LUCILLE HARDCOME'S defeat, unimportant as it was to the world at large,
made her furiously angry for a few days. She would have left the church
to go to the Episcopalians if it had not been that the Episcopalian
Church in Riverbank was direly poverty-stricken. Lucille sulked for a
few days and let the report go out that she was ill, and then appeared
with her hair, which had been golden, a glorious shade of red. She said
it was Titian. It was immensely becoming to her. Had any other woman in
the congregation dared to change the color of her hair thus flauntingly
there would have been little less than a scandal. That her first hair
vagary created little adverse comment shows how completely Lucille had
impressed us with the idea that she was extra-privileged. Later she
changed the color of her hair as the whim seized her, varying from red
to gold.
In addition to the change in the color of her hair Lucille came out of
her brief retirement with an entirely changed opinion of David Dean. She
seemed suddenly aware that, far from being a mere church accessory, he
was someone worth while. She began to court his good opinion openly.
Having burned her fingers she admired the fire.
Lucille was a woman of elementary mentality and much of her domineering
success was due to that very fact. She often went after what she wanted
with a directness that was crude but effective. Lucille set about
getting David under her thumb.
Poor David! Lucille saw that his dearest tasks of helpfulness were
always shared by the trio--'Thusia, now grown pale; Rose Hinch, the
ever-cheerful; and Mary Derling. These three understood David. They
echoed his gentle tact and loving-kindness, and it was to be a fourth in
this group that Lucille decided was the thing she desired.
For the work done by the trio, under David's gentle direction, Lucille
was eminently unfitted. The three women were handmaidens of charity;
Lucille was a major general of earthly ambitions. In spite of this she
thrust herself upon David.
The power of single-minded insistence is enormous. We see this
exemplified over and over again in politics; the most unsuitable men, by
plain force of will, thrust themselves into office. They are not
wanted; everyone knows they are out of place, but they have their way.
Lucille--resplendent hair, flaring gowns and all--forced David to accept
her as one of his intimate helpers by the simple expedient of insisting
that he should. It is only fair to say that she opened her purse, but
this was in itself an evidence of her unfitness for the work she had to
do. Most of David's “cases” needed personal service of a kind Lucille
was incapable of rendering. She gave them dollars instead. Time and
again she upset David's plans by opening her hand and showering silver
where it was not good to bestow it. She tried to take full command of
Rose Hinch and Mary Derling. They went calmly on their accustomed ways.
In one matter in which David was interested Lucille did give valuable
assistance. Although Riverbank was notoriously a “wet” town the State
had voted a prohibitory law against liquor selling. In Riverbank the law
was all but a dead letter. The saloons remained open, the proprietors
coming up once a month to pay a “fine,” which was in fact a local
license. Probably our saloons were no worse than those in other river
towns, but many of us believed it a scandal that they should continue
doing business contrary to law. Our Davy was never much of a believer in
the minister in politics, although he had said his say from the pulpit
with enough youthful fervor back in Civil War days, but he feared and
hated the saloon and all liquor, remembering his long fight for Mack
Graham and plenty of other youths. He was mourning, too, his best of
friends, old Doc Benedict, who never overcame his craving for whisky,
and who died after being thrown from his carriage one night when he had
taken too much. No doubt Sam Wiggett had some influence over David's
actions, too. The old man was all for having the saloons closed as long
as the law said they should be closed, and, to some extent, he dragged
Davy into the fight.
It was understood that if our county attorney wished the saloons closed
he could close them. A fight was made to elect a “dry” county attorney,
and, as it happened, the fight carried all the county and town offices.
Every Democrat was thrown out.
No one can say how greatly David Dean's part in the campaign affected
the result. I think it had a greater effect than was generally believed.
For one thing his sermons aroused us as nothing else could have aroused
us, and for another he had the assistance of Lucille Hardcome.
As women are apt to do, Lucille made her fight a personal matter.
She organized the women, organized children's parades, planned
house-to-house appeals and persuaded even the merchants who favored
open saloons to place her placards in their windows. It is probable that
Lucille's work did more to cause the landslide than all the handbills
and speeches of the politicians and she did it all to impress David.
David's personal stand also had a great effect, for he was known as a
conservative, meddling little with political affairs. It is hardly too
much to say that between them Lucille Hardcome and David carried the
election. The margin was small enough as it was. The _Riverbank Eagle_,
after the election, declared that without David's help the prohibition
forces would have lost out. Among the other defeated candidates was
Marty Ware, who had been city treasurer for several terms.
