His head dipped lower than usual, and she laughed.

"Poor old sleepy-head!"

"For the love o' Mike, Kiddo—me for the hay. Won't them mountains wait till morning?"

"All right!" she answered cheerily. "I'll pull you out at sunrise. The sunrise from our window will be glorious."

He rose and stretched his body like a young, well fed tiger.

"I think it's prettier from the bed. But have it your own way—have it your own way. I'll agree to anything if you lemme go to sleep now."

She rose as the first gray fires of dawn began to warm the cloud-banks on the eastern horizon, stood beside her window and watched in silent ecstasy. Jim was sleeping heavily. She would not wake him until the glory of the sunrise was at its height. She loved to watch the changing lights and shadows in sky and valley and on distant mountain peaks as the light slowly filtered over the eastern hills.

She had recovered from the depression of the last days of their camp. The journey back into the world had improved Jim's manners. There could be no doubt about his ambitions. His determination to be a millionaire was the lever she now meant to work in raising his social aspirations.

Why should she feel depressed?

Their married life had just begun. The two weeks they had passed on their honeymoon had been happy beyond her dreams of happiness. Somehow her imagination had failed to give any conception of the wonder and glory of this revelation of life. His little lapses of selfishness on their sand island no doubt came from ignorance of what was expected of him.

For one thing she felt especially thankful. There had been no ugly confessions of a shady past to cloud the joy of their love. Her lover might be ignorant of the ways of polite society. He was equally free of its sinister vices. She thanked God for that. The soul of the man she had married was clean of all memories of women. The love he gave was fierce in its unrestrained passion—but it was all hers. She gloried in its strength.

She made up her mind, standing there in the soft light of the dawn, that she would bend his iron will to her own in the growing, sweet intimacy of their married life and threw her fears to the winds.

The thin, fleecy clouds that hung over the low range of the eastern foreground were all aglow now, with every tint of the rainbow, while the sun's bed beyond the hills was flaming in scarlet and gold.

She clapped her hands in ecstasy.

"Jim! Jim, dear!"

He made no response, and she rushed to his side and whispered:

"You must see this sunrise—get up quick, quick, dear. It's wonderful."

"What's the matter?" he muttered.

"The sunrise over the mountains—quick—it's glorious."

His heavy eyelids drooped and closed. He dropped on the pillow and buried his face out of sight.

"Ah, Jim dear, do come—just to please me."

"I'm dead, Kiddo—dead to the world," he sighed. "Don't like to see the sun rise. I never did. Come on back and let's sleep——"

His last words were barely audible. He was breathing heavily as his lips ceased to move.

She gave it up, returned to the window and watched the changing colors until the white light from the sun's face had touched with life the last shadows of the valleys and flashed its signals from the farthest towering peaks.

Her whole being quivered in response to the beauty of this glorious mountain world. The air was wine. She loved the sapphire skies and the warm, lazy, caressing touch of the sun of the South.

A sense of bitterness came, just for a moment, that the man she had chosen for her mate had no eye to see these wonders and no ear to hear their music. During the madness of his whirlwind courtship she had gotten the impression that his spirit was sensitive to beauty—to the waters of the bay, the sea and the wooded hills. She must face the facts. Their stay on the island had convinced her that he had eyes only for her. She must make the most of it.

It was ten o'clock before Jim could be persuaded to rise and get breakfast. She literally pulled him up the stairs to the observatory on the tower of the hotel.

"What's the game, Kiddo? What's the game?" he grumbled.

"Ask me no questions. But do just as I tell you; come on!"

Her face was radiant, her hair in a tangle of riotous beauty about her forehead and temples, her eyes sparkling.

"Don't look till I tell you!" she cried, as they emerged on the little minaret which crowns the tower.

"Now open and see the glory of the Lord!" she cried with joyous awe.

The day was one of matchless beauty. The clouds that swung low in the early morning had floated higher and higher till they hung now in shining billows above the highest balsam-crowned peaks in the distance.

In every direction, as far as the eye could reach, north, south, east, west, the dark ranges mounted in the azure skies until the farthest dim lines melted into the heavens.

"Oh, Jim dear, isn't it wonderful! We're lucky to get this view on our first day. It's such a good omen."

Jim opened his eyes lazily and puffed his cigarette in a calm, patronizing way.

"Tough sledding we'd have had with an automobile over those hills," he said. "We'll try it after lunch, though."

"We'll go for a ride?" she cried joyfully.

"Yep. Got to hunt up the folks. The mountains near Asheville!" he said with disgust. "I should say they are near—and far, too. Holy smoke, I'll bet we get lost!"

"Nonsense——"

"Where's the Black Mountains, I wonder?" he asked suddenly.

"Over there!" She pointed to the giant peaks projecting here and there in dim, blue waves beyond the Great Craggy Range in the foreground.

"Holy Moses! Do we have to climb those crags before we start?"

"To go to Black Mountain?"

"Yes. That's where the lawyer said they lived, under Cat-tail Peak in the Black Mountain Range—wherever t'ell that is."

"No, no! You don't climb the Great Craggy; you go around this end of it and follow the Swannanoa River right up to the foot of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak this side of the Rockies. The Cat-tail is just beyond Mount Mitchell."

"You've been there?" he asked in surprise.

"Once, with a party from Asheville. We spent three days and slept in caves."

"Suppose you'd know the way now?"

"We couldn't miss it. We follow the bed of the Swannanoa to its source——-"

"Then that settles it. We'll go by ourselves. I don't want any mutt along to show us the way. We couldn't get lost nohow, could we?"

"Of course not—all the roads lead to Asheville. We can ask the way to the house you want, when we reach the little stopping place at the foot of Mount Mitchell."

"Gee, Kid, you're a wonder!" he exclaimed admiringly. "Couldn't get along without you, now could I?"

"I hope not, sir!"

"You bet I couldn't! We'll start right away. The roads will give us a jolt——"

He turned suddenly to go.

"Wait—wait a minute, dear," she pleaded. "You haven't seen this gorgeous view to the southwest, with Mount Pisgah looming in the center like some vast cathedral spire—look, isn't it glorious?"

"Fine! Fine!" he responded in quick, businesslike tones.

"You can look for days and weeks and not begin to realize the changing beauty of these mountains, clothed in eternal green! Just think, dear, Mount Pisgah, there, is forty miles away, and it looks as if you could stroll over to it in an hour's walk. And there are twenty-three magnificent peaks like that, all of them more than six thousand feet high——"

She paused with a frown. He was neither looking nor listening. He had fallen into a brown study; his mind was miles away.

"You're not listening, Jim—nor seeing anything," she said reproachfully.

"No—Kiddo, we must get ready for that trip. I've got a letter for a lawyer downtown. I'll find him and hire a car. I'll be back here for you in an hour. You'll be ready?"

"Right away, in half an hour——"

"Just pack a suit-case for us both. We'll stay one night. I'll take a bag, too, that I have in my trunk."

It was noon before he returned with a staunch touring car ready for the trip. He opened the little steamer trunk which he had always kept locked and took from it a small leather bag. He placed it on the floor, and, in spite of careful handling, the ring of metal inside could be distinctly heard.

"What on earth have you got in that queer black bag?" she asked in surprise.

"Oh, just a lot o' junk from the shop. I thought I might tinker with it at odd times. I don't want to leave it here. It's got one of my new models in it."

He carried the bag in his hand, refusing to allow the porter who came for the suit-case to touch it.

He threw the suit-case in the bottom of the tonneau. The bag he stowed carefully under the cushions of the rear seat. The moment he placed his hand on the wheel of the machine, he was at his best. Every trace of the street gamin fell from him. Again he was the eagle-eyed master of time and space. The machine answered his touch with more than human obedience. He knew how to humor its mood. He conserved its power for a hill with unerring accuracy and threw it over the grades with rarely a pause to change his speeds. He could turn the sharp curves with such swift, easy grace that he scarcely caused Mary's body to swerve an inch. He could sense a rough place in the road and glide over it with velvet touch.

A tire blew out, five miles up the stream from Asheville, and the easy, business-like deliberation with which he removed the old and adjusted the new, was a revelation to Mary of a new phase of his character.

He never once grunted, or swore, or lost his poise, or manifested the slightest impatience. He set about his task coolly, carefully, skillfully, and finished it quickly and silently.

His long silences at last began to worry her. An invisible barrier had reared itself between them. The impression was purely mental—but it was none the less real and distressing.

There was a look of aloof absorption about him she had never seen before. At first she attributed it to the dread of meeting his kinsfolk for the first time, his fear of what they might be like or what they might think of him.

He answered her questions cheerfully but mechanically. Sometimes he stared at her in a cold, impersonal way and gave no answer, as if her questions were an impertinence and she were not of sufficient importance to waste his breath on.

Unable at last to endure the strain, she burst out impatiently:

"What on earth's the matter with you, Jim?"

"Why?" he asked softly.

"You haven't spoken to me in half an hour, and I've asked you two questions."

"Just studying about something, Kiddo, something big. I'll tell you sometime, maybe—not now."

Slowly a great fear began to shape itself in her heart. The real man behind those slumbering eyes she had never known. Who was he?



CHAPTER XIV. UNWELCOME GUESTS

While she was yet puzzling over the strange mood of absorbed brooding into which Jim had fallen, his face suddenly lighted, and he changed with such rapidity that her uneasiness was doubled.

They had reached the stretches of deep forest at the foot of the Black Mountain ranges. The Swannanoa had become a silver thread of laughing, foaming spray and deep, still pools beneath the rocks. The fields were few and small. The little clearings made scarcely an impression in the towering virgin forests.

"Great guns, Kiddo!" he exclaimed, "this is some country! By George, I had no idea there was such a place so close to New York!"

She looked at him with uneasy surprise. What could be in his mind? The solemn gorge through which they were passing gave no entrancing views of clouds or sky or towering peaks. Its wooded cliffs hung ominously overhead in threatening shadows. The scene had depressed her after the vast sunlit spaces of sky, of shining valleys and cloud-capped, sapphire peaks on which they had turned their backs.

"You like this, Jim?" she asked.

"It's great—great!"

"I thought that waterfall we just passed was very beautiful."

"I didn't see it. But this is something like it. You're clean out of the world here—and there ain't a railroad in twenty miles!"

The deeper the shadows of tree and threatening crag, the higher Jim's strange spirit seemed to rise.

She watched him with increasing fear. How little she knew the real man! Could it be possible that this lonely, unlettered boy of the streets of lower New York, starved and stunted in childhood, had within him the soul of a great poet? How else could she explain the sudden rapture over the threatening silences and shadows of these mountain gorges which had depressed her? And yet his utter indifference to the glories of beautiful waters, his blindness at noon before the most wonderful panorama of mountains and skies on which she had ever gazed, contradicted the theory of the poetic soul. A poet must see beauty where she had seen it—and a thousand wonders her eyes had not found.

His elation was uncanny. What could it mean?

He was driving now with a skill that was remarkable, a curious smile playing about his drooping, Oriental eyelids. A wave of fierce resentment swept her heart. She was a mere plaything in this man's life. The real man she had never seen. What was he thinking about? What grim secret lay behind the mysterious smile that flickered about the corners of those eyes? He was not thinking of her. The mood was new and cold and cynical, for all the laughter he might put in it.

She asked herself the question of his past, his people, his real life-history. The only answer was his baffling, mysterious smile.

A frown suddenly clouded his face.

"Hello! Ye're running right into a man's yard!"

Mary lifted her head with quick surprise.

"Why yes, it's the stopping place for the parties that climb Mount Mitchell. I remember it. We stayed all night here, left our rig, and started next morning at sunrise on horseback to climb the trail."

"Pretty near the jumping-off place, then," he remarked. "We'll ask the way to Cat-tail Peak."

He stopped the car in front of the low-pitched, weather-stained frame house and blew the horn.

A mountain woman with three open-eyed, silent children came slowly to meet them.

She smiled pleasantly, and without embarrassment spoke in a pleasant drawl:

"Won't you 'light and look at your saddle?"

The expression caught Jim's fancy, and he broke into a roar of laughter. The woman blushed and laughed with him. She couldn't understand what was the matter with the man. Why should he explode over the simple greeting in which she had expressed her pleasure at their arrival?

Anyhow, she was an innkeeper's wife, and her business was to make folks feel at home—so she laughed again with Jim.

"You know that's the funniest invitation I ever got in a car," he cried at last. "We fly in these things sometimes. And when you said, 'Won't you 'light,'"—he paused and turned to his wife—"I could just feel myself up in the air on that big old racer's back."

"Won't you-all stay all night with us?" the soft voice drawled again.

"Thank you, not tonight," Mary answered.

She waited for Jim to ask the way.

"No—not tonight," he repeated. "You happen to know an old woman by the name of Owens who lives up here?"

"Nance Owens?"

"That's her name."

"Lord, everybody knows old Nance!" was the smiling answer.

"She ain't got good sense!" the tow-headed boy spoke up.

"Sh!" the mother warned, boxing his ears.

"She's a little queer, that's all. Everybody knows her in Buncombe and Yancey counties. Her house is built across the county line. She eats in Yancey and sleeps in Buncombe——"

"Yes," broke in the boy joyously, "an' when the Sheriff o' Yancey comes, she moves back into Buncombe. She's some punkin's on a green gourd vine, she is—if she ain't got good sense."

His mother struck at him again, but he dodged the blow and finished his speech without losing a word.

"Could you tell us the way to her house?"

"Keep right on this road, and you can't miss it."

"How far is it?"

"Oh, not far."

"No; right at the bottom o' the Cat's-tail," the boy joyfully explained.

"He means the foot o' Cat-tail Peak!" the mother apologized.

"How many miles?"

"Just a little ways—ye can't miss it; the third house you come to on this road."

"You'll be there in three shakes of a sheep's tail—in that thing!" the boy declared.

Jim waved his thanks, threw in his gear, and the car shot forward on the level stretch of road beyond the house. He slowed down when out of sight.

"Gee! I'd love to have that kid in a wood-shed with a nice shingle all by ourselves for just ten minutes."

"The people spoil him," Mary laughed. "The people who stop there for the Mount Mitchell climb. He was a baby when I was there six years ago"—she paused and a rapt look crept into her eyes—"a beautiful little baby, her first-born, and she was the happiest thing I ever saw in my life."

Her voice sank to a whisper.

A vision suddenly illumined her own soul, and she forgot her anxiety over Jim's queer moods.

Deeper and deeper grew the shadows of crag, gorge, and primeval forest. The speedometer on the foot-board registered five miles from the Mount Mitchell house. They had passed two cabins by the way, and still no sign of the third.

"Why couldn't she tell us how many miles, I'd like to know?" Jim grumbled.

"It's the way of the mountain folk. They're noncommittal on distances."

He stopped the car and lighted the lamps.

"Going to be dark in a minute," he said. "But I like this place," he added.

He picked his way with care over the narrow road. They crossed the little stream they were trailing, and the car crawled over the rocks along the banks at a snail's pace.

An owl called from a dead tree-top silhouetted against an open space of sky ahead.

"Must be a clearing there," Jim muttered.

He stopped the car and listened for the sounds of life about a house.

A vast, brooding silence filled the world. A wolf howled from the edge of a distant crag somewhere overhead.

"For God's sake!" Jim shivered. "What was that?"

"Only a mountain wolf crying for company."

"Wolves up here?" he asked in surprise.

"A few—harmless, timid, lonesome fellows. It makes me sorry for them when I hear one."

"Great country! I like it!" Jim responded.

Again she wondered why. What a queer mixture of strength and mystery—this man she had married!

He started the car, turned a bend in the road, and squarely in front, not more than a hundred yards away, gleamed a light in a cabin window—four tiny panes of glass.

"By Geeminy, we come near stopping in the front yard without knowing it!" he exclaimed. "Didn't we?"

"I'm glad she's at home!" Mary exclaimed. "The light shines with a friendly glow in these deep shadows."

"Afraid, Kiddo?" he asked lightly.

"I don't like these dark places."

"All right when you get used to 'em—safer than daylight."

Again her heart beat at his queer speech. She shivered at the thought of this uncanny trait of character so suddenly developed today. She made an effort to throw off her depression. It would vanish with the sun tomorrow morning.

He picked his way carefully among the trees and stopped in front of the cabin door. The little house sat back from the road a hundred feet or more.

He blew his horn twice and waited.

A sudden crash inside, and the light went out. He waited a moment for it to come back.

Only darkness and dead silence.

"Suppose she dropped dead and kicked over the lamp?" Jim laughed.

"She probably took the lamp into another room."

"No; it went out too quick—and it went out with a crash."

He blew his horn again.

Still no answer.

"Hello! Hello!" he called loudly.

Someone stirred at the door. Jim's keen ear was turned toward the house.

"I heard her bar the door, I'll swear it."

"How foolish, Jim!" Mary whispered. "You couldn't have heard it."

"All the same I did. Here's a pretty kettle of fish! The old hellion's not even going to let us in."

He seized the lever of his horn and blew one terrific blast after another, in weird, uncanny sobs and wails, ending in a shriek like the last cry of a lost soul.

"Don't, Jim!" Mary cried, shivering. "You'll frighten her to death."

"I hope so."

"Go up and speak to her—and knock on the door."

He waited again in silence, scrambled out of the car, and fumbled his way through the shadows to the dark outlines of the cabin. He found the porch on which the front door opened.

His light foot touched the log with sure step, and he walked softly to the cabin wall. The door was not yet visible in the pitch darkness. His auto lights were turned the other way and threw their concentrated rays far down into the deep woods.

He listened intently for a moment and caught the cat-like tread of the old woman inside.

"I say—hello, in there!" he called.

Again the sound of her quick, furtive step told him that she was on the alert and determined to defend her castle against all comers. What if she should slip an old rifle through a crack and blow his head off?

She might do it, too!

He must make her open the door.

"Say, what's the matter in there?" he asked persuasively.

A moment's silence, and then a gruff voice slowly answered:

"They ain't nobody at home!"

"The hell they ain't!" Jim laughed.

"No!"

"Who are you?"

She hesitated and then growled back:

"None o' your business. Who are you?"

"We're strangers up here—lost our way. It's cold—we got to stop for the night."

"Ye can't—they's nobody home, I tell ye!" she repeated with sullen emphasis.

Jim broke into a genial laugh.

"Ah! Come on, old girl! Open up and be sociable. We're not revenue officers or sheriffs. If you've got any good mountain whiskey, I'll help you drink it."

"Who are ye?" she repeated savagely.

"Ah, just a couple o' gentle, cooing turtle-doves—a bride and groom. Loosen up, old girl; it's Christmas Eve—and we're just a couple o' gentle cooin' doves——"

Jim kept up his persuasive eloquence until the light of the candle flashed through the window, and he heard her slip the heavy bar from the door.

He lost no time in pushing his way inside.

Nance threw a startled look at his enormous, shaggy fur coat—at the shining aluminum goggles almost completely masking his face. She gave a low, breathless scream, hurled the door-bar crashing to the floor and stared at him like a wild, hunted animal at bay, her thin hands trembling, the iron-gray hair tumbling over her forehead.

"Oh, my God!" she wailed, crouching back.

Jim gazed at her in amazement. He had forgotten his goggles and fur coat.

"What's the matter?" he asked in high-keyed tones of surprise.

Nance made no answer but crouched lower and attempted to put the table between them.

"What t'ell Bill ails you—will you tell me?" he asked with rising wrath.

"I THOUGHT you wuz the devil," the old woman panted. "Now I KNOW it!"

Jim suddenly remembered his goggles and coat, and broke into a laugh.

"Oh!"

He removed his goggles and cap, threw back his big coat and squared his shoulders with a smile.

"How's that?"

Nance glowered at him with ill-concealed rage, looked him over from head to foot, and answered with a snarl:

"'Tain't much better—ef ye ax ME!"

"Gee! But you're a sociable old wild-cat!" he exclaimed, starting back as if she had struck him a blow.

His eye caught the dried skin of a young wildcat hanging on the log wall.

"No wonder you skinned your neighbor and hung her up to dry," he added moodily.

He took in the room with deliberate insolence while the old woman stood awkwardly watching him, shifting her position uneasily from one foot to the other.

In all his miserable life in New York he could not recall a room more bare of comforts. The rough logs were chinked with pieces of wood and daubed with red clay. The door was made of rough boards, the ceiling of hewn logs with split slabs laid across them. An old-fashioned, tall spinning wheel, dirty and unused, sat in the corner. A rough pine table was in the middle of the floor and a smaller one against the wall. On this side table sat two rusty flat-irons, and against it leaned an ironing board. A dirty piece of turkey-red calico hung on a string for a portiere at the opening which evidently led into a sort of kitchen somewhere in the darkness beyond.

The walls were decorated at intervals. A huge bunch of onions hung on a wooden peg beside the wild-cat skin. Over the window was slung an old-fashioned muzzle-loading musket. The sling which held it was made of a pair of ancient home-made suspenders fastened to the logs with nails. Beneath the gun hung a cow's horn, cut and finished for powder, and with it a dirty game-bag. Strings of red peppers were strung along each of the walls, with here and there bunches of popcorn in the ears. A pile of black walnuts lay in one corner of the cabin and a pile of hickory nuts in another.

A three-legged wooden stool and a split-bottom chair stood beside the table, and a haircloth couch, which looked as if it had been saved from the Ark, was pushed near the wall beside the door.

Across this couch was thrown a ragged patchwork quilt, and a pillow covered with calico rested on one end, with the mark of a head dented deep in the center.

Jim shrugged his shoulders with a look of disgust, stepped quickly to the door and called:

"Come on in, Kid!"

Nance fumbled her thin hands nervously and spoke with the faintest suggestion of a sob in her voice.

"I ain't got nothin' for ye to eat——"

"We've had dinner," he answered carelessly.

He stepped to the door and called:

"Bring that little bag from under the seat, Kiddo."

He held the door open, and the light streamed across the yard to the car. He watched her steadily while she raised the cushion of the rear seat, lifted the bag and sprang from the car. His keen eye never left her for an instant until she placed it in his hands.

"Mercy, but it's heavy!" she panted, as she gave it to him.

He took it without a word and placed it on the table in the center of the room.

Nance glared at him sullenly.

"There's no place for ye, I tell ye——"

Jim faced her with mock politeness.

"For them kind words—thanks!"

He bowed low and swept the room with a mocking gesture.

"There ain't no room for ye," the old woman persisted.

Jim raised his voice to a squeaking falsetto with deliberate purpose to torment her.

"I got ye the first time, darlin'!" he exclaimed, lifting his hands above her as if to hold her down. "We must linger awhile for your name—anyhow, we mustn't forget that. This is Mrs. Nance Owens?"

The old woman started and watched him from beneath her heavy eyebrows, answering with sullen emphasis:

"Yes."

Again Jim lifted his hands above his head and waved her to earth.

"Well! Don't blame me! I can't help it, you know——"

He turned to his wife and spoke with jolly good humor.

"It's the place, all right. Set down, Kiddo—take off your hat and things. Make yourself at home."

Nance flew at him in a sudden frenzy at his assumption of insolent ownership of her cabin.

"There's no place for ye to sleep!" she fairly shrieked in his face.

Again Jim's arms were over her head, waving her down.

"All right, sweetheart! We're from New York. We don't sleep. We've come all the way down here to the mountains of North Carolina just to see you. And we're goin' to sit up all night and look at ye——"

He sat down deliberately, and Nance fumbled her hands with a nervous movement.

Mary's heart went out in sympathy to the forlorn old creature in her embarrassment. Her dress was dirty and ragged, an ill-fitting gingham, the elbows out and her bare, bony arms showing through. The waist was too short and always slipping from the belt of wrinkled cloth beneath which she kept trying to stuff it.

Mary caught her restless eye at last and held it in a friendly look.

"Please let us stay!" she pleaded. "We can sleep on the floor—anywhere."

"You bet!" Jim joined in. "Married two weeks—and I don't care whether it rains or whether it pours or how long I have to stand outdoors—if I can be with you, Kid."

The old woman hesitated until Mary's smile melted its way into her heart.

Her lips trembled, and her watery blue eyes blinked.

"Well," she began grumblingly, "thar's a little single bed in that shed-room thar for you—ef he'll sleep in here on the sofy."

Jim leaped to his feet.

"What do ye think of that? Bully for the old gal! Kinder slow at first. As the poet sings of the little bed-bug, she ain't got no wings—but she gets there just the same!"

He drew the electric torch from his pocket and advanced on Nance.

"By Golly—I'll have another look at you."

Nance backed in terror at the sight of the revolver-like instrument.

"What's that?" she gasped.

"Just a little Gatlin' gun!" he cried jokingly. He pressed the button, and the light flashed squarely in the old woman's eyes.

"God 'lmighty—don't shoot!" she screamed.

Jim doubled with laughter.

"For the love o' Mike!"

Nance leaned against the side table and wiped the perspiration from her brow.

"Lord! I thought you'd kilt me!" she panted, still trembling.

"Ah, don't be foolish!" Jim said persuasively. "It can't hurt you. Here, take it in your hand—I'll show you how to work it. It's to nose round dark places under the buzz-wagon."

He held it out to Nance.

"Here, take it and press the button."

The old woman drew back.

"No—no—I'm skeered! No——"

Jim thrust the torch into her hand and forced her to hold it.

"Oh, come on, it's easy. Push your finger right down on the button."

Nance tried it gingerly at first, and then laughed at the ease with which it could be done. She flashed it on the floor again and again.

"Why, it's like a big lightnin' bug, ain't it?"

She turned the end of it up to examine more closely, pushed the button unconsciously, and the light flashed in her eyes. She jumped and handed it quickly to Jim.

"Or a jack o' lantern—here, take it," she cried, still trembling.

Jim threw his hands up with a laugh.

"Can you beat it!"

Backing quickly to the door, Nance called nervously to Mary:

"I'll get your room ready in a minute, ma'am." She paused and glanced at Jim.

"And thar's a shed out thar you can put your devil wagon in——"

She slipped through the dirty calico curtains, and Mary saw her go with wondering pity in her heart.



CHAPTER XV. A LITTLE BLACK BAG

Mary watched Nance, with a quick glance at Jim. Again he had forgotten that he had a wife. She had studied this strange absorption with increasing uneasiness. During the long, beautiful drive of the afternoon beside laughing waters, through scenes of unparalleled splendor, through valleys of entrancing peace, the still, sapphire skies bending above with clear, Southern Christmas benediction, he had not once pressed her hand, he had not once bent to kiss her.

Each time the thought had come, she fought back the tears. She had made excuses for him. He was absorbed in the memories of his miserable childhood in New York, perhaps. The approaching meeting with his relatives had awakened the old hunger for a mother's love that had been denied him. The scenes through which they were passing had perhaps stirred the currents of his subconscious being.

And yet why should such memories estrange his spirit from hers? The effect should be the opposite. In the remembrance of his loneliness and suffering, he should instinctively turn to her. The love with which she had unfolded his life should redeem the past.

