banged against his leg causing
him to feel that the evil one might be gaining, and to yell "Oh, Lawdy!
Oh, Lawdy!!" at the top of his lungs. The torch-bearer had flung away
his light, thinking to elude the devil in the darkness, and all his
soul was in his heels.

Thorne laughed a little, in a mirthless fashion; but he was too
miserable to be amused. While the men talked, black jealousy had crept
around the old magnolia and linked arms with him. Twice in the same
evening this name had crossed him. Who the devil _was_ this Jim Byrd?
These men had spoken of him as the avowed lover of Pocahontas, the man
she would eventually marry. The girl herself had admitted him to be a
dear and valued friend--a friend so dear that his going had left a
blank in her life. The power he had but now felt to be his own,
suddenly appeared to be slipping into other hands. Another sickle was
sharpening for the harvest; other eyes had recognized the promise of
the golden grain; other hands were ready to garner the rich sheaves.

Thorne's heart grew hot; angry blood surged from it and inflamed his
system; every nerve tingled; his eyes glowed, and his fingers tightened
on the barrel of the gun beside him. His consciousness of antagonism
grew so intense that it seemed to annihilate space and materialize his
distant rival into an actual presence; his feeling was that which
animates brutes when they lock horns, or fly at each other's throats;
and, could the emotional force which swayed his soul have been
converted into physical force and projected through space, Jim would
never have seen the light of another day.

Poor Thorne! If suffering may be pleaded in extenuation of moods whose
cause is mingled love and pain, he certainly was not without excuse.
Imagination, wounded by jealousy, leaped forward into the future and
ranged amid possibilities that made him quiver--noble, beautiful
possibilities, filled with joy and light and sweetness--and filled for
his rival--not for him. As in a mirror he beheld his love in his
rival's arms, resting on his bosom, as an hour ago she had rested on
his own; only in this man's embrace, he pictured her glowing, sentient,
responsive to look and caress; not cold, lifeless and inanimate.
Should this thing be? No! a thousand times no! Must he always have a
stone for bread? Must his garners always stand empty while other men's
overflowed with corn?

Deeply the man cursed his past folly; bitterly he anath