"You—you'll have to have patience," Henley remarked, insincerely. "If you can't hold in and take things as they come you'd better call the deal off. I started you; I can't lay down everything and keep—keep telling you what to do and say. Life's too short and makes too many claims on a fellow."

"I want you to say a good word for me, Alf." Long wiped his anxious mouth with his bare hand and tugged at his mustache. "She believes the sun rises and sets in you. Looks to me like it's Alfred did this, an' Alfred said that, an' Alfred thinks so and so and does so and so, with every breath she draws. For a while I 'lowed it was because she was grateful to you for helpin' her out in the marryin' line, but she don't seem to want to marry much, nohow. She'd listen to you, though, if she would to any man alive, and something has to be done."

"Well, I reckon the little woman is friendly to me." Henley avoided the fiercely anxious stare of his flurried companion. "She's done me good turns, and I've tried to respond."

"She'd fight for you tooth and toe-nail," Long declared. "I know from experience. Why, I just happened to say one little, tiny thing about you, and la! she flew at me like a hen fightin' for her brood. I meant no harm. I'd have said the same thing to your face, as I am saying it now. Me 'n her was talking about the way men dress these days, and I said, without meanin' any harm, that it was naturally expected that chaps here in a town like Carlton would be more up to date than at the foot of the mountains where you live, and remarked that you made no great pretence in the clothes you wore, in fact, that I thought you went just a little bit too careless for a man as young and well-off as you are."

"Huh, you told her that, did you?" Henley's cheeks reddened against his will. "Well, I don't go much on style, in hot weather, anyway. I never did want to be called a dude."

"Of course not, but what you reckon she done? She leaned back in her chair while I was a-talking an' laughed like she'd bust herself wide open. She pointed down at my new tan shoes and green socks and wanted to know if things like them was style, and asked me why I kept my gloves on in the house. She wanted to know if I let my yaller-bordered handkerchief stick out of my upper pocket because I was afraid folks wouldn't see it, an' if I kept a cheaper one to blow my nose on. You may know, Alf, that all the good-dressers here at Carlton—and I pride myself I'm amongst 'em—have their suits pressed once a week to make 'em set right, but she said my pant-legs looked like they was lined with pasteboard, and that my high collar looked like a cuff upside down. Of course, I couldn't get mad, for she was joking all through, and laughin' pleasant-like. But, Alf, I must say she's fallin' off in her meal record. You know she made such a fine spread the first time that I naturally expected some'n out of the common again. I saved myself up for it. I didn't take on a big breakfast before I left home because I told myself, I did, that I'd appreciate her fine fixings all the more. So you can imagine how I felt when she marched me out, with them old women, and set me down to—well, a body oughtn't to criticise what's set before 'em in a friend's house, but, Alf, that really was the limit. I can tell you just exactly what we had. I'll never forget it. It was plain pork and beans, and boiled cabbage, and sliced tomatoes, and hard cornbread. She hadn't put a sign of an egg in it, and cornbread without eggs ain't fit to eat. It looks like Mrs. Hart had had some dispute with Dixie about it, too, for the old lady kept whining and telling me it wasn't her fault, that she thought Dixie was going to set in and fix up proper, but that Dixie wouldn't listen to reason, and why, the old lady said, she was unable to understand, for the like had never happened before. Dixie didn't make any excuses, but set at the head of the table and dished out that stuff as if it was the best afloat. 'Won't you pass yore plate for more beans?' she wanted to know, and 'Won't you try some of the butter with the cornbread?' I reckon I made a mistake by speaking of what a fine spread she got up the last time, for she kind o' tilted her nose in the air, an' said she 'lowed the weather was too hot to stand over a hot cook-stove unless it was some extra occasion."

"She's got lots to do," Henley said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "She's undertaken to nurse that little boy back to health, and he takes up a lot of her time."

"I reckon he does," Long said. "Looks like me an' her'd hardly get settled in our chairs on the porch before her mammy would call out that Joe wanted water, or Joe wanted to set up, or what not. It was more like hard work than any day of courtin' I ever put in. But now, Alf, I'm coming to my chief trouble. I want her, and I want her bad. I hardly sleep at night for thinking about her sweet, pretty face, and industrious habits, and what a bang-up wife she'd make, but I don't get nowhere. The minute I come down to hard-pan she wiggles away like a scared tadpole in shallow water. I done a thing, and I don't know whether it was a big mistake or not, and that is the main thing I want to see you about. It was just before I left, an' we was standin' at the gate, nigh my hoss and buggy. It had got sorter dark, and—well, I'll tell you all about it. Alf, I've heard fellows say (and they was men that had had experience with women, too)—I've heard 'em say that the chap that dilly-dallies with a woman, and always acts as sweet as pie, never makes no headway. Them fellows say you've just got to be sorter firm with a girl that won't make up her mind—that women like to have a man show that he ain't scared out of his senses when he's with 'em. And so I had all that in mind, you understand, when I made my last set at her there in the dark. I saw nobody wasn't looking, and I catched hold of her hand, I did, and held on to it though she pulled and twisted with all her might. I told her I was bound to have a kiss, and I pulled her up agin me and tried to take it. I couldn't manage it, though, and, by gad! she got loose and slid through the gate, and went in the house and slammed the door in my face."

"She ought to have knocked your head off, you low-lived fool!" cried Henley. He was white in the face, and his eyes had a dangerous glare in them. His breath came rapidly and with an audible sound. "For a minute I'd pull you down here and stomp the life out of you!"

"Why, Alf! Alf! have you plumb lost your senses?" Long gasped. "Why, why, good Lord, man! Why, Alf—"

"Don't Alf me!" Henley cried. "Get out of my sight or me 'n you'll mix right here! I didn't introduce you to that gentle girl to have you pull her around like a housemaid and force your foul lips to hers. I introduced you as a man, not a bar-room roustabout. No wonder she hain't took to you—no wonder she don't want to tie herself down for life to you!"

Henley had sprung into his buggy and taken up the whip and reins. "Stand out of the way!" he cried. "You've imposed on my friendship, and I don't want you ever to mention this matter to me again. I'm heartily ashamed of my part in it, and I don't want to be reminded of it."

Long tried to stop him, but, still white and furious, Henley lashed his horse, and the animal bore him out of the yard and into the street. "I ought to have given him one in the jaw!" Henley fumed. "I'll be sorry I didn't the longer I think about it—the low-lived, dirty brute!"



CHAPTER XXVIII

All the next day as Henley performed his duties at the store the hot sense of Long's stupid conduct brooded over him. One moment he was fired with fury over the man's sheer vanity, the next he was bitterly accusing himself for having been the primary cause of putting Dixie in a disagreeable position. What would she think of him, he asked himself over and over, for introducing such a despicable creature to her hospitality and good graces?

It was near sunset when he saw her pass the store, going toward the square. He went to the porch in front, unnoticed by the busy Cahews and the drowsy Pomp, and saw her, much to his surprise, enter the court-house yard, a place seldom visited by ladies. She was going up the walk to the arching stone entrance when she met the ordinary of the county, and Henley saw her pause and speak to him. The elderly, gray-haired gentleman stood for several minutes in a listening attitude, his hand cupped behind his ear, for he was slightly deaf. Presently Henley saw the two turn toward the building and enter it side by side.

"I wonder what on earth the little trick's going there for at this time of year," Henley mused. "It ain't tax-paying time."

The sun was down when she came out. He saw her coming and got his hat, timing himself so that he would meet her, as if by accident, and walk home with her. His calculations could not have been more accurate, for she was in front of the store when he came out.

"Oh," he said, "it's you! I thought I saw you pass just now. I'm going your way. I wanted to inquire how your little patient is."

"Oh, he's tiptop!" she cried, a delicate flush of tender enthusiasm on her face, a sparkle in her eyes. "Dr. Stone says he's mending twice as fast at our house because the little fellow is so happy there. When I'm off at work he's petted half to death by them two old women who haven't had anything better than a cat to pamper up since I got out of their clutch."

"And old Pitman let you move him?" Henley half questioned, as he suited his step to hers. "How did you manage it?"

"Me and the doctor put up a job on him," she laughed. "Dr. Stone wanted to help me gain my point, and he had the sharpest talk with old Sam you ever heard. The law was going to take him in hand for violating his contract in regard to the boy, and Dr. Stone would have to appear against him. But he told Sam that if he'd turn the boy over to me till he got well, he thought the whole thing might drop."

"Good job!" Henley chuckled. "Sam's a hard nut to crack."

Dixie raised her long lashes in a steady stare at him. "Guess what I've been doing at the court-house," she said. "I've been engaged in an odd thing for this modern day of enlightenment. Maybe you think slavery is over—maybe you think the Yankees wiped it clean out forty years ago, but they didn't. I've turned the wheels of Time back. I laid down the cash and bought a real live slave to-day. I didn't have to dig up as much as two thousand, which, I understand, was the old price for stout, able-bodied, hard workers, for the one I bought was a little sick one. Alfred, I actually bought little Joe to-day. I paid Sam Pitman twenty-five dollars to get him to release all his claims without any rumpus. I've adopted him. Judge Barton has fixed up the papers good and stout, and says nothing can take him from me as long as I do my part by him. Alfred, I'm so happy that I want to shout at the top of my lungs."

