The blind man's cabin was dark when they reached it, but the front door was ajar. Steve knocked his stick against the frame, got no answer, and struck a match. Rymer lay on the floor, sprawled on his back, his arms out-flung.
The cabin's one room was topsy-turvy. Furniture lay in upended confusion, clothing was scattered here and there, and boards had been torn from the floor. The girl knelt beside the unconscious man while Steve hunted for a light. Presently he found an oil lamp that had escaped injury, and got it burning just as Rymer's filmed eyes opened and he sat up. Steve righted an overthrown rocking-chair and, with the girl, assisted the blind man to it, where he sat panting. He had recognised the girl's voice at once, and he smiled bravely in her direction.
"I'm all right, Nova," he said; "not hurt a bit. Someone knocked at the door, and when I opened it I heard a swishing sound in my ear—and that was all I knew until I came to to find you here."
He frowned with sudden anxiety, got to his feet, and moved across the room. Steve pulled a chair and an upset table from his path, and the blind man dropped on his knees in a corner, fumbling beneath the loosened floor boards. His hands came out empty, and he stood up with a tired droop to his shoulders. "Gone," he said softly.
Steve remembered the watch then, took it from his pocket, and put it into one of the blind man's hands.
"There was a burglar at our house," the girl explained. "After he had gone we found that on the floor. This is Mr. Threefall."
The blind man groped for Steve's hand, pressed it, then his flexible fingers caressed the watch, his face lighting up happily.
"I'm glad," he said, "to have this back—gladder than I can say. The money wasn't so much—less than three hundred dollars. I'm not the Midas I'm said to be. But this watch was my father's."
He tucked it carefully into his vest, and then, as the girl started to straighten up the room, he remonstrated.
"You'd better run along home, Nova; it's late, and I'm all right. I'll go to bed now, and let the place go as it is until tomorrow."
The girl demurred, but presently she and Steve were walking back to the MacPhails' house, through the black streets; but they did not hurry now. They walked two blocks in silence, Steve looking ahead into dark space with glum thoughtfulness, the girl eyeing him covertly.
"What is the matter?" she asked abruptly.
Steve smiled pleasantly down at her.
"Nothing. Why?"
"There is," she contradicted him. "You're thinking of something unpleasant, something to do with me."
He shook his head.
"That's wrong, wrong on the face of it—they don't go together."
But she was not to be put off with compliments. "You're—you're—" She stood still in the dim street, searching for the right word.
"You're on your guard—you don't trust me—that's what it is!"
Steve smiled again, but with narrowed eyes. This reading of his mind might have been intuitive, or it might have been something else.
He tried a little of the truth:
"Not distrustful—just wondering. You know you did give me an empty gun to go after the burglar with, and you know you wouldn't let me chase him."
Her eyes flashed, and she drew herself up to the last inch of her slender live feet.
"So you think—" she began indignantly. Then she drooped toward him, her hands fastening upon the lapels of his coat. "Please, please, Mr. Threefall, you've got to believe that I didn't know the revolver was empty. It was Dr. MacPhail's. I took it when I ran out of the house, never dreaming that it wasn't loaded. And as for not letting you chase the burglar— I was afraid to be left alone again. I'm a little coward. I—I—Please believe in me, Mr. Threefall. Be friends with me. I need friends. I—"
Womanhood had dropped from her. She pleaded with the small white face of a child of twelve —a lonely, frightened child. And because his suspicions would not capitulate immediately to her appeal, Steve felt dumbly miserable, with an obscure shame in himself, as if he were lacking in some quality he should have had.
She went on talking, very softly, so that he had to bend his head to catch the words. She talked about herself, as a child would talk.
"It's been terrible! I came here three months ago because there was a vacancy in the telegraph office. I was suddenly alone in the world, with very little money, and telegraphy was all I knew that could be capitalised. It's been terrible here! The town—I can't get accustomed to it. It's so bleak. No children play in the streets. The people are different from those I've! Known—cruder, more brutal. Even the houses—street after street of them without curtains in the windows, without flowers. No grass in the yards, No trees.
"But I had to stay—there was nowhere else to go. I thought I could stay until I had saved a little money—enough to take me away. But saving money takes so long. Dr. MacPhail's garden has been like a piece of paradise to me. If it hadn't been for that I don't think I could have—I'd have; gone crazy! The doctor and his wife have been nice to me; some people have been nice to me, but most of them are people I can't understand. And not all have been nice. At first it was awful. Men would say things, and women would say things, and when I was afraid of them they thought I was stuck up. Larry—Mr. Ormsby—saved me from that. He made them let me alone, and he persuaded the MacPhails to let me live with them. Mr. Rymer has helped me, too, given me courage; but I lose it again as soon as I'm away from the sight of his face and the sound of his voice.
"I'm scared—scared of everything! Of Larry Ormsby especially! And he's been wonderfully helpful to me. But I can't help it. I'm afraid of him—of the way he looks at me sometimes, of things he says when he has been drinking. It's as if there was something inside of him waiting for something. I shouldn't say that—because I owe him gratitude for—But I'm so afraid! I'm afraid of every person, of every house, of every doorstep even. It's a nightmare!"
Steve found that one of his hands was cupped over the white cheek that was not flat against his chest, and that his other arm was around her shoulders, holding her close.
"New towns are always like this, or worse," he began to tell her. "You should have seen Hopewell, Virginia, when the Du Ponts first opened it. It takes time for the undesirables who come with the first rush to be weeded out. And, stuck out here in the desert, Izzard would naturally fare a little worse than the average new town. As for being friends with you— that's why I stayed here instead of going back to Whitetufts. We'll be great friends. We'll —"
He never knew how long he talked, or what he said; though he imagined afterward that he must have made a very long-winded and very stupid speech. But he was not talking for the purpose of saying anything; he was tallking to soothe the girl, and to keep her small face between his hand and chest, and her small body close against his for as long a time as possible.
So, he talked on and on and on—
The MacPhails were at home when Nova Vallance and Steve came through the flowered yard again, and they welcomed the girl with evident relief. The doctor was a short man with a round bald head, and a round jovial face, shiny and rosy except where a sandy moustache drooped over his mouth. His wife was perhaps ten years younger than he, a slender blond woman with much of the feline in the set of her blue eyes and the easy grace of her movements.
"The car broke down with us about twenty miles out," the doctor explained in a mellow rumbling voice with a hint of a burr lingering around the r's. "I had to perform a major operation on it before we could get going again. When we got home we found you gone, and were just about to rouse thee town."
The girl introduced Steve to the MacPhails, and then told them about the burglar, and of what they had found in the blind man's cabin.