"Confound—no, I won't say confound Patty—but confound me, if I'm mean enough to let you walk to Jonesville. I was a devlish coward yesterday. Here, take the horse, dog on you, or I'll thrash you," and Morton laughed.
"I tell you, Mort, I won't do it," said Kike, "I'm goin' to walk."
"Yes, you look like it! You'll die before you git half-way, you blamed little fool you! If you won't take Dolly, then I'll go along to bury your bones. They's no danger of the buzzard's picking such bones, though."
Just then came by Jake Sniger, who was remarkable for his servility to Lumsden.
"Hello, boys, which ways?" he asked.
"No ways jest now," said Morton.
"Are you a travelin', or only a goin' some place?" asked Sniger, smiling.
"I 'low I'm travelin', and Kike's a goin' some place," said Morton.
When Sniger had gone on, Morton said, "Now Kike, the fat's all in the fire. When the Captain finds out what you've done, Sniger is sure to tell that he see us together. I've got to fight it out now anyhow, and you've got to take Dolly."
"No, Morton, I can't."
If Kike had been any less obstinate the weakness of his knees would have persuaded him to relent.
GOOD-BYE!GOOD-BYE!
"Well, hold Dolly a minute for me, anyhow," said Morton, dismounting. As soon as Kike had obligingly taken hold of the bridle, Morton started toward home, singing Burns's "Highland Mary" at the top of his rich, melodious voice, never looking back at Kike till he had finished the song, and reached the summit of the hill. Then he had the satisfaction of seeing Kike in the saddle, laughing to think how his friend had outwitted him. Morton waved his hat heartily, and Kike, nodding his head, gave Dolly the rein, and she plunged forward, carrying him out of sight in a few minutes. Morton's mother was disappointed, when he came in late to breakfast, to see that his brow was clear. She feared that the good impressions of the day before had worn away. How little does one know of the real nature of the struggle between God and the devil, in the heart of another! But long before Kike had brought Dolly back to her stall, the exhilaration of self-sacrifice in the mind of Morton had worn away, and the possible consequences of his action made him uncomfortable.
Work, Morton could not. After his noonday dinner he lifted his flint-lock gun from the forked sticks upon the wall where it was laid, and set out to seek for deer,—rather to seek forgetfulness of the anxiety that preyed upon him. Excitement was almost a necessity with him, even at ordinary times; now, it seemed the only remedy for his depression. But instead of forgetting Patty, he forgot everything but Patty, and for the first time in his life he found it impossible to absorb himself in hunting. For when a frontierman loves, he loves with his whole nature. The interests of his life are few, and love, having undisputed sway, becomes a consuming passion. After two hours' walking through the unbroken forest he started a deer, but did not see at in time to shoot. He had tramped through the brush without caution or vigilance. He now saw that it would be of no avail to keep up this mockery of hunting. He was seized with an eager desire to see Patty, and talk with her once more before the door should be closed against him. He might strike the trail, and reach the settlement in an hour, arriving at Lumsden's while yet the Captain was away from the house. His only chance was to see her in the absence of her father, who would surely contrive some interruption if he were present.
So eagerly did Morton travel, that when his return was about half accomplished he ran headlong into the very midst of a flock of wild turkeys. They ran swiftly away in two or three directions, but not until the two barrels of Morton's gun had brought down two glossy young gobblers. Tying their legs together with a strip of paw-paw bark, he slung them across his gun, and laid his gun over his shoulder, pleased that he would not have to go home quite empty-handed.
As he steps into Captain Lumsden's yard that Autumn afternoon, he is such a man as one likes to see: quite six feet high, well made, broad, but not too broad, about the shoulders, with legs whose litheness indicate the reserve force of muscle and nerve coiled away somewhere for an emergency. His walk is direct, elastic, unflagging; he is like his horse, a clean stepper; there is neither slouchiness, timidity, nor craftiness in his gait. The legs are as much a test of character as the face, and in both one can read resolute eagerness. His forehead is high rather than broad, his blue eye and curly hair, and a certain sweetness and dignity in his smile, are from his Scotch-Irish mother. His picturesque coon-skin cap gives him the look of a hunter. The homespun "hunting shirt" hangs outside his buckskin breeches, and these terminate below inside his rawhide boots.
The great yellow dog, Watch, knows him well enough by this time, but, like a policeman on duty, Watch is quite unwilling to seem to neglect his function; and so he bristles up a little, meets Morton at the gate, and snuffs at his cowhide boots with an air of surly vigilance. The young man hails him with a friendly "Hello, Watch!" and the old fellow smooths his back hair a little, and gives his clumsy bobbed tail three solemn little wags of recognition, comical enough if Goodwin were only in a mood to observe.
Morton hears the hum of the spinning-wheel in the old cabin portion of the building, used for a kitchen and loom-room. The monotonous rise and fall of the wheel's tune, now buzzing gently, then louder and louder till its whirr could be heard a furlong, then slacking, then stopping abruptly, then rising to a new climax—this cadenced hum, as he hears it, is made rhythmical by the tread of feet that run back across the room after each climax of sound. He knows the quick, elastic step; he turns away from the straight-ahead entrance to the house, and passes round to the kitchen door. It is Patty, as he thought, and, as his shadow falls in at the door, she is in the very act of urging the wheel to it highest impetus; she whirls it till it roars, and at the same time nods merrily at Morton over the top of it; then she trips back across the room, drawing the yarn with her left hand, which she holds stretched out; when the impulse is somewhat spent, and the yarn sufficiently twisted, Patty catches the wheel, winds the yarn upon the spindle, and turns to the door. She changes her spinning stick to the left hand, and extends her right with a genial "Howdy, Morton? killed some turkeys, I see."
"Yes, one for you and one for mother."
"For me? much obliged! come in and take a chair."
"No, this'll do," and Morton sat upon the doorsill, doffing his coon-skin cap, and wiping his forehead with his red handkerchief. "Go on with your spinning, Patty, I like to see you spin."
"Well, I will. I mean to spin two dozen cuts to-day. I've been at it since five o'clock."
Morton was glad, indeed, to have her spin. He was, in his present perplexed state, willing to avoid all conversation except such broken talk as might be carried on while Patty wound the spun yarn upon the spindle, or adjusted a new roll of wool.
Nothing shows off the grace of the female figure as did the old spinning-wheel. Patty's perfect form was disfigured by no stays, or pads, or paniers—her swift tread backwards with her up-raised left hand, her movement of the wheel with the right, all kept her agile figure in lithe action. If plastic art were not an impossibility to us Americans, our stone-cutters might long since have ceased, like school-boys, to send us back from Rome imitation Venuses, and counterfeit Hebes, and lank Lincolns aping Roman senators, and stagey Washingtons on stage-horses;—they would by this time have found out that in our primitive life there are subjects enough, and that in mythology and heroics we must ever be dead copyists. But I do not believe Morton was thinking of art at all, as he sat there in the October evening sun and watched the little feet, yet full of unexhausted energy after traveling to and fro all day. He did not know, or care, that Patty, with her head thrown back and her left arm half outstretched to guide her thread, was a glorious subject for a statue. He had never seen marble, and had never heard of statues except in the talk of the old schoolmaster. How should her think to call her statuesque? Or how should he know that the wide old log-kitchen, with its loom in one corner, its vast fireplace, wherein sit the two huge, black andirons, and wherein swings an iron crane on which hang pot-hooks with iron pots depending—the old kitchen, with its bark-covered joists high overhead, from which are festooned strings of drying pumpkins—how should Morton Goodwin know that this wide old kitchen, with its rare centre-piece of a fine-featured, fresh-hearted young girl straining every nerve to spin two dozen cuts of yarn in a day, would make agenrepiece, the subject of which would be good enough for one of the old Dutch masters? He could not know all this, but he did know, as he watched the feet treading swiftly and rhythmically back and forth, and as he saw the fine face, ruddy with the vigorous exercise, looking at him over the top of a whirling wheel whose spokes were invisible—he did know that Patty Lumsden was a little higher than angels, and he shuddered when he remembered that to-morrow, and indefinitely afterward, he might be shut out from her father's house.
It was while he sat thus and listened to Patty's broken patches of sprightly talk and the monotonous symphony of her wheel, that Captain Lumsden came into the yard, snapping his rawhide whip against his boots, and walking, in his eager, jerky fashion, around to the kitchen door.
"Hello, Morton! here, eh? Been hunting? This don't pay. A young man that is going to get on in the world oughtn't to set here in the sunshine talking to the girls. Leave that for nights and Sundays. I'm afeard you won't get on if you don't work early and late. Eh?" And the captain chuckled his hard little laugh.
Morton felt all the pleasure of the glorious afternoon vanish, as he rose to go. He laid the turkey destined for Patty inside the door, took up the other, and was about to leave. Meantime the captain had lifted the white gourd at the well-curb, to satisfy his thirst.
"I saw Kike just now," he said, in a fragmentary way, between his sips of water—and Morton felt his face color at the first mention of Kike. "I saw Kike crossing the creek on your mare. You oughtn't to let him ride her; she'll break his fool neck yet. Here comes Kike himself. I wonder where he's been to?"
Morton saw, in the fixed look of Kike's eyes, as he opened the gate, evidence of deep passion; but Captain Enoch Lumsden was not looking for anything remarkable about Kike, and he was accustomed to treat him with peculiar indignity because he was a relative.
"Hello, Kike!" he said, as his nephew approached, while Watch faithfully sniffed at his heels, "where've you been cavorting on that filley to-day? I told Mort he was a fool to let a snipe like you ride that she-devil. She'll break your blamed neck some day, and then there'll be one fool less." And the captain chuckled triumphantly at the wit in his way of putting the thing. "Don't kick the dog! What an ill-natured ground-hog you air! If I had the training of you, I'd take some of that out."
"You haven't got the training of me, and you never will have."
Kike's face was livid, and his voice almost inaudible.
"Come, come, don't be impudent, young man," chuckled Captain Lumsden.
"I don't know what you call impudence," said Kike, stretching his slender frame up to its full height, and shaking as if he had an ague-chill; "but you are a tyrant and a scoundrel!"
"Tut! tut! Kike, you're crazy, you little brute. What's up?"
"You know what's up. You want to cheat me out of that bottom land; you have got it advertised on the back side of a tree in North's holler, without consulting mother or me. I have been over to Jonesville to-day, and picked out Colonel Wheeler to act as my gardeen."
"Colonel Wheeler? Why, that's an insult to me!" And the captain ceased to laugh, and grew red.
"I hope it is. I couldn't get the judge to take back the order for the sale of the land; he's afeard of you. But now let me tell you something, Enoch Lumsden! If you sell my land by that order of the court, you'll lose more'n you'll make. I ain't afeard of the devil nor none of his angels; and I recken you're one of the blackest. It'll cost you more burnt barns and dead hosses and cows and hogs and sheep than what you make will pay for. You cheated pappy, but you shan't make nothin' out of Little Kike. I'll turn Ingin, and take Ingin law onto you, you old thief and—"
THE ALTERCATION.THE ALTERCATION.
Here Captain Lumsden stepped forward and raised his cowhide. "I'll teach you some manners, you impudent little brat!"
Kike quivered all over, but did not move hand or foot. "Hit me if you dare, Enoch Lumsden, and they'll be blood betwixt us then. You hit me wunst, and they'll be one less Lumsden alive in a year. You or me'll have to go to the bone-yard."
Patty had stopped her wheel, had forgotten all about her two dozen a day, and stood frightened in the door, near Morton. Morton advanced and took hold of Kike.
"Come, Kike! Kike! don't be so wrothy," said he.
"Keep hands offen me, Mort Goodwin," said Kike, shaking loose. "I've got an account to settle, and ef he tetches a thread of my coat with a cowhide, it'll be a bad day fer both on us. We'll settle with blood then."
"It's no use for you to interfere, Mort," snarled the captain. "I know well enough who put Kike up to this. I'll settle with both of you, some day." Then, with an oath, the captain went into the house, while the two young men moved away down the road, Morton not daring to look at Patty.
What Morton dreaded most had come upon him. As for Kike, when once they were out of sight of Lumsden's, the reaction on his feeble frame was terrible. He sat down on a log and cried with grief and anger.
"The worst of it is, I've ruined your chances, Mort," said he.
And Morton did not reply.
Morton led Kike home in silence, and then returned to his father's house, deposited his turkey outside the door, and sat down on a broken chair by the fire-place. His father, a hypochondriac, hard of hearing, and slow of thought and motion, looked at him steadily a moment, and then said:
"Sick, Mort? Goin' to have a chill?"
"No, sir."
"You look powerful dauncy," said the old man, as he stuffed his pipe full of leaf tobacco which he had chafed in his hand, and sat down on the other side of the fire-place. "I feel a kind of all-overishness myself. I 'low we'll have the fever in the bottoms this year. Hey?"
"I don't know, sir."
"What?"
"I said I didn't know." Morton found it hard to answer his father with decency. The old man said "Oh," when he understood Morton's last reply; and perceiving that his son was averse to talking, he devoted himself to his pipe, and to a cheerful revery on the awful consequences that might result if "the fever," which was rumored to have broken out at Chilicothe, should spread to the Hissawachee bottom. Mrs. Goodwin took Morton's moodiness to be a fresh evidence of the working of the Divine Spirit in his heart, and she began to hope more than ever that he might prove to be one of the elect. Indeed, she thought it quite probable that a boy so good to his mother would be one of the precious few; for though she knew that the election was unconditional, and of grace, she could not help feeling that there was an antecedent probability of Morton's being chosen. She went quietly and cheerfully to her work, spreading the thin corn-meal dough on the clean hoe used in that day instead of a griddle, for baking the "hoe-cake," and putting the hoe in its place before the fire, setting the sassafras tea to draw, skimming the milk, and arranging the plates—white, with blue edges—and the yellow cups and saucers on the table, and all the while praying that Morton might be found one of those chosen before the foundation of the world to be sanctified and saved to the glory of God.
The revery of Mr. Goodwin about the possible breaking out of the fever, and the meditation of his wife about the hopeful state of her son, and the painful reflections of Morton about the disastrous break with Captain Lumsden—all three set agoing primarily by one cause—were all three simultaneously interrupted by the appearance of the younger son, Henry, at the door, with a turkey.
"Where did you get that?" asked his mother.
"Captain Lumsden, or Patty, sent it."
"Captain Lumsden, eh?" said the father. "Well, the captain's feeling clever, I 'low."
"He sent it to Mort by little black Bob, and said it was with Miss Patty's somethin' or other—couplements, Bob called 'em."
"Compliments, eh?" and the father looked at Morton, smiling. "Well, you're gettin' on there mighty fast, Mort; but how did Patty come to send a turkey?" The mother looked anxiously at her son, seeing he did not evince any pleasure at so singular a present from Patty. Morton was obliged to explain the state of affairs between himself and the captain, which he did in as few words as possible. Of course, he knew that the use of Patty's name in returning the turkey was a ruse of Lumsden's, to give him additional pain.
