He shouted these strange tidings down to the group below and was answered by a wail of fury.
Out of the house they sped and to their horses.
“Try the minister’s…try him at his house!” cried Larry.
And down the road they went at the full speed of the laboring, sweating, terrified horses. They flung themselves off when they reached the little vine-covered house of the man of God. And there, shining through the vines that tangled in front of his study window, was a light.
Yet he might be up reading. No, for they could hear other voices sounding in the room!
They crashed through the front door, and, almost in the same leap, they found themselves herding into the narrow, low-ceilinged room. The aged minister stood with his book in his hand and his eyes raised to heaven. Kneeling before him were Joe Bigot and Alice Cary. Behind stood the minister’s wife and his man-of-all-work. At the trio’s entrance, the witnesses withdrew.
“It’s wrong!” cried Larry Haines, struck sick and white by this sight. “Alice, will you give me two minutes to tell you what I know…?”
“Rise up,” said the minister, “you are man and wife.” He turned upon the intruders. “You have come too late,” he said. “You should have spoken before. Hold your peace forever!”
But Larry cried, writhing in his passion: “There’s been foul play! I’ve been bound and gagged to keep me from coming here and telling Alice what I know to…”
“Wait, Larry,” said Alice.
She spoke with such a perfect coolness in front of his excitement that he was abashed in spite of himself.
“I know everything,” she said.
“Perhaps you think you do, but…”
“I know everything,” she answered, “about the letters.”
“When…?”
“Tonight. In the middle of the night Joe came and told me everything, just before he asked me to marry him. It wasn’t what you would have done, I suppose, if you’d been in his place. And it wasn’t even what that clever friend of his would have done…but it was the best thing, Joe.”
She stepped a little closer to Larry Haines, her eyes suddenly sparkling.
“It took the knife out of your hands. But up to this very moment I wouldn’t believe that you really intended to use it.”
Color rushed into the face of Larry. He saw himself baffled, shamed. For an instant he glared around him, seeking some equal foe on whom he could work his vengeance. But, seeing none, he turned and rushed out into the night.
On that far-off hill that was the only elevation overlooking the beautiful little Canadian village, Jack Trainor halted his horse and looked back. He could make out two or three lights still burning in the town, but, even as he drew rein, one of these went out, then another. He waited for a few long minutes. At length the third light also disappeared, and no one could have told where the village lay in the deep blackness which covered the plain.
It was the blotting out of a great adventure for Jack. And, as he turned away, there was a weight of melancholy and a joy mingled with it, for he knew that he had learned to give more than he could ever take. For, as he said to himself, what did one added sorrow matter when, at the price of it, he could give great happiness to two?