"Somehow you keep talkin' like you don't intend to stay long," she said, tentatively.

"I know, but I sha'n't be far away," he replied. "I can run up from my work in Atlanta every now and then, and it would be great to rest up on a farm among home folks, here in the mountains."

"Well, I'll be glad of that," Mrs. Bruce said, plaintively. "I have got sorter used to my step-children, but they ain't the same as a body's own flesh and blood. I'm proud of you, Luke," she added, tremulously. "After all my fears that you'd not come to much, you've turned out to be my main-stay. You'll be a great man before you die. Anybody that kin make an' throw away ten thousand dollars as easy as you have, ain't no small potato as men go these days. I reckon the trouble with us all is that none of us had brains enough to comprehend what yore aims was. But Ann Boyd did. She's the most wonderful woman that ever lived in this part of the country, anyhow-kicked an' shoved about, hated an' hatin', an' yet ever' now an' then hittin' the nail square on the head an' doin'

somethin' big an' grand-something Christ-like an' holy-like what she done when she with-drawed her suit agin Gus Willard, simply because it would throw Mark out of a job to go on with it."

"Yes, she's a good woman, mother."

Mrs. Bruce went out, so that her son might go to sleep, but he slept very little. All night, at intervals, the buzz of low voices and sudden outbursts of merriment reached him and found soothing lodgment in his satisfied soul. Then, too, he was revelling in the memory of Virginia Hemingway's eyes and voice, and a dazzling hope that his meeting with her had inspired.

His mother stole softly into his room towards the break of day. This time it was to bring an old shawl, full of holes and worn to shreds, which she cautiously spread over him, for the mountain air had grown cool. She thought him asleep, but as she was turning away he caught her hand and drew her down and kissed her.

"Why, Luke!" she exclaimed; "don't be foolish! What's got in you? I-"

But her voice had grown husky, and her words died away in an irrepressible sob. She did not stir for an instant, then she put her arms round his neck and kissed him.

XVII

It was in the latter part of August. Breezes with just a touch of autumnal crispness bore down from the mountain-sides, clipping from their stems the first dead and dying leaves, and swept on across Ann Boyd's level cotton-fields, where she was at work at the head of a score of cotton-pickers-negro men, boys, women, and girls. There were certain social reasons why the unemployed poor white females would not labor under this strange woman, though they needed her ready money as badly as the blacks, and that, too, was a constant thorn in the flesh of Ann's pride. She could afford to pay well for work, inasmuch as her planting and harvesting were invariably profitable. She had good agricultural judgment, and she used it. Even her cotton picking would average up better to the acre than any other farmer's, for she saw to it that her workers put in good time and left no white, fluttering sc.r.a.p on stalk, leaf, or bole to attract the birds looking for linings for their winter's nests. When her black band had left a portion of her field, it was as if a forest fire had swept over it, leaving it brown and bare.

The negroes were always ready to work for her, for the best of them were never criticised for having done so. The most fault-finding of her enemies had even been glad of the opportunity to call attention to the fact that only negroes would sink so low as to toil by her side. But the blacks didn't care, and in their taciturn fidelity they never said aught against her. As a rule, the colored people had contempt for the "pore white trash," and reverenced the ex-slave-holder and his family; but Ann Boyd was neither one nor the other. She was rich, and therefore powerful-a creature to be measured by no existing standards. When they worked for their old owners and others of the same impoverished cla.s.s, they were asked to take in payment old clothing, meat-and not the choicest-from the smoke-house, and grain from the barn, or a questionable order to some store-keeper who, being dubious about the planter's account himself, usually charged double in self-protection.

But on Ann's place it was different. At the end of each day, hard, jingling cash was laid into their ready palms, and it was symbolic of the freedom which years before had been talked about so much, but which somehow had appeared in name only. Yes, Ann Boyd was different. Coming in closer contact with her than the whites, they knew her better and felt her inherent worth. They always addressed her as "Miss Ann," and as "Miss Ann" she was known among them far and near-a queer, powerful individuality about whose private life-having naught to lose or gain by it-they never gossiped.

On the present day, when the sun dipped below the mountain-top, Ann raised the cow's horn, which she always wore at her belt, and blew a resounding blast upon it. This was the signal that the day's toil was ended, and yet so faithful were her black allies that each tried to complete the row he happened to be on before he brought in his bag. The crop for the year was good over all that portion of the state, and the newspapers, which Ann read carefully by candle-light at night, were saying that, owing to the little cotton being produced in other parts of the South, the price was going to be high. And that meant that Ann Boyd would be a "holder" in the market-not needing ready money, her bales would remain in a warehouse in Darley till the highest price had been reached in the long-headed woman's judgment, which in this, too, was always good-so good, in fact, that the Darley cotton speculators were often guided by it to their advantage.

