Chapter II: Part 2

“You knew I was poor. A poor man has debts--gambling debts perhaps. Then there are women in men’s lives who make dreadful scandals--there is blackmail. A chap does things in desperation and is not all bad. I have known men to do such things. But from the moment I saw that look on your face to-day, the look which said you thought I was a thief, the world stopped for me.” He threw back his head and gave a little laugh. “It will never go on as it was before.”

Here she put out her hand as if about to take his, but let it fall.

“I’ve nothing to explain. The fact that for the tenth of a second you believed me a thief makes everything else of no value. Of course now”--there was a break in his voice--“you don’t even believe in my love!” His voice was low, but there was a ring in it that she never forgot. “It doesn’t make any difference any more. I’ve tramped with that horror all day.

“Ever since I was a kid I have had a hard time. I have gone to all lengths in time of stress. I have been in all parts of the globe after adventures, but this is the saddest adventure of them all. My heart stopped when I saw that look on your face.”

He stood straight as an arrow, fine as a lance; his figure once more was immovable against the curtain, and he looked like the picture up in her room, but the smile was gone.

“My things are all in the station. Before your clock strikes again I shall be gone. Think of me as you will, but you can’t believe that I did not love you. _That you can’t believe!_”

She would have given much to think him innocent. She covered her face with her hands, murmuring:

“_Oh_--you better just go--you better just go.”

He looked around the dark, paneled room where the shadows gathered like ghosts ready, when he should go, to haunt Waybrook; and as she stood with her hands across her eyes, he took her in his arms and kissed her upon her hair, upon the hand covering her eyes, and upon her lips. He opened the window and she heard him say, “Good-by! Good-by!” and only stirred when she felt the cold night air rushing in upon her.

* * * * *

She found herself clinging to the curtain, her face buried in its folds. She might have been a night moth blown there as she clung and shook, the heavy curtain wrapping her round. Ramsay had drawn her toward the window as if he wanted to take her with him into a world which had treated him not any too well! She came to herself as the clock struck, realizing that she was part of a household whose conventions would not stand for the lady of the house wandering about at dawn through the lower rooms without excuse!

She passed her hands over her face to wipe away not the kisses of an hour before, but the marks of tears; and drew the curtains to shut out with the moonlight the figure of the man who had disappeared into the night. Then she left the music room, intending to go upstairs. She remembered what Cynthia Moore had said that morning about the Earl of Moray and the line of the Persian proverb: “Honor and Dishonor are in the hands of the Beloved.”

On the first step of the staircase she stopped to look toward the smoking room at the far end of the hall, and she saw a line of light under the doorway. Her first thought was that Ramsay had hidden there, and as she crossed the hall she realized that she wanted him to be there--_she wanted him to be there!_

In one of the entirely comfortable chairs, his hand shading his eyes, an open book on his knee, unconscious of midnight rendezvous, her husband was sitting. He turned round and rose as his wife came in, and she saw, although grave and stern, he was impersonal as far as _she_ was concerned.

“Hello, Nell! Couldn’t sleep, just as I couldn’t, I suppose?”

She wondered if it was possible that he had heard her in the music room at the end of the hall.

She came over to him.

“Two o’clock, Tommy; terribly late!”

Hereford drew over the other big chair.

“Since you are up, Nell, sit out a bit longer with me, will you?”

He would think she had been weeping at losing Patricia, no doubt imagine that she had come directly from Patricia’s room. He said:

“The little girl _will_ leave an empty place and we are going to be awfully lonely. We’ll have to go on a new honeymoon trip, Nell!”

Mrs. Hereford sank down in her chair and tried to smile.

“Have you been mourning here all the evening for Patricia, Tommy?”

“No, only been down about half an hour.”

He smoked without looking at her, and again she wondered whether it were possible that he knew she had been in the other room with Ralph.

“I’ve been in the music room for some time. It was full of memories of our jolly times, of dances, of Patricia’s coming-out ball.”

But Hereford did not appear to have heard what she said. His face had settled into the harsh gravity and look of displeasure that she always connected with his son.

“What is the matter, Tommy, tell me?”

“The old story--Jack!”

Mrs. Hereford, with a breath of keen relief, put her hand on his knees, and sat back in her chair.

“Poor Tommy! It must be something perfectly terrible for you to look as you look and to sit here like this half the night.”

“It is the worst.”

“What is it? Tell me.”

“Blackmail!”

And clear as ice came to her the remembrance of Ramsay’s words: “_There are women in men’s lives who make dreadful scandals for them. There is blackmail--_”

“It is a relief to speak to you, Nell. When Jack was at Cambridge he got mixed up with the worst kind of woman and made some sort of marriage with her. Drunk, of course. She has trailed him ever since, followed him even to France; been bleeding him to death. The money you and I have given him has gone to her. He’s been keeping her quiet until now. He told me this last night, here in this room, and he asked for money to shut her up, as she threatened on Patricia’s wedding day to give out a flashy story to the newspapers and drag us all in.”

Mrs. Hereford never stirred.

“I fairly kicked him out of the house,” her husband said. He heard her ask:

“But you refused to give him money?”

“Yes, and I told him all the newspapers in the United States could print his story if they liked. It was his own life!”

Mrs. Hereford half rose, murmuring:

“Oh, and he needed money like _that_! Tommy, like _that_, and you didn’t give it to him?”

