CROSSING the street diagonally, Henley came to a little two-story frame building near the post-office. Pausing before the door, he looked in and saw old Welborne seated at his desk near an open window. The money-lender was thin, had parchment-like skin, massive eyebrows, and long, gray hair, which never seemed to have been trimmed, and was massed on the greasy collar of his faded black alpaca coat. He was past seventy years of age, and the hand which held his pen shook visibly. Henley went in, and as he did so old Welborne laid down his pen and turned round in his revolving-chair. He nodded and grunted, and motioned to a three-legged stool near the desk.
Henley sat down on it, and as he did so he drew out a couple of cigars, and, holding them in the shape of a letter V, he extended them toward the old man. "I'm advertising a new brand," he said, cordially. "Take one, and whenever you want a good smoke drop in. You'll find 'em as free from cabbage-leaves as any in this town. One thing certain, you don't have to bore a hole through 'em to start circulation."
"Drumming up trade, eh?" The money-lender smiled as he took the cigar, and, pinching off the tip with his long thumb-nail, he thrust it between his gashed and stained teeth. "Well, I don't blame any man for trying to turn a penny during hard times like these. But, Lord, Alf, you'd make a living if you was on a bare rockin the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I take off my hat to any man that could handle a busted circus like you did. I wouldn't have touched that pile of junk at your figure if it had been given to me, and yet—well, every man to his line."
Henley scratched a match on the sole of his shoe and lighted his cigar. "I've been just a little afraid that your nephew—that Hank Bradley may have told you about the little spat me and him had at the store the other day—"
"I heard it," Welborne broke in, with an indifferent smile. "I was standing in the door; he was full; he ought to have been kicked out; you done right; he's a lazy, good-for-nothing scamp, but don't talk to me about him. I pay him what is coming to him, board him for next to nothing, and there my responsibility ends. I'm not fighting his battles—huh, I guess not! How's trade over your way?"
"N. G." Henley puffed, squinting his right eye to avoid the smoke which curled up from the end of his cigar, as he looked absently at the dingy window-panes and the cobwebs hanging from the cracked and bulging plastering overhead. "We can sell plenty on tick, but getting paid is the devil. Jim Cahews is a good man, but he can't say no—to a petticoat, anyway. While I was away he went it rather reckless. Why, he let one little woman that has heretofore been the brag of the county get in clean up to her neck."
Old Welborne ceased smoking; his dim, blue eyes twinkled. "I'll bet a dollar to a ginger-cake I know who you mean," he said, eagerly.
"Well, maybe you do and maybe you don't," Henley said. "But I've had enough of her foolishness and promising and never coming to time. I'm not in business for my health. She's a neighbor of mine, and I always admired her plucky fight, but charity begins athome. I'm not running an orphan asylum, nor an old woman's home. Jim misunderstood me, anyway. I told 'im her account was all right, and for him not to bear down too hard on her, and I went to Texas and forgot all about it. But, holy smoke! when I got home and looked at the books I was fairly staggered at the figures. She's over there at the store now, and I had to talk to her straight, and she won't get a bit deeper in my debt. I've got to call a halt."
"I think I might set your mind at rest on what she owes you," Welborne said, with an unctuous smile. "There is no use beating about the bush, Henley, you know she's in debt to me, and you've come over to see if I can help you out. Well, I can. I am in the shape to do it. Me 'n you have clashed several times in our deals and had hard feelings, but there is no use keeping up strife. We can work together now. Me and her own that farm in partnership, and I've had enough of it. I've made a fair give-or-take offer, and nothing is to prevent her from closing out and paying you what she owes you. I've got eight hundred dollars in cash ready to hand her at any minute."
"You don't say!" Henley's look of gratified surprise was perfect. "Well, she's in a better fix than I thought. She ain't much of a hand to tell her business, and I thought she had—well, about run through her pile."
"She can get the money if she will have common-sense," said Welborne; "but women never know how to 'tend to business, and she may act stubborn to the end and force me to put up the land for sale. It wouldn't fetch much, and you and me'd both lose by it. The best thing to do is to make her have sense, and if you will—if you will talk straight to her about your debt, maybe she'll sell out and be done with it."
"Well, I can talk straight enough, if you'll leave it to me," Henley said, with what looked like a frown of chronicresentment. "It makes me mad to think she'll keep me out of my money while you are offering her enough to square off."
"Well, go over to the store and see what you can do to bring her to her senses," the money-lender proposed, with a smirk which twisted his sallow visage into a grimace. "If you can bring her to reason, we'll both get—get what's due us."
"All right," Henley said, in a tone of gratitude. "You come on over in a minute. I'll tell her I've heard of your offer, and that I won't stand anymore foolishness."
Henley sauntered back to the store. His face was set and colorless as he approached Dixie. She glanced up, and he was shocked by the look of despair in her great, sorrowful eyes.
"He's coming over," Henley said. "Everything is cocked and primed. He thinks you may take his money—he thinks I'm going tomakeyou do it. You needn't talk much, but stick to it that you want his offer writ down in black and white and will have it before you'll move a peg. I'll write it and have it ready for him to sign. If he does, we are solid; if not, we are lost. I don't know that I ever tackled anything quite as ticklish as this, for he is as wary and sly as a fox. We mustn't give 'im time to think, if we can help it. Sh! there he is now. Don't mind anything I say, no matter how harsh it sounds—remember, I'm working for your good, and using fire to stop fire."
She nodded and smiled knowingly, but said nothing, for the money-lender was approaching. When Welborne was quite near, Henley suddenly said aloud: "You are a woman, but I ain't going to stand any more foolishness. You've been saying all this time that you can't get the money, and yet here is a cash offer of eight hundred dollars staring you smack-dab in the face."
"I never had the offer until this morning," Dixie said,with what he recognized as astonishing diplomacy. Her face was out of sight under the hood of her sunbonnet, her handkerchief to her eyes.
"She's willing to do what's right," Henley said to Welborne. "The only thing she holds out for is to have the proposition down in writing. Of course, there is no need of it, but women know nothing about business, and will have every detail carried out, and so I scratched it down here. It is a plain give-or-take offer of eight hundred dollars either way, and she ain't in no fix to refuse."
Henley dipped a pen in the ink and held the paper toward the old man. There was an incipient wave of innate distrust in Welborne's manner as he glanced from the bowed form of the girl to that of the waiting storekeeper.
"Let her have her way about it," Henley advised. "Women will have everything complete or you can't do a blessed thing with 'em. It don't mean anything to you; you've made her a fair give-or-take offer."