He was standing now with his heavy chin silhouetted against the flickering light of the candle on the table. His hand closed suddenly on the handle of the bag with the swift clutch of an eagle's claw. She started at the ugly picture it made in the dim rays of the candle.

What were the thoughts seething behind the mask of his face? She watched him, spellbound by his complete surrender to the mood that had dominated him from the moment he had touched the deep forests of the Black Mountain range. A grim elation ruled even his silences. The man standing there rigid, his face a smiling, twitching mask, was a stranger. This man she had never known, or loved. And yet they were bound for life in the tenderest and strongest ties that can hold the human soul and body.

She tossed her head and threw off the ugly thought. It was morbid nonsense! She was just hungry for a kiss, and in his new environment he had forgotten himself as many thoughtless men had forgotten before and would forget again.

"Jim!" she whispered tenderly.

He made no answer. His thick lips were drawn in deep, twisted lines on one side, as if he had suddenly reached a decision from which there could be no appeal.

She raised her voice slightly.

"Jim?"

Not a muscle of his body moved. The drawn lines of the mouth merely relaxed. His answer was scarcely audible.

"Yep——"

"She's gone!"

"Yep——"

She moved toward him wistfully.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

His square jaw still held its rigid position silhouetted in sharp profile against the candle's light. He answered slowly and mechanically.

"What?"

His indifference was more than the sore heart could bear. The pent-up tears of the afternoon dashed in flood against the barriers of her will.

"You—haven't—kissed—me—today," she stammered, struggling with each word to save a break.

Still he stood immovable. This time his answer was tinged with the slightest suggestion of amusement.

"No?"

She staggered against the table beside the door and gripped its edge desperately.

"Oh—" she gasped. "Don't you love me any more?"

With his sullen head still holding its position of indifference, his absorption in the idea which dominated his mind still unbroken, he threw out one hand in a gesture of irritation.

"Cut it, Kid! Cut it!"

His tones were not only indifferent; they were contemptuously indifferent.

With a sob, she sank into the chair and buried her face in her arms.

"You're tired! I see it now; you've tired of me. Oh—it's not possible—it's not possible!"

The torrent came at last in a flood of utter abandonment.

Jim turned, looked at her and threw up his hands in temporary surrender.

"Oh, for God's sake!" he muttered, crossing deliberately to her side. He stood and let her sob.

With a quick change of mood, he drew her to her feet, swept her swaying form into his arms, crushed her and covered her lips with kisses.

"How's that?"

She smiled through her tears.

"I feel better——"

Jim laughed.

"For better or worse—'until Death do us part'—that's what you said, Kid, and you meant it, too, didn't you?"

He seized both of her arms, held them firmly and gazed into her eyes with steady, stern inquiry.

She looked up with uneasy surprise.

"Of course—I meant it," she answered slowly.

He held her arms gripped close and said:

"Well—we'll see!"

His hands relaxed, and he turned away, rubbing his square chin thoughtfully.

She watched him in growing amazement. What could be the mystery back of this new twist of his elusive mind?

He laid his hand on the black bag again, smiled, and turned and faced her with expanding good humor.

"Great scheme, this marryin', Kid! And you believe in it exactly as I do, don't you?"

"How do you mean?" she faltered.

"That it binds and holds both our lives as only Almighty God can bind and hold?"

"Yes—nothing else IS marriage."

"That's what I say, too!"

He placed his hands on her shoulders.

"Great scheme!" he repeated. "I get a pretty girl to work for me for nothing for the balance of my life." He paused and lifted the slender forefinger of his right hand. "And you pledged your pious soul—I memorized the words, every one of them: 'I, Mary, take thee, James, to my wedded husband—TO HAVE AND TO HOLD from this day forward, FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish AND OBEY, TIL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE; AND THEREUNTO I GIVE THEE MY TROTH——'"

He paused, lifted his head and smiled grimly: "That's some promise, believe me, Kiddo! 'AND OBEY'—you meant it all, didn't you?"

She would have hedged lightly over that ugly old word which still survived in the ceremony Craddock had used, but for the sinister suggestion in his voice back of the playful banter. He had asked it half in jest, half in earnest. She had caught by the subtle sixth sense the tragic idea in that one word that he was going to hold her to it. The thought was too absurd!

"OBEY—you meant it, didn't you?" he repeated grimly.

A smile played about the corners of her mouth as she answered dreamily:

"Yes—I—I—PROMISED!"

"That's why I set my head on you from the first—you're good and sweet—you're the real thing."

Again she caught the sinister suggestion in his tone and threw him a startled look.

"What has come over you today, Jim?" she asked.

He hesitated and answered carelessly.

"Oh, nothing, Kiddo—just been thinking a little about business. Got to go to work, you know." He returned to the table and touched the bag lightly.

"Watch out now for this bag while I put up the car—and don't forget that curiosity killed the cat."

Quick as a flash, she asked:

"What's in it?"

Jim threw up his hands and laughed.

"Didn't I tell you that curiosity killed a cat?" He pointed to the skin on the wall. "That's what stretched that wild-cat's hide up there! She got too near the old musket!"

"Anyhow, I'm not afraid of her end—what's in it?"

Jim scratched his red head and looked at her thoughtfully.

"You asked me that once before today, didn't you?"

"Yes——"

"Well, it's a little secret of mine. Take my advice—put your hand on it, but not in it."

Again the sinister look and tone chilled her.

"I don't like secrets between us, Jim," she said.

She looked at the bag reproachfully, and he watched her keenly—then laughed.

"I'd as well tell you and be done with it; you'll go in it anyhow."

She tossed her head with a touch of angry pride. He took her hand, led her across the room and placed it on the valise.

"I've got five thousand dollars in gold in that bag."

She drew back, surprised beyond the power of speech.

"And I'm going to give it to this old woman——"

"To her—why?" she gasped.

"She's my mother."

"Your MOTHER?"

"Yes."

"I—I—thought—you told me she was dead."

"No. I said that I didn't know who she was."

He paused, and a queer brooding look crept into his face.

"I haven't seen her since I was a little duffer three years old. This room and these wild crags and trees come back to me now—just a glimpse of them here and there. I've always remembered them. I thought I'd dreamed it——"

"You remember—how wonderful!" she breathed reverently. She understood now, and the clouds lifted.

"The skunk I called my daddy," Jim went on thoughtfully, "took me to New York. He said that my mother deserted me when I was a kid. I believed him at first. But when he beat me and kicked me into the streets, I knew he was a liar. When I got grown I began to think and wonder about her. I hired a lawyer that knew my daddy, and he found her here——"

With a cry of joy, she seized his arms:

"Tell her quick! Oh, you're big and fine and generous, Jim—and I knew it! They said that you were a brute. I knew they lied. Tell her quick!"

He lifted his hand in protest.

"Nope—I'm going to put up a little job on the old girl—show her the money tonight, get her wild at the sight of it—and give it to her Christmas morning. We've only a few hours to wait——"

"Oh, give it to her now—Jim! Give it to her now!"

He shook his head and walked to the door.

"I want to say something to her first and give her time to think it over. Look out for the bag, and I'll bring in the things."

He swung the rough board door wide, slammed it and disappeared in the darkness.

The young wife watched the bag a moment with consuming curiosity. She had fiercely resented his insulting insinuations at her curiosity, and yet she was wild to look at that glowing pile of gold inside and picture the old woman's joyous surprise.

Her hand touched the lock carelessly and drew back as if her finger had been burned. She put her hands behind her and crossed the room.

"I won't be so weak and silly!" she cried fiercely.

She heard Jim cranking the car. It would take him five minutes more to start it, get it under the shed and bring in the suit-case and robes.

"Why shouldn't I see it!" she exclaimed. "He has told me about it." She hesitated and struggled for a moment, quickly walked back to the bag and touched the spring. It yielded instantly.

"Why, it's not even locked!" she cried in tones of surprise at her silly scruples.

Her hand had just touched the gold when Nance entered.

She snapped the bag and smiled at the old woman carelessly. What a sweet surprise she would have tomorrow morning!

Nance crossed slowly, glancing once at the girl wistfully as if she wanted to say something friendly, and then, alarmed at her presumption, hurried on into the little shed-room.

Mary waited until she returned.

"Room's all ready in thar, ma'am," she drawled, passing into the kitchen without a pause.

"All right—thank you," Mary answered.

She quickly opened the bag, thrust her hand into the gold and withdrew it, holding a costly green-leather jewelry-case of exquisite workmanship. There could be no mistake about its value.

With a cry of joy, she started back, staring at the little box.

"Another surprise! And for me! Oh, Jim, man, you're glorious! My Christmas present, of course! I mustn't look at it—I won't!"

She pushed the case from her toward the bag and drew it back again.

"What's the difference? I'll take one little, tiny peep."

She touched the spring and caught her breath. A string of pearls fit for the neck of a princess lay shining in its soft depths. She lifted them with a sigh of delight. Her eye suddenly rested on a stanza of poetry scrawled on the satin lining in the trembling hand of an old man she had known.