The new city officials, most of them greatly surprised to find
themselves elected, were to take office January first, and it was one
day about the middle of December that Steve Turrill came to the front
door of the little manse and asked for David. 'Thusia, who came to
the door, knew Turrill. She had known him years before, when she was a
thoughtless, pleasure-mad young girl. Even then Steve had been a gambler
and fond of a fast horse. In those days Steve would often disappear for
months at a time, for the steamboats were gambling palaces. He never
returned until his pockets were full of money and his mouth full of
tales of Memphis, Cairo, St. Louis and even New Orleans. He was known in
all the gambling places up and down the Mississippi.
At the beginning of the Civil War Steve Turrill had enlisted, returning,
after about five months service, with a bullet in his leg just below
the left hip. The bullet was never found. After that Steve walked with
a cane and on damp days one could see him in a chair in front of the
Riverbank Hotel, his forehead creased with pain and his left hand
ceaselessly rubbing his left hip. When his hip was worst he could not
sit still at the gaming table. To the gambler's pallor was added the
pallor of pain.
As a boy I remember him sitting under the iron canopy of the hotel.
We all knew he was a gambler, and he was the only gambler we knew.
Sometimes he would have a trotter, and we would see him flash down
the street behind the red-nostriled animal; sometimes even the diamond
horseshoe in his tie and the rings on his fingers would be gone.
Everyone seemed to speak to Steve Turrill. Even as a boy I knew,
vaguely, that he had a room in the Riverbank Hotel where people went to
gamble. It was understood that not everyone could gamble there. I think
there was a feeling that Steve Turrill was “straight,” and that as
he had been wounded in the war, and was the last professional gambler
Riverbank would have, he should not be bothered. I believe he was always
a sick man and that, from the day he returned from the war, Death stood
constantly at his side.
He looked as if Death's hand had touched him. His thin, sharp features
were ashen gray at times and his hands were mere bones covered with
transparent skin. He never smiled. He never touched liquor. He smoked a
long, thin cigar that he had made especially for his own use; I suppose
Doc Benedict had told him how much he could smoke and remain alive.
When 'Thusia saw him at the door (it was one of her “well” days) she was
not startled; for many odd fish come to a dominie's door from one end of
the year to the next. He leaned on his cane and took off his gray felt
hat.
“'Day, 'Thusia,” he said, quite as if they had not been strangers for
years; “I wonder if Mr. Dean is in?”
“He's in,” said 'Thusia, “but this is the afternoon he works on his
sermon. He tries not to see anyone.”
“This is more important than a sermon,” said Turrill. “Would you mind
telling him that?” David would see him. He came to the door himself
and led the gambler into the little study where the spatter-work motto,
“Keep an even mind under all circumstances,” hung above the desk.
He gave Turrill his hand and placed a chair for him, and the gambler
dropped into the chair with a sigh of pain.
“I think you know who I am,” said Turrill, rubbing his hip. “I'm
Turrill. I do a little in the gambling way.”
“Yes, so I understand,” said David, and waited. “It's not about myself
I've come,” said Turrill. “I wouldn't bother about myself; I'm dead any
day. I've been dead twenty-five years, as far as my gambling chance of
life goes. Do you know Marty Ware?”
“Yes,” said David. “Is it about him?”
“He's going to kill himself,” said Turrill without emotion.
David waited.
“The fool!” said Turrill. “He came to me and told me. Why, I can't sleep
anyway, with this hip of mine! How can I sleep, then, when I've got such
a thing as that on my mind! So I came to you; that's what you're for,
isn't it!”
“It is one of the things,” said David.
“He got that book of Ingersoll's,” Turrill complained. “The fool! I've
read that book! Do you think, with this pain in my hip, I would be
dragging along here day after day, if there was anything in that idea
that a man has a right to blow himself out when he feels like it! But
that's what Mart Ware has worked into his head. Suicide! He's going to
do it!”
“Yes! Well!” asked David.
Turrill, rubbing his hip, looked at David. He had hardly expected
anything like this calm query. He had pictured our dominie rushing for
coat and hat, rolling his eyes, perhaps, and muttering prayers. Instead,
David leaned back in his deep chair and placed the tips of his fingers
together and waited.
“I won his money,” said Turrill.
“Yes, I supposed so, or you wouldn't be here, would you!” said David.
“The devil of it--” Turrill stopped. “The--”
“I dare say it is the devil of it,” said David. “Go on.”
