“A pickaxe, and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet: O! a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet.”
Then the girl in the tree grasped the friendly limbs and cowered close and set her teeth to save herself from fainting and falling, for she knew that she watched the digging of her own grave. She struggled with herself to think what she should do; but to solve that problem was easy enough. Her life depended upon the sheltering tree. The pistol that glittered at Merle’s elbow was waiting for her young heart.
Half an hour before their appointed time of meeting Merle finished his labours, hid his tools, trailed the weeds over his work and then, putting on his coat, blew out the lantern and sat down to wait his cousin’s arrival. And presently, while Minnie watched and wondered how long his patience would keep him in Wistman’s Wood, and how long her strength would bear the ordeal of this terror under nightly cold, she saw another shape, and a tall man’s form suddenly heaved up out of the darkness.
He approached the other, and spoke. Then the girl felt her fears almost at an end, for it was Elias Bassett. He had indeed turned his face homeward, but could not find it in his heart to obey Minnie.
“Late work and strange work, neighbour,” said the keeper. “I’ve bided hidden an’ watched you this hour, an’ yet I be so much in the dark as when I comed. Who are you, and what do you here?”
“I mind my business, and do you the like, if you are a wise man!”
“Why! ’Tis Nicholas Merle! I thought you had gone home to your wife.”
The other rose and Elias saw his teeth flash white under the moon.
“You rash fool, are you so weary of living that you come here to hunt for your death? Yes, Nick Merle—a name that if you were a northern clown instead of a Westerner, would make you shake in your shoes. You know too much, my good clod. You had been wiser to leave this wood alone to-night, for leave it again you never will.”
“Yet that grave was not dug for me, I suppose?”
“No, since you are curious. But I can find room for two in it.”
He snatched up a pistol and fired point-blank. Bassett felt a fiery stab in his shoulder; then he dashed in and closed. The men rolled together upon the ground, but handicapped by his wound, the keeper had little chance. His grip relaxed, his head fell back, and the other, who knew that he had hit him, supposed the man was dead. Merle dragged his foe to the grave, and rolled him in without ceremony; then, seeing that Elias moved, hearing that he moaned, the rascal turned to get his second pistol and make an end of the matter. But the pistol was in another hand. Minnie had seen her old suitor slain, as she supposed, and a great grief for the moment banished personal fear. In that moment she acted, leapt quickly to the boulders beneath her hiding-place, crept near the battle unseen, and, as her cousin returned and stood erect, she confronted him with his own weapon raised and cocked.
