Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

The table of contents has been added as an aid for the reader.

Table of Contents

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Carefully Selected Love Stories

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To be published in January, 1925.

To be published in February, 1925.

The Shadow Between Them

OR,

A BLIGHTED NAME

BY
MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER

AUTHOR OF

“Her Life’s Burden,” “The Strength of Love,” “Married in Error,” etc.

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
PUBLISHERS
79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

Copyright, 1900
By NORMAN L. MUNRO
The Shadow Between Them

(Printed in the United States of America)

THE SHADOW BETWEEN THEM.

CHAPTER I.

“I LOVE HIM WHOEVER HE IS!”

“Fly around there, little Eva, and pack the lunch basket while me an’ the other girls get ready for the hay ride an’ the party. Put in the half o’ thet caramel cake, an’ the thickest punkin pie, a big hunk o’ home-made cheese, a loaf of salt-risen bread, a glass o’ plum jelly, an’ some cucumber pickles. They got to find room in the hay wagon for that basket o’ pervisions, even if they do have to pack themselves like sardines, for I beant going to starve on a Hallowe’en party till after midnight!”

This was the rather long-winded pronunciamento of Miss Tabitha Ruttencutter, spinster, as she flounced around and snatched a hot flatiron from the top of the big stove, then turned back to the board where she was ironing handkerchiefs and piles of white ruffled lingerie.

The scene was in the clean, roomy kitchen of a West Virginia farmhouse up in the oil regions, where fortunes were made and lost in a day in rash speculations almost as quickly as in Wall Street.

The roomy old farmhouse was going fast to ruin for lack of means to repair it, for the thirty-acre farm was rocky and sterile, and only afforded a support to its owner by reason of being within the famous oil belt. He eked out a frugal subsistence by leasing part of the ground to the oil men, who were numerous in that section, reaping rich rewards from their speculations.

Some of the neighbors had got rich by oil, and Gran’ther Groves, as his neighbors called him, expected prosperity, too, if the lessees ever put down oil wells on his place, so that he could get some royalties on the yield. But they were “dretful slow,” he complained, adding that he was like to be dead and in his grave before luck struck the family.

Grandfather Groves, indeed, had been in hard luck many years, having four orphan grandchildren to rear and support in his old age.

His son and his son’s wife had died in Kansas in their youth, leaving one boy, Terry, and twin girls, Patty and Lydia. Sympathizing neighbors, not wishing them to come upon the town for support, had promptly raised a purse and sent the orphans, tagged, by express to their Grandfather Groves, in West Virginia.

Pretty Nell, his daughter, had eloped with a fine young Northerner, who was on a hunting trip in the neighborhood, and for three years little was known or heard of her, till she returned one stormy winter night, ill and faded and heartbroken, coming home to die, she said.

She had quarreled with her husband and left him forever. His family, the grand, rich Somervilles, had disliked her and were always coming between them, so she would never go back.

She had had one child, but it died at a year old and was buried in the Somerville vault at Greenwood.

Nell died when her second child was born, though she lived long enough to kiss the pictured face of her husband, and say:

“You may write to him when I am dead. He can have little Eva if he wishes.”

But the father and mother, loath to part with all that was left of their bonny Nell, never wrote. They resented the coldness that had kept the husband from following his wife and suing for a reconciliation. They kept the child for their own.

“We will bring her up with Fred’s little orphans, and her cold, proud kin in New York need never be troubled with poor Nell’s child,” they said, and devoted themselves to their grandchildren.

But when Terry was eighteen, the twins sixteen, and Eva barely fourteen, dear old grandma died of a fever. Then Miss Tabitha Ruttencutter, a distant cousin, rising forty, and “homely as sin,” came to reign over the farm, substituting an iron sway for the loving rule of the one who was gone.

As she soon announced frankly to the neighbors, she “never took to Eva Somerville.” All natures like Miss Ruttencutter’s must have a scapegoat. The youngest girl served the spinster in that capacity.

At the time of the opening of this story the twins were nineteen years old, handsome brunettes both of them, and Eva seventeen, a radiant young beauty of medium height, exquisite form, and combining her mother’s starry dark eyes with the golden locks of her Northern father, forming that fascinating type of loveliness, a dark-eyed blonde.

All four of the young women were invited to go on a Hallowe’en hay ride, but, as usual, Miss Tabby tabooed Eva’s going.

“She must stay at home with Gran’ther Groves. He might take one o’ them fits he’s subject to, and die if he was left alone,” she said bluntly.

Eva’s starry dark eyes suddenly brimmed over with rebellious tears, and she protested with tremulous red lips:

“I think you might stay with gran’ther yourself, to-night, Cousin Tab, and let me go and have some fun.”

