PAUL RUNDEL

FROM the window of her husband's shop in the mountain-village of Grayson, Cynthia Tye stood peering out on the Square. She was tall, gaunt, and thin-so thin, in fact, that her fingers, pricked by her needle and gnarled at the joints, had a hold in energy only, as she pressed them down on her contourless hips. She had left her work in the living-room and kitchen back of the shop and come in to question the shoemaker as to what he wanted for his dinner, the boiling and stewing hour having arrived.

Silas, whose sedentary occupation had supplied him with the surplus flesh his wife needed, and whose genial pate was as bald as an egg, save for a bare fringe of gray which overlapped his ears on the sides and impinged upon his shirt-collar behind, looked up and smiled broadly.

“I wish you'd quit that, Cynthy. I really do.” Every outward and inward part of the man lent itself to his smile, the broad, clean-shaven Irish lip, the big, facile mouth, the almost wrinkleless pink cheeks, the clear, twinkling blue eyes, the besmirched goatee—in fact, all his rotund, satisfied self between his chin and the bench on which he sat shook like a mass of animated jelly.

“Quit what?” She turned on him suddenly. “Why, quit always and eternally comin' to me when I'm chock full o' breakfast, and askin' me what I want to eat for dinner. I can still taste my coffee. I reckon settin' humped over this way between meals ain't exactly accordin' to nature in its best state. I'd ruther live in a boardin'-house and take what was served, hit or miss, than to digest a meal in my mind three hours before I eat it.”

“Huh! I say!” Cynthia sniffed, “and what about me, who not only has to think about it beforehand, but has to pick it in the garden, git it ready for the pots, smell the fumes of it from daylight till dark, and worry all night for fear something, will sour or be ate up by the cat, dog, or chickens?”

Silas laughed till his tools—last, hammer, and knife—rattled in his leather apron. “You got the best o' that argument,” he chuckled, as he pressed the shoe he was repairing down between his fat knees, crossed his short feet, and reached for a box of nails which had fallen to the floor. Then his merriment ceased. He bent a tender glance on the woman and a gentle cadence crept into his voice: “The Lord knows you do have a hard time, Cynthy, an' no jokin'. I wish thar was some way around it. I lie awake many and many a night just thinkin' how happy me'n you'd be if we could take a trip off some'rs and not have nothin' to bother about for one week anyway. What are you gazin' at out thar so steady?”

“I'm watchin' that pore boy, Paul Rundel,” Cynthia returned, with a sigh. “I never see 'im without my heart achin'. He's haulin' bark for Jim Hoag's tannery. He driv' up on a big load to the post-office while I was out gatherin' beans just now. You remember them two devilish Harris boys that picked the row with 'im at the hitchin'-rack last week? Well, I saw 'em at the corner and thought they looked suspicious. Then I knowed they was waitin' for 'im, for they nudged one another and picked up brickbats, and went to Paul's wagon. I couldn't hear what was said, but it looked like they was darin' Paul to git down, for they kept swingin' their bricks and shakin' their fists at 'im.”

“What a pity, what a pity!” The shoemaker sighed. “That boy is tryin' his level best to live right, and thar was two ag'in' one, and both bigger and stronger.”

“Well, Paul kin take care of hisself,” Cynthia said, with a chuckle. “It looked like he was in for serious trouble, and I was runnin' to the fence to try to call somebody to help him, when, lo and behold! I saw him reach back on the load o' bark and pick up a double-barreled gun and stick the butt of it to his shoulder. I am a Christian woman, and I don't believe in bloodshed, but when them scamps drapped the'r bricks and broke for the blacksmith shop like dogs with their tails twixt their legs I shouted and laughed till I cried. Paul got down and was makin' for the shop, when the marshal—Budd Tibbs—stopped 'im and made 'im put up the gun and go back to his wagon. The next minute I saw the Harris boys slip out the back door of the shop and slink off out o' sight.”

“It's bad, bad, bad!” Silas deplored. “Sometimes I wonder why the Lord lets things run slipshod like that. Paul has a bright mind. He is as sharp as a brier. He loves to read about what's goin' on over the world. If thar ever was a boy that needed good advice and trainin' he is one. He's right at the turnin'-point, too; he's got a high temper, a lot o' sperit, and won't stand naggin' from high or low. And what's he got at home? Nothin' that wouldn't take life and hope out of any ambitious boy—a daddy that is half dead, and won't work a lick—”

“And a mammy,” Cynthia broke in, with indignation, “Si, that is the vainest, silliest woman that ever breathed, traipsin' out to meetin' in her flimsy finery bought by that boy's hard work. They say, because she's passably good-lookin' and can sing well, that she thinks herself too good to lay her hands to a thing. She don't love Ralph Rundel, nor never did, or she couldn't act that way when he is sick. I've heard, on good authority, that she never cared much for Paul, even when he was a baby—folks say she didn't want 'im to come when he did, and she never took care of 'im like a mother ought to.”

“I've watched Paul a long time,” Silas remarked. “Me'n him are purty good friends. He's rough on the outside, but now and then I see away down into his heart. He worries about his daddy's bad health constantly. They are more like two brothers than father and son, anyway, and as Ralph grows weaker he leans more and more on his boy. It certainly is sad. I saw 'em both down at Hoag's cotton-gin last fall. Paul had run across some second-hand school-books somewhar, and was tryin' to explain 'em to his pa, but he couldn't make any impression on him. Ralph looked like he was tryin' to show interest, but it wasn't in 'im. I tell you, Cynthy, the hardest job our Creator ever put on his creatures is for 'em to have unbounded faith in the perfection in the unseen when thar is so much out o' joint always before our eyes.”

“Yes, but you never lose faith,” Cynthia said, proudly. “I'd have let loose long ago if I hadn't had you to keep me agoin'.”

“You see, Cynthy, I've noticed that something bright always follows on the heels of what is dark.” Silas hammered the words in with the tacks, which he held in his mouth. “Peace hovers over war and drops down after it like rain on dry soil; joy seems to pursue sorrow like sunshine pushin' clouds away, and, above all, love conquers hate, and you know our Lord laid particular stress on that.”

“Paul has just left the post-office,” Cynthia said. “He's left his hosses standin' and is headed this way.”

“He's comin' after his daddy's shoes,” Silas replied. “I've had 'em ready for a week. I took 'em out to his wagon one day, but he didn't have the money, and although I offered to credit him he wouldn't hear to it. He's as independent as a hog on ice. I tell you thar's lots in that boy.”

Cynthia, as the youth was crossing the street, turned back into her kitchen. A moment later Paul entered the shop. He was thin almost to emaciation, just merging into the quickly acquired height of a boy of sixteen, and had the sallow complexion that belongs to the ill-nourished mountaineers of the South. His coarse brown hair fought against the restrictions of the torn straw hat, which, like a miniature tent, rested on the back part of his head. The legs of his trousers were frayed at the bottoms and so crudely patched at the knees that the varicolored stitches were observable across the room. He wore no coat, and his threadbare shirt of heavy, checked cotton had lost its buttons at the sleeves and neck. He had a finely shaped head, a strong chin, and a good nose. A pair of dreamy brown eyes in somber sockets were still ablaze from their recently kindled fires. His mouth was large and somehow, even in the grasp of anger, suggested the capacity for tenderness and ideality.

“Hello, young man!” Silas greeted him as he peered at the boy above his brass-rimmed spectacles and smiled genially. “Here at last. I was afraid you'd let them shoes take the dry-rot in my shop, and just because you wouldn't owe me a few cents for a day or two.”

Paul made no reply. His restless glance roved sullenly over the heap of mended shoes and boots on the floor, and, selecting the pair he was looking for, he ran a quivering finger along the freshly polished edge of the soles and bent the leather testingly.

“Some o' the white oak you helped tan out thar at Hoag's,” Silas jested. “If it ain't the best the brand on it is a liar, and I have been buncoed by your rich boss.”

This also evoked no response. Thrusting the shoes under his arm, the boy put his hand into his pocket and drew out some small coins and counted them on the low window-sill close to the shoemaker. He was turning away when Silas stopped him. Pointing to a chair bottomed with splints of white oak and strengthened by strips of leather interlaced and tacked to the posts he said:

“Take that seat; I hain't seed you in a coon's age, Paul, and I want to talk to you.”

With a slightly softened expression, the boy glanced through the open doorway out into the beating sunshine toward his horses and wagon.

“I've got to move on.” He drew his tattered sleeve across his damp brow and looked at the floor. “I got another load to bring down from the mountain.”

Silas peered through the window at the horses and nodded slowly. “Them pore pantin' brutes need the rest they are gettin' right now. Set down! set down! You don't have to hurry.”

Reluctantly the youth complied, holding the shoes in his lap. Silas hammered diligently for a moment, and then the furrows on his kindly brow deepened as he stared steadily through his glasses, which were seldom free from splotches of lampblack and beeswax.

“I wonder, Paul, if you'd git mad if I was to tell you that I've always had a whoppin' big interest in you?”

The boy made as if about to speak, but seemed to have no command of tact or diplomacy. He flushed faintly; his lashes flickered; he fumbled the shoes in his lap, but no words were forthcoming. However, to Silas this was answer enough, and he was encouraged to go on.

“You see, Paul, I've knowed you since you was so high”—Silas held his hammer out on a level with his knee—“and I have watched you close ever since. Yore daddy—that was in his palmy days—used to take you with 'im when he'd go afishin', and I used to meet you an' him on the creek-bank. You was as plump and pink a toddler as I ever laid eyes on, just the age of the only one the Lord ever sent us. When mine was alive I was so full of the joy of it that I just naturally wanted to grab up every baby I met and hug it. I never could hear a child cry over a stubbed toe, a stone-bruise, or any little disappointment without actually achin' at the heart. But our son was taken, Paul, taken right when he was the very light an' music of our lives. And, my boy, let me tell you, if ever a Christian come nigh wagin' open war with his Maker I did on that day. God looked to me like a fiend incarnate, and His whole universe, from top to bottom, seemed a trap to catch an' torture folks in. But as time passed somehow my pain growed less, until now I am plumb resigned to the Lord's will. He knowed best. Yes, as I say, I always felt a big interest in you, and have prayed for you time after time, for I know your life is a tough uphill one. Paul, I hope you will excuse me, but a thing took place out thar in front of my window just now that—”

A grunt of somnolent rage escaped the boy, and Silas saw him clench his fist. His voice quivered with passion: “Them two devils have been picking at me for more than a year, calling me names and throwing rocks at me from behind fences. Yesterday they made fun of my father, and so I got ready, and—”

“I know, I know!”—the shoemaker sighed, reproachfully—“and so you deliberately, an' in a calm moment, laid that gun on yore load of bark, and—”

“Yes, and both barrels was loaded with heavy buck-shot!” the boy exulted, his tense face afire, his eyes flashing, “and if they hadn't run like two cowardly pups I'd have blowed holes in 'em as big as a hat.”

Silas made a derogatory sound with his tongue and lips. “Oh, how blind you was, my pore boy—you was too mad to see ahead; folk always are when they are wrought up. Paul, stop for one minute and think. If you had killed one or both of 'em, that wouldn't have settled the trouble. You don't think so now, but you'd have gone through bottomless pits of remorse. The Lord has made it that way. Young as you are, you'd have died on the scaffold, or toiled through life as a convict, for it would have been murder, and deliberate at that.”

The youth shrugged his thin shoulders. “I wouldn't have cared,” he answered. “I tell you it ain't ended, Uncle Si. Them fellows has got to take back what they said about my father. They've got to take it back, I tell you! If they don't, I'll kill 'em if it takes a lifetime to do it. I'll kill 'em!”

Silas groaned. A pained look of concern gathered in his mild eyes. He reached for the polishing-iron which was being heated in the flame of a smoking lamp on his bench and wiped it on his dingy apron. “It won't do!” he cried, and his bald head seemed drawn down by fear and anxiety. “Something has got to be done; they are a pair of low, cowardly whelps that are try in' to bully you, but you've got to quit thinkin' about murder. It won't do, I say; the devil is behind it. You stand away above fellows like them. You've got the makin' of a big man in you. You love to read and inquire, and they don't know their a b c's and can't add two figures. You mustn't lower yourself to such riffraff, and you wouldn't if you didn't let the worst part o' yourself get the upper hand.”

When the boy had left the shop Silas stood watching him from the doorway. It was a pathetic figure which climbed upon the load of bark, and swung the long whip in the air.

“What a pity! What a pity!” the old man exclaimed, and he wrung his hands beneath his apron; then seating himself on his bench he reluctantly resumed his work. “As promising as he is, he may go clean to the dogs. Poor boy!”

CHAPTER II

IT was now near noon, as was indicated by the clock on the low, dome-capped tower of the Court House in the center of the village square. Paul recognized several idlers who stood on a street-corner as he drove past. They looked at him and smiled approvingly, and one cried out:

“Bully for you, Paul! You are all wool and a yard wide.”

“And guaranteed not to tear or shrink!” another added, with a laugh over his borrowed wit; but the boy neither answered nor smiled. A sudden breeze from the gray, beetling cliffs of the near-by mountain fanned his damp brow, and he gazed straight ahead down the long road. Hot broodings over his wrongs surged within him, and the fact that he had so completely routed his enemies failed to comfort him at all. They could still laugh and sneer and repeat behind his back what they had dared to say to his face about a helpless man who had offended no one. Cowards that they were, they would keep their lies afloat, and even add to them.

His road took him past the lumber-yard, sawmills, brick and lime kilns, and through the sordid negro quarter, which was a cluster of ramshackle shanties made of unpainted upright boards grown brown and fuzzy, with now and then a more primitive log cabin, a relic of pioneer and Cherokee days. Vast fields of fertile lands belonging to his employer, James Hoag, lay on both sides of the road just outside the village. There were stretches of corn, cotton, and wheat in the best state of cultivation, beyond which, on a gentle rise, stood the planter's large two-story house, a white frame structure with a double veranda and outside blinds painted green. Beyond the house, at the foot of the slope, could be seen the dun roofs of the long sheds and warehouses of Hoag's tannery, to which Paul was taking the bark. A big gate had to be opened, and the boy was drawing rein with the intention of getting down when Hoag himself, astride a mettlesome bay mare, passed.

“Wait, I'll open it,” he said, and spurring his mount close to the gate he kicked the wooden latch upward and swung the gate aside. “Drive ahead” he ordered. “I can pull it to.”

Paul obeyed, indifferent even to the important man's presence. He would have forgotten Hoag's existence had the mare not borne him alongside the wagon again. The horseman was a middle-aged man of sturdy physique, fully six feet in height, and above two hundred pounds in weight. His skin was florid, his limbs were strong, firm, and muscular, his hands red and hair-grown. There was a cold, cruel expression in the keen blue eyes under the scraggy brows, which was not softened by a sweeping tobacco-stained mustache. He wore well-fitting top-boots which reached above the knee, and into which the legs of his trousers had been neatly folded. A wheeled spur of polished brass was strapped to the heel of his right boot. He sat his horse with the ease and grace of a cavalry officer. He held his mare in with a tense hand, and scanned the load of bark with a critical eye.

“How much more of that lot is left up there?” he asked.

“About two cords, or thereabouts,” the boy said, carelessly.

“Well,” Hoag said, “when you get that all stacked under the shed I want you to haul down the lot on Barrett's ridge. There is a good pile of it, and it's been exposed to the weather too long. I don't know exactly where it lies; but Barrett will point it out if he ain't too lazy to walk up to it.”

“I know where it is,” Paul informed him. “I helped strip it.”

“Oh, well, that's all right. You might put on higher standards and rope 'em together at the top. That dry stuff ain't very heavy, and it is down grade.”

He showed no inclination to ride on, continuing to check his mare. Presently his eyes fell on the stock of the gun which was half hidden by the bark, and his lips curled in a cold smile of amusement.

“Say,” he said, with a low laugh, “do you go loaded for bear like this all the time?”

A slow flush of resentment rose into the boy's face. He stared straight at Hoag, muttered something inarticulately and then, with a distinct scowl, looked away.

The man's careless smile deepened; the boy's manner and tone were too characteristic and genuine, and furnished too substantial a proof of a quality Hoag admired to have offended him. Indeed, there was a touch of tentative respect in his voice, a gleam of callous sympathy in his eyes as he went on:

“I was at the post-office just now. I saw it all. I noticed them fellows layin' for you the other day, and wondered what would come of it. I don't say it to flatter you, Paul”—here Hoag chuckled aloud—“but I don't believe you are afraid of anything that walks the earth. I reckon it is natural for a man like me to sorter love a fair fight. It may be because you work for me and drive my team; but when I looked out the post-office window as I was stampin' a letter, and saw them whelps lyin' in wait for you, I got mad as hell. I wasn't goin' to let 'em hurt you, either. I'd have kicked the breath out of 'em at the last minute, but somehow I was curious to see what you'd do, and, by gum! when that first brickbat whizzed by you, and you lit down with your gun leveled, and they scooted to shelter like flyin' squirrels, I laid back and laughed till I was sore. That was the best bottle of medicine they ever saw, and they would have had a dose in a minute. They slid into the blacksmith's shop like it was a fort an' shut the door. I reckin you'd have shot through the planks if Budd Tibbs hadn't stopped you.”

No appreciation of these profuse compliments showed itself in the boy's face. It was rigid, colorless and sullen, as if he regarded the man's observations as entirely too personal to be allowed. An angry retort trembled on his lips, and even this Hoag seemed to note and relish. His smile was unctuous; he checked his horse more firmly.

“They won't bother you no more,” he said, more seductively. “Such skunks never run ag'in' your sort after they once see the stuff you are made of. That gun and the way you handled it was an eye-opener. Paul, you are a born fightin' man, and yore sort are rare these days. You'll make yore way in the world. Bein' afraid of man or beast will stunt anybody's growth. Pay back in the coin you receive, and don't put up with insult or abuse from anybody. Maybe you don't know why I first took a sorter likin' to you. I'd be ashamed to tell you if I didn't know that you was jest a boy at the time, and I couldn't afford to resent what you said. You was a foot shorter than you are now, and not half as heavy. You remember the day yore pa's shoats broke through the fence into my potato field? You was out in the wet weeds tryin' to drive 'em home. I'd had a drink or two more than I could tote, and several things had gone crooked with me, and I was out o' sorts. I saw you down there, and I made up my mind that I'd give you a thrashin'”—Hoag was smiling indulgently—“and on my way through the thicket I cut me a stout hickory withe as big at the butt as my thumb, and taperin' off like a whip at the end. You remember how I cussed and ripped and went on?”

