“God’s curse is upon it,” he cried. “There is no place for it on earth.”
Tom rose with a sudden movement and began to pace the floor with his charge in his arms.
“It’s a little chap to lay a curse on,” he said. “And helpless enough, by Gad!”
He looked down at the diminutive face, and as he did so, a wild thought flashed through his mind. It had the suddenness and force of a revelation. His big body trembled with some feeling it would have gone hard with him to express, and his heart warmed within him as he felt the light weight lying against it.
“No place for it!” he cried. “By God, there is! There is a place here—and a man to stand by and see fair-play!”
“Give her to me,” he said, “give her to me, and if there is no place for her, I’ll find one.”
“What do you mean?” faltered the man.
“I mean what I say,” said Tom. “I’ll take her and stand by her as long as there is breath in me; and if the day should ever come in spite of me when wrong befalls her, as it befell her mother, some man shall die, so help me God!”
The warm Southern blood which gave to his brothers’ love-songs the grace of passion, and which made them renowned for their picturesque eloquence of speech, fired him to greater fluency than was usual with him, when he thought of the helplessness of the tiny being he held.
“I never betrayed a woman yet, or did one a wrong,” he went on. “I’m not one of the lucky fellows who win their hearts,” with a great gulp in his throat. “Perhaps if there’s no one to come between us, she may—may be fond of me.”