The Law of the Soul

SHE fitted the piece of board over the broken step, sawing it off and nailing it down with a practiced hand. When it was finished she did not stand off, with head on one side, eyeing it complacently, as amateurs in the arts and trades are apt to do, but picked up her tools, and putting them away in a shed near by, walked off to the next duty with a dull deliberateness of action which spoke more of habit than of interest. She was a tall, thin woman, with a figure which might have been graceful if more becomingly clad than in an ill-fitting calico gown. Her face was lined and roughened by weather, and her hair, drawn tightly back, had grown white on the temples. To her neighbors Mrs. Allen was only an every-day woman, aging fast, unsociable and taciturn; but to one who read beyond the pothooks of observation, her features were notably clear-cut and delicate, and the refinement of her voice and speech, when she did speak, was in striking contrast to the slipshod dialect of her neighbors.

Eight years before, husband and wife, with their few belongings, coming from no one knew where, moved into the little two-room, weather-beaten gray house in the pine clearing, and settled down to the monotonous existence of country solitude. They made no reference to their past, nor ever spoke of the future beyond the moment, their few and scattered neighbors accepting them on their merits, and forgetting, as time went by, that there had ever been a period when they had not known the Allens. If the women complained of Mrs. Allen’s lack of sociability, the men could not find fault with Mr. Allen on the same score. He not only never shunned society, but sought it with a shambling alacrity and perseverance which, if put into any kind of work, would have achieved some remarkable results. The women pronounced him “tur’ble shif’less,” but the men always grumblingly took his part.

“Women,” they contended, “were allus hard on er man ef he did n’t wu’k from the firs’ wink of the sun to his’n las’, an’ never made no ’lowunce for er man’s er-gittin’ ti’ahed.”

“Women,” said one philosopher, passing a black bottle to Mr. Allen behind a screen of blackberry bushes, “women is mighty good comfut ’roun’ er stove whar there’s vittles to cook, but they ’s col’ tarnachun w’ en they gits to pokin’ their noses out’n doors. Yessir. Ye gits ez much comfut out’n them ez ye git er-settin’ down on er palmetter clump. Yessir.”

Mr. Allen agreed with hm, showing his tobacco-stained teeth in an artless smile as he accepted the hospitality of the bottle, drinking from it with an avidity that was a striking, if wordless, explanation of what was otherwise inexplicable in his situation.

After finishing the step, Mrs. Allen moved about the back yard, making ready for the night. The chickens and ducks gathered around her, clucking and quacking with garrulous familiarity, she answering them with tender diminutives, like an affectionate interchange of thought. When she had given them their supper she let in the cow from the woods, tied her, and placed everything ready for the milking. Then, going to the rails dividing the yard from an adjoining field, she called, “ Henry ! ”

A man came slouching toward her across the furrows of sweet potatoes, white with bloom. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and carried a bucket in one hand, a hoe in the other. He dropped them both as he climbed stiffly over the rails forming the fence.

“Did n’t git any potatoes,” he drawled; “soon as I begun to hoe, my arms got so tired I jus’ had to give up, an’ I’ve been sittin’ there restin’.”

In spite of the slouchiness of his speech a certain timbre — intangible — betrayed the better things of long ago. He dropped down on the box his wife had placed by the cow for his convenience in milking, as though there was not a muscle in his body firmly jointed, and his backbone nothing but a strip of rag. He took off his soft hat, let it fall to the ground, and slowly rolled up his sleeves. His face was remarkable for its peculiar pallor, looking as though it had been bleached of every drop of blood ; his eyes, faded and weak, never rested directly on any object, but only glanced furtively at it from the corners; his hair and beard were in the colorless transition stage of passing from blond to white, and his stooping figure gave him the false appearance of old age.

“My arms are so weak I don’t know as I can do much milkin’,” he said, still dallying.

His wife sighed. “Let me do it, then,” she replied, a note of weary resignation in her voice.

“Never mind; I reck’n I kin git ’nough for supper; I ’ll try, at any rate.” His mouth had a habit of twitching when he finished speaking, as if the word still trembled on his tongue in dumb speech. There was an odd look of elation on his flaccid face which his wife could not but notice, and it caused her to observe him more closely with a suspicion he was quick to note.

“Think I’ve been drinkin’,” he said, eyeing her covertly, with a weak smile of triumph at his penetration. “I ain’t had a drop; ain’t seen nobody to drink with ; no men lef ’ ’round here to-day, — all of them off beatin’ the woods for that feller.”

