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Mam' Linda

by Will N. Harben · English · Gutenberg #50899 · 577,848 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Mam' Linda

Author: Will N. Harben

Illustrator: F. B. Masters


        
Release date: January 11, 2016 [eBook #50899]
                Most recently updated: October 22, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50899

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAM' LINDA ***

MAM' LINDA

By Will N. Harben

Illustrated by F. B. Masters

1907




CHAPTER I.

[Illustration: 9017]

N the rear of the long store, at a round table under a hanging-lamp with
a tin shade, four young men sat playing poker. The floor of that portion
of the room was raised several feet higher than that of the front, and
between the two short flights of steps was the inclining door leading
to the cellar, which was damp and dark and used only for the storage of
salt, syrup, sugar, hardware, and general rubbish.

Near the front door the store-keeper, James Blackburn, a portly, bearded
man of forty-five, sat chatting with Carson Dwight, a young lawyer of
the town.

“I don't want any of you boys to think that I'm complaining,” the elder
man was saying. “I've been young myself; in fact, as you know, I go the
gaits too, considering that I'm tied down by a family and have a
living to make. I love to have the gang around--I _swear_ I do, though
sometimes I declare it looks like this old shebang is more of a place of
amusement than a business house in good standing.”

“Oh, I know we hang around here too much,” Carson Dwight replied; “and
you ought to kick us out, the last one of us.”

“Oh, it isn't so bad at night like this, when trade's over, but it
is sort o' embarrassing during the day. Why, what do you think? A
Bradstreet commercial reporter was in the other day to get a statement
of my standing, and while he was here Keith Gordon--look at him now,
the scamp! holding his cards over his head; that's a bluff. I'll bet he
hasn't got a ten-spot. While that agent was here Keith and a lot more of
your gang were back there on the platform dancing a hoe-down. The
dust was so thick you couldn't see the windows. The reporter looked
surprised, but he didn't say anything. I told him I thought I'd be able
to pay for all I bought in market, and that I had no idea how much I was
worth. I haven't invoiced my stock in ten years. When I run low I manage
to replenish somehow, and so it goes on from year to year.”

“Well, I am going to talk to the boys,” Dwight said. “They are taking
advantage of your goodnature. The whole truth is they consider you one
of them, Jim. Marrying didn't change you. You are as full of devilment
as any of the rest, and they know it, and love to hang around you.”

“Well, I reckon that's a fact,” Blackburn answered, “and I believe
I'd rather you wouldn't mention it. I think a sight of the gang, and
I wouldn't hurt their feelings for the world. After all, what does
it matter? Life is short, and if Trundle & Hodgson are getting more
mountain custom than I am, I'll bet I get the biggest slice of life.
They'll die rich, but, like as not, friendless. By-the-way, I see your
partner coming across the street. I forgot to tell you; he was looking
for you a few minutes ago. You had a streak of luck when you joined
issues with him; Bill Gamer's a rough sort o' chap, but he is by all
odds the brainiest lawyer in Georgia to-day.”

At this juncture a man of medium stature, with a massive head crowned by
a shock of reddish hair, a smooth-shaven, freckled face, and small feet
and hands stood in the doorway. He wore a long black broadcloth coat,
a waistcoat of the same material, and baggy gray trousers. The exposed
portion of his shirt-front and the lapels of his coat were stained by
tobacco juice.

“I've been up to the den, over to the Club, and the Lord only knows
where else looking for you,” he said to his partner, as he advanced,
leaned against a showcase on the counter, and stretched out his arms
behind him.

“Work for us, eh?” Carson smiled.

“No; since when have you ever done a lick after dark?” was the dry
reply. “I've come to give you a piece of advice, and I'm glad Blackburn
is here to join me. The truth is, Dan Willis is in town. He is full and
loaded for bear. He's down at the wagon-yard with a gang of his mountain
pals. Some meddling person--no doubt your beautiful political opponent
Wiggin--has told him what you said about the part he took in the mob
that raided! negro town.”

“Well, he doesn't deny it, does he?” Dwight asked, his eyes flashing.

“I don't know whether he does or not,” said Gamer. “But I know he's the
most reckless and dangerous man in the county, and when he is drunk he
will halt at nothing. I thought I'd advise you to avoid him.”

“Avoid him? You mean to say”--Dwight stood up in his anger--“that I, a
free-born American citizen, must sneak around in my own home to avoid
a man that puts on a white mask and sheet and with fifty others like
himself steals into town and nearly thrashes the life out of a lot of
banjo-picking negroes? Most of them were good-for-nothing, lazy scamps,
but they were born that way, and there was one in the bunch that I know
was harmless. Oh yes, I got mad about it, and I talked plainly, I know,
but I couldn't help it.”

“You _could_ have helped it,” Gamer said, testily; “and you ought to
have protected your own interests better than to give Wiggin such a
strong pull over you. If you are elected it will be by the aid of that
very mob and their kin and friends. We may be able to smooth it all
over, but if you have an open row with Dan Willis to-night, the cause of
it will spread like wildfire, and bum votes for you in wads and bunches.
Good God, man, the idea of giving Wiggin a torch like that to wave in
the face of your constituency--you, a _town_ man, standing up for the
black criminal brutes that are plotting to pull down the white race! I
say that's the way Wiggin and Dan Willis would interpret your platform.”

“I can't help it,” Dwight repeated, more calmly, though his voice
shook with suppressed feeling as he went on. “If I lose all I hope for
politically--and this seems like the best chance I'll ever have to get
to the legislature--I'll stand by my convictions. We must have law
and order among ourselves if we expect to teach such things to poor,
half-witted black people. I was mad that night. You know that I love the
South. Its blood is my blood. Three of my mother's brothers and two of
my father's died fighting for the 'Lost Cause,' and my father was under
fire from the beginning of the war to the end. In fact, it is my love
for the South, and all that is good and pure and noble in it, that made
my blood boil that night. I saw a part of it you didn't see.”

“What was that?” Garner asked.

“It was a clear moonlight night,” Dwight went on. “I was sitting at the
window of my room at home, looking out over Major Warren's yard, when
the first screams and shouts came from the negro quarter. I suspected
what it was, for I'd heard of the threats the mountaineers had made
against that part of town, but I wasn't prepared for what I actually
saw. The cottage of old Uncle Lewis and Mammy Linda is just behind the
Major's house, you know, and in plain view of my window. I saw the
old pair come to the door and run out into the yard, and then I heard
Linda's voice. 'It's my child!' she screamed. 'They are killing him!'
Uncle Lewis tried to quiet her, but she stood there wringing her hands
and sobbing and praying. The Major raised the window of his room and
looked out, and I heard him ask what was wrong. Uncle Lewis tried to
explain, but his voice could not be heard above his wife's cries. A few
minutes later Pete came running down the street. They had let him
go. His clothes were torn to strips and his back was livid with great
whelks. He had no sooner reached the old folks than he keeled over in a
faint. The Major came down, and he and I bent over the boy and finally
restored him to consciousness. Major Warren was the maddest man I ever
saw, and a mob a hundred strong couldn't have touched the negro and left
him alive.”

“I know, that was all bad enough,” Garner admitted, “but antagonizing
those men now won't better the matter and may do you more political
damage than you'll get over in a lifetime. You can't be a politician
and a preacher both; they don't go together. You can't dispute that
the negro quarter of this town was a disgrace to a civilized community
before the White Caps raided it. Look at it now. There never was such a
change. It is as quiet as a Philadelphia graveyard.”

“It's the way they went about it that made me mad,” Carson Dwight
retorted. “Besides, I know that boy. He is as harmless as a kitten, and
he only hung around those dives because he loved to sing and dance with
the rest. I _did_ get mad; I'm mad yet. My people never lashed their
slaves when they were in bondage; why should I stand by and see them
beaten now by men who never owned negroes and never loved or understood
them? Before the war a white man would stand up and protect his slaves;
why shouldn't he now take up for at least the most faithful of their
descendants?”

“That's it,” Blackburn spoke up, admiringly. “You are a chip off of the
old block, Carson. Your daddy would have shot any man who tried to whip
one of his negroes. You can't help the way you feel; but I agree with
Bill here, you can't get the support of mountain people if you don't, at
least, _pretend_ to see things their way.”,

“Well, I can't see _this_ thing their way,” fumed Dwight; “and I'm not
going to try. When I saw that old black man and woman that awful night
with their very heart-strings torn and bleeding, and remembered
that they had been kind to my mother when she was at the point of
death--sitting by her bedside all night long as patiently as blocks of
stone, and shedding tears of joy at the break of day when the doctor
said the crisis had passed--when I think of that and admit that I
stand by with folded hands and see their only child beaten till he
is insensible, my blood boils with utter shame. It has burned a great
lesson into my brain, and that is that we have got to have law and order
among ourselves if we expect to keep the good opinion of the world at
large.”

“I understand Pete would have got off much easier if he hadn't fought
them like a tiger,” said Blackburn. “They say--”

“And why _shouldn't_ he have fought?” Carson asked, quickly. “The nearer
the brute creation a man is the more he'll fight. A tame dog will fight
if you drive him into a corner and strike him hard enough.”

“Well, you busted up our game,” joined in Keith Gordon, who had left
the table in the rear and now came forward, accompanied by another young
man, Wade Tingle, the editor of the _Headlight_. “Wade and I both agree,
Carson, that you've got to handle Dan Willis cautiously. We are backing
you tooth and toe-nail in this campaign, but you'll tie our hands if you
antagonize the mountain element. Wiggin knows that, and he is working it
for all it's worth.”

“That's right, old man,” the editor joined in, earnestly. “I may as well
be plain with you. I'm making a big issue out of my support of you, but
if you make the country people mad they will stop taking my paper. I
can't live without their patronage, and I simply can't back you if you
don't stick to _me_.”

“I wasn't raising a row,” the young candidate said. “But Garner came to
me just now, actually advising me to avoid that dirty scoundrel. I won't
dodge any blustering bully who is going about threatening what he will
do to me when he meets me face to face. I want your support, but I can't
buy it that way.”

“Well,” Garner said, grimly, more to the others than to his partner,
“there will be a row right here inside of ten minutes. I see that now.
Willis has heard certain things Carson has said about the part he took
in that raid, and he is looking for trouble. Carson isn't in the mood to
take back anything, and a fool can see how it will end.”




CHAPTER II.

[Illustration: 9025]

EITH GORDON and Tingle motioned to Garner, and the three stepped out on
the sidewalk leaving Blackburn and the candidate together. The street
was quite deserted. Only a few of the ramshackle street lights were
burning, though the night was cloudy, the location of the stores,
barbershop, hotel, and post-office being indicated by the oblong patches
of light on the ground in front of them.

“You'll never be able to move him,” Keith Gordon said, stroking his
blond mustache nervously. “The truth is, he's terribly worked up over
it. Between us three, boys, Carson never loved but one woman in his
life, and she's Helen Warren. Mam' Linda is her old nurse, and Carson
knows when she comes home and hears of Pete's trouble it is going to
hurt her awfully. Helen has a good, kind heart, and she loves Linda as
if they were the same flesh and blood. If Carson meets Willis to-night
he'll kill him or get killed. Say, boys, he's too fine a fellow for that
sort of thing right on the eve of his election. What the devil can we
do?”

“Oh, I see; there's a woman at the bottom of it,” Garner said,
cynically. “I'm not surprised at the way he's acting now, but I thought
that case was over with. Why, I heard she was engaged to a man down
where she's visiting.”

“She really may be,” Gordon admitted, “but Carson is ready to fight
her battles, anyway. I honestly think she turned him down when he was
rolling so high with her brother, just before his death a year ago, but
that didn't alter his feelings towards her.”

Garner grunted as he thrust his hand deep into his breast-pocket for
his plug of tobacco and began to twist off a corner of it. “The most
maddening thing on earth,” he said, “is to have a close friend who is a
darned fool. I'm tired of the whole business. Old Dwight is out of all
patience with Carson for the reckless way he has been living, but the
old man is really carried away with pride over the boy's political
chances. He had that sort of ambition himself in his early life, and he
likes to see his son go in for it. He was powerfully tickled the
other day when I told him Carson was going in on the biggest wave of
popularity that ever bore a human chip, but he will cuss a blue streak
when the returns come in, for I tell you, boys, if Carson has a row with
Dan Willis to-night over this negro business, it will knock him higher
than a kite.”

“Do you know whether Carson has anything to shoot with?” Tingle asked,
thoughtfully.

“Oh yes, I saw the bulge of it under his coat just now,” Garner
answered, still angrily, “and if the two come together it will be
raining lead for a while in the old town.”

“I was just thinking about his sick mother,” Keith Gordon remarked.
“My sister told me the other day that Mrs. Dwight was in such a low
condition that any sudden shock would be apt to kill her. A thing like
this would upset her terribly--that is, if there is really any shooting.
Don't you suppose if we were to remind Carson of her condition that he
might agree to go home?”

“No, you don't know him as well as I do,” Garner said, firmly. “It would
only make him madder. The more reasons we give him for avoiding Willis
the more stubborn he'll be. I guess we'll have to let him sit there and
make a target of himself.”

Just then a tall mountaineer, under a broad-brimmed soft hat, wearing a
cotton checked shirt and jean trousers passed through the light of
the entrance to the hotel near by and slouched through the intervening
darkness towards them.

“It's Pole Baker,” said Keith. “He's a rough-and-ready supporter of
Carson's. Say, hold on, Pole!”

“Hold on yourself; what's up?” the mountaineer asked, with a laugh.
“Plottin' agin the whites?”

“We want to ask you if you've seen Dan Willis to-night,” Garner
questioned.

“Have I?” Baker grunted. “That's exactly why I'm lookin' fer you town
dudes instead o' goin' on out home where I belong. I'm as sober as an
empty keg, but I git charged with bein' in the Darley calaboose every
time I don't answer the old lady's roll-call at bed-time. You bet Willis
is loaded fer bear, and he's got some bad men with him down at the
wagon-yard. Wiggin has filled 'em up with a lot o' stuff about what
Carson said concernin' the White Cap raid t'other night. I thought I'd
sorter put you fellers on, so you could keep our man out o' the way
till their liquor wears off. Besides, I'm here to tell you, Bill Garner,
that's a nasty card Wiggin's set afloat in the mountains. He says a
regular gang of blue-bloods has been organized here to take up fer town
coons agin the pore whites in the country. We might crush such a report
in time, you know, but we'll never kill it if thar's a fight over it
to-night.”

“That's the trouble,” the others said, in a breath.

“Wait one minute--you stay right here,” Baker said, and he went and
stood in front of the store door and looked in for a moment; then he
came back. “I thought maybe he'd let us all talk sense to 'im, but you
can't put reason into a man like that any easier than you can dip up
melted butter with a hot awl. I can't see any chance unless you fellers
will leave it entirely to me.”

“Leave it to you?” Garner exclaimed. “What could you do?”

“I don't know whether I could do a blessed thing or not, boys, but the
dam thing is so desperate that I'm willin' to try. You see, I never talk
my politics--if I do, I talk it on t'other side to see what I kin pick
up to advantage. The truth is, I think them skunks consider me a Wiggin
man, and I'd like to git a whack at 'em. Maybe I can git 'em to leave
town. Abe Johnson is the leader of 'em, and he never gets too drunk to
have some natural caution.”

“Well, it certainly couldn't do any harm for you to try, Pole,” said
Tingle.

“Well, I'll go down to the wagon-yard and see if they are still hanging
about.”

As he approached the place in question, which was an open space about
one hundred yards square surrounded by a high fence, at the lower end
of the main street, Pole stood in the broad gateway and surveyed the
numerous camp-fires which gleamed out from the darkness. He finally
descried a group of men around a fire between two white-hooded wagons
to the wheels of which were haltered several horses. As Pole advanced
towards them, paying cheerful greetings to various men and women around
the different fires he had to pass, he recognized Dan Willis, Abe
Johnson, and several others.

A quart whiskey flask, nearly empty, stood on the ground in the light
of the fire round which the men were seated. As he approached they
all looked up and nodded and muttered careless greetings. It seemed to
suggest a movement on the part of Dan Willis, a tall man of thirty-five
or thirty-six years of age, who wore long, matted hair and had bushy
eyebrows and a sweeping mustache, for, taking up the flask, he rose
and dropped it into his coat-pocket and spoke to the two men who sat on
either side of Abe Johnson.

“Come on,” he growled, “I want to talk to you. I don't care whether you
join us or not, Abe.”

“Well, I'm out of it,” replied Johnson. “I've talked to you fellows till
I'm sick. You are too darned full to have any sense.”

Willis and the two men walked off together and stood behind one of the
wagons. Their voices, muffled by the effects of whiskey, came back to
the ears of the remaining two.

“Goin' out home to-night, Abe?” Baker asked, carelessly.

“I want to, but I don't like to leave that damned fool here in the
condition he's in. He'll either commit murder or git his blasted head
shot off.”

“That's exactly what _I_ was thinking about,” said Pole, sitting down
on the ground carelessly and drawing his knees up in the embrace of his
strong arms. “Look here, Abe, me'n you hain't to say quite as intimate
as own brothers born of the same mammy, but I hain't got nothin' agin
you of a personal nature.”

“Oh, I reckon that's all right,” the other said, stroking his round,
smooth-shaven face with a dogged sweep of his brawny hand. “That's all
right, Pole.”

“Well, my family knowed yore family long through the war,” Abe. “My
daddy was with yourn at the front, an' our mothers swapped sugar an'
coffee in them hard times, an', Abe, I'm here to tell you I sorter
hate to see an unsuspectin' neighbor like you walk blind into serious
trouble, great big trouble, Abe--trouble of the sort that would make a
man's wife an' childern lie awake many and many a night.”

“What the hell you mean?” Johnson asked, picking up his ears.

“Why, it's this here devilment that's brewin' betwixt Dan an' Carson
Dwight.”

[Illustration: 0031]

“Well, what's that got to do with _me?_” Johnson asked, in surly
surprise.

“Well, it's jest this, Abe,” Pole leaned back till his feet rose from
the ground, and he twisted his neck as his eyes followed the three men
who, with their heads close together, had moved a little farther away.
“Maybe you don't know it, Abe, but I used to be in the government
revenue service, and in one way and another that's neither here nor
there I sometimes drop onto underground information, an' I want to give
you a valuable tip. I want to start you to thinkin'. You'll admit, I
reckon, that if them two men meet to-night thar will be apt to be blood
shed.”

Johnson stared over the camp-fire sullenly. “If Carson Dwight hain't had
the sense to git out o' town thar will be, an' plenty of it,” he said,
with a dry chuckle.

“Well, thar's the difficulty,” said Pole. “He hain't left town, an'
what's wuss than that, his friends hain't been able to budge 'im from his
seat in Blackburn's store, whar Dan couldn't miss 'im ef he was stalkin'
about blindfolded. He's heard threats, and he's as mad a man as ever
pulled hair.”

“Well, what the devil--”

“Hold on, Abe. Now, I'll tell you whar _you_ come in. My underground
information is that the Grand Jury is hard at work to git the facts
about that White Cap raid. The whole thing--name of leader and members
of the gang has been kept close so far, but--”

“Well”--the half-defiant look in the face of Johnson gave way to one of
growing alarm--“well!” he repeated, but went no further.

“It's this way, Abe--an' I'm here as a friend, I reckon. You know as
well as I do that if thar is blood shed to-night it will git into court,
and a lots about the White Cap raid, and matters even further back, will
be pulled into the light.”

Pole's words had made a marked impression on the man to whom they had
been so adroitly directed. Johnson leaned forward nervously. “So you
think--” But he hung fire again.

“Huh, I think you'd better git Dan Willis out o' this town, Abe, an'
inside o' five minutes, ef you can do it.”

Johnson drew a breath of evident relief. “I can do it, Pole, and I'll
act by your advice,” he said. “Thar's only one thing on earth that would
turn Dan towards home, but I happen to know what that is. He's b'ilin'
hot, but he ain't any more anxious to stir up the Grand Jury than some
of the rest of us. I'll go talk to 'im.”

As Johnson moved away, Pole Baker rose and slouched off in the darkness
in the direction of the straggling lights along the main street. At the
gate he paused and waited, his eyes on the wagons and camp-fire he had
just left. Presently he noticed something and chuckled. The horses, with
clanking trace-chains, passed between him and the fire--they were being
led round to be hitched to the wagons. Pole chuckled again. “I'm not
sech a dern fool as I look,” he said, “Well, I had to lie some and act
a part that sorter went agin the grain, but my scheme worked. If I
ever git to hell I reckon it will be through tryin' to do right--in the
main.”




CHAPTER III.

[Illustration: 9035]

HE wide avenue which ran north and south and cut the town of Darley
into halves held the best and oldest residences. One side of the street
caught the full rays of the morning sun and the other the slanting red
beams of the afternoon. For so small a town, it was a well-graded and
well-kept thoroughfare. Strips of grass lay like ribbons between the
sidewalks and the roadway, and at the triangular spaces created by
the intersection of certain streets there were rusty iron fences built
primarily to protect diminutive fountains which had long since ceased to
play. In one of these little parks, in the heart of the town, as it
was in the hearts of the inhabitants, stood a monument erected to “The
Confederate Dead,” a well-modelled, life-size figure of a Southern
private wrought in stone in faraway Italy. Had it been correctly placed
on its pedestal?--that was the question anxiously asked by reverent
passers-by, for the cloaked and knapsacked figure, which time was
turning gray, stood with its back to the enemy's country.

“Yes, it is right,” some would say, “for the soldier is represented as
being on night picket-duty in Northern territory, and his thoughts and
eyes are with his dear ones at home and the country he is defending.”

