bridle.
Tom mounted in silence, but once finally seated, he turned to his companion.
“Now strike out,” he said.
There were four miles of road before them, but they scarcely slackened rein until they were within sight of the Hollow, and the few words they exchanged were the barest questions and answers.
The cabin was built away from the road on the side of the hill, and leaving their horses tethered at the foot of the slope, they climbed it together.
When they reached the door, the stranger stopped and turned to Tom.
“There is no sound inside,” he faltered; “I dare not go in.”
Tom strode by him and pushed the door open.
In one corner of the room was a roughly made bedstead, and upon it lay a girl, her deathly pale face turned sideways upon the pillow. It was as if she lay prostrated by some wave of agony which had just passed over her; her breath was faint and rapid, and great drops of sweat stood out upon her young drawn face.
Tom drew a chair forward and sat down beside her. He lifted one of her hands, touching it gently, but save for a slight quiver of the eyelids she did not stir. A sense of awe fell upon him.
“It’s Death,” he said to himself. He had experience enough to teach him that. He turned to the man.
“You had better go out of the room; I will do my best.”
In a little over an hour Aunt Mornin dismounted from her mule and tethered it to a sapling at the side of the road below. She looked up at the light gleaming faintly through the pines on the hillside.
“I cum ’s fas’ ’s I could,” she said, “but I reckon I’d orter been here afore. De Lord knows dis is a curi’s ’casion.”
When she crossed the threshold of the cabin, her master pointed to a small faintly moving bundle lying at the foot of the bed over which he was bending.
“Take it into the other room and tell the man to come here,” he said. “There’s no time to lose.”
He still held the weak hand; but the girl’s eyes were no longer closed; they were open and fixed on his face. The great fellow was trembling like a leaf. The past hour had been almost more than he could bear. He was entirely unstrung.
“I wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing,” he had groaned more than once, and for the first time in his life thanked Fate for making him a failure.
As he looked down at his patient, a mist rose before his eyes, blurring his sight, and he hurriedly brushed it away.
She was perhaps nineteen years old, and had the very young look a simple trusting nature and innocent untried life bring. She was small, fragile, and fair, with the pure fairness born of a cold climate. Her large blue-gray eyes had in them the piteous appeal sometimes to be seen in the eyes of a timid child.
Tom had laid his big hand on her forehead and stroked it, scarcely knowing what he did.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said, with a tremor in his voice. “Close your eyes and try to be quiet for a few moments, and then——”
He stooped to bend his ear to her lips which were moving faintly.
“He’ll come directly,” he answered, though he did not hear her; “—directly. It’s all right.”
And then he stroked her hair again because he knew not what else to do, seeing, as he did, that the end was so very near, and that no earthly power, however far beyond his own poor efforts, could ward it off.
Just at that moment the door opened and the man came in.
That he too read the awful truth at his first glance, Tom saw. All attempts at disguise had dropped away. His thin, scholarly face was as colourless as the fairer one on the pillow, his brows were knit into rigid lines and his lips were working. He approached the bed, and for a few moments stood looking down as if trying to give himself time to gain self-control. Tom saw the girl’s soft eyes fixed in anguished entreaty; there was a struggle, and from the slowly moving lips came a few faint and broken words.
“Death!—They—never know.”
The man flung himself upon his knees and burst into an agony of such weeping that, seeing it, Tom turned away shuddering.
“No,” he said, “they will never know, they who loved you—who loved you—will never know! God forgive me if I have done wrong. I have been false that they might be spared. God forgive me for the sin!”
The poor child shivered; she had become still paler, and the breath came in sharp little puffs through her nostrils.
“God—God!—God!” she panted. But the man did not seem to hear her. He was praying aloud, a struggling, disjointed prayer.
“O God of sinners,” he cried, “Thou who forgivest, Thou who hast died, forgive—forgive in this hour of death!”
Tom heard no more. He could only listen to the soft, panting breath sinking lower and lower.
Suddenly the piteous eyes turned towards him—the stranger—as if in great dread: perhaps they saw in the mere human pity of his face what met some sharp last need.
He went to his old place as if in answer to the look, and took the poor little hand once more, closing the warmth of his own over its coldness. He was weeping like a child.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said; “—not afraid. It’s—it’s all right.”
And almost as he said it, with her eyes still fixed upon his own, and with her hand in his, she gave a low sob—and died.
Tom touched the kneeling man upon the shoulder.
“There’s no need of that now,” he said; “it’s over.”
CHAPTER IV
When a few minutes later he went into the back room, he found Aunt Mornin sitting before the big fireplace in which burned a few logs of wood. The light the snapping sticks gave fell full upon her black face, and upon the small bundle upon her spacious knee.
As he entered she turned sharply towards him.
“Don’t nobody keer nothin’ for this yere?” she said, “ain’t nobody comin’ nigh? Whar’s he? Don’t he take no int’rus’ in the pore little lonesome child? I ’spect yo’ll haf to take it ye’self, Mars’ De Willerby, while I goes in dar.”
Tom stopped short, stricken with a pang of remorse. He looked down at the small face helplessly.
“Yes,” he said, “you’ll have to go in there; you’re needed.”
The woman looked at him in
