"You mean it, I know you do, Elizabeth," he said. "I want you to do it, but--O G.o.d! how hard it's going to be!"

He held out his empty arms to her for a last embrace.

Elizabeth shook her head.

"Now's the time to begin, Hugh. 'Too,' Jack says. That tells the whole story. I shall pollute his life also. I shall stand, not for what I think I am, but for what I am, in that child's sight. I reasoned it out when you were so ill, and I thought this was justifiable, and oh, Hugh! I've dragged myself down in my own sight and I've dragged you down with me. It isn't enough for me to seem to be right, I've got to _be_ right," she said in a low tone, and with added shame because she had to keep her voice from John's ears--John who slept upstairs and trusted them.

"It would be easier for you, Elizabeth, if I were not here," Hugh Noland said sadly. "You could kill it out alone."

"But I am not alone. You are here, and have got to help me. Tell me that you will--at any cost," she leaned forward, and in her eagerness raised her voice till he pointed upward warningly.

When she had given his medicine without a touch of tenderness, he said to her:

"You have bid my soul forth. I will give you that help, at any cost."

He made the last sentence stand out, but in her earnestness she did not notice it or think of it again till it was significant. She went back to her bed on the sitting-room couch and to the broken rest allowed to those who watch with the sick.

CHAPTER XXIII

"AT ANY COST"

The old doctor delivered the message to Luther, and the next morning he appeared at the sickroom door.

While he was talking to Hugh, Nathan Hornby came and was called into the sickroom also. Elizabeth was too busy with her own work to think much about this visit, and before it was finished Doctor Morgan was with her questioning her about the night spent by her patient.

Nathan came to the kitchen while they were talking.

"I think I'll take that youngster home with me if you're goin' t' be alone t' day," he announced.

Doctor Morgan looked relieved.

"That's about the kindest thing you could do for this girl," he said.

"Noland isn't as well as I'd like to have him, and she's up every hour in the night. It takes a hired girl to run off at a time like this."

Elizabeth defended Hepsie at once. "Hepsie's pure gold. She waited a long time for Hugh to get well. Please, Doctor, don't make any such remark as that outside of this house or some one 'll tell her I said it. Really, she's the best help a woman ever had. She'll come back the first of next week. She said she'd come back any day I'd send for her. She'd do anything for me."

"I guess you're right, little woman," Doctor Morgan laughed. "I wish all the same that you had some one with you so that you could stay right with that boy."

All through the forenoon Elizabeth kept out of the sickroom except when the medicine was due, and then got away as fast as she could, though it was not easy to do so, for Doctor Morgan had urged her to entertain the invalid and keep him cheered up, letting her see that he was more than usually worried. She meant to live up to her resolutions, but in the afternoon Hugh was so quiet that it seemed ominous and began to worry her.

"Oh, Hugh! how can I do right if you take it this way?" she cried in despair, and would have stroked his hair if he had not shrunk from her hand.

"Don't, Elizabeth. You have asked for help. I have to give it in my own way. I have done harm enough to your life. Make it as easy for me as you can, for I'm only a man and--well, I've promised to help you--_at any cost_. You've nothing to worry about. I'm no worse than I've been," he ended in a whisper, and closed his eyes, as was his way when he did not want to talk.

The girl tiptoed out, and left him to his thoughts. Her own were anything but satisfactory. He was more wan and tragic than ever before, and Doctor Morgan had especially cautioned her. She worked in the kitchen most of the evening, keeping out of his presence, and so the long, hard, unsatisfactory day pa.s.sed, was recorded in the annals of time, and forever gone from the opportunity to alter or change its record.

Luther Hansen came in after dark. Elizabeth answered his knock.

"Alone?" he asked in astonishment when he entered the sitting room.

