The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-04-23

THE SALT LAX
would not have stopped at suggestion
IN her illusions to the person she
watched burying the treasure in the
woods. Instead of speaking of him as
shadow. whose flight she had followed
at distance, she would have described
his figure as that of the same old man
she had seen enter the label cottage a
few minutes before, there being no rea-
son for indefiniteness on this point, her
conscience being sufficiently elastic for
any falsehood that would further her
ends. And, lastly, her manner, under
the examination TO which she had been
subjected, was not that of one who felt
herself under a personal attack. 1t was
a strange, suggestive. hesitating man
ner, battling alike to him who had
more or less sounded her strange ma
ture and to those who had no previous
knowledge of her freaks and subtle in
tellectual power. and only reaching its
height of hateful charm and mysterious
daring when Frederick appeared on the
scene and Joined, or seemed to join,
himself to the number of her examin
ers.
Now, drop all suspicion of her as the
active agent in this crime, and assume
l. AcuSIlCh " Ne the CulpTll anu she the
simple accessory after the fact. and see
how Inconsistencies vanish, and how
much more natural the whole conduct
OF this mysterious woman appears.
Amabel Page left a merry dance at
midnight and stole away into the Suth-
erland garden in her party dress and
slippers-why? Not to fulfill an errand
which anyone who knows her cold and
unsympathetic nature can but regard
as a nrPtpYt b1It hapn11Sa cb 10 falt if i'm
perative to see if her lover with whose
character, temptations and necessities
she was fully acquainted, and in whose
excited and preoccupied manner she
had probably discovered signs of a Sc
cretly-srowing purpose) meant, indeed,
to elude his guests and slip away to
town on the dangerous and unholy en-
terprise suggested by their mutual
knowledge of the money to be got
there by one daring enough to enter a
certain house, open like their own to
midnight visitors.
She followed at such an hour and into
such place, not an unknown man cas-
ually come upon, but her lover whom
she had tracked from the garden of his
fathers house, where she had lain in
wait for him. 1t took courage to do
this, but a courage no longer beyond
the limit of feminine daring, for her
fate was bound up in his, and she could
not but feel the impulse to save him
from the consequences of crime, if not
from the crime itself
AS for the flower, what more natural
than that Frederick should have trans
ferred it from her hair to his button
hole during some of their interviews at
the ball, and that it should have fallen
from its place to the floor in the midst
of his possible struggle with Batsy.
AND with this assumption of her per-
feet knowledge as to who had gone up
the stairs of Mrs. Webb's house, how
much easier it is to understand why
she did not lift her head when she heard
him descend. No woman, even one so
depraved as this, would wish to see the
handsome face of her lover in the glare
of freshly-committed crime, and be-
sides she might very easily be afraid
of him, for a man has but a blow for
the suddenly detected witness of his
crime, unless that witness is his conf
dent, which, from every indica ton,
Sweetwater felt bound to believe ANA
bel was not.
Her flight to the label cottage after
an experience which would madden
most women, has a truer explanation
now than any she gave it, She was
still following her lover. The plan for
making this wretched friend of
Agatha's amenable for her death orig
II
who first started for the label cottage;
it was he who left the hill there. The
fact of the dagger having been seen in
the old mans hand was a myster but
Sweetwater thought he could solve
that, too, without involving any con-
tradiction to this new theory. The dag
ger having been thrown from the Win
dow, possibly because this assassin
knew that this old man was expected
there that night fell on the grass and
was picked up by Amabel, only to be
flung down again in the brightest part
of the lawn. 1t was lying there then,
when, few minutes later and before
either Frederick or Amabel had left
the house, the old man entered the yard
in state of misery bordering on
frenzy. He and his brother were starv-
ing, and had been starving for days.
He was too proud to own his want,
and too loyal to his brother to leave
him for the sake of the food prepared
for them both at Agathas house. and
this was why he had hesitated over his
duty till this late hour when his own
secret misery, or, perhaps, the hope of
his brother drove him to enter
the gate he had been accustomed to
see open before him in glad hospitality.
He finds the lights burning in the house
above and below, and encourag ed by
the welcome they seem to hold out, he
staggers up the path, ignorant of the
tragedy which was at that very mo-
ment being enacted behind those lighted
windows. But half way towards the
house he stops, the courage which has
brought him so far suddenly fails. and
in one of those quick visions which
sometimes visit men in extremity, he
foresees the establishment which his
emaciated figure is likely to cause in
these two old friends, and, burying his
face in his hands. he stops and bitterly
communes with himself before ventur-
ing further. Fatal stop! fatal commun-
inei for as he stands there he sees a
dagger, his own old dagger, how lost
or how found he probably did not stop
to ask, lying on the grass and Offering
in its dumb way suggestions as to how
he might end this struggle without any
further suffering. Dizzy with the new
hope, preferring death to the humilia-
ton he saw before him in Agathas cot
tage, he daSheS out of the yard, al |
most upsetting Mr. Crane, who was
passing by on his homeward way from !
an errand of mercy. A little while later |
Amabel comes across him lying across |
his own doorstep. He has made an ef-
fort to enter, but his long walk and the |
excitement OF this last bitter hour have |
been too much for him. As she watches |
him he gains strength and struggles to |
his feet, while she, aghast at the sight !