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The Sherrods

by George Barr McCutcheon · English · Gutenberg #35335 · 417,545 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Sherrods

Author: George Barr McCutcheon

Illustrator: C. D. Williams


        
Release date: February 24, 2011 [eBook #35335]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35335

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHERRODS ***




Produced by Al Haines








[Illustration: Cover art]




[Frontispiece: JUSTINE SHERROD.]




[Illustration: Title page]




THE

SHERRODS


By

George Barr McCutcheon


Author of "Graustark", "Castle Craneycrow", Etc.



With Illustrations by

C. D. Williams



Grosset & Dunlap

New York




  Copyright, 1903, by
  Dodd, Mead and Company


  _Entered at
  Stationers' Hall_


  _Published September, 1903_


  HILL AND LEONARD
  NEW YORK CITY, U. S. A.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

      I. THE SOFT SUMMER NIGHT
     II. "LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER"
    III. JUD AND JUSTINE
     IV. MRS. HARDESTY'S CHARITY
      V. WHEN THE CLASH CAME
     VI. THE GIRL IN GRAY
    VII. LEAVING PARADISE
   VIII. THE FIRST WAS A CRIMINAL
     IX. THE ENCOUNTER WITH CRAWLEY
      X. THE CLOTHES AND THE MAN
     XI. WHEN THE WIND BLOWS
    XII. THE GOOD OF EVIL
   XIII. THE FINDING OF CELESTE
    XIV. "MY TRUEST COMRADE"
     XV. ONE HEART FOR TWO
    XVI. THE FALL OF THE WEAK
   XVII. AT SEA
  XVIII. 'GENE CRAWLEY'S SERMON
    XIX. THE PURE AND THE POOR
     XX. THE SOCIABLE
    XXI. THE COMING IN THE NIGHT
   XXII. THE FIRST-BORN
  XXIII. THE TALE OF TEARS
   XXIV. THE NIGHT OUT
    XXV. THE LETTER TO CRAWLEY
   XXVI. TWO WOMEN AND A BABE
  XXVII. THE END OF IT ALL
 XXVIII. HEARTS
   XXIX. CRAWLEY'S LEGACY




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


JUSTINE SHERROD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

"IN A SECOND CRAWLEY WAS ROLLING UP HIS SLEEVES"

"YOU MUST LET ME PAY YOU FOR IT"

"HIS EYES TOOK IN THE PICTURE"

"'YOU'RE A LIAR--YOU'RE ALL LIARS'"

"'IT IS NOT TRUE,' HALF SHRIEKED CELESTE"




THE SHERRODS



CHAPTER I.

THE SOFT SUMMER NIGHT.

Through the soft summer night came the sounds of the silence that is
heard only when nature sleeps, imperceptible except as one feels it
behind the breath he draws or perhaps realizes it in the touch of an
unexpected branch or flower.  The stillness of a silence that is not
silent; a stillness so dead that the croaking of frogs, the chirping of
crickets, the barking of dogs, the hooting of owls, the rustling of
leaves are not heard, although the air is heavy with those voices of
the night--the stillness of a night in the country.  All human activity
apparently at an end, all sign of life lost in somber shadows.  The
ceaseless croaking, the chirping, the hooting, the rustling themselves
make up this unspeakable silence--this sweet, unconscious solitude.

A country lane, dark and gloomy, awaited the moon from the clouded
east.  Lighted only here and there by the twinkling windows in roadside
homes, it lay asleep in its bed of dust.  Far off it straggled into a
village, but out there in the country it was lost to the world with the
setting of the sun.

The faint glow from the window of a cottage poured its feeble but
willing self into the night as if seeking to dispel the gloom, dimly
conscious that its efforts were unappreciated and undesired.  Down at
the rickety front gate, cloaked in blackness, stood two persons.
Darkness could not hide the world from them, for the whole world dwelt
within the confines of a love-lit garden gate.  For them there was no
sound of life except their tender voices, no evidence that a world
existed beyond the posts between which they stood, his arm about her,
her head upon his breast.  They spoke softly in the silence about them.

"And to-morrow night at this time you will be mine--all mine," he
murmured.  She looked again into his face, indistinct in the night.

"To-morrow night!  Oh, Jud, it does not seem possible.  We are both so
young and so--so--"

"So foolish!" he smiled.

"So poor," she finished plaintively.

"But, Justine, you don't feel afraid to marry me because I am poor, do
you?" he asked.

"Do you think I have been poor only to be afraid of it?  We love each
other, dear, and we are rich.  To-morrow night I shall be the richest
girl in the world," she sighed tremulously.

"To-morrow night," he whispered.  His arm tightened about her, his head
dropped until his lips met hers and clung to them until the world was
forgotten.

Far away in the night sounded the steady beat of a galloping horse's
hoofs.  Louder and nearer grew the pounding on the dry roadway until at
last the rollicking whistle of the rider could be heard.  Standing in
the gateway, the silent lovers, their happy young hearts beating as
one, listened dreamily to the approach.

"He has been in the village," said she, at length breaking the silence
that had followed their passionate kiss.  Her slender body trembled
slightly in his arms.

"And he is going home drunk, as usual," added the youth sententiously.
"Has he annoyed you lately?"

"We must pay no attention to what he says or does," she answered
evasively.

"Then he has said or done something?"

"He came to the schoolhouse yesterday morning, dear--just for a
moment--and he was not so very rude," she pleaded hurriedly.

"What did he say to you; what did he want?" persisted her lover.

"Oh, nothing--nothing, Jud.  Just the same old thing.  He wanted me to
give you up and--and--"  She hesitated.

"And wait for him, eh?  If he bothers you again I'll kill him.  You're
mine, and he knows it, and he's got to let you alone."

"But it will all be over to-morrow night, dear.  I'll be yours, and
he'll have to give up.  He's crazy now, and you must not mind what he
does.  When I'm your wife he'll quit--maybe he'll go away.  I've told
him I don't love him.  Don't you see, Jud, he has hope now, because I
am not married.  Just as soon as the wedding's over he'll see that it's
no use and--and he'll let us alone."

"The drunken hound!  The idea of him daring to love you!  Justine, I
could kill him!"

The horseman swept past the gate, a swift black shadow amid the thunder
of hoof-beats, and the lovers drew closer together.  Just as he roared
past them his whistling ceased and a strong, bold voice shouted:

"Hello, Justine!"  He was saluting, in drunken gallantry, the girl whom
he believed to be asleep beneath a counterpane near some black window
in the little house.  The horse shied, his whip swished through the air
and cut across the animal's flank; the ugly snort of the beast mingled
with oaths from the rider.

The girl shuddered and placed her hands over her ears; her companion
set his teeth and muttered:

"The dog!  I wish that horse would throw him and break his neck!  He's
not fit to live.  Justine, if there is a man who will go to hell when
he dies, that man is 'Gene Crawley.  And he wants you--the hound!  The
sweetest, gentlest, purest girl in the world!  He wants you!"

They forgot the rider, and the clatter of the horse's hoofs died away
in the night.  The lovers turned slowly toward the house.  At the door
he stooped and kissed her.

"The last night we are to part like this," he whispered.

She laid both hands upon his face.

"Let us pray to-night, dear, that we may be always as happy as we now
are," she said softly.

She opened the door, and the two stood for a moment in the fair light
from the cottage lamp.  From above him on the door-sill, she laid her
fingers in his curly brown hair, and said, half timidly, half joyfully:

"The last night we shall say good-bye like this."

Then she kissed him suddenly and was gone, blushing and trembling.  He
looked at the closed door for an instant, and then dropped to his knees
and kissed the step on which she had stood.




CHAPTER II.

"LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER."

The next night they were married.  In the little cottage there were
lights and the revelry known only in country nuptials.  The doors and
windows were open, and scores of young people in their best clothes
flitted in and out, their merry voices ringing with excitement, their
faces glowing with pleasure, their eyes sparkling with the mischief
peculiar to occasions of the kind.  There were the congratulations and
the teasings; the timid jests and the coarse ones; the cynical bits of
advice from lofty experts; the blushes of prospective brides; the
red-faced denials of guilty beaux; the smiles, the winks, and the
songs; the feasting and the farewells.

"That boy," Jud Sherrod, and "Cap" Van's daughter, Justine, were to be
married.  The community would have liked to be glad.  Everybody had
"allowed" they would be married some day.  Now that the day had come,
amid the rejoicing there were doubts, such as this:

"They's a mighty nice-appearin' couple, but dinged 'f I see how they're
goin' to git along.  Jud ain't got no more bizness workin' on a farm
than a hog hez in a telegraft office.  Course, his pap was a farmer,
but Jud's been off to seminary.  He don't give a dodgast fer the farm,
nohow, an' I perdict that she'll haf to keep on teachin' school fer a
livin'.  Course, that little land o' hern might keep 'em goin', but I
bet a barrel o' cider 'at Jud won't be wuth a bushel o' corn-husks at
runnin' it.  He's a dern nice boy, though, an' I'd hate like Sam Patch
to see a morgidge put on the place.  What she'd orter done wuz to
married some big cuss like Link Overshine er Luther Hitchcock.  They'd
'a' made somethin' out'n that little eighty up yander, an' she'd never
need to worry.  Dinged if she ain't put' nigh the purtiest girl I ever
see.  Looks jest like her ma.  'Member her?  Don't see what she ever
could see in Jud Sherrod.  He cain't do a dasted thing but draw
picters.  His pap had orter walloped him good an' made him chop wood er
somethin', 'stead o' lettin' him go on the way he did.  They do say he
kin sketch things powerful fine.  He tuck off a picter uv Sim Brookses'
sucklin' calves that was a daisy, I've hearn.  But that ain't farmin'
by a dern sight."

Even Jud and Justine had looked forward to the great day with anxious
minds.  Both realized the importance of the step they were to take, for
they were possessed of a judgment and a keenness uncommon in young and
ardent lovers.  Justine, little more than a girl in years, knew that
Jud was not and never could be a farmer; it was not in him.  He knew it
as well as she, though he was not indolent; he was far from that.  He
was ambitious and he was an indefatigable toiler--in art, not of the
soil.  He was a born artist.  By force of circumstances he was a
farmer.  The tan on his hands and face, the hardness in his palms had
not been acquired unwillingly, for he was not a sluggard, nor a
grumbler.  He plowed, though his thoughts were not of the plowing; he
reaped, though his thoughts were not of the harvest.

They had been sweethearts from childhood.  They had played together,
read together, studied together, and suffered together.  It seemed to
them that they just grew up to their wedding day, a perfectly natural
growth.  Had this marriage come five years earlier everything would
have been different.  Instead of the little cottage, clean, cozy, and
poor, there would have been the big white house on the hill, surrounded
by maples and oaks; instead of the simple gown of white lawn there
would have been a magnificent silk or satin; instead of the sympathy
and the somber head-shakings of wedding guests there would have been
rejoicing; and approval.

To-night, as the little clock on Justine's bureau struck eight, she
left her room and met Jud in the narrow hall upstairs.  Downstairs
could be heard the muffled voices of an expectant crowd, an occasional
giggle breaking through the buzz.  He kissed her and both were silent,
thinking of other homes.  One remembered the big white house on the
hill, the other the old yellow farmhouse, large and rambling, "over on
the pike."  To-night they faced the minister in the parlor of one of
the lowliest dwellings in the neighborhood.  The boy had not an acre of
all his father's lands; the girl was poor, at the gates of the famous
Van homestead.  They were married not in his house, but in hers.  The
cottage stood in the corner of a thirty-acre farm that had come to her
through her grandmother.  This was all except memories that the child
had to connect her present life with the comfortable days of the past.

Old Mrs. Crane, who lived with Justine in the little cot, met them at
the foot of the creaking stairway and threw open the door to the
parlor.  Before the boy and girl gleamed the faces of a score or more
of eager, excited friends.  There was hardly a girl in the crowd who
was not dressed more expensively than the bride.  Justine was proudly
aware of the critical, simpering gaze that swept over her simple gown;
she could almost read the exultant thoughts of her guests, as they
compared her plain lawn to the ridiculous finery that hid their
sunburnt necks, scrawny arms, and perspiring bodies.

Her face was fresh and flushed with happiness, pride--perhaps disdain;
their faces had, at least, been washed and lavishly powdered.  Most of
them wore absurd white gloves over their red arms.  Yet they were the
elite of the county.  There were red dresses, blue dresses, yellow
dresses, and there were other dresses in which the colors of the
rainbow shone, all made to fit women other than those who wore them.
The men, old and young, bearded and beardless, were the most uncouth
aristocrats that ever lorded it over a countryside.  True, they had put
on their store clothes and had blackened their boots and shoes; they
had shaved, and they had plastered their hair faultlessly; they had
cast aside their quids of tobacco and they were as circumspect as if
they were at church.

Justine and Jud stood with clasped hands before the young minister,
listening to his lengthy and timely discourse on the blessedness of
matrimony.  Then came the vows.  Their eyes met.  The answers!  They
breathed them--the yes and the yes and the yes--almost unconsciously.
Then the last words--"Whom God hath joined together let not man put
asunder!"

For the next two or three hours they were in a whirl of emotions;
everything was hazy, uncertain, misty to them.  They had taken up each
other's burdens, each other's joys for life; they had begun a new
existence.  She was no longer Justine Van, he was no longer the
thoughtless boy.  They were husband and wife.  The laughter, the jests,
the quips, and the taunts of their merry friends were a jangle of
discordant sounds, unpleasant and untimely, and kindly as they were
meant, unkind.  There were aimless hand-shakings, palsied kisses, inane
responses to crude congratulations, and it was all over.  The guests
departed, singing, shouting, and laughing.  The last to leave was old
Mrs. Crane, Justine's companion for four long years.  She was going to
live with her brother up near the village.  Jud and Justine were to
live alone.

Down at the toll-gate, nearly a mile from Justine's home in the
direction of the village, a small and select company of loungers spent
that evening.  The toll-gate, kept by Jim Hardesty and his wife,
Matilda, was at the junction of the big gravel pike which led to the
county seat and the slim, shady lane that passed Justine's cottage.
Here of evenings the "hired hands" of the neighborhood gathered to
gossip, tell lies, and "talk ugly" about the farmers by whom they were
employed.  On the night of the wedding there were five or six slouchy,
sweat-smelling rustics lounging on the porch.  The wedding formed the
only topic of conversation.

They talked of Justine's good looks and how "they'd liked to be in
Jud's boots"; and of the days when old "Cap" Van lived and the bride of
the night had not had to teach school; of the days when she rode horses
of her own, and went to the city to make purchases instead of to the
humble village as now; they talked of her kindly in their rough way.
They discussed Jud with enthusiasm.  Everybody liked him.  His two
years at college had not "swelled his head."  He was "jest the feller
fer Justine Van, an' she got him, too, 'g'inst ever' girl in the
township--an' ever' one of 'em had set their caps fer him, too, you
bet."  The loungers agreed it was "too bad that Jud and Justine was so
derned pore, but mebbe they'd make out somehow er 'nother."

They laughed about 'Gene Crawley's affection for Justine Van.

'Gene Crawley!  A "hand" over at Martin Grimes' place--a plain,
every-day hired man, working for eighteen dollars a month for the
meanest, stingiest farmer in Clay Township!  He was not any better than
the rest of the hands on the place, "'s fer as learnin' an' manners wuz
concerned.  Hadn't no more license to be skylarkin' 'round after
Justine Van 'n he had after Queen Willimeny.  'S if she'd notice sech a
derned cuss as him; allus cussin' an' drinkin' an' fightin'.  No
'spectabull girl would want to be saw with him."

About nine o'clock a dark figure approached the toll-gate afoot.  It
was a man, and he came from the night somewhere to the east, probably
from the village of Glenville.  There was no mistaking his identity.
The heavy, swift tread told the watchers that it was 'Gene Crawley long
before he came within the radius of light that shot through the open
doorway.  Someone in the crowd called out:

"H' are ye, 'Gene!  Thought you'd be up to the weddin'."

'Gene did not reply.  He strode up to the porch and threw himself into
a vacant chair near the window.  The light from within shone fairly
upon his dark, sullen face, his scowling brow, and his flushed,
unshaven cheeks.  An ugly gleam was in his black eyes.  He had been
drinking, but he was not intoxicated.  His hickory shirt, dirty and
almost buttonless, was open at the throat as if it had been torn that
its wearer might save himself from choking.  He wore no coat, and his
faded, patched blue overalls were pushed into the tops of his heavy
boots.  An old straw hat lay where he had cast it behind his chair.
The black, coarse hair, rumpled and unkempt, grew low on his scowling
forehead.  His face was hard and deeply marked, not unlike that of an
Indian.  The jaw was firm, the chin square and defiant, the mouth broad
and cruel, the nose large and straight, the eyes coal-black and set far
apart, beneath heavy brows.  The arm which rested on the sill was bare
to the elbow; it was rugged, with cords of muscle that looked like
ropes interlaced.  A glimpse of the arm revealed, as if he stood stark
naked, the strength of this young Samson.  He was a huge, unwieldy man,
a little above medium height; he might have weighed one hundred and
seventy pounds; but with his square shoulders, broad chest, and an
unusually erect carriage for an overworked farm-boy, he looked larger
than he really was.

"You ain't got your Sunday-go-to-meetin' close on, 'Gene," commented
Jim Hardesty, tilting back in his chair and spitting tobacco juice half
way across the road.

"Didn' y' git a bid to the weddin'?" asked Harve Crose, with mock
sympathy.

A flush of anger and humiliation reddened the face of Grimes' hired
man, but it was gone in a second.

"No; I didn' git no bid," he answered, a trifle hoarsely.  "Guess they
didn' want me.  I ain't good 'nough, 'pears like."

"Seems to me she'd orter ast you, 'Gene.  You be'n kinder hangin'
'round an' teasin' her to have you, an' seems no more'n right fer her
to have give you a bid to the weddin'," said Doc Ramsey, meaningly.
"She'd orter done that, jest to show you why she wouldn' have you,
don't y' see?"

Crawley's only reply was a baleful glare.

"How does it feel to be cut out by another feller, 'Gene?" asked Crose
tauntingly.

"I'd never let a feller like Jud Sherrod beat my time," added Joe
Perkins.

"Course, Jud's been to college and learned how to spoon with the girls,
so I guess it's no wonder he ketched Justine.  She's jest like all
girls, I reckon.  Smooth cuss kin ketch 'em all, b'gosh.  Never seed it
fail yit.  Trouble with you, 'Gene, is 'at you--"

'Gene sprang to his feet with an oath so ugly that the jesters shrank
back.  For several minutes he tramped up and down the porch like a
caged animal, cursing hoarsely to himself, his broad shoulders hunched
forward as if he were bent on crushing everything before them.  Finally
he came to a standstill in front of the expectant crowd.  The devil was
in his face.

"Don't none o' you fellers ever say anything more to me about this.  Ef
you do I'll break somebody's neck.  It's none o' your business how I
feel, an' I won't have no more of it.  Do y' hear me?" he snarled.

"I on'y ast fer information--" began Crose, apologetically.

"Well, I'll give you some, dang ye!  You say I'm cut out, eh!  Mebbe I
am--mebbe I am!  But you'll see--you'll see!  I'll make him sorry fer
it!  He's whupped me this time, but I'll win yet!  D' y' hear?  I'll
win yet!"

His face was almost white under the coat of tan, his eyes glowed, his
voice was low and intense.  The loungers waited in suspense.

"He thinks he's won!  But I'll show him--I'll show him!  She's like all
women!  She kin be won ag'in--she kin love more'n once!  You say he's
cut me out!  Mebbe he has--mebbe he has!  But this ain't a marker to
the way I'll cut him out.  I'll take her away from him, I will, so he'p
me God!  D' y' hear that?  She'll shake him fer me some day, sure 's
there's a hell, an' then!  Then where'll he be?  She'll be mine!  Fair
'r foul, I'll have her!  I won't give up tell I take her 'way from him!
An' she'll come, too; she'll come!  She'll leave him, jest like other
women have done, an' then who'll be cut out?  Answer, damn ye!  Who'll
be cut out?"

He was facing them and his lips were almost as white as the gleaming
teeth beneath them.  For a moment no one dared to reply.  At last Doc
Ramsey scrambled to his feet.

"Consarn ye, 'Gene Crawley!" he exclaimed.  "You cain't stan' up there
an' say that 'bout Justine Van!  She's a good girl, an' you're a dern
hound fer talkin' like thet!  They ain't a bad drop o' blood in her
body--they ain't a wrong thought in her head, an' you know it.  You kin
lick me, I know, but dern ef you kin say them things to me.  She won't
look at you no more'n she'd look at that dog o' Jim's over yander."

'Gene Crawley's arm struck out and Doc Ramsey crashed to the floor of
the porch.  He lay motionless for a long time.  The dealer of the blow
stood over him like a wild beast waiting for its prey to move.  Not
another man in the group lifted a hand against him.

At last he stooped and picked up his hat.

"That's what you'll all git ef you open your heads," he grated.  "What
I said about her goes!"

He fixed his hat roughly on his head and swung away in the darkness.

In the open door of the cottage down the lane Jud and Justine stood
side by side, her hand in his, long after the last guest had departed.
It was near midnight and behind them the lamps flickered and sputtered
with the last gasps of waning life.  Silhouetted in the long, bright
frame of the doorway, the silent lovers presented a picture of a new
life begun, youth on the threshold of a new world.

His arm drew her to his breast and her fluttering hands went slowly,
gently to his cheeks.  He bent and kissed the upturned lips.

Then the door closed and the picture was gone.