“What fellow? ”

“The feller that — that killed ol’ woman Barton. I tell ’em they’d better save their legs an’ their horses; he ain’t fool ’nough to stay ’round where they’d lynch him; by this time he’s safe somewheres in the city; ” and he chuckled feebly.

The cow looked back and lowed, as if asking why matters did not proceed. He took the hint, and dropping his forehead against her flank, inertly began to draw a thin stream of milk into the pail.

“You need n’t wait,” he mumbled from his resting-place. “I ’ll put her up.”

She turned away with what sounded like a sigh of relief. Going to the tool - shed she took up a trowel and passed to the front of the house. The distance from the house to the road was very short. On each side of the walk leading to the rickety gate, and against the house itself, were flowerbeds bright with salvias and chrysanthemums, and the roses were blooming in the waxen perfection of their fall loveliness. She knew, as we all know and count the treasures that we cannot have, that her flowers would be the handsomer and more abundant for more care and culture, but she put the thought away, trying to lay all burdens out of sight, for the few minutes snatched from her busy day were the bright beads in her rosary of cares. She went to work, digging about the roots, sifting the soil with her fingers, and patting it down again with affectionate care. If she had been a demonstrative woman she would have pressed the roses to her cheek, or dropped a kiss upon their petals. She loved her flowers with passionate tenderness as the one refinement and luxury left her in the shipwreck of her life.

While she was busy with her pleasant task a cow came galloping down the road with the ungainly energy of her ungraceful kind. A rope was around her neck, and hanging on to the other end of the rope was a much heated and exasperated boy. Following more leisurely in their wake, a switch in one hand, a sunbonnet in the other, was a stout, middle-aged woman, somewhat out of breath. At sight of Mrs. Allen she readily halted, resting her arms on the top rail of the worm fence,

“Been up to the woods, a-huntin’ my cow,” she volunteered, when they had exchanged greetings; “she’s like some folks, — got to switch her inter the notion of er-goin’ home; but onct she gits er-started, there’s no a-holdin’ her back. Reck’n Johnny’s arms ’ll be mos’ pulled out’r their sockets ’fore he gits through with her. Heerd the news, o’ course ? ” — the tone was strongly suggestive of the hope that it was yet to be told.

Mrs. Allen very briefly said she had not.

“Well, they’ve done ketched the nigger ez kilt ol’ Mis’ Bartin, —found him up in the Pine Ridge thicket, erlivin’ off’n the po’ soul’s chickings. He’s er short, chunky nigger, black ez er coal, they sez, an’ pow’ful strong. Co’se he sez he never done it, ’clares he’s jes’ er-trampin’ it to the city, an’ bein’ mos’ starved, jes’ gathered up the chickings he foun’ er-runnun’ loose in the woods. Nobody don’t b’lieve him, an’ they’ve got him locked up in jail down to town,” nodding her head toward the west. Then she leaned farther over the fence and lowered her voice impressively: “Mark my words, Mis’ Allen, ’fore mornin’ there ’ll be mo’ than nuts er-hangin’ to the pecan tree by ol’ Mis’ Bartin’s gate.”

Mrs. Allen met her significant gaze in silence. Then instinctively both women looked up the pine-sentineled road toward the east where, nearly a mile farther on, at a turn in the road toward the south, a small house faced them, its tightly closed doors and blinds almost hidden from sight by the great pecan tree growing on one side of the gate. The setting sun had dyed its branches a moist crimson.

Forty years ago this same tree had bravely put forth from the ground. For forty years it had shaded the joys and sorrows of the house’s inmates, tossing down its nuts into the eagerly upraised hands of happy children, dropping its leaves on the pine coffins as, one by one, husband and children had been carried to the grave; and now it had been the sole witness of the violent close of the last life. Henceforth house and tree would stand isolated, debarred from human contact, the prey of bat and squirrel, for Murder had set its red seal on the gate.

Mrs. Allen turned her gaze away with a sigh. “Why don’t they let the law deal with him ? ” she said dully, in response to Mrs. Bilbo’s insinuation. “He may be truly innocent.”

