UNTIL THE DAY BREAK
Although Isom Chase had been in his grave a week, and Judge Little had
been cracking his coat-tails over the road between his home and the
county-seat daily, the matter of the will and the administration of the
estate remained as in the beginning.
Judge Little had filed the will for probate, and had made application
for letters of administration, which the court had denied. Under the
terms of the will, it was pointed out, he was empowered to act in that
capacity only in case of the testator's death before the majority of the
legatee. The date of the document proved that the heir was now long past
his majority, and the only interest that remained to Judge Little in the
matter seemed to be the discovery of the testator's unknown, unseen, and
unbelieved-in son.
If Isom ever had fathered a son, indeed, and the child had died in
infancy, the fact had slipped the recollection of the oldest settler.
Perhaps the proof of that mysterious matter lay in the hands of the two
witnesses to Isom's will. They should know, if anybody knew, people
said.
One of these witnesses, Thomas Cogshawl, had died long since, and there
remained behind neither trace nor remembrance of him save a leaning,
yellowed tombstone carrying the record of his achievements in this
world. They were succinctly recounted in two words: Born and Died. His
descendants were scattered, his family dispersed.
The other witness, John Owens, was in the county poorhouse, deaf, dumb,
and blind, his children dead, his money gone. Communication with him,
except by prods and thumps, had been out of the question for ten years
and more.
On the advice of her neighbors, Ollie had engaged a lawyer to guard her
interests, and make a fight in the courts, if it came to that, in an
effort to retain the property. It was a shame, said the neighbors; Isom
never had a son, or, if he did have one, he had no business to do any
such surreptitious fathering.
While they denounced Isom, Judge Little was advertising in the
metropolitan papers for the mysterious legatee, for there is no man so
faithful to his trust as the administrator of another's estate. Although
the property had not yet succeeded to his hands, the judge was
proceeding in confidence. If the existence of Isom Chase's son could not
be proved, neither could it be disproved.
And there stood the will in Isom's writing as plain as cow tracks,
naming him as administrator. It would all work into his hands at the
end, and there were rewards and emoluments for an administrator who
understood his business, in that estate.
That is true in the case of any executor in the affairs of dead men, or
receiver in the muddled business of the living. That accounts for such
men's inflexibility in carrying out the provisions of unfeeling
testators and the decrees of heartless courts. The law must be applied
to the letter, the wishes of the deceased fulfilled to the last hateful
particular, for the longer the administrator or receiver is in place,
the longer flows the soothing stream of fees.
Ollie had passed out of the brief tranquillity which had settled on her
after the inquest and funeral. Worry had overtaken her again, and a
longing for the return of Morgan, which seemed destined never to be
quieted.
There was not so much concern for her in the ultimate disposal of Isom's
estate, for she had consoled herself all along, since the discovery of
the will, that she would soon be above the need of his miserly scrapings
and hoarded revenues of stint. Morgan would come, triumphant in his
red-wheeled buggy, and bear her away to the sweet recompense of love,
and the quick noises of life beyond that drowsy place. For Morgan, and
love, she could give it all over without one regret, or a glance
behind.
Yet, with the thought of what she already had given for Morgan and love
a quick catching of pain, a troubled stirring bordering on panic, rose
in her breast. Where was Morgan, why did he remain away when he might
come boldly now, like a man, and claim his own? What if Morgan never
should come back? What if she should find herself a double widow, bereft
of both the living and the dead?
During her days she watched for him, straining her eyes up and down the
dust-white road. At night her cheek burned upon her pillow, and her
tears ran down, yearning for the man who had her heart's love in his
keeping and seemed unworthy of the trust.
At such times her anger would flame hot against Joe. If he had not come
into her affairs and muddled them, like a calf in a kitchen, all of this
uncertainty and longing would have been spared her. And it would be like
the fool now, the miserable, bleating bull-calf, to turn back on his
word and betray her. In that case, what should she do? Bow her head,
meekly, and bear him out? She did not think so. There was little chance
that anybody would credit Joe if he should turn now on his own evidence,
less if she should maintain that his first version of the tragedy was
true. For what he had done by his impertinent meddling between her and
Morgan he deserved to suffer. He must grin and bear it now, said she.
Besides this feeling of revenge on Joe's luckless head, Ollie had her
reasons of selfishness and security for desiring him out of the way.
With him in prison for a long time--people said it would be for
life--the secret of her indiscretion with Morgan would be safe. And
then, if Morgan never came back, perhaps another.
But she recoiled from the thought that they might hang Joe for the
murder of Isom. She did not want him hung, for through her gathering
cloud of blame for his too faithful guardianship of his master's house,
she had gleams of tenderness and gratitude for him. She could not help
comparing him with Morgan in such moments of softness. Morgan had let
that boy drive him away; he seemed to have gone with such a terror of
him that he never had looked back. Joe, on the other hand, had stood by
her through the storm. No, she did not want them to hang Joe, but it
would be quite easy and comfortable with him out of the way for a long,
long time.
Public opinion was framing toward giving her the relief that she
desired. If anybody suspected that Ollie was concerned in her husband's
death, it was some remote person whose opinion did not affect the public
mind. The current belief was that Joe alone was to blame.
No matter how severe the world may be upon a woman after she is down in
the mire, there is no denying that it is reluctant to tumble her from
her eminence and throw her there. A woman will find more champions than
detractors in the face of the most serious charge; especially a young
and pretty one, or one whose life has been such as to shape sympathy for
her in itself.
All her neighbors knew that Isom's wife had suffered. That year of
penance in her life brought Ollie before them in a situation which was
an argument and plea for their sympathy and support.
In spite, then, of the coroner's attempt at the inquest to drag Ollie
into the tragedy, and to give foundation for his shrewd suspicion that
there had been something between Isom's wife and bondman which the
husband was unaware of, no sensation nor scandal had come of that. The
case was widely talked of, and it was the hope of every voter in the
county that he would be drawn on the jury to try the boy accused of the
murder. Even the busiest farmers began to plan their affairs so they
would have at least one day to spare to attend the trial at its most
interesting point.
The date set for the trial was approaching, and so was election day. The
prosecuting attorney, being up for reelection, hadn't time, at that busy
hour, to try a homicide case. He had to make speeches, and bestir
himself to save his valuable services to the state. The man penned in
jail, growing thin of cheek and lank of limb, could wait. There would be
other homicide cases, but there never would be another prosecuting
attorney so valuable as that one offering himself, and his young
ambitions, on the altar of public service. That was according to his
view. So he notified Hammer that the state would not be ready for trial
on the day set.
This pleased Hammer well enough, for the greater the delay the wider the
notoriety of the case would spread, the larger his audience would be. By
mutual agreement, the case was put over for one month.
Joe protested against this delay in vain. Hammer said that they would
profit by it, as the ferment of the public mind would settle meantime,
and prejudice would not be so sharp. He talked a great deal about
"character witnesses," which Joe couldn't see the need of, and took down
the names of all the people whom Joe could name as having known him all
his life. Then Hammer went his way, to make speeches in the campaign in
support of the worthy sheriff.
So Joe found himself with another month ahead of him before he could
even hope to walk out into the sun again.
Jail was wearing on him. The disgrace of it was torture to his sensitive
mind, without the physical chafing to pull him down to bones. Those two
weeks had taken off his frame a great deal of the flesh that he had
gained during the summer. His gauntness was more pronounced than it ever
had been before.
Mrs. Newbolt walked in twice a week to see him, carrying with her a
basket of biscuits and other homely things dear to her son's palate. All
of which the sheriff speared with knitting-needles, and tried on various
domestic animals, to make certain that the Widow Newbolt did not cheat
the gallows out of its due by concealing saws in pies, or introducing
poison to her hopeless offspring in boiled eggs.
But all of her tempting relishes, or such of them, at least, as reached
Joe, were powerless to fill his hollow cheeks, growing thinner and paler
day by day. He could not eat with relish, he could not sleep with peace.
If it had not been for the new light that Alice Price had brought into
his life, he must have burned his young heart to ashes in his
restiveness.
Twice again the colonel and Alice had visited Joe, once to carry to him
the books for which he had expressed a desire, and again to bring the
_Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_, which Alice herself had gone after to
Judge Maxwell's house. Each time Joe fancied that she left a radiance
behind her that brightened and warmed his cell for days.
Nobody else in the town troubled himself about the prisoner's welfare,
for nobody else knew him. Two of the ministers had called at the jail in
the first days of Joe's incarceration, in a sort of urging-to-penitence
state of mind, just as if they were assured of Joe's guilt by reason of
his very obscurity. Joe had told them that he had a religion of his own
which seemed to fill all present needs, and did not want to make any
change. He was respectful, but lofty in his bearing. So they put him
down as a stiff-necked son of Belial, and went away, leaving him to save
himself if he thought he was equal to the task, in a manner of
challenge.
