Bles frowned and stood irresolute. The song proceeded with less a.s.surance, slower and lower, till it stopped, and the singer dropped to the ground, watching him with wide eyes. He looked down at her, slight, tired, scratched, but undaunted, striving blindly toward the light with stanch, unfaltering faith. A pity surged in his heart. He put his arm about her shoulders and murmured:
"You poor, brave child."
And she shivered with joy.
All day Sat.u.r.day and part of Sunday they worked feverishly. The trees crashed and the stumps groaned and crept up into the air, the brambles blazed and smoked; little frightened animals fled for shelter; and a wide black patch of rich loam broadened and broadened till it kissed, on every side but the sheltered east, the black waters of the lagoon.
Late Sunday night the mule again swam the slimy lagoon, and disappeared toward the Cresswell fields. Then Bles sat down beside Zora, facing the fields, and gravely took her hand. She looked at him in quick, breathless fear.
"Zora," he said, "sometimes you tell lies, don"t you?"
"Yes," she said slowly; "sometimes."
"And, Zora, sometimes you steal--you stole the pin from Miss Taylor, and we stole Mr. Cresswell"s mule for two days."
"Yes," she said faintly, with a perplexed wrinkle in her brows, "I stole it."
"Well, Zora, I don"t want you ever to tell another lie, or ever to take anything that doesn"t belong to you."
She looked at him silently with the shadow of something like terror far back in the depths of her deep eyes.
"Always--tell--the truth?" she repeated slowly.
"Yes."
Her fingers worked nervously.
"All the truth?" she asked.
He thought a while.
"No," said he finally, "it is not necessary always to tell all the truth; but never tell anything that isn"t the truth."
"Never?"
"Never."
"Even if it hurts me?"
"Even if it hurts. G.o.d is good, He will not let it hurt much."
"He"s a fair G.o.d, ain"t He?" she mused, scanning the evening sky.
"Yes--He"s fair, He wouldn"t take advantage of a little girl that did wrong, when she didn"t know it was wrong."
Her face lightened and she held his hands in both hers, and said solemnly as though saying a prayer:
"I won"t lie any more, and I won"t steal--and--" she looked at him in startled wistfulness--he remembered it in after years; but he felt he had preached enough.
"And now for the seed!" he interrupted joyously. "And then--the Silver Fleece!"
That night, for the first time, Bles entered Zora"s home. It was a single low, black room, smoke-shadowed and dirty, with two dingy beds and a gaping fire-place. On one side of the fire-place sat the yellow woman, young, with traces of beauty, holding the white child in her arms; on the other, hugging the blaze, huddled a formless heap, wreathed in coils of tobacco smoke--Elspeth, Zora"s mother.
Zora said nothing, but glided in and stood in the shadows.
"Good-evening," said Bles cheerily. The woman with the baby alone responded.
"I came for the seed you promised us--the cotton-seed."
The hag wheeled and approached him swiftly, grasping his shoulders and twisting her face into his. She was a horrible thing--filthy of breath, dirty, with dribbling mouth and red eyes. Her few long black teeth hung loosely like tusks and the folds of fat on her chin curled down on her great neck. Bles shuddered and stepped back.
"Is you afeared, honey?" she whispered.
"No," he said st.u.r.dily.
She chuckled drily. "Yes, you is--everybody"s "feared of old Elspeth; but she won"t hurt you--you"s got the spell;" and wheeling again, she was back at the fire.
"But the seed?" he ventured.
She pointed impressively roofward. "The dark of the moon, boy, the dark of the moon--the first dark--at midnight." Bles could not wring another word from her; nor did the ancient witch, by word or look, again give the slightest indication that she was aware of his presence.
With reluctant farewell, Bles turned home. For a s.p.a.ce Zora watched him, and once she started after him, but came slowly back, and sat by the fire-place.
Out of the night came voices and laughter, and the sound of wheels and galloping horses. It was not the soft, rollicking laughter of black men, but the keener, more metallic sound of white men"s cries, and Bles Alwyn paused at the edge of the wood, looked back and hesitated, but decided after a moment to go home and to bed.
Zora, however, leapt to her feet and fled into the night, while the hag screamed after her and cursed. There was tramping of feet on the cabin floor, and loud voices and singing and cursing.
"Where"s Zora?" some one yelled, with an oath. "d.a.m.n it! where is she? I haven"t seen her for a year, you old devil."
The hag whimpered and snarled. Far down in the field of the Fleece, Zora lay curled beneath a tall dark tree asleep. All night there was coming and going in the cabin; the talk and laughter grew loud and boisterous, and the red fire glared in the night.
The days flew by and the moon darkened. In the swamp, the hidden island lay spaded and bedded, and Bles was throwing up a d.y.k.e around the edge; Zora helped him until he came to the black oak at the western edge. It was a large twisted thing with one low flying limb that curled out across another tree and made a mighty seat above the waters.
"Don"t throw the dirt too high there," she begged; "it"ll bring my seat too near the earth."
He looked up.
"Why, it"s a throne," he laughed.
"It needs a roof," he whimsically told her when his day"s work was done.
Deftly twisting and intertwining the branches of tree and bush, he wove a canopy of living green that shadowed the curious nest and warded it snugly from wind and water.
Early next morning Bles slipped down and improved the nest; adding foot-rests to make the climbing easy, peep-holes east and west, a bit of carpet over the bark, and on the rough main trunk, a little picture in blue and gold of Bougereau"s Madonna. Zora sat hidden and alone in silent ecstasy. Bles peeped in--there was not room to enter: the girl was staring silently at the Madonna. She seemed to feel rather than hear his presence, and she inquired softly:
"Who"s it, Bles?"
"The mother of G.o.d," he answered reverently.