II.

It was a hot day in the little valley town, the first Thursday in

August, the climax of a drought, with the sun blazing down from dawn

to dusk, and not a cloud, not a vagrant mist, not even the stir of the

impalpable ether, to interpose. The mountains that rimmed the horizon

all around Colbury shimmered azure, through the heated air. No wind

came down those darker indentations that marked ravines. A dazzling,

stifling stillness reigned; yet now and again an eddying cloud of dust

would spring up along the streets, and go whirling up-hill and down,

pausing suddenly, and settling upon the overgrown shrubbery in the

pretty village yards, or on white curtains hanging motionless at the

windows of large, old-fashioned frame houses. Even the shade was hot

with a sort of closeness unknown in the open air, yet as it dwindled

to noontide proportions some alleviation seemed withdrawn; and though

the mercury marked no change, all the senses welcomed the

post-meridian lengthening of the images of bough and bole beneath the

trees, and the fantastic architecture of the shadows of chimney and

gable and dormer-window, elongated out of drawing, stretching across

the grassy streets and ample gardens. There among the grape trellises,

and raspberry bushes, and peach and cherry trees, the locusts chirred

and chirred a tireless, vibrating panegyric on hot weather. The birds

were hushed; sometimes under a clump of matted leaves one of the

feathered gentry might be seen with wings well held out from his

panting sides. The beautiful green beetle, here called the "June-bug,"

hovered about the beds of thyme, its jeweled, enameled green body and

its silver gauze wings flashing in the sun, although June was far down

the revolving year. Blue and lilac lizards basked in the garden walks,

which were cracked by the heat. Little stir was in the streets; the

languid business of a small town was transacted if absolute need

required, and postponed if a morrow would admit of contemplation. The

voters slowly repaired to the polls with a sense of martyrdom in the

cause of party, and the election was passing off in a most orderly

fashion, there being no residuum of energy in the baking town to

render it disorderly or unseemly. Often not a human being was to be

seen, coming or going.

To Theodosia it was all vastly different from the picture she had

projected of Colbury with an election in progress. In interest,

movement, populousness, it did not compare with a county-court day,

which her imagination had multiplied when she estimated the relative

importance of the events. She had made no allowance for the absence of

the country people, specially wont to visit the town when the

quarterly court was in session, but now all dutifully in place voting

in their own remote districts. The dust, the suffocating heat, the

stale, vapid air, the indescribable sense of a lower level--all these

affected her like a veritable burden, accustomed as she was to the

light and rare mountain breeze, to the tempered sun, the mist, and the

cloud. The new and untried conditions of town life trammeled and

constrained her. She had a certain pride, and she feared she

continually offended against the canons of metropolitan taste. In

every passing face she saw surprise, and she fancied contempt. In

every casual laugh she heard ridicule. Her brain was a turmoil of

conflicting anxieties, hopes, resolutions, and in addition these

external demands upon her attention served to intensify her absorbing

emotions and to irritate her nerves rather than to divert or soothe

them. She had escaped from the relative at whose house she was making

a visit, craftily timed to include election day, on the plea that she

wished to see something of the town. "Ye don't live up on the

mounting, Cousin Anice, 'mongst the deer, an' b'ar, an' fox, like me,"

she had said jestingly, "or ye'd want ter view all the town ye kin."

And once outside the shabby little palings, she returned no more for

hours.

Along the scorching streets she wandered, debating within herself

anxious questions which, she felt, affected all her future, and

unfitting herself still further to reach that just and wise conclusion

she desired to compass. She could not altogether abstract her mind,

despite the interests which she had at stake. She noticed that her

unaccustomed feet stumbled over the flag-stones of the pavement--"Fit

fur nothin' but followin' the plough!" she muttered in irritation. She

hesitated at the door of a store, then sidled sheepishly in, tearing

her dress on a nail in a barrel set well in the corner and out of the

way.

But while looking over the pile of goods which she had neither the

wish nor the money to purchase, she could have sunk with shame with

the sudden thought that perhaps it was not the vogue in Colbury to

keep a clerk actively afoot to while away the idle time of a

desperately idle woman. She could not at once decide how she might

best extricate herself, and for considerable time the empty show of an

impending purchase went on.

"I'll--I'll kem an' see 'bout'n it ter-morrer," she faltered at last.

"Much obleeged."

"No trouble to show goods," said the martyr of the counter, politely.

In truth he had in the course of his career shown them as futilely to

women who were much older and far, far uglier, and contemplating

purchase as remotely.

She went out scarlet, slow, tremulous, and walking close into the wall

like an apprehensive cat, looking now and again over her shoulder. She

wondered if he laughed when he was alone.

Her shadow was long now as it preceded her down the street, lank,

awkward, clumsy. She took note of the late hour which it intimated,

and followed the extravagant, lurching caricature of herself to her

cousin's house, a little unpainted, humble building set far back in

the yard, against the good time coming when a more ornate structure

should be prefixed. The good time seemed still a long way off. Her

cousin's ironing-board was on the porch, and presently a lean,

elderly, active woman whisked out, her flat-iron in her hand.

"Cousin Anice," called Theodosia from the gate, "how's the 'lection

turned out?"

Cousin Anice paused to put her finger in her mouth; thus moistened,

she touched it to the flat-iron, which hissed smartly, and which she

applied then to the apron on the board.

"Laws-a-massy! chile, the polls is jes' closed, an' all the country

deestric's ter be hearn from. We won't know till ter-morrer--till late

ter-night, nohow."

Theodosia leaned against the gate. How could she wait! How could she

endure the suspense! She thought of Justus, and of her promise to fix

the date of the wedding on election day, but only as an additional

factor of trouble in her own anxiety and indecision.

"Wat's been hyar ez cross ez two sticks," said Mrs. Elmer. She paused

to hold up the apron, exquisitely white, and sheer, and stiff, and to

gaze with critical professional eyes upon it; she was what is known as

a "beautiful washer and ironer," although otherwise not comely. "Wat's

beat plumb out o' sight, ef the truth war knowed, I reckon. He 'lows

he's powerful 'feared. Ef't war Justus, now, _he'd_ hev been 'lected

sure. Justus is a mighty s'perior man; pity he never hed no

eddication. He could hev done anything--sharp ez a brier. Yes; Wat's

beat, I reckon."

