"You overwhelm me," she murmured.

"And, will you tell us, O gracious bewitcher, how you knew what I was whistling for?"

"Help me up and I will," her hands went out to him. "When you whistled, Uncle Zack yelled: 'I'se fixin' 'em!'"

"I shall have that nigger shot," the Colonel cried in delight. "Suppose poor, dear Lizzie had been here!"

"What time shall we start?" she turned to Brent, seeing Zack on his way from the house, and somehow feeling that she could not stay just then. Her aversion for this was increasing. She did not know how firmly, how stubbornly, Brent had begun to shut down on his own indulgences.

"Any time you say," he agreeably answered. "Is it town?"

"No, the convent chapel."

"But—er—you'll forgive my wretched memory if I can't seem to recall when these things take up?"

"Five o'clock, over there," she smiled.

"Five! I never heard of such an hour for church, did you, Colonel?"

"Most certainly, sir!" His affirmation suggested a long personal acquaintance with such matters. "They always begin at five!"

Jane gave him a quick, twinkling glance, but only added:

"I thought the vesper service might be cooler, and a pleasanter drive. We ought to start a little after four, don't you think so? And we'll take Bip, and Dale."

"I wouldn't stop there," Brent moodily suggested.

"I think that will be enough for one day," she laughed. "They're the principal ones whom—not who ought to go, you understand, but whom I want to go."

"But Bip is too young," he protested.

"'Suffer the little children—'" she said prettily.

"He'll go to sleep!"

"Then you may hold him."

"Maybe he'll snore!"

"Then you have my permission to choke him," she laughed.

Yet, he was very much in a pout, and staring gloomily at the ground.

"You'll be awfully crowded," he said at last, "with Dale in the buggy, too!"

"We'll take the surrey."

"And he'll be bored stiff!"

"Not from hearing complimentary things said to me," she gently rebuked him.

"Oh, Jane, be a sport and let's go alone! I'm worth saving, ain't I, Colonel?"

"You can't prove it by me, you rogue," the old gentleman asserted.

"I may think about it," she compromised, smiling over her shoulder as she turned away.

They drew up to the table and arranged the chess board. Zack stood waiting for the goblets, having no intention to leave these treacherous exhibits again at large should a spirit of fatigue overtake the players. So there was a prolonged pause while the men fortified themselves for the coming fray, and when the Colonel noisily sucked the very last drop through the cooling ice—and took a piece of this in his mouth to crunch—he leaned back with a sigh of satisfaction. Zack, as he walked slowly away, also sighed, but it held a curious mixture of perplexity and anticipation: perplexity, because Brent had scarcely drunk a third of his julep, and anticipation for an obvious reason.

"All the same," the engineer announced when they were alone, "Bip is too young!"

"Of course, he's too young," the Colonel heartily agreed. "Anybody's too young, or too old, or too something, when it comes to being third person on such a pleasant prospect. I would stand no intrusion, sir!"

"I didn't mean just that," Brent flushed.

"Certainly not, you altruistic and good natured liar," the old gentleman chuckled. "Come, sir; here goes pawn to King four! Now be on your guard!"

"To King four," Brent replied, leaning over and pushing out his own King's pawn.

They had not been playing many minutes when the Colonel, pausing to light a cigar, looked up with a start of surprise. Brent wheeled about and there stood Tom Hewlet, swaying awkwardly and weeping. It was uncanny the way he had approached so near without being heard.

"Well, Tom," the Colonel asked sharply, "what do you want?"

"I just want to call it quits, Cunnel. I ain't done nuthin' to be locked up for!"

"You're very drunk," the old gentleman thundered. "I'm surprised you would approach my place in such a condition!"

"There wasn't no other way, Cunnel. I'm sorry, I am, 'bout what I aimed to do—an' I won't no moh, if Mister McElroy'll let up! I'm a hard workin' man, an' got a big fam'ly to keer for!"

"Do you know what he's talking about?" the old gentleman asked Brent.

"I told you some of it the other day—but I think an approaching delirium tremens is partially responsible for this!"

"Ah, so you did! Tom, you tried to practice blackmail!" The Colonel's eyes were glowering.

"But I ain't no moh," Hewlet turned his back and began anew to weep. "Don't do nuthin' to me!"

Brent motioned the Colonel to let him speak.

"Tom," he said, "Mister Dulany and I have been looking for you, to buy your farm, so you can move to Missouri where your brother is." He paused so Tom could grasp this. "You don't have to sell, and we won't force you against your will." He paused again. "But if you stay here, and want me to let up on you, you'll have to stop drinking; and report to the Colonel every day for a month—"

"For six months," the Colonel corrected.

"—for six months," Brent continued, "so he can see if you're sober. Also, you must plow up your weeds and get the farm in shape. Either of these plans is open for twenty-four hours. Take tonight to think it over, and tell us tomorrow."

"Gawd, I'll go to Missoury if I can sell the farm!" he cried.

"That's better. How much is it worth, Colonel?"

"It's good land," the old gentleman answered. "I'll give a hundred and fifty an acre, because it adjoins me."

"How much is it mortgaged for?" Brent turned to Hewlet, who seemed surprised at the question.

"Nuthin'," he doggedly answered.

"You might as well tell the truth; we're bound to know it!"

"Nuthin', I said," he looked shiftily down. "'N' I don't take no hund'ed 'n' fifty a acre, neither—from no railroad!"

"The same old hold-up," Brent murmured across the chess board.

But the Colonel, still obsessed by the old aching worry, was just then engrossed with another thought. Clearing his throat, he said—trying to do it casually:

"By the way, Tom, where is Tusk Potter?"

"I don't know, Cunnel; I ain't seen 'im for a 'coon's age."

"Oh, nothing at all, nothing at all," the old gentleman hastily added, as though Tom had asked why he wanted to know.

"Well, how about our proposition?" Brent inquired.

"It's wu'th three hund'ed a acre," he grumbled.

"One-fifty is our price, Tom. Think it over before we change our minds!"

"Aw, hell," he sneered, "you can't bluff me!"

"Get off of my place, you drunken scoundrel!" the Colonel, towering with rage, sprang up reaching for his cane.

But Tom, panic stricken, had turned and fled.

Sighing, the old gentleman dropped back into his chair.

"Let me see—where are we!" he said, looking closely at the board. "You'd moved your Queen to her Bishop's second, hadn't you? Ah, yes! Then my Bishop takes your Bishop's pawn, and checks. Now, sir, watch out! I'm coming after you in good earnest!"

As it happened no one intruded upon the drive to church. When four o'clock came around Bip had taken Mac down on the creek with Bob and Mesmie, to hunt under the stones for crawfish.

The Colonel disappeared shortly after dinner for his nap, and Brent sat alone under the trees indulging several rather curious speculations. His eyes were closed, though in no sense was he sleepy. He was thinking of a force; a new, an entirely new force; a perplexing force that each day more determinedly gripped and held him. He had at last taken his character into his hands and was contemplating its remodelling.

There comes a time to the life of every man when he shall sit in hollow solitude and gaze upon the error of his way. To some this may be at the bud, with every outlook forward; to others, not till they are well along the path of yellow leaves. For it is not man who makes this moment. Circumstance, pure and simple, leads to his sublime communion, and circumstance is of the earth. A man may sin, and keep on sinning with never a qualm, till reality sends in the bill. Then it is as if he had stepped upon a corpse at night, and he is shocked beyond his strength to move. Whether this be the specter of public shame, of physical decay, or the ruin of a fellow, and however far along the highway of his life it may appear, there still must come that hour to each who has unworthily yielded, when he stands appalled; that hour when he raises eyes and arms in mute despair up, up—somewhere. This is God's hour; then is where His mercy conquers. But grim realities are not required to touch all hearts. It does not need the jail, it does not need the fiery lash of a ruined woman's pleading, it does not need the death-bed of one beloved; because the Kingdom of Earth is such that just a pair of eyes, a damask cheek, the murmuring of a name at twilight, may grow beneath some magic dew into a power that holds one hand upon the Throne and with the other meets mankind. Love!—another son of God; sometimes welcomed, sometimes cherished, sometimes flattered, sometimes crucified!

Brent clenched his teeth. In years his own outlook was across the sprouting fields of life, but to his hope of winning Jane he could gaze only back along the path of yellow leaves. He realized how truly this was of his own doing, and unsparingly laid the blame at its rightful place. With whatever sincerity he might curse his follies, with whatever fierce pleasure he would strangle them for her sake, their abandonment now could not weld that link which would have united the chains of their destinies. Too late! The utter hopelessness of this made him groan aloud, as he had the first night they met in the circle of cedars; then, from a false and poisonous pride; now, from humility and a man's honest grief.

The sound of wheels brought him back to the time and place. He looked up, shaking off the spell; but his hands were tightly shut, as if he might be gripping the last tatters of abandoned hope. With a quick gesture he made as though to wrap them close about him, and then smiled at the realism into which his earnestness was leading.

Jane was standing on the porch, waiting; and a darky had brought around Brent's own horse and buggy. Some time before this, loud calls from the house and faintly returned answers from the creek had apprized him of Bip's shameless truancy; but he was fully expecting the mountaineer to go with them until this very minute when he saw what character of vehicle stood before the house. He arose and crossed to her, casually asking:

"Where's Dale?"

Two lights crossed the lenses of her eyes, but no timer could have caught them.

"Where?" she asked. "Who knows? He's so utterly oblivious to everything, living in an age so long before the Christian era, that it would be a paradox to take him into a latter-day church."

While speaking she had come down the steps. He helped her in and settled himself comfortably beside her.

"Did you notice how he flew from the dinner table straight back to his books?" she asked, as they turned out of the gate. "When I looked over his shoulder a while ago he was with Cicero again. He adores Cicero!"

"I'm beginning to like old Cis myself," Brent forced a grin and let the horse out a step. "Never knew he could be such a good friend till now. Crawfish and Cicero!—henceforth my amulets!"

But he was not happy, and she knew it. To deceive her he was play-acting, and she knew this, too.

