"
"And whin you let him spind money you know you'll never get back,
and loaf while you do his work, and when you lie mountain high,
times without number, who is it for?"
Then fifteen years' restraint slid from Dannie like a cloak, and in the
torture of his soul his slow tongue outran all its previous history.
"Ye!" he shouted. "It's fra Jimmy, too, but ye first. Always ye
first!" Mary began to tremble. Her white cheeks burned red. Her
figure straightened, and her hands clenched.
"On the cross! Will you swear it?" she cried.
"On the sacred body of Jesus Himself, if I could face Him,"
answered Dannie. "anything! Everything is fra ye first, Mary!"
"Then why?" she panted between gasps for breath. "Tell me why? If
you have cared for me enough to stay here all these years and see
that I had the bist tratemint you could get for me, why didn't you
care for me enough more to save me this? Oh, Dannie, tell me why?"
And then she shook with strangled sobs until she scarce could stand
alone. Dannie Macnoun cleared the space between them and took her
in his arms. Her trembling hands clung to him, her head dropped on
his breast, and the perfume of her hair in his nostrils drove him
mad. Then the tense bulk of her body struck against him, and horror
filled his soul. One second he held her, the next, Jimmy smothering
under the hay, threw up an arm, and called like a petulant child,
"Dannie! Make shun quit shinish my fashe!"
And Dannie awoke to the realization that Mary was another man's,
and that man, one who trusted him completely.
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