“Ye ain’t goin’ to faint air ye?” she asked anxiously. “Lean on me, Creed. I wish’t I knew what to do for ye!”
The young fellow, half unconscious indeed, put his head down upon her shoulder with a great shuddering sigh.
“I’ll be better in a minute, dear,” he whispered. “I reckon I got a little tired—riding so far.”
For some time Judith sat there, Creed’s head on her shoulder, the black night all about them, the little lighted station empty save for the clicking of the telegraph instrument, and the footsteps of the station master who had opened up for the midnight train. She was desperately anxious and at a loss which way to turn. And yet through all her being there rolled a mighty undernote of joy. As to the dweller on the coast the voice of the sea is the undertone to all the sounds of man’s activities, so beneath all her virginal hesitancies, her half terror of what she had done, surged and sang the knowledge that Creed was hers, her avowed lover. She, Judith, had him here safe; she had brought him away out of the mountains, from those who would have harmed him—and those who would have loved him too well. In all her plannings up to this time she had never quite been able to see clearly what should come after getting Creed down into the valley. Over her stormily beating heart now there rose and fell a little packet of bills, savings above necessary expenditures on the farm, and her own modest expenses, savings which had been accumulating since Uncle Jephthah rented the place, and now amounted to some hundreds of dollars. These she had put in the bosom of her frock when she set out on this enterprise, with, as she now realised, the vaguest expectation of ever returning to her uncle’s house.
“Creed,” she whispered, “air ye better?”
“Yes,” responded her charge, “yes—I’m better.” But he made no movement to raise his head, and with eyes long accustomed to darkness she was able to see that his lids were still closed.
“Creed,” she began again, “what shall I do for you now? Must I go ask at the hotel will they give you a room? Have you—have you got money with you?”
Bonbright roused himself.
“I’m all right now,” he said in a strained tone. “Yes, dear, I’ve got some money with me, and a little more in the bank at Hepzibah. I can get hold of that any time I want to. I don’t know just what I’ll do,” he looked around him bewildered. This had not been his plan, and the long ride down the mountain, and above all the happiness of being with Judith, of her avowals had made him forgetful of its exigencies. “I reckon I’ll make out. You needn’t worry about me any more, Judith. I’m safe down here.”
These words sounded dreadfully like a dismissal to the girl. She locked her hands hard together in her lap and fought for composure. An older or a more worldly woman would have said to him promptly that she could not leave him in this case, and that if they were ever to be married it must be now. But all the traditions of the mountain girl’s life and upbringing were against such a course. She gazed at him helplessly.