A CROWD UNDER THE BUTTERNUT TREE.
At last the old woman came in. With the sly instincts of insanity,
Katharine lay still, holding the blankets over her head, pretending to
be asleep.
The old lady did not attempt to disturb her, but merely looked in to see
that all was quiet, and went to the kitchen. To her surprise, she found
the outer door open. The wind had swept in, scattering snow and ashes
over the floor. This had produced a draught down the wide-mouthed
chimney, and filled the room with smoke. Mrs. Allen threw up a sash,
which produced an eddy of wind and sent some loose papers flying toward
the hearth--one, which seemed to be a letter, floated by her and was
drawn up the chimney, catching fire as it went; another was following,
but she grasped it in time, and found that the flimsy bit of silk paper
was a bank bill of considerable amount. Two others she picked up from
the floor.
Who could have been in her house? How was it possible for so much money
to have found its way there? She went into the bedroom, resolved to
question Katharine, who heard her coming, and crouched under the
bedclothes.
"Katharine! Katharine!"
No answer.
The old lady, fearing she scarcely knew what, went up to the bed and
turned down the clothes. There was a little resistance, and then
Katharine looked up with a frightened smile, trembling terribly either
with dread or cold.
"Who has been here since I went away, Katharine?"
"I don't know."
"But look! Where did all this money come from?"
"I don't know."
And, indeed, she did not know, never having taken a thought of that
portion of Thrasher's letter; even the epistle itself only whirled
through the chaos of her mind, like dead leaves in a tempest.
Mrs. Allen examined the money again, while Katharine eyed her with the
sharp cunning of insanity.
"How you shake, child? The open door has given you a chill."
"It was too warm! too warm!" muttered the poor creature; "crimson hot,
crimson hot!"
Mrs. Allen was so surprised with the money that she did not heed the
strange murmur of her daughter. She put the bills away in an old teapot
in the corner cupboard. Then something struck her as unnatural in the
stillness of the room, and she went back again.
"Is the baby asleep yet?" she inquired, sitting down by the bed.
Katharine shrunk away from her; but answered in a quick, eager way:
"Yes; it sleeps sweetly, sweetly, sweetly."
This strange repetition of one word drew Mrs. Allen's attention more
closely to the invalid. There was something strange in her face--a gleam
of vigilant cunning in the eyes that made the mother anxious.
"How soundly the little thing sleeps," she said.
"Yes, soundly," was the answer.
"Move a little, and let me take it up."
"No!"
A look of defiance came into that beautiful face. Katharine was resolved
to defend her secret to the last moment.
Mrs. Allen became frightened; forced the bedclothes from that feeble
grasp, and stooped down to search for the child.
It was gone!
"Where--oh, Katharine--where is the baby?"
A gleam of infinite craft stole into those blue eyes.
"What baby?"
"Yours, yours--our own little child! who has taken it away?"
"Nobody."
"Then where is it?"
"Asleep; didn't I tell you so?"
Mrs. Allen rushed into the kitchen and searched it in every corner. The
smoke had cleared away, and she discovered tracks of a small, naked foot
in the loose snow that had drifted into the room. Where was the child?
what could have happened? Mrs. Allen rushed distractedly into the
street, just as the neighbor whom she had been in search of drove up
with a load of wood on his sled.
"Hello! what's the matter, Mrs. Allen?" he called out, as she came
toward the gate, pale as death, and wringing her hands.
"Our baby--my little grandchild--it is gone!"
The man stopped and emitted a low whistle.
"So there was something in all that talk," he muttered, "hard as I stood
up for her."
"I only left to run down to your house--we hadn't another armful of
wood. When I came back, the outdoor was open, the room full of smoke,
and she all alone! Oh, God help me, what can I do!"
"Just go into the house, and let us talk it all over," said the
kind-hearted farmer, leaving his oxen; "I don't understand."
"Oh, we cannot stop to talk--the child must be found. Isn't that Mr.
Stokes coming up the hill? Call him--we must search--we must find it."
The farmer called out for Mr. Stokes to hurry forward, and at the same
time ran to meet him. The two men stood talking together some minutes,
then came toward the house in company.
Mrs. Allen had gone back to her daughter, and with tears raining down
her face, was pleading with her. Poor woman! it was many years since she
had cried like that, but when an infant comes to a lonely house, the
fountain of tears is sure to swell afresh in the most stern bosom. The
sweet word, "grandmother," had been applied to her. The baby's little
heart had stirred against her own; without that child, all the stern
desolation of her life would come back again.
But Katharine could not answer.
The two men came in, looking curious and excited; their presence seemed
to strike Katharine dumb. She lay with her eyes wide open, staring at
them. A vague smile wandered on her lips as they questioned her, but no
words.
Baffled and still anxious, the men went into the kitchen again, leaving
Mrs. Allen behind. They saw the tracks still imprinted on the floor, and
followed them with keen observation. The tracks continued out into the
yard, turned there, and led toward the orchard. One naked footprint was
stamped on the top of the stone wall, as if a leap had pressed it deeply
there. After this there was little trouble--broken places in the snow
crust led them on till they stood by the rock under the butternut tree.
It is strange how soon a crowd will collect, if any thing unusual is
going on, even in the remotest places. A good many people were on the
road, some going to the stores at Chewstown or Falls Hill, some taking
grists to mill, and others loitering on their way to the tavern, whose
red sign swung on the river road a little beyond Rock Spring.
Before the two men, who tracked that terrible path, had touched the
little white grave by the rock, some half-dozen persons had collected
around it. A feeling of awe kept the first comers from touching the
broken snow-crust; but now, a man in the crowd thrust it aside with his
foot, and the rest set to work.
It took but little time to remove the white covering beneath, and, after
a moment's work, the dead infant was found wrapped in a shawl, which was
recognized by more than one present as belonging to Katharine Allen.
A feeling of profound consternation fell upon the little group of
farmers, as they lifted the infant from its grave. The face, now pale
and cold, was all uncovered, flakes of snow trembled in the golden hair,
and the winds blew over it so sharply, that one of the men put forth
his hand, and drew the shawl softly over its head, muttering, "God
forgive its mother!"
No funeral ever was marked with more solemn faces than those which
followed the dead infant back to the house. No word was spoken aloud,
but hoarse whispers passed from lip to lip, and the hardiest man there
shrunk from carrying that mournful burden into the presence of its
grandmother.
A terrible presentiment of the truth had fallen upon the old woman. She
had failed to win any thing from her daughter, and, with a sinking
heart, listened to the men crunching the snow under their feet, as they
went toward the orchard. For the world she could not have gone to the
door or remained upright upon her feet. The old high-back chair stood on
the hearth; she sat down. The fire flamed up and flickered over her
white features. Those little tracks upon the floor fascinated her gaze.
They melted and run into each other, taking uncouth shapes, but, in her
eyes, there had been no change. These two little footprints, in
disappearing from the floor, seemed to burn themselves into her heart.
She sat still listening, but there was no sound except the soughing of
the wind among the naked apple trees. Katharine lay still in her bed,
exulting in the safety which she had secured for her child, but craftily
silent lest some one should find out her secret. Filled with this idea
she held her breath, as if that would betray her.
Thus the stillness was profound. There was no confusion in the woman's
mind now. Her quick, clear intellect had seized upon the broad facts of
the case. She struggled against them, but the child was gone, and those
footprints on the floor were obliterating, but not dried out. After a
time she heard a strange sound in the road--the heavy tramp of feet,
followed by suppressed voices near the gate. With a prayer to God she
arose, walked to the door, cast it wide open, and stood on the threshold
with her arms extended. It was like laying a dead child into a dead
woman's bosom when the man placed his burden in those arms.