For a long time that night Alethea sat on the cabin porch in Wild-Cat
Hollow, absently watching the limited landscape seen through the narrow
gap of the minor ridges superimposed upon the great mountain. The
sky was dark but for the light that came from the earth. The flames
were out of sight behind the intervening ranges. Weird fluctuating
gleams, however, trembled over the cove below, and summoned from the
darkness that stately file of peaks stretching away along the sole
vista vouchsafed to the Hollow. Sometimes the illumination was a dull
red suffusion, merging in the distance into melancholy gradations of
tawny yellow and indeterminate brown, and so to densest gloom. Again
it was golden, vivid, fibrous, divergent, like the segment of a halo
about some miraculous presence, whose gracious splendor was only thus
suggested to the debarred in Wild-Cat Hollow. The legions of the smoke
were loosed: down in the cove, always passing in endless ranks what way
the wind might will; along the mountain side, marshaled in fantasies
reflecting from the fires subtle intimations of color,—of blue and red
and purple; deploying upward, interposing between the constellations,
that seemed themselves upon the march. There were clouds in the sky; the
night was chill. Alethea gathered her shawl over her head. Now and then
Tige, who sat beside her, wheezed and glanced over his shoulder at the
door ajar, as if to urge her to go in. Sometimes he ran thither himself,
looking backward to see if she would follow him. Then, as she continued
motionless, he would come and sit beside her, with a plaintive whine of
resignation. Tige was pensive and humble to-night, and was making an
edifying show of repentance. On the homeward walk he had been disposed to
follow the example of the moonshiner’s dogs and harass the coon, thereby
becoming acquainted with the teeth of the smiling creature, and incurring
Alethea’s rebukes and displeasure.
It was a cheerful scene within, glimpsed through the half-open door,
contrasting with the wild, dark world without, and its strange glares
and fluctuating glooms and far-off stars and vast admeasurements of
loneliness. The old woman knitted and nodded in her rocking-chair; Jessup
and Mr. Sayles smoked their pipes, and ever and anon the old man began
anew to detail—the pipe-stem between his teeth—the legends that his
grandfather had learned from the Indians of the hidden silver mines in
these mountains, found long ago, and visited stealthily, the secret of
the locality dying with its discoverer, who thus carried out of the world
more than he brought with him. Their eyes gloated on the fire as they
talked, seeing more than the leaping yellow flames or the white heats of
the coals below. It might seem as if the craving for precious metal is a
natural appetite, since these men that knew naught of the world, of the
influence of wealth, of its powers, of its infinite divergences, should
be a-hungered for it in their primitive fastnesses, and dream of it by
night.
“On the top of the Big Smoky Mountings, on a spot whar ye kin see the
Tennessee River in three places at once,” said the old man, repeating the
formula of the tradition.
Jessup puffed his pipe a moment in silence, watching the wreathing smoke.
“I know twenty sech spots,” he said presently.
The old man sighed and shifted his position. “Me too,” he admitted. “But
thar it be,” he observed, “fur the man ez air a-comin’.”
They fell silent, perhaps both projecting a mental ideal of the man of
the future, and the subservient circumstance that should lead him to
stand one day on these stupendous heights, with sunshine and clouds about
him and the world at his feet, and to look upon the mystic curves of the
river, trebly visible, strike his heel upon the ground, and triumphantly
proclaim, “It is here!”
The dogs lay about the hearth; one, a hound, in the shadow, with his
muzzle stretched flat on the floor between his fore-paws, had saurian
suggestions,—he was like an alligator. Leonidas and Lucinda had gone to
bed, but the baby was still up and afoot. The fiat of nursery ethics that
gentry of his age should be early asleep had been complied with only so
far as getting him into his night-gown, which encased his increasing
plumpness like a cylinder. He wore a queer night-cap, that made him look
incongruously ancient and feminine. He plodded about the puncheon floor,
in the joy of his newly acquired powers of locomotion, with reckless
enthusiasm. His shadow accompanied him, magnified, elongated,—his
similitude as he might be in years to come; he seemed in some sort
attended by the presentiment of his future. The energy, however, with
which he had started on his long journey through life would presently be
abated. In good sooth, he would be glad to sit down often and be still,
and would find solace in perching on fences and whittling, and would
know that hustling through this world is not what one might hope. He had
fallen under the delusion that he could talk as well as walk, and was
inarticulately loquacious.
