"What's gone wrong?" Ann pursued, anxiously. "Don't tell me your mother has found out about-"

"Oh no, it's not that," Virginia said, wiping her eyes with her disengaged hand. "It's not that. I'm just miserable, Mrs. Boyd, that's all-thoroughly miserable. You mustn't think I'm like this all the time, for I'm not. I've been cheerful at home all day-as cheerful as I could be under the circ.u.mstances; but, being alone out here for the first time, I got to thinking about my mother, and the sadness of it all was too much for me."

"She hain't worse, is she?" Ann asked.

"Not that anybody could see, Mrs. Boyd," the girl replied; "but the cancer must be worse. Two doctors from Springtown, who were riding by, stopped to ask for a drink of water, and my uncle told them about mother's trouble. It looked like they just wanted to see it out of professional curiosity, for when they heard we had no money and were deeply in debt they didn't offer any advice. But they looked very much surprised when they made an examination, and it was plain that they didn't think she had much chance. My mother was watching their faces, and knew what they thought, and when they had gone away she fairly collapsed. I never heard such pitiful moaning in all my life. She is more afraid of death than any one I ever saw, and she just threw herself on her bed and prayed for mercy. Oh, it was awful! awful! Then my uncle came in and said the doctors had said the specialist in Atlanta could really cure her, if she had the means to get the treatment, and that made her more desperate. From praying she turned almost to cursing in despair. My uncle is usually indifferent about most matters, but the whole thing almost made him sick. He went out to the side of the house to keep from hearing her cries. Some of his friends came along the road and joked with him, but he never spoke to them. He told me there was a young doctor at Darley who was willing to operate on her, but that he would be doing it only as an experiment, and that n.o.body but the Atlanta specialist would be safe in such a case."

"And the cost, if I understood right," said Ann-"the cost, first and last, would foot up to about a hundred dollars."

"Yes, that's what it would take," Virginia sighed.

Ann's brow was furrowed; her eyes flashed reminiscently. "She ought to have been laying by something all along," she said, "instead of making it her life business to hara.s.s and pull down a person that never did her no harm."

"Don't say anything against her!" Virginia flared up. "If you do, I shall be sorry I said what I did this morning. You have been kind to me, but not to her, and she is my mother, who is now lying at the point of death begging for help that never will come."

Ann stared steadily, and then her lashes began to flicker. "I don't know but I think more of you for giving me that whack, my girl," she said, simply. "I deserve it. I've got no right on earth to abuse a mother to her only child, much less a mother in the fix yours is in. No, I went too far, my child. You are not in the fight between me and her."

"You ought to be ashamed to be in it, when she's down," said Virginia, warmly.

"Well, I _am_," Ann admitted. "I _am_. Come on to my gate with me. I want to talk to you. There is a lot of loose wood lying about up there, and you are welcome to all you pick up; so you won't be losing time."

With her ap.r.o.n drawn close up under her shapely chin, her eyes still red and her cheeks damp, Virginia obeyed. If she had been watching her companion closely, she might have wondered over the strange expression of Ann's face. Now and then, as she trudged along, kicking up the back part of her heavy linsey skirt in her st.u.r.dy strides, a shudder would pa.s.s over her and a weighty sigh of indecision escape her big chest.

"To think this would come to me!" she muttered once. "_Me!_ G.o.d knows it looks like my work t'other night was far enough out of my regular track without-huh!"

Reaching the gate, she told Virginia to wait a minute at the fence till she went into the house. She was gone several minutes, during which time the wondering girl heard her moving about within; then she appeared in the doorway, almost pale, a frown on her strong face.

"Look here, child," she said, coming out and leaning her big, bare elbows on the top rail of the fence, "I've thought this all over and over till my head spins like a top, and I can see but one way for your mother to get out of her trouble. I'm the greatest believer you ever run across of every human being doing his or her _full_ duty in every case.

Now, strange as it may sound, I left my home last night and deliberately made it my special business to step in between you and the only chance of getting the money your mother stands in need of. I thought I was doing what was right, and I still believe I was, as far as it went, but I was on the point of making a botched job of it. I'd get mighty few thanks, I reckon, for saving you from the clutches of that scamp if I left your mother to die in torment of body and soul. So, as I say, there ain't but one way out of it."