She dropped the pearls with a cry of terror. Her face went white, and she gasped for breath. The jewel-case in her hand she had seen before. It had belonged to the old gentleman who lived in the front room on the first floor of her building in the days when it was a boarding house. The wife he had idolized was long ago dead. This string of pearls from her neck the old man had worshiped for years. The stanza from "The Rosary" he had scrawled in the lining one day in Mary's presence. He had moved uptown with the landlady. Two months ago a burglar had entered his room, robbed and shot him.

"It's impossible—impossible!" she gasped. "Oh, dear God—it's impossible! Of course the burglar pawned them, and Jim bought them without knowing. Of course! My nerves are on edge today—how silly of me——"

Jim's footsteps suddenly sounded on the porch, and she thrust the jewel-case back into the bag with desperate effort to pull herself together.



CHAPTER XVI. THE AWAKENING

For a moment she felt the foundations of the moral and physical world sinking beneath her feet. Dizziness swept her senses. She gripped the table, leaning heavily against it, her eye watching the door with feverish terror for Jim's appearance.

She had never fainted in her life. It was absurd, but the room was swimming now in a dim blur. Again she gripped the table and set her teeth. She simply would not give up. Why should she leap to the worst possible explanation of the jewels? The hatred of old Ella for Jim and the furious antagonism of Jane Anderson had poisoned her mind, after all. It was infamous that she could suspect her husband of crime merely because two silly women didn't like him.

He could explain the jewels. He, of course, asked no questions of the pawn-broker. They were probably sold at auction and he bought them.

It seemed an eternity from the time Jim's foot step echoed on the little porch until he pushed the door open and hastily entered, his arms piled with lap-robes, coats and the dress-suit case in his hand.

He walked with quick, firm step, threw the coats and robes on the couch and placed the suit-case at its head. He hadn't turned toward her and his face was still in profile while he removed the gloves from his pockets, threw them on the robes, and drew the scarlet woolen neckpiece from his throat.

She was studying him now with new terror-stricken eyes. Never had she seen his jaw look so big and brutal. Never had the droop of his eyelids suggested such menace. Never had the contrast of his slender hands and feet suggested such hideous possibilities.

"Merciful God! No! No!" she kept repeating in her soul while her dilated eyes stared at him in sheer horror of the suggestion which the jewels had roused.

She drew a deep breath and strangled the idea by her will.

"I'll at least be as fair as a jury," she thought grimly. "I'll not condemn him without a hearing."

Jim suddenly became aware of the menace of her silence. She had not moved a muscle, spoken or made the slightest sound since he had entered. He had merely taken in the room at a glance and had seen her standing in precisely the same place beside the table.

He saw now that she was leaning heavily against it.

He raised his head and faced her with a sudden, bold stare, and his voice rang in tones of sharp command.

"Well?"

She tried to speak and failed. She had not yet sufficiently mastered her emotions.

"What's the matter?" he growled.

"Jim——" she gasped.

He took a step toward her with set teeth.

"You've been in that bag—Well?"

Her face was white, her voice husky.

"Those jewels, Jim——"

A cunning smile played about his mouth and he shook his head.

"I tried to keep my little secret from you till Christmas morning; but you're on to my curves now, Kiddo, and I'll have to 'fess up——"

"You bought them for me?" she asked with trembling eagerness.

"Who else do you reckon I'd buy 'em for? I was going to surprise you, too, tomorrow morning. You've spoiled the fun."

She had slipped close to his side and he could hear her quick intake of breath.

"That's—so—sweet of you, Jim. I'm sorry—I—spoiled the surprise—you'd—planned——"

"Oh, what's the difference!" he broke in carelessly. "It's all the same five minutes after, anyhow. Well, don't you like 'em? Why don't you say something?"

"They're wonderful, Jim. Where—where—did you buy them?"

He held her gaze in silence for an instant and fenced.

"Isn't that a funny question, Kiddo?" he said in low tones. "I once heard the old man I worked with in the shop say that you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth."

"I just want to know," she insisted.

"I'm not going to tell you!" he said with a dry laugh.

"Why not?"

"Because you keep asking."

"You wish to tease me?"

"Maybe."

"Please!"

"Why do you want to know? Are you afraid they're fakes?"

"No, they're beautiful—they're wonderful."

"Well, if you don't want them," he broke in angrily, "I'll keep them. I'll sell them."

"Don't tease me, Jim!" she begged. "I don't mind if you bought them at a pawn-shop—if that's why you won't tell me. That is the reason, isn't it? Honestly, isn't it?"

She asked the question with eager intensity. She had persuaded herself that it was so and the horror had been lifted. She pressed close with smiling, trembling lips:

"I don't mind that, Jim! You got them from a pawn-broker, of course, didn't you?"

He looked at her with a puzzled expression and hesitated.

"Didn't you?" she repeated.

"No—I didn't!" was the curt answer.

"You didn't?" she echoed feebly.

"No!"

With a quick breath she unconsciously drew back and he glared at her angrily.

"Say, what'ell's the matter with you, anyhow? Have you gone crazy?"

"You—won't—tell me—where you bought them?" she asked slowly.

He faced her squarely and spoke with deliberate contempt:

"It's—none—of your business!"

She held his gaze with steady determination.

"That string of pearls belongs to the man who once lived in the front room of my old building in New York. He moved uptown with my landlady. A few months ago a burglar robbed and shot him——"

She stopped, seized his arm and cried with strangling horror:

"Jim! Jim! Where did you get them?"

"Now I know you've gone crazy! You don't suppose that's the only string of pearls in the world, do you? Did you count 'em? Did you weigh 'em?"

"Where did you get them?" she demanded.

"What put it into your head that that string of pearls belonged to your old boarder?"

"I saw him write the stanza of poetry on the satin lining of that case. I've heard him recite it over and over again in his piping voice: 'Each bead a pearl—my rosary!' I KNOW that they belonged to him!"

His mouth twitched angrily and he faced her, speaking with cold, brutal frankness.

"I might keep on lying to you, Kiddo, and get away with it. But what's the use? You've got to know. It's just as well now—I did that job——Yes!"

Her face blanched.

"You—a—burglar—a murderer!"

Jim followed her with quick, angry gestures.

"All I wanted was his money! He fought—it was his life or mine——"

"A murderer!"

"I just went after his money—I tell you—besides, he didn't die; he got well. If he'd kept still he wouldn't have lost his pearls and he wouldn't have been hurt——"

"And I stood up for you against them all!" she answered in a dazed whisper. "They told me—Jane Anderson with brutal frankness, Ella with the heart-rending, timid confession of her own tragic life—they told me that you were bad. I said they were liars. I said that they envied our happiness. I believed that you were big and brave and fine. I stood by you and married you!"

She paused and looked at him steadily. In a rush of suppressed passion she seized his arm with a violence that caused his heavy eyelids to lift in amused surprise.

"Oh, Jim—it's not true! It's not true—it's not true! For God's sake, tell me that you're joking!—that you're teasing me! You can't mean it! I won't believe it—I won't believe it!"

Her head sank until it rested piteously against his breast. He stood with his face turned awkwardly away and then moved his body until she was forced to stand erect.

He touched her shoulder gently and spoke soothingly:

"Come, now, Kid, don't take on so. I'll quit the business when I make my pile."

She drew back instinctively and he followed:

"I'll never touch another penny of yours. There's blood on it!"

"Rot!" he went on soothingly. "It's good Wall Street cash—got it exactly like they got theirs—got it because I was quicker and smarter than the fellow that had it. I use a jimmy, they use a ticker—that's all the difference."

She drew her figure to its full height.

"I'm going—Jim——"

"Where?"

His voice rasped like a file against steel.

"Home!"

"Your home's with me."

"I won't live with a thief!"

He stepped squarely before her and spoke with deliberate menace.

"You're—not—going!"

"Get out of my way!" she cried defiantly.

His big jaw closed with a snap and his figure became rigid. The candle's yellow light threw a strange glare on his face, convulsed. The blue flames of hell were in the glitter of his steel eyes.

Her heart sank in a dull wave of terror. She tried to gauge the depth of his brutal rage. There was no standard by which to measure it. She had never seen that look in his face before. His whole being was transformed by some sinister power.

She was afraid to move, but her mind was alert in this moment of supreme trial. She hadn't used her last weapon yet. The fact that he held her with such terrible determination was proof of the spell she had cast over him. She might save him. He couldn't have been a criminal long. She formed her new battle-line with quick decision.



CHAPTER XVII. THE SURRENDER

How long she gazed into the convulsed face of the man who had squared himself before her, mattered little measured by the tick of the watch in her belt. Into the mental anguish endured a life's agony had been pressed. It could not have been more than twenty seconds, and yet it marked the birth of a new being within the soul of a woman. She had been searching only for her own happiness. The search had entangled another in the meshes of her life. Too much had been lived in the past two weeks to be undone by a word and forgotten in a day. She had attempted, coward-like, to run.

She saw now in the consuming flame of a great sorrow that the man before her had some rights which the purest woman must reckon with. He might be a burglar. At least it was her duty to try to save him from himself. Her surrender of the past weeks was a tie that would bind them through all eternity. There was no chemistry of earth or heaven or hell that could erase its memories. Her life was no longer her own—this man's was bound with hers. She must face the facts. She would make one honest, brave effort to save him. To do this she would give all without reservation—pride must be cast to the winds.

