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While the good Craigmiles of Aberdeen were composing themselves to the hopeful view that Ellen's discovery of the date had given them, Larry Kildene and Amalia were seated in a car, luxurious for that day, speeding eastward over the desert across which Amalia and her father and mother had fled in fear and privation so short a time before.
If a tragedy has come upon the Craigmiles, it will also fall on her now, and we must spare her all of it we can, until we know." A call came to them from below, and Bertrand hastily handed the charm back to his wife, and she tied it again in her handkerchief. "Oh, Bertrand, don't go near that terrible brink. It might give way. I'm sure this has been an accident."
The letters reached their opposite destinations at about the same time. The one to Amalia closely buttoned in Larry's pocket, and the short one to himself which he read and reread as his horse slowly climbed the trail, were halfway up the mountain when the postboy delivered Hester Craigmile's at the door of the sedate brick house belonging to the Craigmiles of Aberdeen.
The Craigmiles lived on the main street of the town in the most dignified of the well-built homes of cream-colored brick, with a wide front stoop and white columns at the entrance. Mary was shown into the parlor by a neat serving maid, who stepped softly as if she were afraid of waking some one. The room was dark and cool, but the air seemed heavy with a lingering musky odor.
"Well a good many yes." "Know the Craigmiles?" "The Craigmiles? There's no one there to know now but the Elder. Oh, his wife, of course, but she stays at home so close no one ever sees her. They're away now, if you want to see them." "And she never goes out you say?" "Never since I've been in the town. You see, there was a tragedy in the family.
On the wall above Hester's head was one of the portraits which helped to establish the family dignity of the Craigmiles. If the blinds had been open, one could have seen it in sharp contrast to the pale moth of a woman who sat beneath it. The painting, warm and rich in tone, was of a dame in a long-bodiced dress. She held a fan in her hand and wore feathers in her powdered hair.
"Yes, they were a good family the Craigmiles of Aberdeen. My father brought all the old portraits coming to him to this country to keep the family traditions alive. It's a good thing a good thing!" "She was a beautiful woman, the original of that portrait." "She was a great beauty, indeed. Her husband took her to London to have it done by the great painter. Ah, the Scotch lasses were fine!
I am glad he came." "See here, mother! I know what you are doing. This won't do. Every one who goes to war doesn't get killed or go to the bad. Look at that old redcoat up in my room. He wasn't killed, or where would I be now? I'm coming back, just as he did. We are born to fight, we Craigmiles, and father feels it or he never would have given his consent."
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