“Man, but this is none so bad––none so bad.”

Larry Kildene sat on a bench before a roaring fire in the room added on to the fodder shed. The chimney which Harry King had built, although not quite completed to its full height, was being tried for the first time, as the night was too cold for comfort in the long, low shed without fire, and the men had come down early this evening to talk over their plans before Larry should start down the mountain in the morning. They had heaped logs on the women’s fire and seen that all was right for them, and with cheerful good-nights had left them to themselves.

Now, as they sat by their own fire, Harry could see Amalia by hers, seated on a low bench of stone, close to the blazing torch of pine, so placed that its smoke would be drawn up the large chimney. It was all the light they had for their work in the evenings, other than the firelight. He could see her fingers moving rapidly and mechanically at some pretty open-work pattern, and now and then grasping deftly at the ball of fine white thread that seemed to be ever taking little leaps, and trying to roll into the fire, or out over the cabin floor. She used a fine, slender needle and seemed to be performing some delicate magic with her fingers. Was she one of the three fates continually drawing out the thread of his life and weaving 220 therewith a charmed web? And if so––when would she cease?

“It’s a good job and draws well.”

“The chimney? Yes, it seems to.” Harry roused himself and tried to close his mind against the warm, glowing picture. “Yes––yes. It draws well. I’m inclined to be a bit proud, although I never could have done it if you had not given me the lessons.”

“It’s art, my boy. To build a good fireplace is just that. Did you ever think that the whole world––and the welfare of it––centers just around that;––the fireplace and the hearth––or what stands for it in these days––maybe a little hole in the wall with a smudge of coal in it, as they have in the towns––but it’s the hearth and the cradle beside it––and––the mother.”

Larry’s voice died almost to a whisper, and his chin dropped on his breast, and his eyes gazed on the burning logs; and Harry, sitting beside him, gazed also at the same logs, but the pictures wrought in the alchemy of their souls were very different.

To Harry it was a sweet, oval face––a flush from the heat of the fire more on the smooth cheek that was toward it than on the other, and warm flame flashes in the large eyes that looked up at him from time to time, while the slender figure bent a little forward to see the better, as the wonderful hands kept up the never ceasing motion. A white linen cloth spread over her lap cast a clearer, more rosy light under her chin and brought out the strength of it and the delicate curves of it, which Harry longed even to dare to look upon in the rarest stolen intervals, without the clamor and outcry in his heart. It was always the 221 same––the cry of Cain in the wilderness. Would God it might some day cease! What to him might be the hearth fire and the cradle, and the mother, that the big man should dwell on them thus? What had they meant in Larry Kildene’s life, he who had lived for twenty years the life of a hermit, and had forsworn women forever, as he said?

“I tell ye, lad, there’s a thing I would say to you––before I leave, but it’s sore to touch upon.” Harry made a deprecating gesture. “No, it’s best I tell you. I––I’ll come back––never fear––it’s my plan to come back, but in this life you may count on nothing for a surety. I’ve learned that, and to prove it, look at me. I made sure, never would I open my heart again to think on my fellow beings, but as aliens to my life, and I’ve lived it out for twenty years, and thought to hold out to the end. I held the Indians at bay through their superstitions, and they would no more dare to cross my path with hostile intent than they would dare take their chances over that fall above there. Where did I put my pipe? I can’t seem to find things as I did in the cabin.”

“Here it is, sir. I placed that stone further out at the end of the chimney on purpose for it, and in this side I’ve left a hole for your tobacco. I thought I was very clever doing that.”

“And we’d be fine and cozy here in the winter––if it wer’n’t for the women––a––a––now I’m blundering. I’d never turn them out if they lived there the rest of their days. But to have a lad beside me as I might have had––if you’d said, ‘Here it is, father,’ but now, it would have have been music to me. You see, Harry, I forswore the women harder than I did the men, and it’s the longing for 222 the son I held in my arms an hour and then gave up, that has lived in me all these years. The mother––gone––The son I might have had.”

