Chapter XIII: Book V: The Hour and the Man (2)

Nicholas fell back again, his vivid hair drawings the superb outline of his head on the worn leather against which he leaned.

"Oh, I'm not afraid of Kingsborough," he returned, "but Hagersville is only three miles distant, and the country people are much wrought up. God knows they have reason to be."

"Ah, the usual thing."

"I don't know the details--but there is sufficient evidence against the man, they say, to hang him twenty times. He's as dead as if the noose had left his neck--but he must die by law. There hasn't been a lynching in the State since I've been in office."

He spoke quietly, but Galt saw the anxiety in his face and met it bravely.

"Nonsense, my dear Nick, don't let your hobby run away with you. If there had been any danger they'd have got the wretch away. By the bye, Tom Bassett has gone to New York. I saw him this morning."

"Yes, he dropped in last night. You haven't seen this, I dare say--it's a copy of Diggs's' speech at Danville. So they have fallen on my private life at last."

He handed Galt a typewritten sheet, watching him closely as he read it. "This looks as if they feared me, doesn't it?" he asked.

Galt's reply was an oath of sudden anger. "This is Rann!" he cried. "I see his mark!" A flush of red rose to his face and his voice came again in a long-drawn whistle of helpless rage. "The scoundrel!" he said sharply. "He's raked up that old Kingsborough scandal of Bernard Battle's and made you the man. Oh, the sneaking scoundrel!"

His passion appeared in quick contrast to the other's composure. He was resenting the slander with a violence that he would not have wasted on it had it touched himself--for the fame of his friend was a cause for which his easy-going nature would spring at once into arms.

Burr came over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "When you come to think of it, Ben," he said, "it's no great matter."

"Then what steps have you taken about it?"

Nicholas's arm fell to his side. "I have done nothing. What's the use?"

Galt strode to the window and back again to the fireplace. His eyes were blazing. "The use? Why, man, use or no use, I'll send the last one of them to hell, but they'll stop it! It's Rann--Rann from the beginning. I'd take my oath on it--but I'm his match, and he'll find it out. I'll have Diggs retract this lie by six o'clock this evening or I'll--"

He checked himself abruptly. "How long have you had this?"

"A half-hour. The speech goes in the evening papers."

"A half-hour! And you sit here snivelling about your lynching. Why, what are the necks of ten such devils worth to your good name? When I come to think of it, I'd like to lend a hand at a lynching myself. If I had Rann here--"

The governor laughed dryly. "To tell the truth, my dear fellow, I don't take it seriously. The people know me."

Galt uttered an angry exclamation and flung out his hand. "Oh, give over, Nick," he implored. "Don't drive me to frenzy! I can't stand much more."

He took up a sheet of paper and wrote several lines in pencil. "After all, I've been thinking to some purpose," he said. "Judge Bassett is the man we need. I'll telegraph to him from your office, and I'll have his reply scattered broadcast. If it riddles Webb like shot, I'll have it out."

"Oh, it isn't Webb," said Nicholas. He was looking into the fire, but as the door closed behind Galt he turned and seated himself at his desk. The law-book he had been reading lay to one side, and he opened it and followed up the question that perplexed him. His face was grave, but his eyes were shot with light. When Galt came back he entered slowly and hesitated an instant before speaking, then he said:

"There's bad news, Nick. The judge has had a stroke of paralysis. He is now unconscious. Tom can't be reached, and you--"

Nicholas took out his watch. "I have fifteen minutes in which to make that train," was his answer. "Will you tell Dickson to repeat all messages?" Then, as Galt followed him into the hall, he looked back and spoke again. "Until to-morrow," he said, and went out.

Galt delivered the message to Dickson and walked uptown to Webb's house, where he expected to find him. He had not lunched, and he remembered suddenly that Nicholas had also gone hungry; but the thought brought a smile as he rang Webb's bell. "Oh, for once in a lifetime a man may be heroic," he said. Then he entered the house and found, not Dudley, but Eugenia.

At the sound of his name she had risen and come swiftly forward with outstretched hand. Her face was white and her eyes heavy with anxiety, but he felt then, as always, the calm nobility of her carriage. In the added fulness of her figure her beauty showed majestic.

He took her hand, holding it warmly in his own. "My dear Eugenia, if you are in trouble, remember that I am an ignoble edition of Juliet."

