On the morning after his arrival, Carraway had a long conversation with the old man in his sitting-room, and when it was over he came out with an anxious frown upon his brow and went upstairs to the library which Maria had fitted up in the spare room next her chamber. It was the pleasantest spot in the house, he had concluded last evening, and the impression returned to him as he entered now and saw the light from the wood fire falling on the shining floor, which reflected the stately old furniture, and the cushions, and the window curtains of faded green. Books were everywhere, and he noticed at once that they were not the kind read by the women whom he knew—big leather volumes on philosophy, yellow-covered French novels, and curled edges of what he took to be the classic poets. It was almost with relief that he noticed a dainty feminine touch here and there—a work- bag of flowered silk upon the sofa, a bowl of crocuses among the papers on the old mahogany desk, and clinging to each bit of well-worn drapery in the room a faint and delicate fragrance.

Maria was lying drowsily in a low chair before the fire, and as he entered she looked up with a smile and motioned to a comfortable seat across the hearth. A book was on her knees, but she had not been reading, for her fingers were playing carelessly with the uncut leaves. Against her soft black dress the whiteness of her face and hands showed almost too intense a contrast, and yet there was no hint of fragility in her appearance. From head to foot she was abounding with energy, throbbing with life, and though Carraway would still, perhaps, have hesitated to call her beautiful, his eyes dwelt with pleasure on the noble lines of her relaxed figure. Better than beauty, he admitted the moment afterward, was the charm that shone for him in her wonderfully expressive face—a face over which the experiences of many lives seemed to ripple faintly in what was hardly more than the shadow of a smile. She had loved and suffered, he thought, with his gaze upon her, and from both love and suffering she had gained that fulness of nature which is the greatest good that either has to yield.

"So it is serious," she said anxiously, as he sat down.

"I fear so—at least, where your brother is concerned. I can't say just what the terms of the will are, of course, but he made no secret at breakfast of his determination to leave half of his property—which the result of recent investments has made very large—to the cause of foreign missions."

"Yes, he has told me about it."

"Then there's nothing more to be said, unless you can persuade him for your brother's sake to destroy the will when his anger has blown over. I used every argument I could think of, but he simply wouldn't listen to me—swept my advice aside as if it was so much wasted breath—"

He paused as Maria bent her ear attentively.

"He is coming upstairs now!" she exclaimed, amazed.

There was a heavy tread on the staircase, and a little later Fletcher came in and turned to close the door carefully behind him. He had recovered for a moment his air of bluff good-humour, and his face crinkled into a ruddy smile.

"So you're hatching schemes between you, I reckon," he observed, and, crossing to the hearth, pushed back a log with the toe of his heavy boot.

"It looks that way, certainly," replied Carraway, with his pleasant laugh. "But I must confess that I was doing nothing more interesting than admiring Mrs. Wyndham's taste in books."

Fletcher glanced round indifferently.

"Well, I haven't any secrets," he pursued, still under the pressure of the thought which had urged him upstairs, "and as far as that goes, I can tear up that piece of paper and have it done with any day I please."

"So I had the honour to advise," remarked Carraway.

"That's neither here nor thar, I reckon—it's made now, and so it's likely to stand until I die, though I don't doubt you'll twist and split it then as much as you can. However, I reckon the foreign missions will look arter the part that goes to them, and if Maria's got the sense I credit her with she'll look arter hers."

"After mine?" exclaimed Maria, lifting her head to return his gaze. "Why, I thought you gave me my share when I married."

"So I did—so I did, and you let it slip like water through your fingers; but you've grown up, I reckon, sence you were such a fool as to have your head turned by Wyndham, and if you don't hold on to this tighter than you did to the last you deserve to lose it, that's all. You're a good woman—I ain't lived a month in the house with you and not found that out—but if you hadn't had something more than goodness inside your head you wouldn't have got so much as a cent out of me again. Saidie's a good woman and a blamed fool, too, but you're different; you've got a backbone in your body, and I'll be hanged if that ain't why I'm leaving the Hall to you."

"The Hall?" echoed Maria, rising impulsively from her chair and facing him upon the hearthrug.

"The Hall and Saidie and the whole lot," returned Fletcher, chuckling, "and I may as well tell you now, that, for all your spendthrift notions about wages, you're the only woman I ever saw who was fit to own a foot of land. But I like the quiet way you manage things, somehow, and, bless my soul, if you were a man I'd leave you the whole business and let the missions hang."

"There's time yet," observed Carraway beneath his breath.

"No, no; it's settled now," returned Fletcher, "and she'll have more than she can handle as it is. Most likely she'll marry again, being a woman, and a man will be master here, arter all. If you do," he added, turning angrily upon his granddaughter, "for heaven's sakes, don't let it be another precious scamp like your first!"

With a shiver Maria caught her breath and bent toward him with an appealing gesture of her arms.

"But you must not do it, grandfather; it isn't right. The place was never meant to belong to me."

"Well, it belongs to me, I reckon, and confound your silly puritanical fancies, I'll leave it where I please," retorted Fletcher, and strode from the room.

Throwing herself back into her chair, Maria lay for a time looking thoughtfully at the hickory log, which crumbled and threw out a shower of red sparks. Her face was grave, but there was no hint of indecision upon it, and it struck Carraway very forcibly at the instant that she knew her own mind quite clearly and distinctly upon this as upon most other matters.

"It may surprise you," she said presently, speaking with sudden passion, "but by right the Hall ought not to be mine, and I do not want it. I have never loved it because it has never for a moment seemed home to me, and our people have always appeared strangers upon the land. How we came here I do not know, but it has not suited us, and we have only disfigured a beauty into which we did not fit. Its very age is a reproach to us, for it shows off our newness—our lack of any past that we may call our own. Will might feel himself master here, but I cannot."

Carraway took off his glasses and rubbed patiently at the ridge they had drawn across his nose.

"And yet, why not?" he asked. "The place has been in your grandfather's possession now for more than twenty years."

"For more than twenty years," repeated Maria scornfully, "and before that the Blakes lived here—how long?"

He met her question squarely. "For more than two hundred."

Without shifting her steady gaze which she turned upon his face, she leaned forward, clasping her hands loosely upon the knees.

"There are things that I want to know, Mr. Carraway," she said, "many things, and I believe that you can tell me. Most of all, I want to know why we ever came to Blake Hall? Why the Blakes ever left it? And, above all, why they have hated us so heartily and so long?"

She paused and sat motionless, while she hung with suspended breath upon his reply.

For a moment the lawyer hesitated, nervously twirling his glasses between his thumb and forefinger; then he slowly shook his head and looked from her to the fire.

"Twenty years are not as a day, despite your scorn, my dear young lady, and many facts become overlaid with fiction in a shorter time."

"But you know something—and you believe still more."

"God forbid that I should convert you to any belief of mine."

She put out a protesting hand, her eyes still gravely insistent. "Tell me all—I demand it. It is my right; you must see that."

"A right to demolish sand houses—to scatter old dust."

"A right to hear the truth. Surely you will not withhold it from me?"

"I don't know the truth, so I can't enlighten you. I know only the stories of both sides, and they resemble each other merely in that they both center about the same point of interest."

"Then you will tell them to me—you must," she said earnestly. "Tell me first, word for word, all that the Blakes believe of us."

With a laugh, he put on his glasses that he might bring her troubled face the more clearly before him.

"A high spirit of impartiality, I admit," he observed.

"That I should want to hear the other side?"

"That, being a woman, you should take for granted the existence of the other side."

She shook her head impatiently. "You can't evade me by airing camphor-scented views of my sex," she returned. "What I wish to know—and I still stick to my point, you see—is the very thing you are so carefully holding back."

"I am holding back nothing, on my honour," he assured her. "If you want the impression which still exists in the county—only an impression—I must make plain to you at the start (for the events happened when the State was in the throes of reconstruction, when each man was busy rebuilding his own fortunes, and when tragedies occurred without notice and were hushed up without remark)—if you want merely an impression, I repeat, then you may have it, my dear lady, straight from the shoulder."

"Well?" her voice rose inquiringly, for he had paused.

"There is really nothing definite known of the affair," he resumed after a moment, "even the papers which would have thrown light into the darkness were destroyed—burned, it is said, in an old office which the Federal soldiers fired. It is all mystery— grim mystery and surmise; and when there is no chance of either proving or disproving a case I dare say one man's word answers quite as well as another's. At all events, we have your grandfather's testimony as chief actor and eye-witness against the inherited convictions of our somewhat Homeric young neighbour. For eighteen years before the war Mr. Fletcher was sole agent—a queer selection, certainly—for old Mr. Blake, who was known to have grown very careless in the confidence he placed. When the crash came, about three years after the war, the old gentleman's mind was much enfeebled, and it was generally rumoured that his children were kept in ignorance that the place was passing from them until it was auctioned off over their heads and Mr. Fletcher became the purchaser. How this was, of course, I do not pretend to say, but when the Hall finally went for the absurd sum of seven thousand dollars life was at best a hard struggle in the State, and I imagine there was less surprise at the sacrifice of the place than at the fact that your grandfather should have been able to put down the ready money. The making of a fortune is always, I suppose, more inexplicable than the losing of one. The Blakes had always been accounted people of great wealth and wastefulness, but within five years from the close of the war they had sunk to the position in which you find them now —a change, I dare say, from which it is natural much lingering bitterness should result. The old man died almost penniless, and his children were left to struggle on from day to day as best they could. It is a sad tale, and I do not wonder that it moves you," he finished slowly, and looked down to wipe his glasses.

