by Thomas Dixon
CHAPTER XXXI
SIN FULL GROWN
The sensitive soul of the girl had seen the tragedy before she rushed intothe library. At the first shot she sprang to her feet, her heart in herthroat. The report had sounded queerly through the closed doors and she wasnot sure. She had entered the hall, holding her breath, when the secondshot rang out its message of death.
She was not the woman who faints in an emergency. She paused just a momentin the door, saw the ghastly heap on the floor and rushed to the spot.
She tore Tom's collar open and placed her ear over his heart:
"O God! He's alive--he's alive!"
She turned and saw Cleo leaning against the table with blanched face andchattering teeth.
"Call Andy and Aunt Minerva--and go for the doctor--his heart'sbeating--quick--the doctor--he's alive--we may save him!"
She knelt again on the floor, took Tom's head in her lap, wiped the bloodfrom the clean, white forehead, pressed her lips to his and sobbed:
"Come back, my own--it's I--Helen, your little wife--I'm calling you--youcan't die--you're too young and life's too dear. We've only begun to live,my sweetheart! You shall not die!"
The tears were raining on his pale face and her cries had become littlewordless prayers when Andy and Minerva entered the room.
She nodded her head toward Norton's motionless body:
"Lift him on the lounge!"
They moved him tenderly:
"See if his heart's still beating," she commanded.
Andy reverently lowered his dusky face against the white bosom of hismaster. When he lifted it the tears had blinded his eyes:
"Nobum," he said slowly, "he's done dead!"
The tick of the little French clock on the mantel beneath the mother'sportrait rang with painful clearness.
Helen raised her hand to Minerva:
"Open the windows and let the smoke out. I'll hold him in my arms until thedoctor comes."
"Yassum----"
Minerva drew the heavy curtains back from the tall windows, opened thecasements and the perfumed air of the beautiful Southern night swept intothe room.
A cannon boomed its final cry of victory from the Square and a rocket,bursting above the tree-tops, flashed a ray of red light on the white faceof the dead.