Mrs. Bilbo shook her head with stout conviction. “He ’s the right man, sho’. It was a real nigger ac’. There ain’t no w’ite man in these here parts ez would choke er po’ ol’ woman to death for her little savin’s, and all the niggers ’bout here is honus’ an’ frien’ly. You kin sot yo’ min’ to it that this strange nigger war ’n’t prowlin’ ’bout here fo’ no good puppose, an’ I reck’n they ’ll send him out’n this worl’ ez quick ez he sent her.”

Mrs. Allen shuddered. “It’s horrible ! ” she murmured, almost acutely.

Mrs. Bilbo stared at her; there were shades of feeling that her mind’s eye had never read. “It ain’t any worse ’n what he done,” she said resentfully, “an’ it’ll learn other fo’ks to be mo’ keerful of their ac’s.”

Mrs. Allen made no further remark, crumbling a dead rose leaf in her hand with her usual stony air of emotionless lethargy. Mrs. Bilbo continued to discourse on the all-absorbing topic, but, eliciting no other expression of interest, she took her arms from the fence as the first move toward departure.

“Well,” she said, and the exclamation had the nettled ring of the disappointed raconteur, “I mus’ be gittin’ on. But don’t forgit, if you hears any oncommon noise down this road to-night, that I give you warnin’ of it. I mus’ hurry to git home ’fore dark. Good-night to you,” and Mrs. Bilbo went down the road toward the west, where the crimsoned clouds fast darkened to purple, mentally concluding that she would “sooner talk to er gatepos’ ’n some fo’ks, ’cause you don’t look fo’ nothin’ from a gatepos’, but you do from fo’ks, ’specially w’en you’ve got sunthin’ more ’n common to tell ’em.” Life to Mrs. Bilbo had no greater burden than its inevitable interruptions to conversation.

The November night was frosty and still and clear. Mrs. Allen shivered, but not with cold; she could scarcely have said with what. Her scant time of recreation had been cut short; it was now too dark to see. She went slowly, it might be reluctantly, to the door, casting a lingering look back at her flowers. The roses gleamed palely in the fast falling night like a mystic lifting of white hands, and the jasmine and honeysuckle breathed their essence in her face. If there was a frost before morning the jasmine would be killed. Jasmine, like happiness, lives only in the garden of the sun.

She turned into the room with a sigh. Lighting a lamp, she placed it on the white pine table standing in the centre of the room. In front of the big open fireplace was a stove, the pipe running into the chimney. The walls were the upright boards of the house, rudely whitewashed, the cooking utensils hanging on them, with two or three colored prints, a rasher of bacon, and strings of dried peppers. There was but one other room, the bedroom, which opened into it. The other openings were a window in the side, and the front and back doors, directly opposite each other. Starting a fire in the stove, she put on some coffee to heat and a square of corn bread in the oven to re-warm. Then she set the table with two heavy stone china plates, but the cup she put at her husband’s place was of delicate old china, and — strange anomaly in their rude surroundings — the napkins were in silver rings. She did her work with the same mechanical precision with which she had mended the step, and her hands, coming under the light, were a pathetic history of hard work, with their worn disfigurement of scars and broken nails.

When she had put some bacon on the stove to fry, she went to the back door and peered out into the yard. The moon had not yet risen, and the darkness seemed doubly great awaiting its coming. The frostiness in the air lent additional brilliancy to the stars, and against the glittering background the crowded tops of the forest pines were densely outlined.

“I wonder what’s keeping him,” she murmured. “He can’t be milking all this time. This is the second night he has stayed out so long.”

She seemed about to call, but, checking the impulse, stepped down into the yard and went out to the cow-shed. He was not there, but the cow was in her stall, comfortably munching hay, and recognizing her mistress’s step, gave a soft low of welcome; the chickens rustled in the trees, and the air was so still and clear that the falling of a leaf almost created an echo, and the distant barking of a dog traveled on indefinitely.