Henry Dwight, the wealthy sire of the aggressive young man with whom the
foregoing chapters have principally dealt, lived in one of the moss and
ivy grown houses on the eastern side of the avenue. It was a red brick
structure two and a half stories high, with a colonial veranda, and had
a square, white-windowed cupola as the apex of the slanting roof. There
was a semicircular drive, which entered the grounds at one corner in the
front and swept gracefully past the door. The central and smaller
front gate, for the use of pedestrians, with its imitation stone posts,
spanned by a white crescent, was reached from the house by a
gravelled walk bordered by boxwood. On the right and left were rustic
summerhouses, grape arbors and parterres containing roses and other
flowers, all of which were well cared for by an old colored gardener.

Henry Dwight was a grain and cotton merchant, money-lender, and the
president and chief stockholder of the Darley Cotton Mills, whose great
brick buildings and cottages for employés stood a mile or so to the
west of the town. This morning, having written his daily letters, he was
strolling in his grounds smoking a cigar. To any one who knew him well
it would have been plain that his mind was disturbed.

Adjoining the Dwight homestead there was another ancestral house equally
as spacious and stand-. ing in quite as extensive, if more neglected,
grounds. It was here that Major Warren lived, and it happened that he,
too, was on his lawn just beyond the ramshackle intervening fence, the
gate of which had fallen from its hinges and been taken away.

The Major was a short, slight old gentleman, quite a contrast to the
John Bull type of his lusty, side-whiskered neighbor. He wore a dingy
brown wig, and as he pottered about, raising a rose from the earth with
his gold-headed ebony stick, or stooped to uproot an encroaching weed,
his furtive glance was often levelled on old Dwight.

“I declare I really might as well,” he muttered, undecidedly. “What's
the use making up your mind to a thing and letting it go for no sensible
reason. He's taking a wrong view of it. I can tell that by the way he
puffs at his cigar. Yes, I'll do it.”

The Major passed through the gateway and slowly drew near his
preoccupied neighbor.

“Good-morning, Henry,” he said, as Dwight looked up. “If I'm any judge
of your twists and turns, you are not yet in a thoroughly good-humor.”

“Good-humor? No, sir, I'm _not_ in a good-humor. How could I be when
that young scamp, the only heir to my name and effects--”

Dwight's spleen rose and choked out his words, and, red in the face, he
stood panting, unable to go further.

“Well, it seems to me, while he's not _my_ son,” the Major began, “that
you are--are--well, rather overbearing--I might say unforgiving. He's
been sowing wild oats, but, really, if I am any judge of young men, he
is on a fair road to--to genuine manhood.”

“Road to nothing,” spluttered Dwight. “I gave him that big farm to
see what he could do in its management. Never expected him to work a
lick--just wanted to see if he could keep it on a paying basis, but it
was an investment of dead capital. Then he took up the law. He did a
little better at that along with Bill Garner to lean on, but that never
amounted to anything worth mentioning. Then he went into politics.”

“And I heard you say yourself, Henry,” the Major ventured, gently,
“that you believed he was actually cut out for a future statesman.”

“Yes, and like the fool that I was I hoped for it. I was so glad to see
him really interested in politics that I laid awake at night thinking
of his success. I heard of his popularity on every hand. Men came to me,
and women, too, telling me they loved him and were going to work for
him against that jack-leg lawyer Wiggin, and put him into office with
a majority that would ring all over the State; and they meant it, I
reckon. But what did he do? In his stubborn, bull-headed way he abused
those mountain men who took the law into their hands for the public
good, and turned hundreds of them against him; and all for a nigger--a
lazy, trifling nigger boy!”

“Well, you see,” Major Warren began, lamely, “Carson and I saw Pete the
night he was whipped so severely and we took pity on him. They played
together when they were boys, as boys all over the South do, you know,
and then he saw Mam' Linda break down over it and saw old Lewis crying
for the first time in the old man's life. I was mad, Henry, myself, and
you would have been if you had been there. I could have fought the men
who did it, so I understand how Carson felt, and when he made the remark
Wiggin is using to such deadly injury to his prospects my heart warmed
to the boy. If he doesn't succeed as a politician it will be because he
is too genuine for a tricky career of that sort. His friends are trying
to get him to make some statement that will reinstate him with the
mountain people who sympathized with the White Caps, but he simply won't
do it.”

“Won't do it! I reckon not!” Dwight blurted out. “Didn't the young idiot
wait in Blackburn's store for Dan Willis to come and shoot the top of
his head off? He sat there till past midnight, and wouldn't move an inch
till actual proof was brought to him that Willis had left town. Oh,
I'm no fool! I know a thing or two. I've watched him and your daughter
together. That's at the bottom of it. She sat down on him before she
went off to Augusta, but her refusal didn't alter him. He knows Helen
thinks a lot of her old negro mammy, and in her absence he simply took
up her cause and is fighting mad about it--so mad that he is blind to
his political ruin. That's what a man will do for a woman. They say
she's about to become engaged down there. I hope she is, and that Carson
will have pride enough when he hears of it to let another man do her
fighting, and one with nothing to lose by it.”

“She hasn't written me a thing about any engagement,” the Major
answered, with some animation; “but my sister highly approves of the
match and writes that it may come about. Mr. Sanders is a well-to-do,
honorable man of good birth and education: Helen never seemed to get
over her brother's sad death. She loved poor Albert more than she ever
did me or any one else.”

“And I always thought that it was Carson's association with your son in
his dissipation that turned Helen against him. For all I know, she may
have thought Carson actually led Albert on and was partly the cause of
his sad end.”

“She may have looked at it that way,” the Major said, musingly. They had
now reached the porch in the rear of the house and they went together
into the wide hall. A colored maid with a red bandanna tied like a
turban round her head was dusting the walnut railing of the stairs.
Passing through the hall, the old gentlemen turned into the library,
a great square room with wide windows and tall, gilt-framed pier-glass
mirrors.

“Yes, I'm sure that's what turned her against him,” Dwight continued,
“and that is where, between you and Helen, I get mixed up. Why do you
always take up for the scamp? It looks to me like you'd resent the way
he acted with your son after the boy's terrible end.”

“There is a good deal more in the matter, Henry, than I ever told you
about.” Major Warren's voice faltered. “To be plain, that is my secret
trouble. I reckon if Helen was to discover the actual truth--_all of
it_--she would never feel the same towards me. I think maybe I ought to
tell you. It certainly will explain why I am so much interested in your
boy.” They sat down, the owner of the house in a reclining-chair at an
oblong, carved mahogany table covered with books and papers, the visitor
on a lounge near by.

“Well, it always has seemed odd to me,” old Dwight said. “I couldn't
exactly believe you wanted to bring him and Helen together, after your
experience with that sort of man under your own roof.”

“It is this way,” said the Major, awkwardly. “To begin with, I am sure,
from all I've picked up, that it was not your son that was leading
mine on to dissipation, but just the other way. He's dead and gone, but
Albert was always ready for a prank of any sort. Henry, I want to talk
to you about it because it seems to me you are in the same position in
regard to Carson that I was in regard to my poor boy, and I've prayed
a thousand times for pardon for what I did in anger and haste. Henry,
listen to me. If ever a man made a vital mistake I did, and I'll bear
the weight of it to my grave. You know how I worried over. Albert's
drinking and his general conduct. Time after time he made promises that
he would turn over a new leaf only to break them. Well, it was on the
last trip--the fatal one to New York, where he had gone and thrown away
so much money. I wrote him a severe letter, and in answer to it I got a
pathetic one, saying he was sick and tired of the way he was doing and
begging me to try him once more and send him money to pay his way home.
It was the same old sort of promise and I didn't have faith in him. I
was unfair, unjust to my only son. I wrote and refused, telling him that
I could not trust him any more. Hell inspired that letter, Henry--the
devil whispered to me that I'd been indulgent to the poor boy's injury.
Then came the news. When he was found dead in a small room on the top
floor of that squalid hotel--dead by his own hand--my letter lay open
beside him.”

“Well, well, you couldn't help it!” Dwight said, most awkwardly, and he
crossed his short, fat legs anew and reached for an open box of cigars.
“You were trying to do your duty as you saw it, and to the best of your
ability.”

“Yes, but my method, Henry, resulted in misery and grief to me and Helen
that can never be cured. You see, it is because of that awful mistake
that I take such an interest in Carson. I love him because Albert loved
him, and because sometimes it seems to me that you are most too quick
to condemn him. Oh, he's different! Carson has changed wonderfully since
Albert died. He doesn't drink to excess now, and Garner says he has quit
playing cards, having only one aim, and that to win this political
race--to win it to please you, Henry.”

“Win it!” Dwight sniffed. “He's already as dead as a salt mackerel--laid
out stiff and stark by his own bull-headed stupidity. I've always talked
down drinking and card-playing, but I have known some men to succeed in
life who had such habits in moderation; but you nor I nor no one else
ever saw a blockhead succeed at anything. I tell you he'll never make
a successful politician. Wiggin will beat the hind sights off of him.
Wiggin is simply making capital of the fool's inability to control his
temper and sympathies. Wiggin would have let that mob thrash his own
father and mother rather than antagonize them and lose their votes. He
knows Carson comes of fighting stock, and he will continue to egg Dan
Willis and others on, knowing that every resentful word from Carson will
make enemies for him by the score.”

“Oh, I can see that, too!” the Major sighed; “but, to save me, I can't
help admiring the boy. He thinks the White Caps did wrong that night
and he simply can't pretend otherwise. It is the principle of the thing,
Henry. He is an unusual sort of candidate, and his stand may ruin his
chances, but I--I glory in his firmness. I must say g me to try him once
more and send him money to pay his way home. It was the same old sort of
promise and I didn't have faith in him. I was unfair, unjust to my only
son. I wrote and refused, telling him that I could not trust him any
more. Hell inspired that letter, Henry--the devil whispered to me that
I'd been indulgent to the poor boy's injury. Then came the news. When he
was found dead in a small room on the top floor of that squalid hotel--
dead by his own hand--my letter lay open beside him.”

“Well, well, you couldn't help it!” Dwight said, most awkwardly, and he
crossed his short, fat legs anew and reached for an open box of cigars.
“You were trying to do your duty as you saw it, and to the best of your
ability.”

“Yes, but my method, Henry, resulted in misery and grief to me and Helen
that can never be cured. You see, it is because of that awful mistake
that I take such an interest in Carson. I love him because Albert loved
him, and because sometimes it seems to me that you are most too quick to
condemn him. Oh, he's different! Carson has changed wonderfully since
Albert died. He doesn't drink to excess now, and Garner says he has quit
playing cards, having only one aim, and that to win this political race-
-to win it to please you, Henry.”

“Win it!” Dwight sniffed. “He's already as dead as a salt mackerel--laid
out stiff and stark by his own bull-headed stupidity. I've always talked
down drinking and card-playing, but I have known some men to succeed in
life who had such habits in moderation; but you nor I nor no one else
ever saw a blockhead succeed at anything. I tell you he'll never make a
successful politician. Wiggin will beat the hind sights off of him.
Wiggin is simply making capital of the fool's inability to control his
temper and sympathies. Wiggin would have let that mob thrash his own
father and mother rather than antagonize them and lose their votes. He
knows Carson comes of fighting stock, and he will continue to egg Dan
Willis and others on, knowing that every resentful word from Carson will
make enemies for him by the score.”

“Oh, I can see that, too!” the Major sighed; “but, to save me, I can't
help admiring the boy. He thinks the White Caps did wrong that night and
he simply can't pretend otherwise. It is the principle of the thing,
Henry. He is an unusual sort of candidate, and his stand may ruin his
chances, but I--I glory in his firmness. I must say that.”

“Oh yes, that's the trouble with you sentimental people,” Dwight fumed.
“Between you and the boy's doting mother, the Lord only knows where
he'll land. I've overlooked a lot in him in the hope that he'd put this
election through, but I shall let him go his own way now. It has come
to a pretty pass if I have to see my son beaten to the dust by a man of
Wiggin's stamp because of that long-legged negro boy of yours who would
have been better long ago if he had been soundly thrashed.”

When his visitor had gone Dwight dropped his unfinished cigar into the
grate and went slowly upstairs to his wife's room. At a small-paned
window overlooking the flower-garden, on a couch supported in a
reclining position by several puffy pillows, was Mrs. Dwight. She was
well past middle-age and of extremely delicate physique. Her hair was
snowy white, her skin thin to transparency, her veins full and blue.

“That was Major Warren, wasn't it?” she asked, in a soft, sweet voice,
as she put down the magazine she had been reading.

“Yes,” Dwight answered, as he went to a little desk in one corner of the
room and took a paper from a pigeon-hole and put it into his pocket.

“How did he happen to come over so early?” the lady pursued.

“Because he wanted to, I reckon,” Dwight started out, impatiently, and
then a note of caution came into his voice as he remembered the warning
of the family physician against causing the patient even the slightest
worry. “Warren hasn't a blessed thing to do, you know, from mom till
night. So when he strikes a busy man he is apt to hang on to him and
talk in his long-winded way about any subject that takes possession of
his brain. He's great on showing men how to manage their own affairs. It
takes an idle man to do that. If that man hadn't had money left to him
he would now be begging his bread from door to door.”

“Somehow I fancied it was about Carson,” Mrs. Dwight sighed.

“There you go!” her husband said, with as much grace of evasion as lay
in his sturdy compound. “Lying there from day to day, you seem to have
contracted Warren's complaint. You think nobody can drop in even for a
minute without coming about your boy--your boy! Some day, if you live
long enough, you may discover that the universe was not created solely
for your son, nor made just to revolve around him either.”

“Yes, I suppose I _do_ worry about Carson a great deal,” the invalid
admitted; “but you haven't told me right out that the Major was _not_
speaking of him.”

The old man's face was the playground of conflcting impulses. He grew
red with anger and his lips trembled on the very verge of an outburst,
but he controlled himself. In fact, his irritability calmed down as he
suddenly saw a loop-hole through which to escape her questioning.

“The truth is,” he said, “Warren was talking about Albert's death. He
talked quite a while about it. He almost broke down.”

“Well, I'm so worried about Carson's campaign that I imagine all sorts
of trouble,” Mrs. Dwight sighed. “I lay awake nearly all of last night
thinking about one little thing. When he was in his room dressing the
other day, I heard something fall to the floor. Hilda had taken him some
hot water for shaving, and when she came back she told me he had dropped
his revolver out of his pocket. You know till then I had had no idea he
carried one, and while it may be necessary at times, the idea is very
disagreeable.”

“You needn't let _that_ bother you,” Dwight said, as he took his hat to
go down to his office at his warehouse. “Nearly all the young men carry
them because they think it looks smart. Most of them would run like a
scared dog if they saw one pointed at them even in fun.”

“Well, I hope my boy will never have any use for one,” the invalid said.
“He is not of a quarrelsome nature. It takes a good deal to make him
angry, but when he gets so he is not easily controlled.”




CHAPTER IV.

[Illustration: 9046]

HE young men in Carson Dwight's set had an odd sort of lounging-place.
It was Keith Gordon's room above his father's bank in an old building
which had withstood the shot and shell of the Civil War. “The Den,” as
it was called by its numerous hap-hazard occupants, was reached from
the street on the outside by a narrow flight of worm-eaten and rickety
stairs and a perilous little balcony or passage that clung to the
brick wall, twenty feet from the ground, along the full length of the
building. It was here in one of the four beds that Keith slept, when
there was room for him. After a big dance or a match game of baseball,
when there were impecunious visitors from neighboring towns left over
for various and sundry reasons, Keith had to seek the sanctimonious
solitude of his father's home or go to the hotel.

The den was about twenty-five feet square. It was not as luxurious as
such bachelor quarters went in Augusta, Savannah, or even Atlanta,
but it answered the purpose of “the gang” which made use of it. Keith
frankly declared that he had overhauled and replenished it for the last
time. He said that it was absolutely impossible to keep washbasins and
pitchers, when they were hurled out of the windows for pure amusement of
men who didn't care whether they washed or not. As for the laundry bill,
he happened to know that it was larger than that of the Johnston House
or the boarding department of the Darley Female College. He said, too,
that he had warned the gang for the last time that the room would be
closed if any more clog-dancing were indulged in. He said his father
complained that the plastering was dropping down on his desk below,
and sensible men ought to know that a thing like that could not go on
forever.

The rules concerning the payment for drinks were certainly lax. No
accounts were kept of any man's indebtedness. Any member of the gang was
at liberty to stow away a flask of any size in the bureau or wash-stand
drawer, or under the mattresses or pillows of his or anybody else's bed,
where Skelt, the negro who swept the room, and loved stimulants could
not find it.

Bill Garner, as brainy as he was, while he was always welcome at his
father's house in the country, a mile from town, seemed to love the
company of this noisy set. Through the day it was said of him that he
could read and saturate himself with more law than any man in the State,
but at night his recreation was a cheap cigar, his old bulging carpet
slippers, a cosey chair in Keith's room, and--who would think it?--the
most thrilling Indian dime novel on the market. He could quote the
French, German, Italian, and Spanish classics by the page in a strange
musical accent he had acquired without the aid of a master or any sort
of intercourse with native foreigners. He knew and loved all things
pertaining to great literature--said he had a natural ear for Wagner's
music, had comprehended Edwin Booth's finest work, knew a good picture
when he saw it; and yet he had to have his dime novel. In it he found
mental rest and relaxation that was supplied by nothing else. His
bedfellow was Bob Smith, the genial, dapper, ever daintily clad clerk at
the Johnston House. Garner said he liked to sleep with Bob because Bob
never--sleeping or waking--took anything out of him mentally. Besides
dressing to perfection, Bob played rag-time on the guitar and sang the
favorite coon songs of the day. His duties at the hotel were far from
arduous, and so the gang usually looked to him to arrange dances and
collect toll for expenses. And Bob was not without his actual monetary
value, as the proprietor of the hotel had long since discovered, for
when Bob arranged a dance it meant that various socially inclined
drummers of good birth and standing would, at a hint or a telegram from
the clerk, “lay over” at Darley for one night anyway.

If Bob had any quality that disturbed the surface of his uniform
equanimity it was his excessive pride in Carson Dwight's friendship.
He interlarded his talk with what Carson had said or done, and Carson's
candidacy for the Legislature had become his paramount ambition. Indeed,
it may as well be stated that the rest of the gang had espoused Dwight's
political cause with equal enthusiasm.

It was the Sunday morning following the night Pole Baker had prevented
the meeting between Dwight and Dan Willis, and most of the habitual
loungers were present waiting for Skelt to black their boots, and
deploring the turn of affairs which looked so bad for their favorite.
Wade Tingle was shaving at one of the windows before a mirror in a
cracked mahogany frame, when they all recognized Carson's step on the
balcony and a moment later Dwight stood in the doorway.

“Hello, boys, how goes it?” he asked.

“Oh, right side up, old man,” Tingle replied, as he began to rub the
lather into his face with his hand to soften his week-old beard before
shaving. “How's the race?”

“It's all right, I guess,” Dwight said, wearily, as he came in and sat
down in a vacant chair against the wall. “How goes it in the mountains?
I understand you've been over there.”

“Yes, trying to rake in some ads, stir up my local correspondents,
and take subscriptions. As to your progress, old man, I'm sorry to say
Wiggin's given it a sort of black eye. There was a meeting of farmers
over in the tenth, at Miller's Spring. I was blamed sorry you were
not there. Wiggin made a speech. It was a corker--viewed as campaign
material solely. That chap's failed at the law, but he's the sharpest,
most unprincipled manipulator of men's emotions I ever ran across. He
showed you up as Sam Jones does the ring-tailed monster of the cloven
foot.”

“What Carson said about the Willis and Johnson mob was his theme, of
course?” said Garner, above the dog-eared pages of his thriller.

“That and ten thousand things Carson never dreamed of,” returned Tingle.
“Here's the way it went. The meeting was held under a bush-arbor to
keep the sun off, and the farmers had their wives and children out for
a picnic. A long-faced parson led in prayer, some of the old maids piped
up with a song that would have ripped slits in your musical tympanum,
Garner, and then a raw-boned ploughman in a hickory shirt and one
gallus introduced the guest of honor. How they could have overlooked the
editor-in-chief and proprietor of the greatest agricultural weekly in
north Georgia and picked out that skunk was a riddle to me.”

“Well, what did he say?” Garner asked, as sharply as if he were
cross-examining a non-committal witness of importance.

“What did he say?” Tingle laughed, as he wiped the lather from his face
with a ragged towel and stood with it in his hand. “He began by saying
that he had gone into the race to win, and that he was going to the
Legislature as sure as the sun was on its way down in this country and
on its way up in China. He said it was a scientific certainty, as easily
demonstrated as two and two make four. Those hardy, horny-handed men
before him that day were not going to the polls and vote for a town dude
who parted his hair in the middle, wore spike-toed shoes that glittered
like a new dash-board, and was the ringleader of the rowdiest set of
young card-players and whiskey-drinkers that ever blackened the morals
of a mining-camp. He said that about the gang, boys, and I didn't have a
thing to shoot with. In fact, I had to sit there and take in more.”

“What did he say about his _platform?_” Garner asked, with a heavy
frown; “that's what I want to get at. You never can hurt a politician
by circulating the report that he drinks--that's what half of 'em vote
for.”

“Oh, his platform seemed to be chiefly that he was out to save the
common people from the eternal disgrace of voting for a man like Dwight.
He certainly piled it on thick and heavy. It would have made Carson's
own mother slink away in shame. Carson, Wiggin said, had loved niggers
since he was knee high to a duck, and had always contended that a negro
owned by the aristocracy of the South was ahead of the white, razor-back
stock in the mountains who had never had that advantage. Carson was up
in arms against the White Caps that had come to Darley and whipped those
lazy coons, and was going to prosecute every man in the bunch to the
full extent of the United States law. If he got into the Legislature he
intended to pass laws to make it a penitentiary offence for a white man
to shove a black buck off the sidewalk. 'But he's not going to take his
seat in the Capitol of Georgia,' Wiggins said, with a yell--'if Carson
Dwight went to Atlanta it would _not_ be on a free pass.' And, boys,
that crowd yelled till the dry leaves overhead clapped an encore. The
men yelled and the women and children yelled.”

“He's a contemptible puppy!” Dwight said, angrily.

