isn’t it?”
“Yeah!” Nance answered cheerfully, taking her seat and glancing timidly at her guest.
Jim seized the jug, poured out two drinks of corn whiskey, handed her one and raised his:
“Well, here’s lookin’ at you, old girl.”
He paused, lowered his cup and smiled.
“But say, give me a toast.” He nodded toward the shed-room. “I’m on my honeymoon, you know.”
His hostess laughed timidly and glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. She wished to be sociable and make up as best she could for her rudeness on their arrival.
“I ain’t never heard but one fur honeymooners,” she said softly.
“Let’s have it. I’ve never heard a toast for honeymooners in my life. It’ll be new to me–fire away!”
Nance fumbled her faded dress with her left hand and laughed again.
“‘May ye live long and prosper an’ all yer troubles be LITTLE ONES!'”
She laughed aloud at the old, worm-eaten joke and Jim joined.
“Bully! Bully, old girl–bully!”
He lifted his cup and drained it at one draught and Nance did the same.
He seized the jug and poured another drink for each.
“Once more—-“
He leaned across the table.
“And here’s one for you.” He squared his body and lifted his cup:
“To all your little ones–no matter how big they are!”
Jim drained his liquor without apparently noticing her agitation, though he was watching her keenly from the corner of his eye.
The cup she held was lowered slowly until the whiskey poured over her dress and on the floor. Her thin figure drooped pathetically and her voice was the faintest sob:
“I–I–ain’t got–none!”
“I heard you had a boy,” Jim said carelessly.
The drooping figure shot upright as if a bolt of lightning had swept her. She stared at him in tense silence, trying to gather her wits before she answered.
“Who told you anything about me?” she demanded sternly.
“A fellow in New York,” Jim continued with studied carelessness–“said he used to live down here.”
“He LIVED down here?” she repeated blankly.
“Yep–come now, loosen up and tell us about the kid.”
“There ain’t nuthin’ ter tell–he’s dead,” she cried pathetically.
“He said you deserted the child and left him to starve.”
“He said that?” she growled.
“Yep.”
He was silent again and watched her keenly.
She fumbled her dress and glanced nervously across the table as if afraid to ask more. Unable to wait for him to speak, she cried nervously at last:
“Well–well–what else did he say?”
“That he took the little duffer to New York and raised him.”
“RAISED him?”
She fairly screamed the words, springing to her feet trembling from head to foot.
“Till he was big enough to kick into the streets to shuffle for himself.”
“The scoundrel said he was dead.”
Her voice was far away and sank into dreamy silence. She was living the hideous, lonely years again with a heart starved for love.
Jim’s voice broke the spell:
“Then you didn’t desert him?” The man’s eyes held hers steadily.
She stared at him blankly and spoke with rushing indignation:
“Desert him–my baby–my own flesh and blood? There’s never been a minute since I looked into his eyes that I wouldn’t ‘a’ died fur him.”
She paused and sobbed.
“He had such pretty eyes, stranger. They looked like your’n–only they wuz puttier and bluer.”
She lifted her faded dress, brushed the tears from her cheeks and went on rapidly:
“When I found his drunken brute of a daddy was a liar and had another wife, I wouldn’t live with him. He tried to make me but I kicked him out of the house– and he stole the boy to get even with me.” Her voice broke, she dropped her head and choked back the tears. “He did get even with me, too–he did,” she sobbed.
Jim watched her in silence until the paroxysm had spent itself.
“You think you’d know this boy now if you found him?”
She bent close, her breath coming in quick gasps.
“My God, mister, do you think I COULD find him?”
“He lives in New York; his name is Jim Anthony.”
“Yes–yes?” she said in a dazed way. “He called hisself Walter Anthony–he wuz a stranger from the North and my boy’s name was Jim.” She paused and bent eagerly across the table. “New York’s an awful big place, ain’t it?”
“Some town, old gal, take it from me.”
“COULD I find him?”
“If you’ve got money enough. You said you’d know him. How?”
“I’d know him!” she answered eagerly. “The last quarrel we had was about a mark on his neck. He wuz a spunky little one. You couldn’t make him cry. His devil of a daddy used to stick pins in him and laugh because he wouldn’t cry. The last dirty trick he tried was what ended it all. He pushed a live cigar agin his little neck until I smelled it burnin’ in the next room. I knocked him down with a chair, drove him from the house and told him I’d kill him if he ever put his foot inside the door agin.
He stole my boy the next night–but he’ll carry that scar to his grave.”
“You’d love this boy now if you found him in New York as bad as his father ever was?” Jim asked with a curious smile.
“Yes–he’s mine!” was the quick, firm answer.
Jim watched her intently.
“I looked Death in the face for him,” she went on fiercely. “I’d dive to the bottom o’ hell to find him if I knowed he wuz thar—- But what’s the use to talk; that devil killed him! I’ve waked up many a night stranglin’ with a dream when I seed the drunken brute burnin’ an’ beatin’ an’ torturin’ him to death. The feller you’ve heard about ain’t him. ‘Tain’t no use to make me hope an’ then kill me—-“
“He’s not dead, I tell you. I know.”
Jim’s voice rang with conviction so positive the old woman’s breath came in quick gasps and she smiled through her eager tears.
“And I MIGHT find him?”
“IF you’ve got money enough! Money can do anything in this world.”
He opened the black bag, thrust both hands into it and threw out a handful of yellow coin which he allowed to pour through his fingers and rattle into a tin plate which had been left on the table.
Her eyes sparkled with avarice.
“It’s your’n–all your’n?” she breathed hungrily.
“I’m taking it down South to invest for a fool who thinks”–he stopped and laughed–“who thinks it’s bad luck to keep money that’s stained with blood—-“
Nance started back.
“Got blood on it?”
Jim spoke in confidential appeal.
“That wouldn’t make any difference to you, would it?”
She shook her gray locks and glanced at the pile of yellow metal, hungrily.
“I–I wouldn’t like it with blood marks!”
He lifted a handful of coin, clinked it musically in his hands and held it in his open palms before her.
“Look! Look at it close! You don’t see any blood marks on it, do you?”
Her eyes devoured it.
“No.”
He seized her hand, thrust a half-dozen pieces into it and closed her thin fingers over it.
“Feel of it–look at it!”
Her hands gripped the gold. She breathed quickly, broke into a laugh, caught herself in the middle of it, and lapsed suddenly into silence.
“Feels good, don’t it?” he laughed.
Nance grinned, her uneven, discolored gleaming ominously in the flicker of the candle.
“Don’t it?” he repeated.
“Yeah!”
He lifted another handful and threw it in the air, catching it again.
“That’s the stuff that makes the world go ’round. There’s your only friend, old girl! Others promise well–but in the scratch they fail.”
“Yeah–when the scratch comes they fail!” Nance echoed.
“Money never fails!” Jim continued eagerly. “It’s the god that knows no right or wrong—-“
He touched the pile in the plate and drew the bag close for her to see.
