I.

Mystery was not far to seek, surely. The great gneissoid crags were

moulded by the heat from subterranean fires in remote, unimagined

æons. From the deep coves, now so heavily wooded, the once submerging

waters had long ago ebbed, following undreamed-of lures, drawn seaward

or skyward, or engulfed in still lower depths,--who can say?--leaving

the ripple-marks on their rocky confines to tell of their being. In

the middle of the bridle-path, touched by every careless passing foot,

lay a splintered sandstone slab, the fracture revealing a cluster

of delicate, cylindrical, stem-like petrifactions, thus preserving,

with the comprehensive significance of nature, so slight a thing as

the record of the life of a worm long ages agone, in these fossil

traces of primordial vermicular burrowings, here in the midst of a

scene that was itself as a register of those stupendous revolutions

the incidents of which were the subsidence of vast oceans, and the

emergence of continents, and the development of the mighty agencies

that made and lifted the mountains. All the visible world gave token

of the inexplicable past of creation, of the unrevealed future,--those

thoughts of God which are very deep thoughts. And yet, in the blunting

of daily use, the limitations of dull observation, the unquestioning

acceptance of the accustomed routine of nature, there might seem

naught before the eye which was not plainly manifest,--mountain,

rock, forest,--the mere furniture of existence. One hardly analyzes

the breath of life as it is breathed; even when considered as nearly

twenty-one per cent. of oxygen to seventy-nine per cent. of nitrogen,

are we aught the wiser, for whence comes it, and alas, why does it go?

To those creatures of a day, busy with the day, it seemed that mystery

and doubt and troublous questioning had first entered Etowah Cove in

the guise of a vagrant juggler, their earliest experience of a modern

exponent of his most ancient craft.

The light that timidly flickered out of the schoolhouse windows into

the bosky depths of the encompassing wilderness, one night, marked a

new era in the history of the Cove. It was the first “show” that had

ever been given nearer than Colbury, some forty miles distant, unless

one might make so bold as to include in the term camp-meetings and

revivals, weddings and funerals. The walls of the little log house

had hitherto echoed naught more joyous than sermons and “experience

meetings,” or sounds of scholastic discipline, or the drone of the

juvenile martyr reluctantly undergoing education. The place had long

been closed to secular uses, for only at infrequent intervals was the

school opened, and a drought of instruction still held sway. To the

audience who had been roused from the dull routine of the fireside

by the startling and unprecedented announcement that a stranger-man,

staying at old Tubal Cain Sims’s cabin, was going to give a “show” in

the schoolhouse, the flutter of excitement, the unwonted nocturnal

jaunt hither, the joyous anticipation, were almost tantamount to the

delighted realization. The benches were arranged as for worship or

learning, and were crowded with old and young, male and female, the

reckless and barefoot, the neuralgic and shod. The men, unkempt and

unshaven, steadily chewed their quids of tobacco, and now and then

spat upon the floor and grinned at one another. The women conserved

a certain graver go-to-meeting air, doubtless the influence of the

locality, but were visibly fluttered. Occasionally a big sunbonnet

turned toward another, and whispered gossip ensued, as before the first

hymn is given out. The lighted tallow candles in small tin sconces

against the walls, and a kerosene lamp on the table on the platform,

cast a subdued and mellow light over the assemblage. It flickered up

to the brown rafters, where the cobwebs were many; it converted the

tiny dirt-incrusted panes of the windows to mirror-like use, and was

reflected from the dense darkness outside with duplications of sections

of the audience; it shone full and bright on the tall, athletic figure

of the juggler, appearing suddenly and swiftly from a side door, and

bowing low in the centre of the platform with an air of great deference

and courtesy to his silent and spellbound audience.

He might have astonished more sophisticated spectators. Instead of

wearing the ordinary evening dress or the costume of the Japanese or

Hindoo, according to the usual wont of conjurers, he was clad in a blue

flannel shirt and a black-and-red blazer, and his blue knickerbockers

and long blue hose on his muscular legs impressed the mountaineers as

a ballet costume might have done, could they have conceived of such

attenuations of attire. A russet leather belt was drawn tightly around

his slender waist, and they gazed at him from the tip of his dark

sleek red-brown hair, carefully parted in the middle, to the toes of

his pointed russet shoes with an amazement which his best feat might

fail to elicit. His air of deep respect reassured them in a measure,

for they could not gauge the covert banter in his tone and the mockery

in his eyes as his sonorous “Ladies and gentlemen” rang forth in

the little building. And there was something more in his eyes--of

reddish-brown tint like his hair--that the mockery and banter could

not hide; for these were transient, and the other--a thought with a

fang. It might have been anxiety, remorse, turmoil of mind, fear,--one

might hardly say,--plainly to be seen, yet not discerned. Below his

eyes, above his cheekbones, that showed their contour, for his face

was thin, were deep blue circles, and that unmistakable look of one

who has received some serious sudden shock. But the spirit of the

occasion was paramount now, and he was as unconscious of the lack in

his accoutrements in the estimation of the mountaineers as they were of

how the bare feet of sundry of his spectators offended his prejudices

in favor of _chaussure_.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here to witness some of those

feats which are variously ascribed to charlatanry, to skill or sleight

of hand, or to certain traffic with supernatural agencies. Those which

I shall have the honor to exhibit to this select audience I shall

not explain; in fact,” with a twinkle of the eye, “some of them are

inexplicable, and so may they long continue! I have not thought best

to avail myself of the services of an assistant, who is generally, I

grieve to say, among most of those of my profession, a mere trickster

and accomplice, and therefore you will have the evidence of your eyes

to the fact that every feat which I perform this evening is absolutely

genuine.”

His spirit of rodomontade had reached its limit. Perhaps some of the

more finely strung sensibilities in the audience appraised the ridicule

in his intention, despite the masquerade of his manner, for a glance of

resentment kindled here and there; but before the awed and open-mouthed

majority had drawn a breath or relaxed a muscle he changed his tone.

“I have selected a young man from amongst you,” he said, quite

naturally and pleasantly, “to aid me in finding properties, as it

were, for my entertainment; for in apology be it spoken, I am not

prepared in any respect for an exhibition of this sort. He has, at my

request, borrowed for me this bayonet.” He took from the table drawer

the weapon, newly cleaned and glistening, and looked at it narrowly

as he stood before them on the platform. “I should say it has seen

service. Can this gentleman tell me whether it is from a Federal or a

Confederate gun?”

He stepped down suddenly from the platform and handed the bayonet to a

strong-featured, stern-looking old mountaineer who had earlier regarded

him with dawning disfavor.

“It’s from a Rebel weepon,” the veteran said succinctly.

“It’s off a Yankee Springfiel’,” a voice came from the other side of

the room.

“Enfiel’,” said the first speaker doggedly.

“Springfiel’,” contradicted his invisible antagonist tersely.

Once more, “Enfiel’.”

And again out of the shadow, “Springfiel’.”

And the juggler became aware that he had waked up the political dog of

the region.

“They are equally digestible,” he declared, resuming his place on the

platform. “I believe I’ll swallow it.” And so he did.

For one moment there was an intense silence, while the petrified

audience gazed in motionless astonishment at the juggler. Then arose a

great tumult of voices; there was a violent movement at the rear of the

room; a bench broke down, and in the midst of the commotion, with a gay

cry of “Hey! Presto!” the juggler apparently drew the bayonet from out

his throat and triumphantly held it up before the people.

An increasing confusion of sounds greeted him. Screams of delighted

mirth came from the younger portion of the audience, and exclamations

hardly less flattering from the laughing elders. But ever above

the babel terrified shrieks, shrill and clamorous, rose higher and

higher, and the juggler frowned with sudden sharp annoyance when he

distinguished the fact that an elderly woman was crying out that these

were the works of the devil,--that here was Satan, and that she would

not bide easy till he was bound, neck and heels together, and cast

forth into the river. He was not usually devoid of humane sentiments,

but he felt vastly relieved when she fell into strong hysterics, and

was carried, still shrieking, out to the ox-cart, whence, despite the

closed doors and windows, over and over again those weird, unearthly

cries were borne in to the audience, as the yoking of the steers for

the homeward journey was in progress.

The juggler was out of countenance. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said,

with indignation coloring his face to the roots of his hair, “these

things are done for amusement. If they fail to amuse, they fail

altogether. I will go on, or, if you desire, your money will be

refunded at the door.”

“Lawd, naw, bub!” exclaimed a toothless old fellow, bent nearly double

as he sat on a front bench, his clasped hands between his knees.

“We-uns want ter view all ye know how ter do,--all ye know how ter do,

son.”

Here and there reassuring voices confirmed the spokesman, and as the

discomfited juggler turned to the table drawer, resolving on something

less bloody-minded, he heard a vague titter from that portion of the

building in which, being young, he had already observed that the

greater number of personable maidens were seated.

None so dread ridicule as the satirist. He whirled around, his heart

swelling indignantly, his eyes flashing fire, to perceive, advancing

down the aisle, a fat woman in a gigantic sunbonnet, which, however,

hardly obscured her broad, creased, dimpled face, a brown calico

dress wherein the waist-line must ever be a matter of conjecture, and

a little shoulder-shawl of bright red-and-yellow plaid. She slowly

approached him with something of steel glittering in her hands, and

at his amazed and dumfounded expression of countenance the girlish

cachinnation which he so resented broke forth afresh.

“Beg pardon?” he said more than once, as from his elevation he sought

to catch her request. A single tooth of the upper register, so to

speak, however ornamental, did not serve to render more distinct the

fat woman’s wheeze, in which she sought to articulate her desire that

he should forthwith swallow her big shears, so fascinated was she

by the evidence he had given of his proficiency in the arts of the

impossible.

“Certainly, with pleasure,--always anxious to oblige the ladies,” he

protested, with a return of his covert mockery, as he bowed after a

dancing-class fashion, and received from her fat creased hands the

great domestic implement with its dangling steel chain. “Ladies and

gentlemen,” he declared, with his hand upon his heart, as she subsided,

shaking with laughter, on the front bench, “I cannot refrain from

expressing my flattered sense of this mark of the confidence reposed

in me by this distinguished audience, as well as by the estimable lady

who is so willing to offer her shears on the altar of science. She is

not satisfied with the warlike bayonet. She desires to see the same

experiment, _mutatis mutandis_, on a pair of shears, which are devoted

to the tender-hearted and affable uses of the work-basket, filled with

the love of home and gentle fireside associations, and--and--and other

domestic scraps. The rivet is a trifle loose, and I hope I may not be

forced to disgorge the blades separately.”

He was holding up the scissors as he spoke these words, so that all

could see them; the next moment they had disappeared down his throat,

as it were, and the astounded audience sat as if resolved into eyes,

staring spellbound.

When, a few minutes later, with his cabalistic phrase, “Hey! Presto!”

he drew from his open red mouth the shears dangling at the end of the

rattling steel chain, which the audience had just seen him swallow,

the clamor of exclamations again arose, for the accepted methods of

applause had not yet penetrated to the seclusions of Etowah Cove;

but there was in this manifestation of surprise so definite a quaver

of fear that certain lines of irritation and anxiety corrugated the

smooth brow of the young prestidigitator. The tumultuous amazement of

the spectators seemed as if it were too great to be realized all at

once, and with the sight of the performance anew of the impossible

feat, which should have served as reassurance, it degenerated into

downright terror which held the possibilities of panic. The idea of

panic suggested other possibilities. Albeit their unsophisticated

state was highly favorable to the development of emotions of boundless

astonishment and absolute credulity, he realized that it was not

unattended by some personal danger. After the suggestion of being

bound hand and foot and thrown into the river, the juggler was more

than once unpleasantly reminded--for he was a man of some reading--of

certain fellow craftsmen in the mists of centuries agone, whose

wondrous skill in the powers of air, earth, and fire, though great

enough to be deemed unlawful traffic with the devil, could not avail

to prevent their own earthly elements from going up in smoke and

flame, and thus contributing ethereally to the great reserves of

material nature. He was here alone, far from help, among the most

ignorant and lawless people he had ever seen; and if their dislocated

ideas of necromancy and unlawful dealing with the devil should take a

definite hold upon them, he might be summarily dealt with as an act

of religion, and the world none the wiser. Such disaster had befallen

better jugglers, sooth to say, in more civilized communities than

Etowah Cove. He sought to put this thought from him, for his heart was

sufficiently stout of fibre, but determined that he would not again be

diverted from his intention of substituting less blood-curdling feats

for the usual experiments with knives and swords. He preserved a calm

face and debonair manner, as he carefully wiped the shears free from

supposititious moisture on a folded white table-cloth that lay on the

platform, and stepped down, and with an elaborate bow presented them to

their chuckling and gratified owner.

“Jane Ann Sims wouldn’t keer if the Old Nick hisself war ter set up his

staff in the Cove, ef he hed some news ter tell or a joke ter crack,

or some sorter gamesome new goin’s-on that she hed never hearn tell on

afore,” whispered a lean, towering, limp sunbonnet to its starch and

squatty neighbor.

“An’ _she_ hard on ter fifty odd years old!” said the squatty

sunbonnet, malignantly accurate.

As the juggler stepped back to the platform he took up the table-cloth

and shook it out, that they might all be assured that there was nothing

concealed in its folds.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, taking heart of grace and his

former manner of covert half-banter and mock politeness together, “we

all know that it is by the action of the sun on the soil, and the

dew and the rain, that the seeds of plants germinate and the green

herb grows for the service of men. I propose to show you now a small

agricultural experiment which I venture to hope will be of special

interest to this assembly, as most of you are engaged in the noble

pursuit of tilling the soil, when other diversions cannot by any means

be had.”

As he clattered off his sentences, garnished now and then with trite

bits of Latin, the solemn, stolid, uncomprehending faces ministered

to a certain mocking humor which he had, and which was now becoming a

trifle bitter with the reluctant realization of a lurking danger.

“Will some gentleman come forward and tell me what kind of a seed this

is?”

