But the man's face was so white, so expressive of pain, that the look of anger melted into one of surprised pity.
"Drusy, we've got to git dinner fur twenty-five to-morrow. I'm afeard we shan't be very nimble fur the dance," said Mrs. Jones, appearing at that moment.
Barker disappeared, and a few moments later was walking swiftly back again to the camp, twelve miles through the lonely woods.
Contrary to prediction, the next morning was fair and bright, flushed with pink and warmed with sunshine to its golden heart. It was acknowledged to be the "beatinest" winter weather that ever was known,—a thaw that was not enough of a thaw to make the roads impassable, and without rain. The rude little settlement was alive long before the sun was up. Candles and lanterns flitted to and fro. The people were all eager and alert. Even the dogs and roosters seemed to feel the unusual excitement in the air, and gave vent to their most prolonged and jubilant utterances. The storekeeper opened his establishment at six o'clock, and found customers already waiting on the steps. Sledges and sleighs came tinkling in from the woods and remote clearings. One young girl, wearing moccasins and a jaunty bear-skin jacket, had walked five miles to borrow a white petticoat to wear to the dance. Another travelled ten, by way of an ox-team, to obtain a pair of open-work stockings from a friend who was asthmatic and could not go. Even dresses were lent for the occasion; and during his ten years' sojourn at the settlement the storekeeper had never reaped such a harvest as he did on that day.
Toward night the air grew crisper and colder, as it had done on the day before. The sledge-runners crunched over the snow, and there was a little frosty tinkle to the bells, which woke every wood-track with its cheery melody, floated down the ice-bound river, echoed across the lake and along the well-trodden main road. The hall at the Forks where the dance was to be held—a bare, unfinished apartment, built for the use of, but not yet taken possession of by, the town—was decorated in the most elaborate manner, but chiefly with small flags and strips of cloth in red, white, and blue, as if for some patriotic occasion. A stuffed eagle nestled in a bower of evergreen, holding a banner emblazoned with the stars and stripes in his huge bill. The clock was encircled in a wreath of paper roses, as was also the picture of Daniel Webster, which, having an oval frame, caused the great statesman to look as if he were masquerading for a May queen.
Barker arrived at the festive scene just in time to assist Mrs. Jones and Drusy from their sleigh. Dancing had already commenced, though it was not yet eight o'clock. And what a motley crowd it was which moved to the lively measures of "Money Musk"! Several of the ladies as well as the men were tripping the "light fantastic toe" in moccasins. Girls in calico gowns wore wreaths of artificial flowers upon their heads. Henrietta Blaisdell, a fat, shapeless girl with a freckled face, whose father owned more pine timber than any other man in the county, wore black silk, and was regarded with something like awe by the less fortunate ones in calico and homespun. Drusy was handsomer than ever, in a soft woollen gown of dull blue, with a red rose in the masses of her black hair and another at her throat. The schoolmistress, a pretty blonde, who was also a belle, wore white muslin, with a gay ribbon about her waist. Nearly all the men wore red shirts, but the tie of their cravats betokened careful study. Barker sported a gorgeous waistcoat, ornamented with brilliant flowers of all the colors in the rainbow, which he had purchased for the occasion from the cook at the camp, who had inherited it from an uncle that had died twenty years before. And from this same youth, who was too bashful to go to the dance himself, he obtained the loan of a pair of embroidered slippers which had been sent to him by a sister in the Far West. Wetherbee wore an ordinary cloth suit, made by a city tailor, and was by far the best-dressed and most gentlemanly-looking man in the room.
When Drusy appeared upon the scene he was dancing the first dance with Henrietta Blaisdell. He tossed her one of his pleasant smiles as he whirled breathlessly past, and her eyes followed him with a look which poor Barker would have given worlds to interpret as he stood sad and humble in all his unwonted magnificence by her side. The fiddler, who was a tin-peddler and a poet and the teacher of a "cipherin'-school," as well as a musician, played with great gusto, and was continually calling upon the dancers to "warm up 'n' shake their heels more lively."
"Here, you Joe, you're quick enough at figgers, but you don't handle them moggersons o' yourn in no kind er time," he shouted to a clumsy lumberman, whose partner, a stout, energetic young woman, was scarlet in the face with her exertions to drag him about to the fierce time of the music.
Drusy laughed. "I don't care about that kind of dancing," said she. "It's a reg'lar whirlwind."
"I was a-goin' ter ask ye ter dance 'long o' me, Drusy, only I was 'most afeard tew, fur I knowed I shouldn't keep step," said Barker timidly. "Reube seems ter be a-keepin' his balance fust-rate, but I hain't built so genteel es he is, nor hed the experiunce, neither." And he sighed deeply.