Alethea’s errand outside was to gather chips from the wood-pile hard by,
to kindle the morning’s fires. It had been long since rain had fallen,
but the routine of spreading them upon the hearth, to dry during the
night, was as diligently observed as if the reason that gave rise to the
habit now existed. The splint baskets filled and redolent of the hickory
bark, stood at her feet, yet she did not move.
She was solitary in her isolated life, with her exalted moral ideal that
could compromise with nothing less than the right. She had known no human
being dominated by a supreme idea. The reformers, the martyrs, all who
have looked upward, sacrificed in vain for her—not even as a tradition,
an exemplar might they uphold when she failed. Religion was vague,
distorted, uncomprehended, in the primitive expoundings to which she was
accustomed. Her inherent conscience prevailed within her like some fine,
ecstatic frenzy. It was of an essence so indomitably militant that in her
ignorant musings it seemed that it must be this which marshals the human
forces, and fights the battle of life, and is unconquered in death, and
which the stumbling human tongue calls the soul. And yet so strange it
was, she thought, that she could not always recognize the right,—that she
must sedulously weigh and canvass what she had done and what she might
have done, and what had resulted.
She dwelt long on the moonshiner’s story. She was heart-sore for the
hungry idiot, filching from the hogs,—and what forlorn fate had he found
at last! She drew her shawl closer about her head, and shivered more
with her fears than with the wind. She was very tired; not in body, for
she was strong and well, but in mind and heart and life. Somehow, she
felt as if she were near the end,—surely there was not enough vitality
of hope to sustain her further,—the frequent illusion of sturdy youth,
with the long stretches of weary years ahead. There was even a certain
relaxation of Mink’s tyrannous hold upon her thoughts. It was not that
she cared for him less, but she had pondered so long upon him that her
imagination was numb; she had beggared her invention. She could no more
project scenes where he walked with all those gentler attributes with
which her affection, despite the persistent contradictions of her subtler
discernment, had invested him. She could no longer harass herself with
doubts of his state of mind, with devising troublous reasons why he had
avoided her, with fears of harm and grief menacing him. She had revolted
at last from the thrall of these arid unrealities. She felt, in a sort
of grief for herself, that they were but poor delusions that occupied
her. He must come, and come soon, her heart insistently said. And yet
so tired was her heart that she felt in a sort of dismay that were he
here to-night there would be no wild thrill of ecstasy in her pulses, no
trembling joys. All that she had suffered—despair, and frantic hope that
was hardly less poignant, and keen anxieties, and a stress of care—had
made apathy, quiet, rest, nullity, the grave, seem dearer than aught the
earth could promise.
“He oughter hev kem afore,” she said to herself, in weary deprecation.
And then she thought that perhaps now, since he was at liberty again, he
was happy with Elvira, and she experienced another pang to know that she
was not jealous.
The clouds had obscured the few stars. The wind was flagging; the smoke
grew denser; the forest flames emitted only a dull red glow; the file of
peaks that they had conjured from the blackness of night was lost again
in the deepening gloom.
She was roused suddenly to the fact that it was intensely quiet in-doors.
She could even hear the sound of the fire in the deep chimney-place; it
was “treadin’ snow,” the noise being very similar to the crunch of a
footfall on a frozen crust. She rose, looking upward and holding her hand
to the skies; the glow from within fell upon her fair face, half hooded
in the shawl, and upon her pensive eyes. Flakes were falling; now, no
more; and again she felt the faint touch in her palm.
Her first thought was of Mrs. Jessup, and the impediment that a
snow-storm might prove to her return; and thus she was reminded that the
pedestrian within was still, for she no longer heard the thud of his
bare feet on the floor. He had fallen asleep in a corner of the hearth,
with a gourd in one hand, and in the other a doll, made, after the rural
fashion, of a forked twig arrayed in a bit of homespun. Tige watched him
as he was borne off to his cradle with an envy that was positively human.
