"'WARN'T YOU-UNS APOLOGIZIN' TER ME FUR NOT BEIN' A NEPHEW?'"

The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge

And Other Stories

BY
CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK

AUTHOR OF
"IN THE 'STRANGER PEOPLE'S' COUNTRY" ETC.
ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1895

Copyright, 1895, by Harper & Brothers

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE

Across the narrow gorge the little foot-bridge stretched—a brace of logs, the upper surface hewn, and a slight hand-rail formed of a cedar pole. A flimsy structure, one might think, looking down at the dark and rocky depths beneath, through which flowed the mountain stream, swift and strong, but it was doubtless substantial enough for all ordinary usage, and certainly sufficient for the imponderable and elusive travellers who by common report frequented it.

"We ain't likely ter meet nobody. Few folks kem this way nowadays, 'thout it air jes' ter ford the creek down along hyar a piece, sence harnts an' sech onlikely critters hev been viewed a-crossin' the foot-bredge. An' it hev got the name o' bein' toler'ble onlucky, too," said Roxby.

His interlocutor drew back slightly. He had his own reasons to recoil from the subject of death. For him it was invested with a more immediate terror than is usual to many of the living, with that flattering persuasion of immortality in every strong pulsation repudiating all possibility of cessation. Then, lifting his gloomy, long-lashed eyes to the bridge far up the stream, he asked, "Whose 'harnts'?"

His voice had a low, repressed cadence, as of one who speaks seldom, grave, even melancholy, and little indicative of the averse interest that had kindled in his sombre eyes. In comparison the drawl of the mountaineer, who had found him heavy company by the way, seemed imbued with an abnormal vivacity, and keyed a tone or two higher than was its wont.

"Thar ain't a few," he replied, with a sudden glow of the pride of the cicerone. "Thar's a graveyard t'other side o' the gorge, an' not more than a haffen-mile off, an' a cornsider'ble passel o' folks hev been buried thar off an' on, an' the foot-bredge ain't in nowise ill-convenient ter them."

Thus demonstrating the spectral resources of the locality, he rode his horse well into the stream as he spoke, and dropped the reins that the animal's impatient lips might reach the water. He sat facing the foot-bridge, flecked with the alternate shifting of the sunshine and the shadows of the tremulous firs that grew on either side of the high banks on the ever-ascending slope, thus arching both above and below the haunted bridge. His companion had joined him in the centre of the stream; but while the horses drank, the stranger's eyes were persistently bent on the concentric circles of the water that the movement of the animals had set astir in the current, as if he feared that too close or curious a gaze might discern some pilgrim, whom he cared not to see, traversing that shadowy quivering foot-bridge. He was mounted on a strong, handsome chestnut, as marked a contrast to his guide's lank and trace-galled sorrel as were the two riders. A slender gloved hand had fallen with the reins to the pommel of the saddle. His soft felt hat, like a sombrero, shadowed his clear-cut face. He was carefully shaven, save for a long drooping dark mustache and imperial. His suit of dark cloth was much concealed by a black cloak, one end of which thrown back across his shoulder showed a bright blue lining, the color giving a sudden heightening touch to his attire, as if he were "in costume." It was a fleeting fashion of the day, but it added a certain picturesqueness to a horseman, and seemed far enough from the times that produced the square-tailed frock-coat which the mountaineer wore, constructed of brown jeans, the skirts of which stood stiffly out on each side of the saddle, and gave him, with his broad-brimmed hat, a certain Quakerish aspect.

"I dun'no' why folks be so 'feared of 'em," Roxby remarked, speculatively. "The dead ain't so oncommon, nohow. Them ez hev been in the war, like you an' me done, oughter be in an' 'bout used ter corpses—though I never seen none o' 'em afoot agin. Lookin' at a smit field o' battle, arter the rage is jes' passed, oughter gin a body a realizin' sense how easy the sperit kin flee, an' what pore vessels fur holdin' the spark o' life human clay be."

Simeon Roxby had a keen, not unkindly face, and he had that look of extreme intelligence which is entirely distinct from intellectuality, and which one sometimes sees in a minor degree in a very clever dog or a fine horse. One might rely on him to understand instinctively everything one might say to him, even in its subtler æsthetic values, although he had consciously learned little. He was of the endowed natures to whom much is given, rather than of those who are set to acquire. He had many lines in his face—even his simple life had gone hard with him, its sorrows unassuaged by its simplicity. His hair was grizzled, and hung long and straight on his collar. He wore a grizzled beard cut broad and short. His boots had big spurs, although the lank old sorrel had never felt them. He sat his horse like the cavalryman he had been for four years of hard riding and raiding, but his face had a certain gentleness that accented the Quaker-like suggestion of his garb, a look of communing with the higher things.

"I never blamed 'em," he went on, evidently reverting to the spectres of the bridge—"I never blamed 'em for comin' back wunst in a while. It 'pears ter me 'twould take me a long time ter git familiar with heaven, an' sociable with them ez hev gone before. An', my Lord, jes' think what the good green yearth is! Leastwise the mountings. I ain't settin' store on the valley lands I seen whenst I went ter the wars. I kin remember yit what them streets in the valley towns smelt like."

He lifted his head, drawing a long breath to inhale the exquisite fragrance of the fir, the freshness of the pellucid water, the aroma of the autumn wind, blowing through the sere leaves still clinging red and yellow to the boughs of the forest.

"Naw, I ain't blamin' 'em, though I don't hanker ter view 'em," he resumed. "One of 'em I wouldn't be afeard of, though. I feel mighty sorry fur her. The old folks used ter tell about her. A young 'oman she war, a-crossin' this bredge with her child in her arms. She war young, an' mus' have been keerless, I reckon; though ez 'twar her fust baby, she moughtn't hev been practised in holdin' it an' sech, an' somehows it slipped through her arms an' fell inter the ruver, an' war killed in a minit, dashin' agin the rocks. She jes' stood fur a second a-screamin' like a wild painter, an' jumped off'n the bredge arter it. She got it agin; for when they dragged her body out'n the ruver she hed it in her arms too tight fur even death ter onloose. An' thar they air together in the buryin'-ground."

He gave a nod toward the slope of the mountain that intercepted the melancholy view of the graveyard.

"Got it yit!" he continued; "bekase" (he lowered his voice) "on windy nights, whenst the moon is on the wane, she is viewed kerryin' the baby along the bredge—kerryin' it clear over, safe an' sound, like she thought she oughter done, I reckon, in that one minute, whilst she stood an' screamed an' surveyed what she hed done. That child would hev been nigh ter my age ef he hed lived."

Only the sunbeams wavered athwart the bridge now as the firs swayed above, giving glimpses of the sky, and their fibrous shadows flickered back and forth. The wild mountain stream flashed white between the brown bowlders, and plunged down the gorge in a succession of cascades, each seeming more transparently green and amber and brown than the other. The chestnut horse gazed meditatively at these limpid out-gushings, having drunk his fill; then thought better of his moderation, and once more thrust his head down to the water. The hand of his rider, which had made a motion to gather up the reins, dropped leniently on his neck, as Simeon Roxby spoke again:

"Several—several others hev been viewed, actin' accordin' ter thar motions in life. Now thar war a peddler—some say he slipped one icy evenin', 'bout dusk in winter—some say evil ones waylaid him fur his gear an' his goods in his pack, but the settlemint mostly believes he war alone whenst he fell. His pack 'pears ter be full still, they say—but ye air 'bleeged ter know he hev hed ter set that pack down fur good 'fore this time. We kin take nuthin' out'n this world, no matter what kind o' a line o' goods we kerry in life. Heaven's no place fur tradin', I understan', an' I do wonder sometimes how in the worl' them merchants an' sech in the valley towns air goin' ter entertain tharse'fs in the happy land o'Canaan. It's goin' ter be sorter bleak fur them, sure's ye air born."

With a look of freshened recollection, he suddenly drew a plug of tobacco from his pocket, and he talked on even as he gnawed a piece from it.

"Durin' the war a cavalry-man got shot out hyar whilst runnin' 'crost that thar foot-bredge. Thar hed been a scrimmage an' his horse war kilt, an' he tuk ter the bresh on foot, hopin' ter hide in the laurel. But ez he war crossin' the foot-bredge some o' the pursuin' party war fordin' the ruver over thar, an' thinkin' he'd make out ter escape they fired on him, jes' ez the feller tried ter surrender. He turned this way an' flung up both arms—but thar's mighty leetle truce in a pistol-ball. That minute it tuk him right through the brain. Seems toler'ble long range fur a pistol, don't it? He kin be viewed now most enny moonlight night out hyar on the foot-bredge, throwin' up both hands in sign of surrender."

The wild-geese were a-wing on the way southward. Looking up to that narrow section of the blue sky which the incision of the gorge into the very depths of the woods made visible, he could see the tiny files deploying along the azure or the flecking cirrus, and hear the vague clangor of their leader's cry. He lifted his head to mechanically follow their flight. Then, as his eyes came back to earth, they rested again on the old bridge.

"Strange enough," he said, suddenly, "the skerriest tale I hev ever hearn 'bout that thar old bredge is one that my niece set a-goin'. She seen the harnt herself, an' it shakes me wuss 'n the idee o' all the rest."

His companion's gloomy gaze was lifted for a moment with an expression of inquiry from the slowly widening circles of the water about the horse's head as he drank. But Roxby's eyes, with a certain gleam of excitement, a superstitious dilation, still dwelt upon the bridge at the end of the upward vista. He went on merely from the impetus of the subject. "Yes, sir—she seen it a-pacin' of its sorrowful way acrost that bredge, same ez the t'others of the percession o' harnts. 'Twar my niece, Mill'cent—brother's darter—by name, Mill'cent Roxby. Waal, Mill'cent an' a lot o' young fools o' her age—little over fryin' size—they 'tended camp-meetin' down hyar on Tomahawk Creek—'tain't so long ago—along with the old folks. An' 'bout twenty went huddled up tergether in a road-wagin. An', lo! the wagin it bruk down on the way home, an' what with proppin' it up on a crotch, they made out ter reach the cross-roads over yander at the Notch, an' thar the sober old folks called a halt, an' hed the wagin mended at the blacksmith-shop. Waal, it tuk some two hours, fur Pete Rodd ain't a-goin' ter hurry hisself—in my opinion the angel Gabriel will hev ter blow his bugle oftener'n wunst at the last day 'fore Pete Rodd makes up his mind ter rise from the dead an' answer the roll-call—an' this hyar young lot sorter found it tiresome waitin' on thar elders' solemn company. The old folks, whilst waitin', set outside on the porches of the houses at the settlemint, an' repeated some o' the sermons they hed hearn at camp, an' more'n one raised a hyme chune. An' the young fry—they hed hed a steady diet o' sermons an' hyme chunes fur fower days—they tuk ter stragglin' off down the road, two an' two, like the same sorter idjits the world over, leavin' word with the old folks that the wagin would overtake 'em an' pick 'em up on the road when it passed. Waal, they walked several mile, an' time they got ter the crest o' the hill over yander the moon hed riz, an' they could look down an' see the mist in the valley. The moon war bright in the buryin'-groun' when they passed it, an' the head-boards stood up white an' stiff, an' a light frost hed fell on the mounds, an' they showed plain, an' shone sorter lonesome an' cold. The young folks begun ter look behind em' fur the wagin. Some said—I b'lieve 'twar Em'ry Keenan—they could read the names on the boards plain, 'twar so light, the moon bein' nigh the full: but Em'ry never read nuthin' at night by the moon in his life; he ain't enny too capable o' wrastlin' with the alphabet with a strong daytime on his book ter light him ter knowledge. An' the shadows war black an' still, an' all the yearth looked ez ef nuthin' lived nor ever would agin, an' they hearn a wolf howl. Waal, that disaccommodated the gals mightily, an' they hed a heap more interes' in that old wagin, all smellin' rank with wagin-grease an' tar, than they did in thar lovyers; an' they hed ruther hev hearn that old botch of a wheel that Pete Rodd hed set onto it comin' a-creakin' an' a-complainin' along the road than the sweetest words them boys war able ter make up or remember. So they stood thar in the road—a-stare-gazin' them head-boards, like they expected every grave ter open an' the reveilly ter sound—a-waitin' ter be overtook by the wagin, a-listenin', but hearin' nuthin' in the silence o' the frost—not a dead leaf a-twirlin', nor a frozen blade o' grass astir. An' then two or three o' the gals 'lowed they hed ruther walk back ter meet the wagin, an' whenst the boys 'lowed ter go on—nuthin' war likely ter ketch 'em—one of 'em bust out a-cryin'. Waal, thar war the eend o' that much! So the gay party set out on the back track, a-keepin' step ter sobs an' sniffles, an' that's how kem they seen no harnt. But Mill'cent an' three or four o' the t'others 'lowed they'd go on. They warn't two mile from home, an' full five from the cross-roads. So Em'ry Keenan—he hev been waitin' on her sence the year one—so he put his skeer in his pocket an' kem along with her, a-shakin' in his shoes, I'll be bound! So down the hill in the frosty moonlight them few kem—purty nigh beat out, I reckon, Mill'cent war, what with the sermonizin' an' the hyme-singin' an' hevin' ter look continual at the sheep's-eyes o' Em'ry Keenan—he wears my patience ter the bone! So she concluded ter take the short-cut. An' Em'ry he agreed. So they tuk the lead, the rest a followin', an' kem down thar through all that black growth"—he lifted his arm and pointed at the great slope, dense with fir and pine and the heavy underbrush—"keepin' the bridle-path—easy enough even at night, fur the bresh is so thick they couldn't lose thar way. But the moonlight war mightily slivered up, fallin' through the needles of the pines an' the skeins of dead vines, an' looked bleached and onnatural, an' holped the dark mighty leetle. An' they seen the water a-shinin' an' a-plungin' down the gorge, an' the glistenin' of the frost on the floor o' the bredge. Thar war a few icicles on the hand-rail, an' the branches o' the firs hung ez still ez death; only that cold, racin', shoutin', jouncin' water moved. Jes ez they got toler'ble nigh the foot-bredge a sudden cloud kem over the face o' the sky. Thar warn't no wind on the yearth, but up above the air war a-stirrin'. An' Em'ry he 'lowed Mill'cent shouldn't cross the foot-bredge whilst the light warn't clar—I wonder the critter hed that much sense! An' she jes' drapped down on that rock thar ter rest"—he pointed up the slope to a great fragment that had broken off from the ledges and lay near the bank: the bulk of the mass was overgrown with moss and lichen, but the jagged edges of the recent fracture gleamed white and crystalline among the brown and olive-green shadows about it. A tree was close beside it. "Agin that thar pine trunk Em'ry he stood an' leaned. The rest war behind, a-comin' down the hill. An' all of a suddenty a light fell on the furder eend o' the foot-bredge—a waverin' light, mighty white an' misty in the darksomeness. Mill'cent 'lowed ez fust she thunk it war the moon. An' lookin' up, she seen the cloud; it held the moon close kivered. An' lookin' down, she seen the light war movin'—movin' from the furder eend o' the bredge, straight acrost it. Sometimes a hand war held afore it, ez ef ter shield it from the draught, an' then Mill'cent 'seen twar a candle, an' the white in the mistiness war a 'oman wearin' white an' carryin' it. Lookin' ter right an' then ter lef' the 'oman kem, with now her right hand shieldin' the candle she held, an' now layin' it on the hand-rail. The candle shone on the water, fur it didn't flare, an' when the 'oman held her hand before it the light made a bright spot on the foot-bredge an' in the dark air about her, an' on the fir branches over her head. An' a thin mist seemed to hang about her white frock, but not over her face, fur when she reached the middle o' the foot-bredge she laid her hand agin on the rail, an' in the clear light o' the candle Mill'cent seen the harnt's face. An' thar she beheld her own face; her own face she looked upon ez she waited thar under the tree watchin' the foot-bredge; her own face pale an' troubled; her own self dressed in white, crossin' the foot-bredge, an' lightin' her steps with a corpse's candle." He drew up the reins abruptly. He seemed in sudden haste to go.

