Chapter XLII—The Testimony of the Rocks.

Waikato Times, Volume V, Issue 299, 11 April 1874, Page 2

Chapter XLII — The Testimony of the Rocks.

Mieiam, whom he had been seeking vainly, and who had been, all these months, within his reach ! Miriam, more beautiful than he had ever seen, or imagined her ! Miriam, in whose face he read, even in the instant beforo she turned and rushed away, something more than surprise and fear, something very different from horror. She rushed away ; but in an instant Lawrence followed her, cauae up with her at the wire paling, seized her by the wrists, and fairly dragged her, with the force and determination of any savage, minded that his prey shall not escape him, inside the glass door. Until then, neither spoke; but when he had pulled her in, and stood, still holding fast her wrists, he said one word to hor : ' Miriam !' ' Lot me go, instantly, Mr Daly ! How dare you ?' sho gasped. lie loosed her wrists ; he stood in the doorway, and he answered her : ' How dare you do what you have done to me for many a day ? How dare jou make me so miserable and condemn me to a false position, to satisfy your own pride, or your own fancy ?' ' I did not,' she replied solemnly, and recovering her sclfpossessioii completely. 4lt was ucither my pride nor my fancy which dictated what I have done.' ' T'leu tell mo what it was.' ' You have no right to command me in that tone. The explanation I gave you is the true explanation. From the resolution I then made, you shall never move me. JBy what right do you question me further ?' ' I will tell .you presently. Sit there.' He placed a chair for her ; she took it mechanically ; and he stood before her, not releasing her for a moment from his gaze ' You have to answer me some questions first. Whore have you been since you returned from Germany, and «nre you sent your lawyers to me with youi absurd story about Mr St QuenUn's intentions ?' ' It — it was not absurd, she faltered. ' It was ; and it was cruel, cruel to yourself and to me. But that is not my question. Where have you been 9> ' Here.' ' Here ! Good Heavens ! so near me, when I have been wearying my soul with conjecture, and sickening my heart with hope, always cheated and deferred ! Thank God, at length, at last, for its realisation !' She looked at him with timid surprise ; she blushed and trembled. ' I see ; I know why you did this : being so simple, and so audacious, you calculated, rightly, that 1 should never think of it. And now I bare found you. ' You iball not make me itay here. I will go away. You have no right to pursue me, Mr Daly. lam free to do as I choose, and to decline such acquaintances as I think fit.' She vu making a very poor fight of it — and she knew i t. This wai the most wretched, the most contemptible of shams ! What would you have ? Here waa a guilty woman, who had laid all her ow n life waste, struggling in the strong ( grasp of her first love, in the presence of the man from whom she had fled, because he it was wbom she had wronged, and she had learned that he was her master. ' You are not free,' he replied ; ' at least you are not free from me ! And I will tell you why, Miriam, and in doing so, I will answer the question you asLi-d me just now— " What right have 1?" I will tell jou why. It it because you have bound me to you, and thus cannot free yourself ! It is because no will of yours, no flight of your* can sever me from you! It is because I love you, Miriam, absorbingly, devotedly, as I have loved you since I saw you, as I believe I loved you before I ever saw you, and because I will win you — you, who, I know, have never loved — if it is in love, or man, to win a woman !' She shrank back in her chair, and put her hand out to keep him away. Her eyes closed — a strong shudder ran through her frame ; she made a desperate effort— an effort which frightened him — to keep from fainting. At length •he stammered out : 'O my God ! Can it be ? Yo* do not know what 1 am.' ' I do. I know you are the queen of all women to me , the one women in all the world ; my love, my lady, my life ! Miriam, listen to me ; don't reject me — don't tell mo tbeA hope that ha* stirred my heart since I saw your dear eyes shining on me yonder, is a delusion, like all my life hitherto — the hope that you might come to love me !' Her hands were clasped over her face now, and he gently tried to remove them. But sbe rose, suddenly slipped by him, and stood upright, between him and the door, looking steadily at him. ' Hush !' she said, almost in a whisper, and with one hand pressily heavily on her breast, as she steadied herself by catching the mantel-piece with the other, in the well remembered attitude of their first interview. 'Do not say what I must not hear ; do not say what it will break my heart to remember. You do not know, you cannot conceive, how you are torturing me, how utterly beaten, defeated, a wretch lam ! There is no escape for me now ;' she was growing calmer with every word, and here her eyes shone with the fire of a desperate resolution. ' You, and yet not you, bu^ my fate, and God's eternal immutable justice, have hunted mo down at last ! I have repented, but it does not avail ; I have made restitution, but it is not enough ; I must make confession too, and be for over in your oyes what I am in my owi.' I Miriam ' Great Heaven ! what can you mean ? What can you be iv my eyes but the best beloved among women ?