EVERED

EVERED

BY
BEN AMES WILLIAMS
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright, 1921,
By E. P. Dutton & Company
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA

EVERED

[Chapter: I, ] [II, ] [III, ] [IV, ] [V, ] [VI, ] [VII, ] [VIII, ] [IX, ] [X, ] [XI, ] [XII, ] [XIII, ] [XIV, ] [XV, ] [XVI, ] [XVII, ] [XVIII, ] [XIX.]

I

THERE is romance in the very look of the land of which I write. Beauty beyond belief, of a sort to make your breath come more quickly; and drama—comedy or tragedy according to the eye and the mood of the seer. Loneliness and comradeship, peace and conflict, friendship and enmity, gayety and somberness, laughter and tears. The bold hills, little cousins to the mountains, crowd close round each village; the clear brooks thread wood and meadow; the birches and scrub hardwood are taking back the abandoned farms. When the sun drops low in the west there is a strange and moving purple tinge upon the slopes; and the shadows are as blue as blue can be. When the sun is high there is a greenery about this northern land which is almost tropical in its richness and variety.

The little villages lie for the most part in sheltered valley spots. Not all of them. Liberty, for example, climbs up along a steep hill road on your way to St. George’s Pond, or over the Sheepscot Ridge, for trout. No spot lovelier anywhere. But you will come upon other little house clusters, a white church steeple topping every one, at unsuspected crossroads, with some meadowland round and about, and a brook running through the village itself, and perhaps a mill sprawled busily across the brook. It is natural that the villages should thus seek shelter; for when the winter snows come down this is a harsh land, and bitter cold. So is it all the more strange that the outlying farms are so often set high upon the hills, bare to the bleak gales. And the roads, too, like to seek and keep the heights. From Fraternity itself, for example, there is a ten-mile ridge southwest to Union, and a road along the whole length of the ridge’s crest, from which you may look for miles on either side.

This is not a land of bold emprises; neither is it one of those localities which are said to be happy because they have no history. There is history in the very names of the villages hereabouts. Liberty, and Union, and Freedom; Equality, and Fraternity. And men will tell you how their fathers’ fathers came here in the train of General Knox, when that warrior, for Revolutionary services rendered, was given title to all the countryside; and how he sub-granted to his followers; and how they cleared farms, and tilled the soil, and lumbered out the forests, and exterminated deer and moose and bear. Seventy years ago, they will tell you, there was no big game hereabouts; but since then many farms, deserted, have been overrun by the forests; and the bear are coming back, and there are deer tracks along every stream, and moose in the swamps, and wildcats scream in the night. Twenty or thirty or forty miles to the north the big woods of Maine begin; so that this land is an outpost of the wilderness, thrust southward among the closer dwellings of man.

The people of these towns are of ancient stock. The grandfathers of many of them came in with General Knox; most of them have been here for fifty years or more, they or their forbears. A few Frenchmen have drifted down from Quebec; a few Scotch and Irish have come in here as they come everywhere. Half a dozen British seamen escaped, once upon a time, from a man-of-war in Penobscot Bay, and fled inland, and were hidden away until their ship was gone. Whereupon they married and became part and parcel of the land, and their stock survives. By the mere reading of the names of these folk upon the R. F. D. boxes at their doors you may know their antecedents. Bubier and Saladine, Varney and Motley, McCorrison and MacLure, Thomas and Davis, Sohier and Brine—a five-breed blend of French and English, Scotch and Welsh and Irish; in short, as clear a strain of good Yankee blood as you are like to come upon.

Sturdy folk, and hardy workers. You will find few idlers; and by the same token you will find few slavish toilers, lacking soul to whip a trout brook now and then or shoot a woodcock or a deer. Most men hereabouts would rather catch a trout than plant a potato; most men would rather shoot a partridge than cut a cord of wood. And they act upon their inclinations in these matters. The result is that the farms are perhaps a thought neglected; and no one is very rich in worldly goods; and a man who inherits a thousand dollars has come into money. Yet have they all that any man wisely may desire; for they have food and drink and shelter, and good comradeship, and the woods to take their sport in, and what books they choose to read, and time for solid thinking, and beauty ever before their eyes. Whether you envy or scorn them is in some measure an acid test of your own soul. Best hesitate before deciding.

Gregarious folk, these, like most people who dwell much alone. So there are grange halls here and there; and the churches are white-painted and in good repair; and now and then along the roads you will come to a picnic grove or a dancing pavilion, set far from any town. Save in haymaking time the men work solitary in the fields; but in the evening, when cows have been milked and pigs fed and wood prepared against the morning, they take their lanterns and tramp or drive half a mile or twice as far, and drop in at Will Bissell’s store for the mail and for an hour round Will’s stove.

You will hear tales there, tales worth the hearing, and on the whole surprisingly true. There is some talk of the price of hay or of feed or of apples; but there is more likely to be some story of the woods—of a bull moose seen along the Liberty road or a buck deer in Luke Hills’ pasture or a big catch of trout in the Ruffingham Meadow streams. Now and then, just about mail time in the evening, fishermen will stop at the store to weigh their catches; and then everyone crowds round to see and remark upon the matter.

The store is a clearing-house for local news; and this must be so, for there is no newspaper in Fraternity. Whatever has happened within a six-mile radius during the day is fairly sure to be told there before Will locks up for the night; and there is always something happening in Fraternity. In which respect it is very much like certain villages of a larger growth, and better advertised.

There is about the intimacy of life in a little village something that suggests the intimacy of life upon the sea. There is not the primitive social organization; the captain as lord of all he surveys. But there is the same close rubbing of shoulders, the same nakedness of impulse and passion and longing and sorrow and desire. You may know your neighbor well enough in the city, but before you lend him money, take him for a camping trip in the woods or go with him to sea. Thereafter you will know the man inside and out; and you may, if you choose, make your loan with a knowledge of what you are about. It is hard to keep a secret in a little village; and Fraternity is a little village—that and nothing more.

On weekday nights, as has been said, Will Bissell’s store is the social center of Fraternity. Men begin to gather soon after supper; they begin to leave when the stage has come up from Union with the mail. For Will’s store is post office as well as market-place. The honeycomb of mail boxes occupies a place just inside the door, next to the candy counter. Will knows his business. A man less wise might put his candies back among the farming tools, and his tobacco and pipes and cigars in the north wing, with the ginghams, but Will puts them by the mail boxes, because everyone gets mail or hopes for it, and anyone may be moved to buy a bit of candy while he waits for the mail to come.

This was an evening in early June. Will’s stove had not been lighted for two weeks or more; but to-night there was for the first time the warm breath of summer in the air. So those who usually clustered inside were outside now, upon the high flight of steps which led up from the road. Perhaps a dozen men, a dog or two, half a dozen boys. Luke Hills had just come and gone with the season’s best catch of trout—ten of them; and when they were laid head to tail they covered the length of a ten-foot board. The men spoke of these trout now, and Judd, who was no fisherman, suggested that Luke must have snared them; and Jim Saladine, the best deer hunter in Fraternity and a fair and square man, told Judd he was witless and unfair. Judd protested, grinning meanly; and Jean Bubier, the Frenchman from the head of the pond, laughed and exclaimed: “Now you, m’sieu’, you could never snare those trout if you come upon them in the road, eh?”

They were laughing in their slow dry way at Judd’s discomfiture when the hoofs of a horse sounded on the bridge below the store; and every man looked that way.

It was Lee Motley who said, “It’s Evered.”

The effect was curious. The men no longer laughed. They sat quite still, as though under a half-fearful restraint, and pretended not to see the man who was approaching.

II

THERE were two men in the buggy which came up the little ascent from the bridge and stopped before the store. The men were Evered, and Evered’s son, John. Evered lived on a farm that overlooked the Whitcher Swamp on the farther side. He was a man of some property, a successful farmer. He was also a butcher; and his services were called in at hog-killing time as regularly as the services of Doctor Crapo in times of sickness. He knew his trade; and he knew the anatomy of a steer or a calf or a sheep as well as Doctor Crapo knew the anatomy of a man. He was an efficient man; a brutally efficient man. His orchard was regularly trimmed and grafted and sprayed; his hay was re-seeded year by year; his garden never knew the blight of weeds; his house was clean, in good repair, white-painted. A man in whom dwelt power and strength; and a man whom other men disliked and feared.

