She looked off toward the mountain top and slowly drew her hand from his. "I must do it. There is no one else," she said in a low voice.
"But it can't go on always—this way."
"I reckon so. Once I thought—it might—be some different, but now—" She waited an instant in silence.
"But now—what?"
"It seems as if it must go on—like this way—always, as if I were chained here with iron."
"But why? Won't you tell me so I may help you?"
"I can't," she said sadly and with finality. "It must be."
He brooded a moment, clasping his hands about one knee and gazing at her. "Maybe," he said at last, "maybe I can help you, even if you can't tell me what is holding you."
She smiled a faintly fleeting smile. "Thank you—but I reckon not."
"Miss Cassandra, when you know I am at your service, and will do anything you ask of me, why do you hold something back from me? I can understand, and I may have ways—"
"It's just that, suh. Even if I could tell you, I don't guess you could understand. Even if I went yonder on the mountain and cried to heaven to set me free, I'd have to bide here and do the work that is mine to do, as mother has done hers, and her mother before her."
"But they did it contentedly and happily—because they wished it. Your mother married your father because she loved him, and was glad—"
"Yes, I reckon she did—but he was different. She could do it for him. He lived alone—alone. Mother knew he did—she could understand. It was like he had a room to himself high up on the mountain, where she never could climb, nor open the door."
David leaned toward her. "What do you see when you look off at the mountain like that?"
"It's like I could see him. He would take his little books up there and walk the high path. I never have showedyou his path. It was his, and he would walk in it, up and down, up and down, and read words I couldn't understand, reading like he was singing. Sometimes I would climb up to him, and he'd take me in his arms and carry me like I was a baby, and read. Sometimes he would sit on a bank of moss under those trees—see near the top by that open spot of sky a right dark place? There are no other trees like them. They are his trees. He would sit with me there and tell me the stories of the strange words; but we never told mother, for she said they were heathen and I mustn't give heed to him." When deeply absorbed, she often lapsed into her old speech. David liked it. He almost wished she would never change it for his. "After father died I hunted and hunted for those little books, but I never could find them."
"You remember him so well, won't you tell me how he looked?"
She slowly brought her eyes down from the mountain top and fixed them on his face. "Sometimes—just for a minute—you make me think of him—but you don't look like him. I never heard any one laugh like he could laugh—and with his eyes, too. He was tall like you, and he carried his shoulders high like you do when you hurry, but he was a dark man. When he stood here in the door of the loom shed, his head touched the top. I thought of it when you stood here a bit ago and had to stoop. He always did that." She lifted her gaze again to the mountain, and was silent.
"Tell me a little more? Just a little? Don't you remember anything he said?"
"He used to preach, but I was too little to remember what he said. They used to have preaching in the schoolhouse, and in winter he used to teach there—when he could get the children to come. They had no books, but he marked with charcoal where they could all see, and showed them writing and figures; but somehow they got the idea he didn't know religion right, and they wouldn't go to hear him any more. Mother says it nigh broke his heart, for he fell to ailing and grew that thin and white he couldn't climb to his path any more." She stopped and put her hand to her throat, as her way was. She too had grown white with the ache of sorrowfulremembrance. He thought it cruel to urge her, but felt impelled to ask for more.
"And then?"
"Yes. One day we were all alone sitting right here in the loom shed door. He put one hand on my head, and then he put the other hand under my chin and turned my face to look in his eyes—so great and far—like they could see through your heart. Seems like I can feel the touch of his hand here yet and hear him say: 'Little daughter, never be like the rest. Be separate, and God will send for you some day here on the mountain. He will send for you on the mountain top. He will compass you about and lift you up and you shall be blessed.' Then he kissed me and went into the house. I could hear him still saying it as he walked, 'On the mountain top one will come for you, on the mountain top.' He went in and lay down, and I sat here and waited. It seemed like my heart stood still waiting for him to come back to me, and it must have been more than an hour I sat, and mother came home and went in and found him gone. He never spoke again. He lay there dead."
She paused and drew in a long, sighing breath. "I have never said those words aloud until now, to you, but hundreds of times when I look up on the mountain I have said them in my heart. I reckon he meant I was to bide here until my time was come, and do all like I ought to do it. I did think I could go to school and learn and come back and teach like he used to, and so keep myself separate like he did, but the Lord called me back and laid a hard thing on me, and I must do it. But in my heart I can keep separate like father did."
She rose and stood calmly, her eyes fixed on the mountain. David stood near and longed to touch her passive hand—to lift it to his lips—but forebore to startle her soul by so unusual an act. For all she had given him a confidence she had never bestowed on another, he felt himself held aloof, her spirit withdrawn from him and lifted to the mountain top.
That evening David sat long on his rock holding his flute and watching the thin golden crescent of the new moon floating through a pale amber sky, and one star near its tip slowly sliding down with it toward the deepening horizon.
The glowing sky bending to the purple hilltops—the crescent moon and the lone shining star—the evening breeze singing in the pines above him—the delicate arbutus blossoms hiding near his feet—the call of a bird to its mate, and the faint answering call from some distant shade—the call in his own heart that as yet returned to him unanswered, but with its quiet surety of ultimate response—the joy of these moments perfect in beauty and a more abundant assurance of gladness near at hand—filled him and lifted his soul to follow the star.
Guided by the unseen hand that held the earth, the crescent moon and the star to their orbits, would he find the great happiness that should be not his alone, but also for the eyes uplifted to the mountain top and the heart waiting in the shadows for the one to be sent? Ah, surely, surely, for this had he come. He stooped to the arbutus blossoms to inhale their fragrance. He rose and, lifting his flute to his lips, played to solace his own waiting, inventing new caprices and tossing forth the notes daringly—delicately—rapturously—now penetrating and strong, now faintly following and scarcely heard, uttering a wordless gladness.
Under the great holly tree in the shadows Cassandra sat, watching, as he watched, the crescent moon and the lone star sailing in the pale amber light, with the deepening purple mountain hiding the dim distance below them. Often in the early evening when her mother and Hoyle were sleeping, she would climb up here to pray for Frale that he might truly repent, and for herself that she mightbe strong in her purpose to give up all her cherished hopes and plans, if thereby she might save him from his own wild, reckless self.
It was here his boy's passion had been revealed to her, and here she had seen him changed from boy to man, filled with a man's hunger for her, which had led him to crime, and held him unrepentant and glad could he thus hold her his own. She must give up the life she had hoped to lead and take upon her the life of the wife of Cain, to help him expiate his deed. For this must she bow her head to the yoke her mother had borne before her. In the sadness of her heart she said again and again: "Christ will understand. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief! He will understand."
