I.

THE JUGGLER.I.

THE JUGGLER.

Mysterywas not far to seek, surely. The great gneissoid crags were moulded by the heat from subterranean fires in remote, unimagined æons. From the deep coves, now so heavily wooded, the once submerging waters had long ago ebbed, following undreamed-of lures, drawn seaward or skyward, or engulfed in still lower depths,—who can say?—leaving the ripple-marks on their rocky confines to tell of their being. In the middle of the bridle-path, touched by every careless passing foot, lay a splintered sandstone slab, the fracture revealing a cluster of delicate, cylindrical, stem-like petrifactions, thus preserving, with the comprehensive significance of nature, so slight a thing as the record of the life of a worm long ages agone, in these fossil traces of primordial vermicular burrowings, here in the midst of a scene that was itself as a register of those stupendous revolutions the incidents of which were the subsidence of vast oceans, and the emergence of continents, and the development of the mighty agencies that made and lifted the mountains. All the visible world gave token ofthe inexplicable past of creation, of the unrevealed future,—those thoughts of God which are very deep thoughts. And yet, in the blunting of daily use, the limitations of dull observation, the unquestioning acceptance of the accustomed routine of nature, there might seem naught before the eye which was not plainly manifest,—mountain, rock, forest,—the mere furniture of existence. One hardly analyzes the breath of life as it is breathed; even when considered as nearly twenty-one per cent. of oxygen to seventy-nine per cent. of nitrogen, are we aught the wiser, for whence comes it, and alas, why does it go? To those creatures of a day, busy with the day, it seemed that mystery and doubt and troublous questioning had first entered Etowah Cove in the guise of a vagrant juggler, their earliest experience of a modern exponent of his most ancient craft.

The light that timidly flickered out of the schoolhouse windows into the bosky depths of the encompassing wilderness, one night, marked a new era in the history of the Cove. It was the first “show” that had ever been given nearer than Colbury, some forty miles distant, unless one might make so bold as to include in the term camp-meetings and revivals, weddings and funerals. The walls of the little log house had hitherto echoed naught more joyous than sermons and “experience meetings,” or sounds of scholastic discipline, or the drone of the juvenile martyr reluctantly undergoing education. The place had long beenclosed to secular uses, for only at infrequent intervals was the school opened, and a drought of instruction still held sway. To the audience who had been roused from the dull routine of the fireside by the startling and unprecedented announcement that a stranger-man, staying at old Tubal Cain Sims’s cabin, was going to give a “show” in the schoolhouse, the flutter of excitement, the unwonted nocturnal jaunt hither, the joyous anticipation, were almost tantamount to the delighted realization. The benches were arranged as for worship or learning, and were crowded with old and young, male and female, the reckless and barefoot, the neuralgic and shod. The men, unkempt and unshaven, steadily chewed their quids of tobacco, and now and then spat upon the floor and grinned at one another. The women conserved a certain graver go-to-meeting air, doubtless the influence of the locality, but were visibly fluttered. Occasionally a big sunbonnet turned toward another, and whispered gossip ensued, as before the first hymn is given out. The lighted tallow candles in small tin sconces against the walls, and a kerosene lamp on the table on the platform, cast a subdued and mellow light over the assemblage. It flickered up to the brown rafters, where the cobwebs were many; it converted the tiny dirt-incrusted panes of the windows to mirror-like use, and was reflected from the dense darkness outside with duplications of sections of the audience; it shone full and bright on thetall, athletic figure of the juggler, appearing suddenly and swiftly from a side door, and bowing low in the centre of the platform with an air of great deference and courtesy to his silent and spellbound audience.

He might have astonished more sophisticated spectators. Instead of wearing the ordinary evening dress or the costume of the Japanese or Hindoo, according to the usual wont of conjurers, he was clad in a blue flannel shirt and a black-and-red blazer, and his blue knickerbockers and long blue hose on his muscular legs impressed the mountaineers as a ballet costume might have done, could they have conceived of such attenuations of attire. A russet leather belt was drawn tightly around his slender waist, and they gazed at him from the tip of his dark sleek red-brown hair, carefully parted in the middle, to the toes of his pointed russet shoes with an amazement which his best feat might fail to elicit. His air of deep respect reassured them in a measure, for they could not gauge the covert banter in his tone and the mockery in his eyes as his sonorous “Ladies and gentlemen” rang forth in the little building. And there was something more in his eyes—of reddish-brown tint like his hair—that the mockery and banter could not hide; for these were transient, and the other—a thought with a fang. It might have been anxiety, remorse, turmoil of mind, fear,—one might hardly say,—plainly to be seen, yet not discerned. Below his eyes, above his cheekbones, that showedtheir contour, for his face was thin, were deep blue circles, and that unmistakable look of one who has received some serious sudden shock. But the spirit of the occasion was paramount now, and he was as unconscious of the lack in his accoutrements in the estimation of the mountaineers as they were of how the bare feet of sundry of his spectators offended his prejudices in favor ofchaussure.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here to witness some of those feats which are variously ascribed to charlatanry, to skill or sleight of hand, or to certain traffic with supernatural agencies. Those which I shall have the honor to exhibit to this select audience I shall not explain; in fact,” with a twinkle of the eye, “some of them are inexplicable, and so may they long continue! I have not thought best to avail myself of the services of an assistant, who is generally, I grieve to say, among most of those of my profession, a mere trickster and accomplice, and therefore you will have the evidence of your eyes to the fact that every feat which I perform this evening is absolutely genuine.”

