Turning again, he backed up to the scow’s side and proceeded in a lower voice: 

“When they telled me she were dead, they had to set me in the jacket, buckled so tight ye could hear my bones crack.  The warden ain’t got no blame comin’ from me, ‘cause I smashed his face afore he’d done tellin’ me.  And I felled the keeper like that!” He raised a knotty fist and thrust it forth.  “But it were all ’cause I wanted to be with her so, ‘cause I couldn’t stand the knowin’ that she’d gone a callin’ and a callin’ me!”

He was quiet so long that Eli Cronk drew his sleeve across his face to break the oppressive stillness.  Here, in the dead of night, his somber brother had been transformed into another creature,—­a passionate creature, responding to the call of a dead woman, a man whose hatred would carry him to fearful lengths.

The hoarse voice broke forth again: 

“Midge darlin’, dead baby, and all that ye had belongin’ to me, I do it for you!  I’ll steal his’n, and they’ll suffer and suffer—­”

He tossed up his great head with a jerk, crushing the sentiment from his voice.

“But that don’t make no matter now,” he muttered.  “I’m goin’ to take his kids!  He’s got two, an’ he’s prouder’n a turkey cock of ’em.  I’ll take ’em and I’ll make of ’em what I be—­I’ll make ’em so damn bad that he won’t want ’em no more after I get done with ’em!  I’ll see what his woman does when she finds ’em gone!  Will ye help, Lem—­Eli?”

“Yep, by God, you bet!” burst from both men at once.

“I’ll take ’em to the squatter country, up to Mammy’s,” Lon proceeded, “and, Eli, if ye’ll take one of ’em on the train up to McKinneys Point, I’ll take t’other one up the west side of the lake.  I’ll pay all the way, Eli; it won’t be nothin’ out o’ yer pocket.  We’ll tell Mammy the kids be mine—­see?  And ye can have all there be in this here room.  Be it a bargain?”

“Yep,” assured Eli, and Lena’s consent followed only an instant later.  After that there were no sounds save the snip, snip, snip of the pliers and the occasional low grating from a jeweled trinket as the steel hook gouged into the metal.

CHAPTER THREE

As Eli Cronk said, Scraggy Peterson left her lonely squatter home two weeks before with no companion but her vicious black cat.  The woman had intervals of sanity, and during those periods her thoughts turned to a dark-haired boy, growing up in a luxurious home.  In these rare days she donned her rude clothing, and with the cat perched close to her thin face walked across the state to Tarrytown.  Several times during the five years after leaving Lem’s scow she walked to Tarrytown, returning only when she had seen the little boy, to take up her squatter life in her father’s hut.  So secretive was she that no one had been taken into her confidence; neither had she interfered with her child in any way.  Never once, hitherto, had her senses left her on those long country marches toward the east; but often when she turned backward she would utter forlorn cries, characteristic of her malady.