A few days later Mary left on horseback immediately after breakfast. From Rowland, Charles learned that she was going to see certain persons who owned near-by farms, with the hope of borrowing money for the removal of the wounded man to Atlanta and for his treatment there by the famous surgeon, Doctor Elliot.

Charles was at work, hoeing corn, when from the thicket bordering the field Kenneth and Martin stealthily emerged and joined him, having crept around from the barn.

"It is all right," Kenneth said, with an assuring smile. "Nobody is in sight on the road for a mile either way. We can dodge back any minute at the slightest sound. It\'s hell, Brown, to stay there like a pig being fattened for the killing. This is monotonous, I tell you. I can\'t stand it very long. That man must get to Atlanta. Mary is off this morning to borrow cash for it. Our credit is gone. Nobody will indorse for the old man but Albert Frazier, and I think his name is none too good here lately."

"He will get the money for sister, see if he doesn\'t," Martin spoke up, plaintively. "She is trying to keep him from it, though; that\'s why she went off this morning. She doesn\'t care for him—she doesn\'t—she doesn\'t! She knows what he is. She couldn\'t love a man like that. I hate him. He claims to be helping us, and he is, I reckon, but he has an object in view, and I\'d die rather than have him gain it."

"No, I don\'t want her to marry him, either." Kenneth\'s voice had a touch of genuine manliness in it which Charles noticed for the first time. Moreover, his face was very grave. He shrugged his shoulders and flushed slightly as he went on. "I\'ve been watching you, Brown. Having nothing else to do all day long, I\'ve watched you at your work and seen you come and go from the field to the house and back. I envy you. To tell you the God\'s truth, I\'m sick and tired of the way I\'ve been living. They say I am responsible for Martin being in this mess, too. I reckon I am, and I know I am the cause of sister\'s worry and the disgrace of all this on the family. They say an honest confession is good for the soul, and I say to you that if this damned thing passes over I\'m going to take a different course. I see the pleasure you get out of working, and I am going to work. The other thing is not what it is cracked up to be."

Kenneth\'s voice had grown husky, and he cleared his throat and coughed; the light of shame still shone in his eyes.

"He means it," Martin said, throwing his arm about his brother and leaning on him affectionately. "Last night when he found me awake he came over to my corner and sat down and talked. He said he\'d got so he couldn\'t sleep sound, either. It was wonderful the way he talked, Mr. Brown. I didn\'t know Ken was like that. He talked about mother and about sister\'s brave fight against so many odds—and, may I tell him, Ken? You know what I mean."

"I don\'t care what you say," Kenneth answered. He was seated on the ground, his eyes resting on the gray roof of the house which could be seen above the trees, outlined against the blue sky and drifting white clouds. "I\'m not ashamed of anything I said."

"Why, he said," Martin went on, "that he admired you more than any man he had ever run across. He said what you told him about how you used to drink and gamble—when you could have kept it to yourself—and how you had quit it all and put it behind you because it was the sensible thing to do—Ken said that was the strongest argument he had ever heard, and that he liked you because you ............