It was for the baby’s sake that Mrs. Jessup returned the next day,
despite the deep snow that covered the ground. She had had a dream about
him, she declared,—a dreadful dream, which she could not remember.
It had roused all the maternal sentiment of which she was capable.
She had endured some serious hardship in coming to assure herself of
his well-being, for she was obliged to walk much of the way up the
mountain,—the snow and ice making the road almost impracticable, and
rendering it essential that there should be as little weight as possible
in the wagon; to a woman of her sedentary habit this was an undertaking
of magnitude. After her wild-eyed inquiry, “Air Ebenezer well ez common?”
she seemed to hold him responsible for the deceit of her dream, as if he
were in conspiracy with her sleeping thoughts, and to be disappointed
that the trouble which she had given herself was altogether unnecessary.
“Ye fat gopher!” she remarked, contemptuously, eying his puffy red
cheeks. “Don’t lean on me. I’m fit ter drap. Lean on yer own dinner. I’ll
be bound Lethe stuffed ye ez full ez a sassidge.”
She addressed herself to bewailing that she had curtailed her visit,
having enjoyed it beyond the limits which the lugubrious occasion of the
funeral might seem to warrant.
“Mis’ Purvine war mighty perlite an’ saaft-spoken. I never see a house
so fixed up ez hem air,—though I don’t b’lieve that woman hev more’n two
or three hogs ter slarter fur meat this year, ef that. I slep’ in the
bedroom; ’twar mighty nice, though colder’n ’twar in the reg’lar house,
through hevin’ no fire. I reckon that’s what sot me off ter dreamin’ a
pack o’ lies ’bout that thar great hearty catamount, fairly bustin’ with
fatness. I wisht I hed bided in the cove! Mis’ Purvine begged me ter
bide. We-uns went ter the fun’el tergether, an’ the buryin’, an’ we went
round an’ seen my old neighbors, an’ traded ter the sto’. An’ I spun some
fur Mis’ Purvine.”
“Mighty little, I’ll bet,” declared her husband inopportunely, “ef what
ye do hyar be enny sign.”
Whereupon Mrs. Jessup retorted that she wished she had made an excuse of
the snow to remain with Mrs. Purvine until the thaw, and retaliated amply
by refusing to tell what hymns were sung at the funeral, and to recite
any portion of the sermon.
This resolution punished the unoffending members of the family as
severely as Jessup himself; but it is a common result that the innocent
many must suffer for the guilty unit,—justice generally dealing in the
gross. The old man’s lower jaw fell, dismayed at the deprivation. He
had relinquished sorting his “lumber,” and had roused himself to listen
and note. The details would long serve him for meditation, and would
gradually combine in his recollection in dull mental pictures to dwell
on hereafter, and to solace much lonely vacant time. Mrs. Sayles was
irritated. Alethea had looked to hear something from Mink, and Jessup was
unexpectedly balked.
Nothing could be more complete than Mrs. Jessup’s triumph, as she held
her tongue,—having her reason. Her blue eyes were bright with a surface
gleam, as it were; there was a good deal of fresh color in her face. She
was neater than usual, having been “smartened up ter meet the folks in
the cove.” Her snuff-brush, however, was very much at home in the corner
of an exceedingly pretty mouth. As they all sat before the fire, she
took off the socks which Aunt Dely had lent her, and which she had worn
up the mountain over her shoes, because of the snow; and she could not
altogether refrain from remark.
“Ef these hyar socks hedn’t been loant ter me,” she said, holding one of
them aloft, “I couldn’t holp noticin’ how Mis’ Purvine turned them heels,
knittin’ ’em. I do declar’, ef these hyar socks fits Jerry Price, he hev
got a foot shaped like Buck’s, an’ no mistake.”
It jumped with her idle humor to keep them all waiting, uncertain whether
or not she would relent and disclose the meagre gossip they pined to
hear. Nothing was developed till Jacob Jessup, retaliating in turn,
flatly refused to go and feed Buck, still harnessed in the wagon.
Alethea rose indignantly.
“I don’t lay off ter do yer work ginerally, but I ain’t goin’ ter let the
steer go hongry,” she said, “’kase ye air idle an’ onfeelin’.”
