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diff --git a/29646.txt b/29646.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ca18e24 --- /dev/null +++ b/29646.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8410 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Once to Every Man, by Larry Evans + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Once to Every Man + +Author: Larry Evans + +Illustrator: Anton Otto Fischer + +Release Date: August 9, 2009 [EBook #29646] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONCE TO EVERY MAN *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Illustration: "IT WAS FOR ME--YOU WENT. DON'T YOU--DIDN'T YOU KNOW IT +WAS--JUST BECAUSE OF YOU--THAT I WANTED THEM--AT--ALL?"] + + + + +ONCE TO EVERY MAN + +BY + +LARRY EVANS + +ILLUSTRATED BY + +ANTON OTTO FISCHER + +GROSSET & DUNLAP + +PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK + + + + +Copyright, 1913, by + +The Metropolitan Magazine Company. + +Copyright, 1914, by + +The Metropolitan Magazine Company. + +Copyright, 1914, by + +The H. K. Fly Company. + + + + +TO + +MINE OWN PEOPLE + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + "It Was for Me--You Went. Don't You--Didn't You Know + It Was--Just Because of You--That I Wanted + Them--At--All?" _Frontispiece_ + "Hold Me Tight--Oh! Hold Me Tighter! for They Forgot + Me, Too, Denny; They Forgot Me Too!" 53 + "Dryad, It's All Right--It's Always Been All + Right--With Us! They Lied--They Lied and They + Knew They Were Lying!" 85 + "What You Need, Gentlemen, Is a Trifle Wider + Readin'--Just a Trifle! for You Ain't Bein' Well + Posted on Facts!" 149 + + + + +ONCE TO EVERY MAN + +CHAPTER I + + +The most remarkable thing about the boy was his eyes--that is, if any +man with his spread of shoulder and masculine grace of flat muscled +hips could be spoken of any longer as a boy, merely because his years +happened to number twenty-four. + +They, however--the eyes--were gray; not a too light, off-color, +gleaming gray, but more the tone of slate, deep when one chanced +to find oneself peering deep into them. And they were old. Any +spontaneity of youth which might have flashed from them at one +time had faded entirely and left a sort of wistful sophistry +behind, an almost plaintive hunger which made the pity of his +shoulder-stoop--still mercifully only a prophecy of what the next +twenty years of toil might leave it--an even more pitiful thing. His +sheer bigness should have been still unspoiled; instead it was +already beginning to lose its rebound; it was growing imperceptibly +slack, like the springy stride of a colt put too soon to heavy +harness. + +Late afternoon was giving way to nightfall--a long shadowed twilight +that was heavy with the scent of spring in spite of the scattered +patches of wet snow that still lurked in the swamp holes. As the boy +stood, facing toward the east and the town that sprawled in the +hollow, his great, shoulder-heavy body loomed almost like a painted +figure against the cool red background of the horizon. Even in spite +of the pike-pole which he grasped in one hand and the vividly +checkered blanket coat that wrapped him, the illusion was undeniable. +Stripped of them and equipped instead with a high steeple-crowned hat +and wide buckled shoes, his long half-saddened face and lean body +might have been a composite of all the Puritan fathers who had +wrestled with the rock-strewn acres behind him, two hundred years and +more before. + +Denny Bolton was waiting--Young Denny, the townsfolk preferred to call +him, to distinguish him from Old Denny of the former generation. +Somehow, although he had never mentioned it to anybody, it seemed to +him that he had always been waiting for something--he hardly knew just +what it was himself--just something that was drearily slow in the +coming. + +His home, the farmhouse of the Boltons, for which the straggling +village of Boltonwood below had been named, was nearest of all the +outlying places on the post route, yet last of all to be served, for +when the rural delivery had been established they had begun delivery +at the other end of the circle. Young Denny had never been able to +understand quite why it was so--but it was, for all that. And with +the minister, too, it happened, although not so often, for the +minister of Boltonwood called at almost every door on his rounds and +stayed longer at each, so sometimes for months at a time he never got +around to the shabby place on the hill at all. But the boy believed +that he did understand this and often he smiled to himself over it, +without any bitterness--just smiled half wistfully. He lived alone in +the tumble-down old house and did his own cooking and--well, even a +most zealous man of the gospel might have beamed more heartily upon +better cooks than was Denny, without any great qualms of conscience. + +One other reason existed, or at least Young Denny imagined that it +did, but whenever he stopped to think about it--a thing he had come to +do more and more often in the last few months--he never smiled. +Instead, his lips straightened until the wistful quirk at the corners +disappeared into a straight line and his eyes smouldered ominously. + +There was a select circle of white-haired old men--the village old +guard--which sat in nightly session about the fat-bellied old +wood-stove in the Boltonwood Tavern. It convened with the first +snowfall of the winter and broke up long after the ice had gone out in +the spring; and this circle, when all other topics had been whipped +over at fever heat, until all the zest of bitter contradiction was +gone from them, always turned at last with a delightful sort of +unanimity to the story of the night when Old Denny had died--the +Bolton of the former generation. + +An almost childish enthusiasm tinged their keen relish for the tale. +They squirmed and puckered their wrinkled old faces and shivered +convulsively, just as a child might have shivered over a Bluebeard +horror, as they recalled how Old Denny had moaned in agony one moment +that night, and then screamed horribly the next for the old stone +demijohn that always stood in the corner of the kitchen. They +remembered, with an almost astonishing wealth of detail, that he had +frothed at the mouth and blasphemed terribly one instant, and then +wept, in the very same breath--wept hopelessly, like the uncouth, +overgrown, frightened boy who knelt at the bedside. + +The strangest part of the whole thing was that not one of them had +realized at the time, or ever recalled since, that Old Denny's eyes +were sane when he wept that night and blurred with madness when he +cursed. But then, too, that would have smashed the dramatic element of +the whole tale to flinters. They never missed a scene or a sob, +however, in the re-telling, and they always ended it with an ominous +tilt of the head and a little insinuating crook of the neck toward the +battered, weather-torn old house where Young Denny had lived on alone +since that last bad night. It was very much as though they had said +aloud, "He's the next--he'll go just like the rest." + +Perhaps they never really thought of it, and perhaps it was because +Young Denny's failure to fulfil their prophecy had really embittered +them, but the whole village had given the boy plenty of solitude in +the last few years in which to become on terms of thorough intimacy +with the demijohn which still occupied its place in the kitchen +corner. + +And yet that stone demijohn was almost the only tangible reminder +there was left of the Bolton who had gone before. There were a few in +the village who wondered how, in the three intervening years, the big +silent, shambling boy had managed to tear from his acres money enough +to clear the place of its debt--the biggest thing by far in his +heritage. Eight hundred dollars was a large sum in Boltonwood--and +Denny's acres were mostly rocks. Old Denny would have sold the last +scythe and fork in the dilapidated barn to fill the stone jug, save +for the fact that fork and scythe had themselves been too dilapidated +to find a purchaser. + +But the same scythe had an edge now and a polish where the boy's hands +had gripped and swung it, and it took a flawlessly clear-grained piece +of ash to make a shaft that would stand the forkfuls of hay which his +shoulders heaved, without any apparent effort, into the mow. The +clapboards on the house, although still unpainted, no longer whined +in the wind; they were all nailed tight. And still the circle around +the stove in the Boltonwood Tavern tilted its head--tilted it +ominously--as if to say: "Just wait a bit, he'll come to it--wait now +and see!" But the prophecy's fulfilment, long deferred, was making +them still more bitter--strangely bitter--toward the boy, who stood +alone at sundown watching the road that wound up from the village. + +All this Young Denny knew, not because he had been told, but because +the part of him that was still boy sensed it intuitively. He was just +as happy to be let alone, or at least so he told himself, times +without end, for it gave him a chance to sleep. And tonight as he +stood at the crest of the hill before the dark house, waiting for Old +Jerry to come along with the mail, he was glad, too, that his place +was the last on the route. It gave him something to look forward to +during the day--something to expect--for although he rarely received a +letter or, to be more exact, never, the daily newspaper was, after +all, some company. And then there were the new farm implement +catalogues and seed books, with their dyspeptic looking fruits and +vegetables. They made better reading than nothing at all. + +But it was not the usual bundle of papers which came at the end of +each week for which Young Denny was waiting. Old Jerry, who drove the +post route, and had driven it as long as Denny could remember, was +late tonight--he was even later than usual for Saturday night--and +Denny's hand tightened nervously upon the shaft of the pike-pole as he +realized the cause of the delay. + +For many weeks he had heard but little else mentioned on the village +streets on his infrequent trips after groceries and grain. The winter +sledding was over; the snow had gone off a month back with the first +warm rain; just that afternoon he had made the last trip behind his +heavy team down from the big timber back on the ridges, but during +that month the other drivers with whom he had been hauling logs since +fall had talked of nothing but the coming event. + +From where he stood, looking out across the valley, Young Denny could +see the huge bulk of the Maynard homestead--Judge Maynard's great box +of a house--silhouetted against the skyline, and back of it high piles +of timber--framing and sheathing for the new barn that was going up. +For Judge Maynard was going to give a barn-raising--an old-fashioned +barn-raising such as the hill country had not seen in twenty years. + +Already Young Denny knew that there were to be two team captains who +would choose from among the best men that the country boasted, the +very pick of strength and endurance and daring. And these, when the +word was given, would swarm up with mallet and lock-pin over their +half of the allotted work, in the race to drive home the last spike +and wedge into place the last scantling. For days now with a grave +sort of satisfaction which he hardly understood himself, Young Denny +had time after time put all his strength against a reluctant log, +skidding timber back on the hillside, and watched the lithe pike-pole +bend half double under the steadily increasing strain. Somehow he felt +very sure that one or the other of the captains would single him out; +they couldn't afford to pass him by. + +But in that one respect only was Judge Maynard's barn-raising to be +like those that had passed down into history a score of years back. +Every other detail, as befitted the hospitality of the wealthiest man +in the hill country, was planned on a scale of magnificence before +unheard of, and Denny Bolton stood and touched furtively with the tip +of his tongue lips that were dry with the glamour of it all. + +It was to be a masquerade--the dance which followed on the wide, clean +floors--not the kind of a masquerade which the church societies gave +from time to time to eke out the minister's salary and which, while he +had never attended, Young Denny had often heard described as +"poverty-parties," because everybody wore the oldest of his old +clothes--but a marvelously brilliant thing of hired costumes. It did +not mean so much to him, this last, and yet as he thought of it his +tight lips twisted into a slow smile and his eyes swung from their +hungry contemplation of the great Maynard house to a little clump of +brushwood which made a darker blot against the black shadow of the +hill from the crest of which the Judge's place dominated the +surrounding country. Little by little Denny Bolton's lean face lost +its hint of hardness; the lines that ran from his thin nose to the +corners of his lips disappeared as he smiled--smiled with whimsical +gentleness--at the light that glimmered from a single window through +the tangled bushes, twinkling back at him unblinkingly. + +There was a tiny cottage behind that light, a little drab cottage of a +half dozen rooms. It stood, unpainted and unkempt, in a wedge-shaped +acre of neglected garden which, between high weeds and uncut +shrubbery, had long before gone to straggling ruin. And that +wedge-shaped acre which cut a deep fissure in the edge of the +immaculate pastures of Boltonwood's wealthiest citizen was like a +barbed thorn in Judge Maynard's side. + +The latter was not a judge in reality; partly the size of the cash +balance which rumor whispered he carried at the county bank, partly +the fact that he was the only lawyer in that section, had earned him +the title. But every trick of his tricky trade which he could invent +he had brought against the owner of that little, dilapidated cottage +in a vain effort to force him to sell. And yet the acre of neglect +and ruin still clung like an unsightly burr to the hem of his +smooth-rolling acres. + +The people of Boltonwood were given to calling John Anderson a fool, +and not alone because he persisted in his senseless antagonism of a +man as great in the township as was Judge Maynard. There was at least +one other reason. It was almost twenty years now since the day when +John Anderson had first appeared in the stern old hill town, bringing +with him a frail slip of a woman with great, moist violet-blue eyes +and tumbled yellow hair, whose very white and gold prettiness had +seemed to their puritanical eyes the flaunting of an ungodly thing. +There was a transparent pallor in her white skin and heavy shadows +beneath her big dark eyes that made them seem even larger and duskier. +A whispered rumor went around that she was not too strong--that it was +the brisk keen air for which John Anderson had brought her to the +hills. + +The little drab cottage had been white then and there was scarcely a +day but what the passers-by saw the slender girl, in soft fluttering +things that contrasted painfully with their dingy calico, the thick +gleaming mass of hair that crowned her head wind-tossed into her eyes, +standing with her face buried in an armful of crimson blossoms in the +same garden where the weeds were now breast high, or running with +mad, childish abandon between the high hedgerows. And many a night +after it was too dark to see they heard the man's heavier bass +underrunning the light treble of her laughter which, to their +sensitive ears, was never quite free from a tinge of mockery. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +For a year or more it was like that, and then the day came which, with +dawn, found John Anderson changed into a gray-haired, white-faced man, +whose eyes always seemed to be looking beyond one, and who spoke but +seldom, even when he was spoken to. During the month that followed +that night hardly a person in the village heard a word pass his lips, +except, perhaps, those members of the church societies who had +volunteered to help care for the baby. + +He locked himself up in the small shop which occupied the back room of +the house and day after day he worked there alone in a deadly quiet, +strangely mechanical fashion. Sometimes far into the night they heard +the tap-tap of his mallet as he chipped away, bit by bit, on a slender +shaft of white marble, until more than one man in those days shook his +head dubiously and vouchsafed his neighbor the information that John +Anderson "wa'n't quite right." + +A month passed during which the steady chip-chip scarcely ever ceased; +and yet, when the work was finally finished and set up over the fresh +little mound in the grounds behind the church, and they came to stand +before it, they found nothing ready for them to say. For once the +tongues of the hillsfolk were sobered into silence. + +It was like her--that slim little white statue--so like her in its +pallor and frailty of feature and limb that they only gasped and then +fell to whispering behind their hands at the resemblance. And somehow, +too, as they stared, their faces failed to harden as they had always +hardened before, whenever they rebuked her slim, elfish untidiness, +for upon the face of stone, which was the face of his wife, John +Anderson's chisel had left a fleeting, poignantly wistful smile that +seemed touched with the glory of the Virgin Mother herself. + +They merely stood and stared--the townsfolk--and yet they only half +understood, for when it was noised about the street a few days later +that John Anderson had given up forever his occupation of chiseling +tombstones for the bleak Boltonwood cemetery--an occupation which at +least had yielded him a bare living--and had locked himself up in that +back room to "putter with lumps of clay," he was instantly convicted +of being queer in the eyes of the entire thrifty community, even +without his senseless antagonism of the Judge in the years that +followed to clinch the verdict. + +After the first few weeks that followed that night the village saw +less and less of the man who went on living alone in the small white +cottage with only the child to keep him company--the girl-child whom +he had named Dryad, perhaps in a blind, groping hunger for beauty, +perhaps in sheer revolt against the myriad Janes and Anns and Marthas +about him. His hair was snow white before she was half grown; he was +an old man, wrinkled of face and vacant of eye, who bent always over +the bench in his back-room shop too engrossed with his work even to +note that, day by day, her face and slim body and tumbled yellow hair +grew more and more like the face which was always smiling up at him +from the shaping clay or marble. + +Months passed before he opened his lips again for speech. Then he +began to talk; he began to murmur little, disjointed intimate phrases +of endearment to the stone face growing under his fingers--phrases +that were more than half unintelligible to strange ears--until as the +habit grew there came long periods, days at a time, when he carried on +an uncannily one-sided conversation with the empty air before him, or, +as the villagers often hinted, with some one whom his eyes alone could +see. + +But as the years went by even this novelty lost its spice with long +familiarity. The cottage at the edge of town went from straggling +neglect to utter ruin, but John Anderson still clung to it with a +senseless stubbornness over which they often shook their heads in +pity--in heartfelt commiseration for the Judge who had to endure this +eyesore at his very doors, in spite of all his shrewdness or the +reputed size of his balance at the County National. + +But if time had dimmed their interest in the father, it had only +served to whet their keen curiosity over the girl, who, in the +intervening eighteen years, had changed from a half-starved, half-clad +child that flashed through the thickets like a wild thing, into a long +slender-limbed creature with wide, duskily violet eyes and shimmering, +tumbled hair--a creature of swift, passionate moods who, if they could +only have known it, was startlingly like the wild things for which he +had named her. + +They were not given to the reading of heathen mythology, the people of +Boltonwood, and so they could not know. But with every passing day +they did realize that Dryad Anderson's fiercely wistful little face +was growing more and more like that of the little statue in the +grounds behind the church--the stone face of John Anderson's frail +bride of a year--long since turned a dull, nondescript gray by the sun +and weather. + +She had the same trick of smiling with her eyes when there was no +mirth lurking in the corners of her full lips, the same full-throated +little laugh that carried the faintest hint of mockery in its thrill. +Year by year her slim body lost its unformed boyishness in a new soft +roundness which her long outgrown skirt and too scant little waist +failed completely to conceal. And the hillsfolk were given to shaking +their heads over her now, just as the generation before had done, for +to cap it all--the last straw upon the back of their toleration--Dryad +Anderson had "took up" with Denny Bolton, Young Denny, the last of his +name. Nothing more was needed to damn her forever in the eyes of the +hills people, although they could not have explained just why, even if +they had tried. + +And Young Denny, waiting there in the thickening dusk before his own +dark place, smiled gravely back at that single blinking light in the +window of the cottage squatting under the hill--he smiled with +whimsical gentleness, a man's smile that softened somehow the hard +lines of jaw and lip. It was more than three years now since the first +night when he had stood and watched for it to flash out across the +valley before he had turned and gone to set a lamp in the dark front +windows behind him in answer to it. + +He could never remember just how they had agreed upon that signal--there +had never been any mutual agreement--but every Saturday night since +that first one, three years back, he had come in from his week's work, +ploughing or planting or teaming back in the timber and waited for +it to call to him, just at dusk, across the valley. + +His hand went tentatively to his chin, absently caressing his lean +cheeks as he remembered that day. Late in the afternoon he had found a +rabbit caught fast in a snare which he had set deep in the thicket, +and the little animal had squealed in terror, just as rabbits always +squeal, when he leaned and took it from the trap. And when he had +straightened to his feet with it clutched fast in his arms, to look +for a club with which to end its struggles quickly, his eyes had +lifted to encounter the stormy eyes of the girl who had flashed up +before him as silently as a shadow from the empty air. + +Her two small brown fists were tight clenched against her breast; she +was breathing in short irregular gasps as if she had been running +hard. + +At first Denny Bolton had been too amazed to do more than stare +blankly into her blazing eyes; then before that burning glare his face +began to redden consciously and his gaze dropped, wavering from her +face to the little blouse so long outgrown that it strained far open +across the girl's round throat, doubly white by contrast below the +brown line where the clear tan ended. + +His glance went down from the fierce little face to the tight skirt, +shiny from long wear and so short that the hem hung high above her +slim ankles; and from there down to the cracked, broken shoes, +string-laced and sized too large for her fine drawn feet. They were +old and patched--the stockings--so thickly darned that there was +little of the original fabric left, but for all the patches there were +still wide gashes in them, fresh torn by the thorns, through which the +flesh beneath showed very white. + +Her face colored, too, as Young Denny's uncomfortable scrutiny passed +over her. It flamed painfully from throat to hair and then went very +white. She tried vainly with one hand to close the gap at her throat, +while the other struggled to settle the dingy old skirt a little lower +on her childish hips. But her hot eyes clung unwaveringly to the boy's +face. Suddenly she lifted one hand and pointed a quivering finger at +the furry mass palpitating in his arms. + +"What are you going to do with it?" she demanded. + +Young Denny started at the question. The uncompromising directness of +the words startled him even more than had her first swift, silent +coming. Involuntarily, spasmodically his arms closed until the rabbit +squealed again in an ecstasy of terror. + +"Why, I--I reckon to eat him!" he blurted at last, and then his face +grew hotter than ever at the baldness of the answer. + +It was hard to follow the change that flashed over her face as she +became conscious of his blundering, clumsy embarrassment. It came too +quickly for that, but the angry light faded from her eyes and her +lips began to curve in the faintest of quizzical smiles. She even +forgot the too short skirt and gaping blouse to raise both hands +toward him in coaxing coquetry. + +"Please let him go," she wheedled softly. "Please let him go--for +me!" + +Young Denny backed away a step from her upturned face and outstretched +hands, grinning a little as he slowly shook his head. It bewildered +him--puzzled him--this swift change to supplication. + +"Can't," he refused laconically. "I--I got to have him to eat." + +His voice was calmly final and for no other reason than to learn what +she would do next, because already the boy knew that the soft creature +throbbing against him was to have its freedom again. No one, at least +since he could remember, had ever before smiled and asked Denny Bolton +to "do it--for me." For one flashing instant he saw her eyes flare at +his candid refusal; then they cleared again with that same miraculous +swiftness. Once more the corners of her lips lifted pleadingly, arched +with guileful, provocative sweetness. + +"Please," she begged, even more softly, "please--because I ask you +to!" + +Once more Young Denny shook his head. + +Standing there before his dark house, still smiling vaguely at the +light across the valley his fingers tentatively caressed his lean +cheeks where her fingernails had bit deep through the skin that day. +He never remembered how it had happened--it all came too swiftly for +recollection--but even before he had finished shaking his head the +tempting smile had been wiped from her lips, her little face working +convulsively with rage, before she sprang at him--sprang with lithe, +lightning, tigerlike ferocity that sent him staggering back before +her. + +Her hands found his face and tore deep through the skin before he +could lift his wide-flung arms to protect it. And then, almost before +he realized what had happened, she stood back, groping blindly away +from him until her hands found a birch sapling. She clung to it with a +desperately tight clasp as if to hold herself erect. A little spot of +red flecked her own lip where her locked teeth had cut through. She +swayed a moment, dizzily, the too-tight little waist gaping at her +throat as she struggled for breath. + +"There--there!" she gasped at him voicelessly. "There," she whispered +through her white lips, "now will you let him go?" + +And Denny Bolton had stood that afternoon in wondering silence, gazing +back into her twitching, distorted face without a word while the blood +oozed from the deep cuts in his cheeks and dripped noisily upon the +dry leaves. Once he turned and followed with his eyes the mad flight +of the rabbit through the underbrush; and then turned slowly back to +her. + +"Why, he's gone already," he stated with a gentle gravity that was +almost ponderous. And with a deliberation which he meant more to +comfort than to conciliate: "I--I aimed to let him go, myself, right +from the first time you asked me--after a while!" + +She cried over him that afternoon--cried not as he had known other +girls to cry, but with long noiseless gasps that shook her thin +shoulders terribly. Her eyes swam with great drops that hung from her +lashes and went rolling silently down her small face while she washed +out the cuts with one sleeve ruthlessly wrenched from her blouse and +soaked in the brook nearby. + +But in almost the same breath while she crooned pityingly over him she +bade him--commanded him with a swift, fierce passionate vehemence--to +tell her that it did not hurt--did not hurt very much! And before she +would let him go that day she made him promise to come back--she +promised herself to set a light in the front window of the shabby +little cottage to tell him that she had found the plaster--that there +was enough left to close the cuts. + +There had never been any spoken agreement between them, but since that +night, three years ago, Denny Bolton had learned to watch each week +end, just at dusk, for the signal to appear. From the first their very +loneliness had drawn them together--a childish, starved desire for +companionship; and as time passed they only clung the closer, each to +the other, as jealously fearful as a marooned man and woman might have +been of any harm which might come to the one and leave the other +utterly, desolately alone. + +Winter and summer Denny Bolton went every Saturday night, close to +nightfall, and waited for her to come, except that now, in the last +few weeks since the first rumor of the Judge's big barn-raising and +masquerade had gone forth, no matter how early he started or how much +haste he made, he always found Dryad Anderson there before him. For +weeks no other topic had passed the girl's lips, and with each +recurring visit to the small clearing hidden back in the thicket near +the brook the boy's wonder grew. + +Almost from the first day she had decided upon the costume which she +would wear. Night after night she sat and made plans in a tumultuous, +bubbling flood of anticipation which he could scarcely follow, for it +was only after long argument that he had sheepishly surrendered and +agreed to "dress up" at all; she sat with a picture torn from an old +magazine across her knees--a color-plate of a dancing girl which she +meant to copy for herself--poring over it with shining eyes, her +breath coming and going softly between childishly curved lips as she +devoured every detail of its construction. + +It was a thing of brilliantly contrasting colors--the picture which +she planned to copy--a sleeveless waist of dullest crimson and a much +bespangled skirt of clinging, shimmering black. And that skirt hung +clear to the ankles, swinging just high enough to disclose the gleam +of silken stockings and satiny, pointed slippers, with heels of +absurdly small girth. + +The boy only half understood the feverish hunger which glowed in Dryad +Anderson's face, piquantly, wistfully earnest in the dull yellow +lantern light as she leaned forward, ticking off each item and its +probable cost upon her fingers, and waited doubtfully for him to mock +at the expense; and yet, at that, he understood far better than any +one else could ever have hoped to comprehend, for Young Denny knew too +what it was to wait--to wait for something that was drearily slow in +the coming. + +One other thing marked Judge Maynard's proffered hospitality as +totally different from all the other half-similar affairs which +Boltonwood had ever known. There were to be invitations--written, +mailed invitations--instead of the usual placards tacked up in the +village post-office as they always were whenever any public +entertainment was imminent, or the haphazard invitations which were +passed along by word of mouth and which somehow they always forgot to +pass on to the boy who lived alone in the dark house on the hill. +There were to be formal, mailed invitations, and Young Denny found it +hard waiting that night for Old Jerry, who had never been so late +before. + +The cool red of the horizon behind him faded to a dusky gray and the +dusk thickened from twilight to dark while he stood there waiting, +leaning heavily upon the pike-pole, shifting more and more uneasily +from one tired foot to the other. He had turned at last to go and set +a light in answer to the one which was calling insistently to him from +the blackness before the Judge's place when the shrill squeal of +complaining axles drifted up to him from far down the long hill road. + +Old Jerry came with exasperating slowness that night. The plodding +ascent of the fat white mare and creaking buggy was nerve-rackingly +deliberate. Young Denny shifted the shaft of his pike-pole to the +other hand to wipe his damp palm against the checkered coat as the rig +loomed up ahead of him in the darkness. Old Jerry was complaining to +himself bitterly in a whining, cracked falsetto. + +"'Tain't reg'lar," the boy heard him whimpering. "'Tain't accordin' to +law--not the way I figger it, it ain't. The Gov'mint don't expect +nobody to work 'til this hour!" + +The buggy came to a standstill, with the little, weazened old man +leaning far out from the torn leather seat, shading his eyes with one +unsteady hand while he peered into the shadows searching for the +big-shouldered figure that stepped hesitatingly nearer the wheel. +There was something birdlike in the brilliancy of the beady little +eyes; something of sparrowlike pertness in the tilt of the old man's +head, perked far over to one side. + +"Still a-waitin', be ye?" he exclaimed peevishly. "Well, it's lucky +you ain't been kept a-standin' there a whole sight longer--half the +night, mebby! You would a-been, only for my havin' an orig'nal system +for peddlin' them letters that's all my own. It's system does it--but +it ain't right, just the same. The Gov'mint don't expect nobody to +work more'n eight hours to a stretch, and look at me, two hours late +and I ain't home yet! I'd complain, too--I'd complain to the +authorities at Washington, only--only"--his thin, high-pitched voice +dropped suddenly to a furtively conciliating whisper--"only a-course I +don't want to make no trouble for the Judge." + +Denny Bolton cleared his throat and shuffled his feet uneasily, but +this hint for haste was utterly wasted upon Old Jerry. The latter +failed completely to note the strained intensity of the face that was +upturned before him and went on grumbling as he leaned over to fumble +in the box beneath the seat. And the tirade continued in an unbroken, +half-muffled stream until he straightened laboriously again, the boy's +usual weekly packet of papers and catalogues in one hand. + +"No," he emphasized deliberately, "I wouldn't really go so fur's +that--I ain't figgerin' on makin' no complaint--not this time. I got +too much regard for the Judge to try to get him into any hot water. +But there wa'n't no real use nor reason in his postin' all them +invitations to once. He could a-begun back a stretch and kinda run 'em +in easy, a little to a time, instead of lumpin' 'em this way, and that +would a-give me----" + +Young Denny reached out and took the bundle from the extended, +unsteady old hand. His own hands were shaking a little as he broke the +string and fluttered swiftly through the half dozen papers and +pamphlets. Old Jerry never skipped a breath at the interruption. + +"But that finishes up the day--that's about the last of it." The +thin voice became heavily tinged with pride. "There ain't nobody in +the township but what's got his card to that barn-raising by +now--delivered right on the nail! That's my system." And then, +judiciously: "I guess it's a-goin' to be a real fancy affair, too, +at that. Must be it'll cost him more'n a little mite before he gits +done feedin' 'em. They was a powerful lot of them invitations." + +Slowly Denny Bolton's head lifted. He stood and stared into Old +Jerry's peaked, wrinkled face as if he had only half heard the +rambling complaint, a strange, bewildered light growing in his eyes. +Then his gaze dropped once more, and a second time, far more slowly, +his fingers went through the packet of advertisements. Old Jerry was +leaning over to unwind the reins from the whipstock when the boy's +hand reached out and stopped him. + +"Ain't there--wasn't there anything more for me--tonight?" Young Denny +inquired gravely. + +Jerry paused impatiently. No other question ever caused him quite such +keen irritation, for he felt that it was a slur at his reliability. + +"More!" he petulantly echoed the question. "More? Why, you got your +paper, ain't you? Was you expectin' sunthin' else? Wasn't looking for +a letter, now was you?" + +Denny backed slowly away from the wheel. Dumbly he stood and licked +his lips. He cleared his throat again and swallowed hard before he +answered. + +"No," he faltered at last, with the same level gravity. "No, I wasn't +exactly expectin' a letter. But I kind of thought--I--I was just +hopin'----" + +His grave voice trailed heavily off into silence. Eyes still numbly +bewildered he turned, leaning forward a little, to gaze out across the +valley at the great square silhouette of Judge Maynard's house on the +opposite ridge, while Old Jerry wheeled the protesting buggy and +started deliberately down the hill. Just once more the latter paused; +he drew the fat gray mare to a standstill and leaned a last time far +out from the seat. + +"A-course I didn't mean nothin' when I spoke about complainin' against +the Judge," he called back. "You know that, don't you, Denny? You know +I was just jokin', don't you?" A vaguely worried, appealing strain +crept into the cracked accents. "An' a-course you wouldn't say nothin' +about my speakin' like that. I think a whole heap too much of the +Judge to even try to git him into trouble--and--and then the Judge--he +might--you understand that I was only jokin', don't you, Denny?" + +Young Denny nodded his head silently in reply. Long after the shrill +falsetto grumbling had ceased to drift back up the hill to him he +stood there motionless. After a while the fingers that still clutched +the bundle of circulars opened loosely and when he did finally wheel +to cross slowly to the kitchen door the papers and catalogues lay +unheeded, scattered on the ground where they had fallen. + +He stopped once at the threshold to prop his pike-pole against the +house corner before he passed aimlessly inside, leaving the door wide +open behind him. And he stood a long time in the middle of the dark +room, staring dully at the cold, fireless stove. Never before had he +given it more than a passing thought--he had accepted it silently as +he accepted all other conditions over which he had no control--but +now as he stood and stared, it came over him, bit by bit, that he was +tired--so utterly weary that the task of cooking his own supper that +night had suddenly become a task greater than he could even attempt. +The very thought of the half-cooked food sickened him--nauseated him. +Motionless there in the dark he dragged one big hand across his dry +lips and slowly shook his head. + +"They didn't want me," he muttered hoarsely. "It wasn't because they +forgot me before; they didn't want me--not even for the strength of my +shoulders." + +With heavy, shuffling steps he crossed and dropped loosely into a +chair beside the bare board table that stood in front of one dingy +window. A long time he sat silent, his lean chin propped in his rough +palms, eyes burning straight ahead of him into vacancy. Then, little +by little, his great shoulders in the vividly checkered coat began to +sag--they slumped downward-until his head was bowed and his face lay +hidden in the long arms crooked limply asprawl across the table-top. + +Once more he spoke aloud, hours later. + +"They didn't want me," he repeated dully. "Not even for the work I +could do!" + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +It was very quiet in the front room of the little cottage that +squatted in the black shadow below Judge Maynard's huge house on the +hill. No sound broke the heavy silence save the staccato clip-clip +of the long shears in the fingers of the girl who was leaning almost +breathlessly over the work spread out on the table beneath the +feeble glow of the single oil-lamp, unless the faint, monotonous +murmur which came in an endless sing-song from the lips of the +stooped, white-haired old figure in the small back room beyond the +door could be named anything so definite. + +John Anderson's lips always moved when he worked. His fingers, +strong and clean-jointed and almost womanishly smooth--the only part +of the man not pitifully seared with age--flew with a bewildering +nimbleness one moment, only to dwell the next with a lingering +caress upon the shaping features before him; and for each caress of +his finger tips there was an accompanying, vacantly gentle smile or +an uncertainly emphatic nod of the silvered head which gave the +one-sided conversation a touch of uncanny reality. + +And yet, at regularly recurring intervals, even his busy fingers +faltered, while he sat head bent far over to one side as though he +were listening for something, waiting for some reply. At every such +pause the vacant smile left his face and failed to return immediately. +The monotonously inflectionless conversation was still, too, for the +time, and he merely sat and stared perplexedly about him, around the +small workshop, bare except for the single high-stool that held him +and the littered bench on which he leaned. + +There was a foot-wide shelf against each wall of that room, fastened +waist high from the floor, and upon it stood countless small white +statues, all slim and frail of limb, all upturned and smiling of lip. +They were miraculously alike, these delicate white figures, each with +a throat-tightening heartache in its wistful face--so alike in form +and expression that they might have been cast in a single mold. +Wherever his eyes might fall, whenever he turned in one of those +endlessly repeated fits of faltering uncertainty, that tiny face was +always before him, uplifted of lip, smiling back into John Anderson's +vacant eyes until his own lips began to curve again and he turned once +more, nodding his head and murmuring contentedly, to the clay upon his +bench. + +Out in the larger front room, as she hovered over the work spread out +before her, the girl, too, was talking aloud to herself, not in the +toneless, rambling voice that came from John Anderson's mumbling +lips, but in hushed, rapt, broken sentences which were softly tinged +with incredulous wonder. + +The yellow glow of the single lamp, pushed far across the table from +her, where the most of its radiance was swallowed up by the gloom of +the uncurtained window, flickered unsteadily across her shining, +tumbled hair, coloring the faintly blue, thinly penciled lines beneath +her tip-tilted eyes with a hint of weariness totally at variance with +the firm little sloping shoulders and full lips, pursed in a childish +pout over a mouthful of pins. + +The hours had passed swiftly that day for Dryad Anderson; and the last +one of all--the one since she had lighted the single small lamp in the +room and set it in the window, so far across the table from her that +she had to strain more and more closely over her swift flashing +scissors in the thickening dusk--had flown on winged feet, even faster +than she knew. + +Twice, early in the evening she had laid the long shears aside and +risen from the matter that engrossed her almost to the exclusion of +every other thought, to peer intently out of the window across the +valley at the bleak old farmhouse on the crest of the opposite ridge; +and each time as she settled herself once more in the chair, hunched +boyishly over the table edge, she only nodded her bright head in +utter, undisturbed unconsciousness of the passage of time. + +"He's late getting home tonight," she told herself aloud, after she +had searched the outer darkness in vain for any answering signal, but +there was not even the faintest trace of troubled worry in her words. +She merely smiled with mock severity. + +"He's later than he ought to be--even if it is his last week back in +the hills. Next week I'll have to make him wait----" + +Her vaguely murmured threat drifted away into nothingness, left +unfinished as she rose and stood, hands lightly bracketed upon her +hips, scrutinizing the completed work. + +"There," she went on softly, sighing in deep relief, "there--that's +done--if--if it will only fit." + +She removed the cluster of pins from her mouth and unfastened the long +strip of newspaper from the section of the old black skirt which she +had ripped apart that afternoon for a pattern. It was far too +short--that old skirt--to duplicate the long free lines of the +brilliant red and black costume of the dancer beside her elbow on the +table, but Dryad Anderson's shears, coasting rapidly around the edge +of the worn cloth, had left a wide margin of safety at the hem. + +The critical frown upon her forehead smoothed little by little while +she lifted cautiously that long strip of paper pattern and turned with +it dangling from one hip to walk up and down before the tilted mirror +at the far end of the room, viewing her reflected image from every +possible angle. Even the thoughtful pucker at the corners of her eyes +disappeared and she nodded her small head with its loosened mass of +hair in judicious satisfaction. + +"I do believe that's it," the hushed voice mused on, "or, if it isn't, +it is as near as I can ever hope to get it. If--if only it doesn't sag +at the heels--and if it does I'll have to----" + +Again with a last approving glance flung over one shoulder the +murmured comment, whatever it might have been, was finished +wordlessly. Her fingers, in spite of their very smallness as strong +and straight and clean-jointed as those of the old man bent double +over his bench in the back room, lingered absently over the folding of +that last paper pattern, and when she finally added it to the top of +the stack already folded and piled beside the lamp her eyes had become +velvety blank with preoccupation. + +From early afternoon, ever since the Judge himself had whirled up to +the sagging gate at the end of their rotting boardwalk and clambered +out of his yellow-wheeled buckboard to knock with measured solemnity +at the front door, Dryad had been rushing madly from task to task and +pausing always in just such fashion in the midst of each to stand +dreamily immobile, everything else forgotten for the moment in an +effort to visualize it--to understand that it was real, after all, and +not just a cobweb fabric of her own fancy, like the dreams she was +always weaving to make the long week days pass more quickly. + +It was more than a few years since the last time Judge Maynard had +driven up to the gate of that old, drab cottage; and now standing +there with one slim outstretched hand lovingly patting the bundle of +paper patterns which represented her afternoon's work, she smiled with +gentle derision for the mental picture she had carried all those years +of the wealthiest man in Boltonwood. + +The paternal, almost bewildering familiar cordiality with which he had +greeted her and the pompously jovial urgency of the invitation which +he had come to deliver in person, urging acceptance upon her because +she "saw entirely too little of the young folks of the town," was +hardly in accord with the childish recollection she had carried with +her, year after year, of a purple faced, cursing figure who leaned +over the rickety old fence that bounded the garden, shook his fists in +John Anderson's mildly puzzled face and roared threats until he had to +cease from very breathlessness. + +A far different Judge had bowed low before her that afternoon when she +answered the measured summons at the door--a sleek, twinkling, +unctuously solicitous, far more portly Judge Maynard--and Dryad +Anderson, who could not know that he had finally come to agree with +the rest of the village that he might "catch more flies with molasses +than with vinegar," and was ordering his campaign accordingly, flushed +in painful memory for the half-clad, half-starved little creature that +had clung to John Anderson's rusty coat-tails that other day and +glared black, bitter hate back at the man beyond the fence. + +Leaning against the table there in the half light of the room, a slow +smile curled back the corners of her lips, still childishly quizzical +in contrast with that slim roundness of body which was losing its +boyish litheness in a new slender fullness that throbbed on the +threshold of womanhood. She smiled deprecatingly as she lifted one +hand to search in the breast of the blouse that was always just enough +outgrown to fail of closing across her throat, and drew out the thing +which the Judge had delivered with every possible flourish, barely a +few hours back. + +Already the envelope was creased and worn with much handling, but the +square card within, thickly, creamily white, was still unspotted. As +if it were a perishably precious thing her fingers drew it with +infinite care from its covering, and she leaned far across the table +to prop it up before her where the light fell brightest. Pointed chin +cupped in her palms, she lay devouring with hungry eyes the words upon +its polished surface. + +"---- requests the pleasure of," she picked up the lines which she +already knew by rote; and then, "Miss Dryad Anderson's company," in +the heavy sprawling scrawl which she knew must have come from the +Judge's own pen. + +Suddenly her two hands flashed out and swept the card up to crush it +against her with passionate impetuosity. + +"Oh, you wonderful thing!" she crooned over it, a low laugh that was +half a sob bubbling in her throat. "You wonderful thing! And to think +that I've had you all the afternoon--almost all day--and he's had to +wait all this time for his to come. He's had to wait for Jerry to +bring his with the mail--and Jerry is so dreadfully slow at times." + +Lingeringly, as though she hated to hide it, her fingers thrust the +card back inside its envelope. And she was tucking it away in its warm +hiding place within the scant fullness of the white blouse when the +clock on the wall behind her began to beat out the hour with a noisy +whir of loosened cogs. + +"Hours and hours," she murmured, counting the strokes subconsciously. + +And then as the growing total of those gong strokes beat in upon her +brain, all the dreamy preoccupation faded from her face. The little +compassionate smile which had accompanied the last words disappeared +before the swift, taut change that straightened her lips. She whirled, +peering from startled eyes up at the dim old dial, refusing to +believe her own count; and as she stood, body tensely poised, gazing +incredulously at the hands, she realized for the first time how fast +the hours had flown while she bent, forgetful of all else, over her +paper patterns. + +The table rocked dangerously as she crowded her body between it and +the windowsill and, back to the light, stood staring with her face +cupped in her hands out into the blackness. Far across