Again came to her, as they had often come of late, dropping down through the still air, down through the leafless boughs like joyful hopes yet to be realized, the flute notes. What were they, those sweet sounds? She held her breath and lifted her face toward the sky. Once, long ago in France, the peasant girl had heard the "Voices." Were they heavenly sweet, like these sounds? Did they drop from the sky and fill the air like these? Oh, why should they seem like hopes to her who had put away from her all hope? Were they bringing hope to her who must rise to toil and lie down in weariness for labor never done; who must hold always with sorrowing heart and clinging hands to the soul of a murderer—hold and cling, if haply she might save—and weep for that which, for her, might never be? Were they bringing hope that she might yet live gladly as the birds live; that she might go beyond that and live like those who have no sin imposed on them, to walk with the gods, she knew not how, but to rise to things beyond her ken?
Down came the notes, sweet, shrill, white notes,—hurrying, drifting, lingering, calling her to follow; down on her heart with healing and comfort they fell, lightly as dew on flowers, sparkling with life, joy-giving and pure.
Slowly she began climbing, listening, waiting, one step upward after another, following the sound. As if in a trance she moved. Below her the noise of falling water made a murmuring accompaniment to the music dropping from above—an earth-made accompaniment toheaven-sent melody, meeting and forming a perfect harmony in her heart as she climbed. Gradually the horror and the sorrow fell away from her even, as the soul shall one day shed its garment of earth, until at last she stood alone and silent near David, etherealized in the faint light to a spirit-like semblance of a woman.
With a glad pounding of his heart he sprang towards her. Scarcely conscious of the act he held out both his arms, but she did not move. She stood silently regarding him, her hands dropped at her side, then with drooping head she turned and began wearily to descend the way she had come. He followed her and took her hand. She let it lie passively in his and walked on. He wished he might feel her fingers close warmly about his own, but no, they were cold. She seemed wholly withdrawn from him, and her face bore the look of one who was walking in her sleep, yet he knew her to be awake.
"Miss Cassandra, speak to me," he begged, in quiet tones. "Don't walk away until you tell me why you came."
She seemed then to become aware that he was holding her by the hand and withdrew it, and in the faint light he thought she smiled. "It was just foolishness. You will laugh at me. I heard the music, and I thought it might be—you made it I reckon, but down there it sounded like it might be the 'Voices.' You remember how they came to Joan of Arc, like we were reading last week?" She began to walk on more hurriedly.
"I will go down with you," he said, "you thought it might be the voices? What did they say to you?"
"Oh, don't go with me. I never heed the dark."
"Won't you let me go with you? What did the flute say to you? Can't you tell me?"
She laughed a little then. "It was only foolishness. I reckon the 'Voices' never come these days. I have heard it before, but didn't know where it came from. It just seemed to drop down from heaven like, and this time it seemed some different, as if it might be the 'Voices' calling. It was pretty, suh, far away and soft—like part—of everything. My father's playing sounded sad most times, like sweet crying, but this was more like sweet laughing. I never heard anything so glad like this was, so I tried tofind it. Now I know it is you who make it I won't disturb you again, suh. Good evening." She hastened away and was soon lost in the gloom.
David stood until he heard her footsteps no more, then turned and entered his cabin, his mind and heart full of her. Surely he had called her, and the sound of his call was to her like "sweet laughing." Her face and her quaint expressions went with him into his dreams.
When he hurried down to the widow's place next morning, his mind filled with plans which he meant to carry out and was sure, with the boyish certainty of his nature he could compass, he heard the voice of little Hoyle shrilly calling to old Pete: "Whoa, mule. Haw there. Haw there, mule. What ye goin' that side fer; come 'round here."
Below the widow's house, the stream, after its riotous descent from the fall, meandered quietly through the rich bit of meadow and field, her inheritance for over a hundred years, establishing her claim to distinction among her neighbors. Here Martha Caswell had lived with her mother and her two brothers until she married and went with her young husband over "t'other side Pisgah"; then her mother sent for them to return, begging her son-in-law to come and care for the place. Her two sons, reckless and wild, were allowing the land to run to waste, and the buildings to fall in pieces through neglect.
The daughter Martha, true to her name, was thrifty and careful, and under her influence, her gentle dreamer of a husband, who cared more for his fiddle, his books, and his sermons, gradually redeemed the soil from weeds and the buildings from dilapidation, until at last, with the proceeds of her weaving and his own hard labor, they saved enough to buy out the brothers' interests.
By that time the younger son had fallen a victim to his wild life, and the other moved down into the low country among his wife's people. Thus were the Merlins left alone on their primitive estate. Here they lived contentedly with Cassandra, their only child, and her father's constant companion, until the tragedy which she had so simply related to David.
Her father's learning had been peculiar. Only a little classic lore, treasured where schools were none and bookswere few, handed down from grandfather to grandson. His Greek he had learned from the two small books the widow had so carefully preserved, their marginal notes his only lexicon. They and his Bible and a copy of Bunyan'sPilgrim's Progresswere all that were left of his treasures. A teething puppy had torn hisDialogues of Platoto shreds, and when his successor had come into the home, he had used theMarcus Aureliusfor gun wadding, ere his wife's precaution of placing the padlock from the door on her mother's old linen chest.
To-day, as David passed the house, the old mother sat on her little porch churning butter in a small dasher churn. She was glad, as he could see, because she could do something once more.
"Now are you happy?" he called laughingly, as he paused beside her.
"Well, I be. Hit's been a right smart o' while since I been able to do a lick o' work. We sure do have a heap to thank you fer. Be Decatur Irwin as glad to lose his foot as I be to git my laig back?" she queried whimsically; "I reckon not."
"I reckon not, too, but with him it was a case of losing his life or his foot, while with you it was only a question of walking about, or being bedridden for the next twenty years."
"They be ignorant, them Irwins, an' she's more'n that, fer she's a fool. She come round yest'day wantin' to borry a hoe to fix up her gyarden patch, an' she 'lowed ef you'n Cass had only lef' him be, he'd 'a' come through all right, fer hit war a-gettin' better the day you-uns took hit off. I told her yas, he'd 'a' come cl'ar through to the nex' world, like Farwell done. When the misery left him, he up an' died, an' Lord knows whar he went."
"I'll get him an artificial foot as soon as he is able to wear one. He'll get on very well with a peg under his knee until then. What's Hoyle doing with the mule?"
"He's rid'n' him fer Cass. She's tryin' to get the ground ready fer a crap. Hit's all we can do. Our women nevah war used to do such work neither, but she would try."
"What's that? Is she ploughing?" he asked sharply, and strode away.
"I reckon she don't want ye there, Doctah," the widow called after him, but he walked on.
The land lay in a warm hollow completely surrounded by hills. It had been many years cleared, and the mellow soil was free from stumps and roots. When Thryng arrived, three furrows had been run rather crookedly the length of the patch, and Cassandra stood surveying them ruefully, flushed and troubled, holding to the handles of the small plough and struggling to set it straight for the next furrow.
