If Janet had needed any further clue to Anthony Crawford's character, she would have had it in the sudden trembling terror of his little son. She was shaking herself, yet she mustered an outward appearance of courage for a moment, as she turned to face him squarely and to hear his biting words:
"First the brother, peering over the wall, then the sister, rummaging through my house. Did Jasper Peyton send you here to find where I kept the picture of Cicely Hallowell that he was so reluctant to give up to me?"
"I didn't know it was Cicely Hallowell," returned Janet, trying to speak steadily. "I didn't even know that she was a real person; I thought she was just some one in a story."
Then as Crawford stepped nearer, as little Martin gave a sudden squeak of alarm, blind panic took possession of her. She ran toward the stairs and, though the man put out his arm to intercept her, she dodged under it with undignified agility and plunged down the steps. They were of the broad, shallowkind that made her feel, for all her speed, that she would never reach the bottom, yet she came at last into the hall below and out upon the stoop. She fled past Mrs. Crawford, sitting with the sleeping baby across her lap and looking up anxiously, with good cause for misgiving since she had heard her husband go up the stair.
It was only when she was safely outside the gate that Janet stopped to draw breath, to realize how her knees were trembling and how her heart was pounding. Yet it stopped suddenly and seemed to miss a beat when she realized something further, that she still held in her hand the miniature of Cicely Hallowell.
"Can I go back?" she wondered desperately, but knew instantly that she could never find courage to do so. She went on, hurrying and stumbling as she made her way down the lane. Only once she ventured to look over her shoulder and saw Anthony Crawford standing on the doorstep staring after her while the scarecrow that was so vaguely like him seemed to be lifting its straw-filled arm in a mocking gesture of farewell.
Janet and Oliver held an anxious conference that evening as they sat on the terrace, for until that moment they had not been alone together. She brought out the miniature and told of the astonishing and disturbing manner in which it had come into her possession, while Oliver wondered, in frank dismay, how it was to be restored to its owner.
"I can't think how I came to carry it away with me," wailed Janet. "Of course it was clutched tight in my hand and I was so frightened that I didn't think of anything but getting away. I thought of putting it down on the grass by the gate, but it is too valuable to risk being lost like that. And that man will say I stole it. I don't know what to do."
"We shall have to give it back to him," said Oliver firmly. "To-morrow we will——" but he stopped in the middle of his sentence, unable, even in imagination, to contemplate facing Anthony Crawford and giving him the miniature.
"Shall we tell Cousin Jasper?" Janet suggested, but Oliver declared against it.
"Anthony Crawford will be quite ready to say that Cousin Jasper sent you to get it from him. The miniature and the pictures seem to be part of the trouble, though I don't understand why. So if that man comes here with such an accusation, it would be better for Cousin Jasper to be able to say he knew nothing about it."
"Yes," assented Janet. "I believe, if he knew, Cousin Jasper would try to shield us and Anthony Crawford would use it as one more thing to hold over him. I am beginning to understand both of them better. We—we have overlooked a good many things about Cousin Jasper."
It was only a few minutes later that Cousin Jasper joined them, nor had he yet sat down in the longwicker chair that Oliver placed for him, before Hotchkiss came out with a message.
"John Massey is in the kitchen, sir, and he says to tell you that he would like to see you about something important."
"Bring him out here," Cousin Jasper directed, and, when the somewhat embarrassed visitor in his worn best clothes appeared upon the terrace he got up with as elaborate courtesy as he would have accorded the most distinguished guest.
"What is it, John?" he asked, for the sunburned farmer was evidently an old acquaintance. The other burst out with his news and his errand at once.
"I've been turned off, sir," he said. "Told to leave the farm, with no notice at all and my crops all in the ground. I'll admit I'm a little behind on my rent, but not many landlords around here collect as closely as Mr. Crawford does; they get all their money at the end of the season and don't haggle over it month by month when the farmer has nothing coming in. And what can you do on land that's never improved? He lets the place run down and then turns me out because I can't make a fortune for him on it. I—I was wondering if you couldn't do something for me, sir."
"Do something for you?" echoed Jasper Peyton. "I can't use any influence with Anthony Crawford, if that is what you wish."
"I don't understand it," the man persisted. "Three years ago you were my landlord and noneof us ever had dealings with Anthony Crawford except that we used to know him when he was a boy. The whole bottom land along the river was yours and all your tenants were farming it for a fair rent and every one was satisfied. But then—he comes, and the upper half is his, we hear, and it is bad luck for us, as we soon know. Everything runs down, no one is treated fairly, and here I am, turned off at a word, and all his doing. Couldn't you make room for me farther down the river somewhere, sir, where the land is yours?"
He looked so red and anxious and unhappy that Janet's heart was fairly wrung for him. His wife was ailing, she knew, the season was backward, and here he stood, facing the loss of all his work and the necessity of beginning all over again. She waited eagerly to hear what offer Cousin Jasper would make.
"I—I can't help you, John," he said at last, very slowly and heavily. "Even if I made room for you on one of the lower farms, it would only stir up trouble, and you might wake up some day to find that Anthony Crawford was your landlord again, after all. I can give you the money to pay your rent, if you wish to stay where you are, but that is all that I can do. There are times when we are none of us free agents, or masters of our own affairs."
"I don't care to stay on, sir," John Massey returned. "I've had too many words with AnthonyCrawford for things ever to go easy again. I've been patching up the dike with my own spare time, and maybe the farm has suffered by my doing it; anyway he says so and calls me a fool. I thought perhaps you would help me, since I'd been your tenant so long beforehecame." His voice, dragging with disappointment, trailed lower and lower. "I don't seem to know just where to turn. Well, good night to you, sir." He turned and walked heavily away.
They sat very silent after he was gone. Oliver was leaning against the terrace rail, Janet in her big chair was clenching her hands in her lap, Cousin Jasper, with his hands on the railing, stood in absolute quiet, staring out over the garden. The light of the house came through the long windows, falling on his face that was so pale and tired. He had seemed weary and unhappy for some time, but to-night he looked desperate. The minutes passed, but still he stood in silence, staring straight before him.
The sight of his distress seemed more than either of the two could bear. Oliver could think of nothing to say, but stood dumbly helpless, while Janet moved closer to their cousin and spoke with shy hesitation:
"Couldn't we help you? Won't you tell us what you are thinking?"
"I was only thinking," Cousin Jasper answered very slowly, "I was wondering, as I do sometimes lately, how strangely life can change and twist itselfand make things seem other than they should be. If you have lived all your years following your own sense of honor, if you have tried, in everything you do, to be fair and just, how can it be, when the years have passed, that suddenly all the results of honest dealing should be swept away? How can it be that a man who has disgraced himself, whose ways are known to be everything that is devious and unfair, how can he gain power over you, threaten to take from you everything that is yours, even say that he can destroy your good name? How can every effort you make toward a fair settlement only render matters worse? Is there really something so wrong with the world that a dishonest man can work more harm than a man of honor can ever undo? Doyouthink so?" he concluded, turning to regard them from under his knitted brows as if he must, in his distress, find some word of reassurance somewhere.
"No," said Oliver emphatically, finding his voice somewhat to his own surprise. "I don't think so at all. I believe a man who does dishonorable things can—can mix you up and make you miserable, but he can't go on forever. His plans are bound to come to grief in the end."
His halting words carried the real earnestness of conviction. They seemed to give Cousin Jasper some sort of comfort, for his face relaxed, he moved from his tense attitude, and turned to walk up and down the terrace through the patches of light and shadow that lay between the windows. Janet thrusta friendly, affectionate hand under his arm as she walked beside him. It was a hot night, at June's very highest tide, with the garden at the summit of its beauty. The Madonna lilies were in bloom, showing ghostly white through the dark, rows and ranks and armies of them all up and down the walks and borders, sending sudden ripples of sweetness upward to the terrace whenever the faint breeze stirred. There was no moon yet, but the stars were thick overhead, and the moving lanterns of the fireflies glimmered among the trees, low down still as they always are in the first hours of the dark. Janet was thinking that when the world was so beautiful, it was difficult to believe that things could go entirely wrong in it, but she did not find it possible to put her idea into words. It may have been that Cousin Jasper was thinking the same thing as he stopped and stood for a long time at the head of the brick-paved stair leading down from the end of the terrace into the garden. At last he began to descend slowly, unable to make out the steps in the dark, so that he put his hand on her shoulder to steady himself. He spoke very suddenly.
