Charles sat down on the veranda and Mary turned away. Rowland was bent over his writing and did not look up, so deeply was he absorbed in what he was recording. He had a small bottle of ink on the floor at his side, into which he dipped an old pen which was so sharp at the point that it kept sticking into the cheap paper he was using. Mary reappeared very soon, now wearing her becoming hat and a great pair of cotton gloves.
"Father," she said, teasingly, as she stood beside him, a hand on his threadbare coat at the shoulder, "I saw a list of men in the paper the other day that were being sent to the chain-gang for all sorts of crimes. There was a Jasper Rowland in the lot, and his son Thomas. Had you not better write to them? Perhaps they may furnish an important link in our history."
Rowland looked up and smiled indulgently at her and then at Charles. "She is always poking fun at me like that," he said. "Of course there are off-shoots from the main tree like those she mentions, but I assure you, sir, that they are rare. Besides, such cases often come from families who have once been high up in the world. I am afraid that the idleness and affluence of the old slave period have left their stamp on many of our best families. I know that my own boys—"
"Stop, father!" and Mary actually put her gloved hand over the old man's lips. "You must not bring Kenneth and Martin into such a classification. I know what you started to say, and you shall not to Mr. Brown. My brothers are idle, fun-loving, and wild, but they are not dishonorable."
"Oh, well, have it your way," Rowland gave in. "I think they are all right in many ways, but they are worrying the life out of you by the way they are carrying on. It seems to me that if they had a high sense of honor, they—"
"Now, Mr. Brown," Mary said, quickly, "I won't listen to what he is saying. You'll get the idea presently that my poor brothers are worse than thieves."
"Oh no," Charles tried to say, lightly, as they went down the steps and turned toward the side of the house. "I'm sure I understand about your brothers."
To his surprise, Mary's face had clouded over. It seemed as if she were about to shed tears, for her wondrous eyes were misty. He heard her sigh, and she was silent for several minutes as they went down the path toward the cotton-field. Presently she looked straight into his face. She tried to smile, and then gave up the attempt with a little shake of her head.
"I really am in great, great trouble over my brothers," she faltered. "I didn't want to tell my father, for it will do no good and it seems to me that he is already losing his natural love for them; but this morning I heard from Mrs. Dodd that they were over at Carlin last night, cutting up frightfully—drinking, gambling, and what not. Oh, I don't know how I can bear much more of it. Do you know, Mr. Brown, that since my mother's death these boys, although they are older than I am, have seemed almost like sons of mine? I worry, worry, worry. I lie awake night after night when they are away like this, and even when they are here I watch their every look and tone to see if—if they are about to break out again. I'll have gray hairs—I know I shall—and that very soon."
A keen pang of remorse passed through the listening wanderer. He was recalling certain incidents in his own life, the anxiety and tears of his own mother just prior to her death. For a moment he was almost oblivious of the sweet face into which he was blankly staring. But his expression must have been sympathetic, for Mary suddenly remarked:
"I don't know why I am talking so freely with you about them, Mr. Brown. I really never mention my brothers to my best friends—their faults, I mean—but here I am telling you the worst about them. You seem wonderfully gentle and sympathetic and—and—" She choked up, wiped her fluttering lips with her gloved hand and dropped her eyes.
"I want to aid you," he said, deeply moved, "and I will do everything in my power. Look at me, Miss Rowland. I don't want to pass for better than I am. I want to start right with you. The habits your brothers have were once my own. I owe my wandering life to them. For a year I have been free from the old habits. I hope I shall remain so. I sometimes feel that I shall never, never fall back. I feel so now more strongly than I ever did, because your trouble shows me so plainly how terribly wrong I was."
"Oh, it doesn't make any difference what you once were," Mary said, earnestly. "It is what you are now that counts. I understand you better than I did at first. I see why you are living as you are, away from kindred and friends, and I am glad you told me. It is a great thing to trample an old weakness underfoot and rise up on it. Oh, do you know, what you say makes me hope that my brothers, too, may change! Oh, they must, they must! They cannot go on as they are."
Nothing more was said till they reached the cotton-field, which was a level fertile tract of land containing about ten acres. Beyond it lay another tract about the same size, which was planted in corn, while another smaller field adjoining was given over to wheat. Under a tree at the side of the path lay some hoes, and Mary took one and gave him another.
"See, this is all you have to do," she began, lightly, going to the first cotton-plant in the nearest row and cutting the weeds about it with the hoe. "You can 'kill two birds with one stone'—loosen up the earth's surface and destroy the weeds at the same time. I'm sure you don't have to be shown which is the cotton."
"Oh no! I see that plainly," and with the other hoe Charles set in on the next row, and side by side they worked forward.
"Splendid! splendid!" Mary cried, pausing and smiling at him from her sweet, flushed face. "Surely you have used a hoe before this."
"Only once, in a little garden at a summer resort," he said. "Then it was cabbages and beans."
"But you really are beating me!" she cried, "and it is better done. See! I've left some and you haven't. Your row is as clean as a barn floor before a dance, and your stroke is deep and firm."
They worked to the ends of the two rows and were about to start back when an iron bell on a post at the kitchen door rang. They saw Zilla with her hand on its rope, staring at them fixedly.
"That is for us," Mary explained. "Dinner is ready, and Aunt Zilla has a fit when anybody's late. We all try to obey that bell. It was put there long before the war. It was used—you see it is a large one—to call up the slaves. My grandfather had a regular code of signals which he used to communicate with his overseer. In that day there were negro uprisings, slave runaways to be stopped, and all sorts of outlandish things that are now out of date. Girls like me, for instance, never worked in the field those days, but it is better this way. I know I am stronger and more healthy than my mother was, and if I had less to worry about I think I should be happier, for my mother was not a happy woman. I am afraid that she and my father were not as well mated as they ought to have been. I think the match was made by the parents on both sides, a sort of marriage of convenience to tie some property together."
When they were nearing the kitchen door Charles was suddenly embarrassed by the thought that he might be expected to dine with the family; he felt that he was unfit to sit at table with them in his uncouth clothing. Mary seemed to read his thoughts, for she said:
"Don't change your clothes. We have no ceremony here in the working period. We have no time for style. Run up to your room and get the dust off your face and hands, and come right down. Don't make Zilla mad, for all you do."
Coming down, presently, Charles felt a little easier, for Mary was already at the table in the same dress she had worn in the field. She was drinking milk and eating hot biscuits and fried spring chicken.
