This fact, indeed Decherd himself, was well-nigh forgotten in the grief which now came to the master of the Big House. Troubled as Colonel Calvin Blount was, there was born, and there remained, in his mind the unshakable belief that Miss Lady had not of her own will gone with Henry Decherd.

CHAPTER XVIII

MISFORTUNE

How narrow and inefficient are sometimes all the ways of fate and life! By how small a margin, pa.s.sing upon the crowded ways of life, do we ofttimes miss the friend who comes with running feet to meet us! The very train which bore Miss Lady from the Big House brought down from the northward John Eddring, eagerly bent upon an errand of his own--John Eddring, for weeks restless, harried and driven of his own heart, and now fully committed to a purpose whereon depended all his future happiness. He must find Miss Lady, must see her once more; must tell her this one thing indisputably sure, that the paths of earth had been shaped solely that they two might walk therein for ever! He must tell her of his loneliness, of his ambitions; and of this, his greatest hope. Desperately in haste, he scarce could wait until the train pulled up at the little station. He sprang off on the side opposite from the station, and ran up the lane.

Ah! blind one, not to see, not to feel, not to know that the dearest dweller of the Big House was here, directly at hand upon the platform, unseen, but upon the point of stepping aboard the train which had brought him, and which was now to carry her away. Miss Lady, laying her plans well, had practically concealed herself until the very moment of the arrival of the train. And so now these two pa.s.sed, their feet thereafter running far apart.

Colonel Blount received his guest with a strikingly haggard look upon his face; yet at first he made no explanations. He saw Eddring glancing round, and knew whom he sought.

"She isn't here," the planter said very quietly, and handed him the note which he had but a few moments earlier discovered. Eddring's face went as bloodless as his own as he read the few simple lines.

"What's the reason of this?" he cried fiercely. "When did she go?"

"I don't know," said Blount, "unless it was right now. She may have been right by you--right there at the train for all I know; and I reckon like enough that's just how it happened."

"Where's Decherd?"

"I don't know--gone somewhere. He didn't go with her."

"But Mrs. Ellison?"

"She's not gone," said Blount, grimly, "but she's going. I don't count her in any more. Here's the key to Mrs. Ellison's room. It's better she shouldn't see any one this morning."

"But Blount--why, Cal, my friend--what does all this mean?"

"I don't know. All I can say is, h.e.l.l's broke loose down here."

They pa.s.sed down the hall together toward Blount's office room.

"By the way," said the latter, "here's a telegram that got here just before you did. It's come from the city on a repeat order and must have pa.s.sed you on your way. It's railroad business, I reckon."

Eddring tore open the sleazy gray envelope and read the message. His face was hardened into deep lines as he looked up at his friend, and without comment handed over the bit of paper. The message read as follows:

"Eddring, Division Superintendent Personal Injury Department,-----: You are temporarily relieved duties your office by Allen, of Hillsboro, pending investigation irregularities charged your division. Strong developments of claims long considered abated.

Letter. Dix, Agent."

The two men looked at each other for a moment. Blount extended his hand, and Eddring, gulping, took it.

"G.o.d!" he gasped, as he looked at the two bits of paper in his hand.

"Did more wrong and misery ever come to a fellow all at once than I've got here in these?"

"I know what this telegram means," he said, "and it's all a mistake.

In a week or so I'd have put the whole thing before them. But now, they suspect me of being a thief, and I'll never work another day for them, exonerated or unexonerated."

"Well, what of that?" Blount speke hotly. "You're lucky to lose that job--I've been hoping for a long time that cussed railroad would fire you. There's bigger things in the world for you than drudging along on a salary. You just go ahead and set up office for yourself--fight 'em every chance you get; give 'em h.e.l.l; I'll stake you till you get on your feet. But d.a.m.n it, boy, that's not what's bothering me--it's that girl--she's _got_ to be found."

"She's got to be found," Eddring repeated. Even Calvin Blount, little used as he was to searching beneath the surface, knew that Eddring had ceased to give the railroad a thought.