Passing around a clump of orange trees growing by a shed, she came to a lean-to, thatched with pine boughs, where the firewood was corded up to within a foot of the top. In the opening, coming from the narrow space back of the wood, was the dim reflection of a light, evidently shaded from casting its rays too strongly upward. The unusualness of it, the absence of her husband, coupled with the recent tragedy in the neighborhood, filled her with a sudden fear that caused her to hesitate in dread of she knew not what. But gathering her courage together, she went forward with unconscious caution, and sought to peer through a crack in the end of the lean-to. Here was another surprise, for old bagging had been stretched across the crack with evident intention. She knew that there had never been anything between the wood and the back of the lean-to but some broken barrels and boxes, and this evidence of mystery in so innocent a place set her heart to throbbing in breathless anxiety. She was about to turn away to go to the other end when a ray of light, falling through a knothole near the ground, caught her attention. With a horrible dread holding her heart almost pulseless in its grip, she knelt down and put her eye to the hole. She saw a bit of candle stuck in the ground, a box propped over it like a bird trap to screen the light from shooting upward; half crouched by it, on his heels, was her husband; before him on the ground were five little heaps of coin, — dollars, halves, quarters, dimes, and nickels. His long forefinger, the chalky skin tightly shriveled over the bones, traveled rapidly over the piles, — one, two, three, four, five; then back again, — one, two, three, four, five. Then it climbed up each heap, touching separately the edge of every coin with caressing exactitude as he bent over them as though he could have kissed them in his sordid passion. But his wife saw nothing of his face; she had eyes only for a small calico bag lying over one knee. She had seen that bag once before when old Mrs. Barton had drawn it from its hiding-place between the mattresses to give her some change. She had noticed it then only casually; now its big red flowers flared in her face like a mob of mouths shrieking the secret of the crime! She did not cry out nor faint, but knelt motionless, paralyzed by the horror of the shock.

The man, as he sat gloating over his pitiful treasure, was oblivious for the moment of any fear of detection, seemingly unconscious to any thought but that the money was his, — his alone, — to finger, to hoard, to spend, just as it suited his pleasure, and she watched him with a sickened, dead fascination, precluding every thought of danger to herself if discovered.

Presently he opened the little bag, and slowly, reluctantly, piece by piece, returned the money to it, lastly putting in some bills which had been lying across the other knee; then he placed it in a hole in the ground, covering it with earth, over which he placed a box full of straw, scattering straw about, making it appear like a looted hen’s nest. His next movement, to take up the bit of candle and blow it out, roused her from her torpor, and she fled to the house as one flies with a nameless terror at his heels.

The kitchen was filled with the odor of burning bacon. She did not notice it, but stood with the stove between her and the door, her wide-stretched, horror-stricken eyes fixed on the square of night it framed. She had not long to wait before a booted foot struck the step, and her husband’s face appeared in the doorway, more ghastly than ever in its pallor with the night as background.

“Smells like the bacon ’s burnin’ to cinders,” he drawled. “Fryin’-pan upset? ”

The woman mechanically looked at the stove, and, more by instinct than reason, removed the pan and replaced the burned bacon with fresh. Her husband put down the pail and shut the door.

“Gittin’ chilly outside,” he remarked, with a little shiver. “Should n’t wonder if we had frost ’fore mornin ’. ” He took down his coat from a nail in the wall, and, putting it on, shambled over to the table and took his seat. “Did n’t git more ’n ’nough milk for supper, ” he continued; “my arms give out ’fore I was half through. Think I ’ll hire a boy to milk. I need res’. Fellers as ain’t born to work can’t thrive on it same as fellers that are, an’ I’m all broke up.” He was evidently used to having his remarks pass unnoticed, as he seemed to accept his wife’s silence as a matter of course.

“Coffee ain’t done yet? ” he inquired in a tone of latent irritation, after vainly waiting to be served.

As she brought the coffee to the table and poured it out, she did not look at him; and instead of handing him his cup, as usual, pushed it so slightly toward him that he had to reach across the table and take it for himself.

“What ’re you lookin’ at my hands for ? ” he demanded, with querulous protest. “I washed ’em at the pump ’fore I come in; no need to wash ’em over again jes’ to please you, is there ? ”

She turned away without reply, and made a pretense of stirring the fire.

“Ain’t you goin’ to eat any supper?” he asked more genially, when the coffee had warmed him up.

Her lips parted to reply, but her voice failed, until, with great effort, she finally answered in a low tone, “I ’m not hungry.”

“Reck’n nobody’s hungry,” he gibed, with puerile irritation; “with nothin’ to eat mornin’, noon, an’ night but corn bread, molasses, and bacon, — it’s a wonder one half of us ain’t a bag of meal an’ the other half a porker. I’m tired of this picayune bus’niss. What ’re we made human for if we don’t feed better ’n animals? I can’t stand it any longer. I’m goin’ to take the livin’ in my own hands an’ buy some decent food, — somethin’ one kin eat an’ enjoy, an’ not have the thought of it afterwards turn one sick at the stomach. You need n’t think you ’ll have to dole out the money, ” — as a quick, irrepressible gesture of his wife’s caught his shifting glance, — “I ’ll attend to that. I was n’t born a miser, thank the Lord ! ” — and he chuckled with a sickening air of self-satisfaction. “Look at me, ” he continued, spreading his hands on the table; “I don’t b’lieve I’ve got ’nough blood in my body to fill a saucer; it’s time I was thinkin’ somethin’ of myself; unselfishness kills more people ’n disease.” He raised his cup and drained it to the last drop, then set it down with a hand that trembled as if from palsy or extreme old age.

