"The vedette," murmured Nighthawk, "but he need not see us."

And plunging, or rather gliding into the shadow of the trees, he led the way without noise, to a point directly in rear of the vedette.

A hundred yards farther a fire twinkled; and around this fire were the dusky figures of men and horses. This was evidently the picket.

Three hundred paces to the left, rose a dark object, sombre and lugubrious against the night, which it exceeded in blackness. Only in the upper portion of the house, a dim light, like a star, glittered.

"Some one is yonder," came from Nighthawk in a murmur as before, "let us go there, colonel."

And crouching down until his body nearly reached the earth, my companion glided, snake-like, toward the house. I imitated him; we pa.s.sed un.o.bserved, and almost immediately were behind the house.

Nighthawk then rose erect, and said in a whisper:--

"I am going to reconnoitre. Remain here, colonel. If I think you can come up without danger, I will make you a signal through that window."

With these words Nighthawk pointed to an open window about ten feet from the ground; glided past me through the broken sash of one beside which we were standing, and disappeared like a shadow.

I waited, holding my breath. From the upper portion of the house came the m.u.f.fled sound of voices. I was endeavoring to distinguish the words uttered, when I saw Nighthawk appear at the upper window, and make me a sign.

That sign indicated that I might ascend with a reasonable amount of safety; and pa.s.sing without noise through the window, I found myself in a bare and deserted apartment, with a single shutterless window opposite me. On the right was an open door. I pa.s.sed through it, and found myself at the foot of a rough stairway, occupying half of a narrow pa.s.sage.

Ascending, not without more than one creak, which, I must confess, sent a tingle through my nerves, I reached the upper landing, found myself in front of a closed door, and beside this door encountered the warning hand of Nighthawk.

"Look!" he said.

And drawing me toward him, he pointed through a crack in the board part.i.tion, which separated the pa.s.sage from the apartment.

XXIX.

DARKE'S PAST LIFE.

Leaning on Nighthawk's shoulder, I placed my eye at the aperture.

On a broken chair beside the three-legged table sat Darke, booted, spurred, and armed with pistol and sabre. In an old rocking-chair, without arms, the singular woman, who seemed to accompany him everywhere, sat rocking to and fro, and carelessly tapping with a small whip, the handsome gray riding-habit which defined her slender and graceful figure.

Facing them, on an old bed frame, sat the unfortunate Swartz--but I would scarcely have recognized him, if I had not known that it was he.

His frame had fallen away almost to nothing. His clothes hung upon him as upon a wooden pole. His cheeks were pale, sunken; his eyes hollow; his bearing, cowed, abject, and submissive beyond expression. Let me spare the reader one horror, however. Hunger was not torturing the unfortunate man at this moment. Beside him, on the floor, lay a piece of meat, and an unfinished loaf--thus it was evident that food had been brought to him; and as some of that food remained uneaten, he must have satisfied his hunger.

From Swartz, my glance pa.s.sed to Darke. This second survey of the worthy proved to me that he was what is succinctly styled "half-drunk."

But drink appeared not to have exhilarated him. It seemed even to have made him more morose. In the eyes and lips of the heavily bearded Hercules could be read a species of gloomy sarcasm--a something resembling bitter melancholy.

The woman in the gray dress, had never appeared cooler. She rocked to and fro in her chair with an air of perfect _insouciance_.

The interview had evidently lasted some time before our arrival at the house; but, as the reader will perceive, we came soon enough to overhear a somewhat singular revelation.

As I reached my position near the door, Darke was speaking to Swartz:--

"You ask why you are shut up here to starve," he said, "and as I have some time on my hands to-night, I am going to tell you. That might be called 'imprudent.' No! I am talking to a dead man! You see I hold out no false hopes--you will not leave this house alive probably--I will go back, and tell you something which will serve to explain the whole."

Darke paused a moment, and then gazed with a strange mixture of gloom and tenderness upon the gray woman.

"Perhaps you, too, madam," he said, speaking in a low tone, "may be ignorant of a part of my history. You know the worst--but not all. You shall know every thing. Listen; and I beg you will not interrupt me.

About ten years ago, I chanced to be at Dinwiddie Court-House, a few miles only from this spot; and one day a certain Mr. George Conway visited the courthouse to receive a considerable sum of money which was to be paid to him."

