"But I couldn't," proceeded the governor, "and the man was taken away to prison without one glance at the woman who was praying to see him. For she loved him more—than he did her."
"That's a lie!" burst from Cronk's dry puckered lips.
"I repeat, she loved him well," insisted Vandecar; "for every breath she took was one of love for him."
In the hush that followed his broken sentence, Lon moved one big foot outward, then drew it back.
"Afterward—I mean a few hours after the man was taken away—I began to think of him and his agony—over the woman, and I went out to find her. She was in a little hut down by the canal,—an ill-furnished, one-room shanty,—but the woman was so sweet, so little, yet so ill, that I thought only of her."
A dripping sweat broke from every pore in Lon's body, and drops of water rolled down his dark face. He groped about for another stick of wood, as if blind.
"She was too young, too small, Lon Cronk, for the cross she had to bear."
Lon threw up his head.
"Jesus! what a blisterin' memory!" he said.
His throat almost smothered the words. Ann began to sob; but Katherine stood like a stone image, staring at the squatter.