'
'As God's above,' replied Slavin earnestly, 'I'll hinder ye no more.'
They shook hands, and we passed out.
We laid the baby under the pines, not far from Billy Breen, and the
sweet spring wind blew through the Gap, and came softly down the valley,
whispering to the pines and the grass and the hiding flowers of the New
Life coming to the world. And the mother must have heard the whisper in
her heart, for, as the Priest was saying the words of the Service, she
stood with Mrs. Mavor's arms about her, and her eyes were looking far
away beyond the purple mountain-tops, seeing what made her smile. And
Slavin, too, looked different. His very features seemed finer. The
coarseness was gone out of his face. What had come to him I could not
tell.
But when the doctor came into Slavin's house that night it was the old
Slavin I saw, but with a look of such deadly fury on his face that I
tried to get the doctor out at once. But he was half drunk and after his
manner was hideously humorous.
'How do, ladies! How do, gentlemen!' was his loud-voiced salutation.
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