Total darkness—for in his rush Travis threw aside his lantern—and it seemed an age to Helen as she heard the terrible fight for life going on at her feet, the struggles and howls of the dog, the snapping of the huge teeth, the stinging sand thrown up into her face. Then after a while all was still, and then very quietly from Travis:

"A match, Clay—light the lantern! I have choked him to death."

Under the light he arose, his clothes torn with tooth and fang of the gaunt dog, which lay silent. He stood up hot and flushed, and then turned pallid, and for a moment staggered as he saw the blood trickling from his left arm.

Helen stood by him terror-eyed, trembling, crushed,—with a terrible sickening fear.

"He was mad," said Travis gently, "and I fear he has bitten me, though I managed to jump on him before he bit you two."

He took off his coat—blood was on his shirt sleeve and had run down his arm. Helen, pale and with a great sob in her throat, rolled up the sleeve, Travis submitting, with a strange pallor in his face and the new light in his eyes.

His bare arm came up strong and white. Above the elbow, near the shoulder, the blood still flowed where the fangs had sunk.

"There is only one chance to save me," he said quietly, "and that, a slim one. It bleeds—if I could only get my lips to it—"

He tried to expostulate, to push her off, as he felt her lips against his naked arm. But she clung there sucking out the virus. He felt her tears fall on his arm. He heard her murmur:

"My dying lion—my dying lion!"

He bent and whispered: "You are risking your own life for me, Helen! Life for life—death for death!"

It was too much even for his great strength, and when he recovered himself he was sitting on the sand of the little cave. How long she had clung to his arm he did not know, but it had ceased to pain him and her own handkerchief was tied around it.

He staggered out, a terrible pallor on his face, as he said: "Not this way—not to go this way. Oh, God, your blow—I care not for death, but, oh, not this death?"

"Clay," he said after a while—"Take her—take her to your mother and sister to-night. I must bid you both good-night, ay, and good-bye. See, you walk only across the field there—that is Westmoreland."

He turned, but he felt some one clinging to his hand, in the dark. He looked down at her, at the white, drawn face, beautiful with a terrible pain: "Take me—take me," she begged—"with you—to the end of the world—oh, I love you and I care not who knows."

"Child—child"—he whispered sadly—"You know not what you say. I am dying. I shall be mad—unless—unless what you have done—"

"Take me," she pleaded—"my lion. I am yours."

He stooped and kissed her and then walked quickly away.



CHAPTER XX

THE ANGEL WITH THE FLAMING SWORD

It was nearly time for the mill to close when Mammy Maria, her big honest face beaming with satisfaction at the surprise she had in store for Helen, began to wind her red silk bandana around her head. She had several bandanas, but when Lily saw her put on the red silk one, the little girl knew she was going out—"dressin' fur prom'nade"—as the old lady termed it.

"You are going after Helen," said the little girl, clapping her hands.

She sat on her father's lap: "And we want you to hurry up, Mammy Maria," he said, "I want all my family here. I am going to work to-morrow. I'll redeem Millwood before my two years expire or I am not a Conway again."

Mammy Maria was agitated enough. She had been so busy that she had failed to notice how late it was. In her efforts to surprise Helen she had forgotten time, and now she feared the mill might close and Helen, not knowing they had moved, would go back to Millwood. This meant a two mile tramp and delay. She had plenty of time, she knew, before the mill closed; but the more she thought of the morning's scene at the mill and of Jud Carpenter, the greater her misgivings. For Mammy Maria was instinctive—a trait her people have. It is always Nature's substitute when much intellect is wanting.

All afternoon she had chuckled to herself. All afternoon, the three of them,—for even Major Conway joined in, and helped work and arrange things—talked it over as they planned. His face was clear now, and calm, as in the old days. Even the old servant could see he had determined to win in the fight.

"Marse Ned's hisse'f ag'in," she would say to him encouragingly—"Marse Ned's hisse'f—an' Zion's by his side, yea, Lord, the Ark of the Tabbernackle!"

For the last time she surveyed the little rooms of the cottage. How clean and fresh it all was, and how the old mahogany of Millwood set them off! And now all was ready.

It was nearly dark when she reached the mill. It had not yet closed down, and lights began to blaze first from one window, then another. She could hear the steam and the coughing of the exhaust pipe.

This was all the old woman had hoped—to be in time for Helen when the mill closed.

But one thing was in her way, or she had taken her as she did Lily: She did not know where Helen's room was in the mill. There was no fear in the old nurse's heart. She had taken Lily, she would take Helen. She would show the whole tribe of them that she would! But in which room was the elder sister?

So she walked again into the main office, fearless, and with her head up. For was she not Zion, the Lord's chosen, the sanctified one, and the powers of hell were naught?

No one was in the office but Jud Carpenter, and to her surprise he treated her with the utmost courtesy. Indeed, his courtesy was so intense that any one but Zion, who, being black, knew little of irony and less of sarcasm, might have seen that Jud's courtesy was strongly savored of the two.

"Be seated, Madam," he said with a profound bow. "Be seated, Upholder of Heaven, Chief-cook-an'-bottle-washer in the Kingdom to come! An' what may have sent the angel of the Lord to honor us with another visit?"

The old woman's fighting feathers arose instantly:—

"The same that sent 'em to Sodom an' Gomarrer, suh," she replied.

"Ah," said Jud apologetically, "an' I hope we won't smell any brimstone to-night."

"If you don't smell it to-night, you'll smell it befo' long. And now look aheah, Mister White Man, no use for you an' me to set here a-jawin' an' 'spu'tin'. I've come after my other gyrl an' you know I'm gwine have her!"

"Oh, she'll be out 'torectly, Mrs. Zion! Jes' keep yo' robes on an' hol' yo' throne down a little while. She'll be out 'torectly."

There was a motive in this lie, as there was in all others Jud Carpenter told.

It was soon apparent. For scarcely had the old woman seated herself with a significant toss of her head when the mill began to cease to hum and roar.

She sat watching the door keenly as they came out. What creatures they were, lint-and-dust-covered to their very eyes. The yellow, hard, emotionless faces of the men, the haggard, weary ones of the girls and women and little children! Never had she seen such white people before, such hollow eyes, with dark, bloodless rings beneath them, sunken cheeks, tanned to the color of oiled hickory, much used. Dazed, listless, they stumbled out past her with relaxed under-jaws and faces gloomy, expressionless—so long bent over looms, they had taken on the very looks of them—the shapes of them, moving, walking, working, mechanically. Women, smileless, and so tired and numbed that they had forgotten the strongest instinct of humanity—the romance of sex; for many of them wore the dirty, chopped-off jackets of men, their slouched black hats, their coarse shoes, and talked even in the vulgar, hard irony of the male in despair.

They all passed out—one by one—for in them was not even the instinct of the companionship of misery.

Every moment the old nurse expected Helen to walk out, to walk out in her queenly way, with her beautiful face and manners, so different from those around her.

Jud Carpenter sat at his desk quietly cutting plug tobacco to fill his pipe-bowl, and watching the old woman slyly.

"Oh, she'll be 'long 'torectly—you see the drawer-in bein' in the far room comes out last."

The last one passed out. The mill became silent, and yet Helen did not appear.

The old nurse arose impatiently: "I reck'n I'll go find her," she said to Carpenter.

"I'd better sho' you the way, old 'oman," he said, lazily shuffling off the stool he was sitting on pretending to be reading a paper—"you'll never fin' the room by yo'self."

He led her along through the main room, hot, lint-filled and evil-smelling. It was quite dark. Then to the rear, where the mill jutted on the side of a hill, he stopped in front of a door and said: "This is her room; she's in there, I reckin—she's gen'ly late."

With quickening heart the old woman entered and, almost immediately, she heard the door behind her shut and the key turn in the bolt. The room was empty and she sprang back to the door, only to find it securely locked, and to hear Jud Carpenter's jeers from without. She ran to the two small windows. They were high and looked out over a ravine.

She did not utter a word. Reared as she had been among the Conways, she was too well bred to act the coward, and beg and plead in undignified tones for relief. At first she thought it was only a cruel joke of the Whipper-in, but when he spoke, she saw it was not.

"Got you where I want you, Mother of Zion," he said through the key hole. "I guess you are safe there till mornin' unless the Angel of the Lord opens the do' as they say he has a way of doin' for Saints—ha—ha—ha!"

No word from within.

"Wanter kno' what I shet you up for, Mother of all Holiness? Well, listen: It's to keep you there till to-morrow—that's good reason, ain't it? You'll find a lot of cotton in the fur corner—a mighty good thing for a bed. Can't you talk? How do you like it? I guess you ain't so independent now."

There was a pause. The old woman sat numbly in Helen's chair. She saw a bunch of violets in her frame, and the odor brought back memories of her old home. A great fear began to creep over her—not for herself, but for Helen, and she fell on her knees by the frame and prayed silently.

