did. I told her husband a whole string of deliberate lies that made him

leave her and take her child away. I spent half my life at this thing, to have it end like this: Men and women, the woman that I was doing all that against was the one who came up with the money that saved my worthless life and tried to hide it from me and the rest of the world. She not only done that, but she done me even a greater favor. I won't say what that was, but nobody but an angel from heaven, robed in the flesh of earth, could have done that, for it was the very thing she had every right to want to see visited on me. That act would have paid me back in my own coin, and she wanted to count out the money, but she was too much of heaven to go through it. Instead of striking at me, she saved me suffering that would have dragged me to the dust in shame. I've come here to say all this because I want to do her justice, if I can, while the breath of life is in me. I've just got back from Gilmer, where I went and met the man whose life I wrecked--her husband. I told him the truth, hoping that I could do him some good in atonement, but the poor, worn-out man seemed too utterly crushed to forgive me.'"

"Joe--she went to Joe!" Ann gasped, finding her voice. "Now, I reckon, he believes me. And to think that Jane Hemingway would say all that--do all that! It don't seem reasonable. But you say she actually--"

"Of course she did," broke in the narrator. "And when she was through she marched straight down the middle aisle and stalked outside. Half the folks got up and went to the windows and watched her tottering along the road; and then Brother Bazemore called 'em back and made 'em sit down. He said, in his cold-blooded way, hemming and hawing, that the whole community had been too severe, and that the best way to get the thing settled and smooth-running again was to agree on some sort of public testimonial. Ann, I reckon fully ten men yelled out that they would second the motion. I never in all my life saw such excitement. Folks was actually crying, and this one and that one was telling kind things you had done to them. Then they all got around me, Ann, and they made a lots over me, saying I was the only one who had acted right, and that I must ask you to forgive them. That was the motion Bazemore put and carried by a vote of rising. Half of them was so anxious to have their votes counted that they climbed up on the benches and waved their hats and bonnets and shawls, and yelled out, 'Here! here!' Bazemore dismissed without preaching; it looked like he thought nothing he could say, in any regular line, would count in such a tumult. And after meeting dozens of 'em slid up to me and snatched my hands and told me to speak a good word for them; they kept it up even after I'd got outside, some of 'em walking part of the way with me and sending messages. Wait till I catch my breath, and I'll tell you who spoke and what each one said, as well as I can."

"Never mind," said Ann, an absent look in her strong face. "I believe I'd rather not hear any more of it; it don't make one bit of difference one way or another."

"Why, Ann, surely you won't entertain hard feelings, now that they all feel so bad. If you could only 'a' been there, you would--"

"Oh, it isn't that," Ann sighed, and with her closed hand she pounded her heavy knee restlessly. "You see, Mary--oh, I don't know--but, well, I can't possibly be any way but the way the Lord made me, and to save my life I can't feel grateful. They all just seem to me like a lot of spoilt children that laugh or cry over whatever comes up. Somehow a testimonial from a congregation like that, after a lifetime of beating me and covering me with slime, seems more like an insult than a compliment. They think they can besmirch the best part of my life, and then rub it off in a minute with good intentions and a few words. Why, it was the same sort of whim that made them all follow Jane Hemingway like sheep after a leader. I don't hate 'em, you understand, but what they do or say simply don't alter my feelings a speck. I have known all along that I had the right kind of--character, and to listen to their sniffling testimony on the subject would seem to me like--well, like insulting my own womanhood."

"You are a powerful strange creature, Ann," Mrs. Waycroft said, reflectively, "but, I reckon, if you hadn't been that way you wouldn't be such a wonderful woman in so many ways. I was holding something back for the last, but I reckon you'll sniff at that more than what I've already told you. Ann, when I got home, and had just set down to eat a snack before running over to you, who should come to my back gate and call me out except Jane herself. She stood leaning against the fence like the walk had nearly done her up, and she refused to come in and set down. She said she wanted me to do her a favor. She said she knew I was at meeting and heard what she said, but that she wanted me to come to you for her. As God is my final Judge, I never felt such pity for a poor rotten shred of humanity in all my life. She looked like she was trying to cry, but was too dry inside to do anything but wheeze; her very eyes seemed to be literally on fire; she looked like a crazy person talking rationally. She said she wanted me to tell you how sorry and broke up she was, that she'd pay back that hundred dollars if she had to deed away her dead body to some medical college. She said she could do anything on earth to make amends _except_ go to you face to face and apologize--she'd walk from door to door all over the country, she said, and tell her tale of shame, but she couldn't say it to you. She said she had tried for weeks to do it, but she knew she'd never have the moral strength."

