VI.

The roof beneath which Jack Espey had found shelter was the readiest

expression of hospitality. Its several expansions beyond its builder's

original gambrel design were betokened by the incongruity of the

additions, and the varying tints and fashion of the warped and worn

old clapboards. Two shed-rooms were obviously of a later date than

the dank and mossy covering of the main building; a queer projection

above a modern porch exhibited an aboriginal inspiration correlated

to a dormer window, albeit lacking the aperture; a section of the

limited porch itself was boarded up to serve further as house-room; and

a valiant disregard of the possibility of leakage characterized the

intrepid domestic architect. It further differed from the conventional

roofs of the district in its surroundings. In lieu of the bare dooryard

and the neighboring fields, or the low tangle of peach and apple

orchards, great forest trees loomed above it, the gigantic poplar and

white oak of the region; for the space about it was rugged with the

outcropping rock that sheered off further down into the great precipice

on the mountain slope, precluding the possibility of cultivation. An

exhaustless freestone spring burst out from the rocks close at hand,

the reason of the selection of its vicinity as a building-site, and

the "gyardin spot" and the cornfields were lower down the slope at the

side, out of view amidst the clustering foliage. So little industrial

were the suggestions that hung about this roof, so allied was it in

its rough, gray, mossy aspect to the rugged bark and gnarled boles

of the great trees, that it too might have seemed some spontaneous

production of the soil, as it rose from the ledges of the rock, mossy

and gray and rugged, too, like the rest. It had an intimation, also, of

an aspiration toward higher things, as it, like the trees, gazed out

upon the environing lofty seclusion of the mountains, the very inner

sanctuary of nature; for, save the mystic mist, or the sun and the

pursuing shadow, or the vagrant wind, naught ventured into that vast

semicircle of mountains and intermediate valleys that lay before it,

refulgent with color, massive, multitudinous, illimitable, the compass

of the human vision failing to trace further than the far horizon the

endless ranges still rising tier upon tier.

Whether the inmates of the house consciously derived aught from the

scene, from its calm, its splendor of extent that might serve to

widen the imagination, its vast resources of suggestion, one of them

spent many idle hours in gazing upon it. Often Jack Espey lay all the

forenoon upon the hay in the loft of the little barn, watching through

the bare logs, guiltless of "chinking," the shadows dwindling on the

hazy indented slopes, blue in the sunshine, amethyst in the shade. The

white clouds would sail when the wind was fair, or in still noontides

would lie at anchor off the great shimmering domes. Sometimes these

loiterings were prolonged till the pageants of sunset-tide were on the

march along the great purple western slopes, and from the shipping of

the skies floated every pennant of splendid color; the sun, with the

burnished dazzling quality quenched in the great blood-red sphere,

would go slowly dropping down behind the western ranges, leaving

the sky of a delicate amber tint with scarlet strata, amongst which

incongruous gorgeousness the evening star would shine with a pure,

pensive white radiance. The loft of the flimsy little barn, but now all

aglow with bars of gold alternating with brown shadow as the sunlight

fell between the logs, gilding even the tissues of cobweb and the

masses of hay, would sink into a dull, dusky monochrome. A shadow would

seem to fall upon his spirit. The anxiety to which the contemplative,

languorous idleness had granted surcease roused itself anew; the voices

from the house, never silent, were reasserted upon his attention,

and the necessity would supervene of joining the family circle,--a

necessity sometimes infinitely repugnant to his troubled soul, craving

solitude for its indulgence of woe, and hardly able to maintain the

cheerful disguise which must needs screen it.

So poor were his arts of deception that perhaps they would scarcely

have served his purpose elsewhere, but here he and his peculiarities

were given scant heed. He could not have found another domicile, in

all the length and breadth of the country, where he could have been

installed and have excited so little attention and curiosity. And

indeed, to Mrs. Larrabee, the head of the house, he was only one more

in addition to the rest of the tribe that must be warmed and fed and

housed, or, as she expressed it, "tucked away somewhar." She always

was equal to the emergency, although whenever Espey entered the large

circle about the fireside it seemed to have been recruited somewhere,

and more numerous than at his last survey.

