She sprang forward, her arms outstretched, a glorious smile transfiguring her face.

"Oh, my beloved! My husband!"

She led him to the little couch on which so many bitter tears had told of her misery. He was worn out with walking, and fell upon it, smiling as she raised his head from the cushions, and pillowed it on her bosom, folding in his weakness with her young arms.

"It may kill me, but I could not keep away. Oh, my darling, how I have longed for a sight of you!" said the young husband.

Ruth gathered him closer in her arms, and, forgetting everything but his presence, kissed the very words from his smiling lips.

"Ah, you have come. It is enough! It is enough!"

Something startled her; a faint noise near the door. She lifted her head, and there stood her father, looking wildly upon her--upon him.

Before she could move or speak, the old man swayed, uttered one faint moan, and fell across the threshold.

CHAPTER LIII.

DEATH.

While Ruth had thought her father resting from his dangerous exertions, that poor man had been aroused into keen wakefulness which brought back all his old powers of thought. His brain had been cleared from the dull mists of fever, and the haze that had gathered over his memory was swept away by the physical effort he had made. He began to see things clearly that had seemed fantastic and dreamlike till then.

The events of that night, when he received his wound, came out before him in pictures. The great cedar of Lebanon, the face he had seen for a moment gleaming through the darkness, everything came to his memory with the vividness of thoughts that burn like fire in an enfeebled brain, driving out sleep and everything but themselves.

Slowly and surely dreams melted away into nothingness. For, in the state of nervous excitement which sometimes comes with returning powers, after long mental wanderings, all his ideas were supremely vivid.

One by one he arranged past events in his mind. From the time that he met young Storms in the park on his way home that fatal night, and received the first cruel idea of his daughter's shame, for which he cast the young man to the earth in his rage, as we wrestle with a mad dog, which leaves its poison in our veins. He traced events down to the moment when a flash of fire seemed to pa.s.s through him under the cedars, and he awoke, helpless, in the little chamber whose walls enclosed him now. Then he remembered the letter he had written to young Hurst; hours before, he could not have given its import, or have repeated a word of it. But now, it came before him like the rest, a visible substance. He saw the very handwriting, uneven and irregular, such as he had left in copy-books years before, and it rose up clearly in judgment against him now. Reading these great, uncouth letters in his mind, he groaned aloud.

That which, in his fever, he had resolved to keep secret forever, he had written out in a wild effort to spare anxiety to another, suffering like himself. What if that letter should fall into the hands of an enemy? It conveyed a charge. It hinted at something that might bring terrible suspicions on the young man who had been dear to him almost as his own child. The evil he had tried to prevent had been drawn ominously near by his own hand.

The old man lay there, wounding himself with the most bitter reproaches. Into what mad folly had the fever thrown him!

William Jessup started up in bed, as these thoughts came crowding to his brain. He would at once redeem the evil that had been done. That letter should be revoked.

Yes, he would do it that moment; then, perhaps, he might sleep, for the intense working of his brain was more than he could endure. It was like the rush and thud of an engine, over which the master-hand had lost control.

Ruth Jessup's little desk lay open on the table close by the bed, where she had been using it. Pen and paper lay upon it, inviting the sick man to act at once. He was still wrapped in a long flannel dressing-gown, and his feet were thrust into slippers, which the hands of his child had wrought with scrolls of glittering bead-work and cl.u.s.ters of flowers--soft, dainty slippers, which made no noise as he dropped his feet over the bedside, and drew the table toward him with hands nerved to steadiness by a firm resolve.

Truly, that great hand shook, and the pen sometimes leaped from the paper as some sharp, nervous thrill for a moment disabled it. But for a time excitement was strength, and to that was added a firm will: so the pen worked on, linking letter to letter, and word to word, until the white surface of a page was black with them. Then he turned the sheet over, pressed it down with both hands, and went on until his task was done.

By this time his eyes were heavy with fatigue, and a dusky fever-flush burned on his cheeks. He folded the sheet of paper, which was well written over, and directed it on the blank side to "Walton Hurst,"

then he pushed the table aside, leaned back upon the pillow, and gave way to the exhaustion which this great effort had brought upon him.