"You see I didn't wait for you," she laughed, "and you must not wait for any one in the future, either. When the bell rings sit down and eat. It is the only way. Father is not coming, you see. He has struck another Rowland, a loyalist in the Revolution. Do you know, father went all the way to Charleston, South Carolina, last summer, to consult an old will. He spent money we needed to pay farm-hands with, but he had a glorious time. He was entertained in an old historic mansion which had belonged to some of the Rowlands, and brought home photographs of it, and of old tombstones and maps of the first settlers. Oh, he'll bore the life out of you if you let him! He has never been sat down on but once. Old Judge Warner, who went through the war with father, was with us overnight not long ago, and after supper father got out his charts, books, coats of arms and began. The judge listened for a while, then suddenly said:
"'Say, Andy, I'm going to be frank with you. I never have been interested in myownancestry. Wouldn't it seem odd to you if I was interested inyours?'"
Charles laughed heartily, for the girl had managed to put him quite at his ease. Besides, he was ravenously hungry and Zilla had brought a big platter of fried chicken and a plate heaping with hot biscuits and put them before him. A pot of coffee stood near him, from which he was expected to help himself. A door of the room was open, showing a flower-garden full of blooming rose-bushes. The midday sun beat down on it. Bees were hovering over the flowers. In some apple-trees close to the door birds were flitting about and chirping. A rooster was crowing lustily at the barn; the cawing of a crow came across the fields. To the wanderer all nature seemed to be swelling, bursting with joy. As he looked into the face of the girl across the table something seemed to tell him that a veritable new life had begun for him, and that she, in some way, was responsible for it. He was full of gratitude to her.
Dinner over, they rose from the table together. "What are you going to do now?" she questioned. "I must tell you that we always take at least an hour for dinner, and on very hot days we don't work till later in the afternoon."
"It is too much fun to stay away from it," he laughed. "It is like playing a new game."
She went with him to the door; she stepped down into the yard. "I must show you a few other things," she said. "That is the blacksmith's shop adjoining the smoke-house. The shop used to be a means of making money. We owned an old slave who was considered the best blacksmith in the county. He used to shoe horses and mend carriages and wagons, but now the shop is seldom used except for the sharpening of tools. Then we hire a blacksmith to come out from Carlin. But he gets three dollars a day, and so we only have him about twice a year."
They were at the old shop now, and Mary drew the great sliding-door open. To her surprise, Charles stepped in, examined the big bellows, forge, and anvil with the air of one who knew what he was about.
"Everything is here," he said, "and in good order."
"What do you know about a shop?" Mary asked, with a smile.
"More than I do about farming," he answered. "The show I was with carried its own shop, and now and then I used to work in it as an assistant. If you will let me, the first rainy day that comes I'll sharpen all the tools."
"Oh, can you—will you?" she cried. "That would be splendid. But if it gets out the neighbors will bore you to death with requests for this or that. You couldn't shoe a horse, could you?"
"Oh yes. That is simple enough," he replied, indifferently. "The big draft-horses we used had to be double shod, and I learned how to do it."
At the door of the shop they parted. Charles went back to the cotton-field and resumed his work there. All the afternoon he toiled. Digging the mellow soil and cutting down the succulent weeds and crab-grass was a fascinating pastime rather than a disagreeable task. The sun sank behind the hills. The dusk fell over the land. Presently he looked up and saw Mary at the end of the row which he was finishing.
"This won't do," she chided him. "In a little while it will be too dark. Didn't you hear the bell?"
He had not, and he stared at her, abashed.
"Well, come on," she said, sweetly. "Aunt Zilla is not angry. It is such an odd thing to see a man willing to work that she was laughing over it. I think she likes you already, and it is queer, for she does not take to strangers readily. She is a close observer and she says that you have a sad, lonely look about the eyes. I didn't agree with her, for you seem very cheerful to me. You are not—not homesick, or—or anything of that sort, are you, Mr. Brown?"
"I think not at all," he answered. "How could I be homesick, for I have no home?"
"Then Aunt Zilla may be right," Mary observed, quietly. "You may be sad because you have no home; perhaps that is what she reads in your face. Now that I come to think of it, you do seem to look lonely and isolated. Somehow I can't imagine your being contented here with us. You are so different, somehow, from our young men. I don't know in what way, particularly, but you are different, and so I am actually afraid that you will decide to—to go somewhere else. If you do, Mr. Brown, don't let anything I have said about—about needing your help stop you."
They were on the path approaching the house; he paused suddenly, and they faced each other. "I wish I could remove those ideas from your mind for good and all, Miss Rowland," he said, almost huskily, in his earnestness. "It is the second time you have mentioned the subject and I want you to understand the truth. My life for the last year has been one of restless torment. I gave up traveling with the circus to settle down on a farm. Something told me I would like it, but nothing told me that I would find work with such kind persons as you and your father. The truth is, I am so contented here that I am afraid"—he was laughing now—"that I shall wake up and find myself in that rumbling freight-train again, with canvas to unload, ropes to stretch, and stakes to drive."
"Well, I'll not bring it up again," she promised, with a sigh of relief. "I wouldn't have done it, but Zilla set me thinking on that line. I do want you to feel at home here, and it is not all selfishness, either. I've had trouble—I'm having plenty of it now—and somehow I feel that you have had more than your share somehow, somewhere."
The words were half tentative; she eyed him expectantly, but he made no response. They were at the veranda now, and he turned into the hall and went up to his room. He found that his bag had come, and, quickly putting on the suit of clothes it contained, he hurried down. The suit was a good, well-fitting one, bought with his old taste for such things, and in the lamplight he presented quite a changed appearance. He remarked the all but surprised look in Mary's face when he met her in the dining-room, but she made no comment. She had not changed her dress, and was waiting for him in her place at the head of the table.
"Father has eaten and gone back to his books," she said. "He takes very little nourishment. That is one good thing in ancestry worship, it saves food in his case. He can live on a biscuit and a glass of milk a day if he is on the track of a fresh twig for our tree."
When supper was over they went out to the front veranda. Leaving Charles seated on the end of it, Mary went into the big parlor behind him. He saw the light flash up as she struck a match and applied it to a lamp. A moment later he heard her playing the old piano. Its tone was sweet and her touch good. She was playing old plantation melodies, some of which he had heard before, and a wonderful sense of peace and restfulness crept over him. Presently, as if drawn by the music, Rowland rose from a rustic seat under an oak on the lawn and came to him.
"She learned that from her mother," the old man whispered. "My wife was graduated at a Virginia college for young ladies, and in her day was considered a fine performer. Mary sings, too, but—There, she is beginning now."
He checked himself, for his daughter was singing an old hymn, and Charles thought her voice was wonderfully sweet and sympathetic. But it suddenly quivered, a lump seemed to rise into her throat, and she stopped. There was stillness for a moment, then Charles heard Zilla's voice.
"Don't give way lak dat, missie!" she said. "Raise yo' pretty haid up. Dem boys is gwine ter come thoo dis spree same as de rest of 'um. Don't give up, chile. Ol' Zilla gwine ter go 'stracted if you do. You is too young en' sweet en' lightsome ter give down lak dat."