"Ye 'pear ter hev a cornsider'ble head o' humans hyar, Mis' Haight,"

he observed on one occasion to the old grandam who sat in the corner,

the stepmother-in-law of Mrs. Larrabee, and whose reproval seemed the

natural incident of all that her daughter-in-law did. The world had

gone much awry with her, after the mundane manner, and in the evening

of her days she had neither the softening influence of religion nor the

resources of culture to mitigate the asperities of the result.

"In course,--in course!" she exclaimed rancorously, gazing at him over

her spectacles with little dark eyes, the brighter for exasperation.

"Thar's me an' my old man,--he's got the palsy," as if this rendered

him more numerous; "an' thar's Jerushy, my darter, an' her chil'n,

five, an' her husband; an' S'briny Lar'bee herself, an' her son Jasper.

An' ez ef that warn't enough, she hearn ez Henrietty Timson's husband

war dead, an' they war burnt out an' hed no home, so S'briny Lar'bee

jes' wagons down the mounting an' brung 'em hyar ter stay, seben

of 'em,--seben with thar mammy makes eight. S'briny jes' tucks 'em

away somehows, ez she 'lows, in this hyar leetle house!" She sneered

toothlessly, then laughed aloud. Suddenly she leaned forward, and, with

her knitting-needle in her hand, pointed at the group of floundering

children. "See that thar brat, the leetlest one?"

Espey, turning in his chair, descried a tow-head bobbing not far

above the floor. The significant eye of the old woman fixed him as if

reciting an enormity.

"He war a infant whenst he kem,--a ill-convenient infant in arms,

_with the rickets_!"

As the subject of this criticism scampered out of the crowd, with a

single unbleached cotton garment on, very rotund as to trunk, very

fat and cherubic as to legs, very loud and blatant as to voice, very

arrogant and impudent as to manner, the young man was moved to remark

that he "'peared toler'ble hearty now."

"Course he do," she assented, "through a-gor-mandizin' of so much fat

meat; scandalous, impident shoat,--ez well ez a bear!"

She loved a quiet life, did Mrs. Haight. She had been an only daughter.

She had had only two children. She had always had her house to herself;

and in this congregation of incongruous elements around her widowed

daughter-in-law's hearth she beheld only inconvenience, perversity, and

an unfilial disregard of her own very sage advice. It had even been

advanced to exclude her own daughter.

"Let Jerushy's husband take keer o' her. She would marry him, spite o'

all. Let her 'bide by her ch'ice."

But poor Jerusha's husband was a drunkard, and the forlorn household

had suffered hardship and very nearly grazed starvation before they

made their happy advent into this populous haven.

There were certain sensitive thrills of pride and shame in the

fugitive's heart, as he listened to this arraignment of the numbers

crowded about the hospitable hearth. He said to himself, in

justification, that he was only one more among so many, but he felt

that he was an imposition. There was no such thought, however, in Mrs.

Haight's mind. She regarded him only as a visitor, a personable young

man, and moreover as possessing a certain unique interest for her; for

in her youth she had spent some days in Tanglefoot Cove, and, despite

the wide diversity of their age, occupation, and outlook at life, they

passed sundry companionable hours in gossiping of the people of that

locality, and detailing the various chances that had befallen families

known to both. During these sessions he was wont to hold her yarn for

her to wind. She never slipped the hank across his wrists that he did

not bethink himself of other wristlets destined for him, perchance,

and made of sterner stuff. He was prone to be silent for a time during

the winding of the skeins, but she improved the opportunity to talk

to an attentive listener; for Sabrina was too liable to interruptions

from her various charges to meet her somewhat exacting demands as an

interlocutor, and she was at scornful variance with the other elders of

the family.

"Mis' Lar'bee 'pears ter be fond o' comp'ny," said Jack, as he leaned

forward, with his submissive hands outstretched for the yarn.

The old woman, peering keenly through her spectacles as she sought to

find the end of the thread,--she had a cautious, skillful, alert air,

as of a trapper,--paused suddenly, her knotted, withered hand poised

like a claw.

"'Tain't that!" she exclaimed scornfully. "Nothin' like it! Ye reckon

enny 'oman in her senses likes sech ez that?"

She nodded acrimoniously, and Jack, following the direction of her

eye, glanced over his shoulder at the turmoil of tow-heads scuffling

together in the flickering firelight. Supper was in course of

preparation, and they were even noisier at this glad prospect than

their wont. One of them, under cover of Espey's preoccupation, had

approached, and, slipping his hand under the arm held out for the

skein, was venturing slyly to touch the pistols in his belt, with all

the greed of the small boy for deadly weapons. Espey, his white hat

far back on his head, looked down upon him, his suddenly scowling face

all unshaded, and the little mountaineer fell back affrighted and in

dismay; for, despite his humble estate in life, he had encountered few

frowns.

"Naw, S'briny's reason ain't got no reason in it." Mrs. Haight had

begun the winding now, and the red ball was whirling, ever larger, in

her nimble fingers. "She jes' hed a son kilt in the wars. Leastwise the

tale ez kem back war that he war wounded in a scrimmage, turrible; an'

his folks war all on the run. An' he crawled ter a house nigh by, an'

the 'oman tuk him in. An' he died in her house stiddier on the groun'

or in a fence corner. That war the tale. S'briny never could find out

who war the 'oman, nor edzac'ly whar it happened. But sence then, ter

pay back her debt, she takes 'em all in, an' whenst they gits too

crowded she knocks up a shed or suthin' an' packs 'em in; whenst like

ez not the 'oman lef' Alvin ter die on the hard, cold groun', an' mebbe

sot the dogs on him ter hurry the job."

There was a silence for a few moments, while the firelight flickered

upon Espey's absorbed eyes and intent, listening figure. The wrinkled,

parchment-like face of the old woman was partly in the shadow as she

sat in the corner, but her spectacles gleamed with unwonted brilliancy

as she actively moved and nodded her head under her big ruffled cap.

"S'briny say, too, ez old pa'son Jenks say ez ye mought entertain

angels unaware. An' _I_ say, then agin ye moughtn't! Fur ef enny

o' these hyar that S'briny _hev_ entertained air angels, they air

powerful peart at hidin' it, sure!"

Once more she cast a caustic glance at the group, and her sarcastic

laughter fell upon the air, sharply treble.

If celestial visitants, these were certainly well disguised. Espey

glanced at the bloated face of the inebriate husband of Jerusha,

tremulous, full of sudden fits and starts; at Jerusha herself,

slatternly, slothful, and down at the heel, a snuff brush in her

mouth, and her forlorn discontent with life in general on her weak,

flabby face; at the old, feeble-minded man dozing and muttering in the

corner,--he had once in his life worked in the Lost Time mine, and

he sometimes gave Espey a sudden start by bringing out the name with

a deep, full, blood-curdling curse. Henrietta Timson's thankfulness

had merged into a suspicion that too much gratitude was expected

of her, and she was prone to magnify the lighter tasks which she

selected, and went about with an overworked drudging air, and with

some distinct proclivity for the rôle of martyr. It was a furtive,

jealous eye which she cast upon Mrs. Larrabee, at home, competent, and

emphatically in command. The children, nevertheless, were disposed to

take undue advantage of their protectress; and the smaller they were,

the more capable, by reason of her leniency, of imposing upon her. This

disposition characterized even an infant turkey, which had contracted

some disease by exposure to the inclemency of the weather, and, being

put into a basket of cotton to recuperate, found its way out, from time

to time, with a cotton girdle adhering about its middle, and, with a

fifelike voice, made the grand tour of the hearth, in imminent danger

of catching fire in its cotton gear, causing her acute anguish lest it

should be baked alive and before its time.