“Yes, but he's a slick politician among men of that sort,” said Tingle.
“He certainly knows how to talk and stir up strife.”

“And I suppose you sat there like a bump on a log, and listened to all
that without opening your mouth!” Keith Gordon spoke up from his bed,
where he lay in his bath-robe smoking over the remains of the breakfast
Skelt had brought from the hotel on a big black tray.

“Well, I _did_--get up,” Tingle answered, with a manly flush.

“Oh, you _did!_” Garner leaned forward with interest.

“Well, I'm glad you happened to be on hand, for your paper has
considerable influence over there.”

“Yes, I got up. I waved my hands up and down like a buzzard rising,
to keep the crowd still till I could think of something to say; but,
Carson, old man, you know what an idiot I used to be in college debates.
I could get through fairly well on anything they would let me write down
and read off, but it was the impromptu thing that always rattled me.
I was as mad as hell when I rose, but all those staring eyes calmed me
wonderfully. I reckon I stood there fully half a minute swallowing--”

“You damned fool!” Garner exclaimed, in high disgust.

“Yes, that's exactly what I was,” Tingle admitted. “I stood there
gasping like a catfish enjoying his first excursion in open air. It was
deathly still. I've heard it said that dying men notice the smallest
things about them. I remember I saw the horses and mules haltered
out under the trees with their hay and fodder under their noses--the
dinner-baskets all in a cluster at the spring guarded by a negro woman.
Then what do you think? Old Jeff Condon spoke up.

“'Lead us in prayer, brother,' he said, in reverential tones, and since
I was born I never heard so much laughing.”

“You certainly _did_ play into Wiggin's hands,” growled the disgruntled
Garner. “That's exactly what a glib-tongued skunk like him would want.”

“Well, it gave me a minute to try to get my wind, anyway,” said Tingle,
still red in the face, “but I wasn't equal to a mob of baseball rooters
like that. I started in to deny some of Wiggin's charges when another
smart Alec spoke up and said: 'Hold on! tell us about the time you and
your candidate started home from a ball at Catoosa Springs in a buggy,
and were so drunk that the horse took you to the house of a man who used
to own him sixteen miles from where you wanted to go. Of course, you
all know, boys, that was a big exaggeration, but I had no idea it was
generally known. Anyway, I thought the crowd would laugh their heads
off. I reckon it was the way I looked. I felt as if every man, woman,
and child there had mashed a bad egg on me and was chuckling over their
marksmanship. I ended up by getting mad, and I saw by Wiggin's grin that
he liked that. I managed to say a few things in denial, and then Wiggin
got up and roasted me and my paper to a turn. He said that in supporting
Dwight editorially the _Headlight_ was giving sanction to Dwight's ideas
in favor of the negro and against honest white people, and that every
man there who had any family or State pride ought to stop taking
the dirty sheet; and, bless your life, some of them did cancel their
subscriptions when they met me after the speaking; but I'm going to
keep on mailing it, anyway. It will be like sending free tracts to the
heathen, but it may bear fruit.”




CHAPTER V.

[Illustration: 9054]

ALF an hour later all the young men had left the room except Garner
and Dwight. Garner still wore the frown brought to his broad brow by
Tingle's recital.

“I've set my heart on putting this thing through,” he said; “and while
it looks kind of shaky, I haven't lost all hope yet. Of course, your
reckless remarks about the White Caps have considerably damaged us in
the mountains, but we may live it down. It may die a natural death if
you and Dan Willis don't meet and plug away at each other and set the
talk afloat again. I reckon he'll keep out of your way when he's sober,
anyway.”

“I am not running after him,” Carson returned. “I simply said what I
thought and Wiggin made the most of it.”

Garner was silent for several minutes, then he folded his dime novel and
bent it across his knee, and when he finally spoke Dwight thought he
had never seen a graver look on the strong face. He had seen it full
of emotional tears when Garner was at the height of earnest appeal to a
jury in a murder case; he had seen it dark with the fury of unjust legal
defeat, but now there was a strange feminine whiteness at the corners of
the big facile mouth, a queer twitching of the lips.

“I've made up my mind to tell you a secret,” he said, falteringly. “I've
come near it several times and backed out. It's a subject I don't know
how to handle. It's about a woman, Carson. You know I'm not a ladies'
man. I don't call on women; I don't take them buggy-riding; I don't
dance with them, or even know how to fire soft things at them like you
and Keith, but I've had my experience.”

“It certainly is a surprise to me,” Dwight said, sympathetically, and
then in the shadow of Garner's seriousness he found himself unable to
make further comment.

“I reckon you'll lose all respect for me for thinking there was a ghost
of a chance in that particular quarter,” Garner pursued, without meeting
his companion's eye. “But, Carson, my boy, there is a certain woman
that every man who knows her has loved or is still loving. Keith's crazy
about her, though he has given up all hope as I did long ago, and even
poor Bob Smith thinks he's in luck if she will only listen to one of his
new songs or let him do her some favor. We all love her, Carson, because
she is so sweet and kind to us--”

“You mean--” Dwight interrupted, impulsively, and then lapsed into
silence, an awkward flush rising to his brow.

“Yes, I mean Helen Warren, old man. As I say, I had never thought of a
woman that way in my life. We were thrown together once at a house-party
at Hilburn's farm--well, I simply went daft. She never refused to
walk with me when I asked her, and seemed specially interested in my
profession. I didn't know it at the time, but I have since discovered
that she has that sweet way with every man, rich or poor, married or
single. Well, to make a long story short, I proposed to her. The whole
thing is stamped on my brain as with a branding-iron. We had taken a
long walk that morning and were seated under a big beech-tree near a
spring. She kept asking about my profession, her face beaming, and it
all went to my head. I knew that I was the ugliest man in the State,
that I had no style about me, and knew nothing about being nice to women
of her sort; but her interest in everything pertaining to the law made
me think, you know, that she admired that kind of thing. I went wild. As
I told her how I felt I actually cried. Think of it--I was silly enough
to blubber like a baby! I can't describe what happened. She was shocked
and pained beyond description. She had never dreamed that I felt that
way. I ended by asking her to try to forget it all, and we had a long,
awful walk to the house.”

“That _was_ tough,” Carson Dwight said, a queer expression on his face.

“Well, I've told it to you for a special reason,” Garner said, with a
big, trembling sigh. “Carson, I am a close observer, and I afterwards
made up my mind that I knew why she had led me on to talk so much about
the law and my work in particular.”

“Oh, you found that out!” Carson said, almost absently.

“Yes, my boy, it was about the time you and I were thinking of going in
together. It was all on your account.”

Carson stared straight at Garner. “_My_ account? Oh no!”

“Yes, on your account. I've kept it from you all this time. I'm your
friend now in full--to the very bone, but at that time I felt too sore
to tell you. I'd lost all I cared for on earth, but I simply had too
much of primitive man left in me to let you know how well you stood. My
God, Carson, about that time I used to sit at my desk behind some old
book pretending to read, but just looking at you as you sat at work
wondering how it would feel to have what was yours. Then I watched you
both together; you seemed actually made for each other, an ideal couple.
Then came your--she refused you.”

“I know, I know, but why talk about it, Garner?” Carson had risen and
stood in the doorway in the rays of the morning sun. There was silence
for a moment. The church bells were ringing and negroes and whites were
passing along the street below.

“It may be good for me to speak of it and be done with it, or it may
not,” said Garner; “but this is what I was coming to. I've said it was
a long time before I could tell you that she was once--I don't know how
she is now, but she was at one time in love with you.”

“Oh no, no, she was never that!” Dwight said. “We were great friends,
but she never cared that much for me or for any one.”

“Well, it was a long time before I could say what I thought about
that, and I have only just now taken another step in self-renunciation.
Carson, I can now say that you didn't have a fair deal, and that I have
reached a point in which I want to see you get it. I think I know why
she refused you.”

“You do?” Dwight said, pale and excited, as he came away from the door
and leaned heavily against the wall near his friend.

“Yes, it was this way. I've studied it all out. She loved Albert as few
women love their brothers, and his grim end was an almost unbearable
shock. After his death, you know it leaked out that you had been
Albert's constant companion through his dissipation, almost, in fact, up
to the very end. She couldn't reconcile herself to your part, innocent
as it was, in the tragedy, and it simply killed the feeling she had for
you. I suppose it is natural to a character as strong as hers.”

“I've always feared that--that was the reason,” said Dwight,
falteringly, as he went back to the door and looked out. There was a
droop of utter dejection on him and his face seemed to have aged.
“Garner,” he said, suddenly, “there is no use denying anything. You have
admitted your love for her, why should I deny mine? I never cared for
any other woman and I never shall.”

“That's right, but you didn't get a fair deal, all the same,” said
Garner. “She's never looked for any sort of justification in your
conduct; her poor brother's death stands like a draped wall between you,
but I know you were not as black as you were painted. Carson, all the
time you were keeping pace with Albert Warren you were blind to the gulf
ahead of him and were simply glorying in his friendship--_because he was
her brother_. Ah, I know that feeling!”

Carson was silent, while Garner's gray eyes rested on him for a moment
full of conviction, and then he nodded. “Yes, I think that was it. It
was my ruination, but I could not get away from the fascination of
his companionship. He fairly worshipped her and used to talk of her
constantly when we were together, and he--he sometimes told me things
she kept back. He knew how I felt. I told him. Through him I seemed to
be closer to her. But when the news came that he was dead, and when
I met her at the funeral at the church, and caught her eye, I saw her
shrink back in abhorrence. She wouldn't go out with me ever again after
that, and was never exactly the same.”

“That was two years ago, my boy,” Garner said, significantly, “and your
character has changed. You are a better, firmer man. In fact, it seems
to me that your change dates from Albert Warren's death. But now I'm
coming to the thing that prompted me to say all this. I met Major Warren
in the post-office this morning. He was greatly excited. Carson, she
has just written him that she is coming home for a long stay and the old
gentleman is simply wild with delight.”

“Oh, she's coming, then!” Dwight exclaimed, in surprise.

“Yes, and Keith and Bob and the rest of her adorers will go crazy over
the news and want to celebrate it. I didn't tell them. I wanted you to
know it first. There is one other thing. You know you can't tell whether
there is anything in an idle report, but the gossips say she has perhaps
met her fate down there. I've even heard his name--one Earle Sanders, a
well-to-do cotton merchant of good standing in the business world. But
I'll never believe she's engaged to him till the cards are out.”

“I really think it may be true,” Carson Dwight said, a firm, set
expression about his lips. “I've heard of him. He's a man of fine
character and intellect. Yes, it may be true, Garner.”

“Well,” and Garner drew himself up and folded his arms, “if it should
happen to be so, Carson, there would be only one thing to do, and that
would be to grin and bear it.”

“Yes, that would be the only thing,” Dwight made answer. “She has a
right to happiness, and it would have been wrong for her to have tied
herself to me, when I was what I was, and when I am still as great a
failure as I am.”

He turned suddenly out onto the passage, and Garner heard his resounding
tread as he walked away.

“Poor old chap,” Garner mused, as he leaned forward and looked at the
threadbare toes of his slippers, “if he weathers this storm he'll make
a man right--if not, he'll go down with the great majority, the motley
throng meant for God only knows what purpose.”




CHAPTER VI.

[Illustration: 9061]

HE Warren homestead was in a turmoil of excitement over Helen's return.
The ex-slaves of the family for miles around had assembled to celebrate
the occasion in quite the ante-bellum fashion. The men and grown boys
sat about the front lawn and on the steps of the long veranda and talked
of the day Helen was born, of her childhood, of her beauty and numerous
conquests, away from them, and of the bare possibility of her deigning
to accept the hand of some one of her powerful and wealthy suitors.

In her own chamber, a great square room with many windows, Helen, tall,
graceful, with light-brown eyes and almost golden hair, was receiving
the women and girls. She had brought a present suitable for each of
them, as they knew she would, and the general rejoicing was equal to
that of an old-time Georgia Christmas.

“You are all here,” Helen smiled, as she looked about the room, “except
Mam' Linda. Is she not well?”

“Yessum, she's well as common,” Jennie, a yellow house-maid, said, “as
well as she been since Pete had dat scrimmage wid de White Caps. Missie,
you gwine notice er gre't change in Mam' Lindy. Since dat turrible
night, while she seem strong in de body, she looks powerful weak in
de face en sperit. Unc' Lewis is worried about 'er. She des set in er
cottage do' en rock back an' fo'th all day long. You done heard 'bout dat
lambastin', 'ain't you, Missie?”

“Yes, my father wrote me about it,” Helen replied, an expression of
sympathetic pain on her well-featured face, “but he didn't tell me that
mammy was taking it so hard.”

“He was tryin' ter keep you fum worryin',” Jennie said, observantly.
“Marster knowed how much sto' you set by yo' old mammy. He was de
maddest man you ever laid eyes on dat night, but he couldn't do nothin',
fer it was all over, en dem white trash done skedaddle back whar dey
come fum.”.

“And was Pete so much to blame?” Helen asked, her voice shaking.

“Blame fer de company he been keepin', Missie--dat's all; but what you
gwine ter do wid er strappin' young nigger growin' up? It des like it
was in de old day fo' de war. De niggers had to have deir places ter
meet an' cut up shines. Dey been done too much of it at Ike Bowen's. De
white folks dat lived round dar couldn't sleep at night. It was one long
shindig or a fist-cuff scrap fum supper till daylight.”

“Well, I wish Mam' Linda would come to see me,” Helen said. “I'm anxious
about her. If she isn't here soon I'll go to her.”

“She's comin' right on, Missie,” another negro girl said, “but she tol'
Unc' Lewis she was gwine ter wait till we all cleared out. She say you
her baby, en she ain't gwine ter be bothered wid so many, when she see
you de fust time after so long.”

“That's exactly like her,” Helen smiled. “Well, you all must go now,
and, Jennie, tell her I am dying to see her.”

The room was soon cleared of its chattering and laughing throng, and
Linda, supported by her husband, a stalwart mulatto, came from her
cottage behind the house and went up to Helen's room. She was short,
rather portly, about half white, and for that reason had a remarkably
intelligent face which bore the marks of a strong character. Entering
the room, after sharply enjoining her husband to wait for her in the
hall, she went straight up to Helen and laid her hand on the young
lady's head.

“So I got my baby back once mo',” she said, tenderly.

“Yes, I couldn't stay away, Mammy,” Helen said, with an indulgent smile.
“After all, home is the sweetest place on earth--but you mustn't stand
up; get a chair.”

The old woman obeyed, slowly placing the chair near that of her mistress
and sitting down. “I'm glad you got back, honey,” she said. “I loves all
my white folks, but you is my baby, en I never could talk to de rest of
um lak I kin ter you. Oh, honey, yo' old mammy has had lots en lots er
trouble!”

“I know, Mammy, father wrote me about it, and I've heard more since I
got here. I know how you love Pete.”

Linda folded her arms on her breast and leaned forward till her elbows
rested on her knees. Helen saw a wave of emotion shake her whole body
as she straightened up and faced her with eyes that seemed melting in
grief. “Honey,” she said, “folks said when de law come en give we all
freedom dat de good day was at hand. It was ter be a time er plenty en
joy fer black folks; but, honey, never while I was er slave did I had
ter suffer what I'm goin' thoo now. In de old time marster looked after
us; de lash never was laid on de back er one o' his niggers. No white
pusson never dared to hit one of us, en yit now in dis day er glorious
freedom, er whole gang of um come in de dead er night en tied my child
wid ropes en tuck turn about lashin' 'im. Honey, sometimes I think dey
ain't no Gawd fer a pusson wid one single streak er black blood in 'im.
Ef dey is er Gawd fer sech es me, why do He let me pass thoo what been
put on me? I heard dat boy's cryin' half er mile, honey, en stood in de
flo' er my house en couldn't move, listenin' en listenin' ter his
screams en dat lash failin' on 'im. Den dey let 'im loose en he come
runnin' erlong de street ter find me--ter find his mammy, honey--his
mammy who couldn't do nothin' fer 'im. En dar right at my feet he fell
over in er faint. I thought he was dead en never would open his eyes
ergin.”

“And I wasn't here to comfort you!” Helen said, in a tearful tone of
self-reproach. “You were alone through it all.”

“No, I wasn't, honey. Thank de Lawd, dar is some er de right kind er
white folks left. Marse Carson Dwight heard it all fum his room en come
over. He raised Pete up en tuck 'im in an' laid 'im on de baid. He tuck 'im
up in his arms, honey, young marster did, en set to work to bring 'im to.
An' after de po' boy was easy en ersleep en de doctor gone off, Marse
Carson come ter me en tuck my hand. 'Mam' Lindy,' he said, es pale as ef
he'd been sick er long time, 'dis night's work has give me some'n' ter
think erbout. De best white men in de Souf won't stan' fer dis. Sech
things cayn't go on forever. Ef I go to de Legislature I'll see dat dey
gwine ter pass laws ter pertect you faithful old folks.”

“Carson said that?” Helen's voice was husky, her glance averted.

“Yes, en he was dead in earnest, honey; he wasn't des talkin' ter
comfort me. I know, kase I done hear suppen else dat happened since
den.”

“What was that?” Helen asked.

“Why, dey say dat Marse Carson went straight down-town en tried ter find
somebody dat was in de mob. He heard Dan Willis was among 'em--you know
who he is, honey. He's er bad, desp'rate moonshine man. Well, Marse
Carson spoke his mind about 'im, an' dared 'im out in de open. Unc'
Lewis said Mr. Garner an' all Marse Carson's friends tried to stop
 'im, kase it would go dead agin 'im in his 'lection, but Marse Carson
wouldn't take back er word, en was so mad he couldn't hold in. En dat
another hard thing to bear, honey,” Linda went on. “Des think, Marse
Carson cayn't even try to help er po' old woman lak me widout ruinin'
his own chances.”

“Is it as serious as that?” Helen asked, with deep concern.

“Yes, honey, he never kin win his race lessen he act diffunt. Dey say
dat man Wiggin is laughin' fit ter kill hisse'f over de way he got de
upper hold. I told Marse Carson des t'other day he mustn't do dat way,
but he laughed in my face in de sweet way he always did have. 'Ef dey
vote ergin me fer dat, Mam' Lindy,' he say, 'deir votes won't be worth
much.' Marse Carson is sho got high principle, honey. His pa think he
ain't worth much, but _he's_ all right. You mark my words, he's gwine
ter make a gre't big man--he gwine ter do dat kase he's got er tender
heart in 'im, an ain't afeard of anything dat walk on de yeath. He may
lose dis one 'lection, but he'll not stop. I know young white men, thoo
en thoo, en I never y it seen er better one.”

[Illustration: 0067]

“Have you--have you seen him recently?” Helen asked, surprised at the
catch in her voice.

“Oh yes, honey,” the old woman said, plaintively; “seem lak he know how
I'm sufferin', en he been comin' over often en talkin' ter me'n Lewis.
Seem lak he's so sad, honey, here late. Ain't you seed 'im yit, honey?”

“No, he hasn't been over,” Helen replied, rather awkwardly. “He will
come, though; he and I are good friends.”

“You gwine find 'im changed er lot, honey,” the old woman said. “Do you
know, I don't believe he ever got over Marse Albert's death. He warn't
ter blame 'bout dat, honey, dough I do believe he feel dat way. Seem lak
we never kin fetch up Marse Albert's name widout Marse Carson git sad.
One night here late when Lewis was talkin' 'bout when yo' pa went off
en fetched young master home, Marse Carson hung his head en say: 'Mam'
Lindy, I wish dat time could be go over ergin. I would act so diffunt.
I never seed whar all dem scrapes was leadin' to. But it learned me a
lesson, Mam' Lindy.'”

“That's it,” Helen said, bitterly, as if to herself; “he survived. He
has profited by the calamity, but my poor, dear brother--” She went no
further, for her voice broke and her eyes filled with tears.

“Don't think erbout dat, honey,” old Linda said, consolingly. “You got
yo' one great trouble lak I has, but you is at home wid we all now, en
you must not be sad.”

“I don't intend to be, Mammy,” Helen said, wiping her eyes on her
handkerchief. “We are going to try to do something to keep Pete out of
trouble. Father thinks it is his associates that are to blame. We must
try in future to keep him away from bad company.”

“Dat what I want ter do, honey,” the old woman said, “en ef I des had
somewhar ter send 'im so he could be away fum dis town I'd be powerful
glad.”




CHAPTER VII.

[Illustration: 9070]

Helen anticipated, the young ladies of the town, her most intimate
friends and former school-mates, came in a body that afternoon to see
her. The reception formally opened in the great parlor down-stairs,
but it was not many minutes before they all found themselves in Helen's
chamber fluttering about and chattering like doves in their spring
plumage.

“There's no use putting it off longer,” Ida Tarpley, Helen's cousin,
laughed; “they are all bent on seeing your _things_, and they will
simply spend the night here if you don't get them out.”

“Oh, I think that would look so vain and silly in me,” Helen protested,
her color rising. “I don't like to exhibit my wardrobe as if I were a
dressmaker, or a society woman who is hard up and trying to dispose of
them.”

“The idea of your not doing it, dear,” Mary King, a little blonde, said,
“when not one of us has seen a decent dress or hat since the summer
visitors went away last fall.”

“Leave it to me,” Ida Tarpley laughed. “You girls get off the bed. I
want something to lay them on. If it were only evening I'd make her
put on that gown she wore at the Governor's ball. You remember what the
_Constitution's_ society reporter said about it. He said it was a poet's
dream. If I ever get one it will be _in_ a dream. You must really wear
it to your dance, Helen.”

“_My_ dance?” Helen said, in surprise.