The noise of the fall behind them covered his approach, and ere she was aware he was at her side. Placing his two hands over hers which clung stubbornly to the handles of the plough, he possessed himself of them. Laughingly he turned her about after the short tussle, and looked down into her warm, flushed face. Still holding her hands, he pulled her away from the plough to the grassy edge of the field, leaving Hoyle waiting astride the mule.
"Whoa, mule. Stand still thar," he shrilled, as the beast sought to cross the bit of ploughed ground to reach the grass beyond.
"Let him eat a minute, Hoyle," said David. "Let him eat until I come. Now, Miss Cassandra, what does this mean? Do you think you can plough all that land? Is that it?"
"I must."
"You must not."
"There is no one else now. I must." He could feel her hands quiver in his, as he forcibly held them, and knew from her panting breath how her heart was beating. She held her head high, nevertheless, and looked bravely back into his eyes.
"You must let me—" he paused. Intuitively he knew he must not say as yet what he would. "Let me direct you a little. You have been most kind to me—and—it is my place; I am a doctor, you know."
"If I were sick or hurt, I would give heed to you, I would do anything you say; but I'm not, and this is laid on me to do. Leave go my hands, Doctor Thryng."
"If you'll sit down here a moment and talk this thing out with me, I will. Now tell me first of all, why is this laid on you?"
"Frale is gone and it must be done, or we will have no crop, and then we must sell the animals, and then go down and live like poor white trash." Her low, passive monotone sounded like a moan of sorrow.
"You must hire some one to do this heavy work."
"Every one is working his own patch now, and—no, I have no money to hire with. I reckon I've thought it all over every way, Doctor." She looked sadly down at her hands and then up at the mountain top. "I know you think this is no work for a girl to do, and you are right. Our women never have done such. Only in the war times my Grandmother Caswell did it, and I can now. A girl can do what she must. I have no way to turn but to live as my people have lived before me. I thought once I might do different, go to school and keep separate—but—" She spread out her hands with a hopeless gesture, and rose to resume her work.
"Give me a moment longer. I'm not through yet. That's right, now listen. I see the truth of what you say, and I came down this morning to make a proposition to your mother—not for your sake only—don't be afraid, for my own as well; but I didn't make it because I hadn't time. She told me what you were doing, and I hurried off to stop you. Don't speak yet, let me finish. I feel I have the right, because I know—I know I was sent here just now for a purpose—guided to come here." He paused to allow his words to have their full weight. Whether she would perceive his meaning remained to be seen.
"I understand." She spoke quietly. "Doctor Hoyle sent you to be helped like he was—and you have been right kind to more than us. You've helped that many it seems like you were sent here for we-all as well as for your own sake, but that can't help me now, Doctor; it—"
"Ah, yes it can. I'm far from well yet. I shall be, but I must stay on for a long time, and I want some interest here. I want to see things of my own growing. The ground up around my little cabin is stony and very poor, and I want to rent this little farm of yours. Listen—I'll pay enough so you need not sell your cattle, and you—you can go on with your weaving. You can work in the house again as you have always done. Sometime,when your mother is stronger, you can take up your life again and go to school—as you meant to live—can't you?"
"That can never be now. If you take the farm or not, I must bide on here in the old way. I must take up the life my mother lived and my grandmother, and hers before her. It is mine, forever, to live it that way—or die."
"Why do you talk so?"
"God knows, but I can't tell you. Thank you, suh. I will be right glad to rent you the farm. I'd a heap rather you had it than any one else I ever knew, for we care more for it than you would guess, but for the rest—no. I must bide and work till I die; only maybe I can save little Hoyle and give him a chance to learn something, for he never could work—being like he is."
Thryng's eyes danced with joy as he regarded her. "Hoyle is not going to be always as he is, and he shall have the chance to learn something also. Look up, Miss Cassandra, look squarely into my eyes and laugh. Be happy, Miss Cassandra, and laugh. I say it."
She laughed softly then. She could not help it.
"Wasn't that what the 'Voices' were saying last night when you followed?"
"Yes, yes. They seemed like they were calling, 'Hope, hope,' but they were not the real 'Voices.' You made it."
"Yes, I made it; and I was truly calling that to you. And you replied; you came to me."
"Ah, but that is different from the 'Voices' she heard."
"But if they called the truth to you—what then?"
"Doctah, there is no longer any hope for me. God called me and let me cut off all hope, once. I did it, and now, only death can change it."
"If I believe you, you must believe me. We won't talk of it any more. I'm hungry. Your mother was churning up there; let's go and get some buttermilk, and settle the business of the rent. You've run three good furrows and I'll run three more beside them—my first, remember, in all my life. Then we'll plant that strip to sunflowers. Come, Hoyle, tie the mule and follow us."
So David carried his way. They walked merrily back to the house, chattering of his plans and what he would raise. He knew nothing whatever of the sort of crops tobe raised, and she was naïvely gay at his expense, a mood he was overjoyed to awaken in her. He vowed that merely to walk over ploughed ground made a man stronger.
On the porch he sat and drank his buttermilk and, placing his paper on the step, drew up a contract for rent. Then Cassandra went to her weaving, and he and Hoyle returned to the field, where with much labor he succeeded in turning three furrows beside Cassandra's, rather crooked and uncertain ones, it is true, but quite as good as hers, as Hoyle reluctantly admitted, which served to give David a higher respect for farmers in general and ploughmen especially.
After turning his furrows, David told Hoyle to ride the mule to the stable, then he sat himself on the fence, and meditated. He bethought him that in the paper he had drawn up he had made no provision for the use of the mule. He wiped his forehead and rubbed the perspiration from his hair, and coughed a little after his exertion, glad at heart to find himself so well off.
He would come and plough a little every day. Then he began to calculate the number of days it would take him to finish the patch, measuring the distance covered by the six furrows with his eye, and comparing it with the whole. He laughed to find that, at the rate of six furrows a day, the task would take him well on into the summer. Plainly he must find a ploughman.
Then the laying out of the ground! Why should he not have a vineyard up on the farther hill slope? He never could have any fruit from it, but what of that! Even if he went away and never returned, he would know it to be adding its beauty to this wonderful dream. Who could know what the future held for him—what this little spot might mean to him in the days to come? That he would go out, fully recovered and strong to play his part in life, he never doubted. Might not this idyl be a part of it? He thought of the girl sitting at her loom, swaying as she threw her shuttle with the rhythm of a poem, and weaving—weaving his life and his heart into her web, unknown to herself—weaving a thread of joy through it all which as yet she could not see. He knocked the ashes from his pipe and stood a moment gazing about him.
Yes, he really must have a vineyard, and a bit of pasture somewhere, and a field of clover. What grew best there he little knew, so he decided to go up and consult the widow.
