"Eejit! My son John! Whip ary man in Jackson County! Whoop! Come along! Who'll fight old Eph Adamson?"

The populace of Spring Valley, largely assembled in the shade of the awnings which served as shelter against an ardent June sun, remained cold to the foregoing challenge. It had been repeated more than once by a stout, middle-aged man in shirt sleeves and a bent straw hat, who still turned a truculent gaze this side and that, taking in the straggling buildings which lined the public square—a quadrangle which had for its center the brick courthouse, surrounded by a plat of scorched and faded greensward. At his side walked a taller though younger man, grinning amiably.

The audience remained indifferent, although the challenger now shifted his position to the next path leading out to a street entrance; and repeated this until he had quite traversed the square. Only, at the farther corner back of him, a woman paused as she entered the courthouse inclosure—paused and turned back as she caught sight of the challenger and heard his raucous summons, although evidently she had been hurrying upon some errand.

Ephraim Adamson walked hither and thither, his muscular arms now bared to the elbows; and at his side stalked his stalwart son, who now and then beat his fists together, and cracked his knuckles with a vehemence like that of pistol shots. But none paid great attention to either of the Adamsons. Indeed, the eyes of most now were following the comely figure of this woman, as usually was the case when she appeared.

"Take her now, right how she is," said one of the sidewalk philosophers, "and you got to admit yonder's the handsomest woman in this town, and has been for twenty years." He nodded to where she stood, hesitating.

That she was a tallish woman, of less than middle age and of good figure, was perceptible even at some distance as she finally advanced. She was well clad enough, and with a certain grace and trimness in her appointings—indeed seemed smart in a quiet and unobtrusive way—very neat as to hands and feet, and trim as to the small turban which served now as her only defense against the heat of the summer sun.

"'Rory Lane," said one languid citizen to another, as they sat on comfortable boxes in front of the leading grocery store. "Wonder where she's goin', this time of day? Anyhow, she runs into Old Man Adamson on his regular weekly spree. He wants to fight, as usual, him and his half-wit boy. It's a shame."

"But they kin do it," responded the other ruminatingly. "It's got so lately, every Saturday afternoon regular, him and his half-wit yonder stands off the whole town. No man wants to fight a eejit—it ain't proper."

"Some has," remarked the first citizen thoughtfully.

"Well, anyways, old Joel Tarbush, the town marshal, had ought to look after such things. There he sets now, over yonder under the awnings in front of the Golden Eagle, and he sees them two plain enough."

His crony only chuckled. "Reckon Old Man Tarbush knows when he's well off," was his sententious reply.

The first speaker again pointed a thumb toward the courthouse grounds, where the woman now was crossing toward the street. She was walking rapidly, apparently anxious to escape the notice of the two men in the yard, and intent on her purpose, as though she feared being late at some appointment. The younger and taller was hastening toward her, but shrinking from him she hurried on across through the turnstile, and out into the street. She advanced with a nod here and there to those whom she met along the street front, but she showed no effusiveness, and did not pause to talk with anyone, although all seemed to know her. Some women smiled at her faintly. Some men smiled at her also—after she had passed. All talked of her, sometimes nodding, head to head.

The woman so frankly discussed presently disappeared around the corner of the street which led down to the railway station, a half-mile distant. And now could be heard the rumble of the town "bus," bringing in its tribute from the train to the solitary hotel.

"Huh!" said one of these twain, "'Rory was too late, like enough, if she was plannin' to meet Number Four, fer any reason. Here comes the bus a'ready."

Aurora Lane had indeed been too late to meet the train, but not too late to attain the purpose of her hurried walk. A moment later the two watchers on the sidewalk, and all the other Saturday loafers, saw her emerge again from the street that led up from the railway station.

She was not alone now. A young man had spied her from his place in the hotel bus, and, whether in answer to a signal from her, or wholly of his own notion—regarding which there was later discussion by the two gossips above mentioned—had sprung out to join her on the street.

