A deep sigh answered him. Whose? It had the sound of relief in it, a great soul-satisfying relief. Had the stranger uttered it? It would seem so, but his manner was too professional to be the cloak of so much emotion, or so it seemed to all eyes but one.
The witnesses’ signatures were soon in place, and the stranger rose to go. As he did so his eyes flashed suddenly over his shoulder and rested for an instant on the man who occupied the neighboring cot. The movement was so quick that No. Thirteen had scarcely time to close his eyes undetected. Indeed, some glint of the half-hidden eyeball must have met the stranger’s eye, for he turned quickly and bent over the seemingly unconscious man with a gaze of such intentness that it took all the strength of what had once been called a most obstinate will for the man thus surveyed not to respond to it.
Suddenly the stranger thrust his hand out and laid it on the unknown sufferer’s heart, and a slight smile crossed his features.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” were the words he dropped, cold and stinging, into the apparently deaf ear.
But the man’s will was indomitable and an icy silence was the sole answer which the intruder received.
“I have still a thousand to give away,” was whispered so close into his face that he felt the hot breath that conveyed it.
But even these words fell, or seemed to fall, upon ears of stony deafness, and the stranger rising, moved quietly away, saying as he did so, “This case here is on the mend. His heart has a very normal beat.”
Some few more words were said, and he and his companion were left alone again with the nurse.
At three o’clock No. Twelve called feebly for some water; as the nurse returned from giving it to him she felt her dress pulled slightly by a feeble hand. Turning to No. Thirteen she was astonished to see that his eyes were burning with quite an eager light.
“I could drink some broth,” said he.
“Why, you are better!” she cried.
But he shook his head. “No,” said he, “but—” The voice trailed off into a feeble murmur, but the eye continued bright. He was afraid to speak for fear his lips would frame aloud the words that he had been repeating to himself for the last two hours. “Mary Earle! Mary Earle, of Hamilton—— county, Massachusetts.”
He had found the interest which had been lacking to his recovery.
PART II.
THE MAN WITH THE DOG.
II.
HADLEY’S CAVE.
ON the first day of June, 1892, there could be seen on the highway near the small village of Hamilton, a dusty wanderer with a long beard and rough, unkempt hair. From the silver streaks in the latter, and from his general appearance and feeble walk, he had already passed the virile point of life and had entered upon, or was about to enter upon, the stage of decrepitude. And yet the eyes which burned beneath the gray and shaggy brows were strangely bright, and had an alertness of expression which contradicted the weary bend of the head and the slow dragging of the rough-shod feet.
His dress was that of a farm laborer, and from the smallness of the bundle which he carried on a stick over his shoulder, he had evidently been out of work for some time and was as poor as he was old and helpless.
At the junction of the two roads leading to Leadington and Wells, he stopped and drew a long breath. Then he sat down on a huge stone in the cross of the roads and, drooping his head, gazed long and earnestly at the length of dusty road which separated him from the cluster of steeples and house roofs before him. Was he dreaming or planning, or was he merely weary? A sound at his side startled him. Turning his head, he saw a dog. It was a very lean one, and its attitude as it stood gazing into his face with wistful eyes, was one of entreaty.
“Come!” it seemed to say, and ran off a few steps. The tramp, for we can call him nothing else, though there was a dash of something like refinement in his look and manner, stared for a moment after the animal, then he slowly rose. But he did not follow the dog. The disappointment of the latter was evident. Coming back to the man, he sniffed and pulled at his clothes, and cast such beseeching looks upward out of his all but human eyes that the man though naturally surly was touched at last and turned in the direction indicated by the dog.
“After all, why not?” he murmured, and strolled on after his now delighted guide, up one of the roads to a meadow terminating in an abrupt and rocky steep.
“Why am I such a fool?” he asked himself when half way across this stubbly field. But at the short bark of the dog and the irresistible wagging of the animal’s tail, he stumbled on, influenced no doubt by some superstitious feeling which bade him regard the summons of this unusually sagacious beast as an omen he dared not disregard. At the foot of the rocks he, however, paused. Why should he climb them at the bidding of a dog? But his guide was imperative, and pulled at his trousers so energetically that he finally mounted a short distance, when to his surprise he came upon a cave into the entrance of which the dog plunged with a short sharp cry of pleasure and satisfaction.
Hesitating to follow, the man stood for a moment gazing back upon the town and the stretch of lovely landscape before him. It was an outlook of great charm, but I doubt if he noticed its beauties. Some thought of an unpleasant and perplexing nature furrowed his brow, and it was with a start that he turned, when the dog, reissuing from the cave, renewed his blandishments, and by dint of bark and whine attempted to draw him into the opening before which he stood.
What was in hiding there? Curiosity bade him look, but a certain not unreasonable apprehension deterred him. He finally, however, overcame his fear, if fear it was, and followed the dog, that no sooner saw him start toward the entrance than he gave a leap of delight and bounded into the cave before him. In another moment the man had entered also and was looking around for the helpless or wounded human being whom he evidently expected to find.
But no such sight met his eyes. On the contrary, he saw nothing but an empty cave with here and there a sign of the place having been used as a domicile at a recent date. In one corner was a litter of boughs from which the covering had manifestly been roughly torn, and in the ledges overhead were to be seen spikes of wood, upon which utensils had doubtless been hung, for amid the débris of broken rock beneath lay an old tin pan with the handle broken off.
As there was nothing in this to interest the man he turned and kicked at the inoffensive beast who had lured him out of his path on such a fruitless errand. But the latter instead of resenting this harshness only renewed his previous antics, and finally succeeding by them in re-attracting the man’s attention, led the way to a remote corner of the cave, where the shadows were thickest. Here he stood with his paws raised against the rocky sides, looking up over his head and then back at the man in a way which left no doubt as to his meaning.
He wanted the man to climb, and when the man approaching saw the few rocky steps that had been hewn out of the wall, his curiosity was renewed and he lent himself to the effort, old as he was and tired with many a long hour of tramping in the summer sun.
Above him he perceived a dark hole, and into this he presently thrust his head, but the darkness which he encountered was so impenetrable that he would have instantly retreated had he not remembered the box of matches which kept guard with an old pipe in a certain pocket of his red flannel shirt. Taking out this box, he struck a match and, as soon as the first dazzling flash was over, perceived that he was in a small but well furnished room, stocked with provisions and containing many articles of domestic use. This so surprised him that he withdrew in some haste, though he would dearly have liked to have made some investigation into the old chest of drawers he saw there, and had one peep at least into the odd, long box which took up so much of the darkened space into which he had intruded.
The