“How much do you guess is there?”
Nance gazed greedily into the open bag and looked again at the shining heap in the plate.
“I dunno–a million, I reckon.”
The man laughed.
“Not quite that much! But enough to make you rich for life–IF you had it.”
The old woman turned away pathetically and shook her gray head.
“I wouldn’t have to work no more, would I?”
Her thin hands touched the faded, dirty dress.
“And I could buy me a decent dress,” her voice sank to a whisper, “and I could find my boy.”
“You bet you could!” Jim exclaimed. “There’s just one god in this world now, old girl–the Almighty Dollar!”
He paused and leaned close, persuasively:
“Suppose now, the man that got that money had to kill a fool to take it–what of it? You don’t get big money any other way. A burglar watches his chance, takes his life in his hands and drills his way into a house. He finds a fool there who fights. It’s not his fault that the man was born a fool, now is it?”
“Mebbe not—-“
“Of course not. A burglar kills but one to get his pile, and then only because he must, in self-defence. A big gambling capitalist corners wheat, raises the price of bread and starves a hundred thousand children to death to make his. It’s not stained with blood. Every dollar is soaked in it! Who cares?”
“Yeah–who cares?” Nance growled fiercely.
Jim smiled at his easy triumph.
“It’s dog eat dog and the devil take the hindmost now!”
“That’s so–ain’t it?” she agreed.
“You bet! Business is business and the best man’s the man that gets there. Steal a hundred dollars, you go to the penitentiary–foolish! Don’t do it. Steal a million and go to the Senate!”
“Yeah!” Nance laughed.
“Money–money for its own sake,” he rushed on savagely–“right or wrong. That’s all there is in it today, old girl–take it from me!”
He paused and his smile ended in a sneer.
“Man shall eat bread in the sweat of his brow? Only fools SWEAT!”
Nance turned her face away, sighed softly, glancing back at Jim furtively.
“I reckon that’s so, too. Have another drink, stranger?”
She poured another cup of whiskey and one for herself. She raised hers as if to drink and deftly threw the contents over her shoulder.
Jim seized the jug and poured again.
“Once more. Come, I’ve another toast for you. You’ll drink this one I know.”
He lifted his cup and rose a little unsteadily. Nance stood with uplifted cup watching him.
“As the poet sings,” he began with a bow to the old woman:
“France has her lily, England the rose,
Everybody knows where the shamrock grows–
Scotland has her thistle flowerin’ on the hill,
But the American Emblem–is a One Dollar Bill!”
He broke into a boisterous laugh.
“How’s that, old girl?”
“That’s bully, stranger!”
He lifted high his cup.
“We drink to the Almighty Dollar!”
“To the Almighty Dollar!” Nance echoed, clinking her cup against his.”
He drained it while she again emptied hers over her shoulder.
“By golly, you’re all right, old girl. You’re a good fellow!” he cried jovially.
“Yeah–have another?” she urged.
She filled his cup and placed it on his side of the table. His eye had rested on the gold. He ignored the invitation, lifted a handful of gold and dropped it with musical clinking into the plate.
“Blood marks–tommyrot!” he sneered.
“Yeah–tommyrot!” she echoed. “That’s what I say, too!”
Jim wagged his head sagely:
“Now you’re talking sense, old girl!”
He leaned across the table and pointed his finger straight into her face.
“And don’t you forget what I’m tellin’ ye tonight– get money, get money!”
He stopped suddenly and a sneer curled his lips.
“Oh I Get it `fairly’–get it `squarely’–but whatever you do–by God!–GET IT!”
His uplifted hand crashed downward and gripped the gold. His fingers slowly relaxed and the coin clinked into the plate.
Nance watched him eagerly.
“Yeah, that’s it–get it,” she breathed slowly.
Jim lifted his drooping eyes to hers.
“If you’ve GOT it, you’re a god–you can do no wrong. Nobody’s goin’ to ask you HOW you got it; all they want to know is HAVE you got it!”
“Yeah, nobody’s goin’ to ask you HOW you got it, Nance repeated, “they just want to know HAVE you got it! Yeah–yeah!”
“You bet!”
Jim’s head sank in the first stupor of liquor and he dropped into the chair.
The old woman leaned eagerly over the plate of gold and clutched the coin with growing avarice. Her fingers opened and closed like a bird of prey. She touched it lovingly and held it in her hands a long time watching Jim’s nodding head with furtive glances. She dropped a handful of coin into the plate and watched its effect on the drooping head.
He looked up and his eyes fell again.
“Bed-time, I reckon,” Nance said.
“Yep–pretty tired. I’ll turn in.”
The old woman glided sidewise to the table near the kitchen door, picked up the lantern and started to feel her way backwards through the calico curtains.
“See you in the mornin’, old gal,” Jim drawled– “Christmas mornin’–an’ I got somethin’ else to tell ye in the mornin’—-“
Again his head sank to the table.
“All right, mister–good night!” Nance answered, slowly feeling her way through the opening, watching him intently.
Jim lifted his head and nodded heavily for a moment. His hand slipped from the table and he drew himself up sharply and rose, holding to the table for support.
He picked up the plate of coin, poured it back in the bag, snapped the lock and walked with the bag unsteadily to the couch. He placed the bag under the pillow and pressed the soft feathers down over it, turned back to the table and extinguished the candle by a quick, square blow of his open palm on the flame.
He staggered to the couch, pushed the coats to the floor, dropped heavily, drew the lap-robe over him and in five minutes was sound asleep.
CHAPTER XIX
NANCE’S STOREHOUSE
The cabin was still. Only the broken sobbing of the woman in the little shed-room came faint and low on old Nance’s ears.
She slipped from the kitchen into the shadows of a tree near the house and listened until the sobbing ceased.
She crept close to the shed and stood silent and ghost-like beside its daubed walls. Immovable as a cat crouching in the hedge to spring on her prey, she waited until the waning moon had sunk behind the crags. She laid her ear close to a crack in the logs from which she had once pushed the red mud to let in the light. All was still at last. The sobbing had stopped. The young wife was sound asleep.
She had wondered vaguely at first about the crying, but quickly made up her mind that it was only a lover’s quarrel. She was glad of it. The girl would bar her door and sulk all night. So much the better. There would be no danger of her entering the living- room where Jim slept.
She would wait a little longer to make sure she was asleep. A half hour passed. The white-shrouded figure stood immovable, her keen ears tuned for the slightest sounds from within.
The stars were shining in unusual brilliance. She could see her way through the shadows even better than in full moon. A wolf was crying again for his mate from a distant crag. She had grown used to his howls. He had come close to her cabin once in the day-time. She had tried to creep on him and show her friendliness. But he had fled in terror at the first glimpse of her dress through the parting underbrush.
An owl was calling from his dead tree-top down the valley. She smiled at his familiar, tremulous call. Her own eyes were wide as his tonight. No sight or sound of Nature among the crags about her cabin had for her spirit any terror. The night was her mantle.
