"Ho! ho! for the carrion crow,But hark to the sqawk of the carrion hawk,"
"Ho! ho! for the carrion crow,But hark to the sqawk of the carrion hawk,"
gathered up his reins and set out after the drove in a hand gallop, all doubled over in his blue coat.
I got El Mahdi into the road and we went swinging down the hill. I had a light flashed into the deeps of Woodford, and I saw dimly how able and how dangerous a man he was. I began to comprehend something of the long complex formula that goes to make up a human identity, and it was a discovery as startling as when a fellow perched on his grandfather's shoulder sees through the key-hole a tangle of wheels all going behind the white face of the clock.
I had been deftly handled by this Woodford, and yet I had not seemed to be. He had striven to move me to his will with a sort of masked edging, and, failing in that, left me with the bitterness drawn out. More than that,—shrewd and far-sighted man,—taken hot against him, I was almost won over to his star.
Under the hammering of the hard-headed Ump, I saw Woodford in another light. But I carried no ill will. He had jousted hard and lost, and youth holds no post-mortems. But the flock of night birds had not flown out into the sun. Dislodged from one quarter, they flapped across my heart to another ridgepole.
Woodford had been holding the blue hills with his men, and we knew what it meant to go up against him. But down yonder in among the Lares of our house, one worked against us with her nimble fingers. My heart went hard against the woman.
If she drew back from our floorboard, there was the tongue in her head to say it. No obligation bound her. True, we had given her of our love freely. But it was a thing no man could set a price on, and no man could pay, save as he told back the coin which he had borrowed. And failing in that coin, it was a debt beyond him.
The door to our house stood pulled back on its hinges. Nothing barred it but the sun. If the god Whim was piping, she could follow to the world's end. One might as well bow out the woman when her blood is cooling. Against the human heart the king's writs have never run.
I slapped my pocket above the letter. The current had turned and was running landward. The evil thing cast out upon its flood was riding back. I hoped it might sting cruelly the hand that flung it.
I rose in my stirrups and shook my youthful fists at the hills beyond the Gauley. I could see the smile dying on her red mouth when one came to say that her plans were ship-wrecked.
Then I thought of Ward, and something fluttered in my throat. He was under the spell of this slim, brown-haired witch. She was in his blood, running to his finger-tips. She was on him like the sun. Why could not the woman see what the good God was handing down to her? It was the treasure worth a kingdom. Did she think to find this thing at any crossroads? Oh, she would see. She would see. This thing was found rarely by the luckiest, so rarely that many an old wise man held that there was no such treasure under the sun, and the quest of it was but a fool's errand.
I was a mile behind the drove, and when I came up it had reached the borders of Woodford's land. Jud had thrown down the high fence, staked-and-ridered with long chestnut rails, and the stream of cattle was pouring through and spreading out over the great pasture. I watched the little groups of muleys strike out through the deep broom-sedge hollows and the narrow bulrush marshes and the low gaps of the good sodded hills, spying this new country, finding where the grass was sweetest and where the water bubbled in the old poplar trough, and what wind-sheltered cove would be warmest to a fellow's belly when he lay sleeping in the sun.
Then we rode north through the Hills, over the Gauley where the oak leaves carpeted the ford, and the little trout darted like a beam of light, and the old fish-hawk sat on the hanging limb of the dead beech-tree with his shoulders to his ears and his beak drooping, like some worn-out voluptuary brooding on his sins.
On we went through the deep wooded lanes where the redbird stepped about in his long crimson coat, jerring at the wren, who worked in the deep thicket as though the Master Builder had gone away to kingdom come and left her behind to finish the world.
We came to many a familiar landmark of my golden babyhood, the enchanted grove on the Seely Hill where I had hunted fabled monsters and gone whooping down among the cattle, the Greathouse meadow where Red Mike pitched me out of the saddle when he grew tired of having his bit jerked, and I sat up in my little petticoats and solemnly demanded that Jourdan should cut his head off, a thing the old man promised on his sacred honour when he could borrow the ax of the man in the moon; the high gate-post by the cattle-scales where I perched bareheaded in a calico dress and watched old Bedford make his last fight against human government, Bedford, a bull of mysterious notions, that would kill you if he found you walking in his field, and lick your stirrup if you came riding on a horse.
