mile above the village, half way up the ridge-side. He is very fat,
too, from much meditation, and to aid his thin legs in moving his bulky
body he carries a very long stick, which he uses like a paddle to
propel him; so when you see him in the distance he seems to be standing
in a canoe, sweeping it along. Really he is only navigating the road.
He had a clothes-prop with him that day, and pausing at the end of the
porch, he leaned on it and gasped. I ought to have been pleased to see
Josiah.
"Well, Mark," he said, "I am glad you're home. Mighty! but you look
improved."
He gasped again and smiled through his bushy beard.
"Thank you," said I, icily, waving him toward a chair.
Josiah sat down and smiled again.
"It just does me good to see you," he said, having completely recovered
his power of speech. "I should have come down last night, Mark. I
'pologize for not doin' it, but it's mighty troublesome gittin' 'round
in the dark. The last time I tried it, I caught the end of my stick
between two rocks and it broke. There I was, left settin' on the Red
Hill with no way of gittin' home. I was in for comin' down here to
receive you--really I was--but my missus says she ain't a-goin' to have
me rovin' 'round the country that 'ay agin. 'Gimme an extry oar,' I
says. And she says: 'Does you 'spose I'll let you run 'round lookin'
like a load of wood?' And I says----"
The gate latch clicked. Again Tim appeared from the maze of corn and
stood shading his eyes and gazing toward the house. Now the footfalls
were light. And Mary came! But how could I look careless and dashing,
with Josiah Nummler in the chair I had fixed so close to mine? Rising,
I bowed as awkwardly as possible. I insisted on her taking my own
rocker, while I fixed myself on the floor with a pillar for a
back-rest. Not a word did the girl say, but she sat there clutching
the little basket she held in her lap.
"Eggs?" inquired Josiah.
She shook her head, but did not enlighten him.
"I should judge your hens ain't layin' well, figurin' on the size of
the basket," said the old man, ignoring her denial. "There's a
peculiarity about the hens in this walley--it's somethin' I've noticed
ever since I was a boy. I've spoke to my missus about it and she has
noticed the same thing since she was a girl--so it must be a
peculiarity. The hens in this walley allus lays most when the price of
eggs is lowest."
This was a serious problem. It is not usual for Josiah to be serious,
either, for he is generally out of breath or laughing. Now he was
wagging his head solemnly, pulling his beard, and over and over
repeating, "But hens is contrary--hens is contrary."
Mary contrived to drop the basket to her side, out of the old man's
sight.
"Speakin' of hens," he went on. "My missus was sayin' just yesterday
how as----"
Tim was shouting. He was calling something to me. I could not make
out what it was, for the wind-was rustling the corn-shocks, but I arose
and feigned to listen.
"It's Tim," said I. "He's calling to you, Josiah. It's something
about your red heifer."
"Red heifer--I haven't no red heifer," returned the old man.
"Did I say heifer? I should have said hog--excuse me," said I, blandly.
"But I have killed all my hogs," Josiah replied, undisturbed.
Tim shouted again, making a trumpet of his hands. To this day I don't
know what he was calling to us, but when this second message reached
Josiah's ears, it concerned some cider we had, that Tim was anxious to
know if he would care for. At the suggestion Josiah's face became very
earnest, and a minute later he was hurrying down the field to the spot
where Tim's hat and Tip Pulsifer's shaggy hair showed above the wreck
of a corn-shock.
"How could you hear what Tim was saying?" Mary asked.
It was almost the first word she had spoken to me, and I was in my
chair again, and she was where I had planned so cunningly to have her.
"I know my brother's voice," I answered gravely.
"I couldn't make out a word," said she, "but it isn't like him to let
an old man go tottering over fields to see him. He would have come up
here."
"I guess he would." There was a twinkle in her eyes and I knew it was
useless to dissemble. "Tim and I are different. I never hesitate to
use strategy to get my chair, even at the expense of a feeble old man."
"How gallant you are," she said with a touch of scorn.
"You must not scold," I cried. "Remember I had reason, after all. You
did not come to see Josiah Nummler."
She was taken by surprise. It was brutal of me. But somehow the old
reckless spirit had come back. I was speaking as a soldier should to a
fair woman, bold and free. That's what a woman likes. She hates a man
who stutters love. And while I did not own to myself the least passion
for the girl, I had seen just enough of her on the evening before and I
had smoked just enough over her that morning to be in a sentimental
turn of mind that was amusing. And I gained my point. She turned her
head so as almost to hide her face from me, and I heard a gentle laugh.
