Travis watched him with an amused smile as he hastily took off his

satchel and struck a piece off the ledge. Helen stood wondering,

looking not at Clay, but at Travis, and her eyes shone brilliantly

and full of proud splendor.

Clay forgot that they were there. He measured the ledge. He chipped

off piece after piece and examined it closely. "I never dreamed it

would be here, in this shape," he said at last. "Look!--and fully

eight feet, solid. This hill is full of it. The old preacher will

find it hard to spend his wealth."

"But that is not all," said Travis; "see how the dip runs--see the

vein--this way." He pointed to the left.

Clay paled: "That means--it is remarkable--very remarkable. Why, this

vein should not have been here. It is too low to be in the

Carboniferous." He suddenly stopped: "But here it is--contrary to all

my data and--and--why really it takes the low range of the poor land

of Westmoreland. It--it--will make me rich."

"You haven't seen all," said Travis--"look!" He turned and walked to

another part of the small cave, where the bank had broken, and there

gleamed, not the black, but the red--the earth full of rich ore.

Clay picked up one eagerly.

"The finest iron ore!--who--who--ever heard of such a freak of

nature?"

"And the lime rock is all over the valley," said Travis, "and that

means, coal, iron and lime--"

"Furnaces--why, of course--furnaces and wealth. Helen, I--I--it will

make Westmoreland rich. Now, in all earnestness--in all sincerity I

can tell you--"

"Do not tell me anything, Clay--please do not. You do not

understand. You can never understand." Her eyes were following

Travis, who had walked off pretending to be examining the cave. Then

she gave a shriek which sounded frightfully intense as it echoed

around.

Travis turned quickly and saw standing between him and them a gaunt,

savage thing, with froth in its mouth and saliva-dripping lips. At

first he thought it was a panther, so low it crouched to spring; but

almost instantly he recognized Jud Carpenter's dog. Then it began to

creep uncertainly, staggeringly forward, toward Clay and Helen, its

neck drawn and contracted in the paroxysms of rabies; its deadly

eyes, staring, unearthly yellow in the lantern light. Within two

yards of Clay, who stood helpless with fear and uncertainty, it

crouched to spring, growling and snapping at its own sides, and Helen

screamed again as she saw Travis's quick, lithe figure spring forward

and, grasping the dog by the throat from behind, fling himself with

crushing force on the brute, choking it as he fell.

Total darkness--for in his rush Travis threw aside his lantern--and

it seemed an age to Helen as she heard the terrible fight for life

going on at her feet, the struggles and howls of the dog, the

snapping of the huge teeth, the stinging sand thrown up into her

face. Then after a while all was still, and then very quietly from

Travis:

"A match, Clay--light the lantern! I have choked him to death."

Under the light he arose, his clothes torn with tooth and fang of the

gaunt dog, which lay silent. He stood up hot and flushed, and then

turned pallid, and for a moment staggered as he saw the blood

trickling from his left arm.

Helen stood by him terror-eyed, trembling, crushed,--with a terrible

sickening fear.

"He was mad," said Travis gently, "and I fear he has bitten me,

though I managed to jump on him before he bit you two."

He took off his coat--blood was on his shirt sleeve and had run down

his arm. Helen, pale and with a great sob in her throat, rolled up

the sleeve, Travis submitting, with a strange pallor in his face and

the new light in his eyes.

His bare arm came up strong and white. Above the elbow, near the

shoulder, the blood still flowed where the fangs had sunk.

"There is only one chance to save me," he said quietly, "and that, a

slim one. It bleeds--if I could only get my lips to it--"

He tried to expostulate, to push her off, as he felt her lips against

his naked arm. But she clung there sucking out the virus. He felt her

tears fall on his arm. He heard her murmur:

"My dying lion--my dying lion!"

He bent and whispered: "You are risking your own life for me, Helen!

Life for life--death for death!"

It was too much even for his great strength, and when he recovered

himself he was sitting on the sand of the little cave. How long she

had clung to his arm he did not know, but it had ceased to pain him

and her own handkerchief was tied around it.

He staggered out, a terrible pallor on his face, as he said: "Not

this way--not to go this way. Oh, God, your blow--I care not for

death, but, oh, not this death?"

"Clay," he said after a while--"Take her--take her to your mother and

sister to-night. I must bid you both good-night, ay, and good-bye.

See, you walk only across the field there--that is Westmoreland."

He turned, but he felt some one clinging to his hand, in the dark. He

looked down at her, at the white, drawn face, beautiful with a

terrible pain: "Take me--take me," she begged--"with you--to the end

of the world--oh, I love you and I care not who knows."

"Child--child"--he whispered sadly--"You know not what you say. I am

dying. I shall be mad--unless--unless what you have done--"

"Take me," she pleaded--"my lion. I am yours."

He stooped and kissed her and then walked quickly away.

CHAPTER XX

THE ANGEL WITH THE FLAMING SWORD

It was nearly time for the mill to close when Mammy Maria, her big

honest face beaming with satisfaction at the surprise she had in

store for Helen, began to wind her red silk bandana around her head.

She had several bandanas, but when Lily saw her put on the red silk

one, the little girl knew she was going out--"dressin' fur

prom'nade"--as the old lady termed it.

"You are going after Helen," said the little girl, clapping her

hands.

She sat on her father's lap: "And we want you to hurry up, Mammy

Maria," he said, "I want all my family here. I am going to work

to-morrow. I'll redeem Millwood before my two years expire or I am

not a Conway again."

Mammy Maria was agitated enough. She had been so busy that she had

failed to notice how late it was. In her efforts to surprise Helen

she had forgotten time, and now she feared the mill might close and

Helen, not knowing they had moved, would go back to Millwood. This

meant a two mile tramp and delay. She had plenty of time, she knew,

before the mill closed; but the more she thought of the morning's

scene at the mill and of Jud Carpenter, the greater her misgivings.

For Mammy Maria was instinctive--a trait her people have. It is

always Nature's substitute when much intellect is wanting.

All afternoon she had chuckled to herself. All afternoon, the three

of them,--for even Major Conway joined in, and helped work and

arrange things--talked it over as they planned. His face was clear

now, and calm, as in the old days. Even the old servant could see he

had determined to win in the fight.

"Marse Ned's hisse'f ag'in," she would say to him

encouragingly--"Marse Ned's hisse'f--an' Zion's by his side, yea,

Lord, the Ark of the Tabbernackle!"

For the last time she surveyed the little rooms of the cottage. How

clean and fresh it all was, and how the old mahogany of Millwood set

them off! And now all was ready.

It was nearly dark when she reached the mill. It had not yet closed

down, and lights began to blaze first from one window, then another.

She could hear the steam and the coughing of the exhaust pipe.

This was all the old woman had hoped--to be in time for Helen when

the mill closed.

But one thing was in her way, or she had taken her as she did Lily:

She did not know where Helen's room was in the mill. There was no

fear in the old nurse's heart. She had taken Lily, she would take

Helen. She would show the whole tribe of them that she would! But in

which room was the elder sister?

So she walked again into the main office, fearless, and with her head

up. For was she not Zion, the Lord's chosen, the sanctified one, and

the powers of hell were naught?

No one was in the office but Jud Carpenter, and to her surprise he

treated her with the utmost courtesy. Indeed, his courtesy was so

intense that any one but Zion, who, being black, knew little of irony

and less of sarcasm, might have seen that Jud's courtesy was strongly

savored of the two.

"Be seated, Madam," he said with a profound bow. "Be seated, Upholder

of Heaven, Chief-cook-an'-bottle-washer in the Kingdom to come! An'

what may have sent the angel of the Lord to honor us with another

visit?"

The old woman's fighting feathers arose instantly:--

"The same that sent 'em to Sodom an' Gomarrer, suh," she replied.

"Ah," said Jud apologetically, "an' I hope we won't smell any

brimstone to-night."

"If you don't smell it to-night, you'll smell it befo' long. And now

look aheah, Mister White Man, no use for you an' me to set here

a-jawin' an' 'spu'tin'. I've come after my other gyrl an' you know

I'm gwine have her!"

"Oh, she'll be out 'torectly, Mrs. Zion! Jes' keep yo' robes on an'

hol' yo' throne down a little while. She'll be out 'torectly."

There was a motive in this lie, as there was in all others Jud

Carpenter told.

It was soon apparent. For scarcely had the old woman seated herself

with a significant toss of her head when the mill began to cease to

hum and roar.

She sat watching the door keenly as they came out. What creatures

they were, lint-and-dust-covered to their very eyes. The yellow,

hard, emotionless faces of the men, the haggard, weary ones of the

girls and women and little children! Never had she seen such white

people before, such hollow eyes, with dark, bloodless rings beneath

them, sunken cheeks, tanned to the color of oiled hickory, much used.

Dazed, listless, they stumbled out past her with relaxed under-jaws

and faces gloomy, expressionless--so long bent over looms, they had

taken on the very looks of them--the shapes of them, moving, walking,

working, mechanically. Women, smileless, and so tired and numbed that

they had forgotten the strongest instinct of humanity--the romance of

sex; for many of them wore the dirty, chopped-off jackets of men,

their slouched black hats, their coarse shoes, and talked even in the

vulgar, hard irony of the male in despair.

They all passed out--one by one--for in them was not even the

instinct of the companionship of misery.

Every moment the old nurse expected Helen to walk out, to walk out in

her queenly way, with her beautiful face and manners, so different

from those around her.

Jud Carpenter sat at his desk quietly cutting plug tobacco to fill

his pipe-bowl, and watching the old woman slyly.

"Oh, she'll be 'long 'torectly--you see the drawer-in bein' in the

far room comes out last."

The last one passed out. The mill became silent, and yet Helen did

not appear.

The old nurse arose impatiently: "I reck'n I'll go find her," she

said to Carpenter.

"I'd better sho' you the way, old 'oman," he said, lazily shuffling

off the stool he was sitting on pretending to be reading a

paper--"you'll never fin' the room by yo'self."

He led her along through the main room, hot, lint-filled and

evil-smelling. It was quite dark. Then to the rear, where the mill

jutted on the side of a hill, he stopped in front of a door and said:

"This is her room; she's in there, I reckin--she's gen'ly late."

With quickening heart the old woman entered and, almost immediately,

she heard the door behind her shut and the key turn in the bolt. The

room was empty and she sprang back to the door, only to find it

securely locked, and to hear Jud Carpenter's jeers from without. She

ran to the two small windows. They were high and looked out over a

ravine.

She did not utter a word. Reared as she had been among the Conways,

she was too well bred to act the coward, and beg and plead in

undignified tones for relief. At first she thought it was only a

cruel joke of the Whipper-in, but when he spoke, she saw it was not.

"Got you where I want you, Mother of Zion," he said through the key

hole. "I guess you are safe there till mornin' unless the Angel of

the Lord opens the do' as they say he has a way of doin' for

Saints--ha--ha--ha!"

No word from within.

"Wanter kno' what I shet you up for, Mother of all Holiness? Well,

listen: It's to keep you there till to-morrow--that's good reason,

ain't it? You'll find a lot of cotton in the fur corner--a mighty

good thing for a bed. Can't you talk? How do you like it? I guess you

ain't so independent now."

There was a pause. The old woman sat numbly in Helen's chair. She saw

a bunch of violets in her frame, and the odor brought back memories

of her old home. A great fear began to creep over her--not for

herself, but for Helen, and she fell on her knees by the frame and

prayed silently.