"And grandfather?" asked the girl quietly. Her gaze had not wavered from his face, but her eyes shone luminous through the tears which filled them.

"He became rich as suddenly as the Blakes became poor. Where his money came from no one asked, and no one cared except the Blakes, who were helpless. They made some small attempts at law suits, I believe, but Christopher was only a child then, and there was nobody with the spirit to push the case. Then money was needed, and they were quite impoverished."

Maria threw out her hands with a gesture of revolt.

"Oh, it is a terrible story," she said, "a terrible story."

"It is an old one, and belongs to terrible times. You have drawn it from me for your own purpose, and be that as it may, I have always believed in giving a straight answer to a straight question. Now such things would be impossible," he added cheerfully; "then, I fear, they were but too probable."

"In your heart you believe that it is true?" He did not flinch from his response. "In my heart I believe that there is more in it than a lie."

Rising from her chair, she turned from him and walked rapidly up and down the room, through the firelight which shimmered over the polished floor. Once she stopped by the window, and, drawing the curtains aside, looked out upon the April sunshine and upon the young green leaves which tinted the distant woods. Then coming back to the hearthrug, she stood gazing down upon him with a serene and resolute expression.

"I am glad now that the Hall will be mine," she said, "glad even that it wasn't left to Will, for who knows how he would have looked at it. There is but one thing to be done: you must see that yourself. At grandfather's death the place must go back to its rightful owners."

"To its rightful owners!" he repeated in amazement, and rose to his feet.

"To the Blakes. Oh, don't you see it—can't you see that there is nothing else to do in common honesty?"

He shook his head, smiling.

"It is very beautiful, my child, but is it reasonable, after all?" he asked.

"Reasonable?" The fine scorn he had heard before in her voice thrilled her from head to foot. "Shall I stop to ask what is reasonable before doing what is right?"

Without looking at her, he drew a handkerchief from his pocket and shook it slowly out from its folds.

"Well, I'm not sure that you shouldn't," he rejoined.

"Then I shan't be reasonable. I'll be wise," she said; "for surely, if there is any wisdom upon earth, it is simply to do right. It may be many years off, and I may be an old woman, but when the Hall comes to me at grandfather's death I shall return it to the Blakes."

In the silence which followed he found himself looking into her ardent face with a wonder not unmixed with awe. To his rather cynical view of the Fletchers such an outburst came as little less than a veritable thunderclap, and for the first time in his life he felt a need to modify his conservative theories as to the necessity of blue blood to nourish high ideals. Maria, indeed, seemed to him as she stood there, drawn fine and strong against the curtains of faded green, to hold about her something better than that aroma of the past which he had felt to be the intimate charm of all exquisite things, and it was at the moment the very light and promise of the future which he saw in the broad intelligence of her brow. Was it possible, after all, he questioned, that out of the tragic wreck of old claims and old customs which he had witnessed there should spring creatures of even finer fiber than those who had gone before?

"So this is your last word?" he inquired helplessly.

"My last word to you—yes. In a moment I am going out to see the Blakes—to make them understand."

He put out his hand as if to detain her by a feeble pull at her skirt. "At least, you will sleep a night upon your resolution?"

"How can my sleeping alter things? My waking may."

"And you will sweep the claims of twenty years aside in an hour?"

"They are swept aside by the claims of two hundred."

With a courteous gesture he bent over her hand and raised it gravely to his lips.

"My dear young friend, you are very lovely and very unreasonable," he said.



CHAPTER VIII . Between Maria and Christopher

A little later, Maria, with a white scarf thrown over her head, came out of the Hall and passed swiftly along the road under the young green leaves which were putting out on the trees. When she reached the whitewashed gate before the Blake cottage she saw Christopher ploughing in the field on the left of the house, and turning into the little path which trailed through the tall weeds beside the "worm" fence, she crossed the yard and stood hesitating at the beginning of the open furrow he had left behind him. His gaze was bent upon the horses, and for a moment she watched him in attentive silence, her eyes dwelling on his massive figure, which cast a gigantic blue-black shadow across the April sunbeams. She saw him at the instant with a distinctness, a clearness of perception, that she had never been conscious of until to-day, as if each trivial detail in his appearance was magnified by the pale yellow sunshine through which she looked upon it. The abundant wheaten-brown hair, waving from the moist circle drawn by the hat he had thrown aside, the strong masculine profile burned to a faint terracotta shade from wind and sun, and the powerful hands knotted and roughened by heavy labour, all stood out vividly in the mental image which remained with her when she lowered her eyes.

Aroused by a sound from the house, he looked up and saw her standing on the edge of the ploughed field, her lace scarf blown softly in the April wind. After a single minute of breathless surprise he tossed the long ropes on the ground, and, leaving the plough, came rapidly across the loose clods of upturned earth.

"Did you come because I was thinking of you?" he asked simply, with the natural directness which had appealed so strongly to her fearless nature.

"Were you thinking of me?" her faint smile shone on him for an instant; "and were your thoughts as grave, I wonder, as my reason for coming?"

"So you have a reason, then?"

"Did you think I should dare to come without one?"

The light wind caught her scarf, blowing the long ends about her head. From the frame of soft white lace her eyes looked dark and solemn and very distant.

"I had hoped that you had no other reason than kindness." He had lost entirely the rustic restraint he had once felt in her presence, and, as he stood there in his clothes of dull blue jean, it was easy to believe in the gallant generations at his back. Was the fret of their gay adventures in his blood? she wondered.

"You will see the kindness in my reason, I hope," she answered quietly, while the glow of her sudden resolution illumined her face, "and at least you will admit the justice—though belated."

He drew a step nearer. "And it concerns you—and me?" he asked.

"It concerns you—oh, yes, yes, and me also, though very slightly. I have just learned—just a moment ago—what you must have thought I knew all along."

As he fell back she saw that he paled slowly beneath his sunburn.

"You have just learned—what?" he demanded.

"The truth," she replied; "as much of the truth as one may learn in an hour: how it came that you are here and I am there—at the Hall."

"At the Hall?" he repeated, and there was relief in the quick breath he drew; "I had forgotten the Hall."

"Forgotten it? Why, I thought it was your dream, your longing, your one great memory."

Smiling into her eyes, he shook his head twice before he answered.

"It was all that—once."

"Then it is not so now?" she asked, disappointed, "and what I have to tell you will lose half its value."

"So it is about the Hall?"

With one hand she held back the fluttering lace upon her bosom, while lifting the other she pointed across the ploughed fields to the old gray chimneys huddled amid the budding oaks.

"Does it not make you homesick to stand here and look at it?" she asked. "Think! For more than two hundred years your people lived there, and there is not a room within the house, nor a spot upon the land, that does not hold some sacred association for those of your name." Startled by the passion in her words, he turned from the Hall at which he had been gazing.

"What do you mean? " he demanded imperatively. "What do you wish to say?"

"Look at the Hall and not at me while I tell you. It is this—now listen and do not turn from it for an instant. Blake Hall—I have just found it out—will come to me at grandfather's death, and when it does—when it does I shall return it to your family—the whole of it, every lovely acre. Oh, don't look at me—look at the Hall!"

But he looked neither at her nor at the Hall, for his gaze dropped to the ground and hung blankly upon a clod of dry brown earth. She saw him grow pale to the lips and dark blue circles come out slowly about his eyes.

"It is but common justice; you see that," she urged.

At this he raised his head and returned her look.

"And what of Will?" he asked.

Her surprise showed in her face, and at sight of it he repeated his question with a stubborn insistence: "But what of Will? What has been done for Will?"

"Oh, I don't know; I don't know. The break is past mending. But it is not of him that I must speak to you now—it is of yourself. Don't you see that the terrible injustice has bowed me to the earth? What am I better than a dependent—a charity ward who has lived for years upon your money? My very education, my little culture, the refinements you see in me—these even I have no real right to, for they belong to your family. While you have worked as a labourer in the field I have been busy squandering the wealth which was not mine."

His face grew gentle as he looked at her.

"If the Blake money has made you what you are, then it has not been utterly wasted," he replied.

"Oh, you don't understand—you don't understand," she repeated, pressing her hands upon her bosom, as if to quiet her fluttering breath. "You have suffered from it all along, but it is I who suffer most to-day—who suffer most because I am upon the side of the injustice. I can have no peace until you tell me that I may still do my poor best to make amends—that when your home is mine you will let me give it back to you."

"It is too late," he answered with bitter humour. "You can't put a field-hand in a fine house and make him a gentleman. It is too late to undo what was done twenty years ago. The place can never be mine again—I have even ceased to want it. Give it to Will."