"All's fair in love and war," I said, "and were Josiah twice as old, I
should be justified in using those means to this end."
Then I rocked. There is something so sociable about rocking. And I
smoked. There is something so sociable about smoking. For a moment
the girl sat quietly, screening her face from me. Then she began
rocking too, and I caught a sidelong glance of her eye, and the color
mounted to her cheeks, and we laughed together.
So it came that she suddenly stopped her rocking, and dropping the
little basket at my feet, exclaimed: "I love soldiers--just love them!"
Then I told her that I must keep Perry Thomas's oration going to the
end, and she leaned toward me, her hands clasped, her eyes fixed on
mine and asked: "But will you?"
"I can make no promises," I answered. "They say our bodies change
entirely every seven years. Mark Hope, age fifty, will be a different
man from Mark Hope, age twenty-three. He may have nothing to boast
about himself, and his distorted mind may magnify the deeds of the
younger man. Now the younger man refuses to commit himself. He will
not be in any way responsible for his successors."
"How wise you are!" she cried.
"Wise?" I exclaimed, searching her face for a sign of mockery. But
there was none.
"I mean you talk so differently from the others in the valley. Either
they talk of crops or weather, or they sit in silence and just look
wise. I suppose you have travelled?"
"As compared to most folks in Black Log I am a regular Gulliver," I
answered. "My father was a much-travelled man. He was an Englishman
and came to the valley by chance and settled here, and to his dying day
he was a puzzle to the people. That an Englishman should come to Six
Stars was a phenomenon. That Isaac Bolum and Henry Holmes should be
born here was no mere chance--it was a law of nature."
"And this English father?"
"He married, and then Tim and I came to Black Log."
"Like Isaac Bolum and Henry Holmes?"
"Exactly; and we should have grown like them, but our father was a
bookish man, and with him we travelled; we went with Dickens and
Thackeray and those fellows, and as we came to different places in the
books, he told us all about them. He'd seen them all, so we got to
know his country pretty well. Once he took us to Harrisburg, and by
multiplying everything we saw there, Tim and I were able to picture all
the great cities of the world--for instance, London is five hundred
times Harrisburg."
"But why didn't you go to see the places yourself?"
"Why doesn't everybody in Black Log go to Florida in winter or take the
waters at Carlsbad? We did plan a great trip--father and mother and
Tim and I--we were going to England together when the farm showed a
surplus. We never saw that surplus. I went to Philadelphia once.
It's a grand place, but I had just enough of money to keep me there two
days and bring me home. Then the war came. And now Tim thinks I've
been around the world. He's jealous, for he has never been past
Harrisburg; but I've really gone around a little circle. I've seen
just enough of flying fishes to hanker after Mandalay, just enough of
Spaniards to long for a sight of Spain. But they've shipped me home
and here I am anchored. Here I shall stay until that surplus
materializes; and you know in our country we have neither coal nor oil
nor iron."
"But they tell me that you are to teach the school," she said.
"For which I am grateful," I answered. "Twenty dollars a month is the
salary, and school keeps for six months, so I shall earn the large sum
of $120 a year."
"But your pension?"
"With my pension I shall be a nabob in Six Stars. Anywhere else I
should cut a very poor figure. But after all, this is the best place,
for is there any place where the skies are bluer; is there any place
where the grass is greener; is there any place where the storms are
wilder than over our mountains?"
"Sometimes I would say in Kansas," the girl answered. "Here the world
seems to end at the top of the mountain. It is hard to picture
anything beyond that. Out there you raise yourself on tiptoe, and you
see the world rolling away for miles and miles, and it seems to have no
ending."
"I suppose you will not be able to endure your imprisonment. Some day
you will go back to Kansas."
"Some day--perhaps," she laughed. "But now I am a true Black Logger.
Look at my gown."
It was the gray Dunkard dress--the concession to her uncle's beliefs on
worldliness. It was the first time I had noticed it.
"That is not the garb of Black Log," I said. "It was designed long ago
in Germany, after patterns from Heaven."
"And designed by men," said Mary, laughing; "forced by them on a sex
which wears ribbons as naturally as a bird does feathers."
"In other words, when you came to live with your pious uncle, he picked
you?"
"Exactly," she said; "but I submitted humbly. I came here, as I
supposed, a fairly good Christian, with an average amount of piety and
an average number of faults. My worldliness shocked my uncle, and
being a peaceful person, I let him pick me. But I rebelled at the
bonnet--spare me from one of those coal-scuttles--I'll go to the stake
first."
In her defiance she swung her own straw hat wildly around on the
string. Pausing, she smoothed out the gray gown and eyed it critically.
"Was such a thing ever intended for a woman to wear!" she exclaimed.
"For most women, surely not," said I. "Few could carry that handicap
and win. But after all, your uncle means it kindly. He acts from
interest in your soul's welfare."
Mary's face became serious.
"Yes," she said, "he has paid me the highest compliment a man can pay
to a woman--he wants to meet me in Heaven."
How could I blame Luther Warden?
I had forgotten my uniform and my glory, my hair and my hat, and was
leaning forward with my eyes on the girl. And she was leaning toward
me and our heads were very close. The rebellious brown hair was almost
in the shade of my own dashing hat-brim.
Then I said to myself in answer to the poet, "Here's the cheek that
doth not fade, too much gazed at." For its color was ever changing.
And again I said to myself and to the poet, when my glance had met
hers, and the color was mounting higher: "Here's the maid whose lip
mature is ever new; here's the eye that doth not weary." And now
aloud, forgetfully, leaning back in my chair and gazing at her from
afar off--"Here's the face one would meet in every place."
Mary's chair flew back, and it was for her to gaze at me from afar off.
"What were you saying?" she demanded in a voice not "so very soft."
"Was I saying anything?" I answered, feigning surprise. "I thought I
was only thinking. But you were speaking of Luther Warden."
"Was I?" she said, more quietly, but in an absent tone.
"You said he had paid you a great compliment, but do you know----"
I paused, being a bit nervous, and flushed, for she was looking right
at me. Not till she turned away did I finish.
"Do you know," I went on, "last night when I saw you, I thought we must
have met before, and I thought if I had met you anywhere before, it
must have been in Heaven."
I had expected that at a time like this Josiah Nummler would appear.
In that I was disappointed. In his place, with a bark and a bound,
came a lithe setter, a perfect stranger to me, and Mary seized the long
head in her hands and cried: "Why, Flash--good Flash."
She completely ignored my last remark, and patted the dog and talked to
him.
"Isn't he a beauty?" she cried. "He is Mr. Weston's."
"Whose?" I asked, concealing my irritation. "Mr. Weston--and who is
Mr. Weston?"
Mary held up a warning finger. There were footfalls on the gravel walk
around the house.
"Sh," she whispered, "here he comes--no one knows who he is."
To this day Robert Weston's age is a mystery to me; I might venture to
guess that it is between thirty and fifty. Past thirty all men begin
to dry up or fatten, and he was certainly a lean person. His face was
hidden beneath a beard of bristling, bushy red, and he had a sharp hook
nose and small, bright eyes. From his appearance you could not tell
whether he was a good man or a bad one, wise or stupid, kind-hearted or
a brute. He seemed of a neutral tone. His clothes marked him as a man
of the city, for we do not wear shooting jackets, and breeches and
leather leggings in our valley. In the way he wore them there was
something that spoke the man of the world, for in such a costume we of
Black Log should feel dressed up and ill at ease; but his clothes
seemed a part of him. They looked perfectly comfortable and he was
unconscious of them. This is where the city men have an advantage over
us country-breds. I can carry off my old clothes without being
awkward. I could enter a fine drawing-room in the patched blouse I
wear a-hunting with more ease than in that solemn-looking frock-coat I
bought at the county town five years ago. In that garment I feel that
"I am." No one could ever convince me that I am a mere thought, a
dream, a shadow. Every pull in the shoulders, every hitch in the back,
every kink in the sleeves makes me a profound materialist. But I don't
suppose Weston would bother spreading the tails out when he sat down.
I doubt if he would know he had it on. He is so easy in his ways. I
saw that as he came swinging around the house, and I envied him for it.
"Well, I am in luck!" he cried cheerfully. "Here I came to see the
valley's soldier and I find him holding the valley's flower."