"She talked that way?" Ann said, looking steadily out into the sunshine through the open doorway.

"Yes; and I reckon you have as little patience with her message as you have with the balance," said the visitor.

"No, she's different, Mary," Ann declared. "Jane Hemingway is another proposition altogether. She's fought a long, fierce fight, and God Almighty's forces have whipped her clean out. She was a worthy foe, and I respect her more now than I ever did. She was different from the rest. _She_ had a cause. _She_ had something to fight about. She loved Joe Boyd with all the heart she ever had, and when I married him she couldn't--simply couldn't--let it rest. She held on like a bull-dog with his teeth clamped to bone. She's beat; I won't wait for her to come to me; I may take a notion and go to her."

XL

It was a crisp, clear day in December. Langdon Chester had gone to Darley to attend to the banking of a considerable amount of money which his father had received for cotton on the market. It happened to be the one day in the year in which the town was visited by a mammoth circus, and the streets were overflowing with mountain people eager to witness the grand street-parade, the balloon ascension, the side-shows, and, lastly, the chief performance under the big tent. From the quaint old Johnston House, along Main Street to the grain warehouses and the throbbing and wheezing cotton compress, half a mile distant, the street was filled with people afoot, in carts, wagons, and buggies, or on horseback. All this joy and activity made little impression on Langdon Chester. His face was thin and sallow, and he was extremely nervous. His last conversation with Virginia and her positive refusal to consider his proposal of marriage had left him without a hope and more desperate than his best friend could have imagined possible to a man of his supposedly callous temperament. And a strange fatality seemed to be dogging his footsteps and linking him to the matter which he had valiantly attempted to lay aside, for everywhere he went he heard laudatory remarks about Luke King and his marvellous success and strength of character. In the group of lawyers seated in the warm sunshine in front of Trabue's little one-storied brick office on the street leading to the court-house, it was a topic of more interest than any gossip about the circus. It was Squire Tomlinson's opinion, and he had been to the legislature in Atlanta, and associated intimately with politicians from all sections of the state, that King was a man who, if he wished it, could become the governor of Georgia as easy as falling off a log, or even a senator of the United States. The common people wanted him, the squire declared; they had worshipped him ever since his first editorial war-whoop against the oppression of the political ring, the all-devouring trusts, and the corrupt Northern money-power. The squire, blunt man that he was, caught sight of Langdon among his listeners and playfully made an illustration out of him. "There's a chap, gentlemen, the son of a good old friend of mine. Now, what did money, aristocratic parentage, family brains, and military honors do for him? He was sent to the best college in the state, with plenty of spending-money at his command, and is still hanging onto the strap of his daddy's pocket-book--satisfied like we all were in the good old days when each of us had a little nigger to come and put on our shoes for us and bring hot coffee and waffles to the bed after we'd tripped the merry toe on somebody's farm all night. Oh, you needn't frown, Langdon; you know it's the truth. He's still a chip off the old block, gentlemen, while his barefoot neighbor, a scion of po' white stock, cooked his brain before a cabin pine-knot fire in studying, like Abe Lincoln did, and finally went forth to conquer the world, and _is_ conquering it as fast as a dog can trot. It's enough, gentlemen, to make us all take our boys from school, give 'em a good paddling, and put 'em at hard toil in the field."

"Thank you for the implied compliment, Squire," Langdon said, angrily. "You are frank enough about it, anyway."

"Now, there, you see," the squire exclaimed, regretfully. "I've gone and rubbed him the wrong way, and I meant nothing in the world by it."

Langdon bowed and smiled his acceptance of the apology, though a scowl was on his face as he turned to walk down the street. From the conversation he had learned that King was expected up that day to visit his family, and a sickening shock came to him with the thought that it really was to see Virginia that he was coming. Yes, he was now sure that it had been King's attentions to the girl which had turned her against him--that and the powerful influence of Ann Boyd.

