By Mary Hartwell Catherwood.

THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN. A Novel.
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OLD KASKASKIA. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.

THE CHASE OF ST. CASTIN, and Other Tales.
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THE SPIRIT OF AN ILLINOIS TOWN, and
THE LITTLE RENAULT. Illustrated. 16mo,
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THE QUEEN OF THE SWAMP, and Other
Plain Americans. 16mo, $1.25.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
Boston and New York.

THE QUEEN OF THE
SWAMP

And Other Plain Americans

BY
MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1900

COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

NOTE

Some of these stories were written more than a dozen years ago. They have been gathered in from the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Bazar, Outing, the Independent, the Delineator, the Chicago Tribune, the late Chicago Graphic, and Lippincott’s Magazine, by courteous permission of the editors; and revised year after year. Many of them embody phases of American life which have entirely passed away, or are yet to be found in secluded spots like eddies along the margin of the nation’s progress. Their honest preservation of middle western experience makes them, at least in the author’s eyes, seem worthy themselves of preservation.

The Puritan and the Church of England took possession of the Atlantic seaboard, north and south; and Jesuit and Recollet missionaries carried the cross through Canada and down the Mississippi. But the pioneer evangelist of the Middle West was the Methodist itinerant.

CONTENTS

The Babe Jerome, Rose Day, The Bride of Arne Sandstrom, The Fairfield Poet, and Beetrus are reprinted from “Harper’s Bazar,” and The Queen of the Swamp from Harper’s “Christmas,” by permission of the publishers, Messrs Harper & Brothers.

OHIO

THE QUEEN OF THE SWAMP

Time, 1846

On Christmas Day a large congregation poured from George’s Chapel into the early dusk. Quarterly meeting, which for a week had drawn together, not only the neighborhood, but people from Millersport, Basil, and even Kirkersville, closed that afternoon. The presiding elder and his assistants were wrapping up their throats and joking with each other, for the occasion had been blessed with converts and a fairly liberal collection.

These men must ride on around the circuit, risking health, and accepting whatever fell to their lot, yet nothing checked their flow of spirits. The only solemn person near the group was Mr. Warner, a local preacher and exhorter, who habitually prayed with a war-whoop, and kept the young people tittering at his pompous phrases. His father, an aged apparition, tottering on a stick, was circulating genially to shake every hand, known or unknown, and inquire, toothlessly, “Hi-ya! hi-ya! how’s your consarn?” which being interpreted meant, “How are you, how are you, how’s your concern?” (in religion).

Women clustered together near the red-hot stove, exclaiming to each other, as their work-worn palms met, “Hoddy-do, Mis’ Waddell, does your family keep well?” and “Law! Mis’ Davis, it’s good for sore eyes to see you out to meetin’ once more!” “Yes, I been kept close all fall, but I told him it wouldn’t do, we must come to big meetin’.” “It’s been a good time. One o’ my boys,” the speaker pressing her neighbor’s hand, “was gathered in, and I have my suspicions the other’s touched.” “Yes, there’s more under conviction than’ll own to it.”

They made excuses to each other for neglecting neighborly duties in the past, but promised, now such good sleighin’ had set in, to go more. One had had whooping-cough in her family, another a teething baby, and not a few had been very busy getting the butchering done and making sausage. The men-folks were also constantly hauling with the teams.

Warm Christian feeling pervaded the whole separating assembly, even the young girls greeting each other with unusual affection. The young men drove their conveyances up to the door, exchanging merry remarks; there were many fine horses, and some of the sleighs were painted, but the general vehicle was a wagon-bed, stuffed with straw and comforters, and running on two short sleds called “bobs.”

Theophilus Gill’s sleigh was of this pattern, and he intended to drive the young folks to Macauley’s. His spirited team pranced so that he stood up to control it, though at full height Theophilus Gill was but a little fellow. He had, however, a strong black beard.

“How many goin’ in our load, Theoph?” inquired Philip Welchammer, resting one foot on the forward runner.

“’Bout ten couple. Mart, he’s got to take his mother home, so he won’t be along.”

“You feel like as if you could spare him?”

“I always ken. Now, don’t you go to cut me out if I try to engage her company for Sunday night.”

“Oh, you and Mart fer it,” said Philip. “I ain’t fer cuttin’ neither of ye out. But Persilla Thompson’s a pretty girl.”

“She’s the Queen of the Swamp,” said little Gill, with emphasis.

Priscilla at this moment stepped down from the chapel threshold into the snow, to wait for her party. Philip brought her to the sled and Gill insisted on placing her in a warm and sheltered place just behind the driver’s bench, which he had specially prepared for her.

“Macauley’s is makin’ a big house-warmin’ this Chris’mas,” remarked Priscilla’s little suitor to her. “They’s four tables full of old folks to their turkey-roast, and the young folks all invited in the evenin’. I reckon the old lady’s doin’ it for Mart. She’s bound for him to marry that Miller girl, some says.”

Priscilla replied, with pleasant nonchalance, she reckoned so. She did not look at Mart Macauley at all, but she saw him watching her while he untied his bay filly, and held its head until his mother finished talking with her dinner guests.

He had loved Priscilla Thompson when she was a little girl with black plaits of hair hanging down her linsey back. In those days he gave her a bead purse, and whipped all her tormentors. When she began to be a big girl he shyly courted her, stopping his plough by the fence if he saw her coming, and dropping in of a Sunday night to see her brother, whom he despised, and who had since married and left him without excuse for his visits. When she got a certificate and went into the Kemmerer neighborhood to teach school, with her clothes neatly packed in a large wicker basket, he had no peace of mind all summer. He had himself been to Worthington to college, but in all his experience saw no one to compare with her. Wherever he saw her, so modest and lovely in manner, he cherished the ground her shoes rested on. The cold air gave her a bright color, which the depth and length of her bonnet could not conceal. She wore a wadded alpaca cloak and cloak cape, and Martin’s memory showed him how trimly under these her delaine dress was coat-sleeved to her arm and pointed at her waist.

Mrs. Macauley, climbing into her own sleigh, could take no exceptions to Priscilla Thompson’s manner or appearance, though she would have done so gladly for the benefit of her favorite son. Mrs. Macauley disliked the Thompsons. Her husband before his death objected to them. She thought little Theophilus Gill the best match in the neighborhood for Priscilla Thompson. Her own large light-haired son was too dutiful to marry without her consent. She was educating him to be a doctor; the younger boys could work the farm under her direction. She expected Martin to do his family credit by looking higher than the Thompsons.

Priscilla, on her part, held Mrs. Macauley in secret aversion. She felt sorry for Martin’s younger brothers and sisters, who were all obliged to stand in a row and take pills or tincture before breakfast. Mrs. Macauley was too high-handed and all-prevailing. Priscilla’s disposition was cheerful, but that Ohio region known as the Swamp could not escape the tinge of the period, and at that date the extremely feminine woman with a bias toward melancholy was the standard. Mrs. Macauley was so mannish that Priscilla thought her fully entitled to the tufts of beard in her moles.

The young people crowded merrily into Theophilus Gill’s sled. They all knew how matters stood between the Macauleys and Thompsons. The Thompsons, excepting Priscilla, who was a reticent girl, talked about the Macauleys, and the Macauleys held their heads rather high, excepting Mart; but he thought the world of his mother. The girls suspected Priscilla was going to-night because her staying away would make talk. Some of them believed Theophilus Gill would get her, and others thought things might take a turn so that she would marry Mart Macauley after all.

There was a day when she would have given half her life to go to Macauley’s, but stayed away. That was when Martin broke his collar-bone racing his bay filly. Nobody knew that she hid in her father’s field corn-crib all that day. Yet it was not an occasion for extravagant fears. Mrs. Macauley was the best nurse in Fairfield County, and soon had her son mended to perfection.

