At the end he come over and says: 'This here means
ruinin' my life and breakin' Mattie's heart ... but I calc'late that's
better 'n holdin' father up to scorn and seein' him in jail.... If they
was only some other way!' His voice was stiddylike, but he was right
pale and his eyes was a-shinin'. I remember how they was a-shinin'. 'I
calc'late,' he says, 'that I kin bear it fer father's sake.' Then he
says to me, kind of fierce, 'If ever you let on to anybody why I done
this, if it's in a hunderd years, I'll come back and kill you.' For a
while he kept still again, and then he went in the house and got the
money, and wrote a letter to his old man, and I promised to give it to
him--but I tore it up."
"What did the letter say?"
"It just said somethin' to the effect that he was willin' to do what he
done if his old man would give over breakin' the law and go to livin'
upright like he always done, and that he hoped maybe God seen a
difference in stealin' on account of the reasons folks had for doin'
it--but if God didn't make no difference, why, he'd rather bear it than
have it fall on his old man."
"And then?"
"I took the money and come away.
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