Jud's voice came again: "Want to kno' now why you'll stay there till

mornin'? Well, I'll tell you--it'll make you pass a com'f'table

night--you'll never see Miss Helen ag'in--"

The old nurse sprang to her feet. She lost control of herself, for

all day she had felt this queer presentiment, and now was it really

true? She blamed herself for not taking Helen that morning.

She threw herself against the door. It was strong and secure.

Jud met it with a jeering laugh.

"Oh, you're safe an' you'll never see her agin. I don't mind tellin'

you she has run off with Richard Travis--they'll go North to-night.

You'll find other folks can walk off with yo' gals--'specially the

han'sum ones--besides yo'se'f."

The old nurse was stricken with weakness. Her limbs shook so she sat

down in a heap at the door and said pleadingly:--"Are you lyin' to

me, white man? Will--will he marry her or--"

"Did you ever hear of him marryin' anybody?" came back with a laugh.

"No, he's only took a deserted young 'oman in out of the cold--he'll

take care of her, but he ain't the marryin' kind, is he?"

The reputation of Richard Travis was as well known to Mammy Maria as

it was to anyone. She did not know whether to believe Jud or not, but

one thing she knew--something--something dreadful was happening to

Helen. The old nurse called to mind instantly things that had

happened before she herself had left Millwood--things Helen had

said--her grief, her despair, her horror of the mill, her belief that

she was already disgraced. It all came to the old nurse now so

plainly. Tempted as she was, young as she was, deserted and forsaken

as she thought she was, might not indeed the temptation be too much

for her?

She groaned as she heard Jud laugh and walk off.

"O my baby, my beautiful baby!" she wept, falling on her knees again.

The mill grew strangely silent and dark. On a pile of loose cotton

she fell, praying after the manner of her race.

An hour passed. The darkness, the loneliness, the horror of it all

crept into her superstitious soul, and she became frantic with

religious fervor and despair.

Pacing the room, she sang and prayed in a frenzy of emotional tumult.

But she heard only the echo of her own voice, and only the wailings

of her own songs came back. Negro that she was, she was intelligent

enough to know that Jud Carpenter spoke the truth--that not for his

life would he have dared to say this if it had not had some truth in

it. What?--she did not know--she only knew that harm was coming to

Helen.

She called aloud for help--for Edward Conway. But the mill was closed

tight--the windows nailed.

Another hour passed. It began to tell on the old creature's mind.

Negroes are simple, religious, superstitious folks, easily unbalanced

by grief or wrong.

She began to see visions in this frenzy of religious excitement, as

so many of her race do under the nervous strain of religious feeling.

She fell into a trance.

It was most real to her. Who that has ever heard a negro give in his

religious experience but recognizes it? She was carried on the wings

of the morning down to the gates of hell. The Devil himself met her,

tempting her always, conducting her through the region of darkness

and showing her the lakes of fire and threatening her with all his

punishment if she did not cease to believe. She overcame him only by

constant prayer. She fled from him, he followed her, but could not

approach her while she prayed.... She was rescued by an angel--an

angel from heaven ... an angel with a flaming sword. Through all the

glories of heaven this angel conducted her, praised her, and bidding

her farewell at the gate, told her to go back to earth and take this:

_It was a torch of fire!_

"_Burn! burn!_" said the angel--"_for I shall make the governors of

Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire on

a sheaf. And they shall devour all the people around about, on the right

hand and the left; and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own

place, even in Jerusalem._"

She came out of the trance in a glory of religious fervor: "Jerusalem

shall be inhabited ag'in!--the Angel has told me--told me--Burn--burn,"

she cried. "Oh Lord--you have spoken and Zion has ears to hear--Amen."

Quickly she gathered up the loose cotton and placed it at the door,

piling it up to the very bolt. She struck a match, swaying and rocking

and chanting: "Yea, Lord, thy servant hath heard--thy servant hath

heard!"

The flames leaped up quickly enveloping the door. The room began to fill

with smoke, but she retreated to a far corner and fell on her knees in

prayer. The panels of the door caught first and the flames spreading

upward soon heated the lock around which the wood blazed and crackled.

It burned through. She sprang up, rushed through the blinding smoke,

struck the door as it blazed, in a broken mass, and rushed out. Down the

long main room she ran to a low window, burst it, and stepped out on the

ground:

"Jerusalem shall be inhabited again," she shouted as she ran

breathless toward home.

CHAPTER XXI

THE GREAT FIRE

Edward Conway sat on the little porch till the stars came out,

wondering why the old nurse did not return. Sober as he was and knew

he would ever be, it seemed that a keen sensitiveness came with it,

and a feeling of impending calamity.

"Oh, it's the cursed whiskey," he said to himself--"it always leaves

you keyed up like a fiddle or a woman. I'll get over it after a while

or I'll die trying," and he closed his teeth upon each other with a

nervous twist that belied his efforts at calmness.

But even Lily grew alarmed, and to quiet her he took her into the

house and they ate their supper in silence.

Again he came out on the porch and sat with the little girl in his

lap. But Lily gave him no rest, for she kept saying, as the hours

passed: "Where is she, father--oh, do go and see!"

"She has gone to Millwood through mistake," he kept telling her, "and

Mammy Maria has doubtless gone after her. Mammy will bring her back.

We will wait awhile longer--if I had some one to leave you with," he

said gently, "I'd go myself. But she will be home directly."

And Lily went to sleep in his lap, waiting.

The moon came up, and Conway wrapped Lily in a shawl, but still held

her in his arms. And as he sat holding her and waiting with a

fast-beating heart for the old nurse, all his wasted life passed

before him.

He saw himself as he had not for years--his life a failure, his

fortune gone. He wondered how he had escaped as he had, and as he

thought of the old Bishop's words, he wondered why God had been as

good to him as He had, and again he uttered a silent prayer of

thankfulness and for strength. And with it the strength came, and he

knew he could never more be the drunkard he had been. There was

something in him stronger than himself.

He was a strong man spiritually--it had been his inheritance, and the

very thought of anything happening to Helen blanched his cheek. In

spite of the faults of his past, no man loved his children more than

he, when he was himself. Like all keen, sensitive natures, his was

filled to overflowing with paternal love.

"My God," he thought, "suppose--suppose she has gone back to

Millwood, found none of us there, thinks she had been deserted,

and--and--"

The thought was unbearable. He slipped in with the sleeping Lily in

his arms and began to put her in bed without awakening her,

determined to mount his horse and go for Helen himself.

But just then the old nurse, frantic, breathless and in a delirium of

religious excitement, came in and fell fainting on the porch.

He revived her with cold water, and when she could talk she could

only pronounce Helen's name, and say they had run off with her.

"Who?"--shouted Conway, his heart stopping in the staggering shock of

it.

The old woman tried to tell Jud Carpenter's tale, and Conway heard

enough. He did not wait to hear it all--he did not know the mill was

now slowly burning.

"Take care of Lily"--he said, as he went into his room and came out

with his pistol buckled around his waist.

Then he mounted his horse and rode swiftly to Millwood.

He was astonished to find a fire in the hearth, a lamp burning, and

one of Helen's gloves lying on the table.

By it was another pair. He picked them up and looked closely. Within,

in red ink, were the initials: _R. T._

He bit his lips till the blood came. He bowed his head in his hands.

Sometimes there comes to us that peculiar mental condition in which

we are vaguely conscious that once before we have been in the same

place, amid the same conditions and surroundings which now confront

us. We seem to be living again a brief moment of our past life, where

Time himself has turned back everything. It came that instant to

Edward Conway.

"It was here--and what was it? Oh, yes:--'Some men repent to God's

smile, some to His frown, and some to His fist?'"--He groaned:--"This

is His fist. Never--never before in all the history of the Conway

family has one of its women--"

He sat down on the old sofa and buried, again, his face in his hands.

Edward Conway was sober, but he still had the instincts of the

drunkard--it never occurred to him that he had done anything to cause

it. Drunkenness was nothing--a weakness--a fault which was now behind

him. But this--this--the first of all the Conway women--and his

daughter--his child--the _beautiful one_. He sat still, and then he

grew very calm. It was the calmness of the old Conway spirit

returning. "Richard Travis," he said to himself, "knows as well what

this act of his means in the South,--in the unwritten law of our

land--as I do. He has taken his chance of life or death. I'll see

that it is death. This is the last of me and my house. But in the

fall I'll see that this Philistine of Philistines dies under its

ruins."

He arose and started out. He saw the lap robe in the hall, and this

put him to investigating. The mares and buggy he found under the

shed. It was all a mystery to him, but of one thing he was sure: "He

will soon come back for them. I can wait."

Choosing a spot in the shadow of a great tree, he sat down with his

pistol across his knees. The moon had arisen and cast ghostly shadows

over everything. It was a time for repentance, for thoughts of the

past with him, and as he sat there, that terrible hour, with murder

in his heart, bitterness and repentance were his.

He was a changed man. Never again could he be the old self. "But the

blow--the blow," he kept saying, "I thought it would fall on me--not

on her--my beautiful one--not on a Conway woman's chastity--not my

wife's daughter--"

He heard steps coming down the path. His heart ceased a moment, it

seemed to him, and then beat wildly. He drew a long breath to relieve

it--to calm it with cool oxygen, and then he cocked the five chambered

pistol and waited as full of the joy of killing as if the man who was

now walking down the path was a wolf or a mad dog--down the path and

right into the muzzle of the pistol, backed by the arm which could kill.

He saw Richard Travis coming, slowly, painfully, his left arm tied up,

and his step, once so quick and active, so full of strength and life,

now was as if the blight of old age had come upon it.

In spite of his bitter determination Conway noticed the great change,

and instinct, which acts even through anger and hatred and revenge and

the maddening fury of murder,--instinct, the ever present--whispered its

warning to his innermost ear.

Still, he could not resist. Rising, he threw his pistol up within a few

yards of Richard Travis's breast, his hand upon the trigger. But he

could not fire, although Travis stood quietly under its muzzle and

looked without surprise into his face.

Conway glanced along the barrel of his weapon and into the face of

Richard Travis. And then he brought his pistol down with a quick

movement.

The face before him was begging him to shoot!

"Why don't you shoot?" said Travis at last, breaking the silence and

in a tone of disappointment.

"Because you are not guilty," said Conway--"not with that look in

your face."

"I am sorry you saw my face, then," he smiled sadly--"for it had been

such a happy solution for it all--if you had only fired."

"Where is my child?"

"Do you think you have any right to ask--having treated her as you

have?"

Conway trembled, at first with rage, then in shame:

"No,"--he said finally. "No, you are right--I haven't."

"That is the only reply you could have made me that would make it

obligatory on my part to answer your question. In that reply I see

there is hope for you. So I will tell you she is safe, unharmed,

unhurt."

"I felt it," said Conway, quietly, "for I knew it, Richard Travis, as

soon as I saw your face. But tell me all."

"There is little to tell. I had made up my mind to run off with her,

marry her, perhaps, since she had neither home nor a father, and was

a beautiful young thing which any man might be proud of. But things

have come up--no, not come up, fallen, fallen and crushed. It has

been a crisis all around--so I sent for Clay--a fine young fellow and

he loves her--I had him meet me here and--well, he has taken her to

Westmoreland to-night. You know she is safe there. She will come to

you to-morrow as pure as she left, though God knows you do not

deserve it."

Something sprang into Edward Conway's throat--something kin to a

joyous shout. He could not speak. He could only look at the strange,

calm, sad man before him in a gratitude that uplifted him. He stared

with eyes that were blinded with tears.

