After ransacking the house up-chamber, I ran down-stairs and went into the room from which Rucker had come, where I found the girl hiding behind a sofa, peeking over the back of it at me, and screaming “Go away!” All the walls in this room were hung with some thin black cloth, and it looked like the inside of a hearse.  There was a stand in one corner, and a large extension table in the middle of the room, with chairs placed about it.  In the corner across from the stand was a spiritualist medium’s cabinet; and hanging on the walls were a guitar, a banjo and a fiddle.  A bell stood in the middle of the table, and there were writing materials, slates, and other things scattered about, which theatrical people call “properties,” I am told.  I tore the black draperies down, and searched for a place where my mother might be—­in bed I expected to find her, if at all; but she was not there.  I tried the cellar, but it was nothing but a vegetable cave, dug in the earth, with no walls, and dark as a dungeon when the girl shut down the trap-door and stood on it:  from which I threw her by putting my back under it and giving a surge.  When I came up she was staggering to her feet, and groaning as she felt of her head for the results of some suspected cut or bump from her fall.  Rucker was following me about calling me Jacob and Jakey, a good deal as a man will try to smooth down or pacify a vicious horse or mule; and after I had looked everywhere, I faced him, took him by the throat, and choked him until his tongue stuck out, and his face was purple.

“My God,” said the girl, who had grown suddenly quiet, “you’re killing him!”

I looked at his empurpled face, and my madness came back on me like a rush of fire through my veins—­and I shut down on his throat again until I could feel the cords draw under my fingers like taut ropes.

She laid her hand rather gently on my breast, and looked me steadily in the eye.

“Fool!” she almost whispered.  “Your mother’s dead!  Will it bring her back to life for you to stretch hemp?”

I guess that by that action she saved my life; but it has been only of late years that I have ceased to be sorry that I did not kill him.  I looked back into her eyes for a moment—­I remember yet that they were bright blue, with a lighter band about the edge of the sight, instead of the dark edging that most of us have; and as I understood her meaning I took my hands from Rucker’s throat, and threw him from me.  He lay on the floor for a minute, and as he scrambled to his feet I sank down on the nearest chair and buried my face in my hands.

It was all over, then; my long lone quest for my mother—­a quest I had carried on since I was a little, scared, downtrodden child.  I should never have the chance to serve her in my way as she had served me in hers—­my way that would never have been anything but a very small and easy one at the most; while hers had been a way full of torment and servitude.  All my strength was gone; and the girl seemed to know it; for she came over to me and patted me on the shoulder in a motherly sort of way.