“And who pays you for thinking about what I ought to do, Miss Smarty? Ain’t I one o’ the chappyrones, and in a manner ’bleeged to go?” was the tart rejoinder.

“There’s a-plenty chaperones without you, Cousin Tab. Indeed, I never could see why all the frisky widows and cranky old maids in the country must go poking along with every little frolic the young folks have, as if one settled old woman wasn’t enough to keep them straight! I believe the hateful old things go just to have a good time themselves, thinking to cut the girls out and get a young husband!” ejaculated Eva angrily, in her disappointment, so that Gran’ther Groves, from his corner seat, where he was patting the big dog’s head between his knees, looked around and chuckled:

“Good for you, Eva, my honey; you hit the nail square on the head! I’m thinking, too, that the boys and girls could be trusted together without so many old women to keep ’em from sparking; eh, Pat and Lydia?”

The twins, deprecating the spinster’s wrath, wisely made him no reply, but little Eva flew to his side and, clasping her soft arms about his neck, cried, with her rosy cheek pressed against his dear, white head:

“Dear old gran’ther, please make her let me go on the hay ride if I can persuade Dan to stay with you.”

“Sartain, sartain, child,” the old man answered soothingly.

Dan was the chore boy, a stout, stupid fellow, fond in his way of little Eva, but he had his own plans to go out with the boys on Hallowe’en larks to-night, so he resisted all the little beauty’s blandishments, and would neither be coaxed nor bribed to stay.

Then Gran’ther Groves, pained at his darling’s disappointment, valiantly announced he would stay alone.

Pooh! what was he afraid of, he who had shouldered a musket four long years in the Civil War and marched with Sherman through Georgia.

But, alas, that wound he had got in the last battle had impaired his health for life. He was never able to till the soil any more, and he had never been left alone again since the day he had fallen with his face in the creek in a dreadful fit and been saved by a passing fisherman, who dragged him out just in the nick of time.

The old doctor had said the fit resulted from his wound, and that he must never be suffered to go about alone, lest he should come to grief.

For a while Terry had been his companion, but he was gone away to the university, at Morgantown, to study law, so the duty fell by common consent on Eva.

At his cheerful little speech she hushed her sobs and exclaimed tenderly:

“Say no more about it, for I will never leave you alone, gran’ther, dear.”

“Then quit your fooling and pack the lunch basket for us,” interpolated Patty, who was sewing a new red ribbon into the neck of her waist.

“Yes, do,” added Lydia lazily, from her rocking-chair and novel.

“I won’t, so there!” declared Eva pettishly. “You may wait on yourselves, Pat and Lyd, since you like so well to leave me at home like a poor little ashcat, and go off and have all the fun yourselves. I won’t even help Dan to milk Spots and Dapple! I’m going to sit down and rest and read my love letter over again!” throwing herself into a chair and drawing a large, square, white envelope from her apron pocket and unfolding a closely written sheet, which she began to read with demure interest.

“A letter? Where on airth would that child get a letter?” demanded the spinster, while the twins faced about with equal wonder.

A letter! Why, little Eva had never received a letter in her life, they were sure.

Yet there she sat, demurely rustling the large, satiny white sheets of paper, while its delicate scent of violets exhaled into the room above the kitchen odors of pumpkin pie, caramel cake, and the homely white loaf of salt-risen bread dear to the West Virginian’s heart—the bread his mother made.

“Humph, it smells mighty sweet! Is it from your beau? You don’t mean to say Terry has written you?” demanded Patty sharply.

Eva’s starry eyes flashed angrily at the question, and she answered, with subtle scorn:

“Terry? Why, if Terry had written me this letter I’d take hold of it with the tongs and lay it on the fire.”

The luckless Terry had aroused her ire on a recent visit by too free lovemaking, and had gotten in return a tingling cheek from a rough contact with a little white hand.

“Don’t you ever dare kiss me again against my will, you brute!” she had stormed, rubbing her offended lips till they burned in her rage to be rid of the hated caress.

Bitterly had the twins resented their brother’s repulse, cruelly had they punished her, working through Cousin Tabby, for her daring.

They darted angry looks at her now, and Patty taunted sharply:

“You ought to be grateful to Terry for life. He’s the only fool I ever saw that wanted to be your lover.”

“I should have had dozens before now if you three jealous old maids had not kept me from the chance of knowing any young men,” retorted Eva maliciously, adding, with keen triumph: “But I have a splendid lover, in spite of all your arts.”

“Bah, you are fibbing, Miss Vanity,” cried Lydia mockingly, but at the same moment she made a rush behind Eva’s chair and pinioned her arms to her side, shouting gayly to her sister:

“Snatch the letter, and see who wrote it.”

