A Novel

By

Will N. Harben

Author of

"Abner Daniel" "Pole Baker"

"The Georgians" etc.

New York and London

Harper & Brothers Publishers

1906

Copyright, 1906, by Harper & Brothers.

All rights reserved.

Published September, 1906.

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To

William Dean Howells

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'I RECKON IT WAS THE DIVINE INTENTION FOR ME AND YOU TO HAVE THIS SECRET BETWEEN US'

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CONTENTS

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Ann Boyd

[I]

Ann Boyd Stood at the open door of her corn-house, a square, one-storied hut made of the trunks of young pine-trees, the bark of which, being worm-eaten, was crumbling from the smooth hard-wood. She had a tin pail on her arm, and was selecting "nubbins" for her cow from the great heap of husked corn which, like a mound of golden nuggets, lay within. The strong-jawed animal could crunch the dwarfed ears, grain and corn together, when they were stirred into a mush made of wheat-bran and dish-water.

Mrs. Boyd, although past fifty, showed certain signs of having been a good-looking woman. Her features were regular, but her once slight and erect figure was now heavy, and bent as if from toil. Her hair, which in her youth had been a luxuriant golden brown, was now thinner and liberally streaked with gray. From her eyes deep wrinkles diverged, and the corners of her firm mouth were drawn downward. Her face, even in repose, wore an almost constant frown, and this habit had deeply gashed her forehead with lines that deepened when she was angry.

With her pail on her arm, she was turning back towards her cottage, which stood about a hundred yards to the right, beneath the shade of two giant oaks, when she heard her name called from the main-travelled road, which led past her farm, on to Darley, ten miles away.

"Oh, it's you, Mrs. Waycroft!" she exclaimed, without change of countenance, as the head and shoulders of a neighbor appeared above the rail-fence. "I couldn't imagine who it was calling me."

"Yes, it was me," the woman said, as Mrs. Boyd reached the fence and rested her pail on the top rail. "I hain't seed you since I seed you at church, Sunday. I tried to get over yesterday, but was too busy with one thing and another."

"I reckon you have had your hands full planting cotton," said Mrs. Boyd. "I didn't expect you; besides, I've had all I could do in my own field."

"Yes, my boys have been hard at it," said Mrs. Waycroft. "I don't go to the field myself, like you do. I reckon I ain't hardy enough, but keeping things for them to eat and the house in order takes all my time."

"I reckon," said Mrs. Boyd, studying the woman's face closely under the faded black poke-bonnet—"I reckon you've got something to tell me. You generally have. I wish I could not care a snap of the finger what folks say, but I'm only a natural woman. I want to hear things sometimes when I know they will make me so mad that I won't eat a bite for days."

Mrs. Waycroft looked down at the ground. "Well," she began, "I reckon you know thar would be considerable talk after what happened at meeting Sunday. You know a thing like that naturally would stir up a quiet community like this."

"Yes, when I think of it I can see there would be enough said, but I'm used to being the chief subject of idle talk. I've had twenty odd years of it, Mary Waycroft, though this public row was rather unexpected. I didn't look for abuse from the very pulpit in God's house, if it is His. I didn't know you were there. I didn't know a friendly soul was nigh."

"Yes, I was there clean through from the opening hymn. A bolt from heaven on a sunny day couldn't have astonished me more than I was when you come in and walked straight up the middle aisle, and sat down just as if you'd been coming there regular for all them years. I reckon you had your own private reasons for making the break."

"Yes, I did." The wrinkled mouth of the speaker twitched nervously. "I'd been thinking it out, Mrs. Waycroft, for a long time and trying to pray over it, and at last I come to the conclusion that if I didn't go to church like the rest, it was an open admission that I acknowledged myself worse than others, and so I determined to go—I determined to go if it killed me."

"And to think you was rewarded that way!" answered Mrs. Waycroft; "it's a shame! Ann Boyd, it's a dirty shame!"

"It will be a long time before I darken a church door again," said Mrs. Boyd. "If I'm ever seen there it will be after I'm dead and they take me there feet foremost to preach over my body. I didn't look around, but I knew they were all whispering about me."

"You never saw the like in your life, Ann," the visitor said. "Heads were bumping together to the damagement of new spring hats, and everybody was asking what it meant. Some said that, after meeting, you was going up and give your hand to Brother Bazemore and ask him to take you back, as a member, but he evidently didn't think you had a purpose like that, or he wouldn't have opened up on you as he did. Of course, everybody thar knowed he was hitting at you."

"Oh yes, they all knew, and he had no reason for thinking I wanted to ask any favor, for he knows too well what I think of him. He hates the ground I walk on. He has been openly against me ever since he come to my house and asked me to let the Sunday-school picnic at my spring and in my grove. I reckon I gave it to him pretty heavy that day, for all I'd been hearing about what he had had to say of me had made me mad. I let him get out his proposal as politely as such a sneaking man could, and then I showed him where I stood. Here, Mrs. Waycroft, I've been treated like a dog and an outcast by every member of his church for the last twenty years, called the vilest names a woman ever bore by his so-called Christian gang, and then, when they want something I've got—something that nobody else can furnish quite as suitable for their purpose—why he saunters over to my house holding the skirts of his long coat as if afraid of contamination, and calmly demands the use of my property—property that I've slaved in the hot sun and sleet and rain to pay for with hard work. Oh, I was mad! You see, that was too much, and I reckon he never in all his life got such a tongue-lashing. When I came in last Sunday and sat down, I saw his eyes flash, and knew if he got half an excuse he would let out on me. I was sorry I'd come then, but there was no backing out after I'd got there."

"When he took his text I knew he meant it for you," said the other woman. "I have never seen a madder man in the pulpit, never in my life. While he was talking, he never once looked at you, though he knew everybody else was doing nothing else. Then I seed you rise to your feet. He stopped to take a drink from his goblet, and you could 'a' heard a pin fall, it was so still. I reckon the rest thought like I did, that you was going right up to him and pull his hair or slap his jaws. You looked like you hardly knowed what you was doing, and, for one, I tuck a free breath when you walked straight out of the house. What you did was exactly right, as most fair-minded folks will admit, though I'm here to tell you, my friend, that you won't find fair-minded folks very plentiful hereabouts. The fair-minded ones are over there in that graveyard."

Mrs. Boyd stroked her quivering lips with her hard, brown hand, and said, softly: "I wasn't going to sit there and listen to any more of it. I'd thrown aside pride and principle and gone to do my duty to my religion, as I saw it, and thought maybe some of them—one or two, at least—would meet me part of the way, but I couldn't listen to a two hours' tirade about me and my—my misfortune. If I'd stayed any longer, I'd have spoken back to him, and that would have been exactly what he and some of the rest would have wanted, for then they could have made a case against me in court for disturbing public worship, and imposed a heavy fine. They can't bear to think that, in spite of all their persecution, I've gone ahead and paid my debts and prospered in a way that they never could do with all their sanctimony."

There was silence for a moment. A gentle breeze stirred the leaves of the trees and the blades of long grass beside the road. There was a far-away tinkling of cow and sheep bells in the lush-green pastures which stretched out towards the frowning mountain against which the setting sun was levelling its rays.

"You say you haven't seen anybody since Sunday," remarked the loitering woman, in restrained, tentative tones.

"No, I've been right here. Why did you ask me that?"

"Well, you see, Ann," was the slow answer, "talking at the rate Bazemore was to your face, don't you think it would be natural for him to—to sort o' rub it on even heavier behind your back, after you got up that way and went out so sudden."

"I never thought of it, but I can see now that it would be just like him." Mrs. Boyd took a deep breath and lowered her pail to the ground. "Yes," she went on, reflectively, as she drew herself up again and leaned on the fence, "I reckon he got good and mad when I got up and left."

"Huh!" The other woman smiled. "He was so mad he could hardly speak. He fairly gulped, his eyes flashed, and he was as white as a bunch of cotton. He poured out another goblet of water that he had no idea of drinking, and his hand shook so much that the glass tinkled like a bell against the mouth of the pitcher. You must have got as far as the hitching-rack before his fury busted out. I reckon what he said was the most unbecoming thing that a stout, able-bodied man ever hurled at a defenceless woman's back."

There was another pause. Mrs. Boyd's expectant face was as hard as stone; her dark-gray eyes were two burning fires in their shadowy orbits.

"What did he say?" she asked. "You might as well tell me."

Mrs. Waycroft avoided her companion's fierce stare. "He looked down at the place where you sat, Ann, right steady for a minute, then he said: 'I'm glad that woman had the common decency to sit on a seat by herself while she was here; but I hope when meeting is over that some of you brethren will take the bench out in the woods and burn it. I'll pay for a new one out of my own pocket.'"

"Oh!" The exclamation seemed wrung from her when off her guard, and Mrs. Boyd clutched the rail of the fence so tightly that her strong nails sunk into the soft wood. "He said that! He said that about me!"

"Yes, and he ought to have been ashamed of himself," said Mrs. Waycroft; "and if he had been anything else than a preacher, surely some of the men there—men you have befriended—would not have set still and let it pass."

"But they did let it pass," said Mrs. Boyd, bitterly; "they did let it pass, one and all."

"Oh yes, nobody would dare, in this section, to criticise a preacher," said the other. "What any little, spindle-legged parson says goes the same as the word of God out here in the backwoods. I'd have left the church myself, but I knowed you'd want to hear what was said; besides, they all know I'm your friend."

"Yes, they all know you are the only white woman that ever comes near me. But what else did he say?"

"Oh, he had lots to say. He said he hadn't mentioned no names, but it was always the hit dog that yelped, and that you had made yourself a target by leaving as you did. He went on to say that, in his opinion, all that was proved at court against you away back there was just. He said some folks misunderstood Scripture when it come to deal with your sort and stripe. He said some argued that a church door ought always to be wide open to any sinner whatsoever, but that in your daily conduct of holding every coin so tight that the eagle on it squeals, and in giving nothing to send the Bible to the heathens, and being eternally at strife with your neighbors, you had showed, he said, that no good influence could be brought to bear on you, and that people who was really trying to live upright lives ought to shun you like they would a catching disease. He 'lowed you'd had the same Christian chance in your bringing-up, and a better education than most gals, and had deliberately throwed it all up and gone your headstrong way. In his opinion, it would be wrong to condone your past, and tell folks you stood an equal chance with the rising generation fetched up under the rod and Biblical injunction by parents who knowed what lasting scars the fires of sin could burn in a living soul. He said the community had treated you right, in sloughing away from you, ever since you was found out, because you had never showed a minute's open repentance. You'd helt your head, he thought, if possible, higher than ever, and in not receiving the social sanction of your neighbors, it looked like you was determined to become the richest woman in the state for no other reason than to prove that wrong prospered."

The speaker paused in her recital. The listener, her face set and dark with fury, glanced towards the cottage. "Come in," she said, huskily; "people might pass along and know what we are talking about, and, somehow, I don't want to give them that satisfaction."

"That's a fact," said Mrs. Waycroft; "they say I fetch you every bit of gossip, anyway. A few have quit speaking to me. Bazemore would himself, if he didn't look to me once a month for my contribution. I hope what I've told you won't upset you, Ann, but you always say you want to know what's going on. It struck me that the whole congregation was about the most heartless body of human beings I ever saw packed together in one bunch."

"I want you to tell me one other thing," said Mrs. Boyd, tensely, as they were entering the front doorway of the cottage—"was Jane Hemingway there?"

