Somewhere behind those fluted pillars, white and ghost-like in the dawn, lay the girl who had suddenly risen from the dead to lead his faltering feet up life"s Calvary. He saw the cross slowly lifting its dark form from the hilltop with arms outstretched to embrace him, and the chill of death crept into his heart.
The chirp of stirring birds, the dim noises of waking life, the whitening sky-line behind the house recalled another morning in his boyhood. He had waked at daylight to go to his traps set at the branch in the edge of the woods behind the barn. The plantation at that time had extended into the town. A fox had been killing his fancy chickens. He had vowed vengeance in his boyish wrath, bought half a dozen powerful steel-traps and set them in the fox"s path. The prowler had been interrupted the night before and had not gotten his prey. He would return sure.
He recalled now every emotion that had thrilled his young heart as he bounded along the dew-soaked path to his traps.
Before he could see the place he heard the struggles of his captive.
"I"ve got him!" he shouted with a throb of savage joy.
He leaped the fence and stood frozen to the spot. The fox was a magnificent specimen of his breed, tall and heavy as a setter dog, with beautiful appealing eyes. His fine gray fur was spotched with blood, his mouth torn and bleeding from the effort to break the cruel bars that held his foreleg in their death-like grip. With each desperate pull the blood spurted afresh and the steel cut deeper into bone and flesh.
The strange cries of pain and terror from the trapped victim had struck him dumb. He had come with murder in his heart to take revenge on his enemy, but when he looked with blanched face on the blood and heard the pitiful cries he rushed to the spot, tore the steel arms apart, loosed the fox, pushed his quivering form from him and gasped:
"Go--go--I"m sorry I hurt you like that!"
Stirred by the memories of the dawn he lived this scene again in vivid anguish, and as he slowly mounted the steps of his home, felt the steel bars of an inexorable fate close on his own throat.
CHAPTER VIII
BEHIND THE BARS
When Norton reached his room he locked the door and began to pace the floor, facing for the hundredth time the stunning situation which the presence of Helen had created.
To reveal to such a sensitive, cultured girl just as she was budding into womanhood the fact that her blood was tainted with a negro ancestor would be an act so pitifully cruel that every instinct of his nature revolted from the thought.
He began to realize that her life was at stake as well as his boy"s. That he loved this son with all the strength of his being and that he only knew the girl to fear her, made no difference in the fundamental facts. He acknowledged that she was his. He had accepted the fact and paid the penalty in the sacrifice of every ambition of a brilliant mind.
He weighed carefully the things that were certain and the things that were merely probable. The one certainty that faced him from every angle was that Cleo was in deadly earnest and that it meant a fight for the supremacy of every decent instinct of his life and character.
Apparently she had planned a tragic revenge by luring the girl to his home, figuring on his absence for three months, to precipitate a love affair before he could know the truth or move to interfere. A strange mental telepathy had warned him and he had broken in on the scene two months before he was expected.
And yet he couldn"t believe that Cleo in the wildest flight of her insane rage could have deliberately meant that such an affair should end in marriage. She knew the character of both father and son too well to doubt that such an act could only end in tragedy. She was too cautious for such madness.
What was her game?
He asked himself that question again and again, always to come back to one conclusion. She had certainly brought the girl into the house to force from his reluctant lips her recognition and thus fix her own grip on his life.
Beyond a doubt the surest way to accomplish this, and the quickest, was by a love affair between the boy and girl. She knew that personally the father had rather die than lose the respect of his son by a confession of his shame. But she knew with deeper certainty that he must confess it if their wills once clashed over the choice of a wife. The boy had a mind of his own. His father knew it and respected and loved him all the more because of it.
It was improbable as yet that Tom had spoken a word of love or personally faced such an issue. Of the girl he could only form the vaguest idea. It was clear now that he had been stricken by a panic and that the case was not so desperate as he had feared.
One thing he saw with increasing clearness. He must move with the utmost caution. He must avoid Helen at first and find the boy"s att.i.tude. He must at all hazards keep the use of every power of body, mind and soul in the crisis with which he was confronted.
Two hours later when Andy cautiously approached his door and listened at the keyhole he was still pacing the floor with the nervous tread of a wounded lion suddenly torn from the forest and thrust behind the bars of an iron cage.
CHAPTER IX
ANDY"S DILEMMA
Andy left Norton"s door and rapped softly at Tom"s, tried the lock, found it unfastened, pushed his way quietly inside and called:
"Mister Tom!"
No answer came from the bed and Andy moved closer:
"Mister Tom--Mister Tom!"
"Ah--what"s the matter with you--get out!" the sleeper growled.
The negro touched the boy"s shoulder with a friendly shake, whispering:
"Yo" Pa"s here!"
Tom sat up in bed rubbing his eyes:
"What"s that?"
"Ya.s.sah, I fotch him through the country and we rid all night----"
"What"s the matter?"
"Dat"s what I wants ter see you "bout, sah--an" ef you"ll des slip on dem clothes an" meet me in de liberry, we"ll hab a little confab an" er council er war----"
The boy picked up a pillow and hurled it at Andy:
"Well, get out, you old rascal, and I"ll be down in a few minutes."
Andy dodged the pillow and at the door whispered:
"Ya.s.sah, an" don"t disturb de major! I hopes ter G.o.d he sleep er month when he git started."
"All right, I won"t disturb him."
Tom dressed, wondering vaguely what had brought his father home at such an unearthly hour and by such a trip across the country.
Andy, arrayed in a suit of broadcloth which he had appropriated from Norton"s wardrobe in his absence, was waiting for Tom with evident impatience.
"Now, what I want to know is," the boy began, "what the devil you mean by pulling me out of bed this time of day?"
Andy chuckled: