MAM' LINDA

N the rear of the long store, at a round table under a hanging-lamp with a tin shade, four young men sat playing poker. The floor of that portion of the room was raised several feet higher than that of the front, and between the two short flights of steps was the inclining door leading to the cellar, which was damp and dark and used only for the storage of salt, syrup, sugar, hardware, and general rubbish.

Near the front door the store-keeper, James Blackburn, a portly, bearded man of forty-five, sat chatting with Carson Dwight, a young lawyer of the town.

“I don't want any of you boys to think that I'm complaining,” the elder man was saying. “I've been young myself; in fact, as you know, I go the gaits too, considering that I'm tied down by a family and have a living to make. I love to have the gang around—I swear I do, though sometimes I declare it looks like this old shebang is more of a place of amusement than a business house in good standing.”

“Oh, I know we hang around here too much,” Carson Dwight replied; “and you ought to kick us out, the last one of us.”

“Oh, it isn't so bad at night like this, when trade's over, but it is sort o' embarrassing during the day. Why, what do you think? A Bradstreet commercial reporter was in the other day to get a statement of my standing, and while he was here Keith Gordon—look at him now, the scamp! holding his cards over his head; that's a bluff. I'll bet he hasn't got a ten-spot. While that agent was here Keith and a lot more of your gang were back there on the platform dancing a hoe-down. The dust was so thick you couldn't see the windows. The reporter looked surprised, but he didn't say anything. I told him I thought I'd be able to pay for all I bought in market, and that I had no idea how much I was worth. I haven't invoiced my stock in ten years. When I run low I manage to replenish somehow, and so it goes on from year to year.”

“Well, I am going to talk to the boys,” Dwight said. “They are taking advantage of your goodnature. The whole truth is they consider you one of them, Jim. Marrying didn't change you. You are as full of devilment as any of the rest, and they know it, and love to hang around you.”

“Well, I reckon that's a fact,” Blackburn answered, “and I believe I'd rather you wouldn't mention it. I think a sight of the gang, and I wouldn't hurt their feelings for the world. After all, what does it matter? Life is short, and if Trundle & Hodgson are getting more mountain custom than I am, I'll bet I get the biggest slice of life. They'll die rich, but, like as not, friendless. By-the-way, I see your partner coming across the street. I forgot to tell you; he was looking for you a few minutes ago. You had a streak of luck when you joined issues with him; Bill Gamer's a rough sort o' chap, but he is by all odds the brainiest lawyer in Georgia to-day.”

At this juncture a man of medium stature, with a massive head crowned by a shock of reddish hair, a smooth-shaven, freckled face, and small feet and hands stood in the doorway. He wore a long black broadcloth coat, a waistcoat of the same material, and baggy gray trousers. The exposed portion of his shirt-front and the lapels of his coat were stained by tobacco juice.

“I've been up to the den, over to the Club, and the Lord only knows where else looking for you,” he said to his partner, as he advanced, leaned against a showcase on the counter, and stretched out his arms behind him.

“Work for us, eh?” Carson smiled.

“No; since when have you ever done a lick after dark?” was the dry reply. “I've come to give you a piece of advice, and I'm glad Blackburn is here to join me. The truth is, Dan Willis is in town. He is full and loaded for bear. He's down at the wagon-yard with a gang of his mountain pals. Some meddling person—no doubt your beautiful political opponent Wiggin—has told him what you said about the part he took in the mob that raided! negro town.”

“Well, he doesn't deny it, does he?” Dwight asked, his eyes flashing.

“I don't know whether he does or not,” said Gamer. “But I know he's the most reckless and dangerous man in the county, and when he is drunk he will halt at nothing. I thought I'd advise you to avoid him.”

“Avoid him? You mean to say”—Dwight stood up in his anger—“that I, a free-born American citizen, must sneak around in my own home to avoid a man that puts on a white mask and sheet and with fifty others like himself steals into town and nearly thrashes the life out of a lot of banjo-picking negroes? Most of them were good-for-nothing, lazy scamps, but they were born that way, and there was one in the bunch that I know was harmless. Oh yes, I got mad about it, and I talked plainly, I know, but I couldn't help it.”

“You could have helped it,” Gamer said, testily; “and you ought to have protected your own interests better than to give Wiggin such a strong pull over you. If you are elected it will be by the aid of that very mob and their kin and friends. We may be able to smooth it all over, but if you have an open row with Dan Willis to-night, the cause of it will spread like wildfire, and bum votes for you in wads and bunches. Good God, man, the idea of giving Wiggin a torch like that to wave in the face of your constituency—you, a town man, standing up for the black criminal brutes that are plotting to pull down the white race! I say that's the way Wiggin and Dan Willis would interpret your platform.”

“I can't help it,” Dwight repeated, more calmly, though his voice shook with suppressed feeling as he went on. “If I lose all I hope for politically—and this seems like the best chance I'll ever have to get to the legislature—I'll stand by my convictions. We must have law and order among ourselves if we expect to teach such things to poor, half-witted black people. I was mad that night. You know that I love the South. Its blood is my blood. Three of my mother's brothers and two of my father's died fighting for the 'Lost Cause,' and my father was under fire from the beginning of the war to the end. In fact, it is my love for the South, and all that is good and pure and noble in it, that made my blood boil that night. I saw a part of it you didn't see.”

“What was that?” Garner asked.

“It was a clear moonlight night,” Dwight went on. “I was sitting at the window of my room at home, looking out over Major Warren's yard, when the first screams and shouts came from the negro quarter. I suspected what it was, for I'd heard of the threats the mountaineers had made against that part of town, but I wasn't prepared for what I actually saw. The cottage of old Uncle Lewis and Mammy Linda is just behind the Major's house, you know, and in plain view of my window. I saw the old pair come to the door and run out into the yard, and then I heard Linda's voice. 'It's my child!' she screamed. 'They are killing him!' Uncle Lewis tried to quiet her, but she stood there wringing her hands and sobbing and praying. The Major raised the window of his room and looked out, and I heard him ask what was wrong. Uncle Lewis tried to explain, but his voice could not be heard above his wife's cries. A few minutes later Pete came running down the street. They had let him go. His clothes were torn to strips and his back was livid with great whelks. He had no sooner reached the old folks than he keeled over in a faint. The Major came down, and he and I bent over the boy and finally restored him to consciousness. Major Warren was the maddest man I ever saw, and a mob a hundred strong couldn't have touched the negro and left him alive.”

“I know, that was all bad enough,” Garner admitted, “but antagonizing those men now won't better the matter and may do you more political damage than you'll get over in a lifetime. You can't be a politician and a preacher both; they don't go together. You can't dispute that the negro quarter of this town was a disgrace to a civilized community before the White Caps raided it. Look at it now. There never was such a change. It is as quiet as a Philadelphia graveyard.”

“It's the way they went about it that made me mad,” Carson Dwight retorted. “Besides, I know that boy. He is as harmless as a kitten, and he only hung around those dives because he loved to sing and dance with the rest. I did get mad; I'm mad yet. My people never lashed their slaves when they were in bondage; why should I stand by and see them beaten now by men who never owned negroes and never loved or understood them? Before the war a white man would stand up and protect his slaves; why shouldn't he now take up for at least the most faithful of their descendants?”

“That's it,” Blackburn spoke up, admiringly. “You are a chip off of the old block, Carson. Your daddy would have shot any man who tried to whip one of his negroes. You can't help the way you feel; but I agree with Bill here, you can't get the support of mountain people if you don't, at least, pretend to see things their way.”,

“Well, I can't see this thing their way,” fumed Dwight; “and I'm not going to try. When I saw that old black man and woman that awful night with their very heart-strings torn and bleeding, and remembered that they had been kind to my mother when she was at the point of death—sitting by her bedside all night long as patiently as blocks of stone, and shedding tears of joy at the break of day when the doctor said the crisis had passed—when I think of that and admit that I stand by with folded hands and see their only child beaten till he is insensible, my blood boils with utter shame. It has burned a great lesson into my brain, and that is that we have got to have law and order among ourselves if we expect to keep the good opinion of the world at large.”

“I understand Pete would have got off much easier if he hadn't fought them like a tiger,” said Blackburn. “They say—”

“And why shouldn't he have fought?” Carson asked, quickly. “The nearer the brute creation a man is the more he'll fight. A tame dog will fight if you drive him into a corner and strike him hard enough.”

“Well, you busted up our game,” joined in Keith Gordon, who had left the table in the rear and now came forward, accompanied by another young man, Wade Tingle, the editor of the Headlight. “Wade and I both agree, Carson, that you've got to handle Dan Willis cautiously. We are backing you tooth and toe-nail in this campaign, but you'll tie our hands if you antagonize the mountain element. Wiggin knows that, and he is working it for all it's worth.”

“That's right, old man,” the editor joined in, earnestly. “I may as well be plain with you. I'm making a big issue out of my support of you, but if you make the country people mad they will stop taking my paper. I can't live without their patronage, and I simply can't back you if you don't stick to me.”

“I wasn't raising a row,” the young candidate said. “But Garner came to me just now, actually advising me to avoid that dirty scoundrel. I won't dodge any blustering bully who is going about threatening what he will do to me when he meets me face to face. I want your support, but I can't buy it that way.”

“Well,” Garner said, grimly, more to the others than to his partner, “there will be a row right here inside of ten minutes. I see that now. Willis has heard certain things Carson has said about the part he took in that raid, and he is looking for trouble. Carson isn't in the mood to take back anything, and a fool can see how it will end.”

CHAPTER II.

EITH GORDON and Tingle motioned to Garner, and the three stepped out on the sidewalk leaving Blackburn and the candidate together. The street was quite deserted. Only a few of the ramshackle street lights were burning, though the night was cloudy, the location of the stores, barbershop, hotel, and post-office being indicated by the oblong patches of light on the ground in front of them.

“You'll never be able to move him,” Keith Gordon said, stroking his blond mustache nervously. “The truth is, he's terribly worked up over it. Between us three, boys, Carson never loved but one woman in his life, and she's Helen Warren. Mam' Linda is her old nurse, and Carson knows when she comes home and hears of Pete's trouble it is going to hurt her awfully. Helen has a good, kind heart, and she loves Linda as if they were the same flesh and blood. If Carson meets Willis to-night he'll kill him or get killed. Say, boys, he's too fine a fellow for that sort of thing right on the eve of his election. What the devil can we do?”

“Oh, I see; there's a woman at the bottom of it,” Garner said, cynically. “I'm not surprised at the way he's acting now, but I thought that case was over with. Why, I heard she was engaged to a man down where she's visiting.”

“She really may be,” Gordon admitted, “but Carson is ready to fight her battles, anyway. I honestly think she turned him down when he was rolling so high with her brother, just before his death a year ago, but that didn't alter his feelings towards her.”

Garner grunted as he thrust his hand deep into his breast-pocket for his plug of tobacco and began to twist off a corner of it. “The most maddening thing on earth,” he said, “is to have a close friend who is a darned fool. I'm tired of the whole business. Old Dwight is out of all patience with Carson for the reckless way he has been living, but the old man is really carried away with pride over the boy's political chances. He had that sort of ambition himself in his early life, and he likes to see his son go in for it. He was powerfully tickled the other day when I told him Carson was going in on the biggest wave of popularity that ever bore a human chip, but he will cuss a blue streak when the returns come in, for I tell you, boys, if Carson has a row with Dan Willis to-night over this negro business, it will knock him higher than a kite.”

“Do you know whether Carson has anything to shoot with?” Tingle asked, thoughtfully.

“Oh yes, I saw the bulge of it under his coat just now,” Garner answered, still angrily, “and if the two come together it will be raining lead for a while in the old town.”

“I was just thinking about his sick mother,” Keith Gordon remarked. “My sister told me the other day that Mrs. Dwight was in such a low condition that any sudden shock would be apt to kill her. A thing like this would upset her terribly—that is, if there is really any shooting. Don't you suppose if we were to remind Carson of her condition that he might agree to go home?”

“No, you don't know him as well as I do,” Garner said, firmly. “It would only make him madder. The more reasons we give him for avoiding Willis the more stubborn he'll be. I guess we'll have to let him sit there and make a target of himself.”

Just then a tall mountaineer, under a broad-brimmed soft hat, wearing a cotton checked shirt and jean trousers passed through the light of the entrance to the hotel near by and slouched through the intervening darkness towards them.

“It's Pole Baker,” said Keith. “He's a rough-and-ready supporter of Carson's. Say, hold on, Pole!”

“Hold on yourself; what's up?” the mountaineer asked, with a laugh. “Plottin' agin the whites?”

“We want to ask you if you've seen Dan Willis to-night,” Garner questioned.

“Have I?” Baker grunted. “That's exactly why I'm lookin' fer you town dudes instead o' goin' on out home where I belong. I'm as sober as an empty keg, but I git charged with bein' in the Darley calaboose every time I don't answer the old lady's roll-call at bed-time. You bet Willis is loaded fer bear, and he's got some bad men with him down at the wagon-yard. Wiggin has filled 'em up with a lot o' stuff about what Carson said concernin' the White Cap raid t'other night. I thought I'd sorter put you fellers on, so you could keep our man out o' the way till their liquor wears off. Besides, I'm here to tell you, Bill Garner, that's a nasty card Wiggin's set afloat in the mountains. He says a regular gang of blue-bloods has been organized here to take up fer town coons agin the pore whites in the country. We might crush such a report in time, you know, but we'll never kill it if thar's a fight over it to-night.”

“That's the trouble,” the others said, in a breath.

“Wait one minute—you stay right here,” Baker said, and he went and stood in front of the store door and looked in for a moment; then he came back. “I thought maybe he'd let us all talk sense to 'im, but you can't put reason into a man like that any easier than you can dip up melted butter with a hot awl. I can't see any chance unless you fellers will leave it entirely to me.”

“Leave it to you?” Garner exclaimed. “What could you do?”

“I don't know whether I could do a blessed thing or not, boys, but the dam thing is so desperate that I'm willin' to try. You see, I never talk my politics—if I do, I talk it on t'other side to see what I kin pick up to advantage. The truth is, I think them skunks consider me a Wiggin man, and I'd like to git a whack at 'em. Maybe I can git 'em to leave town. Abe Johnson is the leader of 'em, and he never gets too drunk to have some natural caution.”

“Well, it certainly couldn't do any harm for you to try, Pole,” said Tingle.

“Well, I'll go down to the wagon-yard and see if they are still hanging about.”

As he approached the place in question, which was an open space about one hundred yards square surrounded by a high fence, at the lower end of the main street, Pole stood in the broad gateway and surveyed the numerous camp-fires which gleamed out from the darkness. He finally descried a group of men around a fire between two white-hooded wagons to the wheels of which were haltered several horses. As Pole advanced towards them, paying cheerful greetings to various men and women around the different fires he had to pass, he recognized Dan Willis, Abe Johnson, and several others.

A quart whiskey flask, nearly empty, stood on the ground in the light of the fire round which the men were seated. As he approached they all looked up and nodded and muttered careless greetings. It seemed to suggest a movement on the part of Dan Willis, a tall man of thirty-five or thirty-six years of age, who wore long, matted hair and had bushy eyebrows and a sweeping mustache, for, taking up the flask, he rose and dropped it into his coat-pocket and spoke to the two men who sat on either side of Abe Johnson.

“Come on,” he growled, “I want to talk to you. I don't care whether you join us or not, Abe.”

“Well, I'm out of it,” replied Johnson. “I've talked to you fellows till I'm sick. You are too darned full to have any sense.”

Willis and the two men walked off together and stood behind one of the wagons. Their voices, muffled by the effects of whiskey, came back to the ears of the remaining two.

“Goin' out home to-night, Abe?” Baker asked, carelessly.

“I want to, but I don't like to leave that damned fool here in the condition he's in. He'll either commit murder or git his blasted head shot off.”

“That's exactly what I was thinking about,” said Pole, sitting down on the ground carelessly and drawing his knees up in the embrace of his strong arms. “Look here, Abe, me'n you hain't to say quite as intimate as own brothers born of the same mammy, but I hain't got nothin' agin you of a personal nature.”

“Oh, I reckon that's all right,” the other said, stroking his round, smooth-shaven face with a dogged sweep of his brawny hand. “That's all right, Pole.”

“Well, my family knowed yore family long through the war,” Abe. “My daddy was with yourn at the front, an' our mothers swapped sugar an' coffee in them hard times, an', Abe, I'm here to tell you I sorter hate to see an unsuspectin' neighbor like you walk blind into serious trouble, great big trouble, Abe—trouble of the sort that would make a man's wife an' childern lie awake many and many a night.”

“What the hell you mean?” Johnson asked, picking up his ears.

“Why, it's this here devilment that's brewin' betwixt Dan an' Carson Dwight.”

“Well, what's that got to do with me?” Johnson asked, in surly surprise.

“Well, it's jest this, Abe,” Pole leaned back till his feet rose from the ground, and he twisted his neck as his eyes followed the three men who, with their heads close together, had moved a little farther away. “Maybe you don't know it, Abe, but I used to be in the government revenue service, and in one way and another that's neither here nor there I sometimes drop onto underground information, an' I want to give you a valuable tip. I want to start you to thinkin'. You'll admit, I reckon, that if them two men meet to-night thar will be apt to be blood shed.”

Johnson stared over the camp-fire sullenly. “If Carson Dwight hain't had the sense to git out o' town thar will be, an' plenty of it,” he said, with a dry chuckle.

“Well, thar's the difficulty,” said Pole. “He hain't left town, an' what's wuss than that, his friends hain't been able to budge 'im from his seat in Blackburn's store, whar Dan couldn't miss 'im ef he was stalkin' about blindfolded. He's heard threats, and he's as mad a man as ever pulled hair.”

“Well, what the devil—”

“Hold on, Abe. Now, I'll tell you whar you come in. My underground information is that the Grand Jury is hard at work to git the facts about that White Cap raid. The whole thing—name of leader and members of the gang has been kept close so far, but—”

“Well”—the half-defiant look in the face of Johnson gave way to one of growing alarm—“well!” he repeated, but went no further.

“It's this way, Abe—an' I'm here as a friend, I reckon. You know as well as I do that if thar is blood shed to-night it will git into court, and a lots about the White Cap raid, and matters even further back, will be pulled into the light.”

Pole's words had made a marked impression on the man to whom they had been so adroitly directed. Johnson leaned forward nervously. “So you think—” But he hung fire again.

“Huh, I think you'd better git Dan Willis out o' this town, Abe, an' inside o' five minutes, ef you can do it.”

Johnson drew a breath of evident relief. “I can do it, Pole, and I'll act by your advice,” he said. “Thar's only one thing on earth that would turn Dan towards home, but I happen to know what that is. He's b'ilin' hot, but he ain't any more anxious to stir up the Grand Jury than some of the rest of us. I'll go talk to 'im.”

As Johnson moved away, Pole Baker rose and slouched off in the darkness in the direction of the straggling lights along the main street. At the gate he paused and waited, his eyes on the wagons and camp-fire he had just left. Presently he noticed something and chuckled. The horses, with clanking trace-chains, passed between him and the fire—they were being led round to be hitched to the wagons. Pole chuckled again. “I'm not sech a dern fool as I look,” he said, “Well, I had to lie some and act a part that sorter went agin the grain, but my scheme worked. If I ever git to hell I reckon it will be through tryin' to do right—in the main.”

CHAPTER III.

HE wide avenue which ran north and south and cut the town of Darley into halves held the best and oldest residences. One side of the street caught the full rays of the morning sun and the other the slanting red beams of the afternoon. For so small a town, it was a well-graded and well-kept thoroughfare. Strips of grass lay like ribbons between the sidewalks and the roadway, and at the triangular spaces created by the intersection of certain streets there were rusty iron fences built primarily to protect diminutive fountains which had long since ceased to play. In one of these little parks, in the heart of the town, as it was in the hearts of the inhabitants, stood a monument erected to “The Confederate Dead,” a well-modelled, life-size figure of a Southern private wrought in stone in faraway Italy. Had it been correctly placed on its pedestal?—that was the question anxiously asked by reverent passers-by, for the cloaked and knapsacked figure, which time was turning gray, stood with its back to the enemy's country.

“Yes, it is right,” some would say, “for the soldier is represented as being on night picket-duty in Northern territory, and his thoughts and eyes are with his dear ones at home and the country he is defending.”

Henry Dwight, the wealthy sire of the aggressive young man with whom the foregoing chapters have principally dealt, lived in one of the moss and ivy grown houses on the eastern side of the avenue. It was a red brick structure two and a half stories high, with a colonial veranda, and had a square, white-windowed cupola as the apex of the slanting roof. There was a semicircular drive, which entered the grounds at one corner in the front and swept gracefully past the door. The central and smaller front gate, for the use of pedestrians, with its imitation stone posts, spanned by a white crescent, was reached from the house by a gravelled walk bordered by boxwood. On the right and left were rustic summerhouses, grape arbors and parterres containing roses and other flowers, all of which were well cared for by an old colored gardener.

Henry Dwight was a grain and cotton merchant, money-lender, and the president and chief stockholder of the Darley Cotton Mills, whose great brick buildings and cottages for employés stood a mile or so to the west of the town. This morning, having written his daily letters, he was strolling in his grounds smoking a cigar. To any one who knew him well it would have been plain that his mind was disturbed.

Adjoining the Dwight homestead there was another ancestral house equally as spacious and stand-. ing in quite as extensive, if more neglected, grounds. It was here that Major Warren lived, and it happened that he, too, was on his lawn just beyond the ramshackle intervening fence, the gate of which had fallen from its hinges and been taken away.

The Major was a short, slight old gentleman, quite a contrast to the John Bull type of his lusty, side-whiskered neighbor. He wore a dingy brown wig, and as he pottered about, raising a rose from the earth with his gold-headed ebony stick, or stooped to uproot an encroaching weed, his furtive glance was often levelled on old Dwight.

“I declare I really might as well,” he muttered, undecidedly. “What's the use making up your mind to a thing and letting it go for no sensible reason. He's taking a wrong view of it. I can tell that by the way he puffs at his cigar. Yes, I'll do it.”

The Major passed through the gateway and slowly drew near his preoccupied neighbor.

“Good-morning, Henry,” he said, as Dwight looked up. “If I'm any judge of your twists and turns, you are not yet in a thoroughly good-humor.”

“Good-humor? No, sir, I'm not in a good-humor. How could I be when that young scamp, the only heir to my name and effects—”

Dwight's spleen rose and choked out his words, and, red in the face, he stood panting, unable to go further.

“Well, it seems to me, while he's not my son,” the Major began, “that you are—are—well, rather overbearing—I might say unforgiving. He's been sowing wild oats, but, really, if I am any judge of young men, he is on a fair road to—to genuine manhood.”

“Road to nothing,” spluttered Dwight. “I gave him that big farm to see what he could do in its management. Never expected him to work a lick—just wanted to see if he could keep it on a paying basis, but it was an investment of dead capital. Then he took up the law. He did a little better at that along with Bill Garner to lean on, but that never amounted to anything worth mentioning. Then he went into politics.”

“And I heard you say yourself, Henry,” the Major ventured, gently, “that you believed he was actually cut out for a future statesman.”

“Yes, and like the fool that I was I hoped for it. I was so glad to see him really interested in politics that I laid awake at night thinking of his success. I heard of his popularity on every hand. Men came to me, and women, too, telling me they loved him and were going to work for him against that jack-leg lawyer Wiggin, and put him into office with a majority that would ring all over the State; and they meant it, I reckon. But what did he do? In his stubborn, bull-headed way he abused those mountain men who took the law into their hands for the public good, and turned hundreds of them against him; and all for a nigger—a lazy, trifling nigger boy!”

“Well, you see,” Major Warren began, lamely, “Carson and I saw Pete the night he was whipped so severely and we took pity on him. They played together when they were boys, as boys all over the South do, you know, and then he saw Mam' Linda break down over it and saw old Lewis crying for the first time in the old man's life. I was mad, Henry, myself, and you would have been if you had been there. I could have fought the men who did it, so I understand how Carson felt, and when he made the remark Wiggin is using to such deadly injury to his prospects my heart warmed to the boy. If he doesn't succeed as a politician it will be because he is too genuine for a tricky career of that sort. His friends are trying to get him to make some statement that will reinstate him with the mountain people who sympathized with the White Caps, but he simply won't do it.”

“Won't do it! I reckon not!” Dwight blurted out. “Didn't the young idiot wait in Blackburn's store for Dan Willis to come and shoot the top of his head off? He sat there till past midnight, and wouldn't move an inch till actual proof was brought to him that Willis had left town. Oh, I'm no fool! I know a thing or two. I've watched him and your daughter together. That's at the bottom of it. She sat down on him before she went off to Augusta, but her refusal didn't alter him. He knows Helen thinks a lot of her old negro mammy, and in her absence he simply took up her cause and is fighting mad about it—so mad that he is blind to his political ruin. That's what a man will do for a woman. They say she's about to become engaged down there. I hope she is, and that Carson will have pride enough when he hears of it to let another man do her fighting, and one with nothing to lose by it.”

“She hasn't written me a thing about any engagement,” the Major answered, with some animation; “but my sister highly approves of the match and writes that it may come about. Mr. Sanders is a well-to-do, honorable man of good birth and education: Helen never seemed to get over her brother's sad death. She loved poor Albert more than she ever did me or any one else.”

“And I always thought that it was Carson's association with your son in his dissipation that turned Helen against him. For all I know, she may have thought Carson actually led Albert on and was partly the cause of his sad end.”

“She may have looked at it that way,” the Major said, musingly. They had now reached the porch in the rear of the house and they went together into the wide hall. A colored maid with a red bandanna tied like a turban round her head was dusting the walnut railing of the stairs. Passing through the hall, the old gentlemen turned into the library, a great square room with wide windows and tall, gilt-framed pier-glass mirrors.