There was a sharp little scuffle, and Patty came off victor, seizing the letter and springing upon the kitchen table.

Lydia cheered her on:

“Read it aloud, while I hold her down, and we’ll soon know all about that boasted lover!”

Little Eva was like wax in the grasp of her stronger cousin. She wriggled and twisted, but escape was impossible, so, at length, she drooped her head with a dejected sob, while Gran’ther Groves looked on benignly, thinking it was all just a girlish frolic between the girls. His honest mind never suspected their secret malignity toward his pet.

“Why, it’s poetry! What weak rot! It makes me feel sick!” ejaculated Patty.

“I want to know! But read it, anyway. I’ll listen if it makes us all sick,” put in the spinster curiously, so Patty cleared her throat and read with an air of fine disdain:

“WHEN EVA LAUGHS.”

“When Eva laughs the dimples play

At hide-and-seek upon her cheek,

Like butterflies ’mong roses gay,

While twinkling, starry eyes bespeak

A mirthful mind, a nature kind,

A heart all true and warm and pure,

And music floating down the wind

No sweeter than her laughter’s lure!

“When Eva laughs I seem to hear

Glad echoes of the joyous spring;

The lilting birds, the humming bees,

The skylark on its soaring wing;

The murmur of the rippling stream,

The minor chords of ocean’s tone;

The lover’s sigh, the maiden’s prayer,

The rustling leaves, the wind’s low moan!

“When Eva laughs it drives away

Life’s shadows as the golden dawn

Dispels upon its rosy way

The darkness of the night time born.

As though the azure slipped aside

From heaven and let a sweet song through,

Her happy laugh can thrill the heart

Till fainting hope springs up anew!”

Gran’ther Groves slapped his knee a resounding blow and chuckled with delight.

“I swan, it’s true as the Gospel—every word on’t! Now, what smart young man writ that pretty verse, honey?”

“Who writ it, indeed?” echoed Miss Ruttencutter, with open scorn and secret envy.

But Eva could only blush up to the edge of her curly hair and falter:

“I—I—don’t know!”

They could not believe her; they plied her with curious questions until, in self-defense, to get rid of their importunities, she confessed all she knew.

“I found the verses on my window sill one morning in September—and afterward others just as pretty. And sometimes flowers, and now and then boxes of candy—real chocolates!”

“Chocolates—oh!” breathed Lydia, with upturned eyes of ecstasy.

“And you have devoured all the heavenly things by yourself, greedy little pig!” groaned Patty, jumping down from the table in disgust.

“Oh, no; I’ll give you all some if you like,” cried Eva, running upstairs, followed by gran’ther’s entreaty:

“Bring some more of that spark’s pretty rhymes!”

All blushing and smiling, she returned with a large box of candy, and passed the plump, brown dainties all around.

“Ain’t it nice, gran’ther?” she cried.

“Best chocolate drops I ever ate,” he agreed, adding: “Did you bring some more poetry?”

“Just one little piece. I didn’t want to make Patty sick again,” laughed Eva archly, and she handed it to Lydia, whose curiosity led her to follow Patty’s example, and read this aloud:

“LOVE’S MESSENGERS.”

“My heart is on each wind that blows

Toward you, dearest, in the spring—

I send a message by the rose,

My love, by every bird that goes

Your casement near to lift and sing.

“My heart is in the sun that shines

Upon the ripples of your hair,

The moonlight’s kisses bring you mine,

Dream kisses upon lips divine,

Love’s messengers are everywhere!”

“Just as pretty as t’other piece; but I wonder who on airth writ it to you, Eva?” exclaimed gran’ther in admiring wonder at his pet’s mysterious lover.

“I don’t know, gran’ther, but I feel sure I could find out if Cousin Tab would let me go out like other girls, and meet the young gentlemen of the neighborhood. It must be one of them, surely, and I do not believe he could keep his secret if we were face to face. His eyes must surely betray the love in his heart, and then I should know him for my heart’s choice, for I love him, whoever he is, and I am not ashamed to own it. I will never marry any one but my poet-lover!” declared Eva, with a willful toss of her bright curly head.

“You are a silly little love-sick goose!” commented the spinster, with frank disapprobation.

CHAPTER II.

THE VENDETTA.

Had an angel from heaven pointed out the way to Eva’s heart, her mysterious lover could not have known more surely how to win the little beauty’s love.

She was intensely romantic, like the most of pretty young girls. She loved poetry and flowers, and she loved love for its own dear sake. Incidentally she doted on bonbons, and her unknown lover had catered to all these passions, adding to them the delicious flavor of a romantic mystery.

What a lover must he be who risked his life climbing to a two-story window at midnight to leave tokens of his love on her casement!

