Part 19 (1/2)

She was about to move toward the door of the hut when the sound of voices coming from the balcony-porch halted her. The Interpreter was speaking. She could not distinguish his words, but the deep tones of the old basket maker's voice were not to be mistaken. Then the young woman heard some one reply, and the laughing voice that answered the Interpreter was as familiar to Mary Martin as the laugh of her own brother. The evening visitor to the little hut on the cliff was the son of Adam Ward.

Very softly Mary Martin stole back down the zigzag steps to the road below. Slowly she went back through the deep shadows of the night to her little home, with its garden of old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers, next door to the deserted house where John Ward was born.

Late that night, while John was still at the Interpreter's hut, Adam Ward crept alone like some hunted thing about the beautiful grounds of his great estate. Like a haunted soul of wretchedness, the Mill owner had left his bed to escape the horror of his dreams and to find, if possible, a little rest from his torturing fears in the calm solitude of the night.

When Pete Martin, with Captain Charlie and their many industrial comrades, had returned to their homes after the meeting of their union, five men gathered in that dirty, poorly lighted room in the rear of Dago Bill's pool hall.

The five men had entered the place one at a time. They spoke together in low, guarded tones of John Ward and his management of the Mill, of Pete Martin and Captain Charlie, of the Interpreter and McIver.

And three of those five men had come to that secret place at Jake Vodell's call, directly from the meeting of the Mill workers' union.

CHAPTER XI

COMRADES

Mary was in the flower garden that Sunday forenoon when John Ward stopped his big roadster in front of the Martin cottage.

It was not at all unusual for the one-time private, John, to call that way for his former superior officer. Nearly every Sunday when the weather was fine the comrades would go for a long ride in John's car somewhere into the country. And always they carried a lunch prepared by Captain Charlie's sister.

Sometimes there might have been a touch of envy in Mary's generous heart, as she watched the automobile with her brother and his friend glide away up the green arched street. After all, Mary was young and loved the country, and John Ward's roadster was a wonderful machine, and the boy who had lived in the old house next door had been, in her girlhood days, a most delightful comrade and playfellow.

The young woman could no more remember her first meeting with John or his sister Helen than she could recall the exact beginning of her acquaintance with Charlie. From her cradle days she had known the neighbor children as well as she had known her own brother. Then the inevitable separation of the playmates had come with Adam Ward's increasing material prosperity. The school and college days of John and Helen and the removal of the family from the old house to the new home on the hill had brought to them new friends and new interests--friends and interests that knew nothing of Pete Martin's son and daughter. But in Mary's heart, because it was a woman's heart, the memories of the old house lived. The old house itself, indeed, served to keep those memories alive.

John did not see her at first, but called a cheery greeting to her father, who with his pipe and paper was sitting under the tree on the lawn side of the walk.

Mary drew a little back among the flowers and quietly went on with her work.

”Is Charlie here, Uncle Pete?” asked John, as he came through the gate.

”He's in the house, I think, John, or out in the back yard, maybe,”

answered the old workman. And, then, in his quiet kindly way, Peter Martin spoke a few words to Adam Ward's son about the change in the management of the Mill--wis.h.i.+ng John success, expressing his own gratification and confidence, and a.s.suring him of the hearty good will that prevailed, generally, among the employees.

Presently, as the two men talked together, Mary went to express her pleasure in the promotion of her old playmate to a position of such responsibility and honor in the industrial world. And John Ward, when he saw her coming toward him with an armful of flowers, must at least have noticed the charming picture she made against that background of the garden, with its bright-colored blossoms in the flood of morning sunlight.

Certainly the days of their childhood companions.h.i.+p must have stirred in his memory, for he said, presently, ”Do you know, Mary, you make me think of mother and the way she used to go among her flowers every Sunday morning when we lived in the old house there.” He looked thoughtfully toward the neighboring place.

”How is your mother these days, John?” asked Mary's father.

”She is well, thank you, Uncle Pete,” returned John. ”Except of course,” he added, soberly, ”she worries a good deal about father's ill health.”

”Your father will surely be much better, now that he is relieved from all his business care,” said Mary.

”We are all hoping so,” returned John.

There was an awkward moment of silence.

As if the mention of his father's condition had in some way suggested the thought, or, perhaps, because he wished to change the subject, John said, ”The old house looks pretty bad, doesn't it? It is a shame that we have permitted it to go to ruin that way.”