Mostyn pa.s.sed on after exchanging a few labored plat.i.tudes with the storekeeper. He shrank from the thought of meeting a crowd even of simple mountain people. The high open s.p.a.ces above silently beckoned to him. Never before had solitude in the breast of Nature had such appeal for him. He found growing interest in plants, flowers, insects, and birds. He wondered if they, too, suffered from grief and pain. At noon, when the day was warmest, he reclined on the mossy bank of a clear brook. He took off his shoes and bathed his feet in the cool, swift-running water, feeling the chill course through his veins. What was it that kept whispering within him that here and here alone was the balm for such wounds as his? Contrasting the mystic quiet of his surroundings with the snarling jangle of the life he had led in town, a faint hope of eventual peace began to spring up within him. Once he raised his hands to the infinite blue above him, and his thought, if not his words, was all but a prayer for mercy.

He was descending the mountain road near sunset. The valley into which he was going was already in shadow. Suddenly he heard a mellow masculine voice singing a hymn, and, turning a bend in the road, his body bent downward and swinging his hat in his hand, was Leach, the preacher.

"Well, well, well!" Leach exclaimed, gladly, when he was near enough to recognize him. "I heard you were in these diggings, and was sorry not to see you out at my meeting."

Leach took his hand, pressing his fingers in a tense and sincere clasp while he looked into his eyes tenderly. His strong face filled with emotion; his big lower lip actually shook.

"You needn't tell me about it, brother," he said, huskily. "I've heard it all, and I never was so sorry for a man in my life. You have been sorely stricken--you've had as much as you can stand up under and live.

As soon as I heard it I said to myself: 'Here is a man that has to suffer as much as I went through.' Brother"--Leach still hung on to his hand--"you can't see it as I do now, and you will think I am crazy for saying it, I reckon, but if things work out right, you will see the time that you will thank G.o.d for giving you the load that's on you.

Everything that happens under the Lord's sun is according to law, and is right--so right that average human beings can't see it. You've heard me tell about what I went through in prison, and I thank G.o.d for every minute of it. The backbone of my pride had to be broken, and it took that to do it. Are you in a big hurry?"

"No," Mostyn faltered. "I have plenty of time."

"Well, if you don't mind, let's sit here on the rocks," Leach suggested. "I want to see the sun set. I never miss a sunset on a mountain if I can help it. That's why I walked up here. A fellow asked me to spend the night with him on his farm in the valley, but I refused. The longer I live the more I want to get away from houses, tables, beds, and chairs. They are just babies' rag dolls and playing-blocks. I'll rake up a pile of pine-needles at the highest point I can reach on this mountain to-night and lie with my eyes on the stars-pin-hole windows to G.o.d's glory. Sometimes I can't sleep--I get so full of worship. I was reading the other day that it would take a fast train forty million years to get to the nearest fixed star. Isn't that awful? And think of it, when you got there, a billion times more would lie beyond--so much more that you wouldn't even then have touched the fringe of the wonderful scheme. It is too big for the mind of man to grasp, and so is the other, the realm of spirit, which is, after all, the main thing--in fact, the _only_ thing."

They sat in silence for several minutes. The sun was now a great bleeding ball of crimson. Leach's big hands were locked over his knee.

Now and then his lips moved as if in prayer. He smiled; he laughed; he chuckled. The sun sank lower and finally went out of sight. The sky along the horizon was an ocean of pink and purple, with sh.o.r.es of shimmering opal.

"Forgive me, brother." Leach turned his soft glance on his companion.

"You don't want to talk, I reckon, but the Lord has given me the power to sort o' feel human trouble. I can see it in your face and feel it ooze out of your body like a sad, murky stream. I don't want to part with you to-night without helping you if I can. I wouldn't talk this way if I hadn't helped hundreds. I never have failed where they would open their hearts plumb wide. All I'd want to know would be what particular thing was standing in your way. Something must be in the way. You may think it strange, but I can almost feel it hanging over you, like a thing that ought to be jerked off."

Mostyn was tempted to reply, but he said nothing. Half an hour pa.s.sed.

It was growing cool, damp, and darker. He rose to go. The preacher stood up with him, and grasped his hand.