"Oh yes, by a large majority. I forgot to tell you about her. I had my eyes on her, too, for I knowed it would tickle her nigh to death, and it did. When you left she actually giggled out loud and turned back an' whispered to the Mayfield girls. Her old, yellow face fairly shone, she was that glad, and when Bazemore went on talking about you and burning that bench, she fairly doubled up, with her handkerchief clapped over her mouth."

Mrs. Boyd drew a stiff-backed chair from beneath the dining-table and pushed it towards her guest. "There is not in hell itself, Mary Waycroft, a hatred stronger than I feel right now for that woman. She is a fiend in human shape. That miserable creature has hounded me every minute since we were girls together. As God is my judge, I believe I could kill her and not suffer remorse. There was a time when my disposition was as sweet and gentle as any girl's, but she changed it. She has made me what I am. She is responsible for it all. I might have gone on—after my—my misfortune, and lived in some sort of harmony with my kind if it hadn't been for her."

"I know that," said the other woman, as she sat down and folded her cloth bonnet in her thin hands. "I really believe you'd have been a different woman, as you say, after—after your trouble if she had let you alone."

Mrs. Boyd seated herself in another chair near the open door, and looked out at a flock of chickens and ducks which had gathered at the step and were noisily clamoring for food.

"I saw two things that made my blood boil as I was leaving the church," said she. "I saw Abe Longley, who has been using my pasture for his cattle free of charge for the last ten years. I caught sight of his face, and it made me mad to think he'd sit there and never say a word in defence of the woman he'd been using all that time; and then I saw George Wilson, just as indifferent, near the door, when I've been favoring him and his shabby store with all my trade when I could have done better by going on to Darley. I reckon neither of those two men said the slightest thing when Bazemore advised the—the burning of the bench I'd sat on."

"Oh no, of course not!" said Mrs. Waycroft, "nobody said a word. They wouldn't have dared, Ann."

"Well, they will both hear from me," said Mrs. Boyd, "and in a way that they won't forget soon. I tell you, Mary Waycroft, this thing has reached a climax. That burning bench is going to be my war-torch. They say I've been at strife with my neighbors all along; well, they'll see now. I struggled and struggled with pride to get up to the point of going to church again, and that's the reception I got."

"It's a pity to entertain hard feelings, but I don't blame you a single bit," said Mrs. Waycroft, sympathetically. "As I look at it, you have done all you can to live in harmony, and they simply won't have it. They might be different if it wasn't for that meddlesome old Jane Hemingway. She keeps them stirred up. She and her daughter is half starving to death, while you—" Mrs. Waycroft glanced round the room at the warm rag carpet of many colors, at the neat fire-screen made of newspaper pictures pasted on a crude frame of wood, and, higher, to the mantel-piece, whose sole ornament was a Seth Thomas clock, with the Tower of London in glaring colors on the glass door—"while you don't ask anybody any odds. Instead of starving, gold dollars seem to roll up to your door of their own accord and fall in a heap. They tell me even that cotton factory which you invested in, and which Mrs. Hemingway said had busted and gone up the spout, is really doing well."

"The stock has doubled in value," said Mrs. Boyd, simply. "I don't know how to account for my making money. I reckon it's simply good judgment and a habit of throwing nothing away. The factory got to a pretty low ebb, and the people lost faith in it, and were offering their stock at half-price. My judgment told me it would pull through as soon as times improved, and I bought an interest in it at a low figure. I was right; it proved to be a fine investment."

"I was sorter sorry for Virginia Hemingway, Sunday," said Mrs. Waycroft. "When her mother was making such an exhibition of herself in gloating over the way you was treated, the poor girl looked like she was ashamed, and pulled Jane's apron like she was trying to keep her quiet. I reckon you hain't got nothing against the girl, Ann?"

"Nothing except that she is that devilish woman's offspring," said Mrs. Boyd. "It's hard to dislike her; she's pretty—by all odds the prettiest and sweetest-looking young woman in this county. Her mother in her prime never saw the day she was anything like her. They say Virginia isn't much of a hand to gossip and abuse folks. I reckon her mother's ways have disgusted her."

"I reckon that's it," said the other woman, as she rose to go. "I know I love to look at her; she does my old eyes good. At meeting I sometimes gaze steady at her for several minutes on a stretch. Sitting beside that hard, crabbed old thing, the girl certainly does look out of place. She deserves a better fate than to be tied to such a woman. I reckon she'll be picked up pretty soon by some of these young men—that is, if Jane will give her any sort of showing. Jane is so suspicious of folks that she hardly lets Virginia out of her sight. Well, I must be going. Since my husband's death I've had my hands full on the farm; he did a lots to help out, even about the kitchen. Good-bye. I can see what I've said has made a change in you, Ann. I never saw you look quite so different."

"Yes, the whole thing has kind o' jerked me round," replied Mrs. Boyd. "I've taken entirely too much off of these people—let them run over me dry-shod; but I'll show them a thing or two. They won't let me live in peace, and now they can try the other thing." And Ann Boyd stood in the doorway and watched the visitor trudge slowly away.

"Yes," she mused, as she looked out into the falling dusk, "they are trying to drive me to the wall with their sneers and lashing tongues. But I'll show them that a worm can turn."

[II]

The next morning, after a frugal breakfast of milk and cornmeal pancake, prepared over an open fireplace on live coals, which reddened her cheeks and bare arms, Mrs. Boyd pinned up her skirts till their edges hung on a level with the tops of her coarse, calf-skin shoes. She then climbed over the brier-grown rail-fence with the agility of a hunter and waded through the high, dew-soaked weeds and grass in the direction of the rising sun. The meadow was like a rolling green sea settling down to calmness after a storm. Here and there a tuft of dewy broom-sedge held up to her vision a sheaf of green hung with sparkling diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, and far ahead ran a crystal creek in and out among gracefully drooping willows and erect young reeds.

"That's his brindle heifer now," the trudging woman said, harshly. "And over beyond the hay-stack and cotton-shed is his muley cow and calf. Huh, I reckon I'll make them strike a lively trot! It will be some time before they get grass as rich as mine inside of them to furnish milk and butter for Abe Longley and his sanctimonious lay-out."

Slowly walking around the animals, she finally got them together and drove them from her pasture to the small road which ran along the foot of the mountain towards their owner's farm-house, the gray roof of which rose above the leafy trees in the distance. To drive the animals out, she had found it necessary to lower a panel of her fence, and she was replacing the rails laboriously, one by one, when she heard a voice from the woodland on the mountain-side, a tract of unproductive land owned by the man whose cows she was ejecting. It was Abe Longley himself, and in some surprise he hurried down the rugged steep, a woodman's axe on his shoulder. He was a gaunt, slender man, gray and grizzled, past sixty years of age, with a tuft of stiff beard on his chin, which gave his otherwise smooth-shaven face a forbidding expression.

"Hold on thar, Sister Boyd!" he called out, cheerily, though he seemed evidently to be trying to keep from betraying the impatience he evidently felt. "You must be getting nigh-sighted in yore old age. As shore as you are a foot high them's my cattle, an' not yourn. Why, I knowed my brindle from clean up at my wood-pile, a full quarter from here. I seed yore mistake an' hollered then, but I reckon you are gettin' deef as well as blind. I driv' 'em in not twenty minutes ago, as I come on to do my cuttin'."

"I know you did, Abe Longley," and Mrs. Boyd stooped to grasp and raise the last rail and carefully put it in place; "I know they are yours. My eyesight's good enough. I know good and well they are yours, and that is the very reason I made them hump themselves to get off of my property."

"But—but," and the farmer, thoroughly puzzled, lowered his glittering axe and stared wonderingly—"but you know, Sister Boyd, that you told me with your own mouth that, being as I'd traded off my own pasture-land to Dixon for my strip o' wheat in the bottom, that I was at liberty to use yourn how and when I liked, and, now—why, I'll be dad-blamed if I understand you one bit."

"Well, I understand what I'm about, Abe Longley, if you don't!" retorted the owner of the land. "I did say you could pasture on it, but I didn't say you could for all time and eternity; and I now give you due notice if I ever see any four-footed animal of yours inside of my fences I'll run them out with an ounce of buckshot in their hides."

"Well, well, well!" Longley cried, at the end of his resources, as he leaned on his smooth axe-handle with one hand and clutched his beard with the other. "I don't know what to make of yore conduct. I can't do without the use of your land. There hain't a bit that I could rent or buy for love or money on either side of me for miles around. When folks find a man's in need of land, they stick the price up clean out of sight. I was tellin' Sue the other day that we was in luck havin' sech a neighbor—one that would do so much to help a body in a plight."

"Yes, I'm very good and kind," sneered Mrs. Boyd, her sharp eyes ablaze with indignation, "and last Sunday in meeting you and a lot of other able-bodied men sat still and let that foul-mouthed Bazemore say that even the wooden bench I sat on ought to be taken out and burned for the public good. You sat there and listened to that, and when he was through you got up and sung the doxology and bowed your head while that makeshift of a preacher called down God's benediction on you. If you think I'm going to keep a pasture for such a man as you to fatten your stock on, you need a guardian to look after you."

"Oh, I see," Longley exclaimed, a crestfallen look on him. "You are goin' to blame us all for what he said, and you are mad at everybody that heard it. But you are dead wrong, Ann Boyd—dead wrong. You can't make over public opinion, and you'd 'a' been better off years ago if you hadn't been so busy trying to do it, whether or no. Folks would let you alone if you'd 'a' showed a more repentant sperit, and not held your head so high and been so spiteful. I reckon the most o' your trouble—that is, the reason it's lasted so long, is due to the women-folks more than the men of the community, anyhow. You see, it sorter rubs women's wool the wrong way to see about the only prosperity a body can see in the entire county falling at the feet of the one—well, the one least expected to have sech things—the one, I mought say, who hadn't lived exactly up to the best precepts."

"I don't go to men like you for my precepts," the woman hurled at him, "and I haven't got any time for palavering. All I want to do is to give you due notice not to trespass on my land, and I've done that plain enough, I reckon."

Abe Longley's thin face showed anger that was even stronger than his avarice; he stepped nearer to her, his eyes flashing, his wide upper-lip twitching nervously. "Do you know," he said, "that's its purty foolhardy of you to take up a fight like that agin a whole community. You know you hain't agoin' to make a softer bed to lie on. You know, if you find fault with me fer not denouncin' Bazemore, you may as well find fault with every living soul that was under reach o' his voice, fer nobody budged or said a word in yore defence."

"I'm taking up a fight with no one," the woman said, firmly. "They can listen to what they want to listen to. The only thing I'm going to do in future is to see that no person uses me for profit and then willingly sees me spat upon. That's all I've got to say to you." And, turning, she walked away, leaving him standing as if rooted among his trees on the brown mountain-side.

"He'll go home and tell his wife, and she'll gad about an' fire the whole community against me," Mrs. Boyd mused; "but I don't care. I'll have my rights if I die for it."

An hour later, in another dress and a freshly washed and ironed gingham bonnet, she fed her chickens from a pan of wet cornmeal dough, locked up her house carefully, fastening down the window-sashes on the inside by placing sticks above the movable ones, and trudged down the road to George Wilson's country-store at the crossing of the roads which led respectively to Springtown, hard-by on one side, and Darley, farther away on the other.

