PAUL RUNDEL

FROM the window of her husband's shop in the mountain-village of Grayson, Cynthia Tye stood peering out on the Square. She was tall, gaunt, and thin-so thin, in fact, that her fingers, pricked by her needle and gnarled at the joints, had a hold in energy only, as she pressed them down on her contourless hips. She had left her work in the living-room and kitchen back of the shop and come in to question the shoemaker as to what he wanted for his dinner, the boiling and stewing hour having arrived.

Silas, whose sedentary occupation had supplied him with the surplus flesh his wife needed, and whose genial pate was as bald as an egg, save for a bare fringe of gray which overlapped his ears on the sides and impinged upon his shirt-collar behind, looked up and smiled broadly.

“I wish you'd quit that, Cynthy. I really do.” Every outward and inward part of the man lent itself to his smile, the broad, clean-shaven Irish lip, the big, facile mouth, the almost wrinkleless pink cheeks, the clear, twinkling blue eyes, the besmirched goatee—in fact, all his rotund, satisfied self between his chin and the bench on which he sat shook like a mass of animated jelly.

“Quit what?” She turned on him suddenly. “Why, quit always and eternally comin' to me when I'm chock full o' breakfast, and askin' me what I want to eat for dinner. I can still taste my coffee. I reckon settin' humped over this way between meals ain't exactly accordin' to nature in its best state. I'd ruther live in a boardin'-house and take what was served, hit or miss, than to digest a meal in my mind three hours before I eat it.”

“Huh! I say!” Cynthia sniffed, “and what about me, who not only has to think about it beforehand, but has to pick it in the garden, git it ready for the pots, smell the fumes of it from daylight till dark, and worry all night for fear something, will sour or be ate up by the cat, dog, or chickens?”

Silas laughed till his tools—last, hammer, and knife—rattled in his leather apron. “You got the best o' that argument,” he chuckled, as he pressed the shoe he was repairing down between his fat knees, crossed his short feet, and reached for a box of nails which had fallen to the floor. Then his merriment ceased. He bent a tender glance on the woman and a gentle cadence crept into his voice: “The Lord knows you do have a hard time, Cynthy, an' no jokin'. I wish thar was some way around it. I lie awake many and many a night just thinkin' how happy me'n you'd be if we could take a trip off some'rs and not have nothin' to bother about for one week anyway. What are you gazin' at out thar so steady?”

“I'm watchin' that pore boy, Paul Rundel,” Cynthia returned, with a sigh. “I never see 'im without my heart achin'. He's haulin' bark for Jim Hoag's tannery. He driv' up on a big load to the post-office while I was out gatherin' beans just now. You remember them two devilish Harris boys that picked the row with 'im at the hitchin'-rack last week? Well, I saw 'em at the corner and thought they looked suspicious. Then I knowed they was waitin' for 'im, for they nudged one another and picked up brickbats, and went to Paul's wagon. I couldn't hear what was said, but it looked like they was darin' Paul to git down, for they kept swingin' their bricks and shakin' their fists at 'im.”

“What a pity, what a pity!” The shoemaker sighed. “That boy is tryin' his level best to live right, and thar was two ag'in' one, and both bigger and stronger.”

“Well, Paul kin take care of hisself,” Cynthia said, with a chuckle. “It looked like he was in for serious trouble, and I was runnin' to the fence to try to call somebody to help him, when, lo and behold! I saw him reach back on the load o' bark and pick up a double-barreled gun and stick the butt of it to his shoulder. I am a Christian woman, and I don't believe in bloodshed, but when them scamps drapped the'r bricks and broke for the blacksmith shop like dogs with their tails twixt their legs I shouted and laughed till I cried. Paul got down and was makin' for the shop, when the marshal—Budd Tibbs—stopped 'im and made 'im put up the gun and go back to his wagon. The next minute I saw the Harris boys slip out the back door of the shop and slink off out o' sight.”

“It's bad, bad, bad!” Silas deplored. “Sometimes I wonder why the Lord lets things run slipshod like that. Paul has a bright mind. He is as sharp as a brier. He loves to read about what's goin' on over the world. If thar ever was a boy that needed good advice and trainin' he is one. He's right at the turnin'-point, too; he's got a high temper, a lot o' sperit, and won't stand naggin' from high or low. And what's he got at home? Nothin' that wouldn't take life and hope out of any ambitious boy—a daddy that is half dead, and won't work a lick—”

“And a mammy,” Cynthia broke in, with indignation, “Si, that is the vainest, silliest woman that ever breathed, traipsin' out to meetin' in her flimsy finery bought by that boy's hard work. They say, because she's passably good-lookin' and can sing well, that she thinks herself too good to lay her hands to a thing. She don't love Ralph Rundel, nor never did, or she couldn't act that way when he is sick. I've heard, on good authority, that she never cared much for Paul, even when he was a baby—folks say she didn't want 'im to come when he did, and she never took care of 'im like a mother ought to.”

“I've watched Paul a long time,” Silas remarked. “Me'n him are purty good friends. He's rough on the outside, but now and then I see away down into his heart. He worries about his daddy's bad health constantly. They are more like two brothers than father and son, anyway, and as Ralph grows weaker he leans more and more on his boy. It certainly is sad. I saw 'em both down at Hoag's cotton-gin last fall. Paul had run across some second-hand school-books somewhar, and was tryin' to explain 'em to his pa, but he couldn't make any impression on him. Ralph looked like he was tryin' to show interest, but it wasn't in 'im. I tell you, Cynthy, the hardest job our Creator ever put on his creatures is for 'em to have unbounded faith in the perfection in the unseen when thar is so much out o' joint always before our eyes.”

“Yes, but you never lose faith,” Cynthia said, proudly. “I'd have let loose long ago if I hadn't had you to keep me agoin'.”

“You see, Cynthy, I've noticed that something bright always follows on the heels of what is dark.” Silas hammered the words in with the tacks, which he held in his mouth. “Peace hovers over war and drops down after it like rain on dry soil; joy seems to pursue sorrow like sunshine pushin' clouds away, and, above all, love conquers hate, and you know our Lord laid particular stress on that.”

“Paul has just left the post-office,” Cynthia said. “He's left his hosses standin' and is headed this way.”

“He's comin' after his daddy's shoes,” Silas replied. “I've had 'em ready for a week. I took 'em out to his wagon one day, but he didn't have the money, and although I offered to credit him he wouldn't hear to it. He's as independent as a hog on ice. I tell you thar's lots in that boy.”

Cynthia, as the youth was crossing the street, turned back into her kitchen. A moment later Paul entered the shop. He was thin almost to emaciation, just merging into the quickly acquired height of a boy of sixteen, and had the sallow complexion that belongs to the ill-nourished mountaineers of the South. His coarse brown hair fought against the restrictions of the torn straw hat, which, like a miniature tent, rested on the back part of his head. The legs of his trousers were frayed at the bottoms and so crudely patched at the knees that the varicolored stitches were observable across the room. He wore no coat, and his threadbare shirt of heavy, checked cotton had lost its buttons at the sleeves and neck. He had a finely shaped head, a strong chin, and a good nose. A pair of dreamy brown eyes in somber sockets were still ablaze from their recently kindled fires. His mouth was large and somehow, even in the grasp of anger, suggested the capacity for tenderness and ideality.

“Hello, young man!” Silas greeted him as he peered at the boy above his brass-rimmed spectacles and smiled genially. “Here at last. I was afraid you'd let them shoes take the dry-rot in my shop, and just because you wouldn't owe me a few cents for a day or two.”

Paul made no reply. His restless glance roved sullenly over the heap of mended shoes and boots on the floor, and, selecting the pair he was looking for, he ran a quivering finger along the freshly polished edge of the soles and bent the leather testingly.

“Some o' the white oak you helped tan out thar at Hoag's,” Silas jested. “If it ain't the best the brand on it is a liar, and I have been buncoed by your rich boss.”

This also evoked no response. Thrusting the shoes under his arm, the boy put his hand into his pocket and drew out some small coins and counted them on the low window-sill close to the shoemaker. He was turning away when Silas stopped him. Pointing to a chair bottomed with splints of white oak and strengthened by strips of leather interlaced and tacked to the posts he said:

“Take that seat; I hain't seed you in a coon's age, Paul, and I want to talk to you.”

With a slightly softened expression, the boy glanced through the open doorway out into the beating sunshine toward his horses and wagon.

“I've got to move on.” He drew his tattered sleeve across his damp brow and looked at the floor. “I got another load to bring down from the mountain.”

Silas peered through the window at the horses and nodded slowly. “Them pore pantin' brutes need the rest they are gettin' right now. Set down! set down! You don't have to hurry.”

Reluctantly the youth complied, holding the shoes in his lap. Silas hammered diligently for a moment, and then the furrows on his kindly brow deepened as he stared steadily through his glasses, which were seldom free from splotches of lampblack and beeswax.

“I wonder, Paul, if you'd git mad if I was to tell you that I've always had a whoppin' big interest in you?”

The boy made as if about to speak, but seemed to have no command of tact or diplomacy. He flushed faintly; his lashes flickered; he fumbled the shoes in his lap, but no words were forthcoming. However, to Silas this was answer enough, and he was encouraged to go on.

“You see, Paul, I've knowed you since you was so high”—Silas held his hammer out on a level with his knee—“and I have watched you close ever since. Yore daddy—that was in his palmy days—used to take you with 'im when he'd go afishin', and I used to meet you an' him on the creek-bank. You was as plump and pink a toddler as I ever laid eyes on, just the age of the only one the Lord ever sent us. When mine was alive I was so full of the joy of it that I just naturally wanted to grab up every baby I met and hug it. I never could hear a child cry over a stubbed toe, a stone-bruise, or any little disappointment without actually achin' at the heart. But our son was taken, Paul, taken right when he was the very light an' music of our lives. And, my boy, let me tell you, if ever a Christian come nigh wagin' open war with his Maker I did on that day. God looked to me like a fiend incarnate, and His whole universe, from top to bottom, seemed a trap to catch an' torture folks in. But as time passed somehow my pain growed less, until now I am plumb resigned to the Lord's will. He knowed best. Yes, as I say, I always felt a big interest in you, and have prayed for you time after time, for I know your life is a tough uphill one. Paul, I hope you will excuse me, but a thing took place out thar in front of my window just now that—”

A grunt of somnolent rage escaped the boy, and Silas saw him clench his fist. His voice quivered with passion: “Them two devils have been picking at me for more than a year, calling me names and throwing rocks at me from behind fences. Yesterday they made fun of my father, and so I got ready, and—”

“I know, I know!”—the shoemaker sighed, reproachfully—“and so you deliberately, an' in a calm moment, laid that gun on yore load of bark, and—”

“Yes, and both barrels was loaded with heavy buck-shot!” the boy exulted, his tense face afire, his eyes flashing, “and if they hadn't run like two cowardly pups I'd have blowed holes in 'em as big as a hat.”

Silas made a derogatory sound with his tongue and lips. “Oh, how blind you was, my pore boy—you was too mad to see ahead; folk always are when they are wrought up. Paul, stop for one minute and think. If you had killed one or both of 'em, that wouldn't have settled the trouble. You don't think so now, but you'd have gone through bottomless pits of remorse. The Lord has made it that way. Young as you are, you'd have died on the scaffold, or toiled through life as a convict, for it would have been murder, and deliberate at that.”

The youth shrugged his thin shoulders. “I wouldn't have cared,” he answered. “I tell you it ain't ended, Uncle Si. Them fellows has got to take back what they said about my father. They've got to take it back, I tell you! If they don't, I'll kill 'em if it takes a lifetime to do it. I'll kill 'em!”

Silas groaned. A pained look of concern gathered in his mild eyes. He reached for the polishing-iron which was being heated in the flame of a smoking lamp on his bench and wiped it on his dingy apron. “It won't do!” he cried, and his bald head seemed drawn down by fear and anxiety. “Something has got to be done; they are a pair of low, cowardly whelps that are try in' to bully you, but you've got to quit thinkin' about murder. It won't do, I say; the devil is behind it. You stand away above fellows like them. You've got the makin' of a big man in you. You love to read and inquire, and they don't know their a b c's and can't add two figures. You mustn't lower yourself to such riffraff, and you wouldn't if you didn't let the worst part o' yourself get the upper hand.”

When the boy had left the shop Silas stood watching him from the doorway. It was a pathetic figure which climbed upon the load of bark, and swung the long whip in the air.

“What a pity! What a pity!” the old man exclaimed, and he wrung his hands beneath his apron; then seating himself on his bench he reluctantly resumed his work. “As promising as he is, he may go clean to the dogs. Poor boy!”

CHAPTER II

IT was now near noon, as was indicated by the clock on the low, dome-capped tower of the Court House in the center of the village square. Paul recognized several idlers who stood on a street-corner as he drove past. They looked at him and smiled approvingly, and one cried out:

“Bully for you, Paul! You are all wool and a yard wide.”

“And guaranteed not to tear or shrink!” another added, with a laugh over his borrowed wit; but the boy neither answered nor smiled. A sudden breeze from the gray, beetling cliffs of the near-by mountain fanned his damp brow, and he gazed straight ahead down the long road. Hot broodings over his wrongs surged within him, and the fact that he had so completely routed his enemies failed to comfort him at all. They could still laugh and sneer and repeat behind his back what they had dared to say to his face about a helpless man who had offended no one. Cowards that they were, they would keep their lies afloat, and even add to them.

His road took him past the lumber-yard, sawmills, brick and lime kilns, and through the sordid negro quarter, which was a cluster of ramshackle shanties made of unpainted upright boards grown brown and fuzzy, with now and then a more primitive log cabin, a relic of pioneer and Cherokee days. Vast fields of fertile lands belonging to his employer, James Hoag, lay on both sides of the road just outside the village. There were stretches of corn, cotton, and wheat in the best state of cultivation, beyond which, on a gentle rise, stood the planter's large two-story house, a white frame structure with a double veranda and outside blinds painted green. Beyond the house, at the foot of the slope, could be seen the dun roofs of the long sheds and warehouses of Hoag's tannery, to which Paul was taking the bark. A big gate had to be opened, and the boy was drawing rein with the intention of getting down when Hoag himself, astride a mettlesome bay mare, passed.

“Wait, I'll open it,” he said, and spurring his mount close to the gate he kicked the wooden latch upward and swung the gate aside. “Drive ahead” he ordered. “I can pull it to.”

Paul obeyed, indifferent even to the important man's presence. He would have forgotten Hoag's existence had the mare not borne him alongside the wagon again. The horseman was a middle-aged man of sturdy physique, fully six feet in height, and above two hundred pounds in weight. His skin was florid, his limbs were strong, firm, and muscular, his hands red and hair-grown. There was a cold, cruel expression in the keen blue eyes under the scraggy brows, which was not softened by a sweeping tobacco-stained mustache. He wore well-fitting top-boots which reached above the knee, and into which the legs of his trousers had been neatly folded. A wheeled spur of polished brass was strapped to the heel of his right boot. He sat his horse with the ease and grace of a cavalry officer. He held his mare in with a tense hand, and scanned the load of bark with a critical eye.

“How much more of that lot is left up there?” he asked.

“About two cords, or thereabouts,” the boy said, carelessly.

“Well,” Hoag said, “when you get that all stacked under the shed I want you to haul down the lot on Barrett's ridge. There is a good pile of it, and it's been exposed to the weather too long. I don't know exactly where it lies; but Barrett will point it out if he ain't too lazy to walk up to it.”

“I know where it is,” Paul informed him. “I helped strip it.”

“Oh, well, that's all right. You might put on higher standards and rope 'em together at the top. That dry stuff ain't very heavy, and it is down grade.”

He showed no inclination to ride on, continuing to check his mare. Presently his eyes fell on the stock of the gun which was half hidden by the bark, and his lips curled in a cold smile of amusement.

“Say,” he said, with a low laugh, “do you go loaded for bear like this all the time?”

A slow flush of resentment rose into the boy's face. He stared straight at Hoag, muttered something inarticulately and then, with a distinct scowl, looked away.

The man's careless smile deepened; the boy's manner and tone were too characteristic and genuine, and furnished too substantial a proof of a quality Hoag admired to have offended him. Indeed, there was a touch of tentative respect in his voice, a gleam of callous sympathy in his eyes as he went on:

“I was at the post-office just now. I saw it all. I noticed them fellows layin' for you the other day, and wondered what would come of it. I don't say it to flatter you, Paul”—here Hoag chuckled aloud—“but I don't believe you are afraid of anything that walks the earth. I reckon it is natural for a man like me to sorter love a fair fight. It may be because you work for me and drive my team; but when I looked out the post-office window as I was stampin' a letter, and saw them whelps lyin' in wait for you, I got mad as hell. I wasn't goin' to let 'em hurt you, either. I'd have kicked the breath out of 'em at the last minute, but somehow I was curious to see what you'd do, and, by gum! when that first brickbat whizzed by you, and you lit down with your gun leveled, and they scooted to shelter like flyin' squirrels, I laid back and laughed till I was sore. That was the best bottle of medicine they ever saw, and they would have had a dose in a minute. They slid into the blacksmith's shop like it was a fort an' shut the door. I reckin you'd have shot through the planks if Budd Tibbs hadn't stopped you.”

No appreciation of these profuse compliments showed itself in the boy's face. It was rigid, colorless and sullen, as if he regarded the man's observations as entirely too personal to be allowed. An angry retort trembled on his lips, and even this Hoag seemed to note and relish. His smile was unctuous; he checked his horse more firmly.

“They won't bother you no more,” he said, more seductively. “Such skunks never run ag'in' your sort after they once see the stuff you are made of. That gun and the way you handled it was an eye-opener. Paul, you are a born fightin' man, and yore sort are rare these days. You'll make yore way in the world. Bein' afraid of man or beast will stunt anybody's growth. Pay back in the coin you receive, and don't put up with insult or abuse from anybody. Maybe you don't know why I first took a sorter likin' to you. I'd be ashamed to tell you if I didn't know that you was jest a boy at the time, and I couldn't afford to resent what you said. You was a foot shorter than you are now, and not half as heavy. You remember the day yore pa's shoats broke through the fence into my potato field? You was out in the wet weeds tryin' to drive 'em home. I'd had a drink or two more than I could tote, and several things had gone crooked with me, and I was out o' sorts. I saw you down there, and I made up my mind that I'd give you a thrashin'”—Hoag was smiling indulgently—“and on my way through the thicket I cut me a stout hickory withe as big at the butt as my thumb, and taperin' off like a whip at the end. You remember how I cussed and ripped and went on?”

“You bet I remember,” Paul growled, and his eyes flashed, “and if you'd hit me once it would have been the worst day's work you ever did.”

The planter blinked in mild surprise, and there was just a hint of chagrin in his tone. “Well, I didn't touch you. Of course I wasn't afraid of you or the rock you picked up. I've never seen the man I was afraid of, much less a boy as little as you was; but as you stood there, threatenin' to throw, I admit I admired your grit. The truth is, I didn't have the heart, even drunk as I was, to lick you. Most boys of your size would have broke and run. My boy, Henry, would, I know.”

“He'll fight all right,” Paul said. “He's no coward. I like him. He's been a friend to me several times. He is not as bad as some folks think. He drinks a little, and spends money free, and has a good time; but he's not stuck up. He doesn't like to work, and I don't blame him. I wouldn't, in his place. Huh! you bet I wouldn't.”

“Well, I'm goin' to put 'im between the plow-handles before long,” the planter said, with a frown. “He's gettin' too big for his britches. Say, you'll think I'm a friend worth havin' some time. Just after that thing happened at the post-office, and you'd gone into Tye's shop, Budd Tibbs turned to me and said he believed it was his duty as marshal to make a council case against you for startin' to use that gun as you did. I saw the way the land lay in a minute. Them skunks are akin to his wife, and he was mad. I told him, I did, that he might summon me as a witness, and that I'd swear you acted in self-defense, and prefer counter-charges against the dirty whelps. Huh, you ought to have seen him wilt! He knows how many votes I control, and he took back-water in fine shape.”

“I reckon I can look after my own business,” the boy made answer, in a surly tone. “I ain't afraid o' no court. I'll have my rights if I die gettin' 'em.” Hoag laughed till his sides shook. “I swear you are the funniest cuss I ever knew. You ain't one bit like a natural boy. You act and talk like a man that's been through the rubs.” Hoag suddenly glanced across a meadow where some men were at work cutting hay, and his expression changed instantly. “I never told 'em to mow thar,” he swore, under his breath. “Take your bark on. You know where to put it,” and turning his horse he galloped across the field, his massive legs swinging to and from the flanks of his mare.

CHAPTER III

THAT afternoon at dusk Paul drove down the mountain with his last load of bark for the day. The little-used road was full of sharp turns around towering cliffs and abrupt declivities, worn into gullies by washouts, and obstructed by avalanchine boulders. In places decayed trees had fallen across the way, and these the young wagoner sometimes had to cut apart and roll aside. The high heap of bark on the groaning vehicle swayed like a top-heavy load of hay, and more than once Paul had to dismount from the lead horse he rode, scotch the wheels with stones, and readjust the bark, tightening the ropes which held the mass together. At times he strode along by the horses, holding the reins between his teeth, that his hands might be free to combat the vines and bushes through which he plunged as blindly as an animal chased by a hunter. His arms, face, and ankles were torn by thorns and briers, his ill-clad feet cut to the bone by sharp stones. Accidents had often happened to him on that road. Once he had fallen under the wheels, and narrowly escaped being crushed to death, a perilous thing which would have haunted many a man's life afterward, but which Paul forgot in a moment.

Near the foot of the mountain the road grew wide, smooth, and firm; his team slowed down, and he took a book from the wagon, reading a few pages as he walked along. He was fond of the history of wars in all countries; the bloodshed and narrow escapes of early pioneer days in America enthralled his fancy. He thought no more of a hunter's killing a redskin than he himself would have thought of shooting a wild duck with a rifle.

As he started down the last incline between him and Grayson he replaced his book on the wagon. The dusk had thickened till he could scarcely see the print on the soiled pages. Below, the houses of the village were scattered, as by the hand of chance, from north to south between gentle hills, beyond which rose the rugged mountains now wrapped in darkness. He made out the sides of the Square by the lights in the various buildings. There was the hotel, with its posted lamps on either end of the veranda. Directly opposite stood the post-office. He could make no mistake in locating the blacksmith's shop, for its forge gave out intermittent, bellows-blown flashes of deep red. Other dots of light were the open doors of stores and warehouses. Like vanishing stars some were disappearing, for it was closing-time, and the merchants were going home to supper. This thought gave the boy pleasant visions. He was hungry.

It was quite dark when he had unloaded the wagon at the tannery and driven on past Hoag's pretentious home to the antiquated cottage in which he lived. It had six rooms, a sagging roof of boards so rotten and black with age that they lost thickness in murky streams during every heavy rain. There was a zigzag fence in front, which was ill cared for, as the leaning comers and decayed rails testified. Against the fence, at the edge of the road, stood a crude log barn, a corn-crib made of unbarked pine poles, above which was a hay-loft. Close about was a malodorous pig-pen, a cow-lot, a wagon-shed, and a pen-like stall for horses.

The chickens had gone to roost; the grunting and squealing of the pigs had been stilled by the pails of swill Paul's father, Ralph Rundel, had emptied into their dug-out wooden troughs. In the light of the kitchen fire, which shone through the open door and the glassless windows, Paul saw his father in his favorite place, seated in a chair under an apple-tree at the side of the house. Ralph rose at the sound of the clanking trace-chains and came to the gate. He rubbed his eyes drowsily, as if he had just waked from a nap, and swung on the gate with both hands.

“No use puttin' the wagon under shelter,” he said, in a querulous tone, as his slow eyes scanned the studded vault overhead. “No danger o' rain this night—no such luck for crops that are burnin' to the roots. The stalks o' my upland cotton-patch has wilted like sorghum cut for the press. Say, Paul, did you fetch me that tobacco? I'm dyin' for a smoke.” He uttered a low laugh. “I stole some o' yore aunt's snuff and filled my pipe; but, by hunkey, I'd miscalculated—I sucked the whole charge down my throat, and she heard me a-coughin' and caught me with the box in my hand.”

Paul thrust his hand into his hip-pocket and drew forth a small white bag with a brilliant label gummed on it. “Bowman was clean out o' that fine cut,” he said, as he gave it into the extended hand. “He said this was every bit as good.”

“I'll not take his word for it till I've tried it,” Ralph Rundel answered, as he untied the bag and tested the mixture between thumb and forefinger. “Storekeepers sell what they have in stock, and kin make such fellers as us take dried cabbage-leaves if they take a notion.”

Ralph was only fifty years of age, and yet he had the manner, decrepitude, and spent utterance of a man of seventy. His scant, iron-gray hair was disheveled; his beard, of the same grizzled texture, looked as if it never had been trimmed, combed, or brushed, and was shortened only by periodical breaking at the ends. Despite his crude stoicism, his blue eyes, in their deep sockets, had a wistful, yearning look, and his cheeks were so hollow that his visage reminded one of a vitalized skull. His chest, only half covered by a tattered, buttonless shirt, was flat; he was bent by rheumatism, which had left him stiff, and his hands were mere human talons.

Paul was busy unhooking the traces from the swingletrees and untying the straps of the leather collars, when Ralph's voice came to him above the creaking of the harness and impatient stamping of the hungry horses.

“I noticed you took yore gun along this mornin'. Did you kill me a bird, or a bushy-tail? Seems like my taste for salt pork is clean gone.”

“I didn't run across a thing,” Paul answered, as he lifted the harness from the lead horse and allowed the animal to go unguided to his stall through the gate Ralph held open. “Besides, old Hoag counts my loads, and keeps tab on my time. I can't dawdle much and draw wages from him.”

“Did he pay you anything to-day?” Ralph was filling his pipe, feebly packing the tobacco into the bowl with a shaky forefinger.

“He had no small change,” Paul answered. “Said he would have some to-morrow. You can wait till then, surely.”

“Oh yes, I'll have to make out, I reckon.”

At this juncture a woman appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was a blue-eyed, blond-haired creature of solid build in a soiled gray print-dress. She was Paul's aunt, Amanda Wilks, his mother's sister, a spinster of middle age with a cheerful exterior and a kindly voice.

“You'd better come on in and git yore supper, Paul,” she called out. “You like yore mush hot, and it can't be kept that away after it's done without bakin' it like a pone o' bread. You've got to take it with sour blue-john, too. Yore ma forgot to put yesterday's milk in the spring-house, and the cow kicked over to-night's supply just as I squirted the last spoonful in the bucket. Thar is some cold pork and beans. You'll have to make out.”

“I didn't expect to get anythin' t'eat!” Paul fumed, hot with a healthy boy's disappointment, and he tossed the remainder of the harness on to the wagon and followed the horse to the stall. He was in the stable for several minutes. His father heard him muttering inarticulately as he pulled down bundles of fodder from the loft, broke their bands, and threw ears of corn into the troughs. Ralph sucked his pipe audibly, slouched to the stable-door under a burden of sudden concern, and looked in at his son between the two heads of the munching animals.

“Come on in,” he said, persuasively. “I know you are mad, and you have every right to be after yore hard work from break o' day till now; but nobody kin depend on women. Mandy's been makin' yore ma a hat all day. Flowery gewgaws an' grub don't go together.”

Paul came out. “Never mind,” he said. “It don't make no difference. Anything will do.” Father and son walked side by side into the fire-lighted kitchen. A clothless table holding a few dishes and pans stood in the center of the room. Just outside the door, on a little roofless porch, there was a shelf which held a tin basin, a cedar pail containing water, and a gourd dipper with a long, curved handle. And going to this shelf, Paul filled the basin and bathed his face and hands, after which he turned to a soiled towel on a roller against the weatherboarding and wiped himself dry, raking back his rebellious hair with a bit of a comb, while his father stood close by watching him with the gaze of an affectionate dog.

“That'll do, that'll do,” Ralph attempted to jest. “Thar ain't no company here for you to put on airs before. Set down! set down!”

Paul obeyed, and his father remained smoking in the doorway, still eying him with attentive consideration. Amanda brought from the fire a frying-pan containing the hot, bubbling mush, and pushed an empty brown bowl and spoon toward him.

“Help yoreself; thar's the milk in the pan,” she said. “If it is too sour you might stir a spoonful o' 'lasses in it. I've heard folks say it helps a sight.”

Paul was still angry, but he said nothing, and helped himself abundantly to the mush. However, he sniffed audibly as he lifted the pan and poured some of the thin, bluish fluid into his bowl.

“It wasn't my fault about the cow,” Amanda contended. “Scorchin' weather like this is the dickens on dumb brutes. Sook was a-pawin' an' switchin' 'er tail all the time I had hold of 'er tits. It must 'a' been a stingin' fly that got in a tender spot. Bang, bang! was all the warnin' I had, an' I found myself soaked from head to foot with milk. I've heard o' fine society folks, queens an' the like, washin' all over in it to soften their skins and limber their joints; but I don't need nothin' o' that sort. Yore ma's not back yet. She went over to see about the singin'-class they want her in. She had on 'er best duds an' new hat, and looked like a gal o' twenty. She was as frisky as a young colt. I ironed 'er pink sash, an' put in a little starch to mash out the wrinkles and make it stand stiff-like. They all say she's got the best alto in Grayson. I rolled 'er hair up in papers last night, an' tuck it down to-day. You never saw sech pretty kinks in your life. Jeff Warren come to practise their duet, an' him and Addie stood out in the yard an' run the scales an' sung several pieces together. It sounded fine, an' if I had ever had any use for 'im I'd have enjoyed it more; but I never could abide 'im. He gits in too many fights, and got gay too quick after he buried his wife. He was dressed as fine as a fiddle, an' had a joke for every minute. Folks say he never loved Susie, an' I reckon they wasn't any too well matched. She never had a well day in 'er life, and I reckon it was a blessed thing she was took. A tenor voice an' a dandy appearance are pore consolations to a dyin' woman. But he treats women polite—I'll say that for 'im.”

Paul had finished his mush and milk, and helped himself to the cold string-beans and fat boiled pork. His father had reached for a chair, tilted it against the door-jamb, and seated himself in it. He eyed his son as if the boy's strength and rugged health were consoling reminders of his own adolescence. Suddenly, out of the still twilight which brooded over the fields and meadows and swathed the mountain-tops, came the blending voices of two singers. It was a familiar hymn, and its rendition was not unmelodious, for it held a sweet, mystic quality that vaguely appealed.

“That's Jeff an' Addie now!” Amanda eagerly exclaimed. She went to the door and stood leaning against the lintel. She sighed, and her voice became full and round. “Ain't that just too sweet for anything? I reckon they are both puffed up over the way folks take on over their music. Ever since they sang that duet at Sleepy Hollow camp-meetin' folks hain't talked of anything else.”

Paul sat with suspended knife and fork and listened. His father clutched the back of his chair stiffly, bore it into the yard, and eased himself into it. Paul watched him through the doorway, as he sat in the shadows, now bent over, his thin body as rigid and still as if carved from stone. The singing grew nearer and nearer. It seemed to float on the twilight like a vibrant vapor. The boy finished his supper and went out into the yard. His aunt had seated herself on the door-step, still entranced by the music. Paul moved softly across the grass to his father; but Ralph was unconscious of his presence. Paul saw him take in a deep, trembling breath, and heard him utter a long, suppressed sigh.

