I.

On a certain steep and savage slope of the Great Smoky Mountains, the

primeval wilderness for many miles is unbroken save by one meagre

clearing. The presence of humanity upon the earth is further attested

only by a log cabin, high on the rugged slant. At night the stars seem

hardly more aloof than the valley below. By day the mountains assert

their solemn vicinage, an austere company. The clouds that silently

commune with the great peaks, the sinister and scathing deeds of the

lightnings, the passionate rhetoric of the thunders, the triumphal

pageantry of the sunset-tides, and the wistful yearnings of the dawn

aspiring to the day,—these might seem the only incidents of this lonely

and exalted life. So august is this mountain scheme that it fills all the

visible world with its massive multitudinous presence; still stretching

out into the dim blue distances an infinite perspective of peak and range

and lateral spur, till one may hardly believe that the fancy does not

juggle with the fact.

One day a sound impinged suddenly upon its impressive silence,—faint and

far, but even in the echo charged with alien suggestions; not akin to the

woods or the waters, to the cry of beast or of bird; subtly at variance

with the mountain solitude, imposed upon it, neither of its essence nor

its outgrowth. A soul informed the sound, for it was the voice of a man

singing aloud in the wilderness,—singing with so ecstatic a fervor, with

tones so robust and full, that distant peaks were voiced with fugue-like

feignings, rising to sudden outbursts and sinking to silence, as the

melody waxed or waned. It swung and swayed in rhythmic cadences across

the valley. It might have seemed a spirit in the air, for with the

hymning echoes it was hard to say whence it came. But two mountaineers,

standing beside the fence of the little cornfield in the clearing, gazed

expectantly up the road, that, precarious and rocky, ran along the verge

of the slope. For the song grew louder and more distinct, and presently

in its midst was heard the beat of rapid hoofs. A moment more, and the

young psalmist came around a curve, galloping recklessly down beneath the

fringed boughs of the firs and the pines, still singing aloud; the reins

upon his horse’s neck, his rifle held across the pommel of the saddle,

his broad hat thrust upon the back of his head, his eyes scarcely turning

toward the men that stood by the wayside.

He had evidently not intended to stop, but one of them threw up his arm

and hailed him.

“Hy’re, Teck! hold up!”

The rider drew rein. The rapt expression of his countenance abruptly

changed. He fixed imperative, worldly eyes upon the speaker. They

were deeply set, of a dark blue color, full of a play of expression,

and despite the mundane intimations of the moment they held the only

suggestions in his face of a spiritual possibility. He had a heavy lower

jaw, stern and insistent. A firm, immobile mouth disclosed strong,

even teeth. His nose was slightly aquiline, and he had definitely

marked black eyebrows. His short dark beard, worn after the manner

common in the region, and the usual brown jeans garb, lent his face no

similarity to the faces of the others. There was a strong individuality,

magnetism, about him, and before his glance the peremptory spirit of his

interlocutor was slightly abated. It was only after he had demanded,

“What ye want?” that he was asked in turn,—

“Whar ye been?”

“Been a-huntin’,” said Teck Jepson. He laid one hand upon the barrel of

his rifle on the pommel of his saddle, as if to call attention to it.

“Didn’t ye get nuthin’?”

“Naw. I tuk ter studyin’ ’bout’n the Bible, an’ a-sing-in’, an’ I warn’t

a-goin’ ter thwart the sperit. I ain’t tuk aim this day.”

There was so obvious a pride in this statement that it imposed upon the

others as a valid source of satisfaction.

They all looked meditatively at the spaces of the sunlit valley for a

moment. The shadow of a great wing flickered by. A cow-bell jangled from

the slope below.

“Waal, I expec’ Ben hyar mought hev his say-so ’bout’n studyin’ on the

Bible, jes’ in the time fur pullin’ fodder,” suggested Eli Strobe.

He was the constable of the district, a heavy, thick-set fellow, forty

years of age, perhaps, and of medium height. He had a large head and a

certain lowering side glance, barely lifting the lids of his slow dark

eyes with a sullen, bovine expression. He carried himself in a deliberate

pondering manner, and with distinct aggressiveness. He wore his broad

black wool hat pulled far over his brow. His boots were drawn to the

knee over his blue jeans trousers, and were graced with large spurs. His

features were straight and regular, handsome in their way, and his face

was characterized by a sort of surly dignity. He stood sturdily in the

road, with his hands in his pockets, and looked up from under the brim of

his hat at the horseman.

Jepson lifted his head loftily. “I’d ruther be in the wilderness with the

sperit than with the gleaners in the richest fields o’ the yearth!”

Despite a sanctimonious twang imitated from the circuit rider, his voice

in speaking betokened his gift in song. It was rich and low, and as

smooth as velvet.

The constable, at a spiritual disadvantage, recanted with acerbity.

“I reckon so! Ennybody else would, too. Ye talk ez ef nobody hedn’t no

religion but yerse’f.”

“Laws-a-massy!” exclaimed Jepson’s half-brother, Ben Bowles.

“Laws-a-massy! whenst Teck gits ter studyin’ ’bout the Bible-folks, I’d

jes’ ez lief he’d wander ez work. He talks ter me till them tales hender

me mighty nigh ez much ez him. No fodder sca’cely would hev been pulled

hyar ter-day ef he hed stayed.”

