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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Madelon, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Madelon
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+Release Date: March 1, 2006 [EBook #17885]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADELON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Madelon
+
+A Novel
+
+By
+
+Mary E. Wilkins
+
+Author of "A Humble Romance"
+"Jane Field" etc.
+
+New York
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+1896
+
+
+
+
+    Love is the crown, and the crucifixion, of life,
+  and proves thereby its own divinity.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+There was a new snow over the village. Indeed, it had ceased to fall
+only at sunset, and it was now eight o'clock. It was heaped
+apparently with the lightness of foam on the windward sides of the
+roads, over the fences and the stone walls, and on the village roofs.
+Its weight was evident only on the branches of the evergreen-trees,
+which were bent low in their white shagginess, and lost their upward
+spring.
+
+There were evergreens--Norway pines, spruces, and hemlocks--bordering
+the road along which Burr Gordon was coming. Now and then he jostled
+a low-hanging bough and shook off its load of snow upon his
+shoulders. Then he walked nearer the middle of the street, tramping
+steadily through the new snow. This was an old road, but little used
+of late years, and the forest seemed to be moving upon it with the
+unnoted swiftness of a procession endless from the beginning of the
+world. In places the branches of the opposite pines stretched to each
+other like white-draped arms across the road, and slender, snow-laden
+saplings stood out in young crowds well in advance of the old trees.
+At times the road was no more than a cart-path through the forest;
+but it was a short-cut to the Hautville place, and that was why Burr
+Gordon went that way.
+
+Everything was very still. The new-fallen snow seemed to muffle
+silence itself, and do away with that wide susceptibility to sound
+which affects one as forcibly as the crashing of cannon.
+
+There was no whisper of life from the village, which lay a half-mile
+back; no roll of wheels, or shout, or peal of bell. Burr Gordon kept
+on in utter silence until he came near the Hautville house. Then he
+began to hear music: the soaring sweetness of a soprano voice, the
+rich undertone of a bass, and the twang of stringed instruments.
+
+When he came close to the house the low structure itself, overlaid
+with snow, and with snow clinging to its gray-shingled sides like
+shreds of wool, seemed to vibrate and pulse and shake, and wax fairly
+sonorous with music, like an organ.
+
+Burr Gordon stood still in the road and listened. The constituents of
+the concert resolved themselves to his ear. There was a wonderful
+soprano, a tenor, a bass, one sweet boy's voice, a bass-viol, and a
+violin. They were practising a fugue. The soprano rang out like the
+invitation of an angel,
+
+  "Come, my beloved, haste away,
+  Cut short the hours of thy delay,"
+
+above all the others--even the shrill boy-treble. Then it followed,
+with noblest and sweetest order, the bass in--
+
+  "Fly like a youthful hart or roe,
+  Over the hills where the spices grow."
+
+The very breath of the spices of Arabia seemed borne into the young
+man's senses by that voice. He saw in vision the blue tops of those
+delectable hills where the myrtle and the cassia grew; he felt within
+his limbs the ardent impulse of the hart or roe. He stood with his
+head bent, listening, until the music ceased; the blue hills sank
+suddenly into the land of the past, and all the spice-plants withered
+away.
+
+There was but a few minutes' interval; then there was a chorus--
+
+  "Strike the Timbrel."
+
+Burr Gordon, listening, heard in that only the great soprano, and it
+was to him like the voice of Miriam of old, summoning him to battle
+and glory.
+
+But when that music ceased he did not wait any longer nor enter the
+house, but stole away silently. This time he travelled the main road,
+which intersected the old one at the Hautville house. The village
+lights shone before him all the way. He was half-way to the village
+when he met his cousin, Lot Gordon. He knew he was coming through the
+pale darkness of the night some time before he was actually in sight
+by his cough. Lot Gordon had had for years a sharp cough which
+afflicted him particularly when he walked abroad in night air. It
+carried as far as the yelp of a dog; when Burr first heard it he
+stopped short, and looked irresolutely at the thicket beside the
+road. He had a half-impulse to slink in there among the snowy bushes
+and hide until his cousin passed by. Then he shook his head angrily
+and kept on.
+
+However, when the two men drew near each other Burr kept well to his
+side of the road and strode on rapidly, hoping his cousin might not
+recognize him. But Lot, with a hoarse laugh and another cough,
+swerved after him and jostled him roughly.
+
+"Can't cheat me, Burr Gordon," said he.
+
+"I don't want to cheat you," returned Burr, in a surly tone.
+
+"You can't if you do. Set me down anywhere in the woods when there's
+a wind, and I'll tell ye what the trees are if it's so dark you can't
+see a leaf by the way the boughs blow. The maples strike out stiff
+like dead men's arms, and the elms lash like live snakes, and the
+pines stir all together like women. I can tell the trees no matter
+how dark 'tis by the way they move, and I can tell a Gordon by the
+swing of his shoulders, no matter how fast he slinks by on the other
+side in the shadow. You don't set much by me, Burr, and I don't set
+any too much by you, but we've got to swing our shoulders one way,
+whether we will or no, because our father and our grandfather did
+before us. Good Lord, aren't men in leading-strings, no matter how
+high they kick!"
+
+"I can't stand here in the snow talking," said Burr, and he tried to
+push past. But the other man stood before him with another laugh and
+cough. "You aren't talking, Burr; I'm the one that's talking, and
+I've heard stuff that was worse to listen to. You'd better stand
+still."
+
+"I tell you I'm going," said Burr, with a thrust of his elbow in his
+cousin's side.
+
+"Well," said Lot, "go if you want to, or go if you don't want to.
+That last is what you're doing, Burr Gordon."
+
+"What do mean by that?"
+
+"You're going to see Dorothy Fair when you want to see Madelon
+Hautville, because you don't want to do what you want to. Well, go
+on. I'm going to see Madelon and hear her sing. I've given up trying
+to work against my own motions. It's no use; when you think you've
+done it, you haven't. You never can get out of this one gait that you
+were born to except in your own looking-glass. Go and court Dorothy
+Fair, and in spite of yourself you'll kiss the other girl when you're
+kissing her. Well, I sha'n't cheat Madelon Hautville that way."
+
+"You know--she will not--you know Madelon Hautville never--"
+stammered Burr Gordon, furiously.
+
+Lot laughed again. "You think she sets so much by you she'll never
+kiss me," said he. "Don't be too sure, Burr. Nature's nature, and the
+best of us come under it. Madelon Hautville's got her place, like all
+the rest. There isn't a rose that's too good to take a bee in. Go do
+your own courting, and trust me to do mine. Courting's in our
+blood--I sha'n't disgrace the family."
+
+Burr Gordon went past his cousin with a smothered ejaculation. Lot
+laughed again, and tramped, coughing, away to the Hautville house.
+When he drew near the house the chorus within were still practising
+"Strike the Timbrel."  When he opened the door and entered there was
+no cessation in the music, but suddenly the girl's voice seemed to
+gain new impulse and hurl itself in his face like a war-trumpet.
+
+Burr Gordon kept on to Minister Jonathan Fair's great house in the
+village, next the tavern. There was a light in the north parlor, and
+he knew Dorothy was expecting him. He raised the knocker, and knew
+when it fell that a girl's heart within responded to it with a wild
+beat.
+
+He waited until there was a heavy shuffle of feet in the hall and the
+door opened, and Minister Fair's black servant-woman stood there
+flaring a candle before his eyes.
+
+"Who be you?" said she, in her rich drone, which had yet a twang of
+hostility in it.
+
+Burr Gordon ignored her question. "Is Miss Dorothy at home?" said he.
+
+"Yes, she's at home, I s'pose," muttered the woman, grudgingly. She
+distrusted this young man as a suitor for Dorothy. The girl's mother
+had long been dead, and this old dark woman, whose very thoughts
+seemed to the village people to move on barbarian pivots of their
+own, had a jealous guardianship of her which exceeded that of her
+father.
+
+Now she filled up the doorway before Burr Gordon with her majestic,
+palpitating bulk, her great black face stiffened back with obstinacy.
+It was said that she had been born in Africa, and had been a princess
+in her own country; and, indeed, she bore herself like one now, and
+held up her orange-turbaned head as if it were crowned, and bore her
+candle like a flaming sceptre which brought out strange gleams of
+color and metallic lustres from her garments and the rows of beads on
+her black neck.
+
+Burr Gordon made an impatient yet deferential motion to enter. "I
+would like to see her a few minutes if she is at home," said he.
+
+The woman muttered something which might have been in her native
+dialect, the words were so rolled into each other under her thick
+tongue. Her small, sharp eyes were fairly malicious upon the young
+man's handsome face.
+
+"I don't know what you say," he said, half angrily. "Can't I see
+her?"
+
+"She's in the north parlor, I s'pose," muttered the black woman; and
+she stood aside and let Burr Gordon pass in, following him with her
+hostile eyes as he opened the north-parlor door. Dorothy Fair sat
+with her embroidery-work at the mahogany table, whereon a whole
+branch of candles burned in silver sticks. She was working a muslin
+collar for her own adornment, and she set a fine stitch in a sprig
+before she rose up, either to prove her self-command to herself or to
+Burr Gordon. She had also held herself quiet during the delay in the
+hall.
+
+Dorothy Fair came of a gentle and self-controlled race of New England
+ministers; but now her young heart carried her away. She stood up;
+her embroidery, with her scissors and bodkin, slid to the ground, and
+she came forward with her fair curls dropping around a face pink and
+smiling openly with love like a child's, and was, seemingly half of
+her own accord, in Burr Gordon's arms with her lips meeting his; and
+then they sat down side by side on the north-parlor sofa.
+
+Dorothy Fair's face was very sweet to see; her blue eyes and her soft
+lips were innocent and fond under her lover's gaze. Her little white
+hand clung to his like a baby's. There was a sweet hollow under her
+chin, above her fine lace collar. Her soft, fair curls smelt in his
+face of roses and lavender. The utter daintiness of this maiden
+Dorothy Fair was a separate charm and a fascination full of subtle
+and innocent earthiness to the senses of a lover. She appealed to his
+selfish delight like a sweet-scented flower, like a pink or a rose.