THE PHANTOM OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE

His companion looked with deepening interest at the bridge, although he followed his guide's surging pathway to the opposite bank. As the two dripping horses struggled up the steep incline he asked, "Did the man with her see the manifestation also?"

"He 'lows he did," responded Roxby, equivocally. "But when Mill'cent fust got so she could tell it, 'peared ter me ez Em'ry Keenan fund it ez much news ez the rest o' we-uns. Mill'cent jes' drapped stone-dead, accordin' ter all accounts, an' he an' the t'other young folks flung water in her face till she kem out'n her faint; an' jes' then they hearn the wagin a-rattlin' along the road, an' they stopped it an' fetched her home in it. She never told the tale till she war home, an' it skeered me an' my mother powerful, fur Mill'cent is all the kin we hev got. Mill'cent is gran'daddy an' gran'mammy, sons an' daughters, uncles an' aunts, cousins, nieces, an' nephews, all in one. The only thing I ain't pervided with is a nephew-in-law, an' I don't need him. Leastwise I ain't lookin' fur Em'ry Keenan jes' at present."

The pace was brisker when the two horses, bending their strength sturdily to the task, had pressed up the massive slope from the deep cleft of the gorge. As the road curved about the outer verge of the mountain, the valley far beneath came into view, with intersecting valleys and transverse ranges, dense with the growths of primeval wildernesses, and rugged with the tilted strata of great upheavals, and with chasms cut in the solid rock by centuries of erosion, traces of some remote cataclysmal period, registering thus its throes and turmoils. The blue sky, seen beyond a gaunt profile of one of the farther summits that defined its craggy serrated edge against the ultimate distances of the western heavens, seemed of a singularly suave tint, incongruous with the savagery of the scene, which clouds and portents of storm might better have befitted. The little graveyard, which John Dundas discerned with recognizing eyes, albeit they had never before rested upon it, was revealed suddenly, lying high on the opposite side of the gorge. No frost glimmered now on the lowly mounds; the flickering autumnal sunshine loitered unafraid among them, according to its languid wont for many a year. Shadows of the gray unpainted head-boards lay on the withered grass, brown and crisp, with never a cicada left to break the deathlike silence. A tuft of red leaves, vagrant in the wind, had been caught on one of the primitive monuments, and swayed there with a decorative effect. The enclosure seemed, to unaccustomed eyes, of small compass, and few the denizens who had found shelter here and a resting-place, but it numbered all the dead of the country-side for many a mile and many a year, and somehow the loneliness was assuaged to a degree by the reflection that they had known each other in life, unlike the great herds of cities, and that it was a common fate which the neighbors, huddled together, encountered in company.

It had no discordant effect in the pervasive sense of gloom, of mighty antagonistic forces with which the scene was replete; it fostered a realization of the pitiable minuteness and helplessness of human nature in the midst of the vastness of inanimate nature and the evidences of infinite lengths of forgotten time, of the long reaches of unimagined history, eventful, fateful, which the landscape at once suggested and revealed and concealed.

Like the sudden flippant clatter of castanets in the pause of some solemn funeral music was the impression given by the first glimpse along the winding woodland way of a great flimsy white building, with its many pillars, its piazzas, its "observatory," its band-stand, its garish intimations of the giddy, gay world of a summer hotel. But, alack! it, too, had its surfeit of woe.

"The guerrillas an' bushwhackers tuk it out on the old hotel, sure!" observed Sim Roxby, by way of introduction. "Thar warn't much fightin' hyar-abouts, an' few sure-enough soldiers ever kem along. But wunst in a while a band o' guerrillas went through like a suddint wind-storm, an' I tell ye they made things whurl while they war about it. They made a sorter barracks o' the old place. Looks some like lightning hed struck it."

He had reined up his horse about one hundred yards in front of the edifice, where the weed-grown gravelled drive—carefully tended ten years agone—had diverged from the straight avenue of poplars, sweeping in a circle around to the broad flight of steps.

"Though," he qualified abruptly, as if a sudden thought had struck him, "ef ye air countin' on buyin' it, a leetle money spent ter keerful purpose will go a long way toward makin' it ez good ez new."

His companion did not reply, and for the first time Roxby cast upon him a covert glance charged with the curiosity which would have been earlier and more easily aroused in another man by the manner of the stranger. A letter—infrequent missive in his experience—had come from an ancient companion-in-arms, his former colonel, requesting him in behalf of a friend of the old commander to repair to the railway station, thirty miles distant, to meet and guide this prospective purchaser of the old hotel to the site of the property. And now as Roxby looked at him the suspicion which his kind heart had not been quick to entertain was seized upon by his alert brain.

"The cunnel's been fooled somehows," he said to himself.

For the look with which John Dundas contemplated the place was not the gaze of him concerned with possible investment—with the problems of repair, the details of the glazier and the painter and the plasterer. The mind was evidently neither braced for resistance nor resigned to despair, as behooves one smitten by the foreknowledge of the certainty of the excess of the expenditures over the estimates. Only with pensive, listless melancholy, void of any intention, his eyes traversed the long rows of open doors, riven by rude hands from their locks, swinging helplessly to and fro in the wind, and giving to the deserted and desolate old place a spurious air of motion and life. Many of the shutters had been wrenched from their hinges, and lay rotting on the floors. The ball-room windows caught on their shattered glass the reflection of the clouds, and it seemed as if here and there a wan face looked through at the riders wending along the weed-grown path. Where so many faces had been what wonder that a similitude should linger in the loneliness! The pallid face seemed to draw back as they glanced up while slowly pacing around the drive. A rabbit sitting motionless on the front piazza did not draw back, although observing them with sedate eyes as he poised himself upright on his haunches, with his listless fore-paws suspended in the air, and it occurred to Dundas that he was probably unfamiliar with the presence of human beings, and had never heard the crack of a gun. A great swirl of swallows came soaring out of the big kitchen chimneys and circled in the sky, darting down again and again upward. Through an open passage was a glimpse of a quadrangle, with its weed-grown spaces and litter of yellow leaves. A tawny streak, a red fox, sped through it as Dundas looked. A half-moon, all a-tilt, hung above it. He saw the glimmer through the bare boughs of the leafless locust-trees here and there still standing, although outside on the lawn many a stump bore token how ruthlessly the bushwhackers had furnished their fires.

"That thar moon's a-hangin' fur rain," said the mountaineer, commenting upon the aspect of the luminary, which he, too, had noticed as they passed. "I ain't s'prised none ef we hev fallin' weather agin 'fore day, an' the man—by name Morgan Holden—that hev charge o' the hotel property can't git back fur a week an' better."

A vague wonder to find himself so suspicious flitted through his mind, with the thought that perhaps the colonel might have reckoned on this delay. "Surely the ruvers down yander at Knoxville mus' be a-boomin', with all this wet weather," he said to himself.

Then aloud: "Morgan Holden he went ter Colbury ter 'tend ter some business in court, an' the ruvers hev riz so that, what with the bredges bein' washed away an' the fords so onsartain an' tricky, he'll stay till the ruver falls. He don't know ye war kemin', ye see. The mail-rider hev quit, 'count o' the rise in the ruver, an' thar's no way ter git word ter him. Still, ef ye air minded ter wait, I'll be powerful obligated fur yer comp'ny down ter my house till the ruver falls an' Holden he gits back."

The stranger murmured his obligations, but his eyes dwelt lingeringly upon the old hotel, with its flapping doors and its shattered windows. Through the recurrent vistas of these, placed opposite in the rooms, came again broken glimpses of the grassy space within the quadrangle, with its leafless locust-trees, first of all to yield their foliage to the autumn wind, where a tiny owl was shrilling stridulously under the lonely red sky and the melancholy moon.

"Hed ye 'lowed ter put up at the old hotel?" asked Roxby, some inherent quickness supplying the lack of a definite answer.

For the first time the stranger turned upon him a look more expressive than the casual fragmentary attention with which he had half heeded, half ignored his talk since their first encounter at the railway station.

"A simple fellow, but good as gold," was the phrase with which Simeon Roxby had been commended as guide and in some sort guard.

"Not so simple, perhaps," the sophisticated man thought as their eyes met. Not so simple but that the truth must serve. "The colonel suggested that it might be best," he replied, more alert to the present moment than his languid preoccupation had heretofore permitted.

The answer was good as far as it went. A few days spent in the old hostelry certainly would serve well to acquaint the prospective purchaser with its actual condition and the measures and means needed for its repair; but as Sim Roxby stood there, with the cry of the owl shrilling in the desert air, the lonely red sky, the ominous tilted moon, the doors drearily flapping to and fro as the wind stole into the forlorn and empty place and sped back affrighted, he marvelled at the refuge contemplated.

"I believe there is some of the furniture here yet. We could contrive to set up a bed from what is left. The colonel could make it all right with Holden, and I could stay a day or two, as we originally planned."

"Ye-es. I don't mind Holden: a man ain't much in charge of a place ez ain't got a lock or a key ter bless itself with, an' takes the owel an' the fox an' the gopher fur boarders; but, ennyhow, kem with me home ter supper. Mill'cent will hev it ready by now ennyhows, an' ye need suthin' hearty an' hot ter stiffen ye up ter move inter sech quarters ez these." Dundas hesitated, but the mountaineer had already taken assent for granted, and pushed his horse into a sharp trot. Evidently a refusal was not in order. Dundas pressed forward, and they rode together along the winding way past the ten-pin alley, its long low roof half hidden in the encroaching undergrowth springing up apace beneath the great trees; past the stables; past a line of summer cottages, strangely staring of aspect out of the yawning doors and windows, giving, instead of an impression of vacancy, a sense of covert watching, of secret occupancy. If one's glances were only quick enough, were there not faces pressed to those shattered panes—scarcely seen—swiftly withdrawn?

He was in a desert; he had hardly been so utterly alone in all his life; yet he bore through the empty place a feeling of espionage, and ever and anon he glanced keenly at the overgrown lawns, with their deepening drifts of autumn leaves, at the staring windows and flaring doors, which emitted sometimes sudden creaking wails in the silence, as if he sought to assure himself of the vacancy of which his mind took cognizance and yet all his senses denied.

Little of his sentiment, although sedulously cloaked, was lost on Sim Roxby; and he was aware, too, in some subtle way, of the relief his guest experienced when they plunged into the darkening forest and left the forlorn place behind them. The clearing in which it was situated seemed an oasis of light in the desert of night in which the rest of the world lay. From the obscurity of the forest Dundas saw, through the vistas of the giant trees, the clustering cottages, the great hotel, gables and chimneys and tower, stark and distinct as in some weird dream-light in the midst of the encircling gloom. The after-glow of sunset was still aflare on the western windows; the whole empty place was alight with a reminiscence of its old aspect—its old gay life. Who knows what memories were a-stalk there—what semblance of former times? What might not the darkness foster, the impunity of desertion, the associations that inhabited the place with almost the strength of human occupancy itself? Who knows—who knows?

He remembered the scene afterward, the impression he received. And from this, he thought, arose his regret for his decision to take up here his abiding-place.

The forest shut out the illumined landscape, and the night seemed indeed at hand; the gigantic boles of the trees loomed through the encompassing gloom, that was yet a semi-transparent medium, like some dark but clear fluid through which objects were dimly visible, albeit tinged with its own sombre hue. The lank, rawboned sorrel had set a sharp pace, to which the chestnut, after momentary lagging, as if weary with the day's travel, responded briskly. He had received in some way intimations that his companion's corn-crib was near at hand, and if he had not deduced from these premises the probability of sharing his fare, his mental processes served him quite as well as reason, and brought him to the same result. On and on they sped, neck and neck, through the darkening woods; fire flashed now and again from their iron-shod hoofs; often a splash and a shower of drops told of a swift dashing through the mud-holes that recent rains had fostered in the shallows. The dank odor of dripping boughs came on the clear air. Once the chestnut shied from a sudden strange shining point springing up in the darkness close at hand, which the country-bred horse discriminated as fox-fire, and kept steadily on, unmindful of the rotting log where it glowed. Far in advance, in the dank depths of the woods, a Will-o'-the-wisp danced and flickered and lured the traveller's eye. The stranger was not sure of the different quality of another light, appearing down a vista as the road turned, until the sorrel, making a tremendous spurt, headed for it, uttering a joyous neigh at the sight.

The deep-voiced barking of hounds rose melodiously on the silence, and as the horses burst out of the woods into a small clearing, Dundas beheld in the brighter light a half-dozen of the animals nimbly afoot in the road, one springing over the fence, another in the act of climbing, his fore-paws on the topmost rail, his long neck stretched, and his head turning about in attitudes of observation. He evidently wished to assure himself whether the excitement of his friends was warranted by the facts before he troubled himself to vault over the fence. Three or four still lingered near the door of a log-cabin, fawning about a girl who stood on the porch. Her pose was alert, expectant; a fire in the dooryard, where the domestic manufacture of soap had been in progress, cast a red flare on the house, its appurtenances, the great dark forest looming all around, and, more than the glow of the hearth within, lighted up the central figure of the scene. She was tall, straight, and strong; a wealth of fair hair was clustered in a knot at the back of her head, and fleecy tendrils fell over her brow; on it was perched a soldier's cap; and certainly more gallant and fearless eyes had never looked out from under the straight, stiff brim. Her chin, firm, round, dimpled, was uplifted as she raised her head, descrying the horsemen's approach. She wore a full dark-red skirt, a dark brown waist, and around her neck was twisted a gray cotton kerchief, faded to a pale ashen hue, the neutrality of which somehow aided the delicate brilliancy of the blended roseate and pearly tints of her face. Was this the seer of ghosts—Dundas marvelled—this the Millicent whose pallid and troubled phantom already paced the foot-bridge?

He did not realize that he had drawn up his horse suddenly at the sight of her, nor did he notice that his host had dismounted, until Roxby was at the chestnut's head, ready to lead the animal to supper in the barn. His evident surprise, his preoccupation, were not lost upon Roxby, however. His hand hesitated on the girth of the chestnut's saddle when he stood between the two horses in the barn. He had half intended to disregard the stranger's declination of his invitation, and stable the creature. Then he shook his head slowly; the mystery that hung about the new-comer was not reassuring. "A heap o' wuthless cattle 'mongst them valley men," he said; for the war had been in some sort an education to his simplicity. "Let him stay whar the cunnel expected him ter stay. I ain't wantin' no stranger a-hangin' round about Mill'cent, nohow. Em'ry Keenan ain't a pattern o' perfection, but I be toler'ble well acquainted with the cut o' his foolishness, an' I know his daddy an' mammy, an' both sets o' gran'daddies an' gran'mammies, an' I could tell ye exac'ly which one the critter got his nose an' his mouth from, an' them lean sheep's-eyes o' his'n, an' nigh every tone o' his voice. Em'ry never thunk afore ez I set store on bein' acquainted with him. He 'lowed I knowed him too well."

He laughed as he glanced through the open door into the darkening landscape. Horizontal gray clouds were slipping fast across the pearly spaces of the sky. The yellow stubble gleamed among the brown earth of the farther field, still striped with its furrows. The black forest encircled the little cleared space, and a wind was astir among the tree-tops. A white star gleamed through the broken clapboards of the roof, the fire still flared under the soap-kettle in the dooryard, and the silence was suddenly smitten by a high cracked old voice, which told him that his mother had perceived the dismounted stranger at the gate, and was graciously welcoming him.

She had come to the door, where the girl still stood, but half withdrawn in the shadow. Dundas silently bowed as he passed her, following his aged hostess into the low room, all bedight with the firelight of a huge chimney-place, and comfortable with the realization of a journey's end. The wilderness might stretch its weary miles around, the weird wind wander in the solitudes, the star look coldly on unmoved by aught it beheld, the moon show sad portents, but at the door they all failed, for here waited rest and peace and human companionship and the sense of home.

"Take a cheer, stranger, an' make yerself at home. Powerful glad ter see ye—war 'feard night would overtake ye. Ye fund the water toler'ble high in all the creeks an' sech, I reckon, an' fords shifty an' onsartain. Yes, sir. Fall rains kem on earlier'n common, an' more'n we need. Wisht we could divide it with that thar drought we had in the summer. Craps war cut toler'ble short, sir—toler'ble short."

Mrs. Roxby's spectacles beamed upon him with an expression of the utmost benignity as the firelight played on the lenses, but her eyes peering over them seemed endowed in some sort with independence of outlook. It was as if from behind some bland mask a critical observation was poised for unbiased judgment. He felt in some degree under surveillance. But when a light step heralded an approach he looked up, regardless of the betrayal of interest, and bent a steady gaze upon Millicent as she paused in the doorway.

And as she stood there, distinct in the firelight and outlined against the black background of the night, she seemed some modern half-military ideal of Diana, with her two gaunt hounds beside her, the rest of the pack vaguely glimpsed at her heels outside, the perfect outline and chiselling of her features, her fine, strong, supple figure, the look of steady courage in her eyes, and the soldier's cap on her fair hair. Her face so impressed itself upon his mind that he seemed to have seen her often. It was some resemblance to a picture of a vivandière, doubtless, in a foreign gallery—he could not say when or where; a remnant of a tourist's overcrowded impressions; a half-realized reminiscence, he thought, with an uneasy sense of recognition.

"Hello, Mill'cent! home agin!" Roxby cried, in cheery greeting as he entered at the back door opposite. "What sorter topknot is that ye got on?" he demanded, looking jocosely at her head-gear.

The girl put up her hand with an expression of horror. A deep red flush dyed her cheek as she touched the cap. "I forgot 'twar thar," she murmured, contritely. Then, with a sudden rush of anger as she tore it off: "'Twar granny's fault. She axed me ter put it on, so ez ter see which one I looked most like."

"Stranger," quavered the old woman, with a painful break in her voice, "I los' fower sons in the war, an' Mill'cent hev got the fambly favor."

"Ye mought hev let me know ez I war a-perlitin' round in this hyar men's gear yit," the girl muttered, as she hung the cap on a prong of the deer antlers on which rested the rifle of the master of the house.

Roxby's face had clouded at the mention of the four sons who had gone out from the mountains never to return, leaving to their mother's aching heart only the vague comfort of an elusive resemblance in a girl's face; but as he noted Millicent's pettish manner, and divined her mortification because of her unseemly head-gear in the stranger's presence, he addressed her again in that jocose tone without which he seldom spoke to her.

"Warn't you-uns apologizin' ter me t'other day fur not bein' a nephew 'stiddier a niece? Looked sorter like a nephew ter-night."

She shook her head, covered now only with its own charming tresses waving in thick undulations to the coil at the nape of her neck—a trifle dishevelled from the rude haste with which the cap had been torn off.

Roxby had seated himself, and with his elbows on his knees he looked up at her with a teasing jocularity, such as one might assume toward a child.

"Ye war," he declared, with affected solemnity—"ye war 'pologizin' fur not bein' a nephew, an' 'lowed ef ye war a nephew we could go a-huntin' tergether, an' ye could holp me in all my quar'ls an' fights. I been aging some lately, an' ef I war ter go ter the settlemint an' git inter a fight I mought not be able ter hold my own. Think what 'twould be ter a pore old man ter hev a dutiful nephew step up an'"—he doubled his fists and squared off—"jes' let daylight through some o' them cusses. An' didn't ye say"—he dropped his belligerent attitude and pointed an insistent finger at her, as if to fix the matter in her recollection—"ef ye war a nephew 'stiddier a niece ye could fire a gun 'thout shettin' yer eyes? An' I told ye then ez that would mend yer aim mightily. I told ye that I'd be powerful mortified ef I hed a nephew ez hed ter shet his eyes ter keep the noise out'n his ears whenst he fired a rifle. The tale would go mighty hard with me at the settlemint."

The girl's eyes glowed upon him with the fixity and the lustre of those of a child who is entertained and absorbed by an elder's jovial wiles. A flash of laughter broke over her face, and the low, gurgling, half-dreamy sound was pleasant to hear. She was evidently no more than a child to these bereft old people, and by them cherished as naught else on earth.

"An' didn't I tell you-uns," he went on, affecting to warm to the discussion, and in reality oblivious of the presence of the guest—"didn't I tell ye ez how ef ye war a nephew 'stiddier a niece ye wouldn't hev sech cattle ez Em'ry Keenan a-danglin' round underfoot, like a puppy ye can't gin away, an' that won't git lost, an' ye ain't got the heart ter kill?"

The girl's lip suddenly curled with scorn. "Yer nephew would be obligated ter make a ch'ice fur marryin' 'mongst these hyar mounting gals—Parmely Lepstone, or Belindy M'ria Matthews, or one o' the Windrow gals. Waal, sir, I'd ruther be yer niece—even ef Em'ry Keenan air like a puppy underfoot, that ye can't gin away, an' won't git lost, an' ye ain't got the heart ter kill." She laughed again, showing her white teeth. She evidently relished the description of the persistent adherence of poor Emory Keenan. "But which one o' these hyar gals would ye recommend ter yer nephew ter marry—ef ye hed a nephew?"

She looked at him with flashing eyes, conscious of having propounded a poser.

He hesitated for a moment. Then—"I'm surrounded," he said, with a laugh. "Ez I couldn't find a wife fur myself, I can't ondertake ter recommend one ter my nephew. Mighty fine boy he'd hev been, an' saaft-spoken an' perlite ter aged men—not sassy an' makin' game o' old uncles like a niece. Mighty fine boy!"

"Ye air welcome ter him," she said, with a simulation of scorn, as she turned away to the table.

Whether it were the military cap she had worn, or the fancied resemblance to the young soldiers, never to grow old, who had gone forth from this humble abode to return no more, there was still to the guest's mind the suggestion of the vivandière about her as she set the table and spread upon it the simple fare. To and from the fireplace she was followed by two or three of the younger dogs, their callowness expressed in their lack of manners and perfervid interest in the approaching meal. This induced their brief journeys back and forth, albeit embarrassed by their physical conformation, short turns on four legs not being apparently the easy thing it would seem from so much youthful suppleness. The dignity of the elder hounds did not suffer them to move, but they looked on from erect postures about the hearth with glistening eyes and slobbering jaws.

Ever and anon the deep blue eyes of Millicent were lifted to the outer gloom, as if she took note of its sinister aspect. She showed scant interest in the stranger, whose gaze seldom left her as he sat beside the fire. He was a handsome man, his face and figure illumined by the firelight, and it might have been that he felt a certain pique, an unaccustomed slight, in that his presence was so indifferent an element in the estimation of any young and comely specimen of the feminine sex. Certainly he had rarely encountered such absolute preoccupation as her smiling far-away look betokened as she went back and forth with her young canine friends at her heels, or stood at the table deftly slicing the salt-rising bread, the dogs poised skilfully upon their hind-legs to better view the appetizing performance; whenever she turned her face toward them they laid their heads languishingly askew, as if to remind her that supper could not be more fitly bestowed than on them. One, to steady himself, placed unobserved his fore-paw on the edge of the table, his well-padded toes leaving a vague imprint as of fingers upon the coarse white cloth; but John Dundas was a sportsman, and could the better relax an exacting nicety where so pleasant-featured and affable a beggar was concerned. He forgot the turmoils of his own troubles as he gazed at Millicent, the dreary aspect of the solitudes without, the exile from his accustomed sphere of culture and comfort, the poverty and coarseness of her surroundings. He was sorry that he had declined a longer lease of Roxby's hospitality, and it was in his mind to reconsider when it should be again proffered. Her attitude, her gesture, her face, her environment, all appealed to his sense of beauty, his interest, his curiosity, as little ever had done heretofore. Slice after slice of the firm fragrant bread was deftly cut and laid on the plate, as again and again she lifted her eyes with a look that might seem to expect to rest on summer in the full flush of a June noontide without, rather than on the wan, wintry night sky and the plundered, quaking woods, while the robber wind sped on his raids hither and thither so swiftly that none might follow, so stealthily that none might hinder. A sudden radiance broke upon her face, a sudden shadow fell on the firelit floor, and there was entering at the doorway a tall, lithe young mountaineer, whose first glance, animated with a responsive brightness, was for the girl, but whose punctilious greeting was addressed to the old woman.

"Howdy, Mis' Roxby—howdy? Air yer rheumatics mendin' enny?" he demanded, with the condolent suavity of the would-be son-in-law, or grandson-in-law, as the case may be. And he hung with a transfixed interest upon her reply, prolix and discursive according to the wont of those who cultivate "rheumatics," as if each separate twinge racked his own sympathetic and filial sensibilities. Not until the tale was ended did he set his gun against the wall and advance to the seat which Roxby had indicated with the end of the stick he was whittling. He observed the stranger with only slight interest, till Dundas drew up his chair opposite at the table. There the light from the tallow dip, guttering in the centre, fell upon his handsome face and eyes, his carefully tended beard and hair, his immaculate cuffs and delicate hand, the seal-ring on his taper finger.

"Like a gal, by gum!" thought Emory Keenan. "Rings on his fingers—yit six feet high!"

He looked at his elders, marvelling that they so hospitably repressed the disgust which this effeminate adornment must occasion, forgetting that it was possible that they did not even observe it. In the gala-days of the old hotel, before the war, they had seen much "finicking finery" in garb and equipage and habits affected by the jeunesse dorée who frequented the place in those halcyon times, and were accustomed to such details. It might be that they and Millicent approved such flimsy daintiness. He began to fume inwardly with a sense of inferiority in her estimation. One of his fingers had been frosted last winter, and with the first twinge of cold weather it was beginning to look very red and sad and clumsy, as if it had just remembered its ancient woe; he glanced from it once more at the delicate ringed hand of the stranger.

Dundas was looking up with a slow, deferential, decorous smile that nevertheless lightened and transfigured his expression. It seemed somehow communicated to Millicent's face as she looked down at him from beneath her white eyelids and long, thick, dark lashes, for she was standing beside him, handing him the plate of bread. Then, still smiling, she passed noiselessly on to the others.

Emory was indeed clumsy, for he had stretched his hand downward to offer a morsel to a friend of his under the table—he was on terms of exceeding amity with the four-footed members of the house hold—and in his absorption not withdrawing it as swiftly as one accustomed to canine manners should do, he had his frosted finger well mumbled before he could, as it were, repossess himself of it.

"I wonder what they charge fur iron over yander at the settlemint, Em'ry?" observed Sim Roxby presently.

"Dun'no', sir," responded Emory, glumly, his sullen black eyes full of smouldering fire—"hevin' no call ter know, ez I ain't no blacksmith."

"I war jes' wonderin' ef tenpenny nails didn't cost toler'ble high ez reg'lar feed," observed Roxby, gravely.

But his mother laughed out with a gleeful cracked treble, always a ready sequence of her son's rustic sallies. "He got ye that time, Em'ry," she cried.

