"Yes, indeed! There's one of the best women I ever knew, my dear."

Miss Clarkson drew herself up proudly, and bent upon him an icy glance.

By now they had approached the corner of public square. "I think I must say good _night_, Mr. Rawlins!" said she, with icy emphasis.

"Good night, my dear," said the old minister, sighing.

Not far ahead of Ben McQuaid and merchant Newman walked two other citizens, J.B. Saunders, leading grocer and prominent Knight Templar, and Nels Jorgens, village blacksmith--the same whose shop was across the way from the home of Aurora Lane. It was said of Mr. Saunders that it would have been difficult to surprise him at any hour of the day or night when he was not in his uniform of a Knight Templar, or carrying his sword case and hat. For some reasons best known to himself, and antic.i.p.ating all possible surprises, he had taken with him to the meeting this evening the two latter accessories of his wardrobe, which now he carried as he walked on in conversation.

His neighbor wore an alpaca coat and no necktie whatever--a reticent, gray-whiskered man, whose bank account had a goodliness perhaps not to be suspected from first look at its owner. The two talked of many things, but naturally came around to the only topic which was in the mind of all.

"What'll he do--old Eph Adamson," asked Saunders. "It looks like he couldn't stand for what's been handed to him. That young fellow has pounded him up a couple of times. If I was Adamson I certainly would have the law on him good and plenty."

"Well," said Old Man Jorgens, comfortably, "I don't know much about it anyway, but it looks to me Adamson has got pretty near enough already.

He pays a lawyer to get him clear, and when he gets out of that court already he gets licked once more again. And he knows the boy can lick him."

"You think he'll like enough lick him again?"

"Yeh, that's like enough, yeh. I heard things have been said of his mother by Adamson. Oh, yes, the news is out now--she couldn't hide it no more now--there is the boy she said was dead. But, you know, after all, my friend, a mother is a mother, and men is men. When they say things of how we was born, you would fought, I hope? Me, I hope too. No man likes to hear his mother called of names. And she is his mother. Too bad it is--a bad business all around."

"But then--why, Nels, we know----"

"Yes, we all know," said Jorgens stolidly. "I know and you know, and we all know. And what I know is this:--For twenty years she lives across the street from me, as straight and as good a woman as anyone in this town--each first day of the month right in my hand here she pays the rent, not a month missed in twenty years. I rather rent a house to her as to any business man in this town, and I say she is straight as any woman in this town! No man goes there, not any more now in twenty years.

The man who meets her on the public street he takes his hat off--now.

Her boy--well, he looks citified to me, but at least he can fight. Yeh, I vote he was in the right. Tomorrow my wife shall take some more eggs to Aurora Lane in her house; yeh, and coffee."

There were two other members of the unpolled jury, and they paused now in the full light which came from the mast at the corner of the public square. Judge Henderson, wearied by the exertions of the evening, was disposed to ascend the stair to his own office in search of a manner of refreshment which he well knew he would find there. Turning in this laudable enterprise he met face to face the city marshal, Old Man Tarbush, who halted him for a moment's speech, drawing him apart to the edge of the sidewalk.

"I just thought I'd ask you, Judge, since I see you," said Tarbush, "whether you think I done right or not."

"What do you mean, Mr. Marshal," inquired the judge, none too happy at being interrupted.

"You know how it was. He licked Old Man Adamson again right at the foot of the stair, before the record of his trial was hardly dry on the books. It was unlawful, of course. I didn't arrest him no more, because I seen what had happened in the other trial. You pulled out of that. I didn't want to make no needless expense for the county. But I been sort of uneasy in my mind about it, and I just thought I'd ask you."

"Exactly, exactly," rejoined Judge Henderson. "Well, now, Tarbush, come to think it over, that matter came up for trial, and we concluded the best thing to do was to sort of let things take their course--you see, the young man in all likelihood will leave town very soon. In the conduct of my own affairs I sometimes have seen that it is well enough not to stir things up. Leave them alone, and sometimes they will smooth themselves down."

"Then you wouldn't run him in if you was me?"

"No, I think not, I think not. Let it go for the time. Perhaps there may be further developments, but with such information as I have at hand now, I would be disposed to approve your conduct. There's nothing like letting bygones be bygones in this world--isn't that the truth?"