He walked by her side now, holding her by the arm, patting her shoulder, talking to her volubly, excitedly, all the time—a tall young man in modern garb; a young man with good shoulders and a strong and easy stride. His face seemed flushed with eagerness and happiness. His hat, pushed back on his brow, showed the short curling auburn hair, strong and dense above the brown cheeks. Those who were close might have seen the kindly, frank and direct gaze of his open blue eyes.

A certain aloof distinction seemed to cling about the young man also as he advanced now, laughing and bubbling over with very joy of life and eagerness at greeting this woman at his side—this woman whose face suddenly was glorified with a light none ever had seen it bear before. Why not? It was his mother—Aurora Lane, the best known woman of Spring Valley, and the woman with least reputation.

The two passed directly into the center of the town's affairs, and yet they seemed apart in some strange way. They met greetings, but the greetings were vague, curious. No one knew this young man.

"Huh!" exclaimed one of the two town critics once more. "There they go. Pretty sight, ain't it! Who's he?"

Old Silas Kneebone leaned to his friend, Aaron Craybill, on the adjacent store box. "Taller'n she is, and got red hair, too, like hers. I wonder—but law!—No, good law! No! It kain't be. She ain't nobody's wife, and never was."

"But there they go, walking through the streets in broad daylight, as bold as you please," commented his crony.

"I dunno as I'd call her bold, neither," rejoined Silas. "'Rory Lane, she's kept up her head all these years, and I must say she's minded her own business. Everybody knows, these twenty years, she had a baby, and that the baby died; but that's about all anybody ever did know. The baby's dad, if it had one, has hid damned well—the man nor the woman neither don't live in this town that can even guess who he was. But who's this young feller? Some relative o' hern from somewheres, like enough—reckon she must 'a' been goin' down to the train to meet him. Never told nobody, and just like her not to. She sure is close-mouthed. They're going on over towards her place, seems like," he continued. "Say, don't she look proud? Seems like she's glad over something. But why—that's what I want to know—why?"

The two persons thus in the public eye of Spring Valley by this time had come again to the corner of the courthouse inclosure, and apparently purposed to pass diagonally through the courthouse yard. Now and again the young man turned in friendly fashion to the onlookers, none of whom he knew, but whom he fancied to be acquaintances of his companion. He himself was altogether a stranger in the town. He felt a chill at the curious stares, the silent half smiles he encountered, but attributed that to bucolic reticence, so shrugged his shoulders and turned to Aurora Lane. Had any at that time heard his speech, they surely must have felt yet more surprise.

"Mom!" said he. "Mother! I've got a mother, after all—and such a splendid one! I can't believe it at all—it must all be a dream. To be an orphan all my life—and then to get word that I'm not—that I've a mother, after all—and you! Why, I'd have known you anyhow, I'm sure, if I'd never seen you, even from the picture I had. It was when you were a girl. But you've not changed—you couldn't. And it's you who've been my mother all the time. It's fine to be home with you at last. So this is the town where you have lived—that I've never seen. And here are all your friends?"

"Yes, Don," said she, "all I have, pretty much." Aurora Lane's speaking voice was of extraordinary sweetness.

"Well, you have lived here all your life."

"Yes," she smiled.

"And they all know you."

"Oh, yes," noncommittally. "It was too bad you had to be away from me, Don, boy. You seem like a stranger to me—I can't realize you are here, that you are my own boy, DieudonnÉ! I'm afraid of you—I don't know you—and I'm so proud and frightened, so surprised, so glad—why, I don't know what to do. But I'd have known you anywhere—I did know you. You're just as I've always dreamed of you—and I'm glad—I'm so very glad!"

"Mom! I loved your little picture, but I never knew how much I loved you till now—why—you're my mother! My mother! And I've never seen you—I've never known you—till right now. You're a ripper, that's what you are!

"And is that where you live, over yonder?" he added quickly, to conceal the catch in his throat, the quick moisture in his eyes. His mother! And never in all his life had he seen her face—this sweet, strange, wistful, wonderful face. His mother! He had not even known she was alive. And now, so overwhelmed was he, he did not as yet even think of unraveling the veil of ignorance or deceit—call it what one might—which had left him in orphanage all his life till now.

"Yes, over yonder," said Aurora, and pointed across the square. "That little house under the shade trees, just at the corner. That's home and workshop for me, Don."

She spoke softly, her eyes still fixed on him, the color of her cheeks deepening.

"Not so much of a house, is it?" laughed the boy, tears on his face, born of his new emotion, so sudden, so tremendous and so strange.

"Not so very much," she assented, laughing gayly also, and also in tears, which gave him sudden grief—"but it has served."

"Well, never mind. We're going to do better out West, Mom. We're going to have you with us right away, as soon as I can get started."

"What—what do you say—with us! With us?"

She spoke in swift dismay, halting in her walk. "What do you mean, Don—us?"

"I didn't tell you the news," said he, "for I've just got it myself.

"What a week! I heard of you—that you were alive, that you were living here—though why you never told me I can't dream—and now, today, Anne! Two such women—and for me. I can call God kind to me. As if I deserved it!"

He did not see her face as he went on rapidly:

"We didn't know it ourselves much more than an hour or so ago—Anne and I. She came out on the same train with me—we finished school together, don't you see! Anne lives in Columbus, fifty miles west. She's fine! I haven't had time to tell you."

He didn't have time now—did not have time to note even yet the sudden pallor which came upon his mother's face. "Anne?" she began.

"Huh!" said Silas Kneebone again from his place under the awning, "there she goes—'Rory Lane. Wonder who that kin be with her! And I wonder what old Eph Adamson's goin' to say to them! Watch at them now."

The young man and his mother by this time were within the courthouse fence and coming face to face with the two public challengers, who had so fervently notified all mankind of their wish to engage in personal combat.

Those beneath the awnings now saw the tall figure of the half-wit boy, Johnnie Adamson, advance toward Aurora Lane. They saw her and the tall young stranger halt suddenly—saw the young man gently push the woman back of him and stand full front, frowning, questioning, almost directly against the half-wit. He reached out a hand and thrust him back, sternly, fearlessly, half contemptuously.

"Wait, Don! Come back!" called out Aurora Lane. "Don't get into trouble here—come—come away!"

She plucked at the sleeve of his coat to draw him back. It was too late. The half-wit, cracking his knuckles now yet more loudly, and knocking his fists together, had wholly lost his amiable smile. Something primordial was going on, deep down in his rudimentary brain.

As for Eph Adamson, he also stood scowling and silent, a sudden wave of resentment filling his soul at seeing the happiness of these two.

"No, you don't—just you leave him be!" called out Eph Adamson, as the young man pushed the half-wit back from him, his own blue eyes now beginning to glint. "Leave him alone, unless you want to fight. He can lick you anyways, whoever you are. Do you want to fight?"

"No, why should I? I don't know you."

Don Lane turned toward the stranger, still frowning and somewhat wondering, but in no terror whatever.

"I don't know you neither, nor what you're doin' here, but you've got to fight or 'pologize," said Eph Adamson, arriving at this conclusion through certain mental processes of his own not apparent. "You got to have our consent to cross this here courtyard. This is my son John, and you shan't insult him."

"Get on away—step back," said Don Lane. "I guess it's all right, but let my mother and myself alone—we're just going home."

A sudden wave of rage and wonder, mingled, filled the soul of drunken Eph Adamson as his venom rose to the boiling point.

"Mother!" he half screamed, "your mother? Who're you? You're a pretty pair, you two, ain't you? She said her baby died twenty years ago. Did she have some more? Who're you? Mother?—Say, after all, are you the town's boy—coming pushing past my son with her—your mother! What do you mean? If you're her son, you ain't got no mother, nor no father neither."

And now there came a pause, an icy pause—icy it was, out there in the glare of the hot summer sun. These four who stood in view of all the village might have been statues for the time, so motionless, so tense was each.