“I can’t say that––to you. I have a curse on me, and it will stay until I have paid for my crime. But I’ll be more to you than sons are to their fathers. I’ll be faithful to you as a dog to his master, and love you more. I’ll live for you even with the curse on me, and if need be, I’ll die for you.”

“It’s enough. I’ll ask you no more. Have you no curiosity to hear what I have to tell you?”

“I have, indeed I have. But it seems I can’t ask it––unless I’m able to return your confidence. To talk of my sorrow only deepens it. It drives me wild.”

“You’ll have it yet to learn, that nothing helps a sorrow that can’t be helped like bearing it. I don’t mean to lie down under it like a dumb beast––but just take it up and bear it. That’s what you’re doing now, and sometime you’ll be able to carry it, and still laugh now and again, when it’s right to laugh––and even jest, on occasion. It’s been done and done well. It’s good for a man to do it. The lass down there at the cabin is doing it––and the mother is not. She’s living in the past. Maybe she can’t help it.”

“When I first came on them out there in the desert, she seemed brave and strong. He was a poor, crippled man, with enormous vitality and a leonine head. The two women adored him and lived only for him, and he never knew it. He lived for an ideal and would have died for it. He did not speak English as well as they. I used to wish I could understand him, for he had a poet’s soul, and eyes like his 223 daughter’s. He seemed to carry some secret with him, and no doubt was followed about the world as he thought he was. Fleeing myself, I could not know, but from things the mother has dropped, they must have seen terrible times together, she and her husband.”

“A wonderful deal of poetry and romance always clung to the names of Poland and Hungary for me. When I was young, our part of the world thrilled at the name of Kosciuszko and Kossuth. I’d give a good deal to know what this man’s secret was. All those old tales of mystery, like ‘The Man with the Iron Mask,’ and stories of noblemen spirited away to Siberia, of men locked for many years in dungeons, like the ‘Prisoner of Chillon,’ which fired the fancy and genius of Byron and sent him to fight for the oppressed, used to fill my dreams.” Larry talked on as if to himself. It seemed as if it were a habit formed when he had only himself with whom to visit, and Harry was interested.

“Now, to almost come upon a man of real ideals and a secret,––and just miss it. I ought to have been out in the world doing some work worth while––with my miserable, broken life––Boy! I knew that man McBride! I knew him for sure. We were in college together. He left Oxford to go to Russia, wild with the spirit of adventure and something more. He was a dreamer––with a practical turn, too. There, no doubt, he met these people. I judge this Manovska must have been in the diplomatic service of Poland, from what Amalia told us. Have you any idea whether that woman sitting there all day long rapt in her own thoughts knows her husband’s secret? Is it a thing any one now living would care to know?”

“Indeed, yes. They lived in terror of the prince who hounded him over the world. The mother trusted no one, but Amalia told me––enough––all she knows herself. I don’t know if the mother has the secret or not, but at least she guesses it. The poor man was trying to live until he could impart his knowledge to the right ones to bring about an upheaval that would astonish the world. It meant revolution, whatever it was. Amalia imagines it was to place a Polish king on the throne of Russia, but she does not know. She told me of stolen records of a Polish descendant of Catherine II of Russia. She thinks they were brought to her father after he came to this country.”

“If he had such knowledge or even thought he had, it was enough to set them on his track all his life; the wonder is that he was let to live at all.”

“The mother never mentioned it, but Amalia told me. We talked more freely out in the desert. That remarkable woman walked at her husband’s side over all the terrible miles to Siberia, and through her he escaped,––and of the horrors of those years she never would speak, even to her daughter. It’s not to be wondered at that her mind is astray. It’s only a wonder that she is for the most part so calm.”