His supper finished, he dragged his chair over to the stove, and, sitting down, stretched out his legs well under it to get the full benefit of the heat, and, leaning back, folded his hands in his lap, and half closed his eyes, like a cat that lies at ease, while his wife washed the tea things, putting them away in a small cupboard against the wall. It must have been a heavy task, from the close and concentrated attention she gave it.

The heat seemed to produce a more genial mood in Mr. Allen as he began a dribble of talk, chiefly relating to his boyhood and the excellent cooking of a certain Aunt Sally who had enunciated the truism, “I does de cookin’ an’ Marsa Henry de eatin’.” He was too absorbed to see the glances his wife sent in his direction, — shrinking, despairing, yet now and then doubting, as if they strove to grip the truth of what the tongue refused to question. When she opened the back door to throw out the crumbs, a black cat came running in out of the darkness, mewing piteously, its eyes gleaming like diamonds in the opposing light. It rubbed itself confidingly against her skirt, looking pleadingly up in her face, evidently, from its leanness, asking for food. She drew it in, shut the door, and, getting a saucer, gave it milk, which it lapped ravenously. The man’s babble stopped abruptly, his half-shut eyes centring on the cat with curious intentness.

“Where ’d that thing come from? ” he demanded sharply. His wife was apparently too absorbed in the cat’s comfort to hear. “Where ’d that cat come from? ” he repeated.

Her answer came with evident difficulty. “It’s old — it’s one of the neighbors’ cats.”

“What’d you let it in for?” he asked with restless insistence and shrinking. “You know I hate cats. Turn it out and let it starve.”

She rubbed the animal gently. “When it’s had enough to eat I ’ll turn it out, ” she replied quietly.

His face twitched. “Curse it! — if I did n’t hate to touch ’em I’d take it by its tail and pitch it out myself. The sight of ’em always makes me nervous. I feel now like the infernal thing had its claws in my heart! Turn it out, an’ don’t you let it come sneakin’ back to stay in here all night. I’d know it in my sleep,” He moved his hand restlessly. “It’s a witch, — all those black cats are witches; it ought to be drowned ’stead of bein’ pampered an’ fed! Don’t you fail to turn it out! ”

Suddenly, as she bent protectingly over the poor animal, she became aware of a vibration rather than a sound in the atmosphere outside, a distinct wave of motion; like a rustle of wind-stirred leaves viewed through a closed window it touched the mind rather than the ear. Involuntarily she raised her head and listened. Her husband caught the action with covert sharpness, and imitated it with an alertness that was startling.

More distinct the vibration grew through the stillness, coming nearer and nearer, shaping itself at last into the grim distinctness of the marching of many feet, the terrible reality of men moving through the night with sinister purpose as guide. The woman sprang to her feet, her eyes wide with despair.

“Lynchers! ”

The word seemed to form of itself and ring through the room with unending reverberation. The man dropped back in his chair as though struck a palpable blow. His hands twitched and jerked, his lips gibbered as he tried to articulate. Raising a shaking forefinger he pointed to the door. “Bolt it!” he gasped in a whisper. “ Blow out the light! ”

As she did not move, he made an effort to rise, but his legs refused to uphold him. “Curse it! ” he stuttered desperately, “don’t you see I can’t walk ? Help me! — open the back door so I can get out. Blow out the light an’ they can’t see us move! Blow it out, I say! blow it out, quick! ”

As she still stood motionless, he writhed in his impotence. “You want ’em to come!” he panted; “you’re showing ’em the way! If I could get up from this chair I ’d kill you ! Come an’ help me, — you ! ”

She looked at him, and he was so horrible to see in his abject, consciencesmitten terror she let her glance fall quickly away. “They ” — she gasped for breath. “They — have the man — they believe — to be the ” — But the word would not be said.