"You have adopted him!" Henley exclaimed, in wondering surprise. "Well, well, what won't you do next? Of all the things on earth this knocks me off my feet, and you already loaded down with responsibilities!"

"I don't care," Dixie laughed. "I'd welcome more like that, and never complain. You ought to have seen Joe when I told him Sam had agreed to let him go, and that I was to be his mother. If you could have seen the angelic look on that thin, white face you would have known that life is eternal, and that the spirit is all there is to anything. He stared straight at me with his pale brow wrinkled as if it was too good to be so, and then when I convinced him, he put his arms around my neck and hugged me tight, and sobbed and sobbed in pure joy."

Dixie was shedding tears herself now, and, with a heaving breast and lowered head, she walked along beside her awed and silent companion. They had entered a wood through which the road passed, and there seemed to be a hallowed stillness in the cool, grayish touch of the coming night that pervaded the boughs and foliage of the trees. Beyond the wood a mountain-peak rose in a blaze of molten gold from the oblique rays of the setting sun, but here the night-dews were beginning to fall and the chirping insects of the dark were waking. In the marshy spots frogs were croaking and snarling, and fireflies were cutting, to their kind perhaps readable, hieroglyphics on the leafy background. Presently she wiped her eyes, and smiled up at him.

"What a goose I am!" she said. "As old as I am, I'll cry if you crook your finger at me. You went to Carlton yesterday, didn't you?"

"Yes," he replied, glad to see her emotion over, uplifting and rare as its nature was.

"Did you happen to see my young man?" A smile he failed to see in the shadows was playing sly tricks with her lineaments.

"Your young man? You mean—"

"You know who I mean. I mean my beau—Mr. Jasper Long, Esquire, merchant, cotton-handler, and rich capitalist."

"Yes, I saw him," Henley said, reluctantly. "I didn't make a point of looking him up. He ran about searching for me. I've washed my hands of that—that matter, Dixie. I ain't no hand at match-making, nohow. It ain't my turn. I get all mixed up, and blunder at it. I'll never set myself up to pick out a—a suitable mate for any woman again. There ain't none in existence—there ain't none half good enough for you, nohow. It makes me sick to—to think about a fellow like—well, no better in many ways than this here Long is—having the gall to think he—that you'd be willing to live with him the rest of your days as if there was a single thing in common betwixt you. He told me about what he done—what he tried to do out at the fence when he started off the other night, and, well—"

"Well what?" she cried, eagerly, the corners of her mouth curving upward as she eyed him covertly.

"Why, you know well enough what the fool done, Dixie!" Henley said, unaware of the meshes into which her curiosity was leading him. "When he told me about it, in his offhand way, as if he had just done an ordinary, every-day act, I come as nigh as peas mashing his big, flathering mouth. I've been boiling mad ever since. I rolled and tumbled in bed last night, and it's stuck to me all day. Somehow I just can't shake it off."

"You mean, Alfred"—and she paused at the roadside, and put out her hands to his arms, and studied his face with the eagerness of a child searching for the confirmation of something hoped for and yet not absolutely attainable—"do you mean that it actually made you mad when he told you. Tell me how; tell me why. You wouldn't have—felt that way if—if it had been some other girl, would you?"

"How do I know?" Henley cried, hot from the memory of the thing spoken of. "I don't know whether I'd feel mad or not. I never tried it. It is the first time I was ever up against a thing as aggravating as that was. The idea of him actually trying to kiss you, and—and put his arms around you, and holding to you, and—and—"

"He's a bad, mean thing, ain't he, Alfred?" And her merry laugh rang through the quiet wood, plunging him into deeper mystification than ever. "But of course he couldn't know that I'd not be willing to be hugged and kissed right there at the fence, with a crippled woman peeping out at the window, and a half-blind one standing by, begging for a report of what's taking place. Before you married, Alfred, I'll bet you selected a better place than that when you wanted to kiss a girl. That fellow lives in a big town and I live here in the backwoods, but I can learn him a thing or two."

"You can't fool me." Henley was sure of his ground now. "You wouldn't let that chump kiss you at any time or at any place. I was a fool to ever mention him to you; he ain't worthy to tie the shoes of a woman as noble and sweet and pretty as you are."

"Go it, go it, Alfred!" A delicate flush of delight had overspread her face, which was wreathed in smiles. There was a twinkling light in her eyes, and her laugh rang out sweeter and more merrily than ever. "If Jasper Long only knowed how to say nice things in your roundabout way I'd marry him if he was as poor as Job's turkey. You never have told me in so many words that—that you like my looks or—or like me, as for that matter; but when you get worked up, the sweetest things in heaven or earth slip out when you don't know it."

But grimly unpleasant thoughts had fastened themselves on Henley's bewildered brain, and he could only stare at her in sheer agony of suspense.

"Then you may—you may marry him, after all!" he said, under his breath. "You haven't fully decided yet. You may conclude that you and him—" His voice broke, and, like a dumb animal brought to bay, he stood staring at her, his mouth open, his lower lip quivering.

A great change came over her. She seemed to hesitate an instant, and then she took his inert hand in both of hers, drew it up and held it fondly against her throbbing breast. "Love—the right sort, Alfred—is the sweetest, holiest thing in all the world. It is the first breath of real heaven that men and women feel here on earth. When two people love each other—like we—like they ought to love one another, they both know it as plain as we know that sky full of stars is over us right now. They feel it in the way their pulse beats when their hands meet; they hear it in their voices when they speak; they see it in each other's eyes; they love to be together, and feel like something has gone wrong when they ain't. That's real love, Alfred, and if the man is tied up in a way God never meant him to be, and if the woman is loaded down with burdens till her fresh young shoulders are bent and ache night and day, still the thought of their love may be always in their hearts and make life seem one continual day of sunshine and music."

"Oh, Dixie, you mean—" His voice broke, and he could only stare at her as if waking from a deep dream of perplexity into complete understanding.

She nodded, kissed his hand reverently and released it. They walked on without a word between them till they reached the point where their ways parted. He would have detained her, but she said:

"No, not now, Alfred. I see somebody on your porch. I think it is your wife. We must be careful to do no wrong in the sight of the world. You owe that poor woman all the happiness you can give her. To think of what we might want would be downright selfishness. We know what we know, and that is sweet enough. Don't think of me marrying anybody. I've got Joe and my duties, and—and you know what else. I shall never complain again—never! Good-bye."



CHAPTER XXIX

Across the table at the evening meal Henley saw his wife regarding him stealthily as she served the food to him and the others. Her look had a queer, shifting, probing quality, which at any other time would have inspired investigation, but she failed to rivet his attention to-night. There were other things to think of—things as new and startling as the dawn of day must have appeared to the opening eyes of the first man. And all this had come to him. All these years he had groped in darkness, seeking and never finding till the dreams of youth were dead. But now all was lightness, full comprehension, and joy—joy which all but stifled in its clinging embrace of restitution.

After supper, with a cigar which he forgot to light, he evaded the tentative chatter of old Wrinkle and sought a rustic seat under a tree in the yard. Over the meadow, and piercing the shadows which enveloped him, shone a light from Dixie Hart's kitchen. He fancied that he saw her at work, her strong, lithe form and glorious face emitting cheer, courage, and hope to her helpless charges. He wondered if she was recalling, as he would to the day of his death, the heavenly words she had spoken at parting. The touch of her velvet lips still lay on his hand, sending through his every vein streams of sheer ecstasy. Overhead the sky arched, star-sprinkled, calm, and as full of its untold story as at the dawn of time.

Inside the kitchen near by Mrs. Henley and Mrs. Wrinkle were washing dishes. Wrinkle came from a rear door, a swill-pail in hand, and, bending under its weight, he trudged down to his pigpen at the barn. The clattering in the kitchen ceased; the light went out, to appear again in Mrs. Henley's room. Her transported husband saw her through an uncurtained window. At another time he might have wondered over her present occupation, for, standing before a mirror, she was giving unwonted attention to her toilet. She was fastening a flowing scarf about her neck, pulling at the bow to make it hang to her fancy. She applied white powder to her cheeks and the faintest hint of pink, carefully brushing her hair and pulling down her scant bangs as he could not remember having seen her do since their marriage. Next she threw a light shawl over her shoulders, experimentally drawing it up under her sharp chin, as she viewed the effect in the glass, and then settling it, with final approval, and in easier fashion, farther back upon her shoulders. He saw her raise her candle and turn her head in various ways, her eyes fixed on her twisting image. Then, with a smile of content, she blew out the candle. He saw the tiny red spark which remained on the wick standing guard where she had left it. She must be going to spend the evening somewhere and would demand his company, Henley reflected, in dismay at the thought of his present fancies being disturbed in such a prosaic way. Or perhaps she had taken a sudden whim to go to prayer-meeting—this thought prompted by the dismal clanging of a cast-iron church-bell at Chester. In that case there was a chance of escape, for she would ask Mrs. Wrinkle to accompany her.

