Again his head sank to the table.

"All right, mister—good night!" Nance answered, slowly feeling her way through the opening, watching him intently.

Jim lifted his head and nodded heavily for a moment. His hand slipped from the table and he drew himself up sharply and rose, holding to the table for support.

He picked up the plate of coin, poured it back in the bag, snapped the lock and walked with the bag unsteadily to the couch. He placed the bag under the pillow and pressed the soft feathers down over it, turned back to the table and extinguished the candle by a quick, square blow of his open palm on the flame.

He staggered to the couch, pushed the coats to the floor, dropped heavily, drew the lap-robe over him and in five minutes was sound asleep.



CHAPTER XIX. NANCE'S STOREHOUSE

The cabin was still. Only the broken sobbing of the woman in the little shed-room came faint and low on old Nance's ears.

She slipped from the kitchen into the shadows of a tree near the house and listened until the sobbing ceased.

She crept close to the shed and stood silent and ghost-like beside its daubed walls. Immovable as a cat crouching in the hedge to spring on her prey, she waited until the waning moon had sunk behind the crags. She laid her ear close to a crack in the logs from which she had once pushed the red mud to let in the light. All was still at last. The sobbing had stopped. The young wife was sound asleep.

She had wondered vaguely at first about the crying, but quickly made up her mind that it was only a lover's quarrel. She was glad of it. The girl would bar her door and sulk all night. So much the better. There would be no danger of her entering the living-room where Jim slept.

She would wait a little longer to make sure she was asleep. A half hour passed. The white-shrouded figure stood immovable, her keen ears tuned for the slightest sounds from within.

The stars were shining in unusual brilliance. She could see her way through the shadows even better than in full moon. A wolf was crying again for his mate from a distant crag. She had grown used to his howls. He had come close to her cabin once in the day-time. She had tried to creep on him and show her friendliness. But he had fled in terror at the first glimpse of her dress through the parting underbrush.

An owl was calling from his dead tree-top down the valley. She smiled at his familiar, tremulous call. Her own eyes were wide as his tonight. No sight or sound of Nature among the crags about her cabin had for her spirit any terror. The night was her mantle.

She added to the meager living which she had wrung from her mountain farm by trading with the illicit distillers of the backwoods of Yancey County. Too ignorant to run a distillery of her own, she had stored their goods with such skill that the hiding-place had never been discovered. She loved good whiskey herself. She had tried to find in its fiery depths the dreams of happiness life had so cruelly denied her.

The hiding-place of this whiskey had puzzled the revenue officers of every administration for years. They had watched her house day and night. Not one of them had ever struck the trail to her storehouse.

The game had excited her imagination. She loved its daring and danger. That there was the slightest element of wrong or crime in her association with the moonshiners of her native heath had never for a moment entered her mind. It was no crime to make whiskey. This was the first article of the creed of the true North Carolina mountaineer. They had from the first declared that the tax levied by the Federal Government on the product of their industry was an infamous act of tyranny. They had fought this tyranny for two generations. They would fight it as long as there was breath in their bodies and a single load of powder and buckshot for their rifles.

Nance considered herself a heroine in the pride of her soul for the shrewd and successful defiance she had given the revenue officers for so many years.

She had been too cunning to even allow one of her own people to know the secret of her store house. For that reason it had never been discovered. She always stored the whiskey temporarily in the potato shed or under the cabin floor until night and then alone carried it to the place she had discovered.

She laughed softly at the thought of this deep hiding-place tonight. Its temperature never varied winter or summer. Not a track had ever been left at its door. She might live a hundred years and, unless some spying eye should see her enter, its existence could never be suspected.

She tipped softly into the kitchen, walked to the door of the living-room and listened to the even, heavy breathing of the man on the couch.

Once more the faint echo of a sob in the shed beyond came to her keen ears. She stood for five minutes. It was not repeated. She had only imagined it. The girl was still asleep.

She turned noiselessly back into the kitchen, put a box of matches in her pocket, felt her way to the low shelf on which she had placed the battered lantern, picked it up and shook it to make sure the oil was sufficient.

She stepped lightly into the yard, pushed open the gate of the split-board garden fence, walked along the edge to the corner and selected a spade from the tools that leaned against the boards.

Carrying the spade and unlighted lantern in her left hand, she glided from the yard into the woods. Her right hand before her to feel for underbrush or overhanging bough, she made her way rapidly to the swift-flowing mountain brook.

Arrived at the water whose musical ripple had guided her steps, she removed her shoes and placed them beside a tree. She wore no stockings. The faded skirt she raised and tucked into her belt. She could wade knee deep now without hindrance.

Seizing the spade and lantern, she made her way slowly and carefully downstream for three hundred yards and paused beside a shelving ledge which projected half-way across the brook.

She paused and listened again for full ten minutes, immovable as the rock on which her thin, bony hand rested. The stars were looking, but they could only peep through the network of overhanging trees.

Feeling her way along the rock until the ledge rose beyond her reach, she bent low and waded through a still pool of eddying water straight under the mountain-side for more than a hundred feet. Her extended right hand had felt for the stone ceiling above her head until it ran abruptly out of reach.

She straightened her body and took a deep breath. Ten steps she counted carefully and placed her bare feet on the dry rock beyond the water.

Carefully picking her way up the sloping bank until she reached a stretch of soft earth, she sank to her hands and knees and crawled through an opening less than three feet in height.

"Thar now!" she laughed. "Let 'em find me if they can!"

She lighted her lantern and seated herself on a boulder to rest—one hundred and fifty feet in the depths of a mountain. The cavern was ten feet in height and fifty feet in length. The projecting ledges of rock made innumerable shelves on which a merchant might have displayed his wares.

The old woman was too shrewd for that. Her jugs were carefully planted in the ground behind two fallen boulders, and their hiding-place concealed by a layer of drift which she had gathered from the edge of the water. She had taken this precaution against the day when some curious explorer might stumble on her secret as she had found it hunting ginsing roots in the woods overhead. Her foot had slipped suddenly through a hole in the soft mould. She peered cautiously below and could see no bottom. She dropped a stone and heard it strike in the depths. She made her way down the side of the crag and found the opening through the still eddying waters. The hole through the roof she had long ago plugged and covered with earth and dry leaves.

She carried her lantern and spade to the further end of her storehouse and dug a hole in the earth about two feet in depth. The earth she carefully placed in a heap.

"That's the place!" she giggled excitedly.

She left her lantern burning, dropped again on the soft, mould-covered earth and quickly emerged on the stone banks of the wide, still pool. Her hand high extended above her head, she waded through the water until she touched the heavy ceiling, lowered her body again to a stooping position and rapidly made her way out into the bed of the brook.

She passed eagerly along the babbling path and stopped with sure instinct at the tree beside whose trunk she had placed her shoes.

In five minutes she had made her way through the woods and reached the house. She tipped into the kitchen and stood in the doorway or the living-room watching her sleeping guest. The even breathing assured her that all was well. Her plan couldn't fail. She listened again for the sobs in the shed-room.

She was sure once that she heard them. Five minutes passed and still she was uncertain. To avoid any possible accident she tipped back through the kitchen, circled the house and placed her ear against the crack in the logs.

The girl was sobbing—or was she praying? She crouched beside the wall, waited and listened. The night wind stirred the dead leaves at her feet. She lifted her head with a sudden start, laughed softly and bent again to listen.



CHAPTER XX. TRAPPED

The sobbing in the little room was the only sound that came from one of the grimmest battle-fields from which the soul of a woman ever emerged alive.

To the first rush of cowardly tears Mary had yielded utterly. She had fallen across the high-puffed feather mattress of the bed, shivering in humble gratitude at her escape from the horror of blindness. The grip of his claw-like fingers on her throat came back to her now in sickening waves. The blood was still trickling from the wound which his nails had made when she tore them loose in her first mad fight for breath.

She lifted her body and breathed deeply to make sure her throat was free. God in heaven! Could she ever forget the hideous sinking of body and soul down into the depths of the black abyss! She had seen the face of Death and it was horrible. Life, warm and throbbing, was sweet. She loved it. She hated Death.

Yes—she was a coward. She knew it now, and didn't care.

She sprang to her feet with sudden fear. He might attack her again to make sure that her soul had been completely crushed.

She crept to the door and felt its edges.

"Yes, thank God, there's a place for the bar!" She shivered.

She ran her trembling fingers carefully along the rough logs and found it in the corner. She slipped it cautiously into the iron sockets, staggered to the bed and dropped in grateful assurance of safety for the moment. She buried her face in the pillow to fight back the sobs. How great her fall! She could crawl on her hands and knees to Jane Anderson now and beg for protection. The last shred of pretense was gone. The bankrupt soul stood naked and shivering, the last rag torn from pride.

What a miserable fight she had made, too, when put to the test! Ella had at least proved herself worthy to live. The scrub-woman had risen in the strength of desperation and killed the beast who had maimed her. She had only sunk a limp mass of shivering, helpless cowardice and fled from the room whining and pleading for mercy.

She could never respect herself again. The scene came back in vivid flashes. His eyes, glowing like two balls of blue fire, froze the blood in her veins—his voice the rasping cold steel of a file. And this coarse, ugly beast had held her in the spell of love. She had clung to him, kissed him in rapture and yielded herself to him soul and body. And he had gripped her delicate throat and choked her into insensibility, dropping her limp form from his hands like a strangled rat. She could remember the half-conscious moment that preceded the total darkness as she felt his grip relax.

He would choke and beat her again, too. He had said it in the sneering laughter at the door.

"A good little wife now and it's all right!"

And if you're not obedient to my whims I'll choke you until you are! That was precisely what he meant. That he was capable of any depth of degradation, and that he meant to drag her with him, there could be no longer the shadow of a doubt.