“You bet I remember,” Paul growled, and his eyes flashed, “and if you'd hit me once it would have been the worst day's work you ever did.”

The planter blinked in mild surprise, and there was just a hint of chagrin in his tone. “Well, I didn't touch you. Of course I wasn't afraid of you or the rock you picked up. I've never seen the man I was afraid of, much less a boy as little as you was; but as you stood there, threatenin' to throw, I admit I admired your grit. The truth is, I didn't have the heart, even drunk as I was, to lick you. Most boys of your size would have broke and run. My boy, Henry, would, I know.”

“He'll fight all right,” Paul said. “He's no coward. I like him. He's been a friend to me several times. He is not as bad as some folks think. He drinks a little, and spends money free, and has a good time; but he's not stuck up. He doesn't like to work, and I don't blame him. I wouldn't, in his place. Huh! you bet I wouldn't.”

“Well, I'm goin' to put 'im between the plow-handles before long,” the planter said, with a frown. “He's gettin' too big for his britches. Say, you'll think I'm a friend worth havin' some time. Just after that thing happened at the post-office, and you'd gone into Tye's shop, Budd Tibbs turned to me and said he believed it was his duty as marshal to make a council case against you for startin' to use that gun as you did. I saw the way the land lay in a minute. Them skunks are akin to his wife, and he was mad. I told him, I did, that he might summon me as a witness, and that I'd swear you acted in self-defense, and prefer counter-charges against the dirty whelps. Huh, you ought to have seen him wilt! He knows how many votes I control, and he took back-water in fine shape.”

“I reckon I can look after my own business,” the boy made answer, in a surly tone. “I ain't afraid o' no court. I'll have my rights if I die gettin' 'em.” Hoag laughed till his sides shook. “I swear you are the funniest cuss I ever knew. You ain't one bit like a natural boy. You act and talk like a man that's been through the rubs.” Hoag suddenly glanced across a meadow where some men were at work cutting hay, and his expression changed instantly. “I never told 'em to mow thar,” he swore, under his breath. “Take your bark on. You know where to put it,” and turning his horse he galloped across the field, his massive legs swinging to and from the flanks of his mare.

CHAPTER III

THAT afternoon at dusk Paul drove down the mountain with his last load of bark for the day. The little-used road was full of sharp turns around towering cliffs and abrupt declivities, worn into gullies by washouts, and obstructed by avalanchine boulders. In places decayed trees had fallen across the way, and these the young wagoner sometimes had to cut apart and roll aside. The high heap of bark on the groaning vehicle swayed like a top-heavy load of hay, and more than once Paul had to dismount from the lead horse he rode, scotch the wheels with stones, and readjust the bark, tightening the ropes which held the mass together. At times he strode along by the horses, holding the reins between his teeth, that his hands might be free to combat the vines and bushes through which he plunged as blindly as an animal chased by a hunter. His arms, face, and ankles were torn by thorns and briers, his ill-clad feet cut to the bone by sharp stones. Accidents had often happened to him on that road. Once he had fallen under the wheels, and narrowly escaped being crushed to death, a perilous thing which would have haunted many a man's life afterward, but which Paul forgot in a moment.

Near the foot of the mountain the road grew wide, smooth, and firm; his team slowed down, and he took a book from the wagon, reading a few pages as he walked along. He was fond of the history of wars in all countries; the bloodshed and narrow escapes of early pioneer days in America enthralled his fancy. He thought no more of a hunter's killing a redskin than he himself would have thought of shooting a wild duck with a rifle.

As he started down the last incline between him and Grayson he replaced his book on the wagon. The dusk had thickened till he could scarcely see the print on the soiled pages. Below, the houses of the village were scattered, as by the hand of chance, from north to south between gentle hills, beyond which rose the rugged mountains now wrapped in darkness. He made out the sides of the Square by the lights in the various buildings. There was the hotel, with its posted lamps on either end of the veranda. Directly opposite stood the post-office. He could make no mistake in locating the blacksmith's shop, for its forge gave out intermittent, bellows-blown flashes of deep red. Other dots of light were the open doors of stores and warehouses. Like vanishing stars some were disappearing, for it was closing-time, and the merchants were going home to supper. This thought gave the boy pleasant visions. He was hungry.

It was quite dark when he had unloaded the wagon at the tannery and driven on past Hoag's pretentious home to the antiquated cottage in which he lived. It had six rooms, a sagging roof of boards so rotten and black with age that they lost thickness in murky streams during every heavy rain. There was a zigzag fence in front, which was ill cared for, as the leaning comers and decayed rails testified. Against the fence, at the edge of the road, stood a crude log barn, a corn-crib made of unbarked pine poles, above which was a hay-loft. Close about was a malodorous pig-pen, a cow-lot, a wagon-shed, and a pen-like stall for horses.

The chickens had gone to roost; the grunting and squealing of the pigs had been stilled by the pails of swill Paul's father, Ralph Rundel, had emptied into their dug-out wooden troughs. In the light of the kitchen fire, which shone through the open door and the glassless windows, Paul saw his father in his favorite place, seated in a chair under an apple-tree at the side of the house. Ralph rose at the sound of the clanking trace-chains and came to the gate. He rubbed his eyes drowsily, as if he had just waked from a nap, and swung on the gate with both hands.

“No use puttin' the wagon under shelter,” he said, in a querulous tone, as his slow eyes scanned the studded vault overhead. “No danger o' rain this night—no such luck for crops that are burnin' to the roots. The stalks o' my upland cotton-patch has wilted like sorghum cut for the press. Say, Paul, did you fetch me that tobacco? I'm dyin' for a smoke.” He uttered a low laugh. “I stole some o' yore aunt's snuff and filled my pipe; but, by hunkey, I'd miscalculated—I sucked the whole charge down my throat, and she heard me a-coughin' and caught me with the box in my hand.”

Paul thrust his hand into his hip-pocket and drew forth a small white bag with a brilliant label gummed on it. “Bowman was clean out o' that fine cut,” he said, as he gave it into the extended hand. “He said this was every bit as good.”

“I'll not take his word for it till I've tried it,” Ralph Rundel answered, as he untied the bag and tested the mixture between thumb and forefinger. “Storekeepers sell what they have in stock, and kin make such fellers as us take dried cabbage-leaves if they take a notion.”

Ralph was only fifty years of age, and yet he had the manner, decrepitude, and spent utterance of a man of seventy. His scant, iron-gray hair was disheveled; his beard, of the same grizzled texture, looked as if it never had been trimmed, combed, or brushed, and was shortened only by periodical breaking at the ends. Despite his crude stoicism, his blue eyes, in their deep sockets, had a wistful, yearning look, and his cheeks were so hollow that his visage reminded one of a vitalized skull. His chest, only half covered by a tattered, buttonless shirt, was flat; he was bent by rheumatism, which had left him stiff, and his hands were mere human talons.

Paul was busy unhooking the traces from the swingletrees and untying the straps of the leather collars, when Ralph's voice came to him above the creaking of the harness and impatient stamping of the hungry horses.

“I noticed you took yore gun along this mornin'. Did you kill me a bird, or a bushy-tail? Seems like my taste for salt pork is clean gone.”

“I didn't run across a thing,” Paul answered, as he lifted the harness from the lead horse and allowed the animal to go unguided to his stall through the gate Ralph held open. “Besides, old Hoag counts my loads, and keeps tab on my time. I can't dawdle much and draw wages from him.”

“Did he pay you anything to-day?” Ralph was filling his pipe, feebly packing the tobacco into the bowl with a shaky forefinger.

“He had no small change,” Paul answered. “Said he would have some to-morrow. You can wait till then, surely.”

“Oh yes, I'll have to make out, I reckon.”

At this juncture a woman appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was a blue-eyed, blond-haired creature of solid build in a soiled gray print-dress. She was Paul's aunt, Amanda Wilks, his mother's sister, a spinster of middle age with a cheerful exterior and a kindly voice.

“You'd better come on in and git yore supper, Paul,” she called out. “You like yore mush hot, and it can't be kept that away after it's done without bakin' it like a pone o' bread. You've got to take it with sour blue-john, too. Yore ma forgot to put yesterday's milk in the spring-house, and the cow kicked over to-night's supply just as I squirted the last spoonful in the bucket. Thar is some cold pork and beans. You'll have to make out.”

“I didn't expect to get anythin' t'eat!” Paul fumed, hot with a healthy boy's disappointment, and he tossed the remainder of the harness on to the wagon and followed the horse to the stall. He was in the stable for several minutes. His father heard him muttering inarticulately as he pulled down bundles of fodder from the loft, broke their bands, and threw ears of corn into the troughs. Ralph sucked his pipe audibly, slouched to the stable-door under a burden of sudden concern, and looked in at his son between the two heads of the munching animals.

“Come on in,” he said, persuasively. “I know you are mad, and you have every right to be after yore hard work from break o' day till now; but nobody kin depend on women. Mandy's been makin' yore ma a hat all day. Flowery gewgaws an' grub don't go together.”