His spirit of rodomontade had reached its limit. Perhaps some of the more finely strung sensibilities in the audience appraised the ridicule in his intention, despite the masquerade of his manner, for a glance of resentment kindled here and there; but before the awed and open-mouthed majority had drawn a breath or relaxed a muscle he changed his tone.

“I have selected a young man from amongst you,” he said, quite naturally and pleasantly, “to aid me in finding properties, as it were, for my entertainment; for in apology be it spoken, I am not prepared in any respect for an exhibition of this sort. He has, at my request, borrowed for me this bayonet.” He took from the table drawer the weapon, newly cleaned and glistening, and looked at it narrowly as he stood before them on the platform. “I should say it has seen service. Can this gentleman tell me whether it is from a Federal or a Confederate gun?”

He stepped down suddenly from the platform and handed the bayonet to a strong-featured, stern-looking old mountaineer who had earlier regarded him with dawning disfavor.

“It’s from a Rebel weepon,” the veteran said succinctly.

“It’s off a Yankee Springfiel’,” a voice came from the other side of the room.

“Enfiel’,” said the first speaker doggedly.

“Springfiel’,” contradicted his invisible antagonist tersely.

Once more, “Enfiel’.”

And again out of the shadow, “Springfiel’.”

And the juggler became aware that he had waked up the political dog of the region.

“They are equally digestible,” he declared, resuming his place on the platform. “I believe I’ll swallow it.” And so he did.

For one moment there was an intense silence,while the petrified audience gazed in motionless astonishment at the juggler. Then arose a great tumult of voices; there was a violent movement at the rear of the room; a bench broke down, and in the midst of the commotion, with a gay cry of “Hey! Presto!” the juggler apparently drew the bayonet from out his throat and triumphantly held it up before the people.

An increasing confusion of sounds greeted him. Screams of delighted mirth came from the younger portion of the audience, and exclamations hardly less flattering from the laughing elders. But ever above the babel terrified shrieks, shrill and clamorous, rose higher and higher, and the juggler frowned with sudden sharp annoyance when he distinguished the fact that an elderly woman was crying out that these were the works of the devil,—that here was Satan, and that she would not bide easy till he was bound, neck and heels together, and cast forth into the river. He was not usually devoid of humane sentiments, but he felt vastly relieved when she fell into strong hysterics, and was carried, still shrieking, out to the ox-cart, whence, despite the closed doors and windows, over and over again those weird, unearthly cries were borne in to the audience, as the yoking of the steers for the homeward journey was in progress.

The juggler was out of countenance. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, with indignation coloring his face to the roots of his hair, “these things are done for amusement. If they fail to amuse, theyfail altogether. I will go on, or, if you desire, your money will be refunded at the door.”

“Lawd, naw, bub!” exclaimed a toothless old fellow, bent nearly double as he sat on a front bench, his clasped hands between his knees. “We-uns want ter view all ye know how ter do,—all ye know how ter do, son.”

Here and there reassuring voices confirmed the spokesman, and as the discomfited juggler turned to the table drawer, resolving on something less bloody-minded, he heard a vague titter from that portion of the building in which, being young, he had already observed that the greater number of personable maidens were seated.

None so dread ridicule as the satirist. He whirled around, his heart swelling indignantly, his eyes flashing fire, to perceive, advancing down the aisle, a fat woman in a gigantic sunbonnet, which, however, hardly obscured her broad, creased, dimpled face, a brown calico dress wherein the waist-line must ever be a matter of conjecture, and a little shoulder-shawl of bright red-and-yellow plaid. She slowly approached him with something of steel glittering in her hands, and at his amazed and dumfounded expression of countenance the girlish cachinnation which he so resented broke forth afresh.

“Beg pardon?” he said more than once, as from his elevation he sought to catch her request. A single tooth of the upper register, so to speak, however ornamental, did not serve to render moredistinct the fat woman’s wheeze, in which she sought to articulate her desire that he should forthwith swallow her big shears, so fascinated was she by the evidence he had given of his proficiency in the arts of the impossible.

