VII.

The site of the old mill continued the scene of many curious groups long

after all efforts for the recovery of the body had ceased. The river was

dragged no more, and hope was relinquished. There had never been any

strong expectation of success. The stream was abnormally high considering

the season of the year, and running with great impetuosity. Though with

the aggregations of its tributaries swollen by the late rains it had the

volume of a river, it retained all the capricious traits of the mountain

torrent which it had been. It was full of swirling rapids, of whirlpools,

of sudden cataracts. Its bed was treacherous with quicksands and rugged

with bowlders. Hitched to the miller’s orchard fence were rows of horses,

dozing under their old Mexican saddles or the lighter weight of a ragged

blanket or a folded quilt; teams of oxen stood yoked under the trees of

the open space beyond; children and dogs sat on the roots or lay in the

grass, while the heavy, jeans-clad figures of the mountaineers explored

the banks as they chewed their quids with renewed vigor, and droned the

gossip in drawling voices.

The same faces were seen day after day,—often enough to excite no

particular remark that, whoever came or was absent, Peter Rood was here

with the dawn, and night found him still strolling along the banks,

looking upon the swollen floods with gloomy, insistent dark eyes, as

if he were seeking to read in the writhing lines of the current the

inscrutable secret of the Scolacutta River. Sometimes, with his hands

in his pockets, his lowering face shadowed by his broad hat, he would

silently listen to the speculations of those who found solace for the

futility of the undertaking in the enlarged conjectural field which

failure afforded, discussing the relative probabilities whether the body

had floated down to the Tennessee River, or whether it had been engulfed

by the quicksands and buried forever, or caught among the rocks of the

jagged bank and wedged in, to be found some day—a ghastly skeleton—by a

terrified boy, fishing or wading at low water.

It was only when these bootless surmises had palled at last, through many

repetitions and lack of further developments, that the ruins of the old

mill asserted an interest. There seemed a strange hush on the landscape,

here where the wheel would whir no more. A few timbers scattered about,

a rotten old stump that had served as part of the foundation, the hopper

washed up by the waters, several of the posts which had upheld the race,

were all that was left of the old mill, so long the salient feature of

the place that more than one mountaineer was beset with bewilderment

at the sight,—the recollection of the oblique line of the roof against

the mountain, the open door, the reflections in the water, having more

reality than the bereft bank of the river.

And now the old miller—seeming older than before—was wont to come

tottering out with his stick, the gay sunshine on his long, white hair,

and sit on the broken timbers, forlorn amidst the ruins of his poverty.

At first his appearance created renewed excitement, and his old customers

and friends pressed up to speak to him and hear what he would say,

feeling a certain desire to mark the moral phenomena of loss and the fine

processes of grief. But he held his clasped hands upon the stick, and

silently shook his bowed gray head in his ragged old hat.

“I reckon ye’d better leave him alone,” his pretty granddaughter said;

for she always accompanied him, and stood, as radiant as youth may

ever be, twirling the end of her tattered apron between her fingers,

her tangled yellow hair, like skeins of sunshine, hanging down on

her shoulders, and her blue, undismayed eyes looking with a shallow

indifference upon the scene. It was replete with interest and curiosity,

not to say awe, to the little four-year-old sister who hung upon her

skirts, or thrust a tow head from behind her grandfather. Sometimes her

lips were wreathed with a smile as she saw some child in the crowd, but

if the demonstration were returned she straightway hid her head in the

old man’s sleeve and for a while looked out no more.

Once old Griff spoke suddenly. “’Gustus Tom,” for his favorite kept

beside him, “ye wouldn’t treat nobody mean, would ye?”

“Would ef they treated me mean,” said ’Gustus Tom, with an unequivocal

nod, which intimated that his code of ethics recognized retribution.

“’Thout,” he qualified, “’twar sister Eudory thar,”—he glanced at the

little girl,—“I’d gin ’em ez good ez they sent.”

“’Tain’t religion, ’Gustus Tom,—’tain’t religion,” said the old man

brokenly. ’Gustus Tom, with his fragment of hat on the side of his tow

head, hardly looked as if he cared.

A grizzled old mountaineer in jeans, with a stern, square face and a

deep-set eye, that was lighted suddenly, spoke abruptly in a sepulchral

voice.

“Ye oughter go ter camp, Brother Griff,” he said in a religious

twang,—“ye oughter go ter camp, an’ tell yer ’speriunce! Ye hev lived

long. Ye hev wrastled with the devil. Ye hev seen joy, ye hev knowed

sorrow, ye hev fund grace. Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Ye air full o’ ’speriunce,

brother, an’ ye oughter go ter camp an’ comfort yerse’f, an’ sing, an’

pray.”

