The late convict had wasted his strength. His violent paroxysm of anger had exhausted him more than his laborious tramp. It had sent his temperature up and brought a sickening weakness to his muscles. He wavered as he plodded and once or twice even stumbled to his knees, until at last, with only three-quarters of a mile left, he turned aside to the bank of the roadside and sat down with the sweat of weakness dripping from his face.
It was such a day as must have set poets to making jeweled phrases out of words. The air and skies held that radiance which can make of a Kentucky June morning a miracle of beauty. The horizons were dreamily soft and warm. In the field at Newt Spooner's back a meadow-lark was madly trying to burst his pulsating throat with the flood of golden joy. In Newt Spooner's mind was a somber picture; a picture of the mountains which a few days more would throw across the eastern sky-line, and of a man who lived there and who was to die. He was to die without opportunity to defend himself and without benefit of clergy. It was not to be a fight, but an execution. In the entire mental range of the young man panting by the roadside was no reflex of any other thing than brute bitterness and "pizen meanness."
A buggy and horse rose into view over the crest of the hill. It had only one occupant and the occupant was a girl. She was unlike any woman Newt Spooner had ever known; unlike any of the "gals" back in the mountains. Her lithe figure had all the fresh charm of the sparkling morning and all the spirited quality of the thorough-bred. And just as to Newt Spooner the world held only gall, so to her it held only fragrance and music and starshine—and an abiding faith in men and women.
She was happy because she had not yet discovered any unhappiness and because she was young ... and because to-day she would see in Winchester a certain member of the opposite sex in whom her interest was direct and personal. Meantime, June was softly glowing around the whole circle of the sky's embrace and the trees were rustling their fresh greenery and the birds were singing.
She was singing, too, but suddenly she stopped as her eyes fell on the young man by the roadside. Her quick gaze discerned that he was desperately thin and that the color in his face burned only in hectic spots against a chalky pallor. She saw, too, that as he wiped his forehead on his sleeve his forearm and hand trembled. His clothes proclaimed him lately released from the penitentiary, but her ideas on the subject of prisons were vaguely confined to a compassionate regret that they existed. Quite probably had she found him there looking weak and sick even had he worn stripes, she would still have offered him help. She drew the horse to a standstill, and called out cheerfully in a voice as tuneful as the lark over yonder in the field:
"Good-morning. Can't I give you a lift?"
Newt Spooner gazed back at her sullenly and defiantly. The dog that has only been kicked distrusts the hand thrust out in kindness. It is unknown to his experience.
"Naw," he declined, with as surly an utterance as possible.
The girl flushed and her lips tightened. She flung back her head with a gesture that set truant curls tantalizingly astir and flapped the reins on the horse's back, but in quick afterthought she drew him down again. This boy's rudeness did not alter the fact that he was sick. He looked like a mountaineer and could hardly be expected to measure up to the bluegrass requirements of courtesy.
"You're about as polite as—as a mud-turtle," she calmly informed the traveler, holding his eyes with an unflinching gaze, before which they shamefacedly drooped; "but that doesn't make any difference. I'm going into Winchester, and you don't look very well. Hadn't you better get in and ride to town?"