Still, the poor man could not sleep, the brain had been too much disturbed. While his body lay supine, and his hands were almost helplessly folded in his flannel dressing-gown, those deep-set eyes were wide open, and burning with internal fires.

Thus the sun went down, and a glory of crimson gold and purple swept through the window, slowly darkening the room.

All this time, Ruth was below, sad and thoughtful, gleaning a little pleasure from the fact that all was silent overhead, which indicated a long, healthful sleep for her father, after his first effort to cross the room. She was very careful to make no noise that might disturb the beloved sleeper, and thus sat hushed and watchful, when the sweet shock of her husband's presence aroused her.

This noise had reached the chamber where Jessup lay.

"She is below," he thought, struggling up from his bed. "This very hour she shall carry my letter to 'The Rest.' Will she ever forgive me for doubting her, my sweet, good child? Ah, how did I find heart to wrong her so?"

With the letter clasped in one hand, and that buried in the pocket of his dressing-gown, the old man moved through the dusky starlight that filled his room, and down the narrow stairs slowly, for he was weak, and softly, for his slippers made no noise. He paused a moment in the pa.s.sage, holding by the banister, then, guided by an arrow of light that shot through the door, which was ajar, stood upon the threshold, struck through the heart by what he saw--wounded again and unto death by the words he heard.

"It was true! it was true!" The words said to him by that vile man in the park that night was a fact that struck him with a sharper pang than the rifle had given. His child--his Ruth, his milk-white lamb--where was she? "Whose head was that resting upon her bosom?

Whose voice was that murmuring in her ear?"

The pain of that awful moment made him reel upon his feet, a cry broke to his lips, bringing waves of red blood with it. His hands lost their hold on the door-frame, and his body fell across the threshold.

For a moment two white, scared faces looked down upon the fallen man, then at each other, dazed by the sudden horror. Then Ruth sank to the floor, with a piteous cry, lifted his head to her lap, and moaning over it, besought her father to look up, to speak one word, to lift but a finger, anything to prove that he was not dead.

Hurst bent over her, feeble and trembling. He had no power to lift the old man from her arms, but leaned against the door-frame paralyzed.

"Oh, wipe his lips, they are so red! Help me to lift him up," cried Ruth, with woeful entreaty. "He is not dead, you know. Remember how he fainted before, but that was not death. Help me! Oh, Walton, help me, or something dreadful may come to him."

The agony of this pleading aroused all that remained of strength in the young husband's frame. He stooped down, and attempted to remove the old man from the girl's clinging arms.

"No, no!" she cried. "I can take care of him best. Bring me some brandy--brandy, I say! You will find it in--in the cupboard. Brandy, quick--quick, or he may never come-to!"

Hurst went to the closet, brought forth a flask of brandy, and attempted to force some drops between those parted lips, through which the teeth were gleaming with ghastly whiteness.

"He cannot drink! Bring a gla.s.s. Father! father! try to move--try to swallow. It frightens me so! Ah, try to understand! It frightens me so!"

All efforts were in vain. Hurst knelt down, and, with a hopeless effort, felt for the pulse that would never beat again.

"His head is growing heavier. See how he leans on me! Of course, he knows--only--only--Oh, Walton! There is no breath!" whispered the poor girl. "What can I do--what can I do?"

"Ruth, my poor child, I fear he will never breathe again."

"Never breathe again! Never breathe again! Why, that is death!"

"Yes, Ruth, it is death," answered the young man, folding the dressing-gown over the body, reverently, as if it had been the vestment of some old Roman.

"Then you and I have killed him," said the girl, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"You and I!"

The young man made no answer, but kindly and gently attempted to remove the body that rested so heavily upon her.

"Not yet--oh, not yet! I cannot give him up! He might live long enough to pardon me."

"If good men live hereafter, and you believe that, Ruth, he knows that concealment is all the sin you have committed against him," answered Hurst, gently.

"But that has brought my poor--poor father here," said the girl, looking piteously up into the young man's face.

"Ruth--Ruth, do not reproach me! G.o.d knows I blame myself bitterly enough," he said, at last.

"Blame yourself? Oh, no! I alone am to blame. It was I that tempted you. I that listened--that loved, and made you love me.