"But now, about the eejit, Johnnie," resumed the city marshal once more, reaching out his hand still to detain the other, "I don't know as I done right about him, neither."

"What have you done then, Tarbush?"

"Well, I let him go. You see, I don't know but maybe the _habeas chorus_ proceedings would be squashed like the rest. Besides, the eejit boy has been raising all kinds of h.e.l.l down at the jail, raving and shouting and threatening me. About a hour ago or less I concluded to let him loose, so as to get shut of him."

"You did let him go? And he was not discharged?"

"Well, now, what's the difference, Judge," said the old man. "We couldn't really get no sleep down there, he was making so much fuss, so I just let him out. He lit out upon the street right thataway, towards home--not so very long ago."

Judge Henderson gazed moodily in the direction to which Tarbush pointed.

"Well," said he, "maybe you did right, and in any case this isn't the time and place to discuss it. My professional hours"--and he turned away and walked slowly up the stairs to his own office, intent upon the purpose already prominent in his mind.

The arc light illumined fully the great town clock in the cupola of the courthouse. The hands pointed to a quarter of one, after midnight.

The deliberations of the jury of Spring Valley might have been said to have concluded at the time when Aurora Lane, her son Don, and old Hod Brooks--the last group of the slow procession--themselves turned the corner and emerged upon the public square. The matter of bringing in the verdict was another affair.

CHAPTER VIII

THE EXTRAORDINARY HORACE BROOKS

Something made Aurora Lane uneasy. She turned now and extended her hand to the tall man who walked at her side. "Good night, Mr. Brooks," said she.

But old Hod Brooks only put his hands deeper in his pockets and slouched on alongside. "I'll just go on along with you to the gate. It's hot tonight, isn't it? I don't know when we've had such a spell."

She could not well dismiss him now, so indeed the three walked yet a while together.

Don Lane still was silent, moody. There was little of the Jesuit in his own frank soul. He knew nothing of dissembling, and had no art of putting a good face upon a bad matter. All these complications which so swiftly had come into his life seemed to him only a terrible and overwhelming thing in the total. The morrow was coming for him--nay, it already was at hand, and he knew what that must bring of additional grief. Anne! Anne! He must tell her. He must leave her. Never in all his care-free life had he been so wretched, so miserable, as he was now.

Moreover, for reasons he could not stifle he did not like the presence of Brooks here, even though he and his mother must acknowledge the debt under which he had laid them that day.

"I'll tell you, Mother," said he after a time, when he had turned off the square into their own street. "Just excuse me for a few minutes, won't you? It's so hot and stuffy that I don't feel that I can sleep.

I'll just take a little run down the street, if you don't mind."

"But why, Don?" she inquired.

"You see, I've always been used to keeping fit, and I don't like to break my training--we always had to exercise in college, on the teams. I don't feel good when I don't. I'm used to doing my half mile or so every night just before I go to sleep."

"Huh!" said Old Hod Brooks, looking at the young man appraisingly. "So that's how you keep in training, eh? Well, it seems to work all right!"

His sudden gusty laughter sounded loud in the night, but it lacked the note of ease.

"Go on, go on," he added--"as you get older maybe you'll find it takes all your gimp to take care of your mind and your money, and you'll let your body just about take care of itself. But go ahead--I'll just walk on down with your mother."

"Don't be long, Don," said Aurora Lane; and she meant it, for she felt uneasy at thus being accompanied to her own gate, a thing unknown in her history. She was glad that old Nels Jorgens, on ahead, had just turned in at his own gate.

Don Lane trotted off slowly, with long elastic stride, up on his toes, with his elbows tucked in and his chin high, filling his lungs as best he might with the hot and lifeless air. The sound of his footfalls pa.s.sed down the street, and was lost as he turned at the further corner of the square.

"Good night, now," said Aurora Lane once more, as she and her companion approached her little gate.

But Hod Brooks did not turn away, although he made no attempt to enter.

Instead he reached out a large hand impulsively and arrested hers as it would have pulled together the little crippled gate behind her. Still she did close the gate--until the sudden impact of his own weight snapped off its last remaining hinge. He picked it up carelessly and set it within the fence, himself leaning against the post, filling the gap, his hands back in his pockets.

"Aurora," said he, with a strange softness in his voice, "this seems to me almost like Providence."

"What do you mean?" she said. "I must go----"