VI.
That terrible isolation of identity, the burden of individuality which every man must bear alone, is never so poignantly appreciated as when some anguish falls on the solitary soul, while those who would wish to share it are unconscious and others uncaring.
News, the worldling, was never a pioneer, and hangs aloof from the long stretches of the wildernesses of the Great Smoky Mountains. It seemed afterward to Alethea that she had lacked some normal faculty, to have been so tranquilly uncognizant, so heedlessly placid, in the days that ensued. The glimpse of the world vouchsafed to Wild-Cat Hollow was silent, peaceful, steeped in the full, languorous sheen of the midsummer sun. To look down upon the cove, with its wooded levels, its verdure, its silver glint of waters, and its sheltering mountains, it might have seemed only the scene of some serenest eclogue—especially one afternoon when the red west flung roseate tints upon the strata clouds and the delicate intervenient spaces of the pale blue heavens, and suffused the solemn ranges and the quiet valley with a tender glamour. The voices projected upon this mute placidity had a strident emphasis. There was the occasional clamor of guinea-fowls about the barn, and some turkeys were flying up to roost on the naked boughs of a dead tree, drawn in high relief and sharp detail against the sky; they fluttered down often, with heavy wings, and ungainly flappings, and discordant cries, in their vain efforts to settle the question of precedence that harassed them. The lowing of the homeward-bound cows had fugue-like communings with their echoes. Alethea, going out to meet them, doubted within herself at times whether they had crossed the mountain stream that coursed through Wild-Cat Hollow. The blackberry brambles swayed full fruited above it; in the lucid, golden-brown, gravelly depths a swift shadow darted, turned, cleft the surface with a fin, and was gone. A great skeleton tree, broken half-way, hollow long ago, stood on the bank, rotted by the winter’s floods that ceaselessly washed it when the stream was high, and bleached by the summer’s suns to a bone-like whiteness. A great ball of foam, mysterious sport of the waters, caught in an eddy, was whirling giddily. One could fancy a figure of some fine ethereal essence might just have been veiled within it. The woods, dense, tangled with vines, sombre with shadows, bore already the downcast look of night. Alethea eyed them languidly as she came down to the lower fence, her piggin on her head, one hand staying it, while the other gave surreptitious aid to the efforts of L’onidas and Lucindy to take down the bars, as they piqued themselves upon rendering her this stalwart service. Tige had come too, and now and then he pawed and pranced about the calves, that were also expectantly waiting at the opening of the inclosure. One of them who had known him of yore only lifted his ears and fixed a remonstrant stare upon him. But the other, young and of an infantile expression, ran nimbly from him, and bleated plaintively, and pressed in between Alethea and the children, in imminent danger of having his brains knocked out in the wild handling of the bars.
“That’s enough,” she drawled presently, moderating their energies; “the calf’ll git out ef ye take down enny mo’. The cow kin step over sech ez be left.”
The faint clanging of cow-bells stirred the air. The little house on the rise at one side was darkly brown against the irradiated mountains seen in the narrow vista of the gap. The martins fluttered from the pendulous gourds and circled about the chimneys, and were gone again. The sky cast its bright gold about the Hollow, on the tow heads of the barefoot children, and multiplied the shimmers in the swirls of the stream.
Alethea looked once more toward it, hearing again the far-off lowing. A sudden movement attracted her eye. Against the great hollow whitened tree a man was leaning, whittling a stick with a clasp-knife, and now and then furtively eying her.
For a moment she did not move a muscle. The color surged into her face, and receded, leaving it paler than before. A belated humming-bird, its breast a glistening green, beat the air with its multiplied suggestions of gauzy wings close to her golden head, and was gone like a flash. The children babbled on. Tige was afraid of a stick which L’onidas had brought to keep off the calf while the cow was milked, and he yelped before he was struck, without prejudice to yelping afterward.
The man presently drew himself erect, closed his knife with a snap, and walked up slowly toward the fence.
“Howdy?” he said, as he came.
She leaned one elbow on the rails, and with the other hand she held the empty piggin. She only nodded in return.
He had an embarrassed, deprecatory manner. He was tall and lank, and clumsy of gait. He had an indifferent, good-natured expression, incongruous with the gleam of anxiety in his eye. His face was almost covered by a long, straggling brown beard.
“What made ye run off so t’other night down yander ter Boke’s Spring? I hed a word ter say ter ye.”
“I war sorry I seen ye.”
He fixed a keen look upon her.
“What fur?”
“I didn’t want ter know who ’twar a-moonshinin’,” she said.
“Waal, ye air the only one,” he declared.
He looked about him dubiously.
“I ain’t keerin’ none,” he added. “Me an’ yer mother war kin somehow; I disremember how, edzac’ly—through the Scruggses, I reckon. Ef she war alive she’d gin ye the word ez she air kin ter Sam Marvin, sure. Nobody ain’t ’spicioned nuthin’ ’bout moonshinin’ but you-uns, ’cept them ez be in it.”
He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the fence. The clanking of the cow-bell was nearer. The little calf bleated, and thrust its soft head over the bars.
“I wanted ter say a word ter ye,” he continued, still more ill at ease because of her silence. “I seen ye comin’ along o’ all them chill’n,” nodding at Leonidas and Lucinda, who seemed to deserve being accounted more numerous than they were, having engaged in a wordy altercation over the bars; the little fellow dragging them off to some special spot which he had chosen, of occult advantage, while the girl, older and wiser, insisted that they should lie handy where they were. Only Tige listened to the conversation, slowly wagging his tail. “I ’lowed I couldn’t talk ter ye ’thout bein’ hendered, but I reckon I’ll try. I’m kin ter ye,—that be a true word. An’ I’m moonshinin’. Ye ain’t tole nobody ’bout seein’ me an’ the jug thar in Boke’s barn?”
He fixed his eyes, eager with the query, upon her face.
She slowly shook her head in negation.
“An’ ye won’t, eh?”
He smiled beguilingly, showing his long, tobacco-stained teeth.
“Ef nobody axes me.”
His countenance fell suddenly.
“Look-a-hyar, Lethe Sayles, don’t ye fool with me, a-doublin’ on yer words like a fox on his tracks,” he said roughly. Then, more temperately, “I’m afeard o’ that very thing,—ef somebody axes ye.”
“’Tain’t likely,” said Alethea.
“I dunno,” he insisted, wagging his big head in doubtful pantomime. “I want ye ter ’low ye won’t tell.”
“I don’t b’lieve in sech ez moonshinin’ an’ drinkin’ liquor.”
“What fur?” he demanded, with an air of being ready for argument.
“’Tain’t religion.”
“Shucks!” exclaimed Sam Marvin contemptuously. “D’ ye reckon ef ’twarn’t religion I’d plant corn an’ raise my own damnation, an’ sit an’ bile wrath, an’ still fury, an’ yearn Torment, by sech? Naw, sir! Ye oughter go hear the rider read the Bible: every one o’ them disciples drunk low wines in them days, an’ hed it at weddin’s an’ sech; the low wines is on every page.”
Alethea was for a moment overborne by this argument.
Then, “’Tain’t right,” persisted the zealot of Wild-Cat Hollow.
“Will ye listen at the gal!” he exclaimed, in angry apostrophe. But controlling himself, he added quietly, “Ye let older heads ’n yourn jedge, Lethe. Yer brains ain’t ripened yit, an’ livin’ off in Wild-Cat Hollow ye ain’t hed much chance ter see an’ l’arn. Yer elders knows bes’. That’s what the Bible says.”
Down the shadowy vista of the path on the opposite side of the stream the long horns and slowly nodding heads of the cows appeared. The little calf frisked with nimble joy on legs that seemed hardly bovine in their agility. Lucinda ran to bring the pail of bran, and Leonidas produced a handful of salt in a small gourd. The moonshiner saw that his time was short.
“What ails ye, ter think ’tain’t right, Lethe?” he asked.
“Look how good-fur-nuthin’ it makes Jacob Jessup, an’—an’ Mink Lorey, an’ all them boys in Piomingo Cove.”
“It’s thar own fault, not the good liquor’s. Look at me. I ain’t good-fur-nuthin’. Ever see me drunk? How be I a-goin’ ter keer fur sech a houseful ez we-uns hev got ’thout stillin’ the corn? Can’t sell the corn ’n the apples nuther, an’ can’t raise nuthin’ else on the side o’ the mounting, an’ I’m too pore ter own lan’ in the cove.”
The cows were fording the stream. The water foamed about their flanks. Their breath was sweet with the mountain grasses.
