a rescue, a restoration. The smiling welcome in the women’s eyes, their
soft drawling voices, with mellifluous intonations that gave a value to
each commonplace simple word, braced his nerves like a tonic. It might
have been only the contrast with the recollections of the night, with
the prospect visible through the open door--the serried lines of rain
dropping aslant from the gray sky and elusively outlined against the
dark masses of leafless woods that encircled the clearing; the dooryard
half submerged with puddles of a clay-brown tint, embossed always with
myriads of protruding drops of rain, for however they melted away the
downpour renewed them, and to the eye they were stationary, albeit
pervaded with a continual tremor--but somehow he was cognizant of a
certain coddling tenderness in the old woman’s manner that might have
been relished by a petted child, an unaffected friendliness in the
girl’s clear eyes. They made him sit close to the great wood fire; the
blue and yellow flames gushed out from the piles of hickory logs, and
the bed of coals gleamed at red and white heat beneath. They took his
hat to carefully dry it, and they spread out his cloak on two chairs
at one side of the room, where it dismally dripped. When he ventured to
sneeze, Mrs. Roxby compounded and administered a “yerb tea,” a sovereign
remedy against colds, which he tasted on compulsion and in great doubt,
and swallowed with alacrity and confidence, finding its basis the easily
recognizable “toddy.” He had little knowledge how white and troubled
his face had looked as he came in from the gray day, how strongly marked
were those lines of sharp mental distress, how piteously apparent was
his mute appeal for sympathy and comfort.
“Mill’cent,” said the old woman in the shed-room, as they washed and
wiped the dishes after the cozy breakfast of venison and corn-dodgers
and honey and milk, “that thar man hev run agin the law, sure’s ye air
born.”
Millicent turned her reflective fair face, that seemed whiter and
more delicate in the damp dark day, and looked doubtfully out over the
fields, where the water ran in steely lines in the furrows.
“Mus’ hev been by accident or suthin’. _He_ ain’t no hardened sinner.”
“Shucks!” the old woman commented upon her reluctant acquiescence. “I
ain’t keerin’ for the law! ‘Tain’t none o’ my job. The tomfool men make
an’ break it. Ennybody ez hev seen this war air obleeged to take note
o’ the wickedness o’ men in gineral. This hyer man air a sorter pitiful
sinner, an’ he hev got a look in his eyes that plumb teches my heart.
I ‘ain’t got no call ter know nuthin’ ‘bout the law, bein’ a ‘oman an’
naterally ignorant. I dun’no’ ez he hev run agin it.”
“Mus’ hev been by accident,” said Millicent, dreamily, still gazing over
the sodden fields.
The suspicion did nothing to diminish his comfort or their cordiality.
The morning dragged by without change in the outer aspects. The noontide
dinner came and went without Roxby’s return, for the report of the
washing away of a bridge some miles distant down the river had early
called him out to the scene of the disaster, to verify in his own
interests the rumor, since he had expected to haul his wheat to the
settlement the ensuing day. The afternoon found the desultory talk still
in progress about the fire, the old woman alternately carding cotton
and nodding in her chair in the corner; the dogs eying the stranger,
listening much of the time with the air of children taking instruction,
only occasionally wandering out-of-doors, the floor here and there
bearing the damp imprint of their feet; and Millicent on her knees in
the other corner, the firelight on her bright hair, her delicate cheek,
her quickly glancing eyes, as she deftly moulded bullets.
“Uncle Sim hed ter s’render his shootin’-irons,” she explained, “an’ he
‘ain’t got no ca’tridge-loadin’ ones lef. So he makes out with his old
muzzle-loadin’ rifle that he hed afore the war, an’ I moulds his bullets
for him rainy days.”
As she held up a moulded ball and dexterously clipped off the surplus
lead, the gesture was so culinary in its delicacy that one of the dogs
in front of the fire extended his head, making a long neck, with a
tentative sniff and a glistening gluttonous eye.
“Ef I swallered enny mo’ lead, I wouldn’t take it hot, Towse,” she said,
holding out the bullet for canine inspection. “‘Tain’t healthy!”
