His train was rather late, and as it drew up before the platform he glanced at his watch in some anxiety. His audience for the lecture must already have begun to turn their faces toward the hall in which the evening's entertainment was to be held. He had hoped to reach his journey's end half an hour earlier. He had wanted a few minutes with Latimer, whose presence near him had become so much a part of his existence, that after an absence he felt he had lacked him. He took a carriage at the depot and drove quickly to their rooms. They were to leave them in a day or two and return to Willowfield. Already some of their possessions had been packed up. The sitting-room struck him as looking a little bare as he entered it.

"Is Mr. Latimer out," he asked the mulatto who brought up his valise.

"Yes, sir. He was called out by a message. He left a note for you on the desk."

Baird went to the desk and found it. It contained only a few lines.

"Everything is prepared for you. The audience will be the best you have had at any time. I have been sent for by the man Stamps. He is ill of pneumonia and wishes to deliver some letters to me. I will be with you before you go on the platform."

Since he had left Washington, Baird had heard from Latimer but once and then but briefly. He had felt that his dark mood was upon him, and this reference to letters recalled the fact.

"Stamps is the little man with the cattle claim," he commented to himself. "He comes from the neighbourhood of the Cross-roads. What letters could he have to hand over?"

And he began to dress, wondering vaguely.

* * * * *

Stamps had spent a sleepless night. He could not sleep because his last interview with Linthicum had driven him hard, even though he had been able to promise him the required five hundred dollars; he also could not sleep because the air of the city had been full of talk about the promising outlook of the De Willoughby claim. Over the reports he had heard, he had raged almost with tears.

"The Dwillerbys is ristycrats," he had said. "They're ristycrats, an' it gives 'em a pull even if they was rebels an' Southerners. A pore man ez works hard an' ain't nothin' but a honest farmer, an' a sound Union man ain't got no show. Ef I'd been a ristycrat I could hev got inflooence ez hed hev pulled wires fur me. But I hain't nothin' but my loyal Union principles. I ain't no ristycrat, an' I never aimed to be none."

The bitterness of his nervous envy would have kept him awake if he had had no other reason for being disturbed, but most of all he was sleepless, because he was desperately ill and in danger he knew nothing of. Cold and weeks of semi-starvation, anxiety, excitement, and drenched garments had done the little man to death, and he lay raging with fever and stabbed with pain at each indrawn breath, tossing and gasping and burning, but thinking only of Linthicum and the herds and the scraps of paper which were to bring him five hundred dollars. He was physically wretched, but even while he was racked with agonised fits of coughing and prostrated with pain it did not occur to him to think that he was in danger. He was too wholly absorbed in other thoughts. The only danger he recognised was the danger that there might be some failure in his plans—that Linthicum might give him up—that the parson might back out of his bargain, realising that after all letters unsigned save by a man's Christian name were not substantial evidence. Perhaps he would not come at all; perhaps he would leave the city; perhaps if he came he would refuse to give more than half or quarter the sum asked. Then Linthicum would throw him over—he knew Linthicum would throw him over. He uttered a small cry like a tortured cat.

"I know he'll do it," he said. "I seen it in his eye yesterday, when he let out on me an' said he was a-gettin' sick of the business. I shed hev kept my mouth shut. I'd said too much an' it made him mad. He'll throw me over Monday mornin' ef I don't take him the money on Sunday."

He ate nothing all through the day but lay waiting for the passing of the hours. He had calculated as to which post would bring the letter from Minty. He had written to tell her of the hiding-place in which he had kept the bits of paper safe and dry through all the years. She was to enclose them in a stout envelope and send them to him.

Through the long, dragging day he lay alone burning, gasping, fighting for his breath in the attacks of coughing which seemed to tear his lungs asunder. There was a clock in a room below whose striking he could hear each hour. Between each time it struck he felt as if weeks elapsed. Sometimes it was months. He had begun to be light-headed and to think queer things. Once or twice he heard a man talking in a croaking wail, and after a few minutes realised that it was himself, and that he did not know what he had said, though he knew he had been arguing with Linthicum, who was proving to him that his claim was too rotten to have a ghost of a chance. By the time the afternoon post arrived he was semi-delirious and did not know how it happened that he at last found himself holding Minty's letter in his hand. He laughed hysterically when he opened it. It was all right. There were the two yellowed sheets of paper—small sheets, written close, and in a peculiar hand. He had often studied the handwriting, and believed if he had seen it again he should know it. It was small but strong and characteristic, though that was not what he had called it.

"Ef I'd hed more time an' could hev worked it out more—an' got him to write suthin' down—I could hev hed more of a hold," he said, plaintively, "but Linthicum wouldn't give me no time."

The post arrived earlier than he had expected it, and this gave him time to lie and fret and listen again for the striking of the clock in the room downstairs. The waiting became too long, and as his fever increased he became insanely impatient and could not restrain himself. To lie and listen for his visitor's footsteps upon the stairs—to lie until seven o'clock—if he did not come till then, would be more than he could endure. That would give him too long to think over what Linthicum would do if the whole sum were not forthcoming—to think of the reasons why the parson might make up his mind to treat the letters as if they were worthless. He lay and gnawed his finger-nails anew.

"I wouldn't give nothin' for 'em ef I was in his place," he muttered. "Ef thar'd been anythin' in 'em that proved anythin' I should hev used 'em long sence. But then I'm a business man an' he's a parson, an' doesn't know nothin' about the laws. But he might go to some man—say a man like Linthicum—who could put him up to things. Good Lord!" in a new panic, "he mayn't come at all. He might jest stay away."

