"When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
("He'll hear that sure! he'll sense it in a minute, and know it's all right!")
"I'll bid farewell to every fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes!
"So we will, Miss Flora May, won't we? You sing, too, that's a dandy girl! Let her go, Gallagher!"
Two hundred yards away, a man was driving through the woods at top speed of his lumbering horse. Brows bent, lips compressed, deadly fear at his heart, he sat unseeing, silent, save when he urged the clumsy beast to still further effort. Fear at his heart, and anger, and bewilderment; but struggling with all these something that said dazedly over and over,
"I don't believe it! He wasn't that kind! I don't believe it!"
Suddenly he checked the horse and threw up his head, listening. Through the trees, down the wood road, a voice came flying like a bird, ringing like a trumpet, crying like a great wind in his ears:
"I'll bid farewell to every fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes!"
"Lord, forgive me!" cried Jacob Bailey. "Lord, have mercy on me, and never let him know!"
A glint of blue among the trees, the jingle of a little bell that hung beside the wheel; next moment they came in sight, Pippin first, chin in air, mouth open, singing as a bird sings, with every fibre of his being; the girl hanging back a little, held close by that strong hand, but singing, too, in a sweet, broken voice.