IV

HOW fine a thing it would be if all the faculties of the mind could be

trained for the battles of life as a modern nation makes every man a

soldier. Some of these, as we know, are always engaged in active service;

but there are times when they need to be strengthened by others,

constituting a first reserve; and yet graver emergencies arise in the

marchings of every man when the last defences of land and hearth should be

ready to turn out: too often even then the entire disciplined strength of

his forces would count as a mere handful to the great allied powers of the

world and the devil.

But so few of our faculties are of a truly military turn, and these wax

indolent and unwary from disuse like troops during long times of peace. We

all come to recognize sooner or later, of course, the unfailing little band

of them that form our standby, our battle-smoked campaigners, our Old Guard,

that dies, neversurrenders. Who of us also but knows his faithful artillery,

dragging along his big guns--and so liable to reach the scene after the

fighting is over? Who when worsted has not fought many a battle through

again merely to show how different the result would have been, if his

artillery had only arrived in time! Boom! boom! boom! Where are the enemy

now? And who does not take pride in his navy, sweeping the high seas of the

imagination but too often departed for some foreign port when the coast

defences need protecting?

Beyond this general dismemberment of our resources do we not all feel the

presence within us of certain renegades? Does there not exist inside every

man a certain big, ferocious-looking faculty who is his drum major--loving

to strut at the head of a peaceful parade and twirl his bawble and roll his

eyes at the children and scowl back at the quiet intrepid fellows behind as

though they were his personal prisoners? Let but a skirmish threaten, and

our dear, ferocious, fat major--! not even in the rear--not even on the

field! Then there is a rattling little mannikin who sleeps in the barracks

of the brain and is good for nothing but to beat the cerebral drum. There is

a certain awkward squad--too easily identified--who have been drafted again

and again into service only to be in the way of every skilled manoeuvre,

only to be mustered out as raw recruits at the very end of life. And,

finally, there is a miscellaneous crowd of our faculties scattered far and

near at their humdrum peaceful occupations; so that if a quick call for war

be heard, these do but behave as a populace that rushes into a street to

gaze at the national guard already marching past, some of the spectators not

even grateful, not even cheering.

All that day John had to fight a battle for which he had never been trained;

moreover he had been compelled to divide his forces: there was the far-off

solemn battle going on in his private thoughts; and there was the usual

siege of duties in the school. For once he would gladly have shirked the

latter; but the single compensation he always tried to wrest from the

disagreeable things of life was to do them in such a way that they would

never fester in his conscience like thorns broken off in the flesh.

During the forenoon, therefore, by an effort which only those who have

experienced it can understand, he ordered off all communication with larger

troubles and confined himself in that stifling prison-house of the mind

where the perplexities and toils of childhood become enormous and everything

else in the world grows small. Up under the joists there was the terrible

struggle of a fly in a web, at first more and more violent, then ceasing in

a strain so fine that the ear could scarce take it; a bee came in one

window, went out another; a rat, sniffing greedily at its hole, crept toward

a crumb under a bench, ran back, crept nearer, seized it and was gone; a

toiling slate-pencil grated on its way as arduously as a wagon up a hill; he

had to teach a beginner its letters. These were the great happenings. At

noon the same child that had brought him a note on the day before came with

another:

"Kitty is going to the ball with Horatio. I shall be alone. We can have our

talk uninterrupted. How unreasonable you are! Why don't you understand

things without wanting to have them explained? If you wish to go to the

ball, you can do this afterwards. Don't come till Kitty has gone."

Duties in the school till near sunset, then letters. O'Bannon had told him

that Mr. Bradford's post-rider would leave at four o'clock next morning; if

he had letters to send, they must be deposited in the box that night. Gray

had letters of the utmost importance to write--to his lawyer regarding the

late decision in his will case, and to the secretary of the Democratic Club

in Philadelphia touching the revival of activity in the clubs throughout the

country on account of the expected treaty with England.

After he had finished them, he strolled slowly about the dark town--past his

school-house, thinking that his teaching days would soon be over--past

Peter's blacksmith shop, thinking what a good fellow he always was--past Mr.

Bradford's editorial room, with a light under the door and the curtain drawn

across the window. Two or three times he lingered before show-windows of

merchandise. He had some taste in snuff-boxes, being the inheritor of

several from his Scotch and Irish ancestors, and there were a few in the new

silversmith's window which he found little to his liking. As he passed a

tavern, a group of Revolutionary officers, not yet gone to the ball, were

having a time of it over their pipes and memories; and he paused to hear one

finish a yarn of strong fibre about the battle of King's Mountain. Couples

went hurrying by him beautifully dressed. Once down a dark street he fancied

that he distinguished Amy's laughter ringing faintly out on the still air;

and once down another he clearly heard the long cry of a pet panther kept by

a young backwoods hunter.

The Poythress homestead was wrapped in silence as he stepped upon the porch;

but the door was open, there was a light inside, and by means of this he

discovered, lying asleep on the threshold, a lad who was apprentice to the

new English silversmith of the town and a lodger at the minister's--the bond

of acquaintanceship being the memory of John Wesley who had sprinkled the

lad's father in England.

John laid a hand on his shoulder and tried to break his slumber. He opened

his eyes at last and said, "Nobody at home," and went to sleep again. When

thoroughly aroused, he sat up. Mr. and Mrs. Poythress had been called away

to some sick person; they had asked him to sit up till they came back; he

wished they'd come; he didn't see how he was ever to learn how to make

watches if he couldn't get any sleep; and be lay down again.

John aroused him again.

"Miss Falconer is here; will you tell her I wish to see her?"