He looked at Alethea, suspiciously.
“Ye ain’t goin’ ter promise me ye won’t tell ef ye be axed?” he said, with an air of finality.
In her heart the compact of secrecy was already secure. Somehow she withheld the assurance. It was all wrong, she felt. And if in fear he should desist, so much the safer for him, so much the better would the community fare.
“I ain’t a-goin’ ter promise nuthin’,” she said, slowly, her lustrous eyes full upon his face. “I ain’t goin’ ter do nuthin’ ter holp along what ain’t right.”
“Waal, then, Lethe Sayles, ye jes’ ’member ez ye war warned,” he said, in a low, vehement voice, between his set teeth, and coming up close to her. “An’ ef ever we-uns air fund out an’ raided, we-uns will keep in mind ez nobody knowed but you-uns; an’ whether we be dragged off ter jail an’ our still cut up an’ sech or no, ye won’t git off scot-free. Ye mark my words. Ye air warned.”
She had shrunk from his glittering eyes and angry gestures. Nevertheless, she struck back with ready sarcasm.
“Then, mebbe I won’t tell,” she said, in her soft drawl, “fur I be toler’ble easy skeered.”
He stared at her in the gathering dusk; then turned, and took his way across the mossy log that bridged the stream and down the path through the woods.
For a moment she had an overwhelming impulse to call him back. Long afterward she had cause to remember its urgency. Now she only leaned upon the rail fence, even her golden hair dim in the closing shadows, and gazed with uncomprehended wistfulness after him as he disappeared down the path, and reappeared in a rift of the foliage, and once more disappeared finally.
And here the cow’s great head was thrust over the bars, and L’onidas was on hand in full force to engage in combat with the little calf, and Lucindy was alert with the bucket of bran. All through the milking Alethea was sensible of a yearning regret in her heart. And although she had the testimony of good conscience and could say in full faith, “’Tain’t right,” she was not consoled.
She lifted the pail of milk to her head, and as they went back to the log cabin the moon projected their grotesque shadows as a vanguard, and for all Leonidas ran he could not overtake the quaint little man that led the way.
Stars were in the sky, aloof from the moon. A mocking-bird sang on an elder-bush among the blossoms, fragrant and white; and from time to time, as he joyously lifted his scintillating wings, the boughs seemed enriched with some more radiant bloom. The rails of the fence had a subdued glimmer,—the moonlight on the dew.
Her heart, with its regretful disquiet, was out of harmony with the nocturnal peace of the scene; she had somehow an intimation of an impending sorrow before she heard the sound of sobbing from the porch.
The vines that clambered about it were drawn upon the floor with every leaf and tendril distinct. The log cabin was idealized in some sort with the silver lustre of the moon, the glister of the dew, the song of the bird, and the splendid suggestions of the benighted landscape; yet there was the homely loom, the spinning-wheel and its shadow, the cat in the doorway, with the dull illumination of the smouldering fire behind her, eying a swift, volant shadow that slipped in and out noiselessly, and perhaps was a bat. A group of figures stood in the tense attitudes of listening surprise. But a girl had flung herself upon the bench of the loom, now leaning against the frame and weeping aloud, and now sitting erect and talking with broken volubility.
“Hyar be Elviry Crosby,” Mrs. Sayles said, as Alethea stepped upon the porch and set the piggin on the shelf.
The visitor looked up, with her dark eyes glistening with tears. Her face was pale in the moonbeams. She had short dark hair, thin and fine, showing the shape of her delicate head, and lying in great soft rings about her brow and neck. As she spoke, her quivering red lips exhibited the small, regular white teeth. She was slight and about the medium height, and habited in a yellowish dress, from which the moonlight did not annul the idea of color.
“I ain’t got no gredge agin Lethe,” she said, gazing at her with a certain intentness, “but I hev got my feelin’s, an’ I hev got my pride, an’ I ain’t goin’ ter hev no jail-bird a-settin’ up ter me! I’m sorry I ever seen him!” she declared, with a fresh burst of tears, throwing herself back against the loom. “But ez Lethe never hed nobody else, she mought put up with the raccoon ez he fetched me,—fur I won’t gin the critter house-room, now.”
As Alethea gazed at her, amazed and uncomprehending, a sudden movement on the loom caught her attention. About the clumsy beams a raccoon was climbing nimbly, turning his eyes upon her, full of the peculiar brightness of the night-roaming beast. She noticed his grin as he hung above the group, as if he perceived in the situation humor of special zest.
