Lillian
paused on the veranda and gazed down the road, winding away into the
dusky red flare of the fading west, for the drive must needs be short in
this season of early nightfall. There was no sign of approach along its
smooth and shadowy curves, and at the end of the long vista, where the
jagged verges of crags serrated the serene green sky a star shone, white
and splendid, amidst the vanishing vermilion suffusions of the
sunset-tide.
V.
In the light of after events, one might wonder if the genial, care-free
Edward Briscoe remembered any detail of the discarded arrangement of the
previous evening for the transportation of his transitory guest, Frank
Dean, to Shaftesville; if he realized that at the moment when the revenue
officer would have been starting on the journey, as the host had
insistently planned it, he was himself at the turn of the road and just
beyond the jutting crag; if he divined that the vibrations of the
telephone wire had betrayed the matter to a crafty listening ear on the
party-line in the vacant hotel across the ravine--or was the time too
short for the consideration? Did he even recognize the significance of
the apparition when a swift, erect figure stepped openly from under the
shadowy boughs of the balsam firs into the middle of the road, that the
bead might be drawn straight? Did he appreciate that the flash is sooner
sped than the missile and know his fate before the rifle-ball crashed
into his skull!--or was the instant all inadequate and did he enter
eternity ere he was well quit of this world?
Frightened by the sudden appearance of the man in the middle of the
thoroughfare, the funnel-shaped flare of light, the sharp report of the
weapon, the mare, trotting at full speed, swerved, plunged, backed, the
reins hanging loose about her heels, her driver having fallen forward
upon the dashboard.
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