He locked the front door after them, put the key into its old place under the door-step, where Cavanaugh could find it, and then they passed out at the gate and trudged toward the station. They had ample time, and so he took the best way to avoid meeting any one who might comment on their odd departure.
The station was finally reached. No one was there but a watchman with a lantern in his hand, and he did not know either of them.
"Ticket-office isn't open at this hour," John explained to Dora. "We'll have to pay on the train. We change cars at Bristol. I'll pay that far and we may stop there and rest. This night traveling may go hard with a little thing like you. I've got to attend to you, Sis—eh? Did you catch that? It slipped out as natural as you please, and Sis it is, from now on. Yes, I've got to see that you are fed properly and have a tonic to get your blood right."
When the train came they got aboard. The car was about half full of passengers, nearly all of whom were asleep. John led his wide-eyed charge to a seat, put a valise down for a pillow, and made her take off her hat and lie down. "Close your peepers and take a nap," he jested. "I'm going into the smoker and light my pipe."
A half-hour later he came back. She was asleep. Her hat had fallen to the floor, and he carefully placed it in the rack overhead. Her features in repose appeared almost angelic, despite the fact that the cinders had drifted in at the window and lay on the young cheeks beneath the fallen lashes.
"Poor little rat!" he said to himself. "You are in bad hands, Sis, but maybe no worse off than you were." He recalled Eperson's studied courtesy and attention to Martha Jane and wondered if, after all, Eperson were becoming his absent instructor.
He sat down in the seat across the aisle from Dora and looked out at the window. The coming dawn was lighting the fields through which the train was scurrying like a monster of fire and smoke. The eastern sky was slowly filling with liquid gold. Dora slept till the sun was well up. Then she stirred and waked. He saw her glance around the car in amazement and then she saw him, smiled sheepishly, and flushed a little.
"I was dreaming," she said. "I thought I was flying away up in the air and that I never would light."
"We are going to have some breakfast in a little while," he informed her. "There is a dining-car on this train, and I'll order something brought to us here. A little table fits in here under the window. Come on, I'll show you where to wash your hands and face."
He led her to the ladies' lavatory, taught her how to supply the basin with water. He got a towel from an overhead rack, showed her a brush and comb that were for the use of passengers, and left her to make her toilet.
She came back to him presently, looking brighter and better, and they sat side by side till a negro porter in a white uniform came with the table and their breakfast. It had an inviting look—the fruit, the fried eggs, the thin-sliced bacon, the hot, brown cakes, dainty toast, and aromatic coffee, and the child partook of them with unusual relish.
John watched her with strange, new interest. It was a sudden reversal of a habitual situation. She had waited on him. He was now doing the same for her, and the performance seemed to hold in abeyance a full realization of the tragedy in his life. It may have been autosuggestion, induced by the child's great need of him, but whatever it was was vaguely soothing. He found himself with his young back to a wall of miserable fact, valiantly fighting off constantly increeping and maddening memories which threatened to unman him.
Later that afternoon they reached Bristol, and, as Dora looked weary, John decided to go to a hotel for the night. There was one near the station, and to it they went and secured adjoining rooms. While he was making the arrangements in the office Dora waited for him in the great, barren-looking parlor, the scant furniture of which was upholstered in dark-green plush, and when he came for her she was standing at a window, looking out. The sight of her worried him, for she seemed homesick and drooped like a storm-tossed bird.
"Now for our supper," he said, cheerfully. But she shook her head. She was not a bit hungry, she declared. The motion of the car had sickened her at the stomach.
"Then I'll put you to bed," he said, "and leave you there till I get my supper."
She acquiesced, and he led her to her room up-stairs. "Tumble in," he said, still cheerily, and she began slowly to undress, sitting in a big arm-chair which all but swallowed her diminutive form. She was having trouble with the knots of her shoe-strings, which, in her haste, she had tied too carelessly, and he knelt down and unfastened them. "What a baby you are, after all!" he said, tenderly, a thrill that was almost parental going through him as he drew off the shoes, observed the thick coating of dust that was on them and the holes in the heels and toes of her stockings. "I'll leave your shoes outside the door, and a porter will clean them before morning and put them back," he said, smiling. He opened a valise, took out a clean though tattered nightgown she had brought, and spread it on the bed. Again he thought of Joel Eperson and wondered if Joel had done all such things for Martha Jane when she was a tiny tot. It was likely, for there were several years between their ages, and Joel seemed to be that sort of man.
When Dora was ready to retire he left her. "Are you afraid?" he asked from the door.
She shook her head. "What is there to be afraid of?" she asked, with a wan smile.
He returned in about an hour. He entered his room and peered cautiously in at the connecting door. The light from his gas-jet fell on her bed. She was awake.
"What is this?" he chided her. "Not asleep yet, and you all fagged out! Ah, I see! No wonder. Your window is shut. It is as close in here as a corked flask." He went in and opened her window. He thought the covering over her was too heavy for such a warm night and drew the white coverlet down below her feet. "There, there, that's better," he said. Her tangled hair lay unbecomingly across her brow, and he wanted to brush it back, but, conscious of a queer timidity, he refrained from doing so.
"I can't sleep for thinking," she suddenly said, with a touch of her old bluntness. "You haven't said where we are going."
"Oh, that is it!" He laughed and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Well, the truth is, little sister, I hadn't made up my mind fully. I thought it might be Philadelphia, but I was looking over a newspaper down-stairs and saw some notes about new developments in New York, and I decided to go there."
"Oh, New York!" the child cried. "That is the biggest city in the country. Old Roly-poly says the lid is always off up there, and—"
"Stop!" Not since leaving Ridgeville had John's tone been so sharp and commanding. "Don't mention that man's name ever again, Sis. And another thing! Let's agree between us never to speak of any of it again—not to each other or to anybody else. Do you understand? I want all of it buried forever in a grave as deep as from here to the middle of the earth."
"Not your ma, nor Aunt Jane—?"
"No, no!" he said, fiercely.
"Nor Tilly?"
"No, never—under any circumstances. If people want to know about us, send them to me—or simply say we are orphans, father and mother both dead. John and Dora Trott. You understand now, don't you?"
The little tousled head moved wearily on the big pillow. She did not understand his far-seeing policy, but it didn't matter. He knew best.
There was a rap on the door. Opening it, he admitted a waiter with a tray containing some steaming milk-toast. "I forgot ordering it," John said to Dora, as the man moved a small table up to her bedside and rested the tray on it. "You must not go to bed on an empty stomach, and this is just light enough to make you sleep soundly."
The sight of the food, which was attractively served, appealed to the child, and when the man had left the room, John propped her up with the pillow and put the tray into her lap. She ate heartily, and when she had finished he set the tray aside.
"Now go to sleep," he enjoined her. "We leave at eight thirty in the morning and scoot straight through Virginia to New York."
One morning, two days after this, Tilly, half ill from worry, was in her room. She heard the sound of wheels below, and, looking from her window, she descried Joel Eperson in his buggy under the spreading branches of a big beech in front of the gate. Her mother and father were at a lawyer's office in the village, where they had gone to conclude the arrangements for the immediate annulment of her marriage. She hastened down the stairs, and went out to the grim, sentinel-like visitor, noting, as she approached him, the tense, wasted expression of his sallow face and the dark splotches about his honest eyes.
"Oh, Joel," she all but sobbed, "I'm so glad you came! Did Martha Jane tell you I wanted to see you?"
"Yes, and I hurried over at once." He had bared his brow, held his broad-brimmed hat in his hand, and had descended to the ground. He took her hand and pressed it reverently and with a sort of shrinking timidity. "I want you to know, Tilly, that if there is anything on earth that I can do I'll willingly do it, if it costs my life. God only knows how I long to help you."
"Oh, Joel, it is awful—awful!" she began, and stopped abruptly.
"Oh, I know— I've heard everything!" he responded, "and it is a beastly outrage. I feel like killing some one. Your father must be insane, and the whole hot-headed mass of hoodlums who are making such a row over nothing at all. I knew about your husband's unfortunate mother and about his religious views, but those were things he could not help, and I could not hold them against him."
"You knew about his mother?" Tilly cried, surprised. "You knew before our marriage?"
Eperson shrugged his gaunt shoulders and transferred his resigned gaze from her face to the still fields. "Yes," he said. "A man who thinks he is a friend of mine, and—and knew of my attentions to you, he had heard it down at Ridgeville and came to me with it shortly after your husband came to Cranston to work. I asked him to drop it, and he did so. I was convinced that your husband was an honorable man and in himself worthy of the love I saw that you were giving him. I am ready to be his friend as well as yours."
"Oh, Joel, you are so—so sweet and kind and noble! You are my only friend—you and Martha Jane. Your support and friendship make me stronger and braver."
They were both silent for a moment. Then Eperson said: "But you sent for me, Tilly. There must be something that—"
"Yes," she interrupted, "there is something I want you to do for me. In fact, there is no one else to go to. Oh, Joel, I want to get word to John in some way. I was compelled to run away without seeing him, and I have been unable to get a letter to him. My father has stopped my letters both here and at the post-office. John will not know what to think, and it struck me that if you would write him that I haven't turned against him, and that I will be true to him always in spite of anything my people may do, it would help him to understand the situation, and encourage him to wait till I can go back to Ridgeville."
"Of course, of course I would gladly do that, but would not this be better?" Joel looked at his watch. "You see, it is too late to get a letter off on this morning's train, but I could go in person. I could, by driving fast, leave my horse and buggy at the livery-stable and catch the train myself. In that case I could see him to-night, you know, while if I wrote a letter it would not reach him till late to-morrow, if even then."
"Oh, but could you—would you—really go?" Tilly asked, eagerly. "It would be so much better, for then you could explain everything thoroughly."
"Yes, but I must hurry," Eperson said, glancing at his horse. "I have only a few minutes."
"Then hurry," Tilly urged him. "You will know exactly what to say. Tell him that, no matter what is done in court, I shall still be true to him, and that I love him now more than ever."
Eperson bowed gravely. "I'll do my best," he promised. "And I'll hurry back and bring you his message. Shall I come straight here?"
"Yes, straight here," Tilly cried. "I'll find some way to talk with you in private. Oh, you are so good, so good; but hurry, Joel! Don't miss the train. Find Mr. Cavanaugh and he will show you how to reach John."
"I'll do my best, you may be sure," Eperson said, springing into his buggy and taking up his reins and whip. "Good-by."
She watched him from the gate as he dashed away in the cloud of dust raised by the hoofs of his trotting horse. She estimated the time it would take him to reach the station, and dreaded hearing too soon the whistle of the coming train's locomotive. Fully ten minutes passed before she heard the whistle. Then she was sure that Joel would get aboard in time. She was sure, because she knew the man who was serving her.
That afternoon, rather late, her parents came home. They delivered the news to her that the court had acted most promptly and she was now no longer the legal wife of John Trott. She received the information as stolidly as if it were a foregone verdict and quietly turned from her harsh-faced parents and went up to her room.
"Not his wife?" She laughed to herself as she sat on her bed and locked her limp hands in her lap. "As if a lawyer, a judge, and a few jurymen could take my husband from me as easily as that! Huh! I'd live with him without marriage if that is all there is to marriage. Joel will see him to-night. Joel will tell him how I feel, and John will wait till I can go to him. I know he loves me. I know that, and nothing else counts—nothing!"
Later she descended the stairs and went into the kitchen where her mother was at work. "Let me help you, mother," she said, taking the broom from Mrs. Whaley's hands and beginning to sweep the floor. "You must have had a lot to do while I was away."
Mrs. Whaley stood surprised for a moment, started to speak, hesitated, and then went out to where her husband sat in the slanting rays of the sun under an apple-tree.
"Where is she now?" he asked, glancing up from the open Bible and manuscript on his knee.
"She's sweeping in the kitchen."
"You don't say!" he said, laconically. "Well, when she is through in there send her here to me. I've got a straight talk for her. Things can't rest exactly on the same basis as they used to, as far as she is concerned. She has got to be on probation-like if she stays on under my roof. A great deal will depend on her conduct from now on. Folks will be inclined to slough away from us for a while. Already they blame you and me, and say we were too eager to marry her off. Nothing like this ever happened to any member of my church. It is bad in every way, and may be worse. I'm going to pray that no—no living stigma may follow it. You know what I mean. You know that I don't want to be the grandfather of Liz Trott's grandchild, and I won't—I won't if there is a just God in heaven. When Tilly is through that work send her to me."
"I'll do nothing of the sort," the woman said. "She is my child, as well as yours, and you'd better let well enough alone."
"What do you mean?" he growled, his grisly brows meeting, the old fanatical gleams in his eyes.
"I mean what I say," was the retort, deliberately delivered. "She was a child when she left us—she is a full-grown woman now. A woman don't live with a man even three or four days and remain the same as she was before. If you take my advice you won't nag her over this. I don't like her looks. She took the news of the divorce too quiet-like to suit me."
"Oh, that's it!" Whaley said, seriously, the flare in his eyes dying out. "That's what you are afraid of. You think she might give us the slip and get back to that scoundrel, divorce or no divorce. Well"—and he continued to frown—"that would be bad—that would be making a bad matter worse. I see your point, and you may be right. At any rate, I'll hold up for a while. Yes, yes, I'll hold up."
"I think you'd better," was the answer, as the speaker turned back into the house.
The next day, in the afternoon, when Eperson had alighted from the train, he met his sister waiting for him in the buggy. "I got your message," she said, as he hurriedly approached her, brushing the dust of travel from his hat, "and here I am. What can I do to help poor Tilly?"
"Come with me to her," he said, sadly. "It may give me an opportunity to see her alone. I have already heard what was done at court, but I have even worse news for her."
He hurriedly explained as they drove along. He had met Cavanaugh and the astounded contractor had told him of John and Dora's secret departure. The old man had wept as he said that John had taken himself away as an obstacle to his wife's happiness, and that he evidently intended to disappear completely and forever. As Cavanaugh saw it, John had taken Dora with him to rescue the child from a fate similar to his own, which was a grand and noble thing to do, "especially," the contractor had added with a gulp, "when the poor boy was already loaded down with troubles of his own."
"It will break Tilly's heart—it may kill her!" Martha Jane declared, with strong emotion. "Poor thing!"
Just before reaching Whaley's Joel said: "I may not get a good chance to see Tilly alone, and in that case we'd better not keep her in suspense. Perhaps, after all, you could tell her even better than I."
Martha Jane nodded. "Poor Joel!" she murmured. "I see. You haven't the heart to tell her. Well, I will do it for you."
The elder Whaleys sat on the veranda. Tilly was not in sight. "I'll stay here in the buggy. You go in," Joel said. "They will let you talk to her alone. They always do."
Martha Jane got down to the ground between the parted wheels of the buggy and went into the yard.
"Where is Tilly, Mrs. Whaley?" she asked.
"Up in her room," Mrs. Whaley said. "Will you go up, or wait down here?"
"I'll run up, I guess," the visitor answered, with assumed lightness. "Joel, wait for me. I'll be down soon."
"Won't you come in, Joel?" Mrs. Whaley asked.
"No, I thank you, Mrs. Whaley," he said. "I'll watch my horse out here."
He remained seated in the buggy, slightly bending forward. A horse-fly was teasing the shuddering back of his horse, and he deftly flicked at it with his whip till he had knocked it away. A man in a field across the road was gathering yellow pumpkins and loading them into a cart. Joel himself had several acres of pumpkins ready for harvesting, and ordinarily he would have been interested in the quantity and quality of this farmer's product, but there were graver things on his mind now. Surely Martha Jane was staying a long time up-stairs. Had she put it delicately enough? Had she omitted to mention the fact of Trott's taking the child away with him? Joel had intended emphasizing that, for it was a thing any wife would be proud to hear of the man she had married. The time dragged even more slowly now. Old Whaley left his seat, walked around to the well, drew up a bucket of water, and drank from the bucket itself, tilting it forward with both his hands. Then Mrs. Whaley went into the house. Presently Martha Jane came down the stairs and out into the yard.
"Good-by, Mrs. Whaley," she called out. "I must be going now."
"Good-by, Martha Jane!" from within the house. "Come again when you find the time."
"I will, thank you, Mrs. Whaley. You must come out to see mother. She never gets into town, and you mustn't count visits with her."
There was a response to this which Joel did not hear, for he was studying his sister's face as he stood ready to help her into the buggy.
"Well?" he said, as they started to drive on. "What did you do?"
"Oh, don't ask me—don't ask me!" Martha Jane's eyes were filling, her lips twitching. "Oh, Joel, it was awful—simply awful! I'm glad you did not try to tell her. She stood tottering pitifully and looking as white as a dead person. I thought she was going to faint, and would have called her mother if she hadn't stopped me. It seemed to take away all the hope she had left. She sees it exactly as Mr. Cavanaugh does—that her husband intends to disappear for good and all. She thinks it was for her sake, too. She said so. She declared she did not blame him at all, and when I told her about that child she said she understood that, too, and knew he did it for the little girl's good—that the child was facing a terrible future."
"Well, well, is that all?" Joel inquired, huskily.
"I left her seated at a window," Martha Jane continued. "I tried to get her to promise to be calm and hopeful, but all the old strength and energy seemed to have left her. I'm afraid, very much afraid, that she will never get over it. She has borne a lot already and this shock is the last straw."
A strap which held the breeching around the buttocks of the horse and fastened it to the shafts had broken, and Joel got down to fix it. The buckle-hole had torn out of the rotten leather, and he had to punch another with his pocket-knife.
"Poor Joel!" Martha Jane thought, as she sat and watched him. "People needn't tell me that men can't be constant. He'd love Tilly if she were to wipe her feet on him. He'd love her if she refused him a dozen times for other men. He'd go any length right now to give her back her husband. I wonder what there is about her that men care so much for. I'm sure I don't know, unless it is because she is so patient and gentle and plucky."
The harness was fixed. Joel got back into the buggy and drove on to the Square. "I was going to stop and get some things," Martha Jane said, "but I won't. I'm coming in to see Tilly to-morrow. I'm about the only one that goes to see her now. You knew, didn't you, that some of these narrow-minded women and girls are pretending to believe simply awful things about her?"
"What sort of things?" Eperson asked, waxing indignant.
"Why, you know—they say that Mr. Trott took her to his mother's house and introduced her to the worst sort of folks. There isn't a word of truth in it. Tilly has not yet even met the woman. Tilly and he had a cottage all to themselves. She told me that herself."
Joel groaned angrily. "I'm not surprised at anything the people around here would say and believe," he said, his lips drawn tight, his eyes holding fierce fires that were bursting into flames.
"Joel," Martha Jane said, as they were nearing their home, "you must take yourself in hand. This is showing on you. Tilly's marriage was bad enough, but this is hurting you even more."
"Oh, don't bother about me!" he cried, testily. "I'm a man and can stand anything. But you must look after her. Do you understand? You must come in to-morrow early and stay all day. She will need somebody besides that sour-faced, crabbed old pair that is with her. They will kill her or drive her insane."
"I'll do it—you may depend on me, brother," Martha Jane promised, as he helped her from the buggy at the gate.
On the morning following their arrival at Bristol, John and Dora took the train for New York. "We'll sit in the chair-car," he proposed. "It has revolving fans and is more roomy. They say this train is usually crowded."
Dora smiled expectantly as she followed him into the luxurious coach. She had slept well, had eaten a good breakfast, and seemed brighter than she had the day before. She was still a grotesque-looking creature in the dress which was too long for a child of her age, and the hat that was too large, being one Jane Holder, in one of her rare moments of mild self-reproach, had discarded and hastily retrimmed for her niece. But John Trott was not critical of outward appearances. There was something beneath the surface in Dora—an unspoken reliance on him, a gentle betrayal of pride and confidence in him, not to mention her abject helplessness, which atoned for all external shortcomings. The whole world looked dark to him, but he had determined that Dora should not dwell in the shadow, if he could prevent it.
They were soon well into the state of Virginia. The train was quite crowded and John congratulated himself on securing seats in the parlor-car. From the window Dora listlessly viewed the back-drifting fields and forests, the tobacco which she had never seen growing before, and the old-fashioned houses on the farms as well as in the towns and villages.
It was near night. Washington was only a few hours away.
"We are going to cross a high trestle over a ravine," John explained to his charge. "I heard a man talking about it. There! that is the whistle. I guess they will slow down until we get over it."
But the train was late and the locomotive's speed was not greatly diminished. From the window John saw the line of trees marking the ravine's sinuous course through the fields and told Dora that they would soon be on the trestle. A moment later there was a shriek from the locomotive, a violent jerking of the cars, a distant crashing and grinding of timbers, and a thunderous sound of heavy bodies falling. The coupling was broken and the chair-car lurched forward, left the track, shot its front end against an embankment about twenty feet high and remained poised there. Dora was thrown against a window, the thick glass of which fortunately did not break, and John fell between the chairs to the floor. Everywhere in the car the passengers lay over one another, squirming and screaming in pain and terror.
"Are you hurt?" John asked Dora, as he struggled to his feet and bent over her.
"No." She shook her head, her face blanched, her whole frame quivering.
"Come, let's get out!" he said. He offered to lift her in his arms, for the floor of the car was sharply slanting to one side, but she refused to permit it.
"Oh no. I can get out better by myself," she said, stepping from one seat to another to accelerate their egress.
Some of the passengers around them were injured slightly, some had fainted, and lay prone in the aisle, and these people blocked their progress for a few moments. But when they had finally reached the open a frightful sight met their view. At the bottom of the ravine which the trestle had spanned lay an indiscriminate heap of splintered and telescoped coaches which quite hid from view the locomotive lying beneath. A violent hissing of steam came from the mass which all but drowned out the cries of pain and terror from the imprisoned victims. Now and then men or boys could be seen breaking through the car windows and climbing down to the ground. But hundreds were out of sight. They were doubtless stunned or killed outright.
Fifty or sixty people from the chair-car and the two connected sleeping-coaches, which were the only parts of the train saved from the ruin, gathered on the brink of the ravine and stood spellbound by the sights they beheld in the smoking inferno beneath.
Suddenly a trainman near John raised a cry: "The cars are catching on fire! They are dry as powder and will burn like oil! My God! there are women and children down there!"
"Stay here!" John said to Dora. "I must get down there and try to help."
She nodded mutely, and he darted away. Other men followed him through the weeds and bushes down the rugged declivity. Dora watched him till he had vanished among the trees and boulders. The sound of escaping steam had ceased. Human cries were now audible, groans, prayers, and the pounding of feet and hands against parched car-walls. Faint blows they were and futile—hoarse prayers and unanswered. The highest car in the heap was toppling over and settled down more snugly into the mass. Between the upper coaches blue smoke was issuing, and from the under ones fierce flames were bursting. Dora suddenly descried John. He was on the slanting side of one of the cars, kicking in a wired window. The heart of the child was in her mouth, for he was in the gravest peril. Within twenty feet of him the flames were lapping the paint from the thin woodwork on which he stood.
"That man that was with you is a fool!" a stylishly dressed woman said to Dora. "He will be burned to death."
"He is a workman—a brick-mason," Dora said, "and able to—"
"I don't care what he is—he is crazy, simply crazy!"
What had become of John, Dora did not know, for in a cloud of swirling smoke and flames she suddenly lost sight of him. Also the men who had descended with him could not be seen, and the whole mass of cars were now aflame. The blaze and heat drove the awed spectators back farther from the edge of the fiery gorge. Some were moving away to look after their belongings in the undestroyed cars. Dora wondered what she ought to do. She began to fear the worst in regard to John. She wanted to cry, but the tear-founts seemed to have dried up. The sun was down. The thickening darkness made the flames in the ravine all the brighter.
Presently she felt some one grasp her arm. It was John. He was covered with black as to his hands, face, and neck. His clothing was torn and scorched; there was a bleeding scratch across his right cheek and chin which had been made by a piece of flying glass. He was now mopping it with a soiled handkerchief.
"It is hell!" she heard him say, more to himself than her. "It is hell!"
Dora clung to him joyously.
"Think of it," he panted. "I got one woman out at a window and was reaching down for a little boy. I could see him holding up his hands from the burning seats, but he could not reach me. God! I'll never forget that kid's eyes and his last scream as he fell back into the fire!"
A locomotive drawing flat-cars loaded with people from a near-by town had stopped just beyond the sleeping-cars, and the crowd sprang down and gathered on the brink of the ravine up the side of which remains of the trestle hung, slowly burning.
"Come," John said to Dora. "I'll get our things out of the car, and then we'll get a place to spend the night. I'm sure we'll not get away till morning. I saw a hotel down the track as we came along."
He left her and returned in a moment with the valises. Then they went back along the railway to a crossing where stood a hotel of the very crudest rural type. Going into the office, he secured a room for Dora; but could get none for himself. Returning to her, he said:
"We'll have supper pretty soon. Go to your room and wash the dust off your face and hands. You are a sight to behold."
She followed an attendant up the single flight of stairs, though it looked as if she were averse to being separated from John even for so short a while. Indeed, she was wondering if he did not intend to undertake something else in which danger was involved. However, he did not keep her waiting long. He came up to her room. He had washed his face and hands in the barber shop, and had had his clothing and shoes brushed. He led her down to the dining-room. It was packed with passengers from the remaining coaches of the train who were bent on getting something to eat, and as for the adjoining office, it was literally jammed by an ever-growing throng of curious and horrified spectators, who were arriving by train, by private conveyance, and on foot from all directions.
They had secured seats at a table and given their order when an excited man of middle age, without hat or coat on, rushed up to John, holding out his hand.
"They tell me you are the man who saved my wife!" he cried. "My God! sir, I want—"
"Not me." John smiled blandly. "Must have been some other chap."
"Oh, I beg your pardon," the man said, slightly taken aback. "I see I am mistaken."
He disappeared in the office and Dora looked up at John inquiringly. "Didn't you say back there that you got a woman out of—"
"'Sh!" John said, glancing furtively at the adjoining table and lowering his voice to a whisper. "Yes, I said so, but we have to be careful. That man would have wanted my name and address and I don't know what else. You see, kid, you and I are trying to cover our tracks. If we got our names in a paper the people in Ridgeville would know as much about our business as we do ourselves. There are several reporters here jotting down names and telegraphing them. I made a point of not registering just now—paid in advance to get around it."