In the face of this clerical abandonment, people wondered over the deep
interest that Colonel Price and his daughter seemed to have in the Widow
Newbolt's son, who had neither pride of family nor of possessions to
recommend him.
Joe had not yet brought himself to the belief that it was necessary to
take his lawyer into his confidence, although Hammer had made it
unfeelingly plain to him that the withholding of any vital fact would be
fatal to his cause. Although Joe was beginning to experience a deep and
disquieting concern about the outcome of the trial, he was disposed to
give Morgan an honest man's chance to come forward and take his share of
it upon himself. If he should do that, then Joe felt that he would be
morally free to disclose all that took place in the kitchen on the night
Isom lost his life.
In case that Morgan did not come, or that he had gone beyond the reach
of Hammer or anybody else to fetch him back, then there would not be one
word of evidence to uphold him, or justify his seemingly ridiculous
stand of reticence. Yet, perhaps Morgan was waiting until the trial day;
perhaps he knew all about it, and would appear in time. So argued Joe,
in his great desire to be just to everybody.
He reviewed the matter in this wise with ceaseless repetition, always
arriving at this same end, from which he drew the comfort of hope.
Perhaps Morgan would come in time. At any event, he would wait until the
last minute of the last hour, and give him a man's chance to do what was
honorable and fair.
The talkative horse-thief had been tried and condemned, and had gone his
cheerful way to the penitentiary to serve three years. Before leaving he
had taken pains to sound again his forecast of what was waiting Joe
"down the river," in case they did not give him the "quick and
painless." He never had forgiven Joe his unwillingness to gossip with
him in jail. The fellow's vindictiveness was evident in the sneering
delight that he took on his last night in jail in calling Joe out of his
sleep, or pretended sleep, to hear his description of the terrors
waiting a man condemned to prison for life.
Now that he was gone, Joe felt that his words lived after him, like mold
upon the walls, or a chilling damp between the stones. The recollection
of them could not be denied his abnormally sharpened senses, nor the
undoubted truth of their terrifying picture shut out of his imagination
by any door of reasoning that he had the strength to close. Condemnation
to prison would mean the suspension of all his young hopes and healthy
desires; it would bring him to the end of his activities in the world as
suddenly as death. Considering ambition, love, happiness, men in prison
were already dead. They lived only in their faculty for suffering.
Would Morgan come to save him from that fate? That was his sole
speculation upon a solution of his pressing trouble. Without Morgan, Joe
did not consider any other way.
Colonel Price had received lately a commission for a corn picture from a
St. Louis hotel, upon which he was working without pause. He had reached
that state of exalted certainty in relation to corn that he never was
obliged to put aside his colors and wait the charge of inspiration. His
inspirational tide always was setting in when corn was the subject. Work
with the colonel in such case was a matter of daylight.
On account of the order, the colonel had no time for Joe, for art with
him, especially corn art, was above the worries and concerns of all men.
He did not forget the prisoner in the white heat of his commission. For
several days he had it in his mind to ask Alice to visit him, and carry
to him the assurance of the continuance of the family interest and
regard. But it was an unconventional thing to request of a young lady; a
week slipped past before the colonel realized it while he temporized in
his mind.
At last he approached it circuitously and with a great deal of
diplomatic concealment of his purpose, leaving ample room for retreat
without unmasking his intention, in case he should discern indications
of unwillingness.
By that time the election was over and the country regularly insured
against anarchy, devastation, and ruin for two years longer. The
prosecuting attorney and the sheriff had been reelected; the machinery
of the law was ready to turn at the grist.
The colonel was pleased to see that Alice seconded him in his admission
that they had been treating Joe Newbolt shamefully. Of course the
sheriff was partly to blame for that, having set himself up with
metropolitan importance, now that he was secure in office. He had put
aside Wednesday as the one day of the week on which visitors, other than
relatives or counsel of prisoners, would be permitted to enter the
jail.
It chanced to be a Wednesday morning when the colonel got around to it
finally, and they agreed heartily and warmly that somebody ought to go
and carry a little gleam of cheer and encouragement to Joe. The colonel
looked at his unfinished picture, then at the mellow light of the autumn
day, so much like the soul of corn itself, and then at Alice. He lifted
his eyebrows and waved his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
"Never mind," said she; "you go ahead with the picture; I'll go alone."
