After eating his supper, Lon, sullen and moody, looked out upon the
lake, reviewing in his mind the terrible revenge he was soon to
complete. He took his pipe slowly from his pocket and filled it with
coarse tobacco. Soon gray rings lifted themselves to the ceiling and
faded into the rafters. As the smoke curled upward, his mind became busy
with the past, and so vivid was his imagination that outlined in the
smoke rings that floated about him was a girlish face--a face pale and
wan, but a loving, sweet one to him. He could see the fair curls which
clung close to the head; the eyes, serious but kind, seemed to strike
his memory in unforgotten glances. To another than himself the
smoke-formed face would have been plain, perhaps ugly, the weakness of
her race showing in every feature; but not to him. So intent was he with
these thoughts that the present dissolved completely into the past, and
beside him stood a small, fond woman. In his imagination she had risen
from that grave which he had never been able to find in the Potter's
Field. The personality of his dead wife called upon his senses and made
itself as necessary to him then as in the moment of his first rapture
when she had placed her womanly might upon his soul.
His revenge upon Floyd Vandecar would be finished when the gray-eyed
Flea, so like her own father, went away with the one-armed man, to eke
out her destiny amid the squalor of the thief's home.
For months he had been enthralled with the satisfaction of the last act
in the one terrible drama of his life; for it had played with his rude
fancy as a tigress does with her prey, inflaming his hatred and keeping
alive his desire for retaliation. Flukey was a good thief, although
obeying him at the end of the lash, and Flea would receive her portion
of hate's penalty on her fifteenth birthday.
Cronk did not heed the pitter-patter of his mother's feet as she cleared
the table, nor did he hear the droning of the twin's voices in the loft
above. He was thinking of how the dead woman with her child--his child,
the one small atom he would have loved better than himself--would be
well avenged when Flea went away with Lem.
Lon had kept track of the doings of the young district attorney. He knew
that he had gone to the gubernatorial chair but the year before. The
squatter smiled gloomily as he remembered the words of a newspaper
friendly to Vandecar, in which he had read that Syracuse was full of
painful memories for the new governor, and that Floyd Vandecar had taken
his family down the Hudson, to make another home at Tarrytown, where
Harold Brimbecomb, a youthful friend, resided. Another expression of
dark gratification flitted over Lon's heavy features as he reviewed
again the purport of the article. It had plainly said that in the new
home there would be fewer visions of a lost boy and girl to haunt the
afflicted parents. Lon realized in his savage heart that the change of
scene would not lessen the grief of the stricken family. It was his one
satisfaction to brood over the bereaved father and mother, delighting in
his part of the tragedy and enjoying every evidence of it. Never for a
moment did he think gently of the children, but only of the woman
sacrificed. On this night she stood so close that, with a groan, he put
out his hand. His flesh tingled; for he felt that he could almost touch
her, and his heart clamored for the warmth of the tender body he had
never forgotten.
"God!" he moaned between his teeth, "if I could tech her once, jest for
once, I'd let Flea stay to hum!"
"Did ye speak, Lon?" asked Granny Cronk.
"Nope; I were only a thinkin'."
"Have ye changed yer mind 'bout Flea?"
"Nope, Mammy, and ye keep yer mouth shet if ye want me to stay to hum!
See?"
Granny Cronk grunted a reply, and passed into the back room. Five
minutes later the rope cot creaked under her weight.
Wrapped in his somber musings, Lon did not hear Flea approach him until
she was at his elbow. With her coming, the sweet phantom, to which he
grimly held in his moments of solitude, fled back to its unknown grave.
Never had his loved one been so near, so real; never before had she
touched his writhing nature in all its primeval strength. The girl
before him was so like the man who had withstood his agony that he
clenched his fist and rose from his chair. Flea was looking at him in
mute appeal; but before she could speak he had lifted his fist and
brought it down upon the lovely, beseeching face. The blow stunned her;
but only a smothered moan fell from her lips.
