In a few minutes they met. She looked up, nodded, and bowed.

"I rode over to take a message to father," she announced. "He was in the wheat-field. I didn't want to bother to go around to the gate, so what do you think I did? I made my horse jump a fence eight rails high.

Oh, it was fine! I rose like an arrow in the breeze and came down on the other side as light as a feather."

He caught her bridle-rein and held it to steady the impatient animal.

"You really mustn't take such risks," he said, firmly. "If the horse had caught his feet on the top rail he would have thrown you. Don't, don't do it any more. Don't, please don't!"

She avoided his burning upward glance. Suddenly a shadow swept over her face. "Of course, you've heard about Mr. Mostyn?" she said, softly.

"Isn't it simply awful?"

He nodded, telling her about the letter he had just received. When he had concluded she sat in silence for a moment, then he heard her sigh.

"I thought I'd had trouble myself, but, really, Jarvis, if I tried I could not imagine a more horrible situation. He is proud, and his humiliation and grief combined must be unbearable. Losing his son was the hardest blow. I think you told me he loved the boy very much."

"He adored the little chap," Saunders said. "And well he might, for the boy was wonderfully bright and beautiful. He doted on his father."

Dolly was silent. Saunders saw her white throat throbbing. "It is bound to produce a change in him," she said. "It will either kill him or regenerate him. He has a queer nature. He is a two-sided man. All his life he has been tossed back and forth between good and bad impulses.

How awful it must be for him to have to remain in Atlanta and be thrown with so many who know what has happened! His friends ought to beg him to go off somewhere."

"I am going to write him a letter to-day," Saunders said. "I shall a.s.sure him that my home is his, and beg him to come. Nature is the best balm for keen sorrow, and here in the mountains--"

"Oh, how good and sweet and n.o.ble of you!" Dolly broke in, tremulously.

"You are always thinking of others. Yes, that would do him good. A city is no place for one in his trouble. I imagine that nothing will help him much, but you can do more for him here than any one can down there."

Saunders tried to meet her eyes, but they were steadily avoiding his.

"My G.o.d, does she still care for him?" the planter thought. "Does she still actually love him, and will not this trouble and his presence here unite them again? She has too great a heart to harbor resentment at such a time, and she may suspect that he still loves her. If that is so, I am simply joining their hands together--I who, if I lose her, will be as miserable as he. Oh, I can't give her up! I simply can't.

She is my very life."

Dolly seemed to feel the force back of his agonized stare, for she kept her eyes averted.

"He will come, I'm sure," she said, musingly, and, as he thought, eagerly. "When will the letter reach him?"

"To-night," Saunders said. "I'll urge him to come at once. I'll make the invitation as strong as I can. Shall I--mention you--that is, would you like for me to express your--sympathies?"

"Oh no, I have already written him. I wrote as soon as I heard. I couldn't help it. I cried till the paper was damp. Oh, he will know how sorry I am."

"You have written!" Saunders formed the words in his brain, but they were not uttered. A storm of despair swept through him. He shook from head to foot. She and the horse floated in a swirling mist before him.

"He will appreciate your letter," he managed to say, finally. "He will value it above all else."

"Oh no, I don't think that." She gave him her eyes in what seemed to him to be a questioning stare. "In a deep, heartrending sorrow like his he will scarcely remember my words from one day to another. Do you know what I think, Jarvis? Down inside of him he has a deeply religious nature, and I predict that he will now simply have to turn to G.o.d.

After all, G.o.d is the only resort for a man in his plight."

"You may be right," Saunders returned. "His whole spirit is broken. But hope will revive. In fact, all this, sad as it is, in the long run may be good for him."

Dolly shook her rein gently. "I must go," she said, smiling sadly.

"Good-by."

The horse galloped down the road. Like a fair, winged creature she floated away in the sunlight.

"Am I to lose her at last?" he groaned. "After all these years of patient watching and waiting is she going back to the man who could have had her but would not? G.o.d knows that is not fair. Surely I deserve better treatment--if--if I deserve anything. Can I urge him to come--will it be possible for me sincerely to pen the words which may seal my doom? Yes, I must--if I don't I would not be worthy of her respect, and that I must have, even if I lose her."

CHAPTER XVIII

The letter was written. It was full of manly sympathy and friendly a.s.surances. It brought the afflicted banker three days later to the plantation. A delightful cool and airy room was a.s.signed to him. The open sympathy of the mountaineers and the negroes about the place was vaguely soothing. Looking back upon the city, it seemed a jarring place of torture when contrasted to the eternal peace of this remote spot.

Free to go when and whither he liked, Mostyn spent whole days rambling alone through the narrow roads and by-paths of the mountains, often reaching all but inaccessible nooks in canons and rocky crevices where dank plants and rare flowers budded and bloomed, where velvet mosses were spread like carpets, and ferns stood like miniature palms.