"Dick--Dick," he said, "we have been estranged, since the war. I

misjudged you. I see I never knew you. I came to kill, but here--" He

thrust the grip of his pistol toward Travis--"here, Dick, kill

me--shoot me--I am not fit to live--but, O God, how clearly I see

now; and, Dick--Dick--you shall see--the world shall see that from

now on, with God's help, as Lily makes me say--Dick, I'll be a Conway

again."

The other man pressed his hand: "Ned, I believe it--I believe it. Go

back to your little home to-night. Your daughter is safe. To-morrow

you may begin all over again. To-morrow--"

"And you, Dick--I have heard--I can guess, but why may not you,

to-morrow--"

"There will be no to-morrow for me," he said sadly. "Things stop

suddenly before me to-night as before an abyss--"

He turned quickly and looked toward the low lying range of mountains.

A great red flush as of a rising sun glowed even beyond the rim of

them, and then out of it shot tinges of flame.

Conway saw it at the same instant:

"It's the mill--the mill's afire," he said.

CHAPTER XXII

A CONWAY AGAIN

It was a great fire the mill made, lighting the valley for miles. All

Cottontown was there to see it burn, hushed, with set faces, some of

anger, some of fear--but all in stricken numbness, knowing that their

living was gone.

It was not long before Jud Carpenter was among them, stirring them

with the story of how the old negro woman had burned it--for he knew

it was she. Indeed, he was soon fully substantiated by others who

heard her when she had run home heaping her maledictions on the mill.

Soon among them began the whisper of lynching. As it grew they became

bolder and began to shout it: _Lynch her!_

Jud Carpenter, half drunk and wholly reckless, stood on a stump, and

after telling his day's experience with Mammy Maria, her defiance of

the mill's laws, her arrogance, her burning of the mill, he shouted

that he himself would lead them.

"Lynch her!" they shouted. "Lead us, Jud Carpenter! We will lynch

her."

Some wanted to wait until daylight, but "Lynch her--lynch her now,"

was the shout.

The crowd grew denser every moment.

The people of Cottontown, hot and revengeful, now that their living

was burned; hill dwellers who sympathized with them, and coming in,

were eager for any excitement; the unlawful element which infests

every town--all were there, the idle, the ignorant, the vicious.

And a little viciousness goes a long way.

There had been so many lynchings in the South that it had ceased to

be a crime--for crime, the weed, cultivated--grows into a flower to

those who do the tending.

Many of the lynchings, it is true, were honest--the frenzy of

outraged humanity to avenge a terrible crime which the law, in its

delay, often had let go unpunished. The laxity of the law, the

unscrupulousness of its lawyers, their shrewdness in clearing

criminals if the fee was forthcoming, the hundreds of technicalities

thrown around criminals, the narrowness of supreme courts in

reversing on these technicalities. All these had thrown the law back

to its source--the people. And they had taken it in their own hands.

In violent hands, but deadly sure and retributory.

If there was ever an excuse for lynching, the South was entitled to

it. For the crime was the result of the sudden emancipation of

ignorant slaves, who, backed by the bayonets of their liberators, and

attributing a far greater importance to their elevation than was

warranted, perpetuated an unnameable crime as part of their system of

revenge for years of slavery. And the South arose to the terribleness

of the crime and met it with the rifle, the torch and the rope.

Why should it be wondered at? Why should the South be singled out

for blame? Is it not a fact that for years in every newly settled

western state lynch-law has been the unchallenged, unanimous verdict

for a horse thief? And is not the honor of a white woman more than

the hide of a broncho?

But from an honest, well intentioned frenzy of justice outraged to

any pretext is an easy step. From the quick lynching of the rapist

and murderer--to be sure that the lawyers and courts did not acquit

them--was one step. To hang a half crazy old woman for burning a mill

was another, and the natural consequence of the first.

And so these people flocked to the burning--they who had helped lynch

before--the negro-haters, who had never owned a negro and had no

sympathy--no sentiment for them. It is they who lynch in the South,

who lynch and defy the law.

The great mill was in ruins--its tall black smokestacks alone stood

amid its smoking, twisted mass of steel and ashes--a rough,

blackened, but fitting monument of its own infamy.

They gathered around it--the disorderly, the vicious, the lynchers of

the Tennessee Valley.

Fitful flashes of flame now and then burst out amid the ruins,

silhouetting the shadows of the lynchers into fierce giant forms with

frenzied faces from which came first murmurs and finally shouts of:

"_Lynch her! Lynch her!_"

Above, in the still air of the night, yet hung the pall of the black

smoke-cloud, from whose heart had come the torch which had cost capital

its money, and the mill people their living.

They were not long acting. Mammy Maria had flown to the little

cottage--a crazy, hysterical creature--a wreck of herself--over-worked

in body and mind, and frenzied between the deed and the promptings of a

blind superstitious religion.

Lily hung to her neck sobbing, and the old woman in her pitiful fright

was brought back partly to reason in the great love of her life for the

little child. Even in her feebleness she was soothing her pet.

There were oaths, curses and trampling of many feet as they rushed in

and seized her. Lily, screaming, was held by rough arms while they

dragged the old nurse away.

Into a wood nearby they took her, the rope was thrown over a limb, the

noose placed around her neck.

"Pray, you old witch--we will give you five minutes to pray."

The old woman fell on her knees, but instead of praying for herself,

she prayed for her executioners.

They jeered--they laughed. One struck her with a stick, but she only

prayed for them the more.

"String her up," they shouted--"her time's up!"

"Stand back there!"

The words rang out even above the noise of the crowd. Then a man,

with the long blue deadly barrel of the Colt forty-four, pushed his

way through them--his face pale, his fine mouth set firm and close,

and the splendid courage of many generations of Conways shining in

his eyes.

"_Stand back!_--" and he said it in the old commanding way--the old

way which courage has ever had in the crises of the world.

"O Marse Ned!--I knowed you'd come!"

He had cut the rope and the old woman sat on the ground clasping his

feet.

For a moment he stood over her, his pale calm face showing the

splendor of determination in the glory of his manhood restored. For a

moment the very beauty of it stopped them--this man, this former sot

and drunkard, this old soldier arising from the ashes of his buried

past, a beautiful statue of courage cut out of the marble of manhood.

The moral beauty of it--this man defending with his life the old

negro--struck even through the swine of them.

They ceased, and a silence fell, so painful that it hurt in its very

uncanniness.

Then Edward Conway said very clearly, very slowly, but with a fitful

nervous ring in his voice: "Go back to your homes! Would you hang

this poor old woman without a trial? Can you not see that she has

lost her mind and is not responsible for her acts? Let the law

decide. Shall not her life of unselfishness and good deeds be put

against this one insane act of her old age? Go back to your homes!

Some of you are my friends, some my neighbors--I ask you for her but

a fair trial before the law."

They listened for a moment and then burst into jeers, hoots, and

hisses:

"Hang her, now! That's the way all lawyers talk!"

And one shouted above the rest: "He's put up a plea of insanity

a-ready. Hang her, now!"

Edward Conway flashed hot through his paleness and he placed himself

before the bowed and moaning form while the crowd in front of him

surged and shouted and called for a rope.

He felt some one touch his arm and turned to find the sheriff by his

side--one of those disreputables who infested the South after the

war, holding office by the votes of the negroes.

"Better let 'em have her,--it ain't worth the while. You'll hafter

kill, or be killed."

"You scallawag!" said Conway, now purple with anger--"is that the way

you respect your sworn oath? And you have been here and seen all this

and not raised your hand?"

"Do you think I'm fool enuff to tackle that crowd of hillbillies?

They've got the devil in them--fur they've got a devil leadin'

'em--Jud Carpenter. Better let 'em have her--they'll kill you. We've

got a good excuse--overpowered--don't you see?"

"Overpowered? That's the way all cowards talk," said Conway. "Do one

thing for me," he said quickly--"tell them you have appointed me your

deputy. If you do not--I'll fall back on the law of riots and appoint

myself."

"Gentlemen," said the sheriff, turning to the crowd, and speaking

half-shamedly--"Gentlemen, it's better an' I hopes you all will go

home. We don't wanter hurt nobody. I app'ints Major Conway my deputy

to take the prisoner to jail. Now the blood be on yo' own heads.

I've sed my say."

A perfect storm of jeers met this. They surged forward to seize her,

while the sheriff half frightened, half undecided, got behind Conway

and said:--"It's up to you--I've done all I cu'd."

"Go back to your homes, men"--shouted Conway--"I am the sheriff here

now, and I swear to you by the living God it means I am a Conway

again, and the man who lays a hand on this old woman is as good as

dead in his tracks!"

For an instant they surged around him cursing and shouting; but he

stood up straight and terribly silent; only his keen grey eyes

glanced down to the barrel of his pistol and he stood nervously

fingering the small blue hammer with his thumb and measuring the

distance between himself and the nearest ruffian who stood on the

outskirts of the mob shaking a pistol in Conway's face and shouting:

"Come on, men, we'll lynch her anyway!"

Then Conway acted quickly. He spoke a few words to the old nurse, and

as she backed off into the nearby wood, he covered the retreat. To

his relief he saw that the sheriff, now thoroughly ashamed, had hold

of the prisoner and was helping her along.

In the edge of the wood he felt safe--with the trees at his back.

And he took courage as he heard the sheriff say:

"If you kin hold 'em a little longer I'll soon have my buggy here and

we'll beat 'em to the jail."

But the mob guessed his plans, and the man who had been most

insolent in the front of the mob--a long-haired, narrow-chested

mountaineer--rushed up viciously.

Conway saw the gleam of his pistol as the man aimed and fired at the

prisoner. Instinctively he struck at the weapon and the ball intended

for the prisoner crushed spitefully into his left shoulder. He reeled

and the grim light of an aroused Conway flashed in his eyes as he

recovered himself, for a moment, shocked, blinded. Then he heard some

one say, as he felt the blood trickling down his arm and hand:

"Marse Ned! Oh, an' for po' ole Zion! Don't risk yo' life--let 'em

take me!"

Dimly he saw the mob rushing up; vaguely it came to him that it was

kill or be killed. Vaguely, too, that it was the law--his law--and

every other man's law--against lawlessness. Hazily, that he was the

law--its representative, its defender, and then clear as the blue

barrel in his hand,--all the dimness and uncertainty gone,--it came

to him, that thing that made him say: "I am a Conway again!"

Then his pistol leaped from the shadow by his side to the gray light

in front, and the man who had fired and was again taking aim at the

old woman died in his tracks with his mouth twisted forever into the

shape of an unspoken curse.

It was enough. Stricken, paralyzed, they fell back before such

courage--and Conway found himself backing off into the woods,

covering the retreat of the prisoner. Then afterward he felt the

motion of buggy wheels, and of a galloping drive, and the jail, and

he in the sheriff's room, the old prisoner safe for the time.

CHAPTER XXIII

DIED FOR THE LAW

And thus was begun that historical lynching in the Tennessee

Valley--a tragedy which well might have remained unwritten had it not

fallen into the woof of this story.

A white man had been killed for a negro--that was enough.

It is true the man was attempting to commit murder in the face of the

law of the land; and in attempting it had shot the representative of

the law. It is true, also, that he had no grievance, being one of

several hundred law-breakers bent on murder. This, too, made no

difference; they neither thought nor cared;--for mobs, being

headless, do not think; and being soulless, do not suffer.

They had failed only for lack of a leader.

But now they had a leader, and a mob with a leader is a dangerous

thing.

That leader was Richard Travis.

