The Terrible Ordeal.

  “Oh, do not speak! Take me away—please take me away, out of this dreadful place! Oh, this is like all my life—failure, disappointment, misery—always misery, always failure. What have I done, to be so pursued! Take me away, I beg of you, I implore you!”

  Upon the pavement she was hustled by the mob, the surging masses roared her name and accompanied it with every species of insulting epithet; they thronged after the carriage, hooting, jeering, cursing, and even assailing the vehicle with missiles. A stone crushed through a blind, wounding Laura’s forehead, and so stunning her that she hardly knew what further transpired during her flight.

  It was long before her faculties were wholly restored, and then she found herself lying on the floor by a sofa in her own sitting-room, and alone. So she supposed she must have sat down upon the sofa and afterward fallen. She raised herself up, with difficulty, for the air was chilly and her limbs were stiff. She turned up the gas and sought the glass. She hardly knew herself, so worn and old she looked, and so marred with blood were her features. The night was far spent, and a dead stillness reigned. She sat down by her table, leaned her elbows upon it and put her face in her hands.

  Her thoughts wandered back over her old life again and her tears flowed unrestrained.—Her pride was humbled, her spirit was broken. Her memory found but one resting place; it lingered about her young girlhood with a caressing regret; it dwelt upon it as the one brief interval in her life that bore no curse. She saw herself again in the budding grace of her twelve years, decked in her dainty pride of ribbons, consorting with the bees and the butterflies, believing in fairies, holding confidential converse with the flowers, busying herself all day long with airy trifles that were as weighty to her as the affairs that tax the brains of diplomats and emperors. She was without sin, then, and unacquainted with grief; the world was full of sunshine and her heart was full of music. From that—to this!

  Retrospection.

  “If I could only die!” she said. “If I could only go back, and be as I was then, for one hour—and hold my father’s hand in mine again, and see all the household about me, as in that old innocent time—and then die! My God, I am humbled, my pride is all gone, my stubborn heart repents—have pity!”

  When the spring morning dawned, the form still sat there, the elbows resting upon the table and the face upon the hands. All day long the figure sat there, the sunshine enriching its costly raiment and flashing from its jewels; twilight came, and presently the stars, but still the figure remained; the moon found it there still, and framed the picture with the shadow of the window sash, and flooded it with mellow light; by and by the darkness swallowed it up, and later the gray dawn revealed it again; the new day grew toward its prime, and still the forlorn presence was undisturbed.

  But now the keepers of the house had become uneasy; their periodical knockings still finding no response, they burst open the door.

  The jury of inquest found that death had resulted from heart disease, and was instant and painless. That was all. Merely heart disease.

  CHAPTER 61

  Han ager ikke ilde som veed at vende.

  Wanna unyanpi kta. Niye de kta he?

  IAPI OAYE, VOL. I, NO. 7.

  Clay Hawkins, years gone by, had yielded, after many a struggle, to the migratory and speculative instinct of our age and our people, and had wandered further and further westward upon trading ventures. Settling finally in Melbourne, Australia, he ceased to roam, became a steady-going substantial merchant, and prospered greatly. His life lay beyond the theatre of this tale.

  His remittances had supported the Hawkins family, entirely, from the time of his father’s death until latterly when Laura by her efforts in Washington had been able to assist in this work. Clay was away on a long absence in some of the eastward islands when Laura’s troubles began, trying (and almost in vain,) to arrange certain interests which had become disordered through a dishonest agent, and consequently he knew nothing of the murder till he returned and read his letters and papers. His natural impulse was to hurry to the States and save his sister if possible, for he loved her with a deep and abiding affection.—His business was so crippled now, and so deranged, that to leave it would be ruin; therefore he sold out at a sacrifice that left him considerably reduced in worldly possessions, and began his voyage to San Francisco. Arrived there, he perceived by the newspapers that the trial was near its close. At Salt Lake later telegrams told him of the acquittal, and his gratitude was boundless—so boundless, indeed, that sleep was driven from his eyes by the pleasurable excitement almost as effectually as preceding weeks of anxiety had done it. He shaped his course straight for Hawkeye, now, and his meeting with his mother and the rest of the household was joyful—albeit he had been away so long that he seemed almost a stranger in his own home.

  But the greetings and congratulations were hardly finished when all the journals in the land clamored the news of Laura’s miserable death. Mrs. Hawkins was prostrated by this last blow, and it was well that Clay was at her side to stay her with comforting words and take upon himself the ordering of the household with its burden of labors and cares.

  Washington Hawkins had scarcely more than entered upon that decade which carries one to the full blossom of manhood which we term the beginning of middle age, and yet a brief sojourn at the capital of the nation had made him old. His hair was already turning gray when the late session of Congress began its sittings; it grew grayer still, and rapidly, after the memorable day that saw Laura proclaimed a murderess; it waxed grayer and still grayer during the lagging suspense that succeeded it and after the crash which ruined his last hope—the failure of his bill in the Senate and the destruction of its champion, Dilworthy. A few days later, when he stood uncovered while the last prayer was pronounced over Laura’s grave, his hair was whiter and his face hardly less old than the venerable minister’s whose words were sounding in his ears.