The gathering-bags all in the cotton-house, Ann locked the rusty padlock, paid the toilers from her leather bag, and trudged home to her well-earned supper. When that was prepared and eaten, she moved her chair to the front porch and sat down; but the air was cool to unpleasantness, and she moved back into the gracious warmth of the big, open fire. All the afternoon her heart had thrilled over a report that Jane Hemingway's small cotton crop was being hastily and carelessly gathered and sold at the present low price by the man who held a mortgage on it. It pleased Ann to think that Jane would later hear of her own high receipts and be stung by it. Then, too, she had heard that Jane was more and more concerned about her bodily affliction and the inability to receive proper treatment. Yes, Jane was getting payment for what she had done in such an underhanded way, and Ann was glad of it.

Other things had not gone to please Ann of late. She had tried her best to be in sympathy with Luke King's action in paying out his last dollar of ready money for a farm for his family, whom she heartily despised for their treatment of her, but she could not see it from the young man's sanguine and cheerful stand-point. She had seen the Bruce family driving by in one of the old-fashioned vehicles the d.i.c.kersons had owned, and the sight had seemed ludicrous to her. "The boy will never amount to anything," she said. "He'll be poor all his life. He'll let anybody impose on him." And yet she loved him with a strange, insistent affection she could hardly understand. Even when she had bitterly upbraided him for that amazing act of impulsive generosity, as he sat in her doorway the next morning, and she saw the youthful blaze of enthusiasm in his eyes as he essayed to justify his course by the theories of life which had guided him in his professional career-even then an impulse was tugging at her heart to listen and believe the things he was so ardently declaring would free her from her bondage to hate and avarice. She could have kissed him as she might have kissed a happy, misguided son, and yet her coldness, her severity, she argued, was to be for his ultimate good. He had sent her copies of his new paper, with his editorials proudly marked in blue pencil. They were all in the same altruistic vein, and, strange to say, the extracts printed from leading journals all over the South in regard to his work were full of hearty approval. He had become a great factor for good in the world.

He was one man who had the unfaltering courage of his convictions. Ann laughed to herself as she recalled all she had said to him that day. No wonder that he had thrown it off with a smile and a playful kiss, when such high authorities were backing him up. True, he might live in such a way as never to need the money which had been her weapon of defence, and he might finally rise to a sort of penniless greatness. Besides, his life was one thing, hers another. No great calamity had come to him in youth, such as she had known and so grimly fought; no persistent enemy was following his track with the scent and bay of a blood-hound, night and day seeking to rend him to pieces.

These reflections were suddenly disturbed by a most unusual sound at that time of night. It was the sharp click of the iron gate-latch. Ann's heart sprang to her throat and seemed to be held there by taut suspense.

She stood up, her hand on the mantel-piece, bending her ears for further sounds. Then she heard a heavy, even tread approaching. How could it be?

And yet, though a score of years had sped since it had fallen on her ears, she knew it well. "It can't be!" she gasped. "It's somebody else that happens to walk like him; he'd never dare to-"

The step had reached the porch. The sagging floor bent and creaked. It was Joe Boyd. She knew it now full well, for no one else would have paused like that before rapping. There was silence. The visitor was actually feeling for the door-latch. It was like Joe Boyd, after years of absence, to have thought to enter her house as of old without the formality of announcing himself. He tried the latch; the door was fast.

He paused another moment, then rapped firmly and loudly. Ann stood motionless, her face pale and set almost in a grimace of expectancy.

Then Boyd stalked heavily to the window at the end of the porch; she saw his bushy head and beard against the small square of gla.s.s. As one walking in sleep, Ann stepped close to the window, and through the gla.s.s their eyes met in the first visual greeting since he had gone away.

"Open the door, Ann," he said, simply. "I want to see you."

"Huh, you _do_, do you?" she cried. "Well, you march yourself through that gate an' come round here in daytime. I see myself opening up at night for you or anybody else."

He pressed his face closer to the gla.s.s. His breath spread moisture upon it, and he raised his hands on either side of his head that he might more clearly see within.

"I want to see you, Ann," he repeated, simply. "I've been riding since dinner, and just got here; my hoss is lame."

"Huh!" she sniffed. "I tell you, Joe Boyd, I'll not-" She went no further. Something in his aging features tied her tongue. He had really altered remarkably; his face was full of lines cut since she had seen him. His beard had grown rough and bristly, as had his heavy eyebrows.

How little was he now like the once popular beau of the country-side who had been considered the best "catch" among young farmers! No, she had not thought of him as such a wreck, such an impersonation of utter failure, and even resignation to it.

"I reckon you'd better open the door an' let me in, Ann," he said. "I won't bother you long. I've just a few words to say. It's not about me.

It's about Nettie."

"Oh, it's about the child!" Ann breathed more freely. "Well, wait a minute, till I make a light."