Jud's voice came again: "Want to kno' now why you'll stay there till mornin'? Well, I'll tell you—it'll make you pass a com'f'table night—you'll never see Miss Helen ag'in—"

The old nurse sprang to her feet. She lost control of herself, for all day she had felt this queer presentiment, and now was it really true? She blamed herself for not taking Helen that morning.

She threw herself against the door. It was strong and secure.

Jud met it with a jeering laugh.

"Oh, you're safe an' you'll never see her agin. I don't mind tellin' you she has run off with Richard Travis—they'll go North to-night. You'll find other folks can walk off with yo' gals—'specially the han'sum ones—besides yo'se'f."

The old nurse was stricken with weakness. Her limbs shook so she sat down in a heap at the door and said pleadingly:—"Are you lyin' to me, white man? Will—will he marry her or—"

"Did you ever hear of him marryin' anybody?" came back with a laugh. "No, he's only took a deserted young 'oman in out of the cold—he'll take care of her, but he ain't the marryin' kind, is he?"

The reputation of Richard Travis was as well known to Mammy Maria as it was to anyone. She did not know whether to believe Jud or not, but one thing she knew—something—something dreadful was happening to Helen. The old nurse called to mind instantly things that had happened before she herself had left Millwood—things Helen had said—her grief, her despair, her horror of the mill, her belief that she was already disgraced. It all came to the old nurse now so plainly. Tempted as she was, young as she was, deserted and forsaken as she thought she was, might not indeed the temptation be too much for her?

She groaned as she heard Jud laugh and walk off.

"O my baby, my beautiful baby!" she wept, falling on her knees again.

The mill grew strangely silent and dark. On a pile of loose cotton she fell, praying after the manner of her race.

An hour passed. The darkness, the loneliness, the horror of it all crept into her superstitious soul, and she became frantic with religious fervor and despair.

Pacing the room, she sang and prayed in a frenzy of emotional tumult. But she heard only the echo of her own voice, and only the wailings of her own songs came back. Negro that she was, she was intelligent enough to know that Jud Carpenter spoke the truth—that not for his life would he have dared to say this if it had not had some truth in it. What?—she did not know—she only knew that harm was coming to Helen.

She called aloud for help—for Edward Conway. But the mill was closed tight—the windows nailed.

Another hour passed. It began to tell on the old creature's mind. Negroes are simple, religious, superstitious folks, easily unbalanced by grief or wrong.

She began to see visions in this frenzy of religious excitement, as so many of her race do under the nervous strain of religious feeling. She fell into a trance.

It was most real to her. Who that has ever heard a negro give in his religious experience but recognizes it? She was carried on the wings of the morning down to the gates of hell. The Devil himself met her, tempting her always, conducting her through the region of darkness and showing her the lakes of fire and threatening her with all his punishment if she did not cease to believe. She overcame him only by constant prayer. She fled from him, he followed her, but could not approach her while she prayed.... She was rescued by an angel—an angel from heaven ... an angel with a flaming sword. Through all the glories of heaven this angel conducted her, praised her, and bidding her farewell at the gate, told her to go back to earth and take this: It was a torch of fire!

"Burn! burn!" said the angel—"for I shall make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire on a sheaf. And they shall devour all the people around about, on the right hand and the left; and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem."

She came out of the trance in a glory of religious fervor: "Jerusalem shall be inhabited ag'in!—the Angel has told me—told me—Burn—burn," she cried. "Oh Lord—you have spoken and Zion has ears to hear—Amen."

Quickly she gathered up the loose cotton and placed it at the door, piling it up to the very bolt. She struck a match, swaying and rocking and chanting: "Yea, Lord, thy servant hath heard—thy servant hath heard!"

The flames leaped up quickly enveloping the door. The room began to fill with smoke, but she retreated to a far corner and fell on her knees in prayer. The panels of the door caught first and the flames spreading upward soon heated the lock around which the wood blazed and crackled. It burned through. She sprang up, rushed through the blinding smoke, struck the door as it blazed, in a broken mass, and rushed out. Down the long main room she ran to a low window, burst it, and stepped out on the ground:

"Jerusalem shall be inhabited again," she shouted as she ran breathless toward home.



CHAPTER XXI

THE GREAT FIRE

Edward Conway sat on the little porch till the stars came out, wondering why the old nurse did not return. Sober as he was and knew he would ever be, it seemed that a keen sensitiveness came with it, and a feeling of impending calamity.

"Oh, it's the cursed whiskey," he said to himself—"it always leaves you keyed up like a fiddle or a woman. I'll get over it after a while or I'll die trying," and he closed his teeth upon each other with a nervous twist that belied his efforts at calmness.

But even Lily grew alarmed, and to quiet her he took her into the house and they ate their supper in silence.

Again he came out on the porch and sat with the little girl in his lap. But Lily gave him no rest, for she kept saying, as the hours passed: "Where is she, father—oh, do go and see!"

"She has gone to Millwood through mistake," he kept telling her, "and Mammy Maria has doubtless gone after her. Mammy will bring her back. We will wait awhile longer—if I had some one to leave you with," he said gently, "I'd go myself. But she will be home directly."

And Lily went to sleep in his lap, waiting.

The moon came up, and Conway wrapped Lily in a shawl, but still held her in his arms. And as he sat holding her and waiting with a fast-beating heart for the old nurse, all his wasted life passed before him.

He saw himself as he had not for years—his life a failure, his fortune gone. He wondered how he had escaped as he had, and as he thought of the old Bishop's words, he wondered why God had been as good to him as He had, and again he uttered a silent prayer of thankfulness and for strength. And with it the strength came, and he knew he could never more be the drunkard he had been. There was something in him stronger than himself.

He was a strong man spiritually—it had been his inheritance, and the very thought of anything happening to Helen blanched his cheek. In spite of the faults of his past, no man loved his children more than he, when he was himself. Like all keen, sensitive natures, his was filled to overflowing with paternal love.

"My God," he thought, "suppose—suppose she has gone back to Millwood, found none of us there, thinks she had been deserted, and—and—"

The thought was unbearable. He slipped in with the sleeping Lily in his arms and began to put her in bed without awakening her, determined to mount his horse and go for Helen himself.

But just then the old nurse, frantic, breathless and in a delirium of religious excitement, came in and fell fainting on the porch.

He revived her with cold water, and when she could talk she could only pronounce Helen's name, and say they had run off with her.

"Who?"—shouted Conway, his heart stopping in the staggering shock of it.

The old woman tried to tell Jud Carpenter's tale, and Conway heard enough. He did not wait to hear it all—he did not know the mill was now slowly burning.

"Take care of Lily"—he said, as he went into his room and came out with his pistol buckled around his waist.

Then he mounted his horse and rode swiftly to Millwood.

He was astonished to find a fire in the hearth, a lamp burning, and one of Helen's gloves lying on the table.

By it was another pair. He picked them up and looked closely. Within, in red ink, were the initials: R. T.

He bit his lips till the blood came. He bowed his head in his hands.

Sometimes there comes to us that peculiar mental condition in which we are vaguely conscious that once before we have been in the same place, amid the same conditions and surroundings which now confront us. We seem to be living again a brief moment of our past life, where Time himself has turned back everything. It came that instant to Edward Conway.

"It was here—and what was it? Oh, yes:—'Some men repent to God's smile, some to His frown, and some to His fist?'"—He groaned:—"This is His fist. Never—never before in all the history of the Conway family has one of its women—"

He sat down on the old sofa and buried, again, his face in his hands.

Edward Conway was sober, but he still had the instincts of the drunkard—it never occurred to him that he had done anything to cause it. Drunkenness was nothing—a weakness—a fault which was now behind him. But this—this—the first of all the Conway women—and his daughter—his child—the beautiful one. He sat still, and then he grew very calm. It was the calmness of the old Conway spirit returning. "Richard Travis," he said to himself, "knows as well what this act of his means in the South,—in the unwritten law of our land—as I do. He has taken his chance of life or death. I'll see that it is death. This is the last of me and my house. But in the fall I'll see that this Philistine of Philistines dies under its ruins."

He arose and started out. He saw the lap robe in the hall, and this put him to investigating. The mares and buggy he found under the shed. It was all a mystery to him, but of one thing he was sure: "He will soon come back for them. I can wait."

Choosing a spot in the shadow of a great tree, he sat down with his pistol across his knees. The moon had arisen and cast ghostly shadows over everything. It was a time for repentance, for thoughts of the past with him, and as he sat there, that terrible hour, with murder in his heart, bitterness and repentance were his.

He was a changed man. Never again could he be the old self. "But the blow—the blow," he kept saying, "I thought it would fall on me—not on her—my beautiful one—not on a Conway woman's chastity—not my wife's daughter—"

He heard steps coming down the path. His heart ceased a moment, it seemed to him, and then beat wildly. He drew a long breath to relieve it—to calm it with cool oxygen, and then he cocked the five chambered pistol and waited as full of the joy of killing as if the man who was now walking down the path was a wolf or a mad dog—down the path and right into the muzzle of the pistol, backed by the arm which could kill.

He saw Richard Travis coming, slowly, painfully, his left arm tied up, and his step, once so quick and active, so full of strength and life, now was as if the blight of old age had come upon it.

