“Bless ye! ye’d not be alone.” Patsy’s voice rang vibrant with gladness. “Now, who do you think will be watching for ye, close to the gate? Look yonder!”
Joseph’s eyes went back to the candles, splendid, tall columns they were, with beacon lamps capping each. “Who?”
Dim faces looked at him through the flickering light; but there was only one he saw, and it brought the merriest smile to his lips.
“Why—’course it’s mother—sure’s shootin’!”
Early the next morning Patsy waited on the braided rug outside the spare chamber for Joseph’s mother to come out.
“I’ve been praying ye’d not hate me for the tale I told the little lad that day, the tale that brought him—yonder. And if it isn’t overlate, I’d like to be thanking ye for taking me in that night.”
The woman looked at her searchingly through swollen lids. “I cal’ate there’s no thanks due; your man paid for your keep; he sawed and split nigh a cord o’ wood that night—must ha’ taken him ’most till mornin’.” She paused an instant. “Didn’t—he”—she nodded her head toward the closed door behind her—“never tell you what brought him?”
“Naught but that he wanted to find me.”
“He believed in you,” the woman said, simply, adding in a toneless voice: “I cal’ate I couldn’t hate you. I never saw any one make death so—sweet like—as you done for—him.”