“Certainly, with pleasure,—always anxious to oblige the ladies,” he protested, with a return of his covert mockery, as he bowed after a dancing-class fashion, and received from her fat creased hands the great domestic implement with its dangling steel chain. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he declared, with his hand upon his heart, as she subsided, shaking with laughter, on the front bench, “I cannot refrain from expressing my flattered sense of this mark of the confidence reposed in me by this distinguished audience, as well as by the estimable lady who is so willing to offer her shears on the altar of science. She is not satisfied with the warlike bayonet. She desires to see the same experiment,mutatis mutandis, on a pair of shears, which are devoted to the tender-hearted and affable uses of the work-basket, filled with the love of home and gentle fireside associations, and—and—and other domestic scraps. The rivet is a trifle loose, and I hope I may not be forced to disgorge the blades separately.”

He was holding up the scissors as he spoke these words, so that all could see them; the next moment they had disappeared down his throat, as it were, and the astounded audience sat as if resolved into eyes, staring spellbound.

When, a few minutes later, with his cabalistic phrase, “Hey! Presto!” he drew from his open red mouth the shears dangling at the end of the rattling steel chain, which the audience had just seen him swallow, the clamor of exclamations again arose, for the accepted methods of applause had not yet penetrated to the seclusions of Etowah Cove; but there was in this manifestation of surprise so definite a quaver of fear that certain lines of irritation and anxiety corrugated the smooth brow of the young prestidigitator. The tumultuous amazement of the spectators seemed as if it were too great to be realized all at once, and with the sight of the performance anew of the impossible feat, which should have served as reassurance, it degenerated into downright terror which held the possibilities of panic. The idea of panic suggested other possibilities. Albeit their unsophisticated state was highly favorable to the development of emotions of boundless astonishment and absolute credulity, he realized that it was not unattended by some personal danger. After the suggestion of being bound hand and foot and thrown into the river, the juggler was more than once unpleasantly reminded—for he was a man of some reading—of certain fellow craftsmen in the mists of centuries agone, whose wondrous skill in the powers of air, earth, and fire, though great enough to be deemed unlawful traffic with the devil, could not avail to prevent their own earthly elements from going up in smoke and flame, and thus contributing ethereally to thegreat reserves of material nature. He was here alone, far from help, among the most ignorant and lawless people he had ever seen; and if their dislocated ideas of necromancy and unlawful dealing with the devil should take a definite hold upon them, he might be summarily dealt with as an act of religion, and the world none the wiser. Such disaster had befallen better jugglers, sooth to say, in more civilized communities than Etowah Cove. He sought to put this thought from him, for his heart was sufficiently stout of fibre, but determined that he would not again be diverted from his intention of substituting less blood-curdling feats for the usual experiments with knives and swords. He preserved a calm face and debonair manner, as he carefully wiped the shears free from supposititious moisture on a folded white table-cloth that lay on the platform, and stepped down, and with an elaborate bow presented them to their chuckling and gratified owner.

“Jane Ann Sims wouldn’t keer if the Old Nick hisself war ter set up his staff in the Cove, ef he hed some news ter tell or a joke ter crack, or some sorter gamesome new goin’s-on that she hed never hearn tell on afore,” whispered a lean, towering, limp sunbonnet to its starch and squatty neighbor.

“An’shehard on ter fifty odd years old!” said the squatty sunbonnet, malignantly accurate.

As the juggler stepped back to the platform he took up the table-cloth and shook it out, that they might all be assured that there was nothing concealed in its folds.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, taking heart of grace and his former manner of covert half-banter and mock politeness together, “we all know that it is by the action of the sun on the soil, and the dew and the rain, that the seeds of plants germinate and the green herb grows for the service of men. I propose to show you now a small agricultural experiment which I venture to hope will be of special interest to this assembly, as most of you are engaged in the noble pursuit of tilling the soil, when other diversions cannot by any means be had.”

As he clattered off his sentences, garnished now and then with trite bits of Latin, the solemn, stolid, uncomprehending faces ministered to a certain mocking humor which he had, and which was now becoming a trifle bitter with the reluctant realization of a lurking danger.

“Will some gentleman come forward and tell me what kind of a seed this is?”

He held the small object up between his finger and thumb for a moment, but no one approached. He perceived in a sort of helpless dismay that the dread of him was growing. He was fain to step down from the platform and hand the seed to the old man on the front bench, whose bleared eyes were glittering with delight in the greatest sensation that had ever fallen to his lot; for the juggler judged that of all the audience he was nearest the masculine counterpart of the progressive Jane Ann Sims. The old man, in his circle, was not a personof consideration nor accustomed to deference. He was all the more easily flattered to be thus singled out by the juggler, the conspicuous cynosure of all eyes, to give his judgment and pronounce upon the identity of the seed. The love of notoriety is a blasting passion, deadening all considerations of the conformable. Even in these secluded wilds, even in the presence of but a handful of his familiars, even in the lowly estate of a cumberer of the ground, lagging superfluous, it smote Josiah Cobbs. He rose to his feet, whirled briskly around, and, with a manner founded on the sprightly style of the juggler, yet compounded with the diction of the circuit rider, exclaimed, “Yea, my brethren, this hyar be a seed,—yea, it be actially a persimmon seed, though so dry I ain’t so sure whether or not it’ll ever sot off ter grow like a fraish one might. Yea, my brethren, I ain’t sure how long—ah—this hyar persimmon seed hev—ah—been kem out o’ the persimmon. Yea”—

