This was something of her sister's mood more or less all the time, and Helen found it very trying. But she made every allowance for it, also the more readily as she watched the affairs of the church, and understood how surely they were upsetting to her sister through her belief in the old Indian legend of the fateful pine.

But Kate's occasional outbursts of delirious excitement were far more difficult of understanding. Helen read them in the only way she understood. Her observation warned her that they generally followed talk of the doings of Inspector Fyles, or a distant view of him.

As the days went by Kate seemed more and more wrapped up in the work of the police. Every little item of news of them she hungrily devoured. And frequently she went out on long solitary rides, which Helen concluded were for the purpose of interested observation of their doings.

But all this display of interest was somewhat nullified by another curious phase in her sister. It quickly became obvious that she was endeavoring by every artifice to avoid coming into actual contact with Stanley Fyles. Somehow this did not seem to fit in with Helen's idea of love, and again she found herself at a loss.

Thus poor Helen found herself pa.s.sing many troubled hours. Things seemed to be going peculiarly awry, and, for the life of her, she could not follow their trend with any certainty of whither it was leading. Even Bill was worse than of no a.s.sistance to her. Whenever she poured out her long list of anxieties to him, he a.s.sumed a perfectly absurd air of caution and denial that left her laboring under the belief that he really was "one big fool," or else he knew something, and had the audacity to keep it from her. In Bill's case, however, the truth was he felt he had blundered so much already in his brother's interests that he was not prepared to take any more chances, even with Helen.

Then came one memorable and painful day for Helen. It was a Sat.u.r.day morning. She had just returned from a church committee meeting. Kate had deliberately absented herself from her post as honorary secretary ever since the decision to fell the old pine had been arrived at. It was her method of protest against the outrage. But Mrs. John Day, quite undisturbed, had appointed a fresh secretary, and Kate's defection had been allowed to pa.s.s as a matter of no great importance.

The noon meal was on the table when Helen came in. Kate was at her little bureau writing. The moment her sister entered the room she closed the desk and locked it. Helen saw the action and almost listlessly remarked upon it.

"It's all right, Kate," she said. "Bluebeard's chamber doesn't interest me--to-day."

Kate started up at the other's depressed tone. She looked sharply into the gray eyes, in which there was no longer any sign of their usual laughter.

"What's the matter, dear?" she asked, with affectionate concern. "Mrs.

John?"

Helen nodded. Then at once she shook her head.

"Yes--no. Oh, I don't know. No, I don't think it's Mrs. John.

It's--it's everybody."

Kate had moved to the head of the table, and stood with her hands gripping the back of her chair.

"Everybody?" she said, with a quiet look of understanding in her big eyes. "You mean--the tree?"

Helen nodded. She was very near tears.

But Kate rose to the occasion. She knew. She pointed at Helen's chair.

"Sit down, dear. We'll have food," she said, quietly. "I'm as hungry as any coyote."

Helen obeyed. She was feeling so miserable for her sister, that she had lost all inclination to eat. But Kate seemed to have entirely risen above any of the feelings she had so lately displayed. She laughed, and, with gentle insistence, forced the other to eat her dinner. Strangely enough her manner had become that which Helen seemed to have lost sight of for so long. All her actions, all her words, were full of confident a.s.surance, and quiet command.

Gradually, under this new influence, the anxiety began to die out of Helen's eyes, and the watchful Kate beheld the change with satisfaction. Then, when the girl had done full justice to the simple meal, she pushed her own plate aside, planted her elbows upon the table, and sat with her strong brown hands clasped.

"Now tell me," she commanded gently.

In a moment Helen's anxiety returned, and her lips trembled. The next she was telling her story--in a confused sort of rush.

"Oh, I don't know," she cried. "It's--it's too bad. You see, Kate, I didn't sort of think about it, or trouble anything, until you let me know how you felt over that--that old story. It didn't seem to me that old tree mattered at all. It didn't seem to me it could hurt cutting it down, any more than any other. And now--now it just seems as if--as if the world'll come to an end when they cut it down. I believe I'm more frightened than you are."

"Frightened?"

Kate smiled. But the smile scarcely disguised her true feelings.

"Yes, I'm scared--to death--now," Helen went on, "because they're going to cut it down. They've fixed the time and--day."

"They've fixed the time--and day," repeated Kate dully. "When?"

Her smile had completely gone now. Her dark eyes were fixed on her sister's face with a curious straining.

"Tuesday morning at--daybreak."