She added to the meager living which she had wrung from her mountain farm by trading with the illicit distillers of the backwoods of Yancey County. Too ignorant to run a distillery of her own, she had stored their goods with such skill that the hiding-place had never been discovered. She loved good whiskey herself. She had tried to find in its fiery depths the dreams of happiness life had so cruelly denied her.
The hiding-place of this whiskey had puzzled the revenue officers of every administration for years. They had watched her house day and night. Not one of them had ever struck the trail to her storehouse.
The game had excited her imagination. She loved its daring and danger. That there was the slightest element of wrong or crime in her association with the moonshiners of her native heath had never for a moment entered her mind. It was no crime to make whiskey. This was the first article of the creed of the true North Carolina mountaineer. They had from the first declared that the tax levied by the Federal Government on the product of their industry was an infamous act of tyranny. They had fought this tyranny for two generations. They would fight it as long as there was breath in their bodies and a single load of powder and buckshot for their rifles.
Nance considered herself a heroine in the pride of her soul for the shrewd and successful defiance she had given the revenue officers for so many years.
She had been too cunning to even allow one of her own people to know the secret of her store house. For that reason it had never been discovered. She always stored the whiskey temporarily in the potato shed or under the cabin floor until night and then alone carried it to the place she had discovered.
She laughed softly at the thought of this deep hiding-place tonight. Its temperature never varied winter or summer. Not a track had ever been left at its door. She might live a hundred years and, unless some spying eye should see her enter, its existence could never be suspected.
She tipped softly into the kitchen, walked to the door of the living-room and listened to the even, heavy breathing of the man on the couch.
Once more the faint echo of a sob in the shed beyond came to her keen ears. She stood for five minutes. It was not repeated. She had only imagined it. The girl was still asleep.
She turned noiselessly back into the kitchen, put a box of matches in her pocket, felt her way to the low shelf on which she had placed the battered lantern, picked it up and shook it to make sure the oil was sufficient.
She stepped lightly into the yard, pushed open the gate of the split-board garden fence, walked along the edge to the corner and selected a spade from the tools that leaned against the boards.
Carrying the spade and unlighted lantern in her left hand, she glided from the yard into the woods. Her right hand before her to feel for underbrush or overhanging bough, she made her way rapidly to the swift-flowing mountain brook.
Arrived at the water whose musical ripple had guided her steps, she removed her shoes and placed them beside a tree. She wore no stockings. The faded skirt she raised and tucked into her belt. She could wade knee deep now without hindrance.
Seizing the spade and lantern, she made her way slowly and carefully downstream for three hundred yards and paused beside a shelving ledge which projected half-way across the brook.
She paused and listened again for full ten minutes, immovable as the rock on which her thin, bony hand rested. The stars were looking, but they could only peep through the network of overhanging trees.
Feeling her way along the rock until the ledge rose beyond her reach, she bent low and waded through a still pool of eddying water straight under the mountain-side for more than a hundred feet. Her extended right hand had felt for the stone ceiling above her head until it ran abruptly out of reach.
She straightened her body and took a deep breath. Ten steps she counted carefully and placed her bare feet on the dry rock beyond the water.
Carefully picking her way up the sloping bank until she reached a stretch of soft earth, she sank to her hands and knees and crawled through an opening less than three feet in height.
“Thar now!” she laughed. “Let ’em find me if they can!”
She lighted her lantern and seated herself on a boulder to rest–one hundred and fifty feet in the depths of a mountain. The cavern was ten feet in height and fifty feet in length. The projecting ledges of rock made innumerable shelves on which a merchant might have displayed his wares.
The old woman was too shrewd for that. Her jugs were carefully planted in the ground behind two fallen boulders, and their hiding-place concealed by a layer of drift which she had gathered from the edge of the water. She had taken this precaution against the day when some curious explorer might stumble on her secret as she had found it hunting ginsing roots in the woods overhead. Her foot had slipped suddenly through a hole in the soft mould. She peered cautiously below and could see no bottom. She dropped a stone and heard it strike in the depths. She made her way down the side of the crag and found the opening through the still eddying waters. The hole through the roof she had long ago plugged and covered with earth and dry leaves.
She carried her lantern and spade to the further end of her storehouse and dug a hole in the earth about two feet in depth. The earth she carefully placed in a heap.
“That’s the place!” she giggled excitedly.
She left her lantern burning, dropped again on the soft, mould-covered earth and quickly emerged on the stone banks of the wide, still pool. Her hand high extended above her head, she waded through the water until she touched the heavy ceiling, lowered her body again to a stooping position and rapidly made her way out into the bed of the brook.
She passed eagerly along the babbling path and stopped with sure instinct at the tree beside whose trunk she had placed her shoes.
In five minutes she had made her way through the woods and reached the house. She tipped into the kitchen and stood in the doorway or the living-room watching her sleeping guest. The even breathing assured her that all was well. Her plan couldn’t fail. She listened again for the sobs in the shed- room.
She was sure once that she heard them. Five minutes passed and still she was uncertain. To avoid any possible accident she tipped back through the kitchen, circled the house and placed her ear against the crack in the logs.
The girl was sobbing–or was she praying? She crouched beside the wall, waited and listened. The night wind stirred the dead leaves at her feet. She lifted her head with a sudden start, laughed softly and bent again to listen.
CHAPTER XX
TRAPPED
The sobbing in the little room was the only sound that came from one of the grimmest battle-fields from which the soul of a woman ever emerged alive.
To the first rush of cowardly tears Mary had yielded utterly. She had fallen across the high-puffed feather mattress of the bed, shivering in humble gratitude at her escape from the horror of blindness. The grip of his claw-like fingers on her throat came back to her now in sickening waves. The blood was still trickling from the wound which his nails had made when she tore them loose in her first mad fight for breath.
She lifted her body and breathed deeply to make sure her throat was free. God in heaven! Could she ever forget the hideous sinking of body and soul down into the depths of the black abyss! She had seen the face of Death and it was horrible. Life, warm and throbbing, was sweet. She loved it. She hated Death.
Yes–she was a coward. She knew it now, and didn’t care.
She sprang to her feet with sudden fear. He might attack her again to make sure that her soul had been completely crushed.
She crept to the door and felt its edges.
“Yes, thank God, there’s a place for the bar!” She shivered.
She ran her trembling fingers carefully along the rough logs and found it in the corner. She slipped it cautiously into the iron sockets, staggered to the bed and dropped in grateful assurance of safety for the moment. She buried her face in the pillow to fight back the sobs. How great her fall! She could crawl on her hands and knees to Jane Anderson now and beg for protection. The last shred of pretense was gone. The bankrupt soul stood naked and shivering, the last rag torn from pride.
What a miserable fight she had made, too, when put to the test! Ella had at least proved herself worthy to live. The scrub-woman had risen in the strength of desperation and killed the beast who had maimed her. She had only sunk a limp mass of shivering, helpless cowardice and fled from the room whining and pleading for mercy.
She could never respect herself again. The scene came back in vivid flashes. His eyes, glowing like two balls of blue fire, froze the blood in her veins–his voice the rasping cold steel of a file. And this coarse, ugly beast had held her in the spell of love. She had clung to him, kissed him in rapture and yielded herself to him soul and body. And he had gripped her delicate throat and choked her into insensibility, dropping her limp form from his hands like a strangled rat. She could remember the half- conscious moment that preceded the total darkness as she felt his grip relax.
He would choke and beat her again, too. He had said it in the sneering laughter at the door.
“A good little wife now and it’s all right!”
And if you’re not obedient to my whims I’ll choke you until you are! That was precisely what he meant. That he was capable of any depth of degradation, and that he meant to drag her with him, there could be no longer the shadow of a doubt.
She could not endure another scene like that. She sprang to her feet again, shivering with terror. She could hear the hum of the conversation in the next room. He was persuading his mother to join in his criminal career. He was busy with his oily tongue transforming the simple, ignorant, lonely old woman into an avaricious fiend who would receive his blood-stained booty and rejoice in it.
He was laughing again. She put her trembling hands over her ears to shut out the sound. He had laughed at her shame and cowardice. It made her flesh creep to hear it.
She would escape. The mountain road was dark and narrow and crooked. She would lose her way in the night, perhaps. No matter. She could keep warm by walking. At dawn she would find her way to a cabin and ask protection. If she could reach Asheville, a telegram would bring her father. She wouldn’t lose a minute. Her hat and coat were in the living-room. She would go bareheaded and without a coat. In the morning she could borrow one from the woman at the Mount Mitchell house.
She crept cautiously along the walls of the room searching for a door or window. There must be a way out. She made the round without discovering an opening of any kind. There must be a window of some kind high up for ventilation. There was no glass in it, of course. It was closed by a board shutter–if she could reach it.
She began at the door, found the corner of the room and stretched her arms upward until they touched the low, rough joist. Over every foot of its surface she ran her fingers, carefully feeling for a window. There was none!
She found an open crack and peered through. The stars were shining cold and clear in the December sky. The twinkling heavens reminded her that it was Christmas Eve. The dawn she hoped to see in the woods, if she could escape, would be Christmas morning. There was no time for idle tears of self-pity.
The one thought that beat in every throb of her heart now was to escape from her cell and put a thousand miles between her body and the beast who had strangled her. She might break through the roof! As a rule the shed-rooms of these rude mountain cabins were covered with split boards lightly nailed to narrow strips eighteen inches apart. If there were no ceiling, or if the ceiling were not nailed down and she should move carefully, she might break through near the eaves and drop to the ground. The cabin was not more than nine feet in height.
She raised herself on the footrail of the bed and felt the ceiling. There could be no mistake. It was there. She pressed gently at first and then with all her might against each board. They were nailed hard and fast.
She sank to the bed again in despair. She had barred herself in a prison cell. There was no escape except by the door through which the beast had driven her. And he would probably draw the couch against it and sleep there.
And then came the crushing conviction that such flight would be of no avail in a struggle with a man of Jim’s character. His laughing words of triumph rang through her soul now in all their full, sinister meaning.
“The world ain’t big enough for you to get away from me, Kiddo!”
It wasn’t big enough. She knew it with tragic and terrible certainty. In his blind, brutal way he loved her with a savage passion that would halt at nothing. He would follow her to the ends of the earth and kill any living thing that stood in his way. And when he found her at last he would kill her.
How could she have been so blind! There was no longer any mystery about his personality. The slender hands and feet, which she had thought beautiful in her infatuation, were merely the hands and feet of a thief. The strength of jaw and neck and shoulders had made him the most daring of all thieves–a burglar.
His strange moods were no longer strange. He laughed for joy at the wild mountain gorges and crags because he saw safety for the hiding-place of priceless jewels he meant to steal.
There could be no escape in divorce from such a brute. He was happy in her cowardly submission. He would laugh at the idea of divorce. Should she dare to betray the secrets of his life of crime, he would kill her as he would grind a snake under his heel.
A single clause from the marriage ceremony kept ringing its knell–“until DEATH DO US PART!”
She knelt at last and prayed for Death.
“Oh, dear God, let me die, let me die!”
Suicide was a crime unthinkable to her pious mind. Only God now could save her in his infinite mercy.
She lay for a long time on the floor where she had fallen in utter despair. The tears that brought relief at first had ceased to flow. She had beaten her bleeding wings against every barrier, and they were beyond her strength.
Out of the first stupor of complete surrender, her senses slowly emerged. She felt the bare boards of the floor and wondered vaguely why she was there.
The hum of voices again came to her ears. She lay still and listened. A single terrible sentence she caught. He spoke it with such malignant power she could see through the darkness the flames of hell leaping in his eyes.
“Nobody’s going to ask you HOW you got it–all they want to know is HAVE you got it!”
She laughed hysterically at the idea of reformation that had stirred her to such desperate appeal in the first shock of discovery. As well dream of reforming the Devil as the man who expressed his philosophy of life in that sentence! Blood dripped from every word, the blood of the innocent and the helpless who might consciously or unconsciously stand in his way. The man who had made up his mind to get rich quick, no matter what the cost to others, would commit murder without the quiver of an eyelid. If she had ever had a doubt of this fact, she could have none after her experience of tonight.
She wondered vaguely of the effects he was producing on his ignorant old mother. Her words were too low and indistinct to be heard. But she feared the worst. The temptation of the gold he was showing her would be more than she could resist.
She staggered to her feet and fell limp across the bed. The iron walls of a life prison closed about her crushed soul. The one door that could open was Death and only God’s hand could lift its bars.
CHAPTER XXI
THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE
Hour after hour Nance stood beside the wall of the shed-room and with the patience of a cat waited for the sobs to cease and the girl to be quiet.
Mary had risen from the bed once and paced the floor in the dark for more than an hour, like a frightened, wild animal, trapped and caged for the first time in life. With growing wonder, Nance counted the beat of her foot-fall, five steps one way and five back–round after round, round after round, in ceaseless repetition.
“Goddlemighty, is she gone clean crazy!” she exclaimed.
The footsteps stopped at last and the low sobs came once more from the bed. The old woman crouched down on a stone beside the log wall and drew the shawl about her shoulders.
A rooster crowed for midnight. Still the restless thing inside was stirring. Nance rose uneasily. Her lantern was still burning in her storehouse under the cliff. The wick might eat so low it would explode. She had heard that such things happened to lamps. It was foolish to have left it burning, anyhow.
She glided noiselessly from the house into the woods, entered her hidden door exactly as she had done before, extinguished the lantern, placed it on a shelving rock and put a dozen matches beside it.
In ten minutes she had returned to the house and crouched once more against the wall of the shed.
The low, pleading voice was praying. She pressed her ear to the crack and heard distinctly. She must be patient. Her plan was sure to succeed if she were only patient. No woman could sob and pray and walk all night. She must fall down unconscious from sheer exhaustion before day.
