it was understood that the neighboring politicians collogued at times,
or brethren in the church discussed matters of discipline or more
spiritual affairs. In which of these interests a certain corpulent jug
was most active it would be difficult perhaps to accurately judge. The
great barn-like doors were flung wide open, and there was a group of men
half within the shelter and half without; the shoeing-stool, a broken
plough, an empty keg, a log, and a rickety chair sufficed to seat the
company. The moonlight falling into the door showed the great slouching,
darkling figures, the anvil, the fire of the forge (a dim ashy coal),
and the shadowy hood merging indistinguishably into the deep duskiness
of the interior. In contrast, the scene glimpsed through the low window
at the back of the shop had a certain vivid illuminated effect. A spider
web, revealing its geometric perfection, hung half across one corner of
the rude casement; the moonbeams without were individualized in fine
filar delicacy, like the ravellings of a silver skein. The boughs of a
tree which grew on a slope close below almost touched the lintel; the
leaves seemed a translucent green; a bird slept on a twig, its head
beneath its wing.
[Illustration: THE BLACKSMITH'S SHOP]
Back of the cabin, which was situated on a limited terrace, the great
altitudes of the mountain rose into the infinity of the night.
The drawling conversation was beset, as it were, by faint fleckings of
sound, lightly drawn from a crazy old fiddle under the chin of a gaunt,
yellow-haired young giant, one Ephraim Blinks, who lolled on a log, and
who by these vague harmonies unconsciously gave to the talk of his
comrades a certain theatrical effect.
Grinnell slouched up and sat down among them, responding with a nod to
the unceremonious "Hy're, Job?" of the blacksmith, who seemed thus to do
the abbreviated honors of the occasion. The others did not so formally
notice his coming.
The subject of conversation was the same that had pervaded his own
thoughts. He was irritated to observe how Purdee had usurped public
attention, and yet he himself listened with keenest interest.
"Waal," said the ponderous blacksmith, "I kin onderstan' mighty well ez
Moses would hev been mighty mad ter see them folks a-worshippin' o' a
calf--senseless critters they be! 'Twarn't no use flingin' down them
rocks, though, an' gittin' 'em bruk. Sandstone ain't like metal; ye
can't heat it an' draw it down an' weld it agin."
His round black head shone in the moonlight, glistening because of his
habit of plunging it, by way of making his toilet, into the barrel of
water where he tempered his steel. He crossed his huge folded bare arms
over his breast, and leaned back against the door on two legs of the
rickety chair.
"Naw, sir," another chimed in. "He mought hev knowed he'd jes hev ter go
ter quarryin' agin."
"They air always a-crackin' up them folks in the Bible ez sech powerful
wise men," said another, whose untrained mind evidently held the germs
of advanced thinking. "'Pears ter me ez some of 'em conducted tharselves
ez foolish ez enny folks I know--this hyar very Moses one o' 'em.
Throwin' down them rocks 'minds me o' old man Pinner's tantrums. Sher'ff
kem ter his house 'bout a jedgmint debt, an' levied on his craps. An'
arter he war gone old man tuk a axe an' gashed bodaciously inter the
loom an' hacked it up. Ez ef that war goin' ter do enny good! His wife
war the mos' outed woman I ever see. They 'ain't got nare nother loom
nuther, an' hain't hearn no advices from the Lord."
The violinist paused in his playing. "They 'lowed Moses war a meek man
too," he said. "He killed a man with a brick-badge an' buried him in the
sand. Mighty meek ways"--with a satirical grimace.
The others, divining that this was urged in justification and precedent
for devious modern ways that were not meek, did not pursue this branch
of the subject.
"S'prised me some," remarked the advanced thinker, "ter hear ez them
tables o' stone war up on the bald o' the mounting thar. I hed drawed
the idee ez 'twar in some other kentry somewhar--I dunno--" He stopped
blankly. He could not formulate his geographical ignorance. "An' I never
knowed," he resumed, presently, "ez thar war enough gold in Tennessee
ter make a gold calf; they fund gold hyar, but 'twar mighty leetle."
"Mebbe 'twar a mighty leetle calf," suggested the blacksmith.
"Mebbe so," assented the other.
"Mebbe 'twar a silver one," speculated a third; "plenty o' silver they
'low thar air in the mountings."
