When Birt reached the fence, he discovered that the bars were down.
Rufe had forgotten to replace them that afternoon when he drove in
the cow to be milked. Despite his absorption, Birt paused to put
them up, remembering the vagrant mountain cattle that might stray in
upon the corn. He found the familiar little job difficult enough,
for it seemed to him that there was never before so black a night.
Even looking upward, he could not see the great wind-tossed boughs
of the chestnut-oak above his head. He only knew they were near,
because acorns dropped upon the rail in his hands, and rebounded
resonantly. But an owl, blown helplessly down the gale, was not
much better off, for all its vaunted nocturnal vision. As it
drifted by, on the currents of the wind, its noiseless, out-
stretched wings, vainly flapping, struck Birt suddenly in the face,
and frightened by the collision, it gave an odd, peevish squeak.
Birt, too, was startled for a moment. Then he exclaimed irritably,
"Oh, g'way owEL"--realizing what had struck him.
The next moment he paused abruptly. He thought he heard, close at
hand, amongst the glooms, a faint chuckle. Something--was it?--
SOMEBODY laughing in the darkness?
He stood intently listening. But now he heard only the down-pour of
the rain, the sonorous gusts of the wind, the multitudinous voices
of the muttering leaves.
He said to himself that it was fancy. "All this trouble ez I hev
hed along o' Nate Griggs hev mighty nigh addled my brains."
The name recalled his resolve.
"I'll git even with him, though. I'll git even with him yit," he
reiterated as he plodded on heavily down the path, his mind once
more busy with all the details of his discovery, his misplaced
confidence, and the wreck of his hopes.
It seemed so hard that he should never before have heard of
"entering land," and of that law of the State according priority to
the finder of mineral. The mine was his, but he had hid the
discovery from all but Nate, who claimed it himself, and had secured
the legal title.
"But I'll git even with him," he said resolutely between his set
teeth.
He had thought it a lucky chance to remember, in his reverie before
the fire-lit hearth, that peg in the shed at the tanyard on which
Tim had hung his brother's coat. Somehow the episode of the
afternoon had left so vivid an impression on Birt's mind that hours
afterward he seemed to see the dull, clouded sky, the sombre,
encircling woods, the brown stretch of spent tan, the little gray
shed, and within it, hanging upon a peg, the butternut jeans coat, a
stiff white paper protruding from its pocket.
That grant, he thought, had taken from him his rights. He would
destroy it--he would tear it into bits, and cast it to the turbulent
mountain winds. It was not his, to be sure. But was it justly
Nate's?--he had no right to enter the land down the ravine.
And so Birt argued with his conscience.
Now wherever Conscience calls a halt, it is no place for Reason to
debate the question. The way ahead is no thoroughfare.
Birt did not recognize the tearing of the paper as stealing, but he
knew that all this was morally wrong, although he would not admit
it. He would not forego his revenge--it was too dear; he was too
deeply injured. In the anger that possessed his every faculty, he
did not appreciate its futility.
There were other facts which he did NOT know. He was ignorant that
the deed which he contemplated was a crime in the estimation of the
law, a penitentiary offense.
And toward this terrible pitfall he trudged in the darkness, saying
over and again to himself, "I'll git even with Nate Griggs; he'll
hev no grant, no land, no gold--no more 'n me. I'll git even with
him."
His progress seemed incredibly slow as he groped along the path.
But the rain soon ceased; the wind began to scatter the clouds;
through a rift he saw a great, glittering planet blazing high above
their dark turmoils.
How the drops pattered down as the wind tossed the laurel!--once
they sounded like footfalls close behind him. He turned and looked
back into the obscurities of the forest. Nothing--a frog had begun
to croak far away, and the vibrations of the katydid were strident
on the damp air.
And here was the tanyard, a denser area of gloom marking where the
house and shed stood in the darkness. He did not hesitate. He
stepped over the bars, which lay as usual on the ground, and walked
across the yard to the shed. The eaves were dripping with moisture.
But the coat, still hanging within on the peg, was dry.
He had a thrill of repulsion when he touched it. His hand fell.
"But look how Nate hev treated me," he remonstrated with his
conscience.
The next moment he had drawn the grant half-way out of the pocket,
and as he moved he almost stepped upon something close behind him.
All at once he knew what it was, even before a flash of the distant
lightning revealed a little tow-head down in the darkness, and a
pair of black eyes raised to his in perfect confidence.
It was the little sister who had followed him to-night, as she
always did when she could.
"Stand back thar, Tennessee!" he faltered.