There were other things also to claim his thoughts.Over toward "Wild Cat Hole" there was a woman who needed his care; and he must not become so absorbed in his pastoral romance as to forget Hoyle. He was looking actually haggard these last few days, and his mother said he would not eat. It might be that he needed more than the casual care he was giving him. Possibly he could take him to Doctor Hoyle's hospital for radical treatment later in the season, when his crops were well started. He smiled as he thought of his crops, then laughed outright, and strolled back to the house, weary and hungry, and happy as a boy.
"Well, now, I like the look of ye," called the old mother from the porch, where she still sat. "'Pears like it's done ye good a-ready to turn planter. The' hain't nothin' better'n the smell o' new sile fer them 'at's consumpted."
"Mother," cried Cassandra from within, "don't call the doctor that! Come up and have dinner with us, Doctor." She set a chair for him as she spoke, but he would not. As he stood below them, looking up and exchanging merry banter with her mother, he laughed his contagious laugh.
"I bet he's tired," shrilled Hoyle, from his perch on the porch roof. "He be'n settin' on the fence smokin' an' rubbin' his hade with his handkercher like he'd had enough with his ploughin'. You can nigh about beat him, Cass. Hisn didn't look no better'n what yourn looked."
"Here, you young rascal you, come down from there," cried David. Catching him by the foot, which hung far enough over to be within reach of his long arm, he pulled him headlong from his high position and caught him in mid-air. "Now, how shall I punish you?"
"Ye bettah whollop him. He hain't nevah been switched good in his hull life. Maybe that's what ails him."
The child grinned. "I hain't afeared. Get me down on the ground oncet, an' I c'n run faster'n he can."
"Suppose I duck him in the water trough yonder?"
"I reckon he needs it. He generally do," smiled Cassandra from the doorway. "Come, son, go wash up." David allowed the child to slip to the ground. "Seems like Hoyle is right enough about you, though. Don't go away up the hill; bide here and have dinner first."
David dropped on the step for a moment's rest. "I see I must make a way up to my cabin that will not pass your door. How about that? Was dinner included in the rent, and the mule and the mule's dinner? And what is Hoyle going to pay me for allowing him to ride Pete up and down while I plough?"
"Yas, an' what are ye goin' to give him fer 'lowin' ye to set his hade round straight, an' what are ye goin' to give me fer 'lowin' ye to set me on my laigs again? Ef ye go a-countin' that-a-way, I'm 'feared ye're layin' up a right smart o' debt to we-uns. I reckon you'll use that mule all ye want to, an' ye'll lick him good, too, when he needs hit, an' take keer o' yourself, fer he's a mean critter; an' ye'll keep that path right whar hit is, fer hit goes with the farm long's you bide up yandah."
"You good people have the best of me; we'll call it all even. Ever since I leaped off that train in the snow, I have been dependent on you for my comfort. Well, I must hurry on; since I've turned farmer I'm a busy man. Can you suggest any one I might get to do that ploughing? Miss Cassandra here may be able to do it without help, but I confess I'm not equal to it."
"I be'n tellin' Cass that thar Elwine Timms, he ought to be able to do the hull o' that work. Widow Timmses' son. They live ovah nigh the Gerret place thar at Lone Pine Creek. He used to help Frale with the still. An' then thar's Hoke Belew—he ought to do sumthin' fer all you done fer his wife—sittin' up the hull night long, an' gettin' up at midnight to run to them. Oh, I hearn a heap sittin' here. Things comes to me that-a-way. Thar hain't much goin' on within twenty mile o' here 'at I don't know. They is plenty hereabouts owes you a heap."
"I think I've been treated very well. They keep me supplied with all I need. What more can a man ask? The other day, a man brought me a sack of corn meal, fresh and sweet from the mill—a man with six children and a sick mother to feed, but what could I do? He would leave it, and I—well, I—"
"When they bring ye things, you take 'em. Ye'll help 'em a heap more that-a-way 'n ye will curin' 'em. The' hain't nothin' so good fer a man as payin' his debts. Hitkeeps his hade up whar a man 'at's good fer anything ought to keep hit. I hearn a heap o' talk here in these mountains 'bouts bein' stuck up, but I tell 'em if a body feels he hain't good fer nothin', he pretty generally hain't. He'd a heap better feel stuck up to my thinkin'."
"They've done pretty well, all who could. They've brought me everything from corn whiskey to fodder for my horse. A woman brought me a bag of dried blueberries the other day. I don't know what to do with them. I have to take them, for I can't be graceless enough to send them away with their gifts."
"You bring 'em here, an' Cass'll make ye a blueberry cake to eat hot with butter melt'n' on hit 'at'll make ye think the world's a good place to live in."
"I'll do it," he said, laughing, and took his solitary path up the steep. Halfway to his cabin, he heard quick, scrambling steps behind him, and, turning, saw little Hoyle bringing Cassandra's small melon-shaped basket, covered with a white cloth.
"I said I could run faster'n you could. Cass, she sont some th' chick'n fry." He thrust the basket at Thryng and turned to run home.
"Here, here!" David called after the twisted, hunched little figure. "You tell your sister 'thank you very much,' for me. Will you?"
"Yas, suh," and the queer little gnome disappeared among the laurel below.
In the morning, David found the place of the Widow Timms, and her son agreed to come down the next day and accept wages for work. A weary, spiritless young man he was, and the home as poverty-stricken as was that of Decatur Irwin, and with almost as many children. It was with a feeling of depression that David rode on after his call, leaving the grandmother seated in the doorway, snuff stick between her yellow teeth, the grandchildren clustering about her knees, or squatting in the dirt, like young savages. Their father lounged in the wretched cabin, hardly to be seen in the windowless, smoke-blackened space nearly filled with beds heaped with ragged bedclothes, and broken splint-bottomed chairs hung about with torn and soiled garments.
The dirt and disorder irritated David, and he feltangered at the clay-faced son for not being out preparing his little patch of ground. Fortunately, he had been able to conceal his annoyance enough to secure the man's promise to begin work next day, or he would have gained nothing but the family's resentment for his pains. Already David had learned that a sort of resentful pride was the last shred of respectability to which the poorest and most thriftless of the mountain people clung—pride of he knew not what, and resentfulness toward any who, by thrift and labor, were better off than themselves.
He reasoned that as the young man had been Frale's helper at the still, no doubt corn whiskey was at the bottom of their misery. This brought his mind to the thought of Frale himself. The young man had not been mentioned between him and Cassandra since the day she sought his help. He thought he could not be far from the still, as he forded Lone Pine Creek, on his way to the home of Hoke Belew, whose wife he was going to see.
David was interested in this young family; they seemed to him to be quite of the better sort, and as he put space between himself and the Widow Timms' deplorable state, his irritation gradually passed, and he was able to take note of the changes a week had wrought in the growing things about him.
