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"To-day has brought just what I have longed for, have worked for and waited for, the commission for the spending of millions of dollars to make a little corner of the earth beautiful. Not a bad religion, that," said Nickols, as he told me that Jeffries had spoken a few words of decided business to him as he had packed him into Mr. Cockrell's car with father and Mr. Goodloe.
"Money couldn't build anything like it, Powers," he said to Nickols at his side. "Time and gentle living have formed it as a jewel is made in a matrix. I was born in a mining camp, but I want you to start something like it all for my great grandchildren to live in. How many generations will it take?" "Give me five years, Mr. Jeffries," laughed Nickols in answer.
Nickols says that all the Settlement children will go to school with us in the nice schoolhouse he and Judge Powers and Minister are going to build in front of Mother Spurlock's orchard. That is a law and then we'll have good times, all of us.
Seated by the side of the road was Louisa Helen Plunkett, and before her stood young Bob Nickols, an agony of helplessness showing in every line of his face and big loose-jointed figure, for Louisa Helen was weeping into a handkerchief and one of her blue muslin sleeves.
I followed him with some glasses and sugar and a bowl of cracked ice that I had found in its usual place in the corner of the refrigerator. "Pretty good substitute for the affectionate sweet I thought of all the way down from New York," said Nickols with an adorable laugh, as he lifted the first spoonful, dripping with cream, to his mouth.
Goodloe tried to hold up the whole side of the roof on his own shoulders and only staggered out from the very brink of being involved in the crash. Martha sank to the ground and hid her head in my knees and sobbed while I heard a great cry break from my father's lips. Nickols was the last of his race and our pride was blasted when he fell.
I've got to get out in a wilderness and fight with it." "Take it out on me," offered Nickols, with a laugh that was both wistful and provoking. "No, I've got a home panic and I must go." "Then when do I get my answer from what is left of you after the battle?" "I'll let you know when to come and get it under the roof of the Poplars," I answered him from the doorway.
Then for a long midnight hour I stood at my deep window and looked out over the garden, past the squat steeple silvering beyond the lilac hedge, to Paradise Ridge in the dim distance, and tried to read my own hieroglyphics. I needed help. Nickols had come after me to Goodloets in a spirit of gentle determination and I knew the fight would be to the finish. And why should I fight?
Around and behind swarmed the rest of the Poteet seven, the Ruckers and the Nickols, with Mrs. Sniffer and the five little dogs bringing up the rear. "Well, well, and what have we here?" exclaimed the great man as he descended and stood in front of the lined-up cohorts. "It's the Poteet baby," answered the General with precision. "We bringed him to show you.
I took my hands out of those which had given to mine the strength of prayer and went. I found Nickols lying in his own dim and high bedroom, perfectly motionless under the white sheet, as he had been for two days, the only difference that now his great dark eyes burned into mine and on his mouth there rested a faint trace of the old mocking smile.
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