He held the small object up between his finger and thumb for a moment,

but no one approached. He perceived in a sort of helpless dismay

that the dread of him was growing. He was fain to step down from the

platform and hand the seed to the old man on the front bench, whose

bleared eyes were glittering with delight in the greatest sensation

that had ever fallen to his lot; for the juggler judged that of all the

audience he was nearest the masculine counterpart of the progressive

Jane Ann Sims. The old man, in his circle, was not a person of

consideration nor accustomed to deference. He was all the more easily

flattered to be thus singled out by the juggler, the conspicuous

cynosure of all eyes, to give his judgment and pronounce upon the

identity of the seed. The love of notoriety is a blasting passion,

deadening all considerations of the conformable. Even in these secluded

wilds, even in the presence of but a handful of his familiars, even

in the lowly estate of a cumberer of the ground, lagging superfluous,

it smote Josiah Cobbs. He rose to his feet, whirled briskly around,

and, with a manner founded on the sprightly style of the juggler, yet

compounded with the diction of the circuit rider, exclaimed, “Yea,

my brethren, this hyar be a seed,--yea, it be actially a persimmon

seed, though so dry I ain’t so sure whether or not it’ll ever sot

off ter grow like a fraish one might. Yea, my brethren, I ain’t sure

how long--ah--this hyar persimmon seed hev--ah--been kem out o’ the

persimmon. Yea”--

He progressed not beyond this point, for the audience had no mind

to be entertained with the rhetoric of old Josiah Cobbs, resenting

his usurpation of so prominent a position, and his presumption in

undertaking to address the meeting. Certain people in this world are

given to understand that although their estate in life be not inferior

to that of their neighbors, humility becomes them, and a low seat is

their appropriate station. More than one sunbonnet had rustlingly

communed with another as to the fact that Josiah Cobbs would hardly

be heard at an experience meeting, the state of his humble soul not

interesting the community. So simultaneous a storm of giggles swept

the cluster of girls as to demonstrate that their gravity was of the

same tenuous quality as that of their age and sex elsewhere. It was

wonderful that they did not sustain some collapse, and this furnishes

a pleasing commentary upon the strength of the youthful diaphragm.

The men exchanged glances of grim derision, and finally one, with the

air of a person not to be trifled with, rose up and stretched out his

hand for the bewitched seed, forgetting for the moment all his quondam

qualms of distrust.

Josiah Cobbs rendered it up without an instant’s hesitation. Precious

as was the opportunity in his eyes, preëmpted by his own courage,

his was not the type which makes resistance. The hand to despoil him

had hardly need to be strong. The will to have what he possessed was

sufficient for his pillage. He hardly claimed the merits appertaining

to the pioneer. He stood meekly by as the seed was passed from one set

of horny finger-tips to another, and the dictum, “It’s a persimmon

seed, stranger,” was repeated with a decision which implied no previous

examination.

“A persimmon seed, is it?” said the juggler airily, receiving it back.

“Now, gentlemen, you see that there is nothing in this pail of earth

but good pulverized soil.” He passed his fingers through the surface,

shaking them daintily free from the particles afterward, while the

hands of the practical farmers went boldly grappling down to the bottom

with no thought of dirt. “You see me plant this persimmon seed. There!

Now I throw over the pail this empty cloth,--let it stand up in a peak

so as to give the seed air; now I place the whole on the table, where

you can all see it and assure yourselves that no one goes near it.

While awaiting developments I shall try to entertain you by singing

a song. It may be unknown to you--yet why this suggestion in the

presence of so much culture?--that in the days of eld certain wandering

troubadours came to be in some sort men of my profession. In the

intervals of minstrelsy they entertained and astonished their audiences

with feats of the miraculous,--strange exploits of legerdemain and such

light pastimes,--and were therefore termed _jongleurs_. I shall seek to

follow my distinguished Provençal predecessors in the gay science _haud

passibus æquis_, and pipe up as best I may.”

There was a pause while the juggler, standing at one end of the

platform, seemed to run over in his mind the treasures of his

_répertoire_. The mellow lamplight shone in his reflective brown

eyes, cast down as he twisted one end of the long red-brown mustache,

and again thrown up as if he sought some recollection among the

old rafters. These had the rich reserves of color characteristic

of old wood, and the heavy beams of oak showed all their veinous

possibilities in yellow and brown fibrous comminglements against the

deep umber shadows of the high peak of the roof. The cobwebs adhering

here and there had almost the consistency of a fabric, so densely woven

they were. One pendulous gauze fragment moved suddenly without a breath

of air, for a light living creature had run along the beam beneath it,

and now stood looking down at the audience with a glittering eye and a

half-spread bat-like wing,--a flying squirrel, whose nest was secreted

in the king-post and entered from the outside. So still was the

audience,--the grizzled, unkempt men, the sunbonneted women, even the

giggling girls in the corner,--he might have been meditating a downward

plunge into the room.

Then slightly frowning, but smiling too, the juggler began to sing.

It was a cultivated voice that rang out in the measures of “My Pretty

Jane,”--a tenor of good range, true, clear, sweet, with a certain

romantic quality that was in some sort compelling and effective.

He sang well. Not that the performance would have been acceptable

considered as that of a high-grade professional, yet it was far too

good for a mere parlor amateur. The rich, vibrant voice, without

accompaniment,--grotesque inadequacy to his mind,--filled the little

building with a pathetic, penetrating sweetness, and the whole method

of rendering the ballad was characterized by that elaborate simplicity

and restrained precision so marked in professional circles, so

different from the enthusiastic _abandon_ of the reckless home talent.

It fell flat in Etowah Cove. There were people in the audience who,

if they could not sing, were intimately persuaded that they could;

and after all, that is the essential element of satisfaction. The

modulation, the delicate shades of expression, the refinement of style,

were all lost on the majority; only here and there a discerning ear

was pricked up, appreciating in the concord of sweet sounds something

out of the common. But there was no sign of approval, and in the dead

silence which succeeded the final roulade, coming so trippingly off,

the juggler showed certain symptoms of embarrassment and discomfiture.

