Seven days had dragged their seemingly slow length from seconds to minutes, from minutes to hours, from hours to days. In the cobbler’s shop Jinnie and Bobbie waited in breathless anxiety for Peg’s return. She had gone to the district attorney for permission to visit her husband in his cell. Nearly three hours had passed since her departure, and few other thoughts were in the mind of the girl save the passionate wish for news of her two beloved friends. She was standing by the window looking out upon the tracks, and as a heavy train steamed past she counted the cars with melancholy rhythm. There came to her mind the day she had found Bobbie on the hill, and all the sweet moments since when the cobbler had been with them. She choked back a sob that made a little noise in her tightened throat.

Bobbie stumbled his unseeing way to her and shoved a small, cold hand into hers.

“Jinnie’s sad,” he murmured. “Bobbie’s stars’re blinkin’ out.”

Mrs. Grandoken and Jinnie had come to an understanding that Bobbie should not know of the cobbler’s trouble, so the strong fingers closed over the little ones, but the girl did not speak. At length she caught a glimpse of Peg, who, with bent head, was stumbling across the tracks. Peggy had failed in her mission! Jinnie knew 254 it because the woman did not look up as she came within sight of the house.

As Mrs. Grandoken entered slowly, Jinnie turned to her.

“You didn’t see him?” she said in a tone half exclamation, half question.

“No,” responded Peg, wearily, sitting down. “I waited ’most two hours for the lawyer, an’ when he come, I begged harder’n anything, but it didn’t do no good. He says I can’t see my man for a long time. I guess they’re tryin’ to make him confess he killed Maudlin.”

Jinnie’s hand clutched frantically at the other’s arm. Both women had forgotten the presence of the blind child.

“He wouldn’t do that,” cried Jinnie, panic-stricken. “A man can’t own up to doing a thing he didn’t do.”

“Course not,” whispered Bobbie, in an awed whisper, and the girl sat down, drawing him to her lap. She could no longer guard her tongue nor hide her feelings. She took the afternoon paper from Mrs. Grandoken’s hand.

“Read about it aloud,” implored the woman.

“It says,” began Jinnie, “Mr. King’s dying.”

The paper fluttered from her hand, and she sat like a small graven image. To see those words so cruelly set in black and white, staring at her with frightful truth, harrowed the very soul of her. A sobbing outburst from Bobbie mingled with the soft chug, chug of the engine outside on the track. Happy Pete, too, felt the tragedy in the air. He wriggled nearer his young mistress and rested his pointed nose on one of her knees, while his twinkling yellow eyes demanded, in their eloquent way, to know the cause of his loved ones’ sorrow.

Peggy broke a painful pause.

“Everybody in town says Lafe done it,” she groaned, “an’––” she caught her breath. “Oh, God! it seems I can’t stand it much longer!” 255

Jinnie got up, putting the limp boy in her chair. She was making a masterful effort to be brave, to restrain the rush of emotion demanding utterance. Some beating thing in her side ached as if it were about to burst. But she stood still until Peg spoke again.

“It’s all bad business, Jinnie! an’ I can’t see no help comin’ from anywhere.”

If Peg’s head hadn’t fallen suddenly into her hands, perhaps Jinnie wouldn’t have collapsed just then. As it was, her knees gave way, and she fell forward beside the cobbler’s wife. Bobbie, in his helpless way, knelt too.

Since Lafe’s arrest the girl had not prayed, nor could she recall the promises Lafe had taught her were made for the troubled in spirit. Could she now say anything to make Peg’s suffering less, even if she did not believe it all herself?

“Peg,” she pleaded, “don’t shiver so!... Hold up your head.... I want to tell you something.”

Peggy made a negative gesture.

“It ain’t to be bore, Jinnie,” she moaned hoarsely.

“Lafe ain’t no chance. They’ll put him in the chair.”

Such awful words! The import was pressed deeper into two young hearts by Peg’s wild weeping.

Jinnie staggered to her feet. Blind Bobbie broke into a prolonged wail.

“Lafe ain’t never done nothin’ bad in all his life,” went on the woman, from the shelter of her hands. “He’s the best man in the world. He’s worked an’ worked for everybody, an’ most times never got no pay. An’ now––”

“Don’t say it again, Peggy!” Jinnie’s voice rang out. “Don’t think such things. They couldn’t put Lafe in a wicked death chair—they couldn’t.”

Bobbie’s upraised eyes were trying to pierce through their veil of darkness to seek the speaker’s meaning. 256

“What chair, Jinnie?” he quivered. “What kind of a chair’re they goin’ to put my beautiful Lafe in?”

Jinnie’s mind went back to the teachings of the cobbler, and the slow, sweet, painful smile intermingled with her agony. Again and again the memory of the words, “He hath given his angels charge over thee,” swelled her heart to the breaking point. She wanted to believe, to feel again that ecstatic faith which had suffused her as Maudlin Bates pulled her curls in the marsh, when she had called unto the Infinite and Theodore had answered.

Peg needed Lafe’s angels at that moment. They all needed the comfort of the cobbler’s faith.

“Peg,” she began, “your man’d tell you something sweet if he could see you now.”

Peg ceased writhing, but didn’t lift her face. Jinnie knew she was listening, and continued:

“Haven’t you heard him many a time, when there wasn’t any wood in the house or any bread to eat, tell you about—about––”

Down dropped the woman’s hands, and she lifted a woebegone face to her young questioner.

“Yes, I’ve heard him, Jinnie,” she quavered, “but I ain’t never believed it!”

“But you can, Peggy! You can, sure! Lots of times Lafe’d say, ‘Now, Jinnie, watch God and me!’ And I watched, and sure right on the minute came the money.” She paused a moment, ruminating. “That money we got the day he went away came because he prayed for it.”

The girl was reverently earnest.

“Lafe’s got a chance, all right,” she pursued, keeping Peg’s eye. “More’n a chance, if—if—if––Oh, Peggy, we’ve got to pray!”

“I don’t know how,” said Peg, in stifled tones.

Jinnie’s face lighted with a mental argument Lafe had 257 thrown at her in her moments of distrust. She was deep in despondency, but something had to be done.

“Peg, you don’t need to know anything about it. I didn’t when I came here. Lafe says––”

“What’d Lafe say?” cut in Peggy.

“That you must just tell God about it––” Jinnie lifted a white, lovely face. “He’s everywhere—not away off,” she proceeded. “Talk to Him just like you would to Lafe or me.”

Mrs. Grandoken sunk lower in her chair.

“I wisht I’d learnt when Lafe was here. Now I dunno how.”

“But will you try?” Jinnie pleaded after a little.

“You know ’em better’n I do, Jinnie,” Peg muttered, dejectedly. “You ask if it’ll do any good.”

Jinnie cleared her throat, coughed, and murmured:

“Close your eyes, Bobbie.”

Bobbie shut his lids with a gulping sob, and so did Peg.

Then Jinnie began in a low, constrained voice:

“God and your angels hovering about Lafe, please send him back to the shop. Get him out of jail, and don’t let anybody hurt him. Amen.”

“Don’t let any chair hurt my beautiful cobbler,” wailed Bobbie, in a new paroxysm of grief. “Gimme Lafe an’ my stars.”

In another instant Peggy staggered out of the room, leaving the blind boy and Jinnie alone.

As the door closed, Bobbie’s voice rose in louder appeal. Happy Pete touched him tenderly with a cold, wet nose, crawling into his arms with a little whine.

Jinnie looked at her two charges hopelessly. She knew not how to comfort them, nor could she frame words that would still the agony of the child. Yet she lifted Bobbie and Happy Pete and sat down with them on her lap. 258

“Don’t cry, honey,” she stammered. “There! There! Jinnie’ll rock you.”

Her face was ashen with anxiety, and perspiration stood in large drops upon her brow. Mechanically she drew her sleeve across her face.

“I’m going to ask you to be awful good, Bobbie,” she pleaded presently. “Lafe’s being arrested is hard on Peg—and she’s sick.”

Bobbie burst in on her words.

“But they’ll sit my cobbler in a wicked chair, and kill him, Jinnie. Peggy said they would.”

“You remember, Bobbie,” soothed the girl, “what Lafe said about God’s angels, don’t you?”

The yellow head bent forward in assent.

“And how they’re stronger’n a whole bunch of men?”

“Yes,” breathed Bobbie; “but the chair—the men’ve got that, an’ mebbe the angels’ll be busy when they’re puttin’ the cobbler in it.”

This idea made him shriek out louder than before: “They’ll kill Lafe! Oh, Jinnie, they will!”

“They can’t!” denied Jinnie, rigidly. “They can’t! Listen, Bobbie.”

The wan, unsmiling blind face brought the girl’s lips hard upon it.

“I want to know all about the death chair,” he whimpered stubbornly.

“Bobbie,” she breathed, “will you believe me if I tell you about it?”

“Yes,” promised Bobbie, snuggling nearer.