"I couldn't if I wanted to," she replied; "but I don't want to—I don't want to. It must go back to you and to your sisters. Do you think I could ever be owner of it now? Even if it comes to me when I am an old woman, I shall always feel myself a stranger in the house, though I should live there day and night for fifty years. No, no; it is impossible that I should ever keep it for an instant. It must go back to you and to the Blakes who come after you."

"There will be no Blakes after me," he answered. "I am the last."

"Then promise me that if the Hall is ever mine you will take it."

"From you? No: not unless I took it to hand on to your brother. It is an old score that you have brought up—one that lasted twenty years before it was settled. It is too late to stir up matters now."

"It is not too late," she said earnestly. "It is never too late to try to undo a wrong."

"The wrong was not yours; it must never touch you," he replied. "If my life was as clean as yours, it would, perhaps, not be too late for me either. Ten years ago I might have felt differently about it, but not now."

He broke off hurriedly, and Maria, with a hopeless gesture, turned back into the path.

"Then I shall appeal to your sisters when the time comes," she responded quietly.

Catching the loose ends of her scarf, he drew her slowly around until she met his eyes. "And I have said nothing to you—to you," he began, in a constrained voice, which he tried in vain to steady, "because it is so hard to say anything and not say too much. This, at least, you must know—that I am your servant now and shall be all my life."

She smiled sadly, looking down at the scarf which was crushed in his hands.

"And yet you will not grant the wish of my heart," she said.

"How could I? Put me back in the Hall, and I should be as ignorant and as coarse as I am out here. A labourer is all I am and all I am fit to be. I once had a rather bookish ambition, you know, but that is over—I wanted to read Greek and translate 'The Iliad' and all that—and yet to-day I doubt if I could write a decent letter to save my soul. It's partly my fault, of course, but you can't know you could never know—the abject bitterness and despair of those years when I tried to sink myself to the level of the brutes—tried to forget that I was any better than the oxen I drove. No, there's no pulling me up again; such things aren't lived over, and I'm down for good."

Her tears, which she had held back, broke forth at his words, and he saw them fall upon her bosom, where her hands were still tightly clasped.

"And it is all our fault," she said brokenly.

"Not yours, surely."

"It is not too late," she went on passionately, laying her hand upon his arm and looking up at him with a misty brightness. "Oh, if you would let me make amends—let me help you!"

"Is there any help?" he asked, with his eyes on the hand upon his arm.

"If you will let me, I will find it. We will take up your study where you broke it off—we will come up step by step, even to Homer, if you like. I am fond of books, you know, and I have had my fancy for Greek, too. Oh, it will be so easy—so easy; and when the time comes for you to go back to the Hall, I shall have made you the most learned Blake of the whole line."

He bent quickly and kissed the hand which trembled on his sleeve.

"Make of me what you please," he said; "I am at your service."

For the second time he saw the wonderful light—the fervour— illumine her face, and then fade slowly, leaving a still, soft radiance of expression.

"Then I may teach you all that you haven't learned," she said with a happy little laugh. "How fortunate that I should have been born a bookworm. Shall we begin with Greek?"

He smiled. "No; let's start with English—and start low."

"Then we'll do both; but where shall it be? Not at the Hall."

"Hardly. There's a bench, though, down by the poplar spring that looks as if it were meant to be in school. Do you know the place? It's in my pasture by the meadow brook?"

"I can find it, and I'll bring the books to-morrow at this hour. Will you come?"

"To-morrow—and every day?"

"Every day."

For an instant he looked at her in perplexity. "I may as well tell you," he said at last, "that I'm one of the very biggest rascals on God's earth. I'm not worth all this, you know; that's honest."

"And so are you," she called back gaily, as she turned from him and went rapidly along the little path.



CHAPTER IX. Christopher Faces Himself

When she had gone through the gate and across the little patch of trodden grass into the sunken road, Christopher took up the ropes and with a quick jerk of the buried ploughshare began his plodding walk over the turned-up sod. The furrow was short, but when he reached the end of it he paused from sheer exhaustion and stood wiping the heavy moisture from his brow. The scene through which he had just passed had left him quivering in every nerve, as if he had been engaged in some terrible struggle against physical odds. All at once he became aware that the afternoon was too oppressive for field work, and, unhitching the horses from the plough, he led them slowly back to the stable beyond the house. As he went, it seemed to him that he had grown middle-aged within the hour; his youth had departed as mysteriously as his strength.

A little later, Tucker, who was sitting on the end of a big log at the woodpile, looked up in surprise from the anthill he was watching.

"Quit work early, eh, Christopher?"

"Yes; I've given out," replied Christopher, stopping beside him and picking up the axe which lay in a scattered pile of chips. "It's the spring weather, I reckon, but I'm not fit for a tougher job than chopping wood."

"Well, I'd leave that off just now, if I were you."

Raising the axe, Christopher swung it lightly over his shoulder; then, lowering it with a nerveless movement, he tossed it impatiently on the ground.

"A queer thing happened just now, Uncle Tucker," he said, "a thing you'll hardly believe even when I tell you. I had a visit from Mrs. Wyndham, and she came to say—" he stammered and broke off abruptly.

"Mrs. Wyndham?" repeated Tucker. "She's Bill Fletcher's granddaughter, isn't she?"

"Maria Fletcher—you may have seen her when she lived here, five or six years ago."

Tucker shook his head.

"Bless your heart, my boy, I haven't seen a woman except Lucy and the girls for twenty-five years. But why did she come, I wonder?"

"That's the strange part, and you won't understand it until you see her. She came because she had just heard—some one had told her—about Fletcher's old rascality."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Tucker beneath his breath. He gave a long whistle and sat smiling at the little red anthill. "And did she actually proffer an apology?" he inquired.

"An amendment, rather. The Hall will come to her at Fletcher's death, and she walked over to say quite coolly that she wanted to give it back to us. Think of that! To part with such a home for the sake of mere right and justice."

"It is something to think about," assented Tucker, "and to think hard about, too—and yet I cut my teeth on the theory that women have no sense of honour. Now, that is pure, foolish, strait-laced honour, and nothing else."

"Nothing else," repeated Christopher softly; "and if you'll believe it, she cried—she really cried when I told her I couldn't take it. Oh, she's wonderful!" he burst out suddenly, all his awkward reserve dropping from him. "You can't be with her ten minutes without feeling how good she is—good all through, with a big goodness that isn't in the least like the little prudishness of other women—"

He checked himself hastily, but not before Tucker had glanced up with his pleasant smile.

"Well, my boy, I don't misunderstand you. I never knew a man yet to begin a love affair with a panegyric on virtue. She's an estimable woman, I dare say, and I presume she's plain."

"Plain!" gasped Christopher. "Why, she's beautiful—at least, you think so when you see her smile."

"So she smiled through her tears, eh?"

Christopher started angrily. "Can you sit there on that log and laugh at such a thing?" he demanded.

"Come, come," protested Tucker, "an honest laugh never turned a sweet deed sour since the world began—and that was more than sweet; it was fine. I'd like to know that woman, Christopher."

"You could never know her—no man could. She's all clear and bright on the surface, but all mystery beneath."

"Ah, that's it; you see, there was never a fascinating woman yet who was easy to understand. Wasn't it that shrewd old gallant, Bolivar Blake, who said that in love an ounce of mystery was worth a pound of morality?"

"It's like him: he said a lot of nonsense," commented Christopher. "But to think," he added after a moment, "that she should be Bill Fletcher's granddaughter!"

"Well, I knew her mother," returned Tucker, "and she was as honest, God-fearing a body as ever trod this earth. She stood out against Fletcher to the last, you know, and worked hard for her living while that scamp, her husband, drank them both to death. There are some people who are born with a downright genius for honesty, and this girl may be one of them."

"I don't know—I don't know," said Christopher, in a voice which had grown spiritless. Then after an instant in which he stared blankly down at Tucker's ant-hill, he turned hurriedly away and followed the little straggling path to the barn door.

>From the restlessness that pricked in his limbs there was no escape, and after entering the barn he came out again and went down into the pasture to the long bench beside the poplar spring. Here, while the faint shadows of the young leaves played over him, he sat with his head bent forward and his hands dropped listlessly between his knees.

Around him there was the tender green of the spring meadows, divided by a little brook where the willows shone pure silver under the April wind. Near at hand a catbird sang in short, tripping notes, and in the clump of briars by the spring a rabbit sat alert for the first sound. So motionless was Christopher that he seemed, sitting there by the pale gray body of a poplar, almost to become a part of the tree against which he leaned—to lose, for the time at least, his share in the moving animal life around him.

At first there was mere blankness in his mind—an absence of light and colour in which his thoughts were suddenly blotted out; then, as the wind raised the hair upon his brow, he lifted his eyes from the ground, and with the movement it seemed as if his life ran backward to its beginning and he saw himself not as he was to-day, but as he might have been in a period of time which had no being.

Before him were his knotted and blistered hands, his long limbs outstretched in their coarse clothes, but in the vision beyond the little spring he walked proudly with his rightful heritage upon him—a Blake by force of blood and circumstance. The world lay before him—bright, alluring, a thing of enchanting promise, and it was as if he looked for the first time upon the possibilities contained in this life upon the earth. For an instant the glow lasted—the beauty dwelt upon the vision, and he beheld, clear and radiant, the happiness which might have been his own; then it grew dark again, and he faced the brutal truth in all its nakedness; he knew himself for what he was—a man debased by ignorance and passion to the level of the beasts. He had sold his birthright for a requital, which had sickened him even in the moment of fulfilment.