“Oh, I hope I'm not telling secrets,” Ida said; “but I met Keith Gordon
and Bob Smith in town as I came on. They had a list and were taking
subscriptions from all the young men. They had already enough put down
to buy a house and lot. They say they are going to give you the swellest
dance that was eyer heard of. Bob said that it simply had to surpass
anything you'd been to in Augusta or Atlanta. Expense is not to be
considered. The finest band in Chattanooga has already been engaged;
the refreshments are to be brought from there by a caterer and a dozen
expert waiters. A carload of flowers have been ordered. It is to open
with a grand march.” Ida swung her hands and body comically to and fro
as if in the cake walk, and bowed low. “Nobody is to be allowed to dance
with you who hasn't an evening suit on, and _then_ only once. They are
all crazy about you, Helen. I never could understand it. I've tried to
copy the look you have in the eyes hundreds of times, but it won't have
the slightest effect.”

“There's only one explanation of it,” Miss Wimberley, another girl,
remarked; “it is simply because she really likes them all.”

“Well, I really do, as for that,” Helen said; “and I think it is awfully
nice of them to give me such a dance. It's enough to turn a girl's head.
Well, if Ida really is going to pull out my things, I'll go down-stairs
and make you a lemonade.”

Later in the afternoon the young ladies had all gone except Ida Tarpley,
who lingered with Helen on the veranda.

“I'm glad the girls didn't have the bad taste to embarrass you by
questioning you about Mr. Sanders,” Ida said. “Of course, it is all over
town. Uncle spoke of the possibility of it to some one and that put
it afloat. I'm anxious to see him, Helen. I know he must be
nice--everything, in fact, that a man ought to be, for you always had
high ideals.”

Helen flushed almost angrily, and she drew herself erect and stood quite
rigid, looking at her cousin.

“Ida,” she said, “I don't like what you have just said.”

“Oh, dearest, I'm sorry, but I thought--”

“That's the trouble about a small town,” Helen went on. “People take
such liberties with you, and about the most delicate things. Down in
Augusta my friends never would think of saying I was actually engaged
to a man till it was announced. But here at home it is in every mouth
before they have even seen the gentleman in question.”

“But you really have been receiving constant attentions from Mr. Sanders
for more than a year, haven't you, dear?” Miss Tarpley asked, blandly.

“Yes, but what of that?” Helen retorted. “He and I are splendid friends.
He has been very kind and thoughtful of my comfort, and I like him. He
is noble, sincere, and good. He extended the sweetest sympathy to me
when I went down there under my great grief, and I never can forget it,
but, nevertheless, Ida, I have not promised to marry him.”

“Oh, I see, it is not actually settled yet,” Miss Tarpley said. “Well,
I'm glad. I'm very, very glad.”

“You are glad?” Helen said, wonderingly.

“Yes, I am. I'm glad because I don't want you to go away off down there
and marry a stranger to us. I really hope something will break it up. I
know Mr. Sanders must be awfully fond of you--any man would be who had
a ghost of a chance of winning you--and I know your aunt has been doing
all in her power to bring the match about--but I understand you, dear,
and I am afraid you would not be happy.”

“Why do you say that so--so positively?” Helen asked, coldly.

“Because,” Ida said, impulsively, “I don't believe a girl of your
disposition ever could love in the right way more than once, and--”

“And what?” Helen demanded, her proud lips compressed, her eyes flashing
defiantly.

“Well, I may be wrong, dear,” Miss Tarpley went on, “but if you were not
actually in love before you went to Augusta, you were very near it.”

“How absurd!” Helen exclaimed, with a little angry toss of her head.

“Do you remember the night our set drove out to the Henderson party? I
went with Mr. Garner and Carson Dwight took you? Oh, Helen, I met you
and Carson walking together in the moonlight that evening under the
apple-trees in the old meadow, and if ever a pair of human beings really
loved each other you two must have done so that night. I saw it in his
happy, triumphant face, and in the fact, Helen dear, that you allowed
him to be with you so much, when you knew other admirers were waiting to
see you.”

Helen looked down; her face was clouded over, her proud lip twitched.

“Ida,” she said, tremulously, “I don't want you ever again to mention
Carson Dwight's name to me in--in that way. You have no right to.”

“Yes, I have,” Ida protested, firmly. “I have the right as a loyal
friend to the best, most suffering, and noblest young man I ever knew. I
read you like a book, dear. You really cared very, very much for Carson
once, but after your great loss you never thought the same of him
again.”

“No, nor I never shall,” Helen said, firmly. “I admire him and shall
treat him as a good friend when we meet, but that will be the end of it.
Whether I cared for him or not, as girls care for young men, is neither
here nor there. It is over with.”

“And all simply because he was a little wild at the time your poor
brother--”

“Stop!” Helen said; “don't argue the matter. I can only now associate
him with the darkest hour of my life. I'm tempted to tell you something,
Ida,” and Helen bowed her head for a moment, and then went on in an
unsteady voice. “When my poor brother's trunk was brought home, it was
my duty to put the things it contained in order. There I found some
letters to him, and one dated only two days before Albert's death was
from--from Carson Dwight. I read only a portion of it, but it revealed a
page in poor Albert's life that I had never read--never dreamed could be
possible.”

“But Carson,” Ida Tarpley exclaimed; “what did _he_ have to do with
that?”

Helen swallowed the lump in her throat, and with a cold, steely gleam in
her eyes she said, bitterly: “He could have held out his hand with the
superior strength you think he has and drawn the poor boy back from the
brink, but he didn't. The words he wrote about it were light, flippant,
and heartless. He treated the whole awful situation as a joke, as if--as
if he _himself_ were familiar with such unmentionable things.”

“Ah, I begin to understand it all now!” Ida sighed. “That letter,
coupled with Cousin Albert's awful death, was such a terrible shock that
you cannot feel the same towards Carson. But oh, Helen, you would pity
him if you knew him now as I do. He has never altered in his feelings
towards you. In fact, it seems to me that he loves you even more deeply
than ever. And, dear, if you had seen his patient efforts to make a
better man of himself you'd not harbor such thoughts against him. You
will understand Carson some day, but it may then be too late. I don't
believe a woman ever has a real sweetheart but once. You may marry the
man your aunt wants you to take, but your heart will some day turn back
to the other. You will remember, too, and bitterly, that you condemned
him for a youthful fault which you ought to have pardoned.”

“Do you think so, Ida?” Helen asked, her soft, brown eyes averted.

“Yes, and you'll remember, too, that while his other friends were trying
to help him stick to his resolutions you turned against him. He's going
to make a great and good man, Helen. I've known that for some time. He
is having his troubles, but even they will help him to be stronger
in the end. His greatest trial is going on right now, while folks are
saying that you are going to marry another man. Pshaw! you may say what
you like about Mr. Sanders' good qualities, but I know I shall not
like him,” concluded Ida, with a smile, as she turned to go. “He is a
usurper, and I'm dead against him.”

Helen remained on the veranda after her cousin had left till the
twilight gathered about her. She was about to go in, as it was near
tea-time, when she heard a grumbling voice down the street and saw old
Uncle Lewis returning from town, driving his son, the troublesome Peter,
before him.

“You go right thoo dat gate on back ter dat house, you black imp er
'straction!” he thundered, “er I'll tek er boa'd en lambast de life
out'n you. Here it is night-time en you ain't chop no stove-wood fer
de big house kitchen, en been lyin' roun' dem cotton wagons raisin' mo'
rows wid dem mountain white men.”

“What's the matter, Uncle Lewis?” Helen asked, as the boy sulkily passed
round the corner of the house and the old man, out of breath, paused at
the steps.

“Oh, Missy, you don't know what me'n' Mam' Lindy got to bear up under. We
don't know how ter manage dat boy. Lindy right now is out'n 'er head
wid worry. Buck Black come tol' us 'bout an hour ago dat Pete en some mo'
triflin' niggers was down at de warehouse sassin' some mountain white
men. Buck heard Pete say dat Johnson en his gang couldn't whip him ergin
dout gittin' in trouble, en dey was in er inch of er big row when de
marshal busted it up. Buck ain't no fool, fer a black man, Missy, en
he told me'n' Lindy ef we don't manage ter git Pete out'n de company he
keeps dat dem white men will sho string 'im up.”

“Yes, something has to be done, that's plain,” said Helen,
sympathetically. “I know Mam' Linda must be worrying, and I'll go down
to see her this evening. It doesn't seem to me that a town like this is
best for a boy like Pete. I'll speak to father about it, Uncle Lewis. It
won't do to have Mammy bothered like this. It will kill her. She is not
strong enough to stand it.”

“Oh, Missy,” the old man said, “I wish you would try ter do some'n'.
Me'n' Lindy is sho at de end er our rope.”

“Well, I promise you I'll do all I can, Uncle Lewis,” Helen said, and,
much relieved, the old negro trudged homeward.




CHAPTER VIII.

[Illustration: 9078]

LOCAL institution in which “the gang” was more or less interested was
known as the “Darley Club.” It occupied the entire upper floor of
a considerable building on the main street, and had been organized,
primarily, by the older married men of the town to give the young men of
the best families a better meeting-place than the bar-rooms and offices
of the hotels. At first the older men looked in occasionally to see that
the rather rigid rules of the institution were being kept. But men of
middle-age and past, who have comfortable firesides, are not fond of
the noisy gatherings of their original prototypes, and the Club was
soon left to the management of the permanent president, Mr. Wade Tingle,
editor of the _Headlight_.

Wade endeavored, to the best of his genial nature, to enforce all rules,
collect all dues, and impose all fines, but he wasn't really the man for
the place. He accepted what cash was handed to him, trying to remember
the names of the payers and amounts as he wrote his editorials,
political notes, and social gossip, ending up at the end of each month
with no money at all to pay the rent or the wages of the negro factotum.
However, there was always an outlet from this embarrassment, for
Wade had only to draw a long face as he met some of the well-to-do
stay-at-homes and say that “club expenses were somehow running short,”
 and without question the shortage was made up. Wade had tried to be
officially stern, too, on occasion. Once when Keith Gordon had violated
what Wade termed club discipline, not to say club etiquette, Wade
threatened to be severe. But it happened to be a point upon which there
was a division of opinion, and Keith also belonged to “the gang.” It had
happened this way: Keith had a certain corner in the Club reading-room
where he was wont to write his letters of an evening, and coming down
after supper one night he discovered that the attendant had locked the
door and gone off to supper. Keith was justly angry. He stood at the
door for a few minutes, and then, being something of an athlete, he
stepped back, made a run the width of the sidewalk, and broke the lock,
left the door hanging on a single hinge, and went up and calmly wrote
his letters. As has been intimated, Wade took a serious view of this
violation of club dignity, his main contention being that Keith ought
to have the lock repaired and the hinge replaced. However, Keith just
as firmly stood on his rights, his contention being that a member of the
Club in good standing could not be withheld from his rights by the mere
carelessness of a negro or a twenty-five cent cast-iron lock. So it was
that, in commemoration of the incident, the door remained without the
lock and hinge for many a day.

It was in this building that the grand ball in honor of Helen Warren's
home-coming was to be given. During the entire preceding day Bob Smith
and Keith Gordon worked like happy slaves. The floor had been roughened
by roller-skating, and a carpenter with plane and sand-paper was
smoothing it, Bob giving it its finishing touch by whittling sperm
candles over it and rubbing in the shavings with the soles of his shoes
as he pirouetted about, his right arm curved around an imaginary waist.
The billiard-tables were pushed back against the wall, the ladies'
dressing-rooms thoroughly scoured and put in order, and the lamps
cleaned and trimmed. Keith had brought down from his home some
fine oil-paintings, and these were hung appropriately. But Keith's
_chef-d'ouvre_ of arrangement and decoration was a happy inspiration,
and he was enjoining it on the initiated ones to keep it as a surprise
for Helen. He had once heard her say that her favorite flower was the
wild daisy, and as they were now in bloom, and grew in profusion in the
fields around the town, Keith had ordered several wagon-loads of them
gathered, and now the walls of the ballroom were fairly covered with
them. Graceful festoons of the flowers hung from the ceiling, draped
the doorways, and rose in beautiful mounds on the white-clothed
refreshment-tables.

As a special favor he admitted Carson Dwight in at the carefully guarded
door at dusk on the evening of the ball, first drawing down the blinds
and lighting the candles and lamps that his chum might have the full
benefit of the scene as it would strike Helen on her arrival.

“Isn't that simply superb?” he asked. “Do you reckon they gave her
anything prettier while she was down there? I don't believe it, Carson.
I think this is the dandiest room a girl ever tripped a toe in.”

“Yes, it's all right,” Dwight said, admiringly. “It is really great, and
she will appreciate it keenly. She is that way.”

“I think so myself,” said Keith. “I've been nervous all day, though, old
man. I've been watching every train.”

“Afraid the band wouldn't come?” asked Dwight.

“No, those coons can be depended on; they will be down in full force
with the best figure-caller in the South. No, I was afraid, though, that
Helen might have written to that Augusta chump, and that he would come
up. That certainly would give the thing cold feet.”

“Ah!” Carson exclaimed; “I see.”

“The dear girl wouldn't rub it in on us to that extent, old man,” Keith
said. “I know it now. She really may be engaged to him, and she may not,
but she knows how we feel, and it's bully of her not to invite him. It
would really have been a wet blanket to the whole business. We'd have
to treat him decently, as a visitor, you know, but I'd rather have taken
castor-oil for my part of it. All the gang except you were over to see
her Sunday afternoon; why didn't you go?”

“Oh, you know I live only next door, with an open gate between, and
I thought I'd better give my place to you fellows who don't have my
opportunity. I've already seen her. In fact, she ran over to see my
mother yesterday.”

The ball was in full swing when Carson arrived that night. The street in
front of the club was crowded with carriages, buggies, and livery-stable
“hacks.” The introductory grand march was in progress, and when Carson
went to the improvised dressing-room in charge of Skelt to check his
hat he found Garner standing before a mirror tugging at the lapels of an
evening coat and trying to adjust a necktie which kept climbing higher
than it should. Darley was just at the point in its post-bellum struggle
where evening dress for men was a thing more of the luxurious past than
the stern present, and Dwight readily saw that his partner had persuaded
himself for once to don borrowed plumage.

“What's the matter?” Carson asked, as he thrust his hat-check into the
pocket of his immaculate white waistcoat.

“Oh, the damn thing don't fit!” said Garner, in high disgust. “I know
now that my father has a hump, or did have when he ordered this suit for
his wedding-trip. The tailor who designed this _costeem de swaray_ tried
to help him out, but he has transferred the hump to me by other means
than heredity. Look how the back of it sticks out from my neck!”

“That's because you twist your body to see it in the glass,” said
Carson, consolingly. “It's not so bad when you stand straight.”

“It's a case of not seeing others as they see you, eh?” Garner said,
better satisfied. “I haven't taken a chew of tobacco to-night. I
wouldn't splotch this shirt for the world. I couldn't spit farther than
an inch with this collar on, anyway. She's holding the reel for me. I
can't dance anything else, but I can go through that pretty well if I
get at the end and watch the others. You'd better hurry up and see
her card. There is a swell gang coming on the ten-o'clock train from
Atlanta, and they all know her.”

It was during the interval following the third number on the programme
that Carson met Helen promenading with Keith and offered her his arm.

“Oh, isn't it simply superb?” she said, when Keith had bowed
himself away and they had joined the other strollers round the big,
flower-perfumed room. “Carson, really I actually cried for joy just now
in the dressing-room. I declare I never want to go away from home again.
I'll never have such devoted friends as these.”

“It is nice of you to look at it that way, Helen,” he said, “after the
gay time you have had in Augusta and other cities.”

“At least it is honest and sincere here at home,” she answered,
“while down there it is--well, full of strife, social competition, and
jealousies. I really; got homesick and simply had to come back.”

“We are simply delighted to have you again,” he said, almost fearing to
look upon her, for in her exquisite evening gown and the proud poise of
her head she seemed more beautiful and imperious, and farther removed
from his hopes than he had thought her even in the darkest hours of her
first refusal to condone his fatal offence.

She was looking straight into his eyes with a thoughtful, questioning
stare, when she said: “They all seem the same, Carson, except you. Bob
Smith, Keith, and even Mr. Garner are just like I left them, but somehow
you are altered. You look so much older, so much more serious. Is it
politics that is weighing you down--making you worry?”

“Well,” he laughed, evasively, “politics is not exactly the easiest game
in the world, and the bare fear that I may not succeed, after all, is
enough to make a fellow of my temperament worry. It seems to be my last
throw of the dice, Helen. My father will lose all faith in me if this
does not go through.”

“Yes, I know it is serious,” the girl said. “Keith and Mr. Garner
have talked to me about it. They say they have never seen you so much
absorbed in anything before. You really must win, Carson--you simply
must!”

“But this is no time to talk over sordid politics,” he said, with a
smile. “This is your party and it must be made delightful.”

“Oh, I have my worries, too,” she said, gravely. “I felt a queer twinge
of conscience to-night when all the servants came to see me before I
left home. They were all so happy except Mam' Linda. She tried to act
like the rest, but, Carson, her trouble about that worthless boy is
actually killing the dear old woman. She has her pride, too, and it
has been wounded to the quick. She was always proud of the fact that my
father never had whipped one of his slaves. I've heard her boast of it a
hundred times; and now that she no longer belongs to us in reality, and
her only child was beaten so cruelly, she simply can't get over it.”

“I knew she felt that way,” Dwight said, sympathetically.

Helen's hand tightened unconsciously on his arm as they were passing
by the corner containing the orchestra. “Do you know,” she said, “Mam'
Linda told me that of all the people who had been to see her since
then that you had been the kindest, most thoughtful, the most helpful?
Carson, that was very, very sweet of you.”

“I was only electioneering,” he said, with a flush. “I was after Uncle
Lewis's vote and Mam' Linda's influence.”

“No, you were not,” Helen declared. “It was pure, unadulterated
unselfishness on your part. You were sorry for her and for Uncle Lewis
and even Pete, who certainly needed punishment of some sort for the way
he's been conducting himself. Yes, it was only your good heart. I know
that, for several persons have told me you have even gone so far as to
let the affair hamper you in your political career. Oh, I know all about
what your opponent is saying, and I know mountain people well enough to
know you have given him a powerful weapon. They are terribly wrought
up over the race troubles, and it would be easy enough for them to
misunderstand your exact feeling. Oh, Carson, you must not let even Mam'
Linda's trouble stand between you and your high aim. Taking up her cause
will perhaps not do a bit of good, for no one person can solve so vital
a problem as that is, and your agitation of it may wreck your last
hope.”

“I've promised to keep my mouth shut, if Dan Willis and men of his
sort will not stay right at my heels with their threats. My campaign
managers--the gang, who hold a daily caucus at the den and lay down
my rules of conduct--have exacted that much from me on the penalty of
letting me go by the board if I disobey.”

“The dear boys!” Helen exclaimed. “I like every one of them, they are so
loyal to you. The close friendship of you all for one another is simply
beautiful.”

“Coming back to the inevitable Pete,” Dwight remarked, a few minutes
later. “I've been watching him since he was whipped, and I know he is in
great danger of getting even more deeply into trouble. He has a stupidly
resentful disposition, as many of his race have, and he is going around
making surly threats about Johnson, Wiggin, and others. If he keeps that
up and they get hold of it he will certainly get into serious trouble.”

“My father was speaking of that to-night,” Helen said. “And he was
thinking if there were any way of getting the boy away from his idle
town associates that it might prevent trouble and ease Mam' Linda's
mind.”

“I was thinking of that the other day when I saw Uncle Lewis searching
for him among the idle negroes,” said Carson; “and I have an idea.”

“Oh, you have? What is it?” Helen asked, eagerly.

“Why, Pete always has seemed to like me and take my advice, and as there
is, plenty of work on my farm for such a hand as he is I could give him
a good place and wages over there where he'd be practically removed from
his present associates.”

“Splendid, splendid!” Helen cried; “and will you do it?”

“Why, certainly, and right away,” Carson answered. “If you will have
Mam' Linda send him down to me in the morning I'll give him some
instructions and a good sharp talk, and I'll make my overseer at the
farm put him to work.”

“Oh, it is splendid!” Helen declared. “It will be such good news for
Mam' Linda. She'd rather have him work for you than any one in the
world.”

“There comes Wade to claim his dance,” Dwight said, suddenly; “and I
must be off.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, almost regretfully.

“To the office to work on political business--dozens and dozens of
letters to answer. Then I'm coming back for my waltz with you. I
sha'n't fail.” And as he put on his hat and threaded his way through the
whirling mass of dancers down to the street, he recalled with something
of a shock that not once in their talk had he even _thought_ of his
rival. He slowed up in the darkness and leaned against a wall. There
was a strange sinking of his heart as he faced the grim reality that
stretched out drearily before him. She was, no doubt, to be the wife of
another man. He had lost her. She was not for him, though there in
the glare of the ballroom, amid the sensuous strains of music, in the
perfume of the flowers dying in her service, she had seemed as close to
him in heart, soul, and sympathy as the night he and she--

He had reached his office, a little one-story brick building in the row
of lawyers' offices on the side street leading from the post-office to
the courthouse, and he unlocked the door and went in and lighted the
little murky lamp on his desk and pulled down a package of unanswered
letters.

Yes, he must work--work with that awful pain in his breast, the dry,
tightening sensation in his throat, the maddening vision of her dazzling
beauty and grace and sweetness before him. He dipped his pen, drew the
paper towards him, and began to write: “My dear Sir,--In receiving the
cordial assurances of your support in the campaign before me, I desire
to thank you most heartily and to--”

He laid the pen down and leaned back. “I can't do it, at least not
to-night,” he said. “Not while she is there looking like that and with
my waltz to come, and yet it must be done. I've lost her, and I am only
making it harder to bear. Yes, I must work--work!”

The pen went into the ink again. On the still night air came the strains
of music, the mellow, sing-song voice of the figure-caller in the
“square” dance, the whir and patter of many feet.




CHAPTER IX.

[Illustration: 9089]

EAVING Carson Dwight, Wade Tingle, and Bob Smith chatting about the ball
in the den the next morning, Garner went to the office, bit off a chew
of tobacco, and plunged into work with a vigor which indicated that
he was almost ashamed of his departure from his beaten track into the
unusual fields of social gayety. He still wore the upright collar and
white necktie of the night before, but the hitherto carefully guarded
expanse of shirt-front was already in imminent danger of losing all that
had once recommended it as a presentable garment.