Ann paused; she was holding something tightly clasped in her hand, and not looking at Virginia.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," the girl said, wonderingly. "If you see any way out, it is more than I can."

"Well, your mother's got to go to Atlanta," Ann said, sheepishly; "and, as I see it, there isn't but one person whose duty it is to put up the cash for it, _and that person is me_."

"You? Oh no, Mrs. Boyd!"

"But I know better, child. The duty has come on me like a load of bricks dumped from a wagon. The whole thing has driven me slap-dab in a corner.

I know when I'm whipped-that's one of the things that has helped me along in a moneyed way in this life-it was always knowing when to let up. I've got to wave the white flag in this battle till my enemy's on her feet, then the war may go on. But"-Ann opened her hand and displayed the bills she was holding-"take this money home with you."

"Oh, Mrs. Boyd, I couldn't think of-"

"Well, don't think about it; take it on, and don't argue with a woman older than you are, and who knows better when and how a thing has to be done."

Most reluctantly Virginia allowed Ann to press the money into her unwilling hand. "But remember this," Ann said, firmly: "Jane Hemingway must never know where you got it-never! Do you understand? It looks like I can stand most anything better than letting that woman know I put up money on this; besides, bad off as she is, she'd peg out before she'd let me help her."

Virginia's face was now aflame with joy. "I tell you what I'll do," she said. "I'll accept it as a loan, and I'll pay it back some day if I have to work my hands to the bone."

"Well, you can do as you like about that," Ann said. "The only thing I absolutely insist on is that she isn't told who sent it. It wouldn't be hard to keep her in the dark; if you'll promise me right here, on your word, not to tell, then you can say you gave your sacred promise to that effect, and that would settle it."

"Well, I'll do that," Virginia finally agreed. "I know I can do that."

"All right," Ann said. "It may set the old thing to guessing powerful, and she may bore you to tell, promise or no promise, but she'll never suspicion _me_-never while the sun shines from the sky."

"No, she won't suspect you," Virginia admitted, and with a grateful, backward look she moved away.

Ann stood leaning against the fence, her eyes on the receding figure as the girl moved along the sunlit road towards the dun cottage in the shadow of the mountain.

"I reckon I'm a born idiot," she said; "but there wasn't no other way out of it-no other under the sun. I got my foot in it when I laid in wait watching for the girl to walk into that trap. If I hadn't been so eager for that, I could have left Jane Hemingway to her fate. Good Lord, if this goes on, I'll soon be bowing and sc.r.a.ping at that old hag's feet-_me!_ huh! when it's been _her_ all this time that has been at the bottom of the devilment."

XXV

During this talk Jane Hemingway had gone out to the fence to speak to Dr. Evans, who had pa.s.sed along the road, a side of bacon on his left shoulder, and she came back, and with a low groan sat down. Sam Hemingway, who sat near the fire, shrugged his shoulders and sniffed.

"You are making too much of a hullabaloo over it," he said. "I've been thinking about the matter a lots, and I've come to the final conclusion that you are going it entirely too heavy, considering the balance of us.

Every man, woman, and child, born and unborn, is predestinated to die, and them that meet their fate graceful-like are the right sort. Seeing you takin' on after them doctors left actually turned _me_ sick at the stomach, and that ain't right. I'll be sick enough when my own time comes, I reckon, without having to go through separate spells for all my kin by marriage every time they have a little eruption break out on them. Then here's Virginia having her bright young life blighted when it ought to be all sunshine and roses, if I may be allowed to quote the poets. I'll bet when you was a young girl your cheeks wasn't kept wet as a dish-rag by a complaining mother. No, what you've got to do, Sister Jane, is to pucker up courage and face the music-be resigned."

"Resigned! I say, resigned!" was the rebellious reply-"I say, resigned!

with a slow thing like this eating away at my vitals and nothing under high heaven to make it let go. You can talk, sitting there with a pipe in your mouth, and every limb sound, and a long life ahead of you."