“I told him if he went to you or Patricia I would disinherit him. I told him to get his lawyer. It was up to him. If you begin to give to blackmail you are lost. Let him take what is coming to him--he has made his own life!”

She gave a cry, sank more deeply into her chair, and burst into tears, her head on the arm of the chair. Her husband bent over, reassuring her, telling her not to worry; Jack would get a lawyer and he had been a brute to tell her when she was so utterly done up and tired.

But she had broken down under the strain of fatigue, emotion, and passion greater, at last, than her control.

She tried to pull herself together, to control her grief. She would wire Ramsay to-morrow, she would ask his pardon. To her now it was clear as day. Oh, it was clear! But Ralph would never forgive her--never in the world. She heard her husband go over to a little cupboard in the wall where drinks were kept; she heard the snap of the soda-bottle cork like a little shot.

There was nothing she could say to her husband. Her passion for Ramsay had protected his son. Hereford would never know anything of the theft or anything of her false suspicion.

“Honor and dishonor had been in her hands!”

Her husband came back with a refreshing drink for her, and sat down on the arm of the chair, made her swallow it, and then he drew her up with great gentleness.

“It is nearly morning,” he said, “and we have a busy day before us. Brace up, old girl!” He kissed her on her hair.

Mrs. Hereford looked up at him through her tears. First of all, her husband’s honor had been given to her for keeping. How ruthlessly she had torn it and thrown it away!

Hereford put his arm around her. She needed his support, and they went out, side by side, past the music room, where the ghostly shadows gathered in the four corners, only waiting to take possession.

_The American Magazine_

THE TERRIBLE CHARGE AGAINST JEFF POTTER

BY

SAMUEL A. DERIEUX

THE TERRIBLE CHARGE AGAINST JEFF POTTER[2]

By SAMUEL A. DERIEUX

It was Saturday night and raining hard when Frank Blainey pushed through the group of farmers gathered about Jeff Potter and ordered the old man out of the store. There were three indictments according to Frank’s angry arraignment: First, that old Jeff hadn’t spent twenty dollars in the store in the last two years; second, that he tracked in mud and whittled shavings on the floor; and, third, that women didn’t like to come where he was.

As for the first, well, old Jeff didn’t have much money to spend, and consequently didn’t spend it; as for the second, having no women at home, and putting in a good share of his time in the river swamp, Jeff wasn’t as careful about mud and shavings as he might have been; as for the third--that started him stuttering so he could hardly get the question out.

“W-w-what women?”

It was Frank Blainey who flushed now, but he went on. He was a lanky young fellow, his face a bit narrow, his eyes set a trifle close together. Having started the row he was just the kind of man to see it through, especially where Jeff was concerned, for who minded old Jeff Potter?

“It don’t make any difference what women!” he cried, face white now, eyes blazing. “I don’t want to argue this case and I don’t propose to. This is my store, and I tell you to get out and stay out. That’s all I’ve got to say, and all I’m going to say!”

* * * * *

Then old Jeff went crazy, saw red. You see, it was all so sudden. For twenty years he had been loafing in here--ever since his wife died. This had been his place when Sam Blainey, father of Frank, was alive and ran the store. Here, with a twinkle in his eyes, he had slipped, secretly, many a stick of candy, yellow candy with red stripes, to the youngsters who stood about while parents shopped. Here, out of the soft pine of dry-goods boxes, he had carved many an Indian, while the children crowded about, then gone out in the woods, children following, and colored the Indians red with pokeberry juice. Here, at nights, he had told those bigger children, the fathers, about where fish were biting now in the river, about how wild turkeys were moving from one section of the swamp to another, about the best kind of caller to get them in range. For that was the only kind of thing old Jeff knew, except that children loved candy and carved Indians, and that in a general way folks ought to tote fair with one another.

But to come back--it was all sudden and Jeff saw red. Bill Carson, a farmer, burly and powerful, grabbed him and shoved him back. He wouldn’t have had any show, anyway, with Frank Blainey. His old heart was far stouter than his biceps. All this Bill Carson knew.

“Come on, Jeff,” he was saying. “Yes, that’s all right now, you come with me. We’ll talk about it out here in the road.”

And so it was that Jeff found himself out in the road, with the rain beating in his face, and Bill Carson towering above him.

“Let me go, Bill,” he was pleading. “Let me go back an’ smash his face. Just once, Bill, just once. That wife of hisn is the ‘women’ he’s talkin’ about. I know, Bill. Once in the ol’ days, when Sam Blainey was livin’ an’ runnin’ the sto’, befo’ her an’ Frank married, she come in. I didn’t know there was any lady aroun’, an’ I said ‘damn’ or somethin’. She heerd me an’ went out, head high, an’ said she never would come back agin. She tol’ all the women about what I had said. She’s pizen pious, Bill; you know her. She brought hit up in the ladies’ missionary society--said there was heathens livin’ right around ’em. Meanin’ me. Bill, listen, let me go back!”

“No,” said Carson, “you better go home now, Jeff. He’ll be sorry he done it.”

