You want to give for it
your first awful fear of the swamp. You want to pay for it with the
loneliness and heart hunger you have suffered there, with last winter's
freezing on the line and this summer's burning in the sun. You want it
to stand to her for every hour in which you risked your life to fulfill
your contract honorably. You want the price of that stone to be the
fears that have chilled your heart--the sweat and blood of your body."
Freckles' eyes were filled with tears and his face quivering with
feeling.
"Dear Mr. McLean," he said, reaching with a caress over the Boss's black
hair and his cheek. "Dear Boss, that's why I've wanted you so. I knew
you would know. Now you will be looking at these? I don't want emeralds,
because that's what she gave me."
He pushed the green stones into a little heap of rejected ones. Then he
singled out all the pearls.
"Ain't they pretty things?" he said. "I'll be getting her some of those
later. They are like lily faces, turtle-head flowers, dewdrops in the
shade or moonlight; but they haven't the life in them that I want in the
stone I give to the Angel right now.
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