CHAPTER I. The Unforeseen

Ver.04.29.93*END*

THE DELIVERANCE; A ROMANCE OF THE VIRGINIA TOBACCO FIELDS

By

Ellen Glasgow

1904

CONTENTS

BOOK I. The Inheritance

CHAPTER

I. The Man in the Field

II. The Owner of Blake Hall

III. Showing That a Little Culture Entails Great Care

IV. Of Human Nature in the Raw State

V. The Wreck of the Blakes

VI. Carraway Plays Courtier

VII. In Which a Stand Is Made

VIII. Treats of a Passion That Is Not Love

IX. Cynthia X. Sentimental and Otherwise

BOOK II. The Temptation

I. The Romance That Might Have Been

II. The Romance That Was

III. Fletcher's Move and Christopher's Counterstroke

IV. A Gallant Deed That Leads to Evil

V. The Glimpse of a Bride

VI. Shows Fletcher in a New Light

VII. In Which Hero and Villain Appear as One

VIII. Between the Devil and the Deep Sea

IX. As the Twig Is Bent

X. Powers of Darkness

BOOK III. The Revenge

I. In Which Tobacco Is Hero

II. Between Christopher and Will

III. Mrs. Blake Speaks Her Mind on Several Matters

IV. In Which Christopher Hesitates

V. The Happiness of Tucker

VI. The Wages of Folly

VII. The Toss of a Coin

VIII. In Which Christopher Triumphs

BOOK IV. The Awakening

I. The Unforeseen

II. Maria Returns to the Hall

III. The Day Afterward

IV. The Meeting in the Night

V. Maria Stands on Christopher's Ground

VI. The Growing Light

VII. In which Carraway Speaks the Truth to Maria

VIII. Between Maria and Christopher

IX. Christopher Faces Himself

X. By the Poplar Spring

BOOK V. The Ancient Law

I. Christopher Seeks an Escape

II. The Measure of Maria

III. Will's Ruin

IV. In Which Mrs. Blake's Eyes are Opened

V. Christopher Plants by Moonlight

VI. Treats of the Tragedy Which Wears a Comic Mask

VII. Will Faces Desperation and Stands at Bay

VIII. How Christopher Comes into His Revenge

IX. The Fulfilling of the Law

X. The Wheel of Life

LIST OF CHARACTERS

CHRISTOPHER BLAKE, a tobacco-grower

MRS. BLAKE, his mother

TUCKER CORBIN, an old soldier

CYNTHIA and LILA BLAKE; sisters of Christopher

CARRAWAY, a lawyer

BILL FLETCHER, a wealthy farmer

MARIA FLETCHER, his granddaughter

WILL FLETCHER, his grandson

"MISS SAIDIE," sister of Fletcher

JACOB WEATHERBY, a tobacco-grower

JIM WEATHERBY, his son

SOL PETERKIN, another tobacco-grower

MOLLY PETERKIN, daughter of Sol

Tom SPADE, a country storekeeper

SUSAN, his wife

UNCLE BOAZ, a Negro

Book I

THE INHERITANCE

CHAPTER I. The Man in the Field

When the Susquehanna stage came to the daily halt beneath the

blasted pine at the cross-roads, an elderly man, wearing a

flapping frock coat and a soft slouch hat, stepped gingerly over

one of the muddy wheels, and threw a doubtful glance across the

level tobacco fields, where the young plants were drooping in the

June sunshine.

"So this is my way, is it?" he asked, with a jerk of his thumb

toward a cloud of blue-and-yellow butterflies drifting over a

shining puddle--"five miles as the crow flies, and through a

bog?"

For a moment he hung suspended above the encrusted axle, peering

with blinking pale-gray eyes over a pair of gold-rimmed

spectacles. In his appearance there was the hint of a scholarly

intention unfulfilled, and his dress, despite its general

carelessness, bespoke a different standard of taste from that of

the isolated dwellers in the surrounding fields. A casual

observer might have classified him as one of the Virginian

landowners impoverished by the war; in reality, he was a

successful lawyer in a neighbouring town, who, amid the overthrow

of the slaveholding gentry some twenty years before, had risen

into a provincial prominence.

His humour met with a slow response from the driver, who sat

playfully flicking at a horsefly on the flank of a tall,

raw-boned sorrel. "Wall, thar's been a sight of rain lately," he

observed, with goodnatured acquiescence, "but I don't reckon the

mud's more'n waist deep, an' if you do happen to git clean down,

thar's Sol Peterkin along to pull you out. Whar're you hidin',

Sol? Why, bless my boots, if he ain't gone fast asleep!"

At this a lean and high-featured matron, encased in the rigidity

of her Sunday bombazine, gave a prim poke with her umbrella in

the ribs of a sparrow-like little man, with a discoloured,

scraggy beard, who nodded in one corner of the long seat.

"I'd wake up if I was you," she remarked in the voice her sex

assumes when virtue lapses into severity.

Starting from his doze, the little man straightened his wiry,

sunburned neck and mechanically raised his hand to wipe away a

thin stream of tobacco juice which trickled from his half-open

mouth.

"Hi!we ain't got here a'ready!" he exclaimed, as he spat

energetically into the mud. "I d'clar if it don't beat all--one

minute we're thar an' the next we're here. It's a movin' world we

live in, ain't that so, mum?" Then, as the severe matron still

stared unbendingly before her, he descended between the wheels,

and stood nervously scraping his feet in the long grass by the

roadside.

"This here's Sol Peterkin, Mr. Carraway," said the driver, bowing

his introduction as he leaned forward to disentangle the reins

from the sorrel's tail, "an' I reckon he kin pint out Blake Hall

to you as well as another, seem' as he was under-overseer thar

for eighteen years befo' the war. Now you'd better climb in agin,

folks; it's time we were off."

He gave an insinuating cluck to the horses, while several

passengers, who had alighted to gather blackberries from the

ditch, scrambled hurriedly into their places. With a single

clanking wrench the stage toiled on, plodding clumsily over the

miry road.

As the spattering mud-drops fell round him, Carraway lifted his

head and sniffed the air like a pointer that has been just turned

afield. For the moment his professional errand escaped him as his

chest expanded in the light wind which blew over the radiant

stillness of the Virginian June. From the cloudless sky to its

pure reflection in the rain-washed roads there was barely a

descending shade, and the tufts of dandelion blooming against the

rotting rail fence seemed but patches of the clearer sunshine.

"Bless my soul, it's like a day out of Scripture!" he exclaimed

in a tone that was half-apologetic; then raising his

walking-stick he leisurely swept it into space. "There's hardly

another crop, I reckon, between here and the Hall?"

Sol Peterkin was busily cutting a fresh quid of tobacco from the

plug he carried in his pocket, and there was a brief pause before

he answered. Then, as he carefully wiped the blade of his knife

on the leg of his blue jean overalls, he looked up with a curious

facial contortion.

"Oh, you'll find a corn field or two somewhar along," he replied,

"but it's a lanky, slipshod kind of crop at best, for tobaccy's

king down here, an' no mistake. We've a sayin' that the man that

ain't partial to the weed can't sleep sound even in the

churchyard, an' thar's some as 'ill swar to this day that Willie

Moreen never rested in his grave because he didn't chaw, an' the

soil smelt jest like a plug. Oh, it's a great plant, I tell you,

suh. Look over thar at them fields; they've all been set out

sence the spell o' rain."

The road they followed crawled like a leisurely river between the

freshly ploughed ridges, where the earth was slowly settling

around the transplanted crop. In the distance, labourers were

still at work, passing in dull-blue blotches between the rows of

bright-green leaves that hung limply on their slender stalks.

"You've lived at the Hall, I hear," said Carraway, suddenly

turning to look at his companion over his lowered glasses.

"When it was the Hall, suh," replied Sol, with a tinge of

bitterness in his chuckle. "Why, in my day, an' that was up to

the very close of the war, you might stand at the big gate an'

look in any direction you pleased till yo' eyes bulged fit to

bust, but you couldn't look past the Blake land for all yo'

tryin'. These same fields here we're passin' through I've seen

set out in Blake tobaccy time an' agin, an' the farm I live on

three miles beyond the Hall belonged to the old gentleman, God

bless him! up to the day he died. Lord save my soul! three

hunnard as likely niggers as you ever clap sight on, an' that not

countin' a good fifty that was too far gone to work."

"All scattered now, I suppose?"

"See them little cabins over yonder?" With a dirty forefinger he

pointed to the tiny trails of smoke hanging low above the distant

tree-tops. "The county's right speckled with 'em an' with thar

children--all named Blake arter old marster, as they called him,

or Corbin arter old miss. When leetle Mr. Christopher got turned

out of the Hall jest befo' his pa died, an' was shuffled into the

house of the overseer, whar Bill Fletcher used to live himself,

the darkies all bought bits o'land here an' thar an' settled down

to do some farmin' on a free scale. Stuck up, suh! Why, Zebbadee

Blake passed me yestiddy drivin' his own mule-team, an' I heard

him swar he wouldn't turn out o' the road for anybody less'n God

A'mighty or Marse Christopher!"

"A-ahem!" exclaimed Carraway, with relish; "and in the meantime,

the heir to all this high-handed authority is no better than an

illiterate day-labourer."

Peterkin snorted. "Who? Mr. Christopher? Well, he warn't more'n

ten years old when his pa went doty an' died, an' I don't reckon

he's had much larnin' sence. I've leant on the gate myself an'

watched the nigger children traipsin' by to the Yankee woman's

school, an' he drivin' the plough when he didn't reach much

higher than the handle. He' used to be the darndest leetle brat,

too, till his sperits got all freezed out o' him. Lord! Lord!

thar's such a sight of meanness in this here world that it makes

a body b'lieve in Providence whether or no."

Carraway meditatively twirled his walking-stick. "Raises tobacco

now like the rest, doesn't he?"

"Not like the rest--bless you, no, suh. Why, the weed thrives

under his very touch, though he can't abide the smell of it, an'

thar's not a farmer in the county that wouldn't ruther have him

to plant, cut, or cure than any ten men round about. They do say

that his pa went clean crazy about tobaccy jest befo' he died,

an' that Mr. Christopher gets dead sick when he smells it smokin'

in the barn, but he kin pick up a leaf blindfold an' tell you the

quality of it at his first touch."

For a moment the lawyer was silent, pondering a thought he

evidently did not care to utter. When at last he spoke it was in

the measured tones of one who overcomes an impediment in his

speech.

"Do you happen to have heard, I wonder, anything of his attitude

toward the present owner of the Hall?"

"Happen to have heard!" Peterkin threw back his head and gasped.

"Why, the whole county has happened to hear of it, I reckon. It's

been common talk sence the day he got his first bird-gun, an' his

nigger, Uncle Boaz, found him hidin' in the bushes to shoot old

Fletcher when he came in sight. I tell you, if Bill Fletcher lay

dyin' in the road, Mr. Christopher would sooner ride right over

him than not. You ask some folks, suh, an' they'll tell you a

Blake kin hate twice as long as most men kin love."

"Ah, is it so bad as that?" muttered Carraway.

"Well, he ain't much of a Christian, as the lights go," continued

Sol, "but I ain't sartain, accordin' to my way of thinkin', that

he ain't got a better showin' on his side than a good many of 'em

that gits that befo' the preacher. He's a Blake, skin an' bone,

anyhow, an' you ain't goin' to git this here county to go agin

him--not if he was to turn an' spit at Satan himself. Old Bill

Fletcher stole his house an' his land an' his money, law or no

law--that's how I look at it--but he couldn't steal his name, an'

that's what counts among the niggers, an' the po' whites, too.

Why, I've seen a whole parcel o' darkies stand stock still when

Fletcher drove up to the bars with his spankin' pair of bays, an'

then mos' break tha' necks lettin' 'em down as soon as Mr.

Christopher comes along with his team of oxen. You kin fool the

quality 'bout the quality, but I'll be blamed if you kin fool the

niggers."

Ahead of them there was a scattered group of log cabins,

surrounded by little whitewashed palings, and at their approach a

decrepit old Negro, followed by a slinking black-and-tan

foxhound, came beneath the straggling hopvine over one of the

doors and through the open gate out into the road. His bent old

figure was huddled within his carefully patched clothes of coarse

brown homespun.

"Howdy, marsters," he muttered, in answer to the lawyer's

greeting, raising a trembling hand to his wrinkled forehead.

"Y'all ain' seen nuttin' er ole miss's yaller cat, Beulah, I

reckon?"

Peterkin, who had eyed him with the peculiar disfavour felt for

the black man by the low-born white, evinced a sudden interest

out of all proportion to Carraway's conception of the loss.

"Ain't she done come back yet, Uncle Boaz?" he inquired.

"Naw, suh, dat she ain', en ole miss she ain' gwine git a wink er

sleep dis blessed night. Me en Spy we is done been traipsin'

roun' atter dat ar low-lifeted Beulah sence befo' de

dinner-bell."

"When did you miss her first?" asked Peterkin, with concern.

"I dunno, suh, dat I don't, caze she ain' no better'n one er dese

yer wish-wishys,* an' I ain' mek out yit ef'n twuz her er her

hant. Las' night 'bout sundown dar she wuz a-lappin' her sasser

er milk right at ole miss feet, en dis mawnin' at sunup dar she

warn't. Dat's all I know, suh, ef'n you lay me out."

* Will-o'-the-wisp.

"Well, I reckon she'll turn up agin," said Peterkin consolingly.

"Cats air jest like gals, anyway--they ain't never happy unless

they're eternally gallyvantin'. Why, that big white Tom of mine

knows more about this here county than I do myself."

"Days so, suh; days de gospel trufe; but I'se kinder flustered

'bout dat yaller cat caze ole miss sutney do set a heap er sto'

by 'er. She ain' never let de dawgs come in de 'oom, nohow, caze

once she done feel Beulah rar 'er back at Spy. She's des stone

blin', is ole miss, but I d'clar she kin smell pow'ful keen, an'

'taro' no use tryin' ter fool her wid one houn' er de hull pack.

Lawd! Lawd! I wunner ef dat ar cat kin be layin' close over

yonder at Sis Daphne's?"

He branched off into a little path which ran like a white thread

across the field, grumbling querulously to the black-and-tan

foxhound that ambled at his heels.

"Dar's a wallopin' ahaid er you, sho's you bo'n," he muttered, as

he limped on toward a small log hut from which floated an

inviting fragrance of bacon frying in fat. "I reckon you lay dat

you kin cut yo' mulatter capers wid me all you please, but you'd

better look out sharp 'fo' you begin foolin' 'long er Marse

Christopher. Dar you go agin, now. Ain' dat des like you? Wat you

wanter go sickin' atter dat ole hyar fer, anyhow?"

"So that is one of young Blake's hangers-on?" observed Carraway,

with a slight inflection of inquiry.

"Uncle Boaz, you mean? Oh, he was the old gentleman's

body-servant befo' the war. He used to wear his marster's

cast-off ruffles an' high hat. A mighty likely nigger he was,

too,

till he got all bent up with the rheumatics."

The lawyer had lifted his walking-stick and was pointing straight

ahead to a group of old brick chimneys huddled in the sunset

above a grove of giant oaks.

"That must be Blake Hall over there," he said; "there's not

another house like it in the three counties."

"We'll be at the big gate in a minute, suh," Peterkin returned.

"This is the first view of the Hall you git, an' they say the old

gentleman used to raise his hat whenever he passed by it." Then

as they swung open the great iron gate, with its new coat of red,

he touched Carraway's sleeve and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

"Thar's Mr. Christopher himself over yonder," he said, "an' Lord

bless my soul, if he ain't settin' out old Fletcher's plants.

Thar! he's standin' up now--the big young fellow with the basket.

The old gentleman was the biggest man twixt here an'

Fredericksburg, but I d'clar Mr. Christopher is a good half-head

taller!"

At his words Carraway stopped short in the road, raising his

useless glasses upon his brow. The sun had just gone down in a

blaze of light, and the great bare field was slowly darkening

against the west.

Nearer at hand there were the long road, already in twilight, the

rail fence wrapped in creepers, and a solitary chestnut tree in

full bloom. Farther away swept the freshly ploughed ground over

which passed the moving figures of the labourers transplanting

the young crop. Of them all, Carraway saw but a single worker--in

reality, only one among the daily toilers in the field, moulded

physically perhaps in a finer shape than they, and limned in the

lawyer's mental vision against a century of the brilliant if

tragic history of his race. As he moved slowly along between the

even rows, dropping from time to time a plant into one of the

small holes dug before him, and pausing with the basket on his

arm to settle the earth carefully with his foot, he seemed,

indeed, as much the product of the soil upon which he stood as

did the great white chestnut growing beside the road. In his

pose, in his walk, in the careless carriage of his head, there

was something of the large freedom of the elements.

"A dangerous young giant," observed the lawyer slowly, letting

his glasses fall before his eyes. "A monumental Blake, as it

were. Well, as I have remarked before upon occasions, blood will

tell, even at the dregs."

"He's the very spit of his pa, that's so," replied Peterkin, "an'

though it's no business of mine, I'm afeared he's got the old

gentleman's dry throat along with it. Lord! Lord! I've always

stood it out that it's better to water yo' mouth with tobaccy

than to burn it up with sperits." He checked himself and fell

back hastily, for young Blake, after a single glance at the west,

had tossed his basket carelessly aside, and was striding

vigorously across the field.

"Not another plant will I set out, and that's an end of it!" he

was saying angrily. "I agreed to do a day's work and I've been at

it steadily since sunrise. Is it any concern of mine, I'd like to

know, if he can't put in his crop to-night? Do you think I care

whether his tobacco rots in the ground or out of it?"

As he came on, Carraway measured him coolly, with an appreciation

tempered by his native sense of humour. He perceived at once a

certain coarseness of finish which, despite the deep-rooted

veneration for an idle ancestry, is found most often in the

descendants of a long line of generous livers. A moment later he

weighed the keen gray flash of the eyes beneath the thick fair

hair, the coating of dust and sweat over the high-bred curve from

brow to nose, and the fullness of the jaw which bore with a

suggestion of sheer brutality upon the general impression of a

fine racial type. Taken from the mouth up, the face might have

passed as a pure, fleshly copy of the antique idea; seen

downward, it became almost repelling in its massive power.

Stooping beside the fence for a common harvest hat, the young man

placed it on his head, and gave a careless nod to Peterkin. He

had thrown one leg over the rails, and was about to swing himself

into the road, when Sol spoke a little timidly.

"I hear yo' ma's done lost her yaller cat, Mr. Christopher."

For an instant Christopher hung midway of the fence.

"Isn't the beast back yet?" he asked irritably, scraping the mud

from his boot upon the rail. "I've had Uncle Boaz scouring the

county half the day."

A pack of hounds that had been sleeping under the sassafras

bushes across the road came fawning to his feet, and he pushed

them impatiently aside.

"I was thinkin'," began Peterkin, with an uncertain cough, "that

I might manage to send over my big white Tom, an', bein' blind,

maybe she wouldn't know the difference."

Christopher shook his head.

"Oh, it's no use," he replied, speaking with an air of

superiority. "She could pick out that cat among a million, I

believe, with a single touch. Well, there's no help for it. Down,

Spot--down, I say, Sir!"

With a leisurely movement he swung himself from the fence,

stopping to wipe his brow with his blue cotton sleeve. Then he

went whistling defiantly down the way to the Hall, turning at

last into a sunken road that trailed by an abandoned ice-pond

where bullfrogs were croaking hoarsely in the rushes.

CHAPTER II. The Owner of Blake Hall

As they followed the descending road between flowering chestnuts,

Blake Hall rose gradually into fuller view, its great oaks

browned by the approaching twilight and the fading after-glow

reflected in a single visible pane. Seen close at hand, the house

presented a cheerful spaciousness of front--a surety of light and

air--produced in part by the clean white, Doric columns of the

portico and in part by the ample slope of shaven lawn studded

with reds of brightly blooming flowers. From the smoking chimneys

presiding over the ancient roof to the hospitable steps leading

from the box-bordered walk below, the outward form of the

dwelling spoke to the imaginative mind of that inner spirit which

had moulded it into a lasting expression of a racial sentiment,

as if the Virginia creeper covering the old brick walls had

wreathed them in memories as tenacious as itself.

For more than two hundred years Blake Hall had stood as the one

great house in the county--a manifestation in brick and mortar of

the hereditary greatness of the Blakes. To Carraway, impersonal

as his interest was, the acknowledgment brought a sudden vague

resentment, and for an instant he bit his lip and hung

irresolute, as if more than half-inclined to retrace his steps. A

slight thing decided him--the gaiety of a boy's laugh that

floated from one of the lower rooms and swinging his stick

briskly to add weight to his determination, he ascended the broad

steps and lifted the old brass knocker. A moment later the door

was opened by a large mulatto woman, in a soiled apron, who took

his small hand-bag from him and, when he asked for Mr. Fletcher,

led him across the great hall into the unused drawing-room.

The shutters were closed, and as she flung them back on their

rusty hinges the pale June twilight entered with the breath of

mycrophylla roses. In the scented dusk Carraway stared about the

desolate, crudely furnished room, which gave back to his troubled

fancy the face of a pitiable, dishonoured corpse. The soul of it

was gone forever--that peculiar spirit of place which makes every

old house the guardian of an inner life--the keeper of a family's

ghost. What remained was but the outer husk, the disfigured

frame, upon which the newer imprint seemed only a passing insult.

On the high wainscoted walls he could still trace the vacant

dust-marked squares where the Blake portraits had once

hung--lines that the successive scrubbings of fifteen years had

not utterly effaced. A massive mahogany sofa, carved to represent

a horn of plenty, had been purchased, perhaps at a general sale

of the old furniture, with several quaint rosewood chairs and a

rare cabinet of inlaid woods. For the rest, the later additions

were uniformly cheap and ill-chosen--a blue plush "set," bought,

possibly, at a village store, a walnut table with a sallow marble

top, and several hard engravings of historic subjects.

When the lawyer turned from a curious inspection of these works

of art, he saw that only a curtain of flimsy chintz, stretched

between a pair of fluted columns, separated him from the

adjoining room, where a lamp, with lowered wick, was burning

under a bright red shade. After a moment's hesitation he drew the

curtain aside and entered what he took at once to be the common

living-room of the Fletcher family.

Here the effect was less depressing, though equally

uninteresting--a paper novel or two on the big Bible upon the

table combined, indeed, with a costly piano in one corner, to

strike a note that was entirely modern. The white crocheted

tidies on the chair-backs, elaborated with endless patience out

of innumerable spools of darning cotton, lent a feminine touch to

the furniture, which for an instant distracted Carraway's mental

vision from the impending personality of Fletcher himself. He

remembered now that there was a sister whom he had heard vaguely

described by the women of his family as "quite too hopeless," and

a granddaughter of whom he knew merely that she had for years

attended an expensive school somewhere in the North. The grandson

he recalled, after a moment, more distinctly, as a pretty,

undeveloped boy in white pinafores, who had once accompanied

Fletcher upon a hurried visit to the town. The gay laugh had

awakened the incident in his mind, and he saw again the little

cleanly clad figure perched upon his desk, nibbling bakers' buns,

while he transacted a tedious piece of business with the vulgar

grandfather.

He was toying impatiently with these recollections when his

attention was momentarily attracted by the sound of Fletcher's

burly tones on the rear porch just beyond the open window.

"I tell you, you've set all the niggers agin me, and I can't get

hands to work the crops."

"That's your lookout, of course," replied a voice, which he

associated at once with young Blake. "I told you I'd work three

days because I wanted the ready money; I've got it, and my time

is my own again."

"But I say my tobacco's got to get into the ground this

week--it's too big for the plant-bed a'ready, and with three days

of this sun the earth'll be dried as hard as a rock."

"There's no doubt of it, I think."

"And it's all your blamed fault," burst out the other angrily;

"you've gone and turned them all agin me--white and black alike.

Why, it's as much as I can do to get a stroke of honest labour in

this nigger-ridden country."

Christopher laughed shortly.

"There is no use blaming the Negroes," he said, and his

pronunciation of the single word would have stamped him in

Virginia as of a different class from Fletcher; "they're usually

ready enough to work if you treat them decently."

"Treat them!" began Fletcher, and Carraway was about to fling

open the shutters, when light steps passed quickly along the hall

and he heard the rustle of a woman's silk dress against the

wainscoting.

"There's a stranger to see you, grandfather," called a girl's

even voice from the house; "finish paying off the hands and come

in at once."

"Well, of all the impudence!" exclaimed the young man, with a

saving dash of humour. Then, without so much as a parting word,

he ran quickly down the steps and started rapidly in the

direction of the darkening road, while the silk dress rustled

upon the porch and at the garden gate as the latch was lifted.

"Go in, grandfather!" called the girl's voice from the garden, to

which Fletcher responded as decisively.

"For Heaven's sake, let me manage my own affairs, Maria. You seem

to have inherited your poor mother's pesky habit of meddling."

"Well, I told you a gentleman was waiting," returned the girl

stubbornly. "You didn't let us know he was coming, either, and

Lindy says there isn't a thing fit to eat for supper."

Fletcher snorted, and then, before entering the house, stopped to

haggle with an old Negro woman for a pair of spring chickens

hanging dejectedly from her outstretched hand, their feet tied

together with a strip of faded calico.

"How much you gwine gimme fer dese, marster?" she inquired

anxiously, deftly twirling them about until they swung with heads

aloft.

Rising to the huckster's instinct, Fletcher poked the offerings

suspiciously beneath their flapping wings.

"Thirty cents for the pair--not a copper more," he responded

promptly; "they're as poor as Job's turkey, both of 'em."

"Lawdy, marster, you know better'n dat."

"They're skin and bones, I tell you; feel 'em yourself. Well,

take it or leave it, thirty cents is all I'll give."

"Go 'way f'om yere, suh; dese yer chickings ain' no po' w'ite

trash--dey's been riz on de bes' er de lan', dey is--en de aigs

dey wuz hatched right dar in de middle er de baid whar me en my

ole man en de chillun sleep. De hull time dat black hen wuz

a-settin', Cephus he was bleeged ter lay right spang on de bar'

flo' caze we'uz afeared de aigs 'ould addle. Lawd! Lawd! dey wuz

plum three weeks a-hatchin', en de weather des freeze thoo en

thoo. Cephus he's been crippled up wid de rheumatics ever sence.

Go 'way f'om yer, marster. I warn't bo'n yestiddy. Thirty cents!"

"Not a copper more, I tell you. Let me go, my good woman; I can't

stand here all night."

"Des a minute, marster. Dese yer chickings ain' never sot dey

feet on de yearth, caze dey's been riz right in de cabin, en

dey's done et dar vittles outer de same plate wid me en Cephus.

Ef'n dey spy a chice bit er bacon on de een er de knife hit 'uz

moughty likely ter fin' hits way down dir throat instid er down

me en Cephus'."

"Let me go, I say--I don't want your blamed chickens; take 'em

home again."

"Hi! marster, I'se Mehitable. You ain't fergot how peart I use

ter wuk w'en you wuz over me in ole marster's day. You know you

ain' fergot Mehitable, suh. Ain't you recollect de time ole

marster gimme a dollar wid his own han' caze I foun' de biggest

wum in de hull 'baccy patch? Lawd! dey wuz times, sho's you bo'n.

I kin see ole marster now es plain es ef twuz yestiddy, so big en

shiny like satin, wid his skin des es tight es a watermillion's."

"Shut up, confound you!" cut in Fletcher sharply.

"If you don't stop your chatter I'll set the dogs on you. Shut

up, I say!"

He strode into the house, slamming the heavy door behind him, and

a moment afterward Carraway heard him scolding brutally at the

servants across the hall.

The old Negress had gone muttering from the porch with her unsold

chickens, when the door softly opened again, and the girl, who

had entered through the front with her basket of flowers, came

out into the growing moonlight.

"Wait a moment, Aunt Mehitable," she said. "I want to speak to

you."

Aunt Mehitable turned slowly, putting a feeble hand to her dazed

eyes. "You ain' ole miss come back agin, is you, honey?" she

questioned doubtfully.

"I don't know who your old miss was," replied the girl, "but I am

not she, whoever she may have been. I am Maria Fletcher. You

don't remember me--yet you used to bake me ash-cakes when I was a

little girl."

The old woman shook her head. "You ain' Marse Fletcher's chile?"

"His granddaughter--but I must go in to supper. Here is the money

for your chickens--grandpa was only joking; you know he loves to

joke. Take the chickens to the hen-house and get something hot to

eat in the kitchen before you start out again."

She ran hurriedly up the steps and entered the hall just as

Fletcher was shaking hands with his guest.

CHAPTER III. Showing that a Little Culture Entails Great Care

Carraway had risen to meet his host in a flutter that was almost

one of dread. In the eight years since their last interview it

seemed to him that his mental image of his great client had

magnified in proportions--that Fletcher had "out-Fletchered"

himself, as he felt inclined to put it. The old betrayal of his

employer's dependence, which at first had been merely a suspicion

in the lawyer's mind, had begun gradually, as time went on, to

bristle with the points of significant details. In looking back,

half-hinted things became clear to him at last, and he gathered,

bit by bit, the whole clever, hopeless villainy of the

scheme--the crime hedged about by law with all the prating

protection of a virtue. He knew now that Fletcher--the old

overseer of the Blake slaves--had defrauded the innocent as

surely as if he had plunged his great red fist into the little

pocket of a child, had defrauded, indeed, with so strong a blow

that the very consciousness of his victim had been stunned. There

had been about his act all the damning hypocrisy of a great

theft--all the air of stern morality which makes for the popular

triumph of the heroic swindler.

These things Carraway understood, yet as the man strode into the

room with open palm and a general air of bluff hospitality--as if

he had just been blown by some fresh strong wind across his

tobacco fields--the lawyer experienced a relief so great that the

breath he drew seemed a fit measure of his earlier foreboding.

For Fletcher outwardly was but the common type of farmer, after

all, with a trifle more intelligence, perhaps, than is met with

in the average Southerner of his class. "A plain man but honest,

sir," was what one expected him to utter at every turn. It was

written in the coarse open lines of his face, half-hidden by a

bushy gray beard; in his small sparkling eyes, now blue, now

brown; in his looselimbed, shambling movements as he crossed the

room. His very clothes spoke, to an acute observer, of a

masculine sincerity naked and unashamed--as if his large

coffee-spotted cravat would not alter the smallest fold to

conceal the stains it bore. Hale, hairy, vehement, not without a

quality of Rabelaisian humour, he appeared the last of all men

with whom one would associate the burden of a troubled

conscience.

"Sorry to have kept you--on my word I am," he began heartily;

"but to tell the truth, I thought thar'd be somebody in the house

with sense enough to show you to a bedroom. Like to run up now

for a wash before supper?"

It was what one expected of him, such a speech blurted in so

offhand a manner, and the lawyer could barely suppress a

threatening laugh.

"Oh, it was a short trip," he returned, "and a walk of five miles

on a day like this is one of the most delightful things in life.

I've been looking out at your garden, by the way, and--I may as

well confess it--overhearing a little of your conversation."

"Is that so?" chuckled Fletcher, his great eyebrows overhanging

his eyes like a mustache grown out of place. "Well, you didn't

hear anything to tickle your ears, I reckon. I've been having a

row with that cantankerous fool, Blake. The queer thing about

these people is that they seem to think I'm to blame every time

they see a spot on their tablecloths. Mark my words, it ain't

been two years since I found that nigger Boaz digging in my

asparagus bed, and he told me he was looking for some shoots for

ole miss's dinner."

"The property idea is very strong in these rural counties, you

see," remarked the lawyer gravely. "They feel that every year

adds a value to the hereditary possession of land, and that when

an estate has borne a single name for a century there has been a

veritable impress placed upon it. Your asparagus bed is merely an

item; you find, I fancy, other instances."

Fletcher turned in his chair.

"That's the whole blamed rotten truth," he admitted, waving his

great red hand toward the door; "but let's have supper first and

settle down to talk on a full stomach. Thar's no hurry with all

night before us, and that, to come to facts, is why I sent for

you. No lawyer's office for me when I want to talk business, but

an easy-chair by my own table and a cup of coffee beforehand."

As he finished, a bell jangled in the hall, and the door opened

to admit the girl whom Carraway had seen a little earlier upon

the porch.

"Supper's a good hour late, Maria," grumbled Fletcher, looking at

his heavy silver watch, "and I smelt the bacon frying at six

o'clock."

For an instant the girl looked as if she had more than half an

intention to slap his face; then quickly recovering her

self-possession, she smiled at Carraway and held out a small

white hand with an air of quiet elegance which was the most

noticeable thing in her appearance.

"I am quite a stranger to you, Mr. Carraway," she said, with a

laugh, "but if you had only known it, I had a doll named after

you when I was very small. Guy Carraway!--it seemed to me all

that was needed to make a fairy tale."

The lawyer joined in her laugh, which never rose above a

carefully modulated minor. "I confess that I once took the same

view of it, my dear young lady," he returned, "so I ended by

dropping the name and keeping only the initial. Your grandfather

will tell you that I am now G. Carraway and nothing more. I

couldn't afford, as things were, to make a fairy tale of my life,

you see."

"Oh, if one only could!" said the girl, lowering her full dark

eyes, which gave a piteous lie to her sullen mouth.

She was artificial, Carraway told himself with emphasis, and yet

the distinction of manner--the elegance--was certainly the point

at which her training had not failed. He felt it in her tall,

straight figure, absurdly overdressed for a granddaughter of

Fletcher's; in her smooth white hands, with their finely polished

nails; in her pale, repressed face, which he called plain while

admitting that it might become interesting; in her shapely head

even with its heavy cable of coal-black hair.

What she was her education had made of her--the look of serene

distinction, the repose of her thin-featured, colourless face,

refined beyond the point of prettiness--these things her training

had given her, and these were the things which Carraway, with his

old-fashioned loyalty to a strong class prejudice, found himself

almost resenting. Bill Fletcher's granddaughter had, he felt, no

right to this rare security of breeding which revealed itself in

every graceful fold of the dress she wore, for with Fletcher an

honest man she would have been, perhaps, but one of the sallow,

over-driven drudges who stare like helpless effigies from the

little tumbledown cabins along country roadsides.

Fletcher, meanwhile, had filled in the pause with one of his

sudden burly dashes into speech.

"Maria has been so long at her high-and-mighty boarding-school,"

he said, "that I reckon her head's as full of fancies as a cheese

is of maggots. She's even got a notion that she wants to turn out

all this new stuff--to haul the old rubbish back again but I say

wait till the boy comes on--then we'll see, we'll see."

"And in the meantime we'll go in to supper," put in the girl with

a kind of hopeless patience, though Carraway could see that she

smarted as from a blow. "This is Will, Mr. Carraway," she added

almost gaily, skillfully sweeping her train from about the feet

of

a pretty, undersized boy of fourteen years, who had burst into

the room with his mouth full of bread and jam. "He's quite the

pride of the family, you know, because he's just taken all the

honours of his school."

"History, 'rithmatic, Latin--all the languages," rolled out

Fletcher in a voice that sounded like a tattoo. "I can't keep up

with 'em, but they're all thar, ain't they, sonny?"

"Oh, you could never say 'em off straight, grandpa," retorted the

boy, with the pertness of a spoiled girl, at which, to Carraway's

surprise, Fletcher fairly chuckled with delight.

"That's so; I'm a plain man, the Lord knows," he admitted, his

coarse face crinkling like a sundried leaf of tobacco.

"We've got chickens for supper--broiled," the boy chattered on,

putting out his tongue at his sister; "that's why Lindy's havin'

it an hour late she's been picking 'em, with Aunt Mehitable

helping her for the feathers. Now don't shake your head at me,

Maria, because it's no use pretending we have 'em every night,

like old Mrs. Blake."

"Bless my soul!" gasped Fletcher, nettled by the last remark. "Do

you mean to tell me those Blakes are fools enough to eat spring

chicken when they could get forty cents apiece for 'em in the

open market?"

"The old lady does," corrected the boy glibly. "The one who wears

the queer lace cap and sits in the big chair by the hearth all

day--and all night, too, Tommy Spade says, 'cause he peeped

through once at midnight and she was still there, sitting so

stiff that it scared him and he ran away. Well, Aunt Mehitable

sold her a dozen, and she got a side of bacon and a bag of meal."

"Grandfather, you've forgotten Aunt Saidie," broke in Maria, as

Fletcher was about to begin his grace without waiting for a dumpy

little woman, in purple calico, who waddled with an embarrassed

air from her hasty preparations in the pantry. At first Carraway

had mistaken her for an upper servant, but as she came forward

Maria laid her hand playfully upon her arm and introduced her

with a sad little gaiety of manner. "I believe she has met one of

your sisters in Fredericksburg," she added, after a moment.

Clearly she had determined to accept the family in the lump, with

a resolution that--had it borne less resemblance to a passive

rage could not have failed to glorify a nobler martyrdom. It was

not affection that fortified her--beyond her first gently

tolerant glance at the boy there had been only indifference in

her pale, composed face--and the lawyer was at last brought to

the surprising conclusion that Fletcher's granddaughter was

seeking to build herself a fetish of the mere idle bond of blood.

The hopeless gallantry of the girl moved him to a vague feeling

of pity, and he spoke presently with a chivalrous desire of

making her failure easy.

"It was Susan, I think," he said pleasantly, shaking hands with

the squat little figure in front of him, "I remember her speaking

of it afterward."

"I met her at a church festival one Christmas Eve," responded

Aunt Saidie, in a high-pitched, rasping voice. "The same evening

that I got this pink crocheted nuby." She touched a small pointed

shawl about her shoulders. "Miss Belinda Beale worked it and it

was raffled off for ten cents a chance."

Her large, plump face, overflushed about the nose, had a natural

kindliness of expression which Carraway found almost appealing;

and he concluded that as a girl she might have possessed a common

prettiness of feature. Above her clear blue eyes a widening

parting divided her tightly crimped bands of hair, which still

showed a bright chestnut tint in the gray ripples.

"Thar, thar, Saidie," Fletcher interrupted with a frank

brutality, which the lawyer found more repelling than the memory

of his stolen fortune. "Mr. Carraway doesn't want to hear about

your fascinator. He'd a long ways rather have you make his

coffee."

The little woman flushed purple and drew back her chair with an

ugly noise from the head of the lavishly spread table.

"Set down right thar, suh," she stammered, her poor little

pretense of ease gone from her, "right thar between Brother Bill

and me."

"You did say it, Aunt Saidie, I told you you would," screamed the

pert boy, beginning an assault upon an enormous dish of

batterbread.

Maria flinched visibly. "Be silent, Will," she ordered.

"Grandfather, you must really make Will learn to be polite."

"Now, now, Maria, you're too hard on us," protested Fletcher,

flinging himself bodily into the breach, "boys will be boys, you

know--they warn't born gals."

"But she did say it, Maria," insisted the boy, "and she bet me a

whole dish of doughnuts she wouldn't. She did say 'set'; I heard

her." Maria bit her lip, and her flashing eyes filled with angry

tears, while Carraway, as he began talking hurriedly about the

promise of tobacco, resisted valiantly an impulse to kick the

pretty boy beneath the table. As his eyes traveled about the

fine old room, marking its mellow wainscoting and the whitened

silver handles on the heavy doors, he found himself wondering

with implacable approval if this might not be the beginning of a

great atonement.

The boy's mood had varied at the sight of his sister's tears, and

he fell to patting penitently the hand that quivered on the

table. "You needn't give me the doughnuts, Aunt Saidie; I'll make

believe you didn't say it," he whispered at last.

"Do you take sugar, Mr. Carraway?" asked Miss Saidie, flushed and

tremulous at the head of the overcrowded table, with its massive

modern silver service. Poor little woman, thought the lawyer,

with his first positive feeling of sympathy, she would have been

happier frying her own bacon amid bouncing children in a

labourer's cabin. He leaned toward her, speaking with a grave

courtesy, which she met with the frightened, questioning eyes of

a child. She was "quite too hopeless," he reluctantly admitted

--yet, despite himself, he felt a sudden stir of honest human

tenderness--the tenderness he had certainly not felt for

Fletcher, nor for the pretty, pert boy, nor even for the elegant

Maria herself.

"I was looking out at the dear old garden awhile ago," he said,

"and I gathered from it that you must be fond of flowers--since

your niece tells me she has been away so long."

She brightened into animation, her broad, capable hands fumbling

with the big green-and-gold teacups.

"Yes, I raise 'em," she answered. "Did you happen to notice the

bed of heartsease? I worked every inch of that myself last

spring--and now I'm planting zinnias, and touch-me-nots, and

sweet-williams they'll all come along later."

"And prince's-feather," added the lawyer, reminiscently; "that

used to be a favourite of mine, I remember, when I was a country

lad."

"I've got a whole border of 'em out at the back large, fine

plants, too--but Maria wants to root 'em up. She says they're

vulgar because they grow in all the niggers' yards."

"Vulgar!" So this was the measure of Maria, Carraway told

himself, as he fell into his pleasant ridicule. "Why, if God

Almighty ever created a vulgar flower, my dear young lady, I have

yet to see it."

"But don't you think it just a little gaudy for a lawn,"

suggested the girl, easily stung to the defensive.

"It looks cheerful and I like it," insisted Aunt Saidie,

emboldened by a rare feeling of support. "Ma used to have two big

green tubs of it on either side the front door when we were

children, and we used to stick it in our hats and play we was

real fine folks. Don't you recollect it, Brother Bill?"

"Good Lord, Saidie, the things you do recollect!" exclaimed

Fletcher, who, beneath the agonised eyes of Maria, was drinking

his coffee from his saucer in great spluttering gulps.

The girl was in absolute torture: this Carraway saw in the white,

strained, nervous intensity of her look; yet the knowledge served

only to irritate him, so futile appeared any attempt to soften

the effect of Fletcher's grossness. Before the man's colossal

vulgarity of soul, mere brutishness of manner seemed but a

trifling phase.

CHAPTER IV. Of Human Nature in the Raw State

When at last the pickles and preserved watermelon rind had been

presented with a finishing flourish, and Carraway had

successfully resisted Miss Saidie's final passionate insistence

in the matter of the big blackberry roll before her, Fletcher

noisily pushed back his chair, and, with a careless jerk of his

thumb in the direction of his guest, stamped across the hall into

the family sitting-room.

"Now we'll make ourselves easy and fall to threshing things out,"

he remarked, filling a blackened brier-root pipe, into the bowl

of which he packed the tobacco with his stubby forefinger. "Yes,

I'm a lover of the weed, you see--don't you smoke or chaw, suh?"

Carraway shook his head. "When I was young and wanted to I

couldn't," he explained, "and now that I am old and can I have

unfortunately ceased to want to. I've passed the time of life

when a man begins a habit merely for the sake of its being a

habit."

"Well, I reckon you're wise as things go, though for my part I

believe I took to the weed before I did to my mother's breast. I

cut my first tooth on a plug, she used to say."

He threw himself into a capacious cretonne-covered chair, and,

kicking his carpet slippers from him, sat swinging one massive

foot in its gray yarn sock. Through the thickening smoke Carraway

watched the complacency settle over his great hairy face.

"And now, to begin with the beginning, what do you think of my

grandchildren?" he demanded abruptly, taking his pipe from his

mouth after a long, sucking breath, and leaning forward with his

elbow on the arm of his chair.

The other hesitated. "You've done well by them, I should say."

"A fine pair, eh?"

"The admission is easy."

"Look at the gal, now," burst out Fletcher impulsively. "Would

you fancy, to see her stepping by, that her grandfather used to

crack the whip over a lot of dirty niggers?" He drove the fact in

squarely with big, sure blows of his fist, surveying it with an

enthusiasm the other found amazing. "Would you fancy, even," he

continued after a moment, "that her father warn't as good as I

am--that he left overseeing to jine the army, and came out to

turn blacksmith if I hadn't kept him till he drank himself to

death? His wife? Why, the woman couldn't read her own name unless

you printed it in letters as long as your finger--and now jest

turn and look at Maria!" he wound up in a puff of smoke.

"The girl's wonderful," admitted Carraway. "She's like a

dressed-up doll-baby, too; all the natural thing has been

squeezed out of her, and she's stuffed with sawdust."

"It's a pity she ain't a little better looking in the face,"

pursued Fletcher, waving the criticism aside. "She's a plagued

sight too pale and squinched-up for my taste--for all her fine

air. I like 'em red and juicy, and though you won't believe me,

most likely she can't hold a tallow candle to what Saidie was

when she was young. But then, Saidie never had her chance, and

Maria's had 'em doubled over. Why, she left home as soon as she'd

done sucking, and she hasn't spent a single summer here since she

was eight years old. Small thanks I'll get for it, I reckon, but

I've done a fair turn by Maria."

"The boy comes next, I suppose?" Carraway broke in, watching the

other's face broaden into a big, purple smile.

"Ah, thar you're right--it's the boy I've got my eye on now. His

name's the same as mine, you know, and I reckon one day William

Fletcher'll make his mark among the quality. He'll have it all,

too--the house, the land, everything, except a share of the money

which goes to the gal. It'll make her childbearing easier, I

reckon, and for my part, that's the only thing a woman's fit for.

Don't talk to me about a childless woman! Why, I'd as soon keep a

cow that wouldn't calve.

"You were speaking of the boy, I believe," coolly interrupted

Carraway. To a man of his old-fashioned chivalric ideal the

brutal allusion to the girl was like a deliberate blow in the

face.

"So I was--so I was. Well, he's to have it all, I say--every

mite, and welcome. I've had a pretty tough life in my time--you

can tell it from my hands, suh--but I ain't begrudging it if it

leaves the boy a bit better off. Lord, thar's many and many a

night,when I was little and my stepfather kicked me out of doors

without a bite, that I used to steal into somebody or other's

cow-shed and snuggle for warmth into the straw--yes, and suck the

udders of the cows for food, too. Oh, I've had a hard enough

life, for all the way it looks now--and I'm not saying that if

the choice was mine I'd go over it agin even as it stands to-day.

We're set here for better or for worse, that's my way of

thinking, and if thar's any harm comes of it Providence has got

to take a share of the blame."

"Hardly the preacher's view of the matter, is it?"

"Maybe not; and I ain't got a quarrel with 'em, the Lord knows. I

go to church like clockwork, and pay my pew-rent, too, which is

more than some do that gabble the most about salvation. If I pay

for the preacher's keep it's only fair that I should get some of

the good that comes to him hereafter; that's how it looks to me;

so I don't trouble my head much about the ins and the outs of

getting saved or damned. I've never puled in this world, thank

God, and let come what will, I ain't going to begin puling in the

next. But to go back to whar I started from, it all makes in the

end for that pretty little chap over yonder in the dining-room.

Rather puny for his years now, but as sound as a nut, and he'll

grow, he'll grow. When his mother--poor, worthless drab--gave

birth to him and died, I told her it was the best day's work

she'd ever done."

Carraway's humour rippled over. "It's easy to imagine what her

answer must have been to such a pleasantry," he observed.

"Oh, she was a fool, that woman--a born fool!

Her answer was that it would be the best day for her only when I

came to call it the worst. She hated me a long sight more than

she hated the devil, and if she was to rise out of her grave

to-day she'd probably start right in scrubbing for those darned

Blakes."

"Ah!" said Carraway.

"It's the plain truth, but I don't visit it on the little lad.

Why should I? He's got my name--I saw to that--and mark my word,

he'll grow up yet to marry among the quality."

The secret was out at last--Fletcher's purpose was disclosed, and

even in the strong light of his past misdeeds it showed not

without a hint of pathos. The very renouncement of any personal

ambition served to invest the racial one with a kind of grandeur.

"There's evidently an enviable career before him," said the

lawyer at the end of a long pause, "and this brings me, by the

way, to the question I wish to as--had your desire to see me any

connection with the prospects of your grandson?"

"In a way, yes; though, to tell the truth, it has more to do with

that young Blake's. He's been bothering me a good deal of late,

and I mean to have it square with him before Bill Fletcher's a

year older."

"No difficulty about your title to the estate, I presume?"

"Oh, Lord, no; that's all fair and square, suh. I bought the

place, you know, when it went at auction jest a few years after

the war. I bought and paid for it right down, and that settled

things for good and all."

Carraway considered the fact for a moment. "If I remember

correctly--I mean unless gossip went very far afield--the place

brought exactly seven thousand dollars." His gaze plunged into

the moonlight beyond the open window and followed the clear sweep

of the distant fields. "Seven thousand dollars," he added softly;

"and there's not a finer in Virginia."

"Thar was nobody to bid agin me, you see," explained Fletcher

easily. "The old gentleman was as poor as Job's turkey then,

besides going doty mighty fast."

"The common report was, I believe," pursued the lawyer, "that the

old man himself did not know of the place being for sale until he

heard the auctioneer's hammer on the lawn, and that his mind left

him from the moment--this was, of course, mere idle talk."

"Oh, you'll hear anything," snorted Fletcher. "The old gentleman

hadn't a red copper to his name, and if he couldn't pay the

mortgages, how under heaven could he have bought in the place? As

a plain man I put the question."

"But his friends? Where were his friends, I wonder? In his youth

he was one of the most popular men in the State--a high liver and

good toaster, you remember--and later on he stood well in the

Confederate Government. That he should have fallen into abject

poverty seems really incomprehensible."

Fletcher twisted in his chair. "Why, that was jest three years

after the war, I tell you," he said with irritable emphasis; "he

hadn't a friend this side of Jordan, I reckon, who could have

raised fifty cents to save his soul. The quality were as bad off

as thar own niggers.

"True--true," admitted Carraway; "but the surprising thing is--I

don't hesitate to say--that you who had been overseer to the

Blakes for twenty years should have been able in those destitute

times and on the spot, as it were, to put down seven thousand

dollars."

He faced the fact unflinchingly, dragging it from the long

obscurity full into the red glare of the lamplight. Here was the

main thing, he knew, in Fletcher's history--here was the supreme

offense. For twenty years the man had been the trusted servant of

his feeble employer, and when the final crash came he had risen

with full hands from the wreck. The prodigal Blakes--burning the

candle at both ends, people said--had squandered a double fortune

before the war, and in an equally stupendous fashion Fletcher had

amassed one.

"Oh, thar're ways and ways of putting by a penny," he now

protested, "and I turned over a bit during the war, I may as well

own up, though folks had only black looks for speculators then."

"We used to call them 'bloodsuckers,' I remember."

"Well, that's neither here nor thar, suh. When the place went for

seven thousand I paid it down, and I've managed one way and

another--and in spite of the pesky niggers--to make a pretty bit

out of the tobacco crop, hard as times have been. The Hall is

mine now, thar's no going agin that, and, so help me God, it'll

belong to a William Fletcher long after I am dead."

"Ah, that brings us directly to the point."

Fletcher squared himself about in his chair while his pipe went

out slowly.

"The point, if you'll have it straight," he said, "is jest

this--I want the whole place--every inch of it--and I'll die or

git it, as sure's my name's my own. Thar's still that old frame

house and the piece of land tacked to it, whar the overseers used

to live, cutting straight into the heart of my tobacco fields--in

clear view of the Hall, too--right in the middle of my land, I

tell you!"

"Oh, I see--I see," muttered Carraway; "that's the little farm in

the midst of the estate which the old gentleman--bless his weak

head and strong heart gave his wife's brother, Colonel Corbin,

who came back crippled from the war. Yes, I remember now, there

was a joke at the time about his saying that land was the

cheapest present he could give."

"It was all his besotted foolishness, you know to think of a sane

man deeding away seventy acres right in the heart of his tract of

two thousand. He meant it for a joke, of course. Mr. Tucker or

Colonel Corbin, if you choose, was like one of the family, but he

was as sensitive as a kid about his wounds, and he wanted to live

off somewhar, shut up by himself. Well, he's got enough folks

about him now, the Lord knows. Thar's the old lady, and the two

gals, and Mr. Christopher, to say nothing of Uncle Boaz and a

whole troop of worthless niggers that are eating him out of house

and home. Tom Spade has a deed of trust on the place for three

hundred dollars; he told me so himself."

"So I understand; and all this is a serious inconvenience to you,

I may suppose."

"Inconvenience! Blood and thunder! It takes the heart right out

of my land, I tell you. Why, the very road I cut to save myself

half a mile of mudholes came to a dead stop because Mr.

Christopher wouldn't let it cross his blamed pasture."

Carraway thoughtfully regarded his finger nails. "Then, bless my

soul!--seeing it's your private affair--what are you going to do

about it?" he inquired.

"Git it. The devil knows how--I don't; but git it I will. I

brought you down here to talk those fools over, and I mean you to

do it. It's all spite, pure, rotten spite; that's what it is.

Look here, I'll gladly give 'em three thousand dollars for that

strip of land, and it wouldn't bring nine hundred, on my oath!"

"Have you made the offer?"

"Made it? Why, if I set foot on the tip edge of that land I'd

have every lean hound in the pack snapping at my heels. As for

that young rascal, he'd knock me down if I so much as scented the

matter."

He rapped his pipe sharply on the wood of his chair and a little

pile of ashes settled upon the floor. With a laugh, the other

waved his hand in protest.

"So you prefer to make the proposition by proxy. My dear sir--I'm

not a rubber ball."

"Oh, he won't hurt you. It would spoil the sport to punch

anybody's head but mine, you know. Come, now, isn't it a fair

offer I'm making?"

"It appears so, certainly--and I really do not see why he should

wish to hold the place. It isn't worth much, I fancy, to anybody

but the owner of the Hall, and with the three thousand clear he

could probably get a much better one at a little distance--with

the additional value of putting a few square miles between

himself and you--whom, I may presume, he doesn't love."

"Oh, you may presume he hates me if you'll only work it," snorted

Fletcher. "Go over thar boldly--no slinking, mind you--to-morrow

morning, and talk them into reason. Lord, man, you ought to be

able to do it--don't you know Greek?"

Carraway nodded. "Not that it ever availed me much in an

argument," he confessed frankly.

"It's a good thing to stop a mouth with, anyway. Thar's many and

many a time, I tell you, I've lost a bargain for the lack of a

few rags of Latin or Greek. Drag it in; stuff it down 'em; gag

thar mouths--it's better than all the swearing under heaven. Why,

taking the Lord's name in vain ain't nothing to a line of poetry

spurted of a sudden in one of them dead-and-gone languages. It's

been done at me, suh, and I know how it works--that's why I've

put the boy upstairs on 'em from the start. 'Tain't much matter

whether he goes far in his own tongue or not, that's what I said,

but dose him well with something his neighbours haven't learnt."

He rose with a lurch, laid his pipe on the mantel, and drew out

his big silver watch.

"Great Jehosaphat! it's eleven and after," he exclaimed. "Well,

it's time for us to turn in, I reckon, and dream of breakfast. If

you'll hold the lamp while I bolt up, I'll show you to your

room."

Carraway picked up the lamp, and, cautiously following his host

into the darkened hall, waited until he had fastened the

night-chains and shot the heavy bolts.

"If you want a drink of water thar's a bucket in the porch," said

Fletcher, as he opened the back door and reached out into the

moonlight. "Wait thar a second and I'll hand you the dipper."

He stepped out upon the porch, and a moment later Carraway heard

a heavy stumble followed by a muttered oath.

"Why, blast the varmints! I've upset the boy's cage of white mice

and they're skedaddling about my legs. Here! hold the lamp, will

you--I'm squashing a couple of 'em under each of my hands."

Carraway, leaning out with the lamp, which drew a brilliant

circle on the porch, saw Fletcher floundering helplessly upon his

hands and knees in the midst of the fleeing family of mice.

"They're a plagued mess of beasts, that's what they are," he

exclaimed, "but the little lad sets a heap of store by 'em, and

when he comes down tomorrow he'll find that I got some of 'em

back, anyway."

He fastened the cage and placed it carefully beneath the bench.

Then, closing and bolting the door, he took the lamp from

Carraway and motioned him up the dusky staircase to the spare

chamber at the top.

CHAPTER V. The Wreck of the Blakes

When Christopher left Blake Hall, he swung vigorously in the

twilight across the newly ploughed fields, until, at the end of a

few minutes' walk, he reached the sunken road that branched off

by the abandoned ice-pond. Here the bullfrogs were still croaking

hoarsely, and far away over the gray-green rushes a dim moon was

mounting the steep slope of bluish sky.

The air was fresh with the scent of the upturned earth, and the

closing day refined into a tranquil beauty; but the young man, as

he passed briskly, did not so much as draw a lengthened breath,

and when presently the cry of a whip-poor-will floated from the

old rail fence, he fell into a whistling mockery of the plaintive

notes. The dogs at his heels started a rabbit once from the close

cover of the underbrush, and he called them to order in a sharp,

peremptory tone. Not until he reached the long, whitewashed gate

opening before the frame house of the former overseers did he

break the easy swing of his accustomed stride.

The house, a common country dwelling of the sort used by the

poorer class of farmers, lost something of its angularity beneath

the moonlight, and even the half-dried garments, spread after the

day's washing on the bent old rose-bushes, shone in soft white

patches amid the grass, which looked thick and fine under the

heavy dew. In one corner of the yard there was a spreading

peach-tree, on which the shriveled little peaches ripened out of

season, and against the narrow porch sprawled a gray and crippled

aspen, where a flock of turkeys had settled to roost along its

twisted boughs.

In one of the lower rooms a lamp was burning, and as Christopher

crunched heavily along the pebbled path, a woman with a piece of

sewing in her hand came into the hall and spoke his name.

"Christopher, you are late."

Her voice was deep and musical, with a richness of volume which

raised deluding hopes of an impassioned beauty in the

speaker--who, as she crossed the illumined square of the

window-frame, showed as a tall, thin woman of forty years, with

squinting eyes, and a face whose misshapen features stood out

like the hasty drawing for a grotesque. When she reached him

Christopher turned from the porch, and they walked together

slowly out into the moonlight, passing under the aspen where the

turkeys stirred and fluttered in their sleep.

"Has her cat come home, Cynthia?" were the young man's first

anxious words.

"About sunset. Uncle Boaz found her over at Aunt Daphne's,

hunting mice under the joists. Mother had fretted terribly over

the loss."

"Is she easier now?"

"Much more so, but she still asks for the port. We pretend that

Uncle Boaz has mislaid the key of the wine-cellar. She upbraided

him, and he bore it so patiently, poor old soul!"

Christopher quickly reached into the deep pocket of his overalls

and drew out the scanty wages of his last three days' labour.

"Send this by somebody down to Tompkins," he said, "and get the

wine he ordered. He refuses to sell on credit any longer, so I

had to find the money."

She looked up, startled.

"Oh, Christopher, you have worked for Fletcher?"

Tears shone in her eyes and her mouth quivered. "Oh,

Christopher!" she repeated, and the emotional quality in her

voice rang strong and true. He fell back, angered, while the hand

she had stretched out dropped limply to her side.

"For God's sake, don't snivel," he retorted harshly. "Send the

money and give her the wine, but dole it out like a miser, for

where the next will come from is more than I can tell."

"The pay for my sewing is due in three days," said Cynthia,

raising her roughened hand on which the needle-scars showed even

in the moonlight. "Mother has worried so to-day that I couldn't

work except at odd moments, but I can easily manage to sit up

to-night and get it done. She thinks I'm embroidering an ottoman,

you see, and this evening she asked to feel the silks."

He uttered a savage exclamation.

"Oh, I gave her some ravellings from an old tidy," she hastened

to assure him. "She played with them awhile and knew no better,

as I told her the colours one by one. Afterward she planned all

kinds of samplers and fire-screens that I might work. Her own

knitting has wearied her of late, so we haven't been obliged to

buy the yarn."

"She doesn't suspect, you think?"

Cynthia shook her head. "After fifteen years of deception there's

no danger of my telling the truth to-day. I only wish I could,"

she added, with that patient dignity which is the outward

expression of complete renouncement. When she lifted her tragic

face the tears on her cheeks softened the painful hollows, as the

moonbeams, playing over her gown of patched and faded silk,

revived for a moment the freshness of its discoloured flowers.

"The truth would be the death of her," said the young man, in a

bitter passion of anxiety. "Tell her that Fletcher owns the Hall,

and that for fifteen years she has lived, blind and paralysed, in

the overseer's house! Why, I'd rather stick a knife into her

heart myself!"

"Her terrible pride would kill her--yes, you're right. We'll keep

it up to the end at any cost."

He turned to her with a sudden terror in his face. "She isn't

worse, is she?"

"Worse? Oh, no; I only meant the cost to us, the cost of never

speaking the truth within the house."

"Well, I'm not afraid of lying, God knows," he answered, in the

tone of one from whom a burden has been removed. "I'm only

wondering how much longer I'll be able to afford the luxury."

"But we're no worse off than usual, that's one comfort. Mother is

quite happy now since Beulah has been found, and the only added

worry is that Aunt Dinah is laid up in her cabin and we've had to

send her soup. Uncle Isam has come to see you, by the way. I

believe he wants you to give him some advice about his little hut

up in the woods, and to look up his birth in the servants'

age-book, too. He lives five miles away, you know, and works

across the river at Farrar's Mills."

"Uncle Isam!" exclaimed Christopher, wonderingly; "why, what do I

know about the man? I haven't laid eyes on him for the last ten

years."

"But he wants help now, so of course he's come to you, and as

he's walked all the distance--equally of course--he'll stay to

supper. Mother has her young chicken, and there's bacon and

cornbread for the rest of us, so I hope the poor man won't go

back hungry. Ever since Aunt Polly's chimney blew down she has

had to fry the middling in the kitchen, and mother complains so

of the smell. She can't understand why we have it three times a

day, and when I told her that Uncle Tucker acquired the habit in

the army, she remarked that it was very inconsiderate of him to

insist upon gratifying so extraordinary a taste."

Christopher laughed shortly.

"Well, it's a muck of a world," he declared cheerfully, taking

off his coarse harvest hat and running his hand through his

clustering fair hair. In the mellow light the almost brutal

strength of his jaw was softened, and his sunburned face paled to

the beauty of some ancient ivory carving. Cynthia, gazing up at

him, caught her breath with a sob.

"How big you are, and strong! How fit for any life in the world

but this!"

"Don't whimper," he responded roughly, adding, after a moment,

"Precious fit for anything but the stable or the tobacco field!

Why, I couldn't so much as write a decently spelled letter to

save my soul. A darky asked me yesterday to read a postbill for

him down at the store, and I had to skip a big word in the first

line."

He made his confession defiantly, with a certain boorish pride in

his ignorance and his degradation.

"My dear, my dear, I wanted to teach you--I will teach you now.

We will read together."

"And let mother and Uncle Tucker plough the field, and plant the

crop, and cut the wood. No, it won't answer; your learning would

do me no good, and I don't want it--I told you that when you

first took me from my study and put me to do all the chores upon

the place."

"I take you! Oh, Christopher, what could we do? Uncle Tucker was

a hopeless cripple, there wasn't a servant strong enough to spade

the garden, and there were only Lila and you and I."

"And I was ten. Well, I'm not blaming you, and I've done what I

was forced to--but keep your confounded books out of my sight,

that's all I ask. Is that mother calling?"

Cynthia bent her ear. "I thought Lila was with her, but I'll go

at once. Be sure to change your clothes, dear, before she touches

you."

"Hadn't I better chop a little kindling-wood before supper?"

"No--no, not to-night. Go and dress, while I send Uncle Boaz for

the wine."

She entered the house with a hurried step, and Christopher, after

an instant's hesitation, passed to the back, and, taking off his

clumsy boots, crept softly up the creaking staircase to his

little garret room in the loft.

Ten minutes later he came down again, wearing a decent suit of

country-made clothes, with the dust washed from his face, and his

hair smoothly brushed across his forehead. In the front hall he

took a white rosebud from a little vase of Bohemian glass and

pinned it carefully in the lapel of his coat. Then, before

entering, he stood for a moment silent upon the threshold of the

lamplighted room.

In a massive Elizabethan chair of blackened oak a stately old

lady was sitting straight and stiff, with her useless legs

stretched out upon an elaborately embroidered ottoman. She wore a

dress of rich black brocade, made very full in the skirt, and

sleeves after an earlier fashion, and her beautiful snow-white

hair was piled over a high cushion and ornamented by a cap of

fine thread lace. In her face, which she turned at the first

footstep with a pitiable, blind look, there were the faint traces

of a proud, though almost extinguished, beauty--traces which were

visible in the impetuous flash of her sightless eyes, in the

noble arch of her brows, and in the transparent quality of her

now yellowed skin, which still kept the look of rare porcelain

held against the sunlight. On a dainty, rose-decked tray beside

her chair there were the half of a broiled chicken, a thin glass

of port, and a plate of buttered waffles; and near her high

footstool a big yellow cat was busily lapping a saucer of new

milk.

As Christopher went up to her, she stretched out her hand and

touched his face with her sensitive fingers. "Oh, if I could only

see you," she said, a little peevishly. "It is twenty years since

I looked at you, and now you are taller than your father was, you

say. I can feel that your hair is light, like his and like

Lila's, too, since you are twins."

A pretty, fragile woman, who was wrapping a shawl about the old

lady's feet, rose to her full height and passed behind the

Elizabethan chair." Just a shade lighter than mine, mother," she

responded; "the sun makes a difference, you know; he is in the

sun so much without a hat." As she stood with her delicate hands

clasped above the fancifully carved grotesques upon the

chair-back, her beauty shone like a lamp against the

smoke-stained walls.

"Ah, if you could but have seen his father when he was young,

Lila," sighed her mother, falling into one of the easy reveries

of old age. "I met him at a fancy ball, you know, where he went

as Achilles in full Grecian dress. Oh! the sight he was, my dear,

one of the few fair men among us, and taller even than old

Colonel Fitzhugh, who was considered one of the finest figures of

his time. That was a wild night for me, Christopher, as I've told

you often before--it was love at first sight on both sides, and

so marked were your father's attentions that they were the talk

of the ball. Edward Morris--the greatest wit of his day, you

know--remarked at supper that the weak point of Achilles was

proved at last to be not his heel, but his heart."

She laughed with pleasure at the memory, and returned in a

half-hearted fashion to her plate of buttered waffles. "Have you

been riding again, Christopher?" she asked after a moment, as if

remembering a grievance. "I haven't had so much as a word from

you to-day, but when one is chained to a chair like this it is

useless to ask even to be thought of amid your pleasures."

"I always think of you, mother."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it, my dear, though I'm sure I should

never imagine that you do. Have you heard, by the way, that Boaz

lost the key of the winecellar, and that I had to go two whole

days without my port? I declare, he is getting so careless that

I'm afraid we'll have to put another butler over him."

"Lawd, ole miss, you ain' gwine do dat, is you?" anxiously

questioned Uncle Boaz as he filled her glass.

She lifted the wine to her lips, her stern face softening. Like

many a high-spirited woman doomed to perpetual inaction, her

dominion over her servants had grown to represent the larger

share of life.

"Then be more careful in future, Boaz," she cautioned. "Tell me,

Lila, what has become of Nathan, the son of Phyllis? He used to

be a very bright little darkey twenty years ago, and I always

intended putting him in the dining-room, but things escape me so.

His mother, Phyllis, I remember, got some ridiculous idea about

freedom in her head, and ran away with the Yankee soldiers before

we whipped them."

Lila's face flushed, for since the war Nathan had grown into one

of the most respectable of freedmen, but Uncle Boaz, with a glib

tongue, started valiantly to her support.

"Go 'way, ole miss; dat ar Natan is de mos' ornery un er de hull

bunch," he declared. "Wen he comes inter my dinin'-'oom, out I'se

gwine, an' days sho."

The old lady passed a hand slowly across her brow. "I can't

remember--I can't remember," she murmured; "but I dare say you're

right, Boaz--and that reminds me that this bottle of port is not

so good as the last. Have you tried it, Christopher?"

"Not yet, mother. Where did you find it, Uncle Boaz?"

"Hit's des de same, suh," protested Uncle Boaz. "Dey wuz bofe un

um layin' right side by side, des like dey 'uz bo'n blood kin, en

I done dus' de cobwebs off'n um wid de same duster, dat I is."

"Well, well, that will do. Now go in to supper, children, and

send Docia to take my tray. Dear me, I do wish that Tucker could

be persuaded to give up that vulgar bacon. I'm not so

unreasonable, I hope, as to expect a man to make any sacrifices

in this world--that's the woman's part, and I've tried to take my

share of it--but to conceive of a passion for a thing like

bacon--I declare is quite beyond me."

"Come, now, Lucy, don't begin to meddle with my whims," protested

the cheerful tones of Tucker, as he entered on his crutches, one

of which was strapped to the stump of his right arm. "Allow me my

dissipations, my dear, and I'll not interfere with yours."

"Dissipations!" promptly took up the old lady, from the hearth.

"Why, if it were such a gentlemanly thing as a dissipation,

Tucker, I shouldn't say a word--not a single word. A taste for

wine is entirely proper, I'm sure, and even a little intoxication

is permissible on occasions--such as christenings, weddings, and

Christmas Eve gatherings. Your father used to say, Christopher,

that the proof of a gentleman was in the way he held his wine.

But to fall a deliberate victim to so low-born a vice as a love

of bacon is something that no member of our family has ever done

before."

"That's true, Lucy," pleasantly assented Tucker; "but then, you

see, no member of our family had ever fought three years for his

State--to say nothing of losing a leg and an arm in her service."

His fine face was ploughed with the marks of suffering, but the

heartiness had not left his voice, and his smile still shone

bright and strong. From a proud position as the straightest shot

and the gayest liver of his day, he had been reduced at a single

blow to the couch of a hopeless cripple. Poverty had come a

little later, but the second shock had only served to steady his

nerves from the vibration of the first, and the courage which had

drooped within him for a time was revived in the form of a rare

and gentle humour. Nothing was so terrible but Tucker could get a

laugh out of it, people said--not knowing that since he had

learned to smile at his own ghastly failure it was an easy matter

to turn the jest on universal joy or woe.

The old lady's humour melted at his words, and she hastened to

offer proof of her contrition. "You're perfectly right, brother,"

she said; "and I know I'm an ungrateful creature, so you needn't

take the trouble to tell me. As long as you do me the honour to

live beneath my roof, you shall eat the whole hog or none to your

heart's content."

Then, as Docia, a large black woman, with brass hoops in her

ears, appeared to bear away the supper tray, Mrs. Blake folded

her hands and settled herself for a nap upon her cushions, while

the yellow cat purred blissfully on her knees.

Beyond the adjoining bedroom, through which Christopher passed, a

rude plank platform led to a long, unceiled room which served as

kitchen and dining-room in one. Here a cheerful blaze made merry

about an ancient crane, on which a coffeeboiler swung slowly back

and forth with a bubbling noise. In the red firelight a plain

pine table was spread with a scant supper of cornbread and bacon

and a cracked Wedgewood pitcher filled with buttermilk. There was

no silver; the china consisted of some odd, broken pieces of old

willow-ware; and beyond a bunch of damask roses stuck in a quaint

glass vase, there was no visible attempt to lighten the effect of

extreme poverty. An aged Negress, in a dress of linsey-woolsey

which resembled a patchwork quilt, was pouring hot, thin coffee

into a row of cups with chipped or missing saucers.

Cynthia was already at the table, and when Christopher came in

she served him with an anxious haste like that of a stricken

mother. To Tucker and herself the coarse fare was unbearable even

after the custom of fifteen years, and time had not lessened the

surprise with which they watched the young man's healthful

enjoyment of his food. Even Lila, whose glowing face in its

nimbus of curls lent an almost festive air to her end of the

white pine board, ate with a heartiness which Cynthia, with her

outgrown standard for her sex, could not but find a trifle

vulgar. The elder sister had been born to a different heritage

--to one of restricted views and mincing manners for a

woman--and, despite herself, she could but drift aimlessly on the

widening current of the times.

"Christopher, will you have some coffee--it is stronger now?" she

asked presently, reaching for his emptied cup.

"Dis yer stuff ain' no cawfy," grumbled Aunt Pony, taking the

boiler from the crane; "hit ain' nuttin' but dishwater, I don'

cyar who done made hit." Then, as the door opened to admit Uncle

Isam with a bucket from the spring, she divided her scorn equally

between him and the coffee-pot.

"You needn't be a-castin' er you nets into dese yer pains," she

observed cynically.

Uncle Isam, a dried old Negro of seventy years, shambled in

patiently and placed the bucket carefully upon the stones, to be

shrilly scolded by Aunt Polly for spilling a few drops on the

floor. "I reckon you is steddyin' ter outdo Marse Noah," she

remarked with scorn.

"Howdy, Marse Christopher? Howdy, Marse Tuck?" Uncle Isam

inquired politely, as he seated himself in a low chair on the

hearth and dropped his clasped hands between his open knees.

Christopher nodded carelessly. "Glad to see you, Isam," Tucker

cordially responded. "Times have changed since you used to live

over here."

"Days so, suh, dot's so. Times dey's done change, but I

ain't--I'se des de same. Dat's de tribble wid dis yer worl'; w'en

hit change yo' fortune hit don' look ter changin' yo' skin es

well."

"That's true; but you're doing all right, I hope?"

"I dunno, Marse Tuck," replied Uncle Isam, coughing as a sudden

spurt of smoke issued from the old stone chimney. "I dunno 'bout

dat. Times dey's right peart, but I ain't. De vittles dey's ready

ter do dar tu'n, but de belly, hit ain't."

"What--are you sick?" asked Cynthia, with interest, rising from

the table.

Uncle Isam sighed. "I'se got a tur'able peskey feelin', Miss

Cynthy, days de gospel trufe," he returned. "I dunno whur hit's

de lungs er de liver, but one un um done got moughty sassy ter de

yuther 'en he done flung de reins right loose. Hit looks pow'ful

like dey wuz gwine ter run twel dey bofe drap down daid, so I

done come all dis way atter a dose er dem bitters ole miss use

ter gin us befo' de wah."

"Well, I never!" said Cynthia, laughing. "I believe he means the

brown bitters mother used to make for chills and fever. I'm very

sorry, Uncle Isam, but we haven't any. We don't keep it any

longer."

Leaning over his gnarled palms, the old man shook his head in

sober reverie.

"Dar ain' nuttin' like dem bitters in dese yer days," he

reflected sadly, "'caze de smell er dem use ter mos' knock you

flat 'fo' you done taste 'em, en all de way ter de belly dey use

ter keep a-wukin' fur dey livin'. Lawd! Lawd! I'se done bought de

biggest bottle er sto' stuff in de sto', en hit slid right spang

down 'fo' I got a grip er de taste er hit."

"I'll tell you how to mix it, " said Cynthia sympathetically.

"It's very easy; I know Aunt Eve can brew it."

"Go 'way, Miss Cynthy; huccome you don' know better'n dat? Dar

ain' no Eve. She's done gone."

"Gone! Is she dead?"

"Naw'm, she aint daid dat I knows--she's des gone.

Hit all come along er dem highfalutin' notions days struttin'

roun' dese days 'bout prancin' up de chu'ch aisle en bein' mah'ed

by de preacher, stedder des totin' all yo' belongin's f'om one

cabin ter anurr, en roas'in' yo' ash-cake in de same pile er

ashes. You see, me en Eve we hed done 'sperunce mah'age gwine n

fifty years, but we ain' nuver 'sperunce de ceremony twel las'

watermillion time."

"Why, Uncle Isam, did she leave you because of that? Here, draw

up to the table and eat your supper, while I get down the

age-book and find your birth."

She reached for a dusty account book on one of the kitchen

shelves, and, bringing it to the table, began slowly turning the

yellowed leaves. For more than two hundred years the births of

all the Blake slaves had been entered in the big volume.

"You des wait, Miss Cynthy, you des wait twel I git dar,"

remonstrated Uncle Isam, as he stirred his coffee. "I ain' got no

use fur dese yer newfangle fashions, dot's wat I tell de chillun

w'en dey begin a-pesterin' me ter mah'y Eve--I ain' got no use

fur dem no way hit's put--I ain' got no use fur dis yer struttin'

up de aisle bus'ness, ner fur dis yer w'arin' er sto'-made shoes,

ner fur dis yer leavin' er de hyar unwropped, needer. Hit looks

pisonous tickly ter me, days wat I sez, but w'en dey keep up dey

naggin' day in en day out, en I carn' git shunt er um, I hop

right up en put on my Sunday bes' en go 'long wid 'em ter de

chu'ch--me en Eve bofe a-mincin' des like peacocks. 'You des pay

de preacher,' days wat I tell 'em, 'en I'se gwine do all de

mah'yin' days ter be done'; en w'en de preacher done got thoo wid

me en Eve, I stood right up in de chu'ch an axed ef dey wus any

udder nigger 'ooman es 'ud like ter do a little mah'yin'? 'Hit's

es easy ter mah'y a dozen es ter mah'y one,' I holler out."

"Oh, Uncle Isam! No wonder Aunt Eve was angry. Here we

are--'Isam, son of Docia, born August 12, 18--."

"Lawd, Miss Cynthy, 'twan' me dat mek Eve mad--twuz de preacher,

'caze atter we got back ter de cabin en eat de watermillion ter

de rin', she up en tied her bonnet on tight es a chestnut burr en

made right fur de do'. De preacher done tote 'er, she sez, dat

Eve 'uz in subjection ter her husban', en she'd let 'im see she

warn' gwine be subjected unner no man, she warn't. 'Fo' de Lawd,

Miss Cynthy, dat ar Eve sutney wuz a high-sperited 'ooman!"

"But, Uncle Isam, it was so silly. Why, she'd been married to you

already for a lifetime."

"Dat's so, Miss Cynthy, dat's so, 'caze 'twuz dem ar wuds dat

rile 'er mos'. She 'low she done been in subjection fur gwine on

fifty years widout knowin' hit."

He finished his coffee at a gulp and leaned back in his chair.

"En now des fem me hyear how ole I is," he wound up sorrowfully.

"The twelfth of August, 18-- (that's the date of your birth),

makes you--let me see--you'll be seventy years old next summer.

There, now, since you've found out what you wanted, you'd better

spend the night with Uncle Boaz."

"Thanky, ma'am, but I mus' be gwine back agin," responded Uncle

Isam, shuffling to his feet, "en ef you don' min', Marse

Christopher, I'd like a wud wid you outside de do'."

Laughing, Christopher rose from his chair and, with a patriarchal

dignity of manner, followed the old man into the moonlight.

CHAPTER VI. Carraway Plays Courtier

At twelve o'clock the next day, Carraway, walking in the June

brightness along the road to the Blake cottage, came suddenly, at

the bend of the old icepond, upon Maria Fletcher returning from a

morning ride. The glow of summer was in her eyes, and though her

face was still pale, she seemed to him a different creature from

the grave, repressed girl of the night before. He noticed at once

that she sat her horse superbly, and in her long black habit all

the sinuous lines of her figure moved in rhythm with the rapid

pace.

As she neared him, and apparently before she had noticed his

approach, he saw her draw rein quickly, and, screened by the

overhanging boughs of a blossoming chestnut, send her glance like

a hooded falcon across the neighbouring field. Following the aim

of her look, he saw Christopher Blake walking idly among the

heavy furrows, watching, with the interest of a born

agriculturist, the busy transplanting of Fletcher's crop. He

still wore his jean clothes, which, hanging loosely upon his

impressive figure, blended harmoniously with the dull-purple

tones of the upturned soil. Beyond him there was a background of

distant wood, still young in leaf, and his bared head, with the

strong, sunburned line of his profile, stood out as distinctly as

a portrait done in early Roman gold.

That Maria had seen in him some higher possibility than that of a

field labourer was soon evident to Carraway, for her horse was

still standing on the slight incline, and as he reached her side

she turned with a frank question on her lips.

"Is that one of the labourers--the young giant by the fence?"

"Well, I dare say he labours, if that's what you mean. He's young

Blake, you know."

"Young Blake?" She bent her brows, and it was clear that the name

suggested only a trivial recollection to her mind. "There used to

be some Blake children in the old overseer's house--is this one

of them."

"Possibly; they live in the overseer's house."

She leaned over, fastening her heavy gauntlet. "They wouldn't

play with me, I remember; I couldn't understand why. Once I

carried my dolls over to their yard, and the boy set a pack of

hounds on me. I screamed so that an old Negro ran out and drove

them off, and all the time the boy stood by, laughing and calling

me names. Is that he, do you think?"

"I dare say. It sounds like him."

"Is he so cruel?" she asked a little wistfully.

"I don't know about that--but he doesn't like your people. Your

grandfather had some trouble with him a long time ago."

"And he wanted to punish me?--how cowardly."

"It does sound rather savage, but it isn't an ordinary case, you

know. He's the kind of person to curse 'root and branch,' from

all I hear, in the good old Biblical fashion."

"Oh, well, he's certainly very large, isn't he?"

"He's superb," said Carraway, with conviction.

"At a distance--so is that great pine over there," she lifted her

whip and pointed across the field; then as Carraway made no

answer, she smiled slightly and rode rapidly toward the Hall.

For a few minutes the lawyer stood where she had left him,

watching in puzzled thought her swaying figure on the handsome

horse. The girl fretted him, and yet he felt that he liked her

almost in spite of himself--liked something fine and fearless he

found in her dark eyes; liked, too, even while he sneered, her

peculiar grace of manner. There was the making of a woman in her

after all, he told himself, as he turned into the sunken road,

where he saw Christopher already moving homeward. He had meant to

catch up with him and join company on the way, but the young man

covered ground so quickly with his great strides that at last

Carraway, losing sight of him entirely, resigned himself to going

leisurely about his errand.

When, a little later, he opened the unhinged whitewashed gate

before the cottage, the place, as he found it, seemed to be

tenanted solely by a family of young turkeys scratching beneath

the damask rose-bushes in the yard. From a rear chimney a dark

streak of smoke was rising, but the front of the house gave no

outward sign of life, and as there came no answer to his

insistent knocks he at last ventured to open the door and pass

into the narrow hall. From the first room on the right a voice

spoke at his entrance, and following the sound he found himself

face to face with Mrs. Blake in her massive Elizabethan chair.

"There is a stranger in the room," she said rigidly, turning her

sightless eyes; "speak at once."

"I beg pardon most humbly for my intrusion," replied Carraway,

conscious of stammering like an offending schoolboy, "but as no

one answered my knock, I committed the indiscretion of opening a

closed door."

Awed as much by the stricken pallor of her appearance as by the

inappropriate grandeur of her black brocade and her thread lace

cap, he advanced slowly and stood awaiting his dismissal.

"What door?" she demanded sharply, much to his surprise.

"Yours, madam."

"Not answer your knock?" she pursued, with indignation. "So that

was the noise I heard, and no wonder that you entered. Why, what

is the matter with the place? Where are the servants?"

He humbly replied that he had seen none, to be taken up with her

accustomed quickness of touch.

"Seen none! Why, there are three hundred of them, sir. Well,

well, this is really too much. I shall put a butler over Boaz

this very day."

For an instant Carraway felt strangely tempted to turn and run as

fast as he could along the sunken road--remembering, as he

struggled with the impulse, that he had once been caught at the

age of ten and whipped for stealing apples. Recovering with an

effort his sense of dignity, he offered the suggestion that Boaz,

instead of being seriously in fault, might merely have been

engaged in useful occupations "somewhere at the back."

"What on earth can he have to do at the back, sir?" inquired the

irrepressible old lady; "but since you were so kind as to

overlook our inhospitable reception, will you not be equally good

and tell me your name?"

"I fear it won't enlighten you much," replied the lawyer

modestly, "but my name happens to be Guy Carraway."

"Guy--Guy Carraway," repeated Mrs. Blake, as if weighing each

separate letter in some remote social scales. " I've known many a

Guy in my day--and that part, at least, of your name is quite

familiar. There was Guy Nelson, and Guy Blair, and Guy Marshall,

the greatest beau of his time--but I don't think I ever had the

pleasure of meeting a Carraway before."

"That is more than probable, ma'am, but I have the advantage of

you, since, as a child, I was once taken out upon the street

corner merely to see you go by on your way to a fancy ball, where

you appeared as Diana."

Mrs. Blake yielded gracefully to the skilful thrust.

"Ah, I was Lucy Corbin then," she sighed. "You find few traces of

her in me now, sir."

"Unfortunately, your mirror cannot speak for me."

She shook her head.

"You're a flatterer--a sad flatterer, I see," she returned, a

little wistfully; "but it does no harm, as I tell my son, to

flatter the old. It is well to strew the passage to the grave

with flowers."

"How well I remember that day, " said Carraway, speaking softly.

"There was a crowd about the door, waiting to see you come out,

and a carpenter lifted me upon his shoulder. Your hair was as

black as night, and there was a circle round your head."

"A silver fillet," she corrected, with a smile in which there was

a gentle archness.

"A fillet, yes; and you carried a bow and a quiver full of

arrows. I declare, it seems but yesterday."

"It was more than fifty years ago," murmured the old lady. Well,

well, I've had my day, sir, and it was a merry one. I am almost

seventy years old, I'm half dead, and stone blind into the

bargain, but I can say to you that this is a cheerful world in

spite of the darkness in which I linger on. I'd take it over

again and gladly any day--the pleasure and the pain, the light

and the darkness. Why, I sometimes think that my present

blindness was given me in order that I might view the past more

clearly. There's not a ball of my youth, nor a face I knew, nor

even a dress I wore, that I don't see more distinctly every day.

The present is a very little part of life, sir; it's the past in

which we store our treasures."

"You're right, you're right," replied Carraway, drawing his chair

nearer the embroidered ottoman and leaning over to stroke the

yellow cat; "and I'm glad to hear so cheerful a philosophy from

your lips."

"It is based on a cheerful experience--I've been as you see me

now only twenty years."

Only twenty years! He looked mutely round the soiled whitewashed

walls, where hung a noble gathering of Blake portraits in massive

old gilt frames. Among them he saw the remembered face of Lucy

Corbin herself, painted under a rose-garland held by smiling

Loves.

"Life has its trials, of course, " pursued Mrs. Blake, as if

speaking to herself. "I can't look out upon the June flowers, you

know, and though the pink crape-myrtle at my window is in full

bloom I cannot see it."

Following her gesture, Carraway glanced out into the little yard;

no myrtle was there, but he remembered vaguely that he had seen

one in blossom at the Hall.

"You keep flowers about you, though," he said, alluding to the

scattered vases of June roses.

"Not my crape-myrtle. I planted it myself when I first came home

with Mr. Blake, and I have never allowed so much as a spray of it

to be plucked."

Forgetting his presence, she lapsed for a time into one of the

pathetic day-dreams of old age. Then recalling herself suddenly,

her tone took on a sprightliness like that of youth.

"It's not often that we have the pleasure of entertaining a

stranger in our out-of-the-way house, sir so may I ask where you

are staying--or perhaps you will do us the honour to sleep

beneath our roof. It has had the privilege of sheltering General

Washington."

"You are very kind," replied Carraway, with a gratitude that was

from his heart, "but to tell the truth, I feel that I am sailing

under false colours. The real object of my visit is to ask a

business interview with your son. I bring what seems to me a very

fair offer for the place."

Grasping the carved arms of her chair, Mrs. Blake turned the

wonder in her blind eyes upon him.

"An offer for the place! Why, you must be dreaming, sir! A Blake

owned it more than a hundred years before the Revolution."

At the instant, understanding broke upon Carraway like a

thundercloud, and as he rose from his seat it seemed to him that

he had missed by a single step the yawning gulf before him. Blind

terror gripped him for the moment, and when his brain steadied he

looked up to meet, from the threshold of the adjoining room, the

enraged flash of Christopher's eyes. So tempestuous was the

glance that Carraway, impulsively falling back, squared himself

to receive a physical blow; but the young man, without so much as

the expected oath, came in quietly and took his stand behind the

Elizabethan chair.

"Why, what a joke, mother," he said, laughing; "he means the old

Weatherby farm, of course. The one I wanted to sell last year,

you know."

"I thought you'd sold it to the Weatherbys, Christopher."

"Not a bit of it--they backed out at the last; but don't begin to

bother your head about such things; they aren't worth it. And

now, sir," he turned upon Carraway, "since your business is with

me, perhaps you will have the goodness to step outside."

With the feeling that he was asked out for a beating, Carraway

turned for a farewell with Mrs. Blake, but the imperious old lady

was not to be so lightly defrauded of a listener.

"Business may come later, my son," she said, detaining them by a

gesture of her heavily ringed hand. "After dinner you may take

Mr. Carraway with you into the library and discuss your affairs

over a bottle of burgundy, as was your grandfather's custom

before you; meanwhile, he and I will resume our very pleasant

talk which you interrupted. He remembers seeing me in the old

days when we were all in the United States, my dear."

Christopher's brow grew black, and he threw a sharp and malignant

glance of sullen suspicion at Carraway, who summoned to meet it

his most frank and open look.

"I saw your mother in the height of her fame," he said, smiling,

"so I may count myself one of her oldest admirers, I believe. You

may assure yourself," he added softly, "that I have her welfare

very decidedly at heart."

At this Christopher smiled back at him, and there was something

of the June brightness in his look.

"Well, take care, sir," he answered, and went out, closing the

door carefully behind him, while Carraway applied himself to a

determined entertaining of Mrs. Blake.

To accomplish this he found that he had only to leave her free,

guiding her thoughts with his lightest touch into newer channels.

The talk had grown merrier now, and he soon discovered that she

possessed a sharpened wit as well as a ready tongue. From subject

to subject she passed with amazing swiftness, bearing down upon

her favourite themes with the delightful audacity of the talker

who is born, not made. She spoke of her own youth, of historic

flirtations in the early twenties, of great beaux she had known,

and of famous recipes that had been handed down for generations.

Everywhere he felt her wonderful keenness of perception, that

intuitive understanding of men and manners which had kept her for

so long the reigning belle among her younger rivals.

As she went on he found that her world was as different from his

own as if she dwelt upon some undiscovered planet--a world

peopled with shades and governed by an ideal group of abstract

laws. She lived upon lies, he saw, and thrived upon the sweetness

she extracted from them. For her the Confederacy had never

fallen, the quiet of her dreamland had been disturbed by no

invading army, and the three hundred slaves, who had in reality

scattered like chaff before the wind, she still saw in her

cheerful visions tilling her familiar fields. It was as if she

had fallen asleep with the great blow that bad wrecked her body,

and had dreamed on steadily throughout the years. Of real changes

she was as ignorant as a new-born child. Events had shaken the

world to its centre, and she, by her obscure hearth, had not felt

so much as a sympathetic tremor. In her memory there was no

Appomattox, news of the death of Lincoln had never reached her

ears, and president had peacefully succeeded president in the

secure Confederacy in which she lived. Wonderful as it all was,

to Carraway the most wonderful thing was the intricate tissue of

lies woven around her chair. Lies--lies--there had been nothing

but lies spoken within her hearing for twenty years.

CHAPTER VII. In Which a Stand is Made

Dim wonder was still upon him when Docia appeared bearing her

mistress's dinner-tray, and a moment later Cynthia came in and

paused uncertainly near the threshold.

"Do you wish anything, mother?"

"Only to present Mr. Carraway, my child. He will be with us at

dinner."

Cynthia came forward smiling and held out her hand with the

cordial hospitality which she had inherited with the family

portraits and the good old name. She wore this morning a dress of

cheap black calico, shrunken from many washings, and beneath the

scant sleeves Carraway saw her thin red wrists, which looked as

if they had been soaking in harsh soapsuds. Except for a certain

ease of manner which she had not lost in the drudgery of her

life, she might have been sister to the toilworn slattern he had

noticed in one of the hovels across the country.

"We shall be very glad to have you," she said, with quiet

dignity.

"It is ready now, I think."

"Be sure to make him try the port, Cynthia," called Mrs. Blake,

as Carraway followed the daughter across the threshold.

In the kitchen they found Tucker and Lila and a strange young man

in overalls, who was introduced as "one of the Weatherbys who

live just up the road." He was evidently one of their plainer

neighbours for Carraway detected a constraint in Cynthia's manner

which Lila did not appear to share. The girl, dressed daintily in

a faded muslin, with an organdy kerchief crossed over her

swelling bosom, flashed upon Carraway's delighted vision like one

of the maidens hanging, gilt-framed, in the old lady's parlour.

That she was the particular pride of the family--the one luxury

they allowed themselves besides their costly mother--the lawyer

realised upon the instant. Her small white hands were unsoiled by

any work, and her beautiful, kindly face had none of the nervous

dread which seemed always lying behind Cynthia's tired eyes. With

the high devotion of a martyr, the elder sister must have offered

herself a willing sacrifice, winning for the younger an existence

which, despite its gray monotony, showed fairly rose-coloured in

comparison with her own. She herself had sunk to the level of a

servant, but through it all Lila had remained "the lady,"

preserving an equable loveliness to which Jim Weatherby hardly

dared lift his wistful gaze.

As for the young man himself, he had a blithe, open look which

Carraway found singularly attractive, the kind of look it warms

one's heart to meet in the long road on a winter's day. Leaning

idly against the lintel of the door, and fingering a bright axe

which he was apparently anxious that they should retain, he

presented a pleasant enough picture to the attentive eyes within

the kitchen.

"You'd as well keep this axe as long as you want it," he

protested earnestly. " It's an old one, anyway, that I sharpened

when you asked for it, and we've another at home; that's all we

need."

"It's very kind of you, Jim, but ours is mended now," replied

Cynthia, a trifle stiffly.

"If we need one again, we'll certainly borrow yours, "added Lila,

smiling as she looked up from the glasses she was filling with

fresh buttermilk.

"Sit down, Jim, and have dinner with us; there's no hurry," urged

Tucker hospitably, with a genial wave toward the meagerly spread

table. "Jim's a great fellow, Mr. Carraway; you ought to know

him. He can manage anything from a Sunday-school to the digging

of a well. I've always said that if he'd had charge of the

children of Israel's journey to the promised land he'd have had

them there, flesh-pots and all, before the week was up."

"I can see he is a useful neighbour," observed Carraway, glancing

at the axe.

"Well, I'm glad I come handy, " replied Jim in his hearty way;

"and are you sure you don't want me to split up that big oak log

at the woodpile? I can do it in a twinkling."

Cynthia declined his knightly offer, to be overruled again by

Lila's smiling lips.

"Christopher will have to do it when he comes in, " she said;

"poor Christopher, he never has a single moment of his own."

Jim Weatherby looked at her eagerly, his blue eyes full of

sparkle. "Why, I can do it in no time," he declared, shouldering

his axe, and a moment afterward they heard his merry strokes from

the woodpile.

"Are you interested in tobacco, Mr. Carraway?" inquired Tucker,

as they seated themselves at the pine table without so much as an

apology for the coarseness of the fare or an allusion to their

fallen fortunes. "If so, you've struck us at the time when every

man about here is setting out his next winter's chew. Sol

Peterkin, by the way, has planted every square inch of his land

in tobacco, and when I asked him what market he expected to send

it to he answered that he only raised a little for his own use."

"Is that the Peterkin who has the pretty daughter?" asked

Cynthia, slicing a piece of bacon. "May I help you to turnip

salad, Mr. Carraway?" Uncle Boaz, hobbling with rheumatism, held

out a quaint old tray of inlaid woods; and the lawyer, as he

placed his plate upon it, heaved a sigh of gratitude for the

utter absence of vulgarity. He could fancy dear old Miss Saidie

puffing apologies over the fat bacon, and Fletcher profanely

deploring the sloppy coffee.

"The half-grown girl with the bunch of flaxen curls tied with a

blue ribbon?" returned Tucker, while Lila cut up his food as if

he were a child. "Yes, that's Molly Peterkin, though it's hard to

believe she's any kin to Sol. I shouldn't wonder if she turned

into a bouncing beauty a few years further on."

"It was her father, then, that I walked over with from the

cross-roads," said Carraway. "He struck me as a shrewd man of his

sort."

"Oh, he's shrewd enough," rejoined Tucker, "and the proof of it

is that he's outlived three wives and is likely to outlive a

fourth. I met him in the road yesterday, and he told me that he

had just been off again to get married. 'Good luck to you this

time, Sol', said I. 'Wal, it ought to be, sir,' said he, 'seeing

as marrying has got to be so costly in these days. Why, my first

wife didn't come to more than ten dollars, counting the stovepipe

hat and all, and this last one's mounted up to 'most a hundred.'

'Try and take good care of her, then,' I cautioned; "they come

too high to throw away." "That's true, sir," he answered, with a

sorrowful shake of his head. "But the trouble is that as the

price goes up the quality gets poorer. My first one lasted near

on to thirty years, and did all the chores about the house, to

say nothing of the hog-pen; and if you'll believe me, sir, the

one before this stuck at the hog-feeding on her wedding day, and

then wore out before twelve months were up.'"

He finished with his humorous chuckle and lifted his fork

skilfully in his left hand.

"I dare say he overvalues himself as a husband," remarked

Carraway, joining in the laugh, "but he has at least the merit of

being loyal to your family."

"Well, I believe he has; but then, he doesn't like new folks or

new things, I reckon. There's a saying that his hatred of changes

keeps him from ever changing his clothes."

Christopher came in at the moment, and with a slight bow to

Carraway, slipped into his place.

"What's Jim Weatherby chopping up that log for?" he asked,

glancing in the direction of the ringing strokes.

Cynthia looked at him almost grimly, and there was a contraction

of the muscles about her determined mouth.

"Ask Lila," she responded quietly. As Christopher's questioning

gaze turned to her, Lila flushed rose-pink and played nervously

with the breadcrumbs on the table.

"He said he had nothing else to do," she answered, with an

effort, "and he knew you were so busy--that was all."

"Well, he's a first rate fellow," commented Christopher, as he

reached for the pitcher of buttermilk, "but I don't see what

makes him so anxious to do my work."

"Oh, that's Jim's way, you know," put in Tucker with his offhand

kindliness. "He's the sort of old maid who would undertake to

straighten the wilderness if he could get the job. Why, I

actually found him once chopping off dead boughs in the woods,

and when I laughed he excused himself by saying that he couldn't

bear to see trees look so scraggy."

As he talked, his pleasant pale blue eyes twinkled with humour,

and his full double chin shook over his shirt of common calico.

He had grown very large from his long inaction, and it was with a

perceptible effort that he moved himself upon his slender

crutches. Yet despite his maimed and suffering body he was

dressed with a scrupulous neatness which was almost like an air

of elegance. As he chatted on easily, Carraway forgot, in

listening to him, the harrowing details in the midst of which he

sat--forgot the overheated, smoky kitchen, the common pine table

with its broken china, and the sullen young savage whom he faced.

For Christopher was eating his dinner hurriedly, staring at his

plate in a moodiness which he did not take the trouble to

conceal. With all the youthful beauty of his face, there was a

boorishness in his ill-humour which in a less commanding figure

would have been repellent--an evident pride in the sincerity of

the scowl upon his brow. When his meal was over he rose with a

muttered excuse and went out into the yard, where a few minutes

afterward Carraway was bold enough to follow him.

The afternoon was golden with sunshine, and every green leaf on

the trees seemed to stand out clearly against the bright blue

sky. In the rear of the house there was a lack of the careful

cleanliness he had noticed at the front, and rotting chips from

the woodpile strewed the short grass before the door, where a

clump of riotous ailanthus shoots was waging a desperate battle

for existence. Beside the sunken wooden step a bare brown patch

showed where the daily splashes of hot soapsuds had stripped the

ground of even the modest covering that it wore. Within a stone's

throw of the threshold the half of a broken wheelbarrow, white

with mould, was fast crumbling into earth, and a little farther

off stood a disorderly group of chicken coops before which lay a

couple of dead nestlings. On the soaking plank ledge around the

well-brink, where fresh water was slopping from the overturned

bucket, several bedraggled ducks were paddling with evident

enjoyment. The one pleasant sight about the place was the sturdy

figure of Jim Weatherby, still at work upon the giant body of a

dead oak tree.

