Miss Betty quickly wrote four lines upon the same sheet: "Yes--yes! I must see you, must talk with you before you go. Come at dusk. The garden--near the gap in the hedge. It will be safe for a little while.
He will not be here." She replaced the paper in its envelope, drew a line through her own name on the letter, and wrote "Mr. Vanrevel" underneath.
"Do you know the gentleman who sent you? "she asked.
"No'm; but he'll be waitin' at his office, `Gray and Vanrevel,' on Main Street, for the answer."
"Then hurry!" said Betty.
He needed no second bidding, but, with wings on his bare heels, made off through the gap in the hedge. At the corner of the street he encountered an adventure, a gentleman's legs and a heavy hand at the same time. The hand fell on his shoulder, arresting his scamper with a vicious jerk; and the boy was too awed to attempt an escape, for he knew his captor well by sight, although never before had he found himself so directly in the company of Rouen's richest citizen. The note dropped from the small trembling fingers, yet those fingers did not shake as did the man's when, like a flash, Carewe seized upon the missive with his disengaged hand and saw what two names were on the envelope.
"You were stealing, were you! " he cried, savagely. "I saw you sneak through my hedge!"
"I didn't, either!"
Mr. Carewe ground his teeth, "What were you doing there?"
"Nothing!"
"Nothing!" mocked Carewe. "Nothing!
You didn't carry this to the young lady in there and get her answer?"
"No, sir!" answered the captive, earnestly.
"Cross my heart I didn't. I found it!"
Slowly the corrugations of anger were levelled from the magnate's face, the white heat cooled, and the prisoner marvelled to find himself in the presence of an urbane gentleman whose placidity made the scene of a moment ago appear some trick of distorted vision. And yet, curious to behold, Mr. Carewe's fingers shook even more violently than before, as he released the boy's shoulder and gave him a friendly tap on the head, at the same time smiling benevolently.
"There, there," he said, bestowing a wink upon the youngster. "It's all right; it doesn't matter--only I think I see the chance of a jest in this.
You wait, while I read this little note, this message that you found!" He ended by winking again with the friendliest drollery.
He turned his back to the boy, and opened the note; continuing to stand in that position while he read the two messages. It struck the messenger that, after this, there need be no great shame in his own lack of this much-vaunted art of reading, since it took so famous a man as Mr. Carewe such length of time to peruse a little note. But perhaps the great gentleman was ill, for it appeared to the boy that he lurched several times, once so far that he would have gone over if he had not saved himself by a lucky stagger. And once, except for the fact that the face that had turned away had worn an expression of such genial humor, the boy would have believed that from it issued a sound like the gnashing of teeth.
But when it was turned to him again, it bore the same amiable jocosity of mouth and eye, and nothing seemed to be the matter, except that those fingers still shook so wildly, too wildly, indeed, to restore the note to its envelope.
"There," said Mr. Carewe, "put it back, laddie, put it back yourself.
Take it to the gentleman who sent you. I see he's even disguised his hand a trifle-ha! ha!--and I suppose he may not have expected the young lady to write his name quite so boldly on the envelope! What do you suppose?"
"I d'know," returned the boy. "I reckon I don't hardly understand."
"No, of course not," said Mr. Carewe, laughing rather madly. "Ha, ha, ha!
Of course you wouldn't. And how much did he give you?"
"Yay!" cried the other, joyously. "Didn't he go and hand me a dollar!"
"How much will you take not to tell him that I stopped you and read it; how much not to speak of me at all?"
"What?"
"It's a foolish kind of joke, nothing more. I'll give you five dollars never to tell anyone that you saw me today."
"Don't shoot, Colonel," exclaimed the youth, with a riotous fling of bare feet in the air, "I'll come down!"
"You'll do it?"
"Five!" he shouted, dancing upon the boards. "Five! I'll cross my heart to die I never hear tell of you, or ever knew they was sich a man in the world!"
Carewe bent over him. "No! Say: `God strike me dead and condemn me eternally to the everlasting flames of hell if I ever tell!"
This entailed quick sobriety, though only benevolence was in the face above him. The jig-step stopped, and the boy pondered, frightened.
"Have I got to say that?"
Mr. Carewe produced a bank-bill about which the boy beheld a halo.
Clearly this was his day; heaven showed its approval of his conduct by an outpouring of imperishable riches. And yet the oath misliked him; there was a savor of the demoniacal contract; still that was to be borne and the plunge taken, for there fluttered the huge sum before his dazzled eyes.
He took a deep breath. "`God strike me dead' "--he began, slowly--"` if I ever `--"
"No. `And condemn me to the everlasting flames of hell `--"
"Have I got to?"
"Yes."
--" `And condemn me to--to the everlasting flames of--of hell, if I ever tell!'"
He ran off, pale with the fear that he might grow up, take to drink and some day tell in his cups, but so resolved not to coquet with temptation that he went round a block to avoid the door of the Rouen House bar.
Nevertheless, the note was in his hand and the fortune in his pocket And Mr. Carewe was safe. He knew that the boy would never tell, and he knew another thing, for he had read the Journal, though it came no more to his house: he knew that Tom Vanrevel wore his uniform that evening, and that, even in the dusk, the brass buttons on an officer's breast make a good mark for a gun steadied along the ledge of a window. As he entered the gates and went toward the house he glanced up at the window which overlooked his garden from the cupola.