"Oh, I want you, not Juliet," she said. "I have sent for Dudley, but he has not come--I took the paper at the door by chance--and I find that Colonel Diggs has brought up that old dead lie about the governor. He dares to say that the people of Kingsborough believe it--the coward! They never believed it--it is false--as false as the lie itself. Oh, if I were a man I would kill him for it, but I am a woman, and you--"

"Kill him!" He laughed harshly. "We don't kill men who blacken our friend's honour; we wait till they attack our own lives--that's our code for you. If it were otherwise, I should act upon it with pleasure. But I came to see Webb about this thing. Where is he?"

"Oh, he is coming."

She sat down, keeping her excited eyes upon him. "It was Bernard, my own brother," she said passionately. "You know this, and the world must know it. The world shall know it if I have to utter it from the housetops. Oh, I have sinned enough in ignorance; now I will speak."

She bit her lips to keep back the quick tears, tapping her foot upon the floor. The red was in her cheeks and her eyes were as black as night. Her bosom quivered from the lash of her scorn.

"But you must keep out of it, my dear Eugie. Dudley and I will manage it. We'll see Diggs and get a retraction from him--that's sensible and simple. There's no scandal the better for dragging a woman into it."

She stopped him fiercely. "Then I give you fair warning. If you do not stop it, I shall. Ah, here's Dudley!"

She met him as he entered the room, clasping her hands upon his arm. "Dudley, have you seen it--this falsehood?"

He let her hands fall from his arm and drew her with him to the fireside. "Yes; I have seen it," he answered, and as he shook hands heartily with Galt he made a casual remark about the weather.

"Oh, Dudley, what does the weather matter?" cried Eugenia. "No, don't sit down. You are to go at once to Colonel Diggs and tell him everything--and not spare any one--and you may tell him also that--I despise him!"

He smiled at her vehemence--it was so unlike Eugenia. "I didn't know you took so much interest in these things," he said lightly. "I thought the baby had cured you."

But she caught his hand and held it in her own. "Don't, Dudley," she implored. "You know what it means to me. You know all."

His face softened as he met her eyes; but instead of replying to her appeal he turned with a question to Galt. "Can I do any good?" he asked. "I am willing, of course, to do what I can."

"I was going to ask you to see Diggs," said Galt quietly. "We shall endeavour to keep his speech out of the morning papers, but it has already appeared in the evening issue. You might secure a card from him retracting his statements. I hardly think he knew them to be false."

"I'll go at once," replied Dudley. He went into the hall and took up his hat, but as Galt opened the door he lingered an instant and looked at his wife. She came to him, her eyes shining, and in a flash he realised that to Eugenia it was a question of his own honour as well as of the governor's. With a smile he lifted her chin and met her gaze. "Are you satisfied, my lady?" he asked; but before she could respond he had joined Galt upon the pavement.

There he paused to light a cigar, while Galt hesitated and looked at his watch. "I suppose I may leave it in your hands," suggested the older man. "Diggs isn't on the best of terms with me, you know."

Dudley took the cigar from his mouth and threw the match over the railing into the grass. "Oh, I'll do my best," he answered readily, "and I'll see that the statements are delivered to the newspapers at once. I am as much interested in it as you are. It was a dirty piece of work." And leaving Galt, he quickened his pace as he crossed the street.

Diggs was at his hotel and somewhat relieved at the sudden turn of affairs. "Honestly, I hated it," he frankly admitted. "It's the kind of job I'd like to wash my hands of. But Major Rann took oath on the truth of the story, and he convinced me that I owed it to the community to expose Burr's character. I don't know why I believed it, except that it never occurs to one to doubt evil. However, I'm glad you called. I assure you I'll take more pleasure in retracting the statements than I did in making them."

He wrote the notes and gave them into Dudley's hands. "If they don't get in to-morrow's issue, they must wait over till election day. It's a pity this is Saturday--but you'll have them in, I dare say."

