University of Virginia Library

18. XVIII.

The other party of fugitives took a more circuitous
route, to the east, through that scantily
peopled region.

Volante stepped proudly along, pricking up
her ears to recognize familiar bugbears, and to
question strange stocks and stones, whether they
were “miching malicho” to horse-flesh.

Brothertoft walked by his daughter's side.
Only now and then in their hurried march
could he take her hand and speak and hear
some word of tender love. But the consciousness
in each of the other's presence, and the
knowledge of the new birth of the holiest of all
the holy affections between them, was sufficient.
A vague bliss involved them as they hurried
through the dim night. And both evaded the
thought of that Hate they had left behind, —
that embodied Hate, helpless and alone, at
Brothertoft Manor.

The negroes trotted along, babbling comically
together.

Jierck Dewitt led the way in silence.

“I shall never dare to face Major Skerrett
again, if I don't bring these people straight
through,” — so he thought. “I am just sober
enough to walk my chalk if I pin my eyes to it.
If I look at anything else, or think of anything
else, this path 'll go to zigzagging, and splitting
up into squirrel-tracks, and climbing up trees.
Old Voltaire says he don't know these back
roads very well. If I lose the track, we shall
be nowhere.”

The region a mile back from the river was
mostly forest then, with scattered clearings. Often
the course of our fugitives was merely a
wood-road, or a cow-path, or an old trail. There
were giant boles stopping the way, and prone
trunks barricading it. There were bogs and
thickets to avoid.

It is bewildering business to travel through a
forest in the dark. Jierck Dewitt knew this well.
He did not distract his attention with talk, or
recalling the events of the evening. He held
tight with all his eyes and all his wits to the
track, commanding it not to divide or meander.
This severe application steadied his brain. He
slowly sobered. The fine fumes of his potations
of Brothertoft Madeira, in the cellar, exhaled.
The coarser gases of rum from the paternal
jug split their exit through the sutures of his
skull.

It seemed a moment, it seemed a millennium,
it was an hour, when the party reached the foot
of Cedar Ridge, almost three miles from the
Manor-House.

Cedar Ridge is a famous look-out. “What
you cannot see from there is not worth seeing,”
say the neighbors. It rises some three
hundred feet above the level of the river, and
surveys highlands north, uplands and lowlands
south, with Janus-like vision.

Long before Hendrecus Hudson baptized the
North River, Cedar Ridge was a sacred mount
— a hill of Sion — to the Redskins. Fire had
disforested the summit, and laid bare two bosomy
mounds, stereoscopic counterparts, with a little
depression between. A single cedar, old as the
eldest hills, grew in this hollow. Around it
had generations of frowzy Indian braves held
frantic powwows, and danced their bow-legged
minuets. Many a captive had suffered the fate
of Saint Sebastian against its trunk, and dabbled
the roots with his copper-colored blood.
Savory fragments of roast Iroquois had fattened
the soil. Fed on this unwholesome diet, and
topped every winter by Boreas, the tree made
hard, red flesh, and bloated into a stunted,
wicked-looking Dagon, as gnarled and knobby
as that old yew-tree of Fountains Abbey, which
— so goes the myth — was Joseph of Arimathea's

staff, — planted by him there when he was
on his tour to convert the hairy Britons from
Angli to Angeli.

A famous point of view was Cedar Ridge,
named after this little giant, this squat sovereign
among evergreens.

Such a landmark attained without error, Jierck
Dewitt began to feel secure. He could relax
his strict attention to his duties as guide, and
let his thoughts confuse him again.

The moment he began to review the events
of the evening with a sobered brain, he grew
suddenly troubled.

He halted where the forest ceased on the
ridge, and the two bare mounds with the low
cedar appeared against the sky. He paused
there, and let Voltaire overtake him.

This was the third night of that old brave's
travels. The present pace was telling on him.
He was puffing loud and long, as he stopped at
Jierck's signal. The others passed on up the
ridge. The white mare became a spot of light
in the open.

“Voltaire,” whispered Jierck, “I did n't see
the Mistress around when we left the Manor.
Do you know what was done with her?”

“Where was you, that you did n't see?” asks
Voltaire, taking and yielding air in great gasps
between every word.

“Never mind that! What became of her?”

“Why you know (puff) that she fired (gasp)
a pistol (explosion and sigh) at Master; and
everybody thought (wheeze) that she 'd shot him
dead.” Here Voltaire took in a gallon or so
of night air, and delivered it slowly back, by the
pint, in the form of a chain of clouds, as white
as if they came from the lungs of a pure Caucasian.

This speech explained half the mystery to
Jierck. His curiosity seemed to become more
troublesome. He continued anxiously: “Yes,
yes, I know,” — which he did not until this
moment. “But what was done with her afterwards.
I was outside, doing my part there.”

“You was outside, was you?” says Voltaire,
slowly recovering fluency. “Well, I guess they
wanted you inside.”

“A man can't be in two places at once. What
did they want me for?”

“Them two boys — the root-doctor's son and
Samuel Galsworthy — is as spry as any two boys
I ever see. Mighty spry and strong and handy
boys they is; but they had a'most a orkud job
with Mistress, she tearing and scratching so.
They wanted another hand bad; but they got
through, and fixed her up right at last.”

“Fixed her! How?”

“What you in such an orful hurry about?
Let a man take breff, won't you?”

“Yes; but speak quick! What did they do
with her? Is she left there?”

“Leff thar!” says Voltaire, relapsing into full
patois. “Whar would dey leave her? She 's
done tied up in a big arm-cheer in de parlor.
An' dar she 'll stay all dis bressed night, jess
like a turkey truss up fur to be roast.” And
he gave a little, triumphant chuckle, that seemed
to remember old cruelties he had suffered at her
hands.

Jierck made no answer. He seemed to need
breath as much as the negro. He gave a little
gasp, and sprang up the hill-side.

Puzzled, Voltaire followed slowly after.

While they talked, the others had climbed to
the top of the ridge, and halted to rest where
the old cedar stood barring the way.

Jierck Dewitt came panting up to the summit.

He turned and glanced hastily over the hazy
breadth of slumbering landscape below.

Belts of mist lay in the little valleys. Beyond
was the river, a broad white pathway, like a
void. And beyond again, the black heaps of
the mountains westward. Here and there in
the vague, a dot of light marked a farm-house.
The lanterns of the British frigates were to be
seen twinkling like reflections of stars in water.

It may have been fancy, but in the silence
Lucy thought that she heard the far-away sound

of the Tartar's bell striking four bells, ten o'clock,
and her consorts responding.

Jierck continued peering intently into the
dark.

His seeming alarm communicated itself to the
party.

“What is it?” said Brothertoft. “Do you
fear pursuit?”

“No,” whispered Jierck.

His monosyllable sent a shiver to all their
hearts. There was a veiled scream in this single
word, — a revelation of some terrible panic awaiting
them.

“I must see farther,” resumed Dewitt, in the
same curdling tone; and he sprang up the
mound on the right.

Edwin Brothertoft, impressed by this strange
terror, followed.

He was within a dozen feet of the summit,
and its wider reach of view, when Jierck leaped
down and seized him tight by both shoulders.
Jierck caught breath. Then, with his face close
to the other's, — “My God!” he hissed, “I 've
set the house on fire. We 've left that woman
there, tied, to burn to death.”