Maryland independent. [volume] (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1874-current, 1931-01-23
CHAPTER V-Continued

AS softly as the light, without a
sob or cry. Jeems knelt beside him.
He 'spoke his fathers name, yet knew
that m, answer would rise from the
lifeless lips. He repeated it in an
unexcitable way lsz his hands clutched
at the silent form. The starlight left
nothing unrevealed; his l@.AE dead
his white lips twisted, his hanG
clenched at his side, the top Of his
head naked and bleeding from the
scalping knife. Jeems slumped down.
He may have spoken again. lie may
have sobbed. But the thing like death
that was creeping over him, its dark
ness and vastness, hid him from him
self. He remained beside his father.
as motionless and as still. Odd
crouched near After a little, an Inch
at time, he crept to the dead man.
He muzzled the hands that were grow
ing cold. He licked Jeems' face where
1t had fallen against his fathers shout
der. Then he was motionless again
his eyes seeking about him like balls
of living flame. Death was in the air
He was breathing 1t. He was hear
ing it, AT last, irresistibly impelled
to answer the spirit of death, he sat
back on his launches and howled. 1t
was not Odds howl any more than it
had been Jeems' voice speaking to his
father a few moments before. 1t was
a ghostly sound that seemed to quiet
even the whispering of the leaves, an
unearthly and shivering cry that sent
echoes over the clearing, with grief
for company.
It was this which brought Jeems out
of the depths into which he had fallen.
He raised his head and saw his father
again, and swayed to his feet He be
gan seeking. Close by, near the pile
of apples which she had helped him
gather from under their trees on the
slope, he found his mother. She, too.
lay with her face to the sky. The little
that was left Of her unbound hair lay
scattered on the earth. Her glorious
beauty was gone. Starlight, caress-
ing her gently. revealed to her boy the
hideousness of her end. There, over
her body, Jeems' heart broke. Odd
guarded faithfully. listening to grief
that twisted at his brute soul. Then
fell a greater silence. Through long
hours the burning logs settled down
into fiattened masses of dying en-
bers The darkness came which pre-
cedes the day, and after that, dawn.
Jeems rose to face his blasted world.
He was no longer youth but living
thing aged by an eternity that had
passed. It was Odd who led him in
the quest for Hepsibah Adams. He
sought like one half blind and vet
sensed everything. He saw the tram
pied grass, the moccasin-beaten earth
at the spring, Ratchet lost in the
M rht, and on the Ratchet an English
name. But he did not find his uncle
In the same gray dawn, stirring with
the wings Of birds and the play of
squirrels among the trees, he set out
for Tonteur manor.
He carried the Ratchet, clutching it
as if the wood his fingers gripped held
life Whlcn might escape nlm- be
cause of this Ratchet there grew in
him slow and terrible thought that
had the strength of chain. The
weapon, with its short hickory handle,
its worn iron blade, its battered head,
might have been flesh and blood cap
able of receiving pain or Of giving up
a secret, so tenacious was the hold of
his hand about it. But he did not
see the iron or wood. He saw only
the name which told him that the
English had come with their Indians,
or had sent them, as his uncle had so
often said they would The English.
Not the French. The English.
And he held the Ratchet as If it
were an English throat
Put he was not thinking that. The
part Of him conscious of the act was
working unknown to the faculties
which made him move and see. His
thoughts were Imprisoned within
store walls, and around these walls
the3 beat and trampled themselves. al
ways alike, telling him the same