Next day the major was carried to his final rest in the myrtled shadow of St. Andrew's. At the service the old church was crowded to its doors. Valiant occupied a humble place at one side--the others, he knew, were older friends than he. The light of the late afternoon came dimly in through the stained-glass windows and seemed to clothe with subtle colors the voice of the rector as he read the solemn service. The responses came brokenly, and there were tears on many faces.
Valiant could see the side-face of the doctor, its saturnine grimness strangely moved, and beyond him, Shirley and her mother. Many glanced at them, for the major's will had been opened that morning and few there had been surprised to learn that, save for a life-annuity for old Jereboam, he had left everything he possessed to Shirley. Miss Mattie Sue was beside them, and between, wan with weeping, sat Rickey Snyder. Shirley's arm lay shelteringly about the small shoulders as if it would stay the passion of grief that from time to time shook them.
The evening before had been further darkened by the child's disappearance and Miss Mattie Sue had sat through half the night in tearful anxiety. It was Valiant who had solved the riddle. In her first wild compunction, Rickey had gasped out the story of her meeting with Greef King, his threat and her own terrorized silence, and when he heard of this he had guessed her whereabouts. He had found her at the Dome, in the deserted cabin from which on a snowy night six years ago, Shirley had rescued her. She had fled there in her shabbiest dress, her toys and trinkets left behind, taking with her only a string of blue glass beads that had been Shirley's last Christmas present.
"Let me stay!" she had wailed. "I'm not fit to live down there! It's all my fault that it happened. I was a coward. I ought to stay here in Hell's-Half-Acre forever and ever!" Valiant had carried her back in his arms down the mountain--she had been too spent to walk.
He thought of this now as he saw that arm about the child in that protective, almost motherly gesture. It made his own heartache more unbearable. Such a little time ago he had felt that arm about _him_!
He leaned his hot head against the cool plastered wall, trying to keep his mind on the solemn reading. But Shirley's voice and laugh seemed to be running eerily through the chanting lines, and her face shut out pulpit and lectern. It swept over him suddenly that each abominable hour could but make the situation more impossible for them both. He had seen her as she entered the church, had thought her even paler than in the wood, the bluish shadows deeper under her eyes. Those delicate charms were in eclipse.