“Well, then, the devil of it is, I'm strapped!” said Turrill. “If I
wasn't--” He waved his hand to show how simple it would be. “He came
yesterday, telling me the story. I'm a sick man; I close my place at one
every morning; I can't stand any more than that; but last night I let
them stay until daylight, and, curse it! I had no luck! I took the limit
off and tried to win what Marty needs, and they cleaned me out and took
my I. O. U.'s. So I came to you. It was all I could think of.”
He paused a moment while he rubbed his hip. “It wasn't his own money
Marty lost,” he said then. “He's taken two thousand dollars of the
city money, and I won it.” He stretched out his leg and fumbled in
his trousers pocket and brought out a roll of money. “There!” he said;
“there is five hundred dollars. I went around today and raised that
among the men who come to my room. I can't raise another cent. That's
all _I_ can do; what can you do?”
Now David arose and walked the narrow space before Turrill.
“I suppose his bondsmen will make good! He has bondsmen, hasn't he? I
don't know much about such things.”
“They'll have to make good what he is short,” said Turrill. “Seth
Hardcome will have to make it all good. Tony Porter is on the bond,
but he hasn't a cent. If he had a cent he wouldn't have gone on the
bond--that's the kind he is. Hardcome is the man that'll have to make
good. But he'll see Mart Ware in the penitentiary first.”
“Why!”
Turrill made a gesture with his hand.
“How do I know! Mart says so; Mart went to him. He told Hardcome the
whole thing and asked him to see him through--said he would work his
hands to the bone to pay it back. Hardcome won't do anything and Porter
can't and Marty will kill himself before he goes to the pen. Hardcome is
one of your deacons, or whatever you call them, isn't he!”
“No. He is not in my church at all,” said David. “But he is a just man;
I am sure he is a just man.”
“He is a hard man,” said Turrill. “The most he would do for me was to
say he would keep his mouth shut until the new treasurer goes in. He
says he'll send Marty to the pen; he'll kill Marty instead.”
Turrill arose. There was no emotion shown on his inscrutable gambler's
face. David stood fingering the money Turrill had handed him, and
Turrill moved to the door. From the back he looked like an old, old man.
“You can see what you can do, if you want to,” Turrill said. “I can't do
anything.”
“Wait!” David said. “You'll let me thank you for coming to me? You'll
let me call on you for help if I need it?”
“Anything!” said Turrill, and with that he went.
'Thusia was in the kitchen and David went there.
“It's Marty Ware,” he said. “He's in trouble, 'Thusia. I'll have to go
downtown and let my sermon go. We'll give them another from the bottom
of the barrel this time. Do you suppose you can, presently, take Alice
and drop in on Marty's mother for a little visit? Are you able?”
“In half an hour?”
“Yes, or in an hour. Marty is in dire trouble, 'Thusia, and I don't know
whether he can be pulled out of it. I'm going to do what I can. I've
been thinking of his mother; she is so--what's the word!--aloof!
isolated! so by herself. If the trouble comes she will need someone,
some woman, or she will break. I'd send Rose Hinch, but I think you
would be better--you and Alice.”
“Yes, I understand,” 'Thusia said. “'Something not too bright and good
for human nature's daily food.' Is Marty's trouble serious!”
David placed his hand on his wife's shoulder. “I can't tell you how
serious, 'Thusia,” he said. “I don't want you to know. You'll not let
his mother guess we know anything about it!”
“Let me think!” said 'Thusia. “Didn't she give a lemon cake for our last
church dinner! I'm sure she did! It will be about that I happen to run
in. You'll be back in time for supper, David! Hot rolls, you know!”
“Oh, if it is hot rolls you can depend on me!” David smiled.
Mrs. Ware was a peculiar woman. She was an old woman and alone in the
world except for Marty, her only son, who had come late in her life. She
was a proud woman. During her husband's life she had rather lorded it
(or ladied it) over our mixed “good society” in Riverbank. Ware had
been a commission man, now and then plunging on his own hook, as we say,
buying heavily and selling when prices went up. He always had abundant
money, and Mrs. Ware spent it for him. They built the big house
overlooking the river--a palace for Riverbank of those days--and Mrs.
Ware held her head very high, with four horses in the stable and a
coachman and gardener and two maids and a grand piano and four oil
paintings “done by hand” in Europe! And then, when Ware died, there
was hardly enough money in the bank to pay for his funeral, no life
insurance, and everything mortgaged. Marty was about fourteen then, a
bright boy.
For a year or so Mrs. Ware tried to keep the big house, and then it
had to go. Instead of the social queen, spending the largest income in
Riverbank, she was almost the poorest of women. She moved out of the
big house into a little three-room white box of a place on a back street
that was then a mere track through the weeds. Her white hands had to
do all the housework that was done; she had no maid at all, and hardly
enough for herself and Marty to eat. No doubt it was a crushing blow,
but she could not bare herself in her poverty to those who had known her
in her flaunting prosperity. She shut her door, and became a proud, hard
recluse.
Somehow she managed to get Marty through the high school, and then he
went to work. He found some minor position in one of our banks and might
have held it and have worked up into a better position, for he proved
to be a natural accountant, but the “fast set” caught him, and, after
it was learned that he spent his nights with the cards, the bank let
him go. Until he was twenty-one he skipped from one temporary job to
another. Sometimes he was in the freight office, then with a mill, then
behind a counter for a few weeks. He had wonderful adaptability and
seemed able to step into a position and take up the work of another
man in an instant. He seemed destined to become a permanent “temporary
assistant,” but he was making more friends all the while and he had
hardly passed his majority when he was elected city treasurer. He seemed
to have found his proper niche at last.
The salary attached to the treasurership was not large but it was
enough, or would have been if Marty had not gambled. One good black
winter suit and one good black summer suit will last many years in
Riverbank, and Marty always seemed properly dressed in black. He was
slender and what we called “natty.” His hair was as black as night.
During his second term he began to show the effects of his nights. His
face became paler than it should have been, and some mornings he was so
tremulous he took a glass of whisky to steady his hands. With all this
he was immensely popular, and when the chances of the campaign in which
he was finally beaten were discussed Mart Ware was the one man no one
believed could be beaten. He lost by twenty votes.
As David walked down the hill toward Main Street and Seth Hardcome's
shoe store he thought of these things. Mart Ware was one man, if there
were any, who had been thrown out of office through David's part in the
campaign. To that extent he was specifically responsible; in the broader
sense that he was his “brother's keeper” it was his duty to do all he
could to save any man or woman in such trouble as Marty was in.
A year or two earlier Seth Hardcome, his tough old body beginning to
feel the draughts and changes of temperature of his long, narrow store,
had had Belden, the contractor, partition off an office across the rear,
and here David found the old man. He was standing at his tall desk,
making out half-yearly bills against the coming of the first of January,
and he pushed his spectacles up into his hair and turned to David with
the air of a busy man interrupted.
“Well, dominie!”
David put his hand on the back of one of the chairs near the little
stove that heated the office.
“Can you sit down for a minute or two!” he asked. “Have you time to talk
facts and figures; to give me a business man's good advice!”
“Why, yes,” said Hardcome; “I guess you ain't going to try to sell me
any stocks and bonds, eh! I guess you're one man I don't have to be
afraid of that with. Facts and figures, eh! Fire away!”
David seated himself and put one knee over the other. The warmth of the
stove was grateful after the chill air outside, and he rubbed his palms
back and forth against each other.
“Do you know--or, if you don't know exactly, can you guess fairly dose
to it--what the campaign we had last month cost our crowd!” David asked.
“County or city!” asked Hardcome. “I guess there wasn't much spent
outside the city.”
“I was thinking of the city,” said David.
“Well, we _raised_ pretty close to four thousand dollars,” said
Hardcome, “and we _spent_ more than that. We _spent_ more than four
thousand dollars. Halls, fireworks, speakers, printing--costs a lot of
money! I guess the other fellows spent three times that, so we can't
complain. I hear the liquor makers poured a lot of money into Riverbank,
and I guess it's so. Wouldn't surprise me at all if they spent ten or
twelve thousand.”
“To our four thousand,” said David. “Looking at it that way you couldn't
call our money wasted, could you!”
“Wasted! What you talking about! To clean out these saloons! Four
thousand dollars wasted, when we've as good as got the saloons closed
by spending it! You don't take count of money that way when it's for a
thing like that, do you!”
“Money is money,” said David sagely. “A half of four thousand dollars
would be a wonderful help to our church. And yours is not too rich, is
it! Four thousand dollars would buy the poor how many pairs of shoes!
Eight hundred! A thousand!”
“Depends on the kind of shoes,” said Hardcome with a grim smile. “And a
lot of good it would do to give them shoes into one hand, when they go
right off and spend all they've got, in the saloons, with the other.
Ain't they better off with the saloons closed and the money in their
pockets to buy their own shoes!”
“Yes, I'll admit that,” said David. “Is that why we made the fight to
close the saloons! So they could buy their own shoes! There are not
so many poor in this town, Hardcome. You don't see many suffering for
shoes. I thought our campaign had something to do with saving a few
souls--a few bodies that were going down into the gutter.”