He progressed not beyond this point, for the audience had no mind to be entertained with the rhetoric of old Josiah Cobbs, resenting his usurpation of so prominent a position, and his presumption in undertaking to address the meeting. Certain people in this world are given to understand that although their estate in life be not inferior to that of their neighbors, humility becomes them, and a low seat is their appropriate station. More than one sunbonnet had rustlingly communed withanother as to the fact that Josiah Cobbs would hardly be heard at an experience meeting, the state of his humble soul not interesting the community. So simultaneous a storm of giggles swept the cluster of girls as to demonstrate that their gravity was of the same tenuous quality as that of their age and sex elsewhere. It was wonderful that they did not sustain some collapse, and this furnishes a pleasing commentary upon the strength of the youthful diaphragm. The men exchanged glances of grim derision, and finally one, with the air of a person not to be trifled with, rose up and stretched out his hand for the bewitched seed, forgetting for the moment all his quondam qualms of distrust.

Josiah Cobbs rendered it up without an instant’s hesitation. Precious as was the opportunity in his eyes, preëmpted by his own courage, his was not the type which makes resistance. The hand to despoil him had hardly need to be strong. The will to have what he possessed was sufficient for his pillage. He hardly claimed the merits appertaining to the pioneer. He stood meekly by as the seed was passed from one set of horny finger-tips to another, and the dictum, “It’s a persimmon seed, stranger,” was repeated with a decision which implied no previous examination.

“A persimmon seed, is it?” said the juggler airily, receiving it back. “Now, gentlemen, you see that there is nothing in this pail of earth but good pulverized soil.” He passed his fingersthrough the surface, shaking them daintily free from the particles afterward, while the hands of the practical farmers went boldly grappling down to the bottom with no thought of dirt. “You see me plant this persimmon seed. There! Now I throw over the pail this empty cloth,—let it stand up in a peak so as to give the seed air; now I place the whole on the table, where you can all see it and assure yourselves that no one goes near it. While awaiting developments I shall try to entertain you by singing a song. It may be unknown to you—yet why this suggestion in the presence of so much culture?—that in the days of eld certain wandering troubadours came to be in some sort men of my profession. In the intervals of minstrelsy they entertained and astonished their audiences with feats of the miraculous,—strange exploits of legerdemain and such light pastimes,—and were therefore termedjongleurs. I shall seek to follow my distinguished Provençal predecessors in the gay sciencehaud passibus æquis, and pipe up as best I may.”

There was a pause while the juggler, standing at one end of the platform, seemed to run over in his mind the treasures of hisrépertoire. The mellow lamplight shone in his reflective brown eyes, cast down as he twisted one end of the long red-brown mustache, and again thrown up as if he sought some recollection among the old rafters. These had the rich reserves of color characteristic of old wood, and the heavy beams of oak showedall their veinous possibilities in yellow and brown fibrous comminglements against the deep umber shadows of the high peak of the roof. The cobwebs adhering here and there had almost the consistency of a fabric, so densely woven they were. One pendulous gauze fragment moved suddenly without a breath of air, for a light living creature had run along the beam beneath it, and now stood looking down at the audience with a glittering eye and a half-spread bat-like wing,—a flying squirrel, whose nest was secreted in the king-post and entered from the outside. So still was the audience,—the grizzled, unkempt men, the sunbonneted women, even the giggling girls in the corner,—he might have been meditating a downward plunge into the room.

Then slightly frowning, but smiling too, the juggler began to sing.

It was a cultivated voice that rang out in the measures of “My Pretty Jane,”—a tenor of good range, true, clear, sweet, with a certain romantic quality that was in some sort compelling and effective. He sang well. Not that the performance would have been acceptable considered as that of a high-grade professional, yet it was far too good for a mere parlor amateur. The rich, vibrant voice, without accompaniment,—grotesque inadequacy to his mind,—filled the little building with a pathetic, penetrating sweetness, and the whole method of rendering the ballad was characterized by that elaborate simplicity and restrained precisionso marked in professional circles, so different from the enthusiasticabandonof the reckless home talent.

It fell flat in Etowah Cove. There were people in the audience who, if they could not sing, were intimately persuaded that they could; and after all, that is the essential element of satisfaction. The modulation, the delicate shades of expression, the refinement of style, were all lost on the majority; only here and there a discerning ear was pricked up, appreciating in the concord of sweet sounds something out of the common. But there was no sign of approval, and in the dead silence which succeeded the final roulade, coming so trippingly off, the juggler showed certain symptoms of embarrassment and discomfiture. One might easily perceive from the deft assurance of his exploits of sleight of hand that the value he placed upon them was far cheaper than his estimate of his singing. It was a susceptible sort of vanity that could be hurt by the withheld plaudits of Etowah Cove; but vanity is a sensitive plant, and requires tender nurture. He stood silent and flushing for a moment, while still a gentle fibrous resonance seemed to pervade the room,—the memory of the song rather than its echo; then, with a sudden flouting airy whirl, he turned on his heel, and caught off the cloth that had enveloped the pail of earth containing the persimmon seed which he had just planted. And lo! glossy and green and lustrous in the light, there stood a fair young shoot,some two feet in height, and with all its leaves a-rustle. It was a good trick and very cleverly done.

The little building once more was a babel of sounds. The flying squirrel scrambled back to the king-post, pausing once to look down in half-frightened amazement. The window-panes reflected a kaleidoscope of bright bits of color swiftly swaying, for the audience was in a turmoil. It was not, however, the artistic excellence of the feat which swayed the spectators, but its agricultural significance. This, the old farmers realized, was indeed necromancy. Their struggles with the tough and reluctant earth, which so grudgingly responds to toil, oft with such hard-exacted usury, taking so much more than it gives, and which only the poet or the weed-loving botanist calls generous and fruitful, had served to teach them that this kind of growth must needs come only through the wiles of the deluding devil. Not even an agricultural paper—had they known of such a sophistication—could countenance such deceits. A grim, ashen-tinted face with gray hair appeared near the back of the building; a light gray homespun coat accentuated its pallor. A long finger was warningly shaken at the juggler, as he stood, triumphant, flushed, beside the flourishing shoot he had evoked from the persimmon seed, but only half smiling, for something sinister in the commingled voices had again smitten his attention. Then he was arraigned by Parson Greenought with thesolemn adjuration in a loud tone, “Pause, Mr. Showman, pause!”

The juggler was already petrified. The spectators obeyed the earnest command, albeit not intended for them. They fell once more into their places; the heads of many turned now toward the juggler, and again back to the preacher, who, in his simplicity, had no idea that he had transgressed the canons of sanctification in visiting a place of worldly amusement, since indeed this was his first opportunity, and greatly had he profited by it, until this last enormity had aroused his clerical conscience. “Mr. Showman,” he demanded, “do you-uns call this religion?”

“Religion!” said Mr. Showman, with a burst of unregenerate laughter, for the limits of his patience had been nearly reached. “I call it fun.”

“I call it the devices of the devil!” thundered the preacher. “An’ hyar ye be,”—he turned on the audience,—“ye perfessin’ members, a-aggin’ this man on in his conjurin’ an’ witchments an’ Satan tricks, till fust thing ye know the Enemy will appear, horns, hoofs, an’ tail, a-spittin’ fire an’”—the juggler had a passing recollection that he too could spit fire, and had intended to make hiscongéamongst pyrotechnics of this sort, and he welcomed the thought of caution that was not, like most of its kind,ex post facto,—“a-spittin’ fire, an’ a-takin’ yer souls down ter hell with him. Hyar ye be”—

“If you will allow me to interrupt you, sir,”the juggler said persuasively, “you are altogether mistaken, and I should like to make a full explanation to a man of your age and experience.” His eyes were grave; his face had grown a trifle pale. The danger had come very near. Rough handling might well be encountered amongst these primitive wights, inflamed by pulpit oratory and religious excitement, and abetted by their pastoral guide. “In two minutes,” he went on, “I can teach you to perform this simple feat which seems to you impossible to human agency. It is nothing but sleight of hand, a sort of knack.”

For one moment Parson Greenought hesitated, beguiled. His eye kindled with curiosity and eagerness; he made as though he would leave the bench whereon he was ensconced, to approach the alluring juggler. Unfortunately, it was at the moment that the young man’s hands, grasping the persimmon shoot near the base, drew it forth from the earth with a wrench, so firmly was it planted, and showed to the discerning bucolic gaze the fully developed root with the earth adhering to its fibres; thus proving by the eyesight of the audience, beyond all power of gainsaying, that it had sprouted from the seed and grown two feet high while this juggler—this limb of Satan—had sung his little song about his Pretty Jane.

A man rarely has to contend with an excess of faith in him and his deeds. The juggler was fiercely advised by a dark-browed man leaning forward across one of the benches, with a menacingduplication of his figure and the gesture of his clenched fist reflected in the window, not to try to slip out of it.

And Parson Greenought, with a swelling redundancy of voice and a great access of virtue, gave forth expression of his desire to abide by the will that had ordained the growth of every herb whose seed is in itself upon the earth; he would not meddle and he would not mar, nor would he learn with unhallowed and wicked curiosity thus to pervert the laws that had been laid down while the earth was yet void and without form.

“Well, it never yet was ordained that this persimmon seed was to grow,” said the juggler, still game, though with a fluctuating color. He fished the stone out from the earth, and, dusting it off with his fine white handkerchief, put it between his strong molar teeth and cracked it. He would not again invite attention to the reluctance of the audience to approach him, so he laid it down on the edge of the front bench with the remark, “You can see for yourselves the kernel is withered; that thing has no capacities for growth.”

