“An’ ye tired his patience out,—the critter hed mo’ ’n I gin him credit
fur,—an’ druv him off at last through wantin’ him ter be otherwise. An’
now folks ’low ez him an’ Elviry Crosby air a-goin’ ter marry. I’ll be
bound she don’t harry him none ’bout’n his ways, ’kase her mother tole
me ez she air mighty nigh a idjit ’bout’n him, an’ hev turned off Peter
Rood, who she hed promised ter marry, though the weddin’ day hed been
set, an’ Pete air wuth forty sech ez Mink.”
Alethea turned away abruptly to her work, and as she lightly tossed the
shuttle to and fro she heard, amidst the creaking of the treadle and the
thumping of the batten, her step-mother’s persistent voice droning on:—
“An’ so ye hed yer say, an’ done yer preachin’, an’ he profited by it. I
reckon he ’lowed ef ye jawed that-a-way afore ye war married, thar war
no yearthly tellin’ what ye _could_ say arterward. An’ now,” rising to
the dramatic, “hyar kems along Ben Doaks, powerful peart an’ good enough
ter satisfy ennybody; perlite, an’ saaft-spoken, an’ good-lookin’, an’
respected by all, an’ ready ter marry ye ter-morrer, ef ye’ll say the
word. He owns cattle-critters”—
“An’ sheep,” put in an unexpected voice. A dawdling young woman, with
a shallow blue eye and a pretty, inane soft face, had stepped into the
back door, and heard the last words of the monologue which apparently had
been often enough repeated to admit of no doubt as to its tenor. She had
a slatternly, ill-adjusted look, and a snuff-brush in the corner of her
mouth.
“An’ herds cattle in the summer season,” said Mrs. Sayles.
“He hev a good name ’mongst the cattle-owners,” observed the young woman,
her daughter-in-law.
“An’ hev bought him right smart land,” added Mrs. Sayles.
“Down in Piomingo Cove! not h’isted up on the side o’ the mounting, like
we-uns!” exclaimed the young woman, with more enthusiasm than one would
have believed possible from the flaccid indifference of her manner.
“An’ he put in all the fair weather las’ winter a-raisin’ him a house,”
Mrs. Sayles pursued.
“An’ he ’lowed ter me ez every log war hefted, an’ every pat o’ clay war
daubed on the chinkin’, with the thought o’ Lethe!” cried the other.
“He hev been plantin’ round thar some, a’ready,” said the old woman.
“Corn, pumpkins, wheat, an’ terbacco,” supplemented the daughter-in-law.
“An’ he hev got him some bee-gums,—I never hearn how many bees,” said
Mrs. Sayles.
“Down in Piomingo Cove!” the climax of worldly prosperity.
“Laws-a-massy!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles, with a freshened realization of
despair. “Lethe ain’t never goin’ ter live in that house! I dunno what
ails the gal! She takes a notion ez she likes a man with sech ways ez she
can’t abide, an’ she quar’ls with him mornin’ an’ evenin’. An’ then when
a feller kems along, with all sort’n good ways ez she likes, she don’t
like _him_! Gals never acted similar whenst I war young. I ’low it mus’
be the wiles o’ Satan on the onruly generation.”
“Lethe ’pears ter think the Lord hev app’inted the rocky way,” said the
other. “She be always a-doin’ of what’s the hardest. An’ she can’t quit
nowhar this side o’ nuthin’! Ef ever she’s condemned ter Torment she’ll
kerry a leetle kindlin’ along, fur fear the fire won’t be het up hot
enough ter burn her fur her sins.”
She was silent during a momentary activity of the snuff-brush.
“But ef _I_ war you-uns, Lethe, an’ hed the chance o’ livin’ in my own
house all ter myself”—she began anew.
“Plenty o’ elbow-room,” interrupted Mrs. Sayles; “not all jammed
tergether, like we-uns hyar.”
Alethea, aware of her lack of logic, made an effort to effect a diversion.