Suddenly she appeared on the porch, and came down the steps and tripped lightly across the grass to him. He was conscious of the strange, almost weird, alteration in her manner, and was therefore partially prepared for the change in her voice and intonation.

"Is that you, Alfred?" she inquired, playfully. "I thought you might be here, it is so close inside. You can always catch a breeze on this spot if one is stirring at all."

"Yes, it's me," he answered, pulling his glance from the light across the meadow and letting it rest on her face. "Are you going out somewhere?"

She gave a little mechanical laugh. "Just because I put on this white shawl?" she jested, her thin right hand toying with her bangs. "No, there's no place to go that I know of, and if there was I don't feel in the humor for it to-night. Somehow I felt like I wanted to talk to you. I hope Ma and Pa will go to bed; they are getting to be lots of bother in one way and another. They mean well, the dear things, but they are old and childish."

She sat down on the seat beside him and rested her elbow on its back, her face toward him. "I saw you walking home with Dixie Hart this evening," she remarked. "Did she say how that boy is getting on?"

"Why"—there was just the faintest pause on Henley's part; he was conscious that he caught his breath, and that a warm, objectionable flush was stealing over him—"why, I think he is mending purty fast. I—I reckon there is no secret about it—Miss Dixie says she's adopted him by process of law."

"Good gracious! You don't say! Why, that makes three on her hands. Well, she's a remarkable girl, Alfred, and she's pretty. Don't you think so?" She was toying with the fringe of her shawl, and yet she seemed to hang upon his answer as she gazed straight at him.

"Y-e-s," Henley said. "She really has undertaken a lot, but I reckon she'll pull through, someway or other."

"Pa says she's managed to get out of old Welborne's debt," Mrs. Henley went on, taking her knee in her hands and lifting her foot from the ground and swinging it to and fro. "Lots of folks thought he'd finally sell her out of house and home. I didn't think, myself, that she'd ever pay out, but she seems to have succeeded. I give her full credit for all she is, Alfred. I'm not the sort of woman that underrates another just to be doing it. She's a stanch friend of yours. It is a good deal for me to admit, but she gave me a straight talk once that set me to thinking. I've never let on, but what she said made a deep impression on me."

The speaker paused, as if waiting for her words to take root and sprout in his comprehension, but he said nothing—only sat staring at her, as if trying to divine her subtle drift.

"It was while you was away, Alfred," she continued, "and—and there was so much talk about what I was doing at that time, you remember, to—to show respect for Dick's memory. For a girl as young as she is, she said some powerful strong things. She thought I wasn't acting right toward you, and told me so to my face. I went on with my plans, but I've often thought of her advice. You may have noticed that I hain't talked as much about the—the monument as I did, and I haven't been to see it as often as I used to. Dixie Hart made me look at it from the outside to some extent, and with that I began to be more considerate of you. I saw you wasn't the same as you was at first—I might say, as you was all along when you and Dick was both taking me out, and as you was—for that matter—just before and after me and you got married. In fact, Alfred, you are getting to be a sort o' puzzle to me. Even to-night at supper you seemed to be in some sort of far-off dream or other. You'd lift up a fork or a spoon and hold it a long time before you'd put it in your mouth, and once I caught you gazing straight at me with the blankest look I ever saw on a human face. You don't seem the same. I don't mean that you haven't got a healthy look, for that would bother me a lot, but you are—well, you are just different."

"Don't you worry," Henley heard himself saying, aghast at the cliffs and chasms ahead of him. "Don't worry about me if I seem to have my mind off at times. I've made some trades lately, and got the best end of 'em. I'm a natural trader—a born trader, Hettie. They say it is like a mild form of gambling. Just yesterday I made a deal with an old chap—"

"I don't want to talk about trading and swapping, and the like," the woman broke in, firmly. "Besides, no sort of ordinary business ever made a man look like you've looked lately. You used to be sorter active and nervous, but now you set and brood with an odd, reddish look on your face. It ain't natural. It looks like you've resigned yourself to—to something that you didn't exactly like before, and it don't please me to see you that way. Pa's noticed it and mentioned it two or three times."

"There's nothing in the world the matter with me," Henley declared, actually alarmed at the incongruity of his position.

"Alfred," the woman said, contritely, and she bent forward and peered up into his face, "you are a sight better man than I am a woman, and—"

"Shucks!"

"You may say shucks if you want to, but wait till I get through. I reckon, as women go, in the general run, I'm a queer sort of female. I never was just like other girls. For one thing, I always wanted what was out of my reach; not getting a thing, or even having doubts about it, always made me want it more than anything else. I reckon that is why Dick kind o' fascinated me: the girls was all after him, and he seemed a sort of prize to be had at any cost. Even after we was married, as maybe you know, he kept me worried with his attentions to some of the old crowd of girls. But enough of that. When he died and you come back, begging, as you did, to have me consider you, I finally give in and took you. But that wasn't all. I had stood up before a preacher in the house of God and agreed to be your wife and helpmeet, but, as I now see it, I didn't do my duty by you. I made the mistake, I reckon, of thinking too much about what I owed to the dead and gone, and I went so far as to do things in public that actually driv' you away from home and caused folks to laugh at you and make remarks. Dixie Hart was right; I wasn't toting fair with you, and I want to tell you to-night, Alfred, that I see my error, and—and I am plumb sorry."

He turned upon her resolutely. She was looking down, and he fancied she was about to shed such tears as she had often shed early in their married life when Dick Wrinkle's name was mentioned. He had none of the old chivalrous sympathy which such a demonstration had once evoked, nor any of the old indulgence for a love which he had hoped to see die, and yet, just from his passionate contact with Dixie Hart, he was full of comprehension and pity for his wife's plight—at least, as he now saw it.

"Listen to me, Hettie," he began, and his voice shook with deep feeling. "You've been right all along. Don't you bother about that. It was me that was crooked. In this life folks don't love in the highest and best way but once—not but once in a lifetime. Dick Wrinkle was your first and only abiding fancy. The feeling that made you turn me down and take him when you was a girl and I was a big blockhead of a boy was born of God in heaven. I was the one that was making a mistake when I come and begged you to marry me while that pure thing was still alive in your heart. A love like that never dies; it is too sweet and glorious to die. I see now, too, that you was plumb right about wanting to take care of his mammy and daddy, and about wanting that sermon preached, and about erecting a lasting monument to commemorate his name. You had to do all them things because they was part and parcel of you yourself, and the constancy God planted in you. I can say honestly that I'm glad you still love him. You wouldn't be a high sort of a woman if you did change. Death can't separate folks that love; they go on and on—side by side, hand in hand, heart to heart—through all eternity."

She actually gasped. She rose, and stood staring toward the door, a deep frown on her face; she shrugged her shoulders; she clinched her fists; she rapped the ground sharply with her foot; then she slowly bent down over him, resting her thin left hand on his broad shoulder while she peered with a stare of would-be incredulity into his enraptured face.

"Look at me, Alfred!" she cried, in a rasping tone. "You know you don't mean one single word of all you've just said!"

"Why, I do," he insisted, blandly. "As God is my judge, I do. There ain't no such thing as two loves—a first and a second. When the real thing comes to a body he knows it. A feller could be blinded for a time, I reckon, in hot-blooded youth, while he was in close pursuit of a thing that kept slipping away from him, as was my case when Dick and me was going nip and tuck to see which could get ahead; but the genuine, real thing is as different as—as day from night."

She drew herself up straight, and heaved a deep, lingering sigh. "I don't believe you mean a word of what you say," she repeated. "It ain't natural for a man who is as jealous as—as you always have been even—even of the dead—to set up and talk that way."

"Jealous?" he said, half musingly. "I don't think I'm a jealous man. Anyways, I don't think a feller would have the right to be jealous of a man that was dead and under ground. As I look at it now, I don't think a man has a right, in the best sense, to marry a widow; and in the same way a widower has no right to lay aside his past memories if they are the right sort. They ought to be his best company in his loneliness. Of course, now that you and me are linked together by law and religion, we owe it to the community we live in to do our duty and make the best—I mean, to live along as friendly and harmoniously as we can."

She sank down to the seat again, and sat staring at him fixedly. Presently, seeing that he was not going to resume speaking, she said: "I believe, on my soul, Alfred, you have plumb lost your senses. I may or may not be responsible for it; you may have let all this talk about Dick and my—my thinking about him prey on your mind till it is unhinged. Why, what I done about his grave and memory wasn't anything but respect that was due to him, and has nothing to do with our agreement. You've hurt my feelings, Alfred—you actually have."

She rose suddenly, and, with her handkerchief to her eyes, she started toward the door. She moved slowly, as if she expected him to call her back, as he had frequently done in the past; but he seemed to be oblivious of her presence and not to have heard her last plaintive appeal, for he sat gazing at the light in Dixie Hart's cottage like an unwakable man. She came slowly back, now with stiff, indignant strides—strides which dug deeply into the unoffending turf.