He became so overwrought by this agonising possibility that instead of listening for the striking of the clock, he began to listen for the sound of some passing footstep—the footstep of someone passing by chance who might be sent to the parson with a note. With intolerable effort and suffering he managed to drag himself up and get hold of a piece of paper and a pencil to write the following lines:

"The letters hes come. You'd as well come an' get 'em. Others will pay for 'em ef ye don't want 'em yerself."

His writing of the last sentence cheered his spirits. It was a support to his small, ignorant cunning. "He'll think someone else is biddin' agen him," he said. "Ef there was two of 'em biddin', I could get most anythin' I axed."

After he had put the communication in an envelope he dragged himself to the door almost bent double by the stabbing pain in his side. Once there he sat down on the floor to listen for footsteps.

"It's hard work this yere," he panted, shivering with cold in spite of his fever, "but it's better than a-lyin' thar doin' nothin'."

At length he heard steps. They were the running, stamping feet of a boy who whistled as he came.

Stamps opened the door and whistled himself—a whistle of summons and appeal. The boy, who was on his way with a message to another room, hesitated a minute and then came forward, staring at the sight of the little, undressed, shivering man with his head thrust into the passage.

"Hallo!" he said, "what d'yer want?"

"Want ye to carry this yere letter to a man," Stamps got out hoarsely. "I'll give ye a quarter. Will ye do it?"

"Yes." And he took both note and money, still staring at the abnormal object before him.

When the messenger arrived Latimer was reading the letters which had arrived by the last delivery. One of them was from Baird, announcing the hour of his return to the city. Latimer held it in his hand when Stamps's communication was brought to him.

"Tell the messenger that I will come," he said.

* * * * *

It was not long before Stamps heard his slow approach sounding upon the bare wooden stairs. He mounted the steps deliberately because he was thinking. He was thinking as he had thought on his way through the streets. In a few minutes he should be holding in his hand letters written by the man who had been Margery's murderer—the letters she had hidden and clung to and sobbed over in the blackness of her nights. And they had been written twenty years ago, and Margery had changed to dust on the hillside under the pines. And nothing could be undone and nothing softened. But for the sake of the little old woman ending her days quietly in Willowfield—and for the sake of Margery's memory—yes, he wanted to save the child's memory—but for these things there would be no use in making any effort to secure the papers. Yet he was conscious of a dread of the moment when he should take them into his hand.

Stamps turned eager, miserable eyes upon him as he came in.

"I thought mebbe ye'd made up yer mind to let the other feller hev them," he said. "Hev ye brought the money in bills?"

Latimer stood and looked down at him. "Do you know how ill you are?" he said.

"Wal, I guess I kin feel a right smart—but I don't keer so's things comes my way. Hev ye got the money with ye?"

"Yes. Where are the papers?"

"Whar's the money?"

Latimer took out a pocket-book and opened it that he might see.

Stamps's countenance relaxed. The tension was relieved.

"Thet's far an' squar," he said. "D'ye wanter know whar I found 'em? Tom Dwillerby never knowed I hed more than a envelope—an' I tuk care not to tell him the name that was writ on it. Ye was mighty smart never to let no one know yer name; I don't know how you done it, 'ceptin' that ye kept so much to yerselves."

Latimer remained silent, merely standing and letting him talk, as he seemed to have a feverish, half-delirious tendency to do. He lay plucking at the scanty bed-covering and chuckling.

"'Twas five years arter the child was born," he went on. "I was ridin' through Blair's Holler an' it come to me sudden to go in an' hev a look round keerful. I looked keerful—mighty keerful—an' at last I went on my hands an' knees an' crawled round, an' there was a hole between the logs, an' I seen a bit of white—I couldn't hev seen it ef I hadn't been crawlin' an' looked up. An' I dug it out. It hed been hid mighty secret." He put his hand under his wretched pillow. "Give me the money," he wheezed. "When ye lay it in my hand I'll pass the envelope over to ye. Count it out first."

Latimer counted the bills. This was the moment. Twenty years gone by—and nothing could be changed. He put the money on the bed.

Stamps withdrew his hand from under the pillow. A stout, ill-directed envelope was in its grasp and he passed it over to Latimer. He was shivering and beginning to choke a little, but he grinned.

"I reckin' it's all right," he said. "D'ye want to read 'em now?"

"No," Latimer answered, and putting them in his breast-pocket walked out of the room.

He passed down the stairs and into the avenue where the lamps were lighted and which wore its usual somewhat deserted evening air. He walked along quietly for some minutes. He did not quite know where he was going. Having left a line for Baird explaining his absence, he had time to spare. If he wished to be alone, he could be so until the hour of the beginning of the lecture. For certain reasons it would be necessary that he should see Baird before he went upon the platform. Yes, he must be alone. His mood required it. He would go somewhere and look at the two yellowed letters written twenty years ago. He did not know why it was that he felt he must look at them, but he knew he must. They would satisfy no curiosity if he felt it, and he had none. Perhaps it was the old tragic tender feeling for Margery which impelled him. Perhaps he unconsciously longed to read that this man had loved her—that she had not given her life for nothing—that the story had not been one of common caprice and common treachery. As he walked his varied thoughts surged through his brain disconnectedly. Every now and then he involuntarily put his hand to his breast-pocket to feel the envelope. Once there crossed his mind a memory of the woman whose boy had died and who dare not let herself recall him, and so be swept back into the black maelstrom of woe. To-night, with these things on his breast, it was not twenty years since he had heard Margery's dying cries—it was last night—last night—and the odour of the pine-trees was in his nostrils—the sough of their boughs in his ears.

