Part 18 (2/2)

”G.o.d forgive me; I could not wait to try to resuscitate Jube. I knew he was already past help, so I rushed into the house and to the dead girl's side. In the excitement they had not yet washed or laid her out.

Carefully, carefully, I searched underneath her broken finger nails.

There was skin there. I took it out, the little curled pieces, and went with it to my office.

”There, determinedly, I examined it under a powerful gla.s.s, and read my own doom. It was the skin of a white man, and in it were embedded strands of short, brown hair or beard.

”How I went out to tell the waiting crowd I do not know, for something kept crying in my ears, 'Blood guilty! Blood guilty!'

”The men went away stricken into silence and awe. The new prisoner attempted neither denial nor plea. When they were gone I would have helped Ben carry his brother in, but he waved me away fiercely, 'You he'ped murder my brothah, you dat was _his_ frien', go 'way, go 'way!

I'll tek him home myse'f' I could only respect his wish, and he and his comrade took up the dead man and between them bore him up the street on which the sun was now s.h.i.+ning full.

”I saw the few men who had not skulked indoors uncover as they pa.s.sed, and I--I--stood there between the two murdered ones, while all the while something in my ears kept crying, 'Blood guilty! Blood guilty!'”

The doctor's head dropped into his hands and he sat for some time in silence, which was broken by neither of the men, then he rose, saying, ”Gentlemen, that was my last lynching.”

_Thirteen_

SCHWALLIGER'S PHILANTHROPY

There is no adequate reason why Schwalliger's name should appear upon the pages of history. He was decidedly not in good society. He was not even respectable as respectability goes. But certain men liked him and certain women loved him. He is dead. That is all that will be said of the most of us after a while. He was but a weak member of the community, but those who loved him did not condemn him, and they shut their eyes to his shortcomings because they were a part of him. Without his follies he would not have been himself.

Schwalliger was only a race-horse ”tout.” Ah, don't hold up your hands, good friends, for circ.u.mstances of birth make most of us what we are, whether poets or pickpockets, and if this thick-set, bow-legged black man became a ”tout” it was because he had to. Old hors.e.m.e.n will tell you that Schwalliger--no one knew where he got the name--was rolling and tumbling about the track at Bennings when he was still so short in stature that he got the name of the ”tadpole.” Naturally, he came to know much of horses, grew up with them, in fact, and having no wealthy father or mother to indulge him in his taste or help him use his knowledge, he did the next best thing and used his special education for himself in the humble capacity of voluntary adviser to aspiring gamesters. He prospered and blossomed out into good clothes of a highly ornate pattern. Naturally, like a man in any other business, he had his ups and downs, and there were times when the good clothes disappeared and he was temporarily forced to return to the occupation of rubbing down horses; but these periods of depression were of short duration, and at the next turn of fortune's wheel he would again be on top.

”No, thuh,” he was wont to say, with his inimitable lisp--”no, thuh, you can't keep a good man down. 'Tain't no use a-talkin', you jeth can't. It don't do me no harm to go back to rubbin' now an' then. It jeth nachully keepth me on good termth with de hothes.”

And, indeed, it did seem that his prophecies were surer and his knowledge more direct after one of these periods of enforced humility.

There were various things whispered about Schwalliger; that he was no more honest than he should be, that he was not as sound as he might be; but though it might be claimed, and was, that he would prophesy, on occasion, the success of three different horses to three different men, no one ever accused him of being less than fair with the women who came out from the city to enjoy the races and increase their excitement by staking small sums. To these Schwalliger was the soul of courtesy and honour, and if they lost upon his advice, he was not happy until he had made it up to them again.

One, however, who sets himself to work to give a race-horse tout a character may expect to have his labour for his pains. The profession of his subject is against him. He may as well put aside his energy and say, ”Well, perhaps he was a bad lot, but----.” The present story is not destined to put you more in love with the hero of it, but----

The heat and enthusiasm at Saratoga and the other race-courses was done, and autumn and the glory of Bennings had come. The ingratiating Schwalliger came back with the horses to his old stamping ground and to happiness. The other tracks had not treated him kindly, and but for the kindness of his equine friends, whom he slept with and tended, he might have come back to Was.h.i.+ngton on the wooden steps. But he was back, and that was happiness for him. Broke?

”Well,” said Schwalliger, in answer to a trainer's question, ”I ain't exactly broke, Misthah Johnthon, but I wath pretty badly bent. I goth awa jutht ath thoon ath I commenth to feel mythelf crackin', but I'm hyeah to git even.”

He was only a rubber again, but he began to get even early in the week, and by Sat.u.r.day he was again as like to a rainbow as any of his cla.s.s.

He did not, however, throw away his rubber's clothes. He was used to the caprices of fortune, and he did not know how soon again he should need them. That he was not dressed in them, and yet saved them, made him capable of performing his one philanthropy.

Had he not been gorgeously dressed he would not have inspired the confidence of the old Negro who came up to him on Tuesday morning, disconsolate and weeping.

”Mistah,” he said deferentially through his tears, ”is you a spo't?”

Mr. Schwalliger's chest protruded, and his very red lips opened in a smile as he answered: ”Well, I do' know'th I'm tho much of a thpo't, but I think I knowth a thing or two.”

”You look lak a spo'tin' gent'man, an' ef you is I thought mebbe you'd he'p me out.”

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