He was a short man, broad of shoulder, with a thick neck and a square, well-shaped head, a heavy brow and a steady burning eye. A somber man, he never laughed; never was known to laugh. There was a blighting something in his gaze which discouraged laughter in others. He was known to have a fierce and ruthless temper; in short, a fearsome man, hard to understand. He puzzled his neighbors and baffled them; they let him well alone.

He was driving this evening. His horse, like everything which was his, was well-groomed and in perfect condition. It pranced a little as it came up to the store, not from high spirits, but from nervousness. So much might be known by the white glint of its eye. The nervousness of a mettled creature too much restrained. It pranced a little, and Evered’s hand tightened on the rein so harshly that the horse’s lower jaw was pulled far back against its neck, and the creature was abruptly still, trembling, and sweating faintly for no cause at all. Evered paid no more heed to the horse. He looked toward the group of men upon the steps, and some met his eye, and some looked away.

He looked at them, one by one; and he asked Lee Motley: “Is the mail come?”

Motley shook his head. He was a farmer of means, a strong man, moved by no fear of Evered. “No,” he said.

Evered passed the reins to his son. “Hold him still,” he told the young man, and stepped out over the wheel to the ground, dropping lightly as a cat. The horse gave a half leap forward and was caught by John Evered’s steady hand; and the young man spoke gently to the beast to quiet it.

Evered from the ground looked up at his son and said harshly, “I bade you hold him still.”

The other answered, “I will.”

“You’d best,” said Evered, and turned and strode up the steps into the store.

The incident had brought out vividly enough the difference between Evered and his son. They were two characters sharply contrasting; for where Evered was harsh, John was gentle of speech; and where Evered was abrupt, John was slow; and where Evered’s eye was hard and angry, John’s was mild. They contrasted physically. The son was tall, well-formed and fair; the father was short, almost squat in his broad strength, and black of hair and eye. Nevertheless, it was plain to the seeing eye that there was strength in John as there was strength in Evered—strength of body and soul.

When Evered had gone into the store Motley said to the son, “It’s warm.”

The young man nodded in a wistfully friendly way. “Yes,” he agreed. “So warm it’s brought up our peas this day.”

“That south slope of yours is good garden land,” Motley told him, and John said:

“Yes. As good as I ever see.”

Everyone liked John Evered; and someone asked now: “Been fishing any, over at Wilson’s?”

John shook his head. “Too busy,” he explained. “But I hear how they’re catching some good strings there.”

“Luke Hills brought in ten to-night that was ten feet long,” Jim Saladine offered. “Got ’em at Ruffingham.”

The young man in the buggy smiled delightedly, his eyes shining. “Golly, what a catch!” he exclaimed.

Then Evered came to the door of the store and looked out, and silence fell upon them all once more. The mail was coming down the hill; the stage, a rattling, rusted, do-or-die automobile of ancient vintage, squeaked to a shrill stop before the very nose of Evered’s horse. John spoke to the horse, and it was still. The stage driver took the mail sacks in, and Evered left the doorway. The others all got up and turned toward the door.

Motley said to Saladine, “Did you mark the horse? It was scared of the stage, but it was still at his word, and he did not tighten rein.”

“I saw,” Saladine agreed. “The boy handles it fine.”

“It’s feared of Evered; but the beast loves the boy.”

“There’s others in that same way o’ thinking,” said Saladine.

Inside the store Will Bissell and Andy Wattles, his lank and loyal clerk, were stamping and sorting the mail. No great matter, for few letters come to Fraternity. While this was under way Evered gathered up the purchases he had made since he came into the store, and took them out and stowed them under the seat of the buggy. He did not speak to his son. John sat still in his place, moving his feet out of the other’s way. When the bundles were all bestowed Evered went back up the steps and Will gave him his daily paper and a letter addressed to his wife, and Evered took them without thanks, and left the store without farewell to any man, and climbed into the buggy and took the reins. He turned the horse sharply and they moved down the hill, and the bridge sounded for a moment beneath their passing. In the still evening air the pound of the horse’s hoofs and the light whirring of the wheels persisted for long moments before they died down to blend with the hum and murmur of tiny sounds that filled the whispering dusk.

As they drove away one or two men came to the door to watch them go; and Judd, a man with a singular capacity for mean and tawdry malice, said loudly, “That boy’ll break Evered, some day, across his knee.”

There was a moment’s silence; then Jean Bubier said cheerfully that he would like to see the thing done. “But that Evered, he is one leetle fighter,” he reminded Judd.

Judd laughed unpleasantly and said Evered had the town bluffed. “That’s all he is,” he told them. “A black scowl and some cussing. Nothing else. You’ll see.”

Motley shook his head soberly. “Evered’s no bluff,” he said. “You’re forgetting that matter of the knife, Judd.”

Motley’s reminder put a momentary silence upon them all. The story of the knife was well enough known; the knife they had all seen. The thing had happened fifteen or twenty years before, and was one of the tales many times told about Will’s stove. One Dave Riggs, drunken and worthless, farming in a small way in North Fraternity, sent for Evered to kill a pig. Evered went to Riggs’ farm. Riggs had been drinking; he was quarrelsome; he sought to interfere with Evered’s procedure. Motley, a neighbor of Riggs, had been there at the time, and used to tell the story.

“Riggs wanted him to tie up the pig,” he would explain. “You know Evered does not do that. He says they will not bleed properly, tied. He did not argue with the man, but Riggs persisted in his drunken way, and cursed Evered to his face, till I could see the blood mounting in the butcher’s cheeks. He is a bad-tempered man, always was.

“He turned on Riggs and told the man to hush; and Riggs damned him. Evered knocked him flat with a single fist stroke; and while Riggs was still on the ground Evered turned and got the pig by the ears and slipped the knife into its throat, in that smooth way he has. When he drew it out the blood came after; and Evered turned to Riggs, just getting on his feet.

“‘There’s your pig,’ said Evered. ‘Butchered right. Now, man, be still.’

“Well, Riggs took a look at the pig and another at Evered. He was standing by the chopping block, and his hand fell on the ax stuck there. Before I could stir he had lifted it, whirling it, and was sweeping down on Evered.

“It was all over quick, you’ll mind. Riggs rushing, with the ax whistling in the air. Then Evered stepped inside its swing, and drove at Riggs’ head. I think he forgot he had the knife in his hand. But it was there; his hand drove it with the cunning that it knew—at the forehead of the other man.

“I mind how Riggs looked, after he had dropped. On his back he was, the knife sticking straight up from his head. And it still smeared with the pig’s blood, dripping down on the dead man’s face. Oh, aye, he was dead. Dead as the pig, when it quit its walking round in a little, and laid down, and stopped its squeal.”

Someone asked him once, when he had told the tale: “Where was Riggs’ wife? Married, wa’n’t he?”

“In the house,” said Motley. “The boy was there, though. He’d come to see the pig stuck, and when he saw the blood come out of its throat he yelled and run. So he didn’t have to see the rest—the knife in his father’s head.”

There had been no prosecution of Evered for that ancient tragedy. Motley’s story was clear enough; it had been self-defense at the worst, and half accident besides. Riggs’ wife went away and took her son, and Fraternity knew them no more.

They conned over this ancient tale of Evered in Will’s store that night; and some blamed him, and some found him not to blame. And when they were done with that story they told others; how when he was called to butcher sheep he had a trick of breaking their necks across his knee with a twist and a jerk of his hands. There was no doubt of the man’s strength nor of his temper.

A West Fraternity man came in while they were talking; one Zeke Pitkin, a mild man, and timid. He listened to their words, and asked at last, “Evered?”

They nodded; and Pitkin laughed in an awkward way. “He killed my bull to-day,” he said.

Will Bissell asked quickly, “Killed your bull? You have him do it?”

Pitkin nodded, gulping at his Adam’s apple. “Getting ugly, the bull was,” he said. “I didn’t like to handle him. Decided to beef him. So I sent for Evered, and he came over.”

He looked round at them, laughed uneasily. “He scared me,” he said.

Motley asked slowly. “What happened, Zeke?”

Pitkin rubbed one hand nervously along his leg. “We-ell,” he explained. “I’m nervous like. Git excited easy. So when he come I told him the bull was ugly. Told him to look out for it.

“He just only looked at me in that hard way of his. I had the bull in the barn; and he went in where it was and fetched it out in the barn floor. Left the bull standing there and begun to fix his tackle to h’ist it up.

“I didn’t want to stay in there with the bull. I was scared of it—it loose there, nothing to hold it. And Evered kept working round it, back to the beast half the time. Nothing to stop it tossing him. I didn’t like to get out, but I didn’t want to stay. And I guess I talked too much. Kept telling him to hurry, and asking him why he didn’t kill it and all. Got him mad, I guess.”

The man shivered a little, his eyes dim with the memory of the moment. He took off his hat and rubbed his hand across his head, and Motley said, “He did kill it?”

Pitkin nodded uneasily. “Yeah,” he said. “Evered turned round to me by and by; and he looked at me under them black eyebrows of his, and he says: ‘Want I should kill this bull, do you?’ I ’lows that I did. ‘Want him killed now, do you?’ he says, and I told him I did. And I did too. I was scared of that bull, I say. But not the way he did kill it.”

He shuddered openly; and Motley asked again, “What did he do?”

“Stepped up aside the bull,” said Pitkin hurriedly. “Yanked out that knife of his—that same knife—out of his sheath. Up with it, and down, so quick I never see what he did. Down with the knife right behind the bull’s horns. Right into the neck bone. And that bull o’ mine went down like a ton o’ brick. Like two ton o’ brick. Stone dead.”

Will Bissell echoed, “Stabbed it in the neck?”

“Right through the neck bone. With that damned heavy knife o’ his.” He wiped his forehead again. “We had a hell of a time h’isting that bull, too,” he said weakly. “A hell of a time.”

No one spoke for a moment. They were digesting this tale of Evered. Then Judd said: “I’d like to see that red bull of his git after that man.”

One or two nodded, caught themselves, looked sheepishly round to discover whether they had been seen. Evered’s red bull was as well and unfavorably known as the man himself. A huge brute, shoulder high to a tall man, ugly of disposition, forever bellowing challenges across the hills from Evered’s barn, frightening womenfolk in their homes a mile away. A creature of terror, ruthlessly curbed and goaded by Evered. It was known that the butcher took delight in mastering the bull, torturing the beast with ingenious twists of the nose ring, with blows on the leg joints, and nose, and the knobs where horns should have been. The red bull was of a hornless breed. The great head of it was like a buffalo’s head, like a huge malicious battering ram. It was impossible to look at the beast without a tremor of alarm.

“It’s ugly business to see Evered handle that bull,” Will Belter said, half to himself.

And after a little silence Jean Bubier echoed: “Almost as ugly as to see the man with his wife. When I have see that, sometime, I have think I might take his own knife to him.”

Judd, the malicious, laughed in an ugly way; and he said, “Guess Evered would treat her worse if he got an eye on her and that man Semler.”

It was Jim Saladine’s steady voice which put an end to that. “Don’t put your foul mouth on her, Judd,” he said quietly. “Not if you want to walk home.”

Judd started to speak, caught Saladine’s quiet eye and was abruptly still.

III

EVERED and his son drove home together through the clotting dusk in a silence that was habitual with them. The buggy was a light vehicle, the horse was swift and powerful, and they made good time. Evered, driving, used the whip now and then; and at each red-hot touch of the light lash the horse leaped like a stricken thing; and at each whiplash John Evered’s lips pressed firmly each against the other, as though to hold back the word he would have said. No good in speaking, he knew. It would only rouse the lightly slumbering anger in his father, only lead to more hurts for the horse, and a black scowl or an oath to himself. There were times when John Evered longed to put his strength against his father’s; when he was hungry for the feel of flesh beneath his smashing fists. But these moments were few. He understood the older man; there was a blood sympathy between them. He knew his father’s heart as no other did or could; and in the last analysis he loved his father loyally. Thus had he learned long patience and restraint. It is very easy to damn and hate a man like Evered, hot and fierce and ruthlessly overbearing. But John Evered, his son, who had suffered more from Evered than any other man, neither damned nor hated him.

They drove home together in silence. Evered sat still in his seat, but there was no relaxation in his attitude. He was still as a tiger is still before the charge and the leap. John at his side could feel the other’s shoulder muscles tensing. His father was always so, always a boiling vessel of emotions. You might call him a powerful man, a masterful man. John Evered knew him for a slave, for the slave of his own hot and angry pulse beats. And he loved and pitied him.

Out of Fraternity they took the Liberty road, and came presently to a turning which led them to the right, and so to the way to Evered’s farm, a narrow road, leading nowhere except into the farmyard, and traveled by few men who had no business there.

When they came into the farmyard it was almost dark. Yet there was still light enough to see, beyond the shadow of the barn, the sloping hillside that led down to Whitcher Swamp; and the swamp itself, brooding beneath its gray mists in the thickening night. The farm buildings were set on a jutting shoulder of the hill, looking out across the valley where the swamp lay, to Fraternity, and off toward Moody Mountain beyond the town. By day there was a glory in this valley that was spread below them; by night it was a place of dark and mystery. Sounds used to come up the hill from the swamp; the sounds of thrashing brush where the moose fed, or perhaps the clash of ponderous antlers in the fall, or the wicked scream of a marauding cat, or the harsh cries of night-hawks, or the tremolo hoot of an owl.

Built against the barn on the side away from the house there was a stout roofed stall; and opening from this stall a pen with board walls higher than a man’s head and cedar posts as thick as a man’s leg, set every four feet to support the planking of the walls. As the horse stopped in the farmyard and Evered and his son alighted, a sound came from this stall—a low, inhuman, monstrous sound, like the rumbling of a storm, like the complaint of a hungry beast, like the promise of evil things too dreadful for describing; the muffled roaring of Evered’s great red bull, disturbed by the sound of the horse. John Evered stood still for an instant, listening. It was impossible for most men to hear that sound without an appalling tremor of the heart. But Evered himself gave no heed to it. He spoke to the horse. He said “Hush, now. Still.”

The horse was as still as stone, yet it trembled as it had trembled at Will’s store. Evered gathered parcels from beneath the seat; and John filled his arms with what remained. They turned toward the house together, the son a little behind the father.

There was a light in the kitchen of the farmhouse; and a woman had come to the open door and was looking out toward them. She was silhouetted blackly by the light behind her. It revealed her figure as slim and pleasantly graven. The lamp’s rays turned her hair into an iridescent halo about her head. She rested one hand against the frame of the door; and her lifted arm guided her body into graceful lines.

She called to them in a low voice, “Do you need light?”

Evered answered. “If you were out of the door there’d be light enough,” he said.

The woman lifted her hand to her lips in a hurt little gesture; and she stepped aside with no further word. She still stood thus, at one side of the door, when they came in. The lamplight fell full upon her, full upon her countenance.

The woman’s face, the face of this woman whose body still bore youthful lines, was shocking. There were weary contours in it; there were shadows of pain beneath the eyes; there was anguish in the mobile lips. The hair which had seemed like a halo showed now like a white garland; snow white, though it still lay heavy and glossy as a girl’s. She was like a statue of sorrow; the figure of a sad and tortured life.

The woman was Evered’s second wife; Evered’s wife, Mary Evered. His wife, whom he had won in a courtship that was like red flowers in spring; whom he had made to suffer interminably, day by day, till suffering became routine and death would have been happiness; and whom—believe it or no—Evered had always and would forever love with a love that was like torment. There is set perversely in man and woman alike an impulse to tease and hurt and distress those whom we love. It is, of this stuff that lovers’ quarrels are made; it is from this that the heartbreaks of the honeymoon are born. The men and women of the fairy tales, who marry and live happily ever after, are fairy tales themselves; or else they never loved. For loving, which is sacrifice and service and kindness and devotion, is also misunderstanding and distortion and perversity and unhappiness most profound. It is a part of love to quarrel; the making-up is often so sweet it justifies the anguish of the conflict. Mary Evered knew this. But Evered had a stiff pride in him which would not let him yield; be he ever so deeply wrong he held his ground; and Mary was sick with much yielding.

Annie Paisley, who lived at the next farm on the North Fraternity road, had given Mary Evered something to think about when Paisley died, the year before.

For over Paisley’s very coffin Annie had said in a thoughtful, reminiscent way: “Yes, Mary; Jim ’uz a good husband to me for nigh on thirty year. A good pervider, and a kind man, and a good father. He never drunk, nor ever wasted what little money we got; and we always had plenty to do with; and the children liked him. Kind to me, he was. Gentle.” Her eyes had narrowed thoughtfully. “But Mary,” she said, “you know I never liked him.”