One or two looked cautiously at the withered kernel within the riven pit, and then glanced significantly at each other. It was shrunken, old, worthless, as he had said, but then his black art was doubtless sufficient to have withered it with the mere wish.

“I don’t know a persimmon sprout from a dogwood, or a sumach, or anything else,” declared thejuggler. His face was hard and dogged; he was compelled in his own behoof to unmask himself and show how very superficial were his cleverest efforts. He did it as ungraciously as he might. “This young man”—he indicated a bold bluff young mountaineer who was availing himself of the “standing-room only,” to which a number of the youths were relegated—“dug up this sprout at my request this afternoon, and hunted out a last year’s seed among the dead leaves on the ground.”

As his eyes met those of this young fellow the twinkle of mischievous delight in the mountaineer’s big blue orbs gave him a faint zest of returning relish for the situation, albeit the primitive denizens of the Cove had been all too well humbugged even for his own comfort.

“This pocket is torn,”—he thrust his hand into it,—“and has no bottom. I therefore slipped this wand into this pocket of these knickerbockers,” suiting the action to the word. “You see the leaves all fold together, so that its presence does not even mar the pronounced symmetry of my garments. Then I placed the seed, thus, and threw the cloth over the pail, thus; with my left hand I slipped out the persimmon shoot, and planted it, thus; and it was beneath the cloth that I left in a peak to give it air and to conceal it while I had the honor to entertain you by singing.”

He supposed that he would have satisfied even the most timorous and doubtful by this revelationof his methods and of the innocuous nature of his craft, but he could not fail to note the significantly shaken heads, the disaffected whispers, the colloguing of the young mountaineers occupying “standing-room only.”

“Ef he hed done it that-a-way at fust, I’d hev viewed it sure. I viewed it plain this time,” said one of these.

“He can’t fool me,” protested a sour-visaged woman who kept up a keen espionage on all the world within the range of her pink sunbonnet.

“One lie never mended another,” said the old preacher aside in a low voice to a presiding elder. “Potsherds, lies are, my brother; they hold no water.”

The juggler could deceive them easily enough, but alack, he could not undeceive them! He debated within himself the possibility which each of his feats possessed of exciting their ire, as he hurriedly rummaged in the drawer of the table. He closed it abruptly.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “behold this paper of needles; and here also I desire to introduce to your notice this small spool of thread—Has any lady here,” he continued, with the air of breaking off with a sudden thought, “any breadths of calico or other fabric which she might desire to have run up or galloped up? I am a great seamster.”

Of course, although some had brought their babies, and one or two their lunch to stop themouths of the older children, many their snuff or their tobacco, no one had brought work on this memorable outing to the show in the Cove.

“What a pity!” he cried. “Well, I can only show you how I thread needles. I swallow them all, thus,” and down they went. “Then I swallow the thread,” and forthwith the spool disappeared down his throat.

The audience, educated by this time to expect marvels, sat staring, stony and still. There was a longer interval than usual as he stood with one hand on the table, half smiling, half expectant, as if he too were doubtful of the result. Suddenly he lifted his hand, and began to draw one end of the thread from his lips. On it came, longer and longer; and here and there, threaded and swaying on the fine filament, were the needles, of assorted sizes, beginning with the delicate and small implement, increasing grade by grade, till the descending scale commenced, and the needles dwindled as they appeared.

Parson Greenought had risen when the thread was swallowed, but he lingered till the last cambric needle was laid on the table, and the prestidigitator had made his low bow of self-flattery and triumph in conclusion. Then having witnessed it all, his forefinger shaking in the air, he cried out: “I leave this place! I pernounce these acts ter be traffickin’ with the devil an’ sech. Ef I be wrong, the Lord will jedge me ’cordin’; ez he hev gin me gifts I see with my eyes, an’ my eyes air true,an’ they war in wisdom made, an’ war made ter see with. Oh, young man, pause in time! Sin hev marked ye! Temptation beguiles ye! I dunno what ye hev in mind, but beware of it! Beware of the sin that changes its face, an’ shifts its name, an’ juggles with the thing ez is not what it seems ter be. Beware! beware!”

As he stalked out, the juggler sought to laugh, but he winced visibly. The spectators were on their feet now, having risen with the excitement of the moment of the old man’s exit. There was, however, a manifest disposition to linger; for having become somewhat acclimated to miracles, their appetite for the wonder-working was whetted. But the juggler, frowning heavily, had turned around, and was shaking the cloth out, and banging about in the drawer of the table, as if making his preparations for departure. The people began to move slowly to the door. It was not his intention to dismiss the audience thus summarily and unceremoniously, and as the situation struck his attention he advanced toward the front of the platform.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began; but his voice was lost in the clatter of heavy boots on the floor, the scraping of benches moved from their proper places to liberate groups in order to precede their turn in the procession, the sudden sleepy protest of a half-awakened infant, rising in a sharp crescendo and climaxing in a hearty bawl of unbridled rage.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” he cried vainly to the dusty atmosphere, and the haggard, disheveled aspect of the half-deserted room. “Oh, go along, then,” he added, dropping his voice, “and the devil take you!”