She could not endure another scene like that. She sprang to her feet again, shivering with terror. She could hear the hum of the conversation in the next room. He was persuading his mother to join in his criminal career. He was busy with his oily tongue transforming the simple, ignorant, lonely old woman into an avaricious fiend who would receive his blood-stained booty and rejoice in it.

He was laughing again. She put her trembling hands over her ears to shut out the sound. He had laughed at her shame and cowardice. It made her flesh creep to hear it.

She would escape. The mountain road was dark and narrow and crooked. She would lose her way in the night, perhaps. No matter. She could keep warm by walking. At dawn she would find her way to a cabin and ask protection. If she could reach Asheville, a telegram would bring her father. She wouldn't lose a minute. Her hat and coat were in the living-room. She would go bareheaded and without a coat. In the morning she could borrow one from the woman at the Mount Mitchell house.

She crept cautiously along the walls of the room searching for a door or window. There must be a way out. She made the round without discovering an opening of any kind. There must be a window of some kind high up for ventilation. There was no glass in it, of course. It was closed by a board shutter—if she could reach it.

She began at the door, found the corner of the room and stretched her arms upward until they touched the low, rough joist. Over every foot of its surface she ran her fingers, carefully feeling for a window. There was none!

She found an open crack and peered through. The stars were shining cold and clear in the December sky. The twinkling heavens reminded her that it was Christmas Eve. The dawn she hoped to see in the woods, if she could escape, would be Christmas morning. There was no time for idle tears of self-pity.

The one thought that beat in every throb of her heart now was to escape from her cell and put a thousand miles between her body and the beast who had strangled her. She might break through the roof! As a rule the shed-rooms of these rude mountain cabins were covered with split boards lightly nailed to narrow strips eighteen inches apart. If there were no ceiling, or if the ceiling were not nailed down and she should move carefully, she might break through near the eaves and drop to the ground. The cabin was not more than nine feet in height.

She raised herself on the footrail of the bed and felt the ceiling. There could be no mistake. It was there. She pressed gently at first and then with all her might against each board. They were nailed hard and fast.

She sank to the bed again in despair. She had barred herself in a prison cell. There was no escape except by the door through which the beast had driven her. And he would probably draw the couch against it and sleep there.

And then came the crushing conviction that such flight would be of no avail in a struggle with a man of Jim's character. His laughing words of triumph rang through her soul now in all their full, sinister meaning.

"The world ain't big enough for you to get away from me, Kiddo!"

It wasn't big enough. She knew it with tragic and terrible certainty. In his blind, brutal way he loved her with a savage passion that would halt at nothing. He would follow her to the ends of the earth and kill any living thing that stood in his way. And when he found her at last he would kill her.

How could she have been so blind! There was no longer any mystery about his personality. The slender hands and feet, which she had thought beautiful in her infatuation, were merely the hands and feet of a thief. The strength of jaw and neck and shoulders had made him the most daring of all thieves—a burglar.

His strange moods were no longer strange. He laughed for joy at the wild mountain gorges and crags because he saw safety for the hiding-place of priceless jewels he meant to steal.

There could be no escape in divorce from such a brute. He was happy in her cowardly submission. He would laugh at the idea of divorce. Should she dare to betray the secrets of his life of crime, he would kill her as he would grind a snake under his heel.

A single clause from the marriage ceremony kept ringing its knell—"until DEATH DO US PART!"

She knelt at last and prayed for Death.

"Oh, dear God, let me die, let me die!"

Suicide was a crime unthinkable to her pious mind. Only God now could save her in his infinite mercy.

She lay for a long time on the floor where she had fallen in utter despair. The tears that brought relief at first had ceased to flow. She had beaten her bleeding wings against every barrier, and they were beyond her strength.

Out of the first stupor of complete surrender, her senses slowly emerged. She felt the bare boards of the floor and wondered vaguely why she was there.

The hum of voices again came to her ears. She lay still and listened. A single terrible sentence she caught. He spoke it with such malignant power she could see through the darkness the flames of hell leaping in his eyes.

"Nobody's going to ask you HOW you got it—all they want to know is HAVE you got it!"

She laughed hysterically at the idea of reformation that had stirred her to such desperate appeal in the first shock of discovery. As well dream of reforming the Devil as the man who expressed his philosophy of life in that sentence! Blood dripped from every word, the blood of the innocent and the helpless who might consciously or unconsciously stand in his way. The man who had made up his mind to get rich quick, no matter what the cost to others, would commit murder without the quiver of an eyelid. If she had ever had a doubt of this fact, she could have none after her experience of tonight.

She wondered vaguely of the effects he was producing on his ignorant old mother. Her words were too low and indistinct to be heard. But she feared the worst. The temptation of the gold he was showing her would be more than she could resist.

She staggered to her feet and fell limp across the bed. The iron walls of a life prison closed about her crushed soul. The one door that could open was Death and only God's hand could lift its bars.



CHAPTER XXI. THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE

Hour after hour Nance stood beside the wall of the shed-room and with the patience of a cat waited for the sobs to cease and the girl to be quiet.

Mary had risen from the bed once and paced the floor in the dark for more than an hour, like a frightened, wild animal, trapped and caged for the first time in life. With growing wonder, Nance counted the beat of her foot-fall, five steps one way and five back—round after round, round after round, in ceaseless repetition.

"Goddlemighty, is she gone clean crazy!" she exclaimed.

The footsteps stopped at last and the low sobs came once more from the bed. The old woman crouched down on a stone beside the log wall and drew the shawl about her shoulders.

A rooster crowed for midnight. Still the restless thing inside was stirring. Nance rose uneasily. Her lantern was still burning in her storehouse under the cliff. The wick might eat so low it would explode. She had heard that such things happened to lamps. It was foolish to have left it burning, anyhow.

She glided noiselessly from the house into the woods, entered her hidden door exactly as she had done before, extinguished the lantern, placed it on a shelving rock and put a dozen matches beside it.

In ten minutes she had returned to the house and crouched once more against the wall of the shed.

The low, pleading voice was praying. She pressed her ear to the crack and heard distinctly. She must be patient. Her plan was sure to succeed if she were only patient. No woman could sob and pray and walk all night. She must fall down unconscious from sheer exhaustion before day.

The old woman slipped into the kitchen, took up the quilt which she had spread on the floor for her bed, wrapped it about her thin shoulders and returned to her watch.

Again and again she rose, believing her patience had won, and placed her ear to the crack only to hear a sound within which told her only too plainly that the girl was yet awake. Sometimes it was a sigh, sometimes she cleared her throat, sometimes she tossed restlessly. One spoken sentence she heard again and again:

"Oh, dear God, have mercy on my lost soul!"

"What can be the matter with the fool critter!" Nance muttered. "Is she moanin' for sin? To be shore, they don't have no revival meetings this time o' year!"

She had known sinners to mourn through a whole summer sometimes, but never in all her experience in religious revivals had a mourner carried it over into winter. The dancing had always eased the tension and brought a relapse to sinful thoughts.

The hours dragged until the roosters began to crow for day. It would soon be light.

She must act now. There was no time to lose. She pressed her ear to the crack once more and held it five minutes.

Not a sound came from within. The broken spirit had yielded to the stupor of exhaustion at last.

With swift, cat's tread Nance circled the cabin and entered the kitchen. The quilt she carefully spread on the floor leading to the entrance to the living-room, crossed it softly and stood in the doorway with her long hands on the calico hangings.

For five minutes she remained immovable and listened to the deep, regular breathing of the sleeping man. Her wits were keen, her eyes wide. She could see the dim outlines of the furniture by the starlight through the window. Small objects in the room were, of course, invisible. To light a candle was not to be thought of. It might wake the sleeper.

She knew how to make the light without a noise or its rays reaching his face. He had startled her with the electric torch because of its novelty. She was no longer afraid. She would know how to press the button. He had left the thing lying on the table beside the black bag. He might have hidden the gold. He would not remember in his drunken stupor to move the electric torch.

She glided ghost-like into the room. Her bare feet were velvet. She knew every board in the floor. There was one near the table that creaked. She counted her steps and cleared the spot without a sound.

Her thin fingers found the edge of the table and slipped with uncanny touch along its surface until her hand closed on the rounded form of the torch.

Without moving in her tracks she turned the light on the table and in every nook and corner of the room beyond. She slowly swung her body on a pivot, flashing the light into each shadow and over every inch of floor, turning always in a circle toward the couch.

Satisfied that the object she sought was nowhere in the circle she had covered, she moved a step from the table and winked the light beneath it. She squatted on the floor and flashed it carefully over every inch of its boards from one corner of the room to the other and under the couch.

She rose softly, glided behind the head of the sleeping man and stood back some six feet, lest the flash of the torch might disturb him. She threw its rays behind the couch and slowly raised them until they covered the dirty pillow on which Jim was sleeping. There beneath the pillow lay the bag with its precious treasure. He was sleeping on it. She had feared this, but felt sure that the whiskey he had drunk would hold him in its stupor until late next morning.

She crouched low and fixed the light's ray slowly on the bag that her hand might not err the slightest in its touch. She laid her bony fingers on it with a slow, imperceptible movement, held them there a moment and moved the bag the slightest bit to test the sleeper's wakefulness. To her surprise he stirred instantly.

"What'ell!" he growled sleepily.

She stood motionless until he was breathing again with deep, even, heavy throb. Gliding back to the table, she flashed the light again on the bag and studied its position. His big neck rested squarely across it. To move it without waking him was a physical impossibility.

Here was a dilemma she had not fully faced. She had not believed it possible for him to place the bag where she could not get it. Her only purpose up to this moment had been to take it and store it safely beneath the soft earth in the inner recess of the cave. He would miss it in the morning, of course. She would express her amazement. The bar would be down from the front door. Someone had robbed him. The money could never be found.

She had made up her mind to take it the moment he had convinced her that his philosophy of life was true. His eloquence had transformed her from an ignorant old woman, content with her poverty and dirt, into a dangerous and daring criminal.