“What's the matter, Pa?” the boy asked, a touch of somnolent tenderness in his tone.

“Matter? Me? Why, nothin', nothin'!”

Ralph started, lifted his wide-open eyes, in which a far-away expression lay.

“What did you ax me that for?”

“I thought you looked bothered,” Paul made answer, and he sank on the grass at his father's feet.

“Me? No, I'm all right.” Ralph distinctly avoided his son's eyes, and that was a departure. He fumbled in his pocket for his pipe and tobacco, and finally got them out, only to hold them in inactive hands.

The singing was over. There was a sound of merry laughter beyond the stable and corn-crib, and Jeff Warren's voice rose quite audibly:

“I thought I'd split my sides laughin',” he was heard to say, with a satisfied chuckle, “when Bart Perry riz an' called for order and began to state what the plan was to be. He was electin' hisself chief leader, an' never dreamt the slightest opposition; but I'd told a round dozen or more that if he led me'n you'd pull out, an' so I was lookin' for just what happened. Old Thad Thomas winked at me sorter on the side and jumped up an' said, 'All in favor of electin' Jeff Warren leader make it known by standin', an' every woman an' man-jack thar stood up, an' as Bart already had the floor, an' was ashamed to set down, he hisself made it unanimous. But Lord! he was as red as a turkey-gobbler an' mad as Tucker.”

The low reply of the woman did not reach the trio in the yard, and a moment later the couple parted at the front gate. Mrs. Rundel came round the house through the garden, walking hurriedly and yet with a daintiness of step that gave a certain grace to her movement. She wore a neat, cool-looking white muslin dress, was slender, and had good, regular features, light-brown eyes, abundant chestnut hair, which was becomingly arranged under a pretty hat.

“Supper's over, I know,” she said, lightly, as she paused at the door-step and faced her sister. “Well, they all just wouldn't break up earlier. They sang and sang till the last one was ready to drop. Singers is that a way when they haven't been together in a long time. Don't bother about me. I ain't a bit hungry. Mrs. Treadwell passed around some sliced ham an' bread, an' we had all the buttermilk we could drink.”

“Tell me about it,” Amanda demanded, eagerly. “What was it Jeff was sayin' about Bart Perry?”

“Oh, Bart was squelched in good fashion.” Mrs. Rundel glanced at the shadowy shapes of her husband and son, and then back to the eager face of the questioner. “You know what a stuck-up fool he is. He come there to run things, and he set in at it from the start. He hushed us up when we was all havin' a good time talkin', and begun a long-winded tirade about the big singin' he'd done over at Darley when he was workin' in the cotton-mill. He pointed to our song-books, which have shaped notes, you know, and sniffed, and said they belonged to the backest of the backwoods—said the notes looked like children's toy play-blocks, chickencoops, dog-houses, an' what not. He laughed, but nobody else did. He was in for burnin' the whole pile and layin' out more money for the new-fangled sort.”

“I always knowed he was a fool for want o' sense,” Amanda joined in, sympathetically. “A peddler tried to sell me a song once that he said was all the go in Atlanta; but when I saw them mustard-seed spots, like tadpoles on a wire fence, I told him he couldn't take me in. Anybody with a grain o' sense knows it's easier to sing notes that you can tell apart than them that look pine blank alike.”

“Some folks say it don't take long to learn the new way,” Mrs. Rundel remarked, from the standpoint of a professional; “but as Jeff said, we hain't got any time to throw away when we all want to sing as bad as we do.”

“Well, you'd better go in and take that dress off,” Amanda advised, as she reached out and caught the hem of the starched skirt and pulled it down a little. “It shrinks every time it's washed, and you'll want to wear it again right off, I'll bound you.”

“I don't want to wrinkle it any more than I have to,” Mrs. Rundel answered. “I want it to look nice next Sunday. We hold two sessions, mornin' and evenin'; and next week—the day hasn't been set yet—we are goin' to have a nip-and-tuck match with the Shady Grove class.”

“That will be a heap o' fun,” Amanda said, as her sister passed her and disappeared within. For a few minutes the trio in the yard were silent. Ralph Rundel's pipe glowed in the darkness like a thing of fitful moods. Paul had not heard a word of the foregoing conversation. Young as he was, he had many things to think of. The affair with the Harris boys flitted across his mind; in that, at least, he was satisfied; the vision of the fleeing ruffians vaguely soothed him. Something he had read in his book that day about Napoleon came back to him.

It was the flashing of her sister's candle across the grass, as Mrs. Rundel passed before a window, that drew Amanda's thoughts back to a subject of which she was fond.

“Folks has always said I spoiled Addie,” she said to her brother-in-law, in a plaintive tone, “an' it may be so. Bein' ten year older when ma died, I was a mother to 'er in my best days. I had no chance myself, and somehow I determined she should have what I missed. I certainly made it easy for 'er. When she started to goin' to parties and out with young men I was actually miserable if she ever missed a chance. You know that, Rafe—you know what a plumb fool I was, considerin' how pore pa was.”

Ralph turned his head toward the speaker, but no sound came from him. His head rocked, but whether it was meant as a form of response, or was sinking wearily, no one but himself could have told. After that silence fell, broken only by the grinding tread on the floor within.

CHAPTER IV

PAUL stood up, threw his arms backward languidly, and stretched himself.

“Goin' to bed?” his father inquired, absent-mindedly.

“No, down to the creek; there was a plenty of cats and eels running last night. Where's my cup of bait?”

“I hain't touched it—I hain't dropped a hook in water for over two years. My hands shake, an' I can't hold a pole steady. The bait's with your tackle, I reckon.”

Paul went to the wagon-shed adjoining the stable, and from the slanting roof took down a pair of long canes, from the tapering ends of which dangled crude, home-twisted lines, to which were attached rusty hooks and bits of hammered lead, and, with the poles on his shoulder and the bait-cup in his hand, he went down the path to the creek near by. He had a subtle fondness for Nature, in any mood or dress, and the mystic landscape to-night appealed to a certain famished longing within him—a sense of an unattainable something which haunted him in his reflective moods. The stars were coming out in the unclouded skies, revealing the black outlines of the mountain, the intervening foot-hills, the level meadows, where the cattle and sheep lay asleep, and over which fireflies were darting and flashing their tiny search-lights. The sultry air held the aroma of new-cut hay, of crushed and dying clover-blossom. The snarl of the tree-frog and the chirp of the cricket were heard close at hand, and in the far distance the doleful howling of a dog came in response to the voice of another, so much farther away that it sounded softer than an echo.

Presently Paul reached a spot on the creek-bank where the creeping forest-fires had burned the bushes away, and where an abrupt curve of the stream formed a swirling eddy, on the surface of which floated a mass of driftwood, leaves, twigs, and pieces of bark. Baiting his hooks, he lowered them into the water, fastening one pole in the earth and holding the other in his hands. He had not long to wait, for soon there was a vigorous jerking and tugging at the pole in his hands.

“That's an eel now!” the sportsman chuckled; “an' I'll land 'im, if he don't wind his tail round a snag and break my line.”

Eels are hard to catch, and this one was seen to be nearly a yard in length when Paul managed to drag it ashore. Even out of water an eel is hard to conquer, for Nature has supplied it with a slimy skin that aids it to evade the strongest human grip. The boy sprang upon his prey and grasped it, but it wriggled from his hands, arms, and knees, and like an animated rubber tube bounded toward the stream.

“Nail 'im, nail 'im!” cried out Ralph Rundel, excitedly, quickening his stride down the path. “Put sand on yore hands! Lemme show you—thar now, you got 'im—hold 'im till I—” But the snakelike thing, held for a moment in Paul's eager arms, was away again. The boy and the man bumped against each other as they sprang after it, and Ralph was fortunate enough to put the heel of his shoe on it's head and grind it into the earth. The dying thing coiled its lithe body round the man's ankle like a boa, and then gradually relaxed.

Now, fully alive to the sport, Paul gave all his attention to rebaiting his hook. “This one raised such a racket he has scared all the rest off,” he muttered, his eyes on his line.

“They'll come back purty soon,” Ralph said, consolingly. He sat down on the sand and began to fill his pipe. His excitement over the eel's capture had lived only a moment. There was a fixed stare in his eyes, a dreamy, contemplative note of weariness in his voice, which was that of a man who had outgrown all earthly interests.

“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord!”

It was the mellow, sonorous voice of Jeff Warren singing at his home across the fields.

“Humph! He gits a heap o' fun out of that, fust an' last,” Ralph remarked, sardonically, and he shrugged his frail shoulders. “It ain't so much the singin' he loves—if I'm any judge—as what it fetches to his net, as the sayin' is. He is a born lady's man. Jeff knows exactly when an' how to say the things that tickle a woman's fancy. I think—I think yore ma loves to hear 'im talk mighty nigh as well as she loves to hear 'im sing. I don't know”—a slight pause—“I say I don't know, but I think so.”

Paul thought he had a bite, and he raised his hook to see if the bait was intact. Ralph sighed audibly. He embraced his thin knees with his arms, and held the unlighted pipe in his hands. The hook was back in the water; the boy's face was half averted.

“Thar's a good many points about Jeff that women like,” Ralph resumed, in a forced, tentative tone. “He's a strappin', fine-lookin' feller, for one thing; young, strong, an' always gittin' in fights over some'n or other. The impression is out amongst women an' gals that he won't let nobody pass the slightest slur ag'in' one o' the sex in his hearin'. That will take a man a long way in the opinion of females; but all the same, he's a sly devil. He'll do to watch—in my opinion, that is. I've thought some that maybe—well, I don't know that I'd go that fur neither; but a feller like me, for instance, will have odd notions once in a while, especially if he ain't actively engaged an' busy, like I am most o' the time since I've been so porely. I was goin' to say that I didn't know but what I ort to sorter, you know”—Ralph hesitated, and then plunged—“warn yore mother to—to go it sorter slow with Jeff.”

Paul turned his back on the speaker and began to examine the bait on his hook; he shrugged his shoulders sensitively, and even in the vague starlight evinced a certain show of awkwardness. But Ralph was unobservant; his mental pictures were evidently more clear to him than material ones.

“Yore aunt Mandy is right,” Ralph resumed. “She shorely did spoil yore ma for any real responsibility in life. La me! it was the talk of the neighborhood—I mean Mandy's love-affair was. She was just a gal when she took a big fancy to a Yankee soldier that come along in one o' Sherman's regiments. He was to come back after the war was over, but he never did. It mighty nigh killed 'er; but yore ma was then growin' up, and Mandy just seemed to find comfort in pamperin' and indulgin' her. Addie certainly got all that was a-goin'! No gal in the neighborhood had nicer fixin's; she was just like a doll kept in a bandbox. Stacks and stacks o' fellows was after her, me in the bunch, of course. At first it looked like I didn't stand much of a show; but my grandfather died about then an' left me the farm I used to own. I reckon that turned the scale, for the rest o' the fellows didn't own a foot o' land, a stick o' timber, or a head o' stock. I say it turned the scale, but I don't mean that Addie cared much one way or the other. Mandy had it in hand. I begun to see that she sorter held the rest off and throwed me an' Addie together like at every possible chance—laughin' an' jokin' an' takin' a big interest an' tellin' me she was on my side. You see, it was a case o' the real thing with me. From the fust day I ever laid eyes on yore ma, an' heard 'er talk in her babyish way, I couldn't think o' nothin' else. I felt a little squeamish over bein' so much older 'an her; but Mandy laughed good an' hearty, an' said we'd grow together as time passed. Addie kept me in hot water for a long while even after that—looked like she didn't want Mandy to manage for her, an' kicked over the traces some. I remember I had to beg an' beg, an' Mandy argued an' scolded an' nagged till Addie finally consented. But, la me! how a feller's hopes kin fall! Hard times came. I borrowed on my land to keep Addie supplied with nice things, an' my crops went crooked. I lost money in a sawmill, an' finally got to be a land-renter like I am now, low in health an' spirits, an' dependent on you for even my tobacco—tobacco.” Ralph repeated the word, for his voice had become indistinct.

“That's all right,” Paul said, testily. “Go on to bed. Settin' up like this ain't goin' to do you no good.”

“It does me more good'n you think,” Ralph asserted. “I hold in all day long with not a soul to talk to, an' dyin' to say things to somebody. I ain't hardly got started. Thar's a heap more—a heap that I'm afraid you are too young to understand; but you will some day. Yore time will come, too. Yore lady-love will cross yore track, an' you'll see visions in her eyes that never was on land or sea. I look at you sometimes an' think that maybe you will become a great man, an' I'll tell you why. It is because you are sech a hard worker an' stick to a job so steady, and because you've got sech a hot, spicy temper when folks rile you by treatin' you wrong. Folks say thar is some'n in blood, an' I don't want you to think because I'm sech a flat failure that you have to be. Experts in sech matters say that a body is just as apt to copy after far-off kin as that which is close by, and I want to tell you something. It is about the Rundel stock. Three year ago, when I was a witness in a moonshine case at government court, in Atlanta, my expenses was paid, an' I went down, an' while I was in the city a feller called on me at my boardin'-house. He said the paper had printed my name in connection with the case, an' he looked me up because he was interested in everybody by the name o' Rundel. He was writin' a family history for some rich folks that wanted it all down in black an' white to keep for future generations to look at. He was dressed fine, and talked like a presidin' elder or a bishop. He told me, what I never had heard before, that the name ought to be spelled with an A in front—Arundel. He had a short way o' twistin' it that I can't remember. He said thar was several ways o' callin' the name, an' he laughed an' said he met one old backwoods chap in Kentucky that said his was 'Runnels' because his neighbors called 'im that, an' he liked the sound of it. He set for a good hour or more tellin' me about the ups an' downs of folks by the name. He said what made the whole thing so encouragin' was that the majority of 'em was continually on the rise. He'd knowed 'em, he said, to be plumb down an' out for several generations, an' then to pop up an' produce a man of great fame an' power. He had a list o' big guns as long as yore arm. I knowed I was too far gone to benefit by it myself, but I thought about you, an' I felt comforted. I've always remembered with hope an' pride, too, what Silas Tye told me about the tramp phrenologist that examined heads at his shop one day. He said men was payin' the'r quarters an' listenin' to predictions an' hearin' nothin' of any weight; but that the feller kept lookin' at you while you set waitin', an' finally Tye said the feller told the crowd that you had sech a fine head an' eye an' shaped hands an' feet an' ankles, like a blooded hoss, that he would pass on you for nothin'. Tye said you got mad an' went off in a big huff; but the feller stuck to what he'd said. He declared you'd make yore way up in the world as sure as fate, if you wasn't halted by some accident or other.”

Paul saw his line moving forward, his tense hands eagerly clutching his rod, but the swishing cord suddenly became slack on the surface of the water. An impatient oath slipped from his lips.

“Snapped my line right at the sinker!” he cried. “He was a jim-dandy, too, bigger than that one.” He threw the pole with the broken line on the bank and grasped the other. If he had heard the rambling talk of his father it was completely forgotten.

“Folks laugh at me'n you both,” Ralph ran on, a softer cadence in his voice. “They say I've been a mammy to you, a nuss' an' what not. Well, I reckon thar's truth in it. After I found—found that me'n yore ma wasn't the sweethearts I thought we would be, an' you'd come an' looked so little an' red an' helpless in the pore little cradle I made out of a candle-box with wobbly rockers—I say, I reckon then that I did sorter take yore ma's place. She wasn't givin' milk, an' the midwife advised a bottle, and it looked like neither one o' the women would keep it filled an' give it at the right time. I'd go to the field an' try to work, but fearin' you was neglected I'd go to the house an' take you up an' tote you about. It was turnin' things the wrong way, I reckon, but I was a plumb fool about you. Yore mother seemed willin' to shift the job, an' yore aunt was always busy fixin' this or that trick for her to wear. But I ain't complainin'—understand that—I liked it. Yore little warm, soft body used to give me a feelin' no man kin describe. An' I suffered, too. Many a night I got up when you was croupy, an' uncovered the fire an' put on wood an' set an' rocked you, fearin' every wheezy breath you drawed would stop in yore throat. But I got my reward, if reward was deserved, for you gave me the only love that I ever knowed about. Even as a baby you'd cry for me—cry when I left you, an' coo an' chuckle, an' hold out yore little chubby hands whenever I come. As you got older you'd toddle down the field-road to meet me, yore yaller, flaxen head hardly as high as the broom-sedge. I loved to tote you even after you got so big folks said I looked ridiculous. You was about seven when my wagon run over me an' laid me up for a spell. I'll never forget how you acted. You was the only one in the family that seemed a bit bothered. You'd come to my bed the minute you got home from school, an' set thar an' rub my head. While that spell lasted I was the baby, an' you the mammy, an' to this day I ain't able to recall a happier time.”

Ralph rose and stood by his son for a moment, his gaze on the steady rod. “I'll take the eel to the house,” he said, “an' skin it an' slice it up an' salt it down for breakfast. You may find me in yore bed. This is one o' the times I feel like sleepin' with you—that is, if you don't care?”

“It is all right, go ahead,” Paul said; “there is plenty of room.”

With the eel swinging in his hand, his body bent, Ralph trudged toward the house, which, a dun blur on the landscape, showed in the hazy starlight. A dewy robe had settled on every visible object. An owl was dismally hooting in the wood, which sloped down from the craggy mountain. In the stagnant pools of the lowlands frogs were croaking, hooting, and snarling; the mountain-ridge, with its serried trees against the sky, looked like a vast sleeping monster under cloud-coverings.

Now and then Jeff Warren was heard singing.

CHAPTER V

AT certain times during the year Paul was en abled to earn a little extra money by hauling fire-wood to the village and selling it to the householders. One morning he was standing by his wagon, waiting for a customer for a load of oak, when Hoag came from the bar-room at the hotel and steered toward him. The planter's face was slightly flushed from drink, and he was in a jovial mood.

“Been playing billiards,” he said, thickly, and he jerked his thumb toward the green, swinging doors of the bar. “Had six tilts with a St. Louis drummer, an' beat the socks off of 'im. I won his treats an' I'm just a little bit full, but it will wear off. It's got to. I'm goin' in to eat dinner with my sister—you've seen 'er—Mrs. Mayfield. She's up from Atlanta with her little girl to git the mountain air an' country cookin'.”

At this moment Peter Kerr, the proprietor of the hotel, came out ringing the dinner-bell. He was a medium-sized man of forty, with black eyes and hair, the skin of a Spaniard, and an ever-present, complacent smile. He strode from end to end of the long veranda, swinging the bell in front of him. When Kerr was near, Hoag motioned to him to approach, and Kerr did so, silencing the bell by catching hold of the clapper and swinging the handle downward. Hoag laid his hand on Paul's shoulder and bore down with unconscious weight.

“Say, Pete,” he said, “you know this boy?”

“Oh, yes, everybody does, I reckon,” Kerr answered patronizingly.

“Well, he's the best hand I've got,” Hoag said, sincerely enough; “the hardest worker in seven States. Now, here's what I want. Paul eats out at my home as a rule an' he's got to git dinner here at my expense to-day. Charge it to me.”

Paul flushed hotly—an unusual thing for him—and shook his head.

“I'm goin' home to dinner,” he stammered, his glance averted.

“You'll do nothing of the sort,” Hoag objected, warmly. “You've got that wood to sell, an' nobody will buy it at dinner-time. Every livin' soul is at home. Besides, I want to talk over some matters with you afterward. Fix 'im a place, Pete, an' make them niggers wait on 'im.”

There was no way out of it, and Paul reluctantly gave in. With burly roughness, which was not free from open patronage, the planter caught him by the arm and drew him up the steps of the hotel and on into the house, which Paul knew but slightly, having been there only once or twice to sell game, vegetables, or other farm produce.

The office was noisily full of farmers, traveling salesmen, lawyers, merchants, and clerks who boarded there or dropped in to meals at the special rate given to all citizens of the place and vicinity. On the right hand was a long, narrow “wash-room.” It had shelves holding basins and pails of water, sloping troughs into which slops were poured, towels on wooden rollers, and looking-glasses from the oaken frames of which dangled, at the ends of strings, uncleanly combs and brushes.

When he had bathed his face and hands and brushed his hair, Paul returned to the office, where the proprietor—with some more patronage—took him by the arm and led him to the door of the big dining-room. It was a memorable event in the boy's life. He was overwhelmed with awe; he had the feeling that his real ego was encumbered with those alien things—legs, arms, body, and blood which madly throbbed in his veins and packed into his face. He would not have hesitated for an instant to engage in a hand-to-hand fight with a man wearing the raiment of an emperor's guard, if occasion had demanded it; but this new thing under the heavens gave him pause as nothing else ever had done. The low-ceiled room, with its many windows curtained in white, gauzy stuff, long tables covered with snowy linen, glittering glass, sparkling plated-ware, and gleaming china, seemed to have sprung into being by some enchantment full of designs against his timidity. There was a clatter of dishes, knives, forks, and spoons; a busy hum of voices; the patter of swift-moving feet; the jar and bang of the door opening into the adjoining kitchen, as the white-aproned negroes darted here and there, holding aloft trays of food.

Seeing Paul hesitating where the proprietor had left him, the negro head waiter came and led him to a seat at a small table in a corner somewhat removed from the other diners. It was the boy's rough aspect and poor clothing which had caused this discrimination against him, but he was unaware of the difference. Indeed, he was overjoyed to find that his entrance and presence were unnoticed. He felt very much out of place with all those queer dishes before him. The napkin, folded in a goblet at his plate, was a thing he had heard of but never used, and it remained unopened, even after the waiter had shaken it out of the goblet to give him ice-water. There were hand-written bills of fare on the other tables, but the waiter simply brought Paul a goodly supply of food and left him. He was a natural human being and unusually hungry, and for a few moments he all but forgot his surroundings in pure animal enjoyment. His appetite satisfied, he sat drinking his coffee and looking about the room. On his right was a long table, at which sat eight or ten traveling salesmen; and in their unstudied men-of-the-world ease, as they sat ordering cigars from the office, striking matches under their chairs, and smoking in lounging attitudes, telling yams and jesting with one another, they seemed to the boy to be a class quite worthy of envy. They dressed well; they spent money; they knew all the latest jokes; they traveled on trains and lived in hotels; they had seen the great outer world. Paul decided that he would like to be a drummer; but something told him that he would never be anything but what he was, a laborer in the open air—a servant who had to be obedient to another's will or starve.

At this moment his attention was drawn to the entrance. Hoag was coming in accompanied by a lady and little girl, and, treading ponderously, he led them down the side of the room to a table on Paul's left. Hoag seemed quite a different man, with his unwonted and clumsy air of gallantry as he stood holding the back of his sister's chair, which he had drawn out, and spoke to the head waiter about “something special” he had told the cook to prepare. And when he sat down he seemed quite out of place, Paul thought, in the company of persons of so much obvious refinement. He certainly bore no resemblance to his sister or his niece. Mrs. Mayfield had a fair, smooth brow, over which the brown tresses fell in gentle waves; a slender body, thin neck, and white, tapering hands. But it was Ethel, the little girl, who captured and held from that moment forth the attention of the mountain-boy. Paul had never beheld such dainty, appealing loveliness. She was as white and fair as a lily. Her long-lashed eyes were blue and dreamy; her nose, lips, and chin perfect in contour. She wore a pretty dress of dainty blue, with white stockings and pointed slippers. How irreverent, even contaminating, seemed Hoag's coarse hand when it rested once on her head as he smiled carelessly into the girl's face! Paul felt his blood boil and throb.

“Half drunk!” he muttered. “He's a hog, and ought to be kicked.”

Then he saw that Hoag had observed him, and to his great consternation the planter sat smiling and pointing the prongs of his fork at him. Paul heard his name called, and both the lady and her daughter glanced at him and smiled in quite a friendly way, as if the fork had introduced them. Paul felt the blood rush to his face; a blinding mist fell before his eyes, and the whole noisy room became a chaos of floating objects. When his sight cleared he saw that the three were looking in another direction; but his embarrassment was not over, for the head waiter came to him just then and told him that Mr. Hoag wanted him to come to his table as soon as his dinner was finished.

Paul gulped his coffee down now in actual terror of something intangible, and yet more to be dreaded than anything he had ever before encountered. He was quite certain that he would not obey. Hoag might take offense, swear at him, discharge him; but that was of no consequence beside the horrible ordeal the man's drunken brain had devised. Hoag was again looking at him; he was smiling broadly, confidently, and swung his head to one side in a gesture which commanded Paul to come over. Mrs. Mayfield's face also wore a slight smile of agreement with her brother's mood; but Ethel, the little girl, kept her long-lashed and somewhat conscious eyes on the table. Again the hot waves of confusion beat in Paul's face, brow, and eyes. He doggedly shook his head at Hoag, and then his heart sank, for he knew that he was also responding to the lady's smile in a way that was unbecoming in a boy even of the lowest order, yet he was powerless to act otherwise. Like a blind man driven desperate by encroaching danger that could not be located, he rose, turned toward the door, and fairly plunged forward. The toe of his right foot struck the heel of his left, and he stumbled and almost fell. To get out he had to pass close to Hoag's table, and though he did not look at the trio, he felt their surprised stare on him, and knew that they were reading his humiliation in his flaming face. He heard the planter laugh in high merriment, and caught the words: “Come here, you young fool, we are not goin' to bite you!”

It seemed to the boy, as he incontinently fled the spot, that the whole room had witnessed his disgrace. In fancy he heard the waiters laughing and the amused comments of the drummers.

The landlord tried to detain him as he hurried through the office.

“Did you git enough t'eat?” he asked; but, as if pursued by a horde of furies, Paul dashed on into the street.

He found a man inspecting his load of wood and sold it to him, receiving instructions as to which house to take it to and where it was to be left. With the hot sense of humiliation still on him, he drove down the street to the rear fence of a cottage and threw the wood over, swearing at himself, at Hoag, at life in general, but through it all he saw Ethel Mayfield's long, golden hair, her eyes of dreamy blue, and pretty, curving lips. She remained in his thoughts as he drove his rattling wagon home through the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. She was in his mind so much, indeed, from that day on, that he avoided contact with the members of his family. He loved to steal away into the woods alone, or to the hilltops, and fancy that she was with him listening to his wise explanation of this or that rural thing which a girl from a city could not know, and which a girl from a city, to be well informed, ought to know.

CHAPTER VI

BY chance he met her a week or so later. She and her mother were spending the day at Hoag's, and near noon Ethel had strolled across the pasture, gathering wild-flowers. Paul had been working at the tannery assisting a negro crushing bark for the vats, and was starting home to get his dinner when he saw her. She wore a big sailor hat and a very becoming dress of a different color from the one he had first seen her in. He wanted to take a good look at her, but was afraid she would see him. She had her hands full of flowers and fern leaves, and was daintily picking her way through the thick broom-sedge. He had passed on, and his back was to her when he heard her scream out in fright, and, turning, he saw her running toward him. He hurried back, climbed over the rail fence, and met her. “A snake, a snake!” she cried, white with terror. “Where?” he asked, boyishly conscious that his moment had arrived for showing contempt for all such trivialities.

“There,” she pointed, “back under those rocks. It was coiled up right under my feet and ran when it saw me.”

There was a fallen branch of a tree near by, and coolly picking it up he broke it across his knee to the length of a cudgel, then twisted the twigs and bark off. He swung it easily like a ball-player handling a bat.

“Now, come show me,” he said, riding on a veritable cloud of self-confidence. “Where did it go?”

“Oh, I'm afraid!” she cried. “Don't go, it will bite you!”

He laughed contemptuously. “How could it?” he sneered. “It wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance against this club.” He advanced to the pile of rocks she now indicated, and she stood aloof, holding her breath, her little hands pressed to her white cheeks, as he began prying the stones and boldly thrusting into crevices. Presently from the heap a brownish snake ran. Ethel saw it and screamed again; but even as he struck she heard him laugh derisively. “Don't be silly!” he said, and the next moment he had the dying thing by the tail, calmly holding it up for her inspection, its battered and flattened head touching the ground.

“It's a highland moccasin,” he nonchalantly instructed her. “They are as poisonous as rattlers. It's a good thing you didn't step on it, I tell you. They lie in the sun, and fellers mowing hay sometimes get bit to the bone.”

“Drop it! Put it down!” Ethel cried, her pretty face still pale. “Look, it's moving!”

“Oh, it will wiggle that way till the sun goes down,” he smiled down from his biological height; “but it is plumb done for. Lawsy me! I've killed more of them than I've got fingers and toes.”

Reassured, she drew nearer and looked at him admiringly. He was certainly a strong, well-formed lad, and his courage was unquestionable. Out of respect for her fears he dropped the reptile, and she bent down and examined it. Again the strange, new power she had from the first exercised over him seemed to exude from her whole being, and he felt a return of the cold, insecure sensation of the hotel dining-room. His heart seemed to be pumping its blood straight to his face and brain. Her little white hands were so frail and flower-like; her golden tresses, falling over her proud shoulders like a gauzy mantle, gave out a delicate fragrance. What a vision of loveliness! Seen close at hand, she was even prettier than he had thought. He had once admired Sally Tibbits, whom he had kissed at a corn-husking, as a reward for finding the red ear which lay almost in Sally's lap, and which, according to the game, she could have hidden; but Sally had never worn shoes, that he could remember, and as he recalled her now, by way of comparison, her legs were ridiculously brown and brier-scratched; her homespun dress was a poor bag of a thing, and her dingy chestnut hair seemed as lifeless as her neglected complexion. And Ethel's voice! He had never heard anything so mellow, soft, and bewitching. She seemed like a princess in one of his storybooks, the sort tailors' sons used to meet and marry by rubbing up old lamps.

“What are you going to do with it?” She looked straight at him, and he felt the force of her royal eyes.

“Well, I don't intend to take it to the graveyard,” he boldly jested. “I'll leave it here for the buzzards.” He pointed to the cloud-flecked sky, where several vultures were slowly circling. “They'll settle here as soon as our backs are turned. Folks say they go by the smell of rotten flesh, but I believe their sense is keener than that. I wouldn't be much surprised if they watched and seed me kill that snake.”

“How funny you talk!” Ethel said, in no tone of disrespect, but rather that of the mild inquisitiveness of a stranger studying a foreign tongue. “You said seed for saw. Why, my teacher would give me awful marks if I made a mistake like that. Of course, it may be correct here in the mountains.” Paul flushed a deeper red; there was a touch of resentment in his voice.

“Folks talk that way round here,” he blurted out; “grown-up folks. We don't try to put on style like stuck-up town folks.”

“Please forgive me.” Ethel's voice fell; she put out her hand and lightly touched his. “I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, and I never will say such a thing again—never, on my honor.”

He bitterly repented it afterward, but he rudely drew his hand away, and stood frowning, his glance averted.

“I am very sorry,” Ethel said, “and I can't blame you—I really can't. What I said was a great deal worse than your little mistake. My mother says rudeness is never excusable.”

“Oh, it's all right,” he gave in, as gracefully as he could.

“And are you sure you aren't mad with me?” she pursued, anxiously.

“Nothin' to be mad about,” he returned, kicking the snake with his foot.

