CHAPTER III

It was the last month of the year, and the month was waning. The winds

had rifled the woods and the sere leaves all had fallen. Yet still a

bright after-thought of the autumnal sunshine glowed along the mountain

spurs, for the tardy winter loitered on the way, and the silver rime

that lay on the black frost-grapes melted at a beam.

“The weather hev been powerful onseasonable an’ onreasonable, ter

my mind,” said old Jonas Scruggs, accepting a rickety chair in his

neighbor’s porch. “’Tain’t healthy.”

“Waal, ’tain’t goin’ ter last,” rejoined Mrs. Knox, from the doorway,

where she sat with her knitting. “’Twar jes’ ter-day I seen my old

gray cat run up that thar saplin’ an’ hang by her claws with her head

down’ards. An’ I hev always knowed ez that air a sure sign of a change.”

Presently she added, “The fire air treadin’ snow now.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the deep chimney-place, where a dull

wood fire was sputtering fitfully with a sound that suggested footfalls

crunching on a crust of snow.

“I dunno ez _I_ need be a-hankerin’ fur a change in the weather,

cornsiderin’ the rheumatiz in my shoulder ez I kerried around with me

ez a constancy las’ winter,” remarked Jonas Scruggs, pre-empting a

grievance in any event.

“Thar’s the wild geese a-sailin’ south,” Hilary said, in a low,

melancholy drawl, as he smoked his pipe, lounging idly on the step of

the porch.

His mother laid her knitting in her lap and gazed over her spectacles

into the concave vault of the sky, so vast as seen from the vantage

ground of the little log cabin on the mountain’s brow. Bending to the

dark, wooded ranges encircling the horizon, it seemed of a crystalline

transparency and of wonderful gradations of color. The broad blue

stretches overhead merged into a delicate green of exquisite purity,

and thence issued a suffusion of the faintest saffron in which flakes

of orange burned like living fire. A jutting spur intercepted the sight

of the sinking sun, and with its dazzling disk thus screened, upon

the brilliant west might be descried the familiar microscopic angle

speeding toward the south. A vague clamor floated downward.

“Them fow_els_, sure enough!” she said. “Sence I war a gal I hev

knowed ’em by thar flyin’ always in that thar peaked p’int.”

“They keep thar alignment ez reg’lar,” said her son suddenly, “jes’

like we-uns hev ter do in the army. They hev actially got thar markers.

Look at ’em dress thar ranks! An’ thar’s even a sergeant-major standin’

out ez stiff an’ percise--see him! Thar! Column forward! Guide left!

March!” he cried delightedly.

“I ’lowed, Hilary, ez ye bed in an’ about bed enough o’ the army,” said

the guest, bluntly.

Hilary’s face changed. But for some such reminder he sometimes forgot

that missing right hand. He made no answer, his moody eyes fastened on

that aërial marshaling along the vast plain of the sunset. His right

arm was gone, and the stump dangled helplessly with its superfluity of

brown jeans sleeve bound about it.

“Now that air a true word!” exclaimed Mrs. Knox, “only Hil’ry won’t hev

it so. _I_ ’lows ter him ez he los’ his arm through jinin’ the Confed’

army, an’ _he_ ’lows ’twar gittin’ in a fight with one o’ his own

comrades.”

Jonas Scruggs glanced keenly at her from under his bushy, grizzled

eyebrows, his lips solemnly puckered, and his stubbly pointed chin

resting on his knotty hands, which were clasped upon his stout stick.

He had the dispassionate, pondering aspect of an umpire, which seemed

to invite the cheerful submission of differences.

“Ye knows I war fur the Union, an’ so war his dad,” she continued. “My

old man had been ailin’ ennyhows, but this hyar talk o’ bustin’ up the

Union--why, it jes’ fairly harried him inter his grave. An’ I ’lowed

ez Hil’ry would be fur the Union, too, like everybody in the mountings

ez hed good sense. But when a critter-company o’ Confeds rid up the

mounting one day Hil’ry he talked with some of ’em, an’ he war stubborn

ever after. An’ so he jined the critter-company.”

She fell suddenly silent, and taking up her needles knitted a row or

two, her absorbed eyes, kindling with retrospection, fixed on the

far horizon, for Mrs. Knox was in a position to enjoy the melancholy

pleasures of a true prophet of evil, and although she had never

specifically forewarned Hilary of the precise nature of the disaster

that had ensued upon his enlistment, she had sought to defer and

prevent it, and at last had consented only because she felt she must.

She had her own secret satisfaction that the result was no worse;

it lacked much of the ghastly horrors that she had foreboded--death

itself, or the terrible uncertainty of hoping against hope, and

fearing the uttermost dread that must needs abide with those to whom

the “missing” are dear. Never now could the fact be worse, and thus

she could reconcile herself, and talk of it with a certain relish of

finality, as of a chapter of intense and painful interest but closed

forever.

The old man nodded his head with deliberative gravity until she

recommenced, when he relapsed into motionless attention.

“An’ Hil’ry fought in a heap o’ battles, and got shot a time or two,

an’ war laid up in the horspital, an’ kem out cured, an’ fought agin.

An’ one day he got inter a quar’l with one o’ his bes’ frien’s. They

war jes’ funnin’ afust, an’ Hil’ry hit him harder’n he liked, an’ he

got mad, an’ bein’ a horseback he kicked Hil’ry. An’ Hil’ry jumped on

him ez suddint ez a painter, ter pull him out’n his saddle an’ drub

him. Hil’ry never drawed no shootin’ irons nor nuthin’, an’ warn’t

expectin’ ter hurt him serious. But this hyar Jack Bixby he war full o’

liquor an’ fury; he started his horse a-gallopin’, an’ ez Hil’ry hung

on ter the saddle he drawed his bowie-knife an’ slashed Hil’ry’s arm ez

war holdin’ ter him agin an’ agin, till they war both soakin’ in blood,

an’ at last Hil’ry drapped. An’ the arm fevered, an’ the surgeon tuk it

off. An’ so Hil’ry hed his discharge gin him, sence the Confeds hed no

mo’ use fur him. An’ he walked home, two hunderd mile, he say.”

During this recital the young mountaineer gave no indication of its

effect upon him, and offered no word of correction to conform the

details to the facts. His mother had so often told his story with

the negligence of the domestic narrator, that little by little it

had become thus distorted, and he knew from experience that should

he interfere to alter a phase, another as far from reality would be

presently substituted, for Mrs. Knox cared little how the event had

been precipitated, or for aught except that his arm was gone, that he

was well, and that she had him at home again, from which he should

no more wander, for she had endeavored to utilize the misfortune to

reinforce her authority, and illustrate her favorite dogma of the

infallibility of her judgment.

Her words must have renewed bitter reminiscences, but his face was

impassive, and not a muscle stirred as he silently watched the ranks of

the migrating birds fade into the furthest distance.

“An’ now Hil’ry thinks it air cur’ous ez I ain’t sorrowin’ ’bout’n his

arm,” she continued. “Naw, sir! I’m glad he escaped alive an’ that he

can’t fight no mo’--not ef the war lasts twenty year, an’ it ’pears

like it air powerful persistin’.”

It still raged, but to the denizens of this sequestered district there

seemed little menace in its fury. They could hear but an occasional

rumor, like the distant rumbling of thunder, and discern, as it were, a

vague, transient glimmer as token of the fierce and scathing lightnings

far away desolating and destroying all the world beyond these limits of

peace.

Episodes of civilized warfare were little dreaded by the few

inhabitants of the mountains, the old men, the women and the children,

so dominated were they by the terrors of vagrant bands of stragglers

and marauders, classed under the generic name of bushwhackers,

repudiated by both armies, and given over to the plunder of

non-combatants of both factions in this region of divided allegiance.

At irregular intervals they infested this neighborhood, foraging where

they listed, and housing themselves in the old hotel.

Looking across the gorge from where the three sat in the cabin porch,

there was visible on the opposite heights a great white frame building,

many-windowed and with wide piazzas. There were sulphur springs hard

by, and before the war the place was famous as a health resort. Now

it was a melancholy spectacle--silent, tenantless, vacant--infinitely

lonely in the vast wilderness. Some of the doors, wrenched from their

hinges, had served the raiders for fuel. The glass had been wantonly

broken in many of the windows by the jocose thrusts of a saber. The

grassy square within surrounded by the buildings was overgrown with

weeds, and here lizards basked, and in their season wild things

nested. There was never a suggestion of the gayeties of the past--only

in the deserted old ball-room when a slant of sunshine would fall

athwart the dusty floor, a bluebottle might airily zigzag in the errant

gleam, or when the moon was bright on the long piazzas a cobweb, woven

dense, would flaunt out between the equidistant shadows of the columns

like the flutter of a white dress. The place had a weird aspect, and

was reputed haunted. The simple mountaineers did not venture within it,

and the ghosts had it much of the time to themselves.

The obscurities of twilight were presently enfolded about it. The

white walls rose, vaguely glimmering, against the pine forests in the

background, and above the shadowy abysses which it overlooked.

The old man was gazing meditatively at it as he said, reprehensively,

“’Pears like ter me, Hil’ry, ez ye oughter be thankful ye warn’t killed

utterly--ye oughter be thankful it air no wuss.”

“Hil’ry ain’t thankful fur haffen o’ nuthin’.” Mrs. Knox interposed.

“’Twar jes’ las’ night he looked like su’thin’ in a trap. He walked the

floor till nigh day--till I jes’ tuk heart o’ grace an’ told him ez his

dad bed laid them puncheons ter last, an’ not to be walked on till they

were wore thinner’n a clapboard in one night. An’ yit he air alive an’

hearty, an’ I hev got my son agin. An’ I sets ez much store by him with

one arm ez two.”

And indeed she looked cheerfully about the dusky landscape as she rose,

rolling the sock on her needles and thrusting them into the ball of

yarn. Old Jonas Scruggs hesitated when she told him alluringly that

she had a “mighty nice ash cake kivered on the h’a’th,” but he said

that his daughter-in-law, Jerusha, would be expecting him, and he could

in no wise bide to supper. And finally he started homeward a little

wistful, but serene in the consciousness of having obeyed the behests

of Jerusha, who in these hard times had grown sensitive about his habit

of taking meals with his friends. “As ef,” she argued, “I fed ye on

half rations at home.”

Hilary rose at last from the doorstep, and turning slowly to go within,

his absent glance swept the night-shadowed scene. He paused suddenly,

and his heart seemed beating in his throat.