To do him justice, now that the time had come for an acknowledgment he felt no temptation to evade the judgment of his own mind, nor to cheat himself with the belief that the boy was marked for ruin before he saw him—that Will had worked out, in vicious weakness, his own end. It was not the weakness, after all, that he had played upon—it was rather the excitable passion and the whimpering fears of the hereditary drunkard. He remembered now the long days that he had given to his revenge, the nights when he had tossed sleepless while he planned a widening of the breach with Fletcher. That, at least was his work, and his alone—the bitter hatred, more cruel than death, with which the two now stood apart and snarled. It was a human life that he had taken in his hand—he saw that now in his first moment of awakening—a life that he had destroyed as deliberately as if he had struck it dead before him. Day by day, step by step, silent, unswerving, devilish, he had kept about his purpose, and now at the last he had only to sit still and watch his triumph.

With a sob, he bowed his head in his clasped hands, and so shut out the light.



CHAPTER X. By the Poplar Spring

The next day he watched for her anxiously until she appeared over the low brow of the hill, her arms filled with books, and Agag trotting at her side. As she descended slowly into the broad ravine where he awaited her under six great poplars that surrounded the little spring, he saw that she wore a dress of some soft, creamy stuff and a large white hat that shaded her brow and eyes. She looked younger, he noticed, than she had done in her black gown, and he recalled while she neared him the afternoon more than six years before when she had come suddenly upon him while he worked in his tobacco.

"So you are present at the roll-call?" she said, laughing, as she sat down on the bench beside him and spread out the books that she had brought.

"Why, I've been sitting here for half an hour," he answered.

"What a shame—that's a whole furrow unploughed, isn't it?"

"Several of them; but I'm not counting furrows now. I'm getting ready to appall you by my ignorance." He spoke with a determined, reckless gaiety that lent a peculiar animation to his face.

"If you are waiting for that, you are going to be disappointed," she replied, smiling, "for I've put my heart into the work, and I was born and patterned for a teacher; I always knew it. We're going to do English literature and a first book in Latin."

"Are we?" He picked up the Latin grammar and ran his fingers lightly through the pages. "I went a little way in this once," he said. "I got as far as 'omnia vincit amor' and stopped. Tobacco conquered me instead."

She caught up his gay laugh. "Well, we'll try it over again," she returned, and held out the book.

An hour later, when the first lesson was over and he had gone back to his work, he carried with him a wonderful exhilaration—a feeling as if he had with a sudden effort burst the bonds that had held him to the earth. By the next day the elation vanished and a great heaviness came in its place, but for a single afternoon he had known what it was to thrill in every fiber with a powerful and pure emotion—an emotion beside which all the cheap sensations of his life showed stale and colourless. While the strangeness of this mood was still upon him he chanced upon Lila and Jim Weatherby standing together by the gate in the gray dusk, and when presently the girl came back alone across the yard he laid his hand upon her arm and drew her over to Tucker's bench beside the rose-bush.

"Lila, I've changed my mind about it all," he said.

"About what, dear?"

"About Jim and you. We were all wrong—all of us except Uncle Tucker—wrong from the very start. You musn't mind mother; you musn't mind anybody. Marry Jim and be happy, if he can make you so."

"Oh, Christopher!" gasped Lila, with a long breath, lifting her lovely, pensive face. "Oh, Christopher!"

"Don't wait; don't put it off; don't listen to any of us," he urged impatiently. "Good God! If you love him as you say you do, why have you let all these years slip away?"

"But you thought it was best, Christopher. You told me so."

"Best! There's nothing best except to be happy if you get the chance."

"He wants me to marry him now," said Lila, lowering her voice. "Mother will never know, he thinks, her mind grows so feeble; he wants me to marry him without any getting ready—after church one Sunday morning."

Putting his arm about her, Christopher held her for a moment against his side. "Then do it," he said gravely, as he stooped and kissed her.

And several weeks later, on a bright first Sunday in May, Lila was married, after morning services, in the little country church, and Christopher watched her almost eagerly as she walked home across the broad meadows powdered white with daisies. To the reproachful countenance which Cynthia presented to him upon his return to the house he gave back a careless and defiant smile.

"So it's all over," he announced gaily, "and Lila's married at last."

"Then you're satisfied, I hope," rejoined Cynthia grimly, "now that you've dragged us down to the level of the Weatherbys and— the Fletchers? There's nothing more to be said about it, I suppose, and you may as well come in to dinner."

She held herself stiffly aloof from the subject, with her head flung back and her chin expressing an indignant protest. There was a kind of rebellious scorn in the way in which she carved the shoulder of bacon and poured the coffee.

"Good Lord! It's such a little thing to make a fuss about," said Tucker, "when you remember, my dear, that our levels aren't any bigger than chalk lines in the eyes of God Almighty."

Cynthia regarded him with squinting displeasure.

"Oh, of course; you have no family pride," she returned; "but I had thought there was a little left in Christopher."

Christopher shook his head, smiling indifferently. "Not enough to want blood sacrifices," he responded, and fell into a detached and thoughtful silence. The vision of Lila in her radiant happiness remained with him like a picture that one has beheld by some rare chance in a vivid and lovely light; and it was still before him when he left the house presently and strolled slowly down to meet Maria by the poplar spring.

The bloom of the meadows filled his nostrils with a delicate fragrance, and from the bough of an old apple-tree in the orchard he heard the low afternoon murmurs of a solitary thrush. May was on the earth, and it had entered into him as into the piping birds and the spreading trees. It was at last good to be alive— to breathe the warm, sweet air, and to watch the sunshine slanting on the low, green hill. So closely akin were his moods to those of the changing seasons that, at the instant, he seemed to feel the current of his being flow from the earth beneath his feet—as if his physical nature drew strength and nourishment from that genial and abundant source.

When he reached the spring he saw Maria appear on the brow of the hill, and with a quick, joyous bound his heart leaped up to meet her. As she came toward him her white dress swept the tall grass from her feet, and her shadow flew like a winged creature straight before her. There was a vivid softness in her face—a look at once bright and wistful—which moved him with a new and strange tenderness.

"I was a little late," she explained, as they met before the long bench and she laid her books upon it, "and I am very warm. May I have a drink?"

"From a bramble cup?"

"How else?" She took off her hat and tossed it on the grass at her feet; then, going to the spring, she waited while he plucked a leaf from the bramble and bent it into shape. When he filled it and held it out, she placed her lips to the edge of the leaf and looked up at him with smiling eyes while she drank slowly from his hand.

"It holds only a drop, but how delicious!" she said, seating herself again upon the bench and leaning back against the great body of a poplar. Then her eyes fell upon his clothes. "Why, how very much dressed you look!" she added.

"Oh, there's a reason besides Sunday—I've just come from a wedding. Lila has married after twelve years of waiting."

"Your pretty sister! And to whom?"

"To Jim Weatherby—old Jacob's son, you know. Now, don't tell me that you disapprove. I count on your good sense to see the wisdom of it."

"So it is your pretty sister," she said slowly, "the woman I passed in the road the other day and held my breath as I did before Botticelli's Venus."

"Is that so? Well, she doesn't know much about pictures, nor does Jim. She has thrown herself away, Cynthia says, but what could she have waited for, after all? Nothing had ever come to her, and she had lived thirty years. Besides, she will be very happy, and that's a good deal, isn't it?"

"It's everything," said Maria quietly, looking down into her lap.

"Everything? And if you had been born in her place?"

"I am not in her place and never could be; but six years ago, if I had been told that I must live here all my life, I think I should have fretted myself to death; that would have happened six years ago, for I was born with a great aching for life, and I thought then that one could live only in the big outside world."

"And now?" he questioned, for she paused and sat smiling gravely at the book she held.

"Now I know that the fulness of life does not come from the things outside of us, and that we ourselves must create the beauty in which we live. Oh, I have learned so much from misery," she went on softly, "and worst of all, I have learned what it is to starve for bread in the midst of sugar-plums."

"And it was worth learning?"

"The knowledge that I gained? Oh, yes, yes; for it taught me how to be happy. I went down into hell," she said passionately, "and I came out—clean. I saw evil such as I had never heard of; I went close to it, I even touched it, but I always kept my soul very far away, and I was like a person in a dream. The more I saw of sin and ugliness the more I dreamed of peace and beauty. I builded me my own refuge, I fed on my own strength day and night —and I am what I am—"

"The loveliest woman on God's earth," he said.

"You do not know me, "she answered, and opened the book before her. "It was the story of the Holy Grail," she added, "and we left off here. Oh, those brave days of King Arthur! It was always May then."

He touched the page lightly with a long blade of grass.

"Read yourself—this once," he pleaded, "and let me listen."