  A week after this, he was sitting in a double-bedded room in a cheap boarding house in Washington, with Col. Sellers. The two had been living together lately, and this mutual cavern of theirs the Colonel sometimes referred to as their “premises” and sometimes as their “apartments”—more particularly when conversing with persons outside. A canvas-covered modern trunk, marked “G. W. H.” stood on end by the door, strapped and ready for a journey; on it lay a small morocco satchel, also marked “G. W. H.” There was another trunk close by— a worn, and scarred, and ancient hair relic, with “E. S.” wrought in brass nails on its top; on it lay a pair of saddle-bags that probably knew more about the last century than they could tell. Washington got up and walked the floor a while in a restless sort of way, and finally was about to sit down on the hair trunk.

  “Stop, don’t sit down on that!” exclaimed the Colonel. “There, now—that’s all right—the chair’s better. I couldn’t get another trunk like that—not another like it in America, I reckon.”

  “I am afraid not,” said Washington, with a faint attempt at a smile.

  “No indeed; the man is dead that made that trunk and that saddle-bags.”

  “Are his great-grand-children still living?” said Washington, with levity only in the words, not in the tone.

  “Well, I don’t know—I hadn’t thought of that—but anyway they can’t make trunks and saddle-bags like that, if they are—no man can,” said the Colonel with honest simplicity. “Wife didn’t like to see me going off with that trunk—she said it was nearly certain to be stolen.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Why, aren’t trunks always being stolen?”

  “Well, yes—some kinds of trunks are.”

  “Very well, then; this is some kind of a trunk—and an almighty rare kind, too.”

  “Yes, I believe it is.”

  “Well, then, why shouldn’t a man want to steal it if he got a chance?”

  “Indeed I don’t know.—Why should he?”

  “Washington, I never heard anybody talk like you. Suppose you were a thief, and that trunk was lying around and nobody watching— wouldn’t you steal it? Come, now, answer fair—wouldn’t you steal it?”

  “Well, now, since you corner me, I don’t know but I would take it,— but I wouldn’t consider it stealing.”

  “You wouldn’t! Well, that beats me. Now what would you call stealing?”

  “Why, taking property is stealing.”

  “Property! Now what a way to talk that is. What do you suppose that trunk is worth?”

  “Is it in good repair?”

  “Perfect. Hair rubbed off a little, but the main structure is perfectly sound.”

  “Does it leak anywhere?”

  “Leak? Do you want to carry water in it? What do you mean by does it leak?”

  “Why—a—do the clothes fall out of it when it is—when it is stationary?”

  “Confound it, Washington, you are trying to make fun of me. I don’t know what has got into you to-day; you act mighty curious. What is the matter with you?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, old friend. I am almost happy. I am, indeed. It wasn’t Clay’s telegram that hurried me up so and got me ready to start with you. It was a letter from Louise.”

  “Good! What is it? What does she say?”

  “She says come home—her father has consented, at last.”

  “My boy, I want to congratulate you; I want to shake you by the hand! It’s a long turn that has no lane at the end of it, as the proverb says, or somehow that way. You’ll be happy yet, and Eschol Sellers will be there to see, thank God!”

  “I believe it. General Boswell is pretty nearly a poor man, now. The railroad that was going to build up Hawkeye made short work of him, along with the rest. He isn’t so opposed to a son-in-law without a fortune, now.”

  “Without a fortune, indeed! Why that Tennessee Land—”

  “Never mind the Tennessee Land, Colonel. I am done with that, forever and forever—”

  “Why no! You can’t mean to say—”

  “My father, away back yonder, years ago, bought it for a blessing for his children, and—”

  “Indeed he did! Si Hawkins said to me—”

  “It proved a curse to him as long as he lived, and never a curse like it was inflicted upon any man’s heirs—”

  “I’m bound to say there’s more or less truth—”

  “It began to curse me when I was a baby, and it has cursed every hour of my life to this day—”

  “Lord, lord, but it’s so! Time and again my wife—”

  “I depended on it all through my boyhood and never tried to do an honest stroke of work for my living—”

  “Right again—but then you—”

  “I have chased it years and years as children chase butterflies. We might all have been prosperous, now; we might all have been happy, all these heart-breaking years, if we had accepted our poverty at first and gone contentedly to work and built up our own weal by our own toil and sweat—”

  “It’s so, it’s so; bless my soul, how often I’ve told Si Hawkins—”

  “Instead of that, we have suffered more than the damned themselves suffer! I loved my father, and I honor his memory and recognize his good intentions; but I grieve for his mistaken ideas of conferring happiness upon his children. I am going to begin my life over again, and begin it and end it with good solid work! I’ll leave my children no Tennessee Land!”

  “Spoken like a man, sir, spoken like a man! Your hand, again my boy! And always remember that when a word of advice from Eschol Sellers can help, it is at your service. I’m going to begin again, too!”

  “Indeed!”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve seen enough to show me where my mistake was. The law is what I was born for. I shall begin the study of the law. Heavens and earth, but that Braham’s a wonderful man—a wonderful man sir! Such a head! And such a way with him! But I could see that he was jealous of me. The little licks I got in in the course of my argument before the jury—”

  “Your argument! Why, you were a witness.”