The store was a long, frame building which had once been whitewashed, but was now only a fuzzy, weather-beaten gray. As was usual in such structures, the front walls of planks rose higher than the pointed roof, and held large and elaborate lettering which might be read quite a distance away. Thereon the young store-keeper made the questionable statement that a better price for produce was given at his establishment than at Darley, where high rent, taxes, and clerk-hire had to be paid, and, moreover, that his goods were sold cheaper because, unlike the town dealers, he lived on the products from his own farm and employed no help. In front of the store, convenient alike to both roads, stood a rustic hitching-rack made of unbarked oaken poles into which railway spikes had been driven, and on which horseshoes had been nailed to hold the reins of any customer's mount. On the ample porch of the store stood a new machine for the hulling of pease, several ploughs, and a red-painted device for the dropping and covering of seed-corn. On the walls within hung various pieces of tin-ware and harnesses and saddles, and the two rows of shelving held a good assortment of general merchandise.

As Mrs. Boyd entered the store, Wilson, a blond young man with an ample mustache, stood behind the counter talking to an Atlanta drummer who had driven out from Darley to sell the store-keeper some dry-goods and notions, and he did not come to her at once, but delayed to see the drummer make an entry in his order-book; then he advanced to her.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Boyd," he smiled. "I am ordering some new prints for you ladies, and I wanted to see that he got the number of bolts down right. This is early for you to be out, isn't it? It's been many a day since I've seen you pass this way before dinner. I took a sort of liberty with you yesterday, knowing how good-natured you are. Dave Prixon was going your way with his empty wagon, and, as I was about to run low on your favorite brand of flour, I sent you a barrel and put it on your account at the old price. I thought you'd keep it. You may have some yet on hand, but this will come handy when you get out."

"But I don't intend to keep it," replied the woman, under her bonnet, and her voice sounded harsh and crisp. "I haven't touched it. It's out in the yard where Prixon dumped it. If it was to rain on it I reckon it would mildew. It wouldn't be my loss. I didn't order it put there."

"Why, Mrs. Boyd!" and Wilson's tone and surprised glance at the drummer caused that dapper young man to prick up his ears and move nearer; "why, it's the best brand I handle, and you said the last gave you particular satisfaction, so I naturally—"

"Well, I don't want it; I didn't order it, and I don't intend to have you nor no one else unloading stuff in my front yard whenever you take a notion and want to make money by the transaction. Deduct that from my bill, and tell me what I owe you. I want to settle in full."

"But—but—" Wilson had never seemed to the commercial traveller to be so much disturbed; he was actually pale, and his long hands, which rested on the smooth surface of the counter, were trembling—"but I don't understand," he floundered. "It's only the middle of the month, Mrs. Boyd, and I never run up accounts till the end. You are not going off, are you?"

"Oh no," and the woman pushed back her bonnet and eyed him almost fiercely, "you needn't any of you think that. I'm going to stay right on here; but I'll tell you what I am going to do, George Wilson—I'm going to buy my supplies in the future at Darley. You see, since this talk of burning the very bench I sit on in the house of God, which you and your ilk set and listen to, why—"

"Oh, Mrs. Boyd," he broke in, "now don't go and blame me for what Brother Bazemore said when he was—"

"Brother Bazemore!" The woman flared up and brought her clinched hand down on the counter. "I'll never as long as I live let a dollar of my money pass into the hands of a man who calls that man brother. You sat still and raised no protest against what he said, and that ends business between us for all time. There is no use talking about it. Make out my account, and don't keep me standing here to be stared at like I was a curiosity in a side-show."

"All right, Mrs. Boyd; I'm sorry," faltered Wilson, with a glance at the drummer, who, feeling that he had been alluded to, moved discreetly across the room and leaned against the opposite counter. "I'll go back to the desk and make it out."

She stood motionless where he had left her till he came back with her account in his hand, then from a leather bag she counted out the money and paid it to him. The further faint, half-fearful apologies which Wilson ventured on making seemed to fall on closed ears, and, with the receipted bill in her bag, she strode from the house. He followed her to the door and stood looking after her as she angrily trudged back towards her farm.

"Well, well," he sighed, as the drummer came to his elbow and stared at him wonderingly, "there goes the best and most profitable customer I've had since I began selling goods. It's made me sick at heart, Masters. I don't see how I can do without her, and yet I don't blame her one bit—not a bit, so help me God."

[III]

Wilson turned, and with a frown went moodily back to his desk and sat down on the high stool, gloomily eying the page in a ledger which he had just consulted.

"By George, that woman's a corker," said the drummer, sociably, as he came back and stood near the long wood-stove. "Of course, I don't know what it's all about, but she's her own boss, I'll stake good money on that."

"She's about the sharpest and in many ways the strongest woman in the state," said the store-keeper, with a sigh. "Good Lord, Masters, she's been my main-stay ever since I opened this shack, and now to think because that loud-mouthed Bazemore, who expects me to pay a good part of his salary, takes a notion to rip her up the back in meeting, why—"

"Oh, I see!" cried the drummer—"I understand it now. I heard about that at Darley. So she's the woman! Well, I'm glad I got a good look at her. I see a lot of queer things in going about over the country, but I don't think I ever ran across just her sort."

"She's had a devil of a life, Masters, from the time she was a blooming, pretty young girl till now that she is at war with everybody within miles of her. She's always been a study to me. She's treated me more like a son than anything else—doing everything in her power to help me along, buying, by George, things sometimes that I knew she didn't need because it would help me out, and now, because I didn't get up in meeting last Sunday and call that man down she holds me accountable. I don't know but what she's right. Why should I take her hard-earned money and sit still and allow her to be abused? She's simply got pride, and lots of it, and it's bad hurt."

"But what was it all about?" the drummer inquired.

"The start of it was away back when she was a girl, as I said," began the store-keeper. "You've heard of Colonel Preston Chester, our biggest planter, who lives a mile from here—old-time chap, fighter of duels, officer in the army, and all that?"

"Oh yes, I've seen him; in fact, I was at college at the State University with his son Langdon. He was a terrible fellow—very wild and reckless, full half the time, and playing poker every night. He was never known to pay a debt, even to his best friends."

"Langdon is a chip off of the old block," said Wilson. "His father was just like him when he was a young man. Between you and me, the Colonel never had a conscience; old as he now is, he will sit and laugh about his pranks right in the presence of his son. It's no wonder the boy turned out like he did. Well, away back when this Mrs. Boyd was a young and pretty girl, the daughter of honest, hard-working people, who owned a little farm back of his place, he took an idle fancy to her. I'm telling you now what has gradually leaked out in one way and another since. He evidently won her entire confidence, made her believe he was going to marry her, and, as he was a dashing young fellow, she must have fallen in love with him. Nobody knows how that was, but one thing is sure, and that is that he was seen about with her almost constantly for a whole year, and then he stopped off suddenly. The report went out that he'd made up his mind to get married to a young woman in Alabama who had a lot of money, and he did go off and bring home the present Mrs. Chester, Langdon's mother. Well, old-timers say young Ann Boyd took it hard, stayed close in at home and wasn't seen out for a couple of years. Then she come out again, and they say she was better-looking than ever and a great deal more serious and sensible. Joe Boyd was a young farmer those days, and a sort of dandy, and he fell dead in love with her and hung about her day and night, never seeming willing to let her out of his sight. Several other fellows, they say, was after her, but she seemed to like Joe the best, but nothing he'd do or say would make her accept him. I can see through it now, looking back on what has since leaked out, but nobody understood it then, for she had evidently got over her attachment for Colonel Chester, and Joe was a promising fellow, strong, good-looking, and a great beau and flirt among women, half a dozen being in love with him, but Ann simply wouldn't take him, and it was the talk of the whole county. He was simply desperate folks say, going about boring everybody he met with his love affair. Finally her mother and father and all her friends got after her to marry Joe, and she gave in. And then folks wondered more than ever why she'd delayed, for she was more in love with her husband than anybody had any reason to expect. They were happy, too. A child was born, a little girl, and that seemed to make them happier. Then Mrs. Boyd's mother and father died, and she came into the farm, and the Boyds were comfortable in every way. Then what do you think happened?"

"I've been wondering all along," the drummer laughed. "I can see you're holding something up your sleeve."

"Well, this happened. Colonel Chester's wife was, even then, a homely woman, about as old as he was, and not at all attractive aside from her money, and marrying hadn't made him any the less devilish. They say he saw Mrs. Boyd at meeting one day and hardly took his eyes off of her during preaching. She had developed into about the most stunning-looking woman anywhere about, and knew how to dress, which was something Mrs. Chester, with all her chances, had never seemed to get onto. Well, that was the start of it, and from that day on Chester seemed to have nothing on his mind but the good looks of his old sweetheart. Folks saw him on his horse riding about where he could get to meet her, and then it got reported that he was actually forcing himself on her to such an extent that Joe Boyd was worked up over it, aided by the eternal gab of all the women in the section."

"Did Colonel Chester's wife get onto it?" the drummer wanted to know.

"It don't seem like she did," answered Wilson. "She was away visiting her folks in the South most of the time, with Langdon, who was a baby then, and it may be that she didn't care. Some folks thought she was weak-minded; she never seemed to have any will of her own, but left the Colonel to manage her affairs without a word."

"Well, go on with your story," urged the drummer.

"There isn't much more to tell about the poor woman," continued Wilson. "As I said, Chester got to forcing himself on her, and I reckon she didn't want to tell her husband what she was trying to forget for fear of a shooting scrape, in which Joe would get the worst of it; but this happened: Joe was off at court in Darley and sent word home to his wife that he was to be held all night on a jury. The man that took the message rode home alongside of Chester and told him about it. Well, I reckon, all hell broke out in Chester that night. He was a drinking man, and he tanked up, and, as his wife was away, he had plenty of liberty. Well, he simply went over to Joe Boyd's house and went in. It was about ten o'clock. My honest conviction is, no matter what others think, that she tried her level best to make him leave without rousing the neighborhood, but he wouldn't go, but sat there in the dark with his coat off, telling her he loved her more than her husband did, and that he never had loved his wife, and that he was crazy for her, and the like. How long this went on, with her imploring and praying to him to go, I don't know; but, at any rate, they both heard the gate-latch click and Joe Boyd come right up the gravel-walk. I reckon the poor woman was scared clean out of her senses, for she made no outcry, and Chester went to a window, his coat on his arm, and was climbing out when Joe, who couldn't get in at the front door and was making for the one in the rear, met him face to face."

"Great goodness!" ejaculated the commercial traveller.

"Well, you bet, the devil was to pay," went on the store-keeper, grimly. "Chester was mad and reckless, and, being hot with liquor, and regarding Boyd as far beneath him socially, instead of making satisfactory explanations, they say he simply swore at Boyd and stalked away. Dumfounded, Boyd went inside to his miserable wife and demanded an explanation. She has since learned how to use her wits with the best in the land, but she was young then, and so, by her silence, she made matters worse for herself. He forced her to explain, and, seeing no other way out of the affair, she decided to throw herself on his mercy and make a clean breast of things her and her family had kept back all that time. Well, sir, she confessed to what had happened away back before Chester had deserted her, no doubt telling a straight story of her absolute purity and faithfulness to Boyd after marriage. Poor old Joe! He wasn't a fighting man, and, instead of following Chester and demanding satisfaction, he stayed at home that night, no doubt suffering the agony of the damned and trying to make up his mind to believe in his wife and to stand by her. As it looks now, he evidently decided to make the best of it, and might have succeeded, but somehow it got out about Chester being caught there, and that started gossip so hot that her life and his became almost unbearable. It might have died a natural death in time, but Mrs. Boyd had an enemy, Mrs. Jane Hemingway, who had been one of the girls who was in love with Joe Boyd. It seems that she never had got over Joe's marrying another woman, and when she heard this scandal she nagged and teased Joe about his babyishness in being willing to believe his wife, and told him so many lies that Boyd finally quit staying at home, sulking about in the mountains, and making trips away till he finally applied for a divorce. Ignorant and inexperienced as she was, and proud, Mrs. Boyd made no defence, and the whole thing went his way with very little publicity. But the hardest part for her to bear was when, having the court's decree to take charge of his child, Boyd came and took it away."

"Good gracious! that was tough, wasn't it?" exclaimed the drummer.

"That's what it was, and they say it fairly upset her mind. They expected her to fight like a tiger for her young, but at the time they came for it she only seemed stupefied. The little girl was only three years old, but they say Ann came in the room and said she was going to ask the child if it was willing to leave her, and they say she calmly put the question, and the baby, not knowing what she meant, said, 'Yes.' Then they say Ann talked to it as if it were a grown person, and told her to go, that she'd never give her a thought in the future, and never wanted to lay eyes on her again."

"That was pitiful, wasn't it?" said Masters. "By George, we don't dream of what is going on in the hearts of men and women we meet face to face every day. And that's what started her in the life she's since led."

"Yes, she lived in her house like a hermit, never going out unless she absolutely had to. She had an old-fashioned loom in a shed-room adjoining her house, and night and day people passing along the road could hear her thumping away on it. She kept a lot of fine sheep, feeding and shearing them herself, and out of the wool she wove a certain kind of jean cloth which she sold at a fancy figure. I've seen wagon-loads of it pass along the road billed to a big house in Atlanta. This went on for several years, and then it was noticed that she was accumulating money. She was buying all the land she could around her house, as if to force folks as far from her as possible, and she turned the soil to a good purpose, for she knew how to work it. She hired negroes for cash, when others were paying in old clothes and scraps, and, as she went to the field with them and worked in the sun and rain like a man, she got more out of her planting than the average farmer."

"So she's really well off?" said the drummer.

"Got more than almost anybody else in the county," said Wilson. "She's got stocks in all sorts of things, and owns houses on the main street in Darley, which she keeps well rented. It seems like, not having anything else to amuse her, she turned her big brain to economy and money-making, and I've always thought she did it to hit back at the community. You see, the more she makes, the more her less fortunate neighbors dislike her, and she loves to get even as far as possible."

"And has she had no associates at all?" Masters wanted to know.

"Well, yes, there is one woman, a Mrs. Waycroft, who has always been intimate with her. She is the only—I started to say she was the only one, but there was a poor mountain fellow, Luke King, a barefoot boy who had a fine character, a big brain on him, and no education. His parents were poor, and did little for him. They say Mrs. Boyd sort of took pity on him and used to buy books and papers for him, and that she really taught him to read and write. She sent him off to school, and got him on his feet till he was able to find work in a newspaper office over at Canton, where he became a boss typesetter. I've always thought that her misfortune had never quite killed her natural impulses, for she certainly got fond of that fellow. I had an exhibition of both his regard and hers right here at the store. He'd come in to buy something or other, and was waiting about the stove one cold winter day, when a big mountain chap made a light remark about Mrs. Boyd. He was a head taller than Luke King was, but the boy sprang at him like a panther and knocked the fellow down. They had the bloodiest fight I ever saw, and it was several minutes before they could be separated. Luke had damaged the chap pretty badly, but he was able to stand, while the boy keeled over in a dead faint on the floor, bruised inside some way. The big fellow, fearing arrest, mounted his horse and went away, and several of us were doing what we could with cold water and whiskey to bring the boy around when who should come in but Ann herself. She was passing the store, and some one told her about it. People who think she has no heart and is as cold as stone ought to have seen her that day. In all my life I never saw such a terrible face on a human being. I was actually afraid of her. She was all fury and all tenderness combined. She looked down at him in all his blood and bruises and white face, and got down on her knees by him. I saw a great big sob rise up in her, although her back was to me, and shake her from head to foot, and then she was still, simply stroking back his damp, tangled hair. 'My poor boy,' I heard her say, 'you can't fight my battles. God Himself has failed to do that, but I won't forget this—never—never!'"

"Lord, that was strong!" said Masters. "She must be wonderful!"

"She is more wonderful than her narrow-minded enemies dream of," returned the store-keeper. "You see, it's her pride that keeps her from showing her fine feelings, and it's her secluded life that makes them misunderstand her. Well, she brought her wagon and took the boy away. That was another queer thing," Wilson added. "She evidently had started to take him to her house, for she drove as far as the gate and then stopped there to study a moment, and finally turned round and drove him to the poor cabin his folks lived in. You see, she was afraid that even that would cause talk, and it would. Old Jane Hemingway would have fed on that morsel for months, as unreasonable as it would have been. Ann sent a doctor, though, and every delicacy the market afforded, and the boy was soon out. It wasn't long afterwards that Luke King went to college at Knoxville, and now he's away in the West somewhere. His mother, after his father's death, married a trifling fellow, Mark Bruce, and that brought on some dispute between her and her son, who had tried to keep her from marrying such a man. They say Luke told her if she did marry Bruce he'd go away and never even write home, and so far, they say, he has kept his word. Nobody knows where he is or what he's doing unless it is Mrs. Boyd, and she never talks. I can't keep from thinking he's done well, though, for he had a big head on him and a lot of determination."

"And this Mrs. Hemingway, her enemy," said the drummer, tentatively, "you say she was evidently the woman's rival at one time. But it seems she married some one else."

"Oh yes, she suddenly accepted Tom Hemingway, an old bachelor, who had been trying to marry her for a long time. Most people thought she did it to hide her feelings when Joe Boyd got married. She treated Tom like a dog, making him do everything she wanted, and he was daft about her till he died, just a couple of weeks after his child was born, who, by-the-way, has grown up to be the prettiest girl in all the country, and that's another feature in the story," the store-keeper smiled. "You see, Mrs. Boyd looks upon old Jane as the prime cause of her losing her own child, and I understand she hates the girl as much as she does her mother."

A man had come into the store and stood leaning against a show-case on the side devoted to groceries.

"There's a customer," said the drummer; "don't let me keep you, old man; you know you've got to look at my samples some time to-day."

"Well, I'll go see what he wants," said Wilson, "and then I'll look through your line, though I don't feel a bit like it, after losing the best regular customer I have."

The drummer had opened his sample-case on the desk when Wilson came back.

"You say the woman's husband took the child away," remarked the drummer; "did he go far?"

"They first settled away out in Texas," replied Wilson, "but Joe Boyd, not having his wife's wonderful head to guide him, failed at farming there, and only about three years ago he came back to this country and bought a little piece of land over in Gilmer—the county that joins this one."

"Oh, so near as that! Then perhaps she has seen her daughter and—"

"Oh no, they've never met," said Wilson, as he took a sample pair of men's suspenders from the case and tested the elastic by stretching it between his hands. "I know that for certain. She was in here one morning waiting for one of her teams to pass to take her to Darley, when a peddler opened his pack of tin-ware and tried to sell her some pieces I was out of. He heard me call her by name, and, to be agreeable, he asked her if she was any kin to Joe Boyd and his daughter, over in Gilmer. I could have choked the fool for his stupidity. I tried to catch his eye to warn him, but he was intent on selling her a bill, and took no notice of anything else. I saw her stare at him steady for a second or two, then she seemed to swallow something, and said, 'No, they are no kin of mine.' And then what did the skunk do but try to make capital out of that. 'Well, you may be glad,' he said, 'that they are no kin, for they are as near the ragged edge as any folks I ever ran across.' He went on to say he stayed overnight at Boyd's cabin and that they had hardly anything but streak-o'-lean-streak-o'-fat meat and corn-bread to offer him, and that the girl had the worst temper he'd ever seen. Mrs. Boyd, I reckon, to hide her face, was looking at some of the fellow's pans, and he seemed to think he was on the right line, and so he kept talking. Old Joe, he said, had struck him as a good-natured, lazy sort of come-easy-go-easy mountaineer, but the girl looked stuck up, like she thought she was some better than appearances would indicate. He said she was a tall, gawky sort of girl, with no good looks to brag of, and he couldn't for the life of him see what she had to make her so proud.

"I wondered what Mrs. Boyd was going to do, but she was equal to that emergency, as she always has been in everything. She held one of his pans up in the light and tilted her bonnet back on her head, I thought, to let me see she wasn't hiding anything, and said, as unconcerned as if he'd never mentioned a delicate subject. 'Look here,' she said, thumping the bottom of the pan with her finger, 'if you expect to do any business with me you'll have to bring copper-bottom ware to me. I don't buy shoddy stuff from any one. These pans will rust through in two months. I'll take half a dozen, but I'm only doing it to pay you for the time spent on me. It is a bad investment for any one to buy cheap, stamped ware.'"

[IV]

Mrs. Jane Hemingway, Ann Boyd's long and persistent enemy, sat in the passage which connected the two parts of her house, a big, earthernware churn between her sharp knees, firmly raising and lowering the bespattered dasher with her bony hands. She was a woman past fifty; her neck was long and slender, and the cords under the parchment-like skin had a way of tightening, like ropes in the seams of a tent, when she swallowed or spoke. Her dark, smoothly brushed hair was done up in the tightest of balls behind her head, and her brown eyes were easily kindled to suspicion, fear, or anger.

Her brother-in-law, Sam Hemingway, called "Hem" by his intimates, slouched in from the broad glare of the mid-day sun and threw his coat on a chair. Then he went to the shelf behind the widow, and, pouring some water into a tin pan from a pail, he noisily bathed his perspiring face and big, red hands. As he was drying himself on the towel which hung on a wooden roller on the weather-boarding of the wall, Virginia Hemingway, his niece, came in from the field bringing a pail of freshly gathered dewberries. In appearance she was all that George Wilson had claimed for her. Slightly past eighteen, she had a wonderful complexion, a fine, graceful figure, big, dreamy, hazel eyes, and golden-brown hair, and, which was rare in one of her station, she was tastily dressed. She smiled as she showed her uncle the berries and playfully "tickled" him under the chin.

"See there!" she chuckled.

"Pies?" he said, with an unctuous grin, as he peered down into her pail.

"I thought of you while I was gathering them," she nodded. "I'm going to try to make them just as you like them, with red, candied bars criss-crossing."

"Nothing in the pie-line can hold a candle to the dewberry unless it's the cherry," he chuckled. "The stones of the cherries sorter hold a fellow back, but I manage to make out. I et a pie once over at Darley without a stone in it, and you bet your life it was a daisy."

He went into his room for his tobacco, and Virginia sat down to stem her berries. He returned in a moment, leaning in the doorway, drawing lazily at his pipe. The widow glanced up at him, and rested her dasher on the bottom of the churn.

"I reckon folks are still talking about Ann Boyd and her flouncing out of meeting like she did," the widow remarked. "Well, that was funny, but what was the old thing to do? It would take a more brazen-faced woman than she is, if such a thing exists, to sit still and hear all he said."

"Yes, they are still hammering at the poor creature's back," said Sam, "and that's one thing I can't understand, nuther. She's got dead loads of money—in fact, she's independent of the whole capoodle of you women. Now, why don't she kick the dust o' this spot off of her heels an' go away whar she can be respected, an', by gosh! be let alone one minute 'fore she dies. They say she's the smartest woman in the state, but that don't show it—living on here whar you women kin throw a rock at her every time she raises her head above low ground."