With his small hand well spread over the page of the book he was
consulting, he had become oblivious to his surroundings when suddenly a
man stood in the doorway. He was tall and gaunt and wore a broad-brimmed
hat, a cotton checked shirt, jean trousers supported by a raw-hide belt,
and a pair of tall boots which, as he stood fiercely eying Garner, he
angrily lashed with his riding-whip. It was Dan Willis. His face was
slightly flushed from drink, and his eyes had the glare even his best
friends had learned to tear and tried to avoid.

“Whar's that that dude pardner o' yourn?” he asked.

“Oh, you mean Dwight!” Garner had had too much experience in the
handling of men to change countenance over any sudden turn of affairs,
either for or against his interests, and he had, also, acquired
admirable skill in most effective temporizing. “Why, let me see, Dan,”
 he went on, after he had paused for fully a moment, carefully inspected
the lines he was reading, frowned as if not quite satisfied therewith,
and then slowly turned down a leaf. “Let me think. Oh, you want to see
Carson! Sit down; take a chair.”

“I don't want to set down!” Willis thundered. “I want to see that damned
dude, and I want to see him right off.”

“Oh, that's it!” said Garner. “You are in a _hurry!_” And then, from the
rigid setting of his jaw, it was plain that the lawyer had decided on
the best mode of handling the specimen glowering down upon him. “Oh yes,
I remember now, Willis, that you were loaded up a few nights ago looking
for that chap. Now, advice is cheap--that is, the sort I'm going to give
you. Under ordinary circumstances I'd charge a fee for it. My advice to
you is to straddle that horse of yours and get out of this town. You are
looking for trouble--great, big, far-reaching trouble.”

“You hit the nail that pop, Bill Garner,” the mountaineer snorted. “I'm
expectin' to git trouble, or _give_ trouble, an' I hain't goin' to lose
time nuther. This settlement was due several days ago, but got put off.”

“Look here, Willis”--Garner stood up facing him--“you may not be a fool,
but you are acting powerfully like one. You are letting that measly
little candidate for the legislature make a cat's-paw of you. That's
what you're doing. He knows, if he can get up a shooting-scrap between
you and my pardner over that negro-whipping business, it will turn a few
mountain votes his way. If you get shot, Wiggin will have more charges
to make; and if Carson was to get the worst of it, the boy would be
clean out of the skunk's way. You and Wiggin are both in bad business.”

“Well, that's _my_ lookout!” the mountaineer growled, beside himself in
rage. “Carson Dwight said I was with Johnson the night the gang came in
and whipped them coons, and--”

“Well, you _were_,” said Garner, as suddenly as if he were browbeating a
witness. “What's the use to lie about it?”

“Lie--you say I--?”

“I said I didn't _want_ you to lie about it,” said Garner, calmly. “I
know half the mob, and respect most of them. I have an idea that some of
my own kinsfolk was along that night. They thought they were doing right
and acting in the best interests of the community. That's neither here
nor there. The men that were licked were negroes, and most of them bad
ones at that, but when a big, strapping man of your stamp comes with
blood in his eye and a hunk of metal on his hip, looking for the son
of an old Confederate soldier, who is a Democratic candidate for the
legislature, and a good all-round white citizen, why, I say that is the
time to call a halt, and to call it out loud! I happen to know a few of
the grand jury, and if there is trouble of a serious nature in this town
to-day, I can personally testify to enough deliberation in your voice
and eye this morning to jerk your neck out of joint.”

“What the hell do I care for you or your law?” Dan Willis snorted. “It's
what that damned dude said about _me_ that he's got to swallow, and if
he's in this town I'll find him. A fellow told me if he wasn't here he'd
be in Keith Gordon's room. I don't know whar that is, but I kin find
out.” Turning abruptly, Willis strode out into the street again.

“The devil certainly is to pay now,” Garner said, with his deepest frown
as he closed the law-book, thrust it back into its dusty niche in his
bookcase, and put on his hat. “Carson is still up there with those boys,
and that fellow may find him any minute. Carson won't take back a thing.
He's as mad about the business as Willis is. I wonder if I can possibly
manage to keep them apart.”

On his way to the den he met Pole Baker standing on the corner of the
street by a load of wood, which Pole had brought in to sell. Hurriedly,
Garner explained the situation, ending by asking the farmer if he could
see any way of getting Willis out of town.

“I couldn't work him myself,” Baker said, “fer the dern skunk hain't any
more use fer me than I have fer him, but I reckon I kin put some of his
pals onto the job.”

“Well, go ahead, Pole,” Garner urged. “I'll run up to the room and try
to detain Carson. For all you do, don't let Willis come up there.”

Garner found the young men still in the den chatting about the ball and
Carson's campaign.

Wade Tingle sat at the table with several sheets of paper before him,
upon which, in a big, reporter's hand, he had been writing a glowing
account of “the greatest social event” in the history of the town.

“I've got a corking write-up, Bill,” he said, enthusiastically. “I've
just been reading it to the gang. It is immense. Miss Helen sent me a
full memorandum of what the girls wore, and, for a green hand, I think I
have dressed 'em up all right.”

“The only criticism I made on it, Garner,” spoke up Keith from his bed
in the corner, where he lay fully dressed, “is that Wade has ended all
of Helen's descriptions by adding, 'and diamonds.' I'll swear I'm
no critic of style in writing, but that eternal 'and diamonds, and
diamonds, and diamonds,' at the end of every paragraph, sounds so
monotonous that it gets funny. He even had Miss Sally Ware's plain black
outfit tipped off with 'and diamonds.'”

“Well, I look at it this way, Bill,” Wade said, earnestly, as Garner sat
down, “Of course, the girls who had them on would not like to see them
left out, for they are nice things to have, and, on the other hand,
those who were short in that direction would feel sorter out of it.”

“I think if he had just written 'jewels' once in awhile,” Keith said,
“it would sound all right, and leave something to the imagination.”

“That might help,” Garner said, his troubled glance on Carson's rather
grave face; “but see that you don't write it 'jewelry.'”

“Well, I'll accept the amendment,” Wade said, as he began to scratch
his manuscript and rewrite.

Carson Dwight stood up. “Did you leave the office open?” he asked
Garner. “I've got to shape up that Holcolm deed and consult the
records.”

“Let it go for a while. I want to look it over first,” Garner said,
rather suddenly. “Sit down. I want to talk to you about the--the race.
You've got a ticklish proposition before you, old boy, and I'd like to
see you put it through.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Keith, sitting up on the edge of his bed. “Balls and
what girls wear belong to the regular run of life, but when the chief
of the gang is about to be beaten by a scoundrel who will hesitate at
nothing, it's time to be wide awake.”

“That's it,” said Garner, his brow ruffled, his ear open to sounds
without, his uneasy eyes on the group around him. And for several
minutes he held them where they sat, listening to his wise and observant
views of the matter in hand. Suddenly, while he was in the midst of a
remark, a foot-fall sounded on the long passage without. It was heavy,
loud, and striding. Garner paused, rose, went to the bureau, and from
the top drawer took out a revolver he always kept either there or in his
desk at the office. There was a firm whiteness about his lips which was
new to his friends.

“Carson,” he said, “have you got your gun?” and he stood staring at the
doorway.

A shadow fell on the floor; a man entered. It was Pole Baker, and he
looked around him in surprise, his inquiring stare on Garner's unwonted
mien and revolver.

“Oh, it's you!” Garner exclaimed. “Ah, I thought--”

“Yes, I come to tell you that--” Baker hesitated, as if uncertain
whether he was betraying confidence, and then catching Garner's warning
glance, he said, non-committally: “Say, Bill, that feller you and me was
talkin' about has jest gone home. I reckon you won't get yore money out
of him to-day.”

“Oh, well, it was a small matter, anyway, Pole,” Garner said, in a tone
of appreciative relief, as he put the revolver back in the drawer and
closed it. “I'll mention it to him the next time he's in town.”

“Say, what was the matter with you just now, Garner?” Wade Tingle asked
over the top of his manuscript. “I thought you were going to ask Carson
to fight a duel.”

But with his hand on Dwight's arm Garner was moving to the door. “Come
on, lot's get to work,” he said, with a deep breath and a grateful side
glance at Baker.

In front of the office one of Carson's farm wagons drawn by a pair of
mules was standing. Tom Hill-yer, Carson's overseer and general manager,
sat on the seat, and behind him stood Pete Warren, ready for his stay in
the country.

“Miss Helen's made quick work of it, I see,” Carson remarked. “She's
determined to get that rascal out of temptation.”

“You ought to give him a sharp talking to,” said Garner. “He's got
entirely too much lip for his own good. Skelt told me this morning that
if Pete doesn't dry up some of that gang will hang him before he is a
month older. He doesn't know any better, and means nothing by it, but he
has already made open threats against Johnson and Willis. You understand
those men well enough to know that in such times as these a negro can't
do that with impunity.”

“I agree with you, and I'll stop and speak to him now.”

When Carson came in and sat down at his desk, a few moments later,
Garner looked across at him and smiled.

“You certainly let him off easy,” he said. “I could have thrown a
Christmas turkey down the scamp's throat through that grin of his. I saw
you run your hand in your pocket and knew he was bleeding you.”

“Oh, well, I reckon I'm a failure at that sort of thing,” Dwight
admitted, with a sheepish smile. “I started in by saying that he must
not be so foolhardy as to make open threats against any of those men,
and he said: 'Looky here, Marse Carson, dem white rapscallions cut
gashes in my body deep enough ter plant corn in, an' I ain't gwine ter
love 'em fer it. _You_ wouldn't, you know you wouldn't.'”

“And he had you there,” Garner said, grimly. “Well, they may say what
they please up North about our great problem, but nothing but time and
the good Lord can solve it. You and I can tell that negro to keep his
mouth shut from sunup till sun-down, but I happen to know that he had a
remote white ancestor that was the proudest, hardest fighter that ever
swung a sword. Some of the rampant agitators say that deportation is
the only solution. Huh! if you deported a lot of full-blood blacks along
with such chaps as this one, it would be only a short time before the
yellow ones would have the rest in bondage, and so history would be
going backward instead of forward. I guess it's going forward right now
if we only had the patience to see it that way.”




CHAPTER X.

[Illustration: 9098]

|NE beautiful morning near the first of June, as Carson was strolling on
the upper veranda at home, waiting for the breakfast-bell, Keith Gordon
came by on his horse on his way to town.

“Heard the news?” he called out, as he reined in at the gate and leaned
on the neck of his mount.

“No; what's up?” Carson asked, and as he spoke he saw Helen Warren
emerge from the front door of her father's house and step down among the
dew-wet rose-bushes that bordered the brick walk.

“Horrible enough in all reason,” Keith replied. “There's been a
cold-blooded murder over near your farm. Abe Johnson, who led that mob,
you know, and his wife were killed by some negro with an axe. The whole
country is up in arms and crazy with excitement.”

“Wait, I'll come right down,” Carson said, and he disappeared into
the house. And when he came out a moment later he found Helen on the
sidewalk talking to Keith, and from her grave face he knew she had
overheard what had been said.

“Isn't it awful?” she said to Carson, as he came out at the gate. “Of
course, it is the continuation of the trouble here in town.”

“How do they know a negro did it?” Carson asked, obeying the natural
tendency of a lawyer to get at the facts.

“It seems,” answered Gordon, “that Mrs. Johnson lived barely long enough
after the neighbors got there to say that it was done by a mulatto, as
well as she could see in the darkness. In their fury, the people are
roughly handling every yellow negro in the neighborhood. They say the
darkies are all hiding out in the woods and mountains.”

Then the conversation paused, for old Uncle Lewis, who was at work with
a pair of garden-sheafs behind some rose-bushes close by, uttered a
groan and, wide-eyed and startled, came towards them.

“It's awful, awful, awful!” they heard him say. “Oh, my Gawd, have
mercy!”

“Why, Uncle Lewis, what's the matter?” Helen asked, in sudden concern
and wonder over his manner and tone.

“Oh, missy, missy!” he groaned, as he shook his head despondently. “My
boy over dar 'mongst 'em right now. Oh, my Lawd! I know what dem white
folks gwine ter say fust thing, kase Pete didn't had no mo' sense 'an
ter--”

“Stop, Lewis!” Carson said, sharply. “Don't be the first to implicate
your own son in a matter as serious as this is.”

“I ain't, marster!” the old man groaned, “but I know dem white folks
done it 'fo' dis.”

“I'm afraid you are right, Lewis,” Keith said, sympathetically. “He may
be absolutely innocent, but, since his trouble with that mob, Pete has
really talked too much. Well, I must be going.”

As Keith was riding away, old Lewis, muttering softly to himself and
groaning, turned towards the house.

“Where are you going?” Helen called out, as she still lingered beside
Carson.

“I'm gwine try to keep Linda fum hearin' it right now,” he said. “Ef
Pete git in it, missy, it gwine ter kill yo' old mammy.”

“I'm afraid it will,” Helen said. “Do what you can, Uncle Lewis. I'll
be down to see her in a moment.” As the old man tottered away, Helen
looked up and caught Carson's troubled glance.

“I wish I were a man,” she said.

“Why?” he inquired.

“Because I'd take a strong stand here in the South for law and order
at any cost. We have a good example in this very thing of what our
condition means. Pete may be innocent, and no doubt is, for I don't
believe he would do a thing like that no matter what the provocation,
and yet he hasn't any sort of chance to prove it.”

“You are right,” Carson said. “At such a time they would lynch him, if
for nothing else than that he had dared to threaten the murdered man.”

“Poor, poor old mammy!” sighed Helen. “Oh, it is awful to think of what
she will suffer if--if--Carson, do you really think Pete is in actual
danger?” Dwight hesitated for a moment, and then he met her stare
frankly.

“We may as well face the truth and be done with it,” he said. “No negro
will be safe over there now, and Pete, I am sorry to say, least of all.”

“If he is guilty he may run away,” she said, shortsightedly.

“If he's guilty we don't _want_ him to get away,” Carson said, firmly.
“But I really don't think he had anything to do with it.”

Helen sighed. They had stepped back to the open gate, and there they
paused side by side. “How discouraging life is!” she said. “Carson, in
planning to get Pete over there, you and I were acting on our purest,
noblest impulses, and yet the outcome of our efforts may be the gravest
disaster.”

“Yes, it seems that way,” he responded, gloomily; “but we must try to
look on the bright side and hope for the best.”

On parting with Helen, Carson went into the big, old-fashioned
dining-room, and after hurriedly drinking a cup of coffee he went down
to his office. Along the main thoroughfare, on the street comers, and in
front of the stores he found little groups of men with grave faces, all
discussing the tragedy. More than once in passing he heard Pete's name
mentioned, and for fear of being questioned as to what he thought about
it he hurried on. Garner was an early riser, and he found him at his
desk writing letters.

“Well, from all accounts,” Garner said, “your man Friday seems to be in
a ticklish place over there, innocent or not--that is, if he hasn't had
the sense to skip out.”

“Somehow, I don't think Pete is guilty,” Carson said, as he sank into
his big chair. “He's not that stamp of negro.”

“Well, I haven't made up my mind on that score,” the other remarked. “Up
to the time he left here he seemed really harmless enough, but we don't
know what may have taken place since then between him and Johnson. Funny
we didn't think of the danger of sticking match to tinder like that. I
admit I was in favor of sending him. Miss Helen was so pleased over it,
too. I met her the other day at the post-office and she was telling me,
with absolute delight, that Pete was doing well over there, working like
an old-time cornfield darky, and behaving himself. Now, I suppose, she
will be terribly upset.”

Carson sighed. “We blame the mountain people, in times of excitement,
for acting rashly, and yet right here in this quiet town half the
citizens have already made up their minds that Pete committed the crime.
Think of it, Garner!”

“Well, you see, it's pretty hard to imagine who _else_ did it,” Garner
declared.

“I don't agree with you,” disputed Carson, warmly; “when there are half
a dozen negroes who were whipped just as Pete was and who have
horrible characters. There's Sam Dudlow, the worst negro I ever saw,
an ex-convict, and as full of devilment as an egg is of meat. I saw his
scowling face the next day after he was whipped, and I never want to see
it again. I'd hate to meet him in the dark, unarmed. He wasn't making
open threats, as Pete was, but I'll bet he would have handled Johnson
or Willis roughly if he had met either of them alone and got the
advantage.”

“Well, we are not trying the case,” Garner said, dryly; “if we are,
I don't know where the fees are to come from. Getting money out of an
imaginary case is too much like a lawyer's first year under the shadow
of his shingle.”




CHAPTER XI.

[Illustration: 9103]

IMMEDIATELY on parting with Carson, Helen went down to Linda's cottage.
Lewis was leaning over the little, low fence talking to a negro, who
walked on as she drew near.

“Where is Mam' Linda?” she asked, guardedly. “In de house, missy,” Lewis
answered, pulling off his old slouch hat and wadding it tightly in his
fingers. “She 'ain't heard nothin' yit. Jim was des tellin' me er whole
string er talk folks was havin' down on de street; but I told 'im not
to let 'er hear it. Oh, missy, it gwine ter kill 'er. She cayn't stan' it.
Des no longer 'n las' night she was settin' in dat do' talkin' 'bout
how happy she was to hear Pete was doin' so well over on Marse Carson's
place. She said she never would forget young marster's kindness to er
old nigger'oman, en now”--the old man spread out his hands in apathetic
gesture before him--“now you see what it come to!”

“But nothing serious has really happened to Pete yet,” Helen had started
to say, when the old man stopped her.

“Hush, honey, she comin'!”

There was a sound of a footstep in the cottage. Linda appeared in
the doorway, and with a clouded face and disturbed manner invited her
mistress into the cottage, placing a chair for the young lady, and
dusting the bottom of it with her apron.

“How do you feel this morning, mammy?” Helen asked, as she sat down.

“I'm well emough in my _body_, honey”--the old woman's face was
averted--“but dat ain't all ter a pusson in dis life. Ef des my body
was all I had, I wouldn't be so bad off, but it's my _mind_, honey. I'm
worried 'bout dat boy ergin. I had bad dreams las' night, en thoo 'em
all he seemed ter be in some trouble. Den when I woke dis mawnin' en
tried ter think 'twas only des er dream, I ain't satisfied wid de way all
of um act. Lewis look quar out'n de eyes, en everybody dat pass erlong
hatter stop en lead Lewis off down de fence ter talk. I ain't no fool,
honey! I notice things when dey ain't natcherl. Den here you come 'fo'
yo' breakfust-time. I've watched you, chile, sence you was in de cradle
en know every bat er yo' sweet eyes. Oh, honey”--Linda suddenly sat down
and covered her face with her hands, pressing them firmly in--“honey,”
 she muttered, “suppen's done gone wrong. I've knowed it all dis mawnin'
en I'm actually afeard ter ax youall ter tell me. I--can't think of but
one thing, I'm so muddled up, en dat is dat my boy done thowed up his
work en gone away off somers wid bad company; en yit, honey”---she
now rocked herself back and forth as if in torture and finished with a
steady stare into Helen's face--“dat cayn't be it. Dat ain't bad ernough
ter mek Lewis act like he is, en--en--well, honey, you might es well
come out wid it. I've had trouble, en I kin have mo'.”

Helen sat pale and undecided, unable to formulate any adequate plan of
procedure. At this juncture Lewis leaned in the doorway, and, as his
wife's back was towards him, he could not see her face.

“I want ter step down-town er minute, Lindy,” he said. “I'll be right
back. I des want ter go ter de sto'. We're out er coffee, en--”

Linda suddenly turned her dark, agonized face upon him. “You are not
goin' till you tell me what is gone wrong wid my child,” she said.
“What de matter wid Pete, Lewis?”

The old man's surprised glance wavered between his Wife's face and
Helen's. “Why, Lindy, who say--” he feebly began.

But she stopped him with a gesture at once impatient and full of fear.
“Tell me!” she said, firmly--“tell me!”

Lewis shambled into the cottage and stood over her, a magnificent
specimen of the manhood of his race. Helen's eyes were blinded by tears
she could hot restrain.

“'Tain't tiothiri', Lindy, 'pon my word 'tain't nothin' but dis,” he
said, gently. “Dar's been trouble over near Marse Carson's farm, but not
one soul is done say Pete was in it--_not one soul_.”

“What sort o' trouble?” Linda pursued.

“Er man en his wife was killed over dar in baid last night.”

“What man en woman?” Linda asked, her mouth falling open in suspense,
her thick lip hanging.

“Abe Johnson en his wife.”

Linda leaned forward, her hands locked like things of iron between her
knees. “Who done it, Lewis?--who killed um?” she gasped.

“Nobody knows dat yit, Lindy. Mrs. Johnson lived er little while after
de neighbors come, en she said it was er--she said it was er yaller
nigger, en--en--” He went no further, being at the end of his diplomacy,
and simply stood before her helplessly twisting his hat in his hands.
The room was very still. Helen wondered if her own heart had stopped
beating, so tense and strained was her emotion. Linda sat bent forward
for a moment; they saw her raise her hands to her head, press them there
convulsively, and then she groaned.

“Miz Johnson say it was a yaller nigger!” she moaned. “Oh, my Gawd!”

“Yes, but what dat, 'oman?” Lewis demanded in assumed sharpness of tone.
“Dar's oodlin's en oodlin's er yaller niggers over dar.”

“Dey ain't none of 'em been whipped by de daid man, 'cepin' my boy.”
 Linda was now staring straight at him. “None of 'em never made no
threats but Pete. Dey'll kill 'im--” She shuddered and her voice
fell away into a prolonged sob. “You hear me? Dey'll hang my po' baby
boy--hang 'im--_hang_ 'im!”

Linda suddenly rose to her full height and stood glowering upon them,
her face dark and full of passion and grief combined. She raised her
hands and held them straight upward.

