The seasons run with swift feet. It was in February that Mahala answered a hasty knock at her door. She jumped into her coat and overshoes and hurried down the road through the snow and the storm of a wild night on the shaking arm of Jason. She could see that the house to which she was going was filled with light. When she entered it, she found Ellen’s mother in charge and Doctor Grayson at work. An hour later, through one of those queer turns of fate which no one can explain, it became her part of the thing that was taking place there to carry a small, warm bundle, strongly suggestive of olive oil and castile, and lay it in the arms of Jason.

It seemed to Mahala as she carried Jason his son that the bitterness which at that minute surged up in her heart surpassed anything else she ever had known. She turned from him and went to lay her hand on the head of Ellen. There it was her mission to report that Jason thought his son was fine and wonderful.

By noon the next day she was back in her home. Everything had been done that was necessary. Ellen’s mother and Jason could care for her. There was no reason why Mahala might not go back to her little house and again take up her life with her dead. Because that was what Mahala was doing in those days. She was living hourly with her father. At first it had been difficult to vision him in the country house, but now she could see him before the bookcase, at the hearth, in the dining room. Sometimes she dreamed of him, and with the awful reality of dreams, she again heard his voice, her nostrils were filled with the personal odours of his body, every familiar gesture was before her eyes.

Her mother came there, too. Hourly now she stepped down from the frame above the mantel and walked through the rooms, twitching a curtain into place, setting a picture at a different angle, drawing a finger across a polished surface to make sure that no particle of dust had settled there.

In those days when winter was the coldest and the storms raged outside, and the amount of physical exercise required to keep her in good health was difficult to obtain, Mahala paced the rooms of the little house, and beside her walked another of her dead. Jason was there—thoughtful, kind, always taking care of her, always watching that she should be sheltered, that she should be comfortable—but he was a dead Jason. There was no life in him. The living part of him belonged to Ellen. The mouthing little pink bundle lying on Ellen’s breast very shortly would be on his feet, holding Jason’s hands, making demands of him.

The one thing for which Mahala tried to be thankful in those days was the steady round of duties entailed by living. After Mrs. Ford had gone home, there were days when Ellen was feeling badly and the baby cried, that Mahala went down to Jason’s home, and with light step and skilful fingers, straightened out problems that were too much for Ellen, taught her patience and forbearance and the love that ministers, that expends itself and demands little. Then she went back to her house and during the long nights she deliberately turned her pillow where she could look through the window at the storm-whipped arms of the old orchard and watch the elements having their way with the world, rolling on its age-old route around its orbit.

In these days Mahala found that, in her own home, life had simmered to the asking of one question. She did not ask it of God. She had stopped praying when she had been overwhelmed. She asked it of her mental vision of her father: “Why?” She faced the skilfully painted portrait of her mother, and with stiff lips cried to her: “Why?” She asked the walls of each room in the house. She asked the authors of the books she tried to read. She looked from the windows and asked the winds raging past. She asked the moon of night and the first red rays of morning. “Why?” Eternally, “Why?”

When spring had come again and all the world was busy with the old miracle of rejuvenation, when the apple orchard was sweetest and the lilacs were a benediction and the star flowers were shining, when the doors were opened and Nature was trying with all her might to rejuvenate the hearts of men as easily as she pushed welling sap into bud and bloom, one day when Mahala’s lips had cried “Why?” to the white pigeons and the bluebirds of the orchard, her question was answered.

A livery conveyance from the village stopped at her door, and in wonderment she watched Albert Rich and the town sheriff, the Presbyterian minister and dear old Doctor Grayson alight from it. She took one swift look at the party as they were coming through the gate, and then, without stopping for thought, she flew to the back door and gave the bell one violent spang. A pause, and then another. It was her pre-arranged call for Jason to come with all speed.

Hearing, Jason said to Ellen: “Something has gone wrong with Mahala. She never rang like that before. I must go.”

He dropped a rake that he was mending at the back door, raced across the yard, sprang over the fence, crossed the road, and leaping another fence, took a short cut toward Mahala’s back door. As he ran, he could see the carriage, he could see the men going up the walk and crossing the porch, and without knowing why, a sick apprehension sprang in his heart.

