The doctor appeared just behind her, and told the three men what had happened. Mr. Barlow, his face set hard, and a ghastly white under his yellow skin, tottered up the stairs, the doctor following. Judge Martin penned a telegram to Checkers, and dispatched Arthur with it at once.

"Pert is very sick. Come home," it read, and it was signed as though from Mr. Barlow.

Fortunately, Checkers, in Little Rock, had but a few moments to wait for the outgoing train after receiving the message; but every moment of the journey was torture; every delay at way-stations, agony. When, after what seemed to him like years, they at last pulled into Clarksville, he jumped from the moving train to the platform.

Judge Martin had set for himself the unwelcome task of meeting him and breaking the sad news. But his resolution all but failed him when Checkers, grasping both his hands, asked breathlessly, "How is she, sir?" his face upturned with a pleading look, as though upon the answer depended his very life and salvation.

"She is very low, my poor boy," answered the Judge, the tears coming into his eyes; "but you must be brave--"

"My G.o.d, my G.o.d!" breathed Checkers, raising his hand to his eyes in a dazed way, as though to ward off the blow of the Judge's words, the import of which was all too plain. The Judge laid his hand upon Checkers' shoulder and drew him toward him, protectingly. "Come," he said, gently; "she is at my house."

Checkers started as though from a dream. "At your house," he echoed, "and I have been standing here wasting precious time."

With a sudden bound he jumped to the ground and flew up the street through the darkness, toward the Judge's house, not many yards away.

Arthur heard the sound of his footsteps, and silently opened the door.

"Upstairs, Checkers," he whispered. Checkers hurried frantically up the stairs, but paused at the threshold, ere he entered the room.

There before him, by the light of one dim, flickering candle, sat Sadie, silently weeping. There upon the bed, cold and silent in death, lay the mortal remains of his sweet girl-wife.

With an agonized cry he fell to his knees at the bedside, and taking her cold little hand, he rubbed it and kissed it caressingly. "Pert, my darling," he moaned, "come back to me! Don't leave me, Pert, my precious one--tell me you won't dear--tell me you hear me!--" But only the sound of Sadie's convulsive sobbing answered him as she stumbled from the room.

The long threatened storm now suddenly broke in all its fury. The rain blew fiercely in at a window near him, and drenched him through and through with the flying spray; but he heeded it not. Kneeling at the bedside, his face above the little hand clasped in both of his, he uttered mingled incoherent prayers to Pert to come back, and to G.o.d to take him too.

Judge Martin noiselessly entered the room and closed the window.

Gently he put a hand under each of Checkers' arms, and raised him up.

"Come, my boy," he said kindly, but firmly, "you must not stay here in this condition. Try to bear up. It's an awful blow that has come upon us; but G.o.d, in his inscrutable wisdom, has thought it best to take her--"

Again, with a sudden burst of anguish, as though his very heart had broken within him, Checkers threw himself to his knees by the bedside, and burying his face between his outstretched arms, poured out in bitter, choking sobs, his utter hopeless, despairing misery. So terrible a strain, however, brought about, in the end, its own results.

Beneficent nature intervened, and toward the morning hours Judge Martin and Arthur gently lifted the grief-stricken boy from the kneeling position in which he had fallen asleep, and put him comfortably upon a bed in another room, without his awakening.

Details of this sort are harrowing at best, but nothing imaginable could have been sadder than was the funeral two days later. The rain, which had never intermitted, fell with dismal hopelessness. Mrs.

Barlow had not been able to leave her bed since the shock, and, never strong, her life was now almost despaired of.

Checkers stood uncovered in the down-pouring rain, beside the open grave, his clear-cut face as hard and white as marble. In spite of the draggling wet and clinging mud, the country people were out in force; but their gapes, their nudges and whispers, were as little to him as the falling rain. He was dead to everything but the sense of his utter, hopeless desolation.

What made it all even sadder, if possible, was that a dreadful breach had come between him and Sadie and Arthur.

On the morning following that first awful night, he had suddenly confronted them with the box of powders crushed in his hand, and in his eyes a tragic, questioning look which spoke, while he stood sternly silent.

"Oh, Checkers," cried Sadie, falling to her knees and holding out her hands entreatingly, "forgive us--we did n't know--we didn't know!

Forgive us; please forgive us!"

But his face only grew the harder. "Forgive you," he said, as he raised his clenched hand to heaven, invokingly; "may G.o.d eternally--"

but he faltered, and his voice grew suddenly soft, "forgive you," he added, dropping his arm and lowering his voice contritely. "But I," he began again, in measured pa.s.sionless words--"I can never forgive you.

I never want to see you--either of you--again." And from that hour he never spoke to them, nor looked at them, any more than as though they were not.

The funeral was over. He had come home. The rain had ceased. He sat alone on his doorstep. The minister and some well-meaning but mistaken friends, who had tried to comfort him, were gone. Over the western hills the lowering sun broke through the heavy, moving clouds, painting some a lurid tinge, and lining the heavier ones with silver. Checkers noted it absently. "Another lie nailed," he muttered, as the trite old proverb occurred to him. "My cloud is blacker and heavier than any of those--and silver lining? Humph! Well, silver 's demonetized!" Over his face there flitted the ghost of a smile. A smile, not at the sorry jest, but at the thought that at this hour there should have come to him so whimsical a fancy.