the valley the +dilapidated farmhouse on the ridge showed only a blurred blot against +the skyline. + +Minutes the girl stood and watched. The minutes lengthened interminably +while the light for which she waited failed to show through the +dark, until a dead white, living fear began to creep across her face--a +fear that wiped the last trace of childishness from her tightened +features. + +"He's late," she whispered hoarsely. "It's the last week, and it's +just kept him later than usual!" + +But there was no assurance in the words that faltered from her lips. +They were lifelessly dull, as though she were trying to convince +herself of a thing she already knew she could not believe. + +As long as she could she stood there at the window, doggedly fighting +the rising terror that was bleaching her face; fighting the dread +which was never quite asleep within her brain--the dread of that old +stone demijohn standing in the corner of the kitchen, which for all +her broken pleading Young Denny Bolton had refused with a strange, +unexplained stubbornness to remove--until that rising terror drove her +away from the pane. + +One wide-flung arm swept the stack of neatly folded patterns in a +rustling storm to the floor as she pushed her way out from the +narrow space between table edge and sill. The girl did not heed +them or the lamp, that rocked drunkenly with the tottering table. +She had forgotten everything--the thick white square of cardboard, +even the stooped old man in the small back room--in the face of the +overwhelming fear that reason could not fight down. Only the +peculiarly absolute silence that came with the sudden cessation of his +droning monotone checked the panic haste of her first rush. With one +hand clutching the knob of the outer door she turned back. + +John Anderson was sitting twisted about on his high stool, gazing +after her in infantile, perplexed reproach, his long fingers clasped +loosely about the almost finished figure over which he had been +toiling. As the girl turned back toward him his eyes wandered down to +it and he began to shake his head slowly, vacantly, hopelessly. A low +moaning whimper stirred her lips; then the hand tight-clenched over +the knob slackened. She ran swiftly across to him. + +"What is it, dear?" Her voice broke, husky with fright and pity. +"Tell me--what is the matter? Won't it come right tonight?" + +With shaking hands she leaned over him, smoothing the shining hair. At +the touch of her fingers he looked up, staring with pleading +uncertainty into her quivering face before he shook his head. + +"It--it don't smile," he complained querulously. His fingers groped +lightly over the small face of clay. "I--I can't make it smile--like +the rest." + +Sudden terror contorted the thin features, a sheer ecstacy of terror +as white-lipped as that which marred the face of the girl who bent +above him. + +"Maybe I've forgotten how she smiled!" he whispered fearfully. "Maybe +I'll never be able to----" + +Dryad's eyes flitted desperately around the room, along the shelves +laden with those countless figures--all white and finely slender, all +upturned of face. Again a little impotent gasp choked her; then, eyes +filling hotly at that poignantly wistful smile which edged the lips of +each, she stooped and patted reassuringly the trembling hands before +she stepped a pace away from him. + +"You've not forgotten, dear. Why, you mustn't be frightened like that! +We know, you and I, don't we, that you never could forget? You're just +tired. Now, that's better--that's brave! And now--look! Isn't this the +way--isn't this the way it ought to be?" + +Face uptilted, bloodless lips falling apart in the faintest of pallid +smiles, she swayed forward, both arms outstretched toward him. And as +she stood the wide eyes and straight nose and delicately pointed chin +of her colorless face took line for line the lines of all those, +chalky white, against the wall. + +For a moment John Anderson's eyes clung to her--clung vacant with +hopeless doubt; then they glowed again with dawning recollection. He, +too, was smiling once more as his fingers fluttered in nervous haste +above the lips of the clay face on the bench before him, and almost +before the girl had stepped back beside him he had forgotten that she +was there. + +"Marie!" she heard him murmur. "Marie, why, you mustn't be afraid! +We'll never forget--you and I--we never could forget!" + +Even while she waited another instant those plastic earthen lips began +to curl--they began to curve with hungry longing like all the rest. He +was talking steadily now, mumbling broken fragments of sentences which +it was hard to understand. Her hand hovered a moment longer over his +bowed head; once at the door she paused and looked back at him. + +"It's only for a little while," she promised unsteadily. "I--I have to +go--but it's only for a little while. I'll be back soon--so soon! And +you'll be safe until I come!" + +He gave no sign that he had heard, not even so much as a lifted +glance. But as she drew the door shut behind her she heard him pick +up the words, caressingly, after her. + +"You'll be safe, Marie," he whispered. "It'll be only for a little +while, now. You'll be safe till I come." An ineffably peaceful smile +flickered across his face. "We couldn't forget--why, of course, we +couldn't forget--you and I!" + +With the short black skirt lifted even higher above her ankles that +she might make still more speed, Dryad turned into the dark path that +twisted crookedly through the brush to the open clearing beside the +brook and from there on to the black house on the hill. + +She ran swiftly, madly, through the darkness, with the wild, +panic-stricken, headlong abandon of a hunted thing, finding the narrow +trail ahead of her by instinct alone. Only once she overran it, but +that once a low hanging branch, face high, caught her full across the +forehead and sent her crashing back in the underbrush. Just once she +put one narrow foot in its loosely flapping shoe into the deep crevice +between two rocks and gasped aloud with the pain of the fall that +racked her knees. When she groped out and steadied herself erect she +was talking--stammering half incoherent words that came bursting +jerkily from her lips as she tore on. + +"Help me ... in time ... God," she panted, "Just this once ... get to +him ... in time. Lord, forgive ... own vanity. Oh, God, please in +time!" + +Small feet drumming the harder ground, she flashed up the last rise +and across the yard to the door of that unlighted kitchen. Her hands +felt for the latch and failed to find it; then she realized that it +was already open--the door--but her knees, all the strength suddenly +drained from them at the black quiet in that room, refused to carry +her over the threshold. She rocked forward, reaching out with one hand +for the frame to steady herself, and in that same instant the man who +lay a huddled motionless heap across the table top, moved a little and +began to speak aloud. + +"They didn't want me," he muttered, and the words came with muffled +thickness. "Not even for the strength of my shoulders." + +She took one faltering step forward--the girl who stood there swaying +in the doorway--and stopped again. And the man lifted his head and +laughed softly, a short, ugly rasping laugh. + +"Not even for the work I could do," he finished. + +And then she understood. She tried to call out to him, and the words +caught in her throat and choked her. She tried again and this time her +voice rang clear through the room. + +"Denny," she cried, "Denny, I've come to you! Strike a light! I'm +here, Denny, and--oh, I'm afraid--afraid of the dark!" + +Before he could rise, almost before his big-shouldered body whirled in +the chair toward her, her swift rush carried her across to him. She +knelt at his knees, her thin arms clutching him with desperate +strength. Denny Bolton felt her body shudder violently as he leaned +over, dumb with bewilderment, and put his hands on her bowed head. + +"Thank God," he heard her whispering, "thank God--thank God!" + +But far more swiftly than his half numbed brain could follow she was +on her feet the next instant, tense and straight and lancelike in the +gloom. + +"Damn 'em," she hissed. "Damn 'em--damn 'em--damn 'em!" + +His fingers felt for and found a match and struck it. Her face was +working convulsively, twisted with hate, both small fists lifted +toward the huge house that crowned the opposite hill. It made him +remember that first day when he had looked up, with the rabbit +struggling in his arms, and found her standing there in the thicket +before him, only now the fury that blazed in her eyes was not for him. +There was a rough red welt across her forehead only half hidden by the +tumbled hair that cascaded to her waist, torn loose from its scant +fastenings by the whipping brush. And as he stood with the flame of +the flickering match scorching his fingers, Denny Bolton remembered +all the rest--he remembered the light that still burned unanswered in +the window across the valley. He bowed his head. + +[Illustration: "HOLD ME TIGHT--OH! HOLD ME TIGHTER! FOR THEY FORGOT ME, +TOO, DENNY; THEY FORGOT ME TOO!"] + +"I--I forgot," he faltered at last. "I did not know it was so late. I +must have been--pretty tired." + +Slowly the girl's clenched hands came away from her throat while she +stared up into his face, brown and lean and very hard and bitter. The +ashen terror upon her own cheeks disappeared with a greater, growing +comprehension of all that lay behind that dully colorless statement. +For just a moment her fingers hovered over the opening at the neck of +her too small blouse and felt the thick white card that lay hidden +within, before she lifted both arms to him in impulsive compassion, +trying to smile in spite of the wearily childish droop at the corners +of her lips. + +"I know, Denny," she quavered. "I--I understand." Her arms slipped up +around his neck. "Hold me tight--oh, hold me tighter! For they forgot +me, too, Denny; they forgot me, too!" + +As his arms closed about her slim body she buried her bright head +against the vividly checkered coat and sobbed silently--great +noiseless gasps that shook her small shoulders terribly. Once, after a +long time, when she held his face away to peer up at him through +brimming eyes, she saw that all the numb bitterness was gone from +it--that he had forgotten all else save her own hurt. + +"Why, you mustn't feel so badly for me," she told him then, warmly +tremulous of mouth. "I--I don't mind now, very much. Only"--her voice +broke unsteadily--"only I did want to go just once where all the +others go; I wanted them to see me just once in a skirt that's long +enough for me--and--and to wear stockings without any patches, and +silk, Denny, silk--next to my skin!" + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +At her first swift coming when she had cried out to him there in the +dark and run across to kneel at his knees, a dull, shamed flush had +stained his lean cheeks with the realization that, in his own great +bitterness he had failed even to wonder whether she had been +forgotten, too. + +Now as his big hand hovered over the tumbled brightness of her hair, +loose upon his sleeve, that hot shame in turn disappeared. After the +quivering gasps were all but stilled, he twice opened his lips as if +to speak, and each time closed them again without a word. He was +smiling a faint, gravely gentle smile that barely lifted the corners +of his lips when she turned in his arms and lifted her face once more +to him. + +"We don't mind very much," she repeated in a half whisper. "Do +we--either of us--now?" + +Slowly he shook his head. With effortless ease he stooped and swung +her up on one arm, seating her upon the bare table before the window. +Another match flared between his fingers and the whole room sprang +into brightness as he touched the point of flame to the wick of the +lamp bracketed to the wall beside him. + +She sat, leaning forward a little, both elbows resting upon her slim +knees, both feet swinging pendulum-like high above the floor, watching +with a small frown of curiosity growing upon her forehead, while he +stooped without a word of explanation and dragged a bulky package from +the table and placed it beside her. Then she sighed aloud, an audible +sigh of sheer surprise after he had broken the string and drawn aside +the paper wrapper. + +Just as they had seemed in the picture they lay there under her amazed +eyes--the pointed, satiny black slippers of the dancing girl, with +their absurdly slender heels and brilliant buckles, and filmy +stockings to match. And underneath lay two folded squares of +shimmering stuff, dull black and burnished scarlet, scarce thicker +than the silk of the stockings themselves. + +The faint, vaguely self-conscious smile went from Denny Bolton's lips +while he stood and watched her bend and touch each article, one by +one--the barest ghost of contact. Damp eyes glowing, lips curled half +open, she lifted her head at last and gazed at him, as he stood with +hands balanced on his hips before her. + +A moment she sat immobile, her breath coming and going in soft, +fluttering gasps, and looked into his sober, questioning face; then +she turned again and picked up one web-like stocking and held it +against her cheek, as hotly tinted now beneath its smooth whiteness as +the shining scarlet cloth beside her. + +He heard her murmur to herself little, broken, incoherent phrases that +he could not catch. + +"Denny," he heard her whisper, "Denny--Denny!" + +And then, with the tiny slippers huddled in her lap, her hands flashed +out and caught his face and drew it down against the too-small white +blouse, open at the throat. + +"Man--man," she said, and he felt her breast rise and fall, rise and +fall, against his cheek. "Man, you didn't understand! It--it wasn't +the clothes, Denny, but--but I'm all the gladder, I think, because +you're so much of a man that you couldn't, not even if I tried a +hundred years to explain." + +He drew the chair at the side of the table around in front of her and +dropped into it. With a care akin to reverence he lifted one slipper +and held it outstretched at arm's length upon his broad palm. + +"I--I hadn't exactly forgotten, tonight," he told her. "I'd watched +for the light, and I meant to bring them--when I came." His steady +eyes dropped to her slim, swinging feet. "They're the smallest they +had in any shop at the county-seat," he went on, and the slow smile +came creeping back across his face. "I crossed over through the timber +late last night, after we had broken camp, and I--I had to guess the +size. Shall we--try them on?" + +She reached out and snatched the small thing of satin and leather away +from him with mock jealous impetuosity, a little reckless gurgle of +utter delight breaking from her lips. + +"Over these," she demanded, lifting one foot and pointing at the +thickly patched old stocking above the dingy, string-tied shoe. +"You--you are trying to shame me, Denny--you want to make me confess +they are too small!" + +Then, almost in the same breath, all the facetious accusation left her +face. Even the warm glow of wonder which had lighted her wet eyes gave +way to a new seriousness. + +"No one has ever told me," she stated slowly, "but I know it is so, +just the same. Somehow, because it was to be the first party I had +ever attended--or--or had a chance to attend, I thought it must be all +right, just once, for you to buy me these. There was no one else to +buy them, Denny, and maybe I wanted to go so very much I made myself +believe that it was all right. But there isn't any party now--for us. +And--and men don't buy clothes for women, Denny--not until they're +married!" + +Her face was tensely earnest while she waited for the big man before +her to answer. And Young Denny turned his head, staring silently out +of the opposite window down toward the village, dark now, in the +valley below. He cleared his throat uncertainly. + +"Do they?" She was leaning forward until her hair brushed his own. "Do +they, Denny?" A rising inflection left the words hanging in midair. + +"I don't know just what the difference is," he began finally, his +voice very deliberate. "I've often tried to figure it out, and never +been quite able to get it straight"--he nodded his head again toward +the sleeping village--"but we--we've never been like the rest, anyhow. +And--and anyway," he reached out one hand and laid it upon her knees, +"we're to be married, too--when--when----" + +With swift, caressing haste she lifted the slippers that lay cradled +in her lap and set them back inside the open package. Lightly she +swung herself down and stood before him, both hands balanced upon his +shoulders. For just the fraction of a moment her eyes lifted over his +head, flickering toward the stone demijohn that stood in the far, +shadowy corner near the door. Her voice was trembling a little when +she went on. + +"Then let me come soon, Denny," she begged. "Can't it be soon? Oh, I'm +going to keep them!" One hand searched behind her to fall lightly upon +the package upon the table. "They're--they're so beautiful that I +don't believe I could ever give them back. But do we have to wait any +longer--do we? I can take care of him, too." + +Vehemently she tilted her head toward the little drab cottage across +under the opposite hill. + +"He hardly ever notices when I come or go. I--I want to come, Denny. +I'm lonesome, and--and--" her eyes darkened and swam with fear as she +stared beyond him into the dusky corner near the door, "why can't I +come now, before some time--when it might be--too late?" + +He reached up and took her hands from his shoulders and held them in +front of him, absently contemplating their rounded smoothness. She +bent closer, trying to read his eyes, and found them inscrutable. Then +his fingers tightened. + +"And be like them?" he demanded, and the words leaped out so abruptly +that they were almost harsh. "And be like all the rest," he +reiterated, jerking his head backward, "old and thin, and bent and +worn-out at thirty?" A hard, self-scathing note crept into the words. +"Why, it--it took me almost a month--even to buy these!" + +He in turn reached out and laid a hand upon the bundle behind her. But +she only laughed straight back into his face--a short, unsteady laugh +of utter derision. + +"Old?" she echoed. "Work! But I--I'd have you, Denny, wouldn't I?" +Again she laughed in soft disdain. "Clothes!" she scoffed. And then, +more serious even than before: "Denny, is--is that the only reason, +now?" + +The gleam that always smoldered in Denny Bolton's eyes whenever he +remembered the tales they told around the Tavern stove of Old Denny's +last bad night began to kindle. His lips were thin and straight and as +colorless as his suddenly weary face as he stood and looked back at +her. She lifted her hands and put them back upon his shoulders. + +"I'm not afraid--any more--to chance it," she told him, her lips +trembling in spite of all she could do to hold them steady. "I'm never +afraid, when I'm with you. It--it's only when I'm alone that it grows +to be more than I can bear, sometimes. I'm not afraid. Does it--does +it have to stay there any longer, in the corner, Denny? Aren't we sure +enough now--you and I--aren't we?" + +He stopped back a pace--his big body huge above her slenderness--stepped +away from the very nearness of her. But as she lifted her arms to him +he began to shake his head--the old stubborn refusal that had +answered her a countless number of times before. + +"Aren't we?" she said again, but her voice sounded very small and +bodiless and forlorn in the half dark room. + +He swung one arm in a stiff gesture that embraced the entire valley. + +"They're all sure, too," his voice grated hoarsely, "They're all sure, +too--just as sure as we could ever be--and there's a whole town of +them!" + +She was bending silently over the table, retying the bundle, when he +crossed back to her side, a lighted lantern dangling in one hand. + +"I don't know why myself," he tried to explain. "I only know I've got +to wait. And I don't even know what I'm waiting for--but I know it's +got to come!" + +She would not lift her head when he slipped his free arm about her +shoulders and drew her against him. When he reached out to take the +package from her she held it away from him, but her voice, half +muffled against his checkered coat, was anything but hard. + +"Let _you_ carry them?" she murmured. "Why--I wouldn't trust them to +any other hands in the world but my own. You can't even see them +again--not until I've finished them, and I wear them--for you." + +With head still bowed she walked before him to the open door. But +there on the threshold she stopped and flashed up at him her +whimsically provocating smile. + +"Tell me--why don't you tell me, Denny," she commanded imperiously, +"that I'm prettier than all the others--even if I haven't the pretty +clothes!" + +When the ridges to the east were tinged with the red of a rising sun, +Denny Bolton was still sitting, head propped in his hands, at the +table before the window, totally oblivious to the smoking lamp beside +him, or to anything else save the square card which he had found lying +there beneath the table after he had taken her back across the valley +to John Anderson's once-white cottage. He rose and extinguished the +smoking wick as the first light of day began to creep through the +room. + +"---- requests the pleasure of Miss Dryad Anderson's company," he +repeated aloud. And then, as he turned to the open door and the work +that was waiting for him, in a voice that even he himself had never +before heard pass his lips: + +"And she could have gone--she could have, and she didn't--just +because----" + +His grave voice drifted off into silence. As if it were a perishably +precious thing, he slipped the square card within its envelope and +buttoned the whole within his coat. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +As far back as he could remember Denny could not recall a single day +when Old Jerry had swung up the long hill road that led to his +lonesome farmhouse on the ridge at a pace any faster than a crawling +walk. Nor could he recollect, either, a single instance when he had +chanced to arrive at that last stop upon the route much before dark. + +And yet it was still a good two hours before sundown; only a few +minutes before he had driven his heavy steaming team in from the +fields and turned toward the ladder that mounted to the hayloft, when +the familiar shrill complaint of ungreased axles drifted up to him +from the valley. + +With a foot upon the first rung Young Denny paused, scowling in mild +perplexity. He had crossed the next moment to the open double doors, +as the sound floated up to him in a steadily increasing volume, and +was standing, his big body huge in its flannel shirt, open at the +throat, and high boots laced to the knees, leaning loosely at ease +against the door frame, when the dingy rig with its curtains flapping +crazily in the wind lurched around the bend in the road and came +bouncing wildly up the rutty grade. + +The boy straightened and stiffened, his head going forward a little, +for the fat old mare was pounding along at a lumbering gallop--a pace +which, in all the time he had watched for it, he had never before +beheld. Old Jerry was driving with a magnificent abandon, his hands +far outstretched over the dash, and more than that, for even from +where he stood Denny could hear him shouting at her in his thin, +cracked falsetto--shouting for still more speed. + +A rare, amused smile tugged at the corners of Young Denny's lips as he +crossed the open yard to the crest of the hill. But when the groaning +buggy came to a standstill and Old Jerry flung the reins across the +mare's wide back, to dive and burrow in frantic haste under the seat +for the customary roll of advertisements, without so much as a glance +for the boy who strode slowly up to the wheel, that shadow of a smile +which had touched his face faded into concerned gravity. He hesitated +a moment, as if not quite certain of what he should do. + +"Is there--there isn't any one sick, is there?" he asked at last, half +diffidently. + +The little, white-haired old man in the buggy jerked erect with +startling, automatonlike swiftness at that slow question. For a moment +he stood absolutely motionless, his back toward the speaker, his head +perked far over to one side as though he refused to believe he had +heard correctly. Then, little by little, he wheeled until his +strangely brilliant, birdlike eyes were staring straight down into +Denny's upturned, anxious face. And as he stared Old Jerry's +countenance grew blankly incredulous. + +"Sick!" he echoed the boy's words scornfully. "Sick!" + +His grotesquely thin body seemed to swell as he straightened himself, +and his shrill squeak of a voice took on a new note of pompous +importance. + +"I guess," he stated impressively, "I reckon, Denny, you ain't heard +the news, hev you?" He chuckled pityingly, half contemptuously. "I +reckon you couldn't've," he concluded with utter finality. + +The old, sullenly bewildered light crept back into Young Denny's gray +eyes. He shifted his feet uneasily, shaking his head. + +"I--I just got back down from the timber, three days ago," he +explained, and somehow, entirely unintentionally, as he spoke the slow +statement seemed almost an apology for his lack of information. "I +guess I haven't heard much of anything lately--up here. Is it--is it +something big?" + +Old Jerry hesitated. He felt suddenly the hopeless, overwhelming +dearth of words against which he labored in the attempt to carry the +tidings worthily. + +"Big!" He repeated the other's question. "Big! Why, Godfrey 'Lisha, +boy, it's the biggest thing that's ever happened to this town. +It--it's terrific! We'll be famous--that's what we'll be! In a week +or two Boltonwood'll be as famous as--as--why, we'll be as famous as +the Chicago Fair!" + +He broke off with a gasp for breath and started fluttering madly +through the paper which he had wrenched from Young Denny's bundle of +closely wrapped mail, until he found the page he sought. + +"There 'tis," he cried, and pointed out a lurid headline that ran half +across the head of the sporting section. "There 'tis--or leastwise +that's a part on it. But they's more a-comin'--more that that won't be +a patch to! But you just take a look at that!" + +Young Denny took the paper from his hand with a sort of sober +patience, and there across the first three column heads, following the +direction of Old Jerry's quivering forefinger, he found his first +inkling of the astounding news. + +"Jed The Red wins by knockout over The Texan in fourteenth round," ran +the red-inked caption. + +Word by word he read it through, and a second time his grave eyes went +through it, even more painstakingly, as though he had not caught at a +single reading all its sensational significance. Then he looked up +into the seamed old face above him, a-gleam and a-quiver with +excitement. + +"Jed The Red," the boy said in his steady voice. "Jed The Red!" And +then, levelly: "Who's he?" + +Old Jerry stared at him a moment before he shook his head hopelessly +and collapsed with a thud upon the torn seat behind him, in an excess +of disgust for the boy's stupidity which he made no effort to +conceal. + +"Jed who?" he mimicked, his voice shrill with sarcasm. "Now what in +time Jed would it be, if 'twa'n't Jeddy Conway--our own Jeddy Conway +from this very village? What other Jed is there? Ain't you got no +memory at all, when you ought to be proud to be able to say that you +went to school with him yourself, right in this town?" + +Again Young Denny nodded a silent agreement, but Old Jerry's feverish +enthusiasm had carried him far beyond mere anger at his audience's +apparent lack of appreciation. + +"And that ain't all," he rushed on breathlessly, "not by a lot, it +ain't! That ain't nothin' to compare with what's to come. Why, right +this minute there's a newspaper writer down to the village--he's from +New York and he's been stayin' to the Tavern ever since he come in +this morning and asked for a room with a bath--and he's goin' to +write up the town. Yes sir-e-e--the whole dad-blamed town! Pictures +of the main street and the old place where Jeddy went to school, +like as not, and--and"--he hesitated for an instant to recall the +exact phrasing--"and interviews with the older citizens who +recognized his ability and gave him a few pointers in the game when +he was only a little tad. That's what's to follow, and it's comin' +out in the New York papers, too--Sunday supplement, colors, maybe, +and--and----" + +Sudden recollection checked him in the middle of the tumbled flow of +information. Leaning far out over the dash, he put all his slight +weight against the reins and turned the fat white mare back into the +road with astonishing celerity. + +"Godfrey, but that makes me think," he gasped. "I ain't got no time to +fritter away here! I got to git down to the Tavern in a hurry. He'll +be waitin' to hear what I kin tell him." + +The thin, wrinkled old face twisted into a hopeful, wheedling smile. + +"You know that, don't you, Denny? You could tell him that there wa'n't +nobody in the hills knew little Jeddy Conway better'n I did, couldn't +you? It--it's the last chance I'll ever git, too, more'n likely. + +"Twice I missed out--once when they found Mary Hubbard's husband +a-hangin' to his hay mow--a-hangin by the very new clothes-line Mary'd +just bought the day before and ain't ever been able to use since on +account of her feelin' somehow queer about it--and me laid up to home +sick all the time! Everybody else got their names mentioned in the +article, and Judge Maynard had his picture printed because it was the +Judge cut him down. 'Twa'n't fair, didn't seem to me, and me older'n +any of 'em. + +"And 'twas just the same when they found Mrs. Higgins's Johnny, who +had to go and git through the ice into the crick just the one week in +all the winter when I was laid up with a bad foot from splittin' +kindling. I begun to think I wasn't ever goin' to git my chance--but +it's come. It's come at last--and I got to cut along and be there!" + +Once more he leaned over the dash and slapped the old mare's back with +the slack of the lines. + +"Git there, you," he urged, and the complaining buggy went lurching +down the rough road at the same unheard of pace at which it had +ascended. Halfway down the hill, after he had lifted the mare from her +shuffling fox-trot to a lumbering gallop, Old Jerry turned back for a +last shouted word. + +"He'll be anxious to git all I can tell him, don't you think?" the +shrill falsetto drifted back to the boy who had not stirred in his +tracks. "No article would be complete without that, would it? And +they's to be pictures--Sunday paper--and--maybe--in colors!" + +There was an odd light burning in Denny Bolton's eyes as he stood and +watched the crazy conveyance disappear from view. The half hungry, +half sullen bewilderment seemed to have given place to a new +confusion, as though all the questions which had always been baffling +him had become, all in one breath, an astounding enigma which clamored +for instant solution. Not until the shrill scream of the ungreased +axles had died out altogether and his eyes fell once more to the vivid +streak of red that ran across the top of the sheet still clutched in +his hand did Young Denny realize that Jerry had even failed to leave +him the rest of his mail--the bulky package of circulars. + +He was smiling again as he turned and went slowly toward the back door +of the house, but somehow, as he went, the stoop of his big shoulders +seemed to have even more than the usual vague hint of weariness in +their heavy droop. He even forgot that the hungry team which he had +stabled just a few minutes before was still unfed, as he dropped upon +the top step and spread the paper out across his knees. + +"Jed The Red wins by knockout over The Texan in fourteenth round," he +read again and again. + +And then, with a slow forefinger blazing the way, he went on through +the detailed account of the latest big heavyweight match, from the +first paragraph, which stated that "Jed Conway, having disposed of The +Texan at the Arena last night, by the knockout route in the fourteenth +round, seems to loom up as the logical claimant of the white +heavyweight title," to the last one of all, which pithily advised the +public that "the winner's share of the receipts amounted to twelve +thousand dollars." + +It was all couched in the choicest vocabulary of the ringside, and +more than once Young Denny, whose literature had been confined +chiefly to harvesters and sulky plows, had to stop and decipher +phrases which he only half understood at first reading. But that last +paragraph he did not fail to grasp. + +It grew too dark for him to make out the small type any longer and the +boy folded the paper and laid it back across his knees. With his chin +resting upon one big palm he sat motionless, staring out beyond his +sprawling, unpainted sheds toward the dim bulk of his hilly acres, +with their jagged outcroppings of rock. + +"Twelve thousand dollars!" He muttered the words aloud, under his +breath. Eight hundred in three years had seemed to him an almost +miraculous amount for him to have torn from that thin soil with +nothing but the strength of his two hands. Now, with a bitterness that +had been months in accumulating, it beat in upon his brain with +sledgelike blows that he had paid too great a price--too great a price +in aching shoulders and numbed thighs. + +Methodically, mechanically, his mind went back over the days when he +had gone to school with Jed Conway--the same Jed The Red whom the +whole town was now welcoming as "our own Jeddy," and the longer he +pondered the greater the problem became. + +It was hard to understand. From his point of view comprehension was +impossible, at that instant. For in those earlier days, when anybody +had ever mentioned Jed Conway at all, it had been only to describe him +as "good for nothing," or something profanely worse. Young Denny +remembered him vividly as a big, freckle-faced, bow-legged boy with +red bristly hair--the biggest boy in the school--who never played but +what he cheated, and always seemed able to lie himself out of his +thievery. + +But most vividly of all, he recalled that day when Jed Conway had +disappeared from the village between sundown and dawn and failed to +return. That was the same day they discovered the shortage in the old +wooden till at Benson's corner store. And now Jed Conway had come +home, or at least his fame had found its way back, and even Old Jerry, +whipping madly toward the village to share in his reflected glory, +had, for all the perfection of his "system," failed to leave the very +bundle of mail which he had come to deliver. + +For a long time Young Denny sat and tried to straighten it out in his +brain--and failed entirely. It had grown very dark--too dark for him +to make out the words upon it--when he reached into the pocket of his +gray flannel shirt and drew out the card which he had found lying upon +the kitchen floor that previous Saturday night, after he had lighted +Dryad Anderson on her way home through the thickets. But he did not +need, or even attempt, to read it. + +"And it took me a month," he said aloud to the empty air before him, +"almost a month to save fifteen dollars." + +He rose at the words, stiffly, for the chill air had tightened his +muscles, and stood a moment indecisively contemplating the lights +which were beginning to glimmer through the dusk in the hollow, before +he, too, took the long road to the village down which Old Jerry had +rattled a scant hour or two before. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +The Tavern "office" was crowded and hazy with acrid blue smoke. Behind +the chairs of the favored members of the old circle, who always sat in +nightly conclave about the stove, a long row of men lounged against +the wall, but the bitter controversies of other nights were still. +Instead, the entire room was leaning forward, hanging breathlessly +upon the words of the short fat man who was perched alone upon the +worn desk, too engrossed even to notice Young Denny's entrance that +night. + +The boy stood for a moment, his hand still clasping the knob behind +him, while his eyes flickered curiously over the heads of the crowd. +Even before he drew the door shut behind him he saw that Judge +Maynard's chair was a good foot in advance of all the others, directly +in front of the stranger on the desk, and that the rest of the room +was furtively taking its cue from him--pounding its knee and laughing +immoderately whenever he laughed, or settling back luxuriously +whenever the Judge relaxed in his chair. + +Subconsciously Young Denny realized that such had always been the +recognized order of arrangement, ever since he could remember. The +Judge always rode in front in the parades and invariably delivered +the Fourth of July oration. Undisputed he held the one vantage point +in the room, but over his amply broad back, as near as he dared lean, +bent Old Jerry, his thin face working with alternate hope and half +fearful uncertainty. + +Denny Bolton would have recognized the man on the desk as the +"newspaper writer" from New York from his clothes alone, even without +the huge notebook that was propped up on his knees for corroborative +evidence. From the soft felt hat, pushed carelessly back from his +round, good-natured face, to the tips of his gleaming low shoes, the +newcomer was a symphony in many-toned browns. And as Young Denny +closed the door behind him he went on talking--addressing the entire +throng before him with an easy good-fellowship that bordered on +intimate _camaraderie_. + +"Just the good old-fashioned stuff," he was saying; "the sort of thing +that has always been the backbone of the country. That is what I want +it to be. For, you see, it's like this: We haven't had a champion who +came from our own real old Puritan stock in years and years like +Conway has, and it'll stir up a whole lot of enthusiasm--a whole lot! +I want to play that part of it up big. Now, you're the only ones who +can give me that--you're the only men who knew him when he was a +boy--and right there let's make that a starter! What sort of a +youngster was he? Quite a handful, I should imagine--now wasn't he?" + +The man on the desk crossed one fat knee over the other, tapping a +flat-heeled shoe with his pencil. He tilted the brown felt hat a +little farther back from his forehead and winked one eye at the Judge +in jovial understanding. And Judge Maynard also crossed his knees, +tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, and winked back with +equal joviality. + +"Well, ye-e-s," he agreed, and the agreement was weightily deliberate. +"Ye-e-s, quite a handful was Jeddy." + +One pudgy hand was uplifted in sudden, deprecatory haste, as though he +would not be misunderstood. + +"Nothing really wrong, of course," he hurried to add with oratorical +emphasis. "Nothing like that! There never was anything mean or sneaking +about Jeddy, s'far as I can recollect. Just mischievous--mischievous +and up and coming all the time. But there were folks," Judge Maynard's +voice became heavy with righteous accusation--"it's always that way, +you understand--and there were folks, even right here in Jeddy's own +village, who used to call him a bad egg. But I--I knew better! +Nothing but mischievousness and high spirits--that's what I always +thought. And I said it, too--many's the time I said----" + +The big shouldered boy near the door shifted his position a little. +He leaned forward until he could see Judge Maynard's round, red face a +little more distinctly. There was an odd expression upon Denny +Bolton's features when the fat man in brown lifted his eyes from his +notebook, eyes that twinkled with sympathetic comprehension. + +"----That it was better a bad egg than an omelette, eh?" he +interrupted knowingly. + +The Judge pounded his knee and rocked with mirth. + +"Well, that's just about it--that's just about as near as words could +come to it," he managed to gasp, and the circle behind him rocked, +too, and pounded its knee as one man. + +The man on the desk went on working industriously with his pencil, +even while he was speaking. + +"And then I suppose he was pretty good with his hands, too, even when +he was a little shaver?" he suggested tentatively. "But then I don't +suppose that any one of you ever dreamed that you had a world's +champion, right here at home, in the making, did you?" + +The whole room leaned nearer. Even the late comer near the door forgot +himself entirely and took one step forward, his narrowing gray eyes +straining upon the Judge's face. + +Judge Maynard again weighed his reply, word for word. + +"We-e-ll, no," he admitted. "I don't believe I can say that I +downright believed that he'd make a world's champion. Don't believe's +I could truthfully state that I thought that. But I guess there isn't +anybody in this town that would ever deny but what I did say more than +once that he'd make the best of 'em hustle--ye-e-s, sir, the very best +of 'em, some day!" + +The speaker turned to face the hushed room behind him, as if to +challenge contradiction, and Young Denny, waiting for some one to +speak, touched his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. But no +contradiction came. Instead Old Jerry, leaning across the Judge's +broad back, quavered breathlessly. + +"That's jest it--that's jest as it was--right to a hair. It was system +done it--system right from the very beginning. And many's the time the +Judge says to me--says he----" + +Old Jerry never finished, for Judge Maynard lifted one hand +majestically and the little white-haired old man's eager corroboration +died on his lips. He shrank back into abashed silence, his lips +working wordlessly. + +"As I was saying," the Judge then proceeded ponderously, "I recognized +he had what one could call--er----" + +"Class?" the man on the desk broke in again with his engaging smile. + +"Well, yes," the other continued, "or, as I was about to call it, +talent. From the very first that was very apparent, but then, of +course, a man in my position in the community could scarcely have been +the one to encourage him openly. But he was pretty good, even as a +little shaver! Why, there was nothing among the boys that he wouldn't +tackle--absolutely nothing! Size, sir, never made any difference to +him--not a particle. Jeddy Conway fight----!" + +Again he turned to the close-packed circle behind him as if mere words +were too weak things to do the question justice. And this time as he +turned his eyes met squarely those of the gray-shirted figure that was +staring straight back at him in a kind of fascination. For one +disconcerted instant Judge Maynard wavered; he caught his breath +before that level scrutiny; then with a flourish of utter finality he +threw up one pudgy hand. + +"There's one of 'em right now," he cried. "There's Young Denny Bolton, +who went to school with him, right here in this town. _Ask him_ if Jed +Conway was pretty handy as a boy! Ask him," he leered around the room, +an insinuating accent that was unmistakable underrunning the words. +Then a deep-throated chuckle shook him. "But maybe he won't +tell--maybe he's still a little mite too sensitive to talk about it +yet. Eh, Denny--just a little mite too sensitive?" + +Denny Bolton failed to realize it at that moment, but there was a new +quality in the Judge's chuckling statement--a certain hearty admission +of equality which he had only a second before denied to Old Jerry's +eager endeavor to help. The eyes of the fat man in brown lifted +inquiringly from the notebook upon his knees and followed the +direction of the Judge's outstretched finger. He was still grinning +expansively--and then as he saw more clearly through the thick smoke +the face which Judge Maynard was indicating, the grin disappeared. + +Little by little Young Denny's body straightened until the slight +shoulder stoop had entirely vanished, and all the while that his gaze +never wavered from the Judge's face his eyes narrowed and his lips +grew thinner and thinner. The confused lack of understanding was gone, +too, at last, from his eyes. He even smiled once, a fleeting, +mirthless smile that tugged at the corners of his wide mouth. For the +moment he had forgotten the circle of peering faces. The room was very +still. + +It was the man on the desk who finally broke that quiet, but when he +spoke his voice had lost its easily intimate good-fellowship. He spoke +instead in a low-toned directness. + +"So you went to school with Jed The Red, did you?" he asked gravely. +"Knew him when he was a kid?" + +Slowly Denny Bolton's eyes traveled from the Judge's face. His lips +opened with equal deliberation. + +"I reckon I knew him--pretty well," he admitted. + +The eyes of the man in brown were a little narrower, too, as he nodded +thoughtfully. + +"Er--had a few set-to's with him, yourself, now and then?" + +He smiled, but even his smile was gravely direct. Again there was a +heavy silence before Young Denny replied. + +Then, "Maybe," he said, noncommittally. "Maybe I did." + +The throbbing silence in that room went all to bits. Judge Maynard +wheeled in his chair toward the man on the desk and fell to pounding +his knee again in the excess of his appreciation. + +"Maybe," he chortled, "maybe he did! Well--I--reckon!" + +And, following his lead, the whole room rocked with laughter in which +all but the man in brown joined. He alone, from his place on the desk, +saw that there was a white circle about the boy's tight mouth as Young +Denny turned and fumbled with the latch before he opened the door and +passed quietly out into the night. He alone noticed, but there was the +faintest shadow of a queer smile upon his own lips as he turned back +to the big notebook open on his knees--a vaguely unpleasant smile that +was not in keeping with the rotund jollity of his face. + +For a moment Denny Bolton stood with his strained white face turned +upward, the roar in the room behind him beating in his ears; then he +turned and went blindly up the road that wound toward the bleak house +on the hill--he went slowly and unsteadily, stumbling now and again in +the deep ruts which it was too dark for him to see. + +It was only when he reached the crest of the hill, where Old Jerry had +failed to remember to leave him his mail that afternoon, that he +recalled his own failure to feed the team with which he had been +ploughing all day back in the fields. And in the same blind, automatic +fashion he crossed and threw open the door of the barn. + +The interior was dark, blacker even than the thick darkness of the +night outside. Young Denny, muttering to himself, forgot to strike a +light--he even forgot to speak aloud to the nervous animals in the +stalls until his fingers, groping ahead of him, touched something +sleek and warm and brought him back to himself. Then, instinctively, +although it was too late, he threw up one big shoulder to protect his +face before he was lifted and hurled crashing back against the wall by +the impact of the heavy hoofs that catapulted out of the blackness. A +moment the boy stood, swayed sickeningly, and sank to his knees. Then +he began to think clearly again, and with one hand clasped over the +great, jagged gash which the glancing iron shoe had laid open across +his chin, he reached up and found a cross beam and dragged himself +erect. + +"Whoa, Tommy, whoa boy!" he soothed the dancing horse. "Steady, it's +only me, boy!" he stammered, and supporting himself against the wall +he groped again until he found the feedbin and finished his day's +work. + +It was even darker in the bare kitchen when he lurched dizzily through +the door. Once as he was feeling his way along the wall, searching for +a light, his feet stumbled on a hard rounded object against the +wainscoting, and as it toppled over its contents ran with a slopping +gurgle over the floor. + +Then his fingers found the light. Holding himself with one hand, he +lifted the little lamp with its blackened chimney from its bracket and +raised it until it illuminated his features reflected in the small +square mirror that hung against the wall. For a long time he stood and +looked. The blood that oozed from the ugly bruise upon his chin was +splashing in warm drops to the floor; his face was paper white, and +strangely taut and twisted with pain, but the boy noticed neither the +one nor the other. Straight back into his own eyes he stared--stared +steadily for all that his big shoulders were swaying drunkenly. And +for the first time that he could ever recollect Young Denny Bolton +laughed--laughed with real mirth. + +He placed the smoking lamp upon the bare board table and turned. As if +they could still hear him--the circle about the Tavern stove in the +valley below--he lifted both hard fists and tightened them until the +heavy muscles beneath his shirt bunched and quivered like live +things. + +[Illustration: "DRYAD, IT'S ALL RIGHT--IT'S ALWAYS BEEN ALL RIGHT--WITH +US! THEY LIED--THEY LIED AND THEY KNEW THEY WERE LYING!"] + +"Size never made any difference to him?" he repeated the Judge's word +aloud, with a drawling interrogation. "Size never made any difference +to him?" + +He laughed again, softly, as if there were a newly discovered humor +about it all which must be jealously guarded. + +"It never had to make any difference," the drawling voice went on, "it +didn't have to--because Jed Conway was always the biggest boy in the +school!" + +His nostrils were dilating, twitching with the thin, sharp odor of the +overturned demijohn which was rising and thickening in the room. His +eyes fell and for the first time became conscious of it lying there at +his feet. And he stooped and picked it up, lifting it between both +hands until it was level with his face--until it was held at arm's +length high above his head. Then his whole body snapped forward and +the glass from the broken window pane jingled musically on the floor +as the jug crashed out into the night. + +Young Denny stood and smiled, one side of his chin a gash of crimson +against the dead white of his face. Again he lifted his fists. + +"He never whipped me," he challenged the lights in the hollow, "he +never whipped me--and he never tried but once! I--I--ain't never +been--whipped--yet!" + +There had been no sound to herald her coming as she darted up to the +door. Reeling giddily there in the middle of the room, he had not even +heard the one low cry that she choked back as she stopped at the +threshold, but he half turned that moment and met the benumbed horror +of Dryad Anderson's eyes. Minute after minute he merely stood and +stared back at her stupidly, while bit by bit every detail of her +transformation began to penetrate his brain, still foggy with the +force of the blow that had laid his chin wide open. Her tumbled hair +was piled high upon her head; she was almost tall with the added +height of the high-heeled satin slippers; more slender than ever in +the bespangled clinging black skirt and sleeveless scarlet waist which +the old cloak, slipping unheeded from her shoulders, had disclosed. + +As his brain began to clear Young Denny forgot the dripping blood that +made his white face ghastly, he forgot the stinging odor of the broken +demijohn, thick in the room--forgot everything but Judge Maynard's +face when the latter had looked up and found him standing at the +Tavern door. He knew now what the light was that had lurked in their +shifty depths; it was fear--fear that he--Young Denny--might speak up +in that moment and disclose all the hypocrisy of his suave lies. He +even failed to see the horror in the eyes of the girl before him. +Sudden, reckless laughter rang from his lips. + +"Dryad," he cried out. "Dryad, it's all right--it's always been all +right--with us! They lied--they lied and they knew they were lying!" + +She shrank back, as if all the strength had been drained from her +knees, as he lurched unsteadily across toward her and reached out +his arms. But at the touch of his hands upon her shoulders the power +of action came rushing back into her limbs. She shuddered and +whirled--and shook off his groping fingers. Her own hands flashed out +and held his face away from her. + +"Don't you touch me!" she panted huskily. "Oh, you--you--don't you +even dare to come near me!" + +He tried to explain--tried to follow her swift flight as she leaped +back, but his feet became entangled in the cloak on the floor and +brought him heavily to his knees. He even tried to follow her after +she had been swallowed up in the shadows outside, until he realized +dully that his shuffling feet would not go where his whirling head +directed them. Once he called out to her, before he staggered back to +the kitchen door, and received no answer. + +With his hands gripping the door frame he eased himself down to the +top step and sat rocking gently to and fro. + +"S'all right," he muttered once, his tongue thick with pain. "S'always +been all right!" + +And he laughed aloud, a laugh of utter confidence in spite of all its +unsteadiness. + +"Twelve thousand dollars," he said, "and--and he never whipped me! He +never could--not the best day he ever lived!