The old woman slipped into the kitchen, took up the quilt which she had spread on the floor for her bed, wrapped it about her thin shoulders and returned to her watch.
Again and again she rose, believing her patience had won, and placed her ear to the crack only to hear a sound within which told her only too plainly that the girl was yet awake. Sometimes it was a sigh, sometimes she cleared her throat, sometimes she tossed restlessly. One spoken sentence she heard again and again:
“Oh, dear God, have mercy on my lost soul!”
“What can be the matter with the fool critter!” Nance muttered. “Is she moanin’ for sin? To be shore, they don’t have no revival meetings this time o’ year!”
She had known sinners to mourn through a whole summer sometimes, but never in all her experience in religious revivals had a mourner carried it over into winter. The dancing had always eased the tension and brought a relapse to sinful thoughts.
The hours dragged until the roosters began to crow for day. It would soon be light.
She must act now. There was no time to lose. She pressed her ear to the crack once more and held it five minutes.
Not a sound came from within. The broken spirit had yielded to the stupor of exhaustion at last.
With swift, cat’s tread Nance circled the cabin and entered the kitchen. The quilt she carefully spread on the floor leading to the entrance to the living-room, crossed it softly and stood in the doorway with her long hands on the calico hangings.
For five minutes she remained immovable and listened to the deep, regular breathing of the sleeping man. Her wits were keen, her eyes wide. She could see the dim outlines of the furniture by the starlight through the window. Small objects in the room were, of course, invisible. To light a candle was not to be thought of. It might wake the sleeper.
She knew how to make the light without a noise or its rays reaching his face. He had startled her with the electric torch because of its novelty. She was no longer afraid. She would know how to press the button. He had left the thing lying on the table beside the black bag. He might have hidden the gold. He would not remember in his drunken stupor to move the electric torch.
She glided ghost-like into the room. Her bare feet were velvet. She knew every board in the floor. There was one near the table that creaked. She counted her steps and cleared the spot without a sound.
Her thin fingers found the edge of the table and slipped with uncanny touch along its surface until her hand closed on the rounded form of the torch.
Without moving in her tracks she turned the light on the table and in every nook and corner of the room beyond. She slowly swung her body on a pivot, flashing the light into each shadow and over every inch of floor, turning always in a circle toward the couch.
Satisfied that the object she sought was nowhere in the circle she had covered, she moved a step from the table and winked the light beneath it. She squatted on the floor and flashed it carefully over every inch of its boards from one corner of the room to the other and under the couch.
She rose softly, glided behind the head of the sleeping man and stood back some six feet, lest the flash of the torch might disturb him. She threw its rays behind the couch and slowly raised them until they covered the dirty pillow on which Jim was sleeping. There beneath the pillow lay the bag with its precious treasure. He was sleeping on it. She had feared this, but felt sure that the whiskey he had drunk would hold him in its stupor until late next morning.
She crouched low and fixed the light’s ray slowly on the bag that her hand might not err the slightest in its touch. She laid her bony fingers on it with a slow, imperceptible movement, held them there a moment and moved the bag the slightest bit to test the sleeper’s wakefulness. To her surprise he stirred instantly.
“What’ell!” he growled sleepily.
She stood motionless until he was breathing again with deep, even, heavy throb. Gliding back to the table, she flashed the light again on the bag and studied its position. His big neck rested squarely across it. To move it without waking him was a physical impossibility.
Here was a dilemma she had not fully faced. She had not believed it possible for him to place the bag where she could not get it. Her only purpose up to this moment had been to take it and store it safely beneath the soft earth in the inner recess of the cave. He would miss it in the morning, of course. She would express her amazement. The bar would be down from the front door. Someone had robbed him. The money could never be found.
She had made up her mind to take it the moment he had convinced her that his philosophy of life was true. His eloquence had transformed her from an ignorant old woman, content with her poverty and dirt, into a dangerous and daring criminal.
There was no such thing as failure to be thought of now for a moment. The spade in the inner room of her store-house could be put to larger use if necessary. With the strength of the madness now on her she could carry his body on her back through the woods. The world would be none the wiser. He had quarreled with his wife, and left her in a rage that night. That was all she knew. The sheriff of neither county could afford to bother his head long over an insolvable mystery. Besides, both sheriffs were her friends.
Her decision was instantaneous when once she saw that it was safe.
She smiled over the grim irony of the thing–his words kept humming in her ears, his voice, low and persuasive:
“Suppose now the man that got that money had to kill a fool to take it–what of it? You don’t get big money any other way!”
On the shelf beside the door was a butcher knife which she also used for carving. She had sharpened its point that night to carve her Christmas turkey next day.
She raised the torch and flashed its rays on the shelf to guide her hand, crept to the wall, took down the knife and laid the electric torch in its place.
Steadying her body against the wall, her arms outspread, she edged her way behind the couch and bent over the sleeping man until by his breathing she had located his heart.
She raised her tall figure and brought the knife down with a crash into his breast. With a sudden wrench she drew it from the wound and crouched among the shadows watching him with wide-dilated eyes.
The stricken sleeper gasped for breath, his writhing body fairly leaped into the air, bounded on the couch and stood erect. He staggered backward and lurched toward her. The crouching figure bent low, gripping the knife and waiting for her chance to strike the last blow.
Strangling with blood, Jim opened his eyes and saw the old woman creeping nearer through the gray light of the dawn.
He threw his hands above his head and tried to shout his warning. She was on him, her trembling hand feeling for his throat, before he could speak.
Struggling, in his weakened condition, to tear her fingers away, he gasped:
“Here! Here! Great God! Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I just want yer money,” she whispered. “That’s all, and I’m a-goin’ ter have it!”
Her fingers closed and the knife sank into his neck.
She sprang back and watched him lurch and fall across the couch. His body writhed a moment in agony and was still.
Holding the knife in her hand, she tore open the bag and thrust her itching fingers into the gold, gripping it fiercely.
“Nobody’s goin’ to ask ye how ye got it–they just want to know HAVE ye got it–yeah! Yeah—-“
The last word died on her lips. The door of the shed-room suddenly opened and Mary stood before her.
CHAPTER XXII
DELIVERANCE
The first dim noises of the tragedy in the living-room Mary’s stupefied senses had confused with a nightmare which she had
been painfully fighting.
The torch in Nance’s hand had flashed through a crack into her face once. It was the flame of a revolver in the hands of a thief in Jim’s den in New York. She merely felt it. Her eyes had been gouged out and she was blind. A gang of his coarse companions were holding a council, cursing, drinking, fighting. Jim had sprung between two snarling brutes and knocked the revolver into the air. The flame had scorched her face.
With an oath he had slapped her.
