The man named his price, and the widow objected. Then she asked him to hold up the string again, that she might have a better view. He laid his rod aside, held the string in his right hand, and as she selected, still bargaining for the fish she preferred, he detached them with his left hand. Two pairs of eyes, one old, sharp, and aided by spectacles, the other young, soft, intent, yet fearful, watched his every motion. When he held the fish toward them, the widow was long in finding her purse; the palm of his hand was toward them, they could see the underside of the fingers. They were broad, and cushioned with coa.r.s.e flesh.

Anne had now grown so pale that the elder woman did not dare to linger longer. She paid the money, took the fish, and asked her niece to row on down the lake, not forgetting, even then, to add that she was afraid of the sun's heat, having once had a sun-stroke during the life of the lamented Mr. Young. Anne rowed on, hardly knowing what she was doing.

Not until they had reached the little river again, and were out of sight round its curve under the overhanging trees, did they speak.

"Left-handed, and cushions under his finger-tips," said Miss Lois. "But, Ruth, how you acted! You almost betrayed us."

"I could not help it," said Anne, shuddering. "When I saw that hand, and thought-- Oh, poor, poor Helen!"

"You must not give way to fancies," said Miss Louis. But she too felt an inward excitement, though she would not acknowledge it.

The fisherman was short in stature, and broad; he was muscular, and his arms seemed too long for his body as he sat in his boat. His head was set on his shoulders without visible throat, his small eyes were very near together, and twinkled when he spoke, while his ma.s.sive jaw contradicted their ferrety mirthfulness as his muscular frame contradicted the childish, vacant expression of his peculiarly small boyish mouth, whose upper lip protruded over narrow yellow teeth like fangs.

"Faces have little to do with it," said Miss Lois again, half to herself, half to Anne. "It is well known that the portraits of murderers show not a few fine-looking men among them, while the women are almost invariably handsome. What _I_ noticed was a certain want in the creature's face, a weakness of some kind, with all his evident craftiness."

When they came to the solitary cabin, Miss Lois proposed that they should wait and see whether it really was the fisherman's home. "It will be another small point settled," she said. "We can conceal our boat, and keep watch in the woods. As he has my money, he will probably come home soon, and very likely go directly down to the village to spend it: that is always the way with such shiftless creatures."

They landed, hid the boat in a little bay among the reeds some distance below the cabin, and then stole back through the woods until they came within sight of its door. There, standing concealed behind two tree trunks, they waited, neither speaking nor stirring. Miss Lois was right in her conjecture: within a quarter of an hour the fisherman came down the river from the lake, stopped at the house, brought out a jug, placed it in his dug-out; then, relocking the door, he paddled by them down the river. They waited some minutes without stirring. Then Miss Lois stepped from her hiding-place.

"Whiskey!" she said. "And _my_ money pays for the d.a.m.nable stuff!" This reflection kept her silent while they returned to the skiff; but when they were again afloat, she sighed and yielded it as a sacrifice to the emergencies of the quest. Returning to the former subject, she held forth as follows: "It is something, Ruth, but not all. We must not hope too much. What is it? A man lives up the river, and owns a boat; he is left-handed, and has cushions of flesh under his finger-tips: that is the whole. For we can scarcely count as evidence the fact that he is as ugly as a stump fence, such men being not uncommon in the world, and often pious as well. We must do nothing hurriedly, and make no inquiries, lest we scare the game--if it _is_ game. To-morrow is market-day; he will probably be in the village with fish to sell, and the best way will be for me to find out quietly who his a.s.sociates are, by using my eyes and not my tongue. His a.s.sociates, if he has any, might next be tackled, through their wives, perhaps. Maybe they do sewing, some of them; in that case, we could order something, and so get to speaking terms. There's my old challis, which I have had dyed black--it might be made over, though I _was_ going to do it myself. And now do row home, Ruth; I'm dropping for my tea. This exploring work is powerfully wearing on the nerves."

The next day she went to the village.