“Yes, I'm sure that's what turned her against him,” Dwight continued, “and that is where, between you and Helen, I get mixed up. Why do you always take up for the scamp? It looks to me like you'd resent the way he acted with your son after the boy's terrible end.”

“There is a good deal more in the matter, Henry, than I ever told you about.” Major Warren's voice faltered. “To be plain, that is my secret trouble. I reckon if Helen was to discover the actual truth—all of it—she would never feel the same towards me. I think maybe I ought to tell you. It certainly will explain why I am so much interested in your boy.” They sat down, the owner of the house in a reclining-chair at an oblong, carved mahogany table covered with books and papers, the visitor on a lounge near by.

“Well, it always has seemed odd to me,” old Dwight said. “I couldn't exactly believe you wanted to bring him and Helen together, after your experience with that sort of man under your own roof.”

“It is this way,” said the Major, awkwardly. “To begin with, I am sure, from all I've picked up, that it was not your son that was leading mine on to dissipation, but just the other way. He's dead and gone, but Albert was always ready for a prank of any sort. Henry, I want to talk to you about it because it seems to me you are in the same position in regard to Carson that I was in regard to my poor boy, and I've prayed a thousand times for pardon for what I did in anger and haste. Henry, listen to me. If ever a man made a vital mistake I did, and I'll bear the weight of it to my grave. You know how I worried over. Albert's drinking and his general conduct. Time after time he made promises that he would turn over a new leaf only to break them. Well, it was on the last trip—the fatal one to New York, where he had gone and thrown away so much money. I wrote him a severe letter, and in answer to it I got a pathetic one, saying he was sick and tired of the way he was doing and begging me to try him once more and send him money to pay his way home. It was the same old sort of promise and I didn't have faith in him. I was unfair, unjust to my only son. I wrote and refused, telling him that I could not trust him any more. Hell inspired that letter, Henry—the devil whispered to me that I'd been indulgent to the poor boy's injury. Then came the news. When he was found dead in a small room on the top floor of that squalid hotel—dead by his own hand—my letter lay open beside him.”

“Well, well, you couldn't help it!” Dwight said, most awkwardly, and he crossed his short, fat legs anew and reached for an open box of cigars. “You were trying to do your duty as you saw it, and to the best of your ability.”

“Yes, but my method, Henry, resulted in misery and grief to me and Helen that can never be cured. You see, it is because of that awful mistake that I take such an interest in Carson. I love him because Albert loved him, and because sometimes it seems to me that you are most too quick to condemn him. Oh, he's different! Carson has changed wonderfully since Albert died. He doesn't drink to excess now, and Garner says he has quit playing cards, having only one aim, and that to win this political race—to win it to please you, Henry.”

“Win it!” Dwight sniffed. “He's already as dead as a salt mackerel—laid out stiff and stark by his own bull-headed stupidity. I've always talked down drinking and card-playing, but I have known some men to succeed in life who had such habits in moderation; but you nor I nor no one else ever saw a blockhead succeed at anything. I tell you he'll never make a successful politician. Wiggin will beat the hind sights off of him. Wiggin is simply making capital of the fool's inability to control his temper and sympathies. Wiggin would have let that mob thrash his own father and mother rather than antagonize them and lose their votes. He knows Carson comes of fighting stock, and he will continue to egg Dan Willis and others on, knowing that every resentful word from Carson will make enemies for him by the score.”

“Oh, I can see that, too!” the Major sighed; “but, to save me, I can't help admiring the boy. He thinks the White Caps did wrong that night and he simply can't pretend otherwise. It is the principle of the thing, Henry. He is an unusual sort of candidate, and his stand may ruin his chances, but I—I glory in his firmness. I must say g me to try him once more and send him money to pay his way home. It was the same old sort of promise and I didn't have faith in him. I was unfair, unjust to my only son. I wrote and refused, telling him that I could not trust him any more. Hell inspired that letter, Henry—the devil whispered to me that I'd been indulgent to the poor boy's injury. Then came the news. When he was found dead in a small room on the top floor of that squalid hotel— dead by his own hand—my letter lay open beside him.”

“Oh yes, that's the trouble with you sentimental people,” Dwight fumed. “Between you and the boy's doting mother, the Lord only knows where he'll land. I've overlooked a lot in him in the hope that he'd put this election through, but I shall let him go his own way now. It has come to a pretty pass if I have to see my son beaten to the dust by a man of Wiggin's stamp because of that long-legged negro boy of yours who would have been better long ago if he had been soundly thrashed.”

When his visitor had gone Dwight dropped his unfinished cigar into the grate and went slowly upstairs to his wife's room. At a small-paned window overlooking the flower-garden, on a couch supported in a reclining position by several puffy pillows, was Mrs. Dwight. She was well past middle-age and of extremely delicate physique. Her hair was snowy white, her skin thin to transparency, her veins full and blue.

“That was Major Warren, wasn't it?” she asked, in a soft, sweet voice, as she put down the magazine she had been reading.

“Yes,” Dwight answered, as he went to a little desk in one corner of the room and took a paper from a pigeon-hole and put it into his pocket.

“How did he happen to come over so early?” the lady pursued.

“Because he wanted to, I reckon,” Dwight started out, impatiently, and then a note of caution came into his voice as he remembered the warning of the family physician against causing the patient even the slightest worry. “Warren hasn't a blessed thing to do, you know, from mom till night. So when he strikes a busy man he is apt to hang on to him and talk in his long-winded way about any subject that takes possession of his brain. He's great on showing men how to manage their own affairs. It takes an idle man to do that. If that man hadn't had money left to him he would now be begging his bread from door to door.”

“Somehow I fancied it was about Carson,” Mrs. Dwight sighed.

“There you go!” her husband said, with as much grace of evasion as lay in his sturdy compound. “Lying there from day to day, you seem to have contracted Warren's complaint. You think nobody can drop in even for a minute without coming about your boy—your boy! Some day, if you live long enough, you may discover that the universe was not created solely for your son, nor made just to revolve around him either.”

“Yes, I suppose I do worry about Carson a great deal,” the invalid admitted; “but you haven't told me right out that the Major was not speaking of him.”

The old man's face was the playground of conflcting impulses. He grew red with anger and his lips trembled on the very verge of an outburst, but he controlled himself. In fact, his irritability calmed down as he suddenly saw a loop-hole through which to escape her questioning.

“The truth is,” he said, “Warren was talking about Albert's death. He talked quite a while about it. He almost broke down.”

“Well, I'm so worried about Carson's campaign that I imagine all sorts of trouble,” Mrs. Dwight sighed. “I lay awake nearly all of last night thinking about one little thing. When he was in his room dressing the other day, I heard something fall to the floor. Hilda had taken him some hot water for shaving, and when she came back she told me he had dropped his revolver out of his pocket. You know till then I had had no idea he carried one, and while it may be necessary at times, the idea is very disagreeable.”

“You needn't let that bother you,” Dwight said, as he took his hat to go down to his office at his warehouse. “Nearly all the young men carry them because they think it looks smart. Most of them would run like a scared dog if they saw one pointed at them even in fun.”

“Well, I hope my boy will never have any use for one,” the invalid said. “He is not of a quarrelsome nature. It takes a good deal to make him angry, but when he gets so he is not easily controlled.”

CHAPTER IV.

HE young men in Carson Dwight's set had an odd sort of lounging-place. It was Keith Gordon's room above his father's bank in an old building which had withstood the shot and shell of the Civil War. “The Den,” as it was called by its numerous hap-hazard occupants, was reached from the street on the outside by a narrow flight of worm-eaten and rickety stairs and a perilous little balcony or passage that clung to the brick wall, twenty feet from the ground, along the full length of the building. It was here in one of the four beds that Keith slept, when there was room for him. After a big dance or a match game of baseball, when there were impecunious visitors from neighboring towns left over for various and sundry reasons, Keith had to seek the sanctimonious solitude of his father's home or go to the hotel.

The den was about twenty-five feet square. It was not as luxurious as such bachelor quarters went in Augusta, Savannah, or even Atlanta, but it answered the purpose of “the gang” which made use of it. Keith frankly declared that he had overhauled and replenished it for the last time. He said that it was absolutely impossible to keep washbasins and pitchers, when they were hurled out of the windows for pure amusement of men who didn't care whether they washed or not. As for the laundry bill, he happened to know that it was larger than that of the Johnston House or the boarding department of the Darley Female College. He said, too, that he had warned the gang for the last time that the room would be closed if any more clog-dancing were indulged in. He said his father complained that the plastering was dropping down on his desk below, and sensible men ought to know that a thing like that could not go on forever.

The rules concerning the payment for drinks were certainly lax. No accounts were kept of any man's indebtedness. Any member of the gang was at liberty to stow away a flask of any size in the bureau or wash-stand drawer, or under the mattresses or pillows of his or anybody else's bed, where Skelt, the negro who swept the room, and loved stimulants could not find it.

Bill Garner, as brainy as he was, while he was always welcome at his father's house in the country, a mile from town, seemed to love the company of this noisy set. Through the day it was said of him that he could read and saturate himself with more law than any man in the State, but at night his recreation was a cheap cigar, his old bulging carpet slippers, a cosey chair in Keith's room, and—who would think it?—the most thrilling Indian dime novel on the market. He could quote the French, German, Italian, and Spanish classics by the page in a strange musical accent he had acquired without the aid of a master or any sort of intercourse with native foreigners. He knew and loved all things pertaining to great literature—said he had a natural ear for Wagner's music, had comprehended Edwin Booth's finest work, knew a good picture when he saw it; and yet he had to have his dime novel. In it he found mental rest and relaxation that was supplied by nothing else. His bedfellow was Bob Smith, the genial, dapper, ever daintily clad clerk at the Johnston House. Garner said he liked to sleep with Bob because Bob never—sleeping or waking—took anything out of him mentally. Besides dressing to perfection, Bob played rag-time on the guitar and sang the favorite coon songs of the day. His duties at the hotel were far from arduous, and so the gang usually looked to him to arrange dances and collect toll for expenses. And Bob was not without his actual monetary value, as the proprietor of the hotel had long since discovered, for when Bob arranged a dance it meant that various socially inclined drummers of good birth and standing would, at a hint or a telegram from the clerk, “lay over” at Darley for one night anyway.

If Bob had any quality that disturbed the surface of his uniform equanimity it was his excessive pride in Carson Dwight's friendship. He interlarded his talk with what Carson had said or done, and Carson's candidacy for the Legislature had become his paramount ambition. Indeed, it may as well be stated that the rest of the gang had espoused Dwight's political cause with equal enthusiasm.

It was the Sunday morning following the night Pole Baker had prevented the meeting between Dwight and Dan Willis, and most of the habitual loungers were present waiting for Skelt to black their boots, and deploring the turn of affairs which looked so bad for their favorite. Wade Tingle was shaving at one of the windows before a mirror in a cracked mahogany frame, when they all recognized Carson's step on the balcony and a moment later Dwight stood in the doorway.

“Hello, boys, how goes it?” he asked.

“Oh, right side up, old man,” Tingle replied, as he began to rub the lather into his face with his hand to soften his week-old beard before shaving. “How's the race?”

“It's all right, I guess,” Dwight said, wearily, as he came in and sat down in a vacant chair against the wall. “How goes it in the mountains? I understand you've been over there.”

“Yes, trying to rake in some ads, stir up my local correspondents, and take subscriptions. As to your progress, old man, I'm sorry to say Wiggin's given it a sort of black eye. There was a meeting of farmers over in the tenth, at Miller's Spring. I was blamed sorry you were not there. Wiggin made a speech. It was a corker—viewed as campaign material solely. That chap's failed at the law, but he's the sharpest, most unprincipled manipulator of men's emotions I ever ran across. He showed you up as Sam Jones does the ring-tailed monster of the cloven foot.”

“What Carson said about the Willis and Johnson mob was his theme, of course?” said Garner, above the dog-eared pages of his thriller.

“That and ten thousand things Carson never dreamed of,” returned Tingle. “Here's the way it went. The meeting was held under a bush-arbor to keep the sun off, and the farmers had their wives and children out for a picnic. A long-faced parson led in prayer, some of the old maids piped up with a song that would have ripped slits in your musical tympanum, Garner, and then a raw-boned ploughman in a hickory shirt and one gallus introduced the guest of honor. How they could have overlooked the editor-in-chief and proprietor of the greatest agricultural weekly in north Georgia and picked out that skunk was a riddle to me.”

“Well, what did he say?” Garner asked, as sharply as if he were cross-examining a non-committal witness of importance.

“What did he say?” Tingle laughed, as he wiped the lather from his face with a ragged towel and stood with it in his hand. “He began by saying that he had gone into the race to win, and that he was going to the Legislature as sure as the sun was on its way down in this country and on its way up in China. He said it was a scientific certainty, as easily demonstrated as two and two make four. Those hardy, horny-handed men before him that day were not going to the polls and vote for a town dude who parted his hair in the middle, wore spike-toed shoes that glittered like a new dash-board, and was the ringleader of the rowdiest set of young card-players and whiskey-drinkers that ever blackened the morals of a mining-camp. He said that about the gang, boys, and I didn't have a thing to shoot with. In fact, I had to sit there and take in more.”

“What did he say about his platform?” Garner asked, with a heavy frown; “that's what I want to get at. You never can hurt a politician by circulating the report that he drinks—that's what half of 'em vote for.”

“Oh, his platform seemed to be chiefly that he was out to save the common people from the eternal disgrace of voting for a man like Dwight. He certainly piled it on thick and heavy. It would have made Carson's own mother slink away in shame. Carson, Wiggin said, had loved niggers since he was knee high to a duck, and had always contended that a negro owned by the aristocracy of the South was ahead of the white, razor-back stock in the mountains who had never had that advantage. Carson was up in arms against the White Caps that had come to Darley and whipped those lazy coons, and was going to prosecute every man in the bunch to the full extent of the United States law. If he got into the Legislature he intended to pass laws to make it a penitentiary offence for a white man to shove a black buck off the sidewalk. 'But he's not going to take his seat in the Capitol of Georgia,' Wiggins said, with a yell—'if Carson Dwight went to Atlanta it would not be on a free pass.' And, boys, that crowd yelled till the dry leaves overhead clapped an encore. The men yelled and the women and children yelled.”

“He's a contemptible puppy!” Dwight said, angrily.

“Yes, but he's a slick politician among men of that sort,” said Tingle. “He certainly knows how to talk and stir up strife.”

“And I suppose you sat there like a bump on a log, and listened to all that without opening your mouth!” Keith Gordon spoke up from his bed, where he lay in his bath-robe smoking over the remains of the breakfast Skelt had brought from the hotel on a big black tray.

“Well, I did—get up,” Tingle answered, with a manly flush.

“Oh, you did!” Garner leaned forward with interest.

“Well, I'm glad you happened to be on hand, for your paper has considerable influence over there.”

“Yes, I got up. I waved my hands up and down like a buzzard rising, to keep the crowd still till I could think of something to say; but, Carson, old man, you know what an idiot I used to be in college debates. I could get through fairly well on anything they would let me write down and read off, but it was the impromptu thing that always rattled me. I was as mad as hell when I rose, but all those staring eyes calmed me wonderfully. I reckon I stood there fully half a minute swallowing—”

“You damned fool!” Garner exclaimed, in high disgust.

“Yes, that's exactly what I was,” Tingle admitted. “I stood there gasping like a catfish enjoying his first excursion in open air. It was deathly still. I've heard it said that dying men notice the smallest things about them. I remember I saw the horses and mules haltered out under the trees with their hay and fodder under their noses—the dinner-baskets all in a cluster at the spring guarded by a negro woman. Then what do you think? Old Jeff Condon spoke up.

“'Lead us in prayer, brother,' he said, in reverential tones, and since I was born I never heard so much laughing.”

“You certainly did play into Wiggin's hands,” growled the disgruntled Garner. “That's exactly what a glib-tongued skunk like him would want.”

“Well, it gave me a minute to try to get my wind, anyway,” said Tingle, still red in the face, “but I wasn't equal to a mob of baseball rooters like that. I started in to deny some of Wiggin's charges when another smart Alec spoke up and said: 'Hold on! tell us about the time you and your candidate started home from a ball at Catoosa Springs in a buggy, and were so drunk that the horse took you to the house of a man who used to own him sixteen miles from where you wanted to go. Of course, you all know, boys, that was a big exaggeration, but I had no idea it was generally known. Anyway, I thought the crowd would laugh their heads off. I reckon it was the way I looked. I felt as if every man, woman, and child there had mashed a bad egg on me and was chuckling over their marksmanship. I ended up by getting mad, and I saw by Wiggin's grin that he liked that. I managed to say a few things in denial, and then Wiggin got up and roasted me and my paper to a turn. He said that in supporting Dwight editorially the Headlight was giving sanction to Dwight's ideas in favor of the negro and against honest white people, and that every man there who had any family or State pride ought to stop taking the dirty sheet; and, bless your life, some of them did cancel their subscriptions when they met me after the speaking; but I'm going to keep on mailing it, anyway. It will be like sending free tracts to the heathen, but it may bear fruit.”

CHAPTER V.

ALF an hour later all the young men had left the room except Garner and Dwight. Garner still wore the frown brought to his broad brow by Tingle's recital.

“I've set my heart on putting this thing through,” he said; “and while it looks kind of shaky, I haven't lost all hope yet. Of course, your reckless remarks about the White Caps have considerably damaged us in the mountains, but we may live it down. It may die a natural death if you and Dan Willis don't meet and plug away at each other and set the talk afloat again. I reckon he'll keep out of your way when he's sober, anyway.”

“I am not running after him,” Carson returned. “I simply said what I thought and Wiggin made the most of it.”

Garner was silent for several minutes, then he folded his dime novel and bent it across his knee, and when he finally spoke Dwight thought he had never seen a graver look on the strong face. He had seen it full of emotional tears when Garner was at the height of earnest appeal to a jury in a murder case; he had seen it dark with the fury of unjust legal defeat, but now there was a strange feminine whiteness at the corners of the big facile mouth, a queer twitching of the lips.

“I've made up my mind to tell you a secret,” he said, falteringly. “I've come near it several times and backed out. It's a subject I don't know how to handle. It's about a woman, Carson. You know I'm not a ladies' man. I don't call on women; I don't take them buggy-riding; I don't dance with them, or even know how to fire soft things at them like you and Keith, but I've had my experience.”

“It certainly is a surprise to me,” Dwight said, sympathetically, and then in the shadow of Garner's seriousness he found himself unable to make further comment.

“I reckon you'll lose all respect for me for thinking there was a ghost of a chance in that particular quarter,” Garner pursued, without meeting his companion's eye. “But, Carson, my boy, there is a certain woman that every man who knows her has loved or is still loving. Keith's crazy about her, though he has given up all hope as I did long ago, and even poor Bob Smith thinks he's in luck if she will only listen to one of his new songs or let him do her some favor. We all love her, Carson, because she is so sweet and kind to us—”

“You mean—” Dwight interrupted, impulsively, and then lapsed into silence, an awkward flush rising to his brow.

“Yes, I mean Helen Warren, old man. As I say, I had never thought of a woman that way in my life. We were thrown together once at a house-party at Hilburn's farm—well, I simply went daft. She never refused to walk with me when I asked her, and seemed specially interested in my profession. I didn't know it at the time, but I have since discovered that she has that sweet way with every man, rich or poor, married or single. Well, to make a long story short, I proposed to her. The whole thing is stamped on my brain as with a branding-iron. We had taken a long walk that morning and were seated under a big beech-tree near a spring. She kept asking about my profession, her face beaming, and it all went to my head. I knew that I was the ugliest man in the State, that I had no style about me, and knew nothing about being nice to women of her sort; but her interest in everything pertaining to the law made me think, you know, that she admired that kind of thing. I went wild. As I told her how I felt I actually cried. Think of it—I was silly enough to blubber like a baby! I can't describe what happened. She was shocked and pained beyond description. She had never dreamed that I felt that way. I ended by asking her to try to forget it all, and we had a long, awful walk to the house.”

“That was tough,” Carson Dwight said, a queer expression on his face.

“Well, I've told it to you for a special reason,” Garner said, with a big, trembling sigh. “Carson, I am a close observer, and I afterwards made up my mind that I knew why she had led me on to talk so much about the law and my work in particular.”

“Oh, you found that out!” Carson said, almost absently.

“Yes, my boy, it was about the time you and I were thinking of going in together. It was all on your account.”

Carson stared straight at Garner. “My account? Oh no!”

“Yes, on your account. I've kept it from you all this time. I'm your friend now in full—to the very bone, but at that time I felt too sore to tell you. I'd lost all I cared for on earth, but I simply had too much of primitive man left in me to let you know how well you stood. My God, Carson, about that time I used to sit at my desk behind some old book pretending to read, but just looking at you as you sat at work wondering how it would feel to have what was yours. Then I watched you both together; you seemed actually made for each other, an ideal couple. Then came your—she refused you.”

“I know, I know, but why talk about it, Garner?” Carson had risen and stood in the doorway in the rays of the morning sun. There was silence for a moment. The church bells were ringing and negroes and whites were passing along the street below.

“It may be good for me to speak of it and be done with it, or it may not,” said Garner; “but this is what I was coming to. I've said it was a long time before I could tell you that she was once—I don't know how she is now, but she was at one time in love with you.”

“Oh no, no, she was never that!” Dwight said. “We were great friends, but she never cared that much for me or for any one.”

“Well, it was a long time before I could say what I thought about that, and I have only just now taken another step in self-renunciation. Carson, I can now say that you didn't have a fair deal, and that I have reached a point in which I want to see you get it. I think I know why she refused you.”

“You do?” Dwight said, pale and excited, as he came away from the door and leaned heavily against the wall near his friend.

“Yes, it was this way. I've studied it all out. She loved Albert as few women love their brothers, and his grim end was an almost unbearable shock. After his death, you know it leaked out that you had been Albert's constant companion through his dissipation, almost, in fact, up to the very end. She couldn't reconcile herself to your part, innocent as it was, in the tragedy, and it simply killed the feeling she had for you. I suppose it is natural to a character as strong as hers.”

“I've always feared that—that was the reason,” said Dwight, falteringly, as he went back to the door and looked out. There was a droop of utter dejection on him and his face seemed to have aged. “Garner,” he said, suddenly, “there is no use denying anything. You have admitted your love for her, why should I deny mine? I never cared for any other woman and I never shall.”

“That's right, but you didn't get a fair deal, all the same,” said Garner. “She's never looked for any sort of justification in your conduct; her poor brother's death stands like a draped wall between you, but I know you were not as black as you were painted. Carson, all the time you were keeping pace with Albert Warren you were blind to the gulf ahead of him and were simply glorying in his friendship—because he was her brother. Ah, I know that feeling!”

Carson was silent, while Garner's gray eyes rested on him for a moment full of conviction, and then he nodded. “Yes, I think that was it. It was my ruination, but I could not get away from the fascination of his companionship. He fairly worshipped her and used to talk of her constantly when we were together, and he—he sometimes told me things she kept back. He knew how I felt. I told him. Through him I seemed to be closer to her. But when the news came that he was dead, and when I met her at the funeral at the church, and caught her eye, I saw her shrink back in abhorrence. She wouldn't go out with me ever again after that, and was never exactly the same.”

“That was two years ago, my boy,” Garner said, significantly, “and your character has changed. You are a better, firmer man. In fact, it seems to me that your change dates from Albert Warren's death. But now I'm coming to the thing that prompted me to say all this. I met Major Warren in the post-office this morning. He was greatly excited. Carson, she has just written him that she is coming home for a long stay and the old gentleman is simply wild with delight.”

“Oh, she's coming, then!” Dwight exclaimed, in surprise.

“Yes, and Keith and Bob and the rest of her adorers will go crazy over the news and want to celebrate it. I didn't tell them. I wanted you to know it first. There is one other thing. You know you can't tell whether there is anything in an idle report, but the gossips say she has perhaps met her fate down there. I've even heard his name—one Earle Sanders, a well-to-do cotton merchant of good standing in the business world. But I'll never believe she's engaged to him till the cards are out.”

“I really think it may be true,” Carson Dwight said, a firm, set expression about his lips. “I've heard of him. He's a man of fine character and intellect. Yes, it may be true, Garner.”

“Well,” and Garner drew himself up and folded his arms, “if it should happen to be so, Carson, there would be only one thing to do, and that would be to grin and bear it.”

“Yes, that would be the only thing,” Dwight made answer. “She has a right to happiness, and it would have been wrong for her to have tied herself to me, when I was what I was, and when I am still as great a failure as I am.”

He turned suddenly out onto the passage, and Garner heard his resounding tread as he walked away.

“Poor old chap,” Garner mused, as he leaned forward and looked at the threadbare toes of his slippers, “if he weathers this storm he'll make a man right—if not, he'll go down with the great majority, the motley throng meant for God only knows what purpose.”

CHAPTER VI.

HE Warren homestead was in a turmoil of excitement over Helen's return. The ex-slaves of the family for miles around had assembled to celebrate the occasion in quite the ante-bellum fashion. The men and grown boys sat about the front lawn and on the steps of the long veranda and talked of the day Helen was born, of her childhood, of her beauty and numerous conquests, away from them, and of the bare possibility of her deigning to accept the hand of some one of her powerful and wealthy suitors.

In her own chamber, a great square room with many windows, Helen, tall, graceful, with light-brown eyes and almost golden hair, was receiving the women and girls. She had brought a present suitable for each of them, as they knew she would, and the general rejoicing was equal to that of an old-time Georgia Christmas.

“You are all here,” Helen smiled, as she looked about the room, “except Mam' Linda. Is she not well?”

