Logan stared once more at Billy’s telegram.
Somehow he had let himself forget about the threat of Morgan, which had been hanging over him for weeks. As he reread the words he felt as if a heavy boulder were resting on his shoulders.
After receiving the telegram, Logan had climbed the steep, narrow steps to Digory’s room. Now he slumped into the coarse, straight-backed chair that had probably been there when the groom had occupied these same quarters.
He had just told Lady Margaret what a lucky man he was, spitting the words out defiantly.
Some luck!
This turn of events left him no alternative but to get out of Port Strathy as fast as possible. If Morgan knew he was here, no doubt a couple of his thugs would be hot on his tail, if they weren’t here already. His own sense of panic was dulled by the events of recent days, but suddenly Logan thought of Morgan’s hoodlums tainting the quiet peacefulness of Port Strathy. These were dangerous and merciless men—look what they had done to Skittles! And now they were coming to Port Strathy . . . and Logan had brought them here!
Even if he left immediately, the men looking for him would cause trouble. And these locals would be foolish enough and loyal enough to stand up to the thugs. They could be hurt trying to protect him, never realizing that he had double-crossed them himself.
As much as Logan wanted to convince himself that they cared no more for him than he cared for them, he could not do so. Jesse Cameron had saved his life at the risk of her own. Lady Margaret would no more turn on him than his own mother would. He had little doubt Alec would stand up to anyone who threatened one he loved. And Allison . . . that look he had seen in her eyes an hour ago could not quickly be erased from memory. She had changed after Fairgate’s visit! She cared about him. And she too would protect him.
How could he put all these people in danger? Yet the only other alternative was to confront Morgan’s men, possibly even give himself up to them, or perhaps draw them away from Strathy. That’s what he’d have to do: set up some kind of decoy to lure them out of town. Then if they got him, at least it wouldn’t have to involve his new friends.
Friends! He could hardly believe he’d called them that. He desperately wanted to believe that he didn’t care about what happened to the people in this town. He had lied to them, cheated them, was about to steal from them and put them in grave danger. Yet he still cared about them. Were they indeed his friends? If so, how could he be so dishonest with them?
Evening shadows now darkened the room, but Logan had no heart to light a lamp. He leaned forward on the old pine table, resting his head in his hands.
He did care! It made him cringe to think of any one of them being touched by Morgan’s evil. He hated himself for what he was doing. He was in debt to these folks, just as he was to many others in his life.
He remembered Lady Margaret’s words: I hate to think where I would be if He left me alone!
Was he not only in debt to these people but to God also?
Then as Logan raised his head, his eyes fell upon Digory’s old Bible on the table. Instinctively he touched the worn cover. It reminded him of the promise he made on that flooded road: If we get out of this mess, I might even read that old Bible . . .
He had opened it a time or two. But he had done just what Lady Margaret had said—he was not trying to understand, he was trying to pick it all apart. He was as false in his halfhearted attempt to carry out that vow as he was with everything else. He was doing just what he despised others for doing—trying to use God to get him out of a jam when things were going sour, like some benevolent magistrate in the sky, without getting personally involved, without any relationship with Him as Lady Margaret had said. He had always considered such an attitude hypocrisy, and yet he was guilty of the same thing. Well, neither Lady Margaret’s words nor the earnestness of her voice mattered. He wasn’t going to do what he did when they were out in the flood and go blubbering to God now.
Yet what if she was right? What if he was running from the only person who could help resolve this dilemma and rescue him and his friends from terrible danger? What if all this was happening, as Jesse would no doubt say, just as a way of God’s getting his attention? What if the only way out of his confusion was through the one door he was refusing to open—the door of his own heart?
“Oh, God . . . !” he cried, but nothing else would come. He laid his head softly down on the table, and in the quiet stillness of the evening, Logan Macintyre began weeping tears of bitter remorse.
