In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

"An'—an'"—she faltered a trifle—"ez hed a mind ter go a-diggin' up the bones o' them Leetle Stranger People o' ourn, ter—ter sati'fy hisse'f what sort'n nation they used to be, an' ter git thar pearls off'n thar necks."

There was a shocked gravity and surprise even on Letitia's face. Adelaide had looked away toward the road, affecting to watch for an approach, in despair of being able to fitly meet Shattuck's gaze after saying this, which seemed to affect other people as a commonplace matter, but to her was an accusation of the deepest turpitude. The countenance of the infant Moses, still bent upon him with a sternly investigating stare, was the only one whose gaze had not a covert reproach. He hardly cared to argue with their prejudice. He sought to effect a diversion—in questionable taste he might have deemed it at another time, however little taste might be considered to be concerned in his conversation with the humble mountaineers. He had often heard, and had formally accepted as worthy of credence, the popular axioms concerning the dangers of interference between man and wife. But he certainly did not anticipate the effect of his words when he said:

"I shall have to look out for you, I hear. You are such a friend to the Little People that you have loaded a rifle for me. What sort of a shot are you, now; and how far will your rifle carry?" He cocked his cigar between his teeth, and looked at her with an air of good-natured raillery.

Her face seemed, in the shadow of her purple sun-bonnet, to be slowly turning to stone, so rigid and white it was. She did not reply, but as he noted her startling change of expression he felt a sudden rush of indignation. The mountaineers, with their unconscious ignorance, their intolerance of all standpoints save those within their own limitations, their arrogations of censorship, their suspicions of occult wickedness in his motives and intentions, their overt assumption of a right to direct the public conscience, had begun to strongly anger him. His capacity for making allowances was all at once exhausted, and he found the intensity of her look strangely irksome.

"Well, what's the matter?' he asked, a trifle more roughly than he ever permitted himself to speak to a woman; for he was a man of consciously chivalric impulses, which he had willingly permitted to agreeably tinge his manners. He held his cigar suspended between his fingers while he waited.

"Did—did Steve tell you-uns that word?" she cried, in a tone like despair.

"Why, yes," he returned, promptly.

There was a moment when the vivid sunshine, the cool, dank shadows of the foliage stirring with such soft dryadic murmurs above her head, the song of the bird from the strong, rich effulgence of the corn-field, the chant of the river, even the cry of her child, were as null to her as if her every faculty had been numbed in the centuries of death that crumbled slowly the pygmy burying-ground.

"Did he tell that word on me?" she cried at last, her voice rising discordantly. "He hev gone—he hev gone fur good. He warned me ef I teched that rifle ter fire at them that disturbed the rest o' the Leetle People whilst waitin' fur jedgment—or said that word—that he'd turn me out'n his door. But he 'lowed 'twar the easiest way ter go hisself. An' he hev gone—gone fur good." And once more she lapsed into stony immobility.

Mr. Shattuck turned his cigar and looked down at it. It was a casual gesture, but there was a spark of irritation in his eye. He had lost all appreciation of any element of interest in her beauty, in the picturesque charm of the surroundings. The incongruity that he and his semi-scientific researches in his idle summer loiterings should become involved in a foolish quarrel between a mountaineer and his wife struck him as grotesque, and offended his every sense of the becoming. He had piqued himself somewhat upon his sensibilities, his ever-ready sympathy with all sorts and conditions of people. He had fine abilities in many æsthetic ways; he could discern the higher values, to seek to make them his own and assimilate them. He appreciated the correct standpoint; he felt the susceptibility to the glow of a noble emotion, and he appraised its possession exactly as he did his knowledge of the Italian language—a fine thing per se, and one to grace a gentleman. His capacity to enter into the feelings of the mountaineers, to meet them, despite the heights of his learning and his social position, without effort and without affectation, had extorted the admiration and emulation of his friend the politician, versed in all the arts of currying favor. But he was not equal to this crisis, since it bore heavily upon the fund of pride encompassing his own personality. His consideration, his kindness, his whole attitude was to them as themselves, not in any sort as one with himself. He had not a word of pity for her; he did not see, with that fine far sight which he sometimes called insight, her long, desolate future that challenged her eye and turned her heart cold; he had no perception of those farthest perspectives of altruism, a share in another's morbid terror—he so despised her folly.