The colonel blessed her, and turned to his picture with a great sigh of
relief. Alice left him to prepare for her visit, a flutter of eagerness
in her heart, a feeling of timid nervousness which was unaccountable and
strange.
She was not accustomed to trembling at the thought of meeting young men.
Usually she went forward to the ordeal with a smile, which the victim
would not have gathered a great deal of pleasure from, in most cases, if
he had been able to read, for he would have seen her appraisement of him
on her lips. There was none of this amusing measurement of Joe, no
sounding of his shallows with her quick perception like a sunbeam
finding the pebbles in the bottom of a brook. There was something in his
presence which seemed like a cool wind on the forehead, palpable, yet
profound from the mystery of its source.
She had been surprised by the depth of this unpromising subject, to whom
she had turned at first out of pity for his mother. The latent beauties
of his rugged mind, full of the stately poetry of the old Hebrew
chronicles, had begun to unfold to her sympathetic perception in the
three visits she had made in her father's company. Each visit had
brought some new wonder from that crude storehouse of his mind, where
Joe had been hoarding quaint treasures all his lonely, companionless
years.
And Joe, even in his confinement, felt that he was free in a larger
sense than he ever had been before. He was shaking out his wings and
beginning to live understandingly and understood. It was beyond him to
believe it sometimes; beyond him always to grasp the reality of Alice
Price, and her friendship for one so near the dust as he.
What was there about the poor folks' boy, bound out but yesterday to
Isom Chase, and still bound to his estate under the terms of his
articles? What was there in him to reach out and touch the sympathies of
this beautiful young woman, who came to him with the scent of violets in
her hair? Others had despised him for his poverty, and fastened a name
upon him which was in itself a reproach. And still misunderstanding,
they had carried him off to prison, charged with a dark and hideous
crime. Now this light had come to him in his despair, like the beam of
that white star above the Judean plains. Like that star, she would stand
far off to guide him, and exalt his soul by its strivings to attain her
level. There their relations must cease. He might yearn his heart away
in the gulf that lay between them, and stretch out his empty hands for
evermore, never to feel its nearer warmth upon his breast. He was the
poor folks' boy.
There was a wan sun on the day she came alone to the jail, a day so long
remembered by Joe and held by him so dear. A solemn wind was roaming the
tree-tops outside his cell window; the branches stood bleak and bare
against the mottled sky.
Alice wore a dress of some soft gray material, which seemed to embrace
her in warm comfort, and reveal her in a new and sprightly loveliness.
Her rippled hair was free upon her temples, her ear peeped out from
beneath it with a roguish tint upon it, as if it waited to be kissed,
and blushed for its own temerity. A gay little highland bonnet rode the
brown billows of her abundant hair, saucy and bold as a corsair, with
one bright little feather at its prow. Perhaps it was no more than a
goose quill, or a cock's plume dipped in dye, but to Joe it seemed as
glorious as if it had been plucked from the fairest wing in the gardens
of paradise.
The marvel of it came over Joe again as he stood close against the bars
to greet her. She, so rare and fine, so genteel and fair, caring enough
for him and his unpromising fate to put aside the joyous business of her
unhampered life and seek him in that melancholy place. It seemed a
dream, yet she was there, her delicate dark brows lifted questioningly,
as if uncertain that he would approve her unconventional adventure, a
smile in the depths of her serene, frank eyes. Her cheeks were glowing
from the sparks of morning, and her ungloved hand was reaching out to
meet him.
He clasped it, and welcomed her with joy that he could not have
simulated any more than he could have hidden. There was a tremor in his
voice; a hot sweep of blood flamed in his face like a confession of his
secret soul.
"I never saw you look so tall," said he slowly, measuring her with
adoring eyes.
"Maybe it's the dress," said she, looking herself over with a little
expressive sweep of the hands, as if to put all the blame on that
innocent nun-gray gown, if there was blame to be borne.
She wore a little bunch of mignonette upon her breast, just at the point
where the slashing of her bodice ended, and the gray gave way to a wedge
of virginal white, as if her sempstress had started to lay bare her
heart. The flowers quivered as from some internal agitation, nestling
their pale gold spikes against their lovely bed.
"I don't know that it's the dress," said he, "but you do look taller
than usual, it seems to me."
She laughed, as if she found humor in his solemn repetition of such a
trivial discovery.
"Well, I can't help being tall," she said. "How tall would you have a
lady grow? How tall do you think one ought to be?"
"'As high as my heart,'" said Joe, remembering _Orlando's_ words.