More than once he diverged to investigate blossoming shrubs which were new to him, attracted now by a sweet odor where no flowers appeared, until closer inspection revealed them, and now by a blaze of color against the dark background of laurel leaves and gray rocks. Ah, the flaming azalea had made its appearance at last, huge clusters of brilliant bloom on leafless shrubs. How dazzlingly gay!
In the midst of his observance of things about him, and underneath his surface thoughts, he carried with him a continual feeling of satisfaction in the remembrance of the little farm below the Fall Place, and in an amused way planned about it, and built idly his "Castles in Spain." A bit of stone wall whose lower end was overgrown with vines pleased him especially, and a few enormous trees, which had been left standing when the spot had been originally cleared, and the vine-entangled, drooping trees along the banks of the small river that coursedcrookedly through it,—what possibilities it all presented to his imagination! If only he could find the right man to carry out his ideas for him, he would lease the place for fifty years for the privilege of doing as he would with it.
After a time he came out upon the cleared farm of Hoke Belew, who was industriously ploughing his field for cotton, and called out to him, "How's the wife?"
"She hain't not to say right smart, an' the baby don't act like he's well, neither, suh. Ride on to th' house an' light. She's thar, an' I'll be up d'rectly."
Thryng rode on and dismounted, tying his horse to a sapling near the door. The place was an old one. A rose vine, very ancient, covered the small porch and the black, old, moss-grown roof. The small green foliage had come out all over it in the week since he was last there. The glazed windows were open, and white homespun curtains were swaying in the light breeze. A small fire blazed on the hearth, and before it, in a huge-splint-bottomed rocking-chair, the pale young mother reclined languidly, wrapped in a patchwork quilt. The hearth was swept and all was neat, but very bare.
Close to the black fireplace on a low chair, with the month-old baby on her knees, sat Cassandra. She was warming something at the fire, which she reached over to stir now and then, while the red light played brightly over her sweet, grave face. Very intent she was, and lovely to see. She wore a creamy white homespun gown, coarse in texture, such as she had begun to wear about the house since the warm days had come. Thryng had seen her in such a dress but once before, and he liked it. With one arm guarding the little bundle in her lap, dividing her attention between it and the porridge she was making, she sat, a living embodiment of David's vision, silhouetted against and haloed by the red fire, softened by the blue, obscuring smoke-wreaths that slowly circled in great rings and then swept up the wide, overarching chimney.
He heard her low voice speaking, and his heart leaped toward her as he stood an instant, unheeded by them, ere he rapped lightly. They both turned with a slight start. Cassandra rose, holding the sleeping babe in the hollow of her arm, and set a chair for him before the fire. Then shelaid the child carefully in the mother's arms, and removed the porridge from the fire.
"Shall I call Hoke?" she asked, moving toward the door.
David did not want her to leave them, loving the sight of her. "Don't go. I saw him as I came along," he said.
But she went on, and sat herself on a seat under a huge locust tree. Tardiest of all the trees, it had not yet leaved out. Later it would be covered with a wealth of sweet white blossoms swarming with honey-bees, and the air all about it would be filled with its lavish fragrance and the noise of humming wings.
Presently Hoke came plodding up from the field, and smiled as he passed her. "Doc inside?" he asked.
She nodded. When David came out, he found her still seated there, her head resting wearily against the rough tree. She rose and came toward him.
"I thought I wouldn't leave until I knew if there was anything more I could do," she said simply.
"No, you've done all you can. She'll be all right. Where's your horse?"
"I walked."
"Why did you do that? You ought not, you know."
"Hoyle rode the colt down to see could Aunt Sally come here for a day or two, until Miz Belew can do for herself better." She turned back to the house.
"Come home now with me. Ride my horse, and I'll walk. I'd like to walk," urged David.
"Oh, no. Thank you, Doctor, I must speak to Azalie first. Don't wait."
She went in, and David mounted and rode slowly on, but not far. Where the trail led through a small stream which he knew she must cross, he dismounted and allowed the horse to drink, while he stood looking back along the way for her to come to him. Soon he saw her white dress among the glossy rhododendron leaves as she moved swiftly along, and he walked back to meet her.
"I have waited for you. You are not used to this kind of a saddle, I know, but what's the difference? You can ride cross-saddle as the young ladies do in the North, can't you?"
"I reckon I could." She laughed a little. "Do theyride that way where you come from? It must look right funny. I don't guess I'd like it."
"But just try—to please me? Why not?"
"If you don't mind, I'd rather walk, please, suh. Don't wait."
"Then I will walk with you. I may do that, may I not?" He caught the bridle-rein on the saddle, leaving the horse to browse along behind as he would, and walked at her side. She made no further protest, but was silent.
"You don't object to this, do you?" he insisted.
"It's pleasanter than being alone, but it's right far to walk, seems like, for you."
"Then why not for you?" She smiled her mysterious, quiet smile. "You must know that I am stronger than you?" he persisted.
"I ought to think so, since that day we rode over to Cate Irwin's, but I was right afraid for you that time, lest you get cold; and then it was me—" she paused, and looked squarely in his eyes and laughed. "You wouldn't say 'it was me,' would you?"
He joined merrily in her laughter. "I never corrected you on that."
"You never did, but you didn't need to. I often know, after I've said something—not—right—as you would say it."
"Do you, indeed?" he walked nearer, boyishly happy because she was close beside him. He wanted to touch her, to take her hand and walk as children do, but could not because of the subtile barrier he felt between them. He determined to break it down. "Finish what you were saying? And then it was me—what?"
"And then it was I who gave out, not you."
"But you were a heroine—a heroine from the ground up, and I love you." He spoke with such boyish impulsiveness that she took the remark as one of his extravagances, and merely smiled indulgently, as if amused at it. She did not even flush, but accepted it as she would an outburst from Hoyle.
David was amazed. It only served to show him how completely outside that charmed circle within which she lived he still was. He was maddened by it. He camenearer and bent to look in her face, until she lifted her eyes to look fairly in his.
"That's right. Look at me and understand me. I waited there only that I might tell you. Why do you put a wall between us? I tell you I love you. I love you, Cassandra; do you understand?"
She stood quite still and gazed at him in amazement, almost as if in terror. Her face grew white, and she pressed her two hands on her heart, then slowly slid them up to her round white throat as if it hurt her—a movement he had seen in her twice before, when suffering emotion.
"Why, Cassandra, does it hurt you for me to tell you that I love you? Beautiful girl, does it?"
"Yes, suh," she said huskily.
He would have taken her in his arms, but refrained for very love of her. She should be sacred even from his touch, if she so wished, and the barrier, whatever it might be, should halo her. He had spoken so tenderly he had no need to tell her. The love was in his eyes and his voice, but he went on.
"Then I must be cruel and hurt you. I love you all the days and the nights—all the moments of the days—I love you."
