CHAPTER XXXVI

Charles and the boys were in the field the next morning. The sheer desperate movement of his limbs while at hard work had a tendency to throw off the mental pain that he was still laboring under. It was about ten o'clock, when, happening to glance toward the house, he saw the sheriff drive up in a two-seated trap and sit waiting at the gate. Then, to Charles's surprise, both Mary and her father came out, got into the trap, and were driven away toward the village. Kenneth had noticed it; he came across the cotton-rows and joined him.

"They've gone in to fix up that bond," he explained, in a tone of evident satisfaction. "Father is to sign it to-day in the office of the clerk of the court."

"But your sister?" and Charles wiped the perspiration from his brow and bewildered eyes.

"Oh, I think she went along as a witness to my father's signature, and also to see Tobe Keith and his mother. Brown, she doesn't believe you were connected with those circus men; neither does father. As for me and Martin, you know what we think."

"Thank you," Charles muttered. "It is kind of you all." His eyes were now on the trap and its inmates as they slowly ascended the sloping road half a mile distant. Mary sat with her father on the rear seat. Beyond them rose the rugged mountain, green as to foliage and brown and gray as to earth and stone. Above it all arched the blue sky, with here and there a creeping wisp of snow-white cloud. How incongruous it was! Here he was dodging imprisonment while this gentle family were espousing—blindly espousing his tottering cause. He drew a picture of himself running along the road after the trap, running faster than the horses, overtaking them and panting out a demand that the law should be allowed to take its course. But it was only a futile figment of a weary brain. He had uprooted a stalk of cotton, and he replaced it, raking out the mellow soil with his bare hands, packing it back on the roots, and bracing the plant between two of its neighbors by interlocking their pliant branches.

"Mary! Mary! Mary!" The balmy air, blown from the direction she was taking in his behalf, seemed to sing the name as from vibrant strings stretched from heaven to earth—from shores of matter to boundaries of infinite spirit. Again she was in his arms as she was that night in the darkened old parlor. Her pulsing lips were on his, her clinging arms about his neck. After that spiritual marriage, could heaven or hell tear her from him? Could fate rob him of such a prize? Perhaps, for the prize could not be had at such a price. Mary, who had been a ready sacrifice herself, could not love one less worthy, and she would have to know the truth. He worked on—as a dying man he toiled on through the long, weary day.