This to me was rather an astounding thing to say, and if he intended to
disable me in the first skirmish he succeeded admirably, for my only
answer was a laugh; and the more I laughed the more foolish and
slow-witted I felt. I wanted to run to Mary's aid, but I did not know
how, and while I was rummaging my brain for some way to meet him, she
was answering him valiantly.
"Almost, but not quite," she said. "But he has earned the right to
hold the valley's flower entirely--whoever she may he. It's a pity,
Mr. Weston, you have not been doing so, too, instead of loafing around
the valley all summer long."
She did not speak sharply to him, and that angered me. She was smiling
as she spoke, and he did not seem to mind it at all.
"I came to see the veteran," he said, "and not to be scolded."
"You may have my chair then." Mary was rising. "I shall leave you to
the veteran--if he does not object."
She was moving away.
"Then I shall have to go with you," said the stranger calmly, "if the
veteran doesn't object. He knows a woman should not go unattended
around the valley. He'd rather see me doing my duty than having a
sociable pipe with him and hearing about the war. How about it, Hope?"
He did not stop to hear my answer. Had he waited a moment instead of
striding after the girl, with his dog at his heels, he might have seen
my reply.
[Illustration: He did not stop to hear my answer.]
I raised my pipe above my head and hurled it against the fence, where
it crashed into a score of pieces.
V
"Who is Robert Weston?" I asked of Tim.
"If you can answer that question Theophilus Jones will give you a
cigar," replied my brother. "He has tried to find out; he has
cross-questioned every man, woman, and child that comes to his store,
and he admits that he is beaten."
"When Theop can't find out, the mystery is impenetrable." I recalled
our suave storekeeper and his gentle way of drawing from his customers
their life secrets as he leaned blandly over the counter with his sole
thought apparently to do their commands. Theophilus had known that I
was going to enlist long before I had made up my own mind. He had told
Tim that I was coming home before he had handed him the postal card on
which I had scrawled a few lines announcing my return. So when I heard
that Weston was still a puzzle to him I knew that Six Stars had a
mystery. For Six Stars to have a mystery is unusual. Occasionally we
are troubled with ghosts and such supernatural demonstrations, which
cause us to keep at home at night, but we soon forget these things if
we do not solve them. But for our village to number among its people a
man whose whole history and whose family history was not known was
unheard of. For such a man to be here six weeks and not enlighten us
was hardly to be dreamed of. Robert Weston had dared it. Even Tim
regarded the matter as serious.
"It is suspicious," he said, shaking his head gravely.
He was cleaning up the supper dishes at the end of the table opposite
me. By virtue of my recent return I had not fallen altogether into our
household ways as yet, and sat smoking and watching him.
"It's mighty odd," he went on. "At noon one day, about six weeks ago,
Weston rode up to the tavern on a bicycle and told Elmer Spiker he was
going to stay to dinner. He loafed about all that afternoon, and
stayed that day and the next, and ever since. First there came a trunk
for him, and then a dog. You see him about all the time, for when he
isn't walking, he's loafing around the tavern, or is over at the store,
arguing with Henry Holmes or Isaac Bolum. Yet all we know about him is
that he's undecided how long he'll stay and that he has lived in New
York."
"Has no one asked him point-blank what he is doing here?"
"No. Isaac Bolum declares every day that he is going to, but when the
time comes he breaks down. Every other means of finding out has been
taken."
"Josiah Nummler told me to-day he believed Weston was a detective."
"That was Elmer Spiker's theory. But, as Theop says, who is he
detecting?"
Theophilus settled that theory conclusively, in my mind, at least, for
I knew every man, woman, and child in the valley; and taking a mental
census, I could find no one who seemed to require watching by a
hawkshaw.
"Perry Thomas guessed he was an embezzler," said Tim, putting the last
dish in the cupboard and sitting down to his pipe. "Perry says Weston
is the best-learned man he ever met, and that embezzlers are naturally
educated or they would not be in places where they could embezzle."
"A truly Perryan argument," said I; "and after all, a reasonable one,
for no one would think of looking here for a fugitive."
"That's just what Perry says," rejoined Tim. "But Theop has read every
line in the papers for weeks, and he swears that no embezzlers are
missing now."
"Perhaps his crime is still concealed," I ventured.
"That was just what Isaac Bolum thought," Tim answered. "But Henry
Holmes says no missing criminal is likely to have a setter dog shipped
to him. He says such a man might send for his clothes, but he would
draw the line on dogs."
