The Twins of Table Mountain | Page 6

brother.\
Ruth turned on his heel, and walked towards the door.\
"That's right; go on! Why don't you get the chalk?"\
Ruth made no reply. Rand descended from the bed, and, taking a piece of chalk from the shelf, drew a line on the floor, dividing the cabin in two equal parts.\
"You can have the east half," he said, as he climbed slowly back into bed.\
This mysterious rite was the usual termination of a quarrel between the twins. Each man kept his half of the cabin until the feud was forgotten. It was the mark of silence and separation, over which no words of recrimination, argument, or even explanation, were delivered, until it was effaced by one or the other. This was considered equivalent to apology or reconciliation, which each were equally bound in honor to accept.\
It may be remarked that the floor was much whiter at this line of demarcation, and under the fresh chalk-line appeared the faint evidences of one recently effaced.\
Without apparently heeding this potential ceremony, Ruth remained leaning against the doorway, looking upon the night, the bulk of whose profundity and blackness seemed to be gathered below him. The vault above was serene and tranquil, with a few large far- spaced stars; the abyss beneath, untroubled by sight or sound. Stepping out upon the ledge, he leaned far over the shelf that sustained their cabin, and listened. A faint rhythmical roll, rising and falling in long undulations against the invisible horizon, to his accustomed ears told him the wind was blowing among the pines in the valley. Yet, mingling with this familiar sound, his ear, now morbidly acute, seemed to detect a stranger inarticulate murmur, as of confused and excited voices, swelling up from the mysterious depths to the stars above, and again swallowed up in the gulfs of silence below. He was roused from a consideration of this phenomenon by a faint glow towards the east, which at last brightened, until the dark outline of the distant walls of the valley stood out against the sky. Were his other senses participating in the delusion of his ears? for with the brightening light came the faint odor of burning timber.\
His face grew anxious as he gazed. At last he rose, and re-entered the cabin. His eyes fell upon the faint chalk-mark, and, taking his soft felt hat from his head, with a few practical sweeps of the brim he brushed away the ominous record of their late estrangement. Going to the bed whereon Rand lay stretched, open-eyed, he would have laid his hand upon his arm lightly; but the brother's fingers sought and clasped his own. "Get up," he said quietly; "there's a strange fire in the Canyon head that I can't make out."\
Rand slowly clambered from his shelf, and hand in hand the brothers stood upon the ledge. "It's a right smart chance beyond the Ferry, and a piece beyond the Mill, too," said Rand, shading his eyes with his hand, from force of habit. "It's in the woods where--" He would have added where he met Mornie; but it was a point of honor with the twins, after reconciliation, not to allude to any topic of their recent disagreement.\
Ruth dropped his brother's hand. "It doesn't smell like the woods," he said slowly.\
"Smell!" repeated Rand incredulously. "Why, it's twenty miles in a bee-line yonder. Smell, indeed!"\
Ruth was silent, but presently fell to listening again with his former abstraction. "You don't hear anything, do you?" he asked after a pause.\
"It's blowin' in the pines on the river," said Rand shortly.\
"You don't hear anything else?"\
"No."\
"Nothing like--like--like--"\
Rand, who had been listening with an intensity that distorted the left side of his face, interrupted him impatiently.\
"Like what?"\
"Like a woman sobbin'?"\
"Ruth," said Rand, suddenly looking up in his brother's face, "what's gone of you?"\
Ruth laughed. "The fire's out," he said, abruptly re-entering the cabin. "I'm goin' to turn in."\
Rand, following his brother half reproachfully, saw him divest himself of his clothing, and roll himself in the blankets of his bed.\
"Good-night, Randy!"\
Rand hesitated. He would have liked to ask his brother another question; but there was clearly nothing to be done but follow his example.\
"Good-night, Ruthy!" he said, and put out the light. As he did so, the glow in the eastern horizon faded, too, and darkness seemed to well up from the depths below, and, flowing in the open door, wrapped them in deeper slumber.\
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\f0\b\fs35 \cf0 CHAPTER II.\
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\f1\b0\fs30 \cf0 THE CLOUDS GATHER.\
Twelve months had elapsed since the quarrel and reconciliation, during which interval no reference was made by either of the brothers to the cause which had provoked it. Rand was at work in the shaft, Ruth having that morning undertaken the replenishment of the larder with game from the wooded skirt of the mountain. Rand had taken advantage of his brother's absence