“Well, the grave holds many a mystery, and what a fascination a mystery has for humanity, savage or civilized! I’ve kept the Indians at bay all this time by that means. They fear––they know not what, and the mystery holds them. Now, for ourselves, I leave you for a little while in charge of––the women––and of all my possessions.” Larry, gazing into the blazing logs, smiled. “You may not think so much of them, but it’s not so little now. 225 Talk about lunacy––man, I understand it. I’ve been a lunatic––for––ever since I made a find here in this mountain.”

He paused and mused a while, and Harry’s thoughts dwelt for the time on his own find in the wing of the cabin, where the firewood was stored. The ring and the chest––he had not forgotten them, but by no means would he mention them.

“You may wonder why I should tell you this, but when I’m through, you’ll know. It all came about because of a woman.” Larry Kildene cast a sidelong glance at Harry, and the glance was keen and saw more than the younger man dreamed. “It’s more often so than any other way––almost always because of a woman. Her name may be anything––Mary––Elizabeth,––but, a woman. This one’s name was Katherine. Not like the Katherine of Shakespeare, but the sweetest––the tenderest mother-woman the Lord ever gave to man. I see her there in the fire. I’ve seen her there these many years. Well, she was twin sister to the man who hated me. He hated me––for why, I don’t know––perhaps because he never could influence me. He would make all who cared for him bow before his will.

“When I first saw her, she lived in his home. He was a banker of means,––not wholly of his own getting, but partly so. His father was a man of thrift and saving––anyway, he came to set too much store by money. Sometimes I think he might have been jealous of me because I had the Oxford training, and wished me to feel that wealth was a greater thing to have. Scotchmen think more of education than we of Ireland. It’s a good thing, of course, 226 but I’d never have looked down on him because he went lacking it. But for some indiscretion maybe I would have had money, too. It was spent too lavishly on me in my youth. But no. I had none––only the experience and the knowledge of what it might bring.

“Well, it came about that I came to America to gain the money I lacked, and having learned a bit, in spite of Oxford and the schools, of a practical nature, I took a position in his bank. All was very well until I met her. Now there were the rosy cheeks and the dark hair for you! She looked more like an Irish lass than a Scotch one. But they’re not so different, only that the Irish are for the most part comelier.

“Now this banker had a very sweet wife, and she was kind to the Irish lad and welcomed him to her house. I’m thinking she liked me a bit––I liked her at all events. She welcomed me to her house until she was forbid. It was after they forbid me the house that I took to walking with Katherine, when all thought she was at Sunday School or visiting a neighbor, or even––at the last––when no other time could be stolen––when they thought her in bed. We walked there by the river that flows by the town of Leauvite.”

Again Larry Kildene paused and shot a swift glance at the young man at his side, and noted the drawn lids and blanched face, but he kept on. “In the moonlight we walked––lad––the ground there is holy now, because she walked upon it. We used to go to a high bluff that made a sheer fall to the river below––and there we used to stand and tell each other––things we dreamed––of the life we should live together––Ah, that life! She has spent it in 227 heaven. I––I––have spent the most of it here.” He did not look at Harry King again. His voice shook, but he continued. “After a time her brother got to know about it, and he turned me from the bank, and sent her to live with his father’s sisters in Scotland.

“Kind old ladies, but unmarried, and too old for such a lass. How could they know the heart of a girl who loved a man? It was I who knew that. What did her brother know––her own twin brother? Nothing, because he could see only his own thoughts, never hers, and thought his thoughts were enough for wife or girl. I tell you, lad, men err greatly in that, and right there many of the troubles of life step in. The old man, her father, had left all his money to his son, but with the injunction that she was to be provided for, all her days, of his bounty. It’s a mean way to treat a woman––because––see? She has no right to her thoughts, and her heart is his to dispose of where he wills––not as she wills––and then comes the trouble.

“I ask you, lad, if you loved a girl as fine as silk and as tender as a flower you could crush in your hand with a touch ungentle, and you saw one holding her with that sort of a touch,––even if it was meant in love,––I’ll not be unjust, he loved her as few love their sisters––but he could not grasp her thus; I ask you what would you do?”