“He’ll be enough sight sorrier if I smash his face! Who is he, anyhow? A scrub pup from his fine ol’ daddy’s breed! He was fired from college--for cheatin’, too. He’s a sneak now. You know as well as me that ever’ Saturday he sends that wife of hisn to visit her folks across the river, then sneaks off to town hisself an’ has a good time on the sly. Only las’ Sunday, when that poker club in town was pulled, he was one of the men they caught. Oh, he hushed it up, him an’ his town friends, but he was one. I know, Bill. Jim Ryan, he’s my friend, he’s one of the cops that done it. He come out here to hunt with me las’ Tuesday, an’ he tol’ me about it. I never opened my mouth about it to nobody--I never would have, either. But let me go now, an’ I’ll face him with it. I’ll tell him--”

“No, no,” said Carson kindly, with the indulgence of the strong. “There’s a woman in there, Sam Raine’s wife. You don’t want to raise a row befo’ her, do you? You’ll be justifyin’ what Frank said. Go on home now, ol’ man, an’ go to bed.”

* * * * *

And in humiliation and sorrow old Jeff went--went because there wasn’t anything else for him to do. Anger is a violent intoxicant: you forget your troubles while the rage lasts, you do not care for past or future. Old Jeff Potter would have been happier this night if he could have stayed angry.

But sitting late into the night by the smoky lamp on the table, he had forgotten his anger, he had forgotten everything except that he couldn’t go to the store any more. He had loved it in the old days when Sam Blainey, dead now, ran it, and the lazier men of a lazier era gathered around the rusty, pot-bellied stove. Then he had come to love the new régime, after Frank painted the store all over inside and out; he had loved the bright acetylene lights and the shiny new base-burner, and the Saturday night crowds. He didn’t ask much of life, he never had--just a roof over his head, a place to hunt, a store to loaf in, where he could see men and women and children and hear them talk. And now one of these, the one that was growing dearer as he grew older, had been taken away.

For a moment the old man’s helpless anger flared up like an echo.

“I ought to have smashed his face!” he muttered.

But when he rose and fumbled about on the mantelpiece, among bits of soft pine and half carved Indians, for his pipe, his hands were trembling, and so was the match he held to the bowl; while outside the rain, ever increasing, splashed from the eaves and dashed against the window, as if his cabin were some sub-sea shelter in the midst of a roaring ocean.

It was this continued deluge that waked him up two hours later with the thought that the river would rise and with the fear that the herd of blooded cattle ranging in the swamp--the cattle belonging to Squire Kirby, his landlord--would drown. It brought him thumping suddenly out of bed and made him light the lamp. Twelve, declared the hands of a gingerbread clock on the mantel.

“I better see about them cattle,” he said.

Now, tending cattle wasn’t part of his contract with Squire Kirby. A bale of cotton a year rent for the little farm he lived on _was_. But the bale was seldom forthcoming. It was such a long way to the end of a cotton row, and what excitement was there waiting for you when you got there? You just had to turn round and hoe to the end of another row.

“All right,” Kirby had said, over and over; “if you can’t pay, you can’t, Jeff. You just bring me an Injun or two to send to my grandchildren for Christmas an’ we’ll call it squar’.”

So the Indian or two, or half a dozen of them, had come to be his rent. For the rest, he did look after the cattle whenever he happened to be in the swamp, and Kirby always had the pick of his string of fish and bag of game.

Now, listening shrewdly to the ever-increasing rain, he dressed and picked up his lantern. Then he blew out the lamp and plunged into the storm. Bent double against wind and rain, lantern unlighted, because he loved to find his way in the dark, he hurried across the field. Just before he reached the main road he stopped. Along that road splashed three or four negroes, a lantern between them.

“Dat you, Mr. Jeff Potter?” one of them called.

But he did not answer. They were Kirby’s hands; they might want to go with him; they would be more trouble than they were worth; he would have to be pulling them, instead of cattle, out of the swamp before he got through. They hesitated a moment, then went on, mumbling to one another. Old Jeff grinned.

“When they git home,” he chuckled, “they’ll be tellin’ folks they seen a ha’nt.”

* * * * *

An eighth of a mile before he came to Blainey’s store he turned off into a narrow wood road seldom used. He could see pretty well in the dark, old Jeff could, but he wasn’t looking for anything like this--he almost ran into the car that stood there in the road!

He lit his lantern now and glanced all around. There was no one in the streaming woods. He went to the car, pulled aside the curtains that were fastened down, and peered in. The seats were empty. All excited, he went back to the rear and squatted down. The lantern light shone on the number and lettering of the license. It was a city car. He got out of his inside breastpocket a frazzled notebook, a sort of diary, in which he jotted down bits of wood lore and queer things he saw as he went about. From inside the leaves he took a stub pencil, and set down the number of that car, and the date on which he had seen it.

After he had gone away he looked back. There it was, big and long and silent. He hurried along through the thicket, across the field, and into the big woods of the swamp. Yes, the river was up. The lantern glistened on water where no water ought to be. Into it he splashed, up to his ankles, up to his knees, the trunks of trees coming forward toward him, then slipping back in silent procession, the shadows cast by the lantern darting here and there in the flooded woods, or moving about like enormous black clubs above his head.

He was thoroughly alarmed now--alarmed for Kirby’s cattle. A mile ahead was a high bit of ground, which they would make for and be safe if they sensed the danger of rising water and started in time. If they hadn’t--well, he would just have to round up as many as he could and drive them that way. The water was up to his waist now; still he kept on, holding the lantern high. If he had not known by heart every inch of the ground he would have stepped off into water over his head. But he knew how to keep to the ridges; he could even feel his way across a footlog covered by water; and after a while, all out of breath, he made out the high ground through the trees. The shine of the lantern long before he reached this haven showed the sleek sides and gleaming eyes of cattle huddled together.

