第55章 THE DERELICTS(4)

And you,Bond Saxon,will be behind the bars for your crime,done not so many years ago,and your honorable daughter,disgraced forever by you,can shift for herself.

I've nothing to lose;why should I protect you?"He leaped down the bank into the swiftly flowing river,and,swimming easily to the farther side,he disappeared in the underbrush.

The next afternoon,somebody remembered that Bond Saxon had crossed the bridge and plunged into the overflow of the river around the west end.But Bond had been drunk much of late and nobody approached him when he was drunk.

How could Lagonda Ledge know the agony of the old man's soul as he splashed across the Walnut waters and floundered up the narrow glen to the cave?

Or how,for Dennie's sake,he had begged on his knees for mercy that should save his daughter's name?Or how harder than the stone of the ledges,that the trickling water through slow-dragging centuries has worn away,was the stony heart of the creature who denied him?And only Victor Burleigh had power to picture the struggle that must have followed in that cavern,and beyond the wall into the blind black passages leading at last to the bluff above the river,where,clinched in deadly combat,the two men,fighting still,fell headlong into the Walnut floods.

Down at the shallows Professor Burgess and Dennie had found the waters too deep to reach the Kickapoo Corral,so they strolled along the bluff watching the river rippling merrily in the fall of the afternoon sunshine.

And brightly,too,the sunshine fell on Dennie Saxon's rippling hair,recalling to Vincent Burgess'memory the woodland camp fire and the old legend told in the October twilight and the flickering flames lighting Dennie's face and the wavy folds of her sunny hair.

But even as he remembered,a cry up stream came faintly,once and no more,while,grappling still,two forms were borne down by the swift current to the bend above the whirlpool.

Dennie and Vincent sprang to the very edge of the bluff,powerless to save,as Tom Gresh and Bond Saxon were swept around the curve below the Corral.Across the shallows they struggled for a footing,but the undertow carried them on toward the fatal pool.

A shriek from the bank came to Bond Saxon's ears,and he looked up and saw the two reaching out vain hands to him.

"Your oath,Vincent;your oath!"he cried in agonizing tones.

Then Vincent Burgess put one arm about Dennie Saxon and drew her close to him and lifted up his right hand high above him in token to the drowning man of his promise,under heaven,to keep that oath forever.

A look of joy swept over the old face in the water,his struggling ceased,and once more tribute was paid to the grim Chieftain of Lagonda's Pool.--------They said about town the next day that it was the peacefulest face ever seen below a coffin lid.And,remembering only his many acts of neighborly kindness,they forgave and forgot his weaknesses,while to the few who knew his life-tragedy came the assuring hope that the forgiving mercy of man is but a type of the boundless mercy of a forgiving God.