TIOBA

FROM among the birches and pines, where we pitched our moving tent, you looked over the flat meadow-lands; and through these went a river, slow and almost noiseless, wandering in the valley as if there were no necessity of arriving anywhere at appointed times. “What is the necessity?” it said softly to any that would listen. And there was none; so that for many days the white tent stood among the trees, overlooking the haycocks in the meadows. It was enough business in hand to study the philosophy and the subtle rhetoric of Still River.

Opposite rose a strangely ruined mountain-side. There was a nobly-poised head and plenteous chest, the head three thousand feet nearer the stars—which was little enough from their point of view, no doubt, but to us it seemed a symbol of something higher than the stars, something beyond them forever waiting and watching.

From its feet upward half a mile the mountain was one raw wound. The shivered roots and tree-trunks stuck out helplessly from reddish soil, boulders were crushed and piled in angry heaps, veins of granite ripped open—the skin and flesh of the mountain tom off with a curse, and the bones made a mockery. The wall of the precipice rose far above this desolation, and, beyond, the hazy forests went up a mile or more clear to the sky-line. The peak stood over all, not with triumph or with shame, but with the clouds and stars.

It was a cloudy day, with rifts of sunlight. An acre of light crept down the mountain: so you have seen, on the river-boats at night, the search-light feeling, fingering along the shore.

In the evening an Arcadian, an elderly man and garrulous, came up to see what it might be that glimmered among his pulp-trees. He was a surprise, and not as Arcadian as at first one might presume, for he sold milk and eggs and blueberries at a price to make one suddenly rich. His name was Fargus, and he it was whose hay-cutter clicked like a locust all day in the meadow-lands. He came and made himself amiable beside us, and confided anything we might care to know which experience had left with him.

“That's Tioba,” he said. “That's the name of that mountain.” And he told us the story of one whom he called “Jim Hawks,” and of the fall of Tioba.

She's a skinned mountain [he said]. She got wet inside and slid. Still River used to run ten rods further in, and there was a cemetery, too, and Jim Hawks's place; and the cemetery's there yet, six rods underground, but the creek shied off and went through my plough-land scandalous.

Now, Jim Hawks was a get-there kind, with a clawed face—by a wildcat, yes, sir. Tioba got there; and Jim he was a wicked one. I've been forty years in this valley, with the Petersons and the Storrses and the Merimys at Canada Center, all good, quiet folk. And nothing happened to us, for we did nothing to blame, till Jim came, and Tioba ups and drops on him.

Now look at it, this valley! There've been landslides over beyond in Helder's valley, but there's only one in mine. Looks as if the devil gone spit on it. It's Jim Hawks's trail.

He come one day with a buckboard and a yellow horse, and he says:

“Sell me that land from here up the mountain.”

“Who be you?” says I.

“Jim Hawks,” says he, and that's all he appeared to know about it. And he bought the land, and put up a house close to the mountain, so you could throw a cat down his chimney if you wanted to, or two cats if you had 'em.

He was a long, swing-shouldered man, with a light-colored mustache and a kind of flat gray eye that you couldn't see into. You look into a man's eye naturally to see what his intentions are. Well, Jim Hawks's eye appeared to have nothing to say on the subject. And as to that, I told my wife it was none of our business if he didn't bring into the valley anything but his name and a bit of money sufficient.

He got his face clawed by a wildcat by being reckless with it; and he ran a deer into Helder's back yard once and shot it, and licked Helder for claiming the deer. He was the recklessest chap! He swings his fist into Helder's face, and he says:

“Shoot, if you got a gun. If you hain't, get out!”

I told Jim that was no place to put a house, on account of Tioba dropping rocks off herself whenever it rained hard and the soil got mushy. I told him Tioba'd as soon drop a rock on his head as into his gridiron.

You can't see Canada Center from here. There's a post-office there, and three houses, the Petersons', the Storrses' and the Merimys'. Merimy's house got a peaked roof on it. I see Jeaney Merimy climb it after her kitten a-yowling on the ridge. She wasn't but six years old then, and she was gritty the day she was born. Her mother—she's old Peterson's daughter—she whooped, and I fetched Jeaney down with Peterson's ladder. Jeaney Merimy grew up, and she was a tidy little thing. The Storrs boys calculated to marry her, one of 'em, only they weren't enterprising; and Jeaney ups and goes over to Eastport one day with Jim Hawks—cuts out early in the morning, and asks nobody. Pretty goings on in this valley! Then they come back when they were ready, and Jim says:

“What you got to say about it, Merimy?”

Merimy hadn't nothing to say about it, nor his wife hadn't nothing to say, nor Peterson, nor the Storrs boys. Dog-gone it! Nobody hadn't nothing to say; that is, they didn't say it to Jim.

That was five years ago, the spring they put up the Redman Hotel at Helder's. People's come into these parts now thicker'n bugs. They have a band that plays music at the Redman Hotel. But in my time I've seen sights. The bears used to scoop my chickens. You could hear wildcats 'most any night crying in the brush. I see a black bear come down Jumping Brook over there, slapping his toes in the water and grunting like a pig. Me, I was ploughing for buckwheat.

Jeaney Merimy went over to Eastport with her hair in a braid, and came back with it put up like a crow's nest on top of her head. She was a nice-looking girl, Jeaney, and born gritty, and it didn't do her any good.

I says to Jim: “Now, you're always looking for fighting,” says I. “Now, me, I'm for peaceable doings. If you're looking for fighting any time, you start in beyond me.

“You!” says Jim. “I'd as soon scrap with a haystack.”

I do know how it would be, doing with a haystack that way, but you take it from Jim's point of view, and you see it wouldn't be what he'd care for; and you take it from my point of view, and you see I didn't poke into Jim's business. That's natural good sense. Only I'm free to say he was a wicked one, 'stilling whiskey on the back side of Tioba, and filling up the Storrs boys with it, and them gone to the devil off East where the railroads are. And laying Peterson to his front door, drunk. My, he didn't know any more'n his front door! “He's my grandfather,” says Jim. “That's the humor of it”—meaning he was Jeaney's grandfather. And mixing the singularest drinks, and putting 'em into an old man named Fargus, as ought to known better. My wife she said so, and she knew. I do' know what Jeaney Merimy thought, but I had my point of view on that. Jim got drunk himself on and off, and went wilder'n a wildcat, and slid over the mountains the Lord knows where. Pretty goings on in this valley!

This is a good climate if you add it all up and take the average. But sometimes it won't rain till you're gray waiting for it, and sometimes it will snow so the only way to get home is to stay inside, and sometimes it will rain like the bottom fallen out of a tub. The way of it is that when you've lived with it forty years you know how to add up and take the average.

That summer Tioba kept her head out of sight from June to September mainly. She kept it done up in cotton, as you might say, and she leaked in her joints surprising. She's a queer mountain that way. Every now and then she busts out a spring and dribbles down into Still River from a new place.

In September they were all dark days and drizzly nights, and there was often the two sounds of the wind on Tioba that you hear on a bad night. One of 'em is a kind of steady grumble and hiss that's made with the pine-needles and maybe the tons of leaves shaking and falling. The other is the toot of the wind in the gullies on edges of rock. But if you stand in the open on a bad night and listen, you'd think Tioba was talking to you. Maybe she is.

It come along the middle of September, and it was a bad night, drizzly, and Tioba talking double. I went over to the Hawkses' place early to borrow lantern-oil, and I saw Jeaney Merimy sitting over the fire alone, and the wind singing in the chimney. “Jim hasn't come,” she says, speaking quiet; and she gets me the lantern-oil. After, when I went away, she didn't seem to notice; and what with the wind in the chimney, and Jeaney sitting alone with her big black eyes staring, and Tioba talking double, and the rain drizzling, and the night falling, I felt queer enough to expect a ghost to be standing at my gate. And I came along the road, and there was one!

Yes, sir; she was a woman in a gray, wet cloak, standing at my gate, and a horse and buggy in the middle of the road.

“'Mighty!” says I, and drops my oil-can smack in the mud.

“Does Mr. Hawks live here?” she says, seeing me standing like a tomfool in the mud.

“No, ma'am,” says I. “That's his place across the flat half a mile. He ain't at home, but his wife is.”