He stopped near the entrance to the grounds of the Smithsonian Institute. They were as secluded as a private park at this time, but here and there was a seat and a light. He turned in and found his way to the most retired part where he could find these things—a bench to sit down on, a light to aid him to read. He heard his own breathing as he sat down; he felt the heavy, rapid pulsations of his heart, as he took the papers from his breast his hand was shaking, he could not hold it still. He took out more papers than the envelope Stamps had given him. He drew forth with this the letter which had arrived from Baird, and which he had been reading when the messenger arrived. He had abstractedly put it in his pocket. It fell from his shaking hand upon the ground at his feet, and he let it lie there, forgetful of its existence.

Then he withdrew the two letters from the large envelope and opened one of them.

* * * * *

He read them through once—twice—three times—four. Then he began again. He had read them a dozen times before he closed them. He had read them word by word, poring over each character, each turn of phrase, as a man might pore over an enigma or a document written in a foreign language of which he only knew stray words. If his hands had shaken at first, he had not turned a page before his whole body was shaking and his palms, his forehead, his hair were damp with cold dew. He had uttered one sharp, convulsed exclamation like a suffocated cry—then he went on reading—reading—reading—and shuddering as he read. They were not long letters, but after he had read them once he understood them, and each time he read them again he understood them better. Yes, he could translate them. They were the farewells of a man tossed by a whirlwind of passionate remorseful grief. The child had been loved—her very purity had been loved while she had been destroyed and deceived. The writer poured forth heart-sick longing and heart-sick remorse. He had not at first meant to conceal from her that he was not a free man—then he had lost control over his very being—and he had lost his soul. When she had discovered the truth and had not even reproached him but had stood silent—without a word—and gazed at him with her childish, agonised, blue-flower eyes—he had known that if men had souls his was damned. There was no pardon—he could ask none—pardon would not undo—death itself would not undo what he had done. "Margery! Margery! Oh! child—God hear me if there is God to hear—I loved you—I love you—Death will not undo that either."

He was going abroad to join his wife. He spoke of the ship he sailed on. Latimer knew its name and who had sailed in it. In the second letter he besought her to let him see and speak one word to her—but knew she would not grant his prayer. He had seen her in the street, and had not dared to approach. "I did not fear what a man might fear from other women," he wrote. "I felt that it might kill you, suddenly to see me near when you could not escape."

And after he had read it a third time Latimer realised a ghastly truth. The man who wrote had gone away unknowing of the blackness of the tragedy he had left behind. He plainly had not known the secret Death itself had helped to hide. Perhaps when he had gone Margery herself had not known the worst.

Latimer, having finished his reading, rested his head on his hand for a dull moment and stared down at the letter lying upon the ground at his feet—the letter he had dropped as he took out the others. He felt as if he had not strength or inclination to pick it up—he had passed through a black storm which had swept away from him the power to feel more than a dull, heavy, physical prostration.

But after a few minutes he stooped and picked the letter up. He laid it on his knee by the other two and sat gazing again.

"He did not know," he said, in a colourless voice. "I told him. He heard it first from me when I told him how she died."

The handwriting of the letters was Baird's—every character and word and phrase were his—Baird was the man who had written them.



CHAPTER XXXIX

The street in which the lecture hall stood began to wear the air of being a centre of interest some time before the doors of the building were opened. People who had not been able to obtain reserved seats wished to arrive early. The lectures which had begun by being popular had ended by being fashionable. At the outset an audience of sober, religious tendencies had attended them, but after the first one had been delivered other elements had presented themselves. There had been a sprinkling of serious scientific men, a prominent politician or so, some society women whose faces and toilettes were well-known and lavishly described in the newspapers. On this last night the audience was largely of the fashionable political world. Carriages drove up one after another and deposited well-dressed persons who might have been expected that night to appear at certain brilliant social functions, and who had come to hear "Repentance" instead.

"He has always had good audiences," said a member of the Committee of Arrangement, "but he has never had one like this—in Washington at least. There is the Secretary of State with his wife and daughter. I believe the President is to be here. He has awakened an enormous interest. The house will be literally crammed. They are filling the aisle with seats already."

Baird was in the small retiring-room which had been arranged for his convenience. His journey had somewhat fatigued him, and he was in the physical and mental condition to feel glad that this lecture was to be the last of the series. He was going back to Willowfield, though he was not to remain there. He had received a call from an important church in New York and had accepted it. He was endeavouring to make arrangements that Latimer could be near him. On his return this evening he had found a letter he had been expecting. It referred to Latimer, and he was anxious to talk it over with him. He wished he would come in, and felt a little restless over his delay, though he knew they would have time to say but few words to each other before it was time for the lecture to begin. He walked up and down the room looking down at the green carpet and thinking, his thoughts wandering vaguely to the little pursuant of the herd claim and the letters he had wanted to deliver. He smiled faintly, remembering the small frame in the over-large clothes and the bucolic countenance with its over-sharpness of expression.

The member of the committee looked into the room.

"They are beginning to turn people away from the doors," he said. "Half the Cabinet is here—I never saw such an audience."