Mary Evered had been a girl of spirit and strength; and if she had not loved Evered she would never have stayed with him a year. Loving him she had stayed; and the bitter years rolled over her; stayed because she loved him, and because she—like her son—understood the heart of the man, and knew that through all his ruthless strength and hard purpose, with all his might he loved her.

She said now in the kitchen: “You got the salt pork?”

“Of course I got the salt pork,” Evered told her in a level tone that was like a whip across her shoulders. He dumped his parcels on the table, pointed to one; and she took it up in a hurried furtive way and turned to the stove. John laid down his bundles, and Evered said to him: “Put the horse away.” The young man nodded, and went out into the farmyard.

The horse still stood where Evered had bade it stand. John went to the creature’s head and laid his hand lightly on the velvety nose, and spoke softly; and after a moment the horse mouthed his hand with its lips. He took the bridle and led it toward the stable. There was a lantern hanging by the door, but he did not light it. The young man loved the still darkness of the night; there was some quality in the damp cool air which was like wine to him. And he needed no light for what he had to do; he knew every wooden peg in the barn’s stout frame, blindfolded; for the barn and the farm had been his world for more than twenty years.

Outside the stable door he stopped the horse and loosed the traces and led it out of the thills, which he lowered carefully to the ground. The horse turned, as of habit, to a tub full of water which stood beside the barn door; and while the creature drank John backed the buggy into the carriage shed and propped up the thills with a plank. When he came to the stable door again the horse was waiting for him; and he heard its breath whir in a soundless whinny of greeting. He stripped away the harness expertly, hanging it on pegs against the wall, and adjusted the halter. Once, while he worked, the red bull in its closed stall on the farther side of the barn bellowed softly; and the young man called to the beast in a tone that was at once strong and kindly.

He put the horse in its stall, tied the halter rope, and stepped out into the open floor of the barn to pull down hay for the beast. It was when he did so that he became conscious that someone was near. He could not have told how he knew; but there was, of a sudden, a warmth and a friendliness in the very air about him, so that his breath came a little more quickly. He stood very still for a moment; and then he looked toward the stable door. His eyes, accustomed to the dark, discovered her. She had come inside the barn and was standing against the wall, watching him. He could see the dim white blur of her face in the darkness; he could almost see the glow that lay always in her eyes for him.

He said quietly, “Hello, Ruth.”

And she answered him, “Hello, John.”

“I’ve got to pull down a little hay,” he said. It was as though he apologized for not coming at once to her side.

“Yes,” she told him, and stood there while he finished tending the horse.

When he had done he went toward her slowly and stood before her, and she moved a little nearer to him, so that he put his arms awkwardly round her shoulders and kissed her. He felt her lips move against his; felt her womanly and strong. There was no passion in their caress; only an awkward tenderness on his part, a deep affection on hers.

“I’m glad you came out,” he said; and she nodded against his shoulder.

They went into the barnyard, and his arm was about her waist.

“It’s warm to-night,” she told him. “Summer’s about here.”

He nodded. “We’ll have green peas by the Fourth if we don’t git a frost.”

Neither of them wanted to get at once to the house. There was youth in them; the house was no place for youth. She was Ruth MacLure, Mary Evered’s sister. Not, by that token, John Evered’s aunt; for John Evered’s mother was dead many years gone, before Evered took Mary MacLure for wife. A year ago old Bill MacLure had died and Ruth had come to live with her sister. John had never known her till then; since then he found it impossible to understand how he had ever lived without knowing her. She was years younger than her sister, three years younger than John Evered himself; and he loved her.

They crossed the barnyard to the fence and looked down into the shadowy pit of blackness where the swamp lay, half a mile below them. They rested their elbows on the top bar of the fence. Once or twice the bull muttered in his stall a few rods away. They could hear the champ of the horse’s teeth as the beast fed before sleeping; they could hear Evered’s cows stirring in their tie-up. The night was very still and warm, as though heaven brooded like a mother over the earth.

The girl said at last, “Semler was here while you were gone.”

The young man asked slowly, “What fetched him here?”

“He was on his way home from fishing, down in the swamp stream.”

“Did he do anything down there?”

“Had seventeen. One of them was thirteen inches long. He wanted to leave some, but Mary wouldn’t let him.”

They were silent for a moment, then John Evered said, “Best not tell my father.”

The girl cried under her breath, with an impatient gesture of her hand, “I’m not going to. But I hate it. It isn’t fair. Mary wants him to keep away. He bothers her.”

“I can keep him away.”

“You did tell him not to come.”

“I can make him not come,” said John Evered; and the girl fell silent, and said at last, “He’s writing to her. Oh, John, what can she do? More than she has done?”

“I’ll see to’t he stays away,” the young man promised; and the girl’s hand fell on his arm.

“Please do,” she said. “He’s so unfair to Mary.”

A little later, when they turned at last toward the house, John said half to himself, “If my father ever heard, he’d bust that man.”

“I wish he would,” the girl said hotly. “But—I’m afraid he’d find some way to blame Mary. He mustn’t know.”

“I’ll see Dane Semler,” John promised.

On the doorstep they kissed again. Then they went into the house together. Evered sitting by the lamp with his paper looked up at them bleakly, but said no word. Mary Evered smiled at her sister, smiled at John. She loved her husband’s son, had loved him like a mother since she came to the house and found him, a boy not four years old, helping with the chores as a grown man might have done. She had found something pitiful in the strength and the reserve of the little fellow; and she had mothered out of him some moments of softness and affection that would have surprised his father.

There was a certain measure of reassurance in his eyes as he returned her smile. But when he had sat down across the table from his father, where she could not see his face, he became sober and very thoughtful. He was considering the matter of Dane Semler.

IV

FIRST word of the tragedy came to Will Bissell’s store at seven o’clock in the evening of the next day but one; and the manner of the coming was this:

The day had been lowering and sultry; such a day as Fraternity was accustomed to expect in mid-August, when the sun was heavy on the land and the air was murky with sea fogs blown in from the bay. A day when there seemed to be a malignant spirit in the very earth itself; a day when to work was torment, and merely to move about was sore discomfort. A day when dogs snarled at their masters, and masters cursed at their dogs; when sullen passions boiled easily to the surface, and tempers were frayed to the last splitting strand.

No breath of air was stirring as the evening came down. The sun had scarce shown itself all day; the coming of night was indicated only by a growing obscurity, by a thickening of the murky shadows in the valleys and the gray clouds that hid the hills. Men slighted their evening chores, did them hurriedly or not at all, and made haste to get into the open air. From the houses of the village they moved toward Will’s store; and some of them stopped on the bridge above the brook, as though the sound of running water below them had some cooling power; and some climbed the little slope and sat on the high steps of the store. They talked little or none, spoke in monosyllables when they spoke at all. They were too hot and weary and uncomfortable for talking.

No one seemed to be in any hurry. The men moved slowly; the occasional wagon or buggy that drove into town came at a walk; even the automobiles seemed to move with a sullen reluctance. So it was not surprising that the sound of a horse’s running feet coming along the Liberty road should quickly attract their ears.

They heard it first when the horse topped the rise above the mill, almost a mile away. The horse was galloping. The sounds were hushed while the creature dipped into a hollow, and rang more loudly when it climbed a nearer knoll and came on across the level meadow road toward the town. The beat of its hoofs was plainly audible; and men asked each other whose horse it was, and what the hurry might be; and one or two, more energetic than the rest, stood up to get a glimpse of the road by which the beast was coming.

Just before it came into their sight they heard it stop galloping and come on at a trot; and a moment later horse and rider came in sight, and every man saw who it was.

Jean Bubier exclaimed, “It is M’sieu’ Semler.”

And Judd echoed, “Dane Semler. In a hell of a hurry, too.”

Then the man pulled his horse to a stand at the foot of the store steps and swung off. He had been riding bareback; and he was in the garments which he was accustomed to wear when he went fishing along the brooks. They all knew him; for though he was a man of the cities he had been accustomed to come to Fraternity in June for a good many years. They knew him, but did not particularly like him. There was always something of patronage in his attitude, and they knew this and resented it.

Nevertheless, one or two of them answered his greeting. For the rest, they studied him with an acute and painful curiosity. There was some warrant for their curiosity. Semler, usually an immaculate man, was hot and dusty and disordered; his face was white; his eyes were red and shifting, and there was an agonized haste in his bearing which he was unable to hide.

He asked, almost as his foot touched ground, “Anyone here got a car?”

