Charred Wood | Page 2

left to go along the pathway
toward the village.
Five hundred yards away she was met by a tall man wearing a long
black coat. Was it the priest he had noticed that morning at the door of
the Catholic church in the village? Yes, there was no doubt about that;
it was the priest. He had just lifted his hat to the lady and was now
turning to walk back with her by the way he had come. They evidently
knew each other well; and the man watching them almost laughed at
himself when he realized that he was slightly piqued at the clergyman's
daring to know her while he did not. He watched the pair until they
disappeared around the bend of the bluff path. Then he settled back to
look for his cigar. But he did not find it, for other matters quickly
absorbed his attention.
From out a clump of bushes on his left, where they evidently had been
hiding, two men appeared. He recognized them both. One was a book
agent who was stopping at the hotel in the village; the other was the
local constable. The book agent had a paper in his hand.
"That her?" he asked.
"Yaas, sir!"--the constable was surely a native New Englander--"I seed
her face plain."
"I didn't," said the agent, with annoyance. "I have never seen her
without that confounded veil. This is the first time she's had it thrown
back. But the description is right? Look at it."
He showed the paper to the constable, tapping it as he read.
"'Brown hair, blue eyes'--did you see her eyes?"
"I sure did," answered the constable; "and they wuz blue."

"All right, then. 'Blue eyes, regular features'--how about that?"
"Reg'lar enough," said the constable. "She'd no pug nose, I kin tell ya
that."
"'Regular features,' then, is right. 'Five feet four inches tall'--that's right.
'Small hands and feet'--that's right. 'About twenty-three years old; good
figure.'"
"She sure hez all them," vouchsafed the wearer of the star. "I knowed
her right away, and I've seed her often. She's been in Sihasset well nigh
on a month."
"But where--" the agent turned to look at the unbroken wall--"where in
thunder did she come from?"
The constable, pushing back his helmet, scratched his head.
"Damfino," he said. "That's the rub. There's no gate on this side of
Killimaga."
"Killimaga?"
"A rich old Irishman built it and put a wall around it, too. We folks of
Sihasset don't like that; it shuts off the view of the house and lawn.
Lawn's what makes things purty. He wuz a queer old mug--wanted to
shut hisself up."
"But how did she get out?" insisted the agent, coming back to the issue.
"Search me," offered the constable. He looked toward the top of the
wall. "Clumb the fence, mebbe."
"With her dress looking as it does?"
"There's no other way. I dunno."
The agent was puzzled. "I want a closer inspection of that wall. We'll
walk along this side."

Both agent and constable started off, keeping well behind the wild
hedge along the wall so that they might not be seen from the bluff road.
The man lying in the grass was more puzzled than the agent. Why a
book agent and a constable should be so anxious about a lady who
was--well, just charming--but who had herself stepped out of nowhere
to join a priest in his walk, was a problem for some study. He got up
and walked to the wall. Then he laughed. Close examination showed
him marks in the giant tree, the vertical cuts being cleverly covered by
the bark, while the horizontal ones had creepers festooned over them. A
door was well concealed. But the tree? It was large, yet there could not
be room in it for more than one person, who would have to stand
upright and in a most uncomfortable position. The man himself had
been before it over an hour. How long had the lady been in the tree? He
forgot his lost cigar in trying to figure the problem out.
Mark Griffin had never liked problems. That was one reason why he
found himself now located in a stuffy New England inn just at the end
of the summer season when all the "boarders" had gone except himself
and the book agent.
Griffin himself, though the younger son of an Irish peer, had been born
in England. The home ties were not strong and when his brother
succeeded to the title and estates in Ireland Mark, who had inherited a
fortune from his mother, went to live with his powerful English
relatives. For a while he thought of going into the army, but he knew he
was a dunce in mathematics, so he soon gave up the idea.