In very terror, she flung out her hands and placed them on his breast, holding him thus at arm's-length, and with head thrown back, still looked into his eyes piteously, imploringly. With trembling lips, she seemed to be speaking, but no voice came. He covered her hands with his, and held them where she had placed them.
"You have put a wall between us. Why have you done it?"
"I didn't—didn't know; I thought you were—as far—as far away from us as the star—the star of gold is—from our world in the night—so far—I didn't guess—you could come so—near." She bowed her head and wept.
"You are the star yourself, you beautiful—you are—"
But she stopped him, crying out. She could not draw her hands away, for he still held them clasped to his heart.
"No, no! The wall is there. It must be between usfor always, I am promised." The grief wailed and wept in her tones, and her eyes were wide and pleading. "I must lead my life, and you—you must stay outside the wall. If you love me—Doctor,—you must never know it, and I must never know it." Her beating heart stopped her speech and they both stood thus a moment, each seeing only the other's soul.
"Promised?" The word sank into his heart like lead. "Promised?" Slowly he released her hands, and she covered her face with them and sank at his feet. He bent down to her and asked almost in a whisper: "Promised? Did you say that word?"
She drooped lower and was silent.
All the chivalry of his nature rose within him. Should he come into her life only to torment and trouble her? Ought he to leave the place? Could he bear to live so near her? What had she done—this flower? Was she to be devoured by swine? The questions clamored at the door of his heart. But one thing could he see clearly. He must wait without the wall, seeking only to serve and protect her.
With the unerring instinct which led her always straight to the mark, she had seen the only right course. He repeated her words over and over to himself. "If you love me, you must never know it, and I must never know it." Her heart should be sacred from his personal intrusion, and their old relations must be reëstablished, at whatever cost to himself.
With flash-light clearness he saw his difficulty, and that only by the elimination of self could he serve her, and also that her manner of receiving his revelation had but intensified his feeling for her. The few short moments seemed hours of struggle with himself ere he raised her to her feet and spoke quietly, in his old way.
He lifted her hand to his lips. "It is past, Miss Cassandra. We will drop these few moments out of your life into a deep well, and it shall be as if they had never been." He thought as he spoke that the well was his own heart, but that he would not say, for henceforth his love and service must be selfless. "We may be good friends still? Just as we were?"
"Yes, suh," she spoke meekly.
"And we can go right on helping each other, as we have done all these weeks? I do not need to leave you?"
"Oh, no, no!" She spoke with a gasp of dismay at the thought. "It—won't hurt so much if I can see you going right on—getting strong—like you have been, and being happy—and—" She paused in her slowly trailing speech and looked about her. They were down in a little glen, and there were no mountain tops in sight for her to look up to as was her custom.
"And what, Cassandra? Finish what you were saying." Still for a while she was silent, and they walked on together. "And now won't you say what you were going to say?" He could not talk himself, and he longed to hear her voice.
"I was thinking of the music you made. It was so glad. I can't talk and say always what I think, like you do, but seems like it won't hurt me so here," she put her hand to her throat, "where it always hurts me when I am sorry at anything, if I can hear you glad in the music—like you were that—night I thought you were the 'Voices.'"
"Cassandra, it shall be glad for you, always."
She looked into his eyes an instant with the clear light of understanding in her own. "But for you? It is for you I want it to be glad."
The bishop was seated in a deep canvas chair on his wide veranda, looking out over his garden toward a distant line of blue hills. His little wife sat close to his side on a low rocker, very busy with the making of buttonholes in a small girl's frock of white dimity and lace. Betty Towers loved lace and pretty things.
The small girl was playing about the garden paths with her puppy and chattering with Frale in her high, happy, childish voice, while he bent weeding among the beds of okra and egg-plant. His face wore a more than usually discontented look, even when answering the child with teasing banter. Now and then he lifted his eyes from his work and watched furtively the movements of David Thryng, who was pacing restlessly up and down the long veranda in earnest conversation with the bishop and his wife.
The two in the garden could not understand what was being said at the house, but each party could hear the voices of the other, and by calling out a little could easily converse across the dividing hedge and the intervening space.
"Talk about the influence of the beautiful in nature upon the human soul,—it is all very pretty, but I believe the soul must be more or less enlightened to feel it. I've learned a few things among your people up there in the mountains. Strange beings they are."
"It only goes to show that heredity alone won't do everything," said the bishop, placing the tips of his fingers together and frowning meditatively.
"Heredity? It means a lot to us over there in England."
"Yes, yes. But your old families need a little new blood in them now and then, even if they have to come over here for it."
"For that and—your money—yes." Thryng laughed. "But these mountain people of yours, who are they anyway?"
"Most of them are of as pure a strain of British as any in the world—as any you will find at home. They have their heredity—and only that—from all your classes over there, but it is from those of a hundred or more years ago. They are the unmixed descendants of those you sent over here for gain, drove over by tyranny, or exported for crime."
"How unmixed in your most horribly mixed and mongrel population?"
"Circumstances and environment have kept them to the pure stock, and neglect has left them untrammelled by civilization and unaided by education. Time and generations of ignorance have deteriorated them, and nature alone—as you were but now admitting—has hardly served to arrest the process by the survival of the fittest."
"Nature—yes—how do you account for it? I have been in the grandest, most wonderful places, I venture to say, that are to be found on earth, and among all the glory that nature can throw around a man, he is still, if left to himself, more bestial than the beasts. He destroys and defaces and defiles nature; he kills—for the mere sake of killing—more than he needs; he enslaves himself to his appetites and passions, follows them wildly, yields to them recklessly; and destroys himself and all the beauty around him that he can reach, wantonly. Why, Bishop Towers, sometimes I've gone out and looked up at the stars above me and wondered which was real, they and the marvellous beauty all around me, or the three hundred reeking humanity sleeping in the camp beneath them. Sometimes it seemed as if only hell were real, and the camp was a bit of it let loose to mock at heaven."
"We mustn't forget that what is transitory is not a part of God's eternity of spirit and truth."
"Oh, yes, yes! But we do forget. And some transitory things are mighty hard to endure, especially if they must endure for a lifetime."
David was thinking of Cassandra and what in all probability would be her doom. He had not mentioned her name, but he had come down with the intention of learningall he could about her, and if possible to whom she was "promised." He feared it might be the low-browed, handsome youth bending over the garden beds beyond the hedge, and his heart rebelled and cried out fiercely within him, "What a waste, what a waste!"
Betty Towers, intent on her sewing, felt the thrill that intensified David's tone, and she, too, thought of Cassandra. She dropped her work in her lap and looked earnestly in her husband's face.
"James, I feel just as Doctor Thryng does—when I think of some things. When I see a tragedy coming to a human soul, I feel that a lifetime of transitory things like that is hard to endure. Fancy, James! Think of Cassandra. You know her, Doctor Thryng, of course. They live just below your place. She is the Widow Farwell's daughter, but her name is Merlin."
David arrested his impatient stride and, drawing a chair near her, dropped into it. "What about her?" he said. "What is the tragedy?"
"I think, Betty, the hills must keep their own secrets," said the bishop.
His little wife compressed her lips, glanced over the hedge at the young man who happened at the moment to have straightened from his bent position among the plants and was gazing at their guest, then resumed her sewing.
"Is it something I must not be told?" asked David, quietly. "But I may have my suspicions. Naturally we can't help that."
"I think it is better to know the truth. I don't like suspicions. They are sure to lead to harm. James, let me put it to the doctor as I see it, and see what he thinks of it."
"As you please, dear."
"It's like this. Have you seen anything of that girl or observed her much?"
"I certainly have."
"Then, of course, you can see that she is one of the best of the mountain people, can't you? Well! She has promised to marry—promised to marry—think of it! one of the wildest, most reckless of those mountain boys, one that she knows very well has been in illicit distilling.He is a lawbreaker in that way; and, more than that, he drinks, and in a drunken row he shot dead his friend."
"Ah!" David rose, turned away, and again paced the piazza. Then he returned to his seat. "I see. The young man I tried to help off when I first arrived."
"Yes. There he is."
"I see. Handsome type."
"He's down here now, keeping quiet. How long it will last, no one knows. Justice is lax in the mountains. His father shot three or four men before he died himself of a gunshot wound which he received while resisting the officers of the law. If there's a man left in the family to follow this thing up, Frale will be hunted down and arrested or shot; otherwise, when things have cooled off a little up there, he will go back and open up the old business, and the tragedy will be repeated. James, you know how often after the best you could do and all their promises, they go back to it?"
"I admit it's always a question. They don't seem to be content in the low country. I think it is often a sort of natural gravitation back to the mountains where they were born and bred, more than it is depravity."
"I know, James, but that excuse won't help Cassandra."
"Why did she do it?" asked David. "She must have known to what such a marriage would bring her."
"Do it? That is the sort of girl she is. If she thought she ought, she would leap over that fall there."
"But why should she think she ought? Had she given her—promise—" David saw her as she appeared to him when she had said that word to him on the mountain, and it silenced him, but only for a moment. He would learn all he could of her motives now. He must—he would know. "I mean before he did this, before she went away to study—had she made him such a—promise?"
"No. You tell him about it, James. You have seen her and talked with her. They were quarrelling about her, as I understand, and she thinks because she was the cause of the deed she must help him make retribution. Isn't that it, James? She knows perfectly well what it means for her, for she has had her aspirations. I can see it all. Frale says he was not drunk nor his friend either. He says the other man claimed—but I won't go into that—only Cassandra promised him before God, he says, that if he would repent, she would marry him. And when she was here she used to talk about the way those women live. How her own mother has worked and aged! Why, she is not yet sixty. You have seen how they live in their wretched little cabins, Doctor; that's what Frale would doom her to. He never in life will understand her. He'll grow old like his father,—a passionate, ignorant, untamed animal, and worse, for he would be drunken as well. He's been drunk twice since he came down here. James, you know they think it's perfectly right to get drunk Saturday afternoon."
"Yes, it seems a terrible waste; but if she has children, she will be able to do more for them than her mother has done for her, and they will have her inheritance; so her life can't be wholly wasted, even if she is not able to live up to her aspirations."
"James Towers! I—that—it's because you are a man that you can talk so! I'm ashamed, and you a bishop! I wish—" Betty's eyes were full of angry tears. "I only wish you were a woman. Slowly improve the race by bearing children—giving them her inheritance! How would she bear them? Year after year—ill fed, half clothed, slaving to raise enough to hold their souls in their bodies, bringing them into the world for a brute who knows only enough to make corn whiskey—to sell it—and drink it—and reproduce his kind—when—when she knows all the time what ought to be! Oh, James, James, think of it!"
"My dear, my dear, you forget, he has promised to repent and live a different life. If he does, things will be better than we now see them. If he does not change, then we may interfere—perhaps."
"I know, James. But—but—suppose he repents and she becomes his wife, and puts aside all her natural tastes, and the studies she loves, and goes on living with him there on the home place, and he does the best he can—even. Don't you see that her nature is fine and—and so different—even at the best, James, for her it will be death in life. And then there is the terrible chance, after all, that he might go back and be like his father before him, and then what?"
"Well, their lives and destinies are not in our hands; we can only watch out for them and help them."
"James, he has been drunk twice!"
"Yes, yes, Betty, my little tempest, and if he gets drunk twice more, and twice more, she will still forgive him until seventy times seven. We must make her see that unless he keeps his promise to her, she must give him up."
"Of course. I suppose that's all we can do. I—don't know what you'll think of me, Doctor Thryng; I'm a dreadful scold. If James were not an angel—"
"It's perfectly delicious. I would rather hear you scold than—"
"Than hear James preach," laughed the bishop. "I agree with you."
"I agree with her," said David, emphatically. "It ought to be stopped if—"
"If it ought to be, it will be. What do you think she said to me about it when I went to reason with her? 'If Christ can forgive and stand such as he, I can. It is laid on my soul to do this.' I had no more to say."
"That is one point of view, but we mustn't lose sight of the practical, either. To be his wife and bear his children—I call it a waste, a—"
"Yes, yes. So it is." And what more could the bishop say? After a little, he added, "But still we must not forget that he, too, is a human soul and has a value as great as hers."
"According to your viewpoint, but not to mine—not to mine. If a man is enslaved to his own appetites, he has no right to enslave another to them."
The following day David took himself back to his hermitage, setting aside all persuasions to remain.
"Don't make a recluse of yourself," begged the bishop's wife. "The amenities of life can't always be dispensed with, and we need you, James and I, you and your music."
David laughed. "I'm too fatally human to become a recluse, and as for the amenities, they are not all of one order, you know. I find plenty of scope for exercising them on others, and I often submit to having them exercised on me,—after their own ideas." He laughed again. "I wish you could look into my larder. You'd find meprovided with all the hills afford. They have loaded me with gifts."
"No wonder! I know what your life up there means to them, taking care of their mothers and babies, and sitting up with them nights, going to them when they are in trouble, rain or shine, and visiting them in their bare, wretched, crowded homes."
"It wouldn't be so bad often, if it weren't that when a family is in serious trouble or has a case needing quiet and care, the sympathies of all their relatives are roused, and they come crowding in. In one case, the father was ill with pneumonia. I did all I could for him, and next day—would you believe it?—I found his sister and her 'old man' and their three youngsters, his old mother and a brother and a widowed sister, all camped down on them, all in one room. The sister sat by the fire nursing her three-months-old baby, his mother was smoking at her side, and the sick man's six little children and their three cousins were raising Ned, in and out, with three or four hounds. Not one of the visitors was helping, or, as they say up there, 'doing a lick,' but the wife was cooking for the whole raft when her husband needed all her care. Marvellous ideas they have, some of them."