Across the road, beside the great oak that sent its branches almost to
the little gateway, a man fell away from the fence, upon which, with
murder in his heart, he had been leaning.  His hands were clasped to
his eyes, his strong figure writhed convulsively in the damp grass; his
breath came almost in sobs.  At last, taking his hands from his hot
eyes, he raised his head and looked again toward the cottage.  One by
one the bright windows, grew dark, until at last the house was as black
as the night about it.  Then he sprang to his feet, clutching blindly
at the darkness, uttering inarticulate moans and curses.  For the first
time in his life he knew a sense of loneliness and despair.

He turned his back to the cottage and fled across the meadow.




CHAPTER III.

JUD AND JUSTINE.

Dudley Sherrod was the only son of John Sherrod, who had died about
four years before the marriage.  Up to the day of his death he was
considered the wealthiest farmer in Clay Township.  On that day he was
a pauper; his lands were no longer his own; his wife and his son were
penniless.  In an upstairs room of the great old farmhouse, built by
his grandfather when the country was new, he blew out his brains,
unable to face the ruin that fate had brought to his door.

His father had been a member of the Legislature, and the boy had spent
two years in the city, attending a medical college.  When the diploma
came he went back to the old home and hung out his shingle in quaint
little Glenville.  In less than a year he brought a bride to the
farm--Cora Bloodgood, the daughter of a banker in the capital city of
his State.  Before the end of another year he was, as heir, owner of
all his father's acres.  So it was that John and Cora Sherrod began
life rich and happy.  Their boy was born, grew up a bright and
sprightly lad, and was sent to college.  From the rude country
schoolhouse and its simple teachings he was sent to the busy
university, among city boys and city girls, miserable in ungainly
self-consciousness, altogether out of place.  He left behind him the
country lads and lasses, the tow-heads and the barefoots, and his heart
was sore.  But in the beginning of his second year the simplicity of
his rural heart showed signs of giving way to urban improvements.  His
strength won for him a place on the football team, and the sense of
dignity of this position displaced his self-consciousness and taught
him to be interested in the world beyond his home.  He began to know
something besides the memory of green fields and meadows and clear blue
skies.

All these months he was faithful to a slip of a girl down in the
country to whom he had feared to utter a word of love.  She knew she
loved him because she had cried when he went away and had cried when he
came back.  Letters, stiff and painfully correct as to spelling and
chirography, came each week from dear little Justine Van.  To her his
long letters, homesickness crowding between the lines, although she
could not see it, were like messages from paradise.  A dozen times a
day she read each letter as she sat in her room, or in the hated
schoolroom at Glenville, or in the shady orchard, or in the lonely
lane.  She longed to have him back at home, to hear his merry laugh, to
romp with him as they had romped before he went away to school--but
here she blushed and remembered that he was tall now, and dreadfully
old and grand, and she was--she was fifteen!  Jud thrashed a fellow
student one day because he poked fun at an old tintype of Justine that
he happened to see in the boy's room.  The victim had laughed at the
green bonnet, the long pig-tails, and the wide eyes of the girl in the
picture--"just as if they were looking for the photographer's bird, you
know."

Near the middle of his second year at college the crash came and the
half-dazed boy hurried home.  His father was dead and the whole country
was telling the stories of his great financial losses.  Every dollar,
every foot of land had been swept away by reverses arising from
investments in Arizona mines.  Captain James Van went down in the same
disaster.  When word reached his home of the suicide of John Sherrod,
he was on his way to the barn with a pistol hidden over his heart.
Horror and the awakening of courage made him cast the pistol aside and
turn to face the blow as a brave man should, with his wife and child
behind his back.

Jud and Justine could not at first, and did not for many days, realize
the force of the blow.  One had lost father as well as home; the other
had lost home and had sunk to a depth of poverty that grew more and
more appalling as her young mind began to understand.  The boy, when he
finally grasped the situation, bared his arms and set forth to support
himself and his mother by hard work.  The shock of the suicide was too
great for Mrs. Sherrod.  Her reason fled soon after her husband was
laid in the grave, but it was a year before death took her to him.
During that last year of life she lived in the old place, a helpless
invalid, mentally and physically, although the property belonged to
another.  David Strong held a mortgage on the home place, but he did
not foreclose it until she was gone.

For a year Jud cared for his mother, and worked in the fields with
David Strong's men at wages of twelve dollars a month.  Half of the
year's crop Strong gave to the widow of John Sherrod, although not a
penny's worth of it was hers by right.  After her death Strong and his
family moved into the big old house, and Jud Sherrod lived in a room in
what had been his home.

Justine Van's grandmother, in her will, left to the girl a thirty-acre
piece of ground, half timber, half cultivated, about a mile from the
white house in which the beneficiary was born and which was swallowed
up by the great disaster.  Bereft of every penny, James Van took his
wife and daughter to the miserable little cottage.  The girl shouldered
as much of the burden of poverty as her young and tender shoulders
could carry.  She begged for an appointment as teacher in the humble
schoolhouse where her a-b-abs had been learned, and for two years and a
half before her marriage she had taught the little flock of boys and
girls.  Especially necessary did this means of earning a livelihood
become when, two years after the failure, her father died.  Then Mrs.
Van followed him, and Justine, not nineteen, was face to face with the
world, a trembling, guileless child.

Her wages at the schoolhouse were twenty-five dollars a month, for six
months in a year, and the yield of grain from her poorly tilled farm
was barely enough to pay the taxes and the help hire.  Old Jim Hardesty
farmed the place for her, and he robbed her.  For six months after the
mother's death she lived alone in the cottage, and then the neighbors
finally taking the matter in hand and insisting that she be provided
with a companion, her old nurse, Mrs. Crane, came to the place.  She
was shrewd from years of adversity and persuaded Justine to send Jim
Hardesty packing--and that was the hardest duty Justine had ever had to
meet.

The discouraged boy, over on David Strong's place, worn thin with hard
work and sickness, deprived of every chance, as he thought, to realize
his ambitions, found in the girl a sympathetic comrade.  Of all the
people in his world she was the only one who understood his desires,
and could, in a way, share with him the despair that made life as he
lived it seem like a narrow cell from which he could look longingly
with no hope of escape.  Tired and sore from misfortune, these two
simple, loving natures turned to each other.  His first trembling kiss
upon her surprised, parted lips was a treasure that never left her
memory.  The bloom came to her cheeks, lightness touched her flagging
heart, happiness shone through the gloom, and the whole countryside
marveled at her growing beauty.  This slim, budding maid of the meadow
and wood was as fair a bit as nature ever perfected.  The sweetness and
purity of womanhood undefiled dwelt in her body and soul.  No taint of
worldliness had blighted her.  She was a pure, simple, country girl,
ignorant of wile, sinless and trustful.

Justine was like her father, fair faced and straight of form.  Her hair
was long and reddish-brown, her brow was broad and full, her eyes big
and brown and soft with love, her cheeks smooth and clear.  A trifle
above the medium height, straight and strong, of slender mold, she was
as graceful as a gazelle.  Health seemed to glow in the atmosphere
about her.

With Jud, too, the realization of love and the feeling that there was
something to live for, brought a change.  His stooping shoulders
straightened, his eyes brightened, his steps became springy.  He
whistled and sang at his work, took an interest in life, and presently
even resumed his drawing.  The country folk winked knowingly.  The two
were constantly together when opportunity afforded, so it soon became
common report that he was her "feller, fer sure," and she was his
"girl."

One evening, as they sat in the dusk down by the creek, which ran
through her bit of pasture land, Jud drew his mother's plain gold ring
from his little finger and slipped it upon Justine's third.  They were
betrothed.

Never were such sweethearts as Jud and Justine.  They were lovers,
friends, comrades.  Her sweet, serious face took a new life, new color
at his approach, her dreamy eyes grew softer and more wistful, her low
voice more musical.  Her soul was his, her life belonged to him, her
heart beat only for him.  Jud's famished hopes of something beyond the
farm found fresh encouragement in her simple, wondering praise.  She
was his critic, his unconscious mentor.  Beneath her untrained eye he
sketched as he never sketched before.  Looking over his shoulder as he
lay stretched upon the grass, she marveled at the skill with which his
pencil transferred the world about them to the dearly bought drawing
pads, and her enthusiastic little cries of delight were tributes that
brought confidence to the heart of the artist.

The girl had scores of admirers.  Every boy, every man in the township
longed to "make up" to her, but she gave no thought to them.  Half a
dozen widowers with children asked her to marry them.  She and Jud
laughed when Eversole Baker besought her to become mother to his nine
children, including two daughters older than herself.

But there was one determined suitor, and she feared him with an uncanny
dread that knew no rest until she was safely Jud's on the wedding
night.  That one was Eugene Crawley, drunkard and blasphemer.

Crawley was born in the dense timber land north of Glenville.  His
father had been a woodchopper, hunter, and fisherman.  Hard stories
came down to town about Sam Crawley.  Of 'Gene, the boy, nothing
against his honesty at least could be said.  He was a vile wretch when
drinking, little better when sober, but he was as honest as the sun.

He had gone to school with Jud and Justine when they were little
"tads," and his rough affection for her began when they were mastering
the "first reader."  He and Jud had fought over her twice and each had
been a victor.  The girl despised him, from childhood, and he knew it.
Still, he clung to the hope that he could take her away from his rival.
He dogged her footsteps, frightened her with his mad protestations, and
finally alarmed her by his threats.  The day before the wedding he had
met her as she left the schoolhouse and had sworn to kill Jud Sherrod.
She did not tell Jud of this, nor did she tell him that she had pleaded
with Crawley to spare her lover's life.  Had she told Jud all this she
would have been obliged to tell him how the brute had suddenly burst
into tears and promised he would not harm Jud if he could help it.




CHAPTER IV.

MRS. HARDESTY'S CHARITY.

For many days after their marriage Jud and Justine were obliged to
endure coarse jokes, kindly meant if out of tune with their sensitive
minds.  Happy weeks sped by, weeks replete with the fullness of joy
known only to the newly wedded.  Days of toil, that had once been long
and irksome, now were flitting seasons of anticipation between real
joys.  At dusk he came home with eyes glowing in the delight that knows
no fatigue, with a heart leaping with the love that is young and eager,
and blood carousing under the intoxication of passion's wine.  In the
kitchen door of the little cot, no longer dismal in its weather-worn
plainness, there always stood the slim, supple girl, her heart leaping
with the eagerness to be clasped in his arms.  She was growing into
perfect womanhood, perfect in figure, perfect in love, perfect in all
its mysteries.  Her whole life before now appeared as a dreamless sleep
to her; the present was the beginning of a divine dream that softens
the rest of life into mellow forgetfulness.

She walked with him in the hayfield, from choice, delighted to toil
near him, to breathe the same air, to endure the same sun, to enjoy the
same moments of rest beneath the great oaks, to drink from the same
brown jug of spring water, to sing, to laugh, to play with him.  It was
not work.  Then came the harvesting, the thrashing, and the fall
sowing.  Six months were soon gone and still these children played like
cupids.  Other married people in the neighborhood, whose honeymoons had
not been more than a week old before they began to show callous spots,
wondered dumbly at the beautiful girl who grew prettier and straighter
instead of turning sour, frowsy, and bent under the rigors of connubial
joy--as they had found it.  They could not understand how the husband
could be so blithe and cheery, so upstanding and strong, and so
devoted.  The wives of the neighborhood pondered over the latter
condition.  The husbands did not deem it worth while or expedient to
wonder--they merely called Jud a "dinged shif'less boy that'll wake up
some time er 'nother an' understan' more 'n he does now."  Yet they had
to admit that Jud was conducting the little farm faultlessly, even
though he did find time to moon with his wife, to bask in the sunshine
of her love, to wander over wood and field with her beside him,
sketching, sketching, eternally sketching.

Rainy days and Sundays brought hours of sweet communion to the happy,
simple young couple.  So thoroughly were they devoted to one another
that their lack of attention to the neighbors was the source of more or
less indignation on the part of those who "knowed that Jud and her
hadn't no right to be so infernal stuck-up."  And yet these same
discontents were won over in the briefest conversation with the pair
when they chanced to meet.  Even the most snappish and envious were
overcome by the gentle good humor, the proud simplicity of these young
sweethearts, who saw no ugliness, who knew no bitterness, who found
life and its hardships no struggle at all.

They were desperately poor, but they made no complaint.  The vigor of
life was theirs, and they sang as they suffered, looking forward with
bright, confident eyes to the East of their dreams, in which their sun
of fortune was to rise.

Justine was to have the school another year, beginning in October,
after a six-months' vacation.  Jud's pride revolted at first against
this decision of hers, but she overcame every argument, and he loved
her more than ever for the share she was taking in the dull battle
against poverty.  The land he tilled was not fertile; it had been
overworked for years.  The crops were growing thinner; the timber was
slowly falling beneath the stove-wood ax; the meadow plot was almost
barren of grass.  It was not a productive "thirty," and they knew it.
There was a bare existence in it when crops were good, but there was,
as yet, no mortgage to face.  Jud owned a team of horses, and Justine
two cows and a dozen hogs.  They had no other vehicle than a farm
wagon, old and rattling.  When they went to the village it was in this
wagon; when to church, they walked, although the distance was two
miles, so tender was their pride.

Little Justine was the politic one.  Jud was proud, and was ever ready
to resent the kindly offices of neighbors.  Had it been left to him,
young Henry Bossman would have been summarily dismissed when he offered
to help Jud stack the hay, "jes' fer ole times' sake."  It was Justine
who welcomed poor, awkward Henry, and it was she who sent him away
rejoicing over a good deed, determined to help "Jud and Justine ever'
time he had a chanst."

It was she who accepted the proffer to thrash their thirty acres of
wheat, free of charge, from David Strong, stopping off one day as his
separator and engine passed by.  She thanked him so graciously that he
went his way wondering whether he was indebted to them or they to him.
When Harve Crose offered to get their mail at the crossroads
post-office every day and leave it at the cottage gate as he rode by,
she thanked him so beautifully that he felt as though she ought to
scold him when he was late on rare occasions.  Doc Ramsey, the man who
was knocked down by 'Gene Crawley at the toll-gate one night, helped
Jud build a rail fence over half a mile long, and said he "guessed he'd
call it square if Jud 'd give him that picter he drawed of Justine
summer 'fore las'.  Kinder like to have that picter, 'y ginger; skeer
the rats away with," ending with a roar of apologetic laughter at his
homely excuse.

'Gene Crawley was never to be seen in the little lane.  Sullen and
savage, he frequented the toll-gate, but not so much as formerly.  He
drank more than ever, and it was said that Martin Grimes had taken him
out of jail twice at the county seat, both times on a charge of "drunk
and disorderly conduct."  It seemed that he avoided all possible chance
of meeting Jud and his wife.  Curious people speculated on the outcome
of his increasing moroseness, and not a few saw something tragic in the
scowl that seldom left his swarthy brow.

For many weeks after her marriage Justine dreamed of the fierce eyes
and the desperate threats of this lover, and the only bar to complete
happiness was the fear that 'Gene Crawley would some day wreak
vengeance upon her husband.  As the weeks wore away, this fear
dwindled, until now she felt secure in the hope that he had forgotten
her.  And yet, when his name was mentioned in her presence, she could
not restrain the sudden leaping of her heart or the troubled look that
widened her tender brown eyes.  When Jud bitterly alluded to him and
assured her, with more or less boyish braggadocio, that he would whip
him if he ever so much as spoke to her or him again, she felt a dread
that seemed almost a presentiment of evil.  She did not fear Crawley
for herself, but for Jud.

'Gene's boast before the men at the toll-gate created a sensation in
the usually unruffled community.  The blow that felled Doc Ramsey was
universally condemned, yet no man had the courage to take to task the
man who delivered it.  The story of his mad declaration concerning
Justine spread like wildfire.  Of course, no one believed that his
boast could be carried out, or attempted, for that matter; but, as
gossip traveled, the substance of his vow increased.  Within a week the
tale had grown in vileness until Crawley was credited with having given
utterance to the most unheard-of assertions.  Black and foul as his
actual words had been, they were tame and weak in comparison with the
things the honest farmers and their wives convinced themselves and
others that he had said.

In the course of time the incident which made historical her wedding
night reached the ears of Justine Sherrod.  She had seen 'Gene but two
or three times in the four months that intervened between that time and
the day on which she heard the wretched story from Mrs. Hardesty--an
honest soul who had heard 'Gene's words plainly, and was therefore
qualified to exaggerate if she saw fit.  Once the girl passed him in
the lane near the toll-gate.  He was leaning on the fence at the
roadside as she passed.  She had seen him looking at her hungrily as
she approached, but when she lifted her eyes again, his broad back was
toward her and he was looking across the fields.  There was something
foreboding in the strong shoulders and corded brown arms that bore down
upon the fence in an evident effort at self-control.  She felt the
panic which makes one wish to fly from an unknown danger.  Not daring
to look back, she walked swiftly by, possessed of the fear that he was
following, that he was ready to clutch her from behind.  But he stood
there until she turned into the gate a half mile down the lane.

It remained for Mrs. Hardesty to tell Justine the story.  The bony wife
of the toll-gate keeper carried her busy presence up to the cottage one
afternoon late in September, and found the young wife resting after a
hard, hot ironing.  Her pretty face was warm and rosy, her strong arms
were bare to the shoulder, her full, deep breast was heaving wearily
beneath the loose blue-and-white figured calico.  As Mrs. Hardesty came
up the path from the gate she could not resist saying to herself, as
she looked admiringly but with womanly envy upon the straight figure
leaning against the door-casing, fanning a hot face with an old
newspaper:

"I don' blame 'Gene Crawley er enny other man fer wantin' to have her.
They ain't no one like her in the hull State, er this country, either,
fer that matter."

Justine greeted her cordially.

"How do you do, Mrs. Hardesty?  Aren't you almost baked in this sun?
Come into the shade and sit down.  I'll get you a dipper of water and a
fan."

"Don't put yourself out enny--don't trouble yourself a bit now,
Jestine.  Jes' git me a sup o' water an' I'll be all hunky-dory.  I
don't mind the sun very much.  My, I'm glad to set down in the shade,
though.  Never saw the roads so dusty, did you?  Thank ye,
Jestine--much obliged.  You must have a grand spring here to git such
fine water.  It's as cold, purt' nigh, as the ice water you git up to
town.  Set down, my dear; you look hot an' tired.  I know you look nice
standin' up like that, but you'll be a heap sight more comfortable if
you set down an' rest them tired legs o' your'n.  Where's Jed?"

"He's gone over to Hawkins's blacksmith shop on the pike to have Randy
shod.  She cast two shoes yesterday," explained the girl, sitting on
the doorstep.  "Do you want to see him about anything in particular,
Mrs. Hardesty?  He said he'd be home by six."

"No; I jes' ast.  Thought ef he was aroun' I'd like to see his
good-lookin' face fer a minnit er two.  I reckon, though, he don't look
at other women when you're aroun'," tittered the visitor, who was not a
day under sixty.

"Oh, yes, he does," laughed Justine, turning a shade rosier.  "He's
getting tired of seeing me around all the time.  You see, I'm an old
married woman now."

"Good heavens, child, wait tell you've been married thirty-nine years
like I have, an' then you kin begin to talk about gittin' tired o'
seein' certain people all the time.  I know I could see Jim Hardesty ef
I was as blind as a bat.  I kin almost tell how menny hairs they is in
his whiskers."

"Well, how many, for instance?" asked Justine gaily.

"Two hundred and ninety-seven," answered Mrs. Jim, promptly and
positively.  She regaled the young wife with a long and far from
original dissertation on married life as she had encountered it with
James.  Finally she paused and changed the subject abruptly, leaping to
a question that had doubtless been on her mind for days.

"Have you saw much of 'Gene Crawley lately, Jestine?"  The question was
so unexpected that the girl started, and stammered in replying.

"No; very little.  I don't believe I've seen him more than twice in
several months.  Is he still working for Martin?"

"Oh, yes.  They was some talk o' his goin' over to Rumley to work in a
saw-mill, but seems as though he can't leave this part o' the country."
After a moment's hesitation, she went on boldly, smiling with the
awkwardness of one who is determined to learn something at any cost.
"I s'posed he'd been comin' 'roun' here quite a little."

"Coming here, Mrs. Hardesty?" cried the girl in surprise.  "Why, he'll
never come here.  He and Jud are not friends and he knows I don't like
him.  Whatever put that into your head?"

"Oh, I dunno," said Mrs. Hardesty evasively.  "I heerd somethin' 'bout
his sayin' he was a great frien' o' your'n, so I thought, like as not,
he was--er--that is, he might 'a' drapped in onct in awhile, you
know--jes' like fellers will, you know."

"Well, you may be sure 'Gene will never come here."

"He wouldn't be welcome, I take it."

"I don't like to say that anybody would not be welcome, Mrs. Hardesty.
I hardly think he'd _care_ to come," said the girl nervously.

"Him an' Jed have had some words, hain't they?  Never been friends
sence they was boys, I've heered.  Do you think he's afeared o' Jed?"

"Why should he be afraid of Jud?  So long as each attends to his own
business there is nothing to be afraid of.  They're not good friends,
that's all."

"Well, 'Gene's been doin' some ugly talkin'," said the visitor doggedly.

"What do you mean?" asked Justine.  A strange chill seized her heart--a
fear for Jud.

"He's been very unwise to say the things he has.  I tole Jim Hardesty
ef they ever got to Jed's ears 'Gene 'd pay purty dearly fer them.  But
Jim says 'twouldn't be good fer Jed ef he tackled 'Gene.  He's wuss'n
pison."

"Why, Mrs. Hardesty, I don't--I don't know what you're talking about,"
cried the poor girl.  "What has 'Gene been saying?"

"Oh, it wouldn't be right fer me to git mixed up in it.  It's none o'
my funeral," said Mrs. Hardesty, now in the full delight of keeping a
listener tortured with suspense.  It was a quarter of an hour before
she could be induced to relate the very tales she had come to tell in
the first place.