“Well, I hope you won't hate me,” she said. “I feel that I know you pretty well. Uncle told us a lot about you that day at the hotel. He said you were the bravest boy he ever saw and the hardest worker. I saw you looked embarrassed that day, and he had no right to tease you as he did; but he was—of course, you know what was the matter with him?”

Paul nodded. “I wasn't going to pay any attention to him,” he declared. “I wasn't—wasn't fixed up fit to—to be seen by anybody, any more than I am now, for that matter; but I can't do the work I have to do and go dressed like a town dude.”

“Of course not—of course not,” Ethel agreed, sympathetically, “and Uncle says you spend all you make on others, anyway. He was telling us about how you loved your father and took care of him. You know, I think that is wonderful, and so does mama. Boys are not like that in Atlanta; they are lazy and spoiled, and bad, generally. People in a city are so different, you know. Mama says the greatest men were once poor country boys. I'd think that was encouraging, if I was—if I were you—see, I make slips myself! After if you must always say were to be strictly correct. Just think of it, when I am grown up you may be a great man, and be ashamed even to know me.”

He shrugged his shoulders and frowned. The flush had partly left his face, leaving splotches of white here and there. “No hopes of me ever mak-in' any sort of rise,” he declared. “There is too much to do at home; I don't get time to go to school or study.”

“What a pity!” Ethel sighed. She swept him from head to foot critically. Touches of pink lay on her cheeks just below her earnest eyes. “You are good-looking—you—you really are handsome, and so strong and brave! Somehow I feel certain that you are going to be successful. I—I am going to pray for it. They say God answers prayers when they are the right kind, and I know mine would be right.”

“I don't believe any of that rubbish,” he said, loftily. “I've heard your uncle Jim laugh at the preachers and folks that get converted one day and are plumb over it the next. He says they are the biggest fools in the world.”

“I know he talks that way, and it worries mama awfully,” the girl said. “I'm afraid he's terribly bad. You see, he drinks, plays cards, curses, and is hard on the negroes who work for him. Now, the truth is that the people who go to church really are better than he is, and that, in itself, ought to show he's wrong—don't you think so?”

“He just uses his natural brain,” Paul returned, philosophically. “He says there is just one life, an' he's goin' to get all he can out of it. I don't blame him. He's rich—he can buy and sell the folks round here that say he don't know what he's talkin' about. He says there ain't no God, and he can prove it. He made it purty plain one day while he was talking to a crowd at the tan-yard. He told 'em, if they believed there was any such thing, for 'em to pray for some'n and see if they'd get it. He told about a gang of Methodists that was praying for money to make a church bigger, and the lightning struck it and burned it down.”

“Did you never pray yourself?” Ethel questioned, quite irrelevantly.

He hesitated; his color flamed again in his face, and he avoided her gentle, upward gaze. “Not—not since I was very little,” he said, awkwardly. “I don't believe in it; the whole shoutin', singin-and-prayin' bunch of meetin'-folks make me sick.

“Uncle is responsible for all that,” Ethel declared. “You naturally would look up to him; but I believe he is wrong—I really do. I like good people, and, while he is my uncle, I—well, I don't feel the same toward him as I would if he were a different sort of man.”

“He's all right,” Paul defended. “He's rough, and curses some when he's mad, but you can count on him to keep his word in a deal. He's no hypocrite. Lots of folks believe as he does, but are afraid to own it; he stands his ground and tells them all exactly what he thinks, and says they can lump it.”

They had been walking side by side across the grass, and had reached the point where their ways parted. He was turning homeward, when she advanced impulsively and touched him almost timidly on the arm. Her pretty red lip was quivering and her hand shook visibly.

“I don't care what uncle says—or what any one says. I believe there is a God, and I believe He is good, and I am going to pray to Him to make you have faith.”

There were incipient tears in her eyes, and, as if to avoid his wondering stare, she lowered her head suddenly and walked away.

At the front gate his father stood waiting for him, a mild look of excitement in his weary eyes. “Heard the news?” he inquired.

“No; what's happened?” Paul answered.

“Enough, I reckon, to them that's hit by it,” Ralph returned. “Old Alf Rose, over t'other side o' the mountain, was found dead in a thicket close to his house. He was beat bad, his skull was all mashed in.”

“Who did it?” Paul asked.

“They don't know for sure; but he was robbed of all he had in his pockets, an' his hat was gone. A nigger, Pete Watson, is missin', and they say the sheriff and a passle o' deputies, an' half the county, are out scourin' the woods for 'im. Ef they ketch 'im thar 'll be a lynchin' as sure as preachin'.”

A voice now came from the farm-house. It was Amanda leaning out of the kitchen window.

“Come on in an' git yore dinner,” she cried. “Don't listen to that stuff or you won't eat a bite. Yore pa's chatter has already turned my stomach inside out.”

“That's the woman of it,” Ralph sniffed, wearily. “They both begged an' begged for particulars, an' wormed every bit they could out o' me, an' now they talk about its gaggin' em.”

CHAPTER VII

THAT evening, after Hoag had put his sister and niece into his phaeton, and told Cato, the negro driver, to take them to Grayson, he went back to the veranda where his wife and her mother, Mrs. Sarah Tilton, stood waving their handkerchiefs at the departing guests. Mrs. Hoag was a thin, wanfaced woman of questionable age and health. In honor of the visitors she wore her best black-silk gown, and its stiff, rigid folds and white-lace collar gave her a prim and annual-excursion look. There was a tired expression in her gray eyes, a nervous twitching of her needle-pricked fingers. Her mother was of a lustier type, having a goodly allotment of flesh, plenty of blood and activity of limb and brain, and a tongue which occupied itself on every possible occasion with equal loquacity in small or large affairs.

“I couldn't help from thinkin' what an awful time we'd have had,” she was saying to her daughter, “if they had stayed here this summer instead of at the hotel. I can stand it for a day or two, but three months on a stretch would lay me stark and stiff in my grave. Did you ever in all yore bom days see such finicky ways? They nibbled at the lettuce like tame rabbits eatin' cabbage-leaves, and wiped their lips or fingers every minute, whether they got grease on 'em or not, and then their prissy talk! I presume, if Harriet said presee-um once she did fully a dozen times, an' I didn't know any more what it meant than if she'd been talkin' Choctaw.”

“They are simply not used to our country ways,” Mrs. Hoag sighed. “I don't feel like they are, to say, stuck up. I think they was just tryin' to be easy an' natural-like.”

“Maybe she'd find it easier to go back to the way she used to live before her pa sent 'er off to that fine boardin'-school in Macon,” Mrs. Tilton retorted, with a smile that froze into a sort of grimace of satisfaction. “She used to go barefooted here in the mountains; she was a regular tomboy that wanted to climb every tree in sight, slide down every bank, and wade in every mud-puddle and branch anywheres about. She was eternally stuffin' her stomach with green apples, raw turnips, an' sweet potatoes, an' smearin' her face with 'lasses or preserves. She laid herself up for a week once for eatin' a lot o' pure licorice an' cinnamon-bark that she found in the drug-store her uncle used to keep at the cross-roads.”

Hoag sat down in a chair, tilted it back against the wall, and cast a summarizing glance toward his com, wheat, and cotton fields beyond the brown roofs of the long sheds and warehouses of the tannery at the foot of the hill. He seldom gave the slightest heed to the current observations of his wife or her mother. If they had not found much to say about the visitors, it would have indicated that they were unwell and needed a doctor, and of course that would have meant money out of his pocket, which was a matter of more moment than the most pernicious gossip. Hoag's younger son, Jack, a golden-haired child three years of age, toddled round the house and putting his chubby hands on the lowest of the veranda steps, glanced up at his father, and smiled and cooed. Hoag leaned forward, crude tenderness in his look and movement.

“That's right!” he cried, gently, and he held his hands out encouragingly. “Crawl up to daddy, Jack. I was lookin' for you, little boy. I was wonderin' where you was at. Got scared o' the fine town folks, an' hid out, didn't you?”

Slowly, retarded as Jack was by his short skirt, he mounted step after step, constantly applauded by his father, till, red in the face and panting, he reached the top and was eagerly received into the extended arms.

“Bully boy!” Hoag cried. “I knew you'd stick to it and never say die. You are as full o' pluck as an egg is of meat.” And the planter pressed the bonny head against his breast and stroked the soft, curling hair with his big, red hand.

Few of Hoag's friends knew of his almost motherly tenderness and fondness for his child. In returning home at night, even if it was very late, he never would go to bed without looking into his wife's room to see if Jack was all right. And every morning, before rising, he would call the child to him, and the two would wake The rest of the family With their romping and laughter. Sometimes Hoag would dress the boy, experiencing a delight in the clumsy action which he could not have analyzed. His devotion to Jack seemed all the more remarkable for his indifferent manner toward his older son, Henry, a lad of fifteen, who had a mischievous disposition which made him rather unpopular in the neighborhood. Many persons thought Henry was like his father in appearance, though quite the reverse in the habit of thrift or business foresight. Mrs. Tilton, the grandmother, declared that the boy was being driven to the dogs as rapidly as could be possible, for he had never known the meaning of paternal sympathy or advice, and never been made to do any sort of work. Be that as it might, Henry was duly sworn at or punished by Hoag at least once a week.

The phaeton returned from the village. Cato drove the horses into the stable-yard and put them into their stalls, whistling as he fed them and rubbed them down. The twilight was thickening over the fields and meadows. The dew was falling. The nearest hills were no longer observable. Jack, still in his father's arms on the veranda, was asleep; the touch of the child's breath on the man's cheek was a subtle, fragrant thing that conveyed vague delight to his consciousness. Henry rode up to the stable, turned his horse over to Cato, and came toward the house. He was, indeed, like his father in shape, build, and movement. He paused at the foot of the steps, glanced indifferently at Hoag and said:

“I passed Sid Trawley back on the mountain-road. He said, tell you he wanted to see you to-night without fail; he said, tell you not to leave till he got here.”

“Oh, all right,” Hoag said, with a steady, interested stare at his son, who now stood beside him. “I'll be here.”

His voice waked the sleeping child. Jack sat up, rubbed his eyes, and then put a little hand on his father's face. “Dack hungry; Dack want his supper,” he lisped.

Hoag-swung him gently to and fro like a woman rocking an infant to sleep. “Hold on!” He was speaking to Henry, and his tone was harsh and abrupt. “Did you water that horse?”

Henry leaned in the doorway, idly lashing his legs with his riding-whip. “No; the branch was a quarter of a mile out of the way. Cato will lead him to the well.”

“You know better than that,” Hoag growled. “You didn't even tell Cato the horse hadn't been watered. He would let him stay in the lot all night without a drop, hot as he is. Go water 'im now. Go, I tell you! You are getting so triflin' you ain't fit to live.”

Henry stared, and his stare kindled into a resentful glare. His whip hung steadily by his side. It was as if he were about to retort, but kept silence.

“Go 'tend to that horse,” Hoag repeated, “an' don't you ever do a thing like that again. You are none too good to do work o' that sort; I did plenty of it at your age. I had to work like a nigger an' I'm none the worse for it.”

Henry stood still. He had his father's temper, and it was being roughly handled. Jack, now thoroughly awake, put both his hands on his father's face and stroked his cheeks soothingly, as if conscious of the storm that was about to break. Then, slowly and with inarticulate mutterings, Henry turned and retraced his steps down the path to the stable. Hoag leaned over till Jack had to clutch the lapels of his coat to keep from falling.

“An' don't you raise a row with that nigger, neither,” Hoag called out. “I won't have it. You are not boss about this place.”

Henry paused in the path, turned a defiant face toward his father, and stood still for several seconds, then slowly went on to the stable.

“Dack want his supper, daddy,” Jack murmured.

“All right, baby,” Hoag said, in a tone of blended anger and gentleness, and with the child in his arms he went through the dark hall into the diningroom adjoining the kitchen in the rear of the house. Here, at the table next to his own place, he put Jack into the child's high-chair, and sat down beside him, his massive arm and hand still encircling the tiny shoulders.

“Now, make Dilly bring Jack's mush an' milk!” Hoag said, with a laugh. “Call 'er—call 'er loud!”

“Dilly!” Jack obeyed. “Oh, Dilly!”

“Louder; she didn't hear you.” Hoag shook with laughter, and patted the child on the head encouragingly.

“Dilly! Oh, Dilly!” Jack cried.

“Oh, I hear you, young marster,” the portly negress laughed, as she shuffled into the room. “I was gittin' yo' mush en milk, honey. I 'clar', 'fo' de Lawd you make me jump out'n my skin, I was so scared.”

“Where's the rest o' the folks?” Hoag inquired, with an impatient glance toward the door.

“Bofe of 'em say dey don't want er bite after eatin' all dat watermelon dis evenin',” the cook answered. “Miz Hoag say she gwine ter lie down right off, kase she got off dat hot dress en feel weak after so much doin's terday. She ain't er well 'oman, Marse Hoag—she ain't, suh. I know, kase I seed er lots of um in my day en time. She hain't got no spirit, suh; en when 'omen git dat way it's er bad sign o' what may come.”

Hoag showed no interest in the comment. He reached for the big platter of cold string-beans and boiled pork, and helped himself abundantly. He poured out his own coffee, and drank it hot from the saucer without sugar or cream. He used both hands in breaking the big, oval-shaped pone of corn-bread. He enjoyed his food as a hungry beast might, and yet he paused every now and then to feed the child with a spoon or to wipe the mush from the little chin. It was Jack's drooping head and blinking eyes that caused Hoag to hasten through the meal. He took the child to the little bed in its mother's room and put it down gently.

“Go to sleep,” he said. “Now go to sleep.”

CHAPTER VIII

HE went back to the veranda through the unlighted hall, and stood looking across the lawn toward the gate. There was no moon; but the stars were out, and cast a soft radiance over the undulating landscape. Along the steep side of the nearest mountain forest fires in irregular lines pierced the thicker darkness of the distance, and their blue smoke drifted in lowering wisps over the level fields.

“Some'n's surely up, if Trawley wants to see me to-night,” Hoag mused. “I wonder if my men—” He saw a horse and rider emerge from the gloom down the road leading on to Grayson. There was no sound of hoofs, for the animal was moving slowly, as if guided with caution. Nearer and nearer the horse approached, till it was reined in at the barnyard gate.

“That's him,” Hoag muttered, and with a furtive look into the hall behind him he tiptoed softly down the steps, and then, his feet muffled by the grass, he strode briskly down to the gate. As he drew near the horseman, who was a slender young man in a broad-brimmed slouch hat, easy shirt, and wide leather belt, and with a heavy blond mustache, dismounted and leaned on the top-rail of the fence.

“Hello, Cap,” was his greeting. “'Fraid you might not be at home. Henry didn't know whether you would be or not, but I come on—wasn't nothin' else to do. The klan is all worked up in big excitement. They didn't want to move without your sanction; but if you'd been away we'd 'a' had to. Business is business. This job has to go through.”

“What's up now?” Hoag asked, eagerly.

“They've caught that nigger Pete Watson.”

“Who has—my boys?”

“No; the sheriff—Tom Lawler an' three o' his deputies.”

“You don't say; where?”

“In the swamp, in the river-bottom just beyond Higgins's farm. Ten of the klan happened to be waiting at Larkin's store when Lawler whizzed by with 'em in a two-hoss hack.”

Hoag swore; his voice shook with excitement. “An' you fellers didn't try to head 'em off, or—”

“Head 'em off, hell! an' them with three cocked Winchesters 'cross their laps an' it broad daylight. Besides, the boys said you'd be mad—like you have been every time they've moved a peg without orders. You remember how you cursed an' raved when—”

“Well, never mind that!” Hoag fumed. “Where did they take the black devil?”

“To jail in Grayson; he's under lock an' key all right. We followed, and saw 'im put in. He's the blue-gum imp that killed old Rose. Lawler told some o' our boys that he hain't owned up to it yet, but he's guilty. Sam and Alec Rose are crazy—would 'a' gone right in the jail an' shot everything in sight if we all hadn't promised 'em you'd call out the klan an' take action at once.”

“I see, I see.” Hoag's head rose and fell like a buoy on a wave of self-satisfaction. “The boys are right. They know nothin' can be done in any sort o' decent order without a leader. You know yourself, Sid, that every time they've gone on their own hook they've had trouble, an' fetched down public criticism.”

“We all know that well enough, Cap,” Trawley said, “an' the last one of the gang is dependent on you. It is wonderful how they stick to you, an' rely on yore judgment. But, say, we hain't got a minute to lose. The thing is primed an' cocked. We kin pass the word along an' have every man out by twelve o'clock. I just need your sanction; that's all I'm here for.”

In the starlight the lines, protuberances, and angles of Hoag's face stood out as clearly as if they had been carved from stone. He stroked his mustache, lips, and chin; he drew himself erect and threw his shoulders back with a sort of military precision. He felt himself to be a pivot upon which much turned, and he enjoyed the moment.

“Wait,” he said, “let me study a minute. I—”

“Study hell! Look here, Jim Hoag—”

“Stop!” Hoag broke in sternly, and he leaned on the fence and glared at Trawley. “You know you are breakin' rules—you know the last one of you has sworn never to speak my name at a time like this. I was to be called 'Captain,' an' nothin' else; but here you go blurtin' out my name. There is no tellin' when somebody may be listenin'.”

“Excuse me, Cap, you are dead right. I was wrong; it was a slip o' the lip. I won't let it happen again.”

Hoag's anger was observable even in the dim light. It trembled in his tone and flashed in his eyes.

“Beggin' pardon don't rectify a mistake like that when the damage is done,” he muttered. “You fellers ain't takin' any risk. I'd be the one to hold the bag if the authorities got onto us. They would nab the leader first.”

“You are too shaky and suspicious,” the other retorted, in sanguine contempt of caution. “We hain't got a man but would die ruther than turn traitor, an' thar ain't no court or jury that could faze us. As you said in yore speech at the last regular meetin', we are a law unto ourselves. This is a white man's country, Cap, an' we ain't goin' to let a few lazy niggers run it.”

“The boys sort o' liked that speech, didn't they?” Hoag's voice ran smooth again.

“It was a corker, an' tickled 'em all,” Trawley smiled. “They will put you in the legislature by a big vote whenever you say the word.”

“I don't want it—I ain't that sort,” Hoag said, grandiloquently. “I'm satisfied if I can help a little here at home—sorter hold you boys together an' make you cautious. A thing like this to-night has to be managed in a cool-headed way that will convince the public that there is a power that can be relied on outside o' the tardy one that costs taxpayers so much to keep up. It would tickle a black whelp like Pete Watson to be tried at our expense. He'd love the best in the world to set up in court an' be looked at as some'n out o' the general run, an' incite others o' his stripe to go an' kill helpless white men an' insult white women. The rope, the torch, an' our spooky garb an' masks are the only things niggers are afraid of.”

“You think that is it, do you?” Trawley said, with a low, pleased laugh.

“More'n anything else,” affirmed Hoag, “along with our swift action. Say, I've been thinkin' over some'n Sid. You said when you fust rid up that the klan won't act without a leader, an' my business sometimes calls me off to Atlanta or Augusta—now it is important, in case I'm away at any time, to have some sort o' head, an' I've been thinkin' that, as you are sech an active member, you ought to be made my lieutenant—”

“You don't mean that, do you, Cap—you don't surely—” Trawley's voice seemed submerged in a flood of agreeable surprise.

“I do, an' I'm goin' to propose it at the next full meetin'. I want a young man like you that I can confer with now and then an' chat over matters. A feller can't always git at a big body like ours by hisself, an' you seem to be better fitted to the office than any other member.”

“I'm much obliged, Cap.” Trawley beamed, and his voice was round and full. “I'd like to stand in with you an' I'll do my best. I promise you that. The whole thing is fun to me.”

“You've been more help to me already than anybody else,” Hoag said, “and I'm goin' to propose yore name an' see that it goes through. Now, we haven't got any time to lose in this job to-night. Send the word along the line, Tell all hands to meet at Maxwell's cove by eleven o'clock—that will give us plenty o' time to git things in shape.”

The dawn of the following day was on the point of breaking when Henry Hoag crossed the garden behind the farm-house, stealthily unlocked the front door, and crept up the stairs to his room. He had been out “skylarking” with some of his friends, and did not want his parents to know the hour of his return home. He did not light the candle on his bureau, but proceeded to undress in the dark. Suddenly he paused, as he sat on the edge of his bed removing his shoes, and listened. It was a soft footfall on the steps of the veranda, the gentle turning of a key in the lock of the door, the creaking of the hinges, followed by the clicking of the latch as the door was closed. A moment later a clumsy tread slurred along the lower corridor to Hoag's room.

Henry chuckled. “Got in by the skin of my teeth,” he said. “If he knew I watched that thing from start to finish he'd beat me 'in an inch o' my life. He tried to change his voice, but he was too excited to hide it. Gee! didn't that poor nigger beg? Ugh, I'm afraid I'll see 'im in my sleep, and hear that last gurgle.”

Henry cautiously lowered a shoe to the floor and sat still for a moment. “Poor old Pete!” he mused. “He swore he didn't do it, and somehow it seemed to me that he wasn't lyin'. I'd have turned him loose and risked it. Poor fellow! Poor fellow!”

CHAPTER IX

HOAG was in a reflective mood as he rode along his field-road in the crisp morning air. The sockets of his eyes were puffed out, and he looked like a man who had lost much sleep, and was braced up for the duties of the day by drink. Within certain material limits he was satisfied with himself. The dew seemed to have added succulence to his fat corn-stalks and sugar-cane; his wheat and cotton were in prime condition, especially the latter, of which his judgment had prompted an unusually large planting, and according to the market reports the staple would bring a fine price.

The affair of the preceding night had gone off with quiet, order, and dignity. His followers had listened to his usual speech with respect and close attention, and he was sure he had never spoken better. His threat that if his wishes were disobeyed in the slightest he would renounce the leadership had had the desired effect of proving that he was not a man to be trifled with. He told them he was giving his valuable time to the office, and had held himself in duty bound to answer every call, and would continue to do so as long as they realized the importance of his advice and services.

As he rode into Grayson he saw the sheriff and Budd Tibbs, the village marshal, on a one-horse dray, followed by a motley group of men, women, and children afoot, and Hoag knew that they were bound for the spot where the body of the lynched man was still hanging. The sheriff would cut the rope, an inquest would be held, and the corpse would be taken away for burial. On the street-corners at the Square stood groups of storekeepers without their hats and coats, blandly gazing after the dray and officers. The thought came to Hoag that some of the men on the street might wonder why he did not stop and chat about the matter, as would be natural for an ordinary citizen to do, who, living out of the village, might only just have heard of the happening; but Hoag was not in the mood for the adroit part he would have to play. His brain felt heavy and his thoughts were sluggish. The sight of the grave faces stirred a vague, unaccountable discontent within him, and he urged his horse to move faster. Suddenly the crude sign of a boot and shoe painted on a swinging board over the door of Silas Tye's shop caught his attention, and reminded him of something he wanted to say to the cobbler, so he dismounted at the door, hitched his horse to a post in front, and went into the shop.

Silas was at work putting a half-sole on a shoe which he held tightly clamped between his knees, and looked up over his murky spectacles and nodded.

“Good momin', Brother Hoag,” he said. “Some'n I kin do for you?”

“Not at present, Uncle Si.” Hoag sat down in a chair, thrust his hand into his hip-pocket, and taking out a piece of plug-tobacco, bit off the corner and rolled it about in his mouth. “No, I hain't got no work for you to-day. In fact, I come to sponge on you—to see if you can't give me a piece o' business advice. They say every man to his line, an' I reckon you know as much about ready-made shoes as anybody else at Grayson.”

“Oh, I don't know; I don't know much about manufactured stuff.” Silas shook his bald head gently. “I kin tell good leather by the feel, look, an' smell of it; but mendin' has got to be my chief work now, an' mendin' shoddy goods at that. I kin make as good a boot as you or any other man would wear, but not at the machine-made price. A pair o' my boots will outwear any three from a box sold over a counter, but nobody round here will believe it.”

“I don't doubt it—I don't doubt it for a minute,” Hoag agreed, “and this is what I want to consult you about. I want your opinion. You know I've got that tannery, and I sometimes tan bigger quantities of hides, Uncle Si, than I am willin' to let go at the average price offered in Atlanta by the jobbers. So you see, in turnin' it over in my mind, it struck me all at once that I might put up a little factory on my place for makin' plain shoes by machinery, an' in that way work off surplus stock, increase my output of leather, and make the middleman's profit. If you will look out on the Square any day you'll see it perfectly black with idle niggers, an' I could put some of 'em to work, an'—”

The shoemaker glanced up and smiled faintly. “I reckon you won't see many in sight this momin',” he sighed, as he resumed his work. “The pore devils are scared out o' their senses by that thing last night. It's awful, awful!”

There was a pause. Hoag's eyelashes fluttered. “Yes, yes, I reckon so,” he said. “I was goin' on to say—”

But some sound in the street had caught Tye's attention and, forgetful of his customer, he rose and stood at the door and looked out. The wrinkles on his brow and about his kindly eyes were drawn and deepened as he peered over the brass rims of his glasses. Hoag heard him sigh again, and saw him rubbing the sole of the shoe absent-mindedly.

“What's goin' on?” the tanner asked, without moving from his chair.

“It's that poor nigger Pete Watson's wife an' daughters,” was the answer. “They've come to claim the body—Dick Morgan is showin' 'em which way to go. Lord, Lord, they do look pitiful! They ain't even cryin'—niggers seldom do at sech a time. Looks like they won't shed tears before the whites for fear it will make 'em mad. They learnt who the'r masters was before the war, an' they ain't over it. I knowed Pete Watson—I've mended shoes for 'im. He was always a civil nigger, an' clever enough. I've had talks with 'im, an' I've been astonished to hear what sensible ideas he had. He appeared to me to be a Christian—a Christian that understood what the Lord really meant when he was here on earth, an' that's rare even among the whites.”

Silas came back to his bench and slowly sat down. “Lord, Lord, what a pity, what a pity!” he continued to mutter.

“They say he was undoubtedly guilty.” Hoag felt his anger rising, and yet he realized that he must restrain himself. “That is the current report, anyway,” he said.

“It always is the report,” Silas said. “Even if a mistake was made the public would never know it. The gang that did the work would see to that.”

“We are gittin' away from what we was talkin' about,” Hoag said. “I was asking you what you thought about me startin' a little shoe-plant?”

“I'm afraid it wouldn't pay,” Silas said, deliberately. “They make shoes a sight cheaper in the big works up North than you possibly could down here in the backwoods with untrained help. It's been tried, without success, several times here an' thar. The Yankees understand the knack o' splittin' leather an' usin' both halves, an' even the middle, for different purposes. You can't make shoes right an' put in good stock at the prices Northern made-up goods fetch.” Silas selected a woman's shoe from a pile on the floor, and with his blackened thumb pried the worn bottom open. “Look at that—stuffed with leather shavin's an' glue! That's what you'd have to contend with. When folks go to buy they go by looks, not quality. Then yore help would fall down on you. You can't turn easy-goin', jolly singin' an' dancin' black boys an' gals into drudgin' machines all at once. They come from a drowsy, savage race an' a hot climate, an' you can't make 'em over in a day. La, la—” The shoemaker bent sideways to look out of the doorway toward the spot where the lynching had occurred. “That's why that thing seems so pitiful.”

Hoag felt his ire rising, but he curbed himself. “They say—folks say, I'm told—that the nigger was guilty,” he muttered. “When the neighbors first went to his house they found the old hat Rose had on when he was murdered. That fact may not be generally known.”

“Yes, it is,” Silas replied; “but if that's all the mob acted on they acted on powerful flimsy evidence. I've heard men say so this mornin'—good lawyers right here in town. Besides, I myself heard—why, a man set right whar you are a-settin' at this minute, Brother Hoag, an' told me not ten minutes ago that he seed Pete with his own eyes pick up the hat on the side o' the road long after the killin'. Now, you see, the fact that Pete had Rose's hat wouldn't actually condemn 'im in a court of law, while it would be proof enough for a drunken gang o' hotheaded nigger-haters. For all we know, somebody else done the killin' an' thro wed the hat down. I myself don't believe that even a fool nigger would kill a man an' tote his hat along a public road for everybody to see, an' take it home an' give it to one o' his boys to wear. It don't stand to reason.”

A grim look of blended anger and chagrin had settled on Hoag's face, He crossed his legs and tapped the heel of his boot with the butt of his riding-whip.

“I'm not takin' up for the—the men that did the job,” he said. “I have no idea who they are or whar they come from—all abouts in the mountains, I reckon; but any man with an eye in his head can see that the niggers in this country are gettin' out of all bounds. Thar is not a day that some white woman ain't mistreated or scared out o' her senses. I wouldn't trust a nigger an inch. I've seed the best of 'em—psalm-singers an' exhorters in meetin'—turn right round an' commit acts that only hell itself could devise.”

“I know, I know,” Silas sighed; “an' in my opinion that's exactly why we need law—an' good law at that. Niggers are natural imitators of the whites; they see lawlessness, an' they git lawless. Mob law stirs up the worst that's in 'em. They see injustice done—the wrong man lynched, for instance—an' they brood over it in secret an' want to hit back, an' they do it the first chance. I don't see you at meetin' often, Brother Hoag, an' you may not depend much on Scripture—many busy men don't, these days; but it is my chief guide, an' our Lord an' Master laid down rules of conduct that if they was half obeyed thar wouldn't be a speck o' strife betwixt white an' black. Lovin' the humblest—'the least of these,' as our Saviour put it—an' turnin' t'other cheek as a daily practice wouldn't leave an openin' for such as that last night.”

Silas put some wooden pegs into his mouth, and began to make holes in the shoe-bottom with an awl and a flat-headed hammer. Hoag glared steadily at the bald pate for a moment, and then, shrugging his shoulders, he stood up. There was a red spot on each of his cheeks, a sullen, thwarted sort of flare in his eyes.

“Well, I'll have to be goin',” he said, winding his pliant whip around his hand. “I see you won't help me build that shoe-factory. I may do it, an' I may not. Thar is another deal I may put the money in, but that's plumb out o' your line. So long.”

The cobbler raised his eyes and muttered an inarticulate something from his peg-filled mouth, and watched Hoag as he went out and unhitched his horse.

“He's one o' the big men o' the county,” Silas mused, “an' yet he don't seem to have the slightest inkling o' what rail justice means. I reckon the almighty dollar has plumb blinded him. He wasn't any more concerned with what I told 'im about that pore darky than if I'd been talkin' about a dead hog. Well, they say he's give up believin' in a God or a future life, an' if he has he's livin' up to his lights, or down to 'em—I don't know which.”

CHAPTER X

IN morbid ill-humor, and vaguely discontented under an intangible something that seemed to press upon him from external sources, Hoag went to his horse. At another time the conviction that a mere cobbler had convinced him of his lack of judgment in regard to a business venture would have irritated him beyond expression; but, strange to say, Silas had said other things that were even more objectionable, and Hoag had been obliged to sit and listen, and by his silence leave the impression on the stupid lout that he was right. The fellow was no doubt talking that way to others, and others were talking to him in the same vein.