Her voice suddenly changed to tears.

"Oh, Jim, you do love me, don't you?"

His body slowly relaxed, his eyes shifted, and he shrugged his square shoulders.

"What'ell did I marry you for?"

"Tell me—do you?" she demanded.

"You know that I love you. What do you ask me such a fool question for? I love you with a love that can kill. Do you hear me? That's why you're not going anywhere without me."

There was no mistaking the depth of his passion. She trembled to realize its power and yet it was the lever by which she must move him.

"Then you've got to give this life up. You're young and brave and strong. You can earn an honest living. You haven't been in this long—I feel it, I know it. Have you?"

"No!"

"How long?"

"Eight months."

"Oh, Jim, dear, you must give it up now for my sake. I'll work with you and work for you. I'll teach, I'll sew, I'll scrub, I'll slave for you day and night—if you're only clean and honest."

He turned on her fiercely.

"Cut it, Kid—cut it! I'm out for the stuff now. I'm going to get rich and I'm going to get rich QUICK—that's all that's the matter with me!"

"But, Jim," she broke in tenderly—"you did earn an honest living. Your workshop proves that."

"I've used that to improve my tools and melt the swag the past year. The shop's all right."

"But you did make a successful invention?"

"You bet I did," he answered savagely, "and that's why I quit the business. Three years ago I took down a big automobile and worked out an improvement in the transmission that settled the question of heavy draft machines. I took it to a lawyer in Wall Street and he took it to a man that had money. Between the two of 'em, they didn't do a thing to me! They were going to put my patent on the market and make me a millionaire. God, I was crazy——"

He paused and squared his shoulders with a deep breath.

"They put it on the market all right and they made some millionaires—but I wasn't one of 'em, Kiddo! They got me to sign a paper that skinned me out of every dollar as slick as you can pull an eel through your fingers. I hired another lawyer and gave him half he could get to beat 'em. He fought like a tiger and two days before I met you he got his verdict and they paid it—just ten thousand dollars. Think of it—ten thousand dollars! And each of them got a million cash. They sold it outright for two millions and a half. My lawyer got five thousand dollars, and I got five thousand dollars. That's mine, anyhow. It's in that bag there. I'm working on a new set of tools now in my shop. I'm going to get that money back from the two thieves who stole it from me by law. I'll take it by force, the way they took it. If I can croak them both in the fight—well, there'll be two thieves less to rob honest men and women, that's all."

"Oh, Jim!" Mary gasped, lifting a trembling hand to her throat as if to tear open her collar. "You're mad. You don't know what you're saying——"

"Don't fool yourself, Kiddo," he interrupted fiercely. "My eyes are open now, and I've got a level head back of 'em, too. I've doped it all out. You ought to 'a' heard that lawyer give me a few lessons in business when he'd skinned me and salted my hide. He was good-natured and confidential. He seemed to love me. 'Business is war, sonny,' he piped, between the puffs of the big Havana cigar he was smoking—'war! war to the knife! We got you off your guard and put the knife into you at the right minute—that's all. Don't take it so hard! Invent something else and keep your eyes peeled. You ought to love us for giving you an education in business early in life. You're young. You won't have to learn your lesson again. Go to work, sonny, in your shop, and turn out another new tool for the advancement of trade!'"

He paused and smiled grimly.

"I've done it, too! I've just finished a little invention that'll crack any safe in New York in twenty minutes after I touch it."

He broke into a dry laugh, sat down and deliberately lighted a fresh cigarette.

She studied his face with beating heart. Was he lost beyond all hope of reformation? Or was this the boyish bravado of an amateur criminal poisoned by the consciousness of wrong? She tried to think. She felt the red blood pounding through her heart and beating against her brain in suffocating waves of despair.

In vivid flashes the scene of her marriage but two weeks ago, came back in tormenting memories. The solemn words she had spoken kept ringing like the throb of a funeral bell far up in the star-lit heavens——

"I, MARY ADAMS, TAKE THEE, JAMES ANTHONY, TO MY WEDDED HUSBAND, TO HAVE AND TO HOLD... FOR BETTER FOR WORSE, FOR RICHER FOR POORER, IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, TO LOVE, CHERISH, AND TO OBEY, TILL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE; AND THERETO I GIVE THEE MY TROTH."

The last solemn prayer kept ringing its deep-toned message over all——

"GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON, GOD THE HOLY GHOST, BLESS, PRESERVE, AND KEEP YOU; THE LORD MERCIFULLY WITH HIS FAVOR LOOK UPON YOU, AND FILL YOU WITH ALL SPIRITUAL BENEDICTION AND GRACE; THAT YE MAY SO LIVE TOGETHER IN THIS LIFE, THAT IN THE WORLD TO COME YE MAY HAVE LIFE EVERLASTING. AMEN."

In a sudden rush of desperate pity for herself and the man to whom she was bound, she dropped on her knees by his side, slipped her arms about his neck and clung to him, sobbing.

"Oh, Jim, Jim, man," she whispered hoarsely. "I can't see you sink into hell like this! Have you no real love in your heart for the woman who has given all? Have mercy on me! Have mercy! You can't mean the hideous things you've just said! You've been crazed by your losses. You're just a boy yet. Life is all before you. You're only twenty-four. I'm just twenty-four. We can both begin anew. I've never lived until these past weeks—neither have you. You couldn't drag me down into a life of crime——"

Her head sank and her voice choked into silence. He made no movement of his hand to soothe her. His voice was not persuasive. It was hard and cold.

"I'm not asking you to help me on any of my jobs," he said. "I'm the financier of the family. You can say the prayers and keep house."

"Knowing that you are a criminal? That your hands are stained with human blood?"

"Why not?" he snapped, the blue blaze flashing again in his eyes. "Suppose you were the wife of the gentlemanly lawyer-thief who robbed me, using the law instead of a jimmy—would you bother your little head about my business? Does his wife ask him where he got it? Does anybody know or care? He lives on Fifth Avenue now. He bought a palace up there the day after he got my money. We passed it on the way to the Park the day I met you. A line of carriages was standing in front and finely dressed women were running up the red carpet that led down the stoop and under the canopy to the curb. Did any of the gay dames who smiled and smirked at that thief's wife ask how he got the money to buy the house? Not much. Would they have cared if they had known? They'd have called him a shrewd lawyer—that's all! Do you reckon his wife worries about such tricks of trade? Why should mine worry?"

She gripped his hand with desperate pleading.

"Oh, Jim, dear, you can't be a criminal at heart! I wouldn't have loved you if it had been true. I can't believe it! I won't believe it. You're posing. You don't mean this. You can't mean it. You're going to return every dishonest dollar that you've taken."

"You don't know what you're talking about!"

He closed his jaw with a snap and leaned close in eager, tense excitement.

"Do you know how much junk I've piled into a little box in my shop the past three months?"

"I don't care—I don't want to know!"

"You've got to care—you've got to know now! It's worth a hundred thousand dollars, do you hear? A hundred thousand dollars! It would take me a life-time to earn that on a salary. In two weeks after we get back to New York with my new invention that lawyer advised me to make, I'll go through his house—I'll open his safe, I'll take every diamond, every pearl and every scrap of stolen jewelry his wife's wearing. And I won't leave a fingerprint on the window sill. I've got two of his servants working for me.

"In six months I'll be worth half a million. In a year I'll pull off the big haul I'm planning and I'll be a millionaire. We'll retire from business then—just like they did. We'll build our marble palace down at Bay Ridge and our yacht will nod in the harbor. We'll spend our summers in Europe when we like and every snob and fool in New York will fall over himself to meet me. And every woman will envy my wife. I'm young, Kiddo, but I've cut my eye teeth. You've just been born. I'm running the business end of this thing. You think you can reform me. You can—AFTER I'VE MADE OUR PILE. I'll join the church then and sing louder than that lawyer. But if you think you're going to stop my business career at this stage of the game—forget it, forget it!"

He sprang up with a quick movement of his tense body and threw her off. She rose and watched his restless steps as he paced the floor. Her mind was numb as if from a mortal blow. She brushed the tangled ringlets of brown hair back from her forehead, drew the handkerchief from her belt and wiped the perspiration from her brow.

Before she could gather the strength to speak, he wheeled suddenly and confronted her:

"I've known from the first, Kiddo, that you're not the kind to help in this business. I don't expect it. I don't ask it. I need a ranch like this down here for storage. I'm going to take the old woman into partnership with me."

She started back in an instinctive recoil of horror.

"Your MOTHER?"

He nodded.

"Yep!"

She drew a step nearer and peered into his set face.

"YOU WILL MAKE YOUR OWN MOTHER A CRIMINAL?"

"Sure!" he growled. "That's what I came down here for."

"She won't do it!"

"She won't, eh?" he sneered. "Look at this hog pen!"

He swept the bare, wretched cabin with a gesture of contempt and shrugged his shoulders.

"Look at the rags she's wearing," he went on savagely. "When we talk it over tonight with that five thousand dollars in gold shining in her eyes—I'm going to show her a lot o' things she never saw before, Kiddo—take it from me!"

She answered in slow, even tones:

"I can't live with you, Jim."

