"Mother," said the boy, "this is the new blacksmith that I've been telling you about, and he is great guns--just pulled me out of the bottom of the Tennessee river."

Jack laughed and said: "The little 'un ca'n't swim as well as he can shoot, ma'am."

There was no sign of recognition between them, nothing to show they had ever seen each other before, but Jack saw her eyes grow tender at the first word he uttered, and he knew that Margaret Adams loved him then, even as she had loved him years ago.

He stayed but a short while, and James Adams never saw the silent battle that was waged in the eyes of each. How Jack Bracken devoured her with his eyes,--the comely figure, the cleanliness and sweetness of the little cottage--his painful hungry look for this kind of peace and contentment--the contentment of love.

And James noticed that his mother was greatly embarra.s.sed, even to agitation, but he supposed it was because of his narrow escape from drowning, and it touched him even to caressing her, a thing he had never done before.

It hurt Jack--that caress. Richard Travis's boy--she would have been his but for him. He felt a terrible bitterness arising. He turned abruptly to go.

Margaret had not spoken. Then she thanked him and bade James change his clothes. As the boy went in the next room to do this, she followed Jack to the little gate and stood pale and suffering, but not able to speak.

"Good-bye," he said, giving her his hand--"you know, Margaret, my life--why I am here, to be near you,--how I love you, have loved you."

"And how I love you, Jack," she said simply.

The words went through him with a fierce sweetness that shook him.

"My G.o.d--don't say that--it hurts me so, after--what you've done."

"Jack," she whispered sadly--"some day you'll know--some day you'll understand that there are things in life greater even than the selfishness of your own heart's happiness."

"They can't be," said Jack bitterly--"that's what all life's for--heart happiness--love. Why, hunger and love, them's the fust things; them's the man an' the woman; them's the law unto theyselves, the animal, the instinct, the beast that's in us; the things that makes G.o.d excuse all else we do to get them--we have to have 'em. He made us so; we have to have 'em--it's His own doin'."

"But," she said sweetly--"suppose it meant another to be despised, reviled, made infamous."

"They'd have to be," he said sternly, for he was thinking of Richard Travis--"they'd have to be, for he made his own life."

"Oh, you do not understand," she cried. "And you cannot now--but wait--wait, and it will be plain. Then you'll know all and--that I love you, Jack."

He turned bitterly and walked away.

CHAPTER XXII

THE BROKEN THREAD

For the first time in years, the next Sunday the little church on the mountain side was closed, and all Cottontown wondered. Never before had the old man missed a Sabbath afternoon since the church had been built. This was to have been Baptist day, and that part of his congregation was sorely disappointed.

For an hour Bud Billings had stood by the little gate looking down the big stretch of sandy road, expecting to see the familiar shuffling, blind old roan coming:

"Sum'pins happened to Ben Butler," said Bud at last--and at thought of such a calamity, he sat down and shed tears.

His simple heart yearned for pity, and feeling something purring against him he picked up the cat and coddled it.

"You seem to be cultivatin' that cat again, Bud Billings," came a sharp voice from the cabin window.

Bud dropped the animal quickly and struck out across the mountain for the Bishop's cabin.

But he was not prepared for the shock that came to his simple heart: Shiloh was dying--the Bishop himself told him so--the Bishop with a strange, set, hard look in his eyes--a look which Bud had never seen there before, for it was sorrow mingled with defiance--in that a great wrong had been done and done over his protest. It was culpable sorrow too, somewhat, in that he had not prevented it, and a heart-hardening sorrow in that it took the best that he loved.

"She jes' collapsed, Bud--sudden't like--wilted like a vi'let that's stepped on, an' the Doctor says she's got no sho' at all, ther' bein'

nothin' to build on. She don't kno' nothin'--ain't knowed nothin'

since last night, an' she thinks she's in the mill--my G.o.d, it's awful! The little thing keeps reaching out in her delirium an' tryin'

to piece the broken threads, an' then she falls back pantin' on her pillow an' says, pitful like--'_the thread--the thread is broken!_'

an' that's jes' it, Bud--the thread _is_ broken!"

Tears were running down the old man's cheeks, and that strange thing which now and then came up in Bud's throat and stopped him from talking came again. He walked out and sat under a tree in the yard.

He looked at the other children sitting around stupid--numbed--with the vague look in their faces which told that a sorrow had fallen, but without the sensitiveness to know or care where. He saw a big man, bronzed and hard-featured, but silent and sorrowful, walking to and fro. Now and then he would stop and look earnestly through the window at the little still figure on the bed, and then Bud would hear him say--"_like little Jack--like little Jack_."

The sun went down--the stars came up--but Bud sat there. He could do nothing, but he wanted to be there.

When the lamp was lighted in the cabin he could see all within the home and that an old man held on a large pillow in his lap a little child, and that he carried her around from window to window for air, and that the child's eyes were fixed, and she was whiter than the pillow. He also saw an old woman, lantern-jawed and ghostly, tidying around and she mumbling and grumbling because no one would give the child any turpentine.

And still Bud sat outside, with that lump in his throat, that thing that would not let him speak.

Late at night another man came up with saddle bags, and hitching his horse within a few feet of Bud, walked into the cabin.

He was a kindly man, and he stopped in the doorway and looked at the old man, sitting with the sick child in his lap. Then he pulled a chair up beside the old man and took the child's thin wrist in his hand. He shook his head and said:

"No use, Bishop--better lay her on the bed--she can't live two hours."

Then he busied himself giving her some drops from a vial.

"When you get through with your remedy and give her up," said the old man slowly--"I'm gwinter try mine."

The Doctor looked at the old man sorrowfully, and after a while he went out and rode home.

Then the old man sent them all to bed. He alone would watch the little spark go out.

And Bud alone in the yard saw it all. He knew he should go home--that it was now past midnight, but somehow he felt that the Bishop might need him.

He saw the moon go down, and the big constellations shine out clearer. Now and then he could see the old nurse reach over and put his ear to the child's mouth to see if it yet breathed. But Bud thought maybe he was listening for it to speak, for he could see the old man's lips moving as he did when he prayed at church. And Bud could not understand it, but never before in his life did he feel so uplifted, as he sat and watched the old man holding the little child and praying. And all the hours that he sat there, Bud saw that the old man was praying as he had never prayed before. The intensity of it increased and began to be heard, and then Bud crept up to the window and listened, for he dearly loved to hear the Bishop, and amid the tears that ran down his own cheek, and the quick breathing which came quicker and quicker from the little child in the lap, Bud heard:

"_Save her, oh, G.o.d, an' if I've done any little thing in all my po'

an' blunderin' life that's ent.i.tled to credit at Yo' han's, give it now to little Shiloh, for You can if You will. If there's any credit to my account in the Book of Heaven, hand it out now to the little one robbed of her all right up to the door of death. She that is named Shiloh, which means rest. Do it, oh, G.o.d,--take it from my account if she ain't got none yet herse'f, an' I swear to You with the faith of Abraham that henceforth I will live to light a fire-brand in this valley that will burn out this child slavery, upheld now by ignorance and the greed of the gold lovers. Save little Shiloh, for You can._"

Bud watched through the crisis, the shorter and shorter breaths, the struggle--the silence when, only by holding the lighted candle to her mouth, could the old man tell whether she lived or not. And Bud stood outside and watched his face, lit up like a saint in the light of the candle falling on his silvery hair, whiter than the white sand of Sand Mountain, a stern, strong face with lips which never ceased moving in prayer, the eyes riveted on the little fluttering lips. And watching the stern, solemn lips set, as Bud had often seen the white stern face of Sunset Rock, when the clouds lowered around it, suddenly he saw them relax and break silently, gently, almost imperceptibly into a smile which made the slubber think the parting sunset had fallen there; and Bud gripped the window-sill outside, and swallowed and swallowed at the thing in his throat, and stood tersely wiggling on his strained tendons, and then almost shouted when he saw the smile break all over the old man's face and light up his eyes till the candle's flickering light looked pale, and saw him bow his head and heard him say:

"_Lord G.o.d Almighty ... My G.o.d ... My own G.o.d ... an' You ain't never gone back on me yet.... 'Bless the Lord all my soul, an' all that is within me; bless His Holy Name!'_"

Bud could not help it. He laughed out hysterically. And then the old face, still smiling, looked surprised at the window and said: "Go home, Bud. G.o.d is the Great Doctor, an' He has told me she shall live."

Then, as he turned to go, his heart stood still, for he heard Shiloh say in her little piping child voice, but, oh, so distinctly, and so sweetly, like a bird in the forest: