At "The Edge"
The girl on the sorrel nag and the two riderless animals toiled patiently
up the broad, timbered flank of Big Turkey Track, following the raw red
gash in the greenery that was the road.
She gazed with wondering eyes at the familiar landmarks of the trail. All
was just as it had been when she rode down it at dawn that morning, Andy
and Jeff ahead on their mules whistling, singing, skylarking like two
playful bear cubs. It was herself that was changed. She pushed the cheap
hat off her hot forehead and tried to win to some coherence of thought
and--so far had she already come on a new, strange path--looked back with
wondering uncomprehension, as upon the beliefs and preferences of a crude
primitive ancestress, to the girl who had cared that this hat cost a
dollar and a half instead of a dollar and a quarter--only a few hours
since when she bought it at the store. She went over the bits of talk
that had been between her and Creed Bonbright. What had he said his
favourite colour was? Memory brought back his rapt young face when she
put the question to him. She trembled with delight at the recollection.
His eyes were fixed upon the sky, and he had answered her absently,
"blue."
Blue! What a fool--what a common thickheaded fool she had been all her
days! She let the sorrel take his own gait, hooked his bridle-rein and
Beck's upon the saddle-horn, and lifting her arms withdrew the hatpins
and took off the unworthy headgear. For a moment she regarded savagely
the cheap red ribbon which had appeared so beautiful to her; then with
strong brown fingers tore it loose and flung it in the dust of the road,
where Pete shied at it, and the stolid Beck coming on with flapping ears
set hoof upon it.
What vast world forces move with our movements, pluck us uncomprehending
from the station we had struggled for, and make our sorrowful meat of our
attained desires! The stars in their courses pivot and swing on these
subtle attractions, ancient as themselves. Judith Barrier, tearing the
gaudy ribbon from her hat and casting it upon the road under her horse's
feet, stood to learn what the priests of Isis knew thousands of years
ago, that red is the symbol of pleasure and of mere animal comfort, while
blue is the colour of pure reason.
Halfway up the trail they rode into a cloud that rested trembling on the
mountain-side, passed through it and emerged upon fitful sunlight. Near
the top there came a sudden shower which descended with the souse of an
overturned bucket. It won small attention from Judith, but Pete and Beck
resented it in mule fashion, with a laying back of ears and lashing out
of heels. These amenities were exchanged for the most part across the
intervening sorrel nag and his rider, and Selim replied promptly and in
kind, almost unseating Judith.
"You Selim!" she cried jerking the rein. "You feisty Pete! You no-account
Beck! What ails you-all? Cain't you behave?" and once more she lapsed
into dreaming. It was Selim who, wise and old, stopped at Aunt Nancy
Card's gate and gave Judith an opportunity to descend if such were her
preference.
On the porch of the cabin sat a tall, lean, black-eyed old man smoking
his pipe, Jephthah Turrentine himself. Nancy Card, a dry, brown little
sparrow of a woman, occupied a chair opposite him, and negotiated a pipe
quite as elderly and evil-smelling as his own.
The kerchief folded about her neck was notably white; her clean
check-apron rustled with starch; but the half-grey hair crinkling
rebelliously from its loose coil was never confined by anything more
rigorous than a tucking comb. In moments of stress this always slipped
down, and had to be vigorously replaced, so that stray strands were apt
to be tossing about her eyes--fearless, direct blue eyes, that looked out
of her square, wrinkled, weather-beaten little face with the sincere gaze
of an urchin. Back of her chair lay a bundle of white-oak splits for use
in her by-trade of basket-weaver; above them hung bundles of drying
herbs, for Nancy was a sick-nurse and a bit of an herb-doctor. She had
made a hard and a more or less losing fight against poverty--the men folk
of these hardy, valiant little women seem predestined to be shiftless.
It came back to Judith dimly as she looked at them--she was in a mood to
remember such things--that her uncle had courted Nancy Card when these
two were young people, that they had quarrelled, both had married, reared
families, and been widowed; and they were quarrelling still! Acrimonious
debate with Nancy was evidently such sweet pain that old Jephthah sought
every opportunity for it, and the sudden shower in the vicinity of her
cabin had offered him an excuse to-day.
Nancy did not confine her practice to what she would have called humans,
but doctored a horse or a cow with equal success. One cold spring a
little chicken had its feet frozen in the wet barnyard so badly that it
lost one of them, and Nancy, who had taken the poor mite into the house
and nursed it till she loved it, constructed for it a wooden leg
consisting of a small, light peg strapped to the stump. And thereafter
Nicodemus, a rooster who must now belie the name since he could not cling
to a perch with his single foot, became an institution in the Card
household.
Jephthah Turrentine was a natural bone-setter, and was sent for far and
near to reduce a dislocation or bandage a broken limb. In the pursuit of
this which came to be almost a profession, he acquired a good knowledge
of tending upon the sick, and the bitterness of rival practitioners was
added to the score between him and Nancy. The case of Nicodemus furnished
the man with a chance to call the woman a chicken doctor, and the name
appealing to the humorous side of mountain character stuck to her,
greatly to her disgust.
Aunt Nancy's dooryard was famous for its flowers, being a riot of pied
bloom from March till December. Even now fire-in-the-bush and bridal
wreath made gay the borders.
"Good land, Jude Barrier!" called Nancy herself. "You're as wet as a
drownded rat. 'Light and come in."
Old Turrentine permitted his niece to clamber from Selim, and secure him
and both mules.
"Whar's the boys?" he inquired in a great, sonorous bass, the deep,
true-pitched voice promised by the contours of strong bony arches under
heavy brows and the strong nose-bridge.
"In jail," responded Judith laconically, turning to enter the gate. Then,
as she walked up the hard-trodden clay path between the tossing, dripping
heads of daffodils, "Uncle Jep, did you know Creed Bonbright's daddy?"
"In jail!" echoed Nancy Card, making a pretence of trying to suppress a
titter, and thereby rendering it more offensive. "Ain't they beginnin'
ruther young?"
Tall old Jephthah got to his feet, knocked the ashes from his pipe and
put it in his pocket.
"Who tuck 'em?" he inquired briefly, but with a fierce undernote in his
tones. "What was they tuck fer?"
"I never noticed," said Judith, standing on the step before them,
wringing the wet from her black calico riding skirt. "Nobody named it to
me what they was tuck fer. I was talkin' to Creed Bonbright, and he
'lowed to find out. He said that was his business."
"Creed Bonbright," echoed her uncle; "what's he got to do with it? He's
been livin' down in Hepzibah studyin' to be a lawyer--did he have Jeff
and Andy jailed?"
Judith shook her head. "He didn't have nothing to do with it," she
answered. "He 'lowed they would be held for witnesses against some men
Haley had arrested. But he's goin' to come back and live on Turkey
Track," she added, as though that were the only thing of importance in
the world. "He says we-all need law in the mountings, and he's a-goin' to
bring it to us."
"Well, he'd better let my boys alone if he don't want trouble," growled
old Jephthah but half appeased.
"I reckon a little touch of law now an' agin won't hurt yo' boys," put in
Nancy Card smoothly. "My chaps always tuck to law like a duck to water. I
reckon I ain't got the right sympathy fer them that has lawless young
'uns."
"Yo' Pony was arrested afore Andy and Jeff," Judith remarked suddenly,
without any apparent malice. "He was the first one I seen comin' down the
road, and Dan Haley behind him a-shootin' at him."
Jephthah Turrentine forebore to laugh. But he deliberately drew out his
old pipe again, filled it and stepped inside for a coal with which to
light it.
"Mebbe yo' sympathies will be more tenderer for me in my afflictions of
lawless sons after this, Nancy," he called derisively over his shoulder.
"Hit's bound to be a mistake 'bout Pony," declared the little old woman
in a bewildered tone. "Pone ain't but risin' sixteen, and he's the
peacefullest child----"
"Jest what I would have said about my twin lambs," interrupted old
Jephthah with twinkling eye, as he appeared in the doorway drawing
mightily upon the newly lighted pipe, tossing his great beard from side
to side of his mighty chest. "My chaps is all as peaceful as kittens; but
some old woman gits to talkin' and gives 'em a bad name, and it goes from
lip to lip that the Turrentine boys is lawless. Hit's a sad thing when a
woman's tongue is too long and limber, and hung in the middle so it works
at both ends; the reppytations hit can destroy is a sight."
"But a body's own child--they' son! They' bound to stan' up for him,
whether he's in the right or the wrong," maintained Nancy stoutly.
