Blanche smiled.
“No,” she said. “He escaped.”
Molly sighed, and Blanche went on to tell of the escape. The girl listened with a further deepening of interest as she came to the moment of Jim’s desperate straits. It never occurred to her to question the identity of the man from whom Jim had escaped, and Blanche scrupulously withheld his name.
Then came the moment of Jim’s approach to her father’s farm, and Molly became even more deeply absorbed. And at the end her eyes lit with excitement.
“I remember,” she cried. “Oh, yes. I packed his wallets with food. Think of it! Just think! It was your Jim, an’ I fixed his food! Tell me.”
And so the story went on to Jim’s meeting with Dan Quinlan, and of his sojourn in the Valley of Hope. It told of how Dan had fed him, and how his privations turned his hair white. It told of how, in those long winter months he conceived the idea of helping, through the agency of that great valley, others who, like himself, had stumbled on the road of life. It told of his ultimate safe return to civilisation, and of the help he had sought from her, Blanche, in setting up this refuge. And it was not until the story reached its close that Blanche, with keen instinct for her purpose, concerned herself with McFardell’s place in it.
“Do you know who it was that Jim escaped from on his way to penitentiary?” she asked. “Can you guess? Sure you can if you think awhile.”
For a moment Molly gazed at her blankly. It was as though the interest, the wonder, of the man’s story still held her. Then of a sudden her eyes hardened like grey granite, and Blanche realised the completeness of the thing she had achieved.
“Andy McFardell,” she said, in a low, hard voice.
Blanche nodded.