Transcriber's Note:
A Table of Contents has been added.

WEEDS

BY

EDITH SUMMERS KELLEY

NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
HARCOURT BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.

WEEDS

CONTENTS

WEEDS

CHAPTER I

Bill Pippinger was counted to be as good a neighbor, as bountiful a provider and as kind a husband and father as was to be found in the whole of Scott County, Kentucky, according to local standards of goodness, kindness and bountifulness. He had never been known to refuse a neighbor the loan of anything that he owned, from his pocket knife to his team of mules. He was prompt with neighborly assistance whenever there was any big job to be done, such as a smokehouse to move or a hog to butcher. If he saw his neighbor's ox or his ass fallen down by the way, he heeded the Bible injunction, of which he had never heard, not to hide himself from them, but surely to help his brother to lift them up again. And if he saw his brother's ox or his sheep go astray, he brought them again unto his brother; for he was one of the few strictly honest farmers in Scott County. Unlike most of his neighbors, too, he was a man of peace. He never sought a quarrel and always avoided one if possible. He had never in his life pulled a gun on a man, an unusual record for a native of rural Kentucky, brought up from boyhood in the time-honored tradition that the pulling of guns is a manly sport.

His wife had little cause for complaint against him, for he hardly ever got drunk oftener than once a month at the Georgetown Court Day. He saw to it that there was always, or at least nearly always, at least one fat hog in the pen waiting to be butchered at Thanksgiving or Christmas. He aimed every spring to raise enough corn so that there would be plenty to feed the hens, to fatten his hog or hogs and to furnish material for the daily cornmeal cakes until next season's crop came on. If Bill did not always succeed in this laudable endeavor, the blame was not laid at his door by his neighbors and certainly not by himself. If there came a dry spell that withered up the corn just as it was filling out in the ear, it wasn't Bill's fault. And if a rainy season set in and kept the ground so wet that he couldn't get into the patch with a cultivator, it was none of his doing if the weeds grew so fast that they soon overtopped the corn. Bill was not the inventor of weeds nor of their nefarious habit of growing faster than corn. Under such circumstances reflections like this gave him much peace of mind and spiritual comfort. There was considerable satisfaction in being able to shift the blame onto the Almighty; and there was still further repose of spirit in the thought that no effort of his own weak, human frame could undo the damage done by the will of that all-powerful being. If the corn crop was light, it was light, and that was all there was to it; and there would be that much less corn to shuck out and that much less fodder to haul in.

There were of course other matters pertaining to the farm over which Bill could exercise more control than he did over the rain supply. On these latter his mind could not repose with the same peaceful abandon; hence he did not concentrate upon them. The fences that needed mending, the manure that ought to be hauled out, the brush that should be cut out of his pasture to give the grass a chance to grow: these things preyed more or less upon Bill's mind, but he did not allow them to annoy him too constantly. After all, he told himself, there was just so much that one man could do on a place. A man couldn't be hauling out manure and cutting brush and mending fence all at the same time; and there was no use in worrying because everything was not kept up to the top notch. Besides, a fellow had to have a little rest now and then and a chance to visit with his neighbors, or what use to be alive at all?

Bill dearly loved to rest and visit. They were his favorite pastimes and indeed about the only ones that the circumstances of his life offered to him. To sit on a rail fence or a hitching post with a chew of tobacco in his cheek, a bit of wood in his left hand and a jack-knife in his right, and pass the time of day with all and sundry who happened by, was as much as Bill asked of life. Whether the place was his own barnyard or Jim Townsend's blacksmith shop or Peter Akers' general merchandise store in Clayton made no particular difference to Bill so long as he could sit and chew and whittle and talk. He was built long and rickety, nondescript of feature, but with a bright twinkle of humor and kindliness in his gray eyes; and his tall, narrow-chested figure was a frequent sight about the lounging places of Clayton.

The main trouble with Bill was that along with nine-tenths of the rest of humanity, he had missed his calling. He was by nature a villager, not a farmer, and the great regret of his life was that he had not been a blacksmith. He had mastered the trade through sheer love of it and had become the best of non-professional blacksmiths. He shod his own horses and the horses of all his neighbors, asking them nothing in return but the pleasure of their company while he worked. To have a little shop of his own in the village whither the farmers would come from six or seven miles around, bringing their horses and all the news and gossip of the neighborhood, that had always been Bill's unrealized dream. Chance, however, that wayward arbiter of the fates of all of us, by making Bill the son of a farmer and the husband of a woman who had inherited a farm, had spoiled a good blacksmith to make a poor farmer. It did not occur to him to repine or cry out against his lot or consider himself in any way a blighted being on this account. He merely cast a momentarily envious eye upon Jim Townsend, the blacksmith, whenever he happened to see him, and went on farming—after a fashion. He was a gentle, kindly and sociable soul, and the good will of his neighbors meant more to him than anything else on earth except his family.

His family consisted of his wife and five children. Aunt Annie Pippinger, a small, inconsequential woman in the early forties, was all one color, like an old faded daguerreotype. She may have had some claims to prettiness in the days when Bill courted her; but they had long since gone, leaving her a bit of drab insignificance. Crawford, the eldest boy, was surprisingly handsome and quite as surprisingly indolent of mind and body. The twins, Luella and Lizzie May, were thin, sickly-looking little girls. Lizzie May was pretty in a pale, blond, small-featured way. Luella had a long, pale face, drab hair and dull gray eyes; and her mouth hung open as though she had adenoids. Judith was the third girl, born two years after the twins. After her there was an interval of four years marked for Aunt Annie Pippinger by two miscarriages and a stillborn infant. At the end of this interval a child was born who grew into a chubby, round-eyed, stupid-looking little boy named Elmer.

These children played and quarreled and made discordant, schoolyard noises in the dooryard of a little, three-room shanty standing upon forty-seven acres of heavy clay land which Aunt Annie Pippinger had inherited from her father. The front yard had been plowed up at some time or other but never planted to anything; and the result was a plentiful crop of ragweed, yarrow and pink-blooming soapwort. Two or three rose bushes clung to the broken picket fence and made it gay in June; and by the front door there was a large bush that bore beautiful creamy roses, tinged in the bud ever so slightly with delicate pink. By the back porch a lilac bush as tall as a small tree made April fragrant for the Pippingers.

The back dooryard was beaten bare and hard by the playing feet of children and the dumping of endless tubs of soapsuds and pans of dishwater. A discarded cookstove lying on its side against the back wall of the kitchen, formed the nucleus for a pile of rust-eaten pots and pans. Beyond the bare spot, a fringe of mustard, ragweed, and burdock reached to the picket fence. Along this fence a dozen or so stalks of hollyhock bloomed in summer gorgeously pink and scarlet against a blue sky. The smoke house and the back house occupied opposite corners of this yard, a well worn path through the weeds leading the way to each.

A stone's throw beyond the picket fence stood the barn, a structure that had been in need of repairs these many years, and part of the roof and sides of an old wagon shed. Here, too, was the horsepond, overhung by a big weeping willow, and a small corral that Bill had built for the milking of the cows. Beyond rose a grassy slope dotted with locust trees. A few straggly apple and peach trees, mostly sprung from seed, grew here and there in odd corners.

The Pippinger farm, like all the rest of the land immediately about it, consisted of hills sloping more or less gently into each other, so that there was no level ground to be found anywhere. This was characteristic of the whole of Scott County. Everywhere there were hills: steep hills and gentle hills, high hills and low hills, plowed hills, and grassy hills and weed-covered hills, but always hills. These hills sometimes ran in long ridges across the land with hollows on each side and other hills sloping up from the hollows. The only level land was the narrow strips at the bottoms of these hollows made by the washing down of soil from the hills.

A great deal of otherwise good land was spoiled in this way. If the hills were kept in bluegrass or sweet clover, they "stayed put." But when they were plowed for corn or tobacco and afterward left to grow up in weeds, the heavy rains cut deep gullies in their sides and washed the good soil to the bottom. This was the case with most of the Pippinger acres. There was only a small amount of land left that was smooth enough to be plowed for corn. Ever since the family had moved onto the place, which was when Crawford was a baby, Bill had talked about how he was going to "stop up them gullies an' put in sweet clover." But each year the gullies wore deeper and each year Bill talked less about reclaiming them. There was still enough pasture, however, for two cows, Roanie and Reddie and a team of gray mules that answered, though sometimes reluctantly, to the names of Tom and Bob. Scratching and cackling hens made the barnyard lively; there were geese on the horsepond; and a few turkeys ranged in the surrounding fields and grew fat on the corn and alfalfa for miles around.

This was the center of the universe for the Pippinger children. Here they played the games that they had learned in the schoolyard: "Blind Man's Buff," "Tag," "Tom, Tom, pull away," and "Little Sally Waters." They made playhouses in fence corners where they treasured up bits of colored glass and stones glittering with mica. They hunted for the eggs of hens that had stolen their nests. They stalked the turkeys to find out where they were laying the precious turkey eggs. They stood around their mother as she churned and with greedy little fingers scraped off the spattered blobs of butter as they appeared on the dasher stick and the churn top. When house-cleaning time was come and their mother had the front room carpet out on the line, they crept in between its dusty folds and crawled gleefully up and down making the mild April evening vibrant with their shouts and laughter. They gathered wild raspberries and blackberries in summer and in autumn hickory nuts and black walnuts. They brought up the cows for the milking and exemplified the phrase, "Straight from producer to consumer," by milking into their own mouths. They made dandelion chains in spring and burr baskets in autumn and scattered the silky fluff of ripe milkweed pods into the sunny autumn air. They held buttercups under each other's chins to see if they liked butter. They quarreled over the possession of playthings and other subjects of childish dispute. Sometimes they fought savagely and kicked each other's shins and made vigorous attempts to scratch and bite, then ran crying and complaining to their mother.

A radius of some eight or ten miles about the farm formed their entire world. Within this circle was Clayton, the source of groceries, candy and Christmas toys, as were also the homes of the various grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins with whom they visited. Almost every Sunday, and sometimes on a week day, Bill would hitch up Tom and Bob to the spring wagon as soon as the morning chores were done, and the whole family, dressed in clean denim and starched calico, would jog away over the winding dirt road to the home of one or other of their kin for an all-day visit. The parent Pippingers sat on the seat in front, which was padded with a couple of old patchwork quilts; and the children made themselves comfortable seats in the thick straw of the wagon body.

So they would drive out into the sunshine, up hill and down hill, across rickety wooden bridges, around gentle bends and sharp turns, past corn patches and tobacco fields and long stretches of land grown up in weeds and brush; through little groves of second growth maple and hickory, past old log houses and weathered frame shanties and big tobacco barns and occasional large, more or less pretentious dwellings surrounded by lawns, till they came to grandad's or Aunt Abigail's or Cousin Rubena's, and there halted for the day.

