not yet day, but the old woman, with that proclivity to early rising
characteristic of advancing years, was already astir. It was in the
principal room of the cabin that she slept, and it contained another
bed, in which, placed crosswise, were five billet-shaped objects under
the quilts, which when awake identified themselves as Peter Kittredge's
children. She had dressed and uncovered the embers, and put on a few of
the chips which had been spread out on the hearth to dry, and had sat
down in the chimney corner. A timid blaze began to steal up, and again
was quenched, and only the smoke ascended in its form; then the
light flickered out once more, casting a gigantic shadow of her
sun-bonnet--for she had donned it thus early--half upon the brown and
yellow daubed wall, and half upon the dark ceiling, making a specious
stir amidst the peltry and strings of pop-corn hanging motionless
thence.
She sighed heavily once or twice, and with an aged manner, and leaned
her elbows on her knees and gazed contemplatively at the fire. All at
once the ashes were whisked about the hearth as in a sudden draught,
and then were still. In momentary surprise she pushed her chair back,
hesitated, then replaced it, and calmly settled again her elbows on her
knees. Suddenly once more a whisking of the ashes; a cold shiver ran
through her, and she turned to see a hand fumbling at the batten shutter
close by. She stared for a moment as if paralyzed; her spectacles fell
to the floor from her nerveless hand, shattering the lenses on the
hearth. She rose trembling to her feet, and her lips parted as if to cry
out. They emitted no sound, and she turned with a terrified fascination
and looked back. The shutter had opened; there was no glass; the small
square of the window showed the nebulous gray mist without, and defined
upon it was Evelina's head, her dark hair streaming over the red shawl
held about it, her fair oval face pallid and pensive, and with a great
wistfulness upon it; her lustrous dark eyes glittered.
“Mother,” her red lips quivered out.
The old crone recognized no treachery in her heart. She laid a warning
finger upon her lips. All the men were asleep.
Evelina stretched out her yearning arms. “Gin him ter me!”
“Naw, naw, Eveliny,” huskily whispered Absalom's mother. “Ye oughter kem
hyar an' 'bide with yer husband--ye know ye ought.”
Evelina still held out her insistent arms. “Gin him ter me!” she
pleaded.
The old woman shook her head sternly. “Ye kem in, an' 'bide whar ye
b'long.”
Evelina took a step nearer the window. She laid her hand on the sill.
“Spos'n 'twar Abs'lom whenst he war a baby,” she said, her eyes softly
brightening, “an' another woman hed him an' kep' him, 'kase ye an' his
dad fell out--would ye hev 'lowed she war right ter treat ye like ye
treat me--whenst Abs'lom war a baby?”
Once more she held out her arms.
There was a step in the inner shed-room; then silence.
“Ye hain't got no excuse,” the soft voice urged; “ye know jes how I
feel, how ye'd hev felt, whenst Abs'lom war a baby.”
The shawl had fallen back from her tender face; her eyes glowed, her
cheek was softly flushed. A sudden terror thrilled through her as she
again heard the heavy step approaching in the shed-room. “Whenst Abs'lom
war a baby,” she reiterated, her whole pleading heart in the tones.
A sudden radiance seemed to illumine the sad, dun-colored folds of the
encompassing cloud; her face shone with a transfiguring happiness, for
the hustling old crone had handed out to her a warm, somnolent bundle,
and the shutter closed upon the mists with a bang.
“The wind's riz powerful suddint,” Peter said, noticing the noise as he
came stumbling in, rubbing his eyes. He went and fastened the shutter,
while his mother tremulously mended the fire.
The absence of the baby was not noticed for some time, and when the
father's hasty and angry questions elicited the reluctant facts, the
outcry for his loss was hardly less bitter among the Kittredges than
among the Quimbeys. The fugitives were shielded from capture by the
enveloping mist, and when Absalom returned from the search he could do
naught but indignantly upbraid his mother.
[Illustration: Flung her apron over her head 133]
She was terrified by her own deed, and cowered under Absalom's wrath. It
was in a moral collapse, she felt, that she could have done this
thing. She flung her apron over her head, and sat still and silent--a
monumental figure--among them. Once, roused by Absalom's reproaches, she
made some effort to defend and exculpate herself, speaking from behind
the enveloping apron.
“I ain't born no Kittredge nohow,” she irrelevantly asseverated, “an'
I never war. An' when Eveliny axed me how I'd hev liked ter hev another
'oman take Abs'lom whenst he war a baby, I couldn't hold out no longer.”
