For some time there was no conversation in the sleigh. The horses sped evenly forward, with their heads well in the air, as if they too were excited by the unnatural glare in the sky ahead. Before long there was added to the hurried regular beating of their hoofs upon the hard-packed track another sound—the snoring of the ’squire on the seat behind.
There was a sense of melting in the air. Save where the intense glow of the conflagration lit up the sky with a fan-like spread of ruddy luminance—fierce orange at the central base, and then through an expanse of vermilion, rose, and cherry to deepening crimsons and dull reddish purples—the heavens hung black with snow-laden clouds. A pleasant, moist night-breeze came softly across the valley, bearing ever and again a solitary flake of snow. The effect of this mild wind was so grateful to Jessica’s face, now once more burning with an inner heat, that she gave no thought to a curious difficulty in breathing which was growing upon her.
“The scoundrels shall pay dear for this,” Reuben said to her, between set teeth, when there came a place in the road where the horses must be allowed to walk up hill.
“I’m sure I hope so,” she said, quite in his spirit.
The husky note in her voice caught his attention. “Are you sure you are bundled up warm enough?” he asked with solicitude, pulling the robe higher about her.
“Oh, yes. I’m not very well. I caught a heavy cold yesterday,” she answered. “But it will be nothing, if only we can get there in time.”
It struck her as strange when Reuben presently replied, putting the whip once more to the horses: “God only knows what can be done when I do get there!” It had seemed to her a matter of course that Tracy would be equal to any emergency—even an armed riot. There was something almost disheartening in this confession of self-doubt.
“But at any rate they shall pay for it to-morrow,” he broke out, angrily, a moment later. “Down to the last pennyweight we will have our pound of flesh! My girl,” he added, turning to look into her face, and speaking with deep earnestness, “I never knew what it was before to feel wholly merciless—absolutely without bowels of compassion. But I will not abate so much as the fraction of a hair with these villains. I swear that!”
By an odd contradiction, his words raised a vague spirit of compunction within her. “They feel very bitterly,” she ventured to suggest. “It is terrible to be turned out of work in the winter, and with families dependent on that work for bare existence. And then the bringing in of these strange workmen. I suppose that is what—”
Reuben interrupted her with an abrupt laugh. “I’m not thinking of them,” he said. “Poor foolish fellows, I don’t wish them any harm. I only pray God they haven’t done too much harm to themselves. No: it’s the swindling scoundrels who are responsible for the mischief—they are the ones I’ll put the clamps onto to-morrow.”
The words conveyed no meaning to her, and she kept silent until he spoke further: “I don’t know whether he told you, but Gedney has brought me to-night the last links needed for a chain of proof which must send all three of these ruffians to State prison. I haven’t had time to examine the papers yet, but he says he’s got them in his pocket there—affidavits from the original inventor of certain machinery, about its original sale, and from others who were a party to it—which makes the whole fraud absolutely clear. I’ll go over them to-night, when we’ve seen this thing through”—pointing vaguely with his whip toward the reddened sky—“and if tomorrow I don’t lay all three of them by the heels, you can have my head for a foot-ball!”
“I don’t understand these things very well,” said Jessica. “Who is it you mean?” It was growing still harder for her to breathe, and sharp pain came in her breast now with almost every respiration. Her head ached, too, so violently that she cared very little indeed who it was that should go to prison tomorrow.
“There are three of them in the scheme,” said the lawyer; “as cold-blooded and deliberate a piece of robbery as ever was planned. First, there’s a New York man named Wendover—they call him a Judge—a smart, subtle, slippery scoundrel if ever there was one. Then there’s Schuyler Tenney—perhaps you know who he is—he’s a big hardware merchant here; and with him in the swindle was—Good heavens! Why, I never thought of it before!”
Reuben had stopped short in his surprise. He began whipping the horses now with a seeming air of exultation, and stole a momentary smile-lit glance toward his companion.
“It’s just occurred to me,” he said. “Curious—I hadn’t given it a thought. Why, my girl, it’s like a special providence. You, too, will have your full revenge—such revenge as you never dreamt of. The third man is Horace Boyce!”
A great wave of cold stupor engulfed the girl’s reason as she took in these words, and her head swam and roared as if in truth she had been plunged headlong into unknown depths of icy water.
When she came to the surface of consciousness again, the horses were still rhythmically racing along the hill-side road overlooking the village. The firelight in the sky had faded down now to a dull pinkish effect like the northern lights. Reuben was chewing an unlighted cigar, and the ’squire was steadily snoring behind them. It had begun to snow.
“You will send them all to prison—surely?” she was able to ask.
“As surely as God made little apples!” was the sententious response.
The girl was cowering under the buffalo-robe in an anguish of mind so terribly intense that her physical pains were all forgotten. Only her throbbing head seemed full of thick blood, and there was such an awful need that she should think clearly! She bit her lips in tortured silence, striving through a myriad of wandering, crowding ideas to lay hold upon something which should be of help.
They had begun to descend the hill—a steep, uneven road full of drifts, beyond which stretched a level mile of highway leading into the village itself&mdash............