Sol made a dart for the front door. Then he changed his mind and made for the back one. But he guessed the wrong one--or, perhaps after all, it was the right one.

As he was going out, Betty Jornsen, with her two grips, came in and blocked up his exit.

She had evidently wearied of waiting at the corner, and had determined to investigate matters for herself.

Sol made to brush past. Suddenly he stopped. He looked at Betty. He stared. His eyes became big and nearly popped out of his head in his amazement.

Betty looked up at him in surprise.

They gaped thus at each other for a few seconds, then Sol staggered to the side of the door and leaned against it, breathing hard as if he had run a mile.

At last he found his tongue and himself, and straightened up.

"Betty,--by gosh! Betty,--little Betty, by Yiminy!" he exclaimed, throwing his long arms about her, knocking her grips aside and sending her hat awry. He lifted her up high and kissed her fair on the mouth.

He swung her round and round the smithy, all oblivious of his amused spectators.

Meantime, Betty kicked and struggled, and finally succeeded in smacking his face loudly with a free hand.

Sol set her down and rubbed his cheek foolishly, white she stamped her foot at him.

"You great big--great big--b.o.o.b!" she cried.

Jim stepped out from the shadow.

"Miss Jornsen,--allow me to introduce you to Mr. Sol Hanson!"

Betty looked at Jim querulously, and then at Sol who was standing nervously by, gazing at her.

Slowly and shyly she sidled up to the big blacksmith. She put her hands on the lapels of his ill-fitting coat and slid her fingers down them tenderly; then she laid her head on his chest, while his big arms went about her again.

"Come on, Phil!" said Jim, "this is no place for the proverbial parson's son."

Sol's eyes took on a new light.

"Jim,--by gosh!--maybe it been no place for a parson's son," he grinned, "but it a dam-fine place for a parson. What you think, eh, Betty?"

"You fellows wait. We all go together, get it over right now. What you think, my little Betty?"

"Sure! There ain't no good in waitin'," answered Betty. "And say, Mister--Mister Langford!--I ain't tryin' to be insultin', nor anything like that, but if you think you're a better looker than my big Sol, then you've got another think comin'."

Sol's head went up and his chest went out, as they were ent.i.tled to do, for Jim was considered quite a handsome fellow in his own way.

CHAPTER XVI

The Breakaway

The hour that followed was a busy one. Betty was whisked away by Phil to Mrs. Clunie's for a good, substantial home-made dinner and a general overhaul. Sol rushed home for his new, check suit, then off to the registrar's for the marriage license accompanied by Jim. Phil next unearthed the valiant Smiler from the bas.e.m.e.nt of a Chinese restaurant in Wynd Alley where he was busy sampling the current day's bill of fare, gratis. Phil hauled him off to the barber's for a wash and a haircut, then to the O.K. Supply Store for new clothes, over and under, which set the poor dumb little rascal wondering as to what sin he had committed to warrant the infliction.

The Reverend Anthony Stormer--the venerable old Lutheran pastor--was next informed of the expected arrivals; and, by the time Jim came along upholding Sol in a state of nervous prostration, all was in readiness for the ceremony.

Ten minutes later, Mrs. Clunie arrived escorting Betty Jornsen; pretty, buxom and beaming, and as full of confidence as Smiler was of Chinese noodles.

Smiler could not understand then what the ceremony was all about, nor did he seem to gain any further enlightenment on the matter at any later date.

It was all over within two hours of Betty's arrival in Vernock.

Sol was for sending Betty to her new home till supper time, intending himself to go back to the smithy with Phil and get down to the heavy work that lay there awaiting completion. But Phil and Jim would have none of it. And when Betty and Mrs. Clunie backed them up, there was nothing left for Sol to do but to obey; so, with three or four hand-bags--half of them borrowed--they were bundled into the Kelowna stage, and nothing more was heard of them for two weeks.

Smiler attended to his own needs as he had had to do often before, and he was back in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Chinese restaurant in Wynd Alley, finishing his dinner sampling,--with his new rig-out rolled up in a bundle under his arm and garbed in his much beloved rags and tatters.