"Yes, of course I have," Welborne said, conquering his qualms, and with a quivering hand he signed the paper. He had no sooner done it than Henley laid it face downward on a blotting-pad and, with a steady hand, stroked its back. The eyes he fixed on Dixie, who was covertly watching him, fairly danced as he raised the paper and folded it carefully.
"Now, you two have got the proposition down in fair legal shape, and nothing stands between you and a deal. Miss Dixie, you are just a woman, and may not know the ways of the business world, so I want to tell you on my honor that this is what all fair-minded men call an absolutely straight proposition, and when you've acted on it, it would be wrong for you to ever say anybody coerced you or took advantage of you. You understand that you've got a right either to pay eight hundred and ownthe farm, or take eight hundred and sell your half. Is that plain to you?"
"Yes, I understand it perfectly," Dixie answered, glancing first at him and then at the expectant and suave money-lender.
"And you understand it, too, don't you, Mr. Welborne?"
"Yes, I understand it," the eager old man replied, craftily. "And you know, Alf Henley, that I wouldn't have made as liberal an offer to anybody but this girl. She's in a tight fix and needs the money, and the farm has gone down to less 'n half of what it was worth when me and her bought it."
"Well, then, Miss Dixie," Henley said, significantly, and he held the paper tightly in his strong hand, "you'll have to decide which thing you intend to do."
"I've already decided," the girl said, looking at Welborne with a placid stare, "and I'm going to be satisfied. I know the farm isn't any good now, and will perhaps be lower when the railroad is built the other side of the mountain, but it is the only home we have, and I've decided to buy it."
"Buyit?" Welborne gasped, and stared as if unable to grasp her meaning. "You don't mean that you—"
"Well, well!" Henley cried, "thisisa surprise. Here I've been rowing you up Salt River for your puny little debt to me, and you now say you are able to own a big chunk of real estate unencumbered. Why, you must have struck oil somewhere. My, my, my!"
"I don't tell my business to everybody." Dixie, now standing, had thrust her hand into the pocket of her skirt and was drawing out the bills. "Here's the money, Mr. Welborne."
A snort that could have been heard to the front door issued from Welborne's fluttering nostrils. He pushed the money from him, writhed and tottered, and as he glared furiously at Henley he screamed:
"It's a trick put up between you. I see it, but I won't be buncoed in no such way. Do you hear me?—no such way!"
He was turning off when Henley, now a different man, stepped before him. "You are going to act fair for once, you old thief," he said, a gray look of determination about his mouth and in his fixed eyes. "You've been swindling this orphan girl all these years, and you are going to abide by your own signed contract. You are going to do it, or, by all that's holy, I'll head a gang of mountain-men that will drag you out of your bed and lay a hundred lashes on your bare back."
"I'll see you in hell first!" Welborne shrieked, and, darting past Henley, he hurried from the store as fast as his tottering gait would take him.
"We lost, after all!" Dixie cried, and, sinking back in her chair, the money clutched in her hand, she burst into tears.
"Not yet, notplumbyet, little girl!" Henley was unconscious of the vast tenderness of his tone. "Don't cry; be the brave little trick you've always been."
"I'm not thinking of myself, really I'm not," she sobbed. "But my mother and aunt have heard about it, and they are awfully upset. They love the place, and the thought of leaving and being destitute is running them crazy."
"Look here. Let me have the money," Henley said, his eyes flashing dangerously. "You go home and be easy. Leave him to me. He sha'n't rob you like that; I'll drag his bones from his dirty hide and rattle 'em through the streets before I'll let 'im. This is a Christian community, and God rules."
"You mustn't bother any more," Dixie said, and as she put the money into his hands she clung to them tenderly and appealingly. "Blood has been spilt over matters like this, Alfred, and the whole thing ain't worthit. His nephew—I intended to warn you before—Hank Bradley is your enemy, and now Welborne is, and between them"—she broke off with a convulsive sob, but still clung pleadingly to his hands.
"I don't care if his whole layout is up in arms agin me; he sha'n't rob you. You are the sweetest, dearest, most suffering little girl the sun ever shone on, and I'll fight for you as long as there is a speck of life in me. You go home. I'll come to you the very minute it is settled."
"And you won't—oh, Alfred, please don't—please don't—for my sake, don't have trouble with him. You're hot-tempered, and I've let you get wrought up. Don't you see that it don't make any odds to me?"
"All right, then," he said, smiling, and yet she saw that his smile was only on the surface. "I promise we won't fight about it. I'll try to bring him to his senses in some other way. Now, go home. I'll come out as soon as I possibly can."
It was after nightfall before he saw her again. As he was nearing her cottage in the vague starlight he saw a figure of some one in the fence-corner of her pasture which touched the road near his own land. He surmised that it was she, and that she was there waiting for him, though her head was bowed to the top rail of the fence and he couldn't see her face. There was a strip of grass on the roadside, and he walked upon it that it might deaden his tread till he was close upon her. As it was, he reached her side without attracting her attention. Then something clutched all his senses and held him like a dead thing in his tracks, for he heard her praying in a sweet, suffering voice that lifted him with it to the very throne of thrones.
"Oh, God, my Maker, my Saviour, my Redeemer," he heard her saying, "give me the strength to bear it and let no harm come to my dear, dear friend. I canbear the loss of my home, but not to have harm come to him. Oh, Lord, help—" She raised her head, and their eyes met and clung together. He had a folded paper in his hand, and he extended it to her. His voice rose and broke in a wave of huskiness: "Here is the deed, Dixie, little girl," he said. "The farm is yours. The transaction is recorded at the court-house. Nothing can take it from you now."
"Mine, Alfred, mine, did you say?"
"Yes, I had trouble; he died hard; he saw it was all up with him after he'd signed that agreement, but it was like pulling eye-teeth to get the deed made out. He'd write a line, and then throw down the pen and cry and whine like a baby. I'm ashamed to say it, but once I got mad and caught him by that slim neck of his and pushed him down under his desk and held him there. My thumb was in his throat. I clutched too tight. I thought I'd killed him. The Lord must have restrained me. He was black in the face and as limber as a rag. It was then that he give in. He'd have held out to the end, but I was holding something over him. Women all over the county are lending him money at a low rate, and I showed him that if this trick of his agin you was published they'd lose faith in him and make him pay up. He saw his danger and give in. But, my! how it rankles. It's the first time he was ever whipped to a dead finish."
With the deed in her hand Dixie stood staring at him, her beautiful mouth twitching with emotion, her great eyes aglow with joy. She started to speak, but a sob rose within her and she lowered her head to the rail. The beams of the rising moon fell on her exquisite neck; her wonderful tresses lay massed on her shoulders.
