One evening, several days after Charles\'s trip with Mary to the hiding-place of the two boys, he and Rowland sat on the front veranda. It was dusk and supper was almost ready.

"We may have to wait a little while," the old gentleman explained, in his languid way. "Mary is looking for company, I understand, and he may be slow getting here. He is sometimes, for he is a little careless about such things—more careless, I know, than I used to be in my courting-days."

With a sudden depression of spirits Charles surmised that the expected visitor was Albert Frazier, and he made no comment. Presently Mary came down the stairs. She had changed her dress, rearranged her hair, and looked very pretty as she stood in the doorway and glanced down the road toward Carlin.

"You and Mr. Brown need not wait, father," she said. "You know how slow Albert is. I\'m sure Mr. Brown is both hungry and tired. He has finished the cotton and started on the corn. Albert and I can eat later. I want to get news from Tobe Keith. Albert promised to go by his house before starting out."

"I am not at all hungry," Charles declared, as Mary disappeared in the parlor.

"Well, I am," Rowland said, "and I shall not wait longer for Frazier, or any one else. I have some notes to make after supper, and this delay is upsetting me. Come, let\'s go in and leave the two sweethearts to eat and coo together. They won\'t eat much, I reckon. By the way, in my genealogical research I find that there are many family names of French origin in our mountains. This Frazier—\'Frazyea\' would be the French pronunciation—may have had fine old Huguenot ancestors away back in the early settlement of South Carolina. He has his good points. He is not exactly the stamp of man I would have wanted my daughter to marry in the old days, you know, but things are frightfully changed. The financial shoe is on the other foot, you see, and it is money that founds families."

Their supper was soon ended, and on their return to the veranda they found Mary still watching the road. "I see him, I think," she announced, wearily. "It looks like a man with a broad-brimmed hat on. Yes, that is Albert."

The rider drew in at the gate and dismounted, leading his horse into the yard and up to the steps. "You must excuse me, little girl," he said. "I couldn\'t make it earlier and get the news you wanted. The doctor was making an examination and was delayed. Tobe fainted several times. He is weak, the doctor says tell you, but there is still hope." Here catching sight of Charles, he continued, gruffly: "Say, fellow, put up my horse. And, say, give him a pail of water from the well and some shelled corn and a bundle of fodder."

Starting in surprise, Charles was about to thunder out a furious reply; to save himself from such a display of temper in the presence of a lady he simply turned back into the sitting-room.

"Did he hear me?" he heard Frazier asking his host, in a rising tone of anger.

"He was not hired for that sort of work, Albert," the old man said, pacifically. "He has been in the field ever since sunup. Zilla takes care of our own stock. Come, I\'ll go with you and show you the stall and the feed."

Frazier swore aloud and muttered something about "tramp farm-hands" which Charles could not catch; then he and Rowland led the horse to the stable. Charles was standing in the center of the room when Mary came in. She walked straight up to him and laid her hand on his arm.

"Don\'t let that bother you; please don\'t!" she urged, excitedly. "I don\'t want you to have trouble with him. He is a dangerous sort of man. If he takes a dislike to you he will do his best to injure you, and he has it in his power to do all sorts of things, along with his brother as an officer of the law."

"I understand. I have already heard a few things he has said about me," Charles replied, still furious, and yet trying to calm himself. "I know the kind of man he is exactly. But you are in trouble, and I shall not worry you in the matter. If he insults me again I\'ll try to overlook it—I will overlook it."

"Thank you," Mary said, gently and sweetly, in a voice which quivered with curbed emotion, "but he mustn\'t do it again. I must talk to him. He has no right to come here giving orders like that to people who have been as kind and unselfish as you have been. Oh, I don\'t know what I am to do, Mr. Brown! When he was telling about how weak Tobe Keith was my very soul seemed to die in my body."

The room was dimly lighted by an oil-lamp on a table in the center of the room. She stood facing him, her wondrous eyes filling with tears of anxiety, her lips twitching, her brows knitted, her hands clasped over her snowy apron.

"I don\'t know what to say to comfort you," said Charles. His voice shook and he tried to steady it. "I am ashamed of myself for sinking so low as to be angry with that man at such a time as this. You are stretched on the rack, Miss Rowland, and you are being tortured. I wish I could take your place—as God is my judge, I do! I can\'t bear the sight of it. It is unfair, hellish, satanic! It must not go on like this."

"I want you to—to think well of me," Mary said, haltingly, "and I believe you will. You must not think me shallow if I appear to be light-hearted to-night with Mr. Frazier. You see, everything depends on him now. He knows where the boys are, and if I were to anger him or rouse his suspicions in any way he would turn against us. I am sorry he is like that, but he is. I see now that I made a mistake in allowing him to pay such constant attention to me, but I am only a weak girl and couldn\'t help it. You see, at first he offered to take me to places, parties, picnics, and I wanted to go, as any girl would in my place, and that is the way it began. Then he became dictatorial and jealous, and so it went on till—well, you see how it now is. My father is indebted to him and so am I now."

"Surely you haven\'t obligated yourself—" stammered Charles.

"Not in so many words," Mary broke in, "but it amounts to the same thing. He wants me to let him furnish the money to pay Tobe Keith\'s expenses to Atlanta, and I see no other way than to accept his offer. If it goes that far, I shall consent to be his wife. If he saves my brothers from the scaffold I\'ll be his slave for life. Love? I don\'t expect love. What he feels for me is not love, and what I would be giving would not be, either. Love is a dreamlike thing, more of the soul than the body."

"I know what love is now," Charles thought. "I never knew before, but I do now."

The steps of the two men were heard coming from the barn, and Mary went hastily out of the lamplight and into the gloom of the hall.

"Our supper is ready, Albert," Charles heard her say. "Come on before it is cold."

Passing through the dining-room, Charles managed to reach the yard by means of a side door without having to meet Frazier. He found himself standing among some fig-trees and grape-vines in the dewy grass, surrounded by what had been beds of flowers in the day when the place had been well kept. An unshaded window of the dining-room was before him, and through it Charles saw Frazier and Mary approaching the table. The man\'s arm was actually about the girl\'s waist, his coarse lips were close to her pale cheek. He was smiling broadly, and laughing as if over some jest of his own making. Charles would have withdrawn his eyes, but he was held as if spellbound by the tragedy which was being enacted, with him as the sole spectator. Charles noted that Frazier sank heavily into a chair without first seeing that Mary was seated. He saw him take a cigar damp with saliva from the corner of his great mouth and place it on a plate at his side. He saw him reach out and take Mary\'s hand ............