“If I were a true man, and had a right to my manhood, I would take her. I’d follow her to the ends of the earth.”

“Right, my son––I did that. I took the little money I had from my labor at the bank––all I had saved, and I went bravely to those two old women––her aunts, and they turned me from their door. It was what they had been enjoined to do. They said I was after the money and 228 without conscience or thrift. With the Scotch, often, the confusion is natural between thrift and conscience. Ah, don’t I know! If a man is prosperous, he may hold out his hand to a maid and say ‘Come,’ and all her relatives will cry ‘Go,’ and the marriage bells will ring. If he is a happy Irishman with a shrunken purse, let his heart be loving and true and open as the day, they will spurn him forth. For food and raiment will they sell a soul, and for household gear will they clip the wings of the little god, and set him out in the cold.

“But the arrow had entered Katherine’s heart, and I knew and bided my time. They saw no more of me, but I knew all her goings and comings. I found her one day on the moor, with her collie, and her cheeks had lost their color, and her gray eyes looked in my face with their tears held back, like twin lakes under a cloud before a storm falls. I took her in my arms, and we kissed. The collie looked on and wagged his tail. It was all the approval we ever got from the family, but he was a knowing dog.

“Well, then we walked hand in hand to a village, and it was near nightfall, and we went straight to a magistrate and were married. I had a little coin with me, and we stayed all night at an inn. There was a great hurrying and scurrying all night over the moors for her, but we knew naught of it, for we lay sleeping in each other’s arms as care free and happy as birds. If she wept a little, I comforted her. In the morning we went to the great house where the aunts lived in the town, and there, with her hand in mine, I told them, and the storm broke. It was the disgrace of having been married clandestinely by a magistrate that cut them most to the heart; and yet, what did they 229 think a man would do? And they cried upon her: ‘We trusted you. We trusted you.’ And all the reply she made was: ‘You thought I’d never dare, but I love him.’ Yes, love makes a woman’s heart strong.

“Well, then, nothing would do, but they must have in the minister and see us properly married. After that we stayed never a night in their house, but I took her to Ireland to my grandfather’s home. It was a terrible year in Ireland, for the poverty was great, and while my grandfather was well-to-do, as far as that means in Ireland, it was very little they had that year for helping the poor.” Larry Kildene glanced no more at Harry King, but looked only in the fire, where the logs had fallen in a glowing heap. His pipe was out, but he still held it in his hand.

“It was little I could do. I had my education, and could repeat poems and read Latin, but that would not feed hungry peasant children. I went out on the land and labored with the men, and gave of my little patrimony to keep the old folks, but it was too small for them all, so at last I yielded to Katherine’s importunities, and she wrote to her brother for help––not for her and me, mind you.

“It was for the poor in Ireland she wrote, and she let me read it. It was a sweet letter, asking forgiveness for her willfulness, yet saying she must even do the same thing again if it were to do over again. She pleaded only for the starving in the name of Christ. She asked only if a little of that portion which should be hers might be sent her, and that because he was her only brother and twin, and like part of her very self––she turned it so lovingly––I never could tell you with what skill––but she had the way––yes. But what did it bring?

“He was a canny, canny Scot, although brought up in America. Only for the times when his mother would take him back to Aberdeen with my Katherine for long visits, he never saw Scotland, but what’s in the blood holds fast through life. He was a canny Scot. It takes a time for letters to go and come, and in those days longer than now, when in two weeks one may reach the other side. The reply came as speedily as those days would admit, and it was carefully considered. Ah, Peter was a clever man to bring about his own way. Never a word did he say about forgiveness. It was as if no breach had ever been, but one thing I noticed that she thought must be only an omission, because of the more important things that crowded it out. It was that never once did he mention me any more than if I had never existed. He said he would send her a certain sum of money––and it was a generous one, that is but just to admit––if when she received it she would take another sum, which he would also send, and return to them. He said his home was hers forever if she wished, and that he loved her, and had never had other feeling for her than love. Upon this letter came a long time of pleading with me––and I was ever soft––with her. She won her way.