"Perhaps he has deserted his wife," I said, seeing at last a possible
solution of the mystery.
"That's what Arnold Arker suggested just a few days ago," returned Tim;
"but Tip Pulsifer allowed that no fellow would have to come so far to
desert his wife."
"Tip ought to know," said I, "for he deserts his once a year,
regularly."
"He always comes back the next day," retorted Tim stoutly.
My brother has always been Tip's champion in his matrimonial
disagreements, and whenever Pulsifer flees across the mountain,
swearing terrible oaths that he will never return, Tim goes straight to
the clearing on the ridge and talks long and seriously to the deserted
wife about her duty.
[Illustration: Swearing terrible oaths that he will never return.]
But there was reason in Tip's contention regarding Weston. Indeed,
from Tim's account of events, I could see that the store had very
thoroughly threshed out the whole case and that the problem was not one
that could be solved by abstract reasoning. There was only one person
to solve it, and that was Robert Weston himself.
I knew enough of the world to know that it was not an unheard-of thing
for a man to settle for a time in an out-of-the-way village. I knew
enough of men to understand that he might consider it nobody's business
why he cared to live among us. I had enough sense of humor to see that
he might find amusement in enveloping himself in mystery and sparring
with the sly sages of the store and tavern. By right I should have
stood by and watched the little game; I should have encouraged Isaac
Bolum and Henry Holmes to apply the interrogating probe; I should have
warned Weston of the plotting at the store to lay bare the secret of
his life; I should have brought the contending parties together and
enjoyed the duello. Instead, I had to admit to myself a curiosity as
to the stranger's identity that equalled, if it did not surpass, that
of Theophilus Jones. His was curiosity pure and simple; mine was
something more. Weston had come quietly into my own castle, had taken
complete possession of it for a moment, and then calmly walked away
with the fairest thing it held--and all so quietly and with an air that
in a thousand years of practice, I or none other in the valley could
have simulated. The picture was still sharp in my mind as I sat there
smoking and drawing Tim out; for when I had vented my anger on my pipe
that morning I had hurried to the gate to watch my departing visitors
as they swung down the village street. Weston, lanky and erect, moved
with a masterful stride, not unlike the lean and keen-witted setter
that flashed to and fro over the road before him. At his side was the
girl, a slender body in drab, tossing her hat gayly about at the end of
its long string. They passed the store and the mill, and at the bend
were lost to my view. They seemed to find themselves such good
company! Even Tim, so fine and big, had in this homely, lanky man a
rival well worth watching.
And who was the quiet, lanky man? Over and over I asked myself the
question, and when I touched its every phase I found that Henry Holmes
or Isaac Bolum, some one of the store worthies, had met defeat there
before me. At last I gave up, and by a sudden thought arose and pulled
on my overcoat, and got my hat. Tim was surprised.
"You are not going out?" he said.
"I think I'll stroll down to the tavern and see this stranger," I
replied carelessly. "No, you needn't come. I can find my way alone
all right, for the moon will be up and it's only a step."
It did seem to me that Tim might insist on bearing me company, knowing
as he did that I was still a bit rickety; but he saw fit to take my one
refusal as final, and muttered something about reading. Then, I left
him.
It has been years since they have had a license at our tavern, so there
was a solitary man in the bar-room when I entered. Elmer Spiker, mine
host of the inn, was huddled close to the stove, and was reading by the
light of a lamp. Pausing at the threshold before opening the door, the
sonorous mumble sounding through the deal panels misled me. Believing
the Spiker family at prayers, I stood reverently without until the
service seemed to last too long to be one of devotion. Then I opened a
crack and peeked in. Seeing a lone man at the distant end of the room,
I entered. Elmer's back was toward me and my presence was unnoticed.
His eyes were on the paper before him.
"W. J. Mandelberger, of Martins Mills, was among us last Friday," he
read, slowly, distinctly, measuring every word. "He paid his
subscription for the year and informed us that Mrs. Mandelberger had
just presented him with a bouncing baby boy. Congratulations, W. J."
I coughed apologetically, but Elmer rattled the paper just then, and
did not notice me.
He went rumbling on: "William Arker, of Popolomus, and Miss Myrtle
McGee, of Turkey Valley, were united in the holy bonds of matrimony on
the sixth ultimo."
"Elmer," I said sharply, thumping the floor with a crutch.
Spiker turned slowly.