"I may never see you again, brother," he said, "and I'm sorry, for I feel drawn powerful close to you somehow. I'd like nothing better than to have you along with me. I'm going to leave this part of the country pretty soon. I want to see more of G.o.d's beautiful world. I've always wanted to go to California, and I'm going to do it now."

"That will be fine," Mostyn remarked. "I am going somewhere soon myself. I don't know where, but somewhere."

"You'd better come along with me," the preacher said, eagerly. "We could pull together all right. I'd do my best to make you happy. I'd hammer at you till you saw the truth that has lifted me out o' the mire. G.o.d loves you, brother--He really does, and you will find it out some day. The worst sin in the world is simply not knowing G.o.d's goodness. It is as plentiful as rain and air. What do you say? Couldn't we go together?"

Mostyn was fairly thrilled by the idea. It was a strange suggestion, and appealed to him strongly. There was a soothing quality about the man that attracted him beyond anything else. "When do you leave?" he asked.

"In a couple of weeks. I wish you would go--by Jacks, I do! I know when I like a man, and I like you. I don't want to part from you like this.

What do you say?"

"I'll think over it," Mostyn promised. "Shall you be in Atlanta again this summer?"

"I'll leave from there," Leach answered. "I have to go there to draw a little money that is coming to me."

"Well, look me up down there," Mostyn said. "I shall want to see you again, anyway."

They parted. Mostyn trudged down into the deeper shadows. He heard Leach singing along the rocky way as he ascended higher. How odd! But the going of the man left him more deeply depressed than ever. He felt like running back and calling on him to wait a moment. There was something he wanted to tell him. He wanted to tell him about a certain haunting circ.u.mstance and ask his advice. He wanted to reveal the whole story of Henderson's loss and his gain--of the old man's fall and his rise on the ruins of that wrecked life. But what was the use? He knew what Leach would say. He would say: "Make rest.i.tution, and make it quick, for G.o.d's eye is on you--G.o.d's wide ear is bending down from that sky up there to hear the words you speak."

Mostyn stood still in the lonely road. "Yes, he'd advise that," he muttered, "but I can't do it. It would take almost all I have left, and I must live. Leach can talk, but I am not in his shoes. I might be better off if I were. I know I ought to do it. I ought to have done it years ago. How can I refrain now when I have no one depending on me and Henderson has that helpless family of his? I robbed them--law or no law to back me, I robbed them. A higher law than man's holds me guilty. I wonder what--" He stumbled along through the thickening shadows beneath the trees, the boughs of which were locked and interlaced overhead. "I wonder what Dolly would say. I needn't wonder--I know. Many women would tell me not to bother, but she wouldn't. She would be like Leach--so would Saunders. Great G.o.d! I really _am_ vile. I know what I ought to do, but can't. Then there is my child. If I have a hope left it is that he is safe with--G.o.d. Yes, that's it--_with_ G.o.d. There must be a G.o.d--so many say so, and He must love my little boy, and both of them would want me to do my duty.

"Oh, d.i.c.k, d.i.c.k! my son, my son!" he cried aloud, "are you close to me now? Tell me, tell me what to do. Take my hand, little boy. Lead me. I need you. I am your father, and you are only a child, but you can take me out of this, for you are stronger than I am now."

The echo of his voice came back from the rocky heights. A cricket snarled in a tree. A nightingale's song came up from the valley. He heard sheep-bells, the mooing of a cow, the bleating of a calf, a farmer calling up his hogs. Groaning, and bowed closer to the earth, he continued his way.

CHAPTER XX

A fortnight later Mostyn returned to Atlanta. He spent the first day at his sister's home trying to pa.s.s the time reading in her library, but the whole procedure was a hollow makeshift. Had he been a condemned prisoner awaiting execution at dawn, he could not have suffered more mental agony.

Unable to sleep that night, he rose before sun-up on the following morning and walked through the quiet streets for two hours. What a mad, futile thing the waking city seemed! "What are these people living for--what, after all?" he asked. "But they may be happy in a way," he added. "The fault is in me. I am seeing them through self-stained gla.s.ses. It wasn't like this in my sight once--the town was a sort of heaven when I first entered it and began to attract attention. Yes, I am at fault. I have disobeyed a spiritual law, and am getting my dues.

What is the use of holding out longer? I see now that I am beaten. I have got to do this thing, and be done with it."

