The Bondboy Part 59

"My overcoat, Hiram, and my neck shawl," ordered the judge. He turned to Morgan, who was standing on the hearth.

"Wait for me, I'll not be long away."

"It's a bl.u.s.terin' and a blowin' mighty bad, Judge. I'll get my coat----"

"No, no, Hiram; there's something for you to do here. Watch that man; don't let him leave."

"He ain't gwine a-leave, Judge, sah," said Hiram with calm significance.

Hiram held up the great frieze coat, and the judge plunged his arms into it. Then the old negro adjusted the shawl about his master's shoulders, and tucked the ends of it inside the coat, b.u.t.toning that garment over them, to shield the judge's neck from the driving rain.

The judge turned back into the room to throw another stick on the fire.

The lamp was burning low; he reached over to turn up the wick. The flame jumped, faltered, went out.

"Hah, I've turned it out, Morgan. Well, no matter. You'll not need more light than the fire throws. Make yourself comfortable, Morgan."

With a word to Hiram, the judge opened the door and stepped out into the night.

On the pavement the wind met him rudely, and the rain drove its cold arrows against his kind old face. Wonderful are the ways of Providence, thought Judge Maxwell, bending his head to bring his broad hat-brim to shield his face, and complete are the accounts of justice when it is given that men may see them down to the final word.

The wind laid hold of the judge's coat, and tugged at it like a vicious dog; it raged in the gaunt trees, and split in long sighs upon the gable-ends and eaves. There was n.o.body abroad. For Shelbyville the hour was late; Judge Maxwell had the street to himself as he held on his way.

Past the court-house he fought the wind, and a square beyond that. There he turned down a small street, where the force of the blast was broken, looking narrowly about him to right and left at the fronts of houses as he pa.s.sed.

Simeon Harrison, Ollie Chase's father, lately had given over his unprofitable struggle with the soil. He had taken a house near the Methodist church and gone into the business of teaming. He hauled the merchants' goods up from the railroad station, and moved such inhabitants of Shelbyville as once in a while made a change from one abode to another.

Sim had come to Shelbyville with a plan for setting up a general livery business, in which ambition he had been encouraged by Ollie's marriage to Isom Chase, to whom he looked, remotely, for financial backing. But that had turned out a lean and unprofitable dream.

Since Isom's death Ollie had returned to live with her parents, and Sim's prospects had brightened. He had put a big sign in front of his house, upon which he had listed the many services which he stood ready to perform for mankind, in consideration of payment therefor. They ranged from moving trunks to cleaning cisterns, and, by grace of all of them, Sim was doing very well.

When Sim Harrison heard of his daughter's public confession of shameful conduct with her book-agent boarder, he was a highly scornful man. He scorned her for her weakness in yielding to what he termed the "dally-faddle" of the book-agent, and he doubly scorned her for repudiating her former testimony. The moral side of the matter was obscure to him; it made no appeal.

His sense of personal pride and family honor was not touched by his daughter's confession of shame, any more than his soul was moved to tenderness and warmth for her honest rescue of Joe Newbolt from his overhanging peril. He was voluble in his declarations that they would "put the screws" to Ollie on the charge of perjury. Sim would have kept his own mouth sealed under like circ.u.mstances, and it was beyond him to understand why his daughter had less discretion than her parent. So he bore down on the solemn declaration that she stood face to face with a prison term for perjury.

Sim had made so much of this that Ollie and her mother were watching that night out in fear and trembling, sitting huddled together in a little room with the peak of the roof in the ceiling, a lamp burning between them on the stand. Their arms lay listlessly in their laps, they turned their heads in quick starts at the sound of every footfall on the board walk, or when the wind swung the loose-jointed gate and flung it against its anchorings. They were waiting for the sheriff to come and carry Ollie away to jail.

In front of Sim Harrison's house there was a little porch, not much bigger than a hand held slantingly against its weathered side, and in the shadow of it one who had approached unheard by the anxious watchers through the bl.u.s.tering night, stood fumbling for the handle of a bell.

But Sim Harrison's door was bald of a bell handle, as it was bare of paint, and now a summons sounded on its thin panel, and went roaring through the house like a blow on a drum.

Mrs. Harrison looked meaningly at Ollie; Ollie nodded, understandingly.

The summons for which they had waited had come. The older woman rose in resigned determination, went below and opened the door.

"It is Judge Maxwell," said the dark figure which stood large and fearful in Mrs. Harrison's sight. "I have come to see Mrs. Chase."

"Yes, sir; I'll call her," said the trembling woman.

Ollie had heard from the top of the stairs. She was descending in the darkness, softly. She spoke as her mother turned from the door.

"I was expecting you--some of you," said she.

"Very well, then," said Judge Maxwell, wondering if that mysterious voice had worked another miracle. "Get your wraps and come with me."

Mrs. Harrison began to groan and wail. Couldn't they let the poor child stay there till morning, under her own mother's roof? It was a wild and terrible night, and Lord knew the poor, beaten, bruised, and weary bird would not fly away!

"Save your tears, madam, until they are needed," said the judge, not feeling that he was called upon to explain the purpose of his visit to her.

"I'm ready to go," announced Ollie, hooded and cloaked in the door.

Sim Harrison was stirring about overhead. He came to the top of the stairs with a lamp in his hand, and wanted to know what the rumpus was about.

"It's Judge Maxwell--he's come for Ollie!" said his wife, in a despairing wail.

"I knowed it, I knowed it!" declared Sim, with fatalistic resignation, above which there was perhaps a slight note of triumph in seeing his own prediction so speedily fulfilled.

To Harrison and his wife there was no distinction between the executive and judicial branches of the law. Judge or sheriff, it was all one to them, each being equally terrible in their eyes.

"When can she come home, Judge, when can she come back?" appealed Mrs.

Harrison, in anguished pleading.

"It rests with her," returned the judge.

He gave Ollie his arm, and they pa.s.sed together in silence up the street. They had proceeded a square before the judge spoke.

"I am calling you on an unusual mission, Mrs. Chase," he said, "but I did not know a better way than this to go about what I felt it my duty to do."

"Yes, sir," said she. He could feel her tremble as she lightly touched his arm.

They pa.s.sed the court-house. There was a light in the sheriff's office, but they did not turn in there, and a sigh for that temporary respite, at least, escaped her. The judge spoke again.

"You left the court-room today before I had a chance to speak to you, Mrs. Chase. I wanted to tell you how much I admired your courage in coming forward with the statement that cleared away the doubt and tangles from Joe Newbolt's case. You deserve a great deal of credit, which I am certain the public will not withhold. You are a brave little woman, Ollie Chase."

There it was again! Twice in a day she had heard it, from eminent sources each time. The world was not a bleak desert, as she had thought, but a place of kindness and of gentle hearts.

"I'm glad you don't blame me," she faltered, not knowing what to make of this unexpected turn in the night's adventure.

"A brave little woman!" repeated the judge feelingly. "And I want you to know that I respect and admire you for what you have done."

Ollie was silent, but her heart was shouting, leaping, and bounding again in light freedom, as it had lifted that morning when Alice Price had spoken to her in her despair. At last, she said, with earnestness:

"I promise you I'll be a good woman, too, from now on, Judge Maxwell, and I'm thankful to you for your kind words."

"We turn in here--this is my door," said the judge.

Mystified, wondering what the next development of this strange excursion into the night would be, but satisfied in her mind that it meant no ill for her now, Ollie waited while the judge found the keyhole, for which he groped in the dark.

"And the matter of the will was all disposed of by the probate judge today, I hear," said the judge, his hand on the door.

"Yes, sir."