“Don’ yo’ come heah wid yo’ no-count play-actin’. Cyan’ fool Ranston wid no sich snek-story, neidah. Ain’ no moc’sin at Dam’ry Co’ot, en nebbah was!” “There was, too!” insisted Rickey. “One bit him and Miss Shirley found him and sent Uncle Jefferson for Doctor Southall and it saved his life! So there! Doctor Southall told Mrs. Mason. And he isn’t a man who’s just come to fix it up, either; he’s the really truly man that owns it!” “Who on earth is that child talking about?” Shirley put her arm around her mother and kissed her. Her heart was beating quickly. “The owner has come to Damory Court. He—” The small book Mrs. Dandridge held fell to the floor. “The owner! What owner?” “Mr. Valiant—Mr. John Valiant. The son of the man who abandoned it so long ago.” As she picked up the fallen volume and put it into her mother’s hands, Shirley was startled by the whiteness of her face. “Dearest!” she cried. “You are ill. You shouldn’t have come down.” “No. It’s nothing. I’ve been shut up all day. Go and open the other window.” Shirley threw it wide. “Can I get your salts?” she asked anxiously. Her mother shook her head. “No,” she said almost sharply. “There’s nothing whatever the matter [Pg 187]with me. Only my nerves aren’t what they used to be, I suppose—and snakes always did get on them. Now, give me the gist of it first. I can wait for the rest. There’s a tenant at Damory Court. And his name’s John—Valiant. And he was bitten by a moccasin. When?” “This afternoon.” Mrs. Dandridge’s voice shook. “Will he—will he recover?” “Oh, yes.” “Beyond any question?” “The doctor says so.” “And you found him, Shirley—you?” “I was there when it happened.” She had crouched down on the rug in her favorite posture, her coppery hair against her mother’s knee, catching strange reddish over-tones like molten metal, from the shaded lamp. Mrs. Dandridge fingered her cane nervously. Then she dropped her hand on the girl’s head. “Now,” she said, “tell me all about it.” [Pg 188] CHAPTER XXII THE ANNIVERSARY The story was not a long one, though it omitted nothing: the morning fox-hunt and the identification of the new arrival at Damory Court as the owner of yesterday’s stalled motor; the afternoon raid on the jessamine, the conversation with John Valiant in the woods. Mrs. Dandridge, gazing into the fire, listened without comment, but more than once Shirley saw her hands clasp themselves together and thought, too, that she seemed strangely pale. The swift and tragic sequel to that meeting was the hardest to tell, and as she ended she put up her hand to her shoulder, holding it hard. “It was horrible!” she said. Yet now she did not shudder. Strangely enough, the sense of loathing which had been surging over her at recurrent intervals ever since that hour in the wood, had vanished utterly!