"'Gene tole the boys that night that he'd made love to you ever sence
you was children and that he could tell Jed Sherrod some things ef he
was a mind to.  He said he could take you away from him any time, an'
that Jed 'd have to stay 'roun' home purty close ef he wanted to be
sure o' you."

"Oh, oh, oh!" moaned the dumfounded girl.

"An' then he went on to say that you'd promised to--to--well--well, to
leave Jed some time an' go away with him.  That's the mildest way to
put it.  I couldn't say it the way 'Gene did.  Don't look so put-out
about it, Jestine--really, you look like you want to faint.  Shell I
git you some water?"

"Did--did he say all of that?" Justine whispered hoarsely.

"Yes, he did.  I heered him.  I was in the house an'----"

"Mrs. Hardesty, don't tell me any more.  I cannot bear it.  How could
he have said it--how could he have been so mean?" she wailed,
struggling to her feet.

"Of course, they wasn't any truth in what 'Gene said," Mrs. Hardesty
volunteered, but the declaration bore distinct marks of a question.
Justine's eyes blazed, her body trembled, her lips quivered.  Never had
any one seen such a look upon that sweet, gentle face.

"No!" burst from her lips so fiercely that Mrs. Jim's eyes wavered and
fell.  "No!  And everybody knows it!  How can you ask?"

"I didn't ask--you know I didn't, Jestine----" stammered the guest.

"You _did_ ask.  God forgive 'Gene Crawley for those awful lies--God
forgive him!  Oh, Matilda, how could he--how could he have said such
things?  I never did him any wrong----"

"Jed ought to kill him--the mean snake!  He ought to go right over to
Martin Grimes's an'----" began Mrs. Hardesty excitedly.

"No, no!  He must not know!" cried Justine, with a new terror.  She
clutched Mrs. Hardesty by the shoulders so that the old lady winced.
"Jud must never know!  Don't you see how it would end?  There would be
a murder--a murder!  Jud would kill him.  Let it be as it is; I can
stand it--yes, I can!  We must keep it from him.  You will help me,
won't you?  You will see that nobody goes to Jud with this awful
story--I know you will!  Oh, God!  They would fight and--one of them
would be killed.  How can we keep Jud from hearing?"

Mrs. Hardesty stared up at her, and after a moment laid a hand upon the
clinging one upon her shoulder.

"You are right," she agreed.  "Jed mus' never be tole.  Him an' 'Gene
would settle it, an' I'm afeard fer Jed's sake.  'Gene's so vicious
like."




CHAPTER V.

WHEN THE CLASH CAME.

Despite her apparent cheerfulness, Jud could but note the
ever-recurring look of trouble in her eyes.  Those wistful eyes, when
they were not merry with smiles, were following him with an anxious
look like that of a faithful dog.  Sometimes he came upon her suddenly
and found her staring into space.  At such times he saw indignation in
the soft brown eyes, or wrath, or terror.  He wondered and his soul was
troubled.  Was she unhappy?  Was she tired of him?  He thought of
asking her to confide in him, but his simple heart could not find
courage to draw forth the confession he feared might hurt him endlessly.

Early in October she resumed her work in the schoolhouse.  There was
not an evening or a noon that did not see her hurrying home, dreading
that 'Gene and Jud had met.  One day when she saw 'Gene gallop past the
schoolhouse, coming from the direction of the farm, she dismissed the
school early and ran almost all the way home.  When Jud met her near
the gate she was sobbing with joy.  He never forgot the kisses she
burnt upon his lips.

How she loathed and feared 'Gene Crawley!  She had dismal nightmares in
which he was strangling her husband.  In her waking hours she dreamed
of the dreadful boast he had made.  One night she was startled by the
fear that people might believe the words the wretch had uttered.

One Friday evening they were coming home across the meadow from the
Bossman farm.  The sun was almost below the ridge of trees in the west
and long shadows darkened the edges of the pasture land.  The evening
was cool and bright, and they were as happy as children.  Reaching the
little creek which ran through a corner of Justine's land, not far from
the house, they sat down to watch the antics of two sportive calves.
Peace was in their hearts, quiet in the world about them.  She was like
a delighted child as she laughed with him at the inane caperings of the
calves, those poor little clowns in spots and stripes.  He looked more
often at her radiant, joyous face than at their entertainers, and his
heart throbbed with the pride of possessing her.

Suddenly she gasped and he felt her hand clasp his arm with the grip of
a vise.  A glare of horror drove the merriment from her eyes.

"It's 'Gene Crawley!" she whispered.  "He's coming this way.  Oh, Jud!"

"What's the matter, Justine?  He won't hurt you while I'm here.  Let
him come.  Dear, don't look like that!" he laughed.

Crawley was approaching from down the creek, walking rapidly and
glancing covertly toward the house.  It was evident he had not seen the
couple on the bank.

"Let us go in, Jud.  _Please_ do!  I don't want to see him," she begged.

"I'd like to know what in thunder he's doing in our pasture," growled
Jud, with a sudden flame of anger.

"Maybe he's drunk and has lost his way.  He'll find the way out, Jud.
Come to the house--quick!"  She was on her feet and was dragging him up.

"You go in, Justine, if you want to.  I'm going to find out what he's
doing here.  This isn't a----"

"No, no!  You must not stay--you must not have words with him.  If you
stay, I'll stay!  Won't you please come in, Jud?" she implored; but his
eyes were not for her.  They were glaring angrily at the trespasser,
who, seeing them, had stopped in some confusion twenty feet away.

"Do you think I'm afraid of the derned scoundrel?" he demanded, loud
enough for 'Gene to hear.  The man down on the bank put his hand out
and steadied himself against a sapling.  For an instant his black eyes
shot fire toward Sherrod, but turned away when they met the wild, dark
eyes of the girl.  He had not been drinking and he was truly surprised
by the meeting.  There was a stillness for a moment.  The two men again
glared at one another, all the hatred in their hearts coming to the
surface.  The girl was suffocating with the knowledge that she could do
nothing to stay the catastrophe.

"Get off this place and don't you ever step your foot on here again,"
said Jud savagely.  Justine's hand fell tremblingly from his rigid arm
and she looked a mute appeal to 'Gene, who, still holding to the
sapling, was trying to control his rage.

"I was jest takin' a short cut to Bossman's," he began, hoarsely,
through his teeth.  "I'll git off yer place, if you say so.  I didn't
think you'd mind my cuttin' off a mile er so.  Mrs. Grimes's baby's
sick an'----"

"You needn't explain.  Get out--that's all!"

"Oh, Jud," moaned the girl helplessly.

"Don't be afraid, Justine.  I won't hurt your doll baby.  I'll git off
yer place.  If it wasn't fer you, though, I'd pound his head into dog
meat," sneered 'Gene.

"You would, would you?  You're a liar, dem you!  A liar!  Are you
coward enough to take that?" cried Jud, taking a step forward.  She
threw her arms about him and tried to drag him away.

"Let go, Justine!" he shouted.  "How can I protect myself with you
hanging--let go, I say!"  She was stunned by the first angry words he
had ever spoken to her.  Her arms dropped and she staggered back.

"Oh, God!  Oh, God!" she half whispered.  "Jud, Jud, don't!  He will
kill you!"

"Let him try it!  Justine, dear, I'm no coward, and I owe him a
licking, anyhow.  Now's as good a time as any other.  Go to the house,
dear--it won't do for you to see it," said her husband, very pale and
breathing heavily.  He was throwing his coat to the ground where his
hat already lay.

"You must not--you shall not fight, Jud!  Do you want to kill me?  Mrs.
Hardesty says he is a devil!  Don't, don't, don't, Jud!  If you love
me, don't fight him, Jud!"  She threw herself between the men.  Crawley
had not moved from his tracks, but the wild glare of the beast was
fighting its way to his eyes.  He was fast losing control.  Try as he
would he could not retreat; he could not turn coward before his old
enemy.

"Will you fight, 'Gene Crawley?" demanded Jud, over his shoulder.  "Or
will you run like a whipped pup?"

In a second Crawley's coat was off and he was rolling up his sleeves.
Jud pushed Justine aside.

[Illustration: "IN A SECOND CRAWLEY WAS ROLLING UP HIS SLEEVES."]

"You'd better go to the house," 'Gene said to her.  "It ain't right fer
you to see us fight.  I didn't want to, remember, but, dern him, he
can't call me a coward.  I'll fight him till I'm dead."

"We'll settle up old scores, too," said Jud.  "You've annoyed Justine
and you ain't fit to breathe the same air as she does."

"Damn you, Jud Sherrod, I keer as much fer her as you do.  I'd die fer
her, if she'd let me.  You took her from me an' we've got to have it
out now.  You kin kill me, but you cain't make me say I don't love her!"

"I despise you, 'Gene Crawley!  Oh, how I hate you!" cried the girl.
"I've always hated you!"

"I know it!  I know it!  You needn't throw it up to me!  But I'll make
you sorry fer it, see if I don't----"

"Stop that!  Don't you talk that way to my wife!  Are you ready to
fight?" cried Jud, advancing.  She made a clutch at his arm and then
sank back powerless against the great oak.

"As soon as she goes to the house," replied the other.

"Go to the house, Justine," cried Jud impatiently, but she did not move.

"I'll stay right here!" she said mechanically.  "If he murders you,
I'll kill him."

Crawley ground his teeth and backed away.

"I won't fight before her.  'Tain't right, Jud, 'n you know it.  Le's
go over to the lane," he said.

"If she's bound to stay, let her stay.  And I want her to see me lick
you!  She's a brave girl; you needn't worry so dern much.  Why don't
you want to fight before her?"

"'Cause I'll git mad an' I'll say things she ortn't to hear.  I don't
want her to hear me cuss an' go on like that.  I cain't help cussin'
an'----"

"Oh, you're backin' out!" sneered Jud, and he made a rush at his
adversary.  Before 'Gene could prevent it, a heavy blow landed on his
neck and he went to the ground.  Justine saw and her heart throbbed
with joy.  As the man fell she turned her back upon the thrilling
scene, insanely throwing her arms about the oak as if to claim its
protection.

But Crawley was not conquered by that blow.  He was on his feet in an
instant, his face livid with rage, his mouth twitching with pain.
There were tears in his black eyes, but they were tears of fury.  With
a bull-like rush he was upon Sherrod.  The girl heard the renewed
straggling and turned her face in alarm, still clinging to the tree.
Fascinated beyond the power of movement, she watched the combat.  Her
eyes never left Jud's white, convulsed face, and she prayed, prayed as
she had never prayed in her life.

Jud was the taller, but 'Gene was the heavier.  Almost at the beginning
of the hand-to-hand struggle their shirts were stripped from their
bodies.  Both were well muscled--one clean, wiry, and like a tiger, the
other like a Greek Hercules.  One had the advantage of a quick brain
and a nimble strength, offsetting the brute-like power and slower mind
of the other.  Never in her life had Justine seen two strong men fight.

Sherrod's coolness returned the instant he dealt the first mad blow.
Neither knew the first rudiment of the boxer's art, but he was the
quicker witted, the more strategic.  He knew that 'Gene's wild swings
would fell him if he allowed them to land, so he avoided a close fight,
dodging away and rushing in with the quickness of a cat.  He was
landing light blows constantly on the face of his foe, and was escaping
punishment so surprisingly well that a confident smile twitched at the
corners of his mouth.  Crawley, blinded by anger and half stunned by
the constant blows, wasted his strength in impotent rushes.  Jud was
not in reach when he struck those mighty, overbalancing blows.

"Don't be afraid, Justine," panted Jud; "he can't hurt me."

"I can't, eh?" roared 'Gene savagely.  "You'll see!"  And there
followed a storm of oaths.

In spite of herself, the girl could not turn her eyes away.  The
fierceness, the relentless fury of the fighters fascinated her.  They
were so quick, so strong, so savage that she could see but one
end--death for one or the other.  Their panting sounded like the snarl
of dogs, their rushing feet were like the trampling of cattle, in their
faces murder alone was dominant.  She prayed that some one might come
to separate them.  In her terror she even feared that her husband might
win.  Jud the victor--a murderer!  If only she could call for help!
But her tongue was like ice, her voice was gone.  Murder came into her
own heart.  Could she have moved from the tree she would have tried to
kill 'Gene Crawley.  Rather be the slayer herself than Jud.  She even
thought of the hanging that would follow Jud's deed.

Gradually 'Gene's tremendous strength began to gain ascendency.  His
face was bleeding from many cuts, his white shoulders were covered with
blood from a lacerated lip, but his great muscles retained their power.
Jud was gasping.  The girl began to see in his dulling eyes that the
tide was turning.  An unconscious shriek came with the conviction that
her loved one was losing.  She saw the triumphant gleam in 'Gene's
eyes, recognized the sudden increase of energy in his attack.

"'Gene!  'Gene!" she tried to cry, but her throat was in the clutch of
a terror so great that the appeal was no more than a whisper.

An instant later Crawley succeeded in doing what he had tried to
accomplish for ten minutes.  He clinched with his tired antagonist, and
all Jud's skill was beaten down.  The big arms closed about his
shoulders and waist, and a strong leg locked the loser's knee.  Jud
bent backward.  They swayed and writhed in that deadly embrace, Jud
striking savagely upon the unprotected face of his foe, 'Gene forcing a
resolute hand slowly toward Jud's throat.  Jud's blows made no
impression upon the brutal power of the man, whose burning,
wide-staring eyes saw only the coveted throat, as a beast sees its prey.

A strangling cry came from Jud's lips as the fingers touched his
throat.  He knew it was all over.  He was being crushed--he was
helpless.  If he could only escape that hand!  The fingers closed down
upon his neck; the hot breath of his foe poured into his face; the big
tree in front of him seemed suddenly to whirl upside down; something
was spinning in his head.  As they turned he caught a glimpse of
Justine still standing at the tree.  He tried to call out to her to
help him--to save him--help!  But there was no sound except a gurgle.
His hands tore at the merciless thing in his throat.  He must tear it
away quickly or he would--he was suffocating!  He was blind!  He felt
himself crashing for miles and miles down a precipice.

Justine saw them plunge to the foot-torn turf, 'Gene above.  Beneath
she saw the agonized face of her husband, her life, her world.  With a
rush those awful dreams came back to her and she screamed aloud.

"'Gene!"

Her voice roused the reason of the man, and his blood-shot eyes, for
the first time, sought the object that stood paralyzed, immovable
against the tree.

"I'll kill him!" he panted malignantly.

"Mercy, 'Gene!  Mercy!  For my sake!" she moaned.  She tried to throw
herself upon her knees before him, but her forces were benumbed.  The
look in her eyes brought the conqueror to his senses.  His eyes, still
looking into hers, lost their murderous glare and his knotted fingers
drew slowly away from the blue neck.

He moved his knee from the other's breast and sank away from him, half
lying upon the grass, his heaving body clear of her loved one.  The
action brought life to the girl.

With a cry she threw herself beside Jud's rigid figure.

"He is dead!  Jud!  Jud!" she wailed.  "Don't look like that!"

Crawley raised himself from the ground, bewildered and dumb.  To his
brain came the knowledge that he had killed a man.  Terror supplanted
fury in his closing eyes, a pallor crept over his swarthy face.  For
the first time he looked into the wide eyes in the strangled face.  He
did not hear the cries of the woman; he heard only the gasping of that
throttled man as they had plunged to the ground.

"I hope I haven't--haven't killed him," struggled through his bleeding
lips, tremulously.  "He's dead!"  Like a hunted beast he looked about
for some place in which to hide, for some way to escape.  "They'll hang
me!  They'll lynch me!"  He leaped to his feet and with a yell turned
to plunge across the fields toward the woods.

But the reaction had come upon him.  His strength was gone.  His knees
gave way beneath him and he dropped helplessly to the ground, his eyes
again falling upon the face of his victim.  Trembling in every nerve,
he tried to look away, but could not.

Suddenly he started as if struck from behind.  His intense eyes had
seen a quiver on Jud's lips, a convulsive twitching of the jaws; his
ears caught the sound of a small, choking gasp.  The world cleared for
him.  Jud was not dead!

"He's alive!" burst from his lips.  He flung the convulsed form of the
girl from the breast of the man who was struggling back to life.

As he raised the prostrate man's head, overjoyed to see the blackness
receding, to hear the gasp now grow louder and faster, a heavy body
struck him and something like a steel trap tightened on his neck.
Writhing backward he found the infuriated face of the girl close to
his.  Her hands were upon his throat.

"You killed him and I'll kill you!" she hissed in his ear, and he knew
she was mad!  It was but a short struggle; he overpowered her and held
her to the ground.  She looked up at him with such a malevolent glare
that he cowered and shivered.  Those tender eyes of Justine Van!

"He ain't dead!" he gasped.  "Be quiet, Justine!  For God's sake, be
quiet!  Look!  Don't you see he's alive?  I'll help you bring him to--I
won't tech him again!  Be quiet an' we'll have him aroun' all right in
a minute!  Lookee!  He's got his eyes closed!  I'll git some water!"

He released her and staggered down the bank to the little stream.  He
heard her scream with the discovery that her husband was breathing.  In
his nervous haste, inspired by fear that Jud might die before he could
return, the victor made half a dozen futile efforts before he could
scoop up a double handful of water from the creek.

When he reached Jud's side again, he found that she was holding his
head in her lap and was rubbing his throat and breast.  The purple face
was fast growing white and great heaving gasps came from the contracted
throat.  'Gene dashed the water in his face, only to receive from her a
cry of anger and a look of scorn so bitter that it made her face
unrecognizable.  He shrank back and in rebellious wonder watched her
dry the dripping face.

For many minutes they remained as a tableau, she alone speaking.  All
her heart was pouring itself out in the loving words that were meant
for Jud's ears alone.  His ears could not hear them, but 'Gene
Crawley's did, and his face grew black with jealousy.  He could not
tear himself away; he stood there, rigid, listening to phrases of love
for another that mingled with words of hatred for him.  He could not
believe it was gentle Justine Van who was pouring out those wild words.
At last he passed his unsteady hand across his eyes and spoke.

"I--I guess I'll be goin', Justine.  Hope Jud'll not----" he began
nervously.  She turned upon him.

"You!  You here?  Why don't you go?  For God's sake, go, and don't let
me see your face again as long as I live!" she cried.  "Don't stand
there and let him see you when he comes to.  The blood is terrible!  Go
away!"

He wiped the blood from his face, conscious for the first time that it
was there.  Then he tore down to the brook and bathed his swollen face,
scrubbing the stains from his broad chest and arms.  Going back, he
quickly put on his coat, ashamed of his nakedness.  Then he picked up
Jud's coat and threw it to her, feeling a desire, in spite of all, to
help her in some way.  She did not glance toward him, and he saw the
reason.  Jud's eyes were conscious and were looking up into hers, dumb
and bewildered.  With a muttered oath 'Gene started away, taking a
dozen steps down the creek before a sudden reversal of mind came over
him.  He stopped and turned to her, and something actually imploring
sounded in his voice.

"Cain't I carry him to the house fer you?" he asked.

"Oh!" she cried, turning a terrified face toward him and shielding Jud
with her body.  "Don't you dare come near him!  Don't you touch him!
You dog!"

A snarl of rage escaped his lips.

"I s'pose you'll try to have me arrested, won't you?  He'd 'a' killed
me if he could, an' I didn't kill him jest because you ast me not to.
But I s'pose that won't make no difference.  You'll have the constable
after me.  Well, lookee here!  All the constables in Clay township
cain't take me, an' I won't run from 'em, either.  I'll kill the hull
crowd!  Go on an' have me arrested if you want to.  You c'n tell that
husband o' your'n that I let him go fer your sake, but if he ever
forces me into a fight ag'in all hell cain't save him.  You tell him to
go his way an' I'll go mine.  As fer you--well, I won't say what I'll
do!"

"Oh, I'm not afraid of you!" she cried defiantly.  He strode away
without another word.  From afar, long afterwards, he saw her assist
Jud to his feet and support him as he dragged himself feebly toward the
house.




CHAPTER VI.

THE GIRL IN GRAY.

For days after the fight Jud caught himself stealing surreptitious
glances at his wife, with the miserable feeling that some time he would
take her unawares and detect scornful pity in her eyes.  He was sure
she could not respect a man who had been forced to submit to defeat,
especially after he had vaingloriously forced the conflict upon an
unwilling foe.

But Justine loved him more deeply than ever.  In her eyes he was a
hero.  For her sake he had fought a desperate man in the face of
certain defeat.

At the house as she tenderly bathed his swollen face, "Jud," she said,
"you won't fight him again, will you?"  A lump rose in his throat.  He
felt that she was begging him to desist merely because she knew his
shameful incompetency.

"You won't fight him again, will you?" she repeated earnestly.

"I can't whip him, Justine," he said humbly.  "I thought I could.  How
you must despise me!"

"Despise you!  Despise _you_!  Oh, how I love you, Jud!" she cried.  He
looked into her eyes, fearing to see a flicker of dishonesty, but none
was there.

"I won't fight him until I know I can lick him fair and square.  It may
be never, but maybe I'll be man enough some day.  He's too much for me
now.  He'd have killed me if it hadn't been for you, dear.  Good God,
Justine, I thought I was dying.  You don't know how terrible it was!"

The story of the fight was soon abroad.  The fact that Jud's face bore
few signs of the conflict struck the people as strange.  'Gene had told
wondrous tales of his victory.  On the other hand, 'Gene's face was a
mass of cuts and bruises.  It was hard for them to believe, but the
farmers soon found themselves saying that Jud Sherrod had whipped 'Gene
Crawley.  Even when Jud acknowledged that 'Gene had whipped him, every
one said that Jud was so magnanimous that he "couldn't crow over 'Gene."

