CHAPTER XXXVII (Continued).

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 65, 30 August 1884, Page 4

CHAPTER XXXVII (Continued).

This was true ; for her sake her lover had thrown his defence to the winds and rendered the assistance of his counsel unavailable. Seeing her droop her head abashed, Mr Orcutt dryly proceeded. " I do not know what may take place in court to-morrow,'' said he. "It is difficult to determine what will be the outcome of so complicated a case. The District Attorney, in consideration of the deception which has been practised upon you, may refuse to prosecute any further ; or, if the case goes on and the jury is called upon for a verdict, chey may or may not be moved by its peculiar aspects to acquit a man of such generous dispositions. If they are, I shall do nothing to hinder an acquittal ; but ask for no more active measures on my part. I cannot plead for the lover of the woman who has disgraced me." This decision from one she had trusted so implicitly seemed to crush her. "Ah," she murmured, "if you did not believe him guilty you would not leave him thus to his fate." He gave her a short, side-long glance, half-mocking, half -pitiful. "If," she pursued, "you had felt even a passing gleam of doubt, such as came to me when I discovered that he had never i-eally admitted his guilt, you would let no mero mistake on the part of a woman turn you from your duty as counsellor for a man on trial for his life." His glance lost its pity and became wholly mocking. "And do you cherish but passing gleams ?" he sarcastically asked. She started back. "I laugh at the inconsistency of women," he cried." " You have sacrificed everything, even risked your life, for a man you really believe guilty of crime ; yet if another man similarly stained asked you for your compassion only, you would fly from him as from a pestilence." But no words he could utter of this sort were able to rai«e any emotion in her now. "Mr Orcutt," she demanded, "do you believe Craik Mansell innocent ?" His old mocking tmile came back. " Have I conducted his case as if I believed him guilty?" he asked. "No, no; but you are his lawyer; you are bound not to let your real thoughts appear. But in your secret heart you did not, could not, believe he was free from a crime to which he is linked by so many criminating circumstances ?" But his strange smile remaining unchanged, she seemed to waken to a sudden doubt, and leaping impetuously to his side, laid her hand on his arm and exclaimed : " Oh, sir, if you have ever cherished one hope of his innocence, no matter how faint or small, tell me of it, even if this last disclosure has convinced you of its folly !" Giving her an icy look, he drew his arm slowly from her grasp and replied : "Mr Mansell has never been considered guilty by me." "Never?" "Never." " Not even now ?" "Not even now." "It seemed as if she could not believe his words. " And yet you know all there is against him ; all that I do now i" " I know he visited his aunt's house at or after the time she was murdered, but that is no proof he killed her, Miss Dare." "No," she admitted with slow conviction, " no. But Avhy did he fly in that -v\ ild way when he left it? Why did he go straight to Buffalo, and not wait to give me the interview he promised ?" " Shall I tell you?" Mr Orcutt inquired, with a dangerous sneer on his lips. "Do you wish to know why this man — the man you have so loved — the man for whom you would die this moment, has conducted himself with such marked discretion ?" " Yes," came like a breath from between Imogene's parted lips. "Well," said the lawyer, dropping his words with cruel clearness, "Mr Mansell has a great faith in \\ omen. He has such faith in you, Imogene Dare, he thinks you are all you declare yourself to be ; that in the hour you stood up in court and called yourself a murderer, you spoke but the truth ; that " He stopped ; even his scornful aplomb would not allow him to go on in the lace of the look she wore. "Say — say those words again!" she gasped. "Let me hear them once more. He thinks what ?" " That you are what you proclaimed yourself to be this day, the actual assailant and murderer of Mi's Clemmens. He has thought so all along, Mi«s Dare — why I do not know. Whether he saw anything or heard anything in that house from which you &aw him fly so abruptly, or whether he relied solely upon the testimony of the ring, which you must remember he never acknowledged having received back from you, I only knew that from the minute he heard of his aunt's death his suspicions flew to you, and that, in despite of such suggestions as I felt it judicious to made, they have never suffered shock or been turned from their course from that day to this. Such honour," concluded Mr Orcutt, with dry sarcasm, "does the man you love show to the woman who has sacrificed for his sake all that the world holds dear." " I—lI — I cannot believe it. Y r ou are mocking me," came inarticulately from her lips, while she drew back, step by step, till half the room la/ between them. "Mocking you? Mi&s Dare, he has shown hi 3 feelings so palpably, I have often trembled lest the whole court should see and understand them." " You have trembled " — she could scarcely speak, the rush of emotion was so great — "you have trembled lest the whole court should see he suspected me of this crime ?" " Yes." " Then," she cried, " you must have been convinced, — Ah !" .she hurriedly interposed, with a sudden look of distrust, "you are not amusing yourself with me, are you, Mr Orcutt ? So many traps have been laid for me from time to time, I dare not trust the truth of my best friend. Swear you believe Craik Mansell to have thought this of me ! Swear you have seen this dark thing lying in his soul, or I " "What?" "Will confront him myself with the question, if I have to tear down the walls of the prison to reach him. His mind I must and will know." "Very well, then, you do. I have told you," declared Mr Orcutt. "Swearing would not make it any more true." Lifting her face to heaven, she suddenly fell upon her knees. " 0 God !" she murmured, " help me to bear this great joy !" "Joyf" The icy tone, the fierce surprise it exressed, started her at once to her feet.

