“Tell me, Marian, what this means.”
Lloyd Fenneben had restored her to consciousness and she was resting, white and trembling, in his arms.
“My little Bug, my baby, Burgess!” she sobbed. “Bond Saxon, in a drunken fit, killed his father. Then Tom Gresh carried him away to save him from Bond, too, so Tom declared, but I did not believe him. Bond never harmed a little child. Tom said he meant no harm and that Bug was stolen from where he had left him. It was then that my hair turned white. Tom tried once, a year ago in December, to make me believe he could bring Bug back to me if I would care for him—for that wicked murderer! Oh, Lloyd!”
She nestled close in Dr. Fenneben's protecting arms, and shivered at the thought.
“And you named him Burgess for your own name. Does Vincent know?” Fenneben questioned, tenderly smoothing the white hair as Norrie had so often smoothed his own.
“Is this Vincent my own brother? Will he really own me as his sister? I've tried to meet him many times. I left his picture on my table that he might see it if he should ever come. My father separated us years ago. After we came West he sent me just one letter in which he said Vincent would never speak to me nor claim me as his sister again. A brother—a lover—and my baby boy!”
And the lonely woman, overcome with joy, sat white and still beneath the white moonbeams.
Joy does not kill any more than sorrow. Vincent Burgess and Dennie Saxon, who came just at the right time, told how they had waited with Bug at the slab of stone by the bend in the river until they should be needed.
“It was Dennie who planned it all,” Vincent said, “and did not even let me know. Bug told her my picture was on the table in there. But so long as her father lived, she kept her counsel.”
“I tried four years ago to get Dr. Fenneben to come out here,” Dennie said. And the Dean remembered the autumn holiday and Dennie's solicitude for an unknown woman.