“I want ter curse Gawd!” she cried. “You hear me? I ain't done nothin'
ter deserve dis here thing I've been er patient slave of white folks, en
my mammy an' daddy was 'fo' me. I've acted right en done my duty ter dem
what owned me, en--en now I face dis. I hear my onliest child beggin'
fer um to spare 'im en listen ter 'im. I hear 'im beggin' ter see his
old mammy 'fo' dey kill 'im. I see 'em drag-gin' 'im off wid er rope
roun'--” With a shriek the woman fell face downward on the floor. As if
under the influence of a terrible nightmare, Helen bent over her. She
was insensible. Without a word, Lewis lifted her in his arms and bore
her to a bed in the corner.

“Dis gwine ter kill yo' old mammy, honey,” he gulped. “She ain't never
gwine ter git up fum under it--never in dis world.”

But Helen, with womanly presence of mind, had dampened her handkerchief
in some water and was gently stroking the dark face with it. After a
moment Linda drew a deep, lingering breath and opened her eyes.

“Lewis,” was her first thought, “go try en find out all you kin. I'm
gwine lie here en pray Gawd ter be merciful. I said I'd curse 'Im, but
I won't. He my mainstay. I _got_ ter trust 'Im. Ef He fail me I'm lost.
Oh, honey, yo' old mammy never axed you many favors; stay here wid 'er en
pray--pray wid all yo' might ter let dis cup pass. Oh, Gawd, don't
let 'em!--_don't_ let 'em! De po' boy didn't do it. He wouldn't harm a
kitten. He talked too much, case he was smartin' under his whippin', but
dat was all!”

Motioning to Lewis to leave them alone, Helen sat down on the edge of
the bed and put her arm round Linda's shoulders, but the old woman rose
and went to the door and closed it, then she came back and stood by
Helen in the half-darkness that now filled the room.

“I want you ter git down here by my baid en pray fer me, honey,” she
said. “Seem ter me lak de Lawd always have listen ter white folks mo'
den de black, anyway, en I want you ter beg 'Im ter spare po' li'l'
foolish Pete des dis time--_des dis once_.” Kneeling by the bed, Helen
covered her wet face with her hands. Linda knelt beside her, and Helen
prayed aloud, her clear, sweet voice ringing through the still room.




CHAPTER XII.

[Illustration: 9109]

N Carson Dwight's farm, as the place was not particularly well kept,
the negro hands lived in dismantled log-cabins scattered here and there
about the fields, or in the edge of the woods surrounding the place. In
one of these, at the overseer's suggestion, Pete had installed himself,
his household effects consisting only of a straw mattress thrown on the
puncheon floor and a few cooking utensils for use over the big fireplace
of the mud-and-log chimney.

Here he was sleeping on the night of the tragedy which had stirred the
country-side into a white heat of race hatred. He had spent the first
half of the night at a negro dance, two miles away, at a farm, and
was much elated by finding that he had attracted marked attention and
feminine favor, which was due to the fact that he was looked upon by the
country blacks as something out of the usual run--a town darky with a
glib tongue and many other accomplishments, and a negro, too, as Pete
assured them, who stood high in the favor of his master, whose name
carried weight wherever it was mentioned.

Shortly after dawn Pete was still sleeping soundly, as was his habit
after a night of pleasure, when his door was rudely shaken.

“Pete Warren! Pete Warren!” a voice called out sharply. “Wake up in dar;
wake up, I tell you!”

There was no response--no sound came from within the cabin except the
deep respiration of the sleeper. The door was shaken again, and then,
as it was not locked, and slightly ajar, the little old negro man on the
outside pushed the shutter open and entered, stalking across the floor
to where Pete lay.

“Wake up here, you fool!” he said, as he bent and shook Pete roughly.
“Wake up, ef you know what good fer you.”

Pete turned over; his snoring broke into little gasps. He opened his
eyes, stared inquiringly for an instant, and then his eyelids began to
close drowsily.

“Looky here!” He was roughly handled again by the black hand on his
shoulder. “You young fool, you dance all night till you cayn't keep yo'
eyes open in de day-time, but ef you don't git er move on you en light
out er dis cabin you'll dance yo' last jig wid nothin' under yo' feet
but wind. It'll be er game er frog in de middle en you be de frog.”

“What dat?--what dat you givin' me, Uncle Richmond?” Pete was now awake
and sitting bolt upright on the mattress.

“Huh, I come ter tell you, boy, dat you 'bout ter git in trouble, en,
fer all I know, de biggest you ever had in all yo' bo'n days.”

“Huh, you say I is, Uncle Richmond?” Pete exclaimed, incredulously.
“What wrong wid me?”

The old man stepped back till he could look through the cabin door over
the fields upon which the first streaks of daylight were falling in
grayish, misty splotches.

“Pete,” he said, “somebody done slip in Abe Johnson's house en brain him
en his wife wid er axe.”

“Huh, you don't say!” Pete stared in sleepy astonishment. “When dat
happen, Uncle Richmond?”

“Las' night, er towards mawnin',” the old man said. “Ham Black come
en toi' me. He say we better all hide out; it gwine ter be de
biggestm 'cite-ment ever heard of in dese mountains; but, Pete, _you_ de
main one ter look out--you, you!”

“Me! Huh, what you say dat fer, Uncle Rich'?”

“'Ca'se dey gwine ter look fer you de fus one, Pete. You sho is been
talkin' too much out yo' mouf 'bout dat whippin' Johnson done give you
en Sam Dudlow, en de res' um in town dat night. Ham tol' me ter come
warn you ter hide out, en dat quick. Ham say he know in reason you
didn't do it, 'ca'se, he say, yo' bark is wuss'n yo' bite. Ham say he
bet 'twas done by some nigger dat didn't talk so much. Ham say he mighty
nigh sho Sam Dudlow done it, 'ca'se Sam met Abe Johnson in de big road
yisterday en Johnson cussed 'im en lashed at 'im wid er whip. Ham say
dat nigger come on ter de sto' lookin' lak er devil in men's clothes.
But he didn't say nothin' even den. Look lak he was des lyin' low bidin'
his time.”

Pete got up and began to dress himself with the unimaginative disregard
for danger that is characteristic of his race.

“I bet, myse'f, Sam done it,” he said, reflectively.

“He's er bad yaller nigger, Uncle Richmond, en ever since Johnson en Dan
Willis larruped we-all, he's been sulkin' en growlin'. But es you say,
Uncle Rich', he didn't talk out open. He lay low.”

“Dat don't mek no diffunce, boy,” the old black man went on, earnestly;
“you git out'n here in er hurry en mek er break fer dem woods. Even den
I doubt ef dat gwine ter save yo' skin, 'ca'se Dan Willis got er pair er
blood-hounds dat kin smell nigger tracks thoo er ten-inch snow.”

“Huh, I say, Uncle Richmond, you don't know me,” Pete said. “You don't
know me, ef you 'low I'm gwine ter run fum dese white men. I 'ain't
been nigh dat Abe Johnson's house--not even cross his line er fence. I
promised Marse Carson Dwight not ter go nigh 'im, en--en I promised 'im
ter let up on my gab out here, en I done dat, too. No, suh, Unc' Rich',
you git somebody else ter run yo' foot-race. I'm gwine ter cook my
breakfust lak I always do en den go out ter my sprouts dat hatter be
grubbed. I got my task ter do, rain er shine.”

“Look here, boy,” the old man's blue-black eyes gleamed as he stared at
Pete. “I know yo' mammy en daddy, en I like um. Dey good black folks er
de ol' stripe, en always was friendly ter me, en I don't like ter see
you in dis mess. I tell you, I'm er old man. I know how white men act
in er case like dis--dey don't have one bit er pity er reason. Dey will
kill you sho. Dey'd er been here 'fo' dis, but dey gittin' together.
Listen! Hear dem hawns en yellin'?--dat at Wilson's sto'. Dey will be
here soon. I don't want ter stan' here en argue wid you. I 'ain't had
nothin' ter do wid it, but dey would saddle some of it onto me ef dey
found out I come here ter warn you. Hurry up, boy.”

“I ain't gwine ter do it, Uncle Rich',” Pete declared, firmly, and with
a grave face. “You are er old man, but you ain't givin' me good advice.
Ef I run, dey would say I was guilty sho', en den, es you say, de dogs
could track me down, anyway.”

The boy's logic seemed unassailable. The piercing, beadlike eyes of the
old man flickered. “Well,” he said, “I done all I could. I'm gwine move
on. Even now, dey may know I come here at dis early time, en mix me
up in it. Good-bye. I hope fer Mammy Lindy's sake dat dey will let you
off--I do sho.”

Left alone, Pete went out to the edge of the wood behind his cabin and
gathered up some sticks, leaves, and pieces of bark that had fallen from
the decaying boughs of the trees, and brought them into the cabin and
deposited them on the broad stone hearth. Then he uncovered the coals
he had the night before buried in the ashes, and made a fire for the
preparation of his simple breakfast. He had a sharp sense of animal
hunger, which was due to his long walk to and from the dance and the
fact that he was bodily sound and vigorous. He took as much fresh-ground
corn-meal as his hands would hold from a tow bag in a corner of the room
and put it into a tin pan. To this he added a cup of water and a bit of
salt, stirring it with his hand till it was well mixed. He then deftly
formed it into a pone, and, wrapping it in a clean husk of corn, he
deposited it in the hot ashes, covering it well with live coals. Then he
made his coffee, being careful that the water in the pot did not rise
as high as the point near the spout where the vessel leaked. Next he
unwrapped a strip of “streak o' lean streak o' fat” bacon, and with
his pocket-knife sliced some of it into a frying-pan already hot. These
things accomplished, he had only to wait a few minutes for the heat to
do its work, and he stepped back and stood in the doorway.

Far across the meadow, now under the slanting rays of the sun, he saw
old Uncle Richmond, bowlegged and short, waddling along through the dewy
grass and weeds, his head bowed, his long arms swinging at his sides.

“Huh!” was Pete's slow comment, “so somebody done already settled Abe
Johnson's hash. I know in reason it was Sam Dudlow, en I reckon ef dat
rampacious gang er white men lays hands on 'im--ef dey lays hands on
 'im--” He was recalling certain details of the recent riots in Atlanta,
and an unconscious shudder passed over him. “Well,” he continued to
reflect, “Abe Johnson was a hard man on black folks, but his wife was
er downright good 'oman. Ever'body say she was, en she _was_. It was a
gre't pity ter kill her dat way, but I reckon Sam was afeard she'd
tell it on 'im en had ter kill um bofe. Yes, Miz Johnson was er good
'oman--good ter niggers. She fed lots of 'em behind dat man's back, en
wished 'em well; en now, po', po' 'oman!”

Pete went back to the fireplace and with the blade of his knife turned
the curling white and brown strips of bacon, and with the toe of his
coarse, worn shoe pushed fresher coals against his coffee-pot. Then for
a moment he stood gravely looking at the fire.

“Well,” he mused, with a shrugging of his shoulders. “I wish des _one
thing_, I wish Marse Carson was here. He wouldn't let 'em tech me. He's
de best en smartest lawyer in Georgia, en he would tell 'em what er lot
er fools dey was ter say I done it, when I was right dar'n my baid. My!
dat bacon smell good! I wish I had er few fresh hen aigs ter drap in dat
brown grease. Huh! it make my mouf water.”

There was no table in the room, and so when he had taken up his
breakfast he sat down on the floor and ate it with supreme relish.
Through all the meal, however, in spite of the arguments he was mentally
producing, there were far under the crust of his being certain elemental
promptings towards fear and self-preservation.

“Well, dar's one thing,” he mused. “Marse Hillyer done laid me out my
task ter do in de old fiel' en I ain't ergoin' to shirk it, 'ca'se Marse
Carson gwine ter ax 'im, when he go in town, how I'm gittin' on, en I
wants er good repo't. No, I ain't goin' ter shirk it, ef all de dogs en
white men in de county come yelpin' on de hunt for Sam Dudlow.”




CHAPTER XIII.

[Illustration: 9116]

IS breakfast over, Pete shouldered his grubbing-hoe, an implement shaped
like an adze, and made his way through the dewy undergrowth of the wood
to an open field an eighth of a mile from his cabin. There he set to
work on what was considered by farmers the hardest labor connected with
the cultivation of the soil. It consisted of partly digging and partly
pulling out by the roots the stout young bushes which infested the
neglected old fields.

Pete was hard at work in the corner of a ten-rail worm-fence, when,
hearing a sound in the wood, which sloped down from a rocky hill
quite near him, he saw a farmer, who lived in the neighborhood, pause
suddenly, even in a startled manner, and stare steadily at him.

“Oh!” Pete heard him exclaim; “why, you are Carson Dwight's new man,
ain't you, from Darley?”

“Yes, suh, dat me,” the negro replied. “Mr. Hillyer, de overseer fer
my boss, set me on dis yer job. I want ter clean it up ter de branch by
Sadday.”

“Huh!” The man approached nearer, eying the negro closely from head to
foot, his glance resting longer on Pete's hip-pocket than anywhere else.
“Huh! I heard down at the store just now that you'd left--throwed up
your job, I mean--an' gone clean off.”

“No, I hain't throwed up no job,” the negro said, his slow intelligence
groping for the possible cause of such a report. “I been right here
since my boss sent me over, en I'm gwine stay lessen he sen' fer me
ter tek care o' his hosses in town. I reckon you heard er Marse Carson
Dwight's fine drivin' stock.” The farmer pulled his long brown beard,
his eyes still on Pete's face; it was as if he had not caught the boy's
last remark.

“They said down at the store that you left last night, after--that you
went off last night. A man said he seed you at the nigger blow-out on
Hilton's farm about one o'clock, and that after it was over you turned
towards--I don't know--I'm just tellin' you what they said down at the
store.”

“I _was_ at dat shindig,” Pete said. “I walked fum here dar en back
ergin.”

“Huh, well”--the farmer's face took on a shrewd expression--“I must
move on. I'm lookin' fer a brown cow with a white tail, an' blaze on 'er
face.” As the man disappeared in the wood, Pete was conscious of a
sense of vague uneasiness which somehow seemed to be a sort of augmented
recurrence of the feeling left by the warning of his early visitor.

“Dat white man certainly act curi's,” Pete mused, as he leaned on
the handle of his hoe and stared at the spot where the farmer had
disappeared in the woods. “I'll bet my hat he been thinkin', lak Uncle
Rich' said dey would, dat I had er hand in dat bloody business. Po'
Miz Johnson--I reckon dey layin' 'er out now. She certney was good. I
remember how she tol' me at de spring de day I come here ter try en be a
good, steady boy en not mek dem white men pounce on me ergin. Po' 'oman!
Seem lak er gre't pity. I reckon Abe Johnson got what was comin' ter
 'im, but it look lak even Sam Dudlow wouldn't er struck dat good'oman
down. Maybe he thought he had ter--maybe she cornered 'im; but I dunno;
he's er tough nigger--de toughest I ever run ercross, en I've seed er
lots um.”

Pete leaned on the fence, wiped his perspiring brow with his bare hand,
snapped his fingers like a whip to rid them of the drops of sweat, and
allowed his thoughts to merge into the darker view of the situation. He
was really not much afraid. Under grave danger, a negro has not so great
a concern over death as a white man, because he is not endowed with
sufficient intelligence to grasp its full import, and yet to-day Pete
was feeling unusual qualms of unrest.

“Dar's one thing sho,” he finally concluded; “dat white man looked
powerful funny when he seed me, en he said he heard I'd run off. I'll
bet my hat he's makin' a bee-line fer dat sto' ter tell 'em whar I is
right now. I wish one thing. I wish Marse Carson was here; he'd sen' 'em
 'bout deir business mighty quick.”

With a shrug of indecision, the boy set to work. His back happened to be
turned towards the store, barely visible over the swelling ground in the
distance, and so he failed to note the rapid approach across the meadow
of two men till they were close upon him. One was Jeff Braider, the
sheriff of the county, a stalwart man of forty, in high top-boots, a
leather belt holding a-long revolver, a broad-brimmed hat, and coarse
gray suit; his companion was a hastily deputized citizen armed with a
double-barrelled shot-gun.

“Put down that hoe, Pete!” the sheriff commanded, sharply, as the negro
turned with it in his hand. “Put it down, I say! Drop it!”

“What I gwine put it down for?” the negro asked, in characteristic tone.
“Huh! I got ter do my work.”

“Drop it, and don't begin to give me your jaw,” the sheriff said.
“You've got to come on with us. You are under arrest.”

“What you 'rest me fer?” Pete asked, still doggedly.

“You are accused of killing the Johnsons last night, and if you didn't
do it, I'm here to say you are in the tightest hole an innocent man ever
got in. King and I are going to do our level best to put you in safety
in the Gilmore jail so you can be tried fairly by law, but we've got to
get a move on us. The whole section is up in arms, and we'll have hard
work dodging 'em. Come on. I won't rope you, but if you start to run
we'll shoot you down like a rabbit, so don't try that on.”

“My Gawd, Mr. Braider, I didn't kill dem folks!” Pete said, pleadingly.
“I don't know a thing about it.”

“Well, whether you did or not, they say you threatened to do it, and
your life won't be worth a hill of beans if you stay here. The only
thing to do is to get you to the Gilmore jail. We may make it through
the mountains if we are careful, but we've got to git horses. We can
borrow some from Jabe Parsons down the road, if he hasn't gone crazy
like all the rest. Come on.”

“I tell you, Mr. Braider, I don't know er thing 'bout dis,” Pete said;
“but it looks ter me lak mebby Sam Dudlow--”

“Don't make any statement to me,” the officer said, humanely enough in
his rough way. “You are accused of a dirty job, Pete, and it will take
a dang good lawyer to save you from the halter, even if we save you from
this mob; but talkin' to me won't do no good. Me'n King here couldn't
protect you from them men if they once saw you. I tell you, young man,
all hell has broke loose. For twenty miles around no black skin will
be safe, much less yours. Innocent or guilty, you've certainly shot off
your mouth. Come on.”

Without further protest, Pete dropped his hoe and went with them.
Doggedly, and with an overpowering and surly sense of injury, he
slouched along between the two men.

A quarter of a mile down a narrow, private road, which was traversed
without meeting any one, they came to Parsons' farm-house, a one-story
frame building with a porch in front, and a roof that sloped back to
a crude lean-to shed in the rear. A wagon stood under the spreading
branches of a big beech, and near by a bent-tongued harrow, weighted
down by a heap of stones, a chicken-coop, an old beehive, and a
ramshackle buggy. No one was in sight. No living thing stirred about the
place, save the turkeys and ducks and a solitary peacock strutting
about in the front yard, where rows of half-buried stones from the
mountain-sides formed the jagged borders of a gravel walk from the fence
to the steps.

The sheriff drew the gate open and, according to rural etiquette,
hallooed lustily. After a pause the sound of some one moving in the
house reached their ears. A window-curtain was drawn aside, and later a
woman stood in the doorway and advanced wonderingly to the edge of the
porch. She was portly, red of complexion, about middle-aged, and dressed
in checked gingham, the predominating color of which was blue.

“Well, I'll be switched!” she ejaculated; “what do you-uns want?”

“Want to see Jabe, Mrs. Parsons; is he about?”

“He's over in his hay-field, or was a minute ago. What you want with
him?”

“We've got to borrow some hosses,” the sheriff answered. “We want
three--one fer each. We're goin' to try to dodge them blood-thirsty
mobs, Mrs. Parsons, an' put this feller in jail, whar he'll be safe.”

“_That_ boy?” The woman came down the steps, rolling her sleeves up.
“Why, that boy didn't kill them folks. I know that boy, he's the son of
old Mammy Linda and Uncle Lewis Warren. Now, look here, Jeff Braider,
don't you and Bill King go and make eternal fools o' yourselves. That
boy didn't no more do that nasty work than I did. It ain't _in_ 'im. He
hain't that look. I know niggers as well as you or anybody else.”

“No, I _didn't_ do it, Mrs. Parsons,” the prisoner affirmed. “I didn't!
I didn't!”

“I know you didn't,” said the woman. “Wasn't I standin' here in the door
this mornin' and saw him git up an' go out to git his wood and cook his
breakfast? Then I seed 'im shoulder his grubbin'-hoe and go to the field
to work. You officers may think you know it all, but no nigger ain't
agoin' to stay around like that after killin' a man an' woman in cold
blood. The nigger that did that job was some scamp that's fur from the
spot by this time, and not a boy fetched up among good white folks like
this one was, with the best old mammy and daddy that ever had kinky
heads.”

“But witnesses say he threatened Abe Johnson a month ago,” argued
Braider. “I have to do my duty, Mrs. Parsons. There never would be any
justice if we overlooked a thing as pointed as that is.”

“Threatened 'im?” the woman cried; “well, what does that prove? A nigger
will talk back an' act surly on his death-bed if he's mad. That's all
the way they have of defendin' theirselves. If Pete hadn't talked some
after the lashin' he got from them men, thar'd 'a' been some'n' wrong
with him. Now, you let 'im loose. As shore as you start off with that
boy, he'll be lynched. The fact that you've got 'im in tow will be all
them crazy men want. You couldn't get two miles in any direction from
here without bein' stopped; they are as thick as fleas on all sides, an'
every road is under watch.”

“I'm sorry I can't take yore advice, Mrs. Parsons,” Braider said, almost
out of patience. “I've got my duty to perform, an' I know what it is a
sight better than you do.”

“If you start off with that boy his blood will be on yore head,” the
woman said, firmly. “Left alone, and advised to hide opt till this
excitement is over, he might stand a chance to save his neck; but with
you--why, you mought as well stand still and yell to that crazy gang to
come on.”

“Well, we've got to git horses to go on with, and yours are the
nearest.”

“Huh! you won't ride no harmless nigger to the scaffold on _my_ stock,”
 the woman said, sharply. “I know whar my duty lies. A woman with a
thimbleful of brains don't have to listen to a long string of testimony
to know a murderer when she sees one; that boy's as harmless as a baby
and you are trying your level best to have him mobbed.”