One morning Mostyn saw Saunders hoeing weeds out of the corn-rows in a field back of the house; and, taking another hoe, he joined him, working steadily by his friend's side till noon. And here he made a discovery. He found that the work furnished a sort of vent for the festering agony pent up within him. It seemed to ooze out with the sweat which dampened his clothing, to be absorbed in his heated blood, and after a cooling bath he slept more profoundly than he had slept for years. He now saw the reason for Saunders's partiality to country life.

It was Nature's balm for all ills. In fact, he was sure now that he could not do without it. Nearly every morning after this he insisted on working in the fields. Sometimes it was with a plow, which he learned to use under the advice of Tobe Barnett, a scythe in the hay-field, or a woodman's ax in the depths of the forests. But still sorrow and shame brooded over him like a material pall that refused to be put aside. As he lay in his bed at night he would fancy that he heard little d.i.c.k calling to him from the nursery, and the thought that the voice and love of the child were forever dead to him was excruciating.

One evening after supper Saunders informed him that Dolly and some of her literary friends were to hold a club-meeting at the schoolhouse to discuss some topic of current interest, and asked him if he would care to go along with him. Mostyn was seated at the end of the veranda smoking. He hesitated, it seemed to Saunders, longer than was necessary before he answered:

"I hope you will excuse me, but you mustn't let me keep you away. I am very tired and shall go to bed early."

A little later Saunders left for the meeting. Mostyn saw him pa.s.s out at the gate under the starlight. The bell was ringing. Mostyn recalled the night he had gone with Dolly to a meeting of like nature, and the impression her speech had made on him.

"All that is past--gone like a wonderful dream," he mused. "In feeling I am an old man, bowed and broken under the blind errors of life.

Saunders and I are near the same age. Look at him; look at me; he walks like a young Greek athlete. I have nothing to expect, nothing to hope for. My wife died despising me; my friends merely bear with me out of pity; my boy is dead; I have to die--all living creatures have to die.

What does the whole thing mean? It really must have a meaning, for many great minds have seen nothing but beauty in it, not even excluding sorrow, pain, and death. There must be an unpardonable sin, and I have committed it. Some say that all wrong-doers may get right--I wonder if there is a chance for me, _a single chance?_ No, no, I am sure there is none--none whatever. But, oh, if only I could see my boy alive again! I would be willing to suffer any torment for that, but better still--if only he might be immortal--if only he could live forever in happiness on some other plane, as good people believe, I'd ask nothing for my part--absolutely nothing! I brought him into the world. I am responsible for his marvelous being. I'd give my soul to save his--I would--I would--I would!"

He went to bed. He said no prayer. He accepted his lot without any idea that it might be otherwise. The night was profoundly still. He heard singing. It was at the meeting-house. Softened by distance, the music was most appealing. It seemed to float above the tree-tops, touch the clouds, and fall lightly to earth. His mind, weighted down by care, induced slumber. Dream-creatures flocked about him. He was a child romping in a meadow over new-mown hay. He had a playmate, but he could not see his face; it was ever eluding him. Suddenly he ran upon the child, and with open arms clasped him to his breast. The child laughed gleefully, as children do when caught in such games. It was little d.i.c.k. He held him tightly, fearing that he would get away. He spoke soothingly and yet anxiously. Endearing words rippled from his lips.

Presently his arms were empty. Little d.i.c.k was gone, and standing near, a scowl of hate on his face, was old Henderson, who was shaking fierce fingers at the dreamer.

"Retribution!" he cried. "Retribution! Now it is your time--your time to suffer, and I am appointed to lay on the lash!"

Mostyn waked. The moonlight was shining in at the window. In the distance he heard voices. They were coming nearer. Standing at a window, Mostyn saw Saunders and Tobe Barnett as they were parting at the gate.

"As soon as Dolly stood up," Tobe said, with a satisfied laugh, "I knew she had it in for the whole dang bunch from the way she looked. An'

when she swatted 'em like she did with them keen points o' hers I mighty nigh kicked the bench in front o' me to pieces. I throwed my hat agin the ceilin' an' yelled. She's a corker, Mr. Saunders."

Mostyn could not hear Saunders's reply. As he came on to the house he began to whistle softly. Mostyn saw him pause on the gra.s.s, light a cigar, and begin to smoke as he strolled to and fro.

"Happy man!" Mostyn said, as he went back to his bed. "He's never had anything to bother him. There must be a correct law of life, and he seems to understand and obey it. He used to try to get me to listen to his ideas, but I thought he was a fanatic. Lord, Lord, I thought he was a fool!"

CHAPTER XIX

The next morning, Saunders having left home on some business pertaining to the building of his new cotton-factory, Mostyn started out on one of his all-day rambles in the mountains. As he was pa.s.sing the store Wartrace called out to him cordially.

"You ought to come around about one o'clock, Mr. Mostyn," he said. "A big crowd will be here to listen to John Leach, the tramp preacher.

He's billed for my store, an' he never fails to be on time."