“Yessum, she's well as common,” Jennie, a yellow house-maid, said, “as well as she been since Pete had dat scrimmage wid de White Caps. Missie, you gwine notice er gre't change in Mam' Lindy. Since dat turrible night, while she seem strong in de body, she looks powerful weak in de face en sperit. Unc' Lewis is worried about 'er. She des set in er cottage do' en rock back an' fo'th all day long. You done heard 'bout dat lambastin', 'ain't you, Missie?”

“Yes, my father wrote me about it,” Helen replied, an expression of sympathetic pain on her well-featured face, “but he didn't tell me that mammy was taking it so hard.”

“He was tryin' ter keep you fum worryin',” Jennie said, observantly. “Marster knowed how much sto' you set by yo' old mammy. He was de maddest man you ever laid eyes on dat night, but he couldn't do nothin', fer it was all over, en dem white trash done skedaddle back whar dey come fum.”.

“And was Pete so much to blame?” Helen asked, her voice shaking.

“Blame fer de company he been keepin', Missie—dat's all; but what you gwine ter do wid er strappin' young nigger growin' up? It des like it was in de old day fo' de war. De niggers had to have deir places ter meet an' cut up shines. Dey been done too much of it at Ike Bowen's. De white folks dat lived round dar couldn't sleep at night. It was one long shindig or a fist-cuff scrap fum supper till daylight.”

“Well, I wish Mam' Linda would come to see me,” Helen said. “I'm anxious about her. If she isn't here soon I'll go to her.”

“She's comin' right on, Missie,” another negro girl said, “but she tol' Unc' Lewis she was gwine ter wait till we all cleared out. She say you her baby, en she ain't gwine ter be bothered wid so many, when she see you de fust time after so long.”

“That's exactly like her,” Helen smiled. “Well, you all must go now, and, Jennie, tell her I am dying to see her.”

The room was soon cleared of its chattering and laughing throng, and Linda, supported by her husband, a stalwart mulatto, came from her cottage behind the house and went up to Helen's room. She was short, rather portly, about half white, and for that reason had a remarkably intelligent face which bore the marks of a strong character. Entering the room, after sharply enjoining her husband to wait for her in the hall, she went straight up to Helen and laid her hand on the young lady's head.

“So I got my baby back once mo',” she said, tenderly.

“Yes, I couldn't stay away, Mammy,” Helen said, with an indulgent smile. “After all, home is the sweetest place on earth—but you mustn't stand up; get a chair.”

The old woman obeyed, slowly placing the chair near that of her mistress and sitting down. “I'm glad you got back, honey,” she said. “I loves all my white folks, but you is my baby, en I never could talk to de rest of um lak I kin ter you. Oh, honey, yo' old mammy has had lots en lots er trouble!”

“I know, Mammy, father wrote me about it, and I've heard more since I got here. I know how you love Pete.”

Linda folded her arms on her breast and leaned forward till her elbows rested on her knees. Helen saw a wave of emotion shake her whole body as she straightened up and faced her with eyes that seemed melting in grief. “Honey,” she said, “folks said when de law come en give we all freedom dat de good day was at hand. It was ter be a time er plenty en joy fer black folks; but, honey, never while I was er slave did I had ter suffer what I'm goin' thoo now. In de old time marster looked after us; de lash never was laid on de back er one o' his niggers. No white pusson never dared to hit one of us, en yit now in dis day er glorious freedom, er whole gang of um come in de dead er night en tied my child wid ropes en tuck turn about lashin' 'im. Honey, sometimes I think dey ain't no Gawd fer a pusson wid one single streak er black blood in 'im. Ef dey is er Gawd fer sech es me, why do He let me pass thoo what been put on me? I heard dat boy's cryin' half er mile, honey, en stood in de flo' er my house en couldn't move, listenin' en listenin' ter his screams en dat lash failin' on 'im. Den dey let 'im loose en he come runnin' erlong de street ter find me—ter find his mammy, honey—his mammy who couldn't do nothin' fer 'im. En dar right at my feet he fell over in er faint. I thought he was dead en never would open his eyes ergin.”

“And I wasn't here to comfort you!” Helen said, in a tearful tone of self-reproach. “You were alone through it all.”

“No, I wasn't, honey. Thank de Lawd, dar is some er de right kind er white folks left. Marse Carson Dwight heard it all fum his room en come over. He raised Pete up en tuck 'im in an' laid 'im on de baid. He tuck 'im up in his arms, honey, young marster did, en set to work to bring 'im to. An' after de po' boy was easy en ersleep en de doctor gone off, Marse Carson come ter me en tuck my hand. 'Mam' Lindy,' he said, es pale as ef he'd been sick er long time, 'dis night's work has give me some'n' ter think erbout. De best white men in de Souf won't stan' fer dis. Sech things cayn't go on forever. Ef I go to de Legislature I'll see dat dey gwine ter pass laws ter pertect you faithful old folks.”

“Carson said that?” Helen's voice was husky, her glance averted.

“Yes, en he was dead in earnest, honey; he wasn't des talkin' ter comfort me. I know, kase I done hear suppen else dat happened since den.”

“What was that?” Helen asked.

“Why, dey say dat Marse Carson went straight down-town en tried ter find somebody dat was in de mob. He heard Dan Willis was among 'em—you know who he is, honey. He's er bad, desp'rate moonshine man. Well, Marse Carson spoke his mind about 'im, an' dared 'im out in de open. Unc' Lewis said Mr. Garner an' all Marse Carson's friends tried to stop 'im, kase it would go dead agin 'im in his 'lection, but Marse Carson wouldn't take back er word, en was so mad he couldn't hold in. En dat another hard thing to bear, honey,” Linda went on. “Des think, Marse Carson cayn't even try to help er po' old woman lak me widout ruinin' his own chances.”

“Is it as serious as that?” Helen asked, with deep concern.

“Yes, honey, he never kin win his race lessen he act diffunt. Dey say dat man Wiggin is laughin' fit ter kill hisse'f over de way he got de upper hold. I told Marse Carson des t'other day he mustn't do dat way, but he laughed in my face in de sweet way he always did have. 'Ef dey vote ergin me fer dat, Mam' Lindy,' he say, 'deir votes won't be worth much.' Marse Carson is sho got high principle, honey. His pa think he ain't worth much, but he's all right. You mark my words, he's gwine ter make a gre't big man—he gwine ter do dat kase he's got er tender heart in 'im, an ain't afeard of anything dat walk on de yeath. He may lose dis one 'lection, but he'll not stop. I know young white men, thoo en thoo, en I never y it seen er better one.”

“Have you—have you seen him recently?” Helen asked, surprised at the catch in her voice.

“Oh yes, honey,” the old woman said, plaintively; “seem lak he know how I'm sufferin', en he been comin' over often en talkin' ter me'n Lewis. Seem lak he's so sad, honey, here late. Ain't you seed 'im yit, honey?”

“No, he hasn't been over,” Helen replied, rather awkwardly. “He will come, though; he and I are good friends.”

“You gwine find 'im changed er lot, honey,” the old woman said. “Do you know, I don't believe he ever got over Marse Albert's death. He warn't ter blame 'bout dat, honey, dough I do believe he feel dat way. Seem lak we never kin fetch up Marse Albert's name widout Marse Carson git sad. One night here late when Lewis was talkin' 'bout when yo' pa went off en fetched young master home, Marse Carson hung his head en say: 'Mam' Lindy, I wish dat time could be go over ergin. I would act so diffunt. I never seed whar all dem scrapes was leadin' to. But it learned me a lesson, Mam' Lindy.'”

“That's it,” Helen said, bitterly, as if to herself; “he survived. He has profited by the calamity, but my poor, dear brother—” She went no further, for her voice broke and her eyes filled with tears.

“Don't think erbout dat, honey,” old Linda said, consolingly. “You got yo' one great trouble lak I has, but you is at home wid we all now, en you must not be sad.”

“I don't intend to be, Mammy,” Helen said, wiping her eyes on her handkerchief. “We are going to try to do something to keep Pete out of trouble. Father thinks it is his associates that are to blame. We must try in future to keep him away from bad company.”

“Dat what I want ter do, honey,” the old woman said, “en ef I des had somewhar ter send 'im so he could be away fum dis town I'd be powerful glad.”

CHAPTER VII.

Helen anticipated, the young ladies of the town, her most intimate friends and former school-mates, came in a body that afternoon to see her. The reception formally opened in the great parlor down-stairs, but it was not many minutes before they all found themselves in Helen's chamber fluttering about and chattering like doves in their spring plumage.

“There's no use putting it off longer,” Ida Tarpley, Helen's cousin, laughed; “they are all bent on seeing your things, and they will simply spend the night here if you don't get them out.”

“Oh, I think that would look so vain and silly in me,” Helen protested, her color rising. “I don't like to exhibit my wardrobe as if I were a dressmaker, or a society woman who is hard up and trying to dispose of them.”

“The idea of your not doing it, dear,” Mary King, a little blonde, said, “when not one of us has seen a decent dress or hat since the summer visitors went away last fall.”

“Leave it to me,” Ida Tarpley laughed. “You girls get off the bed. I want something to lay them on. If it were only evening I'd make her put on that gown she wore at the Governor's ball. You remember what the Constitution's society reporter said about it. He said it was a poet's dream. If I ever get one it will be in a dream. You must really wear it to your dance, Helen.”

“My dance?” Helen said, in surprise.

“Oh, I hope I'm not telling secrets,” Ida said; “but I met Keith Gordon and Bob Smith in town as I came on. They had a list and were taking subscriptions from all the young men. They had already enough put down to buy a house and lot. They say they are going to give you the swellest dance that was eyer heard of. Bob said that it simply had to surpass anything you'd been to in Augusta or Atlanta. Expense is not to be considered. The finest band in Chattanooga has already been engaged; the refreshments are to be brought from there by a caterer and a dozen expert waiters. A carload of flowers have been ordered. It is to open with a grand march.” Ida swung her hands and body comically to and fro as if in the cake walk, and bowed low. “Nobody is to be allowed to dance with you who hasn't an evening suit on, and then only once. They are all crazy about you, Helen. I never could understand it. I've tried to copy the look you have in the eyes hundreds of times, but it won't have the slightest effect.”

“There's only one explanation of it,” Miss Wimberley, another girl, remarked; “it is simply because she really likes them all.”

“Well, I really do, as for that,” Helen said; “and I think it is awfully nice of them to give me such a dance. It's enough to turn a girl's head. Well, if Ida really is going to pull out my things, I'll go down-stairs and make you a lemonade.”

Later in the afternoon the young ladies had all gone except Ida Tarpley, who lingered with Helen on the veranda.

“I'm glad the girls didn't have the bad taste to embarrass you by questioning you about Mr. Sanders,” Ida said. “Of course, it is all over town. Uncle spoke of the possibility of it to some one and that put it afloat. I'm anxious to see him, Helen. I know he must be nice—everything, in fact, that a man ought to be, for you always had high ideals.”

Helen flushed almost angrily, and she drew herself erect and stood quite rigid, looking at her cousin.

“Ida,” she said, “I don't like what you have just said.”

“Oh, dearest, I'm sorry, but I thought—”

“That's the trouble about a small town,” Helen went on. “People take such liberties with you, and about the most delicate things. Down in Augusta my friends never would think of saying I was actually engaged to a man till it was announced. But here at home it is in every mouth before they have even seen the gentleman in question.”

“But you really have been receiving constant attentions from Mr. Sanders for more than a year, haven't you, dear?” Miss Tarpley asked, blandly.

“Yes, but what of that?” Helen retorted. “He and I are splendid friends. He has been very kind and thoughtful of my comfort, and I like him. He is noble, sincere, and good. He extended the sweetest sympathy to me when I went down there under my great grief, and I never can forget it, but, nevertheless, Ida, I have not promised to marry him.”

“Oh, I see, it is not actually settled yet,” Miss Tarpley said. “Well, I'm glad. I'm very, very glad.”

“You are glad?” Helen said, wonderingly.

“Yes, I am. I'm glad because I don't want you to go away off down there and marry a stranger to us. I really hope something will break it up. I know Mr. Sanders must be awfully fond of you—any man would be who had a ghost of a chance of winning you—and I know your aunt has been doing all in her power to bring the match about—but I understand you, dear, and I am afraid you would not be happy.”

“Why do you say that so—so positively?” Helen asked, coldly.

“Because,” Ida said, impulsively, “I don't believe a girl of your disposition ever could love in the right way more than once, and—”

“And what?” Helen demanded, her proud lips compressed, her eyes flashing defiantly.

“Well, I may be wrong, dear,” Miss Tarpley went on, “but if you were not actually in love before you went to Augusta, you were very near it.”

“How absurd!” Helen exclaimed, with a little angry toss of her head.

“Do you remember the night our set drove out to the Henderson party? I went with Mr. Garner and Carson Dwight took you? Oh, Helen, I met you and Carson walking together in the moonlight that evening under the apple-trees in the old meadow, and if ever a pair of human beings really loved each other you two must have done so that night. I saw it in his happy, triumphant face, and in the fact, Helen dear, that you allowed him to be with you so much, when you knew other admirers were waiting to see you.”

Helen looked down; her face was clouded over, her proud lip twitched.

“Ida,” she said, tremulously, “I don't want you ever again to mention Carson Dwight's name to me in—in that way. You have no right to.”

“Yes, I have,” Ida protested, firmly. “I have the right as a loyal friend to the best, most suffering, and noblest young man I ever knew. I read you like a book, dear. You really cared very, very much for Carson once, but after your great loss you never thought the same of him again.”

“No, nor I never shall,” Helen said, firmly. “I admire him and shall treat him as a good friend when we meet, but that will be the end of it. Whether I cared for him or not, as girls care for young men, is neither here nor there. It is over with.”

“And all simply because he was a little wild at the time your poor brother—”

“Stop!” Helen said; “don't argue the matter. I can only now associate him with the darkest hour of my life. I'm tempted to tell you something, Ida,” and Helen bowed her head for a moment, and then went on in an unsteady voice. “When my poor brother's trunk was brought home, it was my duty to put the things it contained in order. There I found some letters to him, and one dated only two days before Albert's death was from—from Carson Dwight. I read only a portion of it, but it revealed a page in poor Albert's life that I had never read—never dreamed could be possible.”

“But Carson,” Ida Tarpley exclaimed; “what did he have to do with that?”

Helen swallowed the lump in her throat, and with a cold, steely gleam in her eyes she said, bitterly: “He could have held out his hand with the superior strength you think he has and drawn the poor boy back from the brink, but he didn't. The words he wrote about it were light, flippant, and heartless. He treated the whole awful situation as a joke, as if—as if he himself were familiar with such unmentionable things.”

“Ah, I begin to understand it all now!” Ida sighed. “That letter, coupled with Cousin Albert's awful death, was such a terrible shock that you cannot feel the same towards Carson. But oh, Helen, you would pity him if you knew him now as I do. He has never altered in his feelings towards you. In fact, it seems to me that he loves you even more deeply than ever. And, dear, if you had seen his patient efforts to make a better man of himself you'd not harbor such thoughts against him. You will understand Carson some day, but it may then be too late. I don't believe a woman ever has a real sweetheart but once. You may marry the man your aunt wants you to take, but your heart will some day turn back to the other. You will remember, too, and bitterly, that you condemned him for a youthful fault which you ought to have pardoned.”

“Do you think so, Ida?” Helen asked, her soft, brown eyes averted.

“Yes, and you'll remember, too, that while his other friends were trying to help him stick to his resolutions you turned against him. He's going to make a great and good man, Helen. I've known that for some time. He is having his troubles, but even they will help him to be stronger in the end. His greatest trial is going on right now, while folks are saying that you are going to marry another man. Pshaw! you may say what you like about Mr. Sanders' good qualities, but I know I shall not like him,” concluded Ida, with a smile, as she turned to go. “He is a usurper, and I'm dead against him.”

Helen remained on the veranda after her cousin had left till the twilight gathered about her. She was about to go in, as it was near tea-time, when she heard a grumbling voice down the street and saw old Uncle Lewis returning from town, driving his son, the troublesome Peter, before him.

“You go right thoo dat gate on back ter dat house, you black imp er 'straction!” he thundered, “er I'll tek er boa'd en lambast de life out'n you. Here it is night-time en you ain't chop no stove-wood fer de big house kitchen, en been lyin' roun' dem cotton wagons raisin' mo' rows wid dem mountain white men.”

“What's the matter, Uncle Lewis?” Helen asked, as the boy sulkily passed round the corner of the house and the old man, out of breath, paused at the steps.

“Oh, Missy, you don't know what me'n' Mam' Lindy got to bear up under. We don't know how ter manage dat boy. Lindy right now is out'n 'er head wid worry. Buck Black come tol' us 'bout an hour ago dat Pete en some mo' triflin' niggers was down at de warehouse sassin' some mountain white men. Buck heard Pete say dat Johnson en his gang couldn't whip him ergin dout gittin' in trouble, en dey was in er inch of er big row when de marshal busted it up. Buck ain't no fool, fer a black man, Missy, en he told me'n' Lindy ef we don't manage ter git Pete out'n de company he keeps dat dem white men will sho string 'im up.”

“Yes, something has to be done, that's plain,” said Helen, sympathetically. “I know Mam' Linda must be worrying, and I'll go down to see her this evening. It doesn't seem to me that a town like this is best for a boy like Pete. I'll speak to father about it, Uncle Lewis. It won't do to have Mammy bothered like this. It will kill her. She is not strong enough to stand it.”

“Oh, Missy,” the old man said, “I wish you would try ter do some'n'. Me'n' Lindy is sho at de end er our rope.”

“Well, I promise you I'll do all I can, Uncle Lewis,” Helen said, and, much relieved, the old negro trudged homeward.

CHAPTER VIII.

LOCAL institution in which “the gang” was more or less interested was known as the “Darley Club.” It occupied the entire upper floor of a considerable building on the main street, and had been organized, primarily, by the older married men of the town to give the young men of the best families a better meeting-place than the bar-rooms and offices of the hotels. At first the older men looked in occasionally to see that the rather rigid rules of the institution were being kept. But men of middle-age and past, who have comfortable firesides, are not fond of the noisy gatherings of their original prototypes, and the Club was soon left to the management of the permanent president, Mr. Wade Tingle, editor of the Headlight.

Wade endeavored, to the best of his genial nature, to enforce all rules, collect all dues, and impose all fines, but he wasn't really the man for the place. He accepted what cash was handed to him, trying to remember the names of the payers and amounts as he wrote his editorials, political notes, and social gossip, ending up at the end of each month with no money at all to pay the rent or the wages of the negro factotum. However, there was always an outlet from this embarrassment, for Wade had only to draw a long face as he met some of the well-to-do stay-at-homes and say that “club expenses were somehow running short,” and without question the shortage was made up. Wade had tried to be officially stern, too, on occasion. Once when Keith Gordon had violated what Wade termed club discipline, not to say club etiquette, Wade threatened to be severe. But it happened to be a point upon which there was a division of opinion, and Keith also belonged to “the gang.” It had happened this way: Keith had a certain corner in the Club reading-room where he was wont to write his letters of an evening, and coming down after supper one night he discovered that the attendant had locked the door and gone off to supper. Keith was justly angry. He stood at the door for a few minutes, and then, being something of an athlete, he stepped back, made a run the width of the sidewalk, and broke the lock, left the door hanging on a single hinge, and went up and calmly wrote his letters. As has been intimated, Wade took a serious view of this violation of club dignity, his main contention being that Keith ought to have the lock repaired and the hinge replaced. However, Keith just as firmly stood on his rights, his contention being that a member of the Club in good standing could not be withheld from his rights by the mere carelessness of a negro or a twenty-five cent cast-iron lock. So it was that, in commemoration of the incident, the door remained without the lock and hinge for many a day.

It was in this building that the grand ball in honor of Helen Warren's home-coming was to be given. During the entire preceding day Bob Smith and Keith Gordon worked like happy slaves. The floor had been roughened by roller-skating, and a carpenter with plane and sand-paper was smoothing it, Bob giving it its finishing touch by whittling sperm candles over it and rubbing in the shavings with the soles of his shoes as he pirouetted about, his right arm curved around an imaginary waist. The billiard-tables were pushed back against the wall, the ladies' dressing-rooms thoroughly scoured and put in order, and the lamps cleaned and trimmed. Keith had brought down from his home some fine oil-paintings, and these were hung appropriately. But Keith's chef-d'ouvre of arrangement and decoration was a happy inspiration, and he was enjoining it on the initiated ones to keep it as a surprise for Helen. He had once heard her say that her favorite flower was the wild daisy, and as they were now in bloom, and grew in profusion in the fields around the town, Keith had ordered several wagon-loads of them gathered, and now the walls of the ballroom were fairly covered with them. Graceful festoons of the flowers hung from the ceiling, draped the doorways, and rose in beautiful mounds on the white-clothed refreshment-tables.

As a special favor he admitted Carson Dwight in at the carefully guarded door at dusk on the evening of the ball, first drawing down the blinds and lighting the candles and lamps that his chum might have the full benefit of the scene as it would strike Helen on her arrival.

“Isn't that simply superb?” he asked. “Do you reckon they gave her anything prettier while she was down there? I don't believe it, Carson. I think this is the dandiest room a girl ever tripped a toe in.”

“Yes, it's all right,” Dwight said, admiringly. “It is really great, and she will appreciate it keenly. She is that way.”

“I think so myself,” said Keith. “I've been nervous all day, though, old man. I've been watching every train.”

“Afraid the band wouldn't come?” asked Dwight.

“No, those coons can be depended on; they will be down in full force with the best figure-caller in the South. No, I was afraid, though, that Helen might have written to that Augusta chump, and that he would come up. That certainly would give the thing cold feet.”

“Ah!” Carson exclaimed; “I see.”

“The dear girl wouldn't rub it in on us to that extent, old man,” Keith said. “I know it now. She really may be engaged to him, and she may not, but she knows how we feel, and it's bully of her not to invite him. It would really have been a wet blanket to the whole business. We'd have to treat him decently, as a visitor, you know, but I'd rather have taken castor-oil for my part of it. All the gang except you were over to see her Sunday afternoon; why didn't you go?”

“Oh, you know I live only next door, with an open gate between, and I thought I'd better give my place to you fellows who don't have my opportunity. I've already seen her. In fact, she ran over to see my mother yesterday.”

The ball was in full swing when Carson arrived that night. The street in front of the club was crowded with carriages, buggies, and livery-stable “hacks.” The introductory grand march was in progress, and when Carson went to the improvised dressing-room in charge of Skelt to check his hat he found Garner standing before a mirror tugging at the lapels of an evening coat and trying to adjust a necktie which kept climbing higher than it should. Darley was just at the point in its post-bellum struggle where evening dress for men was a thing more of the luxurious past than the stern present, and Dwight readily saw that his partner had persuaded himself for once to don borrowed plumage.

“What's the matter?” Carson asked, as he thrust his hat-check into the pocket of his immaculate white waistcoat.

“Oh, the damn thing don't fit!” said Garner, in high disgust. “I know now that my father has a hump, or did have when he ordered this suit for his wedding-trip. The tailor who designed this costeem de swaray tried to help him out, but he has transferred the hump to me by other means than heredity. Look how the back of it sticks out from my neck!”

“That's because you twist your body to see it in the glass,” said Carson, consolingly. “It's not so bad when you stand straight.”

“It's a case of not seeing others as they see you, eh?” Garner said, better satisfied. “I haven't taken a chew of tobacco to-night. I wouldn't splotch this shirt for the world. I couldn't spit farther than an inch with this collar on, anyway. She's holding the reel for me. I can't dance anything else, but I can go through that pretty well if I get at the end and watch the others. You'd better hurry up and see her card. There is a swell gang coming on the ten-o'clock train from Atlanta, and they all know her.”

It was during the interval following the third number on the programme that Carson met Helen promenading with Keith and offered her his arm.

“Oh, isn't it simply superb?” she said, when Keith had bowed himself away and they had joined the other strollers round the big, flower-perfumed room. “Carson, really I actually cried for joy just now in the dressing-room. I declare I never want to go away from home again. I'll never have such devoted friends as these.”

“It is nice of you to look at it that way, Helen,” he said, “after the gay time you have had in Augusta and other cities.”

“At least it is honest and sincere here at home,” she answered, “while down there it is—well, full of strife, social competition, and jealousies. I really; got homesick and simply had to come back.”

“We are simply delighted to have you again,” he said, almost fearing to look upon her, for in her exquisite evening gown and the proud poise of her head she seemed more beautiful and imperious, and farther removed from his hopes than he had thought her even in the darkest hours of her first refusal to condone his fatal offence.

She was looking straight into his eyes with a thoughtful, questioning stare, when she said: “They all seem the same, Carson, except you. Bob Smith, Keith, and even Mr. Garner are just like I left them, but somehow you are altered. You look so much older, so much more serious. Is it politics that is weighing you down—making you worry?”

“Well,” he laughed, evasively, “politics is not exactly the easiest game in the world, and the bare fear that I may not succeed, after all, is enough to make a fellow of my temperament worry. It seems to be my last throw of the dice, Helen. My father will lose all faith in me if this does not go through.”

“Yes, I know it is serious,” the girl said. “Keith and Mr. Garner have talked to me about it. They say they have never seen you so much absorbed in anything before. You really must win, Carson—you simply must!”

“But this is no time to talk over sordid politics,” he said, with a smile. “This is your party and it must be made delightful.”

“Oh, I have my worries, too,” she said, gravely. “I felt a queer twinge of conscience to-night when all the servants came to see me before I left home. They were all so happy except Mam' Linda. She tried to act like the rest, but, Carson, her trouble about that worthless boy is actually killing the dear old woman. She has her pride, too, and it has been wounded to the quick. She was always proud of the fact that my father never had whipped one of his slaves. I've heard her boast of it a hundred times; and now that she no longer belongs to us in reality, and her only child was beaten so cruelly, she simply can't get over it.”

