"Waal, then, we-uns mought hev tuk Moses along; I hev seen plenty o' babies sleepin' at a dance an' camp-meetin's, an' even fune'ls. I'll bet thar's a right smart chance of 'em over at Pettingill's now."
"Mought cotch measles from some of 'em, too, or whoopin'-cough," said his wife, conclusively.
There was no help for it. Seclusion with their Dagon was evidently their fate until "leetle Mose" should be grown to man's estate.
There was a long pause, in which the mercurial and socially disposed Yates dimly beheld the lengthening perspective of this prospect. He had been a dancer of famous activities and a joyous blade at all the mountain merry-makings, and he had married the liveliest girl of his acquaintance—with no little trouble, too, for she had been a mountain belle and something of a coquette. He sometimes could hardly identify with these recollections the watchful-eyed and pensive little mother and the home-staying wife.
"I wouldn't mind it ef Moses didn't treat me so mean," he resumed, all his sensibilities sorely wounded. "I do declar' I be kep' hid out so in the woods that I war plumb flustered when I seen them valley men this evenin' down thar at the mound. I wouldn't hev been s'prised none ef I hed jes' sot out an' run from 'em an' hid ahint a tree like old folks 'low the Injuns useter do whenst they seen a white man."
"Ye never 'lowed ez what set that valley man ter talkin' 'bout the Leetle People," she said, seeking to divert his mind from his unfilial son, and to open a more congenial topic. Her eyes, full of the moonlight, turned toward the slope where the sheen, richly metallic and deeply yellow, rested; the rising disk itself was visible through the gap in the mountains; much of the world seemed in some sort unaware of its advent, and lay in the shadow, dark and stolid, in a dull invisibility, as though without form and void. The moon had not yet scaled the heights of the great range; only that long clifty gorge cleaving its mighty heart was radiant with the forecast of the splendors of the night, and through this vista, upon the mystic burial-ground, fell the pensive light like a benison.
Yates, too, glanced toward it with a kindling eye and an alert interest.
"He 'pears ter be a powerful cur'us man. Somebody 'lowed he war a-diggin' fur jugs an' sech ez the Injuns hed—leastwise them ez built the mounds; he 'lows 'twarn't no Injuns; and Pete Dinks tole it ez how the jugs mus' be like that'n ez Felix Guthrie 'lowed war in the grave o' one o' the Leetle People."
He paused. She turned her white, startled face toward him, her eyes distended. Her voice was bated with horror—a mere whisper.
"What grave? How do Fee ondertake ter know sech ez air in the Stranger People's graves?"