Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-10-01
ychapterl6M

AZ S NnOM tue IuOIutHl utl ClA kiss fell upon the fore
 tAt head of the delirious
 N man in the cabin Jes
 sica began to be a prey
 to new emotions, thi significance of which she did not com prehend. That kiss, she told herself that night, had been given to her deat ideal that had lain there in its purify ing grave clothes of forgetfulness. Yet 1t burned on her lips, as that other kiss in darkened room had burned after ward, but with sense of pleasure, not of hurt. 1t took her back into crimson meadows with her lost girlhood and its opaled outlook-and Hugh.
 But largest of all in her mind next day was anxiety. She must know how he fared. In the open daylight she could not approach the cabin, but she reflected that the doctor had beer there and no doubt had carried some report of him to the town. So as the morning grew she rode down the mountain ostensibly to get the cherry cordial she had left behind her the day before, really to satisfy her hunger fol news.
 As 1t happened Mrs. Halloran's first 4 greeting set her anxiety at rest. Pren dergast had bought some tobacco at the general store an hour before while she had been making her daily order and the storekeeper had questioned him. To an interested audience he had told of the finding of Hugh or the mountain road in a sort of crazy ]. fever and enlarged upon the part the girl on horseback had played. Hugt was all right now, he said, except that -.ie didn't remember him or the cabin or Smoky Mountain.
 What Prendergast had said Mrs Halloran told Jessica in breath. Be fore she finished she found that Jes. < sica had not heard of the incident in the saloon which had precipitated the fight with Devlin, and with sympa. thetic rhetoric Mrs. Halloran told tbia too
 "Why does Smoky Mountain hate him so? What has he done" asked Jessica.
 Mrs. Halloran shook her head. "l never knew anything myself" sht said judiciously. q reckon the towr allus counted him just general low down. The rest is only suspicion an give the dog bad name."
 There had been comfort for Jessica in this interview. Mrs. Halloran's story had materially increased the poignant force of her pity. What had seemed to her a vulgar brawl had been in reality a courageous and un selfish championship of defenseless ,utcast. Thinking of this, the sell > blame and contrition which she had felt when she listened to the violin nssailed her anew, till she seemed 6 very part of the guilt, an equal sinner by omission.
 { Yet she rode homeward that day with almost a light heart
 
 As Harry stood in the cabin door way looking after Prendergast toward the town, glistening far below in the morning sunlight, he thought bitterly of his reception there.
 'sThey all knew me-" he thought "Every one knew neon the street, in the hotel. They know me for what have been to them. Yet to me it is all a blank. What shameful deeds have doneY' He shrank from memory now "What was doing so far away, where was I going, on the night when I was picked up beside the railroad track? may be a drunkard," he said to him self. "No, in the past month I have drunk hard, but not for the taste of the liquor may be a gambler, may be a cheat, thief. Yet how is it possible for bad deeds to be plotted out and leave no trace? Actions breed habit if they do not spring from it. and habit automatically repeated becomes char acter. I feel no inherent propensity to rob or defraud. Shall I? Will these things come back to me if my memory does"
 In the battle that he fought now he turned, even in his weakness, to man. ual labor, striving to dull his thought with mechanical movement. He clean. ed and put to rights both rooms and sorted their litter of odds and ends, But at times the inclination to escape became well nigh insupportable. When the conflict was fiercest, he would think of a girls face once seen, and the thought would restrain him. Who was she? Why had her look pierced through him? In that hateful career that seemed so curiously alien could she have had a part?
 He did not know that she of whom he wondered in the bitterest of those hours had been very near him; that on her way up the mountain she had stolen down to the Knob to look through the parted bushes to the cabin with the blue spiral rising from its chimney.
 Though the homely task to which he turned failed to allay his struggle by
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