Paul came out. “Never mind,” he said. “It don't make no difference. Anything will do.” Father and son walked side by side into the fire-lighted kitchen. A clothless table holding a few dishes and pans stood in the center of the room. Just outside the door, on a little roofless porch, there was a shelf which held a tin basin, a cedar pail containing water, and a gourd dipper with a long, curved handle. And going to this shelf, Paul filled the basin and bathed his face and hands, after which he turned to a soiled towel on a roller against the weatherboarding and wiped himself dry, raking back his rebellious hair with a bit of a comb, while his father stood close by watching him with the gaze of an affectionate dog.

“That'll do, that'll do,” Ralph attempted to jest. “Thar ain't no company here for you to put on airs before. Set down! set down!”

Paul obeyed, and his father remained smoking in the doorway, still eying him with attentive consideration. Amanda brought from the fire a frying-pan containing the hot, bubbling mush, and pushed an empty brown bowl and spoon toward him.

“Help yoreself; thar's the milk in the pan,” she said. “If it is too sour you might stir a spoonful o' 'lasses in it. I've heard folks say it helps a sight.”

Paul was still angry, but he said nothing, and helped himself abundantly to the mush. However, he sniffed audibly as he lifted the pan and poured some of the thin, bluish fluid into his bowl.

“It wasn't my fault about the cow,” Amanda contended. “Scorchin' weather like this is the dickens on dumb brutes. Sook was a-pawin' an' switchin' 'er tail all the time I had hold of 'er tits. It must 'a' been a stingin' fly that got in a tender spot. Bang, bang! was all the warnin' I had, an' I found myself soaked from head to foot with milk. I've heard o' fine society folks, queens an' the like, washin' all over in it to soften their skins and limber their joints; but I don't need nothin' o' that sort. Yore ma's not back yet. She went over to see about the singin'-class they want her in. She had on 'er best duds an' new hat, and looked like a gal o' twenty. She was as frisky as a young colt. I ironed 'er pink sash, an' put in a little starch to mash out the wrinkles and make it stand stiff-like. They all say she's got the best alto in Grayson. I rolled 'er hair up in papers last night, an' tuck it down to-day. You never saw sech pretty kinks in your life. Jeff Warren come to practise their duet, an' him and Addie stood out in the yard an' run the scales an' sung several pieces together. It sounded fine, an' if I had ever had any use for 'im I'd have enjoyed it more; but I never could abide 'im. He gits in too many fights, and got gay too quick after he buried his wife. He was dressed as fine as a fiddle, an' had a joke for every minute. Folks say he never loved Susie, an' I reckon they wasn't any too well matched. She never had a well day in 'er life, and I reckon it was a blessed thing she was took. A tenor voice an' a dandy appearance are pore consolations to a dyin' woman. But he treats women polite—I'll say that for 'im.”

Paul had finished his mush and milk, and helped himself to the cold string-beans and fat boiled pork. His father had reached for a chair, tilted it against the door-jamb, and seated himself in it. He eyed his son as if the boy's strength and rugged health were consoling reminders of his own adolescence. Suddenly, out of the still twilight which brooded over the fields and meadows and swathed the mountain-tops, came the blending voices of two singers. It was a familiar hymn, and its rendition was not unmelodious, for it held a sweet, mystic quality that vaguely appealed.

“That's Jeff an' Addie now!” Amanda eagerly exclaimed. She went to the door and stood leaning against the lintel. She sighed, and her voice became full and round. “Ain't that just too sweet for anything? I reckon they are both puffed up over the way folks take on over their music. Ever since they sang that duet at Sleepy Hollow camp-meetin' folks hain't talked of anything else.”

Paul sat with suspended knife and fork and listened. His father clutched the back of his chair stiffly, bore it into the yard, and eased himself into it. Paul watched him through the doorway, as he sat in the shadows, now bent over, his thin body as rigid and still as if carved from stone. The singing grew nearer and nearer. It seemed to float on the twilight like a vibrant vapor. The boy finished his supper and went out into the yard. His aunt had seated herself on the door-step, still entranced by the music. Paul moved softly across the grass to his father; but Ralph was unconscious of his presence. Paul saw him take in a deep, trembling breath, and heard him utter a long, suppressed sigh.

“What's the matter, Pa?” the boy asked, a touch of somnolent tenderness in his tone.

“Matter? Me? Why, nothin', nothin'!”

Ralph started, lifted his wide-open eyes, in which a far-away expression lay.

“What did you ax me that for?”

“I thought you looked bothered,” Paul made answer, and he sank on the grass at his father's feet.

“Me? No, I'm all right.” Ralph distinctly avoided his son's eyes, and that was a departure. He fumbled in his pocket for his pipe and tobacco, and finally got them out, only to hold them in inactive hands.

The singing was over. There was a sound of merry laughter beyond the stable and corn-crib, and Jeff Warren's voice rose quite audibly:

“I thought I'd split my sides laughin',” he was heard to say, with a satisfied chuckle, “when Bart Perry riz an' called for order and began to state what the plan was to be. He was electin' hisself chief leader, an' never dreamt the slightest opposition; but I'd told a round dozen or more that if he led me'n you'd pull out, an' so I was lookin' for just what happened. Old Thad Thomas winked at me sorter on the side and jumped up an' said, 'All in favor of electin' Jeff Warren leader make it known by standin', an' every woman an' man-jack thar stood up, an' as Bart already had the floor, an' was ashamed to set down, he hisself made it unanimous. But Lord! he was as red as a turkey-gobbler an' mad as Tucker.”

The low reply of the woman did not reach the trio in the yard, and a moment later the couple parted at the front gate. Mrs. Rundel came round the house through the garden, walking hurriedly and yet with a daintiness of step that gave a certain grace to her movement. She wore a neat, cool-looking white muslin dress, was slender, and had good, regular features, light-brown eyes, abundant chestnut hair, which was becomingly arranged under a pretty hat.

“Supper's over, I know,” she said, lightly, as she paused at the door-step and faced her sister. “Well, they all just wouldn't break up earlier. They sang and sang till the last one was ready to drop. Singers is that a way when they haven't been together in a long time. Don't bother about me. I ain't a bit hungry. Mrs. Treadwell passed around some sliced ham an' bread, an' we had all the buttermilk we could drink.”

“Tell me about it,” Amanda demanded, eagerly. “What was it Jeff was sayin' about Bart Perry?”

“Oh, Bart was squelched in good fashion.” Mrs. Rundel glanced at the shadowy shapes of her husband and son, and then back to the eager face of the questioner. “You know what a stuck-up fool he is. He come there to run things, and he set in at it from the start. He hushed us up when we was all havin' a good time talkin', and begun a long-winded tirade about the big singin' he'd done over at Darley when he was workin' in the cotton-mill. He pointed to our song-books, which have shaped notes, you know, and sniffed, and said they belonged to the backest of the backwoods—said the notes looked like children's toy play-blocks, chickencoops, dog-houses, an' what not. He laughed, but nobody else did. He was in for burnin' the whole pile and layin' out more money for the new-fangled sort.”

“I always knowed he was a fool for want o' sense,” Amanda joined in, sympathetically. “A peddler tried to sell me a song once that he said was all the go in Atlanta; but when I saw them mustard-seed spots, like tadpoles on a wire fence, I told him he couldn't take me in. Anybody with a grain o' sense knows it's easier to sing notes that you can tell apart than them that look pine blank alike.”

“Some folks say it don't take long to learn the new way,” Mrs. Rundel remarked, from the standpoint of a professional; “but as Jeff said, we hain't got any time to throw away when we all want to sing as bad as we do.”

“Well, you'd better go in and take that dress off,” Amanda advised, as she reached out and caught the hem of the starched skirt and pulled it down a little. “It shrinks every time it's washed, and you'll want to wear it again right off, I'll bound you.”

“I don't want to wrinkle it any more than I have to,” Mrs. Rundel answered. “I want it to look nice next Sunday. We hold two sessions, mornin' and evenin'; and next week—the day hasn't been set yet—we are goin' to have a nip-and-tuck match with the Shady Grove class.”

“That will be a heap o' fun,” Amanda said, as her sister passed her and disappeared within. For a few minutes the trio in the yard were silent. Ralph Rundel's pipe glowed in the darkness like a thing of fitful moods. Paul had not heard a word of the foregoing conversation. Young as he was, he had many things to think of. The affair with the Harris boys flitted across his mind; in that, at least, he was satisfied; the vision of the fleeing ruffians vaguely soothed him. Something he had read in his book that day about Napoleon came back to him.

It was the flashing of her sister's candle across the grass, as Mrs. Rundel passed before a window, that drew Amanda's thoughts back to a subject of which she was fond.

“Folks has always said I spoiled Addie,” she said to her brother-in-law, in a plaintive tone, “an' it may be so. Bein' ten year older when ma died, I was a mother to 'er in my best days. I had no chance myself, and somehow I determined she should have what I missed. I certainly made it easy for 'er. When she started to goin' to parties and out with young men I was actually miserable if she ever missed a chance. You know that, Rafe—you know what a plumb fool I was, considerin' how pore pa was.”