The lad didn't open his eyes but said dreamily:

"She's not here; she's gone to the party."

John lifted him and set him on his feet. Then he put his hands on his

shoulders and shook him:

"You are asleep! Wake up! Tell Miss Falconer I wish to see her."

The lad seized Gray by the arms and shook him with all his might.

"You wake up," he cried. "I tell you she's gone to the party. Do you hear?

She's gone to the party! Now go away, will you? How am I ever to be a

silversmith, if I can't get any sleep?" And stretching himself once more on

the settee, he closed his eyes.

John turned straight to the Wilkinsons'. His gait was not hurried; whatever

his face may have expressed was hidden by the darkness. The tense quietude

of his mind was like that of a summer tree, not one of whose thousands of

leaves quivers along the edge, but toward which a tempest is rolling in the

distance.

The house was set close to the street. The windows were open; long bars of

light fell out; as he stepped forward to the threshold, the fiddlers struck

up "Sir Roger de Coverley"; the company parted in lines to the right and

left, leaving a vacant space down the middle of the room; and into this

vacant space he saw Joseph lead Amy and the two begin to dance.

She wore a white muslin dress--a little skillful work had restored its

freshness; a blue silk coat of the loveliest hue; a wide white lace tucker

caught across her round bosom with a bunch of cinnamon roses; and

straw-coloured kid gloves, reaching far up her snow-white arms. Her hair was

coiled high on the crown of her head and airily overtopped by a great

curiously carved silver-and-tortoise-shell comb; and under her dress played

the white mice of her feet. The tints of her skin were pearl and rose; her

red lips parted in smiles. She was radiant with excitement, happiness,

youth. She culled admiration, visiting all eyes with hers as a bee all

flowers. It was not the flowers she cared for.

He did not see her dress; he did not recognize the garments that had hung on

the wall of his room. What he did see and continued to see was the fact that

she was there and dancing with Joseph.

If he had stepped on a rattlesnake, he could not have been more horribly,

more miserably stung. He had the sense of being poisoned, as though actual

venom were coursing through his blood. There was one swift backward movement

of his mind over the chain of forerunning events.

"She is a venomous little serpent!" he groaned aloud. "And I have been

crawling in the dust to her, to be stung like this!" He walked quietly into

the house.

He sought his hostess first. He found her in the centre of a group of

ladies, wearing the toilet of the past Revolutionary period in the capitals

of the East. The vision dazzled him, bewildered him. But he swept his eye

over them with one feeling of heart-sickness and asked his hostess one

question: was Mrs. Falconer there? She was not.

In another room he found his host, and a group of Revolutionary officers and

other tried historic men, surrounding the Governor.

They were discussing the letters that had passed between the President and

his Excellency for the suppression of a revolution in Kentucky. During this

spring of 1795 the news had reached Kentucky that Jay had at last concluded

a treaty with England. The ratification of this was to be followed by the

surrender of those terrible Northwestern posts that for twenty years had

been the source of destruction and despair to the single-handed, maddened,

or massacred Kentuckians. Behind those forts had rested the inexhaustible

power of the Indian confederacies, of Canada, of England. Out of them,

summer after summer, armies that knew no pity had swarmed down upon the

doggedly advancing line of the Anglo-Saxon frontiersmen. Against them,

sometimes unaided, sometimes with the aid of Virginia or of the National

Government, the pioneers hurled their frantic retaliating armies: Clarke and

Boone and Kenton often and often; Harmar followed by St. Clair; St. Clair

followed by Wayne. It was for the old failure to give aid against these that

Kentucky had hated Virginia and resolved to tear herself loose from the

mother State and either perish or triumph alone. It was for the failure to

give aid against these that Kentucky hated Washington, hated the East, hated

the National Government, and plotted to wrest Kentucky away from the Union,

and either make her an independent power or ally her with France or Spain.

But over the sea now France--France that had come to the rescue of the

colonies in their struggle for independence--this same beautiful, passionate

France was fighting all Europe unaided and victorious. The spectacle had

amazed the world. In no other spot had sympathy been more fiercely kindled

than along that Western border where life was always tense with martial

passion. It had passed from station to station, like a torch blazing in the

darkness and with a two-forked fire--gratitude to France, hatred of

England--hatred rankling in a people who had come out of the very heart of

the English stock as you would hew the heart out of a tree. So that when,

two years before this, Citizen Genet, the ambassador of the French republic,

had landed at Charleston, been driven through the country to New York amid

the acclamations of French sympathizers, and disregarding the

President'sproclamation of neutrality, had begun to equip privateers and

enlist crews to act against the commerce of England and Spain, it was to the

backwoodsmen of Kentucky that he sent four agents, to enlist an army,

appoint a generalissimo, and descend upon the Spanish settlements at the

mouth of the Mississippi--those same hated settlements that had refused to

the Kentuckians the right of navigation for their commerce, thus shutting

them off from the world by water, as the mountains shut them off from the

world by land.

Hence the Jacobin clubs that were formed in Kentucky: one at Lexington, a

second at Georgetown, a third at Paris. Hence the liberty poles in the

streets of the towns; the tricoloured cockades on the hats of the men; the

hot blood between the anti-federal and the federalist parties of the State.

The actions of Citizen Genet had indeed been disavowed by his republic. But

the sympathy for France, the hatred of England and of Spain, had but grown

meantime; and when therefore in this spring of 1795 the news reached the

frontier that Jay had concluded a treaty with England--the very treaty that

would bring to the Kentuckians the end of all their troubles with the posts

of the Northwest--the flame of revolution blazed out with greater

brilliancy.