"It is those boys," Rowland muttered. "She's like her mother was, full of worry when they start to cut up. As for me, you see, I know that wild oats must be sown. I certainly ought to know, for I cut a wide swath in my young day. It must run in our blood. There was a young Sir George Rowland among the first settlers in South Carolina, and, judging from his will, of which I have a copy, he was as dissolute and extravagant as a royal prince. Yes, yes, blood will tell, and history is only repeating itself in my boys."
He turned into the parlor. Charles heard his voice gently admonishing his daughter, joined to that of Aunt Zilla, and presently Mary was heard ascending the stairs to her room. She had a lighted candle in her hand, and Charles caught a glimpse of her when she was half-way up the flight. She looked to him like an old picture of Colonial days; the light elongated her figure and gave to her trim gown the effect of an elaborate train. He was sure that the impression he had of her at that instant would never leave him.
Saying good night to Rowland, Charles went up to his room and undressed. A few minutes before he had been conscious of a sense of infinite peace and content, but already the feeling was gone. In its place was a growing desire to lift the sinister shadow that hung over the young girl. He could hear her soft step in her room across the hall. He had put out his light and now saw from his window that old Rowland was still strolling about the lawn. Presently all was still in Mary's room. He was very tired, but his brain was too active for sleep. The long straight rows of cotton-plants haunted his mind. In thought he was cutting out the weeds with Mary at his side. He heard again her sweet, merry comments and wise suggestions; he saw the wondrous lights and shadows in her beauteous face and the moving grace of her form. He was her servant; she belonged to the social class which he had renounced forever. Owing to the blight upon his name and character, he could never aspire to be more than a laborer on her father's farm, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but her happiness, and he told himself that she should have happiness if he died to give it to her.
He waked before the sun was quite up the next morning. The pale light reflected from the eastern sky was creeping in at the windows when he opened his eyes. His mind was not clear, and at first he thought he was in his room at his old home. In a half-dreaming state he fancied Michael was at the door, telling him it was time to rise and catch a train. Next he thought he heard Ruth's voice calling to him, as she was wont to do at times before she was out of bed. Then the vague outlines of the old furniture took clearer shape and he sat up. In a flash his new life had reopened before him. He dressed hurriedly and went down-stairs. The front door was open, and the dewy lawn lay in the yellowing light. The peak of the nearest mountain pierced the fleecy clouds. He was turning around the house to go to the cotton-field when the blind of Mary's room was thrown open and she looked down and smiled.
"Good morning!" she cried. "I wonder if you are headed for that cotton-patch?"
He answered that he was, and she laughed.
"Not before you have your breakfast," she commanded. "That is against the rules. It will be ready soon. Wait for me. I'm coming right down."
He went to the veranda and saw her descending. When she came out into the full light from the shadowy house he remarked the lines of care in her face, and they threw a damper on his spirits.
"How did you rest?" she asked.
"Very well," he returned, "but I am afraid that you did not."
She was silent, her head downcast, and he wondered over the impulse that had emboldened him to make such a personal comment. He was about to beg her pardon, when she raised her face and looked at him confidingly.
"Oh, I know I show it, Mr. Brown," she exclaimed, "but I can't help it. I've been half crazy all night long. I slept only a few minutes at a time, and even in my sleep my fears clung to me. It is my brothers. I have worried over them before, but never like this. From what I heard yesterday the spree they are on is the worst they ever had. They were with their vilest associates, moonshiners and gamblers, over at Carlin, drinking harder than ever before."
Here Zilla came to the front door. Catching her mistress's eye, she cried out, excitedly: "Young miss, I see er hoss en' buggy 'way down de road. It got two mens in it. Looks ter me like de boys. Dey is whippin' de hoss powerful en' ercomin' fast."
Ascending the veranda steps, Mary looked down the main road toward Carlin. "Yes, it is my brothers," she said, frowning. "Why they are hurrying so I can't make out. The horse looks as if it is about to drop."
She said no more, but hastened to the front gate, where she stood, her tense hands on the latch, waiting for the vehicle to arrive. In a moment a panting, foaming bay horse was reined in at the gate and the two young men sprang down from a ramshackle buggy.
"Where is father?" Kenneth, the older, a tall, dark young man, asked, hurriedly.
"He is in the library, I think," his sister answered, "Kensy, what is the matter?"
"Oh, don't ask me!" he cried, impatiently, a wild look in his eyes. "Keep the horse there ready, Martin. But never mind. What's the use? It is all in. We'll have to leave the main road, anyway. We must skip for the mountains."
"Oh, brother, brother Kensy, what is it?" Mary cried, in sheer terror, as she clutched his arm.
Drawing it from her impatiently, even roughly, he cried out to Zilla: "Call father! Hurry! No, I'll find him."
"Oh, Martin, Martin, what is it?" and Mary turned to her younger brother, who was short, rather frail-looking, and had blue eyes and reddish hair.
"Nothing, nothing," he said, his glance following Kenneth into the house. "Don't ask me, sis. It is all right."
"But I know something has gone wrong!" Mary cried. "You and Kensy look it; you can't hide it. What is it?"
He shrugged his shoulders, lifted his brows, and then said, reluctantly: "Well, we got in a little scrape, that's all, and had to make a break to get away. The sheriff and a deputy are after us."
"After you! after you!" Mary gasped. "What have you done?"
Martin hesitated sullenly, his eyes on the grass.
"Tell yo' sister de trufe, boy," Aunt Zilla suddenly broke in. "Be ershamed er yo'se'f, keepin' 'er awake all night wid worry. Tell 'er what's de matter. Don't yer see she's half 'stracted over yo-all's doin's?"
"Oh, well," he responded, "it was a little shooting-scrape. Ken and Tobe Keith had a dispute in Gardener's pool-room about an hour ago. Tobe drew a knife. Some say he didn't, but I saw it; I'm sure I saw it. I grabbed him around the waist, and—well, Ken was a little full and had a gun, and while I and Tobe were wrestling he fired."
"And killed him!" Mary cried. "Oh God, have mercy!"
"No, no, don't be a fool, sis! Please don't! He was just wounded slightly, that's all."
"But why did you run away, then?" Mary's pale lips shook as the words dropped from them.
"Because," he frowned—"because some of the mountain boys advised us to, and Sheriff Frazier lived around the corner and had heard the shots. This horse and buggy was loaned to us by Steve Pinkney. He'll be here after them. Zilla, feed and water the horse, please. We've got to get away in the mountains till—till we find out how Keith is."
Mary started to say something, but choked up. She put her arm about her brother's neck, but he gently took it down.
"Don't make it worse than it is, sis dear," he faltered. "We are in trouble, big trouble, this time, but we hardly knew what we were doing. If the fellow lives, we will—"
"If he lives! My God!ifhe lives!" Mary moaned.