The violinist spoke up suddenly. "Git one o' them Injuns over yander ter
Quallatown right seasonable drunk, an' he'll tell ye a power o' places
whar the old folks said thar war silver." He bowed his chin once more
upon the instrument, and again the slow drawling conversation proceeded
to soft music.
"Ef ye'll b'lieve me," said the advanced thinker, "I never war so
conflusticated in my life ez I war when he stood up in meetin' an' told
'bout'n the tables o' the law bein' on the bald! I 'lowed 'twar somewhar
'mongst some sort'n people named 'Gyptians."
"Mebbe some o' them Injuns air named 'Gyptians," suggested Spears, the
blacksmith.
"Naw, sir," spoke up the fiddler, who had been to Quallatown, and was
the ethnographic authority of the meeting. "Tennessee Injuns be named
Cher'kee, an' Chick'saw, an' Creeks."
There was a silence. The moonlight sifted through the dark little shanty
of a shop; the fretting and foaming of a mountain stream arose from far
down the steep slope, where there was a series of cascades, a fine
water-power, utilized by a mill. The sudden raucous note of a night-hawk
jarred upon the air, and a shadow on silent wings sped past. The road
was dusty in front of the shop, and for a space there was no shade.
Into the full radiance of the moonlight a rabbit bounded along, rising
erect with a most human look of affright in its great shining eyes as it
tremulously gazed at the motionless figures. It too was motionless for a
moment. The young musician made a lunge at it with his bow; it sprang
away with a violent start--its elongated grotesque shadow bounding
kangaroo-like beside it--into the soft gloom of the bushes. There was no
other traveller along the road, and the talk was renewed without further
interruption. "Waal, sir, ef 'twarn't fur the testimony o' the words he
reads ez air graven on them rocks, I couldn't git my cornsent ter
b'lieve ez Moses ever war in Tennessee," said the advanced thinker. "I
ain't ondertakin' ter say what State he settled in, but I 'lowed
'twarn't hyar. It mus' hev been, though, 'count o' the scripture on them
broken tables."
"I never knowed a meetin' woke ter sech a pint o' holiness. The saints
jes rampaged around till it fairly sounded like the cavortin's o' the
ungodly," a retrospective voice chimed in.
"I raised thirty-two hyme chunes," said the musician, who had a great
gift in quiring, and was the famed possessor of a robust tenor voice. "A
leetle mo' gloryin' aroun' an' I'd hev kem ter the eend o' my row, an'
hev hed ter begin over agin." He spoke with acrimony, reviewing the
jeopardy in which his _repertoire_ had been placed.
"Waal," said the blacksmith, passing his hand over his black head, as
sleek and shining as a beaver's, "I'm a-goin' up ter the bald o' the
mounting some day soon, ef so be I kin make out ter shoe that mare o'
mine"--for the blacksmith's mount was always barefoot--"I'm afeard ter
trest her unshod on them slippery slopes; I want ter read some o' them
sayin's on the stone tables myself. I likes ter git a tex' or the eend
o' a hyme set a-goin' in my head--seems somehow ter teach itself ter the
anvil, an' then it jes says it back an' forth all day. Yestiddy I never
seen its beat--'Christ--war--born--in--Bethlehem.' The anvil jes rang
with that ez ef the actial metal hed the gift o' prayer an' praise."
"Waal, sir," exclaimed Job Grinnell, who had been having frequent
colloquies aside with the companionable jug, "ye mought jes ez well save
yer shoes an' let yer mare go barefoot. Thar ain't nare sign o' a word
writ on them rocks."
They all sat staring at him. Even the singing, long-drawn vibrations of
the violin were still.
"By Hokey!" exclaimed the young musician, "I'll take Purdee's word ez
soon ez yourn."
The whiskey which Grinnell had drunk had rendered him more plastic still
to jealousy. The day was not so long past when Purdee's oath would have
been esteemed a poor dependence against the word of so zealous a brother
as he--a pillar in the church, a shining light of the congregation. He
noted the significant fact that it behooved him to justify himself; it
irked him that this was exacted as a tribute to Purdee's newly acquired
sanctity.
"Purdee's jes a-lyin' an' a-foolin' ye," he declared. "Ever been up on
the bald?"
They had lived in its shadow all their lives. Even by the circuitous
mountain ways it was not more than five miles from where they sat. But
none had chanced to have a call to go, and it was to them as a foreign
land to be explored.
"Waal, I hev, time an' agin," said Grinnell. "I dunno who gin them rocks
the name of Moses' tables o' the Law. Moses must hev hed a powerful
block an' tackle ter lift sech tremenjious rocks. I hev known 'em named
sech fur many a year. But I seen 'em not three weeks ago, an' thar ain't
nare word writ on 'em. Thar's the mounting; thar's the rocks; ye kin go
an' stare-gaze 'em an' sati'fy yerse'fs."
Whether it were by reason of the cumulative influences of the continual
references to the jug, or of that sense of reviviscence, that more alert
energy, which the cool Southern nights always impart after the sultry
summer days, the suggestion that they should go now and solve the
mystery, and meet the dawn upon the summit of the bald, found instant
acceptance, which it might not have secured in the stolid daylight.
The moon, splendid, a lustrous white encircled by a great halo of
translucent green, swung high above the duskily purple mountains. Below
in the valleys its progress was followed by an opalescent gossamer
presence that was like the overflowing fulness, the surplusage, of light
rather than mist. The shadows of the great trees were interlaced with
dazzling silver gleams. The night was almost as bright as the day, but
cool and dank, full of sylvan fragrance and restful silence and a
romantic liberty.
The blacksmith carried his rifle, for wolves were often abroad in the
wilderness. Two or three others were similarly armed; the advanced
thinker had a hunting-knife, Job Grinnell a pistol that went by the name
of "shootin'-iron." The musician carried no weapon. "I ain't 'feared o'
no wolf," he said; "I'll play 'em a chune." He went on in the vanguard,
his tousled yellow hair idealized with many a shimmer in the moonlight
as it hung curling down on his blue jeans coat, his cheek laid softly on
the violin, the bow glancing back and forth as if strung with moonbeams
as he played. The men woke the solemn silences with their loud mirthful
voices; they startled precipitate echoes; they fell into disputes and
wrangled loudly, and would have turned back if sure of the way home, but
Job Grinnell led steadily on, and they were fain to follow. They lagged
to look at a spot where some man, unheeded even by tradition, had dug
his heart's grave in a vain search for precious metal. A deep excavation
in the midst of the wilderness told the story; how long ago it was might
be guessed from the age of a stalwart oak that had sunk roots into its
depths; the shadows were heavy about it; a sense of despair brooded in
the loneliness. And so up and up the endless ascent; sometimes great
chasms were at one side, stretching further and further, and crowding
the narrow path--the herder's trail--against the sheer ascent, till it
seemed that the treacherous mountains were yawning to engulf them. The
air was growing colder, but was exquisitely clear and exhilarating; the
great dewy ferns flung silvery fronds athwart the way; vines in
stupendous lengths swung from the tops of gigantic trees to the roots.
Hark! among them birds chirp; a matutinal impulse seems astir in the
woods; the moon is undimmed; the stars faint only because of her
splendors; but one can feel that the earth has roused itself to a sense
of a new day. And there, with such feathery flashes of white foam, such
brilliant straight lengths of translucent water, such a leaping grace of
impetuous motion, the currents of the mountain stream, like the arrows
of Diana, shoot down the slopes. And now a vague mist is among the
trees, and when it clears away they seem shrunken, as under a spell, to
half their size. They grow smaller and smaller still, oak and chestnut
and beech, but dwarfed and gnarled like some old orchard. And suddenly
they cease, and the vast grassy dome uprises against the sky, in which
the moon is paling into a dull similitude of itself; no longer wondrous,
transcendent, but like some lily of opaque whiteness, fair and fading.
Beneath is a purple, deeply serious, and sombre earth, to which mists
minister, silent and solemn; myriads of mountains loom on every hand;
the half-seen mysteries of the river, which, charged with the red clay
of its banks, is of a tawny color, gleams as it winds in and out among
the white vapors that reach in fantastic forms from heaven above to the
valley below. There is a certain relief in the mist--it veils the
infinities of the scene, on which the mind can lay but a trembling hold.
"Folks tell all sort'n cur'ous tales 'bout'n this hyar spot," said Job
Grinnell, his square face, his red hair hanging about his ears, and his
ragged red beard visible in the dull light of the coming day. "I hev
hearn folks 'low ez a pa'tridge up hyar will look ez big ez a Dominicky
rooster. An' ef ye listens ye kin hear words from somewhar. An'
sometimes in the cattle-herdin' season the beastises will kem an' crowd
tergether, an' stan' on the bald in the moonlight all night."
"I dunno," said the advanced thinker, "ez I be s'prised enny ef Purdee,
ez be huntin' up hyar so constant, hev got sorter teched in the head,
ter take up sech a cur'ous notion 'bout'n them rocks."
He glanced along the slope at the spot, visible now, where Moses flung
the stone tables and they broke in twain. And there, standing beside
them, was a man of great height, dressed in blue jeans, his
broad-brimmed hat pushed from his brow, and his meditative dark eyes
fixed upon the rocks; a deer, all gray and antlered, lay dead at his
feet, and his rifle rested on the ground as he leaned on the muzzle.
A glance was interchanged between the others. Their intention, the
promptings of curiosity, had flagged during the long tramp and the
gradual waning of the influence of the jug. The coincidence of meeting
Purdee here revived their interest. Grinnell, remembering the ancient
feud, held back, being unlikely to elicit Purdee's views in the face of
their contradiction. The blacksmith and the young fiddler took their way
down toward him.
He looked up with a start, seeing them at some little distance. His
full, contemplative eyes rested upon them for a moment almost devoid of
questioning. It was not the face of a man who finds himself confronted
with the discovery of his duplicity and his hypocrisy. There was a
strange doubt stirring in the blacksmith's heart. As he approached he
looked upon the storied rocks with a sort of solemn awe, as if they had
indeed been given by the hand of the Lord to his servant, who broke them
here in his wrath. He knew that the step of the musician slackened as he
followed. What holy mysteries were they not rushing in upon? He spoke in
a bated voice.
"Roger," he said, "we'uns hearn ye tell 'bout the scriptures graven on
these hyar tables ez Moses flung down, an' we'uns 'lowed we'uns would
kem an' read some fur ourselves."
Purdee did not speak nor hesitate; he moved aside that the blacksmith
might stand where he had been--as it were at the foot of the page.
But what transcendent glories thronged the heavens--what august
splendors of dawn! Had the sun ever before risen like this, with the sky
an emblazonment of red, of gold, of darting gleams of light; with the
mountains most royally purple or most radiantly blue; with the prismatic
mists in flight; with the slow climax of the dazzling sphere ascending
to dominate it all?
The blacksmith knelt down to read. The musician, his silent violin under
his chin, leaned over his comrade's shoulder. The hunter stood still,
expectant.
Alas! the corrugations of time, the fissile results of the frost; the
wavering line of ripple-marks of seas that shall ebb no more; growth of
lichen; an army of ants in full march; a passion-flower trailing from a
crevice, its purple blooms lying upon the gray stone near where it is
stamped with the fossil imprint of a sea-weed, faded long ago and
forgotten. Or is it, alas! for the eyes that can see only this?
[Illustration: "THE TABLES OF THE LAW"]
The blacksmith looked up with a twinkling leer; the violinist recovered
his full height, and drew the bow dashingly across the strings; then let
his arm fall.
"Roger," the blacksmith said, "dad-burned ef I kin read ennything hyar."
The young musician looked over his brawny shoulder in silence.
"Whar d'ye make out enny letters, Roger?" persisted Spears.
Purdee leaned over and eagerly pointed with his ramrod to a curious
corrugation of the surface of the rock. Again the blacksmith bent down;
the musician craned forward, his yellow hair hanging about his bronzed
face.
"I hev been toler'ble well acquainted with the alphabit," said Spears,
"fur goin' on thirty year an' better, an' I'll swar ter Heaven thar
ain't nare sign of a letter thar."
Purdee stared at him in wild-eyed amazement for a moment. Then he flung
himself upon his knees beside the great rock, and guiding his ramrod
over the surface, he exclaimed, "Hyar, Spears; right hyar!"
The blacksmith was all incredulous as he lent himself to a new posture,
and leaned forward to look with the languid indulgence of one who will
not again entertain doubt.
