But here we are at the real front door.Shall we go on?"Elinor leaned wearily against the wall,wet and cold,and almost exhausted.
"Let's wait a little,till this shower passes,"she pleaded.
"You poor girl!This has been an awful night,"Vic said gently.
Their eyes were getting accustomed to the darkness and they saw more clearly the outline of the opening to the outside world.
Suddenly Elinor shivered as again the nearness of a presence somewhere possessed them both.
"Let's go!Let's go!"she whispered,huddling close to her companion,whose grip on her arm tightened.
He was conscious of a light behind him.Glancing over his shoulder,he caught a gleam beyond the opening in the rear wall through which they had just crept;and in that gleam,a villainous face,with still black eyes,looking straight at him.
The light disappeared,and he heard the faint sound of something creeping toward them.Vic could fight any man living.
Nature built him for that.He had no fear for himself.
But here was Elinor,and he must think of her first.
At that instant,the doorway darkened,and a form slipped into the cavern somewhere.Oh,wind and rain,and forked blue lightning and the thunder's roar,the river's mad floods,the steep,slippery rocks,and jagged ledges,all were kind beside this secret human presence,cruelly silent and treacherous.
Victor Burleigh drew Elinor closer to him,and whispered low:
"Don't be afraid with me to guard you."
Even in that deep gloom,he caught the outline of a white face with star-bright eyes lifted toward his face.
"I'm not afraid with you,"she whispered.
Behind them stealthy movements somewhere.Between them and the doorway,stealthy movements somewhere;but all so still and slow,they stretched the listening nerve almost to the breaking point.Suddenly,a big,hard hand gripped Burleigh's shoulder,and a dead still voice,that Vic could not recognize,breathed into his ear,"Go quick and quiet!
I'll stand for it.Go!"
It was old Bond Saxon.
Vic caught Elinor's arm,and with one stride they sprang from the cave's mouth up to the open ground beyond it.
Something behind them,it might have been a groan or a smothered oath,reached their ears,as they sped away down a narrow ravine.
The rain had ceased and overhead the stars were peeping from the edges of feathery flying clouds;and all the sodden autumn night was still at last,save for the gurgling waters of a little stream down the rocky glen.
The Sunrise bell was striking eleven when they reached the bridge across the Walnut,and the beacon light from the dome began to twinkle a welcome now and then through the dripping branches of the leafless trees.
A few minutes later,Victor Burleigh brought Elinor safely to Lloyd Fenneben's door.
"We made it in before midnight,anyhow,"he said carelessly.
Elinor looked up in surprise.The terrors of the night still possessed her.
"What a horrible nightmare it has all been.The storm,the river,the rocks,and the darkness,and that dreadful something behind us in the cave.Was there really anything,or did we just imagine it all?
It will seem impossible when the daylight comes."Victor looked at her with a wonderful light in his wide-open brown eyes.
"Yes,"he said in a deep voice."It will seem impossible when daylight comes.But will it all be as a horrible nightmare?""No,no;not all."Elinor's face was winsomely sweet."Not all,"she repeated."It is fine to feel one's self so safeguarded as I have been.
I shall always remember you as one with whom I could never again be afraid."Burleigh turned hastily toward the door,and,having delivered her to the care of her uncle,he bade them both good night.
Dr.Fenneben looked keenly after the young man striding away from the light.
His clothes were torn and bedraggled,his cap was gone,and his heavy hair was a mass of rough waves about his forehead.The direct gaze of his golden-brown eyes took away distrust,and yet the face had changed somehow in this day.
A hint of a new purpose had crept into it,a purpose not possible for Dr.Fenneben to read.
But he did note the set of the head,the erect form and broad shoulders,and the easy swinging step as the boy went whistling away into the shadows of the night.
"A splendid animal,anyhow,"the Dean thought."Will the soul measure up to that princely body?And what can be the purport of this maudlin mouthing of old Bond Saxon?Bond is really a lovable man when he's sober;but he's vindictive and ugly when he's drunk.
I can wait for developments.Whatever the boy's history may have been,like the courts,it's my business to hold every man innocent till he's proven guilty;to build up character,not to undermine and destroy it.
And destruction begins in suspicion."