Do ye? " she asked, in surprise. " Why, I 'lowed you folks from the
settlemints thought hit was mighty scraggy down hyeh."
"Oh no. These mountains and woods are beautiful, and I never
saw lovelier beech-trees. The coloring of their trunks is so
exquisite, and the shade is so fine," he concluded, lamely, noticing
a blank look on the old woman's face. To his delight the girl, half
turned toward him, was listening with puzzled interest.
Well," said the old woman, " beeches is beautiful to me when they
has mast enough to feed the hogs."
Carried back to his train of speculations, Clayton started at this
abrupt deliverance. There was a suspicion of humor in the old
woman's tone that showed an appreciation of their different
standpoints. It was lost on Clayton, however, for his attention had
been caught by the word "mast," which, by some accident, he
I had never heard before.
" Mast," he asked, " what is that?
The girl looked toward him in amazement, and burst into a low,
suppressed laugh. Her mother explained the word, and all laughed
heartily.
Clayton soon saw that his confession of ignorance was a lucky
accident. It brought Easter and himself nearer common ground.
She felt that there was something, after all, that she could teach
him. She had been overpowered by his politeness and deference
and his unusual language, and, not knowing what they meant, was
overcome by a sense of her inferiority. The incident gave him the
key to his future conduct. A moment later she looked up covertly,
and, meeting his eyes, laughed again. The ice was broken. He
began to wonder if she really had noticed him so little at their first
meeting as not to recognize him, or if her indifference or reserve
had prevented her from showing the recognition. He pulled out his
note-book and began sketching rapidly, conscious that the girl was
watching him. When be finished, he rose, picking up the old
flint-lock.
"Won't ye stay and hev some dinner?,' asked the old woman.
"No, thank you."
Come ag'in," she said, cordially, adding the mountaineer's farewell,
"I wish ye well."
"Thank you, I will. Good-day."
As he passed the girl he paused a moment and dropped the paper
into her lap. It was a rude sketch of their first meeting, the bull
coming at him like a tornado. The color came to her face, and
when Clayton turned the corner of the house he heard her
laughing.
"What you laughin' at, Easter?" asked the mother, stopping her
work and looking around.
For answer the girl rose and walked into the house, hiding the
paper in her bosom. The old woman watched her narrowly.
I never seed ye afeard of a man afore," she said to herself. "No, nur
so tickled 'bout one, nother. Well, he air as accommodatin' a feller
as I ever see, ef he air a furriner. But he was a fool to swop his gun
fer hem."
V
THEREAFTER Clayton saw the girl whenever possible. If she
came to the camp, he walked up the mountain with her. No idle
day passed that he did not visit the cabin, and it was not long
before he found himself strangely interested. Her beauty and
fearlessness had drawn him at first; her indifference and stolidity
had piqued him; and now the shyness that displaced these was
inconsistent and puzzling. This he set himself deliberately at work
to remove, and the conscious effort gave a peculiar piquancy to
their intercourse. He had learned the secret of association with the
mountaineers-to be as little unlike them as possible-and he put the
knowledge into practice. He discarded coat and waistcoat, wore a
slouched hat, and went unshaven for weeks. He avoided all
conventionalities, and was as simple in manner and speech as
possible. Often when talking with Easter, her face was blankly
unresponsive, and a question would sometimes leave her in
confused silence. He found it necessary to use the simplest
Anglo-Saxon words, and he soon fell into many of the quaint
expressions of the mountaineers and their odd, slow way of
speech. This course was effective, and in time the shyness wore
away and left between them a comradeship as pleasant as unique.
Sometimes they took long walks together on the mountains. This
was contrary to mountain etiquette, but they were remote even
from the rude conventionalities of the life below them. They even
went hunting together, and Easter had the joy of a child when she
discovered her superiority to Clayton in woodcraft and in the use
of a rifle. If he could tell her the names of plants and flowers they
found, and how they were akin, she could show him where they
grew. If he could teach her a little more about animals and their
habits than she already knew, he had always to follow her in the
search for game. Their fellowship was, in consequence, never
more complete than when they were roaming the woods. In them
Easter was at home, and her ardent nature came to the surface like
a poetic glow from her buoyant health and beauty. Then appeared
all that was wayward and elfin-like in her character, and she would
be as playful, wilful, evanescent as a wood-spirit. Sometimes,
when they were separated, she would lead him into a ravine by
imitating a squirrel or a wild-turkey, and, as he crept noiselessly
along with bated breath and eyes peering eagerly through the
tree-tops or the underbrush, she would step like a dryad from
behind some tree at his side, with a ringing laugh at his
discomfiture. Again, she might startle him by running lightly
along the fallen trunk of a tree that lay across a torrent, or, in a
freak of wilfulness, would let herself down the bare face of some
steep cliff. If he scolded her, she laughed. If he grew angry, she
was serious instantly, and once she fell to weeping and fled home.
