Her face was pale now, and her eyes had a look of pain and horror. Her man—him that she was to marry—was the head of a mine also at Selby, forty miles beyond Bindon, and the horrible plot came home to her with piercing significance.
“Without a second’s warning,” he urged, “to go like that, the man that was so good to my little gal, an’ me with a chance to save him, an’ others too, p’r’aps. You won’t let it be. Say, I’m pinnin’ my faith to you. I’m—”
Suddenly he swayed. She caught him, held him, and lowered him gently in a chair. Presently he opened his eyes. “It’s want o’ food, I suppose,” he said. “If you’ve got a bit of bread and meat—I must keep up.”
She went to a cupboard, but suddenly turned toward him again. Her ears had caught a sound outside in the underbrush. He had heard also, and he half staggered to his feet.
“Quick—in here!” she said, and, opening a door, pushed him inside. “Lie down on my bed, and I’ll bring you vittles as quick as I can,” she added. Then she shut the door, turned to the ironing-board, and took up the iron, as the figure of a man darkened the doorway.
“Hello, Jinny, fixin’ up for to-morrow?” the man said, stepping inside, with a rifle under his arm and some pigeons in his hand.
She nodded and gave him an impatient, scrutinizing glance. His face had a fatuous kind of smile.
“Been celebrating the pigeons?” she asked, dryly, jerking her head toward the two birds, which she had seen drop from her Eden skies a short time before.
“I only had one swig of whiskey, honest Injun!” he answered. “I s’pose I might have waited till to-morrow, but I was dead-beat. I got a bear over by the Ten-mile Reach, and I was tired. I ain’t so young as I used to be, and, anyhow, what’s the good? What’s ahead of me? You’re going to git married to-morrow after all these years we bin together, and you’re going down to Selby from the mountains, where I won’t see you, not once in a blue moon. Only that old trollop, Mother Massy, to look after me.”
“Come down to Selby and live there. You’ll be welcome by Jake and me.”