Francis had registered two days ago. He had rented a room overlooking the lake, and had hired the hotel's three horses this morning. Two of the animals were carrying him and a lady to Racket, and the rider of the third was a groom, who had charge of Mr. Francis's grip, and who would bring the nags back from the depot. Mr. Francis seemed to be in a desperate hurry; but that was not to be wondered at if he meant to catch the next south-bound train, there being just fifty minutes in which to cover the five miles. There was no other train until the night mail, which was due to leave Racket at seven o'clock. The hotel possessed a buggy; but Mr. Francis refused to use it. In fact, he was willing to pay any price for the horses; though it was most inconvenient that there should not even be one horse left in the stable, as it might be wanted in an emergency.

Power thanked his informant, who doubtless wondered what whiff of excitement had stirred this remote corner of New York state that morning; but gleaned little from his cool, self-contained questioner.

Indeed, Power raised only one more point--could he be driven to Racket for the late train?--and was a.s.sured that there would be no difficulty in that respect.

Then Peter received his orders.

"Pack Mrs. Power's baggage and mine, and bring everything here," said Power. "I want you to remain in the cabin till you hear from me; but come to the hotel every day for a letter or telegram."

Granite nodded, and paddled off silently and swiftly. He understood, not all, but some part, of Power's mood. There were ordeals from which any man would flinch, and high among these for the bereaved husband (as the guide deemed him) would rank the heartbreaking task of sorting out and folding Nancy's clothes, and replacing her toilet requisites in a dressing-case. Each garment would speak of her with a hundred mouths, each tiny silver article and cut-gla.s.s bottle would recall the grace of her gestures when she was brushing her luxuriant hair or shrugging her slim shoulders in laughing protest against Derry's clumsiness as a lady's-maid.

Before Peter returned, a luncheon-gong boomed from the porch of the hotel, and a number of men came in from their canoes or fishing-punts.

One of a small party noticed Power sitting on a shaded seat in the little garden which ran down to the water's edge.

"Isn't that the man with the pretty wife who lives in Granite's shack?"

he asked. "He looks as though he'd lost a dollar and found a nickel."

"P'r'aps he's lost his missis," laughed another.

"No fear. They're a honeymoon couple if ever there was one. Why, when he comes here for stores she stands at the door of the hut the whole time he is absent, watching him all the way here and waving to him all the way home again."

The hotelkeeper, noting Power's absence from the dining-room, sent a maid to remind him that the meal was being served.

Power started violently when the girl's soft-spoken words broke in on his reverie. For an instant he dreamed that Nancy had come, that he would feel her fingers clasped over his eyes, hear her voice.

"It is so hot and quiet here," he explained, smiling pleasantly, "that I was nearly asleep. I don't need any lunch, thank you."

Yet never had man seemed more wakeful. The girl thought that surely he must be ill, and in pain, and she wondered why his wife had left him; for Nancy's departure was already known to the hotel servants, since nothing could happen in that secluded nook without their cognizance, and Willard's corner in horse-flesh that morning had been much discussed in the kitchen.

Granite, however, put in an appearance soon, and insisted that Power should eat.

"You'll be headin' for N' York, I reckon," he said, "an' there ain't no sort o' sense in makin' that long trip on an empty stummick. You jest take my say-so, Mr. Power, an' eat yer meals reg'lar, an' you'll size up things altogether different when you set down to yer breakfast tomorrow."

His well-meant advice caused a thrill of agony. Breakfast without Nancy!

The dawn of the first day when she was not by his side! The mind often works in grooves, and Power's thoughts flew back to that other day when he lay crushed on the ledge. As he walked to the hotel with the guide, his leg seemed to be almost broken again, and he moved with difficulty.

Afterward, he spoke and acted in a curiously mechanical way. He was aware that he gave Granite detailed instructions, and paid him far more than the friendly disposed fellow was inclined to accept, and stowed himself and various portmanteaus in the buggy when the hotel proprietor warned him it was time he should set out. He remembered, too, being told that a young lady and an elderly man had taken tickets for New York by the midday train from Racket; but the journey thenceforth was a meaningless blank. He gave no heed to the pa.s.sing of the hours. He did not even know when the train reached the Grand Central Station. Before he realized that he must bestir himself, one of the attendants had to ask him sarcastically where he wanted to go, as the engineer thought he wouldn't b.u.t.t into Park Avenue that morning.

Still behaving like one in a dream, he wandered out of the station into 42d Street, drifted down Fifth Avenue, and entered the Waldorf Hotel.

Here, luckily, he was recognized by a clerk--an expert who never forgot a patron's name or face--and was allotted rooms. Otherwise, he would certainly have been turned away politely; for his unkempt appearance and half-demented air offered the poorest of recommendations to one of New York's palatial hotels.

"What about your baggage, Mr. Power?" inquired the clerk, whose private opinion favored the view that this erstwhile spick-and-span client had been "hitting it up some."

"Baggage? Let me think? I have some recollection----"

Power searched in his pockets, and found a number of bra.s.s checks. He really had not the slightest notion as to when and where that detail was attended to, but habit had evidently proved stronger than emotion, and some sense of grat.i.tude stirred in him that he had not mislaid his own few belongings--and Nancy's.

