In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

"I wisht it war in Rhodes's heart," he observed, slowly. "That's whar I wisht 'twar."

The spinning-wheel stopped suddenly; the blue eyes were bent upon him; her lips curved in laughter. "Thar ye go ter heaven!" she cried, waving her hand as if to point the way, "repentin' by the half-hour."

IV.

All day the slow process of the restoration of the household gods went on. For many a year thereafter all manner of losses dated from this period. "Hain't been seen nor hearn tell on sence 'fore the infair," was a formula that sufficiently accounted for any deficit in domestic accoutrement. There was no one in the Pettingill family so lost to the appreciation of hospitality and the necessity of equalling the entertainment given by the bride's relatives as to opine that the game was not worth the candle. But more than once Mrs. Pettingill, with a deep sigh, demanded, "Who would hev thunk it would hev been so much more trouble ter kerry in things agin 'n ter kerry 'em out!" She did not accurately gauge the force of enthusiastic anticipation as a motive power. Nevertheless she bore up with wonderful fortitude, considering that the triumph of the supper had been eclipsed. The inanimate members of the household were exhibiting a sort of wooden sulks as they were conveyed to their respective places—now becoming stiffly immovable, despite the straining muscles of the "men folks;" then suddenly, without the application of appreciably stronger force, bouncing forward so unexpectedly that the danger of being overrun was imminent, and cries of "Stiddy, thar! Ketch that eend! Holp up, thar!" resounded even through Rhodes's dreams in the roof-room, as he drowsed peacefully under the narcotic influences of hop tea. The loom might have seemed to entertain a savage resentment for its supersedure, and was some two hours journeying back to its place in the shed-room, the scene alike of the blighted supper and its old industrial pursuits. After that the "men folks" took a vacation, and applied themselves with some zest to apparently incidental slumber; old Zack Pettingill nodded in his chair on the porch; the others, chiefly volunteering neighbors, fell asleep in the hay at the barn while ostensibly feeding the cattle, leaving the great skeleton of the warping bars staring its reflection in the river out of countenance as it leaned against the fence, with its skeins of carefully sized party-colored yarn the prey of two nimble kittens, who expressly climbed the gaunt frame to tangle them. Even Mrs. Pettingill, sitting on an inverted basket in the yard amongst her gear, looking a trifle forlorn, bareheaded, with her gray hair tucked in a small knot at the nape of her neck, her spectacles poised upon her nose, her hands on her knees, lost herself while gazing at her possessions in the effort to decide at which end she had best begin to rehabilitate the confusion; her eyelids presently drooped, and scant speculation looked through those spectacles. The great shady trees waved above her head. Bees robbed the clover at her feet, and flew, laden and drowsily droning, away; the light shifted on the river; the sun grew hot; the far blue mountains were like some land of dreams, so fair, so transfigured, that they hardly seemed real and akin to these rugged, craggy, darksome heights which loomed beside the little cottage. Everywhere were sleeping dogs; now and then one roused himself to recollections of the infair and the supper, and invaded the shed-room, standing in the door and with drooping tail gazing upon the simple domestic apparition of the loom in its accustomed place, evidently having believed, in his optimistic simplicity, that the good things and the splendor and the delightful bustle of the past evening were to continue indefinitely, and infinitely disappointed to find them already abolished, the fleeting show of a single occasion.

Shattuck would hardly have acknowledged it to himself, but he certainly felt relieved of an irksome prospect by this succumbing of the Pettingills to the influence of excitement and fatigue. Conversation with his host would necessarily be somewhat hampered by the events of the preceding evening. He could not well resent the old man's indignation, and yet a hospitable forbearance and courtesy would be of even more poignant intimations. He had winced when the bridegroom had taken leave of him with a punctilious show of cordiality and a hearty handshake, as assurance that he bore no malice for those insinuations. For these reasons the guest was not sorry to note the solemn preoccupation in his host's open-mouthed countenance as he passed out from the porch to the shade of the trees, where he came presently upon Mrs. Pettingill, sitting as motionless as a monument amongst her distorted and dislocated "truck," as in her waking moments she would have phrased her belongings. He lighted his cigar as he strolled down to the river, pausing to strike the match upon the white bark of an aspen-tree. The ferns gave out a sweet woodland odor, faint and delicate, overpowered presently by the pungent fragrance of the mint as his feet crushed the thick-growing herb. The crystal river murmured as it went, and seemed to draw reflective, half-breathed sighs, as in the pauses of a story that is told. Now and again, when the banks were high on either side, the rocks duplicated the sound of the lapsing currents with a more sonorous, cavernous emphasis, as if they sought to enter into the spirit of this sentient-seeming life. The sky, looking down from its blue placidities, only here and there smote the water to azure emulations of its tint; for the shadows predominated, and the gravel gave the stream that fine brown, lucent tone, impossible to imitate, broken occasionally where some high boulder incited the impetuosity of the current to bold leaps. Then it was crested with snow-white foam, and shoaled away with glassy-green waves to the same restfully tinted brown and amber swirls. The overhanging rocks were gray and splintered and full of crevices, with moss and lichen. Where they lay in great fractured masses under a giant oak, a spring gushed forth. He heard its tinkling tremor, more delicately crystalline and keyed far higher than the low continuous monotone of the river. He mechanically turned toward the sound, and saw Letitia in her light-blue dress sitting upon the gaunt gray rocks at the foot of the craggy masses, a brown gourd in her hand and an empty cedar pail at her feet. Her eyes were fixed gravely upon him, her face was fresh as the wild roses amongst the crevices of the rocks. She looked not more wilted by the excitements and heat and turmoil of the dancing at the infair than the flower blooming with the break of day. He strolled toward her, and spoke at the distance:

"You're the only member of the family awake now, I believe." He smiled, and flicked off the ash of his cigar.

The expression of her eyes changed as they still rested upon him. "Dun'no' whether I be awake or no," she observed. "I kem down hyar arter a pail o' water, an' 'pears like I can't git away agin. Disabled somehows. Asleep, mebbe, though' I moughtn't look like it."

Her uncouth garb and dialect were somehow softened by the delicacy of her proportions and the perfect profile and chiselling of her face. Her speech was hardly more grating upon him, precisian though he was, than the careless, untutored lapses of a child might have been; all the senses of comparison as readily ignored them. She looked so sprite-like as she sat in a drooping, relaxed posture by the spring in the niche of the rocks, one hand behind her head, the other holding the gourd against her blue dress; and the idea of an oread or a naiad suggested to his mind was suddenly on his lips.

Her reply instantly reminded him of her limitations and her ignorance.

"Witched an' bound ter the spot!" she exclaimed, with widening eyes and breathless tone. She lowered her voice: "Did you-uns ever see one?"