"Yes," he replied gently.
"Now is it plain to you how I have undone my own plans? Two things I desired more than anything else on earth, you, and Burns"s ruin. I ruined Burns and paved the way for the loss of you, for, unscrupulous as I am in some things, I could never marry you when Nellie was free and you loved her. I have wanted happiness so hard, Code, that when I see others who have it within their grasp, I cannot stand in their way.
"But I don"t mind now--I really don"t. That was all in the past, and it"s over now. If you want to make me happy, be happy yourself. I see there are forces that guide our lives that must have their will whatever our own private plans may be, and, having learned that lesson, I feel that perhaps now I shall be happier, somehow, than I ever would have been if my own selfishness had triumphed."
Code lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.
"What a splendid woman you are! I know that happiness and joy will come to you. One who has done what you have done cannot fail to realize it. This hour will always be a very sweet one in my memory, and I shall never forget it."
"Nor I," she said softly, "for, through you, I have begun to find myself."
CHAPTER x.x.xI
PEACE AND PROSPERITY
The village of Freekirk Head prospered once Code Schofield, Bijonah Tanner, and Jed Martin had started the ball rolling. Inside a week another large consignment of fish arrived. Boughton was ready for it, and for all that could come, he said, in the next two months.
This was music to the ears of Code Schofield and the crack crew of the _Charming La.s.s_, and nine days after they had picked up their mooring in the little crescent harbor they were off again, salt and bait-laden, for the Banks, expecting to do a little haddocking if they failed to load down with cod before they disappeared in October.
Seven schooners sailed with him that day, and, at the end of nine weeks, the _La.s.s_ weighed anchor and charged home with the first halibut that had come into Freekirk Head in years. On this trip, when he was left in peace, Code displayed all the remarkable "nose" for fish that his father had had before him.
And when he had weighed out the last of his halibut Bill Boughton led him into the little office of the fishstand and offered him a quarter interest in the business.
Thereafter Code was to make only such trips as he could spare time for, and Pete was to have charge of the _La.s.s_ on other occasions.
He had proved himself worth his salt in the eyes of the whole village, and Boughton needed some one to do the heavy work, while he collected most of the profits. This business future, and three thousand dollars in the bank, led Code one day to send to St. John"s for an architect, and to haggle with Al Green concerning the cost of a piece of land overlooking the blue bay.
The very night that Code and Elsa had their last talk Nat Burns was smuggled aboard a motor sloop lying in Whale Cove and taken over to Eastport, where he was turned loose in the United States.
Half of the value of the _Nettie_ was eaten up by his debts and damage settlements, and so, the better to clear the whole matter up, he sold her at auction inside a week and departed with the remnants of his cash to parts unknown.
Since that time not a word or trace of him had been heard in Freekirk Head except once. That was when the St. John"s paper printed a photograph of an automobile that made a trip across the Hudson Bay country.
Beside the machine stood a man in furs who was claimed by all who saw the picture to be Nat Burns. Was he running a trap line in the wilds with the Indians, or was he a pa.s.senger in the car under an a.s.sumed name?
Elsa Mallaby did not even wait for the departure of the _Charming La.s.s_ on her second voyage before she acted on a determination that had come to her. She shut up Mallaby House entirely, and, with Caroline as her companion, started on a trip around the world, promising to be back in three years.
But she did not go on the mystery schooner, nor did anybody ever see or hear of it again.
It soon developed that the government officials were hard after the boat that had impersonated a gunboat, and would make it very hot both for owners and crew. Elsa knew this the day she made her final triumphant dash into Freekirk Head, and that was the reason that the ship only stayed ten minutes.
So quietly and skilfully was the whole thing managed that, in the excitement of Code"s arrest, every one thought Elsa and her sister had come on the evening boat from St. John"s.
Not three men in the island would have connected her with this strange craft, and two of those weren"t sure enough of anything to speak above a whisper. The third was Code Schofield.
Captain Foraker took the mystery schooner outside the harbor, pointed her nose straight south by the compa.s.s, and held her there for a matter of ten days. At the end of that time he was in danger of pushing Haiti off the map, so he went to Port-au-Prince and sold the schooner at a bargain to the government, which, at that time, happened to need a first-cla.s.s battle-ship. Then Captain Foraker and the crew divided the money (by Elsa"s orders), and returned to the States.
It was only after the return from his second cruise that Code paid attention to Nellie Tanner. Something in him that respected her trouble and Elsa"s confession at the same time had kept his lips sealed during that short stay at home. But one Sunday after the second trip they climbed to the crest of the mountain back of the closed Mallaby House, and Code told her what had been in his heart all these years.
For a while she said nothing. The sun was setting over the distant Maine coast and the clouds all round the horizon were wonderful ma.s.ses of short-lived rainbow texture. The sea was the pink and greenish blue of floating oil.
"You get me a trifle shop-worn," she said at last, laughing uncertainly.
"Then I get you?" He had turned toward her with a flash of boyish eagerness. One look at her radiant face and shining eyes found the answer.
"Shop-worn?" he said after a while. "Well, so am I, a trifle, but not in the way you mean. If having the down knocked off one and seeing things truer and better for it is being shop-worn, then thank G.o.d for the wearing.
"It has been a roundabout way for us, little girl, but at last our paths have met, and from now on, G.o.d willing, they shall go together.
Come, I want to show you something."
They walked through the woods until they found the place where the surveyors had laid out the foundation plan for the little house. There they found an interested couple gravely discussing a near-by excavation with the aid of a blue-print.
Presently the couple turned around, and the lovers clutched each other in amazement.
"Bless me," gasped Code, "if it isn"t ma and Pete Ellinwood!"
THE END
JOHN FOX, JR"S.
STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap"s list.
THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE.
Ill.u.s.trated by F. C. Yohn.
The "_lonesome pine_" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the _foot-prints of a girl_. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chase than "the trail of the lonesome pine."
THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME
Ill.u.s.trated by F. C. Yohn.
This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "Kingdom Come." It is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which often springs the flower of civilization.
"Chad," the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he came--he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery--a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better than anyone else in the mountains.
A KNIGHT OF THE c.u.mBERLAND.
Ill.u.s.trated by F. C. Yohn.