"Then I'll meet you at the morning train with it and rush you to a place
of safety if there is no other way. You must go back home now, and it
will be best not to tell anyone where you are going until you no longer
fear your weakness, for they might betray your hiding place. Strength
will be given you, Martha, if you only ask."
"I'll pray, Parson, I'll pray, now that you are going to give me my
chance to get strong enough to be good. I'll work and I'll pray, but
hide me until I do get strong." And the hard, dry sobs melted as the
girl put her head down upon the gate a moment and then went out through
it.
"God bless you, child, and keep you ever in thought of Him," were the
words that she carried away with her as she hurried down the street
toward the Settlement.
Then for a second some awful fear came across my heart that I did not
understand. I now know that it was a premonition of what was to wring my
own heart and I cowered against the old tree in agony. Gregory Goodloe
was not more than six feet away from me on the other side of the
budding, fragrant hedge, and in the moonlight I could see the beautiful
strength of his golden head and strong placid face, on which lines of
pain were drawn, and I had to restrain myself from crying out to him in
my own pain. I wanted to go quickly and cling to his strength. Then I
stopped and listened.
He had raised his face to the stars and was praying.
"O Father," he asked, as if speaking to someone with whom he walked in
the cool of the midnight, "help the weak on whom the strong prey."
Then he went into the dark door of the little chapel and left me out in
the cold midnight alone. The fear was gone, and comforted I went back
through my budding garden and arrived at the front door just as old Mr.
Pate, the telegraph operator at the little station down the street,
turned in at the gate.
"Miss Charlotte," he puffed, as he fairly flung the telegram at me,
"this come fer you at ten o'clock and I risked it and run up here with
it after I heard them ottermobiles go by. I'm courting Mrs. Jennie Hicks
myself and I understands about courtings." And before I could speak he
had run on back down the street.
As I stood and looked at the yellow envelope fear again gripped my
heart, and without opening it I walked into the house, locking the great
door behind me with trembling fingers, and went toward a light I saw
shining from the trellised back porch and which I did not understand. I
have never in my life been the least bit afraid of anything, except
something within my own body, from the hideous pain of my green-apple
days to the pain I had felt as I talked beside the piano with Nickols in
New York, a thousand miles away; but something made me pause just for a
second in the pantry doorway before I stepped into the light upon the
porch. I shall never forget the scene that was enacted before my
wondering eyes in the dim light of a candle burning upon a table near
the refrigerator.