"Yes. Mr. Chamberlain wanted John to bring the men over and load hogs for him. It's been too hot to take them to town in the daytime. Hugh's asleep, I think," she said in a low tone. "I didn't take a light in, because he likes to be in the dark, but I spoke to him two or three times and he didn't answer. Are you in a hurry? I hate to waken him."

Doctor Morgan came as they talked. He stopped to look Elizabeth over before going to the sickroom, and then took the lamp she handed him and, followed by Luther, left Elizabeth standing in the dining room. She heard the doctor's sharp order, "Take this light, Hansen," and ran to help.

The horror, the anguish, the regret of that hour are best left untold. The number of disks gone from the bottle under the pillow gave the doctor his clue. One final effort must have been made by the desperate invalid to secure for himself the drink which would wash them down without the dreaded coughing spell.

The old doctor, who loved them both, and Luther Hansen also, witnessed Elizabeth's despair, and listened to her story. As Luther had said a few weeks before, he was a safe person, and her secret remained a secret.

Luther led her away into the night and sat silently by while her grief spent itself in tears; it was a necessary stage. When John and the men came, he led her back, and himself met them at the gate to explain.

The morning and the evening were the first day; the comings and goings of the inquisitive and the sympathetic were alike unremarked by Elizabeth.

Only for that first hour did her grief run to tears; it was beyond tears.

At the coroner's inquest she answered penetrating questions as if they related to the affairs of others, and when at last the weary body, whose spirit had been strong enough to lay it aside, had been buried on the bare hillside, the neighbours and those who came to the funeral from curiosity agreed that Elizabeth Hunter could stand anything. So little evidence of emotion had she given that Mrs. Crane remarked to Mrs. Farnshaw as they rode home together:

"I declare, Lizzie's th' coolest hand I ever met. She couldn't 'a' liked Mr. Noland very much. She wasn't near as broke up as Mr. Hunter was, an'

when I asked her if she wouldn't feel kind of spooky in that house after such a thing, she just looked at me, funny-like, an' says 'Why?' an'

didn't seem t' care a bit."

Doctor Morgan drove home from the graveyard with the family.

"I suppose you know, Hunter, that there's a will," he said before he helped Elizabeth into the buggy.

"No! Who's got it?" John exclaimed.

"He gave it to me, with a note asking me not to read it till after he was buried, if he should die."

John and Elizabeth followed the doctor's rig home across the long stretch of prairie.

"Did you know that Hugh left a will?" John Hunter asked Elizabeth, after driving a long time in silence.

"Luther told me last night. I didn't think much about it and I forgot to tell you," Elizabeth returned briefly, and fell back into her own sad thoughts again.

John Hunter looked at his wife in surprise.

"Luther!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," she answered indifferently, not looking up, and unaware that John was regarding her with a surprise which amounted almost to suspicion.

John let the subject drop, but as they rode home he had an uncomfortable sense of unpleasant things to come: first of all why had the presence of the will been concealed from him, Hugh Noland's partner and closest friend? secondly, why had Luther Hansen been told? thirdly, why had Elizabeth declined just now to discuss it with him after knowing about it for some time? He could not put his finger on the exact trouble, but John Hunter was affronted.

The truth of the matter was that Elizabeth had only heard of the will the night before, and had been too stunned by other things to care much about it. If she had thought about it at all she would have supposed that John had been told also, but Elizabeth had been occupied with troubles quite aside from material things, and now did not talk because she was concerned with certain sad aspects of the past and almost as sad forebodings for the future.

"You better come in too, Hansen," Doctor Morgan said to Luther, when they arrived at the Hunter house.

Sadie had stayed with Hepsie at the house, and Luther had expected to take her and go straight home. The two women had been busy in the three hours since the body of Hugh Noland had been taken from the house. The mattress which had been put out in the hot sun for two days had been brought in, and order had been restored to the death chamber. There was a dinner ready for the party of sorrowing friends who had loved the man that had been laid to his final rest, and it was not till after it was eaten that the subject of the will was mentioned again.