“I knew she felt that way,” Dwight said, sympathetically.

Helen's hand tightened unconsciously on his arm as they were passing by the corner containing the orchestra. “Do you know,” she said, “Mam' Linda told me that of all the people who had been to see her since then that you had been the kindest, most thoughtful, the most helpful? Carson, that was very, very sweet of you.”

“I was only electioneering,” he said, with a flush. “I was after Uncle Lewis's vote and Mam' Linda's influence.”

“No, you were not,” Helen declared. “It was pure, unadulterated unselfishness on your part. You were sorry for her and for Uncle Lewis and even Pete, who certainly needed punishment of some sort for the way he's been conducting himself. Yes, it was only your good heart. I know that, for several persons have told me you have even gone so far as to let the affair hamper you in your political career. Oh, I know all about what your opponent is saying, and I know mountain people well enough to know you have given him a powerful weapon. They are terribly wrought up over the race troubles, and it would be easy enough for them to misunderstand your exact feeling. Oh, Carson, you must not let even Mam' Linda's trouble stand between you and your high aim. Taking up her cause will perhaps not do a bit of good, for no one person can solve so vital a problem as that is, and your agitation of it may wreck your last hope.”

“I've promised to keep my mouth shut, if Dan Willis and men of his sort will not stay right at my heels with their threats. My campaign managers—the gang, who hold a daily caucus at the den and lay down my rules of conduct—have exacted that much from me on the penalty of letting me go by the board if I disobey.”

“The dear boys!” Helen exclaimed. “I like every one of them, they are so loyal to you. The close friendship of you all for one another is simply beautiful.”

“Coming back to the inevitable Pete,” Dwight remarked, a few minutes later. “I've been watching him since he was whipped, and I know he is in great danger of getting even more deeply into trouble. He has a stupidly resentful disposition, as many of his race have, and he is going around making surly threats about Johnson, Wiggin, and others. If he keeps that up and they get hold of it he will certainly get into serious trouble.”

“My father was speaking of that to-night,” Helen said. “And he was thinking if there were any way of getting the boy away from his idle town associates that it might prevent trouble and ease Mam' Linda's mind.”

“I was thinking of that the other day when I saw Uncle Lewis searching for him among the idle negroes,” said Carson; “and I have an idea.”

“Oh, you have? What is it?” Helen asked, eagerly.

“Why, Pete always has seemed to like me and take my advice, and as there is, plenty of work on my farm for such a hand as he is I could give him a good place and wages over there where he'd be practically removed from his present associates.”

“Splendid, splendid!” Helen cried; “and will you do it?”

“Why, certainly, and right away,” Carson answered. “If you will have Mam' Linda send him down to me in the morning I'll give him some instructions and a good sharp talk, and I'll make my overseer at the farm put him to work.”

“Oh, it is splendid!” Helen declared. “It will be such good news for Mam' Linda. She'd rather have him work for you than any one in the world.”

“There comes Wade to claim his dance,” Dwight said, suddenly; “and I must be off.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, almost regretfully.

“To the office to work on political business—dozens and dozens of letters to answer. Then I'm coming back for my waltz with you. I sha'n't fail.” And as he put on his hat and threaded his way through the whirling mass of dancers down to the street, he recalled with something of a shock that not once in their talk had he even thought of his rival. He slowed up in the darkness and leaned against a wall. There was a strange sinking of his heart as he faced the grim reality that stretched out drearily before him. She was, no doubt, to be the wife of another man. He had lost her. She was not for him, though there in the glare of the ballroom, amid the sensuous strains of music, in the perfume of the flowers dying in her service, she had seemed as close to him in heart, soul, and sympathy as the night he and she—

He had reached his office, a little one-story brick building in the row of lawyers' offices on the side street leading from the post-office to the courthouse, and he unlocked the door and went in and lighted the little murky lamp on his desk and pulled down a package of unanswered letters.

Yes, he must work—work with that awful pain in his breast, the dry, tightening sensation in his throat, the maddening vision of her dazzling beauty and grace and sweetness before him. He dipped his pen, drew the paper towards him, and began to write: “My dear Sir,—In receiving the cordial assurances of your support in the campaign before me, I desire to thank you most heartily and to—”

He laid the pen down and leaned back. “I can't do it, at least not to-night,” he said. “Not while she is there looking like that and with my waltz to come, and yet it must be done. I've lost her, and I am only making it harder to bear. Yes, I must work—work!”

The pen went into the ink again. On the still night air came the strains of music, the mellow, sing-song voice of the figure-caller in the “square” dance, the whir and patter of many feet.

CHAPTER IX.

EAVING Carson Dwight, Wade Tingle, and Bob Smith chatting about the ball in the den the next morning, Garner went to the office, bit off a chew of tobacco, and plunged into work with a vigor which indicated that he was almost ashamed of his departure from his beaten track into the unusual fields of social gayety. He still wore the upright collar and white necktie of the night before, but the hitherto carefully guarded expanse of shirt-front was already in imminent danger of losing all that had once recommended it as a presentable garment.

With his small hand well spread over the page of the book he was consulting, he had become oblivious to his surroundings when suddenly a man stood in the doorway. He was tall and gaunt and wore a broad-brimmed hat, a cotton checked shirt, jean trousers supported by a raw-hide belt, and a pair of tall boots which, as he stood fiercely eying Garner, he angrily lashed with his riding-whip. It was Dan Willis. His face was slightly flushed from drink, and his eyes had the glare even his best friends had learned to tear and tried to avoid.

“Whar's that that dude pardner o' yourn?” he asked.

“Oh, you mean Dwight!” Garner had had too much experience in the handling of men to change countenance over any sudden turn of affairs, either for or against his interests, and he had, also, acquired admirable skill in most effective temporizing. “Why, let me see, Dan,” he went on, after he had paused for fully a moment, carefully inspected the lines he was reading, frowned as if not quite satisfied therewith, and then slowly turned down a leaf. “Let me think. Oh, you want to see Carson! Sit down; take a chair.”

“I don't want to set down!” Willis thundered. “I want to see that damned dude, and I want to see him right off.”

“Oh, that's it!” said Garner. “You are in a hurry!” And then, from the rigid setting of his jaw, it was plain that the lawyer had decided on the best mode of handling the specimen glowering down upon him. “Oh yes, I remember now, Willis, that you were loaded up a few nights ago looking for that chap. Now, advice is cheap—that is, the sort I'm going to give you. Under ordinary circumstances I'd charge a fee for it. My advice to you is to straddle that horse of yours and get out of this town. You are looking for trouble—great, big, far-reaching trouble.”

“You hit the nail that pop, Bill Garner,” the mountaineer snorted. “I'm expectin' to git trouble, or give trouble, an' I hain't goin' to lose time nuther. This settlement was due several days ago, but got put off.”

“Look here, Willis”—Garner stood up facing him—“you may not be a fool, but you are acting powerfully like one. You are letting that measly little candidate for the legislature make a cat's-paw of you. That's what you're doing. He knows, if he can get up a shooting-scrap between you and my pardner over that negro-whipping business, it will turn a few mountain votes his way. If you get shot, Wiggin will have more charges to make; and if Carson was to get the worst of it, the boy would be clean out of the skunk's way. You and Wiggin are both in bad business.”

“Well, that's my lookout!” the mountaineer growled, beside himself in rage. “Carson Dwight said I was with Johnson the night the gang came in and whipped them coons, and—”

“Well, you were,” said Garner, as suddenly as if he were browbeating a witness. “What's the use to lie about it?”

“Lie—you say I—?”

“I said I didn't want you to lie about it,” said Garner, calmly. “I know half the mob, and respect most of them. I have an idea that some of my own kinsfolk was along that night. They thought they were doing right and acting in the best interests of the community. That's neither here nor there. The men that were licked were negroes, and most of them bad ones at that, but when a big, strapping man of your stamp comes with blood in his eye and a hunk of metal on his hip, looking for the son of an old Confederate soldier, who is a Democratic candidate for the legislature, and a good all-round white citizen, why, I say that is the time to call a halt, and to call it out loud! I happen to know a few of the grand jury, and if there is trouble of a serious nature in this town to-day, I can personally testify to enough deliberation in your voice and eye this morning to jerk your neck out of joint.”

“What the hell do I care for you or your law?” Dan Willis snorted. “It's what that damned dude said about me that he's got to swallow, and if he's in this town I'll find him. A fellow told me if he wasn't here he'd be in Keith Gordon's room. I don't know whar that is, but I kin find out.” Turning abruptly, Willis strode out into the street again.

“The devil certainly is to pay now,” Garner said, with his deepest frown as he closed the law-book, thrust it back into its dusty niche in his bookcase, and put on his hat. “Carson is still up there with those boys, and that fellow may find him any minute. Carson won't take back a thing. He's as mad about the business as Willis is. I wonder if I can possibly manage to keep them apart.”

On his way to the den he met Pole Baker standing on the corner of the street by a load of wood, which Pole had brought in to sell. Hurriedly, Garner explained the situation, ending by asking the farmer if he could see any way of getting Willis out of town.

“I couldn't work him myself,” Baker said, “fer the dern skunk hain't any more use fer me than I have fer him, but I reckon I kin put some of his pals onto the job.”

“Well, go ahead, Pole,” Garner urged. “I'll run up to the room and try to detain Carson. For all you do, don't let Willis come up there.”

Garner found the young men still in the den chatting about the ball and Carson's campaign.

Wade Tingle sat at the table with several sheets of paper before him, upon which, in a big, reporter's hand, he had been writing a glowing account of “the greatest social event” in the history of the town.

“I've got a corking write-up, Bill,” he said, enthusiastically. “I've just been reading it to the gang. It is immense. Miss Helen sent me a full memorandum of what the girls wore, and, for a green hand, I think I have dressed 'em up all right.”

“The only criticism I made on it, Garner,” spoke up Keith from his bed in the corner, where he lay fully dressed, “is that Wade has ended all of Helen's descriptions by adding, 'and diamonds.' I'll swear I'm no critic of style in writing, but that eternal 'and diamonds, and diamonds, and diamonds,' at the end of every paragraph, sounds so monotonous that it gets funny. He even had Miss Sally Ware's plain black outfit tipped off with 'and diamonds.'”

“Well, I look at it this way, Bill,” Wade said, earnestly, as Garner sat down, “Of course, the girls who had them on would not like to see them left out, for they are nice things to have, and, on the other hand, those who were short in that direction would feel sorter out of it.”

“I think if he had just written 'jewels' once in awhile,” Keith said, “it would sound all right, and leave something to the imagination.”

“That might help,” Garner said, his troubled glance on Carson's rather grave face; “but see that you don't write it 'jewelry.'”

“Well, I'll accept the amendment,” Wade said, as he began to scratch his manuscript and rewrite.

Carson Dwight stood up. “Did you leave the office open?” he asked Garner. “I've got to shape up that Holcolm deed and consult the records.”

“Let it go for a while. I want to look it over first,” Garner said, rather suddenly. “Sit down. I want to talk to you about the—the race. You've got a ticklish proposition before you, old boy, and I'd like to see you put it through.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Keith, sitting up on the edge of his bed. “Balls and what girls wear belong to the regular run of life, but when the chief of the gang is about to be beaten by a scoundrel who will hesitate at nothing, it's time to be wide awake.”

“That's it,” said Garner, his brow ruffled, his ear open to sounds without, his uneasy eyes on the group around him. And for several minutes he held them where they sat, listening to his wise and observant views of the matter in hand. Suddenly, while he was in the midst of a remark, a foot-fall sounded on the long passage without. It was heavy, loud, and striding. Garner paused, rose, went to the bureau, and from the top drawer took out a revolver he always kept either there or in his desk at the office. There was a firm whiteness about his lips which was new to his friends.

“Carson,” he said, “have you got your gun?” and he stood staring at the doorway.

A shadow fell on the floor; a man entered. It was Pole Baker, and he looked around him in surprise, his inquiring stare on Garner's unwonted mien and revolver.

“Oh, it's you!” Garner exclaimed. “Ah, I thought—”

“Yes, I come to tell you that—” Baker hesitated, as if uncertain whether he was betraying confidence, and then catching Garner's warning glance, he said, non-committally: “Say, Bill, that feller you and me was talkin' about has jest gone home. I reckon you won't get yore money out of him to-day.”

“Oh, well, it was a small matter, anyway, Pole,” Garner said, in a tone of appreciative relief, as he put the revolver back in the drawer and closed it. “I'll mention it to him the next time he's in town.”

“Say, what was the matter with you just now, Garner?” Wade Tingle asked over the top of his manuscript. “I thought you were going to ask Carson to fight a duel.”

But with his hand on Dwight's arm Garner was moving to the door. “Come on, lot's get to work,” he said, with a deep breath and a grateful side glance at Baker.

In front of the office one of Carson's farm wagons drawn by a pair of mules was standing. Tom Hill-yer, Carson's overseer and general manager, sat on the seat, and behind him stood Pete Warren, ready for his stay in the country.

“Miss Helen's made quick work of it, I see,” Carson remarked. “She's determined to get that rascal out of temptation.”

“You ought to give him a sharp talking to,” said Garner. “He's got entirely too much lip for his own good. Skelt told me this morning that if Pete doesn't dry up some of that gang will hang him before he is a month older. He doesn't know any better, and means nothing by it, but he has already made open threats against Johnson and Willis. You understand those men well enough to know that in such times as these a negro can't do that with impunity.”

“I agree with you, and I'll stop and speak to him now.”

When Carson came in and sat down at his desk, a few moments later, Garner looked across at him and smiled.

“You certainly let him off easy,” he said. “I could have thrown a Christmas turkey down the scamp's throat through that grin of his. I saw you run your hand in your pocket and knew he was bleeding you.”

“Oh, well, I reckon I'm a failure at that sort of thing,” Dwight admitted, with a sheepish smile. “I started in by saying that he must not be so foolhardy as to make open threats against any of those men, and he said: 'Looky here, Marse Carson, dem white rapscallions cut gashes in my body deep enough ter plant corn in, an' I ain't gwine ter love 'em fer it. You wouldn't, you know you wouldn't.'”

“And he had you there,” Garner said, grimly. “Well, they may say what they please up North about our great problem, but nothing but time and the good Lord can solve it. You and I can tell that negro to keep his mouth shut from sunup till sun-down, but I happen to know that he had a remote white ancestor that was the proudest, hardest fighter that ever swung a sword. Some of the rampant agitators say that deportation is the only solution. Huh! if you deported a lot of full-blood blacks along with such chaps as this one, it would be only a short time before the yellow ones would have the rest in bondage, and so history would be going backward instead of forward. I guess it's going forward right now if we only had the patience to see it that way.”

CHAPTER X.

|NE beautiful morning near the first of June, as Carson was strolling on the upper veranda at home, waiting for the breakfast-bell, Keith Gordon came by on his horse on his way to town.

“Heard the news?” he called out, as he reined in at the gate and leaned on the neck of his mount.

“No; what's up?” Carson asked, and as he spoke he saw Helen Warren emerge from the front door of her father's house and step down among the dew-wet rose-bushes that bordered the brick walk.

“Horrible enough in all reason,” Keith replied. “There's been a cold-blooded murder over near your farm. Abe Johnson, who led that mob, you know, and his wife were killed by some negro with an axe. The whole country is up in arms and crazy with excitement.”

“Wait, I'll come right down,” Carson said, and he disappeared into the house. And when he came out a moment later he found Helen on the sidewalk talking to Keith, and from her grave face he knew she had overheard what had been said.

“Isn't it awful?” she said to Carson, as he came out at the gate. “Of course, it is the continuation of the trouble here in town.”

“How do they know a negro did it?” Carson asked, obeying the natural tendency of a lawyer to get at the facts.

“It seems,” answered Gordon, “that Mrs. Johnson lived barely long enough after the neighbors got there to say that it was done by a mulatto, as well as she could see in the darkness. In their fury, the people are roughly handling every yellow negro in the neighborhood. They say the darkies are all hiding out in the woods and mountains.”

Then the conversation paused, for old Uncle Lewis, who was at work with a pair of garden-sheafs behind some rose-bushes close by, uttered a groan and, wide-eyed and startled, came towards them.

“It's awful, awful, awful!” they heard him say. “Oh, my Gawd, have mercy!”

“Why, Uncle Lewis, what's the matter?” Helen asked, in sudden concern and wonder over his manner and tone.

“Oh, missy, missy!” he groaned, as he shook his head despondently. “My boy over dar 'mongst 'em right now. Oh, my Lawd! I know what dem white folks gwine ter say fust thing, kase Pete didn't had no mo' sense 'an ter—”

“Stop, Lewis!” Carson said, sharply. “Don't be the first to implicate your own son in a matter as serious as this is.”

“I ain't, marster!” the old man groaned, “but I know dem white folks done it 'fo' dis.”

“I'm afraid you are right, Lewis,” Keith said, sympathetically. “He may be absolutely innocent, but, since his trouble with that mob, Pete has really talked too much. Well, I must be going.”

As Keith was riding away, old Lewis, muttering softly to himself and groaning, turned towards the house.

“Where are you going?” Helen called out, as she still lingered beside Carson.

“I'm gwine try to keep Linda fum hearin' it right now,” he said. “Ef Pete git in it, missy, it gwine ter kill yo' old mammy.”

“I'm afraid it will,” Helen said. “Do what you can, Uncle Lewis. I'll be down to see her in a moment.” As the old man tottered away, Helen looked up and caught Carson's troubled glance.

“I wish I were a man,” she said.

“Why?” he inquired.

“Because I'd take a strong stand here in the South for law and order at any cost. We have a good example in this very thing of what our condition means. Pete may be innocent, and no doubt is, for I don't believe he would do a thing like that no matter what the provocation, and yet he hasn't any sort of chance to prove it.”

“You are right,” Carson said. “At such a time they would lynch him, if for nothing else than that he had dared to threaten the murdered man.”

“Poor, poor old mammy!” sighed Helen. “Oh, it is awful to think of what she will suffer if—if—Carson, do you really think Pete is in actual danger?” Dwight hesitated for a moment, and then he met her stare frankly.

“We may as well face the truth and be done with it,” he said. “No negro will be safe over there now, and Pete, I am sorry to say, least of all.”

“If he is guilty he may run away,” she said, shortsightedly.

“If he's guilty we don't want him to get away,” Carson said, firmly. “But I really don't think he had anything to do with it.”

Helen sighed. They had stepped back to the open gate, and there they paused side by side. “How discouraging life is!” she said. “Carson, in planning to get Pete over there, you and I were acting on our purest, noblest impulses, and yet the outcome of our efforts may be the gravest disaster.”

“Yes, it seems that way,” he responded, gloomily; “but we must try to look on the bright side and hope for the best.”

On parting with Helen, Carson went into the big, old-fashioned dining-room, and after hurriedly drinking a cup of coffee he went down to his office. Along the main thoroughfare, on the street comers, and in front of the stores he found little groups of men with grave faces, all discussing the tragedy. More than once in passing he heard Pete's name mentioned, and for fear of being questioned as to what he thought about it he hurried on. Garner was an early riser, and he found him at his desk writing letters.

“Well, from all accounts,” Garner said, “your man Friday seems to be in a ticklish place over there, innocent or not—that is, if he hasn't had the sense to skip out.”

“Somehow, I don't think Pete is guilty,” Carson said, as he sank into his big chair. “He's not that stamp of negro.”

“Well, I haven't made up my mind on that score,” the other remarked. “Up to the time he left here he seemed really harmless enough, but we don't know what may have taken place since then between him and Johnson. Funny we didn't think of the danger of sticking match to tinder like that. I admit I was in favor of sending him. Miss Helen was so pleased over it, too. I met her the other day at the post-office and she was telling me, with absolute delight, that Pete was doing well over there, working like an old-time cornfield darky, and behaving himself. Now, I suppose, she will be terribly upset.”

Carson sighed. “We blame the mountain people, in times of excitement, for acting rashly, and yet right here in this quiet town half the citizens have already made up their minds that Pete committed the crime. Think of it, Garner!”

“Well, you see, it's pretty hard to imagine who else did it,” Garner declared.

“I don't agree with you,” disputed Carson, warmly; “when there are half a dozen negroes who were whipped just as Pete was and who have horrible characters. There's Sam Dudlow, the worst negro I ever saw, an ex-convict, and as full of devilment as an egg is of meat. I saw his scowling face the next day after he was whipped, and I never want to see it again. I'd hate to meet him in the dark, unarmed. He wasn't making open threats, as Pete was, but I'll bet he would have handled Johnson or Willis roughly if he had met either of them alone and got the advantage.”

“Well, we are not trying the case,” Garner said, dryly; “if we are, I don't know where the fees are to come from. Getting money out of an imaginary case is too much like a lawyer's first year under the shadow of his shingle.”

CHAPTER XI.

IMMEDIATELY on parting with Carson, Helen went down to Linda's cottage. Lewis was leaning over the little, low fence talking to a negro, who walked on as she drew near.

“Where is Mam' Linda?” she asked, guardedly. “In de house, missy,” Lewis answered, pulling off his old slouch hat and wadding it tightly in his fingers. “She 'ain't heard nothin' yit. Jim was des tellin' me er whole string er talk folks was havin' down on de street; but I told 'im not to let 'er hear it. Oh, missy, it gwine ter kill 'er. She cayn't stan' it. Des no longer 'n las' night she was settin' in dat do' talkin' 'bout how happy she was to hear Pete was doin' so well over on Marse Carson's place. She said she never would forget young marster's kindness to er old nigger'oman, en now”—the old man spread out his hands in apathetic gesture before him—“now you see what it come to!”

“But nothing serious has really happened to Pete yet,” Helen had started to say, when the old man stopped her.

“Hush, honey, she comin'!”

There was a sound of a footstep in the cottage. Linda appeared in the doorway, and with a clouded face and disturbed manner invited her mistress into the cottage, placing a chair for the young lady, and dusting the bottom of it with her apron.

“How do you feel this morning, mammy?” Helen asked, as she sat down.

“I'm well emough in my body, honey”—the old woman's face was averted—“but dat ain't all ter a pusson in dis life. Ef des my body was all I had, I wouldn't be so bad off, but it's my mind, honey. I'm worried 'bout dat boy ergin. I had bad dreams las' night, en thoo 'em all he seemed ter be in some trouble. Den when I woke dis mawnin' en tried ter think 'twas only des er dream, I ain't satisfied wid de way all of um act. Lewis look quar out'n de eyes, en everybody dat pass erlong hatter stop en lead Lewis off down de fence ter talk. I ain't no fool, honey! I notice things when dey ain't natcherl. Den here you come 'fo' yo' breakfust-time. I've watched you, chile, sence you was in de cradle en know every bat er yo' sweet eyes. Oh, honey”—Linda suddenly sat down and covered her face with her hands, pressing them firmly in—“honey,” she muttered, “suppen's done gone wrong. I've knowed it all dis mawnin' en I'm actually afeard ter ax youall ter tell me. I—can't think of but one thing, I'm so muddled up, en dat is dat my boy done thowed up his work en gone away off somers wid bad company; en yit, honey”—-she now rocked herself back and forth as if in torture and finished with a steady stare into Helen's face—“dat cayn't be it. Dat ain't bad ernough ter mek Lewis act like he is, en—en—well, honey, you might es well come out wid it. I've had trouble, en I kin have mo'.”

Helen sat pale and undecided, unable to formulate any adequate plan of procedure. At this juncture Lewis leaned in the doorway, and, as his wife's back was towards him, he could not see her face.

“I want ter step down-town er minute, Lindy,” he said. “I'll be right back. I des want ter go ter de sto'. We're out er coffee, en—”

Linda suddenly turned her dark, agonized face upon him. “You are not goin' till you tell me what is gone wrong wid my child,” she said. “What de matter wid Pete, Lewis?”

The old man's surprised glance wavered between his Wife's face and Helen's. “Why, Lindy, who say—” he feebly began.

But she stopped him with a gesture at once impatient and full of fear. “Tell me!” she said, firmly—“tell me!”

Lewis shambled into the cottage and stood over her, a magnificent specimen of the manhood of his race. Helen's eyes were blinded by tears she could hot restrain.

“'Tain't tiothiri', Lindy, 'pon my word 'tain't nothin' but dis,” he said, gently. “Dar's been trouble over near Marse Carson's farm, but not one soul is done say Pete was in it—not one soul.”

“What sort o' trouble?” Linda pursued.

“Er man en his wife was killed over dar in baid last night.”

“What man en woman?” Linda asked, her mouth falling open in suspense, her thick lip hanging.

“Abe Johnson en his wife.”

Linda leaned forward, her hands locked like things of iron between her knees. “Who done it, Lewis?—who killed um?” she gasped.

“Nobody knows dat yit, Lindy. Mrs. Johnson lived er little while after de neighbors come, en she said it was er—she said it was er yaller nigger, en—en—” He went no further, being at the end of his diplomacy, and simply stood before her helplessly twisting his hat in his hands. The room was very still. Helen wondered if her own heart had stopped beating, so tense and strained was her emotion. Linda sat bent forward for a moment; they saw her raise her hands to her head, press them there convulsively, and then she groaned.

“Miz Johnson say it was a yaller nigger!” she moaned. “Oh, my Gawd!”

“Yes, but what dat, 'oman?” Lewis demanded in assumed sharpness of tone. “Dar's oodlin's en oodlin's er yaller niggers over dar.”

“Dey ain't none of 'em been whipped by de daid man, 'cepin' my boy.” Linda was now staring straight at him. “None of 'em never made no threats but Pete. Dey'll kill 'im—” She shuddered and her voice fell away into a prolonged sob. “You hear me? Dey'll hang my po' baby boy—hang 'im—hang 'im!”

Linda suddenly rose to her full height and stood glowering upon them, her face dark and full of passion and grief combined. She raised her hands and held them straight upward.