“I pray no mo’,” said the old man, lifting his aged, piteous face.

“I’m ’feared the Lord mought hear me an’ answer my prayer.” He smote

his breast. “I ain’t keerin’ fur the mill. I ain’t keerin’ for the

chill’n,—they’ll make out somehows. But ef my prayers could take back

every word o’ wrath I ever spoke ter the idjit, every lick I struck him,

I’d weary the very throne o’ grace. Ef I could git him back an’ begin

over—but I can’t! An’ I won’t pray fur myself, fur the Lord mought hear

me. An’ I want ter remember every one o’ them words an’ every lick, an’

pay back fur ’em, wropped in the flames o’ Torment.”

He got up and tottered away toward the house, followed by his

grandchildren, leaving the by-standers staring after him, strangely

thrilled.

“Waal, I hopes they won’t hear at the camp-meetin’ o’ his talkin’

sech ez that,” remarked the elderly adviser in dismay. “They hev been

a-sermonizin’ a good deal ’bout Tad’s early death an’ Mink Lorey’s awful

crime, an’ sech, ter them young sinners over yander ter camp, an’ it

’peared ter be a-sorter skeerin’ of ’em, a-sorter a-shooin’ of ’em inter

the arms o’ grace. An’ I hopes none o’ ’em will hear ’bout the old man

a-repentin’ an’ wantin’ ter burn, an’ sech, fur the boy’s hevin’ been

c’rected by his elders; they air perverted enough now agin them ez hev

authority over ’em.”

“Old Griff would change his mind ’bout burnin’ ef he seen the fire one

time,” said another, winking seriously, as if he spoke from pyrotechnic

experience. Then with a sudden change of tone, “What ails Pete Rood?”

For Rood was leaning against a tree, his swarthy face overspread with a

sallow paleness, his lips blue, his eyes half closed, his hand clutching

at his heart.

He said it was nothing much; he had been “tuk” this way often before; he

would be better presently. Indeed, he was shortly able to walk down to

the bank of the river, and sit and listen to the surmises of a half dozen

idle fellows, lying in the grass, as to the drowning of Tad and the fate

of Mink, and the terrible illustrations that both had furnished in the

sermons at the camp-meeting in Eskaqua Cove.

And when he left them at last it was to the camp-meeting he went.

The afternoon brought a change in the weather. Rood noted it as he

rode his raw-boned horse over the ranges and down the red clay roads

into Eskaqua Cove. Clouds had gathered, obscuring the sun. There were

no shadows, no gradations of light, no point of brilliant climax.

The foliage was heavy masses of solid color. Only in certain plumy

silver-green boughs lurked a subdued glister, some luculent enchantment;

for if ever the moonlight were enmeshed by a tree it is in the branches

of the white pine.

Silence had fallen, as if the source of light were also source of sound.

There was wind in the upper atmosphere, but no breath stirred the leaves.

