IN THE "STRANGER PEOPLE'S" COUNTRY

Who they were, and whence they came, none can say. The mountains where they found their home—their long home—keep silence. The stars, that they knew, look down upon their graves and make no sign. Their memory, unless in some fine and subtle way lingering in the mystery, the pervasive melancholy, the vaguely troublous forecast and retrospect which possess the mind in contemplating this sequestered spot, unhallowed save by the sense of a common humanity, has faded from the earth. None might know that they had ever lived but for a dim tradition associating them with the ancient forgotten peoples of this old hemisphere of ours that we are wont to deem so new. For this is one of the strange burial-grounds of the "pygmy dwellers" of Tennessee; prehistoric, it is held, an extinct diminutive race; only Aztec children, others surmise, of a uniform age and size, buried apart from their kindred, for some unimagined, never-to-be-explained reason; and a more prosaic opinion contends that the curious stone sepulchres contain merely infant relics of the Cherokee Indian. All I know is, here they rest, awaiting that supreme moment when this mortality shall put on immortality, and meanwhile in the solemn environment of the Great Smoky Mountains the "Leetle People" sleep well.

Quiet neighbors all these years have they been. So quiet! almost forgotten. In fact, the nearest mountaineers start, with a dazed look, at a question concerning them, then become mysterious, with that superstitious, speculative gleam in the eye as of one who knows much of uncanny lore, but is shy to recount.

"I do declar' I never war so set back in my life ez I felt whenst that thar valley man jes' upped an' axed me 'bout'n them thar Leetle Stranger People buried yander on the rise," declared Stephen Yates, one July evening, as he stood leaning on his rifle before the door of his cabin in the cove. His horse, reeking and blown, still saddled, bore a deer, newly slain, unprotected by the game-laws, and the old hounds, panting and muddy from the chase, lay around the doorstep.

A young woman of twenty, perhaps, with a pale oval face and dark hair, and serene dark gray eyes, was on the rickety porch, leaning upon a rude shelf that served also as a balustrade; she had a cedar piggin in her hand, and the cow was lowing at the bars. On the doorstep there sat a rotund and stalwart, but preternaturally solemn young person, who now and again, with a corrugated countenance, gnashed his gums. His time and energies were expended in that trying occupation known as "cuttin' yer teeth," an acquisition which he would some day value more highly than now. He sought, as far as an abnormally developed craft might compass, to force, by many an infant wile, his elders to share his woes, and it was with a distinctly fallen countenance that his father hearkened to his mother's parenthetical request to "'bide hyar an' company leetle Moses whilst I be a-milkin' the cow."

"LEETLE MOSE."

Yates did not refuse, although a braver man might have quailed. It was his hard fate to regard "leetle Moses" as a supreme fetich, and to worship him with as unrequited an idolatry as ever was lavished on the great god Dagon. He only sought to gain time, and continued his account of the conversation:

"He 'lowed ef he hed knowed afore ez they war buried hyar, he'd hev kem a hunderd mile jes' ter view the spot," he said, his eye kindling with a recollection of the "valley man's" enthusiasm.

His wife hardly entered into it at second-hand. She regarded him with a slow wonderment stealing over her face.

"War—war he 'quainted with enny of 'em in thar lifetime?" she demanded, hesitating, but seeking to solve the valley man's reason—"them Leetle Stranger People?"

"'WAR—WAR HE 'QUAINTED WITH ENNY OF 'EM?'"

"Great Gosh! Adelaide!" Yates exclaimed, irritably, contemptuous all at once of the limitations of her standpoint. "Ye stay cooped up hyar sociatin' with nobody but leetle Mose till ye hev furgot every durned thing ye ever knowed. The Leetle People hev been dead so long ago nobody 'members 'em—not even old man Peake, an' he air a hunderd an' ten year old—ef he ain't lyin'," he added, cautiously.

Her face flushed. There was fire in her serene eyes, like a flare of sunset in the placid depths of a lake. "I'm willin' ter 'bide along o' leetle Mose," she retorted. "I never expect ter see no better company 'n leetle Mose ter the las' day I live, an' I never did see none!"

Yates shifted his weight uncertainly upon his other foot, and surveyed with a casual glance the wide landscape. The sense of supersedure was sharp at the moment. He had been in his day a great man in her estimation, and now "leetle Mose," with his surly dejection, with only a tooth or two—and with these he would have gladly dispensed—with his uncertain gait and his pigeon-toes and his nearly bald head, was a greater man still. He and his mother were a close corporation, but, for the sake of his own fealty to the domestic Dagon, Steve Yates forgave them both. He went on presently:

"The valley man hed jes' hearn tell ez them Leetle People war buried hyarabout. I never seen a man so streck of a heap ez he war, an' he axed me fool questions till I felt plumb cur'ous a-talkin' 'bout them Leetle Stranger People buried thar on the rise." Once more he turned toward the slope that embarrassed, half-laughing glance—in which, however, there was no mirth—betokening a spirit ill at ease, and secretly shrinking from some uncanny, irksome fear.

Her eyes mechanically followed his to the purple slope so still under the crimson sky. Higher up, the mountain, shielded by the shadow of its own crags from this reflection of the west, showed a dark-green shade of an indescribable depth and richness of tone, never merging into dusky indefiniteness. Through a gap in the range to the east were visible the infinite blue distances of the Great Smoky peaks, their color here and there idealized by the far-away glamours of sunset to an exquisite roseate hue, or a crystalline and perfect amethyst against the amber horizon. Down the clifty gorge—its walls of solid sandstone, cloven to the bare heart of the range by the fierce momentum of the waters—the bounding river came. One mad leap presented the glittering splendors of a glassy-green cataract, and in its elastic spray an elusive rainbow lurked. Its voice was like that of one crying in the wilderness, so far might its eloquent iteration be heard. The Little People, in their day, might have given ear to its message and pondered on the untranslated tidings, but now they did not heed.

Only the dwellers in the mountaineer's cabin hard by listened at times to the pulsing rhythm, as alive as the metre of a great poem; and, again, in duller mood, its sound was but as silence to those who cared not to hear. The dark little house seemed small and solitary and transitory here among the massive, enduring mountains, beside the majestic flow of the waters, and the rail-fence enclosed the minimum of space from the great unpeopled wilds.

"I 'lowed ter him they never walked," Yates said, presently. "Ez fur ez I know, they hain't been seen, nor none o' 'em set out ter walk, sence they war put thar fust. Nobody ez I know purfesses ter hev seen enny o' the Stranger People's harnts."

He repeated this with simplicity, evidently desirous of giving the pygmy dwellers their bounden due.

"I 'lowed ter him," he continued, "ez folks hed let them be, an' they hed let the mounting folks be. Nobody wanted sech cur'ous harnts ez folks o' thar size ter git ter walkin' at this late day."

There was a vague chill in the air—or was it in the moral atmosphere?

"What be he a-vagrantin' round fur, inquirin' 'bout them as be dead an' done with the livin' long ago?" she demanded, a touch of acerbity in her tone and a restless look in her eyes.

"He 'lows ez he's jes' kem hyar along o' Leonard Rhodes ez be a-'lectioneerin' fur floater fur the Legislatur'. An' him an' Rhodes air frien's, an' Rhodes hev got some lan' in this county ez hev got one o' them Injun mounds on it, an' he hev let this frien' o' his hev men ter dig an' open it ter see what they could find. I seen 'em arter it ter-day; this hyar man 'peared mighty nigh ez excited ez a Juny-bug; I noticed he never dug none, though, hisse'f."

He paused for a moment, chewing hard on his quid of tobacco; then he slowly laughed. "The folks he hed hired ter dig 'lowed he war teched in the head, but he 'peared sorter sensible ter me—never teched a spade, an' 'twar a hot day."

"What did they find?" asked his wife, breathlessly.

"Dirt," Yates said, with an iconoclastic laugh, "a plenty of it. He 'peared toler'ble disapp'inted till he hearn 'bout the Stranger People's buryin'-groun'. Adelaide"—he raised his voice suddenly—"that thar idjit o' a man, he 'lows ez them Leetle People warn't grown folks at all—jes' chil'n; I tried ter tell the fool better—jes' leetle chil'n!"

He glanced quickly at her, as if prepared for the shock of surprise which must be elicited by this onslaught upon the faith of a whole community. Somehow, as she again fastened her eyes on the sombre declivity, her face wore the look of one whose secret thought is revealed in words. In the few years that she had lived here, a stranger herself, in some sort—not accustomed, as was her husband, to a lifelong vicinage to the pygmy burial-ground—she had developed no receptivity to that uncanny idea of a race of dwarfs. Always as children she had thought of the Little People; she had made no effort to reconcile this theory with the strange fact that no similar sarcophagi, enclosing larger frames, were known of far or near; she found no incongruity in the idea that infants should have been thus segregated in death from all their kindred; it seemed a meet resting-place for youth and innocence, thus apart from all others. They were children—only children; all asleep; asleep and resting! With the strange fascination that the spot and its unique tradition exerted upon her, she would glance thither from time to time throughout the day, pausing at her task to follow the shadow of the clouds sweeping over the purple slope, and to listen to the whir of bees in the still noon amongst the sweet fern and to the call of the glad birds. When she sang in fitful fragments a crooning lullaby to her own child, who had made all childhood doubly dear and doubly sacred to her heart, she was wont to watch pensively the tender glow of evening reddening there, so soft, so brilliant, so promissory of the splendid days to come that it needs must suggest that supernal dawn when the Little People should all rise to greet the rising sun that they had seen set for the last time so long ago. In bright, slanting rows, as swift, as ethereal, as dazzling as the morning mist transfigured by the sun's rays—with her prophetic eyes she could behold them, rank after rank, coming down the slope in this radiant guise; meanwhile they slept as securely as her child slept in her arms, their waking as certain.

The picture recurred to her thoughts at the moment. "They will all rise before we-uns at the jedgmint-day," she said, her far-seeing gray eyes clear and crystalline upon the unmarked place.

"Laws-a-massy, Adelaide!" cried her husband, in a tone of expostulation and alarm, with a quick glance over his shoulder, "what ails ye ter say sech ez that—ez ef it war gospel sure?"

Her eyes came back reluctantly to him; the question had jarred upon her reverie. "Ye air 'bleeged ter know that," she retorted, with a slighting manner. "The sun strikes through the gap an' teches the Leetle People's buryin'-groun' a full haffen hour an' better afore it reaches the graveyard o' the mounting folks down thar in the shadder o' the range."

He listened ponderingly to this logic, his chin resting upon the muzzle of his rifle; then, with a noiseless shifting of his posture, he looked again with a cautious gesture over his shoulder. He was a hardy hunter, of a vigorous physique and but scantily acquainted with fear, but this eerie idea of a thousand or so adult pygmy Tennesseeans astir on the last day, forestalling the familiar mountain neighbors, robbed immortality for the moment of its wonted prestige.

The oppressive influence even laid hold on his strong frame, and he extended one powerful arm at full length, with a futile effort to yawn.

"G'long, Adelaide! G'long an' milk the cow!" he exclaimed, with the irritation that was always apparent in his manner when perplexity seized upon his brain—a good organ of its kind, but working best in the clear air of out-of-door contemplation. He was a man of sound common-sense, but with no endowment for furtive speculation, and purblind gropings, and tenuous deductions from flimsy premises. He heaved a great sigh of relief to remember the cow—the good, homely cow—at the bars.

Adelaide had slowly taken up the piggin. "Ye hain't told me why that thar valley man sets so much store by the Leetle People. I'll go arter I hear that word."

"Waal, I ain't a-goin' ter speak it," retorted her husband, with a threatening conjugal frown. "I ain't a-goin' ter let leetle Mose be kep' up hyar till midnight a-waitin' for you-uns ter milk the cow. It's cleverly dark now."

"Leetle Mose" was a name to conjure with; even the wife denied herself the luxury of the last word, so lost was she in the mother. She put the piggin hastily upon her head, and went, with the erect, graceful pose that the prosaic weight fosters, down the winding path beyond the spring to the bars where the red cow stood lowing.

The household idol, sitting upon the step with a grave, inscrutable countenance, silently watched her departure, then suddenly set up a loud and bitter wail of desertion. It was in vain that she paused and called back promises of return, albeit he understood well the language which so far he refused to speak; in vain that his father came and sat beside him on the step, and patted him with a large hand upon his limited back. It was a good opportunity for the lamentation in which "leetle Mose" was prone to indulge. He had a reputation that extended far beyond his ken—for the fence bounded his world—not, however, that he would have cared. He was known throughout many a cove, and even in the settlement, as the "wust chile ever seen, an' a jedgmint, ef the truth war known, on Stephen an' Adelaide Yates fur hevin' been so fly-away an' headstrong in thar single days—both of 'em wild ez deer, an' gin over ter dancin' an' foolishness." It was with a certain grim satisfaction that the settlement hearkened to the fact that they were "mighty tame now." Thus Dagon's filial exploits lacked no plaudits. His mental capacities, too, received due recognition. "He be powerful smart, though; he won't let 'em hev no mo' comp'ny 'n he can help. I reckon he knows they wouldn't 'tend ter him ef they hed ennything else they could 'tend ter. Sometimes that chile be a-settin' on the front porch sorter peaceable, restin' hisse'f from hollerin'," his maternal great-aunt Jerushy chronicled to a coterie of pleased gossips, "an' ef he see a wagon a-stoppin' at the gate, or a visitor a-walkin' up the path, he'll mos' lif' the roof off with his screeches. An' screech he will till they leaves; he hev mos' made me deef fur life. I useter spend consider'ble o' my time with that young couple"—and there was an ousted suggestion in Aunt Jerushy's manner. "It makes his dad an' mam 'shamed fur true, his kerryin's on; they air bowed down ter the yearth!"

The widespread strictures on their idol were very bitter to the parental worshippers. Often, with a troubled aspect, they took counsel together, and repeated in helpless dudgeon the criticism of his kindred and neighbors. It was powerless to shake their loyalty. Even his father, whom he chose to regard with a lowering and suspicious mien, unless it were in the dead hours of the night, when he developed a morbid craving to be trotted back and forth and up and down the puncheon floor, was flattered with the smallest tokens of his confidence.

He had an admirable perseverance. He sat still weeping in the midst of his pink fat with so much distortion of countenance and display of gums, and such loud vocal exercises, when Adelaide returned, that she cast upon her husband a look of deep reproach, and he divined that she suspected him of having gone to the extreme length of smiting Dagon in her absence, and despite his clear conscience he could but look guilty.

"Oh, Mose!" he said, outdone, as he rose, "ye air so mean—ye air so durned mean!"

But the callow wrath of the "leetle Mose" was more formidable than the displeasure of the big man, and his heart burned at the short reply of his wife, a sarcastic "I reckon so!" when he protested that he had done nothing to Mose to which any fair-minded infant could have taken exceptions. The vocalizations of Dagon were of such unusual power this evening that his strength failed shortly after supper, and he was asleep earlier than his ordinary hour, for he was something of a late bird. Belying all his traits, he looked angelic as he lay in his little rude box cradle. When the moonlight came creeping through the door it found him there, with a smile on his rose-leaf lips, and both his pink hands unclasped on the coverlet. Adelaide, despite the silence and studious air of preoccupation she had maintained toward her husband, could but beg Yates to observe the child's beauty as she sank down, dead beat, on the doorstep to rest, but still keeping one hand on the rocker of the cradle, for motion was pleasing to "leetle Mose," and by this requisition he doubtless understood that he could absorb and occupy his elders, even when he was unconscious.

"He's purty enough, the Lord knows," the dejected father assented, as he sat smoking his pipe at a little distance on the step of the porch. "I dun' no', though, what ails him ter take sech a spite at me. I do all I kin ter pleasure him."

Adelaide experienced a vicarious qualm of conscience. "He ain't got no spite at you-uns," she said, reassuringly, in the hope that her words could speak louder than Dagon's actions. "It's jes' his teeth harry him so."

"An' ye didn't useter be so easy sot agin me." Yates preferred this complaint after a meditative puff of the pipe. There is a melancholy pleasure in the role of domestic martyr. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

"I ain't sot agin ye, but somebody hev got ter take up an' gin up fur leetle Mose. Men folks hain't got no patience with leetle chil'n."

"I never knowed what 'twar ter gin up afore," he protested. "I ain't done nuthin' else sence Mose war born. Don't go nowhar, don't see nuthin' nor nobody."

He smoked languidly for a few moments, then, with decision: "Thar ain't no use in it; we-uns mought jes' ez well hev gone ter the infair over yander in the cove at Pettingill's ez not ter-night, an' got Aunt Jerushy ter bide with Moses till we kem back."

"Moses would hev hollered hisself inter a fit; he jes' stiffens at the sight o' Aunt Jerushy."

"Waal, then, we-uns mought hev tuk Moses along; I hev seen plenty o' babies sleepin' at a dance an' camp-meetin's, an' even fune'ls. I'll bet thar's a right smart chance of 'em over at Pettingill's now."

"Mought cotch measles from some of 'em, too, or whoopin'-cough," said his wife, conclusively.

There was no help for it. Seclusion with their Dagon was evidently their fate until "leetle Mose" should be grown to man's estate.

There was a long pause, in which the mercurial and socially disposed Yates dimly beheld the lengthening perspective of this prospect. He had been a dancer of famous activities and a joyous blade at all the mountain merry-makings, and he had married the liveliest girl of his acquaintance—with no little trouble, too, for she had been a mountain belle and something of a coquette. He sometimes could hardly identify with these recollections the watchful-eyed and pensive little mother and the home-staying wife.

"I wouldn't mind it ef Moses didn't treat me so mean," he resumed, all his sensibilities sorely wounded. "I do declar' I be kep' hid out so in the woods that I war plumb flustered when I seen them valley men this evenin' down thar at the mound. I wouldn't hev been s'prised none ef I hed jes' sot out an' run from 'em an' hid ahint a tree like old folks 'low the Injuns useter do whenst they seen a white man."

"Ye never 'lowed ez what set that valley man ter talkin' 'bout the Leetle People," she said, seeking to divert his mind from his unfilial son, and to open a more congenial topic. Her eyes, full of the moonlight, turned toward the slope where the sheen, richly metallic and deeply yellow, rested; the rising disk itself was visible through the gap in the mountains; much of the world seemed in some sort unaware of its advent, and lay in the shadow, dark and stolid, in a dull invisibility, as though without form and void. The moon had not yet scaled the heights of the great range; only that long clifty gorge cleaving its mighty heart was radiant with the forecast of the splendors of the night, and through this vista, upon the mystic burial-ground, fell the pensive light like a benison.

Yates, too, glanced toward it with a kindling eye and an alert interest.

"He 'pears ter be a powerful cur'us man. Somebody 'lowed he war a-diggin' fur jugs an' sech ez the Injuns hed—leastwise them ez built the mounds; he 'lows 'twarn't no Injuns; and Pete Dinks tole it ez how the jugs mus' be like that'n ez Felix Guthrie 'lowed war in the grave o' one o' the Leetle People."

He paused. She turned her white, startled face toward him, her eyes distended. Her voice was bated with horror—a mere whisper.

"What grave? How do Fee ondertake ter know sech ez air in the Stranger People's graves?"

In his instant irritation because of the problem of her mental attitude he lifted his voice, and it sounded strident above the droning susurrus of the cicada, which filled the summer night with a drowsy monotone, and the insistent iteration of the falls.

"Gloryful gracious, Adelaide, surely ye mus' hev hearm ez how one o' them big rocks in the water-fall thar fell from the top wunst, an' crashed down inter the ruver. An' it kerried cornsider'ble o' the yearth along the ruver-bank with it, an' tuk off the top slab o' the stone coffin o' one o' these hyar Leetle People. They hain't buried more'n two feet deep. An' Fee—'twar on his lan'—he had ter move his fence back-'ards, an' whilst he war about it he got that slab an' put it whar it b'longed, an' kivered the grave agin. An' so he seen the jug in thar with the bones. The jug hed shells in it, Fee say, an' the skeleton hed beads round its neck. That all happened, now ez I kem ter study on it, afore ye an' me war married."

His acerbity had evaporated in the interest of the narration, and in the evolution of an excellent reason for her ignorance of these things that had happened previous to her advent into the neighborhood. He did not notice that she took no advantage of the excuse to upbraid him with his readiness to find fault, and that she made no rejoinder as she sat, her head depressed, her whole attitude crouching, her dilated eyes fixed with a horror-stricken fascination upon the pygmy burial-ground, in that broad, lucent expanse of the yellow moonlight which was still streaming through the illuminated gorge of the mountains into an otherwise dusky world. The events of the afternoon were reasserting themselves in his mind. He laughed a little as he reviewed them.

"Fee hed been huntin' with me ter-day, an' this valley man—I b'lieve they 'lowed his name war Shattuck, an' he air a lawyer whar he kem from; he don't dig fur a living—whenst he hearn 'bout that, he say, quick ez lightning: 'Would ye know the spot agin? What made ye leave the jar thar? What made ye put the slab back?' An' Fee—ye know how crusty an' sour an' cantankerous he be—he say, 'Them Leetle People air folks, an' I hev no call ter go grave-robbin' ez I knows on!' That thar Shattuck turned fire-red in a minit. He air a mighty nice, sa-aft-spoken, perlite man, though spindlin'. An' he talked mos'ly ter me arter that—Fee stood by an' listened—an' I liked Shattuck middlin' well. He 'lowed ez 'twar important ter know fur the history of the kentry—an' he did sound sorter like he war vagrantin' in his mind—ter know ef them Leetle People war grown folks or jes' chil'n. He b'lieves they war jes' chil'n, but ef he could see jes' one skull he could tell."

Adelaide gasped; she reached out her hand mechanically and laid it upon the feet of the baby curled up in his soft, warm nest. Her husband's glance absently followed her movement, but he went on unheeding:

"An' Fee, standin' stare-gazin' him, ez sullen ez a bar with a sore head, axed, 'How kin ye tell?' ez much ez ter say, 'Ye lie!' But Shattuck war perlite ez ever. 'Many ways; by their teeth, for instance—their wisdom teeth.' Then he went a-maunderin' on 'bout a man he knowed ez could jes' take a bone o' a animal ez he never seen, ez lived hyar afore the flood, an' tell how tall 'twar an' what it eat—I do declar' he did sound like he war crazy, though he looked sensible ter the las'—an' this l'arned man could actially medjure an' make a pictur' of sech a animal out'n a few bones. An' Fee, he jes' stood listenin' long enough ter say, 'Them Leetle People never done me no harm, an' I ain't goin' ter do them none jes' 'kase they air leetle an' dead, an' can't holp tharse'fs. They may hev hed a use fur thar teeth in thar lifetime; I hain't got no use fur 'em now.' An' he whurled around an' put his foot inter his stirrup an' war a-goin' ter ride off, whenst the valley man cotch his bridle an' say, 'Ye hev got no objections ter my excavatin' on yer land, though?'"

Yates laughed lazily. "I do declar' 'twar too durned funny. Fee didn't know what the long-tongued sinner meant by 'excavatin',' an' I didn't nuther till arterward. But Fee, he jes' wanted ter be contrairy, no matter what, so he jes' say, powerful glum, 'I dun' no' 'bout that,' and rid off down the road. An' this Shattuck, he jes' stood lookin' after Fee with his chin cocked up in the air, an' he say, 'That's a sweet youth!' He speaks out right plain an' spunky fur sech a spindlin' man. Everybody laughed but Rhodes; he looked mightily tuck back ter hev his friend making game o' the mounting folks. Fee's vote counts jes' the same ez ef he war ez pleasant ez a basket o' chips. So Rhodes, he sorter frowned up an' say, 'Ye don't onderstan' Felix Guthrie. He air a good-hearted man, but he ain't been treated right, an' it's sorter soured him. He's good at heart, though.' An' this Shattuck 'peared ter take the hint; he say sorter stridin' about, off-hand, an' that leetle soft hat o' his'n on the side o' his head, 'I mus' make frien's with him, then; I mus' git on the right side o' him.' An' up spoke one o' them Peakes—they war holpin' ter look on at the few ez war willin' ter dig—'The only way,' he say, 'ter make frien's with Fee Guthrie air ter fondle him with a six-shooter.' Shattuck laffed. But Rhodes, he be a-shettin' him up all the time, an' a-hintin' at him, an' a-lookin' oneasy. Rhodes air skeered 'bout his 'lection, ef the truth war knowed."

He stretched his arms above his head and drew a long sigh of pleasurable reminiscence. "We hed a right sorter sociable evenin'. I'll be bound they air all over yander at the infair now. I know Rhodes danced at the weddin' the t'other night at Gossam's, an' they do say he kissed the bride, though they mought hev been funnin' 'bout'n that."

He looked at her once more, noticing at last the absorbed, intent expression of her lustrous, thoughtful eyes; the thrill of some feeling unknown to him was in her hand as she laid it upon his, and asked in an irrelevant, mysterious, apprehensive tone, "What do 'excavate' mean?"

"Hey?" he exclaimed. He had already forgotten what he had said, in the flexibility of his shallow mental processes, and recalled it by an effort. "Shucks! Jes' dig—that's all. Folks hev got a heap o' cur'ous words o' late years."

Her grasp tightened convulsively on his arm, "'Mongst the graves o' the Leetle People?"

He nodded, looking at her with vague surprise and gathering anger.

"He sha'n't!" she cried, finding her voice suddenly, and it rang out shrilly into the soft, perfumed night air. "It's in rifle range—the Leetle People's buryin'-groun'. I hev got aim enough ter stop his meddlin', pryin' han's 'mongst them pore Leetle People's bones. An' I'll do it, too," she added, in a lower tone.

Her grasp had relaxed, for he had sprung to his feet and stood looking at her, infinitely shocked, the image of the unoffending gentleman and scholar, whom she threatened, in his mind, all unaware how it differed from the ghoul of her ignorant fancy.

"Adelaide!" he exclaimed, with that accent of authority which he seldom assumed, "hesh up! Tech that rifle, an' I'll turn ye out'n my door!"

She, too, was standing; she turned a stony face, white in the moonlight, upon him as if she could not realize his words, but her eyes were slowly kindling with a fury before which he quailed.

He was, however, in every way the stronger, and the gravity of the crisis taught him how to use his strength.

"Take them words back," he reiterated, as if all unaffrighted, "or I'll turn ye out'n my house forever, an' ye'll leave leetle Mose hyar, for he b'longs ter me!"

The fear that had quivered in his heart seemed suddenly translated into her eyes; they looked an eloquent reproach, then, suddenly, all the fire was quenched in tears, and she sank down sobbing by the side of the cradle, leaving him standing there triumphant, it is true, but finding bitterness in his victory. He sat down, presently, in his former posture, feeling ill-used and reproachful and indignant. It was difficult to resume the conversation in the tone which he had maintained, and as she persistently wept, he resorted to reproaches.

"I dun' no' what in Canaan is the reason ye an' me can't git along 'thout quar'lin'. We never used ter quar'l none in our courtin' days, an'"—as a fresh burst of sobs acquiesced in this statement, he hastened to put the blame upon her—"ye never used ter talk so like a durned fool." The chilly sensation which her threat, so full of horror, had caused him, renewed for the moment its thrill.

"'Tain't like a fool," she declared, lifting her tearful face. "Ef 'tis, then the law's a fool—the law, ez ye set sech store on. Ain't the law agin diggin' up folks's bones? I ain't a-goin' ter do nothin' 'bout'n it, but ef ennybody war cotched at sech in the mounting-folks's buryin'-groun' they'd hev a few ounces o' lead ter tote off inside of 'em ef they could git away at all, an' ye know they would."

The difference of their standpoint—his normal views unconsciously modified by the talk of the scientific theorist, in which sentiment was easily subordinated to the acquisition of valuable knowledge, none of which could he adequately impart at second hand to her, quivering as she was with the idea of sacrilege and the sanctity of the tomb—baffled him for the moment; he hesitated; he found no words to convey the impressions he had received; then he gave way to the anger always the sequence of the antagonism of opinion between them.

"Ye don't sense nuthin', an' ye dun' no' nuthin', an' ye can't l'arn nuthin'."

"I don't want ter l'arn sech ez ye 'pear ter pick up in the settlemints," she retorted, with spirit. "Robbin' the dead an' sech! I'd ruther stay at home an' jes' 'sociate with leetle Moses—a sight ruther."

"I hedn't!" he declared, roughly. He rose to his feet. "I don't hev no peace at home. I reckon I mought ez well go whar I don't get quar'led with ez much. I mought jes' ez well be at the infair ez hyar."

"Jes' ez well," she sarcastically assented.

He stepped past her into the room to lay aside his shot-pouch and powder-horn, as not meet accoutrement for a festive gathering.

"Ye hed better kerry yer rifle. Ain't ye 'feared ef ye leave it hyar I mought take aim at suthin' in the Leetle People's buryin'-ground?" she said, looking up at him from her lowly seat on the floor, her eyes hard and dry and bright.

"Edzac'ly—fool enough fur ennything," he declared; but it was empty-handed that he stepped out into the moonlight.

She made no effort to detain him; she did not call him back. He paused when in the shadow of the great hickory-trees about the spring, and looked up at the little house. The moon was above the mountains, nearly full and radiant. Trailing luminous mists crept over the summits after it, and caught the light. All the world shared in its gracious splendors now, and the great gap, the gorge of the river, bereft of the unique illumination its rugged vistas had monopolized while all was dark about it, seemed melancholy and pensive, of reduced prominence and blurred effect.

The dew glistened on the slanting roof of the little log-cabin; the vines swayed duplicated by their moving shadows, and where the moonlight fell unbroken through the doorway he saw, against the dark background of the interior, Adelaide, still sitting on the floor beside the cradle, and he heard the monotone of the rockers as they thumped to and fro.

He heard it long after distance had nullified the sound. The wayside katydids sang their song in chorus with it; the tree-toad shrilling stridulously but bore it a burden. Even the roar of the water-fall was secondary, however it might pervade and thrill the wilderness. More than once, as he went along the dark and dewy road, he paused doubtfully, half minded to retrace his way. "I oughtn't ter hev tuck Adelaide up so sharp. Sence she hev hearn the notion ez them Leetle People war jes' leetle chil'n, like Mose, she'll set mo' store by 'em, jes' ter complimint him, ter the las' day she live. I'd hate ter be sech a fool 'bout leetle Mose ez she be." He shook his head solemnly as he stood in the road, fragrant with the odor of the azaleas in the undergrowth and the balsamic breath of the low-hanging firs, which were all fibrously a-glitter wherever the moon touched the dew in the dense midst of their shadows. "An' she 'pears to think herse'f gifted with wisdom now'days, an' sets up ter make remarks ez sobersided ez ef she war risin' fifty year old. 'Fore she war married she never hed no 'pinions on nuthin'—ez frisky as a squir'l an' ez nimble. An' now'days she ain't got nuthin' but 'pinions, an' air ez sot in her doctrines an' ez solemn ez the rider, an' ez slow-spoken."

While he still hesitated, there came into his mind a foretaste of this slow diction, fashioned to reproach or to ill-disguised triumph in sedulously casual phrase, that would greet him should he return home, his threat of attending the infair all unaccomplished. He would have been glad enough to be sitting once more upon the low step of the little porch, with Adelaide and the cradle of the slumbering Dagon close by; but the pleasures of the festive gathering, grown all at once strangely vapid and sterile to his imagination, lay between him and the return to this calm domestic sphere; otherwise he would relinquish all pretence of conserving those elements of primacy which he should arrogate and maintain.

"It's time Adelaide hed fund out who's the head o' this hyar fambly. 'Tain't her, an' 'tain't leetle Mose, an' she ain't a-goin' to l'arn no younger."

II.

In those open fields near the Pettingill cabin where the infair was in progress, the moonlight seemed to reach its richest effulgence. There was something in the delicate blue-green tint of the broad blades of the waving Indian corn, where the dew lay with a glitter like that of the whetted edge of a keen weapon, which was not revoked by the night, being of so chaste and fine a tone that it comported with that limited scale of color which the moon countenances. With the unbroken splendor upon this expanse, all the brighter because of the deep sombre forests above and the dense dark jungle of the laurel below—for the corn stood upon so steep a slope that how the crop was cultivated seemed a marvel to the unaccustomed eye—it was visible a long way to Stephen Yates as he approached on the country road; even after he had crossed the little log foot-bridge over the river, and commenced the steep ascent of a wooded hill, he could still catch glimpses now and then of this dazzling green through the heavy black shadows of the great trees, from the foliage of which every suggestion of color had been expunged. Another light presently came from a different direction, goading the dulled and preoccupied mind of the young man into fresh receptivities. A sound arose other than the tinkling metallic tremors and gurglings of the mountain stream—the sound of a fiddle; a poor thing enough, doubtless, but voicing a wild, plaintive melody, which pervaded the woods with vibrant rhythmic tones, even in the distances, where it wandered fitfully and faint, and now and again was lost. It issued from out a great tawny flare, under the dense boughs of the trees, that grew a brighter yellow as Yates drew nearer, soon resolving itself into the illuminated squares of the doors and windows of the Pettingill cabin. More than once figures, with gigantic shadows that reached high up among the trees, eclipsed these lights, and suggested to him the superannuated spectators of the festivity, looking in upon it from porch and window. Certain masses of shadow began to be differentiated amidst the dusky, tawny vistas in the darkness, now only vaguely asserting an alien texture from the heavy shade of the foliage, and now becoming definite and recognizable as sundry household furnishings, evicted and thrust upon the bare ground to make room for the dancing. The loom cut a sorry figure standing out under the trees. Dimly discerned, it seemed to wear an aspect of forlorn astonishment, consciously grotesque and discouraged. And then, as the path wound, it receded to obscurity, and his attention was bespoken by the spinning-wheels close by the wood-pile, all a-teeter on the uneven flooring of the chips, and now and again, as if by a common impulse, awhirl in a solemn, hesitant revolution, as some tricksy wind came out of the woods and went its way.

A sinuous turn of the river brought it close to the Pettingill cabin, and in the darkness he could see the stars, all come down to the earth, the splendid Lyra playing in the ripples. A flare, too, from the festive halls glassed itself in certain shallows; the rainbow hues of the warping bars hard by were reflected on this placid surface, and the great gaunt frame for the first time beheld its skeleton proportions. The rhythmic beat of the untiring feet on the puncheon floor of the cabin pulsed with the palpitations of the stars; the fiddle sang and sang as ceaselessly as the chanting cicada without, and the frogs intoning their sylvan runes by the water-side. All the night seemed given over, in a certain languorous, subtly pensive way, to the rustic merry-making of the infair, and only Stephen Yates felt himself an intruder and out of place. As his step fell upon the porch, in its most secluded and shadowy corner, he winced to note the quick, alert turning from the window of a shaggy gray head, and the keen, peering eyes of the hospitably intent father of the bridegroom who made the feast.

"Ye, Steve!" he cried out, "what ye kem a-sneak-in' up ter the house that-a-way fur? Howdy! howdy!"

This stentorian welcome, pitched high to drown the sound of the dancing and the long-drawn cadence of the violin, diverted the attention of the by-standers, who, their faces unfamiliar in the combined effects of the high lights from the windows and the deep shadows of the darkness without, all turned to gaze at the new-comer and to assist at the colloquy.

"We-uns hev all been a-gittin' married round hyar lately. Whar's that purty wife o' yourn? Lef' her at home?" Genuine dismay and covert rebuke were in the very inflections of the host's voice, although he sought to make it as hearty and effervescent as before. "Lef' her at home? Ter mind the baby? Waal, we air a-goin' ter miss her, but mebbe the baby would hev missed her mo'. Waal, ye air welcome, ennyhow."

"They tell me, Yates," remarked one of the by-standers, with the pious intention of making himself disagreeable, "ez you-uns hev got the meanes' baby in the kentry. Plumb harries ye out'n house an' home with the temper of him."

"I have hearn that, too," affirmed another, the gleaming teeth of his half-illumined face attesting his relish of the abashed attitude of the forlorn Benedict. "I hev hearn 'way down ter Hang-Over Mountain big tales 'bout'n the survigrous temper o' that thar brat o' yourn. They 'low they kin hear him holler plumb ter the Leetle Tennessee."

The others exchanged glances of derision. The goaded father plucked up a trifle of spirit.

"He may have a survigrous temper, an' he do holler; he hev got the lungs ter do it; fur I tell ye now he's a whale! He air goin' ter be the Big Man o' these mountings—a reg'lar Samson!"

"Sure enough?" demanded the host, who, in his double character of entertainer and father, showed more interest in "leetle Mose" than the bachelors felt, except as he subdued his paternal relative and rendered him ridiculous.

"Yes, sir! Git him to stand on his feet, sir, an' I tell ye his head will reach that high." Yates measured off a length of the post at least twice the height of Moses. "He's a whale!" And, with a gravely triumphant nod, he pushed boldly into the room, although he knew that the rows of elderly women against the wall were commenting upon his "insurance" in appearing without his wife, thence proceeding, doubtless, to tear the character of the "leetle Moses" in such manner as that flimsy and much rent and riddled fabric was capable of being further shred.

The floor trembled and elastically vibrated to the tread of the dancers. The fiddler was seated in a rickety chair, precariously perched upon a table that evidently felt also the recurrent thrills of the measured pace. An intimation of the reverence in which his genius was held was given in the generous glass at the feet of the musician, never allowed to grow empty, however often, with a dexterous downward lurch, he caught it up and applied it to his lips in the intervals of the "figures," which he cried aloud in a stentorian voice. The big boots on his long crossed legs swayed above the heads of the company; his own head was not far from the festoons of red peppers swinging from the brown beams, his face was rapt, his cheek rested on the violin; his eyes were half-closed, and yet his vision was clear enough to detect any effort on the part of a passer-by to perpetrate the threadbare joke of appropriating the glass at his feet devoted to his refreshment. Then the fiddle-bow demonstrated a versatile utility in the sharp rap which it could deal, and its swiftness in resuming its more ostensible uses. There was little laughter amongst the young hunters and their partners. They danced with glistening eyes and flushed cheeks and a solemn agility, each mandate of the fiddler watched for with expectant interest, and obeyed with silent alacrity. They were all familiar to Steve Yates, looking on from the vantage-ground of his twenty-two years at the scenes of his youth, as it were; for in this primitive society the fact that he was a married man rendered him as ineligible for a dancing partner as the palsy could have done. Only Leonard Rhodes seemed something of a novelty. He hailed from the county town, and was a candidate for the Legislature. In the nimble pursuance of the road to success and fame he mingled in the dance, and he would have esteemed it fortunate could his devoirs have always been as congenial. He affected a pronounced rural air, although even his best manners were further from the cosmopolitan standard at which he habitually aimed than he himself realized. He was a tall, well-built, brown-haired young man, with a deeply sunburned face, a small, laughing brown eye, a reddish-brown, waving beard of a fine tint and lustre, which he usually had dyed a darker tone to evade the red shade considered so great a defect in that region. Owing to the length of his absence from his home in the interests of his canvass, and the lack of the village barber and his arts, its color had quite regained its pristine value. He wore sedulously his old clothes, which, upon his handsome figure, hardly looked so old or so plain or so democratic as he would fain have had his constituents see them, or, indeed, as the garments would have seemed on another man. He danced impartially and successively with every girl in the room; and it was well for his political prospects, doubtless, that he had such elastic and tough resources for this amusement at his command, since the neglect of any one of the fair might have resulted in the loss of an indefinite number of votes among her relatives of the sterner sex. His opponent, a family man forty-five years of age, was in disastrous eclipse. The elder candidate could only stand in a corner with some old codgers, who were painfully unresponsive to his remarks and his jolly stories, and whose attention was prone to wander from his long, cadaverous, bearded face as he talked, and to follow the mazes of the dance.

Yates bethought himself of Rhodes's friend, the archæologist, and catching sight of him lounging in a window opposite, his face lighted with the first suggestion of pleasure that the evening had offered. He made the tour of the room gradually, pausing now to keep out of the way of the dancers; now darting mouse-like along the wall in the rear of a couple advancing to the centre; now respectfully edging past a row of the mountain dowagers seated in splint-bottomed chairs, and talking with loud, shrill glee, bestowing but scant recognition on the man who had left his wife at home. At last, after many hair-breadth escapes, he reached Mr. Shattuck, still lolling upon the window-seat.

"How hev ye been a-comin' on?" Yates demanded, looking down at him with a pleased smile.

For Mr. Shattuck, without the affectation of rustic proclivities, made his way so fairly into the predilections of the mountaineers that his friend Rhodes, who held himself a famous tactician and full of all the finer enterprises to capture public favor, had asked more than once how he managed it.

"I don't manage it," the other had said.

He was a man of some twenty-eight or thirty years of age, of medium height and with a slender figure, clad somewhat negligently in a dark suit of flannel; he wore a small, soft, blue hat with an upturned brim, which left his features unshaded. They were very keenly chiselled features, not otherwise striking, but their clear cutting imparted delicacy and intimations of refined force to his pale, narrow face. He had a long, drooping brown moustache, and his hair, cut close, was of a kindred tint, but darker. His eyes were full of light and life, darkly gray, and with heavy lashes, and as they rested upon the scene, unique to his experience, for he was city bred, one might never have divined the circumstance of initiation, so ready an acceptance of it all in its best interpretations did they convey. He made apparently no effort to assume this air and mental attitude. As he looked up his glance was singularly free and unaffected.

"I'm taking it all in," he said.

Yates, his fancy titillated by a fresh interest, his blood beginning to pulse at last to the rhythm of happiness in the air, for which the old fiddle marked the time, grudged himself so much pleasure which Adelaide could not share. His heart was warm with the thought of her; a subtle pain of self-reproach thrilled through his consciousness, and presently her name was on his lips.

"My wife," he said, with unwonted communicativeness to the stranger, "she's a great hand fur sech goin's on ez this; an' sech a dancer! Ye mought ez well compare a herd o' cows ter a nimble young fawn ez compare them gals ter Adelaide."

As he roared this out with all the force of his lungs above the violin's strain and the recurrent beat of the dancing feet, his enthusiasm re-enforcing the distinctness and volume of his speech, the careless Mr. Shattuck became slightly embarrassed, and looked about from one side to the other, as if fearful that the colloquy might be overheard. But no one seemed to notice except a certain long and lank mountaineer standing hard by, grizzled and middle-aged, who bore earnest testimony to the same effect, leaning down toward Shattuck to make himself heard.

"Yes, sir; a plumb beautiful dancer; light on her feet, I tell ye! The purties' gal ennywhar round hyar. I hev knowed her sence she war no bigger'n that thar citizen over yander."

He gave a jerk of his thumb toward a year-old child on the outskirts of the crowd standing at the knee of his grandmother, who supported him in an upright posture by keeping a clutch upon his petticoats, while he bobbed up and down in time to the music, thumping first one foot and then the other upon the floor, emulating and imitating the dancers, participating in the occasion with the zest of a born worldling. His grave face, his glittering eye, his scarlet plumpness of cheek, and his evident satisfaction in his own performance combined to secure an affectionate ridicule from the by-standers; but he, and indeed all else, was unobserved by the dancers.

"Ef I hed thunk Adelaide would hev put up with sech ez you-uns, Steve, I'd hev tried myself," protested the elderly bachelor, "though I ain't much of a marryin' man in gineral."

Yates received this with less geniality. "Ye needn't hev gin yerse'f the trouble," he retorted. "Haffen the mounting tried thar luck, an' war sent away with thar finger in thar mouth."

"An' 'mongst 'em all she made ch'ice of a man ez goes a-pleasurin' whilst she be lef' ter set at home like a old 'oman," and with a nod, half reproach, half derision, he strolled away.

A mild form of pleasuring certainly, to watch the solemn capering of the young mountaineers to and fro on the shaking puncheons, the vibrations of which, communicated to the tallow dips sputtering upon every shelf and table, caused the drowsy yellow light to so fluctuate that with the confusion and the wild whirl of dancing figures the details of the scene were like some half-discriminated furnishings of a dream. Such as it was, Yates's conscience gave him a sharper pang, especially when he thought of her as he had seen her last, the quiet, pure moonlight falling fibrous and splendid through the open door upon her grieved, upturned face as she crouched on the floor beside the sleeping child, angelic in his smiling, pensive dreams. Yates felt that he had been harsh; he felt this so poignantly that he gave himself no plea of justification. All that she had said seemed now natural and devoid of intention; only his alert censoriousness could have called it in question—and he had been her choice of all the mountain.

"Adelaide ain't keerin' fur sech ez this," he said, loftily. "A nangel o' light couldn't 'tice her away from leetle Mose. She fairly dotes on all the other chil'n in the worl' jes' out'n complimint ter leetle Mose. I hed a plumb quar'l with her this evenin'," he added, turning to the archæologist with a smile, "arter I hed told her ez ye reckoned them Leetle People buried thar on the rise war nuthin' but chil'n. She jes' fired up, sir, an' 'lowed ef ye went a-foolin' round them with yer fine book l'arnin' an' diggin' up thar bones, she'd pick ye off with a rifle. Leetle Mose hev made her mighty tender to all the chil'n."

Shattuck glanced up with a good-natured laugh; he recognized only fantastic hyperbole in the threat, and Yates once more experienced a qualm of self-reproach to realize how seriously he had regarded it, how heavily he had punished the extravagant, meaningless indignation.

"The only trouble I fear is getting the consent of the owner of the land," Shattuck said, easily, and his eyes reverted to the object that had before absorbed his attention. It was not the maelstrom of "Ladies to the right." Yates, following the direction of his intent gaze, experienced a trifle of surprise that it should be nothing more striking than Letitia Pettingill, the daughter of the house, standing in the doorway silently watching the dancing.

"A scrap of a gal" she was esteemed in the mountains, being a trifle under the average height, and delicately built in proportion. The light flickering out upon the porch barely showed the dark-green background of hop-vines in the black darkness without. Her dull, light-blue cotton dress, defined against this sombre hue, was swaying slightly aslant, the wind breaking the straight folds of the skirt. Her complexion was of a clear creamy tone; the hair, curling on her brow, and massed at the nape of the neck and there tied closely, the thick, short, curling ends hanging down, was a dusky brown, not black; and her eyes, well set and with long dark lashes and distinctly arched eyebrows, were of that definite blue which always seems doubly radiant and lucent when illumined by an artificial light. Her small straight features had little expression, but her lips were finely cut and delicately red. She held up one arm against the door-frame, and bent her inscrutable eyes on the quickening whirl.

"Waal, what Fee Guthrie kin see in her or what she kin see in Fee Guthrie ter fall in love with one another beats my time," said Yates, with a grin, commenting openly upon the focus of the other's attention.

Mr. Shattuck evidently perceived something of interest in her; he did not lift his eyes, but he rejoined with freshened animation:

"Guthrie? The young 'bear with the sore head' who owns the pygmy burying-ground?"

"That very actial bear," cried Yates, delighted with this characterization of his friend and neighbor. "His old cabin thar's 'bout tumbled down; 'twar lef him by his gran'dad, an' he lives up on the mounting with his step-mam; but he owns that house too; his dad's dead. Some folks 'low," he continued, rehearsing with evident gusto the gossip, "ez he don't keep comp'ny with Litt Pettingill. He jes' sot by her wunst at camp-meetin', 'kase him an' her war all the sinners present, an' that started the tale ez he war courtin' her; everybody else war either convicted o' sin, an' at the mourner's bench, or else shoutin' saints o' the Lord, prayin' an' goin' 'mongst the mourners. I never hearn tell o' nobody keepin' comp'ny with Letishy Pettingill; I'll be bound it'll take a heap better-lookin' gal 'n her ter suit Fee Guthrie."

"I should like ter know where he'd find her," observed Shattuck.

Yates turned to bend the eye of astonished and questioning criticism upon the unconscious object of their scrutiny.

"Ye 'low ez Litt Pettingill air well-favored, stranger?" he demanded at last, in amazement.

"Very pretty and very odd. I never saw a face in the least like hers."

"Waal!" exclaimed Yates. "Litt Pettingill's beauty air news ter the mountings. Some folks 'low she hev got a cur'us kind o' mind. Some even say she air teched in the head." His tone seemed to intimate that Mr. Shattuck, in the face of this fact, had reason to reform his standard of taste.

That gentleman shook his own head in contemptuous negation. "Never in this world. Never with that face."

"Waal, ye can't size her up now," insisted Yates, "leetle ez she be"—with a grin—"whilst she be a-standin' still. Ef ye war ter see her a-movin' an' a-turnin' roun', she's ez quick an' keen-lookin' ez a knife-blade in a suddint fight, an' mighty nigh ez dangerous. She looks at ye like she warn't lookin' at ye, but plumb through yer skull inter yer brains, ter make sure ye war tellin' her what ye thunk. She talks cur'ous, too, sorter onexpected an' contrariwise, an' she never could git religion. That's mighty cur'ous in gal folks. I ain't so mighty partic'lar 'bout men Christians, though I'm a perfesser myself, but religion 'pears ter me ter kem sorter nat'ral ter gal folks. 'Tain't 'kase she's too religious that she ain't a-dancin'. It's jes' 'kase nobody hev asked her. She ain't no sorter favorite 'mongst the boys."

Mr. Shattuck suddenly glanced up, half laughing, half triumphant, for the little figure in blue had just been led out to the centre of the floor, and the doorway was vacant save for a large brindled cur that stood upon the threshold, wagging his tail and watching the scene with a suave, indulgent, presidial gaze, as if he were the patron of the ball. To be sure, her partner was that man of facile admiration, the candidate Rhodes, but Shattuck experienced a vicarious satisfaction that it could not be said that she had not been asked to dance at all.

He watched the couple as the set formed anew, and noticed that Rhodes, with his sedulously rustic air, was beginning in the interim some conversation, stooping from his superior height for her reply. He rose suddenly to the perpendicular, an almost startled surprise upon his face as he stared; then he clapped his hands with a jocular air of applause, and his round laugh rang out with an elastic, unforced merriment, which suggested to his friend that he was finding the ways of policy not such thorny ways after all. Shattuck wondered vaguely if this demonstration, too, were of the affectations of propitiation, or if what she had said were clever enough to elicit it, or merely funny. His eyes followed the little blue-clad figure as she began to dance—her untutored movements all in rhythm with the music, as an azalea dances in time to the wind. Now she drifted about with short, mincing, hesitant steps, now with flying feet and skirts whirling, as if responsive to the circling impetus she could in no wise resist. She looked almost a child amongst the burlier and coarser forms. With her delicate hands, and her tiny feet, and her spirited face, and the faint blue color of her dress, she bore an odd contrast to the buxom beauty of the other mountain girls, clad in variegated plaided homespun. Her blue eyes were alight and glancing; her parted lips were red; her feet hardly seemed to touch the floor as her hands fell from one partner's grasp, and she came wafting through the party-colored maze, with outstretched arms, to another.

For the fun was waxing fast and furious with the added and unique diversion known as "Dancin' Tucker." The forlorn "Tucker" himself, partnerless in the centre of the set, capered solemnly up and down, adjusting his muscles and his pride to ridicule, which was amply attested by the guffaws that ever and anon broke from the spectators. However nonchalantly each temporary "Tucker" might deport himself in his isolated position, the earnestness of his desire to escape from his unwelcome conspicuousness by securing a partner, and his sincere objection to his plight, were manifested always upon the fiddler's command, "Gen'lemen ter the right," when he might join the others on their round, dogging the steps of the youth he wished to forestall, both balancing to each lady in succession. If, by chance, the "Tucker" succeeded first in catching a damsel's hands and swinging her around at the moment that the magic command "Promenade all!" sounded on the air, he left his pillory to the slower swain, who must needs forthwith "dance Tucker."

The traits of character elicited by the "Tucker" rôle constitute its true fascinations, and are manifold. One nimble young hunter seemed almost stricken with the palsy upon his isolation, or gradually petrifying, while he sought to dance alone in the middle of the circle, so heavily did each foot follow the other as he hopped aimlessly up and down; the expression of his eyes was so ludicrously pitiable and deprecatory, as they swept the coterie of the dowagers who lined the walls, that they screamed with laughter. The instant "Promenade all!" sounded upon the air, he made a frantic burst for liberty so precipitate that at the moment of touching the hand of the damsel of his choice he suddenly lost his equilibrium, and fell with a thunderous crash quite outside of the charmed periphery. Amidst the shouts of the company Rhodes caught the relinquished hands of the waiting lady, and triumphantly gallopaded away, thus escaping the ignominy of "dancin' Tucker."

And then Rhodes bethought himself suddenly of that future seat in the legislative halls of the State. Shattuck laughed to divine his anxiety as the meditative gravity gathered upon Rhodes's flushed and distended countenance; his white teeth, all on display, suddenly disappeared. His hand doubtfully stroked his beautiful undyed beard. There was something worse even than dancing Tucker at the infair. With every sharpened sense and every heightened emotion normal to the estate of candidacy, he was appreciating with how much less philosophy, with what scanty grace, indeed, he could endure to dance Tucker before the people at the polls in the November election. As the rueful "Tucker," with every bone shaken, gathered himself up slowly from the floor amidst the screaming and stamping elders—even the dancers and the fiddler had paused to laugh—his face scarlet, his lips compressed with pain, his eyes nervously glancing, unseeing, hither and thither, like a creature's in a trap, Rhodes stepped out from his place.

"This ain't fair," he said, taking the "Tucker" by the arm; "you were ahead of me, and I'd have been left if you hadn't tripped up. I'm Tucker by rights, an' I always play fair."

The "Tucker" looked at him with a doubtful, red, frowning face; but as Rhodes jocularly took his place in the centre, and the violin began a pizzicato movement, as if all the strings were dancing too, with a long sigh of relief he accepted the situation, and presently joined in the laugh at the lorn candidate-Tucker.

The fact of an ulterior motive is a wonderfully reconciling influence. Leonard Rhodes was dancing his way into the ballot-box, and thus it was that he thought it consistent with his dignity to seek to be an especially comical "Tucker." But the essential humor of the character of "Tucker" is his unwillingness to be funny, and his helpless absurdity and eagerness to elude his solitary dance. Human nature is so complex that even those whose profession it is to know it can predicate little even upon its most fundamental facts. As Rhodes bounded about, now and then executing a double-shuffle and cutting a pigeon-wing of an extraordinary agility, and more than once intentionally suffering an opportunity of securing a partner to escape him, remaining "Tucker" through several rounds, Shattuck heard comments among the by-standers altogether at variance with the candidate's expectations. "That's all done a purpose!" "He makes a tremenjious fool of hisself!" "He don't expect ter git married in this kentry!"

Shattuck wondered by what subtle unclassified perception, appertaining to candidate-nature, these unexpected results were at last borne in to Rhodes's consciousness, since he was unable to hear the whispers by reason of the noise of the dancing, or, in the midst of his absorbing saltatory activities, to mark any change of aspect among the spectators. His jocund face grew gradually incongruously grave and troubled as he bounded about with undiminished agility. These were muscular forces now, however, at work, sustaining his continuance—mere strength—instead of the joyous elasticity and animal spirits that had at first made him so light. When, finally, it was possible to bring his penance to a close, his politic monitions had all become confused and contradictory, and he made as blind and vehement a rush for the nearest opportunity as if he had been merely one of the young mountaineers, with no further or deeper purpose in participating in the pastime than the pleasure of dancing. His eyes seemed suddenly opened to his precipitancy as he stood successful among the couples, equipped at last with a partner, and flushed and tired and panting. A wild acclamation of jeering joy had arisen among the spectators, who during Rhodes's incumbency had grown tired and lost zest, for it was seldom, indeed, that Felix Guthrie "danced Tucker." As the young mountaineer, lowering and indignant, stood looking at Rhodes, the genuine mirth of the situation was communicated once more to the dancers, to the violin, and to the spectators, and the whole infair was throbbing with a new lease on life. The tallow candles, sputtering on tables and shelves, which had occasionally bowed almost to extinction before the passing breeze—the whole party vanishing in these momentary eclipses—seemed now endowed with freshened brilliancy; the fiddler changed the tune to a merrier; the odor of apple-jack, newly drawn from the barrel, was imbued with zestful suggestions as the jug was passed among the on-lookers; only to Leonard Rhodes did the hour seem late, and the room hot, and the violin dissonant, and the company frowsily rustic and distasteful, and himself an unlucky devil to have his fate and his best and highest aspirations and his chosen walk in life at their arbitrary will. No candidate, making the crucial test of personal experience, ever felt more doubtful of the wisdom of republican institutions than did Leonard Rhodes, realizing the fatuity of his choice for displacement, on meeting the gaze of Fee Guthrie, whom he had constituted "Tucker" for the nonce, for Guthrie's aspect gave no room for speculation as to the real sentiments with which he regarded the position.

As Felix Guthrie stood in his conspicuous place, both the strangers were impressed with the large symmetry of the scale upon which he was built, its perfect proportion, its graceful ease. His boots, reaching to the knee, were of a length and weight that might have been an effective bar to any display of agility on the part of one less accustomed to such cumbrous foot-gear. His brown jeans coat was buttoned to the chin and girded about with a leather belt, in which there were a pistol and a hunting-knife—in fact, the only preparation which he had made for the dance was the removal of his spurs and his hat. His face was deeply bronzed by the sun and the wind, somewhat too square, but otherwise so regularly cut that the features were inexpressive, save for the long brown eyes, with their lowering, suspicious, antagonistic gleam. The full, dark, straight eyebrows almost met above them. His hair, of a rich yellow color, falling in long, loose, feminine ringlets on either side of this large, surly, aggressive face, had an almost grotesque effect, so far is our civilization from the days of the lovelocks. It hung down on his collar, and curled with a grace and readiness that were the envy of more than one of his partners. He was known far and wide as an "ugly customer," in reference to his surly and belligerent traits of character, which rather overshadowed his physical endowments. Rhodes, however, had no fear of him, save for his political influence, for he was a man of some hereditary consideration, and of substance—of more than moderate means, according to the standard of the cove—and in no wise had he ever been known to be placated or to forgive an affront. It was with a heavy heart that the candidate began to dance to his doom, which he now felt was inevitable, wishing that he could have the immunity of his opponent, whose age had rendered him ineligible for mingling in the festivities of the infair. His eyes ever and anon wandered to the "Tucker," who was beginning to dance too, not vehemently, but with a wonderful softness and lightness, considering his ponderous accoutrements, his curls all in commotion, delicately waving and oscillating about his fierce, intent, unsmiling face. This was a "Tucker" of unique interest and value. The windows were full of the loiterers without; the spectators about the walls laughed breathlessly, and now and again stood up to catch an unimpeded glimpse of him amidst the dancers moving to the fiddler's mandate.

The musician was a wise man in his generation, and understood the human nature amongst which his lot was cast. He had kept sundry "Tuckers" dancing, as mechanically and unwillingly as if they trod on hot iron, long, long after they had despaired of ever hearing again the "Gen'lemen ter the right" which gave them their chance, often elusive, to escape. But he made Fee Guthrie's "Tucker" a short rôle. The spectators were hardly accustomed to him in the unbeloved character when the sudden command "To the right" smote sharply upon the air, and the circle was awhirl anew. Felix Guthrie, in the midst, manifested none of the precipitancy of his predecessors. His eyes were aglow; his feet moved softly in certain "steps" of his own invention; his whole attitude was one of expectancy, of abeyance. Scanning continually the revolving crowd, he looked like a panther ready to spring. When the word came at last, and he darted forward, the whole attack was most accurately adjusted to the moment. He had chosen to forestall Rhodes, who was balancing to Letitia Pettingill. There was only an instant's difference in the quick movements, but instead of "swinging" the man who came first, according to the rules, she suddenly swerved aside, passed under Guthrie's outstretched arm, and, with a radiant face and sapphire eyes, held out both hands to the candidate, who, bewildered, clasped them, and the two swung round in the customary revolution, leaving Guthrie "Tucker" as before. He stood as if petrified in the instant's silence that ensued. Then, as a great clamor of laughter and surprised comment arose, he sprang upon Rhodes, his grip on the candidate's throat. Rhodes, himself of a brawny strength, had put forth its uttermost to defend himself. A wave of wind went through the room, flickering all its candles and blending the fluctuating shadows. In their midst the bewildered guests saw, as in a dream, Guthrie deal, with the butt of the pistol clasped in his hand, a blow upon the candidate's head. The next moment the sharp crack of the discharged weapon pealed through the room, and the puncheons trembled with the heavy fall as Rhodes came down at full length on the floor. The violin quavered into silence, the crowd drew off suddenly, then again pressed close about the insensible figure; the wind once more went through the rooms, with all the shadows racing after; and only the baby, still dancing in the corner—although he, too, had stopped a moment and winked hard at the clamorous, jarring tone of the pistol—was unaware that "dancin' Tucker" at the infair had ended in bloodshed, and that the gayety was over for the time.

III.

Shattuck sprang up, crying out, "Stop him! Don't let him escape!" as he rushed to lift his friend's bleeding head from the floor. Despite the turmoil of his emotions, he appreciated with all his keenly tutored senses the antithesis of the effect of Felix Guthrie's massive immobility as he stood hard by wiping the blood from the butt of the smoking pistol.

"Stop him!" he retorted; "hedn't ye better wait till I set out ter run somewhar?"

There was a bravado in the situation not altogether distasteful, Shattuck knew, to the spirit of the backwoodsmen, and although there were muttered reproaches amongst them, no one laid hands on Felix Guthrie, still looking about to the right and to the left with lowering eyes, and still wiping the blood from his pistol with the soft brim of his hat, that it might not rust upon the weapon to its injury.

The most vehement expressions of reprobation came from the host, who loudly upbraided Felix Guthrie for his lack of "manners," and bewailed the omen of the incident, as he knelt beside the wounded candidate with one of the limp hands in his.

"Thar ain't been nobody died on these puncheons sence Sandy McVeigh called my gran'dad ter the door an' shot him down in his tracks! Thar's been cornsider'ble quiet hyar' sence. The old man war a powerful fighter an' a tartar, an' the neighborhood war peacefuller with him out'n it than in it, ef I do say it myse'f. An' now Fee Guthrie kems hyar a-killin' folks ter spite the infair—whenst we hev hed sech luck with the weddin' an' the supper an' all—an' stain up these old puncheons with a bloody death one more time!"

His gray shock head bobbed about over the prone figure, and as he made his unique lament he sought to stanch the wounds, still bleeding profusely. He rose with a sudden alacrity when, on the outskirts of the crowd, a heralding cry announced that the doctor was coming. Even then it was a question of propriety and hospitality which took precedence with him.

"Let's git him onto a bed, boys; quick! quick! Don't let Doc Craig kem hyar an' tell the whole kentry-side ez we-uns let Mr. Rhodes die on the floor 'kase I don't vote on his side. I wonder I never thunk o' it before. Let's git him onto a bed."

Shattuck's objections to moving him were overborne in the turmoil. A dozen strong fellows seized the prostrate figure, and it was lifted as if it had no weight, and swiftly borne up the narrow stairs to be laid upon a bed in the roof-room. Shattuck, feeling helpless in the midst of these coercive circumstances, could only follow, his protests grinding between his teeth, almost unconsciously metamorphosed into curses. But as he rose step by step on the steep narrow stair blockaded by the crowd pressing after the wounded man, and the roof-room came gradually into view, he grew more content, so palpably for the better was the change. The window at each gable end stood open; into one fell the silvery splendor of the moon; the other was dusky with shadows, though beyond he caught the interfulgent rays amongst the sycamore leaves. The batten shutters swayed gently in the wind. The air was full of vaguely prophetic intimations of dawn. A pigeon that had nested in the niche between the chimney and the wall was astir for a moment, and cooed softly. The dust and glare of the room below seemed far away. The tent-like roof and the simple furnishing—a bed, a cedar chest, a few garments and some large wolf-skins hanging to the rafters—all were made visible by the gracious courtesy of the moon.

Shattuck fancied that he heard his friend sigh faintly as they placed him upon the great soft feather-bed—the whole structure of an uncommon stature, but promising ease and comfort in proportionate amplitude.

He made haste to seize his host's arm. "Send them all down," he said, in an imperative whisper; "you and I are enough to take the doctor's instructions. He needs air and quiet; send them all down."

To his relief, Zack Pettingill seemed to appreciate the suggestion. He turned abruptly to the great shadowy figures of the mountaineers, repeatedly lifting both arms and letting them fall with emphasis, as if he were driving a flock of sheep or poultry before him.

"Git out, boys," he said, in his most clamorous drawl. Shattuck's nerves recoiled from the rasping tone. "We-uns don't want the doctor-man around hyar preachin' an' namin' the devil like he seen him yistiddy—always skeers me out'n my skin ter hear 'bout him so familiar—an' sayin' we air crowdin' round jes' out'n cur'osity an' smotherin' the man an' ain't done all we could fur Candidate Rhodes. I wisht Rhodes could hev tuk another time and somebody else's place ter git shot! Git out'n hyar, boys!" And as he advanced upon the retiring crowd he once more lifted both arms high and let them fall.

"Hesh!" said one of the retreating mountaineers, in a warning tone—he had descended three or four steps of the staircase that entered the room at one corner, his head and shoulders still visible above the floor. "The doctor's a-comin'." The dusky figures pressed close after him. He glanced up once more, his face suddenly illumined with a vague flicker. "With a candle," he added, under his breath, as if he imparted significant matter.

Shattuck drew a long sigh of relief. At last he would be able to see his friend in proper care, and would be free from that terrifying sense of responsibility which sorely harassed him, hampered as he was by the unaccustomed conditions of the place. He would have the aid and sympathy of a man of some education, and on whose judgment he could rely—one of his own nationality at least; for he suddenly felt an alien amongst these men, whose springs of action so differed from his own.

He waited breathlessly, watching the light grow stronger, casting a gigantic shadow of the tousled head of the master of the house upon the walls, as the heavy tread came nearer. The host leaned down to take the candle from the doctor's hand, and in the flicker of the motion the stranger was in the room before the light revealed him. Shattuck, advancing eagerly, suddenly paused. A pang of disappointment—more, despair—quivered through his heart. He beheld a tall, slow, shambling man, clad in old brown jeans, with a broad-brimmed hat, and the heavy boots affected by the mountaineers; he had a grave, meditative face, and he fixed his eyes upon the patient on the bed with that expression of proprietorship which everywhere marks the physician. Otherwise Shattuck could not have believed his senses. "Are you—are you—" he stammered, overlooking in his agitation the slight gesture of salutation with which the stranger recognized his presence there—"are you a regular graduate of a medical college?"

The mountaineer bent a lack-lustre eye upon him. "Which?" he said, in amazement.

"What sort of doctor are you?" demanded Shattuck, troublous recollections of the old idea of charms and spells rising to his mind.

"I be a yerb doctor, by the grace o' God," returned the mountain practitioner. He took, without more ado, the candle from his host, and with it in one hand looked fixedly down at the white face, all streaked and stained, upon the pillow.

Shattuck, constrained by every sentiment of loyalty to his friend of which he was capable, quivering with undeserved self-reproach that he had not earlier made inquiries which might have elicited the nature of the aid to be summoned, frantic with anxiety for the result, and lest he omit some essential duty, turned hastily, and without another word went straight down the stairs. With some instinctive policy animating him, he sought out the bridegroom as most likely to be won over to his theory. This was a tall, heavily built young mountaineer, pleased with the conspicuousness of his position in proportion as his wife, a demure and staid young woman, was abashed and overcome by it. He had that universal bridal manner, intimating a persuasion that nobody else has ever been married. He received Shattuck with the kindly condescension likely to grace one who has attained so unique a distinction.

"I suppose, Mr. Pettingill," said Shattuck, craftily, "that you don't feel at home here now, as you are going away to live among the Gossams. I hear you have built a house across the creek from your father-in-law. I suppose you feel quite one with the Gossams now."

"Oh, Lord, no! that I ain't," declared the bridegroom, with the precipitate denial of one whose secret fear has been put into words, and who seeks to boldly exorcise it. "I hain't married all the fambly; one's a plenty, thanky. Ye needn't be afeared ter speak yer mind 'bout 'em ter me. I'd hev liked Malviny jes' ez well ef she hadn't been a Gossam."

The thought of the rose that by any other name would smell as sweet came incongruously into Shattuck's mind for the instant, but he rejoined hastily:

"Well, if I could get speech of any member of the Pettingill family that cares anything for the name, I would say that Mr. Pettingill has behaved very strangely—sending for an herb doctor instead of the kind of physician that Mr. Rhodes would have if he were at home."

"Lord!" exclaimed the young fellow, laying his hand on Shattuck's shoulder and looking earnestly into his eyes, as they stood on the porch beside one of the flaring windows, "Phil Craig, they say, kin all but raise the dead; he's reg'lar gifted—a plumb yerb doctor. The t'other kind—why, they pizens ye"—kindly didactic, and with a rising inflection.

"Well, people in Colbury will think it mighty strange that Mr. Pettingill didn't send for the kind of doctor that Mr. Rhodes would have had if he could have chosen," Shattuck retorted, with a frown. "You all vote against Rhodes, don't you?"

The countenance of the bridegroom was embarrassed and troubled. Perhaps he thought the festivities made to celebrate his happiness had been sufficiently overcast without further clouding them with political differences.

"But we-uns hain't got no gredge at Mr. Rhodes," he stipulated.

"I should be much grieved," continued Shattuck, "if Mr. Pettingill—he seems to be a worthy man—should be included in the prosecution, or any member of his family involved in any way; but of course Mr. Rhodes's relatives and political friends will make things hot if—if he should die here with medical attendance denied him."

"Good Lord!" the young man burst out, "we-uns hed nuthin' ter do with it—jes' Fee Guthrie. Do ye think they'd prosecute Fee? 'Twar jes' a fight—a sorter fight—but we-uns—"

"If I knew where a sure-enough doctor lives, or could find anybody that does know, I'd have him here if he had to come a hundred miles. I've asked and asked, and nobody seems to know."

"Wait a minute"—the bridegroom turned to intercept old Zack Pettingill as he came down the stairs.

Bold as Shattuck's policy had been, he quaked to witness his own suggestion of political enmity, malicious denial of medical attendance, and the possibility of prosecution, introduced as a threat into Zack Pettingill's honest and hospitable consciousness. And yet he could but laugh at the manner of it. In order to capture and speak apart to his parent, the bridegroom had drawn the old man almost behind the door. In fact, while the son stood visible, with earnest and urgent gestures and grave and deprecatory countenance, the effect of his communication upon the unseen Pettingill was only intimated by the agitation which beset the door, as the old man floundered behind it in the activities of his anger, and his contemptuous floutings of the suggested implication in crime. Now the door quivered on its hinges; now it received a blow that would have sent it flaunting wide had not the young man's hand restrained it; and finally, when it became quiet, Shattuck divined the success of his effort before the bridegroom turned away and the liberated father emerged from behind it. He was not prepared, however, for the glower of deep-seated hatred which Zack Pettingill cast upon him through the open window before he turned toward the stairs. Shattuck felt suddenly wounded; the blood mounted to his face as if he had received a blow; and if he had for the moment forgotten that in these mountains the poorest honest man holds his dignity as safe from the imputation of crime as if he were a magnate and millionaire, and resents it as dearly, what other course could he have pursued with the interests he had at stake—his own conscience and his friend's life? As he paced to and fro the short limits of the porch, there sounded almost immediately the quick thud of galloping hoofs down the rocky hill, surging through the river, becoming fainter on the opposite bank, and so dying away. In his preoccupation he attached no importance to this, as the guests were now beginning to take leave. Only when young Pettingill reappeared, a trifle breathless and with an excited eye, and the comment, "We sent fur Doctor Ganey—seventeen mile—Steve Yates rid fur him," did Shattuck connect the swift departure that he had unconsciously remarked with the success of his mission. He did not triumph in it as he had expected. His sensitiveness, with which he was well enough endowed to keep him amply supplied with unhappiness, was all astir within him; the knowledge of the wounds that he had dealt—deep, bitter, and intentional—had developed a double edge and a sharp retroaction. He doubted if in all Zack Pettingill's hard, limited, and most respectable life he had ever been brought face to face with the ignominy of such suspicions and such threats. Not that the taking of life on a grievous provocation and an implacable quarrel was held, in the mountain ethics, reprehensible; the deep turpitude lay in the suggested circumstances—a conspiracy, a political grudge, and the victim a guest. It would have been far indeed from his own roof-tree could Zack Pettingill, the very soul of hospitality, have contemplated the infamy of which Shattuck had affected to suspect him. He wondered a trifle that so ignorant, so coarse, so violent, so lawless a man should be so vulnerable in the more æsthetic sensibilities, forgetting that traits of character are as the solid wood, indigenous; and that cultivation is, after all, only surface polish and veneer, and can never give to common deal the rich heart, the weight, and the value of the walnut or the oak.

"My wife an' all her folks air a-goin' now, an' I reckon I'll hev ter hustle along an' jine 'em," drawled the bridegroom, presently. "I reckon they hev hed enough o' dancin' an' fiddlin' an' sech. Thar ain't been ez much dancin' in the cove afore I got married sence the Big Smoky war built—'thout," he qualified, meditatively, for he was a man of speculation—"'thout 'twar the Injuns. Some 'low ez Injuns war plumb gin over ter dancin' in the old times"—with the sufficient air of an ethnological authority—"war dances an' scalp dances." He smiled in slow ridicule. "Folks didn't dance none in the war ez we hed hyarabouts—Fed and Cornfed—'thout ye call some o' them quicksteps on the back track dancin'—they war lively enough for ennything! But"—with the manner of resuming the subject—"they danced at the weddin' t'other night at Mr. Gossam's, an' they hev danced at the infair, an' now I hope nobody ain't goin' ter gin no mo' dances; leastwise not in complimint ter Malviny an' me. They air toler'ble tiresome ter me," he protested, with a blasé air. "An' I ain't s'prised none ef they air devices o' the devil ennyhow, ez ennybody mought know from the eend this one hev kem ter. Malviny ain't no dancer, an' air mighty religious, an' all this hyar fiddlin' an' glorifyin' hev been sorter terrifyin' ter her. I ain't pious myse'f," he concluded, with an air which to Shattuck's discerning observation sufficiently identified his type as the incipient man of the world. "I expec' ter go ter heav'n in partnership with Malviny—she's good enough fur two."

He strolled off to join a group whose departure was impeded by much hospitable insistence to remain longer, and by the presentation of bundles of the supper wrapped in paper; for, alack! the disaster had preceded the opening of the supper-room, and its triumphs were and would ever be only a matter of conjecture. The disappointment was stamped into the lines of Mrs. Pettingill's worn countenance. It seemed a perversely withheld opportunity of joy in her restricted life, since it was deemed unmeet that the formal feasting should proceed while Leonard Rhodes lay up-stairs at the point of death. She could only cut great slices of cake, and press them upon her guests, with the wheezing adjuration, "Take it home, and jedge what luck we hed with the bakin'!"

She had been altogether despoiled of the fine show that the table in full array would have made, but the apple-brandy that had constituted Mr. Pettingill's share of the preparations, in circulation since the first arrival, had by no means been in vain. He was disposed to offer his example as one that might with profit be adopted. "I always b'lieved in a handed supper," he remarked. "Then, ef—ef—an accident war ter happen' 'fore 'twar all over, folks wouldn't go away hongry from yer house, nohow. But the wimmin-folks air so gin over ter pride an' fixin's that they air obleeged ter set out a table all tricked up an' finified off."

The violinist, however, was esteemed in some sort exempt from the rule of etiquette which necessitated the immediate dispersing of the company without the formal supper. A curious eye might have discovered him under the staircase which led to the wounded man's room. He sat with the "lap-board"—usually used in cutting out the men's clothes—across his knee, and here was ranged a liberal choice of the viands which the shed-room had contained. Most of the household dogs—there were twenty odd—were underfoot in the shed-room, presiding with a speechless frenzy of interest in the partition of the good things; but two of the younger ones sat at the fiddler's feet, and watched, with heads canted askew and the glistening eyes of admiration, the prodigies of his execution. The stiff tail of one of them—a pointer—sweeping the floor, now and again came in contact with the violin that stood on end in the corner, eliciting a discordant twanging of the strings, and a low, hollow, resonant murmur; whereupon the dog would rise with a knitted, puzzled brow and an air of irritated interruption, only to seat himself anew, and with a bland and freshened interest resume his earnest watch upon the violinist's movements. Again he would wag his tail in the joy of his heart, again strike inadvertently the strings of the instrument, and once more arise to vainly investigate the mystery of "this music in the air."

Occasionally the closed door hard by opened suddenly to disclose Mrs. Pettingill's anxious face and gray head, as she cast a searching glance to discern what havoc the fiddler had succeeded in making in the good things set before him. She added to the normal drawl of the mountaineers an individual wheeze of singular propitiations, and implying cordial and confidential relations. There may be more beautiful sounds, but none of more suave and soothing effect than that husky, "Jack, jes' try a glass o' this hyar cherry-bounce along with a bite o' pound-cake"—as she extended the "bite," which, in point of size, might have discouraged the jaws of the giant Cormoran, but never Jack Brace's. "It'll rest ye mightily, arter all the fiddlin' ye hev done." And again, "Jack, hev ye ever tasted my sweet-spiced peach pickles?"

Jack had, indeed. But Jack said he never had, in order that he might renew the gustatory delights that he remembered.

Now and then less friendly eyes gazed in upon the nook. A gigantic mountaineer, slowly strolling through the half-deserted scene, came to a full halt hard by, leaned peeringly forward, took a step closer, and, with his shaggy-bearded face inclined pharisaically over the well-filled lap-board, demanded, in a tone of gruff reproof:

"What air ye a-doin' of hyar, gormandizing like ye hedn't hed nuthin' ter eat fur a week an' better, an' a man dyin' up-steers?"

"Ye talk like I war a-nibblin' on Len Rhodes," cried Jack Brace, angered by the mere suggestion that etiquette required that he should desist. "My goin' hongry ain't a-goin' ter holp him, an' my eatin' arter fiddlin' all night ain't a-goin' ter hender. Ef he can't go ter heaven 'count o' me an' this leetle brandy peach"—as he held up the appetizing morsel both the dogs rose up on their nimble hind-legs in pathetic misapprehension of his intention, their eyes widening with dismay as he withdrew the dainty effectually from view—"why, he ain't got enough religion ter git thar, that's all!"

Shattuck, going up-stairs, glanced down, upon hearing the words, at the cosy nook and the fiddler, and was reminded anew of his friend's danger, his sense of achievement in carrying his point having served for a time to dull his anxiety. The room had taken on that strange, discordant, forlorn effect which is characteristic of a scene of gayety overpast, and is never compassed by mere bareness, or disarray, or disuse. There was a pervasive sense of expended forces, as if all the elation and effervescent spirit exhaling here had left a veritable vacuum. The candles on shelf and niche and table were sputtering in their sockets or burning dimly. Here and there mountaineers slouched about, awaiting their womankind, who presently flustered out of the shed-room wrapped in shawls, and with big bundles of the "supper" so unhappily transformed into a "snack." There were chairs tilted back against the walls as the spectators of the festivities had left them. A saddle or two and a trace-chain and some bits of harness were lying about the floor, where they had been temporarily disposed by the owners, engaged in "gearing up" the teams without. Now and again voices could be heard calling refractory beasts to order, but dulled by the distance, and partaking of the languor of the hour. The baby, who had danced as assiduously as the best, albeit its walking days were not yet well ushered in, had succumbed at last, and lay, a slumbering heap of pink flesh and blue calico, upon the floor. Its attitude demonstrated the elasticity of its youthful limbs, and its hands clutched one of the pink feet that had done such yeoman service earlier in the evening. An old hound, bound to the spot by the talismanic phrase, "Guard him!"—a duty from which only death itself could lure him—sat bolt-upright by the prostrate figure, and looked now with sleepy eyes and cavernous yawns at the departing guests, and now became preternaturally vigilant, and uttered wistful wheezes of despair and envy as the hopeful gambols of the young dogs about the munching fiddler caught his attention. The whole picture grew dim and hazy with its flickering lights, and fluctuated suddenly into darkness, as if it had slipped from actuality into a mere memory, as Shattuck went farther up the stair and the roof-room gathered shape and consistency before him. The window at one end still held the glamour of the moonlight, the silver green of the swaying foliage, the freshness and the sparkle of the dew. He heard the pigeons cooing drowsily. The wolf-skins swinging from the rafters caught the gleam of the candle, and borrowed a sleek and rich lustre. The focus of the tallow dip itself glowed yellow in the midst of its divergent rays, that grew dim as they stretched ever farther among the duskily brown shadows of the place. Now and again it was eclipsed as figures, ministering to the wounded man, passed before it. Suddenly they drew back. Rhodes's face, distinct upon the pillow, caught the light full upon it. Shattuck started forward, a great throb of relief astir at his heart, and a loud exclamation, incoherent, upon his lips. For his friend had opened his eyes, alight with his own old identity; his face, pallid, and with smears of blood faintly discernible, although much of it had been washed away, wore a languid smile. It seemed that the element of his being which was strongest in him, his sense of postulance, of candidacy before the people, was reasserted first of all his faculties.

"Did I—did I—hurt anybody?" he faltered; "I didn't mean to hurt anybody." Then, as he seemed to realize his surroundings, his memory revived.

"Where's Fee? Fee didn't get hurt, did he? Where am I?" He lifted himself upon his elbow and looked waveringly about. "Lord!" he exclaimed, impressed by the silence, "you didn't stop the dancing on my account, Mr. Pettingill? I've spoiled the party! Well! well! I'll never be able to look Mrs. Pettingill in the face again." And he sank back on the pillow.

The surly countenance beneath the host's grizzled shock of hair took on a milder expression. The stiff grooves and lines of the lips relaxed, and might be said to have released a smile. "We kin spare the party, Mr. Rhodes—spare it a sight easier'n we kin spare you-uns." Then, as Shattuck unwisely pressed up to the side of the bed, the old man's eyes suddenly assumed a hard glitter of triumph with the hot anger that made him breathe quickly and stertorously, and curved the lines of his stiff old mouth.

"Thar be some," he remarked, "ez will 'low I be jes' glad ter git shet o' bein' prosecuted. Me prosecuted, 'kase ye an' Fee tuk ter tusslin' in the middle o' the dancin', an' Fee war the bes' man. Prosecuted!" He snorted out the word with a repulsion that made the very tone odious.

Rhodes, visibly agitated, pulled himself into a sitting posture. "Who—who—said that—such a thing?" Still dazed and confused though he was, his eyes, sweeping the by-standers, rested with the certainty of reproach upon Shattuck. There was a momentary silence. "Understand one thing, Mr. Pettingill," he said at length, with a quick flush upon his pale face that had seemed to grow lean in the last hour—"understand this: alive or dead, no man speaks for me."

He sank back once more upon his pillow, which the herb doctor had readjusted with a hand that was as soft and listless as any fine lady's; he lifted the injured man's head into another position.

"It air mo' level," he observed, learnedly. "This slit in his head air a-goin' ter cure up right off," he continued, looking with mild blue eyes at Shattuck, who stood flushed and indignant among them all, feeling repudiated in the odd turn that affairs had taken. "'Tain't goin' ter inflame none, hevin' bled so much. He warn't shot nowhar; jes' cut on the head. His hair is singed some, whar the powder burnt it, I reckon. He mustn't git up, though, ter-day nor ter-morrow, else he'll fever."

If Shattuck, with the cowardice that is the essential sequence of a well-intentioned mistake, hoped that no more might be said by Mr. Pettingill, he understood little of the pertinacity and endurance that can animate him who presses his breast against the thorn. The host had been unspeakably afflicted by the bare suggestion of foul play. It had served as a goad when naught else might have moved him. Even although its efficacy was nullified, he could not pass it by, but again and again in review he evoked all its capacities of poignancy. "Ye shet up, Phil Craig," he said, his manner of rebuke palpably affected. "Ye ain't fitten ter doctor the 'quality.' I hev hed ter send Steve Yates a-cavortin' seventeen mile in the midnight ter fetch a doctor ter physic Mr. Rhodes fur a leetle gash side o' the head! May keep we-uns from bein' prosecuted, though; leastwise we'll hope so."

Rhodes, appalled, could only stare with amazement at Shattuck. How his friend could have brought himself to consider bodily health before political advantage, and yet call himself a friend, was a thing which he could not comprehend. It was all too fresh for even the sophistical comfort of believing that he had tried to do all for the best. He could only look at Shattuck with eyes full of wonder and reproach, doubly effective from his reduced and prone estate; and Shattuck, indignant and resentful, could only turn short about and walk away. He repented that he had done aught. And then he wondered how any man of sense could have done aught else. His dignity was affronted by the position in which he found himself. He despised his friend for the pusillanimous time-serving of his hearty endorsement of all that the mountaineers had done and said. And yet he could but acknowledge that this was ample. He despised himself for his vicarious fright, his over-serious treatment of the incident. And yet, as he recalled the scene—the two struggling, swaying figures, the savage blow with the butt end of the pistol, the sudden discharge of the weapon, the heavy fall, the long insensibility—it seemed as if the issue were phenomenally fortunate, rather than such as might have been expected. Amidst all the nettling subjects of contemplation, one recurred with continually harassing suggestions—how he should meet the physician whom he had caused to be summoned in the midnight from the distance of seventeen miles, when the learning or the ignorance of the simple herb doctor had so amply sufficed for the emergency. Caused to be summoned! He thought of Steve Yates riding the horse's back sore, believing that a dying man lay in the house. As he heard Rhodes's rollicking laughter—a trifle quavering, to be sure—he quailed before the idea that there was nothing to offer the physician when he should arrive. He felt that he would have been glad of a diseased liver or an injured brain to justify his proceedings. He began in a nervous state of expectancy to pause whenever he reached the shadowy window, and to look through the silvered branches of the sycamore-tree, fearing to descry perchance a mounted figure approaching along the winding road. All vacant it was as it curved, now in the clear sheen, now lost in the black shadow, reappearing at an unexpected angle, as if in the darkness the continuity were severed, and it existed only in sinuous sections. Once adown the dewy way a youthful cavalier spurred with a maiden mounted behind him, swiftly passing out of sight, recalling to the imagination some romance of eld, when the damosel fled with her lover. An ox-cart lumbering slowly along, with its burly, nodding team, through the illumined spaces, and disappearing in intervals of obscurity, the motion of the oxen's horns somehow vaguely discerned before they emerged again from the shadow, illustrated the leisurely ideal of mountain travel. After it had quite vanished, and even the sharp, grating creak of its unoiled running-gear had been lost in the distance, a swift canine figure, distorted by speed to a mere caricature of its species, with tail drooping, with ears laid back close to its head, darted along the serpentine curves—one of the visitors' dogs, just made aware of his master's departure, and in his haste to overtake the jogging vehicle adding farcical suggestions of comparison to its slow progress.

And then for a time Shattuck, pacing the length of the room and pausing at the window, marked neither approach nor departure. The shadows were lengthening; the moon was low in the sky; the neighboring massive mountains were darkly and heavily empurpled against the pensively illumined horizon. At their base the valley slept; it wot little of the opaline mists that gathered above it, and enmeshed elusive enchantments of color, which vanished before the steady gaze seeking to grade them as blue or amber or green, and to fix their status in the spectrum. A strange pause seemed to hold the world. Only the pines breathed faintly. Beneath their boughs he saw suddenly Letitia Pettingill sitting on a log of the great wood-pile. Her pale-blue homespun dress seemed white in the moonlight. She leaned back, her hands clasping her head, which rested upon the higher logs behind her, her eyes fixed contemplatively upon the slow sinking of the reddening moon.