The color deepened in her cheeks; she caught her breath with a little
"Oh!"
She wondered what sprout of blue-blooded and true-blooded nobility in
Shelbyville there was capable of turning a reply like that without
straining for it more than that pale cavalier with his worn clothing
hanging loose upon his bony frame. When she ventured to lift her eyes to
his face, she found him grasping a bar of the cell door with one hand,
as if he would tear it from its frame. His gaze was fixed upon the high
window, he did not turn. She felt that he was struggling with himself
that moment, but whether to drive to speech or to withhold it, she could
not tell.
"I wish I could go out there and run about five miles this morning," he
sighed.
She gave him sigh for sigh, feeling that something was lost. He had not
striven with himself merely to say that. But from there they went on to
talk of his coming trial, and to expose the mutual hope that no further
excuse would be advanced for its continuance. He seemed to be certain
that the trial would see an end of his difficulty, and she trembled to
contemplate any other outcome.
So they stood and talked, and her face was glowing and her eyes were
bright.
"Your cheeks are as red as bitter-sweet," said he.
"There was frost last night," she laughed, "and the cool wind makes my
face burn."
"I know just how it feels," said he, looking again toward the window
with pathetic wistfulness, the hunger of old longings in his eyes.
"It will not be long now until you are free," she said in low voice of
sympathy.
He was still looking at the brown branches of the bare elm, now palely
touched with the cloud-filtered autumn sun.
"I know where there's lots of it," said he, as if to himself, "out in
the hills. It loves to ramble over scrub-oak in the open places where
there's plenty of sun. I used to pick armloads of it the last year I
went to school and carry it to the teacher. She liked to decorate the
room with it."
He turned to her with apologetic appeal, as if to excuse himself for
having wandered away from her in his thoughts.
"I put it over the mantel," she nodded; "it lasts all winter."
"The wahoo's red now, too," said he. "Do you care for it?"
"It doesn't last as long as bitter-sweet," said she.
"Bitter-sweet," said he reflectively, looking down into the shadows
which hung to the flagstones of the floor. Then he raised his eyes to
hers and surprised them brimming with tears, for her heart was aching
for him in a reflection of his own lonely pain.
"It is emblematic of life," said he, reaching his hand out through the
bars to her, as if to beg her not to grieve over the clouds of a day;
"you know there are lots of comparisons and verses and sayings about it
in that relation. It seems to me that I've always had more of the bitter
than the sweet--but it will all come out right in time."
She touched his hand.
"Do you like mignonette?" she asked. "I've brought you some."
"I love it!" said he with boyish impetuosity. "I had a bed of it
last--no, I mean the summer before last--before I was--before I went to
work for Isom."
She took the flowers from her bosom and placed them in his hand. The
scent of them was in his nostrils, stirring memories of his old days of
simple poverty, of days in the free fields. Again he turned his face
toward the window, the little flowers clutched in his hand. His breast
heaved as if he fought in the deep waters of his soul against some
ignoble weakness.
She moved a little nearer, and reached timidly through the bars with the
breathless quiet of one who offers a caress to a sleeper. Her
finger-tips touched his arm.
"Joe," said she, as if appealing in pity to him for permission to share
his agony.
He lifted the flowers to his lips and kissed the stems where her hand
had clasped them; then bowed his head, his strong shoulders against the
bars.
"Joe!" Her voice was a whisper in his ear, more than pity in it, so it
seemed to him in the revelation of that moment; more than entreaty, more
than consolation.
Her hand was on his arm; he turned to her, shaking the fallen locks of
his wild hair back from his brow. Then her hand was in his, and there
was a warm mist, as of summer clouds, before his eyes. Her face was
before him, and near--so near. Not red like the bitter-sweet, but pale
as the winter dawn. Her eyes were wide, her chin was lifted, and he was
straining her to him with the jail door bars against his breast.
Love comes that way, and death; and the blow of sorrow; and the wrench
of life's last bitter pang. Only life is slow; tedious and laggard with
its burdens and its gleams.
He remembered in a moment; the pressure of the bars against his breast
recalled him to his sad estate. He released her hand and fell back a
step from her, a sharp cry on his lips as if he had seen her crushed and
mangled just beyond his reach.
"I didn't mean to do that, Alice; I didn't mean to do that!" said he,
dropping to his knees before her as if struck down by a stunning blow.
He bowed his head in contrite humiliation.
"I forgot where I was, Alice; I forgot!"