“I never hearn o’ folks a-grudgin’ a gal house-room, an’ wantin’ her ter
go off an’ marry fur a place ter bide,” she said, pausing in her weaving.
Mrs. Sayles, who piqued herself, not without some reason, on her kindness
to her step-daughter, having her prosaic welfare, at least, at heart,
retorted in righteous wrath. “An’ nobody ain’t never said no sech word,”
she declared, with amplest negation. “Grudgin’ ye house-room,—shucks!”
“One less wouldn’t be no improve_mint_ ter we-uns, Lethe,” said the
daughter-in-law. “We air jes’ like a hen settin’ on forty aigs: she kin
kiver ’em ez well ez thirty-nine.”
“But I ain’t got no medjure o’ patience with this latter-day
foolishness!” said Mrs. Sayles, tartly. “Whenst I war young, gals married
thar fust chance,—mought hev been afeard they’d never git another,” she
added, impersonally, that others might profit by this contingency. “An’ I
don’t keer much nohow fur these hyar lonesome single wimmen. Ye never kin
git folks ter b’lieve ez they ever _hed_ enny chance.”
“Laws-a-massy, Lethe,” the daughter-in-law reassured her, still vaguely
serene, “I ain’t wantin’ ter git shet o’ ye, nohow. Ye hev tuk mo’ keer
o’ my chill’n than I hev, an’ holped me powerful. It’s well ye done it,
too, fur Jacob Jessup ain’t sech ez kin content me with Wild-Cat Hollow.
I war raised in the cove!”
“Thar’s L’onidas now, axin’ fur suthin’ ter eat,” said the uncompromising
Alethea, whose voice was the slogan of duty.
The loom occupied a full third of the space on the little porch; two or
three rickety chairs stood there, besides; a yoke hung against the wall;
the spinning-wheel was shadowed by the jack-bean vines, whose delicate
lilac blooms embellished the little cabin, clambering to its roof; on
the floor were several splint baskets. A man was languidly filling them
with peaches, which he brought in a wheel-barrow from the trees farther
down on the slope. He was tall and stalwart, but his beard was gray,
and he had assumed the manner and all the exemptions of extreme age;
occasionally he did a little job like this with an air of laborious
precision. He was accompanied both in going and coming by his step-son’s
daughter, a tow-headed, six-year-old girl, and a gaunt yellow dog. The
little girl’s voice, dictatorial and shrill, was on the air continuously,
broken only by the low, acquiescent refrain of the old man’s replies,
carefully adjusted to meet her propositions. The dog paced silently and
discreetly along, his appreciation of the placid pleasure of the occasion
plainly manifested in his quiet demeanor and his slightly wagging tail.
His decorum suffered a lapse when, as they came close to the porch, he
observed Leonidas issue from the door,—a small boy of four, a plump
little caricature of a man, in blue cotton trousers, an unbleached cotton
shirt, and a laughably small pair of knitted suspenders. He held in
his hand a piece of fat meat several inches square, considered in the
mountains peculiarly wholesome for small boys, and a reliable assistant
in “gittin’ yer growth.”
Tige paused not for reflection. He sprang upon the porch, capering
gleefully about, and uttering shrill yelps of discovery with much his
triumphant manner in treeing a coon. Leonidas shared the common human
weakness of overestimating one’s own size. He thought to hold the booty
out of Tige’s reach, and extended his arm at full length, whereupon the
dog, with an elastic bound and extreme nicety of aim, caught it and
swallowed it at a single gulp. Leonidas winked very fast; then, realizing
his bereavement, burst into noisy tears. Tige’s facetiousness had a
discordantly sudden contrast in the serious howl he emitted as he was
kicked off the porch by the child’s father. This was an unkempt young
fellow just emerging from the shed-room. He had a red face and swollen
eyes, and there were various drowsy intimations in his manner that he
was just roused from sleep. No natural slumber, one might have judged;
the odor of whiskey still hung about him, and he walked with an unsteady
gait to the end of the porch and sat down on the edge of the floor, his
feet dangling over the ground. Tige, who had sought refuge beneath the
house, and was giving vent to sundry sobbing wheezes, thrust his head out
to lick his master’s boots. Upon this mollifying demonstration, the man
looked down with the lenient expression of one who loves dogs. “What ails
ye, then,” he reasoned, “ter be sech a fool as ter ’low ye kin be let ter
rob a child the size o’ L’onidas thar?”