“Shucks!” cried Absalom, unfilially; “ye'd aheap better be a-studyin'
'bout'n my good now 'n whenst I war a baby--a-givin' away _my_ child ter
them Quimbeys; a-h'istin' him out'n the winder!”
She was glad to retort that he was “impident,” and to take refuge in an
aggrieved silence, as many another mother has done when outmatched by
logic.
After this there was more cheerfulness in her hidden face than might
have been argued from her port of important sorrow. “Bes' ter hev
no jawin', though,” she said to herself, as she sat thus inscrutably
veiled. And deep in her repentant heart she was contradictorily glad
that Evelina and the baby were safe together down in the Cove.
*****
Old Joel Quimbey, putting on his spectacles, with a look of keenest
curiosity, to read a paper which the deputy-sheriff of the county
presented when he drew rein by the wood-pile one afternoon some three
weeks later, had some difficulty in identifying a certain Elnathan
Daniel Kittredge specified therein. He took off his spectacles, rubbed
them smartly, and put them on again. The writing was unchanged. Surely
it must mean the baby. That was the only Kittredge whose body they could
be summoned to produce on the 24th of December before the judge of the
circuit court, now in session. He turned the paper about and looked at
it, his natural interest as a man augmented by his recognition as an
ex-magistrate of its high important legal character.
“Eveliny,” he quavered, at once flattered and furious, “dad-burned ef
Abs'lom hain't gone an' got out a _habeas corpus_ fur the baby!”
The phrase had a sound so deadly that there was much ado to
satisfactorily explain the writ and its functions to Evelina, who
had felt at ease again since the baby was at home, and so effectually
guarded that to kidnap him was necessarily to murder two or three of the
vigilant and stalwart Quimbey men. So much joy did it afford the old
man to air his learning and consult his code--a relic of his
justiceship--that he belittled the danger of losing the said Elnathan
Daniel Kittredge in the interest with which he looked forward to the day
for him to be produced before the court.
There was a gathering of the clans on that day. Quimbeys and Kittredges
who had not visited the town for twenty years were jogging thither
betimes that morning on the red clay roads, all unimpeded by the deep
mud which, frozen into stiff ruts and ridges here and there, made the
way hazardous to the running-gear. The lagging winter had come, and the
ground was half covered with a light fall of snow.
The windows of the court-house were white with frost; the weighted doors
clanged continuously. An old codger, slowly ascending the steps, and
pushing into the semi-obscurity of the hall, paused as the door slammed
behind him, stared at the sheriff in surprise, then fixed him with a
bantering leer. The light that slanted through the open court-room
door fell upon the official's burly figure, his long red beard, his big
broad-brimmed hat pushed back from his laughing red face, consciously
ludicrous and abashed just now.
“Hev ye made a find?” demanded the newcomer.
For in the strong arms of the law sat, bolt-upright, Elnathan Daniel
Kittredge, his yellow head actively turning about, his face decorated
with a grin, and on most congenial terms with the sheriff.
“They're lawin' 'bout'n him in thar “--the sheriff jerked his thumb
toward the door. “_Habeas corpus_ perceedin's. Dun no ez I ever see a
friskier leetle cuss. Durned ef I 'ain't got a good mind ter run off
with him myself.”
The said Elnathan Daniel Kittredge once more squirmed round and settled
himself comfortably in the hollow of the sheriff's elbow, who marvelled
to find himself so deft in holding him, for it was twenty years since
his son--a gawky youth who now affected the company at the saloon, and
was none too filial--was the age and about the build of this infant
Kittredge.
“They hed a reg'lar scrimmage hyar in the hall--them fool men--Quimbey
an' Kittredge. Old man Quimbey said suthin' ter Abs'lom Kittredge--I
dunno what all. Abs'lom never jawed back none. He jes made a dart an'
snatched this hyar leetle critter out'n his mother's arms, stiddier
waitin' fur the law, what he summonsed himself. Blest ef I didn't hev
ter hold my revolver ter his head, an' then crack him over the knuckles,
ter make him let go the child. I didn't want ter arrest him--mighty
clever boy, Abs'lom Kittredge! I promised that young woman I'd keep holt
o' the child till the law gins its say-so. I feel sorry fur her; she's
been through a heap.”
“Waal, ye look mighty pritty, totin' him around hyar,” his friend
encouraged him with a grin. “I'll say that fur ye--ye look mighty
pritty.”
