"Oh, I"m so glad!" Mary cried. "You can"t imagine how much it means to me!"
"I think I can, little girl, for you are a mother to the boys, young as you are. I came to say something else, too. I wanted to wipe my slate off as clean as possible before I go, and so I set to work on my brother. He now knows all about how I felt to you, and, as he is a good fellow, he promised to help all he could. He is sure now that the boys will never be seriously punished and has promised me not to arrest them."
"Does he know that they did not go West, after all?" Mary asked, anxiously.
"Yes, he does now. The boys were seen working in the field by a mischievous neighbor, who reported it, but no harm will come of it now.
You can depend on my brother. He will not molest them. They"ve had their lesson. They never were a bad sort, but only a little wild. They have good blood in them and will come out all right in the end. My brother really hates to have me leave, and he will stand behind any friend of mine. I"m a rotten egg, little girl. Wanting to tie to you was my best point, and that was a doubtful one, for I was unworthy of you, and knew it all along--all along. I reckon a man ought to be as clean as the woman he marries, and I was wrong, too, in trying to get you by the methods I was using."
The horse at the gate was pawing the ground impatiently. Frazier looked over the landscape musingly. The moon was just appearing above a mountain-top. The old house which had blazed with the festive light and rung with the merriment of buried generations stood swathed in darkness, its roof-edge drawing a line against the dun sky. Ghosts of the past, earth-anch.o.r.ed by sweet memories, perchance, came and went through the old doorway and strolled about the moonlit grounds.
"It is time I was going," Frazier announced. "I don"t know what has come over me of late, little girl, but I know that I am different from what I used to be. If I hadn"t been I"d never have said what I"ve said to-night. I hope you will be happy. You"d never have been so with me--never! Good-by!"
"Good-by!" she echoed. She was crying. Why? She couldn"t have answered.
She went with him to the gate. She held his arm in a gentle grasp of pitying grat.i.tude. They shook hands over the gate. He took up the reins, got into the buggy with his old ponderous movement, raised his hat, and the impatient horse bore him away.
She turned and glanced up at the window of Charles"s room. He was standing there, looking at her, but she could not see him through the murky panes.
"Now go to bed, darling," a voice from the past whispered in her subconscious ear, "Mother is watching over you."
CHAPTER XXVIII
The next day, in the afternoon, Charles and the boys were in the blacksmith"s shop repairing a plow that was to be used immediately.
Kenneth was at the bellows, and Charles at the anvil, his sleeves rolled high on his brawny arms. Martin stood in the doorway. Presently he whistled softly, and ran to Charles just as he was about to strike the red-hot plowshare which he was holding on the anvil.
"Don"t make any noise!" he said. "I see a buggy and horse stopping at the gate. It looks like the sheriff"s rig, and I think he is in it."
Charles dropped his tools, and he and his companions crept to a crack in the wall and peered through it.
"That"s who it is," Kenneth informed Charles, in a startled voice. "I wonder if--if Tobe has become worse, or--or--"
"I couldn"t stand that," Martin cried out. "Oh, don"t think it!"
Charles said nothing, and there was no response from Kenneth, who was grimly peering through the crack. They saw Rowland, bareheaded, walking leisurely from the veranda to the gate. They saw him shaking hands over the buggy-wheels with the sheriff. They could not, at that distance, read his face. Of what was taking place the three watchers could form no idea. Presently they saw Mary come down the walk, pa.s.s through the gate, and shake hands with the sheriff.
"Sister means to find out if anything has gone wrong, so she can warn us," Kenneth said. "Brown, this looks pretty tough on us. We were thinking everything was all right, but this looks bad."
Still Charles said nothing. His face, only half illumined by the light through the crack, which struck across his fixed eyes, was grim and perplexed.
They saw Mary at her father"s side, but the hood of her sunbonnet hid her face from view. The three stood talking for several minutes; then Mary was seen leaving and turning in their direction.
"She"s coming to tell us," Kenneth said. "Now, we"ll know. Keep still.
Maybe she is afraid we"ll be seen or heard at work."
Mary appeared in the doorway. She removed her bonnet and smiled rea.s.suringly. "Frightened out of your skins, I"ll bet," she jested. "I came to tell you. He is not looking for you. He said so plainly, for he saw how worried I was. In fact, he said that Tobe was still improving, and hinted--he didn"t say so in so many words--but he hinted that he knew you both were about the place, and that he was not going to molest you now that Tobe is out of danger."
Charles was staring at her fixedly; the animation that should have been in his face was absent. "Then he wanted to see your father about something else?" he said.