The wind blew her cloak around her sharp, and I could see her face, though it was more or less dark. She was some big and tall, and her face was white and wet with the rain. After a while she says:

“He's married?”

“Yes, ma'am. You'd better not—'Mighty, ma'am!” says I, “where you going?”

She swung herself into the buggy quicker'n women are apt to do, and she whops the horse around and hits him a lick, and off he goes, splashing and galloping. Me, I was beat. But I got so far as to think if she wasn't a ghost, maybe Jim Hawks would as lief she would be, and if she didn't drive more careful she'd be liable to oblige him that way. Because it stands to reason a woman don't come looking for a man on a bad night, and cut away like that, unless she has something uncommon on her mind. I heard the buggy-wheels and the splash of the horse dying away; and then there was nothing in the night but the drip of the rain and Tioba talking double—um-hiss, toot-toot.

Then I went into the house, and didn't tell my wife about it, she disliking Jim on account of his singular drinks, which had a tidy taste, but affecting a man sudden and surprising. My wife she went off to bed, and I sat by the fire, feeling like there was more wrong in the world than common. And I kept thinking of Jeaney Merimy sitting by herself off there beyond the rain, with the wind singing in the chimney, and Tioba groaning and tooting over her. Then there was the extra woman looking for Jim; and it seemed to me if I was looking for Jim on a dark night, I'd want to let him know beforehand it was all peaceable, so there wouldn't be a mistake, Jim being a sudden man and not particular. I had the extra woman on my mind, so that after some while it seemed to me she had come back and was driving splish-splash around my house, though it was only the wind. I was that foolish I kept counting how many times she went round the house, and it was more than forty; and sometimes she came so close to the front door I thought she'd come through it—bang!

Then somebody rapped sudden at the door, and I jumped, and my chair went slap under the table, and I says, “Come in,” though I'd rather it would have stayed out, and in walks Jim Hawks. “'Mighty!” says I. “I thought you was a horse and buggy.”

He picked up my chair and sat in it himself, rather cool, and began to dry off.

“Horse and buggy?” says he. “Looking for me?”

I just nodded, seeing he appeared to know all about it.

“Saw 'em in Eastport,” says he. “I suppose she's over there”—meaning his place. “Gone down the road! You don't say! Now, I might have known she wouldn't do what you might call a rational thing. Never could bet on that woman. If there was one of two things she'd be likely to do, she wouldn't do either of 'em.”

“Well,” says I, “speaking generally, what might she want of you?”

Jim looks at me kind of absent minded, rubbing his hair the wrong way.

“Now, look at it, Fargus,” he says. “It ain't reasonable. Now, she and me, we got married about five years ago. And she had a brother named Tom Cheever, and Tom and I didn't agree, and naturally he got hurt; not but that he got well again—that is, partly. And she appeared to have different ideas from me, and she appeared to think she'd had enough of me, and I took that to be reasonable. Now, here she wants me to come back and behave myself, cool as you please. And me inquiring why, she acts like the country was too small for us both. I don't see it that way myself.” And he shook his head, stretching his hands out over the fire.

“I don't see either end of it,” says I. “You're a bad one, Jim, a downright bad one.”

“That's so. It's Jeaney you mean,” he says, looking kind of interested. “It'll be hell for Jeaney, won't it?”

The wind and rain was whooping round the house so we could hardly hear each other. It was like a wild thing trying to get in, which didn't know how to do it, and wouldn't give up; and then you'd hear like something whimpering, and little fingers tapping at the window-glass.

My opinion of Jim Hawks was that I didn't seem to get on to him, and that's my opinion up to now; and it appeared to me then that Jim might be the proper explanation himself of anything the extra woman did which seemed unreasonable; but I didn't tell him that, because I didn't see rightly what it would mean if I said it.

Jim got up and stretched his legs. “Now, I tell you, Fargus,” says he, “I'm going to put the thing to Jeaney, being a clipper little woman, not to say sharp. If it comes to the worst, I daresay Canada Center will give us a burying; or if she wants to slide over the mountains with me, there's no trouble about it; or if she'd rather go her own way, and me mine, that's reasonable; or if she says to do nothing but hold the fort, why, that's all right, too, only Canada Center would be likely to take a hand, and then there'd surely be trouble, on account of me getting mad. Now, I have to say to you, Fargus, that you've been as friendly as a man could be, as things are; and maybe you've seen the last of me, and maybe you wouldn't mind if you had.”

“Speaking generally,” says I, “you're about right, Jim.”

With that he laughed, and went out, pulling the door to hard against the storm.

Next day the rain came streaming down, and my cellar was flooded, and the valley was full of the noise of the flood brooks. I kept looking toward the Hawkses' place, having a kind of notion something would blow up there. It appeared to me there was too much gunpowder in that family for the house to stay quiet. Besides, I saw Tioba had been dropping rocks in the night, and there were new boulders around. One had ploughed through Jim's yard, and the road was cut up frightful. The boulder in Jim's yard looked as if it might be eight feet high. I told my wife the Hawkses ought to get out of there, and she said she didn't care, she being down on Jim on account of his mixed drinks, which had a way of getting under a man, I'm free to say, and heaving him up.

About four o'clock in the afternoon it come off misty, and I started over to tell Jim he'd better get out; and sudden I stops and looks, for there was a crowd coming from Canada Center—the Storrses and the Petersons and the Merimys, and the extra woman in a buggy with Henry Hall, who was county sheriff then. “Well, 'Mighty!” says I.

They pulled up in front of Jim's place, and I took it they were going to walk in and settle things prompt. But you see, when I got there, it was Jim a-standing by his door with his rifle, and the sheriff and Canada Center was squeezing themselves through the gate and Jim shooting off sideways at the pickets on his fence. And the sheriff ups and yelled:

“Here, you Jim Hawks! That ain't any way to do.”

Then Jim walks down the road with his rifle over his arm, and Jeaney Merimy comes to the door. She looked some mad and some crying, a little of both.

“Hall,” says he, “you turn your horse and go back where you come from. Maybe I'll see you by and by. The rest of you go back to Canada Center, and if Jeaney wants anything of you she'll come and say so. You go, now!”

And they went. The extra woman drove off with the sheriff, hanging her head, and the sheriff saying, “You'll have to come to time, Jim Hawks, soon or late.” Jeaney Merimy sat in the door with her head hung down, too; and the only one as ought to have been ashamed, he was walking around uppish, like he meant to call down Tioba for throwing rocks into his yard. Then Jeaney sees me, and she says:

“You're all down on Jim. There's no one but me to stand up for Jim.”

She began to cry, while Jim cocked his head and looked at her curious. And she kept saying, “There's no one but me to stand up for Jim.”

That was a queer way for her to look at it.

Now, that night set in, like the one before, with a drizzling rain. It was the longest wet weather I ever knew. I kept going to the window to look at the light over at the Hawkses' and wonder what would come of it, till it made my wife nervous, and she's apt to be sharp when she's nervous, so I quit. And the way Tioba talked double that night was terrible—um-hiss, toot-toot, hour after hour; and no sleep for me and my wife, being nervous.

I do' know what time it was, or what we heard. All I know is, my wife jumps up with a yell, and I jumps up too, and I know we were terrible afraid and stood listening maybe a minute. It seemed like there was almost dead silence in the night, only the um-m went on, but no hissing and no tooting, and if there was any sound of the rain or wind I don't recollect it. And then, “Um!” says Tioba, louder and louder and louder! till there was no top nor bottom to it, and the whole infernal world went to pieces, and pitched me and my wife flat on the floor.

The first I knew, there was dead silence again; or maybe my hearing was upset, for soon after I began to hear the rain buzzing away quietly. Then I got up and took a lantern, and my wife grabs me.

“You ain't going a step!” says she, and the upshot was we both went, two old folks that was badly scared and bound to find out why. We went along the road, looking about us cautious; and of a sudden, where the road ought to be, we ran into a bank of mud that went up out of seeing in the night. Then my wife sat down square in the road and began a-crying, and I knew Tioba had fallen down.

Now, there's Tioba, and that's how she looked next morning, only worse—more mushy and generally clawed up, with the rain still falling dismal, and running little gullies in the mud like a million snakes.

According to my guess, Jim and Jeaney and the cemetery were about ten rods in, or maybe not more than eight. Anyway, I says to Peterson, and he agreed with me, that there wasn't any use for a funeral. I says: “God A'mighty buried 'em to suit himself.” It looked like he didn't think much of the way Canada Center did its burying, seeing the cemetery was took in and buried over again. Peterson and me thought the same on that point. And we put up the white stone, sort of on top of things, that maybe you've noticed, and lumped the folk in the cemetery together, and put their names on it, and a general epitaph; but not being strong on the dates, we left them out mostly. We put Jeaney Merimy with her family, but Canada Center was singularly united against letting Jim in.

“You puts his name on no stone with me or mine,” says Merimy, and I'm not saying but what he was right. Yes, sir; Merimy had feelings, naturally. But it seemed to me when a man was a hundred and fifty feet underground, more or less, there ought to be some charity; and maybe I had a weakness for Jim, though my wife wouldn't hear of him, on account of his drinks, which were slippery things. Anyway, I takes a chisel and a mallet, and I picks out a boulder on the slide a decent ways from Canada Center's monument, and I cuts in it, “Jim Hawks”; and then I cuts in it an epitaph that I made myself, and it's there yet:

HERE LIES JIM HAWKS, KILLED BY ROCKS.

HE DIDN'T ACT THE WAY HE OUGHT.

THAT'S ALL I'll SAY OF JIM.

HERE HE LIES, WHAT'S LEFT OF HIM.=

And I thought that stated the facts, though the second line didn't rhyme really even. Speaking generally, Tioba appeared to have dropped on things about the right time, and that being so, why not let it pass, granting Merimy had a right to his feelings?

Now, neither Sheriff Hall nor the extra woman showed up in the valley any more, so it seemed likely they had heard of Tioba falling, and agreed Jim wouldn't be any good, if they could find him. It was two weeks more before I saw the sheriff, him driving through, going over to Helder's. I saw him get out of his buggy to see the monument, and I went up after, and led him over to show Jim's epitaph, which I took to be a good epitaph, except the second line.

Now, what do you think he did? Why, he busted out a-haw-hawing ridiculous, and it made me mad.

“Shut up!” says I. “What's ailing you?”

“Haw-haw!” says he. “Jim ain't there! He's gone down the road.”

“I believe you're a blamed liar,” says I; and the sheriff sobered up, being mad himself, and he told me this.

“Jim Hawks,” says he, “came into East-port that night, meaning business. He routed me out near twelve o'clock, and the lady staying at my house she came into it, too, and there we had it in the kitchen at twelve o'clock, the lady uncommon hot, and Jim steaming wet in his clothes and rather cool. He says: 'I'm backing Jeaney now, and she tells me to come in and settle it to let us alone, and she says we'll hand over all we've got and leave. That appears to be her idea, and being hers, I'll put it as my own.' Now, the lady, if you'd believe it, she took on fearful, and wouldn't hear to reason unless he'd go with her, though what her idea was of a happy time with Jim Hawks, the way he was likely to act, I give it up. But she cried and talked foolish, till I see Jim was awful bored, but I didn't see there was much for me to do. Then Jim got up at last, and laughed very unpleasant, and he says: 'It's too much bother. I'll go with you, Annie, but I think you're a fool.' And they left next morning, going south by train.”

That's what Sheriff Hall said to me then and there. Well, now, I'm an old man, and I don't know as I'm particular clever, but it looks to me as if God A'mighty and Tioba had made a mistake between 'em. Else how come they hit at Jim Hawks so close as that and missed him? And what was the use of burying Jeaney Merimy eight rods deep, who was a good girl all her life, and was for standing up for Jim, and him leaving her because the extra woman got him disgusted? Maybe she'd rather Tioba would light on her, that being the case—maybe she would have; but she never knew what the case was.

That epitaph is there yet, as you might say, waiting for him to come and get under it; but it don't seem to have the right point now, and it don't state the facts any more, except the second line, which is more facts than rhyme. And Tioba is the messiest-look-ing mountain in these parts. And now, I say, Jim Hawks was in this valley little more than a year, and he blazed his trail through the Merimy family, and the Storrs family, and the Peterson family, and there's Tioba Mountain, and that's his trail.

No, sir; I don't get on to it. I hear Tioba talking double some nights, sort of uneasy, and it seems to me she isn't on to it either, and has her doubts maybe she throwed herself away. And there's the cemetery six to ten rods underground, with a monument to forty-five people on top, and an epitaph to Jim Hawks that ain't so, except the second line, there being no corpse to fit it.

Canada Center thinks they'd fit Jim to it if he came round again; but they wouldn't: for he was a wicked one, but sudden to act, and he was reckless, and he kept his luck. For Tioba drawed off and hit at him, slap! and he dodged her.

A MAN FOR A' THAT

COMPANY A was cut up at Antietam, so that there was not enough of it left for useful purposes, and Deacon Andrew Terrell became a member of Company G, which nicknamed him “'is huliness.” Company A came from Dutchess County. There was a little white church in the village of Brewster, and a little white house with a meagre porch where that good woman, Mrs. Terrell, had stood and shed several tears as the deacon walked away down the street, looking extraordinary in his regimentals. She dried her eyes, settled down to her sewing in that quiet south window, and hoped he would remember to keep his feet dry and not lose the cough drops. That part of Dutchess County was a bit of New England spilled over. New England has been spilling over these many years.

The deacon took the cough drops regularly; he kept his gray chin beard trimmed with a pair of domestic scissors, and drilling never persuaded him to move his large frame with other than the same self-conscious restraint; his sallow face had the same set lines. There is something in the Saxon's blood that will not let him alter with circumstances, and it is by virtue of it that he conquers in the end.

But no doorkeeper in the house of God—the deacon's service in the meeting-house at Brewster—who should come perforce to dwell in the tents of wickedness would pretend to like it. Besides, Company G had no tents. It came from the lower wards of the great city. Dinkey Cott, that thin-legged, stunted, imp-faced, hardened little Bowery sprout, put his left fist in the deacon's eye the first day of their acquaintance, and swore in the pleasantest manner possible.

The deacon cuffed him, because he had been a schoolmaster in his day, and did not understand how he would be despised for knocking Dinkey down in that amateur fashion, and the lieutenant gave them both guard duty for fighting in the ranks.

The deacon declared “that young man Cott hadn't no moral ideas,” and did his guard duty in bitterness and strict conscience to the last minute of it. Dinkey put his thumb to his nose and offered to show the lieutenant how the thing should have been done, and that big man laughed, and both forgot about the guard duty.

Dinkey had no sense whatever of personal dignity, which was partly what the deacon meant by “moral ideas,” nor reverence for anything above or beneath. He did not harbor any special anger, either, and only enough malice to point his finger at the elder man, whenever he saw him, and snicker loudly to the entertainment of Company G.

Dinkey's early recollections had to do with the cobblestones of Mulberry Bend and bootblacking on Pearl Street. Deacon Terrell's began with a lonely farm where there were too many potato hills to hoe, a little schoolhouse where arithmetic was taught with a ferrule, a white meeting-house where the wrath of God was preached with enthusiasm; both seemed far enough away from the weary tramp, tramp, the picket duty, and the camp at last one misty night in thick woods on the Stafford hills, looking over the Rappahannock to the town of Fredericksburg.

What happened there was not clear to Company G. There seemed to be a deal of noise and hurrying about, cannon smoke in the valley and cannon smoke on the terraces across the valley. Somebody was building pontoon bridges, therefore it seemed likely somebody wanted to get across. They were having hard luck with the bridges. That was probably the enemy on the ridge beyond.

There seemed to be no end to him, anyway; up and down the valley, mile beyond mile, the same line of wooded heights and drifting smoke.

And the regiment found itself crossing a shaky pontoon bridge on a Saturday morning in the mist and climbing the bank into a most battered and tired-looking little town, which was smoldering sulkily with burned buildings and thrilling with enormous noise. There they waited for something else to happen. The deacon felt a lump in his throat, stopping his breath.

“Git out o' me tracks!” snickered Dinkey Cott behind him. “I'll step on yer.”

Dinkey had never seemed more impish, unholy and incongruous. They seemed to stand there a long time. The shells kept howling and whizzing around; they howled till they burst, and then they whizzed. And now and then some one would cry out and fall. It was bad for the nerves. The men were growling.