"It is not only in body but in spirit that the old must sometimes lean upon the young," he said, and then, with his voice quite cheerful again, began to talk of how well the flowers were doing this year.
Oliver had followed them to the top of the stair and stood above them, listening, but not, apparently, to what Cousin Jasper was saying. His head wasbent and he was straining every nerve to hear some far-off sound. His face looked troubled, then cleared suddenly as he came down the steps.
"Cousin Jasper," he said, "didn't I tell you that the gardener wanted you to know that the night-blooming cereus is open just now? Suppose we walk out to the back of the garden and see it."
His cousin hesitated.
"It is rather late," he answered. "It will be open still to-morrow night."
"Janet has never seen one," persisted Oliver, putting a firm arm through Cousin Jasper's, "and it might rain or something to-morrow night. She would be so disappointed and so would the gardener."
They went down the last steps together, into the sea of white lilies and drifting fragrance, and disappeared into the darkness toward the back of the garden.
In spite of his insistence, Oliver did not seem so deeply interested as the others in the plant that was slowly opening its pink flowers that have so brief and beautiful a season. The gardener, hastily summoned, came across the lawn to exhibit his favorite plant with the greatest pride, but Oliver left the others to admire and ask questions and, in ten minutes, came back alone. Coming upon the terrace again, he saw Hotchkiss, just inside the long window, ushering out a visitor who was talking in loud, easily recognizable tones.
"No, he doesn't seem to be here," Anthony Crawford was saying, "though I didn't believe you, until you let me come in and see for myself. I had something of great importance to say to him—and to the girl. Well, I will come again to-morrow."
He passed down the room and must have come very close to the light, for his shadow loomed suddenly, misshapen and bulky, all across the library, even dropping its black length over the terrace outside. It followed him, a striding giant, from window to window and then dwindled suddenly again as Anthony Crawford himself stood under the light in the doorway giving Hotchkiss final directions.
"Be sure to tell him that I shall be here to-morrow night and that I shall expect him to be at home," he ordered, then climbed into the creaking cart and drove away.
Hotchkiss stood peering into the dark after him, evidently sending no good wishes to speed him homeward. Seeing Oliver coming up the steps at the far end of the terrace, he walked down to speak to him.
"There was something more than usual wrong to-night," he said anxiously. "He vowed that he must see Mr. Peyton and didn't want to take my word for it that he was out. It was fortunate that he had gone into the garden."
"Yes," responded Oliver, "I thought I heard that miserable rattletrap turning in at the gate and I remembered, all of a sudden, that the gardenertold me yesterday about the night-blooming cereus. I—I thought they ought to look at it at once."
Hotchkiss had been nervous and agitated during what must have been a stormy interview, and he found this sudden relief too great for the composure even of a butler. He burst into a great laugh of delight and slapped his knee in ecstasy.
"That was the way to serve him!" he cried. "To think that prying scoundrel found some one that was too clever for him, for once."
Oliver grinned broadly, but recovered himself in a moment.
"Hotchkiss," he said with great gravity, "you would never do for the movies."
Janet was eating her breakfast very deliberately next morning, lingering even after Cousin Jasper had left them and while Oliver sat back in his chair fidgeting in frank impatience. When her brother finally urged her to make haste she broke forth into an explanation that was almost a wail.
"It is because I can't forget where we have to go to-day," she declared. "Oh, why—why did I make such a terrible mistake and carry that miserable picture away?"
Even Oliver looked none too cheerful at the prospect before them.
"We have to do it," he agreed, "but I think we will go over to the Windy Hill first. I promised Polly's father I would tell him what I saw from theboat. But after that there will be plenty of time and we will go to Anthony Crawford's."
"I ought to go alone," Janet said, "for it was I who made the trouble. And shall we tell the Beeman?"
"Not until afterward," replied Oliver. "If there is difficulty about the picture it would be easier if no one were concerned but just ourselves. And indeed you won't go alone! We are in this thing together."
It had rained in the night so heavily that the clumps of larkspur and more tender plants were beaten down and only the shower-loving lilies lifted their wet, shining faces above the green. The sky was still overcast, with threats of another downpour, yet the two put on their raincoats and set forth undeterred.