“Don’t ye let him go hongry, then,” said Jessup, provokingly.
It had ceased to snow. When Alethea opened the door many of the traits
of Wild-Cat Hollow were so changed amid the deep drifts that one who had
seen it only in its summer garb might hardly recognize it. Austere and
bleak as it was, it had yet a symmetry that the foliage and bloom, and
even the stubble and fallen leaves of autumn, served only to conceal.
The splendid bare slope down the mountain, the precipitous ascent on
either side of the deep ravine, showed how much the idea of majesty may
be conveyed in mere lines, in a gigantic arc. The boles of the trees
were deeply imbedded in drifts. On the mountain above, the pines and
the firs supported great masses of snow lodged amongst the needles.
Sometimes a sharp crack told that a branch had broken, over-burdened.
The silence was intense; the poultry had hardly ventured off their
roosts to-day; the gourds that hung upon a pole as a martin-house were
whitened, and glittered pendulous. Once, as Alethea stood motionless, a
little black-feathered head was thrust out and quickly withdrawn. Down
in the cove the snow lay deep, and the forests seemed all less dense,
lined about as they were with white, which served in some sort as an
effacement. Through the narrow gap of the ridges was revealed the long
mountain vista, with the snowy peaks against the gray sky. Very distinct
it all was, sharply drawn, notwithstanding that there lacked but an hour,
perhaps, of the early nightfall. For a moment she had forgotten her
errand; the next she turned back in surprise. “Whar’s Buck an’ the wagin?”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Jessup, still serenely casual, “he’s a-kemin’ up the
mounting along o’ Ben Doaks. I met Ben, an’ I ’lowed ez I didn’t know
how I’d make out ter drive sech a obstinate old steer up the mounting in
all this snow. Buck hev fairly tuk ter argufyin’ ’bout the road ter go,
till ye dunno whether ye air drivin’ the steer or the steer air drivin’
you-uns. I mos’ pulled off his hawns sence I been gone. So Ben, he ’lowed
he’d like ter kem an’ spen’ a few days along o’ we-uns, ennyhow.”
“Whyn’t ye tell that afore?” demanded her mother-in-law angrily. “Ye want
him ter ’low ez we air a-grudgin’ him victuals. Lethe, put in some mo’ o’
them sweet ’taters in the ashes ter roast, an’ ye hed better set about
supper right now.”
For Mrs. Sayles had been accounted in her best days a good housekeeper,
for the mountains, and she cherished the memory of so fair a record.
Perhaps her reputation owed something to the fact that she entertained
a unique theory of hospitality, and made particularly elaborate
preparations when the guests were men. “Wimmen don’t keer special ’bout
eatin’. Show ’em all the quilts ye have pieced, an’ yer spun truck, an’
yer gyardin, an’ they’ll hev so much ter study ’bout an’ be jealous ’bout
ez they won’t want nuthin’ much ter eat.”
Now she proceeded to “put the big pot into the little pot,” to use a
rural expression, singularly descriptive of the ambitious impossibilities
achieved. She did it chiefly by proxy, directing from her seat in the
chimney corner Alethea’s movements, but wearing the absorbed, anxious
countenance of strategy and resource. The glory of the victory is due
rather to the head that devised than to the hands that executed; as in
greater battles the pluck of the soldiery is held subordinate to the
science of the commander.
It was no mean result that smoked upon the table when the sound of Buck’s
slow hoofs was heard on the snow without, and a warm welcome was in
readiness besides. A cheerful transition it was from the bleak solitudes:
the fire flared up the chimney; the peppers and the peltry hanging from
the rafters might sway in draughts that naught else could feel; the snow
without was manifested only by the drifts against the batten shutters,
visible in thin white lines through the cracks, and in that intense
silence of the muffled earth which appeals to the senses with hardly less
insistence than sound.
Ben’s aspect was scarcely so negative, so colorless, as usual, despite
his peculiarly pale brown hair and beard. The sharp sting of the cold air
had brought a flush to his face; his honest, candid gray eyes were bright
and eager. His manner was very demure and propitiatory, especially to
Mrs. Sayles, who conducted herself with an ideally motherly air, which
was imbued with many suggestions of approval, even of respect.
