In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

"Of course not," Shattuck assented, shortly, his confidence renewed. The suspicion touching himself was not the kind of thing that a man would willingly consider, even in its most hypothetical and tenuous guise. That it should be seriously entertained was too terrifying, too odious an idea to be gratuitously harbored. To seek to throw it off was the instinct of self-respect, of self-preservation. His nerves were still sensible of the shock, but his effort was to make light of it, to treat it as the coarse pleasantry of the officer, perpetrated concerning the only stranger within the vast circuit of mountainous country. He felt no gratitude to Guthrie for his warning, as the mountaineer had expected his revelation to be construed. He looked down at him with repugnance and indignation in his eyes, and albeit Guthrie was not skilled in deciphering subtle facial indications, he understood the sentiment and deprecated it. He did not pursue the subject further. He cast about in his clumsy way to make amends for his offence, for thus it seemed to him now, of repeating the obnoxious suggestion.

"I be powerful sorry I kem a-devilin' ye hyar this time o' night fur nuthin'," he said. "I reckon ye think I'm plumb gone destracted 'bout Litt," with a pathetic uplifting of his long-lashed eyes to his interlocutor, who was still sitting in the window. "Ye see a feller like me is mighty forlorn, especially ez I oughter know ez Litt ain't one o' them ez kin be hed fur the askin'. I reckon it'll all come right arter a while?" wistfully interrogative.

"I reckon so," Shattuck was constrained to reply.

Guthrie was never before in so deprecatory or gentle a state of mind. "I feel plumb outdone whenst I remember how I hev talked ter you-uns, ez be so powerful perlite an' saaft-spoken ter all, an' considerin' of feelin's"—Shattuck winced a trifle—"an' how I hev gone on 'bout takin' back promises an' sech. Ye know I don't mean it. Ye air welcome ter dig ennywhar ye wanter on my lan', an' I'll holp ye enny time; now, ef ye like," Guthrie protested with an effort at reparation. "I dun'no' but what it's ez good a time ez enny. Thar's light enough now, an' Mis' Yates mus' be off her gyard; she mus' sleep o' nights—leastwise take cat-naps." He looked up with a propitiatory laugh on his face. "An' I ain't 'feard o' Baker Anderson, nor Litt, nor even Moses."

Shattuck hesitated. He had been more shaken than he would have acknowledged even to himself by the crude suggestion that his name was for a moment connected with one of the brutal and bloody mountain crimes—a mere æsthetic horror, for his mind could not compass the atrocity against probability that the suspicion should be seriously harbored by an officer of the law. He foresaw a night of sleepless irritability, revolving the idea, should he let Guthrie go, although he felt that it should fairly be considered only a fit subject of flout, of ridicule, of inextinguishable laughter. It was rather in the spirit of defending himself against his own capacities for self-torment that he readily turned toward the prospect of diverting his mind, occupying himself with alien interests.

"The spade an' the pick mus' be right thar now," Guthrie observed, by way of urgence. "Eph say he war so flustrated by Mis' Yates's shootin' that he forgot ter fetch 'em back home."

Shattuck looked out at the sober solid shadow of the old brick house, gable and chimney and porch, projected upon the thick herbage of the yard; the silver-green sea of millet glimpsed between the dark branches of the pines; the winding road that led the loitering way to the mountains. "I'll get my hat," he said.

There was no light in the hall save that which the moon cast through the high window on the landing of the stairs. It seemed fibrous, skein-like, pendulous, as far as the balusters; then it fell upon the hall floor below in a distinct, motionless image of the sash and pane, all white and lustrous. By its radiance one could distinguish a hall sofa, long and hard, covered with tattered black hair-cloth; above it, hanging on the wall, the optimistic old barometer that once, perhaps, had been weatherwise, but now insisted that all signs "set fair"; the hall tree, whereon Rhodes's hat swung in its place, while its owner lay unconscious in the room above, the door of which Shattuck need pass with no solicitous tread, for, bating continuance, the pygmies themselves slept not more soundly. The door of his own room stood ajar; the moonlight and the sweet perfumes of the night came in through its open windows. It had a sort of inhabited look, full of comfortable suggestions; perhaps it was only because the fatigue of the day was beginning to hang somewhat heavily on his senses, but as he entered, he stood for a moment irresolute.

In the midst of the dusky uncertainty of sheen and shadow he was abruptly startled to see a dim figure suddenly moving at the opposite side of the room. He advanced a step, and recognized his own image in the indistinguishable mirror. It had a strange, weird effect, this half-seen simulacrum of himself, a skulking, uneasy, secret air that belied its principal, and seemed its own independent attitude, rather than reflected. It was coercive in some sort. He caught up his hat from the table, strode down the hall to Rhodes's door, and thus took those first steps destined never to be retraced. He knocked without response, then opened the door, which creaked raspingly upon its unoiled hinges, rusty with long disuse; and Guthrie, waiting at the window below, amongst the silent pensive lustres of the moon, heard the ringing round voice of Rhodes break forth in drowsy protest, incongruous, prosaic, insistently utilitarian. The interval was short before Shattuck ran down the stair, and sprang through the window, drawing the sash down behind him, and then the two set forth together.

The lilies bloomed at the gate, their chalices full of dew. The mocking-bird sang to the silent moon. Far, far away some watercourse had lifted loud a sylvan song it was not wont to sing by day.