Her father and her older brother were coming out on the veranda now. The old gentleman had a book and manuscript under his handless arm. Charles noted that he was not even pale, though a certain expression of irritation rested on his patrician features.
"Yes, leave the horse," he was saying. "Get into the mountains. As you say, you know a good hiding-place. I'll remember the directions to it, and we'll get food to you somehow or other. It may not be serious. The scoundrel was attacking you with a knife, you think?"
"Martin thought so," Kenneth answered, "but I'm not sure of it now. Steve Pinkney says Martin was mistaken, and that is why he advised us to run. I was drinking. My nerves are all shattered. I got mad when I saw Keith and Martin struggling, and fired before I thought. I'm sorry, but if is too late now. We must get away."
"Yes, and before somebody sees you here," Rowland said. "Are you hungry?"
"Yes, but we can't wait," Kenneth answered. "Come on, Martin."
Mary had run to her older brother. She held out her arms; she was sobbing in her white fluttering throat. He took her into his embrace, drew her bare head to his shoulder, and stroked her hair.
"We are bad boys, sis dear," he said, tenderly. "We have not treated you right; no one knows that better than Martin and I, and we are getting paid for it. I hope Keith won't die. God knows I do! I really haven't anything against him. It was just a dispute over a game of poker. He was mad and so was I. Good-by. We must go. They will not find us where we are going."
"Hurry!" she gasped, as she slid from his arms. "Hurry!"
Side by side the two boys hastened toward the barn. The little group saw them pass through the stable-yard, climb over the fence, and vanish in the thicket which was the border of the vast forest that reached out, dank and trackless, into the mountains toward the west.
With a little sigh of despair, Mary sank down on the lowest step of the veranda. Her father looked at her for a moment with a childlike stare of perplexity, and then said:
"Come, come, don't act that way! It won't do any good."
"Come in de house, missie," Aunt Zilla said, gently, and as soothingly as a mother to an ill child. "Dem boys is gwine ter give de sheriff de slip en' dat man will pull thoo. Come on. Yo' breakfust is gittin' cold. Mr. Brown wants ter git ter his wuk in de cotton."
To his surprise, Charles saw Mary sit more erect. It was as if by a superhuman effort she had shaken herself temporarily free from the overpowering disaster.
"Yes, you must have your breakfast," she said, smiling faintly at Charles. "Come, let's go to the dining-room."
At the table he found himself admiring the self-control of both Mary and her father. Charles noted that Mary ate but little, and that little she seemed to take without relish. Rowland had his manuscript at his side at the table, and once he consulted it, as if his mind had reverted to something he had been interested in before the arrival of his sons.
"I am sorry that I did not have the opportunity to present my boys to you," he remarked once. "I told Kenneth who you were and assured him that you had given us evidence of your friendly spirit. He is glad that you have come to help us out with the work. One might not think so from his present conduct, but he hates to see his sister do manual labor in the field."
Mary, now a different creature from what she was the day before, accompanied Charles to the cotton-field after breakfast. "You have done an enormous amount for half a day," she said. "You must not drive yourself like that. I know why you are doing it, but you must not. It would be wrong for us to permit it. From your accent I take you to be a Northerner, but you are acting like a cavalier of the old South. I appreciate it—I appreciate it, but I can't let you do so much."
"What, that?" he began. "As if that were anything! Why, Miss Rowland—" His emotions swept his power of utterance away from him, and he stood, hoe in hand, helpless under the spell of her storm-swept beauty and appealing womanhood. He wanted to aid her more materially. He wanted to offer his services in behalf of her brothers. He would have given his life—in his eyes it was a futile thing at best—for her cause; and yet he knew himself to be helpless. A woman's intuition is a marvelous thing, and when it permits itself to fathom a man's love it is as sure as the law of gravitation. She understood. Her dawning comprehension beamed faintly in her stricken face. He saw her breast rise tremulously and fall.
"I think I know what you started to say," she faltered. "And it is very, very sweet of you when you have known us such a short time. Isn't it strange that it should be like this? I know I can trust you—something makes me feel sure of it—and you have impressed my father the same way, and even critical Aunt Zilla."
He leaned on his hoe-handle. He now felt more sure of his utterance. "I want to help you," he cried. "I know how terribly you must feel over this matter. You are too young and gentle and frail for this dastardly thing to rest on you. I must do something to beat it off. I—"
"There really is nothing," she half sobbed. "As much as I love my brothers I'd rather see them dead than on trial for murder. Why, Mr. Brown, the sheriff wants to put them in that dirty jail at Carlin! I saw it once. The cells are iron cages in the center of big rooms walled about with brick. Oh, oh, oh!"
He longed to comfort her, but there was nothing that he could say. The keenest pain of his entire life seemed to be wrenching his heart from his body. The still fields, the slanting sunlight on the long rows of cotton-plants, the cloud-draped mountains, grimly mocked him in their placid inactivity when it seemed to him that the very universe ought to be striving in her behalf.
"Oh, it will be only a question of time," she moaned. "They can't hide in the mountains long, and if Tobe Keith dies—oh, oh! if he dies—"
She had suddenly noticed a horseman dismounting at the gate. He was fat, rather gross-looking, of medium height, and middle-aged. His hair and eyes were dark, and he had a heavy brown mustache twisted to points, which was after the manner of the mountaineers.
"It is Albert Frazier, the sheriff's brother," Mary explained.
"The sheriff's brother!" Charles started.
"We needn't be afraid of him," Mary said, somewhat confused. "In fact, I think he has come to try to help me. He—he is a—a friend of mine. He has been paying attention to me for almost a year. He sees me. He is coming here. Wait. Don't go to work yet. I want you to meet him."
"Paying attention to you!" Charles's subconsciousness spoke the words rather than his inert lips. It may have been the sheer blight in his face and eyes that caused the girl to offer a blushing explanation of her words.
"I don't mean that we are engaged—actually engaged," she said. "It is only a sort of—of understanding. He says he loves me. He has done us a great many favors. You see he has influence in various ways. But I have never really encouraged him to—to—You know what I mean. But he is very persistent and very hot-tempered, domineering, too. But, oh, what does that matter—what does anything matter? Right now he may be coming to tell us that—that Tobe Keith is dead."
Charles said nothing, for Frazier was near at hand. His keen brown eyes rested on Charles, half inquiringly, half suspiciously. He carried a riding-whip with which he lashed the horse-hairs from his trousers with a quick, irritated stroke.
"Good morning," he said, as he tipped his broad-brimmed felt hat. "Out here giving instructions, eh? I heard you'd hired help."
She made a failure of the smile she tried to force. It was a pale, piteous pretense. "Mr. Frazier—Mr. Brown," she introduced them.