In spite of his bitter determination Conway noticed the great change, and instinct, which acts even through anger and hatred and revenge and the maddening fury of murder,—instinct, the ever present—whispered its warning to his innermost ear.

Still, he could not resist. Rising, he threw his pistol up within a few yards of Richard Travis's breast, his hand upon the trigger. But he could not fire, although Travis stood quietly under its muzzle and looked without surprise into his face.

Conway glanced along the barrel of his weapon and into the face of Richard Travis. And then he brought his pistol down with a quick movement.

The face before him was begging him to shoot!

"Why don't you shoot?" said Travis at last, breaking the silence and in a tone of disappointment.

"Because you are not guilty," said Conway—"not with that look in your face."

"I am sorry you saw my face, then," he smiled sadly—"for it had been such a happy solution for it all—if you had only fired."

"Where is my child?"

"Do you think you have any right to ask—having treated her as you have?"

Conway trembled, at first with rage, then in shame:

"No,"—he said finally. "No, you are right—I haven't."

"That is the only reply you could have made me that would make it obligatory on my part to answer your question. In that reply I see there is hope for you. So I will tell you she is safe, unharmed, unhurt."

"I felt it," said Conway, quietly, "for I knew it, Richard Travis, as soon as I saw your face. But tell me all."

"There is little to tell. I had made up my mind to run off with her, marry her, perhaps, since she had neither home nor a father, and was a beautiful young thing which any man might be proud of. But things have come up—no, not come up, fallen, fallen and crushed. It has been a crisis all around—so I sent for Clay—a fine young fellow and he loves her—I had him meet me here and—well, he has taken her to Westmoreland to-night. You know she is safe there. She will come to you to-morrow as pure as she left, though God knows you do not deserve it."

Something sprang into Edward Conway's throat—something kin to a joyous shout. He could not speak. He could only look at the strange, calm, sad man before him in a gratitude that uplifted him. He stared with eyes that were blinded with tears.

"Dick—Dick," he said, "we have been estranged, since the war. I misjudged you. I see I never knew you. I came to kill, but here—" He thrust the grip of his pistol toward Travis—"here, Dick, kill me—shoot me—I am not fit to live—but, O God, how clearly I see now; and, Dick—Dick—you shall see—the world shall see that from now on, with God's help, as Lily makes me say—Dick, I'll be a Conway again."

The other man pressed his hand: "Ned, I believe it—I believe it. Go back to your little home to-night. Your daughter is safe. To-morrow you may begin all over again. To-morrow—"

"And you, Dick—I have heard—I can guess, but why may not you, to-morrow—"

"There will be no to-morrow for me," he said sadly. "Things stop suddenly before me to-night as before an abyss—"

He turned quickly and looked toward the low lying range of mountains. A great red flush as of a rising sun glowed even beyond the rim of them, and then out of it shot tinges of flame.

Conway saw it at the same instant:

"It's the mill—the mill's afire," he said.



CHAPTER XXII

A CONWAY AGAIN

It was a great fire the mill made, lighting the valley for miles. All Cottontown was there to see it burn, hushed, with set faces, some of anger, some of fear—but all in stricken numbness, knowing that their living was gone.

It was not long before Jud Carpenter was among them, stirring them with the story of how the old negro woman had burned it—for he knew it was she. Indeed, he was soon fully substantiated by others who heard her when she had run home heaping her maledictions on the mill.

Soon among them began the whisper of lynching. As it grew they became bolder and began to shout it: Lynch her!

Jud Carpenter, half drunk and wholly reckless, stood on a stump, and after telling his day's experience with Mammy Maria, her defiance of the mill's laws, her arrogance, her burning of the mill, he shouted that he himself would lead them.

"Lynch her!" they shouted. "Lead us, Jud Carpenter! We will lynch her."

Some wanted to wait until daylight, but "Lynch her—lynch her now," was the shout.

The crowd grew denser every moment.

The people of Cottontown, hot and revengeful, now that their living was burned; hill dwellers who sympathized with them, and coming in, were eager for any excitement; the unlawful element which infests every town—all were there, the idle, the ignorant, the vicious.

And a little viciousness goes a long way.

There had been so many lynchings in the South that it had ceased to be a crime—for crime, the weed, cultivated—grows into a flower to those who do the tending.

Many of the lynchings, it is true, were honest—the frenzy of outraged humanity to avenge a terrible crime which the law, in its delay, often had let go unpunished. The laxity of the law, the unscrupulousness of its lawyers, their shrewdness in clearing criminals if the fee was forthcoming, the hundreds of technicalities thrown around criminals, the narrowness of supreme courts in reversing on these technicalities. All these had thrown the law back to its source—the people. And they had taken it in their own hands. In violent hands, but deadly sure and retributory.

If there was ever an excuse for lynching, the South was entitled to it. For the crime was the result of the sudden emancipation of ignorant slaves, who, backed by the bayonets of their liberators, and attributing a far greater importance to their elevation than was warranted, perpetuated an unnameable crime as part of their system of revenge for years of slavery. And the South arose to the terribleness of the crime and met it with the rifle, the torch and the rope.

Why should it be wondered at? Why should the South be singled out for blame? Is it not a fact that for years in every newly settled western state lynch-law has been the unchallenged, unanimous verdict for a horse thief? And is not the honor of a white woman more than the hide of a broncho?

But from an honest, well intentioned frenzy of justice outraged to any pretext is an easy step. From the quick lynching of the rapist and murderer—to be sure that the lawyers and courts did not acquit them—was one step. To hang a half crazy old woman for burning a mill was another, and the natural consequence of the first.

And so these people flocked to the burning—they who had helped lynch before—the negro-haters, who had never owned a negro and had no sympathy—no sentiment for them. It is they who lynch in the South, who lynch and defy the law.

The great mill was in ruins—its tall black smokestacks alone stood amid its smoking, twisted mass of steel and ashes—a rough, blackened, but fitting monument of its own infamy.

They gathered around it—the disorderly, the vicious, the lynchers of the Tennessee Valley.

Fitful flashes of flame now and then burst out amid the ruins, silhouetting the shadows of the lynchers into fierce giant forms with frenzied faces from which came first murmurs and finally shouts of:

"Lynch her! Lynch her!"

Above, in the still air of the night, yet hung the pall of the black smoke-cloud, from whose heart had come the torch which had cost capital its money, and the mill people their living.

They were not long acting. Mammy Maria had flown to the little cottage—a crazy, hysterical creature—a wreck of herself—over-worked in body and mind, and frenzied between the deed and the promptings of a blind superstitious religion.

Lily hung to her neck sobbing, and the old woman in her pitiful fright was brought back partly to reason in the great love of her life for the little child. Even in her feebleness she was soothing her pet.

There were oaths, curses and trampling of many feet as they rushed in and seized her. Lily, screaming, was held by rough arms while they dragged the old nurse away.

Into a wood nearby they took her, the rope was thrown over a limb, the noose placed around her neck.

"Pray, you old witch—we will give you five minutes to pray."

The old woman fell on her knees, but instead of praying for herself, she prayed for her executioners.

They jeered—they laughed. One struck her with a stick, but she only prayed for them the more.

"String her up," they shouted—"her time's up!"

"Stand back there!"

The words rang out even above the noise of the crowd. Then a man, with the long blue deadly barrel of the Colt forty-four, pushed his way through them—his face pale, his fine mouth set firm and close, and the splendid courage of many generations of Conways shining in his eyes.

"Stand back!—" and he said it in the old commanding way—the old way which courage has ever had in the crises of the world.

"O Marse Ned!—I knowed you'd come!"

He had cut the rope and the old woman sat on the ground clasping his feet.

For a moment he stood over her, his pale calm face showing the splendor of determination in the glory of his manhood restored. For a moment the very beauty of it stopped them—this man, this former sot and drunkard, this old soldier arising from the ashes of his buried past, a beautiful statue of courage cut out of the marble of manhood. The moral beauty of it—this man defending with his life the old negro—struck even through the swine of them.

They ceased, and a silence fell, so painful that it hurt in its very uncanniness.

Then Edward Conway said very clearly, very slowly, but with a fitful nervous ring in his voice: "Go back to your homes! Would you hang this poor old woman without a trial? Can you not see that she has lost her mind and is not responsible for her acts? Let the law decide. Shall not her life of unselfishness and good deeds be put against this one insane act of her old age? Go back to your homes! Some of you are my friends, some my neighbors—I ask you for her but a fair trial before the law."

They listened for a moment and then burst into jeers, hoots, and hisses:

"Hang her, now! That's the way all lawyers talk!"

And one shouted above the rest: "He's put up a plea of insanity a-ready. Hang her, now!"

Edward Conway flashed hot through his paleness and he placed himself before the bowed and moaning form while the crowd in front of him surged and shouted and called for a rope.

He felt some one touch his arm and turned to find the sheriff by his side—one of those disreputables who infested the South after the war, holding office by the votes of the negroes.

"Better let 'em have her,—it ain't worth the while. You'll hafter kill, or be killed."