"There is an old apple shed in the corner of the orchard where we can leave the car," said Oliver. "Polly showed me, last time, where we could drive in."
The highway was smooth and wet and the river was perceptibly higher under the bridge. They pressed onward, up the grass-covered road, drove through the gap in the orchard wall, and felt their way along the open lane between the apple trees. The car was finally housed in the shelter of the shed and Janet and Oliver raced up the hill, for the first drops of a new shower were just beginning to fall, and Polly, in the doorway of the cottage, was beckoning them to make haste. The downpour wasa sharp one that pattered on the roof, ran streaming from the eaves, and blotted out the hills opposite. The grass and the orchard, however, seemed to grow greener every moment under the refreshing rain, and the clumps of pink hollyhocks that crowded about the doorstep lifted their heads gratefully.
"We can't do much with the bees for an hour or two," observed the Beeman, sitting down in the corner with his pipe. "Now tell me what you saw on the river, Oliver. I noticed your sail and knew that you were out."
Oliver made his report upon the scouring banks while the Beeman listened and nodded gravely.
"That is something we must look into," he declared. "It is like Anthony to have let things go. And now, if you have time to wait, suppose we have a story."
They had ample time, they assured him, being only too glad to postpone the errand that must come later. They were eager for another tale, moreover, for they were beginning to realize that these were not mere haphazard narratives, but stories with some definite bearing upon the places and people about them.
"We have plenty of time," Oliver assured him. "We are in no hurry at all. You might even make it a very long one."
The Beeman nodded assent with that queer smilethat seemed to betray an uncanny understanding of the whole situation.
"A long one it shall be," he agreed, "for I have a good deal to tell you."
People said that the Brighton children could "never manage," when it was said that they were planning to live in the little cottage on the hill above Medford Valley.
"There's always a wind there from the sea, dearie," said old Granny Fullerton to Barbara Brighton. "It will search out your very bones, come winter."
Barbara shook her head cheerfully. A plump and rosy young person of twelve years old does not worry much about cold winds.
People said also, with the strange blindness of those who can live close by for years and yet never know what is in their neighbors' hearts, that it was an odd thing that Howard Brighton should have built that little house so far from the town in the midst of that great stretch of wild land where so few folk lived.
"It is marshy in the valley and wooded on the hills," Granny Fullerton said to Barbara, "with never a neighbor for miles. Of course the land has been in your family time out of mind, but those thatare your nearest kin have always lived in the town. What could Howard Brighton have been thinking to do such a thing!"
They did not know how he had toiled and planned in his narrow little office down near the wharves of the seaport town, how he and his wife had dreamed together that their three children should live in some other place than on the cramped, stony street where they had been born. After his wife's death he had still gone forward with his dream and, when he found that he had, himself, not very long to live, he had made haste to build the cottage that they had so greatly desired.
"It is pleasure enough to think of the children's having it," he said to a plain-spoken neighbor who remonstrated with him on the ground that he could never live there. "The boys will be old enough to care for their sister, and the house on the hill will be just the place for a little maid to grow up."
His children were of widely separated ages, for Ralph, the eldest, was twenty-one, Felix seventeen, and Barbara, as has been said, only twelve. It happened also that they had not all of them the same tastes, for while the two younger ones loved the country and looked forward to living on the Windy Hill, Ralph's desire was to go on working in the dusty office where he had already begun to prosper.
"He is a good getter, but a poor spender," the neighbors said, and in this were right. Ralph, withhis first success, had begun to think too much of money and too little of other things.
In the end the cottage was never finished, only the main portion, a tiny dwelling, was completed without the two broad wings with which Howard Brighton had meant to enlarge it and which he did not live to build. When their father had gone from them his children found that he had left everything he had to Ralph, since the laws of seventy-five years ago made some difficulty over property being held by those who were not of age.
"Ralph has a wise head on his young shoulders and will know how to take good care of the younger ones," was the comment of busy tongues.
Perhaps Ralph heard them, with the result that he felt older and wiser than he really was, but of that no one can be sure.
It was on a clear, warm day of mid-July when they moved from the airless street of the town to their new, wind-swept dwelling on the hill.
"It looks like home already," Barbara said as they came up to the door, for, with its wide, low roof, its broad windows, and its swinging half doors that let in the sunshine and the fresh breezes, it seemed indeed a place in which to forget their sadness and to find a new, happy life. The rustling voice of the oak tree above seemed to be bidding them welcome, and a tall clump of hollyhocks by the door-stone, shell pink and white, seemed tohave come into bloom that very day just for their home-coming.
Barbara ran from room to room, exclaiming in delight over the new freedom, while the two brothers sat on the doorstep to look down over their new domain and to talk of the future. Their father had planned to turn the meadow below into an orchard, and had even managed to set out the first half of the little trees, slim, tiny saplings that dotted the sloping green.
"We will put in the others next autumn and spring," Felix said, "and I will be building new cupboards and shelves for old Chloe in the kitchen, I will mend the press in Barbara's room and I will finish off the garret chamber under the eaves for myself, and there I can play the fiddle to my heart's content and never disturb you at all. I think that life will be very pleasant here."
So their lives swung into the new channel, with Chloe, Barbara's old nurse, to cook for them and with Felix to tend the apple trees and the little garden, to saw and hammer and whistle all day at the task of setting the new place in order.
"It's a pity you haven't a proper, handsome house, with long windows from the ceiling to the floor and a high roof and a carved front door and with black marble chimneypieces instead of these rough stone fireplaces," Chloe would sigh, for she thought that the elegance of that time was none too good for the people she loved. It may be thatRalph sighed with her, but Felix and Barbara were frankly delighted with the painted floors, the casement windows, and the low, big-beamed rooms. In the evenings, as the two would sit on the wide doorstep, the voice of Felix's violin would mingle with the voice of the wind in the oak, while Barbara listened, entranced, for her brother was a real master of his instrument. It would laugh and sing and sigh, while Barbara pressed closer and closer to his knee while the stars came out and the evening breeze stirred the hollyhocks and the great branches of the oak tree. Ralph rode every day to the town to labor over heavy account books in his cramped little office and he always brought home a sheaf of papers under his arm. He would sit at the table inside the window in the candlelight and, as the music rose outside, singing to the child and the flowers and the stars, he would scowl and fidget and tap irritably on the table with the point of his pen, for he did not love his brother's playing.
"There is too much time spent on it," he would say, "when you might be doing useful things."
"I have no head for adding up your endless columns of dollars and cents," Felix would answer, "so I must make myself useful in my own way."
A warm, golden October had painted the valley with blazing colors, had turned the oak tree to ruddy bronze, and had afforded ideal weather for the further planting of the orchard. Here Felix was at work, with Barbara following at his heels,and helping, when each tree was planted, to hold it upright while he pressed down the earth about its roots.
"We will leave an open space through the center," he said, "a lane that will lead straight up toward the house, so that when Ralph and I come home we can look up to the open door and the hollyhocks around the step. Only," he shook his head regretfully, "I am afraid Ralph won't see the flowers. His head is too full of dollar signs when he comes home from the town."
Barbara turned about to look through the orchard. Some one came trudging along between the little trees, his heavy, tired feet crunching in the leaves.
"Oh, it's a peddler," she cried eagerly, for she was always pleased when these traveling merchants came past, with their laces and gay embroideries and colored beads to dazzle the eyes of little girls. But this was a peddler of another sort, a dark-faced man with melting black eyes and eager speech that was less than half of it English. He was an immigrant Italian, newly come to this great America, he managed to explain, and he was trying to sell the trinkets and small household treasures that he had brought with him.
They led him up to the house, for he was weary and hungry, and while Barbara brought him food, Felix was plying him with questions as to where he had come from and whither he was going. He hadmeant to settle down in the little seaport, so he told them, but—here he became so voluble that it was almost impossible to understand him—he did not wish to stop there now, he must go on—on.
"It is the gold," he cried excitedly, making wide gestures with both his brown hands, "the beautiful yellow gold. They find it everywhere!"
He brought out a tattered newspaper to let them see for themselves what he could not explain. News traveled slowly in those days, so that in this out-of-the-way corner of Medford Valley the brother and sister now heard for the first time of the discovery of gold in California. Yet in the towns and where people could gather to tell one another ever-growing stories, the world was rapidly going mad over tales of gold lying loose for the gathering, of nuggets as big as a fist, of rivers running yellow with the precious shining dust.
"Listen, Barbara; why, it can't be true!" cried Felix as he read aloud, the Italian interrupting excitedly, trying to tell them more. It was for this that he had abandoned his plans, that he was selling everything he had to follow a far, golden dream across the country to California.
"A terrible journey, they say," he admitted, "but what does one care, with such fortune at the other end?"
He had little left to sell, nor had they much money to buy; but, so carried away were they by his ardor, they would have given him anything theyhad. There was a carved ivory crucifix, a silver chain and, at the very bottom of his bag, a square box that gave forth a curious humming noise.
"Take care," he cautioned, as Barbara would have peeped within, "they fly away—the bees!"
"Bees?" she echoed in astonishment.
Yes, he had brought all the way to America a queen bee and her retinue of workers, for Italian bees, he told them gravely, were known the world over for their beauty, industry, and gentleness.
"They sting you only if you hurt them," he declared. "Other times, never."
He explained how they were to be put into a hive and just how they were to be tended, for he was wise in the bee lore of Italy. Felix had seen some of the farmers round about struggling with the wild black bees whose tempers were so vicious that the only way to gather their honey was to smoke the whole hiveful to death. The man opened the box a little way to let the yellow-banded creatures crawl over his fingers, to show their gentleness.
"I must sell them quick," he said, "for they live not much longer in a box."
They bought the bees, Felix and Barbara, though it took every penny they had in the house and even the store in the little carved box on the mantel which they were all saving, by Ralph's advice, against a rainy day. The man went away down through the orchard, turning to wave his raggedhat in joyful good-by, for now he had sold everything and was off and away to California.
Felix sat on the doorstep, watching him go, while Barbara moved about inside, laying the table for supper. A thought suddenly struck her and she went to the door.
"Felix," she said, "I wonder what Ralph will say?"
But Felix was not listening.
"Gold," he repeated softly. "Did you hear what he said, Barbara? The sands of the rivers yellow with it, the Indians giving their children nuggets to play with, a year's earnings to be picked up in a day!"
He was so lost in his dream that he could talk of nothing else. It was not the sort of gold that Ralph loved, minted coins that could be saved and counted and stacked away, but it was the shining treasure of romance, wealth that, unlike dully satisfying riches, meant battle and adventure and triumph after overwhelming odds. He did at last consent to help Barbara house the bees in a suitable dwelling, but he talked still of the tale he had heard and his eyes were shining with the wonder of it.
"Did you hear him say that there was just one beaten trail across the plains, all the way from the Mississippi to California? Think of a road, a single road, two thousand miles long, reaching out through the wilderness, over the deserts, through the mountains, with no towns or houses or people,just one lonely highway—and gold at the far end!"
Ralph was late that evening, late and tired and impatient after an unsatisfactory day. He brushed past Felix, still sitting on the step, flung down his bundle of papers, and went over to the fire. The little carved money box stood open on the mantel, revealing its emptiness.
"What is this?" he asked Barbara sternly, as she stood in the corner, twisting her apron and finding, suddenly, that it was very difficult to explain. Felix came in, the light of excitement still on his face, eager to tell the tale.
He began to recount what they had heard, so carried away that he never noticed the gathering thundercloud upon his brother's face. The plains, the mountains, the shining rivers running to the sea—he seemed to conjure up all of them as he told the story, but Ralph's face never changed.
"So," cut in the elder brother at last when the younger stopped for breath, "it is for a fairy tale like this that you have wasted your time and your substance, have emptied my money box. You bought bees with it—bees! To buy bees when the forest is full of them and you can have a swarm from any neighbor for the asking. You spendmymoney that some lying rascal may be helped upon his way!"
"It was our money," Felix reminded him gently, beginning to be awakened from his dream by the bitter anger of the other's tone.
"Mine," repeated Ralph. A cold fury seemed to possess him, which discussions over money could alone bring forth. "Have you forgotten that everything here is mine, given me by our father? The bread you eat, the roof over your head, they belong to me; do you understand?"