He entered the back door and came through the kitchen. He reached the door of the living room as Mahala was offering her guests seats. His first glance was for her. He saw that her face lacked all natural colour and he noticed that she was perfectly controlled, that she was greeting her guests with the graciousness of the lady she had been born to be.

As she returned from laying aside their hats, Albert Rich went to meet her. He deliberately put his arm around her. Then he said: “Mahala, dear, Rebecca Sampson made trouble in the bank to-day. She may have slipped or they may have been rough in putting her out, at any rate, she fell and struck her head a severe blow. She’s now lying on the couch in the directors’ room and every one agrees that she’s quite sane. Her first conscious words were to ask if you found the money that Junior Moreland told her to take from their parlour table and hide in your house for you when no one would see her.”

“Here? Does she say that she put it here?” cried Mahala. Both hands were gripping her heart. She had seemed to shrink, to grow into a helpless, childish thing. The tremors that shook her body were visible through her clothing.

The men were eager in their acquiescence.

“She says,” answered the sheriff, “that she put it through a hole in the plaster on the right-hand side of the front door. You’re vindicated, Mahala, beyond a doubt in the mind of any one, but it would be better, it would be fine, if we could discover that pocket book.”

Jason stood straight in the doorway. His eyes were travelling from the face of one man to another, but they avoided Mahala. Slowly his form tensed, his breathing began to come in short gasps. Albert Rich turned to him.

“Jason,” he said, “get an axe. I’m going to break through the wall on the right-hand side of the front door and search the place where Becky says she put that pocket book.”

Slowly Jason shook his head. His lips were very stiff, but he managed to speak.

“There’s no use,” he said. “You’ll find nothing there. I mended that lath and plastered that broken place with my own hands.”

Suddenly Mahala’s head fell forward, and then she lifted it, and as people have done since the beginning of the world in the ultimate agony, she called on God. Her voice was torn and pitiful past endurance. She was calling on God, but she was reaching to Jason, stretching out her hands to him.

“Oh, God!” she cried. “Help me! Won’t you please help me? Why couldn’t it have been there? Why couldn’t vindication have been complete? Oh, God, won’t you help me?”

Big tears rolled down her cheeks.

She cried directly to Jason: “Oh, Jason! think! Think hard! Can’t you think of any place that it might be?”

She appealed to Doctor Grayson: “You’re sure Becky says she brought it here?”

“Yes,” said Doctor Grayson, “she says you gave her food here, you told her that this was the only home you had, that this was your house.”

Mahala slowly nodded her head.

“I did,” she said. “I told her that this was the only home I had left.”

Again she turned to Jason. “Oh, Jason!” she cried. “Do this much more for me! Find it! Oh, find that pocket book!”

Jason’s face was that of a man in fierce physical torture. With one hand he was tearing at the neck of his shirt, trying to pull it open. Suddenly the attention of the entire party centred on him; it became patent to every one that he was on the rack. For a long second he hesitated, staring with wide eyes of anguish at Mahala, then slowly he ran a hand into his pocket. He drew from it a heavy pruning knife. He stepped across the room and lifted from its fastening above the fireplace the oil portrait of Elizabeth Spellman. Setting it to one side, he ran his fingers over the papered wall behind it, feeling for something. When he found it, he inserted the knife, and ran it around a small space that had been papered over. Prying off a light wooden cover, he stepped back. In the opening where a couple of bricks had been removed, lay a long, black bill book.

For one instant a wild light of rejoicing leaped into Mahala’s eyes, and then a sick horror overwhelmed her as she looked at Jason. She opened her lips, but no words came. Suddenly she stepped back; both her hands clutched her heart tightly. Unable to endure her gaze further, Jason made a gesture toward the opening. His head fell forward on his breast, and, turning, he staggered from the room.

Mahala recovered herself only with the utmost effort. She stretched one hand toward the sheriff, but her eyes were upon the minister.

Her voice said: “You are the executor of the law. My hands never have touched that pocket book. They never shall. Lift it down, and in the presence of these witnesses, open it.”

