A Master's Degree [37]
and hidden, even from the rest of the glen. At the farther end was the low doorway-like entrance to the cave. The song-birds were twittering in the trees above them, the waters of the little stream gurgled at their feet, the woodsy odor of growing things was in the air, and all the little glen was restful and quiet.
"Isn't it beautiful and romantic--and everything nice?" Elinor cried. "I don't mind this sentence to hard service. It is worth it. Do you mind the loss of time, Victor?"
"I counted it gain to be here with you, even in the storm and terror. How can this be loss?" he answered her. His voice was low and musical.
Elinor looked up quickly. And quickly as the thing had come to Victor Burleigh on the west bluff above the old Kickapoo Corral two Octobers ago, so to Elinor Wream came the vision of what the love of such a man would be to the woman who could win it.
"Do you really mean it, Victor? Was n't I a lump of lead? A dead weight to your strength that night? You have never once spoken of it."
She looked up with shining eyes and put out her hand. What could he do but keep it in his own for a moment, firm-held, as something he would keep forever.
"I have never once forgotten it," he murmured.
The cave by daylight was as the lightning had shown it, a big chamber, rock-walled, rock-floored, rock-roofed, in the side of the bluff, but little below the level of the ground and easy of entrance. It was cool and damp, but, with the daylight through the doorway, it was merely shadowy inside. In the farther wall yawned the ragged opening to the black spaces leading off underground. Through this opening these two had crept once, feeling that behind the wall somebody was crouching with evil intent. They peered through the opening now, trying to see the miraculous way by which they had come into the cave from the rear. But they stared only into blackness and caught the breath of the damp underground air with a faint odor of wood smoke somewhere.
"Elinor, it's a good thing we came through here in the night. It would have been maddening to be forced in here by daylight. We must have slipped down through a hole somewhere in our stumbles and hit a passage leading out of here only to the river, a sort of fire escape by way of the waters. You remember we couldn't get anywhere on the back track, except to the cliff above the Walnut. It's all very fine if the escaper gets out of the river before he reaches Lagonda's whirlpool."
He was leaning far through the opening in the wall, gazing into the darkness and seeing nothing.
"Somewhere back in there, while I was pawing around that night, I found something up in a chink that felt like the odd-shaped little silver pitcher my mother had once--an old family heirloom, lost or stolen some time ago. I came back and hunted for it later, but it was winter time and cold as the grave outside and darker in here, and I couldn't find anything, so I concluded maybe I was mistaken altogether about its being like that old pitcher of ours. It was a bad night for `seein' things'; it might have been for `feelin' things' as well. There's nothing here but damp air and darkness."
And even while he was speaking close beside the wall, so near that a hand could have reached him, a man was crouching; the same man whose cruel eyes had stared through the bushes at Lloyd Fenneben as he sat by the river before Pigeon Place; the same man whose eyes had leered at Vic Burleigh in this same place eighteen months before; the same man whom little Bug Buler's innocent face had startled as he was about to seize the money box at the gateway to the Sunrise football field; and this same man was crouching now to spring at Vic Burleigh's throat in the darkness.
"It's a good thing a fellow has a guardian angel once in a while," Vic said, as he hastily withdrew his head and shoulders. "We get pretty close to the edge of things sometimes and never know how near we are to destruction."
"We were pretty close that night," Elinor replied.
"Shall we rest here a little while, or do your
"Isn't it beautiful and romantic--and everything nice?" Elinor cried. "I don't mind this sentence to hard service. It is worth it. Do you mind the loss of time, Victor?"
"I counted it gain to be here with you, even in the storm and terror. How can this be loss?" he answered her. His voice was low and musical.
Elinor looked up quickly. And quickly as the thing had come to Victor Burleigh on the west bluff above the old Kickapoo Corral two Octobers ago, so to Elinor Wream came the vision of what the love of such a man would be to the woman who could win it.
"Do you really mean it, Victor? Was n't I a lump of lead? A dead weight to your strength that night? You have never once spoken of it."
She looked up with shining eyes and put out her hand. What could he do but keep it in his own for a moment, firm-held, as something he would keep forever.
"I have never once forgotten it," he murmured.
The cave by daylight was as the lightning had shown it, a big chamber, rock-walled, rock-floored, rock-roofed, in the side of the bluff, but little below the level of the ground and easy of entrance. It was cool and damp, but, with the daylight through the doorway, it was merely shadowy inside. In the farther wall yawned the ragged opening to the black spaces leading off underground. Through this opening these two had crept once, feeling that behind the wall somebody was crouching with evil intent. They peered through the opening now, trying to see the miraculous way by which they had come into the cave from the rear. But they stared only into blackness and caught the breath of the damp underground air with a faint odor of wood smoke somewhere.
"Elinor, it's a good thing we came through here in the night. It would have been maddening to be forced in here by daylight. We must have slipped down through a hole somewhere in our stumbles and hit a passage leading out of here only to the river, a sort of fire escape by way of the waters. You remember we couldn't get anywhere on the back track, except to the cliff above the Walnut. It's all very fine if the escaper gets out of the river before he reaches Lagonda's whirlpool."
He was leaning far through the opening in the wall, gazing into the darkness and seeing nothing.
"Somewhere back in there, while I was pawing around that night, I found something up in a chink that felt like the odd-shaped little silver pitcher my mother had once--an old family heirloom, lost or stolen some time ago. I came back and hunted for it later, but it was winter time and cold as the grave outside and darker in here, and I couldn't find anything, so I concluded maybe I was mistaken altogether about its being like that old pitcher of ours. It was a bad night for `seein' things'; it might have been for `feelin' things' as well. There's nothing here but damp air and darkness."
And even while he was speaking close beside the wall, so near that a hand could have reached him, a man was crouching; the same man whose cruel eyes had stared through the bushes at Lloyd Fenneben as he sat by the river before Pigeon Place; the same man whose eyes had leered at Vic Burleigh in this same place eighteen months before; the same man whom little Bug Buler's innocent face had startled as he was about to seize the money box at the gateway to the Sunrise football field; and this same man was crouching now to spring at Vic Burleigh's throat in the darkness.
"It's a good thing a fellow has a guardian angel once in a while," Vic said, as he hastily withdrew his head and shoulders. "We get pretty close to the edge of things sometimes and never know how near we are to destruction."
"We were pretty close that night," Elinor replied.
"Shall we rest here a little while, or do your