“That’s it, boys an’ gals!” he yelled. “You knowed more’n I ’lowed you did! You still got some brains lef’ in yo’ thick flat heads!”

He was among them now, slapping their flanks, calling them by name, shoving them about familiarly to see if they were all here. Off to the side was a shed built by fishermen with a rough fireplace and chimney at one end. Here he built a fire, pulled off his wet trousers and socks and hung them up to dry. Then he raked together for a bed some straw which fishermen had used to sit on. His eyes in the firelight were bright now. This was the kind of thing he liked.

It was a deep sleep he fell into, so deep that he did not see through the forest an ever expanding glow in the sky; he did not hear the restless animals moving about as in vague terror; he did not hear out in the farm lands that bordered the swamp the excited crowing of cocks, as if some strange day had dawned.

It was four o’clock when he woke, got into his damp trousers and shoes and started back. It was pitch black. The waters had gone down somewhat, still he had to wade out. Clear of the swamp, he blew out the lantern.

When he came to the patch of woods where he had seen the car he stopped--there was no car here now! He struck a match and held it close to the ground to make sure it had not been a vision. There were the tracks where it had entered the woods, and others where it had been driven out again. He raised his head and sniffed the air. There was a strange smell abroad, as if the woods had been burned off in the night. Wondering what it could mean, he started on home.

* * * * *

Day was dawning as he passed Squire Kirby’s, and Jake, Kirby’s negro hand who fed the mules and horses, was just entering the yard. In the dim light Jake looked quickly at him, then stopped.

“Dat you, Mr. Jeff Potter?” he demanded.

There was something strange in Jake’s voice, and in his face too. Old Jeff thought about it as he splashed along the road home.

“Jake must ’a’ thought I was a ha’nt too,” he chuckled.

He did not hear the news until nearly midday. Worn out, he had fallen asleep across the bed on reaching home and had not waked until after nine. Then he had wound up the clock, got his lonely breakfast, and made a shift of tidying up his room. After that, he went outside. The weather had cleared; it was a bland winter day of the South, with the drenched straw fields and woods sparkling in the sun. He wandered aimlessly around his yard a while, and finally sat down on a bench in front of his cabin, and lit his pipe. He did not notice that the negroes in front of that other cabin across the field were looking curiously his way.

He was very lonely now. The excitement of the night had passed. Usually on Sunday mornings like this he went to Blainey’s store, where others gathered--except when there was preaching--out in front and on the porch. They would be gathering there now, talking about him, and about the row last night. As for him, so long as he lived, he could never go there again.

And so he was brooding when Bill Carson came along the old field road. Bill’s face was grave and he was hurrying. As he turned into the yard Jeff rose, his heart suddenly pounding.

“Jeff, ain’t you heard, man?”

“Heerd what, Bill?”

“Frank Blainey’s store burned down at two o’clock las’ night!”

Off yonder across the field old Jeff was suddenly conscious that the negroes were looking his way; and in Carson’s eyes he saw a close, narrow, searching scrutiny.

“Come on inside,” said Carson.

And inside, half dazed, Jeff heard. Folks--some folks--said he did it. The Blaineys especially. Frank was telling everybody.

“You see, Jeff,” said Carson, gravely, “some niggers up here say they saw you goin’ toward the store at midnight. You didn’t have any lantern lit. Jake saw you comin’ back at daylight. They all spoke to you, but you didn’t speak to them. An’, Jeff, every other man aroun’ here was at that fire but you!”

“Bill!” The old man’s voice was rising, “Bill, tell me as man to man--do you believe I done it?”

Then Carson tried to quiet him, tried to evade the question, too. One thing was certain anyhow--the woman and children didn’t believe it. “I just left home, Jeff,” he said. “My wife an’ the kids had heard about it. They say they know you never done it. They made me come. I left little Ella cryin’. She wouldn’t go to Sunday-school this mornin’.”

But the old man was not to be put off. He was leaning across the table now, eyes dilated. The fear of all wild and half-wild creatures--the fear of the trap--was upon him. “Bill!” he cried. “Does Squire Kirby believe I done it? Tell me the truth, man, for God-A’mighty’s sake!”

“He don’t say, Jeff.”

Over and over, while Carson listened, old Jeff described his movements in the swamp the night before. At last Carson rose to go; there was pity in his eyes now in the presence of the old man’s excitement.

“You just stick aroun’ the house to-day,” he said kindly. “If you go where folks are they’ll start you talkin’.”

And old Jeff stayed at home. At first it was hard, for there was panic in his heart. He wanted to know what was going on beyond those woods that separated him from the more thickly settled part of the community. All morning, anxiously, he watched the road that led from the main thoroughfare to his cabin. Then after dinner, no one having come along the road, and his mind having grown weary of its own anxiety, he bethought him of little Ella Carson, who had cried, and who wouldn’t go to Sunday-school because they said he burned the store. And he went into the cabin, and from underneath the table picked out a piece of white pine boxing.

“I’ll carve her an Injun,” he said. “An Injun gal.”