+
+Lot Gordon had been only half right in his analysis of his cousin's
+wooing. When Burr sat with his arm around this maiden's waist, with
+his face bent tenderly down towards the soft, pink cheek on his
+shoulder, this sweetness near at hand was wellnigh sufficient for
+him, and Dorothy's shy murmur of love in his ear overcame largely the
+memory of the other's wonderful song. A bee cares only for the honey
+and not for the flower, therefore one flower is as dear to him as
+another; and so it is with many a lover when he gets fairly to
+tasting love. The memory of the rose before fades, even if he never
+wore it. Then, too, Burr Gordon had a sense of approbation from his
+shrewder self which sustained him. This Dorothy Fair, the minister's
+daughter, of gentle New England lineage, the descendant of
+college-learned men, and of women who had held themselves with a fine
+dignity and mild reserve in the village society, the sole heiress of
+what seemed a goodly property to the simple needs of the day,
+appealed to his reason as well as his heart. He remained until near
+midnight, while the old black woman crouched with the patience of a
+watching animal outside the door, and he wooed Dorothy Fair with
+ardor and delight, although her softly affectionate kisses were to
+Madelon Hautville's as the fall of snow-flakes to drops of warm
+honey. And although after he had gone home and fallen asleep his
+dreams were mixed, still when he waked with the image of Madelon
+between himself and Dorothy, because sleep had set his heart free, it
+was still with that sense of approbation.
+
+Madelon Hautville was not considered a fair match for a young man who
+had claims to ambition. The Hautville family held a peculiar place in
+public estimation. They belonged not to any defined stratum of the
+village society, but formed rather a side ledge, a cropping, of quite
+another kind, at which people looked askance. One reason undoubtedly
+was the mixture of foreign blood which their name denoted. Anything
+of alien race was looked upon with a mixture of fear and aversion in
+this village of people whose blood had flowed in one course for
+generations. The Hautvilles were said to have French and Indian blood
+yet, in strong measure, in their veins; it was certain that they had
+both, although it was fairly back in history since the first
+Hautville, who, report said, was of a noble French family, had
+espoused an Iroquois Indian girl. The sturdy males of the family had
+handed down the name and the characteristics of the races through
+years of intermarriage with the English settlers. All the
+Hautvilles--the father, the four sons, and the daughter--were tall
+and dark, and straight as arrows, and they all had wondrous grace of
+manner, which abashed and half offended, while it charmed, the stiff
+village people. Not a young man in the village, no matter how finely
+attired in city-made clothing, had the courtly air of these Hautville
+sons, in their rude, half-woodland garb; not a girl, not even Dorothy
+Fair, could wear a gown of brocade with the grace, inherited from a
+far-away French grandmother, with which Madelon Hautville wore indigo
+cotton.
+
+Moreover, the whole family was as musical as a band of troubadours,
+and while that brought them into constant requisition and gave them
+an importance in the town, it yet caused them to be held with a
+certain cheapness. Music as an end of existence and means of
+livelihood was lightly estimated by the followers of the learned
+professions, the wielders of weighty doctrines and drugs, and also by
+the tillers of the stern New England soil. The Hautvilles, furnishing
+the music in church, and for dances and funerals, were regarded much
+in the light of mountebanks, and jugglers with sweet sounds. People
+wondered that Lot and Burr Gordon should go to their house so much.
+Not a week all winter but Burr had been there once or twice, and Lot
+had been there nearly every night when his cousin was not. And he
+stayed late also--this night he outstayed Burr at Dorothy Fair's. The
+music was kept up until a late hour, for Madelon proposed tune after
+tune with nervous ardor when her father and brothers seemed to flag.
+Nobody paid much attention to Lot; he was too constant a visitor. He
+settled into a favorite chair of his near the fire, and listened with
+the firelight playing over his delicate, peaked face. Now and then he
+coughed.
+
+Old David Hautville, the father, stood out in front of the hearth by
+his great bass-viol, leaning fondly over it like a lover over his
+mistress. David Hautville was a great, spare man--a body of muscles
+and sinews under dry, brown flesh, like an old oak-tree. His long,
+white mustache curved towards his ears with sharp sweeps, like doves'
+wings. His thick, white brows met over his keen, black eyes. He kept
+time with his head, jerking it impatiently now and then, when some
+one lagged or sped ahead in the musical race.
+
+Three of the Hautville sons were men grown. One, Louis, laid his
+dark, smooth cheek caressingly against the violin which he played.
+Eugene sang the sonorous tenor, and Abner the bass, like an organ.
+The youngest son, Richard, small and slender as a girl, so like
+Madelon that he might have been taken for her had he been dressed in
+feminine gear, lifted his eager face at her side and raised his
+piercing, sweet treble, which seemed to pass beyond hearing into
+fancy. Madelon, her brown throat swelling above her lace tucker, like
+a bird's, stood in the midst of the men, and sang and sang, and her
+wonderful soprano flowed through the harmony like a river of honey;
+and yet now and then it came with a sudden fierce impetus, as if she
+would force some enemy to bay with music. Madelon was slender, but
+full of curves which were like the soft breast of a bird before an
+enemy. Sometimes as she sang she flung out her slender hands with a
+nervous gesture which had hostility in it. Truth was that she hated
+Lot Gordon both on his own account and because he came instead of his
+cousin Burr. She had expected Burr that night; she had taken his
+cousin's hand on the doorlatch for his. He had not been to see her
+for three weeks, and her heart was breaking as she sang. Any face
+which had appeared to her instead of his in the doorway that night
+would have been to her as the face of a bitter enemy or a black
+providence, but Lot Gordon was in himself hateful to her. She knew,
+too, by a curious revulsion of all her senses from unwelcome desire,
+that he loved her, and the love of any man except Burr Gordon was to
+her like a serpent.
+
+She would not look at him, but somehow she knew that his eyes were
+upon her, and that they were full of love and malice, and she knew
+not which she dreaded more. She resolved that he should not have a
+word with her that night if she could help it, and so she urged on
+her father and her brothers with new tunes until they would have no
+more, and went off to bed--all except the boy Richard. She whispered
+in his ear, and he stayed behind with her while she mixed some bread
+and set it for rising on the hearth.
+
+Lot Gordon sat watching her. There was a hungry look in his hollow
+blue eyes. Now and then he coughed painfully, and clapped his hand to
+his chest with an impatient movement.
+
+"Well, whether I ever get to heaven or not, I've heard music," he
+said, when she passed him with the bread-bowl on her hip and her soft
+arm curved around it. He reached out his slender hand and caught hold
+of her dress-skirt; she jerked away with a haughty motion, and set
+the bowl on the hearth. "You'd better rake down the fire now,
+Richard," said she.
+
+The boy jostled Lot roughly as he passed around him to get the
+fire-shovel. Lot looked at the clock, and the hand was near twelve.
+He arose slowly.
+
+"I met Burr on his way down to Parson Fair's," he said.
+
+Madelon covered up the bread closely with a linen towel. There was a
+surging in her ears, as if misery itself had a veritable sound, and
+her face was as white as the ashes on the hearth, but she kept it
+turned away from Lot.
+
+"Well," said he, in his husky drawl, "a rose isn't a rose to a bee,
+she's only a honey-pot; and she's only one out of a shelfful to him;
+she can't complain, it's what she was born to. If she finds any fault
+it's got to be with creation, and what's one rose to face creation?
+There's nothing to do but to make the best of it. Good-night,
+Madelon."
+
+"Good-night," said Madelon. The color had come back to her cheeks,
+and she looked back at him proudly, standing beside her bread-bowl on
+the hearth.
+
+Lot passed out, turning his delicate face over his shoulder with a
+subtle smile as he went. Richard clapped the door to after him with a
+jar that shook the house, and shot the bolt viciously. "I'll get my
+gun and follow him if you say so, and then I'll find Burr Gordon," he
+said, turning a furious face to his sister.
+
+"Would you make me a laughing-stock to the whole town?" said she.
+"Rake down the fire; it's time to go to bed."
+
+She looked as proudly at her brother as she had done at Lot. The
+resemblance between the two faces faded a little as they confronted
+each other. A virile quality in the boy's anger made the difference
+of sex more apparent. He looked at her, holding his wrath, as it
+were, like a two-edged sword which must smite some one. "If I thought
+you cared about that man that has jilted you--and I've heard the talk
+about it," said he, "I'd feel like shooting _you_."
+
+"You needn't shoot," returned Madelon.
+
+The boy looked at her as angrily as if she were Burr Gordon. Suddenly
+her mouth quivered a little and her eyes fell. The boy flung both his
+arms around her. "I don't care," he said, brokenly, in his sweet
+treble--"I don't care, you're the handsomest girl in the town, and
+the best and the smartest, and not one can sing like you, and I'll
+kill any man that treats you ill--I will, I will!"  He was sobbing on
+his sister's shoulder; she stood still, looking over his dark head at
+the snow-hung window and the night outside. Her lips and eyes were
+quite steady now; she had recovered self-control when her brother's
+failed him, as if by some curious mental seesaw.
+
+"No man can treat me ill unless I take it ill," said she, "and that
+I'll do for no man. There's no killing to be done, and if there were
+I'd do it myself and ask nobody. Come, Richard, let me go; I'm going
+to bed."  She gave the boy's head a firm pat. "There's a turnover in
+the pantry, under a bowl on the lowermost shelf," said she; and she
+laughed in his passionate, flushed face when he raised it.
+
+"I don't care, I will!" he cried.
+
+"Go and get your turnover; I saved it for you," said she, with a
+push.
+
+Neither of them dreamed that Lot Gordon had been watching them,
+standing in a snow-drift under the south window, his eyes peering
+over the sill, his forehead wet with a snow-wreath, stifling back his
+cough. When at last the candlelight went out in the great kitchen he
+crept stiffly and wearily through the snow.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+Lot Gordon lived about half a mile away in the old Gordon homestead
+alone, except for an old servant-woman and her husband, who managed
+his house for him and took care of the farm. Lot himself did not work
+in the common acceptance of the term. His father had left him quite a
+property, and he did not need to toil for his bread. People called
+him lazy. He owned nearly as many books as the parson and the lawyer.