Diagonally across the street was the front entrance to a big livery-stable. It had a high board front, on which was painted a horse in a racing-gig and a driver in a jockey's cap leaning forward whip in hand, feet firmly braced. Beneath the picture were the words:

“TRAWLEY'S FEED AND SALE STABLES”

And thither Hoag led his horse. On the edge of the sidewalk a negro was washing the dust from a new buggy with a sponge and a pail of water. Another negro close by was trimming the mane and tail of a horse with a big pair of clicking shears. They had been conversing in low, earnest tones, but they ceased and applied themselves vigorously to work as the tanner approached.

“Hold my hoss,” he said to the man with the pail. “Is Sid about?”

“Back inside, boss.” The negro touched his hat, swept a broad, flat foot backward, and took the bridle. “Leastwise, he was, suh, des er minute ergo. He was talkin' ter er gipsy dat had er muel ter swap. Dey didn't come ter no trade, dough. I know, kase de gipsy rid his muel off up de street.”

Hoag turned into the stable, which was a spacious structure with wide doors at each end, bare, brown rafters overhead, and a storm-shattered shingle roof, which in places let in rifts of sunshine and exposed bits of sky. On either side of a wide passage, from end to end of the building, were stalls, some occupied by horses, and all smelling of manure and musty hay. There was a sound of the champing of feeding animals, the swishing of tails, for the flies were plentiful, and the satisfied accompaniment of pawing hoofs on the soggy ground.

In the rear doorway stood a man who had just stepped into view from the yard in the rear. It was Trawley. He had a stick of soft pine in his hand, and was nervously whittling with a big pocket-knife, his broad, slouch hat pushed back on his head and turned up in front. Sid was quite as well known for the good stable he ran as for his fighting tendencies, the quick use of a “gun,” and general habits of brave recklessness.

Toward him, with a forced smile of companionship, Hoag walked, cautiously looking into the stalls as he passed.

“They are all in front,” Trawley said, reassuringly when they met; “but we don't want to be seen confabbin' together, to-day of all days.” He jerked his knife toward the yard. “Come out here whar it's quiet.”

With a steady stare of awakening wonder over Sid's unwonted caution Hoag followed, first into the open glare of the sun and then under the roof of a wagon-shed.

“If you hadn't come in, I was goin' to ride out to see you,” Trawley said, with a frown which lay heavily on his sharp-cut features. “I reckon you've heard—bad news travels fast.”

“News? I hain't heard nothin'.” Hoag held the butt of his whip against his lower lip and stared questioningly. “Say, what's up?”

“Enough, God knows—hell's to pay. We've got to git together right away an' take action o' some sort. Say—wait a minute.”

The negro who had been cleaning the buggy was drawing it through the stable toward them, and his master strode angrily to the rear door.

“Leave that buggy thar,” he ordered, “an' go back to the front an' stay till I come.”

With a blank look of astonishment the negro dropped the tongue of the buggy, and turned back to the front. Hoag heard Trawley softly grumbling as he came back.

“I'll break a board over that nigger's head one o' these days,” he growled. “He was try in' to get back here to see what me'n you are up to.”

“Oh, I reckon not—I reckon not,” Hoag said, his gaze anxiously fixed on Trawley's face. “Just now you said somethin' about news.”

“You'll think it's news when you hear it,” the stable-man said, taking off his hat and mopping his hot brow with a soiled handkerchief. “Cap, the last thing me or you could possibly expect has done happened. The sheriff of Canton County has just telegraphed that he's got the man that killed old Rose.”

“Got the man that—bosh! Why we—” The words fell from Hoag's lips like bits of metal, and he broke off with a low oath. For a moment neither he nor Trawley spoke. Hoag laughed defiantly, mechanically, and without mirth. Then his face glowed faintly. “Oh, I see, the sheriff over thar don't know what—what took place here last night. He's nabbed some triflin' nigger that had a suspicious look, an' is holdin' 'im for—”

“'Twasn't no nigger,” Trawley said. “It is a tramp—a white man that the sheriff says passed Rose's farm yesterday afoot.”

“Well, what o' that?” Hoag showed irritability. “We'll have to wire the sheriff to turn the man loose—that's all—that's all!”

“If that was all, it would be easy; but it ain't, by a long shot,” Trawley sniffed. “The tramp had Rose's old silver watch with his name cut on it!”

“You mean—” But Hoag knew well what he meant, and was in no mood for idle remarks. When thwarted in anything, justly or unjustly, he became angry; he felt his rage rising now over his sheer inability to cope with a situation which certainly demanded all his poise, all his mental forces.

“We are simply in a hole,” Trawley muttered, still wiping the sweat from his brow. “In a hole, an' a deep one at that.”

“What makes you think so?” Hoag was glaring into the eyes of his companion, as a man in dense darkness trying to see.

“Because we are,” Trawley answered. “The sheriff over thar in Canton won't want to admit he's made a mistake with the proof he holds. He'll bring his man to trial an' the fellow will be convicted. The fact that we—that us boys in this county strung up a nigger for the crime won't make any difference over thar, but it will make a lot here.”

“I don't see how.”

“Well, I do, if you don't, Cap. We are in, an' we are in deep. You have a curious way about you—you git so mad when things go ag'in' you that you won't admit facts when they are before you. As for me, I've been here thinkin' over it all momin'. It is nasty—the whole damn thing is nasty. The niggers are gittin' bold enough anyway, along with what the Atlanta papers have been sayin' in their favor, an' the Governor talkin' about orderin' troops out, an' the like, an' now this will simply stir up the State. We kin keep the main body of niggers down by what we done—what was done last night; but thar are some sly ones with white blood an' hell in 'em. We are all in danger. Look at this stable.” Trawley waved his damp handkerchief toward the big building and surrounding wagon-sheds. “One of the devils could sneak up here any night and set fire to all I got an' burn it to the ground. It is so dry it would go up like powder. I've got several thousand dollars' worth of vehicles, to say nothin' of live-stock that can't be driv' out at such a time, an' I don't carry insurance, because the rate is too high, owin' to the risk bein' so heavy; Land as for you—your tannery, house, cotton-gin, warehouse, an'—”

“Thar's no good talkin' about all that!” Hoag broke in, with a lowering frown. “We've got to do something, an' do it quick.”

“Wait a minute,” Trawley said. “I hear one o' them niggers whistlin' for me; it may be one o' our—one of—may be somebody lookin' for us now. Thar'll be excitement, big excitement, when it spreads about through the mountains.”

There was an oak in the yard which shaded the well, and Hoag went to the well and sat down on the end of a long dug-out watering-trough. He was beginning to perspire freely, and he took off his hat and fanned himself in a nervous, jerky fashion. His hands were damp, and on their red backs, and along his heavy wrists, the hairs stood like dank reeds in a miniature swamp. He was in high dudgeon; everything seemed to have turned against him. Tye's unconscious lecture and crude object-lessons, combined with the old man's spiritual placidity and saintly aloofness from the horrors he shrank from, were galling in the extreme. Then Trawley's fears that certain property might be destroyed by way of retaliation were worth considering; and, lastly, there was the humiliation of such a grave mistake becoming public, even though the perpetrators themselves might not be known. From where Hoag sat he could look into the stable, and he saw Trawley going from stall to stall showing the horses to a well-dressed stranger, who looked like a traveling salesman of the better class. Presently the man left the stable, and Trawley, still holding his stick and knife in hand, came back to Hoag.

“Damn fool from up North,” he explained, angrily. “Wanted to hire a rig an' hosses to go over the mountain, whar he's got some lumber interests. He talked to me like—I wish you'd a-heard 'im. I couldn't hardly pin 'im down to business, he was so full o' the hangin'. He happened to see 'em cut down the body an' haul it away. Of course, he had no idea that I—he seemed to lay it to a gang o' cutthroats from over whar he was to go, an' wondered if it would be safe for a Northern man to drive out unarmed an' without a bodyguard.”

“Why didn't you slap his jaw?” Hoag growled, inconsistently.

“Yes, an' had 'im ax what it was to me,” Trawley snarled. “I did, in a roundabout way, try to show up our side, an' what we have to contend with; but he just kept groanin', 'My Lord, my Lord,' an' sayin' that old woman an' her children was the pitifulest sight he ever saw! He said”—Trawley shrugged his shoulders and made a grimace as he tugged at his mustache—“he said all of us civilized citizens—them was his words—ought to band together an' 'force law an' order—that it was killin' our interests. He had been countin' on locatin' here, he said, but was afeard, when the thing got in the papers, his company would back out an' not develop their property. He seemed awfully put out. I tried to tell 'im that if he knowed niggers as we do he'd see it our way; but the truth is, I was so bothered over that dang tramp's arrest that—”

“I've been studyin' over that.” Hoag dismissed the stranger from his mind with a fierce frown. “There is only one thing to do. Set down here—set down!”

Sid complied. “If you can think of any way out o' the mess you can beat me,” he said, dejectedly.

“Thar is just one thing for us to do.” Hoag was to some extent regaining his self-possession, his old autocratic mien had returned. “You fellows are all goin' to git rattled an' somebody's got to keep a clear head an' plan how to act. The klan will naturally look to me; it is really on my shoulders; we'll sink or fall by my judgment. Some of us have got to git together to-night an' march over thar to the Canton jail an' take that tramp out.”

“An' lynch 'im? Good Lord, Cap—”

“No, fool, not lynch 'im—that wouldn't do—that never would do in the world; we must send 'im about his business—hustle 'im out o' the country an'—an' circulate the report that he was arrested by mistake, which—which I've no doubt he was. Pete Watson sold 'im the watch. That's plain enough.”

“Oh, ah, I see—by gum, I see; but what about the sheriff over thar? Fellers o' that sort are sometimes proud o' makin' an arrest in a case like that.”

“That's the only hill to climb an' we may fail; but we've got to try it. I know 'im purty well. He expects to be re-elected, an' half of our boys live in his county an' vote thar. We must show 'im the damage the thing would work among the niggers, an' sort o' make a—a political issue of it; show 'im that he'll git beat, an' beat bad, if he goes ag'in' so many.”

“By gum, you are a corker, Cap—you sure are.” Hoag's eyes gleamed, a look of pride settled on his face; he crossed his legs and tapped the spur on his heel with the butt of his whip till the little pronged wheel spun like a circular saw, “When I'm driv' clean to the wall like this I generally see a loophole,” he said. “Now, let's set to work; you send out the word in the usual way, an' have 'em meet at the Cove.”

“Good, good! It's worth tryin', anyway.” Trawley breathed more freely. “I'll notify most o' the boys—especially them that live in Canton County.”

“Order out as many as you can,” Hoag said. “At night it will be hard for the sheriff to know who they all are, an' the bigger the crowd the better; but, say—I've just thought of something important. You'll have to leave Sam an' Alec Rose out. You see it stands to reason that they'd never consent to let the tramp off, an'—an'—well, we can't kill 'im. He's got to go free.”

“Yes, Sam an' Alec will have to be left out—they are crazy enough as it is. I'll caution the other boys not to let 'em know a thing about it.”

“That's the idea.” Hoag was starting away, when Trawley, still seated on the trough, called him back.

“Wait; thar was something else I had on my mind to tell you, but it has clean slipped away. I intended to tell you last night, but we had so much to do, an' thar was so much excitement. Lemme see—oh yes, now I remember!” Trawley stood up and caught the lapel of Hoag's thin coat. “Say, Cap, I want to warn you, as a friend, you are goin' to have more trouble with Jeff Warren. He hain't never been satisfied since you an' him had that fight last spring. He says he licked you, an' that you've been denying it. He was here at the stable yesterday talkin' about what he was goin' to do with you when he meets you. He's heard some'n he claims you said about him an' Ralph Rundel's wife. I reckon he is actin' the fool about 'er, an' maybe he is takin' advantage of a sick man; but nobody knows, for sure. Some think Jeff is honorable. Anyway, you'll have to look out an' not let 'im git the drop on you. He's a bloodthirsty devil when he's mad, an' he hain't got sense enough to know that he'd compromise the woman worse by fightin' for her than lettin' the matter blow over.”

Hoag stood silent, facing his companion. His countenance became rigid and his heavy brows fell together; there was a peculiar twitching about his nostrils. “I don't know what I said about him an' her, an' I care less.” He spoke in halting, uncertain tones. “I've got no use for 'im, an' never had.”

“Well, I thought there'd be no harm in puttin' you on yore guard.” Trawley looked at his chief as if perplexed over his mood. “He's a hot-headed devil, that will shoot at the drop of a hat.”

Hoag stood rigid. There was a fixed stare in his eyes. His lips quivered, as if on the verge of utterance, and then he looked down at the ground. Trawley eyed him in slow surprise for a moment, then he said:

“I hope, Cap, you don't think I am meddlin' in yore private business. It is not often that I tote any sort o' tale betwixt two men; but Jeff is such a rampant daredevil, an' so crazy right now, that—”

“I'm not afraid of 'im. Good God, don't think that!” Hoag was quite pale. “It was only—say, Sid, it's like this: do you think that a man like me, with all I've got at stake, one way or another, can afford to—to take even chances with a shiftless fool like Jeff Warren?”

“It ain't what you, or me, or anybody can afford to do,” the stable-owner returned, “or want to do, for that matter; when a chap like Jeff is loaded for bear an' on our trail we've either got to git ready for 'im or—or swear out a peace-warrant, an' me or you'd rather be hung than do the like o' that. As for me, in all rows I treat everybody alike. If a black buck nigger wants satisfaction out o' me he can git it—you bet he can.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Hoag said, his eyes shifting restlessly in their deep sockets, his fingers fumbling his whip. “I was just wondering; did he—did you notice whether Warren was totin' a gun or not?”

“I think he was; that's why I mentioned the matter to you. In fact, he was inquiring if anybody had seen you—said he knowed enough law to know that if he went to yore house on such serious business that he'd be held accountable, wharas, if you an' him met on a public highway it would be all right, beca'se it was your unjustified remark ag'in' a woman that started the thing.”

Hoag stared into the face of his companion for another minute. It was as if he wanted some sort of advice and did not know how to ask for it. He shrugged his shoulders, lashed the hot air with his whip, cleared his throat, and said:

“I hope you don't think I'm afraid o' the dirty puppy, Sid?”

“Afraid, oh no!” Trawley replied, indifferently. “Of course not. You kin shoot as straight as he can. Besides, if it come to the worst—if he did happen to git the best of it—you are in as good a shape to die as any man I know. You'd leave your wife an' family well provided for. Take my advice and don't give 'im a chance to draw a gun. Pull down, and pull down quick!”

Trawley led the way back into the stable, and at the front the two men parted. Hoag was on the sidewalk when Trawley called to him, and came to his side.

“If you hain't got a gun on you, you kin take mine,” he said, in a low tone.

“I've got one,” Hoag answered, a far-off look in his eyes, and he slid a hand over his bulging hip-pocket. “I never go without it.”

“Well, if nothin' happens, then I'll meet you tonight,” Trawley reminded him. “We must put that thing through.”

Hoag nodded. “All right,” he returned, abstractedly. “All right—all right.”

“If nothin' happens!” The words fairly stung his consciousness as he walked away. “If nothin' happens!” His feet and legs felt heavy. There was a cold, tremulous sensation in the region of his pounding heart.

CHAPTER XI

HOAG had some important business to transact in the little bank on one of the comers of the Square, and he was detained there half an hour or more. The thought flashed on him, as he sat alone at the banker's desk in the rear, that a prudent man at such a time would make a will; but the idea chilled him, horrified him. This feeling was followed by a desperate sort of anger over the realization that a low, shiftless clodhopper could so materially upset a man of his importance. He had recalled the idle remark which had reached Warren's ears, and knew it was the kind of thing the man would fight to the death about. And there was no way out of it—no way under the sun. He could not—as Trawley had said—appeal to the law for protection; such a course would make him the laughing-stock of all his followers, who thought him to be a man of unquestioned courage. Hoag drew a sheet of paper to him and began to write, but was unable to fix his mind on the matter in hand. It seemed utterly trivial beside the encroaching horror. Jeff Warren might walk in at any moment and level his revolver; Jeff Warren would kill the traducer of a woman in a church or in a group of mourners over a new grave and feel that he had done his duty. Hoag crumpled up the sheet of paper and dropped it into a waste-paper basket under the desk. He thrust his hand behind him and drew out his revolver and looked at it. He noticed, as he twirled the polished cylinder, that his fingers shook. He ground his teeth, uttered a low oath, and put the revolver back into his pocket. How could he defend himself with nerves such as the combination of tobacco and whisky had given him? He rose and went through the bank to the street, returning the banker's smiling salutation from the little grated window as he passed out.

He drew a breath of relief when he reached the sidewalk, for Warren was not in sight. To Hoag an irrelevant sort of mocking placidity rested on the scene. Storekeepers, clerks, and cotton-buyers were moving about without their coats, pencils behind their ears. Countrymen from the mountains in white-hooded wagons were unloading grain, potatoes, apples, chickens in coops, and bales of hay, with their hearts in their work, while he, the financial superior of them all, was every minute expecting to grapple with a bloody and ignominious death. He had a deed to record at the Court House, and he went into the big, cool building and turned the document over to the clerk with instructions to keep the paper till he called for it. Two lank, coatless farmers, seated near the desk, were playing checkers on a worn, greasy board.

“Ah, ha!” one of them said, “cap that un, an' watch me swipe the balance.”

Hoag was going out when he saw, carelessly leaning in the doorway at the front of the hall, the man he was dreading to meet. For an instant he had an impulse to fall back into the clerk's office, and then the sheer futility of such a course presented itself. Besides, the tall, slender man, with dark hair and eyes and waxed mustache, who had no weapon in sight, was calmly addressing him.

“I want to see you, Jim Hoag,” he said. “Suppose we step back in the yard at the end o' the house?”

“Oh, hello, Warren, how are you?” Hoag said, forcing a desperate smile to his stiff mouth and chilled cheeks.

“I'll try to show you how I am in a few minutes,” Warren answered, coldly, and he led the way down the hall, his high-heeled boots ringing on the bare floor, toward the door at the end. “Or maybe it will be t'other way—you may show me. Well, if you can, you are welcome.”

“I see you are lookin' for trouble, Jeff,” Hoag began. “I heard you wanted to see me, an' I heard you was mad at some fool lie or other that—”

“You step out here on the grass,” Warren said. “I never seed the day I wouldn't give even a bloated skunk like you a fair chance. Draw your gun. You've got more money 'an I have, Hoag; but, by God! my honor an' the honor of a respectable lady of my acquaintance is worth as much to me as—”

“Look here, Jeff, I ain't armed.” Hoag lied flatly as he saw Warren thrust his hand behind him. “You say you want to act fair, then be fair—be reasonable. The truth is—”

“Oh, I see—well, if you ain't ready, that alters it! No man can't accuse me of pullin' down on a feller that ain't fixed. I know you ain't a-goin' to back down after what I've said to your teeth, an' I'll set here on this step an' you go across to the hardware store an' fix yourself. Mine's a thirty-eight. I don't care what size you git. I want you to be plumb satisfied. Don't tell anybody, either. We don't want no crowd. This is our affair.” Hoag moved a step nearer to the offended man. He smiled rigidly. His voice fell into appealing, pleading gentleness.

“Looky here, Jeff, you an' me 've had differences, I know, an' thar's been plenty o' bad blood betwixt us; but as God is my judge I never had any deep ill-will ag'in' you. I've always known you was a brave man, an' I admired it in you. You are mad now, an' you are not seein' things straight. You've heard some'n or other; but it ain't true. Now, I don't want any trouble with you, an—”

“Trouble!” Warren's dark eyes flashed; his voice rang like steel striking steel. It was an odd blending of threat and laughter. “If we don't have trouble the sun won't set to-night. I'm talkin' about what you said at the post-office t'other day to a gang about me an' a certain neighbor's wife.”

“I think I can guess what you are talkin' about, an' you've got it plumb crooked, Jeff.” Hoag bent toward the man and laid a bloodless hand full of soothing intent on his shoulder. “You say you are a fair man, Jeff, an' I know you are, an' when a man like me says he's sorry and wants to fix things straight—without bloodshed—be reasonable. I didn't mean to reflect on the lady. I just said, if I remember right, that it looked like she admired you some. An' if you say so, I'll apologize to her myself. No man could ask more than that.”

The fierce dark eyes blinked; their glare subsided. There was a momentous pause.

“I wouldn't want 'er to hear a thing like that,” Warren faltered. “Too much has been said anyway, one way an' another, by meddlin' gossips, an' it would hurt her feelin's. I didn't want to fight about it, but couldn't hold in. An' if you say you didn't mean nothin' disrespectful, why, that will have to do. We'll drop it. I don't want bloodshed myself, if I kin get around it.”

“I don't want any either, Jeff,” Hoag said, still pacifically, and yet his fury, contempt for himself, and hatred for the man before him were already returning, “so we'll call it settled?”

“All right, all right,” Warren agreed; “it will have to do. When a man talks like you do nothin' more is to be said. I never yet have whipped a man that didn't want to fight. I'd as soon hit a suckin' baby.” They parted, Warren going into the Court House and Hoag to the stable for his horse. Trawley was at the front waiting for him.

“Hello,” he cried, “I see he didn't plug you full o' holes. I watched 'im follow you into the Court House, an' expected to hear a whole volley o' shots.”

“He did want to see me,” Hoag sneered, loftily. “In fact, he come while I was havin' a paper recorded an' wanted to see me. He tried to git me to admit I was slanderin' that woman, an' I gave 'im a piece o' my mind about it. Her son works for me, an' I think a lot of the boy. I wouldn't have Paul hear a thing like that for anything. He's all right an' is tryin' hard to make his way. I told Jeff if he wanted bloodshed to git up some other pretext an' I'd give 'im all he wanted. A triflin' scamp like he is can't stamp me in public as a traducer of women.”

“I see, I see,” said Trawley, in vague approval. “Well, that's out of the way, an' we can attend to the other matter. It's a serious thing, Jim Hoag. The sheriff over in Canton may tell us to mind our own rat-killin', and then we would be in a box.”

“We've got to bring all our force to bear an' pull 'im round,” Hoag said. “I'm goin' to see a few of our main men here in town, an' sorter map out a plan. If we go at it right, we'll pull it through. I'll meet you all at the Cove to-night.”

CHAPTER XII

IT was late in the afternoon when Hoag rode up to his house and delivered his horse to Cato, with instructions to feed and water the animal and rub him down carefully, as he had to “use him again after supper.”

In the hall he met his wife. She had a tired, anxious look on her face, which seemed flushed by the heat of the cooking-stove, over which she had been working.

“Have the cows come up?” he asked her.

“Yes.” She glanced at him timidly. “Mother is down attendin' to the milkin' with Dilly. I'm watchin' the meat in the stove.”

“You'd better take it up as soon as it's good done,” he said. “I don't want supper to be late ag'in—not to-night, anyway. I've got to ride out to see a man that's got a lot o' land to sell.”

“It's about done,” she answered, wearily, “an' I'll take it up an' set the table.”

He passed on to the kitchen, filled a dipper with water from the pail, and drank; then he returned to the front veranda and sat down in a latticed corner, over which honeysuckles climbed. He removed his coat, for the air was close and hot. He opened the bosom of his moist shirt, and fanned his face, big neck, and hairy chest with his hat. He was upset, dissatisfied, angry. So many things had gone contrary to his wishes. Why had he allowed Silas Tye to talk to him in such a vein? Why had he not defended the worthy principle he and his followers stood for? What could an ignorant shoemaker know of such grave and important issues? Then there was the memory of Jeff Warren's grimly determined mouth, set jaws, and flaming eyes, as he stood placidly demanding satisfaction of him—of him. Hoag's rage ran through him like streams of liquid fire, the glow of which hung before his eyes like a mist of flame. Why had he not—he clenched his brawny fist and the muscles of his arm drew taut—why had he not beaten the insolent fellow's face to a pulp for daring to talk of satisfaction to him? The man, even now, was perhaps recounting what had happened in his stoical, inconsequential way, and there were some persons—some, at least—who would think that the apology was the last resort of a coward. Men who didn't really know him might fancy such to be the case. Yes, he must have it out with Warren. Some day—before long, too—he would call him down publicly on some pretext or other in which a woman's fame was not involved, and prove himself to others and, yes—to himself.

There was a soft step in the hallway behind him. It was his wife. He felt rather than saw her presence in the doorway.

“What is it—what is it?” he demanded, impatiently.

He heard her catch her breath, and knew the delay in replying was due to habitual timidity. He repeated his question fiercely, for there was satisfaction in being stern to some one after the humiliating manner in which he had received Warren.

“You say you are goin' out after supper?” she faltered. “I hope you ain't goin' far, because—”

“I'm goin' as far as I want to go,” he hurled at her. “I won't let you nor your mammy dabble in my affairs. I don't have to make excuses neither. My business is my business. I'll have to be late; but that's neither here nor thar, whether I am or not. I see you both with your heads together now and then, and I know what you say—I know what you think—but I'll be my own boss in this establishment, an' you may as well count on it.”

“Don't, don't! Please don't talk so loud!” she implored him, for his voice had risen almost to a shriek. “Didn't Paul Rundel tell you? I sent 'im in town to find you. Surely you know—”

“To find me? What for?”

“Why, the baby's awful sick; he's just dropped to sleep. Paul got Dr. Lynn as quick as he could, an' then went on after you.”

“Sick—sick—is Jack sick?”

Hoag lowered the front part of his chair to the floor and stood up. He stared into the shrinking face for a moment, and then he spoke in a low, startled voice.

“What did the doctor say ailed him?”

“He said he couldn't tell yet. Jack's got a powerful high fever. Dr. Lynn said it might be very serious, and it might not. He left some medicine, an' told me to watch the child close. He said he'd be back as soon as he could possibly get here. He'd have stayed on, but he was obliged to attend to Mrs. Petty, who ain't expected to last through the night.”

Silence fell as the woman ceased speaking. Hoag's breathing through his big, hair-lined nostrils was audible. He put his hand on the door-facing and swayed toward it. Every trace of his anger had vanished.

“I didn't see Paul.” He had lowered his voice to an undertone. “I had no idea Jack was sick. When—when did you first notice it?”

“About four o'clock. He was playin' in the yard, as usual, an' I didn't dream anything was wrong till Aunt Dilly come to me an' said Jack acted odd. She said she'd been watchin' 'im through the window, an' he'd quit playin' an' would lie down on the grass awhile an' then git up an' play a little an' then lie down ag'in. I went out and found him with the hottest skin I ever felt an' a queer, glassy look in his eyes. I toted 'im in an' put 'im on the bed, an' then I saw he was plumb out o' his head, thinkin' he saw ugly things which he said was comin' to git 'im. He was that way, off an' on, till the doctor come.”

One of Hoag's greatest inconsistencies was the tendency to anger whenever anything went contrary to his desires. He was angry now, angry while he was filled with vague fear and while certain self-accusing thoughts flitted about him like winged imps of darkness. He wanted to charge some one with having neglected the child, and he would have done so at any moment less grave. Just then a low moan came from Mrs. Hoag's room on the right of the hall, and she hastened to Jack's bedside. Hoag followed on tiptoe and bent over the child, who lay on his little bed before a window through which the fading light was falling.

The child recognized his father and held up his flushed arms.

“Daddy, Dack's hick. It's hot—hot!”

“I know—I know,” Hoag said, soothingly, his hand on the child's brow; “the medicine will cool you off after a while.”

“Black' things come to catch Dack—oh, Daddy, don't let 'em—don't let 'em!”

“You was out o' your head,” Hoag heard himself saying, almost cooingly. “It was a bad dream—that's all—a mean, bad dream.”

Then a vague stare of coming unconsciousness crept into the child's eyes and the long lashes drooped to the flushed cheeks. Hoag drew himself erect, held his breath lest his exhaling might waken the child, and crept quietly from the room back to the veranda.

The twilight was thickening over the fields and meadows. The mountains loomed up like sinister monsters against the sky. Clouds of blue smoke from forest fires, far and near, hovered over the valley. The sultry air was laden with the odor of burning twigs, leaves, and underbrush. There was a step on the back porch, and, turning, he saw Mrs. Tilton coming in, bowed between two pails of milk. He went to her as she stood at the kitchen-table straining the warm, fragrant fluid into a brown jar. “What do you think ails the baby?” he inquired. “Looks to me like scarlet fever,” she answered, with the stoicism of her age and sex. “I hain't seen many cases in my time, but from the indications—” He swore under his breath, angry at her for even suggesting such a horrible possibility. “I reckon you don't know much about such things. Wait till the doctor says it's as bad as that before you jump at it so quick.”

“I didn't say I knowed for sure,” Mrs. Tilton flared, resentfully. “But thar's one thing certain, the doctor is worried—I saw that plain enough; he is worried, an' I never would 'a' thought o' scarlet fever if he hadn't said a lot of it was goin' round about.”

“Who's got it?” Hoag demanded, as fiercely as a lawyer browbeating a refractory witness.

“Why, the McKinneys' youngest gal. They sent 'er over here to borrow salt t'other day just before she was took down, an' her an' Jack—”

“I reckon you'll say you let Jack play with 'er next,” Hoag blustered, in the tone of a rough man to a rough man.

“How could we tell?” was the admission, calmly enough made. “She hadn't broke out—she did look sort o' red; but it was a hot day, an' I thought she'd been runnin', as children will do. Jack was playin' in the straw that was cut last week, an' she come by an'—”

“Pack of fools—pack of idiots!” Hoag thundered, and he went back to the veranda, where for several minutes he stood staring dejectedly into the night. He was there holding his unlighted pipe in his hand, his ears bent to catch any sound from the sick-room, when Aunt Dilly, the fat cook, came shuffling in her slipshod way up behind him.

“Supper's on de table, Marse Jim,” she announced, in a low tone of concern. “Miss Sarah an' 'er ma say dey don't feel like eatin' a bite—dey is so clean upset an' outdone.”

Hoag was not conscious of any desire for food, but as a matter of form or habit he followed the negress to the dining-room across the hall from where the child lay and took his usual seat at the long table. A lamp with a pink paper shade stood in the center of the board, and threw a rosy glow over the dishes and cold vegetables and meat. Hoag helped himself to the cabbage and beans, and broke the corn pone, and poured out his coffee. He ate slowly and yet without due mastication, for he was constantly listening, with knife and fork poised in the air, for any sound from the sick-room. The sight of the high, empty chair in which the baby usually sat next to him sent a shudder through him and tightened his throat. Hurrying through his supper, he rose and went back to his seat on the veranda. The fear that was on him was like a palpable weight which crushed him physically as well as mentally. Recent disagreeable occurrences flitted before his mind's eye like specters. It seemed to him, all at once, that a malignant destiny might be taking him in hand. An evil sun had risen on him that day, and this was its setting. Jack, the flower of his life—the only creature he had ever really loved—was going to die—to die, actually to die! Hoag stifled an upsurging groan. His head sank till his chin touched his bare breast, and then he drew himself up in resentful surprise over his weakness. The night crept on like a vast thing full of omnipotent and crafty design. It was twelve o'clock, and yet he had not thought of sleep, although he had not closed his eyes the night before. He heard voices in the sick-room, and was about to go thither, when the door opened and Mrs. Tilton came along the hall and stopped at his chair.

