CHAPTER XXXIV

About a week later Tobe Keith was brought back to Carlin from Atlanta. He was able to walk through the streets from the station to his home. The news reached Kenneth and Martin as they were working in the cotton-fields. The bearer of the tidings said that the sheriff himself had asked that they be informed. Charles was at work close by, and, tossing his straw hat into the air, Kenneth ran toward him, followed by Martin, who was all aglow with joy.

"I thought it would be so," Charles said, when he was informed of the good news.

With his hat swinging at his side, Kenneth held out his hand to him. "I want to thank you," he said, in a manly tone. "You did it, Brown."

And Martin chimed in, a hand outstretched also: "Yes, you did it. If it hadn't been for you he would have stayed here and died. Sister says so."

Flushing red, Charles was unable to deny the part he had played, though still unable fully to explain it. At this instant they saw Mary coming down the path.

"She's heard, too," Martin chuckled. "It lifts a load off her mind—an awful load of worry. She was always afraid there would be an unfavorable turn down there. And they say Tobe is friendly to us."

The two boys went on to meet their sister, but Charles, feeling that he had no valid reason for following them, resumed his work with his hoe in the cotton. Several minutes passed. His back was turned to the trio on the path and he was constantly working away from them. Presently he heard the soft swishing of a starched skirt against the cotton-plants and Mary was at his side. Looking up, he was surprised to find her countenance overcast with a look of depression.

"They've gone over to Dodd's to tell father," she said. "They are very, very happy."

"But you—?" and he leaned on his hoe. "You don't seem—Has anything gone wrong? Was it—a false report, after all?"

"Oh no, it is true enough." She took a deep, lingering breath and released it in a sigh. "But the man that brought the news about Tobe told me something else—something that everybody in the neighborhood seems to know. Charlie, the sheriff has sent those men back to watch you again. They were seen hiding in the woods on the hillside. They are watching us even now. I thought that was all off, but they say the sheriff has had fresh instructions from the East. The men he is after are hiding somewhere in this part of the state, and he seems to think they are here in the mountains and that Tobe Keith and you know something about them."

Charles looked toward the hillside indicated, and then drew his lingering eyes back to hers. He was slightly pale; his lips were drawn tight in chagrin. He made a failure of a smile of indifference.

"I thought that was over," he said. "I thought the sheriff had turned his attention elsewhere. But it can't be helped. You ought not to have taken me in. I ought not to have stopped here at all."

"Don't talk that way!" Mary commanded, with desperate warmth. "What are we going to do about it? I want the truth. I know you are bound by honor, as you say, but as far as you are able I want you to tell me what to expect. If he arrests you—well, what then?"

Charles dropped his eyes to the soil his hoe had turned up and the weeds he had cut. His fine face was stamped with the misery that permeated his being like an absorbent fluid. "If he arrests me he will want me to do the impossible," he said. "He will want me to show who and what I am. I've tried to tell you that I have no past that I can bring up even—even to stand well in your sight. I shall say nothing to him. I don't think the law would let him torture me bodily, but my silence will be ground enough to confirm his suspicions. A man who has been the daily associate of a bunch of circus crooks, and who refuses to show his record to an officer of the law, will stand a poor show."

"I wonder—couldn't you escape? But, oh, I don't want you to leave! I couldn't bear that."

"I thought of escape when they were hanging round before," he answered, with a pale, frank smile, "but gave it up. Such men would be hard to get away from, now that they are on guard, and, besides, to try it would be a confession that I am guilty of what they charge. No, I'll have to let them have their way about it. The men they are after are a dangerous lot and ought to be apprehended."

"Listen to me, Charlie," and Mary, in her earnestness, put her hand on his arm. "I know something—a little something—of all this, and you need not deny it. You are trying to protect some one else in some way. I know it; I feel it; I've been sure of it for some time."

"I am sorry, but I can tell you—even you—nothing," he replied, and the words came out with a low groan. "I'm glad you think so well of me. It is the only good thing that has come my way in a long time, but you mustn't care for me deeply, very deeply, for that would mar your future. You know what I think of you, but I have no right to mention it. Your father is right in warning you, as I know he has done; he shows it in the strange, half-fearful way he now speaks to me."