"Don't—don't cry, Dixie," he said. "I can't bear it." He laid his hand on her head and let it rest there gently.
Presently she looked up, caught his hand in both of hers and pressed her lips to it. "You are the sweetest,best, noblest man in the world, Alfred. I can't thank you. I'll—I'll choke. I'm so—so happy. Good-night."
He stood at the fence and watched her till she had disappeared in the cottage, and then, like a man in a delightful, bewildering dream, he turned his face toward the lights in his own house.
Old Wrinkle was waiting for him at the gate, and he held it open for him. "Your supper—sech as it is—is on the table waitin' for you," he said, picking his teeth with a splinter from the fence. "Ma got it ready for you; I've had mine; I made me some mush out of the yaller corn-meal Pomp fetched from the mill. Mush-an'-milk, with a dab o' cream an' a pinch o' salt, is all right to sleep on. We've had a day of it; Hettie has gone all to flinders, and went to bed at sundown with a crackin' headache, an' eyes swelled as big as squashes. Her uncle Ben is in trouble. He sent her a letter fifty pages in duration by one of his niggers. As well as I can make out betwixt Hettie's spasms her uncle Ben's fine Baltimore lady has turned him down. Thar seems to be a Yankee feller in the way. She advanced a hundred reasons fer deciding not to retire to lonely mountain-life. She's riled up, for one thing, on the nigger question—says she understands a lady has to go armed to the teeth just to walk from the well to the back porch, an' that she never had learned to shoot, nohow. The Yankee feller has more scads than Ben, an' has bought an estate in New York City which he lays at her feet as an inducement. Het an' Ben must be slices off the same block, for his letter was soaked in salt water, an' she had to run a hot flatiron over hern before it would do to send. He writ her that she was the only faithful woman on earth—he was hintin' at Dick's burial arrangements, I reckon—an' that if she was thar he'd put his head in her lap an' have a good cry. They would have had to swap laps if they had been together to-day, for Hetneeded a foot-tub to take care of her overflow. Well, I'm keepin' you from your royal banquet. You'll find it on the dinner-table, with the cloth all drawed up over it like a bundle ready for the wash. Ma tied it up that way to keep the cat out of it. I don't think the cat 'u'd care for any of it, but I reckon Jane 'lowed the thing mought paw it over in the hope o' strikin' some'n worth while."
Conscious of little that the old man was saying, Henley passed on into the dimly lighted farm-house, experiencing a vague sense of relief that he was not just then to face his wife.
ONE evening shortly after this Henley was returning from the store about an hour later than was his custom. He was nearing Dixie Hart's cottage, when, in the clear moonlight, he saw the girl emerge from the little apple-orchard behind her barn and come rapidly toward him. Her glance was on the ground, and she had evidently not seen him. As she drew near where he stood waiting, he noted that her head was bare, and that she had a medicine-bottle in her hand. He noted, too, from her gait and hurried manner, that she was greatly disturbed. She was about to pass him when he called out, cheerily, "Where away, in such a hurry?"
"Oh!" She looked up and stopped. "You scared me, Alfred. I couldn't imagine who it was. I'm going over to Sam Pitman's. Joe is sick—powerful sick. If I am any judge, it is pneumonia, and a bad case at that."
"Pneumonia!" he echoed, aghast. "I didn't know anything was wrong with him."
"It's been coming on some time," she said. "He caught an awful cold. You know the day it rained so hard and the creek got out of banks? I was trying to cross the ford below Pitman's in my wagon. I thought I could make it all right, but the current washed the wagon in a hole, and old Bob couldn't touch bottom. The wagon was floating like a boat, and he finally got stuck in the mud with just his head and neck out andcouldn't budge. Joe was digging sprouts in the field on the right-hand side, and ran down to me. I yelled at him not to come in, but he struck out toward me with his clothes on, swimming like a dog. He got to me and helped me out in the water on a high place, and made me stand there while he worked and tugged at the trace-chains for twenty minutes till he finally unhitched Bob and pulled him out of the mire. Then he helped me out and dragged the wagon ashore."
"Plucky little chap!" cried Henley.
"But he's getting paid for it," Dixie said, bitterly. "He got overheated in the cold mountain-water, and he is in a bad fix, Alfred. I know when a sick person is dangerous, and he is."
She was moving on toward Pitman's now, and Henley was keeping step by her side. "You mustn't take it so hard," he said, in an effort to calm her. "It will come out all right."
"It is a ticklish thing, pneumonia is," she said; "and he hasn't got a doctor. Sam Pitman says it isn't anything but a cold, and he won't send for one. I was over there twice to-day, but he don't even want me to nurse him. I've got my things all done up at home and the folks in bed, and I'm going to stay with him all night if I have to have a knock-down-and-drag-out row to do it. I told Sam Pitman that I'd pay for the doctor out of my own pocket, but that just made him madder. He says I'm trying to come under his roof and run his affairs, and that I sha'n't do it. He may not let me in now. I don't know, but he is one of the devil's imps, if there ever was one. Mrs. Pitman is a little better, but he's got her under his thumb. She won't raise her voice when he is around."
"We must have a doctor, that's certain," declared Henley. "You walk on and I'll run to town and bring Doctor Stone. He knows his business, and he'll takecharge of the case if I back him. If Pitman tries to hinder us I'll jail him as sure as he's a foot high."
"Oh, Alfred, I wish you would get the doctor. I'm so glad I met you. I was worried to death. I know how to nurse in ordinary cases, but pneumonia is so treacherous. Hurry, please; I'll never forget you for this."
Twenty minutes later Henley entered the gate of Sam Pitman's diminutive farm-house. Three watch-dogs came from beneath the little front porch, but, recognizing the visitor, they stood wagging their tails cordially and uttering low whines of welcome. There was a broken harrow, with rusty iron teeth, leaning against the house near the log steps; a top-heavy ash-hopper and a lye-stained trough stood under the spreading branches of a beechnut-tree beside a rotting cider-press and a huge pot for heating water during hog-killing or for boiling lye and grease for the making of soap.
As Henley approached the steps Pitman and his wife, hearing the click of the gate-latch, came out on the porch, which was shaded by overhanging vines, and stood staring blankly at him. Henley was a gallant man, for his station in life, and he drew off his broad-brimmed hat and remained uncovered while he spoke.
"I've run over to inquire how little Joe is," he said, conscious of the grim opposition to his visit in the very air that hung around the farmer. "I happened to meet Miss Dixie Hart just now on her way here, and she was considerably upset."
