"Thank you," Charles muttered. "It is kind of you all." His eyes were now on the trap and its inmates as they slowly ascended the sloping road half a mile distant. Mary sat with her father on the rear seat. Beyond them rose the rugged mountain, green as to foliage and brown and gray as to earth and stone. Above it all arched the blue sky, with here and there a creeping wisp of snow-white cloud. How incongruous it was! Here he was dodging imprisonment while this gentle family were espousing--blindly espousing his tottering cause. He drew a picture of himself running along the road after the trap, running faster than the horses, overtaking them and panting out a demand that the law should be allowed to take its course. But it was only a futile figment of a weary brain. He had uprooted a stalk of cotton, and he replaced it, raking out the mellow soil with his bare hands, packing it back on the roots, and bracing the plant between two of its neighbors by interlocking their pliant branches. "Mary! Mary! Mary!" The balmy air, blown from the direction she was taking in his behalf, seemed to sing the name as from vibrant strings stretched from heaven to earth--from shores of matter to boundaries of infinite spirit. Again she was in his arms as she was that night in the darkened old parlor. Her pulsing lips were on his, her clinging arms about his neck. After that spiritual marriage, could heaven or hell tear her from him? Could fate rob him of such a prize? Perhaps, for the prize could not be had at such a price. Mary, who had been a ready sacrifice herself, could not love one less worthy, and she would have to know the truth. He worked on--as a dying man he toiled on through the long, weary day. CHAPTER XXXVII On reaching the town, Rowland and the sheriff stopped at the court-house and Mary went to the Keiths'. To her great delight, she saw Tobe out in the little yard, seated under an apple-tree. He got up at once, and with scarcely any limp at all came to meet her. "Mother is not here," he said, as he shook hands. "It is kind of you to come, Miss Mary." "I heard you were recovering," Mary returned, "and I was very glad. You know what it meant to me, Tobe?" "Yes, I do, and that helped me pull through, I think, Miss Mary. Those boys are too young and thoughtless to shoulder a load like that would have been. We were all to blame." "I hope we will have no trouble with the courts," Mary said. "What do you think about that, Tobe?" He waved his hands lightly. "Nothing will be done," he answered. "The sheriff and three or four good lawyers told me so. They said it all depended on whether I'd press the charges, and I don't intend to, Miss Mary. I've had my lesson, and the boys have, too. I've cut liquor out and folks say they have, too." She nodded. "Yes, they have changed remarkably. They are more serious, and they work every day."