“Get out, you damned little fool!” he growled. “You’re always in the way when you’re not wanted. Nobody can ever find you when there’s work to be done—-“
“But I can’t see, Jim dear,” she pleaded. “I do not know when things are out of place—-“
“You’re a liar!” he roared. “You know where every piece of junk stands in this room better than I do. I can’t bring a friend into that door that you don’t know it. You can hear the swish of a woman’s skirt on the stairs four stories below—-“
“I only asked you who the woman was who came in with you, Jim—-“
His fingers gripped her throat and stopped her breath. Through the roar of surging blood she could barely hear the vile words he was dinning into her ears.
“I know you just asked me, you nosing little devil, and it’s none of your business! She’s a pal of mine, if you want to know, the slickest thief that ever robbed a flat. She’s got more sense in a minute than you’ll ever have in a lifetime. She’s going to live here with me now. You can sleep on the cot in the kitchen. And you come when she calls, if you know what’s good for your lazy hide. I’ve told her to thrash the life out of you if you dare to give her any impudence.”
She had cowered at his feet and begged him not to beat her again. The fumes of whiskey and stale beer filled the place.
Jim turned from her to quell a new fight at the other end of the room. Another woman was there, coarse, dirty, beastly. She drew a knife and demanded her share of the night’s robberies. She was trying to break from the men who held her to stab Jim. They were all fighting and smashing the furniture—-
She sprang from the bed with a cry of horror. The noise was real! It was not a dream. The beast inside was stumbling in the dark. His passions fired by liquor, he was fumbling to find his way into her room.
She rushed to the door and put her shoulder against the bar, panting in terror.
She heard his strangling cry:
“Here! Here! Great God! Do you know what you’re doing?”
And then his mother’s voice, mad with greed, cruel, merciless:
“I just want yer money–that’s all, an’ I’m goin’ to have it!”
She heard the clinch in the struggle and the dull blow of the knife. In a sudden flash she saw it all. He had succeeded in rousing Nance’s avarice and transforming her into a fiend. Without knowing it she was stabbing her own son to death in the room in which he had been born!
She tried to scream and her lips refused to move. She tried to hurry to the rescue and her knees turned to water.
Gasping for breath, she drew the bar from her prison door and walked slowly into the room.
Nance’s tall, bony figure was still crouched over the open bag, her left hand buried in the gold, her right gripping the knife, her face convulsed with greed–avarice and murder blended into perfect hell-lit unity at last.
Jim lay on his back, limp and still, obliquely across the couch, his breast bared in the struggle, the blood oozing a widening scarlet blot on his white shirt. His head had fallen backward over the edge and could not be seen.
Without moving a muscle, her body crouching, Nance spoke:
“You wuz awake–you heered?”
“Yes!”
The gleaming eyes burned through the gray dawn, two points of scintillating, hellish light fixed in purpose on the intruder.
She had only meant to take the money. The fool had fought. She killed him because she had to. And now the sobbing, sniveling little idiot who had kept her waiting all night had stuck her nose into some thing that didn’t concern her. If she opened her mouth, the gallows would be the end.
She would open it too. Of course she would. She was his wife. They had quarreled, but the simpleton would blab. Nance knew this with unerring instinct. It was no use to offer her half the money. She didn’t have sense enough to take it. She knew those pious, baby faces–well, there was room for two in the cave under the cliff. It was daylight now. No matter; it was Christmas morning. No man or woman ever darkened her door on Christmas day. She could hide their bodies until dark, and then it was easy. She would be in New York herself before anyone could suspect the meaning of that automobile in the shed or the owners would trouble themselves to come after it.
Again her decision was quick and fierce. Her hand was on the bag. She would hold it against the world, all hell and heaven.
With the leap of a tigress she was on the girl, the bag gripped in her left hand, the knife in her right.
To her amazement the trembling figure stood stock still gazing at her with a strange look of pity.
“Well!” Nance growled. “I ain’t goin’ ter be took now I’ve got this money–I’m goin’ to New York ter find my boy!”
She lifted the knife and stopped in sheer stupor of surprise at the girl’s immovable body and staring eyes. Had she gone crazy? What on earth could it mean? No girl of her youth and beauty could look death in the face without a tremor. No woman in her right senses could see the body of her dead husband lying there red and yet quivering without a sign. It was more than even Nance’s nerves could endure.
She lowered the knife and peered into the girl’s set face and glanced quickly about the room. Could she have called help? Was the house surrounded? It was impossible. She couldn’t have escaped. What did it mean?
The old woman drew back with a terror she couldn’t understand.
“What are you looking at me like that for?” she panted.
Mary held her gaze in lingering pity. Her heart went out now to the miserable creature trembling in the presence of her victim. The blow must fall that would crush the soul out of her body at one stroke. The gray hair had tumbled over her distorted features, the ragged dress had been torn from her throat in the struggle and her flat, bony breast was exposed.
“You don’t–have–to–go–to–New York–to–find– your–boy!” the strained voice said at last.
Nance frowned in surprise and flew back at her in rage.
“Yes I do, too–he lives thar!”
The little figure straightened above the crouching form.
“He’s here!”
Nance sank slowly against the table and rested the bag on the edge of the chair. Its weight was more than she could bear. She tried to glance over her shoulder at the body on the couch and her courage failed. The first suspicion of the hideous truth flashed through her stunned mind. She couldn’t grasp it at once.
“Whar?” she whispered hoarsely.
Mary lifted her arm slowly and pointed to the couch.
“There!”
Nance glared at her a moment and broke into a hysterical laugh.
“It’s a lie–a lie–a lie!”
“It’s true—-“
“Yer’re just a lyin’ ter me ter get away an give me up–but ye won’t do it–little Miss–old Nance is too smart for ye this time. Who told you that?”
“He told me tonight!”
“He told you?” she repeated blankly.
“Yes.”
“You’re a liar!” she growled. “And I’ll prove it– you move out o’ your tracks an’ I’ll cut your throat. My boy’s got a scar on his neck–I know right whar to look for it. Don’t you move now till I see–I know you’re a liar—-“
She turned and with the quick trembling fingers of her right hand tore the shirt back from the neck and saw the scar. She still held the bag in her left hand. The muscles slowly relaxed and the bag fell endwise to the floor, the gold crashing and rolling over the boards. She stared in stupor and threw both hands above her streaming gray hair.
“Lord God Almighty!” she shrieked. “Why didn’t I think that he wuz somebody else’s boy if he weren’t mine!”
The thin body trembled and crumpled beside the couch.
The girl lifted her head in a look of awe as if in prayer.
“And God has set me free! free! free!”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE DOCTOR
Mary stood overwhelmed by the tragedy she had witnessed. For the time her brain refused to record sensations. She had seen too much, felt too much in the past eight hours. Soul and body were numb.
The first impressions of returning consciousness were fixed on Nance. She had risen suddenly from the floor and smoothed the hair back from Jim’s forehead with tender touch as if afraid to wake him. She drew the quilt from the kitchen floor, spread it over the body, and lifted her eyes to Mary’s. It was only too plain.
Reason had gone.
She tipped close and put her fingers on her lips.