"I hate ye!" growled Lon. "Get back to the loft afore I kill ye!"
Slowly Flea was regaining her senses, and the squatter's curses struck
her ears like a whiplash. Bitter, scalding tears blinded her as, holding
her thin skirt to her bleeding nose, she stumbled up the ladder. With
anger unappeased, Lon, staggering like one drunken, took his cap from
the peg and went out.
* * * * *
When Lon called Flukey, Flea followed her brother into the night, while
he arranged the thief's tools in the boat. There was a dull roar and
rush of the wind, as it tossed the lake into gigantic whitecaps, which
added to the girl's suffering. Her young soul was smarting beneath the
scathing injustice. As she watched Lem and Lon pull away, with Flukey at
the rudder, Flea squatted on the beach, bent her head, and wept long and
wildly.
A gentle, sympathetic touch of a warm tongue made her put out her arms
and draw Snatchet into them. It comforted her to feel the faithful heart
beating against her own. That Lon disliked to have her and Flukey about
him, she knew; but she had not known until today that he hated her. He
had never before told her so. Flea caught her breath in a gasp, and
turned her eyes to a rift in a rock where the scow lay. Only a dark line
distinguished it in the shadows. At the thought that it was to be forced
upon her for a home, she cried again, and Snatchet, from his haven of
rest, lifted his pointed yellow nose and wailed dismally, striving with
all his dog's soul to assuage her unusual grief.
The distant sound of a hoot-owl startled Flea from her tears. It was a
familiar sound to her and came as a call from a friend.
Creeping into the low woodshed, Flea took up a bundle of fagots from the
corner, and, closing the door on Snatchet that he might not follow her,
mounted the hill with the wood under her arm. Once at the top of the
lane, she opened her lips and echoed the hoot. She passed through a
thicket of sumac into a clearing where a number of sheep were huddled
together in the cold night air. An answer came back almost instantly
from the ragged rocks, and, squatting in a hollow, Flea sat patiently
until the branches broke below her. A woman with tangled hair came
creeping cautiously forward.
"Who be there?" she whispered.
"It's Flea, Screech Owl. Be the bats a runnin' in yer head?"
"Yep, child," the woman answered mournfully. "The fagots be given out,
too, and I'm a huntin' of 'em. The night's cold."
"I was lookin' for ye this afternoon, Screechy," said Flea. "Set down."
The lean, half-starved woman dropped beside the girl. Flea put out her
hand and smoothed down the rough hair on Scraggy's black cat. The
animal, usually so vicious, purred in delight, rubbing his nose against
the girl's hand.
"Air the little Flea wantin' the owl to tell her somethin'?"
"Yep," replied Flea doubtfully.
"And ye brought yer old Screechy a little present?"
"Yep."
"What?"
"Some fagots to keep ye warm, Screechy."
"Where be they?"
"Here by my side."
"Ye be a good Flea," cackled Screechy. "Be ye in trouble?"
"Yep. So be Flukey. Can ye tell me anything 'bout Flukey?"
The woman frowned. "Flukey, Flukey, yer brother," she repeated. "I ain't
a likin' boys, 'cause they throw stones at me."
"Flukey never throwed no stones at ye, Screechy, an' he's unhappy now.
He'll bring ye a lot more fagots sometime to heat yer bones by."
"Aye, I'm a needin' heat. My bones be stiff, and my blood's nothin' but
water, and my eyes ain't seein' nothin'."
"Don't they see things in the dark," asked the girl, superstitiously,
"ghosts and things?"
"Aye, Flea; and the things I see now I'll tell ye if they be good or
bad--mind ye, good or bad!"
"Good or bad," repeated Flea.
At length, after a silence, the girl broke forth. "Air Flukey in yer
eyes, Screechy?"
"Yep, Flea, and so be you; but there ain't much for ye, savin' that ye
go a long journey lookin' for a good land."