These thoughts were too much for him. He went into Asque's bar, at the hotel, called for whiskey, and remained there for hours.

Langdon was in the spacious office of the Johnston House when the evening train from Atlanta came into the old-fashioned brick car-shed at the door, and King alighted. His hand-bag was at once snatched by an admiring negro porter, and the by-standers crowded around him to shake hands. Langdon stood in the office a moment later, his brain benumbed with drink and jealous fury, and saw his rival literally received into the open arms of another eager group. Smothering an oath, the young planter leaned against the cigar-case quite near the register, over which the clerk stood triumphantly calling to King to honor the house by writing the name of the state's future governor. King had the pen in his hand, when, glancing up, he recognized Langdon, whom he had not seen since his return from the West.

"Why, how are you, Chester?" he said, cordially.

Langdon stared. His brain seemed pressed downward by some weight. The by-standers saw a strange, half-insane glare in his unsteady eyes, but he said nothing.

"Why, surely you remember me," Luke exclaimed, in honest surprise. "King's my name--Luke King. It's true I have not met you for several years, but--"

"Oh, it's King, is it?" Langdon said, calmly and with the edge of a sneer on his white, determined lip. "I didn't know if you were sure _what_ it was. So many of your sort spring up like flies in hot weather that one can't tell much about your parentage, except on the maternal side."

There was momentous silence. The crowded room held its breath in sheer astonishment. King stared at his antagonist for an instant, hoping against hope that he had misunderstood. Then he took a deep breath. "That's a queer thing for one man to say to another," he said, fixing Chester with a steady stare. "Are you aware that a remark like that might reflect on the honor of my mother?"

"I don't care who it reflects on," retorted Chester. "You can take it any way you wish, if you have got enough backbone."

As quick as a flash King's right arm went out and his massive fist landed squarely between Chester's eyes. The blow was so strong that the young planter reeled back into the crowd, instinctively pressing his hands to his face. King was ready to strike again, but some of his friends stopped him and pushed him back against the counter. Others in the crowd forcibly drew his maddened antagonist away, and further trouble was averted.

With a hand that was strangely steady, King registered his name with the pen the clerk was extending to him.

"Let it drop, King," the clerk said. "He's so drunk he hardly knows what he's doing. He seems to have it in for you, for some reason or other. It looks like jealousy to me. They were devilling him over at Trabue's office awhile ago about his failure and your big success. Let it pass this time. He'll be ashamed of himself as soon as his liquor dies out."

"Thank you, Jim," King replied. "I'll let it rest, if he is satisfied with what he's already had."

"Going out home to-night?" the clerk asked.

"If I can get a turnout at the stable," King answered.

"You will have to take a room here, then," the clerk smiled, "for everything is out at the livery. I know, because two travelling men who had a date with George Wilson over there are tied up here."

"Then I'll stay and go out in the morning," said King. "I'm tired, anyway, and that is a hard ride at night."

"Well, take the advice of a friend and steer clear of Chester right now," said the clerk. "He's a devil when he's worked up and drinking. Really, he's dangerous."

"I know that, but I'll not run from him," said King. "I thought my fighting day was over, but there are some things I can't take."

XLI

It was dusk the following evening. Virginia was at the cow-lot when her uncle came lazily up the road from the store and joined her. "Well," he drawled out, as he thrust his hands into his pocket for his pipe, "I reckon I'm onto a piece o' news that you and your mother, nor nobody else this side o' Wilson's shebang, knows about. Mrs. Snodgrass has just arrived by hack from Darley, where she attended the circus and tried to get a job to beat that talking-machine they had in the side-show. It seems that this neighborhood has furnished the material for more excitement over there than the whole exhibition, animals and all."

"How is that, uncle?" Virginia asked, absent-mindedly.

"Why, it seems that a row has been on tap between Langdon Chester and Luke King for, lo, these many months, anyway, and yesterday, when the population of Darley turned out in as full force to meet Luke King as they did the circus parade, why it was too much for Chester's blood. He kept drinking and drinking till he hardly knew which end of him was up, and then he met Luke at the Johnston House face to face. Mrs. Snod says Langdon evidently laid his plans so there would have to be a fight in any case, so he up and slandered that good old mammy of King's."