He caught at her meaning with eager hope. “They have him?” he whispered. “They’re goin’ to — hang him ? Are you sure ? Who told you ? ”

“ Mrs. Bilbo, ” — her voice was toneless. “It’s — a negro.”

The effect was electrical, life-giving. He sat up and drew a long breath.

“So they got him after all, did they? ” he said, with a sickening effort at ease. “Well, —they ’ll make short work of him.”

He got up and steadied himself shakily on his feet. “I b’lieve ” — with a quavering laugh— “I ’ll go an’ help ’em. ”

“Henry! ” The cry was anguished.

He shrugged himself, giving her a quick, shifting glance, and laughed again. “Maybe they’ve got ’nough without me, ” and he still tried to stand firmly on his feet. “Sounds like it, at any rate.”

There was now but the few feet of garden between them and the murdered woman’s avengers; they could hear the tread of horses among that of men, and the clinking of bits and stirrups.

He stood with twitching lips, intently listening, scarcely breathing, until the crowd had passed. Unnoticed, the cat had coiled itself up under the stove, but disturbed by the voices, it crept out and rubbed itself against the man’s legs. He looked down at the touch, but shrank back with a mumbled cry; then, with a spasm of fury or fear, gave it a kick that sent it, crying and spitting, against the wall, where it crouched, eyeing him malevolently.

The woman pressed her hands against her breast as if suffocating. “Henry,” she gasped, “there must be some way of stopping them! ”

“Stoppin’ them? ” he jeered. “Stop the Mississippi! ”

“My God! — Why don’t they let the law deal with him ? ”

He looked at her with furtive sharpness. “What ’s it to you,” he demanded, “if they hang every thievin’ nigger in the land ? ”

“But if he’s innocent! ” she urged.

“Innocent! ” he snarled. “What makes you keep on harpin’ ’bout his innocence? What do you know ’bout it?”

Their eyes met.

The strained misery of her face was intensified by the shadows cast upward by the light as she stood by the table.

With head bent forward he kept his eyes fixed on her face with demandant, threatening rigidity. “Well?” he sneered. “’Fraid to talk?” His hands stealthily clinched and unclinched as they hung by his sides.

“I” — she looked away from him, her words so halting and low they were scarcely audible, — “I — saw.”

“What? ”

She could not speak; she raised her hand and pointed out toward the yard.

With the silent swiftness of a cat he sprang at her, his fingers on her throat. He forced her back against the wall, his fingers tightening in their grip, his under lip clutched between his teeth, his twitching muscles turned to steel, the nerve of a brute in every strained and swelling sinew. She did not struggle or even raise her hands to thrust him back, her spirit living only in her eyes, staring out with agonized despair. The cat, terrified beyond measure, bounded about the room, blindly seeking an exit, springing over the table and chairs, and finally hurling itself through the window pane.

The crash shocked the man into looking around; unconsciously he loosened his hold, and, in a pulse beat, the reaction caught him, his strength collapsed, he staggered, threw out his arms, and fell to the floor, writhing, his face livid and distorted.

The woman leaned against the wall, faint, catching her breath in labored strains. For the moment life and memory were a blank; then, her eyes focusing on the wretch on the floor, both came back like a vital stab. Impulsively she moved to him with the instinct of help, then checked herself and hurriedly turned to the door. With her hand on the bolt she looked back. “ Christ help me! ”

Throwing open the door, she ran out and up the road, face to face with the rising moon, and before her, like a flying shadow, sped the cat. Behind her, the growing moonlight spread its silver veil over her garden where the flowers, like the disciples in that other Garden long ago, drooped their heads in sleep while the spirit which had fed their lives and sowed their resurrection cried out, unheeded, in its agonized renunciation.

It was a strange sight the old pecan tree saw as the moon rose. Blocking the road and overflowing into the yard were men armed with rifles or pistols, a few with cudgels. Some were on horseback, the majority on foot, and there was little or no attempt at disguise beyond deeply slouched hats and turned up coat collars. One man had climbed the tree, and, sitting astride of the heaviest limb branching out over the road, was knotting around it a rope, the other end of which dangled loosely down, transformed by the moonlight into a silver cable. Directly under it, in a small space ringed by the crowd, was a short, thickset negro in his shirt-sleeves, and bareheaded. Not a muscle of his face moved, but the moonlight revealed the sullen fire of his eyes. A man stepped out from the crowd and faced him.

“You have three minutes to confess,” he said commandingly. “Were you alone when you did it ? ”

“I ain’t got nuthin’ to confess,” was the dogged reply. “I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout it.”