“‘We will both go, Larry, dear,’ she said. ‘I know he forgot to say you might come, too. If he loves me as he says, he would not break my heart by leaving you out.’

“‘He sends only enough for one––for you,’ I said.

“‘Yes, but he thinks you have enough to come by yourself. He thinks you would not accept it––and would not insult you by sending more.’

“‘He insults me by sending enough for you, dear. If I 231 have it for me, I have it for you––most of all for you, or I’m no true man. If I have none for you––then we have none.’

“‘Larry, for love of me, let me go––for the gulf between my twin brother and me will never be passed until I go to him.’ And this was true enough. ‘I will make them love you. Hester loves you now. She will help me.’ Hester was the sweet wife of her brother. So she clung to me, and her hands touched me and caressed me––lad, I feel them now. I put her on the boat, and the money he sent relieved the suffering around me, and I gave thanks with a sore heart. It was for them, our own peasantry, and for her, I parted with her then, but as soon as I could I sold my little holding near my grandfather’s house to an Englishman who had long wanted it, and when it was parted with, I took the money and delayed not a day to follow her.

“I wrote to her, telling her when and where to meet me in the little town of Leauvite, and it was on the bluff over the river. I went to a home I knew there––where they thought well of me––I think. In the evening I walked up the long path, and there under the oak trees at the top where we had been used to sit, I waited. She came to me, walking in the golden light. It was spring. The whip-poor-wills called and replied to each other from the woods. A mourning dove spoke to its mate among the thick trees, low and sad, but it is only their way. I was glad, and so were they.

“I held her in my arms, and the river sang to us. She told me all over again the love in her heart for me, as she used to tell it. Lad! There is only one theme in the world that is worth telling. There is only one song in the 232 universe that is worth singing, and when your heart has once sung it aright, you will never sing another. The air was soft and sweet around us, and we stayed until a town clock struck twelve; then I took her back, and, as she was not strong, part of the way I carried her in my arms. I left her at her brother’s door, and she went into the shadows there, and I was left outside,––all but my heart. She had been home so short a time––her brother was not yet reconciled, but she said she knew he would be. For me, I vowed I would make money enough to give her a home that would shame him for the poverty of his own––his, which he thought the finest in the town.”

For a long time there was silence, and Larry Kildene sat with his head drooped on his breast. At last he took up the thread where he had left it. “Two days later I stood in the heavy parlor of that house,––I stood there with their old portraits looking down on me, and my heart was filled with ice––ice and fire. I took what they placed in my arms, and it was––my––little son, but it might have been a stone. It weighed like lead in my arms, that ached with its weight. Might I see her? No. Was she gone? Yes. I laid the weight on the pillow held out to me for it, and turned away. Then Hester came and laid her hand on my arm, but my flesh was numb. I could not feel her touch.

“‘Give him to me, Larry,’ she was saying. ‘I will love him like my own, and he will be a brother to my little son.’ And I gave him into her arms, although I knew even then that he would be brought up to know nothing of his father, as if I had never lived. I gave him into her arms because he had no mother and his father’s heart had gone out of him. I gave him into her arms, because I felt it was all I 233 could do to let his mother have the comfort of knowing that he was not adrift with me––if they do know where she is. For her sake most of all and for the lad’s sake I left him there.

“Then I knocked about the world a while, and back in Ireland I could not stay, for the haunting thought of her. I could bide nowhere. Then the thought took me that I would get money and take my boy back. A longing for him grew in my heart, and it was all the thought I had, but until I had money I would not return. I went to find a mine of gold. Men were flying West to become rich through the finding of mines of gold, and I joined them. I tried to reach a spot that has since been named Higgins’ Camp, for there it was rumored that gold was to be found in plenty, and missed it. I came here, and here I stayed.”

