Tom's heart swelled within him; and this time it was not the heart of the Pharisee. There is no lure known to the man part of the race that is half so potent as the tale of a woman in trouble.
"Does—does he beat you, Nan?" he asked; and there was wrathful horror in his voice.
For answer she bent her head and parted the thick black locks over a long scar.
"That's where he give me one with the skillet, a year come Christmas. And this,"—opening her frock to show him a black-and-blue bruise on her breast,—"is what I got only day afore yisterday."
Tom was burning with indignant compassion, and bursting because he could think of no adequate way of expressing it. In all his fifteen years no one had ever leaned on him before, and the sense of protectorship over this abused one budded and bloomed like a juggler's rose.
"I wish I could take you home with me, Nan," he said simply.
There was age-old wisdom in the dark eyes when they were lifted to his.
"No, you don't," she said firmly. "Your mammy would call me a little heathen, same as she used to; and I reckon that's what I am—I hain't had no chanst to be anything else. And you're goin' to be a preacher, Tom."
Why did it rouse a dull anger in his heart to be thus reminded of his own scarce-cooled pledge made on his knees under the shadowing cedars? He could not tell; but the fact remained.
"You hear me, Nan; I'm going to take care of you when I'm able. No matter what happens, I'm going to take care of you," was what he said; and a low rumbling of thunder and a spattering of rain on the leaves punctuated the promise.