Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/47

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"‘God speed your feet!'

"Then it struck him as strange that his wife was not there to see the success or failure of her hero; he threw himself from his horse, letting it go loose, and he ran towards the house calling. Through the lower rooms he went, and round the small garden, but she was not there. Frightened, he again searched the house, and, coming to his dressing-room, he noticed the press standing open and all his clothes tossed about. A black suit he often wore was gone. A light dawned upon him. He rushed into her bedroom. Yes, there was the dress she had worn that morning. What had she done? He flew down the stairs, calling her name, and ran across the fields to the broken bridge again.

"He saw it all now. She had dressed in his clothes and gone in his place. All the manhood in him rose up; he would follow her. She had made a path for him; he was no longer afraid. All along that low wire her little feet had gone; all along the top one her pretty hands had moved. The electricity of her courage must lie there still, and would give him strength to follow. He put his feet on one wire and his hands upon the other. He