"Huh," grunted Jephthah, "offspring is cur'ous. Sometimes hit 'pears like
you air kin to them, and they ain't kin to you. That Pony boy of your'n
is son to a full mealsack; he's plumb filial and devoted thataway to a
dollar, if so be he thinks you've got one in yo' pocket. The facts in the
business air, Nancy, that you've done sp'iled him tell he's plumb rotten,
and a few of the jailings that you so kindly ricommend for my pair won't
do him no harm."
Nancy tossed up her head to reply; but at the moment a small boy,
followed by a smaller girl, coming around the corner of the house,
created a diversion. The girl, a little dancing imp with a frazzle of
flying red hair and red-brown eyes, catching sight of Judith ran to her
and flung herself head foremost in the visitor's lap, where Judith cooed
over her and cuddled her, rumpling the bright hair, rubbing her crimson
cheek against the child's peachy bloom.
"Little Buck and Beezy," said Nancy Card, addressing them both, "Yo' unc'
Pony's in jail. What you-all goin' to do about it?"
The small brown man of six stopped, his feet planted wide on the sward,
his freckled face grave and stern as became his sex.
"Ef the boys goes down for to git him out, I'm goin' along," Little Buck
announced seriously. "Is they goin', granny?"
"I'll set my old rooster on the jail man, an' hit'll claw 'im," announced
Beezy, reckless of distance and likelihood. "My old rooster can claw dest
awful, ef he ain't got but one leg."
Nancy chuckled. These grandchildren were the delight of her heart.
The rain had ceased for the moment; the old man moved to the porch edge,
sighting at the sky.
"I don't know whar Blatch is a-keepin' hisself," he observed. "Mebbe I
better be a-steppin'."
But even as he spoke a tall young mountaineer swung into view down the
road, dripping from the recent rain, and with that resentful air the best
of us get from aggressions of the weather. Blatchley Turrentine, old
Jephthah's nephew, was as brown as an Indian, and his narrow, glinting,
steel-grey eyes looked out oddly cold and alien from under level black
brows, and a fell of stiff black hair.
When the orphaned Judith, living in her Uncle Jephthah's family, was
fourteen, the household had removed from the old Turrentine place--which
was rented to Blatchley Turrentine--to her better farm, whose tenant had
proved unsatisfactory. Well hidden in a gulch on the Turrentine acres
there was an illicit still, what the mountain people call a blockade
still; and it had been in pretty constant operation in earlier years.
When Jephthah abandoned those stony fields for Judith's more productive
acres, he definitely turned his own back upon this feature, but Blatch
Turrentine revived the illegal activities and enlisted the old man's boys
in them. Jeff and Andy had a tobacco patch in one corner where the ground
suited, and in another field Jim Cal raised a little corn. Aside from
these small ventures, the place was given over entirely to the secret
still. The father held scornfully aloof; his attitude was
characteristic.
"Ef I pay no tax I'll make no whiskey," he declared. "You-all boys will
find yourselves behind bars many a time when you'd ruther be out
squirrel-huntin'. Ef you make blockade whiskey every fool that gits mad
at you has got a stick to hold over you. You are good-Lord-good-devil to
everybody, for fear they'll lead to yo' still; or else you mix up with
folks about the business and kill somebody an' git a bad name. These here
blockaded stills calls every worthless feller in the district; most o'
the foolishness in this country goes on around 'em when the boys gits
filled up. I let every man choose his callin', but I don't choose to be
no moonshiner, and ef you boys is wise you'll say the same."
As Blatchley came up now and caught sight of the animals tethered at the
fence he began irritably:
"What in the name of common sense did Andy and Jeff leave they' mules
here for? I can't haul any corn till I get the team and the waggon
together."
"Looks like you've hauled too many loads of corn that nobody knows the
use of," broke out the irrepressible Nancy. "Andy and Jeff's in jail, and
some fool has tuck my little Pone along with the others."
Blatch flung a swift look at his uncle; but whatever his private
conviction, to dishonour a member of his tribe in the face of the enemy,
on the heels of defeat, was not what Jephthah Turrentine would do.
"The boys is likely held for witnesses, Jude allows," the elder explained
briefly. "You take one mule and I'll ride 'tother," he added. "I'll he'p
ye with the corn."
This was a great concession, and as such Blatchley accepted it.
"All right," he returned. "Much obliged."
Then he glanced unconcernedly at Judith, and, instead of making that
haste toward the corn-hauling activities which his manner had suggested,
moved loungingly up the steps. Beezy, from her sanctuary in Judith's lap,
viewed him with contemptuous disfavour. Her brother, not so safely
situated, made to pass the intruder, going wide like a shying colt.