“I ain’t a-goin’ ter keep it!” cried Elvira. “All the kentry will be tellin’, ennyhow, ez I hev kep’ company with a murderer.” A low, muffled cry escaped from Alethea’s lips. “He kem a-makin’ up ter me till I went an’ turned off Pete Rood, ez war mad ez hops. I can’t hender ’em from knowin’ it. But I ain’t a-goin’ ter hev that thar spiteful leetle beast a-grinnin’ at me ’bout’n it, like he war makin’ game o’ me fur bein’ sech a fool. I’d hev killed it, ’ceptin’ I ’lowed thar hed been enough onnecessary killin’ along o’ Mink Lorey.”
“Elviry!” exclaimed Alethea, her voice so tense, so vibrant, so charged with anguish, that, low as it was, it thrilled the stillness as a shriek might hardly do, “what hev Reuben done?”
“Oh, ‘Reuben,’ ez ye calls him,” cried the other, sitting upright on the bench of the loom, her dark eyes flashing and dry,—“yer fine Reuben tore down old Griff’s mill, an’ drownded his nevy, Tad, an’ war put in jail, an’ air goin’ ter be tried, an’ hung, I reckon. That’s what ‘Reuben’ done! He’s Mink by name an’ Mink by natur’—an’ oh! I wish I hed never seen him.”
She once more leaned on the loom behind her, and bowed her head on her hands.
“No!—no!” cried Alethea. She caught her breath in quick gasps; for one moment she seemed losing consciousness. The mountains in the background, the faint stars in the sky, the shadowy roof, the swaying vines, the raccoon in their midst with his grotesque grin, were before her suddenly as if she had just awakened. She had sunk into a chair.
“Ye kin call me a liar! So do!” cried Elvira, lifting her head defiantly. “But he went hisself down ter the court-house an’ told it hisself, an’ wanted ter gin his gun an’ mare ef they’d let him off.” She laughed—a dainty little laugh of scorn. “That’s what he ’lowed the idjit war wuth. But my dad ’lows ez the law sets store on the idjit’s life same ez folks ginerally.”
Alethea felt as if she were turning to stone. Was it her advice that had led him into danger? Was it her fatal insistence that he should see the right as it was revealed to her?
She sprang to her feet, the eager questions crowding to her lips.
“Ye shet up, Lethe!” said her step-mother, entertained by the unwonted spectacle of Elvira’s dramatic grief, and not caring to hear again the news of the tragedy already recited. As to Mink, he had only been overtaken by the disasters which must have fallen upon him sooner or later, and he was in many ways a good riddance. This phase was uppermost in her mind when she said, “Ye see now what gals git fur goin’ agin thar elders’ word. I’ll be bound, Elviry, ’twarn’t yer mother’s ch’ice fur ye ter take Mink an’ gin Pete Rood the go-by.”
“That it warn’t!” cried the repentant Elvira, with a gush of tears. “I wish I hed bided by her word! I reckon I war born lackin’! I hev been sech a fool!”
Mrs. Sayles turned to look at Alethea and nod her head in triumphant confirmation. Then she remarked consolingly, “Waal, waal, I reckon ye kin toll Pete Rood back.”
“I dunno,” sobbed Elvira. “I met him yestiddy at the cross-roads in Piomingo Cove, an’ he jes’ turned his head aside an’ walked by ’thout nare word. I wish—oh, I wish I hed never seen that thar minkish Mink.”
“Waal,” said Mrs. Sayles, who was very human, and who, despite her sympathy for Elvira, had a rankling recollection of her taunt for Alethea’s paucity of the material for “keeping company,” “I hopes Lethe’ll take warning’, an’ not fling away her good chance, fur the sake o’ the wuthless, like Mink an’ sech.”
“Who be her good chance?” exclaimed Elvira, the jealousy nourished on general principles checking her grief.
“Shucks, child! ye purtendin’ not ter know ez Ben Doaks hev mighty nigh wore out his knee-pans a-beggin’ an’ a-prayin’ Lethe ter listen ter him!”
Elvira was meeker after this, and presently rose to go.
“I hed ter kem arter dark, else I couldn’t hev hed Sam an’ the mare, bein’ ez she hev been workin’ in the field ter-day,” she remarked.