"Now, mebby 'Gene Crawley'll take back what he said 'bout Jed an'
Jestine las' spring," said James Hardesty, down at the toll-gate, in
the presence of a large audience.  "He'll keep his dern mouth shet now,
I reckon.  He cain't go 'roun' here talkin' like that 'bout our women
folks.  Gosh dern him, ef he ever opened his head 'bout my wife I'd
knock him over into Butter township, Indiany.  What'n thunder's the use
bein' afeared o' 'Gene Crawley?  He's a big blow an' he cain't lick
nobody 'nless he gits in a crack 'fore the other feller's ready.  Good
gosh, ef I was as young as some o' you fellers, I'd had him licked
forty-seven times 'fore this."

So 'Gene's reputation as a fighter suffered.  But not for long.  Harve
Crose, Joe Perkins, and Link Overshine undertook, on separate
occasions, to "take it out'n his hide" for old-standing grievances, and
'Gene reestablished himself in their estimation.  Link Overshine was in
bed for a week afterwards.

The winter passed rather uneventfully.  In a few of the simpler country
gatherings Jud and Justine took part, but poverty kept them pretty
closely at home.  The yield of grain had not been up to the average and
prices were low.  It was only by skimping almost to niggardliness that
they managed to make both ends meet during the last months of the
winter.  Justine's school-teaching was their salvation, notwithstanding
the fact that the township was usually in arrears.  Jud chopped wood
for an extra dollar now and then.  Justine made frocks for herself.

She wore plain colors and plain material.  The other girls wondered why
it was that Justine Van--they always called her Justine Van--looked "so
nice in them cheap little calicos."  The trimness and daintiness of her
dress was refreshing in a community where the taste of woman ran to
ribbons, rainbows, and remnants.  No girl in the neighborhood
considered herself befittingly gowned for parade unless she could
spread sail with a dozen hues in the breeze, the odor of perfume in the
air, and unblushable pink in her cheeks.  Society in Clay township
could never be accused of color-blindness.  The young gallants, in
their store clothes, were to be won by ribbons and rouge, and, as the
sole object of the girls was to get married and have children, the
seasons apparently merged in an ever-lasting Eastertide.  Justine,
then, aroused curiosity.  In the winter she wore a rough black coat and
a featherless fedora.  In the spring her modest gowns would have been
sniffed at had they covered the person of any one less dainty.  A
single rose in her dark hair, a white trifle at her throat, or a red
ribbon somewhere, made up her tribute to extravagance.

Jud sketched her adoringly.  He had scores of posings even.  When
spring came and they began to plant, in the midst of privation they
found time to be happy.  It was on one of their Sunday-afternoon
sketching expeditions that an incident occurred which was to change the
whole course of their lives.  They had walked several miles across the
hills, through leafy woodland, to Proctor's Falls.  Here the creek
wriggled through a mossy dell until it came to a sudden drop of twenty
feet or more, into a pool whose shimmering surface lay darkly in the
shade of great trees that lined the banks.  It was one of the prettiest
spots in the country, and Jud had long meant to try his skill in
sketching it.

This day he sat far down the ravine, facing the Falls, and rested his
back against a tree.  She nestled beside him, leaning against his
shoulder, watching with proud eyes the hand that fashioned the picture.
To her, his art was little short of the marvelous; to a critic, it
would have shown crudities enough, though even the faults were those of
genius.  Her eye followed his pencil with a half-knowing squint,
sending an occasional glance into Nature's picture up the glen as if
seeing blemishes in the subject rather than in the work of the artist.

"What a pity there is not more water coming over the rock," she said
regretfully.  "And that log would look better if it were turned upside
down, don't you think, Jud?  Goodness, how natural you have made it,
though.  I don't see how you do it."

Presently she ventured, somewhat timidly: "Don't you think you might
sell some of your pictures, Jud, dear?  If I were rich, I know I'd like
to have them, and I----"

"They're yours, anyway," he interrupted, laughing.  "Everything I draw
is yours.  You don't have to be rich."

"I mean, I'd like to have them if I was somebody else, somebody who
wasn't anything to you.  They'd look so nice in frames, Jud.  Honestly,
they would.  Dear me, they're much nicer than those horrid things
'Squire Roudebush paid a dollar and a quarter apiece for."

"Nobody would want to buy my things, Justine.  They're not worth the
paper they cover.  Now, who the dickens is there in this county that
would give me a dollar for the whole lot?  I couldn't give them
away--that is, excepting those I've made of you.  Everybody wants one
of you.  I guess I must draw you better than anything else."

"You make me look so much prettier than I really am," she expostulated.

"No, I don't, either," he responded.  For a long time she forgot to
look at his pencil.  Her eyes were bent reflectively upon the brown,
smooth face with the studious wrinkle in the forehead, and she was not
thinking of the picture.  Suddenly she patted his cheek and afterwards
toyed in silence with the curls that clustered around his ear.

An elderly lady, a slender young woman in a modish gown of gray, and a
tall, boyish chap slowly approached the point from which Proctor's
Falls could best be viewed.  Their clothes and manner proclaimed them
to be city people.  The boy, over whose sullen forehead tilted a rakish
traveling cap, seemed to be expostulating with the young woman.  From
his manner it was easy to be seen that he did not regard further
progress into the wilds as pleasant, profitable, or necessary.  The
elder lady, who was fleshy, evidently supported the youth in his
impatience, but the gray gown was enthusiastically in the foreground
and was determined to push its very charming self into the heart of the
sylvan discovery.

When they had come within a hundred feet of the big tree that sheltered
the artist and his companion, the little bit of genre in their
landscape attracted them.  The visitors halted and surveyed the
unconscious couple, the young lady showing curiosity, the young man
showing disgust, the old lady showing indecision.  Their brief
discussion resolved itself into a separation of forces.  The young lady
petulantly forsook her companions and picked her way through the trees
toward the Falls.

"Let 'em alone, Sis," objected the youth, as she persisted in going
forward; "it's some country jay and his girl and he'll not thank you
for----"

"Oh, go back to the train, Randall," interrupted the young maiden.  "He
won't eat me, you know, and one can't see that pretty little waterfall
unless one gets out there where your lovers sit.  If you won't go with
me, let me go alone in peace.  Wait here, mamma, until I come back, and
don't let little Randall sulk himself into tears."

"You make me sick," growled the youth wrathfully.

The girl in gray soon came to the edge of the little opening in which
Jud and Justine sat, pausing some twenty feet away to smile admiringly
upon the unsuspecting pair.  It was a charming picture that lay before
her, and she was loth to disturb its quiet beauty.  With a sudden
feeling that she might be intruding, she turned to steal away as she
had come.  A twig crackled under her shoe.  The other girl, startled,
looked up at her with amazement in her eyes, her ripe lips apart as if
ready to utter an exclamation that would not come.  The youth's eyes
also were upon her.  The intruder, feeling painfully out of place,
laughed awkwardly, her cheeks turning a brilliant pink.

"I did not mean to disturb you," she stammered.  "I wanted to see the
Falls and--and--well, you happened to be here."

Jud recovered himself first and, in visible agitation, arose, not
forgetting to assist to her feet his wife, who in all her life had seen
no such creature as this.  To her the stranger was like a visitor from
another world.  Her own world had been Clay township.  She did not
dream that she was the cause of envy in the heart of the immaculate
stranger, who, perhaps for the first time in her short, butterfly life,
was looking upon a perfect type of rural health and loveliness.

"You don't disturb us," said Jud quickly.  "I was only trying to draw
the Falls and I--we don't mind.  You can see very well if you will step
over here by the tree."

"But you must not let me disturb you for the tiniest second.  Please go
on with your drawing," said the stranger, pausing irresolutely.  She
was waiting for an invitation from the vivid creature at Jud's side.

"He has it nearly finished," said Justine, almost unconsciously.  The
new arrival was charmed more than ever by the soft, timid voice.

"Won't you let me see the picture, too?" she asked eagerly.  "Let me be
the critic.  I'll promise not to be harsh."  But Jud, suddenly
diffident, put the picture behind him and shook his head with an
embarrassed smile.

"Oh, it's no good," he said.  "I don't know anything about drawing
and----"

"Let me judge as to that," persisted Gray Gown, more eager than before,
now that she had found opposition.  "I am sure it must be good.  Your
modesty is the best recommendation."  She held forth her small gloved
hand appealingly.  Justine looked upon that hand in admiration.  It was
so unlike her own strong brown hand.

"It isn't quite finished," objected Jud, pleased and almost at ease.
She was charmingly fair and unconventional.

"This is the first time he ever tried to get the Falls," apologized
Justine, and her smile bewitched the would-be critic.  She was charmed
with these healthy, comely strangers, found so unexpectedly in the
wilds.  They were not like the rustics she had seen or read about.

"Then I'll watch him finish it," she said decisively.  "Will it take a
very long while?"

"Just a few more lines," said Jud.  "But I can't work with any one
looking on."

"Wasn't this young lady looking on?"

"Oh, but I am different," cried Justine.

"I know," said the other delightedly, "you are--are sweethearts.  Of
course, that does make a difference.  Now, aren't you sweethearts?"
The two flushed unreasonably and exchanged glances.

"I guess it's not hard to guess that," said Jud lamely.  "You probably
saw us before we saw you."

"Show her the picture," murmured Justine, dimly conscious that she and
Jud had seemed amusing to a stranger.  Jud reluctantly held up the
sketching board.  The stranger uttered a little cry of amazement.

"Why!" she cried, looking from the picture to the Falls up the glen,
"this is clever!"  Then a quizzical expression came into her eyes and
she looked from one to the other with growing uncertainty.  "Pardon me,
I thought you were--I mean, I thought you lived near here.  You must
overlook my very strange behavior.  But you will admit that you are
dressed like country people, and you are tanned, and----"  Here she
checked herself in evident confusion.

"And we are country people," said Jud blankly.  The young lady looked
bewildered.

"Are you in earnest?" she demanded doubtingly.  "Are you not out here
from the city?"

"We have lived all our lives within five miles of this spot," said Jud,
flushing.

"And I have never seen a big city," added Justine, first to divine the
cause of the stranger's mistake.  The critic thought herself to be in
the presence of a genius from some city studio.  It was a pretty and
unfeigned compliment to Jud's picture.

"I cannot believe it," she cried.  "You may live here, sir, but you
have studied drawing.  I have never seen a more perfect sketch."

"I have never taken an hour's instruction in my life," said Jud, his
voice trembling with joy.

"Oh, now I know you have been trifling with me," she cried, flushing
slightly.

"It is the truth, isn't it, Justine?  I thought anybody could see that
I know nothing about drawing.  I only wish I could go to an art school."

"You really are in earnest?" the stranger asked, looking from one to
the other.  "Then you must tell me all about yourself.  A man with your
talent should not be lost in these wilds.  You have a wonderful gift.
Truly, I can hardly believe even now that you are not deceiving me."

The two glanced at each other rather helplessly, not knowing how to
reply.

"You haven't looked at the Falls," stammered Jud, at last.  The girl in
gray laughed and her eyes went to Justine's rich, warm face as if
expecting her to join in the merriment at his expense.  Justine,
however, was too deep in admiration to think of smiling.  Caught by the
gaze of the stranger, she was at last forced to smile vaguely.

"I haven't time for the Falls," said the stranger.  "I am interested
only in you.  You are worth cultivating.  Dear me, if I had you in
Chicago, I'd make a lion of you.  How long have you been hiding this
talent out here in the woods?"

Then Jud proceeded to tell her in a disjointed, self-conscious manner
how he had been drawing ever since he was a child; how his mother had
assisted him; how Justine had encouraged him; how much he longed to be
an artist.  At the end of his brief biography, the listener abruptly
asked:

"Will you sell me this picture?"

"I--I--If you'd really like to have it, I--I--will give it to you.  I
could not ask you anything for it.  It's not worth a price.  Besides,
you've been so kind to me.  Won't you accept it as a gift?" he
answered, beginning awkwardly, but ending eagerly.  Justine's eyes were
pleading with the young lady to take it.

"But you must let me pay you for it.  You don't know me, nor I you; you
are under no obligation to me.  And I would rather pay you for it.  You
see, it may be your start in life."

[Illustration: "YOU MUST LET ME PAY YOU FOR IT."]

"It's not worth anything," objected Jud.

"I know what it is worth.  Fifty dollars is cheap."

Before she had finished speaking she was counting the money from her
purse.  Thrusting five bills into Jud's hand, she snatched up the
picture and said:

"It's a bargain, isn't it?  You can't take back the picture because you
have accepted payment."

"Good heaven!--I mean, I can't take all of this!"

"But you can and shall," she cried delightedly.  "It is not enough, I'm
sure, but it is all I have with me.  Some day, when you are famous, I
shall have a valuable picture.  Now I must be going.  My mother and
brother are probably in convulsions.  See them?  Don't they look angry?
Our train had to wait three hours over at the other side of the woods
until they could repair the engine.  We had a breakdown."

"I wish you wouldn't force me to----" Jud began.

"Don't object, now!" she cried.  "I am the gainer.  Save that money to
give to your sweetheart on your wedding day.  That's a very pretty
idea, isn't it?  I know she will approve."  And here she came to
Justine and kissed her.  "I know I should like you very much," she said
honestly.  Justine felt a queer sensation in her throat and her heart
went out more than ever to the girl in gray.

"Remember, it is to be your wedding present when the sweet day comes."

Jud and Justine glanced sheepishly at one another, but before either
had found words to tell her they were already married, she was
hastening away.

"Oh, by the way," she cried, turning back, "what is your name?"

"Dudley Sherrod."

"It would be well for me to know it when you are famous.  Good-bye!"
she called cheerfully.

Jud hesitated an instant.

"Won't you tell me your name?" he cried.  Justine clasped his arm in
mute astonishment.

The receding girl turned, smiled, and held up her card, hastily
withdrawn from its case.  It fluttered to the grass, and she was gone.




CHAPTER VII.

LEAVING PARADISE.

Jud hurried down the slope and snatched up the piece of cardboard.  His
eyes sought the name, then the departing enchantress.  His heart was
full of thankfulness to the stranger, whose gray figure was
disappearing among the oaks.

"She seems just like the fairy queen in the stories we used to read,
Jud," said Justine.  Looking over his shoulders, she read aloud: "'Miss
Wood.'  Oh, dear; it doesn't give her first name.  How I wish I knew
it!"

"And it don't say where she lives," said Jud slowly.

"Chicago, I'm sure.  Don't you remember what she said about wishing she
had you there?  Dear me, what could she do with a country boy like you
in that great place?  Harve Crose says there are more people there than
there are in this whole county.  But wasn't she nice, Jud, wasn't she
nice?  And did you ever see such a beautiful face?"  Here Jud's sober,
thoughtful eyes looked so intently upon his wife's brilliant face that
she blushed under the unspoken compliment.  "And her clothes, Jud!
Weren't they grand?  Oh, oh, I never saw any one like her!"

The two walked slowly homeward, excitedly discussing the fair stranger
and her generosity.  All the evening she and the fifty dollars so
unexpectedly acquired were the topics of conversation.  Jud insisted
upon buying a new dress for Justine--as a "wedding present"--but she
demurred.  The money was to go into the bank the next day, she
insisted; and she ruled.

He was lying beneath a big tree in the yard, looking up at the stars,
reflectively drawing a long spear of wire grass through his teeth.  She
sat beside him, her back against the tree, serene, proud, and happy.
It was he who broke the long silence, dreamily.

"I wonder if I could make it go in Chicago."

She started from her reverie and her hand fell upon his arm.  For an
instant her big eyes narrowed as if trying to penetrate some shadow.
In another moment they opened wide again, and she was earnestly seeking
to convince him that he could succeed in the great city.

The months sped by and side by side they toiled, she with love and
devotion in her soul, he with ambition added.  As the winter came he
slaved with his pencil and pen, his heart bound to the new hope.  The
prediction at Proctor's Falls had inspired him; the glowing blue eyes
had not lied to him even though the lips might have flattered.  She had
praised his work, and she knew!  She must have known what he could do!

Justine shared the enthusiasm that had been awakened by Miss Wood.  She
looked upon that young woman as a goddess who had transformed her
husband into a genius whose gifts were to make the world fall down in
worship.

As the spring drew near Jud began to speak more often of the city and
his chances for success there.  He could see the pride and devotion in
his wife's eyes, but he could also see a certain dim, wistful shadow in
the depths.  He knew she was grieving over the fear that some day he
would desert their happy, simple home and rush out into the world,
leaving her behind until he had won a place for her.  She knew that he
could not take her with him at the outset.  He was to try his fortune
in the strange, big city, and she was to stay in the little cottage and
pray for the day to come speedily that would take her to him.

With him, ambition was tempered by love for her and the certainty that
he could not leave her even to win fame and fortune.  When he allowed
himself to think of her alone in the cottage, looking sadly at the
stars and thinking of him in the rushing city, he said to himself: "I
can't leave her!"  Both knew, although neither spoke it aloud, that if
he went, he would have to go alone.

Justine understood his hesitation and its cause.  She knew that she was
holding him back, that she alone kept him from making the plunge into
the world, and her heart was sore.  Night after night she lay awake in
his arms, her poor heart throbbing against his ambitious heart,
writhing beneath the certain knowledge that she was the weight about
his neck.

One day, late in the fall, when the strain upon her heart had become
too great, she broke the fetters.  It was at dusk, and, coming around
the corner of the cottage, she found him sitting on the doorstep, his
gaze far away, his dejection showing in the droop of the broad
shoulders.  A little gasp of pain came from her lips--pain mingled with
love and pity for him.  She stood for a moment, reading his thoughts as
if they were printed before her eyes--thoughts of fame, honor, success,
trial, chance!  How good, how handsome, how noble he was!  She was the
weight, the drag!  The hour had come for her to decide.  He would never
say the word--that much she knew.

"Jud," she said, standing bravely before him.  He looked up, shaking
off his dream.  "Don't you think it about time you were trying your
luck in Chicago?  You surely have worked hard enough at your drawing,
and I don't see why you put it off any longer."

For a moment he was unable to speak.  Into his eyes came a blur of
tears.

"But, Justine, dear, how are we to live there?  They say it takes a
fortune," he said.  There was a breath of eagerness in his voice and
she detected it.

She sat beside him and laid her arm about his shoulder.  He turned his
face to hers, wondering, and their eyes met.  For a long time neither
spoke by tongue, but they understood.  A sob came into his throat as he
lifted her hand from her lap and drew her to him almost convulsively.

"Justine, I can't do that!  I can't go away off there and leave you
here alone.  Why, sweetheart, I'd die without you," he cried.

"But when you are able, dear, to take me to you in the great city, we
can be the happiest people in the world," she said huskily.  "I'll be
lonesome and you'll be lonesome, but it won't be for long.  You will
succeed.  I know it, dear, and you must not waste another day in this
wilderness----"

"It is the sweetest place in the world," he cried, passionately.
"Wilderness?  With you here beside me?  Oh, Justine, it will be
wilderness if I go away from you!"

"Surely, _surely_, Jud, it is for the best.  I know you can't take me
now, but you can come after me some day, and then I'll know that I have
lost nothing by letting you go.  You will be a great--you _will_
succeed!  Why, Jud, you draw better than any one I ever knew about.
Your pictures even now are better than any I have ever seen.  They
can't help liking you in Chicago.  You must go--you must, Jud!"  She
was talking rapidly, excitedly.

"You love me so much that you are blind, dear.  Up in Chicago they have
thousands of artists who are better than I am, and they are starving.
Wait a minute!  Suppose I should fail!  Suppose they should laugh at me
and I couldn't get work.  What then?  I have no money, no friends up
there.  If I don't get on, what is to become of me?  Did you ever think
of that?"

"Haven't you me and the little farm to come back to, Jud?  I'll be here
and I'll love you more than ever.  And I'll die here on this old place
with you beside me, and never be sorry that you couldn't do for me
everything you wish," she said solemnly.  Then she went on quickly:
"But you won't fail--you can't, Jud, you can't.  Don't you remember
what pretty Miss Wood said about your work?  Well, didn't she know?  Of
course, she did.  She _lives_ in Chicago and she knows."

"If I knew where to find her or write to her, she might help me," said
he, a new animation in his voice.  "But there's no one I can write to.
I don't know how to go about it."

"Go about it like other boys have done.  Lots of them have gone out
into the world and won their way.  Now, Jud, when will you go?"

The moment of decision came too suddenly.  He was not ready to meet it.

"I--I--oh, we can talk about this later on," he faltered.

"We must settle it now."

"Do you want me to go?" he asked after a moment.

"Yes, I do, Jud."

"How queer you are!  I'd rather die than leave you, and yet you want me
to go away from you," he said inconsistently.

"Don't say that!  I love you better than my life!  Don't you see that
is why I want you to go?  It is because I love you so, oh, so much, and
I know it is for the best.  It's not like losing you altogether.  We'll
be with each other soon, I know.  You can come home to see me every
once in awhile, don't you see?  And then, when you feel that you can do
so, you will take your poor little country girl into the great city to
live with you.  You'll be great, then; will you be ashamed of me?"

"Ashamed of you!" he cried.

For a long time he held her in his arms in the twilight, and pleaded
with her to let him remain.  To her courage, to the breaking of her
heart, was due the step which started him out into the world to seek
his fortune and hers.

The day was set for his departure.  She drew from the bank the fifty
dollars his first picture had brought, and pressed it into his
reluctant hands.  It was she who drove him into the village.  In the
pocket of his Sunday clothes he carried the names of newspaper artists,
so familiar to him; they were the men he was to see--the strangers who
were to be his Samaritans.  If they lent him a helping hand all might
go well.

She was to live without him in the little paradise, with old Mrs. Crane
and Caleb Spangler's boy as companions.  They were to conduct the
affairs of the farm through the winter months, while he fought for a
footing in another universe.

It was a sobbing girl who lay all that night in the broad bed, thinking
of the boy whose curly head was missing from the pillow beside her,
whose loving arms were gone, perhaps forever.