With a sudden movement Blatchley caught the child by the shoulders. There
was a pantherlike quickness in the pounce that was somehow daunting from
an individual of this man's size and impassivity.
"Hold on thar, young feller," the newcomer remarked. "Whar you a-goin'
to, all in sech haste?"
"You turn me a-loose," panted the child. "I'm a-goin' over to my Jude."
"Oh, she's yo' Jude, is she? Well they's some other folks around here
thinks she's their Jude--what you goin' to do about it?"
All this time he held the small, dignified atom of humanity in a
merciless grip that made Little Buck ridiculous before his beloved, and
fired his childish soul to a very ecstasy of helpless rage.
"I'll--kill--you when I git to be a man!" the child gasped, between tears
and terror. "I'll thest kill you--and I'll wed Jude. You turn me
a-loose--that's what you do."
Blatch laughed tauntingly and raised the little fellow high in air.
"Ef I was to turn you a-loose now hit'd bust ye," he drawled.
"I don't keer. I----"
Around the corner of the cabin drifted Nicodemus, the wooden-legged
rooster, stumping gravely with his dot-and-carry-one gait.
"Lord, Nancy, thar comes the one patient ye ever cured!" chuckled old
Jephthah. "I don't wonder yo're proud enough of him to roof him and
affectionate him for the balance of his life."
"I reckon you'd do the same, ef so be ye should ever cure one," snapped
Nancy, rising instantly to the bait, and turning her back on the others.
"As 't is, ef they hilt the buryin' from the house of the feller that
killed the patient I reckon Jude wouldn't have nothin' to do but git up
funeral dinners."
Little Buck, despairing of granny's interference, began to cry. At the
sound Judith came suddenly out of a revery to spring up and catch him
away from the hateful restraining hands.
"I don't know what the Lord's a-thinkin' about to let sech men as you
live, Blatch Turrentine!" she said almost mechanically. "Ef I was
a-tendin' to matters I'd 'a' had you dead long ago. Ef you're good for
anything on this earth I don't know what it is."
"Oh, yes you do," Blatchley returned as the old man started down the
steps. "I'd make the best husband for you of any feller in the two Turkey
Tracks--and you'll find it out one of these days."
The girl answered only with a contemptuous glance.
"Come again--when you ain't got so long to stay," Nancy sped them sourly.
"Jude, you'd better set awhile and get your skirts dry." She looked after
Blatch as he moved up the road, then at little Buck, so ashamed of his
trembling lip. Her face darkened angrily. She turned slowly to Judith.
"What you gwine to do with that feller, Jude?" she queried
significantly.
"Do? Why, nothin'. He ain't nothin' to me," responded the girl
indifferently.
"He ain't, hey? Well, he's bound to marry ye, honey," said the older
woman.
"Huh, he ain't the first--and won't be the last, I reckon," assented
Judith easily.
"Ye'd better watch out fer that man, Jude," persisted Nancy, after a
moment's silence. "He'll git ye, yet. I know his kind. He ain't a-keerin'
fer yo' ruthers--whether you want him or no. He jest aims to have
_you_."
"Well, I reckon he'll about have to aim over agin," observed the unmoved
Judith.
"An' Elder Drane? Air ye gwine to take him?--I know he's done axed ye,"
pursued Nancy hesitantly.
"'Bout 'leven times," agreed Judith with perfect seriousness. "No--I
wouldn't have the man, not ef he's made of pure gold." She added with a
sudden little smile and a catch of the breath: "Them's awful nice chaps
o' his; I'd most take him to git them. The baby now--hit's the sweetest
thing!" And she tumbled Beezy tumultuously in her lap, then suddenly
inquired, apparently without any volition of her own, "Aunt Nancy, did
you know Creed Bonbright's folks?"
"Good Lord, yes!" returned old Nancy. "But come on inside and set, Jude.
This sun ain't a-goin' to dry yo' skirt. Come in to the fire. Don't take
that thar cheer, the behime legs is broke, an' it's apt to lay you
sprawling. I've knowed Creed Bonbright sence he wasn't knee-high to a
turkey, and I knowed his daddy afore him, and his grand-daddy, for the
matter of that."
