“Say,” broke in Mr. Link shrewdly, “he’s got to commit murder before they can hang him, ain’t he?”
“I have not said that he would be a murderer,” was the reply, but not until after she had taken the time to deliberately button her coat and readjust her headgear.
“Did you not say you saw him swinging to and fro at the end of a rope?” demanded Silas, accusingly.
“Yes—I—I—that is what I said,” she stammered, and sent a malevolent, challenging look at the smiling churchman.
“The woman is a fraud,” said the latter, shrugging his shoulders. “Cheer up, Brother Baxter. No such fate awaits your son.”
“Well, what I was about to say,” went on Mr. Link, “is this. All we got to do is to bring that boy up not to commit murder. We simply got to educate him so’s he won’t ever think of doing anything like that. Learn him to hold his temper down. Soon as he’s old enough to understand, we’ll begin talking to him about the—er—wages of sin, and so forth. That’ll fix it all right, Ollie. So don’t you believe a derned word she said to you.”
But Mr. Baxter was not so much dismayed as he was dejected. He stared bleakly before him. “The trouble is,” said he, shaking his head mournfully, “there’s a lot of it I want to believe. And if I believe any of it, I’ve got to believe all of it. So what’s the sense of little Oliver being one of the grandest men in the United States if he’s got to be hung before the United States finds it out? Here! Where are you going, Serepty? Don’t leave me.”
“I am going out to get a kettle of boiling water and then I’m going to make that woman wish she’d stayed out where it’s cold. The idea of that poor little innocent baby being a bloodthirsty murderer! If you’re here when I get back, I’ll scald you—”
The gypsy made haste to intercept the bristling Serepta.
“He will not be guilty of the crime for which he is to suffer,” was her sententious conclusion. “Have I not said he would grow up to be a noble and righteous man? He will never do evil. He will be unjustly accused of slaying a fellow man. He will die on the gallows an innocent victim of the law. That is all. I have spoken. I have told you his fate as the stars have revealed it to me. You may believe me or not, as you like. Hold! You need not bother, Mister. Magda will open the door.”