Shadrach Pinnott's shock head bent in his deep cogitation. "He hed the papers an' the tickets of a showman," he argued. "An' thar hev been word of a Street Fair comin', down in Colb'ry."
"An' he hev got the muscle an' the showin' of a reg'lar prize-fighter," said Tom, the athlete, bethinking himself to rub his shoulder.
"An' lis'n," said the crafty old moonshiner; "he sings like a plumb mocking-bird. In my opinion the whole Revenue Department ain't ekal ter sech quirin' ez that."
And once more the dulcet plaint "My Kate has many come to sue," challenged the echoes.
CHAPTER III
For a long time after Lloyd had quitted the place Clotilda Pinnott stood on the porch and listened to his retreating footsteps. An impressive silence had succeeded the turmoils of the storm. No more the echo repeated the sonorous proclamation of the imperious thunder. One could hardly realise how the trumpeting wind had blared through those narrow, deep, mute valleys with their yet more secluded, cup-like coves. The glancing lyrical notes of the rain, falling on the ear like myriads of uncomprehended words keyed to harmony in rhythmic measure, had left but now and again the patter of glittering silver drops from the low-hanging boughs of some moisture-weighted tree. In this quiescence of nature she could mark his progress, as silent, too, she leaned against the post of the rickety porch, her fresh gown of faint blue cotton still distinct in the fading light, so clarified was the air, so pervasive the reflection of the great expanse of the deeply yellow western sky, glowing like burnished copper above the dusky purple mountains that deployed against the horizon line, high above the emerald valleys below. Now she heard the impact of his foot on stone, and again it was the shifting of sand and gravel dislodged by his step that told her he had turned the curve of the road; now she knew he was almost immediately in a line with the house, but nearly a thousand feet below on the mountain side. She was apprised when he passed the chalybeate spring, not indeed by the sound of his tread, for the distance here was too great; some vague reverberations began to issue from the gigantic gneiss cliff hard by that rose austere, grey, columnar, nearly one thousand feet sheer, standing out in half relief from the main mountain mass like a flying buttress of some buried castle in the mythical days of the giants. Its niched and creviced summit was on a level with the cabin perched so high on the mountain side, and now and then a broken vibration betokened the sound of a step below; then came the echo of a voice faintly singing the orchard song. Then silence—a long lapse of time—and still silence.
"He's gone," she said. "He's gone!"
She sighed with a vague languor, an unappreciated pain, and shifted her posture. The tension of her vigilance was relaxed. She stretched up both her arms against the post and dully yawned. Then she looked out at the scene with the effect of observing it for the first time. For a long interval she gazed at the burnished translucent yellow glow of the west that despite its brilliance seemed to diffuse no light upon the world below. Shadows were mustering; the valley beneath could hardly be discerned now, but for the rising of the mists. Their white glimmer among the darker tree tops prolonged the visibility of the forests. Only the horizon line, sharply drawn against the saffron glamours of the heavens, preserved the contour of the mountains, otherwise lost in the dull purplish dusk.
No longer silence reigned. First she heard the tremulous trilling of a tree-toad; a pause ensued in the moist vacuity of the atmosphere, and then came a raucous tentative note of a frog, and presently there sounded a dozen like voices, and now the air rocked to and fro with the strophe and antistrophe of the batrachian tribe, all a-croak by the water courses, and the continuous shrilling of the cicada. All were loud in the calm twilight, so loud that an appreciated sense of silence seemed attendant on the evening star, pellucid, white, quivering in the yellow glow of the west, and the slow dropping of the crescent moon adown and adown the sky.
Clotilda appeared as if she were going to meet it, as she suddenly stepped into the bridle path and began to take her way up the steep ascent of the mountain. A pine tree showed high against the heavens, and as she looked the moon seemed for a time as if entangled amidst its fibrous boughs. Then, as the direction of the path veered, the mystic cresset once more swung against the rich daffodil sky, with opaline glimmers trailing after on all the sea of mist which now submerged valley and forest, still vibrant with the voices of the night; the mist rose above the precipices to the left and tossed its waves, spectre-like, detached, flickering amongst the dense jungle of the laurel growths through which the path had begun to stray. Its trend grew difficult to discern; now it was obliterated, then it reappeared, and again was altogether and finally lost to view. A darksome, dubious way to be sure, and lonelier than aught might express. Even Clotilda lingered, reluctant, perhaps, turning her white face toward the moon, its glamour full upon her pensive pallor. The darkness annulled all else save only this elfin face among the glossy leaves gazing on the magic bow of pearl and loath to quit the light. Suddenly she was gone.