There was no such thing as failure to be thought of now for a moment. The spade in the inner room of her store-house could be put to larger use if necessary. With the strength of the madness now on her she could carry his body on her back through the woods. The world would be none the wiser. He had quarreled with his wife, and left her in a rage that night. That was all she knew. The sheriff of neither county could afford to bother his head long over an insolvable mystery. Besides, both sheriffs were her friends.

Her decision was instantaneous when once she saw that it was safe.

She smiled over the grim irony of the thing—his words kept humming in her ears, his voice, low and persuasive:

"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!"

On the shelf beside the door was a butcher knife which she also used for carving. She had sharpened its point that night to carve her Christmas turkey next day.

She raised the torch and flashed its rays on the shelf to guide her hand, crept to the wall, took down the knife and laid the electric torch in its place.

Steadying her body against the wall, her arms outspread, she edged her way behind the couch and bent over the sleeping man until by his breathing she had located his heart.

She raised her tall figure and brought the knife down with a crash into his breast. With a sudden wrench she drew it from the wound and crouched among the shadows watching him with wide-dilated eyes.

The stricken sleeper gasped for breath, his writhing body fairly leaped into the air, bounded on the couch and stood erect. He staggered backward and lurched toward her. The crouching figure bent low, gripping the knife and waiting for her chance to strike the last blow.

Strangling with blood, Jim opened his eyes and saw the old woman creeping nearer through the gray light of the dawn.

He threw his hands above his head and tried to shout his warning. She was on him, her trembling hand feeling for his throat, before he could speak.

Struggling, in his weakened condition, to tear her fingers away, he gasped:

"Here! Here! Great God! Do you know what you're doing?"

"I just want yer money," she whispered. "That's all, and I'm a-goin' ter have it!"

Her fingers closed and the knife sank into his neck.

She sprang back and watched him lurch and fall across the couch. His body writhed a moment in agony and was still.

Holding the knife in her hand, she tore open the bag and thrust her itching fingers into the gold, gripping it fiercely.

"Nobody's goin' to ask ye how ye got it—they just want to know HAVE ye got it—yeah! Yeah——"

The last word died on her lips. The door of the shed-room suddenly opened and Mary stood before her.



CHAPTER XXII. DELIVERANCE

The first dim noises of the tragedy in the living-room Mary's stupefied senses had confused with a nightmare which she had been painfully fighting.

The torch in Nance's hand had flashed through a crack into her face once. It was the flame of a revolver in the hands of a thief in Jim's den in New York. She merely felt it. Her eyes had been gouged out and she was blind. A gang of his coarse companions were holding a council, cursing, drinking, fighting. Jim had sprung between two snarling brutes and knocked the revolver into the air. The flame had scorched her face.

With an oath he had slapped her.

"Get out, you damned little fool!" he growled. "You're always in the way when you're not wanted. Nobody can ever find you when there's work to be done——"

"But I can't see, Jim dear," she pleaded. "I do not know when things are out of place——"

"You're a liar!" he roared. "You know where every piece of junk stands in this room better than I do. I can't bring a friend into that door that you don't know it. You can hear the swish of a woman's skirt on the stairs four stories below——"

"I only asked you who the woman was who came in with you, Jim——"

His fingers gripped her throat and stopped her breath. Through the roar of surging blood she could barely hear the vile words he was dinning into her ears.

"I know you just asked me, you nosing little devil, and it's none of your business! She's a pal of mine, if you want to know, the slickest thief that ever robbed a flat. She's got more sense in a minute than you'll ever have in a lifetime. She's going to live here with me now. You can sleep on the cot in the kitchen. And you come when she calls, if you know what's good for your lazy hide. I've told her to thrash the life out of you if you dare to give her any impudence."

She had cowered at his feet and begged him not to beat her again. The fumes of whiskey and stale beer filled the place.

Jim turned from her to quell a new fight at the other end of the room. Another woman was there, coarse, dirty, beastly. She drew a knife and demanded her share of the night's robberies. She was trying to break from the men who held her to stab Jim. They were all fighting and smashing the furniture——

She sprang from the bed with a cry of horror. The noise was real! It was not a dream. The beast inside was stumbling in the dark. His passions fired by liquor, he was fumbling to find his way into her room.

She rushed to the door and put her shoulder against the bar, panting in terror.

She heard his strangling cry:

"Here! Here! Great God! Do you know what you're doing?"

And then his mother's voice, mad with greed, cruel, merciless:

"I just want yer money—that's all, an' I'm goin' to have it!"

She heard the clinch in the struggle and the dull blow of the knife. In a sudden flash she saw it all. He had succeeded in rousing Nance's avarice and transforming her into a fiend. Without knowing it she was stabbing her own son to death in the room in which he had been born!

She tried to scream and her lips refused to move. She tried to hurry to the rescue and her knees turned to water.

Gasping for breath, she drew the bar from her prison door and walked slowly into the room.

Nance's tall, bony figure was still crouched over the open bag, her left hand buried in the gold, her right gripping the knife, her face convulsed with greed—avarice and murder blended into perfect hell-lit unity at last.

Jim lay on his back, limp and still, obliquely across the couch, his breast bared in the struggle, the blood oozing a widening scarlet blot on his white shirt. His head had fallen backward over the edge and could not be seen.

Without moving a muscle, her body crouching, Nance spoke:

"You wuz awake—you heered?"

"Yes!"

The gleaming eyes burned through the gray dawn, two points of scintillating, hellish light fixed in purpose on the intruder.

She had only meant to take the money. The fool had fought. She killed him because she had to. And now the sobbing, sniveling little idiot who had kept her waiting all night had stuck her nose into some thing that didn't concern her. If she opened her mouth, the gallows would be the end.

She would open it too. Of course she would. She was his wife. They had quarreled, but the simpleton would blab. Nance knew this with unerring instinct. It was no use to offer her half the money. She didn't have sense enough to take it. She knew those pious, baby faces—well, there was room for two in the cave under the cliff. It was daylight now. No matter; it was Christmas morning. No man or woman ever darkened her door on Christmas day. She could hide their bodies until dark, and then it was easy. She would be in New York herself before anyone could suspect the meaning of that automobile in the shed or the owners would trouble themselves to come after it.

Again her decision was quick and fierce. Her hand was on the bag. She would hold it against the world, all hell and heaven.

With the leap of a tigress she was on the girl, the bag gripped in her left hand, the knife in her right.

To her amazement the trembling figure stood stock still gazing at her with a strange look of pity.

"Well!" Nance growled. "I ain't goin' ter be took now I've got this money—I'm goin' to New York ter find my boy!"

She lifted the knife and stopped in sheer stupor of surprise at the girl's immovable body and staring eyes. Had she gone crazy? What on earth could it mean? No girl of her youth and beauty could look death in the face without a tremor. No woman in her right senses could see the body of her dead husband lying there red and yet quivering without a sign. It was more than even Nance's nerves could endure.

She lowered the knife and peered into the girl's set face and glanced quickly about the room. Could she have called help? Was the house surrounded? It was impossible. She couldn't have escaped. What did it mean?

The old woman drew back with a terror she couldn't understand.

"What are you looking at me like that for?" she panted.

Mary held her gaze in lingering pity. Her heart went out now to the miserable creature trembling in the presence of her victim. The blow must fall that would crush the soul out of her body at one stroke. The gray hair had tumbled over her distorted features, the ragged dress had been torn from her throat in the struggle and her flat, bony breast was exposed.

"You don't—have—to—go—to—New York—to—find—your—boy!" the strained voice said at last.

Nance frowned in surprise and flew back at her in rage.

"Yes I do, too—he lives thar!"

The little figure straightened above the crouching form.

"He's here!"

Nance sank slowly against the table and rested the bag on the edge of the chair. Its weight was more than she could bear. She tried to glance over her shoulder at the body on the couch and her courage failed. The first suspicion of the hideous truth flashed through her stunned mind. She couldn't grasp it at once.

"Whar?" she whispered hoarsely.

Mary lifted her arm slowly and pointed to the couch.

"There!"

Nance glared at her a moment and broke into a hysterical laugh.

"It's a lie—a lie—a lie!"

"It's true——"

"Yer're just a lyin' ter me ter get away an give me up—but ye won't do it—little Miss—old Nance is too smart for ye this time. Who told you that?"

"He told me tonight!"

"He told you?" she repeated blankly.

"Yes."

"You're a liar!" she growled. "And I'll prove it—you move out o' your tracks an' I'll cut your throat. My boy's got a scar on his neck—I know right whar to look for it. Don't you move now till I see—I know you're a liar——"

She turned and with the quick trembling fingers of her right hand tore the shirt back from the neck and saw the scar. She still held the bag in her left hand. The muscles slowly relaxed and the bag fell endwise to the floor, the gold crashing and rolling over the boards. She stared in stupor and threw both hands above her streaming gray hair.

"Lord God Almighty!" she shrieked. "Why didn't I think that he wuz somebody else's boy if he weren't mine!"

The thin body trembled and crumpled beside the couch.

The girl lifted her head in a look of awe as if in prayer.

"And God has set me free! free! free!"



CHAPTER XXIII. THE DOCTOR

Mary stood overwhelmed by the tragedy she had witnessed. For the time her brain refused to record sensations. She had seen too much, felt too much in the past eight hours. Soul and body were numb.

The first impressions of returning consciousness were fixed on Nance. She had risen suddenly from the floor and smoothed the hair back from Jim's forehead with tender touch as if afraid to wake him. She drew the quilt from the kitchen floor, spread it over the body, and lifted her eyes to Mary's. It was only too plain.

Reason had gone.

She tipped close and put her fingers on her lips.

"Sh! We mustn't wake him. He's tired. Let him sleep. It's my boy. He's come home. We'll fix him a fine Christmas dinner. I've got a turkey. I'll bake a cake——" she paused and laughed softly. "I've got eggs too, fresh laid yesterday. We'll make egg-nog all day and all night. I ain't had no Christmas since that devil stole him. We'll have one this time, won't we?"