"You scallawag!" said Conway, now purple with anger—"is that the way you respect your sworn oath? And you have been here and seen all this and not raised your hand?"

"Do you think I'm fool enuff to tackle that crowd of hillbillies? They've got the devil in them—fur they've got a devil leadin' 'em—Jud Carpenter. Better let 'em have her—they'll kill you. We've got a good excuse—overpowered—don't you see?"

"Overpowered? That's the way all cowards talk," said Conway. "Do one thing for me," he said quickly—"tell them you have appointed me your deputy. If you do not—I'll fall back on the law of riots and appoint myself."

"Gentlemen," said the sheriff, turning to the crowd, and speaking half-shamedly—"Gentlemen, it's better an' I hopes you all will go home. We don't wanter hurt nobody. I app'ints Major Conway my deputy to take the prisoner to jail. Now the blood be on yo' own heads. I've sed my say."

A perfect storm of jeers met this. They surged forward to seize her, while the sheriff half frightened, half undecided, got behind Conway and said:—"It's up to you—I've done all I cu'd."

"Go back to your homes, men"—shouted Conway—"I am the sheriff here now, and I swear to you by the living God it means I am a Conway again, and the man who lays a hand on this old woman is as good as dead in his tracks!"

For an instant they surged around him cursing and shouting; but he stood up straight and terribly silent; only his keen grey eyes glanced down to the barrel of his pistol and he stood nervously fingering the small blue hammer with his thumb and measuring the distance between himself and the nearest ruffian who stood on the outskirts of the mob shaking a pistol in Conway's face and shouting: "Come on, men, we'll lynch her anyway!"

Then Conway acted quickly. He spoke a few words to the old nurse, and as she backed off into the nearby wood, he covered the retreat. To his relief he saw that the sheriff, now thoroughly ashamed, had hold of the prisoner and was helping her along.

In the edge of the wood he felt safe—with the trees at his back. And he took courage as he heard the sheriff say:

"If you kin hold 'em a little longer I'll soon have my buggy here and we'll beat 'em to the jail."

But the mob guessed his plans, and the man who had been most insolent in the front of the mob—a long-haired, narrow-chested mountaineer—rushed up viciously.

Conway saw the gleam of his pistol as the man aimed and fired at the prisoner. Instinctively he struck at the weapon and the ball intended for the prisoner crushed spitefully into his left shoulder. He reeled and the grim light of an aroused Conway flashed in his eyes as he recovered himself, for a moment, shocked, blinded. Then he heard some one say, as he felt the blood trickling down his arm and hand:

"Marse Ned! Oh, an' for po' ole Zion! Don't risk yo' life—let 'em take me!"

Dimly he saw the mob rushing up; vaguely it came to him that it was kill or be killed. Vaguely, too, that it was the law—his law—and every other man's law—against lawlessness. Hazily, that he was the law—its representative, its defender, and then clear as the blue barrel in his hand,—all the dimness and uncertainty gone,—it came to him, that thing that made him say: "I am a Conway again!"

Then his pistol leaped from the shadow by his side to the gray light in front, and the man who had fired and was again taking aim at the old woman died in his tracks with his mouth twisted forever into the shape of an unspoken curse.

It was enough. Stricken, paralyzed, they fell back before such courage—and Conway found himself backing off into the woods, covering the retreat of the prisoner. Then afterward he felt the motion of buggy wheels, and of a galloping drive, and the jail, and he in the sheriff's room, the old prisoner safe for the time.



CHAPTER XXIII

DIED FOR THE LAW

And thus was begun that historical lynching in the Tennessee Valley—a tragedy which well might have remained unwritten had it not fallen into the woof of this story.

A white man had been killed for a negro—that was enough.

It is true the man was attempting to commit murder in the face of the law of the land; and in attempting it had shot the representative of the law. It is true, also, that he had no grievance, being one of several hundred law-breakers bent on murder. This, too, made no difference; they neither thought nor cared;—for mobs, being headless, do not think; and being soulless, do not suffer.

They had failed only for lack of a leader.

But now they had a leader, and a mob with a leader is a dangerous thing.

That leader was Richard Travis.

It was after midnight when he rode up on the scene. Before he arrived, Jud Carpenter had aroused the mob to do its first fury, and still held them, now doubly vengeful and shouting to be led against the jail. But to storm a jail they needed a braver man than Jud Carpenter. And they found him in Richard Travis—especially Richard Travis in the terrible mood, the black despair which had come upon him that night.

Why did he come? He could not say. In him had surged two great forces that night—the force of evil and the force of good. Twice had the good overcome—now it was the evil's turn, and like one hypnotized, he was led on.

He sat his horse among them, pale and calm, but with a cruel instinct flashing in his eyes. At least, so Jud Carpenter interpreted the mood which lay upon him; but no one knew the secret workings of this man's heart, save God.

He had come to them haggard and blanched and with a nameless dread, his arm tied up where the dog's fang had been buried in his flesh, his heart bitter in the thought of the death that was his. Already he felt the deadly virus pulsing through his veins. A hundred times in the short hour that had passed he suffered death—death beginning with the gripping throat, the shortened breath, the foaming mouth, the spasm!

He jerked in the saddle—that spasmodic chill of the nerves,—and he grew white and terribly silent at the thought of it—the death that was his!

Was his! And then he thought: "No, there shall be another and quicker way to die. A braver way—like a Travis—with my boots on—my boots on—and not like a mad-dog tied to a stake.

"Besides—Alice—Alice!"

She had gone out of his life. Could such a thing be and he live to tell it? Alice—love—ambition—the future—life! Alice, hazel-eyed and glorious, with hair the smell of which filled his soul with perfume as from the stars. She who alone uplifted him—she another's, and that other Tom Travis!

Tom Travis—returned and idealized—with him, the joint heir of The Gaffs.

And that mad-dog—that damned mad-dog! And if perchance he was saved—if that virus was sucked out of his veins, it was she—Helen!

"This is the place to die," he said grimly—"here with my boots on. To die like a Travis and unravel this thing called life. Unravel it to the end of the thread and know if it ends there, is snapped, is broken or—

"Or—my God," he cried aloud, "I never knew what those two little letters meant before—not till I face them this way, on the Edge of Things!"

He gathered the mob together and led them against the jail—with hoots and shouts and curses; with flaming torches, and crow-bars, with axes and old guns.

"Lynch her—lynch the old witch! and hang that devil Conway with her!" was the shout.

In front of the jail they stopped, for a man stood at the door. His left arm was in a sling, but in his right hand gleamed something that had proved very deadly before. And he stood there as he had stood in the edge of the wood, and the bonfires and torches of the mob lit up more clearly the deadly pale face, set and more determined than before.

For as he stood, pale and silent, the shaft of a terrible pain,—of broken bone and lacerated muscle—twinged and twitched his arm, and to smother it and keep from crying out he gripped bloodlessly—nervously—the stock of his pistol saying over and over:

"I am a Conway again—a man again!"

And so standing he defied them and they halted, like sheep at the door of the shambles. The sheriff had flown, and Conway alone stood between the frenzied mob and the old woman who had given her all for him.

He could hear her praying within—an uncanny mixture of faith and miracle—of faith which saw as Paul saw, and which expected angels to come and break down her prison doors. And after praying she would break out into a song, the words of which nerved the lone man who stood between her and death:

"'I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger, I can tarry, I can tarry but a night. Do not detain me, for I am going To where the streamlets are ever flowing. I'm a pilgrim—and I'm a stranger I can tarry—I can tarry but a night.'"

And now the bonfire burned brighter, lighting up the scene—the shambling stores around the jail on the public square, the better citizens making appeals in vain for law and order, the shouting, fool-hardy mob, waiting for Richard Travis to say the word, and he sitting among them pale, and terribly silent with something in his face they had never seen there before.

Nor would he give the command. He had nothing against Edward Conway—he did not wish to see him killed.

And the mob did not attack, although they cursed and bluffed, because each one of them knew it meant death—death to some one of them, and that one might be—I!

Between life and death "I" is a bridge that means it all.

A stone wall ran around the front of the jail. A small gate opened into the jail-yard. At the jail door, covering that opening, stood Edward Conway.

They tried parleying with him, but he would have none of it.

"Go back—" he said, "I am the sheriff here—I am the law. The man who comes first into that gate will be the first to die."

In ten minutes they made their attack despite the commands of their leader, who still sat his horse on the public square, pale and with a bitter conflict raging in his breast.

With shouts and curses and a headlong rush they went. Pistol bullets flew around Conway's head and scattered brick dust and mortar over him. Torches gleamed through the dark crowd as stars amid fast flying clouds in a March night. But through it all every man of them heard the ringing warning words:

"Stop at the gateway—stop at the dead line!"

Right at it they rushed and crowded into it like cattle—shooting, cursing, throwing stones.

Then two fell dead, blocking the gateway. Two more, wounded, with screams of pain which threw the others into that indescribable panic which comes to all mobs in the death-pinch, staggered back carrying the mob with them.