Now the big man rose to his feet, and looked down on the younger one. He looked kindly. Then, as if seized and shaken by a torrent of impulses which he was trying to hold in check, he spoke tremulously and in suppressed tones.

“I longed for my son, but I tell you this, because there is a strange thing which grasps a man’s soul when he finds gold––as I found it. I came to love it for its own sake. I lived here and stored it up––until I am rich––you may not find many men so rich. I could go back and buy that bank that was Peter Craigmile’s pride––” His voice rose, but he again suppressed it. “I could buy that pitiful little bank a hundred times over. And she––is––gone. I tried to keep her and the remembrance of her in my mind above the gold, but it was like a lunacy upon me. At the last––until I found you there on the verge of death––the gold was always first in my mind, and the triumph of having 234 it. I came to glory in it, and I worked day after day, and often in the night by torches, and all I gathered I hid, and when I was too weary to work, I sat and handled it and felt it fall through my fingers.

“A woman in England––Miss Evans, by name, only she writes under the name of a man, George Eliot––has written a tale of a poor weaver who came to love his little horde of gold as if it were alive and human. It’s a strong tale, that. A good one. Well, I came to understand what the poor little weaver felt. Summer and winter, day and night, week days and Sundays––and I was brought up to keep the Sunday like a Christian should––all were the same to me, just one long period for the getting together of gold. After a time I even forgot what I wanted the gold for in the first place, and thought only of getting it, more and more and more.

“This is a confession, lad. I tremble to think what would have been on my soul had I done what I first thought of doing when that horse of yours called me. He was calling for you––no doubt, but the call came from heaven itself for me, and the temptation came. It was, to stay where I was and know nothing. I might have done that, too, if it were not for the selfish reasons that flashed through my mind, even as the temptation seized it. It was that there might be those below who were climbing to my home––to find me out and take from me my gold. I knew there were prospectors all over, seeking for what I had found, and how could I dare stay in my cabin and be traced by a stray horse wandering to my door? Three coldblooded, selfish murders would now be resting on my soul. It’s no use for a man to shut his eyes and say ‘I didn’t 235 know.’ It’s his business to know. When you speak of the ‘Curse of Cain,’ think what I might be bearing now, and remember, if a man repents of his act, there’s mercy for him. So I was taught, and so I believe.

“When I looked in your face, lying there in my bunk, then I knew that mercy had been shown me, and for this, here is the thing I mean to do. It is to show my gold and the mine from which it came to you––”

“No, no! I can’t bear it. I must not know.” Harry King threw up his hands as if in fright and rose, trembling in every limb.

“Man, what ails you?”

“Don’t. Don’t put temptation in my way that I may not be strong enough to resist.”

“I say, what ails you? It’s a good thing, rightly used. It may help you to a way out of your trouble. If I never return––I will, mind you,––but we never know––if not, my life will surely not have been spent for naught. You, now, are all I have on earth besides the gold. It was to have been my son’s, and it is yours. It might as well have been left in the heart of the mountain, else.”

“Better. The longer I think on it, the more I see that there is no hope for me, no true repentance,––” Again that expression on Harry King’s face filled Larry’s heart with deep pity. An inward terror seemed to convulse his features and throw a pallor as of age and years of sorrow into his visage. Then he continued, after a moment of self-mastery: “No true repentance for me but to go back and take the punishment. For this winter I will live here in peace, and do for Madam Manovska and her daughter what I can, and anything I can do for you,––then I must 236 return and give myself up. The gold only holds out a worldly hope to me, and makes what I must do seem harder. I am afraid of it.”

“I’ll make you a promise that if I return I’ll not let you have it, but that it shall be turned to some good work. If I do not return, it will rest on your conscience that before you make your confession, you shall see it well placed for a charity. You’ll have to find the charity, I can’t say what it should be offhand now, but come with me. I must tell some man living my secret, and you’re the only one. Besides––I trust you. Surely I do.”