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Denny Bolton never quite knew at what hour of that long black night he +reached the final decision; there was no actual beginning or ending or +logical sequence to the argument in the back of his brain which led up +to it, to crystallize into final resolve. + +He merely sat there in the open door of his half-lighted kitchen, +swaying a little from side to side at first, giddy with the pain of +that crashing blow that had laid open his chin; then balancing, +motionless as the thick shadows themselves, in a silence that was +unbroken save for the creaking night noises about him and the rhythmic +splash of the warm drops that fell more and more slowly from the +gaping, unheeded wound, he groped back over the succession of events +of that afternoon and night, reconstructing with a sort of dogged +patience detail after detail which was waveringly uncertain of +outline, until with the clearing of his numbed brain they stood out +once again in sane, well-ordered clarity. And as they gradually took +shape again each detail grew only more fantastically unbelievable. + +It seemed ages since he had stood against the closed door of the +Tavern office and seen Judge Maynard turn and falter before his +unsuspected presence--days and days since he had stood there and +watched that round moon-like face flush heavily with the first shock +of surprise, and realized that the startled light in the shifty eyes +of Boltonwood's most prominent citizen was part fear, part appeal, +that he, Denny Bolton, whose name in the estimation of that same +village stood for all that was at the other extreme, would confirm and +support his barefaced lying statement. It was more than merely +fantastic; and yet, at that, sitting there in the dark, Young Denny +still found something in the recollection that was amusing--far more +amusing than he had imagined anything so simple ever could be. + +And already, although it was scarcely hours old, the rest of it, too, +was tinged with an uncanny unreality that was not far removed from the +bodiless fabric of nightmare itself: Those great, catapulting hoofs +which had thundered against him from the darkness and beaten him back, +a half-senseless heap, against the barn wall; the blind, mad rage, as +much a wildly hysterical abandonment of utter joy as anything else, +which had surged through him when, with the stinging odor of the +overturned jug in his nostrils, he had stooped and straightened and +sent the old stone demijohn, that had stood sentinel for years in the +corner near the door, splintering its way through the window into the +night; and, last of all, the sick horror of the girl's face as she +recoiled before him came vividly before his eyes, and his own strange +impotence of limb and lip when he had tried to follow and found that +his feet would not obey the impulse of his brain, tried to explain +only to find that his tongue somehow refused at that moment to voice +the words he would have spoken. + +That was hardest of all to believe--most difficult to visualize--and +he would not give it full credence until he had reached out behind him +in the dark and found the bit of a cloak which, slipping from her +shoulders, become entangled in his stumbling feet and brought him +crashing to his knees. The feel of that rough cloth beneath his hand +was more than enough to convince him, and swiftly, unreasonably, the +old bitter tide of resentment began to creep back upon him--bitter +resentment of her quick judgment of him, which like that of the +village, had condemned in the years that were past, even without a +hearing. + +"She thought," he muttered slowly aloud to himself, "she thought I +had--" He left the sentence unfinished to drift off into a long +brooding silence; and then, many minutes later: "She didn't even wait +to ask--to see--to let me tell her----" + +One hand went tentatively to the point of his chin--his old, vaguely +preoccupied trick of a gesture--and the wet touch of that open wound +helped to bring him back to himself. A moment longer he sat, trying +to make out the stained figures that were invisible even though he +held them a scant few inches from his eyes, before he rose, stretching +his legs in experimental doubt at first, and passed inside. And once +more he stood before the square patch of mirror on the wall, with the +small black-chimneyed lamp lifted high in one hand, just as he had +stood earlier that same night, and scanned his own face. + +All trace of resentment left his eyes as he realized the ghastly +pallor of those features--all the ragged horror of that oozing welt +which he had only half seen in that first moment when he was clinging +to consciousness with clenched teeth. It was not nice to look at, and +the light that replaced that sudden flare of bitterness was so new +that he did not even recognize it himself at first. + +It was a clearer, steadier, surer thing than he had ever known them +to reflect before; all hint of lost-dog sophistication was gone; even +the smile that touched his thin, pain-straightened lips was +different somehow. It was just as whimsical as before, and just as +half-mirthless--gentle as it always had been whenever he thought at +all of her--but there was no wistful hunger left in it, and little +of boyishness, and nothing of lurking self-doubt. + +"Why, she couldn't have known," he went on then, still murmuring +aloud. "She couldn't have been expected to believe anything else. +I--I'm not much to look at--just now." + +He even forgot that he had tried to follow her--forgot that her cloak +had thrown him sprawling in the doorway. + +"I ought to have told her," he condemned himself. "I shouldn't have +let her go--not like that." + +In the fullness of this new certainty of self that was setting his +pulses hammering, he even turned toward the sleeping town, thickly +blanketed by the shadows in the valley, in a sudden boyish burst of +generosity. + +"Maybe they didn't mean to lie, either," he mused thoughtfully. "Maybe +they haven't really meant to lie--all this time. They could have been +mistaken, just as she was tonight--they certainly could have been +that." + +He found and filled a basin with cold water and washed out the cut +until the bleeding had stopped entirely. And then, with the paper +which that afternoon's mail had brought--the sheet with the astounding +news of Jed The Red, which Old Jerry prophesied would put Boltonwood +in black letters on the map of publicity--spread out on the table +before him, he sat until daybreak poring over it with eyes that were +filmed with preoccupation one moment and keenly strained the next to +make out the close-set type. + +Not long before dawn he reached inside his coat and brought out a bit +of burnished white card and set it up in front of him against the +lamp. There was much in the plump, black capitals and knobby script of +Judge Maynard's invitation which was very suggestive of the man +himself, but Young Denny failed to catch the suggestion at that +moment. + +He never quite knew when that decision became final, nor what the +mental process was which brought it about. Nor did he even dream of +the connection there might have been between it and that square of +cardboard lying in front of him. Just once, as the first light came +streaking in through the uncurtained window beside him, he nodded his +head in deliberate, definite finality. + +"Why, it's the thing I've been waiting for," he stated, something +close akin to wonder in his voice. "It's just a man's size chance. I'd +have to take it--I'd have to do that, even if I didn't want to--for +myself." + +And later, while he was kindling a fire in the stove and methodically +preparing his own breakfast, he paused to add with what seemed to be +absolute irrelevance: + +"Silk--silk, next to her skin!" + +There were only two trains a day over the single-track spur road +that connected Boltonwood with the outer world beyond the hills; one +which left at a most unreasonably inconvenient hour in the early +morning and one which left just as inconveniently late at night. +Denny Bolton, who had viewed from a distinctly unfavorable angle +any possible enchantment which the town might chance to offer, +settled upon the first as the entirely probable choice of the short, +fat, brown-clad newspaper man, even without a moment's hesitation to +weigh the merits of either. And the sight of the round bulk of the +latter, huddled alone upon a baggage truck before the deserted +Boltonwood station-shed, fully vindicated his judgment. + +It was still only a scant hour since daybreak. Heavy, low-hanging +clouds in the east, gray with threatening rain, cut off any warmth +there might have been in the rising sun and sharpened the raw wind to +a knifelike edge. The man on the truck was too engrossed with the +thoughts that shook his plump shoulders in regularly recurring, silent +chuckles, and a ludicrously doleful effort to shut off with upturned +collar the draft from the back of his neck, to hear the boy's +approaching footsteps. He started guiltily to his feet in the very +middle of a spasmodic upheaval, to stand and stare questioningly at +the big figure whose fingers had plucked tentatively at his elbow, +until a sudden, delighted recognition flooded his face. Then he +reached out one pudgy hand with eager cordiality. + +"Why, greetings--greetings!" he exclaimed. "Didn't quite recognize you +with your--er--decoration." His eyes dwelt in frank inquisitiveness +upon the ragged red bruise across Young Denny's chin. "You're the +member who stood near the door last night, aren't you--the one who +didn't join to any marked degree in the general jubilee?" + +Young Denny's big, hard hand closed over the outstretched pudgy white +one. He grinned a little and slowly nodded his head. + +"Thought so," the man in brown rambled blithely on, "and glad to see +you again. Glad of a chance to speak to you! I wanted most mightily to +ask you a few pertinent questions last night, but it hardly seemed a +fitting occasion." + +He tapped Young Denny's arm with a stubby forefinger, one eyelid +drooping quizzically. + +"_Entre nous_--just 'twixt thee and me," he went on, "and not for +publication, was this Jeddy Conway, as you knew him, all that your +eminent citizenry would lead a poor gullible stranger to believe, or +was he just a small-sized edition of the full-blown crook he happens +to be at the present stage of developments? Not that it makes any +difference here," he tapped the big notebook under his arm, "but I'm +just curious, a little, because the Jed The Red whom I happen to know +is so crooked nowadays that his own manager is afraid to place a bet +on him half the time. See?" + +Denny smiled comprehendingly. He shifted his big body to a more +comfortable and far less awkward position. + +"I see," he agreed. + +Somehow, where it would have been an utter impossibility to have +spoken lightly to him the night before, he found it very easy now to +understand and meet half way the frivolity of the fat, grinning man +before him. + +"Well, when he left town about eight years ago, his going was just a +trifle hasty. He--he took about everything there was in the +cash-drawer of Benson's store with him--except maybe a lead slug or +two--and there are some who think he only overlooked those." + +The gurgle of sheer delight that broke from the lips of the man in +brown was spontaneously contagious. + +"Just about as your servant had it figured out last night," he fairly +chirped. Then he slipped one hand through the crook of Denny's elbow. +"I guess I'll have to take a chance on you. It's too good to keep all +to myself." He led the way back to the empty truck. "And you ought to +be safe, too, for judging from the sentiments that were expressed +after you left last night, you--er--don't run very strong with this +community, either." + +Again he paused, his eyelid cocked in comical suggestion. Instead of +narrowing ominously, as they might have twelve hours before, Denny's +own eyes lighted appreciatively at the statement. He even waited an +instant while he pondered with mock gravity. + +"I reckon," he drawled finally, "that I'll have to confess that I've +never been what you might call a general favorite." + +The newspaper man's head lifted a little. He flashed a covertly +surprised glance at the boy's sharp profile. It was far from being the +sort of an answer that he had expected. + +"No, you certainly are not," he emphasized, and then he opened the +flat notebook with almost loving care across his knees. + +Young Denny, with the first glimpse he caught of that very first page, +comprehended in one illuminating flash the cause of those muffled +chuckles which had convulsed that rounded back when he turned the +corner of the station-shed a moment before; he even remembered that +half-veiled mirth in the eyes of the man who had sat balanced upon the +desk in the Tavern office the night before and understood that, too. +For the hurriedly penciled sketch, which completely filled the first +page of the notebook, needed no explanation--not even that of the +single line of writing beneath it, which read: + +"I always said he'd make the best of 'em hustle--yes, sir, the very +best of 'em!" + +It was a picture of Judge Maynard--the Judge Maynard whom Young Denny +knew best of all--unctuous of lip and furtively calculating of eye. +For all the haste of its creation it was marvelously perfect in +detail, and as he stared the corners of the boy's lips began to twitch +until his teeth showed white beneath. The fat man grinned with him. + +"Get it, do you?" he chuckled. "Get it, eh?" + +And with the big-shouldered figure leaning eagerly nearer he turned +through page after page to the end. + +"Not bad--not bad at all," he frankly admired his own handiwork at +the finish. "You see, it was like this. I've been short on anything +like this for a long time--good Rube stuff--and so when Conway came +through in his match the other night it looked like a providential +opportunity--and it certainly has panned up to expectations." + +Once more he turned to scan the lean face turned toward him, far more +openly, far more inquisitively, this time. It perplexed him, +bewildered him--this easy certainty and consciousness of power which +had replaced the lost-dog light that had driven the smile from his own +lips the night before when he had followed Judge Maynard's beckoning +finger. + +Hours after the enthusiastic circle about the Tavern stove had +dissolved he had labored to reproduce that white, bitter, quivering +face at the door, only to find that the very vividness of his memory +somehow baffled the cunning of his pencil. There had been more than +mere bitterness in those curveless, colorless lips; something more +than doubt of self behind the white hot flare in the gray eyes. Now, +in the light of day, his eyes searched for it openly and failed to +find even a ghost of what it might have been. + +"No," he ruminated gently, and he spoke more to himself than the +other, "you don't stand deuce high with this community. You're way +down on the list." He hesitated, weighing his words, suddenly a little +doubtful as to how far he might safely venture. "I--I guess +you've--er--disappointed them too long, haven't you?" + +The blood surged up under Young Denny's dark skin until it touched his +crisp black hair, and the fat man hastened to throw a touch of +jocularity into the statement. + +"Yep, you've disappointed 'em sorely. But I've been monopolizing all +the conversation. I can't convince myself that you've come down here +merely to say me a touching farewell. Was there--was there something +you wanted to see me about in particular?" + +It was the very opening for which Denny had been waiting--the opening +which he had not known how to make himself, for his plan for procedure +by which he was to accomplish it was just as indistinct as his +resolution had been final. He nodded silently, uncertain just how to +begin, and then he plunged desperately into the very middle of it. + +"I thought maybe you could tell me if this was true or not," he said, +and he drew from his pocket the paper which bore the account of Jed +The Red's victory over The Texan. A hint of a frown appeared upon the +forehead of the man in brown as he took the folded sheet and read +where Denny's finger indicated--the last paragraph of all. + +"The winner's share of the receipts amounted to twelve thousand +dollars," was its succinct burden. + +He read it through twice, as if searching for any puzzling phrase it +might contain. + +"I certainly can," he admitted at last. "I wrote it myself, but it's +no doubt true, for all that. Not a very big purse, of course, but +then, you know, he isn't really championship calibre. He's just a +second-rate hopeful, that's all. It seems hard to find a real one +these days. But why the riddle?" he finished, as he handed back the +paper. + +"Why, I thought if it was true maybe I'd ask you to tell me if I--how +I could get a chance at him." + +The boy's explanation was even more flounderingly abrupt than his +former question had been, but his eyes never wavered from the +newspaper man's face. The latter laid his notebook upon the truck with +exaggerated care and rose and faced him. + +"Another!" he lamented in simulated despair. But the next moment all +the bantering light went from his face, while his eyes flashed in +lightning-like appraisement over Denny's lean shoulder-heavy body, +from his feet, small and narrow in spite of the clumsy high boots, to +his clean-cut head, and back again. There was a hint of businesslike +eagerness in that swift calculation of possibilities. The boy shifted +consciously under the scrutiny. + +"It isn't that he never was able to whip me--even when he was a kid," +he tried to explain. "It--it's because I don't believe, somehow, that +he ever could." + +All the strained eagerness disappeared from the face of the pudgy man +in brown. He laughed softly, a short little laugh of amusement at his +own momentary folly. + +"Whew!" he murmured. "I'm getting to be just as bad as all the rest!" + +He felt in a pocket for a card and scribbled an address across its +back. A trace of good-natured familiarity--the first hint of +superiority that had marked his manner--accompanied his gesture when +he extended it in one hand. It savored of the harmless humoring of a +childish vagary. + +"If you ever did chance to get as far from home as that, there's a man +at that address who'd fall on your neck and weep real tears if you +happened to have the stuff," he said. "But just one additional word. +Maybe I've led you astray a bit. Just because I said that Jed The Red +is a second-rater, don't think for a moment that he fights like a +schoolboy now. He doesn't--nothing like that!" + +He gazed for another second at the boy's thin, grave face, so like, in +its very thinness and gravity, all that a composite of its Puritan +forbears might have been. And as he became suddenly conscious of that +resemblance he reversed the card, a whimsical twist touching his lips, +and wrote above his own name, "Introducing the Pilgrim," and put it in +the outstretched hand. + +"Any idea when you expect to make a start?" he inquired with an +elaborate negligence that brought the hot color to the boy's cheeks. +But again, at the words, he caught, too, a glimpse of the unshaken +certainty that backed their gray gravity. + +"Tomorrow, I reckon. It'll take me all of today to get things fixed up +so I can leave. I'll take this train in the morning. And they--they +ought to have told you at the hotel that it's always a half-hour +late." + +Young Denny rose. + +"Surely--surely," the chubby man agreed. "Nothing like getting away +with the bell. And--er--there's one other thing. Of course if it's a +little private affair, I'll bow myself gracefully out, but I do +confess to a lot of curiosity concerning that small souvenir." His +eyes traveled to the red welt across the boy's chin. "May I inquire +just how it happened?" + +Denny failed to understand him at first; then his finger lifted and +touched the wound interrogatively. + +"This?" he inquired. + +The man in brown nodded. + +"Last night," the boy explained, "I--I kind of forgot myself and +walked in on the horses in the dark, without speaking to them. I'd +forgot to feed before I went to the village. One of them's young +yet--and nervous--and----" + +The other scowled comprehendingly. + +"And so, just for that, they both went hungry till you came to in the +morning and found yourself stretched out on the floor, eh?" + +Again Young Denny puzzled a moment over the words. He shook his head +negatively. + +"No-o-o," he contradicted slowly. "No, it wasn't as bad as that. +Knocked me across the floor and into the wall and made me pretty dizzy +and faint for a little while. But I managed to feed them. I--I'd +worked them pretty hard in the timber last week." + +The man in brown puckered his lips sympathetically, whistling softly +while he considered the damage which that flying hoof had done, and +the utter simplicity of the explanation. + +"I wonder," he said to himself, "I wonder--I wonder!" And then, almost +roughly: "Give me back that card!" + +Young Denny's eyes widened with surprise, but he complied without a +word. The man in brown stood a moment, tapping his lips with the +pencil, before he wrote hastily under the scribbled address, cocked +his head while he read it through, and handed it back again. + +The belated train was whistling for the station crossing when he +thrust out his pudgy white hand in farewell. + +"My name's Morehouse," he said, "and I've been called 'Chub' by my +immediate friends, a title which is neither dignified nor reverend, +and yet I answer to it with cheerful readiness. I tell you this +because I have a premonition that we are to meet again. And don't lose +that card!" + +Young Denny's fingers closed over the outstretched hand with a grip +that brought the short, fat man in brown up to his toes. Long after +the train had crawled out of sight the boy stood there motionless +beside the empty truck, reading over and over again the few scrawled +words that underran the line of address. + +"Some of them may have science," it read, "and some of them may have +speed, but, after all, it's the man that can take punishment who gets +the final decision. Call me up if this ever comes to hand." + +Which, after all, was not so cryptic as it might have been. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +That drearily bleak day which was to witness the temporary passing of +the last of the line of Boltons from the town which had borne their +name longer even than the oldest veteran in the circle of regulars +which nightly flanked the cracked wood-stove in the Tavern office +could recall, brought with it a succession of thrills not second even +to those that had been occasioned by the advent of the plump newspaper +man from the metropolis, and all his promised works. + +And yet, so far as he himself was concerned, Young Denny Bolton was +totally oblivious, or at least apparently so, to the very audible hum +of astonishment which ripped along behind them when they--he and Judge +Maynard of all men--whirled down the main street of the village that +morning through the gray mist already heavy as fine rain, to stop with +a great flourish of glittering harness buckles and stamping of hoofs +before the post-office doors. + +It was the busiest hour which the straggling one-story shops along +the unpaved thoroughfare knew, this one directly following the +unshuttering of the specked, unwashed show-windows, known distinctly +as "mail time"--a very certain instant when Old Jerry's measured +passage from the office doors to his dilapidated rig at the edge of +the boardwalk heralded the opening of the general delivery window +within. + +It was Old Jerry's hour--the one hour of the day in which his starved +appetite for notoriety ever supped of nourishment--that moment when +the small knot of loiterers upon the sidewalk, always, face for face, +composed of the same personnel as the unvarying nightly circle about +the Tavern stove, gave way before him and the authority of the +"Gov'mint" which he personified. + +Since that first morning, years back, which had hailed his initial +appearance with the mail bags slung over one thin shoulder, he had +made the most of that daily entrance upon the stage of publicity. +There was always a haughty aloofness in his eyes that killed any word +of greeting upon the lips of these same beholders with whom, a few +hours later, he was to sit and wrangle in bitterest intimacy; a +certain brisk importance of step which was a palpable rebuke to their +purposeless unemployment. + +Just once this haughty reserve had been assailed. It happened that +same first morning when Old Dave Shepard, white of head and womanishly +mild of voice, alike the circle's patriarch and most timid member, had +stepped forward and laid one unsteady hand upon his arm, some +embarrassed word of congratulation trembling on his lips. Old Jerry's +bearing upon that one occasion had precluded for all time the +possibility of its recurrence. He had stepped back a pace, out of +reach of those detaining fingers, and fastened the offender with a +stare of such baleful resentment that the latter drew off in pitiful +haste for self-effacement. And Jerry's words on that one occasion were +still current history. + +"I warn you, Mister Shepard," he had shrilled, "that it's a state's +prison offense to interfere with a Gov'mint official in the +performance of his duty--and if you've got any complaints to make +they'll have to be set down reg'lar in writin', so's I can give 'em +due consideration!" + +Dating from that day Old Jerry's daily appearance had taken on, at +least in the eyes of the Tavern regulars, a ceremonious importance +that demanded their personal attendance, and although it still lacked +a few moments of the hour for which they were waiting, a roll-call +would have found their number complete when the yellow-wheeled +buckboard of Boltonwood's most important citizen, with its strangely +assorted pair of passengers, flashed into view. Denny Bolton was +totally oblivious to the stir which their appearance created, but if +he was too engrossed with other things to be aware of the breathless +hush which followed it, the huge, moon-faced man who occupied the seat +of the buckboard with him was conscious of it all to a degree +sufficient for both. + +From the moment when he had himself answered the summons at the front +door of his great, boxlike house on the hill, and found Young Denny +standing there, Judge Maynard had sensed a sensation. With unerring +judgment he read it in the very carriage of the big-shouldered boy +before him, who for the first time in his life failed to uncover his +head, with a due amount of reverence, in the presence of the town's +great man. + +Perhaps with his mind set upon other things that morning Young Denny +forgot it, perhaps there was an even deeper reason for his remissness, +but the Judge, while he stood and listened to the boy's tersely short +explanation of his errand, was himself too taken up with other +thoughts to note the omission. He was already formulating the rounded +sentences with which he would introduce the subject that night to the +circle in the Tavern office. + +There was much of the dramatic in the whole situation--much that +needed only proper staging and elaboration to make of it a tremendous +triumph, a personal triumph, the extent of which he began to foresee +with Denny's opening words. And the greater became his consciousness +of Denny Bolton's strange new bearing, the clearer he saw all the +possibilities of the situation. + +To cap it all, the one big, irrefutable fact about which he +could build his climax was there all ready before him, ripe for +exploitation. It was with an actual effort of the will that the +Judge held his brain sufficiently attentive to the boy's words to +grasp the reason for his early morning visit, in the face of the +fascination which that great, ragged bruise across Denny's chin had +for him. Properly displayed, properly played up, the possibilities +of that raw, unbandaged wound were incalculable, and the Judge +started almost guiltily from his greedy scrutiny of it to a sudden +realization that the boy before him had paused in his recital and +was waiting in almost insulting self-possession for a reply. + +Many men and some few women had rung boldly at the Judge's front door +or, more often, tapped timidly at the entrance in the rear of the +house, all bent upon the same errand. For it was a country-wide secret +that no one had ever been turned away from those doors with a refusal. +If any of those same visitors ever awakened to a realization that the +terms of their bargain were far harder to bear than a refusal might +have been, they nursed that knowledge in secret. + +The Judge was a first mortgage financier, and he scanned each new +addition to his already extensive collection with all the elaborate +care which a matcher of precious stones might have exercised in the +assembling of a fabulous priced string of pearls. It was his practice +to scrutinize each transaction from every possible angle, in every +degree of light and shade, but in his eagerness that morning he forgot +to don for Denny the air of gracious understanding that was half +paternal, half deprecating, which he always wore to set the others +more at their ease. He even forgot to clear his throat judicially when +he asked the boy before him if he had considered sufficiently the +gravity of such a step as the placing in pawn of the roof that +sheltered him and the ground that gave him food. It may have been +because Young Denny, as he stood quietly waiting for his answer, came +under neither classification--he was neither pitifully timid nor more +pitifully bold--that the Judge omitted the usual pompous formula, or +merely that in his eager contemplation of the boy's hurt face he +forgot for once his perfectly rehearsed part. + +No preoccupation, however, marred the businesslike statement of his +terms, but even while he named the amount which he was willing to risk +upon Young Denny's arid, rocky acres, and the rate of interest which +he felt compelled to demand, his brain was racing far ahead of the +matter in hand. It was the Judge himself who engineered the half +hour's delay which resulted in the fullest possible audience for their +appearance that morning. While he had never attended it himself, +except now and then by chance, he knew too well the infallibility of +that little knot of regulars who watched Old Jerry's daily departure +to have any fears that the first of that day's many thrills would go +unseen or unsung. And he timed their arrival to a second. + +Old Jerry was in the doorway, ready for his straight-backed descent of +the worn steps, when Judge Maynard pulled his smooth gaited pair to a +restive standstill before the office and gave the reins into Young +Denny's keeping. The throng of old men upon the sidewalk was at the +point of opening ranks to allow him to pass through to his tattered +buggy, which stood at the roadside, a bare half-length ahead of the +Judge's polished equipage. And now those same ranks broke in wild +disorder and then closed tighter even than before, while they shifted +and struggled for a better view. + +They forgot the ceremonious solemnity of the moment and the little, +birdlike figure upon the top step trying not to show too plainly upon +his face a sense of his own importance--they forgot everything but the +portend of the scene which the Judge was handling in so masterful a +fashion. + +The latter's descent from his seat to the ground was deliberate, even +for him; his silent nod to those wide-eyed, loose-jawed old men upon +the sidewalk was the very quintessence of secretive dignity, and yet +had he taken up his position there on the corner of the uneven +boardwalk and cried aloud his sensation, like a bally-hoo advertising +the excellence of his own particular side-show, he could not have +equaled the results which the very profundity of his silence +achieved. + +There was a momentous promise in his gravity, a hint of catastrophe in +the tilt of his head. Like two receding waves the tight ranks opened +before him, clearing a path for his heavy-footed advance to the +post-office doors--a lane of bulging eyes and clicking tongues such as +Old Jerry in all his days had never provoked. And the latter stood +there stock still in the middle of the entrance, too dazed at first to +grasp the whole meaning of the situation, until he, too, was swept +aside, without so much as a glance or a word, by one majestic sweep of +the Judge's hand. + +Old Jerry's sparrowlike, thinly, wistful face flamed red, and then +faded a ghastly white, but no one seemed conscious at that moment of +the ignominy of it all. It was hours later that they recalled it and +realized that they had looked upon history in the making. No one +noticed the old man's faltering descent of the steps, or saw that he +paused in his slow way to the buggy to turn back and stand looking +about him in a kind of bewildered desperation. For the gaze of all had +swung from the Judge's broad, disappearing back to the face of the boy +who was sitting in the buckboard, totally unconscious of that battery +of eyes, smiling to himself. + +He even chuckled aloud once--Young Denny did--a muffled, reasonless +sort of a chuckle, as if he did not even know they were there. It was +almost as though he were playing straight into the Judge's own plan, +for the effect of the mirth upon the group on the walk was electrical. +It sent a shiver of anticipation through it from end to end. And then, +like the eyes of one man, their eyes swung back again from the ragged +bruise across the boy's chin to meet the Judge as he reappeared. + +Yet not one of them so much as dared to whisper the question that +was quivering upon the lips of all and burning hungrily in their +faded eyes. Once more the wide lane opened magically for him--but +again Judge Maynard's measured progress was momentarily barred. +Curiosity may have prompted it, and then again it may have been that +he was betrayed by the very fury of his desperate, eleventh hour +effort to assert his right to the center of that stage--the right +of long-established precedent--yet even those two long files of +old men gasped aloud their dismay at his temerity when Old Jerry +thrust his way forward and planted himself for a second time +squarely in the great man's path. + +Half way from the office doors to the yellow-wheeled buckboard, in the +very middle of the walk, he stood and stretched out a tentatively +restraining hand, just as mild-voiced, white-haired Dave had done +years before. And in his high, cracked falsetto, that was tremulously +bitter for all that he struggled to lift it to a plane of easy +jocularity, he exclaimed: + +"Now see here, Jedge; what's the meanin' of all this? You ain't turned +kidnapper, hev you?" + +There came a heavy hush, while the Judge stood and stared down at the +thin face trying to smile confidently up at him--a hush that endured +while Judge Maynard swept him from head to foot with one shriveling +glare and then walked around him without a word--walked around him +just as he might have walked around the hitching post at the roadside, +or any other object that chanced to bar his way! And this time Old +Jerry's face twitched and went whiter even than before. + +Nobody laughed, not even after the yellow-wheeled buckboard with its +strangely assorted pair of passengers had sped from sight toward the +county seat and a legal adjustment of still another mortgage on the +Bolton acres. Not a word was spoken until Old Jerry, too, had +clambered silently into his own creaking buggy and crawled slowly off +up the hill, with a squealing accompaniment of ungreased axles. + +And even then, in the argument which began with a swirl of conjecture +and ended, hours later, in a torrent of bitter personalities farthest +of all from the first question under consideration, they avoided a +mention of that regrettable incident just as for some time after its +occurrence they avoided each other's eyes, as if they felt somehow +that theirs was, after all, the real guilt. + +Upon one point alone did they agree; they were unanimous that if Young +Denny Bolton's bearing that morning--the angle at which he held his +chin, and the huge cut that adorned it, and his causeless mirth--was +not entirely damning, it was at least suspicious enough to require +more than a little explanation. But that verdict, too, was none other +than the very one which the Judge had already planned for them. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Old Jerry drove his route that morning in a numbed, trancelike +fashion; or, rather, he sat there upon the worn-out leather seat with +the reins looped over the dash, staring straight ahead of him, and +allowed the fat old mare to take her own pace. It was she who made the +customary stops; he merely dug absent-mindedly beneath the seat +whenever she fell to cropping grass at the roadside, and searched +mechanically for the proper packet of mail. And twice he was called +back to correct mistakes which he admitted were his own with an +humbleness that was alarming to the complainant. In all the days of +his service he had never before failed to plead extenuating +circumstances for any slip that might occur--and to plead with much +heat and staccato eloquence. But then, too, in all those years no day +had ever equalled the bitter awakening of that morning. + +As he reviewed it all, again and again, Old Jerry began to understand +that it was not the public rebuff which had hurt so much; for there +was that one of the night previous, when the Judge had cut him off in +the middle of his eager corroboration of Jed The Red's history, which +had not left a trace of a sting twelve hours later. It was more than +wounded vanity, although hurt pride was still struggling for a place +in his emotions against a shamed, overwhelming realization of his own +trifling importance, which could not hold its own against the first +interloper, even after years of entrenchment. Judge Maynard's first +thrill had been staged without a hitch; he had paved the way for the +personal triumph which he meant to achieve that night, but he had +accomplished it only at a cost--the loyalty of him who had been, after +all, his stanchest supporter. + +From that moment Old Jerry's defection from the ranks must be dated, +for it was in those bitter hours which followed the yellow-wheeled +buckboard's early morning flight down the main street that the old man +woke to the fact that his admiration for the Judge was made of +anything but immortal stuff. He weighed the Judge in the balance that +morning, and half forgot his own woe in marveling at the discrepancies +which he discovered. + +Self-deceit may or may not be easy of accomplishment. Maybe it is +merely a matter of temperament and circumstance, after all. But it is +a certainty that the first peep at one's own soul is always the most +startling--the most illuminating, always hardest of all to bear. And +once stripped of that one garment of grandeur, which he had conjured +out of his own great hunger for attention, Old Jerry found a +ruthless, half-savage joy in tearing aside veil after veil, until he +found himself gazing straight back into the eyes of his own +spirit--until he saw the pitiful old fraud he really was, naked there +before him. + +Just as well as though he had been a party to it he understood the +Judge's crafty exhibition of Young Denny's maimed face that morning; +he knew without a trace of doubt just what the Judge, in his ominous +silence, had meant to insinuate, and what the verdict would be that +night around the Tavern stove. What he could not understand quite was +why all of them were so easy to convince--so ready to believe--when +only the night before they had sat and heard the Judge's recital of +Jed The Red's intimate history for the benefit of the newspaper man +from the metropolis which, to name it charitably, had been anything +but a literal translation of facts. + +Groping back for one single peg upon which to hang the fabric of their +oft-reiterated prophesy was alarmingly profitless. There had been +nothing, not even one little slip, since Old Denny Bolton's passing on +that bad night, years before. And from that realization he fell to +pondering with less leadenness of spirit upon what the real facts +could be which lay behind Young Denny's sudden transformation. For +that also was too real--too evident--for any eyes to overlook. + +It was not until long after the hour which witnessed the return flight +of the yellow-wheeled buckboard through the village street, leaving +behind an even busier hum of conjecture than before, that he awoke to +a realization that his opportunity for a solution of the riddle was at +least better than that of the wrangling group that had turned traitor +before the post-office steps. + +Long before he reached the top of the grade that ran up to the bleak +house alone on the crest, he was leaning out of his seat, trying to +penetrate the double gloom of rain and twilight; but not until he had +reined in his horse was he positive that there was no shadowy figure +standing there waiting for his arrival. + +He could not quite understand the sensation which the boy's absence +waked in him at that instant. Days afterward he knew it had been +lonesomeness--a rather bewildering loneliness--for no matter what his +reception chanced to be along the way, Young Denny's greeting had been +infallibly regular. + +And another emotion far less difficult to understand began to stir +within him as he sat motionless for a time scanning the shapeless bulk +of the place, entirely dark save for a single light in the rear room. +For the first time he saw how utterly apart from the rest of the town +those unpainted old farm buildings were--how utterly isolated. The +twinkling lights of the village were mere pin-points in the distance. +Each thick shadow beneath the eaves of the house was blacker than he +had ever noticed before. Even the soft swish of the rain as it seeped +from the sodden shingles, even the very familiar complaint of loose +nails lifted by the wind under the clapboards, set his heart pumping +faster. All in an instant his sensation-hungry old brain seized upon +each detail that was as old as he himself and manufactured, right +there on the spot, a sinister something--a something of unaccountable +dread, which sent a delightful shiver up and down his thin, bony, old +back. + +For a while he waited and debated with himself, not at all certain +now that he was as keen for a solution of the riddle of that cut +which had adorned Young Denny's chin as he had been. And yet, even +while he hesitated, feeding his imagination upon the choicest of +premonitory tit-bits, he knew he meant to go ahead. He was magnifying +the unfathomed peril that existed in his erratic, hair-trigger old +brain alone merely for the sake of the complacent pride which +resulted therefrom--pride in the contemplation of his own intrepid +dare-deviltry. + +He could scarcely have put into words just what reception he had +imagined was awaiting him; but, whatever it might have been, Young +Denny's greeting was full as startling. A worn, dusty, shapeless +leather bag stood agape upon the table before the window, and Denny +Bolton paused over the half-folded garment in his hands to wheel +sharply toward the newcomer as the door creaked open. + +For one uncomfortable moment the old adventurer waited in vain for any +light of welcome, or even recognition, to flash up in the boy's steady +scrutiny. Then the vaguest of smiles began to twitch at the corners of +Denny's lips. He laid the coat back upon the table and stepped forward +a pace. + +"Hello!