Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/266

246 They have made you crule, Tom,” said Peggy, with a sudden sad dignity. “Good-bye. Go your ways. God bless you!”

“Cruel to you?” he said densely.

“Yes, crule to me! To me that brought ye mate and dhrink; to me that’d—”

“But what can I do?” he asked her in the same dull tone. “I am grateful to you with all the heart they’ve left me; but they tried their best to cut it out, and I believe they have. Make allowances for me, Peggy, and only tell me what I can do!”

“Take me wid ye, Tom,” she whispered.

“To the sea?”

“An’ further!”

“My dear, how can I? If they follow me alone I can fight them alone until I drop and die. With you I couldn’t.”

“An’ wouldn’t we dhrop and die together?”

And now there were tears in her voice that held his own tongue bound; and now a light in her eyes that shot a ray through his brain at last. He understood, and waited for his heart to bleed for her. When it would not, a great groan came from his soul.

“I can’t help it, Peggy,” he mumbled, in his shame; “it’s as you say! They’ve cut my heart out—cut it clean out, they have!—and a cruel brute is all I can ever be now. Forgive me, my girl—and let me go. Never think twice about me. I’m not worth it—a brute like me! Peggy—Peggy—”

He had tried, in his weakness, to put his arms about her, upon an impulse of pure sorrow and gratitude, that flickered within him like the last ember in a fire. And the convict girl had turned so fiercely that her black hair