“Well, right is on my side, and I can take the horses if I see fit in
the furtherance of law an' order,” said Braider. “If Jabe was here he'd
tell me to go ahead, an' so I'll have to do it anyway. Bill, you stay
here on guard an' I'll bridle the horses an' lead 'em out.”

A queer look, half of anger, half of definite purpose, settled on the
strong, rugged face of the woman, as she saw the sheriff stalk off to
the barn-yard gate, enter it, and let it close after him.

“Bill King,” she said, drawing nearer the man left in charge of the
bewildered prisoner, who now for the first time under the words of his
defender had sensed his real danger--“Bill King, you hain't agoin' to
lead that poor boy right to his death this way--you don't look like that
sort of a man.” She suddenly swept her furtive eyes over the barn-yard,
evidently noting that the sheriff was now in the stable. “No, you
hain't--for I hain't agoin' to _let_ you!” And suddenly, without warning
even to the slightest change of facial expression, she grasped the end
of the shot-gun the man held, and whirled him round Like a top.

“Run, boy!” she cried. “Run for the woods, and God be with you!” For an
instant Pete stood as if rooted to the spot, and then, as swift of foot
as a young Indian, he turned and darted through the gate and round the
farm-house, leaving the woman and King struggling for the possession of
the gun. It fell to the ground, but she grasped King around the waist
and clung to him with the tenacity of a bull-dog.

“Good God, Mrs. Parsons,” he panted, writhing in her grasp, “let me
loose!”

There was a smothered oath from the barn-yard, and, revolver in hand,
the sheriff ran out.

“What the hell!--which way did he go?” he gasped.

But King, still in the tight embrace of his assailant, seemed too badly
upset to reply. And it was not till Braider had torn her locked hands
loose that King could stammer out, “Round the house--into the woods!”

“An' we couldn't catch 'im to save us from--” Braider said. “Madam, I'll
handle you for this! I'll push this case against you to the full limit
of the law!”

“You'll do nothin' of the kind,” the woman said, “unless you want to
make yourself the laughin'-stock of the whole community. In doin' what
I done I acted fer all the good women of this country; an' when you
run ag'in we'll beat you at the polls. Law an' order's one thing,
but officers helpin' mobs do their dirty work is another. If the boy
deserves a trial he deserves it, but he'd not 'a' stood one chance in
ten million in your charge, _an' you know it_.”

At this juncture a man emerged from the close-growing bushes across the
road, a look of astonishment on his face. It was Jabe Parsons. “What's
wrong here?” he cried, excitedly.

“Oh, nothin' much,” Braider answered, with a white sneer of fury. “We
stopped here with Pete Warren to borrow your horses to git 'im over the
mountain to the Gilmore jail, an' your good woman grabbed Bill's gun
while I was in the stable an' deliberately turned the nigger loose.”

“Great God! what's the matter with you?” Parsons thundered at his wife,
who, red-faced and defiant, stood rubbing a small bruised spot on her
wrist.

“Nothin's the matter with me,” she retorted, “except I've got more sense
than you men have. I know that boy didn't kill them folks, an' I didn't
intend to see you-all lynch 'im.”

“Well, I know he did!” Parsons yelled. “But he'll be caught before
night, anyway. He can't hide in them woods from hounds like they've got
down the road.”

“Your wife 'lowed he'd be safer in the woods than in the Gilmore jail,”
 Braider said, with another sneer.

“Well, he _would_. As for that,” Parsons retorted, “if you think that
army headed by the dead woman's daddy an' brothers would halt at a puny
bird-cage like that jail, you don't know mountain men. They'd smash the
damn thing like an egg-shell. I reckon a sheriff has to _pretend_ to act
fer the law, whether he earns his salary or not. Well, I'll go down the
road an' tell 'em whar to look. Thar'll be a picnic som 'er's nigh here
in a powerful short while. We've got men enough to surround that whole
mountain.”




CHAPTER XIV.

[Illustration: 9127]

HE following night was a cloudless, moonlit one, and restlessly and
heart-sore Helen walked the upper floor of the veranda, her eyes
constantly bent on the street leading past Dwight's on to the centre of
the town. The greater part of the day she had spent with Linda, trying
to pacify her and rouse the hope that Pete would not be implicated in
the trouble in the mountains. Helen had gone down to Carson's office
about noon, feeling vaguely that he could advise her better than any one
else in the grave situation. She had found Garner seated at his desk,
bent over a law-book, a studious expression on his face. Seeing her in
the doorway, he sprang up gallantly and proffered a rickety chair, from
which he had hastily dumped a pile of old newspapers.

“Is Carson in?” she asked, sitting down.

“Oh no, he's gone over to the farm,” Garner said. “I couldn't hold him
here after he heard of the trouble. You see, Miss Helen, he thinks,
from a few things picked up, that Pete is likely to be suspected and be
roughly handled, and, you know, as he was partly the cause of the boy's
going there, he naturally would feel--”

“I was the _real_ cause of it,” the girl broke in, with a sigh and a
troubled face. “We both thought it was for the best, and if it results
in Pete's death I shall never forgive myself.”

“Oh, I wouldn't look at it that way,” Garner said. “You were both acting
for what you thought was right. As I say, I tried my best to keep Carson
from going over there to-day, but he would go. We almost had an open
rupture over it. You see, Miss Helen, I have set my head on seeing him
in the legislature, and he is eternally doing things that kill votes.
There is not a thing in the category of political offences as fatal as
this very thing. He's already taken Pete's part and abused the men
who whipped him, and now that the boy is suspected of retaliating and
killing the Johnsons, why, the people will--well, I wouldn't be one bit
surprised to see them jump on Carson himself. Men infuriated like that
haven't any more sense than mad dogs, and they won't stand for a white
man opposing them. But, of course, you know why Carson is acting so
recklessly.”

“I do? What do you mean, Mr. Garner?”

The lawyer smiled, wiped his facile mouth with his small white hand, and
said, teasingly: “Why, you are at the bottom of it. Carson wants to save
the boy simply because you are indirectly interested in him. That's the
whole thing in a nutshell. He's been as mad as a wet hen ever since they
whipped Pete, because he was the son of your old mammy, and now that the
boy's in actual peril Carson has gone clean daft. Well, it's reported
among the gossips about town that you turned him down, Miss Helen--like
you did some of the balance of us presumptuous chaps that didn't know
enough to keep our hearts where they belonged--but you sat on the best
man in the bunch when you did it. It's me that's doing this talking.”

Helen sat silent and pale for a moment, unable to formulate a reply to
his outspoken remark. Presently she said, evasively: “Then you think
both of them are in actual danger?”

“Well, Pete hasn't one chance in a million,” Garner said, gently. “There
is no use trying to hide that fact; and if Carson should happen to run
across Dan Willis--well, one or the other would have to drop. Carson
is in a dangerous mood. He believes as firmly in Pete's innocence as he
does in his own, and if Dan Willis dared to threaten him, as he's likely
to do when they meet, why, Carson would defend himself.”

Helen drew her veil down over her eyes and Garner could see that she was
quivering from head to foot.

“Oh, it's awful--awful!” he heard her say, softly. Then she rose and
moved to the open door, where she stood as if undecided what step to
take. “Is there no way to get any--any news?” she asked, tremulously.

“None now,” he told her. “In times of excitement over in the mountains,
few people come into town; they all want to stay at home and see it
through.”

She stepped out on the sidewalk, and he followed her, gallantly holding
his hat in his hand. Scarcely a soul was in sight. The town seemed
deserted.

“Madam, rumor,” Garner said, with a smile, “reports that your friend Mr.
Sanders, from Augusta, is coming up for a visit.”

“Yes, I had a letter from him this morning,” Helen said, in a dignified
tone. “My father must have spoken of it. It will be Mr. Sanders' first
visit to Darley, and he will find us terribly upset. If I knew how to
reach him I'd ask him to wait a few days till this uncertainty is
over, but he is on his way here--is, in fact, stopping somewhere in
Atlanta--and intends to come on up to-morrow or the next day. Does--does
Carson--has he heard of Mr. Sanders' coming?”

“Oh yes, it was sprung on him this morning for a deadly purpose,” Garner
said, with a significant smile. “The whole gang--Keith, Wade, and Bob
Smith--were in here trying to keep him from going to the farm. They had
tried everything they could think of to stop him, and as a last resort
set in to teasing. Keith told him Sanders would sit in the parlor
and say sweet things to you while Carson was trying to liberate the
ex-slaves of your family at the risk of bone and sinew. Keith
said Carson was showing the finest proof of fidelity that was ever
given--fidelity to _the man in the parlor_.”

“Keith ought to have been ashamed of himself,” Helen said, with her
first show of vexation. “And what did Carson say?”

“The poor chap took it all in a good-humor,” Garner said. “In fact, he
was so much wrought up over Pete's predicament that he hardly heard what
they were saying.”

“You really think Carson is in danger, too?” Helen continued, after a
moment's silence.

“If he meets Dan Willis, yes,” said Garner. “If he opposes the mob,
yes again. Dan Willis has already succeeded in creating a lot of
unpopularity for him in that quarter, and the mere sight of Carson at
such a time would be like a torch to a dry hay-stack.”

So Helen had gone home and spent the afternoon and evening in real
torture of suspense, and now, as she walked the veranda floor alone with
a realization of the grim possibilities of the case drawn sharply before
her mental vision, she was all but praying aloud for Carson's safe
return, and anxiously keeping her gaze on the moonlit street below.
Suddenly her attention was drawn to the walk in front of the Dwight
house. Some one was walking back and forth in a nervous manner, the
intermittent flare of a cigar flashing out above the shrubbery like the
glow of a lightning-bug. Could it be--had Carson returned and entered
by the less frequently used gate in the rear? For several minutes she
watched the figure as it strode back and forth with never-ceasing tread,
and then, fairly consumed with the desire to set her doubts at rest, she
went down into the garden at the side of the house, softly approached
the open gate between the two homesteads, and called out: “Carson, is
that you?”

The figure paused and turned, the fire of the cigar described a red
half-circle against the dark background, but no one spoke. Then, as she
waited at the gate, her heart in her mouth, the smoker came towards her.
It was old Henry Dwight. He wore no hat nor coat, the night being warm,
and one of his fat thumbs was under his broad suspender.

“No, it's not him, Miss Helen,” he said, rather gruffly. “He hasn't got
back yet. I've had my hands full since supper. My wife is in a bad way.
She has been worrying awfully since twelve o'clock, when Carson didn't
turn up to dinner as usual. She's guessed what he went to the farm for,
and she's as badly upset as old Linda is over that trifling Pete. I
thought I had enough trouble before the war over _my_ niggers, but here,
forty years later, _yours_ are upsetting things even worse. I only wish
the men that fought to free the black scamps had some part of the burden
to bear.”

“It really is awful,” Helen responded; “and so Mrs. Dwight is upset by
it?”

“Oh yes, we had the doctor to come, and he gave some slight dose or
other, but he said the main thing was to get Carson back and let
her know for sure that he was safe and sound. I sent a man out there
lickety-split on the fastest horse I have, and he ought to have got back
two hours ago. That's what I'm out here for. I know she's not going to
let me rest till her mind is at ease.”

“Do you really think any actual harm could have come to Carson?” Helen
inquired, anxiously.

“It could come to anybody who has the knack my boy has for eternally
rubbing folks the wrong way,” the old man retorted from the depths of
his irritation; “but, Lord, my young lady, _you_ are at the bottom of
it!”

“I? Oh, Mr. Dwight, don't say that!” Helen pleaded.

“Well, I'm only telling you the _truth_,” said Dwight, throwing his
cigar away and putting, both thumbs under his suspenders. “You know that
as well as I do. He sees how you are bothered about your old mammy, and
he has simply taken up your cause. It's just what I'd 'a' done at his
age. I reckon I'd 'a' fought till I dropped in my tracks for a girl
I--but from all accounts you and Carson couldn't agree, or rather _you_
couldn't. He seems to be agreeing now and staking his life and political
chances on it. Well, I don't blame him. It never run in the Dwight
blood to love more than once, an' then it was always for the pick of the
flock. Well, you are the pick in this town, an' I wouldn't feel like he
was my boy if he stepped down and out as easy as some do these days. I
met him on his way to the farm and tried to shame him out of the trip.
I joined the others in teasing him about that Augusta fellow, who can
do his courting by long-distance methods in an easy seat at his
writing-desk, while up-country chaps are doing the rough work for
nothing, but it didn't feaze 'im. He tossed his stubborn head, got
pretty red in the face, and said he was trying to help old Linda and
Lewis out, and that he know well enough you didn't care a cent for him.”

Helen had grown hot and cold by turns, and she now found herself unable
to make any adequate response to such personal allusions.

“Huh, I see I got you teased, too!” Dwight said, with a short, staccato
laugh. “Oh, well, you mustn't mind me. I'll go in and see if my wife is
asleep, and if she is I'll go to bed myself.”

Helen, deeply depressed, and beset with many conflicting emotions,
turned back to the veranda, and, instead of going up to her room, she
reclined in a hammock stretched between two of the huge, fluted columns.
She had been there perhaps half an hour when her heart almost stopped
pulsating as she caught, the dull beat of horses' hoofs up the street.
Rising, she saw a horseman rein in at the gate at Dwight's. It was
Carson; she knew that by the way he dismounted and threw the rein over
the gate-post.

“Carson!” she called out. “Oh, Carson, I want to see you!”

He heard, and came along the sidewalk to meet her at the gate where
she now stood. What had come over him? There was an utter droop of
despondent weariness upon him, and then as he drew near she saw that his
face was pale and haggard. For a moment he stood, his hand on the gate
she was holding open, and only stared.

“Oh, what has happened?” she cried. “I've been waiting for you. We
haven't heard a word.”

In a tired, husky voice, for he had made many a speech through the
day, he told her of Pete's escape. “He's still hiding somewhere in the
mountains,” he said.

“Oh, then he may get away after all!” she cried.

Dwight said nothing, seeming to avoid her great, staring, anxious eyes.
She laid her hand almost unconsciously on his arm.

“Don't you think he has a chance, Carson?” she repeated--“a bare
chance?”

“The whole mountain is surrounded, and they are beating the woods,
covering every inch of the ground,” he said. “It is now only a question
of time. They will wait till daybreak, and then continue till they have
found him. How is Mam' Linda?”

“Nearly dead,” Helen answered, under her breath.

“And my mother?” he said.

“She is only worried,” Helen told him. “Your father thinks she will be
all right as soon as she is assured of your return.”

“Only worried? Why, he sent me word she was nearly dead,” Carson said,
with a feeble flare of indignation. “I wanted to stay, to be there to
make one final effort to convince them, but when the message reached me,
and things were at a standstill anyway, I came home, and now, even if I
started back to-night, I'd likely be too late. He tricked me--my father
tricked me!”

“And you yourself? Did you meet that--Dan Willis?” Helen asked. He
stared at her hesitatingly for an instant, and then said: “I happened
not to. He was very active in the chase and seemed always to be
somewhere else. He killed all my efforts.” Carson leaned heavily against
the white paling fence as he continued. “As soon as I'd talk a crowd
of men into my way of thinking, he'd come along and fire them with fury
again. He told them I was only making a grandstand play for the negro
vote, and they swallowed it. They swallowed it and jeered and hissed me
as I went along. Garner is right. I've killed every chance I ever had
with those people. But I don't care.”

Helen sighed. “Oh, Carson, you did it all because--because I felt as I
did about Pete. I know that was it.”

He made no denial as he stood awkwardly avoiding her eyes.

“I shall never, never forgive myself,” she said, in pained accents. “Mr.
Garner and all your friends say that your election was the one thing you
held desirable, the one thing that would--would thoroughly reinstate you
in your father's confidence, and yet I--I--oh, Carson I _did_ want you
to win! I wanted it--wanted it--wanted it!”

“Oh, well, don't bother about that,” he said, and she saw that he was
trying to hide his own disappointment. “I admit I started into this
because--because I knew how keenly you felt for Linda, but to-day,
Helen, as I rode from mad throng to mad throng of those good men with
their dishevelled hair and bloodshot eyes, their very souls bent to
that trail, that pitiful trail of revenge, I began to feel that I was
fighting for a great principle, a principle that you had planted within
me. I gloried in it for its own sake, and because it had its birth in
your sweet sympathy and love for the unfortunate. I could never have
experienced it but for you.”

“But you failed,” Helen almost sobbed. “You failed.”

“Yes, utterly. What I've done amounted to nothing more than irritating
them. Those men, many of whom I love and admire, were wounded to their
hearts, and I was only keeping their sores open with my fine-spun
theories of human justice. They will learn their lesson slowly, but
_they will learn it_. When they have caught and lynched poor, stupid
Pete, they may learn later that he was innocent, and then they will
realize what I was trying to keep them from doing. They will be friendly
to me then, but Wiggin will be in office.”

“Yes, my father thinks this thing is going to defeat you.” Helen sighed.
“And, Carson, it's killing me to think that I am the prime cause of it.
If I'd had a man's head I'd have known that your effort could accomplish
nothing, and I'd have been like Mr. Garner and the others, and asked
you not to mix up in it; but I couldn't help myself. Mam' Linda has your
name on her lips with every breath. She thinks the sun rises and sets in
you, and that you only have to give an order to have it obeyed.”

“That's the pity of it,” Carson said, with a sigh.

At this juncture there was the sound of a window-sash sliding upward,
and old Dwight put out his head.

“Come on in!” he called out. “Your mother is awake and absolutely
refuses to believe you haven't a dozen bullet-holes in you.”

“All right, father, I'm coming,” Carson said, and impulsively he held
out his hand and clasped Helen's in a steady, sympathetic pressure.

“Now, you go to bed, little girl,” he said, more tenderly than he
realized. In fact, it was a term he had used only once before, long
before her brother's death. “Pardon me,” he pleaded; “I didn't know what
I was saying. I--I was worried over seeing you look so tired, and--and I
spoke without thinking.”

“You can say it whenever you wish, Carson,” she said. “As if I could get
angry at you after--after--” But she did not finish, for with her hand
still warmly clasping his fingers, she was listening to a distant sound.
It was a restless human tread on a resounding floor.

“It's Mam' Linda,” Helen said. “She walks like that night and day.
I must go to her and--tell her you are back, but oh, how _can_ I?
Good-night, Carson. Ill never forget what you have done--never!”




CHAPTER XV.

[Illustration: 9139]

FTER an almost sleepless night, spent for the greater part in despondent
reflections over his failure in the things to which he had directed
his hopes and energies, Carson rose about seven o'clock, went into his
mother's room to ask how she had rested through the night, and then
descended, to breakfast. It was eight o'clock when he arrived at the
office. Garner was there in a cloud of dust, sweeping a pile of torn
papers into the already filled fireplace.

“I'm going to touch a match to this the first rainy day--if I think of
it,” he said. “It's liable to set the roof on fire when it's dry as it
is now.”

“Any news from the mountains?” Carson asked, as he sat down at his desk.

“Yes; Pole Baker was in here just now.” Garner leaned his broom-handle
against the mantel-piece, and stood critically eying his partner's worn
face and dejected mien. “He said the mob, or mobs, for there are twenty
factions of them, had certainly hemmed Pete in. He was hiding somewhere
on Elk Knob, and they hadn't then located him. Pole left there long
before day and said they had already set in afresh. I reckon it will be
over soon. He told me to keep you here if I had to swear out a writ of
dangerous lunacy against you. He says you have not only killed your own
political chances, but that you couldn't save the boy if you were the
daddy of every man in the chase. They've smelled blood and they want to
taste it.”

“You needn't worry about me,” Carson said, dejectedly. “I realize how
helpless I was yesterday, and am still. There was only one thing that
might have been done if we had acted quickly, and that was to telegraph
the Governor for troops.”

“But you wouldn't sanction that; you know you wouldn't,” said Garner.
“You know every mother's son of those white men is acting according to
the purest dictates of his inner soul. They think they are right. They
believe in law, and while I am a member of the bar, by Heaven! I say
to you that our whole legal system is rotten to the core. Politics will
clear a criminal at the drop of a hat. A dozen voters can jerk a man
from life imprisonment to the streets of this town by a single telegram.
No, you know those sturdy men over there think they are right, and you
would not be the cause of armed men shooting them down like rabbits in a
fence corner.”

“No, they think they are right,” Carson said. “And they were my friends
till this came up. Any mail?”

“I haven't been to the post-office. I wish you'd go. You need exercise;
you are off color--you are as yellow as a new saddle. Drop this thing.
The Lord Himself can't make water run up-hill. Quit thinking about it.”

Carson went out into the quiet street and walked along to the
post-office. At the intersection of the streets near the Johnston
House, on any ordinary day, a dozen drays and hacks in the care of
negro drivers would have been seen, and on the drays and about the hacks
stood, as a rule, many idle negro men and boys; but this morning the
spot was significantly vacant. At the negro barber-shop, kept by Buck
Black, a mulatto of marked dignity and intelligence for one of his race,
only the black barbers might be seen, and they were not lounging about
the door, but stood at their chairs, their faces grave, their tongues
unusually silent. They might be asking themselves questions as to the
possible extent of the fires of race-hatred just now raging--if the
capture and death of Pete Warren would quench the conflagration, or
if it would roll on towards them like the licking flames of a burning
prairie--they might, I say, ask _themselves_ such questions, but to the
patrons of their trade they kept discreet silence. And no white man who
went near them that day would ask them what they believed or what they
felt, for the blacks are not a people who give much thought even to
their own social problems. They had leaned for many generations upon
white guidance, and, with childlike, hereditary instinct, they were
leaning still.

Finding no letters of importance in the little glass-faced and numbered
box at the post-office, Carson, sick at heart and utterly discouraged,
went up to the Club. Here, idly knocking the balls about on a
billiard-table, a cigar in his mouth, was Keith Gordon.

“Want to play a game of pool?” he asked.