"It's bad," said the father, as he filled his pipe again, after supper. "Quarreled with Lumsden! He'll drive us off. We'll all take the fever"—for every evil that Job Goodwin thought of immediately became inevitable, in his imagination—"we'll all take the fever, and have to make a new settlement in winter time." Saying this, Goodwin took his pipe out of his mouth, rested his elbow on his knee, and his head on his hand, diligently exerting his imagination to make real and vivid the worst possible events conceivable from this new and improved stand-point of despair.
But the wise mother set herself to planning; and when eight o'clock had come, and Job Goodwin had forgotten the fever, having fallen into a doze in his shuck-bottom chair, Mrs. Goodwin told Morton that the best thing for him and Kike would be to get out of the settlement until the captain should have time to cool off.
"Kike ought to be got away before he does anything desperate. We want some meat for winter; and though it's a little early yet, you'd better start off with Kike in the morning," she said.
Always fond of hunting, anxious now to drown pain and forebodings in some excitement, Morton did not need a second suggestion from his mother. He feared bad results from Kike's temper; and though he had little hope of any relenting on Lumsden's part, he had an eager desire to forget his trouble in a chase after bears and deer. He seized his cap, saddled and mounted Dolly, and started at once to the house of Kike's mother. Soon after Morton went, his father woke up, and, finding his son gone out, complained, as he got ready for bed, that the boy would "ketch the fever, certain, runnin' 'round that away at night."
THE IRISH SCHOOL-MASTER.THE IRISH SCHOOL-MASTER.
Morton found Kike in a state of exhaustion—pale, angry, and sick. Mr. Brady, the Irish school-master, from whom the boys had received most of their education and many a sound whipping, was doing his best to divert Kike from his revengeful mood. It is a singular fact in the history of the West, that so large a proportion of the first school-masters were Irishmen of uncertain history.
"Ha! Moirton, is it you?" said Brady. "I'm roight glad to see ye. Here's this b'y says hay'd a shot his own uncle as shore as hay'd a toiched him with his roidin'-fwhip. An' I've been a-axin ov him fwoi hay hain't blowed out me brains a dozen times, sayin' oive lathered him with baich switches. I didn't guiss fwat a saltpayter kag hay wuz, sure. Else I'd a had him sarched for foire-arms before iver I'd a venter'd to inform him which end of the alphabet was the bayginnin'. Hay moight a busted me impty pate for tellin' him that A wusn't B."
It was impossible for Morton to keep from smiling at the good old fellow's banter. Brady was bent on mollifying Kike, who was one of his brightest and most troublesome pupils, standing next to Patty and Morton in scholarship though much younger.
Kike's mother, a shrewd but illiterate woman, was much troubled to see him in so dangerous a passion. "I wish he was leetle-er, ur bigger," she said.
"An' fwoi air ye afther wishing that same, me dair madam?" asked the Irishman.
"Bekase," said the widow, "ef he was leetle-er, I could whip it outen him; ef he was bigger, he wouldn't be sich a fool. Boys is allers powerful troublesome when they're kinder 'twixt and 'tween—nary man nor boy. They air boys, but they feel so much bigger'n they used to be, that they think theirselves men, and talk about shootin', and all sich like. Deliver me from a boy jest a leetle too big to be laid acrost your lap, and larnt what's what. Tho', ef I do say it, Kike's been a oncommon good sort of boy to me mostly, on'y he's got a oncommon lot of red pepper into him, like his pappy afore him, and he's one of them you can't turn. An', as for Enoch Lumsden, Iwouldbe glad ef he wuz shot, on'y I don't want no little fool like Kike to go to fightin' a man like Nuck Lumsden. Nobody but God A'mighty kin ever do jestice to his case; an' it's a blessed comfort to me that I'll meet him at the Jedgment-day. Nothin' does my heart so much good, like, as to think what a bill Nuck'll have to settlethen, and how he can't browbeat the Jedge, nor shake a mortgage inhisface. It's the on'y rale nice thing about the Day of Jedgment, akordin' to my thinkin'. I mean to call his attention to some things then. He won't say much about his wife's belongin' to fust families thar, I 'low."
Brady laughed long and loud at this sally of Mrs. Hezekiah Lumsden's; and even Kike smiled a little, partly at his mother's way of putting things, and partly from the contagion of Brady's merry disposition.
Morton now proposed Mrs. Goodwin's plan, that he and Kike should leave early in the morning, on the fall hunt. Kike felt the first dignity of manhood on him; he knew that, after his high tragic stand with his uncle, he ought to stay, and fight it out; but then the opportunity to go on a long hunt with Morton was a rare one, and killing a bear would be almost as pleasant to his boyish ambition as shooting his uncle.
"I don't want to run away from him. He'll think I've backed out," he said, hesitatingly.
"Now, I'll tell ye fwat," said Brady, winking; "you put out and git some bear's ile for your noice black hair. If the cap'n makes so bowld as to sell ye out of house and home, and crick bottom, fwoile ye're gone, it's yerself as can do the burnin' afther ye git back. The barn's noo, and 'tain't quoit saysoned yit. It'll burn a dale better fwen ye're ray-turned, me lad. An', as for the shootin' part, practice on the bears fust! 'Twould be a pity to miss foire on the captain, and him ye're own dair uncle, ye know. He'll keep till ye come back. If I say anybody a goin' to crack him owver, I'll jist spake a good word for ye, an' till him as the captin's own affictionate niphew has got the fust pop at him, by roight of bayin' blood kin, sure."
Kike could not help smiling grimly at this presentation of the matter; and while he hesitated, his mother said he should go. She'd bundle him off in the early morning. And long before daylight, the two boys, neither of whom had slept during the night, started, with guns on their shoulders, and with the venerable Blaze for a pack-horse. Dolly was a giddy young thing, that could not be trusted in business so grave.
Had I but bethought myself in time to call this history by one of those gentle titles now in vogue, as "The Wild Hunters of the Far West," or even by one of the labels with which juvenile and Sunday-school literature—milk for babes—is now made attractive, as, for instance, "Kike, the Young Bear Hunter." I might here have entertained the reader with a vigorous description of the death of Bruin, fierce and fat, at the hands of the triumphant Kike, and of the exciting chase after deer under the direction of Morton.
After two weeks of such varying success as hunters have, they found that it would be necessary to forego the discomforts of camp-life for a day, and visit the nearest settlement in order to replenish their stock of ammunition. Wilkins' store, which was the center of a settlement, was a double log-building. In one end the proprietor kept for sale powder and lead, a few bonnets, cheap ribbons, and artificial flowers, a small stock of earthenware, and cheap crockery, a little homespun cotton cloth, some bolts of jeans and linsey, hanks of yarn and skeins of thread, tobacco for smoking and tobacco for "chawing," a little "store-tea"—so called in contra-distinction to the sage, sassafras and crop-vine teas in general use—with a plentiful stock of whisky, and some apple-brandy. The other end of this building was a large room, festooned with strings of drying pumpkin, cheered by an enormous fireplace, and lighted by one small window with four lights of glass. In this room, which contained three beds, and in the loft above, Wilkins and his family lived and kept a first-class hotel.
In the early West, Sunday was a day sacred to Diana and Bacchus. Our young friends visited the settlement at Wilkins' on that day, not because they wished to rest, but because they had begun to get lonely, and they knew that Sunday would not fail to find some frolic in progress, and in making new acquaintances, fifty miles from home, they would be able to relieve the tedium of the wilderness with games at cards, and other social enjoyments.
Morton and Kike arrived at Wilkins' combined store and tavern at ten o'clock in the morning, and found the expected crowd of loafers. The new-comers "took a hand" in all the sports, the jumping, the foot-racing, the quoit-pitching, the "wras'lin'," the target-shooting, the poker-playing, and the rest, and were soon accepted as clever fellows. A frontierman could bestow no higher praise—to be a clever fellow in his sense was to know how to lose at cards, without grumbling, the peltries hard-earned in hunting, to be always ready to change your coon-skins into "drinks for the crowd," and to be able to hit a three-inch "mark" at two hundred paces without bragging.
Just as the sports had begun to lose their zest a little, there walked up to the tavern door a man in homespun dress, carrying one of his shoes in his hand, and yet not seeming to be a plain backwoodsman. He looked a trifle over thirty years of age, and an acute observer might have guessed from his face that his life had been one of daring adventure, and many vicissitudes. There were traces also of conflicting purposes, of a certain strength, and a certain weakness of character; the melancholy history of good intentions overslaughed by bad passions and evil associations was written in his countenance.
ELECTIONEERING.ELECTIONEERING.
"Some feller 'lectioneerin', I'll bet," said one of Morton's companions.
The crowd gathered about the stranger, who spoke to each one as though he had known him always. He proposed "the drinks" as the surest road to an acquaintance, and when all had drunk, the stranger paid the score, not in skins but in silver coin.
"See here, stranger," said Morton, mischievously, "you're mighty clever, by hokey. What are you running fer?"
"Well, gentlemen, you guessed me out that time. I 'low to run for sheriff next heat," said the stranger, who affected dialect for the sake of popularity.
"What mout your name be?" asked one of the company.
"Marcus Burchard's my name when I'm at home. I live at Jenkinsville. I sot out in life a poor boy. I'm so used to bein' bar'footed that my shoes hurts my feet an' I have to pack one of 'em in my hand most of the time."
Morton here set down his glass, and looking at the stranger with perfect seriousness said, dryly: "Well, Mr. Burchard, I never heard that speech so well done before. We're all goin' to vote for you, without t'other man happens to do it up slicker'n you do. I don't believe he can, though. That was got off very nice."
Burchard was acute enough to join in the laugh which this sally produced, and to make friends with Morton, who was clearly the leader of the party, and whose influence was worth securing.
Nothing grows wearisome so soon as idleness and play, and as evening drew on, the crowd tired even of Mr. Burchard's choice collection of funny anecdotes—little stories that had been aired in the same order at every other tavern and store in the county. From sheerennuiit was proposed that they should attend Methodist preaching at a house two miles away. They could at least get some fun out of it. Burchard, foreseeing a disturbance, excused himself. He wished he might enjoy the sport, but he must push on. And "push on" he did. In a closely contested election even Methodist votes were not to be thrown away.
Morton and Kike relished the expedition. They had heard that the Methodists were a rude, canting, illiterate race, cloaking the worst practices under an appearance of piety. Mr. Donaldson had often fulminated against them from the pulpit, and they felt almost sure that they could count on his apostolic approval in their laudable enterprise of disturbing a Methodist meeting.
The preacher whom they heard was of the roughest type. His speech was full of dialectic forms and ungrammatical phrases. His illustrations were exceedingly uncouth. It by no means followed that he was not an effective preacher. All these defects were rather to his advantage,—the backwoods rhetoric was suited to move the backwoods audience. But the party from the tavern were in no mood to be moved by anything. They came for amusement, and set themselves diligently to seek it. Morton was ambitious to lead among his new friends, as he did at home, and on this occasion he made use of his rarest gift. The preacher, Mr. Mellen, was just getting "warmed up" with his theme; he was beginning to sling his rude metaphors to the right and left, and the audience was fast coming under his influence, when Morton Goodwin, who had cultivated a ventriloquial gift for the diversion of country parties, and the disturbance of Mr. Brady's school, now began to squeak like a rat in a trap, looking all the while straight at the preacher, as if profoundly interested in the discourse. The women were startled and the grave brethren turned their austere faces round to look stern reproofs at the young men. In a moment the squeaking ceased, and there began the shrill yelping of a little dog, which seemed to be on the women's side of the room. Brother Mellen, the preacher, paused, and was about to request that the dog should be removed, when he began to suspect from the sensation among the young men that the disturbance was from them.
"You needn't be afeard, sisters," he said, "puppies will bark, even when they walk on two legs instid of four."
This rude joke produced a laugh, but gained no permanent advantage to the preacher, for Morton, being a stranger, did not care for the good opinion of the audience, but for the applause of the young revelers with whom he had come. He kept silence now, until the preacher again approached a climax, swinging his stalwart arms and raising his voice to a tremendous pitch in the endeavor to make the day of doom seem sufficiently terrible to his hearers. At last, when he got to the terror of the wicked, he cried out dramatically, "What are these awful sounds I hear?" At this point he made a pause, which would have been very effective, had it not been for young Goodwin.
"Caw! caw! caw-aw! cah!" he said, mimicking a crow.
"Young man," roared the preacher, "you are hair-hung and breeze-shaken over that pit that has no bottom."
"Oh, golly!" piped the voice of Morton, seeming to come from nowhere in particular. Mr. Mellen now ceased preaching, and started toward the part of the room in which the young men sat, evidently intending to deal out summary justice to some one. He was a man of immense strength, and his face indicated that he meant to eject the whole party. But they all left in haste except Morton, who staid and met the preacher's gaze with a look of offended innocence. Mr. Mellen was perplexed. A disembodied voice wandering about the room would have been too much for Hercules himself. When the baffled orator turned back to begin to preach again, Morton squeaked in an aggravating falsetto, but with a good imitation of Mr. Mellen's inflections, "Hair-hung and breeze-shaken!"
And when the angry preacher turned fiercely upon him, the scoffer was already fleeing through the door.
The young men were gone until the latter part of November. Several persons longed for their return. Mr. Job Goodwin, for one, began to feel a strong conviction that Mort had taken the fever and died in the woods. He was also very sure that each succeeding day would witness some act of hostility toward himself on the part of Captain Lumsden; and as each day failed to see any evil result from the anger of his powerful neighbor, or to bring any tidings of disaster to Morton, Job Goodwin faithfully carried forward the dark foreboding with compound interest to the next day. He abounded in quotations of such Scripture texts as set forth the fact that man's days were few and full of trouble. The book of Ecclesiastes was to him a perennial fountain of misery—he delighted to found his despairing auguries upon the superior wisdom of Solomon. He looked for Morton's return with great anxiety, hoping to find that nothing worse had happened to him than the shooting away of an arm. Mrs. Goodwin, for her part, dreaded the evil influences of the excitements of hunting. She feared lest Morton should fall into the bad habits that had carried away from home an older brother, for whose untimely death in an affray she had never ceased to mourn.
And Patty! When her father had on that angry afternoon discovered the turkey that Morton had given her, and had sent it home with a message in her name, Patty had borne herself like the proud girl that she was. She held her head aloft; she neither indicated pleasure nor displeasure at her father's course; she would not disclose any liking for Morton, nor any complaisance toward her father. This air of defiance about her Captain Lumsden admired. It showed her mettle, he said to himself. Patty would almost have finished that two dozen cuts of yarn if it had cost her life. She even managed to sing, toward the last of her weary day of work; and when, at nine o'clock, she reeled off her twenty-fourth cut,—drawing a sigh of relief when the reel snapped,—and hung her twelve hanks up together, she seemed as blithe as ever. Her sickly mother sitting, knitting in hand, with wan face bordered by white cap-frill, looked approvingly on Patty's achievement. Patty showed her good blood, was the mother's reflection.
PATTY IN HER CHAMBER.PATTY IN HER CHAMBER.
But Patty? She did not hurry. She put everything away carefully. She was rather slow about retiring. But when at last she went aloft into her room in the old block-house part of the building, and shut and latched her door, and set her candle-stick on the high, old-fashioned, home-made dressing-stand, she looked at herself in the little looking-glass and did not see there the face she had been able to keep while the eyes of others were upon her. She saw weariness, disappointment, and dejection. Her strong will held her up. She undressed herself with habitual quietness. She even stopped to look again in self-pity at her face as she stood by the glass to tie on her night-cap. But when at last she had blown out the candle, and carefully extinguished the wick, and had climbed into the great, high, billowy feather-bed under the rafters, she buried her tired head in the pillow and cried a long time, hardly once admitting to herself what she was crying about.
And as the days wore on, and her father ceased to speak of Kike or Morton, and she heard that they were out of the settlement, she found in herself an ever-increasing desire to see Morton. The more she tried to smother her feeling, and the more she denied to herself the existence of the feeling, the more intense did it become. Whenever hunters passed the gate, going after or returning laden with game, she stopped involuntarily to gaze at them. But she never failed, a moment later, to affect an indifferent expression of countenance and to rebuke herself for curiosity so idle. What were hunters to her?
But one evening the travelers whom she looked for went by. They were worse for wear; their buckskin pantaloons were torn by briers; their tread was heavy, for they had traveled since daylight; but Patty, peering through one of the port-holes of the blockhouse, did not fail to recognize old Blaze, burdened as he was with venison, bear-meat and skins, nor to note how Morton looked long and steadfastly at Captain Lumsden's house as if hoping to catch a glimpse of herself. That look of Morton's sent a blush of pleasure over her face, which she could not quite conceal when she met the inquiring eyes of a younger brother a minute later. But when she saw her father gallop rapidly down the road as if in pursuit of the young men, her sense of pleasure changed quickly to foreboding.
Morton and Kike had managed, for the most part, to throw off their troubles in the excitement of hunting. But when at last they had accumulated all the meat old Blaze could carry and all the furs they could "pack," they had turned their steps toward home. And with the turning of their steps toward home had come the inevitable turning of their thoughts toward old perplexities. Morton then confided to Kike his intention of leaving the settlement and leading the life of a hermit in the wilderness in case it should prove to be "all off" between him and Patty. And Kike said that his mind was made up. If he found that his uncle Enoch had sold the land, he would be revenged in some way and then run off and live with the Indians. It is not uncommon for boys now-a-days to make stern resolutions in moments of wretchedness which they never attempt to carry out. But the rude life of the West developed deep feeling and a hardy persistence in a purpose once formed. Many a young man crossed in love or incited to revenge had already taken to the wilderness, becoming either a morose hermit or a desperado among the savages. At the period of life when the animal fights hard for supremacy in the soul of man, destiny often hangs very perilously balanced. It was at that day a question in many cases whether a young man of force would become a rowdy or a class-leader.
When once our hunters had entered the settlement they became more depressed than ever. Morton's eyes searched Captain Lumsden's house and yard in vain for a sight of Patty. Kike looked sternly ahead of him, full of rage that he should have to be reminded of his uncle's existence. And when, five minutes later, they heard horse-hoofs behind them, and, looking back, saw Captain Lumsden himself galloping after them on his sleek, "clay-bank" saddle-horse, their hearts beat fast with excitement. Morton wondered what the Captain could want with them, seeing it was not his way to carry on his conflicts by direct attack; and Kike contented himself with looking carefully to the priming of his flintlock, compressing his lips and walking straight forward.
"Hello, boys! Howdy? Got a nice passel of furs, eh? Had a good time?"
"Pretty good, thank you, sir!" said Morton, astonished at the greeting, but eager enough to be on good terms again with Patty's father. Kike said not a word, but grew white with speechless anger.
"Nice saddle of ven'son that!" and the Captain tapped it with his cow-hide whip. "Killed a bar, too; who killed it?"
"Kike," said Morton.
"Purty good fer you, Kike! Got over your pout about that land yet?"
Kike did not speak, for the reason that he could not.
"What a little fool you was to make sich a fuss about nothing! I didn't sell it, of course, when you didn't want me to, but you ought to have a little manners in your way of speaking. Come to me next time, and don't go running to the judge and old Wheeler. If you won't be a fool, you'll find your own kin your best friends. Come over and see me to-morry, Mort. I've got some business with you. Good-by!" and the Captain galloped home.
Nor did he fail to observe how inquiringly Patty looked at his face to see what had been the nature of his interview with the boys. With a characteristic love of exerting power over the moods of another, he said, in Patty's hearing: "That Kike is the sulkiest little brute I ever did see."
And Patty spent most of her time during the night in trying to guess what this saying indicated. It was what Captain Lumsden had wished.
Neither Morton nor Kike could guess what the Captain's cordiality might signify. Kike was pleased that his land had not been sold, but he was not in the least mollified by that fact. He was glad of his victory and hated his uncle all the more.
After the weary weeks of camping, Morton greatly enjoyed the warm hoe-cakes, the sassafras tea, the milk and butter, that he got at his mother's table. His father was pleased to have his boy back safe and sound, but reckoned the fever was shore to ketch them all before Christmas or Noo Years. Morton told of his meeting with the Captain in some elation, but Job Goodwin shook his head. He "knowed what that meant," he said. "The Cap'n always wuz sorter deep. He'd hit sometime when you didn't know whar the lick come from. And he'd hit powerful hard when hedidhit, you be shore."
Before the supper was over, who should come in but Brady. He had heard, he said, that Morton had come home, and he was dayloighted to say him agin. Full of quaint fun and queer anecdotes, knowing all the gossip of the settlement, and having a most miscellaneous and disordered lot of information besides, Brady was always welcome; he filled the place of a local newspaper. He was a man of much reading, but with no mental discipline. He had treasured all the strange and delightful things he had ever heard or read—the bloody murders, the sudden deaths, the wonderful accidents and incidents of life, the ups and downs of noted people, and especially a rare fund of humorous stories. He had so many of these at command that it was often surmised that he manufactured them. He "boarded 'round" during school-time, and sponged 'round the rest of the year, if, indeed, a man can be said to sponge who paid for his board so amply in amusement, information, flattery, and a thousand other good offices. Good company is scarcer and higher in price in the back settlements than in civilization; and many a backwoods housewife, perishing ofennui, has declared that the genial Brady's "company wuz worth his keep,"—an opinion in which husbands and children always coincided. For welcome belongs primarily to woman; no man makes another's reception sure until he is pretty certain of his wife's disposition toward the guest.
Mrs. Goodwin set a place for the "master" with right good will, and Brady catechised "Moirton" about his adventures. The story of Kike's first bear roused the good Irishman's enthusiasm, and when Morton told of his encounter with the circuit-rider, Brady laughed merrily. Nothing was too bad in his eyes for "a man that undertook to prache afore hay could parse." Brady's own grammatical knowledge, indeed, had more influence on his parsing than on his speech.
At last, when supper was ended, Morton came to the strangest of all his adventures—the meeting with Captain Lumsden; and while he told it, the schoolmaster's eyes were brimming full of fun. By the time the story was finished, Morton began to suspect that Brady knew more about it than he affected to.
"Looky here, Mr. Brady," he said, "I believe you could tell something about this thing. What made the coon come down so easy?"