As he went away smiling, someone passed him in entering the room. Baird, who was smiling also, changed his expression of courteous appreciation to a smile of greeting, for the man who had entered was Latimer.

He advanced, holding out his hand.

"I am glad you have come," he began to say. "I wanted at least a word with you before I went on."

Then his smile died out, leaving blank amazement which a breath's space later was alarmed questioning. He recalled later how for a second he stood and stared. Latimer's face was white and damp with sweat. Its lines were drawn and sunken deep. His eyes were fixed on the man before him with something which had a ghastly resemblance to an unsteady smile which was not a smile at all. He looked as if illness—or death—or madness had struck him. He did not seem a sane man, and yet a stillness so deadly was expressed by his whole being that it seemed to fill the small, neat, business-like green-room.

Baird strode towards him and seized him by the shoulder.

"What is it? What is it? What is it?" he cried out.

Latimer's face did not alter in a line. He fumbled stiffly in his breast-pocket and held out some pieces of yellowed letter-paper—this being done stiffly, too. He spoke in a hoarse whisper. It seemed to search every corner of the room and echo there.

"See!" he said. "These are two letters. A man wrote them to a poor, half-mad child twenty years ago."

The door opened, and the member of the committee looked in again, radiant with exultation.

"The audience waiting in such breathless silence that you might hear a pin drop. Two thousand of them, if there's one. Ten minutes to eight."

"Thank you," answered Baird.

The door closed again and he stood looking at Latimer's rigid hand and the papers.

"They were written to Margery," went on Latimer. "Stamps found them in a chink in the logs. She had hidden them there that she might take them out and sob over and kiss them. I used to hear her in the middle of the night."

Baird snatched them from his hand. He fell into a chair near the table and dropped his face upon the yellowed fragments, pressing them against his lips with awful sobbing sounds, as if he would wrest from them the kisses the long-dead girl had left there.

"I, too!" he cried. "I, too! Oh! my God! Margery!"

"Don't say 'God!'" said Latimer. "When she was dying, in an agony of fear, she said it. Not that word! Another!"

He said no other—and Latimer drew nearer to him.

"You wrote them," he said. "They are written in your hand—in your words—I should know them anywhere. You may deny it. I could prove nothing. I do not want to prove anything. Deny it if you will."

Baird rose unsteadily. The papers were clutched in his hand. His face was marred by the unnaturalness of a man's tears.

"Do you think I shall deny it?" he answered. "It is true. I have sat and listened to your talk of her and thought I should go quite mad. You have told me of her tortures, and I have listened. I did not know—surely she did not know herself—of the child—when I went away. It is no use saying to you—how should it be?—that I loved her—that I was frenzied by my love of her innocent sweetness!"

"No, there is no use," answered Latimer, in a voice actually void of emotion, "but I daresay it is true."

"There is no use in calling myself by any of the names invented for the men who bring about such tragedies. They are true of some men perhaps, but they were not true of me. I don't know what was true of me. Something worse than has ever been put into words perhaps, for I loved her and I have loved her for twenty years. I would have given up my career—my life, anything she had asked!"

"But when she found you had acted a lie to her——"

"It seemed to fill her with the frantic terror of a child. I dare not approach her. I think she thought she would be struck dead by Heaven. Great God! how I understood your story of her prayers. And it was I—it was I!"

He turned on Latimer with a kind of ferocity.

"You have crucified me!" he cried out. "Let that comfort you. You have crucified me by her side, that I might see her die—that I might hear her low little piteous voice—that I might see her throes and terrors. And I love her—and remember every look of her loving child's eyes—every curve and quiver of her mouth. Through all the years I have been crucified, knowing I had earned all that I felt."

Latimer moved across the room, putting the table between them. He went and stood by the mantel. A murmur of impatient applause from the audience came through the door.

"You loved her," he said, standing with his hand holding something in his breast. "And I loved you. She was the one brightness of my life when I was a boy and you were its one brightness when I was a man. You gave me a reason for living. I am not the kind of man to be my own reason. I needn't tell you what you have been to me. You were the one man on earth I dared to confess to. I knew you would understand and that you knew what pity was."

Baird groaned aloud. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief as he listened.

"I knew you were the one man I could trust. I could trust you. I could confide in you, and talk to you about Margery. One day you said to me that you had learned to love her and that we might have been brothers."

"When I was left free I had but one thought," Baird said, "to return to her—to atone, so far as atonement could be—to pray of her upon my knees. But she was dead—she was dead!"

"Yes, she was dead, and I had no one left to talk to about her. You were my one comfort and support and friend."

He drew his hand out of his breast. Baird started and then stood quite quiet. The hand held a pistol.

"Are you going to kill me?" he said. "You know I asked you that once before."

"No," said Latimer, "I am not going to kill you. I am going to kill the man who loved you, and found you his reason for living. It's all done with!"

"No! no!" shrieked Baird, and he hurled himself across the table like a madman. "No! You are not! No, Latimer! No! God! No!"

They were struggling together—Baird hung to his arm and tried to drag the pistol from his grasp. But it was no use; Latimer's long, ill-hung limbs were the stronger. His fixed face did not change, but he wrenched himself free and flung Baird across the room. He set the pistol against his heart and pulled the trigger. He gave something like a leap and fell down.

The door opened for the returning member of the committee and the impatient applause of the audience came through it almost a roar.

