ON this same night certain things were happening at Ralph Rundel's cottage. The hour was late. Paul, who was suddenly roused from the profound slumber of a tired toiler, was sure of this, though he had no means of ascertaining the exact time.

“Don't you dare hit 'er, Rafe Rundel, don't you—don't you, I say!” was the cry which at first seemed to the boy to be a part of a confused dream, and which resolved itself into distinct utterance as his eyes and ears gradually opened.

“I wasn't tryin' to hit 'er, Mandy, an' you know it.” It was Ralph Rundel's despondent and yet accusing voice which broke the pale stillness of the night. “I just want 'er to tell me the plain, unvarnished truth, an' she's got to! She cayn't be a wife o' mine an' carry on like that, an' do it underhand. I want to know if they met by agreement. I was on the hill an' saw Jeff waitin' at the creek ford. He had no business thar, an' stood behind the bushes, an' kept peepin' at our house till she come out an' went down to 'im. Then they walked to the spring an' set for a good hour, Jeff bent toward 'er, an' she was a-listenin' close, an' a-lookin' toward the house every minute like she was afeard somebody would come.”

It was Amanda Wilks who now spoke as the startled boy put his feet on the floor and sat on the bed, grimly alert.

“Looks like Rafe is axin' a reasonable enough question, Addie,” she was heard to say. “At least it seems so to me, an' I know I am tryin' to be fair to both sides, so I am.”

“It is fair,” Ralph passionately supplemented, “an' if she is honest an' wants to do right she will talk straight an' be as open as day. As my wife the law gives me the right to—”

“Law? What's law amount to when a woman's plumb miserable?” Mrs. Rundel said, in a low, rebellious tone, and Paul heard her bare feet thump on the floor as she flounced about the room. “I hate you. I've hated you all along. I can't remember when I didn't hate you. No livin' woman with any refined feelin's could help it. I want liberty, that's all. I won't have you prowlin' about in the woods and watchin' me like a hawk every time a neighbor speaks decent to me. Lemme tell you some'n; you'd better never let Jeff Warren know you make charges ag'in' me like you are a-doin'. He'd thrash you 'in an inch o' your life, if you are married to me. I'll not tell you why I happened to go down to the spring. That's my business.”

Paul heard his father utter a low, despairing groan as he left the room and stalked through the corridor and out at the front door. Going to the window, the boy looked out just as Ralph turned the corner and paused in the moonlight, his ghastly profile as clear-cut as if it had been carved in stone. Paul saw him raise his stiff arms to the sky, and heard him muttering unintelligible words. The window-sash was up, the sill low to the ground, and dressed only in his night-shirt, the boy passed through the opening and stood on the dewy grass.

There he paused a moment, for he heard his aunt speaking to her sister admonishingly: “Rafe's jest got a man's natural pride an' jealousy. You know folks in a out-o'-the-way settlement like this will talk, an'—”

“Well, let 'em talk! Let 'em talk! Let 'em talk!” the wife retorted, fiercely. “I don't care what they say. I won't be a bound slave to Rafe Rundel if I did marry 'im. I'm entitled to my natural likes and dislikes the same now as I ever was. No woman alive could care for a man hawkin' an' spittin' an' coughin' about the house, with water in his eyes—sneezin' an' snifflin' an' groanin', as peevish as a spoilt child, an' wantin' to know every single minute where I am and what I am doin'. I'm finished with 'im, I tell you—I'm plumb finished with 'im, an' he knows it. Yes, he knows it, an' that's why he was in sech a tantrum just now, pullin' my bedclothes off, shakin' his fist like a crazy fool, an' stormin' around in the dead o' night.”

The pacific voice of Amanda Wilks here broke in; but Paul did not wait to hear what she was saying, for his father, with bowed and shaking form, was tottering away in the moonlight toward the cow-lot. Ralph reached the rail fence, and with an audible moan he bent his head upon it. Paul's feet fell noiselessly on the dewy grass as he crept toward him. Reaching him he touched him on the shoulder.

“Father,” Paul said, softly, “what's the matter? Are you sick?”

Slowly Ralph Rundel raised his head and stared at his son, but he said nothing. His tattered nightshirt was carelessly stuffed under the waistband of his gaping trousers, which were supported by a single suspender over his shoulder. The other suspender hung in a loop over his hip. His grizzled head was bare, as were his attenuated feet. He continued to stare, as if he had no memory of the speaker's face, his lip hanging loose, quivering, and dripping with saliva. The damp, greenish pallor of death itself was on him, and it gleamed like phosphorus in the rays of the moon. A tremulous groan passed out from his low chest, and his head sank to the fence again.