His mountain acquaintance had come to the side of the platform, and stood waiting, one hand on the table, while he idly eyed the juggler, who had returned to rummaging the drawer. He was a tall strong young fellow, with straight black hair that grew on his forehead in the manner denominated a “cowlick,” and large contemplative blue eyes; his face showed some humor, for the lines broke readily into laughter. His long boots were drawn high over his brown jeans trousers, and his blue-checked homespun shirt was open at the neck, and showed his strong throat that held his head very sturdily and straight.

He was compassionate at the moment. “Plumb beat out, ain’t ye?” he said sympathetically.

“I’m half dead!” cried the juggler furiously, throwing off his blazer, and wiping his hot face with his handkerchief.

The open door admitted the currents of the chill night air and the pungent odors of the dense dark woods without. Calls to the oxen in the process of gearing up sounded now and again droningly. Occasionally quick hoofbeats told of a horseman’s departure at full gallop. The talk of waiting groups outside now came mingled to the ear, then ceased and rose anew. More than once a loudyawn told of the physical stress of the late hour and the unwonted excitement. The young mountaineer was going the rounds of the room extinguishing the tallow dips laboriously; taking each down, blowing gustily at it, and replacing it in the sconce. The juggler, as he passed, with his blazer over his arm, quenched the lights far more expeditiously, but mechanically, as it seemed, by fanning the timorous flames outseriatimwith his hat in quick, decisive gestures. When he stood in the door, the room dark behind him, there was no life, no motion, in the umbrageous obscurity at hand; naught gave token of the audience so lately assembled save the creak of an unoiled axle far away, and once the raucous cry of a man to his team. Then all was still. In the hush, a vague drowsy note came suddenly from a bird high amongst the budding leaves of a tulip-tree hard by. An interval, and a like dreamy response sounded from far down the slope where pendulous boughs overhung the river. Some sweet chord of sympathy had brought the thought of the one to the other in the deep dark night,—these beings so insignificant in the plan of creation,—and one must needs rouse itself with that veiled reedy query, and the other, downily dreaming, must pipe out a reassuring “All’s well.”

The suggestiveness of this lyric of two tones was not lost on the juggler. He was pierced by the poignancy of exile. He could hardly realize that he was of the same species as the beings whohad formed the “cultivated and intellectual audience” he had had the honor to entertain. Not one process of his mind could be divined by them; not one throb of their superstitious terrors could he share.

“The cursed fatality,” he growled between his teeth, “that brought me to this God-forsaken country!”

“Waal,” drawled the young mountaineer, whom he had forgotten for the moment, “they won’t be so tur’ble easy skeered nex’ time.”

“They won’t have another chance in a hurry,” retorted the juggler angrily, as they walked away together in single file.

The night was very dark, although the great whorls of constellations were splendidly abloom in the clear sky. If a raylet fell to earth in the forest, it was not appreciable in the sombre depths, and the juggler, with all his craft, might hardly have made shift to follow his companion but for the spark and the light luminous smoke of the mountaineer’s pipe. Suddenly, as they turned a sharp edge of a series of great rocks, that like flying buttresses projected out from the steep perpendicular wall of a crag above them, all at once growing visible, a white flare shone before their eyes, illumining all the surrounding woods. There in an open space near the edge of a bluff was a great fire of logs burning like a funeral pyre. The juggler had paused as if spellbound. From the opposite side of the glowing mass a face, distorted,tremulous, impossibly hideous, elongated almost out of the proportion of humanity, peered at him.

“For God’s sake, what’s that?” he cried out, clutching at his guide’s arm.

The slow mountaineer, surprised out of his composure, paused, and took his pipe from his mouth to stare uncomprehendingly at his companion.

“Jes’ burnin’ lime,” he said.

Their shadows, suddenly evolved, stretched over the ground in the white flare. The Cove, not far beneath, for this was on a low spur of the great range, now flickered into full view, now receded into the darkness. Above the vague mountain the stars seemed all gone, and the sky was elusive and cloaked. For all the art of the juggler, he could show naught of magic more unnatural, more ghastly, than the face of the lime-burner as it appeared through the medium of the heated air arising from the primitive kiln,—protean, distorted by every current of the night’s breath,—although it was of much significance to him, and later he came to know it well to his cost. As the man caught the sound of their approach, he walked around to the side of the kiln, and his face and figure, no longer seen through the unequally refracting medium of the heated air, dwindled to normal proportions. It was not a prepossessing face in its best estate,—long, thin-lipped, grim, with small eyes set close together, and surmounted by a wide wool hat, which, being large for hishead, was so crushed together that its crown rose up in a peak. His clothes were plentifully dusted with powdery flakes, and the scalding breath of the unslaked lime was perceptible to the throats of the newcomers.

“Ye ’pear ter be powerful late,” the young mountaineer hazarded.