Leaning a little forward, she looked down and slowly turned the pages, her head bent over the book, her long lashes shading the faint flush in her cheeks. Over her white dress fell a delicate lacework from the young poplar leaves, flecked here and there with pale drops of sunshine, which filtered through the thickly clustered boughs. When the wind passed in the high tree-tops, the shadows, soft and fine as cobweb, rippled over her dress, and a loose strand of her dark hair waved gently about her ear. The life—the throbbing vitality within—her seemed to vivify the very air she breathed, and he felt all at once that the glad thrill which stirred his blood was but a response to the fervent spirit which spoke in her voice.

"For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May," she read, "in something to constrain him to some manner of thing more in that month than in any other month—for then all herbs and trees renew a man and woman, and in likewise lovers call again to mind old gentleness and old service and many kind deeds that were forgotten by negligence."

The words went like wine to his head, and he saw her shadowy figure recede and dissolve suddenly as in a mist. A lump rose in his throat, his heart leaped, and he felt his pulses beating madly in his temples. He drew back, closing his eves to shut out her face; but the next instant, as she stirred slightly to hold down the rippling leaves, he bent forward and laid his hand upon the one that held the open book.

Her voice fluttered into silence, and, raising her head, she looked up in tremulous surprise. He saw her face pale slowly, her lids quiver and droop above her shining eyes, and her teeth gleam milk white between her parted lips. A tremor of alarm ran through her, and she made a swift movement to escape; then, lifting her eyes again, she looked full into his own, and, stooping quickly, he kissed her on the mouth.

An instant afterward the book fell to the ground, and he rose to his feet and stood trembling against the body of the poplar.

"Forgive me," he said; "forgive me—I have ruined it."

Standing beside the bench, she watched him with a still, grave gentleness before which his gaze dropped slowly to the ground.

"Yes, you have ruined this," she answered, smiling, "but Latin is still left."

"It's no use," he went on breathlessly. "I can't do it; it's no use."

His eyes sought hers and held them while he made a single step forward; then, turning quickly away, he went from her across the meadow to the distant wood.



BOOK FIVE. The Ancient Law

CHAPTER I. Christopher Seeks an Escape

A clump of brambles caught at his feet, and, stumbling like a drunken man, he threw himself at full length upon the ground, pressing his forehead on the young, green thorns. A century seemed to have passed since his flight from the poplar spring, and yet the soft afternoon sunshine was still about him and the low murmurs of the thrush still floated from the old apple-tree. All the violence of his undisciplined nature had rushed into revolt against the surrender which he felt must come, and he was conscious at the instant that he hated only a little less supremely than he loved. In the end the greater passion would triumph over him, he knew; but as he lay there face downward upon the earth the last evil instincts of his revenge battled against the remorse which had driven him from Maria's presence. He saw himself clearly for what he was: he had learned at last to call his sin by its right name; and yet he felt that somewhere in the depths of his being he had not ceased to love the evil that he had done. He hated Fletcher, he told himself, as righteously as ever, but between himself and the face of his enemy a veil had fallen—the old wrong no longer stood out in a blaze of light. A woman's smile divided him like a drawn sword from his brutal past, and he had lost the reckless courage with which he once might have flung himself upon destruction.

Rising presently, he crossed the meadow and went slowly back to his work in the stables, keeping his thoughts with an effort upon his accustomed tasks. A great weariness for the endless daily round of shall things was upon him, and he felt all at once that the emotion struggling within his heart must burst forth at last and pervade the visible world. He was conscious of an impulse to sing, to laugh, to talk in broken sentences to himself; and any utterance, however slight and meaningless, seemed to relieve in a measure the nervous tension of his thoughts.

In one instant there entered into him a desperate determination to play the traitor—to desert his post and strike out boldly and alone into the world. And with the next breath he saw himself living to old age as he had lived from boyhood—within reach of Maria's hand, meeting her fervent eyes, and yet separated from her by a distance greater than God or man could bridge. With the thought of her he saw again her faint smile which lingered always about her mouth, and his blood stirred at the memory of the kiss which she had neither resisted nor returned.

Cynthia, searching for him a few minutes later, found him leaning idly against the mare's stall, looking down upon a half-finished nest which a house-wren had begun to build upon his currycomb.

"It's a pity to disturb that, Tucker would say," he observed, motioning toward the few wisps of straw on the ledge.

"Oh, she can start it somewhere else," replied Cynthia indifferently. "They have sent for you from the store, Christopher—it's something about one of the servants, I believe. They're always getting into trouble and wanting you to pull them out." The descendants of the old Blake slaves were still spoken of by Cynthia as "the servants," though they had been free men and women for almost thirty years.

Christopher started from his abstraction and turned toward her with a gesture of annoyance.

"Well, I'll have to go down, I suppose," he said. "Has mother asked for me to-day?"

"Only for Jim again—it's always Jim now. I declare, I believe we might all move away and she'd never know the difference so long as he was left. She forgets us entirely sometimes, and fancies that father is alive again."

"It's a good thing Jim amuses her, at any rate."

An expression of anger drew Cynthia's brows together. "Oh, I dare say; but it does seem hard that she should have grown to dislike me after all I've done for her. There are times when she won't let me even come in the room—when she's not herself, you know."

Her words were swallowed in a sob, and he stood staring at her in an amazement too sudden to be mixed with pity.

"And you have given up your whole life to her," he exclaimed. appalled by the injustice of the god of sacrifice.

Cynthia put up one knotted hand and stroked back the thin hair upon her temples. "It was all I had to give," she answered, and went out into the yard.

He let her go from him without replying, and before her pathetic figure had reached the house she was blotted entirely from his thoughts, for it was a part of the tragedy of her unselfishness that she had never existed as a distinct personality even in the minds of those who knew and loved her.

When presently he passed through the yard on his way to the store, he saw her taking in the dried clothes from the old lilac-bushes and called back carelessly that he would be home to supper. Then, forgetting her lesser miseries in his own greater one, he fell into his troubled brooding as he swung rapidly along the road.

At the store the usual group of loungers welcomed him, and among them he saw to his surprise the cheerful face of Jim Weatherby, a little clouded by the important news he was evidently seeking to hold back.

"I tried to keep them from sending for you, Christopher," the young man explained. "It is no business of yours—that is what I said."

"Well, it seems that every thriftless nigger in the county thinks he's got a claim upon you, sho' enough," put in Tom Spade. "It warn't mo'n last week that I had a letter from the grandson of yo' pa's old blacksmith Buck, sayin' he was to hang in Philadelphia for somebody's murder, an' that I must tell Marse Christopher to come an' git him off. Thar's a good six hunnard of 'em, black an' yaller an' it's God A'mighty or Marse Christopher to 'em every one."

"What is it now?" asked Christopher a little wearily, taking off his hat and running his hand through his thick, fair hair. "If anybody's been stealing chickens they've got to take the consequences."

"Oh, it's not chicken stealin' this time; it's a blamed sight worse. They want you to send somebody over to Uncle Isam's—you remember his little cabin, five miles off in Alorse's woods—to help him bury his children who have died of smallpox. There are four of 'em dead, it seems, an' the rest are all down with the disease. Thar's not a morsel of food in the house, an' not a livin' nigger will go nigh 'em."

"Uncle Isam!" repeated Christopher, as if trying to recall the name. "Why, I haven't laid eyes upon the man for years."

"Very likely; but he's sent you a message by a boy who was gathering pine knots at the foot of his hill. He was to tell Marse Christopher that he had had nothing to eat for two whole days an' his children were unburied. Then the boy got scared an' scampered off, an' that was all."

Christopher's laugh sounded rather brutal.

"So he used to belong to us, did he?" he inquired.

"He was yo' pa's own coachman. I recollect him plain as day," answered Tom. "I warn't 'mo'n a child then, an' he used to flick his whip at my bare legs whenever he passed me in the road."

"Well, what is to be done?" asked Christopher, turning suddenly upon him.

"The Lord He knows, suh. Thar's not a nigger as will go nigh him, an' I'm not blamin' 'em; not I. Jim's filled his cart with food, an' he's goin' to dump the things out at the foot of the hill; then maybe Uncle Isam can crawl down an' drag 'em back. His wife's down with it, too, they say. She was workin' here not mo'n six months ago, but she left her place of a sudden an' went back again."

Christopher glanced carelessly at the little cart waiting in the road, and then throwing off his coat tossed it on the seat.

"I'll trouble you to lend me your overalls, Tom," he said, "and you can send a boy up to the house and get mine in exchange. Put what medicines you have in the cart; I'll take them over to the old fool."

"Good Lord!" said Tom, and mechanically got out of his blue jean clothes.

"Now don't be a downright ass, Christopher," put in Jim Weatherby. "You've got your mother on your hands, you know, and what under heaven have you to do with Uncle Isam? I knew some foolishness would most likely come of it if they sent up for you."

"Oh, he used to belong to us, you see," explained Christopher carelessly.

"And he's been an ungrateful, thriftless free Negro for nearly thirty years—"

"That's just it—for not quite thirty years. Look here, if you'll drive me over in the cart and leave the things at the foot of the hill I'll be obliged to you. I'll probably have to stay out a couple of weeks—until there's no danger of my bringing back the disease—so I'll wear Tom's overalls and leave my clothes somewhere in the woods. Oh, I'll take care, of course; I'm no fool."