“I thought you was in bed,” she said, in a strange, reserved tone. “I'm awfully worried. I'm afraid it's goin' ag'in' Sarah. She ain't strong enough to stand up under it. If Jack goes she'll go too. Mark my prediction.”

“How's the baby?” Hoag impatiently demanded.

“I don't know; he's tossin' awful. Looks like Dr. Lynn would have been here by this time; but he said the only thing to do was to wait an' see how the medicine acted. Are you goin' to stay up?”

Hoag's head rocked. “Yes, I want to hear what he says. I'll be out here if—if you—need me.”

“All right.” And the old woman slipped away in the unlighted hall, and he heard her softly opening the door of the sick-room. The silence of the night grew profound. The moon was rising like a flaming world above the mountain, throwing its mystical veil over the landscape. There was a sound of a closing gate at the foot of the lawn, and some one entered and came up the walk. It was Henry. He had a cane in his hand, and was idly slashing the flowers which bordered the walk. He was whistling in a low, contented way. Down the steps crept his father, and they met a little distance from the house.

“Stop that infernal noise!” Hoag commanded. “Hain't you got an ounce o' sense? The baby's sick an' you'll wake 'im. Whar 've you been?”

“Over at John Wells's house,” the boy replied. “Tobe is going off to Texas, and everybody was saying good-by.”

“I'll believe that when I have to,” Hoag growled. “I can smell liquor on you now. You fairly stink with it.”

“'Twasn't nothing but an eggnog Mrs. Wells made,” the boy said, slowly, studying the face before him.

“Well, you go on to bed,” Hoag ordered. “An' don't you make a bit o' noise goin' in, either. Don't wake that child.”

“I ain't agoin' to wake 'im,” Henry answered, as he turned away. “I'm sorry he's sick. Can I see him?”

“No, you can't! Go to bed an' let 'im alone.”

When his son had disappeared into the house Hoag stood for a moment staring at the light which filtered through the green blinds of his wife's room, and then, hearing the beating of hoofs on the road, he moved on to the gate with an eager, tentative step.

“That's the doctor now,” he thought. “What the hell's he creepin' along like a snail for when we've been waitin'—” But the horse had stopped in the shadow of the barn, and Hoag saw the rider still in the saddle leaning sideways and peering at him.

“What's the matter, Doc?” Hoag called out. “Want me to hitch yo' hoss?”

“It hain't the doctor—it's me, Cap. Anybody in sight—road clear?”

An oath of combined surprise and disappointment escaped Hoag's tense lips. It was Trawley, and for the first time since he had parted with the man that afternoon he recalled his appointment. He said nothing, but opened the gate, passed out, and went along the fence to the horse and rider.

“I come by to report.” Trawley threw a leg over the rump of his steaming horse and stood down on the ground. “Met Paul Rundel in town searchin' high an' low for you, an' heard your baby was purty bad off, so when I met the boys—eighty odd—an' we'd waited as long as we possibly could, I explained to 'em and took command, an' we went on; we just had to—time was powerful short, you know. We rode fast, goin' an' comin'.”

Trawley ceased speaking and looked at his chief in slow astonishment, for Hoag was blankly staring at the ground.

“My God, Cap, the little chap hain't—dead, is he?”

“No, no, not yet—not yet,” Hoag muttered; “but he may be before mornin'.”

“You don't say! That's bad, powerful bad, for I know what a great pet he is, an' a bright, knowin' child, too, if thar ever was one. Well, I reckon you want to know what we done? We got thar in the neighborhood o' nine o'clock, an' rid straight to the jail. The sheriff was thar hisself on guard, an' at first he thought we was a gang bent on lynchin', an' shet all doors an' talked about firin' on us; but I'd appointed Sim Cotes as spokesman, an' we raised a white flag an' called the sheriff out. Then Sim laid down the law in a speech as smooth as goose grease. As fast as the sheriff would raise an objection Sim would knock it into a cocked hat, till finally the feller didn't have a leg to stand on. Sim told 'im that if he didn't act sensible five hundred men would be out in the mornin' workin' for his defeat in the next election. He wiggled, an' argued, an' mighty nigh prayed—they say he's a deacon or some'n or other; but he had his price, an' he finally tumbled. He went in an' talked with the jailer an' his wife. The woman was on our side; said she didn't want to see the tramp strung up nohow. It was funny; we had 'im whar the wool was short, as the sayin' is, an' so—”

Trawley stopped, for Hoag had turned abruptly and was looking past him to the cross-roads at the corner of his property.

“That must be Doc Lynn now,” he said, excitedly.

“No, it ain't,” Trawley answered. “That is a drummer in a rig o' mine. He went over to Tyler Station before daylight, an' was to git back to-night. I know the hoss's trot. Say, Cap, we shore did act in hot blood last night. We kin say what we like to the public, but we certainly sent one innocent coon to judgment. That measly tramp was as guilty as ever a man was.”

“You think so?” Hoag said, listlessly.

“Yes; we led 'im down the road apiece after we left the jail. He hadn't heard our dicker with the sheriff, an' made shore we was in for hangin' 'im. He must o' had a streak o' good old-fashioned religion in 'im, for all the way we heard 'im prayin' like rips. Even when we all got around 'im to explain he drapped on his knees in the road and confessed to the whole dern business. He didn't ax for mercy, either, but just begged for a few minutes to pray. The boys was all feelin' purty good over the way things was goin' an' was in for some fun, so nobody let on for a while, an' Sim Cotes, in as solemn a voice as a judge, called out that we'd 'low 'im three minutes, an' we all set down on the grass like Indians smokin' a pipe o' peace, an' tuck it in like a show. It seemed he didn't really intend to kill old Rose; he just wanted to stun 'im so he could get what he had, but the old man put up a regular wild-cat fight, an' was yellin' so loud for help, that he had to settle 'im to save his own skin.”

“Then you let 'im go,” Hoag prompted. “Hurry up, I don't want to stay here all night.”

“Yes; some o' the boys was in for givin' the poor devil a sound lashin'; but he really looked like he wasn't strong enough to stand up under it, an' we didn't dare disable 'im, so when we explained to 'im that he was free if he'd get clean out o' the country an' hold his tongue, he was the funniest lookin' sight you ever saw. By gum, he actually tried to kiss our hands; he crawled about on his knees in the road, cryin' an' whimperin' an' beggin' the Lord to bless us. It actually unstrung some o' the boys—looked like they hardly knowed what to do or say. The tramp started off, lookin' back over his shoulder like he was afraid somebody would shoot, an' when he got to the top o' the rise he broke into a run an' he hit the grit like a scared rabbit.”

Trawley laughed impulsively; but no sign of amusement escaped Hoag. His eyes were fixed on a horse and buggy down the road.

“That must be the doctor,” he said. “You go on to town.”

“All right, all right, Cap,” was the reply. “I just thought I'd stop by an' let you know how it come out. Good night.”

“Good night,” Hoag gloomily echoed, and he went back to the gate, where he stood waiting for the doctor.

The physician was a man past middle age, full-bearded, iron-gray, and stockily built. He got out of his buggy with the deliberation of his profession.

“How is the child now?” he asked, as he hitched his horse to the fence.

“I don't know, Doc; you'd better hurry in an' look at 'im. You think he is dangerous, don't you?”

“I thought so when I saw 'im; but I can't tell sure yet. Couldn't get here a bit sooner—tried my best, but couldn't.”

Hoag opened the gate, and they both passed through. On the still air the trotting of Trawley's horse fell faintly on their ears. As they neared the house the light in the sick-room was turned up and Mrs. Tilton came to the front door.

“Walk in, Doctor,” Hoag said, and he remained at the foot of the steps, his bare head catching the silvery beams of the moon. Hoag heard his mother-in-law speaking in a low, explanatory tone, as she led the doctor along the dark hall.

What would the verdict be? Hoag asked himself. Other men had lost their children, why should not he—he, of all men, take his turn at that sort of fatality? He paced the grass in front of the house impatiently. He shrank from seeing the child. There was something in the small, suffering face which he felt would unman him. The minutes seemed to drag like hours. There was a constant grinding and rumbling of feet on the floor within, the mumbling of low voices. Hoag strained his ears for the sound of Jack's voice, but it did not come. Perhaps—perhaps the little fellow was sinking; children died that way, often without pain or struggle. Hoag for one instant leaned toward the hereditary instinct of prayer, and then shrugged his shoulders as he remembered that he had long since given all that up. Belief in God and a future life belonged to a period far back in his memory, when, as a smooth-faced youth, he had erroneously thought himself converted at a revival in which the whole countryside had given itself over to tears, rejoicings, and resolutions. No; if Jack was dying, that was the end of the little life—marvelous as it was—it was the end, the very end. Hoag sat down on the lowest step of the veranda, gripped his big hands between his knees, and stared at the pale, pitiless moon.

The sound of a closing door fell on his ears; a heavy step rang in the hall. The doctor was coming out. Hoag stood up and faced him as he crossed the veranda, his medicine-case in hand. How damnably placid seemed the bearded face; how like that of an official executioner or an undertaker bent on mere profit.

“Well, well?” Hoag gulped. “Well, how is it?”

“I had my scare for nothing.” The doctor bent his body to look around a tree to see if his horse was where he had left it. “It isn't scarlet fever. The child has eaten something that went against him. He had a raging fever; but it's down now, and if you will look to his diet for a day or two he'll be all right.”

Hoag said nothing; something like a blur fell before his eyes, and the fence, trees, bam, and stables rose and fell like objects floating on a turbulent cloud. “Good night,” he heard the doctor saying as from a distance. “Goodnight”—it seemed an echo from within him, rather than a product of his lips. The blur lifted; he steadied himself, and stood watching the doctor as he unhitched his horse and got into the buggy.

CHAPTER XIII

ON this same night certain things were happening at Ralph Rundel's cottage. The hour was late. Paul, who was suddenly roused from the profound slumber of a tired toiler, was sure of this, though he had no means of ascertaining the exact time.

“Don't you dare hit 'er, Rafe Rundel, don't you—don't you, I say!” was the cry which at first seemed to the boy to be a part of a confused dream, and which resolved itself into distinct utterance as his eyes and ears gradually opened.

“I wasn't tryin' to hit 'er, Mandy, an' you know it.” It was Ralph Rundel's despondent and yet accusing voice which broke the pale stillness of the night. “I just want 'er to tell me the plain, unvarnished truth, an' she's got to! She cayn't be a wife o' mine an' carry on like that, an' do it underhand. I want to know if they met by agreement. I was on the hill an' saw Jeff waitin' at the creek ford. He had no business thar, an' stood behind the bushes, an' kept peepin' at our house till she come out an' went down to 'im. Then they walked to the spring an' set for a good hour, Jeff bent toward 'er, an' she was a-listenin' close, an' a-lookin' toward the house every minute like she was afeard somebody would come.”

It was Amanda Wilks who now spoke as the startled boy put his feet on the floor and sat on the bed, grimly alert.

“Looks like Rafe is axin' a reasonable enough question, Addie,” she was heard to say. “At least it seems so to me, an' I know I am tryin' to be fair to both sides, so I am.”

“It is fair,” Ralph passionately supplemented, “an' if she is honest an' wants to do right she will talk straight an' be as open as day. As my wife the law gives me the right to—”

“Law? What's law amount to when a woman's plumb miserable?” Mrs. Rundel said, in a low, rebellious tone, and Paul heard her bare feet thump on the floor as she flounced about the room. “I hate you. I've hated you all along. I can't remember when I didn't hate you. No livin' woman with any refined feelin's could help it. I want liberty, that's all. I won't have you prowlin' about in the woods and watchin' me like a hawk every time a neighbor speaks decent to me. Lemme tell you some'n; you'd better never let Jeff Warren know you make charges ag'in' me like you are a-doin'. He'd thrash you 'in an inch o' your life, if you are married to me. I'll not tell you why I happened to go down to the spring. That's my business.”

Paul heard his father utter a low, despairing groan as he left the room and stalked through the corridor and out at the front door. Going to the window, the boy looked out just as Ralph turned the corner and paused in the moonlight, his ghastly profile as clear-cut as if it had been carved in stone. Paul saw him raise his stiff arms to the sky, and heard him muttering unintelligible words. The window-sash was up, the sill low to the ground, and dressed only in his night-shirt, the boy passed through the opening and stood on the dewy grass.

There he paused a moment, for he heard his aunt speaking to her sister admonishingly: “Rafe's jest got a man's natural pride an' jealousy. You know folks in a out-o'-the-way settlement like this will talk, an'—”

“Well, let 'em talk! Let 'em talk! Let 'em talk!” the wife retorted, fiercely. “I don't care what they say. I won't be a bound slave to Rafe Rundel if I did marry 'im. I'm entitled to my natural likes and dislikes the same now as I ever was. No woman alive could care for a man hawkin' an' spittin' an' coughin' about the house, with water in his eyes—sneezin' an' snifflin' an' groanin', as peevish as a spoilt child, an' wantin' to know every single minute where I am and what I am doin'. I'm finished with 'im, I tell you—I'm plumb finished with 'im, an' he knows it. Yes, he knows it, an' that's why he was in sech a tantrum just now, pullin' my bedclothes off, shakin' his fist like a crazy fool, an' stormin' around in the dead o' night.”

The pacific voice of Amanda Wilks here broke in; but Paul did not wait to hear what she was saying, for his father, with bowed and shaking form, was tottering away in the moonlight toward the cow-lot. Ralph reached the rail fence, and with an audible moan he bent his head upon it. Paul's feet fell noiselessly on the dewy grass as he crept toward him. Reaching him he touched him on the shoulder.

“Father,” Paul said, softly, “what's the matter? Are you sick?”

Slowly Ralph Rundel raised his head and stared at his son, but he said nothing. His tattered nightshirt was carelessly stuffed under the waistband of his gaping trousers, which were supported by a single suspender over his shoulder. The other suspender hung in a loop over his hip. His grizzled head was bare, as were his attenuated feet. He continued to stare, as if he had no memory of the speaker's face, his lip hanging loose, quivering, and dripping with saliva. The damp, greenish pallor of death itself was on him, and it gleamed like phosphorus in the rays of the moon. A tremulous groan passed out from his low chest, and his head sank to the fence again.

“Father, father, don't you know me? Paul! Don't you know me?” The boy touched the gray head; he shook it persuasively, and it rocked like a mechanical tiling perfectly poised. The man's knees bent, quivered, and then straightened up again.

“Father, father, it's me—Paul!—your son! What's the matter?”

Ralph turned his face slowly to one side.

“Oh, it's you!—my boy! my boy! I thought—” He looked about the cow-lot vacantly, and then fixed his all but glazed eyes on his son's face, and said: “You go back to bed, my boy; you can't do me no good—nobody on earth can. I'm done for. I feel it all over me like the sweat o' death.”

“Father, tell me”—Paul stood erect, his head thrown back, and his young voice rang sharply on the still air—“do you believe that dirty whelp—” There was an insane glare in Rundel's watery eyes, and his head rocked back and forth again.

“He's after your ma, Paul.” Ralph emitted another groan. “He's took with 'er purty face, an' has set in to make a plumb fool of 'er, and make 'er hate me. He's the kind o' devil that won't pick and choose for hisself, like an honest man, out in the open among free gals an' women, but thinks that nothin' ain't as good as another man's holdin's. He thinks he is sorry fer 'er because she's tied to a sick man; but it hain't that—it's the devil in 'im!”

The boy laid his arm on his father's shoulders; his lips moved, but no sound issued; his face was rigid and white.

“I ain't talkin' without grounds.” Ralph's faint voice trailed away on its wave of agony. “Friends have come to me an' reported the doin's of the two at singin'. He fetches her a bunch of flowers every day, an' they set an' sing out o' the same book with the'r heads plumped together. He walks mighty nigh all the way home with her through the woods, an' sneaks off as soon as they git in sight o' the house. He makes all manner o' fun o' me—tellin' folks, so I've been told, that I can't last long, an' that she never knowed what rale healthy love was nohow.”

Paul's hand was now on his father's head, and he was gently stroking the long, thick hair, though his eyes were blazing, his breast heaving, as from an inner tempest.

Ralph turned and looked toward the house. The light was out now, and there was no sound.

“I reckon she's gone back to sleep,” Ralph wailed, bitterly. “What does she care how I feel? She could have no idea, you couldn't neither, Paul, fur you are too young. But maybe some day you will know the awful, awful sting o' havin' the world look on in scorn, while a big strappin' brute of a daredevil an' the mother o' yore child—oh, my God! I can't stand it—I jest can't! I'd die a million deaths rather than—it's in the Rundel blood, I reckon, planted thar deep by generations an' generations o' proud folks. I'm goin' to kill 'im, Paul. I don't know when or how, exactly, but it's got to be done, if God will only give me the strength. It won't be no sin; it couldn't be; it would be just wipin' out one o' the slimy vipers o' life.”

“If you don't, I will, father. I swear it here an' now,” the boy solemnly vowed, removing his hand from the cold brow and looking off in the mystical light which lay over the fields.

“Huh, we won't both have to do it!” Ralph spoke as if half dreaming, certainly not realizing his son's frame of mind. “It never would be any satisfaction to have it said that it took two of us to fix 'im, even if he is rated high on his fightin' record. No, that's my job; you keep clean out of it!”

“Come to my bed, father.” Paul caught his arm and drew him gently from the fence. “You are shakin' from head to foot; your teeth are chatterin', an' you are cold through an' through.”

Ralph allowed himself to be led along; now and then he would stumble over a tuft of grass, as if he had lost the power of lifting his feet. Once he paused, threw his arms about his son's shoulder, and said, almost in fright, as he bore down heavily:

“I feel odd, powerful odd. I feel cold clean through to my insides, like my entrails was turnin' to rock. I can hardly git my breath. I don't seem to—to send it clean down. It stops in my chest like, an' I am all of a quiver, an' weak, an' dizzy-like. I can't see a yard ahead of me.”

“You'll feel better when you are in bed,” Paul said, soothingly, and he led his father on to the quiet, house and into his room. He undressed him, wiped the dew from his numb, bloodless feet on a towel, and made him lie down.

“I feel drowsy,” Ralph sighed. “Everything is in a sort of dreamy jumble. I hardly remember what me'n you was—was talkin' about. I'm weak. I've been so bothered that I hain't eat much in several days.”

Presently Paul saw that he was asleep, and lay down beside the still form. After a while he, too, fell into slumber, and the remainder of the night crept along.

The first hint of dawn was announced by the crowing of cocks, the far and near barking of dogs, the grunting of pigs, the chirping of early birds, as they flew about in the dewy branches of the trees. Paul waked and went to his window and looked out. The gray light of a new day lay like an aura on the brow of the mountain. The recollection of what had taken place in the night flashed upon him with startling freshness. He recalled Jeff Warren's visage, his mother in her dainty dress, ribbons and flowers, and his blood began to throb and boil. In a storm of hot pity he glanced toward his father, who in the dark corner lay as still as the cracked plastering, against which his grim profile was cast. Suddenly Paul had a great fear; he held his breath to listen, and strained his eyes to pierce the shadows. Was Ralph Rundel breathing? Did ever living man lie so still, so silent? Paul went to the bed, drew down the sheet, and bent over the face. Eyes and mouth open—Ralph was dead. Paul shook him gently and called to him, but there was no response. The body was still slightly warm, but fast growing stiff.

Quickly dressing, Paul went across the corridor and knocked on the door of his aunt's room.

“What is it now? Oh, what do you want now?” Amanda called out, in drowsy impatience. “You've kept me awake nearly all night with your fussin', an' jest as I am gittin' my fust bit o' rest—”

“Aunt Manda, you'd better come—” Paul's voice faltered and broke. “You'd better come see if you think—”

“What is it? Oh, what is it now?” He heard her feet strike the floor and the loose planks creak as she groped her way to the door, which she unlocked and drew open. “It ain't nigh day.” She cast inquiring eyes toward the yard. “What's got into you wantin' breakfast earlier an' earlier every mornin' you live?”

Paul swallowed a lump in his throat, mutely jerked his head toward his room. “I think—I think father's dead,” he said, simply.

“Dead? Dead?” the woman gasped, incredulously. She stared blankly at her nephew, and then, holding her unbuttoned nightgown at the neck, she strode across the corridor into Paul's room. He followed to the threshold, and dumbly watched her as she made a quick examination of the body. She drew herself up, uttered a little scream, and came to him wringing her hands.

“Oh, God will punish us!” she said. “The Almighty will throw a blight on this house! He's gone, an' his last words was a curse on your ma, an' on me for spoilin' 'er. O God—God, have mercy! An' he went with revenge in his heart an' hate in his soul. Oh, Rafe's gone—Rafe's gone!”

Amanda stood leaning against the wall moaning and ejaculating bits of prayers. The door of Mrs. Rundel's room opened, and with her hair rolled up in bits of paper she peered out.

“What is it?” she inquired, peevishly. “What's the matter? Gone? Did you say he was gone? What if he has gone? He's been threatening to leave all summer. He'll be back. You can count on that. He knows a good thing when he sees it, and he'll lie around here till he dies of old age or dries up an' is blown away.”

“No, he won't be back!” Paul strode to her and stood coldly staring at her. “He's dead. He died of a broken heart, an' you done it—you an' Jeff Warren between you.”

“Dead—dead, you say?” And, as if to make sure, Mrs. Rundel stalked stiffly across the corridor to Ralph's body and bent over it. They saw her raise one of the limp hands and pass her own over the pallid brow. Then, without a word, she drew herself erect and came back to her son and sister. Her face was white and rigid; the coming wrinkles in her cheeks and about her mouth seemed deeper than ever before. She faced Paul, a blended expression of fear and dogged defiance in her eyes.

“Don't you ever dare to—to talk to me like you did just now,” she said, fiercely. “I won't stand it. You are too young a boy to dictate to me.”

“I may be that,” he snarled, “but I'll dictate to somebody else if I'm hung for it. You hear me—if I'm hung for it!”

She shrank under this bitter onslaught. She seemed to waver a moment, then she went into her room, lighted her candle, and began to dress.

Her sister followed and stood beside her. “Don't take on,” Amanda said. “Don't go an' fancy it is yore fault. Paul is out o' his head with grief an' don't know what he's sayin'. Rafe was a sick, dyin' man, anyway; his mind was unhinged; that was plain by the way he suspicioned you. Now, I'll git breakfast an' attend to everything; don't set in to cryin' an' make yourself sick; what is done is done, an' can't be helped.”

CHAPTER XIV

LIKE a human machine obeying the laws of habit, Paul went about his usual morning duties, feeding and currying the horses, taking slop to the pigs, driving up the cow from the pasture, and chopping wood for the fire. Amanda came to him at the woodpile, rolling the flakes of dough from her fingers. The first direct rays of the sun were breaking over the brow of the hill.

“I'll have the coffee an' biscuits done right off,” she said, in a motherly tone, which seemed to be borrowed from some past memory or the long-worn habit of protecting her sister. “I'll call you purty soon. Paul, you'll have to make the best of it. I've been expectin' it for a long time. He's been gettin' peevish an' losin' flesh an' strength. Then, like most folks in that fix, he let his fancy run rife, an' that hurried him on. It's awful—awful havin' a dead person right here in the house; but it comes to high an' low alike. I know you are cut to the quick, an' inclined to fix the blame on somebody; but that will wear off an' you 'll git reconciled. You'll miss 'im, I know—an' that sharp, for he leaned on you as if you an' 'im had swapped places.”

Paul said nothing. He filled his arms with the wood and started into the kitchen. Amanda saw his dull, bloodshot eyes above the heap as he turned.

She followed, and as he noiselessly lowered the wood to the stone hearth, she stood over him.

“There is a thing that must be attended to,” she said. “I sort o' hate to be left with just me an' Addie alone with him in thar like that; but you'll have' to go to town an' order a coffin. Webb an' Wiggins keeps 'em at the furniture-store, an' in hot weather like this they will want the order early. You just pick out the sort you think we kin afford—they're got all grades—an' they will trim it. If I was you I'd make them send it. It would look more decent than for you to haul it out on the wagon. We'll keep your poor pa till to-morrow; it won't look right to be in too great a hurry; thar is sech a sight o' talk these days about bury in' folks alive, here among the ignorant whites an' blacks.” When he had finished his morning's work Paul came in and sat down at the table to the coffee and eggs and hot cakes his aunt had prepared, but he ate without his usual relish. He was just finishing when Abe Langston, a neighboring farmer, a tall, thin man about forty years of age, with long, brown beard, and without a coat, collar, or necktie, appeared, hat in hand, at the door.

“We've just heard it over our way,” he said to Amanda. “I told my wife I'd come over before I set in to cuttin' hay in the bottom. Powerful sudden an' unexpected, wasn't it?”

“Yes, he seemed to pass away in his sleep like.” Amanda was wiping her red eyes on her apron. “It was a weak heart, no doubt, an' it is a comfort to feel that he never suffered.”

“I'll go take a look at 'im,” Langston said, laying his hat on the door-sill. “I sent my oldest gal over after John Tobines an' Andy Warner, an' when they git here we three will lay 'im out. John's handy with a razor—he used to work in a barber's shop—an' he'll shave the pore fellow an' trim his hair. Some o' the young men an' women will want to set up here to-night, an' give you an' Addie a chance to snatch a little sleep.”

“That will be obligin' of 'em,” Amanda answered, still wiping her eyes. “You kin tell 'em I'll fix a nice snack an' some coffee to sorter freshen 'em up. How many do you reckon will come?”

“Oh, I'd fix for four couples, anyway. Thar is a certain crowd that always count on sech occasions—you know who they are as well as I do, I reckon?”

“Yes, Polly Long an' her bunch.” Amanda followed the man across the corridor into the room where the corpse lay, and as Paul was leaving he heard her continuing, plaintively: “Death is just the awfulest, awfulest thing we come across in this life, Brother Langston. We know so little—so powerful little about it. One minute we see the sparkle of the soul in the eye, hear a voice full of life; you catch a smile, or a knowin' look, an' maybe the next minute just a empty shell lies before you. Rafe was a good, patient man, an' he suffered a lot, fust an' last.”

“Did he make his peace?” Langston inquired. “That is the fust thought I have when a body dies. Do you think he was all right? He didn't go to meetin' often, an' I never happened to hear 'im say what his hopes of reward was.”

“I don't know—I really don't know,” Amanda returned, and Paul, lingering in the kitchen doorway, heard her voice falter. “Brother Langston, sometimes I was bothered purty sharp on that score. Him and Paul both used to repeat some o' Jim Hoag's terrible sayin's like they thought they was smart an' funny, an' neither one of 'em ever would read the Bible, or seek spiritual advice, an' sech a thing as family prayer, or a blessin' asked at the table was never heard in this house.”

“I know.” The masculine voice sounded louder now, as if its owner had come back into the corridor. “That's why I was axin'. Folks cayn't take up notions like Hoag has in a God-fearin' community like our'n an' flaunt 'em about without causin' comment. My own opinion is that Jim Hoag is a devil in the garb of a man. He's larnt Paul all the awful things the boy believes, an' a man that will lead the young off like that ought to be tarred an' feathered an' rid out o' the community on a sharp rail. If he didn't have so much money he'd 'a' been called down long ago.”

Paul was in the stable-yard when Amanda came out to him.

“I forgot to tell you,” she said. “Your pa won't have to have new clothes; his Sunday suit will do for weather like this when I've ironed out the wrinkles; but you ought to buy 'im some black slippers, an' a pair o' white store socks an' a plain black necktie—they keep all sech at the furniture-store. You just tell 'em what's lackin' an' they will put 'em in.”

She glanced at her nephew's face in surprise, for it was flushed, and his eyes were flashing angrily.

“What's the matter?” she asked, leaning on the fence and eying him in growing wonder.

“I heard you an' Langston talkin' in thar, standin' right over 'im,” Paul blurted out, “an' him cold an' dead an' unable to take up for hisse'f. Make his peace nothin'! He died before he could settle the things he had to settle. If thar was sech a fool thing as a heaven, how could he enjoy it with Jeff Warren here gloatin' over him? But that will be settled. You hear me—that will be settled, an' before many days, too.”

“I know you are not goin' to act the fool, if you are just a hot-headed boy,” Amanda said. “You are all wrought up now ag'in' your ma an' everybody; but that will wear off. I know when my own father died I—”

But the boy refused to hear. He turned into a stall and began to put a bridle on a horse, which he led out into the yard with only a blanket on its back. There was uncurbed fury in the very spring he made from the ground to his seat. His face was fire-red, and he thrust his heels against the horse's flanks with such force that the animal gave a loud grunt as he lurched toward the open gate.

“Wait, Paul, wait!” Amanda cried after him. “You've forgot some'n. I wouldn't stop you, but you can't do without it.”

He drew rein and glared down on her.

“You haven't got the measure of—of the body. I never thought of it just now when Brother Langston was here, an' he's gone to hurry up Tobines an' Warner. I'd go an' do it myself, but it ain't exactly a woman's place. I'll hold yo' hoss.”

He stared at her for a moment, the color dying down in his face. Then, with obvious reluctance, he slid off the horse and went into the room where the corpse lay covered with a sheet. He was looking about for a piece of string with which to take the required measurement, when he recalled that he and his father were exactly the same height, and, with a sense of relief, he was turning from the room when an uncontrollable impulse came over him to look upon the face beneath the covering. He hesitated for a moment, then, going to the bed, he drew the sheet down and gazed at the white, set countenance. A storm of pity and grief broke over him. He had a mother's yearning to kiss the cold, pale brow, to fondle the wasted form, to speak to the closed eyes, and compel the rigid lips to utter some word of recognition. Glancing furtively toward the door, then toward the window, and with his face close to the dead one, he said:

“Don't you bother about Jeff Warren, father. I'll attend to him. I'll do it—I'll do it. He sha'n't gloat over you, an' you like this. He sha'n't—he sha'n't!”

His voice clogged up, and he tenderly drew the sheet back over the still, white face. Across the corridor he heard his mother moving about in her room; but the door was closed, and he could not see her. Going out, he took the bridle from Amanda's hands, threw it back on the neck of his horse, clutched a collar-worn tuft of the animal's mane, and sprang astride of its back.

“I won't have to bother about a new dress for yore ma,” Amanda remarked, her slow eyes studying the boy's grief-pinched face. “We ain't got time to get one ready, an' she kin put on my black alpaca an' borrow Mrs. Penham's veil that she's about through with. I know she didn't wear it two Sundays ago, an' I reckon her mournin's over. It's in purty good condition.”

Paul rode toward the village. In the first cotton-field on the left-hand side of the way the two Harris brothers were cutting out weeds with hoes that tinkled on the buried stones and flashed in the slanting rays of the sun. They both paused, looked at him steadily and half defiantly, and then, as if reminded of the gruesome thing which had come upon him in the night, they looked down and resumed their work.

Further on was the farm-house belonging to Jeff Warren, and at the well in the yard Paul descried Warren turning the windlass to water a mule which stood with its head over a big tub. Paul saw the man looking at him, but he glanced away. He swung his heels against the flanks of his horse and rode on through a mist which hung before his sight.

Paul went straight to the furniture-store and gave his order, and was leaving when Mrs. Tye came hastily across the street from her husband's shop. There was a kindly light in her eyes, and her voice shook with timid emotion.