And forthwith the mercurial Tige came out, cheerful as before.
In the limited interval when Leonidas—who had been supplied with another
piece of meat, but still wept aloud with callow persistence because of
the affronts offered by Tige—was fain to pause for breath, and between
the alternate creaking of the treadle of the loom and the thumping of the
batten, the man’s ear caught that unwonted stir in the air, the sound of
consecutive rifle-shots.
“Look-a-hyar,” he cried, springing to his feet, “what’s that a-goin’ on
down in the cove? Lethe, stop trompin’ on that thar n’isy treadle, so ez
I kin listen! Quit yellin’, ye catamount!” with a vengeful glance at the
small boy.
But the grief of Leonidas was imperative, and he abated nothing.
Jacob Jessup stood for an instant baffled. Then suddenly he put both
hands to his mouth, and roused all the echoes of Wild-Cat Hollow with a
ringing halloo.
“Who be ye a-hollerin’ at?” asked his mother from her nook in the chimney
corner.
“I ’lowed I viewed a man up yander ’mongst them woods,—mought be one o’
the herders.”
Alethea’s foot paused on the treadle. Her uplifted hand stayed the
batten, the other held the shuttle motionless. She turned her head and
with a sudden rich flush on her cheek and a deep light in her lifted
eyes looked up toward the forests that rose in vast array upon the steep
slopes of the ridge until they touched the sky. Accustomed to the dusky
shadows of their long avenues, she discerned a mounted figure in their
midst. There was a tense moment of suspense. The man had wheeled his
horse on hearing the halloo. He seemed to hesitate; then in lieu of
response he took his way down the hill toward the cabin. The trees were
fewer on the edge of the clearing. Before he drew rein by the rail fence
she had turned back to the loom, and once more the shuttle winged its
short, clumsy flights, like a fledgeling bird, from one side to the
other, and the treadle creaked, and the batten thumped, and she spared
not an instant from her work.
For it was only Ben Doaks dismounting, glad of a pretext, throwing the
reins over a projecting rail of the fence, and tramping up to the house.
“Howdy,” he observed comprehensively. And the family, meditatively eying
him, responded, “Howdy.”
“Keep yer health, Ben?” the old woman demanded. She had come to the door,
and took a gourd of water from a pail which was on a shelf without. She
drank leisurely, and tossed the surplus water from the gourd across
the porch, where it spattered the half-grown pullet, which shunted off
suddenly with a loud, shocked exclamation, as if it sported half a score
of ruffled petticoats.
“Yes’m,” drawled Ben, seating himself on the edge of the porch, near
Jacob, “I keeps toler’ble well.”
“I dunno how ye do it,—livin’ off’n what ye cooks yerse’f.” She
manifested a truly mundane interest in the eligible young man. She did
not return to her chair by the fireside, but sat down on the doorstep.
“I’d look ter be p’isoned ef I hed ter live on yer cookin’.”
“Waal, I reckon _ye_ couldn’t put up with it right handy, seem’ the
sorter table ye set out hyar.”
Was the old woman more than human, to be untouched by this sincere
tribute?
“Ye oughter kem down hyar oftener ye do, Ben, an’ bide ter meals,” she
said, her spectacles turned upon him with a certain grave luminosity.
“We’ll make ye powerful welcome ter sech vittles ez we hev got. Ye ain’t
been hyar fur a right smart time.”