The girl's wits were again alert. She must run for help. A minute to humor the old woman's delusion and she might return before any harm came to her. Jim had not moved a muscle. It was plain that he was beyond help.

"Yes," Mary answered cheerfully. "You fix the cake—and I'll get the wood to make a fire."

Nance laughed again.

"We'll have the dinner all ready for him when he wakes, won't we?"

"Yes. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Nance hurried into the kitchen humming an old song in a faltering voice that sent the cold chills down the girl's spine.

Mary slipped quietly through the door and ran with swift, sure foot down the narrow road along which the machine had picked its way the afternoon before. The cabin they had passed last could not be more than a mile.

She made no effort to find the logs for pedestrians when the road crossed the brook. She plunged straight through the babbling waters with her shoes, regardless of skirts.

Panting for breath, she saw the smoke curling from the cabin chimney a quarter of a mile away.

"Thank God!" she cried. "They're awake!"

She was so glad to have reached her goal, her strength suddenly gave way and she dropped to a boulder by the wayside to rest. In two minutes she was up and running with all her might.

She rushed to the door and knocked.

A mountaineer in shirt-sleeves and stockings answered with a look of mild wonder.

"For God's sake come and help me. I must have a doctor quick. We spent the night at Mrs. Owens'. She's lost her mind completely—a terrible thing has happened—you'll help me?"

"Cose I will, honey," the mountaineer drawled. "Jest ez quick ez I get on my shoes."

"Is there a doctor near?" she asked breathlessly.

He answered without looking up:

"The best one that God ever sent to a sick bed. He don't charge nobody a cent in these parts. He just heals the sick because hit's his callin'. Come from somewhar up North and built hisself a fine log house up on the side of the mountains. Hit's full of all the medicines in the world, too——"

"Will you ask him to come for me?" Mary broke in.

"I'll jump on my hoss an' have him thar in half a' hour. You can run right back, honey, and look out for the po' ole critter till we get thar."

"Thank you! Thank you!" she answered grate fully.

"Not at all, not at all!" he protested as he swung through the door and hurried to the low-pitched sheds in which his horse and cow were stabled. "Be thar in no time!"

When Mary returned, Nance was still busy in the kitchen. She had built a fire and put the turkey in the oven.

Mary was counting the minutes now until the doctor should come. The old woman's prattle about the return of her lost boy, so big and strong and handsome, had become unendurable. She felt that she should scream and collapse unless help came at once. She looked at her watch. It was just thirty-five minutes from the time she had left the cabin in the valley below.

She sprang to her feet with a smothered cry of joy. The beat of a horse's hoof at full gallop was ringing down the road.

In two minutes the Doctor's firm footstep was heard at the kitchen door.

Nance turned with a look of glad surprise.

"Well, fur the land sake, ef hit ain't Doctor Mulford! Come right in!" she cried.

The Doctor seized her hand.

"And how is my good friend, Mrs. Owens, this morning?" he asked cheerfully.

Mary was studying him with deep interest. She had asked herself the question a hundred times how much she could tell him—what to say and what to leave unsaid. One glance at his calm, intellectual face was enough. He was a man of striking appearance, six feet tall, forty-five years of age, hair prematurely gray and a slight stoop to his broad shoulders. His brown eyes seemed to enfold the old woman in their sympathy.

Nance was chattering her answer to his greeting.

"Oh, I'm feelin' fine, Doctor—" she dropped her voice confidentially—"and you're just in time for a good dinner. My boy that was lost has come home. He's a great big fellow, wears fine clothes and come up the mountain all the way in a devil wagon." She put her hand to her mouth. "Sh! He's asleep! We won't wake him till dinner! He's all tired out."

The Doctor nodded understandingly and turned toward Mary.

"And this young lady?"

"Oh, that's his wife from New York—ain't she purty?"

The Doctor saw the delicate hands trembling and extended his.

No word was spoken. None was needed. There was healing in his touch, healing in his whole being. No man or woman could resist the appeal of his personality. Their secrets were yielded with perfect faith.

"Come with me quickly," Mary whispered.

"I understand," he answered carelessly.

Turning again to Nance, he said with easy confidence:

"I'll not disturb you with your cooking, Mrs. Owens. Go right on with it. I'll have a little chat with your son's wife. If she's from New York I want to ask her about some of my people up there——"

"All right," Nance answered, "but don't you wake HIM! Go with her inter the shed-room."

"We'll go on tip-toe!" the Doctor whispered.

Nance nodded, smiled and bent again over the oven.

Mary led him quickly through the living-room, head averted from the couch, and into the prison cell in which she had passed the night. The physician glanced with a startled look at the gold still scattered on the floor.

She seized his hand and swayed.

He touched the brown hair of her bared head gently and pressed her hand.

"Steady, now, child, tell me quickly."

"Yes, yes," she gasped, "I'll tell you the truth——"

He held her gaze.

"And the whole truth—it's best."

Mary nodded, tried to speak and failed. She drew her breath and steadied herself, still gripping his hand.

"I will," she began faintly. "He's dead——"

She paused and nodded toward the living-room.

"The man—her son?"

"Yes. We came last night from Asheville. We were on our honeymoon. We haven't been married but three weeks. I never knew the truth about his life and character until last night when he told me that this old woman was his mother. I found a case of jewels in the bag he carried—jewels that belonged to a man in New York who was robbed and shot. I recognized the case. He confessed to me at last in cold, brutal words that he was a thief. I couldn't believe it at first. I tried to make him give up his criminal career. He laughed at me. He gloried in it. I tried to leave him. He choked me into insensibility and drove me into this cell, where I spent the night. He brought the gold that you saw on the floor which he had honestly made to give to his old mother—but for a devilish purpose. He showed it to her last night to rouse her avarice and make her first agree to hide his stolen goods. He succeeded too well. Before he had revealed himself she slipped into the room at daylight while he slept in a drunken stupor, murdered him and took the money. The struggle waked me and I rushed in. She gripped her knife to kill me. I told her that she had murdered her own son and she went mad——"

She paused for breath and her lips trembled piteously.

"You know what to do, Doctor?"

"Yes!"

"And you'll help me?"

He smiled tenderly and nodded his head.

"God knows you need it, child!"

The nerves snapped at last, and she sank a limp heap at his feet.



CHAPTER XXIV. THE CALL DIVINE

The Doctor threw off his coat and took charge of the stricken house. He sent his waiting messenger for a faithful nurse, a mountain woman whom he had trained, and began the fight for Mary's life. The collapse into which she had fallen would require weeks of patient care. There was no immediate danger of death, and while he awaited the arrival of help, he turned into the living-room to examine the body of the slain husband.

The head had fallen backward over the side of the lounge and a pool of blood, still warm and red, lay on the floor in a widening circle beneath it. His quick eye took in its significance at a glance. He sprang forward, ripped the shirt wide open and applied his ear to the breast.

"He's still alive!" he cried excitedly.

He examined the ugly wound in the left side and found that the knife had penetrated the lung. The heart had not been touched. The blow on the neck had not been fatal. The shock of the final stroke had merely choked the wounded man into collapse from the hemorrhage of the left lung. The position into which the body had fallen across the couch had gradually cleared the accumulated blood. There was a chance to save his life.

In ten minutes he had applied stimulants and restored respiration, but the deep wheeze from the stricken lung told only too plainly the dangerous character of the wound. It would be a bitter fight. His enormous vitality might win. The chances were against him.

Jim's lips moved and he tried to speak.

The Doctor placed his hand on his mouth and shook his head. The drooping eyelids closed in grateful obedience.

The beat of horses' hoofs echoed down the mountain road. His nurse and messenger were coming. He decided at once to move Mary to his own house. She must regain consciousness in new surroundings or her chance of survival would be slender. To awake in this miserable cabin, the scene of the tragedy she had witnessed, might be instantly fatal. Besides she must not yet know that the brute who had choked her was alive and might still hold the power of life and death over her frail body. She believed him dead. It was best so. He might be dead and buried before she recovered consciousness. The fever that burned her brain would completely cloud reason for days.

He hastily improvised a stretcher with a blanket and two strong quilting-poles which stood in the corner of the room. Nance helped him without question. She obeyed his slightest suggestion with childlike submission.

He placed Mary on the stretcher, wrapped her body in another warm blanket and turned to his nurse and messenger:

"Carry her to my house. Walk slowly and rest whenever you wish. Don't wake her. Tell Aunt Abbie to put her to bed in the south room overlooking the valley. Don't leave her a minute, Betty. She's in the first collapse of brain fever. You know what to do. I'll be there in an hour. You come back here, John. I want you."

The mountaineer nodded and seized one end of the stretcher. The nurse took up the other and the Doctor held wide the cabin door as they passed out.

For three weeks he fought the grim battle with Death for the two young lives the Christmas tragedy had thrust into his hands. He gave his entire time day and night to the desperate struggle.

When pneumonia had developed and Jim's life hung by a hair, he slept on the couch in the living-room of the cabin and had Nance make for herself a bed on the floor of the kitchen.

The old woman remained an obedient child. She cooked the Doctor's meals and did the work about the house and yard as if nothing had disturbed her habits of lonely plodding. She believed implicitly all that was told her. Her son had pneumonia from cold he had taken in the long drive from Asheville. The house must be kept quiet. John Sanders was helping her nurse him. She was sure the Doctor would save him.

Even the knife with which she had stabbed him made no impression on her numbed senses. The Doctor had scoured every trace of blood from the blade and put it back in its place on the shelf, lest she should miss it and ask questions. She used it daily without the slightest memory of the frightful story it might tell.

Each morning before going to the cabin the Doctor watched with patience for the first signs of returning consciousness in Mary's fever-wracked body. The day she lifted her grateful eyes to his and her lips moved in a tremulous question he raised his hand gently.