A forced smile crossed Emory's face. He tossed back his tangled dark hair with a gasp that was like the snort of an unruly horse submitting to the inevitable, but with restive projects in his brain. "I let the dog hyar ketch my finger whilst feedin' him," he said. His plausible excuse for the tenpenny expression was complete; but he added, his darker mood recurring instantly, "An', Mis' Roxby, I hev put a stop ter them ez hev tuk ter callin' me Em'ly, I hev."

The old woman looked up, her small wrinkled mouth round and amazed. "I never called ye Emily," she declared.

Swift repentance seized him.

"Naw, 'm," he said, with hurried propitiation. "I 'lowed ye did."

"I didn't," said the old woman. "But ef I war ter find it toothsome ter call ye 'Emily,' I dun'no' how ye air goin' ter pervent it. Ye can't go gunnin' fur me, like ye done fur the men at the mill, fur callin' ye 'Emily.'"

"Law, Mis' Roxby!" he could only exclaim, in his horror and contrition at this picture he had thus conjured up. "Ye air welcome ter call me ennything ye air a mind ter," he protested.

And then he gasped once more. The eyes of the guest, contemptuous, amused, seeing through him, were fixed upon him. And he himself had furnished the lily-handed stranger with the information that he had been stigmatized "Em'ly" in the banter of his associates, until he had taken up arms, as it were, to repress this derision.

"It takes powerful little ter put ye down, Em'ry," said Roxby, with rallying laughter. "Mam hev sent ye skedaddlin' in no time at all. I don't b'lieve the Lord made woman out'n the man's rib. He made her out'n the man's backbone; fur the man ain't hed none ter speak of sence."

Millicent, with a low gurgle of laughter, sat down beside Emory at the table, and fixed her eyes, softly lighted with mirth, upon him. The others too had laughed, the stranger with a flattering intonation, but young Keenan looked at her with a dumb appealing humility that did not altogether fail of its effect, for she busied herself to help his plate with an air of proprietorship as if he were a child, and returned it with a smile very radiant and sufficient at close range. She then addressed herself to her own meal. The young dogs under the table ceased to beg, and gambolled and gnawed and tugged at her stout little shoes, the sound of their callow mirthful growls rising occasionally above the talk. Sometimes she rose again to wait on the table, when they came leaping out after her, jumping and catching at her skirts, now and then casting themselves on the ground prone before her feet, and rolling over and over in the sheer joy of existence.

The stranger took little part in the talk at the table. Never a question was asked him as to his mission in the mountains, or the length of his stay, his vocation, or his home. That extreme courtesy of the mountaineers, exemplified in their singular abstinence from any expressions of curiosity, accepted such account of himself as he had volunteered, and asked for no more. In the face of this standard of manners any inquisitiveness on his part, such as might have elicited points of interest for his merely momentary entertainment, was tabooed. Nevertheless, silent though he was for the most part, the relish with which he listened, his half-covert interest in the girl, his quick observation of the others, the sudden very apparent enlivening of his mental atmosphere, betokened that his quarters were not displeasing to him. It seemed only a short time before the meal was ended and the circle all, save Millicent, with pipes alight before the fire again. The dogs, well fed, had ranged themselves on the glowing hearth, lying prone on the hot stones; one old hound, however, who conserved the air of listening to the conversation, sat upright and nodded from time to time, now and again losing his balance and tipping forward in a truly human fashion, then gazing round on the circle with an open luminous eye, as who should say he had not slept.

It was all very cheerful within, but outside the wind still blared mournfully. Once more Dundas was sorry that he had declined the invitation to remain, and it was with a somewhat tentative intention that he made a motion to return to the hotel. But his host seemed to regard his resolution as final, and rose with a regret, not an insistence. The two women stared in silent amazement at the mere idea of his camping out, as it were, in the old hotel. The ascendency of masculine government here, notwithstanding Roxby's assertion that Eve was made of Adam's backbone, was very apparent in their mute acquiescence and the alacrity with which they began to collect various articles, according to his directions, to make the stranger's stay more comfortable.

"Em'ry kin go along an' holp," he said, heartlessly; for poor Emory's joy in perceiving that the guest was not a fixture, and that his presence was not to be an embargo on any word between himself and Millicent during the entire evening, was pitiably manifest. But the situation was still not without its comforts, since Dundas was to go too. Hence he was not poor company when once in the saddle, and was civil to a degree of which his former dismayed surliness had given no promise.

Night had become a definite element. The twilight had fled. Above their heads, as they galloped through the dank woods, the bare boughs of the trees clashed together—so high above their heads that to the town man, unaccustomed to these great growths, the sound seemed not of the vicinage, but unfamiliar, uncanny, and more than once he checked his horse to listen. As they approached the mountain's verge and overlooked the valley and beheld the sky, the sense of the predominance of darkness was redoubled. The ranges gloomed against the clearer spaces, but a cloud, deep gray with curling white edges, was coming up from the west, with an invisible convoy of vague films, beneath which the stars, glimmering white points, disappeared one by one. The swift motion of this aerial fleet sailing with the wind might be inferred from the seemingly hurried pace of the moon making hard for the west. Still bright was the illumined segment, but despite its glitter the shadowy space of the full disk was distinctly visible, its dusky field spangled with myriads of minute, dully golden points. Down, down it took its way in haste—in disordered fright, it seemed, as if it had no heart to witness the storm which the wind and the clouds foreboded—to fairer skies somewhere behind those western mountains. Soon even its vague light would encroach no more upon the darkness. The great hotel would be invisible, annihilated as it were in the gloom, and not even thus dimly exist, glimmering, alone, forlorn, so incongruous to the wilderness that it seemed even now some mere figment of the brain, as the two horsemen came with a freshened burst of speed along the deserted avenue and reined up beside a small gate at the side.

"No use ter ride all the way around," observed Emory Keenan. "Mought jes ez well 'light an' hitch hyar."

The moon gave him the escort of a great grotesque shadow as he threw himself from his horse and passed the reins over a decrepit hitching-post near at hand. Then he essayed the latch of the small gate. He glanced up at Dundas, the moonlight in his dark eyes, with a smile as it resisted his strength.

He was a fairly good-looking fellow when rid of the self-consciousness of jealousy. His eyes, mouth, chin, and nose, acquired from reliable and recognizable sources, were good features, and statuesque in their immobility beneath the drooping curves of his broad soft hat. He was tall, with the slenderness of youth, despite his evident weight and strength. He was long-waisted and lithe and small of girth, with broad square shoulders, whose play of muscles as he strove with the gate was not altogether concealed by the butternut jeans coat belted in with his pistols by a broad leathern belt. His boots reached high on his long legs, and jingled with a pair of huge cavalry spurs. His stalwart strength seemed as if it must break the obdurate gate rather than open it, but finally, with a rasping creak, dismally loud in the silence, it swung slowly back.

The young mountaineer stood gazing for a moment at the red rust on the hinges. "How long sence this gate must hev been opened afore?" he said, again looking up at Dundas with a smile.

Somehow the words struck a chill to the stranger's heart. The sense of the loneliness of the place, of isolation, filled him with a sort of awe. The night-bound wilderness itself was not more daunting than these solitary tiers of piazzas, these vacant series of rooms and corridors, all instinct with vanished human presence, all alert with echoes of human voices. A step, a laugh, a rustle of garments—he could have sworn he heard them at any open doorway as he followed his guide along the dim moonlit piazza, with its pillars duplicated at regular intervals by the shadows on the floor. How their tread echoed down these lonely ways! From the opposite side of the house he heard Keenan's spurs jangling, his soldierly stride sounding back as if their entrance had roused barracks. He winced once to see his own shadow with its stealthier movement. It seemed painfully furtive. For the first time during the evening his jaded mind, that had instinctively sought the solace of contemplating trifles, reverted to its own tormented processes. "Am I not hiding?" he said to himself, in a sort of sarcastic pity of his plight.

The idea seemed never to enter the mind of the transparent Keenan. He laughed out gayly as they turned into the weed-grown quadrangle, and the red fox that Dundas had earlier observed slipped past him with affrighted speed and dashed among the shadows of the dense shrubbery of the old lawn without. Again and again the sound rang back from wall to wall, first with the jollity of seeming imitation, then with an appalled effect sinking to silence, and suddenly rising again in a grewsome staccato that suggested some terrible unearthly laughter, and bore but scant resemblance to the hearty mirth which had evoked it. Keenan paused and looked back with friendly gleaming eyes. "Oughter been a leetle handier with these hyar consarns," he said, touching the pistols in his belt.

It vaguely occurred to Dundas that the young man went strangely heavily armed for an evening visit at a neighbor's house. But it was a lawless country and lawless times, and the sub-current of suggestion did not definitely fix itself in his mind until he remembered it later. He was looking into each vacant open doorway, seeing the still moonlight starkly white upon the floor; the cobwebbed and broken window-panes, through which a section of leafless trees beyond was visible; bits of furniture here and there, broken by the vandalism of the guerillas. Now and then a scurrying movement told of a gopher, hiding too, and on one mantel-piece, the black fireplace yawning below, sat a tiny tawny-tinted owl, whose motionless bead-like eyes met his with a stare of stolid surprise. After he had passed, its sudden ill-omened cry set the silence to shuddering.

Keenan, leading the way, paused in displeasure. "I wisht I hed viewed that critter," he said, glumly. "I'd hev purvented that screechin' ter call the devil, sure. It's jes a certain sign o' death."

He was about to turn, to wreak his vengeance, perchance. But the bird, sufficiently fortunate itself, whatever woe it presaged for others, suddenly took its awkward flight through sheen and shadow across the quadrangle, and when they heard its cry again it came from some remote section of the building, with a doleful echo as a refrain.

The circumstance was soon forgotten by Keenan. He seemed a happy, mercurial, lucid nature, and he began presently to dwell with interest on the availability of the old music-stand in the centre of the square as a manger. "Hyar," he said, striking the rotten old structure with a heavy hand, which sent a quiver and a thrill through all the timbers—"hyar's whar the guerillas always hitched thar beastises. Thar feed an' forage war piled up thar on the fiddlers' seats. Ye can't do no better'n ter pattern arter them, till ye git ready ter hev fiddlers an' sech a-sawin' away in hyar agin."

And he sauntered away from the little pavilion, followed by Dundas, who had not accepted his suggestion of a room on the first floor as being less liable to leakage, but finally made choice of an inner apartment in the second story. He looked hard at Keenan, when he stood in the doorway surveying the selection. The room opened into a cross-hall which gave upon a broad piazza that was latticed; tiny squares of moonlight were all sharply drawn on the floor, and, seen through a vista of gray shadow, seemed truly of a gilded lustre. From the windows of this room on a court-yard no light could be visible to any passer-by without. Another door gave on an inner gallery, and through its floor a staircase came up from the quadrangle close to the threshold. Dundas wondered if these features were of possible significance in Keenan's estimation. The young mountaineer turned suddenly, and snatching up a handful of slats broken from the shutters, remarked:

"Let's see how the chimbly draws—that's the main p'int."

There was no defect in the chimney's constitution. It drew admirably, and with the white and red flames dancing in the fireplace, two or three chairs, more or less disabled, a table, and an upholstered lounge gathered at random from the rooms near at hand, the possibility of sojourning comfortably for a few days in the deserted hostelry seemed amply assured.

Once more Dundas gazed fixedly at the face of the young mountaineer, who still bent on one knee on the hearth, watching with smiling eyes the triumphs of his fire-making. It seemed to him afterwards that his judgment was strangely at fault; he perceived naught of import in the shallow brightness of the young man's eyes, like the polished surface of jet; in the instability of his jealousy, his anger; in his hap-hazard, mercurial temperament. Once he might have noted how flat were the spaces beneath the eyes, how few were the lines that defined the lid, the socket, the curve of the cheekbone, the bridge of the nose, and how expressionless. It was doubtless the warmth and glow of the fire, the clinging desire of companionship, the earnest determination to be content, pathetic in one who had but little reason for optimism, that caused him to ignore the vacillating glancing moods that successively swayed Keenan, strong while they lasted, but with scanty augury because of their evanescence. He was like some newly discovered property in physics of untried potentialities, of which nothing is ascertained but its uncertainties.

And yet he seemed to Dundas a simple country fellow, good-natured in the main, unsuspicious, and helpful. So, giving a long sigh of relief and fatigue, Dundas sank down in one of the large arm-chairs that had once done duty for the summer loungers on the piazza.

In the light of the fire Emory was once more looking at him. A certain air of distinction, a grace and ease of movement, an indescribable quality of bearing which he could not discriminate, yet which he instinctively recognized as superior, offended him in some sort. He noticed again the ring on the stranger's hand as he drew off his glove. Gloves! Emory Keenan would as soon have thought of wearing a petticoat. Once more the fear that these effeminate graces found favor in Millicent's estimation smote upon his heart. It made the surface of his opaque eyes glisten as Dundas rose and took up a pipe and tobacco pouch which he had laid on the mantel-piece, his full height and fine figure shown in the changed posture.

"Ez tall ez me, ef not taller, an', by gum! a good thirty pound heavier," Emory reflected, with a growing dismay that he had not those stalwart claims to precedence in height and weight as an offset to the smoother fascinations of the stranger's polish.

He had risen hastily to his feet. He would not linger to smoke fraternally over the fire, and thus cement friendly relations.

"I guided him hyar, like old Sim Roxby axed me ter do, an' that's all. I ain't keerin' ef I never lay eyes on him again," he said to himself.

"Going?" said Dundas, pleasantly, noticing the motion. "You'll look in again, won't you?"

"Wunst in a while, I reckon," drawled Keenan, a trifle thrown off his balance by this courtesy.

He paused at the door, looking back over his shoulder for a moment at the illumined room, then stepped out into the night, leaving the tenant of the lonely old house filling his pipe by the fire.

His tread rang along the deserted gallery, and sudden echoes came tramping down the vacant halls as if many a denizen of the once populous place was once more astir within its walls. Long after Dundas had heard him spring from the lower piazza to the ground, and the rusty gate clang behind him, vague footfalls were audible far away, and were still again, and once more a pattering tread in some gaunt and empty apartment near at hand, faint and fainter yet, till he hardly knew whether it were the reverberations of sound or fancy that held his senses in thrall.

And when all was still and silent at last he felt less solitary than when these elusive tokens of human presence were astir.