"You're surer of that than I am," returned Jim, thinking of Lila. "I can't help feeling that there's some truth in father's saying that a man can't be a hero without being a bit of a fool as well. For God's sake, don't, Christopher. You have no right—"

"No, I have no right," repeated Christopher, as he got into the cart and took up the hanging reins. A sudden animation had leaped into his face and his eyes were shining. It was the old love of a "risk for the sake of the risk" which to Tucker had always seemed to lack the moral elements of true courage, and the careless gaiety with which he spoke robbed the situation of its underlying somber horror.

Jim swung himself angrily upon the seat and touched the horse lightly with the whip. "And there's your mother sitting at home—and Cynthia—and Lila," he said.

Christopher turned on him a face in whose expression he found a mystery that he could not solve.

"I can't help it, Jim, to save my life I can't," he answered. "It isn't anything heroic; you know that as well as I. I don't care a straw for Uncle Isam and his children, but if I didn't go up there and bury those dead darkies I'd never have a moment's peace. I've been everything but a skulking coward, and I can't turn out to be that at the end. It's the way I'm made."

"Well, I dare say we're made different," responded Jim rather dryly, for it was his wedding day and he was going farther from his bride. "But for my part, I can't help thinking of that poor blind old lady, and how helpless they all are. Yes, we're made different. I reckon that's what it means."

The cart jogged on slowly through the fading sunshine, and when at last it came to the foot of the hill where Uncle Isam lived Christopher got out and shouldered a bag of meal.

"You'll run the place, I know, and look after mother while I'm away," he said.

"Oh, I suppose I'll have to," returned Jim; and then his ill- humour vanished and he smiled and held out his hand. "Good-by, old man. God bless you," he said heartily.

Sitting there in the road, he watched Christopher pass out of sight under the green leaves, stooping slightly beneath the bag of meal and whistling a merry scrap of an old song. At the instant it came to Jim with the force of a blow that this was the first cheerful sound he had heard from him for weeks; and, still pondering, he turned the horse's head and drove slowly home to his own happiness.



CHAPTER II. The Measure of Maria

When, two weeks later, Christopher reached home again, he was met by Tucker's gentle banter and Lila's look of passionate reproach.

"Oh, dear, you might have died!" breathed the girl with a shudder.

Christopher laughed.

"So might Uncle Tucker when he went into the war," was his retort. He was a little thinner, a little graver, and the sunburn upon his face had faded to a paler shade. After the short absence his powerful figure struck them as almost gigantic; physically, he had never appeared more impressive than he did standing there in the sunlight that filled the kitchen doorway.

"But that was different," protested Lila, flushing, "and this- this—why, you hardly knew Uncle Isam when you passed him in the road."

"And half the time forgot to speak to him," added Tucker, laughing. His eyes were on the young man's figure, and they grew a little wistful, as they always did in the presence of perfect masculine strength. "Well, I'm glad your search for adventures didn't end in disaster," he added pleasantly.

To Christopher's surprise, Cynthia was the single member of the family who showed a sympathy with his reckless knight errantry. "There was nothing else for you to do, of course," she said in a resolute voice, lifting her worn face where the lines had deepened in his absence; "he used to be father's coachman before the war."

She had gone from the kitchen as she spoke, and Christopher, following her, threw an anxious glance along the little platform to the closed door of the house.

"And mother, Cynthia?" he asked quickly.

"Her mind still wanders, but at times she seems to come back to herself for a little while, and only this morning she awoke from a nap and asked for you quite clearly. We told her you had gone hunting."

"May I see her now? Who is with her?"

"Jim. He has been so good."

The admission was wrung shortly from her rigid honesty, and there was no visible softening of her grim reserve, when, entering the house with Christopher, she found herself presently beside Jim Weatherby, who was chatting merrily in Mrs. Blake's room.

The old lady, shrivelled and faded as the dried goldenrod which filled the great jars on the hearth, lay half hidden among the pillows in her high white bed, her vacant eyes fixed upon the sunshine which fell through the little window. At Christopher's step her memory flickered back for an instant, and the change showed in the sudden animation of her glance.

"I was dreaming of your father, my son, and you have his voice."

"I am like him in other ways, I hope, mother."

"If I could only see you, Christopher—it is so hard to remember. You had golden curls and wore a white pinafore. I trimmed it with the embroidery from my last set of petticoats. And your hands were dimpled all over; you would suck your thumb: there was no breaking you, though I wrapped it in a rag soaked in quinine—"

"That was almost thirty years ago, mother," broke in Cynthia, catching her breath sharply. "He is a man now, and big—oh, so big—and his hair has grown a little darker."

"I know, Cynthia; I know," returned Mrs. Blake, with a peevish movement of her thin hand, "but you won't let me remember. I am trying to remember." She fell to whimpering like a hurt child, and then growing suddenly quiet, reached out until she touched Christopher's head. "You're a man, I know," she said, "older than your father was when his first child was born. There have been two crosses in my life, Christopher—my blindness and my never having heard the voices of my grandchildren playing in the house. Such a roomy old house, too, with so much space for them to fill with cheerful noise. I always liked noise, you know; it tells of life, and never disturbs me so long as it is pleasant. What I hate is the empty silence that reminds one of the grave."

She was quite herself now, and, bending over, he kissed the hand upon the counterpane.

"Oh, mother, mother, if I could only have made you happy!"

"And you couldn't, Christopher?"

"I couldn't marry, dear; I couldn't."

"There was no one, you mean—no woman whom you could have loved and who would have given you children. Surely there are still good and gentle women left in the world."

"There was none for me."

She sighed hopelessly.

"You have never—never had a low fancy, Christopher?"

"Never, mother."

"Thank God; it is one thing I could not forgive. A gentleman may have his follies, your father used to say, but he must never stoop for them. Let him keep to his own level, even in his indiscretions. Ah, your father had his faults, my son, but he never forgot for one instant in his life that he was born a gentleman. He was a good husband, too, a good husband, and I was married to him for nearly forty years. The greatest trial of my marriage was that he would throw his cigar ashes on the floor. Women think so much of little things, you know, and I've always felt that I should have been a happier woman if he had learned to use an ash-tray. But he never would—he never would, though I gave him one every Christmas for almost forty years."

Falling silent, her hands played fitfully upon the counterpane, and when next she spoke the present had slipped from her and her thoughts had gone back to her early triumphs.

She wandered aimlessly and waveringly on in a feeble vacancy, and Christopher, after watching her for an agonised moment, left the room and went out into the fresh air of the yard. He could always escape by flight from the slow death-bed; it was Cynthia who faced hourly the final tragedy of a long and happy life.

The thought of Will had oppressed him like a nightmare for the last two weeks, and it was almost unconsciously that he tuned now in the direction of the store and passed presently into the shaded lane leading to Sol Peterkin's. His mood was heavy upon him, and so deep was the abstraction in which he walked that it was only when he heard his name called softly from a little distance that he looked up to find Maria Fletcher approaching him over the pale gray shadows in the road. Her eyes were luminous, and she stretched her hand toward him in a happy gesture.

"Oh, if you only knew how wonderful I think you!" she cried impulsively.

He held her hand an instant, and then letting it fall, withdrew his gaze slowly from her exalted look. The pure heights of her fervour were beyond the reach of his more earthly level, and as he turned from her some old words of her own were respoken in his ears: "Faith and doubt are mere empty forms until we pour out the heart's blood that vivifies them." It was her heart's blood that she had put into her dreams, and it was this, he told himself, that gave her mystic visions their illusive appearance of reality. Beauty enveloped her as an atmosphere; it softened her sternest sacrifice, it coloured her barest outlook, it transformed daily the common road in which she walked, and hourly it sustained and nourished her, as it nourished poor, crippled Tucker on his old pine bench. The eye of the spirit was theirs—this Christopher had learned at last; and he had learned, also, that for him there still remained only the weak, blurred vision of the flesh.

"You make me feel the veriest hypocrite," he said at the end of the long pause.

She shook her head. "And that you are surely not."

"So you still believe in me?"

"It's not belief—I KNOW in you."

"Well, don't praise me; don't admire me; don't pretend, for God's sake, that I'm anything better than the brute you see."

"I don't pretend anything better," she protested; "and when you talk like this it only makes me feel the more keenly your wonderful courage."

"I haven't any," he burst out almost angrily. "Not an atom, do you hear? Whatever I may appear on top, at bottom I am a great skulking coward, and nothing more. Why, I couldn't even stay and take my punishment the other day. I sneaked off like a hound."

"Your punishment?" she faltered, and he saw her lashes tremble.

"For the other day—for the afternoon by the poplar spring. I've been wanting to beg your pardon on my knees."

Her lashes were raised steadily, and she regarded him gravely while a slight frown gathered her dark brows. She was still humanly feminine enough to find the apology harder to forgive than the offense.

"Oh, I had forgotten," she said a little coldly. "So that was, after all, why you ran away?"

"It was not the only reason."

"And the other?"

He closed his eyes suddenly and drew back.

"I ran away because I knew if I stayed I should do it again within two seconds," he replied.

A little blue flower was growing in the red clay wheel-rut at her feet, and, stooping, she caressed it gently without plucking it.