And with the thought came relief. Hours he worked, sitting outside his cabin on the bench, while the shavings, ever finer drawn, accumulated at his feet and the formless fragment of dry-goods box took shape. Now and then he whetted his keen multibladed knife; now and then, all oblivious, he held the work up for his critical inspection.

Even the nose and chin he carved to a nicety, holding the little figure close, smiling at it now and then, the while his mind, running ahead, saw the completed work. She should have hair from the tip of a black mink’s tail; stain from a pokeberry bush would color her; he would strap a tiny papoose across her back with a bit of crimson cloth.

“The little gal will like that,” he chuckled. “Yes--she’ll like that!”

And as he worked, his face now knotted, now serene, he forgot the store and the fire, he did not observe the lengthening shadows, he did not feel the chill of late afternoon. The sun had dropped low when at last he arose suddenly and, still oblivious, started across the field toward the woods.

His old eyes burned with creative fires. This figure in his hand was the best thing he had ever done. She was his humble masterpiece, this Indian girl who had brought him forgetfulness in his trouble. She was ready to be colored now; but no ordinary pokeberry stain would do for her. Deep in the swamp grew bushes whose berries gave a finer and richer tint than any close about. There was an eager smile on his face as he entered the woods.

He had not seen the commotion among the watching negroes when he rose and hurried across the field; he had not seen them beckoning to someone coming along the road. Now, far in the woods, he did not hear the steps behind him as he pushed through the undergrowth that fringed the swamp.

He found the bush he wanted and began his work. He had stained her to the waist, a rich, dark-red color; he was all intent on his task, when he heard the rustle of leaves behind him, and turned. What he saw made him put the figure quickly in his pocket, as if to hide her from those narrowed eyes. For there, straight at him, head and shoulders above the bushes, came Tom Kelly, rural policeman.

“Tryin’ to git away, was you, ol’ man?” grinned Kelly. “Well, it’s bad policy, an’ you’re old enough to know it.” Then solemnly, with eyes still narrowed, as if within him resided all the dignity and all the sternness of the law: “I’ve got a warrant here for you, swore out this afternoon befo’ Magistrate Kirby by Frank Blainey. Come along now, an’ don’t raise no trouble.”

* * * * *

It might all have been different if the old man had listened to his friends--to Squire Kirby, who next morning bound him over to court, and to Bill Carson, who went on his bond, two thousand dollars it was, for hadn’t he tried to make a get-away, and hadn’t Frank Blainey bitterly opposed turning him loose at all?

The squire and Carson, in a conference after the preliminary trial, advised him to employ to defend him Allen and Cathcart, both of them young, energetic, and highly successful lawyers, and offered between them to advance the money to pay the bill. It wasn’t because he doubted their friendship, or was ungrateful, that he did not heed their advice. But these lawyers were young, their minds were taken up with big affairs. What was an old man to them?

Then Jeff had his prejudices, too. More than once, when he was in the county seat, he had seen on the windows of the town skyscraper the gilded sign of Allen and Cathcart. He had seen their big cars and their handsome homes on Main Street. Now, in his extremity, and in his ignorance also, he distrusted them with the poor man’s distrust of the ostentatiously well-to-do. He did not want Allen and Cathcart.

Even while Kirby and Carson talked, his mind, in relief, had turned to another lawyer, old like himself, and neither rich nor ostentatious--old Colonel Donaldson, whom Sam Blainey used to employ to look up deeds, who had come out one day to fish with him and Sam. This was the lawyer he wanted.

* * * * *

He said nothing about it; he asked no one’s advice; but at four o’clock on the morning after his release on bail he set out on foot to the county seat, and at nine o’clock presented himself at the ancient and shabby offices of Colonel Donaldson on Law Row, just behind the courthouse. Heart pounding fast, he told his story to the dry and pedantic old lawyer, who sat behind a littered table in a dingy room where rows of dusty books, Shakespeares, Miltons, Thackerays, Dickenses, and Scotts climbed upward to the cobwebby ceiling.

Anybody would have told him this was not the man to go to; that it had been years since he appeared in court in anything but civil cases; that he might be the man to run down an old deed, but not to plead a case before a jury; that such fires of youth as he might have possessed--and it was said that he had known them once--had burned out long ago.

And yet old Jeff, looking at that thin old scholar surrounded by his books, trembled lest his case be turned down; while his friends, had they known, would have trembled lest it be accepted. And no one who knew the colonel would have dreamed that he would take such a case. It must have been some queer bond that exists between old men that moved him.

“Very well, sir,” he said, dryly, “I’ll take the case. Yes, I recall Sam Blainey quite distinctly--a fine man. I remember the fishing trip to which you refer.”

He asked a number of questions, rather wearily, leaning back, tips of fingers together. His eyes under his spectacles, that were dusty like his window panes, did light up just a moment when his questions brought out the fact that Jeff had seen a car in the woods. Then he copied down the number in a notebook. He would look into that, he said without conviction.

“God knows!” It broke from old Jeff, it was a cry for sympathy. “God knows I never burned that sto’!”

The voice of the ancient lawyer was dry and unimpressed. “Unfortunately, in a case of this kind it’s court and jury, not the Almighty, which you have to convince.... The Indian, you say, you were staining on that afternoon when you were arrested in the swamp--and by the way, sir, it’s a bad thing to be arrested in a swamp--have you that Indian with you?”