Ralph turned his head toward the speaker, but no sound came from him. His head rocked, but whether it was meant as a form of response, or was sinking wearily, no one but himself could have told. After that silence fell, broken only by the grinding tread on the floor within.

CHAPTER IV

PAUL stood up, threw his arms backward languidly, and stretched himself.

“Goin' to bed?” his father inquired, absent-mindedly.

“No, down to the creek; there was a plenty of cats and eels running last night. Where's my cup of bait?”

“I hain't touched it—I hain't dropped a hook in water for over two years. My hands shake, an' I can't hold a pole steady. The bait's with your tackle, I reckon.”

Paul went to the wagon-shed adjoining the stable, and from the slanting roof took down a pair of long canes, from the tapering ends of which dangled crude, home-twisted lines, to which were attached rusty hooks and bits of hammered lead, and, with the poles on his shoulder and the bait-cup in his hand, he went down the path to the creek near by. He had a subtle fondness for Nature, in any mood or dress, and the mystic landscape to-night appealed to a certain famished longing within him—a sense of an unattainable something which haunted him in his reflective moods. The stars were coming out in the unclouded skies, revealing the black outlines of the mountain, the intervening foot-hills, the level meadows, where the cattle and sheep lay asleep, and over which fireflies were darting and flashing their tiny search-lights. The sultry air held the aroma of new-cut hay, of crushed and dying clover-blossom. The snarl of the tree-frog and the chirp of the cricket were heard close at hand, and in the far distance the doleful howling of a dog came in response to the voice of another, so much farther away that it sounded softer than an echo.

Presently Paul reached a spot on the creek-bank where the creeping forest-fires had burned the bushes away, and where an abrupt curve of the stream formed a swirling eddy, on the surface of which floated a mass of driftwood, leaves, twigs, and pieces of bark. Baiting his hooks, he lowered them into the water, fastening one pole in the earth and holding the other in his hands. He had not long to wait, for soon there was a vigorous jerking and tugging at the pole in his hands.

“That's an eel now!” the sportsman chuckled; “an' I'll land 'im, if he don't wind his tail round a snag and break my line.”

Eels are hard to catch, and this one was seen to be nearly a yard in length when Paul managed to drag it ashore. Even out of water an eel is hard to conquer, for Nature has supplied it with a slimy skin that aids it to evade the strongest human grip. The boy sprang upon his prey and grasped it, but it wriggled from his hands, arms, and knees, and like an animated rubber tube bounded toward the stream.

“Nail 'im, nail 'im!” cried out Ralph Rundel, excitedly, quickening his stride down the path. “Put sand on yore hands! Lemme show you—thar now, you got 'im—hold 'im till I—” But the snakelike thing, held for a moment in Paul's eager arms, was away again. The boy and the man bumped against each other as they sprang after it, and Ralph was fortunate enough to put the heel of his shoe on it's head and grind it into the earth. The dying thing coiled its lithe body round the man's ankle like a boa, and then gradually relaxed.

Now, fully alive to the sport, Paul gave all his attention to rebaiting his hook. “This one raised such a racket he has scared all the rest off,” he muttered, his eyes on his line.

“They'll come back purty soon,” Ralph said, consolingly. He sat down on the sand and began to fill his pipe. His excitement over the eel's capture had lived only a moment. There was a fixed stare in his eyes, a dreamy, contemplative note of weariness in his voice, which was that of a man who had outgrown all earthly interests.

“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord!”

It was the mellow, sonorous voice of Jeff Warren singing at his home across the fields.

“Humph! He gits a heap o' fun out of that, fust an' last,” Ralph remarked, sardonically, and he shrugged his frail shoulders. “It ain't so much the singin' he loves—if I'm any judge—as what it fetches to his net, as the sayin' is. He is a born lady's man. Jeff knows exactly when an' how to say the things that tickle a woman's fancy. I think—I think yore ma loves to hear 'im talk mighty nigh as well as she loves to hear 'im sing. I don't know”—a slight pause—“I say I don't know, but I think so.”

Paul thought he had a bite, and he raised his hook to see if the bait was intact. Ralph sighed audibly. He embraced his thin knees with his arms, and held the unlighted pipe in his hands. The hook was back in the water; the boy's face was half averted.

“Thar's a good many points about Jeff that women like,” Ralph resumed, in a forced, tentative tone. “He's a strappin', fine-lookin' feller, for one thing; young, strong, an' always gittin' in fights over some'n or other. The impression is out amongst women an' gals that he won't let nobody pass the slightest slur ag'in' one o' the sex in his hearin'. That will take a man a long way in the opinion of females; but all the same, he's a sly devil. He'll do to watch—in my opinion, that is. I've thought some that maybe—well, I don't know that I'd go that fur neither; but a feller like me, for instance, will have odd notions once in a while, especially if he ain't actively engaged an' busy, like I am most o' the time since I've been so porely. I was goin' to say that I didn't know but what I ort to sorter, you know”—Ralph hesitated, and then plunged—“warn yore mother to—to go it sorter slow with Jeff.”

Paul turned his back on the speaker and began to examine the bait on his hook; he shrugged his shoulders sensitively, and even in the vague starlight evinced a certain show of awkwardness. But Ralph was unobservant; his mental pictures were evidently more clear to him than material ones.

“Yore aunt Mandy is right,” Ralph resumed. “She shorely did spoil yore ma for any real responsibility in life. La me! it was the talk of the neighborhood—I mean Mandy's love-affair was. She was just a gal when she took a big fancy to a Yankee soldier that come along in one o' Sherman's regiments. He was to come back after the war was over, but he never did. It mighty nigh killed 'er; but yore ma was then growin' up, and Mandy just seemed to find comfort in pamperin' and indulgin' her. Addie certainly got all that was a-goin'! No gal in the neighborhood had nicer fixin's; she was just like a doll kept in a bandbox. Stacks and stacks o' fellows was after her, me in the bunch, of course. At first it looked like I didn't stand much of a show; but my grandfather died about then an' left me the farm I used to own. I reckon that turned the scale, for the rest o' the fellows didn't own a foot o' land, a stick o' timber, or a head o' stock. I say it turned the scale, but I don't mean that Addie cared much one way or the other. Mandy had it in hand. I begun to see that she sorter held the rest off and throwed me an' Addie together like at every possible chance—laughin' an' jokin' an' takin' a big interest an' tellin' me she was on my side. You see, it was a case o' the real thing with me. From the fust day I ever laid eyes on yore ma, an' heard 'er talk in her babyish way, I couldn't think o' nothin' else. I felt a little squeamish over bein' so much older 'an her; but Mandy laughed good an' hearty, an' said we'd grow together as time passed. Addie kept me in hot water for a long while even after that—looked like she didn't want Mandy to manage for her, an' kicked over the traces some. I remember I had to beg an' beg, an' Mandy argued an' scolded an' nagged till Addie finally consented. But, la me! how a feller's hopes kin fall! Hard times came. I borrowed on my land to keep Addie supplied with nice things, an' my crops went crooked. I lost money in a sawmill, an' finally got to be a land-renter like I am now, low in health an' spirits, an' dependent on you for even my tobacco—tobacco.” Ralph repeated the word, for his voice had become indistinct.

“That's all right,” Paul said, testily. “Go on to bed. Settin' up like this ain't goin' to do you no good.”

“It does me more good'n you think,” Ralph asserted. “I hold in all day long with not a soul to talk to, an' dyin' to say things to somebody. I ain't hardly got started. Thar's a heap more—a heap that I'm afraid you are too young to understand; but you will some day. Yore time will come, too. Yore lady-love will cross yore track, an' you'll see visions in her eyes that never was on land or sea. I look at you sometimes an' think that maybe you will become a great man, an' I'll tell you why. It is because you are sech a hard worker an' stick to a job so steady, and because you've got sech a hot, spicy temper when folks rile you by treatin' you wrong. Folks say thar is some'n in blood, an' I don't want you to think because I'm sech a flat failure that you have to be. Experts in sech matters say that a body is just as apt to copy after far-off kin as that which is close by, and I want to tell you something. It is about the Rundel stock. Three year ago, when I was a witness in a moonshine case at government court, in Atlanta, my expenses was paid, an' I went down, an' while I was in the city a feller called on me at my boardin'-house. He said the paper had printed my name in connection with the case, an' he looked me up because he was interested in everybody by the name o' Rundel. He was writin' a family history for some rich folks that wanted it all down in black an' white to keep for future generations to look at. He was dressed fine, and talked like a presidin' elder or a bishop. He told me, what I never had heard before, that the name ought to be spelled with an A in front—Arundel. He had a short way o' twistin' it that I can't remember. He said thar was several ways o' callin' the name, an' he laughed an' said he met one old backwoods chap in Kentucky that said his was 'Runnels' because his neighbors called 'im that, an' he liked the sound of it. He set for a good hour or more tellin' me about the ups an' downs of folks by the name. He said what made the whole thing so encouragin' was that the majority of 'em was continually on the rise. He'd knowed 'em, he said, to be plumb down an' out for several generations, an' then to pop up an' produce a man of great fame an' power. He had a list o' big guns as long as yore arm. I knowed I was too far gone to benefit by it myself, but I thought about you, an' I felt comforted. I've always remembered with hope an' pride, too, what Silas Tye told me about the tramp phrenologist that examined heads at his shop one day. He said men was payin' the'r quarters an' listenin' to predictions an' hearin' nothin' of any weight; but that the feller kept lookin' at you while you set waitin', an' finally Tye said the feller told the crowd that you had sech a fine head an' eye an' shaped hands an' feet an' ankles, like a blooded hoss, that he would pass on you for nothin'. Tye said you got mad an' went off in a big huff; but the feller stuck to what he'd said. He declared you'd make yore way up in the world as sure as fate, if you wasn't halted by some accident or other.”