--Here at last, are you?" he saluted. "Aren't you pretty late +tonight?" + +Old Jerry swallowed hard at the cheery ease of the words, but his +fluttery heart began to pump even faster than when he had sat outside +in the buggy debating the advisability of his further advance. That +warning premonition had not been a footless thing, after all, for this +self-certain, vaguely amused person who stood steadily contemplating +him was not the Denny Bolton he had known twenty-four hours +before--not from any angle or viewpoint. + +Behind the simulated cheer of his greeting there was something else +which Old Jerry found disturbingly new and hard to place. In his +perplexity the wordless accusation that morning had been correct at +that. And Young Denny was smiling widely at him now--smiling openly. +The old man shuffled his feet and shifted his gaze from the open wound +upon the boy's face as though he feared his suspicion might be read in +his eyes. Then he answered Denny's question. + +"I--I cal'late I be late--maybe a little," he admitted. + +Denny nodded briskly. + +"More than a little," he corrected. "I expected you to be along even +earlier today! An hour or two, at least." + +Even while he was speaking Young Denny turned back to the packing of +the big bag on the table. Old Jerry stood there, still shifting from +one foot to the other, considering in growing wonder that silent +preparation, and waiting patiently for a further explanation of what +it meant. At last, when he could no longer endure the suspense, he +broke that silence himself. + +"Packin' up for a little trip, be you?" he ventured mildly. + +There was no progress made or satisfaction gained from Young Denny's +short nod. Again the little man bore it as long as he was able. + +"Figurin' on bein' gone quite a spell?" he ventured again. + +And again the big-shouldered figure nodded a silent affirmative. Old +Jerry drew himself up with an air of injured dignity at that +inhospitable slight; he even took one step backward toward the door; +but that one step, in the face of his consuming curiosity, was as far +as he could force himself to go. + +"I--I kinda thought you might be leavin'. Why, I--kinda suspicioned it +this morning when I seen you ridin' townward with the Jedge." + +The boy stuffed the last article into the bulging bag and turned. Old +Jerry almost believed that the lack of comprehension in Young Denny's +eyes was real until he caught again that hint of amusement behind it. +But when Denny started toward him suddenly, without so much as a word, +the old man retreated just as suddenly, almost apprehensively, before +him. + +"You say you was expectin' me," he faltered unsteadily, "but--but if +there wa'n't anything special you wanted to see me about, I--I reckon +I better be joggin' along. I just kinda dropped in, late's it was, to +tell you there wa'n't no mail, and to say--to tell you----" + +He stopped abruptly. He didn't like the looks of Denny Bolton's eyes. +They were different than he had ever seen them before. If their +inscrutability was not actually terrifying, Old Jerry's active +imagination at that moment made it so. And never before had he noted +how huge the boy's body was in comparison with his own weazened frame. +He groped stealthily behind him and found the door catch. The cool +touch of the metal helped him a little. + +"I--I may be a trifle late--jest a trifle," he hurried on, "but I been +hustlin' to git here--that is, ever sense about five o'clock, or +thereabouts. There's been something I been wantin' to tell you. I--I +jest wanted to say that I hoped it wa'n't anything I might have said +or--or kinda hinted at, maybe, nights down to the Tavern, that's druv +you out. That's a mighty mean, gossipy crowd down there, anyway, +always kinda leadin' a man along till he gits to oversteppin' hisself +a little." + +It was the first declaration of his own shortcomings that he had ever +voiced, an humble confession that was more than half apology born of +that afternoon's travail of spirit; but somehow it rang hopelessly +inadequate in his own ears at that minute. And yet Young Denny's head +came swiftly forward at the words; his eyes narrowed and he frowned as +though he were trying to believe he had heard correctly. Then he +laughed--laughed softly--and Old Jerry knew what that laugh meant. The +boy didn't believe even when he had heard; and his slow-drawled, +half-satirical question more than confirmed that suspicion. + +"Wasn't at all curious, then, about this?" he inquired, with a +whimsical twist to the words. + +He touched his chin with the tips of his fingers. Old Jerry's +treacherous lips flew open in his eagerness, and then closed barely +in time upon the admission that had almost betrayed him. + +He was sorry now, too, that he had even lingered to make his apology. +That disturbing glint was flaring brighter than ever in Young Denny's +eyes. Merely because he was afraid to turn his back to pass out, Old +Jerry stood and watched with beadily attentive eyes while the boy +crossed and took a lantern from its peg on the wall behind the stove +and turned up the wick and lighted it. That unexplained preparation +was as fascinating to watch as its purport was veiled. + +"You must be just a little curious about it--just a little bit?" Denny +insisted gravely. "I thought you'd be--and all the others, too. That's +why I was waiting for you--that and something in particular that I did +want to ask you, after I'd made you understand." + +If the first part of his statement was still tinged with mirth, the +second could not possibly have been any more direct or earnest. +Without further explanation, one hand grasping his visitor's thin +shoulder, he urged him outside and across the yard in the direction of +the black bulk of the barn. The rain was still coming down steadily, +but neither of them noticed it at that moment. Old Jerry would have +balked at the yawning barn door but for that same hand which was +directing him and urging him on. His apprehension had now turned to +actual fright which bordered close on panic, and he heard the boy's +voice as though it came from a great distance. + +"----two or three things I'd like to have you understand and get +straight," Denny was repeating slowly, "so that--so that if I asked +you, you could see that--someone else got them straight, too." + +Old Jerry was in no mental condition to realize that that last +statement was untinged by any lurking sarcasm. He was able to think of +but one thing. + +The hand upon his shoulder had loosened its grip. Slowly the little +man turned--turned with infinite caution, and what he considered was a +very capable attitude of self-defense. And for a moment he refused to +believe his own eyes--refused to believe that, in place of the threat +of sudden death which he had expected, Young Denny was merely standing +there before him, pointing with his free hand at a dark, almost damp +stain upon the dusty woodwork behind the stalls. It flashed through +his brain then that Denny Bolton had not merely gone the way of the +other Boltons--it was not the jug alone that had stood in the kitchen +corner, but something far worse than that. + +"I got to humor him," he told himself, although he was shivering +uncontrollably. "I got to keep a grip on myself and kinda humor him." +And aloud, in a voice that was little more than a whisper, he +murmured: + +"What--what is it?" + +"Couldn't you guess--if you had to?" + +Denny made the suggestion with appalling calm. Old Jerry clenched his +teeth to still their chattering. + +"Maybe I could--maybe I could;" and his voice was a little stronger. +"I--I'd say it was blood, I reckon, if anyone asked me." + +Without a word the boy set the lantern down and walked across the barn +to lay one hand upon the flank of the nervous animal in the nearest +stall. + +"That's what it is," he stated slowly; and again he touched the wound +on his chin gingerly. "From this," he went on. "I came in last night +to feed--and I--I forgot to speak to Tom here, and it was dark. He--he +laced out and caught me--and that's where I landed, there against the +wall." + +The servant of the "Gov'mint" nodded his comprehension--he nodded it +volubly, with deep bows that would have done credit to a dancing +master, lest his comprehensions seem in the least bit veiled with +doubt. He even clicked his tongue sympathetically, just as the plump +newspaper man had done. + +"Quite a tap--quite a tap!" he said as soothingly as his uncertain +tongue would permit; but he took care to keep a safe distance between +himself and his guide when Denny stooped and lifted the lantern and +led the way outside. + +Now that he was free from that detaining hand upon his shoulder, he +contemplated the advisability of a sudden dash for the buggy and +flight behind the fat white mare. Nothing but the weakened condition +of his own knees and a lack of confidence in her ability to carry him +clear kept him from acting instantly upon that impulse. And then the +summoning voice of the great blurred figure which had been zigzagging +across the grass before him checked him at the very moment of +decision. + +Young Denny had stopped beside a sapling that stood in a direct line +with the kitchen window, and was pointing down at a heap of broken +crockery that lay at its foot. + +"And if anyone was to ask you," he was deliberately inquiring, "what +do you suppose you would say that had been?" + +Old Jerry knew! He knew without one chance for doubt; but never before +had the truth seemed more overwhelmingly dreadful or surcharged with +peril. A dozen diplomatic evasions flashed through his mind, and were +all condemned as inadequate for that crisis. He knew that candor was +his safest course. + +"Why, I--I'd say it looked mighty like a--a broken jug," he quavered, +with elaborate interest. "Jest a common, ordinary jug that's kinda +got broke, somehow. Yes, sir-e-e, all broke up, as you might say!" + +His shrill cackle of a voice caught in his throat, and grew husky, and +then broke entirely. Even Young Denny, absorbed as he was in his +methodical exhibition of all the evidence, became suddenly aware that +the little figure beside him was swallowing hard--swallowing with +great, noisy gulps, and he lifted the lantern until the yellow light +fell full upon the twitching face below him, illuminating every +feature. And he stared hard at all that the light revealed, for Old +Jerry's face was very white. + +"Jest a little, no-account jug that's got busted," the shrill, +bodiless voice went chattering on, while its owner recoiled from the +light. "Busted all to pieces from hittin' into a tree!" And then, +reassuringly, on a desperate impulse: "But don't you go to worryin' +over it--don't you worry one mite! I'm goin' to fix it for you. Old +Jerry's a-goin' to fix it for you in the morning, so's it'll be just +as good as new! You run right along in now. It's kinda wet out +here--and--and I got to be gittin' along toward home." + +Absolute silence followed the promise. Young Denny only lowered the +lantern--and then lifted it and stared, and lowered it once more. + +"Fix it!" he echoed, his voice heavy with wonder. "Fix it?" + +Then he noted, too, the chattering teeth and meager, trembling body, +and he thought he understood. + +"You'd better come along in," he ordered peremptorily. "You come along +inside. I'll rake up the fire and you can warm up a bit. I--I didn't +think, keeping you out here in the rain. Why, you'll feel better after +you've had a little rest. You ought not to be out all day in weather +like this, anyway. You're too--too----" + +He was going to say too old, but a quick thought saved him. Old Jerry +did not want to accompany him; he would have done almost anything else +with a light heart; but that big hand had fallen again upon his +shoulder, and there was no choice left him. + +Young Denny clicked the door shut before them and pulled a chair up +before the stove with businesslike haste. After he had stuffed the +fire-box full of fresh fuel and the flame was roaring up the pipe, he +turned once more and stood, hands resting on his hips, staring down at +the small figure slumped deep in its seat. + +"I didn't understand," he apologized again, his voice very sober. +"I--I ought to have remembered that maybe you'd be tired out and wet, +too. But I didn't--I was just thinking of how I could best show +you--these things--so's you'd understand them. You're feeling better +now?" + +Furtively, from the corners of his eyes, Old Jerry had been watching +every move while the boy built up the fire. And now, while Denny stood +over him talking so gravely, his head came slowly around until his +eyes were full upon that face; until he was able to see clearly, there +in the better light of that room, all the solicitude that had softened +the hard lines of the lean jaw. It was hard to believe, after all that +he had passed through, and yet he knew that it could not be +possible--he knew that that voice could not belong to any man who had +been nursing a maniacal vengeance behind a cunningly calm exterior. + +There was no light of madness in those eyes which were studying him +so steadily--studying him with unconcealed anxiety. Old Jerry could +not have told how it had come about; but there in the light, with +four good solid walls about him, he realized that a miracle had +taken place. Little by little his slack body began to stiffen; +little by little he raised himself. Once he sighed, a sigh of +deeper thankfulness than Young Denny could ever comprehend, for +Young Denny did not know the awfulness of the peril through which +he had just passed. + +"Godfrey" he thought, and the exclamation was so poignantly real +within him that it took audible form without his knowledge. "Godfrey +'Lisha, but that was a close call! That's about as narrer a squeak as +I'll ever hev, I reckon." + +And he wanted to laugh. An almost hysterical fit of laughter +straggled for utterance. Only because the situation was too precious +to squander, only because he would have sacrificed both arms before +confessing the terror which had been shaking him by the throat, was he +able to stifle it. Instead, he removed his drenched and battered hat +and passed one fluttering hand across his forehead, with just the +shade of unsteadiness for which the affair called. + +"Yes, I'm a-feelin' better now," he sighed. "Godfrey, yes, I'm a sight +better already! Must 'a' been just a little touch of faintness, maybe. +I'm kinda subject to them spells when I've been overworked. And I hev +been a little mite druv up today--druv to the limit, if the truth's +told. Things ain't been goin' as smooth's they might. Why--why, they +ain't nobody'd believe what's been crowded into this day, even if I +was to tell 'em!" + +He filled his lungs again and shoved both feet closer to the oven +door. + +"But that fire feels real nice," he finished; "real nice and +comfortin', somehow. And maybe I could stop just a minute." The old +hungry light of curiosity was kindling again, brighter than ever +before, in the beady little eyes. "As you was remarkin', back a +stretch, you'd been a-waitin' for me to come along. Was they--was they +something you wanted to see me about?" + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +The perplexed frown still furrowed Young Denny's forehead. He felt +that the fire had wrought a most remarkably swift cure of all that he +had feared, but the anxiety faded from his eyes. White head perked +forward, balanced a little on one side, birdlike, Old Jerry was +waiting for him to pick up the thread which had been broken so long. +And now it was the big-shouldered boy who faltered in his words, +uncertain just how to begin. + +"I--I don't know just how to ask you," he started heavily. "I'm--I am +going away. I'm figuring on being gone quite a while, I think. First, +just after I had decided to go, some time last night, I made up my +mind to ask you to take care of the stock till I came back. I thought +maybe it wouldn't be too hard for you--with you coming by at night, +anyhow. There's just the one cow and the team, and the hens to feed. +And then I--I got to thinkin' that maybe, too, you'd be able to do +something else for me, if I sort of explained how things were. +There--there wasn't anyone else I could think of who'd be likely to +want to do me a favor." + +He paused and licked his lips. And Old Jerry, too, furtively touched +his with the tip of his tongue. He was waiting breathlessly, but he +managed to nod his head a little, encouragingly, as he leaned closer. + +"And that was what I was really waiting for," the slow voice went on +ponderously. "I saw this morning--anybody could have seen--what the +Judge meant them all to believe along the street when we drove +through. Somehow things have changed in the last twelve hours. I sort +of look at some things differently than I did, and so it was funny, +just funny to watch him, and I'm not so blind that I don't know what +his story will be tonight down at the Tavern. Not that I care what +they say, either. But there is some one who couldn't help believin' +it--couldn't believe anything else--after what happened last night." +He stopped, groping for words to finish. "And so I--I waited for you +to come," he went on lamely. "I took you outside and showed you how it +really happened, so that--so that you could tell _her_--the truth." + +He nodded over his shoulder--nodded once out across the valley in the +direction of John Anderson's small drab cottage huddled in the shadow +under the hill. And now, once he had fairly begun, all the diffidence, +all the self-consciousness went from his voice. It was only big and +low and ponderous, as always, as he went back and told the old man, +who sat drinking it in, every detail of that night before, when he +had stooped and risen and sent the stone jug crashing through the +window--when he had turned, with blood dripping from his chin, to find +Dryad Anderson there in the doorway, eyes wide with horror and +loathing. Not until he had reached that point did Old Jerry move or +hint at an interruption. + +"But why in time didn't you tell her yourself?" he asked then. "Why +didn't you explain that old Tom hit you a clip out there in the +dark?" + +Young Denny's face burned. + +"I--I tried to," he explained simply. "I--I started toward her, +meaning to explain, but I tripped, there on the threshold, and went +down on my knees. I must have been a little sick--a little giddy. And +when I got up again she--she was gone." + +Old Jerry nodded his head judicially. He sucked in his lips from sheer +delight in the thrill of it all, and nodded his head in profound +solemnity. + +"Jest like a woman--jest like a woman, a-condemnin' of a man without a +bit of mercy! Jest like 'em! I ain't never been enticed yet into +givin' up my freedom; but many's the time I've said--says I----" + +The boy's set face checked him; made him remember. This was no mimic +thing. It was real; too real to need play-acting. And with that +thought came recollection. All in a flash it dawned on him that this +was no man-created situation; it must have something greater than that +behind it. + +That morning had seen his passing from the circle to which he had +belonged as long as the circle had existed. All through that dreary +day he had known that he could never go back to it. Just why he could +not say, but he felt that that decision was irrevocable. And for that +whole day he had been alone--more utterly, absolutely alone than he +had ever been in his whole life--yet here was a place awaiting him, +needing him. For some reason it was not quite so hard to look straight +back into the eyes of that soul which he had discovered that day; it +wasn't so hard, even though he knew it now for the pitiful old fraud +it really was. + +His thin, leathery face was working spasmodically. And it was +alight--aglow with a light that came entirely from within. + +"Could you maybe explain," he quavered hungrily; "could you kinda tell +me--just why it is--you're a-askin' me? It--it ain't jest because you +hev to, entirely; now, is it? It ain't because there ain't nothin' +else left you to do?" + +Denny Bolton sensed immediately more than half of what was behind the +question. He shook his head. + +"No," he answered steadily. "No, because I'm going to try to tell her +again, myself, tonight. It's only partly because maybe I--I won't be +able to see her before I go--and part because she--she'd believe you, +somehow, I think, when she wouldn't believe any of the rest." + +The white-haired old man sighed. His stiffened body slackened as he +shifted his feet against the stove. + +"Why--why, I kinda hoped it was something like that," he murmured; and +he was talking more to himself than to Denny. "I kinda hoped it +was--but I never had no reason to believe it." + +His voice lifted until it was its shriller, more natural falsetto. + +"I wouldn't 'a' believed myself today, at twelve o'clock noon," he +stated flatly. "No, sir-e-e! After takin' stock of myself, as you +might say, the way I done this morning, I wouldn't 'a' believed myself +on oath!" + +His feet dropped noisily to the floor, and he sat bolt upright again. + +"But she's a-goin' to believe me! Godfrey, yes, she'll believe me when +I git through tellin' her!" + +His pale eyes clung to the boy's face, tinged with astonishment before +so much vehemence. + +"And ain't it kinda struck you--ain't it sorta come to you that +she wa'n't quite fair, either, any more than the rest of us, +a-thinkin'--a-thinkin' what she did, without any real proof?" + +Young Denny did not have time to reply. + +"No, I reckon it ain't," Old Jerry rushed on. "And I don't know's I've +got much right criticizing either. Not very much! I've been a tidy +hand at jedgin' other folks' matters until jest lately. Some way I +ain't quite so handy at it as I was. And I kinda expect she's goin' to +be sorry she even thought it, soon enough, without my tryin' to make +her any more so. She's goin' to be mighty uncomfortable sorry, if +she's anything like me!" + +He rose and shuffled across to the door, and stopped there. Denny +could not understand the new thrill there was in his cracked voice, +nor the light in those pale eyes. But he knew that the old man before +him had been making something close akin to an eleventh-hour +confession; making it out of a profound thankfulness for the +opportunity. With the same gesture with which he bade the old man +wait, his big hand went inside his shirt, and came out again. And he +reached out and pressed something into Old Jerry's knotty fingers. + +"I--I was sure you'd do it," he told him. "I knew you would. And I +want you to take this, too, and keep it. I don't want to go away like +this, but I have to. If I didn't start right now I--I might not go at +all. I hate to leave her alone--in this town. That's half of what the +Judge let me have today on this place. It's not much, but it's +something if she should need anything while I'm gone. I thought you +might--see that she was all right--till I got back?" + +The servant of the "Gov'mint" stood and stared down at the limp little +roll of bills in his hand; he stared until something caught in his +throat and made him gulp again noisily. But his face was shamelessly +defiant of the mist that smarted under his eyelids when he looked up +again. + +"Take care of her?" he whispered. "Me take care of her for you? +Why--why, Godfrey--why, man----" + +He dashed one hand across his eyes. + +"I'm a old gossipy fool," he exclaimed. "Nothin' but a old gossipy +fool; but I reckon you don't hev to _count_ them bills over before you +leave 'em with me. Not unless you want to. I've been just an ordinary, +common waggle-tongue. That's what I really come for in such a hurry +tonight, once I'd thought of it. Jest to see if I couldn't nose around +into business that wa'n't no concern of mine. But I'm gittin' over +that--I'm gittin' over that fast! Learning a little dignity of +bearin', too, as you might say. And I don't deny I ain't a little +curious yet--more'n a little curious. But I want to tell you this: +There's some folks that lies mostly for profit, and some that lies +largely for their own amusement, and they both do jest about as much +damage in the long run, and I ain't no better, jest because I never +made nothin' outen mine. But if you could kinda drop me a line, maybe +once in a while, and tell me how you're gittin' on, I'd be mighty glad +to hear. An' it wouldn't do no harm, either." He nodded his head, in +turn, in the direction of the drab cottage across the valley. +"Because--because she's goin' to be waitin' to hear--she's goin' to be +sorry, and kinda wonderin'. I know--well, jest because I know!" + +Still he lingered, with his fingers on the door catch. He shoved out +his free hand. + +"I--I suppose we'd ought to shake hands, hedn't we," he faltered; +"bein' as it's kinda considered the reg'lar and customary thing to do +on such occasions?" + +Denny was smiling as his hand closed over those clawlike fingers; he +was smiling in a way that Old Jerry had never seen before. Because the +noise in his throat was growing alarmingly louder every moment, the +latter went on talking almost wildly, to cover that weakness which he +could not control. + +"I hope you git on," he said. "And I reckon you will. It's funny--it's +more'n that--and I don't know where I got the idea. But it's kinda +come to me, somehow, that maybe it was that account in the paper--that +story of Jeddy Conway--that's set you to leavin'. It ain't none of my +business, and I ain't askin' no questions, but I do want to say that +there never was a time when you couldn't lick the everlastin' tar +outen him. And you've growed some since then. Jest a trifle--jest a +trifle!" + +The boy's smile widened and widened. Then he laughed aloud softly and +nodded his head. + +"I'll send you the papers," he promised. "I'll send you all of them." + +Old Jerry stood with his outstretched hand poised in midair while +he realized that his chance shot had gone home. And suddenly, +unaccountably, he began to chuckle; he began to cackle noisily. + +"I might 'a' knowed it," he whispered. "I ought to hev knowed it all +along. Now, you don't hev to worry--they ain't one mite of a thing I +ain't a-goin' to see to while you're away. You don't want nothin' on +your mind, because you're goin' to hev a considerable somethin' on +your hands. And I got to git along now. Godfrey, but it's late for me +to be up here, ain't it? I got to hustle, if I ever did; and there +ain't too much time to spare. For tonight--tonight, before I git +through, I aim to put a spoke in the Jedge's wheel, down to the +Tavern, that'll make him think the axles of that yello'-wheeled gig of +his'n needs greasin'. Jest a trifle--jest a trifle!" + +He opened the door and slammed it shut behind him even before the +boy could reply. Still smiling whimsically, Young Denny stood and +listened to the grating of the wheels as the buggy was turned about +outside--heard the old rig groan once, and then complain shrilly +as it started on its way. But no one witnessed Old Jerry's wild +descent to the village that night; no one knew the mad speed he +made, save the old mare between the shafts; and she was kept too busy +with the lash that whistled over her fat flanks to have given the +matter any consistent thought. + +Old Jerry drove that scant mile or two this night under the spur of +his one greatest inspiration; and while he drove he talked aloud to +himself. + +"And I was a-goin' to fix it for him," he muttered once, "I was +a-goin' to fix that old busted jug in the morning. Godfrey, I must +'a' been flustered!" He shrilled in uncontrollable glee at the +recollection. And then again, later and far more gravely: + +"I'm a-gittin' more religious every livin' day. I'm gittin' more +religious jest from standin' around and kinda watchin' how things is +made to work out right, jest when you've about decided that the Lord +ain't payin' as much attention to details as he might." + +He knew that there had to be a light in the windows of the Tavern +office; he knew that he had to be in time. That was the finger of a +Something behind the whole day's developments which was directing it +all so masterfully. And because he was so certain of it all--because +he was positive that he was the agent who had been selected to mete +out justice at last--he found himself possessed of a greater courage +than he had ever known before as he clambered down from his seat and +mounted the worn steps. + +A rush of chill air swept the group about the sprawling stove as +he opened the door and made each member lift his head, each after a +fashion that was startlingly indicative of the man himself. For +Judge Maynard wheeled sharply as the cold blast struck him--wheeled +with head flung back challengingly, and a harsh rebuke in every +feature--while old Dave Shepard turned and merely shivered. He just +shivered and flinched a little from the draft, appealingly. The +rest registered an ascending scale of emotions betwixt and between. + +Just as he knew he would find them they sat. Judge Maynard had the +floor; and it was an easy thing to read that he had all but reached +the crisis of his recital. Any man could have read that merely from +the protest in the faces of the rest. And yet Old Jerry simply stood +there and swept the group with serene and dangerous geniality. + +"Evenin', folks," he saluted them mildly. + +His mildness was like a match to the fuse. Judge Maynard pounded his +fat knee with a fatter fist, and exploded thunderously: + +"Shut that door!" he roared. "Shut that door!" + +Old Jerry complied with amazing alacrity. The very panels shivered +with the force of the swing that slammed it close. The Judge should +have known right there--he should have read the writing on the +wall--and yet he failed to do that thing. Instead, he turned back once +more to his audience--back to his interrupted tale, and left Old Jerry +standing there before the door, ignored. + +"As I was sayin'." He cleared his throat. "As I was sayin' when this +unnecessary interruption occurred, I realized right from the moment +when I opened the door and saw him standing there in front of me, +grinning, and his chin cut wide open, that there was something wrong. +I am a discerning man--and I knew! And it didn't take me long to +convince him--not very long!--that there were other communities which +would find him more welcome than this one. Maybe I was harsh--maybe I +was--but harsh cases require harsh remedies. And because he didn't +have the money, I offered to let him have enough to carry him out of +town, and something to keep him about as long as he'll last now, I'm +thinking, although that place of his isn't worth as much as the paper +to write the mortgage on. + +"I knew it had come at last--but, at that, I didn't get anything that +I wanted to call real proof until after we'd drawn up the papers and +signed 'em, and were about ready to start back. Then, when we were +coming down the steps of the clerk's office, I got all the proof I +wanted, and a little more than that. He--he stumbled just about then, +and would have gone down on his face if I hadn't held him up. And he +was laughing out loud to himself, chuckling, with one fist full of +money fit to draw a crowd. And he pulled away from me just when I was +trying to force him into the buggy--pulled away and sort of leered up +at me, waving that handful of bills right under my nose. + +"'Oh, come now, Judge,' he sort of hiccoughed, 'this ain't the way for +two old friends to part. This ain't the way for me to treat an old +friend who's given me this. I want to buy you something--I want to buy +you at least one drink--before I go. Come on, now, Judge. What'll you +have?' says he." + +They had all forgotten Old Jerry's interruption; they had forgotten +everything else but the Judge's recital, that was climbing to its +climax. That room was very quiet when the speaker paused and waited +for his words to sink in--very quiet until a half-smothered giggle +broke the stillness. + +There was an unholy glee in that mirth--a mocking, lilting note of +actual joy which rang almost profane at such a moment. Man for man it +brought that circle erect in the chairs; man for man they sat and +stared at the grotesque figure which was rocking now in a paroxysm of +laughter too real for simulation. In a breathless hush they turned +from the offender back to the judge, waiting, appalled, for the storm +to break. + +Judge Maynard's round moon-face went purple. Twice he tried to speak +before he sat silent, annihilation in his eyes, until Jerry's outbreak +had subsided. Then he lifted one forefinger and pointed, with all the +majesty such a gesture could ever convey, to the empty chair--the +chair which Old Jerry should have been occupying in becoming silence +at that moment. + +"Have you gone crazy?" he thundered. "Have you--or are you just +naturally witless? Or was there something you wanted to say? If there +isn't--if you've no questions to ask--you get over to that chair and +sit down where you belong!" + +It was then that the rest of the circle realized that something had +gone wrong--most mightily wrong! According to all precedent, the +little, white-haired man should have shrunk back and cowered beneath +that verbal lash, and obeyed without a glance. They all realized that +there was imminent a climax unforeseen by all--all but the Judge; and +he was too blind with rage to see. + +Very meekly Old Jerry bore his thundered rebuke--too meekly. But after +the judge had finished he failed to move; he merely stood there, +facing the town's great man. And in his attitude there was something +of infantile, derisive, sparrowlike impudence as he peered back into +the Judge's face--something that was very like the attitude of an +outraged, ruffled old reprobate of a parrot rearing himself erect. + +Old Jerry made no haste. It was a thing which required a nice +deliberation. And so he waited--waited and prolonged the moment to its +last, sweetest second. Once more he chuckled, to himself this +time--just once, before he began to speak. That old Tavern office had +never been so deathly still before. + +"A question?" he echoed at last, thoughtfully. "A question? Well, +Jedge, there was one thing I was a-goin' to ask you. Jest one triflin' +thing I was kinda curious to know. Why, I was a-goin' to ask you, back +a spell--What did you hev? It kinda interested me, wonderin' about it. +But now--now that I've heard your story in full, I reckon I'll hev to +change that question a mite. I reckon they ain't nothin' left but to +ask you--How many did you hev? How many, Jedge? For, Jedge, you're +talkin' most mighty wild tonight!" + +And that silence endured--endured even after the huge man had +half-risen, purple features gone white, and then dropped heavily back +into his chair before that rigid figure in its sodden garments which +had turned from him toward the rest of the circle of regulars. + +Old Jerry made his formal exit that night--he knew that he was +resigning his chair--but the thing was very cheap at the price. + +[Illustration: "WHAT YOU NEED, GENTLEMEN, IS A TRIFLE WIDER READIN'--JUST +A TRIFLE! FOR YOU AIN'T BEIN' WELL POSTED ON FACTS!"] + +"An' I reckon, too," he went on deliberately, and there was a +wicked fleer of sarcasm tinging the words, "I reckon I'll hev to +kinda apologize to you gentlemen for interruptin' your evenin's +entertainment, as you might say. I'm sorry I ain't able to remain, +for it's interestin'. I don't know's I've ever heard anything that +was jest as excitin' an' thrillin', but I've got something more +important needin' my attention this evenin'--meanin' that I ain't got +nothin' in particular that's a-callin' me! But it's no more'n my +plain duty for me to tell you this: You'd ought to follow the +papers a mite closer from now on. It's illuminatin'--it's broadenin'! +What you need, gentlemen, is a trifle wider readin'--jest a +trifle--jest a trifle! For you ain't bein' well posted on facts!" + +Nobody moved. Nobody was capable of stirring even. Old Jerry bowed to +them from the doorway--he bowed till the water trickled in a stream +from the brim of his battered hat. + +And this time, as he passed out, he closed the door very gently behind +him. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +It would have been hard for her to have explained just why it was so, +but Dryad Anderson had been sitting there in the unlighted front room +of the little once-white cottage before Judge Maynard's boxlike place +on the hill, watching hour after hour for that light to blink out at +her from the dark window of Denny Bolton's house on the opposite +slope. Ever since it had grown dark enough for that signal to be seen, +which had called across to her so many nights, she had been waiting +before the table in front of the window--waiting even while she told +herself that it could not appear. It was not Saturday night; there was +no real reason why she should be watching, unless--unless it was hope +that held her there. + +Only in the last few hours since twilight had she admitted to herself +the possibility that such a hope lurked behind her vigil. Before then, +when the thought had first come to her that Denny might cry out to her +through the night, with that half-shuttered light, she had stifled it +with a savageness that left her shaking, panting and dizzy from its +bewildering intensity. + +Time after time she told herself that it would go unheeded by her, no +matter how long or how insistently it beckoned, if by the hundredth +chance it should flare up beyond the shadows, but as minutes dragged +interminably by into equally interminable hours, the strained +fierceness of that whispered promise grew less and less knifelike in +its hardness--less and less assured. + +Somehow, ever since the first light of that gray day had discovered +her sitting there in almost the same position in which she now sat, +eyes straining out across the valley, pointed chin cupped in her +palms, that fearful, almost insane passion which had held each nerve +and fiber of her taut as tight-stretched wire through the entire +sleepless night, had begun to give way to something even less easy to +endure. + +All the terror which had checked her that evening when she swung the +door open and stood poised on the threshold, a low laugh of sheerest +delight in the costume she had worn across for him to see ready to +burst from parted lips--all the horror that had held her incapable of +motion until Denny had swung around and found her there, and lifted +his arms and attempted to speak, had given way, in the first hours +that followed, to a flaming scorn, a searing contempt for him and for +his weakness that had lost him his fight. + +All through that night which followed her panic flight from the huge, +heavy-footed figure that had groped out for her, called to her, and +dropped asprawl her own small cloak in the doorway, Denny Bolton's +blood-soiled face and drunkenly reckless laugh had been with her, +feeding that rage which scorched her eyes beneath their lids--that +burned her throat and choked her. + +Little drops of blood oozed out upon her lips--strangely brilliant +crimson drops against that colorless background--where her teeth sank +deep in the agony of disillusionment that made each pulse-beat a +sledge-hammer blow within her brain. Her small palms were etched blue +under the clenched fingers where the nails bit the flesh. And yet--and +yet, for all the agony of it which made her lift her blanched face +from time to time throughout the night--a face so terribly strained +that it was almost distorted--and set her gasping chokingly that she +hated him, hated him for a man who couldn't fight and keep on +fighting, even when the odds were great--when the light of that new, +dreary day had come streaking in across her half-bowed head, something +else began to take the place of all that bitterness and scorn. + +And throughout the day she had still been struggling against it, +struggling with all the tense fierceness of which her spirit was +capable--her spirit that was far too big for the slim body that housed +it. Yet that thought could not be shaken off. She couldn't forget it, +couldn't wipe out the recollection of that great, gaping wound that +had dripped blood from his chin. She tried to close her eyes and shut +it out as she went from task to task that day, and it would not fade. + +Somehow it wasn't that man at all whom she remembered as the afternoon +dragged by to its close; it wasn't the big-shouldered body nervelessly +asprawl upon the floor that filled her memory. Instead a picture of an +awkward, half-grown boy flashed up before her--a big, ungainly, +terribly embarrassed boy who turned from watching the mad flight of a +rabbit through the brush to smile at her reassuringly, even though his +face was torn raw from her own nails. + +That was the point at which the tide of her chaotic thoughts began to +waver and turn. Long before she realized what she was doing she had +fallen to wondering, with a solicitude that made moist and misty once +more her tip-tilted eyes and softened the thin line of her lips, +whether or not that bruise had been washed out, cleansed and cleanly +bandaged. + +When she did realize what that thought meant, it had been too long +with her to be routed. She was too tired to combat it, anyway, too +tired with the reaction of that long, throbbing night to do more than +wonder at herself. Twilight came and the gray mist that had been over +the hills for hours dissolved into rain. With the first hint of +darkness that the storm brought with it she began to watch--to peer +out of the window whenever her busy footsteps carried her past it, at +the bleak place across the hollow. Before it was fairly night she +began to understand that she was not merely watching for the light, +but hoping, praying wordlessly that it might shine. And when her work +was finished she had taken her place there, her slim body in its scant +black skirt and little white blouse hunched boyishly forward as always +across the table. + +Even that girl who, after the hours which had been almost cataclysmic +for her, could scarcely have been expected to be able to comprehend it +clearly yet--even she read the meaning of the slackened cords of her +body, of her loosened lips and wet eyes. As long as she could she had +fed the flame within her soul--fed it with every bitter thought and +harsh judgment which her brain could evolve--and yet that flame had +slackened and smouldered and finally died out entirely. Self-shame, +self-scorn even, could not rekindle it. + +Her lips were no longer white and straight and feverish with contempt; +they were damp and full again, and curved and half-open with +compassion. The ache was still there in her breast--a great gnawing +pain which it seemed at that moment time could never remove, but it +was no longer the wild hatred which made her pant with a desire to +make him suffer, too, just as she had suffered that night through. +The pain was just as great, but it was pity now--only pity and an +unaccountable yearning to draw that bruised face down against her and +croon over it. + +In spite of the numbness, in spite of the lassitude which that +burnt-out passion had left behind in brain and body, she knew what it +meant. She understood. She had hated his weakness; she still hated his +lack of manhood which had made him fail her. That hatred would be a +long time dying now--if it ever did perish. But she couldn't hate +_him_! She looked that fact in the face, dumb at first at the +awakening. She couldn't hate him--not the man he was! There was a +distinction--a difference very clear to her woman-brain. She could +despise his cowardice; she could despise herself for caring still--but +the caring still went on. Half-vaguely she realized it, but she knew +the change had come. The girlishness was gone from it forever. She had +to care now as a woman always cares--not for the thing he was, but in +spite of it. + +"I ought to hate him," she told herself once, aloud. "I know I ought +to hate him, and yet--and yet I don't believe I can. Why, I--I can't +even hate myself, as I did a little while back, because I still +care!" + +It was a habit that had grown out of her long loneliness--those +half-whispered conversations with herself. And now only one conviction +remained. Again and again she told herself that she could not go to +meet him that night--could not go, even if he should call to her. And +that, too, she put into whispered words. + +"Even if he lights the window, I can't--I couldn't! Oh, not tonight! +He won't--he won't think of it. But I couldn't let him touch +me--until--until I've had a little time to forget!" + +But she was watching still--watching with small, gold-crowned head +nodding heavily, eyes half-veiled with sinking lids--when that +half-shaded window in the dark house glowed suddenly yellow with the +light behind it. She was still hoping, praying dumbly that it might +be, when Young Denny lifted the black-chimneyed lamp from its bracket +on the kitchen wall that night, after he had stood and listened with a +smile on his lips to Old Jerry's hurried departure, and carried it +into the front room which he scarcely ever entered except upon that +errand. + +At first she did not believe. She thought it was only a trick of her +brain, so tired now that it was as little capable of connected thought +as her worn-out body was of motion. Hardly breathing she stared until +she saw the great blot of his body silhouetted against the pane for a +moment as he crowded between the lamp, staring across at her, she +knew. + +She rose then, rose slowly and very cautiously as though she feared +her slightest move might make it vanish. Young Denny's bobbing +lantern, swinging in one hand as he crossed before the house and +plunged into the thicket that lay between them, was all that convinced +her--made her believe that she had seen aright. + +"I can't go--I can't!" she breathed. And then, lifting her head, +vehemently, as if he could hear: + +"I want to--oh, you know I want to! But I can't come to you +tonight--not until I've had a little longer--to think." + +Almost before she had finished speaking another voice answered, a +soft, dreamy voice that came so abruptly in the quiet house that it +made her wheel like a startled wild thing. She had forgotten him for +the time--that little, stooped figure at its bench in the back room +workshop. For hours she had not given him a thought, and he had made +not so much as a motion to make her remember his presence. She could +not even remember when his sing-song, unending monologue had ceased, +but she realized then that he had been more silent that night than +ever before. + +Earlier in the evening when she had lighted his lamp for him and set +out his lump of moist clay, and helped him to his place on the high +stool, she had thought to notice some difference in him. + +Usually John Anderson was possessed of one or two unvarying moods. +Either he plunged contentedly into his task of reproducing the +multitude of small white figures around the walls, or else he merely +sat and stared up at her hopelessly, vacantly, until she put the clay +herself into his hands. Tonight it had been different, for when she +had placed the damp mass between his limp fingers he had laid it aside +again, raised astonishingly clear eyes to hers and shaken his head. + +"After a little--after a little while," he had said. "I--I want to +think a little first." + +It had amazed her for a moment. At any other time it would have +frightened her, but tonight as she stroked his bowed head, she told +herself that it was nothing more than a new vagary of his anchorless +mind. + +But that same strangely clear, almost sane glow which had puzzled her +then was still there when she turned. It was even brighter than +before, and the slow words which had startled her, for all their +dreamy softness, seemed very sane as well. + +"You have to go," John Anderson answered her faltering, half-audible +whisper. "You have to go--but you'll be back soon. Oh, so soon! And +I'll be safe till you come!" + +Dryad flashed forward a step, both hands half-raised to her throat as +he spoke, almost believing that the miracle for which she had ceased +even to hope had come that night. And then she understood--she knew +that the bent figure which had already turned back to its bench had +only repeated her words, parrotlike; she knew that he had only pieced +together a recollection of the absence which her vigil before the +window had meant on a former occasion and repeated her own words of +that other night. + +And yet her brain clamored that there was more behind it all than mere +witless repetition. John Anderson was smiling at her, too, smiling +like a benevolent wraith. She saw that his pile of clay was still +untouched, but there was no hint of petulant perplexity in his face, +nothing of the terrified impotence which the inactivity of his fingers +had always heralded before. He was just smiling--vaguely to be sure +and a little uncertainly--but smiling in utter contentment and +satisfaction, for all that. + +Very slowly--wonderingly, she crossed to him and put both arms about +his white head and drew it against her. + +"I think you knew," she said to him, unsteadily. "I think you are able +to understand better than I can myself. And I know, too, now. I do +have to go--I must go to him. But he need not even know, until I tell +him some day--that I was with him tonight." + +The old man pulled away from her clasp, gently but very insistently. +And he nodded--nodded as though he had understood. She paused and +looked back at him from the doorway, just as she had always +hesitated. He was following her with his eyes. Again he shook his +head, just as positively as he might have, had he been the man he +might have been. + +"Some day," he reiterated, serenely, "some day! And she'll know +then--some day I'll tell her--that I was with her tonight." + +She had forgotten the rain. It was coming down heavily, and it was +dark, too--very, very dark. She stopped a while, as long as she dared, +and waited with the rain beating cold upon her uncovered head and bare +throat until her eyes saw the path a little more clearly. It took her +a long time to feel her way forward that night. And even when she came +within sight of Denny's lantern, even when she was near enough to see +him through the thicket ahead of her, in the little patch of light, +she had not decided what she meant to do. + +But with that first glimpse of him squatting there in the small +cleared space it came to her what her course should be. She +realized that if it was an impossibility for her to go to him, she +could at least let him know she had been there--let him know that he +had not been entirely alone while he waited. She even smiled to +herself--smiled with wistful, half-sad, elfen tenderness as she, too, +huddled down without a sound, there in the wet bushes opposite him, +and decided how she would tell him. + +Denny Bolton never quite knew how long he waited in the rain before he +was certain that there was no use waiting longer. More than half the +night had dragged by when he reached finally into the pockets of his +coat and searched for a scrap of paper. Watching from her place in the +thicket near him, she recognized the small white card which he +discovered--she even reached out one hand instinctively for her +invitation from the Judge, which she had told him had never arrived +and for which she had hunted in vain throughout the following days. + +With an unaccountable gladness because he knew straining at her +throat, she watched him draw the lantern nearer and read again the +words it bore before he turned it over and wrote, laboriously, with +the thick pencil that he used to check logs back in the hills, some +message across its back. + +It was a message to her, she knew; and she knew, too, that he was +going now. Deliberately she reached out then and found a rotten branch +beside her. Young Denny's head shot up as it cracked between her +hands--shot swiftly erect while he stared hard at that wall of +darkness which hid her. And swiftly as she fled, like some noiseless +night creature of the woods, his sudden, plunging rush almost +discovered her. + +Back in the safety of the blackness she stood and saw him bend over +the place where she had been crouching; she saw him put his hand upon +the patch of dead ferns which her body had crushed flat, and knew that +he found it still warm. She even held up her face, as though she were +giving him her lips--she reached out her arms to him--when she saw him +rise from an examination of her foot-prints in the mold, smiling his +slow, infinitely grave smile as he nodded his head over what he had +seen. + +Back over the path she had come she followed the dancing point of his +lantern, sometimes almost upon him, sometimes lagging far behind when +he stopped and strained his ears for her. All recollection of the +night before was gone from her mind, wiped out as utterly as though it +had never existed. Nothing but a great gladness possessed her, a joy +that amounted almost to mischievous glee whenever he stood still a +moment and listened. + +Not until she had waited many minutes after he stooped and slipped the +card beneath the door did she come out from the cover of the woods. +But she raced forward madly then, and flung the door open, and stooped +for it where it lay white against the floor. + +All the mischievous glee went from her face in that next moment. Bit +by bit it faded before the advance of that same strained whiteness +that had marred it, hours before. All the wistfulness that made her +face so childlike, all the hunger that made the hurt in her breast +came back while she read, over and over, the words which Denny had +written for her across the back of her card, until she could repeat +them without looking at it. And even then she only half-understood +what they meant. Once she opened the door and peered out into the +blackness, searching for the lantern that had disappeared. + +"Why--why he's gone! He came to tell me that he was going away," she +murmured, dully. And then, still more dully: + +"And I didn't tell him I was sorry. I've let him go without even +telling him how sorry I was--for the hurt upon his chin!" + +Perhaps it was the silence that made her turn; perhaps she simply +turned with no thought or reason at all, but she faced slowly about at +that moment, just in time to see John Anderson nod and smile happily +at something he alone could see--just in time to hear him sigh softly +once, before his arms went slack upon his work-bench and his head +drooped forward above them. + +The bit of a card fluttered to the floor as both her tight-clenched +fists lifted toward her throat. The softest of pitying little moans +came quavering from her lips. She needed no explanation of what that +suddenly limp body meant! And she understood better now, too, that +untouched lump of clay upon the boards beside his bowed head. John +Anderson's long task was finished. He had known it was finished, and +had been merely resting tonight--resting content before he started +upon that long journey, before he followed that face, tumbled of hair +and uplifted of lip, which seemed always to be calling to him. + +The slim-bodied girl whose face was so like what that other woman's +face had been went slowly across to him where he sat. After a while +she slipped her arm about his wasted shoulders, just as she had done +so often on other nights. A racking sob shook her when she first tried +to speak--and she tried again. + +"You kept faith, didn't you, dear?" she whispered to him. "Oh, but you +kept faith with her--right--right up to the end. Please God--please +God, I may get my chance back again--to try to keep it, too. You've +gone to her--and--and I'm glad! You waited a long time, dear, and you +were very patient. But, oh, you've left me--you've left me all +alone!" + +The tears came then. Great, searing drops that had been hopelessly +dammed back the night before rolled down her thin cheeks. She stooped +and touched the silvered head with her lips before she groped her way +into the other room and found her chair at the table. + +"He knew I was there with him," she tried to whisper. "He knew I was, +I know! But I wish I could tell him I'm sorry. Oh, I wish I could!" + +And Old Jerry found her so, head pillowed upon her outstretched arms, +her hair in a marvelous shimmering mass across her little shoulders +when he came the next morning, almost before the day was fairly begun, +to tell her all the things there were for him to tell. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Monday morning was always a busy morning in Jesse Hogarty's Fourteenth +Street gymnasium; busy, that is to say, along about that hour when +morning was almost ready to slip into early afternoon. The reason for +this late activity was very easy to understand, too, once one realized +that Hogarty's clientele--especially that of his Monday mornings--was +composed quite entirely of that type of leisurely young man who rarely +pointed the nose of his tub-seated raceabout below Forty-second +Street, except for the benefits of a few rather desultory rounds under +Hogarty's tutelage, a shocking plunge beneath an icy shower, and the +all pervading sense of physical well-being resultant upon a half +hour's kneading of none too firm muscles on the marble slabs. + +It was like Jesse Hogarty--or Flash Hogarty, as he had been styled by +the sporting reporters of the saffron dailies ten years back, when it +was said that he could hit faster and harder out of a clinch than any +lightweight who ever stood in canvas shoes--to refuse to transfer his +place to some locality a bit nearer Fifty-seventh Street, even when it +chanced, as it did with every passing year, that he drew his +patrons--at an alarmingly high rate per patron--almost entirely from +far uptown. + +"This isn't a turkish bath," Flash Hogarty was accustomed to answer +such importunities. "If you are just looking for a place to boil out +the poison, hunt around a little--take a wide-eyed look or two! There +are lots and lots of them. This isn't a turkish bath; it's a +gymnasium--a _man's_ gymnasium!" + +That was his invariable formula, alike to the objections of the +youthful, unlimited-of-allowance, more or less hard-living sons that +it "spoils the best part of the week, you know, Flash, just running +'way down here," and the equally earnest and far more peevish +complaints of the ticker tired, just-a-minute-to-spare fathers that it +cost them about five thousand, just to take an hour to work off a few +pounds. + +But they kept on coming, in spite of their lack of time and Hogarty's +calm refusal to consider their arguments--some of the younger men +because they really did appreciate the sensation of flexible muscles +sliding beneath a smooth skin, some of them merely because they liked +to hear Hogarty's fluently picturesque profanity, always couched in +the most delightfully modulated of English, when the activity of a +particularly giddy week-end brought them back a little too shaky of +hand, a little too brilliant of eye and a trifle jumpy as to pulse. +Hogarty had a way of telling them just how little they actually +amounted to, which, no matter how wickedly it cut, never failed to +amuse them. + +The older generation dared do nothing else, even in the face of the +ex-lightweight's scathingly sarcastic admiration of their constantly +increasing waist-line--or lack of one. For their lines were largely a +series of curves exactly opposite to those on which Nature had +originally designed them. + +They continued to come; they ran down-town in closed town cars, padded +heavily across the sidewalk like sad bovines going to the slaughter, +to reappear an hour or two later stepping like three-year-olds, +serenely, virtuously joyous at the tale of the scales which indicated +a five-pound loss. And the Saturday and Sunday week-end out of town +which presently followed, with the astoundingly heavy dinners that +accompanied it, brought them back in a week, sadder even than before. + +Monday morning was always a very busy morning in Hogarty's--but never +until along about noon. And because he knew how infallible were the +habits of his patrons, Hogarty did not so much as lift his eyes to the +practically empty gymnasium floor when a clock at the far side of the +room tinkled the hour of eleven. The two boys who were busily +scrubbing with waxing-mops the floor that already glistened like the +unruffled surface of some crystal pool were quite as unconcerned at +the lack of activity as was their employer. They merely paused long +enough to draw one shirt sleeve across the sweat-beaded foreheads--it +was a very early spring in Manhattan and the first heat was hard to +bear--and went at their task harder than ever. + +Hogarty had one other reason that morning which accounted for his +absolute serenity. From Third Avenue to the waterfront any one who +was well-informed at all--and there was no one who had not at least +heard whispers of his fame--knew that the thin-faced, hard-eyed, +steel-sinewed ex-lightweight who dressed in almost funeral black and +white and talked in the hushed, measured syllables of a professor +of English, loved one thing even more than he loved to see his own +man put over the winning punch in--say the tenth. It was common +gossip that a set of ivory dominoes came first before all else. + +No man had ever ventured to interrupt twice the breathless interest +with which Hogarty was accustomed to play his game. It did not promise +to be safe--a second interruption. And Hogarty was playing dominoes +this particular Monday morning, at a little round, green-topped table +against the wall opposite the door, peering stealthily at the +upturning face of each piece of a newly dealt hand, when the clock +struck off that hour. But if Hogarty was oblivious to everything but +the game, his opponent was far from being in that much to be envied +state. Bobby Ogden yawned--yawned from sheer ennui--although he tried +to hide that indication of his boredom behind a perfectly manicured +hand, while he scowled at the dial. + +Ogden was one of the Monday morning regulars--one of the crowd which +usually arrived in a visibly taut-nerved condition at an entirely +irregular and undependable hour. An attack of malignant malaria, +contracted on a prolonged 'gator hunt in the Glades, coupled with the +equally malignant orders of his physician, alone accounted for his +presence there at that unheard of o'clock. + +There were purplish semi-circles still painfully too vivid beneath +his eyes; his pallor was still tinged with an ivory-like shade of +yellow. And he fidgeted constantly in the face of Hogarty's happy +deliberation, stretching his heliotrope silk-clad arms and tapping +flat, heel-less rubber-soled shoes on the floor beneath the table in +a fashion that would have irritated any but the blandly unconscious +man across the table from him to a state of violence. + +Ogden's quite perfectly lined features were smooth with the smoothness +of twenty years or so. His lack of stability and poise belonged also +to that age and to a physique that managed to tilt the scale beam at +one hundred and eighteen--that is, unless he had been forgetting +rather more rashly than usual that liquids were less sustaining than +solids, when one hundred and ten was about the figure. + +He was playing poorly that morning--playing inattentively--with his +eyes always waiting for the hands to indicate that hour which was most +likely to herald the arrival of the advance guard of the crowd of +regulars. Hogarty himself, after a time, began to feel, vaguely, his +uneasiness and lack of application to the matter in hand, and made +evident his irritation by even longer pauses before each play. He +liked a semblance of opposition at least, and he lifted his head, +scowling a little at Ogden's last, most flagrant blunder, to find that +his antagonist had moved without so much as looking at the piece he +had slipped into position. + +The boy wasn't looking at the table at all. He sat twisted about in +his chair, staring wide-eyed at the figure that had pushed open the +street door and was now surveying the whole room with an astonishingly +calm attention to detail. Ogden was staring, oblivious to everything +else, and with real cause, for the figure that had hesitated on the +threshold was like no other that had ever drifted into Hogarty's place +before. His shoulders seemed fairly to fill the door-frame, for all +that bigger men than he was had stood on that same spot and gone +unnoticed because of size alone. And his waist appeared almost +slender, and his hips very flat, merely from contrast with all that +weight which he carried high in his chest. + +But it was not the possibilities of the newcomer's body that held +Ogden's fascinated attention. In point of fact, he did not notice that +at all, until some time later. Denny Bolton's long, tanned face was +entirely grave--even graver than usual. Just a hint of wistfulness +that would never quite leave them showed in his eyes and lurked in the +line of his lips--an intangible, fleeting suggestion of expectation +that had waited patiently for something that had been very long in the +coming. And the black felt hat and smooth black suit which he wore +finished the picture and made the illusion complete. His face and +figure, even there in the doorway of Hogarty's Fourteenth Street +place, could have suggested but one thing to an observant man. He +might have been a composite of all the New England Pilgrim Fathers who +had ever braved a rock-bound coast. + +And Bobby Ogden was observing. Utterly unconscious of Hogarty's +threatening storm of protest, he sat and gazed and gazed, scarcely +crediting his own eyes. Domino poised in hand, Hogarty had turned in +preoccupied resignation back to a perplexed contemplation of whether +it would be better to play a blank-six and block the game or a +double-blank and risk being caught with a handful of high counters, +when Ogden reached out and clutched him by the wrist. + +"Shades of Miles Standish!" that silk-shirted person gasped. "In the +name of the Mayflower and John Alden, and hallowed Plymouth Rock, +look, Flash, look! For the love o' Mike look, before he moves and +spoils the tableau!" + +Hogarty lifted his head and looked. + +Denny Bolton's eyes had returned from their deliberate excursion about +the gymnasium just in time to meet halfway that utterly impersonal +scrutiny. For a long moment or two that mutual inspection endured; +then the boy's lips moved--open with a smile that was far graver than +his gravity had been--and he started slowly across the floor toward +the table. Hogarty half rose, one hand outstretched as if to halt him, +but for some reason which the ex-lightweight scarcely understood +himself, he failed to utter the protest that was at his tongue's end. +And Young Denny continued to advance--continued, and left in the rear +a neatly defined trail where the heavy nails of his shoes marred the +sacred sheen of that floor. + +Within arm's reach of the table he stopped, his eyes flitting +questioningly from Hogarty's totally inscrutable face to the tense +interest and enjoyment in Bobby Ogden's features, and back again. +Hogarty's hard eyes could be very hard--hard and chilling as chipped +steel--and they were that now. He was only just beginning to awake to +a realization of that profaned floor, but the smile upon Denny's +mouth neither disappeared nor stiffened in embarrassment before that +forbidding countenance. Instead he held out his hand--a big, +long-fingered, hard-palmed hand--toward the ex-lightweight proprietor. +And when he began to speak there was nothing but simple interrogation +in the almost ponderous voice. + +"I--I reckon," he said slowly, "that you must be Jesse Hogarty--Mr. +Jesse Hogarty?" + +Flash Hogarty looked at him, looked at that outstretched hand--looked +back at his steady eyes and the smile that parted his lips. And +Hogarty did a thing that made even Bobby Ogden gasp. He bowed +gracefully and reached out and silently shook hands. When he spoke, +instead of the perfectly enunciated, picturesquely profane rebuke +which the silk-shirted boy was waiting to hear, his voice was even +smoother and softer, and choicer of intonation than usual. + +"Quite so," he stated. "Quite free from error or embarrassing mistake, +sir. I am Mr. Jesse Hogarty. You, however, if I may be permitted that +assertion, have me rather at a disadvantage, sir." + +He bowed again, once more elaborately graceful. Bobby Ogden hugged his +knees beneath the table, for he knew from the very suavity of that +reply all that was brewing. Hogarty's silken voice went on. + +"Regrettable, sir, and most awkward. You, no doubt, have no objection, +however, to making the introduction complete?" + +The smile still hovered upon Denny's lips. Ogden noted, though, that +it had changed. And he realized, too, that it had not been a +particularly mirthful smile, even in the first place. Again Young +Denny's eyes met those of the other boy for one moment. + +"I'm Denny Bolton," he replied just as deliberately. "Denny Bolton, +from Boltonwood--or--or I reckon you've never heard of that place. I'm +down from the hill country, back in the north," he supplemented. + +Hogarty turned away--turned back to the green-topped table and played +the double-blank with delicate precision. + +"Of course," he agreed softly. "Quite right--quite right! And--er--may +I inquire if it was something of importance--something directly +concerning me--which has resulted in this neighborly call?" + +He did not so much as lift his eyes from the dominoes beneath his +fingers. If he had he would have seen, as Ogden saw, that Denny's +smile faded away--disappeared entirely. But when he replied the boy's +voice was unchanged. + +"I don't know's it's particularly important to you," he answered. +"That's what I came down for--to see. I was directed--back a day or +two I was told that maybe if I looked you up you'd have some opening +for me, down here. I was told you were looking for a--a good +heavyweight fighter!" + +Bobby Ogden threw back his head to laugh. And instead he just sat +there with his mouth wide open, waiting. He felt sure that there was a +better moment coming. Hogarty fiddled with the dominoes and seemed to +be considering that information with due deliberation and from every +angle. + +"I see," he murmured at last. "Surely. Quite right--quite right! And I +may, I believe, safely assure you that I have several fine openings in +the establishment for young men--for just the right sort of young men, +of course. May I--er--inquire if you wish employment by the--er--week, +or just in your spare time, to put it so?" + +The question was icily sarcastic. Denny's answer came sharp upon its +heels. His voice was just as measured, just as inflectionless as +Hogarty's had been. + +"If you hire them here by the week," he said, "or for their spare +time, I--I reckon I've come to the wrong establishment. I was only +asking you for a chance to show you whether I was any good or not. I +was told you'd be just as interested to find out as I was myself. +Maybe--maybe I've made a bad mistake!" + +Bobby Ogden was sorry he had waited to laugh. There was a hardness in +the big-shouldered figure's words that he did not like; a directly +simple, unmistakable rebuke for the sneer concealed in Hogarty's +question that could not be misinterpreted. And something utterly bad +flared up in the lean-faced black-clad proprietor's eyes--something +of enmity that seemed to Ogden all out of proportion with the +provocation. All the smooth suavity disappeared from his speech just +as chalk marks are wiped out by a wet sponge. And Hogarty came +swiftly to his feet. + +"Maybe you were--maybe you did make a bad mistake!" he rasped out in a +dead, colorless monotone that scarcely moved his lips. "But no man +ever came into this place yet, and went out again to say he didn't get +his chance. I know a few specimens who make a profession of pleading +that. They're quitters--and they assay a streak of yellow that isn't +pay dirt!" + +His voice dropped in register. It just missed being hoarse. With a +rapidity that was almost bewildering he began to give orders to the +two boys who were still phlegmatically waxing the floor. And the +English-professor intonation was gone entirely. + +"You, Joe!" he called, "get out the rods; set 'em up and rope her off! +Legs, you chase out and find Sutton, if he's not in back. You'll run +into him at Sharp's, most likely. Tell him to come a-running. Tell him +a new one's drifted in from the frontier--and thinks he needs to be +shown. Move, you shrimp!" + +Before he had finished speaking he had started toward the locker +rooms at the rear. Denny he ignored as though he did not exist. He +went without a sound in his rubber-soled shoes. Bobby Ogden, waking +suddenly from his trancelike condition, leaped to his feet and ran +after him. Hogarty halted at the pressure of the boy's pink-nailed +fingers on his arm and wheeled to show a face that was startlingly +white and strained. + +"Why, you great big kid!" Bobby Ogden flung at him. "You big infant! +You're really sore! Don't you know he didn't mean anything. He's only +a kid himself--and you egged him into it!" + +"Is he?" + +From that gently rising inflection alone Ogden knew that interference +was absolutely hopeless. + +"Is he? Well, he's old enough to seem to know what he wants. And he's +going to get it--see? He's going to get it--and--get--it--good! No man +ever flung it into my face that I didn't give him a chance--not and +got away with it." + +Hogarty glanced meaningly down at the restraining hand upon his sleeve +and Ogden removed it hastily. He stood in dismayed indecision until +the ex-lightweight had disappeared before he turned toward Young +Denny, who had been watching in silence his effort at intervention. +Denny had not moved. Ogden's almost girlishly modeled face was more +than apprehensive as he stepped up to him. + +"He's mad," he stated flatly. "You've got him peeved for keeps. And I +guess you've let yourself in for quite a merry little session, too, +unless--unless"--he hesitated, peering curiously in Denny's grave +face, "unless you want to make a nice quiet little exit before he +comes back with Sutton. You can, you know, and--and it may save you +quite a little--er--discomfort in the long run. Sutton--well, the +least I can say of Sutton is that he's inclined to be a trifle +rough!" + +Ogden saw that slow smile returning; he saw it start far back in the +steady eyes and spread until it touched the corners of the other boy's +lips again. + +"You mean--leave?" Young Denny asked. + +Ogden nodded significantly. + +"That's just what I do mean--only a great deal more so!" + +"But I--I couldn't very well do that now--could I?" + +The silk-shirted shoulders shrugged hopelessly. + +"Well, since you ask me," he said, "judging from what I've already +seen of your methods, I--I'd say most emphatically no. I've done all I +can when I advise you that now is the one best hour to make your +getaway. It wouldn't be exactly a glorious retreat from the field, but +it wouldn't be so painful, either. Just remember that, will you? I'm +to fit you out with some fighting togs, I suppose, if you'll just come +along." + +He turned to follow in the direction which Hogarty had taken, and then +paused once more. + +"Beg pardon for the omission, Mr. Bolton," he added, and he smiled +boyishly. "My name's Ogden--Bobby Ogden. Glad to become acquainted +with you, I'm sure. And now, if you will follow on, I'll do my best +for you. Would you mind walking on your toes? You see, there are just +two things most calculated to get Flash's goat. One of 'em's marring +up his floor with heavy boots, and the other is butting in when he's +playing dominoes. You couldn't have known it, of course, but he can't +stand for either of them. And together I am afraid they have got you +in pretty bad. You're sure you can't swallow your pride, and just beat +it quietly while the chance is nice and handy? Maybe you ought to +think of your family--no?" + +Denny's smile widened. He shook his head in refusal. He knew he was +going to like Ogden--like him for the same reason that he had liked +the fat, brown-clad newspaper man in Boltonwood--because of the +charming equality of his attitude and the frankness in his eyes. + +"No," he decided, "I--I'm afraid I can't. I didn't mean to stir him up +so, either, only--only I thought, just for a minute or two, that he +was laughing at me. I think I'd rather stay and see it out. But you +mustn't worry about me--I wouldn't if I were you." + +Again Ogden shrugged resignedly. On tiptoe Denny followed him to the +locker-rooms in the rear, and at a word of direction began to remove +his clothes. While he plunged head-foremost into a bin in search for a +pair of white trunks, Ogden kept up a steady stream of advice +calculated to save the other at least a small percentage of +punishment. + +"Sutton's big," he exclaimed jerkily, head out of sight, "but he isn't +fast on his feet. That's why they call him Boots. He steps around as +though he had on waders--hip-high ones. But he's lightning hitting +from close in--in-fighting they call it--where most big fighters don't +shine. That's because he's had Flash's coaching. You want to keep away +from him--keep him at arm's length, and maybe he won't do too much +harm. I--I'd let him do all the leading, if I were you, and--and kind +of run ahead of him." The voice came half-smothered from the cluttered +bin of equipment. "That isn't running away from him because you're +afraid, you understand. It's just playing him to tire him out, you +know!" + +It was silent for a moment while Bobby Ogden burrowed for the +necessary canvas shoes. Then a hushed laugh broke that quiet and +brought the latter bolt upright. With the trunks in one hand and the +rubber-soled slippers in the other, Ogden stood and stared, only half +understanding that the big boy before him was laughing at him for his +solicitude and trying to reassure him with that same mirth. + +"Funny, is it?" he snorted aggrievedly. "So very--very--funny? Well, I +only hope you'll be able to laugh that way again--say even in a month +or two!" + +"I wasn't laughing at you," Young Denny told him soberly. "I--I was +just thinking how strange it seemed to have somebody worried over +me--worried because they were afraid I might get hurt. Most little +mix-ups I've gone into have worried folks--lest I wouldn't." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +When he had first looked up from the green-topped table and seen him +standing there in the entrance of the gymnasium Ogden had only sensed +the bigness of Denny Bolton's body--only vaguely felt the promise +which his smooth black suit concealed. It was the face that had +interested him most at that moment, and yet he had not even noticed +the half healed cut that ran almost to the point of the chin. Young +Denny's grave explanation of his quiet mirth caused him to look +closer--made him really wonder now what had been its cause. There was +a frankly inquisitive question half-formed behind his lips, but when +he turned to find Denny sitting stripped to the waist, waiting for the +garments which he held in his hands, he merely stood and stared. Bobby +Ogden had seen many men stripped for the ring. It took more than an +ordinary man to make him look even once--but he could not take his +eyes off this boy before him. Once he whistled softly between his +teeth in unconcealed amazement; once he walked entirely around him, +exclaiming softly to himself. Then he remembered. + +"Here, get into these," he ordered abruptly, and thrust the things +into Denny's waiting hands. + +While Denny was obeying he continued to circle and to admire +critically. + +"Man--man!" he murmured. "But you're sure put together right!" He was +silent for a moment while he punched back and shoulders with a +searching thumb. "Silk and steel," he went on to himself. "And not a +lump--not a single knot! Oh, if you only knew how to use it; if you +only knew the moves, wouldn't we give Flash the heart-break of his +life! Now wouldn't we?" + +Denny finished lacing his flat shoes and stood erect, and even Ogden's +chattering tongue was silent. It was very easy now to see why that big +body had seemed shoulder-heavy. From the shoulder points the lines ran +unbroken, almost wedgelike, to his ankles. He was flat and slim in the +waist as any stripling might have been. All hint of bulkiness was +gone. He seemed almost slender, until one started to analyze each +dimension singly, such as the breadth of his back, or the depth of his +chest. Then one realized that it was only the slimness of fine-drawn +ankles, the swelling smoothness of hidden sinews which created that +impression. And Ogden's quick eye caught that instantly. + +"I'd have said one-ninety," he stated judicially. "At least as much as +that, or a shade better, before you undressed. Now I'd put it +under--what do you weigh, anyhow?" + +He slid the weight over the bar after Young Denny had stepped upon the +white scales. + +"One sixty-five--sixty-eight--seventy, and a trifle over," he +finished. "Man, but you're built for speed! You ought to be lightning +fast." + +At that instant the boy called Legs opened the door and thrust in his +head. + +"The chief says if you're coming at all," he droned apathetically, +"you might just as well come now." + +Ogden threw a long bathrobe over his charge's shoulders as the latter +started forward. He wanted to note the effect which the sudden display +of that pair of shoulders and set of back muscles would have upon +Flash Hogarty's temper. As they crossed the long room Denny's grave +lack of concern was made to seem almost stolid in contrast with the +heliotrope silk-shirted boy's excessive nervousness. + +"Now remember what I told you," he whispered hoarsely. "Keep away from +him--keep away and let him do the rushing--for he's got a punch that's +sudden death! You can tire him out. He's old and his wind is gone." + +The brass rods had been set up in their sockets in the floor and the +space which they outlined in the middle of the room roped off and +carpeted with a square of hard, brown canvas. The man called Boots +Sutton was already in his corner, waiting, and his attitude toward the +whole affair was very patently that of sheer boredom. He barely lifted +his eyes as Young Denny crawled through the ropes at the opposite +corner, behind the officiously fluttering Ogden. This was merely part +of his every day's work; he spent hours each week either instructing +frankly confessed amateurs or discouraging too-confident, would-be +professionals. It was only because of the strangely venomous harshness +with which Hogarty had given him his orders while he was himself +dressing that he vouchsafed Denny even that one glance. + +"I want you to get him," Hogarty snarled. "I want you to get him right +from the jump--and get him!--and keep on getting him! Either make him +squeal--make him quit--or beat him to death!" + +But if Sutton failed to note the play of those muscles that bunched +and quivered and ran like live things beneath the skin of the boy's +back, when Bobby Ogden threw off the enveloping wrap with an +ostentatious flourish and knelt to lace on his gloves, that disclosure +was not entirely lost upon Hogarty. Watching from the corners of his +eyes, Bobby saw him scowl and chew his lip as his head came forward a +little. And immediately he turned to speak again in a whisper to +Boots, squatting nonchalantly in his corner. + +"There's no need, mind, of being careless," he cautioned. "He--he +might have a punch, you know, at that. Some of 'em do--a lucky one +once in a while. Just watch him a trifle--and hand it to him good!" + +Sutton nodded and rose to his feet. Watch in hand, Hogarty vaulted the +ropes, and Ogden, with a last whispered admonition, bundled up the +bathrobe and scuttled from the ring. + +At that moment Young Denny's bulkily slender body was even more +deceptive. Sutton, even when trained to his finest, would have +outweighed him twenty pounds. Now that margin was nearer thirty, and +added to that, he was inches less in height. He was shorter of neck, +blocky, built close to the ground. And the span of his ankle was +nearly as great as that of Denny's knee. + +Comparing them with detail-hungry eyes, Bobby Ogden saw, however, that +from the waist up the boy's clean, swelling body totally shadowed the +other's knotted bulk; he noted that, with arm outstretched, heel of +glove against Sutton's chin, Denny's reach was more than great enough +to hold the other away from him. Hard on the heels of that thought +came the realization that that was a fine point of the game utterly +outside of the boy's knowledge. + +It was quiet--oddly, peacefully quiet for a second--in that long room. +Then in obedience to a nod from Hogarty the lanky boy called Legs +languidly touched a bell, and all that peaceful silence was shattered +to bits. Ogden shouted aloud, without knowing it, a shrill, dismayed +cry of warning, as Sutton catapulted from his corner; he shouted and +shut his eyes and winced as if that rushing attack had been launched +at himself. But he opened them again--opened them at the sound of a +sickening smash of glove against flesh--to see Denny blink both eyes +as his whole body rebounded from that blow. + +Ogden waited, forgetting to breathe, for the boy to go down; he waited +to see his knees weaken and his shoulders slump forward. But instead +of shriveling before that pile-driver swing, he realized that Denny +somehow was weathering the storm of blows that followed it; that +somehow he had managed to keep his feet and was backing away, trying +to follow faithfully his instructions. + +Just as Ogden had pictured it would be, it all happened. Foot by foot +Sutton drove him around the ring. There was no opening for Denny to +return a blow--nothing but a maze of battering fists to be blocked and +ducked and covered. Even the speed, the natural speed of lithe muscles +for which Bobby had hoped, and hopelessly expected, was entirely +lacking in every motion. Heavy-footed, ponderous, Young Denny gave way +before that attack. Sutton, always reputed slow, was terribly, +brutally swift of movement in comparison with the boy's faltering +uncertainty. + +Twice and a third time in the first minute of fighting Boots feinted +aside his guard with what seemed childish ease and then drove his +glove against the other's unprotected face. Time after time he +repeated the blow, and at each sickening smack that answered the crash +of leather against flesh Bobby Ogden gasped aloud and marveled. For at +each jolt Denny merely blinked his eyes as he recoiled--blinked, and +retreated a little more slowly than before. + +At the bell Ogden was through the ropes and dragging him to his +corner. A little trickle of blood was gathering on the point of +Denny's chin where the glove had opened afresh the half-healed cut on +his cheek; he was shaking his head as he waved aside the wet towel in +Ogden's hands. + +"Man, but you're some bear for punishment!" Ogden chattered, strangely +weak himself beneath his belt. "If you only had a little speed--just a +little! Why, he sent over a dozen to your chin that ought to have laid +you away. But you're playing him right! You're working him, and if you +can manage to hang on you'll get him in the end. Just keep away--keep +away and let him wear himself out. But--oh, if you did have it. Just +one real punch!" + +Young Denny continued to shake his head--continued to shake it +doggedly. + +"Do--do you mean that that is as hard as he is likely to hit?" he +queried slowly. "Do you mean--he was really trying--hard?" + +Ogden stopped urging the wet towel upon him and stood and gazed at him +with something close akin to awe in his eyes. + +"Hard!" he echoed in a small voice. "Hard! How hard do you expect a +man to hit?" + +"Then your plan was wrong," Young Denny told him. "Of course," he +hastened to soften that abrupt statement, "of course it would work all +right, only--only I'm not much good at that kind of fancy work. I--I +just have to wade right in, when I want to do any damage, because I'm +slow getting away from a man. I can't punch--not hard--when I'm +backing off. But now I aim to show you how hard I expect a man to hit, +just as soon as they ring that bell!" + +Hogarty was leaning over Sutton in the opposite corner, frowning and +talking rapidly. + +"What's the matter, Boots?" he demanded anxiously. "Haven't lost your +kick, have you?" + +Sutton gazed contemplatively down at his gloved hands and up again +into his employer's face. + +"Who'd you say that guy was?" he countered. "Where's he blowed in +from--again?" + +"A rube--down from the hills he called it. Just some come-on," +Hogarty repeated his former information, "who thinks because he's +cleaned up main street and licked the village blacksmith that +he's a world-beater. Why, Boots? You aren't worried, are you?" + +The contemplative gleam in Sutton's eyes deepened. + +"Because," he stated thoughtfully, "just because there's some +mistake--or--or he's made of brass. I--I hit him pretty hard, Flash--and +do you know what he done? Well, he blinked. He--blinked--at--me. I +never hit any man harder." + +Hogarty's face had lost a little of its inscrutability. He flashed one +sharp glance across at Young Denny in the other corner as he stepped +back out of the ring and his frown deepened a little after that brief +scrutiny. For the boy's body, squatting there, crouched waiting for +the bell, was taut in every sinew, quivering with eagerness. + +"You just failed to place 'em right, I guess," he reassured Boots. +"Take a little more time, and get him flush on the bone. You can slow +up a little. He isn't even fast enough to run away from you." + +Again Hogarty nodded to the boy called Legs, and again the gong rang. +Five minutes earlier it would have been hard for Bobby Ogden to have +explained just what it was which he had half dreamed might lurk in +those rippling muscles that bunched and ran beneath Denny's white +skin. For want of a better name he had named it speed. And now, at the +tap of the bell, he watched and recognized. + +Swift as was Sutton's savage rush across the canvas, he had hardly +left his corner in the ropes before Young Denny was upon him. The boy +lifted and sprang and dropped cat-footed in the middle of the ring, +hunched of shoulder and bent of knee to meet the shocking impact. It +was bewilderingly rapid--terrifyingly effortless--this explosive, +spontaneous answer of every muscle to the call of the brain. Just as +before, Sutton feinted and saw his opening and swung. Young Denny knew +only one best way to fight; he knew only that he had to take a blow in +order to give one, and Sutton's fist shot home against his unprotected +chin. He blinked with the shock, just as he had blinked before, and +swayed back a little. Sutton had swung hard--he had swung from his +heels--and he was still following that blow through when Denny snapped +forward again. + +It wasn't a long swing, but it was wickedly quick. From the waist it +started, a short, vicious jolt that carried all the boy's weight +behind it, and the instant that Denny whipped it over Sutton's chin +seemed to come out to meet it--seemed almost to lift to receive it. +And then, as his head leaped back, even before his body had lifted +from the floor, the boy's other hand drove across and set him spinning +in the air as he fell. He went down sideways, a long, crashing fall +that dropped him limp in the corner which he had just left. + +For a moment Denny crouched waiting for him to rise. Then he realized +that Sutton would not rise again--not for a time. He saw Hogarty leap +over the ropes and kneel--saw the boy Legs rush across with ammonia +and water--and he understood. Ogden was at his side, pounding him upon +the shoulder and shrieking in his ear. His eyes lifted from the face +of the fallen man to that of the heliotrope silk-shirted person beside +him. + +"He's not really badly hurt, is he?" he inquired slowly. "I--I didn't +hit him--too hard?" + +Ogden ceased for a moment thumping him on the back. + +"Hurt!" he yelped. "Didn't hit him too hard! Why, man, he's stiff, +right now. He's ready for the coroner! Gad--and I was pitying you--I +was----" + +Young Denny shook him off and crossed and knelt beside the kneeling +Hogarty. And at that moment Sutton opened his eyes again and stared +dully into the ex-lightweight's face. After a time recognition began +to dawn in that gaze--understanding--comprehension. Once it shifted to +Denny, and then came back again. He made several futile efforts before +he could make his lips frame the words. + +Then, "Amateur," he muttered, and he managed to rip one glove from a +limp hand and hurl it from him as he struggled to sit erect. +"Amateur--hell! A-a-a-h, Flash, what're you tryin' to hand me?" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Denny had begun to get back into his clothes, pausing now and then to +dabble tentatively at the freshly broken bruise with the wet towel +which Ogden had at last forced him to accept, when the door of the +dressing-room opened, and Hogarty stepped briskly inside and closed +the door behind him. + +The ex-lightweight ignored entirely the covertly delighted grin that +lit up Bobby Ogden's features at his appearance. His own too-pale, +too-thin lips were curved in a ghost of a smile; his face had lost all +its dangerous tautness, but the greatest change of all lay there in +his eyes. Their flaring antagonism had burnt itself out. And when +Hogarty spoke it was once more in his smoothly perfect, delightfully +measured, best professor-of-English style, for all that his opening +remark was couched in the vernacular. + +"Mr. Bolton," he began to the boy sitting quiet before him, "it looks +as though we would have to hand it to you--which I earnestly desire +you to believe I am now doing, with both hands. It may eventually +prove that I lost a most valuable assistant through this morning's +little flurry. I am not quite certain yet as to that as Boots is not +sufficiently himself to give the matter judicious consideration. + +"He still thinks I crossed him for the entertainment's sake--which is +of little immediate importance. What I did come in for was to listen +to anything at all that you may have to tell me. You'll admit, of +course, that while your explanation as to your errand was strictly to +the point, it was scarcely comprehensive. My own unfortunate temper +was, no doubt, largely the cause of your brevity." + +He hesitated a moment, clearing his throat and gazing blankly at the +grinning Ogden. + +"As Ogden here has of course told you, I'm--well, rather touchy when +interrupted at my favorite pastime, and especially so when I am trying +to get a few minutes relaxation with a pin-headed person who insists +upon playing without watching the board. + +"But you spoke of wanting an opportunity of--er--entering the +game professionally. I'm not admitting you're a world-beater, +understand--or anything like that! You've just succeeded in +putting away a man who was as formidable as the best of them, +five years ago. And five years isn't today, by any means. I've been +looking for a real possibility to appear for so long that I've +grown exceedingly sensitive at each fresh failure. And yet--and yet, +if you did have the stuff----!" + +Again he stopped and Denny, watching, saw the proprietor's face glow +suddenly with a savage sort of exultation. His eyes, half-veiled +behind drooping lids that twitched a little, went unseeingly over the +boy's head as though they were visualizing a triumph so long +anticipated that it had become almost a lost hope. Again that promise +of something ominous blackened the pupils--something totally dangerous +that harmonized perfectly with the snarl upon his lips. + +Hogarty's whole attitude was that of a man who wanted to believe and +yet who, because he knew that the very measure of his eagerness made +him doubly easy to convince, had resolved not to let himself accept +one spurious proof. And all his skepticism was shot through and +through with hate--a deadly, patient sort of hatred for someone which +was as easy to see as it was hard for the big-shouldered boy to +understand. + +There was craft in the ex-lightweight's bearing--a gentleness almost +stealthy when he leaned forward a little, as if he feared that the +first abrupt move or word on his part would frighten away that timid +hope. + +"I believe that you said some one sent you. You--you did not mention +the name?" + +Denny leaned over and picked up his coat from a chair beside the +bench, searching the pockets until he found the card which the plump, +brown-clad newspaper man had given him. Without a word he reached out +and put it in Hogarty's hands. + +It bore Jesse Hogarty's Fourteenth Street address across its face. +Hogarty turned it over. + +"Introducing the Pilgrim," ran the caption in the cramped handwriting +of Chub Morehouse's stubby fingers. And, beneath, that succinct +sentence which was not so cryptic after all: + +"Some of them may have science, and some of them may have speed, but +after all it's the man who can take punishment who gets the final +decision. Call me up, if this ever comes to hand." + +Very deliberately Hogarty deciphered the words, lifted a vaguely +puzzled face to Young Denny, who waited immobile--and then returned +again to the card. He even nodded once in thorough appreciation of the +title which Morehouse had given the boy; he smiled faintly as he +remembered Denny as he had stood there in the entrance of the big +room, a short while before, and realized how apt the phrase was. Then +he began to whistle, a shrill, faint, monotonous measure, the +calculating glitter in his eyes growing more and more brilliant. + +"So!" he murmured thoughtfully. "So-o-o!" + +And then, to Denny: + +"Was there--did he make any comment in particular, when he gave you +this?" + +The boy's eyes twinkled. + +"He--made several," he answered. "He said that there was a man at that +address--meaning you--that would fall on my neck and weep, if I +happened to have the stuff. And he warned me, too, not to think that +Jed The Red fought like a school boy, just because he was a +second-rater--because he didn't, nothing like that!" + +Hogarty laughed aloud. That sudden, staccato chuckle was almost +startling coming from his pale lips. It hushed just as quickly as it +had begun. + +"Jed The Red, eh?" he reiterated softly, and he began tapping the card +with his fingertips. "I see, or at least I am commencing to get a +glimmer of those possibilities which Mr. Morehouse may have had in +mind. And now I think the one best thing to do would be to call him +up, as he has here requested. As soon as you finish dressing Ogden +here will show you the rest of the works, if you'd care to look around +a little. It is entirely likely that we shall want to talk with you +directly." + +He wheeled abruptly toward Ogden who had been listening without a +word, the broad grin never leaving his lips. It was the silk-shirted +boy to whom Hogarty addressed the rest of that sentence. + +"And you," he said, and his voice shed with astounding completeness +all its syllabled nicety. "You try to make yourself useful as well as +pestilential. Get him a bit of adhesive for that cut. It looks as bad +as though a horse had kicked him there. + +"And the rest of your mob will be swarming in here in a few minutes, +too. You can tell them that Sutton is--er--indisposed this morning, +and that they'll have to play by themselves." + +He nodded briefly to Denny and opened the door. But he stopped again +before he passed out. + +"There's one other question, Mr. Bolton," he said over his shoulder. +"And please believe that I am not usually so inquisitive. But I'm more +than a little curious to know why you did not present this card +first--and go through the little informal examination I arranged for +you afterward? It would have insured you a far different reception. +Was there any special reason, or did you just overlook it?" + +Denny dabbed again at the red drop on his chin. + +"No, I didn't exactly forget it," he stated ponderously. "But, you +see, I kind of thought if I just told you first that I wanted to see +if I had any chance, you wouldn't make any allowances for me because +I----" + +Hogarty's second nod which cut him short was the quintessence of crisp +satisfaction. + +"I understand," he cut in. "Perfectly! And quite right--quite right!" + +The ex-lightweight proprietor was sitting with his chin clasped in +both palms, still staring at the half facetious words of introduction +which the plump newspaper man had penciled across that card, when the +door of the small office in the front of the gymnasium was pushed open +a crack, some scant fifteen minutes after his peremptory summons had +gone out over the wire, and made him lift his head. + +His eyes were filmed with a preoccupation too profound to be dispelled +by the mock anxiety upon the chubby round countenance which Morehouse +thrust through that small aperture between door and frame, or his +excessively overdone caution as he swung the door wider and tiptoed +over the threshold, to stand and point a rigidly stubby finger behind +him at the trail of nail prints which Young Denny's shoes had left +across the glistening wax an hour or so earlier. + +"Jesse," he whispered hoarsely, "some one has perpetrated here upon +the sacred sheen of your floor a dastardly outrage! I merely want you +to note, before you start running the guilty one to earth, that I am +making my entrance entirely in accordance with your oft-reiterated +instructions. I am not he!" + +For all the change which it brought about in Hogarty's face that +greeting might have been left unspoken. He vouchsafed the fat man's +elaborate pantomime not so much as the shadow of a smile, nodded once, +thoughtfully, and let his eyes fall again to the card between his +elbows on the table-top. + +"Come in, Chub," he invited shortly. "Come in." And as a clamor of +many voices in the outer entrance heralded the arrival of the rest of +Ogden's crowd: "Here comes the mob now. Come in and close the door." + +Morehouse, still from head to toe a symphony in many-toned browns, +shed every shred of his facetiousness at Hogarty's crisply repeated +invitation. He closed the door and snapped the catch that made it fast +before he crossed, without a word, and drew a chair up to the opposite +side of the desk. + +"Your hurry call just caught me as I was leaving for lunch," he +explained then. "And I made pretty fair time getting down here, too. +What's the dark secret?" + +The black-clad proprietor lifted his lean jaw from his hands and gazed +long and steadily into the newspaper man's eyes, picked up the bit of +pasteboard which bore the latter's own name across its front and +flipped it silently across the table to him. Morehouse took it up +gingerly and read it--reversed it and read again. + +"Nice little touch, that," he averred finally. "Rather neat and tasty, +if I do say it myself. 