“Howdy, Ben, howdy? We-uns air mighty glad ter see ye, Ben.”
“Don’t ye git too proud, Ben,” said Mrs. Jessup, roused from her inertia
by the unwonted excitements of her journey to the cove, and, since she
was not too lazy to exercise her perversity, thoroughly relishing it.
“They’d be jes’ ez glad ter see ennybody,—it air so beset an’ lonesome up
hyar. They fairly tore me ter pieces with thar questions whenst I kem.”
And this reminded old man Sayles that the details of the funeral could
be elicited from Ben Doaks. Upon request the young man lugubriously
rehearsed such portions of the sermon as he could remember, prompted now
and then by Mrs. Jessup, who did not disdain to refresh his recollection
when it flagged; he even lifted his voice in a dolorous refrain to show
how a certain “hyme chune” went. But his attention wandered when supper
was over, and he observed Alethea, with a bowl of scraps in her hand and
a shawl over her head, starting toward the door.
The dogs ran after her, with voracious delight in the prospect of supper,
and bounded up against the door so tumultuously that she had difficulty
in opening it.
“Goin’ ter feed the dogs, Lethe?” said Ben Doaks, seizing the
opportunity. “I’ll keep ’em back till ye kin git out.”
He held the door against the dogs, and when he shut it he too was on
the outer side. It was not yet quite dark; the whiteness of the snow
contended with the night. The evening star showed through the rifts in
the clouds, and then was obscured. The dogs were very distinct as they
ran hither and thither on the snow at Alethea’s feet, while she leaned
against the post of the porch and threw to them scraps from the bowl.
Ben knew that his time was short. “Lethe,” he said, with a lamentable
lack of tact, “I hearn ez how ye hev done gin up waitin’ fur Mink.”
Her lustrous eyes seemed all undimmed by the shadows. The sheen of her
hair was suggested beneath the faded shawl, drawn half over her head.
What light the west could yet bestow, a pearly, subdued glimmer, was on
her face. She said nothing.
He lifted his hand to the low eaves of the porch,—for he was very
tall,—and the motion dislodged a few flakes that fell upon her head. He
did not notice them.
“I hearn Mis’ Purvine ’low ye air all plumb outdone with Mink, an’
wouldn’t hev him ef he war ter ax ye agin,—an’ I reckon ye won’t see him
no mo’. ’Tain’t likely, ye know. An’ Mis’ Purvine ’lowed ye hed been
mightily struck with a man in Shaftesville,—a town cuss” (with acrimony),
“ez war mighty nigh demented ’bout yer good looks an’ sech. Now, Lethe,
ye dunno nuthin’ ’bout’n them town folks, an’ the name they hev got at
home, ’mongst thar neighbors.”
She looked steadily at him, never moving a muscle save to cast more
scraps to the hounds, who, when their tidbits became infrequent, or were
accidentally buried in the snow by inopportune movements of their paws,
gamboled about to attract her attention; rising upon their hind legs, and
almost dancing, in a manner exceedingly creditable to untrained mountain
dogs.
“An’ I ’lowed I war a tremenjious fool ter hev kep out’n the way ’count
o’ Mink,—jes’ ’kase ye seemed ter set so much store by him. T’other folks
mought kem in whilst I war a-holdin’ back. Nobody ain’t never goin’ ter
keer fur ye like I do, Lethe. Mink don’t—never did. An’ my house air
ready fur ye enny day ye’ll walk in. I got ye a rockin’-cheer the t’other
day, an’ a spinnin’-wheel. It looks like home, sure enough, down thar,
Lethe. I jes’ gazed at that thar rockin’-cheer afore the fire till I
could fairly see ye settin’ in it. But shucks, I kin hear ye callin’
chickens roun’ thar,—‘Coo-chee, Coo-chee!’—enny time I listens right
hard.” He laughed in embarrassment because of his sentimentality. “I
reckon I mus’ be gittin’ teched in the head.”
It was snowing again. From those stupendous heights above the Great Smoky
Mountains down into the depths of Piomingo Cove the flakes steadily fell.