Paul saw his line moving forward, his tense hands eagerly clutching his rod, but the swishing cord suddenly became slack on the surface of the water. An impatient oath slipped from his lips.

“Snapped my line right at the sinker!” he cried. “He was a jim-dandy, too, bigger than that one.” He threw the pole with the broken line on the bank and grasped the other. If he had heard the rambling talk of his father it was completely forgotten.

“Folks laugh at me'n you both,” Ralph ran on, a softer cadence in his voice. “They say I've been a mammy to you, a nuss' an' what not. Well, I reckon thar's truth in it. After I found—found that me'n yore ma wasn't the sweethearts I thought we would be, an' you'd come an' looked so little an' red an' helpless in the pore little cradle I made out of a candle-box with wobbly rockers—I say, I reckon then that I did sorter take yore ma's place. She wasn't givin' milk, an' the midwife advised a bottle, and it looked like neither one o' the women would keep it filled an' give it at the right time. I'd go to the field an' try to work, but fearin' you was neglected I'd go to the house an' take you up an' tote you about. It was turnin' things the wrong way, I reckon, but I was a plumb fool about you. Yore mother seemed willin' to shift the job, an' yore aunt was always busy fixin' this or that trick for her to wear. But I ain't complainin'—understand that—I liked it. Yore little warm, soft body used to give me a feelin' no man kin describe. An' I suffered, too. Many a night I got up when you was croupy, an' uncovered the fire an' put on wood an' set an' rocked you, fearin' every wheezy breath you drawed would stop in yore throat. But I got my reward, if reward was deserved, for you gave me the only love that I ever knowed about. Even as a baby you'd cry for me—cry when I left you, an' coo an' chuckle, an' hold out yore little chubby hands whenever I come. As you got older you'd toddle down the field-road to meet me, yore yaller, flaxen head hardly as high as the broom-sedge. I loved to tote you even after you got so big folks said I looked ridiculous. You was about seven when my wagon run over me an' laid me up for a spell. I'll never forget how you acted. You was the only one in the family that seemed a bit bothered. You'd come to my bed the minute you got home from school, an' set thar an' rub my head. While that spell lasted I was the baby, an' you the mammy, an' to this day I ain't able to recall a happier time.”

Ralph rose and stood by his son for a moment, his gaze on the steady rod. “I'll take the eel to the house,” he said, “an' skin it an' slice it up an' salt it down for breakfast. You may find me in yore bed. This is one o' the times I feel like sleepin' with you—that is, if you don't care?”

“It is all right, go ahead,” Paul said; “there is plenty of room.”

With the eel swinging in his hand, his body bent, Ralph trudged toward the house, which, a dun blur on the landscape, showed in the hazy starlight. A dewy robe had settled on every visible object. An owl was dismally hooting in the wood, which sloped down from the craggy mountain. In the stagnant pools of the lowlands frogs were croaking, hooting, and snarling; the mountain-ridge, with its serried trees against the sky, looked like a vast sleeping monster under cloud-coverings.

Now and then Jeff Warren was heard singing.

CHAPTER V

AT certain times during the year Paul was en abled to earn a little extra money by hauling fire-wood to the village and selling it to the householders. One morning he was standing by his wagon, waiting for a customer for a load of oak, when Hoag came from the bar-room at the hotel and steered toward him. The planter's face was slightly flushed from drink, and he was in a jovial mood.

“Been playing billiards,” he said, thickly, and he jerked his thumb toward the green, swinging doors of the bar. “Had six tilts with a St. Louis drummer, an' beat the socks off of 'im. I won his treats an' I'm just a little bit full, but it will wear off. It's got to. I'm goin' in to eat dinner with my sister—you've seen 'er—Mrs. Mayfield. She's up from Atlanta with her little girl to git the mountain air an' country cookin'.”

At this moment Peter Kerr, the proprietor of the hotel, came out ringing the dinner-bell. He was a medium-sized man of forty, with black eyes and hair, the skin of a Spaniard, and an ever-present, complacent smile. He strode from end to end of the long veranda, swinging the bell in front of him. When Kerr was near, Hoag motioned to him to approach, and Kerr did so, silencing the bell by catching hold of the clapper and swinging the handle downward. Hoag laid his hand on Paul's shoulder and bore down with unconscious weight.

“Say, Pete,” he said, “you know this boy?”

“Oh, yes, everybody does, I reckon,” Kerr answered patronizingly.

“Well, he's the best hand I've got,” Hoag said, sincerely enough; “the hardest worker in seven States. Now, here's what I want. Paul eats out at my home as a rule an' he's got to git dinner here at my expense to-day. Charge it to me.”

Paul flushed hotly—an unusual thing for him—and shook his head.

“I'm goin' home to dinner,” he stammered, his glance averted.

“You'll do nothing of the sort,” Hoag objected, warmly. “You've got that wood to sell, an' nobody will buy it at dinner-time. Every livin' soul is at home. Besides, I want to talk over some matters with you afterward. Fix 'im a place, Pete, an' make them niggers wait on 'im.”

There was no way out of it, and Paul reluctantly gave in. With burly roughness, which was not free from open patronage, the planter caught him by the arm and drew him up the steps of the hotel and on into the house, which Paul knew but slightly, having been there only once or twice to sell game, vegetables, or other farm produce.

The office was noisily full of farmers, traveling salesmen, lawyers, merchants, and clerks who boarded there or dropped in to meals at the special rate given to all citizens of the place and vicinity. On the right hand was a long, narrow “wash-room.” It had shelves holding basins and pails of water, sloping troughs into which slops were poured, towels on wooden rollers, and looking-glasses from the oaken frames of which dangled, at the ends of strings, uncleanly combs and brushes.

When he had bathed his face and hands and brushed his hair, Paul returned to the office, where the proprietor—with some more patronage—took him by the arm and led him to the door of the big dining-room. It was a memorable event in the boy's life. He was overwhelmed with awe; he had the feeling that his real ego was encumbered with those alien things—legs, arms, body, and blood which madly throbbed in his veins and packed into his face. He would not have hesitated for an instant to engage in a hand-to-hand fight with a man wearing the raiment of an emperor's guard, if occasion had demanded it; but this new thing under the heavens gave him pause as nothing else ever had done. The low-ceiled room, with its many windows curtained in white, gauzy stuff, long tables covered with snowy linen, glittering glass, sparkling plated-ware, and gleaming china, seemed to have sprung into being by some enchantment full of designs against his timidity. There was a clatter of dishes, knives, forks, and spoons; a busy hum of voices; the patter of swift-moving feet; the jar and bang of the door opening into the adjoining kitchen, as the white-aproned negroes darted here and there, holding aloft trays of food.

Seeing Paul hesitating where the proprietor had left him, the negro head waiter came and led him to a seat at a small table in a corner somewhat removed from the other diners. It was the boy's rough aspect and poor clothing which had caused this discrimination against him, but he was unaware of the difference. Indeed, he was overjoyed to find that his entrance and presence were unnoticed. He felt very much out of place with all those queer dishes before him. The napkin, folded in a goblet at his plate, was a thing he had heard of but never used, and it remained unopened, even after the waiter had shaken it out of the goblet to give him ice-water. There were hand-written bills of fare on the other tables, but the waiter simply brought Paul a goodly supply of food and left him. He was a natural human being and unusually hungry, and for a few moments he all but forgot his surroundings in pure animal enjoyment. His appetite satisfied, he sat drinking his coffee and looking about the room. On his right was a long table, at which sat eight or ten traveling salesmen; and in their unstudied men-of-the-world ease, as they sat ordering cigars from the office, striking matches under their chairs, and smoking in lounging attitudes, telling yams and jesting with one another, they seemed to the boy to be a class quite worthy of envy. They dressed well; they spent money; they knew all the latest jokes; they traveled on trains and lived in hotels; they had seen the great outer world. Paul decided that he would like to be a drummer; but something told him that he would never be anything but what he was, a laborer in the open air—a servant who had to be obedient to another's will or starve.

At this moment his attention was drawn to the entrance. Hoag was coming in accompanied by a lady and little girl, and, treading ponderously, he led them down the side of the room to a table on Paul's left. Hoag seemed quite a different man, with his unwonted and clumsy air of gallantry as he stood holding the back of his sister's chair, which he had drawn out, and spoke to the head waiter about “something special” he had told the cook to prepare. And when he sat down he seemed quite out of place, Paul thought, in the company of persons of so much obvious refinement. He certainly bore no resemblance to his sister or his niece. Mrs. Mayfield had a fair, smooth brow, over which the brown tresses fell in gentle waves; a slender body, thin neck, and white, tapering hands. But it was Ethel, the little girl, who captured and held from that moment forth the attention of the mountain-boy. Paul had never beheld such dainty, appealing loveliness. She was as white and fair as a lily. Her long-lashed eyes were blue and dreamy; her nose, lips, and chin perfect in contour. She wore a pretty dress of dainty blue, with white stockings and pointed slippers. How irreverent, even contaminating, seemed Hoag's coarse hand when it rested once on her head as he smiled carelessly into the girl's face! Paul felt his blood boil and throb.

