Part 26 (1/2)

”This strange belief has been growing upon me since I heard Mrs.

Estill's and mother's revelations until it has become almost conviction, and if we find that on Antelope b.u.t.te, which I feel we will--then it will convince me that Mora is--G.o.d how strange that sounds!--Ivarene born again to enjoy the happiness which her untimely fate prevented her securing in her brief life.”

As he scanned his own reflection in the mirror, by the sunlight, which now was flooding the eastern hills in its golden mantle, while a look of growing wonder and strange curiosity came over his face, he exclaimed, with a start: ”Then Bruce Walraven is--myself!”

After a moment of serious reflection, he continued: ”Well, there is nothing so very improbable or uncanny in the thought, at last; for it is just as probable that G.o.d may have given me a soul that had lived before, as one that had not. No; human nature has too much wisdom to ever have gained it by one life.”

If our hero's theory was true, then Bruce could not have asked a better fate than to live his life again as the handsome youth reflected there, with his crisp golden hair, eyes of pansy blue, and the flush of young manhood on his glossy cheeks.

Chapter XXI.

An hour later found the Warlow family at the foot of Antelope b.u.t.te, whither they had all driven to make a search for--what they shrank from saying. They had been there only a short time when they saw the Estill carriage coming. When it drew near they discovered that it was Mrs.

Estill and Mora, who, when they were a.s.sisted to alight, said they had seen the Warlow carriage with their field-gla.s.s, and suspecting the meaning of its visit to the b.u.t.te, they had hurried up to join the search with their friends.

As Clifford, Rob, and Ralph were carefully searching the face of the declivity, Mrs. Warlow told Mrs. Estill of the remarkable fact that she had also seen that mystic light on the night it had disappeared from Estill Ranch; then, as Mora drew near, she gave a circ.u.mstantial account of the event, which caused her hearers to exchange looks of perplexed amazement.

Mora became thoughtfully silent, and, leaving the others, she wandered restlessly back and forth at the foot of the bluff, watching the searchers intently.

She was startled at length by a cry of astonishment from Clifford, and with the others she hastened up the steep acclivity to where he stood in a recess of the cliff. When she reached his side he was leaning heavily against the rocky wall, white and trembling.

”Oh, Clifford! speak! what is it?” she cried, breathless with a strange dread.

He could only point to the face of the rock with an unsteady finger, while the sweat-drops rained down from his white face, wrung by an agony of emotion which he vainly strove to repress.

Sinking down upon the sloping mound, matted with gra.s.s, and kneeling there at the foot of the cliff she read with a startled gaze the inscription which was carved in faint, moss-grown letters, upon the magnesian stone:--

”My Ivarene, my lost love, lies dead beside me with our little child, cold and still, on her breast. I am wounded and dying; but death is sweet now. We were coming here to watch for the trains when we were a.s.saulted by the strange hunter, who shot us both. My love only breathed one breath. I carried her here. The child was pierced by the same shot.

My eyes are growing dim; but I welcome death. Oh, farewell, bright world! I feel my life ebbing fast away, but would not stay without my darling. I go to meet her where there will be no more parting. Oh, the joy and bliss to see her smile again! It makes me long for death. We shall live again! Bru--”

With a wild cry of agonized grief, Mora covered her face, while the others read, with streaming eyes, that last message from the tomb. Then, as they drew back and waited with broken sobs and smothered weeping, Ralph and Robbie began tenderly to remove the _debris_ and soil which time had formed into a mound below the inscription.

When, at last, there was revealed two skeletons, locked together in the last clasp of love, which even death could not sever, Maud cried aloud with a wail of anguish:--

”Oh, _can this be the last_ of beautiful Ivarene and dear, brave Bruce?”

Choking back their sobs, they all knelt in a circle, while Mrs. Warlow's voice rose in a pa.s.sionate, fervid prayer; then tenderly, with loving care, they carried the remains down to the Warlow carriage, leaving Mora and Clifford still lingering by the vacant mound.

They stood in silence a moment, the only sound the soft rustle of wild-ivy that half draped the cliff in its mottled foliage of crimson, green, and bronze; the radiant sunlight from the cloudless sky lit up the sunflowers and gentian that grew in stunted cl.u.s.ters on the hillside, while the sumac flaunted its plumes of scarlet, gold, and purple along the rifts of the white, rocky wall.