Safe from the bullets, they became frenzied.

The town trembled with their fury.

All order was at an end.

And Edward Conway stood, behind a row of cotton bales, in the jail-yard, covering still the little gateway, and the biting pain in his shoulder had a companion pain in his side, where a pistol ball had ploughed through, but he forgot it as he slipped fresh cartridges into the chambers of his pistol and heard again the chant which came from out the jail window, like a ghost-voice from the clouds:

"Of that City, to which I journey, My Redeemer, my Redeemer is the light. There is no sorrow, nor any sighing, Nor any tears there, nor any dying..., I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger, I can tarry—I can tarry but a night."

At a long distance they shot at Conway,—they hooted, jeered, cursed him, but dared not come closer, for he had breast-worked himself behind some cotton-bales in the yard, and they knew he could still shoot.

Then they decided to batter down the stone wall first—to make an opening they could rush through, and not be blocked in the deadly gateway.

An hour passed, and torches gleamed everywhere. Attacking the wall farther down, they soon had it torn away. They could now get to him. It was a perilous position, and Conway knew it. Help—he must have it—help to protect his flank while he shot in front. If not, he would die soon, and the law with him.

He looked around him—but there was no solution. Then he felt that death was near, for the mob now hated him more than they did the prisoner. They seemed to have forgotten her, for all their cry now was:

"Kill Conway! Kill the man who murdered our people!"

In ten minutes they were ready to attack again, but looking up they saw a strange sight.

Help had come to Conway. On one side of him stood the old Cottontown preacher, his white hair reflecting back the light from the bonfires and torches in front—lighting up a face which now seemed to have lost all of its kindly humor in the crisis that was there. He was unarmed, but he stood calm and with a courage that was more of sorrow than of anger.

By him stood the village blacksmith, a man with the wild light of an old, untamed joy gleaming in his eyes—a cruel, dangerous light—the eyes of a caged tiger turned loose at last, and yearning for the blood of the thing which had caged him.

And by him in quiet bravery, commanding, directing, stood the tall figure of the Captain of Artillery.

When Richard Travis saw him, a cruel smile deepened in his eyes. "I am dying myself," it said—"why not kill him?"

Then he shuddered with the hatred of the terrible thing that had come into his heart—the thing that made him do its bidding, as if he were a puppet, and overthrew all the good he had gathered there, that terrible night, as the angels were driven from Paradise. And yet, how it ruled him, how it drove him on!

"Jim—Jim," he whispered as he bent over his horse's neck—"Jim—my repeating rifle over the library door—quick—it carries true and far!"

As Jim sped away his master was silent again. He thought of the nobility of the things he had done that night—the touch of God that had come over him in making him save Helen—the beautiful dreams he had had. He thought of it all—and then—here—now—murdering the man whose life carried with it the life, the love of—

He looked up at the stars, and the old wonder and doubt came back to him—the old doubt which made him say to himself: "It is nothing—it is the end. Dust thou art, and unto dust—dust—dust—dust—" he bit his tongue to keep from saying it again—"Dust—to be blown away and mingle with the elements—dust! And yet, I stand here—now—blood—flesh—a thinking man—tempted—terribly—cruelly—poignantly—dying—of a poison in my veins—of sorrow in my heart—sorrow and death. Who would not take the dust—gladly take it—the dust and the—forgetting."

He remembered and repeated:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar—"

"'And cometh from afar,'" he whispered—"My God—suppose it does—and that I am mistaken in it all?—Dust—and then maybe something after dust."

With his rifle in his hand, it all vanished and he began to train it on the tall figure while the mob prepared to storm the jail again—and his shot would be the signal—this time in desperate determination to take it or die.

In the mob near Richard Travis stood a boy, careless and cool, and holding in his hand an old pistol. Richard Travis noticed the boy because he felt that the boy's eyes were always on him—always. When he looked down into them he was touched and sighed, and a dream of the long-ago swept over him—of a mountain cabin and a maiden fair to look upon. He bit his lip to keep back the tenderness—bit his lip and rode away—out of reach of the boy's eyes.

But the boy, watching him, knew, and he said in his quiet, revengeful way: "Twice have I failed to kill you—but to-night—my Honorable father—to-night in the death that will be here, I shall put this bullet through your heart."

Travis turned to the mob: "Men, when I fire this rifle—it will mean for you to charge!"

A hush fell over the crowd as they watched him. He looked at his rifle closely. He sprang the breech and threw out a shell or two to see that it worked properly.

"Stay where you are, men," came that same voice they had heard so plainly before that night. "We are now four and well armed and sworn to uphold the law and protect the prisoner, and if you cross the dead line you will die."

There was a silence, and then that old voice again, the voice that roused the mob to fury:

"I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger, I can tarry—I can tarry but a night—"

"Lead us on—give the signal, Richard Travis," they shouted.

Again the silence fell as Richard Travis raised his rifle and aimed at the tall figure outlined closely and with magnified distinctness in the glare of bonfire and torch. How splendidly cool and brave he looked—that tall figure standing there, giving orders as calmly as he gave them at Shiloh and Franklin, and so forgetful of himself and his own safety!

Richard Travis brought his rifle down—it shook so—brought it down saying to himself with a nervous laugh: "It is not Tom—not Tom Travis I am going to kill—it's—it's Alice's husband of only two days—her lover—"

"Shoot! Why don't you shoot?" they shouted. "We are waiting to rush—"

Even where he stood, Richard Travis could see the old calm, quiet and now triumphant smile lighting up Tom Travis's face, and he knew he was thinking of Alice—Alice, his bride.

And then that same nervous, uncanny chill ran into the very marrow of Richard Travis and brought his gun down with an oath on his lips as he said pitifully—"I am poisoned—it is that!"

The crowd shouted and urged him to shoot, but he sat shaking to his very soul. And when it passed there came the old half humorous, half bitter, cynical laugh as he said: "Alice—Alice a widow—"

It passed, and again there leaped into his eyes the great light Jud Carpenter had seen there that morning, and slipping the cartridges out of the barrel's breech, he looked up peacefully with the halo of a holy light around his eyes as he said: "Oh, God, and I thank Thee—for this—this touch again! Hold the little spark in my heart—hold it, oh, God, but for a little while till the temptation is gone, and I shall rest—I shall rest."

"Shoot—Richard Travis—why the devil don't you shoot?" they shouted.

He raised his rifle again, this time with a flourish which made some of the mob think he was taking unnecessary risk to attract the attention of the grim blacksmith who stood, pistol in hand, his piercing eyes scanning the crowd. He stood by the side of Tom Travis, his bodyguard to the last.

"Jack—Jack—" kept whispering to him the old preacher, "don't shoot till you're obleeged to,—maybe God'll open a way, maybe you won't have to spill blood. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord."

Jack smiled. It was a strange smile—of joy, in the risking glory of the old life—the glory of blood-letting, of killing, of death. And sorrow—sorrow in the new.

"Stand pat, stand pat, Bishop," he said; "you all know the trade. Let me who have defied the law so long, let me now stand for it—die for it. It's my atonement—ain't that the word? Ain't that what you said about that there Jesus Christ, the man you said wouldn't flicker even on the Cross, an' wouldn't let us flicker if we loved Him—Hol' him to His promise, now, Bishop. It's time for us to stand pat. No—I'll not shoot unless I see some on 'em makin' a too hasty movement of gun-arm toward Cap'n—"

Had Richard Travis looked from his horse down into the crowd he had seen another sight. Man can think and do but one thing at a time, but oh, the myrmidons of God's legions of Cause and Effect!

Below him stood a boy, his face white in the terrible tragedy of his determination. And as Richard Travis threw up his empty rifle, the octagonal barrel of the pistol in the boy's hand leaped up and came straight to the line of Richard Travis's heart. But before the boy could fire Travis saw the hawk-like flutter of the blacksmith's pistol arm, as it measured the distance with the old quick training of a bloody experience, and Richard Travis smiled, as he saw the flash from the outlaw's pistol and felt that uncanny chill starting in his marrow again, leap into a white heat to the shock of the ball, and he pitched limply forward, slipped from his horse and went down on the ground murmuring, "Tom—Tom—safe, and Alice—he shot at last—and—thank God for the touch again!"

He lay quiet, feeling the life blood go out of him. But with it came an exhalation he had never felt before—a glory that, instead of taking, seemed to give him life.

The mob rushed wildly at the jail at the flash of Jack Bracken's pistol, all but one, a boy—whose old dueling pistol still pointed at the space in the air, where Richard Travis had sat a moment before—its holder nerveless—rigid—as if turned into stone.

He saw Richard Travis pitch forward off his horse and slide limply to the ground. He saw him totter and waver and then sit down in a helpless, pitiful way,—then lie down as if it were sweet to rest.

And still the boy stood holding his pistol, stunned, frigid, numbed—pointing at the stars.

Silently he brought his arm and weapon down. He heard only shouts of the mob as they rushed against the jail, and then, high above it, the words of the blacksmith, whom he loved so well: "Stand back—all; Me—me alone, shoot—me! I who have so often killed the law, let me die for it."

