"Why, nothing that I can see," Mrs. Cavanaugh answered. "All you have to do is to show Tilly that in no sense of the word is she bound by her first marriage. You seem to think she is worried over that."
Joel shrugged his shoulders and took a deep breath. "You don't understand yet," he said, with a low groan. "She is excited—so excited that she can't sleep, but it is not the kind of excitement you think it is. She's heard the report that John Trott is still alive and she is afraid that it may not—by some chance—be true. I don't mean that she'd ever live with him again—now that she is—is a mother, or that she'd hold it against me for marrying her as I did; but to know that no harm came to him will make her happier than she's been for many a day. That is a thing I've got to face. She is the mother of my children, but she has never given me her whole heart and soul. She gave them to John Trott. She has never blamed him for any step he took. She thought that he left here for her sake, and died for her sake. Do you think I don't know that when she hears that he himself has never married in all these years—do you think that she will then love him less than she did? She always looked on him as the most wronged man alive. Do you suppose that she herself will turn against him now? In the name of God, what excuse would she have, and him still loving her as Mr. Cavanaugh thinks he does?"
"I never looked at it that way," Mrs. Cavanaugh said. "You are getting me all mixed up. Does Mrs. Trott— Have any of the reports got to her?"
"No, not yet; but Tilly will want to tell her, now that there is no doubt as to the truth. I must tell my wife what I have just learned. It is my duty to tell her. Yes, yes, I must tell her. I'm honor-bound at once to give her all the joy in my power."
It was as if both Cavanaugh and his wife could think of nothing in the way of comfort for Eperson, and, taking his reins into a better grasp and touching his hat politely, he mounted his wagon and drove away.
CHAPTER VIII
The loose planks on Joel's wagon rattled over the rain-washed and little-used road running from the main highway to the farm he was renting. The house was a log cabin of only three rooms, situated on a bleak, treeless hillside. Adjoining it was a diminutive corn-crib made of pine poles with the bark still on them, and a lean-to shed which was roofed with long shingles sawn and split from red oak.
As he drove his clattering wagon up the slope his two children, little Joel and Tilly, ran out to meet him. The boy held his sister's hand to keep her from falling, and was gleefully shouting to his father to stop and take them into the wagon. Eperson checked his horse and got down and made places for them on his coat.
"Where's your mother?" he inquired, his dull eyes on the cabin.