Vainly she had tried to entrap him, watching night after night for his coming behind her little white curtain.

Some instinct seemed to tell him when she was awake, so that he never ventured near until her tired eyes closed and she nodded wearily in her chair. Then her bold lover would leave his token on her window sill, beneath the embowering honeysuckles, and escape undetected by the beautiful object of his passion.

It was all so beautiful and romantic, it gave new zest and pleasure to her dull, prosaic life, and all her thoughts went out to him in gratitude and love. Those were the happiest days she had ever spent, dreaming of her splendid unknown lover—her lover whom she fancied must be as handsome and as noble as a demigod.

But now she reflected with regret and pain that everything would be at an end, for if he came again he must surely be detected by that stupid Dan, who had overheard outside the door her confession of her mysterious love affair, and on entering the kitchen had stolidly announced that he would watch for “that impertinent feller, an’ yank him down by the legs if he ever caught him climbing up to Miss Eva’s window again. It would break down all the vines, and was enough to skeer the pore gal to death, anyway, and he would put a stop to him with a gun if anybody told he might do it.”

“No, no, Dan; I forbid you to watch for him at all! I—I don’t want it stopped; I like for him to come. I love him!” the young girl cried breathlessly, but her cousins laughed, and urged Dan on, saying they would give him a quarter if he would find out the identity of Eva’s unknown lover.

Urged on by a secret jealousy, for he doted himself on lovely Eva, Dan declared that he would never rest until he found out the truth.

Chagrined to the point of tears, Eva flung out of the room, determining to go for a little canter on Firefly before the early autumn twilight set in darkness. There was nothing like a swift gallop in the cold, clear, bracing air to set the blood a-tingling and drive out the blues.

Firefly was her very own, a spirited colt that gran’ther had raised and given her when she was fourteen, because Grandma Groves had said before she died she wanted Eva to have it. It was the only property she possessed in the world, and the twins grumbled because she had that, but held their peace from reproaching gran’ther with partiality, because Miss Tabitha assured them they needn’t envy the red-headed little spitfire the possession of that wild colt, that would certainly throw her some day and break her proud neck.

The spinster persisted in calling Eva’s golden locks red, through sheer spite and envy of the loveliness she would never acknowledge.

“Not half as pretty as the twins, with their black hair, black eyes an’ red cheeks! I never could abide red-headed gals with black eyes. They have the devil’s own temper!” she said.

But Eva had been riding Firefly several years, and was not killed yet, nor likely to be; for Firefly, though wild and spirited, knew and loved his mistress too well; and as she cantered up the long country road alone, with her golden, curly hair flying loose beneath her jaunty Tam o’ Shanter cap, the pair made a vision of strength and force and beauty to turn an old man young.

Over the distant mountaintops and the autumn-tinted woods the purple haze of twilight was lingering, and it was so still and peaceful, with only the woodland sights and sounds about that an unconscious calm breathed over her ruffled spirits from the tender benisons of nature.

After she had met and passed young Doctor Ludington within a mile of her home, she saw no one else until she drew rein at the farmhouse gate returning home.

As for the doctor, she had cantered past without salutation, her golden head crested scornfully, and a heightened color on her dimpled cheek. He was the handsomest young man in the neighborhood, but “they never spoke as they passed by.”

The cause of their aversion dated back more than thirty years ago, to the Civil War, since when there had existed a vendetta between the families of Groves and Ludington, handed down from the principals to their descendants.

Briefly stated, Gran’ther Groves had been a Union man, and carried a gun beneath the Stars and Stripes for his country. Old Doctor Ludington, a Confederate, had resented his neighbor’s political views, and denounced him as a traitor to the South. Wordy encounters at length resulted in blows, and an estrangement that only widened with the flight of years.

The Ludingtons had the best of it, too, for all the country round about were on their side and the Groves family were almost ostracized for their unpopular sentiments in favor of the Union.

When old Doctor Ludington was imprisoned as a spy several months during the war, all the family, root and branch, denounced Gran’ther Groves as the man who had caused his arrest. Innocent or guilty, his broad shoulders had borne the opprobrious charge ever since.

One of the worst features of the case, too, was that their farms adjoined each other, and now, in their old age and dotage, they squabbled over the merest trifles, such as transgressions of stock, boundary lines, and even over the possession of some crab apples, the tree growing on Ludington’s side, the fruit falling on Groves’ land.

“Them two old fools!” said Miss Tabitha severely, “actilly quarreled an’ fit, an’ had to be parted from scratching one another’s eyes out, all on account o’ some pesky crab apples nyther one o’ them cared a rap about, an’ wa’n’t no airthly use except to make jelly; and enough then to supply the hull neighborhood, jest ’cause they was sp’ilin’ for another fuss.”