“I want ter curse Gawd!” she cried. “You hear me? I ain't done nothin' ter deserve dis here thing I've been er patient slave of white folks, en my mammy an' daddy was 'fo' me. I've acted right en done my duty ter dem what owned me, en—en now I face dis. I hear my onliest child beggin' fer um to spare 'im en listen ter 'im. I hear 'im beggin' ter see his old mammy 'fo' dey kill 'im. I see 'em drag-gin' 'im off wid er rope roun'—” With a shriek the woman fell face downward on the floor. As if under the influence of a terrible nightmare, Helen bent over her. She was insensible. Without a word, Lewis lifted her in his arms and bore her to a bed in the corner.

“Dis gwine ter kill yo' old mammy, honey,” he gulped. “She ain't never gwine ter git up fum under it—never in dis world.”

But Helen, with womanly presence of mind, had dampened her handkerchief in some water and was gently stroking the dark face with it. After a moment Linda drew a deep, lingering breath and opened her eyes.

“Lewis,” was her first thought, “go try en find out all you kin. I'm gwine lie here en pray Gawd ter be merciful. I said I'd curse 'Im, but I won't. He my mainstay. I got ter trust 'Im. Ef He fail me I'm lost. Oh, honey, yo' old mammy never axed you many favors; stay here wid 'er en pray—pray wid all yo' might ter let dis cup pass. Oh, Gawd, don't let 'em!—don't let 'em! De po' boy didn't do it. He wouldn't harm a kitten. He talked too much, case he was smartin' under his whippin', but dat was all!”

Motioning to Lewis to leave them alone, Helen sat down on the edge of the bed and put her arm round Linda's shoulders, but the old woman rose and went to the door and closed it, then she came back and stood by Helen in the half-darkness that now filled the room.

“I want you ter git down here by my baid en pray fer me, honey,” she said. “Seem ter me lak de Lawd always have listen ter white folks mo' den de black, anyway, en I want you ter beg 'Im ter spare po' li'l' foolish Pete des dis time—des dis once.” Kneeling by the bed, Helen covered her wet face with her hands. Linda knelt beside her, and Helen prayed aloud, her clear, sweet voice ringing through the still room.

CHAPTER XII.

N Carson Dwight's farm, as the place was not particularly well kept, the negro hands lived in dismantled log-cabins scattered here and there about the fields, or in the edge of the woods surrounding the place. In one of these, at the overseer's suggestion, Pete had installed himself, his household effects consisting only of a straw mattress thrown on the puncheon floor and a few cooking utensils for use over the big fireplace of the mud-and-log chimney.

Here he was sleeping on the night of the tragedy which had stirred the country-side into a white heat of race hatred. He had spent the first half of the night at a negro dance, two miles away, at a farm, and was much elated by finding that he had attracted marked attention and feminine favor, which was due to the fact that he was looked upon by the country blacks as something out of the usual run—a town darky with a glib tongue and many other accomplishments, and a negro, too, as Pete assured them, who stood high in the favor of his master, whose name carried weight wherever it was mentioned.

Shortly after dawn Pete was still sleeping soundly, as was his habit after a night of pleasure, when his door was rudely shaken.

“Pete Warren! Pete Warren!” a voice called out sharply. “Wake up in dar; wake up, I tell you!”

There was no response—no sound came from within the cabin except the deep respiration of the sleeper. The door was shaken again, and then, as it was not locked, and slightly ajar, the little old negro man on the outside pushed the shutter open and entered, stalking across the floor to where Pete lay.

“Wake up here, you fool!” he said, as he bent and shook Pete roughly. “Wake up, ef you know what good fer you.”

Pete turned over; his snoring broke into little gasps. He opened his eyes, stared inquiringly for an instant, and then his eyelids began to close drowsily.

“Looky here!” He was roughly handled again by the black hand on his shoulder. “You young fool, you dance all night till you cayn't keep yo' eyes open in de day-time, but ef you don't git er move on you en light out er dis cabin you'll dance yo' last jig wid nothin' under yo' feet but wind. It'll be er game er frog in de middle en you be de frog.”

“What dat?—what dat you givin' me, Uncle Richmond?” Pete was now awake and sitting bolt upright on the mattress.

“Huh, I come ter tell you, boy, dat you 'bout ter git in trouble, en, fer all I know, de biggest you ever had in all yo' bo'n days.”

“Huh, you say I is, Uncle Richmond?” Pete exclaimed, incredulously. “What wrong wid me?”

The old man stepped back till he could look through the cabin door over the fields upon which the first streaks of daylight were falling in grayish, misty splotches.

“Pete,” he said, “somebody done slip in Abe Johnson's house en brain him en his wife wid er axe.”

“Huh, you don't say!” Pete stared in sleepy astonishment. “When dat happen, Uncle Richmond?”

“Las' night, er towards mawnin',” the old man said. “Ham Black come en toi' me. He say we better all hide out; it gwine ter be de biggestm 'cite-ment ever heard of in dese mountains; but, Pete, you de main one ter look out—you, you!”

“Me! Huh, what you say dat fer, Uncle Rich'?”

“'Ca'se dey gwine ter look fer you de fus one, Pete. You sho is been talkin' too much out yo' mouf 'bout dat whippin' Johnson done give you en Sam Dudlow, en de res' um in town dat night. Ham tol' me ter come warn you ter hide out, en dat quick. Ham say he know in reason you didn't do it, 'ca'se, he say, yo' bark is wuss'n yo' bite. Ham say he bet 'twas done by some nigger dat didn't talk so much. Ham say he mighty nigh sho Sam Dudlow done it, 'ca'se Sam met Abe Johnson in de big road yisterday en Johnson cussed 'im en lashed at 'im wid er whip. Ham say dat nigger come on ter de sto' lookin' lak er devil in men's clothes. But he didn't say nothin' even den. Look lak he was des lyin' low bidin' his time.”

Pete got up and began to dress himself with the unimaginative disregard for danger that is characteristic of his race.

“I bet, myse'f, Sam done it,” he said, reflectively.

“He's er bad yaller nigger, Uncle Richmond, en ever since Johnson en Dan Willis larruped we-all, he's been sulkin' en growlin'. But es you say, Uncle Rich', he didn't talk out open. He lay low.”

“Dat don't mek no diffunce, boy,” the old black man went on, earnestly; “you git out'n here in er hurry en mek er break fer dem woods. Even den I doubt ef dat gwine ter save yo' skin, 'ca'se Dan Willis got er pair er blood-hounds dat kin smell nigger tracks thoo er ten-inch snow.”

“Huh, I say, Uncle Richmond, you don't know me,” Pete said. “You don't know me, ef you 'low I'm gwine ter run fum dese white men. I 'ain't been nigh dat Abe Johnson's house—not even cross his line er fence. I promised Marse Carson Dwight not ter go nigh 'im, en—en I promised 'im ter let up on my gab out here, en I done dat, too. No, suh, Unc' Rich', you git somebody else ter run yo' foot-race. I'm gwine ter cook my breakfust lak I always do en den go out ter my sprouts dat hatter be grubbed. I got my task ter do, rain er shine.”

“Look here, boy,” the old man's blue-black eyes gleamed as he stared at Pete. “I know yo' mammy en daddy, en I like um. Dey good black folks er de ol' stripe, en always was friendly ter me, en I don't like ter see you in dis mess. I tell you, I'm er old man. I know how white men act in er case like dis—dey don't have one bit er pity er reason. Dey will kill you sho. Dey'd er been here 'fo' dis, but dey gittin' together. Listen! Hear dem hawns en yellin'?—dat at Wilson's sto'. Dey will be here soon. I don't want ter stan' here en argue wid you. I 'ain't had nothin' ter do wid it, but dey would saddle some of it onto me ef dey found out I come here ter warn you. Hurry up, boy.”

“I ain't gwine ter do it, Uncle Rich',” Pete declared, firmly, and with a grave face. “You are er old man, but you ain't givin' me good advice. Ef I run, dey would say I was guilty sho', en den, es you say, de dogs could track me down, anyway.”

The boy's logic seemed unassailable. The piercing, beadlike eyes of the old man flickered. “Well,” he said, “I done all I could. I'm gwine move on. Even now, dey may know I come here at dis early time, en mix me up in it. Good-bye. I hope fer Mammy Lindy's sake dat dey will let you off—I do sho.”

Left alone, Pete went out to the edge of the wood behind his cabin and gathered up some sticks, leaves, and pieces of bark that had fallen from the decaying boughs of the trees, and brought them into the cabin and deposited them on the broad stone hearth. Then he uncovered the coals he had the night before buried in the ashes, and made a fire for the preparation of his simple breakfast. He had a sharp sense of animal hunger, which was due to his long walk to and from the dance and the fact that he was bodily sound and vigorous. He took as much fresh-ground corn-meal as his hands would hold from a tow bag in a corner of the room and put it into a tin pan. To this he added a cup of water and a bit of salt, stirring it with his hand till it was well mixed. He then deftly formed it into a pone, and, wrapping it in a clean husk of corn, he deposited it in the hot ashes, covering it well with live coals. Then he made his coffee, being careful that the water in the pot did not rise as high as the point near the spout where the vessel leaked. Next he unwrapped a strip of “streak o' lean streak o' fat” bacon, and with his pocket-knife sliced some of it into a frying-pan already hot. These things accomplished, he had only to wait a few minutes for the heat to do its work, and he stepped back and stood in the doorway.

Far across the meadow, now under the slanting rays of the sun, he saw old Uncle Richmond, bowlegged and short, waddling along through the dewy grass and weeds, his head bowed, his long arms swinging at his sides.

“Huh!” was Pete's slow comment, “so somebody done already settled Abe Johnson's hash. I know in reason it was Sam Dudlow, en I reckon ef dat rampacious gang er white men lays hands on 'im—ef dey lays hands on 'im—” He was recalling certain details of the recent riots in Atlanta, and an unconscious shudder passed over him. “Well,” he continued to reflect, “Abe Johnson was a hard man on black folks, but his wife was er downright good 'oman. Ever'body say she was, en she was. It was a gre't pity ter kill her dat way, but I reckon Sam was afeard she'd tell it on 'im en had ter kill um bofe. Yes, Miz Johnson was er good 'oman—good ter niggers. She fed lots of 'em behind dat man's back, en wished 'em well; en now, po', po' 'oman!”

Pete went back to the fireplace and with the blade of his knife turned the curling white and brown strips of bacon, and with the toe of his coarse, worn shoe pushed fresher coals against his coffee-pot. Then for a moment he stood gravely looking at the fire.

“Well,” he mused, with a shrugging of his shoulders. “I wish des one thing, I wish Marse Carson was here. He wouldn't let 'em tech me. He's de best en smartest lawyer in Georgia, en he would tell 'em what er lot er fools dey was ter say I done it, when I was right dar'n my baid. My! dat bacon smell good! I wish I had er few fresh hen aigs ter drap in dat brown grease. Huh! it make my mouf water.”

There was no table in the room, and so when he had taken up his breakfast he sat down on the floor and ate it with supreme relish. Through all the meal, however, in spite of the arguments he was mentally producing, there were far under the crust of his being certain elemental promptings towards fear and self-preservation.

“Well, dar's one thing,” he mused. “Marse Hillyer done laid me out my task ter do in de old fiel' en I ain't ergoin' to shirk it, 'ca'se Marse Carson gwine ter ax 'im, when he go in town, how I'm gittin' on, en I wants er good repo't. No, I ain't goin' ter shirk it, ef all de dogs en white men in de county come yelpin' on de hunt for Sam Dudlow.”

CHAPTER XIII.

IS breakfast over, Pete shouldered his grubbing-hoe, an implement shaped like an adze, and made his way through the dewy undergrowth of the wood to an open field an eighth of a mile from his cabin. There he set to work on what was considered by farmers the hardest labor connected with the cultivation of the soil. It consisted of partly digging and partly pulling out by the roots the stout young bushes which infested the neglected old fields.

Pete was hard at work in the corner of a ten-rail worm-fence, when, hearing a sound in the wood, which sloped down from a rocky hill quite near him, he saw a farmer, who lived in the neighborhood, pause suddenly, even in a startled manner, and stare steadily at him.

“Oh!” Pete heard him exclaim; “why, you are Carson Dwight's new man, ain't you, from Darley?”

“Yes, suh, dat me,” the negro replied. “Mr. Hillyer, de overseer fer my boss, set me on dis yer job. I want ter clean it up ter de branch by Sadday.”

“Huh!” The man approached nearer, eying the negro closely from head to foot, his glance resting longer on Pete's hip-pocket than anywhere else. “Huh! I heard down at the store just now that you'd left—throwed up your job, I mean—an' gone clean off.”

“No, I hain't throwed up no job,” the negro said, his slow intelligence groping for the possible cause of such a report. “I been right here since my boss sent me over, en I'm gwine stay lessen he sen' fer me ter tek care o' his hosses in town. I reckon you heard er Marse Carson Dwight's fine drivin' stock.” The farmer pulled his long brown beard, his eyes still on Pete's face; it was as if he had not caught the boy's last remark.

“They said down at the store that you left last night, after—that you went off last night. A man said he seed you at the nigger blow-out on Hilton's farm about one o'clock, and that after it was over you turned towards—I don't know—I'm just tellin' you what they said down at the store.”

“I was at dat shindig,” Pete said. “I walked fum here dar en back ergin.”

“Huh, well”—the farmer's face took on a shrewd expression—“I must move on. I'm lookin' fer a brown cow with a white tail, an' blaze on 'er face.” As the man disappeared in the wood, Pete was conscious of a sense of vague uneasiness which somehow seemed to be a sort of augmented recurrence of the feeling left by the warning of his early visitor.

“Dat white man certainly act curi's,” Pete mused, as he leaned on the handle of his hoe and stared at the spot where the farmer had disappeared in the woods. “I'll bet my hat he been thinkin', lak Uncle Rich' said dey would, dat I had er hand in dat bloody business. Po' Miz Johnson—I reckon dey layin' 'er out now. She certney was good. I remember how she tol' me at de spring de day I come here ter try en be a good, steady boy en not mek dem white men pounce on me ergin. Po' 'oman! Seem lak er gre't pity. I reckon Abe Johnson got what was comin' ter 'im, but it look lak even Sam Dudlow wouldn't er struck dat good'oman down. Maybe he thought he had ter—maybe she cornered 'im; but I dunno; he's er tough nigger—de toughest I ever run ercross, en I've seed er lots um.”

Pete leaned on the fence, wiped his perspiring brow with his bare hand, snapped his fingers like a whip to rid them of the drops of sweat, and allowed his thoughts to merge into the darker view of the situation. He was really not much afraid. Under grave danger, a negro has not so great a concern over death as a white man, because he is not endowed with sufficient intelligence to grasp its full import, and yet to-day Pete was feeling unusual qualms of unrest.

“Dar's one thing sho,” he finally concluded; “dat white man looked powerful funny when he seed me, en he said he heard I'd run off. I'll bet my hat he's makin' a bee-line fer dat sto' ter tell 'em whar I is right now. I wish one thing. I wish Marse Carson was here; he'd sen' 'em 'bout deir business mighty quick.”

With a shrug of indecision, the boy set to work. His back happened to be turned towards the store, barely visible over the swelling ground in the distance, and so he failed to note the rapid approach across the meadow of two men till they were close upon him. One was Jeff Braider, the sheriff of the county, a stalwart man of forty, in high top-boots, a leather belt holding a-long revolver, a broad-brimmed hat, and coarse gray suit; his companion was a hastily deputized citizen armed with a double-barrelled shot-gun.

“Put down that hoe, Pete!” the sheriff commanded, sharply, as the negro turned with it in his hand. “Put it down, I say! Drop it!”

“What I gwine put it down for?” the negro asked, in characteristic tone. “Huh! I got ter do my work.”

“Drop it, and don't begin to give me your jaw,” the sheriff said. “You've got to come on with us. You are under arrest.”

“What you 'rest me fer?” Pete asked, still doggedly.

“You are accused of killing the Johnsons last night, and if you didn't do it, I'm here to say you are in the tightest hole an innocent man ever got in. King and I are going to do our level best to put you in safety in the Gilmore jail so you can be tried fairly by law, but we've got to get a move on us. The whole section is up in arms, and we'll have hard work dodging 'em. Come on. I won't rope you, but if you start to run we'll shoot you down like a rabbit, so don't try that on.”

“My Gawd, Mr. Braider, I didn't kill dem folks!” Pete said, pleadingly. “I don't know a thing about it.”

“Well, whether you did or not, they say you threatened to do it, and your life won't be worth a hill of beans if you stay here. The only thing to do is to get you to the Gilmore jail. We may make it through the mountains if we are careful, but we've got to git horses. We can borrow some from Jabe Parsons down the road, if he hasn't gone crazy like all the rest. Come on.”

“I tell you, Mr. Braider, I don't know er thing 'bout dis,” Pete said; “but it looks ter me lak mebby Sam Dudlow—”

“Don't make any statement to me,” the officer said, humanely enough in his rough way. “You are accused of a dirty job, Pete, and it will take a dang good lawyer to save you from the halter, even if we save you from this mob; but talkin' to me won't do no good. Me'n King here couldn't protect you from them men if they once saw you. I tell you, young man, all hell has broke loose. For twenty miles around no black skin will be safe, much less yours. Innocent or guilty, you've certainly shot off your mouth. Come on.”

Without further protest, Pete dropped his hoe and went with them. Doggedly, and with an overpowering and surly sense of injury, he slouched along between the two men.

A quarter of a mile down a narrow, private road, which was traversed without meeting any one, they came to Parsons' farm-house, a one-story frame building with a porch in front, and a roof that sloped back to a crude lean-to shed in the rear. A wagon stood under the spreading branches of a big beech, and near by a bent-tongued harrow, weighted down by a heap of stones, a chicken-coop, an old beehive, and a ramshackle buggy. No one was in sight. No living thing stirred about the place, save the turkeys and ducks and a solitary peacock strutting about in the front yard, where rows of half-buried stones from the mountain-sides formed the jagged borders of a gravel walk from the fence to the steps.

The sheriff drew the gate open and, according to rural etiquette, hallooed lustily. After a pause the sound of some one moving in the house reached their ears. A window-curtain was drawn aside, and later a woman stood in the doorway and advanced wonderingly to the edge of the porch. She was portly, red of complexion, about middle-aged, and dressed in checked gingham, the predominating color of which was blue.

“Well, I'll be switched!” she ejaculated; “what do you-uns want?”

“Want to see Jabe, Mrs. Parsons; is he about?”

“He's over in his hay-field, or was a minute ago. What you want with him?”

“We've got to borrow some hosses,” the sheriff answered. “We want three—one fer each. We're goin' to try to dodge them blood-thirsty mobs, Mrs. Parsons, an' put this feller in jail, whar he'll be safe.”

“That boy?” The woman came down the steps, rolling her sleeves up. “Why, that boy didn't kill them folks. I know that boy, he's the son of old Mammy Linda and Uncle Lewis Warren. Now, look here, Jeff Braider, don't you and Bill King go and make eternal fools o' yourselves. That boy didn't no more do that nasty work than I did. It ain't in 'im. He hain't that look. I know niggers as well as you or anybody else.”

“No, I didn't do it, Mrs. Parsons,” the prisoner affirmed. “I didn't! I didn't!”

“I know you didn't,” said the woman. “Wasn't I standin' here in the door this mornin' and saw him git up an' go out to git his wood and cook his breakfast? Then I seed 'im shoulder his grubbin'-hoe and go to the field to work. You officers may think you know it all, but no nigger ain't agoin' to stay around like that after killin' a man an' woman in cold blood. The nigger that did that job was some scamp that's fur from the spot by this time, and not a boy fetched up among good white folks like this one was, with the best old mammy and daddy that ever had kinky heads.”

“But witnesses say he threatened Abe Johnson a month ago,” argued Braider. “I have to do my duty, Mrs. Parsons. There never would be any justice if we overlooked a thing as pointed as that is.”

“Threatened 'im?” the woman cried; “well, what does that prove? A nigger will talk back an' act surly on his death-bed if he's mad. That's all the way they have of defendin' theirselves. If Pete hadn't talked some after the lashin' he got from them men, thar'd 'a' been some'n' wrong with him. Now, you let 'im loose. As shore as you start off with that boy, he'll be lynched. The fact that you've got 'im in tow will be all them crazy men want. You couldn't get two miles in any direction from here without bein' stopped; they are as thick as fleas on all sides, an' every road is under watch.”

“I'm sorry I can't take yore advice, Mrs. Parsons,” Braider said, almost out of patience. “I've got my duty to perform, an' I know what it is a sight better than you do.”

“If you start off with that boy his blood will be on yore head,” the woman said, firmly. “Left alone, and advised to hide opt till this excitement is over, he might stand a chance to save his neck; but with you—why, you mought as well stand still and yell to that crazy gang to come on.”

“Well, we've got to git horses to go on with, and yours are the nearest.”

“Huh! you won't ride no harmless nigger to the scaffold on my stock,” the woman said, sharply. “I know whar my duty lies. A woman with a thimbleful of brains don't have to listen to a long string of testimony to know a murderer when she sees one; that boy's as harmless as a baby and you are trying your level best to have him mobbed.”

“Well, right is on my side, and I can take the horses if I see fit in the furtherance of law an' order,” said Braider. “If Jabe was here he'd tell me to go ahead, an' so I'll have to do it anyway. Bill, you stay here on guard an' I'll bridle the horses an' lead 'em out.”

A queer look, half of anger, half of definite purpose, settled on the strong, rugged face of the woman, as she saw the sheriff stalk off to the barn-yard gate, enter it, and let it close after him.

“Bill King,” she said, drawing nearer the man left in charge of the bewildered prisoner, who now for the first time under the words of his defender had sensed his real danger—“Bill King, you hain't agoin' to lead that poor boy right to his death this way—you don't look like that sort of a man.” She suddenly swept her furtive eyes over the barn-yard, evidently noting that the sheriff was now in the stable. “No, you hain't—for I hain't agoin' to let you!” And suddenly, without warning even to the slightest change of facial expression, she grasped the end of the shot-gun the man held, and whirled him round Like a top.

“Run, boy!” she cried. “Run for the woods, and God be with you!” For an instant Pete stood as if rooted to the spot, and then, as swift of foot as a young Indian, he turned and darted through the gate and round the farm-house, leaving the woman and King struggling for the possession of the gun. It fell to the ground, but she grasped King around the waist and clung to him with the tenacity of a bull-dog.

“Good God, Mrs. Parsons,” he panted, writhing in her grasp, “let me loose!”

There was a smothered oath from the barn-yard, and, revolver in hand, the sheriff ran out.

“What the hell!—which way did he go?” he gasped.

But King, still in the tight embrace of his assailant, seemed too badly upset to reply. And it was not till Braider had torn her locked hands loose that King could stammer out, “Round the house—into the woods!”

“An' we couldn't catch 'im to save us from—” Braider said. “Madam, I'll handle you for this! I'll push this case against you to the full limit of the law!”

“You'll do nothin' of the kind,” the woman said, “unless you want to make yourself the laughin'-stock of the whole community. In doin' what I done I acted fer all the good women of this country; an' when you run ag'in we'll beat you at the polls. Law an' order's one thing, but officers helpin' mobs do their dirty work is another. If the boy deserves a trial he deserves it, but he'd not 'a' stood one chance in ten million in your charge, an' you know it.”

At this juncture a man emerged from the close-growing bushes across the road, a look of astonishment on his face. It was Jabe Parsons. “What's wrong here?” he cried, excitedly.

“Oh, nothin' much,” Braider answered, with a white sneer of fury. “We stopped here with Pete Warren to borrow your horses to git 'im over the mountain to the Gilmore jail, an' your good woman grabbed Bill's gun while I was in the stable an' deliberately turned the nigger loose.”

“Great God! what's the matter with you?” Parsons thundered at his wife, who, red-faced and defiant, stood rubbing a small bruised spot on her wrist.

“Nothin's the matter with me,” she retorted, “except I've got more sense than you men have. I know that boy didn't kill them folks, an' I didn't intend to see you-all lynch 'im.”

“Well, I know he did!” Parsons yelled. “But he'll be caught before night, anyway. He can't hide in them woods from hounds like they've got down the road.”

“Your wife 'lowed he'd be safer in the woods than in the Gilmore jail,” Braider said, with another sneer.

“Well, he would. As for that,” Parsons retorted, “if you think that army headed by the dead woman's daddy an' brothers would halt at a puny bird-cage like that jail, you don't know mountain men. They'd smash the damn thing like an egg-shell. I reckon a sheriff has to pretend to act fer the law, whether he earns his salary or not. Well, I'll go down the road an' tell 'em whar to look. Thar'll be a picnic som 'er's nigh here in a powerful short while. We've got men enough to surround that whole mountain.”

CHAPTER XIV.

HE following night was a cloudless, moonlit one, and restlessly and heart-sore Helen walked the upper floor of the veranda, her eyes constantly bent on the street leading past Dwight's on to the centre of the town. The greater part of the day she had spent with Linda, trying to pacify her and rouse the hope that Pete would not be implicated in the trouble in the mountains. Helen had gone down to Carson's office about noon, feeling vaguely that he could advise her better than any one else in the grave situation. She had found Garner seated at his desk, bent over a law-book, a studious expression on his face. Seeing her in the doorway, he sprang up gallantly and proffered a rickety chair, from which he had hastily dumped a pile of old newspapers.

“Is Carson in?” she asked, sitting down.

“Oh no, he's gone over to the farm,” Garner said. “I couldn't hold him here after he heard of the trouble. You see, Miss Helen, he thinks, from a few things picked up, that Pete is likely to be suspected and be roughly handled, and, you know, as he was partly the cause of the boy's going there, he naturally would feel—”

“I was the real cause of it,” the girl broke in, with a sigh and a troubled face. “We both thought it was for the best, and if it results in Pete's death I shall never forgive myself.”