When he lifted his head a few minutes later, his eyes were red, but he felt no healing balm. His tears had been acid on an open wound, for he knew nothing about him had changed. He was alone and in a despair of suffering, seeing for the first time in his life the sinner he truly was. But he would not give in.
Logan sighed a comfortless sigh. His eyes strayed back to the Bible and he again thought of his uncle. Logan had never before truly envied another man. When he had said that he had been satisfied with his life, on the surface he had been speaking the truth so far as he knew it. Yet now he found himself envying old Digory. Here was a man who had been the picture of simplicity. It was evident in this very room where he had dwelt. Logan could almost feel the impact of his unpretentious life in the soul of the place he had inhabited.
“He loved his horses and his Bible,” Lady Margaret had said.
A man without struggles, without the complications of modern life, without people chasing him, without the sham of a false personality tearing at him—it must have been easy for him to follow his God.
Yet . . . was that true? Is it ever easy to lay one’s life down? Though every man’s sacrifice is different, does not every man truly sacrifice when he lays his self on the altar and chooses to follow the path God has laid out for him? Is it ever easy, even for a man like Digory? Was he not wrapped up in the struggles and heartaches of those he loved? Did his heart not ache for his little Maggie? Did not the decision he had to make about the treasure tear at him, too?
All at once Logan caught an image of the old groom bent over his Bible, agonizing over what to do, forced in the end by his love for the girl and his loyalty to the family he had served to hide a priceless treasure in order to keep them from further heartache, evil, and self-generated suffering.
He loved his horses and his Bible. . . .
Digory had sacrificed at least some of his natural simplicity for those he loved. But Logan knew even in his present confusion that if his life had become too complicated to cope with right now, he had only himself to blame. With a frustrated gesture he shoved Digory’s Bible aside. If peace was to be found there, he deserved none of it. He would never be like Digory. He could never be devoted to others. And he deserved none of Digory’s peace. Fatigue began to wash over him. He rose to his feet and shuffled to the bed where he stretched out, fully clothed, on the straw mattress. His eyes drooped and sleep seemed but a moment away, yet his mind continued to race in confused, anguished disarray.
I deserve no peace, he thought. If he had promised to read the words in that old Book, he had lied.
He was a liar! That was how he lived. He had no horses, no peaceful stable, no Bible. He had nothing—but himself! And a rotten self it was. The old poet, Mac—something, whatever his name was—had been right. Low souls, weak hearts . . . That was certainly him! A bad sea-boat with a wretched crew—none other but himself. He was low, weak, and wretched! A poor, foolish man, made to be free but running from the very freedom Lady Margaret said was the source of Digory’s peace—and her own. He was a fool, but he couldn’t help himself. All he had to keep him going was the hope of a treasure—a dirty, stinking treasure.
Maybe that was what he deserved. He had given his heart to this mammon, so his reward would be the anguish of seeing his lust for riches fulfilled while his soul remained tormented in the hell of his own selfishness. There would be no peace for him, only the suffering of the rich man whose tongue could not be cooled amid the flame. Digory had given up the treasure for love. Now his wretched and selfish descendant would turn his back on love, for the treasure . . . would unearth that which had brought evil . . . and would loose more evil into the world and upon himself.
No horses, no Raven, no Maukin, no peace, no quietness of spirit for the descendant. He, Logan Macintyre, whom no doubt old Digory had prayed for without knowing his name, was about to undo what this man of faith had done—he was about to dig up the pain, the heartache, the self of mammon which Digory had tried so hard to banish from the reach of any hands but Maggie’s.
No horses . . . no Bible . . .
Suddenly Logan jerked out of his groggy, half sleep.
His body trembled from the abrupt awakening from a much needed rest. But words tumbled wildly through his brain . . . it was not the first time he’d dug a large hole. Where had he heard that?
