With that Mrs. Kendrick addressed herself to her prayers and to slumber; but Kitty lay awake a long time, thinking and thinking, until finally her thoughts became the substance of youth's sweetest dreams.
IV.
BUT why should the tender dreams of this pure heart be transcribed here? Indeed, why should these vague outlines be spun out to the vanishing- point, like the gossamer threads that float and glance and disappear in the September skies? Some of the grandchildren of George Denham and Kitty Kendrick will read these pages, and wonder, romantic youngsters that they are, why all the love passages have been suppressed; other readers, more practical, and perhaps severer, will ask themselves what possible interest there can be in the narrative of a simple episode in the life of a humble fugitive. What reply can be made, what explanation can be offered? Fortunately, what remains to be told may mostly be put in the sententious language of Brother Johnny Roach.
One day, shortly after the events which have been described, Brother Branuum rode up to Brother Roach's mill, dismounted, and hitched his horse to the rack.
"You're mighty welcome, Brother Brannum," said Brother Roach from the door, as cheerful under his covering of meal dust as the clown in the pantomime; "you're mighty welcome. I had as lief talk to my hopper as to most folks; but the hopper knows me by heart, and I dassent take too many liberties wi' it. Come in, Brother Brannum; there's no great head of water on, and the gear is running soberly. Sat'days, when all the rocks are moving, my mill is a female woman; the clatter is turrible. I'll not deny it. I hope you're well, Brother Brannum. And Sister Brannum. I'll never forgit the savour of her Sunday dumplings, not if I live a thousand year."
"We're well as common, Brother Roach, well as common. Yit a twitch here and a twinge there tells us we're moving along to'rds eternity. It's age that's a-feeling of us, Brother Roach; and when we're ripe it'll pluck us."
"It's age rutherthan the dumplings, that I'll take the stand on," exclaimed Brother Roach. "Yit, when it comes to that, look at Mizzers Denham; that woman kin look age out of countenance any day. Then there's Giner'l Bledser; who more nimble at a muster than the Giner'l? I see 'era both this last gone Sat'day, and though I was in- about up to my eyes in the toll-bin, I relished the seeing and the hearing of 'em. But I reckon you've heard the news, Brother Brannum," said Brother Roach, modestly deprecating his own sources of information.
"Bless you! Not me, Brother Roach," said Brother Brannum; "I've heard no news. Down in my settlement I'm cut off from the world. Let them caper as they may, we're not pestered wi' misinformation."
"No, nor me nuther, Brother Brannum," said Brother Roach, "bekaze it's as much as I can do for to listen at the racket of my mill. Yit there are some sights meal dust won't begin to hide, and some talk the clatter of the hopper won't nigh drown."
"What might they be, Brother Roach?" Brother Brannum brushed the dust off a box with his coat-tails, and sat down.