Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 33, December, 1873

"I don't choose to suppose it," was the steady answer. "Let's talk about something else."

"It ain't pleasant to think of, is it?" the huskily-musical voice went on. "It must be something like a hundred foot to the rocks down there." He paused and began again: "Moonshine's a queerish light, though, ain't it? Makes you look as white now as if you was scared."

"That's very strange, isn't it?" Field replied. "Do you think it would have the same effect on you if you stood in my place?"

"I'm – if I don't!" Long broke out, with a twitching motion of his head, and trembling as he spoke; "and I'd be so cold my teeth would chatter and my veins grog."

"Come," Field said sternly, beginning to feel that if he stood much longer on that spot he should grow dizzy and fall, "let's have no more of this. Have you anything you wish to propose? If you haven't, I'll trouble you to move on and let me pass."

"I propose," replied the other, with a twist of his head, as if there was something in his throat hard to swallow, speaking slowly and repeating the words—"I propose to throw you over."

Field knew that the fellow united the strength of the bear and the agility of the wild-cat. He knew that, even if he had not the terrible disadvantage of position, he would stand no chance in a struggle. Glancing down, he caught the flash of a wave upon the black rocks far below. But he only bit his lip and stood still, a little whiter perhaps, but his eyes never flinching from the other's face. When he did not speak, Long asked, "Do you know what that means?"

The answer came straight and startling, "Yes, it means death."

"I guess you're about right," Long continued. "And I calculate you're about as well prepared as you'll 'most ever be."

Field began to show the strain upon his nerves and the sense of his desperate state, but only by the evident tension of the muscles of the jaw and the unnatural calm of his manner and low, forced tone. "Very likely," he said; and added slowly, "but I'll not go alone."

"Maybe not. I don't much care," was the sullen reply. "This place or that since you come, there ain't much choice. But if you've got anything on your mind that you'd like to have off before you quit, you'd best have it up."

"I have only one thing to say to you," was the reply: "you are not going to throw me over." There was a dimness in his young eyes then and a rising in his throat. He thought of a great many things and people in a very brief space, and the world and a score of friendly faces seemed very sweet and hard to let go. And yet at the same time another and sterner self steadfastly put all that aside, and triumphed over the shrinking of the flesh from the dreadful certainty, and of the spirit from the dread unknown; and to the long fellow's advance and fierce question, "Who'll hinder me?" he cried aloud, "I will." He turned and shut his eyes, gathered himself together, and sprang out into the awful abyss. With his arms by his side and his feet together, swift and straight as an arrow, he dropped through the moonlight and through the black shadow, and struck with a quick, keen plunge a moment afterward a dizzy distance down.

Lying on his face, looking down with staring eyes, and clinging fiercely to the stones for a great fear that took hold of him and shook him, the long fellow suddenly heard the shock of an oar, and saw round to the left a boat slide out of the black shadow under the cliffs and into the calm stretch of moonlit water. He rose up then and fled for miles like a hunted hare.