“Father, father, don't you know me? Paul! Don't you know me?” The boy touched the gray head; he shook it persuasively, and it rocked like a mechanical tiling perfectly poised. The man's knees bent, quivered, and then straightened up again.

“Father, father, it's me—Paul!—your son! What's the matter?”

Ralph turned his face slowly to one side.

“Oh, it's you!—my boy! my boy! I thought—” He looked about the cow-lot vacantly, and then fixed his all but glazed eyes on his son's face, and said: “You go back to bed, my boy; you can't do me no good—nobody on earth can. I'm done for. I feel it all over me like the sweat o' death.”

“Father, tell me”—Paul stood erect, his head thrown back, and his young voice rang sharply on the still air—“do you believe that dirty whelp—” There was an insane glare in Rundel's watery eyes, and his head rocked back and forth again.

“He's after your ma, Paul.” Ralph emitted another groan. “He's took with 'er purty face, an' has set in to make a plumb fool of 'er, and make 'er hate me. He's the kind o' devil that won't pick and choose for hisself, like an honest man, out in the open among free gals an' women, but thinks that nothin' ain't as good as another man's holdin's. He thinks he is sorry fer 'er because she's tied to a sick man; but it hain't that—it's the devil in 'im!”

The boy laid his arm on his father's shoulders; his lips moved, but no sound issued; his face was rigid and white.

“I ain't talkin' without grounds.” Ralph's faint voice trailed away on its wave of agony. “Friends have come to me an' reported the doin's of the two at singin'. He fetches her a bunch of flowers every day, an' they set an' sing out o' the same book with the'r heads plumped together. He walks mighty nigh all the way home with her through the woods, an' sneaks off as soon as they git in sight o' the house. He makes all manner o' fun o' me—tellin' folks, so I've been told, that I can't last long, an' that she never knowed what rale healthy love was nohow.”

Paul's hand was now on his father's head, and he was gently stroking the long, thick hair, though his eyes were blazing, his breast heaving, as from an inner tempest.

Ralph turned and looked toward the house. The light was out now, and there was no sound.

“I reckon she's gone back to sleep,” Ralph wailed, bitterly. “What does she care how I feel? She could have no idea, you couldn't neither, Paul, fur you are too young. But maybe some day you will know the awful, awful sting o' havin' the world look on in scorn, while a big strappin' brute of a daredevil an' the mother o' yore child—oh, my God! I can't stand it—I jest can't! I'd die a million deaths rather than—it's in the Rundel blood, I reckon, planted thar deep by generations an' generations o' proud folks. I'm goin' to kill 'im, Paul. I don't know when or how, exactly, but it's got to be done, if God will only give me the strength. It won't be no sin; it couldn't be; it would be just wipin' out one o' the slimy vipers o' life.”

“If you don't, I will, father. I swear it here an' now,” the boy solemnly vowed, removing his hand from the cold brow and looking off in the mystical light which lay over the fields.

“Huh, we won't both have to do it!” Ralph spoke as if half dreaming, certainly not realizing his son's frame of mind. “It never would be any satisfaction to have it said that it took two of us to fix 'im, even if he is rated high on his fightin' record. No, that's my job; you keep clean out of it!”

“Come to my bed, father.” Paul caught his arm and drew him gently from the fence. “You are shakin' from head to foot; your teeth are chatterin', an' you are cold through an' through.”

Ralph allowed himself to be led along; now and then he would stumble over a tuft of grass, as if he had lost the power of lifting his feet. Once he paused, threw his arms about his son's shoulder, and said, almost in fright, as he bore down heavily:

“I feel odd, powerful odd. I feel cold clean through to my insides, like my entrails was turnin' to rock. I can hardly git my breath. I don't seem to—to send it clean down. It stops in my chest like, an' I am all of a quiver, an' weak, an' dizzy-like. I can't see a yard ahead of me.”

“You'll feel better when you are in bed,” Paul said, soothingly, and he led his father on to the quiet, house and into his room. He undressed him, wiped the dew from his numb, bloodless feet on a towel, and made him lie down.

“I feel drowsy,” Ralph sighed. “Everything is in a sort of dreamy jumble. I hardly remember what me'n you was—was talkin' about. I'm weak. I've been so bothered that I hain't eat much in several days.”