When Carraway came out, Christopher was feeding a pack of hounds

from a tin pan of coarse corn bread, and to the lawyer's surprise

he was speaking to them in a tone that sounded almost jocular.

Though born of a cringing breed, the dogs looked contented and

well fed, and among them Carraway recognised his friend Spy, who

had followed at the heels of Uncle Boaz.

"Here, Miser, this is yours," the young man was saying. "There,

you needn't turn up your nose; it's as big as Blister's. Down,

Spy, I tell you; you've had twice your share; you think because

you're the best looking you're to be the best fed, too."

As Carraway left the steps the dogs made an angry rush at him, to

be promptly checked by Christopher.

"Back, you fools; back, I say. You'd better be careful how you

walk about here, sir," he added; "they'd bite as soon as not--all

of them except Spy.

"Good fellow, Spy," returned Carraway, a little nervously, and

the hound came fawning to his feet. "I assure you I have no

intention of treading upon their preserves," he hastened to

explain; "but I should like a word with you, and this seems to be

the only opportunity I'll have, as I return to town to-morrow."

Christopher threw the remaining pieces of corn bread into the

wriggling pack, set the pan in the doorway, and wiped his hands

carelessly upon his overalls.

"Well, I don't see what you've got to say to me," he replied,

walking rapidly in the direction of the well, where he waited for

the other to join him.

"It's about the place, of course," returned the lawyer, with an

attempt to shatter the awkward rustic reserve. "I understand that

it has passed into your possession."

The young man nodded, and, drawing out his clasp-knife, fell to

whittling a splinter which he had broken from the well-brink.

"In that case," pursued Carraway, feeling as if he were dashing

his head against a wall, "I shall address myself to you in the

briefest terms. The place, I suppose, as it stands, is not worth

much to-day. Even good land is cheap, and this is poor."

Again Christopher nodded, intent upon his whittling. "I reckon it

wouldn't bring more than nine hundred," he responded coolly.

"Then my position is easy, for I am sure you will consider

favourably the chance to sell at treble its actual value. I am

authorised to offer you three thousand dollars for the farm."

For a moment Christopher stared at him in silence, then, "What in

the devil do you want with it?" he demanded.

"I am not acting for myself in the matter," returned the lawyer,

after a short hesitation. "The offer is made through me by

another. That it is to your advantage to accept it is my honest

conviction."

Christopher tossed the bit of wood at a bedraggled drake that

waddled off, quacking angrily.

"Then it's Fletcher behind you," he said in the same cool tones.

"It seems to me that is neither here nor there. Naturally Mr.

Fletcher is very anxious to secure the land. As it stands, it is

a serious inconvenience to him, of course."

Laughing, Christopher snapped the blade of his knife.

"Well, you may tell him from me," he retorted, "that just as long

as it is 'a serious inconvenience to him' it shall stand as it

is. Why, man, if Fletcher wanted that broken wheelbarrow enough

to offer me three thousand dollars for it, I wouldn't let him

have it. The only thing I'd leave him free to take, if I could

help it, is the straight road to damnation!"

His voice, for all the laughter, sounded brutal, and Carraway,

gazing at him in wonder, saw his face grow suddenly lustful like

that of an evil deity. The beauty was still there, blackened and

distorted, a beauty that he felt to be more sinister than

ugliness. The lawyer was in the presence of a great naked

passion, and involuntarily he lowered his eyes.

"I don't think he understands your attitude," he said quietly;

"it seems to him--and to me also, I honestly affirm--that you

would reap an advantage as decided as his own."

"Nothing is to my advantage, I tell you, that isn't harm to him.

He knows it if he isn't as big a fool as he is a rascal."

"Then I may presume that you are entirely convinced in your own

mind that you have a just cause for the stand you take?"

"Cause!" the word rapped out like an oath. "He stole my home, I

tell you; he stole every inch of land I owned, and every penny.

Where did he get the money to buy the place--he a slave-overseer?

Where did he get it, I ask, unless he had been stealing for

twenty years?"

"It looks ugly, I confess," admitted Carraway; "but were there no

books--no accounts kept?"

"Oh, he settled that, of course. When my father died, and we

asked for the books, where were they?

Burned, he said--burned in the old office that the Yankees fired.

He's a scoundrel, I tell you, sir, and I know him to the core.

He's a rotten scoundrel!"

Carraway caught his breath quickly and drew back as if he had

touched unwittingly a throbbing canker. To his oversensitive

nature these primal emotions had a crudeness that was vulgar in

its unrestraint. He beheld it all--the old wrong and the new

hatred--in a horrid glare of light, a disgraceful blaze of

trumpets. Here there was no cultured evasion of the conspicuous

vice--none of the refinements even of the Christian ethics--it

was all raw and palpitating humanity.

"Then my mission is quite useless," he confessed. "I can only add

that I am sorrier than I can say sorry for the whole thing, too.

If my services could be of any use to you I should not hesitate

to offer them, but so far as I see there is absolutely nothing to

be done. An old crime, as you know, very often conforms to an

appearance of virtue."

He held out his hand, Christopher shook it, and then the lawyer

went back into the house to bid good-by to Mrs. Blake. When he

came out a few moments later, and passed through the whitewashed

gate into the sunken road, he saw that Christopher was still

standing where he had left him, the golden afternoon around him,

and the bedraggled ducks paddling at his feet.

VIII. Treats of a Passion that is Not Love

Over a distant meadow fluted the silver whistle of a partridge,

and Christopher, lifting his head, noted involuntarily the

direction of the sound. A covey was hatching down by the meadow

brook, he knew--for not a summer mating nor a hidden nest had

escaped his eyes--and he wondered vaguely if the young birds were

roaming into Fletcher's wheatfield. Then, with a single vigorous

movement as if he were settling his thoughts upon him, he crossed

the yard, leaped the fence by the barnyard, and started briskly

along the edge of a little cattle pasture, where a strange bull

bellowed in the shadow of a walnut-tree. At the bottom of the

pasture a crumbling rail fence divided his land from Fletcher's,

and as he looked over the festoons of poisonous ivy he saw

Fletcher himself overseeing the last planting of his tobacco. For

a time Christopher watched them as through a mist--watched the

white and the black labourers, the brown furrows in which the

small holes were bored, the wilted plants thrown carelessly in

place and planted with two quick pressures of a bare,

earth-begrimed foot. He smelled the keen odours released by the

sunshine from the broken soil; he saw the standing beads of sweat

on the faces of the planters--Negroes with swollen lips and

pleasant eyes like those of kindly animals--and he heard the

coarse, hectoring voice of Fletcher, who stood midway of the

naked ground. To regard the man as a mere usurper of his land had

been an article in the religious creed the child had learned, and

as he watched him now, bearded, noisy, assured of his

possessions, the sight lashed him like the strokes of a whip on

bleeding flesh. In the twenty-five years of his life he had grown

fairly gluttonous of hate--had tended it with a passion that was

like that of love. Now he felt that he had never really had

enough of it--had never feasted on the fruit of it till he was

satisfied--had never known the delight of wallowing in it until

to-day. Deep-rooted like an instinct as the feeling was, he knew

now that there had been hours when, for very weakness of his

nature, he had almost forgotten that he meant to pay back

Fletcher in the end, when it seemed, after all, easier merely to

endure and forget and have it done. Still keeping upon his own

land, he turned presently and followed a little brook that

crossed a meadow where mixed wild flowers were strewn loosely in

the grass. The bull still bellowed in the shadow of the

walnut-tree, and he found himself listening with pure delight to

the savage cries. Reaching at last a point where the brook turned

westward at the foot of a low green hill, he threw himself over

the dividing rail fence, and came, at the end of a minute's

hurried walk, to the old Blake graveyard, midway of one of

Fletcher's fallow fields. The gate was bricked up, after the

superstitious custom of many country burial places, but he

climbed the old moss-grown wall, where poisonous ivy grew rank

and venomous, and landing deep in the periwinkle that carpeted

the ground, made his way rapidly to the flat oblong slab beneath

which his father lay. The marble was discoloured by long rains

and stained with bruised periwinkle, and the shallow lettering

was hidden under a fall of dried needles from a little stunted

fir-tree; but, leaning over, he carefully swept the dust away and

loosened the imprisoned name which seemed to hover like a

spiritual presence upon the air.

"HERE LIES ALL THAT IS MORTAL OF CHRISTOPHER BLAKE, WHO DIED IN

THE HOPE OF A JOYFUL RESURRECTION, APRIL 12, 1786, AGED 70 YEARS.

INTO THY HANDS, O LORD, I COMMIT MY SPIRIT."

Around him there were other graves--graves of all dead Blakes for

two hundred years, and the flat tombstones were crowded so

thickly together that it seemed as if the dead must lie beneath

them row on row. It was all in deep shadow, fallen slabs, rank

periwinkle, dust and mould--no cheerful sunshine had ever

penetrated through the spreading cedars overhead. Life was here,

but it was the shy life of wild creatures, approaching man only

when he had returned to earth. A mocking-bird purled a love note

in the twilight of a great black cedar, a lizard glided like a

gray shadow along one of the overturned slabs, and at his

entrance a rabbit had started from the ivy on his father's grave.

To climb the overgrown wall and lie upon the periwinkle was like

entering, for a time, the world of shades--a world far removed

from the sunny meadow and the low green hill.

With his head pillowed upon his father's grave, Christopher

stretched himself at full length on the ground and stared

straight upward at the darkbrowed cedars. It was such an hour as

he allowed himself at long intervals when his inheritance was

heavy upon him and his disordered mind needed to retreat into a

city of refuge. As a child he had often come to this same spot to

dream hopefully of the future, unboylike dreams in which the

spirit of revenge wore the face of happiness. Then, with the

inconsequence of childhood, he had pictured Fletcher gasping

beneath his feet--trampled out like a worm, when he was big

enough to take his vengeance and come again into his own. Mere

physical strength seemed to him at that age the sole thing

needed--he wanted then only the brawny arm and the heart bound by

triple brass.

Now, as he stretched out his square, sunburned hand, with its

misshapen nails, he laughed aloud at the absurdity of those

blunted hopes. To-day he stood six feet three inches from the

ground, with muscles hard as steel and a chest that rang sound as

a bell, yet how much nearer his purpose had he been as a little

child! He remembered the day that he had hidden in the bushes

with his squirrel gun and waited with fluttering breath for the

sound of Fletcher's footsteps along the road. On that day it had

seemed to him that the hand of the Lord was in his own Godlike

vengeance nerving his little wrist. He had meant to shoot--for

that he had saved every stray penny from his sales of hogs and

cider, of watermelons and chinkapins; for that he had bought the

gun and rammed the powder home. Even when the thud of footsteps

beat down the sunny road strewn with brown honeyshucks, he had

felt neither fear nor hesitation as he crouched amid the

underbrush. Rather there was a rare exhilaration, warm blood in

his brain and a sharp taste in his mouth like that of unripe

fruit--as if he had gorged himself upon the fallen honeyshucks.

It was the happiest moment of his life, he knew, the one moment

when he seemed to measure himself inch by inch with fate; and

like all such supreme instants, it fell suddenly flat among the

passing hours. For even as the gun was lifted, at the very second

that Fletcher's heavy body swung into view, he heard a crackling

in the dead bushes at his back, and Uncle Boaz struck up his arm

with a palsied hand.

"Gawd alive, honey, you don' wanter be tucken out an' hunged?"

the old man cried in terror.

The boy rose in a passion and flung his useless gun aside. "Oh,

you've spoiled it! you've spoiled it!" he sobbed, and shed bitter

tears upon the ground.

To this hour, lying on his father's grave, he knew that he

regretted that wasted powder--that will to slay which had blazed

up and died down so soon. Strangely enough, it soothed him now to

remember how near to murder he had been, and as he drank the

summer air in deep drafts he felt the old desire rekindle from

its embers. While he lived it was still possible--the one chance

that awaits the ready hand, the final answer of a sympathetic

heaven that deals out justice. His god was a pagan god, terrible

rather than tender, and there had always been within him the old

pagan scorn of everlasting mercy. There were moods even when he

felt the kinship with his savage forefathers working in his

blood, and at such times he liked to fit heroic tortures to

heroic crimes to imagine the lighted stake and his enemy amid the

flames. Over him as he lay at full length the ancient cedars,

touched here and there with a younger green, reared a dusky tent

that screened him alike from the hot sunshine and the bright June

sky. Somewhere in the deepest shadow the mocking-bird purled over

its single note, and across the lettering on the marble slab

beside him a small brown lizard was gliding back and forth. The

clean, fresh smell of the cedars filled his nostrils like a balm.

For a moment the physical pleasure in his surroundings possessed

his thoughts; then gradually, in a state between waking and

sleeping, the curious boughs above took fantastic shapes and were

interwoven before his eyes with his earlier memories. There was a

great tester bed, with carved posts and curtains of silvery

damask, that he had slept in as a child, and it was here that he

had once had a terrible dream--a dream which he had remembered to

this day because it was so like a story of Aunt Delisha's, in

which the devil comes with a red-hot scuttle to carry off a

little boy. On that night he had been the little boy, and he had

seen the scuttle with its leaping flames so plainly that in his

terror he had struggled up and screamed aloud. A moment later he

had awakened fully, to find a lighted candle in his face and his

father in a flowered dressing-gown sitting beside the bed and

looking at him with his sad, bloodshot eyes. "Is the devil gone,

father, and did you drive him away?" he asked; and then the tall,

white-haired old man, whose mind was fast decaying, did a strange

and a pitiable thing, for he fell upon his knees beside the bed

and cried out upon Christopher for forgiveness for the

selfishness

of his long life. "You came too late, my son," he said; "you came

twenty years too late. I had given you up long ago and grown

hopeless. You came like Isaac to Abraham, but too late--too

late!" The boy sat up in bed, huddling in the bedclothes, for the

night was chilly. He grew suddenly afraid of his father, the big,

beautiful old man in the flowered dressing-gown, and he wished

that his mother would come in and take him away. "But I came

twins with Lila, father," he replied, trying to speak bravely.

"With Lila! Oh, my poor children! my poor children!" cried the

old man, and, taking up his candle, tottered to the door. Then

Christopher stopped his ears in the pillows, for he heard him

moaning to himself as he went back along the hall. He felt all at

once terribly frightened, and at last, slipping down the tall

bed-steps, he stole on his bare feet to Cynthia's door and crept

in beside her. After this, dim years went by when he did not see

his father, and the great closed rooms on the north side of the

house were as silent as if a corpse lay there awaiting burial.

His beautiful, stately mother, who, in spite of her gray hair,

had always seemed but little older than himself, vanished as

mysteriously from his sight--on a thrilling morning when there

were many waving red flags and much hurried marching by of

gray-clad troops. Young as he was, he was already beginning to

play his boy's share in a war which was then fighting slowly to a

finish; and in the wild flutter of events he forgot, for a time,

to do more than tip softly when he crossed the hall. She was ill,

they told him--too ill to care even about the battles that were

fought across the river. The sound of the big guns sent no

delicious shivers through her limbs, and there was only Lila to

come with him when he laid his ear to the ground and thrilled

with the strong shock which seemed to run around the earth. When

at last her door was opened again and he went timidly in, holding

hands with Lila, he found his mother sitting stiffly erect among

her cushions as she would sit for the remainder of her days,

blind and half dead, in her Elizabethan chair. His beautiful,

proud mother, with the smiling Loves painted above her head!

For an instant he shut his eyes beneath the cedars, seeing her on

that morning as a man sees in his dreams the face of his first

love. Then another day dawned slowly to his consciousness--a day

which stood out clear-cut as a cameo from all the others of his

life. For weeks Cynthia's eyes had been red and swollen, and he

commented querulously upon them, for they made her homelier than

usual. When he had finished, she looked at him a moment without

replying, then, putting her arm about him, she drew him out upon

the lawn and told him why she wept. It was a mellow autumn day,

and they passed over gold and russet leaves strewn deep along the

path. A light wind was blowing in the tree-tops, and the leaves

were still falling, falling, falling! He saw Cynthia's haggard

face in a flame of glowing colours. Through the drumming in his

ears, which seemed to come from the clear sky, he heard the

ceaseless rustle beneath his feet; and to this day he could not

walk along a leaf-strewn road in autumn without seeing again the

blur of red-and-gold and the gray misery in Cynthia's face.

"It will kill mother!" he said angrily. "It will kill mother!

Why, she almost died when Docia broke her Bohemian bowl."

"She must never know," answered Cynthia, while the tears streamed

unheeded down her cheeks. "When she is carried out one day for

her airing, she shall go back into the other house. It is a short

time now at best--she may die at any moment from any shock--but

she must die without knowing this. There must be quiet at the

end, at least. Oh, poor mother! poor mother!"

She raised her hands to her convulsed face, and Christopher saw

the tears trickle through her thin fingers,

"She must never know," repeated the boy. "She must never know if

we can help it."

"We must help it," cried Cynthia passionately. "We must work our

fingers to the bone to help it, you and I."

"And Lila?" asked the boy, curiously just even in the intensity

of his emotion. "Mustn't Lila work, too?"

Cynthia sobbed--hard, strangling sobs that rattled like stones

within her bosom.

"Lila is only a girl," she said, "and so pretty, so pretty."

The boy nodded.

"Then don't let's make Lila work," he responded sturdily.

Selfish in her supreme unselfishness, the woman turned and kissed

his brow, while he struggled, irritated, to keep her off.

"Don't let's, dear," she said, and that was all.

IX. Cynthia

As soon as Christopher had passed out of sight, Cynthia came from

the kitchen with an armful of wet linen and began spreading it

upon some scrubby lilac bushes in a corner of the yard. After

fifteen years it still made her uncomfortable to have Christopher

around when she did the family washing, and when it was possible

she waited to dry the clothes until he had gone back to the

field. In her scant calico dress, with the furrows of age already

settling about her mouth, and her pale brown hair strained in

thin peaks back from her forehead, she might have stood as the

world-type of toil-worn womanhood, for she was of the stuff of

martyrs, and the dignity of their high resolve was her one

outward grace. Life had been revealed to her as something to be

endured rather than enjoyed, and the softer adornments of her sex

had not withstood the daily splashes of harsh soapsuds--they had

faded like colours too delicate to stand the strain of ordinary

use.

As she lifted one of her mother's full white petticoats and

turned to wring it dry with her red and blistered hands, a look

that was perilously near disgust was on her face--for though she

had done her duty heroically and meant to do it until the end,

there were brief moments when it sickened her to desperation. She

was the kind of woman whose hands perform the more thoroughly

because the heart revolts against the task.

Lila, in her faded muslin which had taken the colours of November

leaves, came to the kitchen doorway and stood watching her with a

cheerful face.

"Has Jim Weatherby gone, Cynthia?"

Cynthia nodded grimly, turning her squinting gaze upon her. "Do

you think I'd let him see me hanging out the clothes?" she

snapped. Supreme as her unselfishness was, there were times when

she appeared to begrudge the least of her services; and after the

manner of all affection that comes as a bounty, the unwilling

spirit was more impressive than the ready hand.

"I do wish you would make Docia help you," said Lila, in a voice

that sounded as if she were speaking in her own defense.

Cynthia wrung out a blue jean shirt of Christopher's, spread it

on an old lilac-bush, and pushed a stray lock of hair back with

her wrist.

"There's no use talking like that when you know Docia has heart

disease and can't scrub the clothes clean," she responded. "If

she'd drop down dead I'd like to know what we'd do with mother."

"Well, I'd help you if you'd only let me," protested Lila, on the

point of tears. "I've darned your lavender silk the best I could,

and I'd just as soon iron as not."

"And get your hands like mine in a week. No, I reckon it's as

well for one of us to keep decent. My hands are so knotted I had

to tell mother it was gout in the joints, and she said I must

have been drinking too much port." She laughed, but her eyes

filled with tears, and she wiped them with hard rubs on a twisted

garment, which she afterward shook in the air to dry.

"Well, you're a saint, Cynthia, and I wish you weren't," declared

Lila almost impatiently. "It makes me feel uncomfortable, as if

it were somehow my fault that you had to be so good."

"Being a saint is a good deal like being a woman, I reckon,"

returned Cynthia dryly. "There's a heap in having been born to

it. Aunt Polly, have you put the irons on the fire? The first

batch of clothes is almost dry."

Aunt Polly, an aged crone, already stumbling into her dotage,

hobbled from the kitchen and gathered up an armful of resinous

pine from a pile beside the steps. "Dey's 'mos' es hot es de

debbil's wood en iron shovel," she replied, with one foot on the

step; adding in a piercing whisper: "I know dat ar shovel, honey,

'caze de debbil he done come fur me in de daid er de night,

lookin' moughty peart, too; but I tole 'im he des better bide

aw'ile 'caze I 'uz leanin' sorter favo'bly to'ad de Lawd."

"Aunt Polly, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Take those

irons off and let them cool."

"Dat's so, Miss Cynthy, en I'se right down 'shamed er myse'f,

sho' 'nough, but de shame er hit cyarn tu'n de heart er 'ooman.

De debbil he sutnev did look young en peart, dat he did--en de

Lawd He knows, Miss Cynthy, I allers did like 'em young! I 'uz

done had nine un um in all, countin' de un--en he wuz Cephus dat

run off 'fo' de mah'age wid my bes' fedder baid made outer de

gray goose fedders ole miss done throwed away 'caze dey warn'

w'ite. Yes, Lawd, dar's done been nine un um, black en yaller, en

dar ain' nuver been en ole 'un in de hull lot. Whew! I ain' nuver

stood de taste er nuttin' ole lessen he be a 'possum, en w'en hit

comes ter en ole man, I d'clar hit des tuns my stomick clean

inside out."

"But, Aunt Polly, you're old yourself-it's disgraceful."

Aunt Polly chuckled with flattered vanity.

"I know I is, honey--I know I is, but I'se gwine ter hev a young

husban' at de een ef hit tecks de ve'y las' cent I'se got. De

las' un he come monst'ous high, en mo'n dat, he wuz sech en

outlandish nigger dat he'd a-come high ef I'd got 'im as a

Christmas gif'. I had ter gin 'im dat burey wid de bevel glass I

bought wid all my savin's, en des es soon es I steps outside de

do' he up en toted hit all de way ter de cabin er dat lowlifeted,

savigorous, yaller hussy Delphy. Men sutney are tuh'ble slippery

folks, Miss Cynthy, en y'all des better look out how you monkey

wid 'em, 'caze I'se done hed nine, en I knows 'em thoo en thoo.

De mo' you git, de likelier 'tis you gwine git one dat's worth

gittin', dat's vat I 'low."

Cynthia gathered up the scattered garments, which had been left

carelessly from the day before, and carried them into the

kitchen, where a pine ironing board was supported by two empty

barrels. Lila was busily preparing a bowl of gruel for one of the

sick old Negroes who still lived upon the meager charity of the

Blakes.

"Mother wants you, Cynthia," she said. "I won't do at all, for

she can't be persuaded that I'm really grown up, you know. Here,

give me some of those clothes. It won't hurt my hands a bit."

Cynthia piled the clothes upon the board, and moistening her

finger, applied it to the bottom of the iron. Then she handed it

to Lila with a funny little air of anxiety. "This is just right,"

she said; "be careful not to get your fingers burned, and

remember to sprinkle the clothes well. Do you know what mother

wants?"

"I think it's about taking something to Aunt Dinah. Docia told

her she was sick."

"Then I wish Docia would learn to hold her tongue," commented

Cynthia, as she left the kitchen.

She found Mrs. Blake looking slightly irritated as she wound a

ball of white yarn from a skein that Docia was holding between

her outstretched hands.

"I hear Dinah is laid up with a stitch in her chest, Cynthia,"

she said. "You must look in the medicine closet and give her ten

grains of quinine and a drink of whisky. Tell her to keep well

covered up, and see that Polly makes her hot flaxseed tea every

two hours."

"Lila is fixing her some gruel now, mother."

"I said flaxseed tea, my dear. I am almost seventy years old, and

I have treated three hundred servants and seen sixty laid in

their graves, but if you think you are a better doctor than I am,

of course there's nothing to be said. Docia, hold the yarn a

little tighter."

"We'll make the flaxseed tea at once, and I'll carry it right

over--a breath of air will do me good."

Mrs. Blake sighed. "You mustn't stay too closely with me," she

said; "you will grow old before your time, I fear. As it is you

have given up your young life to my poor old one."

"I had nothing to give up, mother," replied Cynthia quietly, and

in the few words her heart's tragedy was written--since of all

lives, the saddest is the one that can find nothing worthy of

renouncement. There were hours when she felt that any bitter

personal past--that the recollection of a single despairing kiss

or a blighted love would have filled her days with happiness.

What she craved was the conscious dignity of a broken heart--some

lofty memory that she might rest upon in her hours of weakness.

"Well, you might have had, my child," returned her mother.

Cynthia's only answer was to smooth gently the pillows in the old

lady's chair. "If you could learn to lean back, dearest, it would

rest you so," she said.

"I have never slouched in my life," replied Mrs. Blake

decisively, "and I do not care to fall into the habit in my

seventieth year. When my last hour comes, I hope at least to meet

my God in the attitude becoming a lady, and in my day it would

have been considered the height of impropriety to loll in a chair

or even to rock in the presence of gentlemen. Your Greataunt

Susannah, one of the most modest women of her time, has often

told me that once, having unfortunately crossed her knees in the

parlour after supper, she suffered untold tortures from "budges"

for three mortal hours rather than be seen to do anything so

indelicate as to uncross them. Well, well, ladies were ladies in

those days, and now Lila tells me it is quite customary for them

to sit like men. My blindness has spared me many painful sights,

I haven't a doubt."

"Things have changed, dear. I wish they hadn't. I liked the old

days, too."

"I'm glad at least to hear you say so. Your Aunt Susannah--and

she was the one who danced a minuet with General Lafayette, you

know--used to say that patience and humility became a gentlewoman

better than satin and fine lace. She was a lady of fashion and a

great beauty, so I suppose her opinion counts for something--

especially as she was noted for being the proudest woman of her

day, and it was said that she never danced with a gentleman who

hadn't fought a duel on her account. When she went to a ball it

took six small darkies to carry her train, and her escort was

always obliged to ride on top of the coach to keep from rumpling

the flounces of her petticoat. They always said that I had

inherited something of her face and step."

"I'm sure she was never so beautiful as you, mother."

"Ah, well, every one to his taste, my child; and I have heard

that she wore a larger shoe. However, this is foolish chatter,

and a waste of time. Go and carry Dinah the medicine, and let me

see Christopher as soon as he comes in. By the way, Cynthia, have

you noticed whether he seeks the society of ladies? Do you think

it likely that his affections are engaged?"

"No, no, not at all. He doesn't care for girls; I'm sure of it."

"That seems very strange. Why, at his age, his father had been

the object of a dozen love affairs, and been jilted twice, report

went, though I had my suspicion from the first that it was the

other way. Certainly Miss Peggie Stuart (and he had once been

engaged to her) went into a decline immediately after our

marriage--but in affairs of the heart, as I have mentioned often

before, the only reliable witnesses are those who never tell what

they know. Now, as for Christopher, are you quite sure he is as

handsome as you say?" "Quite, quite, he's splendid--like the

picture of the young David in the Bible." "Then there's something

wrong. Does he cough?" "His health seems perfect." "Which proves

conclusively that he cherishes a secret feeling. For a man to go

twenty-six years without falling in love means that he's either a

saint or an imbecile, my dear; and for my part, I declare I don't

know which character sits worse upon a gentleman. Can it be one

of the Morrisons, do you think? The youngest girl used to be

considered something of a beauty by the family; though she was

always too namby-pamby for my taste."

"She's fifty by now, if she's a day, mother, and the only thing I

ever saw Christopher do for her was to drive a strange bull out

of her road." "Well, that sounds romantic; but I fear, as you

say, she's really too old for him. How time does fly." Cynthia

stooped and carefully arranged the old lady's feet upon the

ottoman. "There, now--I'll carry the medicine to Aunt Dinah," she

said, "and be back in plenty of time to dress for supper." She

found the quinine in an old medicine chest in the adjoining room,

and went with it to one of the crumbling cabins which had formed

part of the "quarters" in the prosperous days of slavery. Aunt

Dinah insisted upon detaining her for a chat, and it was half an

hour afterward that she came out again and walked slowly back

along the little falling path. The mild June breeze freshened her

hot cheeks, and as she passed thoughtfully between the coarse

sprays of yarrow blooming along the ragged edges of the fields

she felt her spirit freed from the day's burden of unrest. What

she wanted just then was to lie for an hour close upon the

ground, to renew the vital forces within her by contact with the

invigorating earth--to feel Nature at friendly touch with her

lips and hands. She would have liked to run like a wild thing

through the golden sunshine lying upon the yarrow, following the

shy cries of the partridges that scattered at her approach--but

there was work for her inside the house, so she went back

patiently to take it up. As she entered the little yard, she saw

Tucker basking in the sunshine on an old bench beside one of the

damask rose-bushes, and she crossed over and stood for a moment

in the tall grass before him. "You look so happy, Uncle Tucker.

How do you manage it?" "By keeping so, I reckon, my dear. I tell

you, this sun feels precious good on the back." She dropped

limply on the bench beside him. "Yes, it is pleasant, but I

hadn't thought of it." " Well, you'd think of it often enough if

you were in my place," pursued Tucker, always garrulous, and

grateful for a listener. "I didn't notice things much myself when

I was young. The only sights that seemed to count, somehow, were

those I saw inside my head, and if you'll believe me, I used to

be moody and out of sorts half the time, just like Christopher.

Times have changed now, you'll say, and it's true. Why, I've got

nothing to do these days but to take a look at things, and I tell

you I see a lot now where all was a blank before. You just glance

over that old field and tell me what you find," Cynthia followed

the sweep of his left arm. "There's first the road, and then a

piece of fallow land that ought to be ploughed," she said. "Bless

my soul, is that all you see? Why, there is every shade of green

on earth in that old field, and almost every one of blue, except

azure, which you'll find up in the sky. That little bit of white

cloud, no bigger than my hand, is shaped exactly like an eagle's

wing. I've watched it for an hour, and I never saw one like it.

As for that old pine on top the little knoll, if you look at it

long enough you'll see that it's a great big green cross raised

against the sky." "So it is, " said Cynthia, in surprise; "so it

is."

"Then to come nearer, look at that spray of turtlehead growing by

that gray stone--the shadow it throws is as fine as thread lace,

and it waves in the breeze just like the flower."

" Oh, it is beautiful, and I never should have seen it."

"And best of all," resumed Tucker, as if avoiding an

interruption, "is that I've watched a nestful of young wrens take

flight from under the eaves. There's not a play of Shakespeare's

greater than that, I tell you." "And it makes you happy--just

this?" asked Cynthia wistfully, as the pathos of his maimed

figure drove to her heart. "Well, I reckon happiness is not so

much in what comes as in the way you take it," he returned,

smiling. "There was a time, you must remember, when I was the

straightest shot of my day, and something of a lady-killer as

well, if I do say it who shouldn't. I've done my part in a war

and I'm not ashamed of it. I've taken the enemy's cannon under a

fire hot enough to roast an ox, and I've sent more men to

eternity than I like to think of; but I tell you honestly there's

no battle-field under heaven worth an hour of this old bench. If

I had my choice to-day, I'd rather see the flitting of those

wrens than kill the biggest Yankee that ever lived. The time was

when I didn't think so, but I know now that there's as much life

out there in that old field as in the tightest-packed city street

I ever saw--purer life, praise God, and sweeter to the taste.

Why, look at this poplar leaf that blew across the road; I've

studied the pattern of it for half an hour, and I've found out

that such a wonder is worth going ten miles to see." "Oh, I can't

understand you," sighed Cynthia hopelessly. "I wish I could, but

I can't--I was born different--so different." "Bless your heart,

honey, I was born different myself, and if I'd kept my leg and my

arm I dare say I'd be strutting round on one and shaking the

other in the face of God Almighty just as I used to do. A

two-legged man is so busy getting about the world that he never

has time to sit down and take a look around him. I tell you I see

more in one hour as I am now than I saw in all the rest of my

life when I was sound and whole. Why, I could sit here all day

long and stare up at that blue sky, and then go to bed feeling

that my twelve hours were full and brimming over. If I'd never

seen anything in my life but that sky above the old pine, I

should say at the end 'Thank God for that one good look.'" "I

can't understand--I can't understand," repeated Cynthia, in a

broken voice, though her face shed a clear, white beam. "I only

know that we are all in awful straights, and that to-morrow is

the day when I must get up at five o'clock and travel all the way

to town to get my sewing." He laid his large pink hand on hers,

"Why not let Lila go for you?" "What! to wait like a servant for

the bundle and walk the streets all day--I'd go twenty times

first!" "My dear, you needn't envy me," he responded, patting her

knotted hand. "I took less courage with me when I stormed my

heights."

CHAPTER X. Sentimental and Otherwise

In the gray dawn Cynthia came softly downstairs and, passing her

mother's door on tiptoe, went out into the kitchen to begin

preparations for her early breakfast. She wore a severe black

alpaca dress, made from a cast-off one of her mother's, and below

her white linen collar she had pinned a cameo brooch bearing the

head of Minerva, which had once belonged to Aunt Susannah. On the

bed upstairs she had left her shawl and bonnet and a pair of

carefully mended black silk mitts, for her monthly visits to the

little country town were endured with something of the frozen

dignity which supported Marie Antoinette in the tumbrel. It was a

case where family pride was found more potent than Christian

resignation. When she opened the kitchen door, with her arms full

of resinous pine from the pile beside the steps, she found that

Tucker had risen before her and was fumbling awkwardly in the

safe with his single hand. "Why, Uncle Tucker!" she exclaimed in

surprise, "what on earth has happened?" Turning his cheerful face

upon her, he motioned to a little wooden tobacco box on the bare

table. "A nest full of swallows tumbled down my chimney log in

the night," he explained, "and they cried so loud I couldn't

sleep, so I thought I might as well get up and dig 'em a worm or

two. Do you happen to know where a bit of wool is?" Cynthia threw

her bundle of kindling-wood on the hearth and stood regarding him

with apathetic eyes. "You'd much better wring their necks," she

responded indifferently; "but there's a basketful of wool Aunt

Polly has just carded in the closet. How in the world did you

manage to dress yourself?" "Oh, it's wonderful what one hand can

do when it's put to it. Would you mind fastening my collar, by

the way, and any buttons that you happen to see loose?" She

glanced over him critically, pulling his clothes in place and

adjusting a button here and there. "I do hate to see you in this

old jean suit," she said; "you used to look so nice in your other

clothes." With a laugh he settled his empty sleeve. "Oh, they're

good for warm weather," he responded; "and they wash easily,

which is something. Think, too, what a waste it would be to dress

half a man in a whole suit of broadcloth." "Oh, don't, don't,"

she protested, on the point of tears, but he smiled and patted

her bowed shoulder. "I got over that long ago, honey," he said

gently. "I kicked powerful hard with my one foot at first, but

the dust I raised wasn't a speck in the face of God Almighty.

There, there, we'll have a fine sunrise, and I'm going out to

watch it from my old bench--unless you'll find something for a

single hand to do." She shook her head, smiling with misty eyes.

"You'll have breakfast with me, I suppose," she said. "I got up

early because I couldn't sleep, but it's not yet four o'clock."

For an instant he looked at her gravely. "Worrying about the

day?" "A little." "If I could only manage to hobble along with

you." "Oh, but you couldn't, dear--and the worst of it is having

to wait so long in town for the afternoon stage. I get my sewing,

and then I eat my lunch on the old church steps, and then there

are four mortal hours when I walk about aimlessly in the sun."

"And you wouldn't go to see anybody?" "With my bundle of work,

and in this alpaca? Not for worlds!" He sighed, not

reproachfully, but with the sympathy which projects itself into

states of feeling other than its own. "Well, I wish all the same

you'd let Lila go in with you. I think you make a mistake about

her, Cynthia; she wouldn't feel the strain of it half so much as

you do."

"But I'd feel it for her. No, no, it's better as it is; and she

does walk to the cross-roads with me, you know. Old Jacob

Weatherby brings her back in his wagon. Christopher can't get

off, but he'll come for me at sundown." "Are you sure it isn't

young Jim who fetches Lila?" She frowned. "If it were young Jim,

her going would be impossible--but the old man knows his place

and keeps it." "It's a better place than ours to-day, I reckon,"

returned Tucker, smiling. "To an observer across the road I dare

say the odds would seem considerably in his favour. I met him in

the turnpike last Sunday in a brand new broadcloth."

"Oh, I can't bear to hear you," returned Cynthia passionately.

"If we must go to the dogs, for heaven's sake, let's go

remembering that we are Blakes--or Corbins, if you like."

"Bless your heart, child, I'd just as lief remember I was a Blake

or even a Weatherby, for that matter. Why, Jacob Weatherby's

grandfather was an honest, self-respecting tiller of the soil

when mine used to fish his necktie out of the punch bowl every

Saturday night, people said."

She lifted her black skirt above her knees, and pinned it tightly

at her back with a large safety pin she had taken from her bosom.

Then kneeling on the hearth, she laid the knots of resinous pine

on a crumpled newspaper in the great stone fireplace.

"I don't mind your picking flaws in me," she said dryly, "but I

do wish you would let my great grandfather rest in his grave.

He's about all I've got."

"Well, I beg his pardon for speaking the truth about him,"

returned Tucker penitently; "and now my swallows are so noisy I

must stop their mouths."

He went out humming a tune, while Cynthia hung the boiler from

the crane and mixed the corn-meal dough in a wooden tray.

When breakfast was on the table Lila appeared with a reproachful

face, hurriedly knotting her kerchief as she entered.

"Oh, Cynthia, you promised to let me get breakfast," she said.

"Mother was very restless all night--she dreamed that she was

being married over again--so I slept too late."

"It didn't matter, dear; I was awake, and I didn't mind getting

up. Are you ready to go?"

"All except my hat." Yawning slightly, she raised her hands and

pushed up her clustering hair that was but a shade darker than

Christopher's. Trivial as the likeness was, it began and ended

with her heavy curls, for her hazel eyes held a peculiar liquid

beam, and her face, heart-shaped in outline, had none of the

heaviness of jaw which marred the symmetry of his. A little brown

mole beside the dimple in her cheek gave the finishing touch of

coquetry to the old-world quaintness of her appearance.

As she passed the window on her way to the table she threw a

drowsy glance out into the yard.

"Why, there's Uncle Tucker sitting on the ground," she said; "he

must be crazy."

Cynthia was pouring the hastily made coffee from the steaming

boiler, and she did not look up as she answered.

"You'd better go out and help him up. He's digging worms for some

swallows that fell down his chimney."

"Well, of all the ideas!" exclaimed Lila, laughing, but she went

out with cheerful sweetness and assisted him to his crutches.

A half-hour later, when the meal was over and Christopher had

gone out to the stable, the two women tied on their bonnets and

went softly through the hall. As they passed Mrs. Blake's door

she awoke and called out sharply. "Cynthia, is that you? What are

you doing up so early?" Cynthia paused at strained attention on

the threshold. "I'm going to the Morrisons', mother, to spend the

day. You know I told you Miss Martha had promised to teach me

that new fancy stitch." "But, my dear, surely it is bad manners

to arrive before eleven o'clock. I remember once when I was a

girl that we went over to Meadow Hall before ten in the morning,

and found old Mrs. Dudley just putting on her company cap." "But

they begged me to come to breakfast, dear." "Well, customs

change, of course; but be sure to take Mrs. Morrison a jar of the

green tomato catchup. You know she always fancied it." "Yes, yes;

good-by till evening." She moved on hurriedly, her clumsy shoes

creaking on the bare planks, and a moment afterward as the door

closed behind them they passed out into the first sunbeams.

Beyond the whitewashed fence the old field was silvered by the

heavy dew, and above it the great pine towered like a burnished

cross upon the western sky. To the eastward a solitary thrush was

singing--a golden voice straight from out the sunrise. "This is

worth getting up for!" said Lila, with a long, joyful breath; and

she broke into a tender carolling as spontaneous as the bird's.

The bloom of the summer was in her face, and as she moved with

her buoyant step along the red clay road she was like a rare

flower blown lightly by the wind. To Cynthia's narrowed eyes she

seemed, indeed, a heroine descended from old romance--a maiden to

whom, even in these degenerate modern days, there must at last

arrive a noble destiny. That Lila at the end of her twenty-six

years should have wearied of her long waiting and grown content

to compromise with fate would have appeared to her impossible--as

impossible as the transformation of young Jim Weatherby into the

fairy prince.

"Hush!" she said suddenly, shifting her bundle of sewing from one

arm to the other; "there's a wagon turning from the branch road."

They had reached the first bend beyond the gate, and as they

rounded the long curve, hidden by honey-locusts, a light spring

wagon came rapidly toward them, with Jim Weatherby, in his Sunday

clothes, on the driver's seat. "Father's rheumatism is so bad he

couldn't get out to-day," he explained, as he brought the horses

to a stand; "so as long as I had to take the butter over, I

thought I might save you the five miles." He spoke to Cynthia,

and she drew back stiffly. "It is a pleasant day for a walk," she

returned dryly. "But it's going to be hot," he urged; "I can tell

by the way the sun licks up the dew." A feathery branch of the

honey-locust was in his face, and he pushed it impatiently aside

as he looked at Lila. "I waited late just to take you," he added

wistfully, jumping from his seat and going to the horses' heads.

"Won't you get in?" "You will be so tired, Cynthia," Lila

persuaded. "Think of the walking you have to do in town." As Jim

Weatherby glanced up brightly from the strap he was fastening,

the smile in his blue eyes was like a song of love; and when the

girl met it she heard again the solitary thrush singing in the

sunrise. "You will come?" he pleaded, and this time he looked

straight at her.

"Well, I reckon I will, if you're going anyway," said Cynthia at

last; "and if I drive with you there'll be no use for Lila to go

she can stay with mother."

"But mother doesn't need me," said Lila, in answer to Jim's

wistful eyes; "and it's such a lovely day--after getting up so

early I don't want to stay indoors."

Without a word Jim held out his band to Cynthia, and she climbed,

with unbending dignity, to the driver's seat. "You know you've

got that dress to turn, Lila," she said, as she settled her stiff

skirt primly over her knees.

"I can do it when I get home," answered Lila, laying her hand on

the young man's arm and stepping upon the wheel. "Where shall I

sit, Jim?"

Cynthia turned and looked at her coldly.

"You'd be more comfortable in that chair at the back," she

suggested, and Lila sat down obediently in the little

splitbottomed chair between a brown stone jar of butter and a

basket filled with new-laid eggs. The girl folded her white hands

in the lap of her faded muslin and listened patiently to the

pleasant condescension in Cynthia's voice as she discussed the

belated planting of the crops. As the spring wagon rolled in the

shade of the honey-locusts between the great tobacco fields,

striped with vivid green, the June day filled the younger

sister's eyes with a radiance that seemed but a reflection of its

own perfect beauty. Not once did her lover turn from Cynthia to

herself, but she was conscious, sitting quietly beside the great

brown jar, that for him she filled the morning with her

presence--that he saw her in the blue sky, in the sunny fields,

and in the long red road with the delicate shadowing of the

locusts. In her cramped life there had been so little room in

which her dreams might wander that gradually the romantic

devotion of her old playmate had grown to represent the measure

of her emotional ideal. In spite of her poetic face she was in

thought soundly practical, and though the plain Cynthia might

send a fanciful imagination in pursuit of the impossible, to Lila

the only destiny worth cherishing at heart was the one that drew

its roots deep from the homely soil about her. The stern class

distinctions which had always steeled Cynthia against the

friendly advances of her neighbours troubled the younger sister

not at all. She remembered none of the past grandeur, the old

Blake power of rule, and the stories of gallant indiscretions and

powdered beaux seemed to her as worthless as the moth-eaten satin

rags which filled the garret. She loved the familiar country

children, the making of fresh butter, and honest admiration of

her beauty; and except for the colourless poverty in which they

lived, she might easily have found her placid happiness on the

little farm. With ambition--the bitter, agonised ambition that

Cynthia felt for her--she was as unconcerned as was her blithe

young lover chatting so merrily in the driver's seat. The very

dullness of her imagination had saved her from the awakening that

follows wasted hopes.

"The tobacco looks well," Cynthia was saying in her formal tones;

"all it needs now is a rain to start it growing. You've got yours

all in by now, I suppose."

"Oh, yes; mine was put in before Christopher's," responded Jim,

feeling instantly that the woman beside him flinched at his

unconscious use of her brother's name.

"He is always late," she remarked with forced politeness, and the

conversation dragged until they reached the cross-roads and she

climbed into the stage.

"Be sure to hurry back," were her last words as she rumbled off;

and when, in looking over her shoulder at the first curve, she

saw Lila lift her beaming eyes to Jim Weatherby's face, the

protest of all the dust in the old graveyard was in the groan

that hovered on her lips. She herself would have crucified her

happiness with her own loyal hands rather than have dishonoured

by so much as an unspoken hope the high excellences inscribed

upon the tombstones of those mouldered dead.

In her shabby black dress, with her heavy bundle under her arm,

she passed, a lonely, pathetic figure, through the streets of the

little town. The strange smells fretted her, the hot bricks tired

her feet, and the jarring noises confused her hazy ideas of

direction. On the steps of the old church, where she ate her

lunch, she found a garrulous blind beggar with whom she divided

her slender meal of bacon and cornbread. After a moment's

hesitation, she bought a couple of bananas for a few cents from a

fruit-stand at the corner, and coming back, gave the larger one

to the beggar who sat complaining in the sun. Then, withdrawing

to a conventional distance in the shadow of the steeple, she

waited patiently for the slow hours to wear away. Not until the

long shadow pointed straight from west to east did the ancient

vehicle rattle down the street and the driver pull up for her at

the old church steps. Then it was that with her first sigh of

relief she awoke to the realisation that through all the trying

day her heaviest burden was the memory of Lila's morning look

into the face of the man whose father had been a common labourer

at Blake Hall.

Three hours later, when, pale and exhausted, with an aching head,

she found the stage halting beneath the blasted pine, her

pleasantest impression was of Christopher standing in the yellow

afterglow beside the old spring wagon. The driver spoke to him,

and then, as the horses stopped, turned to toss the

weather-beaten mail-bag to the porch of the country store, where

a group of men were lounging. Among them Cynthia saw the figure

of a girl in a riding habit, who, as the stage halted, gathered

up her long black skirt and ran hastily to the roadside to speak

to some one who remained still seated in the vehicle.

That Christopher's eyes followed the graceful figure in its

finely fitting habit Cynthia noticed with a sudden jealous pang,

detecting angrily the warmth of the admiration in his gaze. The

girl had met his look, she knew, for when she lifted her face to

her companion it was bright with a winter's glow, though the day

was warm. She spoke almost breathlessly, too, as if she had been

running, and Cynthia overhearing her first low words, held her

prim skirt aside, and descended awkwardly over the wheel. She

stumbled in reaching the ground, and the girl with a kindly

movement turned to help her. "I hope you aren't hurt," she said

in crisp, clearcut tones; but the elder woman, recovering herself

with an effort, passed on after an ungracious bow. When she

reached Christopher he was still standing motionless beside the

wagon, and at her first words he started like one awaking from a

pleasant daydream. "So you came, after all," he remarked in an

absent-minded manner. "Of course I came." She was conscious that

she almost snapped the reply. "Did you expect me to spend the

night in town?" "In town? Hardly." He laughed gaily as he helped

her into the wagon; then, with the reins in his hands, he turned

for a last glance at the stage. "Why, what did you think I was

waiting for?" "What you are waiting for now is more to the

purpose," she retorted, pressing her fingers upon her aching

temples. "The afterglow is fading; come, get in."

Without a word he seated himself beside her, and as he touched

the horses lightly with the whip the wagon rolled between the

green tobacco fields. "How delicious the wild grape is!"

exclaimed Cynthia, drawing her breath, "I hope the horses aren't

tired. Have they been at the plough?" "Not since dinner time." It

was clear that his mind was still abstracted, and he kept his

face turned toward the pale red line that lingered on the western

horizon. "This is a queer kind of life," he said presently, still

looking away from her. "We are so poor and so shut in that we

have no idea what people of the world are really like. That girl

out there at the cross-roads, now, she was different from any one

I'd ever seen. Did you hear where she came from?" "I didn't ask,"

Cynthia replied, compressing her lips. "I didn't like the way she

stared." "Stared? At you?" "No, at you. I'm glad you didn't

notice it. It was bold, to say the least." Throwing back his

head, he laughed with boyish merriment; and she saw, as he turned

his face toward her, that his heavy hair had fallen low across

his forehead, giving him a youthful look that became him

strangely. At the instant she softened in her judgment of the

unknown woman at the cross-roads. "Why, she thought I was some

queer beast of burden, I reckon," he returned, "some new farm

animal that made her a little curious. Well, whoever she may be,

she walked as if she felt herself a princess." Cynthia snorted.

"Her habit fitted her like a glove," was her comment, to which

she added after a pause: "As things go, it's just as well you

didn't hear what she said, I reckon." "About me, do you mean?"

"She came down to meet another girl," pursued Cynthia coolly. "I

was getting out, so I don't suppose they noticed me--a shabby old

creature with a bundle. At any rate, when she kissed the other,

she whispered something I didn't hear, and then, 'I've seen that

man before--look!' That was when I stumbled, and that made me

catch the next 'Where?' her friend asked her quickly, and she

answered...." There was a pause, in which the warm dusk was

saturated with the fragrance of the grape blossoms on the fence.

"She answered?" repeated Christopher slowly. Cynthia looked up

and down the road, and then gave the words as if they were a

groan: "In my dreams."

BOOK II . THE TEMPTATION

CHAPTER I. The Romance that Might have Been

With July there came a long rain, and in the burst of sunshine

which followed it the young tobacco shot up fine and straight and

tall, clothing the landscape in a rich, tropical green.