Twilight had sunk upon the cove before he turned off into a road leading

up a wooded hill. In the dusk, sundry equine figures loomed up. The head

of a horse was clearly defined against a patch of the pale sky, and a

shrill neigh jarred the quiet. There were wagons, too, under the trees,

empty, the teams unharnessed, and the poles lying on the ground. A dim

light, deeply yellow, shone among the boles of the trees further on, a

little misty, because already large drops were falling. All unmindful of

the rain, a row of young men and half-grown boys perched on a rail fence

in crouching attitudes, not unlike gigantic roosting fowls. Now and then

a subdued, drawling voice sounded from among them, and a smothered laugh

was attestation of callow humanity. They were not devoid of interest in

the proceedings of the camp-meeting, but it was in the impersonal quality

of spectator, and they held aloof from the tabernacle as if they had no

souls to be saved. They turned to look down at Rood as he dismounted and

hitched his horse, and he heard his own name passed along the row, it

being a self-constituted register of all who came and went. The little

gate dragged and creaked on its hinges, and resisted as if it grudged

the spiritual opportunities to which it gave access, and desired to

point the fact that salvation was not easy to come by. As it yielded

and Rood entered the inclosure there were more yellow lights showing

with misty halos in the olive-green dusk. They came from the doors of a

row of shanties, floorless and windowless, which served as quarters for

the crowd at night. There was a great flaring flame in the rear of each

cabin, with leaping red tongues, surrounded by busy, hovering figures

that cast huge distorted shadows against the encompassing foliage, as

if some uncanny phenomenal beings were stalking a solemn round among

the trees. These fires had uncomfortable spiritual suggestions. But

they issued merely from the kitchens, the most cheerful things at camp,

and here saint and sinner were equally heartily represented. Supper was

over, however. The hymn rising even now from the tabernacle was far from

cheerful: one of the long-drawn, melancholy songs, with wild, thrilling

swells and sudden falls and monotonous recitative passages, sometimes

breaking into a strange, ecstatic chant. The serried vertical lines of

rain seemed to vibrate with it like the strings of a harp. Far away

the thunder rolled in its pauses. More than once the sudden lightning

illumined the grounds with a ghastly gleam, and the rhythmic solemn song

went on like a part of the storm. It was a grave assemblage under the

great roof of the rude structure, shown in the dim light of six or eight

kerosene lamps fixed against the posts. At one end was a platform with

a bench, on which sat some five or six of the preachers participating

in the exercises. Brother Jethro Sims, a hoary-headed patriarch, was

walking slowly up and down the main aisle, clapping his hands and singing

with a look of ecstasy in his upturned eyes which a sophisticated

religionist might vainly wonder at, finding that his superior attainments

and advanced theories had bereft him of the power to even comprehend

such faith, such piously prescient joys. The ground was covered with

a deep layer of straw, deadening the stir among the rows of benches.

Many of these, having no backs, served to acquaint their occupants with

martyrdom and to offer a premium to the naturally upright. There were

numbers of little children present, for as yet the lenient rule of the

mountain churches tolerates their babble and even their crying in reason.

Here and there one of the humbly clad young women, with her sleeping

infant in her arms, the yellow light falling upon its head and on her

solemn, listening, almost holy face, might remind one of another peasant

mother whose Child is the hope of the world. The extreme seriousness,

the devout aspiration, the sublimity of the unquestioning faith, that

animated the meeting, could annul ignorance, poverty, uncouthness.

There were many canine figures on the outskirts of the crowd, now and

then peering with wolfish green eyes and weird effect from the darkness

among the laurel, which was beginning to sway and sound with the wind.

Those in the full light, standing even beneath the roof and, with lolling

tongue and wagging tail, looking upon the proceedings, seemed peculiarly

idle here and to incur the imputation of loafers, despite that they

are never very busy elsewhere. Others were more selfishly employed,

creeping about under the benches and among the feet of the congregation,

searching in the straw for the bits of bread and meat thrown aside by the

frequenters of the meeting who did not camp on the grounds, but brought

their lunch for the midday, and went home at night. One little dapper

yellow dog had bounded on the end of the mourners’ bench, and sat there,

gravely gazing about him with small, affable eyes, all unnoticed by the

elders, but threatening the gravity of an urchin, who grinned and coughed

to hide the grin, breaking out with a wild, uncontrollable vocalization,

relic of the whooping-cough, not long over-past. He was finally motioned

out of the tabernacle, and scudded across in the rain to the shanty,

while the little dog sat demure and unmolested on the mourners’ bench.

Larger sinners were gathering there presently, albeit slowly.

“Come! come!” cried the old man sonorously over the singing. “Delay not!

My brethren, I hev never seen a meetin’ whar the devil held sech a strong

hold! Come! Hell yawns fur ye! Come! Yer time is short! Grace beckons!

Come! The fires o’ perdition air kindled! The flames air red!”

And as his voice broke forth once more in the chanting, the thunder

rolled as a repetition of his summons, the lightning glared, all the

mountains became visible over the woods of the abrupt declivity toward

the east; and higher still above the summits was revealed a vast

cloud-vista in the midst of the black night, vividly white, full of

silent surging motion, with strange suggestions of bending forms, of an

awful glister at the vanishing point,—darkness enveloped it, and once

more the thunder pealed.

As the gathering storm burst, the monotonously chanting voices seemed

keyed to an awed undertone, lisping with this mighty psalm of nature,—the

thunder and its echo in the mountains, the tumultuous cry of the wind,

and the persistent iteration of the rain. In the intervals of its

splendid periods, one might feel it a relief to hear the water timidly

splashing in the little ditches that served to drain the ground on either

side of the tabernacle, and the continual whisper in the pines above the

primitive structure. Here and there two or three boughs hung down further

than the rest, fringing the eaves. Ben Doaks noted, when the lightning

flared again, that just between them the distant peak of Thunderhead

loomed dimly visible,—or was it a cloud? Strain his eyes as he might, he

could hardly say.