Barbara saw, in the firelight, that Felix's face flushed, then turned white. No one but herself could know just how such words would hurt him, how his pride, his love for his brother, and his sturdy independence were all cut to the very quick. He went out of the room without a word and could be heard climbing the ladderlike stairs that led to the room he had made for himself under the eaves. Ralph sat down by the fire, muttering uneasily something about "it all blowing over." With lagging steps Barbara went on setting the table.
They were not prepared to see Felix come down the stairs a few minutes later with his coat and cap and with his violin under his arm.
"I will take no man's charity, not even my brother's," he said huskily, as he stood still for a moment on the threshold. Then he was gone.
Barbara leaned over the half door and watched him go down the path, saw him pass through the lane of tiny apple trees, saw the dusk gather about him as he went on, a smaller and smaller, plodding figure that disappeared at last into the dark. The autumn wind in the oak tree sounded blustering andcold as she closed the door and turned back to the room again.
"He has only gone down to the town, he will come back to-morrow," growled Ralph, but Barbara knew better.
"He has gone to look for gold," she cried, and, sitting down on the bench by the fire, she buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.
Felix used to think, as the days and weeks passed, and as that strange journey upon which he had launched so suddenly dragged on and on, that the grassy slope above the orchard and the cool dark foliage of the oak tree must be the very greenest and fairest things on earth. There was no green now before his aching eyes, only the wide stretch of yellow-brown prairie, a rough trail, deep in dust, winding across it, a line of white-topped wagons crawling like ants over the vast plain, and a blue arch of sky above, blinding-bright with the heat.
It was October when he went away from home, it was a month later when, by leisurely stage and slow canal boat, he arrived at the Mississippi River, the outpost of established travel. Here he was obliged to wait until spring, for even in the rush of '49 there were few bold enough to attempt the overland trail in winter. He turned his hand to every sort of work, he did odd jobs during the day and played his violin for dancing at night, he grew lean and out-at-elbows and graver than he used to be.He slept in strange places and ate stranger food, he suffered pangs of hunger and of homesickness, but he never thought of going back. His violin went everywhere with him, and in more than one of the little towns along the big river, people began to demand the boy fiddler who could make such gay music for their merrymakings.
When at last the snow melted, the wild geese flew northward, and the wilderness trail was open again, he had no difficulty in finding an emigrant party to which to attach himself. Abner Blythe was a lean, hard Yankee, but he had lived for years in the Middle West and had made journeys out into the prairie, although he had never gone the whole of the way to the mountains and the coast. He knew how to drive cattle with the long black-snake whip, whose snapping lash alone can voice the master's orders and which can flick the ear or flank of a wandering steer at the outermost limit of reach. His frail, eager-eyed little wife was to go with them, their boy of five, and a company of helpers who were to drive the wagons of supplies and to serve for protection against Indians.
The road was crowded at first, and the prairie grass grew green and high, full of wild strawberries, pink wild roses, and meadow larks. But as they journeyed slowly westward, as spring passed into summer, the green turned to brown under the burning sun, the low bluffs and tree-bordered water-courses were left behind, and they came to the wide,hot plains that seemed to have no end. At the beginning they sometimes passed farmhouses to the right and left of the trail, built by some struggling pioneer, where there was a little stream of water and where a few trees were planted. The places looked to Felix like the Noah's Ark he used to play with when he was small—the tiny, toy trees, the square toy house, little toy animals set out on the bare, brown floor of the prairie. Even the gaunt women in shapeless garments who always came to the door to watch the wagon train go by were not unlike the stiff wooden figures of Mrs. Noah. At last, however, even the scattered houses came to an end and there was nothing before them but the wilderness.
It was desperately hot, with the blazing sun above and the scorching winds swooping over the prairie to blow in their faces like the blast of a furnace. They made long stops at noontime, resting in the shade of the wagons and pressed on late into the night, so that not an hour might be lost. They went by herds of buffalo, big, clumsy, inert creatures, that looked so formidable from in front and so insignificant from behind. They saw slim, swift little antelope and, on the far horizon, they sometimes made out moving dots that must be Indians. Their numbers and their vigilance, however, seemed great enough to keep them safe from attack.
A deadly weariness began to fall upon them all, so that Abner Blythe became morose and silent, hiswife looked haggard and hollow-eyed, the men grew irritable, and the animals lagged more and more. Others who had passed that way had left many of their footsore beasts behind them—horses, oxen, cows, and sheep—to fall a prey at once to the great gray prairie wolves that hung behind every wagon train, waiting for the stragglers who could not keep up.