"Yes; I'll take them down," said Dudley. He descended in the elevator, walking rapidly when he reached the pavement. Diggs's parting words came back to him and he repeated them as he went. Tomorrow's was the last paper before election day. If the speech were reported in the morning issue and Burr's friends made no denial, there would be, as far as the country voters were concerned, a silence of two days. The contest was not yet decided, this he knew--it would be a close one, and a straw's weight might turn the scales of public favour. Rann realised this too, for he did not fling slime at men for nothing--there was a serious purpose underneath the last act of his play. He was doing it for the sake of those Democrats whose constituents were divided against themselves, and he was trusting to himself to hold the votes that came his way when the cloud should have passed from Burr again. It was all so evident that Dudley held his breath for one brief instant. The whole scheme lay bare before him--he had but to drop these letters into the nearest box, and Rann's purpose would be fulfilled. In the howl of reprobation that followed the hounding of Burr his own hour would come. And granted that the governor was cleared before the meeting of the caucus--well, men are easier to keep than to win--and he might not be cleared after all.

A clock near at hand struck the hour. He raised his head and saw the "Standard" office across the street--and the temptation passed as swiftly as it had come. The instinct of generations was stronger than the appeal of the moment--he might sin a great sin, but he could never commit a meanness.

With sudden energy he crossed the street and ran up the stairs.

V

Again he was returning to Kingsborough. The familiar landscape rushed by him on either side--green meadow and russet woodland, gray swamp and dwarfed brown hill, unploughed common and sun-ripened field of corn. It was like the remembered features of a friend, when the change that startles the unaccustomed eye seems to exist less in the well-known face than in the image we have carried in our thoughts.

It was all there as it had been in his youth--the same and yet not the same. The old fields were tilled, the old lands ran waste in broomsedge, but he himself had left his boyhood far behind--it was his own vision that was altered, not the face of nature. The commons were not so wide as he had thought them, the hills not so high, the hollows not so deep--even the blue horizon had drawn a closer circle.

A man on his way to the water-cooler stopped abruptly at his side. "Well, I declar, if 'tain't the governor!"

Nicholas looked up, and recognising Jerry Pollard, shook his outstretched hand. "When did you leave Kingsborough?" he inquired.

"Oh, I jest ran up this morning to lay in a stock of winter goods. Trade's thriving this year, and you have to hustle if you want to keep up with the tastes of yo' customers. Times have changed since I had you in my sto'."

"I dare say. I am glad to hear that you are doing well. Was the judge taken ill before you left Kingsborough?"

"The judge? Is he sick? I ain't heard nothin' 'bout it. It wa'n't more'n a week ago that I told him he was lookin' as young as he did befo' the war. It ain't often a man can keep his youth like that but his Cæsar is just such another. Cæsar was an old man as far back as I remember, and, bless you, he's spryer than I am this minute. He'll live to be a hundred and die of an accident."

"That's good," said the governor with rising interest. "Kingsborough's a fine place to grow old in. Did you bring any news up with you?"

"Well, I reckon not. Things were pretty lively down there last night, but they'd quieted down this morning. They brought a man over from Hagersville, you know, and befo' I shut up sto' last evening Jim Brown came to town, talkin' mighty big 'bout stringin' up the fellow. Jim always did talk, though, so nobody thought much of it. He likes to get his mouth in, but he's right particular 'bout his hand. The sheriff said he warn't lookin' for trouble."

"I'm glad it's over," said the governor. The train was nearing Kingsborough, and as it stopped he rose and followed Jerry Pollard to the station.

There was no one he knew in sight, and, with his bag in his hand, he walked rapidly to the judge's house. His anxiety had caused him to quicken his pace, but when he had opened the gate and ascended the steps he hesitated before entering the hall, and his breath came shortly. Until that instant he had not realised the strength of the tie that bound him to the judge.

The hall was dim and cool, as it had been that May afternoon when his feet had left tracks of dust on the shining floor. Straight ahead he saw the garden, lying graceless and deserted, with the unkemptness of extreme old age. A sharp breeze blew from door to door, and the dried grasses on the wall stirred with a sound like that of the wind among a bed of rushes.

He mounted the stairs slowly, the weight of his tread creaking the polished wood. Before the threshold of the judge's room again he hesitated, his hand upraised. The house was so still that it seemed to be untenanted, and he shivered suddenly, as if the wind that rustled the dried grasses were a ghostly footstep. Then, as he glanced back down the wide old stairway, his own childhood looked up, at him--an alien figure, half frightened by the silence.

As he stood there the door opened noiselessly, and the doctor came out, peering with shortsighted eyes over his lowered glasses. When he ran against Nicholas he coughed uncertainly and drew back. "Well, well, if it isn't the governor!" he said. "We have been looking for Tom--but our friend the judge is better--much better. I tell him he'll live yet to see us buried."

A load passed suddenly from Nicholas's mind. The ravaged face of the old doctor--with its wrinkled forehead and its almost invisible eyes--became at once the mask of a good angel. He grasped the outstretched hand and crossed the threshold.

The judge was lying among the pillows of his bed, his eyes closed, his great head motionless. There was a bowl of yellow chrysanthemums on a table beside him, and near it Mrs. Burwell was measuring dark drops into a wineglass. She looked up with a smile of welcome that cast a cheerful light about the room. Her smile and the colour of the chrysanthemums were in Nicholas's eyes as he went to the bed and laid his hand upon the still fingers that clasped the counterpane.

The judge looked at him with a wavering recognition. "Ah, it is you, Tom," he said, and there was a yearning in his voice that fell like a gulf between him and the man who was not his son. At the moment it came to Nicholas with a great bitterness that his share of the judge's heart was the share of an outsider--the crumbs that fall to the beggar that waits beside the gate. When the soul has entered the depths and looks back again it is the face of its own kindred that it craves--the responsive throbbing of its own blood in another's veins. This was Tom's place, not his.

He leaned nearer, speaking in an expressionless voice. "It's I, sir--Nicholas--Nicholas Burr."

"Yes, Nicholas," repeated the judge doubtfully; "yes, I remember, what does he want? Amos Burr's son--we must give him a chance."

For a moment he wandered on; then his memory returned in uncertain pauses. He looked again at the younger man, his sight grown stronger. "Why, Nicholas, my dear boy, this is good of you," he exclaimed. "I had a fall--a slight fall of no consequence. I shall be all right if Cæsar will let me fast a while. Cæsar's getting old, I fear, he moves so slowly."

He was silent, and Nicholas, sitting beside the bed, kept his eyes on the delicate features that were the lingering survival of a lost type. The splendid breadth of the brow, the classic nose, the firm, thin lips, and the shaven chin--these were all downstairs on faded canvases, magnificent over lace ruffles, or severe above folded stocks. Over the pillows the chrysanthemums shed a golden light that mingled in his mind with the warm brightness of Mrs. Burwell's smile--giving the room the festive glimmer of an autumn garden.

A little later Cæsar shuffled forward, the wineglass in his hand. The judge turned towards him. "Is that you, Cæsar?" he asked.

The old negro hurried to the bedside. "Here I is, Marse George; I'se right yer."

The judge laughed softly. "I wouldn't take five thousand dollars for you, Cæsar," he said. "Tom Battle offered me one thousand for you, and I told him I wouldn't take five. You are worth it, Cæsar--every cent of it--but there's no man alive shall own you. You're free, Cæsar--do you hear, you're free!"

"Thanky, Marse George," said Cæsar. He passed his arm under the judge's head and raised him as he would a child. As the glass touched his lips the judge spoke in a clear voice. "To the ladies!" he cried.

"He is regaining the use of his limbs," whispered Mrs. Burwell softly. "He will be well again," and Nicholas left the room and went downstairs. At the door he gave his instructions to a woman servant. "I shall return to spend the night," he said. "You will see that my room is ready. Yes, I'll be back to supper." He had had no dinner, but at the moment this was forgotten. In the relief that had come to him he wanted solitude and the breadth of the open fields. He was going over the old ground again--to breathe the air and feel the dust of the Old Stage Road.

He passed the naked walls of the church and followed the wide white street to the college gate. Then, turning, he faced the way to his father's farm and the distant pines emblazoned on the west.

A clear gold light flooded the landscape, warming the pale dust of the deserted road. The air was keen with the autumn tang, and as he walked the quick blood leaped to his cheeks. He was no longer conscious of his forty years--his boyhood was with him, and middle age was a dream, or less than a dream.

In the branch road a fall of tawny leaves hid the ruts of wheels, and the sun, striking the ground like a golden lance, sent out sharp, fiery sparks as from a mine of light. Overhead the red trees rustled.

It was here that Eugenia had ridden beside him in the early morning--here he had seen her face against the enkindled branches--and here he had placed the scarlet gum leaves in her horse's bridle. The breeze in the wood came to him like the echo of her laugh, faded as the memory of his past passion. Well, he had more than most men, for he had the ghost of a laugh and the shadow of love.