At the words "a certain Mr. George Conway," uttered by the speaker, in a hoa.r.s.e and hesitating voice, I very nearly uttered an exclamation.

That name, which General Davenant's recent narrative had surrounded with so many gloomy a.s.sociations, produced a profound effect on me, as it now escaped from this man's lips; and had it not been for Nighthawk's warning pressure on my arm, I should probably have betrayed our vicinity. Fortunately I suppressed the rising exclamation; it had attracted no attention; and Darke went on in the same low tone:--

"I was in the clerk's office of Dinwiddie when the money I refer to was paid to Mr. Conway. It amounted to about ten thousand dollars, and as I had at that time no business in the region more important than hanging around the tavern, and drinking and playing cards--as, besides this, I was at the end of my resources, having lost my last penny on the night before, at the card-table--the idea occurred to me that it would not be a bad plan to ride after Mr. Conway; accost him on the road; represent my necessities to him, and request a small loan out of his abundant means, to prevent myself from being deprived of my luxuries--liquor and cards. Is that a roundabout way of saying I intended to act the highwayman, perhaps the--murderer--on this occasion? By no means, madam! What is highway robbery? Is it not the brutal and wanton robbery of the poor as well as the rich? Well, I was not going to rob anybody.

I was going to request a small loan--and so far from intending violence, or--murder--," he uttered that word always in a hesitating voice--"I swear, I had no such intention. I was entirely unarmed; upon my whole person there was not one deadly weapon--it was only by accident that I found, when riding out of the court-house, that I had a small pen-knife in my pocket. This I had picked up, by pure accident from the table of the clerk's office, where some one had laid it down.

I had carelessly commenced paring my nails with it--my attention was attracted by something else. I finished paring my nails, and without being aware of what I was doing, put the knife in my pocket.

"Well, you may think, perhaps, all this is irrelevant. You are mistaken. Many things turned on that knife. The devil himself placed it in my grasp that day!"

x.x.x.

STABBED "NOT MURDERED."

"Well," Darke continued, "I have told you my design, and now I will inform you how I carried it out.

"I saw Mr. George Conway receive the money--in notes, bank notes, and gold. That was enough; I knew the road he would take; and going to the stable of the tavern I saddled my horse, and rode out of the place in a western direction. When I was out of sight, however, I turned eastward toward Five Forks, pushed into the woods, and about sunset took my stand in a piece of timber, on the side of the road which--he--was coming by."

There was always a marked hesitation when he came to the name of his victim. He went on more rapidly now.

"Well, he came along about dusk. Some one followed him, but I could not make out who. Another man came on from the direction of Petersburg; pa.s.sed me and _him_; and the other who had followed _him_ out of the court-house turned into a by-road and disappeared. Then I saw that the game was in my own hands; I waited, looking at him as he approached me.

I swear I did not intend to harm him. I was half-drunk, but I remember what I intended. He came on. I rode toward him, demanded the money, he refused. I threw myself on him, as he struck at me with the b.u.t.t of his heavy riding-whip, then we both rolled to the ground, I under! His clutch was on my throat, I was choking. 'Help,' he cried, and I came near crying it, too! All at once my hand fell upon my pocket, I felt the knife, I drew it out, opened it, and stabbed him as he was strangling me!

"That was the whole! Do you call it a _murder_? I rose up, as _he_ fell back. His breast was all b.l.o.o.d.y; his eyes turned round; he gasped something, and fell back dead."

The speaker paused and wiped his brow with his huge, muscular hand. His face was a strange spectacle. The most bitter and terrible emotions of the human heart were written there as with a pen of fire.

"Then I looked at him;" he went on, "I said to myself, 'this is a murder,' foolishly, for he was stabbed, not murdered; and my first thought was to conceal the body. I dragged it to the roadside, hid it in some bushes, and thinking I heard some one coming, leaped on my horse, who had stood by quietly--_his_ had galloped away--and left the cursed spot as fast as I could go. The money was left on him. I swear I did not touch a penny of it, and would not have touched it, even if I had not been interrupted. I had not intended to kill him. It was the result of the struggle. I took nothing of _his_ away from that place, but I left something of my own; the knife with which I had struck him!

"The devil had put the cursed thing into my hand; and now the devil made me drop it there, within ten feet of the dead body."

x.x.xI.