After breakfast he went straight to the bank. Wright, Delbridge, and the clerks and stenographers seemed unreal creatures, with flaccid, vacuous faces, as he shook hands with them and answered their conventional queries about his vacation. "Vacation!" The word was not in his vocabulary. "Business!" That, too, was a corpse of a word floating on the still waters of past usage. "Money, stocks, bonds, market-reports!" They seemed like forgotten enemies rising to stop him.

How could Delbridge smile in his smug way, as he chewed his cigar and boasted of a new club of which he was the president? How could Wright put up with his moderate salary and stand all day at that prison window? What could the limp, pale-faced stenographers in their simple dresses hope for? Did they expect to marry, bear children, nurse them at their thin b.r.e.a.s.t.s--and bury them like close-clipped flowers of Heaven just opening to fragrance?

Seated at his desk, he asked a clerk to go to the vault and bring him his certificates of bank stock. Delbridge was pa.s.sing, and, seeing them in his hands, he said, with his forced and commercial shrewdness:

"If you have any idea of selling out, Mostyn, I'm in a shape now to take that stock off your hands."

Mostyn's stare resolved itself into a glare of indecision. "What would be your price?" he asked, under his breath, and yet audibly--"that is, in case I--I found another use for the money?"

"The same price I gave Saunders," Delbridge answered. "You couldn't expect to make a better deal than that long-headed chap. If you really want to do this thing you'd better act at once. I have another plan on hand."

"You make it as an offer?" Mostyn asked.

"Yes."

"Then the stock is yours," Mostyn answered. "Figure it up and place the money to my credit. I may check it out to-day. I am thinking of leaving town."

Delbridge suppressed a glow of triumph in his eyes as he took the certificates into his hands. He spread the crisp sheets out on the desk. "Indorse them while the pen is handy," he suggested.

Mostyn dipped the pen and wrote steadily on the backs of the certificates.

"That's O. K.," Delbridge mumbled, dropping his cigar into a cuspidor.

"Now I'll credit your account with the money. Check on it when you like."

When Delbridge's back was turned Mostyn drew a blank check from a pigeonhole and began to fill it in. The amount was for one hundred thousand dollars. He made it payable to Jefferson Henderson. He was about to sign his name when a great weakness swept over him like a flood from an unexpected source. How could he do a thing as silly as that? A gift of one-tenth of the amount would delight the old man and take him out of want--perhaps win his grat.i.tude for all time. Mostyn started to tear the check up, but paused. No, no, that wouldn't be in obedience to a higher idea of justice. If the old man had been allowed to hold on to his investment in that early enterprise his earnings would have come to fully as much as the written amount. Suddenly Mostyn saw the dead face of his child as it lay in the coffin surrounded with flowers, and a sob struggled up within him and burst.

"For your sake, d.i.c.k," he whispered. "I know you'd want me to do it. I know it--I know it."

Half an hour later he was out in the open air, walking with a strange new activity. His very body seemed imponderable. He crossed the railway near the Kimball House and went on to Decatur Street. Along this street he walked for a few blocks and then turned off. Before long he was in the most dilapidated, sordid part of the city. He knew where Henderson lived. He had seen the old man pottering about the narrow front yard of the grimy little cottage as he drove past it one morning with a friend.

As he drew near the house to-day its impoverished appearance was more noticeable than ever. It was out of repair. Shingles had fallen from the sagging roof. It had not been painted for years; the slats and hinges of the outside blinds were broken, and they hung awry across the cracked window-panes. There was a little fence around it from which many palings were missing, as was the gate. On the narrow front porch a ragged hemp hammock hung by knotted and tied ropes between two posts.

There was a broken baby-carriage in the yard, a child's playhouse at the step, a little toy wagon, a headless doll, a piece of bread, and some chicken-bones.

Mostyn went to the open door and rang the jangling cast-iron bell. It brought a young woman from a room on the right of the bare little hall.

She held a baby in her arms as she peered questioningly at the visitor.

Mostyn knew who she was. She was Henderson's youngest daughter, who had married a shiftless carpenter and been deserted by him, leaving two children to be cared for by their grandfather. It was evident by her blank stare that she did not recognize the caller.

"I want to see your father," Mostyn said. "Is he at home?"