"Nothin' wrong with the boy," Pitman muttered, surlily. "That gal, like most of her meddlin' sort, is havin' a regular conniption-fit over nothin'. I reckon she is afeard thar'll be one less on the marryin' list a few years from now. He was a pesky fool, anyway, plungin' in cold water to attend to her business. He's had croupy coughs before this, an' wheezin'-spells, an' been hot likeall childern will when they eat too much, but we never went stark crazy over it."
"Miss Dixie is a purty good judge, Sam," Henley answered, incisively. "She'd be hard to fool if danger was lurkin' around. When she described Joe's condition to me just now I saw she had plenty cause to worry, and so I went straight back to town and left word for Doctor Stone to hurry here as soon as he got home. They was looking for him every minute."
"You say you did!" Pitman came to the edge of the porch, and, with his arm around one of the posts which upheld the roof, he leaned over till his face was close to Henley's. "Huh! you are some pumpkins, ain't you? You can keep me from runnin' an account at your dirty shebang, Alf Henley, but you can't walk dry-shod over me in my own house. A man's domicyle is his castle in law, and I'm goin' to manage mine an' defend it, ef I have to."
"Don't get excited, Sam; keep your shirt on," Henley said, calmly. There was an oblong spot of light thrown on the grass between him and the gate. It was from the attic window above the porch, and across it now and then moved a shadow. He knew that the little room under the roof was occupied by the sick child, and that the shadow was Dixie's. The shadow was now still and bowed at the window in an attitude of attention to what was going on below.
"I ain't excited any to hurt," Pitman went on, his voice rising higher. "You say you've ordered Stone to come, an' I say if he does he won't put his foot across my threshold."
"You've got it in for me, Sam, I see," Henley said, still unruffled, "but this is no time for you and me to settle old scores. The boy is no blood kin to either of us."
"The law gives me full an' complete charge of 'im tillhe's of age," Pitman snarled, "an' I hain't invited you to put in, an' until I do you'll be a sight safer on t'other side of that fence. I mean the one right thar behind you."
The window-sash was raised above, and Dixie looked out.
"He's just dropped to sleep," she announced in a guarded tone. "Please, Alfred, don't let them talk so loud, and send the doctor up the minute he comes."
"Very well," Henley answered, softly and reassuringly. Then going close to the farmer he said in a low voice, "I want to talk to you a minute; let's walk round the house."
Pitman hesitated, staring doggedly at the speaker, and then shifted his sullen gaze to the face of his wife.
"Go on with 'im," she said, and turned stiffly into the lark doorway behind her.
Silently Henley led Pitman round the house to the little barn-yard in the rear. There was a red-painted road-wagon near the wagon-shed and Henley sat down easily on the strong pole and began to search through his pockets for a cigar and matches. He grunted in disappointment when he found his pockets empty, and then deliberately applied himself to the matter in hand.
"Looky here, Sam Pitman," he began, "for a long-headed, sensible mountain-man you are plunging into more serious trouble than any chap of your size ever got into. I'm going to let you on to a thing that a fellow usually keeps quiet—I'm going to do it because I feel that it is my Christian duty not to be a party to the great disaster you are on the brink of."
"I don't know what you mean, an' I don't care a damn," growled Pitman. "I know what my rights are, an' that's all I'm talkin' about."
"I started to tell you, when you busted in," said Henley, swinging his feet beneath him, "that I'm a memberof the grand jury, and you may or may not know that when a fellow is impaneled in that body he's got a sworn job on his hands that is powerful exacting. He is on his oath to report to the authorities any criminal irregularity that comes under his notice. Now! I have had the word and the judgment of a respectable and truthful lady that the boy bound to you by law is dangerously and critically sick, and, calling here in my lawful capacity to look into the matter, I hear you say with my own ears that no doctor shall put foot across your threshold. Now, look at it straight, Sam. Even if Joe was to get well a big, serious case may come up against you—I don't promise that you'll come off free even as it is, but if the child was todie—I say if he was to happen to pass away, and I've seen little ones die when half a dozen skilled doctors was standing by—Sam Pitman, in that case, no lawyer on earth could keep you out of limbo. I tell you, you don't know it, but right this minute you are in the tightest hole you ever slid into. A jury in your case wouldn't leave their seats. Men pity helpless children in this life more'n they do big hulking men of your stripe, and they'd sock it to you to the full extent of the law. Even if it wasn't tried at court, take it as a hint from me, the men of these mountains would get together in a body and lynch you. Reports have already been going round to your eternal discredit about this child, and one more act of yours will simply settle your hash. This is me talking, Sam."
"You—you dare to come here—" But Pitman's rage was tinctured with actual fear of the man before him, and his intended threat was not uttered. He was white and quivering, but he was helpless. A sound broke the stillness that now fell between the two men. It was the steady trotting of a horse on the road.
"There's Doc now," Henley announced, and his eyes met Pitman's, which were kindling again.
"Well, I've said he sha'n't—an', by God—" Pitman started toward the house, but Henley sprang up and faced him. Laying his hand heavily on the farmer's shoulder he cried almost with a hiss of fury: "Let that doctor alone, you dirty whelp! He's going to crawl up that ladder to that hole under the roof to see that boy. You and me are nigh the same size, and we can settle right here. You tried me once before, maybe you want another dose. Stir a peg to prevent this thing and I'll drive your head into your shoulders same as I would a wedge in a split log."
Pitman glared helplessly, and then he showed defeat. With his eyes on the ground, and writhing from beneath Henley's hand, he said:
"The boy hain't bad off, nohow!"
"Well, we'll see what Doc Stone has to say about it," Henley retorted. "He's authority, an' you hain't."
Pitman had no reply ready. They heard the gate open and close, and then on the still air came the gentle voice of Dixie speaking from the attic window. "Come right in, Doctor, and up the ladder. Be careful and don't stumble. I'll hold the candle for you."
Pitman sullenly turned away. Henley watched him as he went into the stall of a stable and struck a match to light his pipe. Leaving him, Henley went back to the farm-house and sat down on the steps of the porch. The light from the attic window lay on the lush green grass before him, and he kept his eyes upon it. There was a tread on the floor behind him as soft as that of a cat. It was Mrs. Pitman in her bare feet. She held her tattered shoes in her hand. She touched him on the shoulder.
"I hope you an' Sam didn't—come to licks," she whispered.
"No, he's all right," was the gentle reply. "I had totalk sharp, Mrs. Pitman, an' I'm sorry it was here at his own house."
"Well, I'm glad the doctor come," she conceded, slowly. "I was afeard to put in while Sam was talkin'. He gits madder at me 'n he does to all the rest combined. I'm sort o' feard the boy is bad off, myself."
"Yes, he's bad off," Henley nodded, grimly. "If it was a light case Doc Stone would have been down before this. You may depend on it, it's serious."
Muttering inarticulately, the woman crept away. Henley remained bent forward, his eyes on the shifting shadows before him. He looked at his watch; two hours had passed. The closing of a rear door and the resounding tread of a pair of hobnailed boots on the lower floor told him that Pitman had entered the house and was going to bed. He saw Dixie's shadow in its frame on the grass, and went out to the fence and looked up. She was there, and she leaned over the little sill and nodded. "I only wanted to know if you was still there," she said, in a low tone. "Joe—" But the doctor evidently had called her, for she looked back into the room and vanished. Henley saw two shadows bending forward, and he strode back and forth along the fence, a fierce suspense clutching his heart. Presently the doctor, a middle-aged, full-bearded man, with a gentle manner, crept down the ladder and walked softly across the porch. Henley joined him at his buggy in the road.
"How is he, Doc?" he inquired, his fears deepened by the physician's silence, as he stood between the wheels of the buggy and fumbled with the reins wrapped around the whip-holder.
"Awful, awful!" Stone said, grimly. "Not one chance in five hundred. Malignant pneumonia. Neglected case. I've left medicine and instructions. I can't stay—would if I could—case of child-labor down the road—nobody else to attend to it. I'll be back before morning.That will be the crisis. He's in splendid hands; a trained nurse couldn't be better."
"Anything I can do, Doc?" Henley swallowed a lump of emotion that had risen in his throat.
"Not a thing; but you might stay right here. Miss Dixie might—if anything happened—she might need you. She's a plucky little woman, and it might be best for her to have some sort of company. She is wrought up. She loves the boy as a mother would her own child, and yet she is calm and steady."
Henley leaned on the fence and watched the vehicle disappear in the misty moonlight which seemed to fall like a mantle from the mountain. He was resting his head on the fence when he felt a light touch on his arm. It was Dixie.
"He is sleeping," she whispered. "The doctor said it would be good for him. Oh, Alfred, it's pitiful, pitiful! I'm glad to see that you feel like you do. He loves you; he has spoken of you scores of times, and, when I told him just now that you was down here watching, he was glad. I wonder why God tears a human soul to pieces like this. If Joe is taken to-night I don't think I could ever get over it. Oh, Alfred, my heart yearns over him. At this minute I could ask for nothing better than to be allowed to work for that child all the rest of my life." Tears stood in her wonderful eyes, and her breast, under its thin covering, rose and fell tumultuously.
"You are a sweet, good girl, Dixie." Henley's voice sounded new to himself. "You are the noblest woman that ever drew the breath of life. As the Lord is my Redeemer, I'd give all I possess on earth to help you to-night."
Their eyes met in a strange gaze of wonderment. "I believe it," she said, simply, while a sad smile touched her pulsing lips. "Yes, I believe it. But I must go back."
He sat under the beechnut-tree watching the attic window till the eastern sky above the mountains began to take on a grayish cast. Now and then through the long vigil Dixie would come to the window and look down on him, only to nod knowingly and retire, as if content with his mute companionship.
It was almost dawn when the doctor came.
"I was delayed," he explained as he sprang out of his buggy; "bad case of labor—had to use instruments, but successful." He hurried to the gate without hitching his horse. "How is he?"
"I can't say, Doc—you'd better see for yourself."
The yellow light was filling all the sky with resplendent glory when Dixie, her face wan and wearied, came down the ladder. Henley's heart sank at the first sight of her, but it bounded when she had seen him, for the rarest of smiles broke about her mouth and eyes.
"He's going to get well, Alfred!" she cried, and she extended her hand with the warm confidence of a child toward a trusted friend. He let it rest in his as he walked with her to the gate, wondering over the good news, wondering over the delight with which her touch was firing his being.
"Yes, the worst is over," she went on. "The doctor says with good nursing and watching he'll pull through. He is going to stay with him while I run home and do up the things, then I'll come back and relieve him. He is going to give Pitman a tongue-lashing, and says he'll appear against him in court if he doesn't act different. As soon as Joe can be moved we are going to bring him to my house. Oh, Alfred, won't that be glorious? There I can give him everything he needs, and a clean, cool, airy room to get well in. Weak as he was, he cried with actual joy when he heard the doctor say he could come. Alfred, do you know we all ought to be ashamed of ourselves for complaining in this life, and wanting more andmore of the trashy baubles. Right now I'm so happy I feel like flying. Look at that sunrise! We couldn't have seen it like that if we'd been in our beds with our eyes shut; we couldn't feel this way if we hadn't dragged through all that pain and anxiety last night. I've got to write a letter and mail it before I come back. Jasper Long was to come over Sunday, you know, but I can't give the time to him. I'll ask him to come Sunday after next."
"It will disappoint him mightily," Henley said, a sudden feeling of aversion to the subject on him. "It will break the fellow all up. He's been counting the days and hours."
"I can't help it." Dixie shrugged her shoulders indifferently, her head down. They were now in the little wood that lay between Pitman's farm and her cottage. To the leaves and branches of the chestnut and sassafras bushes that bordered the little-used road the night mists and silvery cobwebs clung, magnified by their coating of dew and the yellow light.
"I don't know as I ever saw a fellow quite so much concerned and anxious," Henley's strangely tentative voice produced. "I saw him over there the other day, and he had lots to say. He means to—to get you if he possibly can. He's planning a fine house, and said he was going to tell you about it when he come over. He says women know better about such things than men, and is going to offer you full sway. To do him credit, there ain't nothing little about Long. He'll do right, I reckon, by any woman he pledges his word to. I'd hate to—to think I'd fetched you together if—if he wasn't all right—that is, honest and upright."
"I know that," Dixie said. "But let's not talk about him, or his fine house, or his money, or his good intentions. He don't seem, somehow, to fit one bit into my feelings this morning. He's a cold-blooded businessproposition, and last night's terror and this morning's joy has filled me to here"—she held her tapering hand under her plump chin and laughed—"well, with some'n different from him. The truth is, I don't care if I never see him again. That's a fact, Alfred. I feel like I'm on the up-hill road in single harness, anyway, since I am out of debt to Welborne, and owe you, instead. When are you going to send that note over for me to sign?"
"Never, if I can help it," he said. "I've let men owe me without note or security, why should I make you sign up for a trifle like that?"