She averted her face; her eyes were moist; her exquisite lips were quivering like those of a weeping child. "I must go," she murmured. "I am sure they are watching us."

"Yes, don't stay." He took up his hoe and began to work as she turned to go.

She hesitated and stood still. "The sheriff talks freely to father," she said. "In fact, I think father went over to Dodd's to meet him. I am sorry to have to tell you this, but you might hear it and not understand. Father liked you all along till—" She broke off, at a loss for words sufficiently delicate to express her meaning.

"Till the good old man found that I was a menace under his roof," Charles put in, bitterly. "That's what I am, Miss Row—"

"Stop!" she suddenly cried out. "Have you lost consideration for my feelings? Am I to count for nothing in this matter? What if you can't reveal everything to me? I don't care. To me you are the soul of honor; to me you are the noblest, most abused man on earth. Charlie, I'll stand by you; I'll go with you if they put you in jail. They can't punish you without punishing me. I've told my father so. My brothers know how I feel. That is why father—as I started to say—is so worried. He doesn't know what to do. He has his pride; he loves me, wants to protect me, and does not know which way to turn."

"And there is nothing I can do, as I see it," Charles groaned, leaning on his hoe, his great, famished eyes on hers. "If it would help, I'd gladly kill myself, but my death would prove nothing but my cowardice and confirm them in their suspicions."

She stepped back to him. She laid her slender, tapering hand on his arm and looked into his face steadily. "Yes, you are too brave for that," she faltered, giving her proud head a little shake of emphasis. "I've never been afraid of that. You, like myself, were born to suffer, it seems, but we will stand up under it, won't we? Let them all do their worst; it won't kill us, for we love each other, don't we, Charlie?"

He lowered his uncovered head; his grim, ashen face was wrung as from deathly pain.

"We love each other, don't we, Charlie?" she repeated, entreatingly.

A shudder shook him from head to foot. "How can I be glad to hear you say that," he asked, "when I know that it is your ruin and that I brought it on you? I have no right to tell you how I feel—how I've felt ever since I kissed you that night in the parlor and you lay so willingly in my arms and hung about my accursed neck. What can I do—what in the name of God, my tormentor? Shall I throw my sacred promise to the winds and laugh in the face of—of—?"

"No!" she cried out. "No, for I'd be doing it. I'd be your evil temptress. Be yourself, Charlie—be what you were before I met you. I think I know—you are selling yourself for some one else as I was willing to do when my brothers were in danger. Don't let me tempt you—don't let anything tempt you. God brought me out of my darkness—by your aid He brought me out. He only knows what my awful struggle was when I was ready to go to that repulsive man as his wife with your image locked in my breast—with my desire for you wrapped around my soul. God helped me; surely He will help you. What are earthly troubles for if they are not to be conquered, trampled under foot, as we mount to the heights to which we are destined? You shall not tell me anything. I know your soul, and that is enough."

She turned quickly and moved away. He saw the heads of her brothers as they wended their way toward Dodd's through the tall waving corn. How steadily, how erectly she walked toward the old mansion of her forebears! He noted the tiny marks of her shoes in the soil at his feet. He could have kissed them; he could have fallen on his knees before them in reverent, worshipful humility.

Charles worked on till the cool, creeping shadows of the mountains told him that the sun was down. Then he shouldered his hoe and listlessly trudged homeward. He heard Kenneth and Martin singing as they returned through the corn. It was a negro plantation melody, somehow maddening now in its trustful suggestion of joy. He saw the boys come out into the path. They were arm in arm, full of happiness, full of the ebullient consciousness of their release. He smiled grimly. He told himself that their nightmare had passed, while his was an abiding reality. He must be the exception that proved the rule of life's cosmic harmony. Some things could be borne with a smile. A man might die for his friend, and jest as the black cap muffled his lips; a man might sing as he was being vivisected for a good cause; but this—this fate belonged to no imaginable category of tortures. He had won the heart of an angel and was forced to wear the garb of an outcast in the kingdom which was her rightful abode.