“Aw, cap, give us a chance!”

“It ain't my fault, boys. I got to wait for orders, same as you.”

Dinkey poked the deacon's legs with the butt of his rifle.

“Say, it's rotten, ain't it? Say, cully, my ma don't like me full o' holes. How's yours?”

The other gripped his rifle tight and thought of nothing in particular.

Was it five hours that passed, or twenty, or one? Then they started, and the town was gone behind their hurrying feet. Over a stretch of broken level, rush and tramp and gasping for breath; fences and rocks ahead, clumps of trees and gorges; ground growing rougher and steeper, but that was nothing. If there was anything in the way you went at it and left it behind. You plunged up a hill, and didn't notice it. You dove into a gully, and it wasn't there. Time was a liar, obstacles were scared and ran away. But half-way up the last pitch ran a turnpike, with a stone wall in front that spit fire and came nearer and nearer. It seemed creeping down viciously to meet you. Up, up, till the powder of the guns almost burned the deacon's face, and the smoke was so thick he could only see the red flashes.

And then suddenly he was alone. At least there was no one in sight, for the smoke was very thick. Company G all dead, or fallen, or gone back. There was a clump of brambles to his left. He dropped to the ground, crept behind it and lay still. The roar went on, the smoke rolled down over him and sometimes a bullet would clip through the brambles, but after a time the small fire dropped off little by little, though the cannon still boomed on.

His legs were numb and his heart beating his sides like a drum. The smoke was blowing away down the slope. He lifted his head and peered through the brambles; there was the stone wall not five rods away, all lined along the top with grimy faces. A thousand rifles within as many yards, wanting nothing better than to dig a round hole in him. He dropped his head and closed his eyes.

His thoughts were so stunned that the slowly lessening cannonade seemed like a dream, and he hardly noticed when it had ceased, and he began to hear voices, cries of wounded men and other men talking. There was a clump of trees to the right, and two or three crows in the treetops cawing familiarly. An hour or two must have passed, for the sun was down and the river mist creeping up. He lay on his back, staring blankly at the pale sky and shivering a little with the chill.

A group of men came down and stood on the rocks above. They could probably see him, but a man on his back with his toes up was nothing particular there. They talked with a soft drawl. “Doggonedest clean-up I ever saw.”

“They hadn't no business to come up heah, yuh know. They come some distance, now.”

“Shuah! We ain't huntin' rabbits. What'd yuh suppose?”

Then they went on.

The mist came up white and cold and covered it all over. He could not see the wall any longer, though he could hear the voices. He turned on his face and crawled along below the brambles and rocks to where the clump of trees stood with a deep hollow below them. They were chestnut trees. Some one was sitting in the hollow with his back against the roots.

During the rush Dinkey Cott fairly enjoyed himself. The sporting blood in him sang in his ears, an old song that the leopard knows, it may be, waiting in the mottled shadow, that the rider knows on the race course, the hunter in the snow—the song of a craving that only excitement satisfies. The smoke blew in his face. He went down a hollow and up the other side. Then something hot and sudden came into the middle of him and he rolled back against the roots of a great tree.

“Hully gee! I'm plunked!” he grumbled disgustedly.

For the time he felt no pain, but his blood ceased to sing in his ears. Everything seemed to settle down around him, blank and dull and angry. He felt as if either the army of the North or the army of the South had not treated him rightly. If they had given him a minute more he might have clubbed something worth while. He sat up against a tree, wondered what his chance was to pull through, thought it poor, and thought he would sell it for a drink.

The firing dropped off little by little, and the mist was coming up. Dinkey began to see sights. His face and hands were hot, and things seemed to be riproaring inside him generally. The mist was full of flickering lights, which presently seemed to be street lamps down the Bowery. The front windows of Reilly's saloon were glaring, and opposite was Gottstein's jewelry store, where he had happened to hit one Halligan in the eye for saying that Babby Reilly was his girl and not Dinkey's; and he bought Babby a 90-cent gold ring of Gottstein, which proved Halligan to be a liar. The cop saw him hit Halligan, too, and said nothing, being his friend. And Halligan enlisted in Company G with the rest of the boys, and was keeled over in the dark one night on picket duty, somewhere up country. All the gang went into Company G. The captain was one of the boys, and so was Pete Murphy, the big lieutenant. He was a sort of ward sub-boss, was Pete.

“Reilly, he's soured on me, Pete. I dun-no wot's got the ol' man.”

The lights seemed to grow thick, till everything was ablaze.

“Aw, come off! Dis ain't de Bowery,” he muttered, and started and rubbed his eyes.

The mist was cold and white all around him, ghostly and still, except that there was a low, continual mutter of voices above, and now and then a soft moan rose up from somewhere. And it seemed natural enough that a ghost should come creeping out of the ghostly mist, even that it should creep near to him and peer into his face, a ghost with a gray chin beard and haggard eyes.

“I'm going down,” it whispered. “Come on. Don't make any noise.”

“Hully gee!” thought Dinkey. “It's the Pope!”

A number of things occurred to him in confusion. The deacon did not see he was hit. He said to himself:

“I ain't no call to spoil 'is luck, if he is country.”

He blinked a moment, then nodded and whispered hoarsely: “Go on.”

The deacon crept away into the mist. Dinkey leaned back feebly and closed his eyes.

“Wished I'd die quick. It's rotten luck. Wished I could see Pete.”

The deacon crept down about two hundred yards, then stopped and waited for the young man Cott. The night was closing in fast A cry in the darkness made him shiver. He had never imagined anything could be so desolate and sad. He thought he had better see what was the matter with Dinkey. He never could make out afterward why it had seemed necessary to look after Dinkey. There were hundreds of better men on the slopes. Dinkey might have passed him. It did not seem very sensible business to go back after that worthless little limb of Satan. The deacon never thought the adventure a credit to his judgment.

But he went back, guiding himself by the darker gloom of the trees against the sky, and groped his way down the hollow, and heard Dinkey muttering and babbling things without sense. It made the deacon mad to have to do with irresponsible people, such as go to sleep under the enemy's rifles and talk aloud in dreams. He pulled him roughly by the boots, and he fell over, babbling and muttering. Then it came upon the deacon that it was not sleep, but fever. He guessed the young man was hit somewhere. They had better be going, anyway. The Johnnies must have out a picket line somewhere. He slipped his hands under Dinkey and got up. He tried to climb out quietly, but fell against the bank. Some one took a shot at the noise, spattering the dirt under his nose. He lifted Dinkey higher and went on. Dinkey's mutterings ceased. He made no sound at all for a while, and at last said huskily:

“Wot's up?”

“It's me.”

“Hully gee! Wot yer doin'?”

His voice was weak and thin now. He felt as if he were being pulled in two in the middle.

“Say, ol' man, I won't jolly yer. Les' find Pete. There's a minie ball messed up in me stomick awful.”

“'Tain't far, Dinkey,” said the deacon, gently.

And he thought of Pete Murphy's red, fleshy face and black, oily mustache. It occurred to him that he had noticed most men in Company G, if they fell into trouble, wanted to find Pete. He thought he should want to himself, though he could not tell why. If he happened to be killed anywhere he thought he should like Pete Murphy to tell his wife about it.

Dinkey lay limp and heavy in his arms. The wet blackness seemed like something pressed against his face. He could not realize that he was walking, though in the night, down the same slope to a river called the Rappahannock and a town called Fredericksburg. It was strange business for him, Deacon Terrell of Brewster, to be in, stumbling down the battlefield in the pit darkness, with a godless little brat like Dinkey Cott in his arms.

And why godless, if the same darkness were around us all, and the same light, while we lived, would come to all in the morning? It was borne upon the deacon that no man was elected to the salvation of the sun or condemned to the night apart from other men.

The deacon never could recall the details of his night's journey, except that he fell down more than once, and ran against stone walls in the dark. It seemed to him that he had gone through an unknown, supernatural country. Dinkey lay so quiet that he thought he might be dead, but he could not make up his mind to leave him. He wished he could find Pete Murphy. Pete would tell him if Dinkey was dead.

He walked not one mile, but several, in the blind night Dinkey had long been a limp weight. The last thing he said was, “Les' find Pete,” and that was long before.

At last the deacon saw a little glow in the darkness, and, coming near, found a dying campfire with a few flames only flickering, and beside it two men asleep. He might have heard the ripple of the Rappahannock, but, being so worn and dull in his mind, he laid Dinkey down by the fire and fell heavily to sleep himself before he knew it.

When he woke Pete Murphy stood near him with a corporal and a guard. They were looking for the pieces of Company G. “Dead, ain't he?” said Pete.

The deacon got up and brushed his clothes. The two men who were sleeping woke up also, and they all stood around looking at Dinkey in awkward silence.

“Who's his folks?”

“Him!” said the big lieutenant. “He ain't got any folks. Tell you what, ol' man, I see a regiment drummer somewhere a minute ago. He'll do a roll over Dinkey, for luck, sure!”

They put Dinkey's coat over his face and buried him on the bank of the Rappahannock, and the drummer beat a roll over him.

Then they sat down on the bank and waited for the next thing.

The troops were moving back now across the bridge hurriedly. Company G had to take its turn. The deacon felt in his pockets and found the cough drops and Mrs. Terrell's scissors. He took a cough drop and fell to trimming his beard.

THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER

ANY one would have called Bobby Bell a comfortable boy—that is, any one who did not mind bugs; and I am sure I do not see why any one should mind bugs, except the kind that taste badly in raspberries and some other kinds. It was among the things that are entertaining to see Bobby Bell bobbing around among the buttercups looking for grasshoppers. Grasshoppers are interesting when you consider that they have heads like door knobs or green cheeses and legs with crooks to them. “Bobbing” means to go like Bobby Bell—that is, to go up and down, to talk to one's self, and not to hear any one shout, unless it is some one whom not to hear is to get into difficulties.

Across the Salem Road from Mr. Atherton Bell's house there were many level meadows of a pleasant greenness, as far as Cum-ming's alder swamp; and these meadows were called the Bow Meadows. If you take the alder swamp and the Bow Meadows together, they were like this: the swamp was mysterious and unvisited, except by those who went to fish in the Muck Hole for turtles and eels. Frogs with solemn voices lived in the swamp. Herons flew over it slowly, and herons also are uncanny affairs. We believed that the people of the swamp knew things it was not good to know, like witchcraft and the insides of the earth. In the meadows, on the other hand, there were any number of cheerful and busy creatures, some along the level of the buttercups, but most of them about the roots of the grasses. The people in the swamp were wet, cold, sluggish, and not a great many of them. The people of the meadows were dry, warm, continually doing something, and in number not to be calculated by any rule in Wentworth's Arithmetic.

So you see how different were the two, and how it comes about that the meadows were nearly the best places in the world to be in, both because of the society there, and because of the swamp near at hand and interesting to think about. So, too, you see why it was that Bobby Bell could be found almost any summer day “bobbing” for grasshoppers in the Bow Meadows—“bobbing” meaning to go up and down like Bobby Bell, to talk to one's self and not to hear any one shout; and “grasshoppers” being interesting because of their heads resembling door knobs or green cheeses, because of the crooks in their legs, and because of their extraordinary habit of jumping.

There were in Hagar at this time four ladies who lived at a little distance from the Salem Road and Mr. Atherton Bell's house, on a road which goes over a hill and off to a district called Scrabble Up and Down, where huckleberries and sweet fern mostly grow. They were known as the Tuttle Four Women, being old Mrs. Tuttle and the three Miss Tuttles, of whom Miss Rachel was the eldest.

It is easy to understand why Miss Rachel and the children of the village of Hagar did not get along well together, when you consider how clean she was, how she walked so as never to fall over anything, nor took any interest in squat tag, nor resembled the children of the village of Hagar in any respect. And so you can understand how it was that, when she came down the hill that Saturday afternoon and saw Bobby Bell through the bars in the Bow Meadows, she did not understand his actions, and disapproved of them, whatever they were.

The facts were these: In the first place a green grasshopper, who was reckless or had not been brought up rightly, had gone down Bobby's back next the skin, where he had no business to be; and naturally Bobby stood on his head to induce him to come out. That seems plain enough, for, if you are a grasshopper and down a boy's back, and the boy stands on his head, you almost always come out to see what he is about; because it makes you curious, if not ill, to be down a boy's back and have him stand on his head. Any one can see that. And this is the reason I had to explain about Miss Rachel, in order to show you why she did not understand it, nor understand what followed after.

In the next place, Bobby knew that when you go where you have no business to, you are sometimes spanked, but usually you are talked to unpleasantly, and tied up to something by the leg, and said to be in disgrace. Usually you are tied to the sewing machine, and “disgrace” means the corner of the sewing-room between the machine and the sofa. It never occurred to him but that this was the right and natural order of things. Very likely it is. It seemed so to Bobby.

Now it is difficult to spank a grasshopper properly. And so there was nothing to do but to tie him up and talk to him unpleasantly. That seems quite simple and plain. But the trouble was that it was a long time since Miss Rachel had stood on her head, or been spanked, or tied up to anything. This was unfortunate, of course. And when she saw Bobby stand violently on his head and then tie a string to a grasshopper, she thought it was extraordinary business, and probably bad, and she came up to the bars in haste.

“Bobby!” she said, “you naughty boy, are you pulling off that grasshopper's leg?”

Bobby thought this absurd. “Gasshoppers,” he said calmly, “ithn't any good 'ith their legth off.”

This was plain enough, too, because grasshoppers are intended to jump, and cannot jump without their legs; consequently it would be quite absurd to pull them off. Miss Rachel thought one could not know this without trying it, and especially know it in such a calm, matter-of-fact way as Bobby seemed to do, without trying it a vast number of times; therefore she became very much excited. “You wicked, wicked boy!” she cried. “I shall tell your father!” Then she went off.

Bobby wondered awhile what his father would say when Miss Rachel told him that grasshoppers were no good with their legs off. When Bobby told him that kind of thing, he generally chuckled to himself and called Bobby “a queer little chicken.” If his father called Miss Rachel “a queer little chicken,” Bobby felt that it would seem strange. But he had to look after the discipline of the grasshopper, and it is no use trying to think of two things at once. He tied the grasshopper to a mullein stalk and talked to him unpleasantly, and the grasshopper behaved very badly all the time; so that Bobby was disgusted and went away to leave him for a time—went down to the western end of the meadows, which is a drowsy place. And there it came about that he fell asleep, because his legs were tired, because the bees hummed continually, and because the sun was warm and the grass deep around him.

Miss Rachel went into the village and saw Mr. Atherton Bell on the steps of the post-office. He was much astonished at being attacked in such a disorderly manner by such an orderly person as Miss Rachel; but he admitted, when it was put to him, that pulling off the legs of grasshoppers was interfering with the rights of grasshoppers. Then Miss Rachel went on her way, thinking that a good seed had been sown and the morality of the community distinctly advanced.

The parents of other boys stood on the post-office steps in great number, for it was near mail-time; and here you might have seen what varieties of human nature there are. For some were taken with the conviction that the attraction of the Bow Meadows to their children was all connected with the legs of grasshoppers; some suspected it only, and were uneasy; some refused to imagine such a thing, and were indignant. But they nearly all started for the Bow Meadows with a vague idea of doing something, Mr. Atherton Bell and Father Durfey leading. It was not a well-planned expedition, nor did any one know what was intended to be done. They halted at the bars, but no Bobby Bell was in sight, nor did the Bow Meadows seem to have anything to say about the matter. The grasshoppers in sight had all the legs that rightly belonged to them. Mr. Atherton Bell got up on the wall and shouted for Bobby. Father Durfey climbed over the bars.

It happened that there was no one in the Bow Meadows at this time, except Bobby, Moses Durfey, Chub Leroy, and one other. Bobby was asleep, on account of the bumblebees humming in the sunlight; and the other three were far up the farther side, on account of an expedition through the alder swamp, supposing it to be Africa. There was a desperate battle somewhere; but the expedition turned out badly in the end, and in this place is neither here nor there. They heard Mr. Atherton Bell shouting, but they did not care about it. It is more to the point that Father Durfey, walking around in the grass, did not see the grasshopper who was tied to the mullein stalk and as mad as he could be. For when tied up in disgrace, one is always exceedingly mad at this point; but repentance comes afterwards. The grasshopper never got that far, for Father Durfey stepped on him with a boot as big as—big enough for Father Durfey to be comfortable in—so that the grasshopper was quite dead. It was to him as if a precipice were to fall on you, when you were thinking of something else. Then they all went away.