Trembling, the old man reached in the pocket of his ragged overcoat. Because of some fear that in his absence his cabin would be searched, he had brought his treasure with him.

“Here she is, Colonel,” he said eagerly.

The lawyer reached across the table, took the figure, and holding it up looked at it with a smile strangely sweet. Then he arose and went over to a rusty safe in the corner. He put her carefully away in the drawer, closed the iron doors on her and turned the combination.

“I’ll just keep this,” he said. “And now that will be all this morning. I’ll try and arrange for your case to be called as near the opening of court as possible. Keep close at home. And remember--don’t tell anybody anything.”

He turned to a shelf and got down a volume--probably he had already dismissed the case from his mind; and Jeff came out into the alley, above which towered the walls of the courthouse where soon he was to appear before judge and jury, with only that dry old recluse to stand between him and the penitentiary.

The terrible mistake he had made was duly impressed on him that night by Kirby, who drove over to arrange to take him to town to consult Allen and Cathcart in the morning. Jeff had to admit now what he had done, and Kirby was dumfounded.

“You want to go to the pen?” he demanded, pointing his finger at his tenant, his white beard thrust belligerently forward. “You think you’d like it there, old man? Do you know how strong the evidence is against you? Don’t you know, Jeff, I wouldn’t have sent you up if it hadn’t been? Have you any notion how slim yo’ chance is? My God, man--old Donaldson!”

“He’s smart, Mr. Kirby!” cried Jeff. “Ever seen his books? Piled up to the ceilin’, clutterin’ up the winders and fireplaces?”

“An’ what kind of books? Ol’ law books in one room, yes. Novels an’ po’try in the other! It was the novels an’ po’try you saw; an’ it’s the novels an’ po’try he reads. Jeff, listen to me--what made him take the case, God only knows. He’s forgot about it by now. His mind is back on them ol’ Romans an’ centurions. There’s been millions an’ billions of people in the world he knows about--history an’ the like. What difference does one ol’ feller in the pen make to him? He was thinkin’ about ancient Babylon an’ Sodom an’ Gomorrah this mornin’. He don’t even know what he’s done. He’ll forget to come to the trial! Now let’s get down to brass tacks. You let me go to town to-morrow an’ tell him you’ve changed yo’ mind. It’s yo’ life you’re playin’ with, man! If you go to the pen for arson you’ll die there! You’ll never come out again! You’re too old!”

Jeff’s face knotted with pain. But he was true to his simple code. “It--it’s too late, Squire. I’ve give him the case. It wouldn’t be fair--no, it wouldn’t be fair.”

On the third day of the March term of court, at a quarter of nine in the morning, pale and drawn of face, old Jeff climbed the spiral stairs of the courthouse with Squire Kirby, grimly silent, beside him. Only one communication, in all the weeks that had elapsed since Jeff’s visit to him, had Colonel Donaldson sent. That was a crisp notice to appear this morning in court.

Behind them followed Bill Carson and his wife, and little Ella. A strange postscript to the notice had read: “I’m requesting that Ella Carson be present in court.”

“He’s all balled up,” Kirby had sneered when he read it. “He likely thinks it was Ella Carson that was present at the sto’ that night instead of Sam Raine’s wife!”

Down the aisle they passed, the crowd that was already filling the court-room turning to look at them curiously. Kirby shot a quick glance at the lawyers’ tables inside the bar rail.

“He ain’t even here!” he whispered to Jeff. “I hope to God he’s forgot. Then the co’t will give you a _lawyer_!”

The sheriff pointed out the table for the defendant and his lawyer. Kirby sat down beside Jeff; the Carsons found a place on the front bench of the main court-room.

“Silence in the court!” cried the sheriff.

Overawed, and with a queer feeling that he was choking, old Jeff saw the judge enter in his black robes, while the courthouse rose and stood until His Honor was seated. Yonder in an ante-room, laughing and chatting, he made out young Burton Evans, prosecuting attorney, strong, ruddy, confident. And then, last, down the aisle came old Colonel Donaldson, dressed like a preacher or an undertaker, in a long black coat with a narrow white tie. He shook hands flabbily; he walked over to the table below the clerk’s desk and carefully placed on it a small bundle, wrapped in paper.

He came back and sat down at his table, with Jeff between him and Kirby. The court grew quiet. In a haze the old man rose, Donaldson beside him. Crisp, quick, accusing, Burton Evans, glancing fiercely now and then into the old man’s eyes, read off the indictment, long, meaningless, full of legal phrases. The jury was picked, Donaldson after a few careless questions, discarding six of them, then relapsing into his chair. The trial of old Jeff Potter was on.

* * * * *

It was in some respects the strangest case ever tried in that old court-room; for Colonel Donaldson, sitting listless and abstracted beside his client, lived up to the worst predictions of Kirby. He just let everything slide. The judge, an old man himself, looked now and then at this strange lawyer for the defense with something like a frown. Jeff was too dazed to say anything. Only Kirby fought--fought in angry whispers, leaning across Jeff, his eyes blazing into Donaldson’s.

Three witnesses for the State told the same story of the row in the store. The negroes who had passed along the road described having seen him going toward the store about twelve o’clock that night. He had stopped, they said, as if to hide, and hadn’t answered when they called him by name. No, he didn’t have a lantern, or if he had one it wasn’t lit.

