The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 16

"Thank you."

"What fer?"

"For calling me Jack."

Then her cheeks colored deeply and she wheeled to her work again. But after a little she faced him once more to say half angrily:

"I called ye Jack because ye called me Glory. You've always put a Miss afore hit till now, an' I 'lowed ye'd done made up yore mind ter be friendly at last."

"I've always wanted to be friendly," he a.s.sured her. "It was you who began with a hickory switch and went on with hard words in Latin."

The girl laughed, and the peal of her mirth trans.m.u.ted their status and dispelled her self-consciousness. She came over and stood looking down at him with violet eyes mischievously a-sparkle.

"The co'te," she announced, "hes carefully weighed there evidence in ther case of Jack Spurrier, charged with ther willful murder of Bob White, and is ready to enter jedgment. Jack Spurrier, stand up ter be sentenced!"

The man rose to his feet and stood with such well-feigned abjectness of suspense that she had to fight back the laughter from her eyes to preserve her own pose of judicial gravity.

"It is well established by the evidence befo' ther co'te," she went solemnly on, "thet ther defendant is guilty on every count contained in the indictment." She checked off upon the fingers of the left hand the roster of his crime as she summarized it.

"He entered inter an unlawful conspiracy with the codefendant Rover, a setter dawg. He made a felonious a.s.sault without provocation. He committed murder in the first degree with malice prepense."

Spurrier's head sank low in mock despair, until Glory came to her peroration and sentence.

"Yet since the defendant is amply proved to be a poor, ignorant wanderer upon the face of the earth, unpossessed of ordinary knowledge, the court is constrained to hold him incapable of discrimination between right an' wrong. Hence he is not fully responsible for his acts of violence. Mercy as well as justice lies in the province of the law, twins of a sacred parentage and equal before the throne."

She broke off in a laugh, and so sudden was the transition from absolute mimicry that the man forgot to laugh with her.

"Glory," he demanded somewhat breathlessly, "have you ever been to a theater in your life? Have you ever seen a real actress?"

"No. Why?"

"Because you _are_ one. Does this life satisfy you? Isn't there anything off there beyond the hills that ever calls you?"

The dancing eyes grew abruptly grave, almost pained, and the response came slowly.

"_Everything_ down thar calls ter me. I craves. .h.i.t all!"

Spurrier suddenly recalled old Cappeze's half-frightened vehemence when the recluse had inveighed against the awakening of vain longings in his daughter. Now he changed his manner as he asked:

"I wonder if I'd offend you if I put a question. I don't want to."

"Ye mout try an' see. I ain't got no power ter answer twell I hears. .h.i.t."

"All right. I'll risk it. Your father doesn't talk mountain dialect.

His English is pure--and you were raised close to him. Why do _you_ use--the other kind?"

She did not at once reply and, when she did, the astonis.h.i.+ngly adaptable creature no longer employed vernacular, though she spoke slowly and guardedly as one might who ventured into a foreign tongue.

"My father has lived down below as well as here. He's a gentleman, but he aims--I mean he intends--to live here now till he dies."

As she paused Spurrier prompted her.

"Yes--and you?"

"My father thinks that while I _do_ live here, I'd better fit into the life and talk in the phrases that don't seem high-falutin' to my neighbors."

"I dare say," he a.s.sured her with forced conviction, "that your father is right."

There was a brief silence between them while the warm stillness of the woods breathed its incense and its langour, then the girl broke out impulsively:

"I want to see and hear and taste everything, out there!"

Her hands swept outward with an all-embracing gesture toward the whole of the unknown. "There aren't any words to tell how I want it! What do you want more than anything else, Jack?"

The man remained silent for a little, studying her under half-lowered lids while a smile hovered at the corners of his lips. But the smile died abruptly and it was with deep seriousness that he answered.

"I think, more than anything else, I want a clean name and a vindicated reputation."

Glory's eyes widened so that their violet depths became pools of wondering color and her lips parted in surprise.

"A clean name!" she echoed incredulously. "What blight have you got on it, Jack?" Then catching herself up abruptly she flushed crimson and said apologetically: "That's a question I haven't any license to put to you, though. Only you broached the subject yourself."

"And having broached it, I am willing to pursue it," he a.s.sured her evenly. "I was an army officer until I was charged with unprovoked murder--and court-martialed; dishonorably discharged from the service in which my father and grandfather had lived and died."

For a moment or two she made no answer but her quick expressiveness of lip and eye did not, even for a startled interval, betray any shock of horror. When she did speak it was in a voice so soft and compa.s.sionate that the man thought of its quality before he realized its words.

"Did the man that--that was _really_ guilty go scot free, whilst you had to shoulder his blame?"

There had been no question of evidence; no waiting for any denial of guilt. She had a.s.sumed his innocence with the same certainty that her eye a.s.sumed the flawlessness of the overheard blue. Her interest was all for his wronging and not at all for his alleged wrong.

The man started with surprise; the surprise of one who had trained himself into an unnatural callousness as a defense against what had seemed a universal p.r.o.neness to convict. He had told himself that Glory would see with a straighter and more intuitive eye. He had told her baldly of the thing which he seldom mentioned out of an inquisitiveness to test her reaction to the revelation, but he was unprepared for such unhesitant belief.

"I think you are the first human being, Glory," he said quietly but with unaccustomed feeling in his voice, "who ever heard that much and gave me a clean bill of health without hearing a good bit more. Why didn't you ask whether or not I was guilty?"

"I didn't have to," she said slowly. "Some men could be murderers and some couldn't. You couldn't. You might have to _kill_ a man--but not murder him. You might do lots of things that wouldn't be right. I don't know about that--but those people that convicted you were fools!"

"Thank you," he said soberly. "You're right, Glory. I was as innocent of that a.s.sa.s.sination as you are, yet they proved me guilty. It was only through influence that I escaped ending my days in prison."

Then he gave her the story, which he had already told her father and no one else in the mountains. She listened, thinking not at all of the damaging circ.u.mstances, but secretly triumphant that she had been chosen as a confidant.

But that night Spurrier looked up from a letter he was reading and let his eyes wander to the rafters and his thoughts to the trout stream.

It was a letter, too, which should have held his attention. It contained, on a separate sheet of paper, a list of names which was typed and headed: "Confidential Memorandum." Below that appeared the notation: "Members of the general a.s.sembly, under American Oil and Gas influence. Also names of candidates who oppose them at the next election, and who may be reached by us."

Spurrier lighted his pipe and his face became studious, but presently he looked up frowning.

"I must speak to old Cappeze," he said aloud and musingly. "He's being unfair to her." And that did not seem a relevant comment upon the paper he held in his hand.