“Weather-signs air p’intin’ fur rain,” replied the lime-burner. “I ain’t wantin’ all this lime ter git slacked by accident.” He glanced down with a workman’s satisfaction at the primitive process. Between the logs of the great pile layers of the broken limestone were interposed, and were gradually calcined as the fire blazed. Although some of it was imperfectly consumed, and here and there lay in half-crude lumps, the quantity well burned was sufficient to warrant the laborer’s anxiety to get it under shelter before it should sustain the deteriorating effects of moisture.

“Gideon Beck war a-promisin’ ter kem back straight arter supper,” said Peter Knowles, “an’ holp me git it inter the rock-house thar.” He indicated a grotto in the face of the cliff, where, by the light of the fire, one might perceive that lime had already been stored. The beetling rocks above it afforded adequate protection from falling weather, and the small quantity of the commodity was evidently disproportionate to the ample spaces for its accommodation within. “I felt plumb beset an’ oneasy ’bout Gid,” added Knowles. “He mought hev hed a fit, or suthin’ may havehappened down ter his house, ter some o’ the chil’n o’ suthin’. He merried my sister Judy, ye know. They don’t take haffen keer o’ them chil’n; some o’ them mought hev got sot afire o’ suthin’, or”—

“Theymought, but they ain’t,” exclaimed Jack Ormsby, the young mountaineer, with a laugh. “Gid’s been down yander ter the show, an’ all the chil’n, an’ yer sister Judy too.”

“What show?” demanded Knowles shortly, his grim face half angry, half amazed.

“The show in the schoolhouse in the Cove. This hyar stranger-man, he gin a show,” Ormsby explained. “I viewed ’em all thar, all the fambly.”

There was a momentary pause, and one might hear the wind astir in the darkness of the woods below, and feel the dank breath of the clouds that invisibly were gathering on the brink of the range above. One of the sudden mountain rains was at hand.

“An’ I wish I hed every one of ’em hyar now!” exclaimed Peter Knowles in fury. “I’d kiver ’em all up in that thar quicklime,—that’s what I’d do! An’ thar wouldn’t be hide, hawns, or taller lef’ of none of ’em in the mornin’. Leavemehyar,—leavemehyar with all this medjure o’ lime, an’ I never see none so stubborn in burnin’, the timber bein’ so durned green an’ sappy, the dad-burned critter promisin’ an’ promisin’ ter kem back arter he got his supper,—an’go ter a show, a damned show! What sort’n show war it?”

The juggler burst out laughing. “Come ahead!” he cried to Ormsby. “Lend a hand here!”

He had a strong sense of commercial values. To let a marketable commodity lie out and be ruined by the rain was repellent to all his convictions of economics. It might have been as much for the sake of the lime itself as from a sort of half-pity for the deserted lime-burner—for Peter Knowles had not the cast of countenance or of soul that preëmpted a fellow feeling—that he caught up a great shovel that lay at hand.

“I’ll undertake to learn the ropes in a trice,” he declared, throwing his coat on the ground.

Knowles only stared at him in surly amazement, but Ormsby, who had often seen the process, threw aside the half-burnt-out logs and followed the lead of the juggler, who, tense, light, active, the white flare, terrible so close at hand, on his face and figure, began to shovel the lumps into the barrow or cart made to receive the lime. Then, as the wind swept by with a warning note, Knowles too fell to work, and added the capacities of his experience to the sheer uninstructed force of the willing volunteers. They made it short work. The two neophytes found it a scorching experiment, and more than once they fell back, flinching from the inherent heat of the flying powder as they shoveled it into the mouth of the grotto.

“I had no idea,” the juggler said, as he stoodby the embers when it was all over, looking from one smarting hand to the other, “that quicklime is so very powerful, so caustic an agent. I can believe you when you say that if you should put a body in that bed there it would be consumed by morning,—bones and all?” He became suddenly interrogative.

“Nare toe nor toe-nail lef’,” returned Peter Knowles succinctly, as if he had often performed this feat as a scientific experiment.

The juggler lifted his eyes to the face of the man opposite. They dilated and lingered fascinated with a sort of horror; for that strange anamorphosis had once more possessed it. All at variance it was with its natural contours, as the heated air streamed up from the bed of half-calcined stone,—trembling through this shimmering medium, yet preserving the semblance of humanity, like the face of some mythical being, demon or ghoul. A dawning significance was on his own face, of which he was unconscious, but which the other noted. How might he utilize this property of air and heat and quicklime in some of those wonders of jugglery at which he was so expert? More than once, as he walked away, he turned back to gaze anew at the phenomenon, his trim figure lightly poised, his hand in his belt, his blazer thrown over his arm, that gleam of discovery on his face.

As the encompassing rocks and foliage at last hid him from view, Peter Knowles looked down into the fire.

“That air a true word. The quicklime would eat every bone,” he said slowly. “But what airheaimin’ ter know fur?” And once more he looked curiously at the spot where the juggler had vanished, remembering the guise of discovery and elation his face had worn.

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