"Sh! Child—don't talk! It's all right. You're getting better. I've been with you every day. You're in my house now. You'll soon be yourself again."

She smiled wanly, put her delicate hand on his and pressed it gratefully.

"I understand. You thank me—you say that I am good to you. But I'm not. This is my life. I heal the sick because I must. I love this battle royal with Death. He beats me sometimes—but I never quit. I'm always tramping on his trail, and I've won this fight!"

The calm brown eyes held her in a spell and she smiled again.

"Sleep now," he said soothingly. "Sleep day and night. Just wake to take a little food—that's all and Nature will do the rest."

He stroked her hand gently until her eyelids closed.

Two days later Jim clung to the Doctor's hand and insisted on talking.

"Better wait a little longer, boy," the physician answered kindly. "You're not out of the woods yet——"

"I can't wait—Doc——" Jim pleaded. "I've just got to ask you something."

"All right. You can talk five minutes."

"My wife, Doc, how is she? You took her to your house, John told me. She'll get well?"

"Yes. She's rapidly recovering now."

"What does she say about me?"

"She thinks you're dead."

"You haven't told her?"

"No."

"Why?"

"She had all she could stand——"

Jim stared in silence.

"You think she'd be sorry to know I am alive?" he asked slowly.

"It would be a great shock."

The steel blue eyes slowly filled with tears.

"God! I am rotten, ain't I?"

"There's no doubt about that, my son," was the firm answer.

"Why did you fight so hard to save me—I wonder?"

"An old feud between Death and me."

Jim suddenly seized the Doctor's hand.

"Say, you can't fool me—you're a good one, Doc. You've been a friend to me and you've got to help now—you've just got to. You're the only one on earth who can. You've a great big heart and you can't go back on a fellow that's down and out. Give me a chance! You will—won't you?"

The hot fingers gripped the Doctor's hand with pleading tenderness.

The brown eyes searched Jim's soul.

"If you can show me it's worth while——"

The fingers tightened their grip in silence.

"Just give me a chance, Doc," he said at last, "and I'll show you! I ain't never had a chance to really know what was right and what was wrong. If I'd a lived here with my old mother she'd have told me. You know what it is to be a stray dog on the streets of New York? Even then, I'd have kept straight if I hadn't been robbed by a lawyer and his pal. I didn't know what I was doin' till that night here in this cabin—honest to God, I didn't——"

He paused for breath and a tear stole down his cheek. He fought for control of his emotions and went on in low tones.

"I didn't know—till I saw my old mother creepin' on me in the shadows with that big knife gleamin' in her hand! I tried to stop her and I couldn't. I tried to yell and strangled with blood. I saw the flames of hell in her eyes and I had kindled them there—God! I never knew until that minute! I'm broken and bruised lyin' on the rocks now in the lowest pit—— Give me your hand, Doc! You're my only friend—I'm goin' straight from now on—so help me God!"

He paused again for breath and sought the actor's eyes.

"You'll stand by me, won't you?"

A friendly grip closed on the trembling fingers.

"Yes—I'll help you—if I can."



CHAPTER XXV. THE MOTHER

Mary was resting in the chair beneath the southern windows of the sun-parlor of the Doctor's bungalow. He had built his home of logs cut from the mountainside. Its rooms were supplied with every modern convenience and comfort. Clear spring water from the cliff above poured into the cypress tank constructed beneath the roof. An overflow pipe sent a sparkling, bubbling and laughing through the lawn, refreshing the wild flowers planted along its edges.

The view from the window looking south was one of ravishing beauty and endless charm. Perched on a rising spur of the Black Mountain the house commanded a view of the long valley of the Swannanoa opening at the lower end into the wide, sunlit sweep of the lower hills around Asheville. Upward the balsam-crowned peaks towered among the clouds and stars.

No two hours of the day were just alike. Sometimes the sun was raining showers of diamonds on the trembling tree-tops of the valleys while the blackest storm clouds hung in ominous menace around Mount Mitchell and the Cat-tail. Sometimes it was raining in the valley—the rain cloud a level sheet of gray cloth stretching from the foot of the lawn across to the crags beyond, while the sun wrapped the little bungalow in a warm, white mantle.

Mary had never tired of this enchanted world during the days of her convalescence. The Doctor, with firm will, had lifted every care from her mind. She had gratefully submitted to his orders, and asked no questions.

She began to wonder vaguely about his life and people and why he had left the world in which a man of his culture and power must have moved, to bury himself in these mountain wilds. She wondered if he had married, separated from his wife and chosen the life of a recluse. He volunteered no information about himself.

When not attending his patients he spent his hours in the greenhouse among his flowers or in the long library extension of the bungalow. More than five thousand volumes filled the solid shelves. A massive oak table, ten feet in length and four feet wide, stood in the center of the room, always generously piled with books, magazines and papers. At the end of this table he kept the row of books which bore immediately on the theme he was studying.

Beside the window opening on the view of the valley stood his old-fashioned desk—six feet long, its top a labyrinth of pigeon-holes and tiny drawers.

He pursued his studies with boyish enthusiasm and chattered of them to Mary by the hour—with never a word passing his lips about himself.

Aunt Abbie, the cook, brought her a cup of tea, and Mary volunteered a question.

"Do you know the Doctor's people, Auntie?" she asked hesitatingly.

"Lord, child, he's a mystery to everybody! All we know is that he's the best man that ever walked the earth. He won't talk and the mountain folks are too polite to nose into his business. He saved my boy's life one summer, and when he was strong and well and went back to Asheville to his work, I had nothin' to do but to hold my hands, and I come here to cook for him. He tries to pay me wages but I laugh at him. I told him if he could save my boy's life for nothin' I reckon I could cook him a few good meals without pay——"

Her eyes filled with tears. She brushed them off, laughed and added:

"He lets me alone now and don't pester me no more about money."

Her tea and toast finished, Mary placed the tray on the table, rose with a sudden look of pain, and made her way slowly to the library.

A warm fire of hardwood logs sparkled in the big stone fireplace. The Doctor was out on a visit to a patient. He had given her the freedom of the place and had especially insisted that she use his books and make his library her resting place whenever her mind was fagged. She had spent many quiet hours in its inspiring atmosphere.

She seated herself at his desk and studied the calendar which hung above it. A sudden terror overwhelmed her; she buried her face in her arms and burst into tears.

She was still lying across the desk, sobbing, when the Doctor walked into the room.

He touched her hair reproachfully with his firm hand.

"Why, what's this? My little soldier has disobeyed orders?"

"I don't want to live now," she sobbed.

"And why not?"

"I—I—am going to be a mother," she whispered.

"So?"

"The mother of a criminal! Oh, Doctor, it's horrible! Why did you let me live? The hell I passed through that night was enough—God knows! This will be unendurable. I've made up my mind—I'll die first——"

"Rubbish, child! Rubbish!" he answered with a laugh. "Where did you get all this misinformation?"

"You know what my husband was. How can you ask?"

"Because I happen to know also his wife—the mother-to-be of this supposed criminal who has just set sail for the shores of our planet—and I know that she is one of the purest and sweetest souls who ever lost her way in the jungles of the world. If you were the criminal, dear heart, the case might be hopeless. But you're not. You are only the innocent victim of your own folly. That doesn't count in the game of Nature——"

"What do you mean?" she asked breathlessly.

"Simply this: The part which the male plays in the reproduction of the race is small in comparison with the role of the female. He is merely a supernumerary who steps on the stage for a moment and speaks one word announcing the arrival of the queen. The queen is the mother. She plays the star role in the drama of Heredity. She is never off the stage for a single moment. We inherit the most obvious physical traits from our male ancestors but even these may be modified by the will of the mother."

"Modified by the will of the mother?" she repeated blankly.

"Certainly. There are yet long days and weeks and months before your babe will be born—at least seven months. There's not a sight or sound of earth or heaven that can reach or influence this coming human being save through your eyes and ears and touch and soul. Almighty God can speak His message only through you. You are his ambassador on earth in this solemn hour. What your husband was, is of little importance. There is not a moment, waking or sleeping, day or night, that does not bring to you its divine opportunity. This human life is yours—absolutely to mold and fashion in body and mind as you will."

"You're just saying this to keep me from suicide," Mary interrupted.

"I am telling you the simplest truth of physical life. You can even change the contour of your baby's head if you like. You think in your silly fears that the bull neck and jaw of the father will reappear in the child. It might be so unless you see fit to change it. All any father can do is to transmit general physical traits unless modified by the will of the mother."

"You mean that I can choose even the personal appearance of my child?" she asked in blank amazement.

"Exactly that. Choose the type of man you wish your babe to be and it shall be so. Who in all the world would you prefer that he resemble?"

"You," she answered promptly.

He smiled gently.

"That pays me for all my trouble, child! No doctor ever got a bigger fee than that. Banks may fail, but I'll never lose it. Your choice simplifies that matter very much. You won't need a picture in your room——"

"A picture could determine the features of an unborn babe?" she asked incredulously.

"Beyond a doubt, and it will determine character sometimes. I knew a mother in the mountains of Vermont who hung the picture of a ship under full sail in her living-room. She bore seven sons. Not one of them ever saw the ocean until he was grown and yet all of them became sailors. This was not an accident. In her age and loneliness she blamed God for taking her children from her. Yet she had made sailors of them all by the selection of a single piece of furniture in her room. Nature has a way of starting her children on their journey through this world very nearly equal—each a bundle of possibilities in the hands of a mother. A father may transmit physical disease, if his body is unsound. Such marriages should be prohibited by law. But nine-tenths of the spiritual traits out of which character is formed are the work of the mother. A criminal mother will bring into the world only criminals. A criminal male may be the father of a saint. The responsibility of shaping the destiny of the race rests with the mother——"

The Doctor sprang to his feet and paced the floor, his arms gripped behind his back in deep thought. He paused before the enraptured listener and hesitated to speak the thought in his mind.

He lifted his hand suddenly, his decision apparently made.