+He often read all night it was said, and he roamed the woods in all
+seasons. Under low-hanging winter boughs and summer arches did Lot
+Gordon pry and slink and lie in wait, his fine, sharp face peering
+through snowy tunnels or white spring thickets like a white fox,
+hungrily intent upon the secrets of nature.
+
+There was a deep mystery in this to the village people. They could
+not fathom the reason for a man's haunting wild places like a wild
+animal unless he hunted and trapped like the Hautville sons. They
+were suspicious of dark motives, upon which they exercised their
+imaginations.
+
+Lot Gordon's talk, moreover, was an enigma to them. He was no
+favorite, and only his goodly property tempered his ill repute.
+People could not help identifying him, in a measure, with his noble
+old house, with the stately pillared portico, with his silver-plate
+and damask and mahogany, which his great-grandfather had brought from
+the old country, with his fine fields and his money in the bank. He
+held, moreover, a large mortgage on the house opposite, where Burr
+Gordon lived with his mother. Burr's father and Lot's, although sons
+of one shrewd father, had been of very different financial abilities.
+Lot's father kept his property intact, never wasting, but adding from
+others' waste. Burr's plunged into speculation, built a new house,
+for which he could not pay, married a wife who was not thrifty, and
+when his father died had anticipated the larger portion of his
+birthright. So Lot's father succeeded to nearly all the family
+estates, and in time absorbed the rest. Lot, at his father's death,
+had inherited the mortgage upon the estate of Burr and his mother.
+Burr's father had died some time before. Lot was rumored to be
+harder, in the matter of exacting heavy interest, than his father had
+been. It was said that Burr was far behind in his payments, and that
+Lot would foreclose. Burr had a better head than his father's, but he
+had terrible odds against him. There was only one chance for his
+release from difficulty, people thought. All the property, by a
+provision in the grandfather's will, was to fall to him if Lot died
+unmarried. Lot was twenty years older than Burr, and he coughed.
+
+"Burr Gordon ain't makin' out much now," people said; "the paint's
+all off his house and his land's run down, but there's dead men's
+shoes with gold buckles in the path ahead of him."
+
+Burr thought of it sometimes, although he turned his face from the
+thought, and Lot considered it when he took the mortgage note out of
+his desk and scored another installment of unpaid interest on it. "If
+a man's only his own debtor he won't be very hard on himself," he
+said aloud, and laughed. Old Margaret Bean, his housekeeper, looked
+at him over her spectacles, but she did not know what he meant. She
+prepared many a valuable remedy for his cough from herbs and roots,
+but Lot would never taste them, and she made her old husband swallow
+them all as preventatives of colds, that they should not be wasted.
+Lot was coughing harder lately. To-night, after he returned from the
+Hautvilles', he had one paroxysm after another. He did not go to bed,
+but huddled over the fire wrapped in a shawl, with a leather-bound
+book on his knees, all night, holding to his chest when he coughed,
+then turning to his book again.
+
+When daylight was fully in the room he blew out the candle, and went
+over to the window and looked out across the road at the house
+opposite, which had always been called the "new house" to distinguish
+it from the old Gordon homestead. It was not so solid and noble as
+the other, but it had sundry little touches of later times, which his
+father had always characterized as wasteful follies. For one thing,
+it was elevated ostentatiously far above the road-level upon terraces
+surmounted by a flight of stone steps. It fairly looked down, like
+any spirit of a younger age, upon the older house, which might have
+been regarded in a way as its progenitor.
+
+The smoke was coming out of the kitchen chimney in the ell. Lot
+Gordon looked across. Burr was clearing the snow from the stone steps
+over the terraces. There had never been any lack of energy and
+industry in Burr to account for his flagging fortunes. He arose
+betimes every morning. Lot, standing well behind the dimity curtain,
+watched him flinging the snow aside like spray, his handsome face
+glowing like a rose.
+
+"I suppose he is going to the party at the tavern to-night," Lot
+murmured. Suddenly his face took on a piteous, wistful look like a
+woman's; tears stood in his blue eyes. He doubled over with a violent
+fit of coughing, then went back to his chair and his book.
+
+This party had been the talk of the village for several weeks. It was
+to be an unusually large one. People were coming from all the towns
+roundabout. Burr Gordon had been one of the ringleaders of the
+enterprise. All day long he worked over the preparations, dragging
+out evergreen garlands from under the snow in the woods, cutting
+hemlock boughs, and trimming the ball-room in the tavern. Towards
+night he heard a piece of news which threatened to bring everything
+to a standstill. The dusk was thickening fast; Burr and the two young
+men who were working with him were hurrying to finish the decorations
+before candlelight when Richard Hautville came in. Burr started when
+he saw him. He looked so like his sister in the dim light that he
+thought for a moment she was there.
+
+Richard did not notice him at all. He hustled by him roughly and
+approached the other two young men. "Louis can't fiddle to-night," he
+announced, curtly. The young men stared at him in dismay.
+
+"What's the trouble?" asked Burr.
+
+"He's hurt his arm," replied Richard; but he still addressed the
+other two, and made as if he were not answering Burr.
+
+"Broke it?" asked one of the others.
+
+"No; sprained it. He was clearing the snow off the barn roof and the
+ladder fell. It's all black-and-blue, and he can't lift it enough to
+fiddle to-night."
+
+The three young men looked at each other.
+
+"What's going to be done?" said one.
+
+"I don't know," said Burr. "There's Davy Barrett, over to the Four
+Corners--I suppose we might get him if we sent right over."
+
+"You can't get him," said Richard Hautville, still addressing the
+other two, as if they had spoken. "Louis said you couldn't. His
+wife's got the typhus-fever, and he's up nights watching with
+her--won't let anybody else. You can't get him."
+
+"We can't have a ball without a fiddler," one young man said,
+soberly.
+
+"Maybe Madelon would lilt for the dancing," Burr Gordon said; and
+then he colored furiously, as if he had startled himself in saying
+it.
+
+The boy turned on him. "Maybe you think my sister will lilt for you
+to dance, Burr Gordon!" cried he, and his face blazed white in Burr's
+eyes, and he shook his slender brown fist.
+
+"Nobody wants your sister to lilt if she isn't willing to," Burr
+returned, in a hard voice; and he snatched up a hemlock bough, and
+went away with it to the other side of the ball-room.
+
+"My sister won't lilt for you, and you can have your ball the best
+way you can!" shouted the boy, his angry eyes following Burr. Then he
+went out of the ball-room with a leap, and slammed the door so that
+the tavern trembled.
+
+The young men chuckled. "Injun blood is up," said one.
+
+"You'll be scalped, Burr," called the other.
+
+Burr came over to them with an angry stride. "Oh, quit fooling!" said
+he, impatiently. "What's going to be done?"
+
+"Nothing can be done; we shall have to give the ball up for to-night
+unless you can get Madelon Hautville to lilt for the dancing,"
+returned one, and the other nodded assent. "That's the state of the
+case," said he.
+
+Burr scraped a foot impatiently on the waxed floor. "Go and ask her
+yourself, Daniel Plympton," said he. "I don't see why it has all got
+to come on to me."
+
+"Can't," replied Daniel Plympton, with a laugh. "Remember the falling
+out Eugene and I had at the house-raising? I ain't going to his house
+to ask his sister to lilt for my dancing."
+
+"You, then, Abner Little," said Burr, peremptorily, to the other
+young man. He had a fair, nervous face, and he was screwing his
+forehead anxiously over the situation.
+
+"Can't nohow, Burr," said he. "I've got to drive four miles home, and
+milk, and take care of the horses, and shave, and get dressed, and
+then drive another three miles for my girl. I'm going to take one of
+the Morse girls, over at Summer Falls. I haven't got time to go down
+to the Hautvilles', and that's the truth, Burr."
+
+"You'll have to go yourself, Burr," said Daniel Plympton, with a
+half-laugh.
+
+"I can't," said Burr, "and I won't, if we give the ball up."
+
+"What will all the out-of-town folks say?"
+
+"I don't care what they say--they can play forfeits."
+
+"Forfeits!" returned Daniel Plympton with scorn. "What's kissing to
+dancing?"  Daniel Plympton was somewhat stout but curiously light of
+foot, and accounted the best dancer in town. As he spoke he sprang up
+on his toes as if he had winged heels. "Forfeits!" repeated he,
+jerking his great flaxen head.
+
+"Well, you can go yourself, then, and ask Madelon Hautville to lilt,"
+said Burr.
+
+"I tell you I can't, Burr--I ain't mean enough."
+
+"Well, I won't, and that's flat."
+
+"I've got to go home, anyway," said Abner Little. "What I want to
+know is--is there going to be any ball?"
+
+"Oh, get your girl anyhow, Ab," returned Daniel, with a great laugh;
+"there'll be something. If there ain't dancing, there'll be kissing,
+and that'll suit her just as well. And if she can't get enough here,
+why there's the ride home. Lord, I'd get a girl nearer home! You've
+got to drive six miles out of your way to Summer Falls and back. As
+for me, the quicker I get a girl off my hands the better. I'm going
+to take Nancy Blake because she lives next door to the tavern. Go
+along with ye, Ab; Burr and I will settle it some way."
+
+But it looked for some time after Abner Little left as if there would
+be no ball that night. They could not have any dance unless Madelon
+Hautville would sing for it, and both Daniel Plympton and Burr Gordon
+were determined not to ask her.
+
+At half-past seven Madelon was all dressed for the ball, and neither
+of them had come to see her about it. She and all her brothers except
+Louis were going. They wondered who would play for the dancing, but
+supposed some arrangements would be made. "Burr Gordon will put it
+through somehow," said Louis. "Maybe he'll ride over to Farnham
+Hollow and get Luke Corliss to fiddle."  Louis sat discontentedly by
+the fire, with his arm soaking in cider-brandy and wormwood.
+
+"Farnham Hollow is ten miles away," said Richard.
+
+"His horse is fast; he'd get him here by eight o'clock," returned
+Louis.