As Eva drew rein at the gate she saw the immense hay wagon drawn by six strong horses lumbering heavily away with its load of youths and maidens, and argus-eyed chaperones, to the music of tinkling bells and merry laughter, and her heart sank as heavily as a stone in her breast.

“Perhaps my mysterious lover may be among them!” she thought tearfully. “If he is, how his heart must be aching because I am left behind! And how cruel and unfeeling of Patty and Lydia to laugh when they saw me coming on Firefly, and knew I must stay at home like poor Cinderella in the fairy tale.”

The twins had indeed laughed aloud as they left her behind, in malicious enjoyment of a cunning plot they had schemed for her humiliation.

Upstairs, while they were putting on their finery, one had said to the other:

“Did you notice that Eva did not eat any supper? Nor a single chocolate, either! You may depend on it, she is fasting to try her fortune to-night!”

“To try her fortune? How?”

“Why, Patty, don’t you remember what Cousin Tab was saying only yesterday? That if a young girl will fast all day on Hallowe’en, and spread a table of dainties by her bed when she retires, her future husband will appear at midnight and sup with her in love and joy!”

“Fudge! I tried that last Hallowe’en, when I visited over in Nichols, but nothing came of it!”

“Then you must be cut out for an old maid,” laughingly.

“No more than you, miss. Indeed, I believe I shall be the first one married!” retorted Patty tartly, adding: “So Eva is going to try the charm, too? Well, I only wish we could get up some joke on her, so that she might have to sup with a perfect fright!”

“Some horrid old thing like Doctor Binks, with a bald head and toothless gums, and a hooked nose a yard long! She would die of chagrin, thinking she had to marry such a beast!”

“Perhaps we could manage to send Doctor Binks there! What a capital joke that would be! We owe her something, Lydia, for getting ahead of us with that anonymous lover, and the airs she is taking over us. Come, let us put our wits together and do it.”

They laughed in malice, and when they saw Eva cantering up to the gate on Firefly they laughed again with dangerous significance, little dreaming they were plotting a tragedy that was to recoil with fearful force on their own hearts.

But they were right about Eva. She was indeed fasting to try her fortune that night, dear little romantic girl.

And with her healthy, girlish appetite, she could scarcely refrain from devouring the plates of dainties she placed on the little white-covered table beside her bed. But she bravely abstained, and, going to her window, drew back the white, ruffled curtain, and gazed long and thoughtfully out upon the clear moonlight night, with the light fog rising from the river and wrapping the bases of the mountains in impenetrable mist.

In his room across the hall Gran’ther Groves had already retired, with the little bell by his side to summon Eva if he felt any sudden stroke of illness. He had sat up later than usual, because they were expecting Terry to come home to spend Hallowe’en, but the train was hours and hours late, so he retired at last, disappointed.

“How I hate Terry! I wonder why it is I’ve always hated him, when he is not such a bad fellow, after all, and my cousin, at that?” mused Eva, as she lay down in bed after her little evening prayer, and cuddled down under the warm blankets and snow-white spread, until only the top of her golden, curly head was visible in the glow of her small night lamp.

She went to sleep, with her pretty little nose under cover, so as not to be tempted by the delicious smell of the cake and candy, when she was so tantalizingly hungry from her long day of fasting.

“Will he indeed appear at my bedside and sup with me this Hallowe’en?” she murmured, with delicious thrills of commingled hope and fear, then slid softly into the land of dreams.

The moments and hours slipped away until it was midnight and past, and in the distance sounded the shrill whistle of the belated express train coming into the station half a mile away.

Terry Groves was coming, although too late for the hay ride. Ah, Terry, how much better had you stayed away!

Another was coming, too, before him. Lightly, stealthily, footsteps crept up the stairs, and along the broad hall to Eva’s door, that was always left slightly ajar, that she might more easily hear the least sounds of illness from gran’ther’s room.

The intruder slipped into the room with light, noiseless footsteps, and paused to watch the beautiful sleeper in her warm, white nest.

She had tossed one arm over her head, disturbing the covers, and her upturned face was rosy with health, and smiling as with happy dreams.

The daring intruder into this white bower of maidenhood was a tall, handsome young man, in a well-fitting business suit of dark gray. He stood like one fascinated, gazing on Eva, his dark-blue eyes sparkling with admiration.

“How beautiful! And the very picture of health! What a strange message! I do not understand it, but I will not arouse her! I will wait till she wakes!” and he was about to sink into a chair by the table when the floor creaked at his movement, and she opened her eyes.

For a moment they gazed speechlessly at each other, the man wondering, the young girl slightly dazed, believing her eyes must have played some trick on her brain.