It was now a country of rich meadow-land, and blue-grass hills rising to long, flat ridges that the hickories skirted; but in that other time it was a land of wonders, where in any summer morning, if a fellow set out on his chubby legs, he might come to enchanted forests, lost rivers, halcyon kingdoms guarded by some spell where the roving fairies hunted the great bumblebee to the doorway of his house, and slew him on its sill and carried off his treasure.
Through the fringe of locust bushes along the roadside we caught the first glimpse of home, and the three horses pricked up their ears and swung out in a longer trot. We clattered down the wide lane and tumbled out of the saddles at the gate, leaving the Bay Eagle standing proudly like some victorious general, and the Cardinal like a tired giant who has done his work, and El Mahdi with his grey head high above the gate looking away as of old to the far-off mountains as though he wondered vaguely if the friend or the message or the enemy would never come.
We marched over the flagstone walk and into the house and up the stairway. Old Liza flung us some warning through a window to the garden, which we failed to catch and bellowed back a welcome. Then we gained the door to the library, threw it open and went crowding in.
A step beyond that door we halted with a jerk. Ward was lounging in a big chair with a pillow behind his shoulder, and over by the open window where the sun danced along the casement was Cynthia Carper setting a sheaf of roses in a jar.
Ward looked us down to the floor, and then he laughed until the great chair tottered on its legs. "Cynthia," he cried, "will you drop a courtesy to the gallant troopers?" She spun around with a fear kindling in her eyes.
"The cattle!" she said. "Did you get them over?"
I had the situation in my fingers, and I felt myself grow taller with it. "Yes," I said harshly. Then I put my hand into my pocket, drew out the letter and handed it to her with a mocking bow. "I was asked to carry this letter back to you, and say that my brother's word is good enough for Nicholas Marsh."
She took the envelope and stood twisting it in her slim fingers, while a light came up slowly in the land beyond her eyelids.
Ward held out his hand for the letter. And then I looked to see her flutter like a pinned fly. She grew neither red nor white, but crossed to his chair and put the letter in his hand.
He tore off the envelope and ran his eyes down the written page. "Your order for the money!" he cried; "this was not mentioned in our plan. What is this?"
"That," said the straight young woman, "is a field order of the commanding general issued without the knowledge of the war department."
Then I saw the whole underpinning of the scheme, and my heart stumbled and went groping about the four walls of its house. I tramped out of the room and down the stairway to the big window at the first landing. I stopped and leaned out over the walnut casement. El Mahdi stood as I had left him, staring at the far-off wall of the Hills; and below me in the garden old Liza stooped over her vines, not a day older, it seemed to me, than when I galloped at her long apron-strings on Alhambra the Son of the Wind.
This is the first English version of the popular Austrian novelist's work, and no better choice from his writings could have been made through which to introduce him to the American public. It is a strange, sweet tale, this story of an isolated forest community civilized and regenerated by the life of one man. The translator has caught the spirit of the work, and Rosegger's virile style loses nothing in the translation.
A thrilling story that carries the reader from the closing incidents of the French Revolution, through various campaigns of the Napoleonic wars, to the final scene on a family estate in Germany. The action of the plot is well sustained, and the style might be described as vivid, while the old battle between love and honor is fought out with such freshness of treatment as to seem new.
Mr. Post is to be congratulated upon having found a new field for fiction. The scene of his latest story is laid amidst the hills of West Virginia. Many of the exciting incidents are based upon actual experience on the cattle ranges of the South. The story is original, full of action, and strong, with a local color almost entirely new to the reading public.
A novel more thoroughly original than "Dupes," both in character and in plot, has not appeared for some time. The "dupes" are society people, who, like the Athenians, "spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing." Apart from its charm as a love story, the book makes some clever hits at certain "new things." While this is Mrs. Mumford's first book, she is well known as a writer of short stories.
"Miss Reed's book is an exquisite prose poem—words strung on thought-threads of gold—in which a musician tells his love for one whom he has found to be his ideal. The idea is not new, but the opinion is ventured that nowhere has it been one-half so well carried out as in the 'Love Letters of a Musician.' The ecstacy of hope, the apathy of despair, alternate in these enchanting letters, without one line of cynicism to mar the beauty of their effect."—Rochester Herald.
