A Fair Emigrant, Chapters III-V [pp. 83-106]

6 A FAIR EMIGRANT.
est and favorite son, and the calamity threatened to deprive her
of her reason. So deep was my own affliction that it was some
time before I began to perceive that people were looking askance
at me. Some one was whispering away my fair fame. A nameless horror rose up beside me, dogged my steps, haunted me like
an evil spirit'; when I tried to grasp it, it slipped through my fingers and vanished. I resolved not to see it, tried to forget it,
ascribed its existence to my own over-excited imagination; but
still the reality of it was there, asserting itself at every opportunity. At last one day with a sudden shock I came in front of
it and saw its face, ghastly with falsehood and corruption. It
was believed that I had murdered Fingall!.
"The whisper grew and swelled into a murmur so loud that
I could not shut my ears to it. Even in Mave's tender eyes there
arose a cloud of doubt. Her smile grew colder and colder, and
a look of fear came over her face when I appeared. I became
aware that I had a powerful though secret accuser, who, while
assuming to screen me, was all the time gradually and persistently blasting my good name.
" There came a day when I could bear it no longer, and I
wvent to Mave and asked an explanation of the change in her
manner towards me. I said I knew there were evil rumors in
circulation concerning me, but I should not care for them. I
could live them down, if only she would bravely believe in me.
At once I saw my doom in her averted eyes. It seemed that,
whoever my accuser might be, he had her ear and that her mind
wvas becoming poisoned against me. Seeing the despair in my
face, she burst into passionate weeping; but when I drew near to
comfort her she shrank from me. In the agonizing scene that
followed I learned that some secret evidence had been laid before
her which she considered overwhelming. Timorous and gentle
I had known her to be, but that she could be so miserably weak
and wanting in trust of me, whom she had chosen and dignified
with her love-of disloyalty like this I had not dreamed. I went
to her brother Luke, who was the dominant spirit in that unwholesome household, stated my case, declared my innocence,
and asked him, as man to man, to help me to free myself from
this curse that was threatening to blast me. I found him cool,
reticent, suspicious, professing to be my friend, unwilling to say
anything hurtful to me, but evidently firmly convinced of my
guilt. He said that, for the sake of old friendship and of his
sister's former love for me, they were all anxious to screen me
from the consequences of what had happened. I answered that I
96
[Oct.,