"I've wondered why she don't go off, too," the widow said, as she peered down at the floating lumps of yellow butter in the snowy depths of her vessel, and deftly twirled her dasher in her fingers to make them "gather"; "but, Sam, haven't you heard that persons always want to be on the spot where they went wrong? I think she's that way. And when the facts leaked out on her, and her husband repudiated her and took the child away, she determined to stay here and live it down. But instead of calling humility and submission to her aid, she turned in to stinting and starving to make money, and now she flaunts her prosperity in our faces, as if that is going to make folks believe any more in her. Money's too easily made in evil ways for Christian people to bow before it, and possessions ain't going to keep such men as Brother Bazemore from calling her down whenever she puts on her gaudy finery and struts out to meeting. It was a bold thing for her to do, anyway, after berating him as she did when he went to her to get the use of her grove for the picnic."

"They say she didn't know Bazemore was to preach that day," said Sam. "She'd heard that the presiding elder was due here, and I'm of the opinion that she took that opportunity to show you all she wasn't afraid to appear in public."

Virginia Hemingway threw a handful of berry-stems out into the sunshine in the yard. "She's a queer woman," she said, innocently, "like a character in a novel, and, somehow, I don't believe she is as bad as people make her out. I never told either of you, but I met her yesterday down on the road."

"You met her!" cried Mrs. Hemingway, aghast.

"Yes, she was going home from her sugar-mill with her apron full of fresh eggs that she'd found down at her hay-stacks, and just as she got close to me her dress got caught on a snag and she couldn't get it loose. I stopped and unfastened it, and she actually thanked me, though, since I was born, I've never seen such a queer expression on a human face. She was white and red and dark as a thunder-cloud all at once. It looked like she hated me, but was trying to be polite for what I'd done."

"You had no business touching her dirty skirt," the widow flared up. "The next thing you know it will go out that you and her are thick. It would literally ruin a young girl to be associated with a woman of that stamp. What on earth could have possessed you to—"

"Oh, come off!" Sam laughed. "Why, you know you've always taught Virgie to be considerate of old folks, and she was just doing what she ought to have done for any old nigger mammy."

"I looked at it that way," said the girl, "and I'm not sorry, for I don't want her to think I hate her, for I don't. I think she has had a hard life, and I wish it were in my power to help her out of her trouble."

"Virginia, what are you talking about?" cried Mrs. Hemingway. "The idea of your standing up for that woman, when—"

"Well, Luke King used to defend her," Virginia broke in, impulsively, "and before he went away you used to admit he was the finest young man in the county. I've seen him almost shed tears when he'd tell about what she'd done for him, and how tender-hearted and kind she was."

"Tender-hearted nothing!" snapped Mrs. Hemingway, under a deep frown. "Luke King was the only person that went about her, and she tried to work on his sympathies for some purpose or other. Besides, nobody knows what ever become of him; he may have gone to the dogs by this time; it looks like somebody would have heard of him if he had come to any good in the five years he's been away."

"Somehow, I think she knows where he is," Virginia said, thoughtfully, as she rose to put her berries away.

When she had gone, Sam laughed softly. "It's a wonder to me that Virgie don't know whar Luke is, herself," he said. "I 'lowed once that the fellow liked her powerful; but I reckon he thought she was too young, or didn't want to take the matter further when he was as poor as Job's turkey and had no sort of outlook ahead."

"I sort o' thought that, too," the widow admitted, "but I didn't want Virginia to encourage him when he was accepting so much from that woman."

Sam laughed again as he knocked the ashes from his pipe and cleaned the bowl with the tip of his finger. "Well, 'that woman,' as you call her, is a power in the land that hates her," he said. "She knows how to hit back from her fortress in that old farm-house. George Wilson knows what it means not to stand by her in public, so does Abe Longley, that has to drive his cattle to grass two miles over the mountains. Jim Johnston, who was dead sure of renting her northeast field again next year, has been served with a notice to vacate, and now, if the latest news can be depended on, she's hit a broad lick at half the farmers in the valley, and, while I'm a sufferer with the balance, I don't blame her one bit. I'd 'a' done the same pine-blank thing years ago if I'd stood in her shoes."

"What's she done now?" asked the woman at the churn, leaning forward eagerly.

"Done? Why, she says she's tired o' footing almost the entire wheat-threshing bill for twenty measly little farmers. You know she's been standing her part of the expenses to get the Empire Company to send their steam thresher here, and her contribution amounted to more than half. She's decided, by hunky, to plant corn and cotton exclusively next year, and so notified the Empire Company. They can't afford to come unless she sows wheat, and they sent a man clean from Atlanta to argue the matter with her, but she says she's her own boss, an' us farmers who has land fittin' for nothing but wheat is going to get badly left in the lurch. Oh, Bazemore opened the battle agin her, and you-uns echoed the war-cry, an' the battle is good on. I'll go without flour biscuits and pie-crust, but the fight will be interesting. The Confed' soldiers made a purty good out along about '61, an' they done it barefooted an' on hard-tack an' water. If you folks are bent on devilling the hide off of the most influential woman in our midst, just because her foot got caught in the hem of her skirt an' tripped her up when she was a thoughtless young girl, I reckon us men will have to look on an' say nothing."

"She did slip up, as you say," remarked the widow, "and she's been a raging devil ever since."

"Ay! an' who made her one? Tell me that." Sam laughed. "You may not want to hear it, Jane, but some folks hint that you was at the bottom of it—some think lazy Joe Boyd would have stayed on in that comfortable boat, with a firm hand like hern at the rudder, if you hadn't ding-donged at him and told tales to him till he had to pull out."

"Huh! They say that, do they?" The widow frowned as she turned and looked straight at him. "Well, let 'em. What do I care? I didn't want to see as good-hearted a man as he was hoodwinked."

"I reckon not," Sam said, significantly, and he walked out of the passage down towards the barn. "Huh!" he mused, as he strode along crumbling leaf-tobacco of his own growing and filling his pipe. "I come as nigh as pease tellin' the old woman some'n' else folks say, an' that is that she was purty nigh daft about Joe Boyd, once upon a time, and that dashing Ann cut her out as clean as a whistle. I'll bet that 'ud make my sister-in-law so dern hot she'd blister from head to foot."

[V]

That afternoon Jane Hemingway went out to the barn-yard. For years she had cultivated a habit of going thither, obviously to look after certain hens that nested there, but in reality, though she would not have admitted it even to herself, she went because from that coign of vantage she could look across her enemy's fertile acres right into the lone woman's doorway and sometimes catch a glimpse of Ann at work. There was one unpleasant contingency that she sometimes allowed her mind to dwell upon, and that was that Joe Boyd and his now grown daughter might, inasmuch as Ann's wealth and power were increasing in direct ratio to the diminution of their own, eventually sue for pardon and return. That had become Jane's nightmare, riding her night and day, and she was not going to let any living soul know the malicious things she had done and said to thwart it. Vaguely she regarded the possible coming-back of the father and daughter as her own undoing. She knew the pulse of the community well enough to understand that nothing could happen which would so soon end the war against Ann Boyd as such a reconciliation. Yes, it would amount to her own undoing, for people were like sheep, and the moment one ran to Ann Boyd's side in approval, all would flock around her, and it would only be natural for them to turn against the one woman who had been the primal cause of the separation.

Jane was at the bars looking out on a little, seldom-used road which ran between her land and Ann's, when her attention was caught by a man with a leather hand-bag strapped on his shoulders trudging towards her. He was a stranger, and his dusty boots and trousers showed that he had walked a long distance. As he drew near he took off his straw hat and bowed very humbly, allowing his burden to swing round in front of him till he had eased it down on the turf at his feet.

"Good-evening, madam," he said. "I'd like to show you something if you've got the time to spare. I've made so many mountain folks happy, and at such a small outlay, that I tell you they are glad to have me come around again. This is a new beat to me, but I felt it my duty to widen out some in the cause of human suffering."

"What is it you've got?" Jane asked, smiling at his manner of speaking, as he deftly unlocked his valise and opened it out before her.

"It's a godsend, and that's no joke," said the peddler. "I've got a household liniment here at a quarter for a four-ounce flask that no family can afford to be without. You may think I'm just talking because it's my business, but, madam, do you know that the regular druggists all about over this country are in a combine not to sell stuff that will keep people in good trim? And why? you may ask me. Why? Because, I say, that it would kill the'r business. Go to one, I dare you, or to a doctor in regular practice, and they will mix up chalk and sweetened water and tell you you've got a serious internal complaint, and to keep coming day after day till your pile is exhausted, and then they may tell you the truth and ask you to let 'em alone. I couldn't begin, madam—I don't know your name—I say I couldn't begin to tell you the wonderful cures this liniment has worked all over this part of the state."

"What is it good for?" Jane Hemingway's face had grown suddenly serious. The conversation had caused her thoughts to revert to a certain secret fear she had entertained for several months.

"Huh—good for?—excuse me, but you make me laugh," the peddler said, as he held a bottle of the dark fluid up before her; "it's good for so many things that I could hardly get through telling you between now and sundown. It's good for anything that harms the blood, skin, or muscles. It's even good for the stomach, although I don't advise it taken internally, for when it's rubbed on the outside of folks they have perfect digestions; but what it is best for is sprains, lameness, or any skin or blood eruption. Do you know, madam, that you'd never hear of so many cancers and tumors, that are dragging weary folks to early graves hereabouts, if this medicine had been used in time?"

"Cancer?" The widow's voice had fallen, and she looked towards Ann Boyd's house, and then more furtively over her shoulder towards her own, as if to be sure of not being observed. "That's what I've always wondered at, how is anybody to know whether a—a thing is a cancer or not without going to a doctor, and, as you say, even then they may not tell you the truth? Mrs. Twiggs, over the mountain, was never let know she had her cancer till a few months before it carried her off. The family and the doctor never told her the truth. The doctor said it couldn't be cured, and to know would only make the poor thing brood over it and be miserable."

"That's it, now," said the medicine-vender; "but if it had been taken at the start and rubbed vigorously night and morning, it would have melted away under this fluid like dirt under lye-soap and warm water. Madam, a cancer is nothing more nor less than bad circulation at a certain point where blood stands till it becomes foul and putrefies. I can—excuse me if I seem bold, but long experience in handling men and women has learnt me to understand human nature. Most people who are afraid they've got cancers generally show it on their faces, an' I'll bet my hat and walk bareheaded to the nighest store to get another that you are troubled on that line—a little bit, anyway."

Jane made no denial, though her thin face worked as she strove adequately to meet his blunt assertion. "As I said just now"—she swallowed, and avoided his covetous glance—"how is a person really to know?"

"It's a mighty easy matter for me to tell," said the peddler, and he spoke most reassuringly. "Just you let me take a look at the spot, if it's no trouble to you, and I may save you a good many sleepless nights. You are a nervous, broody sort of a woman yourself, and I can see by your face that you've let this matter bother you a lots."

"You think you could tell if you—you looked at it?" Jane asked, tremulously.

"Well, if I didn't it would be the first case I ever diagnosed improperly. Couldn't we go in the house?"

Jane hesitated. "I think I'd rather my folks didn't know—that is, of course, if it is one. My brother-in-law is a great hand to talk, and I'd rather it wasn't noised about. If there's one thing in the world I don't like it's the pity and the curiosity of other folks as to just about how long I'm going to hold out."

"I've seed a lots o' folks like you." The peddler smiled. "But, if you don't mind tellin', where's the thing located?"

"It's on my breast," Jane gulped, undecidedly, and then, the first bridge having been crossed, she unbuttoned her dress at the neck with fumbling fingers and pulled it down. "Maybe you can see as well here as anywhere."