Two or three of the men had come in automobiles; and one, George Tower, answered, “Sure.”

Tower was a middle-aged man of the sort that remains perpetually young; and he had recently acquired a swift and powerful roadster of which he was mightily proud. It was pride in this car, more than a desire to help Dane Semler, that prompted his answer.

Semler took a step toward him and lowered his voice a little. “I’ve had bad news,” he said. “How long will it take you to get me to town?”

That was a drive of ten or a dozen miles, over roads none too good.

Tower answered promptly: “Land you there in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll give you a dollar for every minute you do it under half an hour,” said Semler swiftly; and Tower got to his feet.

“Where’s your grip?” he asked.

Semler shook his head. “I’m having that sent on. Can’t wait. I’m ready to start now.” He looked toward the men on the steps. “Some of you take care of the horse,” he said quickly. “Garvey will send for it.”

Garvey was the farmer at whose house Semler had been staying. Will Bissell took the horse’s bridle and promised to stable the beast till Garvey should come. Tower was already in his car; Semler jumped in beside him. They were down the hill and across the bridge in a diminuendo roar of noise as the roadster, muffler cut out, rocketed away toward town. Two or three of the men got to their feet to watch them go, sat down again when they were out of sight.

There was a moment’s thoughtful silence before someone said, “What do you make o’ that? Semler in some hurry, I’d say.”

Jean Bubier laughed a little. “One dam’ hurry,” he agreed.

“Like something was after him—or he was after someone.”

Judd the mean cackled to himself. “By Gad,” he cried, “I’ll bet Evered’s got on to him. I’ll bet Evered’s after that man. No wonder he run.”

The other men looked at Judd, and they shifted uncomfortably. Will Bissell had gone round to stable the horse; Lee Motley had not yet come to the store, nor had Jim Saladine. Lacking these three there was no one to silence Judd, and the man might have gone on to uglier speech.

But he was silenced, and silenced by so inconsiderable a person as Zeke Pitkin. Zeke drove up just then, drove hurriedly; and they saw before he stopped his horse that he was shaking with excitement.

He cried out, “Hain’t you heard?”

Judd answered, “Heard what? What ails you, Zeke?”

Pitkin scarce heard him, he was so intent on crying out his dreadful news. It came in a stumbling burst of half a dozen words.

“Evered’s red bull’s killed Mis’ Evered,” he stammered.

V

EVERED’S red bull was a notorious and dangerous figure in the countryside. It was like some primordial monster of the forests, and full as fierce of temper. Evered had bought it two years before, and two men on horseback, with ropes about the creature’s neck, brought it from town to his farm. Evered himself, there to receive it, scowled at their precautions. There was a ring in the monstrous beast’s nose; and to this ring Evered snapped a six-foot stick of ash, seasoned and strong. Holding the end of this stick he was able to control the bull; and he set himself to teach it fear. That he succeeded was well enough attested. The bull did fear him, and with reason. Nevertheless, Evered took no chances with the brute, and never entered its stall without first snapping his ash stick fast to the nose ring. Those who watched at such times said that the bull’s red eyes burned red and redder so long as Evered was near; and those who saw were apt to warn the man to take care. But Evered paid no heed to their warnings; or seemed to pay no heed.

The bull had never harmed a human being, because it had never found the opportunity. Men and women and children shunned it, kept well away from its stout-fenced pasture, its high-boarded pen and its stall. The creature was forever roaring and bellowing; and when the air was still its clamor carried far across the countryside and frightened children and women, and made even men pause to listen and to wonder whether Evered’s bull was loose at last. Some boys used to come and take a fearsome joy from watching the brute; and at first they liked to tease the bull, pelting it with sticks and stones. Till one day they came—Jimmy Hills, and Will Motley, and Joe Suter, and two or three besides—with a setter pup of Lee Motley’s at their heels. The pup watched their game, and wished to take a hand, so slipped through the fence to nip at the great bull’s heels; and the beast wheeled and pinned the dog against the fence with its head like a ram, and then trod the pup into a red pudding in the soft earth, while Will Motley shrieked with rage and sorrow and fear.

Evered heard them that day, and came down with a whip and drove them away; and thereafter a boy who teased the bull had trouble on his hands at home. And the tale of what the brute had done to that setter pup was told and retold in every farmhouse in the town.

Evered, even while he mastered the bull and held it slave, took pains to maintain his dominance. The stall which housed it was stout enough to hold an elephant; the board-walled pen outside the stall was doubly braced with cedar posts set five feet underground; and even the half-mile pasture in which, now and then, he allowed the brute to range, had a double fence of barbed-wire inside and stone wall without.

This pasture ran along the road and bent at right angles to work down to the edge of the swamp. It was, as has been said, about a half mile long; but it was narrow, never more than a few rods wide. It formed the southern boundary of Evered’s farm; and no warning signs were needed to keep trespassers from crossing this area. When the bull was loose here it sometimes ranged along the fence that paralleled the road, tossing its great head and snorting and muttering at people who passed by, so that they were apt to hurry their pace and leave the brute behind.

It was timid Zeke Pitkin, on his way to North Fraternity, who saw the bull break its fence on the afternoon that Mary Evered was killed. Zeke did not usually take the road past Evered’s place, because he did not like to pass under the eye of the bull. But on this day he was in some haste; and he thought it likely the bull would be stalled and out of sight, and on that chance took the short hill road to his destination.

When he approached Evered’s farm he began to hear the bull muttering and roaring in some growing exasperation. But it was then too late to turn back without going far out of his way, so he pressed on until he came in sight of the pasture and saw the beast, head high, tramping up and down along the fence on the side away from the road. Zeke was glad the bull was on that side, and hurried his horse, in a furtive way, hoping the bull would not mark his passing.

When he came up to where the brute was he saw that the bull was watching something in Evered’s woodlot, beyond the pasture; and Zeke tried to see what it was. At first he could not see; but after a moment a dog yapped there, and Zeke caught a glimpse of it; a half-bred terrier from some adjacent farm, roving the woods.

The dog yapped; and the bull roared; and the dog, its native impudence impelling it, came running toward the pasture, and began to dance up and down, just beyond the bull’s reach, barking in a particularly shrill and tantalizing way.

Zeke yelled to the dog to be off; but the dog took his yell for encouragement, and barked the harder; and then Zeke saw a thing which made him turn cold.

He saw the bull swing suddenly, with all its weight, against the high wire fence; and he saw one of the posts sag and give way, and another smashed off short. So, quicker than it takes to tell it, the bull was floundering across the barbed wires, roaring with the pain of them, and Zeke saw it top the wall, tail high and head down, and charge the little dog.

Zeke might have tried to drive the bull back into its pasture; but that was a task for a bold man, and Zeke was not bold. He whipped his horse and drove on to warn Evered; and when he looked back from the top of the hill the bull and the dog had disappeared into the scrub growth of alder and hardwood along a little run that led down to the swamp. He whipped his horse again, and turned into the road that led to Evered’s farmhouse.

When he got to the farmhouse there was no one at home; and after he had convinced himself of this Zeke drove away again, planning to stop at the first neighboring farm and leave word for Evered. But after a quarter of a mile or so he met the butcher, and stopped him and told him that the bull was loose in his woodlot.

Evered asked a question or two; but Zeke’s voluble answers made him impatient, and he left the other and hurried on. At home he stabled his horse, got his ash stave with the snap on the end, and as an afterthought went into the house for his revolver. He had no illusions about the bull; he knew the beast was dangerous.

While he was in the house he marked that his wife was not there, and wondered where she was, and called to her, but got no answer. He knew that John and Ruth MacLure, his wife’s sister, were in the orchard on the other side of the farm from the pasture and woodlot; and he decided that his wife must have gone to join them there. So with the revolver in his pocket and the stave in his hand, Evered went down past the barn and through the bars into the woodlot. Somewhere in the thickets below him he expected to find the bull. He could hear nothing, so he understood that the little dog which had caused the trouble had either fled or been killed by the beast. He hoped for the latter; for he was an impatient man, and angered at the whole incident. Also, the sultry heat of the day had irked him; irked him so that he had cursed to himself because his wife was not at home when he wished to speak to her.

In this impatient mood he began to work down through the woodlot. He went carefully, knowing the treacherous temper of the brute he was hunting. He passed through a growth of birches along a little run, and across a rocky knoll, and through more birches, and so came out upon the lower shelf of his farm, a quarter of a mile from the house, and halfway down to the borders of the swamp.

