Tennessee, alarmed by this impressive demonstration, dismounted hastily from the saddle as soon as his threatening gaze was withdrawn. She tangled her feet in the stirrups and her hands in the reins, and lost more time in scrambling off the floor of the passage and down upon the ground; but at last she was fairly on her way to the spring to convey an account to her mother of the outlaw in the chest. In fact, she was not far from the scene of the soap-boiling when she heard her name shouted in stentorian tones, and pausing to look back, she saw Rufe gleefully capering about in the passage, the headstall on his own head, the bit hanging on his breast, and the reins dangling at his heels.
Now this beguilement the little girl could never withstand, and indeed few people ever had the opportunity to drive so frisky and high-spirited a horse as Rufe was when he consented to assume the bit and bridle. He was rarely so accommodating, as he preferred the role of driver, with what he called “a pop-lash
ee
!” at command. She forgot her tell-tale mission. She turned with a gurgle of delight and began to toddle up the hill again. And presently Mrs. Dicey, glancing toward the house, saw them playing together in great amity, and rejoiced that they gave her so little trouble.
They were still at it when Birt came home, but then Tennessee was tired of driving, and he let her go with him to the wood-pile and sit on a log while he swung the axe. No one took special notice of Rufe’s movements in the interval before supper. He disappeared for a time, but when the circle gathered around the table he was in his place and by no means a non-combatant in the general onslaught on the corn-dodgers. Afterward he came out in the passage and sat quietly among the others.
The freshened air was fragrant, and how the crickets were chirring in the grass! On every spear the dew was a-glimmer, for a lustrous moon shone from the sky. Somehow, despite the long roads of light that this splendid pioneer blazed out in the wilderness, it seemed only to reveal the loneliness of the forests, and to give new meaning to the solemnity of the shadows. The heart was astir with some responsive thrill that jarred vaguely, and was pain. Yet the night had its melancholy fascination, and they were all awake later than usual. When at last the doors were barred, and the house grew still, and even the vigilant Towse had ceased to bay and had lodged himself under the floor of the passage, the moon still shone in isolated effulgence, for the faint stars faded before it.
The knowledge that in all the vast stretch of mountain fastnesses he was the only human creature that beheld it, as it majestically crossed the meridian, gave Andy Byers a forlorn feeling, while tramping along homeward. He had made the journey afoot, some eight miles down the valley, and was later far in returning than others who had heeded the summons of the sick woman. For she still lay in the same critical condition, and his mind was full of dismal forebodings as he toiled along the road on the mountain’s brow. The dark woods were veined with shimmering silver. The mists, hovering here and there, showed now a blue and now an amber gleam as the moon’s rays conjured them. On one side of the road an oak tree had been uptorn in a wind-storm; the roots, carrying a great mass of earth with them, were thrust high in the air, while the bole and leafless branches lay prone along the ground. This served as a break in the density of the forest, and the white moonshine possessed the vacant space.
As he glanced in that direction his heart gave a great bound, then seemed suddenly to stand still. There, close to the verge of the road, as if she had stepped aside to let him pass, was the figure of an old woman - a small-sized woman, tremulous and bent. It looked like old Mrs. Price! As he paused amazed, with starting eyes and failing limbs, the wind fluttered her shawl and her ample sunbonnet. This shielded her face and he could not see her features. Her head seemed to turn toward him. The next instant it nodded at him familiarly.
To the superstitions mountaineer this suggested that the old woman had died since he had left her house, and here was her ghost already vagrant in the woods!
The foolish fellow did not wait to put this fancy to the test. With a piercing cry he sprang past, and fled like a frightened deer through the wilderness homeward.