Mary, now a different creature from what she was the day before, accompanied Charles to the cotton-field after breakfast. "You have done an enormous amount for half a day," she said. "You must not drive yourself like that. I know why you are doing it, but you must not. It would be wrong for us to permit it. From your accent I take you to be a Northerner, but you are acting like a cavalier of the old South. I appreciate it—I appreciate it, but I can\'t let you do so much."

"What, that?" he began. "As if that were anything! Why, Miss Rowland—" His emotions swept his power of utterance away from him, and he stood, hoe in hand, helpless under the spell of her storm-swept beauty and appealing womanhood. He wanted to aid her more materially. He wanted to offer his services in behalf of her brothers. He would have given his life—in his eyes it was a futile thing at best—for her cause; and yet he knew himself to be helpless. A woman\'s intuition is a marvelous thing, and when it permits itself to fathom a man\'s love it is as sure as the law of gravitation. She understood. Her dawning comprehension beamed faintly in her stricken face. He saw her breast rise tremulously and fall.

"I think I know what you started to say," she faltered. "And it is very, very sweet of you when you have known us such a short time. Isn\'t it strange that it should be like this? I know I can trust you—something makes me feel sure of it—and you have impressed my father the same way, and even critical Aunt Zilla."

He leaned on his hoe-handle. He now felt more sure of his utterance. "I want to help you," he cried. "I know how terribly you must feel over this matter. You are too young and gentle and frail for this dastardly thing to rest on you. I must do something to beat it off. I—"

"There really is nothing," she half sobbed. "As much as I love my brothers I\'d rather see them dead than on trial for murder. Why, Mr. Brown, the sheriff wants to put them in that dirty jail at Carlin! I saw it once. The cells are iron cages in the center of big rooms walled about with brick. Oh, oh, oh!"

He longed to comfort her, but there was nothing that he could say. The keenest pain of his entire life seemed to be wrenching his heart from his body. The still fields, the slanting sunlight on the long rows of cotton-plants, the cloud-draped mountains, grimly mocked him in their placid inactivity when it seemed to him that the very universe ought to be striving in her behalf.

"Oh, it will be only a question of time," she moaned. "They can\'t hide in the mountains long, and if Tobe Keith dies—oh, oh! if he dies—"

She had suddenly noticed a horseman dismounting at the gate. He was fat, rather gross-looking, of medium height, and middle-aged. His hair and eyes were dark, and he had a heavy brown mustache twisted to points, which was after the manner of the mountaineers.

"It is Albert Frazier, the sheriff\'s brother," Mary explained.

"The sheriff\'s brother!" Charles started.

"We needn\'t be afraid of him," Mary said, somewhat confused. "In fact, I think he has come to try to help me. He—he is a—a friend of mine. He has been paying attention to me for almost a year. He sees me. He is coming here. Wait. Don\'t go to work yet. I want you to meet him."

"Paying attention to you!" Charles\'s subconsciousness spoke the words rather than his inert lips. It may have been the sheer blight in his face and eyes that caused the girl to offer a blushing explanation of her words.

"I don\'t mean that we are engaged—actually engaged," she said. "It is only a sort of—of understanding. He says he loves me. He has done us a great many favors. You see he has influence in various ways. But I have never really encouraged him to—to—You know what I mean. But he is very persistent and very hot-tempered, domineering, too. But, oh, what does that matter—what does anything matter? Right now he may be coming to tell us that—that Tobe Keith is dead."

Charles said nothing, for Frazier was near at hand. His keen brown eyes rested on Charles, half inquiringly, half suspiciously. He carried a riding-whip with which he lashed the horse-hairs from his trousers with a quick, irritated stroke.

"Good morning," he said, as he tipped his broad-brimmed felt hat. "Out here giving instructions, eh? I heard you\'d hired help."

She made a failure of the smile she tried to force. It was a pale, piteous pretense. "Mr. Frazier—Mr. Brown," she introduced them.

Frazier did not offer his hand, and so Charles did not remove his own from his hoe-handle. He simply nodded. It would have been hard to do more, for instinctively he disliked the man. The feeling must have been returned, for Frazier all but sneered contemptuously.

"I heard of Mr. Brown at the hotel in town," he said. "Circus man, eh. You fellows are always dropping in on us mountain folks. Well, well, we need your help now in the fields. Niggers are no good."

"Have you heard about my brothers?" Mary here broke in.

"Yes. That\'s what I rode out for, Mary. I knew you\'d be crazy. You are funny that way—as if you can keep boys like these two down."

"But how is Keith?" Mary reached forward and caught the lapel of his coat entreatingly. She appeared quite unconscious of what she was doing, and as he answered Frazier took her frail fingers into his burly clasp, and for a moment held them caressingly, a glint of passion in his eyes. Had she been his wife the sight could not have been more painful to Charles. It did not excite his anger; somehow it only heaped fresh despair upon the depression which had almost unmanned him.

"Oh, Keith? Yes, I knew that would be the first question," Frazier said. "And I made special inquiry before I left on that point, for everything depends on it, of course. Well, little girl, nobody can possibly tell yet. Our doctors in town are not expert surgeons, and they can\'t decide just yet, it seems. The ball............