There was the mare dozing at the gate, and Sam, a boy with singularly long legs and arms, looking something like an insect of the genus Tipula, was waiting too. She mounted behind him, and together they rode off in the moonlight, taking their way over the nearest ridge, and so out of sight.
“Waal, waal, sir!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles, as she reseated herself on the porch, with her knitting in her hand, “that thar Mink Lorey never hed no jedgmint no-ways. He couldn’t hev tuk ch’ice of a wuss time ter git fetched up afore a court ’n jes’ now. Squair White tole me ez our Jedge Averill hev agreed ter exchange with Jedge Gwinnan from over yander in Kildeer County nex’ term, ez he can’t try his cases, bein’ kin ter them ez air lawing. So Gwinnan will hold court in Shaftesville nex’ term. I’d hate mightily fur sech a onsartin, onexpected critter ez him ter hev enny say-so ’bout me or mine. But shucks! Men folks ennyhow,” she continued, discursively, her needles swiftly moving, as if they were endowed with independent volition, and needed no supervision, “air freakish, an’ fractious, an’ sot in thar way, an’ gin ter cur’ous cavortin’. It never s’prised me none ez arter the Lord made man he turned in an’ made woman, the fust job bein’ sech a failure.”
There was a pause. The regular metre of the katydid’s song pulsed in the interval. The dewdrops glimmered on the chickweed by the porch. The fragrance of mint and ferns was on the air, and the smell of the dark orchard. Now and then an abrupt thud told that a great Indian peach had reached the measure of ripeness and had fallen. Through the open window and door the moonlight lay in glittering rhomboids on the puncheon floor. All the interior was illuminated, and the grotesque figure of the pet cub was distinctly visible to Jacob Jessup, who was lounging on the porch without, as the creature stole across the floor, and rose upon his hind legs to reach the pine table. As he thrust his scooping claw into the bread trough,—the long, shallow, wooden bowl in which batter for corn-dodgers was mixed,—he turned his cautious head to make sure he was unobserved, and his cunning, twinkling eyes met Jessup’s. Somehow the sudden consciousness of the creature, his nervous haste to be off, appealed to Jessup’s lenient mood. He listened to the scuttling claws on the puncheon floor as the beast hurried out of the back door, and while he debated whether or not he should play informer, his wife, sitting on the doorstep with the baby in her arms, asked suddenly,—
“’Pears like ye air sorter sot agin this Jedge Gwinnan, mother. I never hearn afore ez ye knowed him whenst ye lived in Kildeer County. What sorter man be he?”
Mrs. Sayles wagged her head inside her sun-bonnet to intimate contempt.
“A young rooster, ’bout fryin’ size,” she said, laughing sneeringly, the scorn accented by her depopulated gums. It seemed very forlorn to be laughed at like that.
“Waal, a man can’t be ’lected jedge till he’s thirty,” said Jessup, consciously imparting information. “He’s been on the bench right smart time, too.”
Mrs. Sayles looked at him over her spectacles, still knitting, as if her industry were a disconnected function.
“What air thirty?”
“Waal”—began Jessup, argumentatively, puffing at his cob pipe. Thirty seemed to him a mature age. And the constitution of the State evidently presumes folly to be permanent if it is not in some sort exorcised before reaching that stage of manhood. He did not continue, however, seeing that thirty was held to be very young by Mrs. Sayles, who, to judge from her wrinkles, might be some four or five hundred.
“I ain’t ’quainted with the man myself,” she went on presently, “an’ what’s more I ain’t wantin’ ter be. But,” impressively, “I know a woman ez knowed that man’s mother whenst he war a baby. She ’lowed he war a powerful cantankerous infant, ailin’ an’ hollerin’ all night an’ mighty nigh all day; couldn’t make up his mind ter die, an’ yit warn’t willin’ ter take the trouble ter live.”
Jessup felt it a certain injustice that the nocturnal rampages of infancy should be as rancorously animadverted upon as the late hours of a larger growth.
“Waal, Jedge Gwinnan is powerful pop’lar now’days,” he urged. “He made a mighty fine race when he war ’lected.”