"You certainly are either crazy or a plumb fool!" she fired at him. "You said once that folks hinted that I was cracked in the upper story from the way I acted, but the shoe is on the other foot now. If folks don't say you are out of your head it is because they ain't here to listen to your meandering. A man that will set up and hint to a wife who he loves, and always has loved, that he's willing for her to still care for and cherish another person—I say a man like that is in need of a doctor's advice."

"Well, I was just trying to justify you and your acts," Henley answered in pained retaliation, "and to show you that I had no ill-will in any shape or form. You loved Dick in the right sort of way, and I'm just man enough to lay no obstacle whatever in your track. In the next life you and Dick will be reunited, and all things will be made straight. I don't want to fuss with you over it, Hettie. This life is too beautiful, if it is looked at right, to waste time in jowering. You and me can live in harmony from now on if you'll just be reasonable and not fly off the handle when a feller is doing his level best to arrive at some sort of common meeting-ground. All these years I've been fretting and trying to run a race with a dead man when I could have been in more active business. I've give in at last, and I'm going to stay give in. The truth is, I'm just beginning to live. For the first time in my life I'm in sympathy with true, natural-born, well-mated lovers. If they are tied together, all well and good; but if they are parted by some hook or crook, then they are to be pitied, but still they've got the satisfaction of knowing—well, of knowing what they know—that's all."

"Well, I know one thing," Mrs. Henley said, and she turned away, angrily. "I know you are simply daft—you've lost every grain of sense you ever had."

"I might have known she'd twist the thing all upside-down and never see it right," Henley mused, as he watched her ascend the steps, cross the porch, and disappear in the house. "I thought that view would hit her just right, but, contrary as she always was, she sees fit to disagree. I reckon if she knew everything there would be a row. Huh, I wouldn't risk that with her. She can hold her funeral conclaves, and build monuments to another fellow as high as a church-steeple, and expects me to swallow the dose, but just let me kind o' look about a little, and I'm a fit subject for a madhouse."



CHAPTER XXX

The next morning at breakfast Mrs. Henley seemed to have lost all memory of the angry scene on the grass the evening before. Her countenance was overcast with an expression that her husband would have designated as one of pleasure had he been given to the analysis of her facial phenomena, a pursuit he had long since given up as futile and unprofitable. Her dress, too, showed unusual care, and a crisp, fresh-ironed jauntiness that jerked him back to the past with rather disagreeable suddenness. Amid the white ruffles at her neck she had pinned a large, full-blown rose, and her manner toward the others was a fragile sort of graciousness which would have been a delight if one could have felt that it was permanent. As a rule she passed Henley's coffee to him through the hands of the two Wrinkles, but this morning she rose and brought it round to him, remarking that she had fixed it just to his liking. Old Wrinkle, as his intimates—and many others—knew, was not backward in the use of his tongue, and yet there was something in the unwonted ceremony of the present meal that silenced him. The old fellow, however, was making a record-breaking use of his eyes. Henley saw him taking in every detail of his former daughter-in-law's appearance and mood, and smiling all too knowingly for anybody's comfort as he munched and gulped.

After breakfast Henley was at the gate ready to walk to the store when Wrinkle came to him and clutched his arm familiarly.

"Wait, I'll go 'long with you," he said. "I want to talk to you some, anyway. Alf, did you ever since the world was made—"

But his words were lost on the morning air, for Mrs. Henley was calling to her husband from the porch, where she stood smiling at him from the honeysuckle vines.

"Don't go yet!" she called out, and she tripped down the steps toward him. She paused at a rose-bush on the way and plucked a bright-red bud, and, bringing it to him, she began to fasten it on the lapel of his coat. "You are getting entirely too slouchy," she mumbled, a pin in her mouth. "You never used to wear such dowdy clothes. You've got to spruce up—ain't he, Pa?"

"Well, it ain't Sunday, nor camp-meetin'," Wrinkle made answer. "He looks well enough for every day; he'd look odd with a long, jimswinger coat on in that dusty store with all them one-gallus mossbacks he makes his livin' out of. Them fellers 'u'd laugh at 'im an' say he was gittin' rich too fast at the'r expense."

As red as the flower with which she was trying to adorn him, Henley pushed the bud away. "I don't want it," he said. "I never was any hand to put on such things. I'd be a purty sight, now, wouldn't I—walkin' in town with a flower-garden pinned to me?"

She submitted to his refusal, deftly twining the stem of the flower into the cheap lace about her neck.

"I've got a favor to ask of you, Alfred," she said, sweetly, "and I don't want you to refuse it, either. This time I know what I want, and I must have it."

"Well, what is it?" he asked, his attention diverted from her by the hungry stare with which old Wrinkle was awaiting the climax of the little scene.

"Why, I want you to take me to drive."

"To drive!" Henley repeated, as much surprised as if she had asked him for a trip to Europe, and he heard old Wrinkle laugh out impulsively and saw him dig his heel into the earth, as, with lowered head, he sought to hide a broad and too-knowing smile which had captured his facile mouth. "To drive?"

"Yes, Alfred, it has been a long time since I've seen anything of the country hereabouts. Why, I've almost forgot how it looks, and this is the best time of the year. It would do us both good to take a little jaunt every day in the cool of the evening. We used to go out that way just before we was married, and for a while afterward, and I want to do it again. We've got wrong, somehow. We are not living like we ought to. I say it here before Pa because I mean it, and know he will see it as I do. Don't you think he ought to take me, Pa?"

"Well, I don't know as I'd sanction your ridin' 'round late in the evenin'." Wrinkle now showed no hint of even hidden merriment. "You mought git delayed beyond the usual time and supper would hang fire. Havin' fun an' startin' in to do courtin' over agin is all right an' proper if a body feels thataway, but doin' it on a starvation basis ain't good for the health, if it is for the sentiments."

"Oh, I'll see that you don't suffer, you old, greedy thing," Mrs. Henley said, playfully, and caught her husband's arm. "I want you to hitch up, and get a new lap-robe, and take me to-day—this very evening."

"To-day? Good gracious, what's got into you, Hettie?" Henley stammered, glancing here and there in sheer helplessness. "I couldn't get off from business. I've got my hands full of deals of one kind and another. Driving around is all right for—for young couples that are sparking, and even for fresh-married ones, but there comes a time when all sensible folks ought to settle down to the—the enjoyment of home life."

"I see—you have changed." Mrs. Henley now drew herself up austerely and glared at him coldly. "You think I'm well enough as a drudge about a dirty old farm-house, but not fit company for riding and driving like any woman as young as I am is entitled to. You never thought that sort of a thing was too frivolous before we married, but now you sneer at it. Well, you just wait till I give you a chance to take me anywhere again. I lowered my pride to ask it this time, but I won't remind you again. No, sir."

With a cloud of fury on her face she whirled, and whisked into the house.

"Come on, Alf," old Wrinkle advised, with a look of amusement in his eyes. "Let 'er sweat it out alone. She's jest tryin' to work on you, anyway. She'll be as smooth as goose-grease by night. Looky here, Alf, I'm an old man, an' you are jest a boy by comparison," he went on, as they walked down the road together, "but what I don't know about women you don't know about hosses, and you know a lot. I've learned women inch by inch all through life. I reckon I got on to it by lyin' around the fire on cold or wet days and listenin' to 'em. They say some men make a study of rocks, ores, plants, an' bugs, but my hobby always was females. Why, I almost know what turn a baby gal will take when it grows up. It was a sort of funny game with me. I set out to see if I'd ever see a woman do or say a sensible thing, an' I hain't won yet. Now, you may not know it, my boy, but you are in hot water, an' it is deep enough to float yore whiskers. You had married life down about right till just a few days ago. You could go and come whenever you liked an' nobody axed any questions. You was about the freest married man I ever knowed, white or black, yaller or red, but yore day of reckoning has come. I knowed some'n was wrong last night when you an' Het had that powwow in the yard, an' I knowed the sun was shinin' too bright this mornin' to do yore crop any good except to burn it up. I know Het. I've watched her bury one man an' start in with another, an' if you had been a worryin' feller she'd have had you mouldin' in the ground long go. As long as Hettie could worry you she was happy. Part of that grave-rock celebration was because she 'lowed it bothered you. I couldn't help hearin' the talk last night. You both spoke louder than you thought, an' the wind was blowin' my way. Why, man, when you set thar last night an' told that woman that her undyin' love for Dick was holy an' godly an' a thing to be kept in a glass case an' looked at every hour in the day—I say when you throwed all that guff at her you sealed yore doom. Them words kicked every prop from under her, an' down she come with a flop that knocked the breath out of all her calculations. She looks fresh and rosy this morning, but she rolled and tumbled the most of the night. I don't sleep sound, an' I heard her. I wondered what step she'd take, an' the breakfast-table grins an' rose-bud and buggy-ride proposition showed her hand. This mad spell is part of the game. She has set in to make you do your courtin' over ag'in, an' you'll find that about as unnatural as wearin' yore vest under yore shirt. No man can court the same woman twice an' put his heart in the job, but a woman is just so constituted that she could have it done over an' over by one or a dozen men. I reckon, as Scriptur' says, it is more blessed to give than to receive, but a man 'u'd rather not be blessed in the time to come than to have to make eyes an' say sweet things when he ain't feelin' jest right. Now, I'll turn back; I jest walked out with you to give you what advice I could. Git the bit in yore jaw an' pull yore way steady, an' after a while she'll git tired an' quit naggin' you."

