Marty made no reply. A flush of suppressed emotion had risen in her cheeks and was taking on a deeper tinge. Richard grunted, stepped half-way back to his chimney-corner, and looked at her again. Seeing her eyes still averted, he grunted aloud, and went to his chair and sat down. Several minutes passed. Then Lucinda’s prayerful eyes saw his hand, now quivering, reach behind him and draw his shoes in front of him. He put them on, but did not tie the strings.
“Somehow,” he said, rising, “somehow, now that I come to think of it, I don’t feel exactly right—exactly as I used to—an’ I reckon, maybe, I ort to go some’rs else. I reckon, as you said jest now, that in the eyes o’ some folks you ain’t no married woman, an’ I have been makin’ purty free fer a jail-bird. Old Uncle Billy Hodkins won’t set his dogs on me, an’ I ’ll go over thar tonight. After that the Lord only knows whar I will head fer. Uncle Billy never did believe I was guilty; he’s writ me that a dozen times.”
As he moved toward the door, in a clattering, slipshod fashion, Lucinda fixed Marty with a fierce stare.
“Are you a-goin’ to set thar an’ let Dick leave us fer good?” she hurled at her fiercely.
Marty made no reply save that which was embodied in a would-be defiant shrug, but the flow of blood had receded from her face.
“Ef you do, you ain’t no Christian woman, that’s all,” was Lucinda’s half-sobbing, half-shrieked accusation. “Yo’ ‘re a purty thing to set up an’ drink the sacrament with a heart in you that the Old Nick’s fire couldn’t melt.”
The convict smiled back at his defender from the threshold; then they heard him cross the entry and step down on the gravel walk. He had passed the bars and was turning up the side of a little hill, on the brow of which a few gravestones shimmered in the moonlight, when he heard his name called from the entry. It was Lucinda’s voice; she came to him, her hair flying in the wind.
“I ‘lowed,” he said, sheepishly, as she paused to catch her breath, “I jest ‘lowed I’d go up thar an’ see ef the water had been washin’ out round Annie’s grave. The last time I looked at it the foot-rock was a little sagged to one side.”
“Come back in the house, Dick,” cried the old maid. “Marty has completely broke down. She’s cryin’ like a baby. She has been actin’ stubborn beca’se she was proud an’ afeerd folks would think she was a fool about you. As soon as I told ’er you didn’t say that about bein’ willin’ to go to jail to git out ’n reach o’ ’er tongue, she axed me to run after you. She’s consented to make it up ef we will send over fer the justice an’ have the marryin’ done to-night.”
“Are you a-tellin’ me the truth, Lucinda?”