A point of red light had sprung up in the vague glooms. A

will-o’-the-wisp?--some wavering “ghost’s candle” to light him to his

grave. With his accurate knowledge of the locality he sought to place

it. The distant gleam seemed to shine from a window of the old hotel,

and this bespoke the arrival of rude occupants. He heard a wild halloo,

a snatch of song perhaps--or was it fancy? And were the iterative

echoes in the gorge the fancy of the stern old crags?

For the first time since he returned, maimed and helpless, and a

non-combatant, were the lawless marauders quartered at the old hotel.

He stood for a while gazing at it with dilated eyes. Then he silently

stepped within the cabin and barred the door with his uncertain and

awkward left hand.

The cheerful interior of the house was all aglow. The fire had been

mended, and yellow flames were undulating about the logs with many a

gleaming line of grace. Blue and purple and scarlet flashes they showed

in fugitive iridescence. They illumined his face, and his mother noted

its pallor--the deep pallor which he had brought from the hospital.

“Ye hev got yer fancies ag’in,” she cried. Then with anxious curiosity,

“Whar be yer right hand now, Hil’ry?”

She alluded to that cruel hallucination of sensation in an amputated

arm.

“Whar it oughter be,” he groaned; “on the trigger o’ my carbine.”

His grief was not only that his arm was gone. It was to recognize the

fact that his heart no longer beat exultantly at the mere prospect of

conflict. And he was anguished with the poignant despair of a helpless

man who has once been foremost in the fight.

The next day he was moody and morose, and brooded silently over the

fire. The doors were closed, for winter had come at last. The hoar

frost whitened the great gaunt limbs of the trees, and lay in every

curled dead leaf on the ground, and followed the zigzag lines of the

fence, and embossed the fodder stack and the ash-hopper and the roofs

with fantastic incongruities in silver tracery.

The sun did not shine, the clouds dropped lower and lower still, a wind

sprung up, and presently the snow was flying.

The widow esteemed this as in the nature of a special providence, since

the dizzying whirl of white flakes veiled the little cabin and its

humble surroundings from the observation of the free-booting tenants of

the old hotel across the gorge. “It air powerful selfish, I know, ter

hope the bushwhackers will forage on somebody else’s poultry an’ sech,

but somehows my own chickens seem nigher kin ter me than other folkses’

be. I never see no sech ten-toed chickens ez mine nowhar.”

Reflecting further upon the peculiar merits of these chickens,

ten-toed, being Dorking, reinforced by the claims of consanguinity, she

presently evolved as a precautionary measure a scheme of concealing

them in the “roof-room” of the cabin. And from time to time, as the

silent day wore on, like the blast of a bugle the crow of a certain

irrepressible young rooster demonstrated how precarious was his

retirement in the loft.

“Hear the insurance o’ that thar fow_el_!” she would exclaim in

exasperation. “S’pose’n the bushwhackers war hyar now, axin fur

poultry, an’ I war a-tellin’ ’em, ez smilin’ an’ mealy-mouthed ez I

could, that we hain’t got no fow_els_! That thar reckless critter would

be in the fryin’-pan ’fore night. They’ll l’arn ye ter hold yer jaw,

I’ll be bound!”

But the bushwhackers did not come, and the next day the veil of the

falling snow still interposed, and the familiar mountains near at hand,

and the long reaches of the unexplored perspective were all obscured;

the drifts deepened, and the fence seemed dwarfed half covered as it

was, and the boles of the trees hard by were burlier, bereft of their

accustomed height. The storm ceased late one afternoon; over the white

earth was a somber gray sky, but all along the horizon above the snowy

summits of the western mountains a slender scarlet line betokened a

fair morrow.

Hilary, in the weariness of inaction, had taken note of the weather,

and with his hat drawn down over his brow he strolled out to the verge

of the precipice.

Overlooking the familiar landscape, he detected an unaccustomed smoke

visible a mile or more down the narrow valley. Although but a tiny,

hazy curl in the distance, it did not escape the keen eyes of the

mountaineer. He could not distinguish tents against the snow, but the

location suggested a camp.

The bushwhackers still lingered at the old hotel across the gorge. He

could already see in the gathering dusk the firelight glancing fitfully

against the window. He wondered if it were visible as far as the camp

in the valley.

He stood for a long time, gazing across the snowy steeps at the

desolate old building, with the heavy pine forests about it and the

crags below--their dark faces seamed with white lines wherever a drift

had lodged in a cleft or the interlacing tangles of icy vines might

cling. In the pallid dreariness of the landscape and the gray dimness

of the hovering night the lighted window blazed with the lambent

splendors of some great yellow topaz. His uncontrolled fancy was

trespassing upon the scene within. His heart was suddenly all a-throb

with keen pain. His idle, vague imaginings of the stalwart horsemen and

what they were now doing had revived within him that insatiate longing

for the martial life which he had loved, that ineffable grief for the

opportunity of brave deeds of value which he felt he had lost.

The drill had taught him the mastery of his muscles, but those

more potent forces, his impulses, had known no discipline. A

wild inconsequence now possessed him. He took no heed of reason,

of prudence. He was dominated by the desire to look in upon the

bushwhackers from without--they would never know--undiscovered,

unimagined, like some vague and vagrant specter that might wander

forlorn in the labyrinthine old house.

With an alert step he turned and strode away into the little cabin.

It was very cheerful around the hearth, and the first words he heard

reminded him of the season.

His younger brother, a robust lad of thirteen, was drawling

reminiscences of other and happier Christmas-tides.

“Sech poppin’ o’ guns ez we-uns used ter hev!” said the tow-headed boy,

listlessly swinging his heels against the rungs of the chair.

“The Lord knows thar’s enough poppin’ of guns now!” said his mother.

She stooped to insert a knife under the baking hoe-cake for the purpose

of turning it, which she did with a certain deft and agile flap,

difficult of acquirement and impossible to the uninitiated.

“I ’members,” she added, vivaciously, “we-uns used ter always hev a

hollow log charged with powder an’ tech it off fur the Chris’mus. It

sounded like thunder--like the cannon the folks hev got nowadays.”

“An’ hawg-killin’ times kem about the Chris’mus,” said the boy,

sustaining his part in the fugue.

“Folks _had_ hawgs ter kill in them days,” was his mother’s melancholy

rejoinder as she meditated on the contrast of the pinched penury of the

present with the peace and plenty of the past when there was no war nor

rumor of war.

“Ef ye git a hawg’s bladder an’ blow it up an’ tie the eend right tight

an’ stomp on it suddint it will crack ez loud!” said the noise-loving

boy. “Peas air good ter rattle in ’em, too,” he added, with a wistful

smile, dwelling on the clamors of his happy past.

“Waal, folks ez hed good sense seen more enjyement in eatin’ spare-ribs

an’ souse an’ sech like hawg-meat than in stomping on hawgs’ bladders.

I hev never favored hawg-killin’ times jes’ ter gin a noisy boy the

means ter keep Christian folks an’ church members a-jumpin’ out’n thar

skins with suddint skeer all the Chris’mus.”

This was said with the severity of a personality, but the boy’s face

distended as he listened.

Suddenly his eyes brightened with excitement. “Hil’ry,” he cried,

joyously, “be you-uns a-goin’ ter fire that thar pistol off fur the

Chris’mus?”

Mrs. Knox rose from her kneeling posture on the hearth and stared

blankly at Hilary.

He had come within the light of the fire. His eyes were blazing, his

pale cheeks flushed, his long, lank figure was tense with energy. The

weapon in his hand glittered as he held it at arm’s length.

“Bein’ ez it air ready loaded I reckon mebbe I ain’t so awk’ard yit but

I could make out ter fire it ef I war cornered,” he muttered, as if to

himself. “Leastwise, I’ll take it along fur company.”

“Air ye goin’ ter fire it ’kase this be Chris’mus eve?” she asked in

doubt.

He glanced absently at her and said not a word.

The next moment he had sprung out of the door and they heard his step

crunching through the frozen crust of snow as he strode away.

There were rifts in the clouds and the moon looked out. The white,

untrodden road lay, a glittering avenue, far along the solitudes of the

dense and leafless forests. Sometimes belts of vapor shimmered before

him, and as he went he saw above them the distant gables of the old

hotel rising starkly against the chill sky. In view presently in the

white moonlight were the long piazzas of the shattered old building,

the shadows of the many tall pillars distinct upon the floor. He heard

the sound of the sentry’s tread, and down the vista between the columns

and the shadowy colonnade he saw the soldierly figure pacing slowly to

and fro.

He had not reckoned on this precaution on the part of the bushwhackers.

But the rambling old building, in every nook and cranny, was familiar

to him. While the sentry’s back was turned, he silently crept along the

piazza to an open passageway which led to the grassy square within.

The rime on the dead weeds glistened in the moonbeams; the snow lay

trampled along the galleries on which opened the empty rooms; here and

there, as the doors swung on their hinges, he could see through the

desolate void within, the bleak landscape beyond. There were horses

stabled in some of them, and in the center of the square two or three

were munching their feed from the old music-stand, utilized as a

manger. One of them, a handsome bay, arched his glossy neck to gaze at

the intruder over the gauzy sheen of gathering vapor, his full dilated

eyes with the moonlight in them. Then with a snort he went back to his

corn.

Only one window was alight. There was a roaring fire within, and the

ruddy glow danced on the empty walls and on the hilarious, bearded

faces grouped about the hearth. The men, clad in butternut jeans,

smoked their pipes as they sat on logs or lounged at length on the

floor. A festive canteen was a prominent adjunct of the scene, and was

often replenished from a burly keg in the corner.

As Hilary approached the window he suddenly recognized a face which

he had cause to remember. He had not seen this face since Jack Bixby

looked furiously down from his saddle, hacking the while with his

bowie-knife at his comrade’s bleeding right arm. No enemy had done this

thing--Hilary’s own fast friend.

He divined readily enough that after this dastardly deed Bixby had

not dared to seek to rejoin Captain Bertley’s squadron, and thus had

found kindred spirits among this marauding band of bushwhackers. His

face was not flushed with liquor now--twice the canteen passed Jack

Bixby unheeded. His big black hat was thrust far back on his shock of

red hair; he held his great red beard meditatively in one hand, while

the other fluttered the pages of a letter. He slowly read aloud, in a

droning voice, now and then, from the ill-spelled scrawl. He looked up

sometimes laughing, and they all laughed in sympathy.