"But you are openly disobeying Biblical injunction," said Sam, knocking his exhausted pipe on the heel of his shoe. "You are kicking agin the p.r.i.c.ks. All of us have to die, and you are raising a racket because your turn is somewhere in sight. You are kicking agin something that's as natural as a child coming into the world. Besides, you are going back on what you preach. You are eternally telling folks there's a life in front of us that beats this one all hollow, and, now that Providence has really blessed you by giving you a chance to sorter peep ahead at the pearly gates, you are actually balking worse than a mean mule. I say you ought to give me and Virginia a rest. If you can't possibly raise the scads to pay for having the thing cut out, then pucker up and grin and bear it. Folks will think a sight more of you. Being a baby at both ends of life is foolish-there ain't n.o.body willing to do the nursing the second time."

"I want you to hush all that drivel, Sam," the widow retorted. "I reckon folks are different. Some are born with a natural dread of death, and it was always in my family. I stood over my mother and watched her breathe her last, and it went awfully hard with her. She begged and begged for somebody to save her, even sitting up in bed while all the neighbors were crouched about crying and praying, and yelled out to them to stop that and do something. We'd called in every doctor for forty miles about, and she had somehow heard of a young one away off, and she was calling out his name when she fell back and died."

"Well, she must have had some load on her mind that she wasn't ready to dump at the throne," said Sam, without a hint of humor in his drawling voice. "I've always understood your folks, in the woman line at least, was unforgiving. They say forgiveness is the softest pillow to expire on. I dunno, I've never tried it."

"I'm miserable, simply miserable!" groaned Jane. "Dr. Evans has just been to Darley. He promised to see if any of my old friends would lend me the money, but he says n.o.body had a cent to spare."

"Folks never have cash for an investment of that sort," answered Sam. "I fetched up your case to old Milward Dedham at the store the other day.

He'd just sold five thousand acres of wild mountain land to a Boston man for the timber that was on it, and was puffed up powerful. I thought if ever a man would be prepared to help a friend he would. 'La me, Sam,'

said he, 'you are wasting time trying to keep a woman from pegging out when wheat's off ten cents a bushel. Any woman ought to be happy lying in a grave that is paid for sech times as these.'"

The widow was really not listening to Sam's talk. With her bony elbows on her knee, her hand intuitively resting on the painless and yet insistent seat of her trouble, she rocked back and forth, sighing and moaning. There was a clicking of the gate-latch, a step on the gravelled walk, and Virginia, flushed from exercise in the cool air, came in and emptied her ap.r.o.n in the chimney corner, from which her uncle lazily dragged his feet. He leaned forward and critically scanned the heap of wood.

"You've got some good, rich, kindling pine there, Virginia," he drawled out. "But you needn't bother after to-day, though. I'll have my wagon back from the shop to-morrow, and Simpson has promised to lend me his yoke of oxen, and let me haul some logs from his hill. Most of it is good, seasoned red oak, and when it gets started to burning it pops like a pack of fire-crackers."

Virginia said nothing. Save for the firelight, which was a red glow from live coals, rather than any sort of flame, the big room was dark, and her mother took no notice of her, but Sam had his eyes on her over his left shoulder.

"Your mother has been keeping up the same old song and dance," he said, dryly; "so much so that she's clean forgot living folks want to eat at stated times. I reckon you'll have to make the bread and fry what bacon is left on that strip of skin."

Virginia said nothing to him, for her glance was steadily resting on her mother's despondent form. "Mother," she said, in a faltering, almost frightened tone, for she had been accustomed to no sort of deception in her life, and the part she was to play was a most repellent one-"mother, I've got something to tell you, and I hardly know how to do it. Down the road just a while ago I met a friend-a person who told me-the person told me-"

"Well, what did the person tell you?" Sam asked, as both he and the bowed wreck at the fire stared through the red glow.

"The person wants to help you out of trouble, mother, and gave me the hundred dollars you need. Before I got it I had to give my sacred word of honor that I'd never let even you know who sent it. I hardly knew what to do, but I thought perhaps I ought to-"