Myriads of serried white atoms interposed a veil, impalpable but opaque,
between Wild-Cat Hollow and the rest of the world. Doaks looked about him
a little, and resumed suddenly:——
“I ain’t purtendin’ I’m better ’n other men. I never _could_ git
religion. I ain’t nigh good enough fur ye,—only I think mo’ of ye. I’m
mean ’bout some things. I couldn’t holp but think, whenst I hearn ’bout
Mink, ez now ye’d gin him up. I warn’t _bodaciously_ glad, but I couldn’t
_holp_ thinkin’ ’twar better fur ye an’ me. Ye’d be happier married ter
me, Lethe, than ter him, enny time.”
“I ain’t never goin’ to marry you-uns, Ben,” she said drearily. “An’ now
ye hev hed yer say, an’ thar’s no use a-jawin’ no mo’ ’bout’n it.”
She turned to go in. Tige was already scratching at the door, as eager
for the fire as he had been for his supper. She glanced at Ben over her
shoulder, with some appreciation of his constancy, some pity for his
disappointment.
“Ye hed better go make a ch’ice ’mongst some o’ them gals in the cove,”
she suggested.
He cast a glance of deep reproach upon her, and followed her silently
into the house. Their return was the occasion of some slight flutter in
the home circle, in which had prevailed the opinion that the young folks
out in the cold “war a-courtin’.”
All relics of the supper were cleared away; the fire leaped joyously
up the chimney. L’onidas and Lucindy were asleep. The baby in his
night-gown, all unaware that he cut an unpresentable figure before
company, pounded up and down the floor, unmolested. The pipes were
lighted. As Ben Doaks leaned down to scoop up a coal from the fire, his
face was distinct in the flare, and Mrs. Jessup noted the disappointment
and trouble upon it. Mrs. Sayles too deduced a sage conclusion. A glance
was exchanged between the two women. Then Mrs. Jessup, with a view to
righting matters between these young people, whom fate seemed to decree
should be lovers, asked abruptly, “Did ye tell Lethe the news ’bout Mink?”
“Naw,” Doaks responded, somewhat shortly. “I ’lowed she knowed it long
ago.”
“Naw, she don’t,” said Mrs. Jessup; “none o’ we-uns hyar on the mounting
knowed it.”
She paused to listen to the wind, for it was astir without. A hollow,
icy cry was lifted in the dark stillness,—now shrill and sibilant, now
hoarsely roaring, then dying away in the distance, to be renewed close at
hand. The boughs of the bare trees beat together. The pines were voiced
with a dirge. The porch trembled, and the door shook.
“Why, Lethe,” resumed Mrs. Jessup, turning toward the girl, as she sat
in a low chair in the full radiance of the firelight, “Mink ain’t out’n
jail. The rescuers never tuk him out.”
The color left Alethea’s face. Her doubting eyes were dilated. Mrs.
Jessup replied to the expression in them.
“Mis’ Purvine, she ’lowed ez she an’ you-uns hearn everybody sayin’ the
rescuers tuk him out afore ye lef’ Shaftesville that mornin’. That war
town talk. But ’twarn’t true. The jailer an’ the sher’ff tied an’ gagged
him, an’ tuk him out tharse’fs in the midst o’ the dark, whenst nobody
could see ’em. Makes me laff ter think how they fooled them boys! They
jes’ busted up the jail so ez ’twarn’t safe ter try ter keep him thar no
mo’, an’ the nex’ day the dep’ty an’ two gyards tuk him down ter the jail
at Glaston,—an’ thar he’s safe enough.”
Alethea’s first thought, charged with vague, causeless self-reproach,
was that she had let Sam Marvin, who had seen Tad since the disaster at
the mill, go in the belief that Mink had been released. But how could
she have detained him? And would he, a moonshiner, suffer himself to be
subpœnaed as a witness, and thus insure his own arrest?
Her lips moved without a sound, as if she were suddenly bereft of the
power to articulate.
“Glaston, that’s a fac’,” reiterated Mrs. Jessup, noticing the
demonstration, “’kase I see ’Lijah Miles, ez war one o’ the gyards. He
kem up ter the cove ter the fun’el, bein’ ez his wife war kin ter the
corpse. She war one o’ the Grinnells afore she war married,—not the
Jer’miah fambly, but Abadiah’s darter; an’ Abadiah’s gran’mother war own
cousin ter the corpse’s mother”—
“I dunno ’bout’n that,” said Mrs. Sayles, following this genealogical
detail with a knitted brow and a painstaking attention.