The sun lay behind them, and the afternoon was rich with every enticing charm. The chapel, in modest seclusion, stood off in the valley, and was reached from Arden by a typical country lane—as narrow as it was noiseless—rising and dipping through miles and miles of rolling fields and woods. Its sides were thickly woven vines, and younger trees and shrubs, which gave out a woody fragrance; especially in the cooler, damper places sloping down to meet and pass beneath some small, clear stream.

This valley was in its most languid mood. Bluegrass stood ripe in the pastures, each stem tilting wearily beneath a burden of seed. Wheat was in the shock, and its sheaves leaned against each other as though fatigued with having brought so large a yield; while the golden fields of stubble lent a softer tone to the sturdy corn, or the less mature hemp and tobacco. It was a season when at morning the harvester's call, or at noon the wood-dove's melancholy note, or at evening the low of Jersey herds, were irresistible invitations to poetic drowsiness.

Brent slowly turned and looked at her. Up to this time he had been speaking only of indifferent things.

"I think it is all I can do to keep from making love to you!"

Her heart gave a bound as she recognised, not the bantering, but a very serious, Brent had spoken. Yet she managed, even if a trifle late, to answer frankly:

"You already do so many useless things;—I wouldn't, Brent!"

"I call that a diplomatic master-stroke," he smiled. "But it's insufficient."

"Then appropriate," she added.

"I accept your judgment," he slowly replied, "because your judgment is fair. Insufficient is the very word, and appropriate to everything I've ever done, or have a right to expect from you. I was thinking it out this afternoon before we started. So you've rebuked me, Lady Wonderful, better than you know."

She was not quite following this—rather was she hoping he would stop. The afternoon was too enticing—too charged with a dangerous spell. She saw warning signals being waved at her from all directions. The deep, sincere tone of his voice was one; two little ground squirrels watching them from a mossy ledge of rock—two white butterflies fanning a lace-weed bloom—two majestic birds, with moveless, outstretched wings, weaving graceful aerial figures far up in the sky—made only a part of the afternoon which spoke to her. Everything which rested in the charm of this day, waved to her sweet warnings!

"Do you know what the country is saying?" she asked quickly.

"What the country is saying?" he repeated after her.

"Yes, this country, all about us, everywhere! It's telling me something, and I just wondered if you could be getting the message, too."

He pretended to be listening.

"I can hear a brown thrasher warbling to me how much we love you! Is that what you mean?"

"I wish you would be serious," she said—being, in fact, very far from the wish. "The day is so lovely, so abundant with a nameless something which comes to so few days, that it's asking if you won't try not to spoil it with silly misrelations. Can't you hear it, now?"

"There's no doubt about my hearing it now," he gloomily admitted. "I suppose we should have brought Dale, after all!"

"Don't spoil it in another way," she laughed. "You're such a—I was about to say kid, but that's slangy, and I detest it. You're slangy—awfully, Brent—aren't you!"

In spite of himself his face relaxed into a grin. There was no resisting Jane's appeals, and if she wanted now to be quiet, or talk about anything under the sun, at this admirable day's request, he was, for the time being, willing. He told her this, and it is one of the anomalies of human infelicity that she felt a tinge of disappointment at his ready acquiescence.

"I've always loved this lane," she murmured, after not too long a pause. "Isn't it the soul of peace?"

"Peace? How can you?" he looked down at her. "See the struggle! Honeysuckle, trumpet-vine, poison-ivy, wild-grape, alder—and everything else which I can't name—crowding and tangling and choking out each other's lives! You call it peace?"

They had reached a crest of a hill and, down in front of them half a mile on, stood the chapel, so snugly placed that only its little cross could be seen above the tree-tops, summoning the indolent country-side to prayer. With her eyes resting on it, she answered:

"The approach to your devotions seems to have made you pessimistic."

"My devotions are here, at my side," he said in a low voice. "And my pessimism is caused by the true glass of my nature being held honestly before my eyes. It started cutting up this way today after you left us, and ever since I've not been able to spare myself. I don't know how to make you understand it—perhaps you don't want to understand it—but the two sides of this lane seem so peculiarly expressive of my life that I see no peace in them at all."

"The lane might not be so attractive without a medley of rioting things," she answered dreamily. "Yet, it could be improved by cutting out the poison-ivy!"

"If that were cut out of the lane I mean, there would be little left. It seems to have taken possession of—of my lane!"

"Are there not gardeners," she smiled a wee bit tenderly up at him, "who know how it could be done?"

"But I have no gardener." The wistfulness in his voice checked her smile.

They were at the chapel now, and he drove beneath the grove of trees, helped her down, and then unchecked and tied the horse near a few others already there. She waited. Slowly they went up to the silent door, but on its threshold he touched her arm.

"May I find a gardener?" He was looking down with a strong appeal in his eyes.

"For your sake, do," she hurriedly whispered, and went in.

They were early, and the chapel seemed to be dozing in a cool gloom which was softly set in motion as she glided, like a graceful shadow, up the aisle. He followed with more sturdy strides. So very quiet and vault-like was the place, that each worshipper there before them could be heard turning to see who came; and when he finally stretched back in the pew of her selection, the creaking of its heavy walnut joints let loose the echoes of a hundred years.

She had knelt, but he sat back watching her. The slowly westering sun, piercing the outside branches and filtering a gleam of rose through one of the gothic windows, touched her raised face that was in no need of color. And while she gazed upon the crucifix, he looked tenderly upon her who was typifying the most lovely purity he had to that time known.

A man entered, carrying a babe, and demurely followed by his wife. They sat in the pew across; the woman coughed, and again the nave, the ceiling and the altar were filled with hollow echoes. But other worshippers now came, and their arrival seemed fully to arouse the little chapel for its service, dispelling its ghostly sounds for the rustlings of life.

In the midst of this Brent picked up a book of prayer, and on its first page wrote: "And not for your sake?"—then passed it to her with the pencil.

She read it, closed the place on the tip of her gloved finger, and slowly raised her eyes full again upon the crucifix. The pencil slipped from her lap and rolled beneath the pew, but when he moved to recover it she shook her head;—and whatever the answer might have been remained a secret between herself and the torn Christ.

Someone moved behind the chancel rail, touching with a lighted taper the wick of each holy candle until the altar sparkled with a score of tiny flames. She thought of his altar—his secret altar, and its tiny taper flame.

Now the man across from them laid his sleeping baby in its mother's lap, quietly and awkwardly arose, and tiptoed out. He appeared again in the choir loft, removed his coat and waistcoat, spat upon his hands and grasped the bellows handle. Over this once, twice, thrice he bent, as though bowing before a symbol of the Trinity, and throughout the church fluttered a low, trembling sigh of the organ, as it breathed its first deep breaths of life since the morning service. It was not a mighty instrument, but the nun who demurely came and sat upon the bench, now touched the keys, and its harmonies held the little chapel in the grove enthralled.

The sun was almost down as they turned homeward. It was the same drive, except that the cool of evening was in the air, and a heavier fragrance came from the tangles on either side.

"Forgive me if I'm quiet," she said. "I haven't been to church for so shamefully long, and it so recalls the sweet years spent across there in the convent, that—that I suppose I'm moody."

"I believe I understand almost how you feel. But do you know what I thought when the light was shining through that window on your face?"

"Oh, please, Brent," her voice trembled, "I'm not a bit ready for you to tell me anything you think about me—ever!"

He saw a mist in her eyes, and for awhile kept silent.

"I wonder why it is," he gently asked, "that men stand in such awe of a girl's tears?"

"It isn't the tears, I believe," she tried to laugh, "but intuitively in awe of the mysterious things which cause them. Women must be very silly about it. I know I'm getting to be, for in all my life I've never wanted to cry so many times as this summer. Maybe it's nerves. But sometimes we do feel so helpless that just the sheer weight of sorrow, or the buoyancy of happiness, will sort of press tears from our eyes, in spite of ourselves."

"Which of those hidden forces has caused these?"

"Neither," she looked brightly up at him. "There aren't any tears, you see."

After they had gone another mile in silence, he drily observed:

"Church hasn't left a very salubrious effect on us. It's made me feel as desolate as a haunted house, and the only impression I brought away is that a man must spit on his hands to pump an organ. Funny sort of a stunt, wasn't it—having him come up out of the audience that way?"

"It didn't seem strange to me, Brent. You're probably too literal."

"There isn't such a tremendous scope for the poetic, when a rube wiggles out of his clothes right in the pulpit, you might say!"

"Audience and pulpit," she gaily cried. "What a born churchman you are! But, Brent," her voice grew wondrously sincere, "there was something more to it: the simplicity with which that farmer, whose boots have been in the soil for six days, could merge so actually into those things which make for ideality! How few of us who cannot play an organ would deign to offer ourselves as pumpers for its prosy bellows! Think of the music we are denying ourselves, and others about us, merely because we lack the kind of spirit to take off our coats and," she looked whimsically up at him, "spit on our hands before the world!"

She knew that he was listening, but little suspected how much her words had moved him until he spoke. There was a depth of passion in his voice which she had never heard except upon that one day when he called her as she was going toward the house.

"What eyes have you? To what white heights do you dare climb? You seem literally to push away the clouds and gaze straight through that dome which marks the farthest limit of my imaginings! You seem to tear it with your hands, and look through!—you put your lips to the rift and whisper with the angels!—and you always bring a little something back which does men good! Oh, Jane, Jane! How honestly I wish—"

But he did not finish the wish, and in another few minutes they were at Flat Rock, with Bob welcoming them and helping her to alight.



CHAPTER XXVII

A QUICK FUSE

Days of restlessness followed that drive to the chapel. Brent said one afternoon in desperation that they were so heavy and oppressive he was actually creaking under them;—and Uncle Zack, after watching him critically as he walked away, shook his head in doubt whether he could hear anything or not. But the work went stubbornly on, in spite of the dull gnawing which made it, and reform—and life, indeed—seem meaningless. With this grew another worry, shared more deeply by the Colonel, as time brought no hint of Tusk's fate. Both men were beginning to believe that he had crawled back in some ravine and died, but neither would voice so dismal a suggestion.