It was not considered necessary to warn relatives that on such and such a day they were to receive seven all-day visitors. Such an idea had never occurred to Bill or his wife or any of their connections. The Pippingers themselves received many such guests, and were quite as glad to be visited as to visit. There was no sin greater than the sin of being stingy with your time, your food, or your work. To intimate by word, deed, or look that visitors were not welcome was unthinkable in the social circle in which Bill's family and their kin moved.

When the visiting Pippingers reached their destination, whether it was grandad's or Aunt Abigail's or Cousin Rubena's, the procedure was always the same. Everybody, men, women, and children, came out to the wagon to welcome the visitors. There would follow a few moments of general kissing, handshaking, comments on the weather, and mutual inquiries concerning health. Then the men unhitched, put up the mules, and retired to the barnyard to chew, whittle, and exchange silence-punctuated views on the three main topics of common interest, the weather, the crops, and the neighbors. The children straggled after them or ran to the wagon shed to see the new litter of puppies or started a game of "Hide and Seek" in the dooryard. Aunt Annie Pippinger went with the womenfolk back into the house, where, having laid aside her sun-bonnet and jacket, she immediately started to scrape potatoes, cut string beans, peel apples, or otherwise help with the preparations for dinner.

The whole day was spent in this way. The men loafed in the barnyard; the children played or hung in semi-boredom about their elders; the women cooked and washed dishes in the house. And when these tasks were done and the kitchen floor swept, they sat down stiffly on straight-backed chairs, smoothed their aprons and talked about the price of calico, the raising of chickens, the recent sudden death of Uncle James Cruikshanks, the stroke that Aunt Jenny Boone had had last week, and other such topics.

The only break in what would seem to an outsider an interminable stretch of tedium was the dinner. This usually consisted of salt hog meat, fried or boiled, potatoes and some other vegetable, followed by a heavy-crusted apple pie or a soggy boiled pudding. If it were summer or autumn there would likely be a big platter of "roastin' ears," sliced ripe tomatoes, or sliced cucumbers and onions in vinegar. Everybody ate plentifully and silently, and as soon as the meal was over the men slouched back to the barnyard.

When the sun began to slant low in the western sky, Bill would at last bring the wagon around. Aunt Annie Pippinger would put on her sunbonnet and jacket, and the children, seeing the mules hitched up, would straggle up one by one from their play. There would be a long family gathering about the wagon before the visitors drove off; for nothing having to do with social intercourse is ever done in a hurry in rural Kentucky. They had had all day to talk to each other, and they had repeated the same things many, many times over. It was getting late, too, and there was a long drive ahead of them and all the chores were waiting to be done. But still there could be no hurried leave-taking; there was no precedent for such a thing. So they all stood about the wagon and exchanged some more prophecies about the weather and some more comments on Aunt Jenny Boone's stroke and Uncle James Cruikshank's sudden death. And then there would be a long silence. And at last, in the midst of the silence, Bill would gather up the lines. Then, having allowed a decent interval to elapse, he would give the lines a gentle shake and clear his throat.

"Waal, I guess we'd better be a-hittin' the high places. It'll be dark agin we git home an' the chores'll be to do by lantern light. Is all them young uns in there back, or are we a-leavin' some of 'em behind? Waal, anyway a couple or three more ner less don't make no p'tic'ler odds. Come over all."

"You come agin," the visitees would chant in chorus; and followed by this never failing invitation to return the Pippinger coach and pair would trundle out of the barnyard.

The remaining important factor in the life of the Pippinger children was school. Bill himself like many of his neighbors could neither read nor write, and hence was very firmly convinced of the benefits to be derived from an education and determined that his children should have the best that was to be had. Nothing, therefore, except bad weather, was allowed to interfere with their regular attendance at school. The school was two miles from the Pippinger farm. It was a small, whitewashed, oblong box standing close to the road in the midst of a circle of bare, beaten ground. A grove of stately maples and beeches, fringing the bare spot, made a fine place for "Hide and Seek."

Inside a small pine kitchen table formed the teacher's desk, which stood on a slightly raised platform. There were the usual jackknife-carved double wooden benches and the inevitable lithographs of Washington and Lincoln. Some admirer had contributed a large, impressive print of Roosevelt, which had been given the place of honor immediately over the teacher's desk. A large map of the United States, printed many years previously and much yellowed by age, hung between the windows on one side. These, with the blackboard, were the only mural decorations.

Here Lena Moss, an anemic little girl of eighteen, still a child herself in mind and body, who had been educated for a year and a half at the Georgetown High School, did what she could to drill the three R's into the somewhat blockish heads of about twenty children ranging in years from five to the still tender age of the teacher herself.

Fortunately Lena did not have much trouble with discipline. Her pupils were not, like little city hoodlums, vulgar and boisterous with the life of the streets. Nor were they like the children in smaller towns, who are quite as vulgar and boisterous and are held less in control because their school "system" is perforce less ironly rigid than that in the big cities. Lena's pupils were mostly inbred and undernourished children, brought up from infancy on skim milk, sowbelly, and cornmeal cakes, and living on lonely farms where they had no chance to develop infantile mob spirit. They were pallid, long-faced, adenoidal little creatures, who were too tired after the long walk to school to give the teacher much trouble. The slang, rag, and jazz, which standardize vulgarity in the towns and cities, penetrated to this out-of-the-way corner only as faint, scarcely-heard echoes. The phonograph and the colored "funny sheet" were unknown. Hence, Lena, though she did not know it, had much to be thankful for. The loud munching of apples, the shuffling of feet, the occasional throwing of spit-balls, or exchanging of scribbled notes were the main breaches of a discipline which was never at any time at all rigid. There was one pupil, however, who often gave the teacher a good deal of trouble; and that, strange to say, was a girl. She was Bill Pippinger's youngest daughter, Judith.

Judith was a lithe, active, slim little creature, monkey-like in the agility with which she could climb trees and shin up poles and vault over fences. Her bare, brown toes took hold like fingers. There was something wild and evasive about her swift, sinuous little body, alive with quick, unexpected movements, like those of a young animal. She was like a naughty little goblin that springs up mockingly in your path and before you can reach for it has run up a tree or vanished into the thicket. These characteristics of her body were somewhat contradicted by her face, vivid and bold in color and outline and habitually serious. Her eyebrows were black and straight and rather too heavy; and beneath them her gray eyes were dark, clear, and steady. She had a way of seeming to look through and through you when she fixed you with even a passing glance. These qualities of elusiveness and boldness seemed bafflingly interwoven in her character and made her a hard pupil to deal with. Lena never knew what to expect from her.

Without doubt the troublesomeness of Judith was partly due to the fact that she was better fed than most of the other children. Bill was one who never stinted his children in their food if he could possibly help it. When there was a shortage he let it affect his own plate. The Pippingers were not so saving as most of their neighbors; they did not take every ounce of butter to the village store to sell at fifteen cents a pound. Eggs, too, were not entire strangers to their table. The fact of comparatively good nourishment did not, however, explain away all of Judith's bad conduct; for the other Pippinger children, fed on the same fare, were model pupils in the school. There was something then in the girl's own inherited nature that made her different from her brothers and sisters and from the docile, mouse-like little girls and boys who sat beside her on the school benches.

In backwoods corners of America, where the people have been poor and benighted for several generations and where for as many generations no new blood has entered, where everybody is cousin, first, second, or third, to everybody else for miles around, the children are mostly dull of mind and scrawny of body. Not infrequently, however, there will be born a child of clear features and strong, straight body, as a reminder of earlier pioneer days when clear features and strong, straight bodies were the rule rather than the exception. Bill Pippinger had two such children, Crawford and Judith. Crawford was, like many of the good-looking children of the neighborhood, merely an empty shell. He had inherited the appearance of some pioneer ancestor without any of the qualities of initiative and energy that had made him a pioneer. Judith, however, was quite different. Sometimes when she was bringing up Roanie and Reddie from the pasture at a fast trot or driving the mules out of the cornfield with much whooping, arm-waving, and bad language, Bill, watching her dynamic, long-legged little figure, would say with a sort of restrained admiration: "Land, that little gal's got life enough for a dozen sech—too much life, too much life for a gal!"

CHAPTER II

From early babyhood Judith had shown signs of an energy that craved constant outlet. From the time that she began to creep about on an old quilt spread on the kitchen floor, she was never still except when asleep. She soon passed the boundaries of the quilt, then of the kitchen, and began bruising her temples by pitching head first from the rather high doorstep. After two or three accidents of this sort, she mastered the art of crawling down the steps backward, and could soon do it with surprising agility. She did not creep on her knees, but went on all fours like a little bear, her small haunches high in the air. Soon, with this method of locomotion, she was going all over the yard and even following her father out into the cow lot, sticking close to his heels like a small dog. After she learned to walk the farm could no longer contain her, and she was many times brought back home by neighbors who happened upon her as she strayed away along the roadside.

As she grew older, she showed a strong interest in all living things about the farm. She followed after her mother when she went to feed the chickens, slop the pigs, and milk the cows. She watched her father hook up the mules; and when he plowed trotted along behind him in the furrow for hours together. She was great friends with Minnie, the big Maltese cat, and gave an excited welcome to each of her frequent litters of kittens. Perhaps more than any other animal on the farm she loved old Bounce, the dog, a good-natured and intelligent mongrel, mostly shepherd, brindle of color and growing with age increasingly lazy of habit. She was jubilant when a hen that had stolen her nest would come proudly out from under the barn or behind the pigpen clucking to a dozen or so fluffy little yellow-legged chickens, all spotless and dainty. Once she came upon a turkey's nest in a weed-shaded corner of the rail fence and, stooping with breathless excitement, saw that the little turkeys had just that day come out of the shell. They peeped at her from under the old turkey hen, not with the bright, saucy looks of little chickens, but with shy, wild, frightened eyes, like timid little birds. Even better than the turkeys and chickens, Judith liked the little geese. They were so big and fluffy when they came out of the shell, and such a beautiful, soft green; and they waddled and bobbed their heads so quaintly, as they moved in a little, compact band over the bluegrass that they loved to eat. They were prettier still when they sailed, like a fleet of little boats at anchor, in some quiet corner of the creek, the sun flecking their green bodies with pale gold as it blinked at them through the boughs of the overhanging willow tree.

She was absorbed in all the small life that fluttered and darted and hopped and crawled about the farm. The robins and finches that sang and built their nests in the big hickory tree by the gate; the butterflies, white, yellow, and parti-colored, that fluttered among the weeds and grasses; the big dragonflies with gauzy wings iridescently green and purple in the sunlight, that darted back and forth over the brook: these little creatures, with their sweet voices, their gay colors and shy, elusive ways, entered into Judith's life and became a part of it. The grass and the bare ground, too, were alive for Judith, alive with the life of beetles, crickets, ants, and innumerable other worms and insects. The toads that hopped about in the evening were her friends; and when she happened upon a snake she did not scream and run as Lizzie May would have done, but stood leaning forward on tiptoe admiring its colors, the wonder and beauty of its pattern and the sinuous grace of its movement until it wiggled out of sight in the grass.

She loved fish, too: the long, slinky pickerel that live where the pond is full of reeds and water lilies, the whiskered catfish and the beautiful perch, banded with light and dark green, as though they had taken their colors from the sun-flecked banks along which they lived. Better than these big pond fish, because they were smaller and nearer and so more intimately hers, she liked the little "minnies" that lived in her own creek. From time to time she had been lucky enough to secure a minnow, which she would bring home triumphantly in a salmon can. She would set the can down on the doorstep, fill it up with fresh water from the cistern and sprinkle the water lavishly with bread crumbs for the minnow's refreshment. Then she would sit with the can in her lap and lovingly watch the little dark, sinuous body slipping about beneath the bread crumbs.

The next morning she would find the little fish that only yesterday had been so dark and graceful and lively, lying inert and white-bellied among the sodden bread crumbs at the top of the water.

Then the pitiless grip of self-accusing horror and remorse would tighten on Judith. It made her leaden-hearted to think that she had been the cause of the death of this happy little creature that had seemed to love its life so well. Anguished in spirit, she would make frantic efforts to revive the minnow by supplying him with fresh water and bread crumbs and restoring him to his living position in the water, valiantly opposing her eager endeavors and warm pity against the iron inexorableness of death. But all in vain! The fresh water and bread crumbs always failed to interest him; and as soon as the anxious fingers that held him back upward were removed, he would turn up his little white, pink-veined belly to the fresh morning sunshine that would never gladden him again. Sadly Judith would own her defeat at last and, sick at heart with a sorrow too deep and real for childish tears, she would bury her hapless victim in a tiny, flower-lined grave, resolved that she would never again be so cruel as to catch a minnow. But in a few days, with the easy forgetfulness of childhood, she would slip away to the creek, salmon can in hand; and the old rapture and the old agony would sway her too eager soul all over again.

It seemed to Judith at such times, as she would sit on the doorstep staring dismally into vacancy, that not only in relation to minnows, but to everything else in life, she was foredoomed to failure—failure disastrous not only to herself but still more so to the objects that she tried to befriend and benefit. Mud turtles brought from the swampy land near the creek and kept in a soap box in the yard always died. Butterflies imprisoned in an old, rusty bird cage, though watched and tended ever so carefully, always died. Grasshoppers that she tried to domesticate by keeping them in a pasteboard box with holes punched in it, even though tempted with raisins filched from her mother's pantry and called by the most endearing of pet names, always died. Beautiful, fuzzy, amber-colored caterpillars, treated in like manner, always died. The little girl, sitting meditatively chin on hand, wondered vaguely why all her efforts should be followed by such a curse of blight and disaster. One day she heard, coming nearer and nearer, the sound of sharp, shrill voices and harsh, staccato laughs which she recognized at once as those of boys. Peering through the tall weeds, she saw coming along the road the two Blackford boys, Jerry and Andy, who lived about half a mile farther along. They had with them a small, forlorn, white kitten, which, after the manner of boys, they were amusing themselves by torturing. Just as Judith looked, Andy gave its tail a sharp tweak; and the miserable little thing whined piteously and looked about in a feeble, watery-eyed fashion, for a way of escape. Then Jerry caught up the little creature by its limp tail and whirled it around and around in the air, shouting inarticulately, like the young savage that he was.

When Judith saw the hapless plight of the kitten, a spirit of uncontrollable horror and rage born of horror entered into her. The mother feeling, an instinct which rarely showed itself in her, would not let her see this little animal tortured. Her face blazed scarlet, her eyes flashed with a wild glitter, her long arms and legs grew strong and tense. She dropped her basket, leapt the picket fence and rushed upon the boys like an avenging Fury, her knife in her hand.

"You let that cat alone! Give it up to me! How dare you hurt a poor little helpless cat? By gollies I'll cut you! I'll kill you! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!"

The "Oh's" that Lady Macbeth uttered as she walked in her sleep were not more full of tragic horror than were Judith's as she brandished her knife to right and left in a frenzy of tumultuous emotions. Her long black pigtails, tied at the ends with bits of red grocer's twine, bobbed wildly in the air. Barefooted and bareheaded and wearing a faded and torn blue calico dress, she was yet in spirit a very queen of tragedy as she lunged with her kitchen knife and called down imprecations upon the heads of Jerry and Andy.

Her fury daunted the boys. They had had differences of opinion with Judith before and they knew how she-devilish she could be when angry. They had had experience of her biting, scratching, kicking, and hair-pulling as well as of the hard blows of her strong little clenched fists. While dodging one of the lunges of the knife, Jerry let go of the cat; and Judith instantly snatched it up and stood at bay, the knife poised in one hand, the cat in the other.

"Naow then, one of you jes dass come near here an' I'll run this knife right in yer guts! See if I don't!"

Jerry and Andy showed some sense of the value of discretion. They made no step forward, but stood where they were and bandied compliments.

"You wait till we git ye comin' home from school, ye little slut!" threatened Andy.

"Guess I'll wait a spell, too," retorted Judith, sticking out a viperish red tongue. "I'm not a-skairt of you ner ten more like ye. I can lick any kid in yer family; an' my father can lick yer father, too."

"Oh, can he so?" mocked Jerry. "Mebbe he'd better come over an' try!"

"He don't need to. He wouldn't dirt his hands to touch yer greasy ole dad. But he could if he had a mind to."

"I know sumpin 'bout you! Ah ha, I know sumpin 'bout you!" caroled Jerry derisively.

Judith had begun to lose interest in the verbal encounter.

"Aw shet up yer dirty mouth!" she snapped disgustedly, as she crawled back into her own yard through a hole in the picket fence.

The boys went on down the road walking backward, their fingers to their noses, calling after her in diminishing chorus.

"Cowardly kids! Cowardly kids! Cowardly kids!" returned Judith scornfully, until the enemy voices could no longer be heard.

When she got back to the house she set down her basket by the kitchen door, carried the kitten into the kitchen and got it a saucer of milk. Its eyes were bleared and abject in expression, its sharp little bones almost stuck through its dingy white fur; and its discouraged little tail, tangled with burrs, drooped pitifully.

Judith examined the frail joints of its legs and was immensely relieved to find that none of them were broken. Their intactness seemed to her a miracle; for they were so thin and small and delicate that it seemed as though the slightest blow or pressure would crush them. She shuddered as she felt these fragile joints; and through her whole body there surged a great ocean of tenderness and pity for this defenseless little creature. She experienced a vague, but overwhelming sensation of its pitiful helplessness against all the great, cruel powers of nature, which seemed to be conspiring against it. A clumsy foot, a slamming door, the fall of a flatiron from her mother's ironing board: these and a thousand such could cruelly mangle its frail body and even crush out its tiny spark of life. With a blank, painful, discouraged ache in her heart, Judith wondered vaguely why the whole world should be so rough and cruel and hazardous a place for kittens and minnows and all small, unbefriended things. She did not know that she was precociously experiencing the feeling of many a young mother who, with the birth of her helpless firstborn, feels in one overwhelming rush all the tragedy of weakness in a world where the weak must acquire strength or perish.

The very ugliness of the little thing endeared it to her; for it was a pitiable ugliness, an ugliness born of hunger and ill-treatment. Tenderly she stroked its mangy little head and vowed that she would take care of it and stand between it and the cruel world all the days of its life.

In the morning as soon as she awoke her thoughts flew to the kitten. She scrambled into her clothes and ran out into the yard, glancing about the empty kitchen as she passed through. For a long time she searched in vain and was beginning to think that the kitten had wandered away when of a sudden down at the foot of the hill she stopped in amazement and horror. Here in the heavy clay land beside the creek was a little pool that she had hollowed out the day before and into which she had put four live minnows. The flowers that she had planted around it had all wilted and fallen over. Some were lying flat on the muddy ground, some trailing lifeless in the water. Their bright yellows and purples and pinks had all faded into a common drab. On the edge of the water sat the white kitten. And even as she gazed with horror-dilated eyes it fished up a live minnow with its paw and crunched it mercilessly between its small, strong jaws. In a dazed, half-hearted way Judith looked down into the water of the pond and saw that there was now nothing there—nothing alive—only the pebbles and mosses and half dead water plants.

Silently she turned and ran away, far, far away from the unspeakable kitten and the dead flowers and the empty pool and all the hideous horror of it.

From that day she never again felt the same poignancy of distress at the sight of suffering and death among animals. As she grew more intimately into the life of the woods and the fields and the barnyard she learned to take for granted certain laws of nature which at first had seemed distressingly harsh and cruel. She became resigned to the knowledge that the big fishes eat the little ones, that the chickens devour the grasshoppers, that Bounce, the gentle and affectionate, would kill rabbits and groundhogs whenever he could get hold of them: that in all the bird and animal and insect world the strong prey continually upon the weak. It was hard at first to see Minnie's whole litter of kittens but one dropped into a bucket of water and drowned and to watch her father lead off to the butcher the calf that for two months she had been feeding and petting. But these things happened so often, and the law of the survival of the fittest was so firmly established a part of the life of the farm that she soon learned to accept it with equanimity. She might have been slower in learning this lesson if she had been given to self-deception. But she could never lull her sensibilities with this so commonly used opiate. She insisted upon standing over the bucket in which the kittens were drowned and upon knowing exactly what was going to happen to the calf. Soon she discovered that however many little fishes were eaten there were always plenty more; that an endless number of birds and butterflies and grasshoppers sang and fluttered and jumped through the summer days regardless of the depredations of their enemies; that there were always more kittens and calves being born. Without putting the thought into words or even thinking it, but merely sensing it physically, she knew that in the life of nature death and suffering are merely incidentals; that the message that nature gives to her children is "Live, grow, be happy, and obey my promptings." The birds and chickens and grasshoppers all heard it and Judith knew they heard it. Judith heard it too. As she trotted to school in the clear, sun-vibrant air of the early morning, or brought up the cows through the sweet-smelling twilight, or picked blackberries on the edge of the sunny pasture, nature kept whispering these words in her ear. It is given to few civilized human beings to ever hear this message. Perhaps in that generation Bill Pippinger's girl was the only human being in the whole of Scott County who heard and heeded these words: "Live, grow, be happy, and obey my promptings."

For a number of reasons religion never became a part of Judith's life. The Pippingers were not a church-going family nor were many of their neighbors. The consolations of religion were sought more by the village people who had no morning and evening chores to do and were handy to the churches. A deep-seated, if rather vague respect remained, however, in the mental make-up of these country folk for the religion of their fathers. An ill-defined fear, a dim hope, and a few inhibitions remained of the once more vigorous religious life. Judith sensed these things as she grew into girlhood; but they could find no foothold in the healthy vigor of her spirit.

Once when she was ten years old, she went with the rest of the family to a camp revival meeting where the preaching evangelist described with lurid language and fear-compelling inflections the last judgment day and the tortures of an eternal damnation in a hell burning forever with fire and brimstone. The task of browbeating an ignorant audience was apparently one that the preacher enjoyed mightily; for he went at it with tremendous vigor and zest. At times his voice sank to an awe-inspiring whisper, then rose to a demoniac shriek as he sought to bully and terrify his hearers into a state of nerve collapse. Judith listened with eyes that showed more and more of the whites. The lurid pictures were printed instantly on the sensitive plate of her keen imagination. She took the preacher seriously, literally, which fortunately few in the audience appeared to do. She looked around at their stolid, peaceful faces and felt somewhat reassured. Perhaps it wasn't true after all.

On the way home she asked her father if what the preacher had said was true.

"Waal, I reckon it is an' it ain't," answered Bill, spitting over the side of the wagon. "Mebbe Uncle Ezra Pettit is a-goin' to the hot place. An' I kinder hope he is—not wishin' 'im no bad luck. An' Sam Whitmarsh'll like enough pull up there too. Lord knows he's done enough dirty tricks to deserve to fry good, an' on both sides. An' Uncle Ezry'll be mad whichever place he goes, 'cause he'll have to leave his money an' his land behind. But anyhow me ner mine hain't a-goin' to no hot place, ner nobody else that tends their own business. Git up, Bob! Lord love them mules, they're a-comin' to be slower'n the seven year itch."

Her father's unconcern greatly allayed Judith's apprehensions; but the picture drawn by the evangelist was too fresh and vivid to be forgotten at once. That night Judith dreamed that the end of the world had come. Portentous curtains of black, like a hundred thunder storms in one, hung from the sky. Stabbing the blackness came one sharp arrow of crimson light, glowing, intense, and awe-inspiring. Slowly and dreadfully the arrow lengthened, widened, gathered blinding light and burning heat. The judge of the world was coming in his majesty to sit upon the judgment seat. People rushed from their houses and tried to hide in haystacks, under piles of old lumber or in the rooted-out holes beneath hogpens. Judith herself, with a despairing realization that the worst had really happened and that the world would never again be peaceful and sunshiny, ran out into the dooryard. At that moment the air was split by a terrible blast from Gabriel's trumpet. The blast woke Judith and turned out to be only her father passing the window and blowing his nose onto the ground between his thumb and forefinger.

It was an immense relief to Judith to find that it was only a dream, that the sun still shone and the birds sang and her mother was frying corncakes for breakfast and Craw was chasing the big black hog out of the yard and everything was going to be the way it was before.

CHAPTER III

But with the growth of this harmony with natural things, Judith developed a constantly growing tendency to clash with the life of the school and the home kitchen and the kitchens of the various relatives with whom the Pippingers visited. She was considered by her aunts and other female relatives "a wild, bad little limb," and her contempt for the decent and domestic scandalized them more and more as she grew older. Lena Moss could not for her life understand how it was that Judith had learned to read and write and figure better than almost any other child in the school; for she was anything but studious. In fact she never seemed to pay the slightest attention to her studies. She flatly refused even to try to learn Lena's long and carefully prepared list of all the counties and county towns in Kentucky; and the battles of the Revolutionary and Civil wars, with their accompanying dates, found no lodgment in her mind. Instead of applying herself to these, she munched apples, chewed slippery elm and sassafras, stared idly out of the window, bedeviled the child who sat in front of her, cut folded bits of paper into intricate designs or drew pictures on her slate, the desk, the seat, the floor, the back of the pinafore of the girl in front, any available space within her reach.

These pictures were the curse of Lena's existence. They were to be found everywhere: on the desks, the walls, the floor, the blackboard, the window casings. Outside they decorated the whitewashed wall of the school building, the tops of big flat stones, the fences, the trunks of trees where the bark had been stripped away, every place where a piece of chalk or a bit of black crayon could function.

The pictures, invariably of human beings or animals, were usually comic, satirical or derisive. That they showed great vigor and clarity of vision would have meant nothing to Lena even if she had known it. They were, in her phraseology, "not nice!" They were frequently disrespectful. The morning after the visit of the county superintendent, a large picture in white chalk was found on the blackboard wickedly caricaturing the features of that august personage. The picture was done in profile and exaggerated irreverently the large, bulbous nose, the receding forehead, and the many chins reaching around to a fleshy, pendulous ear. Poor Lena was hard put to it to find a way to control this unruly member of her school. Having much less force of character than her pupil, the advantage of years and vested authority availed her little.

When asked why she had done thus and so, Judith's almost invariable reply was: "Cuz I had to."

"Judy, why hain't you a better gal at school?" Bill asked one morning, trying to look sternly at his favorite daughter across the mush and milk. "Lizzie May says the teacher has a heap o' grief with you. Why don't you mind the teacher, Judy?"

"I do mind her, dad—all I can," Judith returned without looking up. She had the syrup pitcher in her hand and was absorbed in pouring sorghum onto her plate in a very thin stream. Presently she set the pitcher down and handed the plate across the table to her father.

"There, dad, ain't that a good mule? I drawed 'im with the blackstrap. Lizzie May couldn't draw a mule like that."

"Ner I don't want to neither," put in Lizzie May disdainfully. "You otta see, dad, sech pitchers as she draws all raound the school, an' makes fun of everybody: the teacher an' the sup'rintendent an' her own relations an' all. She'd otta think shame to herse'f!"

Bill was proud of his girl's ability to draw, but felt it his duty to discourage her choice of subjects, seeing that the same seemed to be so universally condemned.

"What makes you draw them kind o' pitchers, Judy?" he asked.

"Cuz I want to," replied Judith a little sullenly. "I see things; an' when I see 'em I want to draw 'em."

"O law, she don't see no sech things, dad! Haow kin she? Nobody else sees 'em!" exclaimed Lizzie May, outraged. "Why, the idea of her sayin' she sees sech things!"

"Aw, shet up, Liz, an' tend yer own business!" snapped Judith, flushing red with sudden anger. "Jest cuz you don't see nuthin don't mean nobody else does."

She pushed her chair back from the table and began to gather together her school books, slamming them on top of each other with angry energy. Bill said no more; he was not a disciplinarian.

"It's your turn to wash the dishes, Judy," reminded Luella, who was busy helping her mother put up the midday lunch. "Lizzie May washed 'em yestiddy an' I did 'en day before."

"Why don't Craw have to take his turn washin' dishes?" inquired Judith, who was still nettled from the recent argument.

"Craw's a boy. Boys don't wash dishes," adjudged Luella in a tone of dead finality.

"I don't see why he hadn't otta," continued Judith, as she slapped the plates together. "Far's I c'n see he ain't no good fer nuthin else."

The subject of this conversation, engaged in his favorite occupation of doing nothing in a rocking chair by the stove, looked at his sisters with a mild, impartial eye and said nothing. He was safe and aloof in his masculinity.

"Land, hain't that a nice pattern this platter is burned into, Elly!" exclaimed Judith, examining a small platter which she had just picked up from the table. "Look here at all the nice squares an' di'monds—an' all jes as even!"

"I don't see nothing nice about it," said Luella with a half glance at the platter. "It's burned so's it won't never come white agin. It was you done that, Judy, puttin' it in the oven with them slices o' hog meat on it an' fergittin it till the grease was all burnt into smoke. An' sech a stink as it made when mammy opened the oven door! A person could hardly git their breath."

"Well, I like it anyway," said Judith cheerfully. "It's a good thing somebody likes these old, cracked-over plates, cuz most all of 'em is cracked over. I have lots o' fun lookin' at 'em an' seein' all the diff'rent patterns they git burnt into."

"Yes, an' that's why it takes you so long to wash up the dishes. If you don't hurry you're a-goin' to be tardy for school. The rest of us is a-fixin' to start naow, an' you'll have to run to ketch up."

"I ain't a-goin' to ketch up if I don't want to," returned Judith. "An' if I'm tardy, you hain't got no call to be a-frettin' yo'se'f."

This sort of bickering between Judith and her sisters went on daily in the Pippinger home and increased as the children grew older. Luella and Lizzie May, good, right-minded, docile little girls, looked down upon Judith from the height of two whole years of seniority and felt it their duty to try to make her as good, right-minded and docile as themselves.

There was a half-story attic above the three ground rooms occupied by the Pippingers, and this attic was the girls' bedroom. Here the three slept together in a big wooden bed made all of twisted spirals. The bed had a straw tick and in winter many thicknesses of patchwork quilts. In summer one quilt was enough and often too much; for the windows were small and the roof low; and on hot, breathless nights no air seemed to enter. In summer the bedbugs came out of the walls and Aunt Annie Pippinger saturated the bed once a month or so with kerosene and corrosive sublimate, the odor of which lingered for many days after the application. Between the windows stood an old cherry chest of drawers which had once been a handsome piece of furniture, but was now much scratched and scarred by hard usage. Each girl had one of the three drawers, and here they kept their clothes and treasures.

Luella and Lizzie May had each a pincushion of silk patchwork in the then popular "crazy" style, and fatly stuffed with bran. Luella had a box the lid of which was encrusted with small shells surrounding a red velvet pincushion shaped like a heart. In this box she kept carefully folded bits of silk, velvet and lace; locks of hair cut from the heads of all her relatives, wrapped in tissue paper and labeled with the name of the grower, glass beads, fancy buttons, Christmas cards, pressed flowers, small empty scent bottles and the like. Lizzie May had a similar accumulation but hers was housed in a box with a colored picture on the lid. This picture showed a young lady dressed in a very low-necked pink satin evening gown and a white fur muff and scarf, adjusting a pair of skates on pink satin slippers in the midst of a snowy winter landscape powdered with frosting to make it more realistic. Lizzie May liked this picture very much. She often took out the box just to gaze at the lovely pink satin evening gown, the delicate hands and the pink satin slippers.

Poor Judy had no such treasure box. She often looked at her sisters' collections with envious eyes and wished for as much as two minutes together that she too had some nice things. Somehow she had never been able to collect things. Her drawer contained nothing but her little old frocks and underwear and holey stockings thrown together in a tousled heap, and perhaps a few pine cones and clam shells and odd pebbles that she had picked up from time to time.

There were several colored pictures on the walls, mostly calendars of previous years, much fly-specked and yellowed on the edges. One of these, an advertisement for some kind of corset, represented the upper two thirds of a young woman with bright pink cheeks and golden hair, attired in a chemise and a straight-front corset and holding an Easter lily in her hand. On one side of the chest of drawers was an old, much faded chromo showing a child with a tremendously large head, dressed in skin-tight red satin breeches and pale blue coat with lace ruffles in front looking at a kitten which was playing with a pink ball on the floor. This picture was enclosed in a frame the ends of which stuck out beyond the picture, forming little crosspieces at each corner. On the floor were several pieces of frayed rag carpet and before the bed an oval braided rag mat.

Luella and Lizzie May spent a good deal of their time in this sanctum, "redding up," looking over their treasures, exchanging confidences and sewing patch-work blocks. But Judith hardly ever went into the room except to go to bed. She liked her father's company and her father's occupations better than those of her sisters. She stood at his side and watched him as he nailed the bright new shoes with the bright new horseshoe nails onto the hoofs of Tom and Bob. When he said, "Whoa!" she said "Whoa!" with a faithful echo of his tone and inflection. She loved to hear the cheerful strokes of the hammer and watch the sparks fly from the piece of old railroad iron which Bill used as an anvil. When he stretched a piece of wire fence she was there to hand him the wire stretchers, the pliers, the hammer, the staples. And whenever he mended spots in the old rail fence she caused Bill much inconvenience by insisting on lifting one end of each rail. She liked to watch and help him when he had a job of carpentry to do, a bench to make, or a shelf or some new chicken coops for the spring broods. She ran and fetched the hammer, the nails, the brace, and bit. She held the ends of boards while he nailed them, dragged up more boards; and all the time she watched eagerly. As he worked Bill chewed tobacco and whistled and now and then broke out into a rather tuneless attempt at a song:

Grasshopper settin' on the sweet petater vine;

Turkey gobbler come up from behin'

An' peck him off'n the sweet petater vine

In the mo'nin', in the mo'nin'.

Judith pirouetting about, would sing the song after him, but with the correct time and tune.

"Seems like you c'n beat yer dad at singin', Judy," Bill would say proudly. "I never was one that could hang onto a tune. After a bit, somehaow, it'd allus git away from me. Hand me them there pinchers—the little uns with the shiny ends onto 'em."

Judith liked to work around the mules and was soon entrusted with the task of leading them to water and pitching hay into their manger. In the stable she would get down the curry brush and comb from the beam where Bill kept them and curry them down with many shouts of "Whoa, ye bugger!" and "Git araound there naow!" When there was an errand to do at the neighbor's, she would ride Tom or Bob barebacked, guiding the old mule proudly with tightly held bridle reins.

She liked to go with her father in the spring wagon when he went to Clayton or Sadieville or took corn to the mill to be ground. The clear morning sunshine, the sweet air, the life of the woods and fields all about them mingled exultantly with the rattle of the wagon as it jolted over the ruts in the dirt road, the strong, horsey smell of the mules and the grinding creak of the brake as Tom and Bob held back on the steep hillsides. Perched beside her father on the seat, she insisted on driving and was indignant when Bill would take the lines from her hands at the top of a steep hill or on the approach of another team.

Whenever they met a neighbor or relative—and almost everybody they met was a neighbor or relative—Bill would rein up the mules, the other team would pull up alongside, and there would be a long spell of roadside visiting. There would not be much said, but it would take a long time to say it; and Judith would sometimes grow impatient.

"Dad, why do you stop so long an' talk to folks on the road?" she would ask.

"Why-ee, I dunno. I allus done so ever sence I was a boy, an' my dad allus done so afore me. I like to know haow folks is a-comin' on. You wouldn't have me drive right on with nuthin but a 'Howdy' would you? 'Twouldn't be neighborly."

The mill was a mile or so beyond the village on the bank of a pleasant little stream which furnished it with water power. It was built of logs mortared with mud, and grass grew in the chinks. It was a very small mill the single business of which was to grind corn into meal for the corn cakes of the neighborhood. When Judith and her father would drive up, everything would be silent; not a sign of life but the turning wheel and perhaps a chicken pecking along the path or a pigeon cooing from the roof.

"Hey, Dave! Hey, Dave!" Bill would call, as he tied the mules to the hitching post. Presently Dave Fields, the miller, would come hobbling down the path from his house which stood a few rods away hidden among locust trees. He was a shriveled little old man with one leg shorter than the other from rheumatism and a pair of merry blue eyes twinkling from under bushy white eyebrows.

"Waal, howdy, Bill. Purty weather we're a-havin' naow. Yer folks all smart?"

"Yaas, we keep middlin' smart. How's yo'se'f an' the woman, Dave?"

"Oh, we git about; we git about. But we hain't what we onct was, Bill. The woman had one o' them asthmy spells last week; an' my rheumatics keeps me purty stiff. But of course we're a-gittin' old. We can't complain. Haow much corn you got?"

"Oh, mebbe a couple o' bushel," Bill would answer, lifting the sack out of the wagon.

"Waal, Judy, an' hoaw're you a-feelin' to-day? You're a-growin' to be a great big gal. You'd best stop here with me an' mammy. We hain't got no little uns no more."

And the old miller would chuck the little girl under the chin good-naturedly, as she looked at him with wide, questioning eyes.

Then the mill would be put in operation and Judith would be fascinated by the sight of the golden meal pouring into the hopper.

When the corn was ground, the old man took a tenth for his share and put the rest back into Bill's sack. Then, but with no unseemly haste, the meal was lifted into the wagon and the mules untied and turned in the direction of home.

"Waal, Dave, you an' yer woman come over."

"Yaas, we'll be along by there some day. You come some Sunday an' stop all day with us."

And at last they would go rattling away up the hill toward Clayton.

Then to Peter Akers' general merchandise store to buy flour and sugar and coffee and a ten cent sack of candy for the children. There were always a few loungers here and even in midsummer they stood from force of habit about the tall, rusty, pot-bellied stove, spitting tobacco juice into the little sawdust yard which surrounded it. While her father made his purchases and passed the time of day with the loungers about the stove, Judith would walk about looking at the bright-patterned calicoes and chintzes ranged on the shelves, the shiny dippers and saucepans, the straw hats and piles of blue denim overalls, the brooms standing upside down in a round rack, the gleaming hoes and rakes and shovels with bright-painted handles. Around the walls just below the ceiling ran a frieze of galvanized washtubs and tin plated boilers. The showcase stood on the counter near the door, and Judith, having passed all the other things in review, would flatten the end of her small nose against the glass looking at pink and yellow cakes of scented soap, barber's pole sticks of candy, bottles of ink, silk ribbons, tooth brushes, pads of letter paper, alarm clocks, pocket combs, and sheets of tanglefoot fly paper, arranged much as they have been here enumerated. She never tired of doing this. To her the store was a vast emporium capable of satisfying every human need or whim. She rarely teased Bill to buy her a ribbon or a toy, partly because she knew that he needed the money for horseshoe nails and flour; and partly because there was nothing here that she really wanted very much for herself. She felt no acute need in her own life for any of the contents of the showcase; but she regarded them none the less with deep respect and admiration.

Often Peter Akers, a baldish, pot-bellied man with a flabby face and old-fashioned sideboards, would lean across the counter with professional affability and chuck the little girl under the chin.

"Waal, Judy, you like to come in taown with yer dad? You'd best stay here an' keep store with me. Wouldn't you like to help keep store?"

Judith, looking straight at him with level, grave eyes, would answer never a word.

Then over to Jim Townsend, the blacksmith, to get some plate shoes in case a neighbor should come with a job of horseshoeing to do. Once Jim looked admiringly at Judith, whom he was really seeing for the first time, although she had been there dozens of times before.

"You got a handsome gal there, Bill," he said.

"All my gals is handsome," answered Bill complacently. "But this one here is more a boy'n a gal. She's her dad's hired hand, she is. She helps me shoe the mules, she does."

"Waal, waal, so she's a blacksmith's helper! I'm needin' a hand. Wouldn't ye like to stay here an' help me shoe hosses, eh, little gal?"

Judith looked him through and through and made no reply.

"Dad, do folks really want other folks' chillun to come an' live with 'em?" she asked her father, when they were back in the wagon.

"No, Judy, I can't say they do," Bill answered. "Other folks' young uns is gener'ly wanted 'bout as much as other folks' ailments."

"Then why do they keep a-askin' me to come an' live with 'em?"

"Oh, I dunno. It's jes a way they have. They done like that when I was a lad too."

"I wish they wouldn't," said Judith.

Then, as they drove back home through the sleepy heat of the noonday, Judith would grow hungrier and hungrier and her one thought would be of dinner. She could smell it as soon as they pulled up in the barnyard: boiled hog meat and mustard greens and young beets and potatoes. How good it tasted when at last she had a heaping plateful in front of her with a generous tin mug of cool skim milk to wash it down!

Judith liked best of all the autumn season, when the sky was a hazy, tender blue and the mellow sunshine lay like a film of golden tissue over all the earth. Then there were plenty of apples to munch; and she could go out into the garden and pick the big, red, juicy tomatoes and eat them alive, as it were, before they had been slaughtered by her mother's paring knife. Then the corn stood in the shocks and the big, yellow pumpkins lay scattered among the stubble, suggestive of plenty. The hickory nuts and black walnuts began to drop from the early frosts, the trees turned bronze and russet and scarlet and the warm air was full of bees and butterflies and other humming, buzzing, fluttering things. The tobacco fields lay brown and bare and deserted; but from the big tobacco barns there welled forth a fragrance that was for these Kentuckians, the soul of autumn. Oozing out into the golden sunshine from every crack in the great structures, it exhilarated like an elixir, like a long draught of some rich, spicy wine. The big doors, left open to allow a free current of air, showed the long, yellowish-brown bunches hanging thick-serried in the fragrant gloom.

It was an intoxication to her at this time to be alive, to gather and eat the good things that the earth so generously provided, to see the autumn glory of the woods and roadsides, to feel the glow of the sun, the warmth of the earth under her bare feet, and to sniff in the spicy exhalations of the great barns.

On these autumn days the sun sank early; and this was the time that the Pippinger children most enjoyed their play. There was something about the chilly drawing-in of these October twilights that made them want to leap and run and throw their arms about and utter wild, animal-like noises into the gathering night. Judith was always the leader in these games, and her wild abandon easily infected the others. Round and round the clothesline prop they would fly in the game of "Go in and out the Windows," and "The Farmer in the Dell," the long braids bobbing, the boys' shirttails, escaped from their overalls, flapping in the wind with the girls' petticoats. Then, tiring of this, there would be "Hide and Seek," "Tom, Tom, pull away," and the inexhaustible "Tag."

Minnie, the cat, liked these evenings too, and so did her kitten and the white cat that Judith had rescued from the Blackford boys. The cats, like the children, were filled with a spirit of kobold friskiness, as though their evening bowl of skim milk had gone to their heads. In daytime they did nothing but stretch, sleep, yawn, and wash their faces in the sun; but the chill of the autumn evening brought to them also the spirit of adventure. In their strong, slinky litheness, they jumped and darted and climbed; and the children watching them envied them their perfect unison of body and spirit. Minnie, in spite of all her years and the many times that she had been a mother, was a kitten again. Nothing would do her but she must run clear to the top of the clothesline prop, scratch mightily with her front claws as though sharpening them, then make a sudden leap to the grass and circle about like a mad thing. Her kitten darted up into the lilac bush and peered down at the children with glowing topaz eyes, then whisked away to circle after its mother. The white cat, frisking in and out among the shadows, made the children think of ghosts.