The blue flames beneath the drooping eyelids were leaping now in the yellow glare of the candle's rays. The muscles of his body were knotted. His voice came from his throat a low growl.

"Do you know who you're fooling with?"

The blood of a clean life flamed in her cheeks and nerved her with reckless daring. Her figure stiffened and her voice rang with defiant scorn:

"Yes. I know at last—a thief who would drag his own mother down to hell with him!"

Not a muscle of his powerful body moved; his face was a stolid mask. He threw his words slowly through his teeth:

"Now you listen to me. You're my wife. I didn't invent this marriage game. I played it as I found it. And that's the way you're going to play it. You're good and sweet and clean—I like that kind, and I won't have no other. You're mine. MINE, do you hear! Mine for life—body and soul—'FOR BETTER FOR WORSE, FOR RICHER FOR POORER, IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, TO LOVE, CHERISH'——"

He paused and thrust his massive jaw squarely into her face:

"'——AND OBEY!'" he hissed, "'UNTIL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE'—you said it, didn't you?"

"Yes——"

"Well?"

She turned from him with sudden aversion:

"I didn't know what you were——"

"Nobody ever knows BEFORE they're married!" he broke in savagely. "You took your chances. I took mine—'FOR BETTER FOR WORSE.' We'll just say now it's for worse and let it go at that!"

The little body stiffened.

"I'll die first!"

He held her gaze without words, searching the depths of her being with the cold, blue flame in his drooping eyes. If she were bluffing, it was easy. She could talk her head off for all he cared. If she meant it, he might have his hands full unless he mastered the situation at once and for all time.

There was no sign of yielding to his iron will. An indomitable soul had risen in her frail body and defied him. His decision was instantaneous.

"Oh, you'll die sooner than live with me—eh?"

There was something hideous in the cold venom with which he drawled the words. Her heart fairly stopped its beating. With the last ounce of courage left, she held her place and answered:

"Yes!"

With the sudden crouch of a tiger he drew his clenched fist to strike.

"Forget it!"

She sprang back with terror, her body trembling in pitiful weakness.

"You snivelling little coward!" he growled.

"Oh, Jim, Jim," she faltered,—"you—you—couldn't strike me!"

A step nearer and he stood over her, his big, flat head thrust forward, his eyes gleaming, his muscles knotted in blind rage.

"No—I won't STRIKE you," he whispered. "I'll just KILL you—that's all!"

With the leap of an infuriated beast he sprang on her and his sharp fingers gripped her throat.

The world went black and she felt herself sinking into a bottomless abyss. With maniac energy she tore his hands from her throat and the warm blood streamed from the gash his nails had torn.

"Jim! Jim! For God's sake!" she moaned in abject terror.

With a sullen growl, his fingers, sharp as a leopard's claw, found her neck again and closed with a grip that sent the blood surging to her brain and her eyes starting from their sockets.

The one hideous thought that flashed through her mind was that he was going to plunge his claws into her eyes and blind her for life. He could hold her his prisoner then. She made a last desperate struggle for breath, her hands relaxed, she drooped and sank to the couch toward which he had hurled her in the first rush of his assault.

He lifted her and choked the slender neck again to make sure, loosed his hands and the limp body dropped on the couch and was still.

He stood watching her in silence, his arms at his side.

"Damned little fool!" he muttered. "I had to give you that lesson. The sooner the better!"

He waited with contemptuous indifference until she slowly recovered consciousness. She lay motionless for a long time and then slowly opened her eyes.

Thank God! They had not been gouged out as poor Ella's. She didn't mind the warm blood that soaked her collar and ran down her neck. If he would only spare her eyes. Blindness had been her one unspeakable terror. She closed her eyes again and silently prayed for strength. Her strength was gone. Wave after wave of sickening, cowardly terror swept her prostrate soul. She could feel his sullen presence—his body with its merciless strength towering above her. She dared not look. She knew that he was watching her with cruel indifference. A single cry, a single word and he might thrust his claw into her eyes and the light of the world would go out forever.

Her terror was too hideous; she could endure it no longer. She must move. She must try to save herself. She lifted her head and caught his steady, venomous gaze.

A quick, sliding movement of abject fear and she was erect, facing him and backing away silently.

He followed with even step, his gaze holding her as the eyes of a snake its victim. She would not let him know her terror of blindness. She preferred death a thousand times. If he would only kill her outright it was all the mercy she would ask.

"You—won't—kill—me—Jim!" she sobbed. "Please—please, don't kill me!"

He lifted his sharp finger and followed her toward the shed-room door, his voice the triumphant cry of an eagle above his prey.

"'FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE—UNTIL DEATH DO US PART!'"

Her heart gave a bound of cowardly joy. He had relented. He would not blind her. She could live. She was young and life was sweet.

She tried to smile her surrender through her tears as she backed slowly away from his ominous finger.

"Yes, I'll try—Jim. I'll try—'UNTIL DEATH DO US PART—UNTIL DEATH—UNTIL DEATH——'"

Her voice broke into a flood of tears as she blindly felt her way through the door and into the darkened room.

He paused on the threshold, held the creaking board shutter in his hand and broke into a laugh.

"The world ain't big enough for you to get away from me, Kiddo. Good night—a good little wife now and it's all right!"



CHAPTER XVIII. TO THE NEW GOD

Jim closed the door of the little shed-room with a bang, and stood listening a moment to the sobs inside.

"'UNTIL DEATH DO US PART,' Kiddo!" he laughed grimly.

He turned back into the room and saw Nance standing at the opposite entrance between the calico curtains, an old, battered, flickering lantern in her hand. A white wool shawl was thrown over the gray head and fell in long, filmy waves about her thin figure. Her deep-sunken eyes were exaggerated in the dim light of lantern and candle. She smiled wanly.

He stopped short at the apparition; a queer shiver of superstitious fear shook him. The white form of Death suddenly and noiselessly appearing from the darkness could not have been more uncanny. He had wondered vaguely while the quarrel with his wife was progressing, what had become of his mother. As the fight had reached its height, he had forgotten her.

She looked at him, blinking her eyes and trying to smile.

"Where the devil have you been, old gal?" he asked nervously.

"Nowhere," she answered evasively.

"You've been mighty quiet on the trip anyhow. I see you've brought something back from nowhere."

Nance glanced down at the jug she carried in her left hand and laughed.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Nothin'——"

"Nothin' from nowhere sounds pretty good to me when I see it in a brown jug on Christmas Eve. You're all right, old gal! I was just going to ask if you had a little mountain dew. You're a mind reader. I'll bet the warehouse you keep that stored in is some snug harbor—eh?"

"They ain't never found it yit!" she giggled.

"And I'll bet they won't—bully for you!"

She took down a tin cup from a shelf and placed it beside the jug.

"Another glass, sweetheart——"

The old woman stared at him in surprise, walked to the shelf and brought another tin cup.

"What do ye want with two?" she asked in surprise.

Jim moved toward the stool beside the table.

"Sit down."

"Me?"

"Sure. Let's be sociable. It's Christmas Eve, isn't it?"

"Yeah!" Nance answered cheerfully, taking her seat and glancing timidly at her guest.

Jim seized the jug, poured out two drinks of corn whiskey, handed her one and raised his:

"Well, here's lookin' at you, old girl."

He paused, lowered his cup and smiled.

"But say, give me a toast." He nodded toward the shed-room. "I'm on my honeymoon, you know."

His hostess laughed timidly and glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. She wished to be sociable and make up as best she could for her rudeness on their arrival.

"I ain't never heard but one fur honeymooners," she said softly.

"Let's have it. I've never heard a toast for honeymooners in my life. It'll be new to me—fire away!"

Nance fumbled her faded dress with her left hand and laughed again.

"'May ye live long and prosper an' all yer troubles be LITTLE ONES!'"

She laughed aloud at the old, worm-eaten joke and Jim joined.

"Bully! Bully, old girl—bully!"

He lifted his cup and drained it at one draught and Nance did the same.

He seized the jug and poured another drink for each.

"Once more——"

He leaned across the table.

"And here's one for you." He squared his body and lifted his cup:

"To all your little ones—no matter how big they are!"

Jim drained his liquor without apparently noticing her agitation, though he was watching her keenly from the corner of his eye.

The cup she held was lowered slowly until the whiskey poured over her dress and on the floor. Her thin figure drooped pathetically and her voice was the faintest sob:

"I—I—ain't got—none!"

"I heard you had a boy," Jim said carelessly.

The drooping figure shot upright as if a bolt of lightning had swept her. She stared at him in tense silence, trying to gather her wits before she answered.

"Who told you anything about me?" she demanded sternly.

"A fellow in New York," Jim continued with studied carelessness—"said he used to live down here."

"He LIVED down here?" she repeated blankly.

"Yep—come now, loosen up and tell us about the kid."

"There ain't nuthin' ter tell—he's dead," she cried pathetically.

"He said you deserted the child and left him to starve."

"He said that?" she growled.

"Yep."

He was silent again and watched her keenly.

She fumbled her dress and glanced nervously across the table as if afraid to ask more. Unable to wait for him to speak, she cried nervously at last:

"Well—well—what else did he say?"

"That he took the little duffer to New York and raised him."