“So it did!” said Hardcome promptly. “I didn't start saying how many
shoes the campaign money would buy, did I! I seem to remember you said
it first.”
He smiled again, the pleased smile of a man who has got a dominie in a
corner in argument. David smiled too.
“I believe I did first mention the campaign in terms of shoes,” he
admitted. “I stand corrected. It should be mentioned in terms of
souls--human souls, not shoe soles. And, looking at it that way, was it
worth the price! Was it worth four thousand dollars!”
“My stars!” exclaimed Hardcome, and stared at David in genuine surprise.
“I mean just that,” insisted David; “was it worth four thousand dollars!
How many souls will the campaign actually save! One! Ten! A thousand!
Not a thousand. We can't say, offhand, that every man who stepped into a
saloon lost his soul, can we! He might be saved later, and in some other
way, at less cost. How many in Riverbank have died in the gutter in the
last year? How many have killed themselves because of drink?”
“But--” Hardcome began. David raised his hand.
“Because,” he said, “next year we may have this all to do over again.
Next year we may need another four thousand dollars, and the next year,
and the next year. How many men in Riverbank actually die in the gutter
each year!”
Now, there are not many. Riverbank men do not often die in the gutter,
and but few of them kill themselves on account of drink. They live on
for years, a handful of sodden, stupid, blear-eyed creatures.
“One!” asked David. “Is the average one a year? I don't believe it,
but let us say it is one. Is it worth four thousand dollars to save
one drunkard from death! To save one drunkard's soul! There is a plain
business proposition: Is it worth that much cash! That's what I'm
getting at.”
“To save a man!” exclaimed Hardcome, his hard face as near showing
horror as it had for many long years. “To save a man and his eternal
soul! What do you mean! We don't set prices on souls, that way, do we!
My stars! I never heard of such a thing! And from a dominie! You can't
count a soul in cash dollars. What if it is but one soul we drag back
from hell-fire! What's four thousand, or five thousand, or ten thousand
dollars when it comes to a soul!”
“I don't mean your soul, or mine,” said David. “I mean a drunkard's
soul, or some soul like that. Is it worth while to spend four thousand
dollars to save one soul!”
“Of course it is!” snapped Hardcome. “Couldn't we,” urged David, “save
more souls, at a lower cost per soul, if we sent the money to foreign
missions!”
“I don't know whether we could or we couldn't,” cried Hardcome. “That's
got nothing to do with it. We got to take care of the souls right at
home first. I don't care if it costs ten thousand dollars a soul, it's
our duty to do it!” David arose and turned and faced the shoe merchant.
His face was white. His eyes were like gray steel. He had no smile now.
“Then, if you think souls are worth so much,” he asked tensely, “why
are you sending Marty Ware to eternal death for a miserable two thousand
dollars! Two thousand! For a miserable fifteen hundred, for here are
five hundred a benighted gambler dug up to save the boy!” Hardcome was
on his feet too. He had turned as white as David, or whiter.
“Are drunkards' souls the only souls you prize, Seth Hardcome!” asked
David. “Don't you know that boy will kill himself if he is exposed and
ruined! A fool! Of course he is a fool! You knew he was a gambler--you
must have known it--and you let him run his course when you might have
brought him up short, threatening to get off his bond. You talk about
ten-thousanddollar souls, and you will not turn over your hand to save
Marty Ware's soul when it will not cost you a cent!”
“It'll cost me two thousand dollars,” said Hardcome. “That's what it'll
cost me!”
“And you call yourself a business man!” laughed David. “A business man!
Look!”
He picked up the roll of bank notes he had thrown on the shoe merchant's
desk.
“This is what a gambler gave to save Marty,” he exclaimed. “Five hundred
dollars! And you talk about it costing you two thousand to save Marty
from suicide! Why, man, your two thousand is _gone!_ You are his
bondsman, the only responsible one, and you'll have to pay whether he is
dead and in eternal fire, or alive and to be saved! Your two thousand
is gone, spent, vanished already and it will not cost you a cent more
to save Marty Ware's soul. Here, take this five hundred dollars; you can
_save_ five hundred dollars by saving Marty Ware's eternal soul!”
Hardcome was dazed. He put out his hand and took the money and looked at
it unseeingly, turning it over and over in his fingers. Then he looked
up at David, and in David's eyes was a twinkle. The dominie put his hand
on the shoe man's arm, and laughed.