Avoiding the treacherous piece of furniture against which she had been
warned, Judith slipped out of her wet riding-skirt and arranged it in
front of the fire to dry, turning then and seating herself on the broad
hearth at Nancy's knee, where she prompted feverishly,
"And is all the Bonbrights moved out of the neighbourhood?"
The old woman drew a few meditative whiffs on her pipe.
"All gone," she nodded; "some of 'em killed up in the big feud, and some
moved away--mostly to Texas." Presently she added:
"That there Bonbright tribe is a curious nation of folks. They're always
after great things, and barkin' their shins against rocks in the way.
Creed's mammy--she was Judge Gillenwaters's sister, down in
Hepzibah--died when he was no bigger'n Little Buck, and his pappy never
wedded again. We used to name him and Creed Big 'Fraid and Little 'Fraid;
they was always round together, like a man and his shadder. Then the
feuds broke out mighty bad, and the Blackshearses got Esher Bonbright one
night in a mistake for some of my kin--or so it was thort. Anyhow, the
man was dead, and Creed lived with me fer a spell till his uncle down in
Hepzibah wanted him to come and learn to be a lawyer."
"Lived right here--in this house?" inquired Judith, looking around her,
as she rose and turned the riding-skirt.
"Lord, yes--why not? You would a-knowed all about it, only your folks
never moved in from the Fur Cove neighbourhood till the year Creed went
down to the settlement."
The girl sank back on the hearth, but continued to gaze about her, and
the tell-tale expression in her eyes seemed to afford Nancy Card much
quiet amusement.
"Do you reckon he'll live with you again when he comes back into the
mountains?" she inquired finally.
"I reckon he'll be weddin' one of them thar town gals and fetchin' a wife
home to his own farm over by yo' house," suggested the inveterate tease.
Judith went suddenly white, and then red. "You don't know of anybody--you
hain't heard he was promised, have you?" she hesitated.
"I ain't hearn that he was, and I ain't hearn that he wasn't," returned
Nancy serenely. "The gal that gits Creed Bonbright'll be doin' mighty
well; but also she may not find hit right easy for to trap him. I'll
promise ef he does come up hyer again I'll speak a good word for you,
Jude. The Lord knows I don't see how you make out to live with that thar
old man. You'll deserve a crown and a harp o' gold sot with diamonds ef
you stan' it much longer."
Judith put on the now thoroughly dried riding-skirt, and the two women
went outside together.
"Well, good-bye, Aunt Nancy," she said, as she led the sorrel nag to the
edge of the porch and made ready to mount. "I'll be over and bring the
pieces for you to start me out on that Risin' Sun quilt a-Wednesday."
It was late afternoon as she took her homeward way across the level of
the broad mountain-top to the Turrentine place. She left the
main-travelled road and struck directly into a forest short-cut. After
the rain earth and sky were newly washed; the clear, sweetened air was
full of the scent of damp loam and new-ploughed fields; the colours about
her were freshened and glad, and each distant bird-note rang clear and
vivid. To Mrs. Rhody Staggart and her likes at Hepzibah she might be a
crude, awkward country girl; here she was a princess in her own domain;
and it was a noble realm through which she moved as she went forward
under the great trees that rose straight and tall from a black soil,
making pillared aisles away from her on every side. The fern was thick
under foot--it would brush her saddle-girth, come midsummer. Down the
long vistas under the greening trees, where the moist air hung thick, her
bemused eyes caught the occasional roseflash of azalea through the pearly
mist, her nostril was greeted by their wandering, intensely sweet
perfume, with its curious undernote of earth smell.
She smiled vaguely at the first butterfly she had seen, and again as she
noted the earliest lizard basking in the sun-warmed hollow of a big rock.
Absently her gaze sought for cinnamon fern in low woods, sweet fern in
the thickets, and exquisite maidenhair just beginning to uncurl from the
black leaf mould of dripping brakes.
Like a woman in a dream she made her progress, riding through the
wonderful stillness of the vast wild land, an ocean on which each
littlest sound was afloat, so that each was given its true value almost
like a musical tone. An awful, beautiful silence this, brooding back of
every sound; nothing in such a place gives forth mere senseless noise;
the ripple of frogs in marsh and spring branch fall upon the sense as
sweet as bird-songs. The clamour of little falls, the solemn suggestion
of wind in the pines, the sweet broken jangle of cow-bells, a catbird in
a tree--a continuous yet zigzag sort of warble, silver and sibilant notes
alternating,--the rare wild turkey's call along a deeply embowered
creek--one by one all these came to Judith's dreaming ears, clear,
perfect, individual, on the majestic sea of silence about her.
