The Captain rubbed the organ to which Miss Pipkin referred, and thought for some time. “Suppose your guess is right, and he did come for Jim, there ain’t nothing left for me but to sell. That’s better than losing everything.” He tried to clear his husky voice. “It’s kind of hard. I’ve got you and the minister here now, and I’m sort of obligated to you both. It’s kind of hard.”
“Obligated, fiddlesticks! I ain’t so young that I can’t take care of myself, nor so old, neither. I’ll get on all right, and the minister, too, for that matter.” Her voice dropped with an unsteady quality. “But what you’re going to do, I can’t see.”
He shook his head wearily. “I’ve been trying to see some way all night long, but I can’t, ’cepting to sell.”
“Josiah,”––she crossed over and laid her hand on his shoulder,––“there’s a picture in the setting-room that says beneath it something like this: ‘Don’t Give Up the Ship.’ I was looking at it yesterday after I’d been so 225 silly about what you said to me. I must have been sent to the picture for a purpose in this hour of our trial. We ain’t going to give up the ship, not till we have to.”
“But he’s got the law on his side, and I ain’t got nothing on mine.”
“You’ve got a clear conscience, and that’s more than all the law with which he’s clothing his guilty mind. And, then,”––she eyed him closely,––“you’ve got me. Does that help? We ain’t going to run up the white flag till we have to, and I don’t care if he’s got the whole creation on his side.”
He rose and laid his rough palm over the bony fingers on his shoulder. “Do you mean that you’re going to stick by me, Clemmie?”
She nodded.
“I cal’late that’ll help a heap, even if things go dead against me. It’s purty nigh three weeks afore he can close up on me,” he faltered, as though he dared not hope even in the presence of this unexpected aid that had come to him. “What are we going to do?”
“The fust thing you’re going to do is to see Jim Fox himself, and you’re going to tell him 226 that you’re going to see a good lawyer, the best you can find. If them papers ain’t straight he’ll show plain that he’s worried.” She drew her hand from his. “Josiah, I’m going to show you something I ain’t ever showed to a living soul. It ain’t much, but it might start you along the right way of finding something out.”