“I know that, but somehows I never kin feel right welcome comin’ so
often,” said Ben. He had leaned back against the post of the porch. He
could look, without moving, into Alethea’s grave, absorbed face as she
worked.
“’Count o’ Lethe? Shucks! thar ain’t but one fool hyar. Mought kem ter
see the rest o’ we-uns.”
Alethea’s face flushed. Ben Doaks, dismayed to be the indirect occasion
of her anger, and secretly affronted by the breach of decorum which he
considered involved in this open mention of his bootless suit, hastened
to change the subject. “Did ye hev a word ter say ter me, Jacob?” he
asked. “Ye ’lowed, day ’fore yestiddy, ye wanted ter sell yer steer.”
There was now no sound from the cove. The burnished glisters of the
sunshine hung above it, holding in suspension a gauzy haze, through which
the purple mountains were glamourous and darkly vague. Jacob, his senses
yet in thrall, could hardly recall the question he had desired to ask
concerning the rifle-shots that had trivially jarred its perfect serenity.
“Yes, yes,” he said hastily. “Buck, ye know,” with the manner of
introduction. “Yander he be.” He pointed to a gaunt dun-colored ox with
long horns and a joyless mien, standing within a few feet of a rude
trough which the spring branch kept supplied.
“Jacob,” said Alethea, turning her head with a knitted brow, “ef ye sell
Buck, how air we goin’ ter plough our craps? How air we goin’ ter live
along?”
“Laws-a-massy!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles. “I ain’t s’prised none ef the man
ez marries Lethe at last will find out he hev got a turrible meddler. She
jes’ ups an’ puts inter her elders’ affairs ez brash ez ef hern war the
only brains in the fambly. Jacob’s a-savin’ ter buy a horse, child. Yer
dad ’lowed Jacob mought use his jedgmint ’bout all the crappin’, bein’ ez
yer dad’s old an’ ain’t long fur this worl’. So Jacob hev determinated
ter buy a horse. Who wants ter work a steer when they ken hev a horse?”
Doaks looked intently at Alethea, loyally eager to range himself on her
side. She was oblivious of his presence now; every faculty was on the
alert in her single-handed contest against the family.
“Whar’s the money he hev saved?” she demanded.
Her step-brother seemed frowzier than ever, as he lifted his eyebrows in
vain cogitation for an answer.
“Ye shet up,” he said, in triumphant substitution; “ye ain’t no kin ter
me.”
Alethea, all lacking in the bland and mollifying feminine influences that
subtly work their ends in seeming submission, bluntly spoke her inmost
thought:
“Ez long ez thar’s a moonshine still a-runnin’ somewhar round Piomingo
Cove, Jacob ain’t goin’ ter save no money.”
“Thar ain’t no still round hyar ez I knows on,” said Doaks, in surprise.
“Over yander in Eskaqua Cove thar air a bonded still, I know.”
“That bonded still hev ter sell wholesale, hevin’ no license otherwise,”
she retorted, “an’ Jacob hain’t saved enough yit ter buy by the five
gallon. An’ though he may ’pear sober ter you-uns, he don’t ter me.”
Jacob bore her scathing glance with an admirable equanimity.
“Ye shet up, Lethe; ye dunno nuthin’ ’bout stills, bonded or no.
Look-a-hyar, Ben, don’t ye want ter buy Buck? See him thar?”
“I don’t want him,” said Ben.
Jacob turned fiercely on Alethea. “Whyn’t ye hold yer jaw, ef ye know
how; ye have done spiled my trade. Look-a-hyar, Ben,” he said alluringly,
“it’s this hyar steer,”—there was but one,—“this hyar steer; he’s wuth
money. I tell ye,” he vociferated, with a drunken wag of his head,
“Buck’s a good steer. I dunno ef I kin git my cornsent ter trade Buck
off, no-ways. Buck’s plumb like a member o’ the fambly. I tell ye we-uns
fairly dote on Buck.”