>From morning till night the men worked now in the great fields,

removing the numerous "suckers" from the growing plants, and

pinching off the slender tops to prevent the first beginnings of

a flower, except where, at long spaces, a huge pink cluster would

be allowed to blossom and come to seed.

Christopher, toiling all day alone in his own field, felt the

clear summer dawn break over him, the golden noon gather to full

heat, and the coming night envelop him like a purple mist.

Living, as he did, so close to the earth, himself akin to the

strong forces of the soil, he had grown gradually from his

childhood into a rare physical expression of the large freedom of

natural things.

It was an unusually hot day in mid-August--the time of the

harvest moon and of the dreaded tobacco fly--that he came home at

the dinner hour to find Cynthia standing, spent and pale, beside

the well.

"The sun is awful, Christopher; I don't see how you bear it but

it makes your hair the colour of ripe wheat."

"Oh, I don't mind the sun," he answered, laughing as he wiped the

sweat from his face and stooped for a drink from the tilted

bucket. "I'm too much taken up just now with fighting those

confounded tobacco flies. They were as thick as thieves last

night."

"Uncle Boaz is going to send the little darkies out to hunt them

at sundown," returned Cynthia. "I've promised them an apple for

every one they catch."

Her gaze wandered over the broad fields, rich in promise, and she

added after a moment, "Fletcher's crop has come on splendidly."

"The more's the pity."

For a long breath she looked at him in silence; at the massive

figure, the face burned to the colour of terra-cotta, the thick,

wheaten-brown hair then, with an impulsive gesture, she spoke in

her wonderful voice, which held so many possibilities of passion:

"I didn't tell you, Christopher, that I'd found out the name of

the girl at the cross-roads. She went away the day afterward and

just got back yesterday."

Something in her tone made the young man look up quickly, his

face paling beneath the sunburn.

All the boyish cheerfulness he had worn of late faded suddenly

from his look.

"Who is she?" he asked.

"Jim Weatherby knew. He had seen her several times on horseback,

and he says she's Maria Fletcher, that ugly little girl, grown

up. She hates the life here, he says, and they think she is going

to marry before the winter. Fletcher was talking down at the

store about a rich man who is in love with her."

Christopher stooped to finish his drink, and then rose slowly to

his full height.

"Well, one Fletcher the less will be a good riddance," he said

harshly, as he went into the house.

In the full white noon he returned to the field, working steadily

on his crop until the sunset. Back and forth among the tall green

plants, waist deep in their rank luxuriance, he passed with

careful steps and attentive eyes, avoiding the huge "sand leaves"

spreading upon the ground and already yellowing in the August

weather. As he searched for the hidden "suckers" along the great

juicy stalks, he removed his hat lest it should bruise the tender

tops, and the golden sunshine shone full on his bared head.

Around him the landscape swept like an emerald sea, over which

the small shadows rippled in passing waves, beginning at the rail

fence skirting the red clay road and breaking at last upon the

darker green of the far-off pines. Here and there a tall pink

blossom rose like a fantastic sail from the deep and rocked

slowly to and fro in the summer wind. When at last the sun

dropped behind the distant wood and a red flame licked at the

western clouds, he still lingered on, dreaming idly, while his

hands followed their accustomed task. Big green moths hovered

presently around him, seeking the deep rosy tubes of the

clustered flowers, and alighting finally to leave their

danger-breeding eggs under the drooping leaves. The sound of

laughter floated suddenly from the small Negro children, who were

pursuing the tobacco flies between the furrows. He had ceased

from his work, and come out into the little path that trailed

along the edge of the field, when he saw a woman's figure, in a

gown coloured like April flowers, pass from the new road over the

loosened fence-rails. For a breathless instant he wavered in the

path; then turning squarely, he met her questioning look with

indifferent eyes. The new romance had shriveled at the first

touch of the old hatred. Maria, holding her skirt above her

ruffled petticoat, stood midway of the little trail, a single

tobacco blossom waving over her leghorn hat. She was no longer

the pale girl who had received Carraway with so composed a

bearing, for her face and her gown were now coloured delicately

with an April bloom. "I followed the new road," she explained,

smiling, "and all at once it ended at the fence. Where can I take

it up again?" He regarded her gravely. "The only way you can take

it up again is to go back to it," he answered. "It doesn't cross

my land, you know, and--I beg your pardon--but I don't care to

have you do so. Besides staining your dress, you will very likely

bruise my tobacco." He had never in his life stood close to a

woman who wore perfumed garments, and he felt, all at once, that

her fragrance was going to his brain. Delicate as it was, he

found it heady, like strong drink. "But I could walk very close

to

the fence," said the girl, surprised. "Aren't you afraid of the

poisonous oak?" "Desperately. I caught it once as a child. It

hurt so." He shook his head impatiently. "Apart from that, there

is no reason why you should come on my land. All the prettiest

walks are on the other side--and over here the hounds are taught

to warn off trespassers." "Am I a trespasser?" "You are worse,"

he replied boorishly; "you're a Fletcher." "Well, you're a

savage," she retorted, angered in her turn. "Is it simply because

I happen to be a Fletcher that you become a bear?" "Because you

happen to be a Fletcher," he repeated, and then looked calmly and

coolly at her dainty elegance.

"And if I were anybody else, I suppose, you would let me walk

along that fence, and even be polite enough to keep the dogs from

eating me up?" "If you were anybody else and didn't injure my

tobacco--yes."

"But as it is I must keep away?"

"All I ask of you is to stay on the other side." "And if I

don't?" she questioned, her spirit flaring up to match with his,

"and if I don't?" All the natural womanhood within her responded

to the appeal of his superb manhood; all the fastidious

refinement with which she was overlaid was alive to the rustic

details which marred the finished whole--to the streak of earth

across his forehead, to the coarseness of his ill-fitting

clothes, to the tobacco juice staining his finger nails bright

green. On his side, the lady of his dreams had shrunken to a

witch; and he shook his head again in an effort to dispel the

sweetness that so strangely moved him. "In that case you will

meet the hounds one day and get your dress badly torn, I fear."

"And bitten, probably." "Probably." "Well, I don't think it would

be worth it," said the girl, in a quiver of indignation. "If I

can help it, I shall never set my foot on your land again." "The

wisest thing you can do is to keep off," he retorted. Turning,

with an angry movement, she walked rapidly to the fence, heedless

of the poisonous oak along the way; and Christopher, passing her

with a single step, lowered the topmost rails that she might

cross over the more easily. "Thank you," she said stiffly, as she

reached the other side. "It was a pleasure," he responded, in the

tone his father might have used when in full Grecian dress at the

fancy ball. "You mean it is a pleasure to assist in getting rid

of me?"

"What I mean doesn't matter," he answered irritably, and added,

"I

wish to God you were anybody else!" At this she turned and faced

him squarely as he held the rails. "But how can I help being

myself?" she demanded. "You can't, and there's an end of it." "Of

what?" "Oh, of everything--and most of all of the evening at the

cross-roads." "You saw me then?" she asked. "You know I did," he

answered, retreating into his rude simplicity. "And you liked me

then?"

"Then," he laughed, "why, I was fool enough to dream of you for a

month afterward." "How dare you!" she cried. "Well, I shan't do

it again," he assured her insolently. "You can't possibly dislike

me any more than I do you," she remarked, drawing back step by

step. "You're a savage, and a mean one at that--but all the same,

I should like to know why you began to hate me." He laid the

topmost rail along the fence and turned away. "Ask your

grandfather!" he called back, as he passed into the tobacco

field, with her fragrance still in his nostrils.

Maria, on the other side, walked slowly homeward along the new

road that had ended so abruptly. Her lip trembled, and, letting

her skirt drag in the dust, she put up her hand to suppress the

first hint of emotion. It angered her that he had had the power

to provoke her so, and for the moment the encounter seemed to

have bereft her of her last shreds of womanly reserve. It was as

if a strong wind had blown over her, laying her bosom bare, and

she flushed at the knowledge that he had heard the fluttering of

her breath and seen the indignant tears gather to her eyes--he a

boorish stranger who hated her because of her name. For the first

time in her life she had run straight against an impregnable

prejudice--had felt her feminine charm ineffectual against a

stern masculine resistance. She was at the age when the

artificial often outweighs the real--when the superficial manner

with a woman is apt to be misunderstood, and so to her

Christopher Blake now appeared stripped even of his physical

comeliness; the interview had left her with an impression of mere

vulgar incivility. As she entered the house she met Fletcher

passing through the hall with the mail-bag in his hand, and a

little later, while she sat in a big chair by her chamber window,

Miss Saidie came in and laid a letter in her lap. "It's from Mr.

Wyndham, I think, Maria. Shall I light a candle?" "Not yet; it is

so warm I like the twilight." "But won't you read the letter?"

"Oh, presently. There's time enough." Miss Saidie came to the

window and leaned out to sniff the climbing roses, her shapeless

figure outlined against the purple dusk spangled with fireflies.

Her presence irritated the girl, who stirred restlessly in her

chair. "Is he coming, Maria, do you think?"

"If I let him--yes." "And he wants to marry you?" The girl

laughed bitterly. "He hasn't seen me in my home yet," she

answered, "and our vulgarity may be too much for him. He's very

particular, you know." The woman at the window flinched as if she

had been struck. "But if he loves you, Maria?" "Oh, he loves me

for what isn't me," she answered, "for my 'culture,' as he calls

it--for the gloss that has been put over me in the last ten

years." "Still if you care for him, dear--" "I don't know--I

don't know," said Maria, speaking in the effort to straighten her

disordered thoughts rather than for the enlightenment of Miss

Saidie. "I was sure I loved him before I came home--but this

place upsets me so--I hate it. It makes me feel raw, crude,

unlike myself. When I come back here I seem to lose all that I

have learned, and to grow vulgar, like Jinnie Spade, at the

store." "Not like her, Maria." "Well, I ought to know better, of

course, but I don't believe I do--not when I'm here." "Then why

not go away? Don't think of us; we can get along as we used to

do." "I don't think of you," said the girl. "I don't think of

anybody in the world except myself--and that's the awful

part--that's the part I hate. I'm selfish to the core, and I know

it."

"But you do love Jack Wyndham?" "Oh, I love him to distraction!

Light the candle, Aunt Saidie, and let me read his letter. I can

tell you, word for word, what is in it before I break the seal.

Six months ago I went into a flutter at the sight of his

handwriting. Six months before that I was madly in love with Dick

Bright--and six months from to-day--Oh, well, I suppose I really

haven't much heart to know--and if I ever care for anybody it

must be for Jack--that's positive."

Standing beside the lighted candle on the bureau, she read the

letter twice over, and then turning away, wrote her answer

kneeling beside the big chair at the window.

CHAPTER II. The Romance that Was

Waking in the night she said again, "I love him to distraction,"

and slipping under the dimity curtains of the bed, sought his

letter where she had left it on the bureau. The full light of the

harvest moon was in the room--a light so soft that it lay like a

yellow fluid upon the floor. It seemed almost as if one might

stoop and fill the open palms.

She found the letter thrown carelessly upon the pincushion, and

holding it to her lips, paused a moment beside the window,

looking beyond the shaven lawn and the clustered oaks to where

the tobacco fields lay golden beneath the moon. It was such a

night as seemed granted by some kindly deity for the fulfillment

of lovers' vows, and the girl, standing beside the open window,

grew suddenly sad, as one who sees a vision with the knowledge

that it is not life. When presently she went back to bed it was

to lie sleepless until dawn, with the love letter held tightly in

her hands.

The next day a restlessness like that of fever worked in her

blood, and she ran from turret to basement of the roomy old

house, calling Will to come and help her find amusement.

"Play ball with me, Will," she said; "I feel as if I were a child

to-day." " Oh, it's no fun playing with a girl," replied the boy;

"besides, I am going fishing in the river with Zebbadee Blake; I

shan't be back till supper," and shouldering his fishing-rod he

flung off with his can of worms. Miss Saidie was skimming big

pans of milk in the spring-house, and Maria watched her idly for

a time, growing suddenly impatient of the leisurely way in which

the spoon travelled under the yellow cream. "I don't see how you

can be so fond of it," she said at last. "Lord, child, I never

could abide dairy work," responded Miss Saidie, setting the

skimmed pan aside and carefully lifting another from the flat

stones over which a stream of water trickled. "And yet you've

done nothing else all your long life," wondered Maria. "When it

comes to doing a thing in this world," returned the little woman,

removing a speck of dust from the cream with the point of the

spoon, "I don't ask myself whether I like it or not, but what's

the best way to get it done. I've spent sixty years doing things

I wasn't fond of, and I don't reckon I'm any the less happy for

having done 'em well." "But I should be," asserted Maria, and

then, with her white parasol over her bared head, she started for

a restless stroll along the old road under the great chestnuts.

She had reached the abandoned ice-pond, and was picking her way

carefully in the shadow of the trees, when the baying of a pack

of hounds in full cry broke on her ears, and with the nervous

tremor she had associated from childhood with the sound, she

stopped short in the road and waited anxiously for the hunt to

pass. Even as she hesitated, feeling in imagination all the blind

terror of the pursuit, and determined to swing into a chestnut

bough in case of an approach, a small animal darted suddenly from

around the bend in the sunken road, and an instant afterward the

hounds in hot chase broke from the cover. For a single breath the

girl, dropping her parasol, looked at the lowered branch; then as

the small animal neared her her glance fell, and she saw that it

was a little yellow dog, with hanging red tongue and eyes bulging

in terror. From side to side of the red clay road the creature

doubled for a moment in its anguish, and then with a spring,

straight as the flight of a homing bird, fled to the shelter of

Maria's skirts. Quick as a heart-beat the girl's personal fears

had vanished, and as an almost savage instinct of battle awoke in

her, she stooped with a protecting movement and, picking the

small dog from the ground, held him high above her head as the

hounds came on. A moment before her limbs had shaken at the

distant cries; now facing the immediate presence of the danger,

she felt the rage of her pity flow like an infusion of strong

blood through her veins. Until they dashed her to the ground she

knew that she would stand holding the hunted creature above her

head. Like a wave the pack broke instantly upon her, forcing her

back against the body of the chestnut, and tearing her dress, at

the first blow, from her bosom to the ground. She had felt their

weight upon her breast, their hot breath full in her face, when,

in the midst of the confused noises in her ears, she heard a loud

oath that rang out like a shot, followed by the strokes of a

rawhide whip on living flesh. So close came the lash that the

curling end smote her cheek and left a thin flame from ear to

mouth. The lessening sounds became all at once like the silence;

and when the hounds, beaten back, slunk, whimpering, to heel, she

lowered her eyes until she looked straight into the face of

Christopher Blake. "My God! You have pluck!" he said, and his

face was like that of a dead man. Still holding the dog above her

head, she lay motionless against the body of the tree. "Drive the

beasts away," she pleaded like a frightened child. Without a word

he turned and ordered the hounds home, and they crawled

obediently back along the sunken road. Then he looked at her

again. "I saw them start the dog on my land," he said, "and I ran

across the field as soon as I could find my whip. If I hadn't

come up when I did they would have torn you to pieces. Not

another man in the world could have brought them in. Look at your

dress." Glancing down, she followed the long slit from bosom to

hem. "I hate them!" she exclaimed fiercely. "So it was your dog

they started?" "Mine!" She lowered the yellow cur, holding him

close in her arms, where he nestled shivering. "I never saw him

before, but he's mine now; I saved him. I shall name him Agag,

because the bitterness of death is past." "Well, rather--Look

here," he burst out impulsively, "you've got the staunchest pluck

I ever saw. I never knew a man brave enough to stand up against

those hounds--and you--why, I don't believe you flinched an

eyelash, and--by George the dog wasn't yours after all." " As if

that made a difference!" she flashed out. "Why, he ran to me for

help--and they might have killed me, but I'd never have given him

up."

"I believe you," he declared. She was conscious of a slight

thrill that passed quickly, leaving her white and weak. "I feel

tired," she said, pressing hard against the tree. "Will you be so

good as to pick up my parasol?" "Tired!" he exclaimed, and after

a moment, "Your face is hurt--did the dogs do it?" She shook her

head. "You struck me with your whip." "Is that so? I can't say

after this that I never lifted my hand against a woman--but harsh

measures are sometimes necessary, I reckon. Does it smart?" She

touched the place lightly. "Oh, it's no matter!" she returned. "I

suppose I ought really to thank you for taking the trouble to

save my life but I don't, because, after all, the hounds are

yours, you know." "Yes, I know; and they're good hounds, too, in

their way. The dog had no business on their land." "And they're

taught to warn off trespassers? Well, I hardly fancy their manner

of conveying the hint." "It is sometimes useful, all the while."

"Ah, in case of a Fletcher, I presume."

"In case of a Fletcher," he repeated, his face darkening. "do you

know I had entirely forgotten who you were?"

"It's time you were remembering it," she returned, "for I am most

decidedly a Fletcher."

For an instant he scowled upon her.

"Then you are most decidedly a devil," was his retort, as he

stooped to pick up her parasol from the road. "There's not much

left of it," he remarked, handing it to her.

"As things go, I dare say I ought to be grateful that they spared

the spokes," she said impatiently. "It does seem disagreeable

that I can't go for a short stroll along my own road without the

risk of having my clothes torn from my back. You really must keep

your horrid beasts from becoming a public danger."

"They never chase anything that keeps off my farm," he replied

coolly. "There's not so well trained a pack anywhere in the

county. No other dogs around here could have been beaten back at

the death."

"I fear that doesn't afford me the gratification you seem to

feel--particularly as the death you allude to would have been

mine. I suppose I ought to be overpowered with gratitude for the

whole thing, but unfortunately I'm not. I have had a very

unpleasant experience and I can't help feeling that I owe it to

you."

"You're welcome to feel about it anyway you please," he

responded, as Maria, tucking the dog under her arm, started down

the road to the Hall, the tattered parasol held straight above

her head.

At the house she carried Agag to her room, where she spent the

afternoon in the big chair by the window. Miss Saidie, coming in

with her dinner, inquired if she were sick, and then picked up

the torn dress from the bed.

"Why, Maria, how on earth did you do it?"

"Some hounds jumped on me in the road."

"Well, I never! They were those dreadful Blake beasts, I know. I

declare, I'll go right down and speak to Brother Bill about 'em."

"For heaven's sake, don't," protested the girl. "We've had

quarrelling enough as it is--and, tell me, Aunt Saidie, have you

ever known what it was all about?"

Miss Saidie was examining the rent with an eye to a possible

mending, and she did not look up as she answered. "I never

understood exactly myself, but your grandpa says they squandered

all their money and then got mad because they had to sell the

place. That's about the truth of it, I reckon."

"The Hall belonged to them once, didn't it?"

"Oh, a long time ago, when they were rich. Sakes alive, Maria,

what's the matter with your face?"

"I struck it getting away from the hounds. It's too bad, isn't

it? And Jack coming so soon, too. Do I look very ugly?"

"You're a perfect fright now, but I'll fix you a liniment to draw

the bruise away. It will be all right in a day or two. I declare,

if you haven't gone and brought a little po'-folksy yellow dog

into the house." Maria was feeding Agag with bits of chicken from

her plate, bending over him as he huddled against her dress.

"I found him in the road," she returned, "and I'm going to keep

him. I saved him from the hounds."

"Well, it seems to me you might have got a prettier one,"

remarked Miss Saidie, as she went down to mix the liniment.

It was several mornings after this that Fletcher, coming into the

dining-room where Maria sat at a late breakfast, handed her a

telegram, and stood waiting while she tore it open.

"Jim Weatherby brought it over from the crossroads," he said. "It

got there last night."

"I hope there's nobody dead, child," observed Miss Saidie, from

the serving-table, where she was peeling tomatoes.

"More likely it points to a marriage, eh, daughter?" chuckled

Fletcher jocosely.

The girl folded the paper and replaced it carefully in the

envelope. "It's from Jack Wyndham," she said, "and he comes this

evening. May I take the horses to the crossroads, grandpa?"

"Well, I did have a use for them," responded Fletcher, in high

good-nature, "but, seeing as your young fellow doesn't come every

day, I reckon I'll let you have 'em out."

Maria flinched at his speech; and then as the clear pink spread

evenly in her cheeks, she spoke in her composed tones. "I may as

well tell you, grandpa, that we shall marry almost immediately,"

she said.

CHAPTER III. Fletcher's Move and Christopher's Counterstroke

Not until September, when he lounged one day with a glass of beer

in the little room behind Tom Spade's country store, did

Christopher hear the news of Maria's approaching marriage. It was

Sol Peterkin who delivered it, hiccoughing in the enveloping

smoke from several pipes, as he sat astride an overturned flour

barrel in one corner.

"I jest passed a wagonload of finery on the way to the Hall," he

said, bulging with importance. "It's for the gal's weddin', I

reckon; an' they do say she's a regular Jezebel as far as clothes

go. I met her yestiddy with her young man that is to be, an' the

way she was dressed up wasn't a sight for modest eyes. Not that

she beguiled me, suh, though the devil himself might have been

excused for mistakin' her for the scarlet woman--but I'm past the

time of life when a man wants a woman jest to set aroun' an' look

at. I tell you a good workin' pair of hands goes to my heart a

long ways sooner than the blackest eyes that ever oggled."

"Well, my daughter Jinnie has been up thar sewin' for a month,"

put in Tom Spade, a big, greasy man, who looked as if he had

lived on cabbage from his infancy, "an' she says that sech a

sight of lace she never laid eyes on. Why, her very stockin's

have got lace let in 'em, Jinnie says."

"Now, that's what I call hardly decent," remarked Sol, as he spat

upon the dirty floor. "Them's the enticin' kind of women that a

fool hovers near an' a wise man fights shy of. Lace in her

stockin's! Well, did anybody ever?"

"She's got a pretty ankle, you may be sho'," observed Matthew

Field, a long wisp of a man who had married too early to repent

it too late, "an' I must say, if it kills me, that I always had a

sharp eye for ankles."

"It's a pity you didn't look as far up as the hand," returned Tom

Spade, with boisterous mirth. "I have heard that Eliza lays hers

on right heavy."

"That's so, suh, that's so," admitted Matthew, puffing smoke like

a shifting engine, "but that's the fault of the marriage service,

an' I'll stand to it at the Judgment Day yes, suh, in the very

presence of Providence who made it. I tell you, 'twill I led that

woman to the altar she was the meekest-mouthed creetur that ever

wiggled away from a kiss. Why, when I stepped on her train jest

as I swung her up the aisle, if you believe me, all she said was,

'I hope you didn't hurt yo' foot'; an', bless my boots, ten

minutes later, comin' out of church, she whispered in my year,

'You white-livered, hulkin' hound, you, get off my veil!' Well,

well, it's sad how the ceremony can change a woman's heart."

"That makes it safer always to choose a widow," commented Sol.

"Now, they do say that this is a fine weddin' up at the Hall--

but I have my doubts. Them lace let in stockin's ain't to my

mind."

"What's the rich young gentleman like?" inquired Tom Spade, with

interest. "Jinnie says he's the kind of man that makes kissin'

come natural--but I can't say that that conveys much to the

father of a family."

"Oh, he's the sort that looks as if God Almighty had put the

finishin' touches an' forgot to make the man," replied Sol. "He's

got a mustache that you would say went to bed every night in curl

papers."

Christopher pushed back his chair and drained his glass standing,

then with a curt nod to Tom Spade he went out into the road.

It was the walk of a mile from the store to his house, and as he

went on he fell to examining the tobacco, which appeared to ripen

hour by hour in the warm, moist season. There was no danger of

frost as yet, and though a little of Fletcher's crop had already

been cut, the others had left theirs to mature in the favourable

weather. From a clear emerald the landscape had changed to a

yellowish green, and the huge leaves had crinkled at the edges

like shirred silk. Here and there pale-brown splotches on a plant

showed that it had too quickly ripened, or small perforations

revealed the destructive presence of a hidden tobacco worm.

As Christopher neared the house the hounds greeted him with a

single bay, and the cry brought Cynthia hastily out upon the

porch and along the little path. At the gate she met him, and

slipping her hand under his arm, drew him across the road to the

rail fence that bordered the old field. At sight of her tearless

pallor his ever-present fear shot up, and without waiting for her

words he cried out quickly: "Is mother ill?"

"No, no," she answered, "oh, no; but, Christopher, it is the next

worse thing."

He thought for a breath. "Then she has found out?"

"It's not that either," she shook her head. "Oh, Christopher,

it's Fletcher!"

"It's Fletcher! What in thunder have we to do with Fletcher?"

"You remember the deed of trust on the place--the three hundred

dollars we borrowed when mother was sick. Fletcher has bought it

from Tom Spade and he means to foreclose it in a week. He has

advertised the farm at the cross-roads."

He paled with anger. "Why, I saw Tom about it three days ago," he

said, striking the rotten fence rail until it broke and fell

apart; "he told me it could run on at the same interest."

"It's since then that Fletcher has bought it. He meant it as a

surprise, of course, to drive us out whether or no, but Sam

Murray came straight up to tell you."

He stood thinking hard, his eyes on the waving goldenrod in the

old field.

"I'll sell the horses," he said at last.

"And starve? Besides, they wouldn't bring the money."

"Then we'll sell the furniture--every last stick! We'll sell the

clothes from our backs--I'll sell myself into slavery before

Fletcher shall beat me now!"

"We've sold all we've got," said Cynthia; "the old furniture is

too heavy--all that's left; nobody about here wants it."

"I tell you I'll find those three hundred dollars if I have to

steal them. I'd rather go to prison than have Fletcher get the

place."

"Then he'd leave it in the end," remarked Cynthia hopelessly;

adding after a pause, "I've thought it all out, dear, and we must

steal the money--we must steal it from mother."

"From mother!" he echoed, touched to the quick.

"You know her big diamond," sobbed the woman, "the one in her

engagement ring, that she never used to take off, even at night,

till her fingers got so thin."

"Oh, I couldn't!" he protested.

"There's no other way," pursued Cynthia, without noticing him.

"Surely, it is better than having her turned out in her old

age--surely, anything is better than that. We can take the ring

to-night after she goes to bed, and pry the diamond from the

setting; it is held only by gold claws, you know. Then we will

put in it the piece of purple glass from Docia's wedding

ring--the shape is the same; and she will never find it out. Oh,

mother! mother!"

"I can't, "returned Christopher stubbornly; "it is like robbing

her, and she so blind and helpless. I cannot do it."

"Then I will," said Cynthia quietly, and, turning from him, she

walked rapidly to the house.

Later that night, when he had gone up to his little garret loft,

she came to him with the two rings in her outstretched hand--the

superb white diamond and the common purple setting in Docia's

brass hoop.

"Lend me your knife," she said, kneeling beside the smoky oil

lamp; and without a word he drew his claspknife from his pocket,

opened the blade, and held the handle toward her. She took it

from him, and then knelt motionless for an instant looking at the

diamond, which shone like a star in her hollowed palm. Presently

she stooped and kissed it, and then taking the fine point of the

blade, carefully pried the gold claws back from the imprisoned

stone.

"She has worn it for fifty years," she said softly, seeing the

jewel contract and give out a deeper flame to her misty eyes.

"It is robbery," he protested.

"It is robbery for her sake!" she flashed out angrily.

"All the same, it seems bitterly cruel."

With deft fingers she removed the bit of purple glass from

Docia's ring and inserted it between the gold claws, which she

pressed securely down. "To the touch there is no difference," she

said, closing her eyes. "She will never know."

Rising from her knees, she gazed steadily at the loosened diamond

lying in her hand; then, wrapping it in cotton, she placed it in

a little wooden box from a jeweller of fifty years ago. "You must

get up to-morrow and take it to town," she went on. "Carry it to

Mr. Withers--he knows us. There is no other way," she added

hastily.

"There is no other way, I know," he repeated, as he held out his

hand.

"And you'll be back after sundown."

"Not until night. I shall walk over from the cross-roads."

For a time they were both silent, and he, walking to the narrow

window, looked out into the moist darkness. The smell of the oil

lamp oppressed the atmosphere inside, and the damp wind in his

face revived in a measure his lowered spirits. He seemed suddenly

able to cope with life--and with Fletcher.

Far away there was a faint glimmer among the trees, now shining

clear, now almost lost in mist, and he knew it to be a lighted

window at Blake Hall. The thought of Maria's lace stockings came

to him all at once, and he was seized with a rage that was

ludicrously large for so small a cause. Confused questions

whirled in his brain, struggling for recognition: "I am here and

she is there, and what is the meaning of it all? I know in spite

of everything I might have loved her, and yet I know still better

that it is not love, but hate I now feel. What is the difference,

after all? And why this eternal bother of possibilities?" He

turned presently and spoke:

"And you got this without her suspecting it?"

"She was sleeping like a child, and Lila was in the little bed in

her chamber. Often she is restless, disturbed by her dreams, but

to-night she lies very quiet, and she smiled once as if she were

so happy."

"And to-morrow she will wear the ring with its setting of purple

glass."

"She will never know--see, it fits perfectly. I have fastened it

carefully. After all, what does it matter to her--the ring is

still the same, and the value of it was for her in the

association." Again he looked out of the window, and the distant

glimmer gathered radiance and shone brightly among the trees. "I

am here and she is there, and what is the meaning of it all?"

CHAPTER IV. A Gallant Deed that Leads to Evil

Two days later Christopher met Fletcher in the little room behind

the store and paid down the three hundred dollars in the presence

of Sam Murray. Several loungers, who had been seasoning their

drinks with leisurely stories, hastily drained their glasses and

withdrew at Fletcher's entrance, and when the three men came

together to settle the affair of the mortgage they were alone in

the presence of the tobacco-stained walls, the square pine table

with its dirty glasses, and the bills of notice posted beside the

door. Among them Christopher had seen the public advertisement of

his farm--a rambling statement in large letters, signifying that

the place would be sold for debt on Monday, the twenty-fifth of

September, at twelve o'clock. "I want the money right flat down.

Are you sure you've got it?" were Fletcher's first words after

his start of angry surprise. For answer Christopher drew the roll

of bills from his pocket and counted them out upon the table.

"Here it is," he said, "and I am done with you for good and

all--with you and your rascally cheating ways," "Come, come,

let's go easy," warned Sam Murray, a fat, well-to-do farmer, who

was accustomed to act the part of a lawyer in small transactions.

Fletcher flushed purple and threw off his rage in a sneering

guffaw. "Now that sounds well from him, doesn't it?" he inquired

"when everybody knows he hasn't a beggarly stitch on earth but

that strip of land he thinks so much of." "And whose fault is

that, Bill Fletcher?" demanded the young man, throwing the last

note down. "Oh, well, I don't bear you any grudge," responded

Fletcher, with an abrupt assumption of goodnatured tolerance;

"and to show I'm a well-meaning man in spite of abuse, I'll let

the debt run on two years longer at the same interest if you

choose."

Christopher laughed shortly. "That's all right, Sam," he said,

without replying directly to the offer. "I owe him too much

already to hope to pay it back in a single lifetime." "Well,

you're a cantankerous, hard-headed fool, that's all I've got to

say," burst out Fletcher, swallowing hard, and the sooner you get

to the poorhouse along your own road the better it'll be for the

rest of us." "You may be sure I'll take care not to go along

yours. I'll have honest men about me, at any rate." "Then it's

more than you've got a right to expect."

Christopher grew pale to the lips. "What do you mean, you

scoundrel?" he cried, taking a single step forward. "Come, come,

let's go easy," said Sam Murray persuasively, rising from his

chair at the table. "Now that this little business is all settled

there's no need for another word. I haven't much opinion of words

myself, anyhow. They're apt to set fire to a dry tongue, that's

what I say." "What do you mean?" repeated Christopher, without

swerving from his steady gaze. Tom Spade glanced in at the open

door, and, catching Fletcher's eye, hurriedly retreated. A small

boy with a greasy face came in and gathered up the glasses with a

clanking noise. "What do you mean, you coward?" demanded

Christopher for the third time. He had not moved an inch from the

position he had first assumed, but the circle about his mouth

showed blue against the sunburn on his face. Fletcher raised his

hand and spoke suddenly with a snort. "Oh, you needn't kick so

about swallowing it," he said. "Everybody knows that your

grandfather never paid a debt he owed, and your father was mighty

little better. He was only saved from becoming a thief by being a

drunkard." He choked over the last word, for Christopher, with an

easy, almost leisurely movement, had struck him full in the

mouth. The young man's arm was raised again, but before it fell

Sam Murray caught it back. "I say, Tom, there's the devil to pay

here!" he shouted, and Tom Spade rushed hurriedly through the

doorway. "Now, now, that'll never do, Mr. Christopher," he

reasoned, with a deference he would never have wasted upon

Fletcher. "Why, he's old enough to be yo' pa twice over."

A white fleck was on Fletcher's beard, and as he wiped it away he

spoke huskily. "It's a clear case of assault and I'll have the

law on him," he said. "Sam Murray, you saw him hit me square in

the face."

"Bless your life, I wasn't looking, suh," responded Sam

pleasantly. "I miss a lot in this life by always happening to

look the other way."

"I'll have the law on you," cried Fletcher again, shaking back

his heavy eyebrows.

"You're welcome to have every skulking hound in the county on

me," Christopher replied, loosening Sam Murray's restraining

grasp. "If I can settle you I reckon I can settle them; but the

day you open your lying mouth to me again I'll shoot you down as

I would a mad dog--and wash my hands clean afterward!"

He looked round for his harvest hat, picked it up from the floor

where it had fallen, and walked slowly out of the room.

In the broad noon outside he staggered an instant, dazzled by the

glare.

"Had a drop too much, ain't you, Mr. Christopher?" a voice

inquired at his side, and, looking down, he saw Sol Peterkin

sitting on a big wooden box just outside the store.

"Not too much to mind my own business," was his curt reply.

"Oh, no harm's meant, suh, an' I hope none's taken," responded

the little man good-naturedly. "I saw you walk kinder crooked,

that was all, an'it came to me that you might be needin' an arm

toward home. Young gentlemen will be gentlemen, that's the truth,

suh, an' in my day I reckon I've steadied the legs of mo' young

beaux than you could count on your ten fingers. Good Lord, when

it comes to thinkin' of those Christmas Eve frolics that we had

befo' the war! Why, they use to say that you couldn't get to the

Hall unless you swam your way through apple toddy. Jest to think!

an' here I've been settin' an' countin' the bundles goin' up

thar now--"

"I'm looking for a box, Tom," said a clear voice at Christopher's

back, "a big paper hat-box that ought to have come by express--"

He turned quickly and saw Maria Fletcher in a little cart in the

road, with a strange young man holding the reins. As Christopher

swung round, she nodded pleasantly, but with a cool stare he

passed down the steps and out into the road, carrying with him a

distasteful impression of the strange young man. Yet from that

first hurried glimpse he had brought away only the picture of a

brown mustache.

"By George, I'd like to see that fellow in the prize ring," he

heard the stranger remark as he went by. "Do they have knock-outs

around here, I wonder?"

"Oh, I dare say he'd oblige you with one if you took the trouble

to tread on his preserves," was the girl's laughing rejoinder.

A massive repulsion swept over Christopher, pervading his entire

body--repulsion that was but a recoil from his exhausted rage. In

this new emotion there were both weariness and self-pity, and to

his mental vision there showed clearly, with an impersonal

detachment, his own figure in relation to the scenes among which

he moved. "That is I yonder," he might have said had he been able

to disentangle thought from sensation, "plodding along there

through the red mud in the road. Look at the coarse clothes,

smelling of axle-grease, the hands knotted by toil and stained

with tobacco juice, the face soiled with sweat and clay. That is

I, who was born with the love of ease and the weakness to

temptation in my blood, with the love, too, of delicate food, of

rare wines, and of beautiful women. Once I craved these things;

now the thought of them troubles me no longer, for I work in the

sun all day and go home to enjoy my coarse food. Is it because I

have been broken to this life as a young horse is broken to the

plough, or have all the desires I have known been swallowed up in

a single hatred--a hatred as jealous and as strong as love?"

It was his nightly habit, lying upon his narrow bed in the little

loft, to yield some moments before sleeping to his idle dreams of

vengeance--to plan exquisite punishments and impossible

retaliations. In imagination he had so often seen Fletcher drop

dead before him, had so often struck the man down with his own

hand, that there were hours when he almost believed the deed to

have been done--when something like madness gripped him, and his

hallucinations took the shape and colour of life itself. At such

times he was conscious of the exhilaration that comes in the

instants of swift action, when events move quickly, and one rises

beyond the ordinary level of experience. When the real moment

came--the supreme chance--he wondered if he would meet it as

triumphantly as he met his dreams? Now, plodding along the rocky

road, he went over again all the old schemes for the great

revenge.

The small cart whirled past him, scattering dried mud drops in

his face, and he caught the sound of bright girlish laughter.

Looking after it, he saw the flutter of cherry-coloured ribbons

coiling outward in the wind, and he remembered, watching the gay

streamers, that the only woman he had ever kissed was eating

cherries at the moment. Trivial as the recollection was, it

started other associations, and he followed the escaping memory

of that boyish romance, blithe and short-lived, which was killed

at last by a single yielded kiss. At sixteen it had seemed to him

that when he caught the girl of the cherries in his arms he

should hold veritable happiness; and yet afterward there was only

a great heaviness and something of the repulsion that he felt

to-day. Happiness was not to be found on a woman's lips he had

learned this in his boyhood; and then even as the knowledge

returned to him he found himself savagely regretting that he had

not kissed Maria Fletcher the day he found her on his land--a

kiss of anger, not of love, which she would have loathed all her

life--and have remembered! To have her utterly forget him--pass

on serenely into her marriage, hardly remembering that he hated

her--this was the bitterest thing he had to face; but with the

brutal wish, he softened in recalling the tremor of her lip as

she turned away--the indignant quiver of her eyelashes. Again

came the thought: "I know in spite of everything I might have

loved her, and yet I know still better that it is not love, but

hate I now feel." Her fragrance, floating in the sunshine, filled

his nostrils, and involuntarily he glanced over his shoulder,

half expecting to find a dropped handkerchief in the road. None

was there--only a scattered swarm of butterflies drifting like

yellow rose-leaves on the wind.

Upon reaching the house he found that his mother had asked for

him, and running hastily up to change his clothes, he came down

and bent over the upright Elizabethan chair. "I have been

worrying a good deal about you, my son," she said, with a

sprightly gesture in which the piece of purple glass struck the

dominant note. "Are you quite sure that you are feeling perfectly

well? No palpitations of the heart when you go upstairs? and no

particular heaviness after meals? I dreamed about you all night

long, and though there's not a woman in the world freer from

superstition, I can't help feeling uneasy." Taking her hand, he

gently caressed the slender fingers. "Why, I'm a regular ox,

mother," he returned, laughing, --my muscle is like iron, and I

assure you I'm ready for my meals day or night. There's no use

worrying about me, so you'd as well give it up." "I can't

understand it, I really can't," protested Mrs. Blake, still

unconvinced. "I am an old woman, you know, and I am anxious to

have you settled in life before I die--but there seems to be a

most extraordinary humour in the family with regard to marriage.

I'm sure your poor father would turn in his grave at the very

idea of his having no grand-children to come after him." "Well,

there's time yet, mother; give us breathing space." "There's not

time in my day, Christopher, for I am very old, and half dead as

it is--but it does seem hard that I am never to be present at the

marriage of a child. As for Cynthia, she is out of the question,

of course, which is a great pity. I have very little patience

with an unmarried woman--no, not if she were Queen Elizabeth

herself though I do know that they are sometimes found very

useful in the dairy or the spinning-room. As for an old bachelor,

I have never seen the spot on earth--and I've lived to a great

age--where he wasn't an encumbrance. They really ought to be

taught some useful occupation, such as skimming milk or carding

wool." "I hardly think either of those pursuits would be to my

taste," protested Christopher, "but I give you leave to try your

hand on Uncle Tucker." "Tucker has been a hero, my son," rejoined

the old lady in a stately voice, "and the privilege of having

once been a hero is that nobody expects you to exert yourself

again. A man who has taken the enemy's guns single-handed, or

figured prominently in a society scandal, is comfortably settled

in his position and may slouch pleasantly for the remainder of

his life. But for an ordinary gentleman it is quite different,

and as we are not likely to have another war, you really ought to

marry. You are preparing to go through life too peacefully, my

son." "Good Lord!" exclaimed Christopher, "are you hankering

after squabbles? Well, you shan't drag me into them, at any cost.

There's Uncle Tucker to your hand, as I said before." "I'm sure

Tucker might have married several times had he cared about it,"

replied Mrs. Blake reprovingly. "Miss Matoaca Bolling always had

a sentiment for him, I am certain, and even after his misfortune

she went so far as to present him with a most elaborate slipper

of red velvet ornamented with steel beads. I remember well her

consulting me as to whether it would be better to seem

unsympathetic and give him two or to appear indelicate and offer

him one. I suggested that she should make both for the same

foot, which, I believe, she finally decided to do." "Well,

well, this is all very interesting, mother," said Christopher,

rising from his seat, "but I've promised old Jacob Weatherby to

pass my word on his tobacco. On the way down, however, I'll cast

my eyes about for a wife." "Between here and the Weatherbys'

farm? Why, Christopher!" "That's all right, but unless you expect

me to pick up one on the roadside I don't see how we'll manage.

I'll do anything to oblige you, you know, even marry, if you'll

find me a good, sensible woman." The old lady's eyelids dropped

over her piercing black eyes, which seemed always to regard some

far-off, ecstatic vision. Three small furrows ran straight up and

down her forehead, and she lifted one delicate white hand to rub

them out. "I don't like joking on so serious a subject, my son,"

she said. "I'm sure Providence expects every man to do his duty,

and to remain unmarried seems like putting one's personal

inclination before the intentions of the Creator. Your

grandfather Corbin used to say he had so high an opinion of

marriage that if his fourth wife --and she was very sickly--were

to die at once, he'd marry his fifth within the year. I remember

that Bishop Deane remarked it was one of the most beautiful

tributes ever paid the marriage state--especially as it was no

idle boast, for, as it happened, his wife died shortly afterward,

and he married Miss Polly Blair before six months were up." "What

a precious old fool he was!" laughed the young man, as he reached

the door, passing out with a horrified "What, Christopher! Your

own grandfather?" ringing in his ears. In the yard he found

Cynthia drawing water at the well, and he took the heavy bucket

from her and carried it into the kitchen. "You'd better change

your clothes," she remarked, eyeing him narrowly, "if you're

going

back to the field." "But I'm not going back; the axe handle has

broken again and I'll have to borrow Jim Weatherby's. There's no

use trying to mend that old handle any more. It'll have to lie

over till after tobacco cutting, when I can make a new one." "Oh,

you might as well keep Jim's altogether," returned Cynthia

irritably, loath to receive favours from her neighbours. "The

first thing we know he will be running this entire place." "I

reckon he'd make a much better job of it," replied Christopher,

as he swung out into the road. On the whitewashed porch of the

Weatherbys' house he found old Jacob--a hale, clearly old man

with cheeks like frosted winter apples--gazing thoughtfully over

his fine field of tobacco, which had grown almost to his

threshold. "The weather's going to have a big drop to-night," he

said reflectively; "I smell it on the wind. Lord! Lord! I reckon

I'd better begin on that thar tobaccy about sunup--and yet

another day or so of sun and September dew would sweeten it

consider'ble. How about yours, Mr. Christopher?" "I'll cut my

ripest plants to-morrow," answered Christopher, sniffing the air.

"A big drop's coming, sure enough, but I don't scent frost as

yet--the pines don't smell that way." They discussed the tobacco

for a time--the rosy, genial old man, whom age had mellowed

without souring--listening with a touching deference to his

visitor's casual words; and when at last Christopher, with the

axe on his shoulder, started leisurely homeward, "the drop" was

already beginning, and the wind blew cool and crisp across the

misty fields, beyond which a round, red sun was slowly setting.

Level, vast and dark, the tobacco swept clear to the horizon.

Between Weatherby's and the little store there was an abrupt bend

in the road, where it shot aside from a steep descent in the

ground; and Christopher had reached this point when he saw

suddenly ahead of him a farm wagon driven forward at a reckless

pace. As it neared him he heard the wheels thunder on the rocky

bed of the road, and saw that the driver's seat was vacant, the

man evidently having been thrown some distance back. The

horses--a young pair he had never seen before--held the bits in

their mouths; and it was with a hopelessness of checking their

terrible speed that he stepped out of the road to give them room.

The next instant he saw that they were making straight for the

declivity from which the road shot back, seeing in the same

breath that the driver of the wagon, not falling clear, had

entangled himself in the long reins and was being dragged rapidly

beneath the wheels. Tossing his axe aside, he sprang instantly at

the horses' heads, hanging with his whole powerful weight upon

their mouths. Life or death was nothing to him at the moment, and

he seemed to have only an impersonal interest in the multiplied

sensations. What followed was a sense of incalculable swiftness,

a near glimpse of blue sky, the falling of stars around him in

the road, and after these things a great darkness.

When he came to himself he was lying in a patch of short grass,

with a little knot of men about him, among whom he recognised Jim

Weatherby. "I brought them in, didn't I?" he asked, struggling

up; and then he saw that his coat sleeves were rent from the

armholes, leaving his arms bare beneath his torn blue shirt.

Cynthia's warning returned to him, and he laughed shortly. "Well,

I reckon you could bring the devil in if you put all your grip on

him," was Jim's reply; "as it is, you're pretty sore, ain't you?"

"Oh, rather, but I wish I hadn't spoiled my coat." He was still

thinking of Cynthia. "God alive, man, it's a mercy you didn't

spoil your life. Why, another second and the horses would have

been over that bank yonder, with you and young Fletcher under the

wagon."

Christopher rose slowly from the ground and stood erect.

"With me--and who under the wagon?--and who?" he asked in a

throaty voice.

Jim Weatherby whistled. "Why, to think you didn't know all

along!" he exclaimed. "It was Fletcher's boy; he made Zebbadee

let him take the reins. Fletcher saw it all and he was clean mad

when he got here--it took three men to hold him. He thinks more

of that boy than he does of his own soul. What's the matter, man,

are you hurt?"

Christopher had gone dead white, and the blue circle came out

slowly around his mouth. "And I saved him!" he gasped. "I saved

him! Isn't there some mistake? Maybe he's dead anyway!"

"Bless you, no," responded Jim, a trifle disconcerted. "The

doctor's here and he says it's a case of a broken leg instead of

a broken neck, that's all."

Looking about him, Christopher saw that there was another group

of men at a little distance, gathered around something that lay

still and straight on the grass. The sound of a hoarse groan

reached him suddenly--an inarticulate cry of distress--and he

felt with a savage joy that it was from Fletcher. He looked down,

drawing together his tattered sleeves. For a time he was silent,

and when he spoke it was with a sneering laugh.

"Well, I've been a fool, that's all," was what he said.

CHAPTER V. The Glimpse of a Bride

The next morning he awoke with stiffened limbs and confusion in

his head, and for a time he lay idly looking at his little

window-panes, beyond which the dawn hung like a curtain. Then, as

a long finger of sunlight pointed through the glass, he rose with

an effort and, dressing himself hastily, went downstairs to

breakfast. Here he found that Zebbadee Blake, who had promised to

help him cut his crop, had not yet appeared, owing probably to

the excitement of Fletcher's runaway. The man's absence annoyed

him at first; and then, as the day broke clear and cold, he

succumbed to his ever present fear of frost and, taking his

pruning-knife from the kitchen mantelpiece, went out alone to

begin work on his ripest plants.

The sun had already tempered the morning chill in the air, and

the slanting beams stretched over the tobacco, which, as the dew

dried, showed a vivid green but faintly tinged with yellow--a

colour that even in the sparkling sunlight appeared always

slightly shadowed. To attempt alone the cutting of his crop,

small as it was, seemed, with his stiffened limbs, a particularly

trying task, and for a moment he stood gazing wearily across the

field. Presently, with a deliberate movement as if he were

stooping to shoulder a fresh burden, he slit the first ripe stalk

from its flaunting top to within a hand's-breadth of the ground;

then, cutting it half through near the roots, he let it fall to

one side, where it hung, slowly wilting, on the earth. Gradually,

as he applied himself to the work, the old zest of healthful

labour returned to him, and he passed buoyantly through the

narrow aisle, leaving a devastated furrow on either side. It was

a cheerful picture he presented, when Tucker, dragging himself

heavily from the house, came to the ragged edge of the field and

sat down on an old moss-grown stump. "Where's Zebbadee,

Christopher?" " He didn't turn up. It was that affair of the

accident, probably. Fletcher berated him, I reckon." "So you've

got to cut it all yourself. Well, it's a first-rate crop--the

very primings ought to be as good as some top leaves." "The

crop's

all right," responded Christopher, as his knife passed with a

ripping noise down the juicy stalk. "You know I made a fool of

myself yesterday, Uncle Tucker," he said suddenly, drawing back

when the plant fell slowly across the furrow, "and I'm so stiff

in the joints this morning I can hardly move. I met one of

Fletcher's farm wagons running away, with his boy dragged by the

reins, and--I stopped it." Tucker turned his mild blue eyes upon

him. Since the news of Appomattox nothing had surprised him, and

he was not surprised now--he was merely interested. "You couldn't

have helped it, I suspect," he remarked.

"I didn't know whose it was, you see," answered Christopher; "the

horses were new." "You'd have done it anyway, I reckon. At such

moments it's a man's mettle that counts, you know, and not his

emotions. You might have hated Fletcher ten times worse, but

you'd have risked your life to stop the horses all the same--

because, after all, what a man is is something different from how

he feels about things. It's in your blood to dare everything

whenever a chance offers, as it was in your father's before you.

Why, I've seen him stop on the way to a ball, pull off his coat,

and go up a burning ladder to save a woman's pet canary, and

then, when the crowd hurrahed him, I've laughed because I knew he

deserved nothing of the kind. With him it wasn't courage so much

as his inborn love of violent action--it cleared his head, he

used to say." Christopher stopped cutting, straightened himself,

and held his knife loosely in his hand. "That's about it, I

reckon," he returned. "I know I'm not a bit of a hero--if I'd

been in your place I'd have shown up long ago for a skulking

coward--but it's the excitement of the moment that I like. Why,

there's nothing in life I'd enjoy so much as knocking Fletcher

down--it's one of the things I look forward to that makes it all

worth while." Tucker laughed softly. It was a peculiarity of his

never to disapprove. That's a good savage instinct," he said,

with a humorous tremor of his nostrils, "and it's a saying of

mine, you know, that a man is never really--civilised until he

has turned fifty. We're all born mighty near to the wolf and

mighty far from the dog, and it takes a good many years to coax

the wild beast to lie quiet by the fireside. It's the struggle

that the Lord wants, I reckon; and anyhow, He makes it easier for

us as the years go on. When a man gets along past his fiftieth

year, he begins to understand that there are few things worth

bothering about, and the sins of his fellow mortals are not among

'em." " Bless my soul!" exclaimed Christopher in disgust, rapping

his palm smartly with the flat blade of his knife. "Do you mean

to tell me you've actually gone and forgiven Bill Fletcher?"

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to water the grass on his grave,

"answered Tucker, still smiling, "but I've not the slightest

objection to his eating, sleeping, and moving on the surface of

the earth. There's room enough for us both, even in this little

county, and so long as he keeps out of my sight, as far as I am

concerned he absolutely doesn't exist. I never think of him

except when you happen to call his name. If a man steals my

money, that's his affair. I can't afford to let him steal my

peace of mind as well." With a groan Christopher went back to his

work. "It may be sense you're talking," he observed, "but it

sounds to me like pure craziness. It's just as well, either way,

I reckon, that I'm not in your place and you in mine--for if that

were so Fletcher would most likely go scot free." Tucker rose

unsteadily from the stump. "Why, if we stood in each other's

boots, "he said, with a gentle chuckle, "or, to be exact, if I

stood in your two boots and you in my one, as sure as fate, you'd

be thinking my way and I yours. Well, I wish I could help you,

but as I can't I'll be moving slowly back."

He shuffled off on his crutches, painfully swinging himself a

step at a time, and Christopher, after a moment's puzzled stare

at his pathetic figure, returned diligently to his work.

His passage along the green aisle was very slow, and when at last

he reached the extreme end by the little beaten path and felled

the last stalk on his left side he straightened himself for a

moment's rest, and stood, bareheaded, gazing over the broad

field, which looked as if a windstorm had blown in an even line

along the edge, scattering the outside plants upon the ground.

The thought of his work engrossed him at the instant, and it was

with something of a start that he became conscious presently of

Maria Fletcher's voice at his back. Wheeling about dizzily, he

found her leaning on the old rail fence, regarding him with

shining eyes in which the tears seemed hardly dried.

"I have just left Will," she said; "the doctor has set his leg

and he is sleeping. It was my last chance--I am going away

to-morrow--and I wanted to tell you--I wanted so to tell you how

grateful we feel."

The knife dropped from his hand, and he came slowly along the

little path to the fence.

"I fear you've got an entirely wrong idea about me, "he answered.

"It was nothing in the world to make a fuss over--and I swear to

you if it were the last word I ever spoke--I did not know it was

your brother."

"As if that mattered!" she exclaimed, and he remembered vaguely

that he had heard her use the words before. "You risked your life

to save his life, we know that. Grandpa saw it all--and the

horses dragged you, too. You would have been killed if the others

hadn't run up when they did. And you tell me--as if that made it

any the less brave that you didn't know it was Will."

"I didn't, "he repeated stubbornly. "I didn't."

"Well, he does, " she responded, smiling; "and he wants to thank

you himself when he is well enough."

"If you wish to do me a kindness, for heaven's sake tell him not

to," he said irritably. "I hate all such foolishness it makes me

out a hypocrite!"

"I knew you'd hate it; I told them so," tranquilly responded the

girl. "Aunt Saidie wanted to rush right over last night, but I

wouldn't let her. All brave men dislike to have a fuss made over

them, I know."

"Good Lord!" ejaculated Christopher, and stopped short,

impatiently desisting before the admiration illumining her eyes.

>From her former disdain he had evidently risen to a height in

her regard that was romantic in its ardour. It was in vain that

he told himself he cared for one emotion as little as for the

other--in spite of his words, the innocent fervour in her face

swept over the barrier of his sullen pride.

"So you are going away to-morrow, "he said at last; "and for

good?"

"For good, yes. I go abroad very unexpectedly for perhaps five

years. My things aren't half ready, but business is of more

importance than a woman's clothes."

"Will you be alone?"

"Oh, no."

"Who goes with you?" he insisted bluntly.

As she reddened, he watched the colour spread slowly to her

throat and ear.

"I am to be married, you know," she answered, with her accustomed

composure of tone.

His lack of gallantry was churlish.

"To that dummy with the brown mustache?" he inquired.

A little hysterical laugh broke from her, and she made a hopeless

gesture of reproof. "Your manners are really elementary," she

remarked, adding immediately: "I assure you he isn't in the least

a dummy--he is considered a most delightful talker."

He swept the jest impatiently aside.

"Why do you do it?" he demanded.

"Do what?"

"You know what I mean. Why do you marry him?"

Again she bit back a laugh. It was all very primitive, very

savage, she told herself; it was, above all, different from any

of the life that she had known, and yet, in a mysterious way, it

was familiar, as if the unrestrained emotion in his voice stirred

some racial memory within her brain.

"Why do I marry him?" She drew a step away, looking at sky and

field. "Why do I marry him?" She hesitated slightly, "Oh, for

many reasons, and all good ones--but most of all because I love

him."

"You do not love him."

"I beg your pardon, but I do."

For the first time in her life, as her eyes swept over the

landscape, she was conscious of a peculiar charm in the wildness

of the country, in the absence of all civilising influences--in

the open sky, the red road, the luxuriant tobacco, the coarse

sprays of yarrow blooming against the fence; in the homely tasks,

drawing one close to the soil, and the harvesting of the ripened

crops, the milking of the mild-eyed cows, and in the long still

days, followed by the long still nights.

Their eyes met, and for a time both were silent. She felt again

the old vague trouble at his presence, the appeal of the rustic

tradition, the rustic temperament; of all the multiplied

inheritances of the centuries, which her education had not

utterly extinguished.

"Well, I hope you'll live to regret it," he said suddenly, with

bitter passion.

The words startled her, and she caught her breath with a tremor.

"What an awful wish!" she exclaimed lightly.

"It's an honest one."

"I'm not sure I shouldn't prefer a little polite lying."

"You won't get it from me. I hope you'll live to regret it. Why

shouldn't I?"

"Oh, you might at least be decently human. If you hadn't been so

brave yesterday, I might almost think you a savage to-day."

"I didn't do that on purpose, I told you," he returned angrily.

"You can't make me believe that--it's no use trying."

"I shan't try--though it's the gospel truth--and you'll find it

out some day."

"When?"

"Oh, when the time comes, that's all."

"You speak in riddles," she said, "and I always hated guessing."

Then she held out her hand with a pleasant, conventional smile.

"I am grateful to you in spite of everything," she said; "and now

good-by."

His arms hung at his side. "No, I won't shake hands," he

answered. "What's the use?"

"As you please--only, it's the usual thing at parting."

"All the same, I won't do it," he said stubbornly. "My hands are

not clean." He held them out, soiled with earth and the stains

from the tobacco.

For an instant her eyes dwelt upon him very kindly.

"Oh, I shan't mind the traces of honest toil," she said; but as

he still hung back, she gave a friendly nod and went quickly

homeward along the road. As her figure vanished among the trees,

a great bitterness oppressed him, and, picking up his knife, he

went back doggedly to his work.

In the kitchen, when he returned to dinner some hours later, he

found Cynthia squinting heavily over the torn coat.

"I must say you ruined this yesterday," she remarked, looking up

from her needle, "and if you'd listened to me you could have

stopped those horses just as well in your old jean clothes. I had

a feeling that something was going to happen, when I saw you with

this on."

"I don't doubt it," he responded, woefully eyeing the garment

spread on her knees, "and I may as well admit right now that I

made a mess of the whole thing. To think of my wasting the only

decent suit I had on a Fletcher--after saving up a year to buy

it, too."

Cynthia twitched the coat inside out and placed a square patch

over the ragged edges of the rent. "I suppose I ought to be

thankful you saved the boy's life," she observed, "but I can't

say that I feel particularly jubilant when I look at these

armholes. Of course, when I first heard of it the coat seemed a

mere trifle, but when I come to the mending I begin to wish you'd

been heroic in your everyday clothes. There'll have to be a patch

right here, but I don't reckon it will show much. Do you mind?"

"I'd rather wear a mustard plaster than a patch any time," he

replied gravely; "but as long as there's no help for it, lay them

on--don't slight the job a bit because of my feelings. I can

stand pretty well having my jean clothes darned and mended, but I

do object to dressing up on Sundays in a bedquilt."

"Well, you'll have to, that's all," was Cynthia's reassuring

rejoinder. "It's the price you pay for being a hero when you

can't afford it."

CHAPTER VI. Shows Fletcher in a New Light

Responding to a much-distracted telegram from Fletcher, Carraway

arrived at the Hall early on the morning of Maria's marriage, to

arrange for the transfer to the girl of her smaller share in her

grandfather's wealth. In the reaction following the hysterical

excitement over the accident, Fletcher had grown doubly

solicitous about the future of the boy--feeling, apparently, that

the value of his heir was increased by his having so nearly lost

him. When Carraway found him he was bustling noisily about the

sick-room, walking on tiptoe with a tramp that shook the floor,

while Will lay gazing wearily at the sunlight which filtered

through the bright green shutters. Somewhere in the house a

canary was trilling joyously, and the cheerful sound lent a

pleasant animation to the otherwise depressing atmosphere. On his

way upstairs Carraway had met Maria running from the boy's room,

with her hair loose upon her shoulders, and she had stopped long

enough to show a smiling face on the subject of her marriage.

There were to be only Fletcher, Miss Saidie and himself as

witnesses, he gathered, Wyndham's parents having held somewhat

aloof from the connection--and within three hours at the most it

would be over and the bridal pair beginning their long journey.

Looking down from the next landing, he had further assurance of

the sincerity of Maria's smile when he saw the lovers meet and

embrace within the shadow of the staircase; and the sight stirred

within his heart something of that wistful pity with which those

who have learned how little emotion counts in life watch the

first exuberance of young passion. A bright beginning whatever be

the ending, he thought a little sadly, as he turned the handle of

the sick-room door.

The boy's fever had risen and he tossed his arms restlessly upon

the counterpane. "Stand out of my sunshine, grandpa," he said

fretfully, as the lawyer sat down by his bedside.

Fletcher shuffled hastily from before the window, and it struck

Carraway almost ludicrously that in all the surroundings in which

he had ever seen him the man had never appeared so hopelessly out

of place--not even when he had watched him at prayer one Sunday

in the little country church.

"There, you're in it again," complained the boy in his peevish

tones.

Fletcher lifted a cup from the table and brought it over to the

bed.

"Maybe you'd like a sip of this beef tea now," he suggested

persuasively. "It's most time for your medicine, you know, so

jest a little taste of this beforehand."

"I don't like it, grandpa; it's too salt."

"Thar, now, that's jest like Saidie," blurted Fletcher angrily.

"Saidie, you've gone and made his beef tea too salt."

Miss Saidie appeared instantly at the door of the adjoining room,

and without seeking to diminish the importance of her offense,

mildly offered to prepare a fresh bowl of the broth.

"I'm packing Maria's clothes now," she said, "but I'll be through

in a jiffy, and then I'll make the soup. I've jest fixed up the

parlour for the marriage. Maria insists on having a footstool to

kneel on--she ain't satisfied with jest standing with jined hands

before the preacher, like her pa and ma did before she was born."

"Well, drat Maria's whims," retorted Fletcher impatiently; "they

can wait, I reckon, and Will's got to have his tea, so you'd

better fetch it."

"But I don't want it, grandpa," protested the boy, flushed and

troubled. "You worry me so, that's all. Please stop fooling with

those curtains. I like the sunshine."

"A nap is what he needs, I suspect," observed Carraway, touched,

in spite of himself, by the lumbering misery of the man.

"Ah, that's it," agreed Fletcher, catching readily at the

suggestion. "You jest turn right over and take yo' nap, and when

you wake up well, I'll give you anything you want. Here, swallow

this stuff down quick and you'll sleep easy."

He brought the medicine glass to the bedside, and, slipping his

great hairy hand under the pillow, gently raised the boy's head.

"I reckon you'd like a brand new saddle when you git up," he

remarked in a coaxing voice.

"I'd rather have a squirrel gun, grandpa; I want to go hunting."

Fletcher's face clouded.

"I'm afraid you'd git shot, sonny."

With his lips to the glass, Will paused to haggle over the price

of his obedience.

"But I want it," he insisted; "and I want a pack of hounds, too,

to chase rabbits."

"Bless my boots! You ain't going to bring any driveling beasts on

the place, air you?"

"Yes, I am, grandpa. I won't swallow this unless you say I may."

"Oh, you hurry up and git well, and then we'll see--we'll see,"

was Fletcher's answer. "Gulp this stuff right down now and turn

over."

The boy still hesitated.

"Then I may have the hounds," he said; "that new litter of

puppies Tom Spade has, and I'll get Christopher Blake to train

'em for me."

The pillow shook under his head, and as he opened his mouth to

drink, a few drops of the liquid spilled upon the bedclothes.

"I reckon Zebbadee's a better man for hounds," suggested

Fletcher, setting down the glass.

"Oh, Zebbadee's aren't worth a cent--they can't tell a rabbit

from a watering-pot. I want Christopher Blake to train 'em, and I

want to see him about it to-day. Tell him to come, grandpa."

"I can't, sonny--I can't; you git your hounds and we'll find a

better man. Why, thar's Jim Weatherby; he'll do first rate."

"His dogs are setters," fretted Will. "I don't want him; I want

Christopher Blake--he saved my life, you know."

"So he did, so he did," admitted Fletcher; "and he shan't be a

loser by that, suh," he added, turning to Carraway. "When you go

over thar, you can carry my check along for five hundred

dollars."

The lawyer smiled. "Oh, I'll take it," he answered, "and I'll

very likely bring it back."

The boy looked at Carraway. "You tell him to come, sir," he

pleaded. His eyes were so like Fletcher's--small, sparkling,

changing from blue to brown--that the lawyer's glance lingered

upon the other's features, seeking some resemblance in them,

also. To his surprise he found absolutely none, the high,

blue-veined forehead beneath the chestnut hair, the straight,

delicate nose; the sensitive, almost effeminate curve of the

mouth, must have descended from the "worthless drab" whom he had

beheld in the severe white light of Fletcher's scorn. For the

first time it occurred to Carraway that the illumination had been

too intense.

"I'll tell him, certainly," he said quietly after a moment; "but

I don't promise that he'll come, you understand."

"Oh, I won't thank him," cried the boy eagerly. "It isn't for

that I want him--tell him so. Maria says he hates a fuss."

"I'll deliver your message word for word," responded the lawyer.

"Not only that, I'll add my own persuasion to it, though I fear I

have little influence with your neighbour."

"Tell him I beg him to come," insisted the boy, and the urgent

voice remained with Carraway throughout the day.

It was not until the afternoon, however, when he had tossed his

farewell handful of rice at the departing carriage and met

Maria's last disturbed look at the Hall, that he found time to

carry Will's request and Fletcher's check to Christopher Blake.

The girl had shown her single trace of emotion over the boy's

pillow, where she had shed a few furtive tears, and the thought

of this was with Carraway as he walked meditatively along the red

clay road, down the long curves of which he saw the carriage

rolling leisurely ahead of him. As a bride, Maria puzzled him no

less than she had done at their first meeting, and the riddle of

her personality he felt to be still hopelessly unsolved. Was it

merely repression of manner that annoyed him in her he

questioned, or was it, as he had once believed, the simple lack

of emotional power? Her studied speech, her conventional

courtesy, seemed to confirm the first impression she had made;

then her dark, troubled gaze and the sullen droop of her mouth

returned to give the lie to what he could but feel to be a

possible misjudgment. In the end, he concluded wisely enough

that, like the most of us, she was probably but plastic matter

for the mark of circumstance--that her development would be,

after all, according to the events she was called upon to face.

The possibility that Destiny, which is temperament, should have

already selected her as one of those who come into their

spiritual heritage only through defeat, did not enter into the

half-humorous consideration with which he now regarded her.

Turning presently into the sunken road by the ice-pond, he came

in a little while to the overgrown fence surrounding the Blake

farm. In the tobacco field beyond the garden he saw Christopher's

blue-clad figure rising from a blur of green, and, following the

ragged path amid the yarrow, he joined the young man where he

stood at work.

As the lawyer reached his side Christopher glanced up

indifferently to give a nod of welcome. His crop had all been

cut, and be was now engaged in hanging the wilting plants from

long rails supported by forked poles. At his feet there were

little green piles of tobacco, and around him from the sunbaked

earth rose a headless army of bruised and bleeding stubble.

So thriftless were the antiquated methods he followed that the

lawyer, as he watched him, could barely repress a smile. Two

hundred years ago the same crop was probably raised, cut and

cured on the same soil in the same careless and primitive

fashion. Beneath all the seeming indifference to success or

failure Carraway discerned something of that blind reliance upon

chance which is apt to be the religious expression of a rural and

isolated people.

"Yes, I'll leave it out awhile, I reckon, unless the weather

changes," replied Christopher, in answer to the lawyer's inquiry.

"Well, it promises fair enough," returned Carraway pleasantly.

"They tell me, by the way, that the yellow, sun-cured leaf is

coming into favour in the market. You don't try that, eh?"

Christopher shook his head, and, kneeling on the ground,

carelessly sorted his pile of plants. "I learned to cure it

indoors," he answered, and I reckon I'll keep to the old way. The

dark leaf is what the people about here like--it makes the

sweeter chew, they think. As for me, I hate the very smell of

it." "That's odd, and I'll wager you're the only man in the

county who neither smokes nor chews." "Oh, I handle it, you see.

The smell and the stain of it are well soaked in. I sometimes

wonder if all the water in the river of Jordan could wash away

the blood of the tobacco worm." With a laugh in which there was

more bitterness than mirth, he stretched out his big bronzed

hands, and Carraway saw that the nails and finger-tips were dyed

bright green. "It does leave its mark," observed the lawyer, and

felt instantly that the speech was inane. Christopher went on

quietly with his work, gathering up the plants and hanging the

slit stalks over the long poles, while the peculiar heavy odour

of the freshly cut crop floated unpleasantly about them. For a

time Carraway watched him in silence, his eyes dwelling soberly

upon the stalwart figure. In spite of himself, the mere beauty of

outline touched him with a feeling of sadness, and when he spoke

at last it was in a lowered tone. "You have, perhaps, surmised

that my call is not entirely one of pleasure," he began

awkwardly; "that I am, above all, the bearer of a message from

Mr. Fletcher." "From Fletcher?" repeated Christopher coolly.

"Well, I never heard a message of his yet that wasn't better left

undelivered." "I am sure I am correct in saying," Carraway went

on steadily and not without definite purpose, "that he hopes you

will be generous enough to let bygones be bygones." Christopher

nodded. "He feels, of course," pursued the lawyer, "that his

obligation to you is greater than he can hope to repay. Indeed, I

think if you knew the true state of the case your judgment of him

would be softened. The boy--who so nearly lost his life is the

one human being whom Fletcher loves better than himself--better

than his own soul, I had almost said."

Christopher looked up attentively. "Who'd have thought it," he

muttered beneath his breath. Judging that he had at last made a

beginning at the plastering over of old scars, Carraway went on

as if the other had not spoken. "So jealous is his affection in

this instance, that I believe his granddaughter's marriage is

something of a relief to him. He is positively impatient of any

influence over the boy except his own--and that, I fear, is

hardly for good." Picking up a clod of earth, Christopher

crumbled it slowly to dust. "So the little chap comes in for all

this, does he?" he asked, as his gaze swept over the wide fields

in the distance. "He comes in for all that is mine by right, and

Fletcher's intention is, I dare say, that he'll reflect honour

upon the theft?" "That he'll reflect honour upon the name--yes.

It is the ambition of his grandfather, I believe, that the lad

should grow up to be respected in the county--to stand for

something more than he himself has done." "Well, he'll hardly

stand for more of a rascal," remarked Christopher quietly; and

then, as his eyes rested on the landscape, he appeared to follow

moodily some suggestion which had half escaped him. "Then the way

to touch the man is through the boy, I presume," he said

abruptly.

Arrested by the words, the lawyer looked down quickly, but the

other, still kneeling upon the ground, was fingering a plant he

had just picked up. "Fine leaves, eh?" was the remark that met

Carraway's sudden start.

"To touch him, yes," replied the lawyer thoughtfully. "Whatever

heart he has is given to his grandson, and when you saved the

lad's life the other day you placed Fletcher in your debt for

good. Of his gratitude I am absolutely sure, and as a slight

expression of it he asked me to hand you this."

He drew the check from his pocket, and leaning over, held it out

to Christopher. To his surprise, the young man took it from him,

but the next moment he had torn it roughly in two and handed it

back again. "So you may as well return it to him," he said, and,

rising slowly from the ground, he stood pushing the loose plants

together with his foot.

"I feared as much," observed Carraway, placing the torn slip of

paper in his pocket. "Your grudge is of too long standing to mend

in a day. Be that as it may, I have a request to make of you from

the boy himself which I hope you will not refuse. He has taken a

liking to you, it appears, and as he will probably be ill for

some weeks, he begs that you will come back with me to see him."

He finished a little wistfully, and stood looking up at the young

man who towered a good head and shoulders above him.

"I may as well tell you once for all," returned Christopher,

choking over the words, "that you've given me as much of Fletcher

as I can stand and a long sight more than I want. If anybody but

you had brought me that piece of paper with Bill Fletcher's name

tagged to it I'd have rammed it down his throat before this. As

it is, you may tell him from me that when I have paid him to the

last drop what I owe him--and not till then--will I listen to any

message he chooses to send me. I hate him, and that's my affair;

I mean to be even with him some day, and I reckon that's my

affair, too. One thing I'm pretty sure of, and that is that it's

not yours. Is your visit over, or will you come into the house?"

"I'll be going back now," replied the lawyer, shrinking from the

outburst, "but if I may have the pleasure, I'll call upon your

mother in the morning."

Christopher shook the hand which he held out, and then spoke

again in the same muffled voice. "You may tell him one thing

more," he pursued, "and that is, that it's the gospel truth I

didn't know it was his grandson in the wagon. Why, man, there's

not a Fletcher on this earth whose neck I'd lift my little finger

to save!"

Then, as Carraway passed slowly along the ragged path to the

sunken road, he stood looking after him with a heavy frown upon

his brow. His rage was at white heat within him, and, deny it as

he would, he knew now that within the last few weeks his hatred

had been strengthened by the force of a newer passion which had

recoiled upon itself. Since his parting with Maria Fletcher the

day before, he had not escaped for a breath from her haunting

presence. She was in his eyes and in the air he breathed; the

smell of flowers brought her sweetness to him, and the very

sunshine lying upon the September fields thrilled him like the

warmth of her rare smile. He found himself fleeing like a hunted

animal from the memory which he could not put away, and despite

the almost frenzied haste with which he presently fell to work,

he saw always the light and gracious figure which had come to him

along the red clay road. The fervour which had shone suddenly in

her eyes, the quiver of her mouth as she turned away, the poise

of her head, the gentle, outstretched hand he had repulsed, the

delicate curve of her wrist beneath the falling sleeve, the very

lace on her bosom fluttering in the still weather as if a light

wind were blowing--these things returned to torture him like the

delirium of fever. Appealing as the memory was, it aroused in his

distorted mind all the violence of his old fury, and he felt

again the desire for revenge working like madness in his blood.

It was as if every emotion of his life swept on, to empty itself

at last into the wide sea of his hatred.

VII. In Which Hero and Villain Appear as One

A month later Christopher's conversation with Carraway returned

to him, when, coming one morning from the house with his dogs at

his heels and his squirrel gun on his shoulder, he found Will

Fletcher and a troop of spotted foxhound puppies awaiting him

outside the whitewashed gate.

"I want to speak to you a moment, Mr. Blake," began the boy, in

the assured tones of the rich man to the poor. The Blake hounds

made a sudden rush at the puppies, to be roughly ordered to heel

by their master.

"Well, fire away," returned the young man coolly. "But I may as

well warn you that it's more than likely it will be a clear waste

of breath. I'll have nothing to do with you or your sort." He

leaned on his gun and looked indifferently over the misty fields,

where the autumn's crop of lifeeverlasting shone silver in the

sunrise.

"I don't see why you hate me so," said the boy wonderingly,

checking the too frolicsome adventures of the puppies in the

direction of the hounds. "I've always liked you, you know, even

before you saved my life--because you're the straightest shot and

the best trainer of hounds about here. Grandpa says I mustn't

have anything to do with you, but I will anyway, if I please."

"Oh, you will, will you?" was Christopher's rejoinder, as he

surveyed him with the humorous contempt which the strong so often

feel for the weak of the same sex. "Well, I suppose I'll have my

say in the matter, and strangely enough I'm on your grandfather's

side. The clearer you keep of me the better it will be for you,

my man."

"That's just like grandpa all over again," protested the boy; and

when it comes to that, he needn't know anything about it--he

doesn't know half that I do, anyway; he blusters so about

things."

Christopher's gaze returned slowly from the landscape and rested

inquiringly upon the youthful features before him, seeking in

them some definite promise of the future. The girlish look of the

mouth irritated him ludicrously, and half-forgotten words of

Carraway's awoke within his memory.

"Fletcher loves but one thing on this earth, and his ambition is

that the boy shall be respected in the county." A Fletcher

respected in the very stronghold of a Blake! He laughed aloud,

and then spoke hurriedly as if to explain the surprising mirth in

his outburst.

"So you came to pay a visit to your nearest neighbour and are

afraid your grandfather will find it out? Then you'll get a

spanking, I dare say."

Will blushed furiously, and stood awkwardly scraping up a pile of

sand with the sole of his boot. "I'm not a baby," he blurted out

at last, "and I'll go where I like, whatever he says."

"He keeps a pretty close watch over you, I reckon. Perhaps he's

afraid you'll become a man and step into his shoes before he

knows it."

"Oh, he can't find me out, all the same," said the boy slyly. "He

thinks I've gone over to Mr. Morrison's now to do my Greek--he's

crazy about my learning Greek, and I hate it--and, you bet your

life, he'll be hopping mad if he finds I've given him the slip."

"He will, will he?" remarked Christopher, and the thought

appeared to afford him a peculiar satisfaction. For the first

time the frown left his brow and his tone lost its insolent

contempt. Then he came forward suddenly and laid his hand upon

the gate. "Well, I can't waste my morning," he said. "You'd

better run back home and play the piano. I'm off."

"I don't play the piano--I'm not a girl," declared the boy; "and

what I want is to get you to train my hounds for me. I'd like to

go hunting with you to-day."

"Oh, I can't be bothered with babies," sneered Christopher in

reply. "You'd fall down, most likely, and scratch your knees on

the briers, and then you'd run straight home to blab to

Fletcher."

"I won't!" cried Will angrily. "I'll never blab. He'd be too mad,

I tell you, if he found it out."

"Well, I don't want you anyhow, so get out of my way. You'd

better look sharp after your pups or the hounds will chew them

up."

The boy stood midway of the road, kicking the dust impatiently

ahead of him. His lips quivered with disappointment, and the

expression gave them a singularly wistful beauty. "I'll give you

all my pocket money if you'll take me with you," he pleaded

suddenly, stretching out a handful of silver.

With a snarl Christopher pushed his arm roughly aside. "Put up

your money, you fool," he said; "I don't want it."

"Oh, you don't, don't you?" taunted the other, raging with

wounded pride. "Why, grandpa says you're as poor as Job's turkey

after it was plucked."

It was an old joke of Fletcher's, who, in giving utterance to it,

little thought of the purpose it would finally be made to serve,

for Christopher, halting suddenly at the words, swung round in

the cloud of dust and stood regarding the grandson of his enemy

with a thoughtful and troubled look. The lawyer's words sounded

so distinctly in his ears that he glanced at the boy with a

start, fearing that they had been spoken aloud: "His grandson is

the sole living thing that Fletcher loves." Again the

recollection brought a laugh from him, which he carelessly threw

off upon the frolics of the puppies. Then the frown settled

slowly back upon his brow, and the brutal look, which Carraway

had found so disfiguring, crept out about his mouth.

"I tell you honestly," he said gruffly, "that if you knew what

was good for you, you'd scoot back along that road a good deal

faster than you came. If you're such a headstrong fool as to want

to come with me, however, I reckon you may do it. One thing,

though, I'll have no puling ways."

The boy jumped with pleasure. "Why, I knew all the time I'd get

around you," he answered.

"I always do when I try; and may I shoot some with your shotgun?"

"I'll teach you, perhaps."

"When? Shall we start now? Call the dogs together--they're nosing

in the ditch."

Without taking the trouble to reply, Christopher strode off

briskly along the road, and after waiting a moment to assemble

his scattered puppies, Will caught up with him and broke into a

running pace at his side. As they swung onward the two shadows--

the long one and the short one--stretched straight and black

behind them in the sunlight.

"You're the biggest man about here, aren't you?" the boy asked

suddenly, glancing upward with frank admiration.

"I dare say. What of it?"

"Oh, nothing; and your father was the biggest man of his time,

Sol Peterkin says; and Aunt Mehitable remembers your grandfather,

and he was the tallest man alive in his day. Who'll be the

biggest when you die, I wonder? And, I say, isn't it a pity that

such tall men had to live in such a little old house--I don't see

how they ever got in the doors without stooping. Do you have to

stoop when you go in and out?"

Christopher nodded.

"Well, I shouldn't like that," pursued Will; "and I'm glad I

don't live in such a little place. Now, the doors at the Hall are

so high that I could stand on your shoulders and go in without

bending my head. Let's try it some day. Grandpa wouldn't know."

Christopher turned and looked at him suddenly. "What would you

say to going 'possum hunting one night?" he asked in a queer

voice.

"Whoopee!" cried the boy, tossing his hat in the air. "Will you

take me?"

"Well, it's hard work, you know," went on the other thoughtfully.

"You'd have to get up in the middle of the night and steal out of

the window without your grandfather's knowing it."

"I should say so!"

"We'd tramp till morning, probably, with the hounds, and Tom

Spade would come along to bring his lanterns. Then when it was

over we'd wind up for drinks at his store. It's great sport, I

tell you, but it takes a man to stand it."

"Oh, I'm man enough by now."

"Not according to your grandfather's thinking."

"What does he know about it? He's just an old fogy himself."

"We'll see, we'll see. If he wants to keep you tied to nurse's

strings too long, we must play him a trick. Why, when I was

fourteen I could shoot with any man about here--and drink with

him, too, for that matter. Nobody kept me back, you see."

The boy looked up at Christopher with sparkling eyes, in which

the eternal hero-worship of youth was already kindled.

"Oh, you're splendid!" he exclaimed, "and I'm going to be just

like you. Grandpa shan't keep me a baby any longer, I can tell

you. All this Greek, now--he's crazy about my learning it--and I

hate it. Do you know Greek?"

Christopher laughed shortly. "Where does he live?" he inquired

mockingly.

For a moment the boy looked at him perplexed. "It's a language,"

he replied gravely; "and grandpa says it comes handy in a

bargain, but I won't learn it. I hate school, anyway, and he

swears he's going to send me back in two weeks. I hope I'll fall

ill, and then he can't."

"In two weeks," repeated the other reflectively; "well, a good

deal may happen, I reckon, in two weeks."

"Oh, lots!" agreed the boy with enthusiasm; "you'll let me chase

rabbits with you every day--won't you? and teach me to shoot? and

we'll go 'possum hunting one night and not get home till morning.

It will be easy enough to fool grandpa. I'll take care of that,

and if Aunt Saidie finds it out she'll never tell him--she never

does tell on me. Here, let me take the gun awhile, will you?"

Christopher handed him the gun, and they went on rapidly along

the old road under the honey locusts that grew beyond the bend.

They were nearing the place where Christopher, as a child of

twelve, had waited with his birdgun in the bushes to shoot

Fletcher when he came in sight, and now as the recollection

returned to him he unconsciously slackened his pace and cast his

eyes about for the spot where he had stood. It was all there just

as it had been that morning--the red clumps of sumach covered

with gray dust, the dried underbrush piled along the fence, and

the brown honeyshucks strewn in the sunny road. For the first

time in his life he was glad at this instant that he had not

killed Fletcher then--that his hand had been stayed that day to

fall the heavier, it might be, at the appointed time. The boy

still chatted eagerly, and when presently the hounds scented a

rabbit in the sassafras beyond the fence, he started with a shout

at the heels of the pursuing pack. Swinging himself over the

brushwood, Christopher followed slowly across the waste of

lifeeverlasting, tearing impatiently through the flowering net

which the wild potato vine cast about his feet.

Through the brilliant October day they hunted over the ragged

fields, resting at noon to eat the slices of bread and bacon

which Christopher had brought in his pocket. As they lay at full

length in the sunshine upon the lifeeverlasting, the young man's

gaze flew like a bird across the landscape--where the gaily

decorated autumn fallows broke in upon the bare tobacco fields

like gaudy patches on a homely garment--to rest upon the far-off

huddled chimneys of Blake Hall. For a time he looked steadily

upon them; then, turning on his side, he drew his harvest hat

over his eyes and began a story of his early adventures behind

the hounds, speaking in half-gay, half-bitter tones.

In the mild autumn weather a faint haze overhung the landscape,

changing from violet to gray as the shadows rose or fell. Around

them the unploughed wasteland swept clear to the distant road,

which wound like a muddy river beside the naked tobacco fields.

Lying within the slight depression of a hilltop, the two were

buried deep amid the lifeeverlasting, which shed its soft dust

upon them and filled their nostrils with its ghostly fragrance.

As he went on, Christopher found a savage delight in mocking the

refinements of the boy's language, in tossing him coarse

expressions and brutal oaths much as he tossed scraps to the

hounds, in touching with vulgar scorn all the conventional ideals

of the household--obedience, duty, family affection, religion

even. While he sank still lower in that defiant self-respect to

which he had always clung doggedly until to-day, there was a

fierce satisfaction in the knowledge that as he fell he dragged

Will Fletcher with him--that he had sold himself to the devil and

got his price.

This unholy joy was still possessing him when at nightfall,

exhausted, dirty, brier-scratched, and bearing their strings of

game, they reached Tom Spade's, and Christopher demanded raw

whisky in the little room behind the store. Sol Peterkin was

there, astride his barrel, and as they entered he gave breath to

a low whistle of astonishment.

"Why, your grandpa's been sweepin' up the county for you!" he

exclaimed to Will.

"So he's found out I wasn't at the Morrisons'," said the boy a

little nervously. "I'd better be going home, I reckon, and get it

over."

Christopher drained his glass of whisky, and then, refilling it,

pushed it across the table.

"What! Aren't you man enough to swallow a thimbleful?" he asked,

with a laugh. His face was flushed, and the dust of the roads

showed in streaks upon his forehead, where the crown of his straw

hat had drawn a circle around his moist fair hair. The hand with

which he touched the glass trembled slightly, and his eyes were

so reckless that, after an instants' frightened silence. Peterkin

cried out in alarm: "For the Lord's sake, Mr. Christopher, you're

not yourself--it's the way his father went, you know!"

"What of it?" demanded Christopher, turning his dangerous look

upon the little man. "If there's a merrier way to go, I'd like to

know it."

Peterkin drew over to the table and laid a restraining hold on

the boy's arm. "Put that down, sonny," he said. "I couldn't stand

it, and you may be sure it'll do you no good. It will turn your

stomach clean inside out."

"He took it," replied the boy stubbornly, "and I'll drink it if

he says so." He lifted the glass and stood looking inquiringly at

the man across from him. "Shall I drink it?" he asked, and waited

with a boyish swagger.

Christopher gave a short nod. "Oh, not if you're afraid of it,"

he responded roughly; and then, as Will threw back his head and

the whisky touched his lips, the other struck out suddenly and

sent the glass shivering to the floor. "Go home, you fool!" he

cried, "and keep clear of me for good and all."

A moment afterward he had passed from the room, through the

store, and was out upon the road.

CHAPTER VIII. Between the Devil and the Deep Sea

There was a cheerful blaze in the old lady's parlour, and she was

sitting placidly in her Elizabethan chair, the yellow cat dozing

at her footstool. Lila paced slowly up and down the room, her

head bent a little sideways, as she listened to Tucker's cheerful

voice reading the evening chapter from the family Bible. His

crutch, still strapped to his right shoulder, trailed behind him

on the floor, and the smoky oil lamp threw his eccentric shadow

on the whitewashed wall, where it hung grimacing like a grotesque

from early Gothic art.

"Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown

it," he read in his even tones; "if a man would give all the

substance of his house for love, it would utterly be condemned."

The old lady tapped the arm of her chair and turned her sightless

eyes upon the Bible, as if Solomon in person stood there awaiting

judgment.

"I always liked that verse, brother," she remarked, "though I am

not sure that I consider it entirely proper reading for the

young. Aren't you tired walking, Lila?"

"Oh, no, mother."

"Well, we mustn't take the Scriptures literally, you know, my

child; if we did, I fear a great deal of trouble would come of

it--and surely it is a pity to magnify the passion of love when

so very many estimable persons get along quite comfortably

without it. You remember my remarking how happy Miss Belinda

Morrison always appeared to be, and so far as I know she never

had a suitor in her life, though she lived to be upward of

eighty."

"Oh, mother! and yet you were so madly in love with father--you

remember the fancy ball."

"The fancy ball occupied only one night, my dear, and I've had

almost seventy years. I married for love, as you certainly

know--at my age, I suppose I might as well admit it--but the

marriage happened to be also entirely suitable, and I hope that I

should never have been guilty of anything so indelicate as to

fall in love with a gentleman who wasn't a desirable match."

Lila flushed and bit her lip.

"I don't care about stations in life, nor blood, nor anything

like that," she protested.

The old lady sighed. "We won't have any more of Solomon, Tucker,

"she observed. "I fear he will put notions into the child's head.

Not care about blood, indeed! What are we coming to, I wonder?

Well, well, I suppose it is what I deserve for allowing myself to

fall so madly in love with your father. When I look back now it

seems to me that I could have achieved quite as much with a great

deal less expenditure of emotion."

"Now, now, Lucy, " said Tucker, closing the gilt clasps of the

Bible, "you're not yet seventy, and by the time you reach eighty

you will see things clearer. I'm a good deal younger than you,

but I'm two-thirds in the grave already, which makes a

difference. My life's been long and pleasant as it is, but when I

glance back upon it now I tell you the things I regret least in

it are my youthful follies. A man must be very far in his dotage,

indeed, when he begins to wear a long face over the sharp breaths

that he drew in youth. I came very near ruining myself for a

woman once, and the fact that I was ready to do it--even though I

didn't--is what in the past I like best to recall to-day. It

makes it all easier and better, somehow, and it seems to put a

zest into the hours I spend now on my old bench. To have had one

emotion that was bigger than you or your universe is to have had

life, my dear."

The old lady wiped her eyes. "It may be so, brother, it may be

so," she admitted; "but not before Lila. Is that you,

Christopher?"

The young man came in and crossed slowly to the fire, bending for

an instant over her chair. He was conscious suddenly that his

clothes smelled of the fields and that the cold water of the well

had not cleansed his face and hands. All at once it came to him

with something of a shock that this bare, refined poverty was

beyond his level--that about himself there was a coarseness, a

brutality even, that made him shrink from contact with these

others--with his mother, with Lila, with poor, maimed Tucker in

his cotton suit. Was it only a distinction in manner, he wondered

resentfully, or did the difference lie still deeper in some

unlikeness of soul? For the first time in his life he felt ill at

ease in the presence of those he loved, and as his eyes dwelt

moodily on Lila's graceful figure--upon the swell of her low

bosom, her swaying hips, and the free movement of her limbs--he

asked himself bitterly if he had aught in common with so delicate

and rare a thing? And she? Was her blithe acquiescence, after

all, but an assumed virtue, to whose outward rags she clung? Was

it possible that there was here no inward rebellion, none of that

warfare against Destiny which at once inspirited and embittered

his heart?

His face grew dark, and Uncle Boaz, coming in to stir the fire,

glanced up at him and sighed.

"You sho' do look down in de mouf, Marse Chris," he observed.

Christopher started and then laughed blankly. "Well, I'm not

proof against troubles, I reckon," he returned. "They're things

none of us can keep clear of, you know."

Uncle Boaz chuckled under his breath. "Go 'way f'om yer, Marse

Chris; w'at you know 'bout trouble--you ain' even mah'ed yet."

"Now, now, Boaz, don't be putting any ideas against marriage in

his head," broke in the old lady. "He has remained single too

long as it is, for, as dear old Bishop Deane used to say, it is

surely the duty of every gentleman to take upon himself the

provision of at least one helpless female. Not that I wish you to

enter into marriage hastily, my son, or for any merely

sentimental reasons; but I am sure, as things are, I believe one

may have a great many trials even if one remains single, and

though I know, of course, that I've had my share of trouble,

still I never blamed your poor father one instant--not even for

the loss of my six children, which certainly would not have

happened if I had not married him. But, as I've often told you,

my dear, I think marriage should be rightly regarded more as a

duty than as a pleasure. Your Aunt Susannah always said it was

like choosing a partner at a ball; for my part, I think it

resembles more the selecting of a brand of flour."

"And to think that she once cried herself sick because

Christopher went hunting during the honeymoon!" exclaimed Tucker,

with his pleasant laugh.

"Ah, life is long, and one's honeymoon is only a month, brother,"

retorted the old lady; "and I'm not saying anything against love,

you know, when it comes to that. Properly conducted, it is a very

pleasant form of entertainment. I've enjoyed it mightily myself;

but I'm nearing seventy, and the years of love seem very small

when I look back. There are many interesting things in a long

life, and love for a man is only one among them; which brings me,

after all, to the conclusion that the substance of anybody's

house is a large price to pay for a single feeling."

Christopher leaned over her and held out his arms.

"It is your bedtime, mother--shall I carry you across?" he asked;

and as the old lady nodded, he lifted her as if she were a child

and held her closely against his breast, feeling his tenderness

revive at the clasp of her fragile hands. When he placed her upon

her bed, he kissed her good-night and went up the narrow

staircase, stooping carefully to avoid the whitewashed ceiling

above.

Once in his room, he threw off his coat and sat down upon the

side of his narrow bed, glancing contemptuously at his bare brown

arms, which showed through the openings in his blue shirt

sleeves. He was still smarting from the memory of the sudden

selfconsciousness he had felt downstairs, and a pricking

sensitiveness took possession of him, piercing like needles

through the boorish indifference he had worn. All at once he

realised that he was ashamed of himself--ashamed of his

ignorance, his awkwardness, his brutality--and with the shame

there awoke the slow anger of a sullen beast. Fate had driven him

like a whipped hound to the kennel, but he could still snarl back

his defiance from the shadow of his obscurity. The strong

masculine beauty of his face--the beauty, as Cynthia had said, of

the young David--confronted him in the little greenish mirror

above the bureau, and in the dull misery of the eyes he read

those higher possibilities, which even to-day he could not regard

without a positive pang. What he might have been seemed forever

struggling in his look with what he was, like the Scriptural

wrestle between the angel of the Lord and the brute. The soul,

distorted, bruised, defeated, still lived within him, and it was

this that brought upon him those hours of mortal anguish which he

had so vainly tried to drown in his glass. From the mirror his

gaze passed to his red and knotted hand, with its blunted nails,

and the straight furrow grew deeper between his eyebrows. He

remembered suddenly that his earliest ambition--the ambition of

his childhood--had been that of a gentlemanly scholar of the old

order. He had meant to sit in a library and read Horace, or to

complete the laborious translation of the "Iliad" which his

father had left unfinished. Then his studies had ended abruptly

with the Greek alphabet, and from the library he had passed out

to the plough. In the years of severe physical labour which

followed he had felt the spirit of the student go out of him

forever, and after a few winter nights, when he fell asleep over

his books, he had sunk slowly to the level of the small tobacco

growers among whom he lived. With him also was the curse of

apathy--that hereditary instinct to let the single throw decide

the issue, so characteristic of the reckless Blakes. For more

than two hundred years his people had been gay and careless

livers on this very soil; among them all he knew of not one who

had gone without the smallest of his desires, nor of one who had

permitted his left hand to learn what his right one cast away.

Big, blithe, mettlesome, they passed before him in a long, comely

line, flushed with the pleasant follies which had helped to sap

the courage in their descendants' veins.

At first he had made a pitiable attempt to remain "within his

class," but gradually, as time went on, this, too, had left him,

and in the end he had grown to feel a certain pride in the

ignorance he had formerly despised--a clownish scorn of anything

above the rustic details of his daily life. There were days even

when he took a positive pleasure in the degree of his abasement,

when but for his blind mother he would have gone dirty, spoken in

dialect, and eaten with the hounds. What he dreaded most now were

the rare moments of illumination in which he beheld his

degradation by a blaze of light--moments such as this when he

seemed to stand alone upon the edge of the world, with the devil

awaiting him when he should turn at last. Years ago he had

escaped these periods by strong physical exertion, working

sometimes in the fields until he dropped upon the earth and lay

like a log for hours. Later, he had yielded to drink when the

darkness closed over him, and upon several occasions he had sat

all night with a bottle of whisky in Tom Spade's store. Both

methods he felt now to be ineffectual; fatigue could not deaden

nor could whisky drown the bitterness of his soul. One thing

remained, and that was to glut his hatred until it should lie

quiet like a gorged beast.

Steps sounded all at once upon the staircase, and after a moment

the door opened and Cynthia entered.

"Did you see Fletcher's boy, Christopher?" she asked. "His

grandfather was over here looking for him."

"Fletcher over here? Well, of all the impudence!"

"He was very uneasy, but he stopped long enough to ask me to

persuade you to part with the farm. He'd give three thousand

dollars down for it, he said."

She dusted the bureau abstractedly with her checked apron and

then stood looking wistfully into the mirror.

"Is that so? If he'd give me three million I wouldn't take it,"

answered Christopher.

"It seems a mistake, dear," said Cynthia softly; "of course, I'd

hate to oblige Fletcher, too, but we are so poor, and the money

would mean so much to us. I used to feel as you do, but somehow I

seem all worn out now--soul as well as body. I haven't the

strength left to hate."

"Well, I have," returned Christopher shortly, "and I'll have it

when I'm gasping over my last breath. You needn't bother about

that business, Cynthia; I can keep up the family record on my own

account. What's the proverb about us--'a Blake can hate twice as

long as most men can love'--that's my way, you know."

"You didn't finish it," said Cynthia, turning from the bureau;

"it's all downstairs in the 'Life of Bolivar Blake'; you remember

Colonel Byrd got it off in a toast at a wedding breakfast, and

Great-grandfather Bolivar was so proud of it he had it carved

above his library door."

"High and mighty old chap, wasn't he? But what's the rest?"

"What he really said was: 'A Blake can hate twice as long as most

men can love, and love twice as long as most men can live.'"

Christopher looked down suddenly at his great bronzed hands. "Oh,

he needn't have stuck the tail of it on," he remarked carelessly;

"but the first part has a bully sound."

When Cynthia had gone, he undressed and threw himself on the bed,

but there was a queer stinging sensation in his veins, and he

could not sleep. Rising presently, he opened the window, and in

the frosty October air stood looking through the darkness to the

light that twinkled in the direction of Blake Hall. Faint stars

were shining overhead, and against the indistinct horizon

something obscure and black was dimly outlined--perhaps the great

clump of oaks that surrounded the old brick walls. Somewhere by

that glimmer of light he knew that Fletcher sat hugging his

ambition like a miser, gloating over the grandson who would grow

up to redeem his name. For the weak, foolish-mouthed boy

Christopher at this moment knew neither tolerance nor compassion;

and if he stooped to touch him, he felt that it was merely as he

would grasp a stick which Fletcher had taken for his own defense.

The boy himself might live or die, prosper or fail, it made

little difference. The main thing was that in the end Bill

Fletcher should be hated by his grandson as he was hated by the

man whom he had wronged.

CHAPTER IX. As the Twig is Bent

It was two weeks after this that Fletcher, looking up from his

coffee and cakes one morning, demanded querulously "Whar's Will,

Saidie? It seems to me he sleeps late these days."

"Oh, he was up hours ago," responded Miss Saidie, from behind the

florid silver service. "I believe he has gone rabbit hunting with

that young Blake. "

Fletcher laid down his knife and fork and glowered suspiciously

upon his sister, the syrup from his last mouthful hanging in

drops on his coarse gray beard.

"With young Blake! Why, what's the meaning of that?" he inquired.

"It's only that Will's taken to him, I think. Thar's no harm in

this hunting rabbits that I can see, and it keeps the child out

of doors, anyway. Fresh air is what the doctor said he needed,

you know."

"I don't like it; I don't like it," protested Fletcher; "those

Blakes are as mad as bulldogs, and they've been so as far back as

I can remember. The sooner a stop's put to this thing the better

it'll be. How long has it been going on, I wonder?" "About ten

days, I believe, and it does seem to give the boy such an

interest. I can't help feeling it's a pity to break it up."

"Oh, bother you and your feelings!" was Fletcher's retort. "If

you'd had the sense you ought to have had, it never would have

started; but you've always had a mushy heart, and I ought to have

allowed for it, I reckon. Thar're two kind of women in this

world, the mulish and the pulish, an' when it comes to a man's

taking his pick between 'em, the Lord help him. As for that young

Blake--well, if I had to choose between him and the devil, I'd

take up with the devil mighty fast, that's all."