"Oh yes, never was a better light for the business," said the vender, and he leaned forward, his eyes fixed sharply on the spot exposed between the widow's bony fingers. For a moment he said nothing. The woman's yellow breast lay flat and motionless. She scarcely breathed; her features were fixed by grim, fearful expectancy. He looked away from her, and then stooped to his pack to get a larger bottle. "I'm glad I happened to strike you just when I did, madam," he said. "Thar ain't no mistaking the charactericstics of a cancer when it's in its first stages. That's certainly what you've got, but I'm telling you God's holy truth when I say that by regular application and rubbing this stuff in for a month, night and morning, that thing will melt away like mist before a hot sun."

"So it really is one!" Jane breathed, despondently.

"Yes, it's a little baby one, madam, but this will nip it in the bud and save your life. It will take the dollar size, but you know it's worth it."

"Oh yes, I'll take it," Jane panted. "Put it there in the fence-corner among the weeds, and I'll come out to-night and get it."

"All right," and the flask tinkled against a stone as it slid into its snug hiding-place among the Jamestown weeds nestling close to the rotting rails.

"Here's your money. I reckon we'd better not stand here." And Jane gave it to him with quivering fingers. He folded the bill carefully, thrust it into a greasy wallet, and stooped to close his bag and throw the strap over his shoulder.

"Now I'm going on to the next house," he said. "They tell me a curious sort of human specimen lives over thar—old Ann Boyd. Do you know, madam, I heard of that woman's tantrums at Springtown night before last, and at Barley yesterday. Looks like you folks hain't got much else to do but poke at her like a turtle on its back. Well, she must be a character! I made up my mind I'd take a peep at 'er. You know a travelling physician like I am can get at folks that sort o' hide from the general run."

Jane Hemingway's heart sank. Why had it not occurred to her that he might go on to Ann Boyd's and actually reveal her affliction? Such men had no honor or professional reputation to defend. Suddenly she was chilled from head to foot by the thought that the peddler might even boast of her patronage to secure that of her neighbor—that was quite the method of all such persons. It was on her tongue actually to ask him not to go to Ann Boyd's house at all, but her better judgment told her that such a request would unduly rouse the man's curiosity, so she offered a feeble compromise.

"Look here," she said, "I want it understood between us that—that you are to tell nobody about me—about my trouble. That woman over there is at outs with all her neighbors, and—and she'd only be glad to—"

Jane saw her error too late. It appeared to her now in the bland twinkle of amused curiosity in the stranger's face.

"I understand—I understand; you needn't be afraid of me," the man said, entirely too lightly, Jane thought, for such a grave matter, and he pushed back the brim of his hat and turned. "Remember the directions, madam, a good brisk rubbing with a flannel rag—red if you've got it—soaked in the medicine, twice a day. Good-evening; I'll be off. I've got to strike some house whar they will let me stay all night. I know that old hag won't keep me, from all I hear."

The widow leaned despondently against the fence and watched him as he ploughed his way through the tall grass and weeds of the intervening marsh towards Ann Boyd's house. The assurance that the spot on her breast was an incipient cancer was bad enough without the added fear that her old enemy would possibly gloat over her misfortune. She remained there till she saw the vender approach Ann's door. For a moment she entertained the mild hope that he would be repulsed, but he was not.

She saw Ann's portly form framed in the doorway for an instant, and then the peddler opened the gate and went into the house. Heavy of heart, the grim watcher remained at the fence for half an hour, and then the medicine-vender came out and wended his way along the dusty road towards Wilson's store.

Jane went into the house and sat down wearily. Virginia was sewing at a western window, and glanced at her in surprise.

"What's the matter, mother?" she inquired, solicitously.

"I don't know as there is anything wrong," answered Jane, "but I am sort o' weak. My knees shake and I feel kind o' chilly. Sometimes, Virginia, I think maybe I won't last long."

"That's perfectly absurd," said the girl. "Don't you remember what Dr. Evans said last winter when he was talking about the constitutions of people? He said you belonged to the thin, wiry, raw-boned kind that never die, but simply stay on and dry up till they are finally blown away."

"He's not a graduated doctor," said Jane, gloomily. "He doesn't know everything."

[VI]

A week from that day, one sultry afternoon near sunset, a tall mountaineer, very poorly clad, and his wife came past Wilson's store. They paused to purchase a five-cent plug of tobacco, and then walked slowly along the road in a dust that rose as lightly as down at the slightest foot-fall, till they reached Ann Boyd's house.

"I'll stay out here at the gate," the man said. "You'll have to do all the talking. As Willard said, she will do more for Luke King's mother than she would for anybody else, and you remember how she backed the boy up in his objections to me as a step-daddy."

"Well, I'll do what I can," the woman said, plaintively. "You stay here behind the bushes. I don't blame you for not wanting to ask a favor of her, after all she said when we were married. She may spit in my face—they say she's so cantankerous."

Seating himself on a flat stone, the man cut the corner off of his tobacco-plug and began to chew it, while his wife, a woman about sixty-five years of age, and somewhat enfeebled, opened the gate and went in. Mrs. Boyd answered the gentle rap and appeared at the door.

"Howdy do, Mrs. Boyd," the caller began. "I reckon old age hasn't changed me so you won't know me, although it's been ten years since me 'n' you met. I'm Mrs. Mark Bruce, that used to be Mrs. King. I'm Luke's mother, Mrs. Boyd."

"I knew you when you and Mark Bruce turned the bend in the road a quarter of a mile away," said Ann, sharply, "but, the Lord knows, I didn't think you'd have the cheek to open my front gate and stalk right into my yard after all you've said and done against me."

The eyes of the visitor fell to her worn shoe, through which her bare toes were protruding. "I had no idea I'd ever do such a thing myself until about two hours ago," she said, firmly; "but folks will do a lots, in a pinch, that they won't ordinarily. You may think I've come to beg you to tell me if you know where Luke is, but I hain't. Of course, I'd like to know—any mother would—but he said he'd never darken a door that his step-father went through, and I told 'im, I did, that he could go, and I'd never ask about 'im. Some say you get letters from him. I don't know—that, I reckon, is your business."

"You didn't come to inquire about your boy, then?" Ann said, curiously, "and yet here you are."

"It's about your law-suit with Gus Willard that I've come, Ann. He told you, it seems, that he was going to fight it to the bitter end, and he did call in a lawyer, but the lawyer told him thar was no two ways about it. If his mill-pond backed water on your land to the extent of covering five acres, why, you could make him shet the mill up, even if he lost all his custom. Gus sees different now, like most of us when our substance is about to take wings and fly off. He sees now that you've been powerful indulgent all them years in letting him back water on your property to its heavy damagement, and he says, moreover, that, to save his neck from the halter, he cayn't blame you fer the action. He says he did uphold Brother Bazemore in what he said about burning the bench that was consecrated till you besmirched it, and he admits he talked it here an' yan considerably. He said, an' Gus was mighty nigh shedding tears, in the sad plight he's in, that you had the whip in hand now, and that his back was bare, an' ef you chose to lay on the lash, why, he was powerless, for, said he, he struck the fust lick at you, but he was doin' it, he thought, for the benefit of the community."

"But," and the eyes of Ann Boyd flashed ominously, "what have you come for? Not, surely, to stand in my door and preach to me."

"Oh no, Ann, that hain't it," said the caller, calmly. "You see, Gus is at the end of his tether; he's in an awful fix with his wife and gals in tears, and he's plumb desperate. He says you hain't the kind of woman to be bent one way or another by begging—that is, when you are a-dealing with folks that have been out open agin you; but now, as it stands, this thing is agoing to damage me and Mark awfully, fer Mark gets five dollars a month for helping about the mill on grinding days, and when the mill shets down he'll be plumb out of a job."

"Oh, I see!" and Ann Boyd smiled impulsively.

"Yes, that's the way of it," went on Mrs. Bruce, "and so Gus, about two hours ago, come over to our cabin with what he called his only hope, and that was for me to come and tell you about Mark's job, and how helpless we'll be when it's gone, and that—well, Ann, to put it in Gus's own words, he said you wouldn't see Luke King's mother suffer as I will have to suffer, for, Ann, we are having the hardest time to get along in the world. I was at meeting that day, and I thought what Bazemore said was purty hard on any woman, but I was mad at you, and so I set and listened. I'm no coward. If you do this thing you'll do it of your own accord. I cayn't get down on my knees to you, and I won't."

"I see." Ann's face was serious. She looked past the woman down the dust-clouded road along which a man was driving a herd of sheep. "I don't want you on your knees to me, Cynthia Bruce. I want simple justice. I was doing the best I could when Bazemore and the community began to drive me to the wall, then I determined to have my rights—that's all; I'll have my legal rights for a while and see what impression it will make on you all. You can tell Gus Willard that I will give him till the first of July to drain the water from my land, and if he doesn't do it he will regret it."

"That's all you'll say, then?" said the woman at the step.

"That's all I'll say."

"Well, I reckon you are right, Ann Boyd. I sorter begin to see what you've been put to all on account of that one false step away back when, I reckon, like all gals, you was jest l'arnin' what life was. Well, as that's over and done with, I wonder if you would mind telling me if you know anything about Luke. Me 'n' him split purty wide before he left, and I try to be unconcerned about him, but I cayn't. I lie awake at night thinking about him. You see, all the rest of my children are around me."

"I'll say this much," said Ann, in a softened tone, "and that is that he is well and doing well, but I don't feel at liberty to say more."

"Well, it's a comfort to know that much," said Mrs. Bruce, softly. "And it's nothing but just to you for me to say that it's due to you. The education you paid fer is what gave him his start in life, and I'll always be grateful to you fer it. It was something I never could have given him, and something none of the rest of my children got."

Mrs. Boyd stood motionless in the door, her eyes on the backs of the pathetic pair as they trudged slowly homeward, the red sunset like a world in conflagration beyond them.

"Yes, she's the boy's mother," she mused, "and the day will come when Luke will be glad I helped her, as he would if he could see the poor thing now. Gus Willard is no mean judge of human nature. I'll let him stew awhile, but the mill may run on. I can't fight everybody. Gus Willard is my enemy, but he's open and above-board."

[VII]

One morning about the first of May, Virginia Hemingway went to Wilson's store to purchase some sewing-thread she needed. The long, narrow room was crowded with farmers and mountaineers, and Wilson had called in several neighbors to help him show and sell his wares. Langdon Chester was there, a fine double-barrelled shot-gun and fishing-rod under his arm, wearing a slouch hat and hunter's suit, his handsome face well tanned by exposure to the sun in the field and on the banks of the mountain streams. He was buying a reel and a metallic fly that worked with a spring and was set like a trap. Fred Masters was there, lounging about behind the counters, and now and then "making a sale" of some small article from the shelves or show-cases. He had opened his big sample trunks at the hotel in Springtown, half a mile distant, and a buggy and pair of horses were at the door, with which he intended to transport the store-keeper to his sample-room as soon as business became quieter. Seeing the store so crowded, Virginia only looked in at the door and walked across the street and sat down in Mrs. Wilson's sitting-room to rest and wait for a better opportunity to get what she had come for.

Langdon Chester had recognized an old school-mate in the drummer, but he seemed not to care to show marked cordiality. However, the travelling man was no stickler for formality. He came from behind the counter and cordially slapped Langdon on the shoulder. "How are you, old chap?" he asked; "still rusticating on the old man's bounty, eh? When you left college you were going into the law, and soar like an eagle with the worm of Liberty in its beak skyward through the balmy air of politics, by the aid of all the 'pulls' of influential kin and money, but here you are as easy-going as of old."