She turned Selim's head at a little intersecting trail, and rode
considerably out of her way to pass the old Bonbright place and brood
upon its darkened windows and grass-besieged doorstone. Some day all that
would be changed. Still in her waking dream she unsaddled Selim at the
log barn, and turned him loose in his open pasture. She laid off her town
attire, put on her cotton working-dress, kindled afresh the fire on the
broad hearthstone and got supper. Her Uncle Jephthah and Blatch
Turrentine came in late, weary from their work of hauling corn to that
destination which old Nancy had announced as disreputably indefinite. The
second son of the family, Wade, a man of perhaps twenty-four, was with
them, and had already been told of the mishap to Andy and Jeff.
Old Jephthah sat at the head of the board, his black beard falling to his
lap, his finely domed brow relieved against a background of shadows.
Judith needed the small brass lamp at the hearthstone, and a tallow
candle rather inadequately lit the supper-table. The corners of the room
were in darkness; only the cloth and dishes, the faces and hands of those
about the table showed forth in sudden light or motion.
Hung on the rough walls, and glimpsed in occasional flickers only, were
Judith's big maple bread-bowl, the churn-dash, spurtle, sedge-broom, and
a round glass bottle for rolling piecrust; cheek by jowl with old
Jephthah's bullet moulds and the pot-hooks he had forged for Judith.
There were strings of dried pumpkin, too, and of shining red peppers. On
a low shelf, scarce visible at all in the dense shadow, stood a keg of
sorghum, and one beside it of vinegar, flanked by the butter-keeler and
the salt piggin with its cedar staves and hickory hoops. And there, too,
was the broken coffee-pot in which garden seeds were hoarded.
"What's all this I hear about Andy and Jeff bein' took?" inquired a
plaintive voice from the darkened doorway whose door, with its heavy,
home-made latch, swung back against the wall on its great, rude, wooden
hinges, as abruptly out of the shadow appeared a man who set a plump hand
on either jamb and stared into the room with a round, white, anxiously
inquiring face. It was Jim Cal, eldest of the sons of Jephthah
Turrentine, married, and living in a cabin a short distance up the slope.
"Who give the information?" he asked as soon as he had peered all about
the room and found no outsider present.
"Well, we hearn that _you_ did, podner," jeered Blatch.
"Come in and set," invited the head of the household, with the
mountaineer's unforgetting hospitality. "Draw up--draw up. Reach and take
off."
"Well--I--I might," faltered the fleshy one, sidling toward the table and
getting himself into a seat. Without further word his father passed the
great dish of fried potatoes, then the platter of bacon. Judith brought
hot coffee and corn pone for him. She did not sit down with the men,
having quite enough to do to get the meal served.
Unheedingly she heard the matter discussed at the table; only when Creed
Bonbright's name came up was she moved to listen and put in her word.
Something in her manner of describing the assistance Bonbright offered
seemed to go against Blatch's grain.
"Got to look out for these here folks that's so free with their offers o'
he'p," he grunted. "Man'll slap ye on the back and tell ye what a fine
feller ye air whilst he's feelin' for your pocket-book--that's town
ways."
The girl was like one hearkening for a finer voice amid all this
distracting noise; she could hear neither. She made feverish haste to
clear away and wash her dishes, that she might creep to her own room
under the eaves. Through her open casement came up to her the sounds of
the April night: a heightened chorus of little frogs in a rain-fed
branch; nearer in the dooryard a half-dozen tree-toads trilling
plaintively as many different minors; with these, scents of growing,
sharpened and sweetened by the dark. And all night the cedar tree which
stood close to the porch edge below moved in the wind of spring, and,
chafing against the shingles, spoke through the miniature music in its
deep, muffled legato, a soft baritone note like a man's voice--a lover's
voice--calling to her beneath her window.
It roused her from fitful slumbers to happy waking, when she lay and
stared into the dark, and painted for herself on its sombre background
Creed Bonbright's figure, the yellow uncovered head close to her knee as
he stood and talked at the foot of the mountain trail. And the voice of
the tree in the eager spring airs said to her waiting heart--whispered it
softly, shouted and tossed it abroad so that all might have heard it had
they been awake and known the shibboleth, murmured it in tones of
tenderness that penetrated her with bliss--that Creed was
coming--coming--coming to her, through the April woods.