Here before her stood certainly the very handsomest man she had ever seen—tall, elegant, fascinating—and she was certainly expecting something like this to happen—or, at least, hoping it.

But her great dreamy, dark eyes suddenly dilated from wonder to surprise and horror, her cheeks blanched, her lips parted with a gasping cry:

“What is this? Have I lost my senses? Is it you, Doctor Ludington? How dare you?”

She sat up in bed, huddling the covers about her with one hand, the other pointed at him in dismay.

Doctor Ludington stood still, with his hand on the back of the chair, and answered gravely:

“Are you not ill, Miss Somerville? Then why did you send for me?”

“I send for you, sir? Never, never! I am not ill! If I were, I would die before I sent for you, the son of gran’ther’s enemy! Go, go, at once!” cried Eva, with bitter scorn.

But he stood still, replying gravely:

“Hear me, Miss Somerville, before you banish me in scorn! We have fallen into the snare of some practical joker, who sent for me to come here, saying that you were ill, dying—ah,” and his eyes fell on the table bespread with dainty viands, and he smiled in the face of her scorn. “I understand now,” he added. “You spread your table for a phantom lover, and some jester sent me to personate him. Ah, Miss Somerville—Eva—what a happy chance! Am I pardoned for coming, believing you were ill and needed me? Will you permit me to sup with you, indeed, since I am really quite famished, having been far into the country without food since breakfast, on my rounds to the sick?”

Still half dazed, Eva motioned him to eat, and with a grateful smile he drew up his chair to the feast, saying gently:

“But not one morsel without you, Miss Somerville. Permit me,” and he passed her the cake with a profound bow.

A strange spell seized on her, intoxicating her senses with subtle pleasure, so that she mutely obeyed his gentle command, and, accepting the cake, began to eat, feeling almost as famished as he had declared himself to be.

“Thank you; I am going in a moment, but we have broken cake, if not bread, together, and we may be friends hereafter, may we not?” pleaded Doctor Ludington earnestly, bending his blue eyes tenderly upon her troubled face.

What she might have answered, whether with friendship or scorn, we may never know.

An unheard footstep had come along the hall, and Terry Groves listening a moment to the murmur of voices in the room, suddenly stalked in with blazing eyes and a face purple with fury.

Words of denunciation leaped from his lips; epithets of scorn for her who had dishonored the good old family name, curses for the man who had trailed her honor in the dust.

“You shall not live to boast of her dishonor!” he hissed savagely, drawing a weapon from his breast.

“Listen! I can explain it all!” cried the other, striking up his hand, but not before the bullet was buried in his breast. Then the men closed in mortal combat, hand to hand, the one in blind fury, the other to avenge the death he felt closing down upon him.

CHAPTER III.

THE VERDICT OF THE WORLD.

Like a bolt of lightning from a summer sky came that terrible hour into the hitherto calm existence of Eva Somerville—an hour that was destined to change the whole current of her life, as a little rippling brook, singing along in sunshine and shadow, between green, flowery banks, suddenly empties into a wide, tumultuous torrent, rushing on with irresistible force and thunderous noise to some mighty falls.

Little Eva, half dazed by the strangeness of the night’s events, and horrified by her cousin’s sudden entrance and frenzied accusations against her honor, had crouched down among her pillows in an agony of alarm, unable to utter a word in self-defense until the two men clashed in mortal combat, and the crash of the discharged revolver, filling the room with blue smoke, assured her that murder was being done.

Instantly, and with a moan of despair, she comprehended Terry’s fatal mistake that had driven him into murderous frenzy.

He believed that Doctor Ludington was her clandestine lover. For, how else could he ever have chanced to be there in her room at midnight, alone with her, a trespasser; a Ludington, a member of that family—sworn foes to the Groves’ clan for over thirty years, maintaining a smoldering vendetta after the deplorable fashion of some West Virginia and Kentucky sections, a survival of the savage spirit of their feudal ancestry.

Jealous rage fired Terry’s heart also, for Eva, even as a child, had felt for him a subtle aversion she could never overcome, and that was only increased in the past year by some lover-like advances he had imprudently made.

“Poor Terry, how strange the instinct that draws him to me, while I, in my turn, recoil from him. He is not such a bad fellow, truly,” she had thought more than once, in girlish pity.

But he appeared to her in the light of a fiend now, as the scathing words of his denunciation burned her cheeks with shame.

Now she comprehended her mysterious aversion to him always; a premonition of the evil he was destined to bring into her life.

And he was murdering Doctor Ludington in cold blood; a man who had never harmed him, who, although led into the house by a hideous practical joke, had dared its dangers on an errand of mercy.

He was the enemy of her house, but somehow she could not forget the tenderness of his dark-blue eyes and the wistful pleading of his musical voice as he said:

“We have broken bread together—may we not be friends?”