Baird was struggling to rise as if his fall had stunned him. Latimer was stretched at full length, quite dead.



CHAPTER XL

Tom walked up the staircase pondering deeply. The De Willoughby claim was before the House. Judge Rutherford was making his great speech, and the chief claimant might have been expected to be sitting breathless in one of the galleries. But he was not. He was going to Baird, who had sent for him, and Baird was sitting in the room in which Latimer lay dead with a bullet in his heart. He had been sitting there for hours, and when Tom had arrived at the house he had been told that Baird had asked that he should be taken to him in the death-chamber. He was sitting on a chair by the bed on which Latimer was stretched, rigid with a still face, which looked like a mask of yellow wax, appearing above the exceeding freshness of the turned-down linen sheet. Baird did not move as Tom entered, but continued to gaze at the dread thing with dull, drooping eyes. Tom went to him and laid his hand on his shoulder. He saw the man was stupefied.

"There's nothing to say, Baird," he said after a silence, "when it comes to this."

"There is something for me to say," Baird answered, very quietly. "I want to say it before him, while he lies there. I wonder if he will hear?"

"He may."

"It would not do any good to anyone if he did," Baird said. "The blackness of it all lies in that—that he would not be helped, she would not be helped—I should not."

"She?" said Tom.

Baird got up at once, stiffly and unsteadily. He stood upright, the lithe-limbed slender form, which was so much admired upon the platform, held rigidly. His face looked lined and haggard.

"No other man shall feel an affection for me—I think you are beginning to feel an affection for me—under a false impression. That man loved me for long years, and I loved him. I think I helped him to something that was as near happiness as his nature would allow him to feel. God knows I owed it to him. I was one of those who repented too late. That is why I have preached of repentance. I have done it with a secret, frenzied hope."

"Did he know your reason?" asked Tom.

"Not until last night. When he knew it, he killed himself."

"Because—?" began Tom.

"Because he had loved and trusted me for half a lifetime—because I was the one human creature to whom he had confided the tragedy of his life—knowing he would be sure of comprehension and sympathy. It was to me he poured forth the story of that poor child. You saw her die. She was his sister. And I——"

Tom turned and looked at the face of the dead man and then, slowly, to the face of the living one, who stood before him.

"You—were the man?" he said.

"Yes."

Tom turned to the dead man again. He put his big, warm hand with a curiously suggestive movement—a movement somehow suggesting protection—upon the stiff, clasped fingers.

"No, poor fellow!" he said, as if speaking to him. "You—no, no, there was nothing but this—for you. God have mercy on us."

"No," said Baird, "there was nothing else for him. I know that. Everything was whirled away. I had hours last night thinking there is nothing else for me. Perhaps there is not. But first I shall take his body back to his mother. I must tell her lies. This is the result of an accident. That is what I shall tell her. She is a little old woman who will not live long. I must take care of her—and let her talk to me about her son who loved me—and her daughter."

He began to walk up and down the room.

"A man does not live—for fifteen years—side by side with another—that other loving him wholly—and see the blackness of his own deed laid bare—and hear again and again of the woe he has wrought—he does not live so in peace."

"No," answered Tom.

"I tell you—" wildly—"I tell you there have been hours—as he has talked to me of her—when the cold sweat has stood upon my flesh."

He came back to Tom. He was frantic with agonised restlessness.

"In all the cruelty of it," he cried, "there seems to have been one human pitying soul. It was yours. You were tender to her in those last hours. You were merciful—you held her hand when she died."

"Yes," said Tom, in a somewhat husky voice, since he remembered it so well, "she was frightened. Her little hand was cold. I took it in mine and told her not to be afraid."

Baird flung out his own hand with a movement of passionate feeling—then let it fall at his side.

"We shall not meet again," he said, "you will not want to see me."

Big Tom gave him a long, steady look.

"Good Lord, man!" he said, after it, "am I the man to judge another? I've made nothing of life."

"You have done no creature a wrong," Baird said. "And you have helped some to happiness."

"Well," admitted Big Tom, "perhaps that's true. But I've been a lumbering failure myself. I've just judgment enough now to know that there's nothing a man can say about a thing like this—nothing—and just sense enough not to try to say it."

"If you go back to North Carolina," asked Baird, "may I come to see you—and to see her? She need never know."

"I shouldn't want her to know," Tom answered, "but you may come. We shall go back, and I intend to let those two young ones set up a Garden of Eden of their own. It will be a good thing to look on at. Yes, you may come."

"That is mercifulness," said Baird, and this time when he put out his hand he did not withdraw it, and Tom gave it a strong, sober clasp which expressed more than one emotion.

* * * * *

When Tom returned to the little house near Dupont Circle, Uncle Matt wore a rigidly repressed air as he opened the door, and Miss Burford stood in the hall as if waiting for something. Her ringlets were shaken by a light tremor.

"We have either won the claim this afternoon or lost it," Tom said to himself, having glanced at both of them and exchanged the usual greeting.

They had won it.

Judge Rutherford was striding up and down the sitting-room, but it was Sheba who was deputed to tell the news.

She did it in a little scene which reminded him of her childhood. She drew him to a chair and sat down on his knee, clasping both slim, tender arms round his neck, tears suddenly rushing into her eyes.

"You and Rupert are rich men, Uncle Tom, darling," she said. "The claim has passed. You are rich. You need never be troubled about mortgages again."