He remembered, when he had come thus far, that there was a spring in the hillside a little below him, with two or three old trees above it, and some clean grass beside it. His wife occasionally came here in the afternoon, when her work was done, to sit and read or rest or give herself to her thoughts. Evered knew of this habit of hers; but till this moment he had forgotten it. The spot was cool; it caught what air was stirring. He had a sudden conviction that she might be there now; and the idea angered him. He was angry with her because by coming down here she had put herself in a dangerous position. He was angry with her because he was worried about her safety. This was a familiar reaction of the man’s irascible temperament. Two years before, when Mary Evered took to her bed for some three weeks’ time with what was near being pneumonia, Evered had been irritable and morose and sullen until she was on her feet again. Unwilling to confess his concern for her, he expressed that concern by harsh words and scowls and bitter taunts, till his wife wept in silent misery. His wife whom he loved wept in misery because of him.

Thus it was now with him. He was afraid she had come to the spring; he was afraid the bull would come upon her there; and because he was afraid for her he was angry with her for coming.

He went forward across the level rocky ground, eyes and ears alert; and so came presently atop a little rise from which he could look down to the spring. And at what he saw the man stopped stock-still, and all the fires of hell flared up in his heart till he felt his whole body burn like a flaming ember.

His wife was there; she was sitting on a low smooth rock a little at one side of the spring. But that was not all; she was not alone. A man sat below her, a little at one side, looking up at her and talking earnestly; and Mary Evered’s head was drooping in thought as she listened.

Evered knew the man. The man was Dane Semler. Dane Semler and his wife, together here, talking so quietly.

They did not see him. Their backs were toward him, and they were oblivious and absorbed. Evered stood still for a moment; then he was so shaken by the fury of his own anger that he could not stand, and he dropped on one knee and knelt there, watching them. And the blood boiled in him, and the pulse pounded in his throat, and the breath choked in his lungs. His veins swelled, his face became purple. One watching him would have been appalled.

Evered was in that moment a terrible and dreadful spectacle, a man completely given over to the ugliest of angers, to the black and tempestuous fury of jealousy.

He did not stop to wonder, to guess the meaning of the scene before him. He did not wish to know its explanation. If he had thought soberly he must have known there was no wrong in Mary Evered. But he did not think soberly; he did not think at all. He gave himself to fury. Accustomed to yield to anger as a man yields to alcohol, accustomed to debauches of rage, Evered in this moment loosed all bounds on himself. He hated his wife as it is possible to hate only those whom we love; he hated Dane Semler consumingly, appallingly. He was drunk with it, shaking with it; his lips were so hot it was as though they smoked with rage.

The man and the woman below him did not move. He could catch, through the pounding in his own ears, the murmur of their voices. Semler spoke quickly, rapidly, lifting a hand now and then in an appealing gesture; the woman, when she spoke at all, raised her head a little to look at the man, and her voice was very low. Evered did not hear their words; he did not wish to. The very confidence and ease and intimacy of their bearing damned them unutterably in his eyes.

He was like a figure of stone, there on the knoll just above them. It seemed impossible that they could remain unconscious of his presence there. The unleashed demons in the man seemed to cry out, they were almost audible.

But the two were absorbed; they saw nothing and heard nothing; nothing save each other. And Evered above them, a concentrated fury, was as absorbed and oblivious as they. His whole being was so focused in attention on these two that he did not see the great red bull until it came ponderously round a shoulder of the hill, not thirty paces from where the man and woman sat together. He did not see it then until they turned their heads that way, until they came swiftly to their feet, the man with a cry, the woman in a proud and courageous silence.

The bull stood still, watching them. And in the black soul of Evered an awful triumph leaped and screamed. His ash stave was beside him, his revolver was beneath his hand. There was time and to spare.

He flung one fist high and brought it smashing down. It struck a rock before him and crushed skin and knuckles till the blood burst forth. But Evered did not even know. There was a dreadful exultation in him.

He saw the bull’s head drop, saw the vast red bulk lunge forward, quick as light; saw Semler dodge like a rabbit, and run, shrieking, screaming like a woman; saw Mary Evered stand proudly still as still.

In the last moment Evered flung himself on the ground; he hid his face in his arms. And the world rocked and reeled round him so that his very soul was shaken.

Face in his arms there, the man began presently to weep like a little child.

VI

AFTER an interval, which seemed like a very long time, but was really only a matter of seconds, Evered got to his feet, and with eyes half averted started down the knoll toward the spring.

Yet even with averted eyes he was able to see what lay before him; and a certain awed wonder fell upon the man, so that he was shaken, and stopped for a moment still. And there were tremorous movements about his mouth when he went on.

His wife’s body lay where it had been flung by the first blunt blow of the red bull’s awful head. But—this was the wonder of it—the red bull had not trampled her. The beast stood above the woman’s body now, still and steady; and Evered was able to see that there was no more murder in him. He had charged the woman blindly; but it was now as though, having struck her, he knew who she was and was sorrowing. It was easy to imagine an almost human dejection in the posture of the huge beast.

And it was this which startled and awed Evered; for the bull had always been, to his eyes, an evil and a murderous force.

A few feet from where the woman’s body lay Evered stopped and looked at the bull; and the bull stood quite still, watching Evered without hostility. Evered found it hard to understand.

He turned to one side and knelt beside his wife’s body; but this was only for an instant. He saw at once that she was dead, beyond chance or question. There was no blood upon her, no agony of torn flesh; her garments were a little rumpled, and that was all. The mighty blow of the bull had been swift enough, and merciful. She lay a little on her side, and her lips were twisted in a little smile, not unhappily.

Evered at this time was not conscious of feeling anything at all. His mind was clear enough; his perceptions were never more acute. But his emotions seemed to be in abeyance. He looked upon his wife’s body and felt for her neither the awful hate of the last minutes nor the torturing love of the years that were gone. He looked simply to see if she were dead; and she was dead. So he took off his coat and made of it a pillow for her, and laid her head upon it, and composed her where she lay. And the great red bull stood by, with that unbelievable hint of sorrow and regret in its bearing; stood still as stone, and watched so quietly.

Evered did not think of Semler; he had scarce thought of the man at all, from the beginning. When he was done with his wife he went to where the bull stood, and snapped his ash stave fast to the creature’s nose. The bull made no move, neither backed away nor snorted nor jerked aside its vast head. And Evered, his face like a stone, led the beast to one side and up the slope and through the woodlot toward the farm.

As he approached the barn he turned to one side and came to the boarded pen outside the bull’s stall. He led the beast inside this pen, loosed the stave from the nose ring, and stepped back outside the gate. Watching for a moment he saw the red bull walk slowly across the pen and go into its stall; and once inside it turned round and stood with its head in the doorway of the stall, watching him.

He made fast the gate, then passed through the barn and approached the kitchen door. Ruth, his wife’s sister, came to the door to meet him. His face was steady as a rock; there was no emotion in the man. Yet there was something about him which appalled the girl.

She asked huskily, “Did you get the bull in? I heard him, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” said Evered. “He’s in.”

“I heard him bellowing,” she explained. “And then I saw a man run up across the side field to the road.”

“That was Semler,” Evered explained coldly. “Dane Semler. He was afraid of the bull.”

“I was worried,” the girl persisted timidly, not daring to say what was in her mind. “I was worried—worried about Mary.”

“The bull killed her,” said Evered; and passed her and went into the kitchen.

Ruth backed against the wall to let him go by; and she pressed her two hands to her lips in a desperate frightened way; and her eyes were wide and staring with horror. She stared at the man, and her hands held back the clamor of her grief. She stared at him as at a monstrous thing, while Evered washed his hands at the sink and dried them on the roller towel, and combed his hair before the clean mirror hanging on the wall. There was a dreadful deliberation about his movements.

After a moment the girl began to move; she went by little sidewise steps as far as the door, and then she leaped out into the barnyard, and the screams poured from her in a frenzy of grief that was half madness. Evered turned at the first sound and watched her run, still screaming, across the barnyard to the fence; and he saw her fumble fruitlessly with the topmost bars, and at last scramble awkwardly over the fence itself in her stricken haste. She was still crying out terribly as she disappeared from his sight in the direction of the woodlot and the spring.

Evered watching her said to himself bitterly: “She knew where Mary was; knew where to look for her.”