"It was the only thing open to me," Chester said, with a flush of vexation. "You see, my father's getting old, Masters, and the management of our big place here was rather too much for him, and so—"

"Oh, I see!" And the drummer gave his old friend a playful thumb-thrust in the ribs. "And so you are helping him out with that gun and rod? Well, that's one way of doing business, but it is far from my method—the method that is forced on me, my boy. When you get to a town on the four-o'clock afternoon train and have to get five sample trunks from the train to a hotel, scrap like the devil over who gets to use the best sample-room, finally buy your way in through porters as rascally as you are, then unpack, see the best man in town, sell him, or lose your job, pack again, trunks to excess-baggage scales—more cash and tips, and lies as to weight—and you roll away at midnight and try to nap sitting bolt-upright in the smoker—well, I say, you won't find that sort of thing in the gun-and-fishing-pole line. It's the sort of work, Chester, that will make you wish you were dead. Good Lord, I don't blame you one bit. In England they would call you one of the gentry, and, being an only son, you could tie up with an heiress and so on to a green old age of high respectability; but as for me, well, I had to dig, and I went in for it."

"I had no idea you would ever become a drummer," Langdon said, as he admired his friend's attire. Such tasty ties, shirts, and bits of jewelry that Masters wore, and such well brushed and pressed clothes were rarely seen in the country, and Langdon still had the good ideas of dress he had brought from college, and this was one extravagance his father cheerfully allowed him.

"It seemed the best thing for me," smiled the drummer. "I have a cousin who is a big stockholder in my house, and he got the job for me. I've been told several times by other members of the firm that I'd have been fired long ago but for that family pull. I've made several mistakes, sold men who were rotten to the core, and caused the house to lose money in several instances, and, well—poker, old man. Do you still play?"

"Not often, out here," said Langdon; "this is about the narrowest, church-going community you ever struck. I suppose you have a good deal of fun travelling about."

"Oh yes, fun enough, of its kind." Masters laughed. "Like a sailor in every port, a drummer tries to have a sweetheart in every town. It makes life endurable; sometimes the dear little things meet you at the train with sweet-smelling flowers and embroidered neckties so long that you have to cut off the ends or double them. Have a cigar—they don't cost me a red cent; expense account stretches like elastic, you know. My house kicked once against my drinking and cigar entries, and I said, all right, I'd sign the pledge and they could tie a blue ribbon on me, if they said the word, but that half my trade, I'd discovered, never could see prices right except through smoke and over a bottle. Then, what do you think? Old man Creighton, head of the firm, deacon in a swell joss-house in Atlanta, winked, drew a long face, and said: 'You'll have to give the boy some freedom, I reckon. We are in this thing to pull it through, boys, and sometimes we may have to fight fire with fire or be left stranded.'"

"He's an up-to-date old fellow," Chester laughed. "I've seen him. He owns some fine horses. When a man does that he's apt to be progressive, no matter how many times he says his prayers a day."

"Yes, for an old duck, Creighton keeps at the head of the procession. I can generally get him to help me out when I get in a tight. He thinks I'm a good salesman. Once, by the skin of my teeth, I sold the champion bill in the history of the house. A new firm was setting up in business in Augusta, and I stocked three floors for them. It tickled old man Creighton nearly to death, for they say he walked the floor all night when the thing was hanging fire. There was a pile of profit in it, and it meant more, even, than the mere sale, for Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and Louisville men were as thick as flies on the spot. When I wired the news in the firm did a clog-dance in the office, and they were all at the train to meet me, with plug-hats on, and raised sand generally. Old Creighton drew me off to one side and wanted to know how I did it. I told him it was just a trick of mine, and tried to let it go at that, but he pushed me close, and I finally told him the truth. It came about over a game of poker I was playing with the head of the new firm. If I lost I was to pay him a hundred dollars. If he lost I was to get the order. He lost. I think I learned that 'palming' trick from you."

Langdon laughed impulsively as he lighted the drummer's cigar. "And what did the old man say to that?" he inquired.

"It almost floored him." Masters smiled. "He laid his hand on my shoulder. His face was as serious as I've seen it when he was praying in the amen corner at church, but the old duck's eyes were blazing. 'Fred,' he said, 'I want you to promise me to let that one thing alone—but, good gracious, if Memphis had sold that bill it would have hurt us awfully!'"

"You were always fond of the girls," Chester remarked as he smoked. "Well, out here in the country is no place for them."

"No place for them! Huh, that's your idea, is it? Well, let me tell you, Chester, I saw on the road as I came on just now simply the prettiest, daintiest, and most graceful creature I ever laid my eyes on. I've seen them all, too, and, by George, she simply took the rag off the bush. Slender, beautifully formed, willowy, small feet and hands, high instep, big, dreamy eyes, and light-brown hair touched with gold. She came out of a farm-house, walking like a young queen, about half a mile back. I made Ike drive slowly and tried to get her to look at me, but she only raised her eyes once."

"Virginia Hemingway," Chester said, coldly. "Yes, she's pretty. There's no doubt about that."

"You know her, then?" said the drummer, eagerly. "Say, old man, introduce a fellow."

Chester's face hardened. The light of cordiality died out of his eyes. There was a significant twitching of his lips round his cigar. "I really don't see how I could," he said, after an awkward pause, during which his eyes were averted. "You see, Masters, she's quite young, and it happens that her mother—a lonely old widow—is rather suspicious of men in general, and I seem to have displeased her in some way. You see, all these folks, as a rule, go regularly to meeting, and as I don't go often, why—"

"Oh, I see," the drummer said. "But let me tell you, old chap, suspicious mother or what not, I'd see something of that little beauty if I lived here. Gee whiz! she'd make a Fifth Avenue dress and Easter hat ashamed of themselves anywhere but on her. Look here, Chester, I've always had a sneaking idea that sooner or later I'd be hit deep at first sight by some woman, and I'll be hanged if I know but what that's the matter with me right now. I've seen so many women, first and last, here and there, always in the giddy set, that I reckon if I ever marry I'd rather risk some pure-minded little country girl. Do you know, town girls simply know too much to be interesting. By George, I simply feel like I'd be perfectly happy with a little wife like the girl I saw this morning. I wish you could fix it so I could meet her this trip, or my next."

"I—I simply can't do it, Masters." There was a rising flush of vexation in the young planter's face as he knocked the ashes from his cigar into a nail-keg on the floor. "I don't know her well enough, in the first place, and then, in the next, as I said, her mother is awfully narrow and particular. She scarcely allows the girl out of sight; if you once saw old Jane Hemingway you'd not fancy making love before her eyes."

"Well, I reckon Wilson knows the girl, doesn't he?" the drummer said.

Chester hesitated, a cold, steady gleam of the displeasure he was trying to hide flashed in his eyes.

"I don't know that he knows her well enough for that," he replied. "The people round here think I'm tough enough, but you drummers—huh! some of them look on you as the very advance agents of destruction."

"That's a fact," Masters sighed, "the profession is getting a black eye in the rural districts. They think we are as bad as show people. By George, there she is now!"

"Yes, that's her," and the young planter glanced towards the front doorway through which Virginia Hemingway was entering. So fixed was the drummer's admiring gaze upon the pretty creature, that he failed to notice that his companion had quietly slipped towards the rear of the store. Chester stood for a moment in the back doorway, and then stepped down outside and made his way into the wood near by. The drummer sauntered behind the counter towards the front, till he was near the show-case at which the girl was making her purchase, and there he stood, allowing the fire of his cigar to die out as he watched her, while Wilson was exhibiting to her a drawer full of thread for her to select from.

"By all that's good and holy, she simply caps the stack!" Masters said to himself; "and to think that these galoots out here in the woods are not onto it. She'd set Peachtree Street on fire. I'm going to meet that girl if I have to put on old clothes and work for day wages in her mother's cornfield. Great goodness! here I am, a hardened ladies' man, feeling cold from head to foot on a hot day like this. I'm hit, by George, I'm hit! Freddy, old boy, this is the thing you read about in books. I wonder if—"

But she was gone. She had tripped out into the sunshine. He saw the yellow light fall on her abundant hair and turn it into a blaze of gold. As if dreaming, he went to the door and stood looking after her as she moved away on the dusty road.

"I see you are killing time." It was George Wilson at his elbow. "I'll be through here and with you in a minute. My crowd is thinning out now. That's the way it comes—all in a rush; like a mill-dam broke loose."

"Oh, I'm in no hurry, Wilson," said Masters, his gaze bent upon the bushes behind which Virginia had just disappeared. "Say, now, old man, don't say you won't do it; the fact is, I want to be introduced to that girl—the little daisy you sold the thread to. By glory, she is the prettiest little thing I ever saw."

"Virginia Hemingway!" said the store-keeper. "Yes, she's a regular beauty, and the gentlest, sweetest little trick in seven states. Well, Masters, I'll be straight with you. It's this way. You see, she really is full grown, and old enough to receive company, I reckon, but her mother, the old woman I told you about who hates Ann Boyd so thoroughly—well, she doesn't seem to realize that Virginia is coming on, and so she won't consent to any of the boys going near her. But old Jane can't make nature over. Girls will be girls, and if you put too tight a rein on them they will learn to slip the halter, or some chap will teach them to take the bit in their teeth."

A man came to Wilson holding a sample of syrup on a piece of wrapping-paper, to which he had applied his tongue. "What's this here brand worth?" he asked.

"Sixty-five—best golden drip," was Wilson's reply. "Fill your jug yourself; I'll take your word for it."

"All right, you make a ticket of it—jug holds two gallons," said the customer, and he turned away.

"Say, Wilson, just a minute," cried the drummer; "do you mean that she—"

"Oh, look here now," said the store-keeper. "I don't mean any reflection against that sweet girl, but it has become a sort of established habit among girls here in the mountains, when their folks hold them down too much, for them to meet fellows on the sly, out walking and the like. Virginia, as I started to say, is full of natural life. She knows she's pretty, and she wouldn't be a woman if she didn't want to be told so—though, to be so good-looking, she is really the most sensible girl I know."

"You mean she has her fancies, then," said Masters, in a tone of disappointment.

"I don't say she has." Wilson had an uneasy glance on a group of women bending over some bolts of calico, one of whom was chewing a sample clipped from a piece to see if it would fade. "But—between me and you now—Langdon Chester has for the last three months been laying for her. I see he's slipped away; I'd bet my hat he saw her just now, and has made a break for some point on the road where he can speak to her."

"Chester? Why, the rascal pretended to me just now that he hardly knew her."

Wilson smiled knowingly. "That's his way. He is as sly as they make 'em. His daddy was before him. When it comes to dealing with women who strike their fancy they know exactly what they are doing. But Langdon has struck flint-rock in that little girl. He, no doubt, is flirting with all his might, but she'll have him on his knees before he's through with it. A pair of eyes like hers would burn up every mean thought in a man."

The drummer sighed, a deep frown on his brow. "You don't know him as well as I do," he said. "I knew him at college. George, that little trick ought not to be under such a fellow's influence I'm just a travelling man, but—well—"

"Well, what are you going to do about it—even if there is any danger?" said Wilson. "Get a drink in him, and Langdon, like his father, will fight at the drop of a hat. Conscience? He hasn't any. I sometimes wonder why the Almighty made them like they are, and other men so different, for it is only the men who are not bothered by conscience that have any fun in this life. One of the Chesters could drive a light-hearted woman to suicide and sleep like a log the night she was buried. Haven't I heard the old man laugh about Ann Boyd, and all she's been through? Huh! But I'm not afraid of that little girl's fate. She will take care of herself, and don't you forget it."