Presently Paul saw that he was asleep, and lay down beside the still form. After a while he, too, fell into slumber, and the remainder of the night crept along.

The first hint of dawn was announced by the crowing of cocks, the far and near barking of dogs, the grunting of pigs, the chirping of early birds, as they flew about in the dewy branches of the trees. Paul waked and went to his window and looked out. The gray light of a new day lay like an aura on the brow of the mountain. The recollection of what had taken place in the night flashed upon him with startling freshness. He recalled Jeff Warren's visage, his mother in her dainty dress, ribbons and flowers, and his blood began to throb and boil. In a storm of hot pity he glanced toward his father, who in the dark corner lay as still as the cracked plastering, against which his grim profile was cast. Suddenly Paul had a great fear; he held his breath to listen, and strained his eyes to pierce the shadows. Was Ralph Rundel breathing? Did ever living man lie so still, so silent? Paul went to the bed, drew down the sheet, and bent over the face. Eyes and mouth open—Ralph was dead. Paul shook him gently and called to him, but there was no response. The body was still slightly warm, but fast growing stiff.

Quickly dressing, Paul went across the corridor and knocked on the door of his aunt's room.

“What is it now? Oh, what do you want now?” Amanda called out, in drowsy impatience. “You've kept me awake nearly all night with your fussin', an' jest as I am gittin' my fust bit o' rest—”

“Aunt Manda, you'd better come—” Paul's voice faltered and broke. “You'd better come see if you think—”

“What is it? Oh, what is it now?” He heard her feet strike the floor and the loose planks creak as she groped her way to the door, which she unlocked and drew open. “It ain't nigh day.” She cast inquiring eyes toward the yard. “What's got into you wantin' breakfast earlier an' earlier every mornin' you live?”

Paul swallowed a lump in his throat, mutely jerked his head toward his room. “I think—I think father's dead,” he said, simply.

“Dead? Dead?” the woman gasped, incredulously. She stared blankly at her nephew, and then, holding her unbuttoned nightgown at the neck, she strode across the corridor into Paul's room. He followed to the threshold, and dumbly watched her as she made a quick examination of the body. She drew herself up, uttered a little scream, and came to him wringing her hands.

“Oh, God will punish us!” she said. “The Almighty will throw a blight on this house! He's gone, an' his last words was a curse on your ma, an' on me for spoilin' 'er. O God—God, have mercy! An' he went with revenge in his heart an' hate in his soul. Oh, Rafe's gone—Rafe's gone!”

Amanda stood leaning against the wall moaning and ejaculating bits of prayers. The door of Mrs. Rundel's room opened, and with her hair rolled up in bits of paper she peered out.

“What is it?” she inquired, peevishly. “What's the matter? Gone? Did you say he was gone? What if he has gone? He's been threatening to leave all summer. He'll be back. You can count on that. He knows a good thing when he sees it, and he'll lie around here till he dies of old age or dries up an' is blown away.”

“No, he won't be back!” Paul strode to her and stood coldly staring at her. “He's dead. He died of a broken heart, an' you done it—you an' Jeff Warren between you.”

“Dead—dead, you say?” And, as if to make sure, Mrs. Rundel stalked stiffly across the corridor to Ralph's body and bent over it. They saw her raise one of the limp hands and pass her own over the pallid brow. Then, without a word, she drew herself erect and came back to her son and sister. Her face was white and rigid; the coming wrinkles in her cheeks and about her mouth seemed deeper than ever before. She faced Paul, a blended expression of fear and dogged defiance in her eyes.

“Don't you ever dare to—to talk to me like you did just now,” she said, fiercely. “I won't stand it. You are too young a boy to dictate to me.”

“I may be that,” he snarled, “but I'll dictate to somebody else if I'm hung for it. You hear me—if I'm hung for it!”

She shrank under this bitter onslaught. She seemed to waver a moment, then she went into her room, lighted her candle, and began to dress.

Her sister followed and stood beside her. “Don't take on,” Amanda said. “Don't go an' fancy it is yore fault. Paul is out o' his head with grief an' don't know what he's sayin'. Rafe was a sick, dyin' man, anyway; his mind was unhinged; that was plain by the way he suspicioned you. Now, I'll git breakfast an' attend to everything; don't set in to cryin' an' make yourself sick; what is done is done, an' can't be helped.”