The Man Thou Gavest | Page 7

and then seated himself on the
stump of a tree which served as a settee.
"Now, then!" he said, keeping his eyes on his breezy little guest. "What
have you got to tell me--before you go?"
"It's something that happened--long ago. You will not laugh if I tell you?

You laugh right much."
"I? You think I laugh a good deal? Good Lord! Some folk think I don't
laugh enough." He had his friends back home in mind, and somehow
the memory steadied him for an instant.
"P'r'aps they-all don't know you as well as I do." This with amusing
conviction.
"Perhaps they don't." Truedale was deadly solemn. "But go on,
Nella-Rose. I promise not to laugh now."
"It was the beginning of--you!" The girl turned her eyes to the fire--she
was quaintly demure. "At first when I saw you looking in that window,
yonder, I was right scared."
Jim White's statement that Nella-Rose wasn't more than half real
seemed, in the light of present happenings, little less than bald fact.
"It was the way you looked--way back there when I was ten years old. I
had run away--"
"Are you always running away?" asked Truedale from the hollow
depths of unreality.
"I run away a smart lot. You have to if you want to--see things and be
different."
"And you--you want to be different, Nella-Rose?"
"I--why, can't you see?--I am different."
"Of course. I only meant--do you like to be different."
"I have to like it. I was born with a cawl."
"In heaven's name, what's that?"
"Something over your eyes, and when they take it off you see more,

and farther, than any one else. You're part ha'nt."
Truedale wiped his forehead--the room was getting hot, but the heat
alone was not responsible for his emotions; he was being carried
beyond his depth--beyond himself--by the wild fascination of the little
creature before him. He would hardly have been surprised had a
draught of air wafted her out of the window like a bit of mountain mist.
"But you mustn't interrupt so much!" She turned a stern face upon him.
"I ran away that time to see a--railroad train! One of the niggers told me
about it--he said it was the Bogy Man. I wanted to know, so I went to
the station. It's a right smart way down and I had to sleep one night
under the trees. Don't the stars look starry sometimes?"
The interruption made Truedale jump.
"They certainly do," he said, looking at the soft, dark eyes with their
long lashes.
"I wasn't afraid--and I didn't hurry. It was evening, and the sun just
a-going down, when I got to the station. There wasn't any one about so
I--I ran down the big road the train comes on--to meet it. And then"
(here Nella-Rose clasped her hands excitedly and her breath came
short), "and then I saw it a-coming and a-coming. The big fire-eye
a-glaring and the mighty noise a-snorting and I reckoned it was old
Master Satan and I just--couldn't move!"
"Go on! go on!" Truedale bent close to her--she had caught him in the
mesh of her dramatic charm.
"I saw it a-coming, and set on--on devouring o' me, and still I couldn't
stir. Everything was growing black and black except a big square with
that monster eye a-glaring into the soul o' me!"
The girl's face was set--her eyes vacant and wild; suddenly they
softened, and her little white teeth showed through the childish, parted
lips.

"Then the eye went away, there was a blackness in the square place,
and then a face came--a kind face it was--all a-laughing and it--it kept
going farther and farther off to one side and I kept a-following and
a-following and then--the big noise went rushing by me, and there I
was right safe and plump up against a tree!"
"Good Lord!" Again Truedale wiped his brow.
"Since then," Nella-Rose relaxed, "I can shut my eyes and always there
is the black square and sometimes--not always, but sometimes--things
come!"
"The face, Nella-Rose?"
"No, I can't make that come. But things I want to, do and have. I always
think, when I see things, that I'm going to do a big, fine thing some day.
I feel upperty and then--poof! off go the pictures and I am just--lil'
Nella-Rose again!"
A comically heavy sigh brought Truedale back to earth.
"But the face you saw long ago," Truedale whispered, "was it my face,
do you think?"
Nella-Rose paused--then quietly:
"I--reckon it was. Yes, I'm mighty sure it was your face. When I saw it
at that window"--she pointed across the room--"I certainly thought my
eyes were closed and that--it had come--the kind, good face that saved
me!" A sweet, friendly smile wreathed the girl's lips and she rose with
rare dignity