+
+Madelon was radiant. In spite of herself, she was full of hope in
+going to the ball. She knew Dorothy Fair would not be present, since
+her father was the orthodox parson, and she had seen her own face in
+her glass. With her rival away, what could not a face like that do
+with a heart that leaned towards it of its own nature? Madelon dimly
+felt that Burr Gordon had to resist himself as well as her in this
+matter. She had tended a monthly rose in the south window all winter,
+and she wore two red roses in her black braids. Her cheeks and her
+lips were fuller of warm red life than the roses. She lowered her
+black eyes before her father and her brothers, for there was a light
+in them which she could not subdue, which belonged to Burr Gordon
+only. No costly finery had Madelon Hautville, but she had done some
+cunning needle-work on an old black-satin gown of her mother's, and
+it was fitted as softly over her sweet curves as a leaf over a bud. A
+long garland of flowers after her own design had she wrought in
+bright-colored silks around the petticoat, and there were knots of
+red ribbon to fasten the loopings here and there. And she wore
+another red rose in her lace tucker against her soft brown bosom.
+Madelon wore, too, trim black-silk stockings with red clocks over her
+slender ankles, and little black-satin shoes with steel buckles and
+red rosettes. Every one of her brothers, except the youngest,
+Richard, must needs compare her in his own heart, to her
+disparagement, with some maid not his sister, but they all viewed her
+with pride. Old David Hautville's eyes, under his thick, white brows,
+followed her and dwelt upon her as she moved around the kitchen.
+
+Madelon had got out her red cloak and her silk hood, and it was
+nearly time to start when there was a knock on the door. Madelon's
+face was pale in a second, then red again. She pushed Richard aside.
+"I'll go to the door," said she.
+
+She knew somehow that it was Burr Gordon, and when she opened the
+door he stood there. He looked curiously embarrassed, but she did not
+notice that. His mere presence for the moment seemed to fill all her
+comprehension. She had no eye for shades of expression.
+
+"Come in," said she, all blushing and trembling before him, and yet
+with a certain dignity which never quite deserted her.
+
+"Can I see you a minute?" Burr said, awkwardly.
+
+"Come this way."
+
+Madelon led the way into the best room, where there was no fire. It
+had not been warmed all winter, except on nights when Burr had come
+courting her. In the midst of it the great curtained bedstead reared
+itself, holding its feather-bed like a drift of snow. The floor was
+sanded in a fine, small pattern, there were white tasselled curtains
+at the windows, and there was a tall chest of drawers that reached
+the ceiling. The room was just as Madelon's mother, who had been one
+of the village girls, had left it.
+
+Madelon glanced at the hearth, where she had laid the wood
+symmetrically--all ready to be kindled at a moment's notice should
+Burr come. "I'll light the fire," said she, in a trembling voice.
+
+"No, I can't stop," returned the young man. "I've got to go right up
+to the tavern. Look here, Madelon--"
+
+"Well?" she murmured, trembling.
+
+"I want to know if--look here, won't you lilt for the dancing
+to-night, Madelon?"
+
+Madelon's face changed. "That's all he came for," she thought. She
+turned away from him. "You'd better get Luke Corliss to fiddle," she
+said, coldly.
+
+"We can't. I started to go over there, and I met a man that lives
+next door to him, and he said it was no use, for Luke had gone down
+to Winfield to fiddle at a ball there."
+
+"I don't feel like lilting to-night," said Madelon.
+
+The young man colored. "Well," said he, in a stiff, embarrassed
+voice, and he turned towards the door, "we won't have any ball
+to-night, that's all," he added.
+
+"Well, you can go visiting instead," returned Madelon, suddenly.
+
+"I'd rather go a-visiting--here!" cried Burr, with a quick fervor,
+and he turned back and came close to her.
+
+Madelon looked at him sharply, steeling her heart against his tender
+tone, but he met her gaze with passionate eyes.
+
+"Oh, Madelon, you look so beautiful to-night!" he whispered,
+hoarsely. Her eyes fell before his. She made, whether she would or
+not, a motion towards him, and he put his arms around her. They
+kissed again and again, lingering upon each kiss as if it were a
+foothold in heaven. A great rapture of faith in her lover and his
+love came over Madelon. She said to herself that they had lied--they
+had all lied! Burr had never courted Dorothy Fair. She believed, with
+her whole heart and soul, that he loved her and her alone. And,
+indeed, she was at that time, at that minute, right and not deceived;
+for Burr Gordon was one of those who can encompass love in one tense
+only, and that the present; and they who love only in the present,
+hampered by no memories and no dreams, yield out love's sweetness
+fully. All Burr Gordon's soul was in his kisses and his fond eyes,
+and her own crept out to meet it with perfect faith.
+
+"I will lilt for the dancing," she whispered.
+
+The Hautvilles were going to the ball on their wood-sled, drawn by
+oxen. David was to drive them, and take the team home. It was already
+before the door when Burr came out, and Madelon asked him to ride
+with them, but he refused. "I've got to go home first," he said, and
+plunged off quickly down the old road, the short-cut to his house.
+
+Madelon Hautville, in her red cloak and her great silk hood, stood in
+the midst of her brothers on the wood-sled, and the oxen drew them
+ponderously to the ball. The tavern was all alight. Many other sleds
+were drawn up before the door; indeed, certain of the young men who
+had not their especial sweethearts took their ox-sleds and went from
+door to door collecting the young women. Many a jingling load slipped
+along the snowy road to the tavern that night, and the ball-room
+filled rapidly.
+
+At eight o'clock the ball opened. Madelon stood up in the little
+gallery allotted to the violins and lilted, and the march began. Two
+and two, the young men and the girls swung around the room. Madelon
+lilted with her eyes upon the moving throng, gay as a garden in a
+wind; and suddenly her heart stood still, although she lilted on.
+Down on the floor below Burr Gordon led the march, with Dorothy Fair
+on his arm. Dorothy Fair, waving a great painted fan with the
+tremulous motion of a butterfly's wing, with her blue brocade
+petticoat tilting airily as she moved, like an inverted bell-flower,
+with a locket set in brilliants flashing on her white neck, with her
+pink-and-white face smiling out with gentle gayety from her fair
+curls, stepped delicately, pointing out her blue satin toes, around
+the ball-room, with one little white hand on Burr Gordon's arm.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+Suddenly all Madelon's beauty was cheapened in her own eyes. She saw
+herself swart and harsh-faced as some old savage squaw beside this
+fair angel. She turned on herself as well as on her recreant lover
+with rage and disdain--and all the time she lilted without one break.
+
+The ball swung on and on, and Madelon, up in the musicians' gallery,
+sang the old country-dances in the curious dissyllabic fashion termed
+lilting. It never occurred to her to wonder how it was that Dorothy
+Fair, the daughter of the orthodox minister, should be at the
+ball--she who had been brought up to believe in the sinful and
+hellward tendencies of the dance. Madelon only grasped the fact that
+she was there with Burr; but others wondered, and the surprise had
+been great when Dorothy in her blue brocade had appeared in the
+ball-room.
+
+This had been largely of late years a liberal and Unitarian village,
+but Parson Fair had always held stanchly to his stern orthodox
+tenets, and promulgated them undiluted before his thinning
+congregations and in his own household. Dorothy could not only not
+play cards or dance, but she could not be present at a party where
+the cards were produced or the fiddle played. There was, indeed, a
+rumor that she had learned to dance when she was in Boston at school,
+but no one knew for certain.
+
+Dorothy Fair was advancing daintily between the two long lines,
+holding up her blue brocade to clear her blue-satin shoes, to meet
+the young man from the opposite corner, flinging out gayly towards
+her, when suddenly, with no warning whatever, a great dark woman sped
+after her through the dance, like a wild animal of her native woods.
+She reached out her black hand and caught Dorothy by the white,
+lace-draped arm, and she whispered loud in her ear.
+
+The people near, finding it hard to understand the African woman's
+thick tongue, could not exactly vouch for the words, but the purport
+of her hurried speech they did not mistake. Parson Fair had
+discovered Mistress Dorothy's absence, and home she must hasten at
+once. It was evident enough to everybody that staid and decorous
+Dorothy had run away to the ball with Burr Gordon, and a smothered
+titter ran down the files of the Virginia reel.
+
+Burr Gordon cast a fierce glance around; then he sprang to Dorothy's
+side, and she looked palely and piteously up at him.
+
+He pulled her hand through his arm and led her out of the ball-room,
+with the black woman following sulkily, muttering to herself. Burr
+bent closely down over Dorothy's drooping head as they passed out of
+the door. "Don't be frightened, sweetheart," whispered he. Madelon
+saw him as she lilted, and it seemed to her that she heard what he
+said.
+
+It was not long after when she felt a touch on her shoulder as she
+sat resting between the dances, gazing with her proud, bright eyes
+down at the merry, chattering throng below. She turned, and her
+brother Richard stood there with a strange young man, and Richard
+held Louis's fiddle on his shoulder.
+
+"This is Mr. Otis, Madelon," said Richard, "and he came up from
+Kingston to the ball, and he can fiddle as well as Louis, and he said
+'twas a shame you should lilt all night and not have a chance to
+dance yourself; and so I ran home and got Louis's fiddle, and there
+are plenty down there to jump at the chance of you for a
+partner--and--" the boy leaned forward and whispered in his sister's
+ear: "Burr Gordon's gone--and Dorothy Fair."
+
+Madelon turned her beautiful, proud face towards the stranger, and
+did not notice Richard at all. "Thank you, sir," said she, inclining
+her long neck; "but I care not to dance--I'd as lief lilt."
+
+"But," said the strange young man, pressing forward impetuously and
+gazing into her black eyes, "you look tired; 'tis a shame to work you
+so."
+
+"I rest between the dances, and I am not tired," said Madelon,
+coldly.
+
+"I beg you to let me fiddle for the rest of the ball," pleaded the
+young man. "Let me fiddle while you dance; you may be sure I'll
+fiddle my best for you."
+
+A tender note came into his voice, and, curiously enough, Madelon did
+not resent it, although she had never seen him before and he had no
+right. She looked up in his bright fair face with sudden hesitation,
+and his blue eyes bent half humorously, half lovingly upon her. She
+had a fierce desire to get away from this place, out into the night,
+and home. "I do not care to dance," said she, falteringly; "but I
+could go home, if you felt disposed to fiddle."
+
+"Then go home and rest," cried the stranger, brightly. "'Tis a strain
+on the throat to lilt so long, and you cannot put in a new string as
+you can in a fiddle."
+
+With that the young man came forward to the front of the little
+gallery, and Madelon yielded up her place hesitatingly.