He was conscious of a tremendous shock of relief. He folded her in his arms as if she had been a baby.

"Thank the Lord!" he said. "I didn't know I should be so glad of it."



CHAPTER XLI

The unobtrusive funeral cortege had turned the corner of Bank Street and disappeared from view almost an hour ago. In the front room of the house in which had lived the man just carried to his grave, the gentle old woman who had been his mother sat and looked with pathetic patience at Miss Amory Starkweather as the rough winds of the New England early spring rushed up the empty thoroughfare and whirled through the yet unleafed trees. Miss Amory had remained after the other people had gone away, and she was listening to the wind, too.

"We are both old women," she had said. "We have both lived long enough to have passed through afternoons like this more than once before. Howsoever bad other hours may be, it seems to me that these are always the worst."

"Just after—everything—has been taken away," Mrs. Latimer said now; "the house seems so empty. Faith," tremulously, "even Faith can't help you not to feel that everything has gone—such a long, long way off."

She did not wipe away the tear that fell on her cheek. She looked very small and meek in her deep mourning. She presented to Miss Amory's imagination the figure of a lovable child grown old without having lost its child temperament.

"But I must not complain," she went on, with an effort to smile at Miss Amory's ugly old intelligently sympathetic countenance. "It must have been all over in a second, and he could have felt no pain at all. Death by accident is always an awful shock to those left behind; but it must scarcely be like death to—those who go. He was quite well; he had just bought the pistol and took it out to show to Mr. Baird. Mr. Baird himself did not understand how it happened."

"It is nearly always so—that no one quite sees how it is done," Miss Amory answered. "Do not let yourself think of it."

She was sitting quite near to Mrs. Latimer, and she leaned forward and put her hand over the cold, little, shrivelled one lying on the lap of the mourning-dress.

"Though it was so sudden," she said, "it was an end not unlike Margery's—the slipping out of life without realising that the last hour had come."

"Yes; I have thought that, too."

She looked up at the portrait on the wall—the portrait of the bright girl-face. Her own face lighted into a smile.

"It is so strange to think that they are together again," she said. "They will have so much to tell each other."

"Yes," said Miss Amory; "yes."

She got up herself and went and stood before the picture. Mrs. Latimer rose and came and stood beside her.

"Mr. Baird has been with me every day," she said. "He has been like a son to me."

A carriage drew up before the house, and, as the occupant got out, both women turned to look.

Mrs. Latimer turned a shade paler.

"They have got back from the funeral," she said. "It is Mr. Baird."

Then came the ring at the front door, the footsteps in the passage, and Baird came into the room. He was haggard and looked broken and old, but his manner was very gentle when he went to the little old woman and took her hands.

"I think he scarcely knew he had so many friends at Janney's Mills," he said. "A great many of them came. When I turned away the earth was covered with flowers."

He drew her to a chair and sat by her. She put her white head on his arm and cried.

"He was always so sad," she said. "He thought people never cared for him. But he was good—he was good. I felt sure they must love him a little. It will be better for him—now."

Miss Amory spoke from her place before the fire, where she stood rigidly, with a baffled look on her face. Her voice was low and hoarse.

"Yes," she said, with eager pitifulness. "It will be better now."

The little mother lifted her wet face, still clinging to Baird's arm as she looked up at him.

"And I have it to remember," she sobbed, "that you—you were his friend, and that for years you made him happier than he had ever been. He said you gave him a reason for living."

Baird was ashen pale. She stooped and softly kissed the back of his hand.

"Somehow," she said, "you seemed even to comfort him for Margery. He seemed to bear it better after he knew you. I shall not feel as if they were quite gone away from me while I can talk to you about them. You will spare an hour now and then to come and sit with me?" She looked round the plain, respectable little room with a quiet finality. "I am too old and tired to live long," she added.

It was Baird who kissed her hand now, with a fervour almost passion. Miss Amory started at sight of his action, and at the sound of the voice in which he spoke.

"Talk to me as you would have talked to him," he said. "Think of me as you would have thought of him. Let me—in God's name, let me do what there is left me!"

* * * * *

Miss Amory's carriage had waited before the gate, and when she went out to it Baird went with her.

After he had put her into it he stood a moment on the pavement and looked at her.

"I want to come with you," he said. "May I?"

"Yes," she answered, and made room for him at her side.

But he took the seat opposite to her and leaned back, shutting his eyes while Miss Amory's rested upon him. The life and beauty which had been such ever-present characteristics of his personality seemed to have left him never to return. Miss Amory's old nerves were strung taut. She had passed through many phases of feeling with regard to him as the years had gone by. During those years she had believed that she knew a hidden thing of him known by no other person. She had felt herself a sort of silent detective in the form of an astute old New England gentlewoman. She had abhorred and horribly pitied him. She had the clear judicial mind which must inevitably see the tragic pitifulness of things. She had thought too much to be able to indulge in the primitive luxury of unqualified condemnation. As she watched him to-day during their drive through the streets, she realised that she beheld a kind of suffering not coming under the head of any ordinary classification. It was a hopeless, ghastly thing, a breaking up of life, a tearing loose of all the cords to which a man might anchor his existence.

When they reached the house and entered the parlour, she went to her chair and sat down—and waited. She knew she was waiting, and believed she knew what for. In a vague way she had always felt that an hour like this would come to them. They were somehow curiously akin. Baird began to walk to and fro. His lips were trembling. Presently he turned towards the rigid figure in the chair and stood still.