Often a wind would spring up out of the west as the twilight thickened, and the young Pippingers would run in the face of it, their hair blown back, their arms waving wildly, their voices ringing shrilly into the autumn night: little Valkyries of the hills.

Once, as they were playing a ring game by the barn, a big red moon rose over the brow of the hill and showed their dancing figures silhouetted sharply in black on the barn wall. The weird little shadow figures seemed like a troop of goblin companions that had come to join their play. The more wildly they pranced and threw their arms about, the more reckless and drunken grew the little shadow creatures on the wall, stimulating them in turn to a still greater frenzy of abandon. The wind blew in their faces and brought subtle whiffs of fragrance from the big tobacco barn down the ridge. The other children soon forgot this evening; but to Judith it remained always as one of the exalted moments of her life.

When the children were called in to supper after these autumn orgies, they would come with ruddy cheeks and blazing eyes. Bill, looking about the table, would say with satisfaction: "Them young uns ain't a-lookin' poorly. Guess we won't need to call in the doctor for 'em yet a spell."

The little glass lamp would be lighted in the middle of the oilcloth-covered table; and there would be fried potatoes and a big red platter of sliced tomatoes and roastin' ears steaming hot—a delicious meal!

The winter season was not such a happy one for the Pippinger children. Usually the weather would be warm and pleasant and the roads dry up to Thanksgiving or even later. But then would come the inevitable heavy frosts, followed by thaws and the cold, dismal rains that lasted sometimes for days together. Then the young Pippingers had to stay home from school and time hung very heavy on their hands. They bickered and quarreled and yawned and stared idly out of the window at the drearily falling rain and the dismal expanse of mud that would be there till the April sun dried it up.

Sometimes when the house grew too unbearably dull and small, they threw their coats over their heads and plodded through the heavy mud to the barn to play in the corn fodder and consort with the mules and chickens. It was a great relief to their mother to get them out of the house. Around the barn, the sodden stable dung made a lake of stinking filth and the children had to step very carefully from stone to stone to avoid sinking into it. Inside it was fun for a while to jump about in the clean fodder, to curry the mules and climb on their backs, and to hunt for eggs in the loft and on the top of the beams. But they soon tired of this and trooped back to the house, bringing with them their boredom and a quantity of sticky mud which refused to wipe off on the dirty bit of folded rag carpet before the door.

When the rainy spell was over Mrs. Pippinger heaved a sigh of relief and started them off to school again. Dressed in faded caps and little made-over, outgrown coats, too short in the sleeves and too tight across the chest, they trudged through the mud, glad to be away from the dreary house. When they got to school they were tired to the point of exhaustion; and the mud, which had splashed over their shoe tops, was drying in grayish flakes on their stockings. A tremendous wood fire, built by some of the older boys, blazed in the big box stove and made the room so hot that the children, tired from their long walk and entering that close, heated atmosphere from the chilly freshness of the outdoors, almost fell asleep over their copybooks.

It was worse still as the winter advanced and snow began to fall. The melted snow mixed with the mud and made a thin, oozy, penetrating slush, which usually meant wet feet for the Pippingers. It was not always possible for Bill to provide five new pairs of shoes and five new pairs of rubbers or overshoes with the oncoming of the bad season. And so the shoes were often broken and the rubbers worn into holes in the heels, which gave an easy entrance to the cold winter slush. For this reason and because the air of the schoolhouse was kept so close and overheated, coughs and colds were of very frequent occurrence. The winter, in fact, was one long stretch of barking, sniveling, wheezing, and nose-blowing, with sometimes a more severe attack which kept one or other of the children from school. Mrs. Pippinger always kept on hand in a stone jar a homemade cough syrup consisting of butter, sugar, and vinegar. It did not seem to have any very great curative effect on the coughs and colds; but the children were always glad to take it because it tasted so good.

Then too, as the winter advanced, the pantry and smokehouse grew more and more empty. "Roasin' ears," tomatoes, cucumbers and such garden delicacies were gone with the early frosts. Sweet potatoes, dried out on a shelf behind the kitchen stove, lasted a while longer, but were soon eaten up. White potatoes, cabbage, and pumpkins lasted till about Christmas. After that the frost always got what was left of them, as the Pippingers had no cellar. Christmas, too, saw the last of the apples; for Kentucky is too far south to grow good winter apples. The cured and smoked hog meat hanging in the smokehouse sometimes lasted till spring; but more often it was gone by February. The few jars of jam and cans of peaches and blackberries that Mrs. Pippinger managed to put up through the summer were turned into empty bottles almost before the frost came. Then began a long, lean season of mush and milk for breakfast, corn cakes and drippings for dinner, and corn cakes and sorghum for supper. If Bill could get a job stripping tobacco or shucking corn, there would be some canned goods and a side of bacon from Peter Akers' store. But usually the tobacco was all stripped and the corn all shucked before the lean season came on. Sometimes there was a job of hauling to be had. But the hauling jobs were so few and scattered that they did little more than provide the Pippingers with the occasional sack of flour to make the Sunday and holiday treat of hot biscuit. Bill made special efforts to keep flour in the house, for he did dearly love a light hot biscuit.

CHAPTER IV

The winter that Judith was twelve years old was an unusually bad one. For days the heavy rains fell drearily over the sodden earth. The all-pervading mud went everywhere in the house, in spite of Mrs. Pippinger's housewifely efforts to keep it out. It dried in light gray flakes on the floor, the rungs of chairs, the lower parts of walls and doors and furniture, wherever careless passing feet smeared it off. When Mrs. Pippinger swept it rose in a fine, dry, choking dust that filled the air and then settled thickly on every object in the room. Luella and Lizzie May were kept busy dusting and shaking the dust-filled rags out at the door. The air of the kitchen was damp with steam from wet coats and overalls hung to dry behind the stove. The woodbox was full of sodden, half-rotten fence rails or newly cut green wood, both of which required the greatest coaxing to induce them to burn. Usually the fence rails had to be dried in the oven. They shed rotted scraps over the oven and the floor and the steam of their drying rose up and joined the other exhalations.

When the rain stopped it always turned cold and a piercing, bitter wind came out of the north. For two or three days it stayed cold, then grew mild and cloudy; the wind changed into the south-east and the fine, penetrating rain began all over again.

One bleak, windy day in February the children came home from school to find their mother with a very bad cold. She had done a big washing the day before, had gone out warm from working in the hot suds and got chilled hanging out the clothes in the bitter wind. She was hot and feverish from the cold, her head ached and her chest was tight. Before going to bed Bill made her rub her chest well with skunk grease and take a tablespoonful of castor oil and a good dose of the sugar and vinegar cough mixture.

In the morning she was still poorly and the twins, now grown into a sense of responsibility, insisted on her remaining in bed. They sent Judith and the boys off to school and stayed at home to take care of their mother and do the work. By evening she was much better; and the next day she got up and went about her work as usual.

But two days later, when the children came home from school, she was worse again. She had a high fever, could eat nothing, and failed to make her usual resistance when Bill and the twins insisted on her going straight to bed.

The next day she was no better. The twins stayed home again and Bill drove over and fetched her half sister Abigail.

Aunt Abigail's children were grown and so she could be spared to help in time of sickness. It was for this reason and this only that Bill went for Abigail instead of for Cousin Rubena or Aunt Libby Crupper.

"I might a knowd," she snapped, as she climbed into the wagon, "that Annie'd be daown sick. She don't never take no care of herse'f; an' them folks that don't take care of theirselves makes a heap o' trouble for others. An' I declare with all them near growed-up young uns she works jes as hard as if they was still babies. You an' her has allus babied yer chillun, Bill. They ain't never been made to learn to work the way they'd otta."

Bill made no reply. He always avoided argument with Aunt Abigail. She was the sort of person, not infrequently found in out-of-the-way places, who combines great narrowness with great strength of mind. To a lover of domestic peace and harmony she was not comfortable to live with.

She was considerably older than her sister, a thin, painfully tidy little person with bright, hard, shallow black eyes, a close-shut, thin-lipped mouth and shiny black hair drawn tightly back into a knot that looked as hard as granite. When she took off her jacket and sunbonnet and the many folds of scarf wound round and round her head and neck, she disclosed a spotless checked dress and a white apron with small black polka dots, faultlessly starched and ironed. The apron was frilled and rounded at the corners. The strings, tied in a careful bow in the back, were ample and rustling with starch. Aunt Abigail was very particular about her aprons.

She bustled into the room where her half sister lay in bed restless and feverish.

"Waal Annie, you sholy are a-lookin' bad; an' all, as I ses to Bill, jes 'cause you don't take no care of yo'se'f. The idee of a-goin' aout drippin' with sweat from the washtubs an' hangin' out clothes in this weather when you don't have to! What's all them gals here fer, anyway? Can't they hang aout their mammy's washin' when they git home from school? Law, when I was their age I was a-doin' the washin' an' a-hangin' it aout an' a-cookin' an' a-scrubbin' an' a-milkin' four caows fer dad an' the boys after mammy was took away. Wait till them young uns finds aout what it's like to be without a mammy, an' they'll soon feel the diff'rence."

Aunt Abigail's manner of saying this last almost suggested that she hoped that such time would soon arrive.

The worst thing about Aunt Abigail was her voice. It was even more nasal than that of most Kentuckians; and her a's were harder and flatter. It was hard, shallow, and piercing, like her eyes, and absolutely without depth or resonance. It was as soulless as the hammering of a poker on a tin stewpan. It rang and vibrated through the three rooms of the little log house like a call to arms. The Pippingers all shrank from it but took it for granted because she was their aunt.

"I'd best go on to Clayton, naow I'm hitched, an' fetch Doc MacTaggert," said Bill, looking tentatively at his wife.

"Nothin' o' the kind, Bill! I don't need no doctor. I ain't got but a bad cold, an' I'll be all right in a day or two. You ain't a-goin' to fetch no docter." Mrs. Pippinger's voice had a ring of genuine alarm.

"Waal, I dunno," hesitated Bill, appealing with his eyes to Aunt Abigail, who was bustling about the room setting things to rights.

"If ye'd ast me, I'd say Annie'd otta have a doctor," said Abigail. "But of course folks allus knows their own business best. I don't never advise people, so's they won't have a chanct to turn back on me an' say, 'I told ye so!'"

Still Bill hesitated, looking from one woman to the other.

"No, Abigail, I really ain't so bad as that," placated her sister. "'Tain't nothin' but a hard cold. An' I think mebbe if Bill would chop the head off that rooster—the little un that don't seem to be good fer nothin'—I could take a little chicken broth."

So Bill went to slaughter the inadequate white rooster and Aunt Abigail hastened to see to it that there was hot water to scald him.

But when the chicken broth was made Mrs. Pippinger could eat none of it. The next day she was no better; but still she made alarmed resistance whenever Bill suggested going for a doctor. Aunt Abigail sent home for some more dresses and aprons and prepared to make a stay of it.

Two days later she was so much worse that Bill did not stop to argue with her but hitched up and drove to Clayton for Dr. MacTaggert. Aunt Abigail busied herself mightily putting a clean gown on Mrs. Pippinger, clean sheets and pillow slips on the bed, clean towels on the washstand, in preparation for the august visit.

The doctor came, a bald, dust-colored little man with spectacles and an air of patient resignation to his lot. He took her pulse and temperature, asked about her bowels, listened at her chest, and said that she had congestion of the lungs. From a black leather satchel he took out two bottles of medicine, some pills in a little brown box, and some pills in a small envelope. On the labels of these he wrote directions for giving them and left them with Aunt Abigail, saying that he would call again day after to-morrow. When he was gone they all experienced a sense of great relief, as though the necessary thing had now been done and the sick woman would at once begin to get well.

But Mrs. Pippinger did not get well; and when Dr. MacTaggert paid his second visit she was half delirious. He looked serious and concerned and left several more medicines with more complicated directions for administering them. Aunt Abigail, who always prided herself on her devotion to duty, carried out his instructions with scrupulous exactness. She was also very particular about excluding draughts and in fact all outside air. With great care she pasted up the cracks about the two small windows.

There followed a long period when Mrs. Pippinger alternated between being very sick and not quite so sick. The house was kept unnaturally tidy. The children moved about on tiptoe and spoke in whispers. Judith and the boys stayed outside or in the barn as much as they could. The rooms were full of the smell of strong medicines and ointments. Neighbors and relatives came bringing presents of soups and jellies and pickles and such bedside delicacies, which the children ate with subdued relish after their mother had refused them. The air was full of anxiety, of restlessness, of a sense of waiting, as though the regular flow of life hung for a time suspended and everybody was waiting with half-taken breath for the signal to breathe and live again.

When Bill came in from the barn after the evening chores were done, he pulled off his shoes very quietly and went about in sock feet. Sometimes he went to his wife's bedside and sat silently watching her flushed, restless tossing, or talked with her for a while in low tones if the fever was gone and she was lying pale and quiet. Then he would go back into the kitchen and sit by the stove with his quid of tobacco in his cheek, now and then lifting the lid nearest him to spit into the wood fire. He was a man of clean habits and hardly ever spat in the woodbox. Often he would sit like this till long after his usual bedtime, to be roused at last by Aunt Abigail's strident tones.

"Well, land sakes, Bill Pippinger, if you hain't a-settin' there yet! You'd otta be in bed this hour an' a half. If you're fixin' to be over bright an' early to help Andy Blackford butcher hawgs to-morrow mornin' you'd best be a-gittin' some sleep else ther'l be no rousin' you in the mornin'."

Thus exhorted, Bill would grunt sleepily, slouch to his feet, stretch, yawn, wind the clock, whittle a few kindlings for the morning and retire into the little back room where the air was already heavy and stale from the breathing of Craw and Elmer.

In spite of the occasional days when she felt better and talked about getting up, Mrs. Pippinger grew steadily worse. There were whole days now when she lay in a semi-stupor only rousing a little to smile feebly if Bill or one of the children came to her bedside. She had grown very thin, and her hands that lay on the quilt were white and transparent.

One day on leaving the doctor took Aunt Abigail aside and said in a low tone: "I'm afraid there's not much hope that she'll live through it. If she's in pain and her breath comes hard, give her one of these."

And he handed Aunt Abigail a little envelope containing small, white pills.

Her stupor increased very noticeably after this and she was hardly ever conscious. The neighbors came in and took turns sitting up with her to relieve Bill and Abigail. They moved her bed into the kitchen for greater warmth and convenience of waiting on her; and there she lay day after day more like a dead woman than a living one.

One very cold day her breathing was loud and sonorous like snoring. It echoed all through the stagnant air of the little house. When the doctor came that afternoon he took Bill and Aunt Abigail aside on the way out.

"It isn't likely she'll live till morning," he said.

Bill did not answer; he went to the barn to do his chores. Aunt Abigail hurried back into the house with the air of one who has work to do.

Aunt Sally Whitmarsh came that night to sit up. She was an elderly woman with crafty eyes and rather handsome regular features that were always set and composed, as though she were sitting in church listening to a sermon. She was not so thin as most of her neighbors and her skin was white and fine and almost free from wrinkles.

Then when the supper table was cleared, the dishes washed and the children in bed, and the watchers were settling down for the night, the doorknob turned and old Aunt Selina Cobb stood in the doorway.

She came in with teeth chattering, the remains of an old Paisley shawl drawn tightly about her head and shoulders. A blast of icy air swept in after her.

"Land, but it's a-goin' to be a cold night!" she quavered, as she drew off two pairs of ragged mittens and warmed her withered, claw-like hands over the stove. "It'll like be zero afore mornin'."

She was a tiny, dried-up creature, not more than four and a half feet high and so thin that there seemed to be nothing at all between the yellow, wrinkled skin and the bones beneath. The eyes, as in many old people, showed the only remains of youth and life. They were bright and brown and looked about the room with birdlike alertness. Her movements were sudden, quick and nervous, like those of a person living always at high tension. Her calico dress, when she took off her jacket, was seen to be patched in so many places and with so many different kinds of goods that it was idle to speculate as to its original color and pattern. Her apron was even more patched than the dress. The patchwork garments were clean, stiff with starch and smoothly ironed.

"She's bad off to-night, ain't she, poor thing?" said Aunt Selina, stepping from the fire to the bedside of the sick woman.

Aunt Sally Whitmarsh moved to the bedside and stood beside her. "Yes," she said in a low voice, "she's bad off. The doctor don't think she'll last through the night."

"Eh, dear! Well, well, poor Annie! It seems like yestiddy she was a little gal a-runnin' araound bareleggèd."

"Yes, an' we two stood together at her weddin' here in this very house. You mind that day, Aunt Selina? It don't seem no time sence."

They could see their breath in the cold air about the bed. Their teeth began to chatter and they went back to rub their hands together over the stove, then settled down in kitchen chairs close to the warmth.

"You'd best be a-gittin' to bed, Bill," advised Aunt Abigail. "You can't do nothin' fer her, an' the rest of us'll set up."

Bill was sitting beside the woodbox, between the stove and the wall, apart from the three women. When Abigail spoke he cleared his throat, recrossed his legs, and said: "No, I guess I'll set."

They settled down to wait. Outside it was growing steadily colder. An icy wind was sweeping down from the north, whistling about the decayed old house, rattling window sashes and worming its way through every chink and crevice. It whispered eerily behind the ugly old wall paper and fluttered little loose fragments like struggling wings. Long dust webs clinging to the ceiling above the stove swung to and fro in the draught like clotheslines on a windy day. The loud, sonorous snoring sound filled the room and dominated the hushed voices of the woman about the stove. The little glass lamp threw its dim yellow light over the oilcloth-covered table, threw its dim reflection to the low ceiling and left the rest of the room in deep shadow. They sat waiting.

As the night wore on, the breathing of the dying woman grew gradually less noisy. The creeping cold crowded the three women more closely about the stove and the lid was often lifted to put in more wood.

Gradually the breathing grew fainter, so that it ceased to dominate the room and became scarcely audible even when listened for. The clock struck three slow strokes. Still the women huddled about the stove and Bill sat silently beside the woodbox and the scarcely heard breath fluttered on the lips of the dying woman.

Suddenly she gave a short, quick gasp. Aunt Abigail got up quickly and stood for a moment by the bedside, long enough to make sure that she was still breathing.

"If she lives past four," she said, turning away with a slight shade of disappointment, "she'll likely last another day. This is the time they most gener'ly go."

A movement passed almost imperceptibly through the group about the stove; but no one spoke.

"Waal, I'm ready to be took when my time comes," went on Aunt Abigail, coming back to her seat by the stove. "And when I'm gone it hain't a-goin' to be said of me that I didn't do my duty in times o' sickness an' death. I bin real bad lately with them liver spells I git, an' I was in the very midst o' puttin' up new paper on the front bedroom—it's a awful nice paper an' one that won't show dirt, a chocolate ground with kinder red flowers on it. But when Bill come a-drivin' over with word that Annie was down sick, I put my things right on an' come back with 'im. An' I hain't bin home sence."

Still they sat about the stove and dozed and talked and waited. It seemed as if the faint breathing, the ticking of the clock, the crackling of the fire, and the low intermittent drone of the women's voices would go on forever.

"If the signs tells true, there'll be other deaths among the hills this winter," went on Aunt Abigail, looking from one to the other of the little group. "The dawgs has been a-howlin' awful this winter. Well, the Lord gives an' the Lord takes away; an' none of us knows when our time is a-comin'. When you settle on a spot fer Annie's grave, Bill, you'll want to see that there's a piece left alongside fer yerse'f to lay beside her."

Bill shifted his legs and grunted. The grunt might have meant anything.

There was a low moan. This time they all looked toward the bed for a moment, then sank back into the old positions. Again a faint, rattling gasp. Aunt Abigail got up from her chair with ill-concealed alacrity. Aunt Sally and Aunt Selina looked at each other, then toward the bed, and rose and followed her lead. Once more a faint, guttural gasp came from the dying woman's white lips. Aunt Abigail bent over her, her hand on her pulse, and listened. Then she turned back the covers and placed her hand upon her sister's heart. There were a few moments of heavy silence broken at last by the voice of Aunt Abigail, who spoke with a certain subdued sharpness and authoritativeness. "It's time to stop the clock. Annie's gone!"

Preparations for the funeral began at once. The children, confused and bewildered, were dazed more than grieved by their mother's death, the full gravity of which they could not realize in the midst of Aunt Abigail's hectic hurry and scurry. There was much to be done. The girls' Sunday dresses of red cotton crêpe must be dyed black, their hair ribbons likewise. Aunt Abigail stood over the boiling dye in the wash boiler and stirred and lifted the goods with two long smooth pieces of broom handle till they were funereal enough to satisfy her. Then she soused and rinsed them through many waters and hung them dripping on the line, three sad little black garments, weeping as it were for their own dismal transformation. Lizzie May went out and looked at them and burst suddenly into loud weeping at the sight of what had so lately been the three pretty little red dresses that their mother had made for them. She could not have told whether it was for the dresses or her mother that she was crying. Then the dresses had to be pressed by Aunt Abigail's swift, capable hands. And the boys' Sunday clothes and Bill's Sunday suit—the one he was married in—had to be aired and pressed also.

"Air you sure yer dad's got a fine white shirt?" asked Aunt Abigail, looking up at Luella from the suit she was pressing.

Luella was washing dishes. She let her hands rest idle in the dishwater for a moment.

"Dad's got a fine shirt," she answered promptly, "but it's stripèd."

"Is the stripes black?"

"I couldn't say fer sure if the stripes is black or navy blue."

"Well, you'd best fetch it here an' let me look at it, Elly, 'cause if the stripes hain't black it won't do fer 'im to wear at his own wife's funeral," opined Aunt Abigail.

Luella wiped off her hands and brought the shirt, which Aunt Abigail, after careful inspection at the window, pronounced to be satisfactory.

"The stripes is black all right. It'll do," she approved, handing it back to Luella, who folded it away again in the drawer.

Bill went about in a dazed way, hardly conscious of the life about him. He did the chores about the barn and chopped the wood mechanically from force of habit. When he was spoken to he did not hear. He looked haggard and grief-stricken.

"He feels bad, don't he, poor man," said Aunt Mary Blackford, looking out of the kitchen window at his stooping figure straggling aimlessly toward the barn.

"Yaas, he grieves some," admitted Aunt Abigail. "But he'll be a-lookin' araound fer another afore the year's out. That's haow men is."

The neighborhood for miles around came to the funeral. The hitched buggies filled the barnyard and were strung out for some distance along the side of the road. The women wore their black mourning clothes, with little white aprons tied about their waists. Some of the men had on their wedding suits. Some wore ill-fitting readymades bought from the mail order house after a good crop year. Others came in clean overalls and corduroy jackets lined with sheepskin. All were shaved, sleek-haired and serious-looking. When they had tied their horses, they gathered together in little knots in the barnyard talking in low tones, not about the dead, but about the price of hogs on the hoof, the long, hard winter that it had been this year, and the best way of preparing a tobacco bed. At a sign from the undertaker, they filed respectfully, with bared heads, into the little front room whither their womenfolk had preceded them.

The long coffin stood on a trestle in the middle of the room. It seemed tremendously large and imposing. The mouse-like little woman was claiming more attention now than she had ever done in all the forty-odd years of her drab existence. Bill sat at the head, staring straight before him. The children, with red eyes and dazed, frightened faces, sat along one side. Aunt Abigail and several other near relatives, with solemn faces and handkerchiefs in their hands, completed the circle about the bier. The other mourners stood or sat against the walls. Several of the women were crying. The three women who had laid out Aunt Annie and had not shed a tear at her death, were all weeping copiously now.

The preacher was young, insignificant, and ineffectual, a poor wisp of humanity, who had probably drifted into preaching because it was the only thing that he could do, and had been elbowed into this remote corner by the law of the survival of the fittest. In the flat, empty voice of one who has sounded no depths of life, he spoke feebly of the virtues of the "dear departed sister," offered a sort of canned consolation to the "bereaved husband and children," and mumbled a few concluding words about the "hope of a glorious resurrection."

Then Jabez Moorhouse rose to the six feet three inches of his height.

"Friends an' neighbors," he said, standing simply with his hands in his pockets and speaking in the tone of one talking across the kitchen stove, "the Reverend Mister Spragg has spoke the blessin' of the church over Aunt Annie Pippinger that lies here in the coffin. But not many of us is church goers an' the Reverend Mister Spragg is not much acquainted among us. The Bible says, 'Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.' So I can't let this moment go by without risin' to my feet to offer our respects as friends an' neighbors to the memory of one o' the kindest, best-hearted and hardest-workin' wimmin in the whole of Scott County. Solomon, the wise man, says, 'The heart knoweth its own bitterness.' An' we all know that talk don't do much to help them that suffers. But I feel I speak for all of us here when I say how sad we feel for Bill Pippinger an' for these motherless little uns an' how we're all a-standin' here ready to do what we kin to make this loss easier for him to bear. Amen. Let us all sing, 'Nearer, my God, to Thee.'"

Most of the women were crying now and the men clearing their throats and furtively wiping their eyes with the backs of their hands. But they all joined bravely if haltingly in the old funeral hymn, as Jabez' deep, sonorous voice leading them filled the little room.

Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer to Thee,

E'en though it be a cross

That raises me;

Still all my song shall be

Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer to Thee.

With the end of the hymn the mourners passed about the coffin to take their last look at the dead, then went out respectfully and left the family alone.

On the way out to form the funeral procession, the Reverend Spragg touched Jabez Moorhouse on the elbow.

"I—I wonder if you would mind reading the service at the grave? You could do it as well as I can. You know I preach in three churches and they're a long way apart and it keeps me busy going between them, especially with the roads so bad. It's a long way to the graveyard and I have to preach at seven to-night in Mayville Junction."

The little preacher was embarrassed, apologetic, but anxious to be released. He pressed a leaflet containing the service into Jabez' hand.

"All right," said Jabez, not without a trace of condescension, "I'll do it. But you don't need to give me no book." He handed back the leaflet.

The long, cold drive seemed as though it would never end; but at last they got to the little graveyard, a few white and gray stones and painted wooden slabs crowning a hill. Here they climbed out of the buggies and stamped up and down a bit to limber up their numb feet and stiff legs.

Then they gathered about the open grave, Bill and his children nearest, the others clustered about them in a silent group, the men holding their hats awkwardly in their hands, and Jabez Moorhouse spoke over the dead what he remembered of the graveside service.

"Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down. He fleeth as it were a shadow.

"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we therefore commit her body to the ground."

He said it tenderly, as one who has come to realize that to be committed to the ground may be sweet, soothing, and desirable.

"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, earth to earth."

It was over and they turned away.

But there was one to whom the thought of the lonely grave was anguish. It was when they were getting into the wagon for the long drive home, and the other mourners were letting their thoughts dwell with pleasant expectancy on fried side of hog and corn cakes, that Bill spoke for the first time since they left the house.

"Well, young uns, you hain't got no mammy now." His voice broke and he dropped his face in his hands and shook with sobs. The children gathered about him, wailing dismally. It was a long time before he could control himself enough to gather up the lines and say: "Git up there," to Tom and Bob.

CHAPTER V

For a while it was very dismal and lonely in the Pippinger household. Bill continued to send the children to school and made shift to do the housework as best he could in his slovenly male fashion. When the little Pippingers got home from school in the gathering dusk of the gray winter afternoon, there was no mother briskly baking fragrant cookies or frying corn cakes and sizzling strips of sowbelly. The untidy kitchen, already in twilight, was usually empty, with Bill choring about the barn or away doing a day's work somewhere in the neighborhood. If he happened to be in the kitchen, he sat hunched over the stove in a half stupor, his quid of tobacco in his cheek, his eyes fascinated by the gleams of fire that could be seen through the open sliding draught in front. The twins, now become the housekeepers of the family, would bustle about, polish the lamp chimney and light the lamp, brush the ashes from the stove and the hearth with the turkey feather duster, sweep up the floor and get together the evening meal. Judith helped, but only under direction. She had to be told to run and fetch the side of bacon, to get out the mixing bowl and big spoon for the corn cake batter, and to wash the milk strainer, which Bill had not washed clean in the morning. Elmer and Craw generally went with their father to help milk and do up the barn chores; and Judith went too whenever she could slip away from the twins.

On Saturdays the twins, with Judith's somewhat reluctant help, cleaned house thoroughly, repairing with feminine housewifely zeal the ravages of a week of slipshodness. They polished the stove, scrubbed the table and the floor, dusted the shelves, swept the bedrooms, beat the dust out of the rag mats, and hung out the bedding to air. Sometimes when they were busily at work, Bill would come into the kitchen, glance about and ask, "Where's your—?" then leave the question unfinished, suddenly remembering that she was not there and never would be there again. He had always been in the habit of asking for her this way whenever he came in and did not see her at once.

As time went on and the March sunshine warmed the earth into life, Bill became more cheerful. Everything takes heart in the spring; and Bill too felt the warmth of the sunshine in his bones. Like his children, like Tom and Bob and the cows and the geese and the chickens and the grass under his feet, he lifted up his face to the light and breathed deep of the warm, sweet air. He stretched, yawned, shook from him the heaviness and lethargy of winter, and felt once more that it was good to be alive. On those rare, delicate days in March when the earth is full of a promise of spring, a promise more intoxicating than any fulfilment, he whistled and sang again as he trudged round and round the field in the long furrow getting the ground ready for the new corn crop. So the shadow of death passed from the Pippinger family.

All his thoughts now were of his children, all his planning was for them. They were in school, all five of them; but Craw and the twins would graduate this year. After that everything would be easier. Craw would be at home to help him on the farm and the twins would keep house. Then with Craw's help he would get the farm back into good shape again. The land was good; and if he could once get the washes filled up so that it could be plowed, he and Craw would raise as good a crop of tobacco on it as Uncle Ezra Pettit or old Hiram Stone or any of that lot that felt themselves so much better than other folks because they had the time and the money to keep their ground in shape to raise good tobacco. Yes, Bill would show them all right. In the cool, invigorating March air and heartening sunshine he felt himself filled with a boundless zest for work and achievement.

Things went better with the Pippinger family after the twins were through school. Little women already, with a natural zest for housekeeping, they polished the milk pans, cleaned the cupboards, churned the butter and washed and rinsed and blued the clothes, all the time clacking cheerfully about their work and about the new dresses they were making and the coats they were planning to have before winter came on and the new shoes they would get when dad got paid for his last job of hauling and the Fair at Cynthiana, to which they were all going, dad having promised each of them a quarter to spend. Already, too, they had a nose for gossip and loved to talk about the neighbors and their doings. Again and again they told each other how stingy Uncle Ezra Pettit was and how meanly the Pettits lived in spite of their big house and all their land and money.

Judith was such poor help about the house that the twins soon stopped bothering with her and did the work themselves, only insisting that she look after her own clothes and take her turn at washing the dishes, a job that none of them enjoyed. These tasks done, she was left free to follow her father about the barnyard or run the woods and fields. Soon, however, because she was not lazy and took a deep interest in the farm animals, she made herself useful by taking over most of the out-of-door chores. She brought up the cows and milked them, fed the pigs, took care of the little chicks and saw that all the broods were cooped for the night. She hoed in the garden and kept the rows of beans and turnips thrifty and free from weeds. Like a lynx following its prey, she stalked the turkey hens and found their nests; and she would go out in any kind of storm to save the tender little turkeys from the wetting that would be their death.

Living so intimately in the life of the barnyard, the mysteries of sex were not mysteries at all to her, but matters of routine to be dealt with in the same matter-of-fact fashion in which you slopped the pigs or tied the mules to the hitching post. She knew all about the ways of roosters with hens. She saw calves born and testicles cut from squealing pigs, from young bulls to change them into fat steers and from young stallions to make them tractable in harness. These things interested her, but not more so than other barnyard activities. She was strangely free from precocious interest in sex matters. At school she ignored the small dirtiness that lurks wherever many children are gathered together.

From her own and the neighbors' barnyards Judith had picked up all the profanity and obscenity that is a part of the life of such places, and she used it freely, joyously and unashamedly. Bill's mild remonstrances, "What kind o' talk is that for a little gal?" and the horror of the twins had no effect upon her.

"I should suttenly think shame to myse'f, Judy, if I was you," Lizzie May would say, "to talk that air way. What makes you go fer to do it?"

"Well, Craw talks that way, an' the Blackford boys does, an' dad does too when he's with other men. I ain't no diff'rent from them."