Jack Bracken was comfortably fixed in his underground home. There was every comfort for living. It was warm in winter and cool in summer, and in another apartment adjoining his living room was what he called a kitchen in which a spring of pure water, trickling down from rock to rock, formed in a natural basin of whitest rock below.
“Jack,” said the old man, “won't you tell me about yo'self an' how you ever got down to this? I knowed you as a boy, up to the time you went into the army, an' if I do say it to yo' face, you were a brave hon'rble boy that never forgot a frien' nor—”
“A foe,” put in Jack quickly. “Bishop, if I cu'd only forgive my foes—that's been the ruin of me.”
The old man was thoughtful a while: “Jack, that's a terrible thing in the human heart—unforgiveness. It's to life what a drought is to Nature—an' it spiles mo' people than any other weakness. But that don't make yo' no wuss than the rest of us, nor does robbery nor even murder. So there's a chance for you yet, Jack—a mighty fine chance, too, sence yo' heart is changed.”
“Many a time, Jack, many a time when the paper 'ud be full of yo' holdin' up a train or shootin' a shar'ff, or robbin' or killin', I'd tell 'em what a good boy you had been, brave an' game but revengeful when aroused. I'd tell 'em how you dared the bullets of our own men, after the battle of Shiloh, to cut down an' carry off a measley little Yankee they'd hung up as a spy 'cause he had onct saved yo' father's life. You shot two of our boys then, Jack.”
“They was a shootin' me, too,” he said quietly. “I caught two bullets savin' that Yankee. But he was no spy; he was caught in a Yankee uniform an'—an' he saved my father, as you said—that settled it with me.”
“It turned our boys agin you, Jack.”
“Yes, an' the Yankees were agin me already—that made all the worl' agin me, an' it's been agin me ever since—they made me an outlaw.”
The old man softened: “How was it, Jack? I knowed you was driven to it.”
“They shot my father—waylaid and killed him—some home-made Yankee bush-whackers that infested these hills—as you know.”