“Ask ’em,” whispered Kirby to Donaldson, “how they know it was Jeff Potter in the dark. Ask ’em, sir. Ask ’em!”

“Why, my dear sir,” retorted Donaldson in a whisper hard and dry, “my client here doesn’t even deny it.”

Then Jake testified that at daybreak he saw him coming back from the direction of the store. And Tom Kelly declared that he had trailed the old man into a swamp, and had arrested him there while he was trying to make his get-away.

“Ask him, Colonel Donaldson,” whispered Kirby again, eyes fierce, “how he knows Jeff was trying to get away.”

Old Donaldson didn’t even look at the magistrate now. “Well, just let that pass,” he answered.

“My God!” gasped Kirby.

Likewise, every statement of Frank Blainey went unchallenged. He had ordered the old man out because he was a nuisance, explained Frank. He was just a loafer, who didn’t work for his living. He had hated to do it--sure he had--never hated to do a thing so much in his life. No, he wasn’t angry. He had closed up store and gone home right afterward--about eleven o’clock. His wife had gone to spend the night with her people, and there was no one at home. Yes, he had worried about it a lot on the way home. It had been a disagreeable task, the most disagreeable of his life. Nothing but the good of his business could have made him do it. Jeff Potter wasn’t the kind of man he wanted to have around the store. Women didn’t like to come where he was.

“What women--what women, Colonel Donaldson?” whispered Kirby. “Quick--ask him what women!”

* * * * *

But Colonel Donaldson, sitting back in his chair, the tips of his thin fingers together, his eyes--piercing eyes, too, they were--fastened on the witness, did not seem even to hear; while old Jeff bowed his gray head in shame, and his hands clasped and unclasped on the table before him, and his collar choked him so that he opened it at the neck.

It was at lunch, which followed immediately after Frank’s testimony, that Kirby broke loose. He and Jeff, Bill Carson and his wife and little Ella, had eaten in a restaurant; and now Kirby rose to pay the bill.

“He just don’t care--don’t care that!” And Kirby snapped his strong fingers. “I’ve been in many a trial. I never befo’ saw a lawyer not even raise a finger to save a client!”

A curious crowd had gathered round them. “That’s right,” some of them said. “He ain’t done a thing.” And Mrs. Carson, face upraised, grabbed old Jeff by the sleeve, while little Ella clung to her mother’s skirt.

“Oh, get another lawyer,” pleaded the woman, “before it’s too late. Please--please!”

Jeff swallowed, but he shook his head. “It wouldn’t be fair,” he said. “No--it wouldn’t be fair.”

Early in the afternoon the ancient and supine lawyer for the defense showed the first spark. The testimony for the State was all in, and he had put Kirby on the stand. His voice as he stood, stiff and formal beside Jeff’s chair, was dry, matter of fact.

“How long, Squire Kirby, have you known the defendant, Jeff Potter?”

“Forty years.”

“You must know, then, his reputation for law and order. Is it good or bad?”

“Good.”

Then Burton Evans, exuding confidence, was on his feet. “He’s a tenant on your place, I believe, Mr. Kirby. Did he pay his rent last year?”

Kirby turned to the judge. “Your Honor,” he asked, “must I answer that question?”

The judge looked at Colonel Donaldson. “Do I hear any objections from the plaintiff’s lawyer? If so I may rule that question out. If not--”

The voice was dry. “No objection, Your Honor.” And Kirby, from the witness chair, glared.

“He paid me what I asked,” snapped Kirby.

“And what did you ask, Mr. Kirby?” demanded Evans.

The judge was frowning now--frowning at Donaldson. Back in the court-room a slight buzz of voices began. Two or three spectators left benches in the rear and, bent double, as if to hide their progress, darted to seats nearer the front. And when at last Donaldson spoke, it was as if to further the case of the State.

“As a matter of fact, Mr. Kirby,” he asked, “did he not pay you, for rent, one or more carved Indians, which you sent to your grandchildren as Christmas presents?”

“Yes,” said Kirby.

“Silence in the court!” cried the sheriff.

Burton Evans turned away, a triumphant smile on his face. Then he glanced at the jury. They were mostly men of family; and now he must have remembered suddenly that Donaldson, in choosing the jury, had thrown out unmarried men and men without children; and for the first time now he must have noticed that the jury was mostly old men, some of them plainly grandfathers. Anyway, Burton Evans’s smile suddenly vanished!

“Jeff Potter,” said Donaldson, “will you take the stand?”

* * * * *

Old Jeff never knew how he got there. He only knew he was sitting in a chair on a platform, his tattered hat between his knees; that before him were thousands of faces; that thousands of eyes were turned upon him; that to the left the jury were leaning forward; and that to the right the judge’s swivel chair creaked as His Honor turned toward him. Then he saw that Colonel Donaldson was still standing very erect by his table. Colonel Donaldson was speaking.

“We will not now go into the happenings of that night, Jeff Potter, the night on which it is alleged by the State that you burned the store of this man.” He stopped and looked hard at Blainey. “The State may question you on that if the State so wishes. But I want to get at another matter. Mr. Kelly--I believe that is the officer’s name--has stated that on the afternoon he came to arrest you, you tried to escape by running to the woods. Now, Jefferson Potter, tell the judge and jury why you went to the woods, sir. Talk loud, so they can hear.”