“It ’s no use your lying. Once for all, were you alone, and where is the money?” No answer. “Two minutes gone; in one more you’ll swing from that tree, your body riddled with bullets. Confess! ”

The smothered fire broke forth. “I ain’t got nuthin’ to confess; I tol’ you I ain’t done it, an’ don’t know nuthin’ ’bout who done it. You ’re jes’ er-murd’rin’ me, you w’ite men! The Lord knows I’m innurcunt, an’ you ’ll pay fo’ dis night’s wu’k ’fore yo’ Maker.”

“Swing him! ”

Ready hands seized and thrust him on a horse brought forward for the purpose and stationed under the rope. As they passed the noose over his head he cried, “ Glory ! Glory hallelujah! Lord, take me home! ”

As the whip was about to fall on the horse’s flank a voice came from the distance: “Stop! Stop!”

Every face turned in the direction from whence it came. Up the road, braided with moonlight and shadow, a woman was running at full speed. Through the dewy stillness they could distinctly hear each labored breath. “Stop!” she repeated as she reached them. “Let him go! — I did it, — nobody but I! ”

Bewildered, stunned, the crowd looked at one another, helpless. Theirs was a simple creed of honor, with woman as its foundation stone, — woman the weak, the loving, the merciful. No wonder they stared at her in horrified surprise! No wonder they shrank from her as from a thing accursed!

“Cut the rope!” some one found voice to command. When it was done they melted away as before a poisonous breath, and she stood alone in the road, not even the creature whose life she had saved pausing to give her thanks.

“I d’clare,” Mrs. Bilbo proclaimed to a circle of absorbed feminine friends, “w’en I heerd it you could have knocked me down with a pindar shell! An’ I a-talkin’ to her that very evenin’ with jes’ the fence between us! W’en Bill Evans went ’bout daylight to git her, thar she were a-settin’ on ol’ Mis’ Bartin’s do’step, narry bunnit or shawl on, jes’ like she ’d been a-settin’ thar all night. W’en she seen Bill a-comin’ she riz up an’ come to meet him, an’ sez, jes’ ez cool ez you please, sez she, ‘ You’ve come to fetch me,’ an’ she j’ined him, an’ they come erlong the road tergether, pass her own do’, an’ she would n’t stop for nuthin’, jes’ sez, er-noddin’ t’ards the house, ‘ You ’ll see to some one a-takin’ keer of him, won’t you? He’s sick.’ An’ then she sez, ‘ You ’ll fin’ two picters in my room, ’ sez she. ‘ I want you to burn ’em up, an’ not let anybody else tech ’em.’ An’ Bill’s thet sof’-hearted he did jes’ as she axes him, an’ Bill sez they were a-mighty high-minded, genteel lookin’ couple, them picters, an’ he reck’ns they were her ma an’ pa. Arter she’d tol’ whar the money was hid she ain’t opened her mouth ergin, not even to pray with the preacher; sez ez she’s done prayin’, ez God knows all thar is to know. An’ it jes’ shows how cool she is, a-takin’ the Lord’s name in vain, w’en she has blood on her soul! Co’se they ’ll sentence her to hang, though mos’ fo’ks thinks the Gov’nur’ll make it ’priso’mint fo’ life, ez they ain’t never hanged er woman in this yer state, an’ he ain’t the man ez’d keer to start it. Ez fo’ thet po’ husbun’ of hern, he ’s thet childish an’ silly they’ve done put him at the ’sylum, an’ they tells me he jes’ sets ’bout all day er-diggin’ holes in the ground, an’ fillin’ ’em up ergin mighty quick w’en any one looks his way, — er-grinnin’ an’ er-jabberin’ like er chil’ or er monkey. The shock of findin’ out thet he was er-married to a murd’ress jes’ natchully throwed him inter er fit, an’ w’en he come out of it the leetle min’ he had was plum’ gone. An’ he ain’t never goin’ to git it back ergin, neither, they sez. I allus did feel sorry fo’ him, he so sociabul an’ free talkin’, er-married to thet unsociabul an’ close-tongued woman, an’ now my heart jes’ feels fit to bus’ w’en I thinks of his sorrerful state. Po’, po’ soul! ” And her audience, with fullest accord of sympathy in heart and voice, echoed Mrs. Bilbo’s commiserative expressions.

Isabel Bowman Finley.