“Waal, I don’t want him. Older ’n enny of ye, ain’t he?” drawled Ben. He
was not a dull fellow, and he had taken his cue. He would decry the ox
and forego his bargain, a consciously hopeless sacrifice to his affection.
Jacob straightened himself with an effort, and stared at his interlocutor.
“Who? Buck? Why, Buck ain’t much older than L’onidas thar.” He waved
his hand toward the boy, who had perched on the bench of the loom
beside Alethea. Now and then she patted his shoulder, which effort at
consolation he received with a distinct crescendo; he had begun to relish
the sound of his vocal performance, evidently attempting new and bizarre
effects.
“L’onidas air about four year old, ain’t he, Mis’ Jessup?” Doaks asked
of the young matron, who seemed placidly regardless how the negotiation
should terminate.
“I b’lieve he’s ’bout four,” she said, without animation.
“Waal, he be toler’ble bouncin’ fur that,” said Doaks, looking with the
eye of speculation at the boy, as if he were about to offer a bid for
Leonidas, “but I kin see a heap o’ diff’unce ’twixt his size an’ Buck’s.”
The drunken man turned and stared at the diminutive person on the bench.
“Waal,” he said in a low-spirited way, as if he must yield the point, “I
never knowed ye wanted a steer o’ that size. Wouldn’t be much use ter ye.
Our’n ain’t.”
“He ’pears sorter jubious in his temper. Does he hook?”
“Who? Buck?”—with an air of infinite amazement. “Why, Buck’s ez saaft ez
L’onidas thar.”
As Leonidas was just now extremely loud, the comparison was hardly
felicitous.
“I don’t want no work-ox, nohow,” said Doaks. “I want cattle ter fatten.”
“Jes’ try Buck. He’ll lay on fat fur ev’y ear o’ corn fedded him. Ye
dunno Buck. He hain’t laid on much yit, ’kase, ye see,”—Jessup’s voice
took a confidential intonation, although it was not lowered because of
the roaring Leonidas,—“we-uns ain’t hed much corn ter feed ter Buck,
bein’ back’ard las’ year. The drought cotched our late corn, an’ so Buck,
though he worked it, he never got none sca’cely. An’ that’s why he ain’t
no fatter ’n he be.”
Logical of Buck, but it availed him as little as the logic of misfortunes
profits the rest of the world.
Alethea had risen and turned half round, leaning against the great clumsy
frame of the loom. Her posture displayed her fine height; her supple
figure was slight, as became her age, but with a suggestion of latent
strength in every curve. There was something strangely inconsistent in
the searching, serious expression of her grave brown eyes and the lavish
endowment of her beauty, which seemed as a thing apart from her. Perhaps
only Ben Doaks noted, or rather felt in a vague, unconscious way, the
fascination of its detail: the lustre of her dense yellow hair showing
against the brown wall, where a string of red peppers hung, heightening
the effect; the glimpse of her white throat under the saffron kerchief;
the lithe grace of her figure, about which her sober-hued dress fell in
straight folds. To the home-folks she gave other subjects to contemplate.
“Naw,” she drawled, in her soft, low voice, whose intonation only
suggested sarcasm, “we didn’t plant much o’ nuthin’ las’ year,—hed no
seed sca’cely, an’ nuthin’ ter trade fur ’em. The plenties’ o’ ennythin’
roun’ hyar-abouts war bresh whiskey, an’ ez Buck don’t drink it he ain’t
no fatter ’n he be.”
“Waal,” said Doaks, feeling all the discomforts incident to witnessing a
family row, incompetent to participate by reason of non-membership, “I
’lowed the mountings hed in an’ about done with moonshinin’, cornsiderin’
the way the raiders kep’ up with the distillers. It’s agin the law, ye
know.”
“I ain’t a-keerin’ fur the law,” said Alethea loftily. “The law air jes’
the men’s foolishness, an’ they air a-changin’ of it forever till ’tain’t
got no constancy. Ef I war minded ter break it I’d feel no hendrance in
the sperit.”