"Well, to tell the truth, I like it as it is," she answered, with a fine smile and a rippling laugh that woke the echoes in the quiet spot. "It is such a sweet proof of your friendship. Ain't it funny how me 'n you have been mixed up in things? You know me as well as I know myself, Alfred. You've helped me, and I hope I have you—some. I don't know; I hope I have."
"More than anybody else in the world," he said, fervently.
They had come to where their ways separated, and, with his hat in his hand, and his heart full of an inexplicable, transcendental something, he stood under the trees and watched her move away.
ON the day following Long's second visit to Dixie, Henley's affairs took him to Carlton. He was at the cotton-compress making arrangements to have a quantity of cotton prepared for shipment, when he met one of Long's clerks.
"Have you seen Mr. Long?" the young man asked.
"No, I've just got in," Henley answered. He could not have explained the fact, not being given to self-analysis, but he had vaguely determined that he would make every possible effort to avoid the storekeeper. In spite of his good intentions to aid Dixie in the contemplated alliance, he had come to regard it as altogether too incongruous an affair to be viewed favorably. What right had any man to her? What manner of man could possibly be worthy of her, much less the stupid blockhead who was thrusting himself upon her as Long was?
"Well, he's looking for you, Mr. Henley," the clerk said. "It must be important, for he's been to the bank and post-office three times since he heard you'd got in. It really looks like he's in trouble of some sort."
"Business gone crooked?" Henley inquired, as he watched the clerk's face with almost anxious eyes. "Maybe he's been buying futures?"
"Oh no, it ain't that!" the young man hastened to say. "He don't speculate in anything. He's dead sure of everything he touches. No, it ain't that, and business never was brisker, but we boys are doing it all. He ain'tmuch help; don't do anything but write letters and tear 'em up, and talk about marryin' to every man, woman, an' child that happens in. He was all right and sound, and regular as a clock, till you fetched that girl in from over your way and introduced him. Come down right away, Mr. Henley. I'll tell 'im I saw you."
As Henley turned away to attend to his consignment of cotton in the office of the compress he bit his lip and frowned darkly.
"If the dang fool thinks I'm going down there to be buttonholed for hours to hear his tale of woe, he's certainly off his nut," he muttered, angrily. "I've got other matters to attend to. I don't believe she is at all struck with him, nohow. It don't look like she'd put 'im off like she does and keep him floundering in so much hot water if she thought much of him. He was there yesterday. I wonder what ails him now? She didn't take 'im out to church. Little Joe is at her house, but he is doing well enough for her to spare the time; I wonder if she was ashamed to be seen out with him after that first splurge. I don't know; she certainly is a plumb mystery to me."
His business over, he skirted around Long's establishment and made his way through an isolated alley to the wagon-yard where he had left his horse and buggy. He was just congratulating himself on his escape from the storekeeper, when Long suddenly broke upon his vision as he plunged incontinently through the big gateway. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and with a face drawn and serious, the storekeeper came striding toward him.
"Hello!" he panted. "I've been everywhere looking for you. You are as slippery as an eel, and as hard to catch as a flea. I want to see you bad, Alf. It's a particular matter. I can't let it rest."
"I was busy, and I hain't any too much time left on my hands now." Henley looked at the sun and thenat his watch. "You'll have to talk fast, Long. Seems to toe there's a lot o' hitches in my affairs here lately. This 'un to see, and that 'un to talk to, and—"
"I'm in trouble, Alf, old man." Long laid a red, perspiring hand on his friend's shoulder and bore down heavily. "I was out yore way yesterday. I tried to see you as I started home, but didn't know where to find you. Alf, I can't jest somehow make out that little trick. Looks like she's sorter shifty. In the first place, havin' to postpone the trip on account of that sick young brat that ain't no blood kin to anybody concerned sort o' knocked me off my props, and then, when the daydidcome round, very little was done—that is, in therightdirection."
"You—you'll have to have patience," Henley remarked, insincerely. "If you can't hold in and take things as they come you'd better call the deal off. I started you; I can't lay down everything and keep—keep telling you what to do and say. Life's too short and makes too many claims on a fellow."
"I want you to say a good word for me, Alf." Long wiped his anxious mouth with his bare hand and tugged at his mustache. "She believes the sun rises and sets in you. Looks to me like it's Alfred did this, an' Alfred said that, an' Alfred thinks so and so and does so and so, with every breath she draws. For a while I 'lowed it was because she was grateful to you for helpin' her out in the marryin' line, but she don't seem to want to marry much, nohow. She'd listen to you, though, if she would to any man alive, and something has to be done."
"Well, I reckon the little womanisfriendly to me." Henley avoided the fiercely anxious stare of his flurried companion. "She's done me good turns, and I've tried to respond."
"She'd fight for you tooth and toe-nail," Long declared. "I know from experience. Why, I justhappened to say one little, tiny thing about you, and la! she flew at me like a hen fightin' for her brood. I meant no harm. I'd have said the same thing to your face, as I am saying it now. Me 'n her was talking about the way men dress these days, and I said, without meanin' any harm, that it was naturally expected that chaps here in a town like Carlton would be more up to date than at the foot of the mountains where you live, and remarked that you made no great pretence in the clothes you wore, in fact, that I thought you went just a little bit too careless for a man as young and well-off as you are."
"Huh, you told her that, did you?" Henley's cheeks reddened against his will. "Well, I don't go much on style, in hot weather, anyway. I never did want to be called a dude."
"Of course not, but what you reckon she done? She leaned back in her chair while I was a-talking an' laughed like she'd bust herself wide open. She pointed down at my new tan shoes and green socks and wanted to know if things like them was style, and asked me why I kept my gloves on in the house. She wanted to know if I let my yaller-bordered handkerchief stick out of my upper pocket because I was afraid folks wouldn't see it, an' if I kept a cheaper one to blow my nose on. You may know, Alf, that all the good-dressers here at Carlton—and I pride myself I'm amongst 'em—have their suits pressed once a week to make 'em set right, but she said my pant-legs looked like they was lined with pasteboard, and that my high collar looked like a cuff upside down. Of course, I couldn't get mad, for she was joking all through, and laughin' pleasant-like. But, Alf, I must say she's fallin' off in her meal record. You know she made such a fine spread the first time that I naturally expected some'n out of the common again. I saved myself up for it. I didn't take on a big breakfast before I left homebecause I told myself, I did, that I'd appreciate her fine fixings all the more. So you can imagine how I felt when she marched me out, with them old women, and set me down to—well, a body oughtn't to criticise what's set before 'em in a friend's house, but, Alf, that really was the limit. I can tell you just exactly what we had. I'll never forget it. It was plain pork and beans, and boiled cabbage, and sliced tomatoes, and hard cornbread. She hadn't put a sign of an egg in it, and cornbread without eggs ain't fit to eat. It looks like Mrs. Hart had had some dispute with Dixie about it, too, for the old lady kept whining and telling me it wasn't her fault, that she thought Dixie was going to set in and fix up proper, but that Dixie wouldn't listen to reason, and why, the old lady said, she was unable to understand, for the like had never happened before. Dixie didn't make any excuses, but set at the head of the table and dished out that stuff as if it was the best afloat. 'Won't you pass yore plate for more beans?' she wanted to know, and 'Won't you try some of the butter with the cornbread?' I reckon I made a mistake by speaking of what a fine spread she got up the last time, for she kind o' tilted her nose in the air, an' said she 'lowed the weather was too hot to stand over a hot cook-stove unless it was someextra occasion."
