The man, a tall, shapely fellow, was a young Englishman who had lately come to the iron and coal region of Alabama to take charge of extensive manufacturing and mining interests belonging to his family. Just at present, with a true English faith in the value of outdoor sports, he was hunting wild turkeys, or, for that matter, whatever other wild game might chance to let him get within gun-shot of it. He had left his hotel at Birmingham with the first hint of dawn, and had steadily tramped over hills and mountain spurs and through wild ravines and beautiful glades, without a sight of fur or feather. Now he stood on this airy height, flushed with his healthful exercise, a little disappointed and annoyed. But the mountain air of the South has in it a tenderly exhilarating influence which affects the imagination and lulls one into pleasant, though often rather vague dreams. No matter if Edward Moreton was an intensely practical-minded man of affairs, the kind of Englishman who is willing to come to America and superintend iron works and coal mines, he was, nevertheless, not wholly impervious to the poetry—the lulling magnetism of the climate and the scene. For a while he leaned on his gun, a long, heavy double-barreled piece; then he took from his pocket a cigarette and match, seated himself on an old gray stone and began smoking. In the midst of the valley below, ran a rivulet, winding through the woods with a silvery shimmer, and out across the farms and past one little mill, on into a deep gorge of the stony hills.
Moreton had not found his surroundings in Birmingham quite satisfactory, notwithstanding the fact that he had fallen in love, after the old time fervid fashion, with a fair young Northern girl living there. The little mining town, cramped between the hills, full of rough folk, raw and new, could not be very attractive to a man who, no matter how practical and matter of fact in his disposition, had studied art and who still nursed the artist's dreams. As he sat there with his blue-gray eyes slowly sweeping the valley, he was not as blithe-looking as a model sportsman should be. His dog, a small brown spaniel, sat down at his feet and eyed him lazily. No sound, save the rustle of the wind in the trees and a dull distant tapping of a woodpecker, was disturbing the broad silence of the forest. The sky was intensely blue. Suddenly a short puff of dampness came from the southwest, followed by a growl of thunder, a thing not usual in winter, even in that latitude. Moreton arose and saw a heavy line of black cloud overhanging some conical peaks far away on the southwestern horizon.
"Come Nat," he said to his dog, "we must be going back; a nasty squall is coming. We shall get our jackets wet."
Nat answered with divers canine antics and the two turned away from the valley, the man walking with long firm strides and the dog trotting perfunctorily at his side. Their way led among the flanking spurs and foot-hills of the range, now over great fragmentary bowlders, now through yawning clefts and down winding defiles, sometimes on bare ridges of shale, anon under the dark odorous brushes of the pines. The cloud came after them, sending in advance its gusts of moist, fragrant air. A vast wing reached up to the zenith and a few big drops of rain pattered down. A morning shower in the mountains comes at race-horse speed. The swiftest birds are caught by it. A flock of noisy crows went flapping across the valley, striving in vain to outstrip the slanting flood that fell with a broad, washing roar from that rushing cloud.
"We are in for a soaking, Nat," grumbled Moreton, as he plucked up the collar of his shooting jacket; "a deuced bad outcome for our first day's shooting in America!"
Nat's tail was down and so were his ears. He relished the signs of the weather no more than did his stalwart master. A chilliness was creeping into the air, foretelling how disagreeable the rain was sure to be. The very trees shivered as the sunshine was shut off by the overlapping cloud.
It was just as the storm was about to break that certain sharp cries peculiar to the wild turkey reached the quick ears of sportsman and dog. The man stopped short and cocked his gun, as the spaniel darted away to a short distance and then began creeping through the low underbrush, as a setter does when about to come to a point. In the next instant four large birds were flushed, breaking from cover at about forty yards, their wings making the woods resound with their loud flapping. Almost at the same moment, the "bang—pang!" of Moreton's gun, fired right and left, went echoing across the valley and battling amongst the hills. A cock and hen were stopped short and fell heavily. The dog sprang forward to lead his master to the game, and then came a blinding down-gush of rain with a roar like that of a cyclone.
Moreton with great difficulty got the birds, and, after tying them together by the feet, slung them across his shoulder. This additional load and the hindering force of the rain made his further progress quite laborious. Nat resumed his drooping, mechanical jog-trot at his master's side. The young man leaned over and almost shut his eyes as he pressed on, catching quick breaths as the cold streams trickled down his back. His shooting jacket and trowsers were meant to be impervious to water, but the chilling liquid was dashed by the force of the wind against his neck and thence found its way down to his heels. He did not hesitate, under such stress of ill luck, to rush boldly against the door of a low, rambling mountain cabin and demand admission. His knock on the rough planks was heard by the inmates of the place, despite the heavy roar of the rain, and the response was immediate.
"Kem in, kem in," spoke a rather pleasing voice, in the peculiar accent and intonation of the mountaineers of the region, as the door was opened, letting the hunter and his dog in, along with a dash of slanting rain. "Le' me take them birds, strenger, an' ye jest git ther' by the fire. Hit's purty outdacious rainy all of a suddent; purty near drownd a feller." The speaker was a slender, almost slight, man, near fifty years old, flaxen-haired, thin-faced, with a sharp nose and a straggling beard, still lighter than his hair. He took the brace of birds off Moreton's shoulder and threw them aside on the clean white floor. "I'll jest put yer gun up fur ye," he continued, taking the weapon and leaning it against the wall in a corner of the room. Then he quickly fetched a chair. "Set down an' mek yerself at home, I'll punch up the fire, hit's got sorty low; I'll git some light'ood knots."
Moreton found himself in a place whose features at once interested him. Glancing around the room he saw two low beds, a few plain split-bottomed chairs, an old queer "bureau," or chest of drawers, with glass knobs, some rude shelves with ironstone dishes on them, a long flint-lock rifle, hanging in buck-horn forks over the door, one of which forks also held a coon-skin bullet-pouch and curiously carved powder-horn. The fire-place before which he sat was broad and deep, roughly lined with jagged stones picturesquely black with fleecy accumulations of soot from pine smoke; it was crossed by a heavy charred wooden crane and on its broad jambs rested a curious collection of cob-pipes, clay-pipes, wooden pipes and soft-stone pipes, along with sundry ragged twists of brown home-raised tobacco. There was a low, wide window on one side of the room, and beside it Moreton's eyes rested for a moment on a slim girl's form in a half-cowering position. She was so turned from him that he could see no more of her face than a rounded line of one cheek. There was a heavy brush of long, bright, yellowish flaxen hair, a very delicate ear and a glimpse of a brown throat and neck. One hand, rather large but shapely, lay along her lap, on the scant folds of a homespun cotton dress, the skirt of which could not quite hide her coarsely-shod feet. There was something curiously striking in this crumpled little figure that held Moreton's gaze for a time. Through an open door that gave into a smaller room, the intermittent hum of a spinning-wheel made itself heard, distinct from the clash and swash of the storm, and a tall angular woman walked back and forth, drawing out and reeling up the coarse thread she was twisting. The man had soon fetched wood and pine knots for the fire, and presently a liberal flame wavered up to the mouth of the great old chimney. He turned to Moreton and said: