"It is Virginia-it must be-yes, it is Virginia!" he said, ecstatically.

"She has become what I knew she would become, the loveliest woman in the world; she is exactly as I have fancied her all these years-proud, erect-and her eyes, oh! I must look into her eyes again! Ah, now I know what brought me home! Now I know why I was not content away. Yes, this was the cause-Virginia-my little friend and pupil-Virginia!"

She had turned her head, and with the startled look of a wild young fawn on the point of running away, she stood staring at him.

"Have you entirely forgotten me, Virginia?" he asked, advancing almost with instinctive caution towards her.

"Oh no, now I know you," she said, with, he thought, quite the girlish smile he had taken with him in his roaming, and she leaned over the fence and gave him her hand. He felt it pulsing warmly in his, and a storm of feeling-the acc.u.mulation of years-rushed over him as he looked into the eyes he had never forgotten, and marvelled over their wonderful lights and shadows. It was all he could do to steady his voice when he next spoke.

"It has been several years since I saw you," he said, quite aimlessly.

"In fact, you were a little girl then, Virginia, and now you are a woman, a full-grown woman-just think of that! But why are you looking at me so steadily from head to foot?"

"I-I can hardly realize that it really is you," Virginia said. "You see, Luke-Mr. King, I mean-I thought you were-really, I thought you were dead. My mother has said it many times. She quite believed it, for some reason or other."

"She _wanted_ to believe it, Virginia, with all respect to your mother.

She hates Aunt Ann-Mrs. Boyd, you know-and it seems she almost hoped I'd never amount to anything, since it was Mrs. Boyd's means that gave me my education."

"Yes, that's the way it must have been," admitted the girl, "and it seems strange for you to be here when I have thought I'd perhaps never see you again."

"So you really thought I was done for?" he said, trying to a.s.sume a calmness he was far from feeling under the t.i.tillating spell her beauty and sweet, musical voice had cast over him.

"Yes, mother often declared it was so, and then-" She broke off, her color rising slightly.

"And, then, Virginia-?" he reminded her, eagerly.

She looked him frankly in the eyes; it was the old, fearless, childlike glance that had told him long ago of her strong, inherent n.o.bility of character.

"Well, I really thought if you _had_ been alive you'd have come back to your mother. You would have written, anyway. She's been in a pitiful condition, Mr. King."

"I know it now, Virginia," he said, his cheeks hot with shame. "I'm afraid you'll never understand how a sane man could have acted as I have, but I went away furious with her and her husband, and I never allowed my mind to dwell in tenderness on her."

"That was no excuse," the girl said, still firmly, though her eyes were averted. "She had a right to marry again, and, if you and her husband couldn't get along together, that did not release you from your duty to see that she was given ordinary comfort. I've seen her walk by here and stop to rest, when it looked like she could hardly drag one foot after another. The thought came to me once that she was starving to give what she had to eat to the others."

"You needn't tell me about it," he faltered, the flames of his shame mounting high in his face-"I stayed there last night. I saw enough to drag my soul out of my body. Don't form hasty judgment yet, Virginia.

You shall see that I'll do my duty now. I'll work my hands to the bone."

"Well, I'm glad to hear you talk that way," the girl answered. "It would make her so happy to have help from you."

"Your ideas of filial duty were always beautiful, Virginia," he said, his admiring eyes feasting on her face. "I remember once-I shall never forget it-it was the day you let me wade across the creek with you in my arms. You said you were too big to be carried, but you were as light as a feather. I could have carried you that way all day and never been tired. It was then that you told me in all sincerity that you would really die for your mother's sake. It seemed a strangely unselfish thing for a little girl to say, but I believe now that you'd do it."

"Yes, in my eyes it is the first, almost the _whole_ of one's duty in life," Virginia replied. "I hardly have a moment's happiness now, owing to my mother's failing health."

"Yes, I was sorry to hear she was afflicted," said King. "She's up and about, though, I believe."