It was after midnight when he rode up on the scene. Before he

arrived, Jud Carpenter had aroused the mob to do its first fury, and

still held them, now doubly vengeful and shouting to be led against

the jail. But to storm a jail they needed a braver man than Jud

Carpenter. And they found him in Richard Travis--especially Richard

Travis in the terrible mood, the black despair which had come upon

him that night.

Why did he come? He could not say. In him had surged two great forces

that night--the force of evil and the force of good. Twice had the

good overcome--now it was the evil's turn, and like one hypnotized,

he was led on.

He sat his horse among them, pale and calm, but with a cruel instinct

flashing in his eyes. At least, so Jud Carpenter interpreted the mood

which lay upon him; but no one knew the secret workings of this man's

heart, save God.

He had come to them haggard and blanched and with a nameless dread,

his arm tied up where the dog's fang had been buried in his flesh,

his heart bitter in the thought of the death that was his. Already he

felt the deadly virus pulsing through his veins. A hundred times in

the short hour that had passed he suffered death--death beginning

with the gripping throat, the shortened breath, the foaming mouth,

the spasm!

He jerked in the saddle--that spasmodic chill of the nerves,--and he

grew white and terribly silent at the thought of it--the death that

was his!

Was his! And then he thought: "No, there shall be another and quicker

way to die. A braver way--like a Travis--with my boots on--my boots

on--and not like a mad-dog tied to a stake.

"Besides--Alice--Alice!"

She had gone out of his life. Could such a thing be and he live to

tell it? Alice--love--ambition--the future--life! Alice, hazel-eyed

and glorious, with hair the smell of which filled his soul with

perfume as from the stars. She who alone uplifted him--she another's,

and that other Tom Travis!

Tom Travis--returned and idealized--with him, the joint heir of The

Gaffs.

And that mad-dog--that damned mad-dog! And if perchance he was

saved--if that virus was sucked out of his veins, it was she--Helen!

"This is the place to die," he said grimly--"here with my boots on.

To die like a Travis and unravel this thing called life. Unravel it

to the end of the thread and know if it ends there, is snapped, is

broken or--

"Or--my God," he cried aloud, "I never knew what those two little

letters meant before--not till I face them this way, on the Edge of

Things!"

He gathered the mob together and led them against the jail--with

hoots and shouts and curses; with flaming torches, and crow-bars,

with axes and old guns.

"Lynch her--lynch the old witch! and hang that devil Conway with

her!" was the shout.

In front of the jail they stopped, for a man stood at the door. His

left arm was in a sling, but in his right hand gleamed something that

had proved very deadly before. And he stood there as he had stood in

the edge of the wood, and the bonfires and torches of the mob lit up

more clearly the deadly pale face, set and more determined than

before.

For as he stood, pale and silent, the shaft of a terrible

pain,--of broken bone and lacerated muscle--twinged and twitched

his arm, and to smother it and keep from crying out he gripped

bloodlessly--nervously--the stock of his pistol saying over and over:

"I am a Conway again--a man again!"

And so standing he defied them and they halted, like sheep at the

door of the shambles. The sheriff had flown, and Conway alone stood

between the frenzied mob and the old woman who had given her all for

him.

He could hear her praying within--an uncanny mixture of faith and

miracle--of faith which saw as Paul saw, and which expected angels to

come and break down her prison doors. And after praying she would

break out into a song, the words of which nerved the lone man who

stood between her and death:

"'I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger,

I can tarry, I can tarry but a night.

Do not detain me, for I am going

To where the streamlets are ever flowing.

I'm a pilgrim--and I'm a stranger

I can tarry--I can tarry but a night.'"

And now the bonfire burned brighter, lighting up the scene--the

shambling stores around the jail on the public square, the better

citizens making appeals in vain for law and order, the shouting,

fool-hardy mob, waiting for Richard Travis to say the word, and he

sitting among them pale, and terribly silent with something in his

face they had never seen there before.

Nor would he give the command. He had nothing against Edward

Conway--he did not wish to see him killed.

And the mob did not attack, although they cursed and bluffed, because

each one of them knew it meant death--death to some one of them, and

that one might be--I!

Between life and death "I" is a bridge that means it all.

A stone wall ran around the front of the jail. A small gate opened

into the jail-yard. At the jail door, covering that opening, stood

Edward Conway.

They tried parleying with him, but he would have none of it.

"Go back--" he said, "I am the sheriff here--I am the law. The man

who comes first into that gate will be the first to die."

In ten minutes they made their attack despite the commands of their

leader, who still sat his horse on the public square, pale and with a

bitter conflict raging in his breast.

With shouts and curses and a headlong rush they went. Pistol bullets

flew around Conway's head and scattered brick dust and mortar over

him. Torches gleamed through the dark crowd as stars amid fast flying

clouds in a March night. But through it all every man of them heard

the ringing warning words:

"Stop at the gateway--stop at the dead line!"

Right at it they rushed and crowded into it like cattle--shooting,

cursing, throwing stones.

Then two fell dead, blocking the gateway. Two more, wounded, with

screams of pain which threw the others into that indescribable panic

which comes to all mobs in the death-pinch, staggered back carrying

the mob with them.

Safe from the bullets, they became frenzied.

The town trembled with their fury.

All order was at an end.

And Edward Conway stood, behind a row of cotton bales, in the

jail-yard, covering still the little gateway, and the biting pain in

his shoulder had a companion pain in his side, where a pistol ball

had ploughed through, but he forgot it as he slipped fresh cartridges

into the chambers of his pistol and heard again the chant which came

from out the jail window, like a ghost-voice from the clouds:

"Of that City, to which I journey,

My Redeemer, my Redeemer is the light.

There is no sorrow, nor any sighing,

Nor any tears there, nor any dying...,

I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger,

I can tarry--I can tarry but a night."

At a long distance they shot at Conway,--they hooted, jeered, cursed

him, but dared not come closer, for he had breast-worked himself

behind some cotton-bales in the yard, and they knew he could still

shoot.

Then they decided to batter down the stone wall first--to make an

opening they could rush through, and not be blocked in the deadly

gateway.

An hour passed, and torches gleamed everywhere. Attacking the wall

farther down, they soon had it torn away. They could now get to him.

It was a perilous position, and Conway knew it. Help--he must have

it--help to protect his flank while he shot in front. If not, he

would die soon, and the law with him.

He looked around him--but there was no solution. Then he felt that

death was near, for the mob now hated him more than they did the

prisoner. They seemed to have forgotten her, for all their cry now

was:

"_Kill Conway! Kill the man who murdered our people!_"

In ten minutes they were ready to attack again, but looking up they

saw a strange sight.

Help had come to Conway. On one side of him stood the old Cottontown

preacher, his white hair reflecting back the light from the bonfires

and torches in front--lighting up a face which now seemed to have

lost all of its kindly humor in the crisis that was there. He was

unarmed, but he stood calm and with a courage that was more of sorrow

than of anger.

By him stood the village blacksmith, a man with the wild light of an

old, untamed joy gleaming in his eyes--a cruel, dangerous light--the

eyes of a caged tiger turned loose at last, and yearning for the

blood of the thing which had caged him.

And by him in quiet bravery, commanding, directing, stood the tall

figure of the Captain of Artillery.

When Richard Travis saw him, a cruel smile deepened in his eyes. "I

am dying myself," it said--"why not kill him?"

Then he shuddered with the hatred of the terrible thing that had come

into his heart--the thing that made him do its bidding, as if he

were a puppet, and overthrew all the good he had gathered there, that

terrible night, as the angels were driven from Paradise. And yet, how

it ruled him, how it drove him on!

"Jim--Jim," he whispered as he bent over his horse's neck--"Jim--my

repeating rifle over the library door--quick--it carries true and far!"

As Jim sped away his master was silent again. He thought of the nobility

of the things he had done that night--the touch of God that had come

over him in making him save Helen--the beautiful dreams he had had. He

thought of it all--and then--here--now--murdering the man whose life

carried with it the life, the love of--

He looked up at the stars, and the old wonder and doubt came back to

him--the old doubt which made him say to himself: "It is nothing--it is

the end. Dust thou art, and unto dust--dust--dust--dust--" he bit his

tongue to keep from saying it again--"Dust--to be blown away and mingle

with the elements--dust! And yet, I stand here--now--blood--flesh--a

thinking man--tempted--terribly--cruelly--poignantly--dying--of a poison

in my veins--of sorrow in my heart--sorrow and death. Who would not take

the dust--gladly take it--the dust and the--forgetting."

He remembered and repeated:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting

And cometh from afar--"

"'And cometh from afar,'" he whispered--"My God--suppose it does--and

that I am mistaken in it all?--Dust--and then maybe something after

dust."

With his rifle in his hand, it all vanished and he began to train it on

the tall figure while the mob prepared to storm the jail again--and his

shot would be the signal--this time in desperate determination to take

it or die.

In the mob near Richard Travis stood a boy, careless and cool, and

holding in his hand an old pistol. Richard Travis noticed the boy

because he felt that the boy's eyes were always on him--always. When he

looked down into them he was touched and sighed, and a dream of the

long-ago swept over him--of a mountain cabin and a maiden fair to look

upon. He bit his lip to keep back the tenderness--bit his lip and rode

away--out of reach of the boy's eyes.

But the boy, watching him, knew, and he said in his quiet, revengeful

way: "Twice have I failed to kill you--but to-night--my Honorable

father--to-night in the death that will be here, I shall put this bullet

through your heart."

Travis turned to the mob: "Men, when I fire this rifle--it will mean for

you to charge!"

A hush fell over the crowd as they watched him. He looked at his

rifle closely. He sprang the breech and threw out a shell or two to

see that it worked properly.

"Stay where you are, men," came that same voice they had heard so

plainly before that night. "We are now four and well armed and sworn

to uphold the law and protect the prisoner, and if you cross the dead

line you will die."

There was a silence, and then that old voice again, the voice that

roused the mob to fury:

"I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger,

I can tarry--I can tarry but a night--"

"Lead us on--give the signal, Richard Travis," they shouted.

Again the silence fell as Richard Travis raised his rifle and aimed

at the tall figure outlined closely and with magnified distinctness

in the glare of bonfire and torch. How splendidly cool and brave he

looked--that tall figure standing there, giving orders as calmly as

he gave them at Shiloh and Franklin, and so forgetful of himself and

his own safety!

Richard Travis brought his rifle down--it shook so--brought it down

saying to himself with a nervous laugh: "It is not Tom--not Tom

Travis I am going to kill--it's--it's Alice's husband of only two

days--her lover--"

"Shoot! Why don't you shoot?" they shouted. "We are waiting to

rush--"

Even where he stood, Richard Travis could see the old calm, quiet and

now triumphant smile lighting up Tom Travis's face, and he knew he

was thinking of Alice--Alice, his bride.

And then that same nervous, uncanny chill ran into the very marrow of

Richard Travis and brought his gun down with an oath on his lips as

he said pitifully--"I am poisoned--it is that!"

The crowd shouted and urged him to shoot, but he sat shaking to his

very soul. And when it passed there came the old half humorous, half

bitter, cynical laugh as he said: "Alice--Alice a widow--"

It passed, and again there leaped into his eyes the great light Jud

Carpenter had seen there that morning, and slipping the cartridges

out of the barrel's breech, he looked up peacefully with the halo of

a holy light around his eyes as he said: "Oh, God, and I thank

Thee--for this--this touch again! Hold the little spark in my

heart--hold it, oh, God, but for a little while till the temptation

is gone, and I shall rest--I shall rest."