And then came to the boy's ears the terrible staccato cough of the two Colts pistols whose very fire he had learned to know so well. And he knew that the blacksmith alone was shooting—the blacksmith he loved so—the marksman he worshipped—the man who had saved his life—the man who had just shot his father.

Richard Travis sat up with an effort and looked at the boy standing by him—looked at him with frank, kindly eyes,—eyes which begged forgiveness, and the boy saw himself there—in Richard Travis, and felt a hurtful, pitying sorrow for him, and then an uncontrolled, hot anger at the man who had shot him out of the saddle. His eyes twitched wildly, his heart jumped in smothering beats, a dry sob choked him, and he sprang forward crying: "My father—oh, God—my poor father!"

Richard Travis looked up and smiled at him.

"You shoot well, my son," he said, "but not quick enough."

The boy, weeping, saw. Shamed,—burning—he knelt and tried to staunch the wound with a handkerchief. Travis shook his head: "Let it out, my son—let it out—it is poison! Let it out!"

Then he lay down again on the ground. It felt sweet to rest.

The boy saw his blood on the ground and he shouted: "Blood,—my father—blood is thicker than water."

Then the hatred that had burned in his heart for his father, the father who had begot him into the world, disgraced, forsaken—the father who had ruined and abandoned his mother, was turned into a blaze of fury against the blacksmith, the blacksmith whom he had loved.

Wheeling, he rushed toward the jail, but met the mob pouring panic-stricken back with white faces, blanched with fear.

Jack Bracken stood alone on the barricade, shoving more cartridges into his pistol chambers.

The boy, blinded, weeping, hot with a burning revenge, stumbled and fell twice over dead men lying near the gateway. Then he crawled along over them under cover of the fence, and kneeling within twenty feet of the gate, fired at the great calm figure who had driven the mob back, and now stood reloading.

Jack did not see the boy till he felt the ball crush into his side. Then all the old, desperate, revengeful instinct of the outlaw leaped into his eyes as he quickly turned his unerring pistol on the object from whence the flash came. Never had he aimed so accurately, so carefully, for he felt his own life going out, and this—this was his last shot—to kill.

But the object kneeling among the dead arose with a smile of revengeful triumph and stood up calmly under the aim of the great pistol, his fair hair flung back, his face lit up with the bravery of all the Travises as he shouted:

"Take that—damn you—from a Travis!"

And when Jack saw and understood, a smile broke through his bloodshot, vengeful eyes as starlight falls on muddy waters, and he turned away his death-seeking aim, and his mouth trembled as he said:

"Why—it's—it's the Little 'Un! I cudn't kill him—" and he clutched at the cotton-bale as he went down, falling—and Captain Tom grasped him, letting him down gently.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE ATONEMENT

And now no one stood between the prisoner and death but the old preacher and the tall man in the uniform of a Captain of Artillery. And death it meant to all of them, defenders as well as prisoners, for the mob had increased in numbers as in fury. Friends, kindred, brothers, fathers—even mothers and sisters of the dead were there, bitter in the thought that their dead had been murdered—white men, for one old negress.

In their fury they did not think it was the law they themselves were murdering. The very name of the law was now hateful to them—the law that had killed their people.

Slowly, surely, but with grim deadliness they laid their plans—this time to run no risk of failure.

There was a stillness solemn and all-pervading. And from the window of the jail came again in wailing uncanny notes:—

"I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger, I can tarry, I can tarry but a night—"

It swept over the mob, frenzied now to the stillness of a white heat, like a challenge to battle, like the flaunt of a red flag. Their dead lay all about the gate of the rock fence, stark and still. Their wounded were few—for Jack Bracken did not wound. They saw them all—dead—lying out there dead—and they were willing to die themselves for the blood of the old woman—a negro for whom white men had been killed.

But their wrath now took another form. It was the wrath of coolness. They had had enough of the other kind. To rush again on those bales of cotton doubly protected behind a rock fence, through one small gate, commanded by the fire of such marksmen as lay there, was not to be thought of.

They would burn the jail over the heads of its defenders and kill them as they were uncovered. A hundred men would fire the jail from the rear, a hundred more with guns would shoot in front.

It was Jud Carpenter who planned it, and soon oil and saturated paper and torches were prepared.

"We are in for it, Bishop," said Captain Tom, as he saw the preparation; "this is worse than Franklin, because there we could protect our rear."

He leaped up on his barricade, tall and splendid, and called to them quietly and with deadly calm:

"Go to your homes, men—go! But if you will come, know that I fought for my country's laws from Shiloh to Franklin, and I can die for them here!"

Then he took from over his heart a small silken flag, spangled with stars and the blood-splotches of his father who fell in Mexico, and he shook it out and flung it over his barricade, saying cheerily: "I am all right for a fight now, Bishop. But oh, for just one of my guns—just one of my old Parrots that I had last week at Franklin!"

The old man, praying on his knees behind his barricade, said:

"Twelve years ago, Cap'n Tom, twelve years. Not last week."

The mob had left Richard Travis for dead, and in the fury of their defeat had thought no more of him. But now, the loss of blood, the cool night air revived him. He sat up, weak, and looked around. Everywhere bonfires burned. Men were running about. He heard their talk and he knew all. He was shot through the left lung, so near to his heart that, as he felt it, he wondered how he had escaped.

He knew it by the labored breathing, by the blood that ran down and half filled his left boot. But his was a constitution of steel—an athlete, a hunter, a horseman, a man of the open. The bitterness of it all came back to him when he found he was not dead as he had hoped—as he had made Jack Bracken shoot to do.

"To die in bed at last," he said, "like a monk with liver complaint—or worse still—my God, like a mad dog, unless—unless—her lips—Helen!"

He lay quite still on the soft grass and looked up at the stars. How comfortable he was! He felt around.

A boy's overcoat was under him—a little round-about, wadded up, was his pillow.

He smiled—touched: "What a man he will make—the brave little devil! Oh, if I can live to tell him he is mine, that I married his mother secretly—that I broke her heart with my faithlessness—that she died and the other is—is her sister."

He heard the clamor and the talk behind him. The mob, cool now, were laying their plans only on revenge,—revenge with the torch and the bullet.

Jud Carpenter was the leader, and Travis could hear him giving his orders. How he now loathed the man—for somehow, as he thought, Jud Carpenter stood for all the seared, blighted, dead life behind him—all the old disbelief, all the old infamy, all the old doubt and shame. But now, dying, he saw things differently. Yonder above him shone the stars and in his heart the glory of that touch of God—the thing that made him wish rather to die than have it leave him again to live in his old way.

He heard the mob talking. He heard their plans. He knew that Jud Carpenter, hating the old preacher as he did, would rather kill him than any wolf of the forest. He knew that neither Tom Travis nor the old preacher could ever hope to come out alive.

The torches were ready—the men were aligned in front with deadly shotguns.

"When the fire gets hot," he heard Jud Carpenter say, "they'll hafter come out—then shoot—shoot an' shoot to kill. See our own dead!"

They answered him with groans, with curses, with shouts of "Lead us on, Jud Carpenter!"

"When the jail is fired from the rear," shouted Carpenter, "stay where you are and shoot; they've no chance at all. It's fire or bullet."

Richard Travis heard it and his heart leaped—but only for one tempting moment, when a vision of loveliness in widow's weeds swept through that soul of his inner sight, which sees into the future. Then the new light came back uplifting him with a wave of joyous strength that was sweetly calm in its destiny—glad that he had lived, glad that this test had come, glad for the death that was coming.

It was all well with him.

He forgot himself, he forgot his deadly wound, the bitterness of his life, the dog's bite—all—in the glory of this feeling, the new feeling which now would go with him into eternity.

For, as he lay there, he had seen the bell's turret above the jail and his mind was quick to act.

He smiled faintly—a happy smile—the smile of the old Roman ere he leaped into the chasm before the walls of Rome—leaped and saved his countrymen. He loved to do difficult things—to conquer and overcome where others would quit. This always had been his glory—he understood that. But this new thing—this wanting to save men who were doomed behind their barricade—this wanting to give what was left of his life for them—his enemies—this was the thing he could not understand. He only knew it was the call of something within him, stronger than himself and kin to the stars, which, clear and sweet above his head, seemed to be all that stood between him and that clear Sweet Thing out, far out, in the pale blue Silence of Things.

He reached out and found his rifle. In his coat pocket were cartridges. His arms were still strong—he sprang the magazine and filled it.

Then slowly, painfully, he began to crawl off toward the jail, pulling his rifle along. No one saw him but, God! how it hurt!... that star falling ... scattering splinters of light everywhere ... so he lay on his face and slept awhile....

When he awoke he flushed with the shame of it: "Fainted—me—like a girl!" And he spat out the blood that boiled out of his lips.

Crawling—crawling—and dragging the heavy rifle. It seemed he would never strike the rock fence. Once—twice, and yet a third time he had to sink flat on the grass and spit out the troublesome blood....