'Gene Crawley knew of Jud's intentions long before his departure.  In
fact, the whole township was aware of the great undertaking, and there
was more or less gossip, and no end of doubt as to the wisdom of the
step.  It was generally conceded that Jud was a bright boy, but still
"he wuzn't much to git ahead, even out in the country, so how in
tarnation did he expect to make it go in the city?"  A few of the
evil-minded saw signs of waning love in the Sherrod cottage; others
slyly winked and intimated that 'Gene Crawley had something to do with
it; and the whole neighborhood solemnly shook hands with Jud and "hoped
he'd come back richer'n Vanderbilt."

Crawley saw them drive away to the station in the village, and he saw
the dejected young wife come slowly homeward at dusk.  That night,
while she rolled and sobbed in her bed, he sat on the fence across the
lane from the dark cottage until long after midnight.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE FIRST WAS A CRIMINAL.

Jud's first night in Chicago was sleepless, even bedless.  The train
rolled into the Dearborn Street station at ten o'clock and he stumbled
out into the smoky, clanging train-sheds among countless strangers.  It
was all different from the station platform at Glenville, or even the
more pretentious depot in the town that had seen his short college
career.  Sharp rebuffs, amused smiles, and sarcastic rejoinders met his
innocent queries as he wandered aimlessly about the station, carrying
his ungainly "telescope."  Dismayed and resentful, he refrained from
asking questions at last, and for more than an hour sat upon one of the
unfriendly benches near the gates.  Once he plucked up enough courage
to ask a stranger when he could get a train back to Glenville.

"Never heard of Glenville," was the unfeeling response.

The crowds did not interest the new arrival; he saw the people and
novelties of a great city through dim, homesick eyes, and thought only
of the old, familiar, well-beloved fences, lanes, and pastures, and
Justine's sad face.  His ambition waned.  He realized that he did not
belong in this great, unkind place; he saw that he was an object of
curiosity and amusement; keenly he felt the inconsiderate stares of
passers-by, and indeed he knew that his own strangeness was an excuse
for the smiles which made him shrink with mortification.  An old
gentleman stopped at the news-stand hard by and selected a magazine.
He stood beneath a dazzling arc light and turned the pages, glancing at
the pictures.  Jud was attracted by the honest kindliness of his face,
and approached him.  The old gentleman looked up.

"Excuse me, sir, but I am a stranger here, and I'd like to ask a
favor," said Jud.  He found that his voice was hoarse.

"I have nothing for you," said the old gentleman, returning to the
magazine.

"I'm not a beggar," cried Jud, drawing back, cut to the quick.

"Don't you want enough to get a bed or something for a starving mother
to eat?" sarcastically demanded the old gentleman, taking another look
at the youth.

"I have had nothing but hard words since I came into this depot, and
God knows I've tried to be respectful.  What am I that every one should
treat me like a dog?  Do I look like a beggar or a thief?  I know I
look just what I am, a country boy, but that oughtn't to turn people
against me."  Jud uttered these words in a voice trembling with pent-up
anger and the tears of a long-tried indignation.  Suddenly his eyes
flashed and he blurted forth the real fierceness of his feelings in a
savage, and, for him, unusual display of resentment: "For two cents I'd
tell the whole crowd to go to hell!"

It was this intense and startling expression that convinced the
stranger of Jud's genuineness.  There was no mistaking the sincerity of
that wrath.

"My boy, you shouldn't say that.  This is a big and busy city, and you
must get used to the ways of it.  I see you are a good, honest lad, and
I beg pardon for my unkind words.  Now, tell me, what can I do for you?
My train leaves in ten minutes, so we have no time to spare.  Tell me
what you are doing here."

Jud's heart leaped at the sound of these, the first kindly tones he had
heard, and he poured forth the disjointed story of his ambitions, not
once thinking that the stranger could have no personal interest in
them.  But he had won an attentive listener.

"You're the sort of a boy I like," exclaimed the gray-haired Chicagoan,
grasping the boy's hand.  "I'll be back in Chicago in three or four
days, and I'll do all I can to help you.  Get along here as best you
can till next Friday, and then come to see me.  Here is my card," and
he handed forth an engraved piece of cardboard.  "Don't forget it, now,
for I am interested in you.  Hanged if I don't like a boy who talks as
you did awhile ago.  I feel that way myself sometimes.  Good-bye; I
must get this train.  Friday morning, Mr.--Oh, what is your name?"

"Dudley Sherrod, sir, and I'm much obliged to you.  But I wanted to ask
a favor of you.  Where can I find a place to sleep?"

"Good Lord, was that all you wanted?"  And then the old gentleman
directed him to a nearby hotel.  "Stay there to-night, and if it's too
high-priced, hunt a cheaper place to-morrow.  There goes my train!"

Jud looked after him as he raced down the yard, and drew a breath of
relief as he swung upon the rear platform of the last sleeper,
awkwardly, but safely.  Then he read the card.  "Christopher Barlow,"
it said, "Investment Broker."  It seemed promising, and with a somewhat
lighter heart he made his way to his cumbersome valise, so unlike the
neat boxes carried by other travelers, and prepared for the walk out
into the lamplights of a Chicago street.  He found the hotel, but had
to occupy a chair in the office all night, for the rooms were full.  A
kind-hearted clerk gave him permission to remain there until morning,
observing his fatigue and his loneliness.  He even checked the boy's
valise for him and told him where he could "wash up."

It was Tuesday morning when he started forth for his first walk about
the streets of Chicago.  The clerk recommended a cheap lodging-house
and he found it without much difficulty, and began to feel more at
home.  Some one told him how to reach the _Record_ office, and he was
soon asking a youth in the counting-room where he could find a certain
artist.  Here he encountered a peculiar rebuff.  He was told that the
artists did not go to work until nearly noon.  To Jud, who had always
gone to work at four in the morning, this was almost incomprehensible.
In his ignorance, he at once began to see the easy life he might lead
if ever he could obtain such a position.

All the morning he wandered about State and Clark Streets, Wabash
Avenue, and the Lake Front.  Everything was new and marvelous.  From
the lowly cot in the lane to the fifteen-story monsters in Chicago;
from the meadows and cornfields to the miles of bewildering
thoroughfares; from the occasional vehicle or passing farmhand of the
"pike" to the thousands of rushing men and women on the congested
sidewalks; from the hayracks and the side-boarded grain-wagon to the
clanging street cars and the "L" trains; from the homely garb of the
yokel to the fashionable clothes of the swell.  It is a striking
transition when it comes suddenly.

In the afternoon he was directed to the room of the newspaper artist.
He carried with him his batch of drawings, and his heart was in his
shoes.  Already he had begun to learn something of the haste of city
life.  How could he hope to win more than the passing attention of the
busy man?  Several girls in the counting-room giggled as he strode by,
and his ears flamed red.  He did not know that more than one of those
girls admired his straight, strong figure and sunburnt face.

The artist was drawing at his board when Jud entered the little room
facing Fifth Avenue.  There was no halo of glory hovering over the
rumpled head, nor was there a sign of the glorious studio his dreams
had pictured.  He found himself standing in the doorway of what looked
like a junk-shop.  Desks were strewn with drawing-boards, cardboard,
pens, pads, weights, thumb-tacks, unmounted photographs, and a
heterogeneous assortment of things he had never seen before.  The
cartoonist barely glanced at him as he stepped inside the doorway.

"Morning," remarked the eminent man, and coolly resumed work on the
drawing.  Jud was stricken dumb by this indifference, expected as it
was.  He forgot the speech he had made up and stood hesitating, afraid
to advance or retreat.

"Is this Mr. Brush?" he asked at length, after his disappointed eyes
had swept the untidy den from floor to ceiling.  Was this the room of a
great artist?  Shattered dream!  The walls were covered with flaring
posters, rough sketches, cheaply framed cartoons, and dozens of odd and
ends, such as one sees in the junk-shops of art.

"Yes," was the brief response.  "Have a chair.  I'll talk to you in a
minute."  Jud sat in a chair near the door, his fingers spasmodically
gripping the humble package of drawings he had brought all the way from
the fields of Clay township to show to this surly genius whose work had
been his inspiration.

"Fine day," said Mr. Brush, his head bent low over the board.

"Yes, sir," responded the visitor, who thought it one of the most
dismal days in his life.  After fully ten minutes of awkward silence,
during which Jud found himself willing to hate the artist and that
impolite pen, the artist straightened up in his chair and for the first
time surveyed his caller.

"Do you want to see me about something?"

"I want to show you some of my drawings, if you have time to look at
'em--them, sir," said Jud timidly.

"Oh, you're another beginner who wants a job, eh?" said the other, a
trifle sardonically.  "Let's see 'em.  I can tell you in advance,
however, that you'll have a devil of a time finding an opening in
Chicago.  Papers all full and a hundred fellows looking for places.
Live here?  Oh, I see--from the country."  This after a swift
inspection of his visitor's general make-up.  "I am a little busy just
now.  Can you come in at six o'clock?"

"Yes, sir.  I'm sorry I bothered you," said Jud, glad, in his
disillusionment, to find an excuse for leaving the crowded workshop.
The artist, whimsical as are all men of his profession, suddenly fell
to admiring the young man's face.  It was a strong type, distinctly
sketchable.

"Wait a minute.  I have an engagement at six, come to think of it.
I'll look at 'em now," he said, still gazing.  Jud reluctantly placed
the package on the table and proceeded, with nervous fingers, to untie
the string which Justine had so lovingly, but so stubbornly, knotted.
Every expression of the eager, embarrassed face impressed itself upon
the keen eye of the watcher.  It was with little or no interest,
however, that Mr. Brush took up the little stock of drawings.  This boy
was but one of a hundred poor, aspiring fellows who had wearied him
with their miserable efforts.

"Did you draw these?" he asked, after he had looked at three or four.
Even Jud in all his embarrassment could see that his face had suddenly
turned serious.

"Yes, sir, certainly," answered Jud.

"Didn't copy them?"

"No, sir.  They are pictures of places and objects down in Glenville."

"Where is that?"

"In Indiana.  You don't think they are copies, do you?"

"Drew 'em from life?" asked the other incredulously.

"Of course I did," said Jud with acerbity.

"Don't get mad, my boy.  How long have you been drawing?"

"Since I was a boy--'knee high to a duck'--as we say down there."

"Ever have any instructions?"

"No, sir.  I haven't been able to afford it.  I want to go to an art
school when I have raised the money."

The artist looked through the pack without another word and Jud
fidgeted under the strain.  He was anxious to have the critic condemn
his work so that he could flee and have done with it.

"Here's a pad of paper and a pencil.  See how long it will take you to
sketch that elevated track and the building across the street.  Sit up
here near the window," commanded the artist.

Jud's nerve fled as he found himself called upon to draw beneath the
eye of an expert, and it was only after some little urging that he was
induced to attempt the sketch.  He felt uncertain, incompetent,
uncomfortable, mainly because he was to draw objects entirely new to
his eyes.  It was not like sketching the old barns and fences down in
Clay township.  Closing his jaws determinedly, however, he began the
task, wondering why he was doing so in the face of a decision he had
reached but a moment before.  He had come to the conclusion that it was
not worth while to try for a place in Chicago and had made up his mind
to go back to the farm, defeated.  In twenty minutes he had a good
accurate outline of all that met his keen gaze beyond the window-sill,
and was beginning to "fill in" when the artist checked him.

"That's enough.  You can do it, I see.  Now I believe that you drew all
these from life and nature.  What's your name?"

"Dudley Sherrod."

"Well, Mr. Sherrod, I don't know you, nor do I know where Glenville is,
but I will say this much to you: a man who can draw such pictures as
these is entitled to consideration anywhere.  It kind o' paralyzes you,
eh?  You may rest assured that I am sincere, because we don't praise a
man's work unless it is deserving.  What are you doing up here?
Looking for work?"

"I want to earn enough at something to give me a start, that's all.  Do
you really think I'll do, Mr. Brush?"  His eyes were actually snapping
with excitement.

"You can be made to do.  It's in you.  Try your hand at newspaper
illustrating and then sail in for magazine work, etching,
paintings--thunder, you can do it, if you have the nerve to stick to
it!"

"But how am I to get work on a paper?"

"There are twenty-five applicants ahead of you here, and we are to lose
a man next month--Mr. Kirby, who goes to New York.  I'll see that you
get his place.  In the mean time, you'll have to wait until the first
of the month, and, if you like, you may hang around the office and go
out with the fellows on some of their assignments, just for practice.
You won't get much of a salary to begin with, but you'll work up.  I'm
darn glad you came here first."

"How do you know I came here first?"

"Because you wouldn't have got away from another paper if you'd gone
there.  Have you any friends in the city?"

"No, sir--yes, I did meet a gentleman at the depot last night.  I'm to
call on him next Friday.  Do you know him?"  Sherrod gave him
Christopher Barlow's card.  The artist glanced at it, and, without a
word, picked up a photograph from his desk.

"This the man?"

"Why, yes--isn't it funny you'd have it?"

"And here is his daughter."  This time he displayed the picture of a
beautiful girl.  "And his wife, too."  Jud held the three portraits in
his hand, wondering how they came to be in the artist's possession.
"Mrs. Barlow committed suicide this morning."

"Good heaven!  You don't mean it.  And has Mr. Barlow come home?"

"That's the trouble, my boy.  You'll have a good deal to learn in
Chicago, and you can't trust very much of anybody.  You see, old man
Barlow, who has been looked upon as the soul of honor, skipped town
last night with a hundred thousand dollars belonging to depositors, and
he is now where the detectives can't find him."

Jud was staggered.  That kindly old gentleman a thief!  The first man
to give him a gentle word in the great city a fleeing criminal!  He
felt a cold perspiration start on his forehead.  What manner of world
was this?

His first day in Chicago ended with the long letter he wrote to
Justine, an epistle teeming with enthusiasm and joy, brimming over with
descriptions and experiences, not least of which was the story of
Christopher Barlow.




CHAPTER IX.

THE ENCOUNTER WITH CRAWLEY.

Justine received his letter at the end of the week.  The three days
intervening between his departure and its arrival had seemed almost
years.  Since their marriage day they had not been separated for more
than twelve consecutive hours.  It was the first night she had spent
alone--the night which followed his departure.  In her brief, blissful
married life it was the only night she had spent without his arm for a
pillow.

The days were bleak and oppressive; she lived in a daze, almost to the
point of unconsciousness.  The nights brought dismal forebodings, cruel
dreams, and sudden awakenings.  She felt lost, in strange and
unfriendly surroundings; where love, tenderness, and joy had been the
reigning forces there was now only loneliness.  No object seemed
familiar to her.  Everything that had given personality to the little
farm was gone with the whistle of a locomotive, the clacking of railway
coaches, the clanging of a bell.  The landscape was not the same, the
sky was no longer blue, the moon and stars were somber.  Yank, the dog,
moped about the place, purposeless, sad-eyed, and with no ambition in
his erstwhile frisky tail.  Jud had not been gone more than half a day
when curious neighbors pulled up their horses at the gate.

"Heerd from Jud?  How's he gittin' 'long in Chickawgo?"

"I haven't heard, Mr. Martin, but I am expecting a letter soon.  How
long does it take mail to get here from Chicago?"

"Depends a good deal on how fer it is."

"Oh, it's over two hundred miles, I know."

"Seems to me y'oughter be hearin' 'fore long, then.  Shell I ast ef
they's any mail fer you down to the post-office?"

"I have sent Charlie Spangler to the toll-gate, thank you."

"Gitep!"

Mail reached the cross-roads post-office twice a day, carried over by
wagon from Glenville.  Little Charlie Spangler was at the toll-gate
morning and evening, at least half an hour before Mr. Hardesty drove up
with the slim pouch, but it was not until the third morning that he was
rewarded.  Then came a thick envelope on which blazed the Chicago
postmark.  Every hanger-on about the toll-gate unhesitatingly declared
the handwriting to be that of Jud Sherrod.  It was addressed to Mrs.
Dudley Sherrod.  The letter was passed around for inspection before it
was finally delivered to the proud boy, who ran nearly all the way to
Justine's in his eagerness to learn as much as he could of its
contents.  Jim Hardesty had promised him a bunch of Yucatan if he
brought all the news to the toll-gate before supper-time.

Justine knew the letter had come when she saw the spindle-shanked boy
racing up the lane.  She was awaiting the messenger at the gate.

"Is it from Jud?" she cried, hurrying to meet him, her face glowing
once more.  He was waving the epistle on high.

"That's what they all say," he panted, as he drew near.  "Jim says he'd
know Jud's writin' if he wrote in Chinese."

The poor, lonesome girl read the long letter as if it were the most
thrilling novel, fascinated by every detail, enthralled by the
wonderful experiences of her boy-husband in the great city.  His
descriptions of places, people, and customs, as they appeared to his
untrained, marveling eye, were vivid, though disconnected.  Then came
the narration of his experience with the artist, supplemented by
playful boasting, and the welcome news that he was to have employment
on the great newspaper.

Justine had not, from the first, doubted his ability to find work in
the city.  While she glowed with pride and happiness, there was a
little bitterness in her lonely heart.  In that moment she realized
that there had existed, unknown and unfelt, a hope that he would fail
and that the failure would send him back to gladden the little home.
Afterwards the bitterness gave way to rejoicing.  Success to him meant
success and happiness to both; his struggle was for her as well as for
himself, and the end would justify the sacrifice of the beginning.  It
could not be for long--he had already clutched the standard of fame and
she knew him to be a man who would bear it forward as long as there was
life and health.  She had supreme faith in his ambition--the only rival
to his love.

She read certain parts of his letter aloud to Mrs. Crane and Charlie,
glorying in their astonished ejaculations, widespread eyes, and excited
"Ohs."  Within herself she felt a certain wifely superiority, a little
disdain for their surprise, a certain pity for their ignorance.  With a
touch of self-importance, innocently natural, she enjoyed the emotions
of her companions, forgetting that she had just begun to break through
the chrysalis of ignorance that still bound them.

Before "supper-time" Charlie Spangler was in possession of the Yucatan
and Jim Hardesty's place was ringing with the news of Jud's success.
Long before the night was over certain well-informed and calculating
individuals were prophesying that inside of five years he would be
running for the presidency of the United States.

"'Y gosh!" volunteered Mr. Hardesty, "thet boy's got it in him to be
shuriff of this county, ef he'd a mind to run.  'F he stays up there in
Chickawgo fer a year er two an' tends to his knittin' like a sensible
feller'd oughter, he'll come back here with a reecord so derned hard to
beat thet it wouldn't be a whipstitch tell he'd be the most pop'lar man
in the hull county.  Chickawgo puts a feller in the way of big things
an' I bet three dollars Jed wouldn't have no trouble 't all gittin' the
enomination fer shuriff."

"Shuriff, thunder!  What'd he wanter run fer shuriff fer?  Thet's no
office fer a Chickawgo man.  They run fer jedge or general or senator
or somethin' highfalutin'.  I heerd it said onct thet there has been
more Presidents of the United States come from Chickawgo than from airy
other State in the West.  What Jed'll be doin' 'fore long will be to
come out fer President or Vice-President, you mark my words, boys."
Thus spake Uncle Sammy Godfrey, the sage of Clay township.  He had been
a voter for sixty years and his opinion on things political was next to
law.

'Gene Crawley soon heard the news.  He had been awaiting the letter
with almost as much impatience as had Justine.  If such a creature as
he could pray, it had been his prayer that Justine's husband might find
constant employment in Chicago.  The torture of knowing that she was
another man's wife could be assuaged if he were not compelled to see
the happiness they found in being constantly together.  He could have
shouted for joy when he heard that Jud was to live in Chicago and that
she was to remain on the farm, near him, for a time, at least.

"Well, Jed's gone, 'Gene," said Mrs. Hardesty, meaningly, as he leaned
over the greasy counter that evening.  "'Spose you don't keer much, do
you?"

"Don't give a damn, one way or t'other," responded he, darkly, puffing
away at his pipe.  Despite his apparent calmness, his teeth were almost
biting the cane pipe-stem in two.  "Has he got a job?"

"He's goin' to draw picters fer a newspaper up there, an' they do say
the pay's immense."

"How much is he to git?"

"He says in his letter he's to start out with $15 a week, an'll soon be
gittin' twict as much."

"You mean a _month_."

"No; a week, 'Gene.  Thet's what the letter said."

"Aw, what you givin' us!  Him to git $15 a week?  Why, goldern it, I'm
only gittin' $18 a month, an' I've allus been counted a better hand'n
him.  Who said that was in the letter?"  Jealousy was getting the
better of 'Gene.

"Charlie Spangler heerd Justine Van read it right out loud, an' he's a
powerful quick-witted boy.  He gen'rally hears things right."

"He's the cussedest little liar in Clay township," snarled 'Gene.

"You know better'n that, 'Gene Crawley.  You're jest mad 'cause Jed's
doin' well, thet's what you air, and you know it," cried she.

"Mad?  What fer?" exclaimed he, trying to recover his temper for the
first time in his life.

"'Cause you're jealous an' 'cause he's got her, thet's what fer," she
said, conscious that she was stirring his violent nature to the boiling
point.  But to her surprise--and to his own, for that matter--he gulped
and laughed coarsely.

"Well, he's welcome to her, ain't he?" he asked.  "Who's got a better
right?"

"Thet ain't the way you talked a year ago," she said meaningly.

"You know too dern much," he said and walked away, leaving behind a
thoroughly dissatisfied woman.  But Mrs. Hardesty did not know how
deeply she had cut nor how he raged inwardly as he hurried homeward
through the night.

