That terrible isolation of identity, the burden of individuality which
every man must bear alone, is never so poignantly appreciated as when
some anguish falls on the solitary soul, while those who would wish to
share it are unconscious and others uncaring.
News, the worldling, was never a pioneer, and hangs aloof from the long
stretches of the wildernesses of the Great Smoky Mountains. It seemed
afterward to Alethea that she had lacked some normal faculty, to have
been so tranquilly uncognizant, so heedlessly placid, in the days that
ensued. The glimpse of the world vouchsafed to Wild-Cat Hollow was
silent, peaceful, steeped in the full, languorous sheen of the midsummer
sun. To look down upon the cove, with its wooded levels, its verdure,
its silver glint of waters, and its sheltering mountains, it might have
seemed only the scene of some serenest eclogue—especially one afternoon
when the red west flung roseate tints upon the strata clouds and the
delicate intervenient spaces of the pale blue heavens, and suffused the
solemn ranges and the quiet valley with a tender glamour. The voices
projected upon this mute placidity had a strident emphasis. There was
the occasional clamor of guinea-fowls about the barn, and some turkeys
were flying up to roost on the naked boughs of a dead tree, drawn in high
relief and sharp detail against the sky; they fluttered down often, with
heavy wings, and ungainly flappings, and discordant cries, in their
vain efforts to settle the question of precedence that harassed them.
The lowing of the homeward-bound cows had fugue-like communings with
their echoes. Alethea, going out to meet them, doubted within herself at
times whether they had crossed the mountain stream that coursed through
Wild-Cat Hollow. The blackberry brambles swayed full fruited above it;
in the lucid, golden-brown, gravelly depths a swift shadow darted,
turned, cleft the surface with a fin, and was gone. A great skeleton
tree, broken half-way, hollow long ago, stood on the bank, rotted by the
winter’s floods that ceaselessly washed it when the stream was high, and
bleached by the summer’s suns to a bone-like whiteness. A great ball of
foam, mysterious sport of the waters, caught in an eddy, was whirling
giddily. One could fancy a figure of some fine ethereal essence might
just have been veiled within it. The woods, dense, tangled with vines,
sombre with shadows, bore already the downcast look of night. Alethea
eyed them languidly as she came down to the lower fence, her piggin on
her head, one hand staying it, while the other gave surreptitious aid to
the efforts of L’onidas and Lucindy to take down the bars, as they piqued
themselves upon rendering her this stalwart service. Tige had come too,
and now and then he pawed and pranced about the calves, that were also
expectantly waiting at the opening of the inclosure. One of them who had
known him of yore only lifted his ears and fixed a remonstrant stare upon
him. But the other, young and of an infantile expression, ran nimbly from
him, and bleated plaintively, and pressed in between Alethea and the
children, in imminent danger of having his brains knocked out in the wild
handling of the bars.
“That’s enough,” she drawled presently, moderating their energies; “the
calf’ll git out ef ye take down enny mo’. The cow kin step over sech ez
be left.”
The faint clanging of cow-bells stirred the air. The little house on the
rise at one side was darkly brown against the irradiated mountains seen
in the narrow vista of the gap. The martins fluttered from the pendulous
gourds and circled about the chimneys, and were gone again. The sky
cast its bright gold about the Hollow, on the tow heads of the barefoot
children, and multiplied the shimmers in the swirls of the stream.
Alethea looked once more toward it, hearing again the far-off lowing. A
sudden movement attracted her eye. Against the great hollow whitened tree
a man was leaning, whittling a stick with a clasp-knife, and now and then
furtively eying her.
For a moment she did not move a muscle. The color surged into her face,
and receded, leaving it paler than before. A belated humming-bird, its
breast a glistening green, beat the air with its multiplied suggestions
of gauzy wings close to her golden head, and was gone like a flash.
The children babbled on. Tige was afraid of a stick which L’onidas had
brought to keep off the calf while the cow was milked, and he yelped
before he was struck, without prejudice to yelping afterward.
The man presently drew himself erect, closed his knife with a snap, and
walked up slowly toward the fence.
“Howdy?” he said, as he came.
She leaned one elbow on the rails, and with the other hand she held the
empty piggin. She only nodded in return.
He had an embarrassed, deprecatory manner. He was tall and lank,
and clumsy of gait. He had an indifferent, good-natured expression,
incongruous with the gleam of anxiety in his eye. His face was almost
covered by a long, straggling brown beard.
