University of Virginia Library

42. XLII.
THE GOLD.

SO the afternoon passes; and once more it is
evening. And now once more Guy is riding
southward along the valley to the hum of
wheels. Again old Mount Solomon lies before him, misty
and golden in the sunset and purple distance. The pond
that mirrored it so gloriously on another memorable time
when he rode that way — the pond is ruffled to-night. Yet
the evening is calm, oh! very cool and calm, after the day's
feverish business; and the gracefully skimming barn-swallows
are abroad, and the chippering chimney-swallows clip
with their scissor-like wings the silken air.

“Stop a moment!” says Guy. He hearkens to the sparrow's
evening song: it recalls unspeakable memories, stirring
by its very joyousness the depths of his sad soul.

“Go on!” he says to his companion: for he is not now
riding alone, as when he hastened, flushed with love, to Lucy's
arms; but the sheriff is at his side.

Again the lights twinkle in the village at his arrival, and
the hotel-windows shed a hospitable glow; but his journey
takes him farther still to-night, — under the vast gloomy
brow of Mount Solomon, to a structure massive-walled, with
windows iron-barred. Here we leave him to his reflections.

At the appointed time, Archy came to Lucy's room, bringing
a basket.

“Dandelions,” said he; “some 't I dug. Ma said they'd
be good for ye this time o' year. B'sides, I thought, if any
body axed me what I come for, I could say 'twas to bring
ye some greens.” And he presented his verdant offering.
“I'll git ye some reel nice cowslops some day, 'f ye like
'em.”

“O Archy! I thank God for you to-night!” said Lucy.
“I am glad you brought the basket. Hark! — here comes
Mrs. Hedge!”

Hannah entered with a pan to put the greens in, and some
rhubarb-stalks to send back in the basket.

“Ma said your pie-plant had got along,” remarked the
genius: “and she'll be reel glad o' some, I know; for our'n
hain't hardly started yet. But you mustn't rob yourselves,
you know.”

Mrs. Hedge answered in good neighborly sort. The stalks
were placed in the basket, and she retired with the greens.

Then, while Archy leaned awkwardly on a chair, Lucy
came before him, pale, slender, worn-looking, but spirited,

and as beautiful in his simple eyes as in the days when, for
the love of her, he wished that he was dead.

“Archy, I am going to commit a dangerous trust into your
hands. As you value my life, be true to me!” And she
unrolled a napkin.

“Why, what's this? — so all-fired heavy; though I didn't
mean to swear!” said the wondering genius.

“Hush! nobody must hear. It is the gold, Archy!”

Archy recoiled horror-struck. But Lucy placed it in the
basket, covered it with the rhubarb, and directed him how
to dispose of it.

“I don't feel exactly right about having any thing to do
with that money!” he stammered.

“Archy, you promised to help me. It is terrible to me.
I must get rid of it. Go across the fields: nobody will see
you, if you are careful. I could do it myself; and I will,
if you are afraid.”

The genius hung his head, weighing the basket in his
hand, and the doubts in his mind. “Wal, I'll go — for
you,” he said. And promising, in case of the successful
performance of his mission, to return that way, and whistle
under her window, he set out, lighted down the stairs by
Lucy holding a lamp at the top.

It was a clear, moonless night when Archy crept out from
under the door-yard trees, and stood with a beating heart
beneath the constellations, — Bootes guiding his starry
hounds, and the diamonds brightening in Berenice's dusky

hair. And all was still; and with a touch of the old poignant
grief, as he remembered how once before, by night, he
went in Lucy's service to the house of his rival, he crossed
the road, climbed the fence, and glided across the fields.

He had come in sight of the Lombardy poplars, and was
going round by the orchard, eagerly looking and listening,
thankful that the dogs had been sold, — thinking all the time
of the danger to his neck should the gold be found in his
possession, or of the danger to Lucy should he be put into
jail and her secret wrung from him, — when he discovered,
just a few yards off, another figure like his own skulking
along the ground.

Or was it only a shape of the imagination, which often
played him such tricks, especially in lonesome places at night?
For after experiencing a terrible fright, and squatting on the
ground for at least ten minutes, he could see nothing but the
outlines and dim objects of the earth, and hear nothing but
his own heart thump; and, when he ventured to get upon his
feet again, the thing had vanished, and he was alone.

He timidly advanced. The orchard was near: he came up
to it; and, having looked all up and down among the silent
trees, he softly laid a leg over the wall. He was preparing
to put the other over, lifting his basket carefully, and moving
in constant fear of making the stones tumble, when up
jumped a man before him, upon whose back he had almost
set his foot.

“O Lord!” gasped Archy; and the way the stones rolled
and rattled beneath him was astonishing.

“Hello!” said the man; and a hand caught him by
the leg as he struggled to escape.

“What you want of me?” cried the genius, holding the
basket with its dreadful contents as far off as he could.
“Le' me go!”

“Be still, or I'll choke ye!” muttered the man. “Do
ye know where Guy is?”

“Yes: he's gone to jail,” said Archy's trembling voice.

“The deuse he has! And old Aaron — whereabouts
is he?”

