CHAPTER IV
THE PRODIGAL
At Midfields that evening the late moonlight poured a flood of radiance on the wide columned porch with its climbing roses where Echo sat on the step, chin in hand, absorbed in her own thought. She was alone. Nancy had slipped off to bed, her mother had retired to her room and her father to the quiet of the library and his reading.
From the kitchens she could hear the muffled clash of table-silver and the strident voice of Aunt Emily the cook, grumbling at Nelson: "Yo'-all hurry erlong wid dem ar fawks, now! Speck ah's gwine wait heah all night, yo' triflin' trash, yo'? Yo' heah me—yo' ain' blind! What yo' 'spose Marse Bev'ly pay yo' fo', anyhow?" From far down the road, beyond the gates, she could hear the faint twang of a guitar and the refrain of strolling, darky voices:
"Reign! Reign! Reign-a mah Lawd!
Reign, Marse Jesus, reign!
Reign salvation in-a mah soul,
Reign, Marse Jesus, reign!"
These died away with the sharp, eager bark of a dog. Then at length distinguishable sounds faded and there was only the deep, somnolent peace of the southern night, with the scent of the roses wreathing the garden with their intense, mystical odour—only the faint stirring of little leaves playing hide-and-seek with their shadows, and the thin, fairy tone-carpet woven by the myriad looms of night insects for near whispers to tread on.
Since that homeward ride she had had no time to ponder upon the event of the day. At dinner the trial had been touched upon but casually. Now that she was alone, however, it had rushed uppermost in her thought. It was not that Harry Sevier had lost the verdict: but his speech had seemed to her, in the tension of the crisis, with a man's honour and liberty at stake, inconsequential and almost flippant. And in the measure of her disappointment she had realised anew the depth of her regard for him. Again and again she pictured the scene in the courtroom but each time her thought returned upon itself, baffled and puzzled.
At length, with a long breath that was almost a sigh, she stirred, and rising, passed into the library where the Judge sat in the arm-chair by his reading lamp. "You're a disgraceful night-owl," she said, "and I refuse to keep you in countenance any longer."
He smiled at her. "That's right, Sorrel-Top! It's time for beauty-sleep if you and Nancy are off to ride in the morning. Just give me my eye-shade, will you, before you go?"
She brought the green crescent and snapped it on his forehead. "There! You haven't told me how you like my dress to-night. It's a new one."