“What made ye run off so t’other night down yander ter Boke’s Spring? I
hed a word ter say ter ye.”
“I war sorry I seen ye.”
He fixed a keen look upon her.
“What fur?”
“I didn’t want ter know who ’twar a-moonshinin’,” she said.
“Waal, ye air the only one,” he declared.
He looked about him dubiously.
“I ain’t keerin’ none,” he added. “Me an’ yer mother war kin somehow; I
disremember how, edzac’ly—through the Scruggses, I reckon. Ef she war
alive she’d gin ye the word ez she air kin ter Sam Marvin, sure. Nobody
ain’t ’spicioned nuthin’ ’bout moonshinin’ but you-uns, ’cept them ez be
in it.”
He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the fence. The
clanking of the cow-bell was nearer. The little calf bleated, and thrust
its soft head over the bars.
“I wanted ter say a word ter ye,” he continued, still more ill at ease
because of her silence. “I seen ye comin’ along o’ all them chill’n,”
nodding at Leonidas and Lucinda, who seemed to deserve being accounted
more numerous than they were, having engaged in a wordy altercation over
the bars; the little fellow dragging them off to some special spot which
he had chosen, of occult advantage, while the girl, older and wiser,
insisted that they should lie handy where they were. Only Tige listened
to the conversation, slowly wagging his tail. “I ’lowed I couldn’t talk
ter ye ’thout bein’ hendered, but I reckon I’ll try. I’m kin ter ye,—that
be a true word. An’ I’m moonshinin’. Ye ain’t tole nobody ’bout seein’ me
an’ the jug thar in Boke’s barn?”
He fixed his eyes, eager with the query, upon her face.
She slowly shook her head in negation.
“An’ ye won’t, eh?”
He smiled beguilingly, showing his long, tobacco-stained teeth.
“Ef nobody axes me.”
His countenance fell suddenly.
“Look-a-hyar, Lethe Sayles, don’t ye fool with me, a-doublin’ on yer
words like a fox on his tracks,” he said roughly. Then, more temperately,
“I’m afeard o’ that very thing,—ef somebody axes ye.”
“’Tain’t likely,” said Alethea.
“I dunno,” he insisted, wagging his big head in doubtful pantomime. “I
want ye ter ’low ye won’t tell.”
“I don’t b’lieve in sech ez moonshinin’ an’ drinkin’ liquor.”
“What fur?” he demanded, with an air of being ready for argument.
“’Tain’t religion.”
“Shucks!” exclaimed Sam Marvin contemptuously. “D’ ye reckon ef ’twarn’t
religion I’d plant corn an’ raise my own damnation, an’ sit an’ bile
wrath, an’ still fury, an’ yearn Torment, by sech? Naw, sir! Ye oughter
go hear the rider read the Bible: every one o’ them disciples drunk low
wines in them days, an’ hed it at weddin’s an’ sech; the low wines is on
every page.”
Alethea was for a moment overborne by this argument.
Then, “’Tain’t right,” persisted the zealot of Wild-Cat Hollow.
“Will ye listen at the gal!” he exclaimed, in angry apostrophe. But
controlling himself, he added quietly, “Ye let older heads ’n yourn
jedge, Lethe. Yer brains ain’t ripened yit, an’ livin’ off in Wild-Cat
Hollow ye ain’t hed much chance ter see an’ l’arn. Yer elders knows bes’.
That’s what the Bible says.”
Down the shadowy vista of the path on the opposite side of the stream
the long horns and slowly nodding heads of the cows appeared. The little
calf frisked with nimble joy on legs that seemed hardly bovine in their
agility. Lucinda ran to bring the pail of bran, and Leonidas produced a
handful of salt in a small gourd. The moonshiner saw that his time was
short.
“What ails ye, ter think ’tain’t right, Lethe?” he asked.
“Look how good-fur-nuthin’ it makes Jacob Jessup, an’—an’ Mink Lorey, an’
all them boys in Piomingo Cove.”
“It’s thar own fault, not the good liquor’s. Look at me. I ain’t
good-fur-nuthin’. Ever see me drunk? How be I a-goin’ ter keer fur sech a
houseful ez we-uns hev got ’thout stillin’ the corn? Can’t sell the corn
’n the apples nuther, an’ can’t raise nuthin’ else on the side o’ the
mounting, an’ I’m too pore ter own lan’ in the cove.”
The cows were fording the stream. The water foamed about their flanks.
Their breath was sweet with the mountain grasses.
He looked at Alethea, suspiciously.