Another had observed her there. It was only a moment or two before a tall figure sauntered out from the house and stood near by with a casual air, surveying not her, but the aspects of the departing night or the coming day, as retrospection or anticipation might denominate the hour. Shattuck with a frown recognized the figure; it was easily marked; its height and breadth and muscle would suffice to distinguish it, without the added testimony of the long tousled ringlets and the square, stern, martial face, overshadowed by a broad-brimmed hat. Guthrie's pistol and a knife gleamed in his leather belt. His long boots jingled with the replaced spurs, but he made no move toward departure, and his horse still stood, half in the shadow and half in the sheen, drowsing under a dogwood-tree. It was only after he had waited some time thus silent and motionless that he slowly cast his surly, long-lashed eyes toward Letitia. If she had seen him, she made no sign. Still clasping the back of her shapely head with both uplifted hands, she sat, half reclining, against the logs, and watched the moon go down. The initiative was forced upon him. There was a latent capacity for expressiveness suggested in the surprise and uncertainty and subtle disappointment depicted upon his face. He advanced slowly to the wood-pile, and sat down on one of the lower logs, his booted and spurred legs stretched out before him, one hand upon his hip, his hat thrust back, his ringleted head bare to the dew and the sheen. Still she did not move nor glance toward him. As his eyes absently traversed the space about them, he caught sight of Shattuck turning away from the roof-room window. Whether from a full heart, or in despair that she would break the silence, or on a sudden impulse which the glimpse of the stranger roused, he spoke abruptly, reverting to the scenes of the evening.

"I reckon ye air in an' about sati'fied now with what ye hev up-ed an' done," he drawled, slowly.

She unclasped her hands that she might turn her head and look steadily at him for a moment. Her lustrous illumined blue eyes either showed their fine color in the ethereal light of the moon, or the recollection of it was substituted for the sense of it in the sudden adequateness of their expression. Her gaze relaxed, and she resumed her former attitude. The interval was so long before she spoke that the reply seemed hardly pertinent.

"Ever see me wear a shootin'-iron?" she demanded. Her voice was not loud, but it had a vibratory quality like that of a stringed instrument, rather than a flute-like tone.

He stared at her. "Hey?" he demanded. "What ye say?"

She did not change her posture now. "Ever see me pound ennybody on the head with a shootin'-iron?" she continued.

"Shucks!" he cried, slowly apprehending her meaning; "ye can't git out'n it that-a-way."

"I never war in it. When ye see somebody o' my size in a fight with one o' yer size, let me know it."

"'Twar yer fault, an' ye know that full well," he made himself plain, with an intonation of severity.

"My fault? Mercy!" she cried, "I wouldn't hev bruk up that dance fur a bushel o' sech ez ye an' Rhodes!" She gave a gurgling laugh of retrospective pleasure.

A moment's silence ensued, while he pushed back his hair to look gloweringly at the half-reclining figure, which, although not moving, had contrived to take on an air of flouting indifference.

"Ye air a mighty small matter," he said, scathingly, "fur me an' Rhodes ter make ourselves sech fools about."

"An' sech big fools!" she cried, with animation. "Whenst I feel obligated ter see I'm a fool, it's sech a comfort ter know I ain't much of a fool."

He said nothing in reply, feeling too clumsy and ponderous to follow the attack with so lithe and elusive an enemy. He did not definitely realize it, but in dropping his aggressions he assumed far more potent weapons.

"O my Lord A'mighty!" he groaned, putting his head in one hand, and covering his eyes as he supported his elbow upon the log behind him; "it don't make much diff'ence whose fault 'tis. I hev ter suffer fur it. I hev ter suffer fur everything. Sufferin' air what I war born fur, I reckon. Leastwise I ain't seen nuthin' else."

Something faintly stirred the trees; it was not the wind, for it did not seem to come again or to pass further. It was as if they were awakening from some subtleties of sleep, unknown to science, that had stilled their pulses. Fragrance was in the air; the great red rose in the grass by the gate was bursting its buds. The rank weeds asserted their identity. Even the wood-pile gave evidence of walnut and hickory and the resinous pine. And still the moon, ever reddening, ever dulling, sank lower, and the stars were brightening in the darkening sky.

Once more he groaned. "I never war cut out for a fighter," he declared. "Whenst I war a leetle bit o' a boy, an' my dad married agin an' brung that everlastin' wild-cat o' a step-mam o' mine home, I war in a mighty notion o' bein' frien'ly—leetle liar—leetle cowardly fox! I knowed what war good fur me, an' which side my bread war buttered on, an' she couldn't beat me hard enough ter make me hit back or sass her. I war fur givin' up an' takin' mild ez a lam' everything she hed a mind ter do ter me. But arter a while I got so ez whenst she beat my leetle brother it made me winge an' winge—she couldn't hurt sech a calloused time-server ez me! An' so I tuk ter hidin' him in the bresh whenst she got mad at him. An' one day whenst she fund him, an' tuk ter larrapin' him, I jes' flew at her, an' I bit her arm 'mos' through. She let Ephraim alone. She war skeered at me. I seen it. An' I tuk ter bitin' arter that like a cur-dog. My dad lemme 'lone. Vis'tors ez kem ter the house war warned off'n me. I begun ter git my growth. I hed an arm ez growed so it could lam a man like a sledge-hammer; it kep' all the boys an' everybody else off'n Ephraim, ez never war a fighter, an' let him git some growth, an hold up his head, an' try ter do like folks."

He had dropped his hand and was staring at her with surprised eyes. She was leaning forward, the golden moonlight still on her face. Her finely cut lips were smiling. She held out, with an air of gay, mysterious confidence, a tiny object between her finger and thumb.

"'Hold fast what I give ye,'" she quoted, with a low, gurgling triumphant laugh.

He reached out and took from her with slow suspicion a pistol ball, turning it around, and looking at her with an air of suspended comprehension and doubt.

"I fund it hyar at the wood-pile; it never teched Rhodes. He ain't much hurt—his senses jes' knocked out'n him. They can't do nuthin' ter you-uns fur sech ez that."

"They better not try!" he cried, belligerently. Then, with the accents of scorn: "D'ye 'low ez I be a-troublin' myse'f 'count o' sech cattle ez Rhodes? Naw, sir! Nobody air a-goin' ter pester me! The whole mounting, an' the home folks an' all, hev got mighty perlite ter me, an' hev been fur a long time." He paused meditatively. "Yes, sir," he exclaimed; "peace hev kem ter me by the pound!" He smote his massive chest.

Then, after another silence, he sighed. "But I be troubled," he resumed, "'kase hyar one day 'bout a year ago I goes ter the church house. I always loved the Lord, fur He war persecuted, an' I knowed He felt fur me. I never war so tuk up with this worl'. I hain't hed no pleasure in it. I yearned fur a better one. An' durned ef the thin-lipped, turnip-hearted preacher didn't git up an' gin out the doctrine ef enny war ter hit ye on one cheek, ye mus' turn the tother one; fur that's religion! That ain't my policy, an' 'tain't my practice. An' I reckon I'll hev ter go ter hell jes' whenst I war a-settin' myself in the hope o' heaven."

He drooped his head upon his hand again and groaned aloud. "I hev wondered," he resumed, his voice somewhat muffled by his attitude, "ef the cuss read that in the Good Book, or jes' made it up out'n his own head. But that sayin' hev tormented me in the midnight, an' tuk my sleep from me. I sorter feel it in me like it mus' be true. Religion can't be so easy ez jes' lovin' the Lord. It's this hyar hevin' ter love yer fellow-man ez makes religion so durned hard on ye."

A cloud was in the west, not continuous, but with dusky brown strata across the gilded spaces above the purple mountains; its shadows lay on the mists below in dull streaks amidst the shining pearly tone. When the moon, so golden, so great now and glamourous, passed behind one of these bars of vapor, and even the sullen cloud was tenderly tinted and showed radiating verges of dull gold, one might see the bereft world in the prosaic gray medium of the day that was to come.

Once more he looked about him and sighed. "Why," he argued, "I couldn't hev got on with all the smitin' folks wanted ter do ter me an' Ephraim, 'specially Ephraim. But then I 'low ez I hev got the mounting too much skeered ter fool with Ephraim or me nuther now, an' mebbe ef I sot out ter repent right hearty I mought make out yit. But I furgits—I furgits! I can't repent more'n a haffen hour at a time. An' hyar ter-night—jes' on account o' you-uns—I hauls off agin, an' mighty nigh kills Rhodes!"

"'Twarn't 'count o' me," she drawled, with the musical vibration that seemed to follow each tone. She had resumed her former attitude and her air of mocking gayety. "Ye air carryin' it all wrong. 'Twarn't account o' me ye half killed Rhodes. 'Twar all account o' 'Tucker'!"

He caught the gleam of her laughing eyes as he sat with his elbows on his knees and glowered sidelong at her.

"I am small," she protested, in dimpling merriment. "I can't ondertake more'n my sheer. Let 'Tucker' take the blame. Ye warn't dyin' ter dance with me. Ye war dyin' not ter dance with yerse'f."

His face had flushed. His eyes were full of grave resentment as they met her laughing glance. "I didn't 'low ez ye war so onfeeling ez ye 'pear ter be," he said, reproachfully. "Ever sence that time at the church house whenst all were convicted of sin, or saints, 'ceptin' ye an' me settin' alongside o' one another, I hev been sorter sorry fur ye, an' 'lowed ye war sorter sorry fur me."

She only replied with a laugh, and he evidently deemed futile the bid for sympathy on the score of religious or irreligious fellowship, for he recurred to it no more.

There was a stir along the path; a great high-stepping turkey gobbler was slowly coming down it, pausing now and then, and turning his wattled head askew to bring his eye to bear upon some incident of the high dewy weeds, that might promise a preliminary bit to a morning meal. The rest of his tribe, yet roosting on a bare branch of an otherwise full-leaved tree, looked big and burly against the roseate sky; each long inquisitive neck now and again stretched downward, each clutching claw ever and anon moving uncertainly along the perch with a fluctuating intention to descend, was growing momently more distinct as the gray light more and more encroached upon the moon, all obscured now by one of those cloud strata.

In this interval of eclipse Guthrie asked, suddenly, from out the dusk: "Ye know I warn't 'Tucker' by rights. Whyn't ye wanter dance with me?"

The shadow made her face uncertain. He could only see that she did not move. "Did I say I didn't want ter dance with you-uns? I don't 'pear ter remember it." Her tones, vibrant with mockery, were a trifle louder upon the air—a trifle strained; or was it that the world seemed more silent, muffled in the cloud that hid the moon?

"What's the reason ye wanted ter dance with Rhodes?" he demanded, pursuing the subject.

"Did I say I wanted ter dance with Rhodes?" She asked the counter-question with the sharp note of inquiry.

He detected its spuriousness, but her enigmatical intention embarrassed him. "Ye hed ruther dance with him than with me," he said, forlornly, losing his balance.

"Waal, it looks sorter that-a-way, now don't it?" she replied, in casual, irrelevant accents, as of an unconcerned third person.

The moon came out from under the cloud with a great flare of golden glory. Somewhere a cock's crow sounded—clear, mellow tones, delivered with the precision and aplomb of the blast of a bugle. The wind of dawn was coming over the eastern summits, and suddenly the moonlight was all superfluous above the dark, rugged western mountains, for the gray day was on the land. The little house stood distinct and forlorn, all its windows flaring to show its denuded state within; here, and there a tallow dip still sputtered. And if by moonlight and half distinguished the loom and the warping bars had looked disconsolate in their evicted estate under the trees, by daylight they wore so sorry and so consciously distraught an air that such definite expressiveness seemed oddly incongruous with their inanimate condition. All atilt and unsteady they stood on the uneven ground, and about them were many other objects of the household gear which the night had served to obscure. Pots and pans were scattered about or congregated in heaps. Chests and bedsteads, bags and bundles, quilting-frames and churns and tubs—all bore token how the behests of hospitality had stripped the house to make room for the dancing and the exigent demands of the extensive supper-tables. The dogs seemed to take much note of this unprecedented dislocation of the domestic administration, and they went about with inquisitive, exploring noses, and tails stilled and drooped in suspended judgment, amongst the various objects which they snuffingly recognized. One old fellow, the evening of his days much racked by rheumatism, seemed to discern an adequate reason in all the confusion, as he curled himself to doze on the plumpest of the feather-beds, with a large bone disposed within easy reach, to which he might refer as inclination prompted. The spinning-wheels all teetered unsteadily on the uneven chips about the wood-pile; now and again the wheels revolved with precipitate, erratic action as the wind stirred them. Letitia no longer looked at the moon—a mere pallid simulacrum of itself, worn thin and gauzy against the pale west; one might hardly know if it still hung there when the first red dart of the sun, yet below the horizon, was aimed at the flushing zenith. Her dress was blue again, not white; her face had something of the flush of the sky upon it, half seen though it was. She had bent forward to the little flax wheel, and had drawn out a thread, breaking and tangling it, only affecting to spin, while the whimseys of the wind turned the wheel. The light was distinct enough to show even the pistol ball in Felix Guthrie's hand as he held it up and gazed at it speculatively.

"I wisht it war in Rhodes's heart," he observed, slowly. "That's whar I wisht 'twar."

The spinning-wheel stopped suddenly; the blue eyes were bent upon him; her lips curved in laughter. "Thar ye go ter heaven!" she cried, waving her hand as if to point the way, "repentin' by the half-hour."

IV.

All day the slow process of the restoration of the household gods went on. For many a year thereafter all manner of losses dated from this period. "Hain't been seen nor hearn tell on sence 'fore the infair," was a formula that sufficiently accounted for any deficit in domestic accoutrement. There was no one in the Pettingill family so lost to the appreciation of hospitality and the necessity of equalling the entertainment given by the bride's relatives as to opine that the game was not worth the candle. But more than once Mrs. Pettingill, with a deep sigh, demanded, "Who would hev thunk it would hev been so much more trouble ter kerry in things agin 'n ter kerry 'em out!" She did not accurately gauge the force of enthusiastic anticipation as a motive power. Nevertheless she bore up with wonderful fortitude, considering that the triumph of the supper had been eclipsed. The inanimate members of the household were exhibiting a sort of wooden sulks as they were conveyed to their respective places—now becoming stiffly immovable, despite the straining muscles of the "men folks;" then suddenly, without the application of appreciably stronger force, bouncing forward so unexpectedly that the danger of being overrun was imminent, and cries of "Stiddy, thar! Ketch that eend! Holp up, thar!" resounded even through Rhodes's dreams in the roof-room, as he drowsed peacefully under the narcotic influences of hop tea. The loom might have seemed to entertain a savage resentment for its supersedure, and was some two hours journeying back to its place in the shed-room, the scene alike of the blighted supper and its old industrial pursuits. After that the "men folks" took a vacation, and applied themselves with some zest to apparently incidental slumber; old Zack Pettingill nodded in his chair on the porch; the others, chiefly volunteering neighbors, fell asleep in the hay at the barn while ostensibly feeding the cattle, leaving the great skeleton of the warping bars staring its reflection in the river out of countenance as it leaned against the fence, with its skeins of carefully sized party-colored yarn the prey of two nimble kittens, who expressly climbed the gaunt frame to tangle them. Even Mrs. Pettingill, sitting on an inverted basket in the yard amongst her gear, looking a trifle forlorn, bareheaded, with her gray hair tucked in a small knot at the nape of her neck, her spectacles poised upon her nose, her hands on her knees, lost herself while gazing at her possessions in the effort to decide at which end she had best begin to rehabilitate the confusion; her eyelids presently drooped, and scant speculation looked through those spectacles. The great shady trees waved above her head. Bees robbed the clover at her feet, and flew, laden and drowsily droning, away; the light shifted on the river; the sun grew hot; the far blue mountains were like some land of dreams, so fair, so transfigured, that they hardly seemed real and akin to these rugged, craggy, darksome heights which loomed beside the little cottage. Everywhere were sleeping dogs; now and then one roused himself to recollections of the infair and the supper, and invaded the shed-room, standing in the door and with drooping tail gazing upon the simple domestic apparition of the loom in its accustomed place, evidently having believed, in his optimistic simplicity, that the good things and the splendor and the delightful bustle of the past evening were to continue indefinitely, and infinitely disappointed to find them already abolished, the fleeting show of a single occasion.

