In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim

E-text prepared by Roger Frank
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)

A SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION

IN CONNECTION

WITH THE

De WILLOUGHBY CLAIM

BY

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

AUTHOR OF

“A LADY OF QUALITY,” “LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY,” ETC.

THE PEOPLE’S LIBRARY

Issued Monthly

By The American News Company

NEW YORK

THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY

PUBLISHERS’ AGENTS

39-41 CHAMBERS STREET

Copyright, 1899

by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

All rights reserved

The owners of the copyright of this volume sanction the issue of this edition as a paper-covered book, to be sold at fifty cents; but, while not wishing to interfere with any purchaser binding his own copy, they do not sanction placing on the market any volumes of this edition bound in any other form.

In Connection with

The De Willoughby Claim

CHAPTER I

High noon at Talbot’s Cross-roads, with the mercury standing at ninety-eight in the shade—though there was not much shade worth mentioning in the immediate vicinity of the Cross-roads post-office, about which, upon the occasion referred to, the few human beings within sight and sound were congregated. There were trees enough a few hundred yards away, but the post-office stood boldly and unflinchingly in the blazing sun. The roads crossing each other stretched themselves as far as the eye could follow them, the red clay transformed into red dust which even an ordinarily lively imagination might have fancied was red hot. The shrill, rattling cry of the grasshoppers, hidden in the long yellow sedge-grass and drouth-smitten corn, pierced the stillness now and then with a suddenness startling each time it broke forth, because the interval between each of the pipings was given by the hearers to drowsiness or heated unconscious naps.

In such napping and drowsiness the present occupants of the post-office were indulging. Upon two empty goods boxes two men in copperas-coloured jean garments reclined in easy attitudes, their hats tilted over their eyes, while several others balanced their split-seated chairs against the house or the post-porch and dozed.

Inside the store the postmaster and proprietor tilted his chair against the counter and dozed also, though fitfully, and with occasional restless changes of position and smothered maledictions against the heat. He was scarcely the build of man to sleep comfortably at high noon in midsummer. His huge, heavy body was rather too much for him at any time, but during the hot weather he succumbed beneath the weight of his own flesh. Hamlin County knew him as “Big Tom D’Willerby,” and, indeed, rather prided itself upon him as a creditable possession. It noted any increase in his weight, repeated his jokes, and bore itself patiently under his satire. His indolence it regarded with leniency not entirely untinged with secret exultation.

“The derndest, laziest critter,” his acquaintances would remark to each other; “the derndest I do reckon that ever the Lord made. Nigh unto three hundred he weighs, and never done a lick o’ work in his life. Not one! Lord, no! Tom D’Willerby work? I guess not. He gits on fine without any o’ that in his’n. Work ain’t his kind. It’s a pleasin’ sight to see him lyin’ round thar to the post-office an’ the boys a-waitin’ on to him, doin’ his tradin’ for him, an’ sortin’ the mail when it comes in. They’re ready enough to do it jest to hear him gas.”

And so they were. About eight years before the time the present story commences, he had appeared upon the scene apparently having no object in view but to make himself as comfortable as possible. He took up his quarters at one of the farm-houses among the mountains, paid his hostess regularly for the simple accommodations she could afford him, and, before three months passed, had established his reputation and, without making the slightest apparent effort, had gathered about him a large circle of friends and admirers.

“His name’s D’Willerby,” Mrs. Pike would drawl when questioned about him, “an’ he’s kin to them D’Willerbys that’s sich big bugs down to D’Lileville. I guess they ain’t much friendly, though. He don’t seem to like to have nothin’ much to say about ’em. Seems like he has money a-plenty to carry him along, an’ he talks some o’ settin’ up a store somewhars.”

In the course of a month or so he carried out the plan, selecting Talbot’s Cross-roads as the site for the store in question. He engaged hands to erect a frame building, collected by the assistance of some mysterious agency a heterogeneous stock consisting of calicoes, tinware, coffee, sugar, tobacco, and various waif and stray commodities, and, having done so, took his seat on the porch one morning and announced the establishment open.

Upon the whole, the enterprise was a success. Barnesville was fifteen miles distant, and the farmers, their wives and daughters, were glad enough to stop at the Cross-roads for their calico dresses and store-coffee. By doing so they were saved a long ride and gained superior conversational advantages. “D’Willerby’s mighty easy to trade with,” it was said.

There was always a goodly number of “critters” tied to the fence-corners, and consequently to business was added the zest of society and the interchanging of gossip. “D’Willerby’s” became a centre of interest and attraction, and D’Willerby himself a county institution.

Big Tom, however, studiously avoided taking a too active part in the duties of the establishment. Having with great forethought provided himself with a stout chair which could be moved from behind the counter to the door, and from the door to the store as the weather demanded, he devoted himself almost exclusively to sitting in it and encouraging a friendly and accommodating spirit in his visitors and admirers. The more youthful of those admirers he found useful in the extreme.

“Boys,” he would say, “a man can’t do more than a thousand things at once. A man can’t talk a steady stream and do himself justice, and settle the heftiest kind of questions, and say the kind of things these ladies ought to have said to ’em, and then measure out molasses and weigh coffee and slash off calico dresses and trade for eggs. Some of you’ve got to roust out and do some clerking, or I’ve got to quit. I’ve not got the constitution to stand it. Jim, you ’tend to Mis’ Pike, and Bill, you wait on Mis’ Jones. Lord! Lord! half a dozen of you here, and not one doing a thing—not a derned thing! Do you want me to get up and leave Miss Mirandy and do things myself? We’ve got to settle about the colour of this gown. How’d you feel now, if it wasn’t becoming to her complexion? Just help yourself to that plug of tobacco, Hance, and lay your ten cents in the cash drawer, and then you can weigh out that butter of Mis’ Simpson’s.”

When there was a prospect of a post-office at the Cross-roads, there was only one opinion as to who was the man best calculated to adorn the position of postmaster.

“The store’s right yere, Tom,” said his patrons, “an’ you’re right yere. Ye can write and spell off things ’thout any trouble, an’ I reckon ye wouldn’t mind the extry two dollars comin’ in ev’ry month.”

“Lord! Lord!” groaned Tom, who was stretched full length on the floor of the porch when the subject was first broached. “Do you want a man to kill himself out an’ out, boys? Work himself into eternal kingdom come? Who’d do the extra work, I’d like to know—empty out the mail-bag and hand out the mail, and do the extra cussin’? That would be worth ten dollars a month. And, like as not, the money would be paid in cheques, and who’s goin’ to sign ’em? Lord! I believe you think a man’s immortal soul could be bought for fifty cents a day. You don’t allow for the wear and tear on a fellow’s constitution, boys.”

But he allowed himself to be placed in receipt of the official salary in question, and the matter of extra labour settled itself. Twice a week a boy on horseback brought the mail-bag from Barnesville, and when this youth drew rein before the porch Big Tom greeted him from indoors with his habitual cordiality.

“’Light, sonny, ’light!” he would call out in languidly sonorous tones; “come in and let these fellows hear the news. Just throw that mail-bag on the counter and let’s hear from you. Plenty of good water down at the spring. Might as well take that bucket and fill it if you want a drink. I’ve been waiting for just such a man as you to do it. These fellows would sit here all day and let a man die. I can’t get anything out of ’em. I’ve about half a mind to quit sometimes and leave them to engineer the thing themselves. Look here now, is any fellow going to attend to that mail, or is it going to lie there till I have to get up and attend to it myself? I reckon that’s what you want. I reckon that’d just suit you. Jehoshaphat! I guess you’d like me to take charge of the eternal universe.”

It was for the mail he waited with his usual complement of friends and assistants on the afternoon referred to at the opening of this chapter. The boy was behind time, and, under the influence of the heat, conversation had at first flagged and then subsided. Big Tom himself had taken the initiative of dropping into a doze, and his companions had one by one followed his example, or at least made an effort at doing so. The only one of the number who remained unmistakably awake was a little man who sat on the floor of the end of the porch, his small legs, encased in large blue jean pantaloons, dangling over the side. This little man, who was gently and continuously ruminating, with brief “asides” of expectoration, kept his eyes fixed watchfully upon the Barnesville Road, and he it was who at last roused the dozers.

“Thar’s some un a-comin’,” he announced in a meek voice. “’Tain’t him.”

Big Tom opened his eyes, stretched himself, and gradually rose in his might, proving a very tight fit for the establishment, especially the doorway, towards which he lounged, supporting himself against its side.

“Who is it, Ezra?” he asked, almost extinguishing the latter cognomen with a yawn.

“It’s thet thar feller!”

All the other men awakened in a body. Whomsoever the individual might be, he had the power to rouse them to a lively exhibition of interest. One and all braced themselves to look at the horseman approaching along the Barnesville Road.

“He’s a kinder curi’s-lookin’ feller,” observed one philosopher.

“Well, at a distance of half a mile, perhaps he is,” said Tom. “In a cloud of dust and the sun blazin’ down on him like thunderation, I don’t know but you’re right, Nath.”

“Git out!” replied Nath, placidly. “He’s a curi’s-actin’ feller, anyway. Don’t go nowhar nor hev nothin’ to say to nobody. Jest sets right down in that thar holler with his wife, as if b’ars an’ painters wus all a man or woman wanted round ’em.”

“She’s a doggoned purty critter,” said the little man in large trousers, placidly. He had not appeared to listen to the conversation, but, as this pertinent remark proved, it had not been lost on him.

His observation was greeted with a general laugh, which seemed to imply that the speaker had a character which his speech sustained.

“Whar did ye see her, Stamps?” was asked.

The little man remained unmoved, still dangling his legs over the porch side, still ruminating, still gazing with pale, blinking eyes up the road.

“Went over the mountain to ’tend court to Bakersville, an’ took it on my road to go by thar. She was settin’ in the door, an’ I see her afore she seen me. When she hearn the sound of my mule’s feet, she got up an’ went into the house. It was a powerful hot mornin’, ‘n’ I wus mighty dry, ‘n’ I stopped fur a cool drink. She didn’t come out when fust I hollered, ‘n’ when she did come, she looked kinder skeered ‘n’ wouldn’t talk none. Kep’ her sunbonnet over her face, like she didn’t want to be seen overmuch.”

“What does she look like, Ezry?” asked one of the younger men.

Mr. Stamps meditated a few seconds.

“Don’t look like none o’ the women folk about yere,” he replied, finally. “She ain’t their kind.”

“What d’ye mean by that?”

“Dunno eggsactly. She’s mighty white ‘n’ young-lookin’ ‘n’ delicate—but that ain’t all.”

Tom made a restless movement.

“Look here, boys,” he broke in, suddenly, “here’s a nice business—a lot of fellows asking questions about a woman an’ gossiping as if there wasn’t a thing better to do. Leave ’em alone, if they want to be left alone—leave ’em alone.”

Mr. Stamps expectorated in an entirely unbiased manner. He seemed as willing to leave his story alone as he had been to begin it.

“He’s comin’ yere,” he said, softly, after a pause. “Thet’s whar he’s comin’.”

The rest of the company straightened themselves in their seats and made an effort to assume the appearance of slightly interested spectators. It became evident that Mr. Stamps was right, and that the rider was about to dismount.

He was a man about thirty years of age, thin, narrow-chested, and stooping. His coarse clothes seemed specially ill-suited to his slender figure, his black hair was long, and his beard neglected; his broad hat was pulled low over his eyes and partially concealed his face.

“He don’t look none too sociable when he’s nigher than half a mile,” remarked Nath in an undertone.

He glanced neither to the right nor to the left as he strode past the group into the store. Strange to relate, Tom had lounged behind the counter and stood ready to attend him. He asked for a few necessary household trifles in a low tone, and, as Tom collected and made them into a clumsy package, he stood and looked on with his back turned towards the door.

Those gathered upon the porch listened eagerly for the sound of conversation, but none reached their ears. Tom moved heavily to and fro for a few minutes, and then the parcel was handed across the counter.

“Hot weather,” said the stranger, without raising his eyes.

“Yes,” said Tom, “hot weather, sir.”

“Good-day,” said the stranger.

“Good-day,” answered Tom.

And his customer took his departure. He passed out as he had passed in; but while he was indoors little Mr. Stamps had changed his position. He now sat near the wooden steps, his legs dangling as before, his small countenance as noncommittal as ever. As the stranger neared him, he raised his pale little eyes, blinked them, indulged in a slight jerk of the head, and uttered a single word of greeting.

“Howdy?”

The stranger started, glanced down at him, and walked on. He made no answer, untied his horse, mounted it, and rode back over the Barnesville Road towards the mountain.

Mr. Stamps remained seated near the steps and blinked after him silently until he was out of sight.

“Ye didn’t seem to talk none, D’Willerby,” said one of the outsiders when Tom reappeared.

Tom sank into his chair, thrust his hands into his pockets, and stretched his limbs out to their fullest capacity.

“Let a man rest, boys,” he said, “let a man rest!”

He was silent for some time afterwards, and even on the arrival of the mail was less discursive than usual. It was Mr. Stamps who finally aroused him from his reverie.

Having obtained his mail—one letter in a legal-looking envelope—and made all other preparations to return to the bosom of his family, Stamps sidled up to the counter, and, leaning over it, spoke in an insinuatingly low tone:

“She was bar’foot,” he said, mildly, “‘n’ she hadn’t been raised to it—that was one thing. Her feet wus as soft ‘n’ tender as a baby’s; ‘n’ fur another thing, her hands wus as white as her face, ‘n’ whiter. Thet ain’t the way we raise ’em in Hamlin County—that’s all.”

And, having said it, he slipped out of the store, mounted his mule, and jogged homeward on the Barnesville Road also.

CHAPTER II

Before the war there were no people better known or more prominent in their portion of the State than the De Willoughbys of Delisle County, Tennessee. To have been born a De Willoughby was, in general opinion, to have been born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth. It was indeed to have been born to social dignity, fortune, courage, and more than the usual allowance of good looks. And though the fortune was lavishly spent, the courage sometimes betrayed into a rather theatrical dare-deviltry, and the good looks prone to deteriorate in style, there was always the social position left, and this was a matter of the deepest importance in Delisleville. The sentiments of Delisleville were purely patrician. It was the county town, and contained six thousand inhabitants, two hotels, and a court-house. It had also two or three business streets and half a dozen churches, all very much at odds with each other and each seriously inclined to disbelieve in the probable salvation of the rest. The “first families” (of which there were eight or ten, with numerous branches) attended the Episcopal Church, the second best the Presbyterian, while the inferior classes, who could scarcely be counted at all, since they had not been born in Delisleville, drifted to the Methodists.

The De Willoughbys attended the Episcopal Church, and, being generally endowed with voices, two or three of them sang in the choir, which was composed entirely of members of the attending families and executed most difficult music in a manner which was the cause after each service of much divided opinion. Opinion was divided because the choir was divided—separated, in fact, into several small, select cliques, each engaged in deadly and bitter feud with the rest. When the moon-eyed soprano arose, with a gentle flutter, and opened her charming mouth in solo, her friends settled themselves in their pews with a general rustle of satisfaction, while the friends of the contralto exchanged civilly significant glances; and on the way home the solo in question was disposed of in a manner at once thorough and final. The same thing occurred when the contralto was prominent, or the tenor, or the baritone, or the basso, each of whom it was confidently asserted by competent Delisleville judges might have rendered him or herself and Delisleville immortal upon the lyric stage if social position had not placed the following of such a profession entirely out of the question. There had indeed been some slight trouble in one or two of the best families, occasioned by the musical fervour of youthful scions who were in danger of being led into indiscretions by their enthusiasm.

The De Willoughbys occupied one of the most prominent pews in the sacred edifice referred to. Judge De Willoughby, a large, commanding figure, with a fine sweep of long hair, mustache and aquiline profile; Mrs. De Willoughby (who had been a Miss Vanuxem of South Carolina), slender, willowy, with faded brunette complexion and still handsome brunette eyes, and three or four little De Willoughbys, all more or less pretty and picturesque. These nearly filled the pew. The grown-up Misses De Willoughby sang with two of their brothers in the choir. There were three sons, Romaine, De Courcy, and Thomas. But Thomas did not sing in the choir. Thomas, alas! did not sing at all. Thomas, it was universally conceded by every De Willoughby of the clan, was a dismal failure. Even from his earliest boyhood, when he had been a huge, overgrown fellow, whose only redeeming qualities were his imperturbable good-humor and his ponderous wit, his family had regarded him with a sense of despair. In the first place, he was too big. His brothers were tall, lithe-limbed youths, who were graceful, dark-eyed, dark-haired, and had a general air of brilliancy. They figured well at college and in their world; they sang and danced in a manner which, combining itself with the name of De Willoughby, gave them quite an ennobled sort of distinction, a touch of patrician bravado added to their picturesqueness in the eyes of the admiring; and their little indiscretions were of a nature to be ignored or treated with gentle consideration as the natural result of their youth, spirit, and Southern blood. But at nineteen Thomas had attained a height of six feet five, with a proportionate breadth and ponderousness. His hands and feet were a disgrace to a De Willoughby, and his voice was a roar when he was influenced by anything like emotion. Displays of emotion, however, were but rare occurrences with him. He was too lazy to be roused to anger or any other violent feeling. He spent his leisure hours in lying upon sofas or chairs and getting very much in everybody’s way. He lounged through school and college without the slightest éclat attending his progress.

It became the pastime of the household to make rather a butt of him, and for the most part he bore himself under the difficulties of his position peaceably enough, though there had been times when his weighty retorts had caused some sharp wincing.

“You’re an ill-natured devil, Tom,” his brother De Courcy said to him, as he stood fingering the ornaments on the mantel after one such encounter. “You’re an ill-natured devil.”

Tom was stretched on a sofa, with his big hands under his head, and did not condescend to look around.

“I’m not such a thundering fool as you take me for, that’s all,” he answered. “I’ve got my eyes open. Keep to your side of the street, and I will keep to mine.”

It was true that he had his eyes open and had more wit and feeling than they gave him credit for. No one understood him, not even his mother, who had deplored him from the first hour of his overweighted babyhood, when she had given him over to the care of his negro nurse in despair.

In the midst of a large family occupied with all the small gaieties attendant upon popularity and social distinction in a provincial town, he lived a lonely life, and one not without its pathetic side if it had been so looked upon. But even he himself had never regarded the matter from a sentimental point of view. He endeavoured to resign himself to his fate and meet it philosophically.

“I wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing, boys,” he had said to his friends at college, where he had been rather popular. “I wasn’t cut out for it. Go ahead and leave me behind. I’m not a bad sort of fellow, but there is too much of me in one way and too little in another. What the Lord made such a man as me for after six thousand years’ experience, I haven’t found out yet. A man may as well make up his mind about himself first as last. I’ve made up mine and nobody differs from me so far as I’ve gone.”

When he left college his brothers had already chosen their vocations. Delisle County knew them as promising young lawyers, each having distinguished himself with much fiery eloquence in an occasional case. The cases had not always been gained, but the fervour and poetry of the appeals to the rather muddled and startled agriculturists who formed the juries were remembered with admiration and as being worthy of Delisleville, and were commented upon in the Delisleville Oriflamme as the “fit echoings of an eloquence long known in our midst as the birthright of those bearing one of our proudest names, an eloquence spurred to its eagle flights by the warm, chivalric blood of a noble race.”

But the “warm, chivalric blood” of the race in question seemed to move but slowly in veins of its most substantial representative. The inertness of his youngest son roused that fine old Southern gentleman and well-known legal dignitary, Judge De Willoughby, to occasional outbursts of the fiery eloquence before referred to which might well have been productive of remarkable results.

“Good God, sir!” he would trumpet forth, “good God, sir! have we led the State for generation after generation to be disgraced and degraded and dragged in the dust by one of our own stock at last? The De Willoughbys have been gentlemen, sir, distinguished at the bar, in politics, and in the highest social circles of the South; and here we have a De Willoughby whose tastes would be no credit to—to his overseer, a De Willoughby who has apparently neither the ambition nor the qualification to shine in the sphere in which he was born! Blow your damned brains out, if you have any; blow your damned brains out, and let’s have an end of the whole disgraceful business.”

This referred specially to Tom’s unwillingness to enter upon the study of medicine, which had been chosen for him.

“I should make a better farmer,” he said, bitterly, after a prolonged discussion. “I’m not the build for women’s bedrooms and children’s bedsides. De Courcy would have suited you better.”

“De Courcy is a gentleman—a gentleman, sir! He was born one and would shine in any profession a gentleman may adorn. As for you, this is the only thing left for you, and you shall try it, by G——!”

“Oh,” said Tom, “I’ll try it. I can only fail, and I’ve done that before.”

He did try it forthwith, applying himself to his studies with a persistence quite creditable. He read lying upon sofas and lounging in the piazzas, and in course of time was sent to attend lectures in Philadelphia.

Whether he could have gained his diploma or not was never decided. Those of the professors who commented on him at all, spoke of him as slow but persevering, and regarded him rather as a huge receiving machine of orderly habits. The Judge began to congratulate himself upon his determination, and his mother thought it “a good thing poor Tom was disposed of.”

But one terrible morning just before the first course of lectures was completed, he suddenly returned, walking into the Judge’s office without any previous intimation of his intention.

When he turned in his seat and confronted him, the Judge lost his breath.

“You!” he cried; “you!”

“Yes,” said Tom, “I’ve come back.” He was rather pale and nervous, but there was a dogged, resigned look in his eyes. “I’ve made up my mind,” he added, “that I cannot stand it. Turn me loose on one of your plantations to—to boss niggers. You said once I was fit for an overseer. Perhaps you weren’t wrong. Say the word and I’ll start to-morrow.”

The Judge’s aquiline countenance turned gray with fury. His fine mustache seemed to curl itself anew.

“You—you accursed scoundrel!” he gasped. “You accursed, underbred hound! Tell me what this means, or I’ll strangle you.”

“You’ll say I’m a fool,” said Tom, “and I suppose it’s true, and—and——” with a tremour in his voice, “I’ve no need to be particular about the names you call me. I ought to be used to them by this time.”

“Speak out,” thundered the Judge, “and tell me the whole disgraceful truth!”