It was the Fourth of July. In order to dispel some of the gloom, the Colonel had issued a proclamation calling both families to assemble there upon the lawn at four of the clock, to celebrate, in a sane or insane manner, the patriotic day. To Dale, Bip and Aunt Timmie this brought much excitement. The feelings of Miss Liz were also stirred, but rather with a solemn thrill of reverence for her departed heroes.

Boy-like, the old gentleman had sat up late the previous night checking off an assortment of fireworks especially ordered from the city, and not infrequently examining with pleasurable interest some new pyrotechnic fountain or bomb. But these were for the grand evening display. The afternoon was to be given principally to oratory. Bip, however, should fire a few crackers, and Dale had yielded to Brent's request to demonstrate the mountain people's skill at rifle shooting. Tales of their prowess, the engineer had declared, were more wonderful than believable.

The Colonel had just beaten him at another game of chess, and they were now leaning back in their chairs weary from the exertion, for it had been a long and difficult struggle, when gradually the murmur of excited voices floated in to them. One of these was ponderous and irascible, while the other possessed the fire of youth. As the disputants neared the gate both men looked up with understanding smiles. Then presently the rickety buggy creaked into view, with Aunt Timmie giving angry tugs at the reins but in no wise stimulating her old mule. On his pony, Bip rode.

She had awakened that morning in a direful mood on account of being entrusted the evening before with a package of fire crackers, each of which, she indignantly told Bob, would put out the little boy's eyes in no time! All during the drive to Arden she had been shaking her head and murmuring her intention of burying them in the creek;—a calamity which Bip was resisting with every argument in his power. They were too hotly engaged in this to notice the silently amused men, and wended their way to the stables, the voices becoming fainter but not losing their strident tones.

As the hour of festivities approached, it was more than curiosity which dragged Dale from the library. The proclamation said that he would hear oratory of the good and stirring kind—the kind of which he had read in the days of Lincoln and Clay. There would be something to learn, and, but for this, the lure of his books might have held him fast. Now, tremendously interested, he was sitting on the top porch step, with his long rifle upright between his knees. This was merely for his own part in the celebration when he intended to satisfy the doubting Brent.

A great deal of badinage accompanied the festivity. Bob acted as master of ceremonies, the Colonel and Brent were pledged to orations, while the three ladies and Mac constituted the vast throng of spellbound onlookers. Bip, having for the moment forgotten his fire crackers, was dancing with delighted anticipation. Zack was teeming with mirth—abetted, no doubt, by a heel-tap or two from the Colonel's retiring goblet. Seated in a half circle on the grass were clustered the pickaninnies and their grinning forebears. All was ready, and over the scene Miss Liz smiled with placid contentment. It was fitting, she had more than once this day averred, for them to turn their minds patriotward.

Bob now stepped out and introduced the first great feature: "Bip, the Bouncing Buster of Boozicks and the Fearless Firer of Fireworks, with the admirable assistance of that adaptable and adamant Timorous-are-ye-poor-mortal-worms, will twist the tail of the tawny lion and break the barbarous bandetta of benighted Britain!" This being announced in one sentence, Bob promptly collapsed amidst cheers from the porch and high squeaks from the darker circle—with the one exception of Aunt Timmie. For Zack had maliciously whispered: "He done call you a-dam-ant"—and, indeed, she had heard it with her own ears. A picture of outraged dignity now, she stalked grandly away. It took ten minutes to get the celebration once more in running order, and Aunt Timmie brought to a better understanding.

The little boy advanced into the circle, placed a fire cracker in the grass, and lit it. But, with the first sputtering of its fuse, the old negress clasped him to her breast and rushed out of harm's way. It was not an exhibition of which a Fearless Firer might have been proud, nor did the screams of laughter greeting it serve to palliate his anger. But it was neither fun nor anger with Aunt Timmie. Her mind was a torment of fear lest he be maimed for life. Since early morning she had employed every art, every diplomatic ruse in which her race is so proficient, to avoid this dangerous pastime. Now suddenly, and without warning, she stopped in a startled attitude of thought until all eyes were turned on her, then sat upon the lowest step and broke into uncontrollable spasms of mirth. Tears ran down her furrowed cheeks, and the oak step, that had not these four generations yielded to the weight of Mays, creaked beneath this onslaught of convulsive avoirdupois.

"Lawd," she finally gasped. "Dis heah fracas jest 'mind me of sumfin ole fool Zack done one time!"

Uncle Zack screwed his face into a network of interrogating wrinkles and furtively watched her. He was not yet sure whether to be amused or offended.

"Marse John," she looked up, "does you 'member dat time he wuz deacon of de new chu'ch, an' busted up de niggers' faith wid Sapry's weddin' cake?"

It must have brought something to the Colonel's mind, for he began to chuckle.

"Sapry wuz a yaller gal of de Cunnel's, who'se 'ngaged to mahry a dude nigger on Mister Lige Dudley's place, turr side of town. Nuthin' 'ud do but Zack must perform dat cer'mony—him jest bein' 'lected haid deacon of de new chu'ch what had its meetin's under a big sycamoh tree down by de crick. Dey called it a Foh Day Baptis' Chu'ch—dat is, fer foh days you'se a Baptis', an' de rest de week you'se nuthin' 't all. Ole Zack wuz crazy 'bout it; in fac', he wuz de prime mover, cyarrin' on most of his op'rations durin' dem las' three days. Well, de Cunnel give us one of de out-buildin's fer dis heah weddin', an' I'd done made de cake—I'd done made two cakes, but de second wuz fer Miss Ann's bu'fday; she bein' 'bout six, or sich a matter. All de niggers seen how purty 'twuz wid de candles on it what Marse John done got in de city; an' de dude nigger seen it, too. So what'd he do but slip Zack a piece of money, an' tell him to git some of dem candles fer his cake. Den Zack stole out on a mule, an' rid to town;—an' now i'se gwine tell you how he busted up dat chu'ch!"

She began again to laugh, and the Colonel, wiping tears from his eyes, merrily cried:

"It's the truth, every word of it!"

"Dem wuz de days when de stoh at Buckville never had nuthin' less'n a hund'ed yeahs old," she continued, "—dat is, 'cept when it come down by mistake; an' it jest happen dat dis heah wuz one of dem mistakes. Ole Zack walked in an' axed fer red, yaller, green an' blue candles, an' all at onct a light come in de stoh-keeper's face. 'Why, bress mah soul,' he say, 'some of dem come down yisterday wid anurr order,' he say. 'Dey's marked Roman candles,' he say, 'an' de bill says foh colors,' he say. But, 'course, dat don' mean nuthin' to him or Zack.

"Den de weddin' night come on. Zack wuz so stuck on hisse'f wid a swaller-tail coat what didn' fit, an' Bible what he couldn' read, dar warn't no gittin' nigh 'im. He go in whar de tables wuz, an' fix dese heah candles on de cake, jest lak he seen 'em on li'l Miss Ann's. 'How-cum dey's bigger?' de dude nigger axed. 'You'se bigger, ain' you?' Zack say, an' he walk 'way. Den ole Zack come out 'gin, bowin' hisse'f an' scrapin' his foots to de gals lak he's done lost what li'l sense he ever had. De niggers all prance in de doh, an' stand 'round de table, 'spressin' deyse'ves so proud of dem candles on sich a purty cake. Ole Zack stand at de haid an' say: 'Mah bruddern an' sistern, dis am a 'mentous 'ccasion! I'se gwine to clasp in de th'oes of matermony dis heah couple, but 'foh I does we'll pernounce grace, takin' our tex' from dat po'tion of de Scripture whar Liza rid out de doh in a charity of fyah! Light de candles, bruddern!' So dey all struck matches, jest lak one man, an' lit dem candles!

"Lawd help us!" Aunt Timmie threw her apron over her face. "If Miss Liza done rid out de doh in a charity of fyah, she suttenly change her min' an' rid back in agin! Dem candles begin to sizzle an' spit up sparks, an' shoot up balls of terror dat bust 'ginst de ceilin' an' come down—kersplash! all over us! De niggers stood lak a passel of sheep fer a minit—'twarn't as long as dat—den someun yell 'Witches!' An' dey charge fer de doh, an' when de doh git choked up dey charge fer de winder, an' when de winder git choked up—but I ain' got de heart to recall dat turr'ble night!"

"Did it really happen, Colonel?" Brent cried.

"Every word of it, sir," the old gentleman chuckled. "The rascals burned down my out building, and I believe the groom did not come back, at all."

"Dat's de truff," Aunt Timmie declared. "An' poh Sapry run clar in de crick! Dey foun' her standin' waist deep, yellin' an' fightin' off lightnin'-bugs lak dey's gwine set her on fyah. An' it all come from foolin' wid dese heah pop-cracks! I knows!" Then persuasively she whispered to the little boy: "Come 'long, now, honey—let's me an' you set down heah nice, an' see de ole folks cut up!" This time she accomplished it.

When Bob introduced "the Sharpshooter of Sunlight Patch," another great burst of good natured applause went up; although Brent and the Colonel could not help exchanging glances. It seemed such an impertinence, following upon his other performance with this same rifle; but he had apparently given this no thought, and now stepped out, flushed and determined. About his shoulders swung a bullet pouch and powder horn. He loaded the piece, carefully cutting a patch for the ball; then from his waistcoat pocket drew forth a small tin box of percussion caps, fitted one of these, and was ready.

Assisted by Bob, who improvised all manner of moving targets, he made hit after hit with a sureness provoking cries of admiration. Quickly challenged, he clipped the tip of a feather from the wing of an over-flying crow; and to show it were no accident he repeated this on another speeding bird. A dime tossed into the air was whirled through space, and a plum sent bounding over the ground was shattered. Brent and the old gentleman exchanged another glance and slowly shook their heads, for it seemed there could be no hope for Tusk before so deadly an aim. The marvel was how he had been able to crawl away.

With this last, and most perfect shot, Bob declared he had fairly won the world's championship, and presented him with a huge bouquet. The mountaineer flushed with a strange gripping pleasure, looking quickly at Jane who smiled proudly back at him. But there was another surprise to come. Uncle Zack stalked forth with a new high-power rifle like the one Dale had so feverishly admired in the Colonel's possession; and Bob, presenting it, said:

"A token, in admiration of your skill, from Goethals the younger: Mr. McElroy!"