During the hour that John Gray spent in that assemblage of men that night,

the talk led always to the same front of offence: the baser truckling to

England, an old enemy; the baser desertion of France, a friend. He listened

to one man of commanding eloquence, while he traced the treaty to the

attachment of Washington for aristocratic institutions; to another who

referred it to the jealousy felt by the Eastern congressmen regarding the

growth of the new power beyond the Alleghanies; to a third who foretold that

like all foregoing pledges it would leave Kentucky still exposed to the fury

of the Northern Indians; to a fourth who declared that let the treaty be

once ratified with Lord Granville, and in the same old faithless way,

nothing more would be done to extort from Spain for Kentucky the open

passage of the Mississippi.

At any other time he would have borne his part in these discussions. Now he

scarcely heard them. All the forces of his mind were away, on another

battle-field and he longed to be absent with them, a field strewn with the

sorrowful carnage of ideal and hope and plan, home, happiness, love. He was

hardly aware that his own actions must seem unusual, until one of the older

men took him affectionately by the hand and said:

"Marshall tells me that you teach school till sunset and read law till

sunrise; and tonight you come here with your eyes blazing and your skin as

pallid and dry as a monk's. Take off the leeches of the law for a good

month, John! They abstract too much blood. If the Senate ratifies in June

the treachery of Jay and Lord Granville, there will be more work than ever

for the Democratic Societies in this country, and nowhere more than in

Kentucky. We shall need you then more than the law needs you now, or than

you need it. Save yourself for the cause of your tricolour. You shall have a

chance to rub the velvet off your antlers."

"We shall soon put him beyond the reach of his law," said a member of the

Transylvania Library Committee. "As soon as his school is out, we are going

to send him to ask subscriptions from the President, the Vice-President, and

others, and then on to Philadelphia to buy the books."

A shadow fell upon the face of another officer, and in a lowered tone he

said, with cold emphasis:

"I am sorry that the citizens of this town should stoop to ask anything from

such a man as George Washington."

The schoolmaster scarcely realized what he had done when he consented to act

as a secret emissary of the Jacobin Club of Lexington to the club in

Philadelphia during the summer.

The political talk ended at last, the gentlemen returned to the ladies. He

found himself standing in a doorway beside an elderly man of the most

polished hearing and graceful manners, who was watching a minuet.

"Ah!" he said, waving his hand with delight toward the scene. "This is

Virginia and Maryland brought into the West! It reminds me of the days when

I danced with Martha Custis and Dolly Madison. Some day, with a beginning

like this, Kentucky will be celebrated for its beautiful women. The

daughters and the grand-daughters and the great-granddaughters of such

mothers as these--"

"And of fathers like these!" interposed one of the town trustees who came up

at that moment. "But for the sake of these ladies isn't it time we were

passing a law against the keeping of pet panthers? I heard the cry of one as

I came here to-night. What can we do with these young backwoods hunters?

Will civilization ever make pets of them--ever tame them?"

John felt some one touch his arm; it was Kitty with Horatio. Her cheeks were

like poppies; her good kind eyes welcomed him sincerely.

"You here! I'm so glad. Haven't you seen Amy? She is in the other room with

Joseph. Have they explained everything? But we will loose our place--"she

cried, and with a sweet smile of adieu to him, and of warning to her

partner, she glided away.

"We are entered for this horse race," remarked Mr. Turpin, lingering a

moment longer. "Weight for age, agreeable to the rules of New Market. Each

subscriber to pay one guinea, etc., etc., etc." He was known as the rising

young turfman of the town, having first run his horses down Water Street;

but future member of the first Jockey Club; so that in the full blossom of

his power he could name all the horses of his day with the pedigree of each:

beginning with Tiger by Tiger, and on through Sea Serpent by Shylock, and

Diamond by Brilliant, and Black Snake by Sky Lark: a type of man whom long

association with the refined and noble nature of the horse only vulgarizes

and disennobles.

Once afterward Gray's glance fell on Amy and Joseph across the room. They

were looking at him and laughing at his expense and the sight burnt his eyes

as though hot needles had been run into them. They beckoned gaily, but he

gave no sign; and in a moment they were lost behind the shifting figures of

the company. While he was dancing, however, Joseph came up.

"As soon as you get away, Amy wants to see you."

Half and hour later he came a second time and drew Gray aside from a group

of gentlemen, speaking more seriously: "Amy wants to explain how all this

happened. Come at once."

"There is nothing to explain," said John, with indifference.

Joseph answered reproachfully:

"This is foolish, John! When you know what has passed, you will not censure

her. And I could not have done otherwise." Despite his wish to be serious,

he could not help laughing for he was very happy himself.

But to John Gray these reasonable words went for the very thing that they

did not mean. His mind had been forced to a false point of view; and from a

false point of view the truth itself always looks false. Moreover it was

intolerable that Joseph should be defending to him the very woman whom a few

hours before he had hoped to marry.

"There is no explanation needed from her," he replied, with the same

indifference. "I think I understand. What I do not understand I should

rather take for granted. But you, Joseph, you owe me an explanation. This

is not the place to give it." His face twitched, and he knotted the fingers

of his large hands together like bands of iron. "But by God I'll have it;

and if it is not a good one, you shall answer." His oath sounded like an

invocation to the Divine justice--not profanity.

Joseph fixed his quiet fearless eyes on Gray's. "I'll answer for myself--and

for her"--he replied and turned away.

Still later Gray met her while dancing--the faint rose of her cheeks a shade

deeper, the dazzling whiteness of her skin more pearl-like with warmth, her

gaiety and happiness still mounting, her eyes still wandering among the men,

culling their admiration.

