Chapter 4 - Page 2

unconsecrated ground!"

"There is the place I told you of," said Tom.

"I cannot go there," with the gesture again. "There is no time. I must go away."

He made no pretence at concealing that he had a secret to hide. He seemed to have given up the effort.

Tom looked up at him.

"What are you going to do with this?" he asked.

Then for the first time he seemed to become conscious of the child's presence. He turned and gave it a startled sidelong glance, as if he had suddenly been struck with a new fear.

"I--do not know," he stammered. "I--no! I do not know. What have I been doing?"

He sank into a chair and buried his face in his trembling hands.

"God's curse is upon it," he cried. "There is no place for it on earth."

Tom rose with a sudden movement and began to pace the floor with his charge in his arms.

"It's a little chap to lay a curse on," he said. "And helpless enough, by Gad!"

He looked down at the diminutive face, and as he did so, a wild thought flashed through his mind. It had the suddenness and force of a revelation. His big body trembled with some feeling it would have gone hard with him to express, and his heart warmed within him as he felt the light weight lying against it.

"No place for it!" he cried. "By God, there is! There is a place here--and a man to stand by and see fair-play!"

"Give her to me," he said, "give her to me, and if there is no place for her, I'll find one."

"What do you mean?" faltered the man.

"I mean what I say," said Tom. "I'll take her and stand by her as long as there is breath in me; and if the day should ever come in spite of me when wrong befalls her, as it befell her mother, some man shall die, so help me God!"

The warm Southern blood which gave to his brothers' love-songs the grace of passion, and which made them renowned for their picturesque eloquence of speech, fired him to greater fluency than was usual with him, when he thought of the helplessness of the tiny being he held.

"I never betrayed a woman yet, or did one a wrong," he went on. "I'm not one of the lucky fellows who win their hearts," with a great gulp in his throat. "Perhaps if there's no one to come between us, she may--may be fond of me."

The man gave him a long look, as if he was asking himself a question.

"Yes," he said at last, "she will be fond of you. You will be worthy of it. There is no one to lay claim to her. Her mother lies dead among strangers, and her father----"

For a few moments he seemed to be falling into a reverie, but suddenly a tremour seized him and he struck one clenched hand