"Shoot--Richard Travis--why the devil don't you shoot?" they shouted.

He raised his rifle again, this time with a flourish which made some

of the mob think he was taking unnecessary risk to attract the

attention of the grim blacksmith who stood, pistol in hand, his

piercing eyes scanning the crowd. He stood by the side of Tom Travis,

his bodyguard to the last.

"Jack--Jack--" kept whispering to him the old preacher, "don't shoot

till you're obleeged to,--maybe God'll open a way, maybe you won't

have to spill blood. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord."

Jack smiled. It was a strange smile--of joy, in the risking glory of

the old life--the glory of blood-letting, of killing, of death. And

sorrow--sorrow in the new.

"Stand pat, stand pat, Bishop," he said; "you all know the trade. Let

me who have defied the law so long, let me now stand for it--die for

it. It's my atonement--ain't that the word? Ain't that what you said

about that there Jesus Christ, the man you said wouldn't flicker even

on the Cross, an' wouldn't let us flicker if we loved Him--Hol' him

to His promise, now, Bishop. It's time for us to stand pat. No--I'll

not shoot unless I see some on 'em makin' a too hasty movement of

gun-arm toward Cap'n--"

Had Richard Travis looked from his horse down into the crowd he had

seen another sight. Man can think and do but one thing at a time, but

oh, the myrmidons of God's legions of Cause and Effect!

Below him stood a boy, his face white in the terrible tragedy of his

determination. And as Richard Travis threw up his empty rifle, the

octagonal barrel of the pistol in the boy's hand leaped up and came

straight to the line of Richard Travis's heart. But before the boy

could fire Travis saw the hawk-like flutter of the blacksmith's

pistol arm, as it measured the distance with the old quick training

of a bloody experience, and Richard Travis smiled, as he saw the

flash from the outlaw's pistol and felt that uncanny chill starting

in his marrow again, leap into a white heat to the shock of the ball,

and he pitched limply forward, slipped from his horse and went down

on the ground murmuring, "Tom--Tom--safe, and Alice--he shot at

last--and--thank God for the touch again!"

He lay quiet, feeling the life blood go out of him. But with it came

an exhalation he had never felt before--a glory that, instead of

taking, seemed to give him life.

The mob rushed wildly at the jail at the flash of Jack Bracken's

pistol, all but one, a boy--whose old dueling pistol still pointed at

the space in the air, where Richard Travis had sat a moment

before--its holder nerveless--rigid--as if turned into stone.

He saw Richard Travis pitch forward off his horse and slide limply to

the ground. He saw him totter and waver and then sit down in a

helpless, pitiful way,--then lie down as if it were sweet to rest.

And still the boy stood holding his pistol, stunned, frigid,

numbed--pointing at the stars.

Silently he brought his arm and weapon down. He heard only shouts of

the mob as they rushed against the jail, and then, high above it, the

words of the blacksmith, whom he loved so well: "Stand back--all;

Me--me alone, shoot--me! I who have so often killed the law, let me

die for it."

And then came to the boy's ears the terrible staccato cough of the

two Colts pistols whose very fire he had learned to know so well. And

he knew that the blacksmith alone was shooting--the blacksmith he

loved so--the marksman he worshipped--the man who had saved his

life--the man who had just shot his father.

Richard Travis sat up with an effort and looked at the boy standing

by him--looked at him with frank, kindly eyes,--eyes which begged

forgiveness, and the boy saw himself there--in Richard Travis, and

felt a hurtful, pitying sorrow for him, and then an uncontrolled, hot

anger at the man who had shot him out of the saddle. His eyes

twitched wildly, his heart jumped in smothering beats, a dry sob

choked him, and he sprang forward crying: "My father--oh, God--my

poor father!"

Richard Travis looked up and smiled at him.

"You shoot well, my son," he said, "but not quick enough."

The boy, weeping, saw. Shamed,--burning--he knelt and tried to

staunch the wound with a handkerchief. Travis shook his head: "Let it

out, my son--let it out--it is poison! Let it out!"

Then he lay down again on the ground. It felt sweet to rest.

The boy saw his blood on the ground and he shouted: "Blood,--my

father--blood is thicker than water."

Then the hatred that had burned in his heart for his father, the

father who had begot him into the world, disgraced, forsaken--the

father who had ruined and abandoned his mother, was turned into a

blaze of fury against the blacksmith, the blacksmith whom he had

loved.

Wheeling, he rushed toward the jail, but met the mob pouring

panic-stricken back with white faces, blanched with fear.

Jack Bracken stood alone on the barricade, shoving more cartridges

into his pistol chambers.

The boy, blinded, weeping, hot with a burning revenge, stumbled and

fell twice over dead men lying near the gateway. Then he crawled

along over them under cover of the fence, and kneeling within twenty

feet of the gate, fired at the great calm figure who had driven the

mob back, and now stood reloading.

Jack did not see the boy till he felt the ball crush into his side.

Then all the old, desperate, revengeful instinct of the outlaw

leaped into his eyes as he quickly turned his unerring pistol on the

object from whence the flash came. Never had he aimed so accurately,

so carefully, for he felt his own life going out, and this--this was

his last shot--to kill.

But the object kneeling among the dead arose with a smile of

revengeful triumph and stood up calmly under the aim of the great

pistol, his fair hair flung back, his face lit up with the bravery of

all the Travises as he shouted:

"Take that--damn you--from a Travis!"

And when Jack saw and understood, a smile broke through his

bloodshot, vengeful eyes as starlight falls on muddy waters, and he

turned away his death-seeking aim, and his mouth trembled as he said:

"Why--it's--it's the Little 'Un! I cudn't kill him--" and he clutched

at the cotton-bale as he went down, falling--and Captain Tom grasped

him, letting him down gently.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE ATONEMENT

And now no one stood between the prisoner and death but the old

preacher and the tall man in the uniform of a Captain of Artillery.

And death it meant to all of them, defenders as well as prisoners,

for the mob had increased in numbers as in fury. Friends, kindred,

brothers, fathers--even mothers and sisters of the dead were there,

bitter in the thought that their dead had been murdered--white men,

for one old negress.

In their fury they did not think it was the law they themselves were

murdering. The very name of the law was now hateful to them--the law

that had killed their people.

Slowly, surely, but with grim deadliness they laid their plans--this

time to run no risk of failure.

There was a stillness solemn and all-pervading. And from the window

of the jail came again in wailing uncanny notes:--

"I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger,

I can tarry, I can tarry but a night--"

It swept over the mob, frenzied now to the stillness of a white heat,

like a challenge to battle, like the flaunt of a red flag. Their

dead lay all about the gate of the rock fence, stark and still. Their

wounded were few--for Jack Bracken did not wound. They saw them

all--dead--lying out there dead--and they were willing to die

themselves for the blood of the old woman--a negro for whom white men

had been killed.

But their wrath now took another form. It was the wrath of coolness.

They had had enough of the other kind. To rush again on those bales

of cotton doubly protected behind a rock fence, through one small

gate, commanded by the fire of such marksmen as lay there, was not to

be thought of.

They would burn the jail over the heads of its defenders and kill

them as they were uncovered. A hundred men would fire the jail from

the rear, a hundred more with guns would shoot in front.

It was Jud Carpenter who planned it, and soon oil and saturated paper

and torches were prepared.

"We are in for it, Bishop," said Captain Tom, as he saw the

preparation; "this is worse than Franklin, because there we could

protect our rear."

He leaped up on his barricade, tall and splendid, and called to them

quietly and with deadly calm:

"Go to your homes, men--go! But if you will come, know that I fought

for my country's laws from Shiloh to Franklin, and I can die for them

here!"

Then he took from over his heart a small silken flag, spangled with

stars and the blood-splotches of his father who fell in Mexico, and

he shook it out and flung it over his barricade, saying cheerily: "I

am all right for a fight now, Bishop. But oh, for just one of my

guns--just one of my old Parrots that I had last week at Franklin!"

The old man, praying on his knees behind his barricade, said:

"Twelve years ago, Cap'n Tom, twelve years. Not last week."

The mob had left Richard Travis for dead, and in the fury of their

defeat had thought no more of him. But now, the loss of blood, the cool

night air revived him. He sat up, weak, and looked around. Everywhere

bonfires burned. Men were running about. He heard their talk and he knew

all. He was shot through the left lung, so near to his heart that, as he

felt it, he wondered how he had escaped.

He knew it by the labored breathing, by the blood that ran down and half

filled his left boot. But his was a constitution of steel--an athlete, a

hunter, a horseman, a man of the open. The bitterness of it all came

back to him when he found he was not dead as he had hoped--as he had

made Jack Bracken shoot to do.

"To die in bed at last," he said, "like a monk with liver complaint--or

worse still--my God, like a mad dog, unless--unless--her lips--Helen!"

He lay quite still on the soft grass and looked up at the stars. How

comfortable he was! He felt around.

A boy's overcoat was under him--a little round-about, wadded up, was his

pillow.

He smiled--touched: "What a man he will make--the brave little devil!

Oh, if I can live to tell him he is mine, that I married his mother

secretly--that I broke her heart with my faithlessness--that she died

and the other is--is her sister."

He heard the clamor and the talk behind him. The mob, cool now, were

laying their plans only on revenge,--revenge with the torch and the

bullet.

Jud Carpenter was the leader, and Travis could hear him giving his

orders. How he now loathed the man--for somehow, as he thought, Jud

Carpenter stood for all the seared, blighted, dead life behind

him--all the old disbelief, all the old infamy, all the old doubt and

shame. But now, dying, he saw things differently. Yonder above him

shone the stars and in his heart the glory of that touch of God--the

thing that made him wish rather to die than have it leave him again

to live in his old way.

He heard the mob talking. He heard their plans. He knew that Jud

Carpenter, hating the old preacher as he did, would rather kill him

than any wolf of the forest. He knew that neither Tom Travis nor the

old preacher could ever hope to come out alive.

The torches were ready--the men were aligned in front with deadly

shotguns.

"When the fire gets hot," he heard Jud Carpenter say, "they'll hafter

come out--then shoot--shoot an' shoot to kill. See our own dead!"

They answered him with groans, with curses, with shouts of "_Lead us

on, Jud Carpenter!_"

"When the jail is fired from the rear," shouted Carpenter, "stay

where you are and shoot; they've no chance at all. It's fire or

bullet."

Richard Travis heard it and his heart leaped--but only for one

tempting moment, when a vision of loveliness in widow's weeds swept

through that soul of his inner sight, which sees into the future.

Then the new light came back uplifting him with a wave of joyous

strength that was sweetly calm in its destiny--glad that he had

lived, glad that this test had come, glad for the death that was

coming.

It was all well with him.

He forgot himself, he forgot his deadly wound, the bitterness of his

life, the dog's bite--all--in the glory of this feeling, the new

feeling which now would go with him into eternity.

For, as he lay there, he had seen the bell's turret above the jail

and his mind was quick to act.

He smiled faintly--a happy smile--the smile of the old Roman ere he

leaped into the chasm before the walls of Rome--leaped and saved his

countrymen. He loved to do difficult things--to conquer and overcome

where others would quit. This always had been his glory--he

understood that. But this new thing--this wanting to save men who

were doomed behind their barricade--this wanting to give what was

left of his life for them--his enemies--this was the thing he could

not understand. He only knew it was the call of something within him,

stronger than himself and kin to the stars, which, clear and sweet

above his head, seemed to be all that stood between him and that

clear Sweet Thing out, far out, in the pale blue Silence of Things.