“Ye ain’t goin’ ter promise me ye won’t tell ef ye be axed?” he said,
with an air of finality.
In her heart the compact of secrecy was already secure. Somehow she
withheld the assurance. It was all wrong, she felt. And if in fear he
should desist, so much the safer for him, so much the better would the
community fare.
“I ain’t a-goin’ ter promise nuthin’,” she said, slowly, her lustrous
eyes full upon his face. “I ain’t goin’ ter do nuthin’ ter holp along
what ain’t right.”
“Waal, then, Lethe Sayles, ye jes’ ’member ez ye war warned,” he said, in
a low, vehement voice, between his set teeth, and coming up close to her.
“An’ ef ever we-uns air fund out an’ raided, we-uns will keep in mind ez
nobody knowed but you-uns; an’ whether we be dragged off ter jail an’
our still cut up an’ sech or no, ye won’t git off scot-free. Ye mark my
words. Ye air warned.”
She had shrunk from his glittering eyes and angry gestures. Nevertheless,
she struck back with ready sarcasm.
“Then, mebbe I won’t tell,” she said, in her soft drawl, “fur I be
toler’ble easy skeered.”
He stared at her in the gathering dusk; then turned, and took his way
across the mossy log that bridged the stream and down the path through
the woods.
For a moment she had an overwhelming impulse to call him back. Long
afterward she had cause to remember its urgency. Now she only leaned
upon the rail fence, even her golden hair dim in the closing shadows,
and gazed with uncomprehended wistfulness after him as he disappeared
down the path, and reappeared in a rift of the foliage, and once more
disappeared finally.
And here the cow’s great head was thrust over the bars, and L’onidas
was on hand in full force to engage in combat with the little calf,
and Lucindy was alert with the bucket of bran. All through the milking
Alethea was sensible of a yearning regret in her heart. And although
she had the testimony of good conscience and could say in full faith,
“’Tain’t right,” she was not consoled.
She lifted the pail of milk to her head, and as they went back to the log
cabin the moon projected their grotesque shadows as a vanguard, and for
all Leonidas ran he could not overtake the quaint little man that led the
way.
Stars were in the sky, aloof from the moon. A mocking-bird sang on an
elder-bush among the blossoms, fragrant and white; and from time to time,
as he joyously lifted his scintillating wings, the boughs seemed enriched
with some more radiant bloom. The rails of the fence had a subdued
glimmer,—the moonlight on the dew.
Her heart, with its regretful disquiet, was out of harmony with the
nocturnal peace of the scene; she had somehow an intimation of an
impending sorrow before she heard the sound of sobbing from the porch.
The vines that clambered about it were drawn upon the floor with every
leaf and tendril distinct. The log cabin was idealized in some sort with
the silver lustre of the moon, the glister of the dew, the song of the
bird, and the splendid suggestions of the benighted landscape; yet there
was the homely loom, the spinning-wheel and its shadow, the cat in the
doorway, with the dull illumination of the smouldering fire behind her,
eying a swift, volant shadow that slipped in and out noiselessly, and
perhaps was a bat. A group of figures stood in the tense attitudes of
listening surprise. But a girl had flung herself upon the bench of the
loom, now leaning against the frame and weeping aloud, and now sitting
erect and talking with broken volubility.
“Hyar be Elviry Crosby,” Mrs. Sayles said, as Alethea stepped upon the
porch and set the piggin on the shelf.
The visitor looked up, with her dark eyes glistening with tears. Her
face was pale in the moonbeams. She had short dark hair, thin and fine,
showing the shape of her delicate head, and lying in great soft rings
about her brow and neck. As she spoke, her quivering red lips exhibited
the small, regular white teeth. She was slight and about the medium
height, and habited in a yellowish dress, from which the moonlight did
not annul the idea of color.
“I ain’t got no gredge agin Lethe,” she said, gazing at her with a
certain intentness, “but I hev got my feelin’s, an’ I hev got my pride,
an’ I ain’t goin’ ter hev no jail-bird a-settin’ up ter me! I’m sorry
I ever seen him!” she declared, with a fresh burst of tears, throwing
herself back against the loom. “But ez Lethe never hed nobody else, _she_
mought put up with the raccoon ez he fetched me,—fur I won’t gin the
critter house-room, now.”
As Alethea gazed at her, amazed and uncomprehending, a sudden movement
on the loom caught her attention. About the clumsy beams a raccoon
was climbing nimbly, turning his eyes upon her, full of the peculiar
brightness of the night-roaming beast. She noticed his grin as he hung
above the group, as if he perceived in the situation humor of special
zest.