"Oh, uncle, and they fought?" Virginia, pale and trembling, gasped as she leaned for support on the fence.

"You bet they did. Mrs. Snod says the vile slander had no sooner left Chester's lips than King let drive at him right between the eyes. That knocked Langdon out of the ring for a while, and his friends took him to a room to wash him off, for he was bleeding like a stuck pig. King was to come out here last night, but Mrs. Snod says he was afraid Chester would think he was running from the field, and so he stayed on at the hotel. Then, this morning early, the two of them come together on the street in front of the bank building. Mrs. Snod says Chester drawed first and got Luke covered before he could say Jack Robinson, and then fired. Several shots were exchanged, but the third brought King to his knees. They say he's done for, Virginia. He wasn't dead to-day at twelve, but the doctors said he couldn't live an hour. They say he was bleeding so terrible inside that they was afraid to move him. I'm here to tell you, Virgie, that I used to like that chap; and when he got to coming to see you, and I could see that he meant business, I was in hopes you and him would make a deal, but then you up and bluffed him off so positive that I never could see what it meant. Why, he was about the most promising young man I ever--But look here, child, what's ailing you?"

"Nothing, uncle," Virginia said; and, with her head down, she turned away. Looking after her for a moment in slow wonder, Sam went on into the farm-house, bent on telling the startling news to his sister-in-law. As for Virginia, she walked on through the gathering dusk towards Ann Boyd's house. "Dead, dying!" she said, with a low moan. "It has come at last."

Farther across the meadow she trudged, unconscious of the existence of her physical self. At a little stream which she had to cross on stepping-stones she paused and moaned again. Dead--actually dead! Luke King, the young man whom the whole of his state was praising, had been shot down like a dog. No matter what might be the current report as to the cause of the meeting, young as she was she knew it to be the outcome of Langdon Chester's passion--the fruition of his mad threat to her. Yes, he had made good his word.

Approaching Ann's house, she entered the gate just as Mrs. Boyd came to the door and stood smiling knowingly at her.

"Virginia," she called out, cheerily, "what you reckon I've got here? You could make a million guesses and then be wide of the mark."

"Oh, Mrs. Boyd!" Virginia groaned, as she tottered to the step and raised her eyes to the old woman's face, "you haven't heard the news. Luke is dead!"

"Dead?" Ann laughed out impulsively. "Oh no, I reckon not. Come in and take a chair by the fire; you've got your feet wet with the dew."

"He's dead, he's dead, I tell you!" Virginia stood still, her white and rigid face upturned. "Langdon Chester, the contemptible coward, shot him at Darley this morning."

"Oh, _that's_ it, is it?" A knowing look came into Ann Boyd's face. She stroked an impulsive smile from her facile lips, but Virginia still saw its light in the twinkling eyes above the broad, red hand. "You say he's dead? Well, well, that accounts for something I was wondering about just now. You know I am not much of a hand to believe in spiritual manifestations like table-raising folks do, but I'll give you my word, Virginia, that for the last hour and a half I'd 'a' sworn Luke King _himself_ was right here in the house. Just now I heard something like him walking across the floor. It seemed to me he went out to the shelf and took a drink of water. I'll bet it's Luke's spirit hanging about trying to tell me good-bye--that is, if he really _was_ shot, as you say." Ann smiled again and turned her face towards the inside of the room, and called out: "Say, Ghost of Luke King, if you are in my house right now you'd better lie low and listen. This silly girl is talking so wild the first thing you know she will be saying she don't love Langdon Chester."

"Love him? what's the matter with you?" Virginia panted. "I hate him. You know I detest him. I'll kill him. Do you hear me? I'll kill him as sure as I ever meet him face to face."

Ann stared at the girl for a moment, her face oddly beaming, then she looked back into the room again. "Do you hear that, Mr. Ghost? She now says she'll kill Langdon Chester on sight. She says that after sending _you_ about your business for no reason in the world. You listen good. Maybe she'll be saying after a while that she loved you."

"I _did_ love him. God knows I loved him!" Virginia cried. "I loved him with every bit of my soul and body. I've loved him, worshipped him, adored him ever since I was a child and he was so good to me. He was the noblest man that ever lived, and now a dirty, sneaking coward has slipped up on him and shot him down in cold blood. If I ever meet that man, as God is my Judge, I'll--" With a sob that was almost a shriek Virginia sank to the door-step and lay there, quivering convulsively.