One might easily perceive from the deft assurance of his exploits of

sleight of hand that the value he placed upon them was far cheaper than

his estimate of his singing. It was a susceptible sort of vanity that

could be hurt by the withheld plaudits of Etowah Cove; but vanity is

a sensitive plant, and requires tender nurture. He stood silent and

flushing for a moment, while still a gentle fibrous resonance seemed to

pervade the room,--the memory of the song rather than its echo; then,

with a sudden flouting airy whirl, he turned on his heel, and caught

off the cloth that had enveloped the pail of earth containing the

persimmon seed which he had just planted. And lo! glossy and green and

lustrous in the light, there stood a fair young shoot, some two feet

in height, and with all its leaves a-rustle. It was a good trick and

very cleverly done.

The little building once more was a babel of sounds. The flying

squirrel scrambled back to the king-post, pausing once to look down in

half-frightened amazement. The window-panes reflected a kaleidoscope

of bright bits of color swiftly swaying, for the audience was in a

turmoil. It was not, however, the artistic excellence of the feat which

swayed the spectators, but its agricultural significance. This, the old

farmers realized, was indeed necromancy. Their struggles with the tough

and reluctant earth, which so grudgingly responds to toil, oft with

such hard-exacted usury, taking so much more than it gives, and which

only the poet or the weed-loving botanist calls generous and fruitful,

had served to teach them that this kind of growth must needs come only

through the wiles of the deluding devil. Not even an agricultural

paper--had they known of such a sophistication--could countenance

such deceits. A grim, ashen-tinted face with gray hair appeared near

the back of the building; a light gray homespun coat accentuated its

pallor. A long finger was warningly shaken at the juggler, as he stood,

triumphant, flushed, beside the flourishing shoot he had evoked from

the persimmon seed, but only half smiling, for something sinister in

the commingled voices had again smitten his attention. Then he was

arraigned by Parson Greenought with the solemn adjuration in a loud

tone, “Pause, Mr. Showman, pause!”

The juggler was already petrified. The spectators obeyed the earnest

command, albeit not intended for them. They fell once more into their

places; the heads of many turned now toward the juggler, and again

back to the preacher, who, in his simplicity, had no idea that he

had transgressed the canons of sanctification in visiting a place of

worldly amusement, since indeed this was his first opportunity, and

greatly had he profited by it, until this last enormity had aroused his

clerical conscience. “Mr. Showman,” he demanded, “do you-uns call this

religion?”

“Religion!” said Mr. Showman, with a burst of unregenerate laughter,

for the limits of his patience had been nearly reached. “I call it fun.”

“I call it the devices of the devil!” thundered the preacher. “An’ hyar

ye be,”--he turned on the audience,--“ye perfessin’ members, a-aggin’

this man on in his conjurin’ an’ witchments an’ Satan tricks, till fust

thing ye know the Enemy will appear, horns, hoofs, an’ tail, a-spittin’

fire an’”--the juggler had a passing recollection that he too could

spit fire, and had intended to make his _congé_ amongst pyrotechnics of

this sort, and he welcomed the thought of caution that was not, like

most of its kind, _ex post facto_,--“a-spittin’ fire, an’ a-takin’ yer

souls down ter hell with him. Hyar ye be”--

“If you will allow me to interrupt you, sir,” the juggler said

persuasively, “you are altogether mistaken, and I should like to make

a full explanation to a man of your age and experience.” His eyes were

grave; his face had grown a trifle pale. The danger had come very

near. Rough handling might well be encountered amongst these primitive

wights, inflamed by pulpit oratory and religious excitement, and

abetted by their pastoral guide. “In two minutes,” he went on, “I can

teach you to perform this simple feat which seems to you impossible to

human agency. It is nothing but sleight of hand, a sort of knack.”

For one moment Parson Greenought hesitated, beguiled. His eye kindled

with curiosity and eagerness; he made as though he would leave the

bench whereon he was ensconced, to approach the alluring juggler.

Unfortunately, it was at the moment that the young man’s hands,

grasping the persimmon shoot near the base, drew it forth from the

earth with a wrench, so firmly was it planted, and showed to the

discerning bucolic gaze the fully developed root with the earth

adhering to its fibres; thus proving by the eyesight of the audience,

beyond all power of gainsaying, that it had sprouted from the seed and

grown two feet high while this juggler--this limb of Satan--had sung

his little song about his Pretty Jane.

A man rarely has to contend with an excess of faith in him and his

deeds. The juggler was fiercely advised by a dark-browed man leaning

forward across one of the benches, with a menacing duplication of his

figure and the gesture of his clenched fist reflected in the window,

not to try to slip out of it.

And Parson Greenought, with a swelling redundancy of voice and a great

access of virtue, gave forth expression of his desire to abide by the

will that had ordained the growth of every herb whose seed is in itself

upon the earth; he would not meddle and he would not mar, nor would he

learn with unhallowed and wicked curiosity thus to pervert the laws

that had been laid down while the earth was yet void and without form.

“Well, it never yet was ordained that this persimmon seed was to

grow,” said the juggler, still game, though with a fluctuating color.

He fished the stone out from the earth, and, dusting it off with his

fine white handkerchief, put it between his strong molar teeth and

cracked it. He would not again invite attention to the reluctance of

the audience to approach him, so he laid it down on the edge of the

front bench with the remark, “You can see for yourselves the kernel is

withered; that thing has no capacities for growth.”

