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him, the little bit of treasure-trove may some time, and in some way, prove useful. So forecasting, he slips it into his pocket.
This done he stands reflecting. No noise to disturb him now. Darke’s footsteps have died away in the distance, leaving swamp and cypress forest restored to their habitual stillness. The only sound, Blue Bill hears, is the beating of his own heart, yet loud enough.
No longer thinks he of the coon he has succeeded in treeing. The animal, late devoted to certain death, will owe its escape to an accident, and may now repose securely within its cave. Its pursuer has other thoughts—emotions, strong enough to drive coon-hunting clean out of his head. Among these are apprehensions about his own safety. Though unseen by Richard Darke—his presence there unsuspected—he knows that an unlucky chance has placed him in a position of danger. That a sinister deed has been done he is sure.
Under the circumstances, how is he to act? Proceed to the place whence the shots came, and ascertain what has actually occurred?
At first he thinks of doing this; but surrenders the intention. Affrighted by what is already known to him, he dares not know more. His young master may be a murderer? The way in which he was retreating almost said as much. Is he, Blue Bill, to make himself acquainted with the crime, and bear witness against him who has committed it? As a slave, he knows his testimony will count for little in a court of justice. And as the slave of Ephraim Darke, as little would his life be worth after giving it.
The last reflection decides him; and, still carrying the coon-dog under his arm, he parts from the spot, in timid skulking gait, never stopping, not feeling safe, till he finds himself inside the limits of the “negro quarter.”
Chapter Nine.
An assassin in retreat.
Athwart the thick timber, going as one pursued—in a track straight as the underwood will allow—breaking through it like a chased bear—now stumbling over a fallen log, now caught in a trailing grape-vine—Richard Darke flees from the place where he has laid his rival low.
He makes neither stop, nor stay. If so, only for a few instants, just long enough to listen, and if possible learn whether he is being followed.
Whether or not, he fancies it; again starting off, with terror in his looks, and trembling in his limbs. The sangfroid he exhibited while bending over the dead body of his victim, and afterwards concealing it, has quite forsaken him now. Then he was confident, there could be no witness of the deed—nothing to connect him with it as the doer. Since, there is a change—the unthought-of presence of the dog having produced it. Or, rather, the thought of the animal having escaped. This, and his own imagination.
For more than a mile he keeps on, in headlong reckless rushing. Until fatigue overtaking him, his terror becomes less impulsive, his fancies freer from exaggeration; and, believing himself far enough from the scene of danger, he at length desists from flight, and comes to a dead stop.
Sitting down upon a log, he draws forth his pocket-handkerchief, and wipes the sweat from his face. For he is perspiring at every pore, panting, palpitating. He now finds time to reflect; his first reflection being the absurdity of his making such precipitate retreat; his next, its imprudence.
“I’ve been a fool for it,” he mutters. “Suppose that some one has seen me? ’Twill only have made things worse. And what have I been running away from? A dead body, and a living dog! Why should I care for either? Even though the adage be true—about a live dog better than a dead lion. Let me hope the hound won’t tell a tale upon me. For certain the shot hit him. That’s nothing. Who could say what sort of ball, or the kind of gun it came from? No danger in that. I’d be stupid to think there could be. Well, it’s all over now, and the question is: what next?”
For some minutes he remains upon the log, with the gun resting across his knees, and his head bent over the barrels. He appears engaged in some abstruse calculation. A new thought has sprang up in his mind—a scheme requiring all his intellectual power to elaborate.
“I shall keep that tryst,” he says, in soliloquy, seeming at length to have settled it. “Yes; I’ll meet her under the magnolia. Who can tell what changes may occur in the heart of a woman? In history I had a royal namesake—an English king, with an ugly hump on his shoulders—as he’s said himself, ‘deformed, unfinished, sent into the world scarce half made up,’ so that the ‘dogs barked at him,’ just as this brute of Clancy’s has been doing at me. And this royal Richard, shaped ‘so lamely and unfashionable,’ made court to a woman, whose husband he had just assassinated—more than a woman, a proud queen—and more than wooed, he subdued her. This ought to encourage me; the better that I, Richard Darke, am neither halt, nor hunchbacked. No, nor yet unfashionable, as many a Mississippian girl says, and more than one is ready to swear.
“Proud Helen Armstrong may be, and is; proud as England’s queen herself. For all that, I’ve got something to subdue her—a scheme, cunning as that of my royal namesake. May God, or the Devil, grant me like success!”
At the moment of giving utterance to the profane prayer, he rises to his feet. Then, taking out his watch, consults it.
It is too dark for him to see the dial; but springing open the glass, he gropes against it, feeling for the hands.
“Half-past nine,” he mutters, after making out the time. “Ten is the hour of her assignation. No chance for me to get home before, and then over to Armstrong’s wood-ground. It’s more than two miles from here. What matters my going home? Nor any need changing this dress. She won’t notice the hole in the skirt. If she do, she wouldn’t think of what caused it—above all it’s being a bullet. Well, I must be off! It will never do to keep the young lady waiting. If she don’t feel disappointed at seeing me, bless her! If she do, I shall curse her! What’s passed prepares me for either event. In any case, I shall have satisfaction for the slight she’s put upon me. By God I’ll get that!”
He is moving away, when a thought occurs staying him. He is not quite certain about the exact hour of Helen Armstrong’s tryst, conveyed in her letter to Clancy. In the madness of his mind ever since perusing that epistle, no wonder he should confuse circumstances, and forget dates.
To make sure, he plunges his hand into the pocket, where he deposited both letter and photograph—after holding the latter before the eyes of his dying foeman, and witnessing the fatal effect. With all his diabolical hardihood, he had been awed by this—so as to thrust the papers into his pocket, hastily, carelessly.
They are no longer there!
He searches in his other pockets—in all of them, with like result. He examines his bullet-pouch and gamebag. But finds no letter, no photograph, not a scrap of paper, in any! The stolen epistle, its envelope, the enclosed carte de visite—all are absent.
After ransacking his pockets, turning them inside out, he comes to the conclusion that the precious papers are lost.
It startles, and for a moment dismays him. Where are they? He must have let them fall in his hasty retreat through the trees; or left them by the dead body.
Shall he go back in search of them?
No—no—no! He does not dare to return upon that track. The forest path is too sombre, too solitary, now. By the margin of the dank lagoon, under the ghostly shadow of the cypresses, he might meet the ghost of the man murdered!
And why should he go back? After all, there is no need; nothing in the letter which can in any way compromise him. Why should he care to recover it?
“It may go to the devil, her picture along! Let both rot where I suppose I must have dropped them—in the mud, or among the palmettoes. No matter where. But it does matter, my being under the magnolia at the right time, to meet her. Then shall I learn my fate—know it, for better, for worse. If the former,