A vast change swept over Ann Boyd. Her big face filled with the still blood of deep emotion. She heaved a sigh, and, turning towards the interior of the room, she said, huskily:

"Come on, Luke; don't tease the poor little thing. I wouldn't have carried it so far if I could have got it out of her any other way. She's yours, dear boy--heart, soul, and body."

Hearing these words, Virginia raised her head in wonder, just as Luke King emerged from the house. He bent over her, and tenderly raised her up. He was drawing her closer to him, his fine face aflame with tender passion, when Virginia held him firmly from her.

"Don't! don't!" she said. "If you knew--"

"I've told him everything, Virginia," Ann broke in. "I had to. I couldn't see my dear boy suffering like he was, when--"

"You know--" Virginia began, aghast, "you know--"

"About you and Chester?" King said, with a light laugh. "Yes, I know all about it, and it made me think you the grandest, most self-sacrificing little girl in all the world. So you thought I was dead? That was all gossip. It was only a quarrel that amounted to nothing. I understand, now that he is sober, that Chester is heartily ashamed of himself."

Half an hour afterwards Ann stood at the gate and saw them walking together towards Virginia's home. She watched them till they were lost from her sight in the dusk, then she went back into the house. She stood over the low fire for a moment, then said: "I won't get any supper ready. I couldn't eat a bite. Meat and bread couldn't shove this lump out of my throat. It's pretty, pretty, pretty to see those two together that way. I believe they have got the sort of thing the Almighty really meant love to be. I know _I_ never got that kind, though, as a girl, I dreamt of nothing else--nothing from morning till night but that one thing, and yet here I am this way--_this way_!"

XLII

The next morning the weather was as balmy as spring. Ann had taken all the coverings from her beds and hung them along the fence to catch the purifying rays of the sun. Her rag-carpet was stretched out on the ground ready to be beaten. She was occupied in sweeping the bare floor of her sitting-room when a shadow fell across the threshold. Looking up, she saw a tall, lean man, very ill-clad, his tattered hat in hand, his shoes broken at the toes and showing the wearer's bare feet.

"It's me, Ann," Boyd said. "I couldn't stay away any longer. I hope you won't drive me off, anyway, before I've got out what I come to say."

She turned pale as she leaned her broom against the wall and began to roll her sleeves down her fat arms towards her wrists. "Well, I wasn't looking for you," she managed to say.

"I reckon not, Ann," he returned, a certain wistful expression in his voice and strangely softened face; "but I had to come. As I say--I had to come and speak to you, anyway."

"Well, take a chair," she said, awkwardly. "I've got the windows up to let the dust drive out, and I'll close them. It's powerful draughty. I don't feel it, working like I am, but you might, coming in from the outside."

He advanced to one of the straight-backed chairs which he remembered so well, and laid an unsteady hand on it, but he did not draw it towards him nor sit down. Instead, his great, hungry eyes followed her movements, as she bustled from one window to another, like those of a patient, offending dog.

"Well, why don't you sit down?" She had turned back to him, and stood eying his poor aspect with strange misgivings and pity. In her comfort and luxury, he, with his evidences of poverty and despair, struck a strangely discordant note.

He drew the chair nearer, and with quivering knees she saw him sink into it, with firmness at the beginning and then with the sudden collapse of an invalid. She went to a window and looked out. Not seeing his horse hitched near by, she came back to him.

"Where did you hitch?" she asked, her voice losing firmness.

"I didn't have no horse," he said; "I walked, Ann. Lawson was hauling wood with the horse. He wouldn't have let me take it, anyway. He's got awfully contrary here lately. Me 'n' him don't get along at all."

"Do you mean to tell me--do you mean to tell me you walked all that way, in them shoes without bottoms, and--and you looking like you've just got up from a long sick spell?"

"I made it all right, Ann, stopping to rest on the way." A touch of color seemed to have risen into his wan cheeks. "I had to come to-day--as I did awhile back--to do my duty, as I saw it. In fact, this seems even more my duty. Ann, Jane Hemingway came over to Gilmer awhile back. She come straight to my house, and, my God, Ann, she come and told me she'd been at the bottom of all our trouble. She set right in and acknowledged that she lied; she said she'd been lying all along for spite, because she hated you."