Bobby Bell woke up with a start, and was filled with remorse, remembering his grasshopper. The sun had slipped behind the shoulder of Windless Mountain. There was a faint light across the Bow Meadows, that made them sweet to look on, but a little ghostly. Also it was dark in the roots of the grasses, and difficult to find a green grasshopper who was dead; at least it would have been if he had not been tied to a mullein stalk. Bobby found him at last sunk deep in the turf, with his poor legs limp and crookless, and his head, which had been like a green cheese or a door knob, no longer looking even like the head of a grasshopper.

Then Bobby Bell sat down and wept. Miss Rachel, who had turned the corner and was half way up to the house of the Tuttle Four Women, heard him, and turned back to the bars. She wondered if Mr. Atherton Bell had not been too harsh. The Bow Meadows looked dim and mournful in the twilight. Miss Rachel was feeling a trifle sad about herself, too, as she sometimes did; and the round-cheeked cherub weeping in the wide shadowy meadows seemed to her something like her own life in the great world—not very well understood.

“He wath geen!” wailed Bobby, looking up at her, but not allowing his grief to be interrupted. “He wath my geen bug!”

Miss Rachel melted still further, without knowing why.

“What was green?”

She pulled down a bar and crawled through. She hoped Mr. Atherton Bell was not looking from a window, for it was difficult to avoid making one's self amusing to Mr. Atherton Bell. But Bobby was certainly in some kind of trouble.

“He'th dead!” wailed Bobby again. “He'th thtepped on!”

Miss Rachel bent over him stiffly. It was hard for one so austerely ladylike as Miss Rachel to seem gracious and compassionate, but she did pretty well.

“Oh, it's a grasshopper!” Then more severely: “Why did you tie him up?”

Bobby's sobs subsided into hiccoughs.

“It'th a disgace. I put him in disgace, and I forgotted him. He went down my back.”

“Did you step on him?”

“N-O-O-O!” The hiccoughs rose into sobs again. “He wath the geenest gasshopper!”

This was not strictly true; there were others just as green; but it was a generous tribute to the dead and a credit to Bobby Bell that he felt that way.

Now there was much in all this that Miss Rachel did not understand; but she understood enough to feel sharp twinges for the wrong that she had done Bobby Bell, and whatever else may be said of Miss Rachel, up to her light she was square. In fact, I should say that she had an acute-angled conscience. It was more than square; it was one of those consciences that you are always spearing yourself on. She felt very humble, and went with Bobby Bell to dig a grave for the green grasshopper under the lee of the wall. She dug it herself with her parasol, thinking how she must go up with Bobby Bell, what she must say to Mr. Atherton Bell, and how painful it would be, because Mr. Atherton Bell was so easily amused.

Bobby patted the grave with his chubby palm and cooed contentedly. Then they went up the hill in the twilight hand in hand.

THE ENEMIES

THE great fluted pillars in Ramoth church were taken away. They interfered with the view and rental of the pews behind them. Albion Dee was loud and persuasive for removing them, and Jay Dee secret, shy and resistant against it. That was their habit and method of hostility.

Then in due season Jay Dee rented the first seat in the pew in front of Albion's pew. This was thought to be an act of hostility, subtle, noiseless, far-reaching.

He was a tall man, Jay Dee, and wore a wide flapping coat, had flowing white hair, and walked with a creeping step; a bachelor, a miser, he had gathered a property slowly with persistent fingers; a furtive, meditating, venerable man, with a gentle piping voice. He lived on the hill in the old house of the Dees, built in the last century by one “John Griswold Dee, who married Sarah Ballister and begat two sons,” who respectively begat Jay and Albion Dee; and Albion founded Ironville, three or four houses in the hollow at the west of Diggory Gorge, and a bolt and nail factory. He was a red-faced, burly man, with short legs and thick neck, who sought determined means to ends, stood squarely and stated opinions.

The beginnings of the feud lay backward in time, little underground resentments that trickled and collected. In Albion they foamed up and disappeared. He called himself modern and progressive, and the bolt and nail factory was thought to be near bankruptcy. He liked to look men in the eyes. If one could not see the minister, one could not tell if he meant what he said, or preached shoddy doctrine. As regards all view and rental behind him, Jay Dee was as bad as one of the old fluted pillars. Albion could not see the minister. He felt the act to be an act of hostility.

But he was progressive, and interested at the time in a question of the service, as respected the choir which sang from the rear gallery. It seemed to him more determined and effective to hymnal devotion that the congregation should rise and turn around during the singing, to the end that congregation and choir might each see that all things were done decently. He fixed on the idea and found it written as an interlinear to his gospels, an imperative codicil to the duty of man.

But the congregation was satiated with change. They had still to make peace between their eyes and the new slender pillars, to convince themselves by contemplation that the church was still not unstable, not doctrinally weaker.

So it came about that Albion Dee stood up sternly and faced the choir alone, with the old red, fearless, Protestant face one knows of Luther and Cromwell. The congregation thought him within his rights there to bear witness to his conviction. Sabbaths came and went in Ramoth peacefully, milestones of the passing time, and all seemed well.

Pseudo-classic architecture is a pale, inhuman allegory of forgotten meaning. If buildings like Ramoth church could in some plastic way assimilate their communicants, what gargoyles would be about the cornices, what wall paintings of patient saints, mystical and realistic. On one of the roof cornices of an old church in France is the carved stone face of a demon with horns and a forked tongue, and around its eyes a wrinkled smile of immense kindness. And within the church is the mural painting of a saint, some Beata Ursula or Catherine, with upturned eyes; a likeable girl, capable of her saintship, of turning up her eyes with sincerity because it fell to her to see a celestial vision; as capable of a blush and twittering laugh, and the better for her capabilities.

It is not stated what Albion symbolized. He stood overtopping the bonnets and the gray heads of deacons, respected by the pews, popular with the choir, protesting his conviction.

And all the while secretly, with haunch and elbow, he nudged, bumped and rubbed the shoulders and silvery head of Jay Dee. It is here claimed that he stood there in the conviction that it was his duty so to testify. It is not denied that he so bumped and squatted against Jay Dee, cautiously, but with relish and pleasure.

In the bowed silver head, behind the shy, persistent eyes of Jay Dee, what were his thoughts, his purposes, coiling and constricting? None but the two were aware of the locked throat grip of the spirit. In the droning Sabbath peace the congregation pursued the minister through the subdivisions of his text, and dragged the hymn behind the dragging choir.

It was a June day and the orioles gurgled their warm nesting notes in the maples. The boys in the gallery searched the surface of the quiet assembly for points of interest; only here and there nodding heads, wavering fans, glazed, abstracted eyes. They twisted and yawned. What to them were brethren in unity, or the exegesis of a text, as if one were to count and classify, prickle by prickle, to no purpose the irritating points of a chestnut burr? The sermon drowsed to its close. The choir and Albion rose. It was an outworn sight now, little more curious than Monday morning. The sunlight shone through the side windows, slanting down over the young, worldly and impatient, and one selected ray fell on Jay Dee's hair with spiritual radiance, and on Albion's red face, turned choirward for a testimony.

Suddenly Albion gave a guttural shout. He turned, he grasped Jay Dee's collar, dragged him headlong into the aisle, and shook him to and fro, protesting, “You stuck me! I'll teach you!”

His red face worked with passion; Jay Dee's venerable head bobbed, helpless, mild, piteous. The choir broke down. The minister rose with lifted hands and open mouth, the gallery in revelry, the body of the church in exclamatory confusion. Albion saw outstretched hands approaching, left his enemy, and hat in hand strode down the aisle with red, glowering face, testifying, “He stuck me.”

Jay Dee sat on the floor, his meek head swaying dizzily.

On Monday morning Albion set out for Hamilton down the narrow valley of the Pilgrim River. The sudden hills hid him and his purposes from Ramoth. He came in time to sit in the office of Simeon Ballister, and Simeon's eyes gleamed. He took notes and snuffed the battle afar.