"It was with considerable hesitation that Myrtle Reed's second volume of a musician's love letters was taken up, a natural inference being that Miss Reed could scarcely hope to repeat her first success. Yet that she has equalled, if not surpassed, the interest of her earlier letters is soon apparent. Here will be found the same delicate fancy, the same beautiful imagery, and the same musical phrases from well-known composers, introducing the several chapters, and giving the key to their various moods. Miss Reed has accomplished her purpose successfully in both series of the letters."—N. Y. Times Saturday Review.
"A book to be read as a sedative by the busy and overworked. The scene is laid in England, and is bathed in a peculiarly English atmosphere of peace and leisure. Contains much domestic philosophy of a pleasing if not very original sort, and, incidentally, no little good-natured social satire."—N. Y. Evening Post.
"This is a book of the meditative order. The writer expresses her thoughts in a manner that is a delightful reminder of 'Reveries of a Bachelor' of Ike Marvel.... In parts it is amusing, in the manner of Mark Twain's 'Sketches.' The combination of humor and sensible reflection results to the reader's delight."—Albany Times Union.
"'The Diary of a Dreamer' is a charming treatment of the every-day topics of life. As in 'Reveries of a Bachelor' and 'Elizabeth and her German Garden,' we find an engaging presentation, from the feminine point of view, of the scenes and events that make up the daily living. The 'Diary' is one of those revelations of thought and feeling that fit so well into the reader's individual experience."—Detroit Free Press.
"This book is very entertaining and original ... ingeniously constructed ... well worth reading."—New York Herald.
"One of the best three volumes of stories produced within a year, as will be recalled by those who are attentive to such matters, is 'The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason.' They are stories of adventure in the every-day field of judicial procedure. The talent required to make adventures of this order interesting is a rare one, how rare may be inferred from the fact that almost the only famous example of the kind in English letters is the trial in that obsolete novel, 'Ten Thousand a Year.'"—New York Sun.
"The author makes a strong plea for moral responsibility in his work, and his vivid style and undeniable earnestness must carry great weight with all thinking readers. It is a notable book."—Boston Times.
"Mr. Post has created for himself a new field in literature, just as Conan Doyle by his Sherlock Holmes created for himself a new field. He shows in this book that he is not only a lawyer but a story writer of the very highest skill and literary style. The stories are most thrilling and hold one's interest to the end."—Law Students' Journal.
Mr. Post is to be congratulated upon having found a new field for fiction. The scene of his latest story is laid amidst the hills of West Virginia. Many of the exciting incidents are based upon actual experience on the cattle ranges of the south. The story is original, full of action, and strong with a local color almost entirely new to the reading public.
"Here we have not only literature, but we have character drawing, humor, and descriptive powers that Blackmore only equalled once, and that was in 'Lorna Doone.'... He knows the heart as well as the trees; he knows men and women as well as he knows nature, and he holds them both in the hollow of his hand."—Chicago Tribune.
R. D. Blackmore, the author of "Lorna Doone," said of this: "Knowing nothing of the writer or of his works, I was simply astonished at the beauty and power of this novel. But true as it is to life and place, full of deep interest and rare humor and vivid descriptions, there seemed to be risk of its passing unheeded in the crowd, and rush, and ruck of fiction.... Literature has been enriched with a wholesome, genial, and noble tale, the reading of which is a pleasure in store for many."
"Mr. Allen's text, as in all his writings, is singularly picturesque and captivating. There are no commonplaces, and, although the outcome is perfectly evident early in the story, the reader will find his attention chained.... It is one of the best of the summer books, and as an artistic bit of light reading ranks high. It is a pity that such a vivid imagination and high-bred style of discourse are no longer in the land of the living to entertain us with further stories of adventure."—Boston Times.
"The author is a novelist with a genuine gift for narrative. He knows how to tell a story, and he is capable of conceiving a plot as wild as was ever imagined by Jules Verne or Rider Haggard.... The reader will find himself amused and interested from the first page to the last."—N. Y. Herald.