One or two looked cautiously at the withered kernel within the riven

pit, and then glanced significantly at each other. It was shrunken,

old, worthless, as he had said, but then his black art was doubtless

sufficient to have withered it with the mere wish.

“I don’t know a persimmon sprout from a dogwood, or a sumach, or

anything else,” declared the juggler. His face was hard and dogged;

he was compelled in his own behoof to unmask himself and show how very

superficial were his cleverest efforts. He did it as ungraciously as he

might. “This young man”--he indicated a bold bluff young mountaineer

who was availing himself of the “standing-room only,” to which a number

of the youths were relegated--“dug up this sprout at my request this

afternoon, and hunted out a last year’s seed among the dead leaves on

the ground.”

As his eyes met those of this young fellow the twinkle of mischievous

delight in the mountaineer’s big blue orbs gave him a faint zest of

returning relish for the situation, albeit the primitive denizens of

the Cove had been all too well humbugged even for his own comfort.

“This pocket is torn,”--he thrust his hand into it,--“and has no

bottom. I therefore slipped this wand into this pocket of these

knickerbockers,” suiting the action to the word. “You see the leaves

all fold together, so that its presence does not even mar the

pronounced symmetry of my garments. Then I placed the seed, thus, and

threw the cloth over the pail, thus; with my left hand I slipped out

the persimmon shoot, and planted it, thus; and it was beneath the cloth

that I left in a peak to give it air and to conceal it while I had the

honor to entertain you by singing.”

He supposed that he would have satisfied even the most timorous and

doubtful by this revelation of his methods and of the innocuous

nature of his craft, but he could not fail to note the significantly

shaken heads, the disaffected whispers, the colloguing of the young

mountaineers occupying “standing-room only.”

“Ef he hed done it that-a-way at fust, I’d hev viewed it sure. I viewed

it plain this time,” said one of these.

“He can’t fool me,” protested a sour-visaged woman who kept up a keen

espionage on all the world within the range of her pink sunbonnet.

“One lie never mended another,” said the old preacher aside in a low

voice to a presiding elder. “Potsherds, lies are, my brother; they hold

no water.”

The juggler could deceive them easily enough, but alack, he could not

undeceive them! He debated within himself the possibility which each of

his feats possessed of exciting their ire, as he hurriedly rummaged in

the drawer of the table. He closed it abruptly.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “behold this paper of needles; and

here also I desire to introduce to your notice this small spool of

thread--Has any lady here,” he continued, with the air of breaking off

with a sudden thought, “any breadths of calico or other fabric which

she might desire to have run up or galloped up? I am a great seamster.”

Of course, although some had brought their babies, and one or two their

lunch to stop the mouths of the older children, many their snuff or

their tobacco, no one had brought work on this memorable outing to the

show in the Cove.

“What a pity!” he cried. “Well, I can only show you how I thread

needles. I swallow them all, thus,” and down they went. “Then I swallow

the thread,” and forthwith the spool disappeared down his throat.

The audience, educated by this time to expect marvels, sat staring,

stony and still. There was a longer interval than usual as he stood

with one hand on the table, half smiling, half expectant, as if he too

were doubtful of the result. Suddenly he lifted his hand, and began

to draw one end of the thread from his lips. On it came, longer and

longer; and here and there, threaded and swaying on the fine filament,

were the needles, of assorted sizes, beginning with the delicate and

small implement, increasing grade by grade, till the descending scale

commenced, and the needles dwindled as they appeared.

Parson Greenought had risen when the thread was swallowed, but he

lingered till the last cambric needle was laid on the table, and the

prestidigitator had made his low bow of self-flattery and triumph in

conclusion. Then having witnessed it all, his forefinger shaking in the

air, he cried out: “I leave this place! I pernounce these acts ter be

traffickin’ with the devil an’ sech. Ef I be wrong, the Lord will jedge

me ’cordin’; ez he hev gin me gifts I see with my eyes, an’ my eyes

air true, an’ they war in wisdom made, an’ war made ter see with. Oh,

young man, pause in time! Sin hev marked ye! Temptation beguiles ye!

I dunno what ye hev in mind, but beware of it! Beware of the sin that

changes its face, an’ shifts its name, an’ juggles with the thing ez is

not what it seems ter be. Beware! beware!”

As he stalked out, the juggler sought to laugh, but he winced visibly.

The spectators were on their feet now, having risen with the excitement

of the moment of the old man’s exit. There was, however, a manifest

disposition to linger; for having become somewhat acclimated to

miracles, their appetite for the wonder-working was whetted. But the

juggler, frowning heavily, had turned around, and was shaking the cloth

out, and banging about in the drawer of the table, as if making his

preparations for departure. The people began to move slowly to the

door. It was not his intention to dismiss the audience thus summarily

and unceremoniously, and as the situation struck his attention he

advanced toward the front of the platform.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began; but his voice was lost in the clatter

of heavy boots on the floor, the scraping of benches moved from their

proper places to liberate groups in order to precede their turn in the

procession, the sudden sleepy protest of a half-awakened infant, rising

in a sharp crescendo and climaxing in a hearty bawl of unbridled rage.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” he cried vainly to the dusty atmosphere, and

the haggard, disheveled aspect of the half-deserted room. “Oh, go

along, then,” he added, dropping his voice, “and the devil take you!”

His mountain acquaintance had come to the side of the platform, and

stood waiting, one hand on the table, while he idly eyed the juggler,

who had returned to rummaging the drawer. He was a tall strong young

fellow, with straight black hair that grew on his forehead in the

manner denominated a “cowlick,” and large contemplative blue eyes; his

face showed some humor, for the lines broke readily into laughter.

His long boots were drawn high over his brown jeans trousers, and his

blue-checked homespun shirt was open at the neck, and showed his strong

throat that held his head very sturdily and straight.

He was compassionate at the moment. “Plumb beat out, ain’t ye?” he said

sympathetically.

“I’m half dead!” cried the juggler furiously, throwing off his blazer,

and wiping his hot face with his handkerchief.

The open door admitted the currents of the chill night air and the

pungent odors of the dense dark woods without. Calls to the oxen in the

process of gearing up sounded now and again droningly. Occasionally

quick hoofbeats told of a horseman’s departure at full gallop. The talk

of waiting groups outside now came mingled to the ear, then ceased and

rose anew. More than once a loud yawn told of the physical stress

of the late hour and the unwonted excitement. The young mountaineer

was going the rounds of the room extinguishing the tallow dips

laboriously; taking each down, blowing gustily at it, and replacing

it in the sconce. The juggler, as he passed, with his blazer over his

arm, quenched the lights far more expeditiously, but mechanically, as

it seemed, by fanning the timorous flames out _seriatim_ with his hat

in quick, decisive gestures. When he stood in the door, the room dark

behind him, there was no life, no motion, in the umbrageous obscurity

at hand; naught gave token of the audience so lately assembled save

the creak of an unoiled axle far away, and once the raucous cry of

a man to his team. Then all was still. In the hush, a vague drowsy

note came suddenly from a bird high amongst the budding leaves of a

tulip-tree hard by. An interval, and a like dreamy response sounded

from far down the slope where pendulous boughs overhung the river. Some

sweet chord of sympathy had brought the thought of the one to the other

in the deep dark night,--these beings so insignificant in the plan

of creation,--and one must needs rouse itself with that veiled reedy

query, and the other, downily dreaming, must pipe out a reassuring

“All’s well.”

The suggestiveness of this lyric of two tones was not lost on the

juggler. He was pierced by the poignancy of exile. He could hardly

realize that he was of the same species as the beings who had formed

the “cultivated and intellectual audience” he had had the honor to

entertain. Not one process of his mind could be divined by them; not

one throb of their superstitious terrors could he share.

“The cursed fatality,” he growled between his teeth, “that brought me

to this God-forsaken country!”

“Waal,” drawled the young mountaineer, whom he had forgotten for the

moment, “they won’t be so tur’ble easy skeered nex’ time.”

“They won’t have another chance in a hurry,” retorted the juggler

angrily, as they walked away together in single file.

The night was very dark, although the great whorls of constellations

were splendidly abloom in the clear sky. If a raylet fell to earth

in the forest, it was not appreciable in the sombre depths, and the

juggler, with all his craft, might hardly have made shift to follow

his companion but for the spark and the light luminous smoke of the

mountaineer’s pipe. Suddenly, as they turned a sharp edge of a series

of great rocks, that like flying buttresses projected out from the

steep perpendicular wall of a crag above them, all at once growing

visible, a white flare shone before their eyes, illumining all the

surrounding woods. There in an open space near the edge of a bluff

was a great fire of logs burning like a funeral pyre. The juggler had

paused as if spellbound. From the opposite side of the glowing mass a

face, distorted, tremulous, impossibly hideous, elongated almost out

of the proportion of humanity, peered at him.

“For God’s sake, what’s that?” he cried out, clutching at his guide’s

arm.

The slow mountaineer, surprised out of his composure, paused, and took

his pipe from his mouth to stare uncomprehendingly at his companion.

“Jes’ burnin’ lime,” he said.

Their shadows, suddenly evolved, stretched over the ground in the

white flare. The Cove, not far beneath, for this was on a low spur of

the great range, now flickered into full view, now receded into the

darkness. Above the vague mountain the stars seemed all gone, and the

sky was elusive and cloaked. For all the art of the juggler, he could

show naught of magic more unnatural, more ghastly, than the face of

the lime-burner as it appeared through the medium of the heated air

arising from the primitive kiln,--protean, distorted by every current

of the night’s breath,--although it was of much significance to him,

and later he came to know it well to his cost. As the man caught the

sound of their approach, he walked around to the side of the kiln, and

his face and figure, no longer seen through the unequally refracting

medium of the heated air, dwindled to normal proportions. It was not

a prepossessing face in its best estate,--long, thin-lipped, grim,

with small eyes set close together, and surmounted by a wide wool

hat, which, being large for his head, was so crushed together that

its crown rose up in a peak. His clothes were plentifully dusted with

powdery flakes, and the scalding breath of the unslaked lime was

perceptible to the throats of the newcomers.

“Ye ’pear ter be powerful late,” the young mountaineer hazarded.

