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.”