Mornin.”
With the emotional readiness of her race, the comfortable creature burst into weeping, clasping the child to her broad bosom.
“Pore chile!” she said, “an’ poor chile lef behin’! De Lord help ’em bofe.”
With manifest fear Tom stooped and took the little red flannel bundle from her arms.
“Never mind crying,” he said. “Go into the room and do what’s to be done.”
When left alone with his charge, he sat down and held it balanced carefully in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. He was used to carrying his customers’ children, a great part of his popularity being based upon his jovial fondness for them. But he had never held so small a creature as this in his arms before. He regarded it with a respectful timidity.
“It wasn’t thought of,” he said, reflectively. “Even she—poor thing, poor thing—” he ended, hurriedly, “there was no time.”
He was still holding his small burden with awkward kindliness when the door opened and the man he had left in the room beyond came in. He approached the hearth and stood for a few seconds staring at the fire in a stupefied, abstracted way. He did not seem to see the child. At last he spoke.
“Where shall I lay her?” he asked. “Where is the nearest churchyard?”
“Fifteen miles away,” Tom answered. “Most of the people like to have their dead near them and lay them on the hillsides.”
The man turned to him with a touch of horror in his face.
“In unconsecrated ground?” he said.
“It doesn’t trouble them,” said Tom. “They sleep well enough.”
The man turned to the fire again—he had not looked at the child yet—and made a despairing gesture with his hands.
“That she—” he said, “that she should lie so far from them, and in unconsecrated ground!”
“There is the place I told you of,” said Tom.
“I cannot go there,” with the gesture again. “There is no time. I must go away.”
He made no pretence at concealing that he had a secret to hide. He seemed to have given up the effort.
Tom looked up at him.
“What are you going to do with this?” he asked.
Then for the first time he seemed to become conscious of the child’s presence. He turned and gave it a startled sidelong glance, as if he had suddenly been struck with a new fear.
“I—do not know,” he stammered. “I—no! I do not know. What have I been doing?”
He sank into a chair and buried his face in his trembling hands.
“God’s curse is upon it,” he cried. “There is no place for it on earth.”
Tom rose with a sudden movement and began to pace the floor with his charge in his arms.
“It’s a little chap to lay a curse on,” he said. “And helpless enough, by Gad!”
He looked down at the diminutive face, and as he did so, a wild thought flashed through his mind. It had the suddenness and force of a revelation. His big body trembled with some feeling it would have gone hard with him to express, and his heart warmed within him as he felt the light weight lying against it.
“No place for it!” he cried. “By God, there is! There is a place here—and a man to stand by and see fair-play!”
“Give her to me,” he said, “give her to me, and if there is no place for her, I’ll find one.”
“What do you mean?” faltered the man.
“I mean what I say,” said Tom. “I’ll take her and stand by her as long as there is breath in me; and if the day should ever come in spite of me when wrong befalls her, as it befell her mother, some man shall die, so help me God!”
The warm Southern blood which gave to his brothers’ love-songs the grace of passion, and which made them renowned for their picturesque eloquence of speech, fired him to greater fluency than was usual with him, when he thought of the helplessness of the tiny being he held.
“I never betrayed a woman yet, or did one a wrong,” he went on. “I’m not one of the lucky fellows who win their hearts,” with a great gulp in his throat. “Perhaps if there’s no one to come between us, she may—may be fond of me.”
The man gave him a long look, as if he was asking himself a question.
“Yes,” he said at last, “she will be fond of you. You will be worthy of it. There is no one to lay claim to her. Her mother lies dead among strangers, and her father——”
For a few moments he seemed to be falling into a reverie, but suddenly a tremour seized him and he struck one clenched hand against the other.
“If a man vowed to the service of God may make an oath,” he said, “I swear that if the day ever dawns when we stand face to face, knowing each other, I will not spare him!”
The child stirred in Tom’s arms and uttered its first sharp little cry, and as if in answer to the summons, Aunt Mornin opened the door.
“It’s all done,” she said. “Gib me de chile, Mars De Willerby, and go in an’ look at her.”
When he entered the little square living room, Tom paused at the foot of the bed. All was straight and neat and cold. Among the few articles in the one small trunk, the woman had found a simple white dress and had put it on the dead girl. It was such a garment as almost every girl counts among her possessions. Tom remembered that his sisters had often worn such things.
“She looks very pretty,” he said. “I dare say her mother made it and she wore it at home. O Lord! O Lord!” And with this helpless exclamation, half sigh, half groan, he turned away and walked out of the front door into the open air.
It was early morning by this time, and he passed into the dew and sunlight not knowing where he was going; but once outside, the sight of his horse tethered to a tree at the roadside brought to his mind the necessity of the occasion.
“I’ll ride in and see Steven,” he said. “It’s got to be done, and it’s no work for him!”
When he reached the Cross-roads there were already two or three early arrivals lounging on the store-porch and wondering why the doors were not opened.
The first man who saw him, opened upon him the usual course of elephantine witticisms.
“Look a yere, Tom,” he drawled, “this ain’t a-gwine to do. You a-gittin’ up ’fore daybreak like the rest of us folks and ridin’ off Goddlemighty knows whar. It ain’t a-gwine to do now. Whar air ye from?”
But as he rode up and dismounted at the porch, each saw
