THE LOVES OF AMBROSE

"The young man put the honeysuckle in his buttonhole"

THE
LOVES OF AMBROSE

BY
MARGARET VANDERCOOK

Illustrated by Gordon Grant
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
1914

Copyright, 1914, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian

"And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding
exceeding much, and largeness of
heart, even as the sand that is on the seashore."

To
JOHN VANDERCOOK

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PART ONE

HIS FIRST WIFE

"Oh! lose the winter from thine heart, the darkness from thine eyes,
And from the low hearth-chair of dreams, my Love-o'-May, arise,
And let the maidens robe thee like a white white, lilac tree.
Oh! hear the call of Spring, fair Soul,—and wilt thou come with me?"

CHAPTER I

THE DEPARTURE

Ambrose Thompson opened his front door and looked out. It was May, the sun had just risen over Pennyroyal, and before him lay Kentucky's carnival of spring.

The boy drew a deep breath that seemed to rise and quiver over his face like a breeze coming away at the end of his long, curiously emotional nose.

"Glory, what a day!" he whispered; "seems about good enough to eat!" And then he vanished, only to reappear five minutes afterward dressed as a traveller and wearing a linen duster, a stovepipe hat, and carrying a carpet-bag.

Out in the cinder path his glance embraced the quiet street.

"Right foot, left foot"—without a change of expression the boy broke into an irrepressible jig. He was nineteen and stood six feet four in his stocking feet; the wind tilted his tall hat, showing his high forehead, his straight, straw-coloured hair, and solemn, light blue eyes; it whipped back his linen duster, disclosing his lean legs clad in tight trousers, his frock coat, and white stock. An indescribable air of adventure enveloped him. So Abraham Lincoln may have looked on some dress-occasion morning in his youth—all big bones and promises waiting for something to happen.

"I sure am going to give 'em the slip this time," Ambrose panted, stopping to readjust his costume and to take another careful survey of the neighbourhood. In his garden several lilac bushes were in their first bloom, and above his doorway an ardent, over-early honeysuckle had blossomed in the night. The young man put the honeysuckle in his buttonhole.

"Leaping ditches, tearing across ploughed fields, to the woods ahead"

"I reckon," he remarked, "there ain't nothin' sweet that don't grow in Kentucky," and then with a smile whose shine radiated through his homeliness and a blush that spread to the tips of his big ears, he added: "I ain't just figurin' on the growth of flowers," and was off tiptoeing down his garden walk and stepping across his gate to avoid the creak of opening it.

This was fifty-five years ago in Kentucky, in a little village of some three or four hundred inhabitants, shut in by hills and by inclination in the southwestern part of the state; a community not to be confounded with their high-living, high-stepping blue grass neighbours, for dwellers in the "Pennyrile" were a plainer people, who perhaps drew some of their characteristics from the bittersweet, pungent "Pennyrile" grass that gave the locality its name.

As for the town itself, it rested primly in a cup-shaped hollow with three main streets. One of them, travelling farther than the rest, led in a way to the end of things for the residents of Pennyroyal as it climbed a hill at the foot of the village, set thick with hardy perennials, evergreens, and small white stones, while encircling this hill was Peter's Creek, that by and by grew up to be a river, but it had a tranquil movement, proceeding slowly on its course by reason of sharing the Pennyroyalian distaste for getting any distance from home.

Then the houses in Pennyroyal: although the beautiful open country was all about them, they crowded so close together that they seemed almost to touch elbows, and now and then one of them had appeared to shove the other back in its determination to get the best view of the street. They were mostly cottages, with no front porches, but with sloping roofs and little Gothic wooden fences, and painted white, with green outside blinds, except Ambrose's, and his had been touched with a boy's imagination, its intention being plainly rose colour.

Now in a double row along the outside wooden sidewalk this morning the linden trees were dropping fragrant yellow plumes inches deep in the ruts of the clay road, while over the chimneys whirled the last of the spring's apple blossoms. Bees buzzed among the flowers, birds chattered, flying nervously from one tree to another in an effort to be through with breakfast before the disturbing human element should get about; and hitched to a nearby post Ambrose's horse and gig were waiting.

The young man surveyed his equipage with the eyes of an idealist.

Old Liza had seen service, but her toilet had been made in the spirit of the best foot foremost; her coat had been freshly curried, her gray mane and tail carefully combed, and in her manner there was an air of emotional anticipation.

With one foot hovering above the step of his gig, Ambrose suddenly paused. The laprobe inside the carriage was quivering.

"Holy Moses!" Reaching underneath, the young man drew forth a small black and brown object whose legs and tail were five upturned points of supplication. Setting it upright on the ground, his face hardened. "Ain't I told you you couldn't come with me, Moses?" he began sternly. "Ef ever there was a crittur, human or otherwise, with a talent for bein' where it wasn't wanted, it's you! Besides, ain't I just locked you in the stable?"

The softening in his master's manner, visible in his last question, in the twitching of his eyebrows, in the slight movement of the tip of his long nose, was familiar to Moses. Casually he approached Ambrose's leg, but midway there, sensing defeat and not being an amiable beast, he planted his feet wide apart, barked as loudly as chronic hoarseness permitted, and straightway the young man humbled himself before him.

"Fer the lands sakes don't give me away," he pleaded. "I ain't never had such luck before this, getting off without being pestered." Down on his knees, he patted the stiff bristles, apologetically whispering: "Sorry not to be wishing your company, but Susan and Aunt Ca'line will look after you. Ain't nothin' on God's earth that will keep Susan Barrows from lookin' after every mortal thing she sets eyes on."

Without deigning a farewell, Moses trotted away. A ridiculous looking animal with an ancestry as mixed as any son of Adam, yet he had an enormous self-esteem. You see, though a dog, Moses possessed a self-sustaining ego, which requires no special ancestry or talents to uphold it. For there is a vanity that feeds itself, and many nobler personalities go down before it. Invariably Ambrose's did. Merely christened after the Hebrew lawmaker because of having been found amid some bulrushes, yet Moses may have felt that the name carried its anointment.

But now at last the traveller had fairly started. Swinging into his gig, he arranged his long legs in a comfortable right-angle triangle, taking a final hurried glance around him. "Move on, Liza, faster'n you can, or it's all over with me," he urged, "for things is lookin' kind of nervous."

Three times his wagon wheels had revolved in the clay road when a shutter on the house next door banged open, and like the explosion of a gun a child's voice rent the air.

"He's off! I tell you I see him. He's gettin' away unbeknownst." And a thin, brown figure hopping out of the window on the grass ran toward the street, twittering and moving its head from side to side like an excited bird. An instant later from the same opening a second pair of legs protruded—longer and thinner than the others, clad in white stockings and black cloth gaiters. Like the feelers of a beetle turned over on its back they waved in the air. And from behind a kind of barrel-shaped opening came a voice so tragic and compelling that even old Liza, stopping short, turned an inquiring eye toward the source of the disturbance.

As for Ambrose, although filled with a boy's impatience at interruption, the sight was overpowering. His reins dropped loosely, he stared, gasped, and then shook with silent laughter. Susan Barrows was living in the days of hoopskirts, and now in her effort to slide through the window had been held fast.

Nevertheless, in her time, desire has probably removed as many mountains as faith, so, notwithstanding her present difficulty, Susan's gave her power soon to set herself upright on the ground, and still with her full rigging to continue moving toward her goal like a ship with a full gale behind it.

A thin middle-aged woman, Mrs. Barrows was, of medium height and of terrific energy. The drama of her personal existence in a small town with no outside interests being always insufficient, Susan had filled in her hunger with an insatiate appetite for other people's affairs. Never could her curiosity about her neighbours be wholly gratified, and yet, like the possessor of any other great passion, its owner did her level best to satisfy it.

Out in the road, with one hand she grasped Ambrose's coat sleeve while the other was unconsciously raised toward heaven. Two bright spots of colour burned on her high cheek bones, her bunches of black corkscrew curls trembled with eagerness, her eyes challenged.

"Tell me where you be goin' and what you be a-goin' fer, Ambrose Thompson. It ain't fair you stealin' off this way each year and nobody findin' out where or why. Seems like us bein' neighbours and me seein' to you since your ma's death, that you might leastways have put your trust in me."

