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The woman of larger knowledge did not argue against this credulity. Antonia was of the provinces, bred out of their darkest hours of superstition and savage danger. But it was easy to see how Jonas Bronck's hand must hold his widow from second marriage. What lover could she ask to share her monthly gaze upon it, and thus half realize the continued fleshly existence of Jonas Bronck?
"Yes, we shall see him or have news of him soon." In the tumult of Klussman's mind Jonas Bronck's hand never again came uppermost. He cared nothing and thought nothing about that weird fragment, in the midst of living disaster. It had merely been the occasion of his surrendering to Marguerite.
"And misfortune is sure to follow." "Well, let misfortune and the hand go together." "It was not so said." She looked furtively at Bronck's powerful rival, loath to reveal to him the sick old man's prophecies.
"Perhaps you can tell what manner of box it was," said Lady Dorinda with irony, though a dull red was startled into her cheeks. "Madame Marie says it was a tiny box of oak, thick set with nails. She would not alarm the fort, so she had search made for it in Madame Bronck's name." Lady Dorinda, incredulous, but trembling, divined at once that the dwarf had hid that coffer in her chest.
Her friend followed her to the door below, and the voices of the two women hummed indistinctly in that vault-like hollow. "You have told him," accused Antonia directly. "He is laughing about Mynheer Bronck's hand!" "He does take a cheerful view of the matter," conceded the lady of the fort. Antonia looked at her with all the asperity which could be expressed in a fair Dutch face.
"That unknown lady will have much satisfaction in it," murmured Antonia. "I hope so. And be better known than she was as Jonas Bronck's wife." She colored, but hid a smile within her muffling. Her good-humored suitor leaned toward her, resting his arms upon his knees. "Touching a matter which has never been mentioned between us; was the curing of Bronck's hand well approved by you?"
John had seen human fragments scattered by cannon, and sword and bullet had done their work before her sight. But a faintness beyond the touch of peril made her grasp the table and turn from that ghastly hand. "It cannot be, Antonia" "Yes, it is Mynheer Bronck's hand," whispered Antonia, subduing herself to take admonition from the grim digits. "Lock it up; and come directly away from it.
"Did Monsieur Bronck, before he died, tell you his intention to do this?" pressed Marie, feeling less interest in the Dutch embalmer's method than in the sinuous motive of a man who could leave such a bequest. "Yes, madame." "I do marvel at such an act!" murmured the lady of St. John, challenging Jonas Bronck's loyal widow to take up his instant defense.
The dwarf's lady looked keenly at her. "Oh, no. There could be no talk between those two." "But there hath been. I have watched him. Madame Marie, he took me up when I went into the fort before Madame Bronck's marriage when I was but playing my clavier before that sulky knave to amuse her he took me up in his big common-soldier fingers, gripping me around the waist, and flung me into the hall."
He awoke as often as the guard was changed, and when dawn-light instead of moonlight appeared with the last relief, he sprang up, and took the breastplate which had been laid aside for his better rest. Out of its hollow fell Jonas Bronck's hand, bare and crouching with stiff fingers on the pavement.
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