"It was not an accident," he said. "He killed himself."

"That I felt sure of," Miss Amory answered. "Tell me why he did it."

Baird began to tremble a little himself.

"Yes, I will," he said. "I must. I suppose—there is a sort of hysteric luxury in—confession. He did it because there was nothing else left. The foundations of his world had been torn from under his feet. Everything was gone." His voice broke into a savage cry. "Oh! in one short lifetime—the black misery a man can bring about!"

"Yes," said Miss Amory.

He threw himself into a chair near her.

"For years—years," he said, "he hid a secret." Miss Amory bent forward. She felt she must help him a little—for pity's sake.

"Was it the secret of Margery?" she half whispered.

"Did you know it?"

"When a woman has spent a long life alone, thinking—thinking," she answered, "she has had time to learn to observe and to work at problems. The day she fainted in the street and I took her home in my carriage, I began to fear—to guess. She was not only a girl who was ill—she was a child who was being killed with some horror; she was heart-breaking. I used to go and see her. In the end I knew."

"I—did not," he said, looking at her with haggard eyes.

There was a long pause. She knew he had told her all in the one sentence—all she had guessed.

"She did not know I knew," she went on, presently. "She believed no one knew. Oh, I tell you again, she was heart-breaking! She did not know that there were wild moments when she dropped words that could be linked into facts and formed into a chain."

"Had you formed it," he asked, "when you wrote and told me she had died?"

"Yes. It had led me to you—to nothing more. I felt death had saved her from what would have been worse. It seemed as if—the blackest devil—would be glad to know."

"I am the blackest devil, perhaps," he said, with stony helplessness, "but when I received your letter I was grovelling on my knees praying that I might get back to her—and atone—as far as a black devil could."

"And she was dead," said Miss Amory, wringing her hands together on her lap; "dead—dead."

She stopped suddenly and turned on him. "He killed himself," she cried, "because he found out that it was you!"

"Yes. I was the one man he loved—he had told his secret to me—to me!—the black devil. Now—now I must go to his mother, day after day, and be her son—because I was his friend—and knew his love for Margery—and of her sweetness—and her happy, peaceful death. He used to talk to me for hours; she—poor, tender soul—will talk to me again—of Margery—Margery—Margery—and of Lucien, whose one happiness I was."

"It will—almost—be—enough," said Miss Amory, slowly.

"Yes," he answered; "it will almost be enough—even for a black devil."

And he turned on his chair and laid his face on his folded arms and sobbed like a woman.



CHAPTER XLII

The springtime sunshine had been smiling upon Talbot's Cross-roads all the day. It was not hot, but warm, and its beauty was added to by the little soft winds which passed through the branches of the blossoming apple and pear trees and shook the fragrance from them. The brown earth was sweet and odorous, as it had been on the Sunday morning Sheba had knelt and kissed it, and the garden had covered itself, as then, with hyacinths and daffodils and white narcissus.

During the last weeks the Cross-roads had existed in something like a state of delirium. People rode in from the mountains and returned to their homes after hours of conversation, semi-stupefied with enjoyment. Tom D'Willerby had won his claims. After months of mystified discouragement, in which the Cross-roads seemed to have lost him in a vague and distant darkness, life had seemed to begin again. Nobody was sufficiently analytical of mind to realise in what measure big Tom D'Willerby had been the centre of the community, which was scattered over miles of mountain road and wood and clearing. But when he had disappeared many things seemed to melt away with him. In fact, a large, shrewd humanity was missing.

"I'll be doggered," had been a remark of Mr. Doty's in the autumn, "ef crops hes done es well sence he went."

There had been endless talk of the villanous tendencies of Government officials, and of the tricks played whose end was to defraud honest and long-suffering claimants of their rights. There had even been dark hours when it had seemed possible that the vitiating effect of Washington life might cause deterioration in the character of even the most upright. Could Tom himself stand it, and what would be its effect on Sheba?

But when the outlook was the most inauspicious, Fortune's wheel had swept round once and all was changed.

A letter brought the news—a simple enough letter from Tom himself. The claim was won. They were coming back to Hamlin County, he and Sheba and Rupert De Willoughby. Sheba and Rupert were to be married and spend the first weeks of their honeymoon on the side of the mountain which had enclosed the world the child Sheba had first known.

On this particular day every man and woman who had known and played with her appeared at the Cross-roads. There had not been a large number of them perhaps, but gathered together at and about the Post-office and about the house and garden, they formed a crowd, as crowds are counted in scattered communities. They embodied excitement enough to have exhilarated a much larger body of people. Half a dozen women had been helping Aunt Mornin for days. The house wore a gala air, and the cellar was stored with offerings of cake and home-made luxuries. The garden was a mass of radiant scented bloom of spring. Mis' Doty sat at the open window of the kitchen and, looking out on nodding daffodils, apple-blossom, and pink peach-flower warmed in the sun, actually chuckled as she joyfully sniffled the air.

"The way them things smells," she said, "an' the hummin' o' them bees goin' about as ef the world hadn't nothin' but flowers an' honey in it, seems like it was all jest got up for them two young uns. Lordy, I do declar', it's a plum sight."