A few flakes of snow fell on Gill’s load, and made it all the merrier. No joke could fail to strike fire at once on the steel-clear air, and many a time-honored one was repeated by the young men as their fathers before them had repeated it, and enjoyed by the girls as their mothers had enjoyed it.

Philip Welchammer was pitied for having his arm out of place, and Nora Waddell, discovering it at that instant around her, told him tartly there is folks that their room’s better than their comp’ny. Upon this he genially retorted that she never made no such fuss when they were out sleigh-ridin’ alone; and Nora glowed in her red merino hood while the laugh turned upon her.

Then a girl’s voice, to cover her confusion, started a thrilling old revival hymn, and the load poured its bass and treble through the lines. Darkness approached as near as the white world would allow. The triumphant strain echoed among treetops and stirred emotion in Priscilla.

“There, there on eagles’ wings I soar,

And sense and sin are felt no more.

There heaven comes down our souls to greet,

And glory crowns the Mercy Seat—

And glo-ry crowns the Mer-cy Seat.”

The road was bounded by that distinctively American fence, the rail, or stake-and-ridered, showing drifts of snow in its angles, and white lines like illuminations along the top of every lichened rail. The sled flew over corduroy spaces now deeply bedded. On each side the trees rose out of frozen pools, from which they seemed to conduct a glazed coating upward, for every twig glinted icily through the dusk. In spring-time, when the Feeder and creek rose out of banks, acres of this swamp lay under water, with moss scum and rotting leaves at the top and bottom.

Priscilla found always in these woods a solemn beauty. Her wildest dream was of living deep in their summer shade with an unnamed person, and sitting on the doorstep at nightfall, her hand locked in his. The amber lights, the cry of tree-frog and locust, the mysterious snap of twigs, the reverberating bark of a dog, the ceaseless motion of water under a foot-log, all gave her delight. One spring she worked in her father’s sugar-camp. A bark shelter that they passed reminded her of it, of collecting the sugar-water, watching the bubbling kettles, and dropping the wax on snow, of stirring-off, which was such a festival, and at the same time such a miracle, for you could feel the hardening wax grain to sugar on your tongue.

Theophilus Gill turned his horses from the road, and drove through a gap into the woods.

“What are you doin’ that for?” exclaimed John Davis, who loved a horse, like every good Ohio man, but was always ready to sacrifice it to his comfort or speed.

Theophilus explained there was a bad bit of road ahead, and the circuit through the woods might be better.

If he dreaded cutting his team’s ankles, the danger was not lessened by this choice of routes. For after some easy progress and much winding among saplings and jarring against stumps, they descended to a seldom-used bridge across the Feeder, standing like an island in a frozen lake. Theophilus Gill drew up his horses. There was not room in which to turn back, and the occupants of the sled rose with some apprehension.

Nora Waddell said she would never go over that bridge. Theophilus observed doubtfully he’d risk gettin’ the team across, but mebby some of the boys had better walk over and lighten the load.

Everybody alighted except the driver, who cautiously, and reassuring his snorting horses, moved across the ice and up the bridge. It shook under their tread to such a degree that nearly all the party resolved to trust the ice in preference, and pushed their tracks carefully upon the snow-covered Feeder. Besides Nora Waddell, Philip Welchammer took under his charge Mary Thompson, Priscilla’s flighty young sister, who was barely fifteen and in short dresses, but so headstrong that she would go into company whenever Priscilla did. Starts and exclamations were finally blended into a general outcry, for the ice gave way, and several figures disappeared to their very necks. Then the young men who had landed were prompt in action, while some of the girls showed courage and pioneer swiftness of resource. Philip and his two companions were pulled out, and huddled, dripping, into the sled, all available covering being piled upon them. Everybody scrambled in, and Theophilus, restraining his horses, asked, in an excited shout, if they were all in. Mary Thompson, through her chattering teeth, retorted, “Of course all of us were in, and if he did not mean to kill us entirely, he’d better whip up and get to some fireplace.”

Thus reproached, and by the Swamp Queen’s sister, the young man drove with such zeal that his horses ran away, and were restrained from tearing the vehicle to bits against logs and fences only by his utmost strength and horsemanship.

Thus the party came like a whirlwind up the open lane to Macauley’s, and were hurried into the three-story house, while Macauley’s boys led the horses away to a barn of similar magnitude, where long rows of stalls and shining flanks were discernible by lantern-light.

No less than three fireplaces had blazing logs piled to the very chimney throats. Sarah Macauley conducted the girls upstairs to the best room, from which opened a bedchamber where they laid off their wraps. The young men found a similar haven on the other side of the staircase. And it was pleasant to hear the logs snap while frost lay so thick on the two upper porches which were let into the sides of the house.

Macauleys were very well off indeed. The estate consisted of fifteen thousand dollars cash, besides a couple of farms, and the largest homestead in the township. Mr. Macauley had accumulated all this, after breaking up twice during his career, paying security debts. Nearly all the floors were carpeted in home-made stripe or hit-or-miss, and the best beds reared backs as lofty and imposing as the backs of elephants.

Numbers of young women, arrived before this party, were basking in the best room, their hair and collars smoothed, and their eyes taking keen neighborly notes while the hum of conversation went on. Miss Miller from Millersport was there, and appeared a worthy rival for Priscilla Thompson. She had pink cheeks, and pretty brown hair on a low, delicate forehead, these charms being distractingly set in an all-wool blue merino dress and ribbon headdress to match. Miss Miller possessed two thousand dollars in her own right, and would come in for all her father’s property when he died. Besides, she had attended select school in Lancaster, and some said she was so fine she would cut a bean in two rather than lift the whole of it on the point of her knife to her very pretty mouth.

Mrs. Macauley lost not an instant in dosing her drenched guests with hot whiskey and ginger stew. Other raiment was provided for them. When all the young people had arrived and warmed themselves, they were to descend to the dining-room, one of the largest apartments ever seen in those days, supported by a row of posts across the centre, and floored by oak as smooth as glass. The name of kitchen would have fitted it as well, for here the family cooked. One of those new-fashioned iron machines called stoves stood beside the fireplace, having a pipe to carry its smoke into the chimney. But Mrs. Macauley often said it was not half as much use to her as the Dutch ovens she always baked in, over the coals.

A line of chairs waited around the sides of the dining-room. The pantry, opening at one end, half revealed stacks of Christmas provisions on shelves.

But there was to be no such godless amusement as dancing. The young people would frolic and play plays with kissing penalties, which could by no means corrupt them as much as joining hands and jumping to the tune of a fiddle.

Groups were already descending to the dining-room, and Mary Thompson struggled hard to hook one of Sarah Macauley’s dresses over her stouter waist.

“Your sister didn’t come?” remarked Sarah politely, in the modulated voice that her mother trained.

“Yes, she did,” exclaimed Mary. “She was along with the load. Why, where is Persill?”

This inquiry at once became general. Priscilla was nowhere in the house. The panic-stricken company could not remember seeing her since crossing the Feeder. They all thought she returned to the sled with them. John Davis was sure he helped her in.

Theophilus Gill, turning livid around the edges of his beard, said the horses might have gone to Jericho for all of him, and he’d ’tended to Persilla Thompson himself if he had known the rest of the boys wasn’t goin’ to. Priscilla’s sister began to cry aloud, and such young ladies as did not accompany her gazed at each other in pale apprehension. But Mrs. Macauley came sternly to the front. She would not allow Mary Thompson to proclaim that Priscilla was drowned, and Theoph Gill had done it, and she forbade the party falling into a panic.

Her son Martin had his filly and sleigh ready, and while she snatched blankets and brandy, she marshaled forth such young men to form a separate search party as seemed suitable in her eyes. Mrs. Macauley would not have Priscilla Thompson drowned in the Feeder, and left strict orders on her own offspring against any such impression—which the whole company obeyed. Then she got into the sleigh, and Mart galloped his filly.

He made but one remark to his mother during this ride.

“If she’d come along with us as I wanted her to, this wouldn’t have happened, mother!”

His face showed ghastly through the dark, and his husky voice jarred the breast of the woman who bore him.

The sleigh and the sled containing the young men both stopped at that unused bridge standing in the midst of the Feeder. They all called Priscilla’s name, the winter night’s stillness magnifying the sound. And for reply they had a void of silence.

Mart was for dropping into the hole and searching under the ice, but his mother sternly restrained him. She sent the young men down stream, and she walked across the bridge with her son, separating from him afterward that they might search the woods in different directions.

Down the Feeder, men’s voices raised melancholy echoes—“Persilla! Hoo-o-o, Persil-la! Persilla Thompson!”

The solemn winter woods could not daunt Mrs. Macauley. She gave no nervous start at twigs snapping under the snow-crust, but searched large spaces with vigor. It did hurt her to hear Mart calling the girl in such a tone, and to remember what he had said to his mother. In those days people weighed their words, and every sentence meant something. Martin’s slight reproach to Mrs. Macauley was the first he had ever uttered.

Treading among naked saplings, with now and then a ghostly pawpaw leaf rustling against her face, she came to the bark sugar-house, and met Mart at its open side, carrying Priscilla in his arms. Priscilla was too terrified and exhausted to speak aloud, having crept out of the Feeder as far as this shelter. Icicles hung to her clothing, and she had lost her bonnet and cloak cape. She clung around Mrs. Macauley’s neck, crying like a baby, and very unlike the dignified young woman that her small circle had always considered her. Perhaps this softness had its effect on a nature bent on commanding and protecting.

In half an hour the young folks at Macauley’s knew that Mart’s mother brought Priscilla home on her lap, wrapped in blankets, and dosed with brandy every few rods. The searchers in the sled, arriving but little later, said Priscilla must have been clear under the ice by the looks of it where she crept out. But the Feeder was so shallow right there that she could walk on the bottom.

All festivity remained suspended while the hostess, like some mysterious medicine-woman, worked over her patient. A few groups in the dining-room played “fist’ock,” and other very mild sitting diversions which could be suspended in an instant, the players looking up with concern to receive the latest bulletin from Priscilla.

But she recovered so rapidly that every spirit rose, as did the general opinion of Mrs. Macauley’s skill. John Davis remarked staidly to Darius Macauley that he believed Darius’s mother knew more about doctorin’ horses, even, than most of the horse doctors in the country, but Darius replied with some grimness, she wasn’t settin’ up for that.

Finally Priscilla was able to come downstairs, holding to Mart’s arm, and helped on the other side by his mother, and everybody said they entered the dining-room like a bridal couple about to stand up, for she was pale and handsome enough to be a bride, and he looked scared and anxious enough to be a groom. Priscilla made the effort to come down, not only because Mrs. Macauley considered her sufficiently restored to do so, but also because she did not want to check the merriment of the party.

They put her in a large chair against one of the central posts, and Sarah Macauley, as soon as she could catch breath for surprise, exclaimed, loud enough to be heard by all around her, though fortunately not by the head of the family:—

“Why, mother! you’ve put that flowered silk dress on her that father brought you from Philadelphia when he went over the mountains with a drove of horses! You said you was goin’ to save that for the oldest son’s wife.”

The guests near Sarah looked significantly at each other, and Miss Miller, being among them, tossed her head and tittered.

“Anybody who was anxious to marry into your family,” she remarked to Sarah, “ought to fall sick and send for your mother, and give her all the trouble in the world. That’s the surest way to get her consent.”

Miss Miller pursed her lips. She wanted to correct any impression that she had favored Mart Macauley, and at the same time utter a few strictures.

“Yes, mother’s a good nurse,” said Sarah innocently.

“She’ll nurse you,” whispered Darius, with a warning nudge, “when she hears what you said about that flowered silk.”

“Don’t tell her,” begged his sister. “I’ll do your share of the milkin’ all the rest of the week, if you won’t.”

“Well,” assented Darius provisionally, “mebby I won’t.”

The flowered silk had been constructed for Mrs. Macauley when she was much less matronly in shape than on this Christmas night, and by reason of being put away so long had got into fashion again. It was so rich and thick that it was famed through the neighborhood as being able to stand by itself, but, having retired to lavender and camphor, was not expected forth any more until the occasion of Mart Macauley’s infair dinner.

Priscilla never looked so pretty as she did on this Christmas night. She took no part in the plays, but they sold pawns over her head, and the penalties she inflicted were considered brilliant.

“Heavy, heavy, what hangs over your head!” said John Davis, the seller, holding Miss Miller’s real gold ring. Her father had tried that ring with aquafortis before he allowed her to buy it of the peddler.

“Is it fine or superfine?” inquired Priscilla.

“Superfine,” said John, pulling his neckerchief with an air. “What must be done to redeem it?”

“Let the owner make a charade.”

This sent Miss Miller, with assistants, giggling into the pantry. And a grand charade they exhibited, for Miss Miller had picked up such things among the Lancaster young people, and was not sorry to show her knowledge. First the actors came in supporting each other and weeping aloud. In their second act there were several dumb weddings, and in their third the weddings were repeated with a change of partners. After long guessing, everybody was struck with admiration to discover that the word was Bal-ti-more.

Then John sold Martin’s big handkerchief over Priscilla’s head, informing her it was fine only. And the possessor was bid to bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, and kiss the one he loved best, which Martin did, perambulating about the room in a long search, but coming back to Priscilla in every instance, covering her with confusion, and exciting the company to hilarity.

Mrs. Macauley having discreetly retired, they played “London Bridge is swept away,” furnishing the music with their own voices. The figures and changes made it very similar to the “Virginia Reel,” and Mrs. Macauley would have thought it sounded like a dance had she not known “London Bridge,” to be an innocent marching play.

Supper was served at ten o’clock, with plates and white-handled knives and forks held upon the knee, this variety of refreshment being called a lap supper. The Macauley genius for cookery shone resplendent. Such cold meats and pickles and spiced breads, such coffee (made at a neighboring house in a wash-boiler, by Mrs. Macauley, just before she retired), such varieties of cake and pie, such metheglin and root beer, flowed upon the guests as only Macauleys knew how to make and brew.

“You don’t seem to be havin’ as good a time as the rest,” observed Philip Welchammer to Theophilus Gill, when the plates were being collected, and his plate retained a pile of scarcely touched dainties.

“Oh, I’m gittin’ along, I’m gittin’ along,” said Theophilus.

“You ’pear kind o’ sober.”

“Well, ’twas a scare,” apologized Theophilus.

“But that’s all over now.”

“Yes, it’s all over,” assented the black-bearded lover, with a sigh. And plucking up animation, he added, “Mart has kind o’ took the bit in his teeth, hain’t he?”

“He has that. It’s a match now, if Persilla’s a mind to have him. The old lady, she’s turned round and set herself that way too. I shouldn’t be surprised if the’s an infair to this house by next Chris’mas.”

“No, neither would I,” said Theophilus, shaking his head, and making a grimace as if the action hurt him. He had a stirring, money-making disposition, while Mart Macauley’s tastes were those of a student, and he thought himself as good a match. But there was no accounting for the tricks of fate.

Philip laughed in a heartening and sympathetic fashion.

“I reckon the’ won’t be no chance for you next Sunday night, nor any other Sunday night this year, now,” he said.

“Mebby not,” said Theophilus. “But if Mart Macauley gits her, he gits the Queen of the Swamp, sure as you’re born. She’ll always be that, come what will.”

THE STIRRING-OFF

Time, 1850

Davis’s boys said to all the young men at singing-school, “Come over to’r sugar-camp Saturday night; we’re goin’ to stir off.”

The young men, sitting on the fence to which horses were tied in dusky rows, playfully imitated the preacher when he gave out appointments, and replied they would be there, no preventing Providence, at early candle-lighting.

Jane Davis, attended by her cousin, also circulated among the girls in the school-house during that interval in singing-school called recess, and invited them to the stirring-off.

The Davises, though by no means the richest, were the most hospitable family in the Swamp. They came from Virginia. Their stable swarmed with fine horses, each son and daughter owning a colt; and the steeds of visiting neighbors often crowded the stalls until these looked like a horse-fair.

The Davises entertained every day in the year. Their house was unpretending even for those times, being of unpainted wood, with a bedroom at each side of the porch, a sitting-room where guns and powder-horns hung over the fireplace, a kitchen, and a loft. Yet here sojourned relations from other counties, and even from over the mountains. Here on Christmas and New Year’s days were made great turkey-roasts. Out of it issued Jane Davis to the dances and parties where she was a belle, and her brothers, ruddy, huge-limbed, black-eyed, and dignified as any young men in Fairfield County.

They kept bees, and raised what were called noble turnips. Their farm appeared to produce solely for the use of guests. In watermelon season they kept what might be termed open field. Their cookery was celebrated, and their cordiality as free as sunshine. No unwelcome guest could alight at Davis’s. The head of the family, Uncle Davis was a “general,” and this title carried as much social weight as that of judge. About their premises hung an atmosphere of unending good times. On Sunday afternoons late in November all the raw young men of the neighborhood drew in a circle to Davis’s fireplace, scraping turnips or apples. Now the steel knives moved in concert, and now they jarred; the hollow wall of a turnip protested against the scrape, and Aunt Davis passed the heaping pan again. Or cracked walnuts and hickory nuts were the offerings. Then every youth sat with an overflowing handkerchief on his lap, and the small blade of his knife busy with the kernels,—backlog and forestick being bombarded with shells which burned in blue and crimson.

So when the Davises were ready to stir off in their sugar-camp, it was the most natural thing in the world for them to invite their neighbors to come and eat the sugar, and for their neighbors to come and do so.

The camp threw its shine far among leafless trees. Three or four iron kettles steamed on a pole over the fire. In a bark lodge near by, Aunt Davis had put a lunch of pies and cakes before she went home, to be handed around at the stirring-off. It was a clear starry night, the withered sod crisp underfoot with the stiffness of ice. Any group approaching silently could hear the tapped maples dripping a liquid nocturne into trough or pan.

But scarcely any groups approached silently. They were heard chatting in the open places, and their calls raised echoes.

John and Eck Davis had collected logs and chunks and spread robes and blankets until the seating capacity of the camp was nearly equal to that of George’s Chapel. Some of the girls took off their wraps and hung them in the bark house. One couple carried away a bucket for more sugar-water to cool a kettle, and other couples sauntered after them. There were races on the spongy dead leaves, and sudden squalls of remonstrance.

Jane Davis stood in the midst of her company, moving a long wooden stirrer in the kettle about to sugar-off. Though her beauty was neither brown nor white, nor, in fact, positive beauty of any kind, it cajoled everybody. Her hair was folded close to her cheeks. There was innocent audacity in the curving line of every motion she made. The young men were so taken by the spell of her grace that she was accused of being unrighteously engaged to three at once, and about to add her cousin Tom Randall to the list.

Tom Randall was a Virginian, spending the winter in Ohio. He was handsome, merry as Mercutio, and so easy in his manners that the Swamp youths watched him with varying emotions. He brought his songs over the mountains: one celebrated the swiftness of the electric telegraph in flashing news from Baltimore to Wheeling; another was about a Quaker courtship, and set all the Swamp girls to rattling the lady’s brisk response,—

“What care I for your rings or money,—

Faddle-a-ding, a-ding, a-day;

I want a man that will call me honey,—

Faddle-a-ding, a-ding, a-day!”

Tom Randall sat close to the fire, hanging his delicate hands, which had never done a day’s chopping, over his knees. He looked much of a gentleman, Nora Waddell remarked aside to Philip Welchammer. To all the girls he was a central figure, as Jane was a central figure to the young men.

But Philip claimed that Virginians were no nearer perfection than out-and-out Swamp fellows.

“I didn’t say he was a perfect gentleman,” said Nora, with cautious moderation, “for I wouldn’t say so of any man.”

“He ain’t proud,” admitted Philip. “He’s free to talk with everybody.”

“Humph!” remarked Mary Thompson, sitting at the other side of Philip; “he ought to be. Folks in Georger Chapel neighborhood is just as good as anybody.”

“Well, anyhow, I know he ain’t a prettier dancer than Jane,” sighed Nora, whose folks would not allow her to indulge in the godless motion which the music of a fiddle inspires. While Jane stirred and chatted, she was swaying and taking dance-steps, as if unable to refrain from spinning away through the trees. In this great woods drawing-room, where so many were gathered, it was impossible for her to hear any comment that went on.

“Jane makes a good appearance on the floor,” responded Philip, who, being male, could withstand the general denunciations of the preacher and his mother’s praying at him in meeting. “I like to lead her out to dance.”

“Uncle and Aunt Davis are just as easy with Jane as if they wasn’t perfessors of religion,” sighed Nora Waddell.

“And their boys thinks so much of her,” added Mary Thompson. “John can’t go anywhere unless she ties his neck-han’ketcher for him. I’ve knowed him, when Jane was sick, to come and lean over her to get it fixed.”

“If she’s to leave them,” said Philip, “I wonder how they’d do without her?”

“She’s goin’ to marry Cousin Jimmy Thompson, that I know,” said Mary.

“She’s engaged to Dr. Miller in Lancaster,” insisted Nora. “I’ve saw voluntines he’s sent her.”

“Dick Hanks thinks he’s goin’ to get her,” laughed Philip. “He told me she’s as good as promised him. And Dick’s a good feller, if he wasn’t such a coward.”

“I don’t believe Jane wants anybody,” said Nora Waddell. “She’s light-minded, and likes to enjoy herself.”

Dick Hanks stood by Jane and insisted on helping her to move the stirrer. His hair inclosed his head in the shape of a thatch, leaving but narrow eaves of forehead above his eyebrows, though his expression was open and amiable. He looked like one of Bewick’s cuts of an English carter. The Hankses, however, were a rich family, and, in spite of their eccentricities, a power in the county. Old Jimmy Hanks so dreaded the grave that he had a marble vault hewed, watching its progress for years, and getting himself ready to occupy it a few weeks after its completion. Lest he should be buried alive, his will decreed that the vault should be unlocked and the coffin examined at intervals. The sight of a face floating in alcohol and spotted with drops from the metal casket not proving grateful to his heirs, the key was soon conveniently lost.

His son Dick, hearty in love and friendship and noble in brawn, so feared the dark that he would not go into an unlighted room. When left by himself at the parting of roads after a night’s frolic, he galloped his horse through brush and mire, and it was told that he had more than once reached home without a whole stitch to his back.

But in spite of the powers of darkness, Dick was anxious to take Jane Davis under his protection. The fire and the noisy company kept him from lifting his eyes to the treetops swaying slowly overhead, and the lonesome stars. All through the woods winter-night sounds and sudden twig cracklings could be heard. Dick, however, meant to take Jane Davis home, whether he could persuade one of the Davis boys to go home with him afterward or not.

In those days neighborhoods were intensely local. The people knew what historians have not yet learned about the value of isolated bits of human life. These young folks in the sugar-camp knew nothing of the events and complications of the great world, but they all felt more or less interested in the politics of Jane Davis’s entanglements.

Her brother kept dipping a long spoon into the kettle she stirred, and dropping the liquid into a tin cup of cold sugar-water. As long as the hot stuff twined about in ropy arms, it was syrup; but as soon as it settled to the bottom in a clear mass, it was wax, and the change from wax to the grain of sugar is a sudden one.

When Eck Davis announced, “It’s waxed,” the kettle was slung off in haste, and everybody left the tree which had propped his back, or the robe on which he had leaned, and the graining sugar was served in saucers and handed around. It could be eaten with spoons or “worked” into crackling ropes. Davis’s boys took off the syrup kettles and covered them up in the bark lodge. They would be emptied into stone jars when the more important business of entertaining company was over. The fire now shone redder. Jane was cutting up pies and cakes in the bark house, all this warm light focused on her lowered eyelids, when more of her suitors arrived.

“I knowed the entire posse would be out,” said Philip Welchammer in a laughing undertone to the girls sitting beside him. “Davises never misses invitin’ anybody.”

“You’re too late, Jimmy Thompson,” called Jane’s elder brother before he noticed the preacher was in the party. “Your sheer’s e’t.” When, however, Dr. Miller from Lancaster also came forward, John stood up stiffly and put on his company grandeur. He held the town-man in some awe, and was bound to be constrained by the preacher.

Jimmy Thompson, having met Jane with awkward heartiness, said he would make the young folks acquainted with Brother Gurley. They all knew Brother Gurley; but Jimmy was a wild young man, and his audacity in “brother”-ing the preacher was more delicious than home-made sugar. He afterward explained that the preacher had been turned onto the old folks for Sunday, and he asked him along to the frolic without suspicionin’ he’d come, but the preacher, he took a-holt as if that was the understandin’.

Jane met Brother Gurley and Dr. Miller with equal ease. A hush fell upon the company, and they ate and watched her serve the newcomers and appear to balance such formidable individuals in her hands. Affectation was in that region the deadliest sin a girl could commit against her own popularity, and Jane’s manner was always beautifully simple.

The preacher had a clean-shaven, large face, huge blue eyes, and laughing white teeth, and a sprinkling of fine, indefinitely tinted hair. His figure was vigorous, and well made to bear the hardships of a Methodist circuit-rider. His presence had the grasp of good-fellowship and power, and rather dwarfed Dr. Miller, whom all the girls thought a very pretty man. Dr. Miller wore side-whiskers, and a Lancaster suit of clothes finished by a fine round cloak hooked under his chin. When he took off his hat to bow, two curls fell over his forehead. The woman who would not take Dr. Miller if he wanted her must expect to have the pick of creation, and maybe she would miss it after all. He talked to Jane and ate maple sugar with the greatest of Lancaster ease, telling her he had put up with his cousin in Millersport and borrowed a horse to ride to camp. John Davis at once said the folks at home expected him to put up with them over Sunday, and the other young men resented the doctor’s prompt acceptance of Davis’s hospitality.

The preacher, holding his saucer of sugar in his left hand, was going around and giving the right hand of fellowship to every young person in camp. This was the proper and customary thing for him to do. A preacher who went into company anywhere on the circuit without shaking hands and pushing and strengthening his acquaintance would be a worse stumbling-block than a backslider given up to superfluous clothing and all kinds of sinful levity, or a new convert with artificials in her bonnet. But there was a tingling quality in Brother Gurley’s grasp which stirred the blood; and his heavy voice was as prevailing in its ordinary tones as in the thunders of the pulpit.

“Did you bring your wife with you, Brother Gurley?” simpered Tabitha Gill, a dwarfish, dark old maid, devout in church and esteemed for her ability to make a good prayer.

Mary Thompson whispered behind her back, “Tabitha Gill’s always for findin’ out whether a preacher’s married or not before anybody else does.”

“Not this time,” replied Brother Gurley, warming Sister Gill’s heart with a broad, class-meeting smile. “But I expect to bring her with me when I come around again.”

“Do,” said Tabitha; “and stop at our house.”

“I’m obliged to you, Sister Gill,” replied the preacher. “You have a fine community of young people here.”

“But they ain’t none of ’em converted. There’s a good deal of levity in Georger Chapel neighborhood. Now, Jane, now,—Jane Davis,—she’s a girl nobody can help likin’, but many’s the night that she’s danced away in sinful amusement. I wish you’d do somethin’ for her soul, Brother Gurley.”

“I’ll try,” responded the preacher heartily. He looked with a tender and indulgent eye at Jane, who was dividing her company into two parts, to play one innocent play before the camp broke up.

“Come away from here,” whispered Philip Welchammer to the girl beside him, seceding from the preacher’s group and adding himself to Jane’s. “Tabitha Gill will be haulin’ us all up to the mourners’ bench pretty soon.”

They played “clap-out,” the girls sitting in their wraps all ready to depart, and the young men turning up their collars and tying on their comforters while waiting a summons. Jane was leader, and with much tittering and secrecy each young lady imparted to Jane the name of the youth she wished to have sit beside her. Dick Hanks was called first, and he stood looking at the array from which he could take but one choice, his lips dropping apart and his expression like that he used to display under the dunce-cap at Gum College. During this interval of silence the drip of sugar-water into troughs played a musical phrase or two, and the stirring and whinnying of the horses could be heard where they were tied to saplings. No rural Ohioan ever walked a quarter of a mile if he had any kind of beast or conveyance to carry him.

Then Dick of course sat down by the wrong girl, and was clapped out, and Dr. Miller was called. Dr. Miller made a pleasing impression by hesitating all along the line, and when he sat down by Mary Thompson her murmur of assent was a tribute to his sagacity. Cousin Tom Randall was summoned, and sung two or three lines of the “Quaker’s Courtship” before throwing himself on the mercy of Nora Waddell. He was clapped out, and said he always expected it. West of the Alleghanies was no place for him; they were even goin’ to clap him out up at uncle’s. Then the preacher came smiling joyfully, and placed himself by Tabitha Gill, where he was tittered over and allowed to remain; and one by one the seats were filled, the less fortunate men making a second trial with more success when their range was narrowed.

Everybody rose up to go home. But a great many “good-nights,” and reproaches for social neglect, and promises of future devotion to each other, had first to be exchanged. Then Jimmy Thompson, who had driven in his buggy expressly to take Jane Davis home, and was wondering what he should do with the preacher, saw with astonishment that Brother Gurley had Jane upon his own arm and was tucking her shawl close to her chin. Her black eyes sparkled within a scarlet hood. She turned about with Brother Gurley, facing all the young associates of her life, and said, “We want you all to come to our house after preachin’ to-morrow. The presidin’ elder will be there.”

“I don’t care nothin’ about the presidin’ elder,” muttered Jimmy Thompson.

“Goin’ to be a weddin’, you know,” explained John Davis, turning from assisting his brother Eck to empty the syrup kettles, and beaming warmly over such a general occasion. “The folks at meeting will all be invited, but Jane said she wanted to ask the young people separate to-night.”

“And next time I come around the circuit,” said Brother Gurley, gathering Jane’s hand in his before the company, “I’ll bring my wife with me.”

They walked away from the campfire, Jane turning her head once or twice to call “Good-night, all,” as if she still clung to every companionable hand. The party watched her an instant in silence. Perhaps some were fanciful enough to see her walking away from the high estate of a doctor’s wife in Lancaster, from the Hanks money, and Jimmy Thompson’s thrift, into the constant change and unfailing hardships of Methodist itinerancy. The dancing motion would disappear from her gait, and she who had tittered irreverently at her good mother’s labors with backsliders at the mourners’ bench would come to feel an interest in such sinners herself.

“Dog’d if I thought Jane Davis would ever marry a preacher!” burst out Jimmy Thompson, in sudden and hot disapproval.

“Don’t it beat all!” murmured Tabitha Gill. “And her an unconverted woman in the error of her ways! Jane’s too young for a preacher’s wife.”

“Jane’s fooled us all,” owned Philip Welchammer heartily. To keep intended nuptials a family secret until a day or a few hours before the appointed time was as much a custom of the country as was prying into and spying out such affairs. Surprising her friends by her wedding was, therefore, adding to Jane’s social successes; but only Dr. Miller could perceive her true reason for assembling her suitors at the last moment. While discarding them all, her hospitable nature clung to their friendship; she wished to tell them in a group the change she contemplated, so that no one could accuse her of superior kindness to another. Her very cruelties were intended mercies.

“That’s the way the pretty girls go,” sighed Cousin Tom Randall, seizing hold of Jane’s younger brother: “the preachers get ’em. Come on, Eck; I have to be helped home.”

“I don’t see when he courted her,” breathed Dick Hanks, closing his lips after many efforts.

“Preachers is chain-lightnin’,” laughed Jimmy Thompson. “He’s been around often enough, and always stoppin’ there.”

“To-morrow after preachin’,” said John impressively, as he came forward after hastily covering the jars. “We’re goin’ to have a turkey-dinner, and we want you all to be sure to come. And next time Brother Gurley and Jane makes the circuit, we’ll have the infair at our house, too.”

“That’s just like Davises,” exclaimed one of the dispersing group in the midst of their eager promises; “they wouldn’t be satisfied unless they give the weddin’ and the infair both, and invited all quarterly meetin’ to set down to the table. I thought there was doin’s over at their house; but then they’re always bakin’ and fussin’.”

They could all picture a turkey-roast at Davis’s: the crisp, brown turkeys rising from their own dripping, squares of pone as yellow as buttercups, and biscuits calculated to melt whitely with honey from glass dishes of sweet-smelling combs. There would be every kind of vegetable grown in the Swamp, and game from the banks of the Feeder and Reservoir, pies and cakes and coffee, and at least eight kinds of preserves. Jane Davis and the preacher would stand up in front of the fireplace, and after the ceremony there would be a constant rattle of jokes from the presiding elder and his assistants. And over the whole house would hang that happy atmosphere which makes one think of corn ripening on a sunny hillside in still September weather. A dozen times the long tables would be replenished and supplied with plates, all the usual features of a turkey-roast at Davis’s being exaggerated by the importance of the occasion; and Aunt Davis would now and then forget to urge a guest, while she hurriedly wiped her eyes and replied to some expression of neighborly sympathy, that they had to lose Jane sometime, and it was a good thing for a girl to get a religious man. Then about dusk the preachers and their congregation would start again to chapel, and Jane, in Millersport clothes, would shine on the front seats as a bride, certain of an ovation when the after-meeting handshaking came. It would be a spite if she sat where tallow candles could drip on her from one of the wooden chandeliers, but she would enjoy hearing her bridegroom exhort, and he would feel like exhorting with all his might.

“Well, Doc,” said John Davis, turning from the deserted camp and sinking fire to place himself by the bridle of the young man from Lancaster.

“No,” answered Dr. Miller, “I’m obliged to you, John; but I’ll ride back to Millersport to-night.”

“You don’t feel put out?” urged John, conscious of a pang because all the good fellows who courted Jane could not become his brothers-in-law.

“No; oh, no,” protested Dr. Miller with chagrin. “She’d a right to suit herself. I’ll be around some other day.”

“We’d take it hard if you didn’t,” said John.

“But just now,” concluded the doctor, “I feel what a body might call—stirred-off.”

Dick Hanks was riding up close to Jimmy Thompson, while Jimmy unblanketed his mare and prepared for a deliberate departure.

“John, now,” remarked Jimmy,—“he brothered the preacher right up, didn’t he? They’ll be makin’ a class-leader o’ John yet, if they can git him to quit racin’ horses.”

“Which way you goin’ home, Jimmy?” inquired Dick Hanks anxiously.

“The long way, round by Georger Chapel, where I can look at the tombstones for company. Want to go along? We can talk over the weddin’, and you’re only two mile from home at our woods’ gate.”

“I guess I’ll take the short cut through the brush,” said Dick.

Jimmy drove through the clearing and fence-gap, where John Davis was waiting to lay up the rails again.

“What’s that?” said John, and they both paused to listen.

It was a sound of crashing and scampering, of smothered exclamation and the rasping and tearing of garments. Dick Hanks was whipping his steed through the woods, against trees, logs, and branches, as if George’s Chapel graveyard, containing the ghastly vault of his father, and George’s Chapel preacher, waving Jane Davis in one victorious hand, were both in merciless pursuit of him.

SWEETNESS

Time, 1855

Amber light in the dense Ohio woods receded slowly from the path which a woman ascended. The earth was frozen, and glazed puddles stood in cow tracks. But this woman loved to climb from the valley farms and her day’s sewing, of chill December evenings, and feel that she approached her heaven and left the world behind. The year had just passed its shortest day. Neighborhood custom allowed her to leave her tasks early in the evening, because she came to them with a lantern in the morning. She hastened as you may have noticed a large-eyed anxious cow cantering toward its nursling; but stopped to breathe, half ashamed of herself, in sight of a log-house known through the Rocky Fork settlement as Coon’s.

All the Coons had been queer little people, but this last daughter of them exceeded her forefathers in squatty squareness of stature and Japanese cast of feature. As she was quite thirty-five her friends called her an old maid, according to the custom of that remote period. Yet there was not a girl on all the windings of the Rocky Fork who had more laughter in her eyes, or smoother cheeks, or darker polished hair.

“Sure’s my name is Wilda Coon,” said the small woman beneath her breath, “yonder comes Lanson Bundle.”

The man she saw was yet far off, plodding across the valley toward her hillside; and as he had taken that walk nearly every evening for a dozen years, it should have ceased to surprise her. Yet as shadows thickened among rock and naked trees, it was always a satisfaction to turn and look back from that particular point and exclaim, “Yonder comes Lanson Bundle!”

Wilda’s log-house had a clearing and some acres of trees around it, standing like a German principality or an oasis in the midst of Alanson Bundle’s great farm. The Bundles had vainly tried in times past to buy out the Coons. But Alanson had other views. He had courted Wilda twelve years, and he calculated in time to wear her out. She could not go on forever raising patches of truck in the summer, and quilting and sewing in the winter.

Alanson was not uncomfortable while he waited. His aunt kept house for him at his homestead, where he had several barns, a milk-house, a smoke-house and all modern conveniences around him. He felt his value with everybody but Wilda. The youngest girls showed him no discouragement. There was a sonorous pomp about his singing in meeting which affected every rural nature, while his Adam’s apple, like a sensitive lump of mercury, trembled up and down its inclosure. Some folks thought Alanson Bundle ought to have been a preacher. He would look so nice standing in a pulpit, with his hair sleeked up in a straight roach, saying, “Hence we discover, my brethren.” But Wilda Coon never had made any fuss over him. And for that reason he followed her with abject service.

In that early year of the fifties a great many people about the Rocky Fork had locks on their doors. But a tow latch-string hung out for Wilda Coon, and with it she lifted the wooden latch of her dwelling. At night, for security, she would draw the string inside, and slip a wooden bar into staples across the thick board portal.

The tight-chinked cabin had the strangest interior on the Rocky Fork. There was only one room, and the hollow of the roof rose up in a cavernous arch without joists. Two wooden bars were, indeed, set high across one corner, but they served as roosts for chickens who had already taken to them for the night, and who stirred quavering as Wilda shut the door and emptied a gourd.

Before the fire, yet not too near it, was a trundle-bed which could be pushed anywhere on wheels.

She dropped her hood and shawl upon a chair and slipped toward the trundle-bed, motioning back a great mastiff who kept guard at the hearth. He sat down again and licked his lips; the glory of burning logs in the fireplace was enough to content any dog, for that cabin seemed to have the sunset imprisoned within it. Calico curtains on the four-paned windows hid darkening woods outside.

“O Sweetness!” whispered Wilda, bending over the trundle-bed and scarcely daring to touch the patchwork quilt. Her eyes were full of kisses and fondling for her only baby, the helpless being who reversed for her the maternal relations. It was a little old woman, whose apple face had shriveled into puckers only around the corners of the eyes and mouth. A dimity nightcap tied it in, almost covering white silk threads of hair. This helpless mother, lying in the dead alive state we now call paralysis, and the Rocky Forkers then called palsy, was the secret delight of Wilda’s heart, and Alanson Bundle’s only rival. But she concealed her fondness like a crime. The name of Sweetness was sacred to that hollow cabin. Bounce could make no remark about it, and he was the only safe auditor in an age when excess of loving was considered weakness.

Wilda hung her supper kettles on the hooks of the crane, and made biscuits, and raked out coals to bake them in a Dutch oven. Alanson Bundle would not appear until the evening meal was over. He pottered around in his woods or went across the ridge to look after cattle.

The log-house was exquisite with cleanness, even in that corner where the fowls roosted. No cobwebs or dust marred the rich brown of its upper depth. The floor and stone hearth were scoured white. Wilda’s spinning-wheel stood beside one wall. Her own apartment was an oblong space curtained with homespun which had been dyed a dull red. Some red and gilt chairs, a pine table and a red and gilt cushioned settee on rockers, furnished the house. The log wall between hearth and door held gay trappings of tinware and pewter, all shining in the mighty blaze.

The table was spread and a perfume of coffee filled the place. Wilda had turned the fried eggs and lifted them carefully to a platter before she heard the usual sounds her mother made to call her.

Sweetness was wide awake and smiling like a baby. The Rocky Fork people said she had her faculties but couldn’t make no use of them. Unabated intelligence looked through her eyes and her face never distorted itself, although she could not talk.

“Have you been lonesome to-day, Sweetness? No? Have you slept much? Yes? That’s good. Did Speckle and Banty sit on Bounce’s back and keep you company? They’ve gone to roost now. They’re going to wake up about midnight and crow for Christmas, and wake you up—the bad chickens.—Now supper’s ready. Folks round here thinks I starve you because you never eat in the middle of the day. ’Tain’t no use for me to say anything. But if you don’t want me to be clean disgraced, you must eat hearty when you do eat.”

She fed the helpless being with long and patient use of a spoon. The fire roared. Bounce rose up and yawned, stretching his limbs, to hint that his own plate had been empty since morning. But Wilda never hurried this important part of her day’s business. The food which she must eat became overdone. She sat on the trundle-bed, giving her mother with the spoon meat all the life and doings of that small world on the Rocky Fork.

“Gutteridges were going to have a turkey-roast to-morrow. The presiding elder was at their house. Yes, their sewing was done; she finished Mandy’s black quilted petticoat to-day. Mandy and ’Lizabeth both had new shawls that their father had paid six dollars apiece for, at the woolen factory in Newark; stripes and crossbars. Ridenour’s little boy was so he could sit up; the doctor thought the fever was broke. The Bankses were all going to take dinner at granny’s. And some folks said one of Harris’s girls was to be married to-morrow, but it might be all talk. There wasn’t much chance of snow, but it was a cold night outside. Didn’t Sweetness hear the wind across the roof? It was a good thing our clapboards were on so tight.”

So this one-sided conversation went on until the little old woman was quite filled. Then Wilda made her snug, as if attending an infant, and fed Bounce, and sat down alone at the table.

Scarcely were the clean pewter and crockery in place again, and the wheel set out where the table had been, and Wilda bundled ready to go out, when a knock sounded on the door.

She opened it, and exclaimed as she always did,—

“Well, I declare! here’s Lanson. Come in, Lanson, and take a chair.”

“Gimme your milk bucket,” responded Alanson.

“I was just starting to milk, Lanson. Don’t you bother yourself with it to-night.”

But he took her pail. And Wilda, smiling, laid off her wraps and made the hearth very clean, and plumped up the settee cushions.

When Alanson handed the frothing pail into the door, without putting foot over the threshold, he glanced at the fireplace.

“Want another log brought in to-night?”

“Law, Lanson! that one ain’t half burnt.”

“But it’ll settle down before another twenty-four hours. I ’low I’d better fetch a few sticks.”

So he came in laden with sections of trees, and built them handily upon the structure of the fire.

“Do you want ary bucket of water?” was his next inquiry.

“No, I’m obleeged to you, Lanson,” replied Wilda. “I fetched a big gourdful from the spring as I come uphill. It saves steps.”

Alanson now unbelted and took off his butternut-colored wamus, and Wilda hung it with his hat on a peg. He had a fine black blanket shawl for meeting, but he was not so reckless as to scratch it through hill underbrush every evening.

Feeling himself now ready for society, Alanson walked over to the trundle-bed and greeted the invalid.

“Good even’, Mis’ Coon; it’s right wintry outdoors.”

She gave him an approving smile. He sat down in the settee and rocked himself, while Wilda pulled a long thread from her spindle, stepped back and gave the wheel a whirl. The trundle-bed, as usual, stood between her and her besieger. A hum, rising and rising like some sweet tune through the pines, filled the room. The great wheel blurred all its spokes, and found them again, and slackened to a slow revolution, as Wilda came back to the spindle.

“How’s your aunt to-day?” she inquired.

“Middling,” replied Alanson. Again the music of the spinning arose. Alanson warmed his feet and hands, and felt comforted after his tramp through the vast chill woods.

When the silent companionship which he enjoyed with Wilda had quite filled its measure, he took from his pocket and unfolded a large newspaper.

“I’ll light a candle,” said Wilda, with that eagerness for romance which the simplest lives manifest.

“’Tisn’t needed,” said Alanson. What was a candle’s star to that blazing sun in the fireplace? He turned his shoulder so the light fell upon the “Saturday Evening Post,” and read a harrowing installment about some Bride of the Wilderness. There was domestic bliss in this snug cabin, the wind-song of the wheel, and the winter night with its breath of Christmas. Alanson droned on in a high key, the mother watching him as long as she was able to resist so many monotones. She went to sleep before Wilda’s stint of spinning was done, and before Alanson read with impressive voice, “To be con-tin-u-ed.”

That wary inspection of each other which people of that time called courting had varied its routine so little for twelve years betwixt this pair, that Alanson felt bound to make his usual remark as Wilda sat down to knit.

“Well, folks is still talking about us getting married, Wilda.”

“Let them talk,” said Wilda, putting her hair behind her ear, and smiling while she looked at Sweetness.

“I come here pretty regular. Don’t you think it’s about time we set the day?”

Wilda answered, without moving her eyes from the trundle-bed, “Don’t you think we better let well enough alone, Lanson?”

“Well, now, ’tisn’t well enough,” argued Alanson, and to the sylvan mind there is accumulated force in an oft-used argument. “You’ve got these woods lots and the house and a cow”—

“Yes, I’m well fixed,” murmured Wilda.

—“but you have to leave your mother and go out among the neighbors to airn a living. How do you know sometime the house won’t burn down?”

“I am jub’ous about it often,” owned Wilda, biting the end of a knitting-needle. But catching the yarn over her little finger she drove it ahead with her work.

“Then eventually she might die.”

“I’ve thought of that,” sighed Wilda. “And I’ve thought what’d become of her if I’s to be taken and her left. Then who’d let her pet rooster and hen—that she’s just as tickled with as a child—roost in the house, and clean after them without fretting her?”

Alanson glanced at Speckle and Banty sticking like balls to their perch, and he volunteered some discreet possibilities.

“When folks begins to get used to such things before they’re too old and sot in their ways, seems to me like chickens in the house would be natteral enough—though not brought up to it.”

Whenever Alanson made this great concession, Wilda always fell back upon her observations of marriage.

“But there’s Mary Jane Willey. She had fifteen hundred dollars in her own right, and was well fixed with bedding and goods—six chairs and a bread-trough and a cupboard. And all that didn’t satisfy her, but she must have a man to speckalate with her money and lose it; and now he’s took to drinking, her and her children are like to go on the county.”

Alanson interlaced his fingers across his chest and set his thumbs to whirling.

“She ought to got a man like me,” he observed humorously.

Then the topic was usually diverted into the lives of other Rocky Forkers until Alanson felt it was time to go home.

But to-night, after drawing out his silver watch by its steel log-chain, he lingered uneasily instead of rising from the settee and saying, “Well, I better be moseying towards home.”

The flashing of Wilda’s needles went on. She had a leather stall pinned to her waist, in which she braced and steadied the most rampant needle as he led the gallop around the stocking. Sweetness slept as a spirit may sleep who has escaped the bounds of care, her sunken little mouth and wrinkled eye-corners steadily smiling.

“Going to have any Christmas up here to-morrow?” inquired Alanson, with a sheepish look at Wilda.

“I got a Christmas gift for her,” replied Wilda fondly. Alanson understood the pronouns which always stood for mother.

“Well, now, it’s funny,” said he. “But I got something for her, too.”

“Why, Lanson! What ever put you up to do such a thing?” Wilda paused with her needle held back in mid plunge.

“’Tisn’t much,” apologized Alanson, and he brought his wamus from the peg to the hearth. Wilda had noticed it was laden when she hung it up, but she always discreetly overlooked the apples he brought until he made his offering.

There were no apples in the wamus pockets this time. Alanson took out two packets, and opened one which he laid on Wilda’s knee. It was a pound of red hearts.

“The other’s for her,” he said “and it’s all white ones.”

“Why, Lanson Bundle!” exclaimed Wilda.

But he had yet another paper, and it disclosed the yellow coats of tropical fruit.

“What’s them?” breathed Wilda, bending over in admiration. “Why, Lanson Bundle! If them ain’t lemons and oranges! Where in this world did you get them?”

“I sent clean to Fredericktown for them,” confessed the suitor with an apologetic grin. “I thought her being bedfast so steady all the time, she’d like something out of the common.”

“You are real clever,” spoke Wilda with trembling voice. “She’ll be so tickled! I been making her two fine caps with hem-stitching around the border;—but this does beat all!”

“I done something else,” Alanson ventured on, “that you’ll think is simple;—I’ve never seen such a thing, but I’ve read about it. Coming along through the pines I took my jack-knife out and cut a little one off close to the ground; and it’s laying outside the door.”

“What for, Lanson?”

“A Christmas-tree.”

“What’s that?”

“Why, in a foreign place they call Germany, I’ve read they take an evergreen and make it stand like it growed in the house, and hang gifts on it, and if I don’t disremember, they fix candles into it and light them.”

“I should think that would be pretty,” said Wilda in some excitement. “Law, Lanson! If we could fix it at the foot of her trundle-bed!”

Alanson thought they could fix it, and he set vigorously about the task. He ran out to the ash-hopper and brought in the keg which in summer time caught the lye. The evergreen tree, beautifully straight, and tasseled at the top, he fastened in the keg ingeniously, without clamor of nails and pounding.

Then maid and bachelor trimmed the Christmas-tree for their old sleeping child. A dexterous use of string hung all the hearts to the boughs, as well as oranges and lemons. One cap was put on the top tassel, and the other dropped from a branch by its ties. Wilda brought out her candle box and recklessly cut the moulded tallow into short tapers. This part of the decoration greatly taxed both Alanson and her. But they finally pinned all the tapers in place, and concluded to light the wicks for a trial.

Alanson carried a brand from point to point. Wilda was frightened at the beauty of the thing and their unusual occupation. Her eyes and cheeks were vivid. She had never been so wildly excited in her life before. Thought and resolution, which had battled for years, bounded forward with the bounding of her blood.

“Lanson Bundle!” she laughed, “what do you suppose folks would say if they peeked in and seen us at this!”

“I ’low they’d want to have a Christmas-tree themselves,” responded the bachelor. “You and me will have one next year at our own house, won’t we, Wilda?”

“Well, I don’t know but we will. I don’t know as I can hold out much longer. You’re a real good man, Lanson, and if I’ve got to get married, there ain’t nobody I’d have as quick as you.”

At that admission Alanson laid the brand on the fire, wiped his lips carefully with a red cotton handkerchief, and came expectantly round the Christmas-tree. But with the recoil of a middle-aged girl from dropping man a word of encouragement, Wilda flew behind the trundle-bed and kept her lover warned by an uplifted palm.

“I haven’t made up my mind to no kissing yet, Lanson Bundle! I ain’t used to kissing anybody but her.”

Alanson looked at the little mother in the trundle-bed, and she opened her eyes, disturbed by such scampering. The pet chickens were roused also, and Speckle crowed on his perch with a vigor which belongs only to the midnight of Christmas eve.

“Look there, Sweetness,” Wilda whispered kneeling. “Do you see what Lanson’s fixed for you? That’s a Christmas-tree.”

The mother’s eyes caught the Christmas-tree, and snapped with astonishment and delight. The tapers were dripping tallow, but firelight shone through the boughs, and all the wonderful hearts and yellow fruit hung like a fairy picture. Her grateful look finally sought Alanson, and he also knelt down, at the opposite side of the trundle-bed, and with reverence which brought a rush of tears to Wilda’s eyes, kissed Sweetness on the forehead.

Wilda furtively gathered her tears on her finger-tips, and hid them in her linsey dress, but she said impressively to Alanson,—

“Now, that kiss will make you a better man all your life.”

SERENA

Time, 1860

Serena Hedding drove through the gateway of her father’s farm, while her little son held the creaking gate open. Her vehicle was a low buggy, with room at the back for a sack of nubbins, which the scrawny white horse would appreciate on his return trip. The driver was obliged to cluck encouragement to him as he paused, with his head down, in the gateway; and before he had taken ten steps forward, before Milton could stick the pin back in the post-hole and scamper to his seat at her left side, she lived her girlhood over. She saw her father holding that gate open for camp-meeting or protracted-meeting folks to drive in to dinner with him. She saw Milton Hedding ride through to court her, and the scowl her father gave him; and the buggy which waited for her in the woods one afternoon, herself getting into it, and Milton whipping up his horse to carry her away forever.

The road wound, folding on itself, through dense woods. Nothing had changed about the road. She noticed that the old log among the haw saplings remained untouched. That log was a link binding her childhood to her girlhood. She sat on it to baste up the hem of her ridiculously long dress before going to school, her dinner-basket waiting near; and, coming home in the evening, she there ripped the basting out, lest Aunt Lindy should notice that her skirt did not flop against her heels, as proper skirts had done in Aunt Lindy’s childhood. Seated on that log, she and Milton had talked of the impossibility of their marriage, and decided to run away.

It was so near sunset that the woods were in mellow twilight. She heard the cows lowing away off, and a loaded wagon rumbling over the Feeder bridge. The loamy incense of this ancestral land was so sweet that it pained her. Soon the house would come in sight, and seem to strike her on the face. If they had altered it any, she did not know it. Was her father’s sick-bed downstairs, or did Aunt Lindy keep him above the narrow staircase? The slippery-elm tree she used to wound for its juicy strips started out at the roadside to give her a scarry welcome. Her fingers brushed her cheeks, and drew the black sunbonnet farther over them.