The Bishop of Cottontown Part 75

"How handsome he must have been when he was once a Conway!" thought Helen.

He kissed his daughters at the breakfast table. He chatted with them, and though he said nothing about it, even Lily knew that he had resolved to reform.

After breakfast Helen left him, with Lily sitting on her father's lap, her face bright with the suns.h.i.+ne of it:

"If papa would always be like this"--and she patted his cheek.

Conway started. The very intonation of her voice, her gesture, was of the long dead mother.

Tears came to his eyes. He kissed her: "Never again, little daughter, will I take another drop."

She looked at him seriously: "Say with G.o.d's help--" she said simply.

"Mammy Maria said it won't count unless you say that."

Conway smiled. "I will do it my own self."

But Lily only shook her head in a motherly, scolding way.

"With G.o.d's help, then," he said.

Never was an Autumn morning more beautiful to Helen as she walked across the fields to the mill. She had learned a nearer way, one which lay across hill and field. The path ran through farms, chiefly The Gaffs, and cut across the hills and meadow land. Through little dells, amid fragrant groves of sweet gum and maples, their beautiful many-colored leaves now scattered in rich profusion around. Then down little hollows where the brooks sputtered and frothed and foamed along, the sun all the time darting in and out, as the waters ran first in suns.h.i.+ne and then in shadow. And above, the winds were so still, that the jumping of the squirrel in the hickories made the only noise among the leaves which still clung to the boughs.

All so beautiful, and never had Helen been so happy.

She was earning a living--she was saving Lily from the mill and her father from temptation.

Her path wound along an old field and plunged into scrub cedar and glady rocks. A covey of quail sprang up before her and she screamed, frightened at the sudden thunder of their wings.

Then the path ran through a sedge field, white with the tall silvered panicled-leaves of the life-everlasting.

Beyond her she saw the smoke-stack of the mill, and a short cut through a meadow of The Gaffs would soon take her there.

She failed to see a warning on the fence which said: _Keep out--Danger._

Through the bars she went, intent only on soon reaching the mill beyond and glorying in the strong rich smell of autumn in leaf and gra.s.s and air.

"What a beautiful horse that is in the pasture," she thought, and then her attention went to a meadow lark flushed and exultant. She heard shouts, and now--why was Jim, the stable boy, running toward her so fast, carrying a pitchfork in his hands and shouting: "Whoa--there, Antar--Antar,--you, sir!"

And the horse! One look was enough. With ears laid back, and mouth wide open, with eyes blazing with the fire of fury he was plunging straight at her.

Helpless, she turned in sickening doubt, to feel that her limbs were limp in the agony of fear. She heard the thunder of the man-eating stallion's hoofs just behind her and she b.u.t.ted blindly, as she sank down, into some one who held bravely her hand as she fell, and the next instant she heard a thundering report and smelt a foul blast of gunpowder. She looked up in time to see the great horse pitch back on his haunches, rear, quiver a moment and strike desperately at the air with his front feet and fall almost upon her.

When she revived, the stable boy stood near by the dead stallion, pale with fright and wonder. A half-grown boy stood by her, holding her hand.

"You are all right now," he said quietly as he helped her to arise.

In his right hand he held a pistol and the foul smoke still oozed up from the nipple where the exploded cap lay shattered, under the hammer.

He was perfectly cool--even haughtily so. He scarcely looked at Helen nor at Jim, who kept saying nervously:

"You've killed him--you've killed him--what will Mr. Travis say?"

The boy laughed an ironical laugh. Then he walked up and examined the shot he had made. Squarely between the great eyes the ball had gone, and scarcely had the glaring, frenzied eye-b.a.l.l.s of the man-eater been fixed in the rigid stare of death. He put his fingers on it, and turning, said:

"A good shot, running--and at twenty paces!"

Then he stood up proudly, and his blue eyes flashed defiance as he said:

"And what will Mr. Travis say? Well, tell him first of all that this man-eating stallion of his caught the bullet I had intended for his woman-eating master--this being my birth-day. And tell him, if he asks you who I am, that last week I was James Adams, but now I am James Travis. He will understand."

He came over to Helen gallantly--his blue eyes s.h.i.+ning through a smile which now lurked in them:

"This is Miss Conway, isn't it? I will see you out of this."

Then, taking her hand as if she had been his big sister, he led her along the path to the road and to safety.

CHAPTER X

MARRIED IN G.o.d'S SIGHT

Night--for night and death, are they not one? A farm cabin in a little valley beyond the mountain. An Indian Summer night in November, but a little fire is pleasant, throwing its cheerful light on a room rough from puncheon floor to axe-hewn rafters, but cleanly-tidy in its very roughness. It looked sinewy, strong, honest, good-natured. There was roughness, but it was the roughness of strength. Knots of character told of the suffering, struggles and privations of the st.u.r.dy trees in the forest, of seams twisted by the tempests; rifts from the mountain rocks; fibre, steel-chilled by the terrible, silent cold of winter stars.

And now plank and beam and rafter and roof made into a home, humble and honest, and giving it all back again under the warm light of the hearth-stone.

On a bed, white and beautifully clean, lay a fragile creature, terribly white herself, save where red live coals gleamed in her cheeks beneath the bright, blazing, fever-fire burning in her eyes above.

She coughed and smiled and lay still, smiling.

She smiled because a little one--a tiny, sickly little girl--had come up to the bed and patted her cheek and said: "Little mother--little mother!"

There were four other children in the room, and they sat around in all the solemn, awe-stricken sorrow of death, seen for the first time.

Then a man in an invalid chair, helpless and with a broken spine, spoke, as if thinking aloud:

"She's all the mother the little 'uns ever had, Bishop--'pears like it's cruel for G.o.d to take her from them."

"G.o.d's cruelty is our crown," said the old man--"we'll understand it by and by."

Then the beautiful woman who had come over the mountain arose from the seat by the fireside, and came to the bed. She took the little one in her arms and petted and soothed her.

The child looked at her timidly in childish astonishment. She was not used to such a beautiful woman holding her--so proud and fine--from a world that she knew was not her world.

"May I give you some nourishment now, Maggie?"

The girl shook her head.