“Corpse war ’bleeged ter hev hed a mother wunst, ef ever he war alive,”
said Mrs. Jessup, recklessly.
“I reckon I know _that_” retorted Mrs. Sayles. “But ’Lijah Miles’s wife’s
father’s grandmother war the aunt o’ the corpse, stiddier his mother’s
cousin,”—she tossed her head with a cheerful sense of accuracy,—“sure ez
ye air a born sinner.”
Mrs. Jessup paused in her recital, leaned her elbows on her knees, and
fixed her eyes on the fire, as if following some abstruse calculation.
The wind swept about the house and whistled down the chimney, till even
Tige roused himself, and lifted his head to listen and to growl.
“Waal, hev it so,” said the young woman, unable to contradict. “Howbeit
he war kin ter the corpse, he kem ter the fun’el, an’ arterward, ez he
war goin’ back ter Shaftesville, he stopped at Mis’ Purvine’s an’ stayed
all night. An’ he tole us ’bout’n takin’ Mink ter jail in Glaston. An’
’twar the fust Mis’ Purvine knowed ez Mink warn’t out. But she ’lowed
she’d miss him less in jail ’n out.”
“I reckon everybody feels that-a-way ’bout Mink,” interpolated Mrs.
Sayles. “Folks never knowed what _could_ happen onexpected an’ upsettin’
till Mink’s capers l’arned ’em.”
“Waal, none o’ his capers ever war like this las’ one o’ his’n,” said
Mrs. Jessup, nodding seriously. “They tuk him ter Glaston, an’ ’Lijah
Miles war one o’ the gyards. They tuk him on the steam-kyars.”
“I’ll be bound Mink war fairly skeered by them steam-kyars!” exclaimed
Mrs. Sayles, with all the assumption of superior experience, although she
herself had never had a glimpse of them.
“Waal, I reckon not, from the way he kerried on ’cordin’ ter ’Lijah,”
said Mrs. Jessup, clasping one knee as she talked, eying the fire.
“’Lijah ’lowed he never seen sech a fool. Mink got ter talkin’ ter the
gyards an’ dep’ty ’bout this hyar Jedge Gwinnan”——
“Needn’t tell me nuthin’ ’bout Jedge Gwinnan. ‘Jeemes’ air what they call
him over yander in Kildeer County. An’ ‘Jim,’ too,” said Mrs. Sayles. “I
knowed a woman ez knowed that man’s mother whenst he war a baby.”
“Waal, he’s changed some sence then. He ain’t a baby now. Mink kep’
a-talkin’ ter his gyards ’bout Gwinnan, an’ swearin’ Gwinnan had spited
him in the trial,—put Pete Rood on the jury an’ sent ’em ter jail, an’
tole the sher’ff ter look arter his prisoner or he’d escape the night
Pete Rood fell dead, an’ tole ’em how ter keep the crowd from rescuin’
him, an’ all sech ez that. An’ what d’ ye reckon Mink ’lowed Gwinnan hed
done it fur? ’Kase Gwinnan hed tuk a notion hisself ter Lethe Sayles, an’
’lowed Mink warn’t good enough fur her.”
The incongruity of the idea impressed none of them. They all looked
silently expectant as Mrs. Jessup went on:—
“Waal, Mink swore ez some day he’d git his chance, an’ he’d git even
with Gwinnan, sure. An’ ’Lijah, he seen ez Mink war a-lookin’ at Jedge
Gwinnan,—the jedge, he war a-goin’ down on the train ter Glaston, an’
then out ter wharever he war a-goin’ ter hold court, an’ he war a-smokin’
in the ‘smokin’-kyar,’ ’Lijah say they call it, whar they hed Mink. An’
’Lijah say Mink looked at Gwinnan with his mouth sorter open, an’ his jaw
sorter drapped, an’ his eyes ez set ez ef he war a wild beastis.”