The sheriff obeyed her. He spread the money, the railroad tickets, and the contents of the pocket book upon the table. The minister, at the call of Mahala’s eyes, went to her. He put his arm around her and drew her shivering little body to him with his strength. Looking into her eyes, he said: “Tell us, Mahala, why did Junior Moreland want to ruin you?”

Mahala drew a deep breath that steadied her. “You must ask him,” she said, never so true to her best instincts as in that hour.

Albert Rich came to her other side and took hold of her also, because he was human and his heart ached intolerably. Across her, he said to the minister: “Ask me. They were classmates from childhood. She watched the development of his character, day by day. Fashioned as God made her, she could do nothing but loathe him. Repeatedly she refused to marry him. This is her punishment. This is a new demonstration to Ashwater of the power of riches directed by the Morelands.”

Mahala thrust her hands wide spread before her. She drew away from the men, who were trying to reinforce her strength with theirs. She said to them: “If all of you are satisfied, will you please go?”

Albert Rich said to her: “Mahala, are you strong enough? Could you endure a trip to town with us? Becky feels that she can’t die in peace until she has seen you. She is begging for you constantly.”

Mahala assented. “Wait in the carriage,” she said. “Give me a few minutes to think, to make myself presentable, and then I will try to go with you.”

She hastily straightened her attire, then she went through the back of the house. She found Jason sitting in the kitchen, his face buried in his arms. In tones of cold formality as to a stranger, she said to him: “Becky is asking for me. Will you close and lock the house and then come to the bank after me? They say she is dying, that she feels she cannot go in peace until she has seen me. I am forced to go.”

As they drove through the brilliancy of spring along the River Road, the men tried to say kindly things to Mahala. Presently, they realized that she was not hearing them, that they were wasting words.

The outskirts of the town of Ashwater showed that it had been shaken from centre to circumference. Women were running bareheaded across the streets. Men were hastening here and there, and it could be seen that their hands were shaking, that their faces were set, that the expressions upon them more clearly resembled ravenous animals than men. They were calling out to each other, they were breathing threats, they were uttering awful curses. Man was telling man what the hands of the Morelands had done to him. Here was a man whose land had gone delinquent, and before he was able to redeem it, Martin Moreland had taken it from him for a third of its value. Here was a seamstress who had not been able to pay the street taxes in front of her little home, and because she had borrowed from Martin Moreland she had lost her shelter.

Even from the country there were beginning to come teams driven by men whose faces were pictures of outrage. Conspicuous on the village streets was the form of Jimmy Price. He was rushing around with a sickle in one hand, telling every one who would listen what every one else had said. For once in his life he had forgotten to try to make himself ridiculous. In his excitement he became a pathetic thing. He who never had anything to lose was blustering, threatening, and wildly gesticulating over the wrongs of others. Men who had lost heavily, many of them the savings of a lifetime, were in a different mood. They were gathered in grim consultation. They were passing from house to house, in harsh tones they were making sure of their grievances: “Just what was the sum he skinned you out of, Robert?” “Did you say, John, your wife needn’t have died if you hadn’t been forced to move her in mid winter when she’d just had the baby?”

They were remembering, they were recalling, they were computing, they were sowing the germs of a mob spirit right and left, but their work was certain and methodical. Unmolested, the boys of Ashwater had been busy. As the carriage came down the street, Mahala could see great streaks of yellow paint smeared across the front of the bank. The bronze dogs, so proudly referred to by Martin Moreland as the “watch dogs of the Treasury,” had been crudely muzzled with heavy wire, the yellow paint had been liberally used on them. Some one had broken off their tails and stuck them between their legs; the rough stumps were festooned with tin tomato and peach cans.

When the carriage stopped in front of the bank, the party could only force their way a step at a time to the door. At sight of Mahala pandemonium broke loose. Here was the most tangible thing upon which they could lay their hands. On her they might give their imaginations free rein, with justice. Nothing could be done that could ever, in any degree, atone for the misery through which she had passed.