Then, worn out physically and mentally, he threw himself on a bed and slept. He awoke after three hours, and some of the cloud had lifted off his brain. He felt able to think clearly, and plan a course of action, and that in itself was a blessing. He saw now that, if Nancy were actually humoring a homicidal maniac, she would lead her father straight to Newport, knowing full well that he, Derry, would come there without fail. True, there were sentences in that terrible letter which hardly bore out this argument; but, then, it was probably written under Willard's watching eyes, and that last heartrending farewell might have been the only formula she could devise for a final leave-taking compelled by a loaded revolver.

At any rate, he would telegraph to Dacre, in whose discretion he trusted implicitly; so, not without a strenuous effort needed to collect his wits, he drafted an ambiguously worded telegram.

"My friend's father came to the Adirondacks yesterday, and effected departure forcibly during my absence. Will you make guarded inquiries? Wire me Waldorf Hotel on receipt of this message, and later."

It was a relief to think that he had taken one decisive step. During the two hours of inaction before a reply could come to hand, he bathed, changed his clothes, and ate some food, for which he was ravenous, having refused to dine on the train.

Bethinking himself, too, that Nancy might have found some means of telegraphing on her own account, he inquired, first at the hotel bureau, but without result, since any communications received there would have been sent to his room, and secondly at his bank. Yes, here were letters and telegrams galore, some readdressed from Newport, and others sent direct. He tore open the telegrams feverishly.

But what was this?

"Your mother asking for you every hour. Why don't you wire?

"MACGONIGAL."

And another:

"For Heaven's sake, wire if this reaches you, and start west by next train.

"MACGONIGAL."

The messages latest in arriving were naturally on top of the bundle, and his trembling fingers were tearing at another envelop when someone touched him on the shoulder. It was an official of the bank, who had spoken to him twice in vain across the counter, and was now standing at his side.

"I'm afraid you have bad news from Bison, Mr. Power," he said gently.

"Your manager--or partner, is it?--Mr. MacGonigal, has been telegraphing us repeatedly during the past five days; but unfortunately we did not know where to find you. Your mother is ill, very ill."

"Is she dead?"

Power could only whisper the words, and the other noted in voice and manner what he construed as a son's natural agitation at such a moment.

"No," he said, "but she is undoubtedly in danger. It seems to me, from what MacGonigal says, that a telegram from you telling her you are on board a west-bound train will be more effective than any doctor's treatment."

Power was shaking as though from ague. He alone knew the frightful alternative that faced him now. If he went to Newport, he would be deserting his mother, who was perhaps dying. If he went to Bison, he was deserting Nancy in the hour of her utmost need. At that instant he dared not, he could not, decide, and the knowledge that he even hesitated was like the thrust of a sword through his heart.

"I--I----" he began, and his tongue seemed to refuse its office.

"I quite understand, Mr. Power," said the official, an a.s.sistant manager, as it happened, and a shrewd and kindly man. "It is useless to think of leaving New York before tonight. Come to my desk. I'll write a telegram for you which will straighten things out. Will you travel by the Pennsylvania and Rock Island Route? I thought so. The train starts at seven o'clock; so you have plenty of time to receive an answer from Bison. Now, how will this do?"

And he wrote:

"Your telegrams only just opened. Coming by tonight's train by Pennsylvania road. Wire me care of station agent, Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, Chicago, and Omaha. Message today before six will reach me at Waldorf Hotel. Give my love to mother and bid her cheer up."

Power muttered what he conceived to be words of thanks. Then, rushing to his rooms in the hotel like a hunted animal seeking sanctuary, he read MacGonigal's earlier telegrams. There were letters, too, no less than three from his mother, who seemed perplexed and uneasy because of the varying postmarks on his correspondence, but made no mention of her illness.

Indeed, the last letter, dated only a week earlier, spoke of a shopping expedition to Denver she and Mrs. Moore and the two girls had taken the previous day. MacGonigal, too, was not explicit. "Mrs. Power very ill and desperately anxious to see you," ran one telegram. Another told of Dr. Stearn being summoned, and remaining in constant attendance; but the burden of each and every message was that he, Power, must come home.

It was not surprising that the unhappy son should see in his mother's sudden collapse the hand of the Almighty. Deep in the heart of every man and woman is planted the conviction that an unseen and awful deity deals out retribution as well as justice to erring humanity. Power was under no delusion as to his personal responsibility for his actions. He had done wrong, and now he was being punished. "A man's heart deviseth the way, but the Lord directeth his steps." Sternly and terribly had his feet been turned to the new path; but if he flung himself on his knees and prayed now, it was not for forgiveness of his own sin, but in frenzied pet.i.tion that it should not be visited on his mother and Nancy.

Even in this new delirium of suffering he did not forget the woman he loved. Though his torment was as the torment of a scorpion, he asked that Nancy, too, might be spared. On his head be the punishment; but let the Divine Ruler of the world have pity on her youth, and find innocence in her, for she had been hardly dealt by!

He was still kneeling in anguish of spirit when an awe-stricken page entered the room with a telegram. If aught were needed to crush him into the dust, it was forthcoming in Dacre's guarded words:

"Have accidentally secured brief talk on telephone with friend indicated, who arrived this morning Fall River steamer. No secret made of intentions, which I am bidden to warn you are final. Going with father to Europe at once; but would not discuss reasons, for which, obviously, I could not press. I am puzzled and shocked.