The fence at last, and following it he was soon in the rear of the jail. He knew where the back stair was and crawled to it. Slowly, step by step, and every step splotched with his blood, he went up. At the top he pushed up the trap-door with his head and, crawling through, fell fainting.

But, oh, the glory of that feeling that was his now! That feeling that now—now he would atone for it all—now he would be brother to the stars and that Sweeter Thing out, far out, in the pale blue Silence of Things.

Then the old Travis spirit came to him and he smiled: "Dominecker—oh, my old grandsire, will you think I am a Dominecker now? I found your will—in the old life—and tore it up. But it's Tom's now—Tom's anyway—Dominecker! Wipe it out—wipe it out! If I do not this night honor your blood, strike me from the roll of Travis."

Around him was the belfry railing, waist high and sheeted with metal save four holes, for air, at the base, where he could thrust his rifle through as he lay flat.

He was in a bullet proof turret, and he smiled: "I hold the fort!"

Slowly he pulled himself up, painfully he stood erect and looked down. Just below him was the barricade of cotton bales, its two defenders, grim and silent behind them—the two wounded ones lying still and so quiet—so quiet it looked like death, and Richard Travis prayed that it was not.

One of them had given him his death wound, but he held no bitterness for him—only that upliftedness, only the glory of that feeling within him he knew not what.

He called gently to them. In astonishment they looked up. Thirty feet above their heads they saw him and heard him say painfully, slowly, but oh, so bravely: "I am Richard Travis, Tom, and I'll back you to the death.... They are to burn you out ... but I command the jail, both front and rear. Stay where you both are ... be careful ... do not expose yourselves, for while I live you are safe ... and the law is safe."

And then came back to him clear and with all sweetness the earnest words of the old preacher:

"God bless you, Richard Travis, for He has sent you jus' in time. I knew that He would, that He'd touch yo' heart, that there was greatness in you—all in His own time, an' His own good way. Praise God!"

Travis wished to warn the mob, but his voice was nearly gone. He could only sink down and wait.

He heard shouts. They had formed in the rear, and now men with torches came to fire the jail. Their companions in front, hearing them, shouted back their approval.

Richard Travis thrust his rifle barrel through the air hole and aimed carefully. The torches they carried made it all so plain and so easy.

Then two long, spiteful flashes of flame leaped out of the belfry tower and the arm of the first incendiary, shot through and through—holding his blazing torch, leaped like a rabbit in a sack, and the torch went down and out. The torch of the second one was shot out of its bearer's hand.

Panic-stricken, they looked up, saw, and fled. Those in front also saw and bombarded the belfry with shot and pistol ball. And then, on their side of the belfry, the same downward, spiteful flashes leaped out, and two men, shot through the shoulder and the arm, cried out in dismay, and they all fell back, stampeded, at the deadliness of the spiteful thing in the tower, the gun that carried so true and so far—so much farther than their own cheap guns.

They rushed out of its range, gathered in knots and cursed and wondered who it was. But they dared not come nearer. Travis lay still. He could not speak now, for the blood choked him when he opened his mouth, and the stars which had once been above him now wheeled and floated below, and around him. And that Sweeter Thing that had been behind the stars now seemed to surround him as a halo, a halo of silence which seemed to fit the silence of his own soul and become part of him forever. It was all around him, as he had often seen it around the summer moon; only now he felt it where he only saw it before. And now, too, it was in his heart and filled it with a sweet sadness, a sadness that hurt, it was so sweet, and which came with an odor, the smell of the warm rain falling on the dust of a summer of long ago.

And all his life passed before him—he lived it again—even more than he had remembered before—even the memory of his mother whom he never knew; but now he knew her and he reached up his arms—for he was in a cradle and she bent over him—he reached up his arms and said: "Oh, mother, now I know what eternity is—it's remembering before and after!"

Visions, too—and Alice Westmore—Alice, pitying and smiling approval—smiling,—and then a burning passionate kiss, and when he would kiss again it was Helen's lips he met.

And through it all the great uplifting joy, and something which made him try to shout and say: "The atonement—the atonement—"

Clear now and things around him seemed miles away.

He knew he was sinking and he kicked one foot savagely against the turret to feel again the sensation of life in his limb. Then he struck himself in his breast with his right fist to feel it there. But in spite of all he saw a cloud of darkness form beyond the rim of the starlit horizon and come sweeping over him, coming in black waves that would rush forward and then stop—forward, and stop—forward and stop.... And the stops kept time exactly with his heart, and he knew the last stop of the wave meant the last beat of his heart—then forward ... for the last time.... "Oh, God, not yet!... Look!"

His heart rallied at the sight and beat faster, making the black waves pulse, in the flow and ebb of it.... The thing was below him ... a man ... a ghostly, vengeful thing, whose face was fierce in hatred ... crawling, crawling, up to the rock fence—a snake with the face ... the eyes of Jud Carpenter....

And the black wave coming in ... and he did so want to live ... just a little ... just a while longer....

He pushed the wave back, as he gripped for the last time his rifle's stock, and he knew not whether it was only visions such as he had been seeing ... or Jud Carpenter really crouching low behind the rock fence, his double-barrel shotgun aimed ... drawing so fine a bead on both the unconscious defenders ... going to shoot, and only twenty paces, and now it rose up, aiming: "God, it is—it is Jud Carpenter ... back—back—black wave!" he cried, "and God have mercy on your soul, Jud Carpenter...."

And, oh, the nightmare of it!—trying to pull the trigger that would not be pulled, trying to grip a stock that had grown so large it was now a tree—a huge tree—flowing red blood instead of sap, red blood over things, ... and then at last ... thank God ... the trigger ... and the flash and report ... the flash so far off ... and the report that was like thunder among the stars ... the stars.... Among the stars ... all around him ... and Alice on one star throwing him a kiss ... and saying: "You saved his life, oh, Richard, and I love you for it!" A kiss and forgiveness ... and the two walking out with him ... out into the dim, blue, Sweet Silence of Things, hand in hand with him, beyond even the black wave, beyond even the rim of the rainbow that came down over all ... out—out with music, quaint, sweet, weird music—that filled his soul so, fitted him ... was he ...

"I'm ... a pilgrim ... I'm a stranger, I can tarry—I can tarry but a night."

In the early dawn, a local company of State troops, called out by the governor, had the jail safe.

It was a gruesome sight in front of the stone wall where the deadly fire from Jack Bracken's pistols had swept. Thirteen dead men lay, and the back-bone of lynching had been broken forever in Alabama.

It was the governor himself, bluff and rugged, who grasped Jack Bracken's hand as he lay dying, wrapped up, on a bale of cotton, and Margaret Adams, pale, weeping beside him: "Live for me, Jack—I love you. I have always loved you!"

"And for me, Jack," said the old governor, touched at the scene—"for the state, to teach mobs how to respect the law. In the glory of what you've done, I pardon you for all the past."

"It is fitten," said Jack, simply; "fitten that I should die for the law—I who have been so lawless."

He turned to Margaret Adams: "You are lookin' somethin' you want to say—I can tell by yo' eyes."

She faltered, then slowly: "Jack, he was not my son—my poor sister—I could not see her die disgraced."

Jack drew her down and kissed her.

And as his eyes grew dim, a figure, tall and in military clothes, stood before him, shaken with grief and saying, "Jack—Jack, my poor friend—"

Jack's mind was wandering, but a great smile lit up his face as he said: "Bishop—Bishop—is—is—it Cap'n Tom, or—or—Jesus Christ?" And so he passed out.

And up above them all in the belfry, lying prone, but still gripping his rifle's stock which, sweeping the jail with its deadly protruding barrel, had held back hundreds of men, they found Richard Travis, a softened smile on his lips as if he had just entered into the glory of the great Sweet Silence of Things. And by him sat the old preacher, where he had sat since Richard Travis's last shot had saved the jail and the defenders; sat and bound up his wound and gave him the last of his old whiskey out of the little flask, and stopped the flow of blood and saved the life which had nearly bubbled out.

And as they brought the desperately wounded man down to the surgeon and to life, the old governor raised his hat and said: "The Travis blood—the Irish Gray—when it's wrong it is hell—when it's right it is heaven."

But the old preacher smiled as he helped carry him tenderly down and said: "He is right, forever right, now, Gov'nor. God has made him so. See that smile on his lips! He has laughed before—that was from the body. He is smiling now—that is from the soul. His soul is born again."

The old governor smiled and turned. Edward Conway, wounded, was sitting up. The governor grasped his hand: "Ned, my boy, I've appointed you sheriff of this county in place of that scallawag who deserted his post. Stand pat, for you're a Conway—no doubt about that. Stand pat."

Under the rock wall, they found a man, dead on his knees, leaning against the wall; his gun, still cocked and deadly, was resting against his shoulder and needing only the movement of a finger to sweep with deadly hail the cotton-bales. His scraggy hair topped the rock fence and his staring eyes peeped over, each its own way. And one of them looked forward into a future which was Silence, and the other looked backward into a past which was Sin.