That morning, near noon, as Henley was busy at his work in the rear of the store, Cahews came back to him with a mild look of surprise on his face.

"Your wife is out in front in her uncle Ben's carriage," he announced. "She's dressed for travel—got three or four valises in with her. Warren, must have sent over after her; the team looks like it's been on the go for several hours."

Henley found her in the luxurious seat behind the higher one on which the colored driver, in a battered silk top-hat, sat holding the reins over a handsome pair of blacks. She looked at him coldly as, hatless and coatless, he hurried out to her.

"What's this?" he asked, half playfully. "You ain't going to vamoose the ranch, are you?"

"Uncle Ben's sick," she answered, stiffly. "He sent a note by Ned. He didn't say for me to come, but he hinted at it several times. I'd show you what he wrote, but we haven't time to spare. I packed up as quick as I could. We'll stop at the half-way house for dinner."

"Ben hain't dangerous, is he?" Henley asked, his foot on the brass-tipped hub of the fore-wheel, his hand on the arm of the seat she occupied.

"I don't know whether he is or not," the speaker pulled down the veil under her hat-brim and avoided her husband's eyes, "but he's lonely and heartbroken over the way that unprincipled woman has treated him, and he needs petting and nursing and some company in that big, gloomy house to take his mind off his trouble and humiliation."

"He ought never to have got mixed up with her." Henley was recalling Wrinkle's sage remarks. "Dealing with a woman you've known all her life is risky enough, without going as far as Ben did for an opportunity to get slapped in the face. But he ought to be thankful he found her out in time."

"Finding her out ain't going to lighten the blow." Mrs. Henley shrugged her shoulders. "When a man—or a woman, for that matter—has full faith in a person, and finds out that the person ain't anything like he used to be, why, a body hardly knows what to think. I'm glad I'm going away, Alfred. You showed me this morning when I give you that chance to take me about a little here and there that you are changed. When I'm away you'll realize what you've missed, and I'll be glad of it. Absence, on my side, is the medicine you need to restore your senses."

"Well, we'll all certainly miss you." Henley was too honest—at least in domestic matters—to know that his assertion was insincere, and accustomed as he was in his dealings among men to assume exactly the shade of tone or set of face that went best with a statement, he now had as complete an air of regret and discomfort as the most exacting of wives could have wished.

"Well, I'm getting the drive I asked for," was her parting shot, and she leaned over and gave him a cold, stiff hand. "I'm taking it all by myself, as most married women have to do if they don't seek the attention of other men. But I'm going to do my duty to a human sufferer, and in that I'll get my reward."

He walked back to the store thoughtfully. "She's gone!" he said to himself. "She's ripping mad and got it in for me, that's certain. She's begun on a new line, and I'll bet she makes me smoke before she's through with me. I know what she wants well enough, but somehow I just can't do it. I might at one time, but I couldn't now to save my neck from the loop. The old man is plumb right. When a feller's love gets cold on the inside he can't warm it up by external applications. He's a matrimonial misfit, and the sooner he realizes it and is resigned the better he'll feel."



CHAPTER XXXI

"Well, the old gal's gone," Wrinkle remarked that day at sundown when Henley came in at the gate and found him seated on a dismantled beehive in the yard. "I reckon you seed 'er spin through town. For a woman goin' out as a sick-nuss or spiritual comforter to a chap kicked by a high-steppin' filly she certainly had a supply of frills and ruffles. Them valises was packed as tight as a compressed cotton-bale. She left behind her one solid wail of woe. Jane is afraid she'll never gratify yore taste for grub as well as Het did, an' she's in thar now humpin' herself to contrive new concoctions. Het kept boarders long enough to git stingy, an' I told my wife to turn over a new leaf for a change. I driv' a fat chicken in a fence-corner just now, and held its legs while she chopped its spout off. She knows how to fry 'em, an' if she kin see well enough to pick the pin-feathers off it will be all right. I'd put her biscuits agin any ever baked."

After a really enjoyable supper Henley went out under the trees to get the fresh air which, in invigorating gusts, swept up the valley along the mountain-range. He told himself that his reason for wandering down toward his barn was to avoid meeting Wrinkle, who he knew would soon appear from the kitchen, where he was helping his wife wash the dishes. He was aware, of course, that Dixie Hart's cow-lot adjoined his stable-yard, and he knew that it was the hour at which she went to milk, and yet he would not have admitted that he strolled thither in the hope of meeting her, but, nevertheless, he went.

He saw her entering the lot-gate, a bright tin pail in her hand, and he shielded himself with a jutting corner of his wagon-shed and watched her graceful approach through the dusk. He saw her get the tub of cow's food from the crib and give it to the animal, and then he heard her scream out, and, following her startled eyes, he saw that, having failed to close the gate behind her, the cow's calf had entered and was rushing to its mother. With an ejaculation of impatience Dixie threw her arms about the calf's neck and tried to pull it from the cow's bag, but it was of no avail. The strong young beast would wriggle from her clutch and dart back to its supper.

"Oh, you brat, you are stealing all the milk!" Dixie cried. She picked up a dried corn-stalk, and with it belabored the sleek, brown back of the calf, but she might as well have used an ostrich-plume for all the effect it had on the hungry animal.

It was then that Henley, laughing heartily, sprang over the fence and came to her assistance.

"Let me have the little scamp," he said. And he bent down and took the squirming beast into his strong arms and lifted it bodily from the ground. "Now, where do you want him put?" he asked, as he stood swaying back and forth in his effort to control the wriggling prisoner.

"Over the fence!" she cried, and stood panting in admiration of his cool skill and strength as he walked to the fence and dropped the calf on the other side. He then fastened the gate and came back to her.

"You are doing a man's work, anyway," he said, looking into her flushed face, "and you ought to call a halt. Life is too short to spend it as you are doing."

"It's all very well for you men to talk that way," Dixie retorted, as she pushed her milking-stool to the side of the cow and sat down with the pail between her knees, "but women, as well as men, want to live, and if there's any way to live without work, and plenty of it, I'd like to find out about it."

"It seems to me that a feller by the name of Long was offering to point out a way to you," he said, with a forced smile.

The back part of her uncovered head was turned toward him. Her shapely hands and bare, tapering arms gleamed like yellow marble through the dusk. He smelled the delightful odor of the warm milk as her deft fingers sent it ringing into the pail.

"Yes, he was offering me a job," he heard her say with a sarcastic little chuckle. "He wanted me to quit working at my old place and set in for him, and nothing particular was said about raising my wages."

"And what are you going to answer him, I wonder?" Henley inquired, as he bent down over her that the noise of the squirting milk might not drown her reply.

She flashed a glance at him; there was an ineffable shimmer in her long-lashed eyes; she made a comical little grimace. "I've said the last word between me and him," she answered. "I got a humble letter from him yesterday begging my pardon for what he'd tried to do, and saying he'd behave like a gentleman from now on, if I'd only let him come out again."

"Well, it was time he was apologizing," Henley cried. "For a little I'd have—well!"

Dixie smiled and looked at him eagerly. "Did that make you mad, Alfred—really mad?"

"I don't think I ever was madder in all my life." He walked unsuspectingly into her trap. "I driv' away soon after or I don't know what would have happened. The more I thought about it the madder I got. Once I started to turn round and go back. I would, if I hadn't thought he was such a weak fool. It ain't done with; I can't think about it without wanting to mash something. I reckon me 'n him had better stay apart."

"We ain't going to have any row about that, Alfred," Dixie said, quite seriously. "You know you would bear a lot rather than have folks say a—a married man was taking up for me in that way. If you ever meet him, and the thing comes up, you must remember that one thing. My character's all I've got, Alfred; if you are what I think you are, you'd think twice before compromising me like that. Carrie Wade would talk then, sure enough. Married men don't go about having fisticuffs over girls that live next door to 'em without folks wondering, and I tell you I'm like that fellow Caesar's wife—I'm too good to be wondered about in any shape or form."

"I know it—God knows I know it," Henley responded, under his trembling breath. "You needn't be afraid, Dixie. I'll take care. But you didn't tell me what answer you made to—to Long's apology, or whether you was going to let him come again or not."

"I wrote him a pretty nice sort of a letter." She was laughing as she bent over her pail, but he didn't know it. "You see, Alfred, I was afraid you had hurt the poor fellow's feelings that day, and I thought somebody ought to be mild-tempered. I told 'im that wasn't no place or time, anyway, to kiss a girl—right in front of the door of her house—that a girl naturally liked to be wheedled awhile before she set in on such familiar terms, and that if it had been a third visit, instead of jest the second, that I'd have taken him for a stroll down by the creek. There's a foot-log there plumb hid by willows, Alfred, and I always thought it would be fine to set on it with your feet dangling over the stream and see two sweethearts reflected in the clear water, his arm round her waist and her head on his shoulder. Now, that's the sort of thing this chicken has always had a yearning for, and—" Dixie tittered inaudibly in the pail and said nothing more.