"She's got lots to do," Henley said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "She's undertaken to nurse that little boy back to health, and he takes up a lot of her time."
"I reckon he does," Long said. "Looks like me an' her'd hardly get settled in our chairs on the porch before her mammy would call out that Joe wanted water, or Joe wanted to set up, or what not. It was more like hard work than any day of courtin' I ever put in. But now, Alf, I'm coming to my chief trouble. I want her, and I want her bad. I hardly sleep at night for thinking about her sweet, pretty face, and industrious habits, andwhat a bang-up wife she'd make, but I don't get nowhere. The minute I come down to hard-pan she wiggles away like a scared tadpole in shallow water. I done a thing, and I don't know whether it was a big mistake or not, and that is the main thing I want to see you about. It was just before I left, an' we was standin' at the gate, nigh my hoss and buggy. It had got sorter dark, and—well, I'll tell you all about it. Alf, I've heard fellows say (and they was men that had had experience with women, too)—I've heard 'em say that the chap that dilly-dallies with a woman, and always acts as sweet as pie, never makes no headway. Them fellows say you've just got to be sorter firm with a girl that won't make up her mind—that women like to have a man show that he ain't scared out of his senses when he's with 'em. And so I had all that in mind, you understand, when I made my last set at her there in the dark. I saw nobody wasn't looking, and I catched hold of her hand, I did, and held on to it though she pulled and twisted with all her might. I told her I was bound to have a kiss, and I pulled her up agin me and tried to take it. I couldn't manage it, though, and, by gad! she got loose and slid through the gate, and went in the house and slammed the door in my face."
"She ought to have knocked your head off, you low-lived fool!" cried Henley. He was white in the face, and his eyes had a dangerous glare in them. His breath came rapidly and with an audible sound. "For a minute I'd pull you down here and stomp the life out of you!"
"Why, Alf! Alf! have you plumb lost your senses?" Long gasped. "Why, why, good Lord, man! Why, Alf—"
"Don't Alf me!" Henley cried. "Get out of my sight or me 'n you'll mix right here! I didn't introduce you to that gentle girl to have you pull her around like a housemaid and force your foul lips to hers. I introduced youas aman, not a bar-room roustabout. No wonder she hain't took to you—no wonder she don't want to tie herself down for life to you!"
Henley had sprung into his buggy and taken up the whip and reins. "Stand out of the way!" he cried. "You've imposed on my friendship, and I don't want you ever to mention this matter to me again. I'm heartily ashamed of my part in it, and I don't want to be reminded of it."
Long tried to stop him, but, still white and furious, Henley lashed his horse, and the animal bore him out of the yard and into the street. "I ought to have given him one in the jaw!" Henley fumed. "I'll be sorry I didn't the longer I think about it—the low-lived, dirty brute!"
ALL the next day as Henley performed his duties at the store the hot sense of Long's stupid conduct brooded over him. One moment he was fired with fury over the man's sheer vanity, the next he was bitterly accusing himself for having been the primary cause of putting Dixie in a disagreeable position. What would she think of him, he asked himself over and over, for introducing such a despicable creature to her hospitality and good graces?
It was near sunset when he saw her pass the store, going toward the square. He went to the porch in front, unnoticed by the busy Cahews and the drowsy Pomp, and saw her, much to his surprise, enter the court-house yard, a place seldom visited by ladies. She was going up the walk to the arching stone entrance when she met the ordinary of the county, and Henley saw her pause and speak to him. The elderly, gray-haired gentleman stood for several minutes in a listening attitude, his hand cupped behind his ear, for he was slightly deaf. Presently Henley saw the two turn toward the building and enter it side by side.
"I wonder what on earth the little trick's going there for at this time of year," Henley mused. "It ain't tax-paying time."
The sun was down when she came out. He saw her coming and got his hat, timing himself so that he would meet her, as if by accident, and walk home with her.His calculations could not have been more accurate, for she was in front of the store when he came out.
"Oh," he said, "it's you! I thought I saw you pass just now. I'm going your way. I wanted to inquire how your little patient is."
"Oh, he's tiptop!" she cried, a delicate flush of tender enthusiasm on her face, a sparkle in her eyes. "Dr. Stone says he's mending twice as fast at our house because the little fellow is so happy there. When I'm off at work he's petted half to death by them two old women who haven't had anything better than a cat to pamper up since I got out of their clutch."
"And old Pitman let you move him?" Henley half questioned, as he suited his step to hers. "How did you manage it?"
"Me and the doctor put up a job on him," she laughed. "Dr. Stone wanted to help me gain my point, and he had the sharpest talk with old Sam you ever heard. The law was going to take him in hand for violating his contract in regard to the boy, and Dr. Stone would have to appear against him. But he told Sam that if he'd turn the boy over to me till he got well, he thought the whole thing might drop."
"Good job!" Henley chuckled. "Sam's a hard nut to crack."
Dixie raised her long lashes in a steady stare at him. "Guess what I've been doing at the court-house," she said. "I've been engaged in an odd thing for this modern day of enlightenment. Maybe you think slavery is over—maybe you think the Yankees wiped it clean out forty years ago, but they didn't. I've turned the wheels of Time back. I laid down the cash and bought a real live slave to-day. I didn't have to dig up as much as two thousand, which, I understand, was the old price for stout, able-bodied, hard workers, for the one I bought was a little sick one. Alfred, I actually bought littleJoe to-day. I paid Sam Pitman twenty-five dollars to get him to release all his claims without any rumpus. I've adopted him. Judge Barton has fixed up the papers good and stout, and says nothing can take him from me as long as I do my part by him. Alfred, I'm so happy that I want to shout at the top of my lungs."
