“He’s all right. He’s helpin’ himself. He’s makin’ a genuine effort. A man—or horse—that does that is sure to win. That’s how I put it to myself. After I’d wrastled with the subject up hill an’ down dale, till I couldn’t see nothin’ else in the face of natur’, I done it. Out in the East, where I come from, they’d ’a’ had me up for it; an’ I don’t know but they will here. But I had to, Kit, I had to. I was dead sick an’ starvin’ for a sight of you an’ the boy, an’ mis’able with blamin’ myself that I hadn’t treated you different when I had you, so you wouldn’t have run away. You was a master hand at that business, wasn’t you, girl? I hope you’ve quit now, though.”
“I think so. Here I was born, and here I hope to stay. All my runnings have begun and ended here. But what did you do, Father Abel?”
“Oh, Sis! that name does me good. Promise you’ll never tell,—not till your dyin’ day.”
“I can’t promise that; but I’ll not tell if I can help it.”
“Well, you always had a tender conscience. Yet I can trust your love better ’n ary promise. Well—I—burnt—it!”
“Burned it? Your house? Your home? Yours and Mercy’s? Why—Abel!”
The pioneer squared his mighty shoulders, and faced her as a defiant child might an offended mother.
“Yes, I did. The house, the bed-quilts, the antiquated bedstead, the whole endurin’ business. It was the only way. Year after year she’d keep naggin’ for me to move on further into the wilderness. Me, that was starvin’ for folks, an’ knew she was! It was just plumb lonesomeness made her what she is: a nagger. So, at last—you’ve heard about worms turnin’, hain’t you? I watched, an’ when she’d gone trudgin’ off on a four-mile tramp, pretendin’ somebody’s baby was sick, but really meanin’ she was that druv to hear the sound of another woman’s voice, I took pity on her—an’ myself—an’ set fire to that hateful old heirloom of a bedstead; an’ whilst it was burnin’ I just whipped out the old fiddle, an’ I played—my! how I played! Every time a post fell into the middle, I just danced. ‘So much nearer folks!’ I thought. And the rag-carpet an’ the nineteen-hunderd-million-patch-bedspread—Kit, I’ve set there, day after day, an’ seen Mercy cuttin’ up whole an’ decent rags, an’ sewin’ ’em together again, till I’ve near gone stark mad. Fact. I used to wonder if it wasn’t a sort of craziness possessed her to do that foolishness. Now, it’s all over. She lays the fire to an Indian feller that I’ve spoke fair to, now an’ again, an’ that had been round our way huntin’ not long before. I don’t know where he come from, an’ I never asked him. He never told. Pretended he couldn’t talk Yankee. Don’t know as he could, but he could talk chicken or little pig fast enough. Leastways, I missed such after he’d been there. Well, it wasn’t him. It was—me! I burnt the bedstead, an’ now we’re free folks!”
“But, Abel, why not have brought the bedstead with you, if she loved it so? Why destroy——”