Several days later he boldly climbed the meadow fence, and, for the
first time since the fight, started across Justine's property on a
short cut to the hills.  What his object was in going to the hills in
the dusk of that evening he himself did not clearly understand, but at
the bottom of it all was the desire to intrude upon forbidden ground.
Beneath the ugliness of his motive, however, there lurked a certain
timidity.  He was conscious that he was trespassing, and he knew she
would not like it.  But if she saw him cross the meadow, he never knew.
His intention had been, of course, to attract her notice, and he was
filled with disappointment.  Late in the night he walked back from the
hills.  There was a light in one of her rear windows, and he peered
eagerly from the garden fence, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.  When
Yank began to bark, he threw stones at the faithful brute and stood his
ground, trusting that she would come to the door.  He cursed when old
Mrs. Crane appeared in the yard, calling in frightened tones to the
dog.  Then he slunk away in the night.  The next day and the next he
strode through the meadow.  With each failure he grew uglier and more
set in his purpose, for he had a fair certainty that she saw and
avoided him.

One evening he ventured across the meadow, his black eyes searching for
her.  Suddenly he came upon her.  She was driving a cow home from a far
corner of the pasture, leisurely, in the waning daylight, her thoughts
of Jud and the future.  She did not see Crawley until he was almost
beside her, and she could not restrain the gasp of terror.  Hoping that
he would not speak to her, she hurried on.

"Have you heerd from Jud ag'in, Justine?" he asked, his voice trembling
in spite of himself.

"How dare you speak to me?" she cried, not checking her speed, nor
glancing toward him.

"Well, I guess I've got a voice an' they ain't no law ag'in me usin'
it, is there?  What's the use bein' so unfriendly, anyhow?  I'll drive
the cow in fer you, Justine," he went on with a strange bashfulness.

His stride toward her brought her to a standstill, her eyes flashing
with resentment.

"'Gene Crawley, you've been ordered to keep off of our place and I want
you to stay off.  If you ever put your foot in this pasture again I'll
sic' Yank on you.  Don't you ever dare speak to me again."  She drew
her form to its full height and looked into his face.

"If you sic' Yank on me I'll kill him, jes' as I could 'a' killed _him_
when we fit over yander by the crick.  I let him up fer your sake an'
I've been sorry fer it ever sence.  Say, Justine, I want to be your
friend----"

"Friend!" she exclaimed scornfully.  "You're a treacherous dog and you
don't deserve to have a friend on earth.  If you were a man you'd keep
off this place and quit bothering me.  You know that Jud's away and you
are coward enough to take the advantage.  I want you to _go_--go at
once!"

"You ain't got no right to call me a coward," he growled.

"Do you think it brave to say what you did about me and to make your
boasts down at the toll-gate?  Is that the way a man acts?"

"Somebody's been lyin' to you----" he began confusedly.

"No!  You did say it and there's no use lying to me.  I loathe you
worse than a snake, and I wouldn't trust you as far.  'Gene Crawley,
I've got a loaded shotgun in the house.  So help me God, I'll kill you
if you don't keep away from me."

She was in deadly earnest and he knew it.  The rage of despair burned
away every vestige of the brutal confidence in which he had intruded
upon her little domain.

"I'm not such a bad feller, Justine----" he began, with a mixture of
defiance and humbleness in his voice.  It was now dark and they were
alone, but she commanded the situation despite her quaking heart.

"You lie, 'Gene Crawley!" she exclaimed.  "You are a drunken brute, and
you don't deserve to be spoken to by any woman.  You are not fit to
talk to--to--to the hogs!"

He clenched his fists and an oath sprang to his lips.  "I've a notion
to----" he hissed, but could not complete the threat.  The suppressed
words were "brain you."

"I expect you to," she cried.  "Why don't you do it, you coward?"  He
glared at her for a moment, baffled.  Suddenly his eyes fell, his
shoulders trembled, and his voice broke.

"I wouldn't hurt you for the whole world, Justine."  He turned and
walked away from her without another word.

'Gene Crawley never touched liquor after that night.  "Not fit to talk
to the hogs," "a drunken brute," were sentences that curdled in his
heart, freezing forever the lust of liquor.  He was beginning to crave
the respect of a woman.  Deep in his soul lay the hope that if he could
only cease drinking he might win more than respect from her.




CHAPTER X.

THE CLOTHES AND THE MAN.

It was six weeks before Jud had saved enough money to make the rather
expensive trip to Glenville.  In that time he found many experiences,
novel and soul-trying.  The busy city clashed against the rough edges
of this unsophisticated youth and quickly wore them off.  By the time
he was ready to board the train for a two-days' stay with Justine he
had acquired what it had taken other men years to learn.  Keen and
quick-witted, he easily fell into the ways of strangers, putting
forward as good a foot as any country-bred boy who ever went to Chicago.

The newspaper on which he was employed recognized his worth, and at the
end of the month he was pleased beyond all expression to find a twenty
dollar gold piece in his envelope instead of a ten and a five.  The
chief artist told him his salary would improve correspondingly with his
work.  Still, he realized that twenty dollars a week was but little
more than it required to keep him "going" in this spendthrift
metropolis.  The men he met were good fellows and they spent money with
the freedom customary among newspaper workers.  Jud did not spend his
foolishly, yet he found he could save but little.  He did not touch
liquor; the other boys in the office did.  His friend, the chief
artist, advised him to save what money he could, but to avoid as much
as possible the danger of being called a "cheap skate."  He was told to
be anything but stingy.

The young artist would gladly have eaten at lunch counters and slept in
the lowliest of flats if he could have followed his own inclinations.
But how could he let the other boys spend money on expensive meals
without responding as liberally?  It was with joy, then, that he
welcomed the increase; and besides, it proved to him that there was
promise of greater advancement, and that at no far distant day he could
bring Justine to the city.

He took a bright twenty dollar gold piece to her on that first and
long-expected visit.  She met him at the station.  All the way out to
the little cottage he beamed with the pleasure and pride of possessing
such love as came to him from this glowing girl.  He forgot to compare
her with the visions of loveliness he had become accustomed to seeing
in the city.  So overjoyed was he that he did not notice her simple
garments, her sunburnt hands, her brown face.  To him she was the most
beautiful of all beings--the most perfect, the most to be desired.

"Jud, dear, I am so happy I could die," she whispered as they entered
the cottage door after the drive home.  He took her in his arms and
held her for neither knew how long.

"Are you so glad to see me, sweetheart?" he asked tenderly.

"Glad!  If you had not come to-day I should have gone to Chicago
to-night.  I could not have waited another day.  Oh, it is so good to
have you here; it is so good to be in your arms!  You don't know how I
have longed for you, Jud;--you don't know how lonely I have been all
these years."

"Years!  It has been but a month and a half," he said, smiling.

"But each day has been a year.  Have they not seemed long to you?" she
cried, chilled by the fear that they had been mere days to him when
they had been such ages to her.

"My nights were years, Justine.  My days were short; it was in the
nights that I had time to think, and then I felt I should go wild with
homesickness.  You will never know how often I was tempted to get up
out of bed and come back to you.  It can't be long, it must not, till I
can have you up there with me.  I can't go through many such months as
the last one; I'd die, Justine, honest I would."

"It won't be long, I know.  You are getting on so nicely and you'll be
able soon to take me with you.  Maybe this winter?"  She asked the
question eagerly, dubiously.

"This winter?  Good heavens, if I can't have you up there this winter,
what's the use of trying to do anything?  I want you right away, but I
know I can't do it for a month or two----"

"Don't hope too strongly, dear.  You must not count on it.  I don't
believe you can do it so soon--no, not for six months," she said, again
the loving adviser.

"You don't know me," he cried.  "I can do it!"

"I hope you can, Jud, but--but, I am afraid----"

"Afraid?  Don't you believe in me?"

"Don't say that, please.  I am afraid you won't be ready to have me up
there as a--a----"

"A what, sweetheart?"

"A very heavy burden."

"Burden!  Justine, you will lift the greatest burden I will have to
carry--my spirits.  I need you, and I'll have you if I starve myself."

"When you are ready, Jud, I'll go with you.  You can tell when the time
comes.  I'll starve with you, if needs be."

That night they received callers in the fire-lit front room.  The whole
community knew that he was at home, and everybody came to sate
legitimate curiosity.  Some talked, others joked, a few stared; until
at length the township was satisfied and hurried home to bed.  For days
the people talked of the change they had observed in Jud--not so much
in respect to his clothes as to his advanced ideas.  "Aleck" Cranby was
authority for the statement that Sherrod was engaged in "drawin'
picters fer a dictionary.  Thet's how he knows so all-fired much."

The young artist's brief stay at home was the most blissful period in
his life and in hers.  They were separated only for moments.  When the
time came for him to go away he went with a cheerier heart and he left
a happier one behind.  In their last kiss there was the promise that he
would return in a month, and there was, back of all, the conviction
that she would go with him to Chicago within six months.  On the train,
however, he allowed gloomy thoughts to drive away the optimism that
contact with Justine had inspired.  He realized that every dollar he
possessed in the world was in his pocket, and he had just six dollars
and thirty cents.  At such a rate, how much could he accumulate in six
short months?

Back on the little farm there was a level-headed thinker who was
counting on a year instead of six months, and who was racking her
brains for means with which to help him in the struggle.  One good crop
would be a godsend.

For several weeks Jud observed the strictest economy.  When next he
went to the farm for a visit it was with sixty dollars.  Most of this
he gave to Justine, who hid it in a bureau drawer.  Winter was on in
full blast now, and he did not forget to purchase a warm coat for her,
besides heavy dress-goods, underwear, and many little necessities.
Thanksgiving saw her dressed in better clothes than she had known since
those almost forgotten days of affluence before the mining swindle.
Jud, himself, was not too warmly clad.  He refused to buy clothes for
himself until he had supplied Justine with all she needed.  His suit
was old but neat, his shoes were new, his hat was passable, but his
overcoat was pitiful in its old age.

The night after his return from the farm, he had a few good friends in
his room to eat the apples, cakes, and nuts which his wife had given
him at home.  It was a novel feast for the Chicago boys.  Ned Draper, a
dramatic critic, had money in the new suit of clothes which graced his
person, and he sent out for wine, beer and cigars.  The crowd made
merry until two o'clock, but not one drop of liquor passed Jud's lips.

"Sherrod, where did you get that overcoat I saw you wearing to-day?"
asked Draper, in friendly banter.  Jud flushed, but answered steadily:
"In Glenville."

"The glorious metropolis of Clay township--the city of our youth,"
laughed Hennessy, the police reporter.

"You ought to pension it and give it a pair of crutches," went on
Draper.  "It has seen service enough and it's certainly infirm.  I'll
swear, I don't see how it manages to hang alone."

"It's the best I can afford," cried the owner, resentfully.

"Aw, what are you givin' us?  You're getting twenty a week and you're
to have thirty by Christmas--if you're good, you know,--and I would
blow myself for some clothes.  Hang it, old man, I mean it for your own
good.  People will think more of you if you spruce up and make a
showing.  Those clothes of yours don't fit and they're worn out.  You
don't know what a difference it will make in your game if you make a
flash with yourself.  It gets people thinking you're a peach, when you
may be a regular stiff.  Go blow yourself for some clothes, and the
next time you chase down to Glenville to see that girl she'll break her
neck to marry you before you can get out of town.  On the level, now,
old man, I'm giving it to you straight.  Tog up a bit.  It doesn't cost
a mint and it does help.  I'll leave it to the crowd."

"The crowd" supported Draper, and Jud could but see the wisdom in their
advice, although his pride rebelled against their method of giving it.
The sight of the other men in the office dressing well, if not
expensively, while he remained as ever the wearer of the rankest
"hand-me-downs," had not been pleasing.  For weeks he had been tempted
to purchase a cheap suit of clothes at one of the big department
stores, but the thought of economy prevented.

"You haven't any special expense," said Colton, the third guest.
"Nobody depends on your salary but yourself, so why don't you cut
loose?  Your parents are dead, just as mine are, and you are as free as
air.  I can put you next to one of the best tailors in Chicago and
he'll fix you out to look like a dream without skinning you to death."

Jud smiled grimly when Colton said that no one but himself depended on
his salary.  These fellows did not know he was married.  An
unaccountable fear that they might ridicule him if he posed as a
married man who could not support his wife had caused him to keep
silent concerning his domestic affairs.  Besides, he had heard these
and other men speak of certain wives, often in the presence of their
husbands, in a manner which shocked him.  No one had asked him if he
were married and he did not volunteer the information.  It amused him
hugely when his new acquaintances teased him about "his girl down in
old Clay."  Some day he would surprise them by introducing them to
Justine, calmly, in a matter-of-fact way, and then he would laugh at
their incredulity.

"I can't afford clothes like you fellows wear," he said in response to
Colton's offer.

"Of course, you can--just as well as I can," said Colton.

"Or any one of us," added Draper.  "Clothes won't break anybody."

"You're a good-looking chap, Sherrod, and if you dressed up a bit you'd
crack every girl's heart in Chicago.  'Gad, I can see the splinters
flying now," cried Hennessy, admiringly.

"It's no joke," added Colton.  "I could tog you out till you'd----"

"But I haven't the money, consarn it," cried the victim, a country boy
all over again.  They laughed at his verdancy, and it all ended by
Colton agreeing to vouch for him at the tailor's, securing for him the
privilege of paying so much a month until the account was settled.

Jud lay awake nights trying to decide the matter.  He knew that he
needed the clothes and that it was time to cast aside the shabby
curiosities from Glenville.  He saw that he was to become an object of
ridicule if he persisted in wearing them.  Pride demanded good clothes,
that he might not be ashamed to be seen with well-dressed men;
something else told him that he should save every penny for a day that
was to come as soon as he could bring it about.  At last he went to
Colton and asked him what he thought the clothes would cost, first
convincing himself that tailor-made garments were the only kind to be
considered.

Colton hurried him off to the tailor, and within an hour he was on the
street again, dazed and aware that he had made a debt of one hundred
and thirty dollars.  He was to have two suits of clothes, business and
dress, and an overcoat.  For a week he was miserable, and a dozen times
he was tempted to run in and countermand the order.  How could he ever
pay it?  What would Justine think?  At length the garments were
completed and he found them at his hall door.  Attached was a statement
for $130, with the information that he was to pay $10 a month, "a very
gracious concession as a favor to our esteemed friend, Mr. Colton,"
said the accompanying note.  In a fever of excitement he tried them on.
The fit was perfect; he looked like other men.  Still, his heart was
heavy.  That night, taking up his old cast-off suit, he mourned over
the greasy things that he and Justine had selected at Dave Green's
store the week before they were married.  They were his wedding clothes.

"I'll keep them forever," he half sobbed, and he hung them away
carefully.  The time came for his next visit to the little farm.  In
his letters he had said nothing about the new clothes, but he had
admitted that unexpected expenses had come upon him.  He could not
bring himself to tell her of that extravagance.  He believed that she
would have approved, but he shrank from the confession.

When he boarded the train for the trip home, he was dressed in the
clothes he had first worn to Chicago, the greasy wedding garments.  He
never forgot how guilty he felt when she told him the next evening, as
they sat before the old fireplace, that he should buy a new overcoat
and a heavy suit of clothes.  And after he went away on Monday she
wondered why he had been so quiet and preoccupied during his visit.




CHAPTER XI.

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS.

For weeks he hated the new clothes, handsome though they were, and yet
he realized the difference they made at the office, where tolerance was
turning to respect.  He could but appreciate the impression he now made
in places where he had had no standing whatever up to the time when he
had donned the guilty garments.

Not a day passed during his residence in the city that did not find him
on the look-out for a certain graceful figure and glorious face.  He
never gave up the hope of some day meeting the vivacious Miss Wood.
When first he had come to Chicago there had been no doubt in his mind
that he would presently see her in the street, but that hope had been
dissipated in a very short time.  He did not fear that he would fail to
recognize her, but he ceased to believe that she would remember in him
the simple boy of Proctor's Falls.  He was also conscious of the fact
that she could be friendly with the country lad, but might not so much
as give greeting to the new Jud Sherrod.  In one of his conversations
with the chief artist he innocently asked if he knew Miss Wood.  The
artist said that he did not, but that as there were probably a million
and a half of people in the city who were strangers to him, he did not
consider it odd.  Jud looked in a directory.  He found 283 persons
whose surname was Wood.  Not knowing his friend's Christian name, he
was unable to select her from the list.

He did not know that the names of unmarried girls living with their
parents were not to be found in the directory.  In the society columns
of the newspapers he frequently saw a name that struck his fancy, and
he decided that if it did not belong to her she had been imperfectly
christened.  He began to think of her as Celeste Wood.  A Celeste Wood
lived in the fashionable part of the north side, and he had not been
there a month before he found the house and had gazed in awe upon its
splendor--from a distance.  Several times he passed the place, but in
no instance did his eye behold the girl of Proctor's Falls.

He told Justine of his search for the beautiful stranger, and she was
as much interested as he.  She, too, came to call her Celeste and to
inquire as to his progress in every letter.  They exchanged merry notes
in which the mysterious Celeste was the chief topic.

Christmas came and he spent it with Justine.  It was a white Christmas
and a glad one for everyone except Jud.  He cursed the cowardice that
forced him to sneak down to Glenville in that tattered suit of clothes,
for he still shrank from the confession of what seemed extravagance and
vanity.  In spite of all he could do to prevent it, the cost of living
in the city increased and he could save but little.  Paying for those
hated garments was a hard task each month; it seemed to take the very
ten dollars he had intended to save.  The clothes he wore home were now
bordering on the disreputable, and at Christmas time he vowed he would
wear them no more.  Justine had said that she hated to accept the
present he brought when she saw how much he needed clothing.

Not once did he swerve in his fidelity to her.  He was the only man in
Chicago, it seemed to him, who refused to drink liquor.  He dined with
the fellows, accompanied them on various rounds of pleasure, but he
never broke the promise he made to Justine: to drink no liquor.  The
gay crowd into which he was tossed--artists, writers and good
fellows--introduced him here and there, to nice people, to gay people
and to questionable people.  In the cafes he met wine-tippling ladies
who smiled on him; in the theatre he met gaily dressed women who smiled
on him; in the street he met stylish creatures who smiled on him.  He
met the wives and sisters of his friends, and was simple, gentle, and
gallant; he met the actresses and the gay ones of the midnight hour and
was the same; he met the capricious, alluring women of the fashionable
world, and was still the abashed, clean-hearted lover of one good girl.
She was the only woman.  Three objects he had to strive for: to succeed
in his work, to make a home for Justine, and to find Celeste.  One sin
harassed him--the purchase of two suits of clothes and an overcoat.

Winter struggled on and matters grew worse with Justine.  She did not
tell Jud of the privations on the farm; to him she turned a cheerful
face.  Nothing depressive that might happen down there on the
over-tilled little farm should come to him; he should be handicapped in
no way by the worries which beset her.  The fall crop had been poor
throughout the entire state.  There had been little wheat in the
summer, and the corn-huskers of September found but half a crop.  The
farm was run on half rations after the holidays, simply because the
granary was none too full.  She had sold but little grain, being
obliged to retain most of it for feeding purposes.  What little money
Jud sent to her soon disappeared, despite her frugality.  She and old
Mrs. Crane lived alone in the cottage, and together they fought the
wolf from the kitchen door and from the barnyard.  How Justine wished
that she might again teach the little school down the lane!  She had
given it up that fall because the time could not be spared from the
farm.

She cared for the horses, cows and pigs--few in number, but pigs after
all--while Mrs. Crane looked after the chickens.  That winter was the
coldest the country had known in thirty years, according to Uncle Sammy
Godfrey, who said he had "kep' tab on the therometer fer fifty-three
year, an' danged ef he didn't b'lieve this'n wuz the coldest spell in
all that time, 'nless it wuz that snap in sixty-two.  That wuz the year
it fruz the crick so solid 'at it didn't thaw out tell 'long 'bout the
Fourth of July."

January was bitter cold.  There were blizzards and snowstorms, and
people, as well as stock, suffered intensely.  Horses were frozen to
death and whole flocks of sheep perished.  Justine, young, strong and
humane, worked night and day to keep her small lot of stock
comfortable.  The barn, the cowshed and the hogpens were protected in
every way possible from the blasts, and often she came to the house,
half-frozen, her hands numb, her face stinging.  But that bravery never
knew a faltering moment.  She faced the storms, the frosts and the
dangers with the hardihood of a man, and she did a man's work.

With an ax she chopped wood in the grove back of the pasture until the
heavy snows came.  She would not ask neighbors to help her; indeed, she
refused several kindly offers.  There was not a man in the neighborhood
who would not have gladly found time to perform some of her more
difficult tasks.

One morning, cold almost beyond endurance, she awoke to find that in
some mysterious manner a large pile of chopped wood lay in her
dooryard.  How it came there she did not know, nor would she use it
until she found by the sled tracks in the snow that it had been hauled
from her own piece of timber land.  Again, in the night time, someone
rebuilt a section of fence that had been torn down by the wind.  She
was grateful to the good neighbors, but there was a feeling of
resentment growing out of the knowledge that people were pitying her.
So when Harve Crose drove up one afternoon with a load of pumpkins for
the stock, she declined to accept them.  But she could not sit up of
nights, tired and cold as she was, to drive away those who stole in
surreptitiously and befriended her.  She could not so much as thank
these indefatigable friends.

Her heart and courage sank to the bottom one morning when she arose to
learn that during the night the wind had blown the straw-thatched roof
from her cowshed and the two poor beasts were well-nigh dead from
exposure.  She sat down and cried, nor could Mrs. Crane comfort her.
To replace that roof was a task to try the strength and endurance of
the hardiest man; for her it seemed beyond accomplishment.

Nevertheless, she set about it as soon as the cows were transferred to
the crowded barn.  The roof, intact, lay alongside the pen, the straw
scattered to the winds.  There was but one way to replace the timbers,
and that was to take them apart and reconstruct the roof, piece by
piece.  She had battered several rough-hewn supports from their
position and was surveying the task before her with a sullen expression
in her eyes.  The vigorous exercise had put a hot glow in her cheeks,
and, as she stood there in the snow, her ax across her shoulder, as
straight as an arrow, she was a charming picture.  A biting atmosphere
chilled the breath as it came from her red, full lips, wafting it away,
white and frosty.  The man who vaulted the fence behind her and came
slowly across the barn lot felt his heart beat fiercely against the
rough oilskin jacket.  The girl did not see him until she turned at the
sound of his hoarse voice.