And he was being murdered before her eyes. It must not be, and shriek after shriek rang from her lips as the men fought wildly together for possession of the revolver, while upon the light matting that covered the floor she saw ghastly bloodstains dripping down from Ludington’s breast.

Heedless of her little bare feet and her white night robe, she leaped from the bed and clutched Terry’s coat, trying with all her feeble strength to drag him off his victim, crying:

“Let him go! Let him go! He is innocent! You are a coward to shoot an unarmed man!”

Angrily, viciously, as if she had been a feather, Terry shook off her light hold so that she fell to the floor before gran’ther’s feet, who, aroused by the disturbance and Eva’s shrieks, now came stumping into the room, leaning heavily on his cane.

At the same moment Miss Tabitha and the twins, followed by several young men, came hurrying to the scene along the dimly lighted hall.

The hay wagon, returning with its load of happy revelers, had stopped at the gate just in time for them to hear the shot and the frenzied shrieks of Eva following upon it.

“Heavens, what is that?” they all cried together, except the twins, who thought they understood it, for Patty exclaimed:

“It is only Eva. She has been trying some silly Hallowe’en charms, and has frightened herself, fancying she sees a face in the glass over her shoulder, or some such nonsense!”

“But you forget the pistol shot! Something really must have happened. Some of us had better go in with you and see,” said one of the young men, so several followed them into the house.

And just as Eva fell at gran’ther’s feet they trooped in behind him and came upon the startling scene.

They all saw how Doctor Ludington was trying to wrest the weapon from his assailant’s hand; they all saw that, just as he grasped Terry’s wrist, turning it aside from himself, the weapon was accidentally discharged.

The bullet buried itself in Terry’s brain.

At the same moment the failing strength of Ludington made him lose his grasp and the antagonists reeled apart, each sinking heavily down, their dying groans mingling on the air of the Hallowe’en night.

The frenzied screams of the women added to the horror of the scene.

The twins had rushed to their brother’s side and knelt down by him, quickly followed by gran’ther, who caught his hand, moaning:

“Poor Terry; poor boy! What is it all about? The fighting? My poor head is dazed.”

He did indeed have a piteous look, as he grasped the hand that was already growing cold in his as Terry Groves, with his eyes fast glazing, made a supreme effort and gasped:

“I was going along the hall to my—room—heard voices—peeped in Eva’s door—Ludington was with her—the vile hussy. To wipe—out—the foul—stain—I shot him! I—I——”

“Oh, Terry, Terry! don’t die!” shrieked Lydia wildly.

“He’s dead!” added Patty, in awe-struck accents, as his jaw dropped and the gray pallor of death settled on his boyish face, for he was but one-and-twenty.

Gran’ther Groves crouched down, gazing like one turned to stone, while the sobs and cries of the bereaved sisters, weeping in each other’s arms, filled the room.

Meanwhile, Miss Tabitha, after the first moments of consternation, had taken dire alarm in her maidenly bashfulness at Eva’s dishabille, and tearing the long wrap from her own shoulders, hastily threw it around the girl, muttering as she did so:

“Hain’t you ashamed o’ yourself, gal, walking round here in your bare feet an’ nightgown before all these men? An’ what are them two doing in here, this time o’ night, anyway, an’ fighting like Indians, I want to know?”

But Eva answered nothing, and did not even seem conscious of her words or presence, for at that moment the second horrible report of the revolver rang in her ears like the trump of doom.

“Oh, my God, have mercy!” she cried as the combatants fell apart, each sinking heavily to the floor with piteous, dying groans.

It seemed to her as if the point of a sword had entered her own heart, and she threw out her arms toward heaven with that wild invocation to her God for mercy.

As the smoke of the revolver cleared away she saw them all running toward Terry, leaving Ludington alone, but for herself, and with a moan of anguish she flung herself by his side.

She saw that his white shirt front was crimson with his lifeblood; that the gray pallor of death was on his handsome face; that his blue eyes were dim and set.

A great wave of anguish and pain, mixed with tenderness, surged over the girl.

She bent her face close to his, and impulsively kissed his cold brow with yearning lips, and murmured:

“Good-by, good-by! If you had lived I would have loved you!”

They heard her wild words, all of them. They used them against her afterward.

But, as for Eva, she had forgotten all but the man who lay before her, dying. She hardly thought that his dulled senses could comprehend her words, but, to her surprise, his drooping lids flew open wide, and a sort of radiant surprise and joy gleamed for a moment in his eyes, ere they grew dim again with the mists of death.

One of the young men knelt by him and gently, closed the staring blue eyes.

“He is gone, poor fellow!” he said gently.

