"And a very happy day," said Mark. "I shall go pay my debt the first thing; and then, Heaven helping me, when this harvest is gathered in, I can settle with neighbor Dobbs and stand up a free man. After that, Patty, I'll starve before I beg, borrow, steal, or go security. In my eye, it's all one; it's robbing your own or your neighbors in any case."
How happy felt Mark Brace that morning, as, with springing step, and whistling like a mavis, loud and clear, he strode off to Brakebury to pay his debt. His sinewy hand trembled convulsively as he took his receipt.
"I'm as thankful as you are, Mark," said his creditor; "it would have gone to my heart to ruin you. I lay awake all night thinking of it; but I must have this money or be sold out myself, and my wife is ill in bed, and my old mother blind, and cleaving to this home she was born in as ivy cleaves to the wall."
"I know how it goes," said Mark; "I've felt it. And after this, I'll hold the Scripture rule, to owe no man anything but to love one another."
Mark felt his heart large enough to love all the world that morning, especially that golden-haired mystery who had brought him safety. He hurried home, longing to be at work again. He felt energy for everything. Never had there been such a fair day, never such a lovely home, never such beautiful fields, standing thick to the sickle. Heaven be praised, he was his own man again!
He met his laborers coming to the work. In answer to his questions, one said that, crossing a field after dark, he had met a tall woman, in black, veiled, carrying a bundle which, at the time, he fancied might be a child. Another, returning late from the Blue Boar, had passed a tall woman, in black, veiled, hurrying on, with empty arms swinging at her side, but heard her sob and moan as she went by.
This was all Mark Brace heard about that eventful night.
The neighbors, finding a golden-haired, dainty babe in Patty Brace's cradle, said, wisely:
"No doubt she was well paid." "Mark Brace had seemed flush of money of late." "It was well to have friends. The child very surely belonged to some great lady."
But whether its mother lived or was dead, or where she was, Patty never opened her lips to tell; and, after two months, gossip died away, and the baby at Brackenside Farm was an accepted fact.