"RAISED him?"

She fairly screamed the words, springing to her feet trembling from head to foot.

"Till he was big enough to kick into the streets to shuffle for himself."

"The scoundrel said he was dead."

Her voice was far away and sank into dreamy silence. She was living the hideous, lonely years again with a heart starved for love.

Jim's voice broke the spell:

"Then you didn't desert him?" The man's eyes held hers steadily.

She stared at him blankly and spoke with rushing indignation:

"Desert him—my baby—my own flesh and blood? There's never been a minute since I looked into his eyes that I wouldn't 'a' died fur him."

She paused and sobbed.

"He had such pretty eyes, stranger. They looked like your'n—only they wuz puttier and bluer."

She lifted her faded dress, brushed the tears from her cheeks and went on rapidly:

"When I found his drunken brute of a daddy was a liar and had another wife, I wouldn't live with him. He tried to make me but I kicked him out of the house—and he stole the boy to get even with me." Her voice broke, she dropped her head and choked back the tears. "He did get even with me, too—he did," she sobbed.

Jim watched her in silence until the paroxysm had spent itself.

"You think you'd know this boy now if you found him?"

She bent close, her breath coming in quick gasps.

"My God, mister, do you think I COULD find him?"

"He lives in New York; his name is Jim Anthony."

"Yes—yes?" she said in a dazed way. "He called hisself Walter Anthony—he wuz a stranger from the North and my boy's name was Jim." She paused and bent eagerly across the table. "New York's an awful big place, ain't it?"

"Some town, old gal, take it from me."

"COULD I find him?"

"If you've got money enough. You said you'd know him. How?"

"I'd know him!" she answered eagerly. "The last quarrel we had was about a mark on his neck. He wuz a spunky little one. You couldn't make him cry. His devil of a daddy used to stick pins in him and laugh because he wouldn't cry. The last dirty trick he tried was what ended it all. He pushed a live cigar agin his little neck until I smelled it burnin' in the next room. I knocked him down with a chair, drove him from the house and told him I'd kill him if he ever put his foot inside the door agin. He stole my boy the next night—but he'll carry that scar to his grave."

"You'd love this boy now if you found him in New York as bad as his father ever was?" Jim asked with a curious smile.

"Yes—he's mine!" was the quick, firm answer.

Jim watched her intently.

"I looked Death in the face for him," she went on fiercely. "I'd dive to the bottom o' hell to find him if I knowed he wuz thar—— But what's the use to talk; that devil killed him! I've waked up many a night stranglin' with a dream when I seed the drunken brute burnin' an' beatin' an' torturin' him to death. The feller you've heard about ain't him. 'Tain't no use to make me hope an' then kill me——"

"He's not dead, I tell you. I know."

Jim's voice rang with conviction so positive the old woman's breath came in quick gasps and she smiled through her eager tears.

"And I MIGHT find him?"

"IF you've got money enough! Money can do anything in this world."

He opened the black bag, thrust both hands into it and threw out a handful of yellow coin which he allowed to pour through his fingers and rattle into a tin plate which had been left on the table.

Her eyes sparkled with avarice.

"It's your'n—all your'n?" she breathed hungrily.

"I'm taking it down South to invest for a fool who thinks"—he stopped and laughed—"who thinks it's bad luck to keep money that's stained with blood——"

Nance started back.

"Got blood on it?"

Jim spoke in confidential appeal.

"That wouldn't make any difference to you, would it?"

She shook her gray locks and glanced at the pile of yellow metal, hungrily.

"I—I wouldn't like it with blood marks!"

He lifted a handful of coin, clinked it musically in his hands and held it in his open palms before her.

"Look! Look at it close! You don't see any blood marks on it, do you?"

Her eyes devoured it.

"No."

He seized her hand, thrust a half-dozen pieces into it and closed her thin fingers over it.

"Feel of it—look at it!"

Her hands gripped the gold. She breathed quickly, broke into a laugh, caught herself in the middle of it, and lapsed suddenly into silence.

"Feels good, don't it?" he laughed.

Nance grinned, her uneven, discolored gleaming ominously in the flicker of the candle.

"Don't it?" he repeated.

"Yeah!"

He lifted another handful and threw it in the air, catching it again.

"That's the stuff that makes the world go 'round. There's your only friend, old girl! Others promise well—but in the scratch they fail."

"Yeah—when the scratch comes they fail!" Nance echoed.

"Money never fails!" Jim continued eagerly. "It's the god that knows no right or wrong——"

He touched the pile in the plate and drew the bag close for her to see.

"How much do you guess is there?"

Nance gazed greedily into the open bag and looked again at the shining heap in the plate.

"I dunno—a million, I reckon."

The man laughed.

"Not quite that much! But enough to make you rich for life—IF you had it."

The old woman turned away pathetically and shook her gray head.

"I wouldn't have to work no more, would I?"

Her thin hands touched the faded, dirty dress.

"And I could buy me a decent dress," her voice sank to a whisper, "and I could find my boy."

"You bet you could!" Jim exclaimed. "There's just one god in this world now, old girl—the Almighty Dollar!"

He paused and leaned close, persuasively:

"Suppose now, the man that got that money had to kill a fool to take it—what of it? You don't get big money any other way. A burglar watches his chance, takes his life in his hands and drills his way into a house. He finds a fool there who fights. It's not his fault that the man was born a fool, now is it?"

"Mebbe not——"

"Of course not. A burglar kills but one to get his pile, and then only because he must, in self-defence. A big gambling capitalist corners wheat, raises the price of bread and starves a hundred thousand children to death to make his. It's not stained with blood. Every dollar is soaked in it! Who cares?"

"Yeah—who cares?" Nance growled fiercely.

Jim smiled at his easy triumph.

"It's dog eat dog and the devil take the hindmost now!"

"That's so—ain't it?" she agreed.

"You bet! Business is business and the best man's the man that gets there. Steal a hundred dollars, you go to the penitentiary—foolish! Don't do it. Steal a million and go to the Senate!"

"Yeah!" Nance laughed.

"Money—money for its own sake," he rushed on savagely—"right or wrong. That's all there is in it today, old girl—take it from me!"

He paused and his smile ended in a sneer.

"Man shall eat bread in the sweat of his brow? Only fools SWEAT!"

Nance turned her face away, sighed softly, glancing back at Jim furtively.

"I reckon that's so, too. Have another drink, stranger?"

She poured another cup of whiskey and one for herself. She raised hers as if to drink and deftly threw the contents over her shoulder.

Jim seized the jug and poured again.

"Once more. Come, I've another toast for you. You'll drink this one I know."

He lifted his cup and rose a little unsteadily. Nance stood with uplifted cup watching him.

"As the poet sings," he began with a bow to the old woman:

"France has her lily, England the rose, Everybody knows where the shamrock grows— Scotland has her thistle flowerin' on the hill, But the American Emblem—is a One Dollar Bill!"

He broke into a boisterous laugh.

"How's that, old girl?"

"That's bully, stranger!"

He lifted high his cup.

"We drink to the Almighty Dollar!"

"To the Almighty Dollar!" Nance echoed, clinking her cup against his.

He drained it while she again emptied hers over her shoulder.

"By golly, you're all right, old girl. You're a good fellow!" he cried jovially.

"Yeah—have another?" she urged.

She filled his cup and placed it on his side of the table. His eye had rested on the gold. He ignored the invitation, lifted a handful of gold and dropped it with musical clinking into the plate.

"Blood marks—tommyrot!" he sneered.

"Yeah—tommyrot!" she echoed. "That's what I say, too!"

Jim wagged his head sagely:

"Now you're talking sense, old girl!"

He leaned across the table and pointed his finger straight into her face.

"And don't you forget what I'm tellin' ye tonight—get money, get money!"

He stopped suddenly and a sneer curled his lips.

"Oh I Get it 'fairly'—get it 'squarely'—but whatever you do—by God!—GET IT!"

His uplifted hand crashed downward and gripped the gold. His fingers slowly relaxed and the coin clinked into the plate.

Nance watched him eagerly.

"Yeah, that's it—get it," she breathed slowly.

Jim lifted his drooping eyes to hers.

"If you've GOT it, you're a god—you can do no wrong. Nobody's goin' to ask you HOW you got it; all they want to know is HAVE you got it!"

"Yeah, nobody's goin' to ask you HOW you got it," Nance repeated, "they just want to know HAVE you got it! Yeah—yeah!"

"You bet!"

Jim's head sank in the first stupor of liquor and he dropped into the chair.

The old woman leaned eagerly over the plate of gold and clutched the coin with growing avarice. Her fingers opened and closed like a bird of prey. She touched it lovingly and held it in her hands a long time watching Jim's nodding head with furtive glances. She dropped a handful of coin into the plate and watched its effect on the drooping head.

He looked up and his eyes fell again.

"Bed-time, I reckon," Nance said.

"Yep—pretty tired. I'll turn in."

The old woman glided sidewise to the table near the kitchen door, picked up the lantern and started to feel her way backwards through the calico curtains.

"See you in the mornin', old gal," Jim drawled—"Christmas mornin'—an' I got somethin' else to tell ye in the mornin'——"