Late, late he sat over the dwindling embers. His mind, no longer diverted by the events of the day, recurred with melancholy persistence to a theme which even they, although fraught with novelty and presage of danger, had not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril dulled, the craft of sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him in these dim watches of the night. Self-reproach had found him out here, defenceless so far from the specious wiles and ways of men. All the line of provocations seemed slight, seemed naught, as he reviewed them and balanced them against a human life. True, it was not in some mad quarrel that his skill had taken it and had served to keep his own—a duel, a fair fight, strictly regular according to the code of "honorable men" for ages past—and he sought to argue that it was doubtless but the morbid sense of the wild fastnesses without, the illimitable vastness of the black night, the unutterable indurability of nature to the influences of civilization, which made it taste like murder. He had brought away even from the scene of action, to which he had gone with decorous deliberation—his worldly affairs arranged for the possibility of death, his will made, his volition surrendered, and his sacred honor in the hands of his seconds—a humiliating recollection of the sudden revulsion of the aspect of all things; the criminal sense of haste with which he was hurried away after that first straight shot; the agitation, nay, the fright of his seconds; their eagerness to be swiftly rid of him, their insistence that he should go away for a time, get out of the country, out of the embarrassing purview of the law, which was prone to regard the matter as he himself saw it now, and which had an ugly trick of calling things by their right names in the sincere phraseology of an indictment. And thus it was that he was here, remote from all the usual lines of flight, with his affectation of being a possible purchaser for the old hotel, far from the railroad, the telegraph, even the postal service. Some time—soon, indeed, it might be, when the first flush of excitement and indignation should be overpast, and the law, like a barking dog that will not bite, should have noisily exhausted the gamut of its devoirs—he would go back and live according to his habit in his wonted place, as did other men whom he had known to be "called out," and who had survived their opponents. Meantime he heard the ash crumble; he saw the lighted room wane from glancing yellow to a dull steady red, and so to dusky brown; he marked the wind rise, and die away, and come again, banging the doors of the empty rooms, and setting timbers all strangely to creaking as under sudden trampling feet; then lift into the air with a rustling sound like the stir of garments and the flutter of wings, calling out weirdly in the great voids of the upper atmosphere.

He had welcomed the sense of fatigue earlier in the evening, for it promised sleep. Now it had slipped away from him. He was strong and young, and the burning sensation that the frosty air had left on his face was the only token of the long journey. It seemed as if he would never sleep again as he lay on the lounge watching the gray ash gradually overgrow the embers, till presently only a vague dull glow gave intimation of the position of the hearth in the room. And then, bereft of this dim sense of companionship, he stared wide-eyed in the darkness, feeling the only creature alive and awake in all the world. No; the fox was suddenly barking within the quadrangle—a strangely wild and alien tone. And presently he heard the animal trot past his door on the piazza, the cushioned footfalls like those of a swift dog. He thought with a certain anxiety of the tawny tiny owl that had sat like a stuffed ornament on the mantel-piece of a neighboring room, and he listened with a quaking vicarious presentiment of woe for the sounds of capture and despair. He was sensible of waiting and hoping for the fox's bootless return, when he suddenly lost consciousness.

How long he slept he did not know, but it seemed only a momentary respite from the torture of memory, when, still in the darkness, thousands of tremulous penetrating sounds were astir, and with a great start he recognized the rain on the roof. It was coming down in steady torrents that made the house rock before the tumult of his plunging heart was still, and he was longing again for the forgetfulness of sleep. In vain. The hours dragged by; the windows slowly, slowly defined their dull gray squares against the dull gray day dawning without. The walls that had been left with only the first dark coat of plaster, awaiting another season for the final decoration, showed their drapings of cobweb, and the names and pencilled scribblings with which the fancy of transient bushwhackers had chosen to deface them. The locust-trees within the quadrangle drearily tossed their branches to and fro in the wind, the bark very black and distinct against the persistent gray lines of rain and the white walls of the galleried buildings opposite; the gutters were brimming, roaring along like miniature torrents; nowhere was the fox or the owl to be seen. Somehow their presence would have been a relief—the sight of any living thing reassuring. As he walked slowly along the deserted piazzas, in turning sudden corners, again and again he paused, expecting that something, some one, was approaching to meet him. When at last he mounted his horse, that had neighed gleefully to see him, and rode away through the avenue and along the empty ways among the untenanted summer cottages, all the drearier and more forlorn because of the rain, he felt as if he had left an aberration, some hideous dream, behind, instead of the stark reality of the gaunt and vacant and dilapidated old house.

The transition to the glow and cheer of Sim Roxby's fireside was like a rescue, a restoration. The smiling welcome in the women's eyes, their soft drawling voices, with mellifluous intonations that gave a value to each commonplace simple word, braced his nerves like a tonic. It might have been only the contrast with the recollections of the night, with the prospect visible through the open door—the serried lines of rain dropping aslant from the gray sky and elusively outlined against the dark masses of leafless woods that encircled the clearing; the dooryard half submerged with puddles of a clay-brown tint, embossed always with myriads of protruding drops of rain, for however they melted away the downpour renewed them, and to the eye they were stationary, albeit pervaded with a continual tremor—but somehow he was cognizant of a certain coddling tenderness in the old woman's manner that might have been relished by a petted child, an unaffected friendliness in the girl's clear eyes. They made him sit close to the great wood fire; the blue and yellow flames gushed out from the piles of hickory logs, and the bed of coals gleamed at red and white heat beneath. They took his hat to carefully dry it, and they spread out his cloak on two chairs at one side of the room, where it dismally dripped. When he ventured to sneeze, Mrs. Roxby compounded and administered a "yerb tea," a sovereign remedy against colds, which he tasted on compulsion and in great doubt, and swallowed with alacrity and confidence, finding its basis the easily recognizable "toddy." He had little knowledge how white and troubled his face had looked as he came in from the gray day, how strongly marked were those lines of sharp mental distress, how piteously apparent was his mute appeal for sympathy and comfort.

"Mill'cent," said the old woman in the shed-room, as they washed and wiped the dishes after the cozy breakfast of venison and corn-dodgers and honey and milk, "that thar man hev run agin the law, sure's ye air born."

Millicent turned her reflective fair face, that seemed whiter and more delicate in the damp dark day, and looked doubtfully out over the fields, where the water ran in steely lines in the furrows.

"Mus' hev been by accident or suthin'. He ain't no hardened sinner."

"Shucks!" the old woman commented upon her reluctant acquiescence. "I ain't keerin' for the law! 'Tain't none o' my job. The tomfool men make an' break it. Ennybody ez hev seen this war air obleeged to take note o' the wickedness o' men in gineral. This hyer man air a sorter pitiful sinner, an' he hev got a look in his eyes that plumb teches my heart. I 'ain't got no call ter know nuthin' 'bout the law, bein' a 'oman an' naterally ignorunt. I dun'no' ez he hev run agin it."

"Mus' hev been by accident," said Millicent, dreamily, still gazing over the sodden fields.

The suspicion did nothing to diminish his comfort or their cordiality. The morning dragged by without change in the outer aspects. The noontide dinner came and went without Roxby's return, for the report of the washing away of a bridge some miles distant down the river had early called him out to the scene of the disaster, to verify in his own interests the rumor, since he had expected to haul his wheat to the settlement the ensuing day. The afternoon found the desultory talk still in progress about the fire, the old woman alternately carding cotton and nodding in her chair in the corner; the dogs eying the stranger, listening much of the time with the air of children taking instruction, only occasionally wandering out-of-doors, the floor here and there bearing the damp imprint of their feet; and Millicent on her knees in the other corner, the firelight on her bright hair, her delicate cheek, her quickly glancing eyes, as she deftly moulded bullets.

"Uncle Sim hed ter s'render his shootin'-irons," she explained, "an' he 'ain't got no ca'tridge-loadin' ones lef'. So he makes out with his old muzzle-loadin' rifle that he hed afore the war, an' I moulds his bullets for him rainy days."

As she held up a moulded ball and dexterously clipped off the surplus lead, the gesture was so culinary in its delicacy that one of the dogs in front of the fire extended his head, making a long neck, with a tentative sniff and a glistening gluttonous eye.

"Ef I swallered enny mo' lead, I wouldn't take it hot, Towse," she said, holding out the bullet for canine inspection. "'Tain't healthy!"

But the dog, perceiving the nature of the commodity, drew back with a look of deep reproach, rose precipitately, and with a drooping tail went out skulkingly into the wet gray day.

"Towse can't abide a bullet," she observed, "nor nuthin' 'bout a gun. He got shot wunst a-huntin', an' he never furgot it. Jes show him a gun an' he ain't nowhar ter be seen—like he war cotch up in the clouds."

"Good watch-dog, I suppose," suggested Dundas, striving to enter into the spirit of her talk.

"Naw; too sp'ilt for a gyard-dog—granny coddled him so whenst he got shot. He's jest vally'ble fur his conversation, I reckon," she continued, with a smile in her eyes. "I dun'no' what else, but he is toler'ble good company."

The other dogs pressed about her, the heads of the great hounds as high as her own as she sat among them on the floor. With bright eyes and knitted brows they followed the motions of pouring in the melted metal, the lifting of the bullets from the mould, the clipping off of the surplus lead, and the flash of the keen knife.

Outside the sad light waned; the wind sighed and sighed; the dreary rain fell; the trees clashed their boughs dolorously together, and their turbulence deadened the sound of galloping horses. As Dundas sat and gazed at the girl's intent head, with its fleecy tendrils and its massive coil, the great hounds beside her, all emblazoned by the firelight upon the brown wall near by, with the vast fireplace at hand, the whole less like reality than some artist's pictured fancy, he knew naught of a sudden entrance, until she moved, breaking the spell, and looked up to meet the displeasure in Roxby's eyes and the dark scowl on Emory Keenan's face.

That night the wind shifted to the north. Morning found the chilled world still, ice where the water had lodged, all the trees incased in glittering garb that followed the symmetry alike of every bough and the tiniest twig, and made splendid the splintered remnants of the lightning-riven. The fields were laced across from furrow to furrow, in which the frozen water still stood gleaming, with white arabesques which had known a more humble identity as stubble and crab-grass; the sky was slate-colored, and from its sad tint this white splendor gained added values of contrast. When the sun should shine abroad much of the effect would be lost in the too dazzling glister; but the sun did not shine.

All day the gray mood held unchanged. Night was imperceptibly sifting down upon all this whiteness, that seemed as if it would not be obscured, as if it held within itself some property of luminosity, when Millicent, a white apron tied over her golden head, improvising a hood, its superfluous fulness gathered in many folds and pleats around her neck, fichu-wise, stood beside the ice-draped fodder-stack and essayed with half-numbed hands to insert a tallow dip into the socket of a lantern, all incrusted and clumsy with previous drippings.

"I dun'no' whether I be a-goin' ter need this hyar consarn whilst milkin' or no," she observed, half to herself, half to Emory, who, chewing a straw, somewhat surlily had followed her out for a word apart. "The dusk 'pears slow ter-night, but Spot's mighty late comin' home, an' old Sue air fractious an' contrairy-minded, and feels mighty anxious an' oneasy 'boutn her calf, that's ez tall ez she is nowadays, an' don't keer no mo' 'bout her mammy 'n a half-grown human does. I tell her she oughtn't ter be mad with me, but with the way she brung up her chile, ez won't notice her now."

She looked up with a laugh, her eyes and teeth gleaming; her golden hair still showed its color beneath the spotless whiteness of her voluminous headgear, and the clear tints of her complexion seemed all the more delicate and fresh in the snowy pallor of the surroundings and the grayness of the evening.

"I reckon I'd better take it along," and once more she addressed herself to the effort to insert the dip into the lantern.

Emory hardly heard. His pulse was quick. His eye glittered. He breathed hard as, with both hands in his pockets, he came close to her.

"Mill'cent," he said, "I told ye the t'other day ez ye thunk a heap too much o' that thar stranger—"

"An' I tole ye, bubby, that I didn't think nuthin' o' nobody but you-uns," she interrupted, with an effort to placate his jealousy. The little jocularity which she affected dwindled and died before the steady glow of his gaze, and she falteringly looked at him, her unguided hands futilely fumbling with the lantern.

"Ye can't fool me," he stoutly asseverated. "Ye think mo' o' him 'n o' me, kase ye 'low he air rich, an' book-larned, an' smooth-fingered, an' finified ez a gal, an' goin' ter buy the hotel. I say, hotel! Now I'll tell ye what he is—I'll tell ye! He's a criminal. He's runnin' from the law. He's hidin' in the old hotel that he's purtendin' ter buy."

She stared wide-eyed and pallid, breathless and waiting.

He interpreted her expression as doubt, denial.

"It's gospel sure," he cried. "Fur this very evenin' I met a gang o' men an' the sheriff's deputy down yander by the sulphur spring 'bout sundown, an' he 'lowed ez they war a-sarchin' fur a criminal ez war skulkin' round hyarabout lately—ez they wanted a man fur hevin' c'mitted murder."

"But ye didn't accuse him, surely; ye hed no right ter s'picion him. Uncle Sim! Oh, my Lord! Ye surely wouldn't! Oh, Uncle Sim!"

Her tremulous words broke into a quavering cry as she caught his arm convulsively, for his face confirmed her fears. She thrust him wildly away, and started toward the house.

"Ye needn't go tattlin' on me," he said, roughly pushing her aside. "I'll tell Mr. Roxby myself. I ain't 'shamed o' what I done. I'll tell him. I'll tell him myself." And animated with this intention to forestall her disclosure, his long strides bore him swiftly past and into the house.

It seemed to him that he lingered there only a moment or two, for Roxby was not at the cabin, and he said nothing of the quarrel to the old woman. Already his heart had revolted against his treachery, and then there came to him the further reflection that he did not know enough to justify suspicion. Was not the stranger furnished with the fullest credentials—a letter to Roxby from the Colonel? Perhaps he had allowed his jealousy to endanger the man, to place him in jeopardy even of his life should he resist arrest.

Keenan tarried at the house merely long enough to devise a plausible excuse for his sudden excited entrance, and then took his way back to the barnyard.

