She looked straight into his eyes for a long time; in her own there was something that seemed to search his soul, something of wonder, something groping and intense as if her own soul was asking a grave, perplexing question. A faint, slow surge of colour stole into her face. "I must go in the house now," she said, a queer little flutter in her voice. "After dinner I am going down with mother to see Moll Hawk. If—if you mean all that you have just said, Kenny, why did you refuse to shake hands with me?"
He withdrew his bruised right hand from its hiding-place. "It is an ugly thing to look at but I am proud of it," he said. "I would give it for you a thousand times over."
"Oh, I'm—I'm sorry I misjudged you—" she cried out. Then both of her hands closed on the unsightly member and pressed it gently, tenderly. There was that in the touch of her firm, strong fingers that sent an ecstatic shock racing into every fibre in his body. "I will never question that hand again, Kenny," she said, and then, releasing it, she turned and walked rapidly away.
He stood watching her until she ran nimbly up the porch steps and disappeared inside the house. Whereupon he lifted the swollen but now blessed knuckles to his lips and sighed profoundly.
"Something tells me she still loves Barry, in spite of everything," he muttered, suddenly immersed in gloom. "Women stick through thick and thin. If they once love a man they never—"
"Dinner's ready, Marse Kenneth," announced Zachariah from the door-step.
CHAPTER XXVI — THE FLIGHT OF MARTIN HAWK
Now, Martin Hawk was not a patient man. He waited till mid-afternoon for some word from Barry Lapelle in response to his message, and, receiving none,—(for the very good reason that it was never delivered),—fell to blaspheming mightily, and before he was through with it revealed enough to bring about an ultimate though fruitless search for the departed "go-between."