"You haven't asked me to dance to-night. You haven't even let me tell you

why I had to come with Joseph, when I wanted to come with you." She gave a

little pout of annoyance and let her eyes rest on his with the old fondness.

"Don't you want to know why I broke my engagement with you?" And she danced

on, smiling back at him provokingly.

He did not show that he heard; and although they did not meet again, he was

made aware that a change had at last come over her. She was angry now. He

could hear her laughter oftener--laughter that was meant for his ear and she

was dancing oftener with Joseph. He looked at her repeatedly, but she

avoided his eyes.

"I am playing a poor part by staying here!" he said with shame, and left the

house.

After wandering aimlessly about the town for some two hours, he went

resolvedly back again and stood out in the darkness, looking in at her

through the windows. There she was, unwearied, happy, not feigning; and no

more affected by what had taken place between them than a candle is affected

by a scorched insect. So it seemed to him.

This was the first time he had ever seen her at a ball. He had never

realized what powers she possessed in a field like this: what play, what

resources, what changes, what stratagems, what victories. He mournfully

missed for the first time certain things in himself that should have

corresponded with all those light and graceful things in her.

Perhaps what hurt him most were her eyes, always abroad searching for

admiration, forever filling the forever emptied honeycomb of self-love.

With him love was a sacred, a grim, an inviolate selection. He would no more

have wished the woman he had chosen to seek indiscriminate admiration with

her eyes than with her lips or her waist. It implied the same fatal flaw in

her refinement, her modesty, her faithfulness, her high breeding.

A light wind stirred the leaves of the trees overhead. A few drops of rain

fell on his hat. He drew his hand heavily across his eyes and turned away.

Reaching his room, he dropped down into a chair before his open window and

sat gazing absently into the black east.

Within he faced a yet blacker void--the ruined hopes on which the sun would

never rise again.

It was the end of everything between him and Amy: that was his one thought.

It did not occur to him even to reflect whether he had been right or wrong,

rude or gentle: it was the end: nothing else appeared worth considering.

Life to him meant a simple straightforward game played with a few well-known

principles. It must be as open as a chess-board: each player should see

every move of the other: and all who chose could look on.

He was still very young.

X

THE glimmer of gray dawn at last and he had never moved from his seat. A

fine, drizzling rain had set in. Clouds of mist brushed against the walls

of his cabin. In the stillness he could hear the big trees shedding their

drops from leaf to bending leaf and the musical tinkle of these as they took

their last leap into little pools below.

With the chilliness which misery brings he got up at last and wrapped his

weather-coat about him. If it were only day when he could go to his work and

try to forget! Restless, sleepless, unable to read, tired of sitting, driven

on by the desire to get rid of his own thoughts, he started out to walk.

As he passed his school-house he noticed that the door of it, always

fastened by a simple latch, now stood open; and he went over to see if

everything inside were in order. All his life, when any trouble had come

upon him, he had quickly returned to his nearest post of duty like a

soldier; and once in the school-room now, he threw himself down in his chair

with the sudden feeling that here in his familiar work he must still find

his home--the home of his mind and his affections--as so long in the past.

The mere aspect of the poor bare place had never been so kind. The very

walls appeared to open to him like a refuge, to enfold themselves around him

with friendly strength and understanding.

He sat at the upper end of the room, gazing blankly through the doorway at

the gray light and clouds of white mist trailing. Once an object came into

the field of his vision. At the first glimpse he thought it a dog--long,

lean, skulking, prowling, tawny--on the scent of his tracks. Then the mist

passed over it. When he beheld it again it had approached nearer and was

creeping rapidly toward the door. His listless eyes grew fascinated by its

motions--its litheness, suppleness, grace, stealth, exquisite caution. Never

before had he seen a dog with the step of a cat. A second time the fog

closed over it, and then, advancing right out of the cloud with more

swiftness, more cunning, its large feet falling as lightly as flakes of

snow, the weight of its huge body borne forward as noiselessly as the

trailing mist, it came straight on. It reached the hickory block, which

formed the doorstep; it paused there an instant, with its fore quarters in

the doorway, one fore foot raised, the end of its long tail waving; and then

it stole just over the threshold and crouched, its head pressed down until

its long, whitish throat lay on the floor; its short, jagged ears set

forward stiffly like the broken points of a javelin; its dilated eye blazing

with steady green fire--as still as death. And then with his blood become as

ice in his veins from horror and all the strength gone out of him in a

deathlike faintness, the school- master realized that he was face to face

unarmed with a cougar, gaunt with famine and come for its kill.

This dreaded animal, the panther or painter of the backwoodsman, which has

for its kindred the royal tiger and the fatal leopard of the Old World, the

beautiful ocelot and splendid unconquerable jaguar of the New, is now rarely

found in the Atlantic States or the fastnesses of the Alleghanies. It too

has crossed the Mississippi and is probably now best known as the savage

puma of more southern zones. But a hundred years ago it abounded throughout

the Western wilderness, making its deeper dens in the caverns of mountain

rocks, its lair in the impenetrable thickets of bramble and brakes of cane,

or close to miry swamps and watery everglades; and no other region was so

loved by it as the vast game park of the Indians, where reined a

semi-tropical splendour and luxuriance of vegetation and where, protected

from time immemorial by the Indian hunters themselves, all the other animals

thatconstitute its prey roved and ranged in unimaginable numbers. To the

earliest Kentuckians who cut their way into this, the most royal jungle of

the New World, to wrest it from the Indians and subdue it for wife and

child, it was the noiseless nocturnal cougar that filled their imaginations

with the last degree of dread. To them its cry--most peculiar and startling

at the love season, at other times described as like the wail of a child or

of a traveller lost in the woods--aroused more terror than the nearest bark

of the wolf; its stealth and cunning more than the strength and courage and

address of the bear; its attack more than the rush of the majestic,

resistless bison, or the furious pass with antlers lowered of the noble,

ambereyed, infuriated elk. Hidden as still as an adder in long grass of its

own hue, or squat on a log, or amid the foliage of a sloping tree, it waited

around the salt licks and the springs and along the woodland pathways for

the other wild creatures. It possessed the strength to kill and drag a

heifer to its lair; it would leap upon the horse of a traveller and hang

there unshaken, while with fang and claw it lacerated the hind quarters and

the flanks--as the tiger of India tries to hamstring its nobler,

unmanageable victims; or let an unwary bullock but sink a little way in a

swamp and it was upon him, rending him, devouring him, in his long agony.