"Yes," she murmured, "joy! Don't you see that if ho thinks mo guilty, ho must be innocont 1 lam willing to perish and fall from tho ranks of good inon and honourable women to be sure of a fact like this !" "Irnogene, Imogene, would you drive me mad ?" She did not seem to hear. " Craik, are you guiltless, then?" she was saying. "Is the past all a dream ! Are we two nothing but victims of dread and awful circumstancos ? Oh, wo will see ; life is not ended yet !" And with a burst of hope that seemed to transfigure hor into another woman, she turned toward tho lawyer with the cry : "If he is innocent, he can be saved. Nothing that has boon done by him or me can hurt him if this be so. God, who watches over this crime, has His eye on the guilty one. Though his sin be hidden under a mountain of deceit, it will yot come forth. Guilt like his cannot remain hidden." " You did not think this when you faced the court this morning with perjury on your lips," came in slow, ironical tones from her companion. " Heaven sometimes accepts a sacrifice," she returned. " But who will sacrifice himself for a man who could let tho trial of one lie knew to be innocent go on unhindored ?" "Who, indeed!" camp in almost stifled tones from the lawyer's lips. "If a stranger and not Craik Mausell slew Mrs Clemmens," she went on, "and nothing but an incomprehensible train of coincidences unites him and me to this act j of violence, then may God remember the words of tho widow, and in His almighty power call down such a doom " She ended with a gasp. Mr Orcutt, with a sudden movement, had laid his hand upon her lips. " Hush !" he said, "let no curses iss-r from your mouth. Tho guilty can perL . without that." Keleasing herself from him in alarm, sho drew back/her eyes slowly dilating as she noted the dead whiteness <-W Inri settled over his faco, and taken oven the huo of lifo from his nervously trembling lip. "Mr Orcutt," sho •whispered, with a solemnity which made them heedless that the lamp which had been burning lower and lower in its socket was giving out its last fitful rays, "if Craik Manscll did not kill Widow Clemmens, who then did V" Her question — or was it her look and tone ?— seemed to transfix Mr Orcutt. But it vas only for a moment. Turning with a slight gesture to tho table at his side, he fumbled with his papers, still oblivious of the ilaring lamp, saying blow ly : "lhavo always supposed Gomerneur Hildreth to be tho true author of this crime." " Gouvcrneur Hildreth ?'' Mr Orcutt bowed. "I do not agree with you," she leturncd, moving slowly toward the window. "I am no reader of human hearts, as all my past history shows, but something— is it the voice of God in my breast ?— tells mo that Gouvcrneur Ilildreth is an innocent as Craik Mansell, and that the true murderer of Mrs Clemmens " Her words ended in a shriek. The light, -which for so long a timo had been iiickering to its end, had given one startling ilare in which the face of the man before her had Hashed on hor view in a ghastly flame that seemed to separate it from all surrounding objects, then as suddenly gono out, leaving the room in total darkness. In the silence that followed, a quick sound as of rushing feet was heard, then the window Mas pushed up and the night air came moaning in. Imogene had fled. Horace Byrd had not followed Hickory in his rush toward the house. He had preferred to await results under the great tree which, standing just inside the gate, cast its mysterious and tar-reaching shadow widely over the wintry lawn. He was, therefore, alone during most of the interview which Miss Dare held with Mr Orcutt in the library, and, being alone, felt himself a prey to his sensations and the weirdnc>s of the situation in which he found himself. Though no longer a victim to the passion with which Miss Dare had at first inspired him, he was by no means m ithout feeling for this grand if somewhat misguided woman, and his emotions, as he .stood there awaiting the issue of her la^t desperate attempt to aid the prisoner, were strong enough to make any solitude welcome, though this solitude for some rea.son held an influence which was anjthing but enlivening, if it was not actually depressing, to one of his ready sensibilities. The tree under which he had taken his stand was, as I have intimated, an old one. It had stood there from time immemorial, and was, a* I have heard it since said, at once the pride of Mr Orcutfc't. heart and the chief ornament of his grounds. Though devoid of foliage at the time, its vast and symmetrical canopy of interlacing branches had caught Mr Byrd's attention from the first moment of his entrance beneath it, and, preoccuj icd as he was, he could not prevent his thoughts from reverting now and then with a curious sensation of awe to the immensity of tho.se great limbs which branched above him. His imagination was so powerfully affected at last that he had a notion of leaving the spot and seeking a nearer look-out in the belt of evergreens that hid the crouching form of Hickory ; but a spell seemed to emanate from the huge trunk against -which he leaned that restrained him when he sought to go, and noticing almost at tho samemoment that the path which Miss Dare Mould have totakcian directly under this tree, he yielded to the apathy of the moment and remained where he was. Soon after ho was visited by Hickory. "lean see nothing and hear nothing," was that individual's hurried salutation. " She and Mr Orcutt are evidently still in the library, but I cannot get a clue to what is going on. I shall keep up my watch, however, for I want to catch a glimpse of her face as she steps from tho window." And he waso/F again before Byrd could reply. But the next instant he was back, panting and breathless. "The light is out in the library," he cried ; "we shall see her no more to-night." But scarcely had the words left his lips when a faint sound was heard from tho region of tho piazza, and looking eigerly up the path, they saw tho form of Miss Dare coming hurriedly toward them. To slip around into the deepest shadow cast by the tree was but tho work of a moment. Meantime, the moon shone brightly on the walk down which she was speeding, and as, in. the agitation of her departure, she had forgotten to draw down her veil, they succeeded in obtaining a view of her face. It was pale, and wore an expression of fear, while her feet hasted as though she wore only filled with thoughts of escape. Seeing this, the two detectives held their breaths, preparing to follow her as soon as she had passed the tree. But she did not pass the tree. Just as she got within reach of its shadow, a commanding voice was heard calling upon her to stop, and Mr Orcutfc came hurrying, in his turn, down the path. "I cannot let you go thus," he cried, pausing beside her on the walk directly undor the tree. "If you command me to save Craik Mansell I must do it. What you wish must be done, Imogene."