“Oh, I wouldn't look at it that way,” Garner said. “You were both acting for what you thought was right. As I say, I tried my best to keep Carson from going over there to-day, but he would go. We almost had an open rupture over it. You see, Miss Helen, I have set my head on seeing him in the legislature, and he is eternally doing things that kill votes. There is not a thing in the category of political offences as fatal as this very thing. He's already taken Pete's part and abused the men who whipped him, and now that the boy is suspected of retaliating and killing the Johnsons, why, the people will—well, I wouldn't be one bit surprised to see them jump on Carson himself. Men infuriated like that haven't any more sense than mad dogs, and they won't stand for a white man opposing them. But, of course, you know why Carson is acting so recklessly.”

“I do? What do you mean, Mr. Garner?”

The lawyer smiled, wiped his facile mouth with his small white hand, and said, teasingly: “Why, you are at the bottom of it. Carson wants to save the boy simply because you are indirectly interested in him. That's the whole thing in a nutshell. He's been as mad as a wet hen ever since they whipped Pete, because he was the son of your old mammy, and now that the boy's in actual peril Carson has gone clean daft. Well, it's reported among the gossips about town that you turned him down, Miss Helen—like you did some of the balance of us presumptuous chaps that didn't know enough to keep our hearts where they belonged—but you sat on the best man in the bunch when you did it. It's me that's doing this talking.”

Helen sat silent and pale for a moment, unable to formulate a reply to his outspoken remark. Presently she said, evasively: “Then you think both of them are in actual danger?”

“Well, Pete hasn't one chance in a million,” Garner said, gently. “There is no use trying to hide that fact; and if Carson should happen to run across Dan Willis—well, one or the other would have to drop. Carson is in a dangerous mood. He believes as firmly in Pete's innocence as he does in his own, and if Dan Willis dared to threaten him, as he's likely to do when they meet, why, Carson would defend himself.”

Helen drew her veil down over her eyes and Garner could see that she was quivering from head to foot.

“Oh, it's awful—awful!” he heard her say, softly. Then she rose and moved to the open door, where she stood as if undecided what step to take. “Is there no way to get any—any news?” she asked, tremulously.

“None now,” he told her. “In times of excitement over in the mountains, few people come into town; they all want to stay at home and see it through.”

She stepped out on the sidewalk, and he followed her, gallantly holding his hat in his hand. Scarcely a soul was in sight. The town seemed deserted.

“Madam, rumor,” Garner said, with a smile, “reports that your friend Mr. Sanders, from Augusta, is coming up for a visit.”

“Yes, I had a letter from him this morning,” Helen said, in a dignified tone. “My father must have spoken of it. It will be Mr. Sanders' first visit to Darley, and he will find us terribly upset. If I knew how to reach him I'd ask him to wait a few days till this uncertainty is over, but he is on his way here—is, in fact, stopping somewhere in Atlanta—and intends to come on up to-morrow or the next day. Does—does Carson—has he heard of Mr. Sanders' coming?”

“Oh yes, it was sprung on him this morning for a deadly purpose,” Garner said, with a significant smile. “The whole gang—Keith, Wade, and Bob Smith—were in here trying to keep him from going to the farm. They had tried everything they could think of to stop him, and as a last resort set in to teasing. Keith told him Sanders would sit in the parlor and say sweet things to you while Carson was trying to liberate the ex-slaves of your family at the risk of bone and sinew. Keith said Carson was showing the finest proof of fidelity that was ever given—fidelity to the man in the parlor.”

“Keith ought to have been ashamed of himself,” Helen said, with her first show of vexation. “And what did Carson say?”

“The poor chap took it all in a good-humor,” Garner said. “In fact, he was so much wrought up over Pete's predicament that he hardly heard what they were saying.”

“You really think Carson is in danger, too?” Helen continued, after a moment's silence.

“If he meets Dan Willis, yes,” said Garner. “If he opposes the mob, yes again. Dan Willis has already succeeded in creating a lot of unpopularity for him in that quarter, and the mere sight of Carson at such a time would be like a torch to a dry hay-stack.”

So Helen had gone home and spent the afternoon and evening in real torture of suspense, and now, as she walked the veranda floor alone with a realization of the grim possibilities of the case drawn sharply before her mental vision, she was all but praying aloud for Carson's safe return, and anxiously keeping her gaze on the moonlit street below. Suddenly her attention was drawn to the walk in front of the Dwight house. Some one was walking back and forth in a nervous manner, the intermittent flare of a cigar flashing out above the shrubbery like the glow of a lightning-bug. Could it be—had Carson returned and entered by the less frequently used gate in the rear? For several minutes she watched the figure as it strode back and forth with never-ceasing tread, and then, fairly consumed with the desire to set her doubts at rest, she went down into the garden at the side of the house, softly approached the open gate between the two homesteads, and called out: “Carson, is that you?”

The figure paused and turned, the fire of the cigar described a red half-circle against the dark background, but no one spoke. Then, as she waited at the gate, her heart in her mouth, the smoker came towards her. It was old Henry Dwight. He wore no hat nor coat, the night being warm, and one of his fat thumbs was under his broad suspender.

“No, it's not him, Miss Helen,” he said, rather gruffly. “He hasn't got back yet. I've had my hands full since supper. My wife is in a bad way. She has been worrying awfully since twelve o'clock, when Carson didn't turn up to dinner as usual. She's guessed what he went to the farm for, and she's as badly upset as old Linda is over that trifling Pete. I thought I had enough trouble before the war over my niggers, but here, forty years later, yours are upsetting things even worse. I only wish the men that fought to free the black scamps had some part of the burden to bear.”

“It really is awful,” Helen responded; “and so Mrs. Dwight is upset by it?”

“Oh yes, we had the doctor to come, and he gave some slight dose or other, but he said the main thing was to get Carson back and let her know for sure that he was safe and sound. I sent a man out there lickety-split on the fastest horse I have, and he ought to have got back two hours ago. That's what I'm out here for. I know she's not going to let me rest till her mind is at ease.”

“Do you really think any actual harm could have come to Carson?” Helen inquired, anxiously.

“It could come to anybody who has the knack my boy has for eternally rubbing folks the wrong way,” the old man retorted from the depths of his irritation; “but, Lord, my young lady, you are at the bottom of it!”

“I? Oh, Mr. Dwight, don't say that!” Helen pleaded.

“Well, I'm only telling you the truth,” said Dwight, throwing his cigar away and putting, both thumbs under his suspenders. “You know that as well as I do. He sees how you are bothered about your old mammy, and he has simply taken up your cause. It's just what I'd 'a' done at his age. I reckon I'd 'a' fought till I dropped in my tracks for a girl I—but from all accounts you and Carson couldn't agree, or rather you couldn't. He seems to be agreeing now and staking his life and political chances on it. Well, I don't blame him. It never run in the Dwight blood to love more than once, an' then it was always for the pick of the flock. Well, you are the pick in this town, an' I wouldn't feel like he was my boy if he stepped down and out as easy as some do these days. I met him on his way to the farm and tried to shame him out of the trip. I joined the others in teasing him about that Augusta fellow, who can do his courting by long-distance methods in an easy seat at his writing-desk, while up-country chaps are doing the rough work for nothing, but it didn't feaze 'im. He tossed his stubborn head, got pretty red in the face, and said he was trying to help old Linda and Lewis out, and that he know well enough you didn't care a cent for him.”

Helen had grown hot and cold by turns, and she now found herself unable to make any adequate response to such personal allusions.

“Huh, I see I got you teased, too!” Dwight said, with a short, staccato laugh. “Oh, well, you mustn't mind me. I'll go in and see if my wife is asleep, and if she is I'll go to bed myself.”

Helen, deeply depressed, and beset with many conflicting emotions, turned back to the veranda, and, instead of going up to her room, she reclined in a hammock stretched between two of the huge, fluted columns. She had been there perhaps half an hour when her heart almost stopped pulsating as she caught, the dull beat of horses' hoofs up the street. Rising, she saw a horseman rein in at the gate at Dwight's. It was Carson; she knew that by the way he dismounted and threw the rein over the gate-post.

“Carson!” she called out. “Oh, Carson, I want to see you!”

He heard, and came along the sidewalk to meet her at the gate where she now stood. What had come over him? There was an utter droop of despondent weariness upon him, and then as he drew near she saw that his face was pale and haggard. For a moment he stood, his hand on the gate she was holding open, and only stared.

“Oh, what has happened?” she cried. “I've been waiting for you. We haven't heard a word.”

In a tired, husky voice, for he had made many a speech through the day, he told her of Pete's escape. “He's still hiding somewhere in the mountains,” he said.

“Oh, then he may get away after all!” she cried.

Dwight said nothing, seeming to avoid her great, staring, anxious eyes. She laid her hand almost unconsciously on his arm.

“Don't you think he has a chance, Carson?” she repeated—“a bare chance?”

“The whole mountain is surrounded, and they are beating the woods, covering every inch of the ground,” he said. “It is now only a question of time. They will wait till daybreak, and then continue till they have found him. How is Mam' Linda?”

“Nearly dead,” Helen answered, under her breath.

“And my mother?” he said.

“She is only worried,” Helen told him. “Your father thinks she will be all right as soon as she is assured of your return.”

“Only worried? Why, he sent me word she was nearly dead,” Carson said, with a feeble flare of indignation. “I wanted to stay, to be there to make one final effort to convince them, but when the message reached me, and things were at a standstill anyway, I came home, and now, even if I started back to-night, I'd likely be too late. He tricked me—my father tricked me!”

“And you yourself? Did you meet that—Dan Willis?” Helen asked. He stared at her hesitatingly for an instant, and then said: “I happened not to. He was very active in the chase and seemed always to be somewhere else. He killed all my efforts.” Carson leaned heavily against the white paling fence as he continued. “As soon as I'd talk a crowd of men into my way of thinking, he'd come along and fire them with fury again. He told them I was only making a grandstand play for the negro vote, and they swallowed it. They swallowed it and jeered and hissed me as I went along. Garner is right. I've killed every chance I ever had with those people. But I don't care.”

Helen sighed. “Oh, Carson, you did it all because—because I felt as I did about Pete. I know that was it.”

He made no denial as he stood awkwardly avoiding her eyes.

“I shall never, never forgive myself,” she said, in pained accents. “Mr. Garner and all your friends say that your election was the one thing you held desirable, the one thing that would—would thoroughly reinstate you in your father's confidence, and yet I—I—oh, Carson I did want you to win! I wanted it—wanted it—wanted it!”

“Oh, well, don't bother about that,” he said, and she saw that he was trying to hide his own disappointment. “I admit I started into this because—because I knew how keenly you felt for Linda, but to-day, Helen, as I rode from mad throng to mad throng of those good men with their dishevelled hair and bloodshot eyes, their very souls bent to that trail, that pitiful trail of revenge, I began to feel that I was fighting for a great principle, a principle that you had planted within me. I gloried in it for its own sake, and because it had its birth in your sweet sympathy and love for the unfortunate. I could never have experienced it but for you.”

“But you failed,” Helen almost sobbed. “You failed.”

“Yes, utterly. What I've done amounted to nothing more than irritating them. Those men, many of whom I love and admire, were wounded to their hearts, and I was only keeping their sores open with my fine-spun theories of human justice. They will learn their lesson slowly, but they will learn it. When they have caught and lynched poor, stupid Pete, they may learn later that he was innocent, and then they will realize what I was trying to keep them from doing. They will be friendly to me then, but Wiggin will be in office.”

“Yes, my father thinks this thing is going to defeat you.” Helen sighed. “And, Carson, it's killing me to think that I am the prime cause of it. If I'd had a man's head I'd have known that your effort could accomplish nothing, and I'd have been like Mr. Garner and the others, and asked you not to mix up in it; but I couldn't help myself. Mam' Linda has your name on her lips with every breath. She thinks the sun rises and sets in you, and that you only have to give an order to have it obeyed.”

“That's the pity of it,” Carson said, with a sigh.

At this juncture there was the sound of a window-sash sliding upward, and old Dwight put out his head.

“Come on in!” he called out. “Your mother is awake and absolutely refuses to believe you haven't a dozen bullet-holes in you.”

“All right, father, I'm coming,” Carson said, and impulsively he held out his hand and clasped Helen's in a steady, sympathetic pressure.

“Now, you go to bed, little girl,” he said, more tenderly than he realized. In fact, it was a term he had used only once before, long before her brother's death. “Pardon me,” he pleaded; “I didn't know what I was saying. I—I was worried over seeing you look so tired, and—and I spoke without thinking.”

“You can say it whenever you wish, Carson,” she said. “As if I could get angry at you after—after—” But she did not finish, for with her hand still warmly clasping his fingers, she was listening to a distant sound. It was a restless human tread on a resounding floor.

“It's Mam' Linda,” Helen said. “She walks like that night and day. I must go to her and—tell her you are back, but oh, how can I? Good-night, Carson. Ill never forget what you have done—never!”

CHAPTER XV.

FTER an almost sleepless night, spent for the greater part in despondent reflections over his failure in the things to which he had directed his hopes and energies, Carson rose about seven o'clock, went into his mother's room to ask how she had rested through the night, and then descended, to breakfast. It was eight o'clock when he arrived at the office. Garner was there in a cloud of dust, sweeping a pile of torn papers into the already filled fireplace.

“I'm going to touch a match to this the first rainy day—if I think of it,” he said. “It's liable to set the roof on fire when it's dry as it is now.”

“Any news from the mountains?” Carson asked, as he sat down at his desk.

“Yes; Pole Baker was in here just now.” Garner leaned his broom-handle against the mantel-piece, and stood critically eying his partner's worn face and dejected mien. “He said the mob, or mobs, for there are twenty factions of them, had certainly hemmed Pete in. He was hiding somewhere on Elk Knob, and they hadn't then located him. Pole left there long before day and said they had already set in afresh. I reckon it will be over soon. He told me to keep you here if I had to swear out a writ of dangerous lunacy against you. He says you have not only killed your own political chances, but that you couldn't save the boy if you were the daddy of every man in the chase. They've smelled blood and they want to taste it.”

“You needn't worry about me,” Carson said, dejectedly. “I realize how helpless I was yesterday, and am still. There was only one thing that might have been done if we had acted quickly, and that was to telegraph the Governor for troops.”

“But you wouldn't sanction that; you know you wouldn't,” said Garner. “You know every mother's son of those white men is acting according to the purest dictates of his inner soul. They think they are right. They believe in law, and while I am a member of the bar, by Heaven! I say to you that our whole legal system is rotten to the core. Politics will clear a criminal at the drop of a hat. A dozen voters can jerk a man from life imprisonment to the streets of this town by a single telegram. No, you know those sturdy men over there think they are right, and you would not be the cause of armed men shooting them down like rabbits in a fence corner.”

“No, they think they are right,” Carson said. “And they were my friends till this came up. Any mail?”

“I haven't been to the post-office. I wish you'd go. You need exercise; you are off color—you are as yellow as a new saddle. Drop this thing. The Lord Himself can't make water run up-hill. Quit thinking about it.”

Carson went out into the quiet street and walked along to the post-office. At the intersection of the streets near the Johnston House, on any ordinary day, a dozen drays and hacks in the care of negro drivers would have been seen, and on the drays and about the hacks stood, as a rule, many idle negro men and boys; but this morning the spot was significantly vacant. At the negro barber-shop, kept by Buck Black, a mulatto of marked dignity and intelligence for one of his race, only the black barbers might be seen, and they were not lounging about the door, but stood at their chairs, their faces grave, their tongues unusually silent. They might be asking themselves questions as to the possible extent of the fires of race-hatred just now raging—if the capture and death of Pete Warren would quench the conflagration, or if it would roll on towards them like the licking flames of a burning prairie—they might, I say, ask themselves such questions, but to the patrons of their trade they kept discreet silence. And no white man who went near them that day would ask them what they believed or what they felt, for the blacks are not a people who give much thought even to their own social problems. They had leaned for many generations upon white guidance, and, with childlike, hereditary instinct, they were leaning still.

Finding no letters of importance in the little glass-faced and numbered box at the post-office, Carson, sick at heart and utterly discouraged, went up to the Club. Here, idly knocking the balls about on a billiard-table, a cigar in his mouth, was Keith Gordon.

“Want to play a game of pool?” he asked.

“Not this morning, old man,” Carson answered.

“Well, I don't either,” said Keith. “I went to the bank and tried to add up some figures for the old man, but my thinker wouldn't work. It's out of whack. That blasted nigger Pete is the prime cause of my being upset. I came by Major Warren's this morning. Sister feels awfully sorry for Mam' Linda, and asked me to take her a jar of jelly. You know old colored people love little attentions like that from white people, when they are sick or in trouble. Well”—Keith held up his hands, the palms outward—“I don't want any more in mine. I've been to death-bed scenes, funerals, wrecks on railroads, and all sorts of horrors, but that was simply too much. It simply beggars description—to see that old woman bowed there in her door like a dumb brute with its tongue tied to a stake. It made me ashamed of myself, though, for not at least trying to do something. I glory in you, old man. You failed, but you tried. By-the-way, that's the only comfort Mam' Linda has had—the only thing. Helen was there, the dear girl—and to think her visit home has to be like this!—she was there trying to soothe the old woman, but nothing that was said could produce anything but that awful groaning of hers till Lewis said something about your going over there yesterday, and that stirred her up. She rose in her chair and walked to the gate and folded her big arms across her breast.

“'I thank God young marster felt fer me dat way,' she said. 'He's de best young man on de face o' de earth. I'll go down ter my grave blessing 'im fer dis. He's got er soul in 'im. He knows how old Mammy Lindy feels en he was tryin' ter help her, God bless 'im! He couldn't do nothin', but he tried—he tried, dough everybody was holdin' 'im back en sayin' it would spile his 'lection. Well, if it do harm 'im, it will show dat Gawd done turn ergin white en black bofe.' I came away,” Keith finished, after a pause, in which Carson said nothing. “I couldn't stand it. Helen was crying like a child, her face wet with tears, and she wasn't trying to hide it. I was looking for some one to come every minute with the final news, and I didn't want to face that. Good God, old man, what are we coming to? Historians, Northern ones, seem to think the days of slavery were benighted, but God knows such things as this never happened then. Now, did it?”

“No; it's terrible,” Carson agreed, and he stepped to a window and looked out over the roofs of the near-by stores to the wagon-yard beyond.

“Well, the great and only, the truly accepted one,” Keith went on, in a lighter tone, “the man who did us all up brown, Mr. Earle Sanders, of Augusta, has unwittingly chosen a gloomy date for his visit. He's here, installed in the bridal-chamber of the Hotel de Johnston. Helen got a note from him just as I was leaving. On my soul, old man—maybe it's because I want to see it that way—but, really, it didn't seem to me that she looked exactly elated, you know, like I imagined she would, from the way the local gossips pile it on. You know, the idea struck me that maybe she is not really engaged, after all.”

“She is worried; she is not herself to-day,” Carson said, coldly, though in truth his blood was surging hotly through his veins. It had come at last. The man who was to rob him of all he cared for in life was at hand. Turning from Keith, he pretended to be looking over some of the dog-eared magazines in the reading-room, and then feeling an overwhelming desire to be alone with the dull pain in his breast, he waved a careless signal to Keith and went down to the street. In front of the hotel stood a pair of sleek, restive bays harnessed to a new top-buggy. They were held by the owner of the best livery-stable in the town, a rough ex-mountaineer.

“Say, Carson,” the man called out, proudly, “you'll have to git up early in the morning to produce a better yoke of thorough-breds than these. Never been driven over these roads before. I didn't intend to let 'em out fer public use right now, but a big, rich fellow from Augusta is here sparkin', and he wanted the best I had and wouldn't touch anything else. Money wasn't any object. He turned up his nose at all my other stock. Gee! look at them trim legs and thighs—a dead match as two black-eyed peas.”

“Yes, they are all right.” Carson walked on and went into Blackburn's store, for no other reason than that he wanted to avoid meeting people and discussing the trouble Pete Warren was in, or hearing further comments on the stranger's visit. He might have chosen a better retreat, however, for in a group at the window nearest the hotel he found Blackburn, Garner, Bob Smith, and Wade Tingle, all peering stealthily out through the dingy glass at the team Carson had just inspected.

“He'll be out in a minute,” Wade was saying, in an undertone. “Quit pushing me, Bob! They say he's got dead loads of money.”

“You bet he has,” Bob declared; “he had a wad of it in big bills large enough to stuff a sofa-pillow with. Ike, the porter, who trucked his trunk up, said he got a dollar tip. The head waiter is expecting to buy a farm after he leaves. Gee! there he comes! Say, Garner, you ought to know; is that a brandy-and-soda complexion?”

“No, he doesn't drink a drop,” answered Garner. “Well, he looks all right, as well as I can see through this immaculate window with my eyes full of spiderwebs. My, what clothes! Say, Bob, is that style of derby the thing now? It looks like an inverted milk-bucket. Come here, Carson, and take a peep at the conqueror. If Keith were here we'd have a quomm. By George, there's Keith now! He's watching at the window of the barber-shop. Call him over, Blackburn. Let's have him here; we need more pall-bearers.”

“Seems to me you boys are the corpses,” Blackburn jested. “I'd be ashamed to let a clothing-store dummy like that beat me to the tank.”

Carson had heard enough. In his mood and frame of mind their open frivolity cut him to the quick. Going out, unnoticed by the others, he went to his office. In the little, dusty consultation-room in the rear there was an old leather couch. On this he threw himself. There had been moments in his life when he had worn the crown of misery, notably the day Albert Warren was buried, when, on approaching Helen to offer her his sympathies, she had turned from him with a shudder. That had been a gloomy hour, but this—he covered his face with his hands and lay still. On that day a faint hope had vaguely fluttered within him—a hope of reformation; a hope of making a worthy place for himself in life and of ultimately winning her favor and forgiveness. But now it was all over. He had actually seen with his own eyes the man who was to be her husband. He was sure now that the report was true. The visit at such a grave crisis confirmed all that had been said. Helen had telegraphed him of her trouble, and Sanders had made all haste to reach her side.

CHAPTER XVI.

EHIND the dashing bays the newcomer drove down to Warren's. On the seat beside him sat a negro boy sent from the livery-stable to hold the horses. Sanders was dressed in the height of fashion, was young, of the blond type, and considered handsome. A better figure no man need have desired. The people living in the Warren neighborhood, who peered curiously out of windows, not having Dwight's affairs at heart, indulged in small wonder over the report that Helen was about to accept such a specimen of city manhood in preference to Carson or any of “the home boys.”

Alighting at the front gate, Sanders went to the door and rang. He was admitted by a colored maid and shown into the quaint old parlor with its tall, gilt-framed, pier-glass mirrors and carved mahogany furniture. The wide front, lace-curtained windows, which opened on a level with the veranda floor, let in a cooling breeze which was most agreeable in contrast to the beating heat out-of-doors.

He had only a few minutes to wait, for Helen had just returned from a visit to Linda's cottage and was in the library across the hall. He heard her coming and stood up, flushing expectantly, an eager light flashing in his eyes.

“I am taking you by surprise,” he said, as he grasped her extended hand and held it for an instant.

“Well, you know you told me when I left,” Helen said, “that it would be impossible for you to get away from business till after the first of next month, so I naturally supposed—”

“The trouble was”—he laughed as he stood courteously waiting for her to sit before doing so himself—“the trouble was that I didn't know myself then as I do now. I thought I could wait like any sensible man of my age, but I simply couldn't, Helen. After you left, the town was simply unbearable. I seemed not to want to go anywhere but to the places to which we went together, and there I suffered a regular agony of the blues. The truth is, I'm killing two birds with one stone. We were about to send our lawyer to Chattanooga to settle up a legal matter there, and I persuaded my partner to let me do it. So you see, after all, I shall not be wholly idle. I can run up there from here and back, I believe, in the same day.”

“Yes, it is not far,” Helen answered. “We often go up there to do shopping.”

“I'm going to confess something else,” Sanders said, flushing slightly. “Helen, you may not forgive me for it, but I've been uneasy.”

“Uneasy?” Helen leaned as far back in her chair as she could, for he had bent forward till his wide, hungry eyes were close to hers.

“Yes, I've fought the feeling every day and night since you left. At times my very common-sense would seem to conquer and I'd feel a little better about it, but it would only be a short time till I'd be down in the dregs again.”

“Why, what is the matter?” Helen asked, half fearfully.

“It was your letters, Helen,” he said, his handsome face very grave as he leaned towards her.

“My letters? Why, I wrote as often—even often-er—than I promised,” the girl said.

“Oh, don't think me over-exacting,” Sanders implored her with eyes and voice. “I know you did all you agreed to do, but somehow—well, you know you seemed so much like one of us down there that I had become accustomed to thinking of you as almost belonging to Augusta; but your letters showed how very dear Darley and its people are to you, and I was obliged to—well, face the grim fact that we have a strong rival here in the mountains.”

“I thought you knew that I adore my old home,” she said, simply.

“Oh yes, I know—most people do—but, Helen, the letter you wrote about the dance your friends—your 'boys,' as you used to call them—gave you at that quaint club, why, it is simply a piece of literature. I've read it over and over time after time.”

“Oh, I only wrote as I felt, out of a full heart,” the girl said. “When you meet them, and know them as I do, you will not wonder at my fidelity—at my enthusiasm over that particular tribute.”

Sanders laughed. “Well, I suppose I am simply jealous—jealous not alone for myself, but for Augusta. Why, you can't imagine how you are missed. A party of the old crowd went around to your aunt's as usual the Wednesday following your departure, but we were so blue we could hardly talk to one another. Helen, the spirit of our old gatherings was gone. Your aunt actually cried, and your uncle really drank too much brandy and soda.”