Young as she was, Dora understood what he meant. The supper came, was eaten, and they gave their places to other applicants for seats at the table. Dora looked tired and he sent her to her room. He had decided to sit up all night, but he did not tell her so. He saw a stream of sight-seers going toward the flaring gorge, and he joined them. More than a thousand persons were now massed along the brink of the ravine, in the depths of which lay a vast heap of coals, red-hot iron, twisted steel rails, and the burly outlines of the unconsumed locomotive, over which the ashes and coals had settled like a pall of scarlet.
In the light of a lantern held by a trainman a reporter on the steps of the chair-car sat rapidly making notes on a pad with a pencil. Suddenly he saw a man passing and called out to him:
"Hey, Timmons!" he cried. "Any more names?"
"Oh yes! I was looking for you," the man addressed answered, and he drew a slip of paper from his pocket. "Here you are. Take 'em down quick. I have to wire my own list in right away. T. B. Wrenshall, wife and child, St. Louis. Got that? Begins with a W, not an R. They say he was a traveling-man, but that doesn't matter. It is the list my people want. Here is another: Mrs. Marie Dugan, Nashville, also Miss Satterlee, Atlanta—a school-teacher, they say, but I'm not sure, so leave that out."
"All right. Thank you, Timmons," and the two reporters parted.
John paused, leaned against the car near the man with the pad, and idly watched his rapidly moving pencil. Something, he knew not what, seemed to hold him there as for some occult purpose. A conductor of one of the sleeping-cars approached. "Press?" he asked, hurriedly.
"Yes, here I am," muttered the reporter.
"Here is a complete list of all my passengers," the conductor said, "all alive and checked up."
"All right, but it is the dead ones I'm after," the reporter said, taking the paper and pinning it to his notes.
John moved a few feet away. Again he viewed the red ruins, peering over the brink as into the heart of an active volcano. A thought had come to him, but he was irresolute. He looked back at the reporter. The man was still on the steps at work.
"It would be easy," John mused. "The simplest thing in the world, and I ought to do it. That would settle it for good and all. It would free Tilly completely, and give Dora her chance, too. Yes, I ought to do it— I really ought."
He walked about on the edge of the throng for several moments undecidedly. "What the hell is the matter with me?" he muttered. "Why can't I decide on a thing as simple as that and be done with it? It is for Tilly's lasting good. It would wipe the whole rotten thing out at once, and stop the damned wagging tongues sooner than anything else. It would sting sharply, like a doctor's knife, but it would cure the trouble. If I don't do something it will hang over her as long as she lives. I spoiled her chances by dropping into her life—here is a chance to drop out of it. I'm leaving her for good and all, anyway, so why not make a clean job of it?"
He felt that he had decided at last, and he went back to the reporter.
"Are you taking names?" he asked, in a voice the matter-of-fact tone of which surprised himself.
"Yes. Got any?" The writer did not look up from his rapidly moving pencil.
"Two friends of mine."
"All right, wait a minute."
The pencil was now rapidly producing shorthand dots, curves, and dashes. The red sky above the gorge held John's eyes. As in a picture of radiating flame he saw his little wife as he had seen her the morning he had unknowingly kissed her farewell forever on the door-step of the cottage as he stood, dinner-pail in hand, the sun just rising above the hills. In spite of his self-control and a belief in his stolidness, a lump swelled in his throat.
"She deserves a better deal out of the deck than to be tied to the memory of a man like me," he thought. "When she reads my name in the papers I'll be dead to her, dead and cremated. After all, it can't be worse than the other."
"Well, well," the reporter said, looking up, "you say you have lost some friends?"
"Yes, two—a man and a little girl, in the coach just ahead of this one."
"Their names and addresses, please. I'm in a devil of a rush—using railroad telegraph, and it is packed with official business. Got an opening now, but may lose it any moment. Mention ages and business, if you know them."
"John Trott, twenty years old, Ridgeville, Georgia, brick-mason."
"All right—two t's in Trott, eh? Well, and the other one?"
"Dora Boyles—B-o-y-l-e-s," slowly spelled John; "age about nine, orphan, same town—Ridgeville, Georgia."
"Thanks. Is that all?" asked the reporter.
"That is all," and, afraid of being further questioned, John turned and stalked away.
He and Dora took a train for New York early the next morning. The air seemed to be growing more crisp. Dora's color was better, her skin clearer, her eyes brighter. She seemed more and more interested in the scenery along the way. They had to stop over in Washington for about three hours, and, leaving their valises in a check-room, they strolled about the city. John did not realize it, but the care and entertainment of the child had much to do with keeping his mind from dwelling on his troubles. Once he caught himself actually laughing over a droll mistake Dora made. She was so much interested in the sights that she walked nearly half a block at the side of a stranger, thinking that the man was John, who had paused to buy a cigar, and when she discovered her mistake she fairly screamed and hastened to John, whose hand she wanted to hold thereafter.
"He wouldn't bite you," John said. "In fact, he thought it was a good joke."
At four o'clock that afternoon they reached Jersey City, and at once took the ferry for New York, sitting on the upper deck and viewing the harbor and sky-line.
"It is a big town," John said, "a powerful big town. We'll be lost here like needles in a haystack. Well, that is what we are after, Sis," he added, a serious cast to his features.
They went ashore at Twenty-third Street. They were so ignorant of the life they were entering that they were fairly dazed by the crush and din of human beings and traffic which met them at the long pier and in the congested thoroughfare upon which it fronted. They were all but as helpless as incoming foreigners who could not speak the language of the country. However, with a bag in each hand, and Dora closely following, John managed to reach a street that was less crowded, and they walked on now more calmly. He was looking for a boarding-house, John informed his companion. "I understand there are plenty of them all about," he added.
They had reached West Fourteenth Street, and there in the windows of many of the old-fashioned brownstone former residences of the well-to-do John saw cards advertising rooms and board.
"There are three in a row," he smiled at Dora. "Which one shall we pick?"
"The one this way," she decided. "It looks cleaner, and there are some flowers on the window-sills."
"Good! Let's try it—ask the rates, anyway."
They crossed the street and went to the house in question. Here, however, they were puzzled, for there were two entrances, one on the brownstone stoop and the other beneath it. They decided on the lower, it being more accessible. There was a bell-pull and John, who had once put one into a wall, understood what it was for and used it promptly.
A white woman, who looked like she was Irish, opened the door.
"I see you have rooms and board," John ventured. "We want to see about them."
The woman smiled agreeably. "The madam is up-stairs. You can go up the steps and I'll let you in at the upper door, or you can come through here."
"This way is all right," John said. And the woman led them into a little hallway adjoining a long dining-room, the white-clothed tables of which could be seen through the open door. On the same floor, just beyond, was the kitchen. They knew this, for they caught a glimpse of a big range above which hung a row of polished pots and pans.
The stairway to the upper floor was quite narrow, and John had some difficulty in ascending it with his valises and the mute Dora, who was nervously attempting to hold his arm. However, the ascent was made, and they were shown into a big parlor with windows looking out on the street. The floor was covered by a well-worn but clean carpet, the walls held pictures of various sorts—crayon portraits, steel engravings, machine-made oil landscapes and a few water-colors in every style of frame imaginable.
"Oh, Mrs. McGwire!" the servant called up the flight of stairs which reached the next floor above. "Are you there?"
"Yes, Mrs. Clark. What is it?"
"Rooms and board," was the answer.
"Very well. I'm coming right down."
The landlady proved to be a cheery, bustling little body about thirty-five years of age. Her eyes were blue, her hair chestnut. She bestowed a smile on the applicants that at once put them at ease.
"Yes, I happen to have two rooms at the top," she said, eying Dora's attire with a woman's natural curiosity. "They are three flights up; I have no others right now. My house is usually full at all seasons. You see, I have many stand-by's; people who have been here for years call it home. If you want to see the rooms you can leave your things here for a while."
Leaving Dora below, John accompanied the landlady to the rooms above. On seeing them he was satisfied that they would do. They were in the rear. One was quite large, and, in the crude estimation of the brick-mason, rather well furnished, for it held a massive walnut bureau with a marble top and wide mirror lighted on both sides by globed gas-jets, one of which was pink, the other frosted white. There was a big rosewood sofa against a wall, also a rocking-chair, a center-table, a wide walnut bedstead, and an ample alcove containing running water, and a basin and towels. The other was the typical hall room with a narrow iron bed, a chair, a wash-stand, a rug, a row of hooks on the wall for clothing over which hung a calico dust-curtain, and a single window.
"I suppose this might do for the little girl," suggested Mrs. McGwire, affably. "Children don't need much room. She is a relative, I presume?"
"My sister. We are orphans," John said, casually enough, considering the unlooked-for demand on his resources. "My sister Dora. But I would want her to have the other room. I can bunk anywhere. I want to put her into the public school here, and she ought to have a cheerful place to study in at night and sit in through the day. I shall be away at work."
"Fine, fine! I like that in you." Mrs. McGwire smiled affably. "I'm a widow with three children to bring up (that is why I am running this house) and I certainly appreciate such consideration for a child as you show. I have a boy of thirteen, a girl of eleven, and another of eight. If you stay here the older ones, Harold and Betty, might be able to help start your sister out on her studies."
"That would be nice," John responded. "She is a country girl and never has been to school at all."
Just here a rather tall, slender boy with the face of a student opened the door of a room at the far end of the passage and came forward.
"This is my big son," Mrs. McGwire said, smiling. "This is Harold. The doctor says he studies too hard, but I simply can't make him stop it."
The lad smiled politely, put his arm about his mother's waist, and said: "Somebody has taken my concordance. I left it with my other books, and it is gone."
"Oh, I forgot," Mrs. McGwire said, indulgently. "Mr. King (he is our minister)"—this last to John. "He was looking over your books this morning and he took it down to the parlor with him. It is there."
"Thank you, mother," the boy said, and went down the stairs.
"I'm very proud of my son," Mrs. McGwire said, looking after the boy with beaming eyes. "He really has a remarkable mind. Young as he is, he has already decided to be a preacher. He has read the Bible through twice, and can quote any passage you mention. He is the leader of Mr. King's big Bible class. His father was a minister, and it has been my daily prayer that Harold would go into the same work."
Ten dollars a week for the rooms and board for two was the price agreed on, and John went down with Mrs McGwire to inform Dora of the arrangement.
"I needn't ask your name," Mrs. McGwire said, smiling, as he picked up the valises, "for I see it on your bag. John Trott is short and plain enough."
John blinked. He had really thought seriously of changing his name, but it was too late now; besides, what did it matter? He nodded. "Yes," he said, looking at the letters on the valise. "A friend of mine, a sign-painter, made me a present of this last Christmas, and he lettered it himself."
Dora liked the spacious room very much, and it did not occur to her just then to compare it to John's, as she hastily removed her few belongings from his bags, and hung or laid them about the room.
After supper John went out to buy some tobacco, and when he returned he found Dora in her room, most timidly entertaining Betty and Minnie McGwire. Dora did not introduce her guests, and Betty rather gracefully did it herself. She was an affable talker, a rather slim, gawky blonde, while Minnie was a stocky brunette with heavy, dark brows and black hair that was too coarse and wiry to be easily controlled.
"Betty's going to dress my doll," Dora informed him. "She has got lots and lots of doll-things packed away, and Minnie has the cutest doll-house you ever saw. It is full of tables and chairs and dishes and even closets to hang things in. Could you show it to him, Minnie?"
"Sure," answered the child addressed. "I'll go get it."
"No, not to-night," John interposed. "Some other time."
Leaving the children, he turned into his cheerless room and lighted the gas. He unpacked the valises and hung up some of his apparel under the dust-curtain. There were his working-shirts, his overalls, his coarse cap and stoggy shoes. He had bought an evening paper and he opened it out to read it, but could not fix his attention even on the boldest of the head-lines. Ridgeville, the cottage, Tilly, floated through his mind, and a pain that was both physical and mental clutched his whole being. He winced, ground his teeth together, and stifled a groan.
"It is my damned yellow streak!" he muttered. "I must get over it—kill it, pull it out by the roots. Why shouldn't I have my share of bad luck? Others have plenty of it—even women and children. Poof! Be a man, John Trott. Don't be a dirty shirker!"
A merry ripple of laughter came from the adjoining room, and he heard Dora telling of the mistake she had made on the street in Washington, and somehow he felt relieved. Surely good would come out of the plunge he had made into those unknown waters, dark and deep as they seemed. Wasn't Dora already better off? And what more could he desire than to benefit a child like that materially and lastingly?
But the pain still clung and permeated. He heard the two visitors bidding good night to Dora, and when they had gone down-stairs he went into the other room, finding the child with her doll in her arms, rocking it as a mother might a living babe.
"Now get to bed, Sis," he said, more tenderly than he had ever spoken to her before. "Do you like it here?"
"Oh, very, very much!" she cried, enthusiastically. "Betty and Minnie are the sweetest and best children I ever saw, and Harold is nice, too—nice and polite, and awfully smart. He uses big words that I never heard before. The girls want me to go with them to their school and church. May I?"
"Yes," he returned. "Now get to bed. Sleep as late as you want to in the morning. You don't have to get up before day to cook breakfast for me now, eh?"