He reached out and found his rifle. In his coat pocket were

cartridges. His arms were still strong--he sprang the magazine and

filled it.

Then slowly, painfully, he began to crawl off toward the jail,

pulling his rifle along. No one saw him but, God! how it hurt!...

that star falling ... scattering splinters of light everywhere ... so

he lay on his face and slept awhile....

When he awoke he flushed with the shame of it: "Fainted--me--like a

girl!" And he spat out the blood that boiled out of his lips.

Crawling--crawling--and dragging the heavy rifle. It seemed he would

never strike the rock fence. Once--twice, and yet a third time he had

to sink flat on the grass and spit out the troublesome blood....

The fence at last, and following it he was soon in the rear of the

jail. He knew where the back stair was and crawled to it. Slowly,

step by step, and every step splotched with his blood, he went up. At

the top he pushed up the trap-door with his head and, crawling

through, fell fainting.

But, oh, the glory of that feeling that was his now! That feeling

that now--now he would atone for it all--now he would be brother to

the stars and that Sweeter Thing out, far out, in the pale blue

Silence of Things.

Then the old Travis spirit came to him and he smiled:

"_Dominecker--oh, my old grandsire, will you think I am a Dominecker

now? I found your will--in the old life--and tore it up. But it's

Tom's now--Tom's anyway--Dominecker! Wipe it out--wipe it out! If I

do not this night honor your blood, strike me from the roll of

Travis._"

Around him was the belfry railing, waist high and sheeted with metal

save four holes, for air, at the base, where he could thrust his

rifle through as he lay flat.

He was in a bullet proof turret, and he smiled: "I hold the fort!"

Slowly he pulled himself up, painfully he stood erect and looked

down. Just below him was the barricade of cotton bales, its two

defenders, grim and silent behind them--the two wounded ones lying

still and so quiet--so quiet it looked like death, and Richard Travis

prayed that it was not.

One of them had given him his death wound, but he held no bitterness

for him--only that upliftedness, only the glory of that feeling

within him he knew not what.

He called gently to them. In astonishment they looked up. Thirty feet

above their heads they saw him and heard him say painfully, slowly,

but oh, so bravely: "_I am Richard Travis, Tom, and I'll back you to

the death.... They are to burn you out ... but I command the jail,

both front and rear. Stay where you both are ... be careful ... do

not expose yourselves, for while I live you are safe ... and the law

is safe._"

And then came back to him clear and with all sweetness the earnest

words of the old preacher:

"God bless you, Richard Travis, for He has sent you jus' in time. I

knew that He would, that He'd touch yo' heart, that there was

greatness in you--all in His own time, an' His own good way. Praise

God!"

Travis wished to warn the mob, but his voice was nearly gone. He

could only sink down and wait.

He heard shouts. They had formed in the rear, and now men with

torches came to fire the jail. Their companions in front, hearing

them, shouted back their approval.

Richard Travis thrust his rifle barrel through the air hole and aimed

carefully. The torches they carried made it all so plain and so easy.

Then two long, spiteful flashes of flame leaped out of the belfry

tower and the arm of the first incendiary, shot through and

through--holding his blazing torch, leaped like a rabbit in a sack,

and the torch went down and out. The torch of the second one was shot

out of its bearer's hand.

Panic-stricken, they looked up, saw, and fled. Those in front also

saw and bombarded the belfry with shot and pistol ball. And then, on

their side of the belfry, the same downward, spiteful flashes leaped

out, and two men, shot through the shoulder and the arm, cried out in

dismay, and they all fell back, stampeded, at the deadliness of the

spiteful thing in the tower, the gun that carried so true and so

far--so much farther than their own cheap guns.

They rushed out of its range, gathered in knots and cursed and

wondered who it was. But they dared not come nearer. Travis lay

still. He could not speak now, for the blood choked him when he

opened his mouth, and the stars which had once been above him now

wheeled and floated below, and around him. And that Sweeter Thing

that had been behind the stars now seemed to surround him as a halo,

a halo of silence which seemed to fit the silence of his own soul and

become part of him forever. It was all around him, as he had often

seen it around the summer moon; only now he felt it where he only

saw it before. And now, too, it was in his heart and filled it with a

sweet sadness, a sadness that hurt, it was so sweet, and which came

with an odor, the smell of the warm rain falling on the dust of a

summer of long ago.

And all his life passed before him--he lived it again--even more than

he had remembered before--even the memory of his mother whom he never

knew; but now he knew her and he reached up his arms--for he was in a

cradle and she bent over him--he reached up his arms and said: "_Oh,

mother, now I know what eternity is--it's remembering before and

after!_"

Visions, too--and Alice Westmore--Alice, pitying and smiling

approval--smiling,--and then a burning passionate kiss, and when he

would kiss again it was Helen's lips he met.

And through it all the great uplifting joy, and something which made

him try to shout and say: "The atonement--the atonement--"

Clear now and things around him seemed miles away.

He knew he was sinking and he kicked one foot savagely against the

turret to feel again the sensation of life in his limb. Then he struck

himself in his breast with his right fist to feel it there. But in spite

of all he saw a cloud of darkness form beyond the rim of the starlit

horizon and come sweeping over him, coming in black waves that would

rush forward and then stop--forward, and stop--forward and stop.... And

the stops kept time exactly with his heart, and he knew the last stop of

the wave meant the last beat of his heart--then forward ... for the last

time.... "Oh, God, not yet!... Look!"

His heart rallied at the sight and beat faster, making the black waves

pulse, in the flow and ebb of it.... The thing was below him ... a man

... a ghostly, vengeful thing, whose face was fierce in hatred ...

crawling, crawling, up to the rock fence--a snake with the face ... the

eyes of Jud Carpenter....

And the black wave coming in ... and he did so want to live ... just a

little ... just a while longer....

He pushed the wave back, as he gripped for the last time his rifle's

stock, and he knew not whether it was only visions such as he had been

seeing ... or Jud Carpenter really crouching low behind the rock fence,

his double-barrel shotgun aimed ... drawing so fine a bead on both the

unconscious defenders ... going to shoot, and only twenty paces, and now

it rose up, aiming: "_God, it is--it is Jud Carpenter ...

back--back--black wave!" he cried, "and God have mercy on your soul, Jud

Carpenter...._"

And, oh, the nightmare of it!--trying to pull the trigger that would not

be pulled, trying to grip a stock that had grown so large it was now a

tree--a huge tree--flowing red blood instead of sap, red blood over

things, ... and then at last ... thank God ... the trigger ... and the

flash and report ... the flash so far off ... and the report that was

like thunder among the stars ... the stars.... Among the stars ... all

around him ... and Alice on one star throwing him a kiss ... and

saying: "_You saved his life, oh, Richard, and I love you for it!_" A

kiss and forgiveness ... and the two walking out with him ... out into

the dim, blue, Sweet Silence of Things, hand in hand with him, beyond

even the black wave, beyond even the rim of the rainbow that came down

over all ... out--out with music, quaint, sweet, weird music--that

filled his soul so, fitted him ... was he ...

"_I'm ... a pilgrim ... I'm a stranger,

I can tarry--I can tarry but a night._"

In the early dawn, a local company of State troops, called out by the

governor, had the jail safe.

It was a gruesome sight in front of the stone wall where the deadly

fire from Jack Bracken's pistols had swept. Thirteen dead men lay,

and the back-bone of lynching had been broken forever in Alabama.

It was the governor himself, bluff and rugged, who grasped Jack

Bracken's hand as he lay dying, wrapped up, on a bale of cotton, and

Margaret Adams, pale, weeping beside him: "Live for me, Jack--I love

you. I have always loved you!"

"And for me, Jack," said the old governor, touched at the scene--"for

the state, to teach mobs how to respect the law. In the glory of what

you've done, I pardon you for all the past."

"It is fitten," said Jack, simply; "fitten that I should die for the

law--I who have been so lawless."

He turned to Margaret Adams: "You are lookin' somethin' you want to

say--I can tell by yo' eyes."

She faltered, then slowly: "Jack, he was not my son--my poor

sister--I could not see her die disgraced."

Jack drew her down and kissed her.

And as his eyes grew dim, a figure, tall and in military clothes,

stood before him, shaken with grief and saying, "Jack--Jack, my poor

friend--"

Jack's mind was wandering, but a great smile lit up his face as he

said: "_Bishop--Bishop--is--is--it Cap'n Tom, or--or--Jesus Christ?_"

And so he passed out.

And up above them all in the belfry, lying prone, but still gripping

his rifle's stock which, sweeping the jail with its deadly protruding

barrel, had held back hundreds of men, they found Richard Travis, a

softened smile on his lips as if he had just entered into the glory

of the great Sweet Silence of Things. And by him sat the old

preacher, where he had sat since Richard Travis's last shot had saved

the jail and the defenders; sat and bound up his wound and gave him

the last of his old whiskey out of the little flask, and stopped the

flow of blood and saved the life which had nearly bubbled out.

And as they brought the desperately wounded man down to the surgeon

and to life, the old governor raised his hat and said: "The Travis

blood--the Irish Gray--when it's wrong it is hell--when it's right it

is heaven."

But the old preacher smiled as he helped carry him tenderly down and

said: "He is right, forever right, now, Gov'nor. God has made him so.

See that smile on his lips! He has laughed before--that was from the

body. He is smiling now--that is from the soul. His soul is born

again."

The old governor smiled and turned. Edward Conway, wounded, was

sitting up. The governor grasped his hand: "Ned, my boy, I've

appointed you sheriff of this county in place of that scallawag who

deserted his post. Stand pat, for you're a Conway--no doubt about

that. Stand pat."

Under the rock wall, they found a man, dead on his knees, leaning

against the wall; his gun, still cocked and deadly, was resting

against his shoulder and needing only the movement of a finger to

sweep with deadly hail the cotton-bales. His scraggy hair topped the

rock fence and his staring eyes peeped over, each its own way. And

one of them looked forward into a future which was Silence, and the

other looked backward into a past which was Sin.

CHAPTER XXV

THE SHADOWS AND THE CLOUDS

When Richard Travis came to himself after that terrible night, they

told him that for weeks he had lain with only a breath between him

and death.

"It was not my skill that has saved you," said the old surgeon who

had been through two wars and who knew wounds as he did maps of

battlefields he had fought on. "No," he said, shaking his head, "no,

it was not I--it was something beyond me. That you miraculously live

is proof of it."

He was in his room at The Gaffs, and everything looked so natural. It

was sweet to live again, for he was yet young and life now meant so

much more than it ever had. Then his eyes fell on the rug, wearily,

and he remembered the old setter.

"The dog--and that other one?"

He sat up nervously in bed, trembling with the thought. The old

surgeon guessed and bade him be quiet.

"You need not fear that," he said, touching his arm. "The time has

passed for fear. You were saved by the shadow of death and--the blood

letting you had--and, well, a woman's lips, as many a man has been

saved before you. You'd better sleep again now...."

He slept, but there were visions as there had been all along. And two

persons came in now and then. One was Tom Travis, serious and quiet

and very much in earnest that the patient might get well.

Another was Tom's wife, Alice, who arranged the wounded man's pillows

with a gentleness and deftness as only she could, and who gave quiet

orders to the old cook in a way that made Richard Travis feel that

things were all right, though he could not speak, nor even open his

eyes long enough to see distinctly.

A month afterward Richard Travis was sitting up. His strength came

very fast. For a week he had sat by the fire and thought--thought.