“I went”--old Jeff hardly knew his own voice--“I went to git some pokeberry juice to color an Injun with.”

“And this Indian--for whom were you carving it?”

“Fer little Ella Kyarson.”

“And why were you carving an Indian for little Ella Carson? Talk loud, so the jury there can hear you.”

Jeff turned toward them. They were leaning forward still farther now, these old graybeards, their eyes on him, their faces suddenly all kindly.

“I was carvin’ it fer her because she said she never believed I sot that sto’ on fire.”

The prosecutor, face flushed, sprang to his feet. “I object to all this, Your Honor! I contend, sir, that this is a patent attempt--”

But the judge checked him. “The evidence is admissible, sir,” he said. “The officer testified that the defendant was trying to leave the country. Now it is quite in order for the defense to show that some other motive than escape induced the defendant to enter the swamp where he was arrested.”

The dry voice resumed: “So you were carving an Indian maiden for the little girl who did not believe you burned the store. Is that it?”

“Yes, sir. Her father said she was cryin’ an’ wouldn’t go to Sunday-school.”

“Do you see the little girl in court?”

“Yes, sir. That’s her. Settin’ thar on the front bench with her ma.”

There was a general commotion. People in the rear of the court-room stood up. The jury all looked toward that front bench, while a mother and a little girl in a blue dress both blushed scarlet.

And now a strange thing was happening: Old Colonel Donaldson, his manner still perfectly impersonal, had walked over to the table below the clerk’s desk and opened a bundle.

“I submit this in evidence, Your Honor. Here is the Indian girl he was carving. Does Your Honor care to look at it? You will observe that it is half stained, showing where the work was interrupted by the advent of the officer.”

The judge took it and inspected it, a smile on his strong-lined face. He handed it back, and the colonel walked over to the jury. “Pass it around, gentlemen,” he directed, “from one to the other.”

And now the astonished old man in the witness box saw the whole court-room seem to move forward, people leaving their seats to peer; heard over and over the sheriff’s “Silence in the court!” and saw on the faces of the jury that passed the carved bit of wood from hand to hand the smiles of fathers and grandfathers who would like to take it home to the children.

But his relief was short-lived: Burton Evans had pounced on him.

The questions came thick and fast, after the old man had told the story of his movements that night. Cattle in the swamp? What cattle? Wasn’t he a little over-anxious about another man’s cattle--a man he owed rent to? (No objection from Colonel Donaldson.) Did he have owl’s eyes that he could find his way about on a pitch-black night? If his mission were an honest one, why didn’t he light a lantern? Was it his custom to draw back and hide from passers-by? Was it his custom not to acknowledge a friendly greeting in the road? Did he usually sleep as sound as he slept that night?

But old Jeff, buffeted about like an untrained boxer standing before a professional, managed somehow to keep on his feet, to stick to the truth, though the sweat stood out on his face, and his limp old hat was twisted into a rag, and the crowd and jury swam round and round before him.

Groggy, he came down at last, though not until the judge himself had interposed in his behalf, and not until the eyes of the jury were full of compassion, and not until from the front bench came the voice of a mother trying to quiet a sobbing child.

He sank down limp into his chair, to find Squire Kirby tugging at the coat-tails of Colonel Donaldson, who had risen, and whispering over and over, his voice full of respect now:

“Rest the case, Colonel! Rest the case, rest the case! You’ve brought out the Injun! You give Evans rope, an’ he’s hung hisself! Colonel Donaldson, Colonel Donaldson, give the case to the jury as quick as you kin!”

* * * * *

But the ancient lawyer regarded not at all the frantic whispers or the tugs at his coat-tails. Voice still dry and impersonal, he spoke to the judge:

“May it please Your Honor, I want Mr. Blainey put on the stand once more. I have just a few questions to ask him. There are some details which I overlooked. I am sure, sir, that a man of Mr. Blainey’s humane and just temperament will not mind going on the stand again. I am sure the state attorney can have no possible objections, sir. Mr. Blainey?”

Followed a brief excited conference between Blainey and Evans. Then, very pale, Blainey was in the witness chair, and Donaldson was standing very straight by his table, the afternoon sun streaming through one of the high gothic windows of the old courthouse, and shining full on his thin, hawk-like face.

“Mr. Blainey, what time did you leave the store that night?”

“I’ve answered that once,” said Blainey.

“Well, answer it again!”

“I said eleven.”

“Wasn’t it later than that?”

Blainey looked at Evans, who nodded, his lips compressed.

“Oh, it might have been half past.”

“Was it as late as twelve?”

“No--it was not!”

And now once more the sheriff shouted “Silence in the court!” For the old lawyer had advanced two quick steps toward the witness, and suddenly his voice, shrill and grating, rang out, while a thrill like an electric shock ran through the court-room.

“Wasn’t it two o’clock? Answer me, sir--wasn’t it two?... You do not answer. Very well. Answer me this: Did some friends of yours drive out to see you that night in a car? Did they park the car in the woods near your store? Did they bring with them some liquor and some cards and some chips? Did you have a game of poker in the basement of your store? Did all of you imbibe freely of that liquor in the course of the game? Did you, while under the influence of that liquor, throw lighted cigar and cigarette stubs on the floor of the basement of that store that was littered with packing of all sorts, and excelsior?”