Not many actually heard the words of old Eph Adamson—words wrung out of the bitterness of his own soul perhaps, but words intolerable none the less. None had heard the words of Aurora Lane and the young man as they had spoken previous to this. None guessed who the stranger was or might be—none but drunken Eph Adamson. But all could see what now happened.

For one instant the young man stood almost like a statue. Then with one sudden thrust of his fist he smote the old man full in the mouth, so swift and hard a blow that Adamson dropped prostrate, and for the time motionless.

A sudden, instantaneous, electric buzz, a murmur, ran all around the square. A sound of shuffling feet and falling boxes might have been heard as men here and there rose eagerly, their necks craned out toward this swiftly made arena.

They saw the half-wit boy now advance upon Don Lane with a roar or bawl of rage, his arms swinging flail-like. All expected to see the newcomer turn and run. Not so. He simply stood for a half instant, sidestepped, and again swung in close upon his foe. Old Silas Kneebone described the affair many a time afterwards, at a time when Spring Valley knew more about Don Lane.

"You see, the eejit, he gets up again, hollering, and he goes in again at Dewdonny, bound for to knock his head off. But Dewdonny, he ducks down like a regular prize-fighter—I hear tell, at colleges, them athaletes they have to learn all them sort of things—and he put up a fight like a regular old hand. But all the time he keeps hollering to the crowd, 'Take him away! Take him away! Keep him off, I say! I don't want to hit him!'

"Well, folks begun to laugh at Dewdonny then—before they knowed who he was—thinking he was afraid of that eejit; yet it didn't seem like he was, neither, for he didn't run away. At last he hits the eejit fair a second time, and he knocks him down flat. Folks then begun to allow he could hit him whenever he wanted to, and knock him down whenever he pleased.

"Now, the eejit, he gets up and begins to beller like a calf. He puts his hand on his face where Dewdonny Lane had done hit him the last time or two and he hollers out, 'Pa, he hit me!'

"But his pa could only set up on the grass and shake his head. I reckon old Eph was soberer then than he had been five minutes sooner. Say, that boy had a punch like the kick of a full growed mule!

"Of course, you all know what happened then. It was then that old Man Tarbush come in, seeing the boy had both of them two licked. He got up his own nerve after that. So now he goes over there to the courthouse ground, through the gate where they all was, and he lays his hand on Dewdonny Lane and then on the eejit.

"'I arrest you both for disturbing of the peace,' says he then. 'Come on now, in the name of the law.'

"'The law be damned!' says Dewdonny Lane then. 'Go take this man to jail. Are you crazy—what do you mean by arresting me when I'm just walking home with my mother? This wasn't my fault. I didn't want to hit him.

"'Come on, Mom!' says he, and before Tarbush could help hisself he'd took 'Rory Lane by the arm again and off they went, and right soon they was in their house—them two, the milliner and her boy.

"And Joel Tarbush he heard him call her 'Mom' right there—that's how it all begun to git out.

"That's right—this was the town milliner and the boy she sent away, that never died none at all nohow.—'Rory Lane, and her boy we all thought was dead. And we'd never knowed it nor dreamed it till he spoke, right there in the public square! 'My mother!' says he. Can you beat that?

"Then 'Rory Lane turns around and fronts the whole lot of them. Says she: 'Yes, it's true! This is my son, Dewdonny Lane,' says she. She said it cold.

"That was before we knowed all about how she had put him through college, and that this was his first visit home, and the first time he'd ever seen her—his own mother! I heard as how he'd thought all his life he was a orphan, and someone on the inside that very week—just when he'd finished in college—had wrote him that he wasn't no orphan, but had a mother living right here! So here he comes, hot foot—and didn't he spill the beans!

"She'd tried her durnedest to keep it all covered up—and you must say she'd made one big fight of it, fer it's hard fer a woman to keep her eyes and her hands off of her own flesh and blood, even if it ain't legal. But, somehow, it's hard to keep that sort of thing covered up, for a woman. It all comes out, time'n again—ain't it the truth? How she done it for twenty years is a miracle. But law! What's twenty years, come to forgettin' things like what she done?"