Some hunter once had encamped at the foot of a tree, cooked his supper, seen

his fire die out and lain down to sleep, with only the infinite solitude of

the woods for his blanket, with the dreary, dismal silence for his pillow.

Opening his eyes to look up for the last time at the peaceful stars, what he

perceived above him were two nearer stars set close together, burning with a

green light, never twinkling. Or another was startled out of sleep by the

terrible cry of his tethered horse. Or after a long, ominous growl, the

cougar had sprung against his tent, knocking it away as a squirrel would

knock the thin shell from a nut to reach the kernel; or at the edge of the

thicket of tall grass he had struck his foot against the skeleton of some

unknown hunter, dragged down long before.

To such adventures with all their natural exaggeration John Gray had

listened many a time as they were recited by old hunters regarding earlier

days in the wilderness; for at this period it was thought that the cougar

had retreated even from the few cane-brakes that remained unexplored near

the settlements. But the deer, timidest of animals, with fatal persistence

returns again and again to its old-time ranges and coverts long after the

bison, the bear, and the elk have wisely abandoned theirs; and the cougar

besets the deer.

It was these stories that he remembered now and that filled him with horror,

with the faintness of death. His turn had come at last, he said; and as to

the others, it had come without warning. He was too shackled with weakness

to cry out, to stand up. The windows on each side were fastened; there was

no escape. There was nothing in the room on which he could lay hold--no

weapon or piece of wood, or bar of iron. If a struggle took place, it would

be a clean contest between will and will, courage and courage, strength and

strength, the love of prey and the love of life.It was well for him that

this was not the first time he had ever faced death, as he had supposed; and

that the first thought that had rushed into his consciousness before

returned to him now. That thought was this: that death had come far too

soon, putting an end to his plans to live, to act, to succeed, to make a

great and a good place for himself in this world before he should leave it

for another. Out of this a second idea now liberated itself with incredible

quickness and spread through him like a living flame: it was his lifelong

attitude of victory, his lifelong determination that no matter what opposed

him he must conquer. Young as he was, this triumphant habit had already

yielded him its due result that growth of character which arises silently

within us, built up out of a myriad nameless elements--beginning at the very

bottom of the ocean of unconsciousness; growing as from cell to cell, atom

to atom--the mere dust of victorious experience--the hardening deposits of

the ever-living, ever-working, ever-rising will; until at last, based on

eternal quietude below and lifting its wreath of palms above the waves of

life, it stands finished, indestructible, our inward rock of defence against

every earthly storm.

Soon his face was worth going far to see. He had grown perfectly calm. His

weakness had been followed by a sense of strength wholly extraordinary. His

old training in the rough athletics of the wilderness had made him supple,

agile, wary, long-winded. His eyes hadnever known what it was to be subdued;

he had never taken them from the cougar.

Keeping them on it still, he rose slowly from the chair, realizing that his

chances would be better if he were in the middle of the room. He stepped

round in front of his table and walked two paces straight forward and then

paused, his face as white, as terrible, as death. At the instant of his

moving he could see the tense drawing in of all the muscles of the cougar

and the ripple of its skin, as its whole body quivered with excitement and

desire; and he knew that as soon as he stopped it would make its spring.

With a growl that announces that all hiding and stealth are over, the leap

came. He had thrown his body slightly forward to meet it with the last

thought that whatever happened he must guard his throat. It was at this that

the cougar aimed, leaping almost perpendicularly, its widespread fore feet

reaching for his shoulders, while the hind feet grasped at his legs. The

under part of its body being thus exposed, he dealt it a blow with all his

strength--full in the belly with his foot, and hurled it backward. For a

second it crouched again, measuring him anew, then sprang again. Again he

struck, but this time the fore feet caught his arm as they passed backward;

the sharp, retractile nails tore their way across the back and palm of his

hand like dull knives and the blood gushed. Instantly the cougar leaped upon

the long, wooden desk that ran alone one side of the room, and from that

advantage, sprang again but he bent his body low so that it passed clean

over him. Instantly it was upon his desk at his back; and before he could

more than recover his balance and turn, it sprang for the fourth time. He

threw out his arm to save his throat, but the cougar had reached his left

shoulder, struck its claws deep into his heavy coat; and with a deafening

roar sounding close in his ears, had buried its fangs near the base of his

neck, until he heard them click as they met through his flesh.

He staggered, but the desk behind caught him. Straightening himself up, and

grappling the panther with all his strength as he would a man, he turned

with it and bent it over the sharp edge of the ponderous desk, lower, lower,

trying to break its back. One of the fore feet was beginning to tear through

his clothing, and straightening himself up again, he reached down and caught

this foot and tried to bend it, break it. He threw himself with all his

force upon the floor, falling with the cougar under him, trying to crush it.

He staggered to his feet again, but stepped on his own blood and fell. And

then, feeling his blood trickling down his breast and his strength going,

with one last effort he put up his hands and seizing the throat, fastened

his fingers like iron rivets around the windpipe. And then--with the long,

loud, hoarse, despairing roar with which a man, his mouth half full of

water, sinks far out in the ocean--he fell again.

XI

IT was ten o'clock that morning of mid-May. The rain was over. Clouds and

mists were gone, leaving an atmosphere of purest crystal. The sun floated a

globe of gold in the yielding blue. Above the wilderness on a dead treetop,

the perch of an eagle now flashing like a yellow weather-vane, a thrush

poured the spray-like far-falling fountain of his notes over upon the bowed

woods. Beneath him the dull green domes of the trees flashed as though

inlaid with gems, white and rose. Under these domes the wild grapevines,

climbing the forest arches as the oak of stone climbs the arches of a

cathedral, filled the ceiling and all the shadowy spaces between with fresh

outbursts of their voluptuous dew-born fragrance. And around the

rough-haired Satyr feet of these vines the wild hyacinth, too full of its

own honey to stand, fell back on its couch of moss waiting to be visited by

the singing bee.

The whole woods emerged from the cloudy bath of Nature with the coolness,

the freshness, the immortal purity of Diana united to the roseate glow and

mortal tenderness of Venus; and haunted by two spirits: the chaste, unfading

youth of Endymion and the dust-born warmth and eagerness of Dionysus.

Through these woods, feeling neither their heat nor their cold, secured by

Nature against any passion for either the cooling star or the inflaming

dust, rode Amy--slowly homeward from the ball. Yet lovelier, happier than

anything the forest held. She had pushed her bonnet entirely off so that it

hung by the strings at the back of her neck; and her face emerged from the

round sheath of it like a pink and white tulip, newly risen and bursting

forth.

When she reached home, she turned the old horse loose with many pattings and

good-byes and promises of maple sugar later in the day; and then she bounded

away to the garden to her aunt, of whom, perhaps, she was more truly fond

than of any one in the world except herself.

Mrs. Falconer had quickly left off work and was advancing very slowly--with

mingled haste and reluctance--to meet her.

"Aunt Jessica! Aunt Jessica!" cried Amy in a voice that rang like a small

silver bell, "I haven't seen you for two whole nights and three whole days!"

Placing her hands on Mrs. Falconer's shoulders, she kissed her once on each

cheek and twice playfully on the pearly tip of the chin; and then she looked

into her eyes as innocently as a perfect tulip might look at a perfect rose.

Mrs. Falconer smilingly leaned forward and touched her lips to Amy's

forehead. The caress was as light as thistle-down--perhaps no warmer.

"Three entire days!" she said chidingly. "It has been three months," and she

searched through Amy's eyes onward along the tortuous little passages of her

heart as a calm blue air might search the chambers of a cold beautiful

sea-shell.

Each of these women instantly perceived that since they had parted a change

had taken place in the other; neither was aware that the other noticed the

change in herself. Mrs. Falconer had been dreading to find one in Amy when

she should come home; and it was the one she saw now that fell as a chill

upon her. Amy was triumphantly aware of a decisive change in herself, but

chose for the present, as she thought, to keep it hidden; and as for any

change in her aunt--that was an affair of less importance.

"Why, Aunt Jessica!" she exclaimed indignantly, "I don't believe you are

glad to see me," and throwing her arms around Mrs. Falconer's neck, she

strained her closely. "But you poor dear auntie! Come, sit down. I'm going

to do all the work now--mine and yours, both. Oh! the beautiful gardening!

Rows and rows and rows! With all the other work beside. And me an idle

good-for-nothing!"

The two were walking toward a rough bench placed under a tree inside the

picket fence. Amy had thrown her arm around Mrs. Falconer's waist.

"But you went to the ball," said the elder woman. "You were not idle there,

I imagine. And a ball is good for a great deal. One ought to accomplish more

there than in a garden. Besides, you went with John Gray, and he is never

idle. Did--he--accomplish--nothing?""Indeed, he was not idle!" exclaimed Amy

with a jubilant laugh. "Indeed he did accomplish something--more than he

ever did in his life before!"

Mrs. Falconer made no rejoinder; she was too poignantly saying to herself:

"Ah! if it is too late, what will become of him? "

The bench was short. Instinctively they seated themselves as far apart as

possible; and they turned their faces outward across the garden, not toward

each other as they had been used when sitting thus.

The one was nineteen--the tulip: with springlike charm but perfectly hollow

and ready to be filled by east wind or west wind, north wind or south wind,

according as each blew last and hardest; the other thirty-six--the rose: in

its midsummer splendour with fold upon fold of delicate symmetric

structures, making a masterpiece.

"Aunt Jessica," Amy began to say drily, as though this were to be her last

concession to a relationship now about to end, "I might as well tell you

everything that has happened, just as I've been used to doing since I was a

child--when I've done anything wrong."

She gave a faithful story of the carrying off of her party dress, which of

course had been missed and accounted for, the losing of it and the breaking

of her engagement with John; the return of it and her going to the ball with

Joseph. This brought her mind to the scenes of the night, and she abandoned

herself momentarily to the delight of reviving them.

"Ah! if you had been there, Aunt Jessica! If they had seen you in a ball

dress as I've seen you without one: those shoulders! those arms! that skin!

You would have been a swan among the rough-necked, red-necked turkeys," and

Amy glanced a little enviously at a neck that rose out of the plain dress as

though turned by a sculptor.

The sincere little compliment beat on Mrs. Falconer's ear like a wave upon a

stone.

"But if you did not go with John Gray, you danced with him, you talked with

him?"

"No," replied Amy, quickly growing grave, "I didn't dance with him. But we

talked yes--not much; it was a little too serious for many words," and she

sank into a mysterious silence, seeming even to forget herself in some new

recess of happiness.

Mrs. Falconer was watching her.

"Ah!" she murmured to herself. "It is too late! too late!" She passed her

fingers slowly across her brow with a feeling that life had turned ashen,

cold, barren."How is Kitty?" she asked quickly.

"Well--as always; and stupid."

"She is always kind and good, isn't she? and faithful."

"Kindness is not always interesting, unfortunately; and goodness is

dreadful, and her faithfulness bores me to death."

"At least, she was your hostess, Amy." "I lent her my silk stockings or

she'd have had to wear cotton ones," exclaimed Amy, laughing. "We're even."

"If you were merely paying for a lodging, you should have gone to the inn."

"There was nobody at the tavern who could wear my silk stockings; and I had

spent all my money."

"Don't you expect Kitty to return your visit?

"I certainly do-- more's the pity. She has such big feet!" Amy put out her

toe and studied it with vixenish satisfaction.

"Aunt Jessica," she observed at length, looking round at her aunt. "You

have to work too hard. And I have always been such a care to you. Wouldn't

you like to get rid of me?"

Mrs. Falconer leaned quickly, imploringly, toward her.

"Is that a threat, Amy?"

Amy waited half a minute and then began with a composure that was tinged

with condescension:

"You have had so much trouble in your life, Aunt Jessica; so much sorrow."

Mrs. Falconer started and turned upon her niece her eyes that were always

exquisite with refinement.

"Amy, have I ever spoken to you of the troubles of my life?" The reproof was

majestic in dignity and gentleness.

"You have not."

"Then will you never speak of them to me never again--while you live!"

Amy began again with a dry practical voice, which had in it the sting of

revenge; her aunt's rebuke had nettled her.

"At least, I have always been a trouble to you. You sew for me, cook for me,

make the garden for me, spin and weave for me, and worry about me. Uncle has

to work for me and support me."

The turn of the conversation away from herself brought such relief that Mrs.

Falconer replied even warmly.

"You have been a great pleasure to him and to me! The little I have done,

you have repaid a thousand fold. Think of us at night without you! Your

uncle on one side of the fireplace--me on the other, and you away! Think of

us at the table--him at one end, me at the other, and you away! Think of me

alone in the house all day, while he is in the fields! Child, I have

depended on you--more than you will ever understand!" she added to herself.

"Aunt Jessica," observed Amy with the air of making a fine calculation,

"perhaps uncle would think more of you if I were not in the house."

"Amy!"

"Perhaps you would think more of him!"

"Amy!"

"Perhaps if neither of you had me to depend on, you might depend more on

each other and be happier."

"You speak to me in this way--on a subject like this! You'd better go!"

"Aunt Jessica," replied Amy, never budging, "the time has been when I would

have done so. But it is too late now for you ever to tell me to leave your

presence. I am a woman! If I had not been, I shouldn't have said what I just

have."

Mrs. Falconer looked at her in silence. This rare gentlewoman had too

profound a knowledge of the human heart not to realize that she was

completely vanquished. For where in this world is not refinement instantly

beaten by coarseness, gentleness by rudeness, all delicacy by all that is

indelicate? What can the finest consideration avail against no

consideration? the sweetest forbearance against intrusiveness? the beak of

the dove against the beak of the hawk? And yet all these may have their

victory; for when the finer and the baser metal are forced to struggle with

each other in the same field, the finer may always leave it.

With unruffled dignity and with a voice that Amy had never heard--a voice

that brought the blood rushing into her cheeks--Mrs. Falconer replied:"Yes;

it is true: you are a woman. This is the first day that you have ever made

me feel this. For I have always known that as soon as you became one, you

would begin to speak to me as you have spoken. I shall never again request

you to leave my presence: when it becomes unavoidable, I shall leave yours."

She rose and was moving away. Amy started up and caught her.

"Aunt Jessica, I've something to tell you!" she cried, her face dyed scarlet

with the sting.

Mrs. Falconer released herself gently and returned to her seat.

"You know what I mean by what I said?" inquired Amy, still confused but

regaining self command rapidly.

"I believe I know: you are engaged to be married."

The words were very faint: they would have reached the subtlest ear with the

suggestiveness of a light dreary wind blowing over a desolation.

"Yes; I am engaged to be married."

Amy affirmed it with a definite stress.

"It is this that has made you a woman?

"It is this that has made me a woman."

After the silence of a moment Mrs. Falconer inquired:

"You do not expect to ask my consent--my advice?"

"I certainly do not expect to ask your consent--your advice."

Amy was taking her revenge now--and she always took it as soon as possible.

"Nor your uncle's?"

"Nor my uncle's."

After another, longer silence:

"Do you care to tell me how long this engagement has lasted?"

"Certainly!--Since last night."

"Thank you for telling me that. I think I must go back to my work now."

She walked slowly away. Amy sat still, twirling her bonnet strings and

smiling to herself.

This outburst of her new dignity--this initial assertion of her

womanhood--had come almost as unexpectedly to herself as to her aunt. She

had scarcely known it was in herself to do such a thing. Certain

restrictions had been chafing her for a long time: she had not dreamed that

they could so readily be set aside, that she had only to stamp her foot

violently down on another foot and the other foot would be jerked out of the

way. In the flush of elation, she thought of what had just taken place as

her Declaration of Independence. She kept on celebrating it in a sort of

intoxication at her own audacity:

"I have thrown off the yoke of the Old Dynasty! Glory for the thirteen

colonies! A Revolution in half an hour! I'm the mother of a new country!