She had thought that she was keeping her set white face straight ahead and pressing forward as swiftly as she could force her way, but as she neared the door she saw an arresting sight that caused her to pause and turn, looking the mob in the face. At first glance a spasm of fear shook her. She was forced to look penetrantly to recognize some of the faces she had known all her life. They were so distorted, so unrecognizable in the spasms of emotion now possessing them. Swift as memory flies, she recalled a few of the stories in the hearts of some of the men in the front of that circle, and yet, pressing nearest of all to the building, with disarranged clothing, disordered hair, and almost frothing at the mouth, pranced Jimmy Price. Encouraged by the growl behind him as Mahala paused, he was the first man to lift a hand and crash a brick he carried through the heavy plate glass of the bank window. Even as the glass cracked and broke there came to Mahala the realization that it was very likely that Jimmy Price never had deposited ten dollars in the First National at one time in his life. He never had owned real estate, and the thought came to her even in that crisis, that among the mob probably there were many others like Jimmy taking a vicarious revenge when no personal wrong had been done them. Her sense of justice and fair play came to life instantly.

She lifted her hand and cried out to the mob: “Wait! For the love of God, wait! Learn the truth and act sincerely. Nothing can right the past for some of us, but I beg that you will wait!”

The mob drew back slightly, but it did not disperse. In alternating waves of quiet and of flaming anger as some new recruit from the suburbs, or the country, arrived and began detailing his grievances, it surged back and forth before the bank. When the door was unlocked from the inside, Mahala entered and followed the men to the directors’ room. As she stepped through the door, she saw Rebecca lying pillowed on a leather couch. All the look of childish unconcern had left her face. As she turned toward Mahala it could plainly be seen that she was in possession of her reason. She was a middle-aged woman, tried and hurt past endurance. Her breath was dragging heavily. One hand was fingering nervously at the edge of the leather, the other tightly gripped the osier, the white flag lying across her knees.

Swiftly Mahala knelt beside her. She tried to smile. She opened her lips and she was almost surprised to hear her own voice asking evenly: “You wanted me, Becky?”

“Yes, oh, yes!” cried Rebecca. “The cloud has lifted but it’s a strange thing that there remains in my memory every least little thing that ever happened to me. I know now what happened to the best friend I ever had in Ashwater, when I did what Junior Moreland told me would please you so.”

“It’s all right now, Becky. Don’t try to talk,” whispered Mahala, taking the straying hand in both of hers and holding it close against her breast. “We found the pocket book. It’s all right now.”

“But I must talk!” panted Rebecca. “I must hear you say that you forgive me. You had been kind to me, you had fed me, you told me that the little house on the River Road was your home. I thought I was repaying you for your promise to help me in my search. I thought I was doing a thing that would surprise and please you. Junior said you would be so surprised when you found the money in your home.”

In bitterness Mahala bowed her head over Rebecca’s hand. For an instant her mind worked over that thought. The sardonic humour of Junior saying that she would be surprised when the money was found in her home! Certainly she would have been if it had been found there. A chill shook her as she paused a moment concentrating on the quality of Junior’s mind. He must have known that to have the money found in her home would kill Elizabeth Spellman as cruelly as death could be inflicted; that it would possibly fasten lasting disgrace on her; yet he had done his best to accomplish those things. Recalled by Rebecca’s clinging hand, she tried to comfort her.

She said to her: “Since every one knows now that I never touched the pocket book, it’s all right, Becky. Don’t try to talk any more. Lie quiet so that you will soon be better.”

But Rebecca shook her head.

“First I had to have your forgiveness,” she said. “Now I must see Martin Moreland.”

Mahala turned to Albert Rich. “Step to Mr. Moreland’s private office and ask him to come here,” she said.

Albert Rich assented, but he returned in a minute saying that Mr. Moreland refused to come. The wave of whiteness that swept Rebecca’s face, and the spasm of pain that shook her body, both reacted upon Mahala. She lifted her head.

“Mr. Moreland has no option,” she said steadily. “He is no longer the controlling factor in the life of this town.”

She nodded to the sheriff and to Albert Rich. “Once he worked his will on me without authority. Now it is my turn. Bring him here.”

Forced by a strong man on either side of him, Martin Moreland stood at the feet of Rebecca Sampson. For what seemed an endless time to the tensely silent people waiting in the room, Rebecca’s eyes studied Martin Moreland.