“Not this morning, old man,” Carson answered.

“Well, I don't either,” said Keith. “I went to the bank and tried to add
up some figures for the old man, but my thinker wouldn't work. It's out
of whack. That blasted nigger Pete is the prime cause of my being upset.
I came by Major Warren's this morning. Sister feels awfully sorry
for Mam' Linda, and asked me to take her a jar of jelly. You know old
colored people love little attentions like that from white people, when
they are sick or in trouble. Well”--Keith held up his hands, the palms
outward--“I don't want any more in mine. I've been to death-bed scenes,
funerals, wrecks on railroads, and all sorts of horrors, but that was
simply too much. It simply beggars description--to see that old woman
bowed there in her door like a dumb brute with its tongue tied to a
stake. It made me ashamed of myself, though, for not at least trying
to do something. I glory in you, old man. You failed, but you _tried_.
By-the-way, that's the only comfort Mam' Linda has had--the only thing.
Helen was there, the dear girl--and to think her visit home has to be
like this!--she was there trying to soothe the old woman, but nothing
that was said could produce anything but that awful groaning of hers
till Lewis said something about your going over there yesterday, and
that stirred her up. She rose in her chair and walked to the gate and
folded her big arms across her breast.

“'I thank God young marster felt fer me dat way,' she said. 'He's
de best young man on de face o' de earth. I'll go down ter my grave
blessing 'im fer dis. He's got er _soul_ in 'im. He knows how old Mammy
Lindy feels en he was tryin' ter help her, God bless 'im! He couldn't do
nothin', but he tried--he tried, dough everybody was holdin' 'im back en
sayin' it would spile his 'lection. Well, if it _do_ harm 'im, it will
show dat Gawd done turn ergin white en black bofe.' I came away,” Keith
finished, after a pause, in which Carson said nothing. “I couldn't stand
it. Helen was crying like a child, her face wet with tears, and she
wasn't trying to hide it. I was looking for some one to come every
minute with the final news, and I didn't want to face that. Good God,
old man, what are we coming to? Historians, Northern ones, seem to think
the days of slavery were benighted, but God knows such things as this
never happened then. Now, did it?”

“No; it's terrible,” Carson agreed, and he stepped to a window and
looked out over the roofs of the near-by stores to the wagon-yard
beyond.

“Well, the great and only, the truly accepted one,” Keith went on, in
a lighter tone, “the man who did us all up brown, Mr. Earle Sanders, of
Augusta, has unwittingly chosen a gloomy date for his visit. He's here,
installed in the bridal-chamber of the Hotel de Johnston. Helen got a
note from him just as I was leaving. On my soul, old man--maybe it's
because I want to see it that way--but, really, it didn't seem to me
that she looked exactly elated, you know, like I imagined she would,
from the way the local gossips pile it on. You know, the idea struck me
that maybe she is not _really engaged_, after all.”

“She is worried; she is not herself to-day,” Carson said, coldly, though
in truth his blood was surging hotly through his veins. It had come
at last. The man who was to rob him of all he cared for in life was at
hand. Turning from Keith, he pretended to be looking over some of
the dog-eared magazines in the reading-room, and then feeling an
overwhelming desire to be alone with the dull pain in his breast, he
waved a careless signal to Keith and went down to the street. In front
of the hotel stood a pair of sleek, restive bays harnessed to a new
top-buggy. They were held by the owner of the best livery-stable in the
town, a rough ex-mountaineer.

“Say, Carson,” the man called out, proudly, “you'll have to git up early
in the morning to produce a better yoke of thorough-breds than these.
Never been driven over these roads before. I didn't intend to let 'em
out fer public use right now, but a big, rich fellow from Augusta is
here sparkin', and he wanted the best I had and wouldn't touch anything
else. Money wasn't any object. He turned up his nose at all my other
stock. Gee! look at them trim legs and thighs--a dead match as two
black-eyed peas.”

“Yes, they are all right.” Carson walked on and went into Blackburn's
store, for no other reason than that he wanted to avoid meeting people
and discussing the trouble Pete Warren was in, or hearing further
comments on the stranger's visit. He might have chosen a better retreat,
however, for in a group at the window nearest the hotel he found
Blackburn, Garner, Bob Smith, and Wade Tingle, all peering stealthily
out through the dingy glass at the team Carson had just inspected.

“He'll be out in a minute,” Wade was saying, in an undertone. “Quit
pushing me, Bob! They say he's got dead loads of money.”

“You bet he has,” Bob declared; “he had a wad of it in big bills large
enough to stuff a sofa-pillow with. Ike, the porter, who trucked his
trunk up, said he got a dollar tip. The head waiter is expecting to buy
a farm after he leaves. Gee! there he comes! Say, Garner, _you_ ought to
know; is that a brandy-and-soda complexion?”

“No, he doesn't drink a drop,” answered Garner. “Well, he looks all
right, as well as I can see through this immaculate window with my eyes
full of spiderwebs. My, what clothes! Say, Bob, is that style of derby
the thing now? It looks like an inverted milk-bucket. Come here, Carson,
and take a peep at the conqueror. If Keith were here we'd have a
quomm. By George, there's Keith now! He's watching at the window of the
barber-shop. Call him over, Blackburn. Let's have him here; we need more
pall-bearers.”

“Seems to me you boys are the corpses,” Blackburn jested. “I'd be
ashamed to let a clothing-store dummy like that beat me to the tank.”

Carson had heard enough. In his mood and frame of mind their open
frivolity cut him to the quick. Going out, unnoticed by the others, he
went to his office. In the little, dusty consultation-room in the rear
there was an old leather couch. On this he threw himself. There had been
moments in his life when he had worn the crown of misery, notably the day
Albert Warren was buried, when, on approaching Helen to offer her his
sympathies, she had turned from him with a shudder. That had been a
gloomy hour, but _this_--he covered his face with his hands and lay
still. On that day a faint hope had vaguely fluttered within him--a hope
of reformation; a hope of making a worthy place for himself in life
and of ultimately winning her favor and forgiveness. But now it was all
over. He had actually seen with his own eyes the man who was to be her
husband. He was sure now that the report was true. The visit at such a
grave crisis confirmed all that had been said. Helen had telegraphed him
of her trouble, and Sanders had made all haste to reach her side.




CHAPTER XVI.

[Illustration: 9147]

EHIND the dashing bays the newcomer drove down to Warren's. On the
seat beside him sat a negro boy sent from the livery-stable to hold the
horses. Sanders was dressed in the height of fashion, was young, of the
blond type, and considered handsome. A better figure no man need have
desired. The people living in the Warren neighborhood, who peered
curiously out of windows, not having Dwight's affairs at heart, indulged
in small wonder over the report that Helen was about to accept such a
specimen of city manhood in preference to Carson or any of “the home
boys.”

Alighting at the front gate, Sanders went to the door and rang. He was
admitted by a colored maid and shown into the quaint old parlor with its
tall, gilt-framed, pier-glass mirrors and carved mahogany furniture.
The wide front, lace-curtained windows, which opened on a level with
the veranda floor, let in a cooling breeze which was most agreeable in
contrast to the beating heat out-of-doors.

He had only a few minutes to wait, for Helen had just returned from
a visit to Linda's cottage and was in the library across the hall.
He heard her coming and stood up, flushing expectantly, an eager
light flashing in his eyes.

“I am taking you by surprise,” he said, as he grasped her extended hand
and held it for an instant.

“Well, you know you told me when I left,” Helen said, “that it would
be impossible for you to get away from business till after the first of
next month, so I naturally supposed--”

“The trouble was”--he laughed as he stood courteously waiting for her to
sit before doing so himself--“the trouble was that I didn't know myself
then as I do now. I thought I could wait like any sensible man of my
age, but I simply couldn't, Helen. After you left, the town was simply
unbearable. I seemed not to want to go anywhere but to the places to
which we went together, and there I suffered a regular agony of the
blues. The truth is, I'm killing two birds with one stone. We were about
to send our lawyer to Chattanooga to settle up a legal matter there, and
I persuaded my partner to let me do it. So you see, after all, I shall
not be wholly idle. I can run up there from here and back, I believe, in
the same day.”

“Yes, it is not far,” Helen answered. “We often go up there to do
shopping.”

“I'm going to confess something else,” Sanders said, flushing slightly.
“Helen, you may not forgive me for it, but I've been uneasy.”

“Uneasy?” Helen leaned as far back in her chair as she could, for he had
bent forward till his wide, hungry eyes were close to hers.

“Yes, I've fought the feeling every day and night since you left. At
times my very common-sense would seem to conquer and I'd feel a little
better about it, but it would only be a short time till I'd be down in
the dregs again.”

“Why, what is the matter?” Helen asked, half fearfully.

“It was your letters, Helen,” he said, his handsome face very grave as
he leaned towards her.

“My letters? Why, I wrote as often--even often-er--than I promised,” the
girl said.

“Oh, don't think me over-exacting,” Sanders implored her with eyes and
voice. “I know you did all you agreed to do, but somehow--well, you
know you seemed so much like one of us down there that I had become
accustomed to thinking of you as almost belonging to Augusta; but your
letters showed how very dear Darley and its people are to you, and I was
obliged to--well, face the grim fact that we have a strong rival here in
the mountains.”

“I thought you knew that I adore my old home,” she said, simply.

“Oh yes, I know--most people do--but, Helen, the letter you wrote about
the dance your friends--your 'boys,' as you used to call them--gave you
at that quaint club, why, it is simply a piece of literature. I've read
it over and over time after time.”

“Oh, I only wrote as I felt, out of a full heart,” the girl said.
“When you meet them, and know them as I do, you will not wonder at my
fidelity--at my enthusiasm over that particular tribute.”

Sanders laughed. “Well, I suppose I am simply jealous--jealous not alone
for myself, but for Augusta. Why, you can't imagine how you are missed.
A party of the old crowd went around to your aunt's as usual the
Wednesday following your departure, but we were so blue we could hardly
talk to one another. Helen, the spirit of our old gatherings was gone.
Your aunt actually cried, and your uncle really drank too much brandy
and soda.”

“Well, you mustn't think I don't miss them all,” Helen said, deeply
touched. “I think of them every day. It was only that I had been away
so long that it was glorious to get back home--to my real home again. I
love it down there; it is beautiful; you were all so lovely to me, but
this here is different.”

“That's what I felt in reading your letters,” Sanders said. “A tone of
restful content and happiness was in every line you wrote. Somehow,
I wanted you, in my selfish heart, to be homesick for us so that you
would”--the visitor drew a deep breath--“be all the more likely to--to
consent to live there, you know, _some day_, permanently.” Helen made
no reply, and Sanders, flushing deeply, wisely turned the subject, as he
rose and went to a window and drew the curtain aside.

“Do you see those horses?” he asked, with a smile. “I brought them
thinking I might prevail on you to take a drive with me this morning. I
have set my heart on seeing some of the country around the town, and I
want to do it with you. I hope you can go.”

“Oh, not to-day! I couldn't think of it to-day!” Helen cried,
impulsively.

“Not to-day?” he said, crestfallen.

“No. Haven't you heard about Mam' Linda's awful trouble?”

“Oh, that is _her_ son!” Sanders said. “I heard something of it at the
hotel. I see. She really must be troubled.”

“It is a wonder it hasn't killed her,” Helen answered. “I have never
seen a human being under such frightful torture.”

“And can nothing be done?” Sanders asked. “I'd really like to be of
use--to help, you know, in _some_ way.”

“There is nothing to be done--nothing that _can_ be done,” Helen said.
“She knows that, and is simply waiting for the end.”

“It's too bad,” Sanders remarked, awkwardly. “Might I go to see her?”

“I think you'd better not,” said the girl. “I don't believe she would
care to see any but very old friends. I used to think I could comfort
her, but even I fail now. She is insensible to anything but that
one haunting horror. She has tried a dozen times to go over to the
mountains, but my father and Uncle Lewis have prevented it. That mob,
angry as they are, might really kill her, for she would fight for her
young like a tigress, and people wrought up like those are mad enough to
do anything.”

“And some people think the negro may not really be guilty, do they not?”
 Sanders asked.

“I am sure he is not,” Helen sighed. “I feel it; I know it.”

There was the sound of a closing gate, and Helen looked out.

“It is my father,” she said. “Perhaps he has heard something.”

Leaving her guest, she went out to the steps. “Whose turn-out?” the
Major asked, with admiring curiosity, indicating the horses and buggy.

“Mr. Sanders has come,” she said, simply. “He's in the parlor. Is there
any news?”

“Nothing.” The old man removed his hat and wiped his perspiring brow.
“Nothing except that Carson Dwight has gone over there on a fast horse.
Linda sent him a message, begging him to make one more effort, and he
went. All his friends tried to stop him, but he dashed out of town like
a madman. He won't accomplish a thing, and it may cost him his life,
but he's the right sort, daughter. He's got a heart in him as big as
all out-of-doors. Blackburn told him Dan Willis was over there, a raging
demon in human shape, but it only made Carson the more determined. His
father saw him and ordered him back, and was speechless with fury when
Carson simply waved his hand and rode on. Go back to the parlor. I'll
join you in a minute.”

“Have you heard anything?” Sanders asked, as Helen re-entered the room
and stood white and distraught before him.

She hesitated, her shifting glance on the floor, and then she stared at
him almost as one in a dream. “He has heard nothing except--except that
Carson Dwight has gone over there. He has gone. Mam' Linda begged him to
make one other effort and he couldn't resist her. She--she was good to
his mother and to him when he was a child, and he feels grateful. She
thinks he is the only one that can help. She told me last night that she
believed in him as she once believed in God. He can do nothing, but he
knew it would comfort her for him to try.”

“This Mr. Dwight is one of your--your old friends, is he not?”

Sanders' face was the playground of conflicting emotions as he stood
staring at her.

“Yes,” Helen answered; “one of my best and truest.”

“He has undertaken a dangerous thing, has he not?” Sanders managed to
say.

“Dangerous?” Helen shuddered. “He has an enemy there who is now
seeking his life. They are sure to meet. They have already quarrelled,
and--_about this very thing_.”

She sat down in the chair she had just left and Sanders stood near her.
There was a voice in the hall. It was the Major ordering a servant to
bring in mint julep, and the next moment he was in the parlor hospitably
introducing himself to the visitor.

Seeing her opportunity, Helen rose and left them together. She went up
to her room, with heavy, dragging footsteps, and stood at the window
overlooking the Dwight garden and lawn.

Carson knew that Sanders was in town, she told herself, in gloomy
self-reproach. He knew his rival was with her, and right now as the poor
boy was speeding on to--his death, he thought Sanders was making love to
her. Helen bit her quivering lip and clinched her fingers. “Poor boy!”
 she thought, almost with a sob, “he deserves better treatment than
that.”




CHAPTER XVII

[Illustration: 9154]

N his escape from the sheriff and his deputy, Pete Warren ran with the
speed of a deer-hound through the near-by woods. Thinking his pursuers
were close behind him, he did not stop even to listen to their
footsteps. Through dell and fen, up hill and down, over rocks and
through tangled undergrowth he forged his way, his tongue lolling from
the corner of his gaping mouth. The thorns and briers had tom gashes in
his cheeks, neck, and hands, and left his clothing in strips. The wild
glare of a hunted beast was in his eyes. The land was gradually sloping
upward. He was getting upon the mountain. For a moment the distraught
creature paused, bent his ear to listen and try to decide, rationally,
calmly, which was the better plan, to hide in the caverns and craggy
recesses of the frowning heights above or speed onward over more level
ground. For a moment the drumlike pounding of his heart was all
the sound he heard, and then the blast of a hunter's horn broke
the stillness, not two hundred yards away, and was thrown back in
reverberating echoes from the mountain-side. This was followed by
a far-off answering shout, the report of a signal-gun, and then the
mellow, terrifying baying of blood-hounds fell upon his ears. Pete stood
erect, his knees quivering. No thought of prayer passed through his
brain. Prayer, to his mind, was only a series of empty vocal sounds
heard chiefly in churches where black men and women stood or knelt in
their best clothes, and certainly not for emergencies like this, where
granite heavens were closing upon stony earth and he was caught between.

Suddenly bending lower, and fresher for the second wind he had got,
he sped onward again, choosing the valley rather than the steeper
mountain-side. Shouts, gun reports, horn-blasts, and the baying of the
hounds now followed him. Presently he came to a clear mountain creek
about twenty feet wide and not deeper anywhere than his waist, and in
many places barely covering the slimy brown stones over which it flowed.
Here, as if by inspiration, came the remembrance of some story he had
heard about a pursued negro managing to elude the scent of blood-hounds
by taking to water, and into the icy stream Pete plunged, and, slipping,
stumbling, falling, he made his way onward.

But his reason told him this slow method really would not benefit him,
for his pursuers would soon catch up and see him from the banks. He had
waded up the stream about a quarter of a mile, when he came to a spot
where the stout branches of a sturdy leaning beech hung down within his
reach. The idea which came to him was worthy of a white man's brain,
for, pulling on the bough and finding it firm, he decided upon the
original plan of getting out of the water there, where his trail would
be lost to sight or scent, and climbing into the dense foliage above.
His pursuers might not think to look upward at exactly that spot, and
the hounds, bent on catching the scent from the ground where he landed,
would speed onward, farther and farther away. At all events it was worth
the trial.

With quivering hands he drew the bough down till its leaves sank under
the water. It bore his weight well and from it he climbed to the
massive trunk and higher upward, till, in a fork of the tree, he rested,
noticing, with a throb of relief, that the bough had righted itself and
hung as before above the surface of the stream. On came the dogs; he
could not hear them now, for, intent upon their work, they made no
sound, but the hoarse, maddened voices of men under their guidance
reached his ears. The swish through the undergrowth, the patter, as of
rain on dry leaves, as their claws hurled the ground behind them, the
snuffing and sneezing--_that was the hounds_. Closer and closer Pete
hugged the tree, hardly breathing, fearing now that the water dripping
from his clothing or the bruised leaves of the bough might betray his
presence. But the hounds, one on either side of the stream, their noses
to the earth, dashed on. Pete caught only a gleam of their sleek, dim
coats and they were gone. Behind them, panting, followed a dozen men.
In his fear of being seen, Pete dared not even look at their inflamed
faces. With closed eyes pressed against his wet coat-sleeve, he clung to
his place, a hunted thing, neither fish, fowl, nor beast, and yet, like
them all, a creature of the wilderness, endowed with the instinct of
self-preservation.

“They will run 'im down!” he heard a man say. “Them dogs never have
failed. The black devil thought he'd throw 'em off by taking to water.
He didn't know we had one for each bank.”

On ran the men, the sound of their progress becoming less and less
audible as they receded. Was he safe now? Pete's slow intelligence
answered no. He was still fully alive to his danger. He might stay there
for awhile, but not for long. Already, perhaps owing to his desperate
running, he had an almost maddening thirst, a thirst which the sheer
sight of the cool stream so near tantalized. Should he descend, satisfy
his desire, and attempt to regain his place of hiding? No, for he might
not seclude himself so successfully the next time. Then, with his face
resting on his arm, he began to feel drowsy. Twisting his body about,
he finally found himself in a position in which he could recline
still close to the tree and rest a little, though his feet and legs,
surcharged with blood, were painfully weighted downward. The forest
about him was very quiet. Some bluebirds above his head were singing
merrily. A gray squirrel with a fuzzy tail was perched inquiringly
on the brown bough of a near-by pine. Pete reclined thus for several
minutes, and then the objects about him appeared to be in a blur. The
far off shouts, horn-blasts, and gun reports beat less insistently on
his tired brain, and then he found himself playing with a kitten--the
queerest, most amusing kitten--in the sunlight in front of his mother's
door.

He must have slept for hours, for when he opened his eyes the sun was
sinking behind the top of a distant hill. He tried to draw his aching
legs up higher and felt stinging pricks of pain from his hips to his
toes, as his blood leaped into circulation again. After several efforts
he succeeded in standing on the bough. To his pangs of thirst were now
added those of hunger. For hours he stood thus. He saw the light of day
die out, first on the landscape and later from the clear sky. Now,
he told himself, under cover of night, he would escape, but something
happened to prevent the attempt. Through the darkness he saw the
flitting lights off many pine torches. They passed to and fro under
the trees, sometimes quite near him, and as far as he could see up the
mountain-sides they flickered like the sinister night-eyes of his doom.
He stood till he felt as if he could do so no longer, and then he got
down on the bough as before, and after hours of conscious hunger and
thirst and cramping pains he slept again. Thus he passed that night, and
when the golden rays of sunlight came piercing the gray mountain mists
and flooding the landscape with its warm glory, Pete Warren, hearing the
voices of sleepless revenge, now more numerous and harsh and packed with
hate--hearing them on all sides from far and near--dared not stir. He
remained perched in his leafy nook like some half-knowing, primeval
thing, avoiding the flint-tipped arrows of the high-cheeked,
straight-haired men lurking beneath.




CHAPTER XVIII

[Illustration: 9159]

ARSON DWIGHT remained two days in the vicinity of his farm waiting
gloomily for the discovery and arrest of Pete Warren, his sole
hope being that at the last grewsome moment he might prevail on the
distraught man-hunters to listen to a final appeal for law and order.
He was forced, however, to return to Darley, feeling sure, as did
the others, that Pete was hiding in some undiscovered place in the
mountains, or shrewd and deft enough to avoid the approach of man or
hound. But it would not be for long, the hunters told themselves, for
the entire spot was surrounded and well guarded and they would starve
him out.

“The gang” breathed more freely when they saw Carson appear in the
doorway of the den on the night of his return, and learned that through
some miracle he had failed to meet Dan Willis, though not one of them
was favorably impressed by the outward appearance of their leader. His
eyes, in their darkened sockets, gleamed like despondent fires; on his
tanned cheeks hectic flushes had appeared and his hands quivered as if
from nervous exhaustion. Not a man among them dared reproach him for the
further and futile political mistake he had made. He was a ruined man,
and yet they admired him the more as they looked down on him, be

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