He followed her, but she barricaded herself in her room in the loft,
and would not be coaxed down. The next day she had forgotten
that she was angry.
Her mother showed no surprise at any of her moods. Easter was
not like other " gals," she said; she had always been" quar," and
she reckoned would" al'ays be that way." She objected in no wise
to Clayton's intimacy with her. The furriner," she told Raines, was
the only man who had ever been able to manage her, and if she
wanted Easter to do anything " ag'in her will, she went to him fust
"-a simple remark that threw the mountaineer into deep
thoughtfulness.
Indeed, this sense of power that Clayton felt over the wilful,
passionate creature thrilled him with more pleasure than he would
have been willing to admit; at the same time it suggested to him a
certain responsibility. Why not make use of it, and a good use?
The girl was perhaps deplorably ignorant, could do but little more
than read and write; but she was susceptible of development, and
at times apparently conscious of the need of it and desirous for it.
Once he had carried her a handful of violets, and thereafter an old
pitcher that stood on a shelf blossomed every day with
wild-flowers. He had transplanted a vine from the woods and
taught her to train it over the porch, and the first hint of tenderness
he found in her nature was in the care of that plant. He had taken
her a book full of pictures and fashion-plates, and he had noticed a
quick and ingenious adoption of some of its hints in her dress.
One afternoon, as he lay on his bed in a darkened corner of his
room, a woman's shadow passed across the wall, returned, and a
moment later he saw Easter's face at the window. He had lain
quiet, and watched her while her wondering eyes roved from one
object to another, until they were fastened with a long, intent look
on a picture that stood upon a table near the window. He stirred,
and her face melted away instantly. A few days later he was sitting
with Easter and Raines at the cabin. The mother was at the other
end of the porch, talking to a neighbor who had stopped to rest on
his way across the mountains.
Easter air a-gettin' high notions," she was saying, " 'n' she air
a-spendin' her savin 's, 'n' all mine she kin git hold of, to buy fixin's
at the commissary. She must hev white crockery, 'n' towels, 'n'
newfangled forks, 'n' sichlike." A conscious flush came into the
girl's face, and she rose hastily and went into the house.
"I was afeard," continued the mother, " that she would hev her hair
cut short, 'n' be a-flyin' with ribbons, 'n' spangled out like a
rainbow, like old 'Lige Hicks's gal, ef I hadn't heerd the furriner tell
her it was ' beastly.' Thar ain't no fear now, fer what that furriner
don't like, Easter don't nother."
For an instant the mountaineer's eyes had flashed on Clayton, but
when the latter, a trifle embarrassed, looked up, Raines apparently
had heard nothing. Easter did not reappear until the mountaineer
was gone.
There were othcr hopeful signs. Whenever Clayton spoke of his
friends, she always listened eagerly, and asked innumerable
questions about them. If his attention was caught by any queer
custom or phrase of the mountain dialect, she was quick to ask in
return how he would say the same thing, and what the custom was
in the settlemints." She even made feeble attempts to model her
own speech after his.
In a conscious glow that he imagined was philanthropy, Clayton
began his task of elevation. She was not so ignorant as he had
supposed. Apparently she had been taught by somebody, but when
asked by whom, she hesitated answering; and he had taken it for
granted that what she knew she had puzzled out alone. He was
astonished by her quickness, her docility, and the passionate
energy with which she worked. Her instant obedience to every
suggestion, her trust in every word he uttered, made him acutely
and at times uncomfortably conscious of his responsibility. At the
same time there was in the task something of the pleasure that a
young sculptor feels when, for the first time, the clay begins to
yield obedience to his fingers, and something of the delight that
must have thrilled Pygmalion when he saw his statue tremulous
with conscious life.