[Illustration: "Listen. Go with the love in your heart--for me."
FRONTISPIECE. _See Page 329._]
THE EYE OF DREAD
By PAYNE ERSKINE
Author of "The Mountain Girl," "Joyful Heatherby," Etc.
With Frontispiece by
GEORGE GIBBS
A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
114-120 East Twenty-third Street--New York
Published by Arrangement With Little, Brown & Company
Copyright, 1913,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published, October, 1913
Reprinted, October, 1913
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
I. BETTY 1
II. WATCHING THE BEES 9
III. A MOTHER'S STRUGGLE 23
IV. LEAVE-TAKING 34
V. THE PASSING OF TIME 49
VI. THE END OF THE WAR 59
VII. A NEW ERA BEGINS 69
VIII. MARY BALLARD'S DISCOVERY 87
IX. THE BANKER'S POINT OF VIEW 97
X. THE NUTTING PARTY 110
XI. BETTY BALLARD'S AWAKENING 125
XII. MYSTERIOUS FINDINGS 139
XIII. CONFESSION 157
BOOK TWO
XIV. OUT OF THE DESERT 168
XV. THE BIG MAN'S RETURN 183
XVI. A PECULIAR POSITION 198
XVII. ADOPTING A FAMILY 208
XVIII. LARRY KILDENE'S STORY 219
XIX. THE MINE--AND THE DEPARTURE 237
XX. ALONE ON THE MOUNTAIN 252
XXI. THE VIOLIN 267
XXII. THE BEAST ON THE TRAIL 282
XXIII. A DISCOURSE ON LYING 295
XXIV. AMALIA'S FÊTE 305
XXV. HARRY KING LEAVES THE MOUNTAIN 318
BOOK THREE
XXVI. THE LITTLE SCHOOL-TEACHER 331
XXVII. THE SWEDE'S TELEGRAM 342
XXVIII. "A RESEMBLANCE SOMEWHERE" 354
XXIX. THE ARREST 365
XXX. THE ARGUMENT 376
XXXI. ROBERT KATER'S SUCCESS 387
XXXII. THE PRISONER 408
XXXIII. HESTER CRAIGMILE RECEIVES HER LETTER 422
XXXIV. JEAN CRAIGMILE'S RETURN 433
XXXV. THE TRIAL 445
XXXVI. NELS NELSON'S TESTIMONY 453
XXXVII. THE STRANGER'S ARRIVAL 463
XXXVIII. BETTY BALLARD'S TESTIMONY 475
XXXIX. RECONCILIATION 487
XL. THE SAME BOY 499
THE EYE OF DREAD
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I
BETTY
Two whip-poor-wills were uttering their insistent note, hidden
somewhere among the thick foliage of the maple and basswood trees that
towered above the spring down behind the house where the Ballards
lived. The sky in the west still glowed with amber light, and the
crescent moon floated like a golden boat above the horizon's edge. The
day had been unusually warm, and the family were all gathered on the
front porch in the dusk. The lamps within were unlighted, and the
evening wind blew the white muslin curtains out and in through the
opened windows. The porch was low,--only a step from the ground,--and
the grass of the dooryard felt soft and cool to the bare feet of the
children.
In front and all around lay the garden--flowers and fruit quaintly
intermingled. Down the long path to the gate, where three roads met,
great bunches of peonies lifted white blossoms--luminously white in
the moonlight; and on either side rows of currant bushes cast low,
dark shadows, and here and there dwarf crab-apple trees tossed pale,
scented flowers above them. In the dusky evening light the iris
flowers showed frail and iridescent against the dark shadows under the
bushes.
The children chattered quietly at their play, as if they felt a
mystery around them, and small Betty was sure she saw fairies dancing
on the iris flowers when the light breeze stirred them; but of this
she said nothing, lest her practical older sister should drop a
scornful word of unbelief, a thing Betty shrank from and instinctively
avoided. Why should she be told there were no such things as fairies
and goblins and pigwidgeons, when one might be at that very moment
dancing at her elbow and hear it all?
So Betty wagged her curly golden head, wise with the wisdom of
childhood, and went her own ways and thought her own thoughts. As for
the strange creatures of wondrous power that peopled the earth, and
the sky, and the streams, she knew they were there. She could almost
see them, could almost feel them and hear them, even though they were
hidden from mortal sight.
Did she not often go when the sun was setting and climb the fence
behind the barn under the great locust and silver-leaf poplar trees,
where none could see her, and watch the fiery griffins in the west?
Could she not see them flame and flash, their wings spreading far out
across the sky in fantastic flight, or drawn close and folded about
them in hues of purple and crimson and gold? Could she not see the
flying mist-women flinging their floating robes of softest pink and
palest green around their slender limbs, and trailing them delicately
across the deepening sky?
Had she not heard the giants--nay, seen them--driving their terrible
steeds over the tumbled clouds, and rolling them smooth with noise of
thunder, under huge rolling machines a thousand times bigger than
that Farmer Hopkins used to crush the clods in his wheat field in the
spring? Had she not seen the flashes of fire dart through the heavens,
struck by the hoofs of the giants' huge beasts? Ah! She knew! If
Martha would only listen to her, she could show her some of these true
things and stop her scoffing.
Lured by these mysteries, Betty made short excursions into the garden
away from the others, peering among the shadows, and gazing wide-eyed
into the clusters of iris flowers above which night moths fluttered
softly and silently. Maybe there were fairies there. Three could ride
at once on the back of a devil's riding horse, she knew, and in the
daytime they rode the dragon flies, two at a time; they were so light
it was nothing for the great green and gold, big-eyed dragon flies to
carry two.
Betty knew a place below the spring where the maidenhair fern grew
thick and spread out wide, perfect fronds on slender brown stems,
shading fairy bowers; and where taller ferns grew high and leaned over
like a delicate fairy forest; and where the wild violets grew so thick
you could not see the ground beneath them, and the grass was lush and
long like fine green hair, and crept up the hillside and over the
roots of the maple and basswood trees. Here lived the elves; she knew
them well, and often lay with her head among the violets, listening
for the thin sound of their elfin fiddles. Often she had drowsed the
summer noon in the coolness, unheeding the dinner call, until busy
Martha roused her with the sisterly scolding she knew she deserved and
took in good part.
Now as Betty crept cautiously about, peering and hoping with a
half-fearing expectation, a sweet, threadlike wail trembled out toward
her across the moonlit and shadowed space. Her father was tuning his
violin. Her mother sat at his side, hushing Bobby in her arms. Betty
could hear the sound of her rockers on the porch floor. Now the
plaintive call of the violin came stronger, and she hastened back to
curl up at her father's feet and listen. She closed her vision-seeing
eyes and leaned against her father's knee. He felt the gentle pressure
of his little daughter's head and liked it.
All the long summer day Betty's small feet had carried her on
numberless errands for young and old, and as the season advanced she
would be busier still. This Betty well knew, for she was old enough to
remember other summers, several of them, each bringing an advancing
crescendo of work. But oh, the happy days! For Betty lived in a world
all her own, wherein her play was as real as her work, and labor was
turned by her imaginative little mind into new forms of play, and
although night often found her weary--too tired to lie quietly in her
bed sometimes--the line between the two was never in her thoughts
distinctly drawn.
To-night Betty's conscience was troubling her a little, for she had
done two naughty things, and the pathetic quality of her father's
music made her wish with all the intensity of her sensitive soul that
she might confess to some one what she had done, but it was all too
peaceful and sweet now to tell her mother of naughty things, and,
anyway, she could not confess before the whole family, so she tried to
repent very hard and tell God all about it. Somehow it was always
easier to tell God about things; for she reasoned, if God was
everywhere and knew everything, then he knew she had been bad, and had
seen her all the time, and all she need do was to own up to it,
without explaining everything in words, as she would have to do to her
mother.
Brother Bobby's bare feet swung close to her cheek as they dangled
from her mother's knee, and she turned and kissed them, first one and
then the other, with eager kisses. He stirred and kicked out at her
fretfully.
"Don't wake him, dear," said her mother.
Then Betty drew up her knees and clasped them about with her arms, and
hid her face on them while she repented very hard. Mother had said
that very day that she never felt troubled about the baby when Betty
had care of him, and that very day she had recklessly taken him up
into the barn loft, climbing behind him and guiding his little feet
from one rung of the perpendicular ladder to another, teaching him to
cling with clenched hands to the rounds until she had landed him in
the loft. There she had persuaded him he was a swallow in his nest,
while she had taken her fill of the delight of leaping from the loft
down into the bay, where she had first tossed enough hay to make a
soft lighting place for the twelve-foot leap.
Oh, the joy of it--flying through the air! If she could only fly up
instead of down! Every time she climbed back into the loft she would
stop and cuddle the little brother and toss hay over him and tell him
he was a baby bird, and she was the mother bird, and must fly away and
bring him nice worms. She bade him look up to the rafters above and
see the mother birds flying out and in, while the little birds just
sat still in their nests and opened their mouths. So Bobby sat still,
and when she returned, obediently opened his mouth; but alas! he
wearied of his rôle in the play, and at last crept to the very edge of
the loft at a place where there was no hay spread beneath to break his
fall; and when Betty looked up and saw his sweet baby face peering
down at her over the edge, her heart stopped beating. How wildly she
called for him to wait for her to come to him! She promised him all
the dearest of her treasures if he would wait until "sister" got
there.
Now, as she sat clasping her knees, her little body grew all trembling
and weak again as she lived over the terrible moment when she had
reached him just in time to drag him back from the edge, and to cuddle
and caress him, until he lifted up his voice and wept, not because he
was in the least troubled or hurt, but because it seemed to be the
right thing to do.
Then she gave him the pretty round comb that held back her hair, and
he promptly straightened it and broke it; and when she reluctantly
brought him back to dinner--how she had succeeded in getting him down
from the loft would make a chapter of diplomacy--her mother reproved
her for allowing him to take it, and lapped the two pieces and wound
them about with thread, and told her she must wear the broken comb
after this. She was glad--glad it was broken--and she had treasured it
so--and glad that her mother had scolded her; she wished she had
scolded harder instead of speaking words of praise that cut her to the
heart. Oh, oh, oh! If he had fallen over, he would be dead now, and
she would have killed him! Thus she tortured herself, and repented
very hard.
The other sin she had that day committed she felt to be a double sin,
because she knew all the time it was wrong and did it deliberately.
When she went out with the corn meal to feed the little chicks and
fetch in the new-laid eggs, she carried, concealed under her skirt, a
small, squat book of Robert Burns' poems. These poems she loved; not
that she understood them, but that the rhythm pleased her, and the odd
words and half-comprehended phrases stirred her imagination.
So, after feeding the chicks and gathering the eggs, she did not
return to the house, but climbed instead up into the top of the
silver-leaf poplar behind the barn, and sat there long, swaying with
the swaying tree top and reading the lines that most fascinated her
and stirred her soul, until she forgot she must help Martha with the
breakfast dishes--forgot she must carry milk to the neighbor's--forgot
she must mind the baby and peel the potatoes for dinner. It was so
delightful to sway and swing and chant the rythmic lines over and over
that almost she forgot she was being bad, and Martha had done the
things she ought to have done, and the baby cried himself to sleep
without her, and lay with the pathetic tear marks still on his cheeks,
but her tired mother had only looked reproachfully at her and had not
said one word. Oh, dear! If she could only be a good girl! If only she
might pass one day being good all day long with nothing to regret!
Now with the wailing of the violin her soul grew hungry and sad, and a
strange, unchildish fear crept over her, a fear of the years to
come--so long and endless they would be, always coming, coming, one
after another; and here she was, never to stop living, and every day
doing something that she ought not and every evening repenting
it--and her father might stop loving her, and her sister might stop
loving her, and her little brother might stop loving her, and Bobby
might die--and even her mother might die or stop loving her, and she
might grow up and marry a man who forgot after a while to love
her--and she might be very poor--even poorer than they were now, and
have to wash dishes every day and no one to help her--until at last
she could bear the sadness no longer, and could not repent as hard as
she ought, there where she could not go down on her knees and just cry
and cry. So she slipped away and crept in the darkness to her own
room, where her mother found her half an hour later on her knees
beside the bed fast asleep. She lovingly undressed the limp, weary
little girl, lifted her tenderly and laid her curly head on the
pillow, and kissed her cheek with a repentant sigh of her own,
regretting that she must lay so many tasks on so small a child.