And the house—never before had he seen splendor. They had trouble persuading him to step on the rugs and to walk on the carpets. But the sweet-faced, white-haired lady came graciously forward and shook his hand which made him feel better. Then the Angel sat down before something Solomon had never seen and—
They both stood over him ten minutes afterwards, for he was sitting on a sofa weeping:
“’Scuse me—no—no, ’taint my wounded arm—it’s that’r thing over thar that’s waked up the cat birds in the roderdendrums at home, an’ I heurd the water failin’ over Telulah an’ the wind at midnight in Devil’s Gorge, an’ I nurver knowed befo’ whut little Dinah Mariah had missed bein’ a deef-mute an’—so—it sot me ter bellerin’ this away.”
They were very gentle with him after that, and more gracious, and when the Angel played another piece full of dash and jig and rosened-bow and thunder, he stood it until the blood began to boil under his hair and they found him again in the middle of the floor shouting:
“Hurrah, boys! Lord, but can’t he run? Come home, Ajax!” “’Scuse me—’scuse me—Mrs.—Mrs.—Angul—” after he came to himself—“but—but—she plays that thing ’zactly like Ajax runs.”
It was the greatest day that had ever come into his life, and when he left to go back to his beat he proclaimed exultingly to the White-haired one that it was “Christmas, an’ hog-killin’ an’ heav’n all rolled into one.”
It was twilight when she came out on the lawn, dressed in white with ribbons in her hair. When he turned she had perched herself on her favorite stump and was beckoning him to sit by her. Trembling, weak he obeyed, his great arm touching hers, which thrilled him so that pains shot into his wounds. She was silent, looking at him with the same wistful, doubting eyes of the morning. He had seen them before, in camp, when the boys gambled and their month’s pay was at stake, holding a card aloft uncertain whether to cast or not. And how they held him—those eyes of hers with the tragedy in them!
“Solomon, you know how we love you, mamma and I.” He sat mute with bowed head. “And Solomon, if I trust you—if I tell you—will you never betray?”
“Whut—like that’r Judas I onct heurn of the time I went to meetin’?” She nodded. It hurt him. “I can’t betray—It ain’t in me,” he said simply.
“Forgive me, Solomon. I knew it,” and she put her hand in his just as Dinah Mariah had so often done, except that this made his heart beat so it bothered his breathing and unlike Dinah Mariah’s he could not—she being an angel—clasp it in turn. “Now, Solomon, my brother is coming to-night—he will slip in yonder,” and she pointed to a by road leading through shrubbery to a side gate. “You are not to see him, Solomon, and you are to let him out the same way after we have fed him. For he is hungry, Solomon, and in great danger—been surrounded and hiding for days—they are on his trail. Your men, you know, have killed his horse”—(Solomon winced—it hurt him to hear of a horse being killed)—“and, Solomon, this is the only way he can get out—can save his life—for—for, Solomon, they are to take him dead or alive.” She had ceased to smile. Tears were in her eyes and Solomon’s great hand closed over her little one.