“I ain’t a-goin’ ter keep it!” cried Elvira. “All the kentry will be
tellin’, ennyhow, ez I hev kep’ company with a murderer.” A low, muffled
cry escaped from Alethea’s lips. “He kem a-makin’ up ter me till I went
an’ turned off Pete Rood, ez war mad ez hops. I can’t hender ’em from
knowin’ it. But I ain’t a-goin’ ter hev that thar spiteful leetle beast
a-grinnin’ at me ’bout’n it, like he war makin’ game o’ me fur bein’
sech a fool. I’d hev killed it, ’ceptin’ I ’lowed thar hed been enough
onnecessary killin’ along o’ Mink Lorey.”
“Elviry!” exclaimed Alethea, her voice so tense, so vibrant, so charged
with anguish, that, low as it was, it thrilled the stillness as a shriek
might hardly do, “what hev Reuben done?”
“Oh, ‘Reuben,’ ez ye calls him,” cried the other, sitting upright on the
bench of the loom, her dark eyes flashing and dry,—“yer fine Reuben tore
down old Griff’s mill, an’ drownded his nevy, Tad, an’ war put in jail,
an’ air goin’ ter be tried, an’ hung, I reckon. That’s what ‘Reuben’
done! He’s Mink by name an’ Mink by natur’—an’ oh! I wish I hed never
seen him.”
She once more leaned on the loom behind her, and bowed her head on her
hands.
“No!—no!” cried Alethea. She caught her breath in quick gasps; for one
moment she seemed losing consciousness. The mountains in the background,
the faint stars in the sky, the shadowy roof, the swaying vines, the
raccoon in their midst with his grotesque grin, were before her suddenly
as if she had just awakened. She had sunk into a chair.
“Ye kin call me a liar! So do!” cried Elvira, lifting her head defiantly.
“But he went hisself down ter the court-house an’ told it hisself, an’
wanted ter gin his gun an’ mare ef they’d let him off.” She laughed—a
dainty little laugh of scorn. “That’s what he ’lowed the idjit war wuth.
But my dad ’lows ez the law sets store on the idjit’s life same ez folks
ginerally.”
Alethea felt as if she were turning to stone. Was it her advice that had
led him into danger? Was it her fatal insistence that he should see the
right as it was revealed to her?
She sprang to her feet, the eager questions crowding to her lips.
“Ye shet up, Lethe!” said her step-mother, entertained by the unwonted
spectacle of Elvira’s dramatic grief, and not caring to hear again
the news of the tragedy already recited. As to Mink, he had only been
overtaken by the disasters which must have fallen upon him sooner or
later, and he was in many ways a good riddance. This phase was uppermost
in her mind when she said, “Ye see now what gals git fur goin’ agin thar
elders’ word. I’ll be bound, Elviry, ’twarn’t yer mother’s ch’ice fur ye
ter take Mink an’ gin Pete Rood the go-by.”
“That it warn’t!” cried the repentant Elvira, with a gush of tears. “I
wish I hed bided by her word! I reckon I war born lackin’! I hev been
sech a fool!”
Mrs. Sayles turned to look at Alethea and nod her head in triumphant
confirmation. Then she remarked consolingly, “Waal, waal, I reckon ye kin
toll Pete Rood back.”
“I dunno,” sobbed Elvira. “I met him yestiddy at the cross-roads in
Piomingo Cove, an’ he jes’ turned his head aside an’ walked by ’thout
nare word. I wish—oh, I wish I hed never seen that thar minkish Mink.”
“Waal,” said Mrs. Sayles, who was very human, and who, despite her
sympathy for Elvira, had a rankling recollection of her taunt for
Alethea’s paucity of the material for “keeping company,” “I hopes
Lethe’ll take warning’, an’ not fling away her good chance, fur the sake
o’ the wuthless, like Mink an’ sech.”
“Who be her good chance?” exclaimed Elvira, the jealousy nourished on
general principles checking her grief.
“Shucks, child! ye purtendin’ not ter know ez Ben Doaks hev mighty nigh
wore out his knee-pans a-beggin’ an’ a-prayin’ Lethe ter listen ter him!”
Elvira was meeker after this, and presently rose to go.
“I hed ter kem arter dark, else I couldn’t hev hed Sam an’ the mare,
bein’ ez she hev been workin’ in the field ter-day,” she remarked.