It was vacant. The cows still stood lowing at the bars; the sheep cowered together in their shed; the great whitened cone of the fodder-stack gleamed icily in the purple air; beside it lay the lantern where Millicent had cast it aside. She was gone! He would not believe it till he had run to the barn, calling her name in the shadowy place, while the horse at his manger left his corn to look over the walls of his stall with inquisitive surprised eyes, luminous in the dusk. He searched the hen-house, where the fowls on their perches crowded close because of the chill of the evening. He even ran to the bars and looked down across the narrow ravine to which the clearing sloped. Beyond the chasm-like gorge he saw presently on the high ascent opposite footprints that had broken the light frost-like coating of ice on the dead leaves and moss—climbing footprints, swift, disordered. He looked back again at the lantern where Millicent had flung it in her haste. Her mission was plain now. She had gone to warn Dundas. She had taken a direct line through the woods. She hoped to forestall the deputy sheriff and his posse, following the circuitous mountain road.

Keenan's lip curled in triumph. His heart burned hot with scornful anger and contempt of the futility of her effort. "They're there afore she started!" he said, looking up at the aspects of the hour shown by the sky, and judging of the interval since the encounter by the spring. Through a rift in the gray cloud a star looked down with an icy scintillation and disappeared again. He heard a branch in the woods snap beneath the weight of ice. A light sprang into the window of the cabin hard by, and came in a great gush of orange-tinted glow out into the snowy bleak wintry space. He suddenly leaped over the fence and ran like a deer through the woods.

Millicent too had been swift. He had thought to overtake her before he emerged from the woods into the more open space where the hotel stood. In this quarter the cloud-break had been greater. Toward the west a fading amber glow still lingered in long horizontal bars upon the opaque gray sky. The white mountains opposite were hung with purple shadows borrowed from a glimpse of sunset somewhere far away over the valley of East Tennessee; one distant lofty range was drawn in elusive snowy suggestions, rather than lines, against a green space of intense yet pale tint. The moon, now nearing the full, hung over the wooded valley, and aided the ice and the crust of snow to show its bleak, wan, wintry aspect; a tiny spark glowed in its depths from some open door of an isolated home. Over it all a mist was rising from the east, drawing its fleecy but opaque curtain. Already it had climbed the mountain-side and advanced, windless, soundless, overwhelming, annihilating all before and beneath it. The old hotel had disappeared, save that here and there a gaunt gable protruded and was withdrawn, showed once more, and once more was submerged.

A horse's head suddenly looking out of the enveloping mist close to his shoulder gave him the first intimation of the arrival, the secret silent waiting, of those whom he had directed hither. That the saddles were empty he saw a moment later. The animals stood together in a row, hitched to the rack. No disturbance sounded from the silent building. The event was in abeyance. The fugitive in hiding was doubtless at ease, unsuspecting, while the noiseless search of the officers for his quarters was under way.

With a thrill of excitement Keenan crept stealthily through an open passage and into the old grass-grown spaces of the quadrangle. Night possessed the place, but the cloud seemed denser than the darkness. He was somehow sensible of its convolutions as he stood against the wall and strained his eyes into the dusk. Suddenly it was penetrated by a milky-white glimmer, a glimmer duplicated at equidistant points, each fading as its successor sprang into brilliance. The next moment he understood its significance. It had come from the blurred windows of the old ball-room. Millicent had lighted her candle as she searched for the fugitive's quarters; she was passing down the length of the old house on the second story, and suddenly she emerged upon the gallery. She shielded the feeble flicker with her hand; her white-hooded head gleamed as with an aureola as the divergent rays rested on the opaque mist; and now and again she clutched the baluster and walked with tremulous care, for the flooring was rotten here and there, and ready to crumble away. Her face was pallid, troubled; and Dundas, who had been warned by the tramp of horses and the tread of men, and who had descended the stairs, revolver in hand, ready to slip away if he might under cover of the mist, paused appalled, gazing across the quadrangle as on an apparition—the sight so familiar to his senses, so strange to his experience. He saw in an abrupt shifting of the mist that there were other figures skulking in doorways, watching her progress. The next moment she leaned forward to clutch the baluster, and the light of the candle fell full on Emory Keenan, lurking in the open passage.

A sudden sharp cry of "Surrender!"

The young mountaineer, confused, swiftly drew his pistol. Others were swifter still. A sharp report rang out into the chill crisp air, rousing all the affrighted echoes—a few faltering steps, a heavy fall, and for a long time Emory Keenan's life-blood stained the floor of the promenade. Even when it had faded, the rustic gossips came often and gazed at the spot with morbid interest, until, a decade later, an enterprising proprietor removed the floor and altered the shape of that section of the building out of recognition.

The escape of Dundas was easily effected. The deputy sheriff, confronted with the problem of satisfactorily accounting for the death of a man who had committed no offence against public polity, was no longer formidable. His errand had been the arrest of a horse-thief, well-known to him, and he had no interest in pursuing a fugitive, however obnoxious to the law, whose personal description was so different from that of the object of his search.

Time restored to Dundas his former place in life and the esteem of his fellow-citizens. His stay in the mountains was an episode which he will not often recall, but sometimes volition fails, and he marvels at the strange fulfilment of the girl's vision; he winces to think that her solicitude for his safety should have cost her her lover; he wonders whether she yet lives, and whether that tender troubled phantom, on nights when the wind is still and the moon is low and the mists rise, again joins the strange, elusive, woful company crossing the quaking foot-bridge.

HIS "DAY IN COURT"

It had been a hard winter along the slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains, and still the towering treeless domes were covered with snow, and the vagrant winds were abroad, rioting among the clifty heights where they held their tryst, or raiding down into the sheltered depths of the Cove, where they seldom intruded. Nevertheless, on this turbulent rush was borne in the fair spring of the year. The fragrance of the budding wild-cherry was to be discerned amidst the keen slanting javelins of the rain. A cognition of the renewal and the expanding of the forces of nature pervaded the senses as distinctly as if one might hear the grass growing, or feel along the chill currents of the air the vernal pulses thrill. Night after night in the rifts of the breaking clouds close to the horizon was glimpsed the stately sidereal Virgo, prefiguring and promising the harvest, holding in her hand a gleaming ear of corn. But it was not the constellation which the tumultuous torrent at the mountain's base reflected in a starry glitter. From the hill-side above a light cast its broken image among the ripples, as it shone for an instant through the bosky laurel, white, stellular, splendid—only a tallow dip suddenly placed in the window of a log-cabin, and as suddenly withdrawn.

For a gruff voice within growled out a remonstrance: "What ye doin' that fur, Steve? Hev that thar candle got enny call ter bide in that thar winder?"

The interior, contrary to the customary aspect of the humble homes of the region, was in great disarray. Cooking utensils stood uncleaned about the hearth; dishes and bowls of earthen-ware were assembled upon the table in such numbers as to suggest that several meals had been eaten without the ceremony of laying the cloth anew, and that in default of washing the crockery it had been re-enforced from the shelf so far as the limited store might admit. Saddles and spinning-wheels, an ox-yoke and trace-chains, reels and wash-tubs, were incongruously pushed together in the corners. Only one of the three men in the room made any effort to reduce the confusion to order. This was the square-faced, black-bearded, thick-set young fellow who took the candle from the window, and now advanced with it toward the hearth, holding it at an angle that caused the flame to swiftly melt the tallow, which dripped generously upon the floor.

"I hev seen Eveliny do it," he said, excitedly justifying himself. "I noticed her sot the candle in the winder jes' las' night arter supper." He glanced about uncertainly, and his patience seemed to give way suddenly. "Dad-burn the old candle! I dunno whar ter set it," he cried, desperately, as he flung it from him, and it fell upon the floor close to the wall.

The dogs lifted their heads to look, and one soft-stepping old hound got up with the nimbleness of expectation, and, with a prescient gratitude astir in his tail, went and sniffed at it. His aspect drooped suddenly, and he looked around in reproach at Stephen Quimbey, as if suspecting a practical joke. But there was no merriment in the young mountaineer's face. He threw himself into his chair with a heavy sigh, and desisted for a time from the unaccustomed duty of clearing away the dishes after supper.

"An' 'ain't ye got the gumption ter sense what Eveliny sot the candle in the winder fur?" his brother Timothy demanded, abruptly—"ez a sign ter that thar durned Abs'lom Kittredge."

The other two men turned their heads and looked at the speaker with a poignant intensity of interest. "I 'lowed ez much when I seen that light ez I war a-kemin' home las' night," he continued; "it shined spang down the slope acrost the ruver an' through all the laurel; it looked plumb like a star that hed fell ter yearth in that pitch-black night. I dunno how I s'picioned it, but ez I stood thar an' gazed I knowed somebody war a-standin' an' gazin' too on the foot-bredge a mite ahead o' me. I couldn't see him, an' he couldn't turn back an' pass me, the bredge bein' too narrer. He war jes obligated ter go on. I hearn him breathe quick; then—pit-pat, pit-pat, ez he walked straight toward that light. An' he be 'bleeged ter hev hearn me, fur arter I crost I stopped. Nuthin'. Jes' a whisper o' wind, an' jes' a swishin' from the ruver. I knowed then he hed turned off inter the laurel. An' I went on, a-whistlin' ter make him 'low ez I never s'picioned nuthin'. An' I kem inter the house an' tole dad ez he'd better be a-lookin' arter Eveliny, fur I b'lieved she war a-settin' her head ter run away an' marry Abs'lom Kittredge."

"Waal, I ain't right up an' down sati'fied we oughter done what we done," exclaimed Stephen, fretfully. "It don't 'pear edzacly right fur three men ter fire on one."

Old Joel Quimbey, in his arm-chair in the chimney-corner, suddenly lifted his head—a thin head with fine white hair, short and sparse, upon it. His thin, lined face was clear-cut, with a pointed chin and an aquiline nose. He maintained an air of indignant and rebellious grief, and had hitherto sat silent, a gnarled and knotted hand on either arm of his chair. His eyes gleamed keenly from under his heavy brows as he turned his face upon his sons. "How could we know thar warn't but one, eh?"

He had not been a candidate for justice of the peace for nothing; he had absorbed something of the methods and spirit of the law through sheer propinquity to the office. "We-uns wouldn't be persumed ter know." And he ungrudgingly gave himself all the benefit of the doubt that the law accords.

"That's a true word!" exclaimed Stephen, quick to console his conscience. "Jes' look at the fac's, now. We-uns in a plumb black midnight hear a man a-gittin' over our fence; we git our rifles; a-peekin' through the chinkin' we ketch a glimge o' him—"

"Ha!" cried out Timothy, with savage satisfaction, "we seen him by the light she set ter lead him on!"

"OLD JOEL QUIMBEY"

He was tall and lank, with a delicately hooked nose, high cheek-bones, fierce dark eyes, and dark eyebrows, which were continually elevated, corrugating his forehead. His hair was black, short and straight, and he was clad in brown jeans, as were the others, with great cowhide boots reaching to the knee. He fixed his fiery intent gaze on his brother as the slower Stephen continued, "An' so we blaze away—"

"An' one durned fool's so onlucky ez ter hit him an' not kill him," growled Timothy, again interrupting. "An' so whilst Eveliny runs out a-screamin', 'He's dead! he's dead!—ye hev shot him dead!' we-uns make no doubt but he is dead, an' load up agin, lest his frien's mought rush in on we-uns whilst we hedn't no use o' our shootin'-irons. An' suddint—ye can't hear nuthin' but jes' a owel hootin' in the woods, or old Pa'son Bates's dogs a-howlin' acrost the Cove. An' we go out with a lantern, an' thar's jes' a pool o' blood in the dooryard, an' bloody tracks down ter the laurel."

"Eveliny gone!" cried the old man, smiting his hands together; "my leetle darter! The only one ez never gin me enny trouble. I couldn't hev made out ter put up with this hyar worl' no longer when my wife died ef it hedn't been fur Eveliny. Boys war wild an' mischeevious, an' folks outside don't keer nuthin' 'bout ye—ef they war ter 'lect ye ter office 'twould be ter keep some other feller from hevin' it, 'kase they 'spise him more'n ye. An' hyar she's runned off an' married old Tom Kittredge's gran'son, Josiah Kittredge's son—when our folks 'ain't spoke ter none o' 'em fur fifty year—Josiah Kittredge's son—ha! ha! ha!" He laughed aloud in tuneless scorn of himself and of this freak of froward destiny and then fell to wringing his hands and calling upon Evelina.

The flare from the great chimney place genially played over the huddled confusion of the room and the brown logs of the wall, where the gigantic shadows of the three men mimicked their every gesture with grotesque exaggeration. The rainbow yarn on the warping bars, the strings of red-pepper hanging from the ceiling, the burnished metallic flash from the guns on their racks of deer antlers, served as incidents in the monotony of the alternate yellow flicker and brown shadow. Deep under the blaze the red coals pulsated, and in the farthest vistas of the fire quivered a white heat.

"Old Tom Kittredge," the father resumed, after a time, "he jes' branded yer gran'dad's cattle with his mark; he jes' cheated yer gran'dad, my dad, out'n six head o' cattle."

"But then," said the warlike Timothy, not willing to lose sight of reprisal even in vague reminiscence, "he hed only one hand ter rob with arter that, fur I hev hearn ez how when gran'dad got through with him the doctor hed ter take his arm off."

"Sartainly, sartainly," admitted the old man, in quiet assent "An' Josiah Kittredge he put out the eyes of a horse critter o' mine right thar at the court-house door—"

"Waal, arterward, we-uns fired his house over his head," put in Tim.

"An' Josiah Kittredge an' me," the old man went on, "we-uns clinched every time we met in this mortal life. Every time I go past the graveyard whar he be buried I kin feel his fingers on my throat. He had a nervy grip, but no variation; he always tuk holt the same way."

"'Pears like ter me ez 'twar a fust-rate time ter fetch out the rifles again," remarked Tim, "this mornin', when old Pa'son Bates kem up hyar an' 'lowed ez he hed married Eveliny ter Abs'lom Kittredge on his death-bed; 'So be, pa'son,' I say. An' he tuk off his hat an' say, 'Thank the Lord, this will heal the breach an' make ye frien's!' An' I say, 'Edzacly, pa'son, ef it air Abs'lom's death-bed; but them Kittredges air so smilin' an' deceivin' I be powerful feared he'll cheat the King o' Terrors himself. I'll forgive 'em ennything—over his grave.'"

"Pa'son war tuk toler'ble suddint in his temper," said the literal Steve. "I hearn him call yer talk onchristian, cussed sentiments, ez he put out."