He was trembling from head to foot. And yet Tennessee was far too
young to tell that she had seen the grant in his hands, to
understand, even to question. But had he been seized by the whole
Griggs tribe, he could not have been so panic-stricken as he was by
the sight of that unknowing little head, the touch of the chubby
little hand on his knee.
He thrust the grant back into the pocket of Nate's coat. His
resolve was routed by the presence of love and innocence. Not here-
-not now could he be vindictive, malicious. With some urgent,
inborn impulse strongly constraining him, he caught the little
sister in his arms, and fled headlong through the darkness,
homeward.
As he went he was amazed that he should have contemplated this
revenge.
"Why, I can't afford ter be a scoundrel an' sech, jes' 'kase Nate
Griggs air a tricky feller an' hev fooled me. Ef Tennessee hedn't
stepped up so powerful peart I moughtn't hev come ter my senses in
time. I mought hev tore up Nate's grant by now. But arter this I
ain't never goin' ter set out ter act like a scamp jes' 'kase
somebody else does."
His conscience had prevailed, his better self returned. And when he
reached home, and opening the door saw his mother still nodding over
her knitting, and Rufe asleep in his chair, and the fire smouldering
on the hearth, all as he had left it, he might have thought that he
had dreamed the temptation and his rescue, but for his dripping
garments and Tennessee in his arms all soaking with the rain.
The noise of his entrance roused his mother, who stared in drowsy
astonishment at the bedraggled apparition on the threshold.
"Tennie follered me ter the tanyard 'fore I fund her out," Birt
explained. "It 'pears ter hev rained on her, considerable," he
added deprecatingly.
Tennie was looking eagerly over her shoulder to note the effect of
this statement. Her streaming hair flirted drops of water on the
floor; her cheeks were ruddy; her black eyes brightened with
apprehension.
"Waal, sir! that thar child beats all. Never mind, Tennie, ye'll
meet up with a wild varmint some day when ye air follerin' Birt off
from the house, an' I ain't surprised none ef it eats ye! But
shucks!" Mrs. Dicey continued impersonally, "I mought ez well save
my breath; Tennie ain't feared o' nuthin', ef Birt air by."
The word "varmint" seemed to recall something to Tennessee. She
began to chatter unintelligibly about an "owEL," and to chuckle so,
that Birt had sudden light upon that mysterious laugh which he had
heard behind him at the bars.
In his pride in Tennessee he related how the owl had startled him,
and the little girl, invisible in the darkness, had laughed.
"Tennessee ain't pretty, I know, but she air powerful peart," he
said, affectionately, as he placed her upon her feet on the floor.
Birt was out early with his axe the next day. The air was
delightfully pure after the rain-storm; the sky, gradually becoming
visible, wore the ideal azure; the freshened foliage seemed tinted
anew. And the morning was pierced by the gilded, glittering
javelins of the sunrise, flung from over the misty eastern
mountains. As the day dawned all sylvan fascinations were alert in
the woods. The fragrant winds were garrulous with wild legends of
piney gorges; of tumultuous cascades fringed by thyme and mint and
ferns. Every humble weed lent odorous suggestions. The airy things
all took to wing. And the spider was a-weaving.
Birt had felled a slender young ash, and was cutting it into lengths
for the fireplace, when he noticed a squirrel, sleek woodland dandy,
frisking about a rotten log at some little distance, by the
roadside.
Suddenly the squirrel paused, then nimbly sped away. There was the
sound of approaching hoofs along the road, and presently from around
the curve a woman appeared mounted on a sorrel mare, and with a
long-legged colt ambling in the rear.
It was Mrs. Griggs, setting out on a journey of some ten miles to
visit her married daughter who lived on a neighboring spur. She had
taken an early start to "git rid o' the heat o' the noon," as she
explained to Mrs. Dicey, who had run out to the rail fence when she
reined up beside it. Birt dropped his axe and joined them,
expecting to hear more about Nate's grant and the gold mine. Rufe
and Tennessee added their company without any definite intention.
Pete and Joe were hurrying out of the house toward the group. All
the dogs congregated, some of them climbing over the fence to
investigate the colt, which was skittish under the ordeal. Even the
turkey-gobbler, strutting on the outskirts of the assemblage, had an
attentive aspect, as if he, too, relished the gossip.
Mrs. Griggs's pink calico sunbonnet surmounted the cap with the
explanatory ruffle. She carried a fan of turkey feathers, and with
appropriate gesticulation, it aided in expounding to Mrs. Dicey the
astonishing news that Nate had found a gold mine on vacant land, and
had entered the tract. They intended to send specimens to the State
Assayer, and they were all getting ready to begin work at once.
Another surprise to Birt! The ignorant mountain boy had never heard
of the Assayer. But indeed Nate had only learned of the existence
of the office and its uses during that memorable trip to Sparta.
The prideful Mrs. Griggs from her elevation, literal and
metaphorical, supplemented all this by the creditable statements
that Nate had turned twenty-one, had cast his vote, and had a right
to a choice at the Cross-roads.
Then she chirruped to the rawboned sorrel mare, and jogged off down
the road, followed by the frisky colt, whose long, slender legs when
in motion seemed so fragile that it was startling to witness the
temerity with which he kicked up his frolicsome heels. The dogs,
with that odd canine affectation of having just perceived the
intruders, pursued them with sudden asperity, barking and snapping,
and at last came trotting nimbly home, wagging their tails and with
a dutiful mien.
Mrs. Dicey went back into the house, and sat for a time in envious
meditation, fairly silenced, and with her apron flung over her face.
Then she fell to lamenting that she had been working all her life
for nothing, and it would take so little to make the family
comfortable, and that her children seemed "disabled somehow in thar
heads, an' though always rootin' around in the woods, hed never fund
no gold mine nor nuthin' else out o' the common."
Birt kept silent, but the gloom and trouble in his face suddenly
touched her heart.
"Thar now, Birt!" she exclaimed, with a world of consolation in her
tones, "I don't mean ter say that, nuther. Ain't I a-thinkin' day
an' night o' how smart ye be--stiddy an' sensible an' hard-workin'
jes' like a man--an' what a good son ye hev been to me! An' the
t'other chill'n air good too, an' holps me powerful, though Rufe air
hendered some, by the comical natur o' the critter."
She broke out with a cheerful laugh, in which Birt could not join.
"An' I mus' be gittin' breakfus fur the chill'n," she said, kneeling
down on the hearth, and uncovering the embers which had been kept
all night under the ashes.
"Don't ye fret, sonny. I ain't goin' ter grudge Nate his gold mine.
I reckon sech a good son ez ye be, an' a gold mine too, would be too
much luck fur one woman. Don't ye fret, sonny."
Birt's self-control gave way abruptly. He rose in great agitation,
and started toward the door. Then he paused, and broke forth with
passionate incoherence, telling amidst sobs and tears the story of
the woodland's munificence to him, and how he had flung the gift
away.
In recounting the hopes that had deluded him, the fears that had
gnawed, and the despair in which they were at last merged, he did
not notice, for a time, her look as she still knelt motionless
before the embers on the hearth.
He faltered, and grew silent; then stared dumbly at her.
She seemed as one petrified. Her face had blanched; its lines were
as sharp and distinct as if graven in stone; only her eyes spoke, an
eloquent anguish. Her faculties were numbed for a moment. But
presently there was a quiver in her chin, and her voice rang out.
And yet did she understand? did she realize the loss of the mine?
For it was not this that she lamented
"Birt Dicey!" she cried in an appalled tone. "Did ye hide it from
yer MOTHER--an' tell NATE GRIGGS?"
Birt hung his head. The folly of it!
"What ailed ye, ter hide it from me?" she asked deprecatingly,
holding out her worn, hard-working hands. "Hev I ever done ye
harm?"
"Nuthin' but good."
"Don't everybody know a boy's mother air bound ter take his part
agin all the worl'?"
"Everybody but me," said the penitent Birt.
"What ailed ye, ter hide it from me? What did ye 'low I'd do?"
"I 'lowed ye wouldn't want me ter go pardners with Nate," he said
drearily.
"I reckon I wouldn't!" she admitted.
"Ye always said he war a snake in the grass."
"He hev proved that air a true word."
"I wisht I hedn't tole him!" cried Birt vainly. "I wisht I hedn't."
He watched her with moody eyes as she rose at last with a sigh and
went mechanically about her preparations for breakfast.
There was a division between them. He felt the gulf widening.
"I jes' wanted it fur you-uns, ennyhow," he said, defending his
motives. "I 'lowed ez I mought make enough out'n it ter buy a
horse."
"I hain't got time ter sorrow 'bout'n no gold mine," she said
loftily. "I used ter believe ye set a heap o' store by yer mother,
an' war willin' ter trust her--ye an' me hevin' been through mighty
hard times together. But ye don't--I reckon ye never did. I hev
los' mo' than enny gold mine."
And this sorrow for a vanished faith resolved itself into tears with
which she salted her humble bread.