If this were a surprise to the porch audience, it almost overcame the blushing Dale, who grasped it, ran his eyes along its sights, and then looked in a bewildered, happy fashion again at Jane. She was smiling—and with a rarely sweet expression—but not at the Sharpshooter of Sunlight Patch. The direction of her eyes suggested the necessity of politeness, and he started across the circle toward Brent, when the air was rent by a sharp explosion.

Everyone was frozen to an instant silence, alert for that cry which so often follows sounds of violence. True enough, from the direction of the cabins, came a long, plaintive wail of distress.

The Colonel and his friends sprang up with shocked faces and hurried back. But before them were the negroes, now gathered in helpless, awe-struck groups about a small boy lying in the path. It was little Mesmie, and a glance at her arms, the shattered, still smoking fragments of a giant cracker, told the pitiful story of inexperience, a quick fuse, irreparable horror.

As gently as the child's mother would have done, had she been alive to view this pitiable sight, Brent stooped and lifted her. The Colonel motioned toward her father's cabin a few yards off, and there the procession wended its solemn way. Someone went after Bradford, while Jane hurried to telephone for Doctor Stone, and in less than ten minutes his runabout was chugging out the pike at its top speed of fifteen good miles an hour.

It was a curious sight when the noisy little machine dashed between the old classic gate posts, beneath the low swinging wild-grape vines, and around the silent tanbark circle to the Colonel's secluded home. It was the only thing, indeed, which had been able to check the sobs of Bip for his injured playmate.

To the mutual indignation of the Colonel and Bradford, Doctor Stone sent them quickly from the room, keeping Jane and Timmie to help him with the dressings. Later Jane came out and sat with Ann.

As evening approached, Arden grew deathly still beneath the sadness which had thrust its fangs into the joyous day; the heavy, sickening sadness which comes more poignantly to those whose gaieties have been shocked by tragedy. Silently, and with murmured injunctions to keep them advised, Bob's household took its way homeward, leaving Aunt Timmie to nurse the little sufferer. Miss Liz had offered to do this, and so had Jane and Ann, but the old woman indignantly waved them aside.

"What d' you-all know 'bout nussin'?" she had asked, with a fine degree of scorn.

But the true reason was that Bip loved Mesmie, and this gave Mesmie a claim upon Aunt Timmie's love.



CHAPTER XXVIII

AUNT TIMMIE HEARS A SECRET

Uncle Zack was sitting, shortly after noon a week later, on the door step of Bradford's cottage. Mesmie was sleeping by the aid of a mild narcotic, and Aunt Timmie, having darkened the windows, had now come quietly out to converse with him. Her seven days of vigilance had been trying to a degree, and, although while in the sick room she was the very soul of tenderness, this opportunity for relaxation came as a grateful relief. Therefore, Zack had been passing through several uncomfortable minutes, during the course of which he heard a great deal about "wu'thless niggers what sponges off dey twin wife," and other caustic observations.

His position was becoming altogether unbearable, yet he knew that if he attempted flight she would bring him back, and if he openly rebelled she would spank him. Only on the Colonel's last birthday she had turned him over her knee in good earnest, because he imbibed too many heel-taps to wait upon the table. So, resorting to diplomacy, he assumed a wise air and hinted that he might not be so untrustworthy as she had been misled to believe—that, indeed, he was the possessor of a startling piece of news.

This mollified Aunt Timmie. If she could get nothing else out of her gamble on Zack's earthly existence, she might at least know his secrets. As a matter of fact, she would be most righteously hurt if every family secret did not with proper humility walk up and lay its head in her lap. So she began, using a bait which long experience had proven fruitful when angling in Zack's vicinity.

"You don' know nuthin'," she tilted her chin with a grand air of scorn. "You never did know nuthin', an' it hu'ts me mos' persumptuously to say dat you ain' never gwine know nuthin'!"

"Don' make no diff'ence ef I knows nuthin', or not;—I knows sumfin, jest de same!" he retorted.

"Don' strain yohse'f dat a-way, li'l man," she sneered. "You ain' got sense 'nuff to know you ain' got no sense—an' dat's de wu'st fix a body kin be in!"

"Who says so?" Zack was driven to a question.

"Eve'ybody says so! 'Tain' no secret 'tween heah an' town!"

"You don' 'tatch 'nuff 'portance to me," he glared at her, quivering with indignation, "Since you lef heah de Cunnel don' do nuthin' 'thout fu'st axin' me!"

She laughed, guardedly on Mesmie's account, but it was a taunting, disdainful laugh that cut him to the quick. "Listen to dat!" she sneered. "An' Marse John done said he wouldn' trust you in jail!"

"Den how-cum he taken me wid 'im to find dat man Marse Dale done shoot?" the outraged old man, at last taking the bait, triumphantly dashed off with it.

Aunt Timmie straightened in her chair and her eyes rolled at him in terror.

"You'se lyin'," she said huskily.

The heat of vindicated vanity was in Zack's blood, and nothing would have kept him from rushing into details; dwelling upon each, and making them swell in all directions as he watched her ponderous frame heave with excitement. Finally she had the whole story, and enough exaggeration to dress up the entire calendar of crime. For several minutes she sat looking at her folded hands.

"I'se 'most sorry you tol' me dat," she said in a weak, pathetic voice. "But," squaring herself around at him with the former, towering strength, "don' you tell no one else! Heah me? Come on, now, an' hitch up mah buggy, whilst I call Miss Liz to look arter dis li'l gal. I'se gwine home fer awhile!"

In spite of the physical vigor which accompanied this, it was a very much saddened old woman who drove slowly along the pike, squinting her eyes to keep out its glare. Her lips moved as she talked over to herself the events made known by Zack, or the excuses she was building up for Dale. She was passing Hewlet's house now, when a woman's voice, high, whiney and querulous, floated out to her.

"Let the gal alone, Tom! Yer've done near bruised her arm off now, as 'tis!"

Aunt Timmie reined in.

"An' you kin keep yoh durned mouth shet," a man yelled, evidently in great excitement. "She ain't no moh yourn than she is mine, I reckon; an' she's goin' to git that money from her 'ristocratic friend, or I'll know why! Will you git it?" There was a sound of scuffle, as though someone were shaking another.

"No, I won't," a girl's voice came breathlessly.

There followed, then, the unmistakable sound of a blow, and more frantic protestations from the whining Mrs. Hewlet.

Aunt Timmie waited no longer. She climbed laboriously over the rickety wheel, pushed through the tottering gate, waddled up the sunbaked path lined with jimpson-weeds which were a-buzz with June-bugs, and hesitated just long enough to judge the carrying capacity of the decaying porch. She well knew the risks invited by going in here. If Tom were drunk enough and infuriated enough to strike his step-daughter, what might an old negress expect? And she reasonably well surmised the circumstances underlying Tom's present demand. She had not forgotten a fragment of Brent's conversation with the Colonel one day while she was gathering up their empty goblets, nor had Zack carried messages without her knowledge. It seemed that Aunt Timmie's over-powering presence had a faculty of drawing the innermost secrets from his small body and storing them in her own big frame, as though they were in need of a safer depository. Zack appreciated this, which was excuse enough for him. And, indeed, if they found their way only to Aunt Timmie's hospitable bosom, all situations were safe. She now knocked at the door and the noises abruptly stopped. Then it was jerked open by Tom who stood glaring at her.

"What d'you want?" he demanded.

"I want dat young step-gal of you-all's," she answered with dignity. "Dey's sent fer her over home."

"The hell they have," Tom exclaimed, with a leer.

"Yas, sah," she replied, secretly frightened, but humble and courteous before him. "I'se tol' to fetch her 'foh de trouble lands on you."

Tom paled. So they had changed their minds! He cursed his drunken folly for having tried to bluff two gentlemen of their stamp, and Mrs. Hewlet set up a wail of lamentation—as she would have done upon any provocation whatsoever, real or fancied. Nancy alone stood apparently unmoved before this blow, but her eyes had closed as though to shut out a horrible, approaching humiliation.

"What d'you mean?" Tom demanded huskily.

He was leaning against the table for support, licking his lips and staring. And in meeting this stare the old negress lost her own fright, for she saw a man thoroughly cowered and conquered.

"What d'you mean?" he again asked.

"I don' mean nuthin'," she declared, "'cept dat I knows when dem big jail dohs down dar at Frankfo't shets, dey's gwine stay shet a long time, dat's all. Make haste, chile, an' git in mah buggy 'foh I busts you one;—an' Mrs. Hewlet, dat screetchin' ain' gwine help none!"

Holding back the door for Nancy to pass, Timmie watched with grim satisfaction Tom's exit from the kitchen; and after they reached the buggy, both kept their eyes on him as he tramped through the orchard and disappeared over the hill. The black frame now began to shake.

"You kin go on back now, ef you wants to," she chuckled.

"Why, I thought something awful was about to happen!"

"So dar wuz sumfin awful 'bout to happen, an' happenin'," the old woman laughed. "But I done put de squee-gee on dat! I hyeerd de fracas, an' hyeerd what he uz sayin', an' knowed jest 'bout how-cum 'twuz."

"Oh, Aunt Timmie," the girl impulsively cried, "if everyone had your good heart!"

"Mah heart ain' nuthin' to brag on, chile. I jest happen to know dat in dis worl' dey's wicked people dat'll stoop deeper'n sin fer a dime; an' dey's onery people, so mis'ably onery, dat's afeerd to call dey soul dey own; an' dar's still anurr kind what ain' had no trainin', so when a stylish gemman comes 'long dey's mighty apt to go wrong, 'caze dey ain' had a faih show. Now, I reckon, I most named all de fambly;—I ain' sayin' what fambly, but I is sayin' dat ole Timmie knows moh'n most pussons reckons she do. 'Sides dat, she kin find moh 'xcuses in her heart den de worl' kin. Run 'long, now! I jest stepped in 'caze a li'l gal warn't gittin' a faih show!"