“I saw you ride past jest now,” she began. “We heard the news a few minutes ago, an' me an' Si was awfully sorry. He told me to run across an' beg you to stop at the shop a minute. He wants to see you. I don't know when I've seed 'im so upset. Thar, I see 'im motionin' to us now. Let's go over.”

Paul mechanically complied, and as they turned she laid her hand gently on his arm.

“Thar is nothin' a body kin say that will do a bit o' good at sech a sad time,” she gulped. “I've got so I jest hold my tongue when sech a blow falls. But I wish the Lord would show me some way to comfort you. It must be awful, for I know how you doted on yore pore pa, an' how he worshiped you. Maybe it will comfort you if I tell you what he said to me t'other day. I reckon he was pulled down in sperits by ill health or some'n, for he told me that if it hadn't been for you he'd 'a' killed hisse'f long ago. Of course that was a wicked thought, but I reckon he hardly knowed what he was sayin'. He jest couldn't git through talkin' about you, an' the way you loved 'im an' looked after 'im at all times. That will be a comfort, Paul—after a while it will all settle down an' seem right—his death, I mean; then the recollection that you was so good to him will be a sweet memory that will sustain an' strengthen you all through life.”

They had reached the open door of the shop, and Silas rose from his bench, shaking the shavings of leather and broken wooden pegs from his apron. In his left hand he held the coarse shoe he was repairing and the right he gave to Paul.

“I hain't done nothin' but set here an' pray since I heard it,” he began, sympathetically, his rough fingers clinging to Paul's. “In a case like this God is the only resort. I sometimes think that one of the intentions of death is to force folks to look to the Almighty an' cry out for help. That seems to me to be proof enough to convince the stoutest unbelievers of a higher power, for when a blow like this falls we jest simply beg for mercy, an' we know down inside of us that no human aid can be had, an' that help naturally ought to come from some'r's.”

Paul made no response. Mrs. Tye had placed a chair for him near her husband's bench, and the boy sank into it, and sat staring dumbly at the floor.

“I've got some hot coffee on the stove,” Mrs. Tye said, gently. “You'd feel better, Paul, maybe, if you'd take a cup along with some o' my fresh biscuits and butter.”

He shook his head, mumbled his thanks, and forgot what she had said. He was contrasting Jeff Warren as he stood at the well in the full vigor of health with a still, wasted form under a sheet in a silent, deserted room. Mrs. Tye left the shop, and her husband continued his effort at consolation.

“I know exactly how you feel, Paul, for I've been through it. I've served my Heavenly Master as well as I know how ever since His redeemin' light broke over me away back when I was young; but when He took my only child He took all that seemed worth while in my life. Folks will tell you that time will heal the wound; but I never waste words over that, for I know, from experience, that when a body is bowed down like you are, that it ain't the future you need as a salve, but somethin' right now. Thar is one thing that will help, an' I wish I actually knowed you had it. Paul, empty-minded men like Jim Hoag may sneer and poke fun, but jest as shore as that light out thar in the street comes from the sun thar is a spiritual flood from God hisse'f that pores into hearts that are not wilfully closed ag'in' it. I don't want to brag, but I don't know how I can make it plain without tellin' my own experience. My boy, I'm a pore man; I make my livin' at the humblest work that man ever engaged in, an' yet from momin' till night I'm happy—I'm plumb happy. As God is my judge, I wouldn't swap places with any millionaire that ever walked the earth, for I know his money an' gaudy holdin's would stand betwixt me an' the glory I've got. If I had an idle hour to spare, do you know whar I'd be? I'd be on the side o' that mountain, starin' out over the blue hills, a-shoutin' an' a-singin' praises to God. Some folks say I'm crazy on religion—let 'em—let 'em! History is chock full of accounts of great men, learned in all the wisdom of earth—princes, rulers, poets, who, like St. Paul an' our Lord, declared that all things which was not of the sperit was vanity, dross, an' the very dregs an' scum of existence. So you see, as I look at it—an' as maybe you don't just yet—yore pa ain't like you think he is. You see 'im lyin' thar like that, an' you cayn't look beyond the garment of flesh he has shucked off, but I can. He's beat you 'n me both, Paul; his eyes are opened to a blaze o' glory that would dazzle and blind our earthly sight. Death is jest a ugly gate that we pass through from a cloudy, dark, stuffy place out into the vast open air of Eternity. O Paul, Paul, I want you to try to get hold of this thing, for you need it. This is a sharp crisis in yore life; you've let some things harden you, an' if you don't watch out this great stunnin' blow may drag you even deeper into the mire. I feel sech a big interest in you that I jest can't hold in. I know I'm talkin' powerful plain, an' uninvited, too, but I can't help it. Knowin' that you've been about Jim Hoag a good deal, an' rememberin' little remarks you've dropped now an' then, I'm afraid you hain't got as much faith in the goodness of God as—”

“Goodness of God! Huh—poof!” Paul snorted, his stare on the ground.

“Paul, Paul, don't, don't say that!” Tye pleaded, his kindly eyes filling. “I can't bear to hear it from a young boy like you. Youth is the time most folks believe in all that's good; doubts sometimes come on later in life. It sounds awful to hear you say sech rebellious things when you stand so much in need of, the only help in all the universe.”

“I don't believe there is any God,” Paul muttered, fiercely, “and if I did I'd not believe he was a good one, when I know what's took place an' what's goin' on. The wild beasts in the woods come from the same source as me, an' they fight for what they get; bugs and worms and flying things and crawling things live on one another. That's the only way for us to do if we expect to live. The only difference in men and beasts is that men can remember wrongs longer and know how to plan revenge, an' git it.”

“Oh, my Lord!” The shoemaker lowered his head and seemed to be praying. Presently he looked up, grasped his beard with his blackened fingers, and pulled his lips apart. “I see, you are like most folks when they are under a great, fresh grief. I've knowed some o' the best Christians to turn square ag'in' the'r Maker at sech times—especially women who had lost the'r young in some horrible way—but even they'd come around finally to admit that God knowed best. Take my own case. Would I want my boy back now? No, no, Paul; as great as the pride an' joy would be I know he's in better hands than mine. It's hard on you now; but, sad as it is, this may result in good—good that you can't begin to see in advance. If we had the all-seein' eye we might pass judgment; but we are blind—blind as moles. You can't see that yore pore pa is better off, but he is—he is. I know he is—God knows he is.”

CHAPTER XV

AT the end of the main street, as he rode homeward, Paul saw Ethel Mayfield coming toward him, her head down as if in deep thought. His first impulse was to turn aside, to avoid meeting her, but he saw that such a thing would be unpardonable. In spite of the weight that was on him, he felt the warm blood of embarrassment rushing to his face as the distance shortened between them.

There was a sweet, startled look of concern in her childish eyes as she raised them to him.

“Stop a minute,” she said; and as he awkwardly drew rein she continued: “I've just heard about your father. Two men were talking over there by a fence on the side of the road and I listened. Oh, it is awful, awful! I am so sorry for you, for they say you loved him so much, an' were always so good to him.”

A strange sense of confused helplessness surged over Paul. As she looked up at him so frankly he feared that she would read in his face the fact that she had been in his mind almost constantly since their meeting that day in the meadow. This disturbed him, and also the realization that common politeness demanded some sort of reply in accord with the refinement of her easy expression of sympathy. But that was beyond him. He felt his blood beating into his eyes. She appeared like a spirit thing poised upon an evanescent cloud; not for him save in fancy, not for any boy outside of dreams. In sheer desperation, and under the intuition that he ought not to sit on his horse while she stood, he dismounted.

“Thank you, thank you.” He seemed to hear the words as if they were spoken by other lips than his own, and again he had the exquisite sense of nearness to her, which had so enthralled him before. A wondrous, delectable force seemed to radiate from her and play upon his whole enraptured being.

“I have never seen any one die,” she went on, “and they say you were there alone with him. Oh, how very sad, and you—you are not much older than I am. Sad things are coming to you very early. I wish I could say something, or do something, Paul, but I don't really know how. I'm just a girl. My mother seems to know what to say at such times, but I don't. Grief like this simply overpowers me. I feel as if—as if I must cry, I'm so sorry for you.”

He saw her pretty lips quivering, her glorious eyes filling, and he dug the toe of his worn shoe into the sand of the road. He was becoming conscious of the tattered appearance of his working-clothes, his saddleless horse, his rough, perspiring hands and cuffless wrists. How odd that she, who was so daintily dressed, so wholly detached from his sordid life, could stand talking to him so kindly, so intimately!

“You are very good—very!” he stammered. “Better than anybody else. If they were all like you it wouldn't seem so—so bad.”

“It may seem forward of me and bold,” Ethel returned, “for really we have only been together once before, and yet (I don't know how you feel)—but I feel, somehow, Paul, as if we were very old friends. I admire you because you are brave and strong. You are not like—like the boys in Atlanta. You are different (uncle says you are not afraid of anything on earth). You know a girl could not keep from wanting that sort of a friend. I don't mean that I'd want to see you hurt ever—ever; but it is nice for a girl to feel that she has a friend who would take any risk for her. My mother says I get a lot of notions that are not good for me out of novels. Well, I don't know how that is, but I like you, and I am very, very sad about your father. If I had not met you here I would have written you a note. Can you tell me when—when he is to be buried?”

He told her that the funeral would be at the village church the next day, and therewith his voice broke, and for the first time his heart heaved and his eyes filled.

“I wanted to know because I am going to send some flowers,” she said; and then, observing the signs of his emotion and his averted face, she suddenly and impulsively caught his hand and pressed it between both of her own. “Don't, don't cry!” she pleaded. “I couldn't stand to see it!” Her own lashes were wet and her sweet mouth was drawn tight. “Oh, I wish there was something I could do or say, but I can't think of a thing. Yes, there is one thing, and it must help, because the Bible and the wisest men say it will at such times. I have been praying for you, and I am going to keep on doing it. Paul, from what you said the other day, I suppose you—have never been converted?”

He shook his head, swallowed, but kept his face turned away, conscious that it was distorted by contending emotions.

“I have been,” she said, still pressing his hand, “and, O Paul, it was glorious! It happened at a camp-meeting where mother took me and my cousin, Jennie Buford, in the country below Atlanta, last summer. It was all so wonderful—the singing, shouting, and praying. I was so happy that I felt like flying. Since then I have felt so good and secure and contented. The Bible is full of meaning to me now. I love to read it when I am alone in my room. It is beautiful when you begin to understand it, and know that it is actually the Word of our Creator. I am sure I shall lead a Christian life, as my mother is doing. It has made Jennie happy, too. We are like two twins, you know. We have been together nearly every day since we were babies. There is only a fence between our houses in Atlanta, and she sleeps with me or I with her every night. She was sick last winter, and they thought she was going to die. She thought so, too; she told me so, but would not tell her mother because she would be so broken-hearted. I prayed for Jennie all that night—all night. I hardly stopped a minute.”

“And she didn't die?” Paul looked at her with a glance of mild incredulity in his eyes.

“No; the doctor said she was better and she got well. It would have killed me if she had been taken, I love her so much. We are so much alike that I often read her thoughts and she reads mine. Many and many a time we have told each other exactly what we were thinking about.”

“Thought transference,” he said. “I've read about that. It may be true.”

Ethel now released his hand and flushed slightly. “Excuse me,” she faltered, her lashes touching her cheeks. “I hardly knew what I was doing.”

It was his turn to color now, and they stood awkwardly facing each other. She, however, recovered herself quickly.

“I am going to pray for you more and more now,” she went on, soothingly. “It will surely help you. I know that God answers prayers when they are made in the right spirit. He must help you bear this sorrow, and He will—He will.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Paul muttered, his wavering eyes on the road leading between zigzag rail fences on to his home. “I must be going now. I've got a good many things to attend to.”

“Of course, I know—I know,” Ethel responded, gravely.

A wagon was approaching from the direction of the village. It was drawn by two sturdy mules, which thrust their hoofs into the dust of the road so deeply that a constant cloud of the fine particles hovered over the vehicle. A negro man wearing a tattered straw hat, soiled shirt and trousers, and without shoes, was driving. Ethel caught Paul's hand impulsively, and drew him and his horse to the side of the road.

“Wait till they pass,” she said. “Oh, what nasty dust!”

She saw him staring at the wagon, a rigid look on his face. “It's the coffin,” he explained. “It is going out home.”

The wagon rumbled on. There was an unpainted wooden box behind the negro's seat, and on it rested a plain walnut coffin, thickly coated with dust. The sun had warmed the new varnish, and there was an odor of it in the air.

“Oh, it is so sad!” Paul caught the words from the averted lips of his companion. “I wish I could do something, or say something, but I can't.”

Again his despair fell upon him. As he mounted his horse it seemed to him that he was a moving thing that was dead in all its parts. He couldn't remember that he had ever tipped his hat to any one in his life, and yet he did so now gracefully enough. He felt that he ought to reply to the words she had so feelingly uttered, but the muscles of his throat had tightened. A great sob was welling up within him and threatening to burst. He started his horse, and with his back to her, his head bent toward the animal's neck, he slowly rode away.

“Poor boy!” Ethel said, as the mules, the wagon, the coffin, and Paul floated and vanished in the mist before her eyes. She turned and moved on toward the village, her head lowered, softly crying and earnestly praying.

CHAPTER XVI

ACCORDING to rural custom the young men and young women of the neighborhood came that evening to keep watch over Ralph Rundel's body. In an open coffin resting on two chairs, it occupied the center of the room in which he died.

Amanda had been busy all day cooking dainties—pies, cakes, custards, and making cider from apples gathered in the orchard. She had swept and dusted the house throughout, put the candles into their places, cleaned and filled the lamps, and altered her black dress to fit the slender form of her sister, who had been in her room all day, refusing to show herself to the constant stream of curious, inquiring visitors—men, women, and children who sat about the front and rear doors, leaned on the fences of the yard and cow-lot, and even invaded the kitchen.

As for Paul, no one seemed to notice him, and of sympathy for him little was expressed. Mute and dejected he moved about, attending to his father's former duties as well as his own.

The night fell. The stars came out. There was a low hum of good cheer and merriment from the assembled company inside. To escape it, Paul slipped behind the house and threw himself down on the grass sward beneath the apple-trees. His awful sorrow, weird and gruesome, for which there was no outlet, gave him actual physical pain.

There was singing within the house. The young persons were practising hymns for the funeral service the next day. Mistakes were made, and there was merry, spontaneous laughter, which grated on the boy's ears. He buried his face in the cool, fragrant grass, and thus subdued the rising sob of which he was ashamed. In his mind's eye he saw the exquisite face of Ethel Mayfield, but even it held scant comfort, for how could such as she belong to such deplorable surroundings? The tones of her gentle voice, as she promised to pray for him, seemed a part of some vague dream from which sordid fact had roused him.

“Prayers?” he sneered. “What puny mortal could pray this away, or undo the damnable thing even by the weight of a hair? There isn't any God to pray to—there isn't anything but pain, torment, and death.” There was a tentative step on the grass. Amanda was groping her way around the well. He saw her peering here and there in the shadows under the trees. “Oh!” she exclaimed, on seeing him, as he suddenly sat up and turned his face toward her. “You gave me a scare. At sech a time a body is apt to think they see ghosts, whether they do or not. I've been lookin' high an' low for you, an' axin' the company whar you was at. You hain't had no supper, have you?”

He answered briefly in the negative.

“Well, come on in the kitchen,” she pursued. “I've kept some 'taters and pork-chops hot, an' thar's plenty o' cold buttermilk.”

“I don't want anything,” he said, impatiently, and even roughly. “I couldn't swallow a bite to save my life—not to save my life, I couldn't!”

Her hands on her hips, Amanda stared down at him. “This ain't a-goin' to do, Paul,” she gently protested. “This ain't no time for you to pout an' be cranky. You are our only man now. Yore ma's shet up in her room with a mad cryin' spell every half-hour, an' I have to lay down my work an' run, pacify, an' pet 'er. She's got all sorts o' finicky notions in 'er head that folks are a-talkin' about her an' a certain party. She heard 'em a-laughin' in thar jest now, an' actually started in to give 'em a piece o' 'er mind. I got to 'er in time—thank the Lord! She's now in bed cryin' like 'er heart is broke.”

“Huh, I see, I see!” Paul sniffed. “An' well she may be afraid o' talk, an' you too, for bringing her up as you have. Folks say she's jest a doll, and she is—she is, and a fool flimsy one at that!”

“I ain't a-goin' to listen to you, boy,” Amanda broke in, firmly. “You are too young an' inexperienced to talk that way about the woman that fetched you into the world an' gave you what life you got. If your ma was petted an' sp'ilt, that was my fault, not her'n, an' bein' sp'ilt only makes sech things as this go harder with 'er. If her an' yore pa wasn't the most lovin' match that could be imagined, that wasn't her fault, nor his'n either. God made 'em both, an' for all I know He may have fetched 'em together, an' in makin' a mess o' that He didn't act no wuss than in lettin' some other folks—folks that I know about—live a lifetime without any sort o' try at the game. Now, jest shet up, an' he'p me tote this sad thing through. I got to go set the table for them folks, an' then I'll slide into bed. Whar do you intend to sleep? That's what I wanted to see you about. That crowd has got yore room. I can lay you a pallet down on the floor in the kitchen. It would be sort o' hard, but—”

“I'm going to stay outside,” he told her. “I'm going down to the haystack. The house is too hot, anyway; I couldn't go to sleep in there with all that ding-dong and racket.”

“Well, I'm goin' in,” answered Amanda, who was really not listening to his observations. “It won't hurt you to sleep out once on such a warm night, anyway, an' they are making' a lot o' noise. They don't get many such chances through the year. It is the fust time I've fixed for young folks in a long time. Thar's one pair in thar”—Amanda tittered—“that will set up housekeepin' inside o' six months. Mark my predictions. I ketched 'em a-huggin' on the front steps as I come out.”

When his aunt left him Paul threw himself back on the grass and gazed up at the sky and the far-off blinking stars. How unreal seemed the dead face and stark form of his father as he had last looked upon it! Could it be actually all that was left of the gentle, kindly and patient parent who had always been so dear? Whence had flown the soft, halting voice, the flash of the eye, the only caressing touch Paul had ever known? That—that thing in there boxed and ready for burial was all there ever was, or ever could be again, of a wonderfully appealing personality, and to-morrow even that would sink out of sight forever and forever.

There was an audible footfall at the fence near the farther side of the cottage. Paul sat up and stared through the semi-darkness. It was a tall, slender figure of a man in a broad-brimmed hat. He was cautiously moving along the fence, as if trying to look into the room where the corpse lay. Suddenly a stream of light from within fell on his face. It was Jeff Warren. Paul sprang to his feet and stood panting, his muscles drawn.

“Don't, don't!” a voice within him seemed to caution him. “Not now—not now! Be ashamed!” At this juncture some one called out in a low, subdued tone:

“Is that you, Jeff?”

“Yes, Andy. Kin I come in thar with you all?”

“I dunno; wait a minute, Jeff.” Andrew Warner emerged from the shadow of the house and advanced to the fence. “I railly don't believe I would, Jeff, if I was you. We've got a-plenty, an' they all intend to spend the night.”

“I see, I see. Well, I didn't know how you was fixed, an' I heard you all a-singin' clean across the bottom. Say, Andy, Mrs. Rundel ain't in thar with you, is she?”

“No, we hain't any of us seed 'er; she's been shet up tight all day.”

There was a noticeable pause. Paul crept closer and stood behind a trunk of an apple-tree, the branches of which, laden with unripe fruit, almost touched the ground. He could still see the two men, and their voices were quite audible.

“I see, I see.” Jeff Warren was speaking now. “Have you heard anybody say—do you happen to know, Andy, how she is—takin' it?”

“Purty hard, purty hard, it looks like, Jeff. We've heard 'er cryin' an' takin' on several times; she seems powerful upset.”

“I see, I see,” Warren repeated, and Paul saw him lean toward his companion. “Say, Andy, I want you to do me a favor, if you will. I want you to git Mrs. Rundel to come out here a minute—jest a minute. You needn't let on to anybody else. The little woman must be awful troubled, an' me an' her are powerful good friends. I reckon if you told 'er I was out here, maybe she—”

Paul saw the other man turn his head and stand, staring irresolutely at the house. “I can't do that, Jeff,” he was heard to say presently. “That may be all right from the way you look at it, but I don't want no hand in such. If I was you, I'd wait—that's all, I'd wait. Out of respect for what folks would say or think, I'd put it off. Seems to me like she'd want that 'erse'f—in fact, I'm shore any sensible woman would.”

“All right, Andy, all right!” Warren answered, awkwardly, as his hand tugged at his mustache. “I was jest sorter bothered, that's all. I'll take yore advice. I know you are a friend an' mean well. I'll go home an' git to bed. As you say, I kin afford to wait. What surprises me is to hear you say she's takin' on. I reckon she's sorter upset by havin' a death in the house. Rafe was at the end o' his string, anyway; you know that as well as I do.”

“If the poor fellow had lived he would have called you to taw,” was the significant and yet not unfriendly reply. “The devil's light was in his eye, Jeff. Rafe Rundel was talkin' a lot an' growin' wuss an' wuss.”

“I knowed all that, too,” Warren was heard to say. “His wife kept me posted. Well, well, so long, Andy! I'll git to bed.”

“Not now, not now!” Paul's inner voice cautioned, as with actual lips, and invisible hands seemed to detain him. “Wait, wait; there is plenty of time!” He leaned against the tree and saw Warren's form disappear in the starlight. The man's confident whistle came back on the hot, still air as he strode along the road, becoming more and more indistinct in the misty distance.

Paul went down to the hay-field, looking here and there for a bed to lie upon. Presently he found a heap of freshly cut, succulent clover, full of the crushed perfume of the white and pink blossoms, and damp and cool with the dew. Upon this lair he sank, his tense young face upturned to the stars. How he loathed the silly woman who had borne him! How he detested the happy-go-lucky man who had caught her fancy! How he yearned for the living presence of the dead! His throat felt tight. Unshed tears seemed to trickle down within him. There was a dull aching about his heart. Again, as in a dream, the gentle face of Ethel Mayfield came before him. Her voice was as sweet and soothing as transcendent music. The lovely child had said she was going to pray for him. Perhaps even now she was doing so; and she had declared that prayers were answered. The belief was silly. It was like an inexperienced little city girl to entertain such thoughts, yet what she had said and the way she had said it were strangely comforting. A fiercely fought sob broke within him. Tears swept down his cheeks and trickled into the clover. The pain within him lessened. He became drowsy. The vision of the child with her beautiful hair and eyes became an airy, floating thing; the heavens were full of sweet musical laughter. Ethel seemed to be taken up into a sunlit cloud, and for a moment was hidden from view. Then he saw her returning. She was not alone. Holding her hand was Ralph Rundel—Ralph Rundel transfigured, spirit-like, and yet himself. He was full of the glow of youth. There were no lines, no shadows in his face. His body was erect; he was smiling at his son in a fathomless, eternal way.

“If they tell you I'm dead, don't you believe a word of it,” he said. “For I ain't—I ain't!”

Paul awoke with a start. The moon was rising; the whole landscape was flooded with the pale light of a reflected day. Subdued laughter and the drone of voices came from the window of the room where the body lay.

CHAPTER XVII

EARLY in the morning following the funeral Hoag sent Cato with a message to Paul. There was some work to be done, and the boy was to come at once and see about it. Mrs. Rundel, in her black dress, was near and heard the negro speaking, but she turned indifferently into her room and closed the door.

“Well, I'd go,” Amanda advised her nephew. “Mopin' around home like this won't do any good. At sech a time a body ought to keep the hands an' feet an' even the brain busy. I'd go stark crazy if I'd allow myself to set an' brood. It seems to me that I see yore pore pa's white face everywhar I turn, an' when I ain't seein' that I seem to hear his voice talkin' like nothin' out o' the way had happened. I even git a whiff o' his tobacco now an' then. Do you know, I think maybe death is made horrible like this to warn each of us of what is ahead. Me'n you, as little as we count on it, have got to be put away exactly like Rafe was, an' we may not have any more notice than he had, neither. Some o' the sanctified folks doubt whar he's gone, but I don't—much. Somehow I can't believe that he's gone to a bad place, because he had sech a hard time of it here for sech a long, long time. His pride was cut to the quick, an' he had a lot more o' that than most folks knowed about. Of course, you can't remember his young sparkin' days like I do. He used to dress as fine as a fiddle an' held his head powerful high; but time, an' poverty, an' trouble, an' one thing or other, kept pullin' it down an' down, till it struck the pillow he died on. Well, well, he's gone, an' we 'll miss 'im. I shall, I know, for I already do, an' they say the worst time ain't always right after the buryin'. Thar's always a stir and excitement over puttin' a person away that keeps you from lookin' the thing square in the face.”

Fires of anger and resentment were smoldering in the boy's breast, but he said nothing, and turned down the road to Hoag's. He found the planter moving about in the bark-strewn tan-yard between the vats, the black contents of which were on a level with the ground. He was giving blunt orders to three or four negroes who were piling up and sorting out a great heap of green hides. The day was dry and hot, and a disagreeable odor of decaying flesh was on the still air. He noticed Paul, and carelessly nodded, but for a moment was too busy to speak to him. He held a note-book in his hand, in which he had found some mistakes of record and calculations. They were his own errors, but he was no less angry for that. Finally he approached Paul, and as he moved was actively scratching, erasing, stabbing the paper with his pencil, and muttering oaths.

“How the hell can I do head-work,” he growled, giving the boy a blazing glance, “an' have to watch these black devils like a hawk all the time? The minute my back is turned they set down an' sulk an' shirk. They need a thousand lashes on their bare backs. That's the only thing they understand. Look how that whelp, Sambo, is skulkin'. I hit 'im with a piece o' plank just now, an' he thinks he's threatening me. Huh! I know 'em from the ground up. Did Cato tell you I wanted to see you?”

“Yes, an' I come right over,” Paul stolidly replied.

Hoag closed his note-book, keeping the pencil between the leaves, and thrust it into his pocket. “I saw you comin' back from the graveyard yesterday, an' I decided I'd try to find regular work for you. I kin always depend on you gittin' a job done, an' that's sayin' a lot. You hain't got a lazy bone in your body, if I do say it, an' it will be the makin' of you in the long run. Now, my mill-race has washed in till the flow is gittin' sluggish an' thin. The bottom of it, for fully a quarter of a mile, has got to be shoveled out an' lowered to an even grade. It will take you a month at least, but it will be regular work. The dam's all right, so we don't have to bother with that. I want you to come over every day after breakfast, an' then go to my house for yore dinner. It will save you the walk home, an' you kin git in more time. How would you like the job at the old wages?”

“I'm willin',” Paul answered, listlessly.

“Well, pick you out a spade in the tool-house right now, an' go to the dam an' begin to work toward the mill. The mill's shut down, an' the race bed's just wet enough to make the shovelin' soft. Some o' the banks are purty steep an' you 'll have to throw purty high, but you are equal to it.”

Paul went at once to the mill-dam. The work was really arduous, but the spot was shaded by thickly foliaged trees, and the shallow water, in which he stood in his bare feet, cooled his blood. Bending under his heavy implement filled with the heavier mud he worked like a machine, the sweat streaming from him, and constantly conscious of that strange, aching vacancy in his heart which nothing could fill.

At noon he put down his spade and went to Hoag's, as he had often done before, for his lunch. No one else was in the dining-room, and Mrs. Tilton brought him his dinner, putting it before him in a gentle, motherly way.

“I told Aunt Dilly to let me wait on you,” she said, a note of sympathy creeping into her voice. “I was sorry I couldn't get out to the funeral yesterday. I've got Jackie to watch now, an' he's just gettin' on his feet, after his spell. His mother ain't a bit well, either; she ain't touched hardly a bite since he was so bad off. I think she ought to go to Atlanta to consult a special doctor, but Jim won't hear to it. He says, when a body gits too sick for home treatment their natural time's come, anyway, an' the money would be throwed away. I wish I could tell you how sorry I am about your pa. I know how much you both thought of each other. La, he used to come here while you was choppin' wood on the mountain, an' set in the kitchen door an' talk an' talk with tears in his old eyes about how sorry he was not to be stronger, so you wouldn't have to work so hard. He said you was the best boy that ever lived. Now, I'm just goin' to shet up,” Mrs. Tilton said, regretfully. “I see you are about to cry.” She went to the window quickly and looked out into the yard. “I see Jackie makin' his mud-pies. Oh,” she turned to Paul, “thar's something I wanted to say. You left your gun here t'other day. It's loaded, an' I don't like to see it around. Jackie might git hold of it. I wish you would take it home.”

“I'll take it to work with me now,” Paul promised, “and take it home from there.”

Paul toiled diligently that afternoon till the sun was down. He had just come out of the water, put on his shoes, and with his gun under his arm was starting home, when Hoag appeared on the embankment of the race and surveyed the work which had been done.

“Good, good; prime, prime!” he said, approvingly. “You've done as much as a couple of buck niggers would have done in twice the time. Keep up that lick an' you 'll reach the sluice earlier than I counted on. I won't split hairs with you on the pay for this job. If it goes through at this rate I'll tack on something extra.”

Paul said nothing. He tried to feel grateful for the praise he had received, but he was too tired in body and mind to care for anything. Throughout the long day he had constantly deliberated over the thought that it would now be impossible for him to continue the life he was leading. With the death of his father his heart and soul seemed to have died.

Hoag joined him as he walked homeward, the gun under his arm.

“I could see the graveyard from the hill yesterday,” he remarked, “an' I picked you out in the bunch. You looked powerfully lonely, an' the thought struck me that you was about the only real mourner. Women don't grieve for any but their own babies, an' them two from your house would have acted about the same at any other funeral. I was sorry for your daddy, Paul. He never made much headway in the world, but he deserved a better shake o' the dice. In his last days he toted an awful load. He used to talk purty free to me—just like a child would at times. He talked purty plain to me, I reckon, because he knowed I hain't a speck o' use for the damn snake-in-the-grass that was takin' sech a low, underhanded advantage of him behind his back. You needn't repeat this; I'm tellin' it just to you in private. If—you see, Paul—if it ever does come to words betwixt me an' Jeff Warren, I'll have to shoot 'im as I would a dog, an' a thing like that is troublesome, especially when I look on 'im as mud under my feet. I'd hate to have to stand trial for killin' a puppy, an' the law would demand some form-o' settlement.. Your pa would have killed 'im if he lived. I was lookin' for it every day; he was lyin' low for his chance. Preachers, slobberin' revivalists, an' fools like old Tye will talk to you about turnin' the other cheek; but the great, all-important first law of life is to fight for what you git, hold on to it when you git it, an' mash hell out of everything that tries to run over you. That's been my rule, an' it works like a charm. If I'd been your daddy I'd have shot that dirty whelp two months ago.”

They had reached the point where their ways parted. The gray twilight was thickening. Hoag's big white house gleamed through the trees surrounding it. There were lights in the kitchen and diningroom. All Nature seemed preparing for sleep. The tinkling of sheep and cow bells came drowsily to the ear; the church-bell, a creaking, cast-iron affair, was ringing for the singing-class to meet.

“Well, so long,” Hoag finished, with a wave of his fat hand in the dusk. “Set in bright an' early in the momin' an' let's see how many yards you'll wipe out before sundown.”