There was the mare dozing at the gate, and Sam, a boy with singularly
long legs and arms, looking something like an insect of the genus
_Tipula_, was waiting too. She mounted behind him, and together they rode
off in the moonlight, taking their way over the nearest ridge, and so out
of sight.
“Waal, waal, sir!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles, as she reseated herself on the
porch, with her knitting in her hand, “that thar Mink Lorey never hed
no jedgmint no-ways. He couldn’t hev tuk ch’ice of a wuss time ter git
fetched up afore a court ’n jes’ now. Squair White tole me ez our Jedge
Averill hev agreed ter exchange with Jedge Gwinnan from over yander in
Kildeer County nex’ term, ez he can’t try his cases, bein’ kin ter them
ez air lawing. So Gwinnan will hold court in Shaftesville nex’ term. I’d
hate mightily fur sech a onsartin, onexpected critter ez him ter hev enny
say-so ’bout me or mine. But shucks! Men folks ennyhow,” she continued,
discursively, her needles swiftly moving, as if they were endowed with
independent volition, and needed no supervision, “air freakish, an’
fractious, an’ sot in thar way, an’ gin ter cur’ous cavortin’. It never
s’prised me none ez arter the Lord made man he turned in an’ made woman,
the fust job bein’ sech a failure.”
There was a pause. The regular metre of the katydid’s song pulsed in
the interval. The dewdrops glimmered on the chickweed by the porch. The
fragrance of mint and ferns was on the air, and the smell of the dark
orchard. Now and then an abrupt thud told that a great Indian peach had
reached the measure of ripeness and had fallen. Through the open window
and door the moonlight lay in glittering rhomboids on the puncheon floor.
All the interior was illuminated, and the grotesque figure of the pet
cub was distinctly visible to Jacob Jessup, who was lounging on the
porch without, as the creature stole across the floor, and rose upon
his hind legs to reach the pine table. As he thrust his scooping claw
into the bread trough,—the long, shallow, wooden bowl in which batter
for corn-dodgers was mixed,—he turned his cautious head to make sure he
was unobserved, and his cunning, twinkling eyes met Jessup’s. Somehow
the sudden consciousness of the creature, his nervous haste to be off,
appealed to Jessup’s lenient mood. He listened to the scuttling claws on
the puncheon floor as the beast hurried out of the back door, and while
he debated whether or not he should play informer, his wife, sitting on
the doorstep with the baby in her arms, asked suddenly,—
“’Pears like ye air sorter sot agin this Jedge Gwinnan, mother. I never
hearn afore ez ye knowed him whenst ye lived in Kildeer County. What
sorter man be he?”
Mrs. Sayles wagged her head inside her sun-bonnet to intimate contempt.
“A young rooster, ’bout fryin’ size,” she said, laughing sneeringly, the
scorn accented by her depopulated gums. It seemed very forlorn to be
laughed at like that.
“Waal, a man can’t be ’lected jedge till he’s thirty,” said Jessup,
consciously imparting information. “He’s been on the bench right smart
time, too.”
Mrs. Sayles looked at him over her spectacles, still knitting, as if her
industry were a disconnected function.
“What air thirty?”
“Waal”—began Jessup, argumentatively, puffing at his cob pipe. Thirty
seemed to him a mature age. And the constitution of the State evidently
presumes folly to be permanent if it is not in some sort exorcised before
reaching that stage of manhood. He did not continue, however, seeing that
thirty was held to be very young by Mrs. Sayles, who, to judge from her
wrinkles, might be some four or five hundred.
“I ain’t ’quainted with the man myself,” she went on presently, “an’
what’s more I ain’t wantin’ ter be. But,” impressively, “I know a woman
ez knowed that man’s mother whenst he war a baby. She ’lowed he war a
powerful cantankerous infant, ailin’ an’ hollerin’ all night an’ mighty
nigh all day; couldn’t make up his mind ter die, an’ yit warn’t willin’
ter take the trouble ter live.”
Jessup felt it a certain injustice that the nocturnal rampages of infancy
should be as rancorously animadverted upon as the late hours of a larger
growth.
“Waal, Jedge Gwinnan is powerful pop’lar now’days,” he urged. “He made a
mighty fine race when he war ’lected.”
“Shucks! ye can’t tell me nuthin’!” said his mother, self-sufficiently.