In the instant Theodosia's heart sank. But she turned from the

palings, and sauntered resolutely on. It well behooved her to take

counsel with herself. "I mought hev made a turr'ble, turr'ble

mistake," she muttered. She was sensible of a sharp pang pervading her

consciousness. Nevertheless, judgment clamored for recognition.

"Everybody gins Justus a good name, better'n Wat," she argued. "An' ef

Wat _ain't_ 'lected"--

She walked down the street with a freer step, her head lifted, her

self-respect more secure. With the possible collapse of her prospect

of living in Colbury, and her ambition to adjust herself to the

exigent demands of its more ornate civilization, her natural untrained

grace was returning to her. She felt that she was certainly stylish

enough for the hills, where she was likely to live all her days, and

with this realization she quite unconsciously seemed easy enough,

unconstrained enough, graceful enough, to pass muster in a wider

sphere. Her heart was beating placidly now with the casting away of

this new expectation that had made all its pulses tense. The still air

was cooler, or at least darker. A roseate suffusion was in the sky,

although a star twinkled there. More people were in the streets; doors

and windows were open, and faces appeared now and again among the

vines and curtains. As she hesitated on the street corner, two young

girls in white dresses and with fair hair passed her. She watched them

with darkening brow as they drew hastily together, and suddenly she

overheard the half-smothered exclamation which had a dozen times

to-day barely escaped her ears.

"What a pretty, pretty girl! Oh, my! how pretty, how pretty!"

Theodosia stood like one bewitched; a light like the illumination of

jewels was in her sapphire eyes; the color surged to her cheek; she

lifted up her head on its round, white throat; her lips curved. "Oh,

poor fool!" she thought in pity for herself, for this was what the

Colbury people had been saying all day in their swift, recurrent

glances, their half-masked asides, their furtive turning to look after

her. And she--to have given herself a day of such keen misery

unconscious of their covert encomiums!

"I live up thar in the wilderness till I jes' don't sense nothin',"

she said.

All the wilting prospects of life were refreshed as a flower in the

perfumed dew-fall. She felt competent, able to cope with them all; her

restored self-confidence pervaded her whole entity, spiritual and

material. She walked back with an elastic step, a breezy, debonair

manner, and she met Justus Hoxon at the gate of her cousin's yard with

a jaunty assurance, and with all the charm of her rich beauty in the

ascendant.

He would fain have detained her in the twilight. "What's that ye

promised to tell me 'lection day?"

"I 'lowed the day Wat war 'lected," she temporized, laying her hand on

the gate, which his stronger hand kept still closed.

"Waal, this is the day Wat is 'lected."

She drew back. Even in the dim light he could see her blue eyes

widening with inquiry as she looked at him.

"I 'lowed the returns warn't all in," she said doubtfully.

"They ain't, but enough hev kem in sence the polls closed ter gin him

a thumpin' majority. He's safe." The tense ring of triumph was in his

voice.

The scene was swimming before her; she was dazed by the sudden

alternations of hope and despair, of decision and counter-decision, by

the seeming instability of all this. Once more she thought, in a

tremble, and with a difference, of the mistake she might have made.

She held to the gate to keep her feet, no longer to open it.

"What did ye promise ter tell me 'lection day?" he demanded once

more, clasping her hand as it lay on the palings.

"'Lection day?" she said with a forced laugh--"'t ain't e-ended yit.

An'," with a sudden resolution of effecting a diversion--"afore it

_is_ e-ended I want ter git a peep through that thar thing they call a

tellingscope, ef they let women folks look through it."

He was instantly intent.

"Laws-a-massy, yes!" he exclaimed. "I seen Mis' Dr. Kane and Mis'

Jedge Peters, an' thar darters, an' a whole passel o' women folks over

thar one night las' week. The young folks jes' amble up an' down the

court-house yard, bein' moonlight, like a lot o' young colts showin'

thar paces. An' even ef they ain't thar ter-night, I'll take ye over

thar arter supper, with yer cousin Anice ter keep ye in countenance."

But after supper there was a sufficiency of fluttering white dresses

astir in the court-house yard, and now and again crossing the wide,

ill-paved street thither, to warrant Theodosia in dispensing with her

cousin's company, much to that sophisticated worthy's relief.

"I hev seen all Colbury's got ter show," she said with sated pride.

"An' bein' ez I hev hed a hard day's ironin', I hev got a stitch in my

side."

"I'd onderstan' that better if ye hed hed a hard day's sewin'," said

Justus. He was in high feather, eager, jubilant, drinking in all the

rich and subtle flavors of success with the gusto of personal triumph.

"He air prouder'n Wat," more than one observer opined.

There was another fine exhibition of pride on display in the

court-house yard that evening. One might have inferred that Dr. Kane

had made the comet, from his satisfaction in its proportions, his

accurate knowledge and exposition of its history, its previous

appearances, and when its coming again might be expected. He was the

principal physician of the place, and the little telescope was his

property, and he had thus generously loaned it to the public with the

hope of illuminating the general ignorance by a nearer view of the

starry heavens, while it served his own and his neighbors' interest in

the nightly progress of the great comet. Total destruction had been

prophesied as the imminent fate of the telescope, but it had so far

justified its owner's confidence in the promiscuous politeness of

Kildeer County, and had been a source of infinite pleasure to the

country folks from the coves and mountains, who had never before seen,

nor in good sooth heard of, such an instrument. For weeks past almost

all night curious groups took possession of it at intervals, and

doubtless it did much to enlarge their idea of science and knowledge

of celestial phenomena, for often Dr. Kane's idle humor induced him to

stand by and explain the various theories touching comets,--their

velocity, their substance or lack of substance, their recurrence,

their status in the astral economy,--and cognate themes. As he was a

man of very considerable reading and mental qualifications, of some

means for the indulgence of his taste, and a good deal of leisure, the

synopsis of astronomical science presented in the successive

expositions was very well worth listening to, especially by the more

ignorant of the community, who were thus enlightened as to facts

hitherto foreign even to their wildest imaginings.

But following hard on every benefaction is the trail of ingratitude,

and certain of the irreverent in the crowd found a piquant zest in

secret derision of the doctor, who sometimes did, in truth, present

the air of a showman with a panorama. More especially was this the

case when his enthusiasm waxed high, and his satisfaction in the

glories of the comet partook of a positive personal pride.

"What's he goin' ter do about it?" demanded one grinning rustic of

another on the outskirts of the crowd.

"Put salt on its tail," responded his interlocutor.

Others affected to believe that the doctor was performing a great feat

with the long bow, especially in the tremendous measurements of which

he seemed singularly prodigal. A reference to the height of the

mountains of the moon as compared with the neighboring ranges elicited

a whispered hope that the roads were better there than those of the

Great Smoky; and an inquiry concerning the probable fate of the comet

provoked a speculation that when he was done with it he would sell it

at public outcry to the highest bidder at the east door of the

court-house.

Close about the stand, however, the crowd took on something of the

demeanor of a literary society. Discussions were in order, questions

asked and answered, authorities quoted and refuted: the other

physician, who practiced much in consultation with Dr. Kane, two or

three clergymen, several of the officers of the court, and a number of

lawyers, all taking part. The more youthful members of the gathering

affected the role of peripatetic philosophers, and sauntered to and

fro, arm in arm, in the light of the waxing moon.

The big black shadows of the giant oaks were all dappled with silver

as the beams pierced the foliage and fell to the ground below; only

the cornice of the building threw an unbroken image, massive and

sombre, on the sward. The low clustering roofs of the town had a thin

bluish haze hovering about them, and were all softly and blurringly

imposed on the vaguely blue sky and the dim hills beyond. Among them a

vertical silver line glinted, sharply metallic,--the steeple of a

church. Here and there a yellow light gleamed from a lamp within a

window. No sound came from the streets; all the life of the place

seemed congregated here.

There was a continual succession of postulants to gaze through the

telescope, some gravely curious, some stolidly iconoclastic and

incredulous, others with covert levity, and still others,

self-conscious, solicitous, secretly determined to affect to see all

that other people could see, lest some subtle incapacity, some

flagrant rusticity, be inferred from failure. These last were hasty

observers, scarcely waiting to adjust the eye to the lens, fluttered,

and prolific of inapt exclamations, which too often betrayed the

superficial character of the investigation. To this class did

Theodosia belong.

"Plumb beautiful!" she murmured under her breath, after a momentary

contact of her dazzled eye with the brass rim of the telescope.

"Try ag'in, 'Dosia!" exclaimed Justus, aghast at this perfunctory

dismissal of the comet, as she turned to go away.

She winced a little from his voice, clear, vibrant and urgent, for

Justus had no solicitude concerning the superior canons of Colbury

touching etiquette, and suffered none of her anxieties. She caught Dr.

Kane's eyes fixed upon him as she moved hastily away, and then he came

up beside Justus, who stood near the telescope.

"Let me explain the thing to you, Hoxon," he said. "Try a peep

yourself."

Justus glanced after her. Walter had joined her--not so soon, however,

but that she heard a half-suppressed criticism on her lover as he

turned to the telescope and Dr. Kane's exposition.

"Pity he's got no education--smart fellow, but can't even read and

write."

"Smart" enough to be an apt pupil. The others pressed close around,

listening to the measured voice of the physician and the quick,

pertinent questions of the star-gazer.

It is as an open scroll, that magnificent, wonder-compelling cult of

the skies, not the sealed book of other sciences. Since the days of

the Chaldean, all men of receptive soul in solitary places, the

sailor, the shepherd, the hunter, or the hermit, whether of the

wilderness of nature or the isolation of crowds, have read there of

the mystery of the infinite, of the order and symmetry of the plan of

creation, of the proof of the existence of a God, who controls the

sweet influences of Pleiades and makes strong the bands of Orion. The

unspeakable thought, the unformulated prayer, the poignant sense of

individual littleness, of atomic unimportance, in the midst of the

vast scheme of the universe, inform every eye, throb in every breast,

whether it be of the savant, with all the appliances of invention to

bring to his cheated senses the illusion of a slightly nearer

approach, or of the half-civilized llanero of the tropic solitudes,

whose knowledge suffices only to note the hour by the bending of the

great Southern Cross. It is the heritage of all alike.

For Justus Hoxon, who had followed the slow march of the stars through

many a year in the troubled watches of the night, when anxiety and

foreboding could make no covenant with sleep, there was, in one sense,

little to learn. He knew them all in their several seasons, the time

of their rising, when they came to the meridian, and when they were

engulfed in the west, till with another year they sparkled on the

eastern rim of the sky. He listened to Dr. Kane's explanation of this

with an air of acceptance, but he hardly heeded the detail of their

distance from the earth and from one another--he knew that they were

far,--and he shook his head over speculations as to their physical

condition, vegetation, and inhabitation. "Ye ain't got no sort o'

means o' knowin' sech, Doctor," he said reprehensively, gauging the

depths of the ignorance of the wise man.

He heard their names with alert interest, and repeated them swiftly

after his mentor to set them in his memory. "By George!" he cried

delightedly, "I hed no idee they hed names!"