“Half drunk!” he muttered. “He's a hog, and ought to be kicked.”

Then he saw that Hoag had observed him, and to his great consternation the planter sat smiling and pointing the prongs of his fork at him. Paul heard his name called, and both the lady and her daughter glanced at him and smiled in quite a friendly way, as if the fork had introduced them. Paul felt the blood rush to his face; a blinding mist fell before his eyes, and the whole noisy room became a chaos of floating objects. When his sight cleared he saw that the three were looking in another direction; but his embarrassment was not over, for the head waiter came to him just then and told him that Mr. Hoag wanted him to come to his table as soon as his dinner was finished.

Paul gulped his coffee down now in actual terror of something intangible, and yet more to be dreaded than anything he had ever before encountered. He was quite certain that he would not obey. Hoag might take offense, swear at him, discharge him; but that was of no consequence beside the horrible ordeal the man's drunken brain had devised. Hoag was again looking at him; he was smiling broadly, confidently, and swung his head to one side in a gesture which commanded Paul to come over. Mrs. Mayfield's face also wore a slight smile of agreement with her brother's mood; but Ethel, the little girl, kept her long-lashed and somewhat conscious eyes on the table. Again the hot waves of confusion beat in Paul's face, brow, and eyes. He doggedly shook his head at Hoag, and then his heart sank, for he knew that he was also responding to the lady's smile in a way that was unbecoming in a boy even of the lowest order, yet he was powerless to act otherwise. Like a blind man driven desperate by encroaching danger that could not be located, he rose, turned toward the door, and fairly plunged forward. The toe of his right foot struck the heel of his left, and he stumbled and almost fell. To get out he had to pass close to Hoag's table, and though he did not look at the trio, he felt their surprised stare on him, and knew that they were reading his humiliation in his flaming face. He heard the planter laugh in high merriment, and caught the words: “Come here, you young fool, we are not goin' to bite you!”

It seemed to the boy, as he incontinently fled the spot, that the whole room had witnessed his disgrace. In fancy he heard the waiters laughing and the amused comments of the drummers.

The landlord tried to detain him as he hurried through the office.

“Did you git enough t'eat?” he asked; but, as if pursued by a horde of furies, Paul dashed on into the street.

He found a man inspecting his load of wood and sold it to him, receiving instructions as to which house to take it to and where it was to be left. With the hot sense of humiliation still on him, he drove down the street to the rear fence of a cottage and threw the wood over, swearing at himself, at Hoag, at life in general, but through it all he saw Ethel Mayfield's long, golden hair, her eyes of dreamy blue, and pretty, curving lips. She remained in his thoughts as he drove his rattling wagon home through the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. She was in his mind so much, indeed, from that day on, that he avoided contact with the members of his family. He loved to steal away into the woods alone, or to the hilltops, and fancy that she was with him listening to his wise explanation of this or that rural thing which a girl from a city could not know, and which a girl from a city, to be well informed, ought to know.

CHAPTER VI

BY chance he met her a week or so later. She and her mother were spending the day at Hoag's, and near noon Ethel had strolled across the pasture, gathering wild-flowers. Paul had been working at the tannery assisting a negro crushing bark for the vats, and was starting home to get his dinner when he saw her. She wore a big sailor hat and a very becoming dress of a different color from the one he had first seen her in. He wanted to take a good look at her, but was afraid she would see him. She had her hands full of flowers and fern leaves, and was daintily picking her way through the thick broom-sedge. He had passed on, and his back was to her when he heard her scream out in fright, and, turning, he saw her running toward him. He hurried back, climbed over the rail fence, and met her. “A snake, a snake!” she cried, white with terror. “Where?” he asked, boyishly conscious that his moment had arrived for showing contempt for all such trivialities.

“There,” she pointed, “back under those rocks. It was coiled up right under my feet and ran when it saw me.”

There was a fallen branch of a tree near by, and coolly picking it up he broke it across his knee to the length of a cudgel, then twisted the twigs and bark off. He swung it easily like a ball-player handling a bat.

“Now, come show me,” he said, riding on a veritable cloud of self-confidence. “Where did it go?”

“Oh, I'm afraid!” she cried. “Don't go, it will bite you!”

He laughed contemptuously. “How could it?” he sneered. “It wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance against this club.” He advanced to the pile of rocks she now indicated, and she stood aloof, holding her breath, her little hands pressed to her white cheeks, as he began prying the stones and boldly thrusting into crevices. Presently from the heap a brownish snake ran. Ethel saw it and screamed again; but even as he struck she heard him laugh derisively. “Don't be silly!” he said, and the next moment he had the dying thing by the tail, calmly holding it up for her inspection, its battered and flattened head touching the ground.

“It's a highland moccasin,” he nonchalantly instructed her. “They are as poisonous as rattlers. It's a good thing you didn't step on it, I tell you. They lie in the sun, and fellers mowing hay sometimes get bit to the bone.”

“Drop it! Put it down!” Ethel cried, her pretty face still pale. “Look, it's moving!”

“Oh, it will wiggle that way till the sun goes down,” he smiled down from his biological height; “but it is plumb done for. Lawsy me! I've killed more of them than I've got fingers and toes.”

Reassured, she drew nearer and looked at him admiringly. He was certainly a strong, well-formed lad, and his courage was unquestionable. Out of respect for her fears he dropped the reptile, and she bent down and examined it. Again the strange, new power she had from the first exercised over him seemed to exude from her whole being, and he felt a return of the cold, insecure sensation of the hotel dining-room. His heart seemed to be pumping its blood straight to his face and brain. Her little white hands were so frail and flower-like; her golden tresses, falling over her proud shoulders like a gauzy mantle, gave out a delicate fragrance. What a vision of loveliness! Seen close at hand, she was even prettier than he had thought. He had once admired Sally Tibbits, whom he had kissed at a corn-husking, as a reward for finding the red ear which lay almost in Sally's lap, and which, according to the game, she could have hidden; but Sally had never worn shoes, that he could remember, and as he recalled her now, by way of comparison, her legs were ridiculously brown and brier-scratched; her homespun dress was a poor bag of a thing, and her dingy chestnut hair seemed as lifeless as her neglected complexion. And Ethel's voice! He had never heard anything so mellow, soft, and bewitching. She seemed like a princess in one of his storybooks, the sort tailors' sons used to meet and marry by rubbing up old lamps.

“What are you going to do with it?” She looked straight at him, and he felt the force of her royal eyes.

“Well, I don't intend to take it to the graveyard,” he boldly jested. “I'll leave it here for the buzzards.” He pointed to the cloud-flecked sky, where several vultures were slowly circling. “They'll settle here as soon as our backs are turned. Folks say they go by the smell of rotten flesh, but I believe their sense is keener than that. I wouldn't be much surprised if they watched and seed me kill that snake.”

“How funny you talk!” Ethel said, in no tone of disrespect, but rather that of the mild inquisitiveness of a stranger studying a foreign tongue. “You said seed for saw. Why, my teacher would give me awful marks if I made a mistake like that. Of course, it may be correct here in the mountains.” Paul flushed a deeper red; there was a touch of resentment in his voice.

“Folks talk that way round here,” he blurted out; “grown-up folks. We don't try to put on style like stuck-up town folks.”

“Please forgive me.” Ethel's voice fell; she put out her hand and lightly touched his. “I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, and I never will say such a thing again—never, on my honor.”

He bitterly repented it afterward, but he rudely drew his hand away, and stood frowning, his glance averted.

“I am very sorry,” Ethel said, “and I can't blame you—I really can't. What I said was a great deal worse than your little mistake. My mother says rudeness is never excusable.”

“Oh, it's all right,” he gave in, as gracefully as he could.

“And are you sure you aren't mad with me?” she pursued, anxiously.

“Nothin' to be mad about,” he returned, kicking the snake with his foot.

“Well, I hope you won't hate me,” she said. “I feel that I know you pretty well. Uncle told us a lot about you that day at the hotel. He said you were the bravest boy he ever saw and the hardest worker. I saw you looked embarrassed that day, and he had no right to tease you as he did; but he was—of course, you know what was the matter with him?”

Paul nodded. “I wasn't going to pay any attention to him,” he declared. “I wasn't—wasn't fixed up fit to—to be seen by anybody, any more than I am now, for that matter; but I can't do the work I have to do and go dressed like a town dude.”

“Of course not—of course not,” Ethel agreed, sympathetically, “and Uncle says you spend all you make on others, anyway. He was telling us about how you loved your father and took care of him. You know, I think that is wonderful, and so does mama. Boys are not like that in Atlanta; they are lazy and spoiled, and bad, generally. People in a city are so different, you know. Mama says the greatest men were once poor country boys. I'd think that was encouraging, if I was—if I were you—see, I make slips myself! After if you must always say were to be strictly correct. Just think of it, when I am grown up you may be a great man, and be ashamed even to know me.”