CHAPTER XXV

THE SHADOWS AND THE CLOUDS

When Richard Travis came to himself after that terrible night, they told him that for weeks he had lain with only a breath between him and death.

"It was not my skill that has saved you," said the old surgeon who had been through two wars and who knew wounds as he did maps of battlefields he had fought on. "No," he said, shaking his head, "no, it was not I—it was something beyond me. That you miraculously live is proof of it."

He was in his room at The Gaffs, and everything looked so natural. It was sweet to live again, for he was yet young and life now meant so much more than it ever had. Then his eyes fell on the rug, wearily, and he remembered the old setter.

"The dog—and that other one?"

He sat up nervously in bed, trembling with the thought. The old surgeon guessed and bade him be quiet.

"You need not fear that," he said, touching his arm. "The time has passed for fear. You were saved by the shadow of death and—the blood letting you had—and, well, a woman's lips, as many a man has been saved before you. You'd better sleep again now...."

He slept, but there were visions as there had been all along. And two persons came in now and then. One was Tom Travis, serious and quiet and very much in earnest that the patient might get well.

Another was Tom's wife, Alice, who arranged the wounded man's pillows with a gentleness and deftness as only she could, and who gave quiet orders to the old cook in a way that made Richard Travis feel that things were all right, though he could not speak, nor even open his eyes long enough to see distinctly.

A month afterward Richard Travis was sitting up. His strength came very fast. For a week he had sat by the fire and thought—thought. But no man knew what was in his mind until one day, after he had been able to walk over the place, he said:

"Tom, you and Alice have been kinder to me—far kinder—than I have deserved. I am going away forever, next week—to the Northwest—and begin life over. But there is something I wish to say to you first."

"Dick," said his cousin, and he arose, tall and splendid, before the firelight—"there is something I wish to say to you first. Our lives have been far apart and very different, but blood is blood and you have proved it, else I had not been here to-night to tell it."

He came over and put his hand affectionately on the other's shoulder. At its touch Richard Travis softened almost to tears.

"Dick, we two are the only grandsons that bear his name, and we divide this between us. Alice and I have planned it. You are to retain the house and half the land. We have our own and more than enough. You will do it, Dick?"

Richard Travis arose, strangely moved. He grasped his cousin's hand. "No, no, Tom, it is not fair. No Travis was ever a welcher. It is all yours—you do not understand—I saw the will—I do not want it. I am going away forever. My life must lead now in other paths. But—"

The other turned quickly and looked deep into Richard Travis's eyes. "I can see there is no use of my trying to change your mind, Dick, though I had hoped—"

The other shook his head. It meant a Travis decision, and his cousin knew it.

"But as I started to say, Tom, and there is no need of my mincing words, if you'll raise that boy of mine—" he was silent awhile, then smiling: "He is mine and more of a Travis to-day than his father ever was. If you can help him and his aunt—"

"He shall have the half of it, Dick, and an education, under our care. We will make a man of him, Alice and I."

Richard Travis said no more.

The week before he left, one beautiful afternoon, he walked over to Millwood for the last time. For Edward Conway was now sheriff of the county, and with the assistance of the old bishop, whose fortune now was secured, he had redeemed his home and was in a fair way to pay back every dollar of it.

A new servant ushered Travis in, for the good old nurse had passed away, the strain of that terrible night being too much, first, for her reason, and afterwards, her life.

Edward Conway was away, but Helen came in presently, and greeted him with such a splendid high-born way, so simple and so unaffected that he marveled at her self-control, feeling his own heart pulsing strangely at sight of her. In the few months that had elapsed how changed she was and how beautiful! This was not the romantic, yet buffeted, beautiful girl who had come so near being the tragedy of his old life? How womanly she now was, and how calm and at her ease! Could independence and the change from poverty and worry, the strong, free feeling of being one's self again and in one's sphere, make so great a difference in so short a while? He wondered at himself for not seeing farther ahead. He had come to bid her good-bye and offer again—this time in all earnestness and sincerity, to take her with him—to share his life—but the words died in his mouth.

He could no more have said them than he could have profanely touched her.

When he left she walked with him to the parting of the ways.

The blue line of tremulous mountain was scrolled along a horizon that flamed crimson in the setting sun. A flock of twilight clouds—flamingos of the sky—floated toward the sunset as if going to roost. Beyond was the great river, its bosom as wan, where it lay in the shadow of the mountain, as Richard Travis's own cheek; but where the sunset fell on it the reflected light turned it to pink which to him looked like Helen's.

The wind came down cool from the frost-tinctured mountain side, and the fine sweet odor of life everlasting floated in it—frost-bitten—and bringing a wave of youth and rabbit hunts and of a life of dreams and the sweet unclouded far-off hope of things beautiful and immortal. And the flow of it hurt Richard Travis—hurt him with a tenderness that bled.

The girl stopped and drank in the beauty of it all, and he stood looking at her, "the picture for the frame"—as he said to himself.

It had rained and the clouds were scattered, yet so full that they caught entirely the sunset rays and held them as he would that moment have loved to hold her. Something in her—something about her thrilled him strangely, as he had often been thrilled when looking at the great pictures in the galleries of the old world. He repeated softly to her, as she stood looking forward—to him—into the future:

"What thou art we know not, What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody."

She turned and held out her hand.

"I must bid you good-bye now and I wish you all happiness—so much more than you have ever had in all your life."

He took it, but he could not speak. Something shook him strangely. He knew nothing to say. Had he spoken, he knew he had stammered and blundered.

Never had the Richard Travis of old done such a thing.

"Helen—Helen—if—if—you know once I asked you to go with me—once—in the old, awful life. Now, in the new—the new life which you can make sweet—"

She came up close to him. The sun had set and the valley lay in silence. When he saw her eyes there were tears in them—tears so full and deep that they hurt him when she said:

"It can never—never be—now. You made me love you when you could not love; and love born of despair is mateless ever; it would die in its realization. Mine, for you, was that—" She pointed to the sunset. "It breathed and burned. I saw it only because of clouds, of shadow. But were the clouds, the shadows, gone—"

"There would be no life, no burning, no love," he said. "Ah, I think I understand," and his heart sank with pain. What—why—he could not say, only he knew it hurt him, and he began to wonder.

"You do not blame me," she said as she still held his hand and looked up into his eyes in the old way he had seen, that terrible night at Millwood.

For reply he held her hand in both of his and then laid it over his heart. She felt his tears fall on it, tears, which even death could not bring, had come to Richard Travis at last, and he wondered. In the old life he never wondered—he always knew; but in this—this new life—it was all so strange, so new that he feared even himself. Like a sailor lost, he could only look up, by day, helplessly at the sun, and, by night, helplessly at the stars.

"Helen—Helen," he said at last, strangely shaken in it all,—"if I could tell you now that I do—that I could love—"

She put her hand over his mouth in the old playful way and shook her head, smiling through her tears: "Do not try to mate my love with a thing that balks."

It was simply said, and forceful. It was enough. Richard Travis blushed for very shame.

"Do you not see," she said, "how hopeless it is? Do you not know that I was terribly tempted—weak—maddened—deserted that night? That now I know what Clay's love has been? Oh, why do we not learn early in life that fire will burn, that death will kill, that we are the deed of all we think and feel—the wish of all we will to be?"

Travis turned quickly: "Is that true? Then let me wish—as I do, Helen; let me wish that I might love you as you deserve."

She saddened: "Oh, but you have wished—you have willed—too often—too differently. It can never be now."

"I understand you," he said. "It is natural—I should say it is nature—nature, the never-lying. I but reap my own folly, and now good-bye forever, Helen, and may God bless you and bring you that happiness you have deserved."

"Do you know," she said calmly, "that I have thought of all that, too. There are so many of us in the world, and so little happiness that like flowers it cannot go around—some must go without."

She held his hand tightly as if she did not want him to go.

"My child, I must go out of your life—go—and stay. I see—I see—and I only make you wretched. And I have no right to. It is ignoble. It is I who should bear this burden of sorrow—not you. You who have never sinned, who are so young and so beautiful. In time you will love a nobler man—Clay—"

She looked at him, but said nothing. She knew for the first time the solution of her love's problem. She was silent, holding his hand.

"Child," he said again. "Helen, you must do as I say. There is happiness for you yet when I am gone—when I am out of your life and the memory and the pain of it cease. Then you will marry Clay—"

"Do you really think so? Oh, and he has loved me so and is so splendid and true."

Travis was silent, waiting.

"Now let me go," she said—"let me forget all my madness and folly in learning to love one whose love was made for mine. In time I shall love him as he deserves. Good-bye."

Then she broke impulsively away, and he watched her walk back through the shadows and under the clouds.

At the turning of the path across the meadow, he saw another shadow join her. It was Clay, and the two went through the twilight together.

Travis turned. "It is right—it is the solution—he alone deserves her. I must reap my past, reap it and see my harvest blighted and bound with rotten twine. But, oh, to know it when it is too late—to know that I might love her and could be happy—then to have to give it up—now—now—when I need it most. The Deed," he said—"we are the deed of all we think and feel."