The Wild Olive. Basil King

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СКАЧАТЬ do with it. I shall be only too glad if I can help you to escape."

      "Why? Why should you care about me?"

      "I don't," she said, simply; "at least, I don't know that I do."

      "Oh, then you're helping me just—on general principles?"

      "Quite so."

      "Well," he smiled, "mayn't I ask why, again?"

      "Because I don't like the law."

      "You mean that you don't like the law as a whole?—or—or this law in particular?"

      "I don't like any law. I don't like anything about it. But," she added, resorting to her usual method of escape, "we mustn't talk any more now. Some men passed here this morning, and they may be coming back. They've given up looking for you; they are convinced you're up in the lumber camps, but all the same we must be careful still."

      He had no further speech with her that day, and the next she remained at the cabin little more than an hour.

      "It's just as well for me not to excite curiosity," she explained to him before leaving; "and you needn't be uneasy now. They've stopped the hunt altogether. They say there's not a spot within a radius of ten miles of Greenport that they haven't searched. It would never occur to any one that you could be here. Every one knows me; and so the thought that I could be helping you would be the last in their minds."

      "And have you no remorse at betraying their confidence?"

      She shook her head. "Most of them," she declared, "are very well pleased to think you've got away; and even if they weren't I should never feel remorse for helping any one to evade the law."

      "You seem to have a great objection to the law."

      "Well, haven't you?"

      "Yes; but in my case it's comprehensible."

      "So it is in mine—if you only knew."

      "Perhaps," he said, looking at her steadily, "this is as good a time as any to assure you that the law has done me wrong."

      He waited for her to say something; but as she stroked Micmac's head in silence, he continued.

      "I never committed the crime of which they found me guilty."

      He waited again for some intimation of her confidence.

      "Their string of circumstantial evidence was plausible enough, I admit. The only weak point about it was that it wasn't true."

      Even through the obscurity of his refuge he could feel the suspension of expression in her bearing, and could imagine it bringing a kind of eclipse over her eyes.

      "He was very cruel to you—your uncle?—wasn't he?" she asked, at last.

      "He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him in his sleep—whatever I may have said when in a rage."

      "I should think it might be."

      He started. If it were not for the necessity of making no noise he would have laughed.

      "Are you so bloodthirsty—?" he began.

      "Oh no, I'm not; but I should think it is what a man would do. My father wouldn't have submitted to it. I know he killed one man; and he may have killed two or three."

      Ford whistled under his breath.

      "So that," he said, after a pause, "your objection to the law is—hereditary."

      "My objection to the law is because it is unjust. The world is full of injustice," she added, indignantly, "and the laws men live by create it."

      "And your aim is to defeat them?"

      "I can't talk any more now," she said, reverting to an explanatory tone of voice. "I must go. I've arranged everything for you for the day. If you are very quiet you can sit in the studio and read; but you mustn't look out at the window, or even draw back the curtain. If you hear a step outside, you must creep in here and shut the door. And you needn't be impatient; because I'm going to spend the day working out a plan for your escape."

      But when she appeared next morning she declined to give details of the plan she had in mind. She preferred to work it out alone, she said, and give him the outlines only when she had settled them. It chanced to be a day of drenching summer rain, and Ford, with a renewed effort to get some clew to her identity, expressed his surprise that she should have been allowed to venture out.

      "Oh, no one worries about what I do," she said, indifferently "I go about as I choose."

      "So much the better for me," he laughed. "That's how you came to be wandering on old Wayne's terrace, just in the nick of time. What stumps me is the promptness with which you thought of stowing me away."

      "It wasn't promptness, exactly. As a matter of fact, I had worked the whole thing out beforehand."

      His eyebrows went up incredulously. "For me?"

      "No, not for you; for anybody. Ever since my guardian allowed me to build the studio—last year—I've imagined how easy it would be for some—some hunted person to stay hidden here, almost indefinitely. I've tried to fancy it, when I've had nothing better to do."

      "You don't seem to have had anything better to do very often," he observed, glancing about the cabin.

      "If you mean that I haven't painted much, that's quite true. I thought I couldn't do without a studio—till I got one. But when I've come here, I'm afraid it's generally been to—to indulge in day-dreams."

      "Day-dreams of helping prisoners to escape. It wouldn't be every girl's fancy, but it's not for me to complain of that."

      "My father would have wanted me to do it," she declared, as if in self-justification. "A woman once helped him to get out of prison."

      "Good for her! Who was she?"

      Having asked the question lightly, in a boyish impulse to talk, he was surprised to see her show signs of embarrassment.

      "She was my mother," she said, after an interval in which she seemed to be making up her mind to give the information.

      In the manifest difficulty she had in speaking, Ford sprang to her aid.

      "That's like the old story of Gilbert à Becket—Thomas à Becket's father, you know."

      The historical reference was received in silence, as she bent over the small task she had in hand.

      "He married the woman who helped him out of prison," Ford went on, for her enlightenment.

      She raised her head and faced him.

      "It wasn't like the story of Gilbert à Becket," she said, quietly.

      It took some seconds of Ford's slow thinking to puzzle out the meaning of this. Even then he might have pondered in vain had it not been for the flush that gradually over-spread her features, and brought what he called the wild glint into her eyes. When he understood, he reddened СКАЧАТЬ