Even Mrs. Larrabee herself,--if there were aught spiritual about her,

it must have been in the ends of her fingers. She was much given to

wearing a sunbonnet, in the depths of which her thin, pallid face had

a look like marble, with its keen, straight features. Her busy eye had

not casual observation: she looked at the children to see if they were

sick or cold or hungry; at Jerusha's husband to descry if perchance he

were drunk again; at Jack Espey to discover if he wanted aught, and if

he had no want or ailment she noticed him not at all. He could hardly

have been more free to come and go as he would, and the long hours

when he and Larrabee were away at the still passed altogether without

remark. It was nevertheless to her that he resolved to open his heart.

The door was ajar, and he could see that the long, loitering summer

night had come at last. Through the gap in the trees the stars were

visible, glowing white above the sombre mountains in the distance;

he could not distinguish a constellation,--only a whorl of brilliant

stellular points of light in the scant interval where the black leaves

of the oak, as distinct and as dark as if cut of bronze, failed to

fill the space between the threshold and the zenith. It was not long

now before she would be at leisure, and sleep would silence the

juvenile members of the family, except indeed the turkey, which, though

unclassified amongst nocturnal fowl, was wont to pipe lugubriously

in the dead watches of the night, necessitating the uprising of the

mistress of the house with a draught of water and a light lunch of

corn-meal batter to compose it once more to slumber. As Espey observed

it gadding about on its long legs, disproportioned to the size of its

body even when begirt with the cotton batting, he sagely thought that

Mrs. Larrabee's tolerance toward its exacting idiosyncrasies was the

result of no sense of obligation to it or its kind. "She's a powerful

good-hearted woman, and smart, too," he said to himself; "she's got

enough sense ter hev some feelin's."

The evening, passed in winding the yarn, wore slowly away to him after

his resolve. He was very taciturn and still, and Mrs. Haight, finding

so acquiescent a coadjutor, grew industrious, and hank succeeded

hank upon his motionless and submissive wrists. His silence did not

discourage her flow of words. On the contrary, it assumed the narrative

form in lieu of their usual dialogue; and as the fervor of reminiscence

waxed, her small black eyes grew brighter, her parchment-like cheek

flushed, and, with her red "shoulder shawl" and big white cap and

snowy hair and blue apron, she looked like some fairy godmother. And

indeed, as she briskly wound the thread, now blue, now red, and again

gray "clouded" with white, it might have seemed that she wielded some

sorcery to reduce to this humble fireside utility this wild-eyed,

defiant spirit. The young desperado, his belt stuck full of weapons,

was oddly at variance with the solicitude which he now and again

exhibited when a troublous tangle developed, and the thread perversely

knotted and broke. The firelight that flickered on his face, the fairer

from his sojourn in the sunless depths of the Lost Time mine, his

great boots and spurs, his pliant attitude and submissive gestures,

and his aged and incongruous companion served also to show what speed

was made in disposing of the youthful gentry for the night. With that

perverse disinclination for bedtime which betrays the old Adam in the

youngest infant, they severally resisted, each to the best of his

very respectable capacity. One or two of tender years, having been

hustled up the ladder to the loft, came down again in scant attire,

and he who had triumphed over the rickets, and whose bed was in a box,

resuscitated himself from amongst the bedclothes whenever he was stowed

away, but finally was overtaken, and fell asleep on the old house-dog's

neck as he lay snoring on the hearth.

Espey was of that type of man to whom juvenility is neither comical nor

alluring. Duty was revealed to him in graduated doses adapted to the

age of the taker, and he was disposed to make no allowance to infants

for delinquency. It seemed to him that Mrs. Larrabee's patience was

much misplaced, and he now and again gazed with disapproving eyes at

the group. He was obliged to linger long before she was at leisure and

sitting in front of the hearth with the shovel in her hand, ready to

heap the ashes over the coals to keep the fire till day. The two beds

in the room were edged with the tow-heads of the children, sleeping

crosswise; the baby's box-crib and the turkey's basket had each its

wonted occupant; and if the dreams that went up from the conclave could

have been materialized, what wild display of phantasmagoria they would

have made! The door had been barred up against the possible marauder

of the elder's apprehension, and the black bear of juvenile dread. The

shadows of the two loiterers were on the red, dully illumined ceiling,

two gigantic, distorted heads of dusky brown.

"I war sorter waitin' fur Jasper," observed Espey disingenuously,

having noticed that Mrs. Larrabee looked inquiringly at him. "I reckon

he be a-visitin' down at Tems's."

"Mebbe so," she acquiesced succinctly, rasping the shovel on the

hearth. She seemed indisposed for conversation.

"Mis' Haight's mighty good comp'ny," he continued, leaning sideways in

his chair, with his elbow on its back as he supported his head in his

hand. "Talkin' 'bout old times, an' her courtin' days, an' sech."

For, according to Mrs. Haight's own account, she had been a truculent

heart-breaker in her hey-day. There were few names that one might

mention, native to her locality, which she could not have worn had she

chosen. She always alluded cavalierly to the husband she had and to the

one she had lost as "toler'ble samples o' the whole b'ilin'."

Mrs. Larrabee's immobile face was more inexpressive than before, as the

red light sought it out in the depths of her sunbonnet. She had her

secret doubts as to this wholesale destruction of the peace of youth a

half century ago.

"Toler'ble interestin' ter me!" protested Espey suddenly. "I hev been

sorter in love myse'f--leastwise"--He did not continue to qualify, for

Mrs. Larrabee turned her face, illumined by maternal interest, upon

him. "It's gin me a heap o' trouble, too," he broke out impetuously,

divining her sympathy.

She was looking at him tenderly, remembering her own youth and her

own young lover, dead and gone this many a year. Jacob Larrabee had,

in happier days, laughed retrospectively at his own lackadaisical woe

and wakeful nights and anxious doubts. "Sech a _funny_ fool I

war. Thar may hev been ez _big_ fools, but I'll swar I war the

_funniest_." But his woe had always appealed to her commiseration,

and she was glad she had consciously been no factor in it. "I wouldn't

hev hed ye so tormented fur nuthin', Jacob, ef I hed knowed," she would

say gently.

Jack's young face, worn with fiercer griefs and turmoils and keener

fears, was appealing in its anxious lines; her warm motherly heart

went out to him. He leaned his hands on his knees, and assumed a

confidential tone.

"Now, Mis' Lar'bee," he said, "I 'lowed I'd ax ye what this hyar gal

means. I hev done everything I knowed how ter please her,--even whenst

she tole me ter go a-perlitin' around another gal. I done _jes' like

she ordered_, an' what ye s'pose she done?"

"What?" demanded his partisan confidante angrily, knitting her brows

heavily.

"She hit me."

"Did she hurt ye?" exclaimed Mrs. Larrabee sympathetically, dropping

her voice in contemplation of the enormity.

Remembering the relative proportions and force of Adelicia and himself,

Espey and his woe were out of countenance for the nonce. He laughed a

little sheepishly. "Naw," he admitted reluctantly. "She didn't hurt me

none ter speak on."

Mrs. Larrabee's brow cleared. "Sonny, 'twar jes' love-licks," she

suggested, in old-fashioned maternal phrase.

"Naw, sir! Naw, sir!" Espey shook his head with grave protest. "She war

too leetle ter hurt me, she war bound ter know. She jes' wanted ter

hurt my feelin's. An' she done it, too."

Mrs. Larrabee's face was all commiseration; and suddenly a truly

feminine curiosity became manifest. "Whar do the gal live? Hyarabouts

or in Tanglefoot?"

However far a man may trust a woman, he never trusts her completely.

Jack Espey caught himself sharply. "It's fur off,--mighty fur, 'pears

like ter me," he said mendaciously. "Now, Mis' Lar'bee, I wants ter

git yer advices. What ails the gal ter treat me that-a-way, jes' 'kase

I done her bid an' gin the t'other gal good-evenin', full perlite like

she told me ter do? What ails her?"

"Pride," said Mrs. Larrabee sternly. She could be severe enough with

people whom she did not see, and her mental image of a buxom termagant

was far enough removed from the fragile and shrinking Adelicia.

Espey looked at her with doubtful, troubled eyes. "Jes' turned on me

an' smit me!" he protested. "I feel like I'll never git over that lick.

I'll die of it yit!"

"Pride!" fiercely reiterated Mrs. Larrabee. "An' ef ye wanter make

her repent it, ye jes' perlite up the t'other gal fur true! Whenst I

went back ter Tanglefoot Cove, I'd show sech manners ez it ain't used

ter,--ye'd better b'lieve I would. That thar gal 'lows she kin git ye

too easy, too powerful cheap. T'other gal good lookin'?"

"Waal," drawled Espey uneasily, evidently contemplating apprehensively

this heroic treatment for the small smiter, "nobody don't look purty

ter me but one, an' she's plumb beautiful, ter my mind."

"Oh, shucks!" Mrs. Larrabee exhorted him scornfully.

"T'other gal hev got the name of it, though," he said reluctantly,

plainly jealous for the preëminence of his lady love. "T'other gal is

named a reg'lar gyardin lily fur beauty."

"Waal, then, perlitin' 'round her won't go so turrible hard with ye,"

said Mrs. Larrabee discerningly. "Though mebbe ye hed better let the

'gyardin lily' inter the secret, 'kase she mought fall in love with ye

an' yer perliteness."

But Jack Espey shook his head; he had bitter cause to distrust candor.

"I can't go 'round warnin' the gals against me," he said sturdily. "Ef

she falls in love with me, she'll jes' hev ter fall out agin, that's

all."

He sat for a little time gazing moodily at the fire, and contemplating

the details of this scheme of reprisal. Then, with a curt good-night,

he rose and tramped off to the roof-room, which he shared with Jasper

and a delegation of the larger boys; leaving Mrs. Larrabee covering the

embers, and pausing now and again, as she knelt on the hearth, with the

red light on her statuesque features, to ponder on the lover of her

past youthful days, and the sensible advice she had given Jack Espey to

reduce the inordinate pride of the arrogant, arbitrary damsel of his

heart in Tanglefoot Cove.

But the bars so stoutly made fast against the door were not destined

to keep their place that night. The moon had long before slipped from

the vaguely illumined limited space of the sky, which her own light

had rendered faintly blue, down behind a jutting crag of the western

mountains; it glowed a sombre purple as the crescent passed, with a

pearly gleaming mist half revealed against the black summits about

it. The white stars, whiter still, pulsated in the darkening sky. So

pervasive a sense of silence was in their mute splendor that even the

benighted mountain wilderness seemed to assert many voices, strange,

murmurous, unknown to the light. Espey, stretched upon his pallet in

the recess of the dormer window above the porch, with his wakeful,

troublous thoughts, languidly sought to differentiate the sounds. He

heeded the rustle of a vagrant zephyr, the twitter of a nestling,

the murmur of the spring in the rocks near at hand, the never silent

chirring of the cicada of the Southern summer night. But what was it

in the insensate world of crag and forest and mountain and chasm that

drew a long breath, and paused, and once more sighed heavily, and

again resigned itself to silence? He could see in the rifts of the

clapboards above his head a palpitating white star,--how its heart of

fire beat! He felt his own pulses throb heavily, and the next moment

they seemed to cease. A new sound intruded into the monotony of the

mountain stillness. He heard it once far away, and then silence.

