heels together, made his low bow, and took the money. "I thank you, mein Herr. I need it. I will take it."
Mr. Weaver looked at him with the provincial American's amusement at foreigners' ways, mingled with shrewdness.
"By the way, do you mind telling me how you-all got into this scrape?"
The German flushed and tossed back his head. Then he controlled himself, and said, gently—
"But perhaps you have a r-right to know. If you will excuse me for a time, however, I will r-return after a breakfast. I left my house very early this morning."
Weaver noticed the sudden pinched look of faintness that turned von Rittenheim's ruddy face ashy.
"He's missed more than one meal," he thought, but said aloud only, "Any time before two o'clock."
It was not much that the commissioner learned from von Rittenheim after all, for food brought back self-reliance and courage, and he felt that the whole story of his trouble would be an appeal for sympathy that he could not make. However, he told enough to cause Weaver to say under his breath a few condemnatory things about the deputy-marshal, and then he asked—
"What are you going to do?"
"I hope to find some occupation in Asheville until the time of my tr-rial."
"What do you want to do?"
"I care not. I am well, str-rong. I fear not labor."
Mr. Weaver compared with a glance von Rittenheim's figure with his own puny proportions, and said—
"No, I should think not!"
Then he rubbed his head and asked—
"Can you teach?"
"I know not. Never have I done such a thing. I am a soldier."
"That's easily seen. Still, you're a university man."
He touched his forehead just where on Friedrich's the tip of his scar was visible.
"Oh, yes. I was at Heidelberg."
"I suspect you'll do if you-all are willing to try. My boy's fitting for college, and he's getting badly behind in his German. If you'd tackle his instruction for a few weeks, I'm sure it would be of great value to him. Will you do it?"
"If you will accept a novice, I shall be gr-rateful." And again Friedrich made his low bow.
"Then be at my house at five this afternoon, and here's a week's salary in advance. You'll be wanting it, perhaps."
So was Baron von Rittenheim established as Tommy Weaver's tutor, and fortunate he thought himself.
Fortunate he was, in that this engagement secured to him his simple living; but most unlucky in that it left him with too much spare time. Had he worked at a task that occupied seven or eight hours a day, his thoughts would have filtered through the weariness of his body, and been purified thereby. But his leisure was abundant, and he spent it in brooding over his troubles.
To those that had wrung him before was added his present shame. And his shame was embittered by his suspicion of Dr. Morgan. He held Wilder of no account. He was beneath a gentleman's notice. But Dr. Morgan had pretended to be his friend. He dwelt on all his intercourse with him, and weighed every conversation that he remembered. There came to him half a hundred trifling circumstances that seemed to substantiate his distrust.
The lack of his accustomed exercise told on his health. He grew moody and irritable, and daily the wish for revenge grew stronger. Satisfaction was due him, and satisfaction he would have.
III
A Weak Man's Strength
It was three weeks later. Bud Yarebrough, going rabbit-hunting, pondered, as he trudged along the road, upon the freaks of an April that had come in with snow, and alternately had warmed and chilled the swelling hopes of bud and blossom, until the end of the month showed trees and shrubs but a trifle farther advanced than at its beginning.
"Jus' like M'lissy used to treat me!"
He made the comparison with a breath of relief that that time of wretchedness and rapture was past.
He heard the sound of hoofs approaching from behind, and whistled to heel his three scrawny hounds. When he made sure of the rider's identity, he shifted his gun to his other shoulder, and pulled off his remnant of felt in salutation of Miss Carroll. As she stopped to speak to him, he stared earnestly at her horse's neck; but kind Nature permits even a shy man's vision to take a wide range, and Bud by no means was unobservant of the brilliant skin framed by a glory of red hair; of the velvet dark eyes with their darker lashes; and of the corduroy habit, brownly harmonious with the sorrel horse and the clay road, as with its wearer's coloring.
"How is Melissa, Bud?"
Some of Sydney Carroll's friends thought her voice her greatest charm.
"And the baby? She's a dear baby! I think she looks like Melissa, don't you?"
"She's tol'able—they's tol'able. Yes, Miss Sydney, they says so," replied the lad, whose condition as the father of a family seemed to cast him into depths of bashfulness.
"It's a great responsibility for you, Bud. I hope you feel it. And I hope that you won't let this happen often."
Sydney gravely tapped her eye with her finger, while Bud stole a shamed hand over his own visual organ, which was surrounded by the paling glories of a recent contusion. The color mounted to his hair as he stammered—
"Hit wasn't that—that what you think, Miss Sydney. Hit was a stick o' wood——" But his voice trailed off into nothingness before the girl's gaze.
"Bud, I know—I heard how it happened. Don't tell me what isn't true."
Bud kicked a stone that lay at his feet.
"You-all always does find out," he murmured, with unwilling admiration. "You see Ah was right smart glad about the baby, 'n 'bout M'lissy bein' so well, 'n Ah jus' took a little; 'n Pink Pressley was awful aggravatin', 'n Ah jus' 'lowed Ah didn' want nothin' t' interrup' mah joy," he ended, looking up with a humorous twinkle that brought a responsive smile to the severe young face before him.
"But Ah know hit ain' right to M'lissy," he went on hurriedly, for he realized that the smile was only transitory, "'n Ah'm goin' to try, Ah sho' am," he added, stepping out of the way of the horse, grown uneasy at this long colloquy. "Ah certainly am goin' to get out the tools 'n look 'em over to-morrow," he finished, as Sydney gathered up her reins.
"I hope so, Bud; but why don't you do it to-day?" she called back, saying to herself, as Johnny broke into a canter, "As if poor Bud ever could do anything to-day! He should have been born in the land of mañana."
The horse lengthened his stride into a sweeping gallop where the condition of the road permitted, slackening his pace and betaking himself to the side, and even to the footpath on the bank, when the mud grew too deep for speed. The girl paid little attention to him, for, like all mountain horses, he was accustomed to pick his way with a sagacity that man cannot assist.
On Sydney's face rested a shade too heavy to have been brought there by the failings, customary to the country, of Melissa's husband. But twenty years are not proof against the joint attack of sunshine and fresh, sweet air and the glorious motion of a horse, and she seemed a happy, care-free girl to Bob Morgan, sitting in the sun on his father's porch.
Unlike the Carroll house, which was of stone and surrounded by roofed verandas, Dr. Morgan's dwelling presented an unabashed glare of whitewashed weather-boarding. It needed only green shutters to be a hostage from New England. In summer a rose climbed over the portico and broke the snowy monotony, but at this season the leafless stems served only to enhance the bareness.