"Yes, and on account of it Floyd went to the governor's house."
"Oh, why did you let Floyd go out? He is so ill!" Her eyes were reproachful.
Ann, with a smile, kissed the girl.
"Dear, unselfish child," said she, "don't you understand that, if he hadn't gone, you wouldn't have your strong, big father, nor would little Floyd be now with his mother?"
"Maybe our mother'll make Floyd well," cried Fledra. "Oh, she couldn't help but love him, could she, Sister Ann?"
"And it will be impossible for her not to love you, Deary," exclaimed Ann, wiping her eyes. "But now you must dress. Have you still the clothes you wore away from home?"
"Yes, I have them; but they're all mussed. I fell in the lake, and got them all wet, and they're wrinkled now. They're up in the loft. Wait--I'll get them." She was scrambling up the ladder as she spoke, and her last words were uttered in the darkness of the loft.
Ann could hear the girl moving about overhead, and heard the dragging of a box across the floor. Then another sound broke upon her ears, and before she could move toward the door it opened, and a shabby, one-armed man shuffled in, followed by Everett Brimbecomb.
* * * * *
After Everett had disappeared across the little bridge, Scraggy closed the rickety door of her hut and went fidgeting about in the littered room. Long she brooded, sniveling in her bewilderment. Something hazy, something out of the past, knocked incessantly upon her demented brain. This something touched her heart; for she whimpered as does a hurt child when the hurt is deep and the child's mother is not near. She still missed Black Pussy, and when she thought of the loss of her only friend wilder paroxysms of frenzied grief filled the shanty.
After one of her raving fits of crying more vehement than those preceding, Black Pussy again came to her mind, and suddenly she was taken back to the wintry night she had lost him. Feebly she put the events of that evening together, one by one, until like a burst of light the memory of her boy came to her. Not once hitherto had she remembered him since his blow had sent her into unconsciousness. Now she recalled how roughly her son had handled her, and she did not forget his threat to kill her if she ever mentioned to anyone that she was his mother. She recognized, too, the identity of the stranger who had asked her the way to the scow but a little while before.