“‘Pete Blake he axed ’bout ye, an’ sent his respec’s, an’ Jerry Dunders

says tell ye ‘Howdy’ fur him, though ye be fightin’ on the wrong side,’”

“Jerry,” he explained in a conversational tone, “he jined the Loyal

Tennesseans over yander in White County.”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder westward, and one of the men said

that he had known Jerry since he was “knee-high ter a duck.”

In a strained, unnatural tone Jack Bixby laboriously read on.

“‘Little Ben prays at night fur you. He prayed some last night out’n

his own head. He said he prayed the good Lord would deliver daddy from

all harm.’”

The man’s eyes were glistening. He laughed hurriedly, but he coughed,

too, and the comrade who knew Jerry at so minute a size seemed also

acquainted with little Ben, and said a “pearter young one” had never

stepped. “‘He prayed the good Lord would deliver daddy from all harm,’”

Jack Bixby solemnly repeated as he folded the letter. And silence fell

upon the group.

Hilary, strangely softened, was turning--he was quietly slipping away

from the window when he became suddenly aware that there were other

stealthy figures in the square, and he saw through the frosty panes the

scared face of the sentry bursting into the doorway with a tardy alarm.

There was a rush from the square. Pistol shots rang out sharp on the

chill air, and the one-armed man, conscious of his helpless plight,

entrapped in the mêlée, fled as best he might through the familiar

intricacies of the old hotel--up the stairs, through echoing halls and

rooms, and down a long corridor, till he paused panting and breathless

in the door of the old ball-room.

The rude, unplastered, whitewashed walls were illumined by the

moonlight, for all down one side of the long apartment the windows

overlooking the gorge were full of the white radiance, and in

glittering squares it lay upon the floor.

He remembered suddenly that there was no other means of egress. To be

found here was certain capture. As he turned to retrace his way he

heard swift steps approaching. Guided by the sound of his flight one of

the surprised party had followed him, lured by the hope of escape.

There was evidently a hot pursuit in the rear. Now and then the long

halls reverberated with pistol shots, and a bullet buried itself in

the door as Jack Bixby burst into the room. He stared aghast at his

old comrade for an instant. Then as he heard the rapid footfalls, the

jingle of spurs, the clamor of voices behind him, he ran to one of the

windows. He drew back dismayed by the sight of the depths of the gorge

below. He was caught as in a trap.

Hilary Knox could never account for the inspiration of that moment.

At right angles with the loftier main building a one-story wing jutted

out, and the space within its gable roof and above its ceiling, which

was on a level with the floor of the ball-room, was separated from that

apartment only by a rude screen of boards.

Hilary burst one of these rough boards loose at the lower end, and

held it back with the left hand spared him.

“Jump through, Jack!” he cried out to his old enemy. “Jump through the

plaster o’ the ceilin’ right hyar. The counter in the bar-room down

thar will break yer fall.”

Jack Bixby sprang through the dark aperture. There was a crash within

as the plaster fell.

The next moment a bullet whizzed through Hilary’s hat, and the

ball-room was astir with armed men; among them Hilary recognized other

mountaineers, old friends and neighbors who had joined the “Loyal

Tennesseans.”

“I never would hev thought ye would hev let Jack Bixby git past ye

arter the way he treated ye,” one of them remarked, when the search had

proved futile.

“Waal,” said Hilary, miserably, “I hain’t hed much grit nohows sence

the surgeon took off my arm.”

His interlocutor looked curiously at the hole in the young fellow’s

hat, pierced while he stood his ground that another man might escape.

Hilary had no nice sense of discrimination. His idea of courage was the

onslaught.

The others crowded about, and Hilary relished the suggestions of

military comradeship that clung about them, albeit they were of the

opposing faction, for they seemed so strangely cordial. Each must needs

shake his hand--his awkward left hand--and he was patted on the back,

and one big, bluff soul, who beamed on him with a broadly delighted

smile, gave him a severe hug, such as a fatherly bear might administer.

“Hil’ry ain’t got much grit, he says,” one of them remarked with a

guffaw. “He jes’ helped another feller escape whut he hed a grudge

agin, while he stood ez onconsarned ez a target, an’ I shot him through

the hat an’ the ball ploughed up his scalp in good fashion. Glad my aim

warn’t a leetle mended.”

Hilary’s hat was gone; one of the men persisted in an exchange, and

Hilary wore now a fresh new one instead of that so hastily snatched

from him as a souvenir.

He thought they were all sorry for him because of the loss of his arm;

yet this was strange, for many men had lost limb and life at the hands

of this troop, which was of an active and bloody reputation. He could

not dream they thought him a hero--these men accustomed to deeds of

daring! He had no faint conception of the things they were saying of

him to one another, of his gallantry and his high and noble courage in

risking his life that his personal enemy might escape, when there was

a chance for but one--his false friend, who had destroyed his right

arm--as they mounted their horses and rode away to their camp in the

valley with the prisoners they had taken.

Hilary stood listening wistfully to the jingling of their spurs and

the clanking of their sabers and the regular beat of the hoofs of the

galloping troop--sounds from out the familiar past, from thrilling

memories, how dear!

Then as he plodded along the lonely wintry way homeward he was dismayed

to reflect upon his own useless, maimed life--upon what he had suffered

and what he had done.

“What ailed me ter let him off?” he exclaimed in amaze. “What ailed me

ter help him git away--jes’ account o’ the word o’ a w’uthless brat.

Fur _me_ ter let _him_ off when I hed my chance ter pay my grudge so

slick!”

He paused on the jagged verge of a crag and looked absently over the

vast dim landscape, bounded by the snowy ranges about the horizon.

Here and there mists hovered above the valley, but the long slant of

the moonbeams pervaded the scene and lingered upon its loneliness with

luminous melancholy. The translucent amber sphere was sinking low in

the vaguely violet sky, and already the dark summits of the westward

pines showed a fibrous glimmer.

In the east a great star was quivering, most radiant, most pellucid.

He gazed at it with sudden wistfulness. Christmas dawn was near--and

this was the herald of redemption. So well it was for him that science

had never invaded these skies! His simple faith beheld the Star of

Bethlehem that the wise men saw when they fell down and worshiped. He

broke from his moody regrets--ah, surely, of all the year this was the

time when a child’s prayer should meet most gracious heed in heaven,

should most prevail on earth! His heart was stirred with a strange and

solemn thrill, and he blessed the impulse of forgiveness for the sake

of a little child.

A roseate haze had gathered about the star, deepening and glowing

till the sun was in the east, and the splendid Day, charged with the

sanctities of commemoration, with the fulfillment of prophecy, with the

promises of all futurity, came glittering over the mountains.

But the sun was a long way off, and its brilliancy made scant

impression on the intense cold. Thus it was he noticed, as he came in

sight of home, that, despite the icy atmosphere, the cabin door was

ajar. It moved uncertainly, yet no wind stirred.

“Thar’s somebody ahint the door ez hev seen me a-comin’ an’ air waitin’

ter ketch me ‘Chris’mus Gift,’” he argued, astutely.

To forestall this he took a devious path through the brush, sprang

suddenly upon the porch, thrust in his arm, and clutched the unwary

party ambushed behind the door.

“Chris’mus Gift!” he shouted, as he burst into the room.

But it was Delia waiting for him, blushing and embarrassed, and seeming

nearer tears than laughter. And his mother was chuckling in enjoyment

of the situation.

“Now, whyn’t ye let Dely ketch you-uns Chris’mus Gift like she counted

on doin’, stiddier ketchin’ her? She hain’t got nuthin’ ter gin yer fur

Chris’mus Gift but herself.”

Hilary knew her presence here and the enterprise of “catching him

Christmas Gift” was another overture at reconciliation, but when he

said, “Waal, I’ll thank ye kindly, Dely,” she still looked at him in

silence, with a timorous eye and a quivering lip.

“But, law!” exclaimed Mrs. Knox, still laughing, “I needn’t set my

heart on dancin’ at the weddin’. Dely ain’t no ways ter be trusted. She

hev done like a Injun-giver afore now. Mebbe she’ll take herself away

from ye agin.”

Delia found her voice abruptly.

“No--I won’t, nuther!” she said, sturdily.

And thus it was settled.

They made what Christmas cheer they could, and he told them of a new

plan as they sat together round the fire. The women humored it as a

sick fancy. They never thought to see it proved. At the school held at

irregular intervals before the war he had picked up a little reading

and a smattering of writing. This Christmas day he began anew. He

manufactured ink of logwood that had been saved for dyeing, and the

goose lent him a quill. An old blank book, thrown aside when the hotel

proprietors had removed their valuables, served as paper.

As his mother had said it was not Hilary’s nature to be thankful for

the half of anything; he attacked the unpromising future with that

undismayed ardor that had distinguished him in those cavalry charges

in which he had loved to ride. With practice his left hand became

deft; before the war was over he was a fair scribe, and he often

pridefully remarked that he couldn’t be flanked on spelling. Removing

to one of the valley towns, seeking a sphere of wider usefulness, his

mental qualities and sterling character made themselves known and his

vocation gradually became assured. He was first elected register of the

county of his new home, and later clerk of the circuit court. Other

preferments came to him, and the world went well with him. It became

broader to his view and of more gracious aspect; his leisure permitted

reading and reading fostered thought. He learned that there are more

potent influences than force, and he recognized as the germ of these

benignities that impulse of peace and good will which he consecrated

for the sake of One who became as a Little Child.

THE PANTHER

OF

JOLTON’S RIDGE

CHAPTER I

A certain wild chasm, cut deep into the very heart of a spur of the

Great Smoky Mountains, is spanned by a network, which seen from above

is the heavy interlacing timbers of a railroad bridge thrown across

the narrow space from one great cliff to the other, but seen from the

depths of the gorge below it seems merely a fantastic gossamer web

fretting the blue sky.

It often trembles with other sounds than the reverberating mountain

thunder and beneath other weight than the heavy fall of the mountain

rain. Trains flash across it at all hours of the night and day; in

the darkness the broad glare of the headlight and the flying column

of pursuing sparks have all the scenic effect of some strange uncanny

meteor, with the added emphasis of a thunderous roar and a sulphurous

smell; in the sunshine there skims over it at intervals a cloud of

white vapor and a swift black shadow.

“Sence they hev done sot up that thar bridge I hain’t seen a bar nor a

deer in five mile down this hyar gorge. An’ the fish don’t rise nuther

like they uster do. That thar racket skeers ’em.”

And the young hunter, leaning upon his rifle, his hands idly clasped

over its muzzle, gazed with disapproving eyes after the flying

harbinger of civilization as it sped across the airy structure and

plunged into the deep forest that crowned the heights.

Civilization offered no recompense to the few inhabitants of the gorge

for the exodus of deer and bear and fish. It passed swiftly far above

them, seeming to traverse the very sky. They had no share in the world;

the freighted trains brought them nothing--not even a newspaper wafted

down upon the wind; the wires flashed no word to them. The picturesque

situation of the two or three little log-houses scattered at long

intervals down the ravine; the crystal clear flow of a narrow, deep

stream--merely a silver thread as seen from the bridge above; the grand

proportions of the towering cliffs, were calculated to cultivate the

grace of imagination in the brakemen, leaning from their respective

platforms; to suggest a variation in the Pullman conductor’s jaunty

formula, “’Twould hurt our feelings pretty badly to fall over there,

I fancy,” and to remind the out-looking passenger of the utter

loneliness of the vast wilds penetrated by the railroad. But they left

no speculations behind them. The terrible sense of the inconceivable

width of the world was spared the simple-minded denizens of the woods.

The clanging, crashing trains came like the mountain storms, no one

knew whence, and went no one knew whither. The universe lay between the

rocky walls of the ravine. Even this narrow stage had its drama.

In the depths of the chasm spanned by the bridge there stood in

the shadow of one of the great cliffs a forlorn little log hut, so

precariously perched on the ledgy slope that it might have seemed the

nest of some strange bird rather than a human habitation. The huge

natural column of the crag rose sheer and straight two hundred feet

above it, but the descent from the door, though sharp and steep, was

along a narrow path leading in zigzag windings amid great bowlders and

knolls of scraggy earth, pushing their way out from among the stones

that sought to bury them, and fragments of the cliff fallen long ago

and covered with soft moss. The path appeared barely passable for man,

but upon it could have been seen the imprint of a hoof, and beside

the hut was a little shanty, from the rude window of which protruded

a horse’s head, with so interested an expression of countenance

that he looked as if he were assisting at the conversation going on

out-of-doors this mild March afternoon.

“Ye could find deer, an’ bar, an’ sech, easy enough ef ye would go

arter ’em,” replied the young hunter’s mother, as she sat in the

doorway knitting a yarn sock. “That thar still-house up yander ter the

Ridge hev skeered off the deer an’ bar fur ye worse’n the railroad

hev. Ye kin git that fur an’ no furder. Ye hev done got triflin’ an’ no

’count, an’ nuthin’ else in this worl’ ails ye,--nur the deer an’ bar,

nuther,” she concluded, with true maternal candor.

“It war tole ter me,” said an elderly man, who was seated in a

rush-bottomed chair outside the door, and who, although a visitor, bore

a lance in this domestic controversy with much freedom and spirit, “ez

how ye hed done got religion up hyar ter the Baptis’ meetin’-house the

last revival ez we hed. An’ I s’posed it war the truth.”

“I war convicted,” replied the young fellow, ambiguously, still leaning

lazily on his rifle. He was a striking figure, remarkable for a massive

proportion and muscular development, and yet not lacking the lithe,

elastic curves characteristic of first youth. A dilapidated old hat

crowned a shock of yellow hair, a sunburned face, far-seeing gray eyes,

and an expression of impenetrable calm. His butternut suit was in

consonance with the prominent ribs of his horse, the poverty-stricken

aspect of the place, and the sterile soil of a forlorn turnip patch

which embellished the slope to the water’s edge.

“Convicted!” exclaimed his mother, scornfully. “An’ sech goin’s-on

sence! Mark never _hed_ no religion to start with.”

“What did ye see when ye war convicted?” demanded the inquisitive

guest, who spoke upon the subject of religion with the authority and

asperity of an expert.

“I never seen nuthin’ much.” Mark Yates admitted the fact reluctantly.

“Then ye never _hed_ no religion,” retorted Joel Ruggles. “I _knows_,

’kase I hev hed a power o’ visions. I hev viewed heaven an’ hung over

hell.” He solemnly paused to accent the effect of this stupendous

revelation.

There had lately come a new element into the simple life of the

gorge,--a force infinitely more subtle than that potency of steam which

was wont to flash across the railroad bridge; of further reaching

influences than the wide divergences of the civilization it spread in

its swift flight. Naught could resist this force of practical religion

applied to the workings of daily life. The new preacher that at

infrequent intervals visited this retired nook had wrought changes in

the methods of the former incumbent, who had long ago fallen into the

listless apathy of old age, and now was dead. His successor came like

a whirlwind, sweeping the chaff before him--a humble man, ignorant,

poor in this world’s goods, and of meager physical strength. It was in

vain that the irreverent sought to bring ridicule upon him, that he was

called a “skimpy saint” in reference to his low stature, “the widow’s

mite,” a sly jest at the hero-worship of certain elderly relicts in his

congregation, a “two-by-four text” to illustrate his slim proportions.

He was armed with the strength of righteousness, and it sufficed.

It was much resented at first that he carried his spiritual supervision

into the personal affairs of those of his charge, and required that

they should make these conform to their outward profession. And thus

old feuds must needs be patched up, old enemies forgiven, restitution

made, and the kingdom set in order as behooves the domain of a Prince

of Peace. The young people especially were greatly stirred, and Mark

Yates, who had never hitherto thought much of such subjects, had

experienced an awakening of moral resolve, and had even appeared one

day at the mourners’ bench.

Thus he had once gone up to be prayed for, “convicted of sin,” as the

phrase goes in those secluded regions. But the sermons were few, for

the intervals were long between the visitations of the little preacher,

and Mark’s conscience had not learned the art of holding forth with

persistence and pertinence, which spiritual eloquence (not always

welcome) is soon acquired by a receptive, sensitive temperament. Mark

was cheerful, light-hearted, imaginative, adaptable. The traits of the

wilder, ruder element of the district, the hardy courage, the physical

prowess, the adventurous escapades appealed to his sense of the

picturesque as no merit of the dull domestic boor, content with the

meager agricultural routine, tamed by the endless struggle with work

and unalterable poverty, could stir him. He had no interest in defying

the law and shared none of the profits, but the hair-breadth escapes

of certain illicit distillers hard by, their perpetual jeopardy, the

ingenuity of their wily devices to evade discovery by the revenue

officers and yet supply all the contiguous region, the cogency of their

arguments as to the injustice of the taxation that bore so heavily upon

the small manufacturer, their moral posture of resisting and outwitting

oppression--all furnished abundant interest to a mind alert, capable,

and otherwise unoccupied.

Not so blunt were his moral perceptions, however, that he did not

secretly wince when old Joel Ruggles, after meditating silently,

chewing his quid of tobacco, reverted from the detail of the supposed

spiritual wonders, which in his ignorance he fancied he had seen, to

the matter in hand:

“Hain’t you-uns hearn ’bout the sermon ez the preacher hev done

preached agin that thar still?--_he_ called it a den o’ ’niquity.”

“I hearn tell ’bout’n it yander ter the still,” replied Mark, calmly.

“They ’lowed thar ez they hed a mind ter pull him down out’n the pulpit

fur his outdaciousness, ’kase they war all thar ter the meetin’-house,

an’ _he_ seen ’em, an’ said what he said fur them ter hear.” He paused,

a trifle uncomfortable at the suggestion of violence. Then reassuring

himself by a moment’s reflection, he went on in an off-hand way, “I

reckon they ain’t a-goin’ ter do nuthin’ agin _him_, but he hed better

take keer how he jows at them still folks. They air a hard-mouthed

generation, like the Bible says, an’ they hev laid off ter stop that

thar talk o’ his’n.”

“Did ye hear ’em sayin’ what they war a-aimin’ ter do?” asked Ruggles,

keenly inquisitive.

“’Tain’t fer me ter tell what I hearn whilst visitin’ in other folkses’

houses,” responded the young fellow, tartly. “But I never hearn ’em

say nuthin’ ’ceptin’ they war a-goin’ ter try ter stop his talk,” he

added. “I tells ye that much ’kase ye’ll be a-thinkin’ I hearn worse

ef I don’t. That air all I hearn ’em say ’bout’n it. An’ I reckon they

don’t mean nuthin’, but air talkin’ big whilst mad ’bout’n it. They air

’bleeged ter know thar goin’s-on ain’t fitten fur church members.”

“An’ _ye_ a-jowin’ ’bout’n a hard-mouthed generation,” interposed his

mother, indignantly. “Ye’re one of ’em yerself. Thar hain’t been a bite

of wild meat in this hyar house fur a month an’ better. Mark hev’

mighty nigh tucken ter live at the still; an’ when he kin git hisself

up to the p’int o’ goin’ a-huntin’, ’pears like he can’t find nuthin’

ter shoot. I hev hearn a sayin’ ez thar is a use fur every livin’

thing, an’ it ’pears ter me ez Mark’s use air mos’ly ter waste powder

an’ lead.”

Mark received these sarcasms with an imperturbability which might in

some degree account for their virulence and, indeed, Mrs. Yates often

averred that, say what she might, she could not “move that thar boy no

more’n the mounting.”

He shifted his position a trifle, still leaning, however, upon the

rifle, with his clasped hands over the muzzle and his chin resting

on his hands. The quiet radiance of a smile was beginning to dawn in

his clear eyes as he looked at his interlocutors, and he spoke with a

confidential intonation:

“The las’ meetin’ but two ez they hev hed up yander ter the church

they summonsed them thar Brices ter ’count fur runnin’ of a still,

an’ a-gittin’ drunk, an’ sech, an’ the Brices never come, nor tuk no

notice nor nuthin’. An’ then the nex’ meetin’ they tuk an’ turned ’em

out’n the church. An’ when they hearn ’bout that at the still, them

Brices--the whole lay-out--war pipin’ hot ’bout’n it. Thar warn’t nare

member what voted fur a-keepin’ of ’em in; an’ that stuck in ’em,

too--all thar old frien’s a-goin’ agin ’em! I s’pose ’twar right ter

turn ’em out,” he added, after a reflective pause, “though thar is them

ez war a-votin’ agin them Brices ez hev drunk a powerful lot o’ whisky

an’ sech in thar lifetime.”

