At last the day came when the water ran in yellowed torrents in the creek or stood in stagnant pools under a new sun, when the blood bounded, overwarm, in the tired body. That day Old Con caught sight of them, walking arm in arm at the top of the hill, looking down as though to find a footing, and talking earnestly. They had never before ventured so near the mill. Catching sight of them from some distance, I foresaw the meeting before I could reach them. When I came close enough to see, Lisbeth was trembling visibly, as though from a chill, and Jim stood glowering down at Old Con.
Suddenly Lisbeth edged herself sidewise between them, shouldering Jim away.
"Don't touch him!" she cried. "It's what he's waiting for you to do! Can't you see the look on his face—that wronged look of a man that's done nothing but wrong all his life?"
She stopped, the words swelling within her, too big for utterance. Jim put a quieting arm about her; and just then Old Con made an abrupt motion towards her wrist.
"I guess," he said, "that a father—"
But she was before him.
"Father! He's not my father, d'ye hear? I've kept my word to him and now I'm going to keep it to myself! You see that sun over the hills?"—She turned to Con.—"It's the spring sun—it's summer—summer, d'ye hear? And it's mine—and I'm going to have it, before I'm dead like my mother died with her body still living! You're no more my father than that dead tree the sun can't ever warm again!—It's for good—I said it would be for good—and it is!"
We took her, sobbing dryly, between us, up the road.
That night in our house Lisbeth was married to Jim. A deep serenity seemed to hang about her as though for the moment the past had been shut away from her by a mist. As for Jim, there was a wonder in his eyes, not unlike that I had seen when he came upon an old Lippo Lippi, and a great comprehending reverence. There were tears at the back of my eyes—then the beauty of the scene drove all else back before it.