Removing her hand from his sleeve, Ambrose patted it gently before returning it to its owner. "No, ma'am, I ain't goin' to tell you no more this time than before," he replied. "And I was hopin' to get off once without remarks."

During this temporary delay the younger Susan had been industriously pecking and poking about in the lower part of their neighbour's gig. Now as the young man moved on for the second time the child's voice again rang after him.

"He's goin' courtin'; Ambrose Thompson is always runnin' after girls! It's Peachy Williams, for I seen his leg under his duster, and he's wearing his Sunday clothes!"

These last words were a triumph of evidence, but not for a moment would Ambrose look back nor appear to have heard. A humorous affection he might feel for the older Susan, but for the younger his dislike was to last for more than fifty years. Nevertheless, a little later he did turn around, and root and branch, the Susans had vanished, so that even now the news of his departure was stirring through Pennyroyal as the wind moves the leaves in a group of closely planted trees.

Something it is to know when one is beaten. Swearing a trifle and yet grinning, the boy settled himself more comfortably in his gig. "Might as well drive through town now kind of slow, and give folks a treat," he relented. "Mebbe I was shirkin' duty in tryin' to sneak off. Pennyrile ain't to say starvin' for food and clothes, but she certainly is pinin' for excitement, and who says that ain't just as bad? Seems like Christian charity for me to give this town something to talk about at least once a year."

And truly these yearly spring migrations of young Ambrose Thompson had aroused more interest and unrest in Pennyroyal than the yearly mystery of the earth's rebirth. Because, for the past five years on a certain May morning (and there never was a way of discovering just which morning he might choose) Ambrose had set out, at first on foot and later with his gig, and been away from his home eight and forty hours. Returning, he had given no clue as to where he had been.

Now like the music of a calliope the squeak of his wagon wheels awoke the village. Windows and doors flew open, heads in nightcaps and bald heads and heads with curls were thrust forth, but to their volley of questionings and accusations, Ambrose offered only the morning's greetings.

Travelling with praiseworthy slowness, he neglected no street in Pennyroyal, and, by the dozen, girls went fluttering in and out of houses, to wave farewells to the adventurer, while bolder voices called out Peachy Williams's name with every teasing inflection. One girl to whom Ambrose threw the spray of honeysuckle from his buttonhole cast it scornfully back, refusing to accept what she so plainly thought another's spoils.

Then the young man drove past Brother Bibbs, the Baptist minister, who, framed in the vestibule of his wooden church, beamed upon him with such heavenly condescension toward earthly affection that his expression of "Bless you, my children," was almost equivalent to a marriage ceremony. Next, along his route, appeared three maiden sisters, the Misses Polly. They stood in a line in their front yard, Miss Zeruiah, the literary one, always in advance, then Miss Narcissa, instructor in mathematics and the sciences, and last and humblest because most useful of the family trio, Miss Jane, the domestic one. Upon her Ambrose smiled with especial kindness, remembering certain heart-shaped cookies presented in early youth, which even in the form of sweet cakes held a kind of romantic suggestion. The Mistress Polly were directors of the "Polly Institute," where Ambrose and Peachy had started their technical education at about the same time, and yet this youthful acquaintance hardly justified the present arrangement of a love motif. Nevertheless Ambrose distinctly heard the three ladies breathing in unison the name of "Peachy" as he passed them by.

Two hours later, well away from Pennyroyal, having turned off the high road to a less frequented lane, the traveller brought old Liza to her first halt. Then, drawing out a large red handkerchief, he wiped his moist brow and, removing his collar, gazed furtively about him.

The glory of his early morning face had departed; he looked older and almost haggard.

"Ain't it awful, human curiosity!" he murmured. "Reckon I was most too brave in tryin' to make things worse, and yet I never dreamed folks would think I was runnin' after Peachy Williams this trip. She——"

Lower and lower Ambrose seemed to be gradually settling down into his gig, although finding some trouble in disposing of so great a length of leg.

Finally he sighed: "Kind of wish I had brought old Moses along fer comp'ny." For the boy was feeling that need for companionship that comes after all mental strain. "But then Moses ain't like dogs; he's so bothersome he's most human—always either wantin' you to do something fer him or to set up and take notice of what he is doin'."

Relapsing into silence after this, which was soon followed by a more usual and serene state of mind, the young man shortly after took out from his duster pocket a withered russet apple left over from the winter store, and thoughtfully sunk his teeth in it. Then gradually his tranquillity deepened, increased by the recollection of his having just passed through the fire of the enemy and escaped. Behind him lay the village of Pennyroyal, suspicious yet still unsatisfied, and before him the open, empty, springtime road. At will Liza was cropping wayside grass: the traveller's hands had let slip the reins, and sometimes his eyes wandered to the far-off blue horizon and sometimes dwelt on the closer beauty of the roadsides, where elderberry, sumach and Virginia creeper were tangled in thick hedges, and where young grapevines hung like silver-green garlands under their fine coating of May dust.

In a Kentucky landscape, to those who comprehend it, there is ever a sense of generous growth, of nature's yielding herself gladly to life's eternal purpose. Now dimly this country boy began to understand the motive in the new beauties and new fragrances of each returning spring.

Again the eagerness of the dawn overtook him; and stiffening, he picked up his reins, starting off again, when, turning in from an elbow up the road, Ambrose beheld the one person whom above all others his desire had been to escape.

The figure was occupying the entire seat of a buggy, but was driving along apparently so lost in thought as to seem oblivious of anything or anybody in his vicinity.

"Morning, Ambrose," Doctor Webb began, however, as he appeared directly alongside the other gig, and yet there was nothing either in his tone or manner to suggest that he thought it unusual for a young man to be turning his back upon his natural field of labour at this hour of the morning to drive off in exactly the opposite direction.

"Morning," Ambrose returned, warily attempting to creep past without further conversation. For if the doctor should open the broadside of his humour the secret of his journey might yet be wrested from him. Nevertheless, although the older man had stopped his horse too deliberately to be ignored, he showed no present desire to ask questions. Indeed, the usual smile had disappeared from his kind face, and his deeply lined eyes appeared anxious and worried. Just such a look Ambrose had seen while the doctor sat watching by the bedside of a critically ill patient.

"What troubles you, doctor?" he inquired.

In answer the man leaned across from his buggy, taking one of Ambrose's lean hands in his, and, unaccustomed to a touch with such magnetic power in it, a kind of electric thrill passed through the susceptible boy.

"It's you I've been troubling about lately, my son," Doctor Webb answered, "and now it seems as if Providence had just sent you along for me to speak to this morning. I've brought you out of children's diseases, chicken pox, measles and the like, but I've been seein' symptoms in you lately that have made me powerful uneasy, 'cause in this trouble it ain't in my power to help you through."

Ambrose's tongue was thickening, and his Adam's apple moving convulsively. "Is the disease so serious, then?" he whispered, feeling a hitherto unsuspected though general weakness creeping over him.

The doctor bowed his great head until his double, treble chin rested upon his shirt bosom, concealing his face from view. "Sometimes it's fatal, my boy," he returned, appearing so moved that his big voice sounded hoarse and unnatural. "It's true there's some that gets over it, but nobody ain't ever quite the same afterward."

Ambrose was trying to keep his knees from knocking together. "How have I showed symptoms of the disease?" he asked.

And Doctor Webb's whole body rocked slowly back and forth. "My son, you're showin' 'em uncommon bad this mornin'. I could notice 'em soon as I was ridin' up toward you; your colour is a-comin' an' a-goin', your eyes is shinin' unnatural bright, your heart is a-thumpin' too quick." And here he sighed, so that Ambrose braced his lean shoulders for the worst, although his lips were dry.

"Tell me quick, doctor; ef I kin bear it, what is it ails me?"

"Puppy love," the doctor shouted, and then giving his old horse an unexpected cut with his clean willow switch, off he drove, shaking with laughter.

"Puppy love!" Twice Ambrose repeated the words in a stupid fashion, and then his laughter rang out until it sounded like an echo of the older man's heavier roar. "Durn it," he said to himself, "ef that ain't just another way of sayin' 'Peachy'!"

When finally the traveller entered the shelter of a certain group of low hills near the Kentucky river, it was well past the middle of the afternoon, and there in a hollow he fed and watered his horse and then lay down behind a tree.

CHAPTER II

THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE

In the mean time, however, Mrs. Barrows and her offspring had not been idle. Indeed, no sooner had they become convinced that no information could be had out of Ambrose than they both set off at once hurrying across back lots, the younger preceding her mother like an outrider, thrusting her head and her news into every open door.

Within a few minutes the mother and daughter had arrived together at a small house set midway in the next street, and there, without even pausing to knock, Mrs. Barrows, pulling at a side door, entered a dining-room. Seated at a breakfast table were six girls and one young man, and immediately the six pairs of inquiring feminine eyes were upraised toward Susan, although the solitary male continued the eating of three large fried eggs in spite of the fact that his appearance plainly indicated a bilious temperament.

"Miner Hobbs, he's gone!" said Susan. "Got off most without my seein' him, though I ain't had a good night's rest come this month of May!"

Obviously this information should have been regarded as interesting, and yet, except for a curt nod, Miner apparently had not heard. From earliest boyhood notwithstanding that two more unlike fellow creatures could not be imagined, he and Ambrose Thompson had been closest friends. For while Ambrose was long and fair, Miner was considerably below medium height and dark, with one gloomy, indestructible curl rising above his already furrowed brow. Alike only in both being orphans, Ambrose was untroubled by other ties, while Miner was guardian to six beautiful blond sisters, all exceeding him in size and tranquillity. The drygoods firm of Hobbs & Thompson had been opened up in Pennyroyal a year before, so that to-day Ambrose's unexplained disappearance was not only a failure in personal confidence but a downright business backsliding.

By and by, Miner arose. Still his fit of abstraction appeared too deep to have been pierced from the outside, and yet, sliding past Mrs. Barrows, he attempted to get out of the door. However, his visitor sprang upon him.

"You're sneakin' off to try to catch up with Ambrose," she announced triumphantly. "Well, the Lord knows I ain't one to want to hinder you. But I'm thinkin' you won't succeed, for Ambrose Thompson will lead all of us that aims to keep up with him a powerful long journey before ever we are through with him."

Notwithstanding, in the following of his partner Miner Hobbs fully understood that one must proceed warily; therefore he did not attempt starting until after Ambrose was well out of town, and then he rode slowly along on horseback, never coming into the range of the other traveller's vision, but trying to keep his wheel tracks in evidence, and now and then making inquiries of wayfarers. So that about an hour after Ambrose's entrance into the woods his friend came to the same place and there sought the thicket in which he believed him to have hidden himself.

"Miner rode slowly along on horseback, now and then making inquiries of wayfarers"

Face downward Ambrose was lying on the soft earth; but if he felt surprise or anger at hearing the sound of a horse's hoofs, and later a human footfall, he made no sign. Flopping over he merely called, "Hello," keeping his eyes fixed upon the line of hills on the opposite bank of the river. His fishing-pole, fastened to a bush near by, was extended over the water, but Ambrose's only visible occupation was the chewing of a blade of "pennyrile" grass.

In contrast, Miner Hobbs appeared fatigued and harassed.

"I got to find out why you come off to yourself every year, Ambrose," he began angrily. "I know you're doin' somethin' you're ashamed of or you wouldn't be hidin'."

"Wherefore?" smiled the other boy. "Look here, Miner, we're friends, have been since the first hour we met, yet I can't see as that gives you the right to know my business. Friends has got their places, and in my opinion a man can tell his friend just what he wants him to know, no more, and no less, and the friend ain't the privilege to spy out a single other thing."

"But you're doin' somethin' sinful or you would 'a' told me," Miner repeated doggedly, and then, although uninvited, he sat down on the ground close by, commencing to smooth out the Hyperion curl over his brow which his dejection and the heat of his trip had considerably tightened.

"Then we'll let it go at that," drawled Ambrose.

And for the next five minutes both boys sulked, Miner gnawing savagely at his plug of tobacco, Ambrose still chewing on the blade of "pennyrile" grass.

There were no informing signs about the place, so Miner decided that the truant must now merely be resting on his journey.

"You hadn't a right to run off from business," Miner spluttered next. Having made up his mind not to make this accusation, the little man was surprised upon hearing it explode of its own strength.

However, Ambrose, instead of appearing disturbed, attempted to arrange himself more comfortably on the grass, but finding this impossible, his voice suggested richer repose.

"Miner, ain't it ever come to you that the Lord has given human bein's time for more than one thing?" he queried, resting his chin upon his hand. "I hold with work myself most always, but now and then there comes a time, maybe it's just a short time, that is meant for something else, something that belongs to you and is intended for you to do same as your work. Maybe it's restin' and maybe it ain't."

But at this the little man rose up on his feet. "As you've made up your mind you are not goin' to tell me, Ambrose, what is the use of talkin' so much? I suppose you're sure you are not goin' to tell me?"

His companion bowed his head.

"All right then, it ain't necessary," Miner rejoined. "I know what 'tis. There ain't but one thing that could ever come between you and me and that's—a girl. If it ain't Peachy Williams that has lured you from home, then it's some one else. I've been expectin' this to happen a long time, and I've been tryin' to prepare myself for this day,"—here Miner choked, and coughed in order to conceal his emotion—"but I've always said to myself: Ambrose's easy, but he's open, and he'll surely tell me in time to get a brace. Of course I know, Ambrose, that you've been plumb crazy about girls since the Lord knows when, and been sendin' mottoes and valentines since you were able to talk, but I didn't think you would reach the marryin' stage fer quite a spell. Still I can see for myself that this spring trip looks like business. It passes my knowledge,"—Miner relented—"but it's you. Seems as if I couldn't bear havin' females worritin' me save those my parents and the Lord put on me to the last day I live, but you, Ambrose, you ain't never had petticoat sense and never will. Good-bye." And there was unutterable scorn in Miner's last words, as he moved away, mingled with the affection he was to feel for no living thing save Ambrose. When with head bowed, he was unconsciously treading underfoot the flowers that sprinkled his path, a fishing-pole and line deftly circled through the air caught its hook in his coat sleeve.

The one boy struggled, while the other jerked, and then a rich voice drawled: "Please come back, old man, for if you really want to know why I've run off to myself each spring for these past five years so it clean hurts you not to know, I reckon I've got to tell you."

Then Miner returned and sat down again. His friend's behaviour was now even more puzzling than before, for although Ambrose was close by, his eyes had a faraway look in them, his eyebrows were twitching, his slender nostrils quivering, and indeed, he had the appearance of a man having strayed off some great distance by himself.

"Swear you'll never give me away, Miner," he began, and holding up one of his big hands in the sunlight—his hands which were the truly beautiful thing about him—he made a mystic sign to which his companion swore.

"You won't understand when I do tell you," he hedged, "but I've been comin' away off to myself every spring since I was a boy on account of the 'Second Song of Solomon.'"

And at this Miner groaned, shutting his near-sighted eyes. "Lord, he's the chap that had a thousand wives!"

Then back to earth came Ambrose, his blue eyes swimming in mists of laughter and his shouts waking all the echoes in the hills.

"Wives!" he cried, rolling his long body over and over in the grass, and kicking out his legs in sheer ecstasy, "Miner Hobbs, if ever you git an idea fixed in your head, earthquakes won't shake it. Wives, is it? Why, I ain't given Peachy Williams a thought of my own accord since I started on this trip, nor any other girl, for that matter, so I can't for the land sakes see why I have been havin' her poked at me so continual! 'Course there wouldn't be sense in me denyin' that I have a hankerin' for girls; flesh and blood, 'ceptin' yours, Miner Hobbs, cannot deny the kind we raise in Kentucky. However, they ain't been on my mind this trip. Old King Solomon done a lot of things besides havin' a thousand wives—they was his recreation. He builded a temple and founded a nation and wrote pretty nigh the greatest poetry heard in these parts."

Here the speaker commenced pulling at the damp earth to hide his embarrassment, and then made a pretence of examining the soil that came up in his hand.

"It's the 'Second Song of Solomon' I'm meanin', Miner, and I've already told you you ain't goin' to comprehend me when I do explain," he continued patiently, "but bein's as it's you, I reckon I've got to try. It's that song about spring. Ever since I was a little boy and first heard it, why it began a-callin' me to get away for a little space to myself to try and kind of hear things grow. It's a disappointin' reason for me sneakin' off, ain't it, and foolish? I wish I had been doin' somethin' with more snap to it, just to gratify Pennyroyal. But at first, you see, I didn't mean nothin' in particular by not tellin', knowin' that folks would think my real reason outlandish, but by and by when the town got so all-fired curious and kept sayin' I was up to different sorts of mischief, I just thought I'd keep 'em guessin'." Now the long face was quivering in its eagerness to make things clear. "Why, it seems to me from the time that the first green tips come peepin' up between the stubble in the winter fields I kin hear that Solomon Song a-beatin' and a-beatin' in my ears. 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.'"

But poor Miner was making a cup for his ear with his hand. "But turtles ain't voices, Ambrose, that anybody knows of," he murmured dimly; "it's frogs we hear croakin' along the river bank."

And this time Ambrose laughed to himself. "It's croaks you're always hearin', old fellow, ain't it?" he whispered affectionately. And then—"I reckon it makes no difference to me whether it's a frog or a turtle, a bird or even a tree toad. It's the song of life, I'm listenin' for, Miner."

CHAPTER III

PEACHY

Nevertheless, in spite of Ambrose's intentionally truthful declaration to Miner, for the rest of that afternoon and evening he was never wholly able to get free from the thought of Peachy. However, he did not then stir from his first shelter in the woods, finding endless refreshment in the beauty of the Kentucky river landscape, nor did he surrender himself readily to the lure of the feminine; but poor Ambrose was a victim of the strange force that lies embodied within a universal idea.

A bird appearing on the branch of a tree above his head and bending over, peeped into his face twittering: "Pe-che, Pe-che," as impudently as any small Susan; then, catching his eye, with a little mocking courtesy, flew away. A robin hopping on the grass near the boy's side, pecked at the crumbs left over from his luncheon; her full breast, her air of concentrated domesticity somehow recalled the image of his latest affection—Peachy, the youthful mistress of the Red Farm.

Now in setting out on this spring pilgrimage nothing had been farther from the traveller's intention than any dallying with his familiar weakness. Girls—why, the years behind Ambrose Thompson blossomed with them; never could he recall a season since his extremest boyhood when he had not been enchantingly in love. But actually there was little reason why Peachy Williams should be thrust upon him more than another save that he was growing older and had been devoting some time to her of late. Besides which, she was comely.

Toward nightfall the bird songs became such intimate revelations of love that several times the listener put his fingers into his ears in his effort to fight their suggestions away. And yet it was not until next morning that his decision actually broke.

And then it was not so much a matter of emotion. But he had had an uncomfortable night of fitful dreaming and awakened with yesterday's spiritual elation gone and with an intense desire for human companionship.

Rising first on one elbow, Ambrose made a remark which has probably been considered by the greater portion of the male creation. "I wonder now," he asked himself, "ef bein' looked after and made over ain't sometimes better'n bein' free?"

A very little while after this the boy cooked his own breakfast, with extremely poor results, and then making as pleasing a toilet as his reflection in the river permitted, immediately set out in the direction of the Red Farm. And no longer did Ambrose's face show signs of struggle: his air had now become one of peaceful acquiescence in the laws of nature. He had no idea of committing himself definitely, however, by this visit to Peachy; his mind was not wholly made up and he desired nothing abrupt or startling; it was simply that at present a day of solitary musing did not appear so appealing as her companionship, and moreover, Ambrose shared the universal masculine delusion that his was the important mind to be made up.

A sense of humour means a sense of proportion and therefore an appreciation of values, so Ambrose Thompson, the young Kentucky Romeo, was not without a certain thrifty streak. In driving along it was not disagreeable to reflect that the Red Farm was the richest tobacco farm in the county and that Peachy was its sole heiress. Not that Peachy by herself was insufficient; Ambrose also had pleasure in recalling the firmness of her young bosom, the sheen of her auburn hair, the whiteness of her teeth—and then—how frequently and how delightfully she laughed. That her laugh was non-committal had not up to this time troubled her admirer, who yearned for a feminine audience and had not yet learned to ask that this audience be discriminating.

Even feeding chickens may be made an alluring picture, or at least Ambrose thought so, when he had driven unobserved into the farmyard and waited there watching Peachy, with her sleeves rolled back, flinging the corn to the ground. Also with his accustomed sensitiveness to impressions the boy realized that the girl herself was not unlike one of her own creamy leghorn hens; she, too, was both red and white with her clear healthy skin, red hair, and red-brown eyes—and then the fulness of her figure! The young man laughed delightedly, when turning and catching sight of him the girl started running toward him with short, uneven steps that yet got over the ground very quickly, and actually when she spoke, there was a little cluck to her voice.

And yet, somehow, Peachy did not seem to feel the same degree of surprise that her visitor did at his own unexpected appearance. She blushed when he kissed her hand with an ardour peculiar to Ambrose though foreign to custom in the "Pennyrile," but she betrayed no wonder at his visit in the broad daylight when plainly he should have been at work in his store. Neither did she ask questions. Notwithstanding, after a few words of greeting, Ambrose had the impression of being shooed into the house, Peachy using her white apron for the purpose.

Yet this had not been his intention, for indeed he had arrived at the farm an hour before dinner, with the idea of taking Peachy out for a walk and then possibly confiding to her the original purpose of his escape from Pennyroyal; surely she could be made to understand better than any one else, and his mood was now one requiring sympathy. Instead, however, there was something mysterious the matter with the girl's costume, so that Ambrose shortly found himself divested of his hat and duster and shut up in a sticky parlour with the family album on his lap for entertainment, and only one window open to give him just enough light to be able faintly to see and air to keep barely alive. On entering the room his first impulse naturally had been to fling open wide all the windows, but hearing his hostess's cries of horror, both his arms and his inclination had weakened. Although truly the lawn about the Red Farm house was exquisitely green and free from dust, yet the thought of possible desecration to the best parlour had the effect of reality.

Now although Ambrose was miserably settled according to Peachy's directions, and in spite of having expressed the desire to change her dress at once, the girl still lingered on, her face wearing a look that troubled her suitor as it was so unlike her usually placid and admiring one. Her red lips were drawn, her brow puckered, her atmosphere one of extreme disapproval. Under the circumstances Ambrose's forehead was naturally moist with perspiration and his face not overly clean, yet his clothes, notwithstanding being somewhat crumpled and dusty, were plainly his Sunday best.

"What is it, Peachy?" he asked, first studying himself solicitously. Then, following her shuddering gaze across the crimson splendour of the Brussels carpet, he beheld a track of mud made with footprints so large that they could belong to no other feet than his. His eyes dropped. Surely his feet were caked with mud—mud from the shadowy cool depth of the woods, from the banks of that celestial river so lately deserted by him. Yet, seeing the girl's unhappiness, again the young man surrendered and so for a longtime (it was hard to tell how long) continued sitting in the same place. Peachy had gone away, to remain perhaps till dinner time, and taken his shoes with her. So Ambrose's feet were now encased in a pair of hot carpet slippers, a whole size too small for him, so that he could not even shuffle without crumpling his toes or else walking about in his socks.

Several times he sighed, pushing back his long hair, a gesture with him expressive of mental unrest. Why, oh, why, had he given up his original plan of two days' solitary freedom and companionship with nature? Peachy had never seemed less alluring, and as for physical comfort or even the pleasure of her society, had he gained either? Cold shivers every now and then had their way up and down the young man's spine in the course of his meditations, notwithstanding the warmth of the room. For he knew himself to be easily stirred, so supposing that he and Peachy had taken the walk together that morning and something serious had happened! By and by young Ambrose began to feel as utterly uninterested in female charms, as cool and remote as a snow-capped mountain, and at about this moment Peachy returned to the room.

She was wearing a pure white dress and, moving over into a dark corner, smiling at her suitor, she sat down on a small sofa. Here, by dint of pinning his toes down into his slippers, and letting his heels rise above them, Ambrose managed to arrive a few seconds later. He was close up beside her, as comfortably near as Peachy's starched clothes permitted, liking the clean smell of her dress, the perfume of her body; there were odours about her of warm new milk, of fresh honey, of ripening fruits.

And quite by accident, it seemed to him, the girl's plump hand was laid near his, so that a moment later it required pressing. Then the kerchief about her full breast, rising and falling softly, showed a hint of something whiter and softer beneath. With surprising rapidity the boy's recent regret for his lost holiday began slipping away from him. The room was still close, but a breeze blowing in from the partly raised window fanned them both. Perhaps Ambrose's head was swimming from fatigue and drowsiness, perhaps from his sense of his companion's nearness, of her readiness to fall into his arms with his first desiring touch.

"Peachy," Ambrose was whispering, when stealthily the door of the parlour opened, and there stood Peachy's father, his red face wearing such an expression of amusement and coarse understanding that instantly Ambrose felt a return of his former coldness. His boots having been cleaned and returned to him five minutes later, he followed the farmer and his daughter into their dining-room.

There the meal was a hideous one to him despite his hunger and the good and plentiful food. For seated at the family table, were several farm hands, white overseers of the negro labourers, and they made stupid jokes, shoving their elbows into one another and grinning idiotically from Peachy to him. Their ugly thoughts were like palpable close presences in the room, destroying all possible illusions for the boy, and yet the girl herself seemed not to mind. Instead, she blushed and bridled, sending challenging looks at Ambrose across the spring freshness of his piled-up plate of new potatoes, jowl, and spring greens each time he attempted putting his fork up to his mouth.

So that after a while, inch by inch, the boy felt himself being pushed into a corner where he had meant to walk one day of his own accord. And by the time dinner was over, not only had all desire passed from him, but apparently all will power as well. For next he allowed Peachy to lead him to an enclosed summer house. This summer house was some distance away from the big place and so shut in by carefully trained vines that it allowed no opportunity for distracting views or vistas beyond. It was what one under some circumstances might have called, "a chosen spot."

"The Village"

Now there is no reasonable explanation of why Peachy Williams, the chief heiress of "the Pennyrile," had so set her heart upon the possession of Ambrose Thompson. Lovers were plentiful, and among them the rich owner of the place adjoining her father's, and Ambrose had no fortune worth mentioning, and, moreover, was distinctly homely; but perhaps Peachy was drawn as many another woman has been before—by the lure of the unknown; for never could she have any proper understanding of Ambrose Thompson's temperament. Times were when he appeared more ardent than any of her other suitors, and then his attention being distracted, both physically and mentally he faded from sight. Now in contrast Peachy's own disposition was direct and simple. At a distance from the Red Farm to the village she recognized that her lover might be difficult to control, but near at hand she believed him tractable, and in a measure this was true, for Ambrose could always be managed by his friends up to a certain point—only the trouble was that at this time of life Peachy Williams did not understand where this point ended.

Like a long tallow candle slowly melting from the heat, the young man was now lolling idly on the narrow circular bench of the summer house appearing so limp and dispirited that he seemed incapable of any kind of opposition.

Would the afternoon never pass? Could he ever remember having been forced to remain so long in the society of any one woman? So long that he ceased to have anything he desired to say or any possible idea that he wished to express; indeed his mind felt as clean and empty as a slate wiped by a wet rag. Why in heaven's name didn't Peachy herself have something to say once in a while? Before this day his calls had been short evening ones, when he had had opinions of his own and to spare. Could the time ever come in a man's life when he might want a girl to be inspiration as well as audience, to have an idea of her own now and then?

"Oh, Lord," Ambrose groaned half aloud. If only he could think of some plan of escape, but in the rash enthusiasm of his arrival at the farm had he not promised Peachy to remain all day? And now in his exhausted condition even his imagination had deserted him. Certainly he could think of no excuse for getting away at once.

Yet more and more depressing were Peachy's long silences, her frequent laugh more irritating, since Ambrose could find no reasonable excuse for laughter in the dulness of the interminable May afternoon with nothing to look at but the ground at his feet, or the lacing of leaves overhead, except Peachy, stitching, stitching everlastingly on something so white and weblike that Ambrose felt he too was being sewed in, made prisoner for life.

His long legs twitched, fairly his body ached with his longing to be off, until by and by even the girl was made to realize that things were not going as she had reasonably expected.

"What is it ails you this afternoon, Ambrose?" she asked at last, wistful if he had but known it. "Wasn't there something special you wanted to say to me to-day, else why did you come so out of your regular time?"

"Why had he come?" Barely was Ambrose able to repress another groan. For the life of him he could not now have told what had drawn him that morning to the Red Farm. Whatever desires or emotions had then stirred him were gone, his head was heavy, his blood moved languidly, even the necessary domestic noises of farm life were inexpressibly annoying. Could Peachy ever have spelled romance? Sighing aloud Ambrose put up his hand to wipe fresh moisture from his brow, and then coloured.

"I'm afeard you're ill," the girl continued, suddenly solicitous, and again with a movement that suggested a motherly hen: "You're so quiet and unlike yourself and yet so nervous and wriggly."

Ambrose yawned. "I slep' out last night, so mebbe I'm tired," he confessed unadvisedly; then immediately observed the same expression on Peachy's face that had been brought there by the presence of his muddy boots in her parlour. Her lips had tightened, though her brow was smooth; it was that gentle but awful look of the born manager.

"I knowed you'd been doin' something foolish," she stated calmly. "Anybody else'd remember there is chills and fever out of doors these spring nights. It's the spring that has set in on you; your blood needs thinnin'. I'll get you some sassafras tea." Relieved by Ambrose's revelation, Peachy was for at once starting off, but the young man caught at her skirts.

Truly the spring was not at present working on him nor did his blood at this hour require thinning.

"Don't go, Peachy; it ain't sassafras I'm needin', thank you just as kindly," he said, touched and a bit shamed by her interest. "To tell you the truth, I'm beginnin' to feel restless wantin' to get back to the woods ag'in. I'll come back to see you soon," he pleaded, observing that her head was being shaken with unmoved persistence. Her reply was final:

"You'll do no such thing, Ambrose Thompson; you'll stay right here till your queerness has wore off. Haven't I been worryin' over you ever since dinner? Think I'll let you go moonin' off now by yourself with no one to look after you?" Like young Juno both in her majesty and plenitude, Peachy did this time move out of sight, leaving her victim greatly shaken.

In a few moments Ambrose knew that a bitter herb compound would be poured down his reluctant throat; later he might be placed in bed between hot blankets and more sweat drawn from his lean frame. Really there was no limit to Peachy's particular kind of mothering femininity, and since her intentions were kind—Ambrose knew himself of old—before kindness he would go down like a struck ten-pin. Already he could feel the blankets closing in over him, and now in truth he shook with a chill.

Soon after his tall form arose, and then crouched as it crept forth from the summer house, stopping only long enough to pin a white paper to the outside arbour, when with leaps and bounds it disappeared inside the stable, to reappear a few moments later with old Liza hitched to his high gig. Driving as rapidly as possible he soon got past the outside farm gate leading into the road.

So when Peachy returned with cup and spoon in hand she found her shrine deserted and instead read this note pinned outside among the vines and scrawled in the handwriting of Ambrose Thompson:

You were right, Peachy dear, I'm not myself to-day. I am cold and my heart action is uncommon feeble, so I think I'd best not stay to worry you. Maybe I'll be coming back to the farm some day when I'm feeling different.

Your respectful
Ambrose.

However, safe on the road, Ambrose, looking back and catching a far image of Peachy with his letter in her hand, decided that never again should he return to the Red Farm. For not only was Ambrose fleeing, but knew the reason why. Peachy was a manager, and had that moment in the parlour before dinner been longer—well, thank God and old Liza, he was still free.

"Good Lord, deliver me!" the boy prayed, though being a good Baptist he knew no litany save that of his own soul.

CHAPTER IV

"Even so, Love, even so!
Whither thou goest, I will go."

So the boy continued driving on and on, loitering in the faint sweet-smelling May afternoon.

At first after having left the farm his heart had been troubled and his mind uneasy, burdened by an unconscious wave of sex weariness.

"Lord," he said aloud once, "seems such a pity you didn't make all critturs the same sex; I ain't carin' which, male or female, seein' what a lot of trouble we might all then 'a' been saved."

Naturally, so far as Ambrose himself was concerned, he was through with the dangers lurking in feminine society forever! He even intended confessing this conviction to his friend and partner, Miner, as soon as they should be alone together, for even at the moment of his resolution had not the boy's subliminal self whispered that he might need strengthening later on?

After getting well away from his danger zone, however, Ambrose had chosen that the remainder of his spring journey should lie through an unfamiliar part of the state, and so had turned his horse into every likely lane presenting itself until by degrees the ever-increasing beauty of the landscape wrought its effect upon his susceptible soul.

The houses along his route were finer than those of his own neighbourhood and, being placed farther back, showed only a chimney, or the white fluted column of a veranda every now and then beyond the closely planted avenues of beech or maple trees. Sounding across the fields came the voices of the darkies closing their day's tasks with songs. Truly this Kentucky was a happy land in the days before the war, and on this afternoon there were myriads of the soft, green growing things toward which Ambrose's young spirit had yearned,—acres of corn just creeping above the mould, and miles of tiny tobacco plants.

Then unexpectedly this character of landscape disappeared, and old Liza trotted on to a hard white turnpike. The twilight was closing down, but a toll-gate keeper showed himself a few yards ahead, and then a cluster of small stores. Afterward there was nothing further to interest Ambrose until he drove straight up to a big building surrounded by a high fence and set in the middle of a grassless yard without the influence of a tree or vine near it and where from the inside came the murmur of children's voices hushed to a pathetic, uniform note.

The boy knew the place at once for a county orphan asylum, and being what he was, reflected. In times past he had seen these same orphans led through the streets of Pennyroyal, a dreary set of little human beings, dressed alike and made to keep step like a chain gang. "Glory," he whispered, "here am I running away from the fear of havin' to keep step with one person; what if I had been made to keep step with so many?"

The next moment brought him nearly opposite a woodpile, and there he slowed up, for he thought that he heard a noise behind it sounding like a scared sheep or lamb.

"Stop!" What looked like a child's figure instantly rose and ran toward him. "Hide me!" she gasped; "oh, please be quick and don't ask questions." And the girl clung so tightly to the spokes of the gig wheel that had the young man driven on she must have been dragged like a slave at his chariot.

But of course he did no such thing. "Hop in," he replied cheerfully. Then, while the child crouched shivering and panting against his knee under the thin laprobe, Ambrose whistled to indicate his entire lack of concern in this latest adventure, and also to suggest that he rode alone.

Pretty soon, however, he began wondering what character of person he had rescued and from what or from whom she was running away, it being characteristic of Ambrose that first he had done what was required of him, and later had desired to ask questions. In the haste and semi-darkness it had been impossible to tell whether the child was a gypsy or a mere ordinary waif, and she had looked so young—twelve or a little more perhaps. There was nothing much to judge by except that she was little and light and that her eyes were dark and shiny and she had two braids of long hair. But by and by of its own accord the figure under the laprobe started talking. "Don't let anybody take me away,—say you ain't seen me if they come along," she pleaded in such a tone that it was only possible for Ambrose to give a reassuring pat to her head and then to drive more rapidly along. Once when there was a moment of unusual stillness he did peep under the laprobe, only to catch sight of a pair of grateful eyes upturned to his and to jerk back his hand from the touch of cold lips.

Fifteen minutes of what had seemed totally unnecessary hiding, as there were few vehicles abroad on the turnpike at this late hour, and then both the occupants of the gig heard a furious pounding of a horse's hoofs behind them and knew that something or some one was being pursued.

The girl's clasp tightened, and Ambrose could catch, not the words, but the sound of a prayer. Harder than ever before in all their ten years of friendly intimacy the boy now spurred on old Liza. It might have been just as well had he known why he was being thus chivalrous, but there had been no opportunity so far for finding out, and everything in Ambrose played gallantly with this new adventure. He was still a boy with a boy's love of mischief, of hiding, of winning in any kind of game, and susceptibility to instant sympathy.

Old Liza was a retired racehorse, and although her retirement dated some years back, still she was subject to spurts of speed. However, the best of spurts won't hold out long, and soon her driver realized that the wagon behind was gaining on him every moment.

"Keep still!" he ordered, deliberately pulling up short in the middle of the road. With a quick movement, seeing that the truant was completely hidden, he set his carpet-bag up on his lap, and, opening it, began rummaging among its contents. When the other wagon was within hailing distance he turned slowly about.

"Thank the Lord for trifles, stranger," he called. "I wonder now if you would mind pausin' and givin' me a light; I got my pipe and tobacco"—he held out an old-time corncob pipe—"but maybe you be hurryin' on to a sick person."

Naturally the other man hesitated. Ambrose's solemn long face was fairly plain to view, also his manner of having all eternity before him. Eying him suspiciously, the newcomer thrust forth his own lighted pipe, Ambrose managing to keep his carpet-bag between them.

"You ain't seen anything of a runaway girl?" the man asked.

Ambrose nodded with irritating precision, the time being consumed in scrutiny of his questioner's face. The man had lantern jaws, small, hard eyes, and an expression of official authority peculiarly annoying to certain members of the laity.

"There was a girl a piece back hidin' behind a woodpile; thought maybe she was playin' hide and seek." Here the speaker laughed. "Reckon you suspicioned she was a pretty fair runner if you're chasin' a girl along the high-road with that horse. Most any human would have had the sense to hide." Here the reins flapped on old Liza's back and she took a few steps forward.

Evidently Ambrose's words had not been without effect, for the stranger did not hurry on at once, neither did he reveal any misgiving in connection with the young man nor the amount of property being transported at the front of his gig, for the country people of that day were accustomed to doing their own carrying.

Safety with honours! A smile began playing about Ambrose's face, when suddenly a kind of miniature convulsion shook his leg, followed by a choking, spluttering noise that was plainly a terrified sneeze.

And instantly the hand of the man in the wagon reached forward, but he was not within reaching distance, and at the same instant Ambrose, seizing hold of his passenger, made a flying leap from the gig. Then catching the girl's hand in his he ran with her, ran gloriously, hardly conscious of the light figure being drawn along. All day his long legs had been cramped with sitting still; this, then, was the thing that he had most desired: leaping ditches, tearing across ploughed fields to the woods ahead, with the frightened girl panting but keeping close to his side, and behind them the enraged, shouting figure of officialdom.

Once in the woods the hiding was easy; twisting in and out among the trees not only did Ambrose lose his pursuer, but himself. For if he had counted on anything, which he probably had not, it was that the man would not run after them for any length of time, leaving his fast horse to stand in the road.

Finally, the girl and boy both dropped down on the ground. The long May twilight was past, still they could see the outlines of each other's forms, and Ambrose could hear the beating of the girl's heart against her frock like the fluttering of an imprisoned moth.

He could not help reassuring her. "You're safe, sis, don't worry," he drawled. "Keep still and maybe in a minute I'll find some water."

But she would not let him leave her, and tagged along until they finally discovered a little stream. Then, as Ambrose had some stale bread in his pocket, together they feasted for a short time, when, as the moon of the night before had come out again a trifle larger, Ambrose decided to inquire concerning his companion's plans. She now seemed entirely peaceful, and, though rested, had made no mention of moving along. However, for some time longer he watched her with that solemn stare of his. She was chattering gayly enough about nothing ("there was never a time when a female wouldn't be able to talk," he thought), but by and by she must be interrupted.

"I wonder now," he said when there was no longer any sound either of fear or fatigue in her voice, "if you would kindly be tellin' me which way you would like to be goin' and what friends you was plannin' to run to to-night when I picked you up back on the road? I ain't to say acquainted with this part of the country, but I reckon I can help to find them. It's gettin' late and I ain't easy in my mind about Liza."

For some absurd reason he felt himself placed upon the defensive.

The girl was shaking her head. "I ain't no friend but you."

Ambrose whistled. "Well, bein's as I am what one might call a recently adopted friend, maybe you'll so much as tell me where you're thinkin' of spendin' the night."

"I ain't thinkin'," was the answer, and at this Ambrose swore softly, though you may count on his having sworn under his breath.

"Look here, you got to tell me a straight story. I ought to 'a' made you before," he confessed. "I reckon I knew you were runnin' away from that orphan asylum and I kind of wanted to help, even more when that fellow came after you, but we can't go traipsin' around all night, and I got to find Liza. You oughtn't to have run away from a good asylum if you hadn't no friends."

Ambrose knew himself for a liar before the girl on the ground began rocking herself back and forth with her hands clasped over her knees.

"I ought to, I ought to, I ought to," she repeated until her words had the swaying influence of a chant. "You know nothin' about it. I have been in that place so long I can't remember anywheres else. How can I have friends? I don't know nobody, I don't love nobody, I ain't nobody! Why, there's mornings when I get up and lookin' at the other orphans, seein' we are dressed alike and got to do the same things at the same time all day, I begin to think maybe there ain't any me. I'm just one of them—any one." She began crying now, but that did not interrupt her passionate speech. "I've been thinkin' of runnin' away a long time. P'raps I'll have a hard time; I don't care. Ain't I a right to find out?"

And this of course the young man could not answer, so he only passed his hand over his brow. "Well, you might 'a' stayed at the asylum a little longer," and then because he was Ambrose, "or at least till I got safely past that woodpile."

"I was too old," she defended. "I ought not to have stayed so long as I did, only nobody knew what to do with me." She was looking up into her companion's face close, that she might find something more of help in it. "Maybe you know some one that might want me? I know lots of things, cleanin' and cookin' some——" She would like to have continued to pour out her poor list of accomplishments, but Ambrose stopped her.

For some time the fear had been growing upon him that the child he believed himself to have rescued was not so much a child as he had first supposed. Of course he had never seen her very plainly and there was nothing to judge by in her short, scant dress. "Would you mind," he now inquired, "tellin' me just about how old you are?"

"Sixteen."

Ambrose groaned. For in Kentucky half a century ago, you must remember, sixteen was thought an age nearer that of a woman than of a girl.

"Then I've got to take you back to the orphans," he announced.

However, his declaration had not even the distinction of being listened to, for the girl, with her chin sunk in her clasped hands, was plainly thinking of something else. Now she put one hand timidly on his coat sleeve, and Ambrose could see that she had a curiously pointed chin and that her eyes were like deep wells with the moonlight shining down into them. "Maybe you'll tell me where you're thinkin' of stayin' the night?"

"The Lord knows only." And here yesterday's adventurer had a sudden vision of himself setting forth on his journey to be alone with nature. On the morning of the second day he had been almost caught in a trap of his own setting, and now at nightfall was probably in a worse fix. "I had been thinkin', though, of spendin' the night somewhere peaceful-like in the woods," he growled.

The girl clapped her hands together and, yawning, drew closer to her new friend, almost as if she meant to rest her head upon his shoulder.

"Then let me stay with you, please," she begged, and Ambrose could feel her warm breath on his cheek. "The woods is big and there's plenty of room for me, too. I shan't be afraid with you, and I've never seen the stars, except through the window."

The boy rose. "No," he said harshly, "you can't stay alone in the woods at night with me. I reckon before this I understood you didn't know nothing."

Half an hour afterward they found old Liza cropping grass, a little off the main road where they had left her. When both of them had returned to the gig Ambrose drove on in silence with an uncommonly bored face.

Later the moon went behind a cloud and a light mist fell, and then the girl's body began swaying gently backward and forward. Once she fell too far forward, when, still frowning, her companion slipped an arm about her, and a moment later she was fast asleep with her head resting on his shoulder.

Ambrose breathed deeply of the odour of the fresh wet earth. It was like the perfume of her young body; the moist curls about her face like the damp tendrils of new vines. Soon the boy's shoulder ached, and his entire left side, including his leg, seemed to have gone to sleep. Now and then he wondered if it ever should wake again in this world; and yet try as he might Ambrose Thompson could not make up his mind that he actually disliked the presence of the girl with him, and never from youth to old age had he the talent for deceiving himself.

"Poor kid," he murmured more than once, "she must 'a' been lyin' awake nights plannin' to run away, with no place on God's earth to run to."

Seldom did he allow himself the pleasure of looking long at her, and only once did his lips move toward hers, and then, though his face worked, they were drawn sharply back.

"Lord!" he whispered after this, "whatever shall I do with her?" A stranger in that part of the country himself, he knew of no one to ask to shelter the girl, and take her back to the asylum he would not. Should he turn her over to a stranger she would promptly be sent back there in the morning. Yet here were the lights of a village showing close ahead of them, and every now and then old Liza stumbled, almost falling from weariness.

Ambrose's prayer half awakened the girl. Anyhow, she sat up for a moment rubbing her eyes, to hear him asking: "Whatever is your name?"

"Sarah," and then her head swayed again.

But Ambrose sat straight up giving his reins an unexpected joyous flap. "Glory, why ain't I thought of it before?" he asked of no one. Then aloud: "When Abraham drew near to the land of the Egyptians didn't he admonish Sarah, his wife, to say she was his sister that it might be well with him and that his soul should live?" He grinned silently. "I'm findin' the patriarchs pretty useful this trip, but I reckon if Abraham could say that his wife Sarah was his sister to save his own skin, I can tell the same kind of a one to save a girl."

"Wake up, Sarah," he urged, when a few moments later he drew rein before a red brick tavern door, "and if anybody asks questions, recollect you are to say you're my sister."

However, on that same evening, when Sarah put up her lips for a sister's good night kiss, it was the boy who turned away. There was something in this girl that called to him too strongly, something fragrant and as yet unawakened, and then he had not dreamed she was so pretty, with her scarlet cheeks and big, heavy-lidded eyes, some poor little child of Eve from a far different land than his blond Kentucky. It looked, too, as though the little force the girl had, had now spent itself in her one effort of running a way, and hereafter some one would surely have to look after her. "Not only had she never been taught at the asylum to think for herself," the boy reflected, "she ain't never even been allowed to."

Nevertheless the girl slept untroubled in her high-post bed in the best guest chamber of the tavern, while Ambrose in a tiny room close under the roof, lay awake for a long time. He was not in the woods alone as he had dreamed of being, and yet he was not unhappy. He was not listening to the voices of nature as he knew her, but to the stirrings of his own blood, to the beating of his own heart.

More than once in order to stay his restlessness Ambrose had risen from his bed and stood leaning and looking out of his window at the stars and breathing deep the odours of the night. Still he could see nor feel nothing except the presence of the strange girl near him, the appeal of her utter helplessness. And yet the boy did not understand that the song of life he had come forth to hear was being sung to him for the first time to-night. For he only kept repeating to himself over and over: "Whatever am I to do with her, poor little kid?" until he also fell asleep.

CHAPTER V

THE RETURN

It was the fourth morning since Ambrose's departure, and county court day in Pennyroyal. The hour was just before noon, so the men had already left the court-house and were standing around in groups talking politics, while the younger ones paraded, walking shoulder to shoulder for mutual support and encouragement. The main street was also fluttering with girls, a variety of household errands having brought them forth at this hour; on their arms fresh sunbonnets trembled, in their eyes wonderful things danced, and indeed almost all of them were fair. Yet in the doorway of the drygoods firm of Hobbs & Thompson Miner Hobbs stood wrapped in gloom; the girls had giggled for him and at him vainly. More than eighty-six hours had passed bringing no word from his partner.

Suddenly a vibration swept through the air as tangible as the pealing of bells. Ambrose was on his way back into Pennyroyal. The news must have had its origin somewhere out of sight, for now it was travelling swiftly by word of mouth.

One moment the older men ceased arguing and spat widely, the girls turned their eyes away from their admirers, even the youths glanced up the hill, for the story grew that not only was Ambrose returning, but that he did not ride alone.

By and by, though still some distance off, Miner beheld old Liza drawing the familiar gig. About her neck hung a garland of buttercups and daisies, above one twitching ear appeared a bouquet of wild flowers and sweet fern tied with flowing streamers of white cotton-back satin ribbon, while upright on the floor of the gig stood Ambrose.

As the equipage advanced Miner leaned against his door frame.

Ambrose was wearing a new stove-pipe hat, his swallow tailed coat revealed a new beflowered waistcoat, and in his buttonhole blossomed a rose. But Miner swept details aside. On Ambrose's face was the expression that has lit up the world, and by his side rode a strange girl never before seen in Pennyroyal.

Ambrose was bowing from right to left, waving his hat in joyous circles of greeting, while the girl clung with one hand to an end of his coat and with the other clutched her paper-flower bouquet.

When the gig had turned the corner into Linden street and was moving on toward the rose cottage the news of its approach had preceded it, for the wooden sidewalk close by was lined and there in the forefront stood Susan Barrows, her hands on her hips and her bunches of corkscrew curls bobbing.

"Where on earth did you find that girl, Ambrose Thompson?" she called out as soon as the couple were in hailing distance.

Ambrose drove closer. "I didn't find her, Miss Susan," he answered, lying like a saint.

Mrs. Barrows' eyes bored like old gimlets sharpened from long use. "She's too young to be your housekeeper, and she ain't ugly," she said. "The town'll talk."

But now Liza had stopped of her own accord in front of home, and Ambrose, letting go of his reins, put his arm about the girl. Under the new poke bonnet her face was pale except for the scarlet of her lips and her dark eyes that never left their refuge.

The sensitive point to her companion's long nose quivered. Coming toward them he could see Miner's six pink-and-white, blond sisters, and in their wake the dark little man. Miner was walking like a man at a funeral, with his head bowed, and that he did not wear a band of crêpe upon his arm was only that he had lacked opportunity; everything else suggested a pall. At the same instant, round the corner of the cottage, trotted Moses, waving his tail and wearing a smile of forgiveness. One look, and ignoring his master's friendly whistle, the little dog disappeared, not to be seen again for three days.

Silently Ambrose lifted the stranger down to the boardwalk and with his arm still about her turned to face Susan. Perhaps there was something of appeal in the familiar solemnity of his gaze and in his whimsical drawl:

"We'll let the town talk, Susan, won't we, or it'll bust?" he replied quietly. "No, ma'am, she ain't my hired housekeeper; no ma'am, she ain't no relation of mine; that is, no born blood kin." With this he began leading Sarah to the shelter of his own yard and, drawing her in, closed the gate.

"But we're pretty closely related, Susan." Purposely Ambrose's voice was raised. He then took a few irresistibly jubilant steps backward and forward, swinging the girl with him. "She's my wife!"

PART TWO

HIS SECOND WIFE

"Heaven mend us all"

CHAPTER VI

RECONSTRUCTION

"How long has it been since, Mrs. Barrows?" asked the Baptist minister.

"Eight years, Brother Bibbs," Susan answered.

They were standing in front of Susan Barrows' cottage one late June afternoon in the summer of 1866.

The minister sighed, flapping his worn coat-tails as a signal of distress. Mrs. Barrows was gazing at the house next door. There the lilac bush which had showed its first blossoms on that morning of Ambrose's runaway had grown to full estate. Its season having passed, however, it was no longer in bloom, but instead, the climbing rose, known in the South as the "Seven Sisters," was spreading itself above the front door, bestowing its flowers against the background of the once rose-coloured cottage.

Susan's black curls moved reminiscently, eight years having wrought no changes in her beyond the deepening of the original plan. "Yes, eight years since Ambrose Thompson brought that orphan child home, and two since she passed away. Seems that Ambrose wouldn't never have got off even one year to the war if she hadn't gone on before, seein' as she wasn't never willing to let him out of her sight a minute longer'n she could help."

"A deeply affectionate nature," remarked the minister.

"A powerful clinger," retorted Susan, "but men is forgivin' to regular features with a high colour." She turned at this instant to look down the street. "I call it chokin' myself to hang on to a man the way Sarah done to Ambrose plumb up to the hour she died. What's always needin' proppin' ain't to my mind worth the prop. Howsomever, the child is dead, and I'm hopeful death does change us right considerable, though I can't see as it changes nothin' of what we were nor what we done in this world—and more's the pity!"

Assuredly Brother Bibbs was growing restless, and Mrs. Barrows talking to cover time. For five minutes before had she not seen him attempting to sneak past her gate to gain refuge in the Thompson cottage unobserved before its owner could possibly have returned from work?

Then, too, the minister's face was uncommonly harassed, and these were disjointed days in the Pennyroyal as well as throughout the entire country. True, the Civil War was over, which Susan called "the uncivilest ever fit on God's earth," but while its wounds and differences were patched up they were by no means healed. And Pennyroyal's disposition to regard herself as one family had made her dissensions peculiarly bitter. There were times in this past year since the close of the war when the minister had wondered if it had not been the bitterest year of all, for notwithstanding that Kentucky did not suffer from reconstruction as the states further south, remember that she was, during and after the war, a state divided within herself.

There was trouble in the Pennyroyal air this afternoon.

"Farewell, Susan," Brother Bibbs suggested, as getting out his pocket handkerchief he removed a slight moisture from his eyes. "Ambrose and Sarah loved one another, that was the main thing. Theirs was a spring mating, and, like the birds whose season they chose, brief, too brief in passing." Attempting now to move, Brother Bibbs found it impossible, since in his moment of sentiment Mrs. Barrows, leaning over her fence, had linked her arm through his.

"Well, thank the Lord the little love bird didn't leave a young one in the nest for me and the male to look after," she argued more leniently. "Come right on in, Brother, and rest yourself, as I kin see Ambrose and his two shadders advancin' toward us up the street, and a peskier pair of shadders than Miner Hobbs and that dog, Moses, I ain't never seen, but it's true the two of 'em ain't left Ambrose to himself a minute since his wife died."

With her free hand Susan now waved a friendly greeting, even releasing at the same time the vigour of her clutch with the other, for Brother Bibbs was a fragile gentleman, an elderly widower, and, excepting in matters pertaining to heaven or hell, greatly subject to the sisters in his congregation.

Also the three figures were almost in plain sight, the little man leaning as usual on the arm of the tall one, with Moses following but a few steps behind.

Miner Hobbs walked with a slight limp. Wounded in the battle of Resaca, he had never entirely recovered, and although not yet thirty years old already showed signs of advancing age in his shrivelled appearance, like a nut whose kernel has failed to ripen.

Moses, however, was remarkably well preserved and, barring a stiffness in his legs and a few grizzled hairs, lighter of heart than in many a year. For since that girl who had come to his home had suddenly gone away with equal mysteriousness his master was once more his slave.

On the surface Ambrose seemed to have changed more than either Miner or the dog. His face had lost its look of easy laughter, the crow's feet about the corners of his eyes spoke of nights of hard service. Perhaps he was even longer and leaner than ever, while the hair upon his forehead was slowly beginning to recede like a wave from the shore.

Now his familiar spirit of fun took hold on him. The little man was talking to him earnestly. "Go easy, Miner," he whispered, bending his tall head, "ef you want to keep your secret from the women; there's Miss Susan less'n a block away." He also continued his teasing even after joining the minister and Mrs. Barrows, managing in a few moments to pass with the two men into his house, leaving the lady bristling with anger.

"There's somethin' fermentin' in the head of every man in this here town," she flared, coming out on to the sidewalk and then following the trio into Ambrose's yard the better to deliver her message, "somethin' you're hidin' from the women, and what men keeps to themselves ain't no good and never was! Suppose we ain't noticed you plottin' new mischief together? Like it wasn't enough," she ended bitterly, "that women has had to bear a war, go half starved, and do man's work as well as their own 'thout bein' asked whether they'd like a war or not. Wonder if the good time's comin' when women kin reveal what they think and not have to stand fer the things they don't have no hand in the makin' of."

Although during this tirade her audience had disappeared, eternal vigilance was forever Mrs. Barrows' motto. So now she went on with her watching, while the three men remained a long time inside the cottage, and by and by, when darkness had fallen, other men with their faces hidden followed in after them. Soon these men came out, and last of all Miner, Ambrose, and Brother Bibbs. Miner was scowling; nevertheless his scowl was concealing an expression of triumph; the minister's figure plainly showed defeat, but Ambrose, whatever his former look, laughed aloud, catching sight of his neighbour through the gloom, standing on a kitchen chair and leaning across the dividing rails between her house and his in order to peep through the closed slats of his sitting-room window.

"Look out, Miss Susan, the meetin' is over, and high places is rickety," he called suddenly.

Mrs. Barrows started guiltily, accomplishing her own downfall, and over she went with the wreck of her chair, only to spring up so quickly afterward that her hoopskirts appeared to carry her higher than the laws of gravity.

Although assistance from Ambrose arrived too late, still he lingered. "Ain't you no faith in what men undertakes 'thout advice from women, Miss Susan?" he inquired, and when that lady, breathless for once, was able only to shake her head, he gave her a slow, anxious smile, whispering, "I'm none too sure but you're right," before moving along.