He had drawn himself erect and stood as full of despair as the night was full of darkness. She heard him utter a low groan, but that was all. She peered up at him stealthily, and then, with a face warm with content, she resumed her work. He stood silent till she rose.

"Now that dratted calf can come to the second table," she said, in the most uneventful tone imaginable. "Alfred, will you please let him in? He's about to butt the gate down."

He walked stiffly across the lot and opened the gate. The calf shot past him like an animated cannon-ball. He met her as, with the pail on her arm, she had turned toward the cottage.

"I'm too big a fool to ever understand you, Dixie," he gulped, as they paused face to face. "Since me and you parted the—the other day I—I've been plumb crazy. I got to thinking things that are too far off—too nigh the gates of heaven to be possible—things that made all my troubles fly away, but now I see it was just in my imagination. I'm going to be sensible from now on if it kills me. You can't keep on in the miserable way you are living. You've always thought you'd escape the worst by marrying, and I have no right because this here hell is raging in me to tell you who, or who not, to take. I'd rather see you—you dead in your coffin than the—the wife of that silly fool. But that's your business—that's—that's—" His voice broke and he stood quivering, his strong face torn into shreds by despair.

"You dear, dear boy!" Dixie said, laying her disengaged hand gently on his arm, her own face suffused with a faint glow of uncontrollable tenderness. "I'm only a girl—a natural one, Alfred—and I'm so hungry for love that I try to make you say those things, wrong as they may be. Don't you know when I'm joking? Listen and I'll tell you the truth. I wrote Jasper Long that it was all right about what he'd tried to do. I'd not hold any grudge against him, but that I knew I never could care for him, and I hoped he'd never come to see me again."

"You—you wrote 'im that?" Henley gasped.

"Oh, Alfred," she cried, as she released his arm, "don't you know that I could not marry a man I don't love? Don't you know what has been growing up in me all this time in which you with your unhappiness and me with my misfortune have been drawed so close together? Every night, as I say my prayers and call on God to help you, I wonder what He meant by the bonds with which He's tied me to you hand and foot, heart and soul. When you was trying to find me a husband, and fighting for my legal rights, you thought it was just friendship, and so did I. The world we live in counts it one of the blackest of sins for a married man and an unmarried girl to love each other, but you know we didn't do wrong intentionally. We was as innocent and unsuspecting as lambs in the fold. Right when we thought we was doing our duty the ground was slipping from under us, and we was clutching each other to keep from falling. Now, that's all I'm going to say. I shall never marry any man while this feeling is in my breast. That would be wrong for a dead certainty, let folks say what they please about the other. Your wife went off to-day, didn't she? I saw Warren's carriage drive up and knew something was going to happen; then the old man come over and told us about it."

She had passed through the gate on her way home, and he remained at her side. "I want to stop in after supper, and—and see how little Joe is," he said, hesitatingly.

"No, not to-night, Alfred," she returned, firmly. "He'd like to see you, but don't come the first night after—after she went away. We really must be sensible. Folks don't understand—they never could understand—and we've got to think of them. I may have done wrong in letting you know how I feel, but it will end there."

"I see, I understand," he said, reverently. "They shall never talk about you while I'm alive. Good-night."

He walked slowly toward the lights in the farm-house. He heard the two Wrinkles, with cracked voices, singing a hymn as they sat in their rocking-chairs on the porch. The very stars seemed to hang lower from the darkling mystery overhead; he felt light enough, in his boundless content, to rise to them and drink at their twinkling founts. His soul seemed to swell to the point of bursting. "Oh, God, I thank Thee!" he said, deep within himself. "I thank Thee!"



CHAPTER XXXII

With Henley the next day passed like some fascinating dream. He was busy in various ways as usual, and yet scarcely for a moment were his thoughts away from his new-found delight. He had no hope, bound as he was to another to whom he owed his honor, of ever being closer to Dixie than he was now, and yet there was something in the very purity of his possession of her heart and in her willing sacrifice of so much for the principle which guided her that lifted him into new and untrodden fields of spiritual ecstasy.

It was near sunset, and he stood in the front doorway of the store, looking out into the quiet square, when, to his surprise and with a tumultuous throbbing of his heart, he saw Dixie pass with a letter in her hand on the way to the post-office. She was on the opposite side of the street and did not glance in his direction, and he made no effort to attract her attention. As she passed along by old Welborne's diminutive office Henley noticed that Hank Bradley, who had been drinking about town through the day, came from the doorway and bowed to her conspicuously, his slouch-hat almost sweeping the pavement as he bent downward. She passed on with a bare nod and quickened her step till she entered the post-office, a few doors farther on.

There was something in this, remembering as he did that Bradley had persistently pursued the girl with attentions, which not only angered Henley, but filled him with concern for her safety. The half-drunken brute might take it into his head to follow her down the lonely road which she had to traverse to reach her house. So, with these things in mind, Henley told Cahews that he was going home, and he walked out to the first densely shaded part of the road and, retiring into the bushes, sat on the grass, determined that he would at least follow in her wake till she was out of danger of being accosted.

The sunlight had quite disappeared now, and the fringe of dusk was settling over the silent wood. He was growing impatient, and wondering if anything could have happened to detain Dixie in town, when he beard voices down the road. He stood up and peered through the curtain of wild vines which hung between him and the open. He could see no one, and the voices were so indistinct that he failed to recognize them. But the conversing individuals were evidently rapidly approaching, for their voices were growing louder. Both seemed to be talking at the same time, and Henley was pretty sure that it was a man and a woman. Then the coarser voice drowned the finer and fainter, and Henley recognized it as belonging to Bradley.

"I've been put off and fooled and deviled by you as long as I'm going to be!" the brute cried out. "You are a beautiful young devil, that's what you are. I've offered you every inducement a man could offer. If I'm drunk, you are the cause of it. I can't think of nothing but you—you, with your maddening eyes of fire and cheeks full of hot blood. I want you. I want you every minute I draw breath. You must listen to reason. I've got plenty of money. We could live like a king and queen on the fat of the land, as God means men and women to live, full of joy and life. Stop, you've got to kiss me! We are alone; nobody is about."

"Let me pass, I tell you, let me pass!" Dixie's terrified voice rose to a shriek, and then it ended in a smothered sound as if a hand had been placed over her mouth. Henley was sure they were struggling and he sprang into the road. Swaying back and forth against the dark background of the wood, he saw Bradley with the girl in his arms. Dixie had ducked her head to avoid his repulsive lips, and the assailant's back was turned to Henley. With the bound of a panther he reached them just as Dixie was eluding Bradley's embrace and trying to release her hand, to which he clung with a grip of steel. Neither of the two saw Henley, and it was a crushing blow from the storekeeper's fist against the side of Bradley's head that showed him what he had to contend with. He had scarcely taken another breath before Henley struck him again with the force of a sledgehammer squarely between the eyes. Bradley staggered, swayed, grew limp, and went down. His eyes rolled back in his head till the whites were exposed. He quivered through his whole form, drew his shoulders up once, and then lay still. Henley, his hands clinched, the eyes of an infuriated animal in his head, his great mouth hanging open, stood over the fallen man.

"Thank God, oh, thank God!" It was Dixie's voice behind him, and he turned to see her at the edge of the road, her face as white as death could have made it, her hands convulsively clasped in front of her. "Oh, Alfred, Alfred, if you hadn't come—" She came to him, but, primitive man that he now was, there seemed to be no place in him for tenderness. His great breast heaved, his lips quivered, his eyes bulged from their sockets. She was about to put out her hands in an effort toward soothing him when, glancing toward Bradley, she uttered a scream of alarm. He was rising, a drawn revolver in his hand. Quick as his approach had been, Henley's next movement was quicker; before the weapon was fairly poised he had knocked it from Bradley's grasp. Contemptuously kicking it out of his reach, Henley gave the man a sharp blow with his fist; and while Bradley was impotently shielding his face with his arms, Henley picked up the revolver, cocked it, and directed it toward him.

"Apologize to this lady," he said, huskily, "and do it quick, for I'm going to blow your brains out. Down on your knees, you dirty whelp—down, I say!"

"I'll be damned if I do."

"Then take your medicine, and may God have mercy on your dirty soul!" And, as Bradley screamed out and held up his hands in sudden, overpowering fear, Dixie sprang forward and wrested the weapon from Henley's hand.

"No," she said—"no, you sha'n't kill him. Hank Bradley, go! Go, I tell you! I won't have blood spilt over me. I've got a right to demand that, and I do demand it. Go, I tell you! I'm going to keep this gun to protect myself with. I live in a country of outlaws, and I'm going to defend myself from now on. Go! What are you waiting for?"

Muttering and growling in sullen defiance, Bradley got to his feet, his battered face and eyes swollen.

"You've got the best of the game so far," he snarled at Henley, "but it's not ended. You'll hear from me."

"I'll tell you one thing, Hank," Henley said, as he glared at the man, "you are leaving here now, but if I ever meet you face to face in town, or anywhere else, I'll kill you as sure as there's a God. I've said it, and I mean it—I'll kill you as I would a snake."

Henley and Dixie stood in silence and watched him as he entered the wood and strode farther into its depths. They heard the cracking of dry twigs under his feet as he steadily receded, the sound of his untoward progress growing fainter and fainter in the distance.

"I'll be sorry to the day of my death that I didn't kill him," Henley panted, the wild fury unabated in his voice, face, and eyes. "Why, he was treating you like a dog; he actually proposed, actually dared to hint that his dirty money—my God! and I let him walk off on his two feet."

"I know, I know," Dixie muttered, soothingly, and she forced a smile as she looked at the revolver in her hand, "and oh, Alfred, I'm just girl enough to be glad you come as you did, and even to see it work you up like it has; but at a time like this a woman must act and think for a man when he is all wrought up and half out of his head. I couldn't prevent what he done. He was waiting for me at the end of the street and insisted on walking with me. I begged him to go back, but he was talking so loud and rough that I was afraid folks would make remarks. I hated to call for help; I'm neither sugar nor salt, and am able to care for myself. But I'd never seen him as drunk as that before, and, well, if you hadn't come—"

She shuddered convulsively. He looked at her wrist, which she kept touching with her handkerchief; the skin was broken and the flesh bruised where Bradley had clutched it.

"My God!" Henley took it gently in his throbbing hands and looked at it with glaring eyes, "and I let him walk away! He's free now, but, as there is a God overhead, I'll—"

"No, stop, listen—hear me, Alfred!" Dixie entreated, allowing her hand to rest passively in his. "There are some things you men make more of than us women. I reckon it's your natures to be that way. Now, me 'n you have got to settle this thing for good and all right here and now, for if I have to go home to-night with the fear that there is to be bloodshed on my account I'd be more miserable than I ever was. Last night, Alfred, after I left you at the lot-gate, I went home and done my work with an odd feeling on me, I waited on Joe; I fixed the beds and made my mother and aunt lie down, and then I was all alone and had time to reflect over—over me and you. I reckon my thoughts had taken a new turn by just one little remark of yours. Alfred, it was you asking to come over on the—the first—the very first night after your wife left. A girl will do a lot of headstrong things when her pity and admiration are worked up for a man she loves, but now and then, if she's sensible, some powerful small thing will make her think. Alfred, I saw the brink we was standing on, as plain as if we was on a high cliff and there was nothing between us and the bottom, and all sorts of forces was blinding us and pulling and shoving us over. I'm a good, pure girl—no purer, in thought or act, ever lived, and yet I've been in an inch of having a bad character saddled on me for the rest of my life. As I looked at little Joe asleep in his bed and remembered that I had given my word and bond to the law to make a worthy mother to him, as I looked at them two old women who think I'm already robed in the garb of paradise, and realized that one mischievous word started about me and you would ruin me and all the others—I say, when that thought come to me I wondered how I could, in my right senses, have talked to you as I have and let you know my feelings. I can't believe that it is wrong to—to feel as I do toward you, because I was drawed into it by things that I couldn't avoid. You was always trying to help me, and was so sweet and good and manly and respectful that, knowing about your own troubles, I couldn't help myself. Then I saw you loved—liked me, and the—the pure, hungry joy of it—the dazzling glory of it, bound me hand and foot, and I plunged in without thought or caution. But we are cooler now, Alfred, and we've got to keep our heads. To begin with, you have got to let this matter with that scamp drop. I demand it; my good name demands it; I haven't given you the right to fight battles over me, and I don't intend to. I'd rather let that man, repulsive as he is, kiss me a dozen times than have to hang my head before them I love. They would take Joe from me; it would hurry my mother to her grave; it would be a living death. See, here's the revolver." She, forced a white smile as she slid it into the pocket of his coat. "Dispose of it; I don't want to be reminded of what's happened. I'm giving it to you because I can trust you. I know you'll do as I ask."

"Do as you ask me—good God!" Henley bit his lip till the blood ran against his fine teeth, and he fell to quivering. "I see what you mean, and I know you are right, and yet, and yet, I couldn't have let him walk off like that if I hadn't thought—"

"I know—I saw that in your eye," Dixie went on, firmly—"and that's why I'm making you promise now. No matter what happens, Alfred, you are going to avoid that man—you are going to protect me in a higher and braver way than spilling human blood. You'll avoid him, won't you?"

She saw the muscles of his face settle into a rigid grimace, his eyes flared, his great breast heaved, and he nodded. "Yes," he said, "I'll avoid him; that is, I think—yes, I know I'll do it for your sake."

"There, I knew you wouldn't refuse me," Dixie cried, almost merrily. "Now let's walk on. You mustn't go all the way. I'm afraid our dream is over, Alfred. This scare has opened my eyes to our earthly duties. I'm going to think of you just as—as often as I wish, and lo—love you, but we mustn't meet often. I want you to love me, too—that's God's truth, but don't tell me so, Alfred, any more—not a single time."

"How can I help it?" He turned on her, his face full of fire, his voice shaking with passion. He threw his arms about her and was drawing her into a close embrace when she stiffened her body and, with firm hands, disengaged herself, and, as she pushed him back, she said: "No, no! that will not do, Alfred. You must never do that again. It isn't because I don't want you to. If we had the right, I could rest forever in your dear arms; I could—oh, Alfred, what does God mean by treating us like this?"

"He means that we were made for one another," Henley gulped, as his eyes probed her own. "I know it—I know it."

"Yes, maybe," she said, as she moved onward, "but perhaps not for this life, Alfred. Our love is as eternal as that space above is endless. It is spiritual and pure; let's keep it that way. Now I'll leave you. Don't forget."

"I'll obey your commands," Henley answered, fervidly. "I know my duty and I'll try to do it."

She hung back a moment longer, her pretty, arching brows drawn together in thought. "I'm more worried about you and Hank Bradley than you may guess," she said. "Even if you don't meet him, he may do you some other injury. In fact, he once said—" She paused, her eyes on the ground.

"He said what, Dixie?" Henley prompted.

"He said something one day that worried me a lot," she went on, slowly. "It was the day, you remember, when he was drinking and you ordered him from the store. I met him, and he was in an awful state of fury. I didn't tell you about it because I was afraid it would make trouble."

"Oh, I reckon he was mad that day," Henley said, lightly. "He looked it when he left."

"It wasn't that exactly," Dixie said. "He seemed to be under the same impression that lots of folks are, that—that you are very much in love with your wife, and always have been, for he sneered a great deal about it, and finally said he knew something which, if he was not bound by promise to keep, would tear you all to pieces."

"Humph!" Henley sniffed, "I reckon it was some lie or other that Dick Wrinkle told him when they was out West together. You know Dick hated me like a snake. That ain't nothing, don't let it bother you."

"I couldn't help it," Dixie said, as she turned away. "It looked to me like he really meant something important. He seemed so sure that he had you in his power. Now, good-bye. Keep your promise."



CHAPTER XXXIII

Hank Bradley, his face stinging from the bruises he had received, his blood boiling with fury and humiliation, slunk deeper and deeper into the wood. Now he would utter a despondent groan, again a long and resonant string of threatening oaths. As he slowly spat the blood from his gashed lips, he solemnly vowed that he would have the man's life who had dared to interfere with him. To the end of his existence he would see himself sprawling at the feet of the woman whom he had so long and persistently sought—as long as he lived he would see the righteous glare in his antagonist's eyes, the look of grateful relief which lighted the face of the rescued. Plunging onward, he came to a mountain-brook which, as clear as crystal, leaped and rippled, gurgled and muttered down the rugged declivity. Here he paused, whining and bemoaning his luck, and sat down and bathed his face. He was sober now, all too sober, in fact, for his peace of mind. Above the tree-tops he saw the roof and gables of his uncle's house, and, as he mopped his face with his blood-clotted handkerchief, he trudged toward it.

Old Welborne himself was on the lawn inspecting his beehives, near the front gate, when his nephew entered, and he turned toward him, staring curiously.

"Why, what's the matter?" the old man asked. "You look like you've been run over by a wagon, or kicked by an army mule. Great heavens, man!" Welborne put out his hand as if to touch the purple and swollen spot above Bradley's eye, but with a surly oath the young man drew back.

"Same mule, I reckon, that had hold of your windpipe in your office the other day when you squealed like a stuck pig under the table."

"Huh!" Welborne grunted. "You was in the other room and didn't show yourself when a man less 'n half my age and as strong as an ox was—was—"

"T'wasn't my row, and this ain't yours," Hank growled. "I'll tell you that now, and be done with it. I won't take up any fight of yours over your close-fisted, hold-up deals, but I'll see mine through, and don't you forget it."

"You'd better go in the house and put some medicine on your face," the old man advised, "and sleep off that drunk! I smelt you before you opened the gate. I knew when you was kicked out of Alf Henley's store that day that you'd never let it rest till you had another row. You are like your daddy was, always looking for trouble, and, somehow, always finding plenty of it, and doing no particular harm to anybody else. He was always going to kill somebody, but never got to it."

"Listen to me," Bradley snarled; "if I don't kill that dirty whelp in twenty-four hours from now, I leave home for good and all."