“Shucks! ye can’t tell me nuthin’!” said his mother, self-sufficiently. “I know all ’bout him, an’ Jedge Burns too, ez war on the bench afore Jeemes Gwinnan. Whenst I war a widder-woman an’ lived in Kildeer County we-uns useter hev Jedge Burns on the circuit. He war a settled, middle-aged man ’bout fifty, an’ the law war upheld, an’ things went easy, an’ he war ’lected time arter time, till one year they all turned crazy ’bout this hyar feller, ez war run by his party through fools bein’ sca’ce, I s’pose. Jeemes war ’lected. I tell ye I know all ’bout him. He war born right yander nigh Colbury, an’ I know a woman ez useter be mighty friendly with his mother.”
“What fambly in Colbury did he marry inter?” asked her daughter-in-law, more interested in items of personal history than in his judicial record.
“Bless yer soul, he air a single man. His heart air set on hisself. He wouldn’t marry no gal ’thout she hed some sorter office she could ’lect him ter, ez be higher’n jedge. He be plumb eat up with scufflin’ an’ tryin’ ter git up in the world higher’n the Lord hev set him, an’ ’tain’t religion; that ’tain’t. He minds me o’ Lucifer. He’ll fall some day. Not out o’ heaven, mebbe, ’kase he ain’t never goin’ ter git thar, but leastwise out’n his circuit. Somebody’ll top him off, an’ mebbe I’ll live ter see the day. I dunno, though, I—Laws-a-massy!” she exclaimed, so suddenly that both her listeners started, “look-a-yander at that thar perverted tur-r-key hen an’ her delikit deedies, ez air too leetle ter roost! She’s a-hoverin’ of ’em in that thar tall grass, wet with the dew, an’ it’ll be the death o’ ’em! Whyn’t Lethe tend ter ’em when she kem up from milkin’? Lethe! Lethe! Whar’s that gal disappeared ter?”
With the vagrant instinct of the wild fowl still strong in the domesticated turkey, she had distrusted the hen-house, and because of her brood she was prevented from roosting high up in the old dead tree.
There was no answer to Mrs. Sayles’s call. The daughter-in-law made a feint of busily rocking the baby, and after a doubtful glance at her Mrs. Sayles got up briskly, putting her knitting-needles into her ball of yarn, and thrusting them both into her deep pocket. She clutched her bonnet further forward on her head, took up a splint basket, and presently there arose a piping sound among the weeds, as she darted this way and that in the moonlight with uncanny agility, catching the deedies one by one and transferring them to her basket. The turkey hen, her long neck stretched, her wings outspread, ran wildly about, now and then turning and showing irresolute, futile fight for a moment, and again striving to elude the whole misfortune with her long, ungainly strides. When Mrs. Sayles in triumph unbent her back for the last time and started toward the house, the fluttered mother following, clamoring hysterically, she exclaimed:
“Whar be that thar triflin’ Lethe?”
“’Pears like ter me ez I hearn Lethe go up the ladder ter the roof-room a consider’ble while ago,” said the old man slowly, speaking for the first time during the evening.
Once more Mrs. Sayles paused irresolute.
“Laws-a-massy, then, ef the gal’s asleep I reckon I mought ez well put the tur-r-key an’ deedies inter the hen-house myse’f; but ’pears ter me the young folks does nuthin’ nowadays but doze.”
She took a step further, then suddenly bethought herself. “Hyar, Jacob,” she said to her son, handing him the basket, “make yerse’f nimble. I reckon ye hev got sense enough ter shet that thar tur-r-key an’ deedies up in the hen-house. Leastwise I’ll resk it.”
Sleep was far from Alethea that night. For hours she sat at the roof-room window, looking out with wide, unseeing eyes at the splendid night. And so she had given her counsel freely in the full consciousness of right, and the man she loved had done her bidding. What misery she had wrought! She winced to know how his thoughts must upbraid her. She remembered his petulant taunts, his likening her to the Herder on Thunderhead, whose glance blights those on whom he looks; and she wondered vaguely if the harnt knew the woe it was his fate to wreak, and if it were grief to him as he rode in the clouds on the great cloud-mountain.
“I reckon I know how he feels,” she said.
An isolated star blazing in the vast solitudes of the sky above the peak of Thunderhead burst suddenly into a dazzling constellation before her eyes, for she felt the hot tears dropping down one by one on her hand.
Alas, Alethea! one needs to be strong to attain martyrdom for the sacred sake of the right.
Her tears wore out the night, but when the sun rose she was fain to dry them.