But the dog, perceiving the nature of the commodity, drew back with a
look of deep reproach, rose precipitately, and with a drooping tail went
out skulkingly into the wet gray day.
“Towse can’t abide a bullet,” she observed, “nor nuthin’ ‘bout a gun.
He got shot wunst a-huntin’, an’ he never furgot it. Jes show him a gun
an’ he ain’t nowhar ter be seen--like he war cotch up in the clouds.”
“Good watch-dog, I suppose,” suggested Dundas, striving to enter into
the spirit of her talk.
“Naw; too sp’ilt for a gyard-dog--granny coddled him so whenst he
got shot. He’s jest vally’ble fur his conversation, I reckon,” she
continued, with a smile in her eyes. “I dun’no’ what else, but he _is_
toler’ble good company.”
The other dogs pressed about her, the heads of the great hounds as high
as her own as she sat among them on the floor. With bright eyes and
knitted brows they followed the motions of pouring in the melted metal,
the lifting of the bullets from the mould, the clipping off of the
surplus lead, and the flash of the keen knife.
Outside the sad light waned; the wind sighed and sighed; the dreary
rain fell; the trees clashed their boughs dolorously together, and their
turbulence deadened the sound of galloping horses. As Dundas sat and
gazed at the girl’s intent head, with its fleecy tendrils and its
massive coil, the great hounds beside her, all emblazoned by the
firelight upon the brown wall near by, with the vast fireplace at hand,
the whole less like reality than some artist’s pictured fancy, he knew
naught of a sudden entrance, until she moved, breaking the spell, and
looked up to meet the displeasure in Roxby’s eyes and the dark scowl on
Emory Keenan’s face.
*****
That night the wind shifted to the north. Morning found the chilled
world still, ice where the water had lodged, all the trees incased in
glittering garb that followed the symmetry alike of every bough and
the tiniest twig, and made splendid the splintered remnants of the
lightning-riven. The fields were laced across from furrow to furrow, in
which the frozen water still stood gleaming, with white arabesques which
had known a more humble identity as stubble and crab-grass; the sky was
slate-colored, and from its sad tint this white splendor gained added
values of contrast. When the sun should shine abroad much of the effect
would be lost in the too dazzling glister; but the sun did not shine.
All day the gray mood held unchanged. Night was imperceptibly sifting
down upon all this whiteness, that seemed as if it would not be
obscured, as if it held within itself some property of luminosity, when
Millicent, a white apron tied over her golden head, improvising a hood,
its superfluous fulness gathered in many folds and pleats around her
neck, fichu-wise, stood beside the ice-draped fodder-stack and essayed
with half-numbed hands to insert a tallow dip into the socket of a
lantern, all incrusted and clumsy with previous drippings.
“I dun’no’ whether I be a-goin’ ter need this hyar consarn whilst
milkin’ or no,” she observed, half to herself, half to Emory, who,
chewing a straw, somewhat surlily had followed her out for a word apart.
“The dusk ‘pears slow ter-night, but Spot’s mighty late comin’ home, an’
old Sue air fractious an’ contrairy-minded, and feels mighty anxious
an’ oneasy ‘boutn her calf, that’s ez tall ez she is nowadays, an’ don’t
keer no mo’ ‘bout her mammy ‘n a half-grown human does. I tell her she
oughtn’t ter be mad with me, but with the way she brung up her chile, ez
won’t notice her now.”
She looked up with a laugh, her eyes and teeth gleaming; her golden hair
still showed its color beneath the spotless whiteness of her voluminous
headgear, and the clear tints of her complexion seemed all the more
delicate and fresh in the snowy pallor of the surroundings and the
grayness of the evening.
“I reckon I’d better take it along,” and once more she addressed herself
to the effort to insert the dip into the lantern.
Emory hardly heard. His pulse was quick. His eye glittered. He breathed
hard as, with both hands in his pockets, he came close to her.
