Part 45 (1/2)

He was acknowledging, too, that if the riders numbered among their secret adherents such men as Bas Rowlett and his own boy, his fight was upon a poison that had struck deeper and more malignantly into the arteries of the community than he had heretofore dreamed.

He must talk with Parish Thornton, whose strength and judgment could be trusted. He would see him to-night.

But at that point he halted. As yet he could not reveal his unsubstantiated information to another. A pledge of sacredly observed confidence had been the price of his learning these things--and over there at the Thornton house a baby was expected before long. It would be both wise and considerate to defer the interview that must of necessity bring the whole crisis to violent issue until the young father's thoughts were less personally involved. It was a time to make haste slowly. Old Hump Doane laughed bitterly. He was a father himself, and to-night he had learned how the heart of a parent can be battered.

But before he went to his bed he had talked with his son, while his son sat cowering. It had been a stormy interview during which Pete had denied, expostulated, and at the end broken down in confession, and when Hump Doane rose he had abandoned that slender shred of hope to which, in the teeth of conviction, he had been clinging, that his boy might still be able to clear himself.

”Ye've done lied ter me, an' ye've done broke my heart,” declared the hunchback, slowly, ”but ye've done confessed--an' I'm too d.a.m.n weak ter turn ye over ter ther law like my duty demands. Don't nuver go ter no other meetin', an' ef they questions why ye don't come, tell 'em ter ask me! An' now”--the old man crumpled forward and buried his great head in his knotted hands--”an' now git outen my sight fer a spell, fer I kain't endure ther sight of ye!”

But when he rode abroad the next day no man suspected the cataclysm which had shattered Hump Doane's world into a chaos of irretrievable wreck.

A closer guard of caution than ever before he set upon his speech and bearing, while he sought to run down those devastating truths that had come to him with such unwelcome illumination.

In those days of first bud and leaf Dorothy Thornton looked out of her window with a psychological anxiety. If the first hint of life that came to the great tree were diseased or marked with blight, it would be an omen of ill under which she did not see how she could face her hour, and with fevered eyes she searched the gray branches where the sap was rising and studied the earliest tinge of green.

”Ef harm hed done come ter hit,” she argued with herself, ”hit would show, by this time, in them leetle buds an' tossels,” but she was not satisfied, and reaching through the attic window she broke off from day to day bits of twig to see whether the vitality of rising sap or the brittleness of death proclaimed itself in the wood.

Slowly, under soft air and rain, the buds broke into tiny spears, too small and tender, it seemed to her, to live against the unkind touch of harsh winds, and the rudimentary filaments spread and grew into leaves.

But the time that seemed to Dorothy to lag so interminably was pa.s.sing, and the veils of misty green that had scarcely showed through the forest grays were growing to an emerald vividness. Waxen ma.s.ses of laurel were filling out and flus.h.i.+ng with the pink of blossom. The heavy-fragranced bloom of the locust drooped over those upturned chalices of pink, and the black walnut was gaunt no more, but as brightly and l.u.s.tily youthful as a troubador whom age had never touched.

Warm with swelling life and full throated with bird music the beginnings of summer came to the hills, and the hills forgot their grimness.

But Old Jim Rowlett, over there in his house, was failing fast, men said. He prattled childishly, and his talon-like hands were pitifully palsied. He would scarcely see another spring, and in the fight that was coming his wise old tongue would no longer be available for counsel. So toward the younger and more robust influence of Parish Thornton his adherents turned in his stead.

In those places where secret night sessions were held were the stir of preparation and the talk of punis.h.i.+ng a traitor--for young Pete had deserted the cause, and the plotters were divided in sentiment. A majority advocated striking with stunning suddenness toward the major purpose and ignoring the disaffection of the one young renegade, but a fiercer minority was for making him an example, and cool counsels were being taxed.

To Dorothy Thornton's eyes contentment had returned because gay and hopeful young flags of green flew from every twig of the tree of augury, and in her deep pupils dwelt the serene sweetness that broods on thoughts of approaching motherhood.

Then one morning before dawn Uncle Jase Burrell and a neighbour woman, versed in the homely practises of the midwife, came to the room where Parish Thornton sat with tightly clenched hands before the ruddy hearth.

”He's done been borned,” said Uncle Jase, cheerily; ”he's hale an'

survigrous an' sa.s.sy--an' he's a boy.”

Sim Squires had not gone home that night, and now he rose from his chair and picked up his hat. ”I reckon I'll be farin' on,” he announced, ”hit's all over now but ther shoutin'.” At the door, though, he turned back and from his coat pocket drew a roll of sheafed paper bound in a limp cloth.

”I found this hyar thing layin' behind a barrel up thar in ther attic,”

he lied, as he restored the lost journal of the revolutionary ancestress. ”I 'lowed hit mout be somethin' ye prized.”

One night, when June had come to her full-bosomed richness, young Pete Doane did not return to his father's house and the old hunchback's face darkened anxiously.

The warm night was a blue and moonlit glory of summer tranquillity and from the creek bottom came the full-throated chorus of the frogs. Back in the dark timber sounded the plaintive sweetness of the whippoorwills, and from everywhere drifted an intangible blending of fragrances.

But Hump sat alone and morose in the house where no one dwelt but himself and his son--save the neighbour woman who came in the daytime to cook and clean house for the widower. He sat there until midnight had pa.s.sed and the moon was riding low to the west; he was still sitting in the darkness that comes before dawn, and young Pete had not yet come.

Then when even June could not make gracious that dismal hour that brings fog and reek before the first gray streaks the east, the old man heard a voice outside his door and rose heavily to answer it.