The displeasure of his fellows is a slight and ephemeral matter to a man whose mind is fixed on a great essential question, charged with moral gravity and imperishable consequence; whose physical courage is the instinct of his nature, conserved by its active exercise in a life of physical hardship.
Kelsey had forgotten the gander-pulling, the impending election, the excitement of the escape, before he had ridden five miles from the Settlement. He jogged along the valley road, the reins on the horse's neck, his eyes lifted to the heights. The fulness of day was on their unpeopled summits. Infinity was expressed before the eye. On and on the chain of mountains stretched, with every illusion of mist and colour, with every differing grace of distance, with inconceivable measures of vastness. The grave delight in which their presence steeped the senses stirred his heart. They breathed solemnities. They lent wings to the thoughts. They lifted the soul. Could he look at them and doubt that one day he should see God? He had been near—oh, surely, He had been near.
Kelsey was comforted as he rode on. Somehow, the mountains had for his ignorant mind some coercive internal evidence of the great truths. In their exalted suggestiveness were congruities; so far from the world were they—so high above it; so interlinked with the history of all that makes the races of men more than the beasts that perish, that conserves the value of that noble idea—an immortal soul. On a mountain the ark rested; on a mountain the cross was planted; the steeps beheld the glories of the transfiguration; the lofty solitudes heard the prayers of the Christ; and from the heights issued the great Sermon instinct with all the moralities of every creed. How often He went up into the mountain!
The thought uplifted Kelsey. The flush of strong feeling touched his cheek. His eyes were fired with that sudden gleam of enthusiasm as remote from earthly impulses as the lightnings of Sinai.
'An' I will preach his name!' the parson exclaimed, in a tense and thrilling voice. He checked his horse, drew out of his pocket a thumbed old Bible, clumsily turned the leaves and sought for his text.
No other book had he ever read: only that sublime epic, with its deep tendernesses and its mighty portents; with its subtleties of prophecy in wide and splendid phrase, and their fulfilment in the barren record of the simplest life; with all the throbbing presentment of martyrdom and doom and death, dominated by the miracle of resurrection and the potency of divinity. Every detail was as clearly pictured to his mind as if, instead of the vast, unstoried stretches of the Great Smoky Mountains, he looked upon the sanctities of the hills of Judæa.
He read as he rode along—slowly, slowly. A bird's shadow would flit across the holy page, and then away to the mountain; the winds of heaven caressed it. Sometimes the pollen of flowering weeds fell upon it; for in the midst of the unfrequented road they often stood in tall rank rows, with a narrow path on either side, trodden by the oxen of the occasional team, while the growth bent elastically under the passing bed of the waggon.
He was almost happy. The clamours of his insistent heart were still. His conscience, his memory, his self-reproach, had loosed their hold. His keen and subtile native intellect stretched its unconscious powers, and discriminated the workings of character, and reviewed the deploying of events, and measured results. He was far away, walking with the disciples.
Suddenly, like an aërolite, he was whirled from high ethereal spaces by the attraction of the earth. A man was peering from between the rails of a fence by the wayside.
'Kin ye read yer book, pa'son, an' ride yer beastis all ter wunst?' he cried out with the fervour of admiration.
That tree of knowledge—ah, the wily serpent!
Galilee—it was thousands of miles away across the deep salt seas.
The parson closed his book with a smile of exultation.
'The beast don't hender me none. I kin read ennywhar,' he said, proud of the attainment.
'Waal, sir!' exclaimed the other, one of that class, too numerous in Tennessee, who can neither read nor write. 'Air it the Good Book?' he demanded, with a sudden thought.
'It air the Holy Bible,' said the parson, handing him the book.
The man eyed it with reverence. Then, with a gingerly gesture, he gave it back. The parson was looking down at him, all softened and humanized by this unconscious flattery.
'Waal, pa'son,' said the illiterate admirer of knowledge, with a respectful and subordinate air, 'I hearn ez ye war a-goin' ter hold fo'th up yander at the meet'n-house at the Notch nex' Sunday. Air that a true word?'
'I 'lows ter preach thar on the nex' Lord's day,' replied the parson.
'Then,' with the promptness of a sudden resolution, 'I'm a-goin' ter take the old woman an' the chillen an' waggon up the Big Smoky ter hear the sermon. I 'low ez a man what kin ride a beastis an' read a book all ter wunst mus' be a powerful exhorter; an' mebbe ye'll lead us all ter grace.'
The parson said he would be glad to see the family at the meeting-house, and presently jogged off down the road.
One might regard the satisfaction of this simple scene as the due meed of his labours; one might account his pride in his attainments as a harmless human weakness. There have been those of his calling, proud, too, of a finite knowledge, and fain to conserve fame, whose conscience makes no moan—who care naught for humility, and hardly hope to be genuine.
The flush of pleasure passed in a moment. His face hardened. That fire of a sublimated anger or frenzy touched his eyes. He remembered Peter, the impetuous, and Thomas, the doubter, and the warm generosities of the heart of him whom Jesus loved, and he 'reckoned' that they would not have left Him standing in the road for the joy of hearing their learning praised.
He rebuked himself as caring less for the Holy Book than that his craft could read it. His terrible insight into motives was not dulled by a personal application. Introverted upon his own heart, it was keen, unsparing, insidiously subtle. He saw his pride as if it had been another man's, except that it had no lenient mediator; for he was just to other men, even gentle.
He took pitiless heed of the pettiness of his vanity; he detected pleasure that the man by the wayside should come, not for salvation, but to hear the powerful exhorter speak. He saw the instability of his high mood, of the gracious re-awaking of faith; he realized the lapse from the heights of an ecstasy at the lightest touch of temptation.
'The Lord lifts me up,' he said, 'ter dash me on the groun'!'
No more in Judæa, in the holy mountains; no more among the disciples. Drearily along the valley road, glaring and yellow in the sun, the book closed, the inspiration fled, journeyed the ignorant man, who would fain lay hold on a true and perfected sanctity.
He despatched his errand in the valley—a secular matter, relating to the exchange of a cow and a calf.
The afternoon was waning when he was again upon the slopes of the Big Smoky; for the roads were rough, and he had travelled slowly, always prone to 'favour the beastis.' He stopped in front of Cayce's house, where he saw Dorinda spinning on the porch, and preferred a request for a gourd of water.
The old woman heard his voice, and came hastily out with hospitable insistence that he should dismount and 'rest his bones, sence he hed rid fur, an' tell the news from the Settlemint.' There was a cordial contrast between this warm esteem and his own unkind thoughts, and he suffered himself to be persuaded.
He sat under the hop-vines, and replied in monosyllables to the old woman's animated questions, and gave little news of the excitements at the Settlement which they had not already heard.
Dorinda, her wheel awhirl, one hand lifted holding the thread, the other poised in the air to control the motion, her figure thrown back in a fine, alert pose, looked at him with a freshened pity for his downcast spirit, and with intuitive sympathy. He sorrowed not because of the things of this world, she felt. It was some high and spiritual grief, such as might pierce a prophet's heart. Her eyes, full of the ideality of the sentiment, dwelt upon him reverently.
He marked the look. With his overwhelming sense of his sins, he was abased under it, and he scourged himself as a hypocrite.
'Thar air goin' ter be preachin' at the meetin'-house Sunday, I hearn,' she observed presently, thinking this topic more meet for his discussion than the 'gaynder-pullin'' and the escape, and such mundane matters.
The tempered green light fell upon her fair face, adding a delicacy to its creamy tint; her black hair caught a shifting golden flake of sunshine as she moved back and forth; her red lips were slightly parted. The grasshoppers droned in the leaves an accompaniment to the whirr of her wheel. The 'prince's feathers' bloomed in great clumsy crimson tufts close by the step.
Mirandy Jane, seated on an inverted noggin, listened tamely to the conversation, her wild, uncertain eyes fixed upon the parson's face; she dropped them, and turned her head with a shying gesture, if by chance his glance fell upon her.
From this shadowed, leafy recess the world seen through the green hop-vines was all in a great yellow glare.
'Be you-uns a-goin' ter hold fo'th,' demanded the old woman, 'or Brother Jake Tobin?'
'It air me ez air a-goin' ter preach,' he said.
'Then I'm a-comin',' she declared promptly. 'It do me good ter hear you-uns fairly make the sinners spin. Sech a gift o' speech ye hev got! I fairly see hell when ye talk o' thar doom. I see wrath an' I smell brimstone. Lord be thanked, I hev fund peace! An' I'm jes' a-waitin' fur the good day ter come when the Lord'll rescue me from yearth!' She threw herself back in her chair, closing her eyes in a sort of ecstasy, and beating her hands on her knees, her feet tapping in rhythm.
'Though ef ye'll b'lieve me,' she added, sitting up straight with an appalling suddenness, and opening her eyes, 'D'rindy thar ain't convicted yit. Oh, child,' in an enthused tone of reproof, 'time is short—time is short!'
'Waal,' said Dorinda, speaking more quickly than usual, and holding up her hand to stop the wheel, 'I hev hed no chance sca'cely ter think on salvation, bein' ez the weavin' war hendered some—an'——'
She paused in embarrassment.
'That air a awful word ter say—puttin' the Lord ter wait! Whyn't ye speak the truth ter her, pa'son? Fix her sins on her.'
'Sometimes,' said the parson abruptly, looking at her as if he saw more or less than was before him, 'I dunno ef I hev enny call ter say a word. I hev preached ter others, an' I'm like ter be a castaway myself.'
The old woman stared at him in dumb astonishment. But he was rising to take leave—a simple ceremony. He unhitched the horse at the gate, mounted, and, with a silent nod to the group on the porch, rode slowly away.
Old Mrs. Cayce followed him with curious eyes, peering out in the gaps of the hop-vines.
'D'rindy,' she said, 'that thar Pa'son Kelsey—we-uns useter call him nuthin' but Hi—he's got suthin' heavy on his mind. It always 'peared ter me ez he war a mighty cur'ous man ter take up with religion an' sech. A mighty suddint boy he war—ez good a fighter ez a catamount, an' always 'mongst the evil, bold men. Them he consorted with till he gin his child morphine by mistake, an' its mammy quine-iron; an' she los' her senses arterward, an' flunged herse'f off'n the bluff. 'Pears like to me ez them war jedgments on him—though Em'ly warn't much loss; ez triflin' a ch'ice fur a wife ez a man could make. An' now he hev got suthin' on his mind.'
The girl said nothing. She stayed her wheel with one hand, holding the thread with the other, and looked over her shoulder at the receding figure riding slowly along the vista of the forest-shadowed road. Then she turned, and fixed her lucent, speculative eyes on her grandmother, who continued:
'Calls hisself a castaway! Waal, he knows bes', bein' a prophet an' sech. But it air toler'ble comical talk fur a preacher. Brother Jake Tobin kin hardly hold hisself together, a-waitin' fur his sheer o' the joys o' the golden shore.'
'Waal, 'pears like ter me,' said Mirandy Jane, whose mind seemed never far from the culinary achievements to which she had been dedicated, 'ez Brother Jake Tobin sets mo' store on chicken fixin's than on grace, an' he fattens ev'y year.'
'I hopes,' proceeded the grandmother, disregarding the interruption, and peering out again at the road where the horseman had disappeared, 'ez Hi Kelsey won't sot hisself ter prophesyin' evil at the meetin'; 'pears ter me he ought to be hendered, ef mought be, 'kase the wrath he foresees mos'ly kems ter pass, an' I'm always lookin' ter see him prophesy the raiders—though he hev hed the grace ter hold his hand 'bout'n the still. An' I hopes he won't hev nuthin' ter say 'bout it at the meetin' Sunday.'
The little log meeting-house at the Notch stood high on a rugged spur of the Great Smoky. Dense forests encompassed it on every hand, obscuring that familiar picture of mountain and cloud and cove. From its rude, glassless windows one could look out on no distant vista, save, perhaps, in the visionary glories of heaven or the climatic discomforts of hell, according to the state of the conscience, or perchance the liver. The sky was aloof and limited. The laurel tangled the aisles of the woods.
Sometimes from the hard benches a weary tow-headed brat might rejoice to mark in the monotony the frisking of a squirrel on a bough hard by, or a woodpecker solemnly tapping. The acorns would rattle on the roof, if the wind stirred, as if in punctuation of the discourse. The pines, mustering strong among the oaks, joined their mystic threnody to the sad-voiced quiring within. The firs stretched down long, pendulous, darkling boughs, and filled the air with their balsamic fragrance.
Within the house the dull light fell over a few rude benches and a platform with a chair and table, which was used as pulpit. Shadows of many deep, rich tones of brown lurked among the rafters. Here and there a cobweb, woven to the consistence of a fabric, swung in the air. The drone of a blue-bottle, fluttering in and out of the window in a slant of sunshine, might invade the reverent silence, as Brother Jake Tobin turned the leaves to read the chapter.
Sometimes there would sound, too, a commotion among the horses without, unharnessed from the waggons and hitched to the trees; then in more than one of the solemn faces might be descried an anxious perturbation—not fear because of equine perversities, but because of the idiosyncrasies of callow human nature in the urchins left in charge of the teams. No one ventured to investigate, however, and, with that worldly discomfort contending with the spiritual exaltations they sought to foster, the rows of religionists swayed backward and forward in rhythm to the reader's voice, rising and falling in long, billowy sweeps of sound, like the ground swell of ocean waves.
It was strange, looking upon their faces, and with a knowledge of the limited phases of their existence, their similarity of experience here, where a century might come and go, working no change save that, like the leaves, they fluttered awhile in the outer air with the spurious animation called life, and fell in death, and made way for new bourgeonings like unto themselves—strange to mark how they differed. Here was a man of a stern, darkly religious conviction, who might either have writhed at the stake or stooped to kindle the flames; and here was an accountant soul that knew only those keen mercantile motives—the hope of reward and the fear of hell; and here was an enthusiast's eye, touched by the love of God; and here was an unfinished, hardly humanized face, that it seemed as presumptuous to claim as the exponent of a soul as the faces of the stupid oxen out-of-doors. All were earnest; many wore an expression of excited interest, as the details of the chapter waxed to a climax, like the tense stillness of a metropolitan audience before an unimaginedcoup de théâtre. The men all sat on one side, chewing their quids; the women on the other, almost masked by their limp sun-bonnets. The ubiquitous baby—several of him—was there, and more than once babbled aloud and cried out peevishly. Only one, becoming uproarious, was made a public example, being quietly borne out and deposited in the ox-waggon, at the mercy of the urchins who presided over the teams, while his mother creaked in again on the tips of deprecating, anxious toes, to hear the Word.
Brother Jake Tobin might be accounted in some sort a dramatic reader. He was a tall, burly man, inclining to fatness, with grizzled hair reached back from his face. He cast his light grey eyes upward at the end of every phrase, with a long, resonant 'Ah!' He smote the table with his hands at emphatic passages; he rolled out denunciatory clauses with a freshened relish which intimated that he considered one of the choicest pleasures of the saved might be to gloat over the unhappy predicament of the damned. He chose for his reading paragraphs that, applied to aught but spiritual enemies and personified sins, might make a civilized man quake for his dearest foe. He paused often and interpolated his own observations, standing a little to the side of the table, and speaking in a conversational tone. 'Ain't that so, my brethren an' sisters! Butweair saved in the covenant—ah!' Then, clapping his hands with an ecstatic upward look, 'I'm so happy, I'm so happy!'—he would go on to read with the unction of immediate intention, 'Let death seize them! Let them go down quick into hell!'
He wore a brown jeans suit, the vest much creased in the regions of his enhanced portliness, its maker's philosophy not having taken into due account his susceptibility to 'chicken fixin's.' After concluding the reading, he wiped the perspiration from his brow with his red bandanna handkerchief, and placed it around the collar of his unbleached cotton shirt, as he proceeded to the further exertion of 'lining out' the hymn.
The voice broke forth in those long, lingering cadences that have a melancholy, spiritual, yearning effect, in which the more tutored church music utterly fails. The hymn rose with a solemn jubilance, filling the little house, and surging out into the woods; sounding far across unseen chasms and gorges, and rousing in the unsentient crags an echo with a testimony so sweet, charged with so devout a sentiment, that it seemed as if with this voice the very stones would have cried out, had there been dearth of human homage when Christ rode into Jerusalem.
Then the sudden pause, the failing echo, the sylvan stillness, and the chanting voice 'lined out' another couplet. It was well, perhaps, that this part of the service was so long; the soul might rise on its solemnity, might rise on its aspiration.
It came to an end at last. Another long pause ensued. Kelsey, sitting on the opposite side of the table, his elbow on the back of his chair, his hand shading his eyes, made no movement. Brother Jake Tobin looked hard at him, with an expression which in a worldly man we should pronounce exasperation. He hesitated for a moment in perplexity. There was a faint commotion, implying suppressed excitement in the congregation. Parson Kelsey's idiosyncrasies were known by more than one to be a thorn in the side of the frankly confiding Brother Jake Tobin.
'Whenst I hev got him in the pulpitalongside o' me,' he would say to his cronies, 'I feel ez onlucky an' weighted ez ef I war a-lookin' over my lef' shoulder at the new moon on a November Friday. I feel ez oncommon ez ef he war a deer, or suthin', ez hev got no salvation in him. An' eff he don't feel the sperit ter pray, hewon'tpray, an' I hev got ter surroun' the throne o' grace by myself. Hekinpray ef he hev a mind ter, an' hedoseem ter hev hed a outpourin' o' the sperit o' prophecy; but he hev made me 'pear mighty comical 'fore the Lord a many a time, when I hev axed him ter open his mouth an' he hev kep' it shut.'
Brother Jake did not venture to address him now. An alternative was open to him.
'Brother Reuben Bates, will ye lead us in prayer?' he said to one of the congregation.
They all knelt down, huddled like sheep in the narrow spaces between the benches, and from among them went up the voice of supplication, that anywhere and anyhow has the commanding dignity of spiritual communion, the fervour of exaltation, and all the moving humility of the finite leaning upon the infinite. Ignorance was annihilated, so far as Brother Reuben Bates's prayer was concerned. It grasped the fact of immortality—all worth knowing!—and humble humanity was presented as possessing the intimate inherent principles of the splendid fruitions of eternity.
He had few words, Brother Reuben, and the aspirated 'Ah!' was long drawn often, while he swiftly thought of something else to say. Brother Jake Tobin, after the manner in vogue among them, broke out from time to time with a fervour of assent. 'Yes, my Master!' he would exclaim in a wild, ecstatic tone. 'Bless the Lord!' 'That's a true word!' 'I'm so happy!'
Always these interpolations came opportunely when Brother Reuben seemed entangled in his primitive rhetoric, and gave him a moment for improvisation. It was doubtless Hi Kelsey's miserable misfortune that his acute intuition should detect in the reverend tones a vainglorious self-satisfaction, known to no one else, not even to the speaker; that he should accurately gauge how Brother Jake Tobin secretly piqued himself upon his own gift in prayer, never having experienced these stuttering halts, never having needed these pious boosts; that he should be aware, ignorant as he was, of that duality of cerebration by which Brother Jake's mind was divided between the effect on God, bending down a gracious ear, and the impression of these ecstatic outbursts on the congregation; that the petty contemptibleness of it should depress him; that its dissimulations angered him. With the rigour of an upright man, he upbraided himself. He was on his knees: was he praying? Were these the sincerities of faith? Was this lukewarm inattention the guerdon of the sacrifice of the cross? His ideal and himself, himself and what he sought to be—oh, the gulf! the deep divisions!
He gave his intentions no grace. He conceded naught to human nature. His conscience revolted at a sham. And he was a living, breathing sham—upon his knees.
Ah, let us have a little mercy on ourselves! Most of us do. For there was Brother Jake Tobin, with a conscience free of offence, happily unobservant of his own complicated mental processes and of the motives of his own human heart, becoming more and more actively assistant as Brother Reuben Bates grew panicky, hesitant, and involved, and kept convulsively on through sheer inability to stop, suggesting epilepsy rather than piety.
It was over at last; exhausted nature prevailed, and Brother Bates resumed his seat, wiping the perspiration from his brow and raucously clearing his rasped throat.
There was a great scraping of the rough shoes and boots on the floor as the congregation rose, and one or two of the benches were moved backward with a harsh, grating sound. A small boy had gone to sleep during the petition, and remained in his prayerful attitude. Brother Jake Tobin settled himself in his chair as comfortably as might be, tilted it back on its hind-legs against the wall, and wore the air of having fairly exploited his share of the services and cast off responsibility. The congregation composed itself to listen to the sermon.
There was an expectant pause. Kelsey remembered ever after the tumult of emotion with which he stepped forward to the table and opened the book. He turned to the New Testament for his text—turned the leaves with a familiar hand. Some ennobling phase of that wonderful story which would touch the tender, true affinity of human nature for the higher things—from this he would preach to-day. And yet, at the same moment, with a contrariety of feeling from which he shrank aghast, there was skulking into his mind all that grewsome company of doubts. In double file they came: fate and free agency, free will and fore-ordination, infinite mercy and infinite justice, God's loving-kindness and man's intolerable misery, redemption and damnation. He had evolved them all from his own unconscious logical faculty, and they pursued him as if he had, in some spiritual necromancy, conjured up a devil—nay, legions of devils. Perhaps if he had known how they have assaulted the hearts of men in times gone past; how they have been combated and baffled, and yet have risen and pursued again; how, in the scrutiny of science and research, men have paused before their awful presence, analyzed them, philosophized about them, and found them interesting; how others, in the levity of the world, having heard of them, grudge the time to think upon them—if he had known all this, he might have felt some courage in numbers.
As it was, there was no fight left in him. He closed the book with a sudden impulse. 'My frien's,' he said, 'I stan' not hyar ter preach ter-day, but fur confession.'
There was a galvanic start among the congregation, then intense silence.
'I hev los' my faith!' he cried out, with a poignant despair. 'God ez gin it—ef thar is a God—hev tuk it away. You-uns kin go on. You-uns kin b'lieve. Yer paster b'lieves, an' he'll lead ye ter grace—leastwise ter a better life. But fur me thar's the nethermost depths of hell, ef'—how his faith and his unfaith tried him!—'ef thar be enny hell. Leastwise——Stop, brother,'—he held up his hand in deprecation, for Parson Tobin had risen at last, with a white, scared face; nothing like this had ever been heard in all the length and breadth of the Great Smoky Mountains—'bear with me a little; ye'll see me hyer no more. Fur me thar is shame, ah! an' trial, ah! an' doubt, ah! an' despair, ah! The good things o' life hev not fallen ter me. The good things o' heaven air denied. My name is ter be a by-word an' a reproach 'mongst ye. Ye'll grieve ez ye hev ever hearn the Word from me, ah! Ye'll be held in derision! An' I hev hed trials—none like them ez air comin', comin', down the wind. I hev been a man marked fur sorrow, an' now fur shame.'
He stood erect; he looked bold, youthful. The weight of his secret, lifted now, had been heavier than he knew. In his eyes shone that strange light which was frenzy, or prophecy, or inspiration; in his voice rang a vibration they had never before heard.
'I will go forth from 'mongst ye—I that am not of ye. Another shall gird me an' carry me where I would not. Hell an' the devil hev prevailed agin me. Pray fur me, brethren, ez I cannot pray fur myself. Pray that God may yet speak ter me—speak from out o' the whurlwind.'
There was a sound upon the air. Was it the rising of the wind? A thrill ran through the congregation. The wild emotion, evoked and suspended in this abrupt pause, showed in pallid excitement on every face. Several of the men rose aimlessly, then turned and sat down again. Brought from the calm monotony of their inner life into this supreme crisis of his, they were struck aghast by the hardly comprehended situations of his spiritual drama enacted before them. And what was that sound on the air? In the plenitude of their ignorant faith, were they listening for the invoked voice of God?
Kelsey, too, was listening, in anguished suspense.
It was not the voice of God, that man was wont to hear when the earth was young; not the rising of the wind. The peace of the golden sunshine was supreme. Even a tiny cloudlet, anchored in the limited sky, would not sail to-day.
On and on it came. It was the galloping of horse—the beat of hoofs, individualized presently to the ear—with that thunderous, swift, impetuous advance that so domineers over the imagination, quickens the pulse, shakes the courage.
It might seem that all the ingenuity of malignity could not have compassed so complete a revenge. The fulfilment of his prophecy entered at the door. All its spiritual significance was annihilated; it was merged into a prosaic material degradation when the sheriff of the county strode, with jingling spurs, up the aisle, and laid his hand upon the preacher's shoulder. He wore his impassive official aspect. But his deputy, following hard at his heels, had a grin of facetious triumph upon his thin lips. He had been caught by the nape of the neck, and in a helpless, rodent-like attitude had been slung out of the door by the stalwart man of God, when he and Amos James had ventured to the meeting-house in liquor; and neither he nor the congregation had forgotten the sensation. It was improbable that such high-handed proceedings could be instituted to-day, but the sheriff had taken the precaution to summon the aid of five or six burly fellows, all armed to the teeth. They, too, came tramping heavily up the aisle. Several wore the reflection of the deputy's grin; they were the 'bold, bad men,' the prophet's early associates before 'he got religion, an' sot hisself ter consortin' with the saints.' The others were sheepish and doubtful, serving on the posse with a protest under the constraining penalties of the law.
The congregation was still with a stunned astonishment. The preacher stood as one petrified, his eyes fixed upon the sheriff's face. The officer, with a slow, magisterial gesture, took a paper from his breast-pocket, and laid it upon the Bible.
'Ye kin read, pa'son,' he said. 'Ye kin read the warrant fur yer arrest.'
The deputy laughed, a trifle insolently. He turned, swinging his hat—he had done the sacred edifice the reverence of removing it—and surveyed the wide-eyed, wide-mouthed people, leaning forward, standing up, huddled together, as if he had some speculation as to the effect upon them of these unprecedented proceedings.
Kelsey could read nothing. His strong head was in a whirl; he caught at the table, or he might have fallen. The amazement of it—the shame of it!
'Who does this?' he exclaimed, in sudden realization of the situation. Already self-convicted of the blasphemy of infidelity, he stood in his pulpit in the infinitely ignoble guise of a culprit before the law.
Those fine immaterial issues of faith and unfaith—where were they? The torturing fear of futurity, and of a personal devil and a material hell—how impotent! His honest name—never a man had borne it that had suffered this shame; the precious dignity of freedom was riven from him; the calm securities of his self-respect were shaken for ever. He could never forget the degradation of the sheriff's touch, from which he shrank with so abrupt a gesture that the officer grasped his pistol and every nerve was on the alert. Kelsey was animated at this moment by a pulse as essentially mundane as if he had seen no visions and dreamed no dreams. He had not known how he held himself—how he cherished those values, so familiar that he had forgotten to be thankful till their possession was a retrospection.
He sought to regain his self-control. He caught up the paper; it quivered in his trembling hands; he strove to read it. 'Rescue!' he cried out in a tense voice. 'Rick Tyler! I never rescued Rick Tyler!'
The words broke the long constraint. They were an elucidation, a flash of light. The congregation looked at him with changed eyes, and then looked at each other. Why did he deny? Were not the words of his prophecy still on the air? Had he not confessed himself an evil-doer, forsaken of God and bereft of grace? His prophecy was matched by the details of his experience. Had he done no wrong he could have foreseen no vengeance.
'Rick Tyler ain't wuth it,' said one old man to another, as he spat on the floor.
The widow of Joel Byers, the murdered man, fell into hysterical screaming at Rick Tyler's name, and was presently borne out by her friends and lifted into one of the wagons.
'It air jes' ez well that the sher'ff takes Pa'son Kelsey, arter that thar confession o' his'n,' said one of the dark-browed men, helping to yoke the oxen. 'We couldn't hev kep' him in the church arter sech words ez his'n, and church discipline ain't a-goin' ter cast out no sech devil ez he air possessed by.'
Brother Jake Tobin, too, appreciated that the arrest of the preacher in his pulpit was a solution of a difficult question. It was manifestly easier for the majesty of the State of Tennessee to deal with him than for the little church on the Big Smoky.
'Yer sins hev surely fund ye out, Brother Kelsey,' he began, with the air of having washed his hands of all responsibility. 'God would never hev fursook ye ef ye hedn't fursook the good cause fust. Ye air ter be cast down—ye who hev stood high.'
There was a momentary silence.
'Will ye come?' said the sheriff, smiling fixedly, 'or had ye ruther be fetched?'
The deputy had a pair of handcuffs dangling officiously. They rattled in rude contrast with the accustomed sounds of the place.
Kelsey hesitated. Then, after a fierce internal struggle, he submitted meekly, and was led out from among them.
It is seldom, in this world at least, that a man who absents himself from church repents it with the fervour of regret which Amos James experienced when he heard of the unexpected proceedings at the Notch.
'Sech a rumpus—dad-burn my luck—I mought never git the chance ter see agin!' he declared with a pious sense of deprivation. And he thought it had been a poor substitute to sit on the doorstep all the forenoon Sunday, 'ez lonesome ez a b'ar in a hollow tree,' because his heart was yet so sore and sensitive that he could not see Dorinda's pink sun-bonnet without a rush of painful emotion, or her face without remembering how she looked when he talked of the rescue of Rick Tyler.
The 'gang o' men'—actively described by his mother as 'lopin' roun' the mill'—lingered long in conclave this morning. Perhaps their views had a more confident and sturdy effect from being propounded at the top of the voice, since the insistent whirr of the busy old mill drowned all efforts in a lower tone; but it was very generally the opinion that Micajah Green had transcended all the license of his official character in making the arrest at the place and time he had selected.
'I knows,' commented one of the disaffected, 'ez it air the law o' Tennessee ez a arrest kin be made of a Sunday, ef so be it must. But 'pears like ter me 'twar nuthin' in this worl' but malice an' meanness ez tuk ch'ice o' the minute the man hed stood up ter preach the Word ter arrest him. 'Cajah Green mus' hev tuk keerful heed o' time—jes' got thar spang on the minute.'
'He w-warn't p-p-preachin' the Word,' stuttered Pete Cayce antagonistically. 'He hed 'jest 'lowed he w-w-warn't fit ter preach it. No more war he.'
He had come down from the still to treat for meal for the mash. He was willing to wait—nay anxious, that he might bear his share in the conversation.
He tilted his chair back against the wall, and nodded his long, drab-tinted locks convincingly.
The water whirled around the wheel; the race foamed with prismatic bubbles, flashing opal-like in the sun; the vague lapsing of the calm depths in the pond was like some deep sigh, as of the fulness of happiness or reflective content—not pain. The water falling over the dam babbled in a meditative undertone. All sounds were dominated by the whirr of the mill in its busy, industrial monody, and within naught else could be heard, save the strident voices pitched on the miller's key and roaring the gossip.
Through the window could be seen the rocky banks opposite, their summits tufted with huckleberry and sassafras bushes and many a tangle of weeds; the dark shadow in the water below; the slope of the mountain rising above. A branch, too, of the low-spreading chestnut-oak, that hung above the roof of the mill, was visible, swaying close without; it cast a tempered shade over the long cobwebs depending from the rafters, whitened by the dust of the flour.
The rough, undressed timbers within were of that mellow, rich tint, intermediate between yellow and brown, so restful to the eye. The floor was littered with bags of corn, on which some of the men lounged; others sat in the few chairs, and Amos James leaned against the hopper.
'Waal,' retorted the first speaker, 'ez fur ez 'Cajah Green could know, he'd hev been a-preachin' then, an' argyfyin' his own righteousness; an' 'Cajah laid off ter kem a-steppin' in with his warrant ter prove him a liar an' convict him o' sinnin' agin the law 'fore his congregation.'
''Pears like ter me ez pa'son war sorter forehanded,' said Pete captiously. 'He hed proved hisself a liar 'fore the sher'ff got thar; saved 'Cajah the trouble.'
'I hearn,' said another man, 'ez pa'son up-ed an' 'lowed ez he didn't b'lieve in the Lord, an' prophesied his own downfall an' his trial 'fore the sher'ff got thar.'
'He d-d-did!' shouted Pete. 'We never knowed much more arter 'Cajah an' the dep'ty kem 'n we did afore. Pa'son said they'd gird him an' t-t-take him whar he didn't want ter g-go—an' so they d-d-d-did.'
'D-d-did what?' mockingly demanded Amos James, with unnecessary rancour, it might have seemed.
Pete's infirmity became more pronounced under this cavalier treatment.
'T-t-take him w-w-w-whar he didn't w-w-w-want'—explosively—'ter go, ye fool!'
'Whar?'
'D'ye reckon that he wanted ter go ter jail in Shaftesville?' demanded Pete, with scathing scorn.
His sneering lip exposed his long, protruding teeth, and his hard-featured face was unusually repellant.
'Hev they tuk him ter jail—the pa'son—Pa'son Kelsey?' exclaimed Amos James, in a deeply serious tone.
He looked fixedly at Pete, as if he might thus express more than he said in words. There was indignation in his black eyes, even reproach. He still leaned on the hopper, but there was nothing between the stones, for he had forgotten to pour in more corn, and the industrious flurry of the unsentient old mill was like the bustle of many clever people—a great stir about nothing. He wore his broad-brimmed white hat far back on his head. His black hair was sprinkled with flour and meal, and along the curves of his features the snowy flakes had congregated in thin lines, bringing out the olive tint of his complexion, and intensifying the sombre depths of his eyes.
Pete returned the allusion to his defective speech by a comment on the intentness of the miller's gaze.
'Ye look percisely like a ow-el, Amos—percisely like a old horned ho-ho-hooter,' he declared, with a laugh. 'Ya-as,' he continued,' they did take pa'son ter jail, bein' ez the jestice that the sher'ff tuk him afore—old Squair Prine, ye know—h-he couldn't decide ez ter his g-guilt. The Squair air so onsartain in his mind, an' wavers so ez ter his knowledge, that I hev hearn ez ev'y day he counts his toes ter make sure he's got ten. So the old Squair h-hummed and h-h-hawed over the evidence, an' he 'l-lowed ter Pa'son K-Kelsey ez he couldn't b'lieve nuthin' agin him right handy, ez he hed sot under his p-preachin' many a time an' profited by it; but thar war his cur'ous performin' 'bout'n the gaynder whilst Rick got off, an' he hed hearn ez pa'son turned his back on the Lord in a s'prisin' way. Then the Squair axed how he kem ter prophesy his own arrest ef he hed done nuthin' ter bring it on. The Squair 'lowed 'twar a serious matter, a pen'tiary offence; an' he warn't cl'ar in his own mind; an he up-ed an' down-ed, an' twisted an' turned, an' he didn't knowwhatter do: so the e-end war he jes' committed Pa'son Kelsey ter jail, ter await the action of the g-g-g-gran' jury.'
Pete gave this detail with some humour, wagging his head back and forth to imitate the magisterial treatment of the quandary, and putting up first one hand, then the other, stretching out first one rough boot, then the other, to signify the various points of the dilemma.
Amos James did not laugh. He still gravely gazed at the narrator.
'Whyn't he git bail?' he demanded gruffly.
'Waal, he didn't—'kase he couldn't. The old man, he fixed the bail without so much dilly-dallyin' an' jouncin' 'roun' in his mind ez ye mought expec'. He jes' put on his specs, an' polished his old bald noodle with his red h-h-handkercher, an' tuk a fraish chaw o' terbacco, an' put his nose in his book, an' tuk it out ter brag ez them crazy bugs in N-N-Nashvul sent him a book ev'y time they made a batch o' new laws—pore, prideful old critter mus' hev been lyin'!—an' then he put his nose in his book agin like he smelt the law an' trailed it by scent. 'Twarn't more'n haffen hour 'fore he tuk it out, an' say the least bail he could take war a thousand d-d-dollars fur the defendant, an' five hunderd fur each of his sureties—like it hev been in ev'y sech case 'fore a jestice s-sence the Big Smoky Mountings war made.'
Pete laughed, his great fore-teeth, his flexible lip, his long, bony face and tangled mane giving him something of an equine aspect. His mood was unusually jocular; and, indeed, a man might experience some elation of spirit to be the only one of the 'lopers round' at the mill who had been present at a trial of such significance. The close attention accorded his every word demonstrated the interest in the subject, and the guffaws which greeted his sketch of the familiar character of the old 'Squair' was a flattering tribute to his skill as araconteur. The peculiar antagonism of his disposition was manifested only in the delay and digressions by which he thwarted Amos James's eagerness to know why Parson Kelsey had not been admitted to bail. He could not accurately interpret the indignation in the miller's look, and he cared less for the threat it expressed. Cowardice was not predicable of one of the Cayce tribe. Perhaps it might have been agreeable for the community if the discordant Pete could have been more readily intimidated.
'Whyn't pa'son gin the bail, then?' demanded Amos again.
'Hedidgin it,' returned Pete perversely.
'Waal, then, how'd the sher'ff take him ter jail?'
'Right down the county road, ez ye an' me an' the rest of us hyar in the Big Smoky hev worked on till sech c-c-cattle ez 'Cajah Green an' his buzzardy dep'ty hain't got no sort'n c-chance o' breakin' thar necks over the rocks an' sech.'
'Look-a-hyar, Pete Cayce, I'll fling ye bodaciously over that thar bluff!' exclaimed Amos James, darkly frowning.
A rat that had boldly run across the floor a number of times, its whiskers powdered white, its tail white also, and gaily frisking behind it, had ventured so close to the miller's motionless foot, that when he stepped hastily forward it sprang into the air with a wonderfully human expression of fright; then, in a sprawling fashion, it swiftly sped away to some dark corner, where it might meditate on the escaped danger and take heed of foolhardiness.
'W-w-what would I be a-doin' of, Amos Jeemes, whilst ye war a-flingin' m-me over the b-b-bluff?' demanded Pete pertinently.
'What ails ye, ter git tuk so suddint in yer temper, Amos?' asked another of the baffled listeners, who desired to promote peace and further the account of Parson Kelsey's examination before the magistrate. 'Amos jes' axed ye, Pete, why pa'son warn't admitted ter bail.'
'H-h-he never none now,' said Pete. 'He axed w-w-why Pa'son Kelsey didn't g-ginbail. He did gin it, but 't-twarn't accepted.'
'What fur?' demanded Amos, relapsing into interest in the subject, and leaning back against the hopper.
'Waal,' said Pete, preferring, on the whole, the distinction of relating the proceedings before the magistrate to the more familiar diversion of bickering, 'pa'son he 'lowed he'd gin his gran'dad an' his uncle ter go on his bond; an' the Squair, arter he hed stuck his nose into his book a couple o' times, an' didn't see nuthin' abolishin' gran'dads an' uncles, he tuk it out an' refraished it with a pinch o' snuff, an' 'lowed he'd take gran'dad an' uncle on the bond. An' then up jumped Gid Fletcher, the blacksmith over yander ter the Settlemint—him it war ez swore out the warrant—and demanded the Squair would hear his testimony agin it. That thar 'Cajah Green, he sick-ed him on, all the time. I seen Gid Fletcher storp suddint wunst, an' wall his eye 'round onsartin' at 'Cajah Green, ez ef ter make sure he war a-sayin' all right. An' 'Cajah Green, he batted his eye, ez much ez ter say, "Go it, old hoss!" Sure ez ye air born them two fixed it up aforehand.'
'I dode-spise that thar critter, 'Cajah Green!' exclaimed one of the men, who was sitting on a sack of corn in the middle of the floor. 'He fairly makes the trigger o' my rifle itch! I hope he won't kem out ahead at the August election. The Big Smoky'll hev ter git him beat somehows; we can't hev him aggervatin' 'roun' hyar another two year.'
The fore-legs of Pete Cayce's tilted chair came down with a thump. He leaned forward, and with a marked gesture offered his big horny paw to the man who sat on the bag of corn; they solemnly shook hands as on a compact.
Amos James still leaned against the empty hopper, listening with a face of angry gloom as Pete recommenced:
'Waal, the Squair, he put his nose inter his book agin, an' then he 'lowed he'd hear Gid Fletcher's say-so. An' Gid—waal, he'll be mighty good metal fur the devil's anvil; I feel it in my bones how Satan will rej'ice ter draw Gid Fletcher down small—he got up an' 'lowed ez pa'son an' his uncle an' his gran'dad didn't wuth two thousand dollars. They hed what they hed all tergether, an' 'twarn't enough—'twarn't wuth more'n a thousan', ef that. An' so the Squair—waal, he looked toler'ble comical, a-nosin' in his book an' a-polishin' off the torp o' his head with his red handkercher, an' he war ez oneasy an' onsartain in his actions ez a man consortin' accidentally with a bumbly bee. He tried 'em all powerful in thar temper, bein' so gin over ter backin' an' fo'thin'; but ez he war the jestice they hed ter sot 'round an' look solemn an' respec'ful. An' at las' he said he couldn't accept the bail, ez 'twar insufficient. The dep'ty looked like h'd jump up and down, an' crack his heels together; 'peared like he war glad fur true. An' the Squair, he 'lowed ez the rescue war a crime ez mought make a jestice keerful how he tuk insufficient bail. Ennybody ez would holp a man ter escape from cust'dy would jump his bond hisself, though he war toler'ble keerful ter explain ter pa'son ez he never ondertook ter charge nuthin' on him, nuther. An' he hed ter bear in mind ez he oc'pied a m-m-mighty important place in the l-law—though I can't see ez it air so mighty important ter h-h-hev ter say, "I dunno; let the court decide."'
Amos James remembered the hopper at last. He turned, and, as he lifted a bag and poured in the corn, he asked, his eyes on the golden stream of grain:
'An' what did pa'son say when he fund it out?'
Pete Cayce laughed, his big teeth making the facetious demonstration peculiarly pronounced. He was looking out of the window, through the leafy bough of the overspreading chestnut-oak, at the deep, transparent water in the pond. The dark, lustrous reflection of the sassafras and huckleberry bushes on the summit of the vertical rocky bank was like some mezzotinted landscape under glass. A frog on one of the ledges at the waterside was a picture of amphibious content; sometimes his mouth opened and shut quickly, with an expression, if not beautiful, implying satisfaction. Pete lazily caught up a stick which he had been whittling. The slight missile flew through the air, catching the light as it went. Its aim was accurate, and the next moment the monotony of the placid surface was broken by the elastically widening circles above the spot where the frog jumped in.
'The pa'son,' he said languidly, having satisfactorily concluded this exploit—'at fust it looked like the c-critter couldn't make it out—he 'peared toler'ble peaked an' white-faced, but the way he behaved ter the sher'ff 'minds me o' the tales the old men tell 'bout'n Hangin' Maw an' Bloody Feller, an' them t'other wild Injuns that useter aggervate the white folks in the Big Smoky—proud an' straight, an' lookin' at 'Cajah Green ez ef he war jes' the dirt under his feet. Waal, pa'son 'lowed, calm an' quiet, ez I'd be skinnin' a deer or suthin', ez he'd ruther be obligated ter his own f-folks fur that holp, but ez that couldn't be he'd git bail from others. 'Twarn't m-much matter jes' till he could 'pear 'fore the court, fur nuthin' could be easier'n ter prove ez he hedn't rescued Rick Tyler, nor never gin offence agin the law. An' he turned round ez s-s-sure an' quiet ter Pa'son Tobin, who hed kem along ter see what mought be a-doin', an' sez he, "B-Brother Jake Tobin, you-uns an' some o' the c-church folks, I know, will be 'sponsible fur the bail." An' ef ye'll b'lieve me, Brother Jake Tobin, he got up slanch-wise, and in sech a hurry the cheer fell over ahint him; an' sez he, "Naw, brother—I will call ye brother,"—like that war powerful 'commodatin'—"I kin not sot my p-people ter do sech, arter yer words yestiddy. We kin lose no money by ye—the church air pore an' the cause air needy. I kin only pray fur the devil ter l-loose his holt on ye, f-fur I perceive the devil in ye." Waal, sir,' continued Pete, drawing a plug of tobacco from his pocket, and gnawing on it with tugging persistence, 'Christian perfesser ez I be, I felt sorter 'shamed o' Brother J-Jake Tobin—he looked s-s-sech a skerry h-half-liver, 'feard o' losin' money! Shucks! I could sca'cely keep my hands off 'n him. He looked so—so cur'ous, I wanted ter—ter'—he remembered the reverence due to the cloth—'ter trip him up,' he concluded temperately. 'An' then, ez he war a-whurlin' his fat sides around ter pick up the cheer, Pa'son K-Kelsey—he hed t-turned plumb bleached, like a corpse—he stood up, an' sez, "The Lord hev fursaken me!" An' Brother Jake Tobin humps around, with the cheer in his hand, an' sez, "Naw, brother, naw, ye hev fursook the Lord!"'
'Waal,' said the man on the bag of corn, gazing meditatively at the dusty floor and at a great yellow cur who had ventured within, as a shelter from the mid-day heat, and lay at ungainly length asleep near the door, 'I dunno ez I kin blame Brother Jake Tobin. 'Twould hev made a mighty scandal ter keep Pa'son Kelsey in the church, arter what he said agin' the faith. We'll hev ter turn him out; an' ez he air ter be turned out, I dunno ez the church members hev enny call ter go on his bond. He air none o' we-uns, nowadays.'
'Leastwise none o' 'em war a-goin' t-ter do it,' said Pete quietly. 'They air all mindful o' Brother Jake Tobin's longest ear, ez kin hear a call from the church yander in Cade's Cove ev'y time he g-gits mad at 'em. But I tell ye,' added Pete, restoring his plug of tobacco to his pocket, and chewing hard on the bit which his strong teeth had wrenched off, 'it did 'pear to me ez they mought hev stretched a p'int when I see the pa'son ridin' off with them two sneakin' off'cers. He hed so nigh los' his senses with the notion he war a-goin' ter be jailed ez they had ter hold him up in the saddle, else he'd hev been under the beastis's huffs in a minute.'
'Whyn't you-uns go on his bond?' asked Amos James suddenly.
'Who?' shouted Pete, in stentorian amaze, above the clamour of the old mill.
'You-uns—the whole Cayce lay-out,' reiterated Amos James.
His blood had risen to his face. All the instincts of justice within him revolted at the picture Pete had drawn, coarsely and crudely outlined, but touched with the vivid realities of nature. It was as a scene present before him: the falsely accused man borne away, crushed with shame, while the true criminal looked on with a lax conscience and an impersonal interest, and thriftily saved his observations to recount to his cronies at the mill.
Amos James cared naught for the outraged majesty of the law. The rescue of the prisoner from its fierce talons seemed to him, instead, humane and beneficent. His sense of justice was touched only by the manifest cruelty when one man was forced to bear the consequences of another's act.
'You-uns mought hev done ez much,' he said significantly.
'I reckon they would hev 'lowed ez we warn't wuth it,' said Pete, quietly ruminant; 'the still can't show up.'
'Ye never tried it,' said Amos.
'Waal, d-dad, he warn't thar, an' I couldn't ondertake ter speak for the rest. An' I ain't beholden no ways to Pa'son Kelsey. I hev no call ter b-b-bail him ez I knows on. I hev no hand in his bein' arrested an' sech.'
'Hev no hand in his bein' arrested!' retorted Amos scornfully.
Pete was staring stolidly at him, and the other men assumed an intent, inquiring attitude.
Amos James felt suddenly that he had gone too far. He had no wish to fasten this stigma upon the Cayces; he had every reason to avoid it. He did not know how far he had been accounted a confidant in the intimacies of the cave when Rick Tyler had found a refuge there. He could not disregard the trust reposed in him. And yet he could not recall his words.
Pete's blank gaze changed to an amazed comprehension. He spoke out bluntly the thought in the other's mind.
'Ye air a-thinkin', Amos Jeemes, ez 'twar we-uns ez cut Rick Tyler a-loose o' the sher'ff!' he exclaimed.
Amos, confronted with his own suspicion, listened with a guilty air.
'Ye air surely the b-b-b-biggest f-f-f-fool'—the words seemed very large with these additional consonants—'in the shadder o' the B-b-b-Big S-s-s-sm-Smoky M-m-Mountings!' Pete spread them out with all the magnifying facilities of his infirmity.
'Waal, then,' said Amos, crestfallen, 'who done it?'
'Why, P-Pa'son Kelsey, I reckon.'
That memorable arrest in the Big Smoky was the last official act of the sheriff, except the surrender of his books and papers and taking his successor's receipt for the prisoners in the county jail. The defeat had its odious aspects. The race had been amazingly unequal. Had the ground tottered beneath him, as he stood in the grass-fringed streets of Shaftesville, and heard the rumours of the returns from the civil districts, he could hardly have experienced a sensation of insecurity commensurate with this, for all his moral supports were threatened. His self-confidence, his arrogant affinity for authority, his pride, and his ambition keenly barbed the prescience of this abnormal flatness of failure. He was pierced by every careless glance; every casual word wounded him. He had a strange disturbing sense of a loss of identity. This anxious, browbeaten, humiliated creature—was this Micajah Green? He did not recognise himself; every throb within him had an alien impulse; he repudiated every cringing mental process. It was his first experience of the rigours of adversity; it did not quell him; he felt effaced.
He feebly sought to goad himself to answer the rough chaff of spurious sympathizers with his old bluff spirit; his retort was like the lisp of a child in defiance of the challenge of a bugle. He saw with faltering bewilderment how the interesting spectacle increased his audience; it resembled in some sort an experiment in vivisection, and where the writhings most suggested an appreciated anguish, each curious scientist most longed to thrust the scalpel.
The coroner held the election, as the sheriff himself was a candidate, and when the result became known the details excited increased comment. In the district of the county town he had a majority, but the unanimity against him in the outlying districts, especially in the Big Smoky and its wide-spread spurs and coves, was unprecedented in the annals of the county. He had hoped that the election of judge and attorney-general, taking place at the same time, might divert attention from the disastrous completeness of his failure. But their race involved no peculiar phase of popular interest, and the more important results were subordinated, so far as the county was concerned, to the spectacle of 'Cajah Green, 'flabbergasted an' flustrated like never war seen.'
New elements of gossip were added now and then, vivaciously canvassed among the knots of men perched on barrels in the stores, or congregated in the post-office, or sitting on the steps of the courthouse, and were ruthlessly detailed to the ex-sheriff, whose starts of rage, unthinking relapses into official speech, jerks of convulsive surprise, prolonged the amusement beyond its natural span.
It ceased suddenly. The adjustment to a new line of thought and to a future under altered conditions was facilitated by the inception of an immediate definite intention and a sentiment co-equal with the passion of despair. The idlers of the town might not have been able to accurately define the moment when the drama of defeat, with which he had prodigally entertained them, lost its interest. But there was a moment that differed from all the others of the lazy August hours; the minimum of time charged with disproportionate importance. It might be likened to a symbol of chemistry, which, though the simplest alphabetical character, is significant of an essential element involving life—perhaps death.
That moment the wind came freshly down from the mountains; the glare of the morning sun rested on the empty, sandy street of the village, the weeds and grass that obscured the curbing of the pavement were still overhung by a glittering gossamer net of dew. A yellow butterfly flitted over it, followed by another so like that it could not be distinguished from its aërial counterpart. The fragrance of new-mown hay somewhere in the rural metropolis was sweet on the air. A blue-bottle, inside the window of the store hard by, droned against the glass, and seemed in some sort an echo to the monotonous drawl of a man who had lately been up in the Big Smoky, and who had gleaned fresh points concerning the recent election.
'What did ye ever do ter the Cayces, 'Cajah, or what did Bluff Peake ever do fur 'em?' he asked, as preliminary to detailing that the Cayces had turned out and pervaded the Great Smoky Mountains, electioneering against the incumbent. 'They rid hyar an' they rid thar—up in the mountings an' down in the coves; an' some do say thar war one o' 'em in ev'y votin'-place in all the mounting deestric's the day the 'lection kem off, jes' a-stiffenin' up the Peake men, an' a-beggin', an' a-prayin', an' a-wraslin' in argymint with them ez hed gin out they war a-goin' ter vote fur you-uns. Bluff Peake say they fairly 'lected him, though he 'lowed 'twarn't fur love o' him. I wonder ye done ez well ez ye did, 'Cajah, though ye couldn't hev done much wuss, sure enough. All o' 'em war out, from old Groundhog down ter Sol, when they war 'lectioneerin', an' the whisky ez war drunk round the Settlemint an' sech war 'sprisin'. Some say old Groundhog furnished it free.'
The ex-sheriff made no reply. There was a look in his eye that gave his long, lean head, deeply sunken at the temples, less the aspect of that of a whipped hound than it had worn of late. One might have augured that he was a dangerous brute. And after that, the conversation with the recent election as a theme flagged, and died out gradually.
It was only a few days before he had occasion to go up into the Great Smoky Mountains, on matters, he averred, connected with closing unsettled business of the office which he held.
As he jogged along, he moodily watched the distant mountains, growing ever nearer, and engirdled here and there with belts of white mists, above whose shining silver densities sometimes would tower a gigantic 'bald,' with a suspended, isolated effect, like some wonderful aërial regions unknown to geography, foreign to humanity.
The supreme dignity of their presence was familiar to him. Their awful silence, like the unspeakable impressiveness of some overpowering thought, affected him not. The vastness of the earth which they suggested, beneath the immensities of the sky, which leaned upon them, found no responsive largeness in his emotions.
Those barren domes of an intense blue, tinged with purple where the bold rocks jutted out, flushed where the yellow sunshine languished to a blush; those heavily wooded slopes below the balds, sombre and rich in green and bronze and all darkling shades—touched, too, here and there with a vivid crimson where the first fickle sumach flared; those coves in which shadows lurked and vague sentiments of colour were abroad in visionary guise, in unexplained softness of greys and hardly realized blues, in dun browns and sedate yellows, vanishing before the plain prose of an approach,—he had reduced all this to a scale of miles, and the splendours of the landscape were not more seemly or suggestive than the colours of a map on the wall. It was a mental scale of miles, for the law decreeing a sufficiency of mileposts seemed to weaken in the ruggedness of the advance, and when he was fairly among the coves and ravines they disappeared.
He pushed his horse rather hard, as the time wore on, but sunset was on the mountains before he came upon the great silent company of dead trees towering above the Settlement in the reddening light, and tracing their undeciphered hieroglyphics across the valley beneath and upon the heights beyond. The ringing vibrations of the anvil were on the air; the measured alternations of the hand-hammer and the sledge resounded in a clear, metallic fugue; the flare from the forge fire streamed through the great door of the blacksmith's shop, giving fluctuating glimpses of the interior, but fainting and fading into impotent artificiality before the gold and scarlet fires ablaze in the western sky.
A waggon, broken down and upheld by a pole in lieu of one of the wheels, stood in front of the blacksmith's shop, and was evidently the reason of Gid Fletcher's industry at this late hour.
Its owner loitered aimlessly about; now looking, with a gloat of acquisition, at his purchases stowed away in the waggon, and now nervously at a little barefoot girl whom he had brought with him to behold the metropolitan glories of the Settlement.
He occasionally asked her anxious questions.
'Ain't you-uns 'most tired out, Euraliny?' he would say; or, 'Don't ye feel wore in yer backbone, hevin' ter wait so long?' or, 'Hedn't ye better lay down on the blanket in the waggin an' rest yer bones, bein' ez we-uns started 'fore daybreak?'
But the sturdy Euralina shook her sun-bonnet, with her head in it, in emphatic negation at every suggestion, and sat upright on the board laid across the rough, springless waggon, looking about her gravely, with a stalwart determination to see all there was in the famed Settlement; thinking, perhaps, that her backbone would have leisure to humour its ails in the retirement of home. What an ideal traveller Euralina would be under a wider propitiousness of circumstance!
And so the anxious parent could only stroll about as before, and contemplate his purchases, and pause at the door of the blacksmith's shop to say, 'Ain't you-uns 'most done, Gid?' in a tone of harrowing insistence, for the fortieth time since the blacksmith's services were invoked.
Gid Fletcher looked up with lowering brow as Micajah Green entered.
The shadows of evening were dense in the ill-lighted place; the fluctuations of the forge fire, now flaring, now fading, intensified the idea of gloom.
The red-hot iron that the blacksmith held on the anvil threw its lurid reflection into his swarthy face and his eyes; his throat was bare; his athletic figure, girded with his leather apron, demonstrated in its poses the picturesqueness of the simple craft; his sleeve was rolled tightly from his huge, corded hammer-arm. His hand-hammer seemed endowed with some nice discriminating sense as it tapped here and there with an imperative clink, and the great sledge in the striker's hands came crashing down to execute its sharp behests, while the flakes flew from the metal in jets of golden sparks.
A man is never so plastic to virtuous impulses as when he is doing well his chosen work. Labour was ordained to humanity as a curse; surely God repented Him of the evil. What blessing has proved so beneficent!
The suggestions entering with the new-comer were at variance with this wholesome industrial mood. They recalled to the blacksmith his baffled avarice, his revenge, and the malice that had influenced his testimony at the committing trial. More than once, of late, while the anvil sang responsive to the hammer's sonorous clangour, and the sparks flew, emblazoning the twilight of the shop with arabesques of golden flakes, and the iron yielded like wax to fire and force, he had a sudden fear that he had not done well.
True, he had sworn to nothing which he did not believe, either in the affidavit for the warrant or at the committing trial; but the widely chartered credulity of an angry man! He said to himself in extenuation that he would not have gone so far but for the sheriff.
He was not glad, with these recollections paramount, to see Micajah Green again. Some concession he made, however, to the dictates of hospitality.
'Hy're, 'Cajah,' he said, albeit gruffly, and the monotonous clinking of the hand-hammer and the clanking of the sledge went on as before.
Micajah Green's knowledge of life had not been wide, but there was space to evolve a cynical reflection that, being down in the world now, he must bite the dust, and he attributed this cavalier treatment to the perverse result of the election.
He had acquired something of the manner of bravado, from his recent experience as a defeated candidate, and he swaggered a little as he strolled about the dirt floor of the shop; glancing at the forge fire, slumberously glowing, at the smoky hood above it, at the window opening upon the purpling mountains and the fading west. He even paused, and turned with his foot the clods of the cavity still yawning below the log, where the escaped man had crawled through.
There was an altercation at this moment between the smith and his assistant; for the work was not so satisfactory as when Gid Fletcher's mind was exclusively bent upon it, and his striker officiated also as scapegoat, although that function was not specified as his duty in their agreement. Gid Fletcher had marked with furtive surprise and doubt every movement of the intruder, and this show of interest in the only trace of the escape by which was lost his rich reward roused his ire.
'Even the dogs hev quit that, 'Cajah,' he said enigmatically, as he caught up the iron for the new skene and thrust it into the fire, while the striker fell to at the bellows. The long sighing burst forth; the fire flared to redness, to a white heat, every vivid coal edged by a fan of yellow shimmer. The blacksmith's fine stalwart figure was thrown backward; his face was lined with sharp white lights; he was looking over his shoulder, and laughing silently, but with a sneer.
'The dogs?' said Micajah Green, amazed. He did not sneer.
'The dogs tuk ter cropin' in an' out'n that thar hole fur five or six days arter Rick Tyler got away,' Gid Fletcher explained. 'Peared ter be nosin' round fur him, too. I dunno what notion tuk 'em, but I never would abide 'em in the shop, an' so I jes' kep' that fur 'em'—he nodded at a leather strap hanging on the rod—'an' larnt 'em ter stay out o' hyar. But even they hev gin it up now.'
'I hain't gin it up, though,' said Micajah Green, still turning the clods with his foot. 'I'll be held responsible by the court fur the escape, I rackon, ef the gran' jury remembers ter indict me fur it, ez negligence. An' ef I kin lay my hands on Rick Tyler yit I'll be mighty glad ter feel of him.'
The blacksmith, without changing his attitude, looked hard at his visitor for a moment. Something rang false in the speech. He could not have said what it was, but his moral sense detected it, as his practised ear might have discovered by the sound a flaw in the metal under his hammer.
'Ye ain't kem up the Big Smoky a-huntin' fur Rick Tyler?' he said at length.
'Naw,' admitted Micajah Green; 'it's jes' 'bout some onsettled business o' the county. But ef I war ter meet up with Rick in the road I wouldn't pass him by.'
He said this with a satirical half-laugh, still turning the clods with his foot, the vivid white light illuminating his figure and his face beneath his straw hat. The next moment the sighing bellows was silent, and Gid Fletcher and his striker had the red-hot metal between them on the anvil, and were once more forging that intricate metallic melody, with its singing echoes, that seemed to endow the little log cabin with a pulsing heart, that flowed from its surcharged chamber out into the grey night, to the deeply purple mountains, to the crescent golden moon, to the first few stars pulsating as if in rhythm to the clinking of the hand-hammer and the clanking of the sledge—forging this, and as its incident the durable skene which should enable Euralina and her parent to leave the Settlement shortly.
'I hopes ter git home 'fore daybreak, Gid,' he said desperately, standing in the door, and looking wistfully at the iron in process of transformation upon the anvil.
He turned out again presently, and Micajah Green paused, leaning against the window, and looking doubtfully from time to time at the striker. This was an ungainly, heavy young mountaineer, with a shock of red hair, a thick neck, and unfinished features which seemed not to have been accounted worthy of more careful moulding. There was a look of humble pain in his face when the blacksmith angrily upbraided him. His perceptions were inefficient to accurately distribute blame; he was only receptive, poor fellow! and we all know that in every sense those who can only take, and cannot return, have little to hope from the world. He was evidently not worth fearing; and Micajah Green disregarded him as completely as the presence of the anvil.
'Talkin' 'bout Rick Tyler, did you-uns go sarchin' that night—the dep'ty's party—ter the still they say old man Cayce runs?'
'Naw'—Gid Fletcher paused, his hammer uplifted, the red glow of the iron on his meditative face and eyes; the striker, both hands upholding the poised sledge, waited in the dusky background—'naw. We met up with Pete Cayce, an' he 'lowed ez he hedn't seen nor hearn o' Rick Tyler.'
'Ef I hed been along I'd have sarched the still, too.'
The blacksmith stared in astonishment.
'Pete Cayce's say-so war all I wanted,' he declared; 'an' I hed the two hunderd dollars ez I hed yearned, an' ye hed flunged away, a-hangin' on ter it,' he added.
'I hev a mind ter go thar now, whilst I be on the Big Smoky, an' talk ter the old man 'bout'n it,' Green said reflectively.
He had drawn out his clasp-knife, and was whittling a piece of white oak which he had picked up from the ground. With the energy of his intention the slivers flew.
The blacksmith glanced in furtive surprise at his downcast face, but for a moment said nothing. Then:
'Hain't you-uns hearn how the Cayces turned out agin ye at the 'lection? Ef they didn't defeat ye, they made it an all-fired sight wuss. Ez fur ez I could hear, me and Tobe Grimes war the only men in the Big Smoky ez voted fur ye. I war plumb 'shamed o' it arterward. I hates ter be beat. I'm thinkin' they ain't a-hankerin' ter see ye down yander at the still.'
The defeated candidate's face turned deeply scarlet pending this recital. But he said, with an off-hand air:
'I ain't a-keerin' fur that now; that's 'count o' an old grudge the Cayces hold agin me. All I want now is ter kem up with Rick Tyler, ef so be I can, afore the gran' jury sits again; an' I hev talked with ev'ybody on the mountings, mighty nigh, 'ceptin' it be the Cayces. Which fork o' the road is it ye take fur the still—I furgit—the lef' or the right?'