“Well, you mustn't think I don't miss them all,” Helen said, deeply touched. “I think of them every day. It was only that I had been away so long that it was glorious to get back home—to my real home again. I love it down there; it is beautiful; you were all so lovely to me, but this here is different.”

“That's what I felt in reading your letters,” Sanders said. “A tone of restful content and happiness was in every line you wrote. Somehow, I wanted you, in my selfish heart, to be homesick for us so that you would”—the visitor drew a deep breath—“be all the more likely to—to consent to live there, you know, some day, permanently.” Helen made no reply, and Sanders, flushing deeply, wisely turned the subject, as he rose and went to a window and drew the curtain aside.

“Do you see those horses?” he asked, with a smile. “I brought them thinking I might prevail on you to take a drive with me this morning. I have set my heart on seeing some of the country around the town, and I want to do it with you. I hope you can go.”

“Oh, not to-day! I couldn't think of it to-day!” Helen cried, impulsively.

“Not to-day?” he said, crestfallen.

“No. Haven't you heard about Mam' Linda's awful trouble?”

“Oh, that is her son!” Sanders said. “I heard something of it at the hotel. I see. She really must be troubled.”

“It is a wonder it hasn't killed her,” Helen answered. “I have never seen a human being under such frightful torture.”

“And can nothing be done?” Sanders asked. “I'd really like to be of use—to help, you know, in some way.”

“There is nothing to be done—nothing that can be done,” Helen said. “She knows that, and is simply waiting for the end.”

“It's too bad,” Sanders remarked, awkwardly. “Might I go to see her?”

“I think you'd better not,” said the girl. “I don't believe she would care to see any but very old friends. I used to think I could comfort her, but even I fail now. She is insensible to anything but that one haunting horror. She has tried a dozen times to go over to the mountains, but my father and Uncle Lewis have prevented it. That mob, angry as they are, might really kill her, for she would fight for her young like a tigress, and people wrought up like those are mad enough to do anything.”

“And some people think the negro may not really be guilty, do they not?” Sanders asked.

“I am sure he is not,” Helen sighed. “I feel it; I know it.”

There was the sound of a closing gate, and Helen looked out.

“It is my father,” she said. “Perhaps he has heard something.”

Leaving her guest, she went out to the steps. “Whose turn-out?” the Major asked, with admiring curiosity, indicating the horses and buggy.

“Mr. Sanders has come,” she said, simply. “He's in the parlor. Is there any news?”

“Nothing.” The old man removed his hat and wiped his perspiring brow. “Nothing except that Carson Dwight has gone over there on a fast horse. Linda sent him a message, begging him to make one more effort, and he went. All his friends tried to stop him, but he dashed out of town like a madman. He won't accomplish a thing, and it may cost him his life, but he's the right sort, daughter. He's got a heart in him as big as all out-of-doors. Blackburn told him Dan Willis was over there, a raging demon in human shape, but it only made Carson the more determined. His father saw him and ordered him back, and was speechless with fury when Carson simply waved his hand and rode on. Go back to the parlor. I'll join you in a minute.”

“Have you heard anything?” Sanders asked, as Helen re-entered the room and stood white and distraught before him.

She hesitated, her shifting glance on the floor, and then she stared at him almost as one in a dream. “He has heard nothing except—except that Carson Dwight has gone over there. He has gone. Mam' Linda begged him to make one other effort and he couldn't resist her. She—she was good to his mother and to him when he was a child, and he feels grateful. She thinks he is the only one that can help. She told me last night that she believed in him as she once believed in God. He can do nothing, but he knew it would comfort her for him to try.”

“This Mr. Dwight is one of your—your old friends, is he not?”

Sanders' face was the playground of conflicting emotions as he stood staring at her.

“Yes,” Helen answered; “one of my best and truest.”

“He has undertaken a dangerous thing, has he not?” Sanders managed to say.

“Dangerous?” Helen shuddered. “He has an enemy there who is now seeking his life. They are sure to meet. They have already quarrelled, and—about this very thing.”

She sat down in the chair she had just left and Sanders stood near her. There was a voice in the hall. It was the Major ordering a servant to bring in mint julep, and the next moment he was in the parlor hospitably introducing himself to the visitor.

Seeing her opportunity, Helen rose and left them together. She went up to her room, with heavy, dragging footsteps, and stood at the window overlooking the Dwight garden and lawn.

Carson knew that Sanders was in town, she told herself, in gloomy self-reproach. He knew his rival was with her, and right now as the poor boy was speeding on to—his death, he thought Sanders was making love to her. Helen bit her quivering lip and clinched her fingers. “Poor boy!” she thought, almost with a sob, “he deserves better treatment than that.”

CHAPTER XVII

N his escape from the sheriff and his deputy, Pete Warren ran with the speed of a deer-hound through the near-by woods. Thinking his pursuers were close behind him, he did not stop even to listen to their footsteps. Through dell and fen, up hill and down, over rocks and through tangled undergrowth he forged his way, his tongue lolling from the corner of his gaping mouth. The thorns and briers had tom gashes in his cheeks, neck, and hands, and left his clothing in strips. The wild glare of a hunted beast was in his eyes. The land was gradually sloping upward. He was getting upon the mountain. For a moment the distraught creature paused, bent his ear to listen and try to decide, rationally, calmly, which was the better plan, to hide in the caverns and craggy recesses of the frowning heights above or speed onward over more level ground. For a moment the drumlike pounding of his heart was all the sound he heard, and then the blast of a hunter's horn broke the stillness, not two hundred yards away, and was thrown back in reverberating echoes from the mountain-side. This was followed by a far-off answering shout, the report of a signal-gun, and then the mellow, terrifying baying of blood-hounds fell upon his ears. Pete stood erect, his knees quivering. No thought of prayer passed through his brain. Prayer, to his mind, was only a series of empty vocal sounds heard chiefly in churches where black men and women stood or knelt in their best clothes, and certainly not for emergencies like this, where granite heavens were closing upon stony earth and he was caught between.

Suddenly bending lower, and fresher for the second wind he had got, he sped onward again, choosing the valley rather than the steeper mountain-side. Shouts, gun reports, horn-blasts, and the baying of the hounds now followed him. Presently he came to a clear mountain creek about twenty feet wide and not deeper anywhere than his waist, and in many places barely covering the slimy brown stones over which it flowed. Here, as if by inspiration, came the remembrance of some story he had heard about a pursued negro managing to elude the scent of blood-hounds by taking to water, and into the icy stream Pete plunged, and, slipping, stumbling, falling, he made his way onward.

But his reason told him this slow method really would not benefit him, for his pursuers would soon catch up and see him from the banks. He had waded up the stream about a quarter of a mile, when he came to a spot where the stout branches of a sturdy leaning beech hung down within his reach. The idea which came to him was worthy of a white man's brain, for, pulling on the bough and finding it firm, he decided upon the original plan of getting out of the water there, where his trail would be lost to sight or scent, and climbing into the dense foliage above. His pursuers might not think to look upward at exactly that spot, and the hounds, bent on catching the scent from the ground where he landed, would speed onward, farther and farther away. At all events it was worth the trial.

With quivering hands he drew the bough down till its leaves sank under the water. It bore his weight well and from it he climbed to the massive trunk and higher upward, till, in a fork of the tree, he rested, noticing, with a throb of relief, that the bough had righted itself and hung as before above the surface of the stream. On came the dogs; he could not hear them now, for, intent upon their work, they made no sound, but the hoarse, maddened voices of men under their guidance reached his ears. The swish through the undergrowth, the patter, as of rain on dry leaves, as their claws hurled the ground behind them, the snuffing and sneezing—that was the hounds. Closer and closer Pete hugged the tree, hardly breathing, fearing now that the water dripping from his clothing or the bruised leaves of the bough might betray his presence. But the hounds, one on either side of the stream, their noses to the earth, dashed on. Pete caught only a gleam of their sleek, dim coats and they were gone. Behind them, panting, followed a dozen men. In his fear of being seen, Pete dared not even look at their inflamed faces. With closed eyes pressed against his wet coat-sleeve, he clung to his place, a hunted thing, neither fish, fowl, nor beast, and yet, like them all, a creature of the wilderness, endowed with the instinct of self-preservation.

“They will run 'im down!” he heard a man say. “Them dogs never have failed. The black devil thought he'd throw 'em off by taking to water. He didn't know we had one for each bank.”

On ran the men, the sound of their progress becoming less and less audible as they receded. Was he safe now? Pete's slow intelligence answered no. He was still fully alive to his danger. He might stay there for awhile, but not for long. Already, perhaps owing to his desperate running, he had an almost maddening thirst, a thirst which the sheer sight of the cool stream so near tantalized. Should he descend, satisfy his desire, and attempt to regain his place of hiding? No, for he might not seclude himself so successfully the next time. Then, with his face resting on his arm, he began to feel drowsy. Twisting his body about, he finally found himself in a position in which he could recline still close to the tree and rest a little, though his feet and legs, surcharged with blood, were painfully weighted downward. The forest about him was very quiet. Some bluebirds above his head were singing merrily. A gray squirrel with a fuzzy tail was perched inquiringly on the brown bough of a near-by pine. Pete reclined thus for several minutes, and then the objects about him appeared to be in a blur. The far off shouts, horn-blasts, and gun reports beat less insistently on his tired brain, and then he found himself playing with a kitten—the queerest, most amusing kitten—in the sunlight in front of his mother's door.

He must have slept for hours, for when he opened his eyes the sun was sinking behind the top of a distant hill. He tried to draw his aching legs up higher and felt stinging pricks of pain from his hips to his toes, as his blood leaped into circulation again. After several efforts he succeeded in standing on the bough. To his pangs of thirst were now added those of hunger. For hours he stood thus. He saw the light of day die out, first on the landscape and later from the clear sky. Now, he told himself, under cover of night, he would escape, but something happened to prevent the attempt. Through the darkness he saw the flitting lights off many pine torches. They passed to and fro under the trees, sometimes quite near him, and as far as he could see up the mountain-sides they flickered like the sinister night-eyes of his doom. He stood till he felt as if he could do so no longer, and then he got down on the bough as before, and after hours of conscious hunger and thirst and cramping pains he slept again. Thus he passed that night, and when the golden rays of sunlight came piercing the gray mountain mists and flooding the landscape with its warm glory, Pete Warren, hearing the voices of sleepless revenge, now more numerous and harsh and packed with hate—hearing them on all sides from far and near—dared not stir. He remained perched in his leafy nook like some half-knowing, primeval thing, avoiding the flint-tipped arrows of the high-cheeked, straight-haired men lurking beneath.

CHAPTER XVIII

ARSON DWIGHT remained two days in the vicinity of his farm waiting gloomily for the discovery and arrest of Pete Warren, his sole hope being that at the last grewsome moment he might prevail on the distraught man-hunters to listen to a final appeal for law and order. He was forced, however, to return to Darley, feeling sure, as did the others, that Pete was hiding in some undiscovered place in the mountains, or shrewd and deft enough to avoid the approach of man or hound. But it would not be for long, the hunters told themselves, for the entire spot was surrounded and well guarded and they would starve him out.

“The gang” breathed more freely when they saw Carson appear in the doorway of the den on the night of his return, and learned that through some miracle he had failed to meet Dan Willis, though not one of them was favorably impressed by the outward appearance of their leader. His eyes, in their darkened sockets, gleamed like despondent fires; on his tanned cheeks hectic flushes had appeared and his hands quivered as if from nervous exhaustion. Not a man among them dared reproach him for the further and futile political mistake he had made. He was a ruined man, and yet they admired him the more as they looked down on him, begrimed with the dregs of his failure. Garner's opinion, to himself expressed, was that Dwight was a failure only on the surface, but that it was the surface which counted everywhere except in heaven, and there no one knew what sort of coin would be current. Garner loved him. He loved him for his hopeless fidelity to Helen, for his firm-jawed clinging to a mere principle, such as trying to keep an old negro woman who had faith in him from breaking her heart, for his risking death itself to obtain full justice-for the black boy who was his servant. Yes, Garner mused, Carson certainly deserved a better deal all round, but deserving a thing according to the highest ethics, and getting it according to the lowest were different.

I The following night there was a queer, secret meeting of negroes in the town. Stealthily they left their cabins and ramshackle homes, and one by one they glided through the darkest streets and alleys to the house of one Neb Wynn, a man who had acquired his physical being and crudely unique personality from the confluence of three distinct streams of blood—the white, the Cherokee Indian, and the negro. He owned and drove a dray on the streets of the town, and being economical he had accumulated enough means to build the two-story frame (not yet painted) house in which he lived. The lower floor was used as a negro restaurant, which Neb's wife managed, the upper was devoted to the family bedroom, a guest-chamber for any one who wished to spend the night, and a fair-sized “hall,” with windows on the street, which was rented to colored people for any purpose, such as dances, lodge meetings or church sociables.

It was in this room, where no light burned, that the negroes assembled. Indeed, no sort of illumination was used below, and when a negro who had been secretly summoned reached the spot, he assured himself that no one was in sight, and then he approached the restaurant door on tiptoe, rapped twice with his knuckles, paused a moment, and then rapped three times. Thereupon Neb, with his ear to the key-hole on the inside, cautiously opened the door and drew the applicant within, and, closing the shutter softly, asked, “What is the password?”

“Mercy,” was the whispered reply.

“What's the countersign?”

“Peace an' good-will to all men. Thy will be done. Amen.”

“All right, I know you,” Neb would say. “Go up ter de hall en set down, but mind you, don't speak one word!”

And thus they gathered—the men who were considered the most substantial colored citizens of the town. About ten o'clock Neb crept cautiously up the narrow stairs, entered the room, and sat down.

“We are all here,” he announced. “Brother Hard-castle, I'm done wid my part. I ain't no public speaker; I'll leave de rest ter you.”

A figure in one of the comers rose. He was the leading negro minister of the place. He cleared his throat and then said: “I would open with prayer, but to pray we ought to stand or kneel, and either thing would make too much disturbance. We can only ask God in our hearts, brothers, to be with us here in the darkness, and help lead us out of our trouble; help us to decide if we can, singly or in a body, what course to pursue in the grave matter that faces our race. We are being sorely tried, tried almost past endurance, but the God of the white man is the God of the black. Through a dark skin the light of a pure heart shines as far in an appeal for help towards the throne of Heaven as through a white. I'm not prepared to make a speech. I can't. I am too full of sorrow and alarm. I have just left the mother of the accused boy and the sight of her suffering has upset me. I have no harsh words, either, for the white men of this town. Every self-respecting colored citizen has nothing but words of praise for the good white men of the South, and in my heart, I can't much blame the men of the mountains who are bent on revenge, for the crime perpetrated by one of our race was horrible enough to justify their rage. It is only that we want to see full justice done and the absolutely innocent protected. I have been talking to Brother Black to-day, and I feel—”

He broke off, for a hiss of warning as low as the rattle of a hidden snake escaped Neb Wynn's lips. On the brick sidewalk below the steps of some solitary passer-by rang crisply on the still night air. It died away in the distance and again all was quiet.

“Now you kin go on,” Neb said. “We des got to be careful, gen'men. Ef a meetin' lak dis was knowed ter be on tap de last one of us would be in trouble, en dey would pull my house down fust. You all know dat.”

“You are certainly right,” the preacher resumed. “I was only going to call on Brother Black to say something in a line with the-talk I had with him today. He's got the right idea.”

“I'm not a speaker,” Buck Black began, as he stood up. “A man who runs a barber-shop don't have any too much time ter read and study, but I've giv' dis subject a lot o' thought fust an' last. I almost giv' up after dat big trouble in Atlanta; I 'lowed dar wasn't no way out of we-alls' plight, but I think diffunt now. A white man made me see it. I read some'n' yesterday in the biggest paper in dis State. It was written by de editor an' er big owner in it. Gen'men, it was de fust thing I've seed dat seemed ter me ter come fum on high as straight as a bolt of lightnin'. Brother black men, dat editor said dat de white race had tried de whip-lash, de rope, en de firebrand fer forty years en de situation was still as bad as ever. He said de question never would be plumb settled till de superior race extend a kind, helpful hand ter de ignorant black an' lead 'im out er his darkness en sin en crime. Gen'men, dem words went thoo en thoo me. I knowed dat man myself, when I lived in Atlanta; I've seed his honest face en know he meant what he said. He said it was time ter blaze er new trail, er trail dat hain't been blazed befo'—er trail of love en forgiveness en pity, er trail de Lord Jesus Christ would blaze ef he was here in de midst o' dis struggle.”

“Dat so, dat so!” Neb Wynn exclaimed, in a rasping whisper. “Gawd know dat de trufe.”

“An' I'm here ter-night,” Buck Black continued, “ter say ter you all dat I'm ready ter join fo'ces wid white men like dat. De old time white man was de darky's best friend; he owned 'im, but he helped 'im. In de old slave days black crimes lak our race is guilty of ter-day was never heard of—never nowhar! Dar's er young white man here in dis town, too, dat I love,” Black continued, after a pause. “I needn't mention his name; I bound you it is writ on every heart in dis room. You all know what he did yesterday an' day befo'—in spite er all de argument en persuasions of his friends dat is backin' 'im in politics, he went out dar ter de mountains in de thick o' it. I got it straight. I seed er man fum dar yesterday, en he said Marse Carson Dwight was out 'mongst dem men pleadin' wid 'em ter turn Pete over ter him en de law. He promised ter give er bond dat was big enough ter wipe out all he owned on earth, ef dey'd only spare de boy's life en give 'im a trial. Dey say Dan Willis wanted ter shoot 'im, but Willis's own friends wouldn't let 'im git nigh 'im. I was in my shop last night when he come in town an' axed me ter shave 'im up so he could go home en pacify his mother. She was sick en anxious about him. He got in my chair. Gen'men, I used ter brag beca'se I shaved General John B. Gordon once, when he was up here speakin', but fum now on my boast will be shavin' Marse Carson Dwight. He got in de chair an' laid back so tired he looked lak er dyin' man. He was all spattered fum head ter foot wid mud dat he'd walked an' rid thoo. I was so sorry fer 'im I could hardly do my work. I was cryin' half de time, dough he didn't see it, 'ca'se he jes layed dar wid his eyes closed. Hate de white race lak some say we do?” Black's voice rose higher and quivered. “No, suh, I'll never hate de race dat fetched dat white man in dis world. When he got out de chair de fus thing he ax was ef I'd heard how Mam' Lindy was. I told 'im she was pretty bad off, worried in her mind lak she was; den he turn fum de glass whar he was tyin' his necktie wid shaky fingers en said: 'I thought I might fetch 'er some hope, Buck, but I done give up. Ef I only had Pete in my charge safe in er good reliable jail I could free 'im, fer I don't believe he killed dem folks.'”

Buck Black paused. It was plain that his hearers were much affected, though no sound at all escaped them. The speaker was about to resume, when he was prevented by a sharp rapping on the stair below.

“Hush!” Neb Wynn commanded, in a warning whisper. He crept on tiptoe across the carpetless room, out into the hallway, and leaned over the baluster.

“Who dat?” he asked, in a calm, raised voice.

“It's me, Neb. I want ter see you. Come down!”

“It's my wife>” Neb informed the breathless room. “Sounds lak she's scared 'bout some'n'. Don't say er word till I git back. Mind, you folks got ter be careful ter-night.”

He descended the creaking stairs to the landing below. They caught the low mumbling of his voice intermingled with the perturbed tones of his wife, and then he crept back to them, strangely silent they thought, for after he had resumed his seat against the wall in the dark human circle, they heard only his heavy breathing. Fully five minutes passed, and then he sighed as if throwing something off his mind, some weight of perplexing indecision.

“Well, go on wid what you was sayin', Brother Black,” he said. “I reckon our meetin' won't be 'sturbed.”

“I almost got to what I was coming to,” Buck Black continued, rising and leaning momentously on the back of his chair. “I was leadin' up to a gre't surprise, gen'men. I'm goin' to tell you faithful friends a secret, a secret which, ef it was out dat we knowed it, might hang us all. So far it rests wid des me an' a black 'oman dat kin be trusted, my wife. Gen'men, I know whar Pete Warren is. I kin lay my hands on 'im any time. He's right here in dis town ter-night.”

A subdued burst of surprise rose from the dark room, then all was still, so still that the speaker's grasp of his chair gave forth a harsh, rasping sound.

“Yes, my wife seed 'im in de ol' lumber-yard back o' our house, en he was sech er sight ter look at dat she mighty nigh went out'n 'er senses. He was all cut in de face, en his clothes en shoes was des hangin' ter 'im by strings, en his eyes was 'most poppin' out'n his head. He was starvin' ter death—hadn't had a bite t' eat since he run off. When she seed 'im it was about a hour by sun, en he begged 'er to fetch 'im some victuals. Gen'men, he was so hungry dat she say he licked her han's lak er dog, en cried en tuck on powerful. She come home en told me, en ax me what ter do. Gen'men, 'fo' God on high I want ter do my duty ter my race en also to de white, but I couldn't see any safe way ter meddle. De white folks, some of 'em, anyway, say dat we aid en encourage crimes 'mongst our people, en while my heart was bleedin' fer dat boy en his folks, I couldn't underhanded he'p 'im widout goin' ter de men in power accordin' ter law.”

“And you did right,” spoke up the minister. “As much as I pity the boy, I would have acted as you have done. He is accused of murder and is an escaped prisoner. To decide that he was innocent and help him escape is exactly what we are blaming his pursuers for doing—taking the law into hands not sanctioned by authority. There is only one thing that can decide the matter, and that is the decision of a judge and jury.”

“Dat's exactly de way I looked at it,” said Black, “en so I tol' my wife not ter go nigh 'im ergin. I knowed dis meetin' was up fer ter-night, en I des thought I'd fetch it here en lay it 'fo' you all en take er vote on it.”

“A good idea,” said the minister from his chair. “And, brethren, it seems to me we, as a body of representative negroes of this town, have now a golden opportunity to prove our actual sincerity to the white race. As you say, Brother Black, we have been accused of remaining inactive when a criminal was being pursued for crimes against the white people. If we can agree on it to a unit, and can turn the prisoner over now that all efforts of the whites to apprehend him have failed, our act will be flashed all round the civilized world and give the lie to the charge in question. Do you think, Brother Black, that Pete Warren is still hiding near your house?”

“Yes, I do,” answered the barber. “He would be afeard ter leave dat place, en I reckon he's waitin' dar now fer my wife ter fetch 'im some'n' ter eat.”

“Well, then, all we've got to do is to see if we can thoroughly agree on the plan proposed. I suppose one of the first things, if we do agree to turn him over to the law, is to consult with Mr. Carson Dwight and see if he can devise a way of acting with perfect safety to the prisoner and all concerned. If he can, our duty is clear.”

“Yes, he's de man, God knows dat,” Black said, enthusiastically. “He won't let us run no risk.”

“Well, then,” said the minister, who had the floor, “let us put it to a vote. Of course, it must be unanimous. We can't act on a thing as dangerous as this without a thorough agreement. Now, you have all heard the plan proposed. Those in favor make it known by standing up as quietly as you possibly can, so that I may count you.”

Very quietly, for so many acting in concert, men on all sides of the hall stood up. The minister then began to grope round the room, touching with his hands the standing voters.

“Who's this?” he suddenly exclaimed, when he reached Neb Wynn's chair and lowered his hands to the drayman, who was the only one not standing. “It's me,” Neb answered; “me, dat's who—me!”

“Oh!” There was an astonished pause.

“Yes, it's me. I ain't votin' yo' way,” Neb said. “You all kin act fer yo'selves. I know what I'm about.”

“But what's de matter wid you?” Buck Black demanded, rather sharply. “All dis time you been de most anxious one ter do some'n', en now when we got er chance ter act wid judgment en caution, all in a body, en, as Brother Hardcastle say, ter de honor of ou' race, why you up en—”

“Hold on, des keep yo' shirt on!” said Neb, in a queer, tremulous voice. “Gen'men, I ain't placed des zactly de same es you-all is. I don't want ter tek de whole 'sponsibility on my shoulders, en I don't intend to.”

“You are not taking it all on your shoulders, brother,” said the minister, calmly; “we are acting in a body.”

“No, it's all on me,” Neb said. “You said, Buck Black, dat Pete was in de lumber-yard 'hind yo' house. He ain't. You might search ever' stack o' planks en ever' dry-kiln dar, but you wouldn't fin' 'im. He's a cousin er my wife's, en me'n dat boy was good, true friends, en so he come here des now, when you heard my wife call me, an' th'owed hisse'f on my mercy. He's out at my stable now, up in de hay-loft, waitin' fer me ter fetch 'im suppin ter eat, as soon as you all go off. My wife say he's de most pitiful thing dat God ever made, en, gen'men, I'm sorry fer 'im. Law or no law, I'm sorry fer 'im. It's all well enough fer you ter set here in yo' good clothes wid good meals er victuals inside o' you, en know you got er good safe baid ter go ter—it's all well enough fer you ter vote on what is ter be done, but ef you do vote fer it en clap 'im 'hind de bars en he's hung—hung by de neck till he's as stiff es a bone, you'll be helpin' ter do it. Law is one thing when it's law, it's another thing when it ain't fit ter spit on. You all talk jestice, jestice, en you think it would be er powerful fine thing ter prove ter de worl' how honest you all is by handin' dat po' yaller dog over to de law. Put yo'selves in Pete's shoes an' you wouldn't be so easy ter vote yo'selves 'hind de bars. You'd say de bird in de han' is wuth three in de bush, en you'd stay away firm de white man's court-house. De white men say deirselves dat dar ain't no jestice, en dey's right. Carson Dwight is er good lawyer, en he'd fight till he drapped in his tracks, but de State solicitor would rake up enough agin Pete Warren to keep de jury's blood b'ilin'. Whar'd dey git a jury but fum de ranks o' de very men dat's chasin' Pete lak er rabbit now? Whar'd dey git a jury dat ud believe in his innocence when dey kin prove dat he done threatened de daid man? No whar in dis State. No innocent nigger's ever been hung, hein? No innocent nigger's in de chain gang, hein? Huh, dey as thick dar es fleas.”