But no man knew what was in his mind until one day, after he had been

able to walk over the place, he said:

"Tom, you and Alice have been kinder to me--far kinder--than I have

deserved. I am going away forever, next week--to the Northwest--and

begin life over. But there is something I wish to say to you first."

"Dick," said his cousin, and he arose, tall and splendid, before the

firelight--"there is something I wish to say to you first. Our lives

have been far apart and very different, but blood is blood and you

have proved it, else I had not been here to-night to tell it."

He came over and put his hand affectionately on the other's shoulder.

At its touch Richard Travis softened almost to tears.

"Dick, we two are the only grandsons that bear his name, and we

divide this between us. Alice and I have planned it. You are to

retain the house and half the land. We have our own and more than

enough. You will do it, Dick?"

Richard Travis arose, strangely moved. He grasped his cousin's hand.

"No, no, Tom, it is not fair. No Travis was ever a welcher. It is all

yours--you do not understand--I saw the will--I do not want it. I am

going away forever. My life must lead now in other paths. But--"

The other turned quickly and looked deep into Richard Travis's eyes.

"I can see there is no use of my trying to change your mind, Dick,

though I had hoped--"

The other shook his head. It meant a Travis decision, and his cousin

knew it.

"But as I started to say, Tom, and there is no need of my mincing

words, if you'll raise that boy of mine--" he was silent awhile, then

smiling: "He is mine and more of a Travis to-day than his father ever

was. If you can help him and his aunt--"

"He shall have the half of it, Dick, and an education, under our

care. We will make a man of him, Alice and I."

Richard Travis said no more.

The week before he left, one beautiful afternoon, he walked over to

Millwood for the last time. For Edward Conway was now sheriff of the

county, and with the assistance of the old bishop, whose fortune now

was secured, he had redeemed his home and was in a fair way to pay

back every dollar of it.

A new servant ushered Travis in, for the good old nurse had passed

away, the strain of that terrible night being too much, first, for

her reason, and afterwards, her life.

Edward Conway was away, but Helen came in presently, and greeted him

with such a splendid high-born way, so simple and so unaffected that

he marveled at her self-control, feeling his own heart pulsing

strangely at sight of her. In the few months that had elapsed how

changed she was and how beautiful! This was not the romantic, yet

buffeted, beautiful girl who had come so near being the tragedy of

his old life? How womanly she now was, and how calm and at her ease!

Could independence and the change from poverty and worry, the strong,

free feeling of being one's self again and in one's sphere, make so

great a difference in so short a while? He wondered at himself for

not seeing farther ahead. He had come to bid her good-bye and offer

again--this time in all earnestness and sincerity, to take her with

him--to share his life--but the words died in his mouth.

He could no more have said them than he could have profanely touched

her.

When he left she walked with him to the parting of the ways.

The blue line of tremulous mountain was scrolled along a horizon that

flamed crimson in the setting sun. A flock of twilight clouds--flamingos

of the sky--floated toward the sunset as if going to roost. Beyond was

the great river, its bosom as wan, where it lay in the shadow of the

mountain, as Richard Travis's own cheek; but where the sunset fell on it

the reflected light turned it to pink which to him looked like Helen's.

The wind came down cool from the frost-tinctured mountain side, and the

fine sweet odor of life everlasting floated in it--frost-bitten--and

bringing a wave of youth and rabbit hunts and of a life of dreams and

the sweet unclouded far-off hope of things beautiful and immortal. And

the flow of it hurt Richard Travis--hurt him with a tenderness that

bled.

The girl stopped and drank in the beauty of it all, and he stood looking

at her, "the picture for the frame"--as he said to himself.

It had rained and the clouds were scattered, yet so full that they

caught entirely the sunset rays and held them as he would that moment

have loved to hold her. Something in her--something about her thrilled

him strangely, as he had often been thrilled when looking at the great

pictures in the galleries of the old world. He repeated softly to her,

as she stood looking forward--to him--into the future:

"What thou art we know not,

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody."

She turned and held out her hand.

"I must bid you good-bye now and I wish you all happiness--so much

more than you have ever had in all your life."

He took it, but he could not speak. Something shook him strangely. He

knew nothing to say. Had he spoken, he knew he had stammered and

blundered.

Never had the Richard Travis of old done such a thing.

"Helen--Helen--if--if--you know once I asked you to go with

me--once--in the old, awful life. Now, in the new--the new life which

you can make sweet--"

She came up close to him. The sun had set and the valley lay in

silence. When he saw her eyes there were tears in them--tears so full

and deep that they hurt him when she said:

"It can never--never be--now. You made me love you when you could not

love; and love born of despair is mateless ever; it would die in its

realization. Mine, for you, was that--" She pointed to the sunset.

"It breathed and burned. I saw it only because of clouds, of shadow.

But were the clouds, the shadows, gone--"

"There would be no life, no burning, no love," he said. "Ah, I think

I understand," and his heart sank with pain. What--why--he could not

say, only he knew it hurt him, and he began to wonder.

"You do not blame me," she said as she still held his hand and looked

up into his eyes in the old way he had seen, that terrible night at

Millwood.

For reply he held her hand in both of his and then laid it over his

heart. She felt his tears fall on it, tears, which even death could

not bring, had come to Richard Travis at last, and he wondered. In

the old life he never wondered--he always knew; but in this--this new

life--it was all so strange, so new that he feared even himself. Like

a sailor lost, he could only look up, by day, helplessly at the sun,

and, by night, helplessly at the stars.

"Helen--Helen," he said at last, strangely shaken in it all,--"if I

could tell you now that I do--that I could love--"

She put her hand over his mouth in the old playful way and shook her

head, smiling through her tears: "Do not try to mate my love with a

thing that balks."

It was simply said, and forceful. It was enough. Richard Travis

blushed for very shame.

"Do you not see," she said, "how hopeless it is? Do you not know that

I was terribly tempted--weak--maddened--deserted that night? That now

I know what Clay's love has been? Oh, why do we not learn early in

life that fire will burn, that death will kill, that we are the deed

of all we think and feel--the wish of all we will to be?"

Travis turned quickly: "Is that true? Then let me wish--as I do,

Helen; let me wish that I might love you as you deserve."

She saddened: "Oh, but you have wished--you have willed--too

often--too differently. It can never be now."

"I understand you," he said. "It is natural--I should say it is

nature--nature, the never-lying. I but reap my own folly, and now

good-bye forever, Helen, and may God bless you and bring you that

happiness you have deserved."

"Do you know," she said calmly, "that I have thought of all that,

too. There are so many of us in the world, and so little happiness

that like flowers it cannot go around--some must go without."

She held his hand tightly as if she did not want him to go.

"My child, I must go out of your life--go--and stay. I see--I

see--and I only make you wretched. And I have no right to. It is

ignoble. It is I who should bear this burden of sorrow--not you. You

who have never sinned, who are so young and so beautiful. In time you

will love a nobler man--Clay--"

She looked at him, but said nothing. She knew for the first time the

solution of her love's problem. She was silent, holding his hand.

"Child," he said again. "Helen, you must do as I say. There is

happiness for you yet when I am gone--when I am out of your life and

the memory and the pain of it cease. Then you will marry Clay--"

"Do you really think so? Oh, and he has loved me so and is so

splendid and true."

Travis was silent, waiting.

"Now let me go," she said--"let me forget all my madness and folly in

learning to love one whose love was made for mine. In time I shall

love him as he deserves. Good-bye."

Then she broke impulsively away, and he watched her walk back through

the shadows and under the clouds.

At the turning of the path across the meadow, he saw another shadow

join her. It was Clay, and the two went through the twilight

together.

Travis turned. "It is right--it is the solution--he alone deserves

her. I must reap my past, reap it and see my harvest blighted and

bound with rotten twine. But, oh, to know it when it is too late--to

know that I might love her and could be happy--then to have to give

it up--now--now--when I need it most. The Deed," he said--"we are the

deed of all we think and feel."

CHAPTER XXVI

THE MODEL MILL

The discovery of coal and iron made both the old Bishop and

Westmoreland rich. Captain Tom sent James Travis to West Point and

Archie B. to Annapolis, and their records were worthy of their names.

And now, five years after the great fire, there might be seen in

Cottontown, besides two furnaces, whose blazing turrets lighted the

valley with Prosperity's torch--another cotton mill, erected by the

old Bishop.

Long and earnestly he thought on the subject before building the

mill. Indeed, he first prayed over it and then preached on the

subject, and this is the sermon he preached to his people the Sunday

before he began the erection of The Model Cotton Mill:

"Now, it's this way, my brethren: God made cotton for a mill. You

can't get aroun' that; and the mill is to give people wuck an' this

wuck is to clothe the worl'. That's all plain an' all good, because

it's from God. Man made the bad of it--child labor, and overwuck and

poor pay and the terrible everlastin' grind and foul air an' dirt an'

squaller an' death.

"The trouble with the worl' to-day is that it don't carry God into

business. Why should we not be kinder an' mo' liberal with each other

in business matters? We are unselfish in everything but business.

All social life is based on unselfishness. To charity we give of our

tears an' our money. For the welfare of mankind an' the advancement

of humanity you can always count us on the right side. Even to those

whose characters are rotten an' whose very shadows leave dark places

in life, we pass the courtesies of the hour or the palaverin'

compliments of the day. But let the struggler for the bread of life

come along and ask us to share our profits with him, let the dollar

be the thing involved an' business shrewdness the principle at stake,

an' then all charity is forgotten, every man for himse'f, an' the

chief aim of man seems to be to get mo' out of the trade than his

brother.

"Now the soul of trade is Selfishness, an' Charity never is invited

over her doorway.

"I have known men with tears in their eyes to give to the poor one

day an' rob them the nex' in usurious interest an' rent, as cheerful

as they gave the day befo'. I have known men to open their purses as

wide as the gates of hades for some church charity, an' then close

them the nex' day, in a business transaction, as they called it--with

some helpless debtor or unexperienced widder. The graveyard is full

of unselfish, devoted fathers an' husbands who worked themselves to

death for the comfort an' support of their own families, yet spendin'

their days on earth tryin' to beat their neighbors in the same game.

"It's funny how we're livin'. It's amusin', it is--our ethics of

Christianity. We've baptised everything but business. We give to the

church an' rob the poor. We weep over misfortune an' steal from the

unfortunate. We give a robe to Charity one day and filch it the

nex'. We lay gifts at the altar of the Temple of Kindness for the

Virgin therein, but if we caught her out on the highways of trade an'

commerce we'd steal her an' sell her into slavery. An' after she was

dead we'd go deep into our pockets to put up a monument over her!

"We weep an' rob, an' smile an' steal, an' laugh an' knife, an' wring

the hand of friendship while we step on her toes with our brogans of

business. Can't we be hones' without bein' selfish, fair without

graspin', make a profit without wantin' it all? Is it possible that

Christ's religion has gone into every nook an' corner of the worl'

an' yet missed the great highway of business, the everyday road of

dollars an' cents, profit an' loss!

"So I am goin' to build the mill an' run it like God intended it

should be run, an' I am goin' to put, for once, the plan of salvation

into business, if it busts me an' the plan too! For if it can't stand

a business test it ought to bust!"

He planned it all himself, and, aided by Captain Tom, and Alice, the

beautiful structure went up. Strong and airy and with every comfort

for the workers. "For it strikes me," said the old man, "that the

people who wuck need mo' comforts than them that don't--at least the

comforts of bein' clean. The fust thing I learned in geography was

that God made three times as much water on the surface of the earth

as he did dirt. But you wouldn't think so to look at the human race.

