IN

CHAPTER XLIII

THE REJECTION OF ASHGRAVE

N THE presence of the dead, whom she dimly felt in a way to have died for her, Amanda knew again the stirrings of that troublesome New England conscience, which is rather an entailed inheritance than a mere personal possesssion. The application of the tests of the community in which one lives becomes instinctive, so that even the conscienceless man must act on a higher standard among one people than another. Thus the girl by the chain of inheritance found herself subject to the most rigid of Puritanic rules of judgment, and by these she stood convicted at the bar of personal consciousness. She had wished Ashgrave dead. Before that fact, the actual circumstances of death were meaningless. Sin was of the heart, not of the mere deed itself, and in the silence of that hovel of death, she heard Christ's words, "but I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment."

To this mood Barnaby, when at last he found some one who would go to Belmont for the physician, returned. The shock of finding Ashgrave dead, was less than that of the first hint of Amanda's self-condemnation. The revelation of this was a flash that uncovered, and he was aghast for the moment at the realisation that under the sense of shock was a note of hope that, conventionally, he had no right to tolerate. Yet her present attitude might easily crystallise into a phase of developed

conscience, before convention permitted him to present his claims and urge his arguments.

From this elementally selfish attitude, he was roused by the need for action in Amanda's behalf. Among the acts to be done was the summoning of the coroner, preparatory to the removal of Ashgrave's body.

"Where to?" Amanda asked. "Those ruins down there?"

Whatever she had been, whatever she was to be, it struck him that, for the time at least, she was the embittered wife robbed of her mate and stung with a sense of her own share in the crime of his despoilment.

"To your home, of course," he answered.

"That was to be my home," she said bitterly, pointing into the valley, with intentness that he should not separate her from Ashgrave, excepting in the thought of which she had no power of control.

He felt the unfriendliness, not to say harshness, of her answer. It was his first glimpse of the cruelty of which a woman in her grief is capable.

"I meant your father's house," he said, making allowance rather for the nervous tension of the night, than for the fact of actual grief, and striving to soothe her as he would a wilful child.

"My father! Do you think he would let a dead man be brought into his house, let alone its being Joe?" "Why not?" demanded Barnaby, his surprise dominating his voice and expression.

"Don't you know that to bring a dead body into any house is to bring bad luck as well?" answered Amanda. "Why, if you come to that," declared Barnaby, "you could n't take him anywhere. Every house could be closed on the same plea."

"Every house will be closed," replied Amanda, her manner showing that she had already traversed the ground in her own mind. "He'll have to be buried from here, since his house is burned."

"And you call this a Christian community.'

"Oh," she said, her community sense overcoming the personal, "it could do him no good; he is dead. There is no use injuring them for his sake now."

"But in all decency, he must be buried from some place," he exclaimed. "Why, the good name of the village is at stake.”

She laughed, a trifle unpleasantly, and found comfort in the scourge of bitterness she saw herself unable to escape.

"The place that was good enough for him to die in is good enough for him to be buried from."

The wild devotion he had shown her in his turbulent love, the remembrance of his asserted need for her when he came the night before, and that last touch of gentleness amid the destruction of the farm were uniting to soften the memory of the past, under the natural grief and shock of her position, and to put her in arms against a community that had finally killed him. For the moment Barnaby was rather of, than apart from, that community, and the antagonism, which she dimly felt had made of the relations of the two men something that she did not understand, added to this phase. The righteous wrath which she had felt over the discovery of the watch and the train of circumstances to which it pointed, ceased, save as an underlying force that made for repentance for injustice done the dead.

When Barnaby was seeking a messenger to send for the physician, regard to her fears prevented his

going to her father; but every consideration made for the opposite course when he left the sugar camp the second time.

"So the 'tarnal critter 's got his comeupance at last, hes he?" Seagrave demanded, when he had expressed surprise at Barnaby's appearance and had listened to his story.

"He's dead, at least," said Barnaby, throwing into his tone as much as he could of his protest against the spirit of intolerance which made Seagrave representative of the community, "and somebody ought to hang for it."

"What killed him?" Tom, who had listened with a pale face, asked the question with lips that were tremulous.

"A stone struck him back of the ear and knocked him over like an ox struck on the head with an axe. He never opened his eyes again."

"Ye need n't tumble over, ef he be dead," Seagrave grunted brusquely, watching the increasing pallor of the boy's face. "Thar hain't nobody goin' to raise eny fuss over losin' him. Ef you know anythin', hold your tongue."

"I don't," Tom faltered. "I wish I had n't ben thar," and he broke into sobs.

Barnaby stood appalled over the tragedy he saw himself to have uncovered, fearing dimly lest it should be revealed to Amanda as well. With an effort, however, he recovered himself, and broached the matter of the coroner and the taking of the body to the Seagraves for the funeral.

"Mandy ken come eny time she wants to," the farmer answered, "but I hain't agoin' to hev no dead man brought here, an' 'specially Joe Ashgrave. Mother

would n't hev it nohow, even ef I would, which I would n't."

"But his own house is burned," Barnaby began, only to be interrupted sharply with:

"I don't care ef 't is! I did n't burn it! I hain't goin' tu take no chances hevin' him or any dead man brought into my house.'

"No, dad! don't let 'em do it! Don't let 'em bring him here!" cried Tom.

"You go into the house an' hold yer tongue," the farmer retorted. "Ef you want to be a 'tarnal fool, go an' be it all by yerself."

"He's got to be buried from somewhere," Barnaby urged.

"Wall, let him be," Seagrave answered. "I hain't got nothin' to say agin it."

"But if you refuse him, who's going to give him room."

"I do'no an' I don't care. All I know is, I hain't goin' to hev him here."

When Barnaby had made his report to the coroner, in his perplexity he sought out the clergyman and told him his trouble, hoping that he would exert his authority, and wholly losing the fact that Craig's interest in Ashgrave had ceased with his death. The issue of salvation and eternal damnation was of

the past. Death had fixed his status for the unending ages, and the clergyman's task done.

"What brought you back?" Craig demanded.

was

"I came because I wanted to and had a right to," Barnaby answered.

"You had no right to, under the circumstances, and you know it."