Elliott had had a succession of busy months, when the case was called for the notorious moonshiner, Burr Chester, who had killed the sheriff while resisting arrest. The Grand Jury had found a true bill against him for murder in the first degree and Elliott Harding had been engaged to aid in the prosecution. It was no common case to deal with, and he was keenly conscious of this fact. After two long weeks of incessant work, a verdict of guilty was brought in, but as a last resort to save his client’s neck, an appeal was taken to the higher courts.
After this Elliott had gone home weak, nervous and excited beyond natural tension. He spent a restless night, and the next morning was unexpectedly called to Boston to attend to business that required his immediate presence. He went over to let Dorothy know of his plans. Under a spell of sadness and impulse he said passionately:
“If I left, not knowing that a near day was to bring me back to you I could not bear it. Our wedding day is just three weeks off, and from that time on you are to be inseparably mine—mine forever!”
She clung to him quivering, tears, despite her efforts to be strong, escaping down her cheek. He held her to his heart and soothed her back to something of the calm she had lost.
Just ten days he expected to be gone.
The intervening time busily passed in preparations for the approaching wedding. Besides that, Dorothy’s heart had feasted upon the letters that had daily come on the noon train out of the North. Each afternoon since Elliott’s absence, she had been to town for the mail, having no patience to await its coming from the office by any neighboring messenger who chanced to pass that way.
To-day’s expected letter was to be the last, for to-morrow Elliott would be with her again.
Oh, Love! Love! life is sweet to all mortals, but it was particularly sweet to these two.
After receiving her letter Dorothy started the short way home, singing lightly some old love tune. In the deep forest around her the faithful ring-dove poured forth his anthem of abiding peace.
John Holmes, the staunch friend of the family, had an engagement that evening with the Carr’s; so he started out to overtake Dorothy, hearing she had gone on just ahead of him.
As he hurried along through the coming night, the moon’s white beams fell deep down in the beechen stems. Now and again wood-folk wakened from their dreams and carolled brokenly. The spirit of delicious peace that pervaded the lowering twilight enriched and beautified the reverie that rendered the dreamer oblivious to the present. His thoughts, his hopes were far afield—wandering along beckoning paths of the unexplored future. The office of prosecuting attorney was only the first step. He dreamed of Congress, too.
“Why shouldn’t one do whatever one wants to do?”
Thus he mused, when suddenly the sound of crashing underbrush startled him into consciousness of the present and a dark outline dashed into the road just ahead from out of the dense thicket that lay to his left. Before he could collect his scattered senses sufficiently to question or intercept the excited runner, the man dodged to one side, and sped along the road until he passed out of sight around an angle of the wood. Holmes called after him to stop, but his command was not obeyed.
“What’s the matter?” he shouted after the flying figure; but receiving no answer, again he cried:
“Stop, I say.” And this time a reply came in the shape of a faint groan from near by in the wood. He dashed into the darkness of the forest in the direction from whence the sound had come, his flesh quivering and his breath coming in gasps as an overwhelming sense of apprehension seized him.
At first the gloom was such that he could see nothing distinctly and he groped his way forward with difficulty. The moon that for a moment had passed under a cloud now again shone brightly out, filling all the open spaces with a play of wavering light. He forced himself into the thicket from where he again heard a low sound—writhing, twisting his way through the thick, hindering stems, and there before him, in a little opening, he saw what appeared to be a prostrate human form.
He sprang toward it and drew the clinging boughs aside to let the moonlight in. Then he saw it was the figure of a woman. Two ghastly gashes, edged with crimson, stained the white flesh of her throat.
The awful meaning of the crime, as he thought of the headlong haste of the flying man, surged over Holmes. He quickly knelt to gaze into her face and as he gazed a terrible cry broke from his lips.
“Dorothy! Oh, my God!”
Raising the light form in his arms, he cried passionately on her name.
The wind sobbed a dirge in the bare boughs above, but beside that, all the country-side was still.
The girl hung heavy and limp in his arms as he bore her to the road. She made no answer to his cry—he felt blindly for a pulse—a heart—but found none.
One short, sharp gasp convulsed her breast as he gently laid her down—a faint tremor passed over her frame, and she was dead!
John Holmes looked into her face, distraught with agony. The blood drummed in his ears, his heart beat wildly; dazed and bewildered, a moment he stood—the power of action almost paralyzed. But he felt that something must be done, and done quickly.
With a superhuman effort he lifted the dead girl and carried her toward her home. When he reached the door, after what seemed an eternity of travel, he waited, struggling for composure. How could he meet her father and break the news? Seeing no one around he slipped quietly in and laid the body upon a couch in the room which so long had been her own. When he entered the father’s room a deep calm filled the place. There sat the old man in his armchair, his head fallen to one side in the unstudied attitude of slumber. Upon his face there was more than a smile—a radiance—his countenance was lit up with a vague expression of content and happiness. His white hairs added sweet majesty to the cheerful light upon his face. He slept peacefully—perhaps dreaming that his child was well and would soon be home.
An inexpressible pity was in his voice as John Holmes gently aroused the sleeper and told him the mournful truth. He would never forget that old face so full of startled grief—that awful appeal to him—that withered hand upraised to heaven. Then darkness came before the dim old eyes, when for a time all things were blotted out of his remembrance.
The truth was so terrible that at first he could not grasp it. The moan he uttered was inarticulate and stifled. Gently John Holmes led him tremblingly to the couch where Dorothy lay—the blood still oozing from her throat; the dew of agony yet fresh on her brow, her dainty nostrils expanded by their last convulsive effort to retain the breath of life, appearing almost to quiver.
A moment, motionless and staring, he stood above her—dead!
Slowly awaking to the awful reality, he threw his hands up with the vehemence of despair and horror—then fell forward by her side, saying by the motion of his lips, “Dead!”
Slowly his speech returned, and he reached out one hand.
“My boy, she is not dead. I feel her heart in mine, I see her love for me in her face. No! she is not dead!—not dead!” his voice fell to a whispered groan.
The other tried to stay his tears and to reply, but he could only touch her cold, bruised hand, hoping that he might grow to a perfect understanding of the tragedy.
The father turned his head. His look was full of supplicating agony. In a plaintive and quivering voice he cried:
“My God! My God! My God!”
Presently John Holmes went away to give the alarm. Returning later, he went through the dreary house and darkened the windows—the windows of the room where the dead girl lay he darkened last. He lifted her cold hand and held it to his heart—and all the world seemed death and silence, broken only by the father’s moaning.