"That ain't no work fer you," he was saying.

She found herself looking into the hostile eyes of 'Gene Crawley.
There was real anger in the man's face; he looked contemptuously at the
girl's slim figure, then at the wrecked house, then slowly down at his
big, mittened hands.  Justine gasped and moved back a step.

"I ain't agoin' to hurt you, Missus Sherrod," he said, quickly.  "I'm
goin' to help you, that's all."

"I do not require your assistance," she said, coldly.  "Why do you come
here, 'Gene, when you know I despise to look at you?  Why do you
persist in annoying me?  Is it because my husband isn't here to protect
me?"

"We won't argy about that ag'in," he answered, slowly.  "You cain't put
that roof on the shed an' I kin, so that's why I'm here.  I was jes'
goin' past when I seen you out here slashin' away with that ax.  Thinks
I, I'll not 'low her to do that nasty job, an' so I jes' clumb over the
fence an'--an'--well, ef helpin' you out of a hard job is annoyin' you,
Justine, you'll have to put up with it, that's all; I'm goin' to put
that roof on, whether you want me to er not.  You're damn--I'm sorry I
said that--but you're mighty near froze.  Go in by the fire an' I'll
'tend to this."

"I insist that you are not to touch a hand to this lumber.  I cannot
pay you for the work and I will not accept----"

"Don't say a word about pay.  You k'n have me arrested ef you want to
fer trespass, er you k'n go in an' git that shotgun of your'n an' blaze
away at me, but I'm not goin' to let you kill yourself workin' out here
on a job like this."

He drew off his oil jacket and threw it back in the snow.  The ax
dropped from her shoulder and was buried in the white drift.  Without a
word he strode to her side and fished the implement from the snow.

"I'd rather die than to have you do this for me, 'Gene Crawley," she
hissed.  "What do you think I'd be if I let you do it?  What will the
neighbors say if I let you lift a hand to help me?  What----"

He interrupted with a smothered oath.

"They dassent say anything, dang 'em," he grated.  "This is my
business, an' ef they stick their noses in it they'll git 'em pounded
to hell an' gone."

"Couldn't you have said all that without swearing?" she exclaimed,
scornfully.  His face actually burned with shame and his bold eyes
wavered.

"I didn't mean to, Justine.  I--I jes' fergot.  I want to tell you I
don't cuss like I used to.  Only when I git right mad.  'Sides, ef
you'd gone in the house when I told you to, you wouldn't 'a' heerd."

"Are you going to get off of my place?" she suddenly demanded.

"Not tell I've fixed this roof," he replied doggedly.

"I don't want it fixed," she said.

"What's the use sayin' that?  You was trying to do it yourself when I
come up here.  Will you go in the house er will you stand out here an'
freeze?"

"Do you think you're doing me a favor in this?  Do you think I will
thank you after it is done?"

"I don't believe I expect to be thanked, an' I'm only doin' it because
you hadn't ought to.  I'd do it fer any woman."

He swung the ax against the restraining timbers and a dozen strokes
freed the roof from its twisted fastenings.  She stood off at one side
and glared at him.  She forgot everything except that her enemy--Jud's
bitterest foe--was deliberately befriending her.  A sudden thought came
to her, and the sharp exclamation that fell from her lips caused him to
pause and glance at her.

"Ain't you goin' in by the fire?" he demanded, panting from the
exertion.

"'Gene Crawley, do you know who has been cutting wood up in the grove
and bringing it to my door?" she demanded.

"Yes," he answered, looking away.

"You?"

"Yes."

"If I had known that, I'd have frozen to death before I used a stick,"
she cried, the tears rushing to her eyes.

"An' I fixed your fences an'--an'--an', I might as well tell you, I
come around ever' night to see that your stock is all right," he went
on.

"You! oh, if I had only known!  You!  You!" she exclaimed, glaring at
him with such fury and hatred that his eyes dropped and a miserable
laugh of humiliation struggled through his teeth.  As if to ward off
the fierce, direct stabs of those bitter eyes, he fell to wielding the
ax with all his strength.  The chips flew and far away through the
crisp air rang the song of the steel.  He did not look up until the
roof lay detached and there was no more chopping to be done.  His face
was still burning hotly.  It was the first real goodness of heart he
had ever shown, and it had met repulse.

The anger melted when he saw her.  She had not moved from the spot, but
it was another creature altogether who stood there now.  Justine's
hands were pressed to her eyes and she was crying.  Her whole body
trembled and her thinly clad shoulders heaved convulsively.

Big 'Gene Crawley was helpless before this exhibition of feeling.  He
felt that he was to blame for her grief, and yet a longing to comfort
her came over him.  She looked forlorn, wretched, cold.  He would have
liked to pick up the shivering girl and carry her to the house.  He
tried to speak to her, but there was nothing to say.  The fear that she
would resent a friendly word from him checked the impulse.

Unable to control his own feelings and possessed of a wild desire to
act in some way, he threw down the ax and performed one of those feats
of prodigious strength for which he was noted.  Stooping, he lifted the
edge of the heavy roof until he could work his broad shoulders under
the end.  Then, with an effort, he slowly shifted his load to the side
of the low shed.  Rapidly he went about the little structure and
replaced timbers that had been wrenched away, not once turning his face
toward her.  When all was in readiness for the final effort, he grasped
the side of the roof that still touched the ground and prepared for the
lift.  The cords stood out in his neck, the veins were bursting in his
temples, but steadily his heavy shoulders rose and with them the whole
weight of the timbers.  His great back and powerful legs pushed forward
and the roof moved slowly back to its place.

Then he collapsed against the side of the shed.  She had witnessed this
frightful display of strength with marveling eyes.  Once she was on the
point of crying out to him to stop, certain that no human power could
endure such a strain.  When the task was done she gave way to
unaccountable tears and fled to the house, leaving him leaning against
his support, fagged and trembling.

After a few moments his strength returned and he began to fill up the
open places under the edge of the roof.  At the end of an hour the shed
was as good as new.  Then, with a long look toward the unfriendly house
in which she dwelt, he turned and started for the road, defeated but
satisfied that he had been of service to her.  At the sound of her
voice he stopped near the fence.  She had come from the house and was
following him.

"'Gene, I can only thank you for what you have done.  I did not want
you to do it, but--but I know I couldn't have managed it myself," she
said, hoarsely.

"O, it wasn't much," he growled, looking away.

"'Gene, you must not come here again and you must not do these things
for me.  I don't want you to help me.  I know what you said about me
down at the toll-gate that night, and I know what people will say if
you come here.  Won't you please stay away, 'Gene?"

He looked steadily into her eyes for the first time and there was a
touch of real nobility in his face as he said slowly and with
difficulty:

"I thought, maybe, Justine, ef I kinder slaved aroun' fer you they
might see that I am good an' honest, an' that I didn't mean what I said
that night.  I wisht somebody'd cut my tongue out afore I said them
things, er I wisht I'd been Doc Ramsey an' got knocked down fer
standin' up fer you.  I cain't see you workin' aroun' like this when I
ain't got a thing to do, an' I--I--well, I jes' thought people'd see I
was sorry fer what I said."

"But they'll say the very worst they can about it," she cried,
piteously.

"Then I'll kill somebody!" he grated, and, clearing the fence, was off
down the road.




CHAPTER XII.

THE GOOD OF EVIL.

When Justine wrote her next letter to Jud she purposely neglected to
describe the encounter with 'Gene.  For the first time she wilfully
deceived him.  In her letter she spoke lightly of the wind's work and
casually mentioned the unimportant fact that one of the neighbors had
generously helped her to make the repairs.  She felt that Jud's hatred
for Crawley would have inspired something rash in him.  She was
confident that he would throw aside his work, his
chances,--everything,--and rush to her protection.  And so she found
consolation in deception.

It was her duty--to God and to herself--to keep these men apart, to
prevent the addition of fuel to the flame which smoldered silently,
stealthily.  There was no doubt in her mind that 'Gene was truly
penitent.  She could not trust him, for she despised him too deeply,
but she felt for him a new spirit of fairness.  He had served her and
he had served like the whipped, beaten dog who loves the hand of a
cruel master.  For days after the episode at the cowshed she did not
see him, and she was glad.

Every morning, however, she looked forth, fearful that she might see
him at work or behold some result of his labor in the night.  One
morning she found a brace of rabbits and a wild turkey at her door.
Mrs. Crane saw them, too, and she was so full of joy that the girl
could not find heart to cast 'Gene Crawley's offering away.  And she
herself was hungry.  While Mrs. Crane fried the rabbits, the girl sat
back of the stove, out of patience with herself, yet scarcely able to
resist the fragrant aroma that arose from the crackling skillet.  Pride
and hunger were struggling and hunger won.

Jud came and went once more.  She wore her best frocks and was
cheeriness itself when he was with her.  He brought her a few trifles,
and she loved him as much as if he had given her jewels, and indeed
what pleased her most was the change in his looks.  He wore his
tailor-made suit.  She did not know that he was still in debt to his
tailor, and he did not tell her.

On the day of Jud's departure she met 'Gene in the village.  Her
husband had made her happy with the renewed promise that she could come
to him in the spring.  Justine's heart was singing, her lips were
burning with the warmth of his love.  Bundled in shawls and blankets,
she drove slowly from the village through the first vicious attacks of
a blizzard.  Her thoughts were of the handsome, well-dressed youth in
the warm railway coach.  She forgot the cold, blustery weather and saw
only the bright garden of paradise which his love had created.  Her
heart sang with the memory of the past two days and nights spent with
him.

Just as her old gray horse fumbled his way into the open lane at the
edge of town, she saw a man plodding against the wind, not far ahead
along the roadside.  It was 'Gene and he was starting out upon a long
walk to Martin Grimes's place.  With a blow or two of the "gad," she
urged the horse past him.  The single glance she gave him showed his
face red with the cold and his head bent against the wind.  As she
passed he looked up and spoke.  "Howdy, Justine."

"Good evening, 'Gene," she replied, but she could hardly hear her own
voice.

"It's a nasty drive you got ahead of you," he called.

"O, I'll soon be home," she responded, and he was left behind.

For half a mile there rang in her ears the accusing words: "It's a
nasty drive you got ahead of you."  What of the walk ahead of him?  Now
that she had grown calm she wondered how she could have passed him
without asking him to ride home.  He had been kind to her, after all;
he had redeemed himself to some extent in the past few weeks and--he
had not asked her for the ride as she had feared he would.  She
recalled his cheery greeting and his half-frozen face and then his
anxiety concerning the discomfort ahead of her.  By no sign did he show
a desire to annoy her with his company.  She looked back over the road.
In the twilight, far behind, she saw him trudging along, a lonely
figure against the sky.

"It's a shame to make him walk all the way home.  He'll freeze, and I
can just as well take him in as not," she said to herself, and pulled
the horse to a standstill, resolved to wait for him.  Then came the
fear that some one might see him riding home with her.  The country
would wonder and would gossip.  Unsophisticated country girl as she
was, she knew and abhorred gossip.  Once a good girl's name is coupled
with that of a man in the country, the whole community shuns her; she
is lost.  In the country they never forget and they never investigate.
Turning her face resolutely she whipped up, leaving him far behind.

While she was stabling her horse, by the light of a lantern, she found
herself, amidst warm thoughts of Jud, reproaching herself for the
unkindness to this man who hated her husband and who had sworn to be
her undoing.  She might have given him the ride, she argued against
herself; it was so little to give and he was so cold.  The blizzard was
blowing in force by this time, and her conscience smote her fiercely as
she thought of him forging along against its blasting chill.  In the
village Jud had purchased several suits of warm underclothes for her
and she had placed the package in the seat beside her.  Groceries and
other necessaries were beneath the seat.  To her dismay and grief, she
found that the package had been in some manner jolted from the seat and
was doubtless lost on the road, miles back.

The next morning saw the storm still raging.  The night just past had
been one of the most cruel the country had ever known.  Her first
thought was of her stock, then of 'Gene Crawley.  Had he reached home
safely or had he been frozen out there on the open road?  A chill of
fear and remorse seized her and she turned sick at heart.  Jud would
not have allowed the man to face such a storm, and if he were frozen no
one would condemn her cruelty more bitterly than tender-hearted Jud.

She ran to the rear door of her house, from which Grimes's home on the
hill could be seen, a mile away.  The gust of wind drove the door open
as she turned the knob.  Something rolled against her feet.  The lost
bundle lay before her, left there in the night by--it could have been
no other than 'Gene Crawley.  It was a sob of honest thankfulness to
the poor wretch she had spurned in the highway that came from her lips
as she lifted the package and closed the door.  For many minutes she
stood by the window, clasping the bundle in her arms, looking out into
the bleak morning.  A feeling of relief surged up in the multitude of
thoughts, and tears stood in her eyes.  Not only had he braved the
blizzard safely, hardily, but he had traveled a mile or more farther
through the freezing night to deliver at her door the package she had
lost from the seat that might have been shared with him.

"Did ye hear 'bout 'Gene Crawley?" asked Mrs. Crane, later, when
Justine came in from the barn.  The old woman was preparing the frugal
breakfast and Justine was seated beside the stove, her half-frozen feet
near the oven.  A sickening terror forced a groan from her lips, for
something told her that the news was the worst.  His body had been
found!

"What--what is it?" she whispered.

"He whupped the daylights out'n Jake Smalley an' Laz Dunbar down to the
tollgate day 'fore yest'day.  Mrs. Brown wuz here las' night jest 'fore
you got home, an' she says her man says 'twuz the wust fight that ever
wuz fit in the county."

Justine was leaning back in her chair, her heart throbbing with relief.

"Was--was he hurt?" she asked, indefinitely.

"Who?  'Gene?  Not a speck!  But that big Smalley wuz unsensibul when
'Gene got off'n him.  Doc Pollister says he won't be able to see out'n
them eyes o' his'n fer over a week.  Laz lit out an' run like a
whitehead after 'Gene hit him onct.  I'm glad he didn't git hurt much,
'cause he's goin' to be babtised down at the crick tomorrer, an' he'd
'a' tuck cold, shore.  I tell you, that 'Gene Crawley's a nasty feller.
Constable O'Brien's afeered to serve the warrant on him."

"What was it all about, Aunt Sue?"

"O, nothin' much," answered Mrs. Crane, evasively, suddenly busying
herself about the stove.  "I never did see sitch a fire!  It jest won't
act right.  Where'd this wood come from, Jestine?"

"From the jack-oak grove," said Justine.  For a while she was silent, a
new impression forming itself in her brain.  Stronger and stronger it
grew until it became almost a conviction.  "Tell me what the fight was
about," she went on, breaking in upon Mrs. Crane's chatter.

"O, I'd ruther--er--I don't know fer shore what it wuz about.
Somethin' Jake said to 'Gene, I reckon.  'Gene fights 'thout any real
cause, y' know."  The old woman was clearly embarrassed and eager to
evade the explanation.

"You do know and you must tell me," exclaimed Justine, now fully
convinced.

"'Twon't do you no special good, Jestine, an' I wouldn't mind about it,
'f I wuz you."

"Tell me: was it--did it have anything to do with me?"

"Didn't amount to nothin'--not a thing," expostulated the other.  "You
know how these fool fellers will talk."

"Did 'Gene Crawley say anything mean about me?" she insisted.

"No.  'Twuz jest the other way--er--I mean----"

"Heavens!  What did they say?  Tell me!  What could they say?"

"I hadn't orter tell you, but I guess it's best you know.  Seems like
Jake an' Laz met 'Gene down to the tollgate an' wuz a wonderin' how you
wuz gittin' along this cold spell.  Jake, who's a low down feller ef
they ever wuz one, give 'Gene the wink an' says--now, this is how Mrs.
Brown tells it--he says: 'Jud don't git home much, does he?'  'Gene
said he didn't know an' he didn't give a damn--'scuse me, but them's
the words.  'Nen Laz says: 'Now's yer time to cut in, 'Gene.  Do what
you said you would.  You cain't have a better chanst.'  'Nen Jake
laughed an' said: 'She's all alone up yander an' I reckon she's purty
dern lonesome.  Now's yer oppertunity, 'Gene,----'  Jest then, Mrs.
Brown says her man says, the fight begin.  'Fore Jake could finish up
sayin' what he started out to say, 'Gene lit into him right an' left.
Down went Jake an' Laz follered him.  Jake wuz up fust, an' while he
wuz tryin' to keep 'Gene off, Laz broke fer the door an' got away.  But
the way 'Gene did whup that Smalley feller wuz a caution.  Mr. Brown
says you could 'a' heerd him beller clean down to the mill."

"Is that all?" asked Justine, breathlessly.

"Wuzn't that almost enough?  O, yes; 'Gene tole Jake an' everybody else
there 'at ef ever a word wuz said about you ag'in, in any shape er form
that wuzn't jest right, he'd lick the tarnation soul out'n the hull
capoodle, men an' women.  He said he meant women when he said women,
an' ef he ever heerd of one of them talkin' about you er repeatin' what
he said there at the tollgate on your weddin' night, he'd jest lay her
over his knee an'----"

"Were there many people at the tollgate when the fight took place?"
interrupted Justine.  She was glowing with excitement.

"The place wuz full, an' Mr. Brown says he never did see sitch a
scatterment as they wuz when 'Gene sailed into Jake.  Jim Hardesty
tried to git under the stove, an' Uncle Sammy Godfrey, old as he is,
jumped clean over the counter an' upsot a half barrel of sugar.
Ever'body run, an' nobody tried to help Jake, 'cept Doc Ramsey's
mother, an' that's 'cause he goes with Liz Ramsey.  They do tell that
that's sure to be a match," and then the voluble Mrs. Crane branched
off into other lanes of gossip.

The next Sunday a whole township saw Eugene Crawley walk into the
little Presbyterian church on the hill and nervously take a seat near
the stove.  Mr. Marks, the minister, was reading the first hymn when
'Gene plunged into this strange place, and so great was the sensation
that the reader, having stared blankly with the remainder of the
witnesses, resumed reading on the opposite page and no one was the
wiser.  At first there was a certain fear in the hearts of all that he
had come for no other purpose than to report the death of some loved
one.  No one dreamed that he had come to attend divine worship.

'Gene, himself, was astonished by his own temerity.  It had taken all
his courage to do it, and he was an humble man as he sat stiffly by the
stove and looked at the upper left-hand corner of the organ.  If the
minister had uttered his name suddenly, 'Gene would have swooned.  It
was the first time he had been inside the church since a certain
Christmas eve, twenty years before.  When Deacon Asbury asked him,
after service, if he intended to come regularly, now that he had begun,
'Gene's reserve vanished, and, transfixing the old gentleman with a
glare, he roared:

"What is it to you, you old skinflint?  You don't own the shebang, do
you?  I'll come ef I want to an' you needn't meddle about it either."

In consequence, the whole community said that his conversion was out of
the question, and that all the pulpits in Indiana could not pull him
out of the rut into which he had fallen.  'Gene, in truth, felt that he
was not wanted in the church, and he went home with the conviction that
the deacon's inquiry was inspired by the hope that such a sinner as he
might not continue to blight the sanctuary with his presence.

A day or so later the word was carried to the tollgate by Charlie
Spangler that Justine Sherrod was "sick-a-bed" and it "looked as though
she was liable to have lung fever."  Dr. Pollister called at her house
and found her really ill.  He took her in hand at once, and instructed
Mrs. Crane to see that she remained in bed until he said she could get
up.

"But who is to take care of the stock?" wailed the sick girl.

"Mrs. Crane and I will see to the stock, so don't you worry, Justine.
You've got to stay in bed or Jud'll be coming to a funeral purty soon,"
observed the doctor, with the best of intentions, but with little tact.
She gasped at the thought that she might die and leave Jud; her illness
had been but a trifling matter to her until the grim old physician so
plainly told her the truth.  She realized that she was in danger and
that she wanted Jud to sit by the bedside.

"Is it so serious, doctor?" she asked, anxiously.

"Not if you stay in bed.  Only a bad cold and some fever, but it has to
be looked after.  You've got good lungs or you'd be a good deal wuss."

Then he went out and told Mrs. Crane to look after her, and said that
he'd ask some one to drop around every day to care for the horses, cows
and hogs, and to chop some wood occasionally.

As he drove toward the village in his rattling old buggy, he met 'Gene
Crawley in the road.

"Whoa!" he said to the horse; and that evening 'Gene Crawley was living
up to a promise to "look out fer Justine's stock and to git up some
wood whenever she needed it."

When Mrs. Crane told Justine that he was to come three times a day
while she was sick, to "look after things," the tired, feverish girl
shook her head and sighed, but offered no protest against the unwelcome
fate.




CHAPTER XIII.

THE FINDING OF CELESTE.

Jud received several letters from her, telling him that she was ill,
but getting better, and that the neighbors were very kind to her.  He
replied that he would come home if she needed him, but she insisted
that it was not necessary.  She penned that letter, sitting up in bed.
She wanted him, she hungered for him, she suffered in longing for one
touch of his hand.

By this time Sherrod had formed many acquaintances and had at last been
persuaded to join an artists' club.  The cost was not much, and he
found great pleasure in the meetings.  His salary had been increased,
but his expenses grew correspondingly.  Try as he would, he could find
no way to curtail the cost of living.  Sometimes he looked back and
wondered how he had existed during the first few months in the city.
Once he tried the plan of living as humbly as he had at first, but it
was an utter impossibility.  The worst feature was that he could send
Justine but little money, nor could he see his way clear for bringing
her to the city.  He was bitter against himself.  He loved her; no
other woman tempted him from that devotion.  But there seemed to be no
way of making a home for her in Chicago.  The honest fellow did not
perceive the fact that selfishness was the weight which drew his
intentions out of balance.

