A sickening sensation comes over the watcher.
"They both come!" says she; and turns her eyes northward.
What! Is it another optical delusion, or is this yet one more cloud in the north, which, as it approaches, also takes the semblance of a revolving figure? Hot as the weather is, she shivers sensibly, and, closing her parasol, mutters, her lips as white as driven snow--
"They all come!"
Sub-Chapter XIII.
THE WATCHER ON THE CAIRN.
Twenty-four hours of agonising suspense, and then the revolving figures reach the base of the mountain, and commence simultaneously to roll up the side.
The female figure on the top gives a despairing glance around her, and drops senseless on the cairn.
At length, as the sun is setting in the only unoccupied horizon, she starts, rigid and stiff, and listens.
On either side of her approaches a dull grinding noise, mingled with heavy snorting, and the low muttering of voices.
She dares not look: it is terrible enough to hear!
So evenly do they approach, that at the same instant they reached the summit.
Then she rises majestically to her full height, spreads her arms, and utters a cry which is heard simultaneously at Cairo, at Zanzibar, and at Cape Town.
A terrible silence follows, broken only by the trembling of the mountain and the breathless panting of the three figures as each rears himself slowly to his feet.
The scene that followed may be more easily imagined than described.
Sub-Chapter XIV.
ALL COMES OUT.
It is time we went back to the scene on the cliff at Crocusville narrated in the opening chapter.
Peeler, the coastguardsman, after descending the cliff, resumed his ordinary avocations, and sent his daughter to a superior high school.
Hence her presence at the Duc"s ball and on the desert mountain.
The Duc de Septimominorelli (for such was the mysterious traveller) recoiled several hundred yards on finding himself confronted not only by the aged father of his now middle-aged Velvetina, but by the form of his old opponent the Marquis de Smellismelli.
"Aha!" said the latter, producing his plaster cast. "How do you find yourself, Sep, my boy?"
"Hot," said Septimus, with characteristic coolness.
"Introduce me to the old gentleman," said the detective.
"Peeler," was the laconic reply.
It was Solomon"s turn to turn inquiringly to the lady.
She only bowed.
"I wish very much I had known this before. I have wasted fifty years over you," said Solomon, in injured tones. "I must lose no more time if I am to detect anything. Good morning. Aha!
"Stay!" shouts Sep, in a voice of thunder. "It is I who have wasted fifty years running away from you. You owe me an apology, sirrah!"
The caitiff"s face underwent a kaleidoscopic change as these terrible words rant? in his ears. With the bound of of a wounded antelope he sprang to the summit of the nearest mountain, and stood there with arms erect against the sky, like a statue of Ajax.
"He don"t seem blooming, shiver my timbers if he do," said old Peeler.
"We shall not meet again," said Sep, grinding his teeth in his direction.
"Why should we be standing here in the sun?" said Velvetina. "Let us return to England."
They returned the same evening.
Sub-Chapter XV.
OMNIA VINCIT AMOR.
Septimus Minor and Velvetina Peeler were married quietly at the Crocusville Cathedral.
The bride was given away by her father, Captain Peeler, R.N.
The company was select and the presents were costly.
Amongst the latter none attracted more attention or curiosity than an excellent plaster cast of a horse"s hoof, presented to the happy couple by the Marquis de Smellismelli and his grandson the Lord Mayor of London.
There were few knew its history; but it was eloquent in meaning for Mr and Mrs Septimus Minor, who have given it an honoured place on the mantelpiece of the second spare bedroom of their bijou residence in Pink Street.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
A QUEER PICNIC.
Sub-Chapter I.
A MYSTERIOUS MOUNTAIN.
Magnus minor and my brother Joe were about as chummy as two fellows who had not a single taste in common could well be. Magnus, you know, was an athlete. At least, he was in the fourth eleven, and ran regularly in the quarter-mile open handicap. He got fifty yards the first year, and came in tenth; in the second year they gave him a hundred, and he came in eighteenth; in the third year they generously gave him a hundred and twenty yards, and he never came in at all, for some unexplained reason.
After that he pa.s.sed as an athlete, and considered himself an authority, especially at home, on all matters relating to sport. Joe, on the other hand, was a dreamy boy; he wrote poems, when he should have been construing Caesar, and gave several other indications that he was destined to a great career. He cared as little about sport as Magnus did about poetry. This probably was the reason the two were such chums.
They never trod on one another"s toes.
When they went for a walk, Joe usually dawdled along trying to think of rhymes for "nightingale," and "poppy," and "windmill," and the other beauties of Nature which met his eye or ear; while Magnus stopped behind to vault gates (which always caught his foot as he went over), and do "sprints" with wayside animals, in which the wayside animals usually managed to pull off the event. I"m not sure that they ever talked to one another, which again may have been a reason for their great friendship. If they did, n.o.body ever heard them; indeed, they never seemed to look at one another, or to be aware of one another"s existence, which no doubt fully explains their mutual devotion.
The only real bond of sympathy that I can think of was that they were always going in for examinations together, and always getting plucked.