"Oh, Aunt Timmie," the girl cried, "I ain't bad! But that beast wouldn't care, if he could make them pay more for his farm!"

A strangely beautiful light swept across the wrinkled face.

"Look up at me, chile, an' say dat fu'st agin!"

Nancy raised her flushed cheeks and gazed into the age-marked eyes of her black inquisitor. Then slowly she repeated:

"I ain't bad, Aunt Timmie!"

A deep sigh, like the passing of cave winds, came from the old woman's throat.

"Praise de Lawd," she murmured. "I see now you'se not, honey; but jest why is too much fer me. Run 'long befoh Aunt Timmie make a fool of herse'f. Dat man's oudacious wickedness is got to be stopped—but you leave dat to me! Some day I'se gwine send fer you, an' you'se comin' widout axin' why. Heah dat? Run 'long, now; an' Gawd bress de li'l lamb!"

There was a riot of confusion in her mind as she climbed back into the buggy and scolded the old mule until he awoke—or pretended to awake. The universe as she had arranged it, as she had fitted it together into a mosaic picture before her cabin hearth-stone, was wrong. The little cubes were all askew. The technique was false. This girl, whom she had put into the pile of relics strewn along Brent's path, was no relic at all, and did not belong there. Dale, whom she had staged to rival that other gaunt nobleman of Nature—the product of Kentucky who began life not more than half a hundred miles from the very soil over which she now was driving, who had likewise toiled and endured much for an education; who had emancipated her race; whom, with latter day pride, she declared she had seen in his boyhood;—had now ruined his chances of being President by killing a man. She rocked slowly and pitifully to and fro, as the old mule ambled on, bemoaning the mess of pied cubes that now stood only for destroyed symmetry—a recalcitrant universe. She may have derived some comfort from the anticipation of rearranging Nancy to a nicer part, but this was vastly overshadowed by grief at Dale's untimely act.

She was not guiding the mule, and it turned of its own accord into the winding woodland road to Flat Rock. She probably did not realize home was so near until a gentle voice called her name.

Jane was on the lawn, beneath a low spreading, rambling maple tree whose summer shade had not for years been pierced by a single shaft of sunlight. A rustic table and some rustic chairs were there. It was a spot she chose for the examination of Dale's papers.

Aunt Timmie went on and tied the mule, but tarried not to change her freshly starched calico dress. This was no day whereon to spare clothes. Atop her red bandanna a sunbonnet perched neglected. A small, aggressive tuft of white wool had squeezed below this head-kerchief and was being held in check by ponderous silver-rimmed spectacles, absently pushed up on her forehead. Such an excess of head gear seemed excuse enough for the perspiration trickling down her face as she now looked sorrowfully at the girl.

"Is dem sums?" she asked.

With the pencil end between her teeth, Jane looked up and nodded.

"Well," Aunt Timmie sighed, "he's done done a sum now dat beats 'em all holler! I got to set down, honey; mah bones is jest cussin' wid misery."

Aunt Timmie, as may have been mentioned, never betrayed a secret except to the one confidant she implicitly trusted. This was Jane. And Jane would not breathe her trust but to the one person with whom she knew all things were safe. This was Ann. And Ann would have gone smilingly and willingly to the rack rather than whisper a word, except to Bob. And thus it was that, in the last resort, the stream from Uncle Zack's spring of secrets trickled through many silent places to pour itself into Bob's casual reservoirs.

Jane sat, pale and sometimes trembling, as Aunt Timmie unfolded the story of Zack's concoction, colored here and there with promptings of the old woman's own imagination. She heard each detail, and saw with shocking vividness the shot fired into the back of a man's head, and saw him fall across his threshold. Creepy feelings touched her body at this sickening reminder of a day she had stooped to awaken her father, and found that he had fallen in an everlasting, rather than a drunken, sleep. She shivered. The old woman finished, wiped her face and again mournfully rocked her body to and fro.

"When did it happen?" Jane whispered.

"I reckon sometime yistiddy; but it couldn' a-been so ve'y long ago, noway!"

Without another word Jane pushed back the sums and passed swiftly stableward across the lawn. There was no one at the stables, but she took down her bridle and walked past the long row of box-stalls, finally entering when she came to a horse she knew. Understanding something of her need, he took the bit in his mouth before she had even pressed it—a little act of kindness which, from that time forward, made her his staunch friend.

"Now if you won't swell up when I try to tighten the girth," she pleaded, on the verge of tears.

She had forgotten to whistle for Mac.



CHAPTER XXIX

A PARALYSING DISCOVERY

Jane did not go fast to Arden, for the sun was too blistering hot to torture a horse by frantic riding. But her mind was frantic, and tortured, with the uncertainty of what might be before her. Was Dale there? Had he not, indeed, fled into the mountains as any of his people would have done? Had he been arrested? Question after question surged through her brain, finding no answers and passing on.

The Colonel was not in his accustomed place on the honeysuckled end of the porch, nor was Zack about, so she dismounted alone and tied the lathery beast. Perhaps they were at Bradford's cottage, comforting little Mesmie. Perhaps they were—but she tried not to think of that! Never had the world seemed so deserted. Nothing was astir. The edge of a lace curtain, drawn outward by the passing of someone through one of the library French windows, hung over the sill, deadly white and deadly still. The leaves were still, the air was still. Above her head, where recently she had watched two piping orioles flutter about their weaving, hung now the silent, pendant nest. No pipe, no bird, no motion. It seemed as though here were the stage of Perrault's fairytale; only 'twas a Prince within who had pricked his destiny with a leaden bullet, and a Princess rode to wake him.

Alertly, but with a heavy dread at her heart, she crossed the porch and tiptoed to the open window. Dale was there, bent over the mahogany table, reading; as far from the world as he was from his mad act; as far from them both as he was from her. She went quietly in to him.

"Dale!"

He did not stir.

"Dale!" she again cried in a low voice, shaking him by the shoulder. He looked slowly up.

"Dale, what does this mean?" she hurriedly began. "Why have you killed that man?"

He remembered the Colonel's unpleasant interview, and burned with a deep rage, growling:

"Leave me alone. I've got to read."

"Are you asleep?" she incredulously exclaimed. "Do you realize you've killed Tusk Potter, and any moment they may be after you?"

As he again looked up there was a storm of irritation in his face.

"They won't be after me if people keep their mouths shut! What do I care who I killed? Leave me alone! I've got to study!"

Stunned, she stared stupidly down at him, for here was a new trait—or, at least, one he had not shown her. Many times she had been utterly shocked, thoroughly enraged by evidences of his abnormal selfishness, but she was unprepared for this atrocious abandonment. It aroused her to a quick anger and, snatching the book from the table, she dashed it to the floor.

"Look at me!" she cried.

He was looking at her, as he had never done. The deep-set eyes were deeper, and their pupils venomously bright. She saw the fury being mustered there, but without flinching looked straight back at him.

"Tell me why you killed that man?" she demanded.

His hands were clenched, and for the first time she began to fear her influence might be waning.

"I killed him 'cause he was in the way," he growled again.

"But are you mad to go about killing people because they're in your way? Don't you know—"

"I know all I want to know," he almost screamed at her. "I know that time's flyin', 'n' I got to study! Go out 'n' leave me. He was in the way, I tell you! It was natural to get rid of him."

He picked up the book and began to open it, but instantly she had again flung it away, saying with a degree of ferocity that made him stare in open-mouthed wonderment:

"If you touch that again, I'll kill you!"

It had been her only means of stirring him, and for more than a minute they remained, as two wax figures, glaring into each other's faces. Beneath this spell he was rigid, but her young breast rose with quick pulsations. The room was quiet with that oppressive stillness which comes in storms, when the elements seem to draw breathlessly aside in expectation of a crashing bolt of lightning. Now he took a deep breath and relaxed. She had won, and immediately leaned nearer, never taking her fixed look from his face.

"This is what comes," she said more calmly, "from imitating Nature. You once said that we differ from it in no way; that our eyes conceive, our minds quicken, and our hands destroy, just as it does;—that we in ourselves are the entire law of the cycles gathered into one piece of temporal clay. And I let you say it uncontradicted, because in a sense it was poetic, and because I never dreamed such a philosophy would lead to this. But I feared all the while that with such theories you were more unalterably becoming a merciless egoist, yet pinned my faith somehow to an unseen force to spare you. Now it has failed me. Wait," she commanded, thinking he was about to speak. "That Nature-god you copy might have been one of the beautiful influences in your life, had you not chosen his cruel and wicked side—the side that asks no one's pardon, that lives by the survival of the fittest. Oh, you have seen things so distortedly!—you, whom I had hoped to be proud of, are a shameless sacrifice upon the altar to this god, Nature! Her reward is the brand of outcast; you are catalogued in her museum as a vicious failure, even with all you've accomplished! I shall leave you now, and doubt if I ever teach you again."

He had sat beneath this tirade until she uttered the last sentence, when with a heartrending groan of anguish he sprang up and caught her by the wrists.

"For the love of Christ," he began in a husky voice, but she passionately interrupted him.

"You dare not speak of Christ! You do not know Him! You have no right to call His name! Let go of me!"

"Oh, hear me, hear me," he implored her, releasing one of her wrists and taking the other hand in both his own; alternately stroking it and almost crushing it. His body was twisting and writhing as a tree might in a terrific wind storm, and his eyes were glistening and dry—Oh, so dry, she thought They reminded her of pieces of hot glass. "Hear me," he was saying.

At the final Judgment, some poor soul will stand and face its Creator with just this sort of cry;—some soul which has grievously sinned will bend, and writhe, and implore with hot, glassy eyes, to be heard. Jane felt this in all its varicolored meaning. Until now she had been speaking as the teacher, as the humanitarian. But with his torture-stricken eyes pouring their prayer into her own, with the storm bending his powerful frame before its fury, she felt the old pity, the old interest, rise up in his defense.

"Hear me, hear me," he was murmuring, until her softening attitude touched somewhere upon the receiver of his subliminal mind. Then he responded, and bent eagerly over her.

