The Bell-Ringer of Angels | Page 8

tell you
another thing--that I have seen and spoken to Mrs. McGee since she
came to the Bar. She fell into the water last week, and I swam out and
dragged her ashore. We talked and spoke of the past."
"She fell in," echoed McGee.
Wayne hesitated; then a murky blush came into his face as he slowly
repeated, "She FELL in."

McGee's eyes only brightened. "I have been too hard on her. She might
have drowned ef you hadn't took risks. You see? You understand what
I mean? And she never let out anything about it-- and never boasted o'
YOU helpin' her out. All right--you'll come along and see her agin'."
He turned and walked cheerfully away.
Wayne re-entered the cabin. He sat for a long time by the window until
the stars came out above the river, and another star, with which he had
been long familiar, took its place apparently in the heart of the wooded
crest of the little promontory. Then the fringing woods on the opposite
shore became a dark level line across the landscape, and the color
seemed to fade out of the moist shining gravel before his cabin.
Presently the silhouette of his dark face disappeared from the window,
and Mr. McGee might have been gratified to know that he had slipped
to his knees before the chair whereon he had been sitting, and that his
head was bowed before it on his clasped hands. In a little while he rose
again, and, dragging a battened old portmanteau from the corner, took
out a number of letters tied up in a package, with which, from time to
time, he slowly fed the flame that flickered on his hearth. In this way
the windows of the cabin at times sprang into light, making a somewhat
confusing beacon for the somewhat confused Arthur Wayne, who was
returning from a visit to Angel's, and who had fallen into that slightly
morose and irritated state which follows excessive hilarity, and is also
apt to indicate moral misgivings.
But the last letter was burnt and the cabin quite dark when he entered.
His brother was sitting by the slowly dying fire, and he trusted that in
that uncertain light any observation of his expression or manner--of
which he himself was uneasily conscious-- would pass unheeded.
"You are late," said Madison gravely.
At which his brother rashly assumed the aggressive. He was no later
than the others, and if the Rogers boys were good enough to walk with
him for company he couldn't run ahead of them just because his brother
was waiting! He didn't want any supper, he had something at the Cross
Roads with the others. Yes! WHISKEY, if he wanted to know. People
couldn't keep coffee and temperance drinks just to please him and his

brother, and he wasn't goin' to insult the others by standing aloof.
Anyhow, he had never taken the pledge, and as long as he hadn't he
couldn't see why he should refuse a single glass. As it was, everybody
said he was a milksop, and a tender-foot, and he was just sick of it.
Madison rose and lit a candle and held it up before his brother's face. It
was a handsome, youthful face that looked into his, flushed with the
excitement of novel experiences and perhaps a more material
stimulation. The little silken moustache was ostentatiously curled, the
brown curls were redolent of bear's grease. Yet there was a certain
boyish timidity and nervousness in the defiance of his blue eyes that
momentarily touched the elder brother.
"I've been too hand with him," he said to himself, half consciously
recalling what McGee had said of Safie. He put the candle down, laid
his hand gently on Arthur's shoulder, and said, with a certain cautious
tenderness, "Come, Arty, sit down and tell me all about it."
Whereupon the mercurial Arthur, not only relieved of his nervousness
but of his previous ethical doubts and remorse, became gay and voluble.
He had finished his purchases at Angel's, and the storekeeper had
introduced him to Colonel Starbottle, of Kentucky, as one of "the
Waynes who had made Wayne's Bar famous." Colonel Starbottle had
said in his pompous fashion--yet he was not such a bad fellow, after
all--that the Waynes ought to be represented in the Councils of the
State, and that he, Starbottle, would be proud to nominate Madison for
the next Legislature and run him, too. "And you know, really, Mad, if
you mixed a little more with folks, and they weren't--well, sorter
AFRAID of you--you could do it. Why, I've made a heap o' friends
over there, just by goin' round a little, and one of old Selvedge's
girls--the storekeeper, you know--said from what she'd heard of us, she
always thought I was