> Again she wared him off, and something raajeitic, yet supremely mournful, in her gesture hold him motionless. ' I can be what I am, a woman degraded from her place among women by a base, low, and treacherous crime — a woman who is an undetected felon, at your mercy from this moment.' Over his face there flickered the light of asuddsn, terrible perception. 'Who do you think it was that robbed you, not unconsciously, for there was no unconsciousness, •aye that L D meant Walter's friend ; Lawrence Daly — who do you think it whs that did that, and did it by an act of unparalled treachery ? Who do think it was that signed Mr St Quentin's will ?' I 1 don't know, Miriam,' answered Lawrence Daly, in A low, resolute voice, and made two steps towards her ; ' and I don't care. It was not Mr St Quentm ; I have known that a long time.' ' What ! You knew ?' ' Yesi I knew ; and now, if you have anything more to tell me, you must tell it thus.' She was clasped in his strong arms, she, that tall, grand woman, in an embrace which made her feel as small as a child, as weak as a reed, and yet filled her with an awful joy, and a sudden glorious fear, as of one — «he thought aftei « wards, when thought could take form in her mmd — nn A wakes in heaven. Her head was bent back by the clasp oF hii arms around her figure ; and her ktssei, full of roerej and of love, stifled the sobs which shook her convulsively, as tiis lipi gathered the tears from her eyelids, and his long silken beard hid her face from him. There was ao need for Miriam's conqueror to ask the lover's question. Lawrence Daly never did, in fact, then or afterwards, ask her if •&« lored him. There rras utter surrender id the firit lelples*

lob which heaved up her heart against his breast, and in the quirk shudder with which she nestled there. Visitors are plenty in the Golden State of late ; mere tourists, peopl" who (In not come thither to toil, or to barter, or to gamble, but m^h-Iv f> «oe one of the grandest and most beautiful conn < i. h < •■ Die faco of the glorious earth, to breathe the moit delicni'u air, to realise for once that there is a land in wine l> m<*"' animal living i* delightful. The romance of d-inuer, difficulty, toil, and «ild ndypnture i< indeed all but pone, but (he memor\ of it i* fre«h, nnd many are the visitors now, brought thither eoniniocliou^y by the giant railway, who have trod the plnns, and toiled through the wilderness in the old time Among the number of these, last year, was Lawrence D«)y. Ho was accompanied by Miriam, his wife. lie had said to her once, that when the great railroad which was to join tho Atlantic and the Pacific together wu completed, be would visit the Gbldon State again. And now she wm there with him, the happiest of ■womrn, as she told herself many times a day, wondering bumbly at the great rescue that had come to her, and striving that her life should bear fruits meet for so real a repentance as hers. She had never ceased to wonder at Lawrence's love, and the had once told him so, venturing to touch the margin of a forbidden subject, by saying : 'It is ■o marvellous — though you know quite the worst of me.' ' Though — or— became ?' Lawrence had answered, with that alow, gradually beaming, delightful smile of his, which never lost its fasoination for Miriam. The settlement was a busy, populous, thriving place now, with a town where the huts had stood in the valley, and a goodly row of stores occupying the site of the one emporium of the days of Lawrence and Walter, with constituted authorities, and good entersaininent for man and boast, and one splendid hotel, to which the English party betook themselves. They arrived at night ; but an early hour next morning found Lawrence and Miriam following, on foot, the windings of the valley in the direction of the lone hut. Lawrence had already inquired iato the alterations made by the course of the famous flood, and was not surprised to learn that the lone hut, well remembered us the scene of the murder of Spoiled Five — to whose grave he led Miriam during their walk — had been partially destroyed by the rush of the water through the ravine and over the face of the great rock. It had been considered hazardous to reconstruct a dwelling in the same situation, and such remains an tho flood had spared had been carried nwav piecemeal. When Lawrence and Miriam roundrd the bluff, ami came in sight of the stone plateau on which the hut had stood, there was not a trace that it had ever existed. They approached the place in silence, and stood silent for se\eral minutes, gazing upwards at the rock and the grand sweep of the ravine. ' The hut stood jmt here,' said Daly, at lentjth. ' It is all exactly like your drawing,' said Miriam, whose ryes were lull of tears, inexplicable, yet most easy to be understood. ' There is no change at all, is there, except the hut being gone flI ' 1 don't observe any. — Yes, I do, though. Look there, to the right, up along the face of the ravine, at the exact spot where you put the pin in my drawing, where Wnlfer shewed you the burial-place of the nugget. Are you following my directions 9 Yes ! Then look ;do you not see •omething which contradicts the sketch pl Miriam shaded her eyes from the glorious Californian sunshine, and looked eagerly in the direction which he indicated. ' I think 1 see what you mean,' she