As she walked on Mary was glad that Frazier had been called away before he had asked her whither she was going, for she did not want him to know that she had decided to call at Tobe Keith\'s home and inquire personally about his condition. It struck her as being incongruous that she was already keeping things from the man she might eventually marry. And at this moment various thoughts of Charles fairly besieged her brain. Somehow she could not imagine herself keeping any vital thing from him. How strange, and he such a new friend! She found herself blushing, she knew not why. What was it about the man that appealed to her so strongly? Was it the mystery that constantly enveloped him, and out of which had come such a stream of generous acts, or was it the constant heart-hungry and lonely look of the man who certainly was out of his natural sphere as a common laborer?
Her way took her through the poorest section of the little town. Small houses, some having only two and three rooms each, bordered the rugged, unpaved little streets. Part of the section was known as the "Negro Settlement," and there stood a little steepled church, with green blinds, the walls of which, in default of paint, had received frequent coatings of whitewash at the hands of the swarthy devotees. She had no trouble in finding her way, for she already had a general idea of where the mother of the wounded man lived, and only had to ask as to the particular house.
"Can you tell me where Mr. Keith lives?" she inquired of a little negro boy amusing himself in a swing.
"You mean the man that was kilt?" the child asked, blandly, as he halted himself by thrusting his bare feet down on the ground.
"The man that was—hurt," Mary corrected, shuddering over the way the boy had put his reply.
"De las\' house at the end er de street, on dis yer side. You cayn\'t miss it. Miz\' Keith got grape-vines in \'er front yard, en\' er goat en\' chickens en\' ducks."
She found it without trouble. The house had four small rooms and a crude lean-to shed which served as a kitchen. A slender, thin woman of the lowest class of whites, about fifty years of age, scantily attired in a plain print skirt and a waist of white cotton material, her iron-gray hair plastered down on the sides of her face from a straight part in the middle of her head and drawn to a small doughnut-shaped knot behind, sat in the doorway smoking a clay pipe with a reed stem. As Mary arrived at the little gate, which was kept closed by a rope fastened to a stake and from which hung a brick for a weight, she looked up, drew her coarsely shod feet under her, and took the pipe from her mouth. She must have recognized the visitor, for she contracted her thin brows and allowed a sullen, resentful expression to spread over her wrinkled face and tighten the muscles of her lips.
"May I come in, Mrs. Keith?" Mary asked, holding the gate partly open and dubiously waiting for a response.
The pipe was clutched more firmly and the woman stared straight at her. "You may come in if you want to," was the caustic answer. "We don\'t keep no bitin\' dog. I didn\'t \'low the likes of you would want to come, after what\'s happened, but if you do I can\'t hinder you an\' Tobe hain\'t able to prevent it, nuther."
"Who is it, mother?" came a faint voice from within the house.
"Never mind, sonny, who it is," the old woman called back. "I\'ll tell you after awhile. Remember what the doctor said, that you must not get excited an\' lift your fever."
There was silence in the room behind the grim sentinel at the door, and Mary lowered her voice almost to a whisper.
"Perhaps I\'d better go away, Mrs. Keith," she faltered. "I thought I might see you alone. That\'s why I came. I don\'t want to disturb your son—I wouldn\'t, for all the world. Mrs. Keith, I am unhappy over this, too."
"Huh! I don\'t see nothin\' fer you to be upset over!" sneered the old woman. "Your brothers lit out fer new fields an\' pastures with money to pay expenses with, like all highfalutin folks manage to git, while us pore scrub stock o\' whites has to suffer, like Tobe is thar on his back, unable to move, an\' with barely enough t\' eat except what neighbors send in."
No seat was offered the visitor; the speaker grimly kept her chair, her stiff knees parted for the reception between them of her two gnarled rebellious hands and the clay pipe.
"I came to ask—I had to come," Mary faltered, her sweet face whitened by the rising terrors within her. "I came to see if any arrangements are being made to—to—I understand the doctors advise your son\'s removal to Atlanta, and—"
"They advise anything to shuffle the blame off their own shoulders," blurted out the stubborn woman. "They see they ain\'t able to do nothing, an\' they want my boy to die some\'r\'s else, to save the county the expense of—of—" and she choked down a sob, a dry, alien thing in her scrawny neck. "I don\'t believe he\'ll ever be sent, so I don\'t. Sis Latimer, my cousin, a preacher\'s wife, has traipsed over two counties, tryin\' to raise the four hundred dollars, and now says it can\'t be done. That was the last straw to Tobe. He lay thar, after she left, an\' I heard \'im cryin\' under the sheet, to keep me from hearin\' him. He says he hain\'t got nothin\' ag\'in\' your two brothers now. He says they was all to blame, an\' if they hadn\'t been drunk an\' gamblin\' it wouldn\'t \'a\' happened. Tobe\'s a odd boy—he forgives in a minute; but I hain\'t that way. I know how your brothers felt. They looked on my boy like dirt under their feet because you folks used to own niggers and live so high in your fine house with underlings to run an\' fetch for you at every call. Kenneth Rowland would have thought a second time before pullin\' down on a feller in his own set. Oh, I heard the filthy name he called Tobe, an\' I didn\'t blame my boy for hittin\' him, as they say he did, smack on the jaw. A blow with the bare hand, after a word like that is passed, doesn\'t justify the use of a gun while another feller is pinnin\' a man\'s arms down at his side so he can\'t budge an inch. I\'ll tell you what you may not know, an\' that is that if my boy does die them two whelps will be hunted down and strung up by the neck till they are dead, dead, dead! Thar never was a plainer case o\' murder—cold-blooded murder. They say—folks say your brothers are livin\' like lords in the West on money sent to \'em by rich kin to escape disgrace. The sheriff said so hisse\'f, an\' he ort to know. He\'s jest waitin\' to see what comes o\' Tobe. Your turn an\' your stiff-backed, haughty old daddy\'s is comin\', my fine young lady."
The faint voice was heard protesting from the interior of the house, and Mrs. Keith rose and stalked to the bed on which the wounded man lay. He said something in a low, guarded tone and Mary h............