Audrey listened and was comforted, but the shadow did not quite leave her
eyes. "He is waiting for me now," she said fearfully to Haward, who had
not missed the shadow. "He followed me down the creek, and is waiting over
against the gate in the wall. When I go back he will follow me again, and
at last I will have to cross to his side. And then he will go home with
me, and make me listen to him. His eyes burn me, and when his hand touches
me I see--I see"-Her frame shook, and she raised to his gaze a countenance suddenly changed
into Tragedy's own. "I don't know why," she said, in a stricken voice,
"but of them all that I kissed good-by that night I now see only Molly. I
suppose she was about as old as I am when they killed her. We were always
together. I can't remember her face very clearly; only her eyes, and how
red her lips were. And her hair: it came to her knees, and mine is just as
long. For a long, long time after you went away, when I could not sleep
because it was dark, or when I was frightened or Mistress Deborah beat me,
I saw them all; but now I see only Molly,--Molly lying there dead."
There was a silence in the garden, broken presently by Haward. "Ay,
Molly," he said absently.
With his hand covering his lips and his eyes upon the ground, he fell into
a brown study. Audrey sat very still for fear that she might disturb him,
who was so kind to her. A passionate gratitude filled her young heart; she
would have traveled round the world upon her knees to serve him. As for
him, he was not thinking of the mountain girl, the oread who, in the days
when he was younger and his heart beat high, had caught his light fancy,
tempting him from his comrades back to the cabin in the valley, to look
again into her eyes and touch the brown waves of her hair. She was ashes,
and the memory of her stirred him not.
At last he looked up. "I myself will take you home, child. This fellow
shall not come near you. And cease to think of these gruesome things that
happened long ago. You are young and fair; you should be happy. I will see
to it that"-He broke off, and again looked thoughtfully at the ground. The book which
he had tossed aside was lying upon the grass, open at the poem which he
had been reading. He stooped and raised the volume, and, closing it, laid
it upon the bench beside her. Presently he laughed. "Come, child!" he
said. "You have youth. I begin to think my own not past recall. Come and
let me show you my dial that I have just had put up."