"And loved you," Ann interposed, quickly. "Yes, she came back here, so I've been told, and stood up in meeting and said she'd been to see you, and she confessed it all in public. I can't find it in my heart to be hard with her, Joe. She was only obeying her laws of nature, as you have obeyed yours and I have mine, and--and as our offspring is now obeying hers. Tell me the straight truth, Joe. I reckon Nettie still feels strange towards me."

Joe Boyd's mild eyes wavered and sought the fire beyond the toes of his ragged shoes.

"Tell me the truth, Joe," Ann demanded. "I'm entitled to that, anyway."

"She's always been a queer creature," Boyd faltered, evasively, without looking up, and she saw him nervously laving his bony hands in the sheer, unsuggestive emptiness about him. "But you mustn't think it's just _you_ she's against, Ann. She's plumb gone back on me, too. The money you furnished cleared the place of debt and bought her wedding outfit, and she got her man; but not long back she found out where the means come from, and--"

Ann's lips tightened in the pause that ensued. Her face was set like a grotesque mask of stone. She leaned over the fire and pushed a fallen ember back under the steaming logs with a poker.

"She couldn't stomach that, I reckon?" Ann said, in assumed calmness.

"Well, it made her mad at me. I won't tell you all she done or said, Ann. It wouldn't do no good. I'm responsible for what she is, I reckon. She might have growed up different if she'd had the watchful care of--of a mother. What she is, is what any female will become under the care of a shiftless man like I am."

"No, you are wrong, Joe," Ann said. "Why it is so I don't intend to explain, but Nettie would have been like she is under all circumstances. Money and plenty of everything might have glazed her character over, but down at bottom she'd have been what she is. Adversity generally brings out all the good that's in a person; the reason it hasn't fetched it out in her is because it isn't there, nor never has been. You say you and her don't get on well?"

"Not now," he said. "She just as good as driv me from home yesterday. She told me point-blank that there wasn't room for me, and that when the baby comes they would be more crowded and pinched than ever. She actually sent Lawson to the Ordinary at Springtown to see if there was a place on the poor-farm vacant. When I dropped onto that, Ann, I come off. For all I know, they may have some paper for vagrancy ready to serve on me. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm not going back to them two, never while there is a lingering breath left in my body."

"The poor-farm!" Ann said, half to herself. "To think that she would consent to that, and you her father."

"I think his folks is behind it, Ann. They've got a reason for wanting to get rid of me."

"A reason, you say?" Ann was staring at him steadily.

Joe Boyd's embarrassment of a moment before returned. He twisted his hands together again. "Yes; it's like this, Ann," he went on, awkwardly: "a short time back Lawson's mother and father got onto the fact that you were in good circumstances, and it made the biggest change in them you ever heard of. They talked it all over the settlement. They are hard up, and they couldn't talk of anything but how much you was worth, and what you had your money invested in, and the like. After they got onto that, they never--never paid no attention to what had been--been circulated--your money covered all that as completely as a ten-foot snow. Instead of turning up their noses, as Nettie was afraid they would do, it only made them brag about how well their boy had done, and what a fool I was. They tried all sorts of ways to get Nettie interested in some scheme to attract your attention, but Nettie would just cry and take on and refuse to come over here or to write to you."

"I understand"--Ann stroked her compressed lips with an unsteady hand--"I understand. I've never been a natural mother to her; she couldn't come to me like that. But you say they turned against you."

"Yes. You see, the Lawsons got an idea--the old woman did, in particular, from something she'd picked up--that it was _me_ that stood between you and Nettie. They thought you and me had had such a serious falling-out that a proud woman like you never would have anything to do with Nettie as long as I was about, and that the best thing was to shove me off so the reconciliation would work faster. The truth is, they said that would please you."

"I see, I see," Ann said. "And they set about putting you at the poor-farm."

"Yes; they seemed to think that was as good a place as any. And they could get all the proof necessary to put me there, for I hadn't a cent to my name nor a whole rag to my back; and, Ann, for the last three months I haven't been able to do a lick o' work. I've had a strange sort of hurting all down my left side, and my right ankle seems affected in the same way."