Blount looked at him keenly.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

THE MAKING OP THE WILDERNESS

In the northern pine-lands Father Messasebe murmured to himself, whispering among his rush-environed sh.o.r.es.

"You have taken from me my own," murmured Father Messasebe. "You have swept away my children. You have made child's roads for yourselves along my courses. You have had freedom with me, the Father of the Waters. You, small, have had your liberties with me--with me, who am great, ancient, abiding. But now, since you have taken away my red wilderness, I shall make for myself a black wilderness. In time between these two there shall lie a wilderness of that which once was white!"

And so Father Messasebe, the mighty, the ancient, the abiding, called upon the spirits of the air, which are his kin, and upon the spirits of the earth, which are his friends, and these made cause. The small drop of dew, which hung upon the green beard of the wild rice-plant, dropped down into the hands of Father Messasebe. It did not tarry, as had once been its wont, upon the mossy floor of the wilderness, but hastened on. It met rain-drops shaken from the trees, these drops also hastening. The fountains, once slow and deliberate among the roots of the ancient forest floor, tarried not now upon their beds, but hurried on to join the dew and the rain in a great journeying.

The ravaged forest gave up its springs. The brooks ran dry, and left barren the penetralia of the tamaracks and cedars. All these hurried on, little flow meeting little flow, and they joining yet others; and so finally a great flood joined itself to others great, and this volume coursed on through lake and channel, and surged along all the root-shot banks of the great upper water-ways.

The floods pa.s.sed on, making a merriment which grew more savage and exultant. The scarred and whitening trees stood silent, watching the waters pa.s.s; and the round hills smiled not as their feet were washed high with the hurrying floods. And when Father Messasebe at length came into the country where tall hills stood, neither did these hills protest, but joined in that which was now forward, and sent down red and gray and brown trickles of their own to augment the tawny waters.

And then the country of low hills, which had no trees, sent out its sluggish streams also, across the deep loam-lands, to stain still further the once clean stream of Messasebe. And word went abroad that Father Messasebe had rebelled--word that reached the white-topped mountains far in the West; and these mountains, loyal, sent their white waters down until they, too, grew red, but still tarried not, and rolled on to meet the general stream. And the green mountains in the East, also loyal, sent their floods as well; until Father Messasebe, hating gathered all his armies, marched on and on, to make anew a wilderness of his own.

Thus the floods came at length to a wide land covered with great trees, a land deep and rich, filled with all manner of growing and brooding things; a land of fat soil carried thither no one knows whence; a land apart and prepared. So Messasebe, having traveled many miles, came to a country inhabited by the slow snake, by the otter, and the beaver, the panther, the deer, the bear--many children whom he long had loved.

Along the edge of this lower land there ran low earthen fences made by the white man, who had laid claim upon the kingdom of the Father of the Floods--vainly-builded fences of earth, hopelessly seeking to hedge out the imperious flow of Messasebe, the ancient, the enduring.

Father Messasebe, seeing these things, called back to the following legions of his children that here was time for sport. And all the waters laughed loud and long, dallying with their prey.

"In the North they have robbed me," said Father Messasebe to his legions. "Here in the South they would bind me. Ho! now for the game of letting in the floods, of making anew my wilderness.

"For a wilderness," said Father Messasebe, "the world has ever had.

And whether gentle overpower barbarian, or barbarian in turn overcast the gentle, always there will be a wilderness, and out of it will come combat.

"But the World is ancient and abiding," said Father Messasebe to his children, "and the World cares no whit for those things sometimes called good and new. In the years, that which is new becomes old.

Only the World and its children endure. Only the old prevails. Only the wilderness, and the combat of weak and strong, remain for ever.

"And at all combat," said Father Messasebe to his children, "the World smiles, knowing that the strong must win; and knowing that in time the strong will become weak. Wherefore let us build our wilderness for a time, like to that which will one day rise again along all my sh.o.r.es, great trees growing where cities are to-day.

"Only in the ages," said Father Messasebe to his children, "do the weak come to be the strong. Wherefore must the strong prevail, each in his own day. It is the Law!"