In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

"Lordy mercy, Fee!" he exclaimed, "you don't mean to say that Shattuck is devil-ing you about his confounded Little People! Stave him off! Gag him! Shut him up somehow. Don't listen to him, thinking he'll quit in the course of time. For he won't! I've tried him. The more inches you give him the more ells he'll take."

Mr. Rhodes had a theory that culture is synonymous with mind and essentially coexistent. That each assists the other, no one will deny; but that they are often largely independent, one of the other, is frequently demonstrated. The man of more culture than capacity is painfully familiar to us all. In the rural districts the reverse may sometimes be observed—a stalwart mental endowment, unaided by aught of alien training, seeming occasionally, in its highest development and in an uncouth subject, so incongruous as to strike one as almost inspirational.

It was none of these rare native intelligences, full-winged and of strong flight, that Felix Guthrie possessed; only a good plodding capacity, serviceable afoot, but of much sturdiness, and indeed of some slight acrobatic activity. Rhodes was more taken aback than he had thought possible when his host, bending grave, disconcerting eyes upon him, said:

"It war me a-talkin' about the Leetle People. Yer ears didn't serve ye right, fur me an' Mr. Shattuck don't talk in no ways alike. Them Leetle People 'pear ter me ez well wuth talkin' 'bout ez some folks ez be bigger in stature but small-minded. Thar air a heap o' them leetle-big men lef' yit. So plenty 'tain't wuth while ter go diggin' 'em up ez cur'osities whenst dead."

There was no direct implication which of necessity conveyed offence, but Rhodes again flushed darkly, and his expression changed with the change of color. His regret had always that most nettling quality, self-reproach. No man can repent with the fervor of him who has the candor to blame himself. After an interval of tart internal colloquy with his inner consciousness, in which he called himself a fool, with the emphatic prefix of a certain strong old adjective, unhackneyed even by constant use, and upbraided himself that he should have supposed that Guthrie, like more simple-minded, ignorant men, would adopt his plausible words instead of the facts, he recovered in some degree his normal complexion and assurance, and responded glibly:

"Mountain air is mighty good for Shattuck if it's cured him of his crazy gabble about the Leetle People. Ha! ha! ha! Hey, Shattuck? I'll send him up here every few days, Fee, when the fit begins to come on again. You can hobble him out there in the orchard to keep him from running away. Ha! ha! ha! May get his wits back on your mountain air. For I swear to you he has said hardly a sane thing to me since he first heard there was any pygmy burying-ground round hereabouts. Ha! ha! ha!"

Guthrie did not laugh, nor did Shattuck; but Ephraim, trudging in the rear, strove to be polite as best he knew how, and added a guffaw to the forced laugh of the visitor, with whom no one else would consent to be merry.

Rhodes accorded no overt attention to their silence; but his eyes, the iris of each somehow like a darkly ripe cherry in a certain red lustre, albeit merely escaping blackness, like a cherry too in its definite pronounced effect of roundness, were restless and unnoticing, and as Shattuck caught their gleam they looked angry and hot.

Shattuck was one of those people who accept the Biblical injunction touching the forgiveness of injuries, but in a purely human way. He would not revenge himself, for this was not becoming in one acquainted in some sort with Christianity, nor did it comport with the dignity of a gentleman. But he could not forget. He resented Rhodes's apparently causeless anger toward him now, and it recalled the disagreements of the morning, which still galled him. The stay that he had made here, pleasant enough he had once deemed it, grew irksome in the recollection, in the light of these new relations with his host. He was saying to himself that it was time he was off; he was tired of it all, and Rhodes was insufferable. He had no mind to bear the brunt of all the mishaps and irritation of electioneering, and this was indeed a lucky ride, since on the eve of departure it gave him the opportunity of examining the sarcophagi of the so-called pygmies at once and with the permission and aid of the man who owned the land. He had not realized how definitely he had given up this hope until the expectation was before him again in so immediate a guise. It would have been an incalculable loss to have relinquished the chance, and quitted the region no wiser than he came. His step was light, his face was sharp and eager; he looked anxiously toward the west as they neared the house, to gain some intimation through the trees how the sun fared down the great glistening concave of the western sky. The hour mattered less to him than the duration of the light.

He was hardly less impatient of interruption than Rhodes had become, and, widely at variance though the subjects were that respectively absorbed them, they both saw with unanimity of sentiment that Mrs. Guthrie, standing in the doorway, had a knitted angry brow, and a mien which betokened that they were far enough from her contemplation, and that topics of an engrossing character were in her mind and framing themselves into speech. The pervasive green tint, which seemed a trait of the very atmosphere in this dankly shady spot, rendered her white hair even whiter, her gray gown, her blue checked apron, on which she mechanically wiped her spectacles, more distinct. Her face was deeply furrowed with its frown, and there was something about her heavy jaw, her half-parted thin lips, her pertinacious eye, that gave testimony to establish the terrible stories that were told about her.