He shrugged his shoulders and frowned. The flush had partly left his face, leaving splotches of white here and there. “No hopes of me ever mak-in' any sort of rise,” he declared. “There is too much to do at home; I don't get time to go to school or study.”

“What a pity!” Ethel sighed. She swept him from head to foot critically. Touches of pink lay on her cheeks just below her earnest eyes. “You are good-looking—you—you really are handsome, and so strong and brave! Somehow I feel certain that you are going to be successful. I—I am going to pray for it. They say God answers prayers when they are the right kind, and I know mine would be right.”

“I don't believe any of that rubbish,” he said, loftily. “I've heard your uncle Jim laugh at the preachers and folks that get converted one day and are plumb over it the next. He says they are the biggest fools in the world.”

“I know he talks that way, and it worries mama awfully,” the girl said. “I'm afraid he's terribly bad. You see, he drinks, plays cards, curses, and is hard on the negroes who work for him. Now, the truth is that the people who go to church really are better than he is, and that, in itself, ought to show he's wrong—don't you think so?”

“He just uses his natural brain,” Paul returned, philosophically. “He says there is just one life, an' he's goin' to get all he can out of it. I don't blame him. He's rich—he can buy and sell the folks round here that say he don't know what he's talkin' about. He says there ain't no God, and he can prove it. He made it purty plain one day while he was talking to a crowd at the tan-yard. He told 'em, if they believed there was any such thing, for 'em to pray for some'n and see if they'd get it. He told about a gang of Methodists that was praying for money to make a church bigger, and the lightning struck it and burned it down.”

“Did you never pray yourself?” Ethel questioned, quite irrelevantly.

He hesitated; his color flamed again in his face, and he avoided her gentle, upward gaze. “Not—not since I was very little,” he said, awkwardly. “I don't believe in it; the whole shoutin', singin-and-prayin' bunch of meetin'-folks make me sick.

“Uncle is responsible for all that,” Ethel declared. “You naturally would look up to him; but I believe he is wrong—I really do. I like good people, and, while he is my uncle, I—well, I don't feel the same toward him as I would if he were a different sort of man.”

“He's all right,” Paul defended. “He's rough, and curses some when he's mad, but you can count on him to keep his word in a deal. He's no hypocrite. Lots of folks believe as he does, but are afraid to own it; he stands his ground and tells them all exactly what he thinks, and says they can lump it.”

They had been walking side by side across the grass, and had reached the point where their ways parted. He was turning homeward, when she advanced impulsively and touched him almost timidly on the arm. Her pretty red lip was quivering and her hand shook visibly.

“I don't care what uncle says—or what any one says. I believe there is a God, and I believe He is good, and I am going to pray to Him to make you have faith.”

There were incipient tears in her eyes, and, as if to avoid his wondering stare, she lowered her head suddenly and walked away.

At the front gate his father stood waiting for him, a mild look of excitement in his weary eyes. “Heard the news?” he inquired.

“No; what's happened?” Paul answered.

“Enough, I reckon, to them that's hit by it,” Ralph returned. “Old Alf Rose, over t'other side o' the mountain, was found dead in a thicket close to his house. He was beat bad, his skull was all mashed in.”

“Who did it?” Paul asked.

“They don't know for sure; but he was robbed of all he had in his pockets, an' his hat was gone. A nigger, Pete Watson, is missin', and they say the sheriff and a passle o' deputies, an' half the county, are out scourin' the woods for 'im. Ef they ketch 'im thar 'll be a lynchin' as sure as preachin'.”

A voice now came from the farm-house. It was Amanda leaning out of the kitchen window.

“Come on in an' git yore dinner,” she cried. “Don't listen to that stuff or you won't eat a bite. Yore pa's chatter has already turned my stomach inside out.”

“That's the woman of it,” Ralph sniffed, wearily. “They both begged an' begged for particulars, an' wormed every bit they could out o' me, an' now they talk about its gaggin' em.”

CHAPTER VII

THAT evening, after Hoag had put his sister and niece into his phaeton, and told Cato, the negro driver, to take them to Grayson, he went back to the veranda where his wife and her mother, Mrs. Sarah Tilton, stood waving their handkerchiefs at the departing guests. Mrs. Hoag was a thin, wanfaced woman of questionable age and health. In honor of the visitors she wore her best black-silk gown, and its stiff, rigid folds and white-lace collar gave her a prim and annual-excursion look. There was a tired expression in her gray eyes, a nervous twitching of her needle-pricked fingers. Her mother was of a lustier type, having a goodly allotment of flesh, plenty of blood and activity of limb and brain, and a tongue which occupied itself on every possible occasion with equal loquacity in small or large affairs.

“I couldn't help from thinkin' what an awful time we'd have had,” she was saying to her daughter, “if they had stayed here this summer instead of at the hotel. I can stand it for a day or two, but three months on a stretch would lay me stark and stiff in my grave. Did you ever in all yore bom days see such finicky ways? They nibbled at the lettuce like tame rabbits eatin' cabbage-leaves, and wiped their lips or fingers every minute, whether they got grease on 'em or not, and then their prissy talk! I presume, if Harriet said presee-um once she did fully a dozen times, an' I didn't know any more what it meant than if she'd been talkin' Choctaw.”

“They are simply not used to our country ways,” Mrs. Hoag sighed. “I don't feel like they are, to say, stuck up. I think they was just tryin' to be easy an' natural-like.”

“Maybe she'd find it easier to go back to the way she used to live before her pa sent 'er off to that fine boardin'-school in Macon,” Mrs. Tilton retorted, with a smile that froze into a sort of grimace of satisfaction. “She used to go barefooted here in the mountains; she was a regular tomboy that wanted to climb every tree in sight, slide down every bank, and wade in every mud-puddle and branch anywheres about. She was eternally stuffin' her stomach with green apples, raw turnips, an' sweet potatoes, an' smearin' her face with 'lasses or preserves. She laid herself up for a week once for eatin' a lot o' pure licorice an' cinnamon-bark that she found in the drug-store her uncle used to keep at the cross-roads.”

Hoag sat down in a chair, tilted it back against the wall, and cast a summarizing glance toward his com, wheat, and cotton fields beyond the brown roofs of the long sheds and warehouses of the tannery at the foot of the hill. He seldom gave the slightest heed to the current observations of his wife or her mother. If they had not found much to say about the visitors, it would have indicated that they were unwell and needed a doctor, and of course that would have meant money out of his pocket, which was a matter of more moment than the most pernicious gossip. Hoag's younger son, Jack, a golden-haired child three years of age, toddled round the house and putting his chubby hands on the lowest of the veranda steps, glanced up at his father, and smiled and cooed. Hoag leaned forward, crude tenderness in his look and movement.

“That's right!” he cried, gently, and he held his hands out encouragingly. “Crawl up to daddy, Jack. I was lookin' for you, little boy. I was wonderin' where you was at. Got scared o' the fine town folks, an' hid out, didn't you?”

Slowly, retarded as Jack was by his short skirt, he mounted step after step, constantly applauded by his father, till, red in the face and panting, he reached the top and was eagerly received into the extended arms.

“Bully boy!” Hoag cried. “I knew you'd stick to it and never say die. You are as full o' pluck as an egg is of meat.” And the planter pressed the bonny head against his breast and stroked the soft, curling hair with his big, red hand.

Few of Hoag's friends knew of his almost motherly tenderness and fondness for his child. In returning home at night, even if it was very late, he never would go to bed without looking into his wife's room to see if Jack was all right. And every morning, before rising, he would call the child to him, and the two would wake The rest of the family With their romping and laughter. Sometimes Hoag would dress the boy, experiencing a delight in the clumsy action which he could not have analyzed. His devotion to Jack seemed all the more remarkable for his indifferent manner toward his older son, Henry, a lad of fifteen, who had a mischievous disposition which made him rather unpopular in the neighborhood. Many persons thought Henry was like his father in appearance, though quite the reverse in the habit of thrift or business foresight. Mrs. Tilton, the grandmother, declared that the boy was being driven to the dogs as rapidly as could be possible, for he had never known the meaning of paternal sympathy or advice, and never been made to do any sort of work. Be that as it might, Henry was duly sworn at or punished by Hoag at least once a week.

The phaeton returned from the village. Cato drove the horses into the stable-yard and put them into their stalls, whistling as he fed them and rubbed them down. The twilight was thickening over the fields and meadows. The dew was falling. The nearest hills were no longer observable. Jack, still in his father's arms on the veranda, was asleep; the touch of the child's breath on the man's cheek was a subtle, fragrant thing that conveyed vague delight to his consciousness. Henry rode up to the stable, turned his horse over to Cato, and came toward the house. He was, indeed, like his father in shape, build, and movement. He paused at the foot of the steps, glanced indifferently at Hoag and said:

“I passed Sid Trawley back on the mountain-road. He said, tell you he wanted to see you to-night without fail; he said, tell you not to leave till he got here.”

“Oh, all right,” Hoag said, with a steady, interested stare at his son, who now stood beside him. “I'll be here.”

His voice waked the sleeping child. Jack sat up, rubbed his eyes, and then put a little hand on his father's face. “Dack hungry; Dack want his supper,” he lisped.

PAUL RUNDEL

A Novel

By Will N. Harben

Harper and Brothers

1912

[Original]