“Flea,” said Lon again, “ye came home when I said ye was to, and ye promised that ye’d do what I said, didn’t ye?”

“Yes.”

“And ye remember well that I promised ye to Lem afore ye went away.  I still be goin’ to keep that promise to Lem.”

The bright blood that had swept her face paced back, leaving her ashen pale.  She did not speak, but swayed a little, and supported herself on the top of his chair.  Feeling her nearness, he shifted back, and the small hand fell limply.

“Before ye go to Lem,” pursued Lon, “I want to tell ye somethin’.”  Still Fledra did not speak.  “Ye know that it’ll save Flukey, if ye mind me, and that it don’t make no difference if ye don’t like Lem.”

“Wouldn’t it have made any difference if my mother hadn’t loved you, Pappy Lon?”

The question shot out in appeal, and Lon’s swarthy face shadowed darkly.

“I never loved yer mother,” he drawled, sucking hard upon his pipe.

“Then you loved another woman,” went on Flea bitterly, “because I heard you tell Lem about her.  Would you have liked a man to give her to—­Lem?”

As quick as lightning in the smoke came the ghost-gray phantom, approaching from a dark corner of the shanty.  Lon’s eyes were strained hard, and Fledra saw them widen and follow something in the air.  She drew back afraid.  The man was staring wildly, and only he knew why he groaned, as the wraith in the pipe-smoke broke around him and drifted away.  Fledra brought him back by repeating: 

“Would ye have liked to have had Lem take her, Pappy Lon?”

“I’d a killed him,” muttered Lon, as if to himself.  “But ye, Flea,” here he rose and brought down his fist with a bang, “ye go where I send ye!  The woman’s dead.  If she wasn’t, ye wouldn’t have to go to Lem.”

To soften him, Fledra knelt down at his feet.

“Pappy Lon,” she pleaded, “you haven’t got her, anyhow, and you haven’t got anybody but me.  If you let me stay—­”

How he hated her!  How he would have liked to bruise the sweet, upturned face, marking the white cheeks with the impressions of his fists!  But he dared not.  She would run away again—­and to Lem he had given the opportunity to drag her to fathomless depths.

Fledra misread his thoughts, and said quickly: 

“I wouldn’t care if you beat me every day, Pappy Lon—­only let me stay.  I’ll work for my board.  And won’t you tell me about the other woman—­I don’t mean my mother.”

Then a diabolical thought flashed into the man’s mind.  He, too, could make her suffer, even before she went to Lem.  A smile twisted his lips, and he said slowly: 

“Yer mother ain’t dead, Flea.”

“Not dead!”

“Nope, she ain’t dead.”

“Then where is she?”

“None of yer business!”

Fledra clenched her hands and paled in terror.  A mother somewhere living in the world, a woman who, if she knew, would not let her be sacrificed, who would save her from Lem, and from her father, too!