Then she cried to him: “That my soul may pass from this foot-sore body in peace, tell me, Martin Moreland, was I a scarlet woman?”

Up to that time Martin Moreland had refused to look at Rebecca. He had kept his eyes turned toward the doorway, to the ceiling. At that appeal, in spite of his intentions, something in his inner consciousness forced him to meet her look. To Mahala, at that minute, Rebecca was appealingly beautiful. The mass of her waving fair hair had been loosened and spread over the pillow around her in the examination of her injury. The maturity that realization had brought to her face only gave to it greater appeal. No matter how widely she had journeyed, or how inclement the weather, she always had kept her person with the neat daintiness of any fine lady. It seemed to the onlookers that Moreland was moved to some degree of remorse. There seemed to be forced from him, in spite of the effort he was making for self-preservation, the cry: “No! No! You were my wife. The divorce was fraudulent, not the marriage.”

The rigours of Rebecca’s body eased. She sank back with a deep breath and two big tears trickled from her eyes. But almost immediately she roused again. She drew from Mahala’s clasp the hand she was holding and stretched it to Martin Moreland.

“My baby!” she cried. “What did you do with my baby? I want him! Oh, Martin, I want to see him before I die!”

Martin Moreland drew back. Slowly he shook his head.

Rebecca appealed to Mahala. She began to cry in a pitiful, broken way, her body torn by physical emotion added to the difficulty in breathing that the concussion was making.

“Mahala,” she begged, “you know the weary years that I’ve hunted and I’ve hunted. You’re the only one I ever told that I ever had a little baby—a darling little baby—and Martin Moreland took him away, and I couldn’t find him! You said you’d help me. Beg him, oh, beg him, to give me back my baby!”

Mahala arose. She took one step toward Martin Moreland and slightly extended a hand.

“Mr. Moreland,” she said, “I’d die on the rack before I’d ask anything of you for myself. Because of my word to Becky, I’m asking you now to give her back her baby.”

Mahala did not realize that the baby for which Rebecca was asking must be a man at that time. She was visioning a little pink bit of humanity bundled in white as it must have been when Rebecca had lost it. For an instant she stood thinking. She realized that some one had taken a place beside her, and looking up, she saw that Jason had been admitted to the room, and was standing near enough to reinforce her strength with his.

The dying woman saw him also, and instantly she stretched her hand toward him.

“You have always been my friend,” she said. “Help me only this once more.”

“What shall I do, Rebecca?” asked Jason.

“When he was a tiny thing, only just born, Martin Moreland took my baby,” she said. “I only had him once for a minute. Make him give him back to me before I must die.”

Jason stood looking in a dazed way from Martin Moreland to Rebecca. Then he looked at Mahala as she spoke: “For the love of God, Martin Moreland, tell Rebecca what you did with her baby!”

She dropped on her knees beside the couch and again gathered to her breast the hand that Rebecca was reaching to Martin Moreland.

Jason lifted his head. He shook it, and his shoulders twitched as he stepped forward, his face ashen and cut deep in lines of torture. Throwing out his arms, he pushed back the other men and closed on the old banker. With a powerful hand he gripped one of his arms and drew him nearer to Rebecca. There was something terrible in his voice, something final and ultimate, something discernibly deadly as he ground out the question: “Is this woman’s child living or dead?”

Martin Moreland was pulling back. He had taken one look at Jason’s face, and what he had seen appalled him. His lips were white and stiff; it was only a whisper, the answer he made: “Living.”

Then Jason demanded: “Do you know where he is?”

The banker nodded.

Jason gripped him more firmly. He drew him closer and then he said in tones of finality: “You shall tell Becky where her child is.”

Martin Moreland shook his head.

“You shall tell her,” said Jason, “or I’ll take you out and explain to the mob that is howling for your blood.”

Again Martin Moreland shook his head.