"Tuesday--daybreak? Go on. Tell me some more."

"There's no more to tell, only--only there's to be a ceremony. The whole village is going to turn out and a.s.sist. Mrs. Day is going to make an ad-dress. She said if she'd known there was a legend and curse to that pine she's have had it down at the start of building the church. She'd have had it down 'in the name of religion, honesty and righteousness'--those were her words--'as a fitting tribute at the laying of the foundations of the new church.' Again, in her own words, she said, 'It's presence in the valley is a cloud obscuring the sun of our civilization, a stumbling block to the progress of righteousness.'

And--and they all agreed that she was right--all of them."

Kate was no longer looking at her sister. She was gazing out straight ahead of her. It is doubtful even if she had listened to the p.r.o.nouncements of Mrs. John Day, with her self-satisfied dictatorship of the village social and religious affairs. She was thinking--thinking. And something almost like panic seemed suddenly to have taken hold of her.

"Tuesday--at daybreak," she muttered. Then, in a moment, her eyes flashed, and she sprang from her chair. "Daybreak? Why, that--that's practically Monday night! Do you hear? Monday night!"

Helen was on her feet in a moment.

"I--I don't understand," she stammered.

"Understand? No, of course you don't. n.o.body understands but me," Kate cried fiercely. "I understand, and I tell you they're all mad.

Hopelessly mad." She laughed wildly. "Disaster? Oh, blind, blind, fools. There'll be disaster, sure enough. The old Indian curse will be fulfilled. Oh, Helen, I could weep for the purblind skepticism of this wretched people, this consequential old fool, Mrs. Day. And I--I am the idiot who has brought it all about."

CHAPTER x.x.xI

ANTAGONISTS

Fyles endured perhaps the most anxious time that had ever fallen to his lot, during the few days following his momentous interview with Kate. An infinitesimal beam of daylight had lit up the black horizon of his threatened future. It was a question, a painfully doubtful question, as to whether it would mature and develop into a glorious sunlight, or whether the threatening clouds would overwhelm it, and thrust it back into the obscurity whence it had sprung.

He dared not attempt to answer the question himself. Everything hung upon that insecure thread of official amenability. Such was his own experience that he was beset by the gravest doubts. His only hope lay in the long record of exceptional work he possessed to his credit in the books of the police. This, and the story he had to tell them of future possibilities in the valley of Leaping Creek.

Would Jason listen? Would he turn up the records, and count the excellence of Inspector Fyles's past work? Or would he, with that callous severity of police regulations, only regard the failures, and turn a deaf official ear to the promise of the future? Supersession was so simple in the force, it was the usual routine. Would the superintendent in charge interest himself sufficiently to get away from it?

These were some of the doubts with which the police officer was a.s.sailed. These were some of the endless pros and cons he debated with his lieutenant, Sergeant McBain, when they sat together planning their next campaign, while awaiting Amberley's reply to both the report of failure, and plea for the future.

But Fyles's anxieties were far deeper than McBain's, who was equally involved in the failure. He had far more at stake. For one thing he belonged to the commissioned ranks, and his fall, in conjunction with his greater and wider reputation, would be far more disastrous. For McBain, reduction in rank was of lesser magnitude. His rank could be regained. For Fyles there was no such redemption. Resignation from the force was his alternative to being dismissed, and from resignation there was no recovery of rank.

At one time this would have been his paramount, almost sole anxiety.

It would have meant the loss of all he had achieved in the past. Now, curiously enough, it took a second place in his thoughts. A greater factor than ambition had entered into his life, a factor to which he had promptly become enslaved. Far above all thoughts of ambition, of place, of power, of all sense of duty, the figure of a handsome dark-eyed woman rose before his mind's eye. Kate Seton had become his whole world, the idol of all his thoughts and ambitions, and longings, which left every other consideration lost in the remotest shadows far below.

His earlier love for her had suddenly burst into a pa.s.sionate flame that seemed to be devouring his very soul. And he had a chance of winning her. A chance. It seemed absurd--a mere chance. It was not his way in life to wait for chances. It was for him to set out on a purpose, and achieve or fail. Here--here, where his love was concerned, he was committing himself to accepting chances, the slightest chances, when the winning of Kate for his wife had become the essence of all his hopes and ambitions.

Chance? Yes, it was all chance. The decision of Superintendent Jason.

The leadership of this gang. His success in capturing the man, when the time came. In a moment his whole life seemed to have become a plaything to be tossed about at the whim of chance.