"Well, I'm sorry for her," said Masters, "and I'm going to try to meet her. I'm tough, George—I'll play a game of cards and bet on a horse, and say light things to a pretty girl when she throws down the bars—but I draw the line at downright rascality. Once in a while I think of home and my own folks."

"Now you are a-talking." And Wilson hurried away to a woman who sat in a chair holding a bolt of calico in her arms, as if it were her first-born child and the other women were open kidnappers.

Masters stood motionless in the doorway, his eyes on the dusty road that stretched on towards Jane Hemingway's house.

"Yes, she's in bad, bad hands," he said; "and she is the first—I really believe she's the first that ever hit me this hard."

[VIII]

At dusk that day Ann Boyd went out to search for a missing cow. She crossed the greater part of her stretch of meadow-land in the foggy shadows, and finally found the animal mired to the knees in a black bog hidden from view by the high growth of bulrushes. Then came the task of releasing the patient creature, and Ann carried rails from the nearest fence, placing them in such a way that the cow finally secured a substantial footing and gladly sped homeward to her imprisoned calf. Then, to escape the labor of again passing through the clinging vines and high grass of the marsh, Ann took the nearest way to the main road leading from the store on to Jane Hemingway's cottage. She had just reached the little meeting-house, and a hot flush of anger at the memory of the insult passed upon her there was surging over her, when, happening to glance towards the graveyard in the rear of the building, she saw Virginia Hemingway and Langdon Chester, quite with the air of lovers, slowly walking homeward along a path which, if more rugged, led more directly towards the girl's home. Ann Boyd started and then stared; she could hardly credit the evidence of her sight—Virginia Hemingway and the scapegrace son of that man, of all men, together!

"Ah, ha!" she exclaimed, under her breath, and, falling back into the bushes which bordered the roadside, she stood tingling from head to foot with a new and unexpected sensation, her eager eyes on the loitering pair. "So that's it, is it? The young scamp has picked her out, devil that he is by blood and birth. Well, I might have known it. Who could know better than me what a new generation of that cursed stock would be up to? Right now he's the living image of what his father was at the same age. He's lying to her, too, with tongue, eyes, voice, and very bend of body. Great God, isn't she pretty? I never, in my best day, saw the minute that I could have held a candle to her, and yet they all said—but that makes no difference. I wonder why I never thought before that he'd pick her out. As much as I hate her mammy, and her, too, I must acknowledge she's sweet-looking. She's pure-minded, too—as pure of thought as I was away back there when I wore my hair in a plait. But that man will crush your purity, you little, blind kitten, crush it like a fresh violet under a horse's hoof; he'll teach you what life is. That's the business the Chesters are good at. But, look! I do believe she's holding off from him." Ann crept onward through the bushes to keep pace with the couple, now and then stretching her neck or rising to her full height on tiptoe.

"He hasn't been on her track very long," she mused, "but he has won the biggest part of his battle—he's got her to meet him privately. A sight of this would lay her old mammy out stiff as a board, but she'll be kept in the dark. That scamp will see to that part of the affair. But she'll know in the end. Somebody will tell her the truth. Maybe the girl will herself, when the awful, lonely pinch comes and there is no other friend in sight. Then, Jane Hemingway, it will all come home to you. Then you'll look back on the long, blood-hound hunt you've given another woman in the same plight. The Almighty is doing it. He's working it out for Jane Hemingway's life-portion. The girl is the very apple of her eye; she has often said she was the image of herself, and that, as her own marriage and life had come to nothing, she was going to see to it that her only child's path was strewn with roses. Well, Langdon Chester is strewing the roses thick enough. Ha, ha, ha!" the peering woman chuckled. "Jane can come along an' pick 'em up when they are withered and crumble like powder at the slightest touch. Now I really will have something to occupy me. I'll watch this thing take root, and bud, and leave, and bloom, and die. Maybe I'll be the first to carry the news to headquarters. I'd love it more than anything this life could give me. I'd like to shake the truth in Jane Hemingway's old, blinking eyes and see her unable to believe it. I'd like to stand shaking it in her teeth till she knew it was so, and then I honestly believe I'd fall right down in front of her and roll over and over laughing. To think that I, maybe I will be able to flaunt the very thing in her face that she has all these years held over me—the very thing, even to its being a son of the very scoundrel that actually bent over the cradle of my girlhood and blinded me with the lies that lit up his face."

A few yards away the pair had paused. Chester had taken the girl's hand and was gently stroking it as it lay restlessly in his big palm. For a moment Ann lost sight of them, for she was stealthily creeping behind the low, hanging boughs of the bushes to get nearer. She found herself presently behind a big bowlder. She no longer saw the couple, but could hear their voices quite distinctly.

"You won't even let me hold your hand," she heard him say. "You make me miserable, Virginia. When I am at home alone, I get to thinking over your coldness and indifference, and it nearly drives me crazy. Why did you jerk your hand away so quickly just now?"

"I don't see what you were talking to a drummer about me for, in a public place like that," the girl answered, in pouting tones.

"Why, it was this way, Virginia—now don't be silly!" protested Chester. "You see, this Masters and I were at college together, and rather intimate, and down at the store we were standing talking when you came in the front to buy something. He said he thought you were really the prettiest girl he had ever seen, and he was begging me to introduce him to you."

"Introduce him!" Virginia snapped. "I don't want to know him. And so you stood there talking about me!"

"It was only a minute, Virginia, and I couldn't help it," Chester declared. "I didn't think you'd care to know him, but I had to treat him decently. I told him how particular your mother was, and that I couldn't manage it. Oh, he's simply daft about you. He passed you on the road this morning, and hasn't been able to talk about anything since. But who could blame him, Virginia? You can form no idea of how pretty you are in the eyes of other people. Frankly, in a big gathering of women you'd create a sensation. You've got what every society woman in the country would die to have, perfect beauty of face and form, and the most remarkable part about it is your absolute unconsciousness of it all. I've seen good-looking women in the best sets in Augusta and Savannah and Atlanta, but they all seem to be actually making up before your very eyes. Do you know, it actually makes me sick to see a woman all rigged out in a satin gown so stiff that it looks like she's encased in some metallic painted thing that moves on rollers. It's beauty unadorned that you've got, and it's the real thing."

"I don't want to talk about myself eternally," said Virginia, rather sharply, the eavesdropper thought, "and I don't see why you seem to think I do. When you are sensible and talk to me about what we have both read and thought, I like you better."

"Oh, you want me to be a sort of Luke King, who put all sorts of fancies in your head when you were too young to know what they meant. You'd better let those dreams alone, Virginia, and get down to everyday facts. My love for you is a reality. It's a big force in my life. I find myself thinking about you and your coldness from early morning till late at night. Last Monday you were to come to the Henry Spring, and I was there long before the time, and stayed in agony of suspense for four hours, but I had my walk for nothing."

"I couldn't come," Ann Boyd heard the sweet voice say. "Mother gave me some work to do, and I had no excuse; besides, I don't like to deceive her. She's harsh and severe, but I don't like to do anything she would disapprove of."

"You don't really care much for me," said Langdon—"that is the whole thing in a nutshell."

Virginia was silent, and Ann Boyd bit her lip and clinched her hands tightly. The very words and tone of enforced reproach came back to her across the rolling surf of time. She was for a moment lost in retrospection. The young girl behind the bushes seemed suddenly to be herself, her companion the dashing young Preston Chester, the prince of planters and slave-holders. Langdon's insistent voice brought back the present.

"You don't care for me, you know you don't," he was saying. "You were simply born with all your beauty and sweetness to drag me down to despair. You make me desperate with your maddening reserve and icy coldness, when all this hot fire is raging in me."

"That's what makes me afraid of you," Virginia said, softly. "I admit I like to be with you, my life is so lonely, but you always say such extravagant things and want to—to catch hold of me, and kiss me, and—"

"Well, how can I help myself, when you are what you are?" Chester exclaimed, with a laugh. "I don't want to act a lie to you, and stand and court you like a long-faced Methodist parson, who begins and ends his love-making with prayer. Life is too beautiful and lovely to turn it into a funeral service from beginning to end. Let's be happy, little girl; let's laugh and be merry and thank our stars we are alive."

"I won't thank my stars if I don't go on home." And Virginia laughed sweetly for the first time.

"Yes, I suppose we had better walk on," Langdon admitted, "but I'm not going out into the open road with you till I've had that kiss. No, you needn't pull away, dear—I'm going to have it."

The grim eavesdropper heard Virginia sharply protesting; there was a struggle, a tiny, smothered scream, and then something waked in the breast of Ann Boyd that lifted her above her sordid self. It was the enraged impulse to dart forward and with her strong, toil-hardened hands clutch the young man by the throat and drag him down to the ground and hold him there till the flames she knew so well had gone out of his face. Something like a prayer sprang to her lips—a prayer for help, and then, in a flush of shame, the slow-gained habit of years came back to her; she was taking another view—this time down a darkened vista.

"It's no business of mine," she muttered. "It's only the way things are evened up. After all, where would be the justice in one woman suffering from a thing for a lifetime and another going scot free, and that one, too, the daughter of the one person that has deliberately made a life miserable? No, siree! My pretty child, take care of yourself, I'm not your mother. If she would let me alone for one minute, maybe her eyes would be open to her own interests."

Laughing pleasantly over having obtained his kiss by sheer force, Langdon, holding Virginia's reluctant hand, led her out into an open space, and the watcher caught a plain view of the girl's profile, and the sight twisted her thoughts into quite another channel. For a moment she stood as if rooted to the ground behind the bushes which had shielded her. "That girl is going to be a hard one to fool," she muttered. "I can see that from her high forehead and firm chin. Now, it really would be a joke on me if—if Jane Hemingway's offspring was to avoid the pitfall I fell into, with all the head I've got. Then, I reckon, Jane could talk; that, I reckon, would prove her right in so bitterly denouncing me; but will the girl stand the pressure? If she intends to, she's made a bad beginning. Meeting a chap like that on the sly isn't the best way to be rid of him, nor that kiss; which she let him have without a scratch or loss of a hair on his side, is another bad indication. Well, the game's on. Me 'n' Jane is on the track neck to neck with the wire and bandstand ahead. If the angels are watching this sport, them in the highest seats may shed tears, but it will be fun to the other sort. I'm reckless. I don't much care which side I amuse; the whole thing come up of its own accord, and the Lord of Creation hasn't done as much for my spiritual condition as the Prince of Darkness. I may be a she-devil, but I was made one by circumstances as naturally as a foul weed is made to grow high and strong by the manure around its root. And yet, I reckon, there must be some dregs of good left in my cup, for I felt like strangling that scamp a minute ago. But that may have been because I forgot and thought he was his daddy, and the girl was me on the brink of that chasm twenty years wide and deeper than the mystery of the grave of mankind. I don't know much, but I know I'm going to fight Jane Hemingway as long as I live. I know I'm going to do that, for I know she will keep her nose to my trail, and I wouldn't be human if I didn't hit back."

The lovers had moved on; their voices were growing faint in the shadowy distance. The gray dusk had fallen in almost palpable folds over the landscape. The nearest mountain was lost like the sight of land at sea. She walked on to her cow that was standing bellowing to her calf in the stable-lot. Laying her hand on the animal's back, Ann said: "I'm not going to milch you to-night, Sooky; I'm going to let your baby have all he wants if it fills him till he can't walk. I'm going to be better to you—you poor, dumb brute—than I am to Jane Hemingway."

Lowering the time-worn and smooth bars, she let the cow in to her young, and then, closing the opening, she went into her kitchen and sat down before the fire and pushed out her water-soaked feet to the flames to dry them.