'Over yander on the backbone,' returned the guileless Jacob, reinforcing the information with a stubby forefinger, pointing toward the base of the mountain.
And here was the trough. And Miranda Jane and Jacob stood by the roadside to regretfully watch the big grey horse trot slowly away.
XIII.
There came a change in the weather. A vagueness fell upon the landscape. The farthest mountains receded into invisibility, and the horizon was marked by an outline of summits hitherto familiar in the middle distance. The sunshine was languid, slumberous. A haze clothed the air in a splendid garb of translucent, gold-tinted folds, and trailing across the dim blue of the ranges invested them with many a dreamy illusion. Athwart the sky were long sweeps of fibrous white clouds presaging rain. Since dawn they were thickening; silent in the intense stillness of the noontide, they gathered and overspread the heavens and quenched the sun, and bereaved the vapours hanging in the ravines of all the poetic glamours of reflection.
A rain-crow was huskily cawing on the trough by the roadside where he had perched. Dorinda heard the guttural note, and went out to gather up the fruit spread to dry on boards that were stretched from stone to stone. Dark clouds were rolling up from the west. She paused to see them submerge Chilhowee, its outline stark and hard beneath their turbulent whirl; toward the south their heavy folds broke into sudden commotion, and they were torn into fringes as the rain began to fall. The mist followed and isolated the Great Smoky from all the rest of the world.
And now the little house was as lonely as the ark on Ararat. The mists possessed the universe. They filled the forests and lay upon the corn and hid the 'gyarden-spot,' and came skulking about the porch, peering through the vines in a ghostly fashion. Presently they sifted through, and whenever the door was opened it showed them lurking there as if wistfully waiting or with some half-humanized curiosity.
Night stole on, and the ruddy flare of the fire had heightened suggestions of good cheer and comfort, because of these waifs of the rain and the air shivering in chilly guise about the door.
The men came to supper and all went again, except Pete. He was ailing, he declared, and betook himself to bed betimes. The house grew quiet. The grandmother nodded over her knitting, with a limp falling of the lower jaw, occasional spasmodic gestures, and an absorbed, unfamiliar expression of countenance.
Dorinda, in her low chair, sat in the glow of the fire. As it rose and fell it cast a warm light or a dreamy shadow on her delicately rounded cheek and her shining eyes. One dishevelled tress of her dense black hair fell over the red kerchief twisted round her neck. Her blue homespun dress lay in lustreless folds about her. The shadowy and rude interior of the room—the dark brown of the logs of the wall and the intervening yellow clay daubing; the great clumsy warping-bars; the pendent peltry and pop-corn and strings of red pepper swaying from the rafters; the puncheon floor gilded by the firelight; the deep yawning chimney with its heaps of ashes and its pulsating coals—all formed in the rich colours and soft blending of detail an harmonious setting for her vivid, definite face, as she settled herself to work at her evening 'stent.' Her reel was before her; the spokes, worn smooth and dark and glossy by age and use, reflected with polished lustre the glimmer of the fire. She had a broche in her hand, just taken from the spindle. For the lack of the more modern broche-holder she thrust a stick through the tunnel of the shuck on which the yarn was wound, placing the end of it, to hold it steady, in her low shoe; catching the thread between her deft fingers she threw it with a fine free gesture over the periphery of the reel. And then the whirling spokes were only a rayonnant suggestion, so swiftly they sped round and round in the light of the fire, and a musical low whirr broke forth. Now and then the reel ticked and told off another cut, and she would bend forward to tie the thread with a practised dextrous hand.