Madelon Part 7

"Don't you know--I would not tell them if they would, but--I might tell them until I was gray, and they would not believe me!"

Madelon cried out sharply, as if she in her turn had been struck to the heart.

"It is true," Burr said, quietly.

"Then if he dies without telling, there is no way of--saving you--"

Burr shook his head.

"The knife--how--came your knife there instead of Richard's?"

Burr smiled.

Bluish shadows came around Madelon's dark eyes and her mouth. She gasped for breath as she spoke. "I--have--killed you, then," said she. Suddenly she put up her white, stiffly quivering lips to Burr's.

"Kiss me!" she cried out. "I beg you to give me the kiss that I might have killed you for last night!"

Burr bent down and kissed her, and she threw her arms around him and pressed his head to her bosom. "They shall not," she cried out, fiercely--"they shall not hang you! I will make them believe me!

Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Burr."

"Madelon," Burr said, huskily, "I have been double-faced and false to you, but, as G.o.d is my witness, I'm glad I've got the chance to suffer in your stead."

"You shall not! They shall believe I did it. I will make Lot Gordon tell. He shall tell before he dies!"

The bolt slid back, and Alvin Mead's great bulk darkened the doorway.

Madelon turned her face towards him, with her arms still clasping Burr and holding his head to her bosom. "This man is innocent!" she cried out, with a fierce gesture of protection, as if she were defending her young instead of her false lover. "I tell you he is innocent--you must let him go! I am the one who stabbed Lot Gordon!"

Alvin Mead stared; his heavy pink jaw lopped.

"I tell you, you must let him go!" She released Burr from her arms and gave him a push towards the door. "Go out," she said; "I am the one to stay here."

But Alvin Mead collected and brought about his great body with a show of lumbering fists. "Come," said he, "this ain't a-goin to do. We can't have no sech work as this, young woman. It's time you went."

"Let him go, I tell you!" commanded Madelon, confronting him fiercely. "I am going to stay."

"They won't let you come again if you don't go quietly now," Burr whispered, and he laid his hand on her nervous shoulder.

"I ruther guess we won't have no sech doin's again," said Alvin Mead, with sulky a.s.sent.

"You must go, Madelon."

Madelon tied on her hood. Her white face had its rigid, desperate look again.

"I will make them believe me yet, and you shall be set free," she said to Burr, with a stern nod, and pa.s.sed out, while Alvin Mead stood back to give her pa.s.sage, watching her with sullen and wary eyes. He was, in truth, half afraid of her.

Chapter VI

When Madelon, returning from New Salem, came in sight of her home the first thing which she noticed was her father in the yard in front of the house.

David Hautville's great figure stood out in the dusk of the snowy landscape like a giant's. He was motionless. The roan mare's gallop had evidently struck his ear some time before, and he knew that Madelon was returning. He did not even look her way as she drew nearer, but when she rode into the yard he made a swift movement forward and seized the mare by the bridle. She reared, but Madelon sat firm, with wretched, undaunted eyes upon her father. David Hautville's eyes blazed back at her out of the whiteness of his wrath.

"Where have you been?" he demanded, in a thick voice.

"To New Salem."

"What for?"

"To see Burr, and beg him to confess that I killed Lot."

"You didn't."

"I did."

"Fool!" David Hautville jerked the bridle so fiercely that the mare reared far back again. He jerked her down to her feet, and she made a vicious lunge at him, but he shunted her away.

"I'll fasten you into your chamber," he shouted, "if this work goes on! I'll stop your making a fool of yourself."

"It is Lot Gordon that is making fools of you all," said Madelon, in a hard, quiet voice.

"Did Burr Gordon say he didn't stab him?" cried her father.

"No; he wouldn't own it. He is trying to s.h.i.+eld me."

"He did it himself, and he'll hang for it."

"No, he won't hang for what I did while I draw the breath of life.

I've got the strength of ten in me. You don't know me, if I am your daughter." Madelon freed her bridle with a quick movement, and the mare flew forward into the barn.

David Hautville stood looking after her in utter fury and bewilderment. Her last words rang in his ears and seemed true to him.

He felt as if he did not know his own daughter. This awakening and las.h.i.+ng into action, by the terrible pressure of circ.u.mstances, of strange ancestral traits which he had himself transmitted was beyond his simple comprehension. He shook his head with a fierce helplessness and went into the barn.

"Go in and get the supper," he ordered, "and _I_'ll take care of the mare."

As Madelon came out of the stall he grasped her roughly by the arm and peered sharply into her face. The thought seized him that she must surely not be in her right mind--that Burr's treatment of her and his danger had turned her brain. "Be you crazy, Madelon?" he asked, in his straightforward simplicity, and there was an accent of doubt and pity in his voice.

"No, father," she replied, "I am not crazy. Let me go."

She broke away from him and was out of the barn door, but suddenly she turned and came running back. The sudden softness in his voice had stirred the woman in her to weakness. She went close to her father, and threw up her arms around his great neck, and clung to him, and sobbed as if she would sob her soul away, and pleaded with him as for her life.

"Father!" she cried--"father, help me! Believe me! Tell them I did it! Tell them it is true! Don't let them hang Burr. Help me to save him, father! Don't let them! Save him! Oh, you will save him, father?

You will? Tell me, father--tell me, tell me!" Madelon's voice rose into a wild shriek.

A sudden conviction of his solution of the matter and of his own astuteness came over David Hautville's primitive masculine intelligence. His daughter was wellnigh distraught with her lover's faithlessness and his awful crime and danger. She was to be watched and guarded lest she make a further spectacle of herself; but treated softly as might be, for she was naught but a woman, and liable to mischievous ailments of nerve and brain. David pressed his daughter's dark head with his hard, tender hand against his shoulder, then forced her gently away from him.

"It'll be all right," said he, soothingly--"it'll be all right. Don't you worry."