Free Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries by Melville Davisson Post Page B

but he rose and stood before my uncle. He stood straight and fearless, his long white hair thrown back, his bronzed throat exposed, his face lifted, and his eyes calm and level, like some ancient druid among his sacred oak trees.
    And I crowded my face against the cracked panel, straining to hear what he would say.
    â€œMonsieur,” he said, “I have done an act of justice, not as men do it, but as the providence of God does it. With care and with patience I have accomplished every act, so that to the eyes of men it bore the relation and aspect of God’s providence. And all who saw were content but you. You have pried and ferreted behind these things, and now you must bear the obligations of your knowledge.”
    He spread out his hands toward the sleeping girl.
    â€œShall this child grow up to honor in ignorance, or in knowledge go down to hell? Shall she know what her mother was, and what her father was, and what I am, and be fouled by the knowledge of it, and shall she be stripped of her inheritance and left not only outlawed, but paupered? And shall I go to the hangman, and she to the street? These are things for you to decide, since you would search out what was hidden and reveal what was covered! I leave it in your hands.”
    â€œAnd I,” replied Abner, rising, “leave it in God’s.”

Chapter 5

The Treasure Hunter
    I remember very well when the sailor came to Highfield. It was the return of the prodigal—a belated return. The hospitalities of the parable did not await him. Old Thorndike Madison was dead. And Charlie Madison, in possession as sole heir, was not pleased to see a lost brother land from a river boat after twenty years of silence.
    The law presumes death after seven years, and for twenty Dabney Madison had been counted out of life—counted out by old Thorndike when he left his estate to pass by operation of law to the surviving son; and counted out by Charlie when he received the title.
    The imagination of every lad in the Hills was fired by the romantic properties of this event. The Negroes carried every detail, and they would have colored it to suit the fancy had not the thing happened in ample color.
    The estate had gone to rack with Charlie drunk from dawn until midnight. Old Clayborne and Mariah kept the Negro quarters, half a mile from the house. Clayborne would put Charlie to bed and then go home to his cabin. In the morning Mariah would come to get his coffee. So Charlie lived after old Thorndike, at ninety, had gone to the graveyard.
    It was a witch’s night when the thing happened—rain and a high wind that wailed and whooped round the pillars and chimneys of the house. The house was set on a high bank above the river, where the swift water, running like a flood, made a sharp bend. It caught the full force of wind and rain. It was old and the timbers creaked.
    Charlie was drunk. He cried out when he saw the lost brother and got unsteadily on his legs.
    â€œYou are not Dabney!” he said. “You are a picture out of a storybook!” And he laughed in a sort of half terror, like a child before a homemade ghost. “Look at your earrings!”
    It was a good comment for a man in liquor; for if ever a character stepped out of the pages of a pirate tale, here it was.
    Dabney had lifted the latch and entered without warning. He had the big frame and the hawk nose of his race. He was in sea-stained sailor clothes, his face white as plaster, a red cloth wound tightly round his head, huge half-moon rings in his ears; and he carried a seaman’s chest on his shoulder.
    Old Clayborne told the story.
    Dabney put down his chest carefully, as though it had something precious in it. Then he spoke.
    â€œAre you glad to see me, brother?”
    Charlie was holding on to the table with both hands, his eyes bleared, his mouth gaping.
    â€œI don’t see you,” he quavered. Then he turned his head, with a curious duck of the chin, toward