"I'd rather die a thousand times than have you turn your back," he whispered. It was a magic whisper, made magnetic by that fascinating dilation and contraction of his pupils; but the great body still swayed awkwardly. The storm was still there. "You know what life is to me," he was saying. "You know how I'm fightin' to get my share of learnin'; an' how much I've got to do! You—just you, Miss Jane, can take me on! If you quit, how will I end? Just drift 'round! I know! Do you want my hand—my left hand? I'll cut it off if that'll show you how I feel! I'd cut off the other, but it can write!" There was just at that instant a glorious pride in his voice. Now it was again mystical as he continued: "Don't blame me too hard! You know how I was raised! You know yourself what a puny price we put on life! And you know how we do whenever someone stands in our way! Didn't I have a better right to sweep my road clear than most of my folks, who don't know half the time what they're killin' about? You know our people, an' you know that when Granny put Pap's gun in my hands, an' smeared his blood on me, an' made me swear to get those fellers, I did right to get 'em—'cause I was brought up to do those things, an' didn't know anything else! But after you got to teachin' me, I said a thousand times to myself I'd never kill anybody again—an' I wouldn't have, if that varmint Potter hadn't yelled your name in public, an' said what he'd tried to do!"

"I didn't know that," her cheeks were flaming. "I hadn't heard about that!"

"Well, he did. Ask Bob! He yelled it from a field, an' shot his pistol in the air, and said he'd do it yet. Don't you reckon I knew this country warn't big enough for him an' the school?"

Her cheeks burned hotter with this added humiliation that he had intended, not chivalrously to defend her, but only to keep her for his own advancement.

He had never let go her hand, nor stopped the anguished moving of his body.

"I didn't want over much to kill him," he was again saying. "As I laid there behind a log, watchin' him foolin' around, I almost wanted to creep away. An' when he turned his back to go in the cabin, my finger'd hardly pull the trigger—it reminded me so much of that time I laid my sights on the back of old Bill Whitly's head—"

"What?" she screamed, springing back in a perfect agony of horror. "What?"

He stared at her, amazed and even frightened by this new, this terribly new, ring in her voice. She was raising her hands slowly to her throat, and shrinking away—shrinking back against the wall as though he were some loathsome thing upon which she had suddenly and unexpectedly come.

"What's the matter?" he cried, forgetting his own feelings in this new alarm.

"Did—you—kill—Bill—Whitly?"

"Yes," he answered, not understanding. "Why?"

The room was sickeningly quiet, except for her breathing. He could have almost sworn her eyes were crackling and snapping as they stared at him.

"Why?" she repeated. "Can you ask any one of my name in the mountains, why?"

"I never thought," he whispered in a terrified voice, "you belonged to those Whitlys!" And as he looked more closely at her face the truth slowly crept into his brain. Passionately his hands went out to her, as he took a trembling step forward: "My Gawd, my Gawd, Miss Jane! Don't tell me that I done that! Don't tell me it war yoh Pappy!"

The telephone was on the wall of this room. Keeping the long table between them, she crossed quickly and turned the little crank. Recognizing the town operator's voice she frantically called:

"Miss Gregget, this is Jane Whitly!—well, never mind the name!—this is Colonel May's house!" She was numb, and fearful of those passionate hands which might any instant drag her from the instrument. "Tell the sheriff to come quick!" she screamed. "Dale Dawson has killed Tusk Potter!"

With this she sprang about, her back to the wall and at bay, to receive the infuriated mountaineer's charge. But he had not moved. He stood just where she had left him; looking at her, now again swaying his body in that tense, sullen motion. And suddenly she began to laugh, leaning forward in a crouching attitude, her hands clenched close to her knees.

"You didn't think, when you laid my Pappy across our door sill, that he'd be avenged by a girl, did you!"

He only looked at her, staring in a dull, hopeless sort of way that would have struck pity into the heart of anyone not so blinded by passion.

"You didn't think, did ye," she taunted, with direful malice darting from her eyes, and assuming the mountain dialect so her words would carry a sharper sting, "that Dale Dawson could be headed off, did ye! Yo' sorry life of ignorance never went so fur as ter reckon that poh, ole Bill Whitly, shot down from behind, 'd be so sure in gittin' vengeance, did ye! Ye thought my Pappy war the last of his line, jest as you're the last of yourn!" Her laugh now became quite uncontrollable, but between gasps she still fired taunts at him. "Didn't reckon yo' god Natur' could raise some-un weaker'n ye ter crush ye out! Didn't reckin hit war likely the last Dawson 'd be fetched down by the last Whitly—'n' her a gal!"

As she descended to this, he arose. The next time she looked at him through laughter and blinding tears, he was standing straight and still, gazing calmly back at her. There was no motion to his body now, and his hands were hanging inertly open at his sides. Slowly he crossed to her and, with a dignity that was commanding, said:

"There'll be one left on my side, and that'll just balance your's. It's the one who patched up that truce—that truce what ain't been broke by any one of us, till now! But she's blind, an' maybe don't count for much!"

Ah, the blind sister! She had forgotten her. The blind sister; that physically helpless one whose spiritual strength had put into motion this big, hulking frame of purpose, with its absorbing brain, to square his shoulders before the world and succeed! A softness, a womanly tenderness, came knocking at the door of Jane's heart, but she would not hear. Dale looked down at her resentful face; but he felt no awe of her now—this was the kind he understood!

"The mountains are so full of Whitlys, that I never thought of placin' you as Bill's girl—I don't remember even knowin' that he had a girl! Why'd you take me in school?"

"How did I know who killed him!" she answered, in a hard, dry voice.

Intently they stood, staring deep into each other's eyes;—these two products of a feud whose bitterness had long outlived the cause which gave it birth. His face was not two feet away, and the pupils which clung now eagerly to her own were charged with a force that held her almost hypnotized. Through them she began to see another being, another soul, a transfigured man. Their dilations seemed to be drawing aside and again closing the curtains, letting her peep into the secrets behind his mobile face. Her cheeks were burning more furiously than ever, drying up the recent tears to faint, tell-tale stains; and her lips were parted, showing teeth still set with anger. But her eyes—those eyes which were seeing new things in him—they, by a dewy radiance she did not know was there, contradicted much of the storm and passion.



CHAPTER XXX

"I'LL PAY THE DEBT!"

After several minutes the transfigured man before her spoke again:

"I'll pay the debt," he said, in a low tone of finality. "I'll wait here till the sheriff comes. Up to now there hasn't been a force in all Gawd's world that could 've come 'tween me an' the things you're teachin'. I didn't care about Potter. He was in the way. I've got no sorrows about anythin' since that day I drew sights on yoh Pappy's head, an' now. Ruth said she an' I owed a debt to the State for what they'd done for her, an' we couldn't be beholden to it; so I was goin' to pay all that back by bein' the biggest man of my time, by goin' back in those mountains, just as Lincoln would a-done, an' bringin' my people out to light—by emancipatin' all of 'em from the ignorance that's been makin' 'em slaves! But I reckon the first payment comes to you. You've a right to it, an' I'll stay here till you get all the revenge you want!"

"Don't," she whispered huskily. "Don't talk to me! I don't know what I've done!"

"You've done," he answered for her, "just what yoh Pappy's been callin' on you to do;—just as I did once what my Granny called on me to do. I reckon we're quits, now!"

"Oh, no, Dale!" she suddenly cried, looking up at the clock. "It isn't right! Go, while you have a chance! Go! Go!" She even tried to push him toward the door. "Go somewhere and begin your lessons again, and make yourself big in spite of things! Go now, before they come after you!"

"I can't," he answered simply. "I wish I could. But that feller there," he pointed to a volume of Plutarch, "wrote that Cato said the soul of a lover lives in the body of another. How can I go?"

A tremor passed over her at his new, this personal attitude. It arose from no feeling of gratification, rather from a subtle repulsion. Yet so frantically was she seeking arguments to make him save himself, that she impulsively answered:

"But did we not also read of Kosciusko, who left his native Poland solely on account of love? And do you not know what a gallant soldier he made for freedom and humanity?"

"He loved just one," Dale murmured, waving his hand toward the shelves of books, "but my soul is in all of these."

A blush overspread her face for having momentarily misunderstood, but this was no time for embarrassments. He had not noticed it, and his voice was saying calmly:

"He was lucky enough to die fightin', for that's a heap easier'n the thickenin' of a rope, or the dry rot down in those stone walls. Still, every man's got to take his medicine, an' I'm goin' to swaller mine a-smilin'!"

"Dear Christ," she cried, pressing her hands to her cheeks and stepping farther back from him, "what have I done? Into what has this man turned?"

Through the silence that followed, from far out on the pike, a sound of galloping horses faintly reached their ears. Each stood for a moment listening, and then suddenly she flew at him.

"Dale, run for it! Out the back way, and I'll help you! Go far, anywhere, Dale, and make good—but escape! When it's safe for you to come back I'll send word—but hurry! Hurry! They're almost at the lane!"

"I can't go," he said, smiling at her, "till you're paid up—drop of blood for drop of blood!"

A cry burst from her lips—a cry exquisite of all her mental agony. He could not resist it, and his hand went quickly to her shoulder.

"Don't—oh, don't touch me!" she implored him. "Listen, only listen! I'm half crazed by everything, and this is the last, the very last time I'll have a chance to speak to you for—who can tell? So listen! I want you to go, at once—fly now! You can take any of the horses—reach the mountains and hide! I'll send you things—anything! Don't make me suffer," she fairly screamed at him, "but go! Oh, what crucifixion I've brought you to! Great God above, what crucifixion—and after you have done so wonderfully well! Spare me, Dale, I can't endure it! Your life must not go out, and suddenly lose its purpose, because of a human vengeance that is worthless!"

He spoke more hurriedly, for the horsemen were in the lane and coming fast:

"Nothing is worthless that calls a man to do his duty like a man! An' I'd be worse'n a coward to turn back from a duty to the very person who's taught me what duty is!"

"But think—think," she urged, "of the good there is in you to help that great mankind whose voice you say you've heard! All of that good will be—choked out," she shuddered, "or rot in those gray walls you dread!"