"Ye mus' keep up a Christian sperit, boys; that's the main thing," said the old man, who was esteemed very religious, and a pious Mentor in his own family. He gazed meditatively into the fire. "What ailed Eveliny ter git so tuk up with this hyar Abs'lom? What made her like him?" he propounded.

"His big eyes, edzacly like a buck's, an' his long yaller hair," sneered the discerning Timothy, with the valid scorn of a big ugly man for a slim pretty one. "'Twar jes 'count o' his long yaller hair his mother called him Abs'lom. He war named Pete or Bob, I disremember what—suthin' common—till his hair got so long an' curly, an' he sot out ter be so plumb all-fired beautiful, an' his mother named him agin; this time Abs'lom, arter the king's son, 'count o' his yaller hair."

"Git hung by his hair some o' these days in the woods, like him the Bible tells about; that happened ter the sure-enough Abs'lom," suggested Stephen, hopefully.

"Naw, sir," said Tim; "when Abs'lom Kittredge gits hung it'll be with suthin' stronger'n hair; he'll stretch hemp." He exchanged a glance of triumphant prediction with his brother, and anon gazed ruefully into the fire.

"Ye talk like ez ef he war goin' ter live, boys," said old Joel Quimbey, irritably. "Pa'son 'lowed he war powerful low."

"Pa'son said he'd never hev got home alive 'thout she'd holped him," said Stephen. "She jes' tuk him an' drug him plumb ter the bars, though I don't see how she done it, slim leetle critter ez she be; an' thar she holped him git on his beastis; an' then—I declar' I feel ez ef I could kill her fur a-demeanin' of herself so—she led that thar horse, him a-ridin' an' a-leanin' on the neck o' the beastis, two mile up the mountain, through the night."

"Waal, let her bide thar. I'll look on her face no mo'," declared the old man, his toothless jaw shaking. "Kittredge she be now, an' none o' the name kin come a-nigh me. How be I ever a-goin' 'bout 'mongst the folks at the settlement agin with my darter married ter a Kittredge? How Josiah an' his dad mus' be a-grinnin' in thar graves at me this night! An' I 'low they hev got suthin' ter grin about."

And suddenly his grim face relaxed, and once more he began to smite his hands together and to call aloud for Evelina.

Timothy could offer no consolation, but stared dismally into the fire, and Stephen rose with a sigh and addressed himself to pushing the spinning-wheels and tubs and tables into the opposite corner of the room, in the hope of solving the enigma of its wonted order.

It seemed to Evelina afterward that when she climbed the rugged ways of the mountain slope in that momentous night she left forever in the depths of the Cove that free and careless young identity which she had been. She did not accurately discriminate the moment in which she began to realize that she was among her hereditary enemies, encompassed by a hatred nourished to full proportions and to a savage strength long before she drew her first breath. The fact only gradually claimed its share in her consciousness as the tension of anxiety for Absalom's sake relaxed, for the young mountaineer's strength and vitality were promptly reasserted, and he rallied from the wound and his pallid and forlorn estate with the recuperative power of the primitive man. By degrees she came to expect the covert unfriendly glances his brother cast upon her, the lowering averted mien of her sister-in-law, and now and again she surprised a long, lingering, curious gaze in his mother's eyes. They were all Kittredges! And she wondered how she could ever have dreamed that she might live happily among them—one of them, for her name was theirs. And then perhaps the young husband would stroll languidly in, with his long hair curling on his blue jeans coat-collar, and an assured smile in his dark brown eyes, and some lazy jest on his lips, certain of a welcoming laugh, for he had been so near to death that they all had a sense of acquisition in that he had been led back. For his sake they had said little; his mother would busy herself in brewing his "yerb" tea, and his brother would offer to saddle the mare if he felt that he could ride, and they would all be very friendly together; and his alien wife would presently slip out unnoticed into the "gyarden spot," where the rows of vegetables grew as they did in the Cove, turning upon her the same neighborly looks they wore of yore, and showing not a strange leaf among them. The sunshine wrapped itself in its old fine gilded gossamer haze and drowsed upon the verdant slopes; the green jewelled "Juny-bugs" whirred in the soft air; the mould was as richly brown as in Joel Quimbey's own enclosure; the flag-lilies bloomed beside the onion bed; and the woolly green leaves of the sage wore their old delicate tint and gave out a familiar odor.

Among this quaint company of the garden borders she spent much of her time, now hoeing in a desultory fashion, now leaning on the long handle of the implement and looking away upon the far reaches of the purple mountains. As they stretched to vague distances they became blue, and farther on the great azure domes merged into a still more tender hue, and this in turn melted into a soft indeterminate tint that embellished the faint horizon. Her dreaming eyes would grow bright and wistful; her rich brown curling hair, set free by the yellow sun-bonnet that slipped off her head and upon her shoulders, would airily float backward in the wind; there was a lithe grace in the slender figure, albeit clad in a yellow homespun of a deep dye, and the faded purplish neckerchief was caught about a throat fairer even than the fair face, which was delicately flushed. Absalom's mother, standing beside Peter, the eldest son, in the doorway, watched her long one day.

"It all kem about from that thar bran dance," said Peter, a homely man, with a sterling, narrow-minded wife and an ascetic sense of religion. "Thar Satan waits, an' he gits nimbler every time ye shake yer foot. The fiddler gin out the figger ter change partners, an' this hyar gal war dancin' opposite Abs'lom, ez hed never looked nigh her till that day. The gal didn't know what ter do; she jes' stood still; but Abs'lom he jes' danced up ter her ez keerless an' gay ez he always war, jes' like she war ennybody else, an' when he held out his han' she gin him hern, all a-trembly, an' lookin' up at him, plumb skeered ter death, her eyes all wide an' sorter wishful, like some wild thing trapped in the woods. An' then the durned fiddler, moved by the devil, I'll be bound, plumb furgot ter change 'em back. So they danced haff'n the day tergether. An' arter that they war forever a-stealin' off an' accidentally meetin' at the spring, an' whenst he war a-huntin' or she drivin' up the cow, an' a-courtin' ginerally, till they war promised ter marry."

"'Twarn't the bran dance; 'twar suthin' ez fleetin' an' ez useless," said his mother, standing in the door and gazing at the unconscious girl, who was leaning upon the hoe, half in the shadow of the blooming laurel that crowded about the enclosure and bent over the rail fence, and half in the burnished sunshine; "she's plumb beautiful—thar's the snare ez tangled Abs'lom's steps. I never 'lowed ter see the day ez could show enny comfort fur his dad bein' dead, but we hev been spared some o' the tallest cavortin' that ever war seen sence the Big Smoky war built. Sometimes it plumb skeers me ter think ez we-uns hev got a Quimbey abidin' up hyar along o' we-uns in his house an' a-callin' o' herse'f Kittredge. I looks ter see him a-stalkin' roun' hyar some night, too outdone an' aggervated ter rest in his grave."

But the nights continued spectreless and peaceful on the Great Smoky, and the same serene stars shone above the mountain as over the Cove. Evelina could watch here, as often before, the rising moon ascending through a rugged gap in the range, suffusing the dusky purple slopes and the black crags on either hand with a pensive glamour, and revealing the river below by the amber reflection its light evoked. She often sat on the step of the porch, her elbow on her knees, her chin in her hand, following with her shining eyes the pearly white mists loitering among the ranges. Hear! a dog barks in the Cove, a cock crows, a horn is wound, far, far away; it echoes faintly. And once more only the sounds of the night—that vague stir in the windless woods, as if the forest breathes, the far-away tinkle of water hidden in the darkness—and the moon is among the summits.

The men remained within, for Absalom avoided the chill night air, and crouched over the smouldering fire. Peter's wife sedulously held aloof from the ostracized Quimbey woman. But her mother-in-law had fallen into the habit of sitting upon the porch these moonlit nights. The sparse, newly-leafed hop and gourd vines clambering to its roof were all delicately imaged on the floor, and the old woman's clumsy figure, her grotesque sun-bonnet, her awkward arm-chair, were faithfully reproduced in her shadow on the log wall of the cabin—even to the up-curling smoke from her pipe. Once she suddenly took the stem from her mouth. "Eveliny," she said, "'pears like ter me ye talk mighty little. Thar ain't no use in gittin' tongue-tied up hyar on the mounting."

Evelina started and raised her eyes, dilated with a stare of amazement at this unexpected overture.

"I ain't keerin'," said the old woman, recklessly, to herself, although consciously recreant to the traditions of the family, and sacrificing with a pang her distorted sense of loyalty and duty to her kindlier impulse. "I warn't born a Kittredge nohow."

"Yes,'m," said Evelina, meekly; "but I don't feel much like talkin' noways; I never talked much, bein' nobody but men-folks ter our house. I'd ruther hear ye talk 'n talk myself."

"Listen at ye now! The headin' young folks o' this kentry 'll never rest till they make thar elders shoulder all the burdens. An' what air ye wantin' a pore ole 'oman like me ter talk about?"

Evelina hesitated a moment, then looked up, with a face radiant in the moonbeams. "Tell all 'bout Abs'lom—afore I ever seen him."

His mother laughed. "Ye air a powerful fool, Eveliny."

The girl laughed a little, too. "I dunno ez I want ter be no wiser," she said.

But one was his wife, and the other was his mother, and as they talked of him daily and long, the bond between them was complete.

"I hev got 'em both plumb fooled," the handsome Absalom boasted at the settlement, when the gossips wondered once more, as they had often done, that there should be such unity of interest between old Joel Quimbey's daughter and old Josiah Kittredge's widow. As time went on many rumors of great peace on the mountain-side came to the father's ears, and he grew more testy daily as he grew visibly older. These rumors multiplied with the discovery that they were as wormwood and gall to him. Not that he wished his daughter to be unhappy, but the joy which was his grief and humiliation was needlessly flaunted into his face; the idlers about the county town had invariably a new budget of details, being supplied, somewhat maliciously, it must be confessed, by the Kittredges themselves. The ceremony of planting one foot on the neck of the vanquished was in their minds one of the essential concomitants of victory. The bold Absalom, not thoroughly known to either of the women who adored him, was ingenious in expedients, and had applied the knowledge gleaned from his wife's reminiscences of her home, her father, and her brothers to more accurately aim his darts. Sometimes old Quimbey would fairly flee the town, and betake himself in a towering rage to his deserted hearth, to brood futilely over the ashes, and devise impotent schemes of vengeance.

He often wondered afterward in dreary retrospection how he had survived that first troublous year after his daughter's elopement, when he was so lonely, so heavy-hearted at home, so harried and angered abroad. His comforts, it is true, were amply insured: a widowed sister had come to preside over his household—a deaf old woman, who had much to be thankful for in her infirmity, for Joel Quimbey in his youth, before he acquired religion, had been known as a singularly profane man—"a mos' survigrus cusser"—and something of his old proficiency had returned to him. Perhaps public sympathy for his troubles strengthened his hold upon the regard of the community. For it was in the second year of Evelina's marriage, in the splendid midsummer, when all the gifts of nature climax to a gorgeous perfection, and candidates become incumbents, that he unexpectedly attained the great ambition of his life. He was said to have made the race for justice of the peace from sheer force of habit, but by some unexplained freak of popularity the oft-defeated candidate was successful by a large majority at the August election.

"Laws-a-massy, boys," he said, tremulously, to his triumphant sons, when the result was announced, the excited flush on his thin old face suffusing his hollow veinous temples, and rising into his fine white hair, "how glad Eveliny would hev been ef—ef—" He was about to say if she had lived, for he often spoke of her as if she were dead. He turned suddenly back, and began to eagerly absorb the details of the race, as if he had often before been elected, with calm superiority canvassing the relative strength, or rather the relative weakness, of the defeated aspirants.

He could scarcely have measured the joy which the news gave to Evelina. She was eminently susceptible of the elation of pride, the fervid glow of success, but her tender heart melted in sympathetic divination of all that this was to him who had sought it so long, and so unabashed by defeat. She pined to see his triumph in his eyes, to hear it in his voice. She wondered—nay, she knew that he longed to tell it to her. As the year rolled around again to summer, and she heard from time to time of his quarterly visits to the town as a member of the worshipful Quarterly County Court, she began to hope that, softened by his prosperity, lifted so high by his honors above all the cavillings of the Kittredges, he might be more leniently disposed toward her, might pity her, might even go so far as to forgive.

But none of her filial messages reached her father's fiery old heart.

"Ye'll be sure, Abs'lom, ef ye see Joe Boyd in town, ye'll tell him ter gin dad my respec's, an' the word ez how the baby air a-thrivin', an' I wants ter fotch him ter see the fambly at home, ef they'll lemme."

Then she would watch Absalom with all the confidence of happy anticipation, as he rode off down the mountain with his hair flaunting, and his spurs jingling, and his shy young horse curveting.

But no word ever came in response; and sometimes she would take the child in her arms and carry him down a path, worn smooth by her own feet, to a jagged shoulder thrust out by the mountain where all the slopes fell away, and a crag beetled over the depths of the Cove. Thence she could discern certain vague lines marking the enclosure, and a tiny cluster of foliage hardly recognizable as the orchard, in the midst of which the cabin nestled. She could not distinguish them, but she knew that the cows were coming to be milked, lowing and clanking their bells tunefully, fording the river that had the sunset emblazoned upon it, or standing flank deep amidst its ripples, the chickens might be going to roost among the althea bushes; the lazy old dogs were astir on the porch. She could picture her brothers at work about the barn; most often a white-haired man who walked with a stick—alack! she did not fancy how feebly, nor that his white hair had grown long and venerable, and tossed in the breeze. "Ef he would jes lemme kem fur one haff'n hour!" she would cry.

But all her griefs were bewept on the crag, that there might be no tears to distress the tenderhearted Absalom when she should return to the house.

The election of Squire Quimbey was a sad blow to the arrogant spirit of the Kittredges. They had easily accustomed themselves to ascendency, and they hotly resented the fact that fate had forborne the opportunity to hit Joel Quimbey when he was down. They had used their utmost influence to defeat him in the race, and had openly avowed their desire to see him bite the dust. The inimical feeling between the families culminated one rainy autumnal day in the town where the quarterly county court was in session.

A fire had been kindled in the great rusty stove, and crackled away with grudging merriment inside, imparting no sentiment of cheer to the gaunt bare room, with its dusty window-panes streaked with rain, its shutters drearily flapping in the wind, and the floor bearing the imprint of many boots burdened with the red clay of the region. The sound of slow strolling feet in the brick-paved hall was monotonous and somnolent.