Passing his father's house, he went on beyond the fallen shanty of Uncle Ish into the twilight of the cedars. At the end of the avenue he saw the rows of box--twisted and tall with age--leading to the empty house, where the stone steps were wreathed in vines. Did Eugenia ever come back, he wondered, or was the house to crumble as Miss Chris's rockery had done? On the porch he saw the marks made by the general's chair, which had been removed, and on one of the long green benches there was an E cut in a childish hand. At a window above--Eugenia's window--a shutter hung back upon its hinges, and between the muslin curtains it seemed to him that a face looked out and smiled--not the face of Eugenia, but a ghost again, the ghost of his old romance.

He went into the garden, crossing the cattle lane, where the footprints of the cows were fresh in the dust. Near at hand he heard a voice shouting. It was the voice of the overseer, but the sound startled him, and he awoke abruptly to himself and his forty years. The spell of the past was broken--even the riotous old garden, blending its many colours in a single blur, could not bring it back. The chrysanthemums and the roses and the hardy zenias that came up uncared for were powerless to reinvoke the spirit of the place. If Eugenia, in her full-blown motherhood, had risen in an overgrown path he might have passed her by unheeding. His Eugenia was a girl in a muslin gown, endowed with immortal youth--the youth of visions unfulfilled and desire unquenched. His Eugenia could never grow old--could never alter--could never leave the eternal sunshine of dead autumns. In his nostrils was the keen sweetness of old-fashioned flowers, but his thoughts were not of them, and, turning presently, he went back as he had come. It was dark when at last he reached the judge's house and sat down to supper.

He was with the judge until midnight, when, before going to his room, he descended the stairs and went out upon the porch. He had been thinking of the elections three days hence, and the outcome seemed to him more hopeful than it had done when he first came forward as a candidate. The uncertainty was almost as great, this he granted; but behind him he believed to be the pressure of the people's will--which the schemes of politicians had not turned. Tuesday would prove nothing--nor had the conventions that had been held; when the meeting of the caucus came, he would still be in ignorance--unaware of traps that had been laid or surprises to be sprung. It was the mark to which his ambition had aimed--the end to which his career had faced--that now rose before him, and yet in his heart there was neither elation nor distrust. He had done his best--he had fought fairly and well, and he awaited what the day might bring forth.

Above him a full moon was rising, and across the green the crooked path wound like a silver thread, leading to the glow of a night-lamp that burned in a sick-room. The night, the air, the shuttered houses were as silent as the churchyard, where the tombstones glimmered, row on row. Only somewhere on the vacant green a hound bayed at the moon.

He looked out an instant longer, and was turning back, when his eye caught a movement among the shadows in the distant lane. A quick thought came to him, and he kept his gaze beneath the heavy maples, where the moonshine fell in flecks. For a moment all was still, and then into the light came the figure of a man. Another followed, another, and another, passing again into the dark and then out into the brightness that led into the little gully far beyond. There was no sound except the baying of the dog; the figures went on, noiseless and orderly and grim, from dark to light and from light again to dark. There were at most a dozen men, and they might have been a band of belated workmen returning to their homes or a line of revellers that had been sobered into silence. They might have been--but a sudden recollection came to him, and he closed the door softly and went out. There was but one thing that it meant; this he knew. It meant a midnight attack on the gaol, and a man dead before morning, who must die anyway--it meant vengeance so quiet yet so determined that it was as sure as the hand of God--and it meant the defiance of laws whose guardian he was.

He broke into a run, crossing the green and following the path that rose and fell into the gullies as it led on to the gaol. As he ran he saw the glow of the night-lamp in the sick-room, and he heard the insistent baying of the hound.

The moonlight was thick and full. It showed the quiet hill flanked by the open pasture; and it showed the little whitewashed gaol, and the late roses blooming on the fence. It showed also the mob that had gathered--a gathering as quiet as a congregation at prayer. But in the silence was the danger--the determination to act that choked back speech--the grimness of the justice that walks at night--the triumph of a lawless rage that knows control.

As he reached the hill he saw that the men he had followed had been enforced by others from different roads. It was not an outbreak of swift desperation, but a well-planned, well-ordered strategy; it was not a mob that he faced, but an incarnate vengeance.

He came upon it quickly, and as he did so he saw that the sheriff was ahead of him, standing, a single man, between his prisoner and the rope. "For God's sake, men, I haven't got the keys," he called out.

