"But where am I to get that much money?" Jane said, despondently.
"Well, thar you have me," Evans laughed. "I reckon you know your resources better than anybody else, but you'll have to rake it up some way. You ain't ready to die yet. Callihan has a mortgage on your land, hain't he?"
"Yes, and on my crop not yet gathered," Jane sighed; "he even included every old hoe and axe and piece of harness, and the cow and calf, and every chair and knife and fork and cracked plate in the house."
"Well," and Evans rose and reached for his hat, "as I say, you'll have to get up the money; it will be the best investment you could make."
When he had left, Virginia, horror-stricken, sat staring at her mother, a terrible fear in her face and eyes.
"Then it really is a cancer?" she gasped.
"Yes, I was afraid it was all along," said Jane. "You see, the peddler said so plainly, and he told Ann Boyd about it. Virginia, she didn't know I knew how bad it was, for she hinted at some awful end that was to overtake me, as if it would be news to me. Daughter, I'm going to try my level best to throw this thing off. I always had a fear of death. My mother had before me; she was a Christian woman, and was prepared, if anybody was, and yet she died in agony. She laid in bed and begged for help with her last breath. But my case is worse than hers, for my one foe in this life is watching over me like a hawk. Oh, I can't stand it! You must help me study up some way to raise that money. If it was in sight, I'd feel better. Doctors can do wonders these days, and I'll go to that big one if I possibly can."
[XIII]
One afternoon, about a week later, as Ann Boyd sat in her weaving-room twisting bunches of carded wool into yarn on her old spinning-wheel, the whir of which on her busy days could be heard by persons passing along the road in front of her gate, a shadow fell on her floor, and, looking up, she saw a tall, handsome young man in the doorway, holding his hat in one hand, a valise in the other. He said nothing, but only stood smiling, as if in hearty enjoyment of the surprise he was giving her.
"Luke King!" she exclaimed. "You, of all people on the face of the earth!"