That was the first of a dozen occasions upon which Smiler was dressed up by various well-meaning members of the community and it was the first of twelve occasions that Smiler resented the interference and went back, at the earliest opportunity, to his old, familiar and well-ventilated draperies.

The next fourteen days were desperate ones for Phil. From the moment he got back to the smithy, repair work piled in on him. Reapers and binders gave way in various parts and had to be put to rights at once, for it was nearing the end of the harvest season and the cold weather was already creeping along. Every horse in the Valley seemed suddenly to require reshoeing; wagon springs broke; buggy tires came off or wore out as they had never done before; morning, noon and night Phil slaved trying to cope with the emergency. There was no help that he could call in, and he would not for worlds have sent word to Sol to end his holiday a moment sooner that might be.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed his meals when and where he could, while everyone clamoured for the immediate execution of his requirements. Finally Phil got up so early and he worked so late, that he made his bed for the time being on a bundle of straw covered with sacking, in a corner beside the forge.

He was young and strong, and he knew his work. He loved the rush of it and he gloried in the doing of things that other men would have groaned at. Above all, he was glad to think that he was now considered of some value in a work-a-day community.

It did not occur to him that day and night labour, even for a little time, had a terribly wearing effect on the physique; that he was losing weight with every twenty-four hours of it and that his cheeks grew paler and a little more gaunt every day of that week or so of extra push.

He chased Jim from the smithy as a worthless time-waster--whenever that worthy showed face--and Jim, for the nonce, had to find companionship and entertainment in his world of Penny Dreadful creation and his Love Knot Untanglements.

One glorious gleam of sunshine burst in on Phil's world of toil and set his muscles dancing and his heart singing in merry time to the ring of his hammer on the anvil. A perfumed note, bearing an invitation to him from Eileen Pederstone to attend a reception on the sixth evening of the month following, at her new home on the hill, was the dainty messenger of joy.

And what cared Phil if Brenchfield should be there? He had held his own before;--he could do it again. What counted all this hard work?--a puff of wind;--he was going to Eileen Pederstone's. What matter it how the world wagged?--a tolling bell;--he would dance again with the dainty, little vision with the merry brown eyes, the twinkling feet and the ready tongue. Ho!--life was good; life was great! Life was heaven itself!

Come on! Fill the smithy and the yard with your horses, and I'll shoe all of them! Block the roads and the by-ways with your wagons and buggies;--what care I for toil? Heap your broken reapers and binders a mountain high, and I'll stand on top of them before nightfall, with my hammer held defiantly to the heavens and shout "Excelsior, the work is done." The Fairy Princess has stopped in her procession; she looks my way; she smiles: her galloping courier brings a perfumed favour; she beckons me. Ah, surely! what a Paradise, after all, is this we live in!

In a sweet little world of dreams--in which even a blacksmith may live at times--Phil battled with his tasks and overcame them one by one.

And it was little he cared about the week's growth of beard that sat on his gaunt face, or for the sweat that ran over his forehead and splashed to his great, bared chest. Pride did not chide him for hands that were h.o.r.n.y and begrimed, nor for arms that were red and scarred from the bite of flying sparks.

But it was thus that the lady of his dreams found him, as she wafted in from a gallop over the ranges, with a shoe in her hand and leading a horse that wore only three.

A smile was on her happy face, her cheeks were aglow and her eyes were dancing in childish delight.

Little wonder then that Phil's heart stopped, then raced with all the mad fury of a runaway; little wonder his face grew pale and his eyes gleamed as he moved back against the wall beside his furnace.

And Eileen's merry smile faded away like the heat of an Indian Summer's day before the cool of the approaching night. She stared with widening eyes at the figure before her, for she saw, not the young, st.u.r.dy, country blacksmith, but a picture of the past, a fugitive from the police, a gaunt tired man, spent and almost beaten, seeking sanctuary.

And on this occasion, she did not take time to consider how much the man before her still craved for sanctuary.

Her lips parted in fear. Her hand went to her heart and she stepped slowly backward toward the door.

"Oh,--oh,--oh!" was all she uttered.