She smiled happily, but said nothing.
He yearned to kiss her, for through her companionship in his loneliness she had become very dear to him, but that strode him as being a weak thing for a man to do, and he left her without yielding to the impulse.
The air in his cell-like room was rather close, and he did not go to sleep readily. There were so many things to think about—the work he had to find as soon as possible, the clothes that must be bought for Dora, for he wanted her to dress as well as her new friends. He decided to ask Mrs. McGwire to help him make those purchases. As for the work, he was sure he could find a job at good wages, for he had already looked over the "Help wanted" advertisements in a morning paper and written down the addresses of several firms of contractors and builders who were in need of skilled labor.
After a long while he fell asleep, and when he waked in the morning he heard Dora moving about in her room.
"Kid!" he called out, "come here!"
"All right, brother John," she answered, and he was sure that he heard her tittering in a suppressed way. Wondering what could be the cause of her merriment so early in the day, he called out again. This time she answered with a rippling laugh: "Wait a minute, can't you?"
Ten minutes passed, and then she appeared in the doorway. She had on a really attractive blue-serge suit that fitted her quite well. Indeed, with her hair arranged as Betty McGwire wore hers, she looked like some strange, new little girl who bore but a slight resemblance to the unkempt Dora he had known from her babyhood.
"I was going to surprise you," she said, laughing freely over his stare of astonishment. "It is a dress that was too small for Betty and too big for Minnie. Mrs. McGwire gave it to me last night while you were out. She has two or three others which she says will be out of style before Minnie comes on, and will go to the ragman if I don't take them."
"It looks all right," John said, admiringly. "It will do till we can get some new ones."
His mind greatly relieved by having such good custodians for Dora, John fared forth immediately after breakfast in search of work. No one could possibly have been more ignorant of the intricate ways of the great city than he, and yet he managed to find the office of the first advertiser on his list without overmuch delay or difficulty.
"Pilcher & Reed, Contractors and Builders," as their sign read, had their offices over a carpenter's shop in East Thirty-third Street near the river. The house was a red-brick structure which in former days had been a residence. The contractors occupied all of the second floor, the two floors above being used by certain Jewish makers of shirt-waists and skirts, and an Italian establishment for the dry-cleaning of clothing.
Mr. Reed, the junior member of the firm, was in the main office, a large square room with two windows, the walls of which were hung with framed photographs of buildings the firm had constructed and maps of the city's streets. He was standing at a flat-top desk which was covered with blue-prints, drawings, and sheets of paper filled with figures and diagrams, and as John entered he turned and shook hands with him. He had a broad face, was of middle age, and decidedly bald. He had a cordial manner, and when he detected, from John's pronunciation, that he was Southern, he smiled agreeably.
"I went down into North Carolina with a lumber concern ten years ago," he said. "We roughed it in the mountains getting out timber, and had a splendid time. I often wish I had kept at it. This indoor grind is taking the life out of me. I seldom see the sun. Brick-mason, eh? Well, the manager of our brick-and-stone work is in the rear office now, talking to some applicants. Member of the union?"
"No, not yet," John answered. "But I'm going to join."
"Well, that is unfortunate, for I think Mr. Kline will fill his openings right away, and we have to take union men in our work, to keep out of all sorts of labor complications."
Mr. Reed seemed interested. He laid aside his work, and he and John talked for nearly an hour, and when it finally came out that John had assisted in some contracting work in the South and had an ambition to go farther in the same line, Mr. Reed lowered his brows thoughtfully. In an adjoining office Mr. Pilcher was at work dictating letters to a stenographer and Reed suddenly excused himself and went in to him. John noticed that he shut the door of the tiny office. He was gone ten minutes or more and then he came back.
"The truth is, Mr. Trott," he said, a touch of business-like reserve showing itself in his manner for the first time, "we are really in need of office help. I mean the kind of a man that could do both inside and outside work. Mr. Richer is getting old and is not able to do much. He says he would like to talk to you. Would you mind going in?"
Pilcher was a brusk, dyspeptic individual who seemed to be overworked, but John liked him and was convinced of his fairness and honesty. They had only chatted a few minutes when the old man called out to his partner and asked him to come in.
Reed made his appearance at once. "We might give Mr. Trott a trial in the office," he said. "What do you think?"
"I haven't yet spoken to Mr. Trott of the salary," Reed said. "Have you mentioned it, Mr. Pilcher?"
"No, but I thought you had."
"At the start it could not be more than twenty a week," the junior member said, "but there would be a chance, if you caught on readily to the work, for an increase later on.
"I had hoped to do better than that," John answered, frankly. "I want to make a start at contracting, but I am a good brick-mason, and I can, by working overtime, occasionally earn more at that, I think."
"Yes, perhaps," Pilcher admitted, and he threw a glance at his partner which seemed to sanction John's level-headed view. "We might raise it to twenty-two, and give Mr. Trott time to think it over till—say, to-morrow morning. How would that suit you, Mr. Trott?"
"Very well, thank you," said John, and he rose to go.
Reed followed him into the other office. The fact that John had not at once accepted the position had impressed him favorably. "I really think we could get along well together," he said. "From what you have told me about your past work I think you would fall into our line easily enough. Well, think it over, and let us know in the morning."
John spent the remainder of the day answering in person various advertisements. At some places he was kept waiting in a long line of applicants for hours, only to find that the work to be done was out of town, and that membership in the union was absolutely obligatory.
When the houses of business were beginning to close for the day he took the Elevated train for home. Mrs. McGwire met him at the front door. She was smiling agreeably.
"Your sister is not at home just now," she announced. "Minnie and Betty were going to an ice-cream festival at our church, around in the next block, and they took her with them. I hope you don't mind."
"Not at all," he returned. "I'm glad she got to go, and it was kind of them to take her."
He was at dinner when the children returned and they all came to the table where he sat alone. Dora's face was slightly flushed and she looked very attractive in the blue-serge suit. His heart throbbed with a vague, new pride in her. It was strange, but she had already acquired a sort of self-possession that rested well on such young shoulders. He noticed that she conducted herself almost as well as her two companions. She unfolded her napkin and put it into her lap, and handled her knife and fork as they did.
"Oh, it was glorious, brother John!" she exclaimed. "I wish you had been there. Girls and boys acted and sang on a little stage. Harold helped Mr. King run it all. The ice-cream and cake was the best I ever tasted. Harold made a speech, and it was very funny. Everybody laughed and clapped their hands."
"Harold only introduced some of the performers in a funny sort of way," Betty said, with quiet dignity. "He wrote it down beforehand."