“Ha! Witnesses to pin protruding from coat in region adjoining haunch. Hum! Affidavits to actual puncture of inflamed character, arguing possibly venom of pin. Ha! Hum! Motive of concurrent animosity. A very respectable case. I will come up and see your witnesses—Ha!—in a day or two. Good morning.”

Ballister was a shining light in the county courts in those days, but few speak of him now. Yet he wrote a Life of Byron, a History of Hamilton County, and talked a half century with unflagging charm. Those who remember will have in mind his long white beard and inflamed and swollen nose, his voice of varied melody. Alien whiskey and natural indolence kept his fame local. His voice is silent forever that once rose in the court-rooms like a fountain shot with rainbow fancies, in musical enchantment, in liquid cadence. “I have laid open, gentlemen, the secret of a human heart, shadowed and mourning, to the illumination of your justice. You are the repository and temple of that sacred light. Not merely as a plaintiff, a petitioner, my client comes; but as a worshipper, in reverence of your function, he approaches the balm and radiance of that steadfast torch and vestal fire of civilization, an intelligent jury.” Such was Ballister's inspired manner, such his habit of rhythm and climax, whenever he found twenty-four eyes fixed on his swollen nose, the fiery mesmeric core of his oratory beaconing juries to follow it and discover truth.

But the Case of Dee v. Dee came only before a justice of the peace, in the Town Hall of Ramoth, and Justice Kernegan was but a stout man with hairy ears and round, spectacled, benevolent eyes. Jay Dee brought no advocate. His silvery hair floated about his head. His pale eyes gazed in mild terror at Ballister. He said it must have been a wasp stung Albion.

“A wasp, sir! Your Honor, does a wasp carry for penetration, for puncture, for malignant attack or justifiable defence, for any purpose whatsoever, a brass pin of palpable human manufacture, drawn, headed and pointed by machinery, such as was inserted in my client's person? Does the defendant wish your Honor to infer that wasps carry papers of brass pins in their anatomies? I will ask the defendant, whose venerable though dishonored head bears witness to his age, if, in his long experience, he has ever met a wasp of such military outfit and arsenal? Not a wasp, your Honor, but a serpent; a serpent in human form.”

Jay Dee had no answer to all this. He murmured—

“Sat on me.”

“I didn't catch your remark, sir.”

“Why, you see,” explained the Justice, “Jay says Albion's been squatting on him, Mr. Ballister, every Sunday for six months. You see, Albion gets up when the choir sings, and watches 'em sharp to see they sing correct, because his ear ain't well tuned, but his eye's all right.”

The Justice's round eyes blinked pleasantly. The court-room murmured with approval, and Albion started to his feet.

“Now don't interrupt the Court,” continued the Justice. “You see, Mr. Ballister, sometimes Jay says it was a wasp and sometimes he says it was because Albion squatted on him, don't you see, bumped him on the ear with his elbow. You see, Jay sets just in front of Albion. Now, you see—”

“Then, does it not appear to your Honor that a witness who voluntarily offers to swear to two contradictory explanations; first, that the operation in question, the puncture or insertion, was performed by a wasp; secondly, that, though he did it himself with a pin and in his haste allowed that pin in damnatory evidence to remain, it was because, he alleges, of my client's posture toward, and intermittent contact with him—does it not seem to your Honor that such a witness is to be discredited in any statement he may make?”

“Well, really, Mr. Ballister, but you see Albion oughtn't to've squatted on him.”

“I find myself in a singular position. It has not been usual in my experience to find the Court a pleader in opposition. I came hoping to inform and persuade your Honor regarding this case. I find myself in the position of being informed and persuaded. I hope the Court sees no discourtesy in the remark, but if the Court is prepared already to discuss the case there seems little for me to do.”

The Justice looked alarmed. He felt his popularity trembling. It would not do to balk the public interest in Ballister's oratory. Doubtless Jay Dee had stuck a pin into Albion, but maybe Albion had mussed Jay's hair and jabbed his ear, had dragged and shaken him in the aisle at least. The rights of it did not seem difficult. They ought not to have acted that way. No man has the right to sit on another man's head from the standpoint or advantage of his own religious conviction. Nor has a man a right to use another man for a pincushion whenever, as it may be, he finds something about him in a way that's like a pincushion. But Ballister's oratory was critical and important.

“Why,” said Kemegan hastily, “this Court is in a mighty uncertain state of mind. It couldn't make it up without hearing what you were going to say.”

Again the Court murmured with approval. Ballister rose.

“This case presents singular features. The secret and sunless caverns, where human motives lie concealed, it is the function of justice to lay open to vivifying light. Not only evil or good intentions are moving forces of apparent action, but mistakes and misjudgments. I conclude that your Honor puts down the defendant's fanciful and predatory wasp to the defendant's neglect of legal advice, to his feeble and guilty inepitude. I am willing to leave it there. I assume that he confesses the assault on my client's person with a pin, an insidious and lawless pin, pointed with cruelty and propelled with spite; I infer and understand that he offers in defence a certain alleged provocation, certain insertions of my client's elbow into the defendant's ear, certain trespasses and disturbance of the defendant's hair, finally, certain approximations and contacts between my client's adjacent quarter and the defendant's shoulders, denominated by him—and here we demur or object—as an act of sitting or squatting, whereby the defendant alleges himself to have been touched, grieved and annoyed. In the defendant's parsimonious neglect of counsel we generously supply him with a fair statement of his case. I return to my client.

“Your Honor, what nobler quality is there in our defective nature than that which enables the earnest man, whether as a citizen or in divine worship, whether in civil matters or religious, to abide steadfastly by his conscience and convictions. He stands a pillar of principle, a rock in the midst of uncertain waters. The feeble look up to him and are encouraged, the false and shifty are ashamed. His eye is fixed on the future. Posterity shall judge him. Small matters of his environment escape his notice. His mind is on higher things.

“I am not prepared to forecast the judgment of posterity on that point of ritualistic devotion to which my client is so devoted an advocate. Neither am I anxious or troubled to seek opinion whether my client inserted his elbow into the defendant's ear, or the defendant, maliciously or inadvertently, by some rotatory motion, applied, bumped or banged his ear against my client's elbow; whether the defendant rubbed or impinged with his head on the appendant coat tails of my client, or the reverse. I am uninterested in the alternative, indifferent to the whole matter. It seems to me an academic question. If the defendant so acted, it is not the action of which we complain. If my client once, twice, or even at sundry times, in his stern absorption, did not observe what may in casual accident have taken place behind, what then? I ask your Honor, what then? Did the defendant by a slight removal, by suggestion, by courteous remonstrance, attempt to obviate the difficulty? No! Did he remember those considerate virtues enjoined in Scripture, or the sacred place and ceremony in which he shared? No! Like a serpent, he coiled and waited. He hid his hypocrisy in white hairs, his venomous purpose in attitudes of reverence. He darkened his morbid malice till it festered, corroded, corrupted. He brooded over his fancied injury and developed his base design. Resolved and prepared, he watched his opportunity. With brazen and gangrened pin of malicious point and incensed propulsion, with averted eye and perfidious hand, with sudden, secret, backward thrust, with all the force of accumulated, diseased, despicable spite, he darted like a serpent's fang this misapplied instrument into the unprotected posterior, a sensitive portion, most outlying and exposed, of my client's person.

“This action, your Honor, I conceive to be in intent and performance a felonious, injurious and sufficient assault. For this injury, for pain, indignity and insult, for the vindication of justice in state and community, for the protection of the citizen from bold or treacherous attack, anterior or posterior, vanguard or rear, I ask your Honor that damages be given my client adequate to that injury, adequate to that vindication and protection.”

So much and more Ballister spoke. Mr. Kernegan took off his spectacles and rubbed his forehead.

“Well,” he said, “I guess Mr. Ballister'll charge Albion about forty dollars—”

Ballister started up.

“Don't interrupt the Court. It's worth all that. Albion and Jay haven't been acting right and they ought to pay for it between 'em. The Court decides Jay Dee shall pay twenty dollars damages and costs.”

The court-room murmured with approval.