Anne, finding herself uncontrollably restless, went down and unfastened the skiff, with the intention of rowing awhile to calm her excited fancies. She went up the river for a mile or two. Her mind had fastened itself tenaciously upon the image of the fisherman, and would not loosen its hold. She imagined him stealing up the stairway and leaning over Helen; then escaping with his booty, running through the meadow, and hiding it in his boat, probably the same old black dug-out she had seen.

And then, while she was thinking of him, she came suddenly upon him, sitting in his dug-out, not ten feet distant, fishing. Miss Lois had been mistaken in her surmise: he was not in the village, but here.

There had not been a moment of preparation for Anne; yet in the emergency coolness came. Resting on her oars, she spoke: "Have you any fish to-day?"

He shook his head, and held up one. "That's all," he said, drawing his hand over his mouth by way of preparation for conversation.

"I should not think there would be as many fish here as in the lake,"

she continued, keeping her boat at a distance by a slight motion of her oars.

"When the wind blows hard, there's more in the river," he answered.

"Wind blows to-day."

Was she mistaken? Had he given a sound of _d_ to _th_?

"But the water of the lake must be colder," she said, hardly able to p.r.o.nounce the word herself.

"Yes, in places where it's deep. But it's mostly shaller."

"How cold is it? Very cold?" (Was _she_ saying "gold" too?)

"No, not very, this time o' year. But cold enough in April."

"What?"

"Cold enough in April," replied the fisherman, his small eyes gazing at her with increasing approbation.

He had given the sound of _g_ to the _c_. The pulses in Anne's throat and temples were throbbing so rapidly now that she could not speak.

"I could bring yer some fish to-morrer, I reckon," said the man, making a clicking sound with his teeth as he felt a bite and then lost it.

She nodded, and began to turn the boat.

"Where do you live?" he called, as the s.p.a.ce between them widened.

She succeeded in p.r.o.nouncing the name of her hostess, and then rowed round the curve out of sight, trying not to betray her tremulous haste and fear. All the way home she rowed with the strength of a giantess, not knowing how she was exerting herself until she began to walk through the meadow toward the house, when she found her limbs failing her. She reached her room with an effort, and locking her door, threw herself down on a couch to wait for Miss Lois. It was understood in the house that "poor Miss Young" had one of her "mathematical headaches."

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

"G.o.d made him; therefore let him pa.s.s for a man."

--SHAKSPEARE.

When Miss Lois returned, and saw Anne's face, she was herself stirred to excitement. "You have seen him!" she said, in a whisper.

"Yes. He is the murderer: I feel it."

"Did he say 'gold'?"

"He did."

They sat down on the couch together, and in whispers Anne told all. Then they looked at each other.

"We must work as lightly as thistle-down," said Miss Lois, "or we shall lose him. He was not in the village to-day, and as he was not, I thought it safer not to inquire about him. I am glad now that I did not. But you are in a high fever, dear child. This suspense must be brought to an end, or it will kill you." She put her arms round Anne and kissed her fondly--an unusual expression of feeling from Miss Lois, who had been brought up in the old-fashioned rigidly undemonstrative New England manner. And the girl put her head down upon her old friend's shoulder and clung to her. But she could not weep; the relief of tears was not yet come.

In the morning they saw the fisherman at the foot of the meadow, and watched him through the blinds, breathlessly. He was so much and so important to them that it seemed as if they must be the same to him. But he was only bringing a string of fish to sell. He drew up his dug-out on the bank, and came toward the house with a rolling step, carrying his fish.

"There's a man here with some fish, that was ordered, he says, by somebody from here," said a voice on the stairs. "Was it you, Mrs.

Young?"

"Yes. Come in, Mrs. Blackwell--do. My niece ordered them: you know they're considered very good for an exhausted brain. Perhaps I'd better go down and look at them myself. And, by-the-way, who is this man?"

"It's Sandy Croom; he lives up near the pond."

"Yes, we met him up that way. Is he a German?"

"There's Dutch blood in him, I reckon, as there is in most of the people about here who are not Marylanders," said Mrs. Blackwell, who _was_ a Marylander.

"He's a curious-looking creature," pursued Mrs. Young, as they descended the stairs. "Is he quite right in his mind?"

"Some think he isn't; but others say he's sharper than we suppose. He drinks, though."