Squire Quimbey sat in his place among the justices. Despite his pride of office, he had not the heart for business that might formerly have been his. More than once his attention wandered. He looked absently out of the nearest window at the neighboring dwelling—a little frame-house with a green yard; a well-sweep was defined against the gray sky, and about the curb a file of geese followed with swaying gait the wise old gander. "What a hand for fow-els Eveliny war!" he muttered to himself; "an' she hed luck with sech critters." He used the obituary tense, for Evelina had in some sort passed away.

He rubbed his hand across his corrugated brow, and suddenly he became aware that her husband was in the room, speaking to the chairman of the county court, and claiming a certificate in the sum of two dollars each for the scalps of one wolf, "an' one painter," he continued, laying the small furry repulsive objects upon the desk, "an' one dollar fur the skelp of one wild-cat." He was ready to take his oath that these animals were killed by him running at large in this county.

He had stooped a little in making the transfer. He came suddenly to his full height, and stood with one hand in his leather belt, the other shouldering his rifle. The old man scanned him curiously. The crude light from the long windows was full upon his tall slim figure; his yellow hair curled down upon the collar of his blue jeans coat; his great miry boots were drawn high over the trousers to the knee; his pensive deer-like eyes brightened with a touch of arrogance and enmity as, turning slowly to see who was present, his glance encountered his father-in-law's fiery gaze.

"Mr. Cheerman! Mr. Cheerman!" exclaimed the old man, tremulously, "lemme examinate that thar wild-cat skelp. Thanky, sir; thanky, sir; I wanter see ef 'tain't off'n the head o' some old tame tomcat. An' this air a painter's"—affecting to scan it by the window—"two ears 'cordin' to law; yes, sir, two; and this"—his keen old face had all the white light of the sad gray day on its bleaching hair and its many lines, and his eager old hands trembled with the excitement of the significant satire he enacted—"an' this air a wolf's, ye say? Yes; it's a Kittredge's; same thing, Mr. Cheerman, by a diff'ent name; nuthin' in the code 'bout'n a premium fur a Kittredge's skelp; but same natur'; coward, bully, thief—thief!"

The words in the high cracked voice rang from the bare walls and bare floors as he tossed the scalps from him, and sat down, laughing silently in painful, mirthless fashion, his toothless jaw quivering, and his shaking hands groping for the arms of his chair.

"Who says a Kittredge air a thief says a lie!" cried out the young man, recovering from his tense surprise. "I don't keer how old he be," he stipulated—for he had not thought to see her father so aged—"he lies."

The old man fixed him with a steady gaze and a sudden alternation of calmness. "Ye air a Kittredge; ye stole my daughter from me."

"I never. She kem of her own accord."

"Damn ye!" the old man retorted to the unwelcome truth. There was nothing else for him to say. "Damn the whole tribe of ye; everything that goes by the accursed name of Kittredge, that's got a drop o' yer blood, or a bone o' yer bones, or a puff o' yer breath—"

"Squair! squair!" interposed an officious old colleague, taking him by the elbow, "jes' quiet down now; ye air a-cussin' yer own gran'son."

"So be! so be!" cried the old man, in a frenzy of rage. "Damn 'em all—all the Kittredge tribe!" He gasped for breath; his lips still moved speechlessly as he fell back in his chair.

Kittredge let his gun slip from his shoulder, the butt ringing heavily as it struck upon the floor. "I ain't a-goin' ter take sech ez that off'n ye, old man," he cried, pallid with fury, for be it remembered this grandson was that august institution, a first baby. "He sha'n't sit up thar an' cuss the baby, Mr. Cheerman." He appealed to the presiding justice, holding up his right arm as tremulous as old Quimbey's own. "I want the law! I ain't a-goin' ter tech a old man like him, an' my wife's father, so I ax in the name o' peace fur the law. Don't deny it"—with a warning glance—"'kase I ain't school-larned, an' dunno how ter get it. Don't ye deny me the law! I know the law don't 'low a magistrate an' a jestice ter cuss in his high office, in the presence of the county court. I want the law! I want the law!"

The chairman of the court, who had risen in his excitement, turning eagerly first to one and then to the other of the speakers, striving to silence the colloquy, and in the sudden surprise of it at a momentary loss how to take action, sat down abruptly, and with a face of consternation. Profanity seemed to him so usual and necessary an incident of conversation that it had never occurred to him until this moment that by some strange aberration from the rational estimate of essentials it was entered in the code as a violation of law. He would fain have overlooked it, but the room was crowded with spectators. The chairman would be a candidate for re-election as justice of the peace at the expiration of his term. And after all what was old Quimbey to him, or he to old Quimbey, that, with practically the whole town looking on, he should destroy his political prospects and disregard the dignity of his office. He had a certain twinge of conscience, and a recollection of the choice and fluent oaths of his own repertory, but as he turned over the pages of the code in search of the section he deftly argued that they were uttered in his own presence as a person, not as a justice.

And so for the first time old Joel Quimbey appeared as a law-breaker, and was duly fined by the worshipful county court fifty cents for each oath, that being the price at which the State rates the expensive and impious luxury of swearing in the hearing of a justice of the peace, and which in its discretion the court saw fit to adopt in this instance.

The old man offered no remonstrance; he said not a word in his own defence. He silently drew out his worn wallet, with much contortion of his thin old anatomy in getting to his pocket, and paid his fines on the spot. Absalom had already left the room, the clerk having made out the certificates, the chairman of the court casting the scalps into the open door of the stove, that they might be consumed by fire according to law.

The young mountaineer wore a heavy frown, and his heart was ill at ease. He sought some satisfaction in the evident opinion of the crowd which now streamed out, for the excitements within were over, that he had done a fine thing; a very clever thought, they considered it, to demand the law of Mr. Chairman, that one of their worships should be dragged from the bench and arraigned before the quarterly county court of which he was a member. The result gave general satisfaction, although there were those who found fault with the court's moderation, and complained that the least possible cognizance had been taken of the offence.

"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed an old codger in the street. "I jes knowed that hurt old Joel Quimbey wuss 'n ef a body hed druv a knife through him; he's been so proud o' bein' jestice 'mongst his betters, an' bein' 'lected at las', many times ez he hev run. Waal, Abs'lom, ye hev proved thar's law fur jestices too. I tell ye ye hev got sense in yer skull-i-bone."

But Absalom hung his head before these congratulations; he found no relish in the old man's humbled pride. Yet had he not cursed the baby, lumping him among the Kittredges? Absalom went about for a time, with a hopeful anxiety in his eyes, searching for one of the younger Quimbeys, in order to involve him in a fight that might have a provocation and a result more to his mind. Somehow the recollection of the quivering and aged figure of his wife's father, of the smitten look on his old face, of his abashed and humbled demeanor before the court, was a reproach to him, vivid and continuously present with his repetitious thoughts forever re-enacting the scene. His hands trembled; he wanted to lay hold on a younger man, to replace this æsthetic revenge with a quarrel more wholesome in the estimation of his own conscience. But the Quimbey sons were not in town to-day. He could only stroll about and hear himself praised for this thing that he had done, and wonder how he should meet Evelina with his conscience thus arrayed against himself for her father's sake. "Plumb turned Quimbey, I swear," he said, in helpless reproach to this independent and coercive moral force within. His dejection, he supposed, had reached its lowest limits, when a rumor pervaded the town, so wild that he thought it could be only fantasy. It proved to be fact. Joel Quimbey, aggrieved, humbled, and indignant, had resigned his office, and as Absalom rode out of town toward the mountains, he saw the old man in his crumpled brown jeans suit, mounted on his white mare, jogging down the red clay road, his head bowed before the slanting lines of rain, on his way to his cheerless fireside. He turned off presently, for the road to the levels of the Cove was not the shorter cut that Absalom travelled to the mountains. But all the way the young man fancied that he saw from time to time, as the bridle-path curved in the intricacies of the laurel, the bowed old figure among the mists, jogging along, his proud head and his stiff neck bent to the slanting rain and the buffets of his unkind fate. And yet, pressing the young horse to overtake him, Absalom could find naught but the fleecy mists drifting down the bridle-path as the wind might will, or lurking in the darkling nooks of the laurel when the wind would.

The sun was shining on the mountains, and Absalom went up from the sad gray rain and through the gloomy clouds of autumn hanging over the Cove into a soft brilliant upper atmosphere—a generous after-thought of summer—and the warm brightness of Evelina's smile. She stood in the doorway as she saw him dismounting, with her finger on her lips, for the baby was sleeping: he put much of his time into that occupation. The tiny gourds hung yellow among the vines that clambered over the roof of the porch, and a brave jack-bean—a friend of the sheltering eaves—made shift to bloom purple and white, though others of the kind hung crisp and sere, and rattled their dry bones in every gust. The "gyarden spot" at the side of the house was full of brown and withered skeletons of the summer growths; among the crisp blades of the Indian-corn a sibilant voice was forever whispering; down the tawny-colored vistas the pumpkins glowed. The sky was blue; the yellow hickory flaming against it and hanging over the roof of the cabin was a fine color to see. The red sour-wood tree in the fence corner shook out a myriad of white tassels; the rolling tumult of the gray clouds below thickened, and he could hear the rain a-falling—falling into the dreary depths of the Cove.

All this for him: why should he disquiet himself for the storm that burst upon others?

Evelina seemed a part of the brightness; her dark eyes so softly alight, her curving red lips, the faint flush in her cheeks, her rich brown hair, and the purplish kerchief about the neck of her yellow dress. Once more she looked smilingly at him, and shook her head and laid her finger on her lip.

"I oughter been sati'fied with all I got, stiddier hectorin' other folks till they 'ain't got no heart ter hold on ter what they been at sech trouble ter git," he said, as he turned out the horse and strode gloomily toward the house with the saddle over his arm.

"Hev ennybody been spiteful ter you-uns ter-day?" she asked, in an almost maternal solicitude, and with a flash of partisan anger in her eyes.

"Git out'n my road, Eveliny," he said, fretfully, pushing by, and throwing the saddle on the floor. There was no one in the room but the occupant of the rude box on rockers which served as cradle.

Absalom had a swift, prescient fear. "She'll git it all out'n me ef I don't look sharp," he said to himself. Then aloud, "Whar's mam?" he demanded, flinging himself into a chair and looking loweringly about.

"Topknot hev jes kem off'n her nest with fourteen deedies, an' she an' 'Melia hev gone ter the barn ter see 'bout'n 'em."

"Whar's Pete?"

"A-huntin'."

A pause. The fire smouldered audibly; a hickory-nut fell with a sharp thwack on the clapboards of the roof, and rolled down and bounded to the ground.

Suddenly: "I seen yer dad ter-day," he began, without coercion. "He gin me a cussin', in the court-room, 'fore all the folks. He cussed all the Kittredges, all o' 'em; him too"—he glanced in the direction of the cradle—"cussed 'em black an' blue, an' called me a thief fur marryin' ye an kerry-in' ye off."

Her face turned scarlet, then pale. She sat down, her trembling hands reaching out to rock the cradle, as if the youthful Kittredge might be disturbed by the malediction hurled upon his tribe. But he slept sturdily on.

"Waal, now," she said, making a great effort at self-control, "ye oughtn't ter mind it. Ye know he war powerful tried. I never purtended ter be ez sweet an' pritty ez the baby air, but how would you-uns feel ef somebody ye despised war ter kem hyar an' tote him off from we-uns forever?"

"I'd cut thar hearts out," he said, with prompt barbarity.

"Thar, now!" exclaimed his wife, in triumphant logic.

He gloomily eyed the smouldering coals. He was beginning to understand the paternal sentiment. By his own heart he was learning the heart of his wife's father.

"I'd chop 'em inter minch-meat," he continued, carrying his just reprisals a step further.

"Waal, don't do it right now," said his wife, trying to laugh, yet vaguely frightened by his vehemence.

"Eveliny," he cried, springing to his feet, "I be a-goin' ter tell ye all 'bout'n it. I jes called on the cheerman fur the law agin him."

"Agin dad!—the law!" Her voice dropped as she contemplated aghast this terrible uncomprehended force brought to oppress old Joel Quimbey; she felt a sudden poignant pang for his forlorn and lonely estate.

"Never mind, never mind, Eveliny," Absalom said, hastily, repenting of his frantic candor and seeking to soothe her.

"I will mind," she said, sternly. "What hev ye done ter dad?"

"Nuthin'," he replied, sulkily—"nuthin'."

"Ye needn't try ter fool me, Abs'lom Kittredge. Ef ye ain't minded ter tell me, I'll foot it down ter town an' find out. What did the law do ter him?"

"Jes fined him," he said, striving to make light of it.

"An' ye done that fur—spite!" she cried. "A-settin' the law ter chouse a old man out'n money, fur gittin' mad an' sayin' ye stole his only darter. Oh, I'll answer fur him"—she too had risen; her hand trembled on the back of the chair, but her face was scornfully smiling—"he don't mind the money; he'll never git you-uns fined ter pay back the gredge. He don't take his wrath out on folkses' wallets; he grips thar throats, or teches the trigger o' his rifle. Laws-a-massy! takin' out yer gredge that-a-way! It's ye poorer fur them dollars, Abs'lom—'tain't him." She laughed satirically, and turned to rock the cradle.

"What d'ye want me ter do? Fight a old man?" he exclaimed, angrily.

She kept silence, only looking at him with a flushed cheek and a scornful laughing eye.

He went on, resentfully: "I ain't 'shamed," he stoutly asserted. "Nobody 'lowed I oughter be. It's him, plumb bowed down with shame."

"The shoe's on the t'other foot," she cried. "It's ye that oughter be 'shamed, an' ef ye ain't, it's more shame ter ye. What hev he got ter be 'shamed of?"

"'Kase," he retorted, "he war fetched up afore a court on a crim'nal offence—a-cussin' afore the court! Ye may think it's no shame, but he do; he war so 'shamed he gin up his office ez jestice o' the peace, what he hev run fur four or five times, an' always got beat 'ceptin' wunst."

"Dad!" but for the whisper she seemed turning to stone; her dilated eyes were fixed as she stared into his face.

"An' I seen him a-ridin' off from town in the rain arterward, his head hangin' plumb down ter the saddle-bow."