"It is only the human beings who have the courage to go on," Abner Blythe said to Felix. "You would think that horses were stronger than men and oxen the strongest of all, but the beasts give up and lie down by the road to die, yet the men keep on. It is not strength but spirit that carries us all to our journey's end."
There was one high-spirited black mare, the dearly beloved of Felix's heart, who, whether dragging at the heavy wagon or cantering under the saddle, was always full of energy and fire. She was the boy's especial charge, and, as the weeks passed, the two became such friends as are only produced by long companionship and unbelievable hardships endured together. It was a dreadful hour when, one night as they were making camp, the little mare lay down and not even for a feed of oats or the precious lump of sugar offered her, would she get up again. The very spirit that had driven her forward more bravely than the rest had produced greater exhaustion now.
"We will have to go on without her," saidAbner Blythe dejectedly, as they sat about the camp fire.
Felix was feeding the flame with the sparse fuel, and Anna Blythe, Abner's wife, was sitting on a roll of blankets with her child on her lap. The little boy was ill and lay wailing against her shoulder.
"Don't leave the mare," Felix begged. "A day or two of rest will cure her entirely. There is water here, and grass beside the stream. We could camp two or three days until she can go on."
Abner shook his head wearily.
"We have no time to waste," he declared. "It is August now and we must cross the mountains before the middle of September. We haven't a day, not even an hour, to lose."
Anna Blythe sighed a deep, quivering sigh. Felix knew that she loved the little horse, too, and, so he sometimes thought, she was herself so weary that she often longed to lie down beside the trail and perish as the tired dumb animals did. She had never made complaint before, but to-night, perhaps appalled by the thought of the mountains still to be crossed, she burst out into fierce questioning:
"Abner, why don't we turn back? What is it all for? Can gold, all the gold we could ever gather, repay us for this terrible journey? We are little more than halfway and the worst is still before us. We could go back while there is still time. Why do we go on?"
Abner, spreading his big hands upon his knees, sat staring into the fire.
"I don't know," he said at last, "I vow I don't know. It is not the excitement, nor the gold that drives us, there is no telling what it may be. Our country must go on, she must press forward to new opportunities, she must dwell in new places. It is through people like us that such growth comes about, we don't ourselves know why. A little ambition, a little hope, a great blind impulse, and we go forward. That is all."
They sat very still while the fire died out into charring embers and darkness filled the wide sky above them, showing the whole circling march of the stars like a sky at sea.
"We must be moving," Abner said at last, "we can make a few miles more before it is time to sleep."
They all arose wearily and made ready to go on. Felix went to where the black mare lay and passed his hand down her smooth neck. She whinnied and thrust her soft nose against his cheek, but would make no effort to move. He stood for a moment thinking deeply. Very clearly did he understand Abner's unreasoning desire to go forward, but, perhaps because he was only a boy, he did not feel that same wish so completely and passionately. There were other ideas in his mind, and uppermost among them was the feeling that one can not desert a well-loved friend. Just as the foremost wagon creakedinto motion and rumbled forward into the dark, his resolution found its way into words.
"I think I will stay with the mare," he said. "In three days at least she will be rested enough to go on, and then I can easily overtake you. We don't want to lose her." He tried to hide the depth of his feeling with commonplace words. "It wouldn't be sensible, when we have so few horses."
Abner did not consent willingly, but he agreed at last.
"She'll travel fast when she is on her feet again," he said, "and I don't like leaving her myself."
Felix took some provisions from the cook's wagon, gathered up his blankets, slung his gun over his shoulder, and, as a last thought, reached in for his violin. It would be good company in the dark, he thought.
"Keep your gun cocked for Indians," were Abner's last instructions, "look out for rattlesnakes at the water holes, and catch us up when you can. Good luck to you."
The boy stood beside the trail and listened to the slow complaining of the wheels and the shuffling of the feet of horses and oxen in the dust as the whole train moved onward. For a little while he could hear them and could see the bulk of the wagon tops outlined against the stars, then the long roll of the prairie hid them and he was left all alone in the wide, wild, empty plain.