He leaped out of bed. Groping in the darkness, his hands fumbled over the table and fell onto the Bible. He flung it open to the spot where he had replaced the letter after loaning it to Lady Margaret, the very page where it had been hidden by the old groom. Still trembling, now for other reasons, he took the letter out. What had Digory said? It had been a long time since Logan had read it. Groping farther, Logan found the lamp and matches. He lit it. The bright glow pained his eyes momentarily, but he forced them to study Digory’s scrawl.
I hae moved it, Maggie, and hidden it where I pray none will discover . . .
No, thought Logan . . . further . . . where did he move it?
To see ye with auld Raven . . . lonely Braenock . . . the sandy beach . . . I hae put it in a spot I thocht ye loved . . .
There was the mention of Raven again!
. . . that cliff and ye both got stuck . . . sand . . . the other direction . . .
The other direction from the sand! Of course! It had to be Ramsey Head! It was in the other direction from town than the sandy beach. What else could the cliffs mean?
Ye loved that path to the rock bearing yer name.
That’s it! That’s it! cried Logan—the rock bearing your name . . . Ramsey Head! He buried the treasure on Ramsey Head somewhere near, or in, the very graves of the beloved horses. No one but Maggie could know those secrets the two of them shared—the horses, the love for the path, the time she got stuck riding there. He had done it! He had located the treasure! Unconsciously his eyes continued reading, I pray one day ye will read this and return to us . . .
He folded the letter hastily, wanting to hear no more. Not now. Not when he was on the verge of unearthing what might be millions! He would not condemn himself for being the one to keep Digory’s prayer from being answered, for being the one to keep the letter hidden from the one whose eyes it was intended for.
He began pacing the room, a cold sweat breaking out over his body. How could he have known, at that moment, that the last line of the letter was the most important of all, the line he had not allowed himself to read: But ’tis all in oor dear Lord’s hands, and his will be doon. The direction the bad boats of men’s hearts sail is not always dependent upon the temporal plans of their wretched souls, but instead on the direction of the winds of God’s Spirit that blows upon the waters, guiding them toward the harbor their blind eyes cannot see.
Even as his mind was racing with how to carry out the final stage in his long-awaited scheme, Logan found it incongruous that he should discover the location of the treasure just at the moment he had almost grown to detest any further mention of it.
Yet he could not stop himself. He could not leave it buried as Digory had. He was compelled to go on. But another compulsion, one whose promptings he was altogether unfamiliar with, told him to go back to the table and look again, this time at the Bible rather than the letter. Reluctantly, he obeyed. The book was still opened to the page where the letter had rested all those years. Then his eyes fell on something he had not noticed before. The Bible was opened to the sixth chapter of Matthew. He had never paid any attention to that fact before. And there on the yellowed page, seemingly for the first time, yet he knew that could not be the case, he noticed that one certain verse had been underlined. How odd that Digory would mar this book he so loved, that one—and only one—small passage would be so marked. Carefully Logan bent down and read the fine print:
“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Logan snapped the Bible shut. He knew he had not been intended to find peace or comfort from these pages. Digory, a man of peace, had left his final admonition to anyone who would seek that which his letter revealed—one doomed to tear Logan apart.
He turned away from the table and clasped his head between his hands in a fresh turmoil of confusion and indecision. He couldn’t stop now! To do so would mean to relinquish so many other things! Maybe they were things he was not even sure he wanted anymore. And if he had thought deeply about it, he probably would have admitted he loathed them now. His past life was fading into a mist behind him, and with many backward glances of longing he watched all he had once loved retreat from him. And as he looked to the future, he was afraid of the unknown, afraid as Lady Margaret had said, to understand Digory’s God. He was afraid to depend on Another, even though his own attempts to help himself had failed so miserably. He was afraid to go forward, but realized it was almost too late to go back, stuck at a crossroads of life’s journey. He realized, without framing it consciously in his mind, that to repent of his past now would mean a complete changeabout, would mean to turn on the path and begin moving in a whole new direction. But making that turn was something he could not do . . . not alone . . . not yet.
Logan grabbed his heavy coat from the hook behind the door and ran down the steps into the stable.