And as the amateur astronomer, pleased with so responsive a glow,

began the tracing of the fantastic imagery of the constellations,

detailing the story of each vague similitude, he marked the sudden

dawn of a certain enchantment in his interlocutor's mind, the first

subtle experience of the delights of the ideal and the resources of

fable. It exerted upon Dr. Kane a sort of fascinated interest, the

observation of this earliest exploration of the realms of fancy by so

keen and receptive an intelligence. The comet, the telescope, the

crowd, were forgotten, as with Hoxon at his elbow he made the tour of

the court-house yard, from point to point, wherever the best

observation might be had of each separate sidereal etching on the deep

blue. For a time the crowd casually watched them with a certain

good-natured ridicule of their absorption, and the telescope

maintained its interest to the successive wights who peered through at

the comet still splendidly ablaze despite the light of the gibbous

moon. The ranks of young people promenaded up and down the brick walks

and the grassy spaces. Elder gossips sat on the court-house steps, or

stood in groups, and discussed the questions of the day. Gradually

disintegration began. The clangor of the gate rose now and then as

homeward-bound parties passed through, becoming constantly more

frequent. Still the shifting back and forth of the thinning ranks of

the peripatetic youth went on, and laughter and talk resounded from

the court-house steps. At intervals the telescope was deserted; the

motionless trees were bright with the moon and glossy with the dew.

The voice of guard-dogs was now and again reverberated from the hills.

The languid sense of a late hour had dulled the pulses, and when

Justus Hoxon turned back to earth it was to an almost depopulated

scene, the realization of the approach of midnight, and the sight of

Theodosia sitting alone in the moonlight on the steps of the east door

of the court-house, waiting for him with a touching patience, as it

seemed to him at the moment.

"Air you-uns waitin' fur me, 'Dosia, all by yerse'f?" he demanded

hastily, with a contrite intonation.

"I _'pear_ to be all by myse'f," she said, with a playful feigning of

uncertainty, glancing about her. She gave a forced laugh, and the

constraint in her tone struck his attention.

"I 'lowed ez Wat war with ye," he said apologetically. "Air ye ready

ter go over ter yer cousin Anice's now?"

He was standing leaning against one of the columns of the portico, his

face half in the shadow of his hat and half in the moonlight.

She sat still upon the steps, looking up at him, her upturned eyes

taking an appealing expression from her lowly attitude. She was silent

for a moment, as if at a loss. Then suddenly her eyes fell.

"'Pears ter me ter be right comical ter hev ter remind _ye_ o' what

_I_ promised ter tell ye 'lection day," she said.

"Why, 'Dosia," he broke in vehemently, "I hev axed ye twice ter-day,

an' I didn't ax ye jes' now 'kase ye hed been hyar so long alone, an'

I wanted ter take ye ter yer cousin Anice's ef so be ye wanted ter

go." He stopped for a moment. Then, with a change of tone, "Ye can't

make out ez I hev been anything but hearty in lovin' ye--nearly all

yer life long!" His voice rang out with a definite note of conviction,

of assertion.

Reproach was an untenable ground. She desisted from the effort. Her

eyes wandered down the street that lay shadowy with gable, and

dormer-window, and long chimneys, in sharp geometric figures in the

moonshine, alternating with the deeper shadow of the trees. There were

no lights save a twinkle here and there in an upper window.

A flush rose to his pale cheeks. His heart was beating fast with heavy

presage. He hesitated to demand his fate at so untoward a moment. He

took off his hat, mechanically fanning with its broad brim, and gazing

about him at the slowly dulling splendor of the moonlight as the disk

tended further and further toward the west. The stars were brightening

gradually, and within the range of his vision flared the great comet,

every moment the lustre of its white fire intensifying. He only saw;

he did not note. His every faculty was concentrated on the girl's

drawling voice as she began again, hesitating, and evidently at a

loss.

"Waal, I hate ter tell ye, Justus, but I hev ter do it, an'

I mought ez well the day that I promised ter set _the day_.

It's--it's--_never_! I ain't goin' ter marry ye at all!"

He recoiled as from a blow. And yet he could not accept the fact.

"The'dosia," he said, "air ye mad with me 'kase ye 'low I forgot ye

this evenin'?"

Theodosia had recovered her poise. Now that she had begun she felt

suddenly fluent. It did not accord with her estimate of her own

attractions to dismiss a lover because he had forgotten her. She began

to find a relish in the situation, and sought to adjust its details

more accurately to her preferences.

"Justus, I know ye never furgot me fur one minute. I kin find no fault

with yer likin' fur me."

She had never seen a stage. She had never heard of a theatre, but she

was posing and playing a part as definitely as if it graced the

boards.

He detected a certain spurious note in her voice. It bewildered him.

He stared silently at her.

"I can't marry you-uns. I never kin."

"Why?" he demanded in a measured tone. "How kem ye hev changed yer

mind? Ye hev told me often that ye would."

"W-a-al," she drawled, looking away at the skies, her unthinking eyes

arrested, too, by the blazing comet, "I _did_ 'low wunst I would. But

a man with eddication would suit me bes', an' ye hain't got none."

"No more hev ye," he argued warmly. He was clinging for dear life to

his vanishing hope of happiness. He did not realize depreciation in

his words--only the facts that made them suited to each other. "Ye

know ye _wouldn't_ take l'arnin' at school--an' I _couldn't_ git it;

'pears ter me we air 'bout ekal."

"It air a differ in a 'oman," said Theodosia, quickly. "A 'oman hev

got no call to be l'arned like a man."

This very subordinate view failed in this instance of the satisfaction

it is wont to give to the masculine mind.

"Waal, ye didn't git enough l'arnin' ter hurt ye," he retorted. Then,

relenting, he added, "But I don't find no fault with ye fur that

nuther."

The color flared into her face. How she resented his clemency to her

ignorance! She still sat in her lowly posture on the step, leaning her

bare head against the column of the porch, for her bonnet lay on the

floor beside her; but there was a suggestion of self-assertion in her

voice.

"I ain't expectin' ter live all my days in the woods, like a deer or

suthin' wild. I expec' ter live in town with eddicated folks, ez be

looked up ter, an' respected by all, an' kin make money, an' hev a

sure-enough house." Her ambitious eyes swept the shadowy gables down

the street.

He broke out laughing; his voice was softer; his face relaxed.

"Laws-a-massy! Dosia," he exclaimed, "yer head's plumb turned by one

day's roamin' round town. Ye won't be in sech a hurry ter turn me off

whenst we git back ter the mountings."

"I ain't goin' back ter the mountings!" she cried; "I be a-goin' ter

marry a town man ez hev got position, an' eddication, an' place." She

paused, stung by the fancied incredulity in his eyes. "Why not? Ain't

I good-lookin' enough?"

She had risen to her feet; her eyes flashed upon him; her beautiful

face wore a look of pride. It might have elicited from another man a

protest of its beauty. He stared at her with an expression of alarm

that was almost ghastly.

"Other men like me fur my looks, ef ye don't, Justus Hoxon," she said

in indignation.

"Ef they jes' likes ye fur yer looks they won't like ye long," Hoxon

said severely. "I'll like ye when yer brown head is ez white ez

cotton--ez much ez I like ye now--more!--_more_, I'll be bound! O

'Dosia," with a sudden renewal of tenderness, "don't talk this hyar

cur'ous way! I dunno what's witched ye. But let's go home ter the

mountings, ter yer mother, an' see ef she can't straighten out any

tangle yer feelin's hev got inter."

It needed only this--the allusion to her commonplace mother, the

recollection of the forlorn little mountain home, the idea of her

mother's insistent championship of Justus Hoxon--to bring the avowal

so long trembling on her lips.

"I won't! I ain't likin' ye nowadays, Justus Hoxon, nor fur a long

time past. I ain't keerin' nothin' 'bout ye."

There was something in her tone that carried conviction.

"Air ye in earnest?" he said, appalled.

"Dead earnest."

He gazed at her in the ever dulling light, that yet was clear enough

to show every lineament--even the long black eyelashes that did not

droop or quiver above her great blue eyes.

"Then thar's no more to be said." He spoke in a changed voice, calm

and clear, and she stared at him in palpable surprise. She had

expected an outburst of reproach, of beseechings, of protestation. She

had braced herself to meet it, and she felt the reaction. She was

hardly capable of coping with seeming indifference. It touched her

pride. She missed the tribute of the withheld pleadings. She sought to

rouse his jealousy.

"It's another man I like," she said, "better--oh, a heap better--than

you-uns."

"That's all right, then."

He wondered to hear the words so glibly enunciated. His lips seemed to

him stiff, petrifying. He looked very white about them. She did not

heed. She was angered, wounded, perplexed, by his acquiescence, his

calmness, his taciturnity. A wave of anxiety that was half regret

went over her. She felt lost in the turmoil of these complex emotions.

With that destructive impulse to hurl down, to tear, to strike, that

is an element of a sort of blind irritation, she went on tumultuously:

"He is a man ez hev got eddication, an' a place, an' a fine chance an'

show in life--it's--it's--yer brother Walter."

Her aim was true that time. Her shaft struck in the very core of his

heart: but the satisfaction of this knowledge was denied her. He

looked very white, it is true, but the pale moonlight was on his face;

and he only said in an undertone:

"Walter!"

She laughed aloud, a sort of mockery of glee. She had expected to

enjoy the revelation, and her laughter was an incident of the scene as

she had planned it.

"We war a-courtin' consider'ble o' the time whilst ye war off

electioneerin'," she said, with the side glance of her old coquetry.

She saw his long shadow on the pavement bend forward and recoil

suddenly. She did not look at him.

"An' so ter-night," she went on briskly,--she had truly thought it a

very good joke,--"whilst you-uns war a-star-gazing an' sech, Wat an'

me jes stepped inter the register's office thar, an' the Squair

married us. We 'lowed ye didn't see nothin' of it through the

tellingscope, did ye? So Wat said I must tell ye, ez _he_ didn't want

ter tell ye."

She could not see his face, the light was dulling so, and he had

replaced his wide hat. There was a moment's silence. Then his voice

rang out quite strong and cheerful, "Why, then thar's no more to be

said."

He stood motionless an instant longer. Then suddenly he turned with a

wave of his hand that was like a gesture of farewell, and she marked

how swiftly his shadow seemed to slink from before him as he walked

away, and passed the corner of the house, and disappeared from view.

She gazed silently after him for a moment. Then, leaning against the

column, she burst into a tumult of tears.

* * * * *

Daylight found Justus Hoxon far on the road to the mountains. In the

many miles, as he fared along, his thoughts could hardly have been

pleasant company. As he sought to discover fault or flaw in himself,

search as he might, he could find naught that might palliate the

flippant faithlessness of his beloved, or the treachery of his

brother. His ambition might have been too worldly a thing, but not a

pulse of that most vital emotion beat for himself. He realized it

now--he realized his life in looking back upon this completed episode,

as he might have done in the hour of death. He had so expended himself

in the service of others that there was naught left for him. He had no

gratulation in it, no sense of the virtue of unselfishness, no

preception of achievement; it only seemed to him that his was the most

flagrant folly that ever left a man in the world, but with no place in

it. A sorry object for pride he seemed to himself, but he quivered,

and scorched, and writhed in its hot flames. His one object was to

take himself out of the sight and sound of Colbury, till he might have

counsel within himself, and perfect his scheme of revenge--not upon

the woman. Poor Theodosia, with her limitations, could hardly have

conceived how she had shattered the ideal to which her image had

conformed in his mind, as she had stood on the porch and vaunted her

beauty, and her belief in its power, and her pitiful ambitions. The

woman was heartily welcome to the lot she had chosen. But the

treacherous man,--it was not in Justus Hoxon's scheme of things to

receive a blow and return nothing. A "hardy fighter" he was esteemed,

albeit his prowess was eclipsed by his more peaceful virtues. This,

however, should be returned in kind. He would make no attack to be put

in the wrong, arrested, perhaps, after the Colbury interpretation of

assault and battery. But Walter had many a weak point in his armor,

glaringly apparent now to the once fond brother.

Only a surly, bitter word he had for greeting to the few neighbors

whom he met, and who went their way in the conviction that his brother

had lost his election; for none ascribed any emotion of Justus Hoxon's

to his own sake.

He reached in the evening the little cabin where the padlock hung on

the door, and the heavy, untrodden dust of the drought lay without;

and so it was that the old days when "Fambly" had struggled through

their humble experiences came back to him with that incomparable

sweetness of the irrevocable past. Hardships! How could there be, with

fond faith in one another, and in all the world! Poverty--so rich they

were in love! Life, after all, is more than meat, and there is no

hunger like that of a famished heart. He reviewed that forlorn,

anxious, struggling orphanage, transfigured in the subtle glow of

regretful, loving memory, as one might gaze into the rich glamours of

a promised land. Alas, that our promised land should be so often the

land we made haste to leave! As he sat down on the step he saw the

ragged cluster of children troop down the road from twenty years

agone, almost as if he actually beheld them, himself at the head. He

could still feel their plump palms clinging to his hand at the first

suggestion of danger. He had led them a right thorny path, each to a

successful goal. And now could he turn against "Fambly"? Should he

denounce the treachery of one of the little group that he could see

huddling together for warmth on the meagre hearthstone, while outside

the snows of a long-vanished winter were a-whirl? Should he pull down

the temple on Walter's success--the pride of them all? He remembered

how his sisters, with that feminine necessity of hero-worship in their

untaught little hearts, had clung about Walter. He remembered too that

almost every thought of his own life had been given to this man, who

had ruthlessly and secretly robbed him of all that was dear to him,

and in such wise as to hold him up to ridicule, a scoffing jest, a

very good joke! So Walter considered it, and so doubtless would all

Colbury. It would have surprised Walter, but his sometime mentor's

cheek burned with shame for him.

No; the claims of "Fambly" were paramount. He gave it precedence, as

in the old days he had denied himself when "Fambly" dined at the

skillet, and the bone and the broken bit he took for his share. He

could not bring discredit upon it. He would not lift his hand against

it. It was the object of a lifelong allegiance, and he only marveled

that, since the uses of the loyalty were at an end, the empty life

should go on. He gazed mechanically at the padlock as he sat there

with his dreary thoughts, remembering with what different heart he had

turned the key. Ah, Happiness--to pass out from a door, and knock

there never again!

He rose at last, his burden adjusted to his strength. He had never

worked for thanks. It hardly mattered to him now how his efforts were

requited. And though he encountered treachery at close quarters,--of

his own household,--it was not in his heart to be a traitor to

"Fambly" and its obvious interests. So he too went out from the door

in the footprints of Happiness--likewise to return no more.

* * * * *

Walter Hoxon had not altogether ill-gauged the general proclivity to

deem all fair in love or war. He was accounted to have performed

something of a feat in the clever outwitting of his unsuspecting

rival, and to the minds of the many there was an element of the

romantic in this hasty wedding of the damsel of his choice almost

under the eyes of the expectant bridegroom. He had added to the

prestige of success in politics the lustre of valiance in the lists of

love, and he encountered laughing congratulations from his friends

and political supporters, which served much to reassure him and to

banish a vague and subtle anxiety as to public opinion that had begun

to gnaw at his heart. They all seemed to think he had done a very fine

thing, and that it was a very good joke, and he was soon most jauntily

of their persuasion. He could not know that here and there people were

saying to one another, aside, the words he had feared to hear in

reproach--that the swain whom he and his lady-love had conspired to

dupe was his brother, who had done everything for him--had, as a mere

child, encountered and vanquished poverty, had clothed and educated

this man and his sisters, had served his every interest with a perfect

self-abnegation all his life; that it was his brother who had won his

election, being a man of much influence and untaught eloquence, and of

great native tact and intelligence; that the secrecy, the conspiracy,

and the publicity of the dramatic denouement, in lieu of an open

rivalry, rendered it a case of the most flagrant ingratitude, and

argued much unworthiness in the people's choice.

But suddenly a doubt began to prevail as to whether he were the

people's choice. In the returns from the farthest districts, not heard

from till quite late in the day, in which Walter Hoxon had felt

secure, Quigley developed unexpected strength. In great perturbation

Walter swiftly patrolled the town in search of Justus; unprecedented

developments were imminent, and he hardly dared face the emergency

without his valiant backer at hand. Justus had disappeared as utterly

as if the night had swallowed him up.

"Consarn the tormentin' critter!" exclaimed Walter, mopping his brow

as he stood at the little gate of Mrs. Elmer's yard, returning

thither, after his fruitless searching, in the hope of finding his

brother among the familiar faces. "Mad ez a hornet, I'll be bound, an'

lef' me in the lurch. Beat arter all, I'll bet!"

Theodosia listened, tremulous, aghast. All the fine prospects that had

seemed so near, into whose charming perspectives she might in another

moment have stepped as actually as upon that path to the gate, were

drawing away, dissolving, as tenuous, as intangible, as those morning

sunlit mists shifting and rising from before the massive blue ranges

of the Great Smoky Mountains, and dallying with the distances into

invisibility.

"I tole ye ag'in an' ag'in ye bes' not be _too sure_," she said, a sob

in her throat, with an obvious disposition to wreak her disappointment

upon him.

It was crushed in the moment.

He turned a frowning face full upon her. "Hold yer jaw!" he cried

violently. "Ef 't warn't for you-uns I'd hev Justus hyar, an' I'll be

bound _he_ could fix it. Ye miserable deceitful critter--settin' two

own brothers at loggerheads! I'll take no word from _you-uns_--sure!"

He shook his head indignantly at her, clapped his hat upon it, and

turned desperately away as a man came running up. "Have ye found

Justus?" Wat exclaimed.

"Justus? No. But they say it's a tie--a tie!"

For the news was already bruited throughout the town--in a ferment of

excitement, because of the closeness of the contest--that the two

candidates, racing gallantly neck and neck, had come under the wire

together with not so much as the point of a nose to distinguish the

winner.

Walter stood still for a moment, his dark eyes dilated with eagerness

and anxiety. Suddenly he leaned back against the gate-post with a deep

sigh of relief and relaxation.

"Then it's all right," he exclaimed breathlessly. "The coroner's my

frien', ef I ain't got another in the worl'. Old Beckett will stan' by

me, _sure_!"