"Oh, Brother Bill, he saved the child's life!"

"Well, he didn't do it on purpose; he told me so himself. I tried

to settle that fair and square with him, you know, and he had the

face to tear my check in half and send it back. Oh, I don't like

this thing, I tell you, and I won't have it. I've no doubt it's

at the bottom of all Will's cutting up about school, too. He was

not well enough to go yesterday, he said, and here he's getting

up this morning at daybreak and streaking, heaven knows whar,

with a beggar. You may as well pack his things--I'll ship him off

to-morrow if I'm alive."

"I hope you won't scold him, anyway; he's not strong, you know,

and it's good for him to have a little pleasure. I'm sure I can't

see what you have against the Blakes, as far as that goes. I

remember the old gentleman when I was a child--so fine, and

clean, and pleasant, it was a sight just to see him ride by on

his dappled horse. He always lifted his hat to me, too, when he

passed me in the road, and once he gave me some peaches for

opening the red gate for him. I never could help liking him, and

I was sorry when he lost his money and they had to sell the

Hall."

Fletcher choked over his coffee and grew purple in the face.

"Hang your puling!" he cried harshly. "I'll not stand it, do you

hear? The old man was a beggarly, cheating spendthrift, and the

young one is a long sight worse. I'd rather wring Will's neck

than have him mixed up with that batch of paupers."

Miss Saidie shrunk back, frightened, behind the silver service.

"Of course you know best, brother," she hastened to acknowledge,

with her unfailing good-humour. "I'm as fond of the child as you

are, I reckon--and of Maria, too, for that matter. Have you seen

this photograph she sent me yesterday, taken at some outlandish

place across the water? I declare, I had no idea she was half so

handsome. She has begun to wear her hair low and has filled out

considerable."

"Well, there was room for it," commented Fletcher, as he glanced

indifferently at the picture and laid it down. "Get Will's

clothes packed to-day, remember. He starts off tomorrow morning,

rain or shine."

Pushing back his chair, he paused to gulp a last swallow of

coffee, and then stamped heavily from the room.

At dinner Will did not appear, and when at last the supper bell

jangled in the hall and Fletcher strode in to find the boy's

place still empty, the shadow upon his brow grew positively

black. As they rose from the table there were brisk, light steps

along the hall, and Will entered hurriedly, warm and dusty after

the day's hunt. Catching sight of his grandfather, he started

nervously, and the boyish animation he had brought in from the

fields faded quickly from his face, which took on a sly and

dogged look.

"Whar in the devil's name have you been, suh?" demanded Fletcher

bluntly.

The boy hesitated, seeking the inevitable defenses of the weak

pitted against the strong. "I've been teaching my hounds to hunt

rabbits," he replied, after a moment. "Zebbadee was with me."

"So you were too sick to start for school this morning, eh?"

pursued Fletcher, hurt and angry. "Only well enough to go

traipsing through the bushes after a pack of brutes?"

"I had a headache, but it got better. May I go up now to wash my

hands?"

For an instant Fletcher regarded him in a brooding silence; then,

with that remorseless cruelty which is the strangest

manifestation of wounded love, he loosened upon the boy's head

all the violence of his smothered wrath.

"You'll do nothing of the kind! I ain't done with you yet, and

when I am I reckon you will know it. Mark my words, if you warn't

such a girlish looking chap I'd take my horsewhip to your

shoulders in a jiffy. So this is the return I get, is it, for all

my trouble with you since the day you were born! Tricks and lies

are all the reward I'm to expect, I reckon. Well, you'll learn--

once for all, now--that when you undertake to fool me it's a

clear waste of time. I've found out whar you've been to-day, and

I know you've been sneaking across the county with that darn

Blake!"

The boy looked at him steadily, first with speechless terror,

then with a cowed and sullen rage. The glare in Fletcher's eyes

fascinated him, and he stood motionless on his spot of carpet as

if he were held there in an invisible vise. Weakling as he was,

he had been humoured too long to bear the lash submissively at

last, and beneath the tumult of words that overwhelmed him he

felt his anger flow like an infusion of courage in his veins. The

greater share of love was still on his grandfather's side, and

the knowledge of this lent a sullen defiance to his voice.

"You bluster so I can't hear," he said, blinking fast to shut out

the other's eyes. "If I did go with Christopher Blake, what's the

harm in it? I only lied because you make such a fuss it gives me

a headache."

"It's the first fuss I ever made with you, I reckon," returned

Fletcher, softening before the accusation. "If I ever fussed with

you before, sonny, you may make mighty certain you deserved it."

"You frighten me half to death when you rage so," persisted the

boy, snatching craftily at his advantage.

"There, there, we'll get it over," said Fletcher, quieting

instantly. "I didn't mean to scare you that way, but the truth is

it put me in a passion to hear of you mixing up with that scamp

Blake. Jest keep clear of him and I'll ask nothing more of you.

You may chase all your rabbits between here and kingdom come for

aught I care, but if I ever see you alongside of Christopher

Blake again, I tell you, I'll lick you until you're black and

blue. And now hurry up and git your supper and go to bed, for you

start to school to-morrow morning at sunrise."

Will flushed, and stood blinking his eyes in the lamplight.

"I don't want to go to school, grandpa," he said persuasively.

"That's a pity, sonny, because you've got to go whether you like

it or not. Your Aunt Saidie has gone and packed your things, and

I'll give you a month's pocket money to start with."

"But I'd rather stay at home and study with Mr. Morrison. Then I

could follow after the hounds in the afternoon and keep out in

the fresh air, as the doctor said I must."

"Now, now, we've had enough of this," said Fletcher decisively.

"You'll do what I say, mind you, and you'll do it quick. No

haggling over it, do you hear?"

Will looked at him sullenly, nerved by that reckless anger which

so often passes for pure daring.

"If you make me go you'll be sorry, grandpa," he said, choking.

Fletcher swallowed an uneasy laugh, strangled over it, and

finally spat it out with a wad of tobacco.

"Why, what blamed maggot have you got in your head, son?" he

inquired, laying his heavy hand on the boy's shoulder. "You

didn't use to hate school so, and, as sure as you're born, you'll

find it first rate sport when you get back. It's this Blake

business, that's what it is--he's gone and stuffed you plum full

of notions. Look here, now, you don't want to grow up to be a

dunce like him, do you?"

He had touched the raw at last, and Will broke out passionately

in revolt, inflamed by a boyish admiration for his own bravado.

"He's got a lot more sense than anybody about here, "he cried,

backing against the door and holding tightly to the handle; "and

if he doesn't know that plaguey Greek it's because he says there

isn't any use in it. Why, he can shoot a bird on the wing over

his shoulder, and mount a horse at full gallop, and tell stories

that make you creep all over. He's not a dunce, grandpa; he's my

friend, and I like him!"

The last words came in a sudden spurt, for, feeling his

artificial courage ooze out of him, the boy had started in a run

from the room. He had barely crossed the threshold, however, when

Fletcher reached out with a strong grip and pulled him back,

swinging him slowly round until the two stood face to face.

"Now, here's one thing flat," said the man in a husky voice, if I

ever see or hear of you opening your mouth to that rascal again,

I'll thrash you until you haven't a sound bone in your body.

You'd better go up now and say your prayers."

As he released his grasp, the boy struck out at him with a

nerveless gesture and then shot like an arrow through the hall

and out into the twilight. At the moment his terror of Fletcher

was forgotten in the paroxysm of his anger. Short sobs broke from

him as he ran, and presently his breath came in pants like those

of an overdriven horse; but still, without slackening his pace,

he sped on to the old ice-pond and then wheeled past the turning

into the sunken road. Not until he had reached the long gate

before the Blake cottage did he stop short suddenly and stand,

grasping his moist shirt collar, in an effort to quiet his

convulsed breathing.

The hounds greeted him with a single bay, and at the noise

Cynthia came out upon the porch and then down into the gravelled

path between the old rose-bushes.

"What do you wish?" she demanded stiffly, standing severe and

erect in her faded silk.

"I must speak to Christopher--I must!" gasped the boy, breathing

hard. "I am going away tomorrow, and this is my last chance."

"Well, he's in the stable, I believe," replied Cynthia coolly.

"If you want him, you must go there to look for him, and be sure

not to make a noise when you pass the house." Then, as he darted

away, her eyes followed him with a weary aversion.

Will passed the kitchen and the woodpile and, turning into a

little path that led from the well, came to the open door of the

rudely built stable. A dim light fell in a square across the

threshold, and looking inside he saw that a lantern was hanging

from a nail above the nearest stall and that within the circle of

its illumination Christopher was busily currying the old gray

mare.

At the boy's entrance he paused for an instant, glanced

carelessly over the side of the stall, and then went on with his

work.

"Playing night-owl, eh?" he remarked indifferently. "There's no

rubbing-down for you to do, I reckon."

"There's a darn sight worse," returned the boy, throwing out the

oath with a conscious swagger as he braced himself against the

ladder that ran up to the loft.

His tone arrested Christopher's hand, and, lifting his head, the

young man stood attentively regarding him, one arm lying upon the

broad back of the old mare.

"Why, what's up now?" he questioned with a smile. Some fine

chaff, which he had brought down from the loft, still clung to

his hair and clothes and darkened his upper lip like a mustache.

"Grandpa's found it out and he's hopping," said the boy. "I

always told you he would be, you know, and now it's come. If he

ever catches me with you again he swears he'll give it to me like

hell. He pressed tightly against the ladder and wagged his head

defiantly. "But he needn't think he can bully me like that--not

if I know it!"

"Well, he mustn't catch you again," returned Christopher, not

troubling to soften his scorn of such cheap heroics; "we must

manage better next time. Did you think to remind him, by the way,

that I once took the trouble to save your life?"

"That's a fact, I didn't think of it. What would he have said, I

wonder?"

Christopher raised his eyebrows. "Knocked your front teeth out,

perhaps. He's like that, isn't he?"

"Oh, he's awfully fond of me, you know," protested the boy; "but

it's his meddling ways that I can't stand. What business is it of

his who my friends are? He hasn't got to take up with 'em, has

he? Why, what he hates is for me to want to be with anybody but

himself or Aunt Saidie. He'd like to keep me dangling all day to

his coat tails, but it's not fair, and I won't have it. I'll show

him whether I'm to be kept a kid forever or not!"

"There's spirit for you!" drawled Christopher with a laugh, as he

applied the currycomb to the mare's flank.

"You just wait till you hear the worst," returned the other, with

evident pride in the thunderbolt about to be delivered. "He

swears he's going to send me to school tomorrow at sunrise."

"You don't say so?" ejaculated Christopher.

"Oh, but he'll do it, too--the only way to get around him is to

fall ill, and I can't work that tomorrow. I played the trick last

week and he saw through it. I've got to go, that's certain; but

I'm going to make him sorry enough before he's done. Why couldn't

he let me keep on studying with Mr. Morrison, as the doctor said

I ought to? What's the use of this blamed old Latin and Greek,

anyway? Nobody about here knows them, and why should I set myself

up for a precious numbskull of a scholar? I'd rather be a crack

shot like you any day! I tell you one thing," he finished,

sucking in his breath in a way that had annoyed Christopher from

the first, "I've half a mind to run away or fall ill after I get

there!"

Christopher turned suddenly, slapped the mare on the flank, and

came out of the stall, the currycomb still in his hand. His shirt

sleeves were rolled above his elbows, and the muscles of his arms

stood out like cords under the sunburned skin, which showed a

paler bronze from the wrists up. He was flushed from leaning

over, and his clothes smelled strongly of the stable.

"If you do, come to me, " he said lightly, "and I'll hide you in

the barn till the storm blows over. It wouldn't last long, I

reckon."

"Bless you, no; when he's scared I can do anything with him. Why,

he was as soft as mush after the horses ran away with me, though

he'd threatened to thrash me if I touched the reins. Oh, I say

it's a shame we never had that 'possum hunt!"

Christopher turned down his shirt sleeves and brushed the chaff

from his face.

"What do you say about to-night?" he inquired, with something

like a sneer. "We couldn't go far, of course, and we'd have to

borrow Tom Spade's hounds--mine are tired out--but we might have

a short run about midnight, get a 'possum or so, and be in our

beds before daybreak. Shall we try it?"

The boy wavered, struggling between his desire for the chase and

his fear of Fletcher.

"Of course, if you're afraid--" added Christopher slowly.

"I'm not afraid," broke out Will angrily. "I'm not afraid and you

know it. You be at the store by eleven, and I'll get out of the

window and join you. Grandpa will never know, and if he

does--well, I'll settle him!"

"Then be quick about it," was Christopher's retort, and as the

boy ran out into the darkness he followed him to the door and

stood gazing moodily down upon the yellow circle that his lantern

cast on the bare ground. A massive fatigue oppressed him, and his

hands and feet had become like leaden weights. There was a

heaviness, too, about his head, and his eyeballs burned as if he

had looked too long at a bright light. At the moment he felt like

a man who, being bound upon a wheel, is whirled so rapidly around

that he is dazed by the continuous revolutions. What did it all

mean, anyway--the boy, Fletcher, himself, and the revenge which

he now saw so clearly before him? Was it a great divine judgment

or a great human cruelty?

Question as he would, the wheel still turned, and he knew that

for good or evil he was bound upon it until the end.

CHAPTER X. Powers of Darkness

October dragged slowly along, and Christopher followed his work

upon the farm with the gloomy indifference which had become the

settled expression of his attitude toward life. Since the morning

when he had seen Will drive by to the cross-roads he had heard

nothing of him, and gradually, as the weeks went on, that last

reckless night behind the hounds had ceased to represent a cause

either of rejoicing or of regret. He had not meant to goad the

boy into drinking--of this he was quite sure--and yet when the

hunt was over and the two stood just before dawn in Tom Spade's

room he had felt the devil enter into him and take possession.

The old mad humour of his blood ran high, and as the raw whisky

fired his imagination he was dimly conscious that his talk grew

wilder and that the surrounding objects swam before his gaze as

if seen through a fog. Life, for the time at least, lost its

relative values; the moment loomed larger in his vision than the

years, and he beheld the past and the future dwarfed by the

single radiant instant that was his own. It was as if he could

pay back the score of a lifetime in that one minute.

"Is it possible that what was so difficult yesterday should have

grown so easy to-day?" he asked himself, astonished. "Why have I

never seen so clearly before? Why, until this evening, have I

gone puling about my life as if such things as disgrace and

poverty were sufficient to crush the strength out of a man? Let

me put forth all my courage and nothing is impossible--not even

the attainment of success nor the punishment of Fletcher. It is

only necessary to begin at once--to hasten about one's task--and

in a few short years it will be accomplished and done with. All

will be as I wish, and I shall then be as happy as Tucker."

Following this came the questions, How? When? Where shall I

begin?--but he put them angrily aside and refilled his glass. A

great good-humour possessed him, and, as he drank, all the

unpleasant things of life--loss, unrest, heavy labour--vanished

in the roseate glow that pervaded his thoughts.

What came of it was not quite clear to him next day, and this

caused the uneasiness that lasted for a week. He had a vague

recollection that Tom Spade took the boy home and rolled him

through the window, and that he himself went whistling to his bed

with the glorious sensation that he was riding the crest of a big

wave. With the morning came a severe headache and the ineffectual

effort to remember just how far it had all gone, and then a sharp

anxiety, which vanished when he saw Will pass on his way to

school.

"The boy was none the worse for it," Tom Spade told him later;

"he had a drop too much, to be sure, but his legs were as steady

as mine, an' he slept it off in an hour. He's a ticklish chap,

Mr. Christopher," the storekeeper added after a moment, "an' I'd

keep my hands from meddlin' with him, if I was you. That thing

shan't happen agin at my place, an' it wouldn't have happened

then if I'd been around at the beginnin'. You may tamper with yo'

own salvation as much as you please--that's my gospel, but I'll

be hanged if you've got a right to tamper with anybody else's."

Christopher wheeled suddenly about and gave him a keen glance

from under his lowered eyelids. For the first time he detected a

lack of deference in Tom Spade's tone, and a suspicion shot

through him that the words were meant to veil a reprimand.

"Well, I reckon the boy's got as good a right to drink as I

have," he retorted sneeringly, and a moment afterward went gaily

whistling through the store. At the time he felt a certain

pleasure in defying Tom's opinion--in setting himself so boldly

in opposition to the conventional morality of his neighbours. The

situation gave him several sharp breaths and that dizzy sense of

insecurity in which his mood delighted. It had needed only the

shade of disapproval expressed in the storekeeper's voice to lend

a wonderful piquancy to his enjoyment--to cause him to toy in

imagination with his hatred as a man does with his desire. Before

Tom spoke he had caught himself almost regretting the

affair--wondering, even, if his error were past retrieving--but

with the first mere suggestion of outside criticism his humour

underwent a startling change.

Between Fletcher and himself the account was still open, and the

way in which he meant to settle it concerned himself alone--least

of all did it concern Tom Spade.

He was groping confusedly among these reflections when, one

evening in early November, he went upstairs after a hasty supper

to find Cynthia already awaiting him in his room. At his start of

displeased surprise she came timidly forward and touched his arm.

"Are you sick, Christopher? or has anything happened? You are so

unlike yourself."

He shook his head impatiently and her hand fell from his sleeve.

It occurred to him all at once, with an aggrieved irritation,

that of late his family had failed him in sympathy--that they had

ceased to value the daily sacrifices he made. Almost with horror

he found himself asking the next instant whether the simple bond

of blood was worth all that he had given--worth his youth, his

manhood, his ambition? Until this moment his course had seemed to

him the one inevitable outcome of circumstances--the one

appointed path for him to tread; but even as he put the question

he saw in a sudden illumination that there might have been

another way--that with the burden of the three women removed he

might have struck out into the world and at least have kept his

own head above water. With his next breath the horror of his

thought held him speechless, and he turned away lest Cynthia

should read his degradation in his eyes.

"Happened! Why, what should have happened?" he inquired with

attempted lightness. "Good Lord! After a day's work like mine you

can hardly expect me to dance a hornpipe. Since sunrise I've done

a turn at fall ploughing, felled and chopped a tree, mended the

pasture fence, brought the water for the washing, tied up some

tobacco leaves, and looked after the cattle and the horses--and

now you find fault because I haven't cut any extra capers!"

"Not find fault, dear," she answered, and the hopeless courage in

her face smote him to the heart. In a bitter revulsion of feeling

he felt that he could not endure her suffering tenderness.

"Find fault with you! Oh, Christopher! It is only that you have

been so different of late, so brooding, and you seem to avoid us

at every instant. Even mother has noticed it, and she imagines

that you are in love."

"In love!" he threw back his head with a loud laugh. "Oh, I'm

tired, Cynthia--dog-tired, that's the matter."

"I know, I know," replied Cynthia, rubbing her eyes hard with the

back of her hand. "And the worst is that there's no help for

it--absolutely none. I think about it sometimes until I wonder

that I don't go mad."

He turned at this from the window through which he had been

gazing and fixed upon her a perplexed and moody stare. The

wistful patience in her face, like the look he had seen in the

eyes of overworked farm animals, aroused in him a desire to prod

her into actual revolt--into any decisive rebellion against fate.

To accept life upon its own terms seemed to him, at the instant,

pure cowardliness--the enforced submission of a weakened will;

and he questioned almost angrily if the hereditary instincts were

alive in her also? Did she, too, have her secret battles and her

silent capitulations? Or was her pious resignation, after all,

only a new form of the old Blake malady--of that fatal apathy

which seized them, like disease, when events demanded strenuous

endeavour? Could the saintly fortitude he had once so envied be,

when all was said, merely the outward expression of the inertia

he himself had felt--of the impulse to drift with the tide, let

it carry one where it would?

"Well, I'm glad it's no worse," said Cynthia, with a sigh of

relief, as she turned toward the door. "Since you are not sick,

dear, things are not so bad as they might be. I'll let mother

fancy you have what she calls 'a secret sentiment.' It amuses

her, at any rate. And now I'm going to stir up some buckwheat

cakes for your breakfast. We've got a jug of black molasses."

"That's pleasant, at least," he returned, laughing; and then as

she reached the door he went toward her and laid his hand

awkwardly upon her shoulder. "Don't worry about me, Cynthia," he

added; "there's a lot of work left in me yet, and a change for

the better may come any day, you know. By next year the price of

tobacco may shoot skyhigh."

Her face brightened and a flush smoothed out all the fine

wrinkles on her brow, but with the pathetic shyness of a woman

who has never been caressed she let his hand fall stiffly from

her arm and went hurriedly from the room.

For a few minutes Christopher stood looking abstractedly at the

closed door. Then shaking his head, as if to rid himself of an

accusing thought, he turned away and began rapidly to undress. He

had thrown off his coat, and was stooping to remove his boots,

when a slight noise at the window startled him, and straightening

himself instantly he awaited attentively a repetition of the

sound. In a moment it came again, and hastily crossing the room

and raising the sash, he looked out into the full moonlight and

saw Will Fletcher standing in the gravelled path below. At the

first glance surprise held him motionless, but as the boy waved

to him he responded to the signal, and, catching up his coat from

the bed, ran down the staircase and out into the yard.

"What in the devil's name--" he exclaimed, aghast.

Will was trembling from exhaustion, and his face glimmered like a

pallid blotch under the shadow of the aspen. When the turkeys

stirred on an overhanging bough above him he started nervously

and sucked in his breath with a hissing sound. He was run to

death; this Christopher saw at the first anxious look.

"Get me something to eat," said the boy; "I'm half starved--but

bring it to the barn, for I'm too dead tired to stand a moment.

Yes, I ran away, of course," he finished irritably. "Do I look as

if I'd come in grandpa's carriage?"

With a last spurt of energy he disappeared into the shadows

behind the house, and Christopher, going into the kitchen, began

searching the tin safe for the chance remains of supper. On the

table was the bowl of buckwheat which Cynthia had been preparing

when she was called away by some imperious demand of her

mother's, and near it he saw the open prayer-book from which she

had been reading. From the adjoining room he heard Tucker's

voice--those rich, pleasant tones that translated into sound the

courageous manliness of the old soldier's face--and for an

instant he yearned toward the cheerful group sitting in the

firelight beyond the whitewashed wall--toward the blind woman in

her old oak chair, listening to the evening chapter from the

Scriptures. Then the feeling passed as quickly as it had come,

and securing a plate of bread and a dried ham-bone, he filled a

glass with fresh milk, and, picking up his lantern, went out of

doors and along the little straggling path to the barn.

The yard was frosted over with moonlight, but when he reached the

rude building where the farm implements and cattle fodder were

sheltered he saw that it was quite dark inside, only a few

scattered moonbeams crawling through the narrow doorway. To his

first call there was no answer, and it was only after he had

lighted his lantern and swung it round in the darkness that he

discovered Will lying fast asleep upon a pile of straw.

As the light struck him full in the face the boy opened his eyes

and sprang up.

"Why, it's you," he said in a relieved voice. "I thought it was

grandpa. If he comes you've got to keep him out, you know!"

He spoke in an excited whisper, and his eyes plunged beyond the

entrance with a look of pitiable and abject terror. Once or twice

he shivered as if from cold, and then, turning away, cowered into

the pile of straw in search of warmth.

For a time Christopher stood gazing uneasily down upon him. "Look

here, man, this can't keep up," he said. "You'd better go

straight home, that's my opinion, and get into a decent bed."

Will started up again. "I won't see him! I won't!" he cried

angrily. "If you bring him here I'll get up and hide. I won't see

him! Why, he almost killed me after that 'possum hunt we had, and

if he found this out so soon he'd kill me outright. There was an

awful rumpus at school. They wrote him and he said he was coming,

so I ran away. It was all his fault, too; he had no business to

send me back again when he knew how I hated it. I told him he'd

be sorry."

"Well, he shan't get in here to-night," returned Christopher

soothingly. I'll keep him out with a shotgun, bless him, if he

shows his face. Come, now, sit up and eat a bit, or there won't

be any fight left in us."

Will took the food obediently, but before it touched his lips the

hand in which he held it dropped limply to the straw.

"I can't eat," he complained, with a gesture of disgust. "I'm too

sick--I've been sick for days. It was all grandpa's doing, too.

When I heard he was coming I went out and got soaking wet, and

then slept in my clothes all night. I knew he'd never make a fuss

if I could only get ill enough, but the next morning I felt all

right, so I came away."

Kneeling upon the floor, Christopher held the glass to his lips,

gently forcing him to drink a few swallows. Then dipping his

handkerchief in the cattle trough outside, he bathed the boy's

face and hands, and, loosening his clothes, made him as

comfortable as he could. "This won't do, you know," he urged

presently, alarmed by Will's difficult breathing. "You are in for

a jolly little spell, and I must get you home. Your grandfather

will never bother you while you're sick."

At the words the boy clung to him deliriously, breaking into

frightened whimpers such as a child makes in the dark. "I won't

go back! I won't go back!" he repeated wildly; "he'll never

believe I'm ill, and I won't go back!"

"All right; that settles it. Lie quiet and I'll fetch you some

bedding from my room. Then I'll fix you a pallet out here, and

we'll put up as best we can till morning."

"Don't stay; don't stay," pleaded Will, as the other, leaving his

lantern on the floor, ran out into the moonlight.

Returning in a quarter of an hour, he threw a small feather-bed

down upon the straw and settled the boy comfortably upon it. Then

he covered him with blankets, and, after closing the door, came

back and stood watching for him to fall asleep. A slight draft

blew from the boarded window, and, taking off his coat, he hung

it carefully across the cracks, shading the lantern with his hand

that its light might not flash in the sleeper's face.

At his step Will gave a stifled moan and looked up in terror.

"I thought you'd left me. Don't go," he begged, stretching out

his hand until it grasped the other's. With the hot, nerveless

clutch upon him, Christopher was conscious of a quick repulsion,

and he remembered the sensation he had felt as a boy when he had

once suddenly brought his palm down on a little green snake that

was basking in the sunshine on an old log. Yet he did not shake

the hand off, and when presently the blanket slipped from Will's

shoulders he stooped and replaced it with a strange gentleness.

The disgust he felt was so evenly mingled with compassion that,

as he stood there, he could not divide the one emotion from the

other. He hated the boy's touch, and yet, almost in spite of

himself, he suffered it.

"Well, I'm not going, so you needn't let that worry you," he

replied. "I'll stretch myself alongside of you in the straw, and

if you happen to want me, just yell out, you know."

The weak fingers closed tightly about his wrist.

"You promise?" asked the boy.

"Oh, I promise," answered the other, raising the lantern for a

last look before he blew it out.

By early daybreak Will's condition was still more alarming, and

leaving him in a feverish stupor upon the pallet, Christopher set

out hurriedly shortly after sunrise to carry news of the boy's

whereabouts to Fletcher.

It was a clear, cold morning, and the old brick house, set midway

of the autumn fields, appeared, as he approached it, to reflect

the golden light that filled the east. Never had the place seemed

to him more desirable than it did as he went slowly toward it

along the desolate November roads. The somber colours of the

landscape, the bared majesty of the old oaks where a few leaves

still clung to the topmost boughs, the deserted garden filled

with wan specters of summer flowers, were all in peculiar harmony

with his own mood as with the stern gray walls wrapped in naked

creepers. That peculiar sense of ownership was strongly with him

as he ascended the broad steps and lifted the old brass knocker,

which still bore the Blake coat of arms.

To his astonishment the door opened instantly and Fletcher

himself appeared upon the threshold. At sight of Christopher he

fell back as if from a blow in the chest, ripping out an oath

with a big downward gesture of his closed fist.

"So you are mixed up in it, are you! Whar's the boy?" From the

dusk of the hall his face shone dead white about the eyes.

"If you want to get anything out of me you'd better curb your

tongue, Bill Fletcher," replied Christopher coolly, feeling an

animal instinct to prolong the torture. "If you think it's any

satisfaction to me to have your young idiot thrown on my hands

you were never more mistaken in your life. I've been up half the

night with him, and the sooner you take him away the better I'll

like it."

"Oh, you leave him to me and I'll settle him," responded

Fletcher, reaching for his hat. "Jest show me whar he is and I'll

git even with him befo' sundown. As for you, young man, I'll have

the sheriff after you yit."

"In the meantime, you'd better have the doctor. The boy's ill, I

tell you. He came to me last evening, run to death and with a

high fever. He slept in the barn, and this morning he is

decidedly worse. If you come, bring Doctor Cairn with you, and I

warn you now you've got to use a lot of caution. Your grandson is

mortally afraid of you, and he threatens to run away if I let you

know where he is. He wants me to sit at the door with a shotgun

and keep you off."

He delivered his blows straight out from the shoulder, lingering

over each separate word that he might enjoy to the full its

stupendous effect.

"This is your doing," repeated Fletcher hoarsely; "it's your

doing, every blamed bit of it."

Christopher laughed shortly. "Well, I'm through with my errand,"

he said, moving toward the steps and pausing with one hand on a

great white column. "The sooner you get him out of my barn the

better riddance it will be. There's one thing certain, though,

and that is that you don't lay eyes on him without the doctor.

He's downright ill, on my oath."

"Oh, it's the same old trick, and I see through it," exclaimed

Fletcher furiously. "It's pure shamming."

"All the same, I've got my gun on hand, and you don't go into

that barn alone." He hung for an instant upon the topmost step,

then descended hurriedly and walked rapidly back along the broad

white walk. It would be an hour, at least, before Fletcher could

follow him with Doctor Cairn, and after he had returned to the

barn and given Will a glass of new milk he fed and watered the

horses and did the numberless small tasks about the house. He was

at the woodpile, chopping some light wood splinters for Cynthia,

when the sound of wheels reached him, and in a little while more

the head of Fletcher's mare appeared around the porch. Doctor

Cairn, a frousy, white-bearded old man, crippled from rheumatism,

held out his hand to Christopher as he descended with some

difficulty between the wheels of the buggy.

Christopher motioned to the barn, and then, taking the reins,

fastened the horse to the branch of a young ailanthus tree which

grew near the woodpile. As he watched the figures of the two men

pass along the little path between the fringes of dead yarrow he

drew an uneasy breath and dug his boot into the rotting mould

upon the ground. The barn door opened and closed; there was a

short silence, and then a sudden despairing cry as of a rabbit

caught in the jaws of a hound. When he heard it he turned

impulsively from the horse's head and went quickly along the path

the men had taken. There was no definite intention in his mind,

but as he reached the barn door it shot open and Fletcher put out

a white face.

"The Doctor wants you, Mr. Christopher," he cried; "Will has gone

clean mad!"

Without a word, Christopher pushed by him and went into the great

dusky room, where the boy was struggling like a madman to loosen

the doctor's grasp. He was conscious at the moment that the air

was filled with fine chaff and that he sucked it in when he

breathed.

At his entrance Will lay quiet for a moment and looked at him

with dazed, questioning eyes.

"Keep them out, Christopher!" he cried, in anguish.

Christopher crossed the room and laid his hand with a protecting

gesture on the boy's head.

"Why, to be sure I will," he said heartily; "the devil himself

won't dare to touch you when I am by, "

BOOK III

THE REVENGE

CHAPTER I. In Which Tobacco is Hero

On an October afternoon some four years later, at the season of

the year when the whole county was fragrant with the curing

tobacco, Christopher Blake passed along the stretch of old road

which divided his farm from the Weatherbys', and, without

entering the porch, called for Jim from the little walk before

the flat whitewashed steps. In response to his voice, Mrs.

Weatherby, a large, motherly looking woman, appeared upon the

threshold, and after chatting a moment, directed him to the log

tobacco barn, where the recently cut crop was "drying out."

"Jim and Jacob are both over thar," she said; " an' a few others,

for the matter of that, who have been helpin' us press new cider

an' drinkin' the old. I'm sure I don't see why they want to

lounge out thar in all that smoke, but thar's no accountin' for

the taste of a man that ever I heard tell of an' I reckon they

kin fancy pretty easy that they are settin' plum in the bowl of a

pipe. It beats me, though, that it do. Why, one mouthful of it is

enough to start me coughin' for a week, an' those men thar jest

swallow it down for pure pleasure." Clean, kindly, hospitable,

she wandered garrulously on, remembering at intervals to press

the young man to "come inside an' try the cakes an' cider."

"No, I'll look them up out there," said Christopher, resisting

the invitation to enter. "I want to get a pair of horseshoes from

Jim; the gray mare cast hers yesterday, and Dick Boxley is laid

up with a sprained arm. Oh, no, thanks; I must be going back."

With a friendly nod he turned from the steps and went rapidly

along the path which led to the distant barn.

As Mrs. Weatherby had said, the place was like the bowl of a

pipe, and it was a moment before Christopher discovered the

little group gathered about the doorway, where a shutter hung

loosely on wooden hinges.

The ancient custom of curing tobacco with open fires, which had

persisted in Virginia since the days of the early settlers, was

still commonly in use; and it is possible that had one of

Christopher's colonial ancestors appeared at the moment in Jacob

Weatherby's log barn it would have been difficult to convince him

that between his death and his resurrection there was a lapse of

more than two hundred years. He would have found the same square,

pen-like structure, built of straight logs carefully notched at

the corners; the same tier-poles rising at intervals of three

feet to the roof; the same hewn plates to support the rafters;

the same "daubing" of the chinks with red clay; and the same

crude door cut in the south wall. From the roof the tobacco hung

in a fantastic decoration, shading from dull green to deep

bronze, and appearing, when viewed from the ground below, to

resemble a numberless array of small furled flags. On the hard

earth floor there were three parallel rows of "unseasoned" logs

which burned slowly day and night, filling the barn with gray

smoke and the pungent odour of the curing tobacco.

"It takes a heap of lookin' arter, an' no mistake," old Jacob was

remarking, as he surveyed the fine crop with the bland and easy

gaze of ownership. "Why, in a little while them top leaves thar

will be like tinder, an' the first floatin' spark will set it all

afire. That's the way Sol Peterkin lost half a crop last year,

an' it's the way Dick Moss lost his whole one the year before."

At Christopher's entrance he paused and turned his pleasant,

ruddy face from the fresh logs which he had been watching. "So

you want to have a look at my tobaccy, too?" he added, with the

healthful zest of a child. "Well, it's worth seein', if I do say

so; thar hasn't been sech leaves raised in this county within the

memory of man."

"That's so," said Christopher, with an appreciative glance. "I'm

looking for Jim, but he's keeping up the fires, isn't he?" Then

he turned quickly, for Tom Spade, who with young Matthew Field

had been critically weighing the promise of Jacob's crop, broke

out suddenly into a boisterous laugh.

"Why, I declar', Mr. Christopher, if you ain't lost yo' shadow!"

he exclaimed.

Christopher regarded him blankly for a moment, and then joined

lightly in the general mirth. "Oh, you mean Will Fletcher," he

returned. "There was a pretty girl in the road as we came up, and

I couldn't get him a step beyond her. Heaven knows what's become

of him by now!"

"I bet my right hand that was Molly Peterkin," said Tom. "If

anybody in these parts begins to talk about 'a pretty gal,' you

may be sartain he's meanin' that yaller-headed limb of Satan.

Why, I stopped my Jinnie goin' with her a year ago. Sech women, I

said to her, are fit for nobody but men to keep company with."

"That's so; that's so," agreed old Jacob, in a charitable tone;

"seein' as men have most likely made 'em what they are, an'

oughtn't to be ashamed of thar own handiwork."

"Now, when it comes to yaller hair an' blue eyes," put in Matthew

Field, "she kin hold her own agin any wedded wife that ever made

a man regret the day of his birth. Many's the time of late I've

gone a good half-mile to git out of that gal's way, jest as I

used to cut round old Fletcher's pasture when I was a boy to keep

from passin' by his redheart cherry-tree that overhung the road.

Well, well, they do say that her young man, Fred Turner, went

back on her, an' threw her on her father's hands two days befo'

the weddin'."

"It was hard on Sol, now you come to think of it," said Tom. "He

told me himself that he tried to git the three who ought to marry

her to draw straws for the one who was to be the happy man, but

they all backed out an' left her high an' dry an' as pretty as a

peach. Fred Turner would have taken his chance, he said, like an

honest man, an' he was terrible down in the mouth when I saw him,

for he was near daft over the gal."

"Well, he was right," admitted Matthew, after reflection. "Why,

the gal sins so free an' easy you might almost fancy her a man."

He drew back, coughing, for Jim came in with a long green log and

laid it on the smouldering fire, which glowed crimson under the

heavy smoke.

"Here's Sol," said the young man, settling the log with his foot.

"I told him you were on your way to the house, pa, but he said he

had only a minute, so he came out here."

"Oh, I've jest been to borrow some Jamaica ginger from Mrs.

Weatherby," explained Sol Peterkin, carefully closing the shutter

after his entrance.

"My wife's took so bad that I'm beginnin' to fear she'll turn out

as po' a bargain as the last. It's my luck--I always knew I was

ill-fated--but, Lord a-mercy, how's a man goin' to tell the state

of a woman's innards from the way she looks on top? All the

huggin' in the world won't make her wink an eyelash, an' then

there'll crop out heart disease or dropsy befo' the year is up.

When I think of the trouble I had pickin' that thar woman it

makes me downright sick. It ain't much matter about the colour or

the shape, I said--a freckled face an' a scrawny waist I kin

stand--only let it be the quality that wears. If you believe it,

suh, I chose the very ugliest I could find, thinkin' that the

Lord might be mo' willin' to overlook her--an' now this is what's

come of it. She's my fourth, too, an' I'll begin to be a joke

when I go out lookin' for a fifth. Naw, suh; if Mary dies, pure

shame will keep me a widower to my death."

"Thar ain't but one thing sartain about marriage, in my mind,"

commented Matthew Field, "an' that is that it gits most of its

colour from the distance that comes between. The more your mouth

waters for a woman, the likelier 'tis that 'tain't the woman for

you--that's my way of thinkin'. The woman a man don't git somehow

is always the woman he ought to have had. It's a curious,

mixed-up business, however you look at it."

"That's so," said Tom Spade; "I always noticed it. The woman who

is your wife may be a bouncin' beauty, an' the woman who ain't

may be as ugly as sin, but you'd go twice as far to kiss her all

the same. Thar is always a sight more spice about the woman who

ain't."

"Jest look at Eliza, now," pursued Matthew, wrapped in the

thought of his own domestic infelicities. "What I could never

understand about Eliza was that John Sales went clean to the dogs

because he couldn't git her. To think of sech a thing happenin',

jest as if I was to blame, when if I'd only known it I could hev

turned about an' taken her sister Lizzie. Thar were five of 'em

in all, an' I settled on Eliza, as it was, with my eyes

blindfold. Poor John--poor John! It was sech a terrible waste of

wantin'."

"Well, it's a thing to stiddy about," said old Jacob, with a

sigh. "They tell me now that that po' young gal of Bill

Fletcher's has found it a thorny bed, to be sho'. Her letters are

all bright an' pleasant enough, they say, filled with fine

clothes an' the names of strange places, but a gentleman who met

her somewhar over thar wrote Fletcher that her husband used her

like a dumb brute."

Christopher started and looked up inquiringly.

"Have you heard anything about that, Jim?" he asked in a queer

voice.

"Nothin' more. Fletcher told me he had written to her to come

home, but she answered that she would stick to Wyndham for better

or for worse. It's a great pity--the marriage promised so well,

too."

"Oh, the gal's got a big heart; I could tell it from her eyes,"

said old Jacob. "When you see those dark, solemn eyes, lookin'

out of a pale, peaked face, it means thar's a heart behind 'em,

an' a heart that bodes trouble some day, whether it be in man or

woman."

Christopher passed his hand across his brow and stood staring

vacantly at the smouldering logs. He could not tell whether the

news saddened or rejoiced him, but, at least, it brought Maria's

image vividly before his eyes. The spell of her presence was over

him again, and he felt, as he had felt on that last evening, the

mysterious attraction of her womanhood. So intense was the

visionary appeal that it had for the moment almost the effect of

hallucination; it was as if she still entreated him across all

the distance. The brooding habit of his mind had undoubtedly done

much to conserve his emotion, as had the rural isolation in which

he lived. In a city life the four years would probably have

blotted out her memory; but where comparison was impossible, and

lighter distractions almost unheard of, what chance was there for

him to forget the single passionate experience he had known?

Among his primitive neighbours Maria had flitted for a time like

a bewildering vision; then the great distant world had caught her

up into its brightness, and the desolate waste country was become

the guardian of the impression she had left.

"If thar's a man who has had bad luck with his children, it's

Bill Fletcher," old Jacob was saying thoughtfully. "He's been a

hard man an' a mean one, too, an' when he couldn't beg or borrow

it's my opinion that he never hesitated to put forth his hand an'

steal. Thar's a powerful lot of judgment in dumb happenin's, an'

when you see a family waste out an' run to seed like that it

usually means that the good Lord is havin' His way about matters.

It takes a mighty sharp eye to tell the difference between

judgment an' misfortune, an' I've seen enough in this world to

know that, no matter how skilfully you twist up good an' evil,

God Almighty may be a long time in the unravelling, but He'll

straighten 'em out at last. Now as to Bill Fletcher, his sins got

in the bone an' they're workin' out in the blood. Look at his son

Bill--didn't he come out of the army to drink himself to death?

Then his granddaughter Maria has gone an' mismarried a somebody,

an' this boy that he'd set his heart on is goin' to the devil so

precious fast that he ain't got time to look behind him."

"Oh, he's young yet," suggested Tom Spade, solemnly wagging his

head, "an' Fletcher says, you know, that he's all right so long

as he keeps clear of Mr. Christopher. It's Mr. Christopher, he

swears, that's been the ruin of him."

Christopher met this with a sneer. "Why does he let him dog my

footsteps, then?" he inquired with a laugh. "I never go to the

Hall, and yet he's always after me."

"Bless you, suh, it ain't any question of lettin' an' thar never

has been sence the boy first put on breeches. Why, when I refused

to sell him whisky at my sto', what did he do but begin smugglin'

it out from town! Fletcher found it out an' blew him sky-high,

but in less than a month it was all goin' on agin."

"An' the funny part is," said Jim Weatherby, "that you can't

dislike Will Fletcher, however much you try. He's a kindhearted,

jolly fellow, in spite of the devil."

"Or in spite of Mr. Christopher," added Tom, with a guffaw.

Frowning heavily, Christopher turned toward the door.

"Oh, you ask Will Fletcher who is his best friend," he said, "and

let me hear his answer."

With an abrupt nod to Jacob, he went out of the tobacco barn and

along the little path to the road. He had barely reached the

gate, however, when Jim Weatherby ran after him with the

horseshoes, and offered eagerly to come over in the morning and

see that the gray mare was properly shod.

"I'm handy at that kind of thing, you know," he explained, with a

blush.

"Well, if you don't mind, I wish you would come," Christopher

replied, "but to save my life I can't see why you are so ready

with other people's jobs."

Then, taking the horseshoes, he opened the gate and started

rapidly toward home. His mind was still absorbed by old Jacob's

news, and upon reaching the house he was about to pass up to his

room, when Cynthia called him from the little platform beyond the

back door, and going out, he found her standing pale and tearful

on the kitchen threshold. Looking beyond her, he saw that Lila

and Tucker were in the room, and from the intense and resolute

expression in the younger sister's face he judged that she was

the central figure in what appeared to be a disturbing scene.

"Christopher, you can't imagine what has happened," Cynthia began

in her beautiful, tragic voice. "Lila went to church yesterday--

with whom, do you suppose?"

Christopher thought for a moment.

"Not with Bill Fletcher?" he gave out at last.

"Come, come, now, it's a long ways better than that, you'll

admit, Cynthia," broke in Tucker, with a peaceful intention. "I

can't help reminding you, my dear, to be thankful that it wasn't

so unlikely a person as Bill Fletcher."

With a decisive gesture such as he had never believed her capable

of, Lila came up to Christopher and stood facing him with beaming

eyes. He had never before seen her so lovely, and he realised at

the instant that it was this she had always needed to complete

her beauty. From something merely white and warm and delicate she

had become suddenly as radiant as a flame.

"I went with Jim Weatherby, Christopher," she said slowly, "and

I'm not ashamed of it."

The admission wrung a short groan from Cynthia, who stood

twisting her gingham apron tightly about her fingers.

"Oh, Lila, who was his grandfather?" she cried. "Well, there's

this thing certain, she doesn't want to marry his grandfather,"

put in Tucker, undaunted by the failure of his former attempts at

peace-making. "Not that I have anything against the old chap, for

that matter; he was an honest, well-behaved old body, and used to

mend my boots for me up to the day of his death. Jim gets his

handy ways from him, I reckon."

Cynthia turned upon him angrily.

"Uncle Tucker, you will drive me mad," she exclaimed, the tears

starting to her lashes. "It does seem to me that you, at least,

might show some consideration for the family name. It's all we've

left."

"And it's a good enough relic in its way," returned Tucker

amicably, "though if you are going to make a business of

sacrificing yourself, for heaven's sake let it be for something

bigger than a relic. A live neighbour is a much better thing to

make sacrifices for than a dead grandfather."

"I don't care one bit what his grandfather was or whether he ever

had any or not!" cried Lila, in an outburst of indignation; "and

more than that, I don't care what mine was, either. I am going to

marry him--I am--I am! Don't look at me like that, Cynthia. Do

you want to spoil my whole life?"

Cynthia threw out her hands with a despairing grasp of the air,

as if she were reaching for the broken remnants of the family

pride. "To marry a Weatherby!" she gasped. "Oh, mother! mother!

Lila, is it possible that you can be so selfish?" But Lila had

won her freedom too dearly to surrender it to an appeal.

"I want to be selfish," she said stubbornly. "I have never been

selfish in my life, and I want to see what it feels like. Oh, you

are cruel, all of you, and you will break my heart."

Christopher's face paled and grew stern.

"We must all think of mother's wishes, Lila," he said gravely.

For the first time the girl lost her high fortitude, and a

babyish quiver shook her lips. Her glance wavered and fell, and

with a pathetic gesture she turned from Christopher to Cynthia

and from Cynthia to Tucker.

"Oh, you can't understand, Christopher!" she cried; "you have

never been in love, nor has Cynthia. None of you can understand

but Uncle Tucker!"

She ran to him sobbing, and he, steadying himself on a single

crutch, folded his arm about her.

"I understand, child, thank God," he said softly.

CHAPTER II. Between Christopher and Will

An hour later Christopher was at work in the stable, when he

heard a careless whistle outside, and Will Fletcher looked in at

the open door.

"I say, Chris, take a turn off and come down to Tom Spade's," he

urged.

Christopher, who was descending from the loft with an armful of

straw, paused midway of the ladder and regarded his visitor with

perceptible hesitation.

"I can't this evening," he answered; "the light is almost gone,

and I've a good deal to get through with after dark. I'll manage

better to-morrow, if I can. By the way, why didn't you show up at

Weatherby's?"

Will came in and sat down on the edge of a big wooden box which

contained the harness. In the four years he had changed but

little in appearance, though his slim figure had shot up rapidly

in height. His chestnut hair grew in high peaks from his temples

and swept in a single lock above his small, sparkling eyes, which

held an expression of intelligent animation. On the whole, it was

not an unpleasing face, despite the tremulous droop of the mouth,

already darkened by the faint beginning of a brown mustache.

"Oh, Molly Peterkin stopped me in the road," he replied readily.

"I'd caught her eye once or twice before, but this was the first

chance we'd had to speak. I tell you she's a peach, Christopher."

Christopher came down from the ladder and spread the straw evenly

in the horses' stalls.

"So they say," he responded; "but I haven't much of an eye for

women, you know. Now, when it comes to judging a leaf of tobacco,

I'm a match for any man."

"Well, one can't be everything," remarked Will consolingly. He

snatched at a piece of straw that had fallen on the lowest rung

of the ladder and began idly chewing it. "As for me I know a

blamed sight more about women than I do about tobacco," he added,

with a swagger.

Christopher glanced up, and at sight of the boyish figure burst

into a hearty laugh.

"Oh, you're a jolly old sport, I know, and to think that Tom

Spade has been accusing me of leading you astray! Why, you are

already twice the man that I am."

"Pshaw! That's just grandpa's chatter! The old man rails at me

day and night about you until it's a mortal wonder he doesn't

drive me to the dogs outright. I'd like to see another fellow

that would put up with it for a week. Captain Morrison told him,

you know, that I hadn't done a peg of study for a year, and it

brought on a scene that almost shook the roof. Now he swears I'm

to go to the university next fall or hang."

"Well, I'd go, by all means."

"What under heaven could I do there? All those confounded

languages Morrison poured into my head haven't left so much as a

single letter of the alphabet. Ad nauseam is all I learned of

Latin. I tell you I'd rather be a storekeeper any time than a

scholar--books make me sick all over--and, when it comes to that,

I don't believe I know much more to-day than you do."

A smile crossed Christopher's face, leaving it very grim. The

words recalled to him his own earlier ambition--that of the

gentlemanly scholar of the old order--and there flickered before

his eyes the visionary library, suffused with firelight, and the

translation of the "Iliad" he had meant to finish.

"I always told you it wasn't worth anything," he said roughly.

"She'd love you any better if you could spurt Greek?"

Will broke into a pleased laugh, his mind dwelling upon the fancy

the other had conjured up so skilfully.

"Did you ever see such lips in your life?" he inquired.

Christopher shook his head. "I haven't noticed them, but Sol's

have a way of sticking in my memory."

"Oh, you brute! It's a shame that she should have such a father.

He's about the worst I ever met."

"Some think the shame is on the other side, you know."

"That's a lie--she told me so. Fred Turner started the whole

thing because she refused to marry him at the last moment. She

found out suddenly that she wasn't in love with him. Girls are

like that, you see. Why, Maria--" Christopher looked up quickly.

"I've nothing to do with your sister," he observed. "I know that;

but it's true, all the same. Maria couldn't tell her own mind any

better. Why, one day she was declaring that she was over head and

ears in love with Jack, and the next she was wringing her hands

and begging him to go away." "What are you going to do down at

the store?" asked Christopher abruptly. "Oh, nothing in

particular--just lounge, I suppose; there's never anything to do.

By the way, can't we have a hunt to-morrow?" "I'll see about it.

Look here, is your grandfather any worse than usual? He stormed

at me like mad yesterday because I wouldn't turn my team of oxen

out of the road." "It's like blasting rock to get a decent word

out of him. The only time he's been good-humoured for four years

was the week we were away together. He offered me five thousand

dollars down if I'd never speak to you again." "You don't say

so!" exclaimed Christopher. He bent his head and stood looking

thoughtfully at the matted straw under foot. "Well, you had a

chance to turn a pretty penny," he said, in a tone of gentle

raillery. "Oh, hang it! What do you mean?" demanded Will. "Of

course, I wasn't going back on you like that just to please

grandpa. I'd have been a confounded sneak if I had!" "You're a

jolly good chap and no mistake! But the old man would have been

pleased, I reckon?" Will grinned.

"You bet he would! I could twist him round my finger but for you,

Aunt Saidie says." "It will be all the same in the end, though.

The whole thing will come to you some day." "Oh, yes. Maria got

her share, and Wyndham has made ducks and drakes of it." "Your

grandfather's aging, too, isn't he?"

"Rather," returned Will, with a curious mixture of amiable

lightness and cool brutality. "He's gone off at least twenty

years since that time I had pneumonia in your barn. That wrecked

him, Aunt Saidie says, and all because he knew he'd have to put

up with you when the doctor told him to let me have my way. His

temper gets worse, too, all the time. I declare, he sometimes

makes me wish he were dead and buried." "Oh, he'll live long

enough yet, never fear--those wiry, cross-grained people are as

tough as lightwood knots. It's a pity, though, he wants to bully

you like that--it would kill me in a day." A flush mounted to

Will's forehead. "I knew you'd think so," he said, "and it's what

I tell him all the time. He's got no business meddling with me so

much, and I won't stand it." "He ought to get a dog," suggested

Christopher indifferently. "Well, I'm not a dog, and I'll make

him understand it yet. Oh, you think I'm an awful milksop, of

course, but I'll show you otherwise some day. I'd like to know if

you could have done any better in my place?" "Done! Why, I

shouldn't have been in your place long, that's all." "I shan't,

either, for that matter; but I've got to humour him a little, you

see, because he holds the purse-strings." "He'd never go so far

as to kick you out, would he?" "Well, hardly. I'm all he has, you

know. He doesn't like Maria because of her fine airs, much as he

thinks of education. I've got to be a gentleman, he says; but as

for him, he wouldn't give up one of his vulgar habits to save

anybody's soul. His trouble with Maria all came of her reproving

him for drinking out of his saucer. Now, I don't mind that kind

of thing so much, but Maria used to say she'd rather have him

steal, any day, than gulp his coffee. Why are you laughing so?"

"Oh, nothing. Are you going to Tom's now? I've got to work." Will

slid down from the big box and sauntered toward the door, pausing

on the little wooden step to light a cigarette. "Drop in if you

get a chance," he threw back over his shoulder, with a puff of

smoke. In a few moments Christopher finished his work, and,

coming

outside, closed the stable door. Then he walked a few paces along

the little path stopping from time to time to gaze across the

darkening landscape. A light mist was wreathed about the tops of

the old lilac-bushes, where it glimmered so indistinctly that it

seemed as if one might dispel it by a breath; and farther away

the soft evening colours had settled over the great fields,

beyond which a clear yellow line was just visible above the

distant woods. The wind was sharp with an edge of frost, and as

it blew into his face he raised his head and drank long,

invigorating drafts. From the cattle-pen hard by he smelled the

fresh breath of the cows, and around him were those other odours,

vague, familiar, pleasant, which are loosened at twilight in the

open country. The time had been when the mere physical contact

with the air would have filled him with a quiet satisfaction, but

during the last four years he had lost gradually his

sensitiveness to external things--to the changes of the seasons

as to the beauties of an autumn sunrise. A clear morning had

ceased to arouse in him the old buoyant energy, and he had lost

the zest of muscular exertion which had done so much to sweeten

his labour in the fields. It was as if a clog fettered his

simplest no less than his greatest emotion; and his enjoyment of

nature had grown dull and spiritless, like his affection for his

family. With his sisters he was aware that a curious constraint

had become apparent, and it was no longer possible for him to

meet his mother with the gay deference she still exacted. There

were times, even, when he grew almost suspicious of Cynthia's

patience, and at such moments his irritation was manifested in a

sullen reserve. To himself he could give no explanation of his

state of mind; he knew merely that he retreated day by day

farther into the shadow of his loneliness, and that, while in his

heart he still craved human sympathy, an expression of it even

from those he loved was, above all, the thing he most bitterly

resented. A light flashed in the kitchen, and he went on slowly

toward the house. As he reached the back porch he saw that Lila

was sitting at the kitchen window looking wearily out into the

dusk. The firelight scintillated in her eyes, and as she turned

quickly at a sound within the room he noticed with a pang that

the sparkles were caused by teardrops on her lashes. His heart

quickened at the sight of her drooping figure, and an impulse

seized him to go in and comfort her at any cost. Then his severe

constraint laid an icy hold upon him, and he hesitated with his

hand upon the door.

"If I go in and speak to her, what is there for me to say?" he

thought, overcome by his horror of any uncontrolled emotion. "We

will merely go over the old complaints, the endless explanations.

She will probably weep like a child, and I shall feel a brute

when I look on and keep silent. In the first place, if I speak to

her, what is there for me to say? If I simply beg her to stop

crying, or if I rush in and urge her to marry Jim Weatherby

to-morrow, what good can come of either course? She doesn't wait

for my consent to the marriage, for she is as old as I am, and

knows her own heart much better than I know mine. It is true that

she is too beautiful to waste away like this, but how can I

prevent it, or what is there for me to do?"

Again came the impulse to go in and fold her in his arms, but

before he had taken the first step he yielded, as always, to his

strange reserve, and he realised that if he entered it would be

but to assume his customary unconcern, from the shelter of which

he would probably make a few commonplace remarks on trivial

subjects. The emotional situation would be ignored by them all,

he knew; they would treat it absolutely as if it had no

existence, as if its voice was not speaking to them in the

silence, and they would break their bread and drink their coffee

in apparent unconsciousness that supper was not the single thing

that engrossed their thoughts. And all the time they would be

face to face with the knowledge that they had demanded that Lila

should sacrifice her life.

Presently Cynthia came out and called him, and he went in

carelessly and sat down at the table. Lila left the window and

slipped into her place, and when Tucker joined them she cut up

his food as usual and prepared his coffee.

"Uncle Tucker's cup has no handle, Cynthia," she said with

concern. "Let me take this one and give him another."

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Cynthia, bending over to examine the

break with her near-sighted squint. "We'll soon have to begin

using Aunt Susannah's set, if this keeps up. Uncle Boaz, you've

broken another cup to-day."

Her tone was sharp with irritation, and the fine wrinkles caused

by ceaseless small worries appeared instantly between her

eyebrows. Christopher, watching her, remembered that she had worn

the same expression during the scene with Lila, and it annoyed

him unspeakably that she should be able to descend so readily,

and with equal energy, upon so insignificant a grievance as a bit

of broken china.

Uncle Boaz hobbled round the table and peered contemptuously at

the cup which Lila held.

"Dar warn' no use bruckin' dat ar one," he observed, "'caze 'twuz

bruck a'ready." " Oh, there won't be a piece left presently,"

pursued Cynthia indignantly; and Christopher felt suddenly that

there was something contemptible in the passion she expended upon

trifles. He wondered if Tucker noticed how horribly petty it all

was to lament a broken cup when the tears were hardly dried on

Lila's cheeks. Finishing hurriedly, he pushed back his chair and

rose from the table, shaking his head in response to Cynthia's

request that he should go in to see his mother. "Not now," he

said impatiently, with that nervous avoidance of the person he

loved best. "I'll be back in time to carry her to bed, but I've

got to take a half-hour off and look in on Tom Spade." "She

really ought to go to bed before sundown," responded Cynthia,

"but nothing under heaven will persuade her to do so. It's her

wonderful will that keeps her alive, just as it keeps her sitting

bolt upright in that old chair. I don't believe there's another

woman on earth who could have done it for more than twenty

years." Taking down his hat from a big nail in the wall,

Christopher stood for a moment abstractedly fingering the brim.

"Well, I'll be back shortly," he said at last, and went out

hurriedly into the darkness. At the instant he could not tell why

he had so suddenly decided to follow Will Fletcher to the store,

but, as usual, when the impulse came to him he proceeded to act

promptly as it directed. Strangely enough, the boy was the one

human being whom he felt no inclination to avoid, and the least

oppressive moments that he knew were the reckless ones they spent

together. While his daily companion was mentally and morally upon

a lower plane than his own, the association was not without a

balm for his wounded pride; and the knowledge that it was still

possible to assume superiority to Fletcher's heir was, so far as

he himself admitted, the one consolation that his life contained.

As for his feeling toward Will Fletcher as an individual, it was

the outcome of so curious a mixture of attraction and repulsion

that he had long ceased from any attempt to define it as pure

emotion. For the last four years the boy had been, as Tom Spade

put it, "the very shadow on the man's footsteps," and yet at the

end of that time it was almost impossible for Christopher to

acknowledge either his liking or his hatred. He had suffered him

for his own end, that was all, and he had come at last almost to

enjoy the tolerance that he displayed. The hero worship--the

natural imitation of youth-- was at least not unpleasant, and

there had been days during a brief absence of the boy when

Christopher had, to his surprise, become aware of a positive

vacancy in his surroundings. So long as Will made no evident

attempt to rise above him--so long, indeed, as Fletcher's

grandson kept to Fletcher's level, it was possible that the

companionship would continue as harmoniously as it had begun. In

the store he found Tom Spade and his wife--an angular,

strong-featured woman, in purple calico, who carried off the

reputation of a shrew with noisy honours. When he asked for Will,

the storekeeper turned from the cash-drawer which he was emptying

and nodded toward the half-open door of the adjoining room.

"Several of the young fellows are in thar now," he remarked

offhand, "an' I've jest had to go in an' git between Fred Turner

an' Will Fletcher. They came to out an' out blows, an' I had to

shake 'em both by the scuff of thar necks befo' they'd hish

snarlin'. Bless yo' life, all about a woman, too, every last word

of it. Well, well, meanin' no disrespect to you, Susan, it's a

queer thing that a man can't be born, married, or buried without

a woman gittin' herself mixed up in the business. If she ain't

wrappin' you in swaddlin' bands, you may be sho' she's measurin'

off yo' windin'-sheet. Mark my words, Mr. Christopher, I don't

believe thar's ever been a fight fought on this earth--be it a

battle or a plain fisticuff--that it warn't started in the brain

of somebody's mother, wife, or sweetheart an' it's most likely to

have been the sweetheart. It is strange, when you come to study

'bout it, how sech peaceable-lookin' creaturs as women kin have

sech hearty appetites for trouble."

"Well, trouble may be born of a woman, but it generally manages

to take the shape of a man," observed Mrs. Spade from behind the

counter, where she was filling a big glass jar with a fresh

supply of striped peppermint candy. "And as far as that goes,

ever sence the Garden of Eden, men have taken a good deal mo'

pleasure in layin' the blame on thar wives than they do in layin'

blows on the devil. It's a fortunate woman that don't wake up the

day after the weddin' an' find she's married an Adam instid of a

man. However, they are as the Lord made 'em, I reckon," she

finished charitably, "which ain't so much to thar credit as it

sounds, seein' they could have done over sech a po' job with

precious little trouble."

"Oh, I warn't aimin' at you, Susan," Tom hastened to assure her,

aware from experience that he entered an argument only to be

worsted. "You've been a good wife to me, for all yo' sharp

tongue, an' I've never had to git up an' light the fire sence the

day I married you. Yes, you've been a first-rate wife to me, an'

no mistake."

"I'm the last person you need tell that to," was Mrs. Spade's

retort. "I don't reckon I've b'iled inside an' sweated outside

for mo' than twenty years without knowin' it. Lord! Lord! If it

took as hard work to be a Christian as it does to be a wife,

thar'd be mighty few but men in the next world--an' they'd git

thar jest by followin' like sheep arter Adam--"

"I declar', Susan, I didn't mean to rile you," urged Tom,

breaking in upon the flow of words with an appealing effort to

divert its course. "I was merely crackin' a joke with Mr.

Christopher, you know."

"I'm plum sick of these here jokes that's got to have a woman on

the p'int of 'em," returned Mrs. Spade, tightly screwing on the

top of the glass jar. "I've always noticed that thar ain't

nothin' so funny in this world but it gits a long sight funnier

if a man kin turn it on his wife."

"Now, my dear--" helplessly expostulated Tom.

"My name's Susan, Tom Spade, an' I'll have you call me by it or

not at all. If thar's one thing I hate on this earth it's a

'dear' in the mouth of a married man that ought to know better.

I'd every bit as lief you'd shoot a lizard at me, an' you ain't

jest found it out. If you think I'm the kind of person to git any

satisfaction out of improper speeches you were never mo' mistaken

in yo' life; an' I kin p'int out to you right now that I ain't

never heard one of them words yit that I ain't had to pay for it.

A 'dear' the mo' is mighty apt to mean a bucket of water the

less. Oh, you can't turn my head with yo' soft tricks, Tom Spade.

I'm a respectable woman, as my mother was befo' me, an' I don't

want familiar doin's from any man, alive or dead. The woman who

does, whether she be married or single, ain't no better than a

female--that's my opinion!"

She paused to draw breath, and Tom was quick to take advantage of

the intermission. "Good Lord, Mr. Christopher, those darn young

fools are at it agin! " he exclaimed, darting toward the

adjoining room.

With a stride, Christopher pushed past him and, opening the door,

stopped uncertainly upon the threshold.

At the first glance he saw that the trouble was between Will and

Fred Turner, and that Will, because of his slighter weight, had

got very much the worst of the encounter. The boy stood now,

trembling with anger and bleeding at the mouth, beside an

overturned table, while Fred--a stout, brawny fellow--was busily

pummelling his shoulders.

"You're a sneakin', puny-livered liar, that's what you are!"

finished Turner with a vengeance.

Christopher walked leisurely across the room.

"And you're another," he observed in a quiet voice--the voice of

his courtly father, which always came to him in moments of white

heat. "You are exactly that--a sneaking, puny-livered liar." His

manner was so courteous that it came as a surprise when he struck

out from the shoulder and felled Fred as easily as he might have

knocked over a wooden tenpin. "You really must learn better

manners," he remarked coolly, looking down upon him.

Then he wiped his brow on his blue shirt-sleeve and called for a

glass of beer.

Chapter III. Mrs. Blake Speaks her Mind on Several Matters

Breakfast was barely over the next morning when Jim Weatherby

appeared at the kitchen door carrying a package of horseshoe

nails and a small hammer.

"I thought perhaps Christopher might want to use the mare early,"

he explained to Cynthia, who was clearing off the table. There

was a pleasant precision in his speech, acquired with much

industry at the little country school, and Cynthia, despite her

rigid disfavour, could not but notice that when he glanced round

the room in search of Lila he displayed the advantage of an

aristocratic profile. Until to-day she could not remember that

she had ever seen him directly, as it were; she had looked around

him and beyond him, much as she might have obliterated from her

vision a familiar shrub that chanced to intrude itself into her

point of view. The immediate result of her examination was the

possibility she dimly acknowledged that a man might exist as a

well-favoured individual and yet belong to an unquestionably

lower class of life.

"Well, I'll go out to the stable," added Jim, after a moment in

which he had patiently submitted to her squinting observation.

"Christopher will be somewhere about, I suppose?"

"Oh, I suppose so," replied Cynthia indifferently, emptying the

coffee-grounds into the kitchen sink. The asperity of her tone

was caused by the entrance of Lila, who came in with a basin of

corn-meal dough tucked under her bared arm, which showed as round

and delicate as a child's beneath her loosely rolled-up sleeve.

"Cynthia, I can't find the hen-house key," she began; and then,

catching sight of Jim, she flushed a clear pink, while the little

brown mole ran a race with the dimple in her check.

"The key is on that nail beside the dried hops," returned Cynthia

sternly. "I found it in the lock last night and brought it in.

It's a mercy that the chickens weren't all stolen."

Without replying, Lila took down the key, strung it on her little

finger, and, going to the door, passed with Jim out into the

autumn sunshine. Her soft laugh pulsed back presently, and

Cynthia, hearing it, set her thin lips tightly as she carefully

rinsed the coffee-pot with soda.

Christopher, who had just come up to the wellbrink, where Tucker

sat feeding the hounds from a plate of scraps, gave an abrupt nod

in the direction of the lovers strolling slowly down the

hen-house path.

"It will end that way some day, I reckon," he said with a sigh,

"and you know I'm almost of a mind with Cynthia about it. It does

seem a downright pity. Not that Jim isn't a good chap and all

that, but he's an honest, hard-working farmer and nothing more--

and, good heavens! just look at Lila! Why, she's beautiful enough

to set the world afire."

Smiling broadly, Tucker tossed a scrap of cornbread into Spy's

open jaws; then his gaze travelled leisurely to the hen-house,

which Lila had just unlocked. As she pushed back the door there

was a wild flutter of wings, and the big fowls flew in a swarm

about her feet, one great red-and-black rooster craning his long

neck after the basin she held beneath her arm. While she

scattered the soft dough on the ground she bent her head slightly

sideways, looking up at Jim, who stood regarding her with

enraptured eyes.

"Well, I don't know that much good ever comes of setting anything

afire," answered Tucker with his amiable chuckle; "the danger is

that you're apt to cause a good deal of trouble somewhere, and

it's more than likely you'll get singed yourself in putting out

the flame. You needn't worry about Lila, Christopher; she's the

kind of woman--and they're rare--who doesn't have to have her

happiness made to order; give her any fair amount of the raw

material and she'll soon manage to fit it perfectly to herself.

The stuff is in her, I tell you; the atmosphere is about her-

-can't you feel it--and she's going to be happy, whatever comes.

A woman who can make over a dress the sixth time as cheerfully as

she did the first has the spirit of a Caesar, and doesn't need

your lamentations. If you want to be a Jeremiah, you must go

elsewhere."

"Oh, I dare say she'll grow content, but it does seem such a

terrible waste. She's the image of that Saint-Memin portrait of

Aunt Susannah, and if she'd only been born a couple of

generations ago she would probably have been the belle of two

continents. Such women must be scarce anywhere."

"She's pretty enough, certainly, and I think Jim knows it.

There's but one thing I've ever seen that could compare with her

for colour, and that's a damask rose that blooms in May on an old

bush in the front yard. When all is said, however, that young

Weatherby is no clodhopper, you know, and I'm not sure that he

isn't worthier of her than any highsounding somebody across the

water would have been. He can love twice as hard, I'll wager, and

that's the chief thing, after all; it's worth more than big

titles or fine clothes--or even than dead grandfathers, with due

respect to Cynthia. I tell you, Lila may never stir from the

midst of these tobacco fields; she may be buried alive all her

days between these muddy roads that lead heaven knows where, and

yet she may live a lot bigger and fuller life than she might have

done with all London at her feet, as they say it was at your

Greataunt Susannah's. The person who has to have outside props to

keep him straight must have been made mighty crooked at the

start, and Lila's not like that."

Christopher stooped and pulled Spy's ears.

"That's as good a way to look at it as any other, I reckon," he

remarked; "and now I've got to hurry the shoeing of the mare."

He crossed over and joined Lila and Jim before the henhouse door,

where he put the big fowls to noisy flight.

"Well, you're a trusty neighbour, " he cried good-humoredly,

striking Jim a friendly blow that sent him reeling out into the

path.

Lila passed her hand in a sweeping movement round the inside of

the basin and flirted the last drops of dough from her

finger-tips.

"A few of your pats will cripple Jim for a week," she observed,

"so you'd better be careful; he's too useful a friend to lose

while there are any jobs to do."

"Why, if I had that muscle I could run a farm with one hand,"

said Jim. "Give a plough a single push, Christopher, and I

believe it would run as long as there was level ground."

Cynthia, standing at the kitchen window with a cuptowel slung

across her arm, watched the three chatting merrily in the

sunshine, and the look of rigid resentment settled like a mask

upon her face. She was still gazing out upon them when Docia

opened the door behind her and informed her in a whisper that

"Ole miss wanted her moughty quick."

"All right, Docia. Is anything the matter?"

"Naw'm, 'tain' nuttin' 'tall de matter. She's des got fidgetty."

"Well, I'll come in a minute. Are you better to-day? How's your

heart?"

"Lawd, Miss Cynthia, hit's des bruised all over. Ev'y breaf I

draw hits it plum like a hammer. I hyear hit thump, thump, thump

all de blessed time."

"Be careful, then. Tell mother I'm coming at once."

She hung the cup-towel on the rack, and, taking off her blue

checked apron, went along the little platform to the main part of

the house and into the old lady's parlour, where the morning

sunshine fell across the faces of generations of dead Blakes. The

room was still furnished with the old rosewood furniture, and the

old damask curtains hung before the single window, which gave on

the overgrown front yard and the twisted aspen. Though the rest

of the house suggested only the direst poverty, the immediate

surroundings of Mrs. Blake revealed everywhere the lavish ease so

characteristic of the old order which had passed away. The

carving on the desk, on the book-cases, on the slender sofa, was

all wrought by tedious handwork; the delicate damask coverings to

the chairs were still lustrous after almost half a century; and

the few vases scattered here and there and filled with autumn

flowers were, for the most part, rare pieces of old royal

Worcester. While it was yet Indian summer, there was no need of

fires, and the big fireplace was filled with goldenrod, which

shed a yellow dust down on the rude brick hearth.

The old lady, inspired by her indomitable energy, was already

dressed for the day in her black brocade, and sat bolt upright

among the pillows in her great oak chair.

"Some one passed the window whistling, Cynthia. Who was it? The

whistle had a pleasant, cheery sound."

"It must have been Jim Weatherby, I think: old Jacob's son."

"Is he over here?"

"To see Christopher--yes."

"Well, be sure to remind the servants to give him something to

eat in the kitchen before he goes back, and I think, if he's a

decent young man, I should like to have a little talk with him

about his family. His father used to be one of our most

respectable labourers."

"It would tire you, I fear, mother. Shall I give you your

knitting now?"

"You have a most peculiar idea about me, my child. I have not yet

reached my dotage, and I don't think that a little talk with

young Weatherby could possibly be much of an ordeal. Is he an

improper person?"

"No, no, of course not; you shall see him whenever you like. I

was only thinking of you."

"Well, I'm sure I am very grateful for your consideration, my

dear, but there are times, occasionally, you know, when it is

better for one to judge for oneself. I sometimes think that your

only fault, Cynthia, is that you are a little--just a very little

bit, you understand--inclined to manage things too much. Your

poor father used to say that a domineering woman was like a

kicking cow; but this doesn't apply to you, of course."

"Shall I call Jim now, mother?"

"You might as well, dear. Place a chair for him, a good stout

one, and be sure to make him wipe his feet before he comes in.

Does he appear to be clean?"

"Oh, perfectly."

"I remember his father always was--unusually so for a common

labourer. Those people sometimes smell of cattle, you know; and

besides, my nose has grown extremely sensitive in the years since

I lost my eyesight. Perhaps it would be as well to hand me the

bottle of camphor. I can pretend I have a headache."

"There's no need, really; he isn't a labourer at all, you know,

and he looks quite a gentleman. He is, I believe, considered a

very handsome young man."

Mrs. Blake waved toward the door and the piece of purple glass

flashed in the sunlight. "In that case, I might offer him some

sensible advice," she said. "The Weatherbys, I remember, always

showed a very proper respect for gentle people. I distinctly

recall how well Jacob behaved when on one occasion Micajah

Blair--a dreadful, dissolute character, though of a very old

family and an intimate friend of your father's--took decidedly

too much egg-nog one Christmas when he was visiting us, and

insisted upon biting Jacob's cheek because it looked so like a

winesap. Jacob had come to see your father on business, and I

will say that he displayed a great deal of good sense and

dignity; he said afterward that he didn't mind the bite on his

cheek at all, but that it pained him terribly to see a Virginia

gentleman who couldn't balance a bowl of egg-nog. Well, well,

Micajah was certainly a rake, I fear; and for that matter, so was

his father before him."

"Father had queer friends," observed Cynthia sadly. "I remember

his telling me when I was a little girl that he preferred that

family to any in the county."

"Oh, the family was all right, my dear. I never heard a breath

against the women. Now you may fetch Jacob. Is that his name?"

"No; Jim."

"Dear me; that's very odd. He certainly should have been called

after his father. I wonder how they could have been so

thoughtless."

Cynthia drew forward an armchair, stooped and carefully arranged

the ottoman, and then went with stern determination to look for

Jim Weatherby.

He was sitting in the stable doorway, fitting a shoe on the old

mare, while Lila leaned against an overturned barrel in the

sunshine outside. At Cynthia's sudden appearance they both

started and looked up in amazement, the words dying slowly on

their lips.

"Why, whatever is the matter, Cynthia?" cried Lila, as if in

terror.

Cynthia came forward until she stood directly at the mare's head,

where she delivered her message with a gasp:

"Mother insists upon talking to Jim. There's no help for it; he

must come."

Weatherby dropped the mare's hoof and raised a breathless

question to Cynthia's face, while Lila asked quickly:

"Does she know?"

"Know what?" demanded Cynthia, turning grimly upon her. "Of

course she knows that Jim is his father's son."

The young man rose and laid the hammer down on the overturned

barrel; then he led the mare back to her stall, and coming out

again, washed his hands in a tub of water by the door.

"Well, I'm ready," he observed quietly. "Shall I go in alone?"

"Oh, we don't ask that of you," said Lila, laughing. "Come; I'll

take you." She slipped her hand under his arm and they went gaily

toward the house, leaving Cynthia to pick up the horseshoe nails

lying loose upon the ground.

Hearing the young man's step on the threshold, Mrs. Blake turned

her head with a smile of pleasant condescension and stretched out

her delicate yellowed hand.

"This is Jim Weatherby, mother," said Lila in her softest voice.

"Cynthia says you want to talk to him."

"I know, my child; I know," returned Mrs. Blake, with an animated

gesture. "Come in, Jim, and don't trouble to stand. Find him a

chair, Lila. I knew your father long before you were born," she

added, turning to the young man, "and I knew only good of him. I

suppose he has often told you of the years he worked for us?"

Jim held her hand for an instant in his own, and then, bending

over, raised it to his lips.

"My father never tires of telling us about the old times, and

about Mr. Blake and yourself," he answered in his precise

English, and with the simple dignity which he never lost. Lila,

watching him, prayed silently that a miracle might open the old

lady's eyes and allow her to see the kind, manly look upon his

face.

Mrs. Blake nodded pleasantly, with evident desire to put him

wholly at his ease.

"Well, his son is becoming quite courtly," she responded,

smiling, "and I know Jacob is proud of you--or he ought to be,

which amounts to the same thing. There's nothing I like better

than to see a good, hard-working family prosper in life and raise

its station. Not that I mean to put ideas into your head, of

course, for it is a ridiculous sight to see a person dissatisfied

with the position in which the good Lord has placed him. That was

what I always liked about your mother, and I remember very well

her refusing to wear some of my old finery when she was married,

on the ground that she was a plain, honest woman, and wanted to

continue so when she was a wife. I hope, by the way, that she is

well."

"Oh, quite. She does not walk much, though; her joints have been

troubling her."

To Lila's surprise, he was not the least embarrassed by the

personal tone of the conversation, and his sparkling blue eyes

held their usual expression of blithe good-humour.

"Indeed!" Mrs. Blake pricked at the subject in her sprightly way.

"Well, you must persuade her to use a liniment of Jamestown weed

steeped in whisky. There is positively nothing like it for

rheumatism. Lila, do we still make it for the servants? If so,

you might send Sarah Weatherby a bottle."

"I'll see about it, mother. Aren't you tired? Shall I take Jim

away?"

"Not just yet, child. I am interested in seeing what a promising

young man he has become. How old are you, Jim?"

"Twenty-nine next February. There are two of us, you know--I've a

sister Molly. She married Frank Granger and moved ten miles

away."

"Ah, that brings me to the very point I was driving at. Above all

things, let me caution you most earnestly against the reckless

marriages so common in your station of life. For heaven's sake,

don't marry a woman because she has a pretty face and you cherish

an impracticable sentiment for her. If you take my advice, you

will found your marriage upon mutual respect and industry. Select

a wife who is not afraid of work, and who expects no folderol of

romance. Love-making, I've always maintained, should be the

pastime of the leisure class exclusively."

"I'm not afraid of work myself," replied Jim, laughing as he

looked boldly into the old lady's sightless eyes, "but I'd never

stand it for my wife--not a--a lick of it!"

"Tut, tut! Your mother does it."

Jim nodded. "But I'm not my father," he mildly suggested.

"Well, you're a fine, headstrong young fool, and I like you all

the better for it," declared Mrs. Blake. "You may go now, because

I feel as if I needed a doze; but be sure to come in and see me

the next time you're over here. Lila, put the cat on my knees and

straighten my pillows."

Lila lifted the cat from the rug and placed it in the old lady's

lap; then, as she arranged the soft white pillows, she bent over

suddenly and kissed the piece of purple glass on the fragile

hand.

Chapter IV. In Which Christopher Hesitates

Following his impulsive blow in defense of Will Fletcher,

Christopher experienced, almost with his next breath, a reaction

in his feeling for the boy; and meeting him two days later at the

door of the tobacco barn, he fell at once into a tone of

contemptuous raillery.

"So you let Fred smash you up, eh?" he observed, with a sneer.

Will flushed.

"Oh, you needn't talk like that," he answered; "he's the biggest

man about here except you. By the way, you're a bully friend to a

fellow, you know, and it's not a particle of use pretending you

don't like me, because you can't help hitting back jolly quick

when anybody undertakes to give me a licking."

"Why were you such a fool as to go at him?" inquired Christopher,

glancing up at his evenly hanging rows of tobacco, and then

coming outside to lock the door. "You'll never get a reputation

as a fighter if you are always jumping on men over your own size.

Now, next time I should advise you to try your spirit on Sol

Peterkin."

"Oh, it was all about Molly," explained Will frankly. "I told

Fred that he was a big blackguard to use the girl so, and then he

called me a 'white-livered liar.'"

"I heard him," remarked Christopher quietly.

"Well, I don't care what he says--he is a blackguard. I'm glad

you knocked him down, too; it was no more than he deserved."

"I didn't do it on Molly Peterkin's account, you know. Tobacco

takes up quite enough of my time without my entering the lists as

a champion of light women. But if you aren't man enough to fight

your own battles, I suppose I'll have to keep my muscle in proper

shape."

Will smarted from the words, and the corners of his mouth took a

dogged droop.

"I don't see how you expect me to be a match for Fred Turner," he

returned angrily.

"Why, I don't expect it," replied Christopher coolly, as he

turned the key in the padlock, drew it out, and slipped it into

his pocket. "I expect you merely to keep away from him, that's

all."

Will stared at him in perplexity. "What a devil of a humour you

are in!" he exclaimed.

"Am I?" Christopher broke into a laugh. "You are accustomed to

the sunny temper of your grandfather. How is he to-day? In his

usual cheerful vein?"

"Oh, he's awful," answered the boy, relieved at the change of

subject. "If you could only have heard him yesterday! Somebody

told him about the fight at the store, and, as luck would have

it, he found out that Molly Peterkin was at the bottom of it all.

When he called me into his room and locked the door I knew

something was up; and sure enough, we had blood and thunder for

two mortal hours. He threatened to sell the horses and the

hounds, and to put me at the plough, if I ever so much as looked

at the girl again--'gal,' he called her, and a 'brazen wench.'

That is the way he talks, you know."

"I know," Christopher nodded gravely.

"But the funny part is, that the thing that made him hottest was

your knocking over Fred Turner. That he simply couldn't stand.

Why, he'd have paid Fred fifty dollars down to thrash me black

and blue, he said. He called you--Oh, he has a great store of pet

names!"

"What?" asked Christopher, for the other caught himself up

suddenly.

"Nothing much--he's always doing it, you know."

"You needn't trouble yourself on my account. I'm familiar with

his use of words."

"Oh, he called you 'a crazy pauper who ought to be in gaol.'"

"He did, did he? Well, for once in his life he drew it mild."

Then he gave a long whistle and kicked away a rock in the path. "

"'A crazy pauper who ought to be in gaol.' I've a pretty

good-sized debt to settle with your grandfather, when I come to

think of it."

"Just suppose you were in my place now," insisted Will. "Then I

reckon you'd have cause forswearing, sure enough. I tell you I

couldn't get out of that room yesterday until I promised him I'd

turn over a new leaf--that I'd start in with Mr. Morrison

to-morrow, and dig away at Latin and Greek until I go to the

university next fall."

Christopher turned quickly.

"To-morrow?" he repeated. "Why, that's the day I had planned we'd

go hunting. Make Morrison's Friday."

The boy wavered.

"Can't we go another day?" he asked. "He's so awfully set on

to-morrow. I'd have to be mighty sharp to fool him again."

"Oh, well, but it's the only day I've free. There's a lot of fall

ploughing to do; then the apples are ready to be gathered; and I

must take some corn to the mill before the week's up. I've wasted

too much time with you as it is. It's the only wealth I have, you

see."

"Then I'll go--I'll go," declared Will, jumping to a decision.

"There'll be a terrific fuss if he finds it out, but perhaps he

won't. I'll bring my gun over to the barn to-night, and get

Zebbadee to meet us with the hounds at the bend in the road.

Well, I must get back now. I don't want him to suspect I've seen

you to-day."

He started off at a rapid pace, and Christopher, turning in the

other direction, went to bring the horses from the distant

pasture. It was a mellow afternoon, and a golden haze wrapped the

broad meadow, filled with autumn wild flowers, and the little

bricked-up graveyard on the low, green hill. As he swung himself

over the bars at the end of the path he saw Lila and Jim

Weatherby gathering goldenrod in the center of the field. When

they caught sight of him, Jim laid his handful of blossoms in a

big basket on the ground and came to join him on his way to the

pasture.

"They are for Mrs. Blake's fireplace," he remarked with a

friendly smile, as he glanced back at Lila standing knee-deep

amid the October flowers.

"It's a queer idea," observed Christopher, finding himself at a

loss for a reply.

Jim strolled on leisurely, snatching at the heads of wild carrot

as he passed.

"There's something I've wanted to tell you, Christopher," he said

after a moment, turning his pleasant, manly face upon the other.

"Is that so?" asked Christopher, with a sudden desire to avert

the impending responsibility. "Oh, but I hardly think I'm the

proper person, " he added, laughing.

Jim met his eyes squarely.

"I'm a plain man," he said slowly, "and though I'm not ashamed of

it, I know, of course, that my family have always been plain

people. As things are, I had no business on earth to fall in love

with your sister, but all the same it's what I've gone and done."

Christopher nodded and walked on.

"Well, I suppose it's what I should have done, too, in your

place," he returned quietly.

"I've reproached myself for it often enough," pursued Jim; "but

when all is said, how can a man prevent a thing like that? I

might as well try to shut my eyes to the sun when it is shining

straight on me. Why, everybody else seems dull and lifeless when

I look at her--and I seem such a brute myself that I hardly dare

touch her hand. All I ask is to be her servant until I die."

It took courage to speak such words, and Christopher, knowing it,

stopped midway of the little path and regarded Jim with the rare

smile which gave a boyish brightness to his face.

"By George, you are a trump!" he said heartily. "And as far as

that goes, you're good enough for Lila or for anybody else. It

isn't that, you see; it's only--"

"I know," finished Jim quietly and without resentment; "it's my

grandfather. Your sister, Cynthia, told me, and I reckon it's all

natural, but somehow I can't make myself ashamed of the old man--

nor is Lila, for that matter. He was an honest, upright body as

ever you saw, and he never did a mean thing in his life, though

he lived to be almost ninety."

"You're right," said Christopher, flushing suddenly; "and as far

as I'm concerned, I'd let Lila marry you to-morrow; but as for

mother, she would simply never consent. The idea would be

impossible to her, and we could never explain things; you must

see that yourself."

"I see," replied Jim readily; "but the main point is that you

yourself would have no objection to our marriage, provided it

were possible."

"Not a bit; not a bit."

He held out his hand, and Jim shook it warmly before he picked up

his basket and went to rejoin Lila.

Turning in the path, Christopher saw the girl, who was sitting

alone on the lowered bars, rise and wave a spray of goldenrod

above her head. Then, as the lovers met, she laid her hand upon

Jim's arm and lifted her glowing face as if to read his words

before he uttered them. Something in the happy surrender of her

gesture, or in the brooding mystery of the Indian summer, when

one seemed to hear the earth turn in the stillness, touched

Christopher with a sudden melancholy, and it appeared to him when

he went on again that a shadow had fallen over the brightness of

the autumn fields. Disturbed by the unrest which follows any

illuminating vision of ideal beauty, he asked himself almost

angrily, in an effort to divert his thoughts, if it were possible

that he was weakening in his purpose, since he no longer found

the old zest in his hatred of Fletcher. The deadness of his

emotions had then affected this one also--the single feeling

which he had told himself would be eternal; and the old nervous

thrill, so like the thrill of violent love, no longer troubled

him when he chanced to meet his enemy face to face. To-day he

held Will Fletcher absolutely in his hand, he knew; in a few

year's at most his debt to Fletcher would probably be cancelled;

the man and the boy would then be held together by blood ties

like two snarling hounds in the leash--and yet, when all was

said, what would the final outcome yield of satisfaction? As he

put the question he knew that he could meet it only by evasion,

and his inherited apathy enfeebled him even while he demanded an

answer of himself.

As the months went on, his indifference to success or failure

pervaded him like a physical lethargy, and he played his game so

recklessly at last that he sometimes caught himself wondering if

it were, after all, worth a single flicker of the candle. He

still saw Will Fletcher daily; but when the spring came he ceased

consciously, rather from weariness than from any nobler

sentiment, to exert an influence which he felt to be harmful to

the boy. For four years he had wrought tirelessly to compass the

ruin of Fletcher's ambition; and now, when he had but to stretch

forth his arm for the final blow, he admitted impatiently that

what he lacked was the impulsive energy the deed required.

He was still in this mood when, one afternoon in April, as he was

driving his oxen to the store, he met Fletcher in the road behind

the pair of bays. At sight of him the old man's temper slipped

control, and at the end of a few minutes they were quarrelling as

to who should be the one to turn aside.

"Git out of the road, will you?" cried Fletcher, half rising from

his seat and jerking at the reins until the horses reared. "Drive

your brutes into the bushes and let me pass!"

"If you think I'm going to swerve an inch out of my road to

oblige you, Bill Fletcher, you are almost as big a fool as you

are a rascal," replied Christopher in a cool voice, as he brought

his team to a halt and placed himself at the head of it with his

long rawhide whip in his hand.

As he stood there he had the appearance of taking his time as

lightly as did the Olympian deities; and it was clear that he

would wait patiently until the sun set and rose again rather than

yield one jot or tittle of his right upon the muddy road. While

he gazed placidly over Fletcher's head into the golden distance,

he removed his big straw hat and began fanning his heated face.

There followed a noisy upbraiding from Fletcher, which ended by

his driving madly into the underbrush and almost overturning the

heavy carriage. As he passed, he leaned from his seat and slashed

his whip furiously into Christopher's face; then he drove on at a

wild pace, bringing the horses in a shiver, and flecked with

foam, into the gravelled drive before the Hall.

The bright flower-beds and the calm white pillars were all in

sunshine, and Miss Saidie, with a little, green wateringpot in

her hand, was sprinkling a tub of crocuses beside the steps.

"You look flustered, Brother Bill," she observed, as Fletcher

threw the reins to a Negro servant and came up to where she

stood.

"Oh, I've just had some words with that darned Blake," returned

Fletcher, chewing the end of his mustache, as he did when he was

in a rage. "I met him as I drove up the road and he had the

impudence to keep his ox-cart standing plumb still while I tore

through the briers. It's the third time this thing has happened,

and I'll be even with him for it yet."

"I'm sure he must be a very rude person," remarked Miss Saidie,

pinching off a withered blossom and putting it in her pocket to

keep from throwing it on the trim grass. "For my part, I've never

been able to see what satisfaction people git out of being

ill-mannered. It takes twice as long as it does to be polite, and

it's not nearly so good for the digestion afterward."

Fletcher listened to her with a scowl. "Well, if you ever get

anything but curses from Christopher Blake, I'd like to hear of

it," he said, with a coarse laugh.

Why, he was really quite civil to me the other day when I passed

him," replied Miss Saidie, facing Fletcher with her hand resting

on the belt of her apron. "I was in the phaeton, and he got down

off his wagon and picked up my whip. I declare, it almost took my

breath away, but when I thanked him he raised his hat and spoke

very pleasantly."

"Oh, you and your everlasting excuses!" sneered Fletcher, going

up the steps and turning on the porch to look down upon her. "I

tell you I've had as many of 'em as I'm going to stand. This is

my house, and what I say in it has got to be the last word. If

you squirt any more of that blamed water around here the place

will rot to pieces under our very feet."

Miss Saidie placed her watering-pot on the step and lifted to him

the look of amiable wonder which he found more irritating than a

sharp retort.

"I forgot to tell you that Susan Spade has been waiting to speak

to you," she remarked, as if their previous conversation had been

of the friendliest nature.

"Oh, drat her! What does she want?"

"She wouldn't tell me--it was for you alone, she said. That was a

good half-hour ago, and she's been waiting in your setting-room

ever sence. She's such a sharp-tongued woman I wonder how Tom

manages to put up with her."

"Well, if he does, I won't," growled Fletcher, as he went in to

meet his visitor.

Mrs. Spade, wearing a severe manner and a freshly starched purple

calico, was sitting straight and stiff on the edge of the

cretonne-covered lounge, and as he entered she rose to receive

him with a visible unbending of her person. She was a lank woman,

with a long, scrawny figure which appeared to have run entirely

to muscle, and very full skirts that always sagged below the

belt-line in the back. Her face was like that of a man--

large-featured, impressive, and not without a ruddy masculine

comeliness.

"It's my duty that's brought me, Mr. Fletcher," she began, as

they shook hands. "You kin see very well yo'self that it's not a

pleasure, as far as that goes, for if it had been I never should

have come-not if I yearned and pined till I was sore. I never saw

a pleasure in my life that didn't lead astray, an' I've got the

eye of suspicion on the most harmless-lookin' one that goes. As I

tell Tom--though he won't believe it--the only way to be sartain

you're followin' yo' duty in this world is to find out the thing

you hate most to do an' then do it with all yo' might. That rule

has taken me through life, suh: it married me to Tom Spade, an'

it's brought me here to-day. 'Don't you go up thar blabbin' on

Will Fletcher,' said Tom, when I was tyin' on my bonnet. 'You

needn't say one word mo' about it,' was my reply. 'I know the

Lord's way, an' I know mine. I've wrastled with this in pra'r,

an' I tell you when the Lord turns anybody's stomach so dead agin

a piece of business, it means most likely that it's the very

thing they've got to swallow down."

"Oh, Will!" gasped Fletcher, dropping suddenly into his armchair.

"Please come to the point at once, ma'am, and let me hear what

the rascal has done last."

"I'm comin', suh; I'm comin'," Mrs. Spade hastened to assure him.

"Yes, Tom an' I hev talked it all down to the very bone, but I

wouldn't trust a man's judgment on morals any mo' than I would on

matchin' calico. Right an' wrong don't look the same to 'em by

lamplight as they do by day, an' if thar conscience ain't set

plum' in the pupils of thar eyes, I don't know whar 'tis, that's

sho'. But, thank heaven, I ain't one of those that's always

findin' an excuse for people--not even if the backslider be my

own husband. Thar's got to be some few folks on the side of

decency, an' I'm one of 'em. Virtue's a slippery thing--that's

how I look at it--an' if you don't git a good grip on it an'

watch it with a mighty stern eye it's precious apt to wriggle

through yo' fingers. I'm an honest woman, Mr. Fletcher, an' I

wouldn't blush to own it in the presence of the King of England

"Great Scott!" exclaimed Fletcher, with a brutal laugh; "do you

mean to tell me the precious young fool has fallen in love with

you?"

"Me, suh? If he had, a broomstick an' a spar' rib or so would

have been all you'd ever found of him agin. I've never yit laid

eyes on the man I couldn't settle with a single sweep, an' when a

lone woman comes to wantin' a protector, I've never seen the

husband that could hold a candle to a good stout broom. That's

what I said to Jinnie when she got herself engaged to Fred

Boxley. 'Married or single,' I said, 'gal, wife, or widow, a

broom is yo' best friend.'"

Fletcher twisted impatiently in his chair.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, stop your drivelling," he blurted out at

last, "and tell me in plain language what the boy has done."

"Oh, I don't know what he's done or what he hasn't," rejoined

Mrs. Spade, "but I've watched him courtin' Molly Peterkin till I

told Tom this thing had to stop or I would stop it. If thar's a

p'isonous snake or lizard in this country, suh, it's that

tow-headed huzzy of Sol Peterkin's; an' if thar's a sex on this

earth that I ain't go no patience with, it's the woman sex. A man

may slip an' slide a little because he was made that way, but

when it comes to a woman she's got to w'ar whalebones in her

clothes when I'm aroun'. Lord! Lord! What's the use of bein'

honest if you can't p'int yo' finger at them that ain't? Virtue

gits mighty little in the way of gewgaws in this world, an' I

reckon it's got to make things up in the way it feels when it

looks at them that's gone astray--"

"Molly Peterkin!" gasped Fletcher, striking the arm of his chair

a blow that almost shattered it. "Christopher Blake was bad

enough, and now it's Molly Peterkin! Out of the frying-pan right

spang into the fire. Oh, you did me a good turn in coming, Mrs.

Spade. I'll forgive you the news you brought, and I'll even

forgive you your blasted chatter. How long has this thing been

going on, do you know?"

"That I don't, suh, that I don't; though I've been pryin' an'

peekin' mighty close. All I know is, that every blessed evenin'

for the last two weeks I've seen 'em walkin' together in the lane

that leads to Sol's. This here ain't goin' to keep up one day

mo'; that's what I put my foot down on yestiddy. I'd stop it if I

didn't have nothin' agin that gal but the colour of her hair. I

don' know how 'tis, suh, but I've always had the feelin' that

thar's somethin' indecent about yaller hair, an' if I'd been born

with it I'd have stuck my head into a bowl of pitch befo' I'd

have gone flauntin' those corn-tassels in the eyes of every man I

met. Thar's nothin' in the looks of me that's goin' to make a man

regret he's got a wife if I can help it; an' mark my word, Mr.

Fletcher, if they had dyed Molly Peterkin's hair black she might

have been a self-respectin' woman an' a hater of men this very

day. A light character an' a light head go precious well

together, an' when you set one a good sober colour the other's

pretty apt to follow."

Fletcher rose from his chair and stood gripping the table hard.

"Have you any reason to think--does it look likely--that young

Blake has had a hand in this?" he asked.

"Who? Mr. Christopher? Why, I don't believe he could tell a

petticoat from a pair of breeches to save his soul. He ain't got

no fancy for corn-tassels and blue ribbons, I kin tell you that.

It's good honest women that are the mothers of families that he

takes to, an' even then it ain't no mo' than 'How are you, Mrs.

Spade? A fine mornin'!'"

"Well, thar's one thing you may be sartain of," returned

Fletcher, breaking in upon her, "and that is that this whole

business is as good as settled. I leave here with the boy

to-morrow morning at sunrise, and he doesn't set foot agin in

this county until he's gone straight through the university. I'll

drag him clean across the broad ocean before he shall do it."

Then, as Mrs. Spade took a noisy departure, he stood, without

listening to her, gazing morosely down upon the pattern of the

carpet.

CHAPTER V. The Happiness of Tucker

Early in the following November, Jim Weatherby, returning from

the cross-roads one rainy afternoon, brought Christopher a long,

wailing letter from Will.

"Oh, I've had to walk a chalk-line, sure enough," he wrote,

"since that awful day we left home in a pouring rain, with

grandpa wearing a whole thunderstorm on his forehead. It has been

cram, cram, cram ever since, I can tell you, and here I am now,

just started at the university, with my head still buzzing with

the noise of those confounded ancients. If grandpa hadn't gone

when he did, I declare I believe he would have ended by driving

me clean crazy. Since he left I've had time to take a look about

me, and I find there's a good deal of fun to be got here, after

all. How I'll manage to mix it in with Greek I don't see, but

luck's with me, you know--I've found that out--so I shan't

bother.

"By the way, I wish you would make Molly Peterkin understand how

it was I came away so hastily. Tell her I haven't forgotten her,

and give her the little turquoise pin I'm sending. It just

matches her eyes. Be sure to let me know if she's as pretty as

ever."

By the next mail the turquoise brooch arrived, and Christopher,

putting it in his pocket, went over to Sol Peterkin's to bear the

message to the girl. As it happened, she was swinging on the

little sagging gate when he came up the lane, and at sight of him

her eyebrows shot up under her flaxen curls, which hung low upon

her forehead. She was a pretty, soulless little animal, coloured

like peach-blossoms, and with a great deal of that soft

insipidity which is usually found in a boy's ideal of maiden

innocence.

"Why, I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw you," she said,

arranging her curls over her left shoulder with a conscious

simper.

The old Blake gallantry rose to meet her challenging eyes, and he

regarded her smilingly a moment before he answered.

"Well, I could hardly believe mine, you know," he responded

carelessly. "I thought for an instant that a big butterfly had

alighted on the gate."

She pouted prettily.

"Won't you come in?" she asked after a moment, with an

embarrassed air, as she remembered that he was one of the "real

Blakes" for whom her father used to work.