He lifted himself upon his elbow and listened, with dilating eyes.

Only the sense of the noiseless dewfall, the cracking of a sun-dried

clapboard, the swift scurrying of a mouse amongst the rafters, and once

more silence, or that mysterious voice of the night which rose and fell

in the cadence of sighs. He was about to lie down when the sound came

again,--distinct this time, unmistakable, so close at hand that it

seemed the very malice of fate that he should not have distinguished

it earlier. It was the hoofbeat of horses, and they came at a swift

gallop,--so swift that he had hardly a moment to take counsel with

himself, in a turmoil of doubt and fear; his foot was barely on the

stairway when a heavy tread fell upon the little porch, and a sturdy

fist thundered at the door.

Into the dusky red darkness of the room below--for the glow of the

embers could hardly be reckoned as light--a feeble white glimmer was

stealing. Mrs. Larrabee, without her sunbonnet for once, had hustled

on her homespun dress, buttoned all awry, and was striking a light for

a tallow dip. Perhaps its dim flicker revealed the young man standing

high in the deep shadows on the stair that led to the roof-room, or

perhaps she only distinguished his step in the midst of the clamor at

the door, for she called out suddenly to him, "Open the door, Jack,

open the door, sonny, no matter who it be! Every chile in the house

will be a-swarmin' up d'rectly ef that thar bangin' be 'lowed ter go

on, an' I reckon we'll _never_ git the baby inter bed agin!"

The turkey was already awake and alert, its piercing pipe adding to the

confusion and nervous stress of the situation, as Jack Espey, after one

irresolute moment, strode to the door, and Mrs. Larrabee rose from her

knees on the hearth and stood in the dusky brown background, shading

with her hand the timorous flame of the candle.

Perhaps it was well for Jack Espey that the bars went down with so

resolute and hearty a clangor, for, as he confronted the men at the

door, they did not doubt that they faced the son of the house.

"Widder Lar'bee lives hyar?" said a keen, tall, dark-eyed man, with

high cheek-bones and a hooked nose, above which his thick black

eyebrows met. His soft black hat had a sort of peaked crown, and he

wore a suit of plaided "store clothes," as befitted one having access

to the towns, but which were much creased, and his boots were drawn,

country fashion, over his trousers to the knees.

"Air that enny reason ter bust the door down?" demanded Espey, looking

at the stout battens as if expecting to discern injury as it swayed in

his hand.

Mrs. Larrabee interposed blandly, "I be Widder Lar'bee. 'Tain't no use

ter talk loud. I got some mighty fractious chil'n hyar 'sleep."

The fractious turkey stood upon the hearth and piped till the end

of its tail quivered with the energy of its vocalization. A cricket

was shrilling keenly. The trivial sounds seemed to throb in Espey's

brain when the visitor said, "I be dep'ty sher'ff o' this county, Mis'

Lar'bee, an' I hear ez thar war a stranger in the Cove a-puttin' up

hyar."

The two men behind the officer looked over his shoulder, their bearded

faces sharply inquisitive.

"Naw, sir, I ain't got no stranger hyar; not but whut I would take 'em

in,--me an' my son hev made a rule o' that,--but we-uns bide too fur

off'n the road." She did not account Espey a stranger, so accustomed a

figure had he become in the domestic circle.

There was a definite disappointment in the officer's keen,

high-featured face.

Mrs. Larrabee turned to Espey. "Ye ain't hearn o' enny stray man

hyarabouts, hev ye, sonny?"

"Thar be a stranger down at Tems's," said Espey; "though I reckon

he ain't done nuthin' agin the law,--saaft-spoken an' perlite an'

peaceable."

The high-featured face was contorted in a jocose grimace, to which the

meeting of the black eyebrows gave a singularly sinister effect. Espey

felt his heart sink as the official winked at him.

"Perliteness would have been wuth mo' ter this man ef he could hev

showed manners sooner. War mighty onpolite indeed in Tanglefoot Cove,

Mis' Lar'bee, an' shot a man."

"Kilt him?" she demanded in a bated voice, and turning pale. She held

the candle awry, as she spoke, and the flickering light as the tallow

melted and dripped heavily on the floor showed only her own straight

features and masses of brown hair, dulled with gray, coiled at the back

of her head.

Espey's overladen heart thumped heavily. The cold drops stood thick on

his face, all in the shadow, white and drawn with suspense.

"In an' about,--a sorter livin' death. An' sence he hev got so much

worse his folks want the malefactor apprehended straight. We hearn ez

he air hyarabouts or in Persimmon Cove, one. An' ez the constable o'

this deestric' air sick abed,--ailin' old cattle like him oughtn't ter

be 'lowed ter hold office!--the high sher'ff sent me ter look arter

him, ef I could come up with him. Waal,"--he was turning away,--"I'm

sorry I hed ter roust ye and yer son up this time o' night."

Mrs. Larrabee took no note of this misdescription. Her thoughts were

engrossed by a sudden hospitable intention.

"Wouldn't a bite an' a sup hearten ye up sorter, arter so much ridin'

in the night wind?" she drawled amiably.

The deputy, despite his lean, lank, ill-nourished air, was susceptible

to the allurements of the pleasures of the table. He hesitated, and a

very little urgency sufficed to induct him into a chair by the side of

the fire, while Mrs. Larrabee ransacked her stores for the bite and

sup, which were more easily promised than provided.

He was new to his office, and disposed to magnify its dignities and

difficulties, as he and his two companions waited for the refection,

while Espey stirred up the fire and rescued the turkey, which had

burrowed into a mound of dead ashes, still permeated, however, with the

grateful warmth of the embers.

"Ye'd be plumb s'prised, Mis' Lar'bee, at the slyness o' sech

malefactors, an' the trouble they'll gin. Now I be a stranger ter this

e-end o' the county, an' what with the constable sick everybody sorter

holds back 'bout informin' the officer o' the law; turrible 'fraid lest

the folks in gineral takes it out on them, ye know. Some 'lows I be

a-trappin' moonshiners; an' that ain't my business at all. I got no

mo' agin moonshiners 'n I hev agin whiskey. It's all one ter _me_.

I don't c'lect the tax, an' I don't pay it nuther. I drinks mos'ly on

treats, sech ez this." He held up his glass, for Espey had proffered

the product of the Lost Time still, and it seemed to him at the moment

that the very jug looked conscious. "I couldn't git a critter ter kem

with me ter-night 'thout reg'lar summonsin' a posse: one man ailin';

t'other man, sick wife; another man, sore foot; another man, lame

horse. Course _I_ could hev _made_ 'em kem," waving the hand

with the glass in it with a capable gesture; "but I didn't want ter be

harsh an' requirin' with the citizens, 'kase, ye know," with a sudden

sly geniality illumining his countenance, "I mought want ter run fur

sher'ff myse'f some day,--that is, ef the old man was ter git done

with the office," he added, mindful of his tenure through the favor

of the high sheriff. "Now this hyar man," pointing out one of his

followers, who bore with a sort of wooden equanimity the united gaze

of Mrs. Larrabee and Espey, "he be a stranger hyarabouts, too,--kems

from my deestric', frien' o' mine,--so o' course he warn't acquainted

hyarabout, nuther."

Mrs. Larrabee's perceptions detected something embarrassing to a

sensitive nature in this invited survey of the silent, bearded man, who

had not opened his mouth except to put a biscuit into it. As amends,

she handed him the plate anew, and the second biscuit silently went the

way of the first.

"Now this hyar other man,"--the officer indicated a short, square-set

fellow,--"he war powerful leetle 'quainted round hyar, though he kem

from neighboring ways, the Gap; so he ondertook ter p'int out yer

house"--