Shattuck would hardly have acknowledged it to himself, but he certainly felt relieved of an irksome prospect by this succumbing of the Pettingills to the influence of excitement and fatigue. Conversation with his host would necessarily be somewhat hampered by the events of the preceding evening. He could not well resent the old man's indignation, and yet a hospitable forbearance and courtesy would be of even more poignant intimations. He had winced when the bridegroom had taken leave of him with a punctilious show of cordiality and a hearty handshake, as assurance that he bore no malice for those insinuations. For these reasons the guest was not sorry to note the solemn preoccupation in his host's open-mouthed countenance as he passed out from the porch to the shade of the trees, where he came presently upon Mrs. Pettingill, sitting as motionless as a monument amongst her distorted and dislocated "truck," as in her waking moments she would have phrased her belongings. He lighted his cigar as he strolled down to the river, pausing to strike the match upon the white bark of an aspen-tree. The ferns gave out a sweet woodland odor, faint and delicate, overpowered presently by the pungent fragrance of the mint as his feet crushed the thick-growing herb. The crystal river murmured as it went, and seemed to draw reflective, half-breathed sighs, as in the pauses of a story that is told. Now and again, when the banks were high on either side, the rocks duplicated the sound of the lapsing currents with a more sonorous, cavernous emphasis, as if they sought to enter into the spirit of this sentient-seeming life. The sky, looking down from its blue placidities, only here and there smote the water to azure emulations of its tint; for the shadows predominated, and the gravel gave the stream that fine brown, lucent tone, impossible to imitate, broken occasionally where some high boulder incited the impetuosity of the current to bold leaps. Then it was crested with snow-white foam, and shoaled away with glassy-green waves to the same restfully tinted brown and amber swirls. The overhanging rocks were gray and splintered and full of crevices, with moss and lichen. Where they lay in great fractured masses under a giant oak, a spring gushed forth. He heard its tinkling tremor, more delicately crystalline and keyed far higher than the low continuous monotone of the river. He mechanically turned toward the sound, and saw Letitia in her light-blue dress sitting upon the gaunt gray rocks at the foot of the craggy masses, a brown gourd in her hand and an empty cedar pail at her feet. Her eyes were fixed gravely upon him, her face was fresh as the wild roses amongst the crevices of the rocks. She looked not more wilted by the excitements and heat and turmoil of the dancing at the infair than the flower blooming with the break of day. He strolled toward her, and spoke at the distance:

"You're the only member of the family awake now, I believe." He smiled, and flicked off the ash of his cigar.

The expression of her eyes changed as they still rested upon him. "Dun'no' whether I be awake or no," she observed. "I kem down hyar arter a pail o' water, an' 'pears like I can't git away agin. Disabled somehows. Asleep, mebbe, though' I moughtn't look like it."

Her uncouth garb and dialect were somehow softened by the delicacy of her proportions and the perfect profile and chiselling of her face. Her speech was hardly more grating upon him, precisian though he was, than the careless, untutored lapses of a child might have been; all the senses of comparison as readily ignored them. She looked so sprite-like as she sat in a drooping, relaxed posture by the spring in the niche of the rocks, one hand behind her head, the other holding the gourd against her blue dress; and the idea of an oread or a naiad suggested to his mind was suddenly on his lips.

Her reply instantly reminded him of her limitations and her ignorance.

"Witched an' bound ter the spot!" she exclaimed, with widening eyes and breathless tone. She lowered her voice: "Did you-uns ever see one?"

Her literal interpretation embarrassed and threw him off his guard.

"Never till now," he said. He was not intentionally flirting with Zack Pettingill's daughter; but elsewhere and to another of her sex the speech would have impressed him as a pretty compliment. In her quality of woman, in her possession of a heart, she was no more represented in his mind than if she had been the flower above her.

She either did not comprehend the flattery or she ignored it. Her mind seemed fixed upon the water-nymph and the oread. "Bound ter the spot!" she reiterated, with a sceptical air. "Thar's a heap o' ways o' bein' bound ter the spot. Laziness kin hinder ez totally ez a block an' chain. Mebbe they war 'flicted that-a-way, sorter like me." She stretched both arms upward in an attitude that might have been grotesque in another, but with her was a charming and childish expression of fatigue.

He sat down on the ledge of the rock, took out his watch, and looked at it. "I wish I knew whether the doctor wouldn't come or would," he said, the harassment of the earlier hours recurring to his mind. "I am sorry they ever sent for him. Doesn't he seem a long time coming?"

"Fee Guthrie axed me that question fourteen hundred an' fifty times this mornin'. I don't set my mind on doctor men whenst folks air well, only whenst ailin'. 'Pears ter me like Mr. Rhodes's main complaint air foolishness."

Shattuck flushed with a sort of loyal resentment for his friend's sake. "You think he is foolish because he wanted to dance with you?" he said, tartly.

She cast a rallying side glance down upon him. "Mr. Rhodes warn't particular 'bout dancin' with me," she protested. "I ain't in no wise a favorite 'mongst the boys. That's what makes me 'low I be so smart!" She turned her head with a bird-like coquetry, more formidable for being so natural.

"Too smart for them?" he said, placated in spite of himself by her naïve arrogations.

She nodded the wise little head that she so boldly vaunted. "They all ax me, 'Hey? hey?'"—she raucously thickened her voice in drawling mimicry—"ter every word I say—every one I ever see but you-uns."

If he could compliment, she could return the courtesy. He was silent for a moment, remembering the criticisms that he had heard last night on her unexpected and contrariwise conversation. She was doubtless far too clever for her compeers and her sphere—even clever enough to know it.

"You don't think it worth while to be a favorite amongst fools. But how is poor Mr. Rhodes a fool?"

"Foolish," she corrected him, as if she made a distinction. "'Kase he wants ter git 'lected ter office, an' he kerns 'round sa-aft-sawderin' folks ez laffs, 'an laffs at him, ahint his back. An' he dassent say his soul's his own! An' he hev ter take sass off'n everybody. He talks 'bout the kentry, an' ennybody kin see he don't keer nuthin' 'bout the kentry. I'd ruther be a wild dog down thar by the ruver-bank, an' feed off'n the bones the wolf leaves, an' be free ter hev a mind o' my own."

Shattuck seemed to revolve this caustic characterization of his friend the politician. He did not care to press her further as to her opinions. He only said, presently, once more looking at his watch, "I think it so strange that the doctor doesn't come."

"Fee Guthrie waited a considerable time ter make sure ez Mr. Rhodes wouldn't die, an' 'twouldn't be desirable ter hang nobody ter-day."

Her interlocutor winced a trifle, remembering his threats last night. Her placid face, however, intimated nothing of any intention that might animate her words; it expressed only its own unique beauty.

He was charmed by it in some sort. He could see by that mentor, his watch, how long it had been that he had sat here listening alternately to the river's song and her low vibrant drawl. But he fancied that reluctance to meet the mountaineers at the house had detained him, or eagerness to descry the first approach of the superfluous physician, rather than the fascination of this rustic little creature, whose words so combined bitterness and honey. He hastened to divert her attention from the last suggestion.

"Where is Guthrie now, anyhow?" he said, affecting to look around as if expecting to see him somewhere at hand amongst the black vertical shadows of the noon and the still golden sunshine.

"Off in the woods somewhere, I reckon," she said; "prayin', mebbe."

"Praying?" he repeated, in astonishment.

"Lawsy-massy, yes! He's a mighty survigrous han' at prayin' an' repentin'. He repents some every day—whenst he don't furgit it."

She laughed in a languid way, once more stretching up her tired arms, the brown gourd in one of her lifted hands, and then she relapsed into silence, her eyes fixed upon the swift flow of the stream. He too was silent, gazing upon the gliding waters. Naught so unobtrusively, so sufficiently fills an interval of quiet as this watching the continual movement of a current. They neither knew nor cared how the time went by. Ceaselessly the swift swirling lines made out to the centre of the stream, and further down swept once more close in to the banks as the conformation of the unseen channel directed the volume and the force. The spring gurgled; its sunlit branch, wherein might be seen now and again a darting minnow, with its svelte shadow beneath it, flowed timorously down to join the river till a sudden widening and a quicker motion showed that its pulses felt the impetus of the stronger current. A kill-deer, flying so low as to dip its wings, ever and anon alighted on the margin, its stilt-like legs half submerged as it ran hither and thither, now and then bending to dig in the sand with its long slender bill. Suddenly there was a darker shadow in the water. A young woman had abruptly emerged from the undergrowth on the opposite bank, and was crossing the stream on the rickety little foot-bridge, consisting of but one log, the upper side hewn; her balance was a trifle difficult to maintain, as she carried a child in her arms. She looked eagerly toward the two as they sat by the spring, thus essentially differing from "leetle Mose," who, upon perceiving them, turned the back of his pink sun-bonnet upon them with an air of sullen rejection, unaware how the dignity of his demonstration was impaired by the diminutiveness of his head-gear, and, sooth to say, of the head within it. If he had expected to thus formidably crush the two spectators, he was mistaken; but he could not observe how it affected them, for he buried his face upon his mother's shoulder. She seemed fatigued and travel-worn as she came near, and her face bore traces of recent weeping in the pathetic drooping lips, the heavily lidded eyes, and her pallor. She strove gallantly for a smile and to speak in a casual tone, as she said, "Howdy, Litt?" Then, although nodding to Shattuck, for introductions are not in vogue in this region, she went on, eagerly: "Did Steve kem ter the infair? He 'lowed he would." She paused, biting her lips hard to keep back the tears. Letitia looked uncertainly at Shattuck, as if expecting him to reply. The benedict, drearily superfluous to the festivities, had hardly been noticed by her as he lurked about the walls and sought what entertainment was possible to one under the social disabilities of matrimony.

"Who? Stephen Yates? Oh, yes," said Shattuck. "He talked to me a long time. You were uneasy because he didn't come home?" he asked, with facile sympathy. At the kind tones her self-control melted, and the tears began to flow afresh. "The infair broke up with a row, and Mr. Rhodes was hurt," he explained, holding out his cigar with a delicate gesture, and touching off the long ash against a verge of the rock. "Steve Yates went for the doctor on one of Mr. Pettingill's horses. It seems to me that it is time for him to be back, too," he added, his mind recurring to his own interest in the matter, and once more he looked across the river and up the section of the road which became visible for a little way along the side of a corn-field, expecting to see the dust rise beneath the hoof-beats of the messenger's horse or the doctor's buggy wheels. But all was still and silent; only the air shimmered in the heat, and from amidst the blue-green expanse of the corn he saw a mocking-bird rise in the ecstasy of its redundant song, its wing-feathers a dazzling white in the sun, and drop back quivering and still singing upon the unstable perch of a waving tassel.

Adelaide's tears continued to flow, although she sought to stanch them now and again with the curtain of her sun-bonnet, which she pressed to her eyes. She had seated herself upon one of the rocks on the opposite side of the spring, and the "leetle Moses," whom she held upon her knee, one arm passed about his sufficiently burly waist, seeing that he was not noticed, indulged his own curiosity, and from the interior of his pink sun-bonnet bent a stare of frowning severity first upon Letitia, and then transferred his callow speculation to Shattuck. Perhaps it was far less Adelaide's natural embarrassment at thus meeting in tears a stranger than her divination of the young girl's mental attitude toward her that roused her pride and the resources of her fortitude. She sought to put away the recollection, hardly less poignant than the reality, of the long sad hours of the wakeful night—spent in reviewing the quarrel, repenting her hasty words to her husband, and anon inconsistently angered anew because of the memory of his own bitter sayings—the keen expectancy of the lagging morning, and the terrible morbid fear that had grown upon her jarred and shaken nerves that he would come back no more. Far, far was all her feeling from the girl's comprehension, and she deprecated that, with that half-scoffing face, Letitia should look in upon her sorrows—disproportionate and fantastic though they might be, but none the less piercing—and seek to gauge them by the narrow measure of her own experience and her own untried, undeveloped gamut of emotions.

"I ain't a-goin' ter git married," remarked the fancy-free scoffer from her perch, "till I kin find a man ez I kin trust wunst in a while ter take keer o' hisself, a-goin' an' a-comin' from a neighbor's house. Mus' be powerful sorrowful ter set at home an' shed tears lest he mought hev stumped his toe on the road. Mighty oncommon kind o' man I want, I know, but"—with resolution—"I be a-goin' ter s'arch the mountings, far an' nigh, till I find him. I'd like ter marry a man ez could be trusted ter take keer o' hisself, an' mought even, on a pinch, take keer o' me."

Shattuck, with a smile, glanced across at the weeping wife, who laughed a trifle hysterically amidst her tears, and said:

"Oh, don't, Litt!" Then, regaining her composure, she once more pressed the curtain of her calico sun-bonnet to her eyes. It seemed that her dignity required some explanation. "I wouldn't hev minded it so," she said, "ef me an' Steve hedn't hed words. He wanted me ter kem with him ter the infair, but I war 'feared ter bring leetle Mose, fur he mought hev cotched the measles or the whoopin'-cough."

"He's safe now," remarked Letitia. "I be the youngest o' the fambly. I hed the measles thirteen year ago, an' I never did demean myself so fur ez ter hev the whoopin'-cough."

Somehow the tone of raillery, the sense of the freedom and the irresponsibility of the young girl, roused a vague sort of protest in the other, only a few years older, but upon whose heart were so many clamorous demands, all the dearer for their exactions. She felt bound to set herself right. Who had ever a happier married life than she and Stephen, a more contented home? And then the supreme unanimity of their worship of the domestic god Dagon—the extraordinary "leetle Mose!"

"I 'low I wouldn't hev been sech a fool ef 'twarn't so uncommon fur me an' Steve ter fall out," she said, her face resuming its serene curves, her full, luminous dark eyes fixed with a sort of recognition on Shattuck, which his quick senses apprehended as identification from description. "I oughtn't ter hev set up my 'pinion 'gin his, I reckon. He war mightily tuk up with a man—I reckon 'twar you-uns—ez hed been a-diggin' in the Injun mounds."

Shattuck nodded in response to this unique introduction.

IN THE "STRANGER PEOPLE'S" COUNTRY

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS.

IN THE "STRANGER PEOPLE'S" COUNTRY.

I.

II.

III.

IV.