"You ought to write out some of your experiences."
"Oh, I can't. It would seem like a sort of betrayal of friendship. They have adopted me, so to speak, and are so naïve and kind, and have trusted me—I think they are my friends. I may be very odd—you know."
"I know how you feel," said Betty.
The bishop's little daughter had assumed the proprietorship of the doctor. She even preferred his companionship to that of her puppy. She clung to his hand as he walked away, pulling and swinging upon his arm to coax him back. He took her in his arms and carried her out upon the walk, the small dog barking and snapping at his heels, as David threatened to bear his tyrannical young mistress away to the station.
"Doggie wants you to leave me here," she cried, pounding him vigorously with her two little fists.
He brought her back and placed her on the broad, flat top of the high gate-post. "Very well, doggie may have you. I will leave you here."
"Doggie wants you to stay, too." She held him with her small arms about his neck.
"Well, doggie can't have me." He unclinched her chubby hands, crossed them in her lap, and held them fast while he kissed her tanned and rosy cheek. "Good-by, you young rogue," he said, and strode away.
"Come and lift me down," she wailed. But he knew well she could scramble down by herself when she chose, and walked on. She continued to call after him; then, spying Frale in the wood yard, she imperatively summoned him to her aid, and trotted at his side back to the woodpile, where they sat comfortably upon a log and visited together.
They were the best of friends and chattered with each other as if both were children. In the slender shadow of a juniper tree that stood like a sentinel in the corner of the wood yard they sat, where a high board fence separated them from the back street.
The bishop's place was well planted, and this corner had been the quarters of the house servants in slave times. It was one of Frale's duties to pile here, for winter use, the firewood which he cut in short lengths for the kitchen fire, and long lengths for the open fireplaces.
He hated the hampered village life, and round of small duties—the weeding in the garden, cleaning of piazzas and windows, and the sweeping of the paths. The woodcutting was not so bad, but the rest he held in contempt as women's work. He longed to throw his gun in the hollow of his arm and tramp off over his own mountains. At night he often wept, for homesickness, and wished he might spend a day tending still, or lying on a ridge watching the trail below for intruders on his privacy.
The joy of life had gone out for him. He thought continually of Cassandra and desired her; and his soul wearied for her, until he was tempted to go back to the mountains at all risks, merely for a sight of her. Painfully he had tried to learn to write, working at the copies Betty Towers had set for him,—and certainly she had done all her conscientious heart prompted to interest him and keep him away from the village loungers. He had even progressed far enough to send two horribly spelled missives to Cassandra, feeling great pride in them. And now hehad begun to weary of learning. To be able to write those badly scrawled notes was in his eyes surely enough to distinguish him from his companions at home; of what use was more?
"What's that you are tossing up in the air? Let me see it," demanded the child, as Frale tossed and caught again a small, bright object. He kept on tossing it and catching it away from the two little hands stretched out to receive it. "Give it to me. Give it to me, Frale. Let me see it."
He dropped it lightly in her palm. "Don't you lose hit. That thar's somethin' 'at's got a charm to hit."
"What's a 'charm to hit'? I don't see any charm."
Then Frale laughed aloud. He took it with his thumb and forefinger and held it between his eye and the sun. "Is that the way you see the 'charm to hit'? Let me try."
But he slipped it in his pocket, first placing it in a small bag which he drew up tightly with a string. "Hit hain't nothing you kin see. Hit's only a charm 'at makes hit plumb sure to kill anybody 'at hit hits. Hit's plumb sure to hit an' plumb sure to kill, too."
"Oh, Frale! What if it had hit me when you threw it up that way—and—killed me? Then you'd be sorry, wouldn't you, Frale?"
"Hit nevah wouldn't kill a girl—a nice little girl—like you be. Hit's charmed that-a-way, 'at hit won't kill nobody what I don't want hit to."
"Then what do you keep it in your pocket for? You don't want to kill anybody, do you, Frale?"
"Naw—I reckon not; not 'thout I have to."
"But you don't have to, do you, Frale?" piped the child.
He rose, and selecting an armful of stove wood carried it into the shed and began packing it away. Dorothy sat still on the log, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, meditating. A tall man slouched by and peered over the high board fence at her. His eyes roved all about the place eagerly, keen and black. His matted hair hung long beneath his soft felt hat. The child looked up at him with fearless, questioning glance, then trotted in to her friend.
"Frale, did you see that man lookin' over the fence?You think he was lookin' for you, Frale? Come see who 'tis. P'r'aps he's a friend of yours."
"Dorothy, Dorothy," called her mother from the piazza, and the child bounded away, her puppy yelping and leaping at her side. The tall man turned at the corner and looked back at the child.
The bishop's place occupied one corner of the block, and the fence with a hedge beneath it ran the whole length of two sides. Slowly sauntering along the second side, the gaunt, hungry-eyed man continued his way, searching every part of the yard and garden, even endeavoring, with backward, furtive glances, to see into the woodhouse, where in the darkness Frale crouched, once more pallid with abject fear, peering through the crack where on its hinges the door swung half open.
As the man disappeared down the straggling village street, Frale dropped down on the wheelbarrow and buried his haggard face in his hands. A long time he sat thus, until the dinner-hour was past, and black Carrie had to send Dorothy to call him. Then he rose, but in the place of the white and haunted look was one of stubborn recklessness. He strolled to the house with the nonchalant air of one who fears no foes, but rather glories in meeting them, and sat himself down at his place by the kitchen table, where he bantered and badgered Carrie, who waited on him reluctantly, with contemptuous tosses of her woolly head. From the day of his first appearance there had been war between them, and now Frale knew that if the stranger asked her, she would gladly and slyly inform against him.
The afternoon wore on. Again Frale sat on the wheelbarrow, thinking, thinking. He took the small bag from his pocket and felt of the bullet through the thin covering, then replaced it, and, drawing forth another bag, began counting his money over and over. There it was, all he had saved, five dollars in bills, and a few quarters and dimes.
He did not like to leave the shelter of the shed, and his eyes showed only the narrow glint of blue as, with half-closed lids, he still peered out and watched the street where his enemy had disappeared. Suddenly he rose and climbed with swift, catlike movements up the ladder stairs behindhim, which led to his sleeping loft. There he rapidly donned his best suit of dyed homespun, tied his few remaining articles of clothing in a large red kerchief, and before a bit of mirror arranged his tie and hair to look as like as possible to the village youth of Farington. The distinguishing silken lock that would fall over his brow had grown again, since he had shorn it away in Doctor Thryng's cabin. Now he thrust it well up under his soft felt hat, and, taking his bundle, descended. Again his eyes searched up and down the street and all about the house and yard before he ventured out in the daylight.