And in fact the merriment in the hall at the sheriff's expense began
to grow so exhilarating as to make him feel that the proceedings within
were too interesting to lose. His broad red face with its big red beard
reappeared in the doorway--slightly embarrassed because of the sprightly
manners of his charge, who challenged to mirth every eye that glanced at
him by his toothful grin and his gurgles and bounces; he was evidently
enjoying the excitement and his conspicuous position. He manfully
gnawed at his corn-dodger from time to time, and from the manner in
which he fraternized with his new acquaintance, the sheriff, he seemed
old enough to dispense with maternal care, and, but for his incomplete
methods of locomotion, able to knock about town with the boys. The
Quimbeys took note of his mature demeanor with sinking hearts; they
looked anxiously at the judge, wondering if he had ever before seen
such precocity--anything so young to be so old: “He 'ain't never afore
'peared so survigrus--so _durned survigrus_ ez he do ter-day,” they
whispered to each other.
“Yes, sir,” his father was saying, on examination, “year old. Eats
anything he kin git--cabbage an' fat meat an' anything. _Could_ walk if
he wanted ter. But he 'ain't been raised right”--he glanced at his wife
to observe the effect of this statement. He felt a pang as he noted her
pensive, downcast face, all tremulous and agitated, overwhelmed as she
was by the crowd and the infinite moment of the decision. But Absalom,
too, had his griefs, and they expressed themselves perversely.
“He hev been pompered an' fattened by bein' let ter eat an' sleep so
much, till he be so heavy ter his self he don't wanter take the trouble
ter get about. He _could_ walk ennywhar. He's plumb survigrus.”
And as if in confirmation, the youthful Kittredge lifted his voice to
display his lung power. He hilariously babbled, and suddenly roared out
a stentorian whoop, elicited by nothing in particular, then caught the
sheriff's beard, and buried in it his conscious pink face.
The judge looked gravely up over his spectacles. He had a bronzed
complexion, a serious, pondering expression, a bald head, and a gray
beard. He wore a black broadcloth suit, somewhat old-fashioned in cut,
and his black velvet waist-coat had suffered an eruption of tiny
red satin spots. He had great respect for judicial decorums, and no
Kittredge, however youthful, or survigrus, or exalted in importance
by _habeas corpus_ proceedings, could “holler” unmolested where he
presided.
“Mr. Sheriff,” he said, solemnly, “remove that child from the presence
of the court.”
And the said Elnathan Daniel Kittredge went out gleefully kicking in the
arms of the law.
The hundred or so grinning faces in the courtroom relapsed quickly into
gravity and excited interest. The rows of jeans-clad countrymen seated
upon the long benches on either side of the bar leaned forward with
intent attitudes. For this was a rich feast of local gossip, such as
had not been so bountifully spread within their recollection. All the
ancient Quimbey and Kittredge feuds contrived to be detailed anew in
offering to the judge reasons why father or mother was the more fit
custodian of the child in litigation.
As Absalom sat listening to all this, his eyes were suddenly arrested
by his wife's face--half draped it was, half shadowed by her sun-bonnet,
its fine and delicate profile distinctly outlined against the
crystalline and frosted pane of the window near which she sat. The snow
without threw a white reflection upon it; its rich coloring in contrast
was the more intense; it was very pensive, with the heavy lids drooping
over the lustrous eyes, and with a pathetic appeal in its expression.
And suddenly his thoughts wandered far afield. He wondered that it had
come to this; that she could have misunderstood him so; that he had
thought her hard and perverse and unforgiving. His heart was all at once
melting within him; somehow he was reminded how slight a thing she was,
and how strong was the power that nerved her slender hand to drag his
heavy weight, in his dead and helpless unconsciousness, down to the bars
and into the safety of the sheltering laurel that night, when he lay
wounded and bleeding under the lighted window of the cabin in the Cove.
A deep tenderness, an irresistible yearning had come upon him; he was
about to rise, he was about to speak he knew not what, when suddenly
her face was irradiated as one who sees a blessed vision; a happy light
sprang into her eyes; her lips curved with a smile; the quick tears
dropped one by one on her hands, nervously clasping and unclasping
each other. He was bewildered for a moment. Then he heard Peter gruffly
growling a half-whispered curse, and the voice of the judge, in the
exercise of his discretion, methodically droning out his reasons for
leaving so young a child in the custody of its mother, disregarding the
paramount rights of the father. The judge concluded by dispassionately
recommending the young couple to betake themselves home, and to try
to live in peace together, or, at any rate, like sane people. Then he
thrust his spectacles up on his forehead, drew a long sigh of dismissal,
and said, with a freshened look of interest, “Mr. Clerk, call the next
case.”