Washington, salute me!"

Then, with perhaps somewhat the feeling of a pullet that has whipped a hen

in a barnyard and that after an interval will run all the way across the

barnyard to attack again and see whether the victory is complete, she rose

and went across the garden, bent on trying the virtue of a final peck.

"But you haven't congratulated me, Aunt Jessica! You have turned your back

on the bride elect--you with all your fine manners! She presents herself

once more to your notice the future Mrs. Joseph Holden, Junior, to be

married one month from last night!" And unexpectedly standing in front of

Mrs. Falconer, Amy made one of her low bows which she had practised in the

minuet. But catching the sight of the face of her aunt, she cried

remorsefully:

"Oh, I have been so rude to you, Aunt Jessica! Forgive me!" There was

something of the new sense of womanhood in her voice and of the sisterhood

in suffering which womanhood alone can bring.

But Mrs. Falconer had not heard Amy's last exclamation.

"What do you mean?" she asked with quick tremulous eagerness. She had

regained her firmness of demeanour, which alone should have turned back any

expression of sympathy before it could have been offered.

"That I am to become Mrs. Joseph Holden--a month from last night," repeated

Amy bewitchingly.

"You are serious?"

"I am serious!"

Mrs. Falconer did not take Amy's word: she searched her face and eyes with

one swift scrutiny that was like a merciless white flame of truth, scorching

away all sham, all play, all unreality. Then she dropped her head quickly,

so that her own face remained hidden, and silently plied her work. But how

the very earth about the rake, how the little roots and clods, seemed to

come to life and leap joyously into the air! All at once she dropped

everything and came over and took Amy's hand and kissed her cheek. Her

lovely eyes were glowing; her face looked as though it had upon it the rosy

shadow of the peach trees not far away.

"I do congratulate you," she said sweetly, but with the reserve which Amy's

accession to womanhood and the entire conversation of the morning made an

unalterable barrier to her. "You have not needed advice: you have chosen

wisely. You shall have a beautiful wedding. I will make your dress myself.

The like of it will never have been seen in the wilderness. You shall have

all the finest linen in the weaving-room. Only a month! How shall we ever

get ready!--if we stand idling here! Oh, the work, the work!" she cried and

turned to hers with a dismissing smile--unable to trust herself to say more.

"And I must go and take the things out of my bundle," cried Amy, catching

the contagion of all this and bounding away to the house. Some five minutes

later Mrs. Falconer glanced at the sun: it was eleven o'clock--time to be

getting dinner.

When she reached her room, Amy was standing beside the bed, engaged in

lifting out of the bundle the finery now so redolent of the ball.

"Aunt Jessica," she remarked carelessly, without looking round, "I forgot to

tell you that John Gray had a fight with a panther in his schoolroom this

morning," and she gave several gossamer-like touches to the white lace

tucker.

Mrs. Falconer had seated herself in a chair to rest. She had taken off her

bonnet, and her fingers were unconsciously busy with the lustrous edges of

her heavy hair. At Amy's words her hands fell to her lap. But she had long

ago learned the value of silence and self-control when she was most deeply

moved: Amy had already surprised her once that morning.

"The panther bit him in the shoulder close to the neck," continued Amy,

folding the tucker away and lifting out the blue silk coat. "They were on

the floor of the school-house in the last struggle when Erskine got there.

He had gone for Phoebe Lovejoy's cows, because it was raining and she

couldn't go herself; and he heard John as he was passing. He said his voice

sounded like the bellow of a dying bull."

"Is he much hurt? Where is he? Did you go to see him? ho dressed his wound?

Who is with him?"

"They carried him home," said Amy, turning round to the light and pressing

the beautiful silk coat in against her figure with little kicks at the

skirt. "No; I didn't go; Joseph came round and told me. He didn't think the

wound was very dangerous--necessarily. One of his hands was terribly

clawed."

"A panther? In town? In his schoolroom?"--

"You know Erskine keeps a pet panther. I heard him tell Mrs. Poythress it

was a female," said Amy with an apologetic icy, knowing little laugh. "And

he said this one had been prowling about in the edge of the canebrakes for

several days. He had been trying to get a shot at it. He says it was nearly

starved: that was why it wanted to eat John whole before breakfast."

Amy turned back to the bed and shook out delicately the white muslin

dress--the dress that John had hung on the wall of his cabin--that had wound

itself around his figure so clingingly.

There was silence in the room. Amy had now reached the silk stockings; and

taking up one, she blew down into it and quickly peeped over the side, to

see whether it would fill out to life-size--with a mischievous wink.

"I am going to him at once."

Amy looked up in amazement.

"But, Aunt Jessica," she observed reproachfully; "who will get uncle's

dinner? You know I can't."

"Tell your uncle what has happened as soon as he comes."

She had risen and was making some rapid preparations.

"I want my dinner," said Amy ruefully, seating herself on the edge of the

bed and watching her aunt with disapproval.

"You can't go now!" she exclaimed. "Uncle has the horses in the field."

Mrs. Falconer turned to her with simple earnestness.

"I hoped you would lend me your horse?"

"But he is tired; and beside I want to use him this afternoon: Kitty and I

are going visiting."

"Tell your uncle when he comes in," said Mrs. Falconer, turning in the

doorway a minute later, and speaking rapidly to her niece, but without the

least reproach, "tell your uncle that his friend is badly hurt. Tell him

that we do not know how badly. Tell him that I have gone to find out and to

do anything for him that I can. Tell him to follow me at once. He will

find me at his bedside. I am sorry about the dinner."