'Introducing The Pilgrim!' Hum-m-m. You can't +quite appreciate it of course, but--oh, Flash, I wish you could have +seen that big boy standing there in the door of that little backwoods +tavern, just as I saw him, about a week ago! Why, he--he was----" + +"He's come!" Hogarty cut in briefly. + +Morehouse's chin dropped. He sat with mouth agape. + +"Huh?" he grunted. "He's--he's come where?" + +Where his facetiousness had failed him Morehouse's round-eyed +astonishment, a little tinged with panic, was more than successful. +Hogarty permitted himself to smile a trifle--his queer, strained +smile. + +"He is here," he repeated gravely, and the words were couched in his +choicest accents. "He came in, perhaps, an hour ago. That is his +monogramed trail across the floor which caught your eye. Oh, he's +here--don't doubt that! I'll give you a little review of the manner of +his coming, after you tell me how you ever happened to send him--why +you gave him that card? What's the answer to it, Chub?" + +That same light of savage hope and cruelly calculating enmity, all so +strangely mixed with a persistent doubt, which Young Denny had seen +flare up in the ex-lightweight's eyes a little while before, back in +the dressing-room, began to creep once more across Hogarty's face. + +"You know how long I've been waiting for one to come along, Chub," he +went on, almost hoarsely. "You know how I've looked for the man who +could do what none of the others have done yet, even though he is only +a second-rater. Twice I thought I had a newcomer who could put The Red +away--and put him away for keeps--and I just fooled myself because I +was so anxious to believe. I've grown a trifle wary, Chub, just a +trifle! Now, I'd like to hear you talk!" + +Morehouse sat and fingered that card for a long time in absolute +silence--a silence that was heavy with embarrassment on his part. He +understood, without need of explanation, for whom that chill hatred +glowed in the spare ex-lightweight's eyes--knew the full reason for +it. And because he knew Hogarty, too, as few men had ever come to know +him, he had often assured himself that he was thankful not to be the +man who had earned it. + +That knowledge had been very vividly present when, a few days +before, on the platform of the Boltonwood station, he had requested +Denny Bolton to give him back his card for a moment, after listening +to the boy's grave explanation of the raw wound across his cheek, +and on a quite momentary impulse written across its back that short +sentence which was so meaty with meaning. Every detail of Hogarty's +country-wide search for a man who could whip Jed The Red was an open +secret, so far as he was concerned; he was familiar with all the +bitterness of every fresh disappointment, but he had never seen +Hogarty's face so alive with exultant hope as it was at that moment. + +And Morehouse was embarrassed and sorry, and ashamed, too, of what +seemed now must have been a weak surrender to an impulse which, after +all, could have been born of nothing but a too keen sense of humor. +Hogarty's face was more than eager. It was white and strained. + +"Flash," he began at last, ludicrously uncomfortable, "Flash, I'm +sorry I wrote this, for I always told you that if I ever did send any +one to you he'd be a live one and worth your trouble. Right this +minute I can't tell why I did it, either, unless I am one of those +naturally dangerous idiots with a perverted sense of what is really +funny. Or maybe I didn't believe he'd ever get any farther from home +than he was that morning when I gave him this card. That must have +been it, I suppose. Because I never saw him in action. Why, I never so +much as saw him kick a dog! + +"I'm telling you because I don't want you to be disappointed +again--and yet I have to tell you, too, that right at the time I wrote +this stuff, Flash, just for a minute or two, I believe I did almost +think he might be an answer to your riddle. Maybe that was because he +had already licked Jed The Red once, and I should judge, made a very +thorough job of it at that. That must have influenced me some. But let +me tell you all the story and maybe you'll understand a little +better--something that I can't say for myself right at this very +instant." + +Morehouse began at the very beginning, looking oftener at the card +between his fingers than at Hogarty's too brilliant eyes, which were +fairly burning his face. + +"In the first place, Flash," he went on, "you know as well as I do +that The Red isn't a real champion and never will be. He has the build +and the punch, and he's game, too--you'll have to hand him that. But +stacked up against the men who held the title ten years ago he'd last +about five rounds--if he was lucky. I don't know why that is, either, +unless he is so crooked at heart that he loses confidence even in +himself when he has to face a real man. But the public at this minute +thinks he is as great as the greatest. The way he polished off The +Texan had convinced them of that--and we--well, the paper always tries +to give them what they want, you know. + +"Now that was the reason I ran up north last week, after I'd got a tip +that Conway hailed originally from a little New England village back +in the hills--one of those towns that are almost as up-to-date today +as they were fifty years ago. It looked like a nice catchy little +story, which I will, of course, admit I could have faked just as well +as not. But it was the cartoons I wanted. You can't really fake +them--not after you've once known the real thing. And as it happens I +have known it, for I came from a village up that way myself. + +"And, then, I was curious, too. I've always had a private opinion that +if chance hadn't pitchforked Conway into the prize-ring he'd have made +a grand success as a blackjack artist or a second-story man. But I +wanted the pictures, and it wasn't a very difficult matter either to +get them. You see I knew just where I'd find what I wanted, and things +panned out pretty much as I thought they would. + +"It didn't take more than a half hour to spread the report that Conway +was practically the only really famous man in the country today, and +in a fair way to make his own home town just as celebrated. It may +sound funny to you, for you don't know the back-country as I do, but +just that short article in the daily, coupled with a few helpful hints +from me that I was looking for all the nice, touching incidents of his +boyhood days, with the opinions of the oldest inhabitants, and maybe a +few of their pictures to be used in a big Sunday feature, brought them +all out: the old circle of regulars which always sits around the +tavern stove nights, straightening out the country's politics and +attending strictly to everybody's affairs but their own. + +"Eager? Man, it was a stampede! I reckon that every male inhabitant +within a radius of five miles was there when I opened the meeting with +a few choice words--every man but one, and he comes in just a little +later in this tale. They surely did turn out. It was as perfect a +mass meeting as any I've ever seen, but the crowd itself didn't get +much of a chance to talk--not individually anyhow. They were simply +the chorus of 'ayes' which the town's big man paused now and then for +them to voice. + +"He did the talking, Flash. They called him 'Judge'--they most always +do in those towns. He most certainly monopolized the conversation, and +while he gave his monologue, I sat and got the best of them down on +paper. They thought I was taking notes. I'll show you his picture some +day. He's the meanest man I ever met yet--and I've met a few! +Puffy-faced and red, and too close between the eyes. Fat, too! Somehow +I'm ashamed of being plump myself, since meeting him. + +"He did all the talking, and from the very first time he opened his +mouth I knew he was lying. You can always tell a professional liar; he +lies too smoothly, somehow. Well, to judge from his story Conway was +the only unspotted cherub child that had ever been born and bred in +that section. Oh, yes, _he'd_ seen the promise in Conway; _he_ knew +that Conway was to be the pride and joy of the community, right from +the first. _He'd_ always said so! Why, _he_ was the very man who had +given him his first pointers in the game, when he was cleaning up all +the rest of the boys in town, just by way of recreation. If I'd never +had a suspicion before I'd have known just from those slick sentences +of his that Conway had never been anything in that village but a +small-sized edition of the full-blown crook he is today. + +"But I didn't have any reason to contradict him, did I? He was doing +all that I could ask, and more. For there wasn't a man in that whole +crowd who dared to sneeze until he got his cue from the Judge. But +that fat man got his jolt finally, just the same, and got it good, +too. + +"He had just finished telling how Conway had cleaned up the village +kids, irrespective of size, whenever he felt the need of exercise, and +was looking around at the circle behind him to give them a chance to +back him up, when it happened. I told you a minute ago that I wished +you could have seen that boy, as I saw him that night, standing there +in that tavern doorway. You see, he'd come in so quietly that nobody +had heard him--come in just in time to hear the Judge's last words. +And when the Judge turned around he looked full into that boy's eyes. + +"Oh, he got his, good and plenty! I didn't watch him very closely +because it was hard for me to take my eyes off the white face of that +boy at the door. But I did see that he went pretty nearly purple for a +minute, and I heard him gurgle, too, he was that surprised, before he +caught his breath. Then he stuck out one hand and tried to bluff it +out. + +"'There's one of 'em, right now,' he sang out; but he should have +known that a man who's sure of his ground doesn't have to shout to +make his point. 'There's Young Denny Bolton,' he said, 'who went to +school with him, right here in this town. _Ask him_ if Jeddy Conway +was pretty handy as a boy!' And he laughed, Flash--commenced to +chuckle! Oh, there was no misunderstanding what he meant to insinuate. +'Ask him--but maybe he's still a little mite too sensitive to talk +about it yet--eh, Denny?' + +"He thought he could bluff it--bluff me, with that boy standing there +in the doorway calling him a liar as if I didn't know it all, yet at +that minute I couldn't help but ask that boy a question. I think it +was mostly because I wanted to hear what the voice of a man with a +face like his would sound like, for he hadn't opened his lips to +answer that fat hypocrite's insinuation. + +"So I asked him if he had known Conway well--asked him if he had had a +few set-to's with him himself. I'm not going to forget how he looked +when he turned toward me, either. I'm not going to forget the look on +his face as he swung around. And I'm remembering his voice pretty +fairly well, too, right now! + +"'Maybe,' he answered me, and he almost drawled the words. 'Maybe I +did,' he said. + +"Why, Flash, he couldn't have said more if he had talked for a week. +He'd said all there was to say, now, hadn't he? But it let the Judge +out, just the same, for he just gave the circle behind him the the +high sign and set the crowd to laughing for a minute or two, until the +tension was relieved. I didn't laugh myself. There didn't seem to be +much of a joke about it after seeing that boy's eyes. It was +Bolton--Young Denny, they called him--and I got his story, their side +of it at least, after he shut the door behind him. + +"It's another thing I'd be more likely to understand than you would, +Flash, because you've never lived in a village like that, and I have. +Back a hundred years or so the first settlement had been named for his +family--Boltonwood, they'd called it--but I guess the strain must have +petered out. From all I could gather the Boltons had been drinking +themselves to death with unfailing regularity and dispatch for several +generations back, and I heard a choice detailed description, too, of +the way the boy's own father had made his final exit--heard it from +that moon-faced leading citizen who did all the talking--that made me +want to kick him in the face. I don't know yet why I didn't. I was +sitting on the tavern desk with my feet on a level with his face. I +should have bashed him a good one. It's one of the lost opportunities +which I'll always regret, unless maybe I take a Saturday off some day +and run up and beat him up proper! + +"He gave me a nice little account of how the boy's dad had gone over, +screaming mad, with the town's elite standing around saying, 'I told +you so,' and that big scared kid kneeling beside his bed, trying to +pray--trying to make it easier for him. + +"Did you ever see a flock of buzzards circling, Flash, waiting for +some wounded thing beneath them to die? No? Well, I have, and it isn't +a pretty sight either. That was what they made me think of that night. +And I learned, too, how they'd been waiting ever since for that boy to +go the way his father had traveled before him; they even told me that +the same old jug still stood in the kitchen corner, and would have +pointed out his tumble-down old place on the hill, where they had let +him go on living alone, only it was too dark for any one to see. + +"Odd, now wasn't it? But it didn't come to me at that moment. I never +gave it a thought that there was a man who had licked Conway once and +might do it again. But I didn't forget him; I wanted to, that night, +but I couldn't. And I guess I was still thinking about him when some +one touched my arm the next morning, while I was waiting for the +train, and I turned around and found him standing there beside me. + +"Flash, have you noticed how grave he is--kind of sober-quiet? Have +you? That comes from living too much alone. And he's only a kid, after +all--that's all, just a kid. He startled me for a moment, but the +minute I looked at him that morning I knew he had something on his +mind, and after I'd tried to make it a little easier for him I gave +him a chance to talk. + +"He had a big raw welt across one cheek--a wicked thing to look at! +You've noticed it, I see. Well, he stood there fingering it a little, +trying to think of a way to begin gracefully. Then he got out the +paper with the account of Jed The Red's last go in it and jumped right +into the middle of all that was bothering him. He hunted out the +statement of Conway's share of the purse and asked me if it was true. +I told him it was--that I'd written it myself. And then he asked me, +point blank, how _he_ could get a chance at Conway. He--he said Conway +had never been able to whip him, Flash--said he didn't believe he ever +could! + +"Now, I'm sentimental--I know that. But I manage to keep my feet on +the ground now and then just the same. And so I want to say right +here that it wasn't his words that counted with me. Why, I'd have +laughed in his face only for the way he said them! As it was, I said +too much. But I thought of you then--I couldn't help it, could I? It +hit me smash between the eyes! His face had been reminding me of +something--something I couldn't place until that minute. Flash, do +you know what he made me think of? Do you? Well, he looked like a +halftone print of the Pilgrim Fathers--the kind that they hang on the +walls in the district schools. And it got me--got me!--maybe you +know why. I don't. But I wrote it on this card, under your address, +and gave it to him. + +"I would have laughed at him only he was so mighty grave and quiet. +One doesn't make a practice of laughing at men who are as big as he +is--not when they carry themselves like that. I kept my funny feelings +to myself, if I had any, while I spent a minute or two sizing him up. +And that brought me back to his chin--back to that big, oozing cut. I +had been waiting for an opportunity to ask him about it, and didn't +know myself how to go about it. Just from that you can realize how he +had me guessing, for it takes quite some jolt to make me coy. So I +followed his own lead finally and blurted the question right out, +without any fancy conversational trimmings, and he told me how it had +happened. + +"One of his horses had kicked him. You look as though you could have +guessed it yourself! He didn't tell you, did he, Flash? No-o-o? Well, +that was it. He said he had gone blundering in on them the night +before, to feed, without speaking to them in the darkness. It isn't +hard to guess what had made him absent-minded that night. You can't +know, just from seeing it now, how bad that fresh cut was, either. It +looked bad enough to lay any man out, and I told him so. But he said +he had managed to feed his horses just the same--he'd worked them +pretty hard that week in the timber! + +"It wasn't merely what he said, you see; it was the way he said it. +I've made more fuss before now over pounding my finger with a tack +hammer. And I did a lot of talking myself in that next minute or two. +A man can say a whole lot that is almost worth while when he talks +strictly to himself. It wasn't alone the fact that he had been able to +get back on his feet and keep on traveling after a blow that would +have caved in most men's skulls that hit me so hard. The recollection +of what his eyes had been like that night before, when he had handed +the Judge the lie without even opening his lips, helped too--and the +way he shut his mouth, there on the station platform, when I gave him +an opening to say his little say concerning the village in general. He +just smiled, Flash, a slow sort of a smile, and never said a word. + +"Man, he knew how to take punishment! Oh, don't doubt that! I realized +right then that he had been taking it for years, ever since they had +counted his father out, with the whole house yelling for the stuff to +get him, too. He'd been hanging on, hoping for a fluke to save him. +He'd been hanging on, and he didn't squeal, either, while he was doing +it. Not--one--yip--out--of--him! + +"So I made him give me back the card and I wrote the rest of this +stuff across the back of it. And again I'll tell you, Flash, right +now, I'm not sure why I did it. But I'll tell you, too, just as I told +myself a few mornings ago, back there on that village station +platform, that if I were Jed The Red and I had my choice, I wouldn't +choose to go up against a man who had been waiting five years for an +opening to swing. No--I would not! For he's quite likely to do more or +less damage. I never thought he'd turn up, and I don't know whether I +am sorry or not. But now that he's here, what are you going to do +about it? + +"It's my fault, but whatever you do I want to ask you not to do one +thing. I want you to promise not to try to make a fool of the boy, +Flash? You're, well--a little bit merciless on some of 'em, you know. +It's not his fault, and I--why, damn it, I haven't met a man in years +I like as I do that big, quiet, lonesome kid! Now, there's your story. +It explains the whole thing, and my apologies go with it. What are you +going to do?" + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Jesse Hogarty had been listening without moving a muscle--without once +taking his two brilliant eyes from Morehouse's warm face--even when +Morehouse refused to look back at him as he talked. + +"'Introducing The Pilgrim,'" he murmured to himself, after a moment of +silence, and the professor of English accent could not have been more +perfect, "The Pilgrim! Hum-m-m, surely! And a really excellent name +for publicity purposes, too. It--it fits the man." + +Then he threw back his head--he came suddenly to his feet, to pace +twice the length of the room and back, before he remembered. When he +reseated himself he was gnawing his lip as if vexed that he had showed +even that much lack of self-control. And once more he buried the point +of his chin in his hands. + +"Do, Chub?" he picked up the other's question silkily. "What am I +going to do? Well, I believe I am going to pay my debts at last. I +think I am going to settle a little score that has stood so long +against me that it had nearly cost me my self-respect." + +That lightning-like change swept his face again, twisting his lips +nastily, stamping all his features with something totally bad. The man +who had never been whipped by any man, from the day he won his first +brawl in the gutter, showed through the veneer that was no thicker +than the funereal black and white garb he wore, no deeper than his +superficially polished utterance which he had acquired from long +contact with those who had been born to it. + +"I'm going to pay my debts," he slurred the words dangerously, "pay +them with the same coin that Dennison slipped to me two years ago!" + +Little by little Morehouse's head came forward at the mention of that +name. It was of Dennison that the plump newspaper man had been +subconsciously thinking ever since he had entered Hogarty's immaculate +little office; it was of Dennison that he always thought whenever he +saw that bad light kindling in the ex-lightweight's eyes. Dennison was +the promoter who had backed Jed The Red from the day when the latter +had fought his first fight. + +And, "You don't mean," he faltered, "Flash, you don't mean that you +think that boy can stop----" + +Hogarty's thin voice bit in and cut him short. + +"Think?" he demanded. "Think? I don't have to think any more! I +know!" + +For a second he seemed to be pondering something; then he threw up his +head again. And his startlingly sudden burst of laughter made +Morehouse wince a little. + +"Don't make a fool of him, Chub?" he croaked. "Be merciful with the +boy! Man, you're half an hour late! I did my best. Oh, I'm bad--I know +just how bad I can be, when I try. But he called me! Yes, that's what +he did--he as much as told me that I wasn't giving him a chance to get +his cards on the table. So I ran him up against Sutton. And I did more +than that. I told Boots to get him--told him to beat him to death--and +I meant it, too! And do you know what happened? Could you guess? Well, +I'll tell you and save you time. + +"He went in and took enough punishment from Boots in that first round +to make any man stop and think. He put up the worst exhibition I ever +saw, just because he was trying to fight the way Ogden had coached +him, instead of his own style. That was the first round; but it didn't +take him very long to see where he had been wrong. There wasn't any +second round--that is, not so that you could really notice it. + +"He was waiting for the bell, and the gong just seemed to pick him up +and drop him in the middle of the ring. And Sutton went to him--and he +caught Boots coming in! Why, he just snapped his right over and +straightened him up, and then stepped in and whipped across his left, +and Boots went back into the ropes. He went back--and he stayed +back!" + +Swiftly, almost gutturally, Hogarty sketched it all out: Young Denny's +calm statement of his errand, his own groundless burst of spleen, and +the outcome of the try-out which had sent him hurrying back to Denny's +dressing-room with many questions on his tongue's tip and a living +hope in his brain which he hardly dared to nurse. + +Hogarty even recalled and related the late delivery of the card of +introduction which Morehouse was now nervously twisting into misshapen +shreds and, word for word, repeated the boy's grave explanation of his +reason for that tardiness. + +"He bothered you, did he?" he asked. "Well, he had me guessing, too, +right from the first word he spoke. There was something about him that +left me wondering--thinking a little. But I'm understanding a whole +lot better since you finished talking. You're right, too, Chub--you're +all of that! Five years is a long time to wait for a chance to swing. +I ought to know--I've waited half that long myself. That was the way +he started for Boots, that second round. Oh, it was deadly--it was +mighty, mighty wicked. And now, to top it all, it's The Red for whom +he was looking, too. I wish it wasn't so easy; I sure do! It's so +simple I almost don't enjoy it. Almost--but not quite!" + +Once more he shot to his feet and began pacing up and down the room. +Morehouse sat following him to and fro with his eyes, trying to +comprehend each step of this bewildering development which was +furthest of all from what he had expected. He had listened with his +face fairly glowing with appreciation to the ex-lightweight's account +of Denny's coming. It was all so entirely in keeping with what he had +already known of him. But the glint died out of his eyes after a time; +even his nervously active fingers stopped worrying the bit of +cardboard on the table. + +"Granted that he could turn the trick, Flash," he suggested at last, +"even admitting that he might be able to stop Conway after a few +months of training to help him out, do you suppose he'd be willing to +hang around and fight his way up through the ranks, until he forced +'em to let him have his match? It's usually a two year's job, you +know, at the very least. + +"I don't know why, Flash, but somehow the more I think of it, the +surer I grow that there is something more behind his wanting that +fight than we know anything about. It isn't just a grudge; it isn't +just because of the dirty deal which that village has been giving him, +either. I've been wondering--I'm wondering right now why he asked me +if that account of the purse was true or not. Because men don't fight +the way you say he fought, Flash, just for money. They fight hard, +I'll admit, but not that way!" + +There was a living menace in Hogarty's steady tread up and down the +room. He wheeled and crossed, turned and retraced his steps +noiselessly, cat-footed in his low rubbed-shod shoes. And he turned a +gaze that was almost pitying upon the plump man's objection. + +"Two years--to get ready?" he asked softly. "Chub, do you think I'd +wait two years--now? Why, two months is too long, and that is the +outside limit which I'm allowing myself in this affair. You're a +little slow, Chub--just a bit slow in grasping the possibilities, +aren't you? Think a minute! Put your mind upon it, man! I've told you +I am going to pay Dennison off--and pay him with the same coin that he +handed me. Doesn't that mean anything at all?" + +He stopped short, crossed to the table and stood with his fingertips +bracketed upon its surface. Morehouse knew Hogarty--knew him as did +few other men, unless, perhaps, it was those who, years before, had +faced him in the ring. And at that moment Hogarty's eyes were mere +slits in his face as he stood and peered down into the newspaper man's +upturned features, his mouth like nothing so much as a livid scar +above his chin. There was nothing of mirth in those eyes, nothing of +merriment in that tight mouth, and yet as he sat and gazed back up at +them, Morehouse's own lips began to twitch. They began to relax. That +wide grin spread to the very corners of his eyelids and half hid his +delighted comprehension behind a thousand tiny wrinkles. + +"I wonder," he breathed, "I wonder now, Flash, if you are thinking +about the same thing I am? For if you are--well, you're too sober +faced. You are that! It's time to indulge in a little hysterics." + +And he began to chuckle; he sat and shook with muffled spasms of +absolute joy as the thing became more and more vivid with each new +thought. Even Hogarty's answering smile, coming from reluctant lips, +had in it something of sympathetic mirth. + +"That's just what I am thinking," he said. "Just that! It's what I +meant when I said I was going to pay him--with his own coin. When a +man plays another man crooked, he expects that other man to come back +at him some day; he is looking for him to do that. But there is one +thing he doesn't expect--not usually. He isn't looking for him to work +the same old game. It is something new he's looking to guard against. + +"And that is where Dennison is weak--in that spot and one other. He +doesn't know even yet that when I fell for his game I fell hard enough +to wake me up. He thinks I haven't a suspicion but what it was just an +accident that laid Sutton out, two years back--just a lucky punch of +The Red's that went across and spoiled our perfect frame-up. And he +hasn't a suspicion that I know he was sure The Red was going to clean +up Sutton, just as surely as they went to the ring together. + +"That is where he is weak. When a man is a crook he wants to be a real +crook--and a real one is suspicious of everybody, even of himself." + +He lifted one hand and pounded gently upon the polished surface of the +table. + +"The old days are done--dead--when a man got his reputation, and a +chance at the big ones simply by fighting his way up from the bottom. +I can give a man a bigger reputation in a week, with five thousand +dollars' worth of real advertising, than he'd be able to get in a +lifetime the old way. And training?----" + +He jerked his head over one shoulder toward the dressing-rooms beyond +the closed door. + +"Right now he is just where I want him. Why, he looks like a pitiful +dub if you hold him back. Order him to wait--and it's heart-breaking +to watch him suffer. In one month I can teach him all he'll ever need +to know about blocking and getting away. And the rest? Well, you'll +get a chance to see just what happens when he really goes into action. +I tell you it makes you stop and think. + +"And I don't care what _he_ is fighting for; I don't care what he +wants. Pleasure or profit, it's all one to me. It's you I need most +right now, Chub. I know you have always been a little particular about +soiling your hands. A shady deal never appealed to me so much, either, +but I'm not exactly bashful about this one. That part of it will be my +own private affair. You handle the publicity end--merely hail Bolton +as a comer, when the time is ripe. Are you--are you in on it?" + +Morehouse thoughtfully scratched his head. + +"I have been a trifle fastidious, haven't I?" he murmured, and +unconsciously he mimicked Hogarty's measured accents. "But I hardly +believe that any sensitive scruples of mine would annoy me much in +this matter. I don't know but what I'd just as soon squash a snake +with a brick, even if I knew it was somebody's beloved performing +pet. + +"That, as you say, is your side of the question. As for me--well, +every time I remember that popeyed unctuous fat party they called the +'Judge' chanting Conway's innocent childhood, with that big, lonesome +kid standing there in the doorway listening and trying to understand, +I begin to sizzle. It is time that Conway was licked--and licked +right! + +"Oh, I'm in on it--I want to be there! But," he stopped and made a +painstaking effort to fit the torn card together again, "but I have an +idea that Bolton may be the one to hold out. There are some honest +people, you know, who are honest all the time. He might not +understand the necessity of--er--a little professional fixing, so to +speak." + +"Will he have to be in on it?" Hogarty countered instantly. "Will he? +Not to any great extent, he won't. According to my plan he fights +straight. Don't you suppose I know a straight man when I see one, just +as well as you do? + +"Here's the whole thing--just as I'll put it up to Dennison before +it's dark tonight. It's Dennison's own plan, too, in the first place, +so he hasn't any kick coming. We'll match Bolton against one of the +fairly good ones--Lancing, say--in about two weeks. Lancing gets his +orders to open up in the sixth round and go down with the punch--and +stay down! That's plain enough, isn't it? Well, Bolton is fighting +under the name of 'The Pilgrim,' and you step up the next morning and +give him two columns--you hail him as a real one, at last. + +"We'll match him with The Texan then. Conway whipped him back a week +or two, but he had his hands full doing it. The Texan--and I ought to +know--is open to reason if the figure is big enough to be persuasive. +We'll see to that. + +"He gets his orders, too--just as if they were really necessary! About +the twelfth he lies down to sleep. Why, it's so simple it's real art! +I'll just hold Bolton back until those rounds. I'll make him take it +slow--and then send him in to clean up! Dennison is shy a match right +this minute for The Red; they're all a little doubtful about him. The +Pilgrim will be the only logical man in the world to send against +him--that is, according to your sporting columns. And Dennison, of +course, being on the inside, knows he is really nothing but a +dub--knows it is simply a plain open and shut proposition. That is to +say--he _thinks_ he knows!" + +Jesse Hogarty paused and the corners of his lips twitched back to show +his teeth, but not in laughter. + +"It's the same little frame-up that he sent against Boots and me," he +finished. "He ought to be satisfied, hadn't he? And I'll have him on +the street the next morning--I'll put him where he'll be glad to +borrow a dollar to buy his breakfast with!" + +For a long time they stared back into each other's face: Hogarty taut +at the table side, Morehouse slouched deep in his chair. The latter +was the first to break that pregnant silence. He was nodding his head +in thoughtful finality when he lifted himself to his feet. + +"You've got me," he stated. "You've got me snared! Not that I give two +hoots about what happens to Dennison, mind! I don't--although I must +admit that the prospect of his starving to death is a lovely one to +contemplate. And I'd die happy, I think, if I could see The Red +trimmed, and trimmed with conscientious thoroughness. But those +aren't my reasons for going hands with you in this assassination. + +"I know a hunch when I see one. I ought to, for I've spent the +contents of my little yellow envelope often enough trying to make one +come true. And I'm in with you, Flash, till the returns are all in +from the last district, but it's because I know that there is +something more than either of us dream of behind that boy's wanting to +meet Conway. He has something on his mind; he wants something, and +wants it real bad. And I like him--I liked him right from the +beginning--so I'll stick around and help. Maybe I'll find out what it +is that's been bothering him, too, before I get through. But I wish I +wasn't of such an inquiring turn of mind. It keeps one too stirred +up." + +He stopped to grin comically. + +"Any objection, now that I've sworn allegiance, Flash, if I go out and +present myself?" + +Hogarty's whole tense body began to relax, his lean face softened and +his eyes lost much of their hardness and glitter as he shook his head +in negation. + +"That's a little detail of the campaign which I had already assigned +to you," he replied, and the inflection of his voice was perfect. "Not +that I have any fears of his going the way of his forefathers, +however, because I haven't. And if my assurance on that point +perplexes you, you might ask him to have one drink and watch his eyes +when he refuses you. + +"But I would like to have you look out for him for a while. If you +don't Ogden will--Ogden likes him, too--and he is too frivolous to be +trusted." + +Hogarty reached out one long arm and dropped a hand heavily upon +Morehouse's shoulder. He was smiling openly now--smiling with a +barefaced enjoyment which the plump newspaper man had never before +known him to exhibit. And he continued to smile, while he stood there +in the open door and watched Morehouse mince on tiptoe across the +polished floor to the corner where Ogden was officiously presenting +each member of the Monday morning squad of regulars, as they returned +from the dressing-rooms, to the big-shouldered boy in black, whose +face was so very grave. + +Hogarty smiled as he closed his office door, after he had seen +Morehouse slip his hand through the crook of Young Denny's arm, in +spite of Bobby Ogden's yelp of protest, and clear a way to the outer +entrance with one haughty flip of his free hand. + +Hours later that same day, when the tumult in the long main room of +the gymnasium had hushed and the apathetic Legs and his helper had +turned again to their endless task of grooming the waxed floor, +Dennison, the manager of Jed The Red, sitting in that same chair which +Morehouse had occupied, cuddling one knee in his hands, fairly basked +in that same smile. The purring perfection of Hogarty's discourse was +enticing. The absurd simplicity of his plan, which he admitted must, +after all, be credited to the astuteness of Dennison himself, was more +than alluring. But that smile was the quintessence of hypnotic +flattery. + +It savored of a delightful intimacy which Jesse Hogarty accorded to +few men. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +In all that hill town's history no period had ever before been so +filled with sensation as was that one which opened with the flight of +Judge Maynard's yellow-wheeled buckboard along the main street of +Boltonwood to herald the passing of the last of the line of men who +had given the village its name. + +One by one, in bewildering succession, climax after climax had piled +itself upon those which already had left the white-haired circle of +regulars about the Tavern stove breathless with fruitless argument and +footless conjecture. + +Old Jerry's desertion from the ranks of the old guard over which the +Judge had ruled with a more than despotic tongue, bursting with +bomblike suddenness in their midst that very same night which had seen +Young Denny's dramatic departure, had complicated matters to an +inconceivable degree. For, after all, he was the one member of the +circle to whom they had all been unconsciously looking for a +comprehensive answer to the question which the Judge's crafty +exhibition of the boy's bruised face had created. + +He enjoyed what none of the others could claim an absolutely +incontestable excuse for visiting the old, weatherbeaten farmhouse on +the hill above town--and in his official capacity they felt, too, that +he might venture a few tentative inquiries at least, which, coming +from any one else, might have savored of indelicacy. + +Not but what the circle had enjoyed Judge Maynard's masterly recital, +for it had held them as one man. But they were hungry also for +facts--facts which could convince as well as entertain. Even the Judge +himself had planned upon Old Jerry's co-operation; he had had it in +mind to be patronizingly lenient that night; that is, after that first +rebuke which was to leave him the undisputed master of the situation. + +To reach the really great heights of which the evening's triumph was +capable the old mail carrier's collaboration had been almost +indispensable. They had been waiting with hungry impatience for him. +And then Old Jerry had appeared--he made his entrance and his +exit--and departing had left them gasping for breath. + +Old Jerry had not waited to view the effect of his mad defiance of the +town's great man. It is doubtful if he had given that side of the +issue one passing thought, but his triumphant withdrawal from the +field had robbed the situation of not one bit of its decisiveness. +Quiet followed his going, a stillness so profound that they heard him +cackling to himself in insane glee as he went down the steps. And that +hush had endured while they waited in a delicious state of tingling +suspense for the first furious sentences which should preface his +lifelong banishment from the circle itself. + +For years they had whispered, "Just wait, he'll come to it--he'll go +just like the rest." And so Young Denny's final weakening had not been +so unexpected as it might have been. And more than once, too, when the +Judge's harsh censure of him who had always been his stanchest +supporter had left Old Jerry cringing in his place beside the stove, +they had all felt the justice if not a premonition of final +retribution to come. It was the debonaire dare-deviltry of Old Jerry's +defiance rather than its unexpectedness which had proved its greatest +sensation. That day's one supreme moment--the only one which had not +suffered from too acute anticipation--came while they waited for the +Judge's denial, that denial which was never spoken. + +The town's great man had slumped back in his chair in a kind of +stunned trance while the apoplectic purple of his earlier wrath faded +from his face. He did open his mouth, but not in any effort to speak. +It was only to lick his thick lips and gurgle noisily in his fat +throat. He tried to rise, too, and failed in his first attempt--and +tried again. + +They had all realized what it was that made his knees wabble as he +crossed to the door; they understood what had drained his face of all +its color. Every man of them knew why the latch rattled under his +shaking figure. The Judge had been afraid, not merely morally +frightened, but abjectly, utterly terrified in the flesh--afraid of +the threat in the insolent bearing of the little, shriveled man who +had passed out into the night a moment before. + +It could have been funny. It might have been sublimest farce-comedy, +had they not lacked the perspective necessary for its appreciation. +But it was enough that they realized that the demagogue had come +crashing down--enough that, watching his furtive disappearance that +night, they learned how pitiful a coward a blusterer really can be. + +Old Jerry's own actions in those days which followed had furnished +rich food for conjecture. The fact that it had been the little +mail-carrier himself who had ridden in the carriage beside the slim +girl with the tumbled hair, at the head of the dreary procession that +toiled slowly up to the bleak cemetery behind the church, had, indeed, +been worthy of some discussion. The spendthrift prodigality of the +white roses which rumor whispered he had gone to place the next day +over the new mound of raw earth had not gone unspoken. Even the +resemblance of the girl who John Anderson had named Dryad in his +hunger for the beautiful--even the likeness of her face with its +straight little nose and wistfully curved lips, to the features of +that small, rain-stained statue of the white and gold slip of a woman +who had been his wife, came in for its share of the discussion, too. + +But all those topics which were touched upon in the nights that +followed were, at best, of only secondary importance. Inevitably the +circle about the stove swung back to a consideration of that first +day's major climax, until the very discord of opinion which hitherto +had been the chief joy of those nightly sessions bade fair to prove +their total disruption. + +For the circle of regulars were leaderless now; there was no longer a +master mind to hold in check the flood of argument and rebuttal, or +preserve a unity of disagreement. Where before they had been +accustomed to take up each new development and pursue it until it +reached a state either too lucid for further consideration or an +insolvable problem that dead-locked conversation, a half dozen +different arguments sprang up each night, splitting the circle into +wrangling factions which trebled the din of voices and multiplied +ten-fold the new note of bitter personalities which had taken the +place of former incontrovertible logic. + +Judge Maynard's iron discipline was gone, and the old guard faced a +quite probable dissolution in the first week or two which followed his +going. More from habit than anything else they had waited that next +night for him to come and clear his throat pompously and open the +evening's activities. And the Judge failed to appear, failed just as +signally as had Old Jerry. + +And yet it was not the absence of the former which had left them +leaderless. Not one of them had realized it the night before--but that +second night they knew! + +By his very rebellion Old Jerry had won the thing which years of +faithful service had failed to bring. He had dethroned the despot, and +the honors were his by right of conquest. + +The circle knew that the Judge would never return; after one hour of +fruitless waiting that was a certainty. But night after night they +continued to gather, stubbornly, persistently hopeful that Old Jerry +would come back. And in the meantime they almost forgot, at times, +Young Denny who had gone the way of his fathers as they had so truly +prophesied; they only touched a little uncomfortably upon the problem +of the slim, yellow-haired girl alone in the battered cottage at the +edge of the town, while they reviewed with startlingly fertile detail +and a lingering relish that came very close to being hero-worship, +his last brief remarks which had left the Judge a wreck of his former +magnificence. + +If Old Jerry realized all this that had come to pass he gave no +outward sign of such knowledge. He even forgot to pause impressively +upon the top step of the post-office those days, as he always had +formerly, before he made his straight-backed descent with the pouches +slung over one shoulder. There were mornings when he came perilously +near to ignoring altogether the double line which, with a new +deference, greeted his daily passage to the waiting buggy, and yet +there was not one who dared so much as to whisper that there was +anything in his air of preoccupation that savored of studiously +planned forethought. But it is doubtful if he did realize the change +that had taken place, at least in that first week or two, for Old +Jerry had much of a strictly private nature to occupy his mind. + +He was never quite able to remember the things he had said that +morning to the girl with the too-white face and tumbled hair, huddled +in the half-light at the table before the window, or to recall in any +sort of a connected, coherent sequence his own actions in those first +few days which followed it. + +It aggravated him for a day or two, this inability to piece out the +details; it brought a peevish frown to his thin face and a higher, +even more querulous note to his shrill falsetto voice, which, while +they hardly understood it, nevertheless resulted in an even +profounder hush in those respectful ranks. He couldn't even +revisualize it clearly enough for his own private edification--for the +joy of seeing himself as others had seen him. + +Nothing remained but a picture of Dryad Anderson's face--the face that +had tried so hard to smile--which she had lifted to him that first +morning when he entered the front room of the little drab cottage at +the edge of town. That was limned upon his brain in startlingly +perfect detail still--that and one other thing. The memory of John +Anderson's pitifully wasted form huddled slack upon the high stool, +arms outstretched and silvered head bowed in a posture of utter +weariness, remained with him, too, clinging in spite of every effort +to dislodge it. + +That whole week had not served to wipe it out. Day after day, as Old +Jerry drove his route with the reins taut in his nervous hands, it +floated up before him. And even when he wound the lines about the +whipstock, letting the old mare take her own pace, and leaned back, +eyes closed, against the worn cushions, the interior of that back-room +shop with its simple, terribly inert occupant and countless rows of +tiny white statues, all so white and strangely alike, crept in under +the lids. + +Old Jerry's mail route suffered that week; his original "system" of +mail distribution, of which he had always been so jealously proud, +went from bad to very, very bad, and from that to an impossible worse; +and yet, while it became a veritable lottery for the hillsfolk who +were dependent upon him whether they would receive the packet of mail +which really belonged to a two-mile distant neighbor or none at all, +in one respect the rural service improved immensely, and the +improvement--and strangely enough, too--was as directly a result of +that stubborn image of John Anderson's bowed head which persisted in +haunting the mind of the servant of the Gov'mint as was the alarming +growth of his lack of dependability. + +Day by day Old Jerry grew less and less prone to let the leisurely +white mare take her own pace. Instead, he sat stiffly erect a great +portion of the time, driving with one eye cocked calculatingly upon +the course of the sun, and his mind running far ahead of him, to the +end of the day's route, when he would have to turn in at the +cross-road that toiled up the grade to the wind-racked old Bolton +place on the hill north of town. + +They had always had a forbidding aspect--Young Denny's black, +unpainted farmhouse and dilapidated outbuildings--even when he had +been certain that just as surely as he reached the crest he would find +the boy's big body silhouetted against the skyline, waiting for him, +they had not been any too prepossessing. Now they never served to +awake in him anything but actual dread and distrust. + +Old Jerry laid it to the lonesomeness of the place--to the bleak +blindness of the shaded windows and the untenanted silence--but he +took good care that no loitering on his part would be to blame for his +arrival at the house after dusk. + +No one, not even he himself, knew how strong the temptation was that +week to make tentative advances of peace to the members of the circle +of Tavern regulars, for the more he dwelt upon it the finer the +dramatic possibilities of the thing seemed. But he had misread in the +hushed respect of his former intimates a chill and uncompromising +disapproval, and he had to fall back upon a one-sided conversation +with himself as the next best thing. + +"I wa'n't brought up to believe in ghosts," he averred to himself more +than once. "Ghosts naturally is superstition--and that ain't accordin' +to religion, not any way you look at it. But allowing that there could +be ghosts--just for the sake of argument allowing that there is--now +what would there be to hinder him from just kinda settlin' down up +there, as you might say? It's nice and quiet, ain't it? Sort of out of +the way--and more or less comfortable, too?" + +At that point in the mumbled monologue the white-haired driver of the +buggy usually paused for a moment, tilting his head, birdlike, to one +side, wrapped in thought. There were those shelves lined with +countless white figures which also had to be considered. + +"He must've worked mighty steady," he told himself time and again in a +voice that was small with awe. "He must hev almost enjoyed workin' at +'em, to hev finished so many! And he kept at it nearly all the time, I +reckon. And now, that's what I'm a-gettin' at! Now I want to ask how +do we know he's a-goin' to quit now--how do we know that? We don't +know it! And Godfrey 'Lisha, what better place would he want than that +back kitchen up there? Ain't there a table right there by the window, +all a-waitin' for him--an'--an'----" + +Invariably he broke off there, to peer furtively at the sun, before he +whipped up his horse. + +"Git along!" he admonished her earnestly, then, "Git along--you! +Nobody believes in ghosts--leastwise, I don't. But they ain't no sense +nor reason in just a-killin' time on the road, neither. And I ain't +one to tempt Providence--not to any great nor damagin' extent, I +ain't!" + +And yet in spite of all the uneasiness which the combination of the +dark house and the persistent image of the little, worn-out +stone-cutter kept alive in him, in so far as Young Denny's team of +horses was concerned, and the scanty rest of the stock which the boy +had left in his care, Old Jerry kept strictly to the letter of his +agreement. At the most it meant no more than a little readjustment of +his daily schedule, which he high-handedly rearranged to suit his +better convenience. + +But all the rest which he had promised so fervidly to carry out--the +message which he had meant to deliver the very next morning after the +boy's departure and the explanation of Young Denny's bruised face, +even a diplomatic tender of the damp wad of bills which Denny had +pushed in his hand--had somehow been allowed to wait. For it had +proved to be anything but the admirably simple thing it had seemed to +the old man when he had volubly acquiesced to the plan. + +He had forgotten it that first morning. With the well-planned opening +sentence fairly trembling upon his tongue-tip when he opened the door, +the whole thing had been swept utterly from his mind. And in the press +of events that followed he never so much as thought of it again for +days. When the memory of it did return, a week later, somehow he found +it almost impossible to introduce the subject--at least impossible to +introduce it gracefully. + +That was one of the reasons for his failure to execute the mission +entrusted to him. The other reason, which was far weightier, so far as +Old Jerry was concerned, was even harder to define. He blamed it +directly to the attitude of the girl with the tumbled yellow hair and +blue eyes, which were never quite the same shade of purple. More than +a small proportion of the remarks which he had prepared beforehand to +deliver to her had consisted of reproof--not too harsh, but for all +that a trifle severe, maybe--of her hasty and utterly unfair judgment +of Young Denny. That, he had assured himself, was only just and +merited, and could only prove, eventually, to have been for the best. +But she never gave him a chance to deliver it. One moment of sadness +on her part would have been sufficient excuse. If he could have +surprised her just once gazing at him from moist, questioning eyes, he +felt that that would have been enough proof of contrition and humble +meekness of spirit on her part. But he never did. + +Instead Old Jerry had never seen so astounding a change take place in +any human being as that which came over her day by day. By the end of +that first week the pallor had gone entirely from her cheeks. The deep +dark circles which had rimmed the wet eyes which she had lifted to him +that first morning disappeared so entirely that it was hard to +remember that they had ever been there at all. Even the lithely +slender body seemed fuller, rounder. To every outward appearance at +least Old Jerry had to confess to himself that he had never seen a +more supremely contented, thoroughly happy creature than Dryad +Anderson was at that week's end. + +And it irritated him; it almost angered him at times. Remembering his +own travail of spirit, the self-inflicted agony of mind which he had +undergone that day when he had first looked square into the eyes of +his own soul and acknowledge his years of guilty unfairness to the +lonely boy on the hill, he shut his lips tight upon the message he +might have delivered and waited, stubbornly, for her to show some sign +of repentance. + +For a day or two a mental contemplation of this necessarily severe +course brought him moments of comparative peace of mind. It justified +in a measure, at least, his own remissness, and yet even that +mind-state at times was rudely shaken. At each day's end, after he had +made his reluctant ascent of the hill which led up to Young Denny's +unlighted house, and a far speedier, none too dignified return, the +little