"It is of the utmost importance to the race that our mothers shall be pure. Better certainly if both father and mother are so. It is indispensable that the mother shall be! On this elemental fact rests the dual standard of sex morals. On this fact rests the hope of a glorified humanity through the development of an intelligent motherhood. Stay here with me until your child is born and I'll prove the truth of every word I've spoken——"

"Oh, if I only could!"

"Why not?"

"I couldn't impose such a burden on you!" she faltered.

"You would confer on me the highest honor, if you will allow me to direct you in this experiment."

There was no mistaking his honesty and earnestness. There was no refusing the appeal.

"You really wish me to stay?" she asked.

"I beg of you to stay! You will bring to me a new inspiration—new faith—new courage to fight. Will you?"

She extended her hand.

"Yes."

"And you will agree to follow my instructions?"

"Absolutely."

"Good. We begin from this moment. I give you my first orders. Forget that James Anthony ever lived. Forget the tragedy of Christmas Eve. You are going to be a mother. All other events in life pale before this fact. God has conferred on you the highest honor He can give to mortal. Keep your soul serene, your body strong. You are to worry about nothing——"

"I must pay you for this extra expense I impose, Doctor. I have a thousand dollars in bank in New York," she interrupted.

"Certainly, if you will be happier. My home is now your sanitarium. You are my patient. Your board will cost me about eight dollars a week. All right. You can pay that if you wish.

"Take no thought now except on the business of being a mother. I will make myself your father, your brother, your guardian, your physician, your friend and companion. I will give you at once a course of reading. You are to think only beautiful thoughts, see beautiful things, dream beautiful dreams, hear beautiful music. I'm going to make you climb these mountain peaks with me for the next three months and live among the clouds. I'm going to refit your room with new furniture and pictures and place in it a phonograph with the best music. When you are strong enough you can work for me three hours a day as my secretary. You use the typewriter?"

"I'm an expert——"

"Good! I'm writing a book which I'm going to call 'The Rulers of the World.' It is a study of Motherhood. I am one who believes that the redemption of humanity awaits the realization by woman of her divine call. When woman knows that she is really a co-creator with God in the reproduction of the race, a new era will dawn for mankind. You promise me faithfully to obey my instructions?"

"Faithfully."

"You're a wonderful subject on which to make an experiment. You are young—in the first dawn of the glory of womanhood. Your body is beautiful, your mind singularly pure and sweet. You must give me at once the full power of your will in its concentration on Truth and Beauty. The success or failure of this experiment will depend almost entirely on your mentality and the use you make of it during these months in which your babe is being formed. Whatever the shape of the body there is one eternal certainty—only YOUR mind can reach the soul of this child. If the father were the veriest fiend who ever existed and should concentrate his mind to the task, not one thought from his darkened soul could reach your babe! YOUR mind will be the ever-brooding, enfolding spirit forming and fashioning character."

He paused and his deep brown eyes flashed with enthusiasm.

"Think of it! You are now creating an immortal being whose word may bend a million wills to his. And you are doing this mighty work solely by your mind. The physical processes are simple and automatic.

"The first lesson you must learn and hold with deathless grip is that thoughts are things. A thought can kill the body. A thought can heal the body. If I am successful as a physician it is because I use this power with my patients. With some I use drugs, with others none. With all I use every ounce of mental power which God has given me. You will remember this?"

"Yes."

He walked to the shelves and drew down a volume of poetry.

"Read these poems until you are tired today—then sleep. I'll give you a good novel tomorrow and when you've read it, a volume of philosophy. When we climb the peaks, I'll give you a study of these rocks that will tell you the story of their birth, their life, and their coming death. We'll learn something of the birds and flowers next spring. We'll dream great dreams and think great thoughts—you and I—in these wonderful days and weeks and months which God shall give us together."

She looked up at him through her tears:

"Oh, Doctor, you have not only saved a miserable life: you have saved my soul!"



CHAPTER XXVI. A SOUL IS BORN

It was more than a month after the experiment began before the Doctor ventured to hint of Jim's survival. He had waited patiently until Mary's strength had been fully restored and her mind filled with the new enthusiasm for motherhood. He could tell her now with little risk. And yet he ventured on the task with reluctance. He found her seated at her favorite window overlooking the deep blue valley of the Swannanoa, a volume of poetry in her lap.

He touched her shoulder and she smiled in cheerful response.

"You are content?" he asked.

"A strange peace is slowly stealing into my heart," she responded reverently. "I shall learn to love life again when my baby comes to help me."

"You remember your solemn promise?"

"Have I not kept it?" she murmured.

"Faithfully—and I remind you of it that you may not forget today for a moment that your work is too high and holy to allow a shadow to darken your spirit even for an hour. I have something to tell you that may shock a little unless I warn you——"

She lifted her eyes with a quick look of uneasiness, and studied his immovable face.

"You couldn't guess?" he laughed.

She shook her head in puzzled silence.

"Suppose I were to tell you," he went on evenly, "that I found a spark of life in your husband's body that morning and drew him back from the grave?"

Her eyes closed and she stretched her hand toward the Doctor.

He clasped the fingers firmly between both his palms, held and stroked them gently.

"You did save him?" she breathed.

"Yes."

"Thank God his poor old mother is not a murderer! But he is dead to me. I shall never see him again—never!"

"I thought you would feel that way," the Doctor quietly replied.

"You won't let him come here?" she asked suddenly.

"He won't try unless you consent——"

Mary shuddered.

"You don't know him——"

The Doctor smiled.

"I'm afraid you don't know him now, my child."

"He has changed?"

"The old, old miracle over again. He has been literally born again—this time of the spirit."

"It's incredible!"

"It's true. He's a new man. I think his reformation is the real thing. He's young. He's strong. He has brains. He has personality——"

Mary lifted her hand.

"All I ask of him is to keep out of my sight. The world is big enough for us both. The past is now a nightmare. If I live to be a hundred years old, with my dying breath I shall feel the grip of his fingers on my throat——"

She paused and closed her eyes.

"Forget it! Forget it!" the Doctor laughed. "We have more important things to think of now."

"He wishes to see me?"

"Begs every day that I ask you."

"And you have hesitated these long weeks?"

"Your strength and peace of mind were of greater importance than his happiness, my dear. Let him wait until you please to see him."

"He'll wait forever," was the firm answer.

Jim smiled grimly when his friend bore back the message.

"I'll never give up as long as there's breath in my body," he cried, bringing his square jaws together with a snap.

"That's the way to talk, my boy," the Doctor responded.

"Anyhow you believe in me, Doc, don't you?"

"Yes."

"And you'll help me a little on the way if it gets dark—won't you?"

"If I can—you may always depend on me."

Jim clasped his outstretched hand gratefully.

"Well, I'm going to make good."

There was something so genuine and manly in the tones of his voice, he compelled the Doctor's respect. A smaller man might have sneered. The healer of souls and bodies had come to recognize with unerring instinct the true and false note in the human voice.

His heart went out in a wave of sympathy for the lonely, miserable young animal who stood before him now, trembling with the first sharp pains of the immortal thing that had awaked within. He slipped his arm about Jim's shoulders and whispered:

"I'll tell you something that may help you when the way gets dark—the wife is going to bear you a child."

"No!"

"Yes."

"God!—— That's great, ain't it?"

Jim choked into silence and looked up at the Doctor with dimmed eyes.

"Say, Doc, you hit me hard when you brought what she said—but that's good news! Watch me work my hands to the bone—you know it's my kid and she can't keep me from workin' for it if she tries now can she?"

"No."

"There's just one thing that'll hang over me like a black cloud," he mused sorrowfully.

"I know, boy—your mother's darkened mind."

Jim nodded.

"When I see that queer glitter in her eyes it goes through me like a knife. Will she ever get over it?"

"We can't tell yet. It takes time. I believe she will."

"You'll do the best you can for her, Doc?" he pleaded pathetically. "You won't forget her a single day? If you can't cure her, nobody can."

"I'll do my level best, boy."

Jim pressed his hand again.

"Gee, but you've been a friend to me! I didn't know that there were such men in the world as you!"

For six months the Doctor watched the transplanted child of the slums grow into a sturdy manhood in his new environment. He snapped at every suggestion his friend gave and with quick wit improved on it. He not only discovered and developed a mica mine on his mother's farm, he invented new machinery for its working that doubled the market output. Within six weeks from the time he began his shipments the mine was paying a steady profit of more than five hundred dollars a month. He had made just one trip to New York and secretly returned to the police every stolen jewel and piece of plunder taken, with a full confession of the time and place of the crime. He had shipped his tools and machinery from the workshop on the east side before his sensational act and made good his departure for the South.

The tools and machinery he installed in a new workshop which he built in the yard of Nance's cabin. Here he worked day and night at his blacksmith forge making the iron hinges, and irons, shovels, tongs, fire sets and iron work complete for a log bungalow of seven rooms which he was building on the sunny slope of the mountain which overlooks the valley toward Asheville.

The Doctor had lent Jim the blue-prints of his own home and he was quietly duplicating it with loving care. His wife might refuse to see him but he could build a home for their boy. For his sake she couldn't refuse it.

With childlike obedience Nance followed him every day and watched the workmen rear the beautiful structure under Jim's keen eyes and skillful hands. The man's devotion to his mother was pathetic. Only the Doctor knew the secret of his pitiful care, and he kept his own counsel.



CHAPTER XXVII. THE BABY

The last roses of summer were bursting their topmost buds into full bloom on the lawn of the Doctor's bungalow. The martins that built each year in the little boxes he had set on poles around his garden were circling and chattering far up in the sapphire skies of a late September day. Their leaders had sensed the coming frost and were drilling for their long march across the world to their winter home. The chestnut burrs were bursting in the woods. The silent sun-wrapped Indian Summer had begun. Not a cloud flecked the skies.

A quiet joy filled the soul of the woman who smiled and heard her summons.