When dinner was over they all went to the parlor above. Betty sat at the piano, opened a book of "Gospel Songs," and she and Minnie and some of the boarders began to sing. Harold came in with his mother and they stood side by side, listening. John sat at a window and he noticed that Dora, who was near the piano, had a look half of envy, half of chagrin in her eyes.
"Poor kid!" John mused, reading her aright, "she is sorry she can't sing. Young as she is, she has backbone and doesn't want others to be ahead of her."
That night before going to bed he looked in on her in her room. She sat in a big rocking-chair with a book in her lap. He went in and looked at it. It was an English primer. She glanced up at him. There was something like the moisture of diffused tears in her eyes and he heard her sigh.
"What is the matter?" he asked, gently.
She sighed again. "I can't make head nor tail of this darned thing," she said, her lips twitching. "Oh, I'm mad, brother John! Betty and Minnie can both read and write, and Betty keeps telling me (not in a mean way, though) not to say this and not to say that. Why, I'm a fool— I'm really a blockhead!"
John was deeply touched. He drew up a chair close beside hers and rested his hand on her head. "Listen, kid," he began. "It will come out all right. You are going to start to school Monday and you will learn fast. You are anxious to do it, you see, and that is the main thing. Some children have to be forced to learn, but it will come easy to you, for you have a good mind."
"Do you believe it? Do you really?" she faltered, searching his face eagerly.
"I know it," he answered, "and, take it from me, when you once get started you will go ahead of stacks and stacks of them. Don't be ashamed to start at the bottom. Great men and women began that way, and you are not to blame for the poor chance you've had."
He saw that he had comforted her, and recounted his various adventures in seeking work. When he spoke of the offer Pilcher & Reed had made him she suddenly said, "Take them up, brother John."
"Why do you say that?" he inquired.
"Because"—she began, and hesitated—"because I don't want you always to be a brick-mason. It is dirty work. You can do better. Look at Harold. He is just a boy, and yet he is determined to be a minister like Mr. King. Ministers talk nice and look nice."
And as John lay in his bed afterward, trying to decide what to do, he suddenly said: "It is a go! I'll take the kid's advice. It is a toss-up, anyway. They may not keep me the week out, but the thing is worth trying for. Sam always said it was my line and others have said the same thing. Yes, I'll close with Pilcher & Reed in the morning. I'll hang up my hat in that office and try my hand at a new game for one week, anyway."
When he waked the next morning, however, he felt oppressed by a weighty sense of the things he had renounced forever. The new work he was about to undertake no longer charmed him. His entire outlook now seemed chaotic, futile. How could he go ahead—with any sort of heart—in this drab life among strangers, and leave forever behind him the memory of his ecstatic honeymoon with the sweet, pulsing mate of his choice? It simply could not be done. It was beyond mortal strength. He told himself that he had kept himself keyed up to the present point by continual change and rapid movement since leaving Tilly, but the ultimate test was on him. With a groan from a tight throat, and smothering another in his pillow, he told himself over and over that his career was ended. Tilly was free—there was comfort in that. With the news of his death in the wreck, she would bury him as widows have always buried their mates, and life for her would roll on, but she would remain alive to him as long as the breath came and went from his cheerless frame.
"Brother John!" It was Dora calling to him. "Are you awake?"
He started to answer, but his voice was clogged and he was afraid to trust it to utterance. She called again and then appeared fully dressed in the doorway, the primer in her hands. She approached his bedside. "Will you please tell me what this darned letter is? I can say them all, I think, down to it. What comes after O?"
"P," he answered. "Who taught you the others?"
"Betty. And Q comes next," she went on, holding the book closed. "Then R, S, T— What comes after T, brother John?" He told her, and she sat down on the edge of his bed, and for ten minutes he helped her learn the part of the alphabet she did not know.
The first bell for breakfast rang, and she left him. He stood up and stretched himself. "Be ashamed of yourself, John Trott," he muttered. "There is that poor kid trying to rise, and yet you are complaining. It is your damned yellow streak, or your liver is out of order. Throw it off, you whelp! Be a man! Women suffer in childbirth—children suffer under operations, crushed bones, and blindness. Your own father had his hell on earth. Stop whining over spilled milk. Think what you may be able to do for the dirty-faced brat you brought with you. Plunge in. Look those men in the eye to-day, and tell them you don't want their money unless you can give value received. What is New York more than Ridgeville, anyway?"
When he had dressed, he stood in the doorway of the other room. Dora was now copying the letters from her book on a piece of paper with a pencil.
"That's the idea," he said, smiling. "Come on, let's go to breakfast." He had never done it before, but he slid his arm about the waist of his foster-sister and playfully drew her toward the stairs. She appreciated it. It was as if she started to kiss him, but was too timid, daring only to incline her head against his arm.
"Harold says I am a heathen," she said. "What is that, brother John?"
He frowned thoughtfully and then smiled indulgently. "The church folks say it is a person that doesn't believe in a God. They pretend to believe in one because they make a living out of it. Let them think what they like. It doesn't concern us."
"Yes, it does," Dora answered, firmly. "Harold, Betty, and her mother all say that I must believe in God, that I must study about Him, listen to sermons, and—and even pray to Him every night and morning. They say I must go to Sunday-school and learn all about the Bible and Adam, and—and somebody else."
"Well, it is all right; go with them," John said in slow perplexity. "Most people do such things, and maybe you'd better. I don't want to stand in your way. Yes, you'd better go along with them and be like the rest. When you are grown you can think it all out for yourself, as I have."
Betty was coming from her mother's room, one flight below, and she turned and greeted them with a smile.
"She is a nice girl," John thought, as she and Dora linked arms and went ahead of him down the stairs. "She will make a fine woman, but she will never be equal to—"
He checked his thought. A storm of pain swept through him, almost depriving him of strength. He followed the children into the dining-room, which was well filled with boarders, some eating, some waiting to be served, and all chatting volubly. There was a great clatter of knives, forks, and dishes. Mrs. McGwire was helping in the kitchen, and Betty joined her and became a waitress herself.
"I must fight it off—kill it, or it will down me!" John said to himself, as he and Dora sat waiting to be served. "I will never do the work before me if I keep this up, and it must be done—it must!"
When he had breakfasted and was outside in the cool, crisp air he felt better. He walked briskly, swinging his arms to and fro to start the circulation of his blood. He knew the car he was to take and he boarded it, first buying a morning paper, which he could not read for thinking of the delicious and agonizing things he had forsworn forever.
"It will never come through trying to forget," he finally said, with a stoic shrug. "It will simply have to wear itself out. Maybe, after a few months, a year, or two, I will be something like I was before Sam and I went up to—" He checked himself again. "Oh, what's the use?" His very mind seemed to sob and choke. A man seated near him asked him what time it was, and John took out his watch and informed him in the casual tone that any passenger might use to another.