A light retort was on his lips, but while he looked at her a

little weary frown darkened her shallow eyes, and with the

peculiar sympathy for all those oppressed by man or nature which

was but one expression of his many-sided temperament he quickly

changed the tone of his reply. At the instant it seemed to him

that Molly Peterkin and himself stood together defrauded of their

rightful heritage of life; and as his thought broadened he felt

suddenly the pathos of her forlorn little figure, of her foolish

blue eyes, of her trivial vanities, of her girlish beauty, soiled

and worn by common handling. A look very like compassion was in

his face, and the girl, seeing it, reddened angrily and kicked at

a loose pebble in the path. When he went away a moment later he

left a careless message for Sol about the tobacco crop, and the

little white box containing the turquoise brooch was still in his

pocket.

That afternoon the trinket went back to Will with a curt letter.

"If you take my advice, you'll leave Molly Peterkin alone," he

wrote in his big, unformed hand, "for as far as I can see you are

too good a match to get on well together. She's a fool, you know,

and from the way you're going on just now it looks very much as

if you were one also. At any rate, I'm not your man for

gallantries. I'd rather hunt hares than women, any day--and

game's plentiful just now."

It was a long winter that year, and for the first time since her

terrible illness Mrs. Blake was forced to keep her bed during a

bitter spell of weather, when the raw winds whistled around the

little frame house, entering the cracks at the doors and the

loosened sashes of the windows. Cynthia grew drawn and pinched

with a sickly, frost-bitten look, and even Lila's rare bloom

drooped for a while like that of a delicate plant starving for

the sunshine. Christopher, who, as usual, was belated in his

winter's work, was kept busy hauling and chopping wood,

shovelling the snow away from the porch and the paths that led to

the well, the stable, and the barn. Once a day, most often after

breakfast, Jim Weatherby appeared, smiling gaily beneath his

powdering of snow; and sometimes, in defiance of Cynthia, he

would take Lila for a sleigh-ride, from which she would return

blossoming like a rose.

Mrs. Blake, from her tester bed, complained bitterly of the cold,

and drew from the increasing severity of the winters, which she

declared became more unbearable each year, warrant for her belief

in the gradual "decline of the world as a dwelling-place."

"You may say what you please, Tucker," she remarked one morning

when she had awakened with an appetite to find that her eggs had

frozen in the kitchen, "but you can hardly be so barefaced as to

compliment this weather. I'm sure I never felt anything like it

when I was young."

"Well, at least I have a roof over my head now, and I didn't when

I marched to Romney with old Stonewall," remarked Tucker from the

hearth, where he was roasting an apple before the big logs.

"Many's the morning I waked then with the snow frozen stiff all

over me, and I had to crack through it before I could get up."

The old lady made a peevish gesture.

"It may sound ungrateful," she returned, "but I'm sometimes

tempted to wish that you had never marched to Romney, or that

General Jackson had been considerate enough to choose a milder

spell. I really believe when you come to die you will console

yourself with the recollection of something worse that happened

in the war."

Tucker laughed softly to himself as he watched the apple

revolving in the red heat on its bit of string. "Well, I'm not

sure that I shan't, Lucy," he said.

"Habit's mighty strong, you know, and when you come to think of

it there's some comfort in knowing that you'll never have to face

the worst again. A man doesn't duck his head at the future when

he's learned that, let be what will; it can't be so bad as the

thing he's gone through with and yet come out on top. It gives

him a pretty good feeling, after all, to know that he hasn't

funked the hardest knock that life could give. Well, my birds are

hungry, I reckon, and I'll hobble out and feed 'em while this

apple is roasting to the core."

Raising himself with difficulty, he got upon his crutches and

went to scatter his crumbs from the kitchen window.

By the first of March the thaw came, and the snow melted in a day

beneath the lavish spring sunshine. It was a week later that

Christopher, coming from the woods at midday, saw Tucker sitting

on his old bench by the damask rose-bush, in which the sap was

just beginning to swell. The sun shone full on the dead grass,

and the old soldier, with his chin resting in the crook of his

crutch, was gazing straight down upon the earth. The expression

of his large, kindly face was so radiant with enjoyment that

Christopher quickened his steps and slapped him affectionately

upon the shoulder.

"Is Fletcher dead, Uncle Tucker?" he inquired, laughing.

"No, no; nobody's dead that I've heard of," responded Tucker in

his cheerful voice; "but something better than Bill Fletcher's

death has happened, I can tell you. Why, I'd been sitting out

here an hour or more, longing for the spring to come, when

suddenly I looked down and there was the first dandelion--a

regular miracle--blooming in the mould about that old rose-bush."

"Well, I'll be hanged!" exclaimed Christopher, aghast. "Mark my

words, you'll be in an asylum yet."

The other chuckled softly.

"When you put me there you'll shut up the only wise man in the

county," he returned. "If your sanity doesn't make you happy, I

can tell you it's worth a great deal less than my craziness. Look

at that dandelion, now--it has filled two hours chock full of

thought and colour for me when I might have been puling indoors

and nagging at God Almighty about trifles. The time has been when

I'd have walked right over that little flower and not seen it,

and now it grows yellower each minute that I look at it, and each

minute I see it better than I did the one before. There's nothing

in life, when you come to think of it--not Columbus setting out

to sea nor Napoleon starting on a march--more wonderful than that

brave little blossom putting up the first of all through the

earth."

"I can't see anything in a dandelion but a nuisance," observed

Christopher, sitting down on the bench and baring his head to the

sunshine; "but you do manage to get interest out of life, that's

certain."

"Interest! Good Lord!" exclaimed Tucker. "If a man can't find

something to interest him in a world like this, he must be a dull

fellow or else have a serious trouble of the liver. So long as I

have my eyes, and there's a different sky over my head each day,

and earth, and trees, and flowers all around me, I don't reckon

I'll begin to whistle to boredom. If I were like Lucy, now, I

sometimes think things would be up with me, and yet Lucy is one

of the very happiest women I've ever known. Her brain is so

filled with pleasant memories that it's never empty for an

instant."

Christopher's face softened, as it always did at an allusion to

his mother's blindness.

"You're right," he said; "she is happy."

"To be sure, she's had her life," pursued Tucker, without

noticing him. "She's been a beauty, a belle, a sweetheart, a

wife, and a mother--to say nothing of a very spoiled old woman;

but all the same, I don't think I have her magnificent patience.

Oh, I couldn't sit in the midst of all this and not have eyes to

see."

With a careless smile Christopher glanced about him--at the

bright blue sky seen through the bare trees, at the dried carrot

flowers in the old field across the road, at the great pine

growing on the little knoll.

"I hardly think she misses much," he said, and added after a

moment, "Do you know I'd give twenty--no forty, fifty years of

this for a single year of the big noisy world over there. I'm

dog-tired of stagnation."

"Well, it's natural," admitted Tucker gently. "At your age I

doubtless felt the same. The young want action, and they ought to

have it, because it makes the quiet of middle age seem all the

sweeter. You've missed your duels and your flirtations and your

pomades, and you've been put into breeches and into philosophy at

the same time. Why, one might as well stick a brier pipe in the

mouth of a boy who is crying for his first gun and tell him to go

sit in the chimney-corner and be happy. When I was twenty-five I

travelled all the way to New York for the latest Parisian

waistcoat, but I can't remember that I ever strolled round the

corner to see a peach-tree in full bloom. I'm a lot happier now,

heaven knows, in my homespun coat, than I was then in that

waistcoat of satin brocade, so I sometimes catch myself wishing

that I could see again the people I knew then--the men I

quarrelled with and the women I kissed. I'd like to apologise for

the young fool of thirty years ago."

Christopher stirred restlessly, and, clasping his hands behind

his head, stared at a small white cloud drifting slowly above the

great pine.

"Well, it's the fool part I envy you, all the same," he remarked.

"You're welcome to it, my boy," answered Tucker; then he paused

abruptly and bent his ear. "Ah, there's the bluebird! Do you hear

him whistling in the meadow? God bless him; he's a hearty fellow

and has spring in his throat."

"I passed one coming up," said Christopher.

"The same, I reckon. He'll be paying me a visit soon, and I've

got my crumbs ready." He smiled brightly and then sat with his

chin on his crutch, looking steadily across the road. "You

haven't had your chance, my boy," he resumed presently; "and a

man ought to have several chances to look round him in this

world, for otherwise the things he misses will always seem to him

the only things worth having. I'm not much of a fellow to preach,

you'll say--a hundred and eighty pounds of flesh that can't dress

itself nor hobble about without crutches that are strapped on-

-but if it's the last word I speak I wouldn't change a day in my

long life, and if it came to going over it again I'd trust it all

in the Lord's hands and start blindfolded. And yet, when I look

back upon it now, I see that it wasn't much of a life as lives

go, and the two things I wanted most in it I never got."

Christopher turned quickly with a question.

"Oh, you think I have always been a contented, prosaic chap,"

pursued Tucker, smiling, "but you were never more mistaken since

you were born. Twice in my life I came mighty near blowing out my

brains--once when I found that I couldn't go to Paris and be an

artist, and the second time when I couldn't get the woman I

wanted for my wife. I wasn't cut out for a farmer, you see, and I

had always meant from the time I was a little boy to go abroad

and study painting. I'd set my heart on it, as people say, but

when the time came my father died and I had to stay at home to

square his debts and run the place. For a single night I was as

clean crazy as a man ever was. It meant the sacrifice of my

career, you know, and a career seemed a much bigger thing to me

then than it does to-day."

"I never heard that," said Christopher, lowering his voice.

"There's a lot we don't know even about the people we live in a

little house with. You never heard, either, I dare say, that I

was so madly in love once that when the woman threw me over for a

better man I shut myself up in a cabin in the woods and did not

speak to a human being for six months. I was a rare devil, sure

enough, though you'd never believe it to see me now. It took two

blows like that, a four years' war, and the surgeon's operating

table to teach me how to be happy."

"It was Miss Matoaca Bolling, I suppose?" suggested Christopher,

with a mild curiosity.

The old soldier broke into his soft, full laugh.

"Matoaca! Bless your soul, no. But to think that Lucy should have

kept a secret for more than thirty years! Never talk to me again

about a woman's letting anything out. If she's got a secret that

it mortifies her to tell it will be buried in the grave with her,

and most likely it will never see the light at judgment Day. Lucy

was always ashamed of my being jilted, you know."

"It's a new story then, is it?"

"Oh, it's as old as the hills by now. What's the funny part,

though, is that Lucy has always tried to persuade herself it was

really Matoaca I cared for. You know, I sometimes think that a

woman can convince herself that black is white if she only keeps

trying hard enough--and it's marvellous that she never sees the

difference between wanting to believe a thing and believing it in

earnest. Now, if Matoaca had been the last woman on this earth,

and I the last man, I could never have fallen in love with her,

though I may as well confess that I had my share of fancies when

I was young. It's no use attempting to explain a man's feelings,

of course. Matoaca was almost as great a belle as Lucy, and she

was the handsomest creature you ever laid eyes on--one of those

big, managing women who are forever improving things around them.

Why, I don't believe she could stay two seconds in a man's arms

without improving the set of his cravat. Some men like that kind

of thing, but I never did, and I often think the reason I went so

mad about the other woman was that she came restful after

Matoaca. She was the comforting kind, who, you might be sure,

always saw you at your best; and no matter the mood you were in,

she never wanted to pat and pull you into shape. Lucy always said

she couldn't hold a candle to Matoaca in looks, and I suppose she

was right; but, pretty or plain, that girl had something about

her that went straight to my heart more than thirty years ago and

stays there still. Strange to say, I've tried to believe that it

was half compassion, for she always reminded me of a little wild

bird that somebody had caught and shut up in a cage, and it used

to seem to me sometimes that I could almost hear the fluttering

of her soul. Well, whatever it was, the feeling was the sort that

is most worth while, though she didn't think so, of course, and

broke her great heart over another man. She married him and had

six children and died a few years ago. He was a fortunate fellow,

I suppose, and yet I can't help fancying that I've had the better

part and the Lord was right. She was not happy, they said, and he

knew it, and yet had to face those eyes of hers every day. It was

like many other marriages, I reckon; he got used to her body and

never caught so much as a single glimpse of her soul. Then she

faded away and died to him, but to me she's just the same as when

I first saw her, and I still believe that if she could come here

and sit on this old bench I should be perfectly happy. It's a

lucky man, I tell you, who can keep the same desire for more than

thirty years."

He shook his head slowly, smiling as he listened to the bluebird

singing in the road. "And now I'll be fetching my crumbs," he

added, struggling to his crutches.

When he had helped Tucker to the house, Christopher came back and

sat down again on the bench, closing his eyes to the sunshine,

the spring sky, and the dandelion blooming in the mould. He was

very tired, and his muscles ached from the strain of heavy

labour, yet as he lingered there in the warm wind it seemed to

him that action was the one thing he desired. The restless season

worked in his blood, and he felt the stir of old impulses that

had revived each year with the quickening sap since the first

pilgrimage man made on earth. He wanted to be up and away while

he was still young, and his heart beat high, and at the moment he

would have found positive delight in any convulsion of the

natural order, in any excuse for a headlong and impetuous plunge

into life.

He heard the door open again, and Tucker shuffled out into the

path and began scattering his crumbs upon the gravel. When

Christopher passed a moment later, on his way to the house, the

old soldier was merrily whistling an invitation to a glimpse of

blue in a tree-top by the road.

The spring dragged slowly, and with June came the transplanting

of the young tobacco. This was the busiest season of the year

with Christopher, and so engrossed was he in his work that for a

week at the end of the month he did not go down for the county

news at Tom Spade's store. Fletcher was at home, he knew, but he

had heard nothing of Will, and it was through the storekeeper at

last that he learned definitely of the boy's withdrawal from the

university. Returning from the field one afternoon at sunset, he

saw Tom sitting beside Tucker in the yard, and in response to a

gesture he crossed the grass and stopped beside the long pine

bench.

"I say, Mr. Christopher, I've brought you a bit of news," called

the storekeeper at the young man's approach.

"Well, let's have it," returned Christopher, laughing. "If you're

going to tell me that Uncle Tucker has discovered a rare weed,

though, I warn you that I can't support it."

"Oh, I'm not in this, thank heaven," protested Tucker; "but to

tell the truth, I'm downright sorry for the boy--Fletcher or no

Fletcher,"

"Ah," said Christopher under his breath, "so it's Will Fletcher?"

"He's in a jolly scrape this time, an' no mistake," replied Tom.

"He's been leadin' a wild life at the university, it seems, an'

to-day Fletcher got a telegram saying that the boy had been

caught cheatin' in his examinations. The old man left on the next

train, as mad as a hornet, I can tell you. He swore he'd bring

the young scamp back an' put him to the plough. Well, well, thar

are worse dangers than a pretty gal, though Susan won't believe

it."

"Then he'll bring him home?" asked Christopher, blinking in the

sunlight. At the instant it seemed to him that sky and field

whirled rapidly before his eyes, and a strange noise started in

his ears which he found presently to be the throbbing of his

arteries.

"Oh, he's been given a hard push down the wrong road," answered

Tom, "an' it's more than likely he'll never pull up till he gits

clean to the bottom."

CHAPTER VI. The Wages of Folly

Two days later Fletcher's big new carriage crawled over the muddy

road, and Christopher, looking up from his work in the field,

caught a glimpse of the sullen face Will turned on the familiar

landscape. The younger Fletcher had come home evidently nursing a

grievance at his heart; his eyes held a look of dogged

resentment, and the hand in which he grasped the end of the linen

dust-robe was closed in an almost convulsive grip. When he met

Christopher's gaze he glanced angrily away without speaking, and

then finding himself face to face with his grandfather's scowl he

jerked impatiently in the opposite direction. It was clear that

the tussle of wills had as yet wrung only an enforced submission

from the younger man.

Lifting his head, Christopher stood idly watching the carriage

until it disappeared between the rows of flowering chestnuts;

then, returning in a half-hearted fashion to his work, he found

himself wondering curiously if Fletcher's wrath and Will's

indiscretions were really so great as public rumour might lead

one to suppose.

An answer to his question came the next evening, when he heard a

light, familiar whistle outside the stable where he was at work,

and a moment afterward Will appeared in the shadow of the

doorway.

"So it wasn't a cut, after all?" said Christopher with a laugh,

as he held out his hand.

"I'll be hanged if I know what it was," was Will's response,

turning away after a limp grasp and seating himself upon the big

box in the corner. "To tell the truth, grandpa has put me into

such a fluster that I hardly know my head from my heels. There's

one thing certain, though; if he doesn't take his eye off me for

a breathing space he'll send me to the dogs before he knows it."

His face had lost its boyish freshness of complexion and his weak

mouth had settled into lines of sullen discontent. Even his dress

displayed the carelessness which is one of the outward marks of a

disordered mind, and his bright blue tie was loosely knotted in

unequal lengths.

"What's the trouble now?" demanded Christopher, coming from the

stall and hanging his lantern from a nail beside the ladder,

where the light fell full on Will's face. "Out with it and have

done. I thought yesterday that you had been driving a hard

bargain with the old man on my account."

"Oh, it's not you this time, thank heaven," returned Will. "It's

all about that confounded scrape I got into at the university. I

told him it would mean trouble if he sent me there, but he would

do it whether or no. He dragged me away from here, you remember,

and had me digging at my books with a scatter-brained tutor for a

good six months; then when I knew just about enough to start at

the university he hauled me there with his own hands and kept

watch over me for several weeks. I'm quick at most things like

that, so after he went away I thought I'd have a little fun and

trust luck to make it up to me at the end--but it all went

against me somehow, and then they stirred up that blamed rumpus

about the examinations."

Yawning more in disgust than in drowsiness, he struck a match on

the edge of the box and lighted a cigarette. His flippant manner

was touched with the conscious resentment which still lingered in

his eyes, and from the beginning to the end of his account he

betrayed no hint of a regret for his own shabby part in the

affair. When it was not possible to rest the blame upon his

grandfather, he merely shrugged his shoulders and lightly tossed

the responsibility to fate.

"This is one of the things I daren't do at the house," he

remarked after a moment, inhaling a cloud of smoke and blowing it

in spirals through his nostrils; "the old man won't tolerate

anything more decent than a pipe, unless it happens to be a chew.

Oh, I'm sick to death of the whole business," he burst out

suddenly. "When I woke up this morning I had more than half a

mind to break loose and go abroad to Maria. By the way, Wyndham's

dead, you know; he died last fall just after we went away."

"Ah, is that so!" exclaimed Christopher. "She'll come home, then,

will she?"

"That's the queer part--she won't, and nobody knows why. Wyndham

turned out to be a regular scamp, of course; he treated her

abominably and all that, but he no sooner died than she turned

about and picked up one of his sisters to nurse and coddle. Oh,

it's all foolishness, but I've half a mind to run away, all the

same. A life like this will drive me crazy in six months, and

I'll be hanged if it is my fault, after all. He knew I never had

a head for books, but he drove me at them as if I were no better

than a black slave. Things have all been against me from the

start, and yet I used to think that I was born to be lucky--"

"What does he mean to do with you now?" inquired Christopher.

"Put me to the plough, he says; but I can't stand it--I haven't

the strength. Why, this morning he made me hang around that

tobacco field in the blazing sun for two mortal hours, minding

those shiftless darkies. If I complain; or even go off to sit

down in a bit of shade, he rushes up and blusters about kicking

me out of doors unless I earn my bread. Oh, his temper is simply

awful, and he gets worse every day. He's growing stingy, too,

and makes us live like beggars. All the vegetables go to market

now, and most of the butter, and this morning he blew Aunt

Saidie's head off because she had spring chickens on the

breakfast table. I don't dare ask him for a penny, and yet he's

rich--one of the richest men in the State, they say."

"Well, it sounds jolly," observed Christopher, smiling.

"Oh, you can't imagine the state of things, and you'd never

believe it if I told you. It's worse than any fuss you ever heard

of or ever saw. I used to be able to twist him round my finger,

you know, and now he hates me worse than he does a snake. He

hasn't spoken a word to me since that scene we had at the

university, except to order me to go out and watch the Negroes

plant tobacco. If he finds out I want a thing he'll move heaven

and earth to keep me from getting it--and then sit by and grin.

He's got a devil in him, that's the truth, and there's nothing to

do except keep out of his way as much as possible. I'm patient,

too--Aunt Saidie knows it--and the only time I ever hit back was

when he jumped on you the other day. Then I got mad and struck

out hard, I tell you."

Christopher leaned over and began buckling and unbuckling a

leather strap in the harness-box.

"Don't get into hot water on my account," he returned; "the more

he abuses me, you know, the better I like it. But it's odd that

after all these years he should want to turn you into an

overseer."

"Well, he shan't do it; that's certain. It will be a cold day

when he gets me masquerading in the family character. Let him go

just one step too far and I'll shake him off for good, and strike

out on a freight-train. Life couldn't be any worse than it is

now, and it might be a great deal better. As to my hanging round

like this much longer and swearing at a pack of worthless

darkies--well, it's more than I bargain for, that's all."

"There's not much excitement in it, to be sure. I would rather be

a freight-hand myself, I think, when all is said."

"Oh, you needn't joke. You were brought up to it and it doesn't

come so hard."

"Doesn't it?"

"Not so hard as it does to me, at any rate. There's got to be

some dash about life, I tell you, to make it suit my taste. I

wasn't born to settle down and count my money and my tobacco from

morning till night. It's spice I want in things, and--hang it! I

don't believe there's a pretty woman in the county."

For a moment Christopher stared silently down at the matted

straw. His face had grown dark, and the reckless lines about his

mouth became suddenly prominent.

"Why, where's Molly Peterkin?" he asked abruptly, with a laugh

that seemed to slip from him against his will.

The other broke into a long whistle and tossed the end of his

cigarette through the doorway.

"You needn't think I've forgotten her," he replied; "she's the

one bright spot I see in this barren hole. By the way, why do you

think her a fool?"

"Because she is one."

"And you're a brute. What does a man want with brains in a woman,

anyway. Maria had them and they didn't keep her from coming to

shipwreck."

Christopher reached for the lantern.

"Well, I've got to go now," he broke in, "and you'd better be

trotting home or you'll have the old man and the hounds out after

you."

With the lantern swinging from his hand, he went to the door and

waited for Will; then passing out, he turned the key in the lock,

and with a short "Good-night!" started briskly toward the house.

Will followed him to the kitchen steps, and then keeping to the

path that trailed across the yard, he passed through the

whitewashed gate and went on along the sunken road which led by

the abandoned ice-pond. Here he turned into the avenue of

chestnuts, and with the lighted windows of the Hall before him,

walked slowly toward the impending interview with his

grandfather.

As he entered the house, Miss Saidie looked out from the

dining-room doorway and beckoned in a stealthy fashion with the

hen-house key.

"He has been hunting everywhere for you," she whispered, "and I

told him you'd gone for a little stroll along the road."

An expression of anger swept over Will's face, and he made a

helpless gesture of revolt.

"I won't stand it any longer," he answered, with a spurt of

resolution which was exhausted in the feeble speech.

Miss Saidie put up her hand and straightened his necktie with an

affectionate pat.

"Only for a little while, dear," she urged; "he's in one of his

black humours, and it will blow over, never fear. Things are

never so bad but there's hope of a mending some day. Try to

please him and go to work as he wants you to do. It all came of

the trouble at the university--he had set his heart on your

carrying off the honours."

"It was his fault," said Will stubbornly. "I begged him not to

send me there. It was his fault."

"Well, that can't be helped now," returned the little woman

decisively. "All we can do is to make things as easy as we can,

and if thar's ever to be any peace in this house again you must

try to humour him. I never saw him in such a state before, and

I've known him for sixty years and slept in a trundle-bed with

him as a baby. The queerest thing about it, too, is that he seems

to get closer and closer every day. Just now thar was a big fuss

because I hadn't sent all the fresh butter to market, and I

thought he'd have a fit when he found I was saving some asparagus

for dinner to-morrow."

"Where is he now?" asked Will in a whisper.

"Complaining over some bills in his setting-room; and he actually

told me a while ago, when I went in, that he had been a fool to

give Maria so much money for Wyndham to throw away. Poor Maria!

I'm sure she has had a hard enough time without being abused for

something she couldn't help. But it really is a passion with him,

thar's no use denying it. He spends his whole time adding up the

cost of what we eat."

Then, as the supper-bell rang in the hall, she finished

hurriedly, and assuming a cheerful manner, took her place behind

the silver service.

Fletcher entered with a heavy step, his eyes lowering beneath his

bushy eyebrows. The weight of his years appeared to have fallen

upon him in a night, and he was no longer the hale, ruddy man of

middle age, with his breezy speeches and his occasional touches

of coarse humour. The untidiness of his clothes was still

marked-his coat, his cravat, his finger nails, all showed the old

lack of neatness.

"Won't you say grace, Brother Bill?" asked Miss Saidie, as he

paused abstractedly beside his chair.

Bending his head, he mumbled a few hurried words, and then cast a

suspicious glance over the long table.

"I told you to use the butter with onions in it," he said,

helping himself and tasting a little on the end of his knife.

"This brings forty cents a pound in market, and I'll not have the

waste."

"Oh, Brother Bill, the other is so bad," gasped Miss Saidie

nervously.

"It's good enough for you and me, I reckon. We wan't brought up

on any better, and what's good enough for us is good enough for

my grandson." Then he turned squarely upon Will. "So you're back,

eh? Whar did you go?" he demanded

Will tried to meet his eyes, failed, and stared gloomily at the

white-and-red border of the tablecloth.

"I went out for a breath of air," he answered in a muffled voice.

"It's been stifling all day."

"You've got to get used to it, I reckon," returned the old man

with a brutal laugh. "I'll have no idlers and no fancy men about

me."

An ugly smile distorted his coarse features, and, laying down his

knife and fork, he sat watching his grandson with his small,

bloodshot eyes.

CHAPTER VII. The Toss of a Coin

A fortnight passed before Will came to Christopher's again, and

then he stole over one evening in the shadow of the twilight.

Things were no better, he said; they were even worse than usual;

the work in the tobacco field was simply what he couldn't stand,

and his grandfather was growing more intolerable every day.

Besides this, the very dullness of the life was fast driving him

to distraction. He had smuggled a bottle of whisky from the town,

and last night, after a hot quarrel with the old man, he had

succeeded in drugging himself to sleep. "My nerves have gone all

to pieces," he finished irritably, "and it's nothing on earth but

this everlasting bickering that has done it. It's more than flesh

and blood can be expected to put up with."

His hand shook a little when he lighted a cigarette, and his

face, which was burned red from wind and sun, contracted

nervously as he talked. It was the wildness in his speech,

however, the suppressed excitement which ran in an undercurrent

beneath his words, that caused the other to turn sharply and

regard him for a moment with gathered brows.

"Well, take my advice and don't try that dodge too often,"

remarked Christopher in a careless tone.

"What in the deuce does it matter?" returned Will desperately.

"It was the only quiet night I've had for three weeks: I slept

like a log straight through until the breakfast-bell. Then I was

late, of course, and he threatened to take an hour's time from my

day's wages. By the way, he pays me now, you know, just as he

does the other labourers."

For a time he kept up his rambling complaint, but, breaking off

abruptly at last, made some trivial excuse, and started homeward

across the fields. Christopher, looking after him, was hardly

surprised when he saw him branch off into the shaded lane that

led to Sol Peterkin's.

There followed a month when the two met only at long intervals,

and then with a curious constraint of manner. Sometimes

Christopher, stopping on his way to the pasture, would exchange a

few words over the rail fence with Will, who lounged on the edge

of his grandfather's tobacco crop; but the old intimacy had

ceased suddenly to exist, and it was evident that a newer

interest had distracted the boy's ardent fancy.

It was not until August that the meaning of the change was made

clear to Christopher, when, coming one day to a short turn in a

little woodland road upon his land, he saw Will and Molly

Peterkin sitting side by side on a fallen log. The girl had been

crying, and at the sight of Christopher she gave a frightened sob

and pulled her blue gingham sunbonnet down over her forehead; but

Will, inspired at the instant by some ideal of chivalry, drew her

hand through his arm and came out boldly into the road.

"You know Molly," he said in a brave voice that was not without

pathos, "but you don't know that she has promised to be my wife."

Whatever the purpose of the girl's tears, she had need of them no

longer, for with an embarrassed little laugh she flushed and

dimpled into her pretty smile.

"Your wife?" repeated Christopher blankly. "Why, you're no better

than two children and deserve to be whipped. If I were in your

place, I'd start to catching butterflies, and quit fooling."

He passed on laughing merrily; but before the day was over he

began to wonder seriously if Will could be really sincere in his

intention to marry Molly Peterkin--poor, pretty Molly, whose fame

was blown to the four corners of the county.

By night the question had come to perplex him in earnest, and it

was almost with relief that he heard a familiar rattle on his

window-pane as he undressed, and, looking out, saw Will standing

in the long grass by the porch.

"Well, it's time you turned up," he said, when he had slipped

cautiously down the staircase and joined him in the yard.

"Get your lantern," returned Will, "and come on to the barn.

There's something I must see you about at once," and while the

other went in search of the light, he stood impatiently uprooting

a tuft of grass as he whistled a college song in unsteady tones.

At the end of a minute Christopher reappeared, bearing the

lantern, which he declared was quite unnecessary because of the

rising moon.

"Oh, but I must talk indoors," responded Will; "the night makes

me creepy--it always did."

"So there is something to say, and it's no nonsense? Are the

skies about to fall, or has your grandfather got a grip on his

temper?"

"Pshaw! It's not that. Wait till we get inside." And when they

had entered the barn, he turned and carefully closed the door,

after flashing the light over the trampled straw in the dusky

corners. In the shed outside a new-born calf bleated plaintively,

and at the sound he started and broke into an apologetic laugh.

"You thought I was joking to-day," he said suddenly.

Christopher nodded.

"So I presumed," he answered, wondering if drink or love or both

together had produced so extreme an agitation.

"Well, I wasn't," declared Will, and, placing the lantern on the

floor, he raised his head to meet the other's look. "I was as

dead in earnest as I am this minute--and if it's the last word I

ever speak, I mean to marry Molly Peterkin."

His excitable nerves were plainly on the rack of some strong

emotion, and as he met the blank amazement in Christopher's face

he turned away with a gesture of angry reproach.

"Then you're a fool," said Christopher, with a shrug of his

shoulders.

Will quivered as if the words struck him like a whip.

"Because she's Sol Peterkin's daughter?" he burst out.

Christopher smiled.

"It's not her father, but her character, that I was thinking of,"

he answered, and the next instant fell back in sheer surprise,

for Will, flinging himself recklessly upon him, struck him

squarely in the mouth.

As they fell breathlessly apart Christopher was conscious that

for the first time in his life he felt something like respect for

Will Fletcher--or at least for that expression of courageous

passion which in the vivid moments of men's lives appears to

raise the strong and the weak alike above the ordinary level of

their surroundings. For a second he stood swallowing down the

anger which the blow aroused in him--an anger as purely physical

as the mounting of the hot blood to his cheek--then he looked

straight into the other's face and spoke in a pleasant voice.

"I beg your pardon; it was all my fault," he said.

"I knew you'd see it," answered Will, appeased at once by the

confession, "and I counted on you to help us; that's why I came."

"To help you?" repeated Christopher, a little startled.

"Well, we've got to be married, you know--there's simply nothing

else to do. All this confounded talk about Molly has come near

killing her, and the poor child is afraid to look anybody in the

face. She's so innocent, you know, that half the time she doesn't

understand what their lies are all about."

"Good God!" said Christopher beneath his breath.

"And besides, what use is there in waiting?" urged Will. "Grandpa

won't be any better fifty years from now than he is to-day, and

by that time we'd be old and gray-haired. This life is more than

I can stand, anyway, and it makes mighty little difference

whether it ends one way or another. Just so I have Molly I don't

care much what happens. "

"But you can't marry--it's simply out of the question. Why,

you're not yet twenty."

"Oh, we can't marry here, of course, but we're going on to

Washington to-morrow--all our plans are made, and that's why I

came to see you. I want to borrow your horses to take us to the

crossroads at midnight. "

Seizing him by the shoulder, Christopher shook him roughly in a

powerful grasp.

"Wake up," he said impatiently; "you are either drunk or asleep,

and you're going headlong to the devil. If you do this thing

you'll be ashamed of it in two weeks." Then he released him,

laughing as he watched him totter and regain his balance. "But if

you're bent on being an ass, then, for heaven's sake, go and be

one," he added irritably.

A shiver passed through Will, and he stuttered an instant before

he could form his words.

"She told me you'd say that," he replied. "She told me you'd

always hated her."

"Hate her? Nonsense! She isn't worth it. I'd as soon hate a white

kitten. As far as that goes, I've nothing against the girl, and I

don't doubt she'd be a much better wife than most men deserve.

I'm not prating about virtue, mind you; I'm only urging common

sense. You're too young and too big a fool to marry anybody."

"Well, you disapprove of her, at any rate--you're against her,

and that's why I haven't talked about her before. She's the most

beautiful creature alive, I tell you, and I wouldn't give her up

if to keep her meant I'd be a beggar."

"It will mean that, most likely."

Turning away, Will drew a small flask from his pocket and,

unscrewing the stopper, raised the bottle to his lips. "I'd go

mad but for this," he said; "that's why I've carried it about

with me for the last week. It's the only thing that drives away

this horrible depression."

As he drank, Christopher regarded him curiously, noting that the

whisky lent animation to his face and an unnatural luster to his

eyes. The sunburn on his forehead appeared to deepen all at once,

and there was a bright red flush across his cheeks.

"You won't take my advice," said Christopher at last, "but I

can't help telling you that unless you're raving mad you'd better

drop the whole affair as soon as possible."

"Not now--not now, " protested Will gaily, consumed by an

artificial energy. "Don't preach to me while the taste of a drink

is still in my mouth, for there's no heart so strong as the one

whisky puts into a man. When I feel my courage oozing from my

fingers I can reinforce it in less time than it takes to sneak

away."

Growing boisterous, he assumed a ridiculous swagger, and broke

into a fragment of a college song. Until morning he would not

probably become himself again, and, knowing this, Christopher

desisted helplessly from his efforts at persuasion.

"You will lend me the horses?" asked Will, keeping closely to his

point.

"Are you steady enough?"

"Of course--of course, " he stretched out his hands and moved a

pace or two away; "and besides, Dolly drives like old Nick."

"Well, I'll see," said Christopher, and going to the window, he

flung back the rude shutter and looked out into the August night.

The warm air touched his face like a fragrant breath, and from

the darkness a big white moth flew over his shoulder to where the

lantern burned dimly on the floor.

"I may take them?" urged Will again, pulling him by the sleeve.

At the words Christopher turned and walked slowly back across the

barn.

"Yes, I'll lend them to you," he answered, without meeting the

other's eyes.

"You're a jolly good chap; I always knew it, " cried Will

heartily. "I'll take them out at midnight, when there's a good

moon, and get Jerry Green to drive them back to-morrow. Hurrah!

It's the best night's work you ever did!"

He went out hurriedly, still singing his college song, and

Christopher, without moving from his place, stood watching the

big white moth that circled dizzily about the lantern. At the

instant he regretted that Will had appealed to him--regretted

even that he had promised him the horses. He wished it had all

come about without his knowledge--that Fletcher's punishment and

Will's ruin had been wrought less directly by his own

intervention. Next he told himself that he would have stopped

this thing had it been possible, and then with the thought he

became clearly aware that it was still in his power to prevent

the marriage. He had but to walk across the fields to Fletcher's

door, and before sunrise the foolish pair would be safely home

again. Will would probably be sent off to recover, and Molly

would go back to making butter and to flirting with Fred Turner.

On the other hand, let the marriage but take place--let him keep

silent until the morning--and the revenge of which he had dreamed

since childhood would be accomplished at a single stroke. Bill

Fletcher's many sins would find him out in a night.

The big moth, fluttering aimlessly from the lantern, flew

suddenly in his face, and the touch startled him from his

abstraction. With a laugh he shook the responsibility from his

shoulders, and then, as he hesitated again for a breath, the

racial instinct arose, as usual, to decide the issue.

Taking a dime from his pocket, he tossed it lightly in the air

and waited for it to fall.

"Heads for me, tails for Fletcher."

The coin spun for an instant in the gloom above him and then

dropped noiselessly to the floor. When he lifted the lantern and

bent over it he saw that the head lay uppermost.

CHAPTER VIII. In Which Christopher Triumphs

When he entered the house a little later Cynthia met him in the

kitchen doorway with an anxious frown.

"I heard a noise, Christopher. What was it?"

"A man wanted me about something. How is mother resting?"

"Not well. Her dreams trouble her. She grows weaker every day,

and the few hours she insists upon spending in her chair tire her

dreadfully."

"There is nothing that she needs, you say?"

"No; nothing. She has never felt our poverty for an instant."

The furrow between his eyebrows grew deeper.

"And you?" he asked abruptly, regarding her fixedly with his

intent gaze. "What under heaven are you up to at this hour?"

Glancing down at the ironing-board before her, she flushed

painfully through the drawn grayness of her face.

"I had a little ironing to do," she answered, "and I wanted it

all finished to-night. Mother needs me in the day."

Pushing her aside, he seized the iron and ran it in a few hasty

strokes over the rough-dry garment which she had spread on the

board. "Go to bed and leave these things alone," he insisted.

"Oh, Christopher, you'll spoil it!" cried Cynthia, clutching his

arm.

He returned the iron to the stand and met her reproachful look

with a gesture of annoyance. "Well, I'm going to sleep, if you

aren't," he said, and treading as lightly as possible in his

heavy boots, went along the little platform and upstairs to his

garret room.

Once inside, he undressed hastily and flung himself upon the bed,

but his thoughts spun like a top, and wild visions of Will, of

Fletcher, and of Molly Peterkin whirled confusedly through his

brain. When at last he lost consciousness for a time, it was to

dream restlessly of the cry of a hare that the hounds had caught

and mangled. The scream of the creature came to him from a thick

wood, which was intersected by innumerable small green paths, and

when he tried vainly to go to the rescue he lost himself again

and again in the wilderness of trails. Back and forth he turned

in the twilight, crushing down the underbrush and striking in a

frenzy at the forked boughs the trees wrapped about him, while

suddenly the piteous voice became that of a woman in distress.

Then, with a great effort, he fought his way through the wood, to

see the mangled hare change slowly into Maria Fletcher, who

opened her eyes to ask him why he hunted her to death.

He awoke in a cold sweat, and, sitting up in bed, leaned for air

toward the open window. A dull ache gnawed at his heart, and his

lips were parched as if from fever. Again it seemed to him that

Maria entreated him across the distance.

When he came down at sunrise he found Jerry Green awaiting him

with the horses, and learned in answer to his questions that the

lovers had taken a light wagon at the cross-roads and driven on

to town.

"They were that bent on gittin' thar that they couldn't even wait

for the stage, " the man told him. "Well, they're a merry pair,

an' I hope good will come of it--seein' as 'tain't no harm to

hope."

"Oh, they think so now, at any rate," Christopher replied, as he

turned away to unharness the patient horses.

At breakfast, an hour or two later, he learned that his mother

was in one of her high humours, and that, awaking early and

prattling merrily of the past, she insisted that they should

dress her immediately in her black brocade. When the meal was

over he carried her from her bed to the old oak chair, in which

she managed to keep upright among her pillows. Her gallant spirit

was still youthful and undaunted, and the many infirmities of her

body were powerless to distort the cheerful memories behind her

sightless eyes.

Leaving her presently, after a careless chat about the foibles of

Bolivar Blake, he took his hoe from an outhouse and went to

"grub" the young weeds from the tobacco, which had now reached

its luxuriant August height. By noon his day's work on the crop

was over, and he was resting for a moment in the shadow of a

locust tree by the fence, when he heard rapid footsteps

approaching in the new road, and Bill Fletcher threw himself over

the crumbling rails and came panting into the strip of shade. At

sight of the man's face Christopher flung his hoe out into the

field, where it bore down a giant plant, and bracing his body

against the tree, prepared himself to withstand the shock of the

first blow; but the other, after glaring at him for a breathless

instant, fell back and rapped out a single thundering oath. "You

hell-hound! This is all your doing!"

Throwing off the words with a gesture of his arm, Christopher

stared coolly into the other's distorted face; then, yielding to

the moment's vindictive impulse, he broke into a sneering laugh.

"So you have heard the good news?" he inquired lightly.

Before the rage in the old man's eyes--before the convulsed

features and the quivering limbs--he felt a savage joy suddenly

take possession of him.

"It's all your doing, every last bit of it," repeated Fletcher

hoarsely, "and I'll live to pay you back if I hang for it in the

end!"

"Go ahead, then," retorted Christopher; "you might as well hang

for a sheep as for a lamb, you know."

"Oh, you think I'm fooling?" said the other, wiping a fleck of

foam from his mouth, "but you'll find out better some day, unless

the devil gets you mighty quick. You've made that boy a scamp and

a drunkard, and now you've gone and married him to a--" He

swallowed the words and stood gasping above his loosened collar.

Christopher paled slightly beneath his sunburn; then, as he

recovered his assurance, a brutal smile was sketched about his

mouth.

"Come, come, go easy," he protested flippantly; "there's such a

thing, you remember, as the pot calling the kettle black."

His gay voice fell strangely on the other's husky tones, and for

the moment, in spite of his earth-stained hands and his clothes

of coarse blue jean, he might have been a man of the world

condescending to a peasant. It was at such times, when a raw

emotion found expression in the primitive lives about him, that

he realised most vividly the gulf between him and his neighbours.

To his superficial unconcern they presented the sincerity of

naked passion.

"You've made the boy what he is," repeated the old man, in a

quiver from head to foot. "You've done your level best to send

him to the devil."

"Well, he had a pretty good start, it seems, before I ever laid

eyes on him."

"You set out to ruin him from the first, and I watched you," went

on Fletcher, choking over each separate word before he uttered

it; "my eye was on your game, and if you were anything but the

biggest villain on earth I could have stopped it. But for you

he'd be a decent chap this very minute."

"And the pattern of his grandfather," sneered Christopher.

Fletcher raised his arm for a blow and then let it fall limply to

his side. "Oh, I'm done with you now, and I'm done with your

gang," he said. "Play your devil's tricks as much as you please;

they won't touch me. If that boy sets foot on my land again I'll

horsewhip him as I would a hound. Let him see who'll feed him now

when he comes to starve."

Catching his breath, Christopher stared at him an instant in

silence; then he spoke in a voice which had grown serious.

"The more fool you, then," he said. "The chap's your grandson,

and he's a better one than you deserve. Whatever he is, I tell

you now, he's a long sight too good for such as you--and so is

Molly Peterkin, for that matter. Heavens above! What are you that

you should become a stickler for honesty in others? Do you think

I've forgotten that you drove my father to his grave, and that

the very land you live on you stole from me? Pshaw! It takes more

than twenty years to bury a thing like that, you fool!"

Fletcher looked helplessly round for a weapon, and catching sight

of the hoe, raised it in his hands; but Christopher, seizing it

roughly from him, tossed it behind him in the little path.

"I'll have none of that," added the young man grimly.

"You're a liar, as your father was before you," burst out

Fletcher, swallowing hard; "and as for that scamp you've gone and

sent to hell, you can let him starve or not, jest as you please.

He has made his choice between us, and he can stick to it till he

rots in the poorhouse. Much good you'll do him in the end, I

reckon."

"Well, just now it seems he hasn't chosen either of us," remarked

Christopher, cooling rapidly as the other's anger grew red hot.

"It rather looks as if he'd chosen Molly Peterkin."

"Damn you!" gasped Fletcher, putting up a nerveless hand to tear

his collar apart, while a purple flush rose slowly from his

throat to his forehead. "If you name that huzzy to me again I'll

thrash you within an inch of your life!"

"Let's try it," suggested Christopher in an irritating drawl.

"Oh, I'm used to bullies like you," pursued the old man. "I know

the kind of brute that thinks he can knock his way into heaven.

Your father was jest sech another, and if you come to die a crazy

drunkard like him it'll be about the end that you deserve!"

An impatient frown drew Christopher's brows together, and,

picking up the hoe, he walked leisurely out into the field.

"Well, I can't stop to hear your opinion of me," he observed.

"You'll have to keep it until another time," and breaking into a

careless whistle, he strode off between the tobacco furrows on

his way to bring the old mare from the pasture.

A little later, alone with the broad white noon and the stillness

of the meadow, his gay whistle ended abruptly on his lips and the

old sullen frown contracted his heavy brows. It was in vain that

he tried to laugh away the depression of the moment; the white

glare of the fields and the perfume of wild flowers blooming in

hot sunshine produced in him a sensation closely akin to physical

nausea--a disgust of himself and of the life and the humanity

that he had known. What was it all worth, after all? And what of

satisfaction was there to be found in the thing he sought?

Fletcher's face rose suddenly before him, and when he tried to

banish the memory the effort that he made brought but the more

distinctly to his eyes the coarse, bloated features with the

swollen veins across the nose. Trivial recollections returned to

annoy him--the way the man sucked in his breath when he was

angry, and the ceaseless twitching of the small muscles above his

bloodshot eyes. "Pshaw! What business is it of mine?" he

questioned angrily. "What am I to the man, that I cannot escape

the disgust that he arouses? Is it possible that I should be

haunted forever by a face I hate? There are times when I could

kill him simply because of the repulsion that I feel. As for the

boy--let him marry a dozen Molly Peterkins--who cares? Not I,

surely. When he turns upon his grandfather and they fall to

gnawing at each other's bones, the better I shall be pleased." He

shook his head impatiently, but the oppression which in some

vague way he associated with the white heat and the scent of wild

flowers still weighed heavily upon his thoughts. "Is it possible

that after all that has happened I am not yet satisfied?" he

asked, with annoyance.

For awhile he lingered by the little brook in the pasture, and

then slipping the bridle on the old mare, returned slowly to the

house. At the bars he met Sol Peterkin, who had hurried over in

evident consternation to deliver his news.

"Good Lord, Mr. Christopher! What do you think that gal of mine

has gone and done now?"

Christopher slid the topmost bar from its place and lifted his

head

"Don't tell me that she's divorced already," he returned. "Why,

the last I heard of her she had run off this morning to marry

Will Fletcher."

"That's it, suh; that's it," said Sol. "I'm meanin' the marriage.

Well, well, it does seem that you can't settle down an' begin to

say yo' grace over one trouble befo' a whole batch lights upon

you. To think, arter the way I've sweated an' delved to be

honest, that a gal of mine should tie me hand an' foot to Bill

Fletcher."

In spite of his moodiness, the humour of the situation struck

home to Christopher, and throwing back his head he burst into a

laugh.

"Oh, you needn't poke yo' fun, suh," continued Sol. "Money is a

mighty good thing, but you can't put it in the blood, like you

kin meanness. All Bill Fletcher's riches ain't soaked in him

blood an' bone, but his meanness is, an' that thar meanness goes

a long sight further than his money. Thar ain't much sto' set by

honesty in this here world, suh, an' you kin buy a bigger chaw of

tobaccy with five cents than you kin with all the virtue of Moses

on his Mount; but all the same it's a mighty good thing to rest

yo' head on when you go to bed, an' I ain't sure but it makes

easier lyin' than a linen pillow-slip an' a white goose tick--"

"Oh, I dare say," interrupted Christopher; "but now that it's

over we must make the best of it. She didn't marry Bill Fletcher,

after all, you know--"

He checked himself with a start, and the bridle slipped from his

arm to the ground, for his name was called suddenly in a high

voice from the house, and as he swung himself over the bars Lila

came running barehead across the yard.

"Christopher!" she cried; "we could not find you, and Bill

Fletcher has talked to mother like a madman. Come quickly! She

has fainted!"

Before she had finished, he had dashed past her and through the

house into the little parlour, where the old lady sat erect and

unconscious in her Elizabethan chair.

"I found her like this," said Lila, weeping. "We heard loud

voices and then a scream, and when we rushed in the man left, and

she sat looking straight ahead like this--like this."

Throwing himself upon his knees beside the chair, Christopher

caught his mother to his breast and turned angrily upon the

women.

"Has nothing been done? Where is the doctor?" he cried.

"Jim has gone for him. Here, let me take her," said Cynthia,

unclasping his arms. "There, stand back. She is not dead. In a

little while she will come to herself again."

Rising from the floor, he stood motionless in the center of the

room, where the atmosphere was heavy with the fragrance of

camphor and tea-roses. A broad strip of sunshine was at his feet,

and in the twisted aspen beside the window a catbird was singing.

These remained with him for years afterward, and with them the

memory of the blind woman sitting stiffy erect and staring

vacantly into his face.

"He has told her everything," said Cynthia--"after twenty years."

BOOK IV. The Awakening

CHAPTER I. The Unforeseen

The road was steep, and Christopher, descending from the big,

lumbering cart, left the oxen to crawl slowly up the incline. It

was a windy afternoon in March, and he was returning from a trip

to Farrar's mill, which was reached by a lane that branched off a

half-mile or so from the cross-roads. A blue sky shone brightly

through the leafless boughs above him, and along the little

wayside path tufts of dandelion were blooming in the red dust.

The wind, which blew straight toward him from the opening beyond

the strip of wood in which he walked, brought the fresh scent of

the upturned fields and of the swelling buds putting out with the

warm sunshine. In his own veins he felt also that the blood had

stirred, and that strange, quickening impulse, which comes with

the rising sap alike to a man and to a tree, worked restlessly in

his limbs at the touch of spring. Nature was alive again, and he

felt vaguely that in the resurrection surrounding him he must

have his part--that in him as well as in the earth the spirit of

life must move and put forth in gladness. A flock of swallows

passed suddenly like a streak of smoke on the blue sky overhead,

and as his eyes followed them the old roving instinct pulled at

his heart. To be up and away, to drink life to its dregs and come

home for rest, were among the impulses which awoke with the

return of spring.

The oxen moved behind him at a leisurely pace, and outstripping

them in a little while, he had turned at a sudden opening in the

trees into the main road, when, to his surprise, he saw a woman