“Weather-signs air p’intin’ fur rain,” replied the lime-burner. “I

ain’t wantin’ all this lime ter git slacked by accident.” He glanced

down with a workman’s satisfaction at the primitive process. Between

the logs of the great pile layers of the broken limestone were

interposed, and were gradually calcined as the fire blazed. Although

some of it was imperfectly consumed, and here and there lay in

half-crude lumps, the quantity well burned was sufficient to warrant

the laborer’s anxiety to get it under shelter before it should sustain

the deteriorating effects of moisture.

“Gideon Beck war a-promisin’ ter kem back straight arter supper,”

said Peter Knowles, “an’ holp me git it inter the rock-house thar.”

He indicated a grotto in the face of the cliff, where, by the light

of the fire, one might perceive that lime had already been stored.

The beetling rocks above it afforded adequate protection from falling

weather, and the small quantity of the commodity was evidently

disproportionate to the ample spaces for its accommodation within. “I

felt plumb beset an’ oneasy ’bout Gid,” added Knowles. “He mought hev

hed a fit, or suthin’ may have happened down ter his house, ter some

o’ the chil’n o’ suthin’. He merried my sister Judy, ye know. They

don’t take haffen keer o’ them chil’n; some o’ them mought hev got sot

afire o’ suthin’, or”--

“They _mought_, but they ain’t,” exclaimed Jack Ormsby, the young

mountaineer, with a laugh. “Gid’s been down yander ter the show, an’

all the chil’n, an’ yer sister Judy too.”

“What show?” demanded Knowles shortly, his grim face half angry, half

amazed.

“The show in the schoolhouse in the Cove. This hyar stranger-man, he

gin a show,” Ormsby explained. “I viewed ’em all thar, all the fambly.”

There was a momentary pause, and one might hear the wind astir in the

darkness of the woods below, and feel the dank breath of the clouds

that invisibly were gathering on the brink of the range above. One of

the sudden mountain rains was at hand.

“An’ I wish I hed every one of ’em hyar now!” exclaimed Peter Knowles

in fury. “I’d kiver ’em all up in that thar quicklime,--that’s what I’d

do! An’ thar wouldn’t be hide, hawns, or taller lef’ of none of ’em in

the mornin’. Leave _me_ hyar,--leave _me_ hyar with all this medjure o’

lime, an’ I never see none so stubborn in burnin’, the timber bein’ so

durned green an’ sappy, the dad-burned critter promisin’ an’ promisin’

ter kem back arter he got his supper,--an’ go ter a show, a damned

show! What sort’n show war it?”

The juggler burst out laughing. “Come ahead!” he cried to Ormsby. “Lend

a hand here!”

He had a strong sense of commercial values. To let a marketable

commodity lie out and be ruined by the rain was repellent to all

his convictions of economics. It might have been as much for the

sake of the lime itself as from a sort of half-pity for the deserted

lime-burner--for Peter Knowles had not the cast of countenance or of

soul that preëmpted a fellow feeling--that he caught up a great shovel

that lay at hand.

“I’ll undertake to learn the ropes in a trice,” he declared, throwing

his coat on the ground.

Knowles only stared at him in surly amazement, but Ormsby, who had

often seen the process, threw aside the half-burnt-out logs and

followed the lead of the juggler, who, tense, light, active, the white

flare, terrible so close at hand, on his face and figure, began to

shovel the lumps into the barrow or cart made to receive the lime.

Then, as the wind swept by with a warning note, Knowles too fell

to work, and added the capacities of his experience to the sheer

uninstructed force of the willing volunteers. They made it short work.

The two neophytes found it a scorching experiment, and more than once

they fell back, flinching from the inherent heat of the flying powder

as they shoveled it into the mouth of the grotto.

“I had no idea,” the juggler said, as he stood by the embers when

it was all over, looking from one smarting hand to the other, “that

quicklime is so very powerful, so caustic an agent. I can believe

you when you say that if you should put a body in that bed there it

would be consumed by morning,--bones and all?” He became suddenly

interrogative.

“Nare toe nor toe-nail lef’,” returned Peter Knowles succinctly, as if

he had often performed this feat as a scientific experiment.

The juggler lifted his eyes to the face of the man opposite. They

dilated and lingered fascinated with a sort of horror; for that strange

anamorphosis had once more possessed it. All at variance it was with

its natural contours, as the heated air streamed up from the bed of

half-calcined stone,--trembling through this shimmering medium, yet

preserving the semblance of humanity, like the face of some mythical

being, demon or ghoul. A dawning significance was on his own face,

of which he was unconscious, but which the other noted. How might he

utilize this property of air and heat and quicklime in some of those

wonders of jugglery at which he was so expert? More than once, as he

walked away, he turned back to gaze anew at the phenomenon, his trim

figure lightly poised, his hand in his belt, his blazer thrown over his

arm, that gleam of discovery on his face.

As the encompassing rocks and foliage at last hid him from view, Peter

Knowles looked down into the fire.

“That air a true word. The quicklime would eat every bone,” he said

slowly. “But what air _he_ aimin’ ter know fur?” And once more

he looked curiously at the spot where the juggler had vanished,

remembering the guise of discovery and elation his face had worn.