“Well, honey; I was some good to ye, after all,” was her comment.
“Indeed, yes.”
“And you had a closer shave for your life than you think,” she continued. “Tom Terrill swore he'd kill ye, and it's one of the miracles, sure, that he didn't.”
“Well, Mother Borton, Tom Terrill's laid up in Livermore with a broken head, and I'm safe here with you, ready to serve you in any way that a man may.”
“Safe—safe?” mused Mother Borton, an absent look coming over her skinny features, as though her mind wandered. Then she turned to me impressively. “You'll never be safe till you change your work and your name. You've shut your ears to my words while I'm alive, but maybe you'll think of 'em when I'm in my coffin. I tell you now, my boy, there's murder and death before you. Do you hear? Murder and death.”
She sank back on her pillow and gazed at me with a wearied light in her eyes and a sibyl look on her face.
“I think I understand,” I said gently. “I have faced them and I ought to know them.”
“Then you'll—you'll quit your job—you'll be yourself?”
“I can not. I must go on.”
“And why?”