Frazier did not offer his hand, and so Charles did not remove his own from his hoe-handle. He simply nodded. It would have been hard to do more, for instinctively he disliked the man. The feeling must have been returned, for Frazier all but sneered contemptuously.
"I heard of Mr. Brown at the hotel in town," he said. "Circus man, eh. You fellows are always dropping in on us mountain folks. Well, well, we need your help now in the fields. Niggers are no good."
"Have you heard about my brothers?" Mary here broke in.
"Yes. That's what I rode out for, Mary. I knew you'd be crazy. You are funny that way—as if you can keep boys like these two down."
"But how is Keith?" Mary reached forward and caught the lapel of his coat entreatingly. She appeared quite unconscious of what she was doing, and as he answered Frazier took her frail fingers into his burly clasp, and for a moment held them caressingly, a glint of passion in his eyes. Had she been his wife the sight could not have been more painful to Charles. It did not excite his anger; somehow it only heaped fresh despair upon the depression which had almost unmanned him.
"Oh, Keith? Yes, I knew that would be the first question," Frazier said. "And I made special inquiry before I left on that point, for everything depends on it, of course. Well, little girl, nobody can possibly tell yet. Our doctors in town are not expert surgeons, and they can't decide just yet, it seems. The ball is lodged in the stomach somewhere, and they seem to be afraid to probe for it. It was a good-sized piece of cold lead and the fellow may kick the bucket any minute. You see—"
"Stop! She is fainting!" Charles cried.
He sprang forward, but Frazier had put his rough arm about her and began to fan the ghastly face which now rested on his breast.
"By God! so she is!" Frazier said. "Get some water, man. Quick! I can hold her, all right!"
"No, no, don't go!" said Mary, as she opened her eyes, drew herself erect, and stood away from Frazier. "I felt faint, but it is all gone now. Nothing is the matter with me. Go on! Tell me about my brothers."
Frazier glanced at Charles, half smiled, and shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh, you know as much about them as I do, I reckon," he said. "They came this way. I know where they are by this time. I know, but my brother doesn't," and Frazier laughed significantly. "You see it is like this, little girl; my brother happens not to be on to these trips of mine out here to see you. I have my reasons, and good ones at that, for not letting him know. There is a part of my father's estate that is to be divided when either me or John marries, and if he thought that I was thinking of such a thing it might upset him a little. At any rate, he is in the dark about us, so when he started out this morning after your brothers I made it my business to throw him clean off the track. I told him that they had gone exactly the opposite way and that I was sure they would take a train for the West at Tifton, and show him a clean pair of heels."
"Then—then he won't look for them here in the mountains?" Mary panted.
"Not for a while, anyway," Frazier returned. "And that is what I came to tell you, little woman. I'm no fool and I am going to do everything in my reach to keep the boys out of John's clutch till we can tell how Keith gets on. John and I have worked together in tracking men down, and he doesn't dream that I am against him in this. Thanks to me, he and his deputies are working on a false scent altogether, and I'll keep them at it if I turn the world over. You can depend on me, little girl. I'll keep you posted. The boys will be safe where they are for a while, if you will keep them fed."
"But do you think Keith will live?" Mary demanded, tremulously.
"The Lord only knows," Frazier said. "He is awfully low, it seems to me. I reckon there is no use fooling you as to that. You may get bad news any minute. But even if he dies we'll manage somehow to slip the boys away. I know a feller now in the West. I get letters from him. Fifteen years ago he shot a man in—"
"Don't, don't tell me about it!" Mary pleaded, her agonized eyes turning to Charles, as if for protection that was not available from any other source.
"No, what is the use of all that?" Charles blurted out.
"Don't chip in here!" Frazier thundered. "What do you mean by breaking into my talk? Get back to your work! Are you paid to stand here idle?"
There was nothing he could say, and Charles dropped his head for a moment. Mary was staring at him blankly. So vast was the tragedy hovering over her that she quite failed to sense the tension between the two men.
"Come on, let's go to the house," went on Frazier, continuing to scowl at Charles even while he was putting his arm about the girl. "I have to see your father about some money he wants to borrow at the bank. He wants me to indorse a note for him."
"You know what to do, Mr. Brown," Mary said. "It will take you several days to finish the cotton. After that we'll decide what next to do."
Charles doffed his hat and bowed as she turned away, Frazier's arm still about her waist. He went to the unfinished row of cotton-plants and began to work. His back was turned to the receding pair. How different his outlook was from that of the day before! Then a veritable new existence seemed to have opened out before him, an existence that was a divinely bestowed transition from sordid misery to far-reaching happiness. All the ills of life seemed to have taken wing, leaving him free to grow and expand as the plants he was nurturing; but now there was nothing to face but the grim fact that he was a drudging outcast from conventional civilization. As he toiled on his breast ached under a pain that was superphysical. Had he brought it on himself? he wondered. Was all this the inevitable punishment for the reckless folly of his youth? It might be so, he told himself, and the sacrifice he had made for William and Celeste and Ruth was not sufficient. He had caused his dying mother great mental distress; he had led young men astray; he had been ostracized by his club and college fraternity; he had been sentenced by a judge in a police court; he had disgraced his family. He ceased working and looked toward the house. Mary and Frazier were still in sight. The heavy arm was still about the slender waist. The fellow bore himself with the air of a man confident of the prize he was winning, and yet unconscious of its inestimable value. Charles stood staring till they disappeared in the house, then he resumed his work, but without any part of the interest of the day before. A wonderful thing had happened to him. He had scoffed all his life at the idea of a man's supreme devotion to any particular woman, and yet within only a few hours he had found himself bound hand and foot, mind and soul, to a young girl he had never seen before. What had brought it about? Ah, she was suffering and he was suffering! It was the kinship of his soul to hers. But what could come of it? he asked, gloomily. Nothing, not even if she were to withhold her love from her present suitor, for Charles could never prove himself worthy of her. She belonged to a proud old family, and he was virtually a nameless man. For William's sake he had promised to obliterate himself, and he must keep his promise. He toiled on. The sun was hot and the perspiration oozed from him and dampened his clothing. He worked with the despair of a shackled convict bent on forgetting all that lay beyond his prison walls.
The next day was a wet one. Charles heard the rain beating on his window when he waked. Dressing hurriedly, for his watch showed that he was late, he went down-stairs. No one was in sight. Going to the dining-room, he saw Zilla putting his coffee at his plate.
"I heard yer comin'," she said, agreeably. "My white folks ain't up yit. Marse Andy al'ays sleeps late on er wet day, en young miss just got back from town en is in 'er room, tryin' ter res'. She saddled de hoss 'erse'f 'bout midnight en rode off. She said she couldn't sleep nohow widout knowin' how Tobe Keith was gittin' on. I tried ter stop 'er, en so did 'er pa, but she would go."