For Ben Doaks was there, the first to respond to the earnest exhortations

to the sinners to come forward. He had a shamefaced look as he shambled

up and took his seat on the mourners’ bench, while the little dog sat

unnoticed at the other end. Doaks was quick, however, to observe that one

of the preachers eyed him sharply, and spoke to another, who shook his

head with a gesture indeed of negation, but an expression of reluctant

affirmation, and he felt sure that they recognized how often he had sat

there, and that they were saying to each other that it was of no use,—he

was evidently rejected by grace.

Now and then low voices sounded in the midst of the singing,—the

Christians urging those convicted of sin to go up and be prayed for.

Others came forward. There was more stir than before; a vivid curiosity

was on many faces turning about to see who was going up, who was

resisting entreaty, who ought to be convicted of sin, being admirably

supplied with obliquity of which to repent.

Pete Rood sat, his black eyes on the ground, intent, brooding, deeply

grave. Elvira Crosby thought at first that he affected to overlook her.

Then, with a sinking of the heart, she realized that indeed he did

not see her. The tears welled up to her eyes. The past was not to be

recalled. When was he ever before unaware of her presence? He had been

so eager, so devoted, so unlike the capricious lover for whom she had

lightly flung him away. It was all over, though. She looked about her

to divert her mind, to preserve her composure. She noted Mrs. Sayles in

the congregation, identifying her by her limp sun-bonnet. Mrs. Sayles

had long been saying that she intended to put splints in it some day

when time favored her; but it still hung over her eyes, obscuring her

visage, except her mouth, as she sang, and she was an edifying spectacle

of a disregard of earthly pomps and a lack of vain interest in baubles

and bonnets. Alethea’s face, like some fair flower half enfolded in its

sheath, was visible in the funnel-shaped depths of her own brown bonnet,

with a glistening suggestion of her gold hair on her forehead, and one

escaped tress hanging down beneath the curtain on her dark brown homespun

dress. She did not sing, and she looked downcast.

In the aisle between the two benches reserved for the mourners the

brethren were crowding, talking individually to the contrite sinners,

sometimes with such effect that sobs and tears broke forth; and then

the hymn was renewed, with the rhythmic sound of the clapping of hands,

while the thunder crashed and the forked lightnings darted through

the sky. The lurid scenic effects added their impressiveness to the

terrible word-painting of another preacher, who was less interesting

though not less efficient than that gentle old man, Brother Jethro Sims.

He described hell with an accurate knowledge of its topography, its

_personnel_, and its customs, which was a triumph of imagination, and

made one feel that he had surely been there. A young woman suddenly

broke into wild screams, shouting that she had found her salvation, and

clapping her hands, and crying, “Glory!” finally fainting, and being

borne out into the rain.

In the aisles they all often knelt, praying aloud in turns: sometimes,

the voice of one failing in a whispered Amen! another would cry out

insistently, “Let us continue the supplication!” And once more the prayer

would go up.

There were no more conversions. Over and again the brethren announced

in pious dudgeon that it was a stubborn meeting, and hell gaped for the

sinner. It was evidence of the sincerity of the mourners, and their

anxiety not to deceive themselves and others, that they could thus resist

the urgency of the impassioned appeals, that with quivering nerves they

could still withhold all demonstrations of yielding until the spirit

should descend upon them.

Presently persons who desired the prayers of the congregation were

requested to rise and make known their wish. It might be feared that some

of the compliances did not tend to preserve domestic harmony. One woman

asked prayers for her husband, whose heart, she stated, was not in his

religion, and the defiant contradiction expressed in the face of a man

seated beside her suggested that she had thus publicly made reprisal for

sundry conjugal differences. Nevertheless, old Brother Sims said, “Amen!”

Mrs. Sayles rose and begged prayers for the “headin’ young folks o’ the

kentry, that they’d be guided by thar elders, an’ not trest thar own

green jedgmints, an’ finally be led ter grace.” And all the old people

said, heartily, “Amen!” Many turned to look at Alethea, whose face had

become a delicate pink.

And suddenly Peter Rood rose. “I want the prayers o’ the godly,” he said,

now and then casting a hasty glance at Brother Sims, who stood listening

intently, his chin in the air, his hands arrested in the gesture of

clapping, “fur light ter my steps. I reckon I’m a backslider, fur I git

no light when I pray. It’s all dark,—mighty dark!” His voice trembled.

He was beginning to lose his self-control. “My actions tarrify me! I

’lowed wunst I hed fund grace, but in trouble I hev no helper.”

The lightnings flashed once more. The swift illumination seemed to blanch

his swarthy face, and lighted his uplifted black eyes with a transient

gleam. “I’m in sin an’ great mis’ry. I hev done wrong.” He was about to

sit down.

“Make reparation, brother, an’ free yer soul in prayer,” said the old man.