Once more the wind, tumultuous, pervasive, with all the vast solitudes
given over to it, swept down the mountain with shrill acclaim.
“Goin’ ter hev some weather arter this,—ye mind my words,” said Mrs.
Sayles, listening a moment.
“Waal, ’Lijah never thunk nuthin’ mo’, an’ Mink kep’ his eyes ter hisself
the rest o’ the way. When they got ter Glaston the gyards sorter waited
fur the t’other folks ter git out fust, an’ then they started. Waal,
’Lijah say the dep’ty he jumped off’n the platform fust, an’ tole Mink
ter kem on. An’ the dep’ty—’Lijah say the dep’ty set a heap o’ store
by Mink—he war a-tellin’ Mink ter look how many tracks an’ locomotives
an’ sech thar war in the depot, an’ not noticin’ Mink much. An’ ’Lijah
say he seen Mink dart ter one side; he ’lowed Mink war makin’ a bust
ter git away. Naw, sir! Gwinnan hed stopped by the side o’ the kyar ter
speak ter a man. ’Lijah say he felt like he war a-dreamin’ when he seen
Mink lift up both his handcuffed hands an’ bring the irons down on the
jedge’s head. ’Lijah say him an’ the dep’ty an’ the t’other gyard hed
thar pistols out in a second. But they war feared ter shoot, fur the
jedge, stiddier drappin’ on the groun’, whurled roun’ an’ grabbed the
man ez hit him. He got Mink by the throat, an’ held on ter him same ez
a painter or sech. He nearly strangled Mink ter death, though the jedge
war fairly blinded with his own blood. Mink writhed an’ wriggled so they
couldn’t tell one man from t’other. The gyards war feared ter shoot at
Mink, ’kase they mought kill the jedge. They tore Mink loose at last.
They ’lowed his face war black ez ef he hed been hung. He won’t tackle
Gwinnan agin in a hurry. Ye ’lowed Gwinnan war a feeble infant, mother;
he ain’t very feeble now. Though he did faint arterward, an’ war hauled
up ter the tavern in a kerridge. They hed ter hev some perlice thar ter
holp keep the crowd off Mink, takin’ him ter jail. Waal, ’Lijah say they
dunno whether the jedge will live or no,—suthin’ the matter with his
head. But even ef he do live, ’Lijah say we ain’t likely ter see Mink
in these parts no mo’ fur a right smart while, ’kase he hearn thar ez
assault with intent ter c’mit murder air from three ter twenty-one year
in the pen’tiary. An’ I reckon enny jury would gin Mink twenty”——
“Yes, sir, he needs a good medjure!” exclaimed the negative Mr. Sayles,
with unwonted hearty concurrence.
“Mink will be an old man by the time he do git back,” computed Mrs.
Sayles.
“Now, Lethe,” argued Mrs. Jessup, “ain’t ye got sense enough ter see ez
Mink ain’t nobody ter set sech store on, an’ ef ye like him it’s ’kase ye
air a fool?”
The girl sat as if stunned, looking into the fire with vague distended
eyes. She lifted them once and gazed at Mrs. Jessup, as if she hardly
understood.
“Look-a-hyar, Lethe, what sorter face air that ye hev got onter ye?”
cried Mrs. Sayles. “Ye better not set yer features that-a-way. I hev
hearn folks call sech looks ‘the dead-face,’ an’ when ye wear the
‘dead-face’ it air a sign ye air boun’ fur the grave.”
“Waal, that’s whar we all air boun’ fur,” moralized old man Sayles.
“Quit it!” his wife admonished the girl, who passed her hand over her
face as if seeking to obliterate the obnoxious expression. “Ye go right
up-steers ter bed. I’m goin’ ter gin ye some yerb tea.”
She took down a small bag, turning from it some dried leaves into her
hand, and looked at them mysteriously, as if she were about to conjure
with them.
The girl rose obediently, and went up the rude, uncovered stairs to the
roof-room. After an interval Mrs. Jessup observed the babbling baby
pointing upward. Among the shadows half-way up the flight Alethea was
sitting on a step, looking down vacantly at them. But upon their sudden
outcry she seemed to rouse herself, rose, and disappeared above.