+
+"But you cannot dance yourself, sir," said she.
+
+"I have danced all I want to to-night," he replied, and began tuning
+the fiddle.
+
+"I'm sure I'm much obliged to you, sir," Madelon said, and got her
+hood and cloak from the back of the gallery with no more parley.
+
+The young man cast admiring glances after her as she went out, with
+her young brother at her heels.
+
+"I'm going home with you," Richard said to her as they went down the
+gallery stairs.
+
+"Not a step," said she. "You've just been after the fiddle, and
+they're going to dance the Fisher's Hornpipe next."
+
+"You'll be afraid in that lonesome stretch after you leave the
+village."
+
+"Afraid!"  There was a ring of despairing scorn in the girl's voice,
+as if she faced already such woe that the supposition of new terror
+was an absurdity.
+
+They had come down to the ball-room floor, and were standing directly
+in front of the musicians' gallery. The young fiddler, Jim Otis,
+leaned over and looked at them.
+
+"I don't care," said Richard, "I won't let you go alone unless you
+take my knife."
+
+Madelon laughed. "What nonsense!" said she, and tried to pass her
+brother.
+
+But Richard held her by the arm while he rummaged in his pocket for
+the great clasp-knife which he had earned himself by the sale of some
+rabbit-skins, and which was the pride of his heart and his dearest
+treasure, and opened it. "Here," said he, and he forced the
+clasp-knife into his sister's hand. Otis, leaning over the gallery,
+saw it all. Many of the dancers had gone to supper; there was no
+other person very near them. "If you should meet a _bear_, you could
+kill him with that knife--it's so strong," said the boy. "If you
+don't take it I'll go home with you, and it's so late father won't
+let me come out again to-night."
+
+"Well, I'll take it," Madelon said, wearily, and she passed out of
+the ball-room with the knife in her hand, under her cloak.
+
+When she got out in the cold night air she sped along fast over the
+creaking snow, still holding the knife clutched fast in her hand. She
+began to lilt again as she went, and again Burr and Dorothy danced
+together before her eyes. She passed Parson Fair's house, and the
+best-room windows were lighted. She thought that Burr was there, and
+she lilted more loudly the Virginia reel.
+
+After Parson Fair's house was some time left behind, and she had come
+into the lengthy stretch of road, she saw a shadowy figure ahead. She
+could not at first tell whether it was moving towards or from
+her--whether it was a man or a woman; or, indeed, whether it were not
+a forest tree encroaching on the road and moving in the wind. She
+kept on swiftly, holding her knife under her cloak. She had stopped
+singing.
+
+Presently she saw that the figure was a man, and coming her way; and
+then her heart stood still, for she knew by the swing of his
+shoulders that it was Burr Gordon. She threw back her proud head and
+sped along towards him, grasping her knife under her cloak and
+looking neither to the right nor left. She swerved not her eyes a
+hair's-breadth when she came close to him--so close that their
+shoulders almost touched in passing in the narrow path.
+
+Suddenly there was a quick sigh in her ear--"Oh, Madelon!"  Then an
+arm was flung around her waist and hot lips were pressed to her own.
+
+The mixed blood of two races, in which action is quick to follow
+impulse, surged up to Madelon's head. She drew the hand which held
+the knife from under her cloak and struck. "Kiss me again, Burr
+Gordon, if you dare!" she cried out, and her cry was met by a groan
+as he fell away from her into the snow.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+Madelon stood for a second looking at the dark, prostrate form as one
+of her Iroquois ancestors might have looked at a fallen foe before he
+drew his scalping-knife; then suddenly the surging of the savage
+blood in her ears grew faint. She fell down on her knees beside him.
+"Have I killed you, Burr?" she said, and bent her face down to
+his--and it was not Burr, but Lot Gordon!
+
+The white, peaked face smiled up at her out of the snow. "You haven't
+killed me if I die, since you took me for Burr," whispered Lot
+Gordon.
+
+"Are you much hurt?"
+
+"I--don't know. The knife has gone a little way into my side. It has
+not reached my heart, but that was hurt unto death already by life,
+so this matters not."
+
+Madelon felt along his side and hit the handle of the clasp-knife,
+firmly fixed.
+
+"Don't try to draw it out--you cannot," said Lot, and his pain forced
+a groan from him. "I'll live, if I can, till the wound is healed for
+the sake of your peace. I'd be content to die of it, since you gave
+it in vengeance for another man's kiss, if it were not for you. But
+they shall never know--they shall never--know."  Lot's voice died
+away in a faint murmur between his parted lips; his eyes stared up
+with no meaning in them at the wintry stars.
+
+Madelon ran back on the road to the village, taking great leaps
+through the snow, straining her eyes ahead. Now and then she cried
+out hoarsely, as if she really saw some one, "Hullo! hullo!"  At the
+curve of the road she turned a headlong corner and ran roughly
+against a man who was hurrying towards her; and this time it was Burr
+Gordon.
+
+Burr reeled back with the shock; then his face peered into hers with
+fear and wonder. "Is it you?" he stammered out. "What is the matter?"
+
+But Madelon caught his arm in a hard grip. "Come, quick!" she gasped,
+and pulled him along the road after her.
+
+"What is the matter?" Burr demanded, half yielding and half
+resisting.
+
+Madelon faced him suddenly as they sped along. "I met your cousin Lot
+just below here and he kissed me, and I took him for you and stabbed
+him, if you must know," she sobbed out, dryly.
+
+Burr gave a choking cry of horror.
+
+"I think I--have killed him," said she, and pulled him on faster.
+
+"And you meant to kill me?"
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+"I wish to God you had!" Burr cried out, with a sudden fierce anger
+at himself and her; and now he hurried on faster than she.
+
+Lot was quite motionless when they reached him. Burr threw himself
+down in the snow and leaned his ear to his cousin's heart. Madelon
+stood over them, panting. Suddenly a merry roulade of whistling broke
+the awful stillness. Two men were coming down the road whistling
+"Roy's Wife of Alidivalloch" as clearly soft and sweet as flutes,
+accented with human gayety and mirth.
+
+On came the merry whistlers. Burr sprang up and grasped Madelon
+Hautville's arm. "He isn't dead," he whispered, hoarsely. "Somebody's
+coming. Go home, quick!"
+
+But Madelon looked at him with despairing obstinacy. "I'll stay,"
+said she.
+
+"I tell you, go! Somebody is coming. I'll get help. I'll send for the
+doctor. Go home!"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Oh, Madelon, if you have ever loved me, go home!"
+
+Madelon turned away at that. "I'll be there when they come for me,"
+said she, and went swiftly down the road and out of sight in the
+converging distance of trees, with the snow muffling her footsteps.
+
+When she reached home she groped her way into the living-room, which
+was lighted only by the low, red gleam of the coals on the hearth.
+Her father's gruff voice called out from the bedroom beyond: "That
+you, Madelon?"
+
+"Yes," said she, and lighted a candle at the coals.
+
+"Have the boys come?"
+
+"No."
+
+Madelon went up the steep stairs to her chamber, but before she
+opened her door her brother Louis's voice, broken with pain, besought
+her to come into his room and bathe his sprained shoulder for him.
+She went in, set the candle on the table, and rubbed in the
+cider-brandy and wormwood without a word. Louis, in the midst of his
+pain, kept looking up wonderingly at his sister's face. It looked as
+if it were frozen. She did not seem to see him. Nothing about her
+seemed alive but her gently moving hands.
+
+Suddenly he gave a startled cry. "What's that? Have you cut your
+hand, Madelon?"  Madelon glanced at her hand, and there was a broad
+red stain over the palm and three of her fingers.
+
+"No," said she, and went on rubbing.
+
+"But it looks like blood!" cried Louis, knitting his pale brows at
+her.
+
+Madelon made no reply.
+
+"Madelon, what is that on your hand?"
+
+"Blood."
+
+"How came it there?"
+
+"You'll know to-morrow."  Madelon put the stopper in the cider-brandy
+and wormwood bottle; then she covered up the wounded arm and went
+out.
+
+"Madelon, what is it? What is the matter? What ails you?" Louis
+called after her.
+
+"You'll know to-morrow," said she, and shut her chamber door, which
+was nearly opposite Louis's. His youngest brother Richard occupied
+the same room, having his little cot at the other side, under the
+window. When he came in, an hour later, Louis turned to him eagerly.
+
+"Has anything happened?" he demanded.
+
+The boy's face, which was always so like his sister's, had the same
+despair in it now. "Don't know of anything that's happened," he
+returned, surlily.
+
+"What ails Madelon?"
+
+"I tell you I don't know."  Richard would say no more. He blew out
+his candle and tumbled into bed, turned his face to the window and
+lay awake until and hour before dawn. Then he arose, dressed himself,
+and went down-stairs. He put more wood on the hearth fire, then knelt
+down before it, and puffed out his boyish cheeks at the bellows until
+the new flames crept through the smoke. Then he lighted the lantern,
+and went to the barn to milk and feed the stock. That was always
+Richard's morning task, and he always on his way thither replenished
+the hearth fire, that his sister Madelon might have a lighter and
+speedier task at preparing breakfast. Madelon usually arose a
+half-hour after Richard, and she was not behindhand this morning. She
+entered the great living-room, lit the candles, and went about
+getting breakfast. Human daily needs arise and set on tragedy as
+remorselessly as the sun.
+
+Madelon Hautville, who had washed but a few hours ago the stain of
+murder from her hand, in whose heart was an unsounded depth of
+despair, mixed up the corn-meal daintily with cream, and baked the
+cakes which her father and brothers loved before the fire, and laid
+the table. She had always attended to the needs of the males of her
+family with the stern faithfulness of an Indian squaw. Now, as she
+worked, the wonder, softer than her other emotions, was upon her as
+to how they would get on when she was in prison and after she was
+dead; for she made no doubt that she had killed Lot Gordon and the
+sheriff would be there presently for her, and she felt plainly the
+fretting of the rope around her soft neck. She hoped they would not
+come for her until breakfast was prepared and eaten, the dishes
+cleared away, and the house tidied; but she listened like a savage
+for a foot-fall and a hand at the door. She had packed a little
+bundle ready to take with her before she left her chamber. Her cloak
+and hood were laid out on the bed.
