He heard old Jo’s amazed curse and Florry’s cry. He bolted the door and wheeled to see the old man lift a heavy light-wood knot from the clay hearth above the girl’s thin shoulders. Fierce, not with anger but with a strange delight, he knocked the stick from old Jo’s claw and closed his hands about the leathery neck. He tightened his grip until the bloodshot eyes grew wild and the strong old hands quit their beating upon him. A terrified whimper came from the scrawny throat. Old Jo’s body drooped limply. Mart held him up by the jaws. The neck under his fingers seemed suddenly weak and small. He pushed the man from him, tumbling him across the sagging pine bedstead. Old Jo sobbed and gasped. Mart loomed over him.

“Ol’ feller,” he said, “mebbe you’ll be a mite more pertickler about your meanness. Reckon you an’ me’s goin’ to make out over the same pot o’ grits.”

Old Jo snuffled and wiped his nose.

Florry’s blood stirred warm again, where for a moment there had been the old chill of fear. Jo was old; frightened, old and beaten. She stared at the unhappy huddle on the bed. He was mumbling miserably, his old face wrinkled in distress. The ancient terror was gone.

Mart strode about, appraising the bare room with satisfaction. His step, that had shuffled all summer, in spite of his weariness was hard and sure. Something of the shy delight was in him that he had brought to her in this place those several years ago. His wet clothes steamed as he moved closer to the hearth fire. The gale drummed fiercely on the shingled roof. The small-paned windows rattled like loose teeth.

“Ol’ feller,” he called to the sniffling heap on the bed, “is they rations in your kitchen?”

“There be meal an’ sich,” the old man proffered grudgingly.

“Let’s go, Florry.”

They dashed through the east door, across the breezeway, Mart pushing Florry ahead of him against the pounding winds. They burst into the kitchen, only to have the full force of the hurricane sweep in upon them through the gaping doorway.

“That ol’ rascal,” Mart yelled, “never put back that door blowed off.”

She put out a hand to hold him, but he was already in the storm, freeing the fallen door from a tangle of weeds. He loped across the sand, searching out an implement for his uses. He picked up at last a rusty axe-head, and brought in a pine sapling to use for batten. The wind shrieked over the kitchen, but it was no longer blowing through. Mart had the door in place.

Florry called through the thin pine.

“Kin you make that sorry door stay shut?”

He thumped confidently with the rusty axe-head.

“Hit’ll hold,” he said.

The Pardon