“Hang on to Pete, and I will tell you,” said Jinnie.

“I’m hangin’ to ’im,” sighed Bobbie, touching Pete’s shaggy forelock. “Tell me about the chair.”

Jinnie was searching her brain for an argument to satisfy him. She wouldn’t have lied for her own welfare—but 259 for Bobbie—she could feel the weak, small heart palpitating against her arm.

“Well, in the first place,” she began deliberately, “Peg doesn’t know everything about murders. Why, Bobbie, they don’t do anything at all to men like Lafe. Why, a cobbler, dear, a cobbler could kill everybody in the whole world if he liked.”

Bobbie’s breath was sent out in one long exclamation of wonder.

“A cobbler,” went on Jinnie impressively, “could steal loaves of bread right under a great judge’s nose and he couldn’t do anything to him.”

Jinnie had made a daring speech, such a splendid one; she wanted to believe it herself.

“Tell me more,” chirped Bobbie. “What about the death chair, Jinnie?”

She had nursed the hope that the boy would be satisfied with what she had already told him, but she proceeded in triumphant tones:

“Oh, you mean the chair Peg was speaking about, huh? Sure I know all about that.... There isn’t anything I don’t know about it.... I know more’n all the judges and preachers put together.”

A small, trustful smile appeared at the corners of Bobbie’s mouth.

“I know you do, Jinnie,” he agreed. “Tell it to me.”

Jinnie pressed her lips on his hair.

“And if I tell you, kiddie, you’ll not cry any more or worry Peggy?”

“I’ll be awful good, and not cry once,” promised the boy, settling himself expectantly.

“Now, then, listen hard!”

Accordingly, after a dramatic pause, to give stress to her next statement, she continued: 260

“There isn’t a death chair in the whole world can kill a cobbler.”

Bobbie braced himself against her and sat up. His blind eyes were roving over her with an expression of disbelief. Jinnie knew he was doubting her veracity, so she hurried on.

“Of course they got an electric chair that’ll kill other kinds of men,” she explained volubly, “but if you’ll believe me, Bobbie, no cobbler could ever sit in it.”

Bobbie dropped back again. There was a ring of truth in Jinnie’s words, and he began to believe her.

“And another thing, Bobbie, there’s something in the Bible better’n what I’ve told you. You believe the Bible, don’t you?”

“Lafe’s Bible?” asked Bobbie, scarcely audible.

“Sure! There isn’t but one.”

“Yes, Jinnie, I believe that,” said the boy.

“Well,” and Jinnie glanced up at the ceiling, “there’s just about a hundred pages in that book tells how once some men tried to put a cobbler in one of those chairs, and the lightning jumped out and set ’em all on fire––”

Bobbie straightened up so quickly that Happy Pete fell to the floor.

“Yes, yes, Jinnie dear,” he breathed. “Go on!”

Jinnie hesitated. She didn’t want to fabricate further.

“It’s just so awful I hate to tell you,” she objected.

“I’d be happier if you would,” whispered Bobbie.

“Then I will! The fire, jumping out, didn’t hurt the cobbler one wee bit, but it burned the wicked men––” Jinnie paused, gathered a deep breath, and brought to mind Lafe’s droning voice when he had used the same words, “Burned ’em root and branch,” declared she.

Bobbie’s face shone with happiness.

“Is that all?” he begged. 261

“Isn’t it enough?” asked Jinnie, with tender chiding.

“Aren’t there nothin’ in it about Lafe?”

“Oh, sure!” Again she was at loss for ideas, but somehow words of their own volition seemed to spring from her lips. “Sure there is! There’s another hundred pages in that blessed book that says good men like Lafe won’t ever go into one of those chairs, never, never.... The Lord God Almighty ordered all those death chairs to be chopped up for kindling wood,” she ended triumphantly.

“Shortwood?” broke out Bobbie.

Unheeding the interruption, Jinnie pursued: “They just left a chair for wicked men, that’s all.”

Bobbie slipped to the floor and raised his hands.

“Jinnie, pretty Jinnie. I’m goin’ to believe every word you’ve said, every word, and my stars’re all shinin’ so bright they’re just like them in the sky.”

Jinnie kissed the eager little face and left the child sitting on the floor, crooning contentedly to Happy Pete.

“Lafe told me once,” Jinnie whispered to herself on the way to the kitchen, “when a lie does a lot of good, it’s better than the truth if telling facts hurts some one.”

She joined Peggy, sighing, “I’m an awful liar, all right, but Bobbie’s happy.”