He looked toward the gate, through which the sheriff now might dash at any moment. She saw in his face the terrible dread of that alternative and, to help him win the way she wished, grasped his arm. But slowly his eyes turned back, moving affectionately across the rows of books lining the walls, and, as though echoing impressions gathered from their great storehouse, he whispered:

"What good there is in a man is there to stay. God, Himself, couldn't take it out. It's only wickedness that twists it in a different shape, and makes people think it never was! Do you reckon your good'll go when you die?"

"But its opportunities to extend—they will be stopped!" she cried. "Yours will be stopped!" The horses were in the circle now, and she implored even more frantically: "Run for it—run!"

"No! The biggest men in those covers," he pointed again to the shelves, "wouldn't be there today if they'd run! Jesus would be a by-word, and the world couldn't raise its head to a single hero." The horses had stopped, and a man was dismounting. "Good-bye," the big mountaineer said quietly.

He put out his hand, but she did not see it. She had slipped into a chair and was burying her sobbing face in her arms. Steps sounded on the porch, and a bell far back in the house jingled. He looked at her another long, breathless moment, then turned and walked out through the French window.

"Good mawnin', sheriff," her tortured brain heard him say.

Old Jess Mason eyed him over high cheek bones and hawk-like nose for the fraction of a second before taking his hand from beneath his coat. Then it came slowly out, empty.

"Good mawnin', yohse'f!" The sheriff was fairly bristling with anger. "Look-ee-heah," he savagely demanded, "what's this funny business about, anyhow? Do you-all reckon you're goin' to poke fun at me an' the law, an' git away with it? Or what?"

"I don't reckon there's been such an awful lot of fun poked around heah, Jess," Dale sullenly answered.

"You don't! Well, there'd better not be, that's all I got to say!" He wiped his forehead and glared. "Then s'pose you explain somethin'! I'm ridin' through town a while back, when the telephone gal sticks her head outen the winder an' squeals: 'Git to the Cunnel's a-flyin', Jess—they say Dale Dawson's done kilt Tusk Potter!'"

"That's all right," Dale said.

"Keep yoh 'pinions to yohse'f till I ask for 'em! I put my hawse's belly to the ground an' we've gone 'bout two mile, when young McElroy comes chargin' up behind a-yellin' for me to stop." 'What's the matter?' I asks, pullin' 'round an' facin' 'im. 'You've got a blame good hawse, Jess,' he grins, 'I thought I couldn't ketch you!!' Then he comes up clost an' says: "That message come wrong!' 'How d'you know?' I asks. 'I heerd it,' he says, 'an' Dale ain't never kilt Tusk!' 'Then who did?' I asks agin. 'Me,' he says."

Jane's nails bit into the palms of her hands as she sprang up, breathlessly listening. The sheriff went on:

"I looks at 'im an' seen he was cold sober, but I knowed the other message come straight, too. So I says: 'Then you're under 'rrest; go back an' set on the cou'thouse steps till I come from the Cunnel's,' I says. 'If you go out thar I won't stay,' he says. 'You will if I asks you, Brent,' I says, 'No, Jess, I'll be damned if I do,' he says. Wall, we argyed, an' he was so pig-headed I thought I'd have to shoot 'im right thar; but arter 'while he says he'll go back an' set, an' then I come on. Now I want to know what kind of fun you fellers is tryin' to git outen me!"

Little did the sheriff, Dale or Jane know that Brent rode back to town like mad, threw himself from his horse and dashed up the stair leading to the telephone office above the drug-store. He fairly bounded in upon Miss Gregget, crying:

"Quick! Give me the Colonel's!"

While she was inserting a plug and turning a crank—for Buckville's central switchboard was many years behind the times—he unceremoniously lifted the operator's head-set from her coiled hair and fitted it upon his own head. Several times she spun the little crank, breathlessly repealing:

"I've just been trying them, but they must have left the receiver off!"

"Wait!" he whispered.

The receiver was still off the hook at Arden, just as Jane had left it dangling, and now he was listening—listening to interrupted portions of a scene being enacted in that far away library, and illogically hoping one of its actors might pass near enough the instrument for him to yell and attract his or her attention. Only an occasional word could he understand, but once a girl's voice very distinctly cried: "Dale, run for it! Out the back way, and I'll help you!—They're almost at the lane!"

A feeling of pleasure swept through the listener as he realized that she was warning the mountaineer—that there was yet a chance! "They," must have meant the sheriff and his darky boy attendant, for it was just about time they should have covered the distance to Arden. But this momentary triumph was succeeded by a heavy, sickening dread as he realized that she must now know the truth; that the horrible disappointment he would have spared her must have fallen—must now be crushing her—since, otherwise, she would not be there warning. Yet, as he leaned forward trying to catch more and not hearing it, he thought how willingly he would change places with the murderer for just those expressions of pleading from her lips!

"Excuse me, Mr. McElroy," Miss Gregget was saying, rather coolly because of his impertinence in mussing her hair, "there are other calls—I'd better take the board!"

He turned then and went down the stairs. He was stunned, but he was smiling as he stepped out on the street which would bring him in contact with men he knew. Crossing diagonally the shaded green where gray haired "boys" pitched horse shoes at a peg—the "cou'thouse squar," bounded by the town's four streets—he deliberately sat upon the whittled steps of that old building, at about the moment Jess was ringing the Colonel's front door bell.

Dale had stood as still as marble, except to moisten his lips which were becoming very dry. He had been willing enough to accept Brent's plan of refuge, before a blood equation developed, but now things were different. His honour, as a man of the mountains knows and sustains his honour, would permit him but one course.

"Brent ain't to be relied on, when it comes to this business," he said, at last.

"Now, look-ee-heah," the sheriff bristled again, "I don't let no man make Brent out a liar; I don't kyeer who he is!"

"I ain't makin' Brent out a liar, Jess; but you don't know how this thing is! The night after I killed Tusk, Brent came in my room an' said he's goin' to take the blame. He said he was doin' it for the fun of the thing; but I knew better'n that from somethin' I heard one time. I knew he was doin' it for Miss Jane. I reckon I was so blame thankful I didn't think of it then—not till I went to his room later. But he was sittin' in the dark, lookin' out the window, an', as he didn't hear me, I slipped back."

The sheriff's face was a study, but no one could have described the look on another face pressed close to the folds of the library window curtains. Only the angels knew why her eyes grew wide and wonderingly deep with a new sort of tears that never before had bathed them. The imps of hell may have surmised why her nails again pressed into her palms when Dale added:

"I was afraid he might be sorry for havin' made that promise; an', not wantin' him to change his mind, I never went back. You see, it looked like there might a-been a leetle chance one time of his takin' the teacher away—so jail was the best place for 'im. I wouldn't be tellin' you this, but—but there's other things to be considered."

"Are you drunk?" Jess suddenly asked.

"No, I ain't drunk! Come on; I'll go!"

"Don't be so danged fast, young feller," the sheriff advised. "When did you kill Tusk?"

"Last week. Come on, Jess."

"Say, are you crazy?"

"No, I'm not crazy, neither!"

"Then I am," Jess spat decisively. "Not a mile from this heah gate I seen Tusk no moh'n half hour ago! When I hollered at 'im, he ducked an' run!"

Dale's tongue went again to his lips. He stared at the sheriff with about as much surprise as the sheriff was staring at him. Finally he said:

"I must a-missed 'im. Ruth was lookin' at me, an' maybe that throwed me off. But, anyhow, you want me for killin' Bill Whitly nine year ago!"

The sheriff's jaws dropped.

"Say," he whispered, "what you tryin' to do—commit suicide? or write yohse'f a invite to the pen?"

"I ain't hankerin' for neither," Dale answered in a dejected voice.

"Wall, you're hankerin' for somethin', that's a fac'! You jest shet up with them ghost stories! The Cunnel don't want nothin' like that, scarin' the wimmin-folks! I wa'n't sheriff nine year ago, no-how," he thoughtfully fingered his chin, "an' I reckon if the statters of limintation was looked up we'd find they'd done run out on that old fracas."

Zack, who had come in answer to the bell, was lingering inside the door with his eyes rolling and every nerve a-tingle. At this last expression of relenting from the man of law, he stepped out.

"Mawnin', Marse Jess," he bowed. "Ef you'se'll let me rest yoh hat, I'se gwine fetch sumfin good fer de heat. De Cunnel'd be proud ef you'd 'cept it, an' powerful outraged wid me ef I let you go home 'thout it!"

Jess left the porch to have a word with his man, and during the minutes he was away Dale watched him with serious interest. There was something more on the mountaineer's mind which had not been said; some further part of his duty lay before him; so, as the sheriff returned, and at the same moment Zack reappeared with refreshments, he announced:

"An' there was Tyse Brislow I killed on the raft goin' down to Frankfo't!"

"Good Lawd, Marse Dale," the negro exclaimed in terror, "is you still tellin' 'bout all dem mens you'se shot up?"

The sheriff poured his libation, swallowed it, and wiped his long mustache on the back of his hand. Then he said: "U-um! A-ah!" Whereupon Zack poured another and passed it to him. Old Zack did not understand the drift of things in the least, but he did know that this thirty-year-old bourbon of the Colonel's was a tremendously potent mollifier in all times of stress. Jess held the glass fondly up to the light, and was more careful now to brush away his mustache. It evidently dawned on him that the flavor of the first "three fingers" had been neglected through haste.

"I don't remember Tyse," he said at length, reaching for one of Zack's store cigars. "When was that?"

"Three years before," Dale answered.

"Three yeahs befoh Tusk?"

"No, three years before Bill."

"Wall, I'll be—heah, Zack, give me another snifter!" Jess nervously drank it, handed back the glass and looked at Dale. "In my jedgment, the statters of limintation is clean busted on that case, too. But I'll jest tell you as a friend, that if you go resurrectin' any moh of them man slaughters—I don't care if they're older'n the 'sassination of Garfield—I'll hang you for bein' a plain damn fool." With this he uttered a loud guffaw, but once more grew sober and laid his hand on Dale's shoulder: "Don't you go killin' no moh fellers 'round heah! I do mean that! Leastwise, don't do it while you're stayin' at the Cunnel's. It ain't right to his folks, an' I won't stand for it!"