Nicholas swung himself over the fence and made his way to the entrance beneath the steps that led to the floor above. He had come as one of the men about him, and they had not heeded him. Now, as he faced them from the shadow he saw here and there a familiar face--the face of a boy he had played with in childhood. Several were masked, but the others raised bare features to the moonlight--features that were as familiar as his own.

Then he stood up and spoke. "Men, listen to me. In the name of the Law, I swear to you that justice shall be done--I swear."

A voice came from somewhere. "We ain't here to talk--you stand aside, and _we'll_ show you what we're here for."

Again he began. "I swear to you--"

"We don't want no swearing." On the outskirts of the crowd a man laughed. "We don't want no swearing," the voice repeated.

The throng pressed forward, and he saw the faces that he knew crowding closer. A black cloud shut out the moonlight. Above the pleading of the sheriffs tones he heard the distant baying of the hound.

He tried to speak again. "We'll be damned, but we'll get the nigger!" called some one beside him. The words struck him like a blow. He saw red, and the sudden rage upheld him. He knew that he was to fight--a blind fight for he cared not what. The old savage instinct blazed within him--the instinct to do battle to death--to throttle with, his single hand the odds that opposed. With a grip of iron he braced himself against the doorway, covering the entrance.

"I'll be damned if you do!" he thundered.

A quick shot rang out sharply. The flash blinded him, and the smoke hung in his face. Then the moon shone and he heard a cry--the cry of a well-known voice.

"By God, it's Nick Burr!" it said. He took a step forward.

"Boys, I am Nick Burr," he cried, and he went down in the arms of the mob.

They raised him up, and he stood erect between the leaders. There was blood on his lips, but a man tore off a mask and wiped it away. "By God, it's Nick Burr!" he exclaimed as he did so.

Nicholas recognised his voice and smiled. His face was gray, but his eyes were shining, and as he steadied himself with all his strength, he said with a laugh. "There's no harm done, man." But when they laid him down a moment later he was dead.

He lay in the narrow path between the doorstep and the gate where roses bloomed. Some one had started for the nearest house, but the crowd stood motionless about him. "By God, it's Nick Burr!" repeated the man who had held him.

The sheriff knelt on the ground and raised him in his arms. As he folded his coat about him he looked up and spoke.

"And he died for a damned brute," was what he said.

VI

It was the afternoon of election day, and Eugenia sat in her drawing-room with Sally Bassett.

Outside there was the sound of tramping feet, for the people were giving him burial. They had been passing so for half an hour and they still went on, on, on--he was going to his grave in state.

"There are the drums," said Sally, turning her ear. "All Virginia has come to town, I believe. The whole city is in mourning, and by and by they will put up his statue in the Capitol Square--but if he had lived, would he have had the senatorship?"

"Ah, who knows?" said Eugenia. She played idly with the spoon of her teacup, her eyes on the coals.

"As you say--who knows?" murmured the other. "And, after all, it is perhaps better that he died just now. He would have tried to lift us too high, and we should have fallen back. He was a hero, and the public can't always keep to the heroic level."

There were tears in her voice.

Eugenia turned from her and said nothing.

After, Sally had gone she still sat with her cup in her hand before the fire. Her child was rolling on the floor at her feet, but she did not stoop to him. She was not thinking--she was merely resting from emotion--as she would rest for the remainder of her days.

The sound of tramping feet died away. The cars passed once more, and along the block a boy went whistling a tune. Everything was beginning again--everything would go on as it had gone since the dawn of time, and she would go with it. The best or the worst of it was that she would go happily--neither regretting nor despairing, but filled to the finger-tips with the cheerful energy of a busy life.

Suddenly she caught up her child with a frantic rapture and held him to her bosom, kissing the small hands that reached up to her lips. This was her portion, and even to-day she was content.

An hour later Dudley found her sitting there when he entered, and as he straightened himself against the mantel he looked down on her with an affectionate gaze.

"He was a great man," he said simply, and his generous spirit rang in his voice.

"Yes, he was a great man," repeated Eugenia. She looked up at her husband as he stood before her--buoyant with expectation, mellowed by the glow of assured success. He smiled into her face, and she smiled back again with quick tenderness. Then she bent above her child and kissed his lips, and the sunlight coming from the day without shone in her eyes.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Voice of the People, by Ellen Glasgow