"And did she get favorable news?" Charles asked.
"He's des de same as he was," Zilla replied, with a sigh. "He's powerful critical. She waited dar all night at de hotel wid Miz' Quinby. One minute she'd hear one thing, and den ergin sumpin' else. Po' chile talk erbout war-times en slave days? Dat po' chile has mo' ter bear dan 'er ma en pa ever went th'oo when dey was all fightin' fer de ole state."
The rain was still falling heavily when he left the table, and as he stood in the front doorway and realized that it was too wet for hoeing, he suddenly thought of the blacksmith shop and the work he had planned to do in sharpening the tools. Glad of something to busy himself with, he went to the shop, kindled a fire in the antiquated forge, and began to work. There was something vaguely soothing in the splash and patter of the rain on the low, blackened roof of split oaken boards, the sucking of the air into the bellows, the creaking of the bellows chains, the ringing of the anvil, and the spray of metallic sparks in the half darkness of the room.
It was near noon. The rain had ceased, though the clouds were still heavy and lowering. He was hammering on a red plowshare when Mary suddenly appeared in the doorway. Her back was to the outer daylight, her face dimly lighted by the slow blaze of the forge. She advanced into the shop, paused and scanned the heap of sharpened tools on the ground near the tub of blackened water which was used for cooling the metal.
"What a wonder you are!" she cried, with an attempt at a lightness he knew she did not feel. "You have already done ten dollars' worth of work this morning. You see I know, for I pay the bills."
"It is nothing," he answered. "I wanted to be busy."
"I heard the ringing of the anvil when I waked, and knew what it meant. Yes, you are wonderful, and I am afraid"—she tried to smile—"that you are too valuable for us. I was thinking about you on my way to town last night. You won't stay here. You can't stand this sort of thing—I mean the awful mess you find us in. I wouldn't blame you for leaving us. Why, I'll be frank with you, Mr. Brown—it is only fair to you as a stranger in this locality. There are plantations only a few miles away where you would find more people employed, where they have some sort of amusement, and where the people you'd work for would not be upset and depressed as we are. I did want to save our crops, now that they are planted, but, facing this other thing, the crops count for nothing—nothing at all. If God would show me a way to save my brothers I'd give my very soul in payment. You don't know—no one could know how I feel. I am stretched on a cross, Mr. Brown. I am praying with every breath I draw, but I am stifling under the dread of what may happen. At this very minute Tobe Keith may—may—" she groaned, leaned against the bellows and stood shuddering, cowed and wild-eyed, under the horror her mind had pictured.
"Don't, don't, please don't!" he cried. "Don't give up. Don't lose hope. There is always hope. I lost it once in—in a great trouble, but I lived through it somehow. You will, too. Some wise man has said that God does not lay any burden on any one that is too heavy to bear. Think of that—believe that; it comforted me once. It is comforting me now in the belief that you will escape from this terrible thing."
"Oh, do you think so—doyou?" and she wrung her hands, lowered her head again, and uttered a little wail that ended in a sob.
He all but reached out his hands toward her in a strange, bold impulse to take her into his arms, but checked himself and stood aghast as he contemplated the catastrophe which might have followed such an unwarranted act. Had he subconsciously leaped back to the free period before his downfall, or, as a regenerated man, had he for an instant felt himself to be on her level? Ah no, it was the kinship again—the kinship of suffering souls.
"I'm sure of it," he repeated. "If I thought otherwise I'd see no good in life at all. Men deserve punishment for the wrong they do, but gentle girls like you must not suffer for the mistakes of men. It will pass over—your cloud will blow away."
"Oh, oh!" and she put her hands to her dry eyes while her shoulders shook. "I hope—you make me hope a little, somehow—that what you say may be true. You comfort me more than everybody else put together. It is your way, your voice, your look. You are a good, kind man, Mr. Brown. How strange that you came just when you did! I'll try to be braver. I'll try to stop thinking that every approaching person on the road is coming to tell me the worst."
"That is right," he said.
"And would you pray—would you continue to pray?" she asked, with the timid simplicity of a child groping in the dark.
Their eyes met steadily. "I don't know how to advise you as to that," he said, after a pause full of thought. "I must confess that I am not religious. I used to pray, as a child, but I don't now."
"Well, I shall keep it up," she said, quietly. "There are moments when it seems to help. I prayed to be allowed to sleep this morning, and I did. You see, I need the strength. If I go to pieces all may be lost, for my father can do nothing."
She turned back to the house. The rain had ceased, though the clouds were still thick and lowering. The forge blazed again; the anvil rang as he pounded the yielding steel into shape. He had forgotten himself and his past; the new existence was buoying him up again. Nothing mattered but the woes which had come to Mary Rowland and the necessity of his shouldering them—fighting them.
When the bell rang for lunch he went into the house. He found Mary in the dining-room, packing some food into a basket.
"It is for the boys," she explained. "I am glad it is clearing up, for I must take it to them."
"You?" he cried, in surprise.
"Yes," she made answer, simply. "Father and I are the only ones who know where the boys are. Father is in town now to wait for news and to attend to some business with Mr. Frazier at the bank. Father would not want me to go, but some one must."
"Might I not go in your place?" he asked, and he actually held his breath while he waited for her reply.
"You don't know the way," she said. "It is hard even for me to find."
He looked at the heavy basket. "But you can't carry that by yourself. May I not carry it for you?"
She glanced at him gratefully. "Would you really care to go?" she inquired. "It is a long walk, and difficult even in dry weather."
"Please!" he said. "You ought not to go alone."
"Thank you; but first get your dinner. I don't want any. I have only just eaten my breakfast."
When they started out, half an hour later, the clouds had lifted somewhat, though they were still full of rain. They went through the barn-yard, climbed over the rail fence, and entered the near-by thicket, which stretched on into the sloping woodland of the mountains. The wet weeds and grass were already dampening her shoes, and, noting it, he paused suddenly.
"You really ought not to expose yourself this way," he protested. "Your feet will be soaked in a very short time."
"It doesn't matter," she said. "Nothing matters, Mr. Brown, but the fate that hangs over my brothers. I think I could wade in water up to my knees for days at a time and not be conscious of discomfort. It isn't one's body that feels the greatest pain, it is the mind, the soul, the memory. The pain comes from the futility of hoping. Life is a tragedy, isn't it?"
"Yes and no," he answered, smiling into her expectant, upturned face, the beauty of which had deepened under her gloom. "I have thought so at times, but there were always rifts in my clouds. There will be in yours."
"How sweet and noble of you!" she said, tremulously, in her emotion. Suddenly he saw that she was studying his face closely, feature by feature. Then she continued, as one rendering a verdict: "Yes, you have suffered. I see the traces of it. It lurks in the tone of your voice; it shows itself in your sympathy for me."
