He stopped abruptly, put on his cap, and thrust his hands down deep into his loose coat pockets. Reba sat very still in the dark corner, not knowing what to say.
"I killed somebody once," he brought out at last in a low tone.
"Oh!" gasped Reba, and caught her breath.
"Don't be afraid. I wouldn't hurt you."
"I'm not afraid," she told him. "I'm not the least bit afraid."
"I killed my own mother," he added. And after a pause, "No one in all the world knows that but me—and now you—now you," he repeated.
"And I don't believe it!" said Reba.
"I guess you'll have to, miss," he smiled wearily in the dark. "I'm going to tell you all about it.
"I was brought up in a little place, way up in the corner of Maine, right near the border of Canada," he went on. "I was fifteen when I saw it last. That was when I ran away to sea. It was a poor little town—just a few little houses, and one small store, and no railroad nearer than twelve miles. We—me and my mother and my stepfather—lived six miles away from the store—on a kind of rocky clearing on the edge of some woods, in an old weather-beaten sort of shack, with tar paper nailed all over one side of it, to keep out the wind.
"It wasn't much of a place for a woman like my mother to live. She'd been used to things nice. She was a school-teacher once—my mother was. She was a small, delicate little thing. I wish I had a picture of my mother. There was something about her eyes and forehead, just here," he tapped his brow, "that