"You are not afraid?" the Doctor asked.

She turned her grateful eyes to his.

"The peace of God fills the world—and I owe it all to you."

"Nonsense. Your sturdy will and cultivated mind did the work. I merely made the suggestion."

"You are not going to give me an anesthetic, are you?" she said evenly.

"Why did you ask that?"

"Because I wish to feel and know the pain and glory of it all."

"You don't wish to take it?"

"Not unless you say I should."

"What a wonderful patient you are, child! What a beautiful spirit!" He looked at her intently. "Well, I'm older and wiser in experience than you. I'm glad you added that clause 'unless you say I should.' I'm going to say it. After all my talks to you on our return to the truths and simplicity of Nature you are perhaps surprised. You needn't be. I'm going to put you into a gentle sleep. Nature will then do her physical work automatically. I do this because our daughters are the inheritors of the sins of their mothers for centuries. The over-refinement of nerves, the hothouse methods of living, and the maiming of their bodies with the inventions of fashion have made the pains of this supreme hour beyond endurance. This should not be. It will not be so when our race has come into its own. But it will take many generations and perhaps many centuries before we reach the ideal. No physician who has a soul could permit a woman of your physique, your culture and refinement to walk barefoot and blindfolded into such a hell of physical torture. I will not permit it."

He walked quietly into his laboratory, prepared the sleeping powders and gave them to her.

Six hours later she opened her eyes with eager wonder. Aunt Abbie was busy over a bundle of fluffy clothes. The Doctor was standing with his arms folded behind his back, his fine, clean-shaven face in profile looking thoughtfully over the sun-lit valley. There was just one moment of agonized fear. If they had failed! If her child were hideous—or deformed! Her lips moved in silent prayer.

"Doctor?" she whispered.

In a moment he was bending over her, a look of exaltation in his brown eyes.

"Tell me quick!"

"A wonderful boy, little mother! The most beautiful babe I have ever seen. He didn't even cry—just opened his big, wide eyes and grunted contentedly."

"Give him to me."

Aunt Abbie laid the warm bundle in her arms and she pressed it gently until the sweet, red flesh touched her own. She lay still for a moment, a smile on her lips.

"Lift him and let me look!"

"What a funny little pug nose," she laughed.

"Yes—exactly like his mother's!" the Doctor replied.

She gazed with breathless reverence.

"He is beautiful, isn't he?" she sighed.

"And you have observed the chin and mouth?"

"Exactly like yours. It's wonderful!"



CHAPTER XXVIII. WHAT IS LOVE?

Eighteen months swiftly passed with the little mother and her boy still in Dr. Mulford's sanitarium. She had allowed herself to be persuaded that he had the right to be her guide and helper in the first year's training of the child.

The boy had steadily grown in strength and beauty of body and mind. The Doctor persuaded her to spend one more winter basking in his sun-parlor and finishing the final chapters of his book. Her mind was singularly clever and helpful in the interpretation of the experiences and emotions of motherhood.

She had stubbornly resisted every suggestion to see her husband or allow him to see the child. The Doctor had managed twice to give Jim an hour with the baby while she had gone to Asheville on shopping trips. He was rewarded for his trouble in the devotion with which the young father worshiped his son. The Doctor watched the slumbering fires kindle in the man's deep blue eyes with increasing wonder at the strength and tenderness of his newfound soul.

Jim had completed the furnishing of the bungalow with the advice and guidance of his friend, and every room stood ready and waiting for its mistress. He had insisted on making every piece of furniture for Mary's room and the nursery adjoining. The Doctor was amazed at the mechanical genius he displayed in its construction. He had taken a month's instruction at a cabinet maker's in Asheville and the bed, bureau, tables and chairs which he had turned out were astonishingly beautiful. Their lines were copied from old models and each piece was a work of art. The iron work was even more tastefully and beautifully wrought. He had toiled day and night with an enthusiasm and patience that gave the physician a new revelation in the possibility of the development of human character.

His friend came at last with a cheering message. He began smilingly:

"I'm going to make the big fight today, boy, to get her to see you."

"You think she will?"

"There's a good chance. Her savings have all been used up from her bank account in New York. She is determined to go to her father in Kentucky. I'll have a talk with her, bring her over to the bungalow, show her through it on the pretext of its model construction and then you can tell her that you built it with your own hands for her and the baby. You might be loafing around the place about that time."

Jim's hand was suddenly lifted.

"I got ye, Doc, I got ye! I'll be there—all day."

"Don't let her see you until I give the signal."

"Caution's my name."

"We'll see what happens."

Jim pressed close.

"Say, Doc, if you know how to pray, I wish you'd send up a little word for me while you're talkin' to her. Could ye now?"

"I'll do my best for you, boy—and I think you've got a chance. She's been watching the blue eyes of that baby lately with a rather curious look of unrest."

"They're just like mine, ain't they?" Jim broke in with pride.

"Time has softened the old hurt," the Doctor went on. "The boy may win for you——"

The square jaw came together with a smash.

"Gee—I hope so. I'll wait there all day for you and I'm goin' to try my own hand at a little prayer or two on the side while I'm waiting. Maybe God'll think He's hit me hard enough by this time to give me another trial."

With a friendly wave of his hand the Doctor hurried home.

He found Mary seated under the rose trellis beside the drive, watching for his coming. The day was still and warm for the end of April. Birds were singing and chattering in every branch and tree. A quail on the top fence-rail of the wheat field called loudly to his mate.

The boy was screaming his joy over a new wagon to which Aunt Abbie had hitched his goat. He drove by in style, lifted his chubby hand to his mother and shouted:

"Dood-by, Doc-ter!"

The Doctor waved a smiling answer, and lapsed into a long silence.

He waked at last from his absorption to notice that Mary was day-dreaming. The fair brow was drawn into deep lines of brooding.

"Why shadows in your eyes a day like this, little mother?" he asked softly.

"Just thinking——"

"About a past that you should forget?"

"Yes and no," she answered thoughtfully. "I was just thinking in this flood of spring sunlight of the mystery of my love for such a man as the one I married. How could it have been possible to really love him?"

"You are sure that you loved him?"

"Sure."

"How did you know?"

"By all the signs. I trembled at his footstep. The touch of his hand, the sound of his voice thrilled me. I was drawn by a power that was resistless. I was mad with happiness those wonderful days that preceded our marriage. I was madder still during our honeymoon—until the shadows began to fall that fatal Christmas Eve." She paused and her lips trembled. "Oh, Doctor, what is love?"

The drooping shoulders of the man bent lower. He picked up a pebble from the ground and flicked it carelessly across the drive, lifted his head at last and asked earnestly:

"Shall I tell you the truth?"

"Yes—your own particular brand, please—the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

"I'll try," he began soberly. "If I were a poet, naturally I would use different language. As I'm only a prosaic doctor and physiologist I may shock your ideals a little."

"No matter," she interrupted. "They couldn't well get a harder jolt than they have had already."

He nodded and went on:

"There are two elemental human forces that maintain life—hunger and love. They are both utterly simple, otherwise they could not be universal. Hunger compels the race to live. Love compels it to reproduce itself. There has never been anything mysterious about either of these forces and there never will be—except in the imagination of sentimentalists.

"Nature begins with hunger. For about thirteen years she first applies this force to the development of the body before she begins to lay the foundation of the second. Until this second development is complete the passion known as love cannot be experienced.

"What is this second development? Very simple again. At the base of the brain of every child there is a vacant space during the first twelve or fifteen years. During the age of twelve to fourteen in girls, thirteen to fifteen in boys, this vacant space is slowly filled by a new lobe of the brain and with its growth comes the consciousness of sex and the development of sex powers.

"This new nerve center becomes on maturity a powerful physical magnet. The moment this magnet comes into contact with an organization which answers its needs, as certain kinds of food answer the needs of hunger, violent desire is excited. If both these magnets should be equally powerful, the disturbance to both will be great. The longer the personal association is continued the more violent becomes this disturbance, until in highly sensitive natures it develops into an obsession which obscures reason and crushes the will.

"The meaning of this impulse is again very simple—the unconscious desire of the male to be a father, of the female to become a mother."

"And there is but one man on earth who could thus affect me?" Mary asked excitedly.

"Rubbish! There are thousands."

"Thousands?"

"Literally thousands. The reason you never happen to meet them is purely an accident of our poor social organization. Every woman has thousands of true physical mates if she could only meet them. Every man has thousands of true physical mates if he could only meet them. And in every such meeting, if mind and body are in normal condition, the same violent disturbance would result—whether married or single, free or bound.

"Marriage therefore is not based merely on the passion of love. It is a crime for any man or woman to marry without love. It is the sheerest insanity to believe that this passion within itself is sufficient to justify marriage. All who marry should love. Many love who should not marry.

"The institution of marriage is the great SOCIAL ordinance of the race. Its sanctity and perpetuity are not based on the violence of the passion of love, but something else."

He paused and listened to the call of the quail again from the field.

"You hear that bob white calling his mate?"

"Yes—and she's answering him now very softly. I can hear them both."

"They have mated this spring to build a home and rear a brood of young. Within six months their babies will all be full grown and next spring a new alignment of lovers will be made. Their marriage lasts during the period of infancy of their offspring. This is Nature's law.

"It happens in the case of man that the period of infancy of a human being is about twenty-four years. This is the most wonderful fact in nature. It means that the capacity of man for the improvement of his breed is practically limitless. A quail has a few months in which to rear her young. God gives to woman a quarter of a century in which to mold her immortal offspring. Because the period of infancy of one child covers the entire period of motherhood capacity, marriage binds for life, and the sanctity of marriage rests squarely on this law of Nature."

He paused again and looked over the sunlit valley.

"I wish our boys and girls could all know these simple truths of their being. It would save much unhappiness and many tragic blunders.