" My wishes should nob be neoded to lead you to do your duty by tho man you believe to be innocent of tho charge for which ho is being triod," was her earnest and strangely cold reply. "Perhaps not," he muttered, bitterly; "but— ah, Imogeno," he suddenly broke forth, in a way to startle these two detectives, who, however suspicious they had beon of his passion, had never bofore had the opportunity of seeing him under its control, " what have you made of me with your bewildering graces and indomitable soul? Before I know you, life was a round of honourable duties and serene pleasures. I lived in my profession, and found my groatest delight in its exercise. But now " What now ?" she asked. " I soem "— ho said, aud the hard, cold selfishness that undorlay all his actions, however generous thoy may have boon in appearance, was apparent in his words and tones— "l seem to forget everything, oven my standing and famo as a lawyer, in the one fear that, although lost to me, you will yet live to give yourself to another." 41 If you Year that I shall ovor be so weak as to give myself to Craik Mansell," was her steady reply, "you havo only to recall the promiso I mado you when you undertook his caso." "Yes," said ho, "but that was when you yoursolf bolieved him guilty.' "I know," she roturned; "but if he were not good enough for me then, I am not good enough for him now. Do you forget 1 am blotted with a stain that can never bo effaced ? When I stood up in court today and donounccd myself as guilty of crime, I signed away all my chancos of future happiness. " There was a pauso ; Mr Orcutt seomod to be thinking. From the position occupied by the two" dotcctives his shadow could bo seen oscillating to and fro on tho lawn, then, amid tho hush of night- a deathly hush— undisturbed, as Mr Byrd afterward remarked, by so ranch as tho cracking of a twig, his voice ro>o quiet, yet vaguoly sinister, in tho ords : "You havo conquered. If any man cullers for i his crimo it shall not bo Craik Maxell, but " The sentence \v;i« never finished. Before tho words could leave his mouth a sudden, strange, and splitting sound was heard above their heads, then a terrifying rush took place, and a great limb lay upon tho w alk where but a moment beforo tho beautiful form of lmogene Dare lifted itself by the side of the eminent lawyer. When a full seuso of the terrible naturo of the calamity which had just occurred swept across tho minds of tho benumbed detectives, Mr Byrd, recalling tho words and attitude of Imogeno in face of a similar, if less fatal catastropho at tho hut, exclaimed under his breath : "It is the vengeance of Heaven ! lmogene Dare must have been moro guilty than we believed." But when, [after a superhuman exertion of strength, 'and the assistance of many hands, the limb was at length raised, it was found that, although both had been prostrated by it* weight, only one remained stretched and senseless upon tho ground, and that was not Imogeno Daro, but the great lawyer, Mr Orcutt.