And soon they were jogging along down the mountain side, toward the cabin where the woman lived and supported herself and boy by her needle.
To-day Margaret was agitated and excited—more than the Bishop had ever known her to be. He knew the reason, for clean-shaved and neatly dressed, Jack Bracken passed her on the road to church that morning, and as they rode along the Bishop told her it was indeed Jack whom she had seen, “an' he loves you yet, Margaret,” he said.
She turned pink under her bonnet. How pretty and fresh she looked—thought the Bishop—and what purity in a face to have such a name.
“It was Jack, then,” she said simply—“tell me about him, please.”
“By the grace of God he has reformed,” said the old man—“and—Margaret—he loves you yet, as I sed. He is going under the name of Jack Smith, the blacksmith here, an' he'll lead another life—but he loves you yet,” he whispered again.
Then he told her what had happened, knowing that Jack's secret would be safe with her.
When he told her how they had buried little Jack, and of the father's admission that his determination to lead the life of an outlaw had come when he found that she had been untrue to him, she was shaken with grief. She could only sit and weep. Not even at the gate, when the old man left her, did she say anything.
Within, she stopped before a picture which hung over the mantle-piece and looked at it, through eyes that filled again and again with tears. It was the picture of a pretty mountain girl with dark eyes and sensual lip.
Margaret knelt before it and wept.
The boy had come and stood moodily at the front gate. The hot and resentful blood still tinged in his cheek. He looked at his knuckles—they were cut and swollen where he had struck the boy who had jeered him. It hurt him, but he only smiled grimly.