+
+When she sat down at the table with her father and brothers, all of
+them except Richard and Louis stared at her with open amazement and
+questioned her. Richard and Louis stared furtively at their sister's
+face, as stiff, set, and pale as if she were dead, but they asked no
+questions. Madelon said, in a voice that was not hers, that she was
+not sick, and put pieces of Indian cake into her untasting mouth and
+listened. But breakfast was well over and the dishes put away before
+anybody came. And then it was not the sheriff to hale her to prison
+on a charge of murder, but an old man from the village big with news.
+
+He was a relative of the Hautvilles, an uncle on the mother's side,
+old and broken, scarcely able to find his feeble way on his shrunken
+legs through the snow; but, with the instinct of gossip, the sharp
+nose for his neighbors' affairs, still alert in him, he had arisen at
+dawn to canvass the village, and had come thither at first, since he
+anticipated that he might possibly have the delight of bringing the
+intelligence before any of the family had heard it elsewhere. He came
+in, dragging his old, snow-laden feet, tapping heavily with his stout
+stick, and settled, cackling, into a chair.
+
+"Heard the news?" queried Uncle Luke basset, his eyes, like black
+sparks, twinkling rapidly at all their faces.
+
+Madelon set the cups and saucers on the dresser.
+
+"We don't have any time for anybody's business but our own," quoth
+David Hautville, gruffly. He did not like his wife's uncle. He was
+tightening a string in his bass-viol; he pulled it as he spoke, and
+it gave out a fierce twang. Louis sat moodily over the fire with his
+painful arm in wet bandages. Richard was whittling kindling-wood,
+with nervous speed, beside him. Eugene and Abner were cleaning their
+guns. They all looked at the eager old man except Richard and Louis
+and Madelon.
+
+"Burr Gordon has killed Lot so's to get his property," proclaimed the
+old man, and his voice broke with eager delight and importance.
+
+Madelon gave a cry and sprang forward in front of him. "It's a lie!"
+she shouted.
+
+The old man laughed in her face. "No, 'tain't, Madelon. You're
+showin' a Christian sperrit to stan' up for him when he's jilted ye
+for another gal, but 'tain't a lie. His knife, with his name on to
+it, was a-stickin' out of Lot's side."
+
+"_It's a lie!_  I killed him with my brother Richard's knife!"
+
+The old man shrank back before her in incredulous horror. The great
+bass-viol fell to the ground like a woman as David strode forward and
+Abner and Eugene turned their shocked, white faces from their guns.
+
+"I killed him with Richard's knife," repeated Madelon.
+
+Richard got up and came around before her, thrusting his hand in his
+pocket. He pulled out his own clasp-knife, and brandished it in her
+face. "Here is my knife," he cried, fiercely--"my knife, with my name
+cut in the handle. Say you killed Lot Gordon with it again!"
+
+Madelon snatched the knife out of her brother's hand and looked at it
+with straining eyes. There, indeed, was a rude "R. H." cut in the
+horn handle. She gasped. "What does this mean?" she cried out.
+
+"It means you have lost your wits," answered Richard, contemptuously;
+but his eyes on his sister's face were full of pleading agony.
+
+"What knife did you give me when I started home last night?"
+
+"I gave you no knife."
+
+Old Luke Basset asserted himself again. "The gal's lost her balance,"
+he said. "It was Burr Gordon's knife, with his name cut into it, that
+was stickin' out of Lot Gordon's side."
+
+"Is Lot Gordon dead?" Louis demanded, hoarsely.
+
+"No, he ain't dead, but the doctor thinks he can't live long. Ephraim
+Steele and Eleazer Hooper were a-goin' home from the ball when they
+come right on Lot layin' side of the road and Burr a-tryin' to draw
+his knife out, so it shouldn't testify against him."
+
+"It's a lie!" Madelon groaned. "Burr Gordon did not kill him. It was
+I! He met me, and tried to--kiss me, and--the knife was in my
+hand--Richard made me take it because I was coming home alone, and
+there had been rumors of a bear."
+
+"I did not," persisted Richard, doggedly. "I did not make her take my
+knife. Here is my knife, with my name cut in the handle."
+
+Madelon turned on him fiercely. "You did, you know you did!" said
+she.
+
+"Here is my knife, with my name cut on the handle."
+
+"You gave me a knife as I was coming out of the tavern."
+
+"No, I did not."
+
+"You did, and I killed him with it. It was not Burr! I ran for help,
+and I met Burr, and I told him what I had done, and he went back with
+me to Lot. Then he sent me home when he heard somebody coming. Ask
+Lot Gordon if I did not kill him; if he can speak he can tell you."
+
+"There won't neither him nor Burr say a word," said the old man, "but
+there was Burr's knife a-stickin' into Lot's side, with his name cut
+into it."
+
+Madelon turned sharply to Louis. "You saw the blood on my hand when I
+was rubbing your arm last night," she said.
+
+He made no reply, but stared gloomily at the fire.
+
+"Louis, you saw Lot Gordon's blood on my hand?"
+
+Louis sprang up with an oath, and pushed past her out of the room.
+
+"Louis," Madelon cried, "tell them!"
+
+"She is trying to shield Burr Gordon!" Louis called back, fiercely,
+and the closing door shook the house like a cannon-shot.
+
+"Where is Burr?" Madelon demanded of old Luke Basset.
+
+"The sheriff took him to New Salem to jail this morning," he replied,
+grinning.
+
+Madelon gave a great cry and started to rush out of the room, but her
+father stood in her way.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked, sternly.
+
+"I am going to get my hood and cloak, and then I am going to Lot
+Gordon's."  Her father stood aside, and she went out and up-stairs to
+her chamber. She took up the red cloak which lay on her bed, and
+examined it eagerly to see if by chance there was a blood stain
+thereon to prove her guilt and Burr Gordon's innocence, but she could
+find none. She had flung it back when she struck. She looked also
+carefully at her pretty ball gown, but the black fabric showed no
+stain.
+
+When she went down-stairs with her cloak and hood on old Luke Basset
+was gone, and so were her brothers. Her father stood waiting for her,
+and he had on his fur cap and his heavy cloak. He came forward and
+took her firmly by the arm. "I'm going with you to Lot Gordon's,"
+said he. And they went out together and up the road, he still keeping
+a firm hand on his daughter's arm, and neither spoke all the way to
+Lot Gordon's house.
+
+When they reached it David Hautville opened the door without touching
+the knocker, and strode in with Madelon following. Old Margaret Bean
+was just passing through the entry with a great roll of linen cloths
+in her arms, and she stopped when she saw them.
+
+"How is he?" whispered David, hoarsely.
+
+"He's pretty low," returned Margaret Bean, at the same time nodding
+her head cautiously towards the door on her right. Long, smooth loops
+of sallow hair fell from Margaret Bean's clean white cap over her
+cheeks, which looked as if they had been scrubbed and rasped red with
+tears. Her own gray hair was strained back out of sight--not to be
+discovered, even when there was a murder in the house.
+
+"Does he know anybody?" queried David Hautville.
+
+"Just as well as ever he did."  Margaret Bean rubbed a tear dry on
+her cheek with her starched apron.
+
+"We've got to see him, then."
+
+"I dunno as you can--the doctor--"
+
+"I don't care anything about the doctor! We've _got_ to _see him!"_
+David's voice rang out quite loud in the hush of murder and death
+which seemed to fill the house. Margaret Bean stood aside with a
+scared look. David Hautville threw open the door on the right, and he
+and Madelon went in.
+
+Lot Gordon's eyes turned towards them, but not his head. He lay as
+still in bed as if he were already dead, and his long body raised the
+gay patchwork quilt in a stiff ridge like a grave.
+
+Madelon went close to him and bent over him. "Tell who stabbed you,"
+said she, in a sharp voice.
+
+Lot looked up at her, and a red flush came over his livid face.
+
+"Tell who stabbed you."
+
+Lot smiled feebly, but he did not speak.
+
+Margaret Bean came in, with her old husband shuffling at her heels. A
+great face, bristling with a yellow stubble of beard, appeared in the
+door. It belonged to the sheriff, Jonas Hapgood, who had just
+returned from taking Burr to New Salem. Madelon cast a desperate
+glance around at them. "Lot Gordon," she cried out, "tell them--tell
+them I was the one who stabbed you, and set Burr free!"
+
+There was a chuckle from Jonas Hapgood in the door. "Likely story,"
+he muttered to Margaret Bean's husband, and the old man nodded
+wisely.
+
+"Tell them!" commanded Madelon. She reached out a hand as if she
+would shake Lot Gordon into obedience, wounded unto death although he
+was, but Lot only smiled up in her face.
+
+Then David Hautville bent his stern face down to the sick man's. "Lot
+Gordon, tell the truth before God, daughter of mine or no daughter of
+mine," said he, in his deep voice. Lot only followed Madelon with his
+longing, smiling eyes.
+
+"Speak, Lot Gordon!"
+
+The wounded man turned his eyes on David and made a feeble motion,
+scarcely more than a quiver of his hand, which seemed to express
+negation.
+
+"Can't you speak?"
+
+Again Lot made that faint signal.
+
+"He ain't spoke sence they brought him home," said Margaret
+Bean--"not a word to the doctor nor nobody."
+
+"I couldn't get a word out of him," announced the sheriff, stepping
+farther into the room. "In course, there was Burr's knife and Burr
+himself over him when the others came up, and that was proof enough;
+but still we kinder thought we'd like to have Lot's word for it afore
+he died, in case it came to hangin' with Burr; but I guess he's past
+speakin'. I miss my guess if he can sense anything we say."
+
+"Tell them--tell them I was the one who stabbed you, and Burr is
+innocent!" Madelon pleaded; but he smiled back at her unmoved.
+
+Jonas Hapgood's great body shook with mirth. "Likely story a gal did
+it," he chuckled.
+
+"I did do it!" returned Madelon, fiercely, turning to him.
+
+"I guess you don't want your beau hung."
+
+"I tell you I killed this man. I am the one to be hung!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+The sheriff turned to David Hautville. "Guess you'd better take your
+gal home," he said, his red, bristling cheeks broad with laughter.