There was no displeasure in her face as she stood panting before the
barred door, her hands to her heaving breast, her head thrown back. Her
lips were parted; there was a light of exaltation in her eyes, as of one
who has felt the benediction of a great and lasting joy. She put her
hand through the bars again, and touched his bowed head.
"Don't do that, Joe," said she.
The sheriff's key sounded in the lock of the corridor gate.
"Time's up," he called.
"All right; I'm coming," Alice returned.
Joe stood, weak and trembling. He felt as if he had, in the heat of some
great passion, rashly risked life, and more than life; that he had only
now dragged his battered body back to the narrow, precarious ledge from
which he had leaped, and that safety was not his.
"I must go now," said she, soft and low and in steady voice. "Good-bye."
She gave him her hand, and he clung to it like a nestling fastening upon
the last branch interposing between it and destruction.
"I forgot where I was," said he weakly, his shaken mind incapable of
comprehending things as they were, his abasement over the breach that he
had committed being so profound. She withdrew her hand. When it was gone
out of his, he remembered how warm it was with the tide of her young
body, and how soft for his own work-roughened fingers to meet and
enfold.
"I must go now," said she again. Her feet sounded in the corridor as she
ran away. A little way along she stopped. She was beyond his sight, but
her voice sounded near him when she called back "Good-bye!"
She had not gone in anger nor displeasure, thought he, getting hand of
his confused senses after a while, standing as she had left him, the
flowers in his hand. Strangely exulting, strangely thrilling, mounting a
moment like an eagle, plunging down now like a stone, Joe walked his
cell.
What had he done, drawn on by that which he had read in her eyes in that
poignant moment! In jail, locked behind a grated door of steel, he had
taken her hand and drawn her to him until the shock of the bars had
called back his manhood. He had taken advantage of her friendship and
sympathy.
Prison was no place for love; a man locked in jail charged with a
crime had no right to think of it. It was base of him, and unworthy.
Still--mounting again in a swift, delicious flight--it was sweet to
know what her eyes had told him, sweeter to rest assured that she had
not left him in scorn. Down again, a falling clod. Unless he had
misinterpreted them in the ignorance of his untutored heart. Yet, that
is a language that needs no lexicon, he knew.
Who is so simple, indeed, as to be unaware of that? How different this
passion from that which Ollie's uncovered bosom had stirred; how he
burned with shame at the memory of that day!
Up and down he strode the morning through, his long, thin legs now spare
in his boot-tops, his wide, bony shoulders sharp through his coat. The
strong light fell on his gaunt face as he turned toward the window;
shadows magnified its hollows when he turned toward the door. Now that
the panic of it had left him, the sweetness of it remained.
How soft her hand was, how her yielding body swayed in his arm! How
delicious her breath was on his face; how near her eyes, speaking to
him, and her lips; how near her parted, warm, red lips!
He took up the Book, and turned with trembling hands to a place that he
remembered well. There was something that he had read, not feeling, not
understanding, words of which came back to him now. The Songs of Songs,
Which is Solomon's.
Ah, the Song of Songs! The music of it now was written in his heart. It
was not the song in glorification and exaltation of the church that the
translators had captioned it; not a song full of earthly symbols meant
to represent spiritual passions. Joe had read it, time and again, in
that application, and it had fallen flavorless upon his understanding.
No; it was the song of a strong man to the woman whom he loved.
And the music of it, old but ever new in its human appeal, now was
written in his heart.
Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely. Thou
art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.... Until the day break,
and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved....
Ah, until the day break!
In his rapt exaltation the boy's face beamed as he strode swiftly the
length of his cell. It would not be long until daybreak now. The judge
would understand him, and would not press a man to tell what he had
delicate reasons for concealing, when the concealment could bring harm
to nobody, but boundless good to one weak creature who must wither
otherwise in the blaze of shame.
He remembered the strong face and the long iron-gray hair of Judge
Maxwell; only a little while ago Joe had given him some apples which he
had stopped to admire as he drove past Isom's orchard in his sagging,
mud-splashed, old buggy. He was a good man; the uprightness of his life
spoke from his face. Judge Maxwell was a man to understand.
Poor Ollie; poor weak, shrinking Ollie! Her frightened eyes glowed hot
in his memory of the day of the inquest, carrying to him their appeal.
Poor, mistaken, unguided Ollie! He would protect her to the last, as he
had done at the beginning, and trust and hope that the judge, and Alice,
and the colonel, and the whole world, would understand in due and proper
time.