Her eyes met his. He looked vaguely away. Certainly there was no
reasoning on this basis.
“’Tain’t right,” she said suddenly. “Jacob sleeps an’ drinks his time
away, an’ don’t do his sheer o’ the work. I done _all_ the ploughin’ this
year,—me an’ Buck,—an’ I ain’t one o’ the kind ez puts up with sech. I
ain’t a Injun woman, like them at Quallatown. Pete Rood,—he hev been over
thar,—he ’lows the wimmen do _all_ the crappin’ while the men go huntin’.
I’ll kerry my e-end o’ the log, but when the t’other e-end draps ’pears
ter me I oughter drap mine.”
“What ye goin’ ter do, Lethe?” said the old woman. “Goin’ ter take ter
idlin’ an’ drinkin’ bresh whiskey, too?”
She laughed, but she sneered as well.
Alethea, all unmoved by her ridicule, drawled calmly on: “I dunno nuthin’
’bout bresh whiskey, an’ I ain’t idled none, ez the rest o’ you-uns kin
see; but ef Jacob don’t do his stent nex’ year, thar’ll be less corn hyar
than this.”
It was hard for Doaks to refrain from telling her that there was a home
ready for her, and one to share it who would work for both. Only futility
restrained him. He flushed to the roots of his light brown hair, and as
a resource he drew out a clasp-knife and absently whittled a chip as he
listened.
“Waal, wimmen hev ter holp men along with thar work wunst in a while,”
said Mrs. Sayles patronizingly. “Ye’ll find that out, child, whenst ye
git married.”
“Ef I war married,” said Alethea, severely contemplating the
possibility,—and Doaks felt a vague thrill of jealousy,—“I’d do his work
ef he war ailin’ ennywise, but not ter leave him in the enjyement o’
bresh whiskey.”
“Ye shet up, Lethe,” said Jacob, nettled. “Ye ain’t no kin ter me,—jes’
a step-sister,—an’ ye ain’t got no right ter jow at me. Ye dunno nuthin’
’bout bresh whiskey. Ye dunno whar it’s made nor who makes it.”
“Ef I did”—she began abruptly.
He looked up at her with a sober dismay on his face.
“Don’t go ter ’lowin’ ye’d gin the word ter the revenuers?” he said.
Mrs. Sayles dropped her knitting in her lap.
“Look-a-hyar, Lethe,” she exclaimed, “it’s ez much ez yer life’s wuth ter
say them words!”
“I ain’t said ’em,” declared Alethea. She looked vaguely away with absent
eyes, disregarding Jacob’s growling defense of himself, which consisted
in good measure of animadversions on people who faulted their elders and
gals who couldn’t hold their tongues. Suddenly she stepped from the porch.
“Whar be ye goin’, Lethe?” demanded Mrs. Sayles, ruthlessly interrupting
Jacob’s monologue.
“Ter hunt up that thar lam’,” replied Alethea calmly, as if nothing else
had been under discussion. “I ain’t seen nuthin’ of it ter-day, an’ some
o’ the chill’n—I b’lieve ’twar Joe—’lowed its dam war down yander nigh
Boke’s spring yestiddy, actin’ sorter cur’ous, an’ I reckon suthin’ ’s
happened ter it.”
Doaks looked after her as she went, tempted to follow. She took her way
down the path beside the zigzag rail-fence. All the corners were rank
with wild flowers, vines and bushes, among which her golden head showed
from time to time as in a wreath. She was soon without the limits of
Wild-Cat Hollow. More than once she paused as she went, holding her
hands above her eyes, and looking at the vast array of mountains on
every side. A foreign land to her, removed even from vague speculation;
she only saw how those august summits lifted themselves into the sky,
how the clouds, weary-winged, were fain to rest upon them. There was a
vague blurring at the horizon-line, for a shower was succeeded by mist.