When Neb had ceased speaking not a voice broke the stillness of the room for several minutes, then the minister said, with a deep-drawn breath: “Well, there is really no harm in looking at all sides of the question. The very view you have taken, Brother Wynn, may be the one that has really kept colored people from being more active in the legal punishment of their race. But it seems to me that it would only be fair, since you say Pete Warren is near, for him to be told of the situation and left to decide for himself.”

“I'm willin' ter do dat, God knows,” said Neb, “en ef y'all say so, I'll fetch 'im here en you kin splain it ter 'im.”

“I'm sure that will be best,” said Hardcastle. “Hurry up. To save time, you might bring his food here—that is, if your wife has not taken it to him.”

“No, she was afeard ter go out dar. I'll mek 'er fetch it up here while I go after him. It may tek time, fer he may be afeard to come in. But ef I tell 'im de grub's here, I bound you he'll come a-hustlin'.”

They heard Neb's voice below giving instructions to his wife, and then the outer door in the rear was opened and closed. Presently a step was heard on the stair, and they held their breaths expectantly, but it was only Neb's wife with a tray of food. Gropingly she placed it on a little table, which she softly dragged from a corner into the centre of the room, and without a word retired. A door below creaked on its hinges; steps shambling and unsteady resounded hollowly from the floor beneath, and Neb's urgent, pacific voice rose to the tense ears of the listeners, “Come on; don't be a baby, Pete!” they heard Neb say. “Dey all yo' friends en want ter he'p you out 'n yo' trouble ef dey kin.”

“Whar dat meat? whar it? oh, God! whar it?” It was the voice of the pursued boy, and it had a queer, uncanny sound that all but struck terror to the hearts of the listeners.

“She lef' it up dar whar dey all is,” Neb said; “come on! I'll give it to you!”

That seemed to settle the matter, for the clambering steps drew nearer; and then two figures slightly denser than the darkness came into the room.

“Wait; let me git you er chair,” Neb said.

“Whar it? whar it? my God! whar dat meat?” Pete cried, in a harsh, rasping voice.

“Whar'd she put it?” Neb asked. “Hanged ef I know.”

“On the table,” said Hardcastle.

Neb reached out for the tray and had barely touched it, when Pete sprang at him with a sound like the snarl of an angry dog. The tray fell with a crash to the floor and the food with it.

“There!” Neb exclaimed; “you did it.”

Then the spectators witnessed a pitiful, even repulsive scene, for the boy was on the floor, a big bone of ham in his clutch. For a moment nothing was heard except the snuffling, gulping, crunching sound that issued from Pete's nose, mouth, and jaws. Then a noise was heard below. It was a sharp rapping on the outer door.

“Sh!” Neb hissed, warmingly; but there was no cessation of the ravenous eating of the starving negro. Neb cautiously looked out of the window, allowing only his head to protrude over the windowsill. “Who dar?” he called out.

“Me, Neb; Jim Lincum,” answered the negro below. “You told me ef I heard any news over my way ter let you know.”

“Oh yes,” said Neb.

“Folks think Pete done lef de woods, Neb. De mob done scattered ter hunt all round de country. A gang of 'em was headed dis way at sundown.”

“Oh, dat so?” Neb said; “well we done gone ter baid, Jim, or I'd open de do' en let you have er place ter sleep.”

“Don't want no place ter sleep, Neb,” was the answer, in a half-humorous tone. “Don't want ter sleep nowhar 'cep' on my laigs sech times as dese. Er crowd er white men tried ter nab me while I was in my cotton-patch at work dis mawnin' but I made myse'f scarce. Dey hot en heavy after Sam Dudlow; some think he had er hand in de killin'. Dey cayn't find dat nigger, dough.”

“Well, good-night, Jim. I got ter git some rest,” and Neb drew his head back and lowered the window-sash.

“Jim's all right,” he said, “but I couldn't tek 'im in here. Dem men may 'a' been followin' 'im on de sly.”

He advanced to the middle of the room and stood over the crouching figure still noisily eating on the floor.

“Pete, Brother Hardcastle got suppin ter 'pose ter you, en we 'ain't got any too much time. We goin' ter tell you 'bout it an leave it ter you. One thing certain, you ain't safe hidin' out like you is, en nobody ain't safe dat he'ps hide you, so I say suppin got ter be done in yo' case.”

“I want y'all ter sen' fer Marse Carson,” Pete mumbled, between his gulps. “He kin fix me ef anybody kin.”

“That's what we were about to propose, Pete,” said the preacher. “You see—”

“Sh!” It was Neb's warning hiss again. All was silence in the room; even Pete paused to listen. It was the low drone of human voices, and many in number, immediately below. A light from a suddenly exposed lantern flashed 'on the walls. Neb approached the window, but afraid even cautiously to raise the sash, he stood breathless. Then through his closed teeth came the words: “We are caught; gen'men, we in fer it certain en sho! Dey done tracked us down!”

There was a loud rapping on the door below, a stifled scream from Neb's wife at the foot of the stairs, and then a sharp, commanding voice sounded outside.

“Open up, Neb Wynn!” it said. “We are onto your game. Some devilment is in the wind and we are going to know what it is.”

Neb suddenly and boldly threw up the sash and looked out. “All right, gen'men, don't bre'k my new lock. I'll be down dar in er minute.” Then quickly turning to Pete, he bent and drew him up. “Mak' er bre'k fer dat winder back dar, slide down de shed-roof, en run fer yo' life. Run!”

There was a great clatter of chairs and feet in the group of men, a crashing of a thin window-sash in the rear, a heavy, thumping sound on a roof outside, and a loud shout from lusty throats below.

“There he goes! Catch 'im! Head 'im off! Shoot 'im!”

Then darkness, chaos, and terror reigned.

CHAPTER XIX.

HILE these things were being enacted, Sanders, who had taken supper at Warren's, and Helen sat on the front veranda in the moonlight. Scarcely any other topic than Mam' Linda's trouble had been broached between them, though the ardent visitor had made many futile efforts to draw the girl's thought into more cheerful channels. It was shortly after ten o'clock, and Sanders was about to take his leave, when old Lewis emerged from the shadows of the house and was shambling along the walk towards the gate leading into the Dwight grounds, when Helen called out to him: “Where are you going, Uncle Lewis?”

He doffed his old slouch hat and stood bare and, bald, his smooth pate gleaming in the moonlight.

“I started over ter see Marse Carson, missy,” he said, in a low, husky voice. “I knows good en well dat he can't do a thing, but Linda's been beggin' me ever since she seed him en Mr. Garner drive up at de back gate. She thinks maybe dey l'arnt suppin 'bout Pete. I knows dey hain't, honey, 'ca'se dey ud 'a' been over 'fo' dis. Dar he is on de veranda now—oh, Marse Carson! Kin I see you er minute, suh?”

“Yes, I'll be right down, Lewis,” Carson answered, leaning over the railing.

As he came out of the house and approached across the grass, Sanders and Helen went to meet him. He bowed to Helen and nodded coldly to Sanders, to whom he had barely been introduced, and then with a furrowed brow he stood and listened as the old man humbly made his wants known.

“I'm sorry to say I haven't heard a thing, Uncle Lewis,” he said. “I'd have been right over to see Mam' Linda if I had. So far as I can see, everything is just the same.”

“Oh, young marster, I don't know what I'm ergoin' ter do,” the old negro groaned. “I don't see how Linda's gwine ter pass thoo another night. She's burnin' at de stake, Marse Carson, but thoo it all she blesses you, suh, fer tryin' so hard. My Gawd, dar she come now; she couldn't wait.”

He hastened across the grass to where the old woman stood, and caught hold of her arm.

“Whar Marse Carson? Whar young marster?” Linda cried, and then, catching sight of the trio, she tottered unaided towards them.

“Oh, young marster, I can't stan' it; I des can't!” she groaned, as she caught Dwight's hand and clung to it. “I am a mother ef I am black, an' dat my onliest child. My onliest child, young marster, en de po' boy is 'way over in dem mountains starvin' ter death wid dem men en dogs on his track. Oh, young marster, ol' Mammy Lindy is cert'nly crushed. Ef I could see Pete in his coffin I could put up wid it, but dis here—dis here”—she struck her great breast with her hand—“dis awful pain! I can't stan' it—I des can't!”

Carson lowered his head. There was a look of profound and tortured sympathy on his strong face. Garner came out of the house smoking a cigar and strolled across the grass towards them, but observing the situation he paused at a flowering rose-bush and stood looking down the moonlit street towards the court-house and grounds dimly outlined in the distance. Garner had never been considered very emotional; no one had ever detected any indications of surprise or sorrow in his face. He simply stood there to-night avoiding contact with the inevitable. As a criminal lawyer he had been obliged to inure himself to exhibitions of mental suffering as a physician inures himself to the presence of physical pain, and yet had Garner been questioned on the matter, he would have admitted that he admired Carson Dwight for the abundant possession of the very qualities he lacked. He positively envied his friend to-night. There was something almost transcendental in the heart-wrung homage the old woman was paying Carson. There was something else in the fact that the wonderful tribute to courage and manliness was being paid there without reservation or stint before the (and Garner chuckled) very eyes of the woman who had rejected Carson's love, and in the very presence of the masculine incongruity (as Garner viewed him) by her side. All the display of emotion, per se, had no claims on Garner's interest, but the sheer, magnificent play of it, and its palpable clutch on things of the past and possible events of the future, held him as would the unfolding evidence in an important law case.

“But oh, young marster,” old Linda was saying; “thoo it all you been my stay en comfort; not even God's been as good ter me as you have; you tried ter he'p po' ol' Lindy, but de Lawd on high done deserted her. Dar ain't no just, reasonable God dat will treat er po' old black 'oman es I'm treated, honey. In slavery en out I've done de best—de very best I could fer white en black, en now as I stan' here, after er long life, wid my feet in de grave, I don't deserve ter be punished wid dis slow fire. Go ter de white 'omen er dis here big Newnited States en ax' 'em how dey would feel in my fix. Ef de mothers in dis worl' could see me ter-night en read down in my heart, er river of tears would flow fer me. Dat so, en' yet de God I've prayed ter-night en mornin', in slavery en out, has turned His back on me. I've prayed, young marster, till my throat is sore, till now I hain't got no strength nor faith lef' in me, en—well, here I stand. You all see me.” Without a word, his face wrung with pain, Carson clasped her hand, and bowing to Helen and her companion he moved away and joined Garner.

“It was high time you were getting out of that,” Garner said, as he pulled at his cigar and drew his friend back towards the house. “You can do nothing, and letting Linda run on that way only works her up to greater excitement. But say, old man, what's the matter with you?”

Carson was white, and the arm Garner had taken was trembling.

“I don't know, Garner, but I simply can't stand anything like that,” Dwight said, his eyes on the group they had left. “It actually makes me sick. I—I can't stand it. Good-night, Garner; if you won't sleep here with me, I'll turn in. I—I—”

“Hush! what's that?” Garner interrupted, his ear bent towards the centre of the town.

It was a loud and increasing outcry from the direction of Neb Wynn's house. Several reports of revolvers were heard, and screams and shouts: “Head 'im off! Shoot 'im! There he goes!”

“Great God!” Garner cried, excitedly; “do you suppose it is—”

He did not finish, for Carson had raised his hand to check him and stood staring through the moonlight in the direction from which the sounds were coming. There were now audible the rapid and heavy foot-falls of many runners. On they came, the sound increasing as they drew nearer. They were only a few blocks distant now. Carson cast a hurried glance towards the Warren house. There, leaning on the fence, supported by Helen and Lewis, stood Linda, silent, motionless, open-mouthed. Sanders stood alone, not far away. On came the rushing throng. They were turning the nearest corner. Somebody, or something, was in the lead. Was it a man, an animal, a mad dog, a——

On it came forming the point of a human triangle. It was a man, but a man doubled to the earth by. fatigue and weakness, a man who ran as if on the point of sprawling at every desperate leap forward. His hard breathing now fell on Carson's ears.

“It's Pete!” he said, simply.

Garner laid a firm hand on his friend's arm.

“Now's the time for you to have common-sense,” he said. “Remember, you have lost all you care for by this thing—don't throw your very life into the damned mess. By God, you sha'n't! I'll—”

“Oh, Marse Carson, it's Pete!” It was Linda's voice, and it rang out high, shrill, and pleading above the roar and din. “Save 'im! Save 'im!”

Dwight wrenched his arm from the tense clutch of Garner and dashed through the gate, and was out in the street just as the negro reached him and stretched out his arms in breathless appeal and fell sprawling at his feet. The fugitive remained there on his knees, his hands clutching the young man's legs, while the mob gathered round.

“He's the one!” a hoarse voice exclaimed. “Kill 'im! Burn the black fiend!”

Standing pinioned to the ground by Pete's terrified clutch, Carson raised his hands above his head. “Stop! Stop! Stop!” he kept crying, as the crowd swayed him back and forth in their effort to lay hold of the fugitive who was clinging to his master with the desperate clutch of a drowning man.

“Stop! Listen!” Carson kept shouting, till those nearest him became calmer, and forming a determined ring, pressed the outer ones back.

“Well, listen!” these nearest cried. “See what he's got to say. It's Carson Dwight. Listen! He won't take up for him; he's a white man. He won't defend a black devil that—”

“I believe this boy is innocent!” Carson's voice rang out, “and I plead with you as men and fellow-citizens to give me a chance to prove it to your fullest satisfaction. I'll stake my life on what I say. Some of you know me, and will believe me when I say I'll put up every cent I have, everything I hold dear on earth, if you will only give me the chance.”

A fierce cry of opposition rose in the outskirts of the throng, and it passed from lip to lip till the storm was at its height again. Then Garner did what surprised Carson as much as anything he had ever seen from that man of mystery.

“Stop! Listen!” Garner thundered, in tones of such command that they seemed to sweep all other sounds out of the tumult. “Let's hear what he's got to say. It can do no harm! Listen, boys!”

The trick worked. Not three men in the excited mob associated the voice or personality with the friend and partner of the man demanding their attention. The tumult subsided; it fell away till only the low, whimpering groans of the frightened fugitive were heard. There was a granite mounting-block on the edge of the sidewalk, and feeling it behind him: Carson stood upon it, his hands on the woolly pate of the negro still crouching at his feet. As he did so, his swift glance took in many things about him: he saw Linda at the fence, her head bowed upon her arms as if to shut out from her sight the awful scene; near her stood Lewis, Helen, and Sanders, their expectant gaze upon him; at the window of his mother's room he saw the invalid clearly outlined against the lamplight behind her. Never had Carson Dwight put so much of his young, sympathetic soul into words. His eloquence streamed from him like a swollen torrent of logic. On the still night air his voice rose clear, firm, confident. It was no call to them to be merciful to the boy's mother bowed there like a thing cut from stone, for passion like theirs would have been inflamed by such advice, considering that the fugitive was charged with having slain a woman. But it was a calm call to patriotism. Carson Dwight plead with them to let their temperate action that night say to all the world that the day of unbridled lawlessness in the fair Southland was at an end. Law and order on the part of itself was the South's only solution of the problem laid like another unjust burden on a sorely tried and suffering people.

“Good, good! That's the stuff!” It was the raised voice of the adroit Garner, under his broad-brimmed hat in the edge of the crowd. “Listen, neighbors; let him go on!”

There was a fluttering suggestion of acquiescence in the stillness that followed Garner's words. But other obstacles were to arise. A clatter of galloping horses was heard round the corner on the nearest side street, and three men, evidently mountaineers, rode madly up. They reined in their panting, snorting mounts.

“What's the matter?” one of them asked, with an oath. “What are you waiting for? That's the damned black devil.”

“They are waiting, like reasonable human beings, to give this man a chance to establish his innocence,” Carson cried, firmly.

“They are, damn you, are they?” the same voice retorted. There was a pause; the horseman raised his arm; a revolver gleamed in the moonlight; there was a flash and a report. The crowd saw Carson Dwight suddenly lean to one side and raise his hands to the side of his head.

“My God, he's shot!” Garner called out. “Who fired that gun?”

For an instant horrified silence reigned; Carson still stood pressing his hands to his temple.

No one spoke; the three restive horses were rearing and prancing about in excitement. Garner made his way through the crowd, elbowing them right and left, till he stood near the fugitive and his defender.

“A good white man has been shot,” he cried out—“shot by a man on one of those horses. Be calm. This is a serious business.”

But Carson, with his left hand pressed to his temple, now stood erect.

“Yes, some coward back there shot me,” he said, boldly, “but I don't think I am seriously wounded. He may fire on me again, as a dirty coward will do on a defenceless man, but as I stand here daring him to try it again I plead with you, my friends, to let me put this boy into jail. Many of you know me, and know I'll keep my word when I promise to move heaven and earth to give him a fair and just trial for the crime of which he is accused.”

“Bully for you, Dwight! My God, he's got grit!” a voice cried. “Let him have his way, boys. The sheriff is back there. Heigh, Jeff Braider, come to the front! You are wanted!”

“Is the sheriff back there?” Carson asked, calmly, in the strange silence that had suddenly fallen.

“Yes, here I am.” Braider was threading his way towards him through the crowd. “I was trying to spot the man that fired that shot, but he's gone.”

“You bet he's gone!” cried one of the two remaining horsemen, and, accompanied by the other, he turned and, they galloped away. This seemed a final signal to the crowd to acquiesce in the plan proposed, and they stood voiceless and still, their rage strangely spent, while Braider took the limp and cowering prisoner by the arm and drew him down from the block. Pete, only half comprehending, was whimpering piteously and clinging to Dwight.

“It's all right, Pete,” Carson said. “Come on, we'll lock you up in the jail where you'll be safe.” Between Carson and the sheriff, followed by Garner, Pete was the centre of the jostling throng as they moved off towards the jail.

“What dey gwine ter do, honey?” old Linda asked, finding her voice for the first time, as she leaned towards her young mistress.

“Put him in jail where he'll be safe,” Helen said. “It's all over now, mammy.”

“Thank God, thank God!” Linda cried, fervently. “I knowed Marse Carson wouldn't let 'em kill my boy—I knowed it—I knowed it!”

“But didn't somebody say Marse Carson was shot, honey?” old Lewis asked. “Seem ter me like I done heard—”

Pale and motionless, Helen stood staring after the departing crowd, now almost out of view. Carson Dwight's thrilling words still rang in her ears. He had torn her very heart from her breast and held it in his hands while speaking. He had stood there like a God among mere men, pleading as she would have pleaded for that simple human life, and they had listened; they had been swept from their mad purpose by the fearless sincerity and conviction of his young soul. They had shot at him while he stood a target for their uncurbed passion, and even then he had dared to taunt them with cowardice as he continued his appeal.

“Daughter, daughter!” her father on the upper floor of the veranda was calling down to her.

“What is it, father?” she asked.

“Do you know if Carson was hurt?” the Major asked, anxiously. “You know he said he wasn't, but it would be like him to pretend so, even if he were wounded. It may be only the excitement that is keeping him up, and the poor boy may be seriously injured.”

“Oh, father, do you think—?” Helen's heart sank; a sensation like nausea came over her, and she reeled and almost fell. Sanders, a queer, white look on his face, caught hold of her arm and supported her to a seat on the veranda. She raised her eyes to the face of her escort as she sank into a chair. “Do you think—did he look like he was wounded?”

“I could not make out,” Sanders answered, solicitously, and yet his lip was drawn tight and he stood quite erect. “I—I thought he was at first, but later when he continued to speak I fancied I was mistaken.”

“He put his hands to his temple,” Helen said, “and almost fell. I saw him steady himself, and then he really seemed stunned for a moment.”

Sanders was silent. “I remember her aunt said,” he reflected, in grim misery, his brows drawn together, “that she once had a sweetheart up here. Is this the man?”

CHAPTER XX

EN minutes later, while they still sat on the veranda waiting for Carson's return, they saw Dr. Stone, the Dwights' family physician, alight from his horse at the hitching-post nearby.

“I wonder what that means?” the Major asked. “He must have been sent for on Carson's account and thinks he is at home. Speak to him, Lewis.”

Hearing his name called, Dr. Stone approached, his medicine-case in hand.

“Were you looking for Carson?” Major Warren asked.

“Why, no,” answered the doctor, in surprise; “they said Mrs. Dwight was badly shocked. Was Carson really hurt?”

“We were trying to find out,” said the Major. “He went on to the jail with the sheriff, determined to see Pete protected.”

There was a sound of an opening door and old Dwight came out to the fence, hatless, coatless, and pale. “Come right in, doctor,” he said, grimly. “There's no time to lose.”

“Is it as bad as that?” Stone asked.

“She's dying, if I'm any judge,” was the answer. “She was standing at the window and heard that pistol-shot and saw Carson was hit. She fell flat on the floor. We've done everything, but she's still unconscious.”

The two men went hastily into the room where Mrs. Dwight lay, and they were barely out of sight when Helen noticed some one rapidly approaching from the direction of the jail. It was Keith Gordon, and as he entered the gate he laid his hand on Linda's shoulder and said, cheerily, “Don't worry now; Pete is safe and the mob is dispersing.”

“But Carson,” Major Warren asked; “was he hurt?”

“We don't exactly know yet.” Keith was now at Helen's side, looking into her wide-open, anxious eyes. “He wouldn't stop a second to be examined. He was afraid something might occur to alter the temper of the mob and wasn't going to run any risks. The crowd, fortunately for Pete, was made up mostly of towns-people. One man from the mountains, a blood relative of the Johnsons, could have kindled the blaze again with a word, and Carson knew it. He was more worried about his mother than anything else. She was at the window and he saw her fall; he urged me to hurry back to tell her he was all right. I'll go in.”

But he was detained by the sound of voices down the street. It was a group of half a dozen men, and in their midst was Carson Dwight, violently protesting against being supported.

“I tell you I'm all right!” Helen heard him saying. “I'm not a baby, Garner; let me alone!”

“But you are bleeding like a stuck pig,” Garner said. “Your handkerchief is literally soaked. And look at your shirt!”

“It's only skin-deep,” Carson cried. “I was stunned for a moment when it hit me, that's all.” Helen, followed by her father and Sanders, advanced hurriedly to meet the approaching group. They gave way as she drew near, and she and Dwight faced each other.

“The doctor is in the house, Carson,” she said, tenderly; “go in and let him examine your wound.”

“It's only a scratch, Helen, I give you my word,” he laughed, lightly. “I never saw such a squeamish set of men in my life. Even stolid old Bill Garner has had seven duck fits at the sight of my red handkerchief. How's my mother?”

Helen's eyes fell. “Your father says he is afraid it is quite serious,” she said. “The doctor is with her; she was unconscious.”

They saw Carson wince; his face became suddenly rigid. He sighed. “It may not be so well after all. Pete is safe for awhile, but if she—if my mother were to—” He went no further, simply staring blankly into Helen's face. Suddenly she put her hand up to his blood-stained temple and gently drew aside the matted hair. Their eyes met and clung together.

“You must let Dr. Stone dress this at once,” she said, more gently, Sanders thought, than he had ever heard a woman speak in all his life. He turned aside; there was something in the contact of the two that at once maddened him and drew him down to despair. He had dared to hope that she would consent to become his wife, and yet the man to whom she was so gently ministering had once been her lover. Yes, that was the man. He was sure of it now. Dwight's attitude, tone of voice, and glance of the eye were evidence enough. Besides, Sanders asked himself, where was the living man who could know Helen Warren and not be her slave forever afterwards?

“Well, I'll go right in,” Carson said, gloomily. He and Keith and Garner were passing through the gate when Linda called to him as she came hastily forward, but Keith and Garner were talking and Carson did not hear the old woman's voice. Helen met her and paused. “Let him alone to-night, mammy,” she said, almost bitterly, it seemed to Sanders, who was peering into new depths of her character. “Your boy is safe, but Carson is wounded—wounded, I tell you, and his mother may be dying. Let him alone for to-night, anyway.”

“All right, honey,” the old woman said; “but I'm gwine ter stay here till de doctor comes out en ax 'im how dey bofe is. My heart is full ter-night, honey. Seem 'most like God done listen ter my prayers after all.”

Sanders lingered with the pale, deeply distraught young lady on the veranda till Keith came out of the house, passed through the gate, and strode across the grass towards them.

“They are both all right, thank God!” he announced. “The doctor says Mrs. Dwight has had a frightful shock but will pull through. Carson was right; his wound was only a scratch caused by the grazing bullet. But God knows it was a close call, and I think there is but one man in the State low enough to have fired the shot.”

When Keith and Sanders had left her, Helen went with dragging, listless feet up the stairs to her room.

Lighting her lamp, she stood looking at her image in the mirror on her bureau. How strangely drawn and grave her features appeared! It seemed to her that she looked older and more serious than she had ever looked in her life.

Dropping her glance to her hands, she noted something that sent a thrill through her from head to foot. It was a purple smudge left on her fingers by their contact with Carson Dwight's wound. Stepping across to her wash-stand, she poured some water into the basin, and was on the point of removing the stain when she paused and impulsively raised it towards her lips. She stopped again, and stood with her hand poised in mid-air. Then a thought flashed into her brain. She was recalling the contents of the fatal letter of Carson's to her poor brother; the hot blood surged over her. She shuddered, dipped her hands, and began to lave them in the cooling water. Carson was noble; he was brave; he had a great and beautiful soul, and yet he had written that letter to her dead brother. Yes, she had openly encouraged Sanders, and she must be honorable. At any rate, he was a good, clean man and his happiness was at stake. Yes, she supposed she would finally marry him. She would marry him.

CHAPTER XXI.