"Then Tusk'd better keep away," the mountaineer grumbled.

"Wall, if the Cunnel don't want him 'round, I can mighty easy give him a tip to vamoose—but you let me 'tend to it, understand? Now," he chuckled, "I'd better git back an' unlock Brent from them steps!"

So it was that, when he mounted and rode away, his mind was distinctly on Brent and the caressing quality of the Colonel's thirty-year-old bourbon, and not at all concerned with the mission which had taken him to Arden.

Dale stood looking after him, but not thinking. He stood in a sort of ferment of happy thrills and deepest sorrow. The bars that had momentarily been put up between him and his pasture of learning, now lay again at his feet. He could pass through at will, any time he desired. But what of Jane? Would she be there to welcome, to help him?—to take his hand again and lead him into the cool places, into the mazy shadows, through vista after vista of appealing outlook? He turned back to the library and, with hesitation, stepped through the low window.

The room was empty. His eyes glanced down at the book which she had torn from his hand and flung away. He saw that it had fallen, sprawled and awkward, and was leaning drunkenly against the legs of the dictionary stand. Across from it, by a deep leather chair, lay, also on the floor, a dainty handkerchief, moist and pressed into a little ball. Each of these held him with an esoteric charm; but his eyes remained upon the tear-moistened, scented linen as though at any moment it might begin to accuse him. He was afraid to touch it, and afraid to touch the book. He felt that he had obtruded an unwelcome presence upon these two mute evidences of passion which seemed now to be drawn momentarily apart for breath before re-engaging in the fray. In this strained expectancy the measured ticking of the old clock in the corner was startlingly loud. One might have counted a hundred, and then, as quietly as he came, he tiptoed out, crossed the porch and passed on through the trees.



CHAPTER XXXI

OUT OF THE DYING DAY

When the sheriff turned away, Jane had for an instant closed her eyes in a prayer of happy thankfulness; but then a torture, a tearing and racking mortification because she had proved herself so weak before the mountain man so strong—and in contrast to Brent! (ah, God, what sacrifice would he not make for her!)—thrust its claws into her sensitive nature, and she blindly fled to the long room whose musty silence promised solitude. At the far end of this she threw herself straight out upon a sofa, and for more than an hour buried her face in its linen coverlet. Her brows were drawn into a frown as she wilfully shut out the image of Brent, for something sterner must first be faced.

Something must be done to re-establish Dale's faith in her, or she must forever abandon him to other hands and other influences. Today—now—she must act. And this left her helpless, because she could find no way. His nature had made a complete revolution in that moment of crisis before the sheriff came; his words had carried her beyond her understanding of him! She did not know this new Dale, and how could she re-establish faith with a stranger?

But at any hazard it must be tried. Were she to fail him, he would be like a compass with no magnetic pole—spinning, vacillating. Suppose he should go spinning off from his now safe orbit? And then suppose he should come rushing back to her for help?—could she ever again enter those former halls of confidence with this new, strange man, as he had grown to be?

This was the price, she told herself, of having been weaker than he; of having behaved more ignobly! The contemplation of it sapped her self-assurance, and as self-assurance vanished there began to enter a new feeling which she unwillingly recognized as fear.

She was not afraid of Dale—not the man! No personal element had ever existed between them. But she was most decidedly afraid of the far-reaching consequences which might be wrought by her failure to hold him steadfast. For if he could rise to a place whose height had dazzled her, why should she not in his eyes have sunk as astonishingly low? By what incentive would he then come again for guidance? How could she have the effrontery to offer it?

Between remorseless reasonings and the stings of wounded pride, she pressed her face still deeper into the old sofa.

It must have been an hour later when she sprang up and looked anxiously at the darkening windows. She had formed no definite plan, but her dominant impulse was to act before he should have a night to analyse, to settle, to censure. Stopping at the first wall mirror she made a few touches to her hair and searched her face for signs of tears; then passed out, closing the heavy door with a firmness which might have meant all fears were shut within.

At the library she hesitated, experiencing a momentary relief when it was found to be deserted. She went to the porch but it, too, was vacant; and as far as she could see out through the grounds no one stirred. Yet, as her search continued, her self-assurance came bounding back, and when she started across the grass to an old arbor, where he had sometimes been known to go at this hour, she became once more the courageous, dauntless mountain girl.

He was there, just as she suspected. Through the gathering shadows he could be seen leaning heavily against one of the upright posts, his shoulders stooped, and his face set upon the west which was a fiery red. Going softly along the tanbark path, and stopping within a pace of him, she waited to see if he would turn; then asked:

"Were you watching the sunset?"

He answered "Yes," but it might have come from someone else, so little did he seem to realize her presence.

"Was it beautiful?" she asked again.

"I don't know; I didn't see it."

"It is leaving a wonderful sky," she ventured, trying to come gracefully to the things she wanted to say.

"Yes," he murmured, after another pause. "A kind of sky that makes me sad—a sort of sadness very far from tears. I don't know what I mean;—I don't reckon anyone knows what I mean!"

Her eyes did not leave their watchful gaze upon his shoulders. It might have been that she expected to see him change again; to see him begin another transformation back to the old Dale—for surely this was not the schoolboy speaking now! And she wished he might come back, for then she could talk to him. Again she was reminded of the precious minutes passing. It would be easier to open with an attack.

"I shouldn't think you could be anything else but sad after the way you've behaved," she said slowly, wondering if he would submit.

But he only murmured:

"I did all I could to pay the debt;—I thought I was doing my duty!"

If there were a qualm of conscience in the girl's heart she ruthlessly murdered it, and evenly replied:

"Yes, I am proud of you for that. It was other things I meant."

He turned now, and slowly questioned her with his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't want you to know about Tusk, and when you took me by surprise that way, I reckon I acted rough! Who'd a-thought we were born enemies!—an' after all you've done to help me! But I tried, Gawd knows I tried, to pay the debt!"

A wave of pity thrilled her, but her voice was proportionately accusing as she said:

"All you've tried can not atone for what you did."

"I know," he buried his face in his hands. "That was ignorance, an' I'm payin' for it by havin' you turn away an' snap my future like a fiddle string! Oh, how could my hand a-struck yoh people—even in black ignorance!"

Her mental claws, which had bared at the approach of this interview, now softly began to find their padded coverings. The anxious anticipation which had armed her against an untested foe, now left but a sympathy straining to take possession; because her instinct said there was to be no resisting force, and the crushed attitude of the man before her plainly told that she was still the unlowered, the unapproachable being in his eyes. With her pride unhurt, her belligerency was unessential. For a moment more she continued to let him suffer. She might have relieved it now—she even wanted to—but the old savage spirit was still unappeased, and a devil of the feud days made her ask:

"Where are you going, and what are you intending to make of your life?"

She might have expected some outburst as a result of this, for she shrank slightly back; but he did not move. He seemed too crushed, and pressed his hands more violently against his face, murmuring from the depths of inordinate suffering:

"Oh, Gawd! That you an' I should be enemies!—that we were born to be enemies!"

"Yes, I know," she faltered, looking away; for the sight of his grief had conquered. "It's hard to believe—wretchedly hard—that you and I should have been born to hate and destroy each other;—and that you, with the hand I've so patiently taught to write, killed—him!" He groaned. "But, Dale," she stepped closer, "I've just been facing facts, and believe that our strong wills can adjust it all;—that through our old feud may come a truer understanding, a surer sympathy, than enters often into this comedie humaine. Those are the real things which make life worth while; not inherited hatreds because our ancestors were at war! It may be hard to forgive, furiously hard; but certainly it is wrong to keep such ghastly things alive! The world is such a wide marvel of the beautiful out-of-doors to wander in!—there is so much to do and learn and see and be!—so much to read and think about and live for!—so much of the glories of life—that surely you and I can be given the boon of forgetfulness and the bounty of friendship! Go back to the house, pick up the book I threw away, and look at the last line you read!—then rub your eyes, and pretend you've just awakened from an ugly dream!"

He was slowly drawing his hands down from his face, and looking as though this itself might be a dream. In bewilderment he asked:

"Is this true?"

"Ah, yes, yes," she hurriedly answered. "It is all true. The nobility which made old Ben French and Leister Mann be friends, has reached into the valley and calmed the hatred which by our law should live between you and me. Go back to your book. Tomorrow when I see you, today will not have been. No, don't thank me! You might—thank Ruth!" And quickly she was gone.

But Dale was following. At the end of the arbor he caught her by the shoulders, as he would have caught a fleeing boy. Springing about, she saw the new light of happiness in his face, and her irritation at being thus stopped changed almost into laughter.

"I will thank you anyhow," he said, with a silent chuckle of honest fellowship. "This is like givin' me a new life after I'd been shot to death. Just watch those lessons fly now!"

"But you mustn't stop ladies roughly that way!"

He stepped back, stammering and visibly embarrassed as she knew he would be; and, believing it well for him to continue so to be, she went toward the horse. But he was again at her side, not to apologize;—just humbly to help her mount.

He watched as she cantered around the circle and passed between the old gate posts; then threw back his head and gazed into the sky, solemnly, earnestly; taking deep, deep breaths, as famished kine will dip their muzzles in a stream and gluttonously swallow. After this he went slowly to the library, took up the book, and reverently opened it at the place where he had begun to dream a dream.



CHAPTER XXXII

THE SHERIFF FORGETS HIS PRISONER

Had Jess remained undiverted when he galloped out of Arden, Brent might soon have been honorably and apologetically escorted from the Buckville court house steps; but as he crossed a stream trickling over the pike—the same spot where Tusk gave battle to Mephisto—his eyes rested on a bee, a bee which had settled there to drink from the moist earth. This checked the sheriff, who was ever considerate of his fondness for wild honey—and this was a wild bee. Moreover, when he had looked again, he saw other bees in the act of drinking. So he quietly dismounted, gave his bridle rein to the darky, crouched and crept forward.