“I know all ’bout him, an’ Jedge Burns too, ez war on the bench afore
Jeemes Gwinnan. Whenst I war a widder-woman an’ lived in Kildeer
County we-uns useter hev Jedge Burns on the circuit. He war a settled,
middle-aged man ’bout fifty, an’ the law war upheld, an’ things went
easy, an’ he war ’lected time arter time, till one year they all turned
crazy ’bout this hyar feller, ez war run by his party through fools bein’
sca’ce, I s’pose. Jeemes war ’lected. I tell ye I know all ’bout him.
He war born right yander nigh Colbury, an’ I know a woman ez useter be
mighty friendly with his mother.”
“What fambly in Colbury did he marry inter?” asked her daughter-in-law,
more interested in items of personal history than in his judicial record.
“Bless yer soul, he air a single man. His heart air set on hisself.
He wouldn’t marry no gal ’thout she hed some sorter office she could
’lect him ter, ez be higher’n jedge. He be plumb eat up with scufflin’
an’ tryin’ ter git up in the world higher’n the Lord hev set him, an’
’tain’t religion; that ’tain’t. He minds me o’ Lucifer. He’ll fall some
day. Not out o’ heaven, mebbe, ’kase he ain’t never goin’ ter git thar,
but leastwise out’n his circuit. Somebody’ll top him off, an’ mebbe I’ll
live ter see the day. I dunno, though, I—Laws-a-massy!” she exclaimed,
so suddenly that both her listeners started, “look-a-yander at that thar
perverted tur-r-key hen an’ her delikit deedies, ez air too leetle ter
roost! She’s a-hoverin’ of ’em in that thar tall grass, wet with the dew,
an’ it’ll be the death o’ ’em! Whyn’t Lethe tend ter ’em when she kem up
from milkin’? Lethe! Lethe! Whar’s that gal disappeared ter?”
With the vagrant instinct of the wild fowl still strong in the
domesticated turkey, she had distrusted the hen-house, and because of her
brood she was prevented from roosting high up in the old dead tree.
There was no answer to Mrs. Sayles’s call. The daughter-in-law made a
feint of busily rocking the baby, and after a doubtful glance at her
Mrs. Sayles got up briskly, putting her knitting-needles into her ball
of yarn, and thrusting them both into her deep pocket. She clutched
her bonnet further forward on her head, took up a splint basket, and
presently there arose a piping sound among the weeds, as she darted
this way and that in the moonlight with uncanny agility, catching the
deedies one by one and transferring them to her basket. The turkey hen,
her long neck stretched, her wings outspread, ran wildly about, now and
then turning and showing irresolute, futile fight for a moment, and again
striving to elude the whole misfortune with her long, ungainly strides.
When Mrs. Sayles in triumph unbent her back for the last time and started
toward the house, the fluttered mother following, clamoring hysterically,
she exclaimed:
“Whar _be_ that thar triflin’ Lethe?”
“’Pears like ter me ez I hearn Lethe go up the ladder ter the roof-room a
consider’ble while ago,” said the old man slowly, speaking for the first
time during the evening.
Once more Mrs. Sayles paused irresolute.
“Laws-a-massy, then, ef the gal’s asleep I reckon I mought ez well put
the tur-r-key an’ deedies inter the hen-house myse’f; but ’pears ter me
the young folks does nuthin’ nowadays but doze.”
She took a step further, then suddenly bethought herself. “Hyar, Jacob,”
she said to her son, handing him the basket, “make yerse’f nimble. I
reckon ye hev got sense enough ter shet that thar tur-r-key an’ deedies
up in the hen-house. Leastwise I’ll resk it.”
Sleep was far from Alethea that night. For hours she sat at the roof-room
window, looking out with wide, unseeing eyes at the splendid night. And
so she had given her counsel freely in the full consciousness of right,
and the man she loved had done her bidding. What misery she had wrought!
She winced to know how his thoughts must upbraid her. She remembered his
petulant taunts, his likening her to the Herder on Thunderhead, whose
glance blights those on whom he looks; and she wondered vaguely if the
harnt knew the woe it was his fate to wreak, and if it were grief to him
as he rode in the clouds on the great cloud-mountain.
“I reckon I know how he feels,” she said.
An isolated star blazing in the vast solitudes of the sky above the peak
of Thunderhead burst suddenly into a dazzling constellation before her
eyes, for she felt the hot tears dropping down one by one on her hand.
Alas, Alethea! one needs to be strong to attain martyrdom for the sacred
sake of the right.
Her tears wore out the night, but when the sun rose she was fain to dry
them.