“Sh! We mustn’t wake him. He’s tired. Let him sleep. It’s my boy. He’s come home. We’ll fix him a fine Christmas dinner. I’ve got a turkey. I’ll bake a cake—-” she paused and laughed softly. “I’ve got eggs too, fresh laid yesterday. We’ll make egg- nog all day and all night. I ain’t had no Christmas since that devil stole him. We’ll have one this time, won’t we?”
The girl’s wits were again alert. She must run for help. A minute to humor the old woman’s delusion and she might return before any harm came to her. Jim had not moved a muscle. It was plain that he was beyond help.
“Yes,” Mary answered cheerfully. “You fix the cake–and I’ll get the wood to make a fire.”
Nance laughed again.
“We’ll have the dinner all ready for him when he wakes, won’t we?”
“Yes. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Nance hurried into the kitchen humming an old song in a faltering voice that sent the cold chills down the girl’s spine.
Mary slipped quietly through the door and ran with swift, sure foot down the narrow road along which the machine had picked its way the afternoon before. The cabin they had passed last could not be more than a mile.
She made no effort to find the logs for pedestrians when the road crossed the brook. She plunged straight through the babbling waters with her shoes, regardless of skirts.
Panting for breath, she saw the smoke curling from the cabin chimney a quarter of a mile away.
“Thank God!” she cried. “They’re awake!”
She was so glad to have reached her goal, her strength suddenly gave way and she dropped to a boulder by the wayside to rest. In two minutes she was up and running with all her might.
She rushed to the door and knocked.
A mountaineer in shirt-sleeves and stockings answered with a look of mild wonder.
“For God’s sake come and help me. I must have a doctor quick. We spent the night at Mrs. Owens’. She’s lost her mind completely–a terrible thing has happened–you’ll help me?”
“Cose I will, honey,” the mountaineer drawled. “Jest ez quick ez I get on my shoes.”
“Is there a doctor near?” she asked breathlessly.
He answered without looking up:
“The best one that God ever sent to a sick bed. He don’t charge nobody a cent in these parts. He just heals the sick because hit’s his callin’. Come from somewhar up North and built hisself a fine log house up on the side of the mountains. Hit’s full of all the medicines in the world, too—-“
“Will you ask him to come for me?” Mary broke in.
“I’ll jump on my hoss an’ have him thar in half a’ hour. You can run right back, honey, and look out for the po’ ole critter till we get thar.”
“Thank you! Thank you!” she answered grate fully.
“Not at all, not at all!” he protested as he swung through the door and hurried to the low-pitched sheds in which his horse and cow were stabled. “Be thar in no time!”
When Mary returned, Nance was still busy in the kitchen. She had built a fire and put the turkey in the oven.
Mary was counting the minutes now until the doctor should come. The old woman’s prattle about the return of her lost boy, so big and strong and handsome, had become unendurable. She felt that she should scream and collapse unless help came at once. She looked at her watch. It was just thirty-five minutes from the time she had left the cabin in the valley below.
She sprang to her feet with a smothered cry of joy. The beat of a horse’s hoof at full gallop was ringing down the road.
In two minutes the Doctor’s firm footstep was heard at the kitchen door.
Nance turned with a look of glad surprise.
“Well, fur the land sake, ef hit ain’t Doctor Mulford! Come right in!” she cried.
The Doctor seized her hand.
“And how is my good friend, Mrs. Owens, this morning?” he asked cheerfully.
Mary was studying him with deep interest. She had asked herself the question a hundred times how much she could tell him–what to say and what to leave unsaid. One glance at his calm, intellectual face was enough. He was a man of striking appearance, six feet tall, forty-five years of age, hair prematurely gray and a slight stoop to his broad shoulders. His brown eyes seemed to enfold the old woman in their sympathy.
Nance was chattering her answer to his greeting.
“Oh, I’m feelin’ fine, Doctor–” she dropped her voice confidentially–“and you’re just in time for a good dinner. My boy that was lost has come home. He’s a great big fellow, wears fine clothes and come up the mountain all the way in a devil wagon.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Sh! He’s asleep! We won’t wake him till dinner! He’s all tired out.”
The Doctor nodded understandingly and turned toward Mary.
“And this young lady?”
“Oh, that’s his wife from New York–ain’t she purty?”
The Doctor saw the delicate hands trembling and extended his.
No word was spoken. None was needed. There was healing in his touch, healing in his whole being. No man or woman could resist the appeal of his personality. Their secrets were yielded with perfect faith.
“Come with me quickly,” Mary whispered.
“I understand,” he answered carelessly.
Turning again to Nance, he said with easy confidence:
“I’ll not disturb you with your cooking, Mrs. Owens. Go right on with it. I’ll have a little chat with your son’s wife. If she’s from New York I want to ask her about some of my people up there—-“
“All right,” Nance answered, “but don’t you wake HIM! Go with her inter the shed-room.”
“We’ll go on tip-toe!” the Doctor whispered.
Nance nodded, smiled and bent again over the oven.
Mary led him quickly through the living-room, head averted from the couch, and into the prison cell in which she had passed the night. The physician glanced with a startled look at the gold still scattered on the floor.
She seized his hand and swayed.
He touched the brown hair of her bared head gently and pressed her hand.
“Steady, now, child, tell me quickly.”
“Yes, yes,” she gasped, “I’ll tell you the truth—-“
He held her gaze.
“And the whole truth–it’s best.”
Mary nodded, tried to speak and failed. She drew her breath and steadied herself, still gripping his hand.
“I will,” she began faintly. “He’s dead—-“
She paused and nodded toward the living-room.
“The man–her son?”
“Yes. We came last night from Asheville. We were on our honeymoon. We haven’t been married but three weeks. I never knew the truth about his life and character until last night when he told me that this old woman was his mother. I found a case of jewels in the bag he carried–jewels that belonged to a man in New York who was robbed and shot. I recognized the case. He confessed to me at last in cold, brutal words that he was a thief. I couldn’t believe it at first. I tried to make him give up his criminal career. He laughed at me. He gloried in it. I tried to leave him. He choked me into insensibility and drove me into this cell, where I spent the night. He brought the gold that you saw on the floor which he had honestly made to give to his old mother–but for a devilish purpose. He showed it to her last night to rouse her avarice and make her first agree to hide his stolen goods. He succeeded too well. Before he had revealed himself she slipped into the room at daylight while he slept in a drunken stupor, murdered him and took the money. The struggle waked me and I rushed in. She gripped her knife to kill me. I told her that she had murdered her own son and she went mad—-“
She paused for breath and her lips trembled piteously.
“You know what to do, Doctor?”
“Yes!”
“And you’ll help me?”
He smiled tenderly and nodded his head.
“God knows you need it, child!”