"It was very foolish," she said in a quiet voice; "but I had forgotten it, and you should have let it rest. Afterward, you did such a brave, splendid thing."

"I did nothing but run from you," he persisted, losing his head. "If I hadn't gone to Uncle Isam I'd have done something equally reckless in a different way. I wanted to get away from you—to escape you, but I couldn't—I couldn't. You were with me always, night and day, in those God-forsaken woods. I never lost you for one instant, never. I tried to, but I couldn't."

"You couldn't," she repeated, and, rising, faced him calmly. Then before the look in his eyes her own wavered and fell slowly to the ground, and he saw her quiver and grow white as if a rough wind blew over her. With an effort he steadied himself and turned away.

"There is but one thing to do," he said, holding his breath in the pause; "it's a long story, but if you will listen patiently—and it is very long—I will tell you all." Following him, she crossed the carpet of pine needles and sat down upon the end of a fallen log.

"Tell me nothing that you do not care to," she answered, and sat waiting.

"It began long ago, when we were both little children," he went on, and then going back from her into the lane he stood staring down upon the little blue flower blooming in the wheel-rut. She saw his shadow, stretching across the road, blurred into the pale dusk of the wood, uncertain, somber, gigantic in its outline. His hat was lying on the ground at her feet, and, lifting it, she ran her fingers idly along the brim.

For a time the silence lasted; then coming back to her, he sat down on the log and dropped his clasped hands between his knees. She heard his heavy breathing, and something in the sound drew her toward him with a sympathetic movement.

"Ah, don't tell me, don't tell me," she entreated.

"You must listen patiently," he returned, without looking at her, "and not interrupt—above all, not interrupt."

She bent her head. "I will not speak a word nor move a finger until the end," she promised; and leaning a little forward, with his eyes on the ground and his hands hanging listlessly between his knees, he began his story.

The air was so still that his voice sounded strangely harsh in the silence, but presently she heard the soughing of the pine trees far up above, and while it lasted it deadened the jarring discord of the human tones. She sat quite motionless upon the log, not lifting a finger nor speaking a word, as she had promised, and her gaze was fixed steadily upon a bit of dried fern growing between the roots of a dead tree.

"It went on so for five years," he slowly finished, "and it was from beginning to end deliberate, devilish revenge. I meant from the first to make him what he is to-day. I meant to make him hate his grandfather as he does—I meant to make him the hopeless drunkard that he is. It is all my work—every bit of it—as you see it now."

He paused, but her eyes clung to the withered fern, and so quiet was her figure that it seemed as if she had not drawn breath since he began. Her faint smile was still sketched about the corners of her mouth, and her fingers were closed upon the brim of his harvest hat.

"For five years I was like that," he went on again. "I did not know, I did not care—I wanted to be a beast. Then you came and it was different."

For the first time she turned and looked at him.

"And it was different?" she repeated beneath her breath.

"Oh, there's nothing to say that will make things better; I know that. If you had not come I should never have known myself nor what I had been. It was like a thunderclap—the whole thing; it shook me off my feet before I saw what it meant—before I would acknowledge even to myself that—"

"That?" she questioned in a whisper, for he had bitten back the words.

"That I love you."

As he spoke she slipped suddenly to her knees and lay with her face hidden on the old log, while her smothered sobs ran in long shudders through her body. A murmur reached him presently, and it seemed to him that she was praying softly in her clasped hands; but when in a new horror of himself he made a movement to rise and slip away, she looked up and gently touched him detainingly on the arm.

"Oh, how unhappy—how unhappy you have been!" she said.

"It is not that I mind," he answered. "If I could take all the misery of it I shouldn't care, but I have made you suffer, and for the sin that is mine alone."

For a moment she was silent, breathing quickly between parted lips; then turning with an impulsive gesture, she laid her cheek upon the hand hanging at his side.

"Not yours alone," she said softly, "for it has become mine, too."

Before the wonder of her words he stared at her with dazed eyes, while their meaning shook him slowly to his senses.

"Maria!" he called out sharply in the voice of one who speaks from a distance.

She met his appeal with a swift outward movement of her arms, and, bending over, laid her hands gently upon his head.

"Mine, too, Christopher—mine, too," she repeated, "for I take the blame of it, and I will share in the atonement. My dear, my dear, is love so slight a thing that it would share the joy and leave the sorrow—that it would take the good and reject the evil? Why, it is all mine! All! All! What you have been I was also; what I am to-day you will be. I have been yours since the first instant you looked upon me."

With a sob he caught her hands and crushed them in his own.

"Then this is love, Maria?"

"It has been love—always."

"From the first—as with me?"

"As with you. Beloved, there is not a wrong on this earth that could come between us now, for there is no room in my heart where it might enter. There can be no sin against love which love does not acknowledge."

Falling apart, their hands dropped before them, and they stood looking at each other in a silence that went deeper than words. She felt his gaze enveloping her in warmth from head to foot, but he still made no movement to draw nearer, for there are moments when the touch of the flesh grows meaningless before the mute appeal of the spirit. In that one speechless instant there passed between them the pledges and the explanations of years.

Suddenly the light flamed in his face, and opening his arms, he made a single step toward her; but melting into tears, she turned from him and ran out into the road.



CHAPTER III. Will's Ruin

Blinded by tears, she went swiftly back along the road into the shadows which thickened beyond the first short bend. Will must be saved at any cost, by any sacrifice, she told herself with passionate insistence. He must be saved though she gave up her whole life to the work of his redemption, though she must stand daily and hourly guard against his weakness. He must be saved, not for his own sake alone, but because it was the one way in which she might work out Christopher's salvation. As she went on, scheme after scheme beckoned and repelled her; plan after plan was caught at only to be rejected, and it was at last with a sinking heart, though still full of high resolves, that she turned from the lane into a strip of "corduroy road," and so came quickly to the barren little farm adjoining Sol Peterkin's.

Will was sitting idly on an overturned wheelbarrow beside the woodpile, and as she approached him she assumed with an effort a face of cheerful courage.

"Oh, Will, I thought you'd gone to work. You promised me!"

"Well, I haven't, and there's an end of it," he returned irritably, chewing hard on a chip he had picked up from the ground; "and what's more, I shan't go till I see the use. It's killing me by inches. I tell you I'm not strong enough to stand a life like this. Drudge, drudge, drudge; there's nothing else except the little spirit I get from drink."

"And that ruins you. Oh, don't, don't. I'll go on my knees to you; I'll work for you like a servant day and night; I'll sell my very clothes to help you, if you'll only promise me never to drink again."

"You a servant!" said Will, and laughed shortly while he looked her over with raised eyebrows. "Why, your stockings would keep me in cigarettes for a week."

A flush crossed Maria's face, and she glanced down guiltily, letting her black skirt fall above the lace upon her petticoat. "I have bought nothing since coming home," she responded presently with quiet dignity; "these belong, with my old luxuries, to a past life. There were a great many of them, and it will fortunately take me a long time to wear them out."

"Oh, I don't begrudge them," returned Will; a little ashamed of his show of temper; "fine clothes suit you, and I hope you will squeeze them out of grandpa all you can. It's as good a way for him to spend his money as any other, and it doesn't hurt me so long as he'll never let me see the colour of a cent."

"But your promise, dear? Will you promise me?"

He lifted his sullen face toward her kind eyes, then turning away, kicked listlessly at the rotting chips.

"What's the use in promising? I wouldn't keep it," he replied. "Why, there are times when but for whisky I'd go mad. It's the life, I tell you, that's killing me, not drink. If things were different I shouldn't crave it—I shouldn't miss it, even. Why, for three months after I married Molly I didn't touch a single drop, and I'd have kept it up, too, except for grandpa's devilment. It's his fault; he drove me back to it as clear as day."

His weak mouth quivered, and he sucked in his breath in the way he had inherited from Fletcher. The deep flush across his face faded slowly, and dropping his restless, bloodshot eyes, he dug his foot into the mould with spasmodic twitches of his body. His clothes appeared to have been flung upon him, and his cravat and loosened collar betrayed the lack of neatness which had always repelled Maria so strongly in her grandfather. As she watched him she wondered with a pang that she had never noticed until to-day the resemblance he bore to the old man at the Hall.

"But one must be patient, Will," she said helplessly after a moment's thought; "there's always hope of a mending—and as far as that goes, grandfather may relent tomorrow."

"Relent? Pshaw! I'd like to see him do it this side of hell. Let him die; that's all I ask of him. His room is a long sight better than his company, and you may tell him I said so."

"What good would come of that?"

"I don't want any good to come of it. Why should I? He's brought me to this pass with his own hand."

"But surely it was partly your fault. He loved you once."

"Nonsense. He wanted a dog to badger, that was all. Christopher Blake said so."

"Christopher Blake! Oh, Will, Will, if you could only understand!"

She turned hopelessly away from him and looked with despairing eyes over the ploughed fields which blushed faintly in the sunshine.

"So your spring ploughing is all done," she said at last, desisting from her attempt to soften his sullen obduracy, "and you have been working harder than I knew."