driver of the squealing buggy made it a point to turn off and +stop for a moment or two before the gate of John Anderson's cottage. +At first the girl's real need of him prompted this daily detour; then, +when the actual need no longer existed, he excused the visit on the +plea of her lonesomeness and his promise to Denny to look after her. + +His own loneliness--for he had never been so lonely before in all his +lonely life--and the other and real reason for this habit, he never +allowed himself to scrutinize too closely. But each day he sat a +little forward on the buggy seat as soon as he had turned the last +sharp curve in the road and stared eagerly ahead through the afternoon +dusk until he made out her slim figure leaning against the fence +waiting for him. And every afternoon, after he had pulled the +shuffling horse to a standstill, he bent down from his vantage point +on the high seat to scan her upturned face minutely, almost craftily +at times, for some tell-tale trace of tears on her long lashes, or a +possible quiver of her lips, or a suspicious droop in her boyish +shoulders. And he never discovered either the one or the other. + +It was at such moments that his peace of mind suffered, for no sane +man could ever have read, by any stretching of the imagination, +anything akin to sorrow or sadness in the low laugh with which she +invariably met his scrutiny. It fairly bubbled joy. Each day Old Jerry +found her only happy--offensively happy--and where he had been +secretly watching her for one betraying sign he became uneasily +conscious after a time that very often she, too, seemed to be scanning +his own face as if she were trying to penetrate into the inner tumult +of perplexities behind his seamed forehead. Some days he was almost +certain that there was a calculating light in her steady eyes--a hint +of half-hidden delight in something he couldn't understand--and it +worried him. It bothered him almost as much as did the unvaried +formula with which she greeted him every afternoon. + +"Have you any news for me today?" she always asked him. "Surely you've +something new to tell me this afternoon--now, haven't you?" + +The tone in which she made the query was never anything but disarming; +it was quite childishly wheedling and innocently eager, he thought. +But reiterated from day to day it wore on his nerves after a while. +Added to the something he sometimes thought he caught glimmering in +her tip-tilted eyes, it made him more than a little uncomfortable. He +fell back upon a quibble to dodge the issue. + +"Was you expectin' a letter?" he always countered. + +This daily veiled tilt of wits might have gone on indefinitely had not +a new development presented itself which threw an entirely different +aspect upon the whole affair. + +A fortnight had elapsed since Denny Bolton's mysterious departure from +the village when it happened. As usual, after the day's duties were +completed with his hurried return from the Bolton homestead, Old Jerry +turned off at the crossroads to stop for a moment before the cottage +squatting in its acre of desolate garden. He didn't even straighten up +in his seat that afternoon to gaze ahead of him, so certain he had +grown that she would be waiting for him, a hint of laughter in her +eyes and the same disturbing question on her lips, and not until the +fat animal between the shafts had stopped of her own accord before the +straggling fence did he realize that the girl was not there. Then her +absence smote him full. + +It frightened him. Right from the first he was conscious of impending +disaster born quite entirely of the knowledge of his own guilt. The +front door of the house was open and after fruitless minutes of +panicky pondering he clambered down and advanced uncertainly toward +it. His shadow across the threshold heralded his reluctant coming, and +Dryad turned from the half-filled box upon the table over which she +had been bending and nodded to him almost before he caught sight of +her. + +That little, intimately brief inclination of the head was her only +greeting. With hands grasping each side of the door-frame Old Jerry +stood there and gazed about the room. It had never been anything but +bare and empty looking--now with the few larger pieces of furniture +which it had contained all stacked in one corner and the smaller +articles already stored away in a half-dozen boxes, the last of which +was holding the girl's absorbed attention, it would have been barnlike +had it not been so small. From where he stood Old Jerry could see +through into the smaller back-room workshop. Even its shelves were +empty,--entirely stripped of their rows of tiny white woman-figures. + +He paled as he grasped the ominous import of it; he tried to speak +unconcernedly, but his voice was none too steady. + +"So you're a-house-cleanin', be you?" he asked jauntily. "Ain't you +commencin' a little early?" + +He was uncomfortably conscious of that interrogative gleam in Dryad's +glance--that amused glimmer which he couldn't quite fathom--when she +turned her head. She was smiling, too, a little--smiling with her lips +as well as with her eyes. + +"No-o-o," she stated with preoccupied lack of emphasis, as she bent +again over the box. "No--I'm packing up." + +Old Jerry had known that that would be her answer. He had been certain +of it. The other interpretation--the only other possible one which +could be put upon the dismantled room--had been nothing more or less +than a momentary and desperate grasping at a straw. + +For a while he was very, very quiet, wondering just what it was in her +mind which made her so cheerfully indifferent to his presence. She +filled that last box while he stood there in the doorway, stood off to +survey her work critically, and then picked up a hammer that lay on +the table and prepared to nail down the lid. + +"I've hit my finger four times today," she apprised him between strokes +as she drove the first nail home. "Four times this afternoon--and always +the same finger, too!" + +The very irrelevancy of the statement, coupled with her calm serenity, +was appalling to the old man. She didn't so much as lift her eyes when +she told him, but when the lid was fastened she whirled suddenly with +that impetuosity which always startled him more than a little, her +hands tightly clasped in front of her, and fairly beamed at him. + +"There, that finishes everything--everything but the pots and pans," +she cried. "And I'll need them a little longer, anyway, won't I? But +maybe I won't take them with me, either--they're pretty old and worn +out. What do you think?" + +Old Jerry cleared his throat. He ignored her question. + +"Ain't--ain't this a trifle sudden," he faltered--"jest a trifle?" + +She shook her head again and laughed softly, as if from sheer joyous +excitement. + +"No," she said. "No, I've been planning it for days and days--oh, for +more than a week!" + +Then she seemed to catch for the first time the dreariness of his +whole attitude--the dejection of his spare angular body and +sparrowlike, anxious face. + +"You're sorry I'm going," she accused him then, and she leaned toward +him a little, eyes quizzically half closed. "I knew you'd be sorry!" +And then, swiftly, "Aren't you?" + +Old Jerry scraped first one foot and then the other. + +"I reckon I be," he admitted faintly. "Kinda surprised, too. I--I +wa'n't exactly calculating on anything like this. It--it's kinda +thrown me off my reckonin'! Are you--are you figurin' on goin' right +away?" + +Dryad spun about and threw her head far on one side to scan the whole +bare room. + +"Tomorrow, maybe," she decided, when she turned back to him. "Or the +next day at the very latest. You see, everything is about ready now, +and there isn't any reason for me to stay, on and on, here--is +there?" + +A little tired note crept into the last words, edging the question +with a suggestion of wistfulness. It was something not so very +different from that for which Old Jerry had been stubbornly waiting +throughout those entire two weeks, but he failed to catch it at that +moment. He had heard nothing but her statement that she meant to +remain at least another day. It made it possible for him to breathe +deeply once again. + +Much could happen in twenty-four hours. She might even change her +mind, he desperately assured himself--women were always doing +something like that, wern't they? But even if she did go it was a +reprieve; it gave him one last opportunity. Now, for the present, all +he wanted was to get away--to get away by himself and think! On +heavily dragging feet he turned to go back down the rotting +boardwalk. + +"I--I'll drop in on you tomorrow," he suggested, pausing at the steps. +"I'll stop in on my way 'round--to--to say good-by." + +The girl stood in the doorway smiling down at him. He couldn't meet +her eyes. As it was he felt that their gaze went through and through +him. And so he did not see her half lift her arms to him in a sudden +quite wonderful gesture of contrite and remorseful reassurance. He did +not hear the first of the impulsive torrent of words which she barely +smothered behind lips that trembled a little. His head was bowed so +that he did not see her eyes, and if he could but have seen them and +nothing else, he would have understood, without the words or the +gesture. + +Instead he stood there, plucking undecidedly at his sleeve. + +"Because I--I wouldn't like to hev you go--without seein' you again," +he went on slowly--"without a chance to tell you something--er--to +tell you good-by." + +He didn't wait for her answer. At the far bend in the road, when he +looked back, she was still there in the doorway watching him. + +He was not quite certain, but he thought she threw up one thin white +arm to him as he passed out of sight. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +It rained that next day--a dull, steady downpour that slanted in upon +a warm, south wind. Old Jerry was glad of the storm. The leaden +grayness of the low-hanging clouds matched perfectly his own frame of +mind, and the cold touch of the rain soothed his hot head, too, as it +swept in under the buggy hood, and helped him to think a little +better. There was much that needed readjusting. + +Throughout the early hours of that morning he drove with a newspaper +spread flat upon his knees--the afternoon edition of the previous day, +which, in the face of other matters, he had had neither the necessary +time nor enthusiasm to examine until it was an entire twelve hours +old. At any other time the contents of that red-headlined sheet would +have set his pulses throbbing in a veritable ecstasy of excitement. + +For two whole weeks he had been watching for it, scanning every inch +of type for the news it brought, but now that account of Young Denny's +first match, with a little, square picture of him inset at the column +head, fell woefully flat so far as he was concerned. + +Not that the plump newspaperman who had written the account of that +first victorious bout had achieved anything but a masterpiece of +sensationalism. Every line was alive with action, every phrase seemed +to thud with the actual shock of contest. And there was that last +paragraph, too, which hailed Denny--"The Pilgrim," they called him in +the paper, but that couldn't deceive Old Jerry--as the newcomer for +whom the public had been waiting so long, and, toward the end, so +hopelessly. + +It was really a perfect thing of its kind--but Old Jerry could not +enjoy it that morning, even though it was Denny Bolton's first +triumph, to be shared by him alone in equal proportion. Instead of +sending creepy thrills chasing up and down his spine it merely +intensified his doleful bitterness of spirit. Long before noon he +breathed a leaden heavy sigh, refolded the sodden sheet and put it +away in the box beneath the seat. + +The old mare took her own pace that day. In a brain that was already +burdened until it fairly ached there was no room for the image of the +silver-haired stone-cutter which had made for speed on other +occasions. He had plenty to occupy his mind which was of a strictly +immediate nature. + +A dozen times that morning Old Jerry asked himself what he would tell +Dryad Anderson that night, when he stopped at the little drab cottage +at the route's end, ostensibly to bid her good-by. He asked himself, +in desperate reiteration, _how_ he would tell, for he knew that the +long delay in the delivery of Denny's message was going to need more +than a little explanation. And when he had wrestled with the question +until his eyes stung and his temples throbbed, and still could find no +solution for it, he turned helplessly to the consideration of another +phase of the problem. + +He fell to tormenting himself with the possibility of her having gone +already. Everything in those bare rooms had been packed--there was no +real reason for the girl to remain another hour. Perhaps she had +reconsidered, changed her mind, and departed even earlier than she had +planned, and if she had--if she had---- + +Whenever he reached that point, dumbly he bowed his head. + +It was dark when he turned off the main road and started up the long +hill toward the Bolton place--not just dark, but a blackness so +profound that the mare between the shafts was only a half formless +splotch of gray as she plodded along ahead. Even his dread of the +place, which formerly had been so acute, did not penetrate the mental +misery that wrapped him; he did not vouchsafe so much as one uneasy +glance ahead until a glimmer of light which seemed to flash out from +the rear of the house fairly shocked him into conscious recollection +of it all. + +He sprang erect then, spilling a cataract of water from his hat brim +in a chill trickle down the back of his neck, and barked a shrilly +staccato command at the placid horse. The creaking buggy came to a +standstill. + +He tried to persuade himself it was a reflection of the village lights +upon the window panes which had startled him, but it was only a +half-hearted effort. No one could mistake the glow that filtered out +of the black bulk of the rear of the house for anything save the thing +it was. Half way up the hill he sat there, hunched forward in a +hopeless huddle, his eyes protected by cupped palms, and stared and +stared. + +Once before, the evening of that day when the Judge's exhibition of +Young Denny's bruised face had been more than his curiosity could +endure, he had approached that bleak farmhouse in fear and trembling, +but the trepidation of that night, half real, half a child of his own +erratic imagination, bulked small beside the throat-tightening terror +of this moment. + +And yet he did not turn back. The thought that he had only to wheel +his buggy and beat as silent a retreat as his ungreased axles would +permit never occurred to him. It was much as if his harrowed spirit, +driven hither and yon without mercy throughout the whole day long, had +at last backed into a corner, in a mood of last-ditch, crazy +desperation, and bared its teeth. + +"If he is up there," he stated doggedly, "if he is up there, +a-putterin' with his everlasting lump o' clay, he ain't got no more +right up there than I hev! He's just a-trespassin', that's what he's +a-doin'. I'm the legal custodian of the place--it was put into my +hands--and I'll tell him so. I'll give him a chance to git out--or--or +I'll hev the law on him!" + +The plump mare went forward again. There was something terribly +uncanny, even in her relentless advance, but the old man clung to the +reins and let her go without a word. When she reached the top she +slumped lazily to a standstill and fell contentedly to nibbling +grass. + +The light in the window was much brighter, viewed from that lessened +distance--thin, yellow streaks of brightness that quivered a little +from the edges of a drawn shade. An uneven wick might easily have +accounted for the unsteadiness, but in that flickering pallor Old +Jerry found something ominously unhealthy--almost uncanny. + +But he went on. He clambered down from his high seat and went doggedly +across--steadily--until his hand found the door-latch. And he gave +himself no time for reconsideration or retreat. The metal catch +yielded all too readily under the pressure of his fingers, and when +the door swung in he followed it over the threshold. + +The light blinded him for a moment--dazzled him--yet not so completely +but that he saw, too clearly for any mistake, the figure that had +turned from the stove to greet him. Dryad Anderson's face was +pink-tinted from forehead to chin by the heat of the glowing lids--her +lips parted a little until the small teeth showed white beyond their +red fullness. + +In her too-tight, boyish blouse, gaping at the throat, she stood there +in the middle of the room, hands bracketed on delicate hips, and +smiled at him. And behind her the lamp in its socket on the wall +smoked a trifle from a too-high wick. + +Old Jerry stood and gazed at her, one hand still clutching the door +latch. In one great illuminating flash he saw it all--understood just +what it meant--and with that understanding a hot wave of rage began to +well up within him--a fierce and righteous wrath, borne of all that +day's unnecessary agony and those last few minutes of fear. + +It was a hoax on her part. She had been trifling with him the day +before, just as she had been playing fast and loose with his peace of +mind for days. An ejaculation bordering close upon actual profanity +trembled upon his lips, but a draft of cold air sweeping in at the +open doorway set the lamp flickering wildly and brought him back a +little to himself. His eyes went again to the girl in the middle of +the floor. She was rocking to and fro upon the balls of her feet, +every inch of her fairly pulsing with mocking, malicious delight. + +She waited for him to speak, and he, stiff of back and grim of face, +stood stonily silent. She seemed all innocently unaware of his +unconcealed disgust. The quizzical smile only widened before the +chilly threat of his beady eyes and ruffled forehead. And then, all in +one breath, her little pouted chin went up and she burst into a low +gurgle of utter enjoyment of the tableau. + +"Well," she demanded, "aren't you ever going to say anything? Here I +am! I--I decided to move today--there really wasn't any use of +waiting. Aren't you surprised--just a little?" + +The meekness of her voice, so wholly belied by her eyes and lips and +swaying boy-like body, only tightened the old man's mouth. He was +still reviewing all that long day's mental torment, counting the +wasted hours which might have been applied to a soul-satisfying feast +upon Morehouse's red-headlined account in the paper. No veteran had +ever marched more hopelessly into a cannon's mouth than he had +approached the door of that kitchen. + +And yet a flood of thankfulness, the direct reflex of his first +impotent rage, threatened to sweep up and drown the fires of his +wrath. Already he wanted to slump down into a chair and rest weary +body and wearier, relieved brain; he wanted a minute or two in which +to realize that she was there--that his unfulfilled promise was still +far from being actual catastrophe--and he would not let himself. Not +yet! + +She had been playing with him--playing with him cat-and-mouse fashion. +The birdlike features which had begun to relax hardened once more. + +"Maybe I be," he answered her question with noncommittal grimness. +"Maybe I be--and maybe I ain't!" And then, almost belligerently: "Your +lamp's a-smokin'!" + +She turned and strained on tiptoe and lowered it. + +"I thought you would be," she agreed, too gravely for his complete +comfort, when she had accomplished the readjustment of the wick to her +entire satisfaction. "For, you know, you seemed a little worried +and--well, not just happy, yesterday, when I told you I was going to +move I--I felt sure you would be glad to find that I hadn't gone +far!" + +Old Jerry remembered at that moment and he removed his soaked hat. He +turned, too, and drew up a chair. It gave him an opportunity to avoid +those moistly mirthful eyes for a moment. Seated and comfortably +tilted back against the wall he felt less ill at ease--felt better +able to deal with the situation as it should be dealt with. + +For a moment her presence there had only confounded him--that was when +the wave of righteous wrath had swept him--but at the worst he had +counted it nothing more than a too far-fetched bit of fantastic +mischief conceived to tantalize him. + +Her last statement awakened in him a preposterously impossible suspicion +which, now that he had a chance to glance about the room, was confirmed +instantly--absolutely. It was astounding--utterly unbelievable--and +yet on all the walls, in every corner, there were the indisputable +evidences of her intention to remain indefinitely--permanently. + +At least it gave him an opening. + +"You don't mean to say," he began challengingly, "you don't mean to +tell me that you're a-figurin' on stayin' here--for good?" + +She pursed her lips and nodded vigorously at him until the loosened +wisps of hair half hid her eyes. It was quite as though she were +pleased beyond belief that he had got at the gist of it all so +speedily. + +"Yes, for good," she explained ecstatically, "or," more slowly, "or at +least for quite a while. You see I like it here! It's just like home +already--just like I always imagined home would be when I really had +one, anyway. There's so much room--and it's warm, too. And then, the +floors don't squeak, either. I don't think I care for squeaky +floors--do you?" + +A quick widening of those almost purple eyes accompanied the last +question. + +The little white-haired figure in the back-tilted chair snorted. He +tried to disguise it behind a belated cough, but it was quite +palpably a snort of outraged patience and dignity. She couldn't fool +him any longer--not even with that wide-eyed appealingly infantile +stare. He knew, without looking closer, that there was a flare of +mirth hidden within its velvet duskiness. And there was only one way +to deal with such shallowness--that was with firm and unmistakable +severity. He leaned forward and pounded one meager knee for emphasis +as Judge Maynard had often done. + +"You can't do it!" he emphasized flatly, his thin voice almost +gloatingly triumphant. "Whatever put it into your head I don't +know--but don't you realize what you're a-doin', comin' up here like +this and movin' in, high-handed, without speaking to nobody? Well, +you've made yourself liable to trespass--that's what you've done! +Trespass and house-breaking, too, I guess, without interviewin' me +first!" + +The violet eyes flew wider. Old Jerry was certain that he caught a +gleam of apprehension in them. She took one faltering step toward him +and then stopped, irresolute, apparently. Somehow the mute appeal in +that whole poise was too much, even for his outraged dignity. Maybe he +had gone a little too far. He attempted to temper the harshness of +it. + +"Not a-course," he added deprecatingly, "meanin' that anything like +that would be likely to happen to you. Seein' as you didn't exactly +understand, I wouldn't take no steps against you." And, even more +encouragingly, "I doubt if I'd hev any legal right to proceed against +anybody without seeing Den--without seeing the rightful owner first." + +He bit his tongue painfully in covering that slip, but Dryad had not +seemed to notice it. She crossed back to the stove and in an absolute +silence fell to prodding with a fork beneath steaming lids. + +"I really should have thought of that myself," she murmured pensively. +"After seeing you return from here every afternoon, I should have +known he--the place had been left in your care." + +It rather startled him--that half absent-minded statement of hers--it +disturbed his confidence in his command of the situation. Sitting +there he told himself that he should have realized long ago that she +could easily watch the hill road from the door of the little drab +cottage huddled at the end of Judge Maynard's acres. + +He began to feel guilty again--began to wonder just how much his daily +visits to Denny's place had led her to suspect. But Dryad did not wait +for any reply. She had turned once more until she was facing him, her +lips beginning to curl again, petal-like, at the corners. + +"But you would have to interview the real owner first?" she inquired +insistently. "You do think that would be necessary before you could +make me leave, don't you?" + +He nodded--nodded warily. Something in her bearing put him on his +guard. And then, before he knew how it had happened, a little rush had +carried her across the room and she was kneeling at his feet, her face +upflung to him. + +"Then you'll have to interview me,"--the words trembled madly, +breathlessly, from her lips. "You'll have to interview +me--because--because I own it all--all--every bit of it!" + +And she laughed up at him--laughed with a queer, choking, strained +note catching in her throat up into his blankly incredulous face. He +felt her thin young arms tighten about him; he even half caught her +next hysterical words in spite of his amazement, and for all that they +were quite meaningless to him. + +"You dear," she rushed on. "O, you dear, dear stubborn old fraud! I +punished you, didn't I? You were frightened--afraid I'd go! You know +you were! As if I'd ever leave until--until--" She failed to finish +that sentence. "But I'll never, never tease you so again!" + +Then there came that lightning-like change of mood which always left +him breathless in his inability to follow it. The mirth went out of +her eyes--her lips drooped and began to work strangely as she knelt +and gazed up at him. + +"I bought his mortgage," she told him slowly. "I bought it from Judge +Maynard a week ago with part of the money he gave me for our place +there below his. He was very generous. Somehow I feel that he paid +me--much more than it was worth. He's always wanted it and--and +I--there wasn't any need for me to stay there any more, was there?" + +Old Jerry had never seen a face so terribly earnest before--so +hungrily wistful--but it was the light that glowed in that kneeling +girl's eyes that held him dumb. It left him completely incapable of +coherent thought, yet mechanically his mind leaped back to that night, +two weeks before, when Young Denny had stumbled and gone floundering +to his knees before her, there on that very threshold. The boy's own +words had painted that picture for him too vividly for him to forget. +And he knew, without reasoning it out, just from the world of pain +there in her eyes, that she, too, at that moment was thinking of that +limp figure--of the great red gash across its chin. + +"I didn't help him," she went on, and now her voice was little more +than a whisper. "I went and left him here alone--and hurt--when I +should have stayed, that night when he went away. And so I bought +it--I bought it because I thought some day he might come back--and +need me even more. I thought if he did come--he'd feel as though he +had just--come back home! And--and just to be here waiting, I +thought, too, might somehow help me to have faith that he would come, +some day--safe!" + +The old man felt the fiercely tense little arms go slack then. Her +head went forward and lay heavy, pillowed in her hands upon his knees. +But he sat there for a full minute, staring down at the thick, +shimmering mass of her hair, swallowing an unaccountable lump that +bothered his breathing preparatory to telling her all that he had kept +waiting for just that opportunity, before he realized that she was +crying. And for an equally long period he cast desperately about for +the right thing to say. It came to him finally--a veritable +inspiration. + +"Why, you don't want to cry," he told her slowly. "They--they ain't +nothing to worry about now! For if that's the case--if you've gone to +work and bought it, why, I ain't got no more jurisdiction over +it--none whatever!" + +Immediately she lifted her head and gazed long and questioningly at +him, but Old Jerry's face was only guilelessly grave. It was more than +that--benevolent reassurance lit up every feature, and little by +little her brimming eyes began to clear; they began to glisten with +that baffling delight that had irritated him so before. She slipped +slowly to her feet and stood and gazed down at him. Old Jerry knew +then that he would never again see so radiant a face as hers was at +that moment. + +"I wasn't crying because I was worried," she said, and she managed not +to laugh. "I've been doing that every night, all night long, for two +weeks. That was before I understood--things! But today--this afternoon +I found something--read something--that made me understand better. +I--I'm just crying a little tonight because I am so glad." + +Old Jerry couldn't quite fathom the whole meaning of those last words +of hers. They surprised him so that all the things he had meant to +tell her right then of Young Denny's departure once more went totally +out of mind. He wondered if it was the red-headlined account of his +first battle that she had seen. No matter how doubtful it was he felt +it was very, very possible, for at each day's end he had been leaving +Denny's roll of papers there just as he had when the boy was at home. + +But the rest of it he understood in spite of the wonder of it all. +Whenever he remembered Young Denny asprawl upon the floor it seemed to +him a thing too marvelous for belief, and yet, recalling the light +that had glowed radiant in that girl's eyes, he knew it was the only +thing left to believe. + +He talked it over with himself that night on the way home. + +"She bought it so's if he ever did want to come back, he'd feel as if +he had come back home," he repeated her words, and he pondered long +upon them. There was only one possible deduction. + +"She thought he wouldn't have nothing left to buy it back when he did +come--that he'd be started on the road all the rest of 'em traveled +and pretty well--shot--to--pieces! That's what she thought," he +decided. + +He shook his head over it. + +"And she didn't know," he marveled. "She didn't know how that old jug +really got broke--because I ain't told her yet! But she's waitin' for +him just the same--just a-waitin' for him, no matter how he comes. +Figurin' on takin' care of him, too--that's what she was doin'--her +that ain't no bigger'n his little finger!" + +The storm had blown over long before his buggy went rattling down that +long hill, and he sat with the reins dangling neglected between his +knees and squinted up at the stars. + +"I always did consider I'd been pretty lucky," he confided after a +time to the plump mare's lazily flopping ears, "never gettin' mixed up +in any matrimonial tangle, so to speak. But now--now I ain't quite so +sure." A lonesome note crept into the querulous voice. "Maybe I'd hev +kept my eyes open a little mite wider'n I did if I'd ever a-dreamed +anybody could care like that.... Don't happen very often though, I +reckon. Just about once in a lifetime, maybe. Maybe, if he ain't too +blind to see it when it does come ... maybe once to every man!" + + * * * * * + +That next week marked the beginning of an intimacy unlike anything +which Old Jerry had ever before known in all his life, for in spite of +the girl's absolute proprietorship he continued his daily trips up the +long hill, not only for the purpose of leaving Young Denny's bundle of +papers and seed catalogues, but to attend to the stock which the boy +had left in his care as well. It never occurred to him that that duty +was only optional with him now. + +He never again attempted either, after that night, to explain his +delinquency and deliver Young Denny's message to her. There seemed to +him absolutely no need now to open a subject which was bound to be +embarrassing to him. And then, too, a sort of tacit understanding +appeared to have sprung up between them that needed no further +explanation. + +Only once was the temptation to confess to her the real reason for +Denny's sudden going almost stronger than he could resist. That was +quite a month later, when the news of the boy's second battle was +flaunted broadcast by the same red-headlined sheet. Then for days he +considered the advisability of such a move. + +It was not some one to share his hot pride that he wanted; he had +lived his whole life almost entirely within himself, and so his +elation was no less keen because he had no second person with whom to +discuss the victory. He wanted her opinion on a quite different +question--a question which he felt utterly incapable of deciding for +himself. It was no less a plan than that he should be present at the +match which was already hinted at between "The Pilgrim" and Jed The +Red--Jeddy Conway, from that very village. + +There were days when he almost felt that she knew of this new +perplexity of his, felt that she really had seen that account of Young +Denny's first fight and had been watching for the second, and at such +times only a mumbled excuse and a hasty retreat saved him from baring +his secret desire. + +"She'd think I'd gone stark crazy," he excused his lack of courage. +"She'd say I was a-goin' into my second childhood!" + +Yet in the end it was the girl with the tip-tilted eyes who decided it +for him. + +Spring had slipped into early summer when the day came which made the +gossip of "The Pilgrim's" possible bid for the championship a +certainty. It was harder than ever for Old Jerry after that. Each +fresh day's issue brought forth a long and exhaustive comparison of +the two men's chances--of their strength and weaknesses. The technical +discussion the old man skipped; it was undecipherable to him and +enough that Young Denny was hailed as a certain winner. + +And then as the day set for the match crept nearer and nearer, he +began to notice a new and alarming change in the tone of that daily +column. At first it was only fleeting--too intangible for one to place +one's finger upon it. But by the end of another week it was openly +inquiring whether "The Pilgrim" had as much as an even chance of +winning after all. + +It bewildered Old Jerry; it was beyond his comprehension, and had he +not been so depressed himself he would have noted the change that came +over the girl, too, these days. He never entered the big back kitchen +now to hear her humming softly to herself, and sometimes he had to +speak several times before she even heard him. + +That continued for almost a week, and then there came a day, a scant +three days before the date which he had hungrily underlined in red +upon a mental calendar, which brought the whole vexing indecision to a +precipitate head. + +Old Jerry read that day's column in the sporting extra with weazened +face going red with anger--read it with fists knotted. Those others +had been merely skeptical--doubtful of "The Pilgrim's" willingness to +meet the champion--and now it openly scoffed at him; it laughed at his +ability, lashed him with ridicule. And, to cap it all, it accused him +openly of having already "sold out" to his opponent. + +When the little white-haired driver of the buggy reached the house on +the hill that night he was as pale as he had been red, hours before, +and he pleaded fatigue to excuse his too hasty departure. He did not +see that she was almost as openly eager to have him go or that she +almost ran across to the table under the light with the packet of +papers as he turned away. + +Had he noticed he would have been better prepared the next night for +the scene that met him when he opened her door at dusk. One step was +all he took, and then he stopped, wide-eyed, aghast. Dryad was +standing in the middle of the room, her hair loose about her +shoulders, lips drawn dangerously back from tight little teeth, fists +clenched at her throat, and her eyes flaming. + +Old Jerry had never before seen her in a rage; he had never before +seen anybody so terribly, pallidly violent. As he entered her eyes +shot up to his. He heard her breath come and go, come and go, between +dry lips. And suddenly she lifted her feet and stamped upon the +newspaper strewn about her on the floor--infinitesimal shreds which +she had torn and flung from her. + +"It's a lie!" she gasped. "It's a lie--a lie! They said he couldn't +win anyway; they said he had sold--sold his chance to win--and they +lie! He's never been whipped. He's never--been--whipped--yet!" + +It frightened him. The very straining of her throat and the mad rise +and fall of her breast made him afraid for her. In his effort to quiet +her he hardly reckoned what he was saying. + +"Why, it--it don't mean nothin'," he stated mildly. "That newspaper +trash ain't no account, anyway you look at it." + +"Then why do they print it?" she stormed. "How do they dare to print +it? They've been doing it for days--weeks!" + +He felt more equal to that question. The answer fairly popped into his +brain. + +"They hev to, I reckon," he said with a fine semblance of cheerfulness. +"If they didn't maybe everybody'd be so sure he'd win that they +wouldn't even bother to go to see it." And then, very carelessly, as +though it was of little importance: "Don't know's I would hev thought +of goin' myself if it hadn't been for that. It's advertisin' I +reckon--just advertisin'!" + +Her fists came down from her chin; her whole body relaxed. It was that +bewildering change of mood which he could never hope to follow. She +even started toward him. + +"Wouldn't have thought of it!" she repeated. "Why--why, you don't mean +that you _aren't_ going?" + +It was quite as though she had never considered the possibility of +such a contingency. Old Jerry's mouth dropped open while he stared at +her. + +"Go," he stammered, "me go! Why, it's goin' to happen tomorrow +night!" + +She nodded her head in apparent unconsciousness of his astonishment. + +"You'll have to leave on the early train," she agreed, "and--and so I +won't see you again." + +She turned her back upon him for a moment. He realized that she was +fumbling inside the throat of the little, too-tight blouse. When she +faced him again there was something in the palm of her outstretched +hand. + +"I've been waiting for you to come tonight," she went on, "and it was +hard waiting. That's why I tore the paper up, I think. And now, will +you--will you give him this for me--give it to him when he has won? +You won't have to say anything." She hesitated. "I--I think he'll +understand!" + +Old Jerry reached out and took it from her--a bit of a red silk bow, +dotted with silver spangles. He gazed at it a moment before he tucked +it away in an inside pocket, and in that moment of respite his brain +raced madly. + +"Of course I figured on goin'," he said, when his breath returned, +"but I been a little undecided--jest a trifle! But I ought to be +there; he might be a mite anxious if they wasn't somebody from home. +And I'll give it to him then--I'll give it to him when he's won!" + +He went a bit unsteadily back to his waiting buggy. + +"She had that all ready to give me," he said to himself as he climbed +up to the high seat. Tentatively his fingers touched the little lump +that the spangly bow of red made inside his coat. "She's had it all +ready for me--mebby for days! But how'd she know I was a-goin'?" he +asked himself. "How'd _she_ know, when I didn't know myself?" + +He gave it up as a feminine whimsicality too deep for mere male +wisdom. Once on the way back he thought of the route that would go +mailless the next day. + +"'Twon't hurt 'em none to wait a day or so," he stated, and his voice +was just a little tinged with importance. "Maybe it'll do 'em good. +And there ain't no way out of it, anyhow--for I surely got to be +there!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +Morehouse did not hear the door in the opaque glass partition that +walled his desk off from the outer editorial offices open and close, +for all that it was very quiet. Ever since the hour which followed the +going to press of the afternoon edition of the paper the huge room, +with its littered floor and flat-topped tables, had been deserted, so +still that the buzzing of a blue-bottle fly against the window pane at +Morehouse's side seemed irritatingly loud by contrast. + +The plump newspaperman in brown was too deeply preoccupied to hear +anything so timidly unobtrusive as was that interruption, and only +after the intruder had plucked nervously at the elbow that supported +his chin did he realize that he was not alone. His head came up then, +slowly, until he was gazing back into the eyes of the little, +attenuated old man who, head tilted birdlike to one side, was standing +beside him in uncomfortable, apologetic silence. + +It surprised Morehouse more than a little. For the life of him he +couldn't have told just whom he had expected to see when he looked up, +but nothing could have startled him more than the presence of that +white-haired wisp of a man with the beady eyes who fitted almost +uncannily into the perplexing puzzle which had held him there at his +desk until dusk. He forgot to greet the newcomer. Instead he sat +gazing at him, wide-mouthed, and after Old Jerry had borne the +scrutiny as long as he could he took the initiative himself. + +"Well, I got here," he quavered. "I been a-tryin' to get upstairs to +see you ever since about three o'clock, and they wouldn't let me in. +Said you was too busy to be bothered, even when I told 'em I belonged +to the Gov'mint service. But I managed to slip by 'em at last!" + +He paused and waited for some word of commendation. Morehouse merely +nodded. He was thinking--thinking hard! The voice was almost as +familiar to him as was his own, and yet it persisted in tantalizing +his memory. He couldn't quite place it. Old Jerry sensed something of +his difficulty. + +"I'm from Boltonwood," he introduced himself, not quite so uncertainly. +"I'm Old Jerry. Maybe you remember me--I sat just next the stove that +night you was in town a-huntin' news." + +Then Morehouse remembered. Old Jerry had not had much to say that +night, but his face and his shrill eagerness to snatch a little of the +spotlight was unforgettable. And it was of that very night Morehouse +had been thinking--that and the face of the big boy silent there on +the threshold--when the interruption came. But still he uttered no +welcome; instead there was something close akin to distinct aversion +in his manner as he drew up a chair for the old man. + +Old Jerry felt the chill lack of cordiality, but he sat down. And +after a long period of silence, in which Morehouse made no move to put +him more at ease, he swallowed hard and went on with his explanation. + +"I come down to--to see Denny fight," he stated. "It kinda seemed to +us--to me--that he'd think it strange if somebody from his home town +wa'n't there. So I come along. And I wouldn't a bothered you at all +today--it's gettin' late and I ain't got my ticket to get in +yet--only--only I was worried a mite--jest a trifle--and I thought I'd +better see you if I could." + +Morehouse tilted his head again. + +Old Jerry gave up any attempt of further excusing his intrusion and +went straight to the heart of the matter. He unfolded a paper that +bulged from the side pocket of his coat and spread it out on the +desk. + +"It's this," he said, indicating the column that had scoffed so openly +at Young Denny's chances. "You--you wrote it, I suppose, didn't you?" + +Again that impersonal nod. + +"Well, I just wanted to ask you if--if you really thought it was--if +you think he ain't got no chance at all?" + +The eagerness of that trembling old voice was not to be ignored any +longer. But Morehouse couldn't help but recollect the eager circle of +"Ayes" which had flanked the Judge that other night. + +"What of it?" he inquired coolly. "What if he hasn't? I though Jed +Conway was the particular pride of your locality!" + +Old Jerry's beady eyes widened. There was no mistaking the positive +dislike in that round face, any more than one could misunderstand the +antagonism of that round-faced man's words. + +For weeks Morehouse had been puzzling over a question which he could +not answer--something which, for all the intimacy that had sprung up +between himself and Denny Bolton, he had never felt able to ask of the +boy with the grave eyes and graver lips. Even since the conference in +Hogarty's little office, when he had agreed to the ex-lightweight's +plan, it had been vexing him, no nearer solution than it had been that +day when he assured Hogarty that there was more behind young Denny's +eagerness to meet Jed Conway than the prize-money could account for. + +Now, that afternoon, on the very eve of that battle, he sat there in +the thickening dusk, unconscious of the passage of time, and listened +to the explanation that came pouring from Old Jerry's lips, haltingly +at first, and then in a steady falsetto stream, and learned the answer +to it. + +The old mail carrier didn't know what he was doing. His one desire was +to vindicate himself in the cold eyes of the man before him. But he +told it well and he did not spare himself. + +Once he though he caught a glimpse of thawing mirth in that face when +he had finished relating how Denny had led him, reluctant and fearful, +from the kitchen of the farmhouse to the spot of blood on the stable +wall, and from there to the jug in a heap of fragments against the +tree-butt. And that fleeting mirth became a warm, all-enveloping grin +when he had detailed the climax of the Judge's prearranged sensation +that same night. + +He knew then that he had set himself right, and he did not mean to go +into it any more fully. It was the changed attitude of Morehouse that +led him on and on. So he told, too, of Dryad Anderson's purchase of +the bleak old place on the hill and her reason. But when it came to +her wild fury against the paper that had dared to scoff at the boy he +paused. For a second he calculated the wisdom of exhibiting the bit of +a red bow that had been entrusted him. It, without a doubt, would be +the only passport he could hope for to a share of the glory, when it +was all over. For the time being he jealously decided to let it wait, +and he turned back to the rumpled sheet upon the desk. + +"She--she'd be mighty disappointed," he finished a little lamely. +"She's so sure, somehow, it kinda worries me. You--you do think he's +got a little chance, don't you--jest a trifle?" + +It took a long time--Old Jerry's confession. It was dark before he +finished, but Morehouse did not interrupt him by so much as the +lifting of a finger. And he sat silent, gazing straight ahead of him, +after the old man had finished. Old Jerry, watching him, wondered +vaguely what made his eyes so bright now. + +"So that's it, is it?" the plump man murmured at last. "So that's it. +And I never dreamed of it once. I must be going stale." + +He wheeled in his chair until he faced Old Jerry full. + +"I don't know," he said. "A half-hour before you came in I didn't like +even to think of it. But now--chance? Well, this deadly waiting is +over anyhow, and we'll soon know. And I wonder--now--I wonder!" + +With his watch flat in the palm of his hand Morehouse sat and whistled +softly. And then he shot hastily to his feet. Old Jerry understood +that whistle, but he hung back. + +"I--I ain't got my ticket yet," he protested. + +Morehouse merely reached in and hustled him over the threshold. + +"Your unabridged edition, while it has no doubt saved my sanity, has +robbed us both of food and drink," he stated. "There's no time left, +even for friendly argument, if you want to be there when it happens. +You won't need any ticket this time--you'll be with me." + +Even at that they were late, for when they paused a moment in the +entrance of the huge, bowl-shaped amphitheater, a sharp gust of +hand-clapping, broken by shrill whistling and shriller cat-calls, met +them. Far out across that room Old Jerry saw two figures, glistening +damp under the lights, crawl through the ropes that penned in a +high-raised platform in the very center of the building, and disappear +up an aisle. + +He turned a dismayed face to Morehouse who, with one hand clutching +his arm, was deeply engrossed in a whispered conversation with a man +at the entrance--too engrossed to see. But when the newspaperman +turned at last to lead the way down into the body of the house he +explained in one brief word: + +"Preliminary," he said. + +Old Jerry did not understand. But half dragged, half led, he followed +blindly after his guide, until he found himself wedged into a seat at +the very edge of that roped-off, canvas-padded area. It was a single +long bench with a narrow board desk, set elbow high, running the +entire length in front of it. Peering half fearfully from the corner +of his eye Old Jerry realized that there were at least a full dozen +men beside themselves wedged in before it, and that, like Morehouse, +there was a block of paper before each man. + +The awe with which the immensity of the place had stunned him began to +lessen a little and allowed him to look around. Wherever he turned a +sea of faces met him--faces strangely set and strained. Even under the +joviality of those closest to him he saw the tightened sinews of their +jaws. Those further away were blurred by the smoke that rose in a +never-thinning cloud, blurred until there was nothing but indistinct +blotches of white in the outer circles of seats. + +And when he lifted his head and looked above him, he gasped. They were +there, too, tiny, featureless dots of white, like nothing so much as +holes in a black wall, in the smoke-drift that alternately hid and +revealed them. + +Faces of men--faces of men, wherever he turned his head! Faces +strained and tense as they waited. That terrible tensity got under his +skin after a while; it crept in upon him until his spine crawled a +little, as if from cold. It was quiet, too; oddly quiet in spite of +the dull mumble that rose from thousands of throats. + +Twice that hush was broken--twice when men laden with pails of water, +and bottles and sponges, and thick white towels crowded through the +ropes in front of him. Then the whole house was swept by a premature +storm of hand-clapping for the men who, stripped save for the flat +shoes upon their feet and the trunks about their hips, followed them +into the ring. + +"Preliminary!" Morehouse had said, and there had been something of +disinterested contempt in his voice. Old Jerry felt, too, the entire +great crowd's disinterested, good-natured tolerance. They were waiting +for something else. + +Twice Morehouse left his place at the long board desk and wended his +way off through the maze of aisles. The second time he returned, after +the third match had been finished, Old Jerry caught sight of his face +while he was a long way off--and Old Jerry's breath caught in his +throat. His plump cheeks were pale when he crowded back into his +place. The old man leaned nearer and tried to ask a question and his +dry tongue refused. The plump reporter nodded his head. + +Again the men came with their bottles of water--their