FullReads

“Well,” said Miss Satterly rather unsympathetically, “and how did he leave, then?”

Miss Forsyth twisted her watch chain and hesitated. “I really ought not to say a word–if you really don’t know–what he did–“

“If it’s to his discredit,” said the schoolma’am, looking straight at her, “I certainly don’t know. It must have been something awful, judging from your tone. Did he”–she spoke solemnly–“did he mur-rder ten people, old men and children, and throw their bodies into–a well?“

It is saying much for Miss Forsyth that she did not look as disconcerted as she felt. She did, however, show a rather catty look in her eyes, and her voice was tinged faintly with malice. “There are other crimes–beside–murder,” she reminded. “I won’t tell what it was–but–but Will found it necessary to leave in the night! He did not even come to tell me goodbye, and I have–but now we have met by chance, and I could explain–and so,” she smiled tremulously at the schoolma’am, “I know you can understand–and you will not mention to anyone what I have told you. I’m too impulsive–and I felt drawn to you, somehow. I–I would die if I thought any harm could come to Will because of my confiding in you. A woman,” she added pensively, “has so much to bear–and this has been very hard–because it was not a thing I could talk over–not even with my own mother!” Miss Forsyth had the knack of saying very little that was definite, and implying a great deal. This method saved her the unpleasantness of retraction, and had quite as deep an effect is if she came out plainly. She smiled confidingly down at the schoolma’am and went off to waltz with Bert Rogers, apparently quite satisfied with what she had accomplished.

Miss Satterly sat very still, scarce thinking consciously. She stared at Weary and tried to imagine him a fugitive from his native town, and in spite of herself wondered what it was he had done. It must be something very bad, and she shrank from the thought. Then Cal Emmett came up to ask her for a dance, and she went with him thankfully and tried to forget the things she had heard.

Weary, after dancing with every woman but the one he wanted, and finding himself beside Myrtle Forsyth with a frequency that puzzled him, felt an unutterable disgust for the whole thing. After a waltz quadrille, during which he seemed to get her out of his arms only to find her swinging into them again, and smiling up at him in a way he knew of old, he made desperately for the door; snatched up the first gray hat he came to–which happened to belong to Chip–and went out into the dewy darkness.

It was half an hour before he could draw the hostler of the Dry Lake stable away from a crap game, and it was another half hour before he succeeded in overcoming Glory’s disinclination for a gallop over the prairie alone.

But it was two hours before Miss Forsythe gave over watching furtively the door, and it was daylight before Chip Emmett found a gray hat under the water bench–a hat which he finally recognized as Weary’s and so appropriated to his own use.

PART FOUR

Weary clattered up to the school-house door to find it erupting divers specimens of young America–by adoption, some of them. He greeted each one cheerfully by name and waited upon his horse in the shade.

Close behind the last sun-bonnet came Miss Satterly, key in hand. Evidently she had no intention of lingering, that night; Weary smiled down upon her tentatively and made a hasty guess as to her state of mind–a very important factor in view of what he had come to say.

“It’s awful hot, Schoolma’am; if I were you I’d wait a while–till the sun lets up a little.”