Paul walked on, so weary now that the gun he was carrying almost slipped from his inert arm. Presently his own home came into view, beyond the field of corn. Ralph Rundel had planted and hoed so feebly. Paul's heart sank into the very ooze of despair. How incongruous was the thought that his father would not be at the gate to meet him, as had been his habit for so many years! The boy stopped in a corner of the rail fence at the roadside and leaned on his gun. An indescribable pain, which was at once physical and mental, had his whole young being in a crushing grasp. The kitchen door was open, and the red logs of an open fire shone out on the sward about the house. Tree-frogs were snarling, fireflies were flashing here and there over the dewy meadows like tiny, short-lived meteors. Paul heaved a sigh, stifled a groan, bit his lip, and trudged on.

As he got nearer to the house, he suddenly became aware of the fact that two figures, that of a man and a woman, were standing at the bars of the barnyard. He recognized the white-clad form on the inside as his mother's. The tall, slender man with the broad hat and square shoulders was Jeff Warren—that would have been plain even if his voice in some indistinct utterance had not been heard. The blood of fury, goaded to the point of insanity, raged within the youth. He felt its close, hot pressure above his eyes, and a red veil fell before his sight. Hoag's recent words rang in his ears. Revenge, revenge! Yes, that was the only thing worth having. Paul bent lower. His gun trailed the ground like the gun of a pioneer hunter. He crept silently forward, keeping the fence between him and the pair, till he was close enough to overhear the colloquy. It was Jeff Warren's voice and his suave, daredevil tone.

“Oh, I know the boy hates me. I've seed it in the little scamp's face many a time. Rafe must 'a' put 'im up to it when his mind was so flighty; but we'll straighten him out between us when we git things runnin' smooth. He'll think I'm a rip-snortin' stepdaddy when I git through with 'im.”

The hot pressure on Paul's brain increased. Pausing in a corner of the fence, he grasped his gun in both hands and cocked it with tense, determined fingers. His father's dead face rose before him. It seemed to smile approvingly. Hoag's words came to him like the advice of an oracle. He strained his ears to hear what his mother was saying, but her low utterance failed to reach him. Jeff Warren was turning away, his broad hat gallantly swung toward the ground.

“Well, I'll see you ag'in 'fore long,” he said merrily. “I know how you feel, but all that will soon wear off. We kin wait a decent time, but I'm in the race, I tell you. I'll talk all them notions out o' your purty head.”

Paul saw his mother vanish in the dusk, and, merrily intoning the tune of a hymn, Warren came on toward Paul. On he Strode, still swinging his hat. Paul heard him softly chuckling.

“Halt, you dirty coward!” Paul cried, as he stepped in front of him, the gun leveled at the broad chest.

“What—what? Good God!” Warren gasped. “Put down that gun, you young fool! Drop it, I say, or I'll—”

Warren was about to spring forward as the only means of self-protection, but before he could do so there was a flash, a ringing report, a puff of smoke, and with a groan Warren bent forward, his hands on his breast. He swayed back and forth, groaning. He reeled, tottered sideways, made a strenuous effort to keep erect, then fell forward, gasping audibly, and lay still.

Paul lowered his gun, and for a moment stood looking at the fallen man. His blood was wildly beating in his heart and brain. There was a barking of dogs far and near. Glancing toward the house, he noticed the forms of his mother and aunt framed by the kitchen doorway, the firelight behind them.

“It may be somebody shootin' bats”—Amanda's voice held a distinct note of alarm—“but I was shore I heard somebody speak sharp-like just before the shot was fired. Let's run down thar an' look.”

They dropped out of sight. Paul heard the patter of their feet, knew they were coming, and, for no reason which he could fathom, he retreated in the direction from which he had come. As if in a flash he caught and held the idea that, having done his duty, he would turn himself over to an officer of the law, as he had read of men doing in similar circumstances.

He had gone only a few hundred yards when he heard the two women screaming loudly; and why he did so he could not have explained, but he quickened his gait into a slow, bewildered sort of trot, the gun still in his hands. Perhaps it was due to the thought that he wanted voluntarily to give himself up before any one should accuse him of trying to flee. He was nearing Hoag's barn, and thinking of making a short cut to the village across the fields, when a man suddenly burst from the thicket at the side of the road and faced him. It was Hoag himself.

“Hold thar!” he cried, staring through the dusk at Paul. “What's all that screamin' mean? I heard a gun go off, an' rememberin' that you—say, did you—Good God! What you comin' back this way for?”

“I've killed Jeff Warren,” Paul answered, calmly. “I'm goin' to Grayson to give myself up.”

“Good Lord, you don't say—why, why—” Hoag's voice trailed away into silence, silence broken only by the voices of the two women in the distance calling for help.

“Yes, I shot 'im—you know why; you yourself said—”

Hoag suddenly laid a trembling hand on Paul's arm. The boy had never seen his employer turn pale before, or show so much agitation. “Looky' here, you didn't go an'—an' do that because I—on account o' anything I said. Shorely you didn't—shorely you didn't! Come into the thicket, quick! Folks will be passin' here in a minute. Them fool women will rip the'r lungs out. Say, you didn't really kill 'im, did you—actually kill 'im?”

Paul avoided his eyes. “You go back there an' see if I didn't,” he said, doggedly.

Hoag stared incredulously for a moment, then, with a firm grip on Paul's arm, he drew him deeper into the thicket.

“Something's got to be done,” he panted. “If you give yourself up for trial they will worm out o' you that I said—that I was talkin' to you, an'—Looky' here, boy, do you know what this means? Are you plumb out o' your senses?”

“I don't care what it means,” Paul retorted. “I've put him out o' the way for good and all.”

“Good Lord, you are a cool un! Wait here; don't stir! I'll come back. I'll run down thar to make sure.”

Hoag moved excitedly toward the road. He had just reached it when a man came running past at full speed in the direction of the village. “Hold, hold!” Hoag cried. “What's wrong?”

The runner slackened his speed a little; but did not stop. It was Abe Langston.

“Somebody's shot Jeff Warren down thar by the fence. He's as dead as a door-nail. I'm goin' to send out the alarm an' git the sheriff.”

In a cloud of self-raised dust Langston dashed away. Hoag stood hesitating for a moment, then turned back to Paul, finding him seated on the decaying trunk of a fallen tree, the gun resting on his slender knees. Hoag stood before him.

“You've got to git out o' this,” he panted, excitedly. “You've done a thing that the court will hold you responsible for. I ain't sure you was justified nohow. The fellow was just in love, that's all. A jury will call it unprovoked, cold-blood, deliberate, what-not. You ain't in no fix to fight it, an' you'd be a plumb idiot to stay here an' let 'em lay hold of you.' The only sensible thing for you to do is to show a clean pair o' heels, an' git out for good an' all. You don't seem overly satisfied here with them women on your hands nohow, an' the world is big and wide. I don't want my name used—mind that. If you do git caught an' fetched back, I hope you'll have the decency not to lug me an' this advice in even under oath. I'm tryin' to help you. Make a bee-line through the mountains to North Carolina an' board the first train. Throw that gun down. Don't be caught red-handed; it would be a plumb give-away.”

“What's the use?” Paul shifted his feet, and raised his sullen eyes.

“Thar's a heap o' use,” Hoag returned, impatiently. “You may not think so now, but you will after you've laid in that dang dirty jail in town, an' been tuck to court to be gazed at by the public, with no money to pay fees with, no friends on hand, an' nothin' before you but to be hung by the neck till you are dead, dead, dead. Take my advice. Git away off some'r's in the world, change your name, burn yore bridges behind you, an' start life 'new all for yoreself without any load like the one you've always had like a millstone round your neck.”

Paul rose to his feet, rested the stock of his gun on the trunk of the tree; he looked off through the twilight wistfully.

“You really think that would be best?” he faltered.

“It certainly will, if you kin manage to git away,” Hoag said. “Why, if you stay here, you will be in a damn sight wuss fix than the skunk you shot. He's out o' his trouble, but if you stay here yours will just be beginnin'.”

“Well, I'll go,” Paul consented. “I can get away all right. I know the woods and mountains.”

“Well, throw your gun down behind that log an make off. Say, if they press you hard on your way through the country, an' you find yourself near the farms of Tad Barton, Press Talcot, Joe Thomas, or old man Jimmy Webb, say this to 'em—tell 'em I said—No, I won't give you no password. I haven't got the right to do it without due form. It's ag'in' the rules; but you tell either of 'em that I said put you out of sight, give you grub or a place to sleep, an' that I said pass you along to the railroad. Got any money? Here is five dollars. I owe you that much, anyway, and it's all I happen to have in my pocket. Now, you hit the grit.”

Paul took the money and indifferently thrust it into his pocket. Hoag held out his hand. “I don't want you to go away with the idea that I had anything much ag'in' the feller you shot; that's done away with now. We've had one or two little scraps, but they didn't amount to anything. Say”—Hoag pointed to the creek—“if I was you I'd wade along that watercourse for a mile or two. The sheriff might take a notion to put bloodhounds on your track, an' the stream will wash away the scent. Good-by. Make the best of it. I'd ask you to drop me a line, but that wouldn't be safe for me or you either. Cut this section clean out—it's been tough on you, anyway. You can make a livin'. You've got a great head on you for learnin'—I've heard plenty o' sensible folk say so. Good-by.” They parted. Hoag went deliberately toward the constantly growing group where Jeff Warren had fallen. He had almost reached it when he met Aunt Dilly, who had been anxiously inquiring for him. She was whimpering and wiping her eyes on her apron.

“Oh, Marse Hoag,” she cried, “I'se been searchin' fer you everwhar. Dey want you up at de house right off.”

“Want me? What's the matter?”

“I dunno, suh; but Miz Hoag drapped off ter sleep-like in 'er chair, en her ma cayn't wake 'er up. Cato done run fer de doctor. Suppen's wrong, suh, suppen powerful wrong. Hit don't look lak des er faintin' spell.”

Hoag stifled an oath of impatience, glanced at the silent group, hesitated a moment, and then turned homeward. At the gate he saw Mrs. Tilton waving her hands wildly in a signal for him to hurry.

“She's dead!” she sobbed. “She's growing cold.” Hoag passed through the gate which she held open.

“Keep the baby away,” he said. “There is no use lettin' 'im look at her. He's too young to—to see a thing like that.”

II

CHAPTER I

|SEVEN years passed. It was early summer.

Externally James Hoag had changed. He was a heavier man; his movements were more sluggish, his hair was turning white, his face was wrinkled and had the brown splotches indicative of a disordered liver. There was on him, at times, a decided nervousness which he more or less frankly, according to mood, attributed to his smoking too much at night and the habit of tippling. He had grown more irritable and domineering. Beneath the surface, at least, he had strongly objected to his mother-in-law's continuing to look to him for support after her daughter's death. But Mrs. Tilton had told him quite firmly that she now had only one duty in life, and that was the care of her grandchild, Jack; and Hoag, quick, harsh, and decided in his dealings with others, knew no way of refusing.

He had really thought of marrying again; but the intimate presence of the mother-in-law and his inability to quite make up his mind as to which particular woman of his acquaintance could be trusted not to have motives other than a genuine appreciation of himself had delayed the step. Indeed, he had given the subject much thought, but objections more or less real had always arisen. The girl was too young, pretty, and spoiled by the attention of younger and poorer men, or the woman was too old, too plain, too settled, or too wise in the ways of the world. So Hoag had all but relinquished the thought, and if he had any heart he gave it to Jack, for whom he still had a remarkable paternal passion, as for his son Henry he still had little love or sympathy. For the last three or four years he had regarded Henry as an idle fellow who would never succeed in anything.

The “klan” of which Hoag was still the leader continued to hold its secret meetings, framed crude laws under his dictation, and inflicted grim and terrible punishment. And these men honestly believed their method to be more efficacious than the too tardy legal courts of the land.

Hoag had been to one of these meetings in a remote retreat in the mountains one moonlit night, and about twelve o'clock was returning. He was just entering the gate of his stable-yard when his attention was attracted to the approach along the road of a man walking toward Grayson, a traveler's bag in his hand. It was an unusual thing at that hour, and, turning his horse loose in the yard, Hoag went back to the gate and leaned on it, curiously and even officiously eying the approaching pedestrian. As the man drew nearer, lightly swinging his bag, Hoag remarked the easy spring in his stride, and noted that he was singing softly and contentedly. He was sure the man was a stranger, for he saw nothing familiar in the figure as to dress, shape, or movement.

“Must be a peddler in some line or other,” he said to himself; “but a funny time o' night to be out on a lonely road like this.”

It would have been unlike Hoag to have let the pedestrian pass without some sort of greeting, and, closing the gate, he stepped toward the center of the road and stood waiting.

“Good evening,” he said, when the man was quite close to him.

“Good evening.” The stranger looked up suddenly, checking his song, and stared at Hoag steadily in apparent surprise. Then he stopped and lowered his bag to the ground. “I wonder,” he said, “if this is—can this possibly be Mr. Jim Hoag?”

“That's who it is,” was the calm reply; “but I don't know as I've ever laid eyes on you before.”

“Oh yes, you have.” The stranger laughed almost immoderately. “You look closely, Mr. Hoag, and you'll recognize a chap you haven't seen in many a long, long year.”

Hoag took the tall, well-built young man in from head to foot. He was well and stylishly dressed, wore a short, silky beard, and had brown eyes and brown hair. Hoag dubiously shook his head.

“You've got the best o' me,” he said, slowly. “I'm good at recollectin' faces, as a rule, too; but my sight ain't what it used to be, an' then bein' night-time—”

“It was after dark the last time you saw me, Mr. Hoag.” The stranger was extending his hand and smiling. “Surely you haven't forgotten Ralph Rundel's son Paul?”

“Paul Rundel—good Lord!” Hoag took the extended hand clumsily, his eyes dilating. “It can't be—why, why, I thought you was dead an' done for long ago. I've thought many a time that I'd try to locate you. You see, after advisin' you—after tellin' you, as I did that night, that I thought you ought to run away, why, I sort o' felt—”

Hoag seemed unable to voice his train of thought and slowed up to an awkward pause.

“Yes, I know—I understand,” Paul Rundel said, his face falling into seriousness, his voice full and earnest. “I know I'm late about it; but it is better to be late than never when you intend to do the right thing. I committed a crime, Mr. Hoag, and the kind of a crime that can't be brushed out of a man's conscience by any sort of process. I've fought the hardest battle that any man of my age ever waged. For years I tried to follow your advice, and live my life in my own way, but I failed utterly. I started out fair, but it finally got me down. I saw I had to do the right thing, and I am here for that purpose.”

“You don't mean—you can't mean,” Hoag stammered, “that you think—that you actually believe—”

“I mean exactly what I say.” The young, bearded face was all seriousness. “I stood it, I tell you, as long as I could in my own way, and finally made up my mind that I'd let God Almighty take me in hand. It was like sweating blood, but I got to it. In my mind, sleeping and waking, I've stood on the scaffold a thousand times, anyway, and now, somehow, I don't dread it a bit—not a bit. It would take a long time to explain it, Mr. Hoag, but I mean what I say. There is only one thing I dread, and that is a long trial. I'm going to plead guilty and let them finish me as soon as possible. I want to meet the man I killed face to face in the Great Beyond and beg his pardon in the presence of God. Then I will have done as much of my duty as is possible at such a late day.”

“Oh, I see!” Hoag fancied he understood. One of his old shrewd looks stoic into his visage. If Paul Rundel thought he was as easily taken in as that, he had mistaken his man, that was certain. Hoag put his big hand to his mouth and crushed out an expanding smile, the edge of which showed itself' in his twinkling eyes. “Oh, I see,” he said, with the sort of seduction he used in his financial dealings; “you hain't heard nothin' from here since you went off—nothin' at all?”

“Not a word, Mr. Hoag, since I left you down there seven years ago,” was the reply. “I must have walked thirty miles that night through the worst up-and-down country in these mountains before day broke. I struck a band of horse-trading gipsies at sun-up in the edge of North Carolina, and they gave me breakfast. They were moving toward the railroad faster than I could walk. I was completely fagged out, and they took pity on me and let me lie down on some straw and quilts in one of their vans. I slept soundly nearly all day. I wasn't afraid of being caught; in fact, I didn't care much one way or the other. I was sick at heart, blue and morbid. I suppose conscience was even then getting in its work.”

“I see.” Hoag was studying the young man's face, voice, and manner in growing perplexity. There was something so penetratingly sincere about the fellow. Hoag had heard of men being haunted by conscience till they would, of their own volition, give themselves up for punishment, but he had never regarded such things as possible, and he refused to be misled now. “Then you took a train?” he said, like a close cross-questioner. “You took the train?”

“Yes, I left the gipsies at Randal's Station, on the B: A. & L., and slipped into an unlocked boxcar bound for the West. It was an awful trip; but after many ups and downs I reached Portland in about as sad a plight as a boy of my age could well be in. I found work as a printer's devil on a newspaper. From that I began to set type. I studied hard at night, and finally got to be an editorial writer. You see, I kept myself out of view as much as possible—stayed at my boardinghouse from dark till morning, and, having access to a fine library, I read to—to kill time and keep my mind off my crime.”

“Your crime? Oh, you mean that you thought—”

“I couldn't possibly get away from it, Mr. Hoag.” Paul's voice quivered, and he drew his slender hand across his eyes. “Night or day, dark or light, Jeff Warren was always before me. I've seen him reel, stagger, and fall, and heard him groan millions and millions of times. It would take all night to tell you about those awful years of sin and remorse—that soul-racking struggle to defy God, which simply had to end, and did end, only a few days ago. When I left here I believed as you did about spiritual things, Mr. Hoag, and I thought I could live my life out as I wished, but I know better now. My experience during those seven years would convince any infidel on earth that God is in every atom of matter in the universe. The human being does not live who will not, sooner or later, bow down under this truth—if not here, he will in the Great Beyond.”

“Bosh!” Hoag growled, his heavy brows meeting in a fierce frown of displeasure.

“Oh, I see you still think as you used to think,”

Paul went on, regretfully; “but you'll come to it some day—you'll come to it in God's own good time. It is a satisfaction to me to know that I am giving you a proof of my reformation, anyway. You know, if you will stop to think about it, Mr. Hoag, that I am giving vital proof that I, at least, am convinced or I would not be willing to give my life up like this. It isn't hard to die when you know you are dying to fulfil a wonderful divine law; in fact, to mend a law which you yourself have broken!”

“I don't know what you are trying to git at, an' I don't care,” Hoag blustered. “I don't know what your present object is, what sort of an ax you got to grind; but I'll tell you what I think, Paul, an' you kin smoke it in your pipe if you want to. Somebody round here has kept you posted. You know how the land lays, an' have made up your mind to turn preacher, I reckon—if you ain't already one—an' you think it will be a fine card to make these damn fools here in the backwoods think you really was ready to go to the scaffold, an' the like o' that. But the truth will leak out. Sooner or later folks—even the silliest of 'em—will git onto your game. You can't look me square in the eye, young man, an' tell me that you don't know Jeff Warren didn't die, an' that when he married your mammy an' moved away the case ag'in' you was dismissed. Huh, I ain't as green as a gourd!”

Paul started, stared incredulously at the speaker, his mouth falling open till his white teeth gleamed in the moonlight. He leaned forward, his breath coming and going audibly, his broad chest swelling. He laid his hand on Hoag's shoulder and bore down on it heavily. Hoag felt it quivering as if it were charged with an electric current. Paul was trying to speak, trying to be calm. He swallowed; his lips moved automatically; he put his disengaged hand on Hoag's other shoulder and forced him to look at him. He shook him. In his face was the light of a great nascent joy.

“Don't say he's alive unless—my God, unless it's true!” he cried, shaking Hoag again. “That would be the act of a fiend in human shape. I couldn't stand it. Speak, speak, speak, man! Don't you understand? Speak! Is it true—is it possible that—” Paul's voice broke in a great welling sob of excitement and his quivering head began to sink.

Hoag was quite taken aback. This was genuine; of that he was convinced. “Thar's no use gittin' so worked up,” he said. “Jeff is sound an' well. I'm sorry I talked like I did, for I see you must 'a' been in the dark, an'—”

He went no further. Paul had removed his hands. A light was on his face that seemed superhuman. He raised his eyes to the sky. He swerved toward the side of the road like a man entranced till he reached the fence, and there he rested his head on his arms and stood bowed, still, and silent.

“Huh, this is a purty pickle!” Hoag said to himself. He stood nonplussed for several minutes, and then advanced to Paul, treading the ground noiselessly till he was close to him. And then he heard the young man muttering an impassioned prayer.

“I thank thee, O God, I thank thee! O, blessed Father! O, merciful Creator, this—this is thy reward!”

Hoag touched him on the shoulder, and Paul turned his eyes upon him, which were full of exultant tears. “Say,” Hoag proposed, kindly enough, “thar ain't no need o' you goin' on to Grayson to-night. The hotel ain't runnin' this summer, nohow. Pete Kerr an' his wife closed it for a month to go off on a trip. I've got a big, cool room in my house that ain't occupied. Stay with me as long as you like. We are sort o' old friends, an' you are entirely welcome. I'd love the best in the world to have you.”

“It is very good of you.” Paul was calmer now, though his countenance was still aglow with its supernal light. “I really am very tired. I've walked ten miles—all the way from Darby Crossroads. The hack broke down there a little after dark, and as I wanted to give myself up before morning—before meeting anybody—I came on afoot. The driver was a new man, and so he had no idea of who I was or what my intentions were. Oh, Mr. Hoag, you can't imagine how I feel. You have given me such a great joy. I know I am acting like a crazy man, but I can't help it. It is so new, so fresh—so glorious!”

“The whole thing seems crazy to me,” said Hoag, with a return of his old bluntness; “but that's neither here nor thar. You seem to be in earnest. Pick up yore valise an' let's go in the house.”

“Are you sure you have room for me?” Paul asked, as he went for his bag.

“Plenty, plenty. My sister, Mrs. Mayfield, an' Ethel, from Atlanta—you remember them—they are spending the summer here, as they always do now. They went to Atlanta yesterday—some o' their kin is sick—Jennie Buford. They will be back tomorrow by dinner-time. But when they come you needn't stir. We've got plenty o' room. You are welcome to stay as long as you like. I want to talk to you about the West.”

CHAPTER II

HOAG led the way through the gate and up the walk toward the house.

“Do you think you'll be likely to settle down here again?” he inquired.

“Oh, I shall now—I shall now,” Paul returned, eagerly. “I've been so homesick for these old mountains and valleys that I shall never want to leave them. It is that way with most men; they never find any spot so attractive as the place where they were brought up.”

“The reason I asked,” Hoag said, with a touch of pride, “was this. I've increased my interests here a powerful sight since you went away. I've added on two more good-sized farms. My tannery is double what it was, an' my flour-mill's a new one with the patent-roller process. Then I run a brickyard t'other side o' town, and a shingle-mill and a little spoke an' hub factory. I tell you this so you'll understand the situation. I'm gittin' too stiff an' heavy to ride about much, an' I've got to have a general superintendent. The fellow that was with me for the last four years left me high an' dry a week ago, after a row me an' him had over a trifle, when you come to think about it. It just struck me that you might want to think it over an' see how you'd like the job.”

“I should like it, I am sure,” Paul said, gratefully.

“I am going to stay here, and I'll have to keep busy.”

“Well, we'll talk it over to-morrow,” Hoag said, in quite a tone of satisfaction. “I reckon we'll agree on the price. If you are as hard a worker as you used to be I'll be more 'an pleased.”

They were now at the veranda steps. The front door was locked; Hoag opened it with a key which was fastened to his suspenders by a steel chain, and the two went into the unlighted hall. The owner of the house fumbled about in the dark until he found a couple of candles on a table, and, scratching a match on his thigh, he lighted them.

“Now we are all hunky-dory,” he chuckled. “I'm goin' to give you a good room, an' if I don't live on the fat of the land as to grub nobody else does. If we come to terms, I'll want you to stay right here, whar I can consult you at a moment's notice.”

“That would be nice indeed,” Paul returned, as he followed his host up the uncarpeted stairs to a hall, which was the counterpart of the one below.

At the front end of the hall Hoag pushed a door open and entering a large bedroom, put one of the candles on the mantelpiece. “Here you are,” he said, pleasantly, waving his heavy hand over the furniture, which consisted of a table, a couple of chairs, a bureau, wardrobe, and a fully equipped wash-stand. “You 'll have to admit”—Hoag smiled at this—“that it is better than the place you was headed for. The last time I peeped in that jail thar wasn't any beds that I could see—niggers an' tramps was lyin' on iron bars with nothin' under 'em but scraps o' blankets.”

Just then there was the sound of a creaking bed in the room adjoining.

Hoag put his own candle down on the table. “It's Henry,” he explained. “He's been poutin' all day. Me'n him had some hot words at supper. He wants me to furnish some money for him to go in business on. Him an' another man want to start a produce store in Grayson, but I won't put hard cash in inexperienced hands. It would be the same as stickin' it in a burnin' brush-heap. He's quit drinkin' an' gamblin', but he won't work.”

“I've seen young men like him,” Paul said. “Henry wasn't brought up to work, and he may be helpless. He ought to be encouraged.”

“Well, I'll not encourage him by puttin' a lot o' cash in his clutches,” Hoag sniffed. “If he'd set in an' work like you used to do, for instance, thar's no tellin' what I would do for him in the long run. Well, I'm keepin' you up. I'll see you in the mornin'. Good night.”

“Good night,” Paul said.

With his lighted candle in his hand Hoag went down-stairs and turned into his own room, adjoining the one in which Jack and his grandmother slept. Putting his candle on a table, he began to undress. He had finished and was about to lie down when he heard a light footfall in the next room. A connecting door was pushed open and a tall, slender boy in a white nightgown stood in the moonlight which streamed through a vine-hung window and fell on the floor.

“Is that you, Daddy?”

“Yes, son.” There was an odd note of affection in Hoag's welcoming tone. “Do you want anything?”

The boy crept forward slowly. “I got scared. I woke and heard you talkin' up-stairs like you was still quarreling with Henry.”

“You must have been dreaming.” The father held out his arms and drew the boy into a gentle embrace. “Do you want to sleep with your old daddy?”

“Oh yes!” Jack crawled from his father's arms to the back part of the bed and stretched out his slender white legs against the plastered wall. “May I sleep here till morning, and get up when you do?”

“Yes, if you want to. Do you railly love to sleep in my bed?”

Hoag was now lying down, and Jack put his arm under his big neck and hugged him. “Yes, I do; I don't like my little bed; it's too short.”

“Thar, kiss daddy on the cheek and go to sleep,” Hoag said, under the thrill of delight which the boy's caresses invariably evoked. “It's late—awful late fer a chap like you to be awake.”

Jack drew his arm away, rolled back against the cool wall, and sighed.

“Daddy,” he said, presently, just as Hoag was composing himself for sleep, “I don't want Grandma to tag after me so much. She watches me like a hawk, an' is always saying if I don't look out I'll grow up and be good for nothing like Henry. Daddy, what makes Henry that way?”

“I don't know; he's just naturally lazy. Now go to sleep.”

“Some folks like Henry very, very much,” the boy pursued, getting further and further from sleep. “Grandma says he really is trying to be good, but don't know how. Was you like him when you was young, Daddy?”

“No—I don't know; why, no, I reckon not. Why do you ask such silly questions?”

“Grandma told Aunt Dilly one day that you always did drink, but that you didn't often show it. She said Henry had quit, and that was wonderful for any one who had it in his blood like Henry has. Is it in my blood, too, Daddy?”

“No.” Hoag's patience was exhausted. “Now go to sleep. I've got to rest, I'm tired, and must work to-morrow.”

“Are you a soldier, Daddy?” Jack pursued his habit of ignoring all commands from that particular source.

“No, I'm not. Now go to sleep; if you don't, I'll send you back to your own bed.”

“Then why does Mr. Trawley call you 'Captain'?”

“Who said—who told you he called me that?” Hoag turned his massive head on his pillow and looked at the beautiful profile of his son, as it was outlined against the wall.

“Oh, I heard him the other day, when he rode up after you to go somewhere. I was in the loft at the barn fixing my pigeon-box and heard him talking to you down at the fence. Just as he started off he said, 'Captain, your men will wait for you at the usual place. They won't stir without your commands.'”

Hoag's head moved again; his eyes swept on to the ceiling; there was a pause; his wit seemed sluggish.

“Are you really a captain, Daddy?” Jack raised himself on his elbow and leaned over his father's face, “No; lie down and go to sleep,” Hoag said, sternly. “Some people call me that just out of—out of respect, just as a sort o' nickname. The war is over; thar ain't no real captains now.”

“I think I know why they call you that.” Jack's delicate face was warm with pride, and his young voice was full and round. “It is because you are the bravest an' richest and best one. That's why Mr. Trawley said they wouldn't stir till you told them. I asked Grandma about it, and she looked so funny and acted so queer! She wouldn't say anything to me, but she went straight to Aunt Dilly, and they talked a long time, and Grandma looked like she was bothered. That was the night the White Caps rode along the road after that runaway negro. I saw Grandma watching from the window. She thought I was asleep, but I got up and looked out of the other window and she didn't know it. Oh, they looked awful in their long, white things. Aunt Dilly was down in the yard, and she told Grandma that God was going to have revenge, because the Bible said so. She said Cato had left his cabin and was hiding in the woods for fear they might get him. She said Cato was a good nigger, and that it was a sin to scare him and all the rest like that. Daddy, what are the White Caps? Where do they come from?”

“Oh, from roundabout in the mountains!” Hoag returned, uneasily. “Now go to sleep. You are nervous; you are shaking all over; those men won't hurt you.”

“But they do get white folks sometimes, and take them out and whip them,” Jack said, tremulously. “Aunt Dilly said one day to Cato that they begun on the blacks, but they had sunk so low that they were after their own race now. What would we do if they was to come here after—” The little voice trailed away on the still air, and glancing at the boy's face Hoag saw that the pretty, sensitive lips were quivering.

“After who?” he asked, curious in spite of his caution.

“After Henry,” Jack gulped. “They might, you know, to whip him for not working. They did whip a poor white man last summer because he let his wife and children go hungry. Daddy, if they was—really was to ride up here and call Henry out, would you shoot them? What would be the use, when there are so many and every one has a gun?”

“They—they are not coming after Henry.” Hoag was at the end of his resources. “Git all that rubbish out o' your head an' go to sleep!”

“How do you know they won't come, Daddy? Oh, Daddy, Henry really is my only brother an' I love 'im. You don't know how good he is to me sometimes. He mends my things, and makes toys for me with his knife, and tells me stories about sailors and soldiers and Indians.”

Hoag turned on his side and laid a caressing hand on the boy's brow. “Now, now,” he said, soothingly, “let's both go to sleep.”

“All right, Daddy.” Jack leaned over his father's face and kissed him. “Good night.”

“Good night.” Hoag rolled over to the front side of the bed, straightened himself out and closed his eyes.