The mention of his work reminded him of it anew. As he stood in the

turn-row, he began to tear from the stalwart stalks of the Indian corn,

tasseled far higher than his head, the long blue-green and glossy

blades, rustling at a touch and shining in the sun. He was in his

shirt-sleeves, a gaunt, shambling fellow, with yellow beard and hair,

and long, tobacco-stained teeth; he had a docile, acquiescent face and a

temporizing blue eye. Few men could contrive to agree with both Jepson

and Strobe, but to Ben Bowles no miracle of trimming was impossible. The

corn was fine; the heavy ears, swathed in their crisp husks and crested

with sun-embrowned silk, hung far from the stalks, about which trumpet

vines twined, the blossoms flaunting scarlet. There even peered out now

and then the tender blue eyes of morning-glories, still open, a-bloom in

the dank shadow. The more prosaic growth of pumpkins was about the roots,

and sometimes Bowles caught his awkward feet in the vines, and added a

stumble to his shamble.

“The sperit hev been with me strong,—mighty strong, ter-day,” said Teck

Jepson suddenly. “I hev been studyin’ on Moses, from the time he lef’

the saidges by the ruver bank,” he added, bridling with a sentiment that

was strikingly like the pride of earth. Then, as he gazed down at the

landscape, his face softened and grew pensive.

The great ranges were slowly empurpled against the pale eastern horizon,

delicately blue, for the sun was in the western skies. How splendidly

saffron those vast spaces glowed! What purity and richness of tint! Here

and there were pearly wing-like sweeps of an incomparable glister;

and the clouds, ambitious, must needs climb the zenith, with piled and

stately mountainous effects, gleaming white, opaque and dazzling. The

focal fires of the great orb were unquenched, and still the yellow

divergent rays streamed forth; yet in its heart was suggested that

vermilion smouldering of the sunset, and the western hills were waiting.

“’Twar tur’ble hard on Moses,” said Teck Jepson dreamily, “when the Lord

shut him out’n Canaan, arter travelin’ through the wilderness. Tur’ble,

tur’ble hard!”

There was naught in the scene to suggest to a mind familiar with the

facts an Oriental landscape,—naught akin to the hills of Judæa. It was

essentially of the New World, essentially of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Yet ignorance has its license. It never occurred to Teck Jepson that his

Biblical heroes had lived elsewhere. Their history had to him an intimate

personal relation, as of the story of an ancestor in the homestead ways

and closely familiar. He brooded upon these narrations, instinct with

dramatic movement, enriched with poetic color, and localized in his

robust imagination, till he could trace Hagar’s wild wanderings in the

fastnesses; could show where Jacob slept and piled his altar of stones;

could distinguish the bush, of all others on the “bald,” that blazed

with fire from heaven, when the angel of the Lord stood within it.

Somehow, even in their grotesque variation, they lost no dignity in their

transmission to the modern conditions of his fancy. Did the facts lack

significance because it was along the gullied red clay roads of Piomingo

Cove that he saw David, the smiling stripling, running and holding high

in his hand the bit of cloth cut from Saul’s garments, while the king

had slept in a cave at the base of Chilhowee Mountain? And how was the

splendid miracle of translation discredited because Jepson believed that

the chariot of the Lord had rested in scarlet and purple clouds upon the

towering summit of Thunderhead, that Elijah might thence ascend into

heaven?

He mistook the dramatic instinct, that entranced him with these splendid

epics, for religion. He sang loud and long in the meetings, with a rich

voice and a fervid indorsement of the sentiment of the rude hymns, but he

told few experiences; his soul seemed untroubled, unstirred; he neither

shouted nor exhorted others, and in the midst of exhortation he often

dropped asleep. But if the text were from the Old Testament, rich in

narrative, his fine head was alert, his eyes grew eager and intent; he

would lean forward, to lose no word, his hand on the back of the bench

in front of him, and often his strong hand trembled. He was an earnest

advocate of education. “Let the Bible be read!” he would exclaim in a

thunderous, coercive voice, strong with the sincerity of his own wish

to read. For he was sometimes aware that he carried with him broken

impressions of the stories that emblazoned his mind. Then his quick

supplementing fancy would unconsciously assert itself anew, the rift

would close, and the continuity would stretch forth perfected.

His was the mind receptive, romantic. The endowment to believe the

essential verity, undemonstrable though it be, to see that which is

not before the material eye, to feel the abstract sentiment, he shared

with those for whom tradition has woven its fine, embellished webs, and

history has penned its heroic page, and poets have sung and have soared.

The gift was in the nature of a sarcasm, bestowed here. He had not even

the cradle lore of other men. Niggard circumstance had environed him with

all the limitations of ignorance. In these close bounds, the readings of

the circuit rider gave him the only collations of connected fact, the

only narrative, the only glimpse of a status of people more amply endowed

than those about him; and the dramatic instinct vivified the meagre

details, caused them to glow before him, and they served for him as the

libraries of the world serve for other men.

Encompassed by the democratic sovereignty that hedges about an American

voter; knowing no rank, no gradations of caste, other than that of the

sheriff, the constable, the justice of the peace,—and latterly the high

estate of a circuit judge had been brought to his knowledge,—it was

curious how he caught from the spirit of the text the sentiment of awe

and reverence for the exalted in the earth, prophets and high-priests,

kings and great captains. He exulted in the Scriptural pageantry. His

fancy would marshal again and again the fine show of the serried ranks

of opposing armies along the mountain side, when David went out in the

valley to fight Goliath. The triumph would hardly have been what it was

to him without those multiplied martial spectators,—nor, it is safe to

say, to David either.

“Yes, sir,” he reiterated. “’Twar tur’ble hard on Moses. I jes’ know how

he felt. Thar ain’t nuthin’ in this worl’ so tormentin’ ter the sperit ez

ter be in a place ye _de_spise, an’ hanker an’ hone ter git ter another.

Whenst I war a witness in the court yander at Glaston agin Jake Baintree

ez killed Sam’l Keale, I fairly pined so fur the mountings my chist felt

tight, like I couldn’t breathe, an’ my eyeballs plumb started out’n my

head. An’ when they ’lowed thar’d hev ter be a new trial, an’ I’d hev ter

kem back las’ March agin, I war so outdone an’ aggervated by the foolin’

’round o’ them lawyers, ez tuk an’ sp’iled the case they hed been at sech

trouble ter fix _jes’ so_, that I jes’ up-ed an’ ’lowed afore the jedge

ez I hoped I’d be dead afore that time.”

“The folks laffed at ye, too,” said the constable.

“Let ’em laff,—laffin’ ’s cheap,” retorted Jepson. He was one of those

happily constituted mortals who respect their own mental attitude far

more than its effect on others.

“Waal, they ’low ez Baintree air a-layin’ fur ye ’bout’n that thar

testimony ye gin agin him,” observed Strobe.

Jepson received this suggestion in the silence of contempt.

“I never looked ter see Baintree let off from that court,” said Bowles.

“Yes,” assented Jepson cheerfully. “The law ’peared ter hev a weak streak

in it somehows, an’ the lawyers said they couldn’t prove it on him. An’

I ’lowed ter the State’s lawyer ez they hed better prove it then with a

sentence from Jedge Lynch.”

The constable, mindful of his position as an officer of the law, cast a

sudden glance upon him of threatening surprise.

“What did the ’torney gineral say ter that?” he demanded pertinently.

“He say ef he hed sech a tongue ez mine he’d tie it ter his palate, ter

keep it still,” responded Jepson easily. “But I told him thar warn’t

no danger, fur ef ennybody fell out with the sayin’s o’ my tongue, the

doin’s o’ my fist war mighty apt ter make ’em fall in agin. Yes, sir,”

he proceeded after a pause, “I appealed ter Jedge Lynch.” His form of

expression was reminiscent of his recent experiences in the courts. “I

never got nothin’ by it, though. Folks is gittin’ so white-livered they

be afeard o’ thar shadders.”

“Waal, now,” spoke up the constable, moving back a pace, and feeling

at a disadvantage in being constrained to look upward at the horseman,

“when the courts hev let a man go, an’ can’t prove nuthin’ on him, I say

’twon’t do fur folks ter set out an’ mebbe hang a man by mistake.”

“_Whar’s Sam’l Keale?_” Jepson asked the question, and then looked

casually across the road and the stream at the great vermilion sun going

down behind the long summit line, far, far away, of Walden’s Ridge,—how

finely outlined, how delicate in hue, against the flushed horizon. The

mountains close around loomed sombre, purple, silent, and mysterious,

sharers in none of these ethereal graces of color. On the rocky banks of

the stream, here and there, felled trees were lying; one protruded far

into the water, and was green with moss and dank with ooze. It stirred

suddenly, for some water animal had sprung upon it, then splashed again

into the current, as Bowles’s old dog rushed out of the cornfield with a

shrill, sharp bark of discovery. His master’s eyes followed him absently,

while with a quivering tail and alert ears he patrolled the banks hither

and thither, now and again uttering his sharp cry, varied with wheezes of

disappointment.

“_Whar’s—Sam’l—Keale?_” Jepson demanded again, significantly, and once

more waited for an answer. Neither of the other men spoke. The wind

stirred; an acorn dropped with a sharp thud from a chestnut-oak; a locust

was shrilling from a pawpaw tree. “Ef ye’ll tell me ennywhar Sam’l

Keale _kin_ be, I’ll gin it up. Now jes’ look-a-hyar,” he argued. “Them

two fellers—nobody knowed then what they war arter, but it kem out on

the trial—got it inter thar heads ez thar war some silver mines in the

mountings. An’ they sets out ter find one.” His lip curled. “So day arter

day they leaves thar plows in the furrow, an’ goes a-sarchin’ fur the

silver mine. An’ one day nare one o’ ’em kems back. A plumb week goes by.

An’ then hyar kems Baintree nigh starved with a-wanderin’ in the woods,

an’ with a big tale ’bout Sam’l hevin’ fell down a hole ez ’peared ter

be the mouth o’ a cave, an’ he couldn’t hear nuthin’ from him, though

Baintree hollered an’ hollered. An’ he war afeard the law’d take arter

him, kase they war a-scufflin’ whenst Sam’l slipped an’ fell. Waal,

the folks tuk arter him fur not hevin’ kem straight ter tell,—lef’ the

critter thar in the cave ter starve or drown. None o’ that fooled me!”

He broke off abruptly.

Ben Bowles pulled his hay-colored beard with meditative fingers. “Ye

b’lieve Sam’l war dead fust, an’ then war flung down inter the cave.”

Jepson knit his brows fiercely. “Percisely.”

“Ye ’low, ef he warn’t, Baintree would hev been powerful quick ter skeet

out’n them woods an’ git somebody ter holp him git Sam’l out, ’thout

waitin’ a week!”

“Jes’ so!”

The constable put in suddenly; his loyalty to the law was enlisted, and

he felt it his bounden duty to support its decisions with the weight of

his personal opinion.

“Baintree ’lowed Sam war dead, or hed sunk spang through the yearth, kase

he wouldn’t answer. The boy war _afeard_ ter tell. He wouldn’t even tell

a-fust ez they war a-scufflin’ an’ a-playin’. An’ ez the jury ’lowed he

warn’t guilty, I feel ez ef he ought ter be let ter go.”

“_Whar’s—Sam’l—Keale?_” demanded Jepson once more.

Neither answered. The shrilling of the locust persisted sharply. Only

the rim of the sun showed above the distant blue mountain; the soft

suffusions of light upon the great valley were reddening, and a sense of

impending shadows, not yet falling, was upon the air. Night was pluming

her wings, to spread them erelong. A point of light suddenly scintillated

in the dark flow of the mountain stream, for the poetic evening star—how

serene!—was in the sky. What prophetic melancholy had pierced the group

of pines hard by? Their fringes were astir, and a monody, all tenderly

subdued and subtly mournful, was on the air.

“Baintree kem down yander ter the blacksmith shop las’ Wednesday,” Jepson

resumed abruptly. “I war thar ter hev this hyar horse-critter’s nigh

fore-foot shod;” he leaned over, glancing down at it, then came suddenly

to the perpendicular. “He kem thar ez ef he expected folks ter ’bide by

the verdic’ an’ be sati’fied. He kem in the door an’ walked roun’, an’

then he sot down in the winder. An’ then I jes’ riz up. I said ter him, I

said aloud, ‘Cain, I see Abel with ye. I view him thar. Ye needn’t winge

away. He hev kem ter abide alongside o’ ye. Ye kin hide him in no caves.

He air yer share forever!’ An’ then I turned back ter the anvil, whar

Clem Sanders war a-forgin’ of the horse-shoe. An’ time he hed bent the

bar I looked over my lef’ shoulder, an’ the winder war empty.”

A long pause ensued. “Waal, sir,” Strobe presently remarked, “folks ’low

he hev got religion now, an’ air goin’ ter be baptized.”

Teck turned a face of amazed anger upon him.

“He sha’n’t!” he cried, as arrogantly as if he guarded the gates of

heaven. “He shell not save his soul! He shell not reach the golden shore,

whilst the man he buried in the depths o’ the yearth, ’thout nare minit’s

grace ter think on salvation, air a-welterin’ in brimstun, an’ a-burnin’

in hell. He shell not save his soul!”

His breath was short, his cheek flushed, his eye intent and fiery. All at

once his whole aspect changed.

“Hy’re, A’minty!” he cried out, his flexible voice rising to a cheery

key. “I see ye; no use a-hidin’. Supper ready?”

For there, sidling along among the weeds in the fence corners, was a

small girl, much distraught by the presence of a stranger, and holding

her head so bent down that little could be seen of her face for the

curling tangled red hair that fell over it. She wore a blue checked

homespun frock, and she carried in her arms, feet upward, a large,

ungainly yellow cat, with unattractive green eyes, which rolled about

while its head hung down.

“They blows the horn at the house fur we-uns,” Jepson continued, “but

A’minty keeps one eye on the pot, an’ kems arter me jes’ a leetle

aforehand every day. She knows I be afeard ter go ter the house by

myself. Suthin’ mought ketch me on the road—varmints, or dogs, or sech.”

He winked jovially at the two men, but A’minty stood unsmiling by the

fence.

Suddenly the resonance of a horn was on the air, with a trailing refrain

of echoes. So far they rang, so faint, so fine, they hardly seemed

akin to the homely blast wound close at hand. The moon, rising now,—a

lucent yellow sphere in the pink haze of the skies, far above the purple

earth,—might naturalize such sounds. Thus rings the horn of Diana,

perhaps, amidst the lunar mountains. And when the vibrations died away

the ear strained to hear them again; so elfin was the final tone that the

succeeding interval was less like silence than a sound which the sense

was not fine enough to discern.

“Wanter ride, A’minty?” Teck demanded of his small niece.

Her shyness vanished instantly. She showed a rounded freckled face and

shining eyes, and an assemblage of jagged gleeful teeth, as she ran,

with the deft noiselessness of the barefooted gentry, almost under his

horse’s heels and caught the stirrup. He reached down gravely for the

cat, holding it by the middle, with its four stiff paws outstretched, and

A’minty clutched his great spurred boot, and climbed up his long leg like

a squirrel. He rode off, the rifle stayed upon the pommel of the saddle

by the hand that held too the reins, while the little girl, nestling in

his arms, looked back at the two men by the side of the fence, and the

cat, which she clasped, turned its supple neck and gazed back, too, from

its perch above the horseman’s shoulder.