"Yes, but she is suffering more than mere bodily pain. She has her trouble on her mind night and day. She's afraid to die, Luke. That's queer to me. Even at my age I'd not be afraid, and she is old, and really ought not to care. I'd think she would have had enough of life, such as it has been from the beginning till now, full of strife, anger, and envy. I hear her calling me now, and I must go in. Come see her, won't you?"

"Yes, very soon," King said, as she turned away. He stood at the fence and watched her as she moved gracefully over the gra.s.s to the gate near the cottage. At the door she turned and smiled upon him, and then was gone.

"Yes, I now know why I came back," he said. "It was Virginia-little Virginia-that brought me. Oh, G.o.d, isn't she beautiful-isn't she strong of character and n.o.ble? Away back there when she wore short dresses she believed in me. Once" (he caught his breath) "I seemed to see the dawn of love in her eyes, but it has died away. She has out-grown it. She thought me dead; she didn't want to think me alive and capable of neglecting my mother. Well, she shall see. She, too, looks on me as an idle drift-about; in due time she shall know I am more serious than that. But I must go slowly; if I am too impulsive I may spoil all my chances, and, Luke King, if that woman does not become your wife you will be a failure-a dead failure at everything to which you lay your hands, for you'd never be able to put your heart into anything again-you couldn't, for it's hers for all time and eternity."

It was dusk when he returned to his mother's cabin. Jake sat on his warm bag of meal just inside the door. Old Mark had taken off his shoes, and sat under a persimmon-tree "cooling off" and yelling impatiently at his wife to "hurry up supper."

When she heard Luke had returned, she came to the door where he sat talking to Jake. "We didn't know what had become of you," she said, as she emerged from the cabin, bending her head to pa.s.s through the low doorway.

"I got interested in looking over the d.i.c.kerson farm," he replied, "and before I realized it the sun was almost down."

"Oh, it don't matter; I saved you a piece of pie; I'm just warming it over now. I'll bet you didn't get a bite o' dinner."

"Yes, I did. The fact is, d.i.c.kerson remembered me, and made me go to dinner with him; but I'm ready to eat again."

As they were rising from the table a few minutes later, King said, in a rather constrained tone, "I've got something to say to you all, and I may as well do it now."

With much clatter they dragged their chairs after him to the front room and sat down with awkward ceremony-the sort of dignified quiet that usually governed them during the visit of some strolling preacher or benighted peddler. They stared with ever-increasing wonder as he placed his own chair in front of them. Old Mark seemed embarra.s.sed by the formality of the proceedings, and endeavored to relieve himself by a.s.suming indifference. He coughed conspicuously and hitched his chair back till it leaned against the door-jamb.

There was a queer, boyish tremor in Luke King's voice when he began to speak, and it vibrated there till he had finished.

"Since I went away from you," he began, his eyes on the floor, "I have studied hard and closely applied myself to a profession, and, though I've wandered about a good deal, I've made it pay pretty well. I'm not rich, now, but I'm worth more than you think I am. In big cities the sort of talent I happen to have brings a sort of market-price, and I have profited by my calling. You have never had any luck, and you have worked hard and deserve more than has fallen to your lot. You'd never be able to make anything on this poor land, even if you could buy your supplies as low as those who pay cash, but you have not had the ready money at any time, and the merchants have swindled you on every deal you've made with them. The d.i.c.kerson plantation is the sort of place you really need. It is worth double the price he asked for it. I happened to have the money to spare, and I bought it to-day while I was over there."

There was a profound silence in the room. The occupants of the row of chairs stared at him with widening eyes, mute and motionless. A sudden breeze came in at the door and turned the oblong flame of the candle on the mantel towards the wall, and caused black ropes of smoke from the pine-knots in the chimney to curl out into the room like pyrotechnic snakes. Mrs. Bruce bent forward and peered into King's motionless face and smiled and slyly winked, then she glanced at the serious faces of the others, and broke into a childish laugh of genuine merriment.

