“But were she a woman?” asked Lem meditatively.

“Yep, she were a woman, and I married her square, I did!”

Lon stirred his dank black hair ferociously, standing it on end with horny fingers.  “I loved her, Lem Crabbe,” he continued hoarsely.  “I loved her, that I know!  And ye can let that devilish grin ride on yer lips when I say it and I don’t give a hell; but—­but if ye say that she didn’t love me, if ye so much as smile when I say that she died a callin’ me, that she went away lovin’ me every minute, I—­I’ll rip offen yer hooked arm and tear out yer in’ards with it!”

He was leaning against the wall no longer.  As he spoke, he came closer to the crouching canalman, his eyes straining from their sockets in livid hate.  But he halted, and presently began to speak in a voice more subdued.

“But she’s dead, and I’m goin’ to get even.  He killed her, he did, ’cause he wouldn’t let me see her, and he’s got to go the same way I went!  He’s got to tear his hair and call God to curse some ’un he won’t know who!  He’s got to want his kids like as how I’ve been wantin’ mine—­”

“Ye ain’t had no kids, Lon,” his brother broke in scoffingly.

“I would a had if he’d a kept his hands to hum and let me see her.  But she were so little an’ young-like an’ afeard, and I telled her that night—­I telled her when she whispered that she were a goin’ to have a baby, and said as how she couldn’t stand bein’ hurt—­I says, ’Midge darlin’, do it hurt the grass to grow jest ’cause the winds bend it double?  Do it hurt the little birds to bust out of their shells in the springtime?’ And she knowed what I meant, that not even what she were a thinkin’ of could hurt her if I was there close by.”

His deep voice sank almost to a whisper, a hard, heavy sob closing his throat.  He shook himself fiercely and continued: 

“I took her up close—­God! how close I tooked her up!  And I telled her that there wasn’t no pain big ’nough to hurt her when I were there—­that even God’s finger couldn’t tech her afore it went through me.  And she fell to sleep like a bird, a trustin’ me, ’cause I said as how there wasn’t goin’ to be no hurt.  And all the time I knowed I were a lyin’—­I knowed that she’d suffer—­”

His voice trailed into silence, the muscles of his dark face twitching under the gnawing heart-pain; but after a time he conquered his feelings and went on: 

“Then they comed and took me away for stealin’ jest that there week and sent me up to Auburn prison, and they wouldn’t let me stay with her.  And I telled the state’s lawyer, Floyd Vandecar, this; I says, ’Vandecar, ye be a good man, I be a thief, and ye caught me square, ye did.  My little Midge be sick like women is sick sometimes, and she wants me, like every woman wants her man jest then, an’ if ye’ll let me see her, to stay a bit, I’ll go up for twice my time.’  But he jest laughed till—­”

Lon stopped speaking, and neither listener moved.  For a moment he lowered his head to the small boat window and gazed out into the vapors hanging low over the opposite bank.