As the coroner held the election, the sheriff himself being a

candidate, it was his duty to give the casting vote. This

prolongation of the jeopardy of the result heightened the popular

interest, the more as the officer did not immediately decide upon his

action in the matter.

"I want a leetle time ter think it over--a leetle time fur the casting

vote," he said, as he gnawed at a plug of tobacco, then crossed his

ponderous legs while he leaned back in a splint-bottomed chair in the

register's office.

He was a tall, portly man, with a large, round imperious face,

thatched heavily with iron-gray hair. He wore no beard, and was

dressed in brown jeans, which imparted a certain sallowness to his

dark complexion. He had small gray eyes, at once shrewd and

good-natured, but his manner was bluff, imperative, and all the

judiciary of the State could hardly have compassed an expression of a

greater sense of importance.

He was observed with much interest by a number of men who lounged

about the room. A tense sub-current of curiosity underlay the suspense

natural to the occasion, for it was well known to the gossips about

the court-house that he and the sheriff had not been on the best of

terms; when their official functions had happened to bring them into

contact they had clashed smartly, and the county rang with their

feuds. His course was obvious to all--his hesitation only an

affectation, lest a too vehement animosity be imputed to him.

"Poor Quigley's cake is dough," observed one of the incumbent's

friends in an undertone, standing with his hands in his pockets, and

gazing through the long dark vista of the hall out of the door into

the sunlight's glow, as it fell upon the few houses and the great

stretch of arable land beyond. A horizontal shadow of a cloud lay at

its extremity, as definite as a material barrier, and far above it

rose tiers of green and bronze hills like a moulding to the base of

the lapis-lazuli-tinted mountains.

"This never happened in this county before," said the register,

glancing up from a big book in which he was copying the doings of "the

party of the first part" and "the party of the second part"--the

familiar spirits of his den.

"Why, no!" exclaimed the coroner, with a pleased laugh. "To me the

castin' vote is ez _phee_-nomenal an' ez astonishin' ez the comet." He

chuckled--the fat man's unctuous laugh. "Something like the comet,

too: it has its place in the legal firmament, but 't ain't often

necessary to use it."

"That war a toler'ble funny tale 'bout the comet they air a-tellin'

roun' town," observed a young countryman pausing in front of the two,

his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of his red head, a wide

grin of enjoyment on his freckled face,--"about the feller that hed

his sweetheart a-courtin' out hyar in the yard last night, an' tuk ter

lookin' at the comet through the spy-glass, an' whilst he war busy

a-star-gazin' the comet, another feller stepped up with the Squair,

an' married his gal--ha! ha! ha!"

Beckett looked up interested. Incongruously enough a vein of romance

ran through the massive strata of conceit, and intolerance, and

vainglory, and pertinacity, and pugnacity that made up the very

definite structure of his nature. He dearly loved a lover. He was as

sentimental as a girl of eighteen, and he melted instantly into

suavest amenities at the first intimation of a love-story in abeyance.

"I ain't heard 'bout that," he said in a mellifluous voice.

"Ye know I was tucked up in yonder"--he jerked his thumb over

his shoulder--"tendin' to the countin' of the votes, bein'

returnin'-officer. Who married?"

"Why this hyar Walter Hoxon--him ez is candidate fur sher'ff,"

said the red-haired interlocutor, widening his grin.

Beckett elevated his heavy, grizzled eyebrows. A sudden, secret,

important look, as if he were colloguing with some one vanquished in

argument, crossed his face. He nodded once or twice, but only said

acquiescently: "Ah--ha! Ah--ha! Toler'ble enterprisin'. Run fur office

an git married 'lection day."

He smiled broadly. Any innovation on the stereotyped methods appealed

to him with the grace and relish of a new metre to a neophytic

rhymester.

"Wat's a nice boy, a mighty good boy, too," he went on, with his oily

voice quite soft. "Run mighty well in this 'lection, too. He's a

mighty smart, good boy."

He nodded his big head approvingly. "I don't wonder he cut the t'other

feller out. Mighty fine feller Wat is."

"Well, now," said the register, suddenly putting his pen behind his

ear, and leaving the party of the first part and the party of the

second part to their own devices, "I'm blest if I don't think Justus

is worth a hundred of Wat, lock, stock, an' barrel."

Once more the grizzled eyebrows went up toward the iron-gray thatch of

the coroner's forehead. "_Justus!_ I'm free ter say I dunno nobody

equal ter Justus. I hev known Justus sence he war knee-high ter a

pa'tridge--the way he did keer fur them chil'n, an' brung 'em up ter

be equal ter anybody in the lan'! An' smart--_smart_ ain't the word

fur him! Ef he hed education he could do anything; but he hed ter

stan' back an' let the t'other chil'n git it. Whar would Wat be ef 't

warn't fur Justus?"

"That's what makes me say 't was a mighty mean trick he played on

Justus," the register broke in.

"Who? How?" demanded the coroner.

"Why, Justus was the t'other feller. Wat an' the girl never let _him_

have an inklin' of it. They just fooled him along, believin' she was

goin' ter marry _him_. An' las' night when it was reported all over

town that Wat was elected, an' Justus took time from electioneerin'

fur his brother to breathe, they tolled him out to look at the comet,

an' slipped off an' married."

The man of sentiment, with the election in his hand, sat looking

loweringly about him. His satisfaction was wilted; his fat hung

flabbily on his big bones; his small eyes were hard and cold.

"Waal," he said, rising at last, "these extry an' occasional

opportunities like comets an' castin' votes oughter be took full

advantage of--full advantage of; no doubt about that."

And thus it was that the casting vote tipped the scale in favor of the

incumbent.

"He's ez hard-headed, an' _ty_rannical, an' _per_verse, an'

cantankerous a critter ez ever lived, with no feelin's, nor softness,

nor perliteness in him--but he's a square man. He'll do the _fair_

thing--every time," the coroner said in explanation.

And so he braced himself for another term of official wrangling.