"Tut! tut! and ye shouldn't call yer own dair father-in-law (that is to bay) a coun. Ye ought to have larn't some manners agin this toime, with all the batins I've gin ye for disrespect to yer supayriors. An' ispicially to thim as is closte akin to ye."
Little Henry, who sat squat upon the hearth, tickling the ears of a sleepy dog with a straw, saw an infinite deal of fun in this rig on Morton.
"Well, but you didn't answer my question, Mr. Brady. How did you fetch the Captain round? For I think you did it."
"Be gorra I did!" and Brady looked up from under his eyebrows with his face all a-twinkle with fun. "I jist parsed the sintince in sich a way as to put the Captin in the nominative case. He loikes to be put in the nominative case, does the Captin. If iver yer goin' to win the devoine craycher that calls him father ye'll hev to larn to parse with Captin Lumsden for the nominative." Here Brady gave the whole party a look of triumphant mystery, and dropped his head reflectively upon his bosom.
"Well, but you'll have to teach me that way of parsing. You left that rule of syntax out last winter." said Morton, seeking to draw out the master by humoring his fancy. "How did you parse the sentence with him, while Kike and I were gone?"
"Aisy enough! don't you say? the nominative governs the varb, and thin the varb governs 'most all the rist of the sintince."
"Give an instance," said Morton, mimicking at the same time the pompous air and authoritative voice with which Brady was accustomed to make such a demand of a pupil.
"Will, thin, I'll till ye, Moirton. But ye must all be quiet about it. I wint to say the Captin soon afther yerself and Koike carried yer two impty skulls into the woods. An' I looked koind of confidintial-loike at the Captin, an' I siz, 'Captin, ye ought to riprisint this county in the ligislater,' siz I."
"'Do you think so, Brady?' siz he.
"'It's fwat I've been a-sayin' down at the Forks,' siz I, 'till the folks is all a-gittin' of me opinion,' siz I; 'ye've got more interest in the county,' siz I, 'than the rist,' siz I, 'an' ye've got the brains to exart an anfluence whin ye git thar,' siz I. Will, ye see, Moirton, the Captin loiked that, and he siz, 'Will, Brady,' siz he, 'I'm obleeged fer yer anfluence,' siz he. An' I saw I had 'im. I'd jist put 'im in the nominative case governin' the varb. And I was the varb. An' I mint to govern, the rist." Here Brady stopped to smile complacently and enjoy the mystification of the rest.
"Will, I said to 'im afther that: 'Captain' siz I, 'ye must be moighty keerful not to give the inimy any handle onto ye,' siz I. An' he siz 'Will, Brady, I'll be keerful,' siz he. An' I siz, 'Captin, be pertik'ler keerful about that matter of Koike, if I may make so bowld,' siz I. 'Fer they'll use that ivery fwere. They're a-talkin' about it now.' An' the Captin siz, 'Will, Brady, I say I kin thrust ye,' siz he. An' I siz, 'That ye kin, Captain Lumsden: ye kin thrust the honor of an Oirish gintleman,' siz I. 'Brady,' siz he, 'this mess of Koike's is a bad one fer me, since the little brat's gone and brought ole Whayler into it,' siz he. 'Ye bitter belave it is, Captin,' siz I. 'Fwat shill I do, Brady?' siz he. 'Spoike the guns, Captin,' siz I. 'How?' siz he. 'Make it all roight with Koike and Moirton,' siz I. 'As fer Moirton,' siz I, 'he's the smartestyoungman,' siz I (puttin' imphasis on 'young,' you say), he's the smartest young man,' siz I, 'in the bottoms; and if ye kin make an alloiance with him,' siz I, 'ye've got the smartest old man managin' the smartest young man. An' if ye kin make a matrimonial alloiance,' siz I, a-winkin' me oi at 'im, 'atwixt that devoine young craycher, yer charmin' dauther Patty,' siz I, 'and Moirton, ye've got him tethered for loife, and the guns is spoiked,' siz I. An' he siz, 'Brady, yer Oirish head is good, afther all. I'll think about it,' siz he. An' that's how I made Captin Lumsden the nominative case governin' the varb—that's myself—and thin the varb rigilates the rist. But I must go and say Koike, or the little black-hidded fool'll spoil all me conthrivin' and parsin' wid the captin. Betwixt Moirton and Koike and the captin, it's meself as has got a hard sum in the rule of thray. This toime I hope the answer'll come out all roight, Moirton, me b'y!" and Brady slapped him on the shoulder and went out. Then he put his head into the door again to say that the answer set down in the book was: "Misthress Patty Goodwin."
Colonel Wheeler was the standard-bearer of the flag of independence in the Hissawachee bottom. He had been a Captain in the Revolution; but Revolutionary titles showed a marked tendency to grow during the quarter of a century that followed the close of the war. An ex-officer's neighbors carried him forward with his advancing age; a sort of ideal promotion by brevet gauged the appreciation of military titles as the Revolution passed into history and heroes became scarcer. And emigration always advanced a man several degrees—new neighbors, in their uncertainty about his rank, being prone to give him the benefit of all doubts, and exalt as far as possible the lustre which the new-comer conferred upon the settlement. Thus Captain Wheeler in Maryland was Major Wheeler in Western Pennsylvania, and a full-blown Colonel by the time he had made his second move, into the settlement on Hissawachee Creek. And yet I may be wrong. Perhaps it was not the transplanting that did it. Even had he remained on the "Eastern Shore," he might have passed through a process of canonization as he advanced in life that would have brought him to a colonelcy: other men did. For what is a Colonel but a Captain gone to seed?
"Gone to seed" may be considered a slang expression; and, as a conscientious writer, far be it from me to use slang. And I take great credit to myself for avoiding it just now, since nothing could more perfectly describe Wheeler. His hair was grizzling, his shoulders had a chronic shrug, his under lip protruded in an expression of perpetual resistance, and his prominent chin and brow seemed to have been jammed together; the space between was too small. He had an air of defense; his nature was always in a "guard-against-cavalry" attitude. He had entered into the spirit of colonial resistance from childhood; he was born in antagonism to kings and all that are in authority; it was a family tradition that he had been flogged in boyhood for shooting pop-gun wads into the face of a portrait of the reigning monarch.
When he settled in the Hissawachee bottom, he of course looked about for the power that was to be resisted, and was not long in finding it in his neighbor, Captain Lumsden. He was the one opponent whom Lumsden could not annoy into submission or departure. To Wheeler this fight against Lumsden was the one delightful element of life in the Bottoms. He had now the comfortable prospect of spending his declining years in a fertile valley where there was a powerful foe, whose encroachments on the rights and privileges of his neighbors would afford him an inexhaustible theme for denunciation, and a delightful incitement to the exercise of his powers of resistance. And thus for years he had eaten his dinners with better relish because of his contest with Lumsden. Mordecai could not have had half so much pleasure in staring stiffly at the wicked Haman as Isaiah Wheeler found in meeting Captain Lumsden on the road without so much as a nod of recognition. And Haman's feelings were not more deeply wounded than Lumsden's.
Colonel Wheeler was not very happily married; for at home he could find no encroachments to resist. The perfect temper of his wife disarmed even his opposition. He had begun his married life by fighting his wife's Methodism; but when he came to the Hissawachee and found Methodism unpopular, he took up arms in its defense.
Such was the man whom Kike had selected as guardian—a man who, with all his disagreeableness, was possessed of honesty, a virtue not inconsistent with oppugnancy. But Kike's chief motive in choosing him was that he knew that the choice would be a stab to his uncle's pride. Moreover, Wheeler was the only man who would care to brave Lumsden's anger by taking the trust.