He saw her go to the mantel-piece and get a candle and bend over the fire. There was a sudden flare of bluish flame as the dripping tallow became ignited in the hot ashes, then she straightened up and placed the light on a table. She moved slowly to the door and opened it. They stood face to face. He started-as if from the habit of general greeting-to hold out his rough hand, but changed his mind and rubbed it awkwardly against his thigh as his dumb stare clung to hers.

"Yes," he began, doggedly, "it's about Nettie." He had started to close the door after him, but, grasping the shutter firmly, Ann pushed it back against the wall.

"Let the door stand open," she said, harshly.

"Oh," he grunted, stupidly, "I didn't know but somebody pa.s.sin' along the road might-"

"Well, let 'em pa.s.s and look in, too," Ann retorted. "I'd a sight rather they'd pa.s.s and see you here in open candle-light than to have the door of my house closed with us two behind it. Huh!"

"Well," he said, a blear in his big, weary eyes, "you know best, I reckon. I admit I don't go deep into such matters. It's sorter funny to see you so particular, though, and with-with _me_."

He walked to the fire and mechanically held out his hands to the warmth.

Then, with his back to the red glow, he stood awkwardly, his eyes on the floor. After a pause, he said, suddenly: "If you don't mind, Ann, I'd rather set down. I'm tired to death, nearly, from that blasted long ride. Coming down-hill for five or six miles on a slow, stiff-jointed hoss is heavy on a man as old as I am."

She reached behind her and gave him a chair, but refused to sit down herself, standing near him as he sank into the chair; and, quite in his old way, she noticed he thrust out his pitifully ill-shod feet to the flames and clasped his hair-grown hands in his lap-that, too, in the old way, but with added feebleness.

"You said it was about the child," Ann reminded him. "Ain't she well?"

"Oh yes, she's well an' hearty," Boyd made haste to reply. "I reckon you may think it's odd fer me to ride away over here, but, Ann, I'm a man that feels like I want to do my full duty if I can in this life, and I've been bothering a lots here lately-a lots. I've lost sleep over a certain delicate matter, but nothing I kin do seems to help me out. It's a thing, you see, that I couldn't well ask advice on, and so I had to tussle with it in private. Finally I thought I'd just ride over and lay the whole thing before you."

"Well, what is it?" Ann asked.

"It's about the hardest thing to talk about that I ever tried to approach," Boyd said, with lowered glance, "but I reckon I'll have to get it out and be done with it, one way or another. You see, Ann, when the law gave me the custody of the child I was a younger man, with more outlook and health and management, in the judgment of the court, than I've got now, and I thought that what I couldn't do for my own flesh and blood n.o.body else could, and so I took her off."

"_Yes, you took her off!_" Ann straightened up, and a sneer touched her set features; there was a sarcastic, almost triumphant cry of vindictiveness in her tone.

"Yes, I thought all that," Boyd continued. "And I meant well, but miscalculated my own capacity and endurance. Instead of making money hand over hand as folks said almost any man could do out West, I sunk all I put in. We come back this way then, and I located in Gilmer, thinking I'd do better on soil I understood, and among the kind o' folks and religion I was used to, but it's been down-hill work ever since then. When Nettie was little it didn't seem like so much was demanded, but now, Ann, she's like all the balance o' young women of her age. She wants things like the rest around her, an' she pines for them, an'

sulks, and-and makes me feel awful. It's a powerful hard matter for me to dress her like some o' the rest about us, and she's the proudest thing that ever wore shoe-leather."

"Oh, I see!" said Ann. "She's going about, too, with-she's bein' courted by some feller or other."

"Yes, Sam Lawson, over there, a likely young chap, has taken a big fancy to her, and he's good enough, too, but I reckon a little under the influence of his daddy, who is a hard-sh.e.l.l Baptist, a man that believes in sanctification and talks it all the time. Well, to come down to it, things between Nettie and Sam is sorter hanging fire, and Nettie's nearly crazy for fear it will fall through. And that's why, right now, I screwed up to the point of coming to see you."

"You thought I could help her out in her courting?" Ann sneered, and yet beneath her sneer lay an almost eager curiosity.

"Well, not that exactly"-Joe Boyd spread out his rough fingers very wide to embrace as much of his dust-coated beard as possible; he pulled downward on a rope of it, and let his shifting glance rest on the fire-"not that exactly, Ann."

"Well, then, I don't understand, Joe Boyd," Ann said; "and let me tell you that no matter what sort of young thing I was when we lived together, I'm now a _business_ woman, and a _successful_ one, and I have a habit of not beating about the bush. I talk straight and make others do the same. Business is business, and life is short."

"Well, I'll talk as straight as I can," Boyd swallowed. "You see, as I say, old Lawson is a narrow, grasping kind of a man, and he can't bear the idea of his only boy not coming into something, even if it's very little, and I happen to know that he's been expecting my little farm over there to fall to Nettie."

"Well, _won't_ it?" Ann demanded.