The woods intervened presently; the long stretches of the majestic
avenues lay before her, all singularly open, cleared of undergrowth
by the fiery besom of the annual conflagration. It was very silent;
once only she heard the shrill trilling of a tree-frog; and once the
insistent clamor of a locust broke out close at hand, vibrating louder
and louder and dying away, to be caught up antiphonally in the distance.
Often she noted the lightning-scathed trees, the fated of the forest,
writhen and blanched and spectral among their flourishing kindred. There
were presently visible at the end of the long leafy vista other dead
trees: their blight was more prosaic; they stood girdled and white in
an abandoned field that lay below the slope on which she had paused,
and near the base of the mountain. A broken rotting rail-fence still
encircled it. Blackberry bushes, broom-sedge, a tangle of weeds, were a
travesty of its crops. A fox, a swift-scudding tawny streak, sped across
it as she looked. Hard by there was a deserted hut: the doors were open,
showing the dark voids within; the batten shutters flapped with every
changing whim of the winds. Fine sport they had often had, these riotous
mountain sprites, shrieking down the chimney to affright the loneliness;
then falling to sobs and sighs to mock the voices of those who had known
sorrow here and perhaps shed tears; sometimes wrapping themselves in snow
as in a garment, and reeling in fantastic whirls through the forlorn and
empty place; sometimes twitting the gaunt timbers with their infirmities,
and one wild night wrenching off half a dozen clapboards from the roof
and scattering them about the door. Thus the moon might look in, seeing
no more those whose eyes had once met its beam, and even the sunlight
had melancholy intimations when it shone on the forsaken hearth-stone.
A screech-owl had found refuge among the rafters, and Alethea heard its
quavering scream ending in a low, sinister chuckle. There was a barn near
at hand,—a structure of undaubed, unhewn logs, with a wide open pass-way
below the loft to shelter wagons and farm implements; it seemed in better
repair than the house. The amber sky above the dark woods had deepened to
orange, to crimson; the waning light suffused the waters of the spring
branch which flowed close by the barn, the willows leaning to it, the
ferns laving in it. The place was incredibly solitary and mournful with
the persistent spectacle of the deserted home, suggestive of collapsed
energies, of the defeated scheme of some simple humanity.
A faint bleat rose suddenly. Alethea turned quickly. Amongst a patch of
briers she caught a glimpse of something white; another glance,—it was
the ewe, quietly nibbling the grass.
Alethea had no intention of moving softly, but her skirts brushing
through the weeds made hardly a sound. Her light, sure step scarcely
stirred a leaf. The ewe saw her presently, and paused in feeding. She
had been making the best of her woes, remaining near her lamb, which had
fallen into a sink-hole, sustained by the earth, gravel and banks of
leaves held in the mouth of the cavity. Its leg was broken, and thus,
although the sheep could venture to it, the lamb could not follow to the
vantage-ground above. Seeing that succor was at hand, the sheep lost all
patience and calmness, and ran about Alethea in a distracting fashion,
bleating, till the lamb, roused to a renewed sense of its calamities,
bleated piteously too. As it lay down in the cavity upon the dead leaves,
it had a strangely important look upon its face, appreciating how much
stir it was making in the world for one of its size. Alethea noticed
this, albeit she was too self-absorbed at the moment. These treacherous
hopper-shaped sink-holes are of indefinite depth, and are often the
mouths of caves. To reach the lamb she must needs venture half across the
cavity. She stepped cautiously down the debris, holding fast the while to
the branches of an elder-bush growing on its verge. She felt the earth
sinking beneath her feet. The sheep, which had jumped in too, sprang
hastily out. Alethea had a dizzying realization of insecurity. She caught
the lamb up in one arm, then stepped upon the sinking mass and struggled
up the side of the aperture, as with a great gulp the leaves and earth
were swallowed into the cavity. She looked down with that sickening sense
of a sheer escape, still holding the lamb in one arm; the other hand
readjusted the heavy masses of her golden hair, and the saffron kerchief
about the neck of her brown dress. The sheep, one anxiety removed, was
the prey of another, and pressed close to Alethea, with outstretched head
and all the fears of kidnapping in her pleading eyes.