The two men followed them with a languid gaze for a moment; then Strobe

was moved to seat himself slowly and circumspectly on a bowlder near the

roadside. As he leaned his shoulder against the pawpaw tree close by, the

locust shrilling high up among its branches suddenly ceased its iteration.

“Teck air too durned smart,” he said, his own individuality reasserting

itself since freed from the dominant presence of the other,—“too

durned smart. Set an’ talk afore a off’cer o’ the law ’bout lynchin’ a

man, an’ gin his opinion agin a jury’s verdic’ an’ a jedge’s say-so.

He hev got the big-head powerful bad. Axin’, ‘_Whar’s Sam’l Keale?

Whar’s—Sam’l—Keale?_’ ez ef enny cit’zen hev got enny right ter know or

say, when the law’s done its sheer.”

“I reckon Jake Baintree mus’ be innercent,” observed Bowles, with the

mild eye and voice of the temporizer. “He war twenty when it happened,

an’ he be twenty-five now—a year older ’n Teck. It tuk all that time ter

jail an’ try him.”

“Waal, the law is slow,—the law is slow.” The important constable

deported himself with a sort of clumsy pride in the lingering exploits of

the law.

“Yes, sir; ’minds me of a slow mule-race all the time, the law does,”

said Bowles.

Strobe looked at him, surlily suspicious of a satiric intent, but the

mild Bowles had evidently spoken in all good faith.

“Sech talk ez Teck’s air the reason they hed ter hev a change o’ venue,”

said Strobe, presently. “Stiddier tryin’ Baintree in Colb’ry, his county

town, they hed ter take him ter Glaston, ’kase folks in this county war

all so set agin him the court ’lowed he couldn’t git a fair trial hyar.”

“I reckon his folks hev been powerful put ter it ter live along all this

time,” remarked Bowles.

“I know they never planted none the fust year,” rejoined Strobe.

“Waal, at fust they ’lowed it would be soon over, an’ they jes’ stirred

thar stumps ter do everything fur the trial, an’ they thunk o’ nuthin’

else. Then nex’ year they hed ter pay suthin’ ter them lawyers, whether

they sp’ilt thar case or no.”

“Jake war a-tellin’ me the t’ other day,” said Strobe, “how thankful he

war ter some o’ thar neighbors, ez hed holped ’em along in thar troubles.

Ye know he air so meek-spoken, an’ perlite, an’ sech now; an’ he jes’

makes hisse’f ez small ez he sets by the fire, an’ he grins afore ye kin

speak ter him, an’—I dunno.” He relinquished suddenly the descriptive

effort. “An’ I jes’ spoke up, an’ I say, ‘I’d be obleeged ter ye, Jake,

now that the law hev let ye off, ef ye wouldn’t _look_ so durned guilty.’”

“What’d he say?” demanded Bowles.

“Waal, the critter changed suddint. An’ he say, ‘I know folks ’low I be

guilty, an’ it makes me look guilty till I plumb _feel_ guilty.’”

The constable’s portly form had a burly shadow behind it, as he rose

from his seat on the rock, for the moon was well up now, glistening

through the needles of the pines, and casting a broad refulgent sheen

upon the empty road; the blades of Indian corn gleamed, as they stirred

in the breeze. Bowles had unhooked his arms from the fence rail, and

the two men took their way together to the little cabin in the notch.

The conformation of the great slopes above it was such as to show a

neighboring peak standing definite and dark against the evening sky.

Adown the wooded steeps the shadows gloomed. The ground fell away from

the door in an abrupt descent, and through the uninclosed passage between

the two rooms, which constituted the house, could be seen a far-reaching

defile of crags and sombre purple ranges in the elusive blue distances.

The little cabin, its ridge-pole in a slant against the sky, with its

forlorn shanty of a barn, its few bee-gums awry along the rickety rail

fence, its scanty scaffolds of tobacco and drying fruit, seemed all the

more meagre for the splendid affluence of the scene spread out before it

on every side. “I kin see fifty mile an’ furder in three States,” Bowles,

its owner, some-timer boasted.

“I’d ruther see fewer bushes an’ mo’ cornfield,” his wife as often

retorted.

It was with none of the complacence of ownership that she contemplated

her share in his possessions. She often satirically commented upon them,

with a singular absence of any sense of responsibility for them. Although

she maintained absolute sway in the household, she deported herself like

an alien.

The interior was alight with a dull red glow, for the cooking of supper

was in progress; and while she waited for the baking of the johnny-cake

she sat upon the step of the rickety little porch and looked about her

with an idle, casual glance, devoid of any consanguinity with the objects

upon which it rested. She was some twenty years of age, perhaps. She had

a clear olive complexion, and dark brown hair smoothly drawn away from a

broad low forehead. Her eyes were small, dark, and bead-like, and held a

laughing twinkle in them. She had a blunt nose, and flexible lips that

showed two rows of teeth, large, strong, and white. She was accounted

good-looking, and had the neat and orderly appearance common to people of

that repute. Her compact and well-rounded figure was tidily bestowed in a

blue and white checked cotton dress, and from the “tuckin’-comb” at the

back of her head no loose ends of hair escaped. Her husband had esteemed

himself singularly fortunate to win such a prize, handicapped as he was

in the matrimonial race. He felt himself elderly at thirty-five; he was

a widower, poorer than his fellows, and burdened with three children. It

was rumored in the Cove that she had married Benjamin Bowles to spite

another lover, with whom she had quarreled. It is to be hoped that this

unique revenge smote with due force its intended victim, but Mrs. Bowles

had times of great depression of spirit, and it may be feared that her

chosen retribution had given her a backhanded blow in its recoil.

It was with much urbanity that she received the constable, who was her

cousin, and who had chanced to be called up into the mountain on official

business, and had stopped to spend the night at his relative’s house. She

evidently entertained some anxiety that a flattering report of the match

she had made, and her content therewith, should go down to the Cove, and

for this she exerted her tact. She was smiling and brisk as she served

the supper, which was savory enough, for she was a good housewife, bland

and kind to her step-children, decorous and deferential to her husband;

but her manner to his brother was singularly null, which indication Eli

Strobe did not fail to notice. There was antagonism here, and each was

strong in a way. “Fight dog, fight bar,” said Eli Strobe, chuckling to

himself.

It titillated his sense of humor to remember how anxious she had been

that Jepson should join his cattle and sheep and household gear to her

husband’s stock, when his mother had died, and his home in the valley was

thus broken up. It had been a provident and profitable arrangement on her

part.

“Ef she jes’ could hev got the vally o’ the stock ’thout the bother

an’ contrariousness o’ hevin’ Teck in the house, wouldn’t she hev been

happy!” Strobe silently jeered.

They sat around the open door, after the meal was concluded. The high air

was chill; the influence of the stern wilds, with the lonely moon upon

them, with the silent mists vagrant in the valleys, was vaguely drear,

but the red flare of the smouldering fire within was genial to see, and

harmonized with the sense of home. A’minty sat upon the doorstep, with

the yellow cat in her arms; it was wakeful, eying the moonlight, and now

and then the flickering gossamer wing of a cicada’s short flight in a

few hop vines at one side of the porch. The old dog lay at length and

drowsed; but a puppy found an absorbing interest in a toad hopping along

the road, and now sat and gazed at him with knitted brows and an intent

attitude, and now smote him with a festive paw and treated him to a high

callow yap. How the leaves of the oak accorded with the moonlight; how

they lent their glossy surface to the sheen! The shadows flecked the road

with dusky intervals and interfulgent glitter, and the great crag that

jutted out a little way down the slope was half in the gloom and half in

the light. Mrs. Bowles’s needles clicked, as she knitted, and gleamed in

the red glow of the fire.

“Miss me enny in the Cove, cousin Eli?” she demanded, flashing her

bead-like eyes upon him.

Strobe thrust his hands deep in his pockets, swayed himself far back in

his chair, and surveyed her with a sort of burly jocosity.

“Waal, _I_ ain’t missed ye none,” he averred. He looked steadily at

her, as if to watch the effect of this statement, and she, apprehending

a jest, returned his gaze expectantly. “I ’lowed ez Peter Bryce war

competent ter miss ye about all the missin’ ez ye war entitled ter. Ho!

ho! I reckon he ’lows ez Bowles air ez lucky ez a wishbone.”

And Benjamin Bowles, feeling somehow thrust out of the conversation at

his own fireside, so that he could think of nothing to say, made haste to

glibly laugh too, to show his triumph in his prize; for Peter Bryce was

the rejected suitor.

Mrs. Bowles looked quickly at her husband, as if to supervise the due

exhibition of gratulation; then laughed coquettishly, with a great

show of teeth. “Oh, nobody expec’s _ye_ ter take ter jokin’! Ye air so

sober-sided, cousin Eli.”

She dropped a stitch, and bent forward to catch the light of the flames

upon it. She drew back with a sharp cry.

“Who put that thar stick o’ ellum wood on the fire ter burn? Who’s

burnin’ ellum?” she exclaimed, pointing at it.

“’Tain’t ellum, air it?” Her husband bent over in quick anxiety to see.

“Ellum!” said cousin Eli laconically. “I seen it ez soon ez I kem in.”

“It air a sign o’ bad luck!” she protested, at once flustered and angry.

“Ellum,” said cousin Eli Strobe ruminatively. He leaned forward, with

his elbows on his knees, and gazed into the fire with his heavy-lidded

eyes. “Ellum,” he repeated, his pipe between his set teeth. “They makes

coffins out’n ellum, an’ that’s why they ’low that burnin’ it air a sign

o’ death.”

Mrs. Bowles looked at her husband for a moment, aghast.

“Sim mus’ hev put it on,” said Bowles, weakly seeking to shield himself.

Sim was a small carrot-headed boy, whose sullen, watchful eyes and

manner, at once cowed and resentful, intimated some harsh dealings of

Fate.

“It don’t make no diff’ence ef Sim did,” said Teck Jepson.

Mrs. Bowles looked at him angrily, apprehending the defiance, but

silently; he returned the gaze with steadfast intentness, and she flung

petulantly away.

“Sim air a bad aig,” she remarked. “I dunno what ailed that ’oman”—thus

she always referred to her predecessor—“ter raise her chil’n ter be so

mean an’ spiteful. She war a fool, sure!”

“Waal, waal,” said the husband and father uneasily, “I reckon she done

the bes’ she could.”

It was all he dared say in defense of the dead, but urgent conscience

constrained this. He often thought of her,—far more often, doubtless,

than if his second marriage had been a smoother fate,—and of the

terrible winter that she died, when the mountain was sheathed in ice

and impassable; no man could come up or go down, and he was isolated in

his sorrow. A ghastly gray day it was when he hollowed out with his own

hands a shallow grave in the frozen ground, and laid her in it, with

only the three babbling children to stand by. It was in some sort as an

offering to her memory that he occasionally admitted to himself that his

second marriage was a mistake. Sometimes he tried to look upon it as a

sacrifice: the children would have frozen stiff, would have starved,

would have run wild, with no woman to look after them, he said to

himself. And in this half-hearted matrimonial bargain there was a set-off

for Mrs. Bowles’s spited lover.

The influence of the burning elm was very perceptible in Mrs. Bowles’s

manner after that; for a time she was silent and preoccupied, and roused

herself only to rebuke the children, unmindful of the story that would

go down to the Cove. Sim and A’minty were quick to note the change of

mood, and deported themselves with a dodging expectation; but Bob, a

boy of four, sat before the fire, now broadly smiling, and now nodding

and dozing in his chair. He was plump and ruddy, his big eyes were hazel

and bright, and his hair, cropped in a unique manner by perverse shears,

heightened the grotesque callowness of his aspect. The dogs walked

casually over him; the cats climbed upon him, and made him convenient

to reach the bowl of milk on the table; the chickens did not scruple to

perch upon the arms of his chair, or even on his knee, or his hand, or

his head. The world was not easy to small Bob Bowles, but his was the

temperament to make it easier. A good-tempered, docile creature he was,

for he had no sensitive sentiments to assuage when the smart to his flesh

had ceased.

The talk fell among the men, and presently Teck was recounting his

garbled version of the preaching he had heard at the camp-meeting in

the Cove. The speed that Jehu made, as he so gallantly drove into

Jezreel, had impressed him deeply. “I wisht I knowed edzac’ly how fas’

he traveled, an’ sech time ez he made,” he said wistfully. “Pa’son never

read that.”

The seeming barbarity of the old chronicles, the poetic justice meted out

with so unfaltering a hand, had no morbid effect upon his sensibilities.

It was but the fit rounding of the heroic tale. The ghastly details,

however, were an aggravation to Mrs. Bowles’s darkened mood. “Air _that_

in the Bible?” she would cry in dismay. “Waal, sir! I’m glad them folks

air gone! I’ll be bound they made a heap o’ trouble. They hed ter bar up

the door, in them days, _I know_. Wuss’n the boys in the Cove.”

She tried to change the theme. She rallied her amiability. She flashed

her bead-like eyes at cousin Eli with her old-time coquetry, and her

renewed desire that only triumphant accounts might go down to the Cove

was manifest in her eager anxiety to put the small household belongings

before him in their best light. She seemed nearer akin to her household

effects as she sought to gloss over any imperfection. Her recognition of

their deficiencies had hitherto been couched in the form of sneers, to

acquaint her husband with the damage “that ’oman” had done to them.

“I dunno what ails that cheer ez ye air settin’ in ter creak so, cousin

Eli,” she observed. “It’s plumb strong. ’Tain’t goin’ ter let ye down.”

Her reassuring smile showed her strong white teeth. Its suavity was gone

before its distention relaxed, as she turned suddenly to her husband.

“Did ennybody ever put one e-end o’ a coffin inter it?” she asked

breathlessly.

Bowles started, with a wild glance about the room, as if to identify the

chair that had borne so ghastly a burden. “Laws-a-massy, naw, M’ria!

_That_ cheer air in the roof-room. What ails ye ter ax sech?”

“Waal,” she said hastily, in much perturbation, “the old folks ’low ez

sech a cheer will groan an’ creak ever arter.”

“’Tain’t disturbin’ me noways, cousin M’ria,” said cousin Eli. “I’ll die

when my time comes.” He seemed to make an admission in saying this in a

deep bass voice.

“I dunno what ailed me ter take up sech a notion,” she observed, with a

forced laugh, as she resumed her knitting. After this she succeeded in so

steering the conversation as to exclude Jepson and further reminiscences

of Jezreel; and she was not sorry when, after sitting for a time in

brooding silence, he rose, put his pipe into his pocket, and strolled out

upon the porch, then down the path in the light of the midsummer moon.

Somehow it seemed to share the lush splendors of the August, the climax

of ripening growths, of fair fruitions, of rank and riotous blossoming.