Wheeler lived in a log house on the hillside, and to this house, on the day after the return of Morton and Kike, there rode a stranger. He was a broad-shouldered, stalwart, swarthy man, of thirty-five, with a serious but aggressive countenance, a broad-brim white hat, a coat made of country jeans, cut straight-breasted and buttoned to the chin, rawhide boots, and "linsey" leggings tied about his legs below the knees. He rode a stout horse, and carried an ample pair of saddlebags.
Reining his horse in front of the colonel's double cabin, he shouted, after the Western fashion, "Hello! Hello the house!"
COLONEL WHEELER'S DOORYARD.COLONEL WHEELER'S DOORYARD.
At this a quartette of dogs set up a vociferous barking, ranging in key all the way from the contemptible treble of an ill-natured "fice" to the deep baying of a huge bull-dog.
"Hello the house!" cried the stranger.
"Hello! hello!" answered back Isaiah Wheeler, opening the door, and shouting to the dogs, "You, Bull, come here! Git out, pup! Clear out, all of you!" And he accompanied this command by threateningly lifting a stick, at which two of the dogs scampered away, and a third sneakingly retreated; but the bull-dog turned with reluctance, and, without smoothing his bristles at all, slowly marched back toward the house, protesting with surly growls against this authoritative interruption.
"Hello, stranger, howdy?" said Colonel Wheeler, advancing with caution, but without much cordiality. He would not commit himself to a welcome too rashly; strangers needed inspection. "'Light, won't you?" he said, presently; and the stranger proceeded to dismount, while the Colonel ordered one of his sons who came out at that moment to "put up the stranger's horse, and give him some fodder and corn." Then turning to the new-comer, he scanned him a moment, and said: "A preacher, I reckon, sir?"
"Yes, sir, I'm a Methodist preacher, and I heard that your wife was a member of the Methodist Church, and that you were very friendly; so I came round this way to see if you wouldn't open your doors for preaching. I have one or two vacant days on my round, and thought maybe I might as well take Hissawachee Bottom into the circuit, if I didn't find anything to prevent."
By this time the colonel and his guest had reached the door, and the former only said, "Well, sir, let's go in, and see what the old woman says. I don't agree with you Methodists about everything, but I do think that you are doing good, and so I don't allow anybody to say anything against circuit riders without taking it up."
Mrs. Wheeler, a dignified woman, with a placidly religious face—a countenance in which scruples are balanced by evenness of temperament—was at the moment engaged in dipping yarn into a blue dye that stood in a great iron kettle by the fire. She made haste to wash and dry her hands, that she might have a "good, old-fashioned Methodist shake-hands" with Brother Magruder, "the first Methodist preacher she had seen since she left Pittsburg."
Colonel Wheeler readily assented that Mr. Magruder should preach in his house. Methodists had just the same rights in a free country that other people had. He "reckoned the Hissawachee settlement didn't belong to one man, and he had fit aginst the King of England in his time, and was jist as ready to fight aginst the King of Hissawachee Bottom." The Colonel almost relaxed his stubborn lips into a smile when he said this. Besides, he proceeded, his wife was a Methodist; and she had a right to be, if she chose. He was friendly to religion himself, though he wasn't a professor. If his wife didn't want to wear rings or artificials, it was money in his pocket, and nobody had a right to object. Colonel Wheeler plumed himself before the new preacher upon his general friendliness toward religion, and really thought it might be set down on the credit side of that account in which he imagined some angelic book-keeper entered all his transactions. He felt in his own mind "middlin' certain," as he would have told you, that "betwixt the prayin' for he got fromsucha wife as his, and his own gineral friendliness to the preachers and the Methodis' meetings, he would be saved at the last,somehow or nother." It was not in the man to reflect that his "gineral friendliness" for the preacher had its origin in a gineral spitefulness toward Captain Lumsden.
Colonel Wheeler's son was dispatched through the settlement to inform everybody that there would be preaching in his house that evening. The news was told at the Forks, where there was always a crowd of loafers; and each individual loafer, in riding home that afternoon, called a "Hello!" at every house he passed; and when the salutation from within was answered, remarked that he "thought liker'n not they had'n heern tell of the preacher's comin' to Colonel Wheeler's." And then the eager listener, generally the woman of the house, would cry out, "Laws-a-massy! You don't say! A Methodis'? One of the shoutin' kind, that knocks folks down when he preaches! What will the Captin' do? They do say hedoeshate the Methodis' worse nor copperhead snakes, now. Some old quarrel, liker'n not. Well, I'm agoin', jist to see howredikl'us them Methodis'doesdo!"
The news was sent to Brady's school, which had "tuck up" for the winter, and from this centre also it soon spread throughout the neighborhood. It reached Lumsden's very early in the forenoon.
"Well!" said Lumsden, excitedly, but still with his little crowing chuckle; "so Wheeler's took the Methodists in! We'll have to see about that. A man that brings such people to the settlement ought to be lynched. But I'll match the Methodists. Where's Patty? Patty! O, Patty! Bob, run and find Miss Patty."
And the little negro ran out, calling, "Miss Patty! O' Miss Patty! Whah is ye?"
He looked into the smoke-house, and then ran down toward the barn, shouting, "Miss Patty! O! Miss Patty!"
Where was Patty?
Patty had that morning gone to the spring-house, as usual, to strain the milk.
Can it be possible that any benighted reader does not know what a spring-house is? A little log cabin six feet long by five feet wide, without floor, built where the great stream of water issues clear and icy cold from beneath the hill. The little cabin-like spring-house sits always in the hollow; as you approach it you look down upon the roof of rough shingles which Western people call "clapboards," you see the green moss that overgrows them and the logs, you see the new-born brook rush out from beneath the logs that hide its cradle, you lift the home-made latch and open the low door which creaks on its wooden hinges, you see the great perennial spring rushing up eagerly from its subterranean prison, you note how its clear cold waters lave the sides of the earthen crocks, and in the dim light and the fresh coolness, in the presence of the rich creaminess, you feel whole eclogues of poetry which you can never turn into words.
It was in just such a spring-house that Patty Lumsden had hidden herself.
She brought clean crocks—earthenware milk pans—from the shelf outside, where they had been airing to keep them sweet; she held the strainer in her left hand and poured the milk through it until each crock was nearly full; she adjusted them in their places among the stones, so that they stood half immersed in the cold current of spring water; she laid the smooth pine cover on each crock, and put a clean stone atop that to secure it.
While she was thus putting away the milk her mind was on Morton. She wondered what her father had said to him yesterday. In the heart of her heart she resolved that if Morton loved her she would marry him in the face of her father's displeasure. She had never rebelled against the iron rule, but she felt herself full of power and full of endurance. She could go off into the wilderness with Morton; they would build them a cabin, with chinking and daubing, with puncheon floor and stick chimney; they would sleep, like other poor settlers, on beds of dry leaves, and they would subsist upon the food which Morton's unerring rifle would bring them from the forest. These were the humble cabin castles she was building. All girls weave a tapestry of the future; on Patty's the knight wore buck-skin clothes and a wolf-skin cap, and brought home, not the shields or spoils of the enemy, but saddles of venison and luscious bits of bear-meat to a lady in linsey or cheap cotton who looked out of no balcony but a cabin window, and who smoked her eyes with hanging pots upon a crane in a great fire-place. I know it sounds old-fashioned and sentimental in me to bay so, and yet how can it matter to a heart like Patty's what may be the scenery on the tapestry, if love be the warp and faith the woof?
PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.
Morton on his part was at the same time endeavoring to plan his own and Patty's partnership future, but he drew a more cheerful picture than she did, for he had no longer any reason to fear Captain Lumsden's displeasure. He was at the moment going to meet the Captain, walking down the foot-path through the woods, kicking the dry beech leaves into billows before him and singing a Scotch love-song of Burns's which he had learned from his mother.
He planned one future, she another; and in after years they might have laughed to think how far wrong were both guesses. The path which Morton followed led by the spring-house, and Patty, standing on the stones inside, caught the sound of his fine baritone voice as he approached, singing tender words that made her heart stand still:
"Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear;Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dearNocht of ill shall come thee near,My bonnie dearie."
And as he came right by the spring-house, he sang, now in a lower tone lest he should be heard at the house, but still more earnestly, and so audibly that the listening Patty could hear every word, the last stanza:
"Fair and lovely as thou art,Thou hast stown my very heart;I can die—but cannot part,My bonnie dearie."
And even as she listened to the last line, Morton had discovered that the spring-house door was ajar, and turned, shading his eyes, to see if perchance Patty might not be within. He saw her and reached out his hand, greeting her warmly; but his eyes yet unaccustomed to the imperfect light did not see how full of blushes was her face—for she feared that he might guess all that she had just been dreaming. But she was resolved at any rate to show him more kindness than she would have shown had it not been for the displeasure which she supposed her father had manifested. And so she covered the last crock and came and stood by him at the door of the spring-house, and he talked right on in the tender strain of his song. And she did not protest, but answered back timidly and almost as warmly.
And that is how little negro Bob at last found Patty at the spring-house and found Morton with her. "Law's sake! Miss Patty, done look for ye mos' every whah. Yer paw wants ye." And with that Bob rolled the whites of his eyes up, parted his black lips into a broad white grin, and looked at Morton knowingly.
"Ha! ha! good morning, Morton!" said the Captain. "You've been keeping Patty down at the spring-house when she should have been at the loom by this time. In my time young men and women didn't waste their mornings. Nights and Sundays are good enough for visiting. Now, see here, Patty, there's one of them plagued Methodist preachers brought into the settlement by Wheeler. These circuit riders are worse than third day fever 'n' ager. They go against dancing and artificials and singing songs and reading novels and all other amusements. They give people the jerks wherever they go. The devil's in 'em. Now I want you to go to work and get up a dance to-night, and ask all you can get along with. Nothing'll make the preacher so mad as to dance right under his nose; and we'll keep a good many people away who might get the jerks, or fall down with the power and break their necks, maybe."
Patty was always ready to dance, and she only said: "If Morton will help me send the invitations."
"I'll do that," said Morton, and then he told of the discomfiture he had wrought in a Methodist meeting while he was gone. And he had the satisfaction of seeing that the narrative greatly pleased Captain Lumsden.
"We'll have to send Wheeler afloat sometime, eh, Mort?" said the Captain, chuckling interrogatively. Morton did not like this proposition, for, notwithstanding theological, differences about election, Mrs. Wheeler was a fast friend of his mother. He evaded an answer by hastening to consult with Patty and her mother concerning the guests.
Those who got "invites" danced cotillions and reels nearly all night. Morton danced with Patty to his heart's content, and in the happiness of Morton's assured love and of a truce in her father's interruptions she was a queen indeed. She wore the antique earrings that were an heir-loom in her mother's family, and a showy breast-pin which her father had bought her. These and her new dress of English calico made her the envy of all the others. Pretty Betty Harsha was led out by some one at almost every dance, but she would have given all of these for one dance with Morton Goodwin.
Meantime Mr. Magruder was preaching. Behold in Hissawachee Bottom the world's evils in miniature! Here are religion and amusement divorced—set over the one against the other as hostile camps.
Brady, who was boarding for a few days with the widow Lumsden, went to the meeting with Kike and his mother, explaining his views as he went along.
"I'm no Mithodist, Mrs. Lumsden. Me father was a Catholic and me mother a Prisbytarian, and they compromised on me by making me a mimber of the Episcopalian Church and throyin' to edicate me for orders, and intoirely spoiling me for iverything else but a school taycher in these haythen backwoods. But it does same to me that the Mithodists air the only payple that can do any good among sich pagans as we air. What would a parson from the ould counthry do here? He moight spake as grammathical as Lindley Murray himsilf, and nobody would be the better of it. What good does me own grammathical acquoirements do towards reforming the sittlement? With all me grammar I can't kape me boys from makin' God's name the nominative case before very bad words. Hey, Koike? Now, the Mithodists air a narry sort of a payple. But if you want to make a strame strong you hev to make it narry. I've read a good dale of history, and in me own estimation the ould Anglish Puritans and the Mithodists air both torrents, because they're both shet up by narry banks. The Mithodists is ferninst the wearin' of jewelry and dancin' and singin' songs, which is all vairy foolish in me own estimation. But it's kind o' nat'ral for the mill-race that turns the whale that fades the worruld to git mad at the babblin', oidle brook that wastes its toime among the mossy shtones and grinds nobody's grist. But the brook ain't so bad afther all. Hey, Mrs. Lumsden?"
Mrs. Lumsden answered that she didn't think it was. It was very good for watering stock.
"Thrue as praychin', Mrs. Lumsden," said the schoolmaster, with a laugh. "And to me own oi the wanderin' brook, a-goin' where it chooses and doin' what it plazes, is a dale plizenter to look at than, the sthraight-travelin' mill-race. But I wish these Mithodists would convart the souls of some of these youngsters, and make 'em quit their gamblin' and swearin' and bettin' on horses and gettin' dthrunk. And maybe if some of 'em would git convarted, they wouldn't be quoite so anxious to skelp their own uncles. Hey, Koike?"
Kike had no time to reply if he had cared to, for by this time they were at the door of Colonel Wheeler's house. Despite the dance there were present, from near and far, all the house would hold. For those who got no "invite" to Lumsden's had a double motive for going to meeting; a disposition to resent the slight was added to their curiosity to hear the Methodist preacher. The dance had taken away those who were most likely to disturb the meeting; people left out did not feel under any obligation to gratify Captain Lumsden by raising a row. Kike had been invited, but had disdained to dance in his uncle's house.
Both lower rooms of Wheeler's log house were crowded with people. A little open space was left at the door between the rooms for the preacher, who presently came edging his way in through the crowd. He had been at prayer in that favorite oratory of the early Methodist preacher, the forest.
Magruder was a short, stout man, with wide shoulders, powerful arms, shaggy brows, and bristling black hair. He read the hymn, two lines at a time, and led the singing himself. He prayed with the utmost sincerity, but in a voice that shook the cabin windows and gave the simple people a deeper reverence for the dreadfulness of the preacher's message. He prayed as a man talking face to face with the Almighty Judge of the generations of men; he prayed with an undoubting assurance of his own acceptance with God, and with the sincerest conviction of the infinite peril of his unforgiven hearers. It is not argument that reaches men, but conviction; and for immediate, practical purposes, one Tishbite Elijah, that can thunder out of a heart that never doubts, is worth a thousand acute writers of ingenious apologies.
When Magruder read his text, which was, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God," he seemed to his hearers a prophet come to lay bare their hearts. Magruder had not been educated for his ministry by years of study of Hebrew and Greek, of Exegesis and Systematics; but he knew what was of vastly more consequence to him—how to read and expound the hearts and lives of the impulsive, simple, reckless race among whom he labored. He was of their very fibre.