Without revealing his new-found passion for her, which surged within him like a raging torrent, there was nothing he could say. Presently they came to a brook several yards in width and he could see no means of crossing it. She was disturbed for a moment, but to her surprise he stepped into the shallow water, took the basket to the other side and, wet to his knees, came wading back to her.
"You must let me carry you across," he said, smiling.
"No, I'm too heavy." She shook her head.
"I could carry one of you under each arm," he jested. "Come!" He held out his hands. She hesitated. A touch of pink colored her cheeks, and then she came into his arms.
"There," he directed, as he lifted her up, "put your arm around my neck and lean toward me. Don't be afraid. That's right. I must be steady, you know, for there are round stones under my feet, and if I slipped we'd both go down."
Reaching the other side, he put her down and took up the basket. His heart was beating like a trip-hammer. The flush was still on Mary's face.
"You carried me as if I were a baby," she said. "How very strong you are! I could feel the muscles of your arms like knotted ropes. What an odd mixture you are!"
"In what way?" he asked, as they moved on side by side.
"I hardly know," she answered. "Well, for one thing, you seem out of place as a common workman in the fields. You have the manner, the way of—" She broke off, and the flush in her cheeks deepened.
"I've been several things," he admitted, with a sigh. "I ought to know something of life, for I've had many experiences."
"I was in your room this morning," she said. "It is a desolate place for a man of your temperament. I must fix it up. The attic is full of old things—curtains, pictures, and even books. You must be lonely at times. I noticed a photograph on your bureau in a frame. It was that of a child, a beautiful little girl. She was so refined-looking, and so daintily dressed. She resembled you, about the eyes and brow."
Charles stared fixedly. He looked confused. "Yes, I think we do look alike," he finally replied. Probably she expected him to say more, but how was it possible to explain?
"I think I understand," she said, almost in an undertone, as she strode on ahead of him. "I now know why you look homesick at times. You must miss her."
He saw that she did not fathom the truth about the child, but he was not prepared for an adequate explanation and so he remained silent. However, the girl was making deductions.
"It must be," she thought, as she forged her way through the damp bushes still ahead of him. "It is his child. His wife must be living and they are separated, or he would speak of her. Poor fellow!"
For four miles they walked over very uneven, rocky ground. Deeper and deeper they went into the mountains. There were hills to climb in places where there was no sign of path or road; there were yawning gulches to cross; dank, stream-filled cañons filled with dead and leaning trees to pass through. He felt that she was leading him aright, for her step was firm and her progress rapid and sure. Now and then she would look at the western sky where the presence of the sun was indicated by a somewhat brighter spot than the rest of the dun expanse.
"We really must hurry," she kept saying, "for we'll be overtaken by night on our return if we don't get to them pretty soon."
"Have you a landmark to guide you?" he asked.
"Yes, there to the left. Do you see that mountain peak? Well, their hiding-place—it is a little cave they know about—is in the thick jungle at the foot of it, on this side. We can't go all the way in. It would be impossible. I shall get nearer and whistle for them to come out. They know my whistle. They taught me how to do it when I was little. It is like this," and she clasped her hands together tightly, leaving an orifice between the thumbs into which she blew her breath sharply. A keen whistle was produced. "There is no mistaking it," she continued. "They would know it anywhere. Every pair of hands makes a different sound."
Half an hour later they were on the edge of the dense jungle of which she had spoken. A veritable riot of dank undergrowth was massed beneath giant trees and around green, moss-grown boulders. The greater part of it was a miasmatic swamp, the boggy soil of which could not be walked upon with safety even in dry weather. Mary paused on a spot where the ground was firm and folded her hands. "Be still and listen," she said. "If they are there, they will answer. They will know that I'd not whistle if it were not safe."
The flutelike note rose on the still air; it was echoed from a near-by cliff and died down. No sound followed. Mary looked perplexed, worried. She whistled again. This time a distant whistle caught up the echo. It was a coarser tone than hers but produced in the same way.
"That's Kensy!" she cried, in relief. "Listen! Hear the twigs breaking? He is coming—maybe both. She whistled again, now more softly, and in her excitement tremulously. The sound of bending bushes and the cracking of dry branches was growing nearer.
"Hello, brother!" Mary suddenly cried out. "Here we are. Come on."
"Hello, sis! Who is with you—father?"
"No, Mr. Brown."
The sound of his movements ceased. "Who?" he asked, dubiously.
"Mr. Brown, you know. He is working for us. Come on. It is all right, Kensy."
"Oh!" Kenneth was heard ejaculating. "All right. Coast clear, sis?"
"Yes, yes, Kensy. We've got some food."
"Food, thank God! We are starving, sis. We haven't had a bite to eat since the night before we left home." With this he appeared from a clump of weeping willows, and stood before them. She introduced him to Charles. Kenneth simply nodded. He was coatless, without a hat, and besmeared with the dark mud of the morass from head to foot.
"I fell down back there," he said. "My foot slipped while I was on a log. I was wet, anyway. We were away from the cave, trying to kill some birds to eat, and got caught in the rain. Afraid to make a fire, anyway. No matches."
"I have some in a dry box," Charles said. "Won't you take them?"
"Never mind. I put plenty of them in the basket," Mary said. "Where is Martin?"
"In the cave. He had his clothes off, trying to dry them, and so I came out alone. He is all right, but acting like a baby. Oh God! what have you got, sis. He had the basket in his muddy hands and was removing the napkin which covered the contents. There he comes now. He couldn't wait."
The other boy now appeared, barefooted, his trousers rolled up to his knees. On being introduced he shook hands timidly. He ignored the basket of food. His glaring, dark-ringed eyes rested on his sister's face. He panted as he bent toward her. "How is Keith?" he asked.
"Yes, how is he?" Kenneth echoed, glancing up from the contents of the basket.
Charles thought it was significant that Mary hesitated for an instant before replying. "He is just the same as he was—no better, no worse," she answered.
"No better? My God!" Martin seemed to shrink together like a touched sensitive-plant. "Then—then he may die?"
Kenneth had his hands full of baked chicken, but he lowered them and, leaving the food in the basket, he stood up. "Is it as bad as that, sis?" he faltered, his lips betraying a tendency to shake.
"I hate to say so," Mary faltered, "but I must not deceive you and make you reckless. This is the only safe place now." She told them of Albert Frazier's aid in misleading his brother.
"He is a good one," Kenneth said, more at ease. "He is sharper any day than his blockhead of a brother. If he stays on our side we'll be all right, even—even if—"
"Don't say it, Ken!" Martin's young mouth was twisted awry. "I can't bear it. I can't—I simply can't!"
Kenneth uttered a forced laugh of defiance. "He is like that all the time," he said. "He didn't sleep a wink last night. He cried. He prayed to God and to mother's spirit: 'Save Tobe Keith—save Tobe Keith! Don't let 'im die!'"