The Quimbey and Kittredge factions poured into the hall; what cared
they for the disputed claims of Jenkins _versus_ Jones? The lovers
of sensation cherished a hope that there might be a lawless effort
to rescue the infant Kittredge from the custody to which he had been
committed by the court. The Quimbeys watchfully kept about him in
a close squad, his pink sun-bonnet, in which his head was eclipsed,
visible among their brawny jeans shoulders, as his mother carried him
in her arms. The sheriff looked smilingly after him from the court-house
steps, then inhaled a long breath, and began to roar out to the icy
air the name of a witness wanted within. Instead of a gate there was
a flight of steps on each side of the fence, surmounted by a small
platform. Evelina suddenly shrank back as she stood on the platform, for
beside the fence Absalom was waiting. Timothy hastily vaulted over the
fence, drew his “shooting-iron” from his boot-leg, and cocked it with
a metallic click, sharp and peremptory in the keen wintry air. For a
moment Absalom said not a word. He looked up at Evelina with as much
reproach as bitterness in his dark eyes. They were bright with the anger
that fired his blood; it was hot in his bronzed cheek; it quivered in
his hands. The dry and cold atmosphere amplified the graces of his long
curling yellow hair that she and his mother loved. His hat was pushed
back from his face. He had not spoken to her since the day of his
ill-starred confidence, but he would not be denied now.
“Ye'll repent it,” he said, threateningly. “I'll take special pains fur
that.”
She bestowed on him one defiant glance, and laughed--a bitter little
laugh. “Ye air ekal ter it; ye have a special gift fur makin' folks
repent they ever seen ye.”
“The jedge jes gin him ter ye 'kase ye made him out sech a fibble little
pusson,” he sneered. “But it's jes fur a time.”
She held the baby closer. He busied himself in taking off his sun-bonnet
and putting it on hind part before, gurgling with smothered laughter
to find himself thus queerly masked, and he made futile efforts to play
“peep-eye” with anybody jovially disposed in the crowd. But they
were all gravely absorbed in the conjugal quarrel at which they were
privileged to assist.
“It's jes fur a time,” he reiterated.
“Wait an' see!” she retorted, triumphantly.
“I won't wait,” he declared, goaded; “I'll take him yit; an' when I do
I'll clar out'n the State o' Tennessee--see ef I don't!”
She turned white and trembled. “Ye dassent,” she cried out shrilly.
“Ye'll be 'feared o' the law.”
“Wait an' see!” He mockingly echoed her words, and turned in his old
confident manner, and strode out of the crowd.
Faint and trembling, she crept into the old canvas-covered wagon, and
as it jogged along down the road stiff with its frozen ruts and ever
nearing the mountains, she clasped the cheerful Kittredge with a
yearning sense of loss, and declared that the judge had made him no
safer than before. It was in vain that her father, speaking from
the legal lore of the code, detailed the contempt of court that the
Kittredges would commit should they undertake to interfere with the
judicial decision--it might be even considered kidnapping.
“But what good would that do me--an' the baby whisked plumb out'n the
State? Ef Abs'lom ain't 'feared o' Tim's rifle, what's he goin' ter
keer fur the pore jedge with nare weepon but his leetle contempt o'
court--ter jail Abs'lom, ef he kin make out ter ketch him!”
She leaned against the swaying hoop of the cover of the wagon and burst
into tears. “Oh, none o' ye 'll do nuthin' fur me!” she exclaimed, in
frantic reproach. “Nuthin'!”
“Ye talk like 'twar we-uns ez made up sech foolishness ez _habeas
corpus_ out'n our own heads,” said Timothy. “I 'ain't never looked ter
the law fur pertection. Hyar's the pertecter.” He touched the trigger of
his rifle and glanced reassuringly at his sister as he sat beside her on
the plank laid as a seat from side to side of the wagon.
She calmed herself for a moment; then suddenly looked aghast at the
rifle, and with some occult and hideous thought, burst anew into tears.
