A little wagon-way, which was not used enough to kill the stubbly grass that grew on it, ran from the main road out to Calihan’s house. The woods through which the little road had been cut were so thick and the foliage so dense that the overlapping branches often hid the sky.
Calihan’s house was a four-roomed log building which had been weather-boarded on the outside with upright unpainted planks. On the right side of the house was an orchard, and beneath some apple-trees near the door stood an old-fashioned cider-press, a pile of acid-stained rocks which had been used as weights in the press, and numerous tubs, barrels, jugs, and jars, and piles of sour-smelling refuse, over which buzzed a dense swarm of honey-bees, wasps, and yellow-jackets. On the other side of the house, in a chip-strewn yard, stood cords upon cords of wood, and several piles of rich pine-knots and charred pine-logs, which the industrious farmer had on rainy days hauled down from the mountains for kindling-wood. Behind the house was a great log barn and a stable-yard, and beyond them lay the cornfields and the lush green meadow, where a sinuous line of willows and slender cane-brakes marked the course of a little creek.
The approach of the five visitors was announced to Mrs. Calihan and her daughter by a yelping rush toward the gate of half a dozen dogs which had been napping and snapping at flies on the porch. Mrs. Calihan ran out into the yard and vociferously called the dogs off, and with awed hospitality invited the men into the little sitting-room.
Those of them who cared to inspect their surroundings saw a rag carpet, walls of bare, hewn logs, the cracks of which had been filled with yellow mud, a little table in the center of the room, and a cottage organ against the wall near the small window. On the mantel stood a new clock and a glass lamp, the globe of which held a piece of red flannel and some oil. The flannel was to give the lamp color. Indeed, lamps with flannel in them were very much in vogue in that part of the country.
“Me an’ Sally wuz sorter expectin’ ye,” said Mrs. Calihan, as she gave them seats and went around and took their hats from their knees and laid them on a bed in the next room. “I don’t know what to make of Mr. Calihan,” she continued, plaintively. “He never wuz this away before. When we wuz married he could offer up the best prayer of any young man in the settlement. The Mount Zion meetin’-house couldn’t hold protracted meetin’ without ‘im. He fed more preachers an’ the’r hosses than anybody else, an’ some ‘lowed that he wuz jest too natcherly good to pass away like common folks, an’ that when his time come he’d jest disappear body an’ all.” She was now wiping her eyes on her apron, and her voice had the suggestion of withheld emotions. “I never calculated on him bringin’ sech disgrace as this on his family.”
“Whar is he now?” asked Odell, preliminarily.
“Down thar stackin’ hay. Sally begun on ’im ag’in at dinner about yore orders to Eph, an’ he went away ‘thout finishin’ his dinner. She’s been a-cryin’ an’ a-poutin’ an’ takin’ on fer a week, an’ won’t tech a bite to eat. I never seed a gal so bound up in anybody as she is in Eph. It has mighty nigh driv her pa distracted, kase he likes Eph, an’ Sally’s his pet.” Mrs. Calihan turned her head toward the adjoining room: “Sally, oh, Sally! are ye listenin’? Come heer a minute!”
There was silence for a moment, then a sound of heavy shoes on the floor of the next room, and a tall rather good-looking girl entered. Her eyes and cheeks were red, and she hung her head awkwardly, and did not look at any one but her mother.
“Did you call me, ma?”
“Yes, honey; run an’ tell yore pa they are all heer,—the last one of ‘em, an’ fer him to hurry right on to the house an’ not keep ‘em a-waitin’.”