* * * * *

Poor Theodosia! She never forgot that return home, through all the

dust of the drought and the glare of the midsummer sun. Even to

herself her nature seemed too small for the magnitude of the various

anguish which she was called upon to endure. The sharp alternations of

certainty and doubt which she had undergone seemed slight, seemed

naught, in comparison with the desolate finality of despair, the fang

of hopeless regret, and the dread of the veiled future with which she

had made no covenant of expectation or preparation, that preyed upon

every plodding step as she went. Her anxiety as to the wisdom of her

course was not assuaged by the aghast dismay of her mother's face,

when she reached the little house overlooking the encircling

mountains,--as still, as meditative, as majestically unmoved, as if no

more troublous world existed,--and unfolded the story of her visit to

Colbury. She felt for the first time in her life how Justus Hoxon's

friend merited his confidence. Her mother had no reproaches, no

sarcasms, no outbursts of grief. She addressed herself to the support

and the comforting of her daughter, but with so evident a hopelessness

and an expectation of bitter things to come that the girl burst out

sobbing afresh.

"D' ye think Wat air so wuthless ez all that!"

The discipline of life began for her here. As the price of his

political defeat, Walter had scant relish for the triumph he had

scored in love. He was surly, taciturn, or else loud with reproaches

and criminations, which grew more vehement and contumelious if she

answered, seeking to exculpate or justify herself; and if she were

silent, her submission seemed to exasperate him and to develop a

crafty ingenuity in finding fault. He brooded grimly on his brother's

probable exultation when he should return and hear the news of the

casting vote. To fortify himself for the encounter he spent much time

at the still, and his drunken, reasonless wrath was even more

formidable to the object of his displeasure than his sober, surly

resentment against her as the cause of all his disasters. But Justus

did not come. Walter began to doubt if the news of the untoward result

of the election, in which he had spent all his energies, had reached

him. He also began to desire, contradictorily enough, that his brother

should know it. For although Justus must needs recognize it as a

mortal blow to his dearest foe, it had the capacity of doing much

execution in its recoil. Justus had had the election so greatly at

heart; he had struggled, and planned, and managed with such

preternatural activity and tact and energy from the first, that it

would smite him hard to know that it was all in vain. And then his

vicarious ambitions, his pride, his pleasure, in the elevation of

"Fambly"! Walter cast about futilely for an assurance that he might

have the satisfaction of reducing all this. He knew that Justus, in

his mistaken certainty of the result of the election, would not ask

for information, and that he could not read the newspapers. A

letter--even if there were any remote presumption as to his

address--would lie indefinitely in the mail, and find its way at last

to the Dead Letter Office.

Walter realized after a time that Justus intended to return no

more--the woman he loved was his brother's wife. Justus had probably

put the breadth of the State between them, Walter sneeringly

concluded.

He made haste to quarrel with his wife's mother, in his perverse

relish of aught that might give Theodosia pain, and they quitted her

home and took up their residence in the house in which Theodosia had

once expected to live, the scene of the early struggles of "Fambly."

Theodosia's beauty could hardly be said to fade; it disappeared in the

overblowing. She grew very fat and unwieldy as the years wore on; her

face broadened, her florid complexion degenerated into a mottled red

and purple. She was no prettier than her mother had been when she

ridiculed her lover's eulogy of her mother's spiritual beauty. She had

a hard life with her drunken, idle, slothful husband, who habitually

imputed to her agency every evil that had ever befallen him, holding

it to excuse him from all exertion to better their very poor estate,

and whose affection had been easily kindled by her beauty and as

easily extinguished.

* * * * *

Justus, self-exiled from the mountains, tramped the valley roads,

hardly caring whither, and drifted finally to the outskirts of one of

the large manufacturing towns of Tennessee. He worked for some seasons

doggedly, drudgingly, on a farm near by, but found a sort of

entertainment in the sights and sounds within the city limits, as

having no association with the past which his memory dreaded. He

prospered in some sort, for although he was ignorant of all methods of

skilled labor, fidelity is an art with so few proficients that friends

and opportunities were not lacking. His progress was somewhat

hampered, however, despite his evident intelligence, by a doubt which

prevailed concerning his mental balance. He was often observed to

stand and gaze smilingly, fondly, after any group of ragged, dirty

children; he, although of the poorest, was profuse in gratuities to

any callow beggar who did not know enough of the world's ways to

expect nothing of such as he, as did the older ones. He could not

read, but he bought newspapers from the smallest of the guild of

newsboys, and meditatively turned the sheets in his hand, and then

softly and slowly tore them to bits. And these things created a doubt

of his sanity, for who could know how "Fambly" looked at him from the

pinched face of every poor, and cold, and hungry child?

At last, despite this unsuspected drawback, a congenial occupation

came to him. He was night watchman at a great factory, and as he

paced, all solitary, back and forth in the yard, he was wont to note

the stars as the infallible seasons brought them into place; and he

began to remember their names, and to trace the strange configuration

of the constellations, and to con again the stories woven into their

shining meshes which he heard at the time that the great comet blazed

among them.

And this is his never failing interest--dark summer nights, when the

Galaxy opens a broad avenue of constellated light across the heavens,

seeming a veritable road, as if it might be the way to God's throne,

beaten hard and bright by the feet of saints and martyrs; or when the

moon is full, and autumnal glamours reign, and only the faint sidereal

outlines prevail; or when winter winds are high, and the snow lies on

slanting roofs, and spires gleam with icicles, and Orion draws his

scintillating blade; or when, all bedight in scarlet, "Arcturus and

his sons" are guided into the vernal sky.

BOOKS BY

"Charles Egbert Craddock."

(MARY N. MURFREE.)

IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS. Short Stories. 16mo, $1.25.

DOWN THE RAVINE. For Young People. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.

THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.

IN THE CLOUDS. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.

THE STORY OF KEEDON BLUFFS. For Young People. 16mo, $1.00.

THE DESPOT OF BROOMSEDGE COVE. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.

WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.

HIS VANISHED STAR. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.

THE MYSTERY OF WITCH-FACE MOUNTAIN. 16mo, $1.25.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,

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