He flung out one hand in a weak gesture of despair that came strangely from so harshly strong a man; and he began to move aimlessly about the kitchen, not knowing what he did. He took a drink at the pump; he changed his shoes for barnyard boots; he cut tobacco from a plug and filled his pipe and forgot to light it; he stood in the door, the cold pipe in his teeth, and stared out across his farm; and his teeth set on the pipestem till it cracked and roused him from his own thoughts.

Then he heard someone running, and his son, John Evered, came from the direction of the orchard, and flung a quick glance at his father, and another into the kitchen at his father’s back.

Evered looked at him, and the young man, panting from his run, said, “I heard Ruth cry out. What’s happened, father?”

Evered’s tight lips did not stir for a moment; then he took the pipe in his hand, and he said stiffly, “The red bull killed Mary.”

They were accustomed to speak of Evered’s second wife as Mary when they spoke together. John, though he loved her, had never called her mother. He loved her well; but the blood tie was strong in him, and he loved his father more. At his father’s word now he stepped nearer the older man, watching, sensing something of the agony behind Evered’s simple statement; and their eyes met and held for a little.

Then Evered said, “She was with Dane Semler at the spring.”

The gentler lines of his son’s face slowly hardened into a likeness of his own. The young man asked, “Where’s Semler?”

“Ran away,” said Evered.

“I had wanted a word with him.”

Evered laughed shortly; and it was almost the first time that John had ever seen him laugh, so that the sight was shocking and terrible. Then the older man turned back into the house.

John followed him and asked quickly, “It was at the spring?”

“Yes. The bull broke down his fence to get at a dog.”

“We must bring her home,” the son suggested quietly. “Where is Ruth?”

“Down there,” Evered told him.

John turned to the door again. “We’ll bring her home,” he said; and Evered saw the young man go swiftly across the farmyard and vault the fence and start at an easy run in the direction Ruth had gone.

Evered stayed in the house alone for a moment; and when he could bear to be alone no longer he went out into the farmyard. As he did so Zeke Pitkin drove in, on his way back from that errand in North Fraternity.

The bleak face of Evered appalled the timid man and frightened him; and he stammered apologetically: “W-wondered if you got the b-bull in.”

“Yes,” said Evered. “After he had killed Mary.”

Zeke stared at Evered with a face that was a mask of terror for a moment, and Evered stood still, watching him. Then Pitkin gathered his reins clumsily, and clumsily turned his horse, so sharply that his wagon was well-nigh overthrown by the cramped wheel. When it was headed for the road he lashed out with the whip, and the horse leaped forward. Evered could hear it galloping out to the main road, and then to the left, toward Fraternity.

“Town’ll know in half an hour,” he said half to himself.

The man was still in a stupor, his emotions numb. But he did not want to be alone. After a moment he went out into the stable and harnessed the horse to his light wagon and started down a wood road toward the spring. The wagon would serve to bring his wife’s body home.

The vehicles on a Fraternity farm are there for utility, almost without exception. Evered had a mowing machine, a rake, a harrow, a sledge, a single-seated buggy and this light wagon. He was accustomed to take the wagon when he went butchering; and it had served to haul the carcasses of any number of sheep or calves or pigs or steers from farm to market. He had no thought that he was piling horror on horror in taking this wagon to bring home his wife’s body.

He laid a double armful of hay in the bed of the wagon before he started; and he himself walked by the horse’s head, easing it over the rough places. The wood road which he followed would take him within two or three rods of the spring.

John Evered, going before his father, had found Ruth MacLure passionately sobbing above the body of her sister. And at first he could not bring himself to draw near to her; he was held by some feeling that to approach her would be sacrilege. There had been such a love between the sisters as is not often seen; there was a spiritual intimacy between them, a sympathy of mind and heart akin to that sometimes marked between twins. John knew this; he knew all that Ruth’s grief must be. And so he stood still, a little ways off from her, and waited till the tempest of her grief should pass.

When she was quieter he spoke to her; and at the sound of his voice the girl whirled to face him, still kneeling; and there were no more tears in her. He was frightened at the stare of challenge in her eyes. He said quickly, “It’s me.”

She shook her head as though something blurred her sight. “I thought it was your father,” she told him, and there was a bitter condemnation in her tone.

John said, “You mustn’t blame him.”

“He’s not even sorry,” she explained softly, thoughtfully.

“He is,” John insisted. “You never understood him. He loved her so.”

She flung her head to one side impatiently and got to her feet, brushing at her eyes with her sleeve, fumbling with her hair, composing her countenance. “It’s growing dark,” she said. “We must take her home.”

He nodded. “I’ll carry her,” he said; and he crossed and bent above the dead woman, and looked at her for a moment silently. The girl, watching him, saw in the still strength of his features a likeness to his father that was suddenly terrible and appalling.

She shuddered; and when he would have lifted her sister’s body she cried out in passionate hysterical protest, “Don’t touch her! Don’t touch her! You shan’t touch her, John Evered!”

John looked at her slowly; and with that rare understanding which was the birthright of the man he said, “You’re blaming father.”

“Yes, yes,” she cried, “I am.”

“It was never his fault,” he said.

“He kept that red, killing brute about,” she protested. “Oh, he killed her, he killed Mary, he killed my sister, John.”

“That is not fair,” he told her.

Before she could answer they both hushed to the sound of the approaching wagon; and Evered came toward them, leading the horse, and he turned it and backed the wagon in below the spring.

They did not speak to him, nor he to them. But when he was ready he went toward the dead woman to lift her into the wagon bed; and Ruth pushed between them and cried: “You shan’t touch her! You shan’t touch her, ever!”

Evered looked at her steadily; and after a moment he said, “Stand to one side.”

The girl wished to oppose him; but it was a tribute to his strength that even in this moment the sheer will of the man overpowered her. She moved aside; and Evered lifted his wife’s body with infinite gentleness and disposed it upon the fragrant hay in the wagon bed. He put the folded coat again beneath his wife’s head as a pillow, as though she were only sleeping.

Still with no word to them he took the horse’s rein and started to lead it toward the road and up the hill. And Ruth and John, after a moment, followed a little behind.

When they came up into the open, out of the scattering trees, a homing crow flying overhead toward its roost saw them. It may have been that the wagon roused some memory in the bird, offered it some promise. At any rate, the black thing circled on silent wing, and lighted in the road along which they had come, and hopped and flopped behind them as they went slowly up the hill toward the farm.

Ruth saw the bird and shuddered; and John went back and drove it into flight; but it took earth again, farther behind them.

It followed them insistently up the hill; and it was still there, a dozen rods away, as they brought Mary Evered home.

VII

WHEN they came into the farmyard night was falling. In the west the sky still showed bright and warm; and against this brilliant sky the hills were purple and deeper purple in the distance. In the valleys mists were rising and black pools of night were forming beneath these mists; and while Evered bore his wife’s body into the house and laid it on the bed in the spare room, these pools rose and rose until they topped the hills and overflowed the world with darkness. The air was still hot and heavy, as it had been all day; and the sultry sky which had intensified the heat of the sun served now to hide the stars. When it grew dark it was as dark as pitch. The blackness seemed tangible, as though a man might catch it in his hand.

Ruth stayed beside her sister; but John built a fire in the stove while Evered sat by in stony calm, and he made coffee and fried salt pork and boiled potatoes. There were cold biscuits which Mary Evered had made that morning, and doughnuts from the crock in the cellar. When the supper was ready he called Ruth; and she came. The most tragic thing about death is that it accomplishes so little. The dropping of man or woman into the pool of the infinite is no more than the dropping of a pebble into a brook. The surface of the pool is as calm, a little after, as it was before. Thus, now, save that Mary was not at the table, their supping together was as it had always been.

And after they had eaten they must go with the familiarity of long habit about their evening chores. Ruth washed the dishes; John and his father fed the beasts and milked the cows; and when they came in John turned the separator while Ruth attended to the milk and put away, afterward, the skim milk and the cream.

By that time two or three neighbors had come in, having heard of that which had come to pass. There was genuine sorrow in them, for Mary Evered had been a woman to be loved; but there was also the ugly curiosity native to the human mind; and there was speculation in each eye as they watched Evered and John and Ruth. They would discuss, for days to come, the bearing of each one of the three on that black night.

For Evered, the man was starkly silent, saying no word. He sat by the table, eyes before him, puffing his pipe. Ruth stayed by her sister as though some instinct of protection kept her there. John talked with those who came, told them a little. He did not mention Semler’s part in the tragedy. He said simply that the bull had broken loose; that Mary Evered was by the spring, where she liked to go; that the bull came upon her there.