Field was quickly missed, and suspicion immediately set upon long Bill Trapp. More people knew of the little drama they and one more had been playing than either had any idea of. A boy from the Ti House had passed Field up near the old battle-ground, and coming back from the village soon after had followed Trapp and seen him turn up toward the old fort. A handkerchief was found on the top of the cliff marked "D.F.," and Field's hat was found among the rocks along the shore. A warrant was issued for Trapp's arrest, and he was hunted high and low by a posse of constables, but not taken. And meanwhile Field was lying unconscious in an old farm-house by the lake-side a mile or two north. Old Trapp had been out that night, looking for his son—he and Bill's mother had been a good deal worried about him the last week or two—and the old man had been down to Ti inquiring for him, having heard nothing of him for some days. He was pulling out, on his way home, from under the rocks below the fort, and saw the two men standing out in the angle of the wall high up. He saw the awful leap and plunge, rowed round and fished out the limp shape of a young man he had never seen, worked the water out of him, rowed him home and carried him and laid him in bed. He left him there, breathing but unconscious, and went for Dr. Niedever of Rawdon. He must have struck his head in some way: there was a cut on his forehead, but no other serious injury that could be seen. If he had struck sidewise, it would not have mattered much whether it was water or rock that he struck; but his leap had carried him beyond the debris at the cliff's foot, and, coming down perfectly straight as he did, ten feet deeper water would have let him off little the worse. As it was, he was unconscious for some time. When he came to himself he was extremely weak and hungry, and perfectly contented to let them do with him as they pleased. The doctor's daily visits, the movements of the queer old couple as they came in and out, fed him and gave his draughts, the homely old place and the placid expanse of the lake which he saw by turning his head, were as much and no more to him than his own body lying there day after day. They were parts of a pantomime, of which he was actor and spectator, but in which he had no special interest, and which he was perfectly happy to go to sleep and leave. Gradually his brain cleared, and slowly he got back the thread of recollection where it had broken so sharply, and began to spin again; and among the first clear new ideas that took shape out of his scattered wits was one, that the queer old couple had been exceedingly good to him, and that they had no special reason for kindness in his case; and, second, that this gruff, ruddy, Indian-haired doctor was a man of skill and decision, and one not too fond of Mr. Daniel Field.

The second Sunday afternoon Field was lying quietly looking out on the lake from the bed, and thinking in a mood uncommonly serious for him, not very complacent nor very proud. Some feelings that had been stronger than he cared to resist these last few weeks had grown vague and intermittent—some new ones had come into their place.

Dr. Niedever came in and looked at him, giving him no greeting and treating him brusquely enough. He took a turn about the room, and faced round. "Well, young man," he said, "we pulled you through a pretty tight place."

The manner and tone angered Field. "That's your trade, isn't it?" he answered. "I suppose money will pay you."

"Money!" roared the old doctor. "Of course you'll pay, and pay well. But do you think I've done it for your sake, or your money? Look here: he served you right when he threw you over."

"I suppose he'd hang as well as another," answered Field.

"He wouldn't hang. There's no evidence but hearsay and surmise against him. If you had died, your body would never have been found. A hundred good men would testify to his character, and I'd have been one. He stands a worse chance now than if you were anchored to the bottom of the lake. I haven't saved your life for his sake nor for yours: I have done it for this old man. You owe me nothing but money, but everything you've got, and all you'll ever have, and the chance of redeeming yourself, you owe to old Joe Trapp; and I wish him joy of his debtor!"

"Now, old man," Field answered, "you can go. You needn't come back. I haven't the money now, but old Trapp will give you my card out of my coat. Send your bill to that address and I'll pay you when I can."

The doctor stood looking at him a minute with his hands in his pockets, his red face scowling savagely. He muttered something, turned on his heel and went down. Old Trapp was away at the time, and came home an hour later. He came up and into Field's room with his queer gait and face and stooping old figure.

"My friend," said Field, "I'll trouble you to bring me my clothes: I'm going to get up."

The old man went down and brought them, helped him to dress and come down stairs, and set him by the fire in an easy-chair. The old wife brought and laid on the table a knife, a bunch of keys, a letter, a card-case and cigar-case, a handkerchief newly washed and ironed, a pair of soiled gloves, some pennies and trifles, and two rolls of bills.

"They was wet, you know, and we had to dry 'em separate," said the old man, "but you'll find 'em right, I guess."

Field flushed up when he saw one of the rolls: it was tied with a string, and a bit of paper about it was marked in pencil, partly obliterated, "Long Fellow of Ti." He put that package into his pocket with the' other things, and left the other roll of money on the table.

"You two people have done uncommonly neighborly by me," he said. "I should like to know your reason." "I guess most anybody'd done it, stranger," answered Trapp. "Like's you'd be done by, you know, ef you'd ha' been me, wouldn't you?"

"No, I'll be hanged if I would!" broke out Field. "But look here, friends: you think he threw me down. He did not: I jumped off myself. He did not touch me."

"Oh, God bless you!" cried the bowed old wife, her worn face turning radiant upon him and bright drops starting in the dull old eyes. They were almost the first words he had heard her speak. Though she had been very attentive to him all along, she had done it almost in silence and with an averted face. Her voice was high and almost sweet. Field talked on then, and told them several things at which they both fell to crying like children. He took out one bill from the roll on the table and made the old man take the rest. "I do not pretend that money can pay what I owe you," he said, "but what I have you must let me give you for my own satisfaction."

During the next few days, while he gathered his strength, our friend sat about the house in the sunny places and took a strong liking for the simple, kind old wife, and told her by degrees the story of his life and his friends. In that wonderful air he rallied like magic. He took longer and longer walks, keeping well out of sight of prying eyes, though the place was retired enough, for that. Thursday morning of that week he borrowed some clothes of the farmer and made a bundle of his own. He bade the old couple good-bye, not without regret on either side. As the Wanita ploughed up the lake that day on her return trip, a man came down from the hurricane-deck into the cabin, sat by the table and took up a magazine lying there and turned it over. He was dressed in coarse, ill-fitting, homespun clothes, and had a newly-healed scar on his forehead. His upper lip was roughly shorn, and the rest of his face covered with a two or three weeks' beard. He was not an attractive-looking person, certainly, and yet the pretty girl sewing by the window, her face quite wan and worn-looking now, glanced at him many times in a flurried, nervous way; and when he was gone she went and took up the old magazine, opened it where a leaf was turned down, and read these lines of an old-fashioned ballad:

Oh, alone and alorn, as the night came down,
Sir Reginald walked on the wet sea-sands;
And all as he walked came Marianne,
King's daughter of all those lands.

That evening, as the dusk was coming on, Hester Charner walked on the path along the lake, round toward the forest, and suddenly in a shaded place she met the unkempt stranger of the boat She started back and almost screamed. His face had a dark look that scared her.

"Is it you, Mr. Meadow?" she entreated.

"No," he answered: "Meadow's dead—drowned in the lake for ever, I hope to God."

The girl drew back with a little cry. "Then he did kill him?" she wailed. "Oh, I wish I might die! I wish he'd killed me!"

"Oh, you false girl!" Field broke out. "But he did not kill him. I killed him myself. He would if I hadn't, and served him right, too. But he did not put a finger on him. I saved him from murder—him and me. Yes, you—don't shrink—you drove him to it; and you would have been the guiltier of the two. You were as good as promised to him—you know you were—and you should have been proud to be. He would have given his life for you any day, and you broke your faith for a smooth—faced, brazen fop, who played with you to your peril, and despised you in his heart all the while for a false jade. You may thank Trapp all your life for cutting that short when he did, and thank God you can yet be an honest wife to an honest man."

As he thus spoke there came a watery feeling into his eyes, and a yearning to take the girl to his heart and brave all the world for her sake. He hated the long fellow as he had never done before, and cursed him in his heart while he praised him with his lips. But he kept his thoughts upon a picture of a gray old farm-house by the water-side, and a bent old man and woman therein, and went on playing his game, and won it.

Her face paled, and she clasped her hands. "Where is he?" she asked eagerly.

"He's lying to-night in Aleck Jarley's cabin, back of the haystack."

She was turning away, but he stopped her. "Wait a minute," he said. "Here is some money belonging to Trapp: you can give it to him."

The money was in her hand before he had finished speaking. She folded her shawl across her breast and turned away in the direction he had indicated.

The next morning Field started for home. He had just one dollar in his pocket and two hundred miles of ground to get over. He walked, caught a ride now and then, got a lift on a canal-boat two or three times, ate bread and drank water and slept in barns or under grain-stacks. He came walking into Colman's office one morning looking cheerful but somewhat disreputable. Colman did not know him at first. When they had shaken hands. Colman looked in his friend's shaggy face and asked, "Is it all square, Dan?"

"All square, Phil," answered Field, looking the other as straight in the eyes;

"Well, I'm glad you pulled through, Dan," said Colman; "but you'd better have come home with me."

"Well, I don't know, Phil," Field answered musingly: "I'm not sure whether I'm sorry or glad."

    J.T. McKAY.

THE PROBLEM

Two parted long, and yearning long to meet,
Within an hour the life of months repeat;