The twilight was gathering as Albion drove across the old covered bridge and turned into the road that leads to Ironville through a gloomy gorge of hemlock trees and low-browed rocks. The road keeps to the left above Diggory Brook, which murmurs in recesses below and waves little ghostly white garments over its waterfalls. Such is this murmur and the soft noise of the wind in the hemlocks, that the gorge is ever filled with a sound of low complaint. Twilight in the open sky is night below the hemlocks. At either end of the avenue you note where the light still glows fadingly. There lie the hopes and possibilities of a worldly day, skies, fields and market-places, to-days, to-morrows and yesterdays, and men walking about with confidence in their footing. But here the hemlocks stand beside in black order of pillars and whisper together distrustfully. The man who passes you is a nameless shadow with an intrusive, heavy footfall. Low voices float up from the pit of the gorge, intimations, regrets, discouragements, temptations.

A house and mill once stood at the lower end of it, and there, a century ago, was a wild crime done on a certain night; the dead bodies of the miller and his children lay on the floor, except one child, who hid and crept out in the grass; little trickles of blood stole along the cracks; house and mill blazed and fell down into darkness; a maniac cast his dripping axe into Diggory Brook and fled away yelling among the hills. Not that this had made the gorge any darker, or that its whispers are supposed to relate to any such memories. The brook comes from swamps and meadows like other brooks, and runs into the Pilgrim River. It is shallow and rapid, though several have contrived to fall and be drowned in it. One wonders how it could have happened. The old highway leading from Ramoth village to the valley has been grass-grown for generations, but that is because the other road is more direct to the Valley settlement and the station. The water of the brook is clear and pleasant enough. Much trillium, with its leaves like dark red splashes, a plant of sullen color and solitary station, used to grow there, but does so no more. Slender birches now creep down almost to the mouth of the gorge, and stand with white stems and shrinking, trembling leaves. But birches grow nearly everywhere.

Albion drove steadily up the darkened road, till his horse dropped into a walk behind an indistinguishable object that crept in front with creaking wheels. He shouted for passage and turned into the ditch on the side away from the gorge. The shadowy vehicle drifted slantingly aside. Albion started his horse; the front wheels of the two clicked, grated, slid inside each other and locked. Albion spoke impatiently. He was ever for quick decisions. He backed his horse, and the lock became hopeless. The unknown made no comment, no noise. The hemlocks whispered, the brook muttered in its pit and shook the little white garments of its waterfalls.

“Crank your wheel a trifle now.”

The other did not move.

“Who are you? Can't ye speak?”

No answer.

Albion leaned over his wheel, felt the seat rail of the other vehicle, and brought his face close to something white—white hair about the approximate outline of a face. By the hair crossed by the falling hat brim, by the shoulders seen vaguely to be bent forward, by the loose creaking wheels of the buck-board he knew Jay Dee. The two stood close and breathless, face to face, but featureless and apart by the unmeasured distance of obscurity.

Albion felt a sudden uneasy thrill and drew back. He dreaded to hear Jay Dee's spiritless complaining voice, too much in the nature of that dusky, uncanny place. He felt as if something cold, damp and impalpable were drawing closer to him, whispering, calling his attention to the gorge, how black and steep! to the presence of Jay Dee, how near! to the close secret hemlocks covering the sky. This was not agreeable to a positive man, a man without fancies. Jay Dee sighed at last, softly, and spoke, piping, thin, half-moaning:

“You're following me. Let me alone!”

“I'm not following you,” said Albion hoarsely. “Crank your wheel!”

“You're following me. I'm an old man. You're only fifty.”

Albion breathed hard in the darkness. He did not understand either Jay Dee or himself. After a silence Jay Dee went on:

“I haven't any kin but you, Albion, except Stephen Ballister and the Winslows. They're only fourth cousins.”

Albion growled.

“What do you mean?”

“Without my making a will it'd come to you, wouldn't it? Seems to me as if you oughtn't to pester me, being my nearest kin, and me, I ain't made any will. I got a little property, though it ain't much. 'Twould clear your mortgage and make you easy.”

“What d'you mean?”

“Twenty dollars and costs,” moaned Jay Dee. “And me an old man, getting ready for his latter end soon. I ain't made my will, either. I ought to've done it.”

What could Jay Dee mean? If he made no will his property would come to Albion. No will made yet. A hinted intention to make one in favor of Stephen Ballister or the Winslows. The foundry was mortgaged.—Jay was worth sixty thousand. Diggory Gorge was a dark whispering place of ancient crime, of more than one unexplained accident. The hemlocks whispered, the brook gurgled and glimmered. Such darkness might well cloak and cover the sunny instincts that look upwards, scruples of the social daylight. Would Jay Dee trap him to his ruin? Jay Dee would not expect to enjoy it if he were dead himself. But accidents befall, and men not seldom meet sudden deaths, and an open, free-speaking neighbor is not suspected. Success lies before him in the broad road.

It rushed through Albion's mind, a flood, sudden, stupefying—thoughts that he could not master, push back, or stamp down.

He started and roused himself; his hands were cold and shaking. He sprang from his buggy and cried angrily:

“What d'ye mean by all that? Tempt me, a God-fearing man? Throw ye off'n the gorge! Break your old neck! I've good notion to it, if I wasn't a God-fearing man. Crank your wheel there!”

He jerked his buggy free, sprang in, and lashed his horse. The horse leaped, the wheels locked again. Jay Dee's buckboard, thrust slanting aside, went over the edge, slid and stopped with a thud, caught by the hemlock trunks. A ghostly glimmer of white hair one instant, and Jay Dee was gone down the black pit of the gorge. A wheezing moan, and nothing more was heard in the confusion. Then only the complaining murmur of the brook, the hemlocks at their secrets.

“Jay! Jay!” called Albion, and then leaped out, ran and whispered, “Jay!”

Only the mutter of the brook and the shimmer of foam could be made out as he stared and listened, leaning over, clinging to a tree, feeling about for the buckboard. He fumbled, lit a match and lifted it. The seat was empty, the left wheels still in the road. The two horses, with twisted necks and glimmering eyes, were looking back quietly at him, Albion Dee, a man of ideas and determination, now muttering things unintelligible in the same tone with the muttering water, with wet forehead and nerveless hands, heir of Jay Dee's thousands, staring down the gorge of Diggory Brook, the scene of old crime. He gripped with difficulty as he let himself slide past the first row of trees, and felt for some footing below. He noticed dully that it was a steep slope, not a precipice at that point. He lit more matches as he crept down, and peered around to find something crushed and huddled against some tree, a lifeless, fearful thing. The slope grew more moderate. There were thick ferns. And closely above the brook, that gurgled and laughed quietly, now near at hand, sat Jay Dee. He looked up and blinked dizzily, whispered and piped:

“Twenty dollars and costs! You oughtn't to pester me. I ain't made my will.”

Albion sat down. They sat close together in the darkness some moments and were silent.

“You ain't hurt?” Albion asked at last. “We'll get out.”

They went up the steep, groping and stumbling.

Albion half lifted his enemy into the buckboard, and led the horse, his own following. They were out into the now almost faded daylight. Jay sat holding his lines, bowed over, meek and venerable. The front of his coat was torn. Albion came to his wheel.

“Will twenty dollars make peace between you and me, Jay Dee?”

“The costs was ten,” piping sadly.

“Thirty dollars, Jay Dee? Here it is.”

He jumped into his buggy and drove rapidly. In sight of the foundry he drew a huge breath.

“I been a sinner and a fool,” and slapped his knee. “It's sixty thousand dollars, maybe seventy. A self-righteous sinner and a cocksure fool. God forgive me!”

Between eight and nine Jay Dee sat down before his meagre fire and rusty stove, drank his weak tea and toasted his bread. The windows clicked with the night wind. The furniture was old, worn, unstable, except the large desk behind him full of pigeonholes and drawers. Now and then he turned and wrote on scraps of paper. Tea finished, he collected the scraps and copied:

Tioba, and Other Tales

TIOBA

AND OTHER TALES

By Arthur Colton

With a Frontispiece by A. B. Frost

New York

Henry Holt And Company

1903

[Original]

[Original]

[Original]

DEDICATED TO

A. G. BRINSMADE

TIOBA

HERE LIES JIM HAWKS, KILLED BY ROCKS.

HE DIDN'T ACT THE WAY HE OUGHT.

THAT'S ALL I'll SAY OF JIM.

HERE HE LIES, WHAT'S LEFT OF HIM.=

A MAN FOR A' THAT

THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER

THE ENEMIES