"You were swept completely off your feet by the rush of the first emotion caused by meeting a man who was your physical mate. You imagined this emotion to be a mysterious revelation which can come but once. Your imagination in its excited condition, of course, gave to your first-found mate all sorts of divine attributes which he did not possess. You were 'in love' with a puppet of your own creation, and hypnotized yourself into the delusion that James Anthony was your one and only mate, your knight, your hero.

"In a very important sense this was true. Your intuitions could not make a mistake on so vital an issue. But you immediately rushed into marriage and your union has been perfected by the birth of a child. Whether you are happy or unhappy in marriage does not depend on the reality of love. Happiness in marriage is based on something else."

"On what?"

"The joy and peace that comes from oneness of spirit, tastes, culture and character. I know this from the deepest experiences of life and the widest observation."

"You have loved?" she asked softly.

"Twice——"

A silence fell between them.

"Shall I tell you, little mother?" he finally asked quietly.

"Please."

He seated himself and looked into the skies beyond the peaks across the valley.

"Ten years ago I met my first mate. The meeting was fortunate for both. She was a woman of gentle birth, of beautiful spirit. Our courtship was ideal. We thought alike, we felt alike, she loved my profession even—an unusual trait in a woman. She thought it so noble in its aims that the petty jealousy that sometimes wrecks a doctor's life was to her an unthinkable crime. The first year was the nearest to heaven that I had ever gotten down here.

"And then, little mother, by one of those inexplicable mysteries of nature she died when our baby was born. For a while the light of the world went out. I quit New York, gave up my profession and came here just to lie in the sun on this mountainside and try to pull myself together. I didn't think life could ever be worth living again. But it was. I found about me so much of human need—so much ignorance and helplessness—so much to pity and love, I forgot the ache in my own heart in bringing joy to others.

"I had money enough. I gave up the ambitions of greed and strife and set my soul to higher tasks. For nine years I've devoted my leisure hours to the study of Motherhood as the hope of a nobler humanity. But for the great personal sorrow that came to me in the death of my wife and baby I should never have realized the truths I now see so clearly.

"And then the other woman suddenly came into my life. I never expected to love again—not because I thought it impossible, but because I thought it improbable in my little world here that I could ever again meet a woman I would ask to be my wife. But she dropped one day out of the sky."

He paused and took a deep breath.

"I recognized her instantly as my mate, gentle and pure and capable of infinite joy or infinite pain. She did not realize the secret of my interest in her. I didn't expect it. I knew that under the conditions she could not. But I waited."

He paused and searched for Mary's eyes.

"And you married her?" she asked in even tones.

"I have never allowed her to know that I love her."

"Why?"

"She was married."

Mary threw him a startled look and he went on evenly:

"I could have used my power over mind and body to separate her from her husband. I confess that I was tempted. But there was a child. Their union had been sealed with the strongest tie that can bind two human beings. I have never allowed her to realize that she might love me. Had I chosen to break the silence between us I could have revealed this to her, taken her and torn her from the man to whom she had borne a babe. I had no right to commit that crime, no matter how deep the love that cried for its own. Marriage is based on the period of infancy of the child which spans the maternal life of woman. God had joined these two people together and no man had the right to put them asunder!"

"And you gave her up?"

"I had to, little mother. On the recognition of this eternal law the whole structure of our civilization rests."

Mary bent her gaze steadily on his face for a moment in silence.

"And you are telling me that I should be reconciled to the man who choked me into insensibility?"

"I am telling you that he is the father of your son—that he has rights which you cannot deny; that when you gave yourself to him in the first impulse of love a deed was done which Almighty God can never undo. Your tragic blunder was the rush into marriage with a man about whose character you knew so little. It's the timid, shrinking, home-loving girl that makes this mistake. You must face it now. You are responsible as deeply and truly as the man who married you. That he happened at that moment to be a brute and a criminal is no more his fault than yours. It was YOUR business to KNOW before you made him the father of your child."

"I tried to appeal to his better nature that awful night," Mary interrupted, "but he only laughed at me!"

"You owe him another trial, little mother—you owe it to his boy, too."

Mary shook her head bitterly.

"I can't—I just can't!"

"You won't see him once?"

She sprang to her feet trembling.

"No—no!"

"I don't think it's fair."

"I'm afraid of him! You can't understand his power over my will."

"Come, come, this is sheer cowardice—give the devil his dues. Face him and fight it out. Tell him you're done forever with him and his life, if you will—but don't hedge and trim and run away like this. I'm ashamed of you."

"I won't see him—I've made up my mind."

The Doctor threw up both hands.

"All right. If you won't, you won't. We'll let it go at that."

He paused and changed his tones to friendly personal interest.

"And you're determined to leave me and take my kid away tomorrow?"

"We must go. I've no money to pay my board. I can't impose on you——"

"It's going to be awfully lonely."

He looked at her with a strange, deep gaze, lifted his stooping shoulders with sudden resolution and changed his manner to light banter.

"I suppose I couldn't persuade you to give me that boy?"

She smiled tenderly.

"You know his father did leave his mark on him after all! The eyes are all his. Of course, I will admit that those drooping lids have often been the mark of genius—perhaps a genius for evil in this case. If you don't want to take the risk—now's your chance. I will——"

Mary shook her head in reproachful protest.

"Don't tease me, dear doctor man. I've just this one day more with you. I'm counting each precious hour."

"Forgive me!" he cried gayly. "I won't tease you any more. Come, we'll run over now and see our neighbor's new bungalow before you go. You admire this one and threaten to duplicate it. He has built a better one."

"I don't believe it."

"You'll go?"

"If you wish it——"

"Good. We'll take the boy, too. He can drive his new wagon the whole way. It's only half a mile."



CHAPTER XXIX. THE NEW MAN

The door of the bungalow stood wide open. Mary paused in rapture over the rich beds of wood violets that carpeted the spaces between the drive and the log walls.

"Aren't they beautiful!" she cried. "A perfect carpet of dazzling green and purple!"

"Come right in," the Doctor urged from the steps. "My neighbor's a patient of mine. He hasn't moved in yet but he told me always to make myself at home."

Mary lifted the boy from his wagon, tied the goat and led the child into the house. The Doctor showed her through without comment. None was needed. The woman's keen eye saw at a glance the perfection of care with which the master builder had wrought the slightest detail of every room. The floors were immaculate native hard-wood—its grain brought out through shining mirrors of clean varnish. There was not one shoddy piece of work from the kitchen sink to the big open fireplace in the spacious hall and living-room.

"It's exquisite!" she exclaimed at last. "It seems all hand-made—doesn't it?"

"It is, too. The owner literally built it with his own hands—a work of love."

"For himself?" Mary asked with a smile.

"For the woman he loves, of course! My neighbor's a sort of crank and insisted on expressing himself in this way. Come, I want you to see two rooms upstairs."

He led her into the room Jim had built for his wife.

"Observe this furniture, if you please."

"Don't tell me that he built that too?" she laughed.

"That's exactly what I'm going to tell you."

"Impossible!" she protested. "Why, the line and finish would do credit to the finest artisan in America."

"So I say. Look at the perfect polish of that table! It's like the finish of a rosewood piano." He touched the smooth surface.

"Of course you're joking?" Mary answered. "No amateur could have done such work."

"So I'd have said if I had not seen him do it."

"What on earth possessed him to undertake such a task?"

"The love of a beautiful woman—what else?"

"He learned a trade—just to furnish this room with his own hand?"

"Yes."

"His love must be the real thing," she mused.

"That's what I've said. Look at this iron work, too—the stately andirons in that big fireplace, the shovel, the tongs, and the massive strop-hinges on the doors."

"He did that, too?" she asked in amazement.

"Every piece of iron on the place he beat out with his own hand at his forge."

"And all for the love of a woman? The age of romance hasn't passed after all, has it?"

"No."

Mary paused before the window looking south.

"What a glorious view!" she cried. "It's even grander than yours, Doctor."

"Yes. I claim some of the credit, though, for that. I helped him lay out the grounds."

"Who is this remarkable man?" she asked at last.

"A friend of mine. I'll introduce him directly. He should be here at any moment now."

"We're intruding," Mary whispered. "We must go. I mustn't look any more. I'll be coveting my neighbor's house."

The doctor turned to the window and signaled to someone on the lawn, as Mary hurried down the stairs.

She fairly ran into Jim, who was being pulled into the house by the boy.

"'Ook, Mamma! 'Ook! I found a Daddy! He says he be my Daddy if you let him. Please let him. I want a Daddy, an' I like him. Please!"

Jim blushed and trembled and lifted his eyes appealingly, while Mary stood white and still watching him in a sort of helpless terror.

The child moved on to his wagon.

"Say, little girl," Jim began in low tones, "it's been a thousand years since I saw you. Don't drive me away—just give me one chance for God's sake and this baby's that He sent us! I've gone straight. I've sent back every dishonest dollar. I'm earning a clean living down here and a good one. I've practiced for two years cutting out the slang, too."

He paused for breath and she turned her head away.

"Just listen a minute! I know I was a beast that night. I'm not the same now. I've been through the fires of hell and I've come out a cleaner man. Let me show you how much I love you! Life's too short, but just give me a chance. If I could undo that awful hour when I hurt you so, I'd crawl 'round the world on my hands and knees—and I'll show you that I mean it! I built this house for you and the baby."

Mary turned suddenly with wide dilated eyes.

"You—YOU built this house?" she gasped.

"I've worked on it every hour, day and night, the past two years when I wasn't earning a living in the mine. I made every stick of that furniture in the rooms up there—for you and my boy. The house is yours—whether you let me stay or not."

"I—I can't take it, Jim," she faltered.

"You've got to, girlie. You can't throw a gift like this back in a fellow's face—it cost too much! Your money's all gone. You've got to bring up that kid. He's mine, too. I'm man enough to support my wife and baby and I'm going to do it. I don't care what you say. You've got to let me. I'm going to work for you, live for you and die for you—whether you stay with me or not. I've got the right to do that, you know."

THE END