They asked morbidly whether she was trampled and torn; and they seemed disappointed when he told them that she was not, that even the terrible red bull had seemed appalled at the thing which he had done. And through the evening others came and went, so that he had to say the same things over and over; and always Evered sat silently by the table, giving no heed when any man spoke to him; and Ruth, in the other room, kept guard above the body. The women went in there, some of them; but no men went in.

John had telephoned to Isaac Gorfinkle, whose business it was to prepare poor human clay for its return to earth again; and Gorfinkle came about midnight and put all save Ruth out of the room where the dead woman lay. Gorfinkle was a little, fussy man; a man who knew his doleful trade. Before day he and Ruth had done what needed doing; and Mary Evered lay in the varnished coffin he had brought. Her white hair and the sweet nobility of her countenance, serenely lying there, made those who looked forget the ugly splendor of Gorfinkle’s wares.

It was decided that she should be buried on the second day. On the day after her death many people came to the farm; and some came from curiosity, and some from sympathy, and some with an uncertain purpose in their minds.

These were the selectmen of the town—Lee Motley, chairman; and Enoch Thomas, of North Fraternity; and Old Man Varney. Motley, a sober man and a man of wisdom, was of Evered’s own generation; Enoch Thomas and Varney were years older. Old Varney had a son past thirty, whom to this day he thrashed with an ax stave when the spirit moved him, his big son good-naturedly accepting the outrage.

Thomas and Varney came to demand that Evered kill his red bull; and Motley put the case for them.

“We’ve talked it over,” he said. “Seem’s like the bull’s dangerous; like he ought to be killed. That’s what we’ve—what we’ve voted.”

Evered turned his heavy eyes from man to man; and Old Varney brandished his cane and called the bull a murdering beast, and bade Evered take his rifle and do the thing before their eyes. Evered’s countenance changed no whit; he looked from Varney to Thomas, who was silent, and from Thomas to Lee Motley.

“I’ll not kill the bull,” he said.

Before Motley could speak, Varney burst into abuse and insistent demand; and Evered let him talk. When the old man simmered to silence they waited for Evered to answer, but Evered held his tongue till Lee Motley asked, “Come, Evered, what do you say?”

“What I have said,” Evered told them.

“The town’ll see,” Old Varney shrilled, and shook his fist in Evered’s face. “The town’ll see whether a murdering brute like that is to range abroad. If you’ve not shame enough—your own wife, man—your own——” he wagged his head. “The town’ll see.”

Said Evered: “I’ll not take rifle to the bull; but if any man comes here to kill the beast, I’ll have use for that rifle of mine.”

Which fanned Varney to a fresh outbreak, till Evered flung abruptly toward him, and abruptly said, “Be still.”

So were they still; and Evered looked them in the eye, man by man, till he came to Motley; and then he said, “Motley, I thought there was more wisdom in you.”

“Aye,” cried Varney. “He’s as big a fool as you.”

And Motley said, “I voted against this, Evered. The bull’s yours, if you’re a mind to kill him. I’m not for making you. It’s your own affair, you mind. And—the ways of a bull are the ways of a bull. The brute’s not overmuch to be blamed.”

Evered nodded and turned his back on them; and after a time they went away. But when Evered went into the house he met Ruth, and the girl stopped him and asked him huskily, “You’re not going to kill that red beast?”

Evered hesitated; then he said, with something like apology in his tones, “No, Ruth.”

She began to tremble, and he saw that words were hot on her lips; and he lifted one hand in a placating gesture. She turned into the other room, and the door shut harshly at her back. Evered’s eyes rested on the door for a space, a curious questioning in them, a wistful light that was strange to see.

All that day Ruth was still, saying little. No word passed between her and Evered, and few words between her and John. But that night, when they were alone, John spoke to her in awkward comfort and endearment.

“Please, Ruthie,” he begged. “You’re breaking yourself. You’ll be sick. You must not be so hard.”

He put an arm about her, as though he would have kissed her; but the girl’s hands came up against his chest, and the girl’s eyes met his in a fury of horror and loathing, and she flung him away.

“Don’t! Don’t!” she cried in a voice that was like a scream. “Don’t ever! You—his son!”

John, inexpressibly hurt, yet understanding, left her alone; he told himself she was not to be blamed, with the agony of grief still scourging her.

One of the neighbor women came in that night to sit with Ruth; and Ruth slept a little through the night. John was early abed; he had had no sleep the night before, and he was tired. He sank fathoms deep in slumber; a slumber broken by fitful, unhappy dreams. His own grief for the woman who had been mother to him had been stifled, given no chance for expression, because he had fought to comfort Ruth and to ease his father. The reaction swept over him while he slept; he rested little.

Evered, about nine o’clock, went to the room he and his wife had shared for so many years. He had not, before this, been in the room since she was killed. Some reluctance had held him; he had shunned the spot. But now he was glad to be alone, and when he had shut the door he stood for a moment, looking all about, studying each familiar object, his nerves reacting to faint flicks of pain at the memories that were evoked.

He began to think of what the selectmen had said, of their urgency that he should kill the bull. And he sat down on the edge of the bed and remained there, not moving, for a long time. Once his eye fell on his belt hanging against the wall, with the heavy knife that he used in his butchering in its sheath. He reached out and took down the belt and drew the knife forth and held it in his hands, the same knife that had killed drunken Dave Riggs long ago. A powerful weapon, it would strike a blow like an ax; the handle of bone, the blade heavy and keen and strong. He balanced it between his fingers, and thought of how he had struck it into the neck of Zeke Pitkin’s bull, and how the bull had dropped in midlife and never stirred more. The knife fascinated him; he could not for a long time take his eyes away from it. At the last he reached out and thrust it into its sheath with something like a shudder, strange to see in so strong a man.

Then he undressed and got into bed, the bed he had shared with Mary Evered. He had blown out the lamp; the room was dark. There was a little current of air from the open window. And after a little Evered began to be as lonely as a boy for the first time away from home.

There is in every man, no matter how stern his exterior, a softer side. Sometimes he hides it from all the world; more often his wife gets now and then a glimpse of it. There was a side of Evered which only Mary Evered had known. And she had loved it. When they had come to bed together it always seemed to her that Evered was somehow gentler, kinder. He put away his harshness, as though it were a part he had felt called upon to play before men. The child in him, strong in most men, came to the surface. He was never a man overgiven to caresses, but when they were alone at night together, and he was weary, he would sometimes draw her arm beneath his head as a pillow or take her hand and lift it to rest upon his forehead, while she twined her fingers gently through his hair.

They used to talk together, sometimes far into the night; and though he might have used her bitterly through the day, with caustic tongue and hard, condemning eye, he was never unkind in these moments before they slept. A man the world outside had never seen. It was these nights together which had made life bearable for Mary Evered; and they had been dear to Evered too. How dreadful and appalling, then, was this, his first night alone.

Her shoulder was not there to cradle his sick and weary head; her gentle hand was not there to cool his brow. When he flung an arm across her pillow, where she used to lie, it embraced a gulf of emptiness that seemed immeasurably deep and terrible. After a little, faint perspiration came out upon the man’s forehead. He turned on his right side, in the posture that invited sleep; but at first sleep would not come. His limbs jerked and twitched; his eyelids would not close. He stared sightlessly into the dark. Outside in the night there were faint stirrings and scratchings and movings to and fro; and each one brought him more wide awake than the last. He got up and closed the window to shut them out, and it seemed to him the closed room was filled with her presence. When he lay down again he half fancied he felt her hand upon his hair, and he reached his own hand up to clasp and hold hers, as he had sometimes used to do; but his groping fingers found nothing, and came sickly away again.

How long he lay awake he could not know. When at last he dropped asleep the very act of surrender to sleep seemed to fetch him wide awake again. Waking thus he thought that he held his wife in his arms; he had often wakened in the past to find her there. But as his senses cleared he found that the thing which he held so tenderly against his side was only the pillow on which her head was used to lie.

The man’s nerves jangled and clashed; and he threw the pillow desperately away from him as though he were afraid of it. He sat up in bed; and his pulses pounded and beat till they hurt him like the blows of a hammer. There was no sleep in Evered.

He was still sitting thus, bolt upright, sick and torn and weary, when the gray dawn crept in at last through the window panes.