"It is because I held him," Martin feebly explained. "You see, I had him so he couldn't move, and—and when Ken shot I felt his body sort of crumble up and hang limp in my arms. If he dies it will be my fault, for—for he could have dodged the shot but for me. If he dies, sis, it will be my fault and it will mean the rope and the scaffold."
Kenneth had bent to the basket again, but he refrained from taking up the food. He faced his sister. "We'll have to stay hid," he said, grimly. "Don't offend Albert Frazier, for all you do. He won't let his brother find us. Even if he found us, I'll bet Albert could keep him from making an arrest. He owes Albert money, I've heard. They always work into each other's hands. Albert had some trouble himself once that the sheriff squashed."
Charles was now looking at Mary. There was an expression about her face, and all but swaying body, that was akin to that of her fainting-spell in the field the preceding day. She had locked her hands together and he saw a flare of agony in her tortured eyes. There was a fallen tree near her and she sank down on its trunk and lowered her head. Finally she accomplished what he knew she was trying so hard to do; she mastered her weakness.
"Martin, sit here by me," she said, pleadingly, and the younger boy obeyed, the far-reaching terror still in his bland blue eyes. She stroked back his matted hair and picked the fragments of leaves and grass from it. "My sweet boy!" she faltered, "I don't know what to say to comfort you and quiet your fears about—Tobe's condition. I'm glad mother is not alive, Martin. She could not have borne this. You are so young—just a boy—and you are sensitive and imaginative. It looks worse to you than it really is. I feel down deep in me that Tobe will get well. We are sure to get good news before long. Now eat something."
"I was hungry this morning, but it is gone," Martin said. "The sight of the stuff almost sickens me."
Mary put both her arms around his neck and kissed him. "You are making yourself sick," she said. "Eat, won't you, for my sake?"
His brother was eating now, and Martin went to his side and took a piece of chicken and a biscuit. Mary watched them for a moment with wide-open glittering eyes—the sort of stare that sometimes seems to float on a rising tide of tears invisible. Then her head sank again.
"Look here," Kenneth said, suddenly, as he glanced toward the western sky. "You and Mr. Brown have a long walk before you to get back before night. You are doing no good here now. Hadn't you better start?"
Mary stood up. "Yes, we must be going. Are you comfortable in the cave?"
"Yes," Kenneth returned. "It is good enough. We have a big bed of dry leaves and grass, and if Martin would only sleep we'd be all right."
"I try, but I can't," the blue-eyed boy said, in an uncertain, half-abashed tone. "There was a night-owl near us last night, and it was hooting, and, my God! sis, the thing seemed to talk. I never had anything against Tobe Keith in my life. In fact, he and I used to fish and swim together when we'd run away from school, and to think that I actually—Turn around, and I'll show exactly how I clamped his arms and how he was bent down when Ken fired."
"No, not now," Charles protested. "Your sister is very nervous. She almost fainted just now."
"No, don't go into it," Kenneth mumbled, his mouth full. "I haven't anything against Tobe, either. We were both drinking, but they tell me the law doesn't excuse a fellow on that account. I didn't know what I was doing, but I couldn't prove it to a jury. I reckon they would call it deliberate. You see, Tobe and I had had words the day before over another matter, and I remember I made some threats about what I'd do to him. Oh, if he dies they will have a case against us. I know that well enough, and we must stay under cover till we can get West."
"I thought Tobe had a knife," Martin said, piteously. "I was sure I saw him draw it, and I held him to keep him from stabbing Ken. You know Tobe did rip a fellow open once in a fight. They say I was mistaken and that it was just a spoon he had been eating oysters with, and that he dropped it as soon as I grabbed him. Sis, will you let us know how he is as often as you can?"
"Yes, yes," the girl promised, "and if you don't hear it will be a sign of good news. Remember that, and, brother, do try to sleep to-night. You look sick."
She glanced at the sky again. She kissed them both and walked away. They had gone only a few paces when Charles suddenly turned back and joined them.
"Your sister may not be able to come every time," he said. "But I know the way now, for I took note of the landmarks, and I'll come by myself."
"That will be bully of you," Kenneth said. "By the way, we must have a signal, so that I'll know who it is. Suppose you whistle twice slowly and three times fast, and I'll answer and come out."
Mary was looking at Charles from sadly inquiring eyes when he caught her up a moment later. "What did you say to them?" she asked.
He told her and she forced a wan smile, while a warm glow of gratitude rose in her eyes.
"How sweet and kind of you!" she said. "You have proved yourself to be a friend, and we have known you such a short time."
"I'd give my life to help you out of this," he suddenly said, surprised at his boldness of speech and the raging storm of sympathy which had fairly forced the words from him.
"Your life?" She was close at his side, for he was holding the dripping bough of a mountain cedar aside for her to pass. "That is a strong expression. Your life? That is all one has, you know."
"My life is worthless to me and to every one else," he said, frankly, and as he uttered the words he was viewing his career in a flash-light of memory from its beginning to the present. "Yes, Miss Rowland, it is no good—absolutely no good. That's why I feel as I do for your brothers, and—I mean it—I'd give my life to-day to lift you out of this trouble and see you as I did that day in the store when you hired me."
"Hiredyou? Don't use that word," she suddenly cried out, and she put her hand on his arm in a gentle stroke of protest. "Mr. Brown, it seems to me—I don't know how to explain it, but it seems to me that I've known you for ages and ages. I can see that you are sad at times, and I know that you have suffered somehow, somewhere. That picture of the pretty child in your room—she is linked with your trouble, is she not?"
"Indirectly," he admitted, not seeing her drift. "Yes, it was partly on her account—for her own future—that I left home."
"I see, I see; and her mother?" Mary's voice had sunken almost to inaudibility; the cracking of the twigs under their feet all but drowned its sound. "Did you leave her with the child?"
"Oh yes! They are inseparable," he answered. He felt that he was admitting too much, and he turned the subject to that of the lessening sunlight on a cliff to their left. He thought the dense clouds massing behind them indicated a high wind and a heavy downpour of rain.
But his companion was not thinking of the state of the weather. "You will go back to them some day, of course," she persisted.
Charles shuddered; she was probing a subject that he felt honor bound not to touch upon. She repeated her words, steadily fixing his eyes with her own.
"No," he repeated, firmly, "I shall never go back, Miss Rowland—never in the world. My future home is here, anywhere, but never there again."
"And you do not like to speak of your family? Is that it?" Mary went on, softly, sympathetically.
"I can't—I haven't the moral right to speak of them now. That is all I can say. I'm dead to my past, Miss Rowland. I am blotting it out. Serving you in any capacity helps kill memories that ought to be dead. There are memories that reproach and torture one. I have my share of them."