said. *In the drawing there is a space between those two stones, which lie over the other there, in the ravine.' ' Exartly. Yet I know I drew their relative positions correctly, and Walter confirmed it by pointing out to you the apace between them. That is, of course, one result of the flood, and would confirm me in my belief, if it required confirmation, that our nugget, if not stolen, was swept sway by the waters. The undermining of the earth between the upper and lower rock brought the upper one down.' ' What a pity the gold should have been lost! I don't mean to us,' she added hastily. ' We have more than enough of all the world can give, but generally speaking.' ' Yet, said Lawrence, ' that nugget was an unfortunate treasure-trove to us. It is as well as it is. You won't mind ■waiting here, Miriam, while I climb up that path, and take a look at the place ? I want to see whether there is any spot from which a man standing on the rock, under the rdee of the ravine, can be seen. I have always suspected Walter was watched that morninsr, intentioniilly or unintentionally, and that poor Spoiled Five wm murdered, not by insn who came for the gold to the but. but bv men who came in the night to the place where Walter hud hidden it.' 'It is dangerous climbing, Lawrence ? Is there any risk of your slipping 9> 'Not the least, dear; nnd I have not forgotten all the art* of n wild life, if there were.' He collected some loose f tones into a tolerably convenient peat for her, and ran across the plateau, was concealed from her sight for a few minutes, and then emerged, scrambling up the face of the ravirie. Miriam watched him intently, following every movement of his alert, active figure with loving eyes, and a heart filled with countless and contending feelings. Once or twice he stopped, and waved his hand, and called to her, his voice rasily distinct in the pure sparkling air. She saw him spring at a tuft of brushwood, and swing himself up on the projecting edge of the lower rock, and then she caw him etoop, kneel down, lie down on the flat surface, and lay his head upon it, apparently peering eagerly into the crevices of its junction with the superincumbent mass of the upper rock. She saw him, clinging to the stone he lay on with one hand, plunge the other and his arm up to the elbow into a crevice, which ihe could not see. He remained in that attitude for some minutes, then withdrew his hand ; but she could not discern whether he held anything in it. Then he raised bimtelf, and standing on the rock, formed his hands into a epeaking-trumpet, and shouted to her. She jumped up, and ran to the edge of the plateau. ' Run down the valley, and bring the first man you meet here.' She obeyed him instantly, running fleotly but steadily, as so few women can run. On and on she sped, until, at a considerable distance beyond the bluff, she saw two men coming leisurely towards her on horseback. Then she stopped, to recover breath, to ha intelligible when they •hould come up to her, whicli they did presently. She ■teppfd out into the road, and told them that she had been •ent to bring help to her husband, who had climbed up the ravine, and required assistance, she did not know why. Then one of the two, a fine young fellow, who recognised the English lady he bad seen in the town lust night, set Miriam on his saddle, holding her with his strong arm, and strode along by the side of his horse, while the other galloped on to Lawrence's assistance. When Miriam and her escort reached the plateau, this man was already beside Daly, having tied hit horse to a bush. Miriam begged the young man who had come with her, to tie up his horse also, and join the other two. He obeyed her at once, and resumed her seat on tho stones. Lawrence was not liurt, she knew that ; she could wait patiently for anything more there was to know. And now, straining her eyes in the direction of the three men, who had not much more than standing-room, and •were obliged to move with caution, on the surface of the rock, she saw them lie down, and grope, as she supposed, into the crevice as he bad groped. Tnen they all stood upright and talked earnestly together for awhile, after which they descended the face of the ravine, and the two men weDt directly to their horses, loosed them, mounted them, and, having gravely saluted her, rode away. Not till then did Lawrence approach her with a face so solemn that it awed her for a moment out of the power of speech. ' Come away, my love !' Ho raised her from her seat, ond drew her hand within his arm. ' What is it, Lawrence t What did you find there ?' • A dreadful thing — a human skeleton ! A man on whom the upper rock, no doubt, had fallen and crushed him to death, while he was digging there, between the two, unconscious of the loosening action of the flood.' ' O Lawrence, how dreadful ! What can you do ?' ' Nothing. Those good fellows have gone to the town to give notice of the discovery. I fear I must appear at the inquest, for I alone enn presumptively identify those dry bare bonet ' 'You' Who is it U . ' Deering— it must be he ! The unhappy wretch lied to me, came hither to dig out the nugget, and met with a terrible fate.' 4 O Lawrence, how awful ! But how do you know ?' c Thu» ! We found this in a deep crevice behind tho lower rock.' Lawrence Daly placed in his wife's shrinking handi Waller's Pocket-book. THE KND.