All had heard Terry’s dying words, and by the verdict of the world Eva was guilty, though pure as snow in the sight of Heaven.

CHAPTER IV.

“I RENOUNCE YOU FOREVER!”

For a moment it seemed as if Gran’ther Groves would break down and weep like a woman as he saw poor Terry, his only grandson, lying dead on the floor in his young manhood, cut off so suddenly in the bloom of youth and hope.

He had looked for him to be the prop of his feeble, advancing years, and to carry on the honest name to posterity, but all in a moment these cherished hopes were blasted forever.

There at his feet lay his last male descendant, slain by the hand of the enemy of his house.

One long, piercing cry came from his quavering lips, and then his stern manhood quickly reasserted itself, and his blood leaped again through his veins with the fire of youth.

Rising quickly to his feet, he pointed with abhorrence at the young doctor’s body where it lay with its feet to Terry’s, as they had fallen apart, sinking with their mortal wounds.

His eyes gleamed with anger and his voice was tense with rage as he shouted hoarsely:

“Send for them to take it away before I drag the dastard out with my own hands and spurn his body into the road.”

“Come away, sir, into your own room, and the body shall be removed directly,” one of the young men said, leading him gently away.

Meanwhile Miss Tabitha, even in that tragic moment, could not forget that shocking dishabille of poor, distracted Eva, and, pushing her behind a screen, she began to help her to huddle on her clothes.

“A pretty sight you look, Eva Somerville, and all these men about, and more coming, for o’ course the crowner will be here directly to sit on the corpses! Here, pull on your stockings an’ shoes! You can’t? Lawk a-massy, stick out your foot an’ I’ll help you. There, now, stand up an’ let me get your clo’es on! Why, you can’t help yourself no more than a baby. An’ I vow to gracious I wouldn’t tech you with a ten-foot pole only to make you look decent before us other decent females. I never did take to you, Eva Somerville, an’ I never expected no good of you! Set down there, now, in that cheer, and don’t go to swooning, as I see you’re like to do.”

She snatched a glass of water and flung it square in the girl’s face, bringing her back to consciousness with a strangling gasp.

At that moment Gran’ther Groves, still in his long red flannel bedgown, his gray locks awry like one distraught, his aged face purple with rage, reëntered the room and hobbled across it till he stood in front of Eva, crying out to her in terrible wrath:

“I jest natchelly ought to kill you, gal, same as Terry killed your vile partner in shame!”

“Oh, gran’ther, I am innocent!” little Eva answered, in wild remonstrance.

But, heedless of her passionate protest, the half-crazed old man began to pour out the most scathing denunciation, drawing every one around to listen except the two whose ears were dulled in death.

In a lull of his passionate accusations she cried frantically:

“Oh, stop and let me speak, dear, dear gran’ther! Do not believe your little Eva the vile thing you say! No, no, if I were, I would bare my breast for your deathblow! I tell you, there was some fatal mistake. If Terry had but waited a moment, Doctor Ludington would have explained all to him!”

“Perhaps you can explain it!” the angry old man sneered incredulously.

“Yes, yes, if you will listen in kindness, and not glare at me in such fury, like a wild beast about to spring and devour me! Oh, gran’ther, how can you be so cruel to your poor little Eva, that loved you so!” she sobbed reproachfully.

“Go on with your explanation,” he answered, with brutal impatience in his unreasoning wrath, and she sobbed on:

“I never spoke to Doctor Ludington in all my life until to-night. Some one—some wicked practical joker that ought to be hung—sent him here, telling him I was ill, dying, and wished him to come. Seeing how angry I was, he explained to me, and was about to go when—when Terry entered in a senseless rage—because he loved me and was jealous. Then he would listen to nothing! He fell upon an unarmed man, the coward, and killed him! That is the true story, gran’ther, and I swear to you I am innocent!”

But Patty and Lydia, who had stopped their lamentations to listen, joined in with Miss Tabitha in derisive sneers:

“A likely story, indeed! Never spoke to him until to-night!”

“Of course it was he that was bringing you the flowers, and poetry, and candy every night and being entertained in your room, you shameless thing, trying to pretend you had an unknown, honorable lover!”

“Didn’t all of us see you down on your knees, kissing him and telling him you loved him, before he died—that bad man, the son of gran’ther’s enemy?”

So they overwhelmed her with reproaches, stifling the voice of mercy in gran’ther’s breast by their plausible accusations, to which she only answered sadly:

“I pitied him because he suffered for my sake! But, gran’ther, I swear to you I am innocent. Do not let my cruel enemies turn your heart against me!”

No one saw the twin sisters whisper dismayedly to each other:

“How did Dan come to make such a terrible mistake?”

“God only knows!”

“We must never let him confess the truth.”