Suddenly Jason swung him around; he shoved him in front of him across the room and into the hall from the back end of which there could be seen the big plate glass window, shattered at the top, and the glass door. Pressed against what remained of the broken glass of the window and the door, and reinforced by the width of the packed street behind them, there were faces topping the forms of men, yet one scarcely would have recognized them as the faces of men,—menacing faces by the hundred, upon the bodies of men who had been men of peace, men of patience, godly men. They were farmers and business men and day labourers. They had been outraged to a degree that had turned them into a compact mob of snarling, blood-thirsty beasts. In their hands could be seen revolvers, rifles, sickles; some of them carried axes, some of them bricks and stones, or clubs. At the sight of the banker a snarling cry broke from them and they surged forward until the front of the building shook with their impact.

Galvanized with terror, Moreland summoned strength to break from Jason’s grasp and rush back toward the directors’ room. But Jason was at his heels as he reached the door, he caught and whirled him around, once more forcing him to face Rebecca. She struggled to a sitting posture and stretched out both hands in a last appeal.

“My baby! Give me back my baby. Let me have him only one minute before I die!”

Martin Moreland shook his ghastly white head.

Then Jason gripped his other arm and brought his strength to bear until the old banker shrank and winced. Rebecca was rapidly losing strength. Great tears began running down her cheeks.

“Martin, I loved you so,” she pleaded. “Don’t you remember that I gave you everything? And you took all I had to give and you took my baby, too, and you threw me away and God punished me. He made me an outcast and a wanderer, while you had everything. It wasn’t fair. I’ve spent my life searching for my baby, and I can’t find him——”

Suddenly the beast broke in Doctor Grayson, in Albert Rich, in the sheriff, in the cashier. With black menace on their faces, they crowded up to reinforce Jason. The old banker looked around wildly for an avenue of escape; and there was none. He hesitated an instant longer and then he lifted a shaking hand as he said: “If you will have it, then, there is your baby.” He indicated Jason.

Rebecca lifted herself free of all support. She stared at Martin Moreland and then she studied Jason. Her eyes seemed to leap to his face and to cling there. A desperate inquiry was running in waves over her tortured face. She began to see lines that she recognized, a likeness to herself in the colouring of the hair and the eyes, suggestions of the lean face of Moreland, reproduced in Jason. A look of wonder crept into her face, and then one of horror. She drew back from Martin Moreland, a look of repulsion on her face, on every line of her figure.

“You devil!” she cried to him. “You let me walk the roads of earth every day seeking my baby, every day seeing him; experiencing his kindness, and not knowing he was mine. That knowledge would have cured my sick brain, would have saved me——”

She paused from weakness, but an instant later she gathered her forces and raised her hand.

“The curse of God shall fall as heavily on you as it has on me,” she cried. “It is His justice. He wills that you shall now take up the white flag that I have been forced to carry every day for the salvation of my soul, and for the salvation of yours you shall carry it for the remainder of your life! After all, you are the worse off of the two. I lost my baby; you have lost your soul. Now you shall go and seek it.”

She thrust the white flag into his hands and said to the men: “Let him go free. This is the work of God. Start him on his journey.”

The men stepped back. With bowed head, the flag in his hand, Martin Moreland turned and sought what safety was promised him in the shelter of his private room. There were men in his employ awaiting him there, and they watched him with repulsed eyes as he tottered into the room carrying the white emblem. Freed from the torturing hands that had gripped him, he tried to think. He made an effort to recover the ground that their faces told him he had lost in their estimation. Mechanically, he made his way to his chair. The absurd flag was in his hands. What would he do with it? He glanced around and then he thrust the holder into an urn standing on a bookcase behind his chair. It was an unfortunate disposal to make of the flag, for when he dropped into his accustomed seat, it was hanging directly over his head, its snowy whiteness stained by contact with the street and with the blood of the woman who for many years had borne it, a self-imposed penance for the easement of her soul.

In the directors’ room, Rebecca lifted her face to Jason. She stretched out her shaking arms.

“Jason!” she cried, “do you think this is the truth? Are you my baby? Oh, are you my baby? And if you are, will you come to me only a minute before I go?”

Jason came crashing to his knees beside her. He slid an arm under her body and caught her shoulders in a firm grip.

“Yes, I think it is the truth,” he said. “I believe you, and I believe him. In my heart I feel that you are my mother.”

He gathered her into his arms and kissed her face and her hands while she made her crossing.