Ann Boyd suddenly turned away. Through the window she had seen the wind blowing one of her sheets from the fence, and she went out and put it in place. He limped out into the sunlight and stood at the little, sagging gate a few yards from her. Something of his old dignity and gallantry of manner was on him: he still held his hat in his hand, his thin, iron-gray hair exposed to the warm rays of the sun.

"Well, I'd better be going, Ann," he said. "There is no telling when somebody might come along and see me here, and start the talk you hate so much. I come all the way here to tell you how low and mean I feel for taking Jane Hemingway's word instead of yours, and how plumb sorry I am. You and me may never meet again this side of the Seat of Judgment, and I'll say this if I never speak again. Ann, the only days of perfect happiness I ever had was here with you, and, if all of it was to do over again, I'd suffer torture by fire rather than believe you anything but an angel from heaven. Oh, Ann, it was just my poor, weak inferiority to you that made me misjudge you. If I'd ever been a _real_ man--a man worthy of a woman like you--I'd have snapped my fingers at all that was said, but I was obeying my laws, as you say. I simply wasn't deep enough nor high enough to do you justice."

He drew the little gate ajar and dragged his tired feet through the opening. The fence was now between them. She looked down the road. A woman under a sun-bonnet and little shawl was coming towards them. By a strange fatality it was Jane Hemingway, but she was not to pass directly by them, as her path homeward turned sharply to the left a hundred yards below. They both recognized her.

"I don't know fully what you mean, Joe," Ann said, softly, "but if you mean by what you just said that you'd be willing now to--to come back--if _that's_ what you mean, I'd have something to say that maybe, in justice to myself, I ought to say."

"_Would_ I come back? Would I? Oh, Ann, how could you doubt that, when you see how miserable and sorry I feel. God knows I'd never feel worthy of you; but if you would--if you only could--let me stay, I--"

"I couldn't consent to _that_, Joe--that's the point," Ann answered, firmly. "Anything else on earth but _that_. I expect to provide for Nettie in a substantial way, and I expect to have a lawyer make it one of the main conditions that her income depends on her good treatment of you as long as you and she live. I expect to do that, but the other matter is different. A woman of my stamp has her pride and her rights, Joe. I've been through a lot, but I can endure just so much and no more. If--if you _did_ come back, and we was married over again, it would go out to the world that you had taken _me_ back, and I couldn't stand that. My very womanhood rises up and cries out against that in a voice that rings clear to the end of truth and justice and woman's eternal rights. Joe, I'm too big and pure in _myself_ to let the world say a man who was--was--I'm going to say it--was little enough to doubt my word for the best part of my days had at last taken _me_ back--taken me back when my lonely life's sun was on the decline. No, no, never; for the sake of unborn girl infants who may have to meet what I fell under when I was too young to know the difference between the smile of hell and the smile of heaven, I say No! We'd better live out our days in loneliness apart--you frail and uncared for, and me on here without a friend or companion--than to sanction such a baleful thing as that."

"Then I'll tell you what you let _me_ do," Boyd said, with a flare of his old youthful adoration in his face. "Let me get down on my knees, Ann, and crawl with my nose in the dust to everybody that we ever knew and tell them that I'd begged and begged for mercy, and at last Ann had taken _me_ back, weak and broken as I am--weak, ashamed, and unworthy, but back with her in the place I lost through my own narrowness and cowardice. Let me do that, Ann--oh, let me do that! I can't go away. I'd die without you. I've loved you all, all these years and had you in my mind night and day."

Ann was looking at the ground. The blood had mounted red and warm into her face. Suddenly she glanced down the road. Jane Hemingway was just turning into the path leading to her home; her eyes were fastened on them. She paused and stood staring.

"Poor thing!" Ann said, her moist, glad eyes fixed upon Jane. "She is as sorry and repentant as she can be. Her only hope right now, Joe, is that we'll make it up. She used to love you, too, Joe. You are the only man she ever did love. Let's wave our hands to her so she will understand that--we have come to an understanding."

"Oh, Ann, do you mean--" But Ann, with a flushed, happy face, was waving her hand at her old enemy. As for Boyd, he lowered his head to the fence and sobbed.

THE END