THE PIPE OF PEACE.

Barbara went to her room. She ran up the stairs: her stateliness was gone when she was out of sight. She bolted her door, threw herself on her knees beside her bed, and buried her face in the counterpane.

‘I am so happy!’ she said; but her happiness can hardly have been complete, for the bed vibrated under her weight—shook so much that it shook down a bunch of crimson carnations she had stuck under a sacred picture at the head of the bed, and the red flowers fell about her dark hair, and strewed themselves on the counterpane round her head. She did not see them. She did not feel them.

If she had been really and thoroughly happy when at last she rose from her knees, her cheeks would not have shone with tears, nor would her handkerchief have been so wet that she hung it out of her window to dry it, and took another from her drawer.

Then she went to her glass and brushed her hair, which was somewhat ruffled, and she dipped her face in the basin.

After that she was more herself. She unlocked her desk and from it took a small box tied round with red ribbon. Within this box was a shagreen case, and in this case a handsome rosewood pipe, mounted in silver.

This pipe had belonged to her uncle, and it was one of the little items that had come to her. Indeed, in the division of family relics, she had chosen this. Her cousins had teased her, and asked whether it was intended for her future husband. She had made no other reply than that she fancied it, and so she had kept it. When she selected it, she had thought of Jasper. He smoked occasionally. Possibly, she thought she might some day give it him, when he had proved himself to be truly repentant.

Now he was clear from all guilt, she must make him the present—a token of complete reconciliation. She dusted the pretty bowl with her clean pocket-handkerchief, and looked for the lion and head to make sure that the mounting was real silver. Then she took another look at herself in the glass, and came downstairs, carrying the calumet of peace enclosed in its case.

She found Jasper sitting with Eve on the bench where she had left them. They at once made way for her. He rose, and refused to sit till she had taken his place.

‘Mr. Jasper,’ she said, and she had regained entire self-command, ‘this is a proud and happy day for all of us—for you, for Eve, and for me. I have been revolving in my mind how to mark it and what memorial of it to give to you as a pledge of peace established, misunderstandings done away. I have been turning over my desk as well as my mind, and have found what is suitable. My uncle won this at a shooting-match. He was a first-rate shot.’

‘And the prize,’ said Jasper, ‘has fallen into hands that make very bad shots.’

‘What do you mean? Oh!’ Barbara laughed and coloured. ‘You led me into that mistake about yourself.’

‘This is the bad shot I mean,’ said Jasper: ‘you have brought Miss Eve here to me, and neither does Eve want me, nor do I her.’

Barbara opened her eyes very wide. ‘Have you quarrelled?’ she inquired, turning to see the faces of Jasper and her sister. Both were smiling with a malicious humour.

‘Not at all. We are excellent friends.’

‘You do not love Eve?’

‘I like Eve, I love someone else.’

The colour rushed into Barbara’s face, and then as suddenly deserted it. What did he mean? A sensation of vast happiness overspread her, and then ebbed away. Perhaps he loved someone at Buckfastleigh. She, plain, downright Barbara—what was she for such a man as Jasper had approved himself? She quickly recovered herself, and said, ‘We were talking about the pipe.’

‘Quite so,’ answered Jasper. ‘Let us return to the pipe. You give it me—your uncle’s prize pipe?’

‘Yes, heartily. I have kept it in my desk unused, as it has been preserved since my uncle’s death; but you must use it; and I hope the tobacco will taste nice through it.’

‘Miss Jordan,’ said Jasper, ‘you have shown me such high honour, that I feel bound to honour the gift in a special manner. I can only worthily do so by promising to smoke out of no other pipe so long as this remains entire, and should an accident befall it, to smoke out of no other not replaced by your kind self.’

Eve clapped her hands.

‘A rash promise,’ said Barbara. ‘You are at liberty to recall it. If I were to die, and the pipe were broken, you would be bound to abjure smoking.’

‘If you were to die, dear Miss Jordan, I should bury the pipe in your grave, and something far more precious than that.’

‘What?’

‘Can you ask?’ He looked her in the eyes, and again her colour came, deep as the carnations that had strewed her head.

‘There, there!’ he said, ‘we will not talk of graves, and broken pipes, and buried hearts; we will get the pipe to work at once, if the ladies do not object.’

‘I will run for the tinder-box,’ said Eve eagerly.

‘I have my amadou and steel with me, and tobacco,’ Jasper observed; ‘and mind, Miss Barbara is to consecrate the pipe for ever by drawing out of it the first whiff of smoke.’

Barbara laughed. She would do that. Her heart was wonderfully light, and clear of clouds as that sweet still evening sky.

The pipe was loaded; Eve ran off to the kitchen to fetch a stick out of the fire with glowing end, because, she said, ‘she did not like the smell of the burning amadou.’

Jasper handed the pipe to Barbara, who, with an effort to be demure, took it.

‘Are you ready?’ asked Jasper, who was whirling the stick, making a fiery ring in the air.

Barbara had put the pipe between her lips, precisely in the middle of her mouth.

‘No, that will not do,’ said the young man; ‘put the pipe in the side of your mouth. Where it is now I cannot light it without burning the tip of your nose.’

Barbara put her little finger into the bowl to assure herself that it was full. Eve was on her knees at her sister’s feet, her elbows on her lap, looking up amused and delighted. Barbara kept her neck and back erect, and her chin high in the air. A smile was on her face, but no tremor in her lip. Eve burst into a fit of laughter. ‘Oh, Bab, you look so unspeakably droll!’ But Barbara did not laugh and let go the pipe. Her hands were down on the bench, one on each side of her. She might have been sitting in a dentist’s chair to have a tooth drawn. She was a little afraid of the consequences; nevertheless, she had undertaken to smoke, and smoke she would—one whiff, no more.

‘Ready?’ asked Jasper.

She could not answer, because her lips grasped the pipe with all the muscular force of which they were capable. She replied by gravely and slowly bowing her head.

‘This is our calumet of peace, is it not, Miss Jordan? A lasting peace never to be broken—never?’

She replied again only by a serious bow, head and pipe going down and coming up again.

‘Ready?’ Jasper brought the red-hot coal in contact with the tobacco in the bowl. The glow kindled Barbara’s face. She drew a long, a conscientiously long, breath. Then her brows went up in query.

‘Is it alight?’ asked Eve, interpreting the question.

‘Wait a moment——Yes,’ answered Jasper.

Then a long spiral of white smoke, like a jet of steam from a kettle that is boiling, issued from Barbara’s lips, and rose in a perfect white ring. Her eyes followed the ring.

At that moment—bang! and again—bang!—the discharge of firearms.

The pipe fell into her lap.

‘What is that?’ asked Eve, springing to her feet. They all hurried out of the garden, and stood in front of the house, looking up and down the lane.

‘Stay here and I will see,’ said Jasper. ‘There may be poachers near.’

‘In pity do not leave us, or I shall die of fear,’ cried Eve.

The darkness had deepened. A few stars were visible. Voices were audible, and the tread of men in the lane. Then human figures were visible. It was too dark at first to distinguish who they were, and the suspense was great.

As, however, they drew nearer, Jasper and the girls saw that the party consisted of Joseph, the warder, and a couple of constables, leading a prisoner.

‘We have got him,’ said Joseph Woodman, ‘the right man at last.’

‘Whom have you got?’ asked Barbara.

‘Whom!—why, the escaped felon, Martin Babb.’

A cry. Eve had fainted.