"Oh yes, never was a better light for the business," said the vender, and he leaned forward, his eyes fixed sharply on the spot exposed between the widow's bony fingers. For a moment he said nothing. The woman's yellow breast lay flat and motionless. She scarcely breathed; her features were fixed by grim, fearful expectancy. He looked away from her, and then stooped to his pack to get a larger bottle. "I'm glad I happened to strike you just when I did, madam," he said. "Thar ain't no mistaking the charactericstics of a cancer when it's in its first stages. That's certainly what you've got, but I'm telling you G.o.d's holy truth when I say that by regular application and rubbing this stuff in for a month, night and morning, that thing will melt away like mist before a hot sun."

"So it really _is_ one!" Jane breathed, despondently.

"Yes, it's a little baby one, madam, but this will nip it in the bud and save your life. It will take the dollar size, but you know it's worth it."

"Oh yes, I'll take it," Jane panted. "Put it there in the fence-corner among the weeds, and I'll come out to-night and get it."

"All right," and the flask tinkled against a stone as it slid into its snug hiding-place among the Jamestown weeds nestling close to the rotting rails.

"Here's your money. I reckon we'd better not stand here." And Jane gave it to him with quivering fingers. He folded the bill carefully, thrust it into a greasy wallet, and stooped to close his bag and throw the strap over his shoulder.

"Now I'm going on to the next house," he said. "They tell me a curious sort of human specimen lives over thar-old Ann Boyd. Do you know, madam, I heard of that woman's tantrums at Springtown night before last, and at Barley yesterday. Looks like you folks hain't got much else to do but poke at her like a turtle on its back. Well, she must be a character! I made up my mind I'd take a peep at 'er. You know a travelling physician like I am can get at folks that sort o' hide from the general run."

Jane Hemingway's heart sank. Why had it not occurred to her that he might go on to Ann Boyd's and actually reveal her affliction? Such men had no honor or professional reputation to defend. Suddenly she was chilled from head to foot by the thought that the peddler might even boast of her patronage to secure that of her neighbor-that was quite the method of all such persons. It was on her tongue actually to ask him not to go to Ann Boyd's house at all, but her better judgment told her that such a request would unduly rouse the man's curiosity, so she offered a feeble compromise.

"Look here," she said, "I want it understood between us that-that you are to tell n.o.body about me-about my trouble. That woman over there is at outs with all her neighbors, and-and she'd only be glad to-"

Jane saw her error too late. It appeared to her now in the bland twinkle of amused curiosity in the stranger's face.

"I understand-I understand; you needn't be afraid of me," the man said, entirely too lightly, Jane thought, for such a grave matter, and he pushed back the brim of his hat and turned. "Remember the directions, madam, a good brisk rubbing with a flannel rag-red if you've got it-soaked in the medicine, twice a day. Good-evening; I'll be off. I've got to strike some house whar they will let me stay all night. I know that old hag won't keep me, from all I hear."

The widow leaned despondently against the fence and watched him as he ploughed his way through the tall gra.s.s and weeds of the intervening marsh towards Ann Boyd's house. The a.s.surance that the spot on her breast was an incipient cancer was bad enough without the added fear that her old enemy would possibly gloat over her misfortune. She remained there till she saw the vender approach Ann's door. For a moment she entertained the mild hope that he would be repulsed, but he was not.

She saw Ann's portly form framed in the doorway for an instant, and then the peddler opened the gate and went into the house. Heavy of heart, the grim watcher remained at the fence for half an hour, and then the medicine-vender came out and wended his way along the dusty road towards Wilson's store.

Jane went into the house and sat down wearily. Virginia was sewing at a western window, and glanced at her in surprise.

"What's the matter, mother?" she inquired, solicitously.

"I don't know as there is anything wrong," answered Jane, "but I am sort o' weak. My knees shake and I feel kind o' chilly. Sometimes, Virginia, I think maybe I won't last long."

"That's perfectly absurd," said the girl. "Don't you remember what Dr.

Evans said last winter when he was talking about the const.i.tutions of people? He said you belonged to the thin, wiry, raw-boned kind that never die, but simply stay on and dry up till they are finally blown away."

"He's not a graduated doctor," said Jane, gloomily. "He doesn't know everything."

VI

A week from that day, one sultry afternoon near sunset, a tall mountaineer, very poorly clad, and his wife came past Wilson's store.

They paused to purchase a five-cent plug of tobacco, and then walked slowly along the road in a dust that rose as lightly as down at the slightest foot-fall, till they reached Ann Boyd's house.

"I'll stay out here at the gate," the man said. "You'll have to do all the talking. As Willard said, she will do more for Luke King's mother than she would for anybody else, and you remember how she backed the boy up in his objections to me as a step-daddy."

"Well, I'll do what I can," the woman said, plaintively. "You stay here behind the bushes. I don't blame you for not wanting to ask a favor of her, after all she said when we were married. She may spit in my face-they say she's so cantankerous."

Seating himself on a flat stone, the man cut the corner off of his tobacco-plug and began to chew it, while his wife, a woman about sixty-five years of age, and somewhat enfeebled, opened the gate and went in. Mrs. Boyd answered the gentle rap and appeared at the door.

"Howdy do, Mrs. Boyd," the caller began. "I reckon old age hasn't changed me so you won't know me, although it's been ten years since me 'n' you met. I'm Mrs. Mark Bruce, that used to be Mrs. King. I'm Luke's mother, Mrs. Boyd."

"I knew you when you and Mark Bruce turned the bend in the road a quarter of a mile away," said Ann, sharply, "but, the Lord knows, I didn't think you'd have the cheek to open my front gate and stalk right into my yard after all you've said and done against me."

The eyes of the visitor fell to her worn shoe, through which her bare toes were protruding. "I had no idea I'd ever do such a thing myself until about two hours ago," she said, firmly; "but folks will do a lots, in a pinch, that they won't ordinarily. You may think I've come to beg you to tell me if you know where Luke is, but I hain't. Of course, I'd like to know-any mother would-but he said he'd never darken a door that his step-father went through, and I told 'im, I did, that he could go, and I'd never ask about 'im. Some say you get letters from him. I don't know-that, I reckon, is your business."

"You didn't come to inquire about your boy, then?" Ann said, curiously, "and yet here you are."

"It's about your law-suit with Gus Willard that I've come, Ann. He told you, it seems, that he was going to fight it to the bitter end, and he _did_ call in a lawyer, but the lawyer told him thar was no two ways about it. If his mill-pond backed water on your land to the extent of covering five acres, why, you could make him shet the mill up, even if he lost all his custom. Gus sees different now, like most of us when our substance is about to take wings and fly off. He sees now that you've been powerful indulgent all them years in letting him back water on your property to its heavy damagement, and he says, moreover, that, to save his neck from the halter, he cayn't blame you fer the action. He says he _did_ uphold Brother Bazemore in what he said about burning the bench that was consecrated till you besmirched it, and he admits he talked it here an' yan considerably. He said, an' Gus was mighty nigh shedding tears, in the sad plight he's in, that you had the whip in hand now, and that his back was bare, an' ef you chose to lay on the lash, why, he was powerless, for, said he, he struck the fust lick at you, but he was doin' it, he thought, for the benefit of the community."

"But," and the eyes of Ann Boyd flashed ominously, "what have _you_ come for? Not, surely, to stand in my door and preach to me."

"Oh no, Ann, that hain't it," said the caller, calmly. "You see, Gus is at the end of his tether; he's in an awful fix with his wife and gals in tears, and he's plumb desperate. He says you hain't the kind of woman to be bent one way or another by begging-that is, when you are a-dealing with folks that have been out open agin you; but now, as it stands, this thing is agoing to damage me and Mark awfully, fer Mark gets five dollars a month for helping about the mill on grinding days, and when the mill shets down he'll be plumb out of a job."

"Oh, I see!" and Ann Boyd smiled impulsively.

"Yes, that's the way of it," went on Mrs. Bruce, "and so Gus, about two hours ago, come over to our cabin with what he called his only hope, and that was for me to come and tell you about Mark's job, and how helpless we'll be when it's gone, and that-well, Ann, to put it in Gus's own words, he said you wouldn't see Luke King's mother suffer as I will have to suffer, for, Ann, we are having the hardest time to get along in the world. I was at meeting that day, and I thought what Bazemore said was purty hard on any woman, but I was mad at you, and so I set and listened. I'm no coward. If you do this thing you'll do it of your own accord. I cayn't get down on my knees to you, and I won't."

"I see." Ann's face was serious. She looked past the woman down the dust-clouded road along which a man was driving a herd of sheep. "I don't want you on your knees to me, Cynthia Bruce. I want simple justice. I was doing the best I could when Bazemore and the community began to drive me to the wall, then I determined to have my rights-that's all; I'll have my legal rights for a while and see what impression it will make on you all. You can tell Gus Willard that I will give him till the first of July to drain the water from my land, and if he doesn't do it he will regret it."

"That's all you'll say, then?" said the woman at the step.

"That's all I'll say."

"Well, I reckon you are right, Ann Boyd. I sorter begin to see what you've been put to all on account of that one false step away back when, I reckon, like all gals, you was jest l'arnin' what life was. Well, as that's over and done with, I wonder if you would mind telling me if you know anything about Luke. Me 'n' him split purty wide before he left, and I try to be unconcerned about him, but I cayn't. I lie awake at night thinking about him. You see, all the rest of my children are around me."

"I'll say this much," said Ann, in a softened tone, "and that is that he is well and doing well, but I don't feel at liberty to say more."

"Well, it's a comfort to know _that_ much," said Mrs. Bruce, softly.

"And it's nothing but just to you for me to say that it's due to you.

The education you paid fer is what gave him his start in life, and I'll always be grateful to you fer it. It was something I never could have given him, and something none of the rest of my children got."

Mrs. Boyd stood motionless in the door, her eyes on the backs of the pathetic pair as they trudged slowly homeward, the red sunset like a world in conflagration beyond them.

"Yes, she's the boy's mother," she mused, "and the day will come when Luke will be glad I helped her, as he would if he could see the poor thing now. Gus Willard is no mean judge of human nature. I'll let him stew awhile, but the mill may run on. I can't fight _everybody_. Gus Willard is my enemy, but he's open and above-board."

VII

One morning about the first of May, Virginia Hemingway went to Wilson's store to purchase some sewing-thread she needed. The long, narrow room was crowded with farmers and mountaineers, and Wilson had called in several neighbors to help him show and sell his wares. Langdon Chester was there, a fine double-barrelled shot-gun and fishing-rod under his arm, wearing a slouch hat and hunter's suit, his handsome face well tanned by exposure to the sun in the field and on the banks of the mountain streams. He was buying a reel and a metallic fly that worked with a spring and was set like a trap. Fred Masters was there, lounging about behind the counters, and now and then "making a sale" of some small article from the shelves or show-cases. He had opened his big sample trunks at the hotel in Springtown, half a mile distant, and a buggy and pair of horses were at the door, with which he intended to transport the store-keeper to his sample-room as soon as business became quieter. Seeing the store so crowded, Virginia only looked in at the door and walked across the street and sat down in Mrs. Wilson's sitting-room to rest and wait for a better opportunity to get what she had come for.

Langdon Chester had recognized an old school-mate in the drummer, but he seemed not to care to show marked cordiality. However, the travelling man was no stickler for formality. He came from behind the counter and cordially slapped Langdon on the shoulder. "How are you, old chap?" he asked; "still rusticating on the old man's bounty, eh? When you left college you were going into the law, and soar like an eagle with the worm of Liberty in its beak skyward through the balmy air of politics, by the aid of all the 'pulls' of influential kin and money, but here you are as easy-going as of old."

"It was the only thing open to me," Chester said, with a flush of vexation. "You see, my father's getting old, Masters, and the management of our big place here was rather too much for him, and so-"