"La me! ef you-uns ain't settin' thar with mouths open like bull-frogs swallowin' down ever'thing that boy says, as ef it was so much law an'

gospel."

But none of them entered her mood; indeed, they gave her not so much as a glance. Without replying to her, King rose and took the candle from the mantel-piece. He stood it on the table and laid a folded doc.u.ment beside it. "There's the deed," he said. "It's made out to mother as long as she lives, and to fall eventually to her step-daughters and step-son, Jake."

He left the paper on the table and went back to his chair. An awkward silence ensued. It was broken by old Mark. He coughed and threw his tobacco-quid out at the door, and, smiling to hide his half-sceptical agitation, he moved to the table. His gaunt back was to them, and his grizzled face went out of view when he bent to hold the paper in the light.

"By Jacks, that's what it is!" he blurted out. "There's no shenanigan about it. The d.i.c.kerson place is Mariar Habersham Bruce's, ef _I_ kin read writin'."

With a great clatter of heavy shoes and tilted chairs falling back into place, they rose and gathered about him, leaving their benefactor submerged in their combined shadow. Each took the paper, examined it in reverent silence, and then slowly fell back, leaving the doc.u.ment on the table. Mark Bruce started aimlessly towards the next room, but finally turned to the front door, where he stood irresolute, staring out at the night-wrapped mountain road. Mrs. Bruce looked at Luke helplessly and went into the next room, and, exchanging glances of dumb wonder with each other, the girls followed. Jake noticed that the wind was blowing the doc.u.ment from the table, and he rescued it and silently offered it to his step-brother.

King motioned it from him. "Give it to mother," he said. "She'll take care of it; besides, it's been recorded at the court-house. By-the-way, d.i.c.kerson will get out at once; the transfer includes all the furniture, and the crops, which are in a good condition."

King had Jake's bed to himself again that night. For hours he lay awake listening to the insistent drone of conversation from the family, which had gathered under the apple-trees in front of the cabin. About eleven o'clock some one came softly into his room. The moon had risen, and its beams fell in at the open door and through a window with a sliding wooden shutter. It was Mrs. Bruce, and she was moving with catlike caution.

"Is that you, mother?" he asked.

For an instant she was so much startled at finding him awake that she made no reply. Then she stammered: "Oh, I was tryin' so hard not to wake you! I jest wanted to make sh.o.r.e yore bed was comfortable. We put new straw in the tick to-day, and sometimes new beds lie lumpy and uneven."

"It's all right," he a.s.sured her. "I wasn't asleep, anyway."

He could feel her still trembling in excitement as she sat down on the edge of the bed. "I reckon you couldn't sleep, nuther," she said. "Thar hain't a shut eye in this cabin. They've all laid down, an' laid down, an' got up over an' over." She laughed softly and twisted her hands nervously in her lap. "We are all that excited we don't know which end of us is up. Why, Luke, boy, it will be the talk of the whole county, and it'll be a big feather in old Ann Boyd's cap-you goin' off an'

makin' money so fast after she give you your schoolin', an' they all predicted it ud come to no good end. Sech luck hain't fell to any family as pore as we are sence I kin remember. I don't know as I ever heard o'

such a thing in my life. La me, it ud make you split your sides laughin'

to set out thar an' listen to all the plans them children are a-makin'.

But Mark, he has the least to say of all, an', Luke, as happy as I am, I'm sorter sorry fer that pore old fellow. He feels bad about the way he's always treated you, an' run down yore kind o' work. He's too back'ard an' shamefaced to ax yore pardon, an' in a sheepish sort of a way, jest now, he hinted he'd like fer me to plaster it over fer 'im.

He's a good man, Luke, but he's gittin' old an' childish, an' has been hounded to death by debt an' circ.u.mstances."

"He's all right," King said, strangely moved. "Tell him I have not the slightest ill-will against him, an' I hope he'll get along well on the new place."