Of a sudden, he started violently. He thrust his head forward, with a movement so abrupt, almost threatening in its seeming, that the girl, in her turn, was startled, and withdrew a step, half-fearful.
"I want to see that locket you are wearing." Jim Maxwell spoke in a tone that Nell had not heard before. It rang with a note of command not to be denied. She gazed affrighted at the change in his face. The kindliness was fled from it. It was imperious, ruthless, with a trace of underlying savagery. The young wife was dazed by the metamorphosis in the man on whom depended now her husband's rescue. And she was afraid, as well—no longer with a doubtful fear, but with a real terror before the expression in that heavily lined face, out of which the eyes stared at her with a cruel insistence.
"I want to see that locket you are wearing," he repeated harshly, and held out his right hand with the palm upward to receive it.
Without a word, Nell took off the chain from her neck, and dropped it with the locket into the waiting palm. Then, she moved a little aside, shrinking from the new being with whom she found herself. But, after a few seconds, she forgot her own emotion, her alarm, her anxiety in behalf of her husband. For she was looking on the soul of a man, bared in agony. So great and so terrible was that revelation that, very quickly, she turned her gaze aside that she might not see.
Jim Maxwell remained with his eyes fixed on the little locket, which bore for an ornament an initial N traced in tiny pearls. He could not doubt. It was the locket that he had caused to be made for his daughter, for Nell—his little girl! Presently, he would open it, to see if the pictures of Lou and of himself were still within. But, in this first burst of emotion, he could only stand moveless there, racked by all the torments of memory. It was the tearing open of wounds, which, though they had never healed, had ceased to bleed. Now, they bled afresh, and it seemed to him that his soul was drowning in the blood.
The fierceness of his first emotion passed. Suddenly, it was as if a cloud lifted from his brain, and he became aware of himself standing there in the cabin. A moment before—or was it ages?—he had been in heaven—and in hell. Now, he was back in the cabin in the wilderness. And he was glad to be there, for it was home....
Again, his attention was caught by the gleam of the gold within his hands. He recognized the locket. But, at last, he was able to accept its presence with some degree of calm.
Jim Maxwell turned to the girl, and addressed her gently enough, but still with that dominant tone which would brook no denial.
"Where did you get this locket?"
"I have had it always," she answered. None could doubt her truth as she spoke, with the clear eyes meeting her questioner's stern gaze squarely.