"Yes, some business, or--" Mary broke off, and with a sudden shadow across her face she stood staring at him. "I don"t know what he wanted to see father about. It seemed to me that it was of a private nature, and so--so that"s why I came away."
"Gee! what does it amount to, since he"s letting us go?" said Martin. He stepped to his sister"s side and stood with his arm around her waist.
For once she seemed unaware of the boy"s presence. She was recalling something Albert Frazier had said about the sheriff"s opinion of Charles. Could the present visit pertain to him?
"Thank the Lord, he"s off!" Kenneth exclaimed. "Bully boy, that chap!"
The brothers went to the doorway, looked all around, and then hastened away to meet their father, who was slowly coming toward the shop. They joined him.
"Where is your sister?" he asked. They told him, and he went on, as if only partially conscious of their eager questions.
"Oh, that"s all right!" he said, impatiently. "He is not going to bother you. Oh, Mary, where are you?"
"Here, father," she answered, as she came out, accompanied by Charles.
"Did you want me?" It seemed to her that he now glanced at Charles with a look of vague displeasure on his face.
"Yes, I want to see you. Come to the house with me, please."
Mary was sure now that something pertaining to Charles had happened, for her father was treating him in a manner that surely indicated it; the old man had taken no notice of him, and that was most unusual.
Leaving the others in the shop, Rowland led his daughter toward the house. "I wanted to see you about a little matter that may be rather serious," he began. "The sheriff didn"t come to see me about the boys at all, but about Mr. Brown."
"About him!" Mary said, faintly. "What about him?"
"He put a lot of questions to me in regard to Mr. Brown," Rowland said, "but I couldn"t answer a single one of them. He seemed surprised--astonished, in fact, for he said he didn"t see how any sensible man could take in a stranger like Brown unless he had proper credentials. I couldn"t even tell him where Mr. Brown came from, who he was, or anything. I tried to explain that Mr. Brown had been so gentlemanly and useful that we hadn"t thought such a course necessary, but the sheriff only laughed at me for being so easily hoodwinked."
"Hoodwinked!" Mary protested. "He hasn"t hoodwinked us, father. I"m sure he is all we have given him credit for being."
"Well, it seems that the sheriff thinks there is something very suspicious about him. Warrants are out for a number of men who left the circus when Mr. Brown did. The sheriff says that Mr. Brown has been leaving our house at night, and has been seen in town on several occasions. Quite recently he met a stranger at the hotel, a queer fellow with a Northern accent who had refused to register. They were out together the night the gift was made to Mrs. Keith that everybody is talking about, and the man that turned the money over to her answered the description of the stranger that Mr. Brown was with."
"But surely the sheriff is not fool enough to think that giving money away like that was a sign that Mr. Brown was--was a suspicious character!" protested Mary.
"The sheriff thinks that very thing is ground for suspicion," Rowland went on. "He says it may be that Tobe Keith knows more than he has ever let out. It seems that he was seen drinking with some of the circus men.
The sheriff thinks that the money was paid over by persons who were afraid Tobe would make some sort of death-bed statement that would implicate Mr. Brown and others. The sheriff found out through one of his men that the same man who met Mr. Brown at the hotel was seen at the hospital in Atlanta where Keith is, and then again here with Mr. Brown.
I don"t want to be unfair or suspicious of innocent persons, but--now I must be plainer, daughter. I"ve been afraid that you and Mr. Brown--But I"m sure you know what I mean without my going into it."
"I know what you mean, father," Mary faltered.
"I don"t want to offend you, my dear," Rowland went on, "but it seems to be my duty to bring it up. He is an educated man and has the manners of a refined gentleman. In fact, when I used to contrast him with Albert Frazier it seemed to me that a young girl like you could not fail to be impressed with him. He is a good talker and has seen something of the world, evidently. I must say I like him. I like him so much that I almost feel that it is my duty to be more open with him than I can be, for I promised the sheriff that I"d say nothing to him of this. He wants to have him watched for a week or so. In any case, he thinks that under some pretext or other he may arrest him and force him to give an account of himself."
"An account of himself!" Mary repeated the words to herself. Then, touching her father"s arm appealingly, she said, aloud: "Do you think you ought--Surely, father, you will not let this change your manner toward Mr. Brown?"
"Why do you ask that?" he demanded.
"Because just now in the shop you treated him coldly. I"m sure he must have noticed it. He is an unhappy, lonely, sensitive man, who--I think--has had some great trouble."
"I didn"t mean to treat him differently," Rowland said with regret.