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Apparently it belonged to the old chief, for he sat on a raised spot at the further end, under an awning, watching the proceedings with a complacent air which especially excited Pember's wrath.
Mis' Pember, you see Mellony Mellony's married." "Mellony married!" Strangely enough she had not thought of that. She grasped the doorpost for support. "Yes, she up and married him," went on the captain more blithely. "I hardly thought it of Mellony," he added in not unpleasurable reflection, "nor yet of Ira." "Nor I either." Mrs. Pember's lips moved with difficulty. Mellony married!
"You know you're my girl, Mellony," she answered gently. "You're all I've got." "Yes," the other answered indifferently, "that's all I am, Mellony Pember, Mrs. Pember's girl, just that." "Ain't that enough? Ain't that something to be, all I plan for and work for? Ain't that enough for a girl to be?"
After a good deal of palaver, a hoe was put into Pember's hands, and signs were made to him that he was to go to work with it. Toby and Pat had hoes given to them also. Esse fancied that we should be allowed to escape.
That she failed to distinguish between individuals, that she failed to see that young Baldwin was destitute of those traits which her sharpened vision would now have detected in Pember's youth, was both the fault of her perceptive qualities and the fruit of her impregnable resolve. She had been hurt by Mellony's rebellion, but not influenced by so much as a hair's-breadth.
Pember's conception of the place of future punishment; and when her husband died in an appropriate and indecorous fashion as the result of a brawl, he continued to mitigate the relief of the event by leaving in his wife's heart a haunting fear, begotten of New England conscientiousness, that perhaps she ought not to be so unmistakably glad of it.
Pember's voice had a marked sweetness when she spoke to her daughter, which it lost entirely when she addressed her daughter's companion, but always it was penetrated by the timbre of a certain inflexibility. The shadows grew deeper on the water, the glow-worms of lanterns glimmered more sharply, and the softness of the night grew more palpable.
The bullet whined off the sphere as if it were steel. Pember jerked his head in despair. Angrily he fired again. His tin hat slid to one side of his head at a rakish angle. "You spawn of hell!" he cried. Pember lowered his gun. The sphere pulsed ominously. Then the doughboy charged. Beneath the brim of his helmet Pember's jaws were set.
"If you really were smart, you'd have counted us. Don't you know there are three of us who aren't afraid of the spheres?" As Masters spoke, the point of Pember's bayonet touched the small of Norden's back. The soldier had crept from the tunnel, unobserved by Norden, who was engrossed in the mental torture of his prisoners. With a cry of rage Norden whirled and fired.
A flicker of flame flashed over the charging soldier. An odor of charred human flesh filled the room. Then came a new sound, the hissing splash of spilled metal. The pot was dumped. Taylor dropped the rope and faced the sphere. He saw the charred pile of ashes beside the inhuman creature. Nearby was a fused tube of metal, all that was left of Pember's rifle.
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