“Mill’cent,” he said, “I told ye the t’other day ez ye thunk a heap too
much o’ that thar stran-ger-”
“An’ I tole ye, bubby, that I didn’t think nuthin’ o’ nobody but
you-uns,” she interrupted, with an effort to placate his jealousy. The
little jocularity which she affected dwindled and died before the steady
glow of his gaze, and she falteringly looked at him, her unguided hands
futilely fumbling with the lantern.
“Ye can’t fool me,” he stoutly asseverated. “Ye think mo’ o’ him ‘n o’
me, kase ye ‘low he air rich, an’ book-larned, an’ smooth-fingered, an’
fini-fied ez a gal, an’ goin’ ter buy the hotel. I say, _hotel!_ Now
_I’ll_ tell ye what he is--I’ll tell ye! He’s a criminal. He’s runnin’
from the law. He’s hidin’ in the old hotel that he’s purtendin’ ter
buy.”
She stared wide-eyed and pallid, breathless and waiting.
He interpreted her expression as doubt, denial.
“It’s gospel sure,” he cried. “Fur this very evenin’ I met a gang o’
men an’ the sheriff’s deputy down yander by the sulphur spring ‘bout
sundown, an’ he ‘lowed ez they war a-sarchin’ fur a criminal ez war
skulkin’ round hyarabout lately--ez they wanted a man fur hevin’
c’mitted murder.”
“But ye didn’t accuse _him_, surely; ye hed no right ter s’picion _him_.
Uncle Sim! Oh, my Lord! Ye surely wouldn’t! Oh, Uncle Sim!”
Her tremulous words broke into a quavering cry as she caught his arm
convulsively, for his face confirmed her fears. She thrust him wildly
away, and started toward the house.
“Ye needn’t go tattlin’ on me,” he said, roughly pushing her aside.
“I’ll tell Mr. Roxby myself. I ain’t ‘shamed o’ what I done. I’ll
tell him. I’ll tell him myself.” And animated with this intention to
forestall her disclosure, his long strides bore him swiftly past and
into the house.
It seemed to him that he lingered there only a moment or two, for Roxby
was not at the cabin, and he said nothing of the quarrel to the old
woman. Already his heart had revolted against his treachery, and then
there came to him the further reflection that he did not know enough
to justify suspicion. Was not the stranger furnished with the fullest
credentials--a letter to Roxby from the Colonel? Perhaps he had allowed
his jealousy to endanger the man, to place him in jeopardy even of his
life should he resist arrest.
Keenan tarried at the house merely long enough to devise a plausible
excuse for his sudden excited entrance, and then took his way back to
the barnyard.
It was vacant. The cows still stood lowing at the bars; the sheep
cowered together in their shed; the great whitened cone of the
fodder-stack gleamed icily in the purple air; beside it lay the lantern
where Millicent had cast it aside. She was gone! He would not believe
it till he had run to the barn, calling her name in the shadowy place,
while the horse at his manger left his corn to look over the walls of
his stall with inquisitive surprised eyes, luminous in the dusk. He
searched the hen-house, where the fowls on their perches crowded close
because of the chill of the evening. He even ran to the bars and looked
down across the narrow ravine to which the clearing sloped. Beyond the
chasm-like gorge he saw presently on the high ascent opposite footprints
that had broken the light frostlike coating of ice on the dead leaves
and moss--climbing footprints, swift, disordered. He looked back again
at the lantern where Millicent had flung it in her haste. Her mission
was plain now. She had gone to warn Dundas. She had taken a direct line
through the woods. She hoped to forestall the deputy sheriff and his
posse, following the circuitous mountain road.
Keenan’s lip curled in triumph. His heart burned hot with scornful anger
and contempt of the futility of her effort. “They’re there afore she
started!” he said, looking up at the aspects of the hour shown by the
sky, and judging of the interval since the encounter by the spring.
Through a rift in the gray cloud a star looked down with an icy
scintillation and disappeared again. He heard a branch in the woods snap
beneath the weight of ice. A light sprang into the window of the cabin
hard by, and came in a great gush of orange-tinted glow out into the
snowy bleak wintry space. He suddenly leaped over the fence and ran like
a deer through the woods.
Millicent too had been swift. He had thought to overtake her before he
emerged from the woods into the more open space where the hotel stood.
In this quarter the cloud-break had been greater. Toward the west a
fading amber glow still lingered in long horizontal bars upon the opaque
gray sky. The white mountains opposite were hung with purple shadows
borrowed from a glimpse of sunset somewhere far away over the valley
of East Tennessee; one distant lofty range was drawn in elusive snowy
suggestions, rather than lines, against a green space of intense yet
pale tint. The moon, now nearing the full, hung over the wooded valley,
and aided the ice and the crust of snow to show its bleak, wan, wintry
aspect; a tiny spark glowed in its depths from some open door of an
isolated home. Over it all a mist was rising from the east, drawing its
fleecy but opaque curtain. Already it had climbed the mountain-side and
advanced, windless, soundless, overwhelming, annihilating all before and
beneath it. The old hotel had disappeared, save that here and there a
gaunt gable protruded and was withdrawn, showed once more, and once more
was submerged.
A horse’s head suddenly looking out of the enveloping mist close to his
shoulder gave him the first intimation of the arrival, the secret silent
waiting, of those whom he had directed hither. That the saddles were
empty he saw a moment later. The animals stood together in a row,
hitched to the rack. No disturbance sounded from the silent building.
The event was in abeyance. The fugitive in hiding was doubtless at
ease, unsuspecting, while the noiseless search of the officers for his
quarters was under way.
With a thrill of excitement Keenan crept stealthily through an open
passage and into the old grass-grown spaces of the quadrangle. Night
possessed the place, but the cloud seemed denser than the darkness. He
was somehow sensible of its convolutions as he stood against the wall
and strained his eyes into the dusk. Suddenly it was penetrated by a
milky-white glimmer, a glimmer duplicated at equidistant points, each
fading as its successor sprang into brilliance. The next moment he
understood its significance. It had come from the blurred windows of the
old ball-room. Milli-cent had lighted her candle as she searched for the
fugitive’s quarters; she was passing down the length of the old house
on the second story, and suddenly she emerged upon the gallery. She
shielded the feeble flicker with her Hand; her white-hooded head gleamed
as with an aureola as the divergent rays rested on the opaque mist; and
now and again she clutched the baluster and walked with tremulous care,
for the flooring was rotten here and there, and ready to crumble away.
Her face was pallid, troubled; and Dundas, who had been warned by the
tramp of horses and the tread of men, and who had descended the stairs,
revolver in hand, ready to slip away if he might under cover of
the mist, paused appalled, gazing across the quadrangle as on an
apparition--the sight so familiar to his senses, so strange to his
experience. He saw in an abrupt shifting of the mist that there were
other figures skulking in doorways, watching her progress. The next
moment she leaned forward to clutch the baluster, and the light of the
candle fell full on Emory Keenan, lurking in the open passage. A sudden
sharp cry of “Surrender!” The young mountaineer, confused, swiftly drew
his pistol. Others were swifter still. A sharp report rang out into
the chill crisp air, rousing all the affrighted echoes--a few faltering
steps, a heavy fall, and for a long time Emory Keenan’s life-blood
stained the floor of the promenade. Even when it had faded, the rustic
gossips came often and gazed at the spot with morbid interest, until, a
decade later, an enterprising proprietor removed the floor and altered
the shape of that section of the building out of recognition.
The escape of Dundas was easily effected. The deputy sheriff, confronted
with the problem of satisfactorily accounting for the death of a man
who had committed no offence against public polity, was no longer
formidable. His errand had been the arrest of a horse-thief, well-known
to him, and he had no interest in pursuing a fugitive, however obnoxious
to the law, whose personal description was so different from that of the
object of his search.
Time restored to Dundas his former place in life and the esteem of his
fellow-citizens. His stay in the mountains was an episode which he will
not often recall, but sometimes volition fails, and he marvels at the
strange fulfilment of the girl’s vision; he winces to think that her
solicitude for his safety should have cost her her lover; he wonders
whether she yet lives, and whether that tender troubled phantom, on
nights when the wind is still and the moon is low and the mists rise,
again joins the strange, elusive, woful company crossing the quaking
foot-bridge.