CHAPTER III

ON finding himself alone in his room, Paul began to realize the full import of the startling information Hoag had imparted to him. He stood before an open window, and with the sense of being afloat on a sea of actual ecstasy he gazed into the mystic moonlight. Northward lay the village, and to the left towered the mountains for which he had hungered all the years of his absence. How restful, God-blessed seemed the familiar meadows and fields in their drowsy verdure! He took deep draughts of the mellow air, his broad chest expanding, his arms extended wide, as if to clasp the whole in a worshiping embrace.

“Thank God,” he cried, fervently, “I am not a murderer! My prayers are answered. The Lord is showing me the way—and such a way—such a glorious, blessed way!”

And to-morrow—his thoughts raced madly onward—to-morrow the dawn would break. The land he loved, the hills and vales he adored, would be flooded with the blaze of his first day of actual life. Ethel would be there—little Ethel, who, of course, was now a young woman—there, actually there, in that very house! Would she remember him—the ragged boy whom she had so unselfishly befriended? What must she think of him—if she thought of him at all—for acting as he had? Oh yes, that was it—if she thought of him at all! He had treasured her every word. Her face and voice, in all their virginal sympathy, had been constantly with him during the terrible years through which he had struggled.

The dawn was breaking. Paul lay sleeping; his bearded face held a frown of pain; his lips were drawn downward and twisted awry. He was dreaming. He saw himself seated at his desk in the editorial room of the paper on which he had worked in the West. He seemed to be trying to write an article, but the sheets of paper before him kept fluttering to the floor and disappearing from sight. There was a rap on the door, the latch was turned, and an officer in uniform entered and stood beside him.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but you'll have to come with me. You are wanted back in Georgia. We've been looking for you for years, but we've landed you at last.”

Paul seemed to see and hear the jingle of a pair of steel handcuffs. A dead weight bore down on his brain as the metal clasped his wrists. Dense darkness enveloped him, and he felt himself being jerked along at a mad pace.

“I intended to give myself up,” he heard himself explaining to his captor. “I'm guilty. I did it. Day after day I've told myself that I would go back and own it, but I put it off.”

“That's the old tale.” The officer seemed to laugh out of the darkness. “Your sort are always intending to do right, but never get to it. They are going to hang you back there in the mountains, young man, hang you till you are dead, dead, dead! Ethel Mayfield's there—she is the same beautiful girl—but she will be ashamed to acknowledge she ever knew you. She used to pray for you—silly young thing!—and this is the answer. You'll die like a dog, young man, with a rope around your neck.”

Paul waked slowly; his face was wet with cold perspiration. At first he fancied he was in a prison cell lying on a narrow cot. Such queer sounds were beating into his consciousness—the crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, the gladsome twittering of birds! Then he seemed to be a boy again, lying in his bed in the farm-house. His father was calling him to get up. The pigs were in the potato-field. But how could Ralph Rundel call to him, for surely he was dead? Yes, he was dead, and Jeff Warren—Jeff Warren—Why, Hoag had said that he had—recovered. Recovered!

Paul opened his eyes and looked about him in a bewildered way. The room, in the gray light which streamed in at the windows, was unfamiliar. He sat up on the edge of his bed and tried to collect his thoughts; then he rose to his feet and sprang to the window.

“Thank God, thank God!” he cried, as he stared out at the widening landscape and the truth gradually fastened itself upon him. “Thank God, I'm free—free—free!”

He told himself that he could not possibly go to sleep again, and hurriedly and excitedly he began to put on his clothes.

When he had finished dressing he crept out into the silent hall and softly tiptoed down the stairs. The front door was ajar, and, still aglow with his vast new joy, he passed out into the yard. The dewy lawn had a beauty he had never sensed before. The great trees, solemn and stately, lifted their fronded tops into the lowering mist. The air held the fragrance of flowers. Red and white roses besprent with dew bordered the walks, bloomed in big beds, and honeysuckles and morning-glories climbed the lattice of the veranda. Down the graveled walk, under the magnolias, the leaves of which touched his bare head, Paul strode, his step elastic, his whole being ablaze with mystic delight. Reaching the road, he took the nearest path up the mountain. He waved his arms; he ran; he jumped as he had jumped when a boy; he whistled; he sang; he wept; he prayed; he exulted. Higher and higher he mounted in the rarefied air, his feet slipping on the red-brown pine-needles and dry heather till he reached an open promontory where a flat ledge sharply jutted out over the gray void below. Like a fearless, winged creature he stood upon the edge of it. The eastern sky was taking on a tinge of lavender. Slowly this warmed into an ever-expanding sea of pink, beneath the breathless waves of which lay the palpitating sun. Paul stretched out his arms toward the light and stood as dumb and still as the gray boulders and gnarled trees behind him. He was athrob with a glorious sense of the Infinite, which seemed to enter his being like a flood at its height.

“Free! Free!” he shouted, as the tears burst from his eyes and streamed down his cheeks. “Forgiven, forgiven! I was blind and now I see! I stand on the fringe of the eternal and see with the eyes of truth. All is well with God and every created thing, vast and infinitesimal! O Lord, I thank Thee; with my whole being, which is spirit of Thy spirit and flesh of Thy flesh, I thank Thee! Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty! He is in me, and I am in Him!”

Paul covered his face with his hands and the hot tears trickled through his fingers. His body shook with sobs. Presently he became calmer, uncovered his face, and looked again toward the east. The day, like a blazing torrent, was leaping into endless space, lapping up with tongues of fire islands and continents of clouds. Raising his hands heavenward, Paul cried out, in a clear, firm voice that rebounded from the cliffs behind him:

“O God, my blessed Creator, Thou hast led me through the agony of travail, through the pits and caverns of sin and remorse to the foot of Thy throne. Dimly I see Thy veiled face. I hear the far-off hosts of eternal wisdom chanting the deathless song of Love. Take me—command me, body, mind, and soul! Burden me again, and yet again; torture me, afflict me; grind me as a filthy worm beneath the heel of Thy Law; but in the end give me this—this wondrous sense of Thee and transcendent knowledge of myself. Here, now and forever, I consecrate myself to Thy cause. O blessed God, who art love and naught but love. I thank Thee, I thank Thee!”

The sun, now a great, red disk, had burst into sight. The golden light lay shimmering on hill and vale. Every dewy blade of grass, stalk of grain, and dripping leaf seemed to breathe afresh. From the lower boughs of the trees night-woven cobwebs hung, the gauzy snares of creatures as wise as Napoleon and materially as cruel. The scattered houses of Grayson were now in view. Paul feasted his eyes on the Square, and the diverging streets which led into the red-clay mountain roads. The hamlet was almost devoid of life. He saw, or thought he saw, his old friend, Silas Tye, go out to the public pump in front of his shop, fill a pail with water, and disappear. In the wagon-yard were two canvas-covered wagons and a camp-fire, over which men, women, and children were cooking breakfast. Paul's glance swept down the rugged slope to Hoag's house. Cato was feeding the horses and cattle in the stable-yard. Aunt Dilly, in a red linsey frock, was chopping stove-wood close to the kitchen, the thwacks of her dull ax sharply audible. Paul suddenly had a desire to speak to these swarthy toilers, to take them by the hand and make them feel his boundless friendliness to them, and so, with a parting look at the view below, he turned and began to retrace his steps.

Cato was near the kitchen door helping Dilly take in the wood when Paul went up the front walk, turned the corner of the house, and approached him. The negro stared in astonishment, then laid down his burden and held out his hands.

“My Gawd, Mister Paul, is dis you? Lawd, Law'd 'a' mussy!”

“Yes, it is I,” the young man answered; “I've got back at last.”

“It's a wonder I knowed you wid dat beard, an' dem fine riggin's on.” Cato was eying Paul's modern raiment with a slow, covetous glance. “But it was dem eyes o' your'n I knowed you by. Nobody ain't gwine ter forgit dem peepers. Somehow dey look as saft as 'er woman's. What yer been done ter yo'se'f—you ain't de same. My Gawd, you ain't de same po' boy dat tried yo' level best ter kill dat white man wid er gun.”

Paul was saved the embarrassment of a reply by the sudden appearance of Aunt Dilly, who was literally running down the steps from the kitchen porch.

“Don't tell me dat is Marse Paul Rundel?” she cried. “I ain't gwine believe it. De gen'man's er foolin' you, you blockhead idiot!”

“That's who it is, Aunt Dilly.” Paul held out his hand cordially and clasped her rasping, toil-stiffened fingers. “I've got back, never to leave again.”

“Lawd, Lawd, it is—it sho is dat ve'y boy!” Dilly cried. “You right, Cato, he got de eyes en de voice. I'd know 'em anywhar. My, my, my, but you sho is changed er sight! I ain't never expect ter see dat raggety white boy turn inter er fine gen'man lak dis. Lawd, what gwine ter happen next?”

Paul conversed with the two for several minutes, and then went up to his room on a hint from Dilly that breakfast would soon be served. Paul had been in his room only a short while when he heard the door of Henry Hoag's room open and Henry appeared.

“Hello, Paul!” he said, cordially extending his hand. “I wouldn't have known you from a side of sole-leather if I hadn't heard you talking to Cato and Dilly down there. I didn't know you were back. I thought you'd cut this section off your map. I'm goin' to do it some day, if I can get up enough money to start on. What you ever came back here for is one on me. It certainly is the jumpin'-off place.”

“It is the only home I ever knew,” Paul returned. “You know it is natural for a man to want to see old landmarks.”

“I reckon so, I reckon so.” Henry's roving glance fell on. Paul's valise. “I suppose you've seen a good deal of the world. I certainly envy you. I am tired of this. I am dying of the dry-rot. I need something to do, but don't know how to find it. I tried life insurance, but every man I approached treated it as a joke. I made one trip as a drummer for a fancy-goods firm in Baltimore. I didn't sell enough to pay my railroad fare. The house telegraphed me to ship my sample trunks back. My father had advanced me a hundred to start on, and when I came home he wanted to thrash me. I'll give you a pointer, Paul; if you are lookin' for a job, you can land one with him. He's crazy to hire an overseer, but he wouldn't trust it to me. The chap that left 'im wouldn't stand his jaw and the old man can't attend to the work himself. Take a tip from me. If you accept the job, have a distinct understandin' that he sha'n't cuss you black an' blue whenever he takes a notion. He's worse at that than he used to be, an' the only way to git along with him is to knock 'im down and set on him right at the start. He hasn't but one decent trait, an' that is his love for little Jack. He'd go any lengths for that kid. Well, so would I. The boy is all right—lovely little chap. He hasn't a jill of the Hoag blood in him.”

“I haven't seen Jack yet,” Paul said. “He was a baby when I left.”

There was the harsh clanging of a bell below; Cato was vigorously ringing it on the back porch.

“That's breakfast now.” Henry nodded toward the door. “Don't wait for me—I usually dodge the old man. We've got summer boarders—kin folks. Cousin Eth' and her mammy are here with all their finicky airs. Eth's a full-fledged young lady now of the Atlanta upper crust, and what she don't know about what's proper and decent in manners never was written in a book of etiquette. She begun to give me lessons last year about how and when to use a fork—said I made it rattle between my teeth. I called her down. She knows I don't ask her no odds. There is a swell fellow in Atlanta, a banker, Ed Peterson, that comes up to spend Sunday with her now and then. I never have been able to find out whether Eth' cares for him or not. The old man likes him because he's got money, and he's trying to make a match of it. I think Aunt Harriet leans that way a little, too, but I'm not sure. Oh, he's too dinky-dinky for anything—can't drive out from town without a nigger to hold his horse, and wears kid gloves in hot weather, and twists his mustache.”

Glad to get away from the loquacious gossip, Paul descended the stairs to the dining-room. Here nothing had been changed. The same old-fashioned pictures in veneered mahogany frames were hanging between the windows. The same figured china vases stood on the mantelpiece over the fireplace, which was filled with evergreens, and the hearth was whitewashed as when he had last seen it. Mrs. Tilton, looking considerably older, more wrinkled, thinner, and bent, stood waiting for him at the head of the table.

“I'm glad to see you ag'in, Paul,” She extended her hand and smiled cordially. “I've wondered many and many a time if you'd ever come back. Jim was telling me about you just now. How relieved you must feel to find things as they are! Set down at the side there. Jim's out among the beehives with Jack. They have to have a romp every momin'. Jack is a big boy now, and powerful bright. There, I hear 'em coming.”

“Get up! Get up! Whoa!” the child's voice rang out, and Hoag, puffing and panting, with Jack astride his shoulders, stood pawing like a restive horse at the edge of the porch.

“Jump down now,” Hoag said, persuasively. “One more round!” the boy cried, with a merry laugh.

“No; off you go or I'll dump you on the porch.”

“You can't!” Jack retorted. “You ain't no Mexican bronco. I'll dig my heels in your flanks and stick on till you are as tame as a kitten.”

“No; get down now, I'm hungry,” Hoag insisted; “besides, we've got company, an' we mustn't keep 'im waiting.”

That seemed to settle the argument, and in a moment Jack entered, casting shy glances at the visitor, to whom he advanced with a slender hand extended.

“You can't remember me, Jack,” Paul said. “You were a little tot when I left.”

Jack said nothing. He simply withdrew his hand and took a seat beside his father, against whom he leaned, his big brown eyes, under long lashes, studiously regarding the visitor. The boy was remarkably beautiful. His golden-brown hair was as fine as cobwebs; his forehead was high and broad; his features were regular; his limbs slender and well-shaped. An experienced physiognomist would have known that he possessed a sensitive, artistic temperament.

Paul heard little of the casual talk that was going on. His elation clung to him like an abiding reality. The sunshine lay on the grass before the open door. The lambent air was full of the sounds peculiar to the boyhood which had seemed so far behind him and yet had returned. Hens were clucking as they scratched the earth and made feints at pecking food left uncovered for their chirping broods. Waddling ducks and snowy geese, with flapping wings, screamed one to another, and innumerable bird-notes far and near, accompanied by the rat-tat of the woodpecker, were heard. A donkey was braying. A peacock with plumage proudly spread stalked majestically across the grass, displaying every color of the rainbow in his dazzling robe.

Breakfast over, Hoag led Paul into the old-fashioned parlor and gave him a cigar. “I've got to ride out in the country,” he said, “an' so I may not see you again till after dark. I've been thinkin' of that proposition I sorter touched on last night. Thar ain't no reason why me'n you can't git on. We always did, in our dealin's back thar, an' I need a manager powerful bad. I paid t'other man a hundred a month an' his board throwed in, an' I'm willin' to start out with you on the same basis, subject to change if either of us ain't satisfied. It's the best an' easiest job in this county by long odds. What do you say? Is it a go?”

“I'm very glad to get it,” Paul answered. “I shall remain here in the mountains, and I want to be busy. I'll do my best to serve you.”

“Well, that's settled,” Hoag said, in a tone of relief. “Knock about as you like to-day, and tomorrow we'll ride around an' look the ground over.”

CHAPTER IV

PAUL'S first impulse, on finding himself alone, was to walk to Grayson and look up his old friends; but so new and vivifying was his freedom from the cares which had so long haunted him that he wanted to hug the sense of it to himself still longer in solitude. So, leaving the farm-house, he went to the summit of a little wooded hill back of the tannery and sat down in the shade of the trees. In his boundless joy he actually felt imponderable. He had an ethereal sense of being free from his body, of flying in the azure above the earth, floating upon the fleecy clouds. He noticed a windblown drift of fragrant pine-needles in the cleft of a rock close by, and creeping into the cool nook like a beast into its lair, he threw himself down and chuckled and laughed in sheer delight.

Ethel, little Ethel, who had once been his friend—who had prayed for him and wept with him in sorrow—was coming. That very day he was to see her again after all those years; but she would not look the same. She was no longer a child. She had changed as he had changed. Would she know him? Would she even remember him—the gawky farm-hand she had so sweetly befriended? No; it was likely that he and all that pertained to him had passed out of her mind. The memory of her, however, had been his constant companion; her pure, childish faith had been an ultimate factor in his redemption.

The morning hours passed. It was noon, and the climbing sun dropped its direct rays full upon him. He left the rocks and stood out in the open, unbaring his brow to the cooling breeze which swept up from the fields of grain and cotton. His eyes rested on the red road leading to the village. Wagons, pedestrians, droves of sheep and cattle driven by men on horses, were passing back and forth. Suddenly his heart sprang like a startled thing within him. Surely that was Hoag's open carriage, with Cato on the high seat in front. Yes, and of the two ladies who sat behind under sunshades the nearer one was Ethel. Paul turned cold from head to foot, and fell to trembling. How strange to see her, even at that distance, in the actual flesh, when for seven years she had been a dream! A blinding mist fell before his eyes, and when he had brushed it away the carriage had passed out of view behind the intervening trees. In great agitation he paced to and fro. How could he possibly command himself sufficiently to face her in a merely conventional way? He had met women and won their friendship in the West, and had felt at ease in good society. But this was different. Strange to say, he was now unable to see himself as other than the awkward, stammering lad clothed in the rags of the class to which he belonged.

Hardly knowing what step to take, he turned down the incline toward the farm-house, thinking that he might gain his room unseen by the two ladies. At the foot of the hill there was a great, deep spring, and feeling thirsty he paused to bend down and drink from the surface, as he had done when a boy. Drawing himself erect, he was about to go on, when his eye caught a flash of a brown skirt among the drooping willows that bordered the stream, and Ethel came out, her hands full of maiden-hair ferns. At first she did not see him, busy as she was shaking the water from the ferns and arranging them. She wore a big straw hat, a close-fitting shirt-waist, and a neat linen skirt. How much she was changed! She was taller, her glorious hair, if a shade darker, seemed more abundant. She was slender still, and yet there was a certain fullness to her form which added grace and dignity to the picture he had so long treasured. Suddenly, while he stood as if rooted in the ground, she glanced up and saw him.

“Oh!” he heard her ejaculate, and he fancied that her color heightened a trifle. Transferring the ferns to her left hand, she swept toward him as lightly as if borne on a breeze, her right hand held out cordially. “I really wouldn't have known you, Paul,” she smiled, “if Uncle Jim had not told me you were here. Oh, I'm so glad to see you!”

As he held her soft hand it seemed to him that he was drawing self-possession and faith in himself from her ample store of cordiality.

“I would have known you anywhere,” he heard himself saying, quite frankly. “And yet you have changed very, very much.”

Thereupon he lost himself completely in the bewitching spell of her face and eyes. He had thought her beautiful as a little girl, but he had not counted on seeing her like this—on finding himself fairly torn asunder by a force belonging peculiarly to her.

He marveled over his emotions—even feared them, as he stole glances at her long-lashed, dreamy eyes, witnessed the sunrise of delicate embarrassment in her rounded cheeks, and caught the ripened cadences of the voice which had haunted him like music heard in a trance.

“You have changed a great deal,” she was saying, as she led him toward the spring. “A young man changes more when—when there really is something unusual in him. I was only a little girl when I knew you, Paul, but I was sure that you would succeed in the world. At least I counted on it till—”

“Till I acted as I did,” he said, sadly, prompted by her hesitation.

She looked at him directly, though her glance wavered slightly.

“If I lost hope then,” she replied, “it was because I could not look far enough into the future. Surely it has turned out for the best. Uncle told me why you came back. Oh, I think that is wonderful, wonderful! Till now I have never believed such a thing possible of a man, and yet I know it now because—because you did it.”

He avoided her appealing eyes, looking away into the blue, sunlit distance. His lip shook when he answered:

“Some day I'll tell you all about it. I'll unfold it to you like a book, page by page, chapter by chapter. It is a story that opens in the blackness of night and ends in the blaze of a new day.”

“I know what you mean—oh, I know!” Ethel sighed. “The news of that night was my first realization of life's grim cruelty. Somehow I felt— I suppose other imaginative girls are the same way—I felt that it was a sort of personal matter to me because I had met you as I had. I didn't blame you. I couldn't understand it fully, but I felt that it was simply a continuation of your ill-luck. I cried all that night. I could not go to sleep. I kept fancying I saw you running away through the mountains with all those men trying to catch you.”

“So you didn't—really blame me?” Paul faltered. “You didn't think me so very, very bad?”

“No, I think I made a sort of martyr of you,” Ethel confessed. “I knew you did it impulsively, highly wrought up as you were over your poor father's death. You can't imagine how I worried the first few days after—after you left. You see, no one knew whether Jeff Warren would live or not. Oh, I was happy, Paul, when the doctor declared he was out of danger! I would have given a great deal then to have known how to reach you, but—but no one knew. Then, somehow, as the years passed, the impression got out that you were dead. Everybody seemed to believe it except old Mr. Tye, the shoemaker.”

“My faithful old friend!” Paul said. “He was constantly giving me good advice which I refused to take.”

“I sometimes go into his shop and sit and talk to him,” Ethel continued. “He is a queer old man, more like a saint than an ordinary human being. He declares he is in actual communion with God—says he has visions of things not seen by ordinary sight. He told me once, not long ago, that you were safe and well, and that you would come home again, and be happier than you ever were before. I remember I tried to hope that he knew. How strange that he guessed aright!”

“I understand him now better than I did when I was here,” Paul returned. “I didn't know it then, but I now believe such men as he are spiritually wiser than all the astute materialists the world has produced. What they know they get by intuition, and that comes from the very fountain of infinite wisdom to the humble perhaps more than to the high and mighty.”

“I am very happy to see you again,” Ethel declared, a shadow crossing her face; “but, Paul, you find me—you happen to find me in really great trouble.”

“You!” he cried. “Why?”

Ethel breathed out a tremulous sigh. “You have heard me speak of my cousin, Jennie Buford. She and I are more intimate than most sisters. We have been together almost daily all our lives. She is very ill. We were down to see her yesterday. She had an operation performed at a hospital a week ago, and her condition is quite critical. We would not have come back up here, but no one is allowed to see her, and I could be of no service. I am afraid she is going to die, and if she should—” Ethel's voice clogged, and her eyes filled.

“I'm so sorry,” Paul said, “but you mustn't give up hope.”

“Life seems so cruel—such a great waste of everything that is really worth while,” Ethel said, rebelliously. “Jennie's mother and father are almost crazed with grief. Jennie is engaged to a nice young man down there, and he is prostrated over it. Why, oh why, do such things happen?”

“There is a good reason for everything,” Paul replied, a flare of gentle encouragement in his serious eyes. “Often the things that seem the worst really are the best in the end.”

“There can be nothing good, or kind, or wise in Jennie's suffering,” Ethel declared, her pretty lips hardening, a shudder passing over her. “She is a sweet, good girl, and her parents are devout church members. The young man she is engaged to is the soul of honor, and yet all of us are suffering sheer agony.”

“You must try not to look at it quite that way,” Paul insisted, gently. “You must hope and pray for her recovery.”

Ethel shrugged her shoulders, buried her face in the ferns, and was silent. Presently, looking toward the farm-house, she said: “I see mother waiting for me. Good-by, I'll meet you at luncheon.” She was moving away, but paused and turned back. “You may think me lacking in religious feeling,” she faltered, her glance averted, “but I am very, very unhappy. I am sure the doctors are not telling us everything. I am afraid I'll never see Jennie alive again.”

He heard her sob as she abruptly turned away. He had an impulsive desire to follow and make a further effort to console her, but he felt instinctively that she wanted to be alone. He was sure of this a moment later, for he saw her using her handkerchief freely, and noted that she all but stumbled along the path leading up to the house. Mrs. Mayfield was waiting for her on the veranda, and Paul saw the older lady step down to the ground and hasten to meet her daughter.

“Poor, dear girl!” Paul said to himself, his face raised to the cloud-flecked sky. “Have I passed through my darkness and come out into the light, only to see her entering hers? O merciful God, spare her! spare her!”

CHAPTER V

THAT afternoon Paul went to Grayson, noting few changes in the place. The sun was fiercely beating down on the streets of the Square. Two or three lawyers, a magistrate, the county ordinary, and the clerk of the court sat in chairs on the shaded side of the Court House. Some were whittling sticks, others were playing checkers, all were talking politics. Under the board awnings in front of the stores the merchants sat without their coats, fighting the afternoon heat by fanning themselves and sprinkling water on the narrow brick sidewalks. A group of one-horse drays, on which idle negroes sat dangling their legs and teasing one another, stood in the shade of the hotel. The only things suggesting coolness were the towering mountains, the green brows of which rose into the snowy, breeze-blown clouds overhead.

Paul found Silas Tye at his bench in his shop. He was scarcely changed at all. Indeed, he seemed to be wearing exactly the same clothing, using the same tools, mending the same shoes. On his bald pate glistened beads of sweat which burst now and then and trickled down to his bushy eyebrows. Paul had approached noiselessly, and was standing looking in at him from the doorway, when the shoemaker glanced up and saw him. With an ejaculation of delight he dropped his work and advanced quickly, a grimy hand held out.

“Here you are, here you are!” he cried, drawing the young man into the shop. “Bearded and brown, bigger an' stronger, but the same Paul I used to know. How are you? How are you?”

“I'm all right, thank you,” Paul answered, as he took the chair near the bench and sat down. “How is Mrs. Tye?”

“Sound as a dollar, and simply crazy to see you,” Silas replied, with a chuckle. “If you hadn't come in we'd 'a' got a hoss an' buggy from Sid Trawley's stable an' 'a' rid out to see you. Jim Hoag this mornin' was tellin' about you gittin' back, an' said he'd already hired you to manage for him. Good-luck, good-luck, my boy; that's a fine job. Cynthy's just stepped over to a neighbor's, an' will be back purty soon. Oh, she was tickled when she heard the news—she was so excited she could hardly eat her dinner. She thought a sight of you. In fact, both of us sort o' laid claim to you.”

“Till I disgraced myself and had to run away,” Paul sighed. “I'm ashamed of that, Uncle Si. I want to say that to you first of all.”

“Don't talk that way.” Silas waved his awl deprecatingly. “Thank the Lord for what it's led to. Hoag was tellin' the crowd how you come back to give yourself up. Said he believed it of you, but wouldn't of anybody else. Lord, Lord, that was the best news I ever heard! Young as you are, you'll never imagine how much good an act o' that sort will do in a community like this. It is a great moral lesson. As I understand it, you fought the thing with all your might and main—tried to forget it, tried to live it down, only in the end to find that nothin' would satisfy you—nothin' but to come back here and do your duty.”

“Yes, you are right,” Paul assented. “I'll tell you all about it some time. I'm simply too happy now to look back on such disagreeable things. It was awful, Uncle Si.”

“I know, and I don't blame you for not talking about it,” the old man said. “Sad things are better left behind. But it is all so glorious! Here you come with your young head bowed before the Lord, ready to receive your punishment, only to find yourself free, free as the winds of heaven, the flowers of the fields, the birds in the woods. Oh, Paul, you can't see it, but joy is shining out o' you like a spiritual fire. Your skin is clear; your honest eyes twinkle like stars. It's worth it—your reward is worth all you've been through, an' more. Life is built that way. We have hunger to make us enjoy eatin'; cold, that we may know how nice warmth feels; pain, that we may appreciate health; evil, that we may know good when we see it; misery, that we may have joy, and death, that we may have bliss everlasting. I've no doubt you've suffered, but it has rounded you out and made you strong as nothing else could have done. I reckon you'll look up all your old acquaintances right away.”

Paul's glance went to the littered floor. “First of all, Uncle Si, I want to inquire about my mother.”

“Oh, I see.” The cobbler seemed to sense the situation as a delicate one, and he paused significantly. “Me an' Cynthy talked about that this momin'. In fact, we are both sort o' bothered over it. Paul, I don't think anybody round here knows whar your ma an' Jeff moved to after they got married. But your aunt went with 'em; she was bound to stick to your ma.”

“They married”—Paul's words came tardily—“very soon after—after Warren recovered, I suppose?”

“No; she kept him waitin' two years. Thar was an awful mess amongst 'em. Your ma an' your aunt stood for you to some extent, but Jeff was awful bitter. The trouble with Jeff was that he'd never been wounded by anybody in his life before, an' that a strip of a boy should shove 'im an inch o' death's door an' keep 'im in bed so long was a thing that rankled. Folks about here done 'em both the credit to think you acted too hasty, an' some thought Jim Hoag was back of it. The reason your ma kept Jeff waitin' so long was to show the public that she hadn't done nothin' she was ashamed of, an' folks generally sympathized with 'er. Finally she agreed to marry Jeff if he'd withdraw the case ag'in' you. It was like pullin' eye-teeth, but Jeff finally give in an' had a lawyer fix it all up. But he was mad, and is yet, I've no doubt.”

“I understand.” Paul was looking wistfully out of the window into the street. “And would you advise me, Uncle Si, to—to try to find them?”

“I don't believe I would,” Silas opined slowly, his heavy brows meeting above his spectacles; “at least not at present, Paul. I'd simply wait an' hope for matters to drift into a little better shape. Jeff is a bad man, a fellow that holds a grudge, and, late as it is, he'd want a settlement o' some sort. I've talked to him. I've tried to reason with him, but nothin' I'd say would have any weight. I reckon he's been teased about it, an' has put up with a good many insinuations. Let 'em all three alone for the present. You've got a high temper yourself, an' while you may think you could control it, you might not be able to do it if a big hulk of a man like Jeff was to jump on you an' begin to pound you.”

“No; I see that you are right,” Paul sighed; “but I am sorry, for I'd like my mother to understand how I feel. She may think I still blame her for—for fancying Warren, even when my father was alive, but I don't. Rubbing up against the world, Uncle Si, teaches one a great many things. My mother was only obeying a natural yearning. She was seeking an ideal which my poor father could not fulfil. He was ill, despondent, suspicious, and faultfinding, and she was like a spoiled child. I am sure she never really loved him. I was in the wrong. No one could know that better than I do. When I went away that awful night I actually hated her, but as the years went by, Uncle Si, a new sort of tenderness and love stole over me. When I'd see other men happy with their mothers my heart would sink as I remembered that I had a living one who was dead to me. Her face grew sweeter and more girl-like. I used to recall how she smiled, and how pretty and different from other women she looked wearing the nice things Aunt Amanda used to make for her. I'd have dreams in which I'd hear her singing and laughing and talking, and I'd wake with the weighty feeling that I had lost my chance at a mother. It seemed to me that if I had not been so hasty”—Paul sighed—“she and I would have loved each other, and I could have had the joy of providing her with many comforts.”

Silas lowered his head toward his lap. The pegs, hammer and awl, and scraps of leather jostled together in his apron. He was weeping and valiantly trying to hide his tears. He took off his spectacles and laid them on the bench beside him. Only his bald pate was in view. Presently an uncontrollable sob broke from his rugged chest, and he looked at the young man with swimming eyes.

“You've been redeemed,” he said. “I see it—I see it! Nobody but a Son of God could look and talk like you do. My reward has come. I don't take it to myself—that would be a sin; but I want you to know that I've prayed for you every day and night since you left—sometimes in much fear an' doubt, but with a better feelin' afterward. You may not believe it, but I am sure there are times when I actually know that things are happenin' for good or ill to folks I love—even away off at a distance.”

Paul Rundel: A Novel

PAUL RUNDEL

A Novel

By Will N. Harben

Harper and Brothers

1912

[Original]

[Original]

TO

THE MEMORY OF MY LITTLE SON ERIC

I

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

“TRAWLEY'S FEED AND SALE STABLES”

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

II

CHAPTER I

|SEVEN years passed. It was early summer.

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V