Brent had wheeled on him.
"You're getting in mighty dangerous ground, Tom," he warned sharply.
"'Tain't half as dangerous as that orchard back there, if you didn't come into it honest!—an' if you did come honest, there ain't no reason why I can't borry a fiver—bein' a fam'ly matter, as you might say!"
"I came honest, and I'm leaving honest, you drunken fool," Brent raved at him. "And don't try any blackmail dodges on me or I'll beat your head off!"
"Blackmail!" Tom stepped back, not so much in surprise at the word as at Brent's threatening attitude. "Well, I'll leave it to the Cunnel, an' Miss Jane, an' them folks over there, if this ain't a fair an' squar proposition—all in the fam'ly, as you might say;—bein' as you come honest! For if fine gentlemen like you don't come honest, they'll say Gawd pity the gal!"
They'll say: God pity the girl! It smote his soul like a whip. Why should they not say it anyhow of the half-read country girl whom he slipped around by back roads to meet at night? Heretofore, he had been more the adventurer than criminal, but now he felt the brand of both. Some day, after his work was finished and he had gone, Zack would tell of the messages and notes, and all the sacred oaths of all the creeds would not convince Arden and Flat Rock one little mite of her innocence!
Over in the orchard a girl, walking slowly to the house, had stopped, terrified; shrinking for him, not for herself, as with the unerring instinct of her sex she realized how his pride would cringe before such an exposure.
"Tom," he said at last, "you may have the fiver, but not because I'm afraid of anything you can say. Nancy hasn't a thing in God's world to be ashamed of, and neither have I. But it's plain that I can't come again as long as you're drunk and seeing things. Here," handing him a bill. "But it isn't a loan, or hush money, or anything of the sort;—just hope money."
"How hope money?" Tom grinned, crumpling it eagerly in his hand.
"Because I hope you'll drink yourself to death with it. Good night."