“I can’t!” he cried, shrilly. “I’m ’feard! I’m ’feard o’ my life. I

wouldn’t hev done sech ’ceptin’ I war drunk,—drunk with liquor an’ drunk

with spite.”

He felt that he was saying too much. He sat down, biting his lip till the

blood started. Then he rose and faltered, “I want yer prayers fur light.”

“Amen!” said Brother Sims.

Rood had recovered himself abruptly. He was looking about with furtive

sharpness through the congregation, seeking to gauge the effect of what

he had said when under the strong spell of religious excitement that

had swayed the crowd. Fearful as he was, he detected only curiosity,

interest, nothing more marked; for in the rhetoric of frenzied repentance

these good men often apply to themselves language that seriously

entertained could only grace an indictment.

The rain had ceased; the quiet without seemed to conduce to a calmer

spirit within. The fervor of the meeting had spent itself. Only a few of

the brethren were “workin’” with Ben Doaks; his face was troubled and

perplexed, his anxious eyes turned from one to another.

“Can’t ye feel ye air jes’ a wuthless worm a-crawlin’ round the throne o’

grace? Can’t ye feel that only mercy kin save ye?—fur ye richly desarve

damnation.”

“Laws-a-massy, naw,” said poor, candid Ben, greatly harried. “I think

mighty well o’ myself!”

And so they left him in his sins. The crowd was breaking up, chiefly

seeking their several camps, as the shanties were called. But a few had

come merely to participate in the exercises of the evening, and these

were busy in harnessing their horses or yoking their oxen into their

wagons on the hillside without the inclosure. The declivity was veined

with rivulets, into which the heavy feet of the men and beasts splashed;

the leaves continuously dripped; frogs were croaking near at hand in

the sombre woods,—not so dark now, for the melancholy waning moon shone

among the breaking clouds. The rumble of wheels presently intruded upon

the low-toned conversation, the burden of which was the meeting and

reminiscent comparison with other meetings. Several of the boys, not

burdened with immortality, took leave less decorously, whooping loudly at

each other as they galloped past the vehicles, and were soon out of sight

and hearing.

The red clay road was presently lonely enough as Alethea trudged along

it. There was no room for her in the little wagon which Buck drew in

single harness, as might be called the ropes by which the ox, fastened

between the shafts, was made to dispense with a yoke-fellow. A rope tied

to his horn was intended to guide him along any intricacies of the road

with which he might not be acquainted. Mrs. Sayles, her daughter-in-law,

and several of the children were seated in the wagon, and sometimes

Alethea walked in advance, and sometimes fell into the rear. It was no

great distance that they were to travel,—their destination being her

aunt’s house in Eskaqua Cove, where they were to spend the night before

wagoning up the Great Smoky.

Alethea was beset with her own unquiet thoughts; the remorse that would

not loose its hold; the strange wrong which the right had wrought. Her

conscience, forever on the alert—serving, if need were, as proxy—could

find no flaw in what she had counseled; and thus perverse fate, in

the radiant guise of rectitude, had led Reuben Lorey to despair, and

delivered her to grief.

She hardly noted the incidents of the wayside,—the foot-bridge over

the creek; the stars amongst the ripples; the sound of the insects; the

zigzag fences on either hand; the mists that lurked among the trees,

that paced the turn-rows of the corn-fields, that caught the moonbeams,

and glittered against the dark mountain side. It was another gleam that

struck her attention; she looked again,—the slant of the rays against the

windows of a little school-house. There was a deep impression of silence

upon it, vacant in the night, dark but for the moonbeams. The pines that

overhung it were sombre and still. The vapors shifted about it, fringing

even the rotten palings that inclosed it. Her feet had followed her gaze.

She was near the edge of the narrow road, as she paused to wait for Buck

and the wagon to come up. She heard nothing as she listened. She said to

herself that she must be a long way ahead. She was sensible of fatigue

presently; the excitements of the evening were superimposed on the work

of the day. She leaned against the tottering fence. Her bonnet had fallen

back on her shoulders; she rested her head on her hand, her elbows on

the low palings. She might have dreamed for a moment. Suddenly something

touched her. She turned her head quickly; her shriek seemed to pierce the

sky, for there in the inclosure,—did she see aright?—the idiot’s face!

white with a responsive terror upon it, vanishing in the mist. Or was it

the mist? Did she hear the quick thud of retreating footsteps, or was it

the throbs of her own plunging heart? As she turned, wildly throwing up

both arms, she beheld Buck and the wagon on the crest of the hill, with

the worshipers from the camp-meeting, and the sight restored to her more

mundane considerations.