Page:Mehalah 1920.djvu/284

274 the house. She could not speak, she could only look up at him as at one risen from the dead. He led her towards the sea-wall, looking behind him at the figure of the blind man, rushing about, and smiting recklessly in his jealousy and fury, and hitting bushes, rails, walls, anything in hopes of smiting down the man whose name he had heard, and who he knew had come back to break in on and ruin his hopes.

George De Witt walked lamely, he had a somewhat stiff leg; otherwise he seemed well.

"How manly you have grown!" exclaimed Mehalah, holding him at arms' length, and contemplating him with pride.

"And you. Glory, have become more womanly; but in all else are the same."

"Where have you been, George?"

"At sea, Glory, and smelt powder. I have been a sailor in His Majesty's Royal Navy, in the Duke of Clarence, and I am pensioned off, because of my leg."

"Have you been wounded?"

"Not exactly. A cannon-ball, as we were loading, struck me on the shin and bruised the bone, so that I have been invalided with swellings and ulcerations. I ain't fit for active service, but I'm not exactly a cripple."

"But George! when did this take place? I do not understand. After your escape?"

"Escape, Glory? I have had no escape."

"From confinement in Red Hall," she added.

"I never was confined there. I do not know what you are talking about."

Mehalah passed her hand over her face.

"George! I thought that Elijah had made you drunk and then put you in his cellar, chained there till you went mad."

"There is not a word of truth in this," said De Witt. "Who told you such a tale?"

"Elijah himself."

"Elijah is a rascal. I have enough cause against him without that."

"Then tell me about yourself. I am bewildered. How came you to disappear?