A number of days went by. He simply drifted, doing a few needful duties mechanically; sometimes eating the food which Mandy prepared for him, but oftener going without altogether; sitting, brooding, hours at a time, gazing vacantly into s.p.a.ce.

Mrs. Barlow--he learned one day from the doctor, who stopped a moment in pa.s.sing--had taken a slight turn for the better. Mr. Barlow, the following morning appeared, as Checkers stood meditatively surveying a fine old apple tree, from which a large limb, hanging heavy with fruit, had been blown during the night.

"Thar," snorted the old man as he came up; "thar ye go, with yer dog-durned laziness. If you 'd o' propped that limb weeks ago, as you 'd ought t' done, you 'd o' saved me a couple o' barrels o'

apples--Shannons, too. It's high time I was takin' a holt here myself.

Git the saw and the grafting-wax." Checkers obeyed, and stood apathetically watching Mr. Barlow minister to the tree's necessity.

"Now," said the old man, when at last he had finished, "come and set in the shade; I want to have a talk with ye;" and he led the way around to the doorstep. Both sat down. The old man drew a plug of "Horseshoe"

from his pocket, and cut off a liberal piece, which he chewed into a comfortable consistency before beginning.

"Now, boy," he said, "luck's ben a-comin' mighty hard for you and me these last few weeks, and I ain 't a-sayin' it's over yit for both o'

us." Checkers made no response.

The old man chewed ruminatingly, and spat at a "devil's-horse" which sat alertly atop of a shrub near by. "Y' see," he continued, "times is gittin' wuss and wuss; banks failin' everywhar, and nawthin' wuth a cent on th' shillin', 'cept Gov'ment bonds. Corn aint wuth nawthin; farmers is feedin' their wheat to th' hogs, and cotton ye could n't give away." Again there was a silence, and again the "devil's-horse"

narrowly escaped a deluge.

"By the way, whar 've ye got them Gov'ment bonds o' yourn?" Checkers came out of his reverie at the question.

"Mr. Bradley 's got them put away in the safe for me at the store," he answered.

"Mm-hmm!" mused the old man; "I was kinder wonderin' whether ye ever give any on 'em away, like ye done th' place here;" and he glanced at Checkers cunningly out of the corner of his eye.

"I never gave them away," said Checkers, drearily, "because there was no occasion for it. What we had we owned together and shared in common, and it makes little difference whether it was in my name or--or any one else's."

"Yes; but it does. It makes a difference in the eye o' the law."

"Well, the law can leave it in its eye, or get it out, if it worries it any."

The old man grinned sardonically on the side of his face away from Checkers. He had never liked our little friend from the time when Checkers had caused him to fall over a rocking-chair in the parlor the night that he and Pert became engaged; and Checkers had fostered this dislike by snubbing and belittling him whenever an opportunity occurred. His entire make-up of sneaking, petty selfishness and greed was abhorrent to one of Checkers' open, generous nature, and it was only for Pert's sake that he had ever consented to have the old man about or notice him at all.

"Wal," said Mr. Barlow, musingly, "that 's one thing I kin see stickin'

out; you ain't no kind o' hand to run a place like this--ye 're too tarnal shif'less. Somebody 's got to look after things. Now, my place down below 's all right for raisin' cotton and sich, but it 's onhealthy, mighty. The doctor says it 's livin' down thar gives my wife chills and ager. So, take it all 'round, and bein' 's ye 're fixed so nice up here, but lonesome-like by yerself, I guess me an'

wife 'll close up the ole house an' move up here to live."

"Guess again."

"No; I 'low I guessed it right fust time," grinned the old man. "What 's the good in runnin' two houses when we kin all live together in one jist ez well? Wife kin have the parlor bedroom all t' herself, and you kin have the front or back room upstairs, either you like--I ain't pertic'lar on that pint--"

"Now, see here," interrupted Checkers, jumping up with an impatient gesture, "I 've listened to enough of this b.l.o.o.d.y nonsense. I 'll live here by myself and run this place to suit myself. Now, when you go out, close the gate--I 'm tired of talking, and I want to be left alone."

But the old man never budged; and again the "devil's-horse" braved an unrighteous fate with a stoicism worthy of a better cause.

"Young feller," said Mr. Barlow, after several moments' cogitation, "you ain't never treated me with the perliteness and respect as is due from a boy yer age t' his elders and betters. But I never harbored no grudge, 'cause I knowed it was only a matter o' time when chickens like them 'ud come home to roost."

Checkers had intended to move off and leave him sitting there alone; but he stopped long enough to light a cigarette (a thing which the old man abominated) and listen to this last remark.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. BARLOW]

"_Now it's roostin' time_," continued Mr. Barlow with emphasis, "and onless ye come down off'n th' high horse ye 're ridin', ye 're goin'

ter hear suthin' drap that 'll kinder put a crimp in that pride o'

yourn."