"Say, look here," Welborne said, with a change of tone. "I'm not saying this for Alf Henley's sake, for I hate him; he is the only man in this county that ever tricked me out of my rights, and I'll get even with 'im, sooner or later, but I'm thinking now about you. You may be foolhardy enough to try some slip-up game on him. I'm not afraid you'll meet him like a man, for, if it had been in you, you'd have done it before this, but you may think you can do your job in the dark, so listen to me, Hank. You may think you can shoot him from behind, but I tell you if you do you'll swing for it. I've got a longer head than you have, because I've kept it clear, and hate of a man never will get my neck in the loop. Don't you know—can't you see that if anything harmed that fellow now, after this whipping he's given you, that suspicion would be directed to you. He's popular—men on all sides like him—and a jury would not leave their seats to convict you. You'd hang, I tell you, hang till you are dead, dead, dead!"

"I'd rather hang, by God," Bradley growled, "than go through with what I'm going through now. Don't talk to me. Go on with your flea-skinning, and let me alone. I know what I'm about!"

"You don't, for you are too befuddled with liquor to know," retorted the calm old man. "I can remind you of a thing that maybe you ought to recall. There was a white man lynched for a certain offence two months ago. It was done by a mob of eight or ten young devils on a drunken rampage. The authorities was disposed to drop it, because it was believed the man was guilty, but now it is leaking out that he was the wrong party. His friends are working as quiet as moles under ground. They are getting names and stacks of evidence. A man I've done a favor for come and told me to warn you. I didn't think it was worth while, but I do now, because if you fire on Alf Henley from the dark you'll be arrested, and both charges will be saddled on you."

"I don't care a damn about that, either," Bradley spouted, and he turned toward the house. "I'll do one thing at a time, and take the biggest first."

"That's your determination, then?"

"You bet it is. I know my business, and I don't want you to put your fingers in it."

"Well, go ahead with your rat-killing," the money-lender said. "I've given you a piece of sound advice, and, if you don't take it, that isn't my lookout."

Bradley strode heavily and with dragging feet along the gravelled walk to the house. He lunged awkwardly across the veranda floor and went into the wide hallway and ascended the walnut stairs to his room.

An hour later he came down. He had been drinking again from a supply of liquor kept in his chamber. One of his hip-pockets bulged with a flask, the other with a long revolver. No one was on the front veranda or on the lawn. A dim light from a window at the right of the hall told him that his uncle was in his room, perhaps absorbed over his accounts and papers. Passing out at the gate, he took the narrow, private road through his uncle's fields to Chester, the lights of which danced before his unsteady vision. It was Saturday, and, as Henley often went to the store on that night, Bradley concluded that he might be there now. When he reached the square he found few persons on any of the divergent streets. A few strangers and drummers sat smoking and chatting on the low veranda of the little hotel, and in the darkness he passed them without attracting attention. Reaching Henley's store, he glanced in at the front. Cahews and Pomp were putting the tumbled dry-goods department to rights, and sweeping, sprinkling, and dusting. A queer thrill of triumph passed through the watcher as he descried the lamp on Henley's desk and the unruffled face of the storekeeper in its circle of rays.

Fearing that some passer-by might notice him in front, Bradley climbed over the fence at the side of the house and crouched down in the yard, hidden by the shadow of the wall. The village was very still. The clanging of a near-by church-bell calling the choir to practise for the Sunday service jarred harshly on Bradley's tense nerves. Pomp was singing, keeping time with strokes of his broom, and Cahews was whistling an accompaniment. Bradley waited till the bell had ceased its clangor, and then, with a step that was almost steady, he glided along the weather-boarding through the junk-filled yard till he had reached the open window close to Henley's desk. Henley was still there. He seemed to be counting money, for he had a bag of coin near him and the iron safe near by was open. Bradley could see the pigeon-holes and little drawers with their brass mountings gleaming in the light. He drew his revolver and cocked it noiselessly and aimed it experimentally at his intended victim. No better mark could be desired, but the right moment must be chosen. Bradley looked about him, his befuddled brain noting this or that obstacle to immediate flight. He must think; he must make no mistake, for, as his uncle had said, the risk was grave. The sudden report of a revolver would cause that cottage door to fly open; Seth Woods at work in his cage-like shop across the street would run directly over to see what had happened. The loungers at the hotel would appear, Cahews and Pomp, and, and—Bradley recalled Welborne's reference to the lynched man, and shuddered. Yes, drunk as he was, he could see that, easy as the deed was of execution, escape would be most difficult. He told himself, as he thrust the weapon back into his pocket, that the centre of the town was no place for work like this, and that later Henley would have to pass along a lonely road in darkness to get home. Yes, that was the best plan, he decided, and, creeping back through the yard, he regained the fence, and, watching his opportunity, he climbed over into the street and made his way unobserved out into the country road.

Soon he had reached the point he had in mind. It was, by odd fatality, the spot where he had received his castigation only a few hours before. The moon was behind a cloud, and yet the visible stars furnished sufficient light for him to see his way, dulled as his vision was by the spirits he had consumed. Now his plan was complete. He would lie in wait right where the unshaded roadway entered the wood. Henley's form would be clearly limned against the unobstructed horizon. Bradley would fire once, twice, as many times as would be necessary to do the work absolutely. He believed that he would be calm enough, practicable as it would be at that distance from any residence, to step forward and examine the body to be sure that no mistake had been made. Bradley chuckled as he sat down on the heather, and felt a satisfied, even triumphant, glow steal over him. Taking out his flask, he drained its contents, and then threw it into the wood. It whistled ominously as it cut its way through the air and fell with a crash against a bowlder. He drew out his watch and struck a match to see the dial. It was ten o'clock. His victim could not be long now, for Henley never remained late at the store.

"Ah, what was that? Surely it was a man's whistle, and Henley's whistle was a well-known and merry characteristic of himself. To-night it rippled forth more joyously than usual, and this in itself added to the flames in the crouching man's breast. Henley could whistle that way because he had triumphed so conspicuously in the recent encounter. But stopping a man's whistle was a small matter when it was done with a six-shooter by a good marksman, Bradley chuckled, and that wouldn't bother him many seconds. Now he could distinctly hear the storekeeper's step; he would soon be in view there where the fireflies were flashing, and then—but what was that? Something seemed to be lowered from the branches of a tree directly across the road as by a rope, and to hang against the dark background, turning in a gruesome fashion, as if wind-blown, first one way and then another. It was a human body. The feet were tied by a bridle-rein, the hands bound behind by the suspenders the corpse had worn. Bradley had seen the thing in fancy many times before, but never in such grim actuality as now. He strained his sight to make sure. There was no doubt. The thing was actually there—there, there, great God!—there!

"Gentlemen, friends, neighbors"—he remembered the very words that had escaped the lips now grinning at him—"you are hangin' the wrong man. I'm innocent. In the name of God, spare me. I'm the father of six children that depend on me for a living. Give me a chance to prove what I say—oh, God!—oh, God, oh, God, have mercy!"

The hand holding the revolver relaxed. With a subdued cry of terror, Bradley was on his feet, glaring at the accusing sight. He saw Henley enter the wood and move on unsuspectingly toward the horrible spectre which swung across his path. Indeed, Henley passed through it as through a vapor, still whistling. With a cry still in his throat, Bradley dashed into the wood and fled the spot.

Henley heard the sound of pattering feet and paused for a moment, looking about him wonderingly. It wasn't an animal suddenly frightened from its lair, for the weird, guttural cry was human. At the side of the road stood a huge oak, on the trunk of which there was a grayish, barkless strip about the width and length of a medium-sized man, and hanging from a bough above was an uprooted grape-vine. These natural objects would have attracted Henley's attention had he known how they had been masquerading in his behalf. As it was, however, he resumed his whistling, and, barely reminded by the spot of the recent encounter, he cheerfully pursued his way. He was very tired, and looked forward with eagerness to the moment when he could get into bed.



CHAPTER XXXIV

Henley's wife had been gone two weeks and had not written a line either to him or the Wrinkles, when, one morning just after breakfast, as old Jason stood on the front porch, he espied, far down the road, the Warren carriage, with Ned in the driver's seat. The back part of the vehicle was not in sight, but Wrinkle had seen enough to convince him that his ex-daughter-in-law was returning, and he promptly and gleefully announced the fact to his wife and Henley in the dining-room. They all went to the porch and waited for the now-hidden carriage to round the bend. For a short distance Ned's battered silk top-hat and the tip of his whip flitting along above the tasselled corn-stalks which intervened between the house and the road were the only evidence of the vehicle's approach, and then it turned sharply in at the wagon-gate.

"My Lord, the dang thing's empty!" Wrinkle cried. "I wonder if she fell out comin' down the mountain, an' Ned never noticed it?"

A full and rather startling explanation was furnished by the negro, when he had reined in at the steps. Ben Warren was dead and was to be buried the next day. Mrs. Henley had been too much overcome by careful watching at his bedside and grief to write, but she had sent the carriage over for the Wrinkles, whom she wished to attend the funeral. She wanted them to bring a good many things to wear, as they might have to stay some time to keep her company in her loneliness.