CHAPTER XI.
A BLOW IN THE DARK.
THE rover, so lost in exalted happiness that he hardly knew where he was going, when at length he said his final good night to Garde, was not aware that the faithful old Halberd finally fell into his tracks behind him and followed him off toward the tavern.
Immensely relieved again to see his master, whom he had not been able to locate before, the old beef-eater was soon convinced that Adam was in a mood the like of which had not appeared in the family for many a day. He therefore glided silently after the dreamer, a rod or so to the rear, waiting until Adam should turn about, as was his wont, to bid him walk at his side.
But to-night the Sachem was so thoroughly engrossed with his love and his forming plans, that he completely forgot to think of his lorn retinue, and therefore the beef-eater felt more alone and sad than usual. There was nothing in Boston, save Adam, with which he could associate any thoughts of jollier days. There was nothing but Adam left in the world, to which to devote the great fund of affection and devotion in his simple breast.
But he was making no complaint, not even to himself. Whatever the Sachem did was right. Nothing that Adam could have done would have driven him away, nor have altered his love by so much as one jot. All he desired was the privilege of loving his master, at whose heels he would have followed, though the path led to Hell itself, and this with never so much as a question, nor a murmur of hesitation.
The moon had been silvering the roofs of the houses for some time, and Adam and Halberd wended their way, in their short procession, through the deserted business streets of the town. Masses of shadow lay upon the sidewalk, where Adam was striding buoyantly along.
Within fifteen feet of him, and between him and Adam, suddenly Halberd heard a sound that made him halt where he stood. Three figures, their faces masked with black cloth, ran out from a deep doorway, where they had crowded back, for concealment, and darted upon the rover, walking unconsciously onward.
“Sachem! Sachem!” cried the beef-eater, wildly.
He darted forward, in time to see Adam turn to receive a stab in the neck and a blow on the head that sent him to earth before he could even so much as raise a hand to ward off his murderous assailants.
Dragging his sword from his scabbard as he ran, old Halberd leaped frantically into the midst of the three asassins, ready to battle against any odds conceivable, in this the climax-moment of his loyalty.
He struck but a single blow, which fell upon one of the bludgeons held by the masked ruffians. He screamed out his terrible tocsin of anguish and rage. Then a blow from behind him crushed in his skull and he fell across the master he had striven to serve, a corpse.
Waiting for nothing further, the three figures sped away, down the street, dived into the darkness of an alley and were gone, past all finding, when a few startled citizens opened their windows or doors and looked out on the street to see what the awful cries of Halberd had betokened.
“I see something—down on the sidewalk,” said the voice of one of the men. “The lantern, wife, the lantern!”
“What is it? What is it?” called another, from across the way.
And others answering, that they knew not what it meant, or that it had sounded like some terrible deed being done, there were presently half a dozen awed men coming forth, when their neighbor appeared at his door with his light.
The black, still heap which had been seen from a window smote them all with horror. A dark stream, from which the light was suggestively reflected, already trickled to the gutter. They lifted Halberd from the second prostrate form and found that Adam was swiftly bleeding to death from a ghastly wound in the neck, from which the life-fluid was leaping out in gushes.
“Turn him over, turn him over!” commanded the man with the lantern. “Run to my house and ask the wife for everything to tie up an artery—bandages, too!”
He knelt down in the red stream. Digging his fingers into the gaping, red mouth of the wound, he clutched upon the severed artery with a skill at once brutal and sure. The gushes ceased, almost entirely.
Adam’s face, already deathly white, had been turned upward.
“Saints preserve us!” said one of the citizens. “It’s the bosom friend of the Governor!”
“Then we know where to take him, if he doesn’t die in spite of me,” said the skilful surgeon who had pounced upon the wound. “Look to the other man and see if he too, is bleeding.”
One of the other men had already loosened the collar about old Halberd’s neck. Another came to assist him.
“He’s bleeding a little, from the back of his head,” said he. “O Lord! He’s dead!”
The doctor’s wife came running to the place herself, with her husband’s case in which he had a score of cunning tools and the needs of his craft.
The good woman pushed the men aside and with an assurance and a courage almost totally unknown in her sex, at the time, in such a case as this, bent down above the wounded man and lent to her husband the nimble fingers and the quick comprehension without which he might easily have failed to prevent that deadly loss of blood.
As it was, Rust was at the door of death. The turn he had made, when Halberd called out in alarm, had saved him from inevitable death. The steel driven so viciously into his neck, would have severed the jugular vein completely had he turned the fraction of a second less soon than he did, or an inch less far.
The blow on his temple had glanced, so that half the power, which in the case of Halberd had crushed in the skull instantly, had been lost, nevertheless it had served to render him wholly unconscious. Therefore, two hours later, when brave little Mrs. Phipps got him laid in a clean, sweet couch, he looked like death, and his heart-beat was feeble and faintly fluttering between mere life and the Great Stillness.