His companions liked him all the more because he was unswerving in his
resolve to touch no liquor.  He went with them to bars and wine rooms,
but he never touched wines, nor did other vices tempt him.  Up in his
room at the lodging house hung a picture he had drawn after reading the
story of a man's downfall.  He called it "Wine, Women, Woe."

He had now allowed his friends to believe him unmarried so long that it
was next to impossible to explain.  They alluded frequently to the
sweetheart down in the country, and he smiled as if to say: "I don't
mind being teased about her."  He made no one his confidant and no one
asked questions.  The boys took it for granted that some day he would
marry "the girl down there," and said nothing.  He laughed when he
thought of the surprise in store for them some day.  This thought
usually took him back to the day at Proctor's Falls when Celeste had
spoken of him and Justine as sweethearts and had given him fifty
dollars with which to buy her a wedding present.  The name and face of
the donor had haunted him ever since that day.  Her card was in his
pocketbook.  Somewhere in this great city she lived and, he was
beginning to know, left other cards in the halls of her friends every
day--ordinary cards; not like this that had made a man's career.  But
there seemed to be no chance to tell her the difference.  He had not
seen her.

One of the fellows at the club was Converse, a rich young man with a
liking for art and the will to cultivate a rather mediocre talent.  He
took a fancy to the handsome young newspaper man, and invited him to
his home on the South Side.  One evening late in March he dined with
Converse and his parents.  Douglass Converse was an only child and was
little more than a boy in years.  The home in Michigan Avenue was
beautiful and its occupants lived luxuriously.  The dinner over, the
two young men lounged in Converse's "den"--a room which astonished and
delighted Jud--smoking and chatting idly.

"Funny you don't drink, Sherrod," said Converse, quizzically.

"I took a pledge once, and I expect to keep it."

"Always?"

"Always."

"Pledge to your mother, I suppose?"

"No; to a girl who--lives down there."

"Oho, that's the first bit of sentiment I ever heard from you.  A
sweetheart, eh?"

"Well, I can't deny it," said Jud, ashamed of his equivocation.

"Tell me about her," cried his friend, enthusiastically.

"There's nothing to tell.  I had a letter from her to-day."

"Then it's still on?"

"I hope so," answered Jud, smiling mysteriously.

"You're devilishly uncommunicative.  If I had a sweetheart who could
make me live up to a promise like that, I'd be only too glad to sing
her praises to the sky."

"Fall in love with some good, true girl, old fellow, and see how much
you'll tell the world about it," said Jud, cleverly dodging the point.

"I am in love and with the best girl in the world, but what good does
it do me?  She's not in love with me.  Confound the luck, I'm younger
than she is," cried Converse, ruefully.  Sherrod laughed and puffed
dreamily at his cigar for a few moments.

"It's a crime to be young, I presume," he said, as if obliged to reopen
the conversation.  Converse was standing at his desk, looking at a
photograph.

"Don't give up because you are young.  You'll outgrow it.  I was very
young when--when--I mean, I was younger than you by several years when
I first fell in love," went on Jud confusedly.

"But, I have no chance, you know," said the other, boyishly.

"Prefers another?"

"Don't know; I haven't had the courage to ask.  She thinks I'm a nice
boy and such good company.  Girls don't say those things about the
fellow they care for seriously.  I'd rather be anything than a nice
boy."

"Is that her photograph?"

"Yes.  Isn't she a dream?"

The owner of the den passed the portrait to his guest.  Converse was
surprised to see him start violently and then pass his hand over his
eyes as if brushing away some form of doubt.

"This is--this is Miss Wood?" asked Sherrod at last.

"Do you know her?  If you do, you can't wonder that I'm hard hit,"
cried the other.

"I met her once down near my old home.  One doesn't forget a face like
hers.  So I find her, after all, and the sweetheart of my best friend,"
Jud was saying, hazily.

"Oh, no!  Don't put it that way.  She'd fall dead if any one suddenly
intimated that such a relationship existed--keel over with surprise.
But have you never seen her more than once?"

"Just once.  She bought the first picture I ever sold."

"Great Caesar!  Are you the fellow who drew a picture of a waterfall
somewhere and sold it to her for fifty dollars?"  Converse was staring
at Jud with eager eyes.

"I'm the one who imposed upon her," said Jud, lamely.

"Then, you're the good-looking country boy with the beautiful
sweetheart that Celeste talked so much about.  Well, this beats the----"

"Celeste?  Is that her name?" cried Jud, sitting bolt upright.

"Yes.  Her mother is French--she was a countess, by the way.  Celeste
has that picture hanging in her den--and her den is a wonder, too--and
she never fails to tell about that little experience down in Indiana.
She'll be crazy to meet you."

Jud's heart gave a leap.  He was bewildered in a tumult of emotions.
The recognition of the portrait, the mysterious coincidence in
names--the one his imagination had given her, and the one she bore; the
thoughts that she remembered him and Justine; that his picture hung in
her den; that she might really be glad to see him.  Impossibilities
upon impossibilities!

"My picture in her den?" he managed to stammer, feeling sure that his
friend could detect an emotion that might require explanation.

"Sure--most prominent thing in the room.  She says the boy who drew it
will be a master some day.  The trouble is, she forgot your name.  She
says she'd know your face or the girl's anywhere, but the name is gone.
By George, this will please her."

The girl's!  Jud's thoughts flew back to Justine, tenderly, even
resentfully, for why should this careless city maid speak of her as
"the girl"?

"I'll take you to call, Sherrod.  I know she'll be glad to see you, and
I'll surprise her.  This is great!  Let's see: I'll say you are a
particular friend, but I'll not give up your name.  She'd remember it.
I can see her now when she first gazes upon your face.  Great!"

Jud went home that night in a delightful torture of anticipation.
After all these months of waiting and watching, fate--nothing less than
fate--was to bring him to her side with the long unspoken words of
gratitude and joy.  What would she be like?  How would she look?  How
would she be dressed?  Not in that familiar gray of his memory, to be
sure, but--but--and so he wondered, as he tossed in his bed that night.
It would be some days before Converse could take him to the home of
Miss Wood, and until then he must be content with imaginings.  One
thing worried him.  Just before he left his friend, Douglass had asked
with an unhidden concern in his voice:

"You're sure you've got a sweetheart down there?"

Jud's heart stopped beating for a second.  Something within him urged
him to cry out that he had no sweetheart, but a loving, loyal wife.
But the old spirit of timidity conquered.

"I am sure I had one," he replied, and his heart throbbed with relief.

"And you're the kind of a fellow who'll stick to her, too.  I know you
well enough to say that," said the other warmly, as if some odd
misgiving had passed from his mind.

"Thanks for the good opinion," said Jud, a great lump clogging his
throat.

And when at last he slept, his dreams were of the old days and Justine,
and how lonely he was without her--how lonely she must be down there in
the cold, dark night--sick, perhaps, and longing for him.  In his dream
they were at Proctor's Falls, then in Chicago, then she was beside him
in the bed.  His arm, moved by dream love, stretched out and drew her
close to his breast and there were no scores of miles between his
tranquil heart and that of the girl he worshiped.




CHAPTER XIV.

"MY TRUEST COMRADE."

He looked forward to the meeting with Miss Wood as if it were to be one
of the epochs in his life.  An odd fear took possession of
him--cowardice, inspired by the knowledge that he was not of her world.
Once again he felt like the crude, ignorant country boy, and he
trembled at the thought of meeting this beautiful "society girl" in her
own realm.  In the old days he had interested her as if he were a
curiosity; now he was to see her on different grounds.  He was to
submit to an inspection which he knew he was not yet able to endure.
As the night drew near for the visit to her home, as arranged by the
glowing Converse, self-consciousness overpowered him.  What would she
think of him?

Converse rushed in one day and told him that he had just seen Miss Wood
on the street--in fact had ridden several blocks in her carriage--and
that a strange coincidence was to be related.  She was driving to the
Art Institute with his drawing of Proctor's Falls.  She had, through
some influence of her own, obtained permission to hang it for a few
weeks.  No sooner had his visitor departed than Jud, throwing aside his
work, dashed from the building and off to the Institute.  He hoped that
he might see her there; at least, he might again look upon that humble
sketch as it hung among the aristocratic lordlings of art.  She was not
there, but he managed to find his picture.  A man was placing it in a
rather conspicuous place on the wall.

"New picture, eh?" Jud asked, assuming indifference.

"Yes.  It beats the devil how the management lets cranks, just because
they're pretty, come in here and hang chromos.  Look at that.  Wouldn't
that jar you?  Lead pencil and crayon, and as cheap as mud.  Next thing
we know they'll be hanging patent medicine ads in here."

Jud walked away.  He never forgot that half minute of impersonal
criticism.  As he was hurrying from the building he saw a carriage
drive swiftly from the curb below.  For one brief instant he had a
glimpse of a face inside--one that he had never forgotten.

She drove toward State Street, in the direction of the big stores to
the north.  Hoping for another glimpse of her, he followed.  From afar
he saw her enter her carriage and whirl away toward the river and her
North Side home.  Then he went back to work and to the letter he was
writing to Justine.  It teemed with references to the fairy of
Proctor's Falls.

The next evening but one found him ready for the call, but very
nervous.  He felt that he was taking a step into the world in which he
might not be fit to hold a place; a world which would stare curiously
at him as a gifted plebeian, and shut its doors upon him when the
novelty had died.

He dressed himself laboriously for the event.  It was to be his
introduction into select society, and he must not let that be the
occasion for the faintest twinkle of mirth in the eyes of those to the
manner born.  At the Athletic Club he met Converse, who looked him over
admiringly.  If Converse had purposed exhibiting him to Miss Wood as a
matter of entertainment for one night, the plan was not feasible.
Instead of the careless artist or the unsophisticated youth, there
appeared a straight, strong figure, a clean-cut face, keen and
handsome.  Indeed, Converse found himself envying Jud's dignity of
manner.  He did not know that the apathy of the person who rode beside
him was the composure of extreme dread.  Almost before Jud was aware of
it, he was inside the Wood drawing-room, awaiting the appearance of its
mistress.  Through the maze he could barely remember passing an august
personage who opened the doors to them and who said that Miss Wood was
expecting Mr. Converse.  Then he found himself sitting in a gorgeous
apartment, blankly listening to the undertones of his friend, and
responding with mechanical calmness, so that Converse marveled again at
his conventional bearing.  That young man was delighted with the
surprise he had in store for the girl he loved.

She came into the room suddenly and unexpectedly, and the two men
arose--one with a laugh, the other with serious, questioning eyes.
Miss Wood gave Converse her hand and turned to Jud with the smile which
precedes an introduction.  He detected the instantaneous gleam of
inquiry, strengthened presently to perplexity and wonder.

"Let me present----" began Converse, but she restrained him quickly.
There was now an intentness in her gaze that brought the blood to Jud's
face.

"I know your face--don't speak, Douglass.  Will you let me guess--let
me think?  Pardon my extraordinary behavior, but I am so sure I know
you.  I have seen you often, very often, I know.  You are--oh, dear,
how embarrassing!  Yes, yes, I know now!"  Her eyes fairly danced with
the joy of discovery and she impulsively came to him with hand
outstretched.  "You are the artist--the boy who drew the picture!"

"Yes, you have guessed," said Jud.

"I knew your face.  I am so glad to see you.  And you are living out my
prophecy, too.  Where is the country boy now?  What did I tell you?"
She stood before him, her eyes looking squarely up into his face,
bright with smiles.

"I am trying to merit the recommendation you gave me, but I am afraid
I'll fail," said he.

"Fail?" cried Converse.  "You've made a sensational hit, Sherrod, and
you owe it to this prophet in petticoats.  She made you.  If it hadn't
been for her, you'd be down there in the woods plowing hay and digging
cucumbers and nobody'd know you were on earth.  If I were you I'd jump
up and crack my heels together, and yell like a cannibal.  That's how
happy I'd feel."

The boy's excitement was contagious, and Jud began to lose some of his
embarrassment.

"I am happy, and I'd like to shout my gratification to Miss Wood," he
said.  "She fairly drove me to some sort of action.  Without her
encouragement I'm sure nothing could have induced me to try my luck
here."

"Oh, you would have discovered yourself some day.  Genius like yours
would sooner or later become a master and compelled you to obey.  I
merely poked you until you awoke from the dreams and began to see
things as they are.  And are you really living in Chicago?"

Then she compelled him to tell her all about himself, his work, and his
plans.  She was so deeply interested that his heart glowed.  As he sat
and talked with her, forgetting that Converse was present, he felt
himself gradually lulled into security, like that of a traveler who has
crept along the edge of a precipice for miles and has reached a haven
from which he can look back and laugh at the terrors.

For an hour they conversed, seriously, merrily about his experiences in
the city.  He was a true gentleman, therefore modest; the pronoun "I"
was used as sparingly as possible, and there was an absence of egotism
that charmed his new-found friend.  He was beginning to realize the
success he had achieved in the city, but one look into his honest gray
eyes proved that he was no braggadocio.  She saw that she could safely
compliment him on his progress; she compared him as he sat before her
with the country boy she had first known, when she told him that she
knew then that he was a great diamond that needed little polishing.
The magnificence of his surroundings, the beauty of his hostess, the
subtle influence of splendor, softened his first rough feelings of
apprehension into the mellow confidence of ease and urbanity.  It was
all so strange and sweet that he lived it over and over again in the
days that followed, before he could convince himself that he--poor Jud
Sherrod--had not really been in fairyland.

There was no questioning the sincerity of her admiration.  Converse sat
back and jealously watched the light in her eyes, and listened to the
new fervor in her voice as she talked to the man whose demeanor plainly
indicated that he considered her his guiding star in the journey from
obscurity to light.

"O, yes," she cried, suddenly, a taunting gleam coming to her eyes, "I
have forgotten something quite important.  What has become of the
beautiful sweetheart?  I never saw a prettier girl.  Is she still down
there?"

For a moment the spell was broken.  He caught his breath.  He had
forgotten Justine--his own Justine!  His composure fled, his eyes
wavered before the laughing eyes of his inquisitor.  His lips parted
with the impulse to blurt out that she was his wife, when he remembered
Converse.  He had led Converse with the others to consider him
unmarried, unintentionally and innocently he knew down in his heart.
His helpless looks from one to the other showed such unmistakable signs
of embarrassment that Miss Wood hastily sought to relieve the
situation, fearing she had committed a painful blunder.

"I beg your pardon.  It is not my affair and I----" she began, but
Converse, obtuse and rejoicing in Jud's discomfiture, interrupted.

"O, she's still there, all right, all right.  Look at his blushes!  I
wish I had the luck he has."

"Douglass Converse, I'll send you to the library if you don't keep
quiet.  I hope you will pardon my natural curiosity, Mr. Sherrod," she
said, gravely.

Sherrod caught his breath again and battled for an instant with
something in his throat, then allowed a deeper flush to follow the
first--the flush that comes with criminal bravery.

"I don't mind telling you about her.  She still lives down at my old
home and often writes to me about you, wondering whether I have seen
you," he said in a hard voice, fully resolved to deceive for the time
being.

"Don't forget to let me know what she says when you tell her you have
really seen me.  I am so interested in her.  What is her name?"

Without a moment's hesitation he took the plunge.

"Justine Van."

"What an odd name.  Yet she was an odd looking girl.  Her beauty was so
different, so fresh, so pure.  I hope the gay life of the city is not
turning you away from that jewel down there.  O, I know what the city
does for young men who come from the country.  It usually spoils them.
They forget the best, the truest part of their lives, and they let new
faces drive out the old and loving ones."

"I--I don't think you quite understand the situation," floundered Jud,
moved to contrition.  Had she not interrupted at that instant, he would
have told the truth.

"It is easier to understand than you think," she said.  "You are up
here, she is there.  You are a new man with new ideas, new
possibilities, new hopes; she is the same sweet, innocent country girl,
no farther advanced than she was the day you left her.  You have gone
forward, she stands still.  You are Dudley Sherrod, the most promising
of young artists, with popularity ready to leap at you; she is the
common lass of the fields, honest and true, unknown except to the
people who live nearby.  You are up here, thrown with bright men, and
perhaps with clever women, while she is back there with the farmers and
the farmers' wives.  You have every opportunity to be somebody; she
will always be nobody unless she is lifted from that mire of
inactivity.  Don't you see how well I understand the situation?  You
have every advantage, she has none.  Yes, Mr. Sherrod, you are living
out the promise I made for you months ago, and you are winning only
what is yours by right.  But you must not forget that there are few
such jewels here as the one you left behind when you sought treasures
in the world."

"That's the neatest lecture I ever heard, Celeste," cried Converse,
admiringly.  "You musn't forget to go back and polish up the jewel,
Sherrod.  That's what she means, in few words."

Jud feared that both were laughing at him and resented it.

"I am sure Miss Wood has said nothing that is untrue concerning Justine
Van.  She is the noblest girl I ever knew," he said, deliberately.
"She is far above me in every way.  She has more reason to stoop to me
than I to her.  She is my best friend."

"Friend?" echoed Miss Wood.

"My truest comrade," said he.  The perspiration started on his forehead.




CHAPTER XV.

ONE HEART FOR TWO.

The passing of two months saw Sherrod a constant, even a privileged,
visitor at the Wood home.  In that time he visited the cottage in
Indiana but once, and on that occasion glowingly related to Justine the
story of his first visit to the goddess and of her subsequent interest
in his affairs.

Just now he was beginning to realize the consequences of his deception.
Affairs had reached the stage where it seemed next to impossible to
acknowledge his marriage to Justine, and he certainly could not tell
that honest, trusting wife of his unfortunate duplicity.  He loved her
too deeply to inflict the wound that such a confession would make, and
yet he could see that delay would only increase the violence of the
shock should she learn of his mistake, innocently conceived, but
unwisely fostered.

Justine also had a secret.  When he was ready to take her to the city,
she would confess to him that 'Gene Crawley was to farm the place for
her that spring and summer, working it on shares.  He was to use his
own team, for her horses had died of influenza.  So little did Jud know
of the old home place now that he did not recognize Crawley's horses in
the stable, nor could he see that a man's hand had performed wonders in
the field.  He was thinking of Chicago and the miserable broil in which
his affairs were involved.  Justine induced Crawley to remain away from
the farm during Jud's stay, an undertaking which required some force of
persuasion.  Crawley wanted to make peace with Jud and to assure him of
his good faith; he begged her to let him apologize to his old adversary
and ask him to shake hands and say quits.  But she knew that Jud would
not understand and that there could be no forgiveness.  Never in her
life had she loved Jud as in these days when she was disobeying and
deceiving him.  While she knew that 'Gene was no longer the brute and
the blackguard of old, she saw that her husband could look upon him
only as he had known him.

The farm was bound to do well this year and she was happy to give Jud
that assurance.  Once he caught her looking wistfully at him when he
was telling of expected triumphs in the city.  He knew that she was
hoping he would say that she could soon go with him to the city,
leaving the farm to care for itself.  But how could he take her there
now?  He groaned with the shame of it.

A week of sleepless nights followed this visit to Clay township.  The
young artist's work on the paper suffered and his fellows advised him
to take a rest.  He had had no vacation since taking the position many
months before.  But it was not overwork that told on him; it was the
lying awake of nights striving to find a way out of his predicament
without losing the respect of all these friends, especially that of one
whom he admired so deeply.  He had permitted her to believe him free
and had behaved as a free man behaves to such an extent that
explanations were impossible.  To tell her the truth concerning the man
she had gone to the theatre with, had lunched with in downtown
restaurants, had entertained in her own home almost to the exclusion of
others, could bring but one end--the scorn and detestation he deserved.

Poor Converse had given up the conflict in despair, but, good fellow
that he was, held no grudge against Sherrod, for whom he had genuine
admiration.  They were lunching together a week or two after his trying
trip to Clay township, and Jud was so moody that Converse took note of
it.  As they sat at the table, Converse mentally observed that his
friend was growing handsomer every day; the moods improved him.  After
a long silence, the artist said:

"I had an offer to-day to do some book illustrating for a publishing
house."

"Good!  That's the stuff!  Book pictures will be your line, old man.
Will you accept?"

"I'm afraid I'd be a failure," said Jud, gloomily.

"Is that what's the matter with you?"

"What do you mean?" demanded the other, quickly.

"O, your grumpiness.  You've been all out of sorts for a couple of
weeks, you know--or maybe you don't.  But you have, anyway.  I never
saw a fellow change as you have in--in, well, ten days."

"I don't understand why you think so.  Everything is all right with
me," said Jud, shortly.

"Maybe you're off your feed a bit."

"Never was better in my life."

"Well, it's darned queer.  You act like a man whose liver is turning
mongrel.  Why, you ought to be satisfied.  You've made a big hit here
and you'll soon be getting the biggest salary of any newspaper artist
in town.  You have been elected to the Athletic Club, you have been
invited to lecture before some of the clubs, you've got plenty of coin
to throw at birds, so why don't you rub those wrinkles from between
your eyes?"

Jud laughed rather mirthlessly, without taking his eyes from the coffee
which he was stirring.

"Wrinkles don't come because you want them, but because you don't."

"Well, old chap, I'm sure something is worrying you.  Can I help you in
any way?" went on his generous friend.

"Thanks, Doug; you can help me to another lump of sugar."

"The devil take you," cried Converse, handing him the bowl.  "Say," he
said, a moment later, watching Jud as he calmly buttered his bread, "I
believe there's a woman in it."

"A woman!" exclaimed the other, almost dropping his knife.  For an
instant his gray eyes seemed to look through the other's brain.  "What
are you driving at, Doug?" he we

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