A Maid of the Kentucky Hills

by Edwin Carlile Litsey

I didn't believe him. I believed that the devil did it, and that God would help me get rid of it.

Since I had to go up into the wilderness, the sooner I went the sooner I would return, and I found my anxiety to be off increasing day by day. Spring was unusually early this year. March was a miracle month of plum blooms, and swelling buds, and flower-sprinkled grass. Little spears of bright green were beginning to show on the lilac bushes, and elusive bird notes came fitfully from orchard and fence-row—blown bubbles of sound bursting ere they were scarcely heard.

When I began to make my preparations, I realized how helpless I was. What should I take with me in the way of food, clothing, bedding, utensils, medicine? I had never camped out a night in my life. 'Crombie would have to tell me. He knew, for every year he hiked off to Canada and the Adirondacks for thirty days, and lived like a caveman every hour he was gone. I went to his office. He was engaged, with six people in the waiting-room. I went out and got him on the telephone. He promised to see me that night at nine in his apartments. It was then three o'clock in the afternoon, so I took a walk. I could do nothing more until I had talked to him.

Lexington is really nothing more than a great big country town, but we love it. I reached the suburbs in half an hour, then took the pike, and walked briskly. The day had been like one huge bloom of some tropical orchid. Contrasted with the biting winter only a few weeks back, it was something to exult the heart and uplift the soul. Rain had fallen the night before. Day came with a world-wide flare of yellow sunshine; her dress a tempered breeze. By noon a coat was uncomfortable, and the air was full of music; the droning, charming, ceaseless litany of the bees. At three in the afternoon, when some strange freak drove me to the open road, the miracle had not passed. Surely God's hands were spread over the face of the earth, and His eyes looked down between. A few cumulus clouds were piled in fantastic groups toward the west, as I stopped about two miles out, and gazed slowly around me. Overhead was infinity, and the presence of the Creator. Encompassing me were unnumbered acres of that soil of which every child of the bluegrass is proud. On the breast of the world the annual mystery was spread. Death had changed to life. Where the snow's warm blanket had lately lain uprose millions and millions of tiny spears; wheat which had been folded safely by nature's cover against the blighting cold. Billowing fields of richest brown, where the ploughshare had made ready a bed for the seed corn and the hemp. Near me were two trees. Their roots were intertwined, for their trunks were not over a foot apart, and their branches had overlapped and interwoven. Almost as one growth they seemed. They were the dogwood and the redbud, and each was in full bloom. At first the sight dazzled me. The pure white flowers, yellow-hearted, gleaming against the mass of crimson blooms which clung closely to twig and limb, produced a remarkable effect. The hardier trees remained bleak, barren, apparently lifeless. They required more embracing from the sun, more kissing from the rain, more sighs of entreaty from the wind before the transmutation of sap to leaf would be accomplished.

It chanced that I had halted at a spot where no homestead was visible, and I was absolutely alone. None passed, and no cattle or stock of any kind stood in the adjoining fields. It was a faint foretaste of the immediate future, and a peculiar peace came over me as I stood on the hard, oiled road, and felt myself becoming at one with the universal light and life of the earth and sky. My breast thrilled, and I drew in my breath quickly. Was it a message? An assurance from the mother-heart of Nature that she would care for me tenderly in exile?

I turned and went slowly, thoughtfully, back to town, reaching it just as the dusk began to be starred by the rayed arc lights.

"'Crombie," I said, lighting one of his choicest cigars and sitting facing him; "you've steered me into an awful mess."

You know I could fuss at 'Crombie. He was too big to take offense.

"How so, my son?" he replied, easily, his large face gently humorous.

"Well, I started to pack for this—er—trip, or outing, and I had no more idea how to go about it than a pig. What will I need, and what must I take? You've got me into this, and you've got to see me through it."