"Nare A, nor B, nor C, nor none o' the fambly," he declared. "These
hyar rocks ain't no Moses' tables sure enough; Moses never war in
Tennessee. They be jes like enny other rock, an' thar ain't a word o'
writin' on 'em."
He looked up with a curious questioning at Purdee's face--a strange face
for a man detected in a falsehood, a trick. The deep-set eyes were wide
as if straining for perception denied them. Despite the chill, rare air,
great drops had started on his brow, and were falling upon his beard,
and upon his hands. These strong hands were quivering; they hovered
above the signs on the rocks. The mystic letters, the inspired words,
where were they? Grope as he might, he could not find them. Alas! doubt
and denial had climbed the mountain--the awful limitations of the more
finite human creature--and his inspiration and the finer enthusiasms of
the truth were dead.
Dead with a throe that was almost like a literal death. This--on this he
had lived; the ether of ecstasy was the breath of his life. He clutched
at the stained red handkerchief knotted about his throat as if he were
suffocating; he tore it open as he swayed backward on his knees. He did
not hear--or he did not heed--the laugh among the little crowd on the
bald--satirical, rallying, zestful. He was deaf to the strains of the
violin, jeeringly and jerkingly playing a foolish tune. It was growing
fainter, for they had all turned about to betake themselves once more to
the world below. He could have seen, had he cared to see, their bearded
grinning faces peering through the stunted trees, as descending they
came near the spot where he had lavished the spiritual graces of his
feeling, his enthusiasm, his devotion, his earnest reaching for
something higher, for something holy, which had refreshed his famished
soul; had given to its dumbness words; had erased the values of the
years, of the nations; had made him friends with Moses on the "bald";
had revealed to him the finger of the Lord on the stone.
He took no heed of his gestures, of which, indeed, he was unconscious.
They were fine dramatically, and of great power, as he alternately rose
to his full height, beating his breast in despair, and again sank upon
his knees, with a pondering brow and a searching eye, and a hovering,
trembling hand, striving to find the clew he had lost. They might have
impressed a more appreciative audience, but not one more entertained
than the cluster of men who looked and paused and leered in amusement at
one another, and thrust out satirical tongues. Long after they had
disappeared, the strains of the violin could be heard, filling the
solemn, stricken, strangely stunted woods with a grotesquely merry
presence, hilarious and jeering.
* * * * *
Purdee found it possible to survive the destruction of illusions. Most
of us do. It wrought in him, however, the saturnine changes natural upon
the relinquishment of a dear and dead fantasy. This ethereal entity is a
more essential component of happiness than one might imagine from the
extreme tenuity of the conditions of its existence. Purdee's fantasy may
have been a poor thing, but, although he could calmly enough close its
eyes, and straighten its limbs, and bury it decently from out the
offended view of fact, he felt that he should mourn it in his heart as
long as he should live. And he was bereaved.
There is a certain stage in every sorrow when it rejects sympathy.
Purdee, always taciturn, grave, uncommunicative, was invested with an
austere aloofness, and was hardly to be approached as he sat, silent and
absent, brooding over the fire at his own home. When roused by some
circumstance of the domestic routine, and it became apparent that his
mood was not sullenness or anger, but simple and complete introversion,
it added a dignity and suggested a remoteness that were yet less
reassuring. His son, who stood in awe of him--not because of paternal
severity, but because no boy could refrain from a worshipping respect
for so miraculous a shot, a woodsman so subtly equipped with all elusive
sylvan instincts and knowledge--forbore to break upon his meditations by
the delivery of Grinnell's message. Nevertheless the consciousness of
withholding it weighed heavily upon him. He only pretermitted it for a
time, until a more receptive state of mind should warrant it. Day by
day, however, he looked with eagerness when he came into the cabin in
the evening to ascertain if his father were still seated in the
chimney-corner silently smoking his pipe. Purdee had seldom remained at
home so long at a time, and the boy had a daily fear that the gun on the
primitive rack of deer antlers would be missing, and word left in the
family that he had taken the trail up the mountain, and would return
"'cordin' ter luck with the varmints." And thus Job Grinnell's
enigmatical message, that had the ring of defiance, might remain
indefinitely postponed.