"You have adopted him!" Henley exclaimed, in wondering surprise. "Well, well, what won't you do next? Of all the things on earth this knocks me off my feet, and you already loaded down with responsibilities!"
"I don't care," Dixie laughed. "I'd welcome more like that, and never complain. You ought to have seen Joe when I told him Sam had agreed to let him go, and that I was to be his mother. If you could have seen the angelic look on that thin, white face you would have known that life is eternal, and that the spirit is all there is to anything. He stared straight at me with his pale brow wrinkled as if it was too good to be so, and then when I convinced him, he put his arms around my neck and hugged me tight, and sobbed and sobbed in pure joy."
Dixie was shedding tears herself now, and, with a heaving breast and lowered head, she walked along beside her awed and silent companion. They had entered a wood through which the road passed, and there seemed to be a hallowed stillness in the cool, grayish touch of the coming night that pervaded the boughs and foliage of the trees. Beyond the wood a mountain-peak rose in a blaze of molten gold from the oblique rays of the setting sun, but here the night-dews were beginning to fall and the chirping insects of the dark were waking. In the marshy spots frogs were croaking and snarling, and fireflies were cutting, to their kind perhaps readable, hieroglyphics on the leafy background. Presently she wiped her eyes, and smiled up at him.
"What a goose I am!" she said. "As old as I am, I'llcry if you crook your finger at me. You went to Carlton yesterday, didn't you?"
"Yes," he replied, glad to see her emotion over, uplifting and rare as its nature was.
"Did you happen to see my young man?" A smile he failed to see in the shadows was playing sly tricks with her lineaments.
"Youryoung man? You mean—"
"You know who I mean. I mean my beau—Mr. Jasper Long, Esquire, merchant, cotton-handler, and rich capitalist."
"Yes, I saw him," Henley said, reluctantly. "I didn't make a point of looking him up. He ran about searching for me. I've washed my hands of that—that matter, Dixie. I ain't no hand at match-making, nohow. It ain't my turn. I get all mixed up, and blunder at it. I'll never set myself up to pick out a—a suitable mate for any woman again. There ain't none in existence—there ain't none half good enough for you, nohow. It makes me sick to—to think about a fellow like—well, no better in many ways than this here Long is—having the gall to think he—that you'd be willing to live with him the rest of your days as if there was a single thing in common betwixt you. He told me about what he done—what hetriedto do out at the fence when he started off the other night, and,well—"
"Well what?" she cried, eagerly, the corners of her mouth curving upward as she eyed him covertly.
"Why, you know well enough what the fool done, Dixie!" Henley said, unaware of the meshes into which her curiosity was leading him. "When he told me about it, in his offhand way, as if he had just done an ordinary, every-day act, I come as nigh as peas mashing his big, flathering mouth. I've been boiling mad ever since. I rolled and tumbled in bed last night, and it's stuck to me all day. Somehow I just can't shake it off."
"You mean, Alfred"—and she paused at the roadside, and put out her hands to his arms, and studied his face with the eagerness of a child searching for the confirmation of something hoped for and yet not absolutely attainable—"do you mean that it actually made you mad when he told you. Tell me how; tell me why. You wouldn't have—felt that way if—if it had been some other girl, would you?"
"How do I know?" Henley cried, hot from the memory of the thing spoken of. "I don't know whether I'd feel mad or not. I never tried it. It is the first time I was ever up against a thing as aggravating as that was. The idea of him actually trying to kiss you, and—and put his arms around you, and holding to you, and—and—"
"He's a bad, mean thing, ain't he, Alfred?" And her merry laugh rang through the quiet wood, plunging him into deeper mystification than ever. "But of course he couldn't know that I'd not be willing to be hugged and kissed right there at the fence, with a crippled woman peeping out at the window, and a half-blind one standing by, begging for a report of what's taking place. Before you married, Alfred, I'll bet you selected a better place than that when you wanted to kiss a girl. That fellow lives in a big town and I live here in the backwoods, but I can learn him a thing or two."
"You can't fool me." Henley was sure of his ground now. "You wouldn't let that chump kiss you at any time or at any place. I was a fool to ever mention him to you; he ain't worthy to tie the shoes of a woman as noble and sweet and pretty as you are."
"Go it, go it, Alfred!" A delicate flush of delight had overspread her face, which was wreathed in smiles. There was a twinkling light in her eyes, and her laugh rang out sweeter and more merrily than ever. "If Jasper Long only knowed how to say nice things in your roundabout way I'd marry him if he was as poor as Job'sturkey. You never have told me in so many words that—that you like my looks or—or likeme, as for that matter; but when you get worked up, the sweetest things in heaven or earth slip out when you don't know it."
But grimly unpleasant thoughts had fastened themselves on Henley's bewildered brain, and he could only stare at her in sheer agony of suspense.
"Then you may—youmaymarry him, after all!" he said, under his breath. "You haven't fully decided yet. You may conclude that you and him—" His voice broke, and, like a dumb animal brought to bay, he stood staring at her, his mouth open, his lower lip quivering.
A great change came over her. She seemed to hesitate an instant, and then she took his inert hand in both of hers, drew it up and held it fondly against her throbbing breast. "Love—the right sort, Alfred—is the sweetest, holiest thing in all the world. It is the first breath of real heaven that men and women feel here on earth. When two people love each other—like we—like they ought to love one another, they both know it as plain as we know that sky full of stars is over us right now. They feel it in the way their pulse beats when their hands meet; they hear it in their voices when they speak; they see it in each other's eyes; they love to be together, and feel like something has gone wrong when they ain't. That's real love, Alfred, and if the man is tied up in a way God never meant him to be, and if the woman is loaded down with burdens till her fresh young shoulders are bent and ache night and day, still the thought of their love may be always in their hearts and make life seem one continual day of sunshine and music."
"Oh, Dixie, you mean—" His voice broke, and he could only stare at her as if waking from a deep dream of perplexity into complete understanding.
She nodded, kissed his hand reverently and released it. They walked on without a word between them till theyreached the point where their ways parted. He would have detained her, but she said:
"No, not now, Alfred. I see somebody on your porch. I think it is your wife. We must be careful to do no wrong in the sight of the world. You owe that poor woman all the happiness you can give her. To think of what we might want would be downright selfishness. We know what we know, and that is sweet enough. Don't think of me marrying anybody. I've got Joe and my duties, and—and you know what else. I shall never complain again—never! Good-bye."