Charles and the boys were in the field the next morning. The sheer
desperate movement of his limbs while at hard work had a tendency to
throw off the mental pain that he was still laboring under. It was about
ten o'clock, when, happening to glance toward the house, he saw the
sheriff drive up in a two-seated trap and sit waiting at the gate. Then,
to Charles's surprise, both Mary and her father came out, got into the
trap, and were driven away toward the village. Kenneth had noticed it;
he came across the cotton-rows and joined him.
"They've gone in to fix up that bond," he explained, in a tone of
evident satisfaction. "Father is to sign it to-day in the office of the
clerk of the court."
"But your sister?" and Charles wiped the perspiration from his brow and
bewildered eyes.
"Oh, I think she went along as a witness to my father's signature, and
also to see Tobe Keith and his mother. Brown, she doesn't believe you
were connected with those circus men; neither does father. As for me and
Martin, you know what we think."
"Thank you," Charles muttered. "It is kind of you all." His eyes were
now on the trap and its inmates as they slowly ascended the sloping road
half a mile distant. Mary sat with her father on the rear seat. Beyond
them rose the rugged mountain, green as to foliage and brown and gray as
to earth and stone. Above it all arched the blue sky, with here and
there a creeping wisp of snow-white cloud. How incongruous it was! Here
he was dodging imprisonment while this gentle family were
espousing--blindly espousing his tottering cause. He drew a picture of
himself running along the road after the trap, running faster than the
horses, overtaking them and panting out a demand that the law should be
allowed to take its course. But it was only a futile figment of a weary
brain. He had uprooted a stalk of cotton, and he replaced it, raking out
the mellow soil with his bare hands, packing it back on the roots, and
bracing the plant between two of its neighbors by interlocking their
pliant branches.
"Mary! Mary! Mary!" The balmy air, blown from the direction she was
taking in his behalf, seemed to sing the name as from vibrant strings
stretched from heaven to earth--from shores of matter to boundaries of
infinite spirit. Again she was in his arms as she was that night in the
darkened old parlor. Her pulsing lips were on his, her clinging arms
about his neck. After that spiritual marriage, could heaven or hell tear
her from him? Could fate rob him of such a prize? Perhaps, for the prize
could not be had at such a price. Mary, who had been a ready sacrifice
herself, could not love one less worthy, and she would have to know the
truth. He worked on--as a dying man he toiled on through the long, weary
day.