“It won’t take long,” said Tom; “I told it when I said I’d made up my mind I couldn’t stand it. I’ve been walking the hospitals and attending the clinics for the last three months, and I’ve had a chance to see what my life would be if I went through. I’ve seen things to make a man tremble when they came back to him in the dead of night—agony and horror—women and children! Good Lord! I can’t tell you. De Courcy could, but I can’t. I’d rather be in hell than live such a life day after day. I tried to stand up against it at first. I thought I might get used to it, but I haven’t the nerve—or something was wrong. It got worse and worse, until I used to start up out of my sleep in a cold sweat, hearing screams and groans and prayers. That was the worst of all—their prayers to us to help them and not to hurt them. Four days ago a child was brought in—a child four or five years old. There was an operation to be performed, and I was the man chosen to hold it still. Its mother was sent out of the room. My God! how it screamed when it saw her go and knew it was to be left to us. They told me to hold it because I was the strongest, and—and I put my hands on it. I’m a big fellow to look at, and I suppose it knew there was no help for it when I came near. It turned as white as death and looked up at me with the tears streaming down its face. Before the operation was half over it hadn’t the strength left to scream or struggle, and it lay and looked at me and moaned. I should have given up the job, but somehow I couldn’t make up my mind to—to leave it. When it was all done, I gave it back to its mother and went to my rooms. I turned sick on the way and had to sit down to rest. I swore then I’d let the thing drop, and I bought my ticket and came back. I’m not the man for the work. Better men may do it—perhaps it takes better men. I’m not up to it.” And his shaken voice broke as he hung his great head.

A deadly calm settled upon the Judge. He pointed to the door.

“Go home to your mother, sir,” he said, “I’ve done with you. Go and stay with the women. That’s the place for you.”

“He’s a coward as well as a fool,” he said afterwards in the bosom of his family; “a white-livered fool who hasn’t the nerve to look at a sick child.”

It was a terrible day for the household, but at last it was over. Tom went to his room in an apathy. He had been buffeted and scorned and held up to bitter derision until he had ceased to feel anything but a negative, helpless misery.

About a week later Delia Vanuxem appeared upon the scene. Delia Vanuxem was a young cousin of Mrs. De Willoughby’s, and had come to pay her relatives a visit. It was the hospitable custom of Delisleville to cultivate its kinsfolk—more especially its kinswomen. There were always in two or three of the principal families young lady guests who were during their stay in the town the sensation of the hour. Novelty established them as temporary belles; they were petted by their hostesses, attended by small cohorts of admirers, and formed the centre for a round of festivities specially arranged to enliven their visits.

Delia Vanuxem bore away the palm from all such visitors past or to come. She was a true Southern beauty, with the largest dark eyes, the prettiest yielding manner, and the very smallest foot Delisleville had ever fallen prostrate before, it being well known among her admirers that one of her numerous male cousins had once measured her little slipper with a cigar—a story in which Delisleville delighted. And she was not only a pretty, but also a lovable and tender-hearted young creature. Her soft eyes end soft voice did not belie her. She was gentle and kindly to all around her. Mrs. De Willoughby and the two older girls fell in love with her at once, and the Judge himself was aroused to an eloquence of compliment and a courtly grandeur of demeanour which rose even beyond his usual efforts in a line in which he had always shone. The very negroes adored her and vied with each other to do her service.

It was quite natural that a nature so sweet and sympathetic should be awakened to pity for the one member of the gay household who seemed cut off from the rest, and who certainly at the time existed under a darker cloud than usual.

From the first she was more considerate of poor Tom than anyone who had ever been before, and more than once, as he sat silent and gloomy at the table, he looked up to find her lovely eyes resting upon his big frame with a questioning, pitying glance.

“He is so much too big, Aunt Jule,” she wrote home once. “And he seems somehow to feel as if he was always in the way, and, indeed, he is a little sometimes, poor fellow! and everyone appears to think he is only a joke or a mistake; but I have made up my mind never to laugh at him at all as the other girls do. It seems so unkind, and surely he must feel it.”

She never did laugh at him, and sometimes even tried to talk to him, and once drew him out so far in an artful, innocent way, that he told her something of his medical failure and the reasons for it, manifestly ashamed of the story as he related it, and yet telling it so well in a few clumsy, rather disconnected sentences, that when he had finished her eyelashes were wet and she broke into a little shuddering sigh.

“Oh!” she said, “I don’t think you are to blame, really. I have often thought that I could never, never bear to do such things, though, of course, if there was no one to do them it would be dreadful; but——”

“Yes,” said Tom, “there it is. Someone must do it, and I know I’m a confounded coward and ninny, but—but I couldn’t.” And he looked overwhelmed with humiliation.

“But after all,” she said, in the soft voice which had always the sound of appeal in it, “after all, I’m sure it was because you have a kind heart, and a kind heart is worth a great deal. You will do something else.”

“There is nothing else for me to do,” he said, mournfully; “nothing that won’t disgrace the rest, they tell me.”

It was small wonder that this was his final undoing, though neither was to blame. Certainly no fault could be attached to the young creature who meant to be kind to him, as it was her nature to be to all surrounding her; and surely Tom’s great and final blunder arose from no presumption on his part. He had never thought of aspiring to the proud position with regard to her which Romaine and De Courcy seemed to occupy by natural right. It was only now and then, when they were unavoidably engaged, that he had the courage to offer his services as messenger or escort, but even those rare pleasures were a little too much for him. He was so unused to such privileges that they intoxicated him and set his mind in a whirl which prevented his thinking clearly, or, indeed, ever thinking at all sometimes.

Even when it was all over, he scarcely knew how he had been betrayed into the weakness he was guilty of. It was not like him to lose sight of his manifold imperfections; but for once they were swept out of his mind by a momentary madness.

It was on the occasion of a ball at the Delisle House. The Delisle House was the principal hotel, and all important festivities were held in its long dining-hall disguised as a ballroom. The ball was given by a gallant Delisleville Club in honour of Miss Delia Vanuxem, and it was a very magnificent affair indeed. The disguise of the dining-room was complete. It was draped with flags and decorated with wreaths of cedar and paper roses. A band of coloured gentlemen, whose ardour concealed any slight musical discrepancies, assisted the festivities, which—to quote the Oriflamme of the next morning—“the wealth, beauty, and chivalry of Delisleville combined to render unequalled in their gaiety and elegance, making the evening one of the most successful of the piquant occasions

Usually Tom’s part in such festivities was to sit uncomfortably in dull corners, taking up as little room as possible, or piloting his way carefully through the crowd to the supper-table with an elderly lady or a wall-flower clinging timidly to his huge arm. But during this one evening he lost his equilibrium. Delia had been more than usually kind to him, perhaps because she saw his unhappy awkwardness as he towered above everyone else and tried to avoid treading upon his neighbours. She gave him such a pretty smile across the room that he obeyed the impulse to go to her and stand at her side; then, when she left him to dance with De Courcy, she gave him her fan and bouquet and fleecy white wrap to hold, and somehow it seemed not unnatural that De Courcy should bring her back to him as to a sentinel when the dance was over. Thus it was as she sat, flushed a little and smiling, her face uplifted to his, while she thanked him for taking care of her possessions, that the wild thought which so betrayed him rushed into his brain.

“Delia,” he faltered, “will you dance once with me?”

It was so startling a request, that, though she was quick enough to conceal her surprise, she hesitated a second before recovering her breath to give him her answer.

“Yes, Tom, if you like,” she said, and glanced down at her programme. “The next is a waltz, and I can let you have it because Dr. Ballentine has been called away. Do you waltz?”

“I have learned,” he answered, rather huskily and tremulously. “I do it badly, of course, but I know the steps well enough.”

He was so helpless with nervousness that he could scarcely speak, and his hands trembled when they stood up together and he laid his arm reverently about her waist.

She saw his timidity and looked up at him with a kind smile.

“I must be very little,” she said, “I never knew before that I was so little.”

He had thought he should recover himself when the music and motion began, but he did not. He looked down at the delicate head which reached barely to his beating heart, and a blur came before his sight; the light and the crowd of dancers dazzled and confused him. The whirling movement made him dizzy, and he had not expected to be dizzy. He began suddenly to be conscious of his own immensity, the unusualness of his position, and of the fact that here and there he saw a meaning smile; his heart beat faster still, and he knew he had been led into a mistake. He swung round and round too quickly for the music, missed a step, tried to recover himself, became entangled in his partner’s dress, trod on her poor little feet, and fell headlong on the floor, dragging her with him and striking against a passing couple.

It was his brother De Courcy with whom he had come in such violent contact, and it was De Courcy who sprang to Delia’s rescue, assisting her to her feet with all possible grace, and covering her innocent confusion with a brilliant speech, but not, however, before he had directed a terrible scowl at the prostrate culprit and sworn furiously at him under his breath. But Delia was very good to him and did not desert him in the hour of his need, giving him only kind looks and managing to arrange that he should lead her to her seat as if he had not been in disgrace at all.

But the shame and pain of his downfall were sharper pangs than he had ever borne, and before the night was half over he slipped away from the dangers and rushed home to his own room, where he lay awake through the long hours, cursing himself for his folly, and tossing in a fever of humiliation and grief.

In the morning when he came down to the breakfast table, the family were already assembled, and the Judge had heard the story from De Courcy, who told it all the more forcibly in the absence of Miss Vanuxem, who had spent the night at the house of another relative.

When Tom entered, his paternal parent was ready to receive him.

“Trod on Miss Vanuxem’s dress and tore it off her back in the ballroom, did you?” he burst forth. “Made a fool of yourself and a bear-garden of the Delisle House ballroom! What were you trying to dance for? Leave that to men who can manage their limbs, and don’t inflict yourself on women who are too high-bred to refuse to dance with a man who ought to be a gentleman. Stay at home, sir! Stay at home, and don’t make a disgraceful spectacle of yourself in public, particularly when there are lovely women present to witness your humiliation.”

It was the figurative last straw. Tom’s mind had been dark and gloomy enough to begin with, but when during his father’s harangue he glanced up and saw De Courcy bending his aquiline face over his paper with a slightly sardonic smile, he could stand no more.

To the utter dumfounding of his mother and sisters, and even the irate Judge himself, he pushed his chair back and sprang to his feet with an actual roar of rage and pain. His great body seemed to swell until its size overwhelmed them; his eyes blazed, he shook his tremendous fist.

“Leave me alone!” he shouted, “leave me alone! Yes, I did make a fool of myself! Yes, I did knock a woman down and tear her dress and look like an ass and set the whole room laughing at me, women and all—the best-bred and sweetest of them! It’s all true, every word of it, and more too—more too! And that’s not enough, but my own father serves it up again, and you fellows sit there and grin over it to make it worse. That’s right, pitch in, all of you, and drive me mad and put an end to it.”

He upset his chair and a small negro boy with a plate of waffles, and, striding over the scattered ruins, dashed out of the room with tears of fury in his eyes.

It was the turning-point of his existence. He made his bitter resolve as he walked out of the house down the street. Early as it was, he went straight to Delia, and when he found himself alone with her, poured forth all the misery of his sore heart.

“If I had been born a clod-hopper it would have been better for me,” he said. “I have no place here among men with decently shaped bodies and clear heads. I’m a great clumsy fool, and there’s no help for it. If I’d had more brain, I might have managed the rest; but I’m a dullard too. They may well sneer at me. I think I will go away and bury myself somewhere among the people I ought to have lived among by rights. In some simple country place I might find those who know less than I do, and forget the rest; and perhaps be content enough in time. I shall never marry. I—I suppose you know that, Delia.” And he took her little hand and laid it on his own open palm and sat silent a moment looking at it, and at last suddenly a great drop fell upon it which made them both start. He did not look up at her, but took out his big white handkerchief and wiped the drop gently away and then stooped and kissed the spot where it had fallen. Her own lashes were wet when their eyes met afterwards, and she spoke in a subdued voice.

“I have always liked you very much, Cousin Tom,” she said; “you mustn’t talk of going away. We should miss you much more than you think. I know I should be very sorry.”

“You won’t be here to miss me, Delia,” he answered, sadly.

The hand on his palm trembled slightly and her eyes faltered under his gaze.

“I—think it—is possible I shall live in Delisleville,” she whispered.

His heart bounded as if it would burst his side. He knew what she meant in an instant, though he had never suspected it before.

“Oh! Oh!” he groaned. “Oh, Delia! which—which of them is it? It’s De Courcy, I could swear. It’s De Courcy!”

“Yes,” she faltered, “it is De Courcy.”

He drew his hand away and covered his face with it.

“I knew it was De Courcy,” he cried. “He was always the kind of fellow to win. I suppose he deserves it. The Lord knows I hope he does, for your sake. Of course it’s De Courcy. Who else?”

He did not stay long after this, and when he went away he wrung her hand in his in a desperate farewell.

“This is another reason for my going now,” he said; “I couldn’t stay. This—is—good-bye, Delia.”

He went home and had a prolonged interview with his father. It was not an agreeable interview to recur to mentally in after time, but in the end Tom gained his point, and a portion of his future patrimony was handed over to him.

“I shall be no further trouble to you,” he said. “You mayn’t ever hear of me again. This is the end of me as far as you are concerned.”

That night, with a valise in his hand, he took his place in the stage running towards the mountain regions of North Carolina, and from that day forward the place knew him no more. It was as he had known it would be: no one was very sorry to be rid of him, and even Delia’s sadness was at length toned down by the excitement of preparation for and the festivities attendant upon her triumphant union with the most dashing De Willoughby of the flock.

When this event occurred, Tom’s wanderings had ended temporarily in the farm-house referred to in the first chapter, and his appearance in this remote and usually undisturbed portion of his country had created some sensation. The news of the arrival of a stranger had spread itself abroad and aroused a slow-growing excitement.

They were a kindly, simple people who surrounded him—hospitable, ignorant, and curious beyond measure concerning the ways of the outside world of which they knew so little.

In the course of time, as the first keenness of his misery wore away, Tom began to discover the advantages of the change he had made. He no longer need contrast himself unfavourably with his neighbours. He knew more than they, and they found nothing in him to condemn or jeer at. To them he was a mine of worldly knowledge. He amused them and won their hearts. His natural indolence and lack of active ambition helped the healing of his wounds, perhaps; and then he began to appreciate the humourous side of his position and his old tendency to ponderous joking came back, and assisted him to win a greater popularity than any mere practical quality could have done.

The novelty of his rôle was its chief attraction. He began to enjoy and give himself up to it, and make the most of his few gifts. Life was no longer without zest. His natural indolence increased with the size of his great body as the years passed, and his slow whimsical humour became his strongest characteristic. He felt it a fine point in the sarcasm of his destiny that he should at last have become a hero and be regarded with admiration for his conversational abilities, but he bore his honours discreetly, and found both moral and physical comfort in them.

He insensibly adopted the habits of his neighbours; he dressed with their primitive regard for ease; he dropped now and then into their slurring speech, and adopted one by one their arcadian customs.

Whether the change was the better or the worse for him might easily be a matter of opinion, and depend entirely on the standpoint from which it was viewed. At least he lived harmlessly and had no enemy.

And so existence stood with him when the second great change in his life took place.

CHAPTER III

Scarcely a month before the events described in the opening chapter took place, the stranger and a young woman, who was his companion, had appeared in the community. There was little that seemed mysterious about them at the outset. A long, uninhabited cabin, a score or so of yards from the mountain road, had been roughly patched up and taken possession of by them. There was nothing unusual in the circumstance except that they had appeared suddenly and entirely unheralded; but this in itself would have awakened no special comment. The mystery developed itself from their after reserve and seclusion. They guarded themselves from all advances by keeping out of sight when anyone approached their cabin. The young woman was rarely, if ever, seen. The man never called at the post-office for mail, and upon the few occasions on which a stray human being crossed his path, his manner was such as by no means encouraged the curious. Mr. Stamps was the only individual who had seen the woman face to face. There was an unmoved pertinacity in the character of Mr. Stamps which stood him in good stead upon all occasions. He was not easily abashed or rebuffed, the more especially when he held in view some practical object. Possibly he held some such object in view when he rode up to the tumbled down gateway and asked for the draught of water no woman of the region could refuse without some reasonable excuse.

“’Tain’t airs they’re puttin’ on, Cindy,” he said to the partner of his joys and sorrows the evening after his ride over the mountain. “Oh, no, ’tain’t airs, it’s somethin’ more curi’s than that!” And he bent over the fire in a comfortable lounging way, rubbing his hands a little, and blinked at the back log thoughtfully.

They were a friendly and sociable people, these mountaineers, all the more so because the opportunities for meeting sociably were limited. The men had their work and the women their always large families to attend to, and with a mile or so of rough road between themselves and their neighbours, there was not much chance for enjoyable gossip. When good fortune threw them together they usually made the best of their time. Consequently, the mystery of two human beings, who had shut themselves off with apparent intent from all intercourse with their kind, was a difficulty not readily disposed of. It was, perhaps, little to be wondered at that Mr. Stamps thought it over and gathered carefully together all the points presenting themselves to his notice. The subject had been frequently discussed at the Cross-roads post-office. The disposition to seclusion was generally spoken of as “curi’sness,” and various theories had been advanced with a view to explaining the “curi’sness” in question. “Airs” had been suggested as a solution of the difficulty, but as time progressed, the theory of “airs” had been abandoned.

“Fur,” said Uncle Jake Wooten, who was a patriarch and an authority, “when a man’s a-gwine to put on airs, he kinder slicks up more. A man that’s airy, he ain’t a-gwine to shut hisself up and not show out more. Like as not he’d wear store-clothes an’ hang round ‘n’ kinder blow; ‘n’ this feller don’t do nary one. ‘N’ as to the woman, Lord! I should think all you’unses knows how womenfolks does that’s airy. Ef this yere one wus that way, she’d be a-dressin’ in starched calikers ‘n’ sunbonnets ‘n’ bress-pins, ‘n’ mebbe rings ‘n’ congrist-gaiters. She’d be to the meetin’ every time there was meetin’ a-showin’ out ‘n’ lettin’ on like she didn’t know the rest on ’em wus seein’. It don’t sound to reason that either on ’em is airy.”

It had been suggested by a bold spirit capable of more extended flights of the imagination than the rest, that they were “Northerners” who for some unworthy object had taken up their abode within the bound of civilisation; but this idea was frowned down as being of a wild nature and not to be encouraged.

Finally the general interest in the subject had subsided somewhat, though it was ready to revive at any new comment or incident, which will explain the bodily awakening of the sleepers on the post-office porch when Mr. Stamps made his announcement of the approach of “thet thar feller.”

Up to the moment when the impulse seized him which led him to take his place behind the counter as the stranger entered the store, Tom De Willoughby had taken little or no part in numerous discussions held around him. He had listened with impartiality to all sides of the question, his portion of the entertainment being to make comments of an inspiriting nature which should express in a marked manner his sarcastic approval of any special weakness in a line of argument.

Among the many agreeable things said of him in his past, it had never been said that he was curious; he was too indolent to be curious, and it may be simply asserted that he had felt little curiosity concerning the popular mystery. But when he found himself face to face with his customer, a new feeling suddenly took possession of him. The change came when, for one instant, the man, as if in momentary forgetfulness, looked up and met his eyes in speaking. Each moved involuntarily, and Tom turned aside, ostensibly, to pick up a sheet of wrapping paper. The only words exchanged were those relating to the courtesies and the brief remarks heard by the loungers outside. After this the stranger rode away and Tom lounged back to his chair. He made no reply to Stamps’s explanatory aside, and no comment upon the remarks of the company whose curiosity had naturally received a new impetus which spurred them on to gossip a little in the usual vague manner. He gave himself up to speculation. The mere tone of a man’s voice had set his mind to work. His past life had given him experience in which those about him were lacking, and at the instant he heard the stranger speak this experience revealed to him as by a flash of light, a thing which had never yet been even remotely guessed at.

“A gentleman, by thunder!” he said to himself. “That’s it! A gentleman!”

He knew he could not be mistaken. Low and purposely muffled as the voice had been, he recognised in it that which marked it as the voice of a man trained to modulated speech. And even this was not all, though it had led him to look again, and more closely, at the face shadowed by the broad hat. It was not a handsome face, but it was one not likely to be readily forgotten. It was worn and haggard, the features strongly aquiline, the eyes somewhat sunken; it was the face of a man who had lived the life of an ascetic and who, with a capacity for sharp suffering, had suffered and was suffering still.

“But a gentleman and not a Southerner,” Tom persisted to himself. “A Yankee, as I’m a sinner; and what is a Yankee doing hiding himself here for?”

It was such a startling thing under the circumstances, that he could not rid himself of the thought of it. It haunted him through the rest of the day, and when night came and the store being closed, he retired as usual to the back part of the house, he was brooding over it still.

He lived in a simple and primitive style. Three rooms built on to the store were quite enough for him. One was his sitting- and bedroom, another his dining-room and kitchen, the third the private apartment of his household goddess, a stout old mulatto woman who kept his house in order and prepared his meals.

When he opened the door to-night the little boarded rooms were illuminated with two tallow candles and made fragrant with the odour of fried chicken and hoe-cakes, to which Aunt Mornin was devoting all her energies, and for the first time perhaps in his life, he failed to greet these attractions with his usual air of good cheer.

He threw his hat into a chair, and, stretching himself out upon the bedstead, lay there, his hands clasped above his head and his eyes fixed upon the glow of the fire in the adjoining room, where Aunt Mornin was at work.

“A gentleman!” he said, half aloud. “That’s it, by Jupiter, a gentleman!”

He remembered it afterwards as a curious coincidence that he should have busied his mind so actively with his subject in a manner so unusual with him.

His imagination not being sufficiently vivid to help him out of his difficulty to his own satisfaction, he laboured with it patiently, recurring to it again and again, and turning it over until it assumed a greater interest than at first. He only relinquished it with an effort when, going to bed later than usual, he made up his mind to compose himself to sleep.

“Good Lord!” he said, turning on his side and addressing some unseen presence representing the vexed question. “Don’t keep a man awake: settle it yourself.” And finally sank into unconsciousness in the midst of his mental struggle.

About the middle of the night he awakened. He felt that something had startled him from his sleep, but could not tell what it was. A few seconds he lay without moving, listening, and as he listened there came to his ear the sound of a horse’s feet, treading the earth restlessly outside the door, the animal itself breathing heavily as if it had been ridden hard; and almost as soon as he aroused to recognition of this fact, there came a sharp tap on the door and a man’s voice crying “Hallo!”

He knew the voice at once, and unexpected as the summons was, felt he was not altogether unprepared for it, though he could not have offered even the weakest explanation for the feeling.

“He’s in trouble,” he said, as he sat up quickly in bed. “Something’s gone wrong.” He rose and in a few seconds opened the door.

He had guessed rightly; it was the stranger. The moonlight fell full upon the side of the house and the road, and the panting horse stood revealed in a bright light which gave the man’s face a ghostly look added to his natural pallor. As he leaned forward, Tom saw that he was as much exhausted as was the animal he had ridden.

“I want to find a doctor, or a woman who can give help to another,” he said.

“There ain’t a doctor within fifteen miles from here,” began Tom. He stopped short. What he saw in the man’s face checked him.

“Look here,” he said, “is it your wife?”

The man made a sharp gesture of despair.

“She’s dying, I think,” he said, hoarsely, “and there’s not a human being near her.”

“Good Lord!” cried Tom, “Good Lord!” The sweat started out on his forehead. He remembered what Stamps had said of her youth and her pale face, and he thought of Delia Vanuxem, and from this thought sprang a sudden recollection of the deserted medical career in which he had been regarded as so ignominious a failure. He had never mentioned it since he had cut himself off from the old life, and the women for whose children he had prescribed with some success now and then had considered the ends achieved only the natural results of his multitudinous gifts. But the thought of the desolate young creature lying there alone struck deep. He listened one moment, then made his resolve.

“Go to the stable,” he said, “and throw a saddle over the horse you will find there. I know something of such matters myself, and I shall be better than nothing, with a woman’s help. I have a woman here who will follow us.”

He went into the back room and awakened Aunt Mornin.

“Get up,” he said, “and saddle the mule and follow me as soon as you can to the cabin in Blair’s Hollow. The wife of a man who lives there needs a woman with her. Come quickly.”

When he returned to the door his horse stood there saddled, the stranger sitting on his own and holding the bridle.

Tom mounted in silence, but once finally seated, he turned to his companion.

“Now strike out,” he said.

There were four miles of road before them, but they scarcely slackened rein until they were within sight of the Hollow, and the few words they exchanged were the barest questions and answers.

The cabin was built away from the road on the side of the hill, and leaving their horses tethered at the foot of the slope, they climbed it together.

When they reached the door, the stranger stopped and turned to Tom.

“There is no sound inside,” he faltered; “I dare not go in.”

Tom strode by him and pushed the door open.

In one corner of the room was a roughly made bedstead, and upon it lay a girl, her deathly pale face turned sideways upon the pillow. It was as if she lay prostrated by some wave of agony which had just passed over her; her breath was faint and rapid, and great drops of sweat stood out upon her young drawn face.

Tom drew a chair forward and sat down beside her. He lifted one of her hands, touching it gently, but save for a slight quiver of the eyelids she did not stir. A sense of awe fell upon him.

“It’s Death,” he said to himself. He had experience enough to teach him that. He turned to the man.

“You had better go out of the room; I will do my best.”

In a little over an hour Aunt Mornin dismounted from her mule and tethered it to a sapling at the side of the road below. She looked up at the light gleaming faintly through the pines on the hillside.

“I cum ’s fas’ ’s I could,” she said, “but I reckon I’d orter been here afore. De Lord knows dis is a curi’s ’casion.”

When she crossed the threshold of the cabin, her master pointed to a small faintly moving bundle lying at the foot of the bed over which he was bending.

“Take it into the other room and tell the man to come here,” he said. “There’s no time to lose.”

He still held the weak hand; but the girl’s eyes were no longer closed; they were open and fixed on his face. The great fellow was trembling like a leaf. The past hour had been almost more than he could bear. He was entirely unstrung.

“I wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing,” he had groaned more than once, and for the first time in his life thanked Fate for making him a failure.

As he looked down at his patient, a mist rose before his eyes, blurring his sight, and he hurriedly brushed it away.

She was perhaps nineteen years old, and had the very young look a simple trusting nature and innocent untried life bring. She was small, fragile, and fair, with the pure fairness born of a cold climate. Her large blue-gray eyes had in them the piteous appeal sometimes to be seen in the eyes of a timid child.

Tom had laid his big hand on her forehead and stroked it, scarcely knowing what he did.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said, with a tremor in his voice. “Close your eyes and try to be quiet for a few moments, and then——”

He stooped to bend his ear to her lips which were moving faintly.

“He’ll come directly,” he answered, though he did not hear her; “—directly. It’s all right.”

And then he stroked her hair again because he knew not what else to do, seeing, as he did, that the end was so very near, and that no earthly power, however far beyond his own poor efforts, could ward it off.

Just at that moment the door opened and the man came in.

That he too read the awful truth at his first glance, Tom saw. All attempts at disguise had dropped away. His thin, scholarly face was as colourless as the fairer one on the pillow, his brows were knit into rigid lines and his lips were working. He approached the bed, and for a few moments stood looking down as if trying to give himself time to gain self-control. Tom saw the girl’s soft eyes fixed in anguished entreaty; there was a struggle, and from the slowly moving lips came a few faint and broken words.

“Death!—They—never know.”

The man flung himself upon his knees and burst into an agony of such weeping that, seeing it, Tom turned away shuddering.

“No,” he said, “they will never know, they who loved you—who loved you—will never know! God forgive me if I have done wrong. I have been false that they might be spared. God forgive me for the sin!”

The poor child shivered; she had become still paler, and the breath came in sharp little puffs through her nostrils.

“God—God!—God!” she panted. But the man did not seem to hear her. He was praying aloud, a struggling, disjointed prayer.

“O God of sinners,” he cried, “Thou who forgivest, Thou who hast died, forgive—forgive in this hour of death!”

Tom heard no more. He could only listen to the soft, panting breath sinking lower and lower.

Suddenly the piteous eyes turned towards him—the stranger—as if in great dread: perhaps they saw in the mere human pity of his face what met some sharp last need.

He went to his old place as if in answer to the look, and took the poor little hand once more, closing the warmth of his own over its coldness. He was weeping like a child.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said; “—not afraid. It’s—it’s all right.”

And almost as he said it, with her eyes still fixed upon his own, and with her hand in his, she gave a low sob—and died.

Tom touched the kneeling man upon the shoulder.

“There’s no need of that now,” he said; “it’s over.”

CHAPTER IV

When a few minutes later he went into the back room, he found Aunt Mornin sitting before the big fireplace in which burned a few logs of wood. The light the snapping sticks gave fell full upon her black face, and upon the small bundle upon her spacious knee.

As he entered she turned sharply towards him.

“Don’t nobody keer nothin’ for this yere?” she said, “ain’t nobody comin’ nigh? Whar’s he? Don’t he take no int’rus’ in the pore little lonesome child? I ’spect yo’ll haf to take it ye’self, Mars’ De Willerby, while I goes in dar.”

Tom stopped short, stricken with a pang of remorse. He looked down at the small face helplessly.

“Yes,” he said, “you’ll have to go in there; you’re needed.”

The woman looked at him in startled questioning.

“Mars De Willerby,” she said, “does dat ar mean she’s cl’ar gone?”

“Yes,” answered Tom. “She’s gone, Mornin.”

With the emotional readiness of her race, the comfortable creature burst into weeping, clasping the child to her broad bosom.

“Pore chile!” she said, “an’ poor chile lef behin’! De Lord help ’em bofe.”

With manifest fear Tom stooped and took the little red flannel bundle from her arms.

“Never mind crying,” he said. “Go into the room and do what’s to be done.”

When left alone with his charge, he sat down and held it balanced carefully in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. He was used to carrying his customers’ children, a great part of his popularity being based upon his jovial fondness for them. But he had never held so small a creature as this in his arms before. He regarded it with a respectful timidity.

“It wasn’t thought of,” he said, reflectively. “Even she—poor thing, poor thing—” he ended, hurriedly, “there was no time.”

He was still holding his small burden with awkward kindliness when the door opened and the man he had left in the room beyond came in. He approached the hearth and stood for a few seconds staring at the fire in a stupefied, abstracted way. He did not seem to see the child. At last he spoke.

“Where shall I lay her?” he asked. “Where is the nearest churchyard?”

“Fifteen miles away,” Tom answered. “Most of the people like to have their dead near them and lay them on the hillsides.”

The man turned to him with a touch of horror in his face.

“In unconsecrated ground?” he said.

“It doesn’t trouble them,” said Tom. “They sleep well enough.”

The man turned to the fire again—he had not looked at the child yet—and made a despairing gesture with his hands.

“That she—” he said, “that she should lie so far from them, and in unconsecrated ground!”

“There is the place I told you of,” said Tom.

“I cannot go there,” with the gesture again. “There is no time. I must go away.”

He made no pretence at concealing that he had a secret to hide. He seemed to have given up the effort.

Tom looked up at him.

“What are you going to do with this?” he asked.

Then for the first time he seemed to become conscious of the child’s presence. He turned and gave it a startled sidelong glance, as if he had suddenly been struck with a new fear.

“I—do not know,” he stammered. “I—no! I do not know. What have I been doing?”

He sank into a chair and buried his face in his trembling hands.

“God’s curse is upon it,” he cried. “There is no place for it on earth.”

Tom rose with a sudden movement and began to pace the floor with his charge in his arms.

“It’s a little chap to lay a curse on,” he said. “And helpless enough, by Gad!”

He looked down at the diminutive face, and as he did so, a wild thought flashed through his mind. It had the suddenness and force of a revelation. His big body trembled with some feeling it would have gone hard with him to express, and his heart warmed within him as he felt the light weight lying against it.

“No place for it!” he cried. “By God, there is! There is a place here—and a man to stand by and see fair-play!”

“Give her to me,” he said, “give her to me, and if there is no place for her, I’ll find one.”

“What do you mean?” faltered the man.

“I mean what I say,” said Tom. “I’ll take her and stand by her as long as there is breath in me; and if the day should ever come in spite of me when wrong befalls her, as it befell her mother, some man shall die, so help me God!”

The warm Southern blood which gave to his brothers’ love-songs the grace of passion, and which made them renowned for their picturesque eloquence of speech, fired him to greater fluency than was usual with him, when he thought of the helplessness of the tiny being he held.

“I never betrayed a woman yet, or did one a wrong,” he went on. “I’m not one of the lucky fellows who win their hearts,” with a great gulp in his throat. “Perhaps if there’s no one to come between us, she may—may be fond of me.”

The man gave him a long look, as if he was asking himself a question.

“Yes,” he said at last, “she will be fond of you. You will be worthy of it. There is no one to lay claim to her. Her mother lies dead among strangers, and her father——”

For a few moments he seemed to be falling into a reverie, but suddenly a tremour seized him and he struck one clenched hand against the other.

“If a man vowed to the service of God may make an oath,” he said, “I swear that if the day ever dawns when we stand face to face, knowing each other, I will not spare him!”

The child stirred in Tom’s arms and uttered its first sharp little cry, and as if in answer to the summons, Aunt Mornin opened the door.

“It’s all done,” she said. “Gib me de chile, Mars De Willerby, and go in an’ look at her.”

When he entered the little square living room, Tom paused at the foot of the bed. All was straight and neat and cold. Among the few articles in the one small trunk, the woman had found a simple white dress and had put it on the dead girl. It was such a garment as almost every girl counts among her possessions. Tom remembered that his sisters had often worn such things.

“She looks very pretty,” he said. “I dare say her mother made it and she wore it at home. O Lord! O Lord!” And with this helpless exclamation, half sigh, half groan, he turned away and walked out of the front door into the open air.

It was early morning by this time, and he passed into the dew and sunlight not knowing where he was going; but once outside, the sight of his horse tethered to a tree at the roadside brought to his mind the necessity of the occasion.

“I’ll ride in and see Steven,” he said. “It’s got to be done, and it’s no work for him!”

When he reached the Cross-roads there were already two or three early arrivals lounging on the store-porch and wondering why the doors were not opened.

The first man who saw him, opened upon him the usual course of elephantine witticisms.

“Look a yere, Tom,” he drawled, “this ain’t a-gwine to do. You a-gittin’ up ’fore daybreak like the rest of us folks and ridin’ off Goddlemighty knows whar. It ain’t a-gwine to do now. Whar air ye from?”

But as he rode up and dismounted at the porch, each saw that something unusual had happened. He tied his horse and came up the steps in silence.

“Boys,” he said, when he stood among them, “I want Steven. I’ve been out to the Hollow, and there’s a job for him there. The—the woman’s dead.”

“Dead!” they echoed, drawing nearer to him in their excitement. “When, Tom?”

“Last night. Mornin’s out there. There’s a child.”

“Thunder ‘n’ molasses!” ejaculated the only family man of the group, reflectively. “Thunder ‘n’ molasses!” And then he began to edge away, still with a reflective air, towards his mule.

“Boys,” he explained, “there’d ought to be some women folks around. I’m gwine for Minty, and she’ll start the rest on ’em. Women folks is what’s needed. They kin kinder organize things whar thar’s trouble.”

“Well,” said Tom, “perhaps you’re right; but don’t send too many of ’em, and let your wife tell ’em to talk as little as possible and leave the man alone. He’s got enough to stand up under.”

Before the day was over there were women enough in the hillside cabin. Half a dozen faded black calico riding-skirts hung over the saddles of half a dozen horses tethered in the wood round the house, while inside half a dozen excellent souls disposed themselves in sympathetic couples about the two rooms.

Three sat in the front room, their sunbonnets drawn well down over their faces in the true mourner’s spirit, one at the head of the bed slowly moving a fan to and fro over the handkerchief-covered face upon the pillow. A dead silence pervaded the place, except when it was broken by occasional brief remarks made in a whisper.

“She was a mighty purty-lookin’ young critter,” they said. “A sight younger-lookin’ than her man.”

“What’s the child?”

“Gal.”

“Gal? That’s a pity. Gals ain’t much chance of bein’ raised right whar they’re left.”

“Hain’t they any folks, neither on ’em?”

“Nobody don’t know. Nobody hain’t heerd nothin’ about ’em. They wus kinder curi’s about keepin’ to themselves.”

“If either on ’em had any folks—even if they wus only sort o’ kin—they might take the chile.”

“Mebbe they will. Seems to reason they must have some kin—even if they ain’t nigh.”

Then the silence reigned again and the woman at the bed’s head gave her undivided attention to the slow, regular motion of her palm-leaf fan.

In the room beyond a small fire burned in spite of the warmth of the day, and divers small tin cups and pipkins simmered before and upon the cinders of it, Aunt Mornin varying her other duties by moving them a shade nearer to the heat or farther from it, and stirring and tasting at intervals.

Upon a low rocking-chair before the hearth sat the wife of the family man before referred to. She was a tall, angular creature, the mother of fifteen, comprising in their number three sets of twins. She held her snuff-stick between her teeth and the child on her lap, with an easy professional air.

“I hain’t never had to raise none o’ mine by hand since Martin Luther,” she remarked. “I’ve been mighty glad on it, for he was a sight o’ trouble. Kinder colicky and weakly. Never done no good till we got him off the bottle. He’d one cow’s milk, too, all the time. I was powerful partickerler ’bout that. I’d never have raised him if I hadn’t bin. ‘N’ to this day Martin Luther hain’t what ’Poleon and Orlando is.”

“Dis yere chile ain’t gwine to be no trouble to nobody,” put in Aunt Mornin. “She’s a powerful good chile to begin with, ‘n’ she’s a chile that’s gwine to thrive. She hain’t done no cryin’ uv no consequence yit, ‘n’ whar a chile starts out dat dar way it speaks well for her. If Mornin had de raisin’ o’ dat chile, dar wouldn’t be no trouble ’t all. Bile der milk well ‘n’ d’lute down right, ‘n’ a chile like dat ain’t gwine to have no colick. My young Mistis Mars D’Willerby bought me from, I’ve raised three o’ hern, an’ I’m used to bilin’ it right and d’lutin’ it down right. Dar’s a heap in de d’lutin’. Dis yere bottle’s ready now, Mis’ Doty, ef ye want it.”

“It’s the very bottle I raised Martin Luther on,” said Mrs. Doty. “It brings back ole times to see it. She takes it purty well, don’t she? Massy sakes! How f’erce she looks for sich a little thing!”

Later in the day there arose the question of how she should be disposed of for the night, and it was in the midst of this discussion that Tom De Willoughby entered.

“Thar ain’t but one room; I s’pose he’ll sleep in that,” said Mrs. Doty, “‘n’ the Lord knows he don’t look the kind o’ critter to know what to do with a chile. We hain’t none o’ us seen him since this mornin’. I guess he’s kinder wanderin’ round. Does any of you know whar he is? We might ax what he ’lows to do.”

Tom bent down over the child as it lay in the woman’s lap. No one could see his face.

“I know what he’s going to do,” he said. “He’s going away to-morrow after the funeral.”

“‘N’ take the child?” in a chorus.

“No,” said Tom, professing to be deeply interested in the unclosing of the small red fist. “I’m going to take the child.”

There were four sharp exclamations, and for a second or so all four women gazed at him with open mouths. It was Mrs. Doty who first recovered herself sufficiently to speak. She gave him a lively dig with her elbow.

“Now, Tom D’Willerby,” she said, “none of your foolin’. This yere ain’t no time for it.”

“Mars D’Willerby,” said Aunt Mornin, “dis chile’s mother’s a-lyin’ dead in the nex’ room.”

Tom stooped a trifle lower. He put out both his hands and took the baby in them.

“I’m not foolin’,” he said, rather uncertainly. “I’m in earnest, ladies. The mother is dead and the man’s going away. There’s nobody else to claim her, he tells me, and so I’ll claim her. There’s enough of me to take care of her, and I mean to do it.”

It was so extraordinary a sensation, that for a few moments there was another silence, broken as before by Mrs. Doty.

“Waal,” she remarked, removing her snuff-stick and expectorating into the fire. “Ye’ve allus been kinder fond o’ chillun, Tom, and mebbe she ain’t as colicky by natur’ as Martin Luther was, but I mus’ say it’s the curi’sest thing I ever heern—him a-gwine away an’ givin’ her cl’ar up as ef he hadn’t no sort o’ nat’ral feelin’s—I do say it’s curi’s.”

“He’s a queer fellow,” said Tom, “a queer fellow! There’s no denying that.”

That this was true was proven by his conduct during the time in which it was liable to public comment. Until night he was not seen, and then he came in at a late hour and, walking in silence through the roomful of watchers, shut himself up in an inner chamber and remained there alone.

“He’s takin’ it mighty hard,” they said. “Seems like it’s kinder onsettled his mind. He hain’t never looked at the child once.”

He did not appear at all the next day until all was ready and Tom De Willoughby went to him.

He found him lying on the bed, his haggard face turned towards the window. He did not move until Tom touched him on the shoulder.

“If you want to see her——” he said.

He started and shuddered.

“What, so soon?” he said. “So soon?”

“Now,” Tom answered. “Get up and come with me.”

He obeyed, following him mechanically, but when they reached the door, Tom stopped him.

“I’ve told them a story that suits well enough,” he said. “I’ve told them that you’re poor and have no friends, and can’t care for the child, and I’ve a fancy for keeping it. The mother is to lie out here on the hillside until you can afford to find a better place for her—perhaps at your own home. I’ve told the tale my own way. I’m not much of a hand at that kind of thing, but it’ll do. I’ve asked you no questions.”

“No,” said the man, drearily. “You’ve asked me no questions.”

Then they went together into the other room. There were twenty or thirty people in it, or standing about the door. It was like all mountain funerals, but for an air of desolateness even deeper than usual. The slender pine coffin was supported upon two chairs in the middle of the room, and the women stood or sat about, the more easily moved weeping a little under the shadow of their calico sunbonnets. The men leaned against the door-posts, or sat on the wooden steps, bare-headed, silent, and rather restless.

When Tom led his charge into the apartment, there was a slight stir and moving back of chairs to make way for him. He made his way straight to the coffin. When he reached it and looked down, he started. Perhaps the sight of the white dress with its simple girlish frills and homelike prettiness brought back to him some memory of happier days when he had seen it worn before.

The pure, childlike face had settled into utter calm, and across the breast and in the hands were long, slender branches of the thickly flowering wild white clematis. Half an hour before Tom had gone into the woods and returned with these branches, which he gave to one of the younger women.

“Put them on her,” he said, awkwardly; “there ought to be some flowers about her.”

For a few moments there reigned in the room a dead silence. All eyes were fixed upon the man who stood at the coffin side. He simply looked down at the fair dead face. He bestowed no caresses upon it, and shed no tears, though now and then there was to be seen a muscular contraction of his throat.

At length he turned towards those surrounding him and raised his hand, speaking in a low voice.

“Let us pray.”

It was the manner of a man trained to rigid religious observances, and when the words were uttered, something like an electric shock passed through his hearers. The circuit-riders who stopped once or twice a month at the log churches on the roadside were seldom within reach on such an occasion as this, and at such times it was their custom to depend on any good soul who was considered to have the gift of prayer. Perhaps some of them had been wondering who would speak the last words now, as there was no such person on the spot; but the trained manner and gesture, even while it startled them by its unexpectedness, set their minds at rest.

They settled themselves in the conventional posture, the women retiring into their bonnets, the men hanging their heads, and the prayer began.

It was a strange appeal—one which only one man among them could grasp the meaning of, though all regarded its outpouring words with wonder and admiration. It was an outcry full of passion, dread, and anguish which was like despair. It was a prayer for mercy—mercy for those who suffered, for the innocent who might suffer—for loving hearts too tender to bear the bitter blows of life.

“The loving hearts, O God!” he cried, “the loving hearts who wait—who——”

More than one woman looked up from under her bonnet; his body began to tremble—he staggered and fell into a chair, hiding his face, shaking from head to foot in an agony of weeping. Tom made his way to him and bent over him.

“Come with me,” he said, his great voice broken. “Come with me into the air, it will quiet you, and we can wait until—until they come.”

He put his arm under his and supported him out of the house.

Two or three women began to rock themselves to and fro and weep aloud hysterically. It was only the stronger ones who could control themselves. He was standing at Tom’s side then; when they came out a short time afterwards, walking slowly and carrying the light burden, which they lowered into its resting-place beneath the pines.

He was quite calm again, and made no sound or movement until all was over. Then he spoke to Tom.

“Tell them,” he said, “that I thank them. I can do no more.”

He walked back to the desolate house, and in a little while the people went their ways, each of them looking back a little wistfully at the cabin as he or she rode out of sight.

When the last one was lost to view, Tom, who had loitered about, went into the cabin.

The man was sitting in the empty room, his gaze fixed upon the two chairs left standing in the middle of it a few paces from each other.

Tom moved them away and then approached him.

“The child has been taken to my house,” he said. “You don’t want to see it?”

“No.”

“Is there anything else I can do?”

“No, nothing else,” monotonously.

“Are you going away?”

“Yes—to-night.”

Tom glanced around him at the desolation of the poor, bare little place, at the empty bed, and the small trunk at the foot of it.

“You are not going to stay here alone, man?” he said.

“Yes,” he was answered. “I have something to do; I must be alone.”

Tom hesitated a moment.

“Well,” he said, at length, “I suppose I’ve done, then. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” he was answered. “The Lord—the Lord will reward you.”

And then Tom crossed the room slowly and reluctantly, passed out, and closed the door after him.

When he opened his own door, he struck his foot against something and stumbled over it. It was a primitive wooden cradle—somewhat like a box on rockers—a quilt of patchwork covered it, and upon the small pillow rested the round black head of his new possession. He stopped short to regard it. Aunt Mornin had left it there while she occupied herself with preparing supper in the kitchen. It really looked quite comfortable. Gradually a smile established itself upon Tom’s countenance.

“By thunder!” he said, “here you are, youngster, ain’t you? You’ve come to stay—that’s what you’ve come for.”

And, being answered by a slight stirring of the patchwork quilt, he put his foot out with much cautiousness, touched the rocker, and, finding to his great astonishment that he had accomplished this much safely, he drew up a chair, and, sitting down, devoted himself with laudable enthusiasm to engineering the small ark with a serious and domestic air.

CHAPTER V

In two days’ time the whole country had heard the news. The mystery of Blair’s Hollow was revived and became a greater mystery than ever. The woman was dead, the man had disappeared. The cabin stood deserted, save for the few household goods which had been left just as they were on the day of the funeral. Not an article had been moved, though the woman to whom Tom De Willoughby, as the person most concerned, handed over the discarded property, did not find the little trunk, and noticed that articles had been burned in the fireplace in the front room.

“Thar wus a big pile o’ ashes on the ha’th,” she said to her friends, “sorter like as if he’d been burnin’ a heap a little things o’ one sort or ’nother. It kinder give me cold chills, it looked so lonesome when I shut the door arter the truck was gone. I left the ashes a-lyin’ thar. I kinder had a curi’s feelin’ about touchin’ on ’em. Nothing wouldn’t hire me to live thar. D’Willerby said he reckoned I could hev moved right in ef I wanted to, but, Lawsy! I wouldn’t have done it fer nothin’.”

But that which roused the greatest excitement in the community was Tom De Willoughby’s course.

At first Mrs. Doty’s story of Big Tom’s adoption of the child was scarcely accepted as being a possibility. The first man who heard it received it with a grin of disbelief. This individual was naturally Mr. Doty himself.

“Minty,” he said, “don’t ye let him fool ye. Don’t ye know Tom D’Willerby by this time? Ye’d orter. It’s jest some o’ his gas. Don’t ye s’pose he hain’t got no more sense? What’d he do with it?”

“Ye can believe it or not,” replied Mrs. Doty, sharply, “but he’s gwine to raise that young’n, as shore as your name’s Job. Mornin’s got her this minute.”

Mr. Doty indulged in a subdued chuckle.

“A nice-lookin’ feller he is to raise a infant babe!” he remarked. “Lord a massy! if thet thar ain’t jest like one o’ his doggoned tales! He is the derndest critter,” with reflective delight, “the derndest! Thar ain’t nothin’ in Hamlin to come up to him.”

But the next day even Mr. Doty was convinced. After his customary visit to the Cross-roads, he returned to his family wearing a bewildered expression. It became a sheepish expression when his wife confronted him on the doorstep.

“Wal, Job Doty,” she remarked, “I guess you’ve found out by this time whether I was right or wrong.”

“Wal,” answered Mr. Doty, throwing his saddle down on the porch, “I reckon I hev. She’s thar shore enough, ‘n’ it seems like he’s gwine to keep her; but I wouldn’t hev believed it ef I hadn’t seen it, doggoned ef I would! But, Lord, it’s like him, arter all.” And he brightened up and chuckled again.

“I reckon he don’t scarcely know what he’s tuk in hand,” said Mrs. Doty.

“Him!” answered Mr. Doty. “Tom! Lord! ’tain’t a-gwine to trouble Tom. He’ll get along, Tom will. Tom’d jus’ as lief as she wus twins as not, mebbe liefer. It’d be a bigger thing for him to engineer ‘n’ gas about ef she wus. Ef you’d seen him bring her into the store to the boys ‘n’ brag on her ‘n’ spread hisself, I reckon ye wouldn’t hev minded ’bout Tom. Why, he’s set on her, Minty, a’reddy, as set as he kin be.”

The Cross-roads post-office had indeed been the scene of a sort of informal levée held by the newcomer, who had been thus presented to her fellow-citizens. One man after another had dropped in to hear the truth of the story related, and each one had been dumfounded at the outset by Tom’s simple statement of fact.

“Yes, I’m going to keep her, boys,” he said. “She’s in the back part of the house now. According to my calculations, she’s drunk about three quarts of milk since morning, and seems to stand it pretty well, so I suppose she’s all right.”

There were a great many jokes made at first, and a general spirit of hilariousness reigned, but it was observed by one of the keener witted ones that, despite his jocular tone, there was an underlying seriousness in Tom’s air which might argue that he felt the weight of his responsibility. When the women began to come in, as they did later in the day, he received them with much cordiality, rising from his chair to shake hands with each matron as she appeared.

“Come in to see her, have you?” he said. “That’s right. She’s in the back room. Walk right in. Mis’ Simpson and Mis’ Lyle, I’d like some of you ladies to have a look at her. I’ll go with you myself and hear what you have to say.”

He made the journey each time with a slight air of anxiety, leading the way to the wooden cradle, and standing over it like a Herculean guardian angel, listening attentively to all the comments made and all the advice given.

“She seems to be getting on pretty well, doesn’t she?” he enquired.

“Lor’, yes!” said one matron; “jest keep her kivered up ‘n’ don’t let no air strike her, ‘n’ ye won’t hev no trouble with her, I reckon.”

“No air?” enquired Tom, in some trepidation; “none at all?”

“Wal, thet’s my way,” was the answer. “Some folks does diff’rent, but I didn’t never expose ’em none till they was more’n amonth old. New-born babies is tender things!”

“Yes,” said Tom. “Good Lord, yes!”

His visitor started at him perplexedly for a moment.

“Wal,” she said. “My man allus used to say they kinder skeered him ’long at the first—he kinder felt as if they’d mebbe come apart, or sumthin’. They allus sorter ’minded me o’ young mice. Wal, you jest tell Mornin to giv’ her es much milk as she calls fer, an’ don’t let it bile too long, ‘n’ she’ll come on fine.”

The next visitor that entered uttered an exclamation of dismay.

“Ye’re gwine ter kill her!” she said. “Thar ain’t a breath o’ air in the room, ‘n’ thar ain’t nothin’ a new-born baby wants more ’n plenty o’ air. They’re tender critters, ‘n’ they cayn’t stand to be smothered up. Ye’ll hev her in spasms afore the day’s over.”

Tom flung the doors and windows open in great alarm.

“It is hot,” he said. “It’s hot enough out of doors, but Mis’ Simpson told me to keep her shut up, and I thought she’d had experience enough to know.”

“Jane Simpson!” with ill-concealed scorn. “She’d orter! She’s had six to die in their second summer. I reckon she told ye to give her half-b’iled milk as often as she wanted it?”

Tom reflected in manifest trepidation.

“She did tell me not to boil it too much, and to give it to her when she called for it,” he said, slowly.

“Wal, if ye don’t want ter kill her, take my advice an’ bile it a good half hour, ‘n’ don’t give it to her oftener than once in three hours. She’ll cry fur it, but ye needn’t mind. Ye’ll get used ter it. I don’t believe in lettin’ young uns hev nuthin’ out o’ their reg’lar time.”

The next caller found Tom somewhat discouraged. He preceded her into the reception-chamber with less alacrity than he had shown in his previous visits.

She was a younger woman than the rest, and when she reached the cradle’s side, she bent down and rearranged the cover with a soft touch.

“She’s gwine to be a purty little thing,” she said; “she’ll be sorter dark-complected, but she’s gwine to hev purty hair ‘n’ eyes. Ye’ll be right proud of her, Tom, when she’s grown, ‘n’ I guess she’ll be a heap o’ company to you. Lord!” with a motherly sigh, “it seems sorter curi’s her bein’ left to a man; but you’ll do well by her, Tom, you’ll do well by her. I hain’t no doubt o’ that. You was always mighty clever with children.”

“I’ll do all I can for her,” said Tom, “though I suppose that isn’t much.”

The young woman—she had left her own baby in the store with her husband—patted the little pillow lightly into shape.

“Ye’ll larn a heap by watchin’ her,” she said. “Jest watch her close ‘n’ she’ll teach you herself. What do you do about her milk?” anxiously.

“I’ve been told to do several things,” said Tom. “I’ve been told to boil it half an hour and not to boil it at all, and to give her all she wanted and not to give her all she wanted. I’m a little mixed about it.”

“Wal, I hain’t had but five, but I’ve allus let it come to a bile an’ then kinder used my reason about givin’ it. Seems like the mejumer ye air with children, the better. But, Lordy! I guess Mornin knows. She raised her young mistress’s.”

She kissed the child before she left it, and when she reentered the store, hurriedly took her own struggling offspring from its father’s arms, settled its pink dress and sunbonnet with a nervous, caressing motion, and, carrying it to the door, stood with it pressed against her breast while she seemed to be looking out at the distant mountains. She did not move until her husband had completed his purchases and came to her. And when she followed him out to take her place in the waggon, her eyes were bright and moist.

“Don’t ye take the Blair’s Holler road, Dave,” she said, as he touched up his horses. “Go round by Jones’s.”

“What’s yer notion, Louizy?” he asked.

“’Tain’t nothin’ but a notion, I reckon,” she answered; “but I don’t—I don’t want to hev to pass by that thar grave jest to-day. Take the other road.”

And being an easy-going, kindly fellow, he humoured her and went the other way.

In the store itself the spirit of hilariousness increased as the day advanced. By mail-time the porch was crowded and Tom had some slight difficulty in maintaining order.

“Say, boys,” he said, “there’s got to be quiet here. If we can’t carry on the establishment without disturbing the head of the household at present asleep in the back room, this post-office has to close and you can get a new postmaster. That’d suit you, I daresay. Some fellow, now, that wouldn’t half’tend to his business, not more than half, and that hadn’t legislative ability enough to carry on a precinct, let alone a county. You want a man of that kind, I suppose. That’s what you’re working for.”

“Tom,” said one of the younger ones, “bring her out ‘n’ let’s see her. You’ve been braggin’ on her all day, but ye hain’t let us see her.”

Half a dozen others joined in the cry.

“Yes,” they said, “bring her out, Tom.”

Tom did not rise from his seat. He tilted his chair back and balanced himself on his heels, his hands thrust into his pockets.

“Boys,” he said, “I’ll bring her out on one condition, and that is that there shall be no shines. I wouldn’t have her scared or upset for a good deal. There’s a joke in this sort of thing, I daresay; but it ain’t all joke. If I bring her out and show her, there’s to be no crowding and no row.”

It was agreed that there should be none, and he left his chair and went to the inner room again. When he returned, the men who had been lounging in the porch had come in, though perhaps not one among them understood his own unusual interest in the affair. Babies were not rarities in Hamlin County, every cabin and farm-house in the region being filled to overflowing with white-headed, sunburnt youngsters. And yet when Tom appeared there was a moment of silence. The child was asleep, its tiny black head resting peacefully against the huge chest of its bearer. There was no trace of confusion or awkwardness in his face, he seemed well content with his burden, and perhaps it was the quiet of his manner as much as anything else which caused the slight hush to fall upon those around him.

At last a middle-aged farmer stepped forward. He gave the child a long and rather curious look.

“Gal, ain’t it?” he enquired.

“Yes,” Tom answered.

“Wal, ’tain’t a bad thing fer her she’s got some un to stan’ by her; gals needs it.”

Tom gave her a long look too. She was sleeping very quietly; it might have been her mother’s breast she was lying against.

“Well,” he said, “here’s a man to stand by her,” and then he raised his head and looked at the rest of them.

“Boys,” he said, “that’s a promise. Remember it.”

And he carried her back.

CHAPTER VI

The rooms at the back had never seemed so quiet before as when, at the close of the day, he went into them. They seemed all the quieter by contrast with the excitement of the past hours. In the kitchen Mornin was giving the final touches to the supper, and in the room which was at once sitting-room and bedroom, the wooden cradle had fitted itself in a corner near the fireplace and wore an air of permanent establishment remarkable to contemplate when one considered how unlooked-for an incident it was.

On the threshold of this apartment Tom paused a moment. Such silence reigned that he could hear the soft, faint breathing of the child as it lay asleep. He stopped a second or so to listen to it. Then he stooped down, and began to loosen his shoes gently. As he was doing it, Mornin caught sight of him in passing the open door.

“Mars Tom,” she said, “what’s ye a-gwine fer to do?”

“I’m going to take them off,” he answered, seriously. “They’ll make too much noise.”

The good soul in the kitchen chuckled.

“Now,” she said, “now, Mars Tom, dar ye go right now a-settin’ out to ruinate a good chile, ’stead o’ ustin’ it ter things—a-settin’ out ter ruinate it. Don’t never tip aroun’ fer no chile. Don’t ye never do it, ‘n’ ye won’t never haf ter. Tippin’ roun’ jest spiles ’em. Tell ye, Mornin never tipped roun’ when she had em’ ter raise. Mornin started out right from de fust.”

Tom looked at the cradle.

“She’ll rest easier,” he said. “And so shall I. I must get a pair of slippers.” And he slipped out of his shoes and stood ready to spend the evening in his stocking-feet. A solitary tallow candle stood upon the table, shedding its yellow light upon all surrounding objects to the best of its ability, and, seeing that its flickering brightness fell upon the small sleeper’s face, he placed it at the farther end of the high mantel.

“She’ll be more comfortable,” he said. And then sat down feeling at ease with his conscience.

Mornin went back to her supper shaking her head.

“By de time she’s a year old, dar won’t be no managin’ her,” she said. “Da’s allus de way wid de men folks, allus too hard or too soft; better leav’ her to Mornin ‘n’ ust’n her to things right at de start.”

There seemed little chance that she would be so “ustened.” Having finished his supper, Tom carried his pipe and newspaper into the kitchen.

“I’ll sit here awhile,” he said. “The smoke might be too much for her, and the paper rustles so. We’d better let her have her sleep out.”

But when the pipe was out and the last page of the paper read, he went back to his own room. The small ark stranded in his chimney corner was attractive enough to draw him there. It was a stronger attraction than it would have been to most men. He had always been fond of children and curious concerning them. There was not a child in the surrounding region who had not some remembrance of his rather too lavish good-nature. A visit to the Cross-roads was often held out as a reward for circumspect behaviour, and the being denied the treat was considered punishment heavy enough for most juvenile crimes.

“Ef ye’d had young uns of yer own, Tom, ye’d hev ruined them, shore,” the secretly delighted matrons frequently remarked. “You’d let ’em run right over ye. I reckon ye keep that candy thar right a-purpose to feed ’em on now, don’t yer?”

His numerous admirers, whose affection for him was founded on their enjoyment of his ponderous witticisms and the humour which was the little leavening of their unexciting lives, had once or twice during the past few days found themselves unprepared for, and so somewhat bewildered by, the new mood which had now and then revealed itself.

“It’s kinder outer Tom’s way to take things like he takes this; it looks onnat’ral,” they said.

If they had seen him as he drew up to the cradle’s side, they would have discovered that they were confronting a side of the man of which they knew nothing. It was the man whose youth had been sore-hearted and desolate, while he had been too humble to realise that it was so, and with reason. If he had known lonely hours in the past eight years, only the four walls of the little back room had seen them. He had always enacted his rôle well outside; but it was only natural that the three silent rooms must have seemed too empty now and again. As he bent over the cradle, he remembered such times, and somehow felt as if they were altogether things of the past and not to trouble him again.

“She’ll be life in the place,” he said. “When she sleeps less and is old enough to make more noise, it will be quite cheerful.”

He spoke with the self-congratulating innocence of inexperience. A speculative smile settled upon his countenance.

“When she begins to crawl around and—and needs looking after, it will be lively enough,” he reflected. “She’ll keep us busy, I daresay.”

It was a circumstance perhaps worthy of mention that he never spoke of the little creature as “it.”

“She’ll need a good deal of looking after,” he went on. “It won’t do to let her tumble around and take care of herself, as a boy might. We must be tender of her.”

He bent forward and drew the cover cautiously over the red flannel sleeve.

“They think it a good joke, those fellows,” he said; “but it isn’t a joke with us, is it, young woman? We’ve a pretty big job to engineer between us, but I daresay we shall come out all right. We shall be good friends in the end, and that’s a pretty nice thing for a lonely fellow to look forward to.”

Then he arose stealthily and returned to the kitchen.

“I want you to tell me,” he said to Mornin, “what she needs. I suppose she needs something or other.”

“She needs mos’ ev’rything, Mars Tom,” was the answer; “seems like she hain’t bin pervided fer ’t all, no more ’n ef she was a-gwine ter be a youn’ tukky dat de Lord hisself hed fitted out at de start.”

“Well,” said Tom, “I’ll go to Barnesville to-morrow and talk to Judge Rutherford’s wife about it. She’ll know what she ought to have.”

And, after a few moments given to apparently agreeable reflection, he went back to the room he had left.

He had barely seated himself, however, when he was disturbed by a low-sounding tap on the side door, which stood so far open as to allow of any stray evening breeze entering without reaching the corner of the chimney.

“Come in!” said Tom, not in a friendly roar, as usual, but in a discreetly guarded voice.

The door was pushed gently open and the visitor stood revealed, blinking with an impartial air at the light within.

“Don’t push it wide open,” said Tom; “come in if you are going to, and leave it as it was.”

Mr. Stamps obeyed without making any noise whatever. It was one of his amiable peculiarities that he never made any noise, but appeared and disappeared without giving any warning, making himself very agreeable thereby at inopportune moments. He slipped in without a sound, deftly left the door in its previous position, and at once slipped into a chair, or rather took possession of one, by balancing himself on the extreme edge of it, arranging his legs on the lower bar with some dexterity.

“Howdy?” he said, meekly, having accomplished this.

Tom’s manner was not cordial. He stretched himself, put his hands in his pockets, and made no response to the greeting which was, upon the whole, a rather unnecessary one, as Mr. Stamps had been hanging about the post-office through the whole day, and had only wended his way homeward a few hours before.

“Want anything?” he enquired.

Mr. Stamps turned his hat around in his hands hurriedly.

“No, I don’t want nothin’, Tom,” he said. Then, after a pause, he added, very softly:

“I jest thought I’d step in.”

“Where are you going?” asked Tom.

The hat was turned round again.

“Whar wus I a-gwine?” deprecatingly. “Whar? Oh! I—I was a-gwine—I was a-gwine to Marthy’s, I guess.”

“You’re pretty late,” remarked Tom; “better lose no time; it’s a pretty bad road between here and there.”

“So ’tis,” replied Mr. Stamps, apparently struck with the originality of the suggestion. “So ’tis!” He appeared to reflect deeply for a few seconds, but suddenly his eyes began to wander across the room and rested finally upon the corner in which the cradle stood. He jerked his head towards it.

“It’s thar, is it?” he enquired.

“Yes, she’s thar,” Tom answered, rather crustily. “What of it?”

“Oh! nothin’, nothin’, Tom, only it’s kinder curi’s—kinder curi’s.”

“Well,” said Tom, “I’ve not begun to look at it in that light yet myself.”

“Hain’t ye, now?” softly. “Hain’t ye, Tom?”

Then a faint little chuckle broke from him—not an intrusive chuckle, quite the contrary; a deprecatory and inadvertent sort of chuckle.

“That ain’t me,” he ventured, inoffensively. “I’ve been a-thinkin’ it was curi’s all along.”

“That ain’t going to hurt anybody,” responded Tom.

“Lord, no!” quite in a hurry. “Lord, no! ’tain’t likely; but it kinder int’rusted me—int’rusted me, findin’ out what I did.”

And he ended with a gently suggestive cough.

Tom thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and covered as large an area of floor with his legs as was possible without upsetting Mr. Stamps’s chair and at the same time that stealthy little man himself.

“Oh! found out!” he replied, “Found out h——”

He checked himself with much suddenness, glancing at the cradle as he did so.

“What did you find out?” he demanded, unceremoniously, and with manifest contempt. “Let’s hear.”

Mr. Stamps coughed again.

“’Twan’t much, mebbe,” he replied, cautiously, “‘n’ then again, mebbe ’twas. It was kinder int’rusting, though. That—that thar was a good prayer o’ his’n, warn’t it?”

“Yes,” admitted Tom, rather blusteringly. “I daresay it was; I suppose you are a better judge of prayers than I am.”

“I’m a purty good judge on ’em,” modestly. “I’d orter be, bein’ a class-leader ‘n’ uster kinder critykisin’. I don’t never do it much in public myself, but I’ve allus critikised them as did. Thet sounded more professionaller then they air mostly—unless comin’ frum them, as has bin raised to it.”

“Did it?” said Tom.

“Yes, it was more professionaller.”

Then he turned his hat again, setting it more carefully on his knee. He also fixed his eyes on Tom with a harmless smile.

“They wus North’ners.”

Tom started, but managed to recover himself.

“You might have mentioned that before,” he remarked, with sarcasm.

“I did,” said Mr. Stamps, “along at the start, Tom; but ye wouldn’t none on ye believe me.”

Tom remembered that this was true, it having been Mr. Stamps who suggested the Northern theory which had been so unitedly scouted by his hearers at the time of its propounding.

“I h’ain’t stayed as stiddy in North Car’lina as the rest on ’em,” repeated Mr. Stamps. “When I was younger, I kinder launched out wunct. I thought I could make money faster ef I wus in a more money-makin’er place, ‘n’ I launched out. I went North a spell ‘n’ was thar a right smart while. I sorter stedded the folks’ ways ‘n’ I got to knowin’ ’em when I seed ’em ‘n’ heerd ’em talk. I know’d her for one the minit I set eyes on her ‘n’ heern her speak. I didn’t say nuthin’ much to the rest on ye, ’cause I know’s ye’d make light on it; but I know’d it wus jest that ar way with the Northerners.”

“Well,” said Tom, “it’s valuable information, I suppose.”

Mr. Stamps coughed. He turned his hat over and looked into its greasy and battered crown modestly.

“It mout be,” he replied, “‘n’ then again it moughtent. It moughtent be if thar’ wus nuthin’ else to go ’long with it. They wus hidin’ sumthin’, ye know, ‘n’ they sot a heap on keepin’ it hid. Ef a body know’d the whole thing from the start, thet’d be int’rustin’, ‘n’ it ’ud be vallyable too.”

“Valuable be d——” Tom began, but he checked himself once more on glancing at the cradle.

But Mr. Stamps was so far interested that he did not read the warning he might have read in the suddenly repressed outbreak. As he neared his goal he became a little excited and incautious. He leaned forward, blinking rapidly.

“They wasn’t no man ‘n’ wife,” he said. “Lord, no! ‘N’ ef the two as knowed most on ’em ‘n’ was kinder quickest at readin’ signs ’d kinder go partners ‘n’ heve confydence in one another, ‘n’ sorter lay to ‘n’ work it out ‘n’ foller it up, it ud be vallybler than stores, or post-offices, or farms to both on ’em.” And he leaned so far forward and blinked so fast that he lost his balance and almost fell off his chair.

It was Tom who saved him from his fall, but not from that tender consideration for his physical security which such an act would argue. Tom gathered up his legs and strode across to him almost before he had finished speaking. For the time being he had apparently forgotten the cradle and its occupant. He seized the little man by the back of his collar and lifted him bodily out of his chair and shook him as a huge mastiff might have shaken a rat, agitating the little legs in the large trousers with a force which gave them, for a few seconds, the most active employment.

“You confounded, sneaking, underhanded little thief!” he thundered. “You damned little scoundrel! You—you——”

And he bore him out of doors, set him struggling astride his mule which was cropping the grass, and struck that sagacious animal a blow upon her quarters which sent her galloping along the Barnesville Road at a pace which caused her rider to cling to her neck and body with arms and legs, in which inconvenient posture he remained, unable to recover himself, for a distance of at least half a mile.

Tom returned to the back room in some excitement. As he crossed the threshold, he was greeted by a shrill cry from the cradle. He ruefully regarded the patchwork quilt which seemed to be struggling violently with some unseen agency.

“Doggone him!” he said, innocently, “he’s wakened her—wakened her, by thunder!”

And he sat down, breathing heavily from his bodily exertion, and began to rock the cradle with a vigour and gravity which might have been expected to achieve great results, if Mornin had not appeared and taken his charge into her own hands.

CHAPTER VII

The next day Tom went to Barnesville. He left the Cross-roads on horseback early in the morning, and reached his journey’s end at noon. He found on arriving at the town that the story of his undertaking had preceded him.

When he drew rein before Judge Rutherford’s house and having dismounted and tied his horse to the fence, entered the gate, the Judge’s wife came out upon the porch to meet him with her baby in her arms.

She greeted him with a smile.

“Well,” she said, “I must say I am glad to see you. The Judge brought us a nice story from the country yesterday. What have you been doing at the Cross-roads? I told the Judge I didn’t believe a word of it. There, sit down in this chair and tell me right away.”

“Well,” answered Tom in a business-like manner, “it’s true or I shouldn’t be here to-day. I’ve come to ask your advice about—well, about things in general.”

Mrs. Rutherford uttered a little cry of delighted curiosity and surprise.

“Gracious!” she exclaimed, “I never heard such a thing! Mother!” turning her head to call to someone in the room beyond, “it’s all true about the baby. Do come and hear Mr. De Willoughby tell about it.”

She sat down on the steps of the porch laughing and yet regarding Tom with a half sympathetic, half curious look. It was not the first time she had found him unexpectedly mysterious.

“Where’s the father?” she said. “Didn’t he care for the poor little thing at all? The Judge heard that he was so poor that he couldn’t take care of it. Hadn’t he any friends? It has a kind of heartless sound to me—his going away that way.”

“He was poor,” said Tom, quietly. “And he had no relatives who could take the child. He didn’t know what to do with it. I—I think he had a chance of making a living out West and—the blow seemed to have stunned him.”

“And you took the baby?” put in Mrs. Rutherford.

“Yes,” Tom answered, “I took the baby.”

“Is it a pretty baby?”

“Yes,” said Tom, “I think it is.”

Just then the Judge’s mother came out and he was called upon to tell the story again, when it was received with interest even more excited and wondering than before. The older Mrs. Rutherford exclaimed and looked dubious alternately.

“Are you sure you know what to do with it?” she asked.

“Well, no,” said Tom, “I’m not. I suppose I shall have to educate myself up to it gradually. There’ll be a good deal to learn, I suppose.”

But he did not appear at all discouraged, and presently broached the object of his visit, displaying such modest readiness to accept advice and avail himself of all opportunities for acquiring valuable information, that his young hostess was aroused to the deepest admiration, and when he proceeded to produce quite a large memorandum book with a view to taking an immediate list of all required articles, and established rules, she could scarcely contain her delight.

“I want to do it all up in the proper way,” he said.

Thereupon he was borne into the house and a consultation of the most serious practical nature was held. Piles of the last baby’s pretty garments being produced to illustrate any obscure point. The sight of those garments with their embroidery and many frills fired Tom with new enthusiasm. He could not resist the temptation to pick up one after another of the prettiest and most elaborate and hold them out at arm’s length, his fingers stuck through the sleeves the better to survey and display them to advantage.

“Yes,” he kept saying, “that’s the kind of thing she wants—pretty and with plenty of frills.”

He seemed to set his heart especially upon this abundance of frills and kept it in view throughout the entire arrangements. Little Mrs. Rutherford was to take charge of the matter, purchasing all necessaries and superintending the work of placing it in competent hands.

“Why,” she said, laughing at him delightedly, “she’ll be the best dressed baby in the county.”

“I’d like her to be among the best,” said Tom, with a grave face, “among the best.”

Whereupon Mrs. Rutherford laughed a little again, and then quite suddenly stopped and regarded him for a moment with some thoughtfulness.

“He has some curious notions about that baby, mother,” she said afterwards. “I can see it in all he says. Everyone mightn’t understand it. I’m not sure I do myself, but he has a big, kind heart, that Tom de Willoughby, a big, kind heart.”

She understood more clearly the workings of the big, kind heart before he left them the next morning.

At night after she had put her child to sleep, she joined him on the front porch, where he sat in the moonlight, and there he spoke more fully to her.

He had seated himself upon the steps of the porch and wore a deeper reflective air, as he played with a spray of honeysuckle he had broken from its vine.

She drew up her rocking-chair and sat down near him.

“I actually believe you are thinking of that baby now,” she said, with a laugh. “You really look as if you were.”

“Well,” he admitted, “the fact is that’s just what I was doing—thinking of her.”

“Well, and what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking—” holding his spray of honeysuckle between his thumb and forefinger and looking at it in an interested way, “I was thinking about what name I should give her.”

“Oh!” she said, “she hasn’t any name?”

“No,” Tom answered, without removing his eyes from his honeysuckle, “she hasn’t any name yet.”

“Well,” she exclaimed, “they were queer people.”

There was a moment’s silence which she spent in looking curiously both at him and his honeysuckle.

“What was her mother’s name?” she asked at last.

“I don’t know.”

Mrs. Rutherford sat up in her chair.

“You don’t know!”

“She was dying when I saw her first, and I never thought of asking.”

“But her father?”

“I didn’t think of asking that either, and nobody knew anything of them. I suppose he was not in the frame of mind to think of such things himself. It was all over and done with so soon. He went away as soon as she was buried.”

Mrs. Rutherford sank back into her chair.

“It’s the strangest story I ever heard of in my life,” she commented, with a sigh of amazement. “The man must have been crazed with grief. I suppose he was very fond of his wife?”

“I suppose so,” said Tom.

There was another pause of a few moments, and from the thoughts with which they occupied it Mrs. Rutherford roused herself with a visible effort.

“Well,” she said, cheerily, “let it be a pretty name.”

“Yes,” answered Tom, “it must be a pretty one.”

He turned the bit of honeysuckle so that the moonlight fell on its faintly tinted flower. It really seemed as if he felt he should get on better for having it to look at and refer to.

“I want it to be a pretty name,” he went on, “and I’ve thought of a good many that sounded well enough, but none of them seemed exactly to hit my fancy in the right way until I thought of one that came into my mind a few moments ago as I sat here. It has a pleasant meaning—I don’t know that there’s anything in that, of course; but I’ve got a sort of whim about it. I suppose it’s a whim. What do you think—” looking very hard at the honeysuckle, “of Felicia?”

“I think,” said his companion, “that it is likely to be the best name you could give her, for if she isn’t a happy creature it won’t be your fault.”

“Well,” said Tom, “I’ve set out to do my best and I’d like to give her a fair start in every way, even in her name, though there mayn’t be anything in it, but I’d like to do it. I suppose it’s time I should be having some object in life. I’ve never had one before, and I’ve been a useless fellow. Well, I’ve got one now by chance, and I’m bound to hold on to it and do what I can. I want her to have what chances I can give her on her side, and it came into my mind that Felicia——”

He stopped to consult the honeysuckle, as it were, and Jenny Rutherford broke in:

“Yes,” she said, “Felicia is the name for her, and it’s a beautiful thought——”

“Oh!” interrupted Tom, bestirring himself uneasily, “it’s a natural thought. She needs all she can get to balance the trouble she began life with. Most other little chaps begin it in a livelier way—in a way that’s more natural, born into a home, and all that. It’s a desolate business that she should have no one but a clumsy fellow like me to pick her up, and that there should be a shadow of—of trouble and pain and death over her from the first. Good Lord!” with a sudden movement of his big arm, “let’s sweep it away if we can.”

The thought so stirred him, that he turned quite around as he sat.

“Look here,” he said, “that’s what I was aiming at when I set my mind on having her things frilled up and ornamented. I want them to be what they might have been if she had been born of a woman who was happy and well cared for and—and loved—as if she had been thought of and looked forward to and provided for in a—in a tender way—as they say young mothers do such things: you know how that is; I don’t, perhaps, I’ve only thought of it sometimes——” his voice suddenly dropping.

But he had thought of it often, in his lonely back room one winter a few years ago, when it had drifted to him that his brother De Courcy was the father of a son.

Mrs. Rutherford leaned forward in her seat, tears rose in her eyes, and she put her hand impulsively on his shoulder.

“Oh!” she cried, “you are a good man. You’re a good man, and if she lives, she will tell you so and love you with all her heart. I will see to the little clothes just as if they were Nellie’s own” (Nellie being the baby, or more properly speaking, the last baby, as there were others in the household). “And if there is anything I can ever do for the little thing, let me do it for her poor young mother’s sake.”

Tom thanked her gratefully.

“I shall be glad to come to you often enough, I reckon,” he said. “I guess she’ll have her little sick spells, as they all do, and it’ll help wonderfully to have someone to call on. There’s her teeth now,” anxiously, “they’ll be coming through in a few months, and then there’ll be the deuce to pay.”

He was so overweighted by this reflection, that he was silent for some minutes afterwards and was only roused by a question requiring a reply.

Later the Judge came in and engaged him in political conversation, all the Judge’s conversation being of a political nature and generally tending to vigorous denunciations of some candidate for election who belonged to the opposite party. In Barnesville political feeling ran high, never running low, even when there was no one to be elected or defeated, which was very seldom the case, for between such elections and defeat there was always what had been done or what ought to have been done at Washington to discuss, it being strongly felt that without the assistance of Barnesville, Washington would be in a sorry plight indeed.

To-day the Judge had been engaged in a livelier discussion than usual as he rode homeward with a select party of legal brethren from court at Brownsboro, and consequently made his appearance blustering and joyous. He bestowed upon his wife a sounding kiss, and, with one arm around her waist, shook hands with Tom in a gust of hospitality, speaking to both at once.

“Howdy, Jenny? Howdy, Tom? It’s a coon’s age since we’ve seen you, Tom. Time you showed yourself. How are the children, Jenny—and what’s Tom Scott been doing? What’s this we hear about that stray young one? Nice tale that is to tell on a fellow. Fowler heard it at Brownsboro and like to have killed himself. Lord! how hot it’s been! I’m ready for supper, Jenny. Sit down, Tom. As soon as I get through supper, we’ll have a real old-fashioned talk. I’ve been suffering for one for three months. Jenny, tell Sophronia to spread herself on her waffles, for I’ve been getting some mighty poor stuff for the last few days. What do you think of Thatcher running for the Legislature? Lord! Lord! what a fool that fellow is! Most unpopular man in the county, and about the meanest too. Mean? Lord! mean ain’t the name for it! He’ll be beat so that any other man wouldn’t want to show his head, and it won’t make a mark on him. Nellie’s asleep, ain’t she, Jenny? I’ve got to go and look at her and the rest of them. Don’t you want to come along, Tom? You’re a family man yourself now, and you ought to take an interest!”

He led the way into the family-room at the back and, taking the candle from the high mantel, moved it triumphantly over the beds in which the children slept.

“Here’s Tom Scott!” he announced. “Tom Scott’s got to have a crib to himself. Look at him now. What do you think of that for a boy? He’s five years old next month, and he about runs Barnesville. The boys round here are just ruining him with making much of him and setting him up to tricks. He just lives round at the stores and the post-office. And what Tom Scott don’t know ain’t worth knowing. Came home with six jack-knives in his pockets the first day Jenny turned him out in pantaloons. The boys tried themselves to see who could do best by him. You could hear them shouting and laughing all over the town at the things they got him to say. I tell you he’s a case, Tom is. Last election he was as stirred up as any of us. Hollered ‘’Rah for Collins’ until he was hoarse and his mother brought him home and gave him syrup of squills because she thought he had the croup. What do you think he did, now? Went into Barton’s store and ordered a bushel of chestnuts to be sent down to my account and brought ’em out and set on the horse-block and gave a treat for Collins. I was coming up home and saw the crowd and heard the hollering and laughing, and there was Tom in the middle baling out his chestnuts and hollering at the top of his voice: ‘Come on, boys, all you Collins men, here’s a treat for Collins!’ I thought Collins would have died when he heard it. He laughed until he choked, and the next day he came to see Tom and gave him a gold eagle and a colt. He says he is going to give him a little nigger to look after it, and he’ll do it. Oh, Tom Scott’s the boy! He’ll be in the White House forty years from now. He’s making a bee-line for it right now.”

And he bent and kissed the little fellow’s sunburnt rosy cheek.

“His mother and his grandmother can’t do a thing with him,” he said, rapturously, “and it’s as much as I can do to manage him. Oh, he’s a case, is Tom Scott!”

And with this tribute to his character, he left him to his slumbers, with his sturdy little legs occupying an extensive area of crib and his face resting on his small brown arm.

After this, the Judge went to his supper and consumed a large quantity of fried chicken, waffles, and coffee, afterwards joining Tom on the porch, smoking his pipe and stigmatising Thatcher in a loud and jovial voice as the meanest man in Hamlin.

But for this resonant jovialness of voice, his denunciation of the Democratic Party, which was not his party, might have appeared rather startling.

“There isn’t an honest man among them,” he announced. “Not a durned one! They’re all the same. Cut each other’s throats for a dime, the whole caboodle. Oh! damn a Democrat anyhow, Tom, ’tain’t in the nature of things that they should be anything but thieves and rascals. Just look at the whole thing. It’s founded on lies and corruption and scoundrelism. That’s their foundation. They start out on it, and it ain’t reasonable to expect anything better of them. Good Lord! If I thought Tom Scott would join the Democrats, I believe I’d blow his brains out in his crib this minute.”

Tom’s part in this discussion was that of a large-minded and strictly impartial listener. This was the position he invariably assumed when surrounded by political argument. He was not a politician. His comments upon political subjects being usually of a sarcastic nature, and likely to prove embarrassing to both parties.

“Yes,” he said in reply to the Judge’s outpourings, “you’re right. There ain’t a chance for them, not an eternal chance. You can’t expect it, and it ain’t all their fault either. Where are they to get their decent men from, unless some of you fellows go over? Here you are without a liar or a fool among you—not a durned one—made a clean sweep of all the intellect and honesty and incorruptible worth in the country and hold on to it too, and then let out on these fellows because there isn’t any left for ’em. I’m a lazy man myself and not much on argument, but I must say that’s a weak place in your logic. You don’t give ’em a show at the start—that’s their misfortune.”

“Oh, go to thunder!” roared the Judge, amiably. “You don’t know the first thing about it and never did. That’s where you fail—in politics. The country would be in a mighty poor fix if we had many fellows like you—in a mighty poor fix. You’re a good citizen, Tom, but you ain’t a politician.”

“That’s so,” said Tom. “I ain’t good enough for your party or bad enough for the other, when a man’s got to be either a seraphim or a Democrat, there isn’t much chance for an ordinary fellow to spread himself.”

Whereupon the Judge in an altogether friendly manner consigned him to thunder again and, evidently enjoying himself immensely, proceeded to the most frightful denunciations of Thatcher and his party, the mere list of whose crimes and mental incapacities should have condemned them to perdition and the lunatic asylum upon the spot without further delay.

While he was in the midst of this genial loud-voiced harangue, his wife, who had been in the back room with the baby, came out and, on seeing her, he seemed suddenly to forget his animosities and the depraved political condition of the country altogether, becoming a placable, easily pleased, domesticated creature at once.

“Got Nellie to sleep again, have you?” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Well, let’s go in and have some music. Come and sing ‘The Last Rose of Summer.’ That’s my favourite; it beats all the new-fangled opera things all to pieces.”

He led the way into the parlour, which was a large square room, regarded by Barnesville as the most sumptuous of reception chambers, inasmuch as its floor was covered by a Brussels carpet adorned with exotics of multifarious colours, its walls ornamented with massively framed photographs, and its corners fitted up with whatnots and shining hair-cloth seats known in Hamlin County as “tater-tates,” and in that impressive character admired beyond expression. Its crowning glory, however, was the piano, which had belonged to Jenny Rutherford in her boarding-school days, and was the delight of the Judge’s heart. It furnished him with his most cherished recreation in his hours of repose from political conflict and argument, inasmuch as he regarded his wife’s performance seldom to be equalled and never surpassed, and the soft, pleasant voice with which she sang “The Last Rose of Summer” and other simple and sentimental melodies as that of a cantatrice whose renown might have been world-wide if she had chosen to turn her attention to its development.

“Lord!” he said, throwing himself into one of the shining arm-chairs. “There’s nothing like music, nothing under the shining sun. ‘Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.’”

This in his most sonorous quotation tones: “Let a man get tired or out of sorts, or infernal mad at a pack of cursed fools, and music’s the thing that’ll set him straight every time, if he’s any sort of a fellow. A man that ain’t fond of music ain’t of any account on God’s green earth. I wouldn’t trust him beyond a broom-straw. There’s a mean streak in a man that don’t care for music, sure. Why, the time the Democrats elected Peyton, the only thing that saved me from bursting a blood-vessel was Jenny’s playing ‘My Lodging’s on the Cold Ground’ with variations. I guess she played it for two hours hand-running, because when I found it was sort of soothing me, I didn’t want her to break in on the effect by beginning another. Play it for Tom, Jenny, after you’ve sung awhile. There’s one thing I’ve made up my mind to—if I had fifty girls, I’d have ’em all learn music if they didn’t know anything—not the operatic kind, you know, but enough to teach them to sing to a man like Jenny does. Go on, Jenny.”

The sustaining and cheering effects of Sophronia’s fried chicken and waffles probably added to his comfortable enjoyment, which was without limit. He leaned back in his armchair as far as the stiffly ornamented back would admit of his so doing and kept time with his head or his feet, occasionally joining in on a chorus with startling suddenness in an evidently subdued roar, which, though subdued, was still roaring enough, and, despite the excellence of its intention, quite out of tune enough to cause the wax flowers in their wax basket on the table (both done by Jenny at boarding-school) to shake under the glass shade until they tapped against its side with a delicate tinkle.

It was while this was going on that Tom, sitting near a side table, picked up a book and almost unconsciously opened it and read its title. Having read its title, an expression of interest showed itself on his countenance and he turned over a leaf or so, and as he turned them over dipped into them here and there.

He had the book in his hand when Jenny Rutherford ended her last chorus and came towards him.

“Do you go much by this?” he asked.

She took it from him and glanced at it.

“I brought Tom Scott up on it,” she said. “Mother wasn’t with me then, and I was such a child I did not know what to do with him.”

“Seems to be a good sort of book,” said Tom, and he turned over the leaves again.

“It is,” she answered, smiling at him. “There are lots of things in it every doctor don’t know. It was written by a woman.”

“That’s the reason, I reckon,” said Tom.

He laid the book down and seemed to forget it, but about an hour after when his bedroom candle was brought and he was on the point of retiring for the night, he turned upon the threshold of the sitting-room and spoke to his hostess in the tone of one suddenly recollecting himself.

“Where did you say you got that book?” he inquired, snuffing his candle with his thumb and forefinger.

“I didn’t say at all,” answered Jenny. “I got it from Brough & Bros., Baltimore.”

“Oh, there!” he remarked. “Good-night.”

When he reached his room and shut himself in, he set his candlestick on a table and proceeded to draw from his pocket the memorandum-book, also producing the stump of a lead pencil.

Then he made as he stood up before the looking-glass and in the flickering light of the candle, an entry which was as follows: “Advice to Young Mothers, Brough & Bros.” He made it with a grave countenance and a business-like manner, and somehow, owing it may be to the small size of the room, its low ceilings and many shadows, or the flickering of the candle, his colossal height and breadth of body and tremendous look of strength had never seemed so marked nor appeared so to overpower the objects surrounding him.

Having completed the entry, he shut up the book and returned it to his pocket with a relieved air.

“If a man ain’t a young mother,” he remarked, “I guess he can get the good of it, if he gives himself time. And what she wants”—rather hurriedly—“is to get as good a start as if she had a young mother.”

And he sat down and pulled off his right boot in so absorbed a frame of mind, that he aroused presently with a start to find that he was holding it as if it had been made of much less tough material and required handling tenderly.

CHAPTER VIII

He was on his way homeward early the next morning, and by noon his horse had climbed the rising ground from which he could look down on the Cross-roads and the post-office baking itself brown in the sun. Catching sight of the latter edifice, he smiled a little and shook the bridle against his steed’s warm neck.

“Get along, Jake,” he said. “I’m in a little more of a hurry to get home than usual—seems that way anyhow.”

The eagerness he felt was a new experience with him and stirred his sense of humour even while it warmed his always easily moved heart. It had been his wont during the last eight years to return from any absence readily but never eagerly or with any touch of excited pleasure. Even at their brightest aspect, with the added glow of fire and warmth and good cheer, and contrast to winter’s cold and appetite sharpened by it, the back rooms had always suffered from the disadvantage of offering no prospect of companionship or human interest to him. After the supper had been disposed of and the newspapers read and the pipe smoked, there had only been the fire to watch, and it was quite natural to brood as its blaze died down and its logs changed to a bed of glowing cinders. Under such circumstances it was easy to fall into a habit of brooding too much and thinking of things which had better been forgotten. When there was no fire, it had been lonelier still, and he had found the time hang heavily, on his hands.

“But now,” he said, shaking his bridle again, “there she is, and it’s quite queer, by thunder, how much she seems to give a man to think of and what will it be when she begins to talk.” And his smile ended in a jovial laugh which rather startled Jake, who was not expecting it, and caused him to shy promptly.

She was not asleep when he entered her presence, which was so unusual a state of affairs that he found it a little alarming.

“Hello!” he exclaimed, “there’s nothing wrong, I hope.”

“Wid dat chile?” chuckled Mornin, delightedly. “I sh’d think not, Mars’ D’Willerby! Dat ar chile’s a-thrivin’ an’ a-comin’ ’long jes’ like she’d orter. Dar ain’t a-gwine to be nothin’ wrong wid dat chile.”

“That’s a good thing,” said Tom.

He sat down by the cradle’s side and regarded its occupant with an interest as fresh as if she had just appeared for the first time upon his horizon. She had been imbibing a large quantity of milk, and the effect of this nourishment had been to at once compose her spirits and slightly enliven them. So she employed the passing moments by looking at Tom with steadfast and solemn eyes—not, perhaps, very intelligently, but still with a vacant air of interest in him in his character of an object.

“Why,” he said, “she’s grown; she’s grown in thirty-six hours, and she’s improved too. Oh, yes! she’s coming along nicely.”

He touched her very carefully with his large forefinger, a liberty which she did not resent or even notice, unless the fact that she winked both eyes might be regarded as a token of recognition.

“We’ll have a box full of things here for her in a couple of weeks,” he said. “And then she can start out in life—start out in life.”

The last four words seemed to please him; as he repeated them he touched her cheek again, carefully as before.

“And start out fair, too!” he added. “Fair and square—as fair and square as any of them.”

He remained a little longer in his seat by the cradle, talking to Mornin, asking her questions and delivering messages laden with advice from little Mrs. Rutherford, which instructions Aunt Mornin plainly regarded as superfluous.

“Now, Mars’ D’Willerby,” she giggled in amiable scorn, “didn’t I raise fo’ o’ my young Mistes’s? Mornin ain’t no spring chicken. Dar ain’t nuffin ’bout chillun Mornin h’aint heerd. Leeve dis yere chile to Mornin.”

“She ain’t going to be left to anyone,” said Tom, cheerfully, “not to the best woman in Hamlin County. We’ve got to make up to her for two or three things, and we’re going to do it.”

Having relieved himself of which sentiment, he went to his place at the table and ate a mighty dinner, during his enjoyment of which meal he did not lose interest in his small silent partner at all, but cast proud glances and jocular sallies at her every few mouthfuls, partaking of her, as it were, with his mountain trout, and finding her add flavour and zest to his hot corn-bread and fried ham.

When he had ended his repast with an astonishing draught of buttermilk, and was ready to go into the store, she had dozed off cosily again and was making the best of her opportunities, so he only paused for a moment to give her a farewell glance.

“Yes,” he said, “Felicia—that’ll do. When you come to the meaning of it, I don’t know of anything else that’d seem to start her out as fair—Felicia!”

And though he said the word in a whisper it seemed to reach her ear in some mysterious way, for she stirred slightly, though not as through any sense of disturbance, opened her eyes upon his big figure and, closing them the next instant, sank into soft sleep again with the faintest dawn or ghost of a baby smile upon her face.

So, nestling under the patchwork quilt and sleeping the hours away in the small ark stranded in the chimney corner, she began life.

Felicia was received by Talbot’s Cross-roads with some difference of opinion.

“I’d rather had Mirandy or Lucretia,” said Mrs. Doty. “Flishyer ain’t nigh as showy as a heap o’ other names, ‘n’ like as not, folks’ll be callin’ her F’lish. Now thar’s Vangerline ‘n’ Clementine ‘n’ Everlyne that’d ha’ bin showier then Flishyer.”

“Tom,” put in Mr. Doty, with his usual enjoyment of his friend’s weakness and strength, “Tom he’d a notion ’bout it. He said it meant som’n ’bout her a’bein’ happy, ‘n’ he ’lowed it’d kinder give her a start in the right direction. It’s jes’ like Tom. He’s full o’ notions when he gits started. I’ll back him agin any man in Hamlin fur notions when he gits started. Lord! it’s jes’ Tom all over!”

Through a disposition to take even names easily and avoid in all cases any unnecessary exertion, Mrs. Doty’s pronunciation was adopted at once, which was perhaps the principal reason for a fanciful change being made not long afterwards.

Against “F’lishyer” Tom rebelled loudly and without ceasing, but without effect.

The fanciful change came about and was adopted in this wise. In the course of a couple of weeks the box of little garments arrived from Barnesville, accompanied by a warm-hearted note from Jenny Rutherford.

The unpacking of the box—which was not a large one, though it seemed to contain an astonishing number of things, most of them of great length and elaborateness—was to Tom a singularly exciting event, so exciting that he found himself wondering and not at all sure that he understood it.

When he opened the box—Mornin standing at his side, her charge in her arms—he did it with tremulous fingers, and when, having laid one article after another in a snowy drift upon the bed, he drew back to look at them, he found it necessary after a few moments’ inspection to turn about and pace the floor, not uneasily, but to work off steam as it were, while Mornin uttered her ejaculations of rapture.

“I never seen nuthin’ like ’em afore, Mars’ D’Willerby,” she said with many excitable giggles. “Dis yer chile’s a-gwine to take the flo’ shore as yo’ bawn! Sich a settin’ out as dat is! She’ll git ter puttin’ on airs afore she’s a year ole. We’ll hev ter give her a settin’ down wunce ’n a while to keep her straight. Mis’ Rutherford, she wus boun’ to do it up in style, she wus!”

Tom took one hand out of his pocket and ruffled his hair with it, and then put it back again.

“Your young mistresses now,” he suggested, “I suppose they are about such things as their mothers made for them.”

“Lordy, dey’s a heap finer, Mars’ D’Willerby—a heap finer! Dey wus rich folks’ chillun, but dey never hed sich a settin’ out as dis yere—not one on ’em.”

“They didn’t?” said Tom, with secretly repressed exultation. “Well, if they didn’t, I guess she’ll do. They are rather nice, I reckon—and I meant they should be. Say, Mornin, suppose you dress her up and let me show her to the boys.”

He himself picked out the sumptuous long-skirted garments she was to wear and watched with the deepest interest the rather slow process of her attiring. He was particularly pleased with a wonderfully embroidered white cloak and lace cap, which latter article he abstractedly tied on his great fist and found much too small for it. His triumph, when she was given to his arms, he did not attempt to conceal, but carried her into the store with the manner of a large victor bearing his spoils.

“Now look here, boys,” he announced, being greeted with the usual laughter and jocular remarks. “This ain’t the style of thing we want. Hand a man a chair.”

His customary support being produced, he seated himself in it, keeping his charge balanced with a dexterity and ease quite wonderful to behold.

“What we want,” he proceeded, “is a more respectful tone. Something in the elaborate chivalric style, and we’re going to have it. What we want is to come into this establishment feeling that there’s no risk of our being scared or upset by any durned fool startling us and setting our delicate machinery wrong. We’ve come here to stay, and we expect to be more familiar with things as we grow older, and the thing for us is to start out right without any disagreeable impressions. We don’t want to say when we’re brought in here—‘Why, here’s the place where that fool gave me such a start last week. I wonder if he’s here again?’ What we want is to feel that here’s a place that’s home, and a place that a person’s likely to look forward to coming to with the view to ah—I should say to a high old time of an agreeable description.”

“She’s a-goin’ to be a doggoned purty critter,” said a lounger who sat on a barrel near by.

“She ain’t nuthin’ like her mother,” said another; “though she wus a purty critter when I seed her.”

He had only seen her in her coffin.

“She ain’t like her father,” put in another.

Tom moved in his chair uneasily.

“She won’t be like either of them,” he said. “Let that go.”

There was a tone in his voice which more than one among them had now and again noticed with some slow bewilderment during the last few weeks—a tone new to them, but which in time they grew used to, though they never understood its meaning.

“Kinder,” they used to say, “as ef he wus mad or—ruffed up, though it warn’t that exactly, either.”

“Black eyes, h’ain’t she?” inquired the man on the barrel.

“Yes.”

“An har. That’s my kind er women, black eyes an’ har, and kinder spirity. They’ve more devil to ’em ‘n’ is better able to take care of ’emselves.”

“She’s got some one to take care of her,” answered Tom. “That’s my business.”

“You’ve got her mightily fixed up, Tom,” remarked Mr. Doty, who had just entered. “You’ll hev all the women in the country flocking up. She sorter makes me think o’ the Queen o’ Sheby. Sheby, she wus great on fixin’.”

Every man who entered, seeing her as she lay in state in Tom’s lap, was drawn towards her to stand and wonder at her vaguely. There developed a tendency to form small and rather silent groups about her. Infancy was no novelty in this region of numerous progenies, but the fine softness of raiment and delicate sumptuousness of infancy were. More than one man, having looked at her and wandered away, was unable to resist the temptation to wander back again and finally to settle in some seat or box upon a barrel, that he might the better indulge his curiosity and interest.

“Ye must hev spent a heap on her, Tom,” was said respectfully again and again.

The fact that “a heap had been spent on her” inspired the audience with a sense of her importance, which amounted to reverence. That she represented an apparently unaccountable expenditure, was considered to reflect credit upon her, however vaguely, and to give her a value not to be lightly regarded. To Mr. Doty the idea of the “Queen of Sheby” appeared to recur persistently, all his imaginings of the poetic, the dramatic, and luxurious being drawn from Scriptural sources.

“I can’t think o’ nuthin’ else but Sheby when I look at her,” he remarked several times. “She ’minds me more o’ Sheby then anything else ’n Scripter. Minty’ll jest hev to come ter see her.”

This boldness of imagery struck a chord in the breast of his hearers which responded at once. It was discovered that more than one of them had been reminded in some indefinite manner of the same distinguished personage.

“When she was consider’ble younger then in Solomon’s time,” said one gentleman with much solemnity.

Tom himself was caught by the fancy and when his charge was referred to occasionally in a most friendly spirit as “Sheby thar,” he made no protest against it.

“It’s a thunderation sight better than ‘Flishyer,’” he said, “and if it comes easier to you fellows, I’ve no objection. Sheba ain’t bad. There’s a kind of swing to it, and you can’t get it very far wrong. The other’s a good name spoiled, and it’s a name I’ve a fancy for saving for her. I gave it to her—I’ll save it for her, and it shall be a thing between us two. Call her Sheba if you like.”

So it fell out that Mr. Doty’s Oriental imaginings sealed her fate and gradually, by a natural process, Felicia was abandoned for Sheba, even Tom using it upon all ordinary occasions.

Having in this manner begun life, a day rarely passed in which she did not spend an hour or so in the post-office. Each afternoon during the first few months of her existence Tom brought her forth attired in all her broidery, and it was not long before the day came when he began to cherish the fancy that she knew when the time for her visit was near, and enjoyed it when it came.

“She looks as if she did,” he said to Mornin. “She wouldn’t go to sleep yesterday after I came into the room, and I’ll swear I saw her eyes following me as I walked about; and when I carried her in after she was dressed, she turned her head over her shoulder to look round her and smiled when she had done it and found nothing was missing. Oh! she knows well enough when she gets in there.”

The fancy was a wonderfully pleasant one to him, and when, as time went on, she developed a bright baby habit of noticing all about her, and expressing her pleasure in divers soft little sounds, he was a happier man than he had ever thought to be. His greatest pleasure was the certain knowledge that she had first noticed himself—that her first greeting had been given to him, that her first conscious caress had been his. She was a loving little creature, showing her affection earlier than most children do. Before she could sit upright, she recognised his in-comings and out-goings, and when he took her in his arms to walk to and fro with her, as was his habit at night, she dropped her tiny head upon his shoulders with a soft yielding to his tenderness which never failed to quicken the beatings of his heart.

“There’s something in her face,” he used to say to himself, “something that’s not in every child’s face. It’s a look about her eyes and mouth that seems to tell a man that she understands him—whether his spirits are up or down.”

But his spirits were not often down in those days. The rooms at the back no longer wore an air of loneliness, and the evenings never hung heavily on his hands. In the course of a few months he sent to Brownsboro for a high chair and tried the experiment of propping his small companion up in it at his side when he ate his supper. It was an experiment which succeeded very well and filled him with triumph. From her place in the kitchen Mornin could hear during every meal the sound of conversation of the most animated description. Tom’s big, kind voice rambling cheerily and replied to by the soft and unformed murmuring of the child. He was never tired of her, never willing to give her up.

“What I might have given to others if they’d cared for it,” was his thought, “I give to her and she knows it.”

It seemed too that she did know it, that from her first gleaming of consciousness she had turned to him as her friend, her protector, and her best beloved. When she heard his footsteps, she turned in Mornin’s arms, or in her cradle, to look for him, and when she saw his face her whole little body yearned towards him.

One afternoon when she was about eight months old, he left her at the usual time. Mornin, who was working, had spread a big red shawl upon the floor and seated her upon it, and when Tom went out of the room, she sat still playing in the quiet way peculiar to her, with the gay fringe. She gave him a long earnest look as he crossed the threshold, a look which he remembered afterwards as having been more thoughtful than usual and which must have represented a large amount of serious speculation mingled with desire.

Tom went into the store, and proceeded to the performance of his usual duty of entertaining his customers. He was in a jovial mood, and, having a larger number of visitors than ordinarily, was kept actively employed in settling the political problems of the day and disposing of all public difficulties.

“What’s most wanted at the head of things,” he proclaimed, “is a man that’s capable of exerting himself (Mis’ Doty, if you choose that calico, Job can cut it off for you!) a man who ain’t afraid of work. (Help yourself, Jim!) Lord! where’d this post-office be if some men had to engineer it—a man who would stand at things and loaf instead of taking right hold. (For Heaven’s sake, Bill, don’t hurry! Jake’ll give you the tea as soon as he’s cut off his wife’s dress!) That’s the kind of men we want in office now—in every kind of office—in every kind of office. If there’s one thing I’ve no use for on God’s green earth, it’s a man with no energy. (Nicholson, just kick that box over here so I can get my feet on it!)”

He was sitting near the door which connected the back part of the establishment with the front, and it was just at this juncture that there fell upon his ear a familiar sound as of something being dragged over the floor. The next moment he felt his foot touched and then pressed upon by some soft unsteady weight.

He looked down with a start and saw first a small round face upturned, its dark eyes tired but rejoicing and faithful, and then a short white dress much soiled and dusted by being dragged over the bare boards of the two storerooms.

His heart gave a leap and all the laughter died out of his face.

“My God, boys!” he said, as he bent down, “she’s followed me! She’s followed me!”

It was quite true. She had never crawled far beyond the limits of the shawl before, but this morning her longing had given her courage and strength, and she had set out upon her journey in search of him.

Those about him burst into loud, admiring laughter, but Tom did not laugh at all. He lifted the child to his knee and held her encircled by one arm. She was weary with her exertion and settled at once into an easy sitting posture, her head resting against him while she gazed quietly from under her upcurled lashes at the faces grouped about her. Their laughter did not disturb her now that she had reached her haven of safety.

“To think of her a-followin’ him!” said Mis’ Doty, “‘n’ her never sot off nowhars afore. The purty little critter! Lord! Tom, she’s a-gwine ter be a sight when she’s grown—with them eyes and har! An’ ter think of her a-slippin’ off from Mornin an’ makin’ up her little mind to follow ye. I’ve never had a young ’un to try it that early in all I’ve raised.”

“Lordy!” said Mr. Doty, “she’s as sot on Tom ’s he’s on her, ‘n’ ef ever a man wus a doggoned fool about a young ’un, he is about that’n; ‘n’ fur bein’ a doggoned fool”—triumphantly—“when he sets out ter be, I’ll back Tom agin any man in Hamlin.”

Tom said but little. He made no more jokes. He kept the child with him through the rest of the day, holding her upon his knee or carrying her out upon the porch.

When at supper-time he carried her back to the room, she was asleep and he laid her in her cradle himself. He moved about very quietly afterwards and ate his supper alone with frequent glances at the sleeper.

“Don’t take her away,” he said to Mornin when she came in; “leave her here.”

“‘N’ hev her a-wakin’ ‘n’ disturbin’ uv ye, Mars’ Tom!” she responded.

“Leave her here,” he said, laying his hand on the head of the cradle. “She’ll not disturb me. We shall get along finely together.”

She was left, Mornin taking her departure with manifest disbelief in the practicability of the plan. And then, having drawn the cradle to his bedside, Tom put out the light and retired himself.

But he did not sleep for some time; having flung his mighty body upon the couch, he lay with his arms thrown above his head gazing at the darkness and listening to the soft breathing at his side. He was thinking over the one event of the day.

What might have seemed a slight thing to many men had struck deep into his great heart.

“My God!” he said, a touch of reverential tone in his whisper, “to think of her following me!”

And he stretched out his hand in the darkness and laid it upon the side of the cradle lightly, and afterwards fell asleep.

CHAPTER IX

Just at this time, which was the year before the Civil War, that fashionable summer resort, the White Briar Springs, was at its gayest. Rarely before had the hotel been filled with so brilliant a company. A few extra cases of yellow fever had been the cause of an unusual exodus from the fever districts, and in consequence the various summer resorts flourished and grew strong. The “White Briar” especially exerted and arrayed itself in its most festive garments. The great dining-room was filled to overflowing, the waiters were driven to desperation by the demands made upon them as they flew from table to table and endeavoured with laudable zeal to commit to memory fifty orders at once and at the same time to answer “Comin’, sah” to the same number of snapped fingers. There were belles from Louisiana, beauties from Mississippi, and enslavers from Virginia, accompanied by their mothers, their fathers, their troops of younger brothers and sisters, and their black servants. There were nurses and valets and maids of all shades from ebony to cream-colour, and of all varieties of picturesqueness. All day the immense piazzas were crowded with promenaders, sitters, talkers, fancy-workers, servants attired in rainbow hues and apparently enjoying their idleness or their pretence at work to the utmost. Every morning parties played ten-pins, rode, strolled, gossipped; every afternoon the daring few who did not doze away the heated hours in the shaded rooms, flirted in couples under trees on the lawn, or in the woods, or by the creek. Every evening there was to be found ardent youth to dance in the ballroom, and twice a week at least did this same youth, arrayed in robes suited to honour the occasion, disport itself joyfully and with transcendent delight in the presence of its elders assembled in rooms around the walls of the same glittering apartment with the intention of bestowing distinction upon what was known as “the hop.”

Sometimes, in dull seasons, there was a scarcity of partners upon such occasions; but this year such was not the case. Aside from the brothers of the belles and beauties before referred to, who mustered in full force, there was a reserved corps of cavaliers who, though past the early and crude bloom of their first youth, were still malleable material. Who could desire a more gallant attendant than the agile though elderly Major Beaufort, who, with a large party of nieces, daughters, and granddaughters, made the tour of the watering-places each succeeding year, pervading the atmosphere of each with the subtle essence of his gallantry and hilariousness?

“I should be a miserable man, sir,” proclaimed the Major, chivalrously upon each succeeding Thursday—“I should be a miserable man in seeing before me such grace and youth and beauty, feeling that I am no longer young, if I did not possess a heart which will throb for Woman as long as it beats with life.”

Having distinguished himself by which poetic remark, he usually called up a waiter with champagne and glasses, in which beverage he gallantly drank the health of the admiring circle which partook of it with him.

Attached to the Beaufort party were various lesser luminaries, each of whom, it must be confessed, might well, under ordinary circumstances, have formed the centre of a circle himself; legal luminaries, social luminaries, political luminaries, each playing ten-pins and whist, each riding, each showing in all small gallantries, and adding by their presence to the exhilaration of the hour.

There was one gentleman, however, who, though he was not of the Beaufort party, could still not be considered among the lesser luminaries. He was a planet with an orbit of his own. This gentleman had ridden up to the hotel one afternoon on a fine horse, accompanied by a handsome, gloomy boy on another animal as fine, and followed by a well-dressed young negro carrying various necessary trappings, and himself mounted in a manner which did no discredit to his owner. The air of the party was such as to occasion some sensation on the front gallery, where the greater number of the guests were congregated.

“Oh,” cried one of the Beauforts, “what a distinguished-looking man. Oh, what a handsome boy! and what splendid horses.”

At that moment one of the other ladies—a dark, quiet, clever matron from South Carolina—uttered an exclamation.

“Is it possible,” she said. “There is Colonel De Willoughby.”

The new arrival recognised her at once and made his way towards her with the most graceful air of ease and pleasure, notwithstanding that it was necessary that he should wind his way dexterously round numerous groups in and out among a dozen chairs.

He was a strikingly handsome man, dark, aquiline, tall and lithe of figure; his clothes fitted him marvellously well at the waist, his slender arched foot was incased in a marvel of a boot, his black hair was rather long, and his superb eyes gained a mysterious depth and mellowness from the length and darkness of their lashes; altogether, it was quite natural that for the moment the Beauforts and their satellites should pale somewhat by comparison.

When he bowed over Mrs. Marvin’s hand, a thrill of pleasure made itself manifest in those surrounding them. He spoke in the most melodious of voices.

“The greatest of pleasures,” he was heard to say. “I did not expect this.” And then, in response to some question: “My health since—since my loss has been very poor. I hope to recover strength and spirits,” with an air of delicate and gentle melancholy. “May I present my boy—Rupert?”

In response to the summons the boy came forward—not awkwardly, or with any embarrassment, but with a bearing not at all likely to create a pleasant impression. The guests could see that he was even a handsomer boy than he had seemed at a greater distance. He was very like his father in the matter of aquiline features, clear pale-olive skin and superb dark eyes: his face had even a fineness the older man’s lacked, but the straight marks of a fixed frown were upon his forehead, and his mouth wore a look which accorded well with the lines.

He approached and bared his head, making his boyish bow in a manner which did credit to his training, but though he blushed slightly on being addressed, his manner was by no means a responsive one, and he moved away as soon as an opportunity presented itself, leaving his father making himself very fascinating in a gently chivalric way, and establishing himself as a planet by the mere manner of his address towards a woman who was neither pretty, young, nor enthusiastic.

There was no woman in the hotel so little prone to enthusiasm as this one. She was old enough and clever enough to have few illusions. It was thought singular that though she admitted she had known the Colonel from his youth, she showed very little partiality for his society, and, indeed, treated him with marked reserve. She never joined in the choruses of praise which were chanted daily around her.

“I know the De Willoughbys very well,” she said. “Oh, yes, very well indeed—in a way. We hear a good deal of them. De Courcy’s wife was a friend of mine. This one is De Courcy, the other is Romaine, and there was one who was considered a sort of black sheep and broke with the family altogether. They don’t know where he is and don’t care to know, I suppose. They have their own views of the matter. Oh, yes; I know them very well, in a way.”

When questioned by enthusiasts, she was obliged to confess that the hero of the hour was bountifully supplied with all outward gifts of nature, was to be envied his charm of manner and the air of romance surrounding him, though, in admitting this, she added a little comment not generally approved of.

“It’s a little of the Troubadour order,” she said; “but I dare say no woman would deny that it is rather taking. I don’t deny it, it is taking—if you don’t go below the surface.”

Never was a man so popular as the Colonel, and never a man so missed as he on the days of his indisposition. He had such days when he did not leave his room and his negro was kept busy attending to his wants. The nature of his attacks was not definitely understood, but after them he always appeared wearing an interesting air of languor and melancholy, and was more admired than ever.

“The boy seems to feel it very much,” the lady remarked. “He always looks so uneasy and anxious, and never goes away from the house at all. I suppose they are very fond of each other.”

“I dare say he does feel it very much,” said Mrs. Marvin with her reserved little smile. “He is De Willoughby enough for that.”

It was not agreed to that he inherited his father’s grace of manner however. He was a definitely unamiable boy, if one might judge from appearances. He always wore a dark little scowl, as if he were either on the point of falling into a secret rage or making his way out of one; instead of allowing himself to be admired and made a pet of, he showed an unnatural preference for prowling around the grounds and galleries alone, sometimes sitting in corners and professing to read, but generally appearing to be meditating resentfully upon his wrongs in a manner which in a less handsome boy would have been decidedly unpleasant. Even Mrs. Marvin’s advances did not meet with any show of cordiality, though it was allowed that he appeared less averse to her society than to that of any other woman, including the half dozen belles and beauties who would have enjoyed his boyish admiration greatly.

“I knew your mother,” said Mrs. Marvin to him one day as he sat near her upon the gallery.

“Did you?” he answered, in a rather encouraging way. “When did you know her?”

“When she was young. We were girls together. She was a beauty and I wasn’t, but we were very fond of each other.”

He gave his closed book a sullen look.

“What makes women break so?” he asked. “I don’t see why they break so. She had pretty eyes when she died, but,——”

He drew his handsome black brows down and scowled; and, seeing that he was angry at himself for having spoken, Mrs. Marvin made another remark.

“You miss her very much?” she said, gravely.

He turned his face away.

“She’s better off where she is, I suppose,” he said. “That’s what they always say of dead people.”

And then still frowning he got up and walked away.

The negro servants about the hotel were all fond of him, though his manner towards them was that of a fiery and enthusiastic young potentate, brooking no delay or interference. His beauty and his high-handed way impressed them as being the belongings of one favoured by fortune and worthy of admiration and respect.

“He’s a D’Willoughby out and out,” said his father’s negro, Tip. “Ain’t no mistake ’bout dat. He’s a young devil when his spirit’s up, ’n it’s easy raised. But he’s a powerful gen’lman sort o’ boy—powerful. Throw’s you a quarter soon’s look at ye, ’n he’s got the right kind o’ high ways—dough der ain’t no sayin’ he ain’t a young devil; de Kurnel hisself cayn’t outcuss him when his spirit’s up.”

The Colonel and his son had been at the springs a month, when the fancy-dress ball took place which was the occasion of a very unpleasant episode in the annals of this summer.

For several days before the greatest excitement had prevailed at the hotel. A pleasant air of mystery had prevailed over the preparations that were being made. The rural proprietors of the two stores in which the neighbourhood rejoiced were driven to distraction by constant demands made upon them for articles and materials of which they had never before heard, and which were not procurable within a hundred miles of the place. Bedrooms were overflowing with dresses in process of alteration from ordinary social aspects to marvellous combinations of imagination and ingenuity, while an amiable borrowing and exchanging went on through all the corridors.

On the day before the ball the Colonel’s popularity reached its height. As it was the time of a certain local election, there was held upon the grounds a political meeting, giving such individuals as chose to avail themselves of it the opportunity of expressing their opinions to the assembled guests and the thirty or forty mountaineers who had suddenly and without any warning of previous existence appeared upon the scene.

The Colonel had been one of the first called upon, and, to the delight of his admirers, he responded at once with the utmost grace to the call.

When he ascended the little platform with the slow, light step which was numbered among his chief attractions and stood before his audience for a moment looking down at them gently and reflectively from under his beautiful lashes, a throb of expectation was felt in every tender bosom.

His speech fell short of no desire, being decided to be simple perfection. His soft voice, his quiet ease of movement, his eloquence, were all that could be hoped for from mortal man. He mentioned with high-bred depreciation the fact that he could not fairly call himself a politician unless as any son of the fair South must be one at least at heart, however devoid of the gifts which have made her greatest heard from continent to continent. He was only one of the many who had at stake their cherished institutions, the homes they loved, the beloved who brightened those homes, and their own happiness as it was centred in those homes, and irrevocably bound in that of the fairest land upon which the fair sun shone.

The applause at this juncture was so great as to oblige him to pause for a few moments; but it was to be regretted that nine out of ten of the mountaineers remained entirely unresponsive, crossing their jean-covered legs and rubbing their lean and grizzled jaws in a soulless manner. They displayed this apathetic indifference to the most graceful flight of rhetoric, to the most musical appeals to the hearts of all men loving freedom, to the announcement that matters had reached a sad and significant crisis, that the peculiar institutions left as a legacy by their forefathers were threatened by the Northern fanatics, and that in the near future the blood of patriots might be poured forth as a libation upon the soil they loved; to eloquent denunciations of the hirelings and would-be violators of our rights under the constitution. To all these they listened, evidently devoting all their slow energies to the comprehension of it, but they were less moved than might have been expected of men little used to oratory.

But it was the termination of the speech that stirred all hearts. With a dexterity only to be compared to its easy grace, the orator left the sterner side of the question for a tenderer one to which he had already referred in passing, and which was the side of all political questions which presented themselves to such men as he. Every man, it was to be hoped, knew the meaning of home and love and tenderness in some form, however poor and humble and unpatriotic; to every man was given a man’s privilege of defending the rights and sacredness of this home, this love, with his strength, with his might, with the blood of his beating heart if need be. To a Southern man, as to all men, his right to be first in his own land in ruling, in choosing rulers, in carrying out the laws, meant his right to defend this home and that which was precious to him within it. There were a few before him upon this summer’s day, alas, alas! that Fate should will it so, who had not somewhere a grave whose grass moved in the softness of the wind over dead loves and hopes cherished even in this hour as naught else was cherished. “And these graves——”

He faltered and paused, glancing towards the doorway with a singular expression. For a few seconds he could not go on. He was obliged to raise to his lips the glass of water which had been provided for him.

“Oh!” was sighed softly through the room, “his emotion has overpowered him. Poor fellow! how sad he looks.”

Mrs. Marvin simply followed the direction his eyes had taken. She was a practical person. The object her eye met was the figure of the boy who had come in a few minutes before. He was leaning against the doorpost, attired in a cool suit of white linen, his hands in his pockets, the expression of his handsome darkling young face a most curious one. He was staring at his father steadily, his fine eyes wide open holding a spark of inward rage, his nostrils dilated and quivering. He seemed bent upon making the orator meet his glance, but the orator showed no desire to do so. He gave his sole attention to his glass of water. To this clever, elderly Southern matron it was an interesting scene.

“If he sprang up in two minutes and threw something deadly and murderous at him,” she said to herself, “I should not be in the least surprised; and I should not be the first to blame him.”

But the rest of the audience was intent upon the Colonel, who, recovering himself, finished his harangue with an appeal that the land made sacred by those loves, those homes, those graves, might be left solely in the hands of the men who loved it best, who knew its needs, who yearned for its highest development, and who, when the needful hour arrived, would lay down their lives to save its honour.

When he concluded, and was on the point of seating himself very quietly, without any appearance of being conscious of the great sensation he had created, and still wearing an admirable touch of melancholy upon his fine countenance, Major Beaufort rushed towards him, almost upsetting a chair in his eagerness, and grasped his hand and shook it with a congratulatory ardour so impressive and enthusiastic as to be a sensation in itself.

There were other speeches afterwards. Fired by the example of his friend, Major Beaufort distinguished himself by an harangue overflowing with gallantry and adorned throughout with amiable allusions to the greatest power of all, the power of Youth, Beauty, and Womanhood. The political perspicuity of the address was perhaps somewhat obscured by its being chivalrously pointed towards those fair beings who brighten our existence and lengthen our griefs. Without the Ladies, the speaker found, we may be politicians, but we cannot be gentlemen. He discovered (upon the spot, and with a delicate suggestion of pathos) that by a curious coincidence, the Ladies were the men’s mothers, their wives, their sisters, their daughters. This being greatly applauded, he added that over these husbands, these fathers, these brothers—and might be added “these lovers”—the Ladies wielded a mighty influence. The position of Woman, even in the darkest ages, had been the position of one whose delicate hand worked the lever of the world; but to-day, in these more enlightened times, in the age of advancement and discovery, before what great and sublime power did the nobleman, the inventor, the literary man, the warrior, bow, as he bowed before the shrine of the Ladies?

But it was the Colonel who bore away the palm and was the hero of the hour. When the audience rose he was surrounded at once by groups of enthusiasts, who shook hands with him, who poured forth libations of praise, who hung upon his every word with rapture.

“How proud of you he must be,” said one of the fairest in the group of worshippers; “boys of his age feel things so strongly. I wonder why he doesn’t come forward and say something to you? He is too shy, I suppose.”

“I dare say,” said the Colonel with his most fascinating gentle smile. “One must not expect enthusiasm of boys. I have no doubt he thought it a great bore and wondered what I was aiming at.”

“Impossible,” exclaimed the fair enslaver. “Don’t do him an injustice, Colonel de Willoughby.”

But as she glanced towards the doorway her voice died down and the expression of her face changed somewhat. The boy—still with his hands in his pockets—was looking on with an air which was as insolent as it was remarkable, an air of youthful scorn and malignant derision which staggered even the enthusiast.

She turned uneasily to the Colonel, who faintly smiled.

“He is a handsome fellow,” he said, “and I must own to being a vain parent, but he has a demon of a temper and he has been spoiled. He’ll get over it when he is older.”

It was a great blow to his admirers when it became known the next morning that the Colonel was suffering from one of his attacks, and even a worse one than usual. Neb was shut up in his room with him all day, and it was rumoured that the boy would not come down, but wandered up and down the corridors restlessly, looking miserable enough to have touched the stoniest heart.

During the morning quite a gloom pervaded the atmosphere; only the excitement of preparations for the evening could have proved an antidote to the general depression.

It was to be a brilliant occasion. The county had been scoured for guests, some of whom were to travel in their carriages from other watering-places for twenty or thirty miles. The ballroom had been decorated by a committee of ladies; the costumes, it was anticipated, would be dazzling beyond measure. No disappointment was felt when the festal hour arrived, but the very keen emotion attendant upon the absence of the interesting invalid.

“If he had only been well enough to be here,” it was said, “how he would have enjoyed it.”

Major Beaufort, attired as a Sultan and appropriately surrounded by his harem in sarsenet trousers and spangled veils, gave universal satisfaction. Minnehaha in feathers and moccasins, and Hiawatha in moccasins and feathers, gave a touch of mild poetry to the evening. Sisters of Charity in white cambric caps told their beads through the mazes of the lancers. Night and Morning, attired respectively in black and white tarletan, and both profusely adorned with silver paper stars, combined their forces to add romance and vividness to the festive scene.

There had been dancing and flirtation, upon which those of the guests who did not join gazed for an hour or so as they sat in the chairs arranged around the walls, doubtless enjoying themselves intensely, and the gaiety was at its height, when some commotion became manifest at one of the doors. Those grouped about it appeared to be startled at finding something or somebody behind them, and almost immediately it was seen that this something or somebody was bent upon crowding past them. A loud, insane-sounding laugh was heard. The dancers stopped and turned towards it with one accord, their alarm and astonishment depicted on their faces. The spectators bent forward in their seats.

“What is it?” was the general exclamation. “Oh! Oh!”

This last interjection took the form of a chorus as two of the group at the doorway were pushed headlong into the room, and a tall, unsteady, half-dressed figure made its violent entrance.

At the first glance it was not easy to recognize it; it was simply the figure of a very tall man in an ungirt costume, composed of shirt and pantaloons. He was crushed and dishevelled. His hair hung over his forehead. He strode into the middle of the quadrille, and stood with his hands in his pockets, swaying to and fro, with a stare at once malicious and vacant.

“Oh,” he remarked, sardonically, as he took in his surroundings, and then everyone recognized at once that it was Colonel De Willoughby, and that Colonel De Willoughby was mad drunk.

He caught sight of Major Beaufort, and staggered towards him with another frantic laugh.

“Good God, Major,” he cried; “how becomin’ ’tis, how damned becomin’. Harem an’ all. Only trouble is you’re too fat—too fat; if you weren’t so fat wouldn’t look such a damned fool.”

It was to be regretted there was no longer an air of refinement about his intoxication, no suggestion of melancholy grace, no ghost of his usual high-bred suavity; with his laugh and stare and unsteady legs he was simply a more drunken lunatic than one generally sees.

There was a rush at him from all sides—Major Beaufort, in his Turkish trousers, being the first to fall upon him and have his turban stamped upon in the encounter. He was borne across the room, shouting and struggling and indulging in profanity of the most frightful kind. Just as they got him to the door his black boy Neb appeared, looking ashen with fright.

“De Lord o’ massey,” he cried. “I ain’t lef’ him more’n a minit. He sent me down hisself. One o’ his cunnin’ ways to get rid o’ me when he’s at de wust. Opium ’n whiskey, dats what gets him dis way. Bof togedder a-gwine ter kill him some dese days, ’n de opium am de wustest. For de Lord’s sake some o’ you gen’men cum ’n hep me till I git him quieted down.”

It was all over in a few moments, but the effort made to return to hilariousness was a failure; the shock to the majority of the gay throng had been great. Mrs. Marvin, sitting in her special corner, was besieged with questions, and at length was prevailed upon through the force of circumstances to speak the truth as she knew it.

“Has he ever done it before?” she said. “Yes, he has done it before—he has done it a dozen times since he has been here, only to-night he was madder than usual and got away from his servant. What is it? It is opium when it isn’t whiskey, and whiskey when it isn’t opium, and oftenest it is both together. He is the worst of a bad lot, and if you haven’t understood that miserable angry boy before you may understand him now. His mother died of a broken heart when he was twelve years old, and he watched her die of it and knew what killed her, and is proud enough to feel the shame that rests upon him. That’s as much as I care to say, and yet it isn’t the half.”

When those bearing the Colonel to his room turned into the corridor leading to it they encountered his son, who met them with a white-lipped rage, startling to every man of them in its incongruous contrast to the boyish face and figure.

“What?” he said, panting. “You’ve got him, have you?”

“Yes,” responded the Colonel hilariously; “’ve got me safe ’nuff; pick me up ad’ car’ me. If man won’t go out, tote ’m out.”

They carried him into his rooms and laid him down, and more than one among them turned curiously to the boy as he stood near the bed looking down at the dishevelled, incoherent, gibbering object upon it.

“Damn him,” he said in a sudden outburst; “damn him.”

“Hello, youngster,” said one of the party, “that’s not the thing exactly.”

“Go to the devil,” roared the lad, livid with wrath and shame. “Do you think I’ll not say what I please? A nice one he is for a fellow to have for a father—to be tied to and dragged about by—drinking himself mad and disgracing himself after his palaver and sentiment and playing the gentleman. He ought to be a gentleman—he’s got a gentleman’s name, and”—choking a little—“all the rest of it. I hate him! He makes me sick. I wish he was dead. He’s a liar and a bully and a fool. I’d kill him if he wasn’t my father. I should like to kill him for being my father!”

Suddenly his voice faltered and his face turned white. He walked to the other side of the room, turning his back to them all, and, flinging himself into a chair, dropped his curly head on his arm on the window-sill and sobbed aloud with a weakness and broken-down fury pitiful to see.

The Colonel burst into a frantic shriek of laughter.

“Queer little devil,” he said. “Prou’ lit’l devil! Like’s moth‘—don’ like it. Moth’ used er cry. She didn’t like it.”

CHAPTER X

As the Cross-roads had regarded Tom as a piece of personal property to be proud of, so it fell into the habit of regarding his protégée. The romance of her history was considered to confer distinction upon the vicinity, and Tom’s affection for her was approved of as a sentiment worthy of the largeness of the Cross-roads nature.

“They kinder set one anuther off,” it was frequently remarked, “her a-bein’ so little and him so big, an’ both of ’em stickin’ to each other so clost. Lordy! ’tain’t no use a-tryin’ to part ’em. Sheby, she ain’t a-goin’ nowhar ’thout Tom, an’ Tom, he h’aint a-goin’ nowhars ’thout Sheby!”

When the child was five years old the changes which had taken place in the store were followed by still greater changes in the house. Up to her fifth birthday the experiences had balanced themselves between the store and the three back rooms with their bare floors and rough walls. She had had her corner, her small chair behind the counter or near the stove, and there she had amused herself with her playthings through long or short days, and in the evening Tom had taken her upon his shoulder and carried her back to the house, as it was called, leaving his careless, roystering gaiety behind him locked up in the store, ready to be resumed for the edification of his customers the next morning.

“He don’t hev no pore folkses ways wid dat chile,” said Mornin once to Mrs. Doty; “he don’t never speak to her no other then gen’leman way. He’s a-raisin’ her to be fitten fur de highes’. He’s mighty keerful ob her way ob speakin’ an’ settin’ to de table. Mornin’s got to stand ’hind her cheer an’ wait on her hersel’; an’ sence she was big ’nuff to set dar, she’s had a silver fork an’ spoon an’ napkin-ring same’s de President himself. Ah; he’s a-raisin’ her keerful, is Mars D’Willerby.”

“Waal,” said Mrs. Doty, “ef ’twarn’t Tom D’Willerby, I shed say it was a puttin’ on airs; but thar ain’t no airs ’bout Tom D’Willerby.”

From the first Mr. Stamps’s interest in Tom’s protégée had been unfailing though quiet. When he came into the store, which he did some three times a week, it was his habit to fix his small, pale eyes upon her and follow her movements stealthily but with unflagging watchfulness. Occasionally this occupation so absorbed him that when she moved to her small corner behind the counter, vaguely oppressed by his surveillance, he sauntered across the room and took his seat upon the counter itself, persisting in his mild, furtive gaze, until it became too much for her and she sought refuge at Tom’s knee.

“He looks at me,” she burst out distressedly on one such day. “Don’t let him look at me.”

Tom gave a start and turned round, and Mr. Stamps gave a start also, at once mildly recovering himself.

“Leave her alone,” said Tom, “what are you lookin’ at her for?”

Mr. Stamps smiled.

“Thar’s no law agin it, Tom,” he replied. “An’ she’s wuth a lookin’ at. She’s that kind, an’ it’ll grow on her. Ten year from now thar ain’t no law es ’ed keep ’em from lookin’ at her, ’thout it was made an’ passed in Congrist. She’ll hev to git reckonciled to a-bein’ looked at.”

“Leave her alone,” repeated Tom, quite fiercely. “I’ll not have her troubled.”

“I didn’t go to trouble her, Tom,” said Mr. Stamps, softly; and he slipped down from the counter and sidled out of the store and went home.

With Mr. Stamps Sheba always connected her first knowledge of the fact that her protector’s temper could be disturbed. She had never seen him angry until she saw Mr. Stamps rouse him to wrath on the eventful fifth birthday, from which the first exciting events of her life dated themselves. Up to that time she had seen only in his great strength and broad build a power to protect and shield her own fragility and smallness from harm or fear. When he took her in his huge arms and held her at what seemed to be an incredible height from the ordinary platform of existence, she had only felt the cautious tenderness of his touch and recognised her own safety, and it had never occurred to her that his tremendous voice, which was so strong and deep by nature, that it might have been a terrible one if he had chosen to make it so, could express any other feeling than kindliness in its cheery roar.

But on this fifth birthday Tom presented himself to her childish mind in a new light.

She had awakened early to find him standing at her small bedside and a new doll lying in her arms. It was a bigger doll than she had ever owned before, and so gaily dressed, that in her first rapture her breath quite forsook her. When she recovered it, she scrambled up, holding her new possession in one arm and clung with the other around Tom’s neck.

“Oh, the lovely, lovely doll!” she cried, and then hid her face on his shoulder.

“Hallo,” said Tom, hugging her, “what is she hiding her eyes for?”

She nestled closer to him with a little sob of loving delight.

“Because—because of the doll,” she answered, bewildered by her own little demonstration and yet perfect in her confidence that he would understand her.

“Well,” said Tom, cheerfully, “that’s a queer thing, ain’t it? Look here, did you know it was your birthday? Five years old to-day—think of that.”

He sat down and settled her in her usual place on his knee, her doll in her arms.

“To think,” he said, “of her setting up a birthday on purpose to be five years old and have a doll given her. That’s a nice business, ain’t it?”

After they had breakfasted together in state, the doll was carried into the store to be played with there. It was a wet day, and, the air being chilled by a heavy mountain rain, a small fire was burning in the stove, and by this fire the two settled themselves to enjoy the morning together, the weather precluding the possibility of their being disturbed by many customers. But in the height of their quiet enjoyment they were broken in upon by the sound of horse’s hoofs splashing in the mud outside and Mr. Stamps’s hat appeared above the window-sill.

It was Sheba who saw it first, and in the strength of her desire to avoid the wearer, she formed a desperate plan. She rose so quietly that Tom, who was reading a paper, did not hear her, and, having risen, drew her small chair behind the counter in the hope that, finding her place vacant, the visitor would not suspect her presence.

In this she was not disappointed. Having brushed the mud from his feet on the porch, Mr. Stamps appeared at the doorway, and, after his usual precautionary glance about him, made his way to the stove. His manner was at once propitiatory and friendly. He drew up a chair and put his wet feet on the stove, where they kept up a comfortable hissing sound as they dried.

“Howdy, Tom,” he said, “howdy?” And from her hiding-place Sheba saw him rubbing his legs from the knee downwards as he said it, with an air of solid enjoyment which suggested that he was congratulating himself upon something he had in his mind.

“Morning,” responded Tom.

Mr. Stamps rubbed his legs again quite luxuriously.

“You’re a lookin’ well, Tom,” he remarked. “Lord, yes, ye’re a lookin’ powerful well.”

Tom laid his paper down and folded it on his knee.

“Lookin’ well, am I?” he answered. “Well, I’m a delicate weakly sort of fellow in general, I am, and it’s encouraging to hear that I’m looking well.”

Mr. Stamps laughed rather spasmodically.

“I wouldn’t be agin bein’ the same kind o’ weakly myself,” he said, “nor the same kind o’ delycate. You’re a powerfle hansum man, Tom.”

“Yes,” replied Tom, drily, “I’m a handsome man. That’s what carried me along this far. It’s what I’ve always had to rely on—that and a knock-down intellect.”

Mr. Stamps rubbed his legs with his air of luxury again.

“Folks is fond o’ sayin’ beauty ain’t but skin deep,” he said; “but I wouldn’t hev it no deeper myself—bein’ so that it kivers. An’, talkin’ o’ beauty, she’s one—Lord, yes. She’s one.”

“Look here,” said Tom, “leave her alone.”

“’Tain’t a gwine to harm her, Tom,” replied Mr. Stamps, “’tain’t a gwine to harm her none. What made me think of it was it a bein’ jest five years since she was born—a makin’ it her birthday an’ her jest five years old.”

“What,” cried Tom, “you’ve been counting it up, have you?”

“No,” replied Mr. Stamps, with true modesty of demeanour, “I ain’t ben a countin’ of it up, Tom.” And he drew a dirty memorandum book softly from his pocket. “I set it down at the time es it happened.”

He laid the dirty book on his knee and turned over its pages carefully as if looking for some note.

“I ain’t much on readin’ an’ writin’,” he said, “an’ ’rithmetick it goes kinder hard with me now an’ agin, but a man’s got to know suthin’ on ’em if he ’lows to keep anyways even. I ’low to keep even, sorter, an’ I’ve give a good deal o’ time to steddyin’ of ’em. I never went to no school, but I’ve sot things down es I want to remember, an’ I kin count out money. I never was imposed on none I rekin, an’ I never lost nothin’. Yere’s whar I sot it down about her a-bein’ born an’ the woman a-dyin’ an’ him a-gwine away. Ye cayn’t read it, mebbe.” He bent forward, pointing to the open page and looking up at Tom as if he expected him to be interested. “Thar it is,” he added in his thin, piping, little voice, “even to the time o’ day. Mornin, she told me that. ’Bout three o’clock in the mornin’ in thet thar little front room. Ef anyone shed ever want to know particular, thar it is.”

The look in Tom’s face was far from being a calm one. He fidgetted in his chair and finally rolled his paper into a hard wad and threw it at the counter as if it had been a missile.

“See here,” he exclaimed, “take my advice and let that alone.”

Mr. Stamps regarded his dirty book affectionately.

“’Tain’t a-gwine to hurt nothin’ to hev it down,” he replied, with an air of simplicity.

He shut it up, returned it to his pocket, and clasped his hands about his knees, while he fixed his eyes on the glimmer of red showing itself through a crack in a stove-plate.

“It’s kinder curi’s I should hev happened along by thar this mornin’,” he remarked, reflectively.

“By where?” demanded Tom.

Mr. Stamps hugged his knees as if he enjoyed their companionship.

“By thar,” he responded, cheerfully, “the Holler, Tom. An’ it ’peared to me it ’ed be kinder int’restin’ to take a look through, bein’ as this was the day as the thing kinder started. So I hitched my mule an’ went in.” He paused a moment as if to enjoy his knees again.

“Well,” said Tom.

Mr. Stamps looked up at him harmlessly. “Eh?” he enquired.

“I said ‘well,’” answered Tom, “that’s what I said.”

“Oh,” replied Mr. Stamps. “Waal, thar wasn’t nothin’ thar, Tom.”

For the moment Tom’s expression was one of relief. But he said nothing.

“Thar wasn’t nothin’ thar,” Mr. Stamps continued. Then occurred another pause. “Nothin’,” he added after it, “nothin’ particular.”

The tenderness with which he embraced his knees at this juncture had something like fascination in it.

Tom found himself fixing a serious gaze upon his clasping arms.

“I kinder looked round,” he proceeded, “an’ if there’d ben anythin’ thar I ’low I’d hev seed it. But thar wasn’t nothin’, nothin’ but the empty rooms an’ a dead leaf or so es hed blowed in through a broken winder, an’ the pile o’ ashes in the fireplace beat down with the rain as hed fell down the chimney. Mighty lonesome an’ still them ashes looked; an’ thar wasn’t nothin’ but them an’ the leaves,——an’ a bit of a’ envelope.”

Tom moved his chair back. Sheba thought he was going to get up suddenly. But he remained seated, perhaps because Mr. Stamps began again.

“Thar wasn’t nothin’ but them an’ the bit of a’ envelope,” he remarked. “It was a-sticken in a crack o’ the house, low down, like it hed ben swep’ or blowed thar an’ overlooked. I shouldn’t hev seed it”—modestly—“ef I hedn’t ben a-goin’ round on my hands an’ knees.”

Then Tom rose very suddenly indeed, so suddenly that he knocked his chair over and amazed Sheba by kicking it violently across the store. For the moment he so far forgot himself as to be possessed with some idea of falling upon Mr. Stamps with the intent to do him bodily injury. He seized him by the shoulders and turned him about so that he had an excellent view of his unprepossessing back. What Mr. Stamps thought it would have been difficult to discover. Sheba fancied that when he opened his mouth he was going to utter a cry of terror. But he did not. He turned his neck about as well as he could under the circumstances, and looking up into Tom’s face meekly smiled.

“Tom,” he said, “ye ain’t a-gwine ter do a thing to me, not a dern thing.”

“Yes, I am,” cried Tom, furiously, “I’m goin’ to kick——”

“Ef ye was jest haaf to let drive at me, ye’d break my neck,” said Mr. Stamps, “an ye ain’t a-gwine ter do it. Ef ye was, Tom, ye’d be a bigger fool than I took ye fer. Lemme go.”

He looked so diminutive and weak-eyed, as he made these remarks, that it was no wonder Tom released him helplessly, though he was obliged to thrust his hands deep into his pockets and keep them under control.

“I thought I’d given you one lesson,” he burst forth; “I thought——”

Mr. Stamps interrupted him, continuing to argue his side of the question, evidently feeling it well worth his while to dispose of it on the spot.

“Ye weigh three hundred, Tom,” he said, “ef ye weigh a pound, an’ I don’t weigh but ninety, ’n ye couldn’t handle me keerful enuf not to leave me in a fix as wouldn’t be no credit to ye when ye was done; ’n it ’ed look kinder bad for ye to meddle with me, anyhow. An’ the madder ye get, the more particular ye’ll be not to. Thar’s whar ye are, Tom; an’ I ain’t sich a fool as not to know it.”

His perfect confidence in the strength of his position, and in Tom’s helplessness against it, was a thing to be remembered. Tom remembered it long afterwards, though at the moment it only roused him to greater heat.

“Now then,” he demanded, “let’s hear what you’re driving at. What I want to know is what you’re driving at. Let’s hear.”

Mr. Stamps’s pale eyes fixed themselves with interest on his angry face. He had seated himself in his chair again, and he watched Tom closely as he rambled on in his simple, uncomplaining way.

“Ye’re fond o’ laughin’ at me round yere at the store, Tom,” he remarked, “an’ I ain’t agin it. A man don’t make nothin’ much by bein’ laughed at, I rekin, but he don’t lose nothin’ nuther, an’ that’s what I am agin. I rekin ye laugh ’cos I kinder look like a fool—an’ I hain’t nothin’ agin thet, nuther, Lord! not by a heap. A man ain’t a-gwine to lose nothin’ by lookin’ like a fool. I hain’t never, not a cent, Tom. But I ain’t es big a fool es I look, an’ I don’t ’low ye air, uther. Thar’s whar I argy from. Ye ain’t es big a fool as ye look, an’ ye’d be in a bad fix ef ye was.”

“Go on,” ordered Tom, “and leave me out.”

“I cayn’t leave ye out, Tom,” said Mr. Stamps, “fer ye’re in. Ye’d be as big a fool as ye look ef ye was doin’ all this yere fer nothin’.”

“All what?” demanded Tom.

“Gals,” suggested Mr. Stamps, “is plenty. An’ ef ye take to raisin’ ’em as this un’s ben raised, ye ain’t makin’ much; an’ ef thar ain’t nothin’ to be made, Tom, what’s yer aim?”

He put it as if it was a conundrum without an answer.

“What’s yer aim, Tom?” he repeated, pleasantly, “ef thar ain’t nothin’ to be made?”

Tom’s honest face flamed into red which was almost purple, the veins swelled on his forehead, his indignation almost deprived him of his breath. He fell into a chair with a concussion which shook the building.

“Good—good Lord!” he exclaimed; “how I wish you weighed five hundred pounds.”

It is quite certain that if Stamps had, he would have demolished him utterly upon the spot, leaving him in such a condition that his remains would hardly have been a source of consolation to his friends. He pointed to the door.

“If you want to get out,” he said, “start. This is getting the better of me—and if it does——”

Mr. Stamps rose.

“Ye wouldn’t do a dern thing, Tom,” he said, peaceably, “not a dern thing.”

He sidled towards the door, and reaching it, paused to reflect, shaking his head.

“Ef thar ain’t nothin’ to be made,” he said, “ye’v got ter hev a aim, an’ what is it?”

Observing that Tom made a move in his chair, he slipped through the doorway rather hurriedly. Sheba thought he was gone, but a moment later the door re-opened and he thrust his head in and spoke, not intrusively—simply as if offering a suggestion which might prove of interest.

“It begun with a ‘L,’” he said; “thar was a name on it, and it begun with a ‘L’.”

CHAPTER XI

It was upon the evening after this interview with Mr. Stamps that Tom broached to his young companion a plan which had lain half developed in his mind for some time.

They had gone into the back room and eaten together the supper Mornin had prepared with some extra elaboration to do honour to the day, and then Sheba had played with her doll Lucinda while Tom looked on, somewhat neglecting his newspaper and pipe in his interest in her small pretence of maternity.

At last, when she had put Lucinda to sleep in the wooden cradle which had been her own, he called her to him.

“Come here,” he said, “I want to ask you a question.”

She came readily and stood at his knee, laying her hands upon it and looking up at him, as she had had a habit of doing ever since she first stood alone.

“How would you like some new rooms?” he said, suggestively.

“Like these?” she answered, a pretty wonder in her eyes.

“No,” said Tom, “not like these—bigger and brighter and prettier. With flowers on the walls and flowers on the carpets, and all the rest to match.”

He had mentioned this bold idea to Molly Hollister the day before, and she had shown such pleasure in it, that he had been quite elated.

“It’s not that I need anything different,” he had said, “but the roughness and bareness don’t seem to suit her. I’ve thought it often when I’ve seen her running about.”

“Seems like thar ain’t nothin’ you don’t think of, Tom,” said Molly, admiringly.

“Well,” he admitted, “I think about her a good deal, that’s a fact. She seems to have given me a kind of imagination. I used to think I hadn’t any.”

He had imagination enough to recognise at the present moment in the child’s uplifted face some wistful thought she did not know how to express, and he responded to it by speaking again.

“They’ll be prettier rooms than these,” he said. “What do you say?”

Her glance wandered across the hearth to where the cradle stood in the corner with Lucinda in it. Then she looked up at him again.

“Prettier than this,” she repeated, “with flowers. But don’t take this away.” The feeling which stirred her flushed her childish cheek and made her breath come and go faster. She drew still nearer to him.

“Don’t take this away,” she repeated, and laid her hand on his.

“Why?” asked Tom, giving her a curious look.

She met the look helplessly. She could not have put her vague thought into words.

“Don’t—don’t take it away,” she said again, and suddenly laid her face upon his great open palm.

For a minute or two there was silence. Tom sat very still and looked at the fire.

“No,” he said at length, “we won’t take it away.”

In a few days, however, it was well known for at least fifteen miles around the Cross-roads that Tom D’Willerby was going to build a new house, and that it was going to be fitted up with great splendour with furniture purchased at Brownsboro.

“Store carpetin’ on every floor an’ paper on every wall,” said Dave Hollister to Molly when he went home after hearing the news. “An’ Sheby’s a-goin’ with him to choose ’em. He says he’ll bet fifty dollars she has her notions about things, an’ he’s a-goin to hev ’em carried out, fer it’s all fer her, an’ she’s the one to be pleased.”

It was not many weeks before the rooms were so near completion that the journey to Brownsboro was made, and it was upon this day of her first journeying out into the world that Sheba met with her first adventure. She remembered long afterwards the fresh brightness of the early morning when she was lifted into the buggy which stood before the door, while Mornin ran to and fro in the agreeable bustle attendant upon forgetting important articles and being reminded of them by shocks. When Tom climbed into his seat and they drove away, the store-porch seemed quite crowded with those who watched their triumphant departure. Sheba looked back and saw Mornin showing her teeth and panting for breath, while Molly Hollister waved the last baby’s sunbonnet, holding its denuded owner in her arms. The drive was a long one, but the travellers enjoyed it from first to last. Tom found his companion’s conversation quite sufficient entertainment to while away the time, and when at intervals she refreshed herself from Mornin’s basket and fell asleep, he enjoyed driving along quietly while he held her small, peacefully relaxed body on his knee, quite as much as another man might have enjoyed a much more exciting occupation.

“There’s an amount of comfort in it,” he said, reflectively, as the horse plodded along on the shady side of the road, “an amount of comfort that’s astonishing. I don’t know, but I’d like to have her come to a standstill just about now and never grow any older or bigger. But I thought the same thing three years ago, that’s a fact. And when she gets to blooming out and enjoying her bits of girl finery there’ll be pleasure in that too, plenty of it.”

She awakened from one of these light sleeps just as they were entering Brownsboro, and her delight and awe at the dimensions and business aspect of the place pleased Tom greatly, and was the cause of his appearing a perfect mine of reliable information on the subject of large towns and the habits of persons residing in them.

Brownsboro contained at least six or seven hundred inhabitants, and, as Court was being held, there were a good many horses to be seen tied to the hitching-posts; groups of men were sitting before the stores and on the sidewalks, while something which might almost have been called a crowd was gathered before the Court-house itself.

Sheba turned her attention to the tavern they were approaching with a view to spending the night, and her first glance alighted upon an object of interest.

“There’s a big boy,” she said. “He looks tired.”

He was not such a very big boy, though he was perhaps fourteen years old and tall of his age. He stood upon the plank-walk which ran at the front of the house, and leaned against the porch with his hands in his pockets. He was a slender, lithe boy, well dressed in a suit of fine white linen. He had a dark, spirited face, and long-lashed dark eyes, but, notwithstanding these advantages, he looked far from amiable as he stood lounging discontentedly and knitting his brows in the sun.

But Sheba admired him greatly and bent forward that she might see him better, regarding him with deep interest.

“He’s a pretty boy,” she said, softly, “I—I like him.”

Tom scarcely heard her. He was looking at the boy himself, and his face wore a troubled and bewildered expression. His gaze was so steady that at length the object of it felt its magnetic influence and lifted his eyes. That his general air of discontent did not belie him, and that he was by no means an amiable boy, was at once proved. He did not bear the scrutiny patiently, his face darkened still more, and he scowled without any pretence of concealing the fact.

Tom turned away uneasily.

“He’d be a handsome fellow if he hadn’t such an evil look,” he said. “I must have seen him before; I wonder who he is?”

There were many strangers in the house, principally attenders upon the Court being held. Court week was a busy time for Brownsboro, which upon such occasions assumed a bustling and festive air, securing its friends from less important quarters, engaging in animated discussions of the cases in hand, and exhibiting an astonishing amount of legal knowledge, using the most mystical terms in ordinary conversation, and secretly feeling its importance a good deal.

“Sparkses” was the name of the establishment at which the travellers put up, and, being the better of the two taverns in which the town rejoiced, Sparkses presented indeed an enlivening spectacle. It was a large frame house with the usual long verandah at the front, upon which verandah there were always to be seen customers in rocking-chairs, their boots upon the balustrade, their hands clasped easily on the tops of their heads. During Court week these customers with their rocking-chairs and boots seemed to multiply themselves indefinitely, and, becoming exhilarated by the legal business transacted around them, bestirred themselves to jocularity and argument, thus adding to the liveliness of the occasion.

At such periods Mr. Sparkes was a prominent feature. Attired in an easy costume seemingly composed principally of suspenders, and bearing a pipe in his hand, he permeated the atmosphere with a business-like air which had long stamped him in the minds of his rural guests as a person of administrative abilities rarely equalled and not at all to be surpassed.

“He’s everywhar on the place, is Sparkes,” had been said of him. “He’s at dinner, ’n supper, ’n breakfast, ’n out on the porch, ’n in the bar, an’ kinder sashiatin’ through the whole thing. Thet thar tavern wouldn’t be nothin’ ef he wasn’t thar.”

It was not to be disputed that he appeared at dinner and breakfast and supper, and that on each appearance he disposed of a meal of such proportions as caused his countenance to deepen in colour and assume a swelled aspect, which was, no doubt, extremely desirable under the circumstances, and very good for the business, though it could scarcely be said to lighten the labour of Mrs. Sparkes and her daughters, who apparently existed without any more substantial sustenance than the pleasure of pouring out cups of coffee and tea and glasses of milk, and cutting slices of pie, of which they possibly partook through some process of absorption.

To the care of Mrs. Sparkes Tom confided his charge when, a short time after their arrival, he made his first pilgrimage for business purposes.

“She’s been on the road all day,” he said, “and I won’t take her out till to-morrow; so if you don’t mind, I’ll leave her with you until I come back. She’ll be all right and happy, won’t you, Sheba?”

Secretly Sheba felt some slight doubt of this; but in her desire to do him credit, she summed up all her courage and heroically answered that she would, and so was borne off to the dining-room, where two girls were cutting bread and slicing ham for supper. They were Mrs. Sparkes’s daughters, and when they saw the child, dropped their knives and made a good-natured rush at her, for which she was not at all prepared.

“Now, mother,” they cried, “whar’s she from, ’n who does she b’long to?”

Mrs. Sparkes cast a glance at her charge, which Sheba caught and was puzzled by. It was a mysterious glance, with something of cautious pity in it.

“Set her up in a cheer, Luce,” she said, “’n give her a piece of cake. Don’t ye want some, honey?”

Sheba regarded her with uplifted eyes as she replied. The glance had suggested to her mind that Mrs. Sparkes was sorry for her, and she was anxious to know why.

“No,” she answered, “no, thank you, I don’t want any.”

She sat quite still when they put her into a chair, but she did not remove her eyes from Mrs. Sparkes.

“Who does she b’long to, anyhow?” asked Luce.

Mrs. Sparkes lowered her voice as she answered:

“She don’t b’long to nobody, gals,” she said. “It’s thet little critter big Tom D’Willerby from Talbot’s Cross-roads took to raise.”

“Ye don’t say. Pore little thing,” exclaimed the girls. And while one of them stooped to kiss her cheek, the other hurriedly produced a large red apple, which she laid on the long table before her.

But Sheba did not touch it. To hear that she belonged to nobody was a mysterious shock to her. There had never seemed any doubt before that she belonged to her Uncle Tom, but Mrs. Sparkes had quite separated her from him in her statement. Suddenly she began to feel a little tired, and not quite so happy as she had been. But she sat still and listened, rendered rather tremulous by the fact that the speakers seemed so sure they had reason to pity her.

“Ef ever thar was a mystery,” Mrs. Sparkes proceeded, “thet thar was one; though Molly Hollister says D’Willerby don’t like it talked over. Nobody knowed ’em, not even their names, an’ nobody knowed whar they come from. She died, ’n he went away—nobody knowed whar; ’n the child wasn’t two days old when he done it. Ye cayn’t tell me thar ain’t a heap at the back o’ that. They say D’Willerby’s jest give himself up to her ever since, an’ ’tain’t no wonder, nuther, for she’s a’ out ’n out beauty, ain’t she, now? Just look at her eyes. Why don’t ye eat yer apple, honey?”

Sheba turned towards the window and looked out on the porch. A bewildering sense of desolation had fallen upon her.

“I don’t want it,” she said; and her small voice had a strange sound even in her own ears. “I want Uncle Tom. Let me go out on the porch and see if he’s coming.”

She saw them exchange rapid glances and was troubled afresh by it.

“D’ye reckin she understands?” the younger daughter said, cautiously.

“Lordy, no!” answered the mother; “we ain’t said nothin’. Ye kin go ef ye want to, Sheba,” she added, cheerfully. “Thar’s a little rocking-cheer that ye kin set in. Help her down, Luce.”

But she had already slipped down and found her way to the door opening out on to the street. The porch was deserted for a wonder, the reason being that an unusually interesting case was being argued in the Court-house across the street, where groups of men were hanging about the doors. The rocking-chair stood in a corner, but Sheba did not sit down in it. She went to the steps and stood there, looking out with a sense of pain and loneliness still hanging over her; and at last, without knowing why, only feeling that they had a dreary sound and contained a mystery which somehow troubled her, she began to say over softly the words the woman had used.