Alethea waited for a moment to rest. Then as she glanced over her
shoulder her heart seemed to stand still, her brain reeled, and but for
her acute consciousness she would have thought she must be dreaming.
The clearing lay there all as it was a moment before: the deserted
buildings, the weed-grown fields, the rotting rail fence; the woods
dark about it, the sky red above it. Around and around the old barn, in
a silent circuit, three men were solemnly tramping in single file. She
stood staring at them with dilated eyes, all the mystic traditions of
supernatural manifestations uppermost in her mind. Once more the owl’s
scream rent the brooding stillness. How far that low, derisive chuckle
echoed! A star, melancholy, solitary, was in the pensive sky. The men’s
faces were grave,—once, twice, thrice, they made the round. Then they
stood together in the open space beneath the loft, and consulted in
whispers.
One suddenly spoke aloud.
“Oh, Tobe!” he called.
“_Tobe!_” called the echoes.
There was no answer. All three looked up wistfully. Then they again
conferred together in a low tone.
“Oh, Tobias!” cried the spokesman in a voice of entreaty.
“_Tobias!_” pleaded the plaintive echoes.
Still there was no answer. The owl screamed suddenly in its weird,
shrill tones. It had flown out from among the rafters and perched on
the smokeless chimney of the hut. Then its uncanny laughter filled the
interval.
Once more the men whispered anxiously to each other. One of them, a tall,
ungainly, red-haired fellow, seemed to have evolved a solution of the
problem which had baffled them.
“Mister Winkeye!” he exclaimed, with vociferous confidence.
The echoes were forestalled. A sneeze rang out abruptly from the loft of
the deserted old barn,—a sneeze resonant, artificial, grotesque enough to
set the blades below to roaring with delighted laughter.
“He mus’ hev his joke. _Mister Winkeye_ air a mighty jokified old man,”
declared the red-haired fellow.
They made no effort to hold further communication with the sneezer in the
loft. They hastily placed a burly jug in the centre of the space below,
and laid a silver half-dollar upon the cob that served as stopper. The
coin looked extremely small in this juxtaposition. There may be people
elsewhere who would be glad of a silver coin of that size capable of
filling so disproportionately large a jug. Then they ran off fleetly out
of the clearing and into the woods, and Alethea could hear the brush
crackling as they dashed through it on the slopes below.
She was still pale and tremulous, but no longer doubts beset her. She
understood the wiles of the illicit distiller, pursued so closely by the
artifices of the raiders that he was prone to distrust the very consumers
of his brush whiskey. They never saw his face, they knew not even his
name. They had no faint suspicion where his still was hidden. They were
not even dangerous as unwilling witnesses, should they be caught with
the illicit liquor in their hands. The story that they had left a jug
and a half-dollar in a deserted barn, and found the jug filled and the
coin vanished, would inculpate no one. From the loft the distiller or
his emissary could see and recognize them as they came. Alethea, having
crept down the slope amongst the briers in search of the lamb, had been
concealed from him. She was seized instantly by the desire to get away
before he should appear. She coveted the knowledge of no such dangerous
secret. She walked boldly out from the leafy covert, that he might see
her in the clearing and delay till she was gone.
The lamb was bleating faintly in her arms; the sheep pressed close to her
side, nudging her elbow with an insistent nozzle. The last flush of the
day was on her shining hair and her grave, earnest face. The path led
her near the barn. She hesitated, stopped, and drew back hastily. A man
was swinging himself alertly down from the loft. He caught up the coin,
slipped it into his pocket, and lifted the jug with the other hand. The
next moment he dropped it suddenly, with a startled exclamation. His eyes
had met her eyes. There was a moment of suspense charged with mutual
recognition. Then she ran hastily by, never pausing till she was far away
in the deep obscurity of the woods.