  “Oh, yes, to the popular eye, to the popular eye—but I knew when I was dropping information and when I was letting drive at the court with an insidious argument. But the court knew it, bless you, and weakened every time! And Braham knew it. I just reminded him of it in a quiet way, and its final result, and he said in a whisper, ‘You did it, Colonel, you did it, sir—but keep it mum for my sake; and I’ll tell you what you do,’ says he, ‘you go into the law, Col. Sellers—go into the law, sir; that’s your native element!’ And into the law the subscriber is going. There’s worlds of money in it!—whole worlds of money! Practice first in Hawkeye, then in Jefferson, then in St. Louis, then in New York! In the metropolis of the western world! Climb, and climb, and climb— and wind up on the Supreme bench. Eschol Sellers, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, sir! A made man for all time and eternity! That’s the way I block it out, sir—and it’s as clear as day—clear as the rosy morn!”

  Washington had heard little of this. The first reference to Laura’s trial had brought the old dejection to his face again, and he stood gazing out of the window at nothing, lost in reverie.

  There was a knock—the postman handed in a letter. It was from Obedstown, East Tennessee, and was for Washington. He opened it. There was a note saying that enclosed he would please find a bill for the current year’s taxes on the 75,000 acres of Tennessee Land belonging to the estate of Silas Hawkins, deceased, and added that the money must be paid within sixty days or the land would be sold at public auction for the taxes, as provided by law. The bill was for $180—something more than twice the market value of the land, perhaps.

  Washington hesitated. Doubts flitted through his mind. The old instinct came upon him to cling to the land just a little longer and give it one more chance. He walked the floor feverishly, his mind tortured by indecision. Presently he stopped, took out his pocket book and counted his money. Two hundred and thirty dollars—it was all he had in the world.

  “One hundred and eighty . . . . . . . from two hundred and thirty,” he said to himself. “Fifty left . . . . . . It is enough to get me home . . . . . . . Shall I do it, or shall I not? . . . . . . . I wish I had somebody to decide for me.”

  The pocket book lay open in his hand, with Louise’s small letter in view. His eye fell upon that, and it decided him.

  “It shall go for taxes,” he said, “and never tempt me or mine any more!”

  He opened the window and stood there tearing the tax bill to bits and watching the breeze waft them away, till all were gone.

  “The spell is broken, the life-long curse is ended!” he said. “Let us go.”

  The baggage wagon had arrived; five minutes later the two friends were mounted upon their luggage in it, and rattling off toward the station, the Colonel endeavoring to sing “Homeward Bound,” a song whose words he knew, but whose tune, as he rendered it, was a trial to auditors.

  CHAPTER 62

  Gedi kanadiben tsannawa.

  —La xalog, la xamaih mi-x-ul nu qiza u quïal gih, u quïal agab?

  RABINAL-ACHI.

  Philip Sterling’s circumstances were becoming straightened. The prospect was gloomy. His long siege of unproductive labor was beginning to tell upon his spirits; but what told still more upon them was the undeniable fact that the promise of ultimate success diminished every day, now. That is to say, the tunnel had reached a point in the hill which was considerably beyond where the coal vein should pass (according to all his calculations) if there were a coal vein there; and so, every foot that the tunnel now progressed seemed to carry it further away from the object of the search.

  Sometimes he ventured to hope that he had made a mistake in estimating the direction which the vein should naturally take after crossing the valley and entering the hill. Upon such occasions he would go into the nearest mine on the vein he was hunting for, and once more get the bearings of the deposit and mark out its probable course; but the result was the same every time; his tunnel had manifestly pierced beyond the natural point of junction; and then his spirits fell a little lower. His men had already lost faith, and he often overheard them saying it was perfectly plain that there was no coal in the hill.

  Foremen and laborers from neighboring mines, and no end of experienced loafers from the village, visited the tunnel from time to time, and their verdicts were always the same and always disheartening—“No coal in that hill.” Now and then Philip would sit down and think it all over and wonder what the mystery meant; then he would go into the tunnel and ask the men if there were no signs yet? None— always “none.” He would bring out a piece of rock and examine it, and say to himself, “It is limestone—it has crinoids and corals in it—the rock is right.” Then he would throw it down with a sigh, and say, “But that is nothing; where coal is, limestone with these fossils in it is pretty certain to lie against its foot casing; but it does not necessarily follow that where this peculiar rock is, coal must lie above it or beyond it; this sign is not sufficient.”

  The thought usually followed:—“There is one infallible sign—if I could only strike that! ”

  Three or four times in as many weeks he said to himself, “Am I a visionary? I must be a visionary; everybody is in these days; everybody chases butterflies: everybody seeks sudden fortune and will not lay one up by slow toil. This is not right, I will discharge the men and go at some honest work. There is no coal here. What a fool I have been; I will give it up.”

  But he never could do it. A half hour of profound thinking always followed; and at the end of it he was sure to get up and straighten himself and say: “There is coal there; I will not give it up; and coal or no coal I will drive the tunnel clear through the hill; I will not surrender while I am alive.”