Never before, he thought, had it worn so rich and radiant a guise as

it hung above the purple mountains; a gilded bloom rested upon its

disk; this fine and delicate efflorescence softened yet did not dim its

lustre. Far, far, he followed it amidst the great trees, draped from

their stupendous heights to the ground with the luxuriant cables of the

grapevines, the fragrance of the fruit perfuming the air. The laurel was

done with blooming, but the dew lurked in its bosky tangles, and sent out

a scintillating glimmer. How few the stars were!—few and faint, for the

night was the moon’s. He paused in a rocky rift in a great gorge, that he

might look up to see one afar off, with a dim glitter; and the tracings

of a coil that he knew, but not as Scorpio; and in a gap in a Carolina

Mountain a planet that was rising. How long ago they were kindled,—these

stars! How many eyes had turned to them! The prophets saw them. And as he

tended sheep and lay on the hillsides with his flocks, David himself had

known these lucent splendors. And Moses, familiar of the high mountains,

in whose fastnesses he spoke with the Lord as man with man,—they surely

shone upon that hidden place where the great lawgiver lay.

“A powerful strange buryin’,” he meditated, “the Lord himself chief

mourner.”

He paused, pondering, with a sort of solemn pride that poor humanity

should ever have been thus cherished.

The thought of death in the gaunt gorge, with the looming cliffs on

either side and many a black chasm below; with only the starveling shrubs

to grow, and the moon to light the stark spaces as of a desert world;

with the white mists to hide the familiar valley, and a dark mountain to

gloom afar, while the lonely sky bent above, induced a strangely isolated

feeling, and the recollection of a certain forlorn fate came ghastly and

drear into his mind. It was a long time ago, he said to himself, and men

die daily; why should he think, with a numb chill upon him, of Samuel

Keale? He glanced upward among the black shadows of the jagged rock,

sharply outlined in the moon’s light upon the gray sandstone. Suddenly a

moving shadow was among them: a wolf, black and grisly, with a lowered

tail and a keen muzzle, stood upon the summit, and looked curiously,

with doubtful glittering eyes and a quivering snuffing nostril, at the

motionless figure below. The cowardly animal sprang back affrighted, when

Jepson stirred. He had drawn a broad-bladed knife, and passed his hand

quickly along its keen edge. But until his stentorian halloo roused the

sleeping echoes with a thousand weird shouts, the animal showed sign of

flight. It crouched like a frightened dog; then turned, and ran cowering

and silent along the summit, pausing only once to cast a swift glance

backward, and so out of sight.

“Ef ye hed been hongry, Mister Wolf, ye’d hev kem down hyar ter see what

I be made out’n. Too many good sheep an’ yearlin’ cattle pastured round

them thar mountings fur ye ter git fightin’ hongry till winter-time.”

He put up his knife, but his mind was tenacious of its impressions. The

wolf had added another grim suggestion to the idea of death alone among

the mountains, in the depths of the unexplored, inaccessible cave.

“’Tain’t fur from hyarabouts, I hearn tell,” he said. Then he took

himself to task. “I hev got ter quit this hyar way o’ lopin’ in the woods

like I war bereft. I’ll git teched in the head, ef I don’t mind. Folks

are beginnin’ ter laff at me, ennyhows, ’bout talkin’ so much ’bout them

in the Bible. Las’ time I war at the Settlemint, them boys thar at the

store axed me, ‘How’s Solomon, an’ Mrs. Solomon?’ Durn ’em! I’d hate,

though, fur Moses an’ David an’ them ter kem back, ef they could, an’

find me so beset an’ tuk up ’bout them an’ thar doin’s. I’ll be bound

they wouldn’t take ez much notice o’ me.”

As he sought to assume his place on this basis of mutual indifference,

he noted a rock lying before a niche in the cliffs. It had been cleft

by some freeze of the past winter perhaps; the fragment had fallen down

the chasm at some distance, and he could dimly see the black interior of

the fissure. Once again, the idea of death recurred to his persistent

mind. This was like the burial caves of the Bible, with a stone rolled to

the door of the crypt. He sat down near at hand; he was trembling with

the intensity of his interest. He gazed at the place with an excited

fascination. He wondered if any one could have been buried here. But

no,—he would have heard of it. Besides, he was surprised now that he

could have thought it,—the place was too contracted; a full-grown man

could not have been entombed in this niche.

His interest flagged upon the prosaic summons of fact. He rose to turn

homeward. Then he stopped suddenly and looked back. In shifting his

position he saw the moon full on the place now, on the broken stone that

had been rolled to the niche; shining through the rift, blanching the

sandstone, and showing distinctly, too, some dark object within.

He did not understand his motive afterward. He fell upon the rock in a

sudden fury; it yielded to his strength, and rolled crashing down the

gorge, rousing a wild clamor in the silent mountains. He did not hear. He

did not heed.

The niche was smaller even than he had thought. There were no ghastly

relics, no bones, no hair; only a man’s hat and coat, quite fresh and

well preserved,—the usual jeans coat, the white wool hat common in the

mountains; but as he unrolled them, there was some vague air about

them that was familiar, and he knew them for the missing man’s. When

were they hidden here? His quick imagination could answer, could paint

the scene in every minute detail. He saw the skulking, guilty creature

coming down the gorge laden with these garments, warm then from the form

chilling fast, perhaps, in some icy subterranean current. The niche was

a ready hiding-place, the great rock close at hand. And here they had

lain concealed till the essential moment when the freeze cleft the rock

and rendered up the evidence,—the new evidence, so long buried where

the criminal had hidden it. And as Jepson held the garments aloft a

recollection of his experience in the courts came to him. “A man shall

not be placed twice in jeopardy of his life for the same offense,” said

the lawyer.