"Oh, it's not I," returned Will promptly, his face clearing for the first time. "It's all Christopher's work; he ploughed that field just before he went away. Do you see that new cover over the well? He knocked that up the last morning he was here, and made those steps before the front door at the same time. Now, he's the kind of friend worth having, and no mistake. But for him I'd have landed in the poorhouse long ago."

Maria's gaze left the field and returned to Will's face, where it lingered wistfully.

"Have you ever heard what it was all about, Will?" she asked, "the old trouble between him and grandfather?"

"Some silly property right, I believe; I can't remember. Did you ever see anybody yet with whom grandpa was on decent terms?"

"He used to be with you, Will."

"Only so long as I wore short breeches and he could whack me over the head whenever he had a mind to. I tell you I'd rather try to get along with Beelzebub himself."

"Have you ever tried peace-making in earnest, I wonder?"

Twirling a chip between his thumb and forefinger, he flirted it angrily at a solitary hen scratching in the mould.

"Why, shortly after my marriage I went over there and positively wiped up the floor with myself. I offered him everything under heaven in the shape of good behaviour, and, by Jove! I meant it, too. I'd have stopped drinking then; I'd even have given up Christopher Blake—"

"Did you tell him that?"

"Did I ever tell a thunderstorm I'd run indoors? It was enough to get away with a whole skin—he left me little more. And the day afterward, by the way, he sent me the deeds to this rotten farm, and warned me that he'd shoot me down if I ever set foot at the Hall."

"And there has been no softening—no wavering since?"

Will shook his head with a brutal laugh. "Oh, you heard of our meeting in the road and what came of it. I told him I was starving: he answered that he wasn't responsible for all the worthless paupers in the county. Then I cursed him, and he broke his stick on my shoulders. I say, Maria," he wound up desperately, "do you think he'll live forever?"

She kept her eyes upon him without answering, fearing to tell him that by the terms of the new will he could never come into his share of Fletcher's wealth.

"Has he ever seen Molly?" she asked suddenly, while an unreasonable hope shot through her heart. "Does he know about the child?"

"He may have seen her—I don't know; but she's not so much to look at now: she's gone all to pieces under this awful worry. It isn't my fault, God knows, but she expected different things when she married me. She thought we'd live somewhere in the city and that she'd have pretty clothes to wear."

"I was thinking that when the child came he might forgive you," broke in Maria almost cheerfully.

"And in the meantime we're to die like rats. Oh, there's no use talking, it's got to end one way or another. There's not a cent in the house nor a decent scrap of food, and Molly is having to see the doctor every day. I declare, it's enough to drive me clean to desperation!"

"And what good would that do Molly or yourself? Be a man, Will, and don't let a woman hear you whine. Now I'm going in to see her, and I'll stay to help her about supper."

She nodded brightly, and, opening the little door of the house, passed into the single lower room which served as kitchen and dining-room in one. Beyond the disorderly table, from which the remains of dinner had not yet been cleared away, Molly was lying on a hard wooden lounge covered with strips of faded calico. Her abundant flaxen hair hung in lusterless masses upon her shoulders, and the soiled cotton wrapper she wore was torn open at the throat as if she had clutched it in a passion of childish petulance. At Maria's entrance she started and looked up angrily from her dejected attitude.

"I can't see any visitors—I'm not fit!" she cried.

Marie drew forward a broken split—bottomed chair and sat down beside the lounge.

"I'm not a visitor, Molly," she answered; "and I've come to see if I can't make you a little easier. Won't you let me fix you comfortably? Why, you poor child, your hands are as hot as fire!"

"I'm hot all over," returned Molly peevishly; "and I'm sick—I'm as sick as I can be. Will won't believe it, but the doctor says so."

"Will does believe it, and it worries him terribly. Here, sit up and let me bathe your face and hands in cold water. Doesn't that feel better?"

"A little," admitted Molly, when Maria had found a towel and dried her hands.

"And now I'm going to comb the tangles out of your hair. What lovely hair! It is the colour of ripe corn."

A pleased flush brightened Molly's face, and she resigned herself easily to Maria's willing services. "There's a comb over there on that shelf under the mirror," she said. "Will broke half the teeth out of it the other day, and it pulls my hair out when I use it."

"Then I'll bring you one of mine. You must be careful of these curls. They're too pretty to treat roughly. Do I hurt you?"

As she spoke, a bright strand of the girl's hair twisted about one of her rings, and after hesitating an instant she drew the circle from her finger and laid it in Molly's lap.

"There. I haven't any money, so that's to buy you medicine and food," she said. "It cost a good deal once, I fancy."

"Diamonds!" gasped Molly, with a cry of rapture.

Her hand closed over the ring with a frantic clutch; then slipping it on, she lay watching the stone sparkle in the last sunbeams. A colour had bloomed suddenly in her face, and her eyes shone with a light as brilliant as that of the jewel at which she gazed.

"And you had—others?" she asked in a kind of sacred awe.

"A great many once—a necklace, and rings, and brooches, and a silly tiara that made me look a fright. I never cared for them after the novelty of owning them wore off. They are evil things, it seems to me, and should never be the gifts of love, for each one of those foolish stones stands for greed, and pride, and selfishness, and maybe crime. That was my way of looking at them, of course, and whenever I wore my necklace I used to feel like asking pardon of every beggar that I passed. 'One link in this chain might make a man of you,' was what I wanted to say—but I never did. Well, they are almost all gone now; some I sold and some I gave away. This one will buy you medicine, I hope, and then it will give me more happiness than it has ever done before."

"Oh, it is beautiful, beautiful," sighed Molly beneath her breath, and then went to the little cracked mirror in the corner and held the diamond first to her ear and then against her hair. "They suit me," she said at last, opening the bosom of her wrapper and trying it on her pretty throat; "they would make me look so splendid. Oh, if I'd only had a lover who could give me things like this!"

Maria, watching her, felt her heart contract suddenly with a pang of remembrance. Jewels had been the one thing which Jack Wyndham had given her, for of the finer gifts of the spirit he had been beggared long before she knew him. In the first months of his infatuation he had showered her with diamonds, and she had grown presently to see a winking mockery in each bauble that he tossed her. Before the first year was ended she had felt her pride broken by the oppressiveness of the jewels that bedecked her body, like the mystic princess who was killed at last by the material weight of the golden crown upon her brow.

"They could never make you happy, Molly. How could they? Come back and lie down, and let me put the ring away. Perhaps I'd better take it to town myself." But Molly would not open her closed hand on which the diamond shone; and long after Maria had cooked supper and gone back to the Hall the girl lay motionless, holding the ring against the light. When Will came in from milking she showed it to him with a burst of joy.

"Look! Oh, look! Isn't it like the sun?"

He eyed it critically.

"By Jove! It must have cost cool hundreds! I'll take it to town to-morrow and bring back the things you need. It will get the baby clothes, too, so you won't have to bother about the sewing."

"You shan't! You shan't!" cried Molly in a passion of sobs. "It's mine. She gave it to me, and you shan't take it away. I don't want the medicine: it never does me any good; and I can make the baby clothes out of my old things. I'll never, never give it up!"

For an instant Will stared at her as if she had lost her senses.

"Well, she was a fool to let you get it," he said, as he flung himself out of the room.



CHAPTER IV. In Which Mrs. Blake's Eyes are Opened

Before the beauty of Maria's high magnanimity Christopher had felt himself thrust further into the abasement of his self-contempt. Had she met his confession with reproach, with righteous aversion, with the horror he had half expected, it is possible that his heart might have recoiled into a last expression of defiance. But there had been none of these things. In his memory her face shone moonlike from its cloud of dark hair, and he saw upon it only the look of a great and sorrowful passion. His wretchedness had drawn her closer, not put her further away, and he had felt the quiet of her tolerance not less gratefully than he had felt the fervour of her love. Her forgiveness had been of the grandeur of her own nature, and its height and breadth had appealed, even apart from her emotion, to a mind that was accustomed to dwell daily on long reaches of unbroken space. He had been bred on large things from his birth—large horizons, large stretches of field and sky, large impulses, and large powers of hating, and he found now that a woman's presence filled to overflowing the empty vastness of his moods.

Reaching the yard, he saw Tucker sitting placidly on his bench, and, crossing the long grass, he flung himself down beside him with a sigh of pleasure in the beauty of the scene.

"You're right, Uncle Tucker; it's all wonderful. I never saw such a sunset in my life."

"Ah, but you haven't seen it yet," said Tucker. "I've been looking at it since it first caught that pile of clouds, and it grows more splendid every instant. I'm not an overreligious body, I reckon, and I've always held that the best compliment you can pay God Almighty is to let Him go His own gait and quit advising Him; but, I declare, as I sat here just now I couldn't help being impertinent enough to pray that I might live to see another."

"Well, it's a first-rate one; that's so. It seems to shake a body out of the muck, somehow."

"I shouldn't wonder if it did; and that's what I told two young fools who were up here just now asking me to patch up their first married quarrel. 'For heaven's sake, stop playing with mud and sit down and watch that sunset,' I said to 'em, and if you'll believe it, the girl actually dropped her jaws and replied she had to hurry back to shell her beans while the light lasted. Beans! Why, they'll make beans enough of their marriage, and so I told 'em."