“Thar will be a sight less whisky drunk about hyar ef that small-sized

preacher-man kin keep up the holt he hev tuk on temperance sermons,”

said Mrs. Yates a trifle triumphantly. Then with a clouding brow: “I

could wish he war bigger. I ain’t faultin’ the ways o’ Providence in

nowise, but it do ’pear ter me ez one David and G’liath war enough fur

the tales o’ religion ’thout hevin’ our own skimpy leetle shepherd

and the big Philistines of the distillers at loggerheads--whenst

flat peebles from the brook would be a mighty pore dependence agin

a breech-loading rifle. G’liath’s gun war more’n apt ter hev been

jes’ a old muzzle-loader, fur them war the times afore the war fur

the Union; but these hyar moonshiners always hev the best an’ newest

shootin’-irons that Satan kin devise--not knowin’ when some o’ the

raiders o’ the revenue force will kem down on ’em--an’ that makes a

man keen ter be among the accepted few in the new quirks o’ firearms.

A mighty small man the preacher-man ’pears ter be! If it war the

will o’ Providence I could wish fur a few more pounds o’ Christian

pastor, considering the size an’ weight ez hev been lavished on them

distillers.”

“It air scandalous fur a church member ter be a gittin’ drunk an’

foolin’ round the still-house an’ sech,” said Joel Ruggles, “an’ ef ye

hed ever hed any religion, Mark, ye’d hev knowed that ’thout hevin’ ter

be told.”

“An’ it’s scandalous fur a church member to drink whisky at all,” said

Mrs. Yates, sharply, knitting off her needle, and beginning another

round. A woman’s ideas of reform are always radical.

Joel Ruggles did not eagerly concur in this view of the abstinence

question; he said nothing in reply.

“Thar hain’t sech a mighty call ter drink whisky yander ter the

still,” remarked young Yates, irrelevantly, feeling perhaps the need

of a plea of defense. “It ain’t the whisky ez draws me thar. The gang

air a-hangin’ round an’ a-talkin’ an’ a-laughin’ an’ a-tellin’ tales

’bout bar-huntin’ an’ sech. An’ thar’s the grist mill a haffen mile an’

better through the woods.”

“Thar’s bad company at the still, an’ it’s a wild beast ez hev got a

fang ez bites sharp an’ deep, an’ some day ye’ll feel it, ez sure ez

ye’re a born sinner,” said Mrs. Yates, looking up solemnly at him over

her spectacles. “I never see no sense in men a-drinkin’ of whisky,” she

continued, after a pause, during which she counted her stitches. “The

wild critters in the woods hev got more reason than ter eat an’ drink

what’ll pizen ’em--but, law! it always did ’pear to me ez they war

ahead in some ways of the men, what kin talk an’ hev got the hope of

salvation.”

This thrust was neither parried nor returned. Joel Ruggles, discreetly

silent, gazed with a preoccupied air at the swift stream flowing far

below, beginning to darken with the overhanging shadows of the western

crags. And Mark still leaned his chin meditatively on his hands, and

his hands on the muzzle of his rifle, in an attitude so careless that

an unaccustomed observer might have been afraid of seeing the piece

discharged and the picturesque head blown to atoms.

Through the futility of much remonstrance his mother had lost her

patience--no great loss, it might seem, for in her mildest days she

had never been meek. Poverty and age, and in addition her anxiety

concerning a son now grown to manhood, good and kind in disposition,

but whose very amiability rendered him so lax in his judgment of the

faults of others as to slacken the tension of his judgment of his own

faults, and whose stancher characteristics were manifested only in

an adamantine obstinacy to her persuasion--all were ill-calculated

to improve her temper and render her optimistic, and she had had no

training in the wider ways of life to cultivate tact and knowledge of

character and methods of influencing it. Doubtless the “skimpy saint”

in the enlightenment of his vocation would have approached the subject

of these remonstrances in a far different spirit, for Mark was plastic

to good suggestions, easily swayed, and had no real harm in him. He

understood, too, the merit and grace of consistency, of being all of

a piece with his true identity, with his real character, with the

sterling values he most appreciated. But the quality that rendered

him so susceptible to good influences--his adaptability--exposed him

equally to adverse temptation. He had spoken truly when he had said

that it was only the interest of the talk of the moonshiners and their

friends--stories of hunting fierce animals in the mountain fastnesses,

details of bloody feuds between neighboring families fought out through

many years with varying vicissitudes, and old-time traditions of the

vanished Indian, once the master of all the forests and rocks and

rivers of these ancient wilds--and not the drinking of whisky, that

allured him; far less the painful and often disgusting exhibitions of

drunkenness he occasionally witnessed at the still, in which those

sufficiently sober found a source of stupid mirth. Afterward it seemed

to him strange to reflect on his course. True he had had but a scanty

experience of life and the world, and the parson’s reading from the

Holy Scriptures was his only acquaintance with what might be termed

literature or learning in any form. But arguing merely from what he

knew he risked much. From the pages of the Bible he had learned what

the leprosy was, and what, he asked himself in later years, would he

have thought of the mental balance of a man who frequented the society

of a leper for the sake of transitory entertainment or mirth to be

derived from his talk? In the choice stories of “bar” and “Injuns,”

innocent in themselves, he must needs risk the moral contagion of this

leprosy of the soul.

Nevertheless he was intent now on escaping from his mother and Joel

Ruggles, since it was growing late and he knew the cronies would soon

be gathered around the big copper at the still-house, and he welcomed

the diversion of a change of the subject. It had fallen upon the

weather--the most propitious times of plowing and planting; an earnest

confirmation of the popular theory that to bring a crop potatoes and

other tubers must be planted in the dark of the moon, and leguminous

vegetables, peas, beans, etc., in the light of the moon. Warned by the

lengthening shadows, Joel Ruggles broke from the pacific discussion of

these agricultural themes, rose slowly from his chair, went within to

light his pipe at the fire, and with this companion wended his way down

the precipitous slope, then along the rocky banks of the stream to his

own little home, half a mile or so up its rushing current.

As he went he heard Mark’s clear voice lifted in song further down

the stream. He had hardly noted when the young fellow had withdrawn

from the conversation. It was a mounted shadow that he saw far away

among the leafy shadows of the oaks and the approaching dusk. Mark had

slipped off and saddled his half-broken horse, Cockleburr, and was

doubtless on his way to his boon companions at the distillery.

The old man stood still, leaning on his stick, as he silently listened

to the song, the sound carrying far on the placid medium of the water

and in the stillness of the evening.

“O, call the dogs--Yo he!--Yo ho!

Boone and Ranger, Wolf an’ Beau,

Little Bob-tail an’ Big Dew-claw,

Old Bloody-Mouth an’ Hanging Jaw.

Ye hear the hawns?--Yo he!--Yo ho!

They all are blowin’, so far they go,

With might an’ main, for the trail is fresh,

A big bear’s track in the aidge o’ the bresh!”

“Yo he! yo ho!” said the river faintly. “Yo he! yo ho!” said the rocks

more faintly; and fainter still from the vague darkness came an echo

so slight that it seemed as near akin to silence as to sound, barely

impinging upon the air. “Yo he! yo ho!” it murmured.

But old Joel Ruggles, standing and listening, silently shook his head

and said nothing.

“Yo he! yo ho!” sung Mark, further away, and the echoes of his boyish

voice still rang vibrant and clear.

Then there was no sound but the stir of the river and the clang of

the iron-shod hoofs of Cockleburr, striking the stones in the rocky

bridle-path. The flint gave out a flash of light, the yellow spark

glimmering for an instant, visible in the purple dusk with a transitory

flicker like a firefly.

And old Joel Ruggles once more shook his head.

CHAPTER II

Far away in a dim recess of the deep woods, on the summit of the ridge,

amidst crags and chasms and almost inaccessible steeps, the shadows

had gathered about a dismal little log hut of one room--like all the

other dismal little hovels of the mountain, save that in front of the

door the grass was worn away from a wide space by the frequent tread

of many feet; a preternaturally large wood-pile was visible under a

frail shelter in the rear of the house; from the chimney a dense smoke

rose in a heavy column; and the winds that rushed past it carried on

their breath an alcoholic aroma. But for these points of dissimilarity

and its peculiarly secluded situation, Mark Yates, dismounting from

his restive steed, might have been entering his mother’s dwelling. The

opening door shed no glare of firelight out into the deepening gloom

of the dusk. It was very warm within, however--almost too warm for

comfort; but the shutters of the glassless window were tightly barred,

and the usual chinks of log-house architecture were effectually closed

with clay. The darkness of the room was accented rather than dispelled

by a flickering tallow dip stuck in an empty bottle in default of a

candlestick, and there was an all-pervading and potent odor of spirits.

The salient feature of the scene was a stone furnace, from the closed

door of which there flashed now and then a slender thread of brilliant

light. A great copper still rose from it, and a protruding spiral tube

gracefully meandered away in the darkness through the cool waters of

the refrigerator to the receiver of its precious condensed vapors.

There were four jeans-clad mountaineers seated in the gloomy twilight

of this apartment; and the stories of “bar-huntin’ an’ sech” must have

been very jewels of discourse to prove so alluring, as they could

certainly derive no brilliancy from their unique but somber setting.

“Hy’re, Mark! Come in, come in,” was the hospitable insistence which

greeted young Yates.

“Hev a cheer,” said Aaron Brice, the eldest of the party, bringing out

from the darkness a chair and placing it in the feeble twinkle of the

tallow dip.

“Take a drink, Mark,” said another of the men, producing a broken-nosed

pitcher of ardent liquor. But notwithstanding this effusive

hospitality, which was very usual at the still-house, Mark Yates

had an uncomfortable impression that he had interrupted an important

conference, and that his visit was badly timed. The conversation that

ensued was labored, and hosts and guest were a trifle ill at ease.

Frequent pauses occurred, broken only by the sound of the furnace fire,

the boiling and bubbling within the still, the gurgle of the water

through its trough, that led it down from a spring on the hill behind

the house to the refrigerator, the constant dripping of the “doublings”

from the worm into the keg below. Now and then one of the brothers

hummed a catch which ran thus:--

“O, Eve, she gathered the pippins,

Adam did the pomace make;

When the brandy told upon ’em,

They accused the leetle snake!”

Another thoughtfully snuffed the tallow dip, which for a few moments

burned with a brighter, more cheerful light, then fell into a tearful

despondency and bade fair to weep itself away.

Outside the little house the black night had fallen, and the wind was

raging among the trees. All the stars seemed in motion, flying to

board a fleet of flaky white clouds that were crossing the sky under

full sail. The moon, a spherical shadow with a crescent of burnished

silver, was speeding toward the west; not a gleam fell from its disk

upon the swaying, leafless trees--it seemed only to make palpable the

impenetrable gloom that immersed the earth. The air had grown keen

and cold, and it rushed in at the door as it was opened with a wintry

blast. A man entered, with the slow, lounging motion peculiar to the

mountaineers, bearing in his hand a jug of jovial aspect. The four

Brices looked up from under their heavy brows with sharp scrutiny to

discern among the deep shadows cast by the tallow dip who the newcomer

might be. Their eyes returned to gaze with an affected preoccupation

upon the still, and in this significant hush the ignored visitor stood

surprised and abashed on the threshold. The cold inrushing mountain

wind, streaming like a jet of seawater through the open door, was

rapidly lowering the temperature of the room. This contemptuous silence

was too fraught with discomfort to be maintained.

“Ef ye air a-comin’ in,” said Aaron Brice, ungraciously, “come along

in. An’ ef ye air a-goin’ out go ’long. Anyway, jes’ ez ye choose, ef

ye’ll shet that thar door, ez I don’t see ez ye hev any call ter hold

open.”

Thus adjured the intruder closed the door, placed the jug on the floor,

and looked about with an embarrassed hesitation of manner. The flare

from the furnace, which Aaron Brice had opened to pile in fresh wood,

illumined the newcomer’s face and long, loose-jointed figure and showed

the semicircle of mountaineers seated in their rush-bottomed chairs

about the still. None of them spoke. Never before since the still-house

was built had a visitor stood upon the puncheon floor that one of the

hospitable Brices did not scuttle for a chair, that the dip was not

eagerly snuffed in the vain hope of irradiating the guest, that the

genial though mutilated pitcher filled with whisky was not ungrudgingly

presented. No chair was offered now, and the broken-nosed pitcher with

its ardent contents was motionless on the head of a barrel. It was a

strange change, and as the broad red glare fell on their stolid faces

and blankly inexpressive attitudes the guest looked from one to the

other with an increasing surprise and a rising dismay. The light was

full for a moment upon Mark Yates’s shock of yellow hair, gray eyes,

and muscular, well-knit figure, as he, too, sat mute among his hosts.

He was not to be mistaken, and once seen was not easily forgotten.

The next instant the furnace door clashed, and the room fell back

into its habitual gloom. One might note only the gurgle of the spring

water--telling of the wonders of the rock-barricaded earth below and

the reflected glories of the sky above--only the hilarious song of

the still, the continuous trickle from the worm, the all-pervading

spirituous odors, and the shadowy outlines of the massive figures of

the mountaineers.

The Brices evidently could not be relied upon to break the awkward

silence. The newcomer, mustering heart of grace, took up his testimony

in a languid nasal drawl, trying to speak and to appear as if he had

noticed nothing remarkable in his reception.

“I hev come, Aaron,” he said, “ter git another two gallons o’ that thar

whisky ez I hed from you-uns, an’ I hev brung the balance of the money

I owed ye on that, an’ enough ter pay for the jugful, too. Hyar is a

haffen dollar fur the old score, an’--”

“That thar eends it,” said Aaron, pocketing the tendered fifty cents.

“We air even, an’ ye’ll git no more whisky from hyar, Mose Carter.”

“Wha--what did ye say, Aaron? I hain’t got the rights ’zactly o’ what

ye said.” And Carter peered in great amaze through the gloom at his

host, who was carefully filling a pipe. As Aaron stooped to get a coal

from the furnace one of the others spoke.

“He said ez ye’ll git no more whisky from hyar. An’ it air a true

word.”

The flare from the furnace again momentarily illumined the room, and as

the door clashed it again fell back into the uncertain shadow.

“That is what I tole ye,” said Aaron, reseating himself and puffing his

pipe into a strong glow, “an’ ef ye hain’t a-onderstandin’ of it yit

I’ll say it agin--ye an’ the rest of yer tribe will git no more liquor

from hyar.”

“An’ what’s the reason I hain’t a-goin’ ter get no more liquor from

hyar?” demanded Moses Carter in virtuous indignation. “Hain’t I been ez

good pay ez any man down this hyar gorge an’ the whole mounting atop o’

that? Look-a hyar, Aaron Brice, ye ain’t a-goin’ ter try ter purtend ez

I don’t pay fur the liquor ez I gits hyar--an’ you-uns an’ me done been

a-tradin’ tergither peaceable-like fur nigh on ter ten solid year.”

“An’ then ye squar’ round an’ gits me an’ my brothers a-turned out’n

the church fur runnin’ of a still whar ye gits yer whisky from. Good

pay or bad pay, it’s all the same ter me.”

“I never gin my vote fur a-turnin’ of ye out ’kase of ye a-runnin’ of a

still.” Moses Carter trembled in his eager anxiety to discriminate the

grounds upon which he had cast his ballot. “It war fur a-gittin’ drunk

an’ astayin’ drunk, ez ye mos’ly air a-doin--an’ ye will ’low yerself,

Aaron, ez that thar air a true word. I don’t see no harm in a-runnin’

of a still an’ a-drinkin’ some, but not ter hurt. It air this hyar

gittin’ drunk constant ez riles me.”

“Mose Carter,” said the youngest of the Brice brothers, striking

suddenly into the conversation, “ye air a liar, an’ ye knows it!”

He was a wiry, active man of twenty-five years; he spoke in an

authoritative high key, and his voice seemed to split the air like

a knife. His mind was as wiry as his body, and it was generally

understood on Jolton’s Ridge that he was the power behind the throne

of which Aaron, the eldest, wielded the unmeaning scepter; he,

however, remained decorously in the background, for among the humble

mountaineers the lordly rights of primogeniture are held in rigorous

veneration, and it would have ill-beseemed a younger scion of the house

to openly take precedence of the elder. His Christian name was John,

but it had been forgotten or disregarded by all but his brothers in

the title conferred upon him by his comrades of the mountain wilds.

Panther Brice--or “Painter,” for thus the animal is called in the

vernacular of the region--was known to run the still, to shape the

policy of the family, to be a self-constituted treasurer and disburser

of the common fund, to own the very souls of his unresisting elder

brothers. He had elected, however, in the interests of decorum, that

these circumstances should be sedulously ignored. Aaron invariably

appeared as spokesman, and the mountaineers at large all fell under

the influence of a dominant mind and acquiesced in the solemn sham.

The Panther seldom took part even in casual discussions of any vexed

question, reserving his opinions to dictate as laws to his brothers in

private; and a sensation stirred the coterie when his voice, that had

a knack of finding and thrilling every sensitive nerve in his hearer’s

body, jarred the air.

“I hev seen ye, Mose Carter,” he continued, “in this hyar very

still-house ez drunk ez a fraish biled owl. Ye hev laid on this hyar

floor too drunk ter move hand or foot all night an’ haffen the nex’ day

at one spree. I hev seen ye’, an’ so hev plenty o’ other folks. An’

ef ye comes hyar a-jowin’ so sanctified ’bout’n folks a-gittin’ drunk,

I’ll turn ye out’n this hyar still-house fur tellin’ of lies.”

He paused as abruptly as he had spoken; but before Moses Carter could

collect his slow faculties he had resumed. “It ’pears powerful comical

ter me ter hear this hyar Baptis’ church a-settin’ of itself up so

stiff fur temp’rance, ’kase thar air an old sayin’--an’ I b’lieves

it--ez the Presbyterians holler--‘What is ter be will be!--even ef it

won’t be!’ an’ the Methodies holler, ‘Fire! fire! fire! Brimstun’ an’

blue blazes!’--but the Bapties holler, ‘Water! water! water! with a

_leetle_ drap o’ whisky in it!’ But ye an’ yer church’ll be dry enough

arter this; thar’ll be less liquor drunk ’mongst ye’n ever hev been

afore, ’kase ye air all too cussed stingy ter pay five cents extry a

quart like ye’ll hev ter do at Joe Gilligan’s store down yander ter

the Settlemint. Fur nare one o’ them sanctified church brethren’ll git

another drap o’ liquor hyar, whar it hev always been so powerful cheap

an’ handy.”

“The dryer ez ye kin make the church the better ye’ll please the

pa’son. He lays off a reg’lar temperance drought fur them ez kin foller

arter his words. I be a-tryin’ ter mend my ways,” Moses Carter droned

with a long, sanctimonious face, “but--” he hesitated, “the sperit is

willin’, but the flesh is weak--the flesh is weak!”

“I’ll be bound no sperits air weak ez ye hev ennything ter do with,

leastwise swaller,” said the Panther, with a quick snap.

“He is hyar in the mounting ter-night, the pa’son,” resumed Mose

Carter, with that effort, always ill-starred, to affect to perceive

naught amiss when a friend is sullenly belligerent; he preserved the

indifferent tone of one retailing casual gossip. “The pa’son hev laid

off ter spen’ the better part o’ the night in prayer and wrestlin’

speritchully in the church-house agin his sermon ter-morrer, it bein’

the blessed Sabbath. He ’lowed he would be more sole and alone thar

than at old man Allen’s house, whar he be puttin’ up fur the night,

’kase at old man Allen’s they hev seben gran’chil’ren an’ only one

room, barrin’ the roof-room. Thar be a heap o’ onregenerate human

natur’ in them seben Allen gran’chil’ren. Thar ain’t no use I reckon

in tryin’ ter awake old man Allen ter a sense of sin an’ the awful

oncertainty of life by talkin’ ter _him_ o’ the silence an’ solitude o’

the grave! Kee, kee!” he laughed. But he laughed alone.

“_Wrestlin’!_ The pa’son a-wrestlin’! I could throw him over my head!

It’s well fur him his wrestlin’s air only in prayer!” exclaimed

Painter, with scorn. “The still will holp on the cause o’ temp’rance

more’n that thar little long-tongued preacher an’ all his sermons.

Raisin’ the tar’ff on the drink will stop it. Ye’re all so dad-burned

stingy.”

“Jes’ ez ye choose,” said Moses Carter, taking up his empty jug.

“’Tain’t nuthin’ s’prisin’ ter me ter hear ye a-growlin’ an’ a-goin’

this hyar way, Painter--ye always war more like a wild beast nor a

man, anyhow. But it do ’stonish me some ez Aaron an’ the t’other boys

air a-goin’ ter let ye cut ’em out’n a-sellin’ of liquor ter the whole

kentry mighty nigh, ’kase the brethren don’t want a sodden drunkard,

like ye air, in the church a-communin’ with the saints.”

“Ye needn’t sorrow fur Aaron,” said Panther Brice, with a sneer

that showed his teeth much as a snarl might have done, “nor fur the

t’other boys nuther. We kin sell all the whisky ez we kin make ter Joe

Gilligan, an’ the folks yander ter--ter--no matter whar--” he broke

off with a sudden look of caution as if he had caught himself in an

imminent disclosure. “We kin sell it ’thout losin’ nare cent, fur we

hev always axed the same price by the gallon ez by the bar’l. So Aaron

ain’t a needin’ of yer sorrow.”

“Ye air the spitefullest little painter ez ever seen this hyar worl’,”

exclaimed Moses Carter, exasperated by the symmetry of his enemy’s

financial scheme. “Waal--waal, prayer may bring ye light. Prayer is a

powerful tool. The pa’son b’lieves in its power. He is right now up

yander in the church-house, fur I seen the light, an’ I hearn his

voice lifted in prayer ez I kem by.”

The four brothers glanced at one another with hot, wild eyes. They had

reason to suspect that they were themselves the subject of the parson’s

supplications, and they resented this as a liberty. They had prized

their standing in the church not because they were religious, in the

proper sense of the word, but from a realization of its social value.

In these primitive regions the sustaining of a reputation for special

piety is a sort of social distinction and a guarantee of a certain

position. The moonshiners neither knew nor cared what true religion

might be. To obey its precepts or to inconvenience themselves with

its restraints, was alike far from their intention. They had received

with boundless amazement the first intimation that the personal and

practical religion which the “skimpy saint” had brought into the

gorge might consistently interfere with the liquor trade, the illicit

distilling of whisky, and the unlimited imbibing thereof by themselves

and the sottish company that frequented the still-house. They had

laughed at his temperance sermons and ridiculing his warnings had

treated the whole onslaught as a trifle, a matter of polemical theory,

in the nature of things transitory, and had expected it to wear out as

similar spasms of righteousness often do--more’s the pity! Then they

would settle down to continue to furnish spirituous comfort to the

congregation, while the “skimpy saint” ministered to their spiritual

needs. The warlike little parson, however, had steadily advanced his

parallels, and from time to time had driven the distillers from one

subterfuge to another, till at last, although they were well off in

this world’s goods--rich men, according to the appraisement of the

gorge--they were literally turned out of the church, and had become

a public example, and they felt that they had experienced the most

unexpected and disastrous catastrophe possible in nature.

They were stunned that so small a man had done this thing, a man, so

poor, so weak, so dependent for his bread, his position, his every

worldly need, on the favor of the influential members of his scattered

congregations. It had placed them in their true position before their

compeers. It had reduced their bluster and boastfulness. It had made

them seem very small to themselves, and still smaller, they feared, in

the estimation of others.

Moses Carter--himself no shining light, indeed a very feebly glimmering

luminary in the congregation--looked from one to the other of their

aghast indignant faces with a ready relish of the situation, and said,

with a grin:

“I reckon, Painter, ef the truth war plain, ye’d ruther hev all the

gorge ter know ez the pa’son war a-spreadin’ the fac’s about this hyar

still afore a United States marshal than afore the throne o’ grace,

like he be a-doin’ of right now.”

The Panther rose with a quick, lithe motion, stretched out his hand to

the head of a barrel near by, and the thread of light from the closed

furnace door showed the glitter of steel. He came forward a few steps,

walking with a certain sinewy grace and brandishing a heavy knife,

his furious eyes gleaming with a strange green brilliance, all the

more distinct in the half-darkened room. Then he paused, as with a new

thought. “I won’t tech ye now,” he said, with a snarl, “but arter a

while I’ll jes’ make ye ’low ez that thar church o’ yourn air safer

with me in it nor it air with me out’n it. An’ then we’ll count it

even.” He ceased speaking suddenly; cooler now, and with an expression

of vexation upon his sharp features--perhaps he repented his hasty

threat and his self-betrayal. After a moment he went on, but with less

virulence of manner than before. “Ye kin take that thar empty jug o’

yourn an’ kerry it away empty. An’ ye kin take yer great hulking stack

o’ bones along with it, an’ thank yer stars ez none of ’em air bruken.

Ye air the fust man ever turned empty out’n this hyar still-house, an’

I pray God ez ye may be the las’, ’kase I don’t want no sech wuthless

cattle a-hangin’ round hyar.”

“I ain’t a-quarrelin’ with hevin’ ter go,” retorted Carter, with

asperity. “I never sot much store by comin’ hyar nohow, ’ceptin’ Aaron

an’ me, we war toler’ble frien’ly fur a good many year. This hyar

still-house always reminded me sorter o’ hell, anyhow--whar the worm

dieth not an’ the fire is not quenched.”

With this Parthian dart he left the room, closing the door after him,

and presently the dull thud of his horse’s hoofs was borne to the ears

of the party within, again seated in a semicircle about the furnace.

CHAPTER III

After a few moments of vexed cogitation Aaron broke the silence,

keeping, however, a politic curb on his speech. “’Pears ter me, John,

ez how mebbe ’twould hev done better ef ye hedn’t said that thar ez ye

spoke ’bout’n the church-house.”

“Hold yer jaw!” returned the Panther, fiercely. “Who larned ye ter

jedge o’ my words? An’ it don’t make no differ nohow. I done tole

him nuthin’ ’bout’n the church-house ez the whole Ridge won’t say

arterward, any way ez ye kin fix it.”

If Mark Yates had found himself suddenly in close proximity to a real

panther he could hardly have felt more uncomfortable than these

half-covert suggestions rendered him. He shrank from dwelling upon

what they seemed to portend, and he was anxious to hear no more. The

recollection of sundry maternal warnings concerning the evils, moral

and temporal, incident upon keeping bad company, came on him with

a crushing weight, and transformed the aspect of the fascinating

still-house into a close resemblance to another locality of worm and

fire, to which the baffled Carter had referred. He was desirous of

going, but feared that so early a departure just at this critical

juncture might be interpreted by his entertainers as a sign of distrust

and a disposition to stand aloof when they were deserted by their other

friends. And yet he knew, as well as if they had told him, that his

arrival had interrupted some important discussion of the plot they were

laying, and they only waited his exit to renew their debate.

While these antagonistic emotions swayed him, he sat with the others

in meditative silence, gazing blankly at the pleasing rotundity of

the dense shadow which he knew was the “copper,” and listening to the

frantic dance and roistering melody of its bubbling, boiling, surging

contents, to the monotonous trickling of the liquor falling from the

worm, to the gentle cooing of the rill of clear spring water. The

idea of pleasure suggested by the very sight of the place had given

way as more serious thoughts and fears crowded in, and his boyish

liking for these men who possessed that deadly fascination for youth

and inexperience,--the reputation of being wild,--was fast changing

to aversion. He still entertained a strong sympathy for those fierce

qualities which gave so vivid an interest to the stirring accounts

of struggles with wolves and wild cats, bears and panthers, and to

the histories of bitter feuds between human enemies, in the bloody

sequel of which, however, the brutality of the deed often vied with its

prowess; but this fashion of squaring off, metaphorically speaking,

at the preacher, and the strange insinuations of sacrilegious injury

to the church--the beloved church, so hardly won from the wilderness,

representing the rich gifts of the very poor, their time, their labor,

their love, their prayers--this struck every chord of conservatism in

his nature.

There had never before been a church building in this vicinity; “summer

preachin’” under the forest oaks had sufficed, with sometimes at long

intervals a funeral sermon at the house of a neighbor. But in response

to that strenuous cry, “Be up and doing,” and in acquiescence with

the sharp admonition that religion does not consist in singing sleepy

hymns in a comfortable chimney-corner, the whole countryside had

roused itself to the privilege of the work nearest its hand. Practical

Christianity first developed at the saw-mill. The great logs, seasoned

lumber from the forest, were offered as a sacrifice to the glory of

God, and as the word went around, Mark Yates, always alert, was among

the first of the groups that came and stood and watched the gleaming

steel striking into the fine white fibers of the wood--the beginnings

of the “church-house”--while the dark, clear water reflected the great

beams and roof of the mill, and the sibilant whizzing of the simple

machinery seemed, with the knowledge of the consecrated nature of its

work, an harmonious undertone to the hymning of the pines, and the

gladsome rushing of the winds, and the subdued ecstasies of all the

lapsing currents of the stream.

Mark had looked on drearily. His spirit, awakened by the clarion call

of duty, fretted and revolted at the restraints of his lack of means.

He could do naught. It was the privilege of others to prepare the

lumber. It seemed that even inanimate nature had its share in building

the church--the earth in its rich nurture that had given strength to

the great trees; the seasons that had filled the veins of each with the

rich wine of the sap, the bourgeoning impulse of its leafage and the

ripeness of its fine fruitions; the rainfall and sunshine that had fed

and fostered and cherished it--only he had naught to give but the idle

gaze of wistful eyes.

The miller, a taciturn man, was very well aware that he had sawed

the lumber. He said naught when the work was ended, but surveyed the

great fragrant piles of cedar and walnut and maple and cherry and oak,

the building woods of these richly endowed mountains, with a silence

so significant that it spoke louder than words. It said that his work

was finished, and who was there who would do as much or more? So loud,

so forceful, so eloquent was this challenge that the next day several

teamsters came and stood dismally each holding his chin-whiskers in his

hand and contemplated the field of practical Christianity.

“It’ll be a powerful job ter hev ter haul all that thar lumber, sure!”

said one reluctant wight, in disconsolate survey, his mouth slightly

ajar, his hand ruefully rubbing his cheek.

“It war a powerful job ter saw it,” said the miller.

The jaws of the teamster closed with a snap. He had nothing more to

say. He, too, was roused to the gospel of action. The miller should not

saw more than he would haul. Thus it was that the next day found him

with his strong mule team at sunrise, the first great lengths of the

boles on the wagon, making his way along the steep ascents of Jolton’s

Ridge.

And again Mark looked on drearily. He could do naught--he and

Cockleburr. Cockleburr was hardly broken to the saddle, wild and

restive, and it would have been the sacrifice of a day’s labor, even

if the offer of such unlikely aid would have been accepted, to hitch

the colt in for the hauling of this heavy lumber, such earnest, hearty

work as the big mules were straining every muscle to accomplish. He

was too poor, he felt, with a bitter sigh. He could do naught--naught.

True, he armed himself with an axe, and went ahead of the toiling

mules, now and then cutting down a sapling which grew in the midst of

the unfrequented bridle-path, and which was not quite slight enough to

bend beneath the wagon as did most of such obstructions, or widening

the way where the clustering underbrush threatened a stoppage of

the team. So much more, under the coercion of the little preacher’s

sermon, he had wanted to do, that he hardly cared for the “Holped me

powerful, Mark,” of the teamster’s thanks, when they had reached the

destination of the lumber--the secluded nook where the little mountain

graveyard nestled in the heart of the great range--the site chosen

by the neighbors for the erection of their beloved church. Beloved

before one of the bowlders that made the piers of its foundation was

selected from the rocky hillside, where the currents of forgotten,

long ebbed-away torrents had stranded them, where the detrition of the

rain and the sand had molded them, the powers of nature thus beginning

the building of the church-house to the glory of God in times so long

gone past that man has no record of its spaces. Beloved before one of

the great logs was lifted upon another to build the walls, within which

should be crystallized the worship of congregations, the prayers of the

righteous that should avail much. Beloved before one of the puncheons

was laid of the floor, consecrated with the hope that many a sinner

should tread them on the way to salvation. Beloved with the pride of a

worthy achievement and the satisfaction of a cherished duty honestly

discharged, before a blow was struck or a nail driven.

And here Mark, earnestly seeking his opportunity to share the work,

found a field of usefulness. No great skill, one may be sure, prevailed

in the methods of the humble handicraftsmen of the gorge--all untrained

to the mechanical arts, and each a jack-of-all-trades, as occasion in

his lowly needs or opportunity might offer. Mark had a sort of knack

of deftness, a quick and exact eye, both suppleness and strength, and

thus he was something more than a mere botch of an amateur workman. His

enthusiasm blossomed forth. He, too, might serve the great cause. He,

too, might give of the work of his hands.

At it he was, hammer and nails, from morning till night, and he

rejoiced when the others living at a distance and having their

firesides to provide for, left him here late alone building the temple

of God in the wilderness. He would ever and anon glance out through

the interstices of the unchinked log walls at the great sun going down

over the valley behind the purple mountains of the west, and lending

him an extra beam to drive another nail, after one might think it time

to be dark and still; and vouchsafing yet another ray, as though loath

to quit this work, lingering at the threshold of the day, although the

splendors of another hemisphere awaited its illumination, and many a

rich Southern scene that the sun is wont to love; and still sending a

gleam, high aslant, that one more nail might be driven; and at last the

red suffusion of certain farewell, wherein was enough light for the

young man to catch up his tools and set out swiftly and joyously down

the side of Jolton’s Ridge.

And always was he first at the tryst to greet the sun--standing in the

unfinished building, his hammer in his hand, his hat on the back of

his head, and looking through the gap of the range to watch the great

disk when it would rise over the Carolina Mountains, with its broad,

prophetic effulgence falling over the lowly mounds in the graveyard,

as if one might say, “Behold! the dispersal of night, the return of

light, the earnest of the Day to come.” Long before the other laborers

on the church reached the building Mark had listened to the echoes

keeping tally with the strokes of his hammer, had heard the earth

shake, the clangor and clash of the distant train on the rails, the

shriek of the whistle as the locomotive rushed upon the bridge above

that deep chasm, the sinister hollow roar of the wheels, and the deep,

thunderous reverberation of the rocks. Thus he noted the passage of

the early trains--the freight first, and after an hour’s interval the

passenger train; then a silence, as if primeval, would settle down upon

the world, broken only by the strokes of the hammer, until at last some

neighbor, with his own tools in hand, would come in.

None of them realized how much of the work Mark had done. Each

looked only at the result, knowing it to be the aggregated industry

and leisure of the neighbors, laboring as best they might and as

opportunity offered. This was no hindrance to Mark’s satisfaction. He

had wanted to help, not to make a parade of his help, or to have what

he had done appreciated. He thought the little preacher, the “skimpy

saint,” as his unfriends called him, had a definite idea of what he had

done. In the stress of this man’s lofty ideals he could compromise with

little that failed to reach them. He was forever stretching onward and

upward. But Mark noted a kindling in his intent eye one day, while “the

chinking” was being put in, the small diagonal slats between the logs

of the wall on which the clay of the “daubing” was to be plastered.

“Did you do all this side?” he had asked.

As Mark answered “Yes,” he felt his heart swell with responsive pride

to win even this infrequent look of approval, and he went on to claim

more. “Don’t tell nobody,” he said, glancing up from his kneeling

posture by the side of the wall. “But I done that corner, too, over

thar by the door. Old Joel Ruggles done it fust, but the old man’s

eyesight’s dim, an’ his hand onstiddy, an’ ’twar all crooked an’

onreg’lar, so _unbeknown_ ter _him_ I kem hyar early one day an’ did

it over,--though he don’t know it,--so ez ’twould be ekal--all of a

piece.”

The “skimpy saint” now hardly seemed to care to glance at the work. He

still stood with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, looking down at him

with eyes in which Mark perceived new meanings.

“You can sense, then, the worth of hevin’ all things of a piece with

the best. See ter it, Mark, that ye keep yer life all of a piece with

this good work--with the best that’s in ye.”

So Mark understood. But nowadays he hardly felt all of a piece with

the good work he had done on the church walls, against so many

discouragements, laboring early and late, seeking earnestly some means

that might be within his limited power. Oftentimes, after the church

was finished, he went and stood and gazed at it, realizing its stanch

validity, without shortcomings, without distortions--all substantial

and regular, with none of the discrepancies and inadequacies of his

moral structure.

While silently and meditatively recalling all these facts as he sat

this night of early spring among the widely unrelated surroundings

of the still, the shadowy group of moonshiners about him, Mark Yates

looked hard at Panther Brice’s sharp features, showing, in the thread

of white light from the closed door of the furnace, with startling

distinctness against the darkness, like some curiously carved cameo. He

never understood the rush of feeling that constrained him to speak, and

afterward, when he thought of it, his temerity surprised him.

“Painter,” he said, “I hev been a-comin’ hyar ter this hyar still-house

along of ye an’ the t’other boys right smart time, an’ I hev been

mighty well treated; an’ I ain’t one o’ the sort ez kin buy much

liquor, nuther. I hev hed a many a free drink hyar, an’ a sight o’

laughin’ an’ talkin’ along o’ ye an’ the t’other boys. An’ ’twarn’t

the whisky as brung me, nuther--’twar mos’ly ter hear them yarns o’

yourn ’bout bar-huntin’ an’ sech, fur ye air the talkin’est one o’

the lot. But ef ye air a-goin’ ter take it out’n the preacher or the

church-house--I hain’t got the rights o’ what ye air a-layin’ off ter

do, an’ I don’t want ter know, nuther--jes’ ’kase ye an’ the t’other

boys war turned out’n the church, I hev hed my fill o’ associatin’ with

ye. I ain’t a-goin’ ter hev nuthin’ ter do with men-folks ez would

fight a pore critter of a preacher, what hev got ez much right ter jow

ez ef he war a woman. Sass is what they both war made fur, it ’pears

like ter me, an’ ’twar toler’ble spunky sure in him ter speak his mind

so plain, knowing what a fighter ye be an’ the t’others, too--no other

men hev got the name of sech tremenjious fighters! I allow he seen his

jewty plain in what he done, seem’ he tuk sech risks. An’ ef ye air

a-goin’ ter raise a ’sturbance ter the church-house, or whatever ye air

a-layin’ off ter do ter _it_, I ain’t a-goin’ ter hev no hand-shakin’

with sech folks. Payin’ ’em back ain’t a-goin’ ter patch up the matter

nohow--ye’re done turned out the church now, an’ that ain’t a-goin’ ter

put ye back. It ’pears mighty cur’ous ter me ez a man ez kin claw with

a bar same ez with a little purp, kin git so riled ez he’ll take up

with fightin’ of that thar pore little preacher what ain’t got a ounce

o’ muscle ter save his life. I wouldn’t mind his jowin’ at me no more’n

I mind my mother’s jowin’--an’ she air always at it.”

There was a silence for a few moments--only the sound of the trickling

liquor from the worm and the whir inside the still. That white face,

illumined by the thread of light, was so motionless that it might have

seemed petrified but for the intense green glare of the widely open

eyes. The lips suddenly parted in a snarl, showing two rows of sharp

white teeth, and the high shrill voice struck the air with a shiver.

“Ye’re the cussedest purp in this hyar gorge!” the Panther exclaimed.

“Ye sit thar an’ tell how well ye hev been treated hyar ter this hyar

still-house, an’ then let on ez how ye think ye’ re too good ter come

a-visitin’ hyar any more. Ye air like all the rest o’ these folks

round hyar--ye take all ye wants, an’ then the fust breath of a word

agin a body ye turns agin ’em too. Ye kin clar out’n this. Ye ain’t

wanted hyar. I ain’t a-goin’ ter let none o’ yer church brethren nor

thar fr’en’s nuther--fur ye ain’t even a perfessin’ member--come five

mile a-nigh hyar arter this. We air a-goin’ ter turn ’em out’n the

still-house, an’ that thar will hurt ’em worse’n turnin’ ’em out’n the

church. They go an’ turn _us_ out’n the church fur runnin’ of a still,

an’ before the Lord, we kin hardly drive ’em away from hyar along of

we-uns. I’m a-goin’ ter git the skin o’ one o’ these hyar brethren an’

nail it ter the door like a mink’s skin ter a hen house, an’ I’ll see

ef that can’t skeer ’em off. An’ ef ye don’t git out’n hyar mighty

quick now, Mark Yates, like ez not the fust skin nailed ter the door

will be that thar big, loose hide o’ yourn.”

“I ain’t the man ter stay when I’m axed ter go,” said young Yates,

rising, “an’ so I’ll light out right now. But what I war a-aimin’ ter

tell ye, Painter, war ez how I hev sot too much store by ye and the

t’other boys ter want ter see ye a-cuttin’ cur’ous shines ’bout the

church-house an’ that leetle mite of a preacher an’ sech.”

Once more that mental reservation touching “the strength of

righteousness” recurred to him. Was the little preacher altogether a

weakling? His courage was a stanch endowment. He had been warned of the

gathering antagonisms a hundred times, and by friend as well as foe.

But obstinately, resolutely, he kept on the path he had chosen to tread.

“An’ I’ll let ye know ez I kin be frien’ly with a man ez fights bars

an’ fightin’-men,” Mark resumed, “but I kin abide no man ez gits ter

huntin’ down little scraps of preachers what hain’t got no call ter

fight, nor no muscle nuther.”

“Ye’ll go away ’thout that thar hide o’ yourn ef ye don’t put out

mighty quick now,” said the Panther, his sinister green eyes ablaze

and his supple body trembling with eagerness to leap upon his foe.