"That bin a heap got up for 'em, seems like," said Molly Hollister, smiling at the nearest apple-tree as if it were a particular friend. "Fust off, they're dead in love with each other, an' we uns all knows how that makes people feel—even in the dead o' winter, an' when they ain't a penny in their pockets; they're as good-hearted as they kin be—an' es hansum'—an' they're rich, an' they was married this mornin', an' they're comin' home with Tom D'Willerby to a place an' folks that loves 'em—an' the very country an' the things that grows seems as if they was dressed out for a weddin'. An' it's Sheba as Tom took me to look at lyin' in her little old wooden cradle in the room behind the store."

She laughed, as she said it, a little hysteric laugh, with suddenly moist eyes. She was an emotional creature.

The road had been watched steadily for many hours before any arrival could have been legitimately expected. It gave restless interest—something to do. At noon one of Molly Hollister's boys came running breathlessly up the road, waving his hat.

"They're a-comin'!" he shouted. "They're a-comin'! They're in a fine carriage."

"Let Tom D'Willerby alone for havin' the finest team in Hamlin," said Mr. Doty, with a neighbourly grin.

Almost immediately the carriage was to be seen. The horses lifted their feet high, and stepped at a pace which was felt worthy of the occasion. Uncle Matt drove. Rupert and Sheba sat side by side. They looked very young and beautiful, and rather shy. They had only been married a few hours, and were bewildered by the new radiance of things. Big Tom humanely endeavoured not to look at them, but found it difficult to avert his eyes for any length of time. There was that about them which drew his gaze back in spite of himself.

"That's old Tom!" he heard familiar voices proclaim, as they drew near the Post-office. "Howdy, Tom! Howdy, Sheby! Wish ye much joy! Wish ye much joy!"

Then the horses stopped, and the crowd of long-known faces surged near and were all about the carriage. The clamour of the greeting voices, the grasping of one hand after another seemed to Sheba and Rupert like something happening in a dream. They were too far away from earth to feel it real just now, though it was part of the happiness of things—like the sunshine and the soft wind and the look in Tom's eyes, when, amid hand-shakes and congratulations, and welcoming laughter, he himself laughed back in his old way.

"Ye look jest like ye used ter, Tom—jest like ye used ter," cried Jake Doty. "Ye hain't changed a durned bit!"

* * * * *

How did the day pass? Who knows? What does it matter? It was full of strange beauty, and strange happiness, and strange life for two young souls at least. People came and went, congratulating, wondering, rejoicing. Talbot's Cross-roads felt that it had vicariously come into the possession of wealth and dignity of position. Among the many visitors, Mrs. Stamps rode up on a clay-bank mare. She was attired in the black calico riding-skirt and sunbonnet which represented the mourning garb of the mountain relict.

"I'm a widder," she said to big Tom, in a tone not unresigned. "Ye got yer claim through, but Stamps hadn't no influence, an' he was took off by pneumony. Ketched cold runnin' to Linthicum, I guess. His landlady was a honest enough critter. She found a roll o' five hundred dollars hid in his bed when she went to lay him out, an' she sent it back to me. Lord knows whar he got it from—I don't. But it come in mighty handy."

By sunset the welcoming crowd had broken up and melted away into the mountains. Horses and ox-waggons had been mounted and ridden or driven homeward. The Post-office was closed; no one was to be seen in the porch. No one was to be seen anywhere except in the garden among the blossoms where Rupert and Sheba walked under the fragrance of the trees, talking to each other in low, softly broken words.

Tom sat in the porch and watched the moon rise in a sea of silver. The scents the wind wafted to him, the occasional sound of a far-off night-bird, the rustle of the leaves brought things back to him—things he had felt in his youth. There had been nights like this in the days when he had been a big, clumsy young fellow, wild with hopeless love for Delia Vanuxem. On such nights the air had been full of this night breath of flowers, the birds had stirred in their nests with just such sounds, the moon had mounted, as it did to-night, higher and higher in a sky it thrilled a man's soul to lift his face to.

"Yes, it was all like this," he said, leaning back and clasping his big hands behind his head. "Just like this! And those two out there are living it over again, only they've been fairly treated, and they are trembling with the joy of it. They're pretty safe," he ended. "They're pretty safe. They've had a fair show."

Rupert and Sheba walked slowly side by side. They saw and felt everything. If a bird stirred with a sleepy sound, they stopped to listen and smiled tremulously at each other. More than once Sheba knelt down and hid her face among the flowers, kissing them. Her arms were full of white blossoms. She and Rupert had made white garlands for her hair and waist, such as she had worn the night he had first seen her standing on her little balcony. When Rupert held her to his side, the scent from their crushed petals filled the air they breathed. The early night was at its stillest and fairest, and the moonlight seemed to flood all the world, when Sheba stopped and looked up, speaking softly:

"Shall we go now?" she said. "The moon will be shining down between the pines. It will be so quiet."

"Yes," he answered. "Let us go now."

They had planned weeks ago the things they were going to do. They were going to say good-night to the small mound at Blair's Hollow.

When they left their horses at the foot of the hill even the pines could not look darkly under the fair light. The balmy air passing through their branches made a sound as if it was hushing a child to sleep.

The little mound lay in the soft brightness of clear moonbeams. Sheba knelt beside it and began to lay her bridal blossoms on the grass-covered earth. Rupert stood and watched her. His heart beat with a reverent, rapturous tremor. She looked like a young angel.

She bent down and laid her cheek upon the grass; her arm was thrown out as if she clasped something to her girl's breast. She spoke in a whisper—thrilled with love. "I am happy," she said. "I am happy. Oh, do you hear? Do you hear?"

THE END