pails--their +towels and sponges. There was a third man who slipped agilely into the +nearest corner. Old Jerry saw him turn once and nod reassuringly, he +thought, at Morehouse. The little mail carrier did not know him; +everybody else within a radius of yards had apparently recognized him, +but he could not take his eyes off that lean, hard face. There was a +kind of satanic, methodical deadliness in Hogarty's directions to the +other two men inside the ropes. + +Even while he was staring at him, fascinated, that hand-clapping +stormed up again, and then swelled to a hoarse roar that went +hammering to the roof. A figure passed Old Jerry, so close that the +long robe which wrapped him brushed his knee. When Hogarty had +stripped the robe away and the figure went on--on up through the +ropes--he recognized him. + +As Young Denny seated himself in the corner just above them Morehouse +threw out his arm and forced Old Jerry back into his seat. Then the +little man remembered and shrank back, but his eyes glowed. He forgot +to watch for the coming of the other in dumb amaze at the wide expanse +of the boy's shoulders that rose white as the narrow cloth that +encircled his hips. Dazed, he listened to them shouting the name by +which they knew him--"The Pilgrim"--and he did not turn away until Jed +Conway was in the ring. + +He heard first the cheers that greeted the newcomer--broken +reiterations of "Oh, you Red!" But the same heartiness was not there, +nor the volume. When Old Jerry's eyes crept furtively across the ring +he understood the reason. + +It was the same face that he had known before, older and heavier, but +the same. And there was no appeal in that face. It was scant of brow, +brutish, supercunning, and the swarthy body that rose above the black +hip-cloth matched the face. Old Jerry's eyes clung to the thick neck +that ran from his ears straight down into his shoulders until a +nameless dread took him by the throat and made him turn away. + +Back in Denny's corner Hogarty was lacing on the gloves, talking +softly in the meantime to the big boy before him. + +"From the tap of the gong," he was droning. "From the tap of the +gong--from the tap of the gong." + +Young Denny nodded, smiled faintly as he rose to his feet to meet the +announcer, who crossed and placed one hand on his shoulder and +introduced him. Again the applause went throbbing to the roof; and +again the echo of it after Jed The Red had in turn stood up in his +corner. + +The referee called them to the middle of the ring. It was quiet in an +instant--so quiet that Old Jerry's throat ached with it. The announcer +lifted his hand. + +"Jed The Red fights at one hundred and ninety-six," he said, "'The +Pilgrim' at one hundred and seventy-two." + +Immediately he turned and dropped through the ropes. His going was +accompanied by a flurry in each corner as the seconds scuttled after +him with stools and buckets. + +They faced each other, alone in the ring save for the referee--The +Pilgrim and Jed The Red. Then a gong struck. They reached out and each +touched the glove of the other. + +Old Jerry could not follow it--it came too terribly swift for +that--but he heard the thudding impact of gloves as Denny hurtled +forward in that first savage rush. + +"From the gong," Hogarty had ordered, "from the gong!" The Red, +covering and ducking, blocking and swaying beneath the whirlwind of +that attack, broke and staggered and set himself, only to break again, +and retreat, foot by foot, around the ring. The whole house had come +to its feet with the first rush, screaming to a man. Old Jerry, too, +was standing up, giddy, dizzy, as he watched Conway weather that first +minute. + +He had no chance to swing; with both hands covering he fought wildly +to stay on his feet; to live through it; to block that right hand that +lashed out again and again and found his face. + +Each time that blow went across it shook him to the soles of his feet; +it lifted the cheering of the crowd to a higher, madder key; but even +Old Jerry, eyes a little quicker already, saw that none of those blows +landed flush upon the side of the jaw. + +Conway called to his aid all the ring-generalship of which he was +capable in that opening round. Once that lightening-like fist reached +out and found his mouth. A trickle of blood oozed red from the lips +that puffed up, almost before the glove came away; once when he had +seen an opening and led for The Pilgrim's own face, that wicked jolt +caught him wide open. He ducked his head between his shoulders then. +The shock sent him to his knees, but that upraised shoulder saved him. +The force of that glancing smash had spent itself before it reached +his unprotected neck. + +There was no let-up--no lull in the relentless advance. He was on his +feet again, grim, grasping, reeling, hanging on! And again that +avalanche of destruction enveloped him. + +He fought to drop into a clinch, for one breath's respite, his huge +hairy arms slipping hungrily out about Denny's white body, but even as +he snuggled his body close in, that fist lashed up between them and +found his chin again. It straightened him, flung him back. And once +more, before the certain annihilation of that blow, he ducked his head +in between his shoulders. + +Old Jerry heard the crash of the glove against the top of his head; he +saw Conway hurled back into the ropes. But not until seconds later, +when he realized that the roar of the crowd had hushed, did he see +that a change had come over the fight. + +Conway was no longer giving ground; he was himself driving in more and +more viciously, for that deadly right hand no longer leaped out to +check him. Twice just as Denny had rocked him he now jolted his own +right over to The Pilgrim's face. At each blow the boy lashed out with +his left hand. Both blows he missed, and the second time the force of +his swing whirled him against the barrier. Right and left Conway sent +his gloves crashing into his unprotected stomach--right and left! + +And then the tap of the gong! + +Hogarty was through the ropes with the bell. As Denny dropped upon the +stool he stripped the glove from the boy's right hand and examined it +with anxious fingers. The other two were sponging his chest with +water--pumping fresh air into his lungs; but Old Jerry's eyes clung to +the calamity written upon Hogarty's gray features. + +Everybody else seemed to understand what had happened--everybody but +himself. He turned again to the man next him on the bench. Morehouse, +too, had been watching the ex-lightweight's deft fingers. + +"Broken," he groaned. "His right hand is gone." And after what seemed +hours Old Jerry realized that Morehouse was cursing hoarsely. + +In Conway's corner the activity was doubly feverish. The Red lay +sprawled back against the ropes while they kneaded knotty legs, and +shoulders. There was blood on his chin, his lips were cut and +misshapen, but he had weathered that round without serious damage. +Watching him Old Jerry saw that he was smiling--snarling confidently. + +Back in Denny's corner they were still working over him, but the whole +house had sensed the dismay in that little knot of men. Hogarty, +gnawing his lip, stopped and whispered once to the boy on the stool, +but Young Denny shook his head and held out his hand. He laced the +gloves back on them, over the purple, puffy knuckles. + +And then again that cataclysmic bell. + +Just as the first round had started, that second one opened with a +rush, but this time it was Conway who forced the fighting. Like some +gigantic projectile he drove in and caught Denny in his own corner, +and beat him back against the standard. Again that thudding right and +left, right and left, into the stomach. And again Old Jerry saw that +left hand flash out--and miss. + +Just as The Pilgrim had driven him Conway forced Denny around the +ring, except that the boy was heart-breaking slow in getting away. The +Red stayed with him, beat him back and back, smothered him! With that +deadly right no longer hunting for his jaw, he fought with nothing to +fear, for Young Denny could not find his face even once with that +flashing left swing. + +Before the round was half over The Pilgrim had gone down twice--body +blows that did little harm; but they were shouting for The +Red--shouting as if from a great distance, from the balconies. + +Again Conway drove him into a corner of the ropes, feinted for the +stomach. Then there came that first blow that found his chin. Old +Jerry saw Denny's body go limp as he crashed his length upon the +padded canvas; he saw him try to rise and heard the house screaming +for him to take the count. + +He rested there for a precious instant, swaying on one knee. But his +eyes were still glazed when he rose, and again Conway, rushing, beat +down that guarding right, and, swinging with all his shoulder weight +behind it, found that same spot and dropped him again. + +Pandemonium broke loose in the upper reaches of the seats, but the +silence of the body of the house was deathlike as he lay without +stirring. Old Jerry gulped and waited--choked back a sobbing breath as +he saw him start to lift himself once more. Upon his hands and knees +first, then upon his knees alone. And then, with eyes shut, he +struggled up, at the count of ten, and shaped up again. + +And Conway beat him down. + +Even the gallery was quiet now. The thud of that stiff-armed jolt went +to every corner of that vast room. And the referee was droning out the +count again. + +"--Five--six--seven----" + +Head sagging between his arms, eyes staring and sightless, The +Pilgrim groped out and found the ropes. Once more at the end of the +toll he lifted himself--lifted himself by the strength of his +shoulders to his legs that tottered beneath him, and then stepped free +of the ropes. + +That time, before Conway could swing, the gong saved him. + +Again it was Hogarty who was first through the ropes. Effortlessly he +stooped and lifted that limp body and carried it across to the stool. +They tried to stretch him back against the ropes behind him, and each +time his head slumped forward over his knees. + +Old Jerry turned toward Morehouse and choked--licked his lips and +choked again. And Morehouse nodded his head dumbly. + +"He--he's gone!" he said. + +Old Jerry sat and stared back at him as though he couldn't understand. +He remembered the bit of a red bow in his pocket then; he fumbled +inside and found it. He remembered the eyes of the girl who had given +it to him, too, that night when she had knelt at his knees. His old +fingers closed, viselike, upon the fat man's arm. + +"But she told me to give him this," he mumbled dully. "Why, she--she +said for me to give him this, when he had _Won_." + +Morehouse stared at the bit of tinseled silk--stared up at Old Jerry's +face and back again. And then he leaned over suddenly and picked it +up. The next moment he was crowding out from behind the desk--was +climbing into the ring. + +Old Jerry saw him fling fiercely tense words into Hogarty's face, and +Hogarty stood back. He knelt before the slack body on the stool and +tried to raise the head; he held the bit of bright web before him, but +there was no recognition in Denny's eyes. And the old man heard the +plump reporter's words, sob-like with excitement: + +"She sent it," he hammered at those deaf ears. "She sent it--she sent +it--silk--a little bow of red silk!" + +Then the whole vast house saw the change that came over that limp +form. They saw the slack shoulders begin to go back; saw the +dead-white face come up; they saw those sick eyes beginning to clear. +And The Pilgrim smiled a little--smiled into Morehouse's face. + +"Silk," he repeated softly. "Silk!" and then, as if it had all come +back at once: "Silk--next to her skin!" + +And they called it a miracle--that recovery. They called it a miracle +of the mind over a body already beaten beyond endurance. For in the +scant thirty seconds which were left, while the boy lay back with them +working desperately above him, it was almost possible to see the +strength ebbing back into his veins. They dashed water upon his head, +inverted bottles of it into his face, and emptied it from his eyes, +but during that long half minute the vague smile never left his +lips--nor his eyes the face of Conway across from him. + +And he went to meet The Red when the gong called to them again. He +went to meet him--smiling! + +The bell seemed to pick him up and drop him in the middle of the ring. +Set for the shock he stopped Conway's hurtling attack. And when The +Red swung he tightened, took the blow flush on the side of the face, +and only rocked a little. + +Conway's chin seemed to lift to receive the blow which he started +then from the waist. That right hand, flashing up, found it and +straightened The Red back--lifted him to his toes. And while he was +still in the air The Pilgrim measured and swung. The left glove +caught him flush below the ear; it picked him up and drove him +crashing back into the corner from which he had just come. + +Old Jerry saw them bend over him--saw them pick him up at last and +slip him through the ropes. Then he realized that the referee was +holding Young Denny's right hand aloft; that Hogarty, with arms about +him, was holding the boy erect. + +The little mail-carrier heard the ex-lightweight's words, as he edged +in beside Morehouse, against the ropes. + +"A world-beater," he was screaming above the tumult. "I'll make a +world-beater of you in a year!" + +And The Pilgrim, still smiling vaguely, shook his head a little. + +"Maybe," he answered faintly. "Maybe I'll come back. I don't +know--yet. But now--now I reckon I'd better be going along home!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +It was a white night--a night so brilliant that the village lights far +below in the hollow all but lost their own identity in the radiance of +that huge, pale moon; so white that the yellow flare of the single +lamp in its bracket, in the back kitchen of the old Bolton place on +the hill seemed shabbily dull by contrast. + +Standing at the window in the dark front room of the house, peering +out from under cupped palms that hid her eyes, Dryad could almost pick +out each separate picket of the straggling old fence that bounded the +garden of the little drab cottage across from her. In that searching +light she could even make out great patches where the rotting +sheathing of the house had been torn away, leaving the framework +beneath naked and gaunt and bare. + +It was scarcely two months since the day when she had gone herself to +Judge Maynard with her offer to sell that unkempt acre or so which he +had fought so long and bitterly to force into the market. And it had +been a strange one, too--that interview. His acceptance had been +quick--instantaneously eager--but the girl was still marvelling a +little over his attitude throughout that transaction, whenever her +mind turned back to it. + +When she mentioned the mortgage which Young Denny had secured only a +few days before, he had seemed to understand almost immediately why +she had spoken of it, without the explanation which she meant to +give. + +Once again she found him a different Judge Maynard from all the others +she had known, and he had in the years since she could remember, been +many different men to her imagination. It puzzled her almost as much +as did his opinion upon the value of the old place, which, somehow, +she could not bring herself to believe was worth all that he insisted +upon paying. But then, too, she did not know either that the town's +great man had been riding a-tilt at his own soul, for several days on +end, and just as Old Jerry had done, was seizing upon the first +opportunity to salve the wounds resultant. + +And yet this was the first day that the girl had seen him so much as +inspect his long-coveted property; the first time she had known him to +set foot within the sagging gate since he had placed in her hands that +sum of money which was greater than any she had ever seen before. +Under his directions men had commenced clearing away the rank +shrubbery that afternoon--commenced to tear down the house itself. + +Time after time since morning she had entered the front room to stand +and peer out across the valley at this new activity which the Judge +himself was directing with an oddly suppressed lack of his usual +violent gestures. There was something akin to apology in his every +move. + +It brought a little homesick ache into the girl's throat; it set her +lips to curving--made her eyes go damp with pity and tenderness for +the little white-haired figure bending over his bench. He had clung so +bravely, so stubbornly, to that battered bit of a house; to his garden +which he had never realized had long since ceased to be anything but a +plot of waist-high bushes and weeds. Once when she recollected those +countless rows of poignantly wistful faces on the shelves of that +back-room workshop she wondered if she had not been disloyal, after +all. And she had argued it out with herself aloud as she went from +task to task in that afternoon's gathering twilight. + +"But it was because of her that he stayed," she reassured herself. "It +was because of her that he kept it, all these years. And--and so he +couldn't mind--not very much, I think, now that they don't need it any +longer, if I sold it so that I could keep this place--for him!" + +They had been long, those hours of waiting. Not a minute of those +entire two days since Old Jerry's departure but had dragged by on +laggard feet. And yet now, with nightfall of that third day she +became jealous of every passing minute. She hated to have them pass; +dreaded to watch the creeping hands of the clock on the kitchen wall +as they drew up, little by little, upon that hour which meant the +arrival of the night train in the village. + +One moment she wondered if he would come--wondered and touched dry +lips with the tip of her tongue. And the very next, when somehow she +was so very, very sure that there was no room for doubt, she even +wondered whether or not he would be glad--glad to find her there. The +gaunt skeleton of a framework showing through the torn sides of John +Anderson's cottage almost unnerved her whenever that thought came, and +sent her out again into the lighted back room. + +"What if he isn't?" she whispered, over and over again. "Why, I--I +never thought of that before, did I? I just thought I had to be here +when he came. But what if he--isn't glad?" + +An hour earlier, when the thought had first come to her, she had +carried a big, square package out to the table before the kitchen +window and untied with fluttering fingers the string that bound it. +The little scarlet blouse and shimmering skirt, alive with tinsel +that glinted under the light, still lay there beside the thin-heeled +slippers and filmy silk stockings. She bent over them, patting +them lovingly with a slim hand, her eyes velvety dark while she +considered. + +"Oh, you're pretty--pretty--pretty!" she said in a childishly hushed +voice, "the prettiest things in the world!" + +The next instant she straightened to scan soberly the old shiny black +skirt she was wearing, and the darned stockings and cracked shoes. + +"And--and you would help, I think," she went on musing. "I know you +would, but then--then it wouldn't be _me_. It would be easy for any +one to care for you--almost too easy. I--I think I'll wear them for +him--some other time, maybe--if he wants me to." + +But she turned the very next moment and crossed to the mirror on the +wall--that square bit of glass before which Young Denny had stood and +stared back into his own eyes and laughed. Oblivious to everything +else she was critically scanning her own small reflection--great, +tip-tilted eyes, violet in the shadow, and then cheeks and pointed +chin--until, even in spite of her preoccupation, she became aware of +the hungry tremulousness of the mouth of that reflected image--until +the hoarse shriek of an engine's whistle leaped across the valley and +brought her up sharp, her breath going in one long, quavering gasp +between wide lips. + +It was that moment toward which she had been straining every hour of +those two days; the one from which she had been shrinking every minute +of those last two hours since dark. She hesitated a second, head +thrown to one side, listening; she darted into that dark front room +and pressed her face to the cold pane, and again that warning note +came shrilling across the quiet from the far side of town. + +There in the darkness, a hand on either side of the frame holding her +leaning weight, she stood and waited. Below her the house roofs lay +like patches of jet against the moon-brightness. She stood and watched +its whole length, and no darker figure crept into relief against its +lighter streak of background. Minutes after she knew that he had had +time to come, and more, she still clung there, staring wide-eyed, +villageward. + +It wasn't a recollection of that half dismantled wreck of a house +under the opposite ridge that finally drew her dry-lipped gaze from +the road; she did not even think of it that moment. It was simply +because she couldn't watch any longer--not even for a minute or +two--that her eyes finally fluttered that way. But when she did turn +there was a bigger, darker blot there against the leaning picket +fence--a big-shouldered figure that had moved slowly forward until it +stood full in front of the sagging gate. + +And even as she watched Denny Bolton swung around from a long +contemplation of that half-torn-down building to peer up at his own +dark place on the hill--to peer straight back into the eyes of the +girl whom he could not even see. + +She saw the bewilderment in that big body's poise; even at that +distance she sensed his dumb, numbed uncomprehension. From bare white +throat to the mass of tumbled hair that clustered across her forehead +the blood came storming up into her face; and with the coming of that +which set the pulses pounding in her temples and brought an +unaccountable ache to her throat, all the doubt which had squired her +that day slipped away. + +Before he had had time to turn back again she had flown on mad feet +into the kitchen, swept the lamp from its bracket on the wall with +heedless haste and raced back to that front window. And she placed it +there behind a half-drawn shade--that old signal which they had agreed +upon without one spoken word, years back. + +Crouching in the semi-gloom behind the lamp she watched. + +He stepped forward a pace and stopped; lifted one hand slowly, as +though he did not believe what he saw. Bareheaded he waited an instant +after that arm went back to his side. When he swung around and +disappeared into the head of the path that led from the gate into the +black shadow of the thicket in the valley's pit she lifted both arms, +too, and stood poised there a moment, slender and straight and vividly +unwavering as the lamp-flame itself, before she wheeled and ran. + +It was dark in the thick of the underbrush; dark and velvety quiet, +save for the little moon-lit patch of a clearing where he waited. He +stood there in the middle of that spot of light and heard her coming +long before she reached him--long before he could see her he heard her +scurrying feet and the whip of bushes against her skirt. + +But when she burst through the fringe of brush he had no time to move +or speak, or more than lift his arms before her swift rush carried her +to him. When her hands flashed up about his neck and her damp mouth +went searching softly across his face and he strained her nearer and +even nearer to him, he felt her slim body quivering just as it had +trembled that other night when she had raced across the valley to +him--the night when Judge Maynard's invitation had failed to come. +After a time he made out the words that were tumbling from her lips, +all incoherent with half hysterical bits of sobs, and he realized, +too, that her words were like that of that other night. + +"Denny--Denny," she murmured, her small, gold-crowned head buried in +his shoulder. "I'm here--I've come--just as soon as I could; Oh, I've +been afraid! I knew you'd come, too--I knew you would tonight! I was +sure of it--even when I was sure that you wouldn't." + +For a long time he was silent, because dry lips refused to frame the +words he would have spoken. Minutes he stood and held her against him +until the rise and fall of her narrow shoulders grew quieter, before +he lifted one hand and held her damp face away, that he might look +into it. And gazing back at him, in spite of all the wordless wonder +of her which she saw glowing in his eyes, she read, too, the grave +perplexity of him. + +"Why--you--you must have known I'd come," he said, his voice +ponderously grave. "I--I told you so. I left word for you that I would +be back--as soon as I could come." + +He felt her slim body slacken--saw the lightning change flash over her +face which always heralded that bewildering swift change of mood. It +wiped out all the tenseness of lip and line. + +There in the white light in spite of the shadows of her lashes which +turned violet eyes to great pools of satin shadow, he caught the flare +of mischief behind half-closed lids, before she tilted her head back +and laughed softly, with utter joyous abandon straight up into his +face. + +"He--he didn't deliver it," she stated naively. "It wasn't his fault +entirely, though, Denny--although I did give him lots of chances, at +first anyway. I almost made him tell--but he--he's stubborn." + +She stopped and laughed again--giggled shamelessly as she remembered. +But her eyes grew grave once more. + +"I think he didn't quite approve of my attitude," she explained to him +as he bent over her. "He thought I wasn't--sorry enough--to deserve it +at first. And then--and then I never gave him any opportunity to +speak. I would have stopped him if he had tried. You--you see, I just +wanted to--wait." + +Head bowed she paused a moment before she continued. + +"But--but I sent him to you--two days ago, Denny. I sent something +that I asked him to give you--when--when it was over. Didn't you--get +it?" + +He fumbled in the pocket of his smooth black suit after she had +disengaged herself and dropped to the ground at his feet. With her +ankles curled up under her she sat in a boyish heap watching him, +until he drew out the bit of a spangled crimson bow and held it out +before him in the palm of one big hand. Then he swung down to the +ground beside her. + +"I thought it must have been Old Jerry who brought it. I didn't see +him, and no one could remember his name or knew where he had gone when +they thought to look for him. They--they just described him to me." + +He turned the bow of silk over, touching it almost reverently. + +"Some one gave it to me," he continued slowly. "I don't know exactly +how or when. It--it was just put into my hand--when I needed it most. +I wasn't sure Old Jerry had brought it, but I knew it came from you, +knew it when I didn't--know--much--else!" + +She was very, very quiet, content merely in his nearness. Even then +she didn't understand it--the reason for his going that night, weeks +before--for the papers which had told her a little had told her +nothing of his brain's own reason. The question was on her lips when +her narrow fingers, searching the shadow for his, found that bandaged +wrist and knuckles. Almost fiercely she drew that hand up into the +light. From the white cloth her gaze went to the discolored, bruised +patches on face and chin--the same place where that long, ugly cut had +been which dripped blood on the floor the night she had run from him +in the dark--went to his face, and back again, limpid with pity. And +she lifted it impulsively and tucked it under her chin, and held it +there with small hands that trembled a little. + +"Then--then if you haven't seen Old Jerry--why--why you--he couldn't +have told you anything at all yet, about me." + +The words trailed off softly and left the statement hanging +interrogatively in midair. + +Denny nodded his head in the direction of John Anderson's house that +had been. + +"About that?" he asked. + +She nodded her head. And then she told him; she began at the very +beginning and told him everything from that night when she had watched +him there under cover of the thicket. Once she tried to laugh when she +related Old Jerry's panic, a week or two later, when he had come to +find her packing in preparation to leave. But her mirth was waveringly +unsteady. And when she tried to explain, too, how she had chanced to +buy up the mortgage on his own bleak house on the hill, her voice +again became suddenly, diffidently small. + +There was a new, sweet confusion in her refusal to meet his eyes and +Denny, reaching out with his bandaged hand, half lifted her and swung +her around until she needs must face him. + +"You--you mean you--bought it, yourself?" he marvelled. + +Then, face uplifted, brave-eyed, she went on a little breathlessly. + +"I bought it, myself," she said, "the week you went away." And, in a +muffled whisper: "Denny, I didn't have faith--not much, at first. But +I meant to be here when you did come, just--just because I thought you +might need me--mighty badly. And waiting is hard, too, when one hasn't +faith. And I did wait! That was something, wasn't it, Denny? +Only--only now, today, I--I think I realized that my own need of you +is greater than yours could ever be for me!" + +She sat, lips apart, quiet for his answer. + +An odd smile edged the boy's lips at her wistful earnestness. It was a +twisted little smile which might have been born of the pain of +stinging lids and dryer, aching throat. He could not have spoken at +that moment had he tried. Instead he lifted her bodily and drew her +huddled little figure into his arms. It was his first face to face +glimpse of the wonder of woman. + +But he knew now something which she had only sensed; he knew that the +big, lonesome, bewildered boy whom she had tried to comfort in his +bitterness that other night when she had hidden her own hurt +disappointment with the white square card within her breast, had come +back all man. + +He looked down at her--marvelled at her very littleness as though it +were a thing he had never known before. + +"And--and you still--would stay?" he managed to ask, at last. "You'd +stay--even if it did mean being like them," he inclined his head +toward the distant village, "like them, old and wrinkled and worn-out, +before they have half lived their lives?" + +She nodded her head vehemently against his coat. He felt her thin arms +tighten and tighten about him. + +"I'll stay," she repeated after him in a childishly small voice. +"You--you see, I _know_ what it is now to be alone, even just for a +week or two. I think I'll stay, please!" + +There had been a bit of a teasing lilt in her half smothered words. It +disappeared now. + +"I--I'd be pretty lonesome, all the rest of my life--man--if I +didn't!" + +And long afterward she lifted her head from his arm and blinked at him +from sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes. + +"Why, Denny?" she asked in drowsy curiosity. "Why did you go--why, +really? Don't you realize that you haven't told me even yet?" + +He rose and lifted her to her feet, but that did not cover the slow +flush that stained his face--the old, vaguely embarrassed flush that +she knew so well. He groped awkwardly for words while he stared again +at the bit of silk in his hand, before his searching fingers found the +thick, crisp packet that had lain with it in his pocket. + +"The Pilgrim's share of the receipts amounted to $12,000," had been +the tale of Morehouse's succinct last paragraph. + +Then, "It--took me almost two months to save fifteen dollars," Young +Denny explained in painful self-consciousness. + +She understood. She remembered the scarlet blouse and shimmering skirt +with its dots of tinsel, and the stockings and slim-heeled slippers. +Her fingers touched his chin--the barest ghost of a caressing +contact. + +"Denny--Denny," she murmured, "I told you that night that you didn't +understand. And yet--and yet I'm glad that you couldn't. It was for +me--you went. Don't you--didn't you know it was--just because of +you--that I wanted them--at--all?" + + * * * * * + +The circle in the Boltonwood tavern convened early that night, and +long after hope had all but died a death of stagnation the regulars +stuck stubbornly to their places about the cheerlessly cold, +fat-bellied stove. + +It was a session extraordinary, for even Dave Shepard, the patriarch +of the circle itself, could not recall an occasion when they had +foregathered there in such fashion so long after the last spring snow +had surrendered to summer. Yet it was largely mild-voiced Dave's +doing--this silent, sober gathering. + +For he alone of all of them had heeded Old Jerry's parting admonition +that night, weeks before, when the servant of the Gov'mint had turned +from his shrill defiance of the Judge to whip their whole ranks with +scorn. Since then Dave had been following the papers with faithful and +painstaking care--not merely the political news of the day which +invariably furnished the key for each night's debate--but searching +every inch of type, down to the last inconsequential advertisement. +And he had been rewarded; he had penetrated, with the aid of that +small picture inset at the column-head, the disguise of the colorful +sobriquet which Morehouse had fastened upon Young Denny Bolton. More +than that, he had been reading for weeks each step in that campaign of +publicity which had so harrowed Old Jerry's peace of mind--and somehow +he had kept it religiously to himself. + +Not until two days before, when Old Jerry's desertion from duty had +become a town-wide sensation had he opened his mouth. The route back +in the hills went mailless that day, and for that reason there were +more than enough papers to go around when he finally gave the old +guard which was waiting in vain for Old Jerry's appearance upon the +top step of the post-office, the benefits of his wider reading. + +There had been a fierce factional debate raging when he came up +late to take his unobtrusive place upon the sidewalk, but even before +he added his voice to the din those who argued that the old +mail-carrier's disappearance could be in no way connected with that +of Young Denny Bolton, who had gone the way of all the others of +his line, were in a hopeless minority. + +Their timidest member's announcement stunned them all to silence--left +them hushed and speechless--not for an hour or two, but for the days +that followed as well. Even the red-headlined account which had come +with that morning's batch of news of Young Denny's victory and the +fall of Jed The Red, whom they had championed under the Judge's able +leadership, failed to stir up any really bitter wrangle. + +They sat in an apathetic circle, waiting for Old Jerry to come. + +But no one, not even Morehouse, knew when Old Jerry disappeared that +night after Jed Conway had come hurtling from his corner, only to lift +and whirl and go crashing back before the impact of The Pilgrim's +leaping gloves. At first the plump newspaper man believed that the +surging, shouting wave of humanity which had broken comber-like over +the ropes to hail a newer favorite had separated the little, +bird-faced man from him. Only a recollection of those vice-like +fingers clinging to his arm a moment before made that probability seem +unbelievable. + +It was a long time before The Pilgrim's brain had again become clear +enough to grasp the meaning of the questions which Morehouse put to +him, but Denny did not know even as much as did the round-faced +reporter himself. He only recognized the description of the shrill +voiced, beady-eyed mail carrier. + +To Old Jerry belonged the only comprehensive explanation for his +sudden withdrawal from the scene, just at that moment when his own +share in it might have been not inconsequential. And more than that, +his resolution to keep it strictly and privately his own grew firmer +and firmer, the more thought he gave to it. + +In those hours which intervened between the impulse which had resulted +in his modest retreat from Morehouse's side, under cover of the +crowd's wild demonstration, and the next morning when he boarded the +train which was to carry him back to the hills, after a cautious +reconnaissance that finally located Denny in the coach ahead of him, +he once or twice sought to analyze his actions for an explanation less +derogatory to his own self-respect. + +"They wan't no real sense ner reason in my hangin' around, jest +gittin' under foot," he stated thoughtfully. "I done about all I was +called on to do, didn't I? Why, I reckon when all's said and done, I +jest about won that fight myself! For if I hadn't a-come he wouldn't +never a-got that ribbon. And Godfrey, but didn't that wake him!" + +There was more than a little satisfaction to be gained in viewing +himself in that light. With less to occupy his mind and unlimited +leisure for elaboration it could have served as the entire day's theme +for thought. But so far as explaining his almost panic haste to get +away the reasoning was palpably unsatisfactory--so unsatisfactory that +he cringed guiltily behind the back of the seat in front of him +whenever anyone entered the front door of the car. + +He gave quite the entire day to the problem and long before night hid +the flying fences outside his window he decided that eventually there +could be only one way out of it. Sooner or later he had to face the +issue: he had to tell Young Denny that he had betrayed his trust. Even +that damp wad of bills which the boy had pressed into his hand, that +night before he left, still burned within his coat. + +Once or twice he rose, during the return journey and advanced with +forced jauntiness as far as the door of the car ahead. But he always +stopped there, after a moment's uneasy contemplation of Denny's back, +turned a little sadly to the water-cooler, and returned slowly and +unenthusiastically to his seat. Twice when it was necessary to change +trains he made the transfer with a lightning precision that would have +done honor to any prestidigitator. And when, hours after nightfall, +the train came to a groaning standstill before Boltonwood's deserted +station shed he waited his opportunity and dropped off in the dark--on +the wrong side of the track! + +Denny had already become a dark blur ahead of him when he, too, turned +in and took the long road toward town. + +Old Jerry followed the big-shouldered figure that night with heavily +lagging feet--he followed heavy in spirit and bereft of hope. He was +still behind him when Denny finally paused before the sagging gate of +John Anderson's half-stripped house. Then, watching the boy's dumb +lack of understanding, the enormity of the whole horrible complication +dawned upon him for the first time. He had forgotten Dryad Anderson's +going--forgotten that the house upon the ridge was no longer the +property of the man who had entrusted it to him. + +When the light behind that half-drawn shade flared up, far across on +the crest of the opposite hill, and Young Denny wheeled to plunge into +the black mouth of the path that led deeper into the valley, he too +started swiftly forward. He swept off in desperate haste up the long +hill road that led to the Bolton homestead. + +The light was still there in that front room when he poked a +tentatively inquiring head in at the open door; he paused in a +dull-eyed examination of the silken garments draped over the table top +in the kitchen after he had roamed vaguely through the silent house. +But he was too tired in mind to give them much attention just then. + +Outside, buried in the shadow of Young Denny's squat, unpainted barn, +he still waited doggedly--he waited ages and ages, a lifetime of +apprehension. And then he saw them coming toward him, up out of the +shadow of the valley into the moonlight that bathed the hill in +silver. + +They paused and stood there--stood and stared out across the valley at +Judge Maynard's great box of a house on the hill and that bit of a +wedge-shaped acre of ruin that clung like an unsightly burr to the hem +of his immaculate pastures. + +Slender and boy-like in her little blouse and tight, short skirt the +girl was half-hidden in the hollow of his shoulder. Once, watching +with his head cocked pertly, sparrowlike, on one side, the old man's +eyes went to the white-bandaged knuckles of Denny's right hand; once +while he waited Old Jerry saw her lift her face--saw the big, +shoulder-heavy figure fold her in his arms and bend and touch the +glory of her hair with his lips while she clung to him, before she +turned and went slowly toward the open kitchen door. + +Then he started. He shrank farther back into the shadow and edged a +noiseless way around the building. But with the tavern lights +beckoning to him he waited an introspective moment or two. + +"Godfrey 'Lisha," he sighed thunderously, "but that takes a load offen +my mind!" + +And he ruminated. + +"But what's the use of my tryin' to explain now? What's the use--when +they ain't nothing to explain! It's all come out all right, ain't it? +Well, then, hedn't I jest as well save my breath?" + +He straightened his thin shoulders and stretched his arms. + +"It couldn't a-been handled much neater, either," that one-sided +conversation went on, "not anyway you look at it. I always did think +that the best thing to do in them matters was to kinda let 'em take +their own course. And now--now I guess I'll be gittin' along down!" + + * * * * * + +Before he opened the door of the Tavern office a scant half hour +later, Denny Bolton stopped there on the steps a moment and, his hand +on the latch, listened to the thin, falsetto voice that came from +within. A slow smile crept up and wrinkled the corners of the boy's +eyes after a while when he had caught the drift of those strident +words. + +They had been waiting for him--the regulars. They had been waiting for +him longer than Old Jerry knew. In the chair that had been the +throne-seat of the town's great man the servant of the Gov'mint sat +and faced his loyal circle. + +He had reached his climax--had hammered it home. Now he was rounding +out his conclusion for those who hung, hungry-eyed, upon his +eloquence. + +"I ain't begun to do it jestice yet," he apologized. "I ain't more'n +jest teched on a good many things that needs to be gone into a +trifle. Jest a trifle! It'll take weeks and weeks to do that. But +as I was a-sayin'--I got there! I got there just when I was needed +almighty bad. I ain't done that part of it jestice--but you'll see it +all in the papers in a day or two--Sunday supplement, maybe--and +pictures--and colors, too, I reckon!" + +THE END + + + + +GROSSET & DUNLAP'S + +DRAMATIZED NOVELS + +THE KIND THAT ARE MAKING THEATRICAL HISTORY + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list. + +WITHIN THE LAW. By Bayard Veiller & Marvin Dana. + +Illustrated by Wm. Charles Cooke. + +This is a novelization of the immensely successful play which ran for two +years in New York and Chicago. + +The plot of this powerful novel is of a young woman's revenge directed +against her employer who allowed her to be sent to prison for three years +on a charge of theft, of which she was innocent. + +WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY. By Robert Carlton Brown. + +Illustrated with scenes from the play. + +This is a narrative of a young and innocent country girl who is suddenly +thrown into the very heart of New York, "the land of her dreams," where +she is exposed to all sorts of temptations and dangers. + +The story of Mary is being told in moving pictures and played in theatres +all over the world. + +THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM. By David Belasco. + +Illustrated by John Rae. + +This is a novelization of the popular play in which David Warfield, as Old +Peter Grimm, scored such a remarkable success. + +The story is spectacular and extremely pathetic but withal, powerful, both +as a book and as a play. + +THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. By Robert Hichens. + +This novel is an intense, glowing epic of the great desert, sunlit +barbaric, with its marvelous atmosphere of vastness and loneliness. + +It is a book of rapturous beauty, vivid in word painting. The play has +been staged with magnificent cast and gorgeous properties. + +BEN HUR. A Tale of the Christ. By General Lew Wallace. + +The whole world has placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on a +height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The +clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect +reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere of +the arena have kept their deep fascination. A tremendous dramatic success. + +BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. By George Broadhurst and Arthur Hornblow. + +Illustrated with scenes from the play. + +A stupendous arraignment of modern marriage which has created an interest +on the stage that is almost unparalleled. The scenes are laid in New York, +and deal with conditions among both the rich and poor. + +The interest of the story turns on the day-by-day developments which show +the young wife the price she has paid. + +Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction + +Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York + + + + +JOHN FOX, JR'S. + +STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list. + +THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE. + +Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. + +The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree +that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine +lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he +finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the +foot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the +trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chase +than "the trail of the lonesome pine." + +THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME + +Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. + +This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "Kingdom Come." It +is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which often +springs the flower of civilization. + +"Chad," the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he +came--he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, +seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered +this waif about whom there was such a mystery--a charming waif, by the +way, who could play the banjo better than anyone else in the mountains. + +A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND. + +Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. + +The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of +moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the heroine +a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two impetuous young +Southerners fall under the spell of "The Blight's" charms and she learns +what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making of the +mountaineers. + +Included in this volume is "Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of +Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives. + +Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction + +Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York + + + + +STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY + +GENE STRATTON-PORTER + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list. + +THE HARVESTER. + +Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs + +"The Harvester," David Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who +draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the +book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man, with his sure +grip on life, his superb optimism, and his almost miraculous knowledge of +nature secrets, it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his +"Medicine Woods," and the Harvester's whole sound, healthy, large outdoor +being realizes that this is the highest point of life which has come to +him--there begins a romance, troubled and interrupted, yet of the rarest +idyllic quality. + +FRECKLES. + +Decorations by E. Stetson Crawford + +Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he +takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great +Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to +the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The Angel" +are full of real sentiment. + +A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. + +Illustrated by Wladyslaw T. Brenda. + +The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of the +self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards +all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, +and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising +surroundings those rewards of high courage. + +It is an inspiring story of a life worth while and the rich beauties of +the out-of-doors are strewn through all its pages. + +AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW. + +Illustrations in colors by Oliver Kemp. Design and decorations by Ralph +Fletcher Seymour. + +The scene of this charming, idyllic love story is laid in Central Indiana. +The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love; +the friendship that gives freely without return, and the love that seeks +first the happiness of the object. The novel is brimful of the most +beautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment +will endear it to all. + +Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction + +Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York + + + + +STORIES OF WESTERN LIFE + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list. + +RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE, By Zane Grey. + +Illustrated by Douglas Duer. + +In this picturesque romance of Utah, of some forty years ago, we are +permitted to see the unscrupulous methods employed by the invisible hand +of the Mormon Church to break the will of those refusing to conform to its +rule. + +FRIAR TUCK, By Robert Alexander Wason. + +Illustrated by Stanley L. 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Chisholm. + +Illustrated by Frank Tenney Johnson. + +This is a strong, virile novel with the lumber industry for its central +theme and a love story full of interest as a sort of subplot. + +A PRAIRIE COURTSHIP, By Harold Bindloss. + +A story of Canadian prairies in which the hero is stirred, through the +influence of his love for a woman, to settle down to the heroic business +of pioneer farming. + +JOYCE OF THE NORTH WOODS, By Harriet T. Comstock. + +Illustrated by John Cassel. + +A story of the deep woods that shows the power of love at work among its +primitive dwellers. It is a tensely moving study of the human heart and +its aspirations that unfolds itself through thrilling situations and +dramatic developments. + +Ask for a complete free list of G. & D. 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