Zane sat down by Betty’s side and laughed softly but heartily.
“We’ll fix him all right, the lonely hill-climber! Why, he hasn’t a ghost of a chance. Wait until she sees him after hearing your story! I tell you, Betty—why—damme! you’re crying!”
He had turned to find her head lowered, while she shaded her face with her hand.
“Now, Betty, just a little innocent deceit like that—what harm?” he said, taking her hand. He was as tender as a woman.
“Oh, Eb, it wasn’t that. I didn’t mind telling him. Only the flash in his eyes reminded me of—of Alfred.”
“Surely it did. Why not? Almost everything brings up a tender memory for someone we’ve loved and lost. But don’t cry, Betty.”
She laughed a little, and raised a face with its dark cheeks flushed and tear-stained.
“I’m silly, I suppose; but I can’t help it. I cry at least once every day.”
“Brace up. Here come Helen and Will. Don’t let them see you grieved. My! Helen in pure white, too! This is a conspiracy to ruin the peace of the masculine portion of Fort Henry.”
Betty went forward to meet her friends while Colonel Zane continued talking, but now to himself. “What a fatal beauty she has!” His eyes swept over Helen with the pleasure of an artist. The fair richness of her skin, the perfect lips, the wavy, shiny hair, the wondrous dark-blue, changing eyes, the tall figure, slender, but strong and swelling with gracious womanhood, made a picture he delighted in and loved to have near him. The girl did not possess for him any of that magnetism, so commonly felt by most of her admirers; but he did feel how subtly full she was of something, which for want of a better term he described in Wetzel’s characteristic expression, as “chain-lightning.”
He reflected that as he was so much older, that she, although always winsome and earnest, showed nothing of the tormenting, bewildering coquetry of her nature. Colonel Zane prided himself on his discernment, and he had already observed that Helen had different sides of character for different persons. To Betty, Mabel, Nell, and the children, she was frank, girlish, full of fun and always lovable; to her elders quiet and earnestly solicitous to please; to the young men cold; but with a penetrating, mocking promise haunting that coldness, and sometimes sweetly agreeable, often wilful, and changeable as April winds. At last the colonel concluded that she needed, as did all other spirited young women, the taming influence of a man whom she loved, a home to care for, and children to soften and temper her spirit.
“Well, young friends, I see you count on keeping the Sabbath,” he said cheerily. “For my part, Will, I don’t see how Jim Douns can preach this morning, before this laurel blossom and that damask rose.”
“How poetical! Which is which?” asked Betty.
“Flatterer!” laughed Helen, shaking her finger.
“And a married man, too!” continued Betty.
“Well, being married has not affected my poetical sentiment, nor impaired my eyesight.”
“But it has seriously inconvenienced your old propensity of making love to the girls. Not that you wouldn’t if you dared,” replied Betty with mischief in her eye.
“Now, Will, what do you think of that? Isn’t it real sisterly regard? Come, we’ll go and look at my thoroughbreds,” said Colonel Zane.
“Where is Jonathan?” Helen asked presently. “Something happened at Metzar’s yesterday. Papa wouldn’t tell me, and I want to ask Jonathan.”
“Jack is down by the spring. He spends a great deal of his time there. It’s shady and cool, and the water babbles over the stones.”
“How much alone he is,” said Helen.
Betty took her former position on the steps, but did not raise her eyes while she continued speaking. “Yes, he’s more alone than ever lately, and quieter, too. He hardly ever speaks now. There must be something on his mind more serious than horse-thieves.”
“What?” Helen asked quickly.
“I’d better not tell—you.”
A long moment passed before Helen spoke.
“Please tell me!”
“Well, Helen, we think, Eb and I, that Jack is in love for the first time in his life, and with you, you adorable creature. But Jack’s a borderman; he is stern in his principles, thinks he is wedded to his border life, and he knows that he has both red and white blood on his hands. He’d die before he’d speak of his love, because he cannot understand that would do any good, even if you loved him, which is, of course, preposterous.”
“Loves me!” breathed Helen softly.
She sat down rather beside Betty, and turned her face away. She still held the young woman’s hand which she squeezed so tightly as to make its owner wince. Betty stole a look at her, and saw the rich red blood mantling her cheeks, and her full bosom heave.
Helen turned presently, with no trace of emotion except a singular brilliance of the eyes. She was so slow to speak again that Colonel Zane and Will returned from the corral before she found her voice.
“Colonel Zane, please tell me about last night. When papa came home to supper he was pale and very nervous. I knew something had happened. But he would not explain, which made me all the more anxious. Won’t you please tell me?”
Colonel Zane glanced again at her, and knew what had happened. Despite her self-possession those tell-tale eyes told her secret. Ever-changing and shadowing with a bounding, rapturous light, they were indeed the windows of her soul. All the emotion of a woman’s heart shone there, fear, beauty, wondering appeal, trembling joy, and timid hope.
“Tell you? Indeed I will,” replied Colonel Zane, softened and a little remorseful under those wonderful eyes.
No one liked to tell a story better than Colonel Zane. Briefly and graphically he related the circumstances of the affair leading to the attack on Helen’s father, and, as the tale progressed, he became quite excited, speaking with animated face and forceful gestures.
“Just as the knife-point touched your father, a swiftly-flying object knocked the weapon to the floor. It was Jonathan’s tomahawk. What followed was so sudden I hardly saw it. Like lightning, and flexible as steel, Jonathan jumped over the table, smashed Case against the wall, pulled him up and threw him over the bank. I tell you, Helen, it was a beautiful piece of action; but not, of course, for a woman’s eyes. Now that’s all. Your father was not even hurt.”
“He saved papa’s life,” murmured Helen, standing like a statue.
She wheeled suddenly with that swift bird-like motion habitual to her, and went quickly down the path leading to the spring.
* * * *
Jonathan Zane, solitary dreamer of dreams as he was, had never been in as strange and beautiful a reverie as that which possessed him on this Sabbath morning.
Deep into his heart had sunk Betty’s words. The wonder of it, the sweetness, that alone was all he felt. The glory of this girl had begun, days past, to spread its glamour round him. Swept irresistibly away now, he soared aloft in a dream-castle of fancy with its painted windows and golden walls.
For the first time in his life on the border he had entered the little glade and had no eye for the crystal water flowing over the pebbles and mossy stones, or the plot of grassy ground inclosed by tall, dark trees and shaded by a canopy of fresh green and azure blue. Nor did he hear the music of the soft rushing water, the warbling birds, or the gentle sighing breeze moving the leaves.
Gone, vanished, lost today was that sweet companionship of nature. That indefinable and unutterable spirit which flowed so peacefully to him from his beloved woods; that something more than merely affecting his senses, which existed for him in the stony cliffs, and breathed with life through the lonely aisles of the forest,