It takes us a long time to take a hint."

The big mountain spring settled the point, and when the mill was

finished there were hot and cold baths in it for the tired workers.

"For there's nothin' so good," said the old man, "for a hot man or a

hot hoss as a warm body-wash. It relaxes the muscles an' makes them

come ag'in. An' the man that comes ag'in is the man the worl' wants."

In the homes of the workers, too, he had baths placed, until it grew

to be a saying of the good old man "that it was easier to take a bath

in Cottontown than to take a drink."

The main building was lofty between floor and ceiling, letting in all

the light and air possible, and the floors were of hard-wood and

clean. As the greatest curse of the cotton lint was dust, atomizers

for spraying the air were invented by Captain Tom. These were

attached to the machinery and could be turned off or on as the

operators desired. It was most comfortable now to work in the mill,

and tired and hot employees, instead of lounging through their noon,

bathed in the cool spring water which came down from the mountain

side and flowed into the baths, not only in the mill, but through

every cottage owned by the mill. And as the bath is the greatest

civilizer known to man, a marked difference was soon noticed in every

inhabitant of Cottontown. They were cleanly, and cleanliness begets a

long list of other virtues, beginning with cleaner and better clothes

and ending with ambition and godliness.

But it was the old Bishop's policy for the wage-earners, which put

the ambition there--a system never heard of before in the ranks of

capital, and first tested and proved in his Model Cotton Mill.

"There are two things in the worl'," said the Bishop, "that is as

plain as God could write them without tellin' it Himself from the

clouds. The first is that the money of the worl' was intended for all

the worl' that reaches out a hand an' works for it.

"The other is that every man who works is entitled to a home.

"It was never intended for one man, or one corporation or one trust

or one king or one anything else, to own more than his share of the

money of the worl', no matter how they get it. Every man who piles up

mo' money than he needs--actually needs--in life, robs every other

man or woman or child in the worl' that pinches and slaves and

starves for it in vain. Every man who makes a big fortune leaves just

that many wrecked homes in his path."

In carrying out this idea the old bishop had the mill incorporated at

one hundred thousand dollars, which included all his fortune, except

enough to live on and educate his grandchildren; for he never changed

his home, and the only luxury he indulged in was a stable for Ben

Butler.

The stock was divided into shares of ten dollars each, which could be

acquired only by those who worked in the mill, to be held only during

life-time, and earned only in part payment for labor, given according

to proficiency and work done, and credited on wages. In this way

every employee of the mill became a stockholder--a partner in the

mill, receiving dividends on his stock in addition to his regular

wages, and every year he worked in the mill added both to his stock

and dividends. At death it reverted again to The Model Cotton Mill

Company, to be obtained again, in turn, by other mill workers coming

on up the line. This made every mill worker a partner in the mill and

spurred them on to do their best.

But the home idea of the bishop was the more original one, and a far

greater boon to the people. Instead of paying rent to the mill for

their homes, as they had before, every married mill worker was deeded

a home in the beginning, a certain per cent of his wages being

appropriated each month in part payment; in addition, ten per cent of

the stock acquired, as above, by each individual home owner, went to

the payment of the home, and the whole was so worked out and adjusted

that by the time a faithful worker had arrived at middle age, the

home, as paid for, was absolutely his and his children's, and when he

arrived at old age the dividends of the stock acquired were

sufficient to support him the balance of his life.

In this way the mill was virtually resolved into a corporation or

community of interests, running perpetually for the maintenance and

support of those who worked in it. The only property actually

acquired by the individual was a home, his savings in wages, and the

dividends on his stock acquired by long service and work.

Some wanted the old man to run a general store on the same plan of

community of interest, the goods and necessities of life to be bought

at first cost and only the actual expenses of keeping the store

added. But he wisely shook his head, saying: "No, that will not do;

that's forming a trust ag'in the tillers of the earth an' the workers

in every other occupation. That's cuttin' in on hones' competition,

an' if carried out everywhere would shut off the rest of the worl'

from a livin'. We're makin' our livin'--let them make theirs."

The old bishop was proud of the men he selected to carry out his

plans. Captain Tom was manager of the Model Mill.

"Now," said the old man, after the mill had run two years and

declared a semi-annual dividend, both years, of eight per cent each,

"now you all see what it means to run even business by the Golden

Rule. Here is this big fortune that I accidentally stumbled on, as

everybody does who makes one--put out like God intended it sh'ud,

belonging to nobody and standing there, year after year, makin' a

livin' an' a home an' life an' happiness for over fo' hundred people,

year in an' year out, an' let us pray God, forever. It was not mine

to begin with--it belonged to the worl'. God put the coal and iron in

the ground, not for me, but for everybody. An' so I've given it to

everybody. Because I happened to own the lan' didn't make the

treasure God put there mine, any mo' than the same land will be mine

after I've passed away. We're only trustees for humanity for all we

make mo' than we need, jus' as we're only tenants of God while we

live on the earth."

As for children, the bishop settled that quickly and effectively. His

rule was that no boy or girl under sixteen should be permitted to

work in the mill, and to save any parents, weakly inclined, from the

temptation, he established a physical standard in weight, height and

health.

He found afterwards there was really small need of his stringent

rule, for under this system of management the temptations of child

labor were removed.

Among the good features of the mill, established by Alice Travis, was

a library, a pretty little building in the heart of Cottontown. It

was maintained yearly by the mill, together with donations, and

proved to be the greatest educational and refining influence of the

mill. It was kept, for one week at a time, by each girl in the mill

over twenty, the privilege always being given by the mill's physician

to the girl who seemed most in need of a week's rest. It came to be a

great social feature also, and any pretty afternoon, and all Saturday

afternoon,--for the mill never ran then--could be seen there the

young girls and boys of Cottontown.

To this was afterwards added a Cottontown school for the younger

children, who before had been slaves to the spinner and doffer carts.

And so it ran on several years, but still the Bishop could see that

something was lacking--that there was too much sickness, that in

spite of only eight hours his people, year in and year out, grew

tired and weak and disheartened, and with his great good sense he put

his finger on it.

"Now, it's this away," he said to his directors, "God never intended

for any people to work all the time between walls an' floors. Tilling

the soil is the natural work of man, an' there is somethin' in the

very touch of the ground to our feet that puts new life in our

bodies.

"The farmin' instinct is so natural in us that you can't stop it by

flood or drought or failure. Year in an' year out the farmer will

plant an' work his crop in spite of failure, hopin' every year to

hit it the nex' time. Would a merchant or manufacturer or anybody

else do that? No, they'd make an assignment the second year of

failure. But not so with the farmer, and it shows God intended he

shu'd keep at it.

"Now, I'm goin' to give this mill a chance to raise its own cotton,

besides everything else its people needs to eat. I figger we can

raise cotton cheaper than we can buy it, an' keep our folks healthy,

too."

Near Cottontown was an old cotton plantation of four thousand acres.

It had been sadly neglected and run down. This the bishop purchased

for the company for only ten dollars an acre, and divided it into

tracts of twenty acres each, building a neat cottage, dairy and barn,

and other outhouses on each tract--but all arranged for a family of

four or five, and thus sprang up in a year a new settlement of two

hundred families around Cottontown. It was no trouble to get them,

for the fame of The Model Mill had spread, and far more applied

yearly for employment than could be accommodated. This large farm,

when equipped fully, represented fifty thousand dollars more, or an

investment of ninety thousand dollars, and immediately became a

valuable asset of the mill.

It was divided into four parts, each under the supervision of a manager,

a practical and experienced cotton farmer of the valley, and the tenants

were selected every year from among all the workers of the mill,

preference always being given to the families who needed the outdoor

work most, and those physically weak from long work in the mill. It was

so arranged that only fifty families, or one-fourth of the mill, went

out each year, staying four years each on the farm. And thus every four

years were two hundred families given the chance in the open to get in

touch with nature, the great physician, and come again. After four years

they went back to the mill, sunburnt, swarthy, and full of health, and

what is greater than health,--cheerfulness--the cheerfulness that comes

with change.

On the farm they received the same wages as when in the mill, and each

family was furnished with a mule, a cow, and poultry, and with a good

garden.

To reclaim this land and build up the soil was now the chief work of the

old man; but having been overseer on a large cotton plantation, he knew

his business, and set to work at it with all the zeal and good sense of

his nature.

He knew that cotton was one of the least exhaustive crops of the world,

taking nearly all its sustenance from the air, and that it was also one

of the most easily raised, requiring none of the complicated and

expensive machinery necessary for wheat and other smaller grains. He

knew, too, that under the thorough preparation of the soil necessary for

cotton, wheat did best after it, and with clover sown on the wheat, he

would soon have nature's remedy for reclaiming the soil. He also knew

that the most expensive feature of cotton raising was the picking--the

gathering of the crop--and in the children of Cottontown, he saw at once

that he had a quick solution--one which solved the picking problem and

yet gave to each growing boy and girl three months, in the cool,

delightful fall, of healthful work, with pay more than equal to a year

of the old cheap labor behind the spinners. For,--as it proved, at

seventy-five cents per hundred pounds for the seed cotton picked,--these

children earned from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a half a day.

The first year, only half of the land was put in cotton, attention being

given to reclaiming the other half. But even this proved a surprise for

all, for nearly one thousand bales of cotton were ginned, at a total

cost to the mill of only four cents per pound, while Cottontown had been

fed during summer with all the vegetables and melons needed--all raised

on the farm.

That fall, the land, under the clean and constant plowing necessary

to raise the cotton, was ready to sow in wheat, which in February was

followed with clover--nature's great fertilizer--the clover being

sown broadcast on the wheat, behind a light harrow run over the

wheat. The wheat crop was small, averaging less than ten bushels to

the acre, but it was enough to keep all Cottontown in bread for a

year, or until the next harvest time, and some, even, to sell. Behind

the wheat, after it was mowed, came the clover, bringing in good

dividends. After two years, it was turned under, and then it was that

the two thousand acres of land produced fifteen hundred bales of

cotton at a total cost of four cents per pound, or twenty dollars per

bale. And this included everything, even the interest on the money

and the paying of seventy-five cents per hundred pounds to the

Cottontown children for picking and storing the crop.

In a few years, under this rotation, the farm produced all the cotton

necessary to run The Model Mill, besides raising all its vegetables,

fruit, and bread for all the families of Cottontown.

But the most beautiful sight to the old man was to see the children

every fall picking the cotton. Little boys and girls, who before had

worked twelve hours a day in the old, hot, stifling, ill-smelling

mill, now stood out in the sunshine and in the frosty air of the

mornings, each with sack to side, waist deep in pure white cotton,

flooded in sunshine and health and sweetness.

They were deft with their fingers--the old mill had taught many of

them that--and their pay, daily, ran from seventy-five cents to a

dollar and a half--as much as some of them had earned in a week of

the old way. And, oh, the health of it, the glory of air and sky and

sunshine, the smell of dew on the bruised cotton-heads, the rustle of

the mountain breeze cooling the heated cheeks; the healthy hunger,

and the lunches in the shade by the cool spring; the shadows of

evening creeping down from the mountains, the healthy fatigue--and

the sweet home-going in the twilight, riding beneath the silent stars

on wagons of snowy seed cotton, burrowing in bed of down and purest

white--this snow of a Southern summer--with the happy laughter of

childhood and the hunger of home-coming, and the glory and freedom of

it all!

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Bishop of Cottontown, by John Trotwood Moore