The nerves snapped at last, and she sank a limp heap at his feet.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CALL DIVINE
The Doctor threw off his coat and took charge of the stricken house. He sent his waiting messenger for a faithful nurse, a mountain woman whom he had trained, and began the fight for Mary’s life. The collapse into which she had fallen would require weeks of patient care. There was no immediate danger of death, and while he awaited the arrival of help, he turned into the living-room to examine the body of the slain husband.
The head had fallen backward over the side of the lounge and a pool of blood, still warm and red, lay on the floor in a widening circle beneath it. His quick eye took in its significance at a glance. He sprang forward, ripped the shirt wide open and applied his ear to the breast.
“He’s still alive!” he cried excitedly.
He examined the ugly wound in the left side and found that the knife had penetrated the lung. The heart had not been touched. The blow on the neck had not been fatal. The shock of the final stroke had merely choked the wounded man into collapse from the hemorrhage of the left lung. The position into which the body had fallen across the couch had gradually cleared the accumulated blood. There was a chance to save his life.
In ten minutes he had applied stimulants and restored respiration, but the deep wheeze from the stricken lung told only too plainly the dangerous character of the wound. It would be a bitter fight. His enormous vitality might win. The chances were against him.
Jim’s lips moved and he tried to speak.
The Doctor placed his hand on his mouth and shook his head. The drooping eyelids closed in grateful obedience.
The beat of horses’ hoofs echoed down the mountain road. His nurse and messenger were coming. He decided at once to move Mary to his own house. She must regain consciousness in new surroundings or her chance of survival would be slender. To awake in this miserable cabin, the scene of the tragedy she had witnessed, might be instantly fatal. Besides she must not yet know that the brute who had choked her was alive and might still hold the power of life and death over her frail body. She believed him dead. It was best so. He might be dead and buried before she recovered consciousness. The fever that burned her brain would completely cloud reason for days.
He hastily improvised a stretcher with a blanket and two strong quilting-poles which stood in the corner of the room. Nance helped him without question. She obeyed his slightest suggestion with childlike submission.
He placed Mary on the stretcher, wrapped her body in another warm blanket and turned to his nurse and messenger:
“Carry her to my house. Walk slowly and rest whenever you wish. Don’t wake her. Tell Aunt Abbie to put her to bed in the south room overlooking the valley. Don’t leave her a minute, Betty. She’s in the first collapse of brain fever. You know what to do. I’ll be there in an hour. You come back here, John. I want you.”
The mountaineer nodded and seized one end of the stretcher. The nurse took up the other and the Doctor held wide the cabin door as they passed out.
For three weeks he fought the grim battle with Death for the two young lives the Christmas tragedy had thrust into his hands. He gave his entire time day and night to the desperate struggle.
When pneumonia had developed and Jim’s life hung by a hair, he slept on the couch in the living-room of the cabin and had Nance make for herself a bed on the floor of the kitchen.
The old woman remained an obedient child. She cooked the Doctor’s meals and did the work about the house and yard as if nothing had disturbed her habits of lonely plodding. She believed implicitly all that was told her. Her son had pneumonia from cold he had taken in the long drive from Asheville. The house must be kept quiet. John Sanders was helping her nurse him. She was sure the Doctor would save him.
Even the knife with which she had stabbed him made no impression on her numbed senses. The Doctor had scoured every trace of blood from the blade and put it back in its place on the shelf, lest she should miss it and ask questions. She used it daily without the slightest memory of the frightful story it might tell.
Each morning before going to the cabin the Doctor watched with patience for the first signs of returning consciousness in Mary’s fever-wracked body. The day she lifted her grateful eyes to his and her lips moved in a tremulous question he raised his hand gently.
“Sh! Child–don’t talk! It’s all right. You’re getting better. I’ve been with you every day. You’re in my house now. You’ll soon be yourself again.”
She smiled wanly, put her delicate hand on his and pressed it gratefully.
“I understand. You thank me–you say that I am good to you. But I’m not. This is my life. I heal the sick because I must. I love this battle royal with Death. He beats me sometimes–but I never quit. I’m always tramping on his trail, and I’ve won this fight!”
The calm brown eyes held her in a spell and she smiled again.
“Sleep now,” he said soothingly. “Sleep day and night. Just wake to take a little food–that’s all and Nature will do the rest.”
He stroked her hand gently until her eyelids closed.
Two days later Jim clung to the Doctor’s hand and insisted on talking.
“Better wait a little longer, boy,” the physician answered kindly. “You’re not out of the woods yet—-“
“I can’t wait–Doc—-” Jim pleaded. “I’ve just got to ask you something.”
“All right. You can talk five minutes.”
“My wife, Doc, how is she? You took her to your house, John told me. She’ll get well?”
“Yes. She’s rapidly recovering now.”
“What does she say about me?”
“She thinks you’re dead.”
“You haven’t told her?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“She had all she could stand—-“
Jim stared in silence.
“You think she’d be sorry to know I am alive?” he asked slowly.
“It would be a great shock.”
The steel blue eyes slowly filled with tears.
“God! I am rotten, ain’t I?”
“There’s no doubt about that, my son,” was the firm answer.
“Why did you fight so hard to save me–I wonder?”
“An old feud between Death and me.”
Jim suddenly seized the Doctor’s hand.
“Say, you can’t fool me–you’re a good one, Doc. You’ve been a friend to me and you’ve got to help now–you’ve just got to. You’re the only one on earth who can. You’ve a great big heart and you can’t go back on a fellow that’s down and out. Give me a chance! You will–won’t you?”
The hot fingers gripped the Doctor’s hand with pleading tenderness.
The brown eyes searched Jim’s soul.
“If you can show me it’s worth while—-“
The fingers tightened their grip in silence.
“Just give me a chance, Doc,” he said at last, “and I’ll show you! I ain’t never had a chance to really know what was right and what was wrong. If I’d a lived here with my old mother she’d have told me. You know what it is to be a stray dog on the streets of New York? Even then, I’d have kept straight if I hadn’t been robbed by a lawyer and his pal. I didn’t know what I was doin’ till that night here in this cabin– honest to God, I didn’t—-“
He paused for breath and a tear stole down his cheek. He fought for control of his emotions and went on in low tones.
“I didn’t know–till I saw my old mother creepin’ on me in the shadows with that big knife gleamin’ in her hand! I tried to stop her and I couldn’t. I tried to yell and strangled with blood. I saw the flames of hell in her eyes and I had kindled them there– God! I never knew until that minute! I’m broken and bruised lyin’ on the rocks now in the lowest pit—- Give me your hand, Doc! You’re my only friend–I’m goin’ straight from now on–so help me God!”
He paused again for breath and sought the actor’s eyes.
“You’ll stand by me, won’t you?”
A friendly grip closed on the trembling fingers.
“Yes–I’ll help you–if I can.”
CHAPTER XXV
THE MOTHER
Mary was resting in the chair beneath the southern windows of the sun-parlor of the Doctor’s bungalow. He had built his home of logs cut from the mountainside. Its rooms were supplied with every modern convenience and comfort. Clear spring water from the cliff above poured into the cypress tank constructed beneath the