“Why, didn't you tell me, Carson?” she repeated, putting her disengaged hand on his arm and raising her appealing face till it was close to his.
He shrugged his shoulders, still frowning, and then said, flushing under her urgent gaze: “Because, Helen, you've already seen and heard too much of this awful stuff. It really is not fit for a gentle, sensitive girl like you.”
“Oh, Carson,” she cried, her suffused face held even closer to his, “you are the dearest, sweetest boy in the world!” and she turned and left him, left him alone there in his fatigue, alone under the starlight to fight as he had never fought before the deathless yearning for her.
CHAPTER XXXV.
WO weeks went by. Great changes had come over the temper of the insurgent mountain people. They had gradually come to accept the rescue of Pete Warren as a chance bit of real justice that was as admirable as it was unusual and heroic. A sufficient number of men had come forward and testified to Sam Dudlow's ante-mortem confession to exculpate Carson's client, and some who had a leaning towards Dwight's cause politically were hinting, on occasion, that surely a man who would take such a plucky stand for the rights of a humble negro would not be a mere figure-head in the legislature of the State. At all events, there was one man who ground his teeth in secret rage over the subtle turn of affairs, and that man was Wiggin. He still busied himself sowing the seditious seed of race hatred wherever he found receptive soil, but, unfortunately for his cause, in many places where unbridled fury had once ploughed the ground a sort of frost had fallen. Most men whose passions are unduly wrought undergo a certain sort of relapse, and Wiggin found many who were not so much interested in their support of him as formerly when an open and defiant enemy was to be defeated.