“Did I do that well?” he asked.
Hardcome did not smile. He turned his head and peered through the glass
of the door into the store room, doubtless to see where his clerk was
and whether he had heard, and then he looked back at David.
“Sit down,” he said, still unsmilingly.
David seated himself. Hardcome stood, half leaning against the desk,
turning the roll of bills in his hand.
“You don't know why I went on that boy's bond,” he said. “His mother
slammed a door in my wife's face, or what amounted to that, or worse.
His mother was queen of Riverbank when you came, and for a long while
after, so I needn't tell you how high and mighty she was before Ware
died. You know, I guess. They came here in 'Fifty-three, and my wife and
I came in 'Fifty-one, and I started this shoe business that year. That
was on Water Street, in a frame shack where the Riverbank Hotel stands
now. I didn't move the store up here until 'Fifty-nine. My wife and I
lived at the old Morton House until the bugs drove us out---bugs and
roaches, and we couldn't stand them--and there were no houses to be had,
so for a while we lived back of the store in the shack, getting along
the best we could, waiting for houses to be built.
“The Wares had some money when they came, and Tarvole, who was building
the house we hoped to rent, sold it to Ware and they moved in. You know
how things are in a new town. Anyway, my wife took her calling cards and
called on Mrs. Ware. She didn't find the lady at home, and that evening
a boy brought my wife's card back to her. He said Mrs. Ware told him to
say she wasn't at home, and wouldn't be, to a cobbler.
“My wife laughed at it, but it made me mad enough. I said I would
get even with the Wares, and I meant it. I kept it in mind for years,
waiting a chance, but you don't always have a chance. There are some
men and women you can't seem to hurt, and the Wares were two of them. He
seemed to make plenty of money and keep out of things where I could have
done him a bad turn. I got to be a director in the Riverbank National,
but he never needed to borrow, so I couldn't hurt him there. His wife
was always at the top of things, too. I couldn't hit her.
“Well, Ware died and everything went. The widow was as poor as a church
mouse; I don't know how she got along. She was so poor she couldn't be
hurt; she was like the dust you walk on--it's dust, and that's an end of
it: it can't be anything less. She shut herself up, and was nothing.
My wife was dead, anyway, and I couldn't hurt the widow by flaunting my
wife and the position she had in the widow's face.
“Then this boy grew up--this Marty. I got him the place in the bank.”
“You did!” David exclaimed.
“It was the only way I could hit at the widow,” said Hardcome. “I
thought maybe it would annoy her, to know I was the one that was helping
her boy. Maybe it did. I never knew. When the cashier said it wasn't
safe to keep him any longer I told Marty to tell his mother not to
worry; that I would try to fix it so he could stay. I did manage to get
them to keep him a few months longer; then they outvoted me.
“Then I got him the place in the freight office, but he couldn't hold
it. A couple of times, when he lost his jobs, I took him in the store
here. I knew that would annoy the old dame, and I guess it did. Then
some of the Democrats picked him up and ran him for this job he has now.
It made me mad that I couldn't say I had been back of that, but when it
came to getting a couple of bondsmen I saw another chance to bother the
old lady. I went on his bond.”
Hardcome unrolled the money in his hand and smoothed it out.
“You knew my wife, dominie;” he continued slowly. “Some people did not
like her, but I did. I never had any complaint to make about her; she
was a good wife. So it sort of seemed to me--when Turrill came to me and
told me what Marty had done--and I remembered how that woman had slammed
her door in my wife's face, so to say--that this was my chance--my
chance to get even once for all.”
He stopped, folded the bills, and slipped them into his pocket.
“You see,” he said, “you didn't know the whole story. It would have been
something of a windup to send the boy to the penitentiary. I guess that
would have taken the old lady off her high horse. But I don't know. I
don't want to kill the boy's soul, or anybody's soul. I guess I'll make
good what he is short, and take him into the store here again.”
David was ont of his chair and his hand clasped Hardcome's hand. The old
man laughed then, a little sheepishly.
“Sort of tickles me!” he said. “Wouldn't the old dame be hopping mad if
she knew the cobbler was going to save the Riverbank queen's boy, and
his life, and his soul, and the whole caboodle!”
“It would be coals of fire on her head,” smiled David.
“'Twould so!” said Seth Hardcome; “and I reckon the hair is getting
pretty thin on the top of her head now, too!”
Then he laughed. And David laughed.
He was still smiling when he stepped out into the street and was told by
the first man he met that old Sam Wiggett had just dropped dead in his
office.