“He's after you: I thought he was. Come, le' me go,
Mad Biddikin!”

“Look here, Archy. What ye got in the basket?”

“I've got some pie-plants, — nothing for you.”

“I wish they was cooked!” said Mad. “Hain't ye got
any thing good to eat? Le' me see.”

“Le' go o' me! I'll screech!” For Archy, though
terrified, remembering that one murder had been done for the
sake of that same gold, was determined to be faithful to his
trust, even if he had to fight.

“Wal, you needn't be so skittish!” said Mad. “See
here: I want you to go to the village, and buy me some
things; will ye?”

“Give me some money, then.”

“I'm dead-broke. That's what I want to see Guy
for. Archy,” Mad whispered, “I know who has got that
gold!”

“I should think you ought to know!” stammered
Archy.

“Guy left it with Lucy, I'll bet a thousand dollars. She's
got it now.”

“I don't believe it! She hain't got it any more'n I
have!”

“That's all you know about it. I'll tell ye: get your
mother to go over there to-morrow, and coax it out of her, or
manage to steal it; and I'll give you fifty dollars, — yes, a
hundred, — as much as you want!”

“I know Lucy hain't got it,” replied Archy; “for the
sheriff was there to-day, and had a sarch.”

“And couldn't find it?” said Mad, surprised. “And
Guy's gone to jail! — 'St! there's a buggy! I'm going to
see if it stops to the colonel's: it may be Aaron. Wait till
I come back.”

Mad darted along by the wall towards the road, wonderfully
to the relief of Archy, who did not wait till he came back,
but ran off in the opposite direction, and hid in some sumacs.
There he lay panting, when Mad returned, and softly called
his name, and walked by within a rod of him, and disappeared
in the darkness. That was the last he saw of him; and venturing
at length out of his retreat, thanking his stars that he
had kept safe the contents of his basket, — the idea never
once occurring to him that all that gold might now be his,
if he did but choose, — honest, single-hearted, cautious, — he
groped through the obscure orchard on his way.

The colonel is alone in his library. A shaded lamp burns
dimly. Dimly from the wall look down the portraits of the
young mother and the fair-haired boy upon her knee; and
his thoughts are of them, — there in the silence, with his head
sunk upon his breast.

The window is open; and within the window the cactus
hangs, — monstrous crawling creature, with its long feelers
hanging like a fringe of snakes all round the suspended vase.
It is going to blossom soon. And the colonel remembers
again the old witch-woman and her prediction, already twice
fulfilled, — that the flowering of this cactus will always mark
some great change in the Bannington Family.

He looks up at the portraits, and, with feelings that carry
him back twenty years, regards the noble and sweet face of
the mother, and the bright, brave face of the boy, — the boy
they so idolized then; who was their pride afterwards in his
promising youth; the son whom she died blessing, committing
him to his paternal care; the son from whom he has been for
near a twelvemonth unnaturally estranged; over whose neck
he now sees the noose of the gallows dangle, — and the cactus
about to bloom!

Again his head sinks upon his chest in mute agony; for
how had he fulfilled that mother's charge! The stillness
within the room, and the stillness without in the dark night,
is utter and ominous; when suddenly the cactus shakes its
snaky fringes, and something falls with a dull clash.

The colonel starts as if a bomb-shell had burst. He looks

round, but can see nothing unusual; and all is still again.
A superstitious fear seizes him; for, truth to tell, all his professed
scepticism and hatred of the supernatural arise from a
secret belief and terror. He looks, and sees the cactus fringes
stirring still, — horribly stirring, like live snakes. He gets
hold of his bell, and jingles it violently. Rhoda comes
running.

Had she heard any thing? No, she avers, and wonders;
and he sets her to searching the room.

“My goodness sakes! what's this?” And she fishes a
heavy-freighted little bundle from under his chair.

He seizes it with shaking hands. Some missile, doubtless,
directed against his life. “There'll be a mania for murdering
folks now! Shut the window, — the blinds! and run out
and see who fired it!”

“I'm afraid!” said honest-spoken Rhoda. “I'm dreadfully
scaret! What is it?”

A most extraordinary engine of mischief, tied up in a
bag; and the colonel is a little shy of loosening the strings.
But, concluding that it is entirely the work of human hands,
— no spirit hocus-pocus about it, as he remarks to Rhoda, —
he summons pluck, cuts the knots, and spills out an astonishing
stream of gold.

Archy had done his errand; and now, fearful of pursuers,
he scoots away, shadowy and swift, back through the orchard,
and into the open field, where he pauses to listen and take
breath, in the midst of a profound night-silence and dimly

visible shapes, — alone, beneath the glittering constellations.

Soon Lucy, after long anxiously waiting, hears the preconcerted
whistle under her window, and thanks God, kneeling
beside her bed.

Then Archy hurries home to his mother. And so the day
ends, and sleep comes to whom it will. Blessed sleep! that
visits even Lucy this night; even Guy, in his new, strange
lodgings; and old Ben Arlyn, after tossing all day with fever
in Mrs. Pinworth's house. Blessed, blessed sleep!