“Waal, sir,” exclaimed Stephen, outdone, “what with all this hyar daily
weepin' an' nightly mournin', I 'ain't got spunk enough lef ter stan'
up agin the leetlest Kittredge a-goin'. I ain't man enough ter sight a
rifle. Kittredges kin kem enny time an' take my hide, horns, an' tallow
ef they air minded so ter do.”
“I 'lowed I hearn suthin' a-gallopin' down the road,” said Tim,
abruptly.
Her tears suddenly ceased. She clutched the baby closer, and turned
and lifted the flap of the white curtain at the back of the wagon,
and looked out with a wild and terror-stricken eye. The red clay road
stretched curveless, a long way visible and vacant. The black bare trees
stood shivering in the chilly blast on either side; among them was an
occasional clump of funereal cedars. Away off the brown wooded hills
rose; snow lay in thin crust-like patches here and there, and again the
earth wore the pallid gray of the crab-grass or the ochreous red of the
gully-washed clay.
“I don't see nuthin',” she said, in the bated voice of affrighted
suspense.
While she still looked out flakes suddenly began to fly, hardly falling
at first, but poised tentatively, fluctuating athwart the scene,
presently thickening, quickening, obscuring it all, isolating the woods
with an added sense of solitude since the sight of the world and
the sound of it were so speedily annulled. Even the creak of the
wagon-wheels was muffled. Through the semicircular aperture in the front
of the wagon-cover the horns of the oxen were dimly seen amidst the
serried flakes; the snow whitened the backs of the beasts and added its
burden to their yoke. Once as they jogged on she fancied again that she
heard hoof-beats--this time a long way ahead, thundering over a little
bridge high above a swirling torrent, that reverberated with a hollow
tone to the faintest footfall. “Jes somebody ez hev passed we-uns,
takin' the short-cut by the bridle-path,” she ruminated. No pursuer,
evidently.
Everything was deeply submerged in the snow before they reached the dark
little cabin nestling in the Cove. Motionless and dreary it was; not
even a blue and gauzy wreath curled out of the chimney, for the fire had
died on the hearth in their absence. No living creature was to be seen.
The fowls were huddled together in the hen-house, and the dogs had
accompanied the family to town, trotting beneath the wagon with lolling
tongues and smoking breath; when they nimbly climbed the fence their
circular footprints were the first traces to mar the level expanse of
the door-yard. The bare limbs of the trees were laden; the cedars bore
great flower-like tufts amidst the interlacing fibrous foliage. The
eaves were heavily thatched; the drifts lay in the fence corners.
Everything was covered except, indeed, one side of the fodder-stack that
stood close to the barn. Evelina, going out to milk the cow, gazed at it
for a moment in surprise. The snow had slipped down from it, and lay
in rolls and piles about the base, intermixed with the sere husks and
blades that seemed torn out of the great cone. “Waal, sir, Spot mus' hev
been hongry fur true, ter kem a-foragin' this wise. Looks ez ef she hev
been fairly a-burrowin.”
She turned and glanced over her shoulder at tracks in the
snow--shapeless holes, and filling fast--which she did not doubt were
the footprints of the big red cow, standing half in and half out of the
wide door, slowly chewing her cud, her breath visibly curling out on
the chill air, her great lips opening to emit a muttered low. She moved
forward suddenly into the shelter as Evelina started anew toward it,
holding the piggin in one hand and clasping the baby in the other arm.
[Illustration: Stole noiselessly in the soft snow 145]
Evelina noted the sound of her brothers' two axes, busy at the
wood-pile, their regular cleavage splitting the air with a sharp stroke
and bringing a crystalline shivering echo from the icy mountain. She did
not see the crouching figure that came cautiously burrowing out from
the stack. Absalom rose to his full height, looking keenly about him the
while, and stole noiselessly in the soft snow to the stable, and peered
in through a crevice in the wall.
Evelina had placed the piggin upon the straw-covered ground, and stood
among the horned cattle and the huddling sheep, her soft melancholy face
half shaded by the red shawl thrown over her head and shoulders. A tress
of her brown hair escaped and curled about her white neck, and hung down
over the bosom of her dark-blue homespun dress. Against her shoulder the
dun-colored cow rubbed her horned head. The baby was in a pensive
mood, and scarcely babbled. The reflection of the snow was on his
face, heightening the exquisite purity of the tints of his infantile
complexion. His gentle, fawn-like eyes were full of soft and lustrous
languors. His long lashes drooped over them now, and again were lifted.
His short down of yellow hair glimmered golden against the red shawl
over his mother's shoulders.