+"Guess she's kind of off her balance, she feels so bad about her
+beau."
+
+David's black eyes flashed haughtily at Jonas Hapgood, who
+straightened his face suddenly. He deigned not a word to him, but he
+turned to his daughter with a stern air. "Whether it is one way, or
+whether it is the other way," said he, "we go neither by staying
+here. Come home."
+
+"I won't go!"
+
+David looked sharply at his daughter's face. Jonas Hapgood's doubt
+was over him too. He wondered, with a great spasm of wrath, if she
+could be accusing herself to shield this man who had played her
+false.
+
+He grasped her arm again. "Come," he said, "I'll have no more of
+this," and Madelon went out with her father. Full of spirit as she
+was, she had always been strangely docile with him. He had ruled all
+his children with a firm hand from their youth up, and tuned their
+wills to suit his ear as he did his viol strings.
+
+"I'll have no foolery," he said to her, gruffly, when they were out
+on the road. "I'll have no putting yourself in the wrong to save a
+man that's given you the go-by. If ye be fooling me, ye can stop it
+now if you're a daughter of mine."  He shook his head fiercely at
+her.
+
+But Madelon answered him with a burst of wrath that equalled his own.
+"I stabbed him because I took him for the man who jilted me a-trying
+to kiss me, with Dorothy Fair's kiss on his lips. _Me!_" she cried;
+and she raised her hand as if she would have struck again had Burr
+Gordon and his false lips been there.
+
+Her father looked at her gloomily, then strode on with his eyes on
+the snowy ground. He was still in doubt. David Hautville had that
+primitive order of mind which distrusts and holds in contempt that
+which it cannot clearly comprehend, and he could not comprehend
+womankind. His sons were to him as words of one syllable in straight
+lines; his daughter was written in compound and involved sentences,
+as her mother had been before her. Fond and proud of Madelon as he
+was, and in spite of his stern anxiety, her word had not the weight
+with him that one of his son's would have had. It was as if he had
+visions of endless twistings and complexities which might give it the
+lie, and rob it, at all events, of its direct force.
+
+Indeed, Madelon strengthened this doubt by crying out passionately
+all at once, as they went on: "Father, you must believe me! I tell
+you I did it! I--don't let them hang him! Father!"  All Madelon's
+proud fierceness was gone for a moment. She looked up at her father,
+choking with great sobs.
+
+David smiled down at her convulsed face. "She's nothing but a woman,"
+he thought to himself, and he thought also, with a throb of angry
+relief, that she had not killed Lot Gordon. "Come along home and red
+up the house, and let's have no more fooling," he said, roughly, and
+strode on faster and would not say another word, although Madelon
+besought him hard to assure her that he believed her, and that Burr
+should not be hanged, until they reached the Hautville house. Then he
+turned on her and said, with keen sarcasm that stung more than a
+whip-lash, "'Tis Parson Fair's daughter and not mine that should come
+down the road in broad daylight a-bawling for Burr Gordon."
+
+Madelon started back, and her face stiffened and whitened. She shut
+her mouth hard and followed her father into the house. The great
+living-room was empty; indeed, not one of the Hautville sons was in
+the house; even Louis was gone. David took his axe out of the corner
+and set out for the woods to cut some cedar fire-logs. Madelon put
+the house in order, setting the kitchen and pantry to rights, going
+through the icy chambers and making the high feather beds. In her own
+room she paused long and searched again, holding up her red cloak and
+her ball dress to the window, where they caught the wintry light, for
+a stain of blood that might prove her guilt; but she could find none.
+
+Madelon prepared dinner for her father and brothers as usual, and
+when it was ready to be dished she stood in the doorway, with the
+north wind buffeting her in the face, and blew the dinner-horn with a
+blast that could be heard far off in the woods.
+
+Presently her father emerged from under the snowy boughs with his axe
+over his shoulder, and shortly afterwards Eugene and Abner came, in
+Indian file, with their guns. Eugene was carrying a fat rabbit by its
+long ears. Louis and Richard did not come at all. David asked sternly
+of their brothers where they were, but neither Eugene nor Abner knew.
+They had not seen them since David and Madelon left for Lot Gordon's
+that morning.
+
+Madelon set the food before her father and her brothers, and took her
+place as usual, and ate as she might have filled a crock with milk or
+cakes, tasting nothing which she put into her mouth. She did not
+during the meal say another word concerning the tragedy in which she
+was living, but there was a strange silent vehemence and fire about
+her which seemed louder than speech. Now and then her father and her
+brothers started and stared at her as if she had cried out. Two red
+spots had come on her brown cheeks; her eyes were glittering with
+dark light; her lips were a firm red; her fingers stiffened with
+nervous clutches. She looked as if every muscle in her were strained
+and rigid for a leap.
+
+After dinner Eugene and Abner went out again with their guns, and
+David smoked his old pipe by the fire, while Madelon put away the
+dishes and swept the floor. When her work was finished the pipe was
+smoked out, and David rose up slowly, clapped his fur cap over his
+white head, and took up his axe.
+
+"Mind ye say what ye said this morning to nobody else," he said, as
+he went out the door.
+
+"I'll say it with my dying breath," returned Madelon, and she caught
+her breath, as if it were indeed her last, as she spoke.
+
+"Accuse yourself of murder, would ye, and be hung, and leave your own
+kith and kin with nobody to keep house for them, for the sake of a
+man that's left ye for another girl!"
+
+"Father, I tell you that _I_ did it!"
+
+But David clapped to the door on her speech, and the awful truth of
+it seemed to smite her in her own face.
+
+Madelon went up-stairs, and brushed and braided her black hair before
+her glass; but the face therein did not look like her own to her, and
+she felt all the time as if she were braiding and wreathing the hair
+around another's head. One of those deeds had she committed which
+lead a man to see suddenly the stranger that abides always in his
+flesh and in his own soul, and makes him realize that of all the
+millions of earth there is not one that he knows not better than his
+own self, nor whose face can look so strange to him in the light of
+his own actions.
+
+Madelon put her red cloak over her shoulders as she might have put it
+on a lay-figure, and tied on her hood. Then she went down-stairs, out
+of the house to the barn, and put the side-saddle on the roan mare.
+
+Not another woman in the village, and scarcely a man except the
+Hautville sons, would have dared to ride this roan, with the backward
+roll of her vicious eyes and her wicked, flat-laid ears; but Madelon
+Hautville could not be thrown.
+
+The mare, when she was saddled, danced an iron-bound dance in the
+barn bay, but Madelon bade her stand still, and she obeyed, her
+nostrils quivering, the breath coming from them in a snort of smoke,
+and every muscle under her roan hide vibrating.
+
+Then Madelon placed her foot in the stirrup, and was in the saddle,
+pulling the bit hard against the jaw, and the mare shot out of the
+barn with a fierce lash-out of her heels and an upheaval of her gaunt
+roan flanks that threatened to dash the girl's head against the
+lintel of the door.
+
+But Madelon knew with what she had to do, and she bent low in the
+saddle and passed out in safety. Then she spared not the mare for
+nigh three miles on the New Salem road. It was ten miles to New
+Salem, and it did not take long to reach it, riding a horse who went
+at times as if all the fiends were in chase, and often sprang out
+like a bow into the wayside bushes, and was off with a new spurt of
+vicious terror. It was still far from sundown when Madelon Hautville
+tied the roan outside the jail where Burr Gordon lay.
+
+Burr was sitting in his cell, which was nothing but a rough chamber
+with whitewashed walls and a grated window. It was furnished with a
+bed, a table, and a chair. He had an inkstand and a great sheet of
+paper on the table, and he was writing a letter when the bolt shot
+and the jailer entered with Madelon Hautville.
+
+Burr looked at her with a white, incredulous face. Then he started up
+and came forward, but Madelon did not look at him. She turned to the
+jailer, Alvin Mead. "I want to see him alone," said she,
+imperatively.
+
+"It's again my orders," said the jailer. He was a great man, with an
+arm like a crow-bar. He was reputed to have used it as one many a
+time at a house-raising.
+
+"I've got to see him alone!"
+
+"He's in here on a charge of murder, and it's again my orders,"
+repeated Alvin Mead, like a parrot.
+
+"I've got to see him alone!"
+
+Alvin Mead looked at her irresolutely with his stupid light eyes;
+then all his great system of bone and muscle seemed to back out of
+the room before her. He shut the door after him, and they heard the
+bolt slide.
+
+Madelon turned to Burr. "Tell them," she gasped out--"tell them it
+was--I!"
+
+Burr did not speak for a minute; he stood looking at her. "Perhaps I
+am not any too much of a man," he said, slowly, at length, "but you
+ask me to be a good deal less of a man than I am."
+
+Madelon did not seem to hear him. "I have told them I did it! I have
+told them all," said she, "but they won't believe me--they won't
+believe me! _You_ must tell them."
+
+"I will die before I will tell them," said Burr Gordon.
+
+Madelon looked at his white face, which was set against hers like a
+rock; then she gave a great cry and fell down on her knees before
+him. "Tell them," she moaned, "or they will hang you--they will hang
+you, Burr!"
+
+"Let them hang me, then!"
+
+"Tell them; they won't believe me!"
+
+Burr caught hold of her two arms and raised her to her feet. "See
+here, Madelon," said he, "don't you know--"
+
+She looked at him dumbly.
+
+"Don't you know--I would not tell them if they would, but--I might
+tell them until I was gray, and they would not believe me!"
+
+Madelon cried out sharply, as if she in her turn had been struck to
+the heart.
+
+"It is true," Burr said, quietly.
+
+"Then if he dies without telling, there is no way of--saving you--"
+
+Burr shook his head.
+
+"The knife--how--came your knife there instead of Richard's?"
+
+Burr smiled.
+
+Bluish shadows came around Madelon's dark eyes and her mouth. She
+gasped for breath as she spoke. "I--have--killed you, then," said
+she. Suddenly she put up her white, stiffly quivering lips to Burr's.
+"Kiss me!" she cried out. "I beg you to give me the kiss that I might
+have killed you for last night!"
+
+Burr bent down and kissed her, and she threw her arms around him and
+pressed his head to her bosom. "They shall not," she cried out,
+fiercely--"they shall not hang you! I will make them believe me!
+Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Burr."
+
+"Madelon," Burr said, huskily, "I have been double-faced and false to
+you, but, as God is my witness, I'm glad I've got the chance to
+suffer in your stead."
+
+"You shall not! They shall believe I did it. I will make Lot Gordon
+tell. He shall tell before he dies!"
+
+The bolt slid back, and Alvin Mead's great bulk darkened the doorway.
+Madelon turned her face towards him, with her arms still clasping
+Burr and holding his head to her bosom. "This man is innocent!" she
+cried out, with a fierce gesture of protection, as if she were
+defending her young instead of her false lover. "I tell you he is
+innocent--you must let him go! I am the one who stabbed Lot Gordon!"
+
+Alvin Mead stared; his heavy pink jaw lopped.
+
+"I tell you, you must let him go!"  She released Burr from her arms
+and gave him a push towards the door. "Go out," she said; "I am the
+one to stay here."
+
+But Alvin Mead collected and brought about his great body with a show
+of lumbering fists. "Come," said he, "this ain't a-goin to do. We
+can't have no sech work as this, young woman. It's time you went."
+
+"Let him go, I tell you!" commanded Madelon, confronting him
+fiercely. "I am going to stay."
+
+"They won't let you come again if you don't go quietly now," Burr
+whispered, and he laid his hand on her nervous shoulder.
+
+"I ruther guess we won't have no sech doin's again," said Alvin Mead,
+with sulky assent.
+
+"You must go, Madelon."
+
+Madelon tied on her hood. Her white face had its rigid, desperate
+look again.
+
+"I will make them believe me yet, and you shall be set free," she
+said to Burr, with a stern nod, and passed out, while Alvin Mead
+stood back to give her passage, watching her with sullen and wary
+eyes. He was, in truth, half afraid of her.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+When Madelon, returning from New Salem, came in sight of her home the
+first thing which she noticed was her father in the yard in front of
+the house.
+
+David Hautville's great figure stood out in the dusk of the snowy
+landscape like a giant's. He was motionless. The roan mare's gallop
+had evidently struck his ear some time before, and he knew that
+Madelon was returning. He did not even look her way as she drew
+nearer, but when she rode into the yard he made a swift movement
+forward and seized the mare by the bridle. She reared, but Madelon
+sat firm, with wretched, undaunted eyes upon her father. David
+Hautville's eyes blazed back at her out of the whiteness of his
+wrath.
+
+"Where have you been?" he demanded, in a thick voice.
+
+"To New Salem."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To see Burr, and beg him to confess that I killed Lot."
+
+"You didn't."
+
+"I did."
+
+"Fool!"  David Hautville jerked the bridle so fiercely that the mare
+reared far back again. He jerked her down to her feet, and she made a
+vicious lunge at him, but he shunted her away.
+
+"I'll fasten you into your chamber," he shouted, "if this work goes
+on! I'll stop your making a fool of yourself."
+
+"It is Lot Gordon that is making fools of you all," said Madelon, in
+a hard, quiet voice.
+
+"Did Burr Gordon say he didn't stab him?" cried her father.
+
+"No; he wouldn't own it. He is trying to shield me."
+
+"He did it himself, and he'll hang for it."
+
+"No, he won't hang for what I did while I draw the breath of life.
+I've got the strength of ten in me. You don't know me, if I am your
+daughter."  Madelon freed her bridle with a quick movement, and the
+mare flew forward into the barn.
+
+David Hautville stood looking after her in utter fury and
+bewilderment. Her last words rang in his ears and seemed true to him.
+He felt as if he did not know his own daughter. This awakening and
+lashing into action, by the terrible pressure of circumstances, of
+strange ancestral traits which he had himself transmitted was beyond
+his simple comprehension. He shook his head with a fierce
+helplessness and went into the barn.
+
+"Go in and get the supper," he ordered, "and _I_'ll take care of the
+mare."
+
+As Madelon came out of the stall he grasped her roughly by the arm
+and peered sharply into her face. The thought seized him that she
+must surely not be in her right mind--that Burr's treatment of her
+and his danger had turned her brain. "Be you crazy, Madelon?" he
+asked, in his straightforward simplicity, and there was an accent of
+doubt and pity in his voice.
+
+"No, father," she replied, "I am not crazy. Let me go."
+
+She broke away from him and was out of the barn door, but suddenly
+she turned and came running back. The sudden softness in his voice
+had stirred the woman in her to weakness. She went close to her
+father, and threw up her arms around his great neck, and clung to
+him, and sobbed as if she would sob her soul away, and pleaded with
+him as for her life.
+
+"Father!" she cried--"father, help me! Believe me! Tell them I did
+it! Tell them it is true! Don't let them hang Burr. Help me to save
+him, father! Don't let them! Save him! Oh, you will save him, father?
+You will? Tell me, father--tell me, tell me!"  Madelon's voice rose
+into a wild shriek.
+
+A sudden conviction of his solution of the matter and of his own
+astuteness came over David Hautville's primitive masculine
+intelligence. His daughter was wellnigh distraught with her lover's
+faithlessness and his awful crime and danger. She was to be watched
+and guarded lest she make a further spectacle of herself; but treated
+softly as might be, for she was naught but a woman, and liable to
+mischievous ailments of nerve and brain. David pressed his daughter's
+dark head with his hard, tender hand against his shoulder, then
+forced her gently away from him.
+
+"It'll be all right," said he, soothingly--"it'll be all right. Don't
+you worry."
+
+"Father, you will?"
+
+"I'll fix it all right. Don't you worry."
+
+"Father, you promise?"
+
+"I'll do everything I can. Don't you worry, Madelon. You'd better go
+in and get supper now. I'll go along to the house with you and get
+the lantern. It's getting too dark to do the work here."
+
+David drew his daughter along, out of the barn, across the snowy yard
+to the house, she pleading frantically all the way, he soothing her
+with his sudden wisdom of assent and evasion.
+
+The hearth fire was blazing high when Madelon entered the kitchen.
+The red glare of it was on her white face, upturned to her father's
+with one last pleading of despair. She clutched his arm and shook his
+great frame to and fro.
+
+"Father, promise me you'll go over to New Salem to-night and tell
+them to set him free and take me instead! Father!"
+
+"We'll see about it, Madelon," answered David Hautville. There was a
+tone in his voice which she had never heard before. It might have
+come unconsciously to himself from some memory, so old that it was
+itself forgotten, of his dead wife's voice over the child in her
+cradle. Some echo of it might have yet lingered in the old father's
+soul, through something finer than his instinct for sweet sounds from
+human throat and viol--through his ear for love.
+
+"Get the supper now, and we'll see about it," said David Hautville.
+He began fumbling with clumsy fingers, all unused to women's gear, at
+the string of this daughter's cloak; but she pulled herself away from
+him suddenly, and the old hard lines came into her face. "We'll say
+no more about it," said she. She lit a candle quickly at the hearth
+fire, and was out of the room to put away her cloak and hood. Her
+father lighted his lantern slowly and went back to the barn, plodding
+meditatively through the snowy track, with the melting mood still
+strong upon him. He was disposed to carry matters now with a high and
+tender hand with the girl to bring her to reason, and he brought all
+his crude diplomacy to bear upon the matter.
+
+When he reached the barn his son Eugene stood in the doorway. He had
+just come from the woods, and the smell of wounded cedar-trees was
+strong about him. He stood leaning upon his axe as if it were a
+staff. "Who's been out with the mare?" he asked.
+
+"Your sister."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To New Salem."
+
+"To see _him_?"
+
+David nodded grimly. His lantern cast a pale circle of light on the
+snow about them.
+
+"About--that?"
+
+"To get him to own up she did it."
+
+Eugene Hautville stared at his father, scowling his handsome dark
+brows. He was the most graceful mannered of all the Hautville sons,
+and by some accounted the best-looking.
+
+"Is she crazy?" he said.
+
+"No, she's a woman," returned his father, with a strange accent of
+contempt and toleration.
+
+"Did the coward lay it to her when she gave him the chance?" demanded
+Eugene.
+
+"No; she said he wouldn't, to shield her."
+
+Eugene moved his axe suddenly; the lantern-light struck it, and there
+was a bright flash of sharp steel in their eyes. "Shield her!" he
+cried out, with an oath. "I wish I could meet him in the path once.
+I'd give him a taste before they put the rope 'round his neck, the
+lying murderer!"
+
+David nodded his head in savage assent.
+
+"What's going to be done with Madelon?" cried Eugene, fiercely.
+
+"I've been thinking--" said his father, slowly.
+
+"No sister of mine shall go about rolling herself in the dust at that
+fellow's feet if I can help it."
+
+"I've been thinking--would you lock her in her chamber a spell?"
+
+"Lock Madelon in her chamber! She'd get out or she'd beat her brains
+out against the wall."
+
+"I don't know but she would," assented David, perplexedly. "You can't
+count on a woman when they rise up. She might go away a spell."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"We might send her somewhere."
+
+Eugene laughed. The roan mare was pawing in her stall. Now and then
+she pounded the floor with a clattering thud like an iron flail.
+
+"How far do you suppose that mare would go if you tried to send her
+anywhere?" he asked.
+
+"Maybe Madelon wouldn't go."
+
+"You'd have to halter the mare," said Eugene, "and drag her half the
+way and stand from under, or she'd trample you down the other."
+Eugene, although his words were strong, spoke quite softly, lowering
+his sweet tenor. From where they stood they could see Madelon moving
+to and fro behind the kitchen windows preparing supper.
+
+"I don't know what to do," said David, after a pause.
+
+"Watch her," returned Eugene, quietly.
+
+"Watch her?"
+
+"Yes. I've been under cover days before now watching for a pretty
+white fox or a deer I wanted."  Eugene laughed pleasantly.
+
+"Will you?"
+
+"I'll stay by the house to-morrow. She sha'n't go about accusing
+herself of murder to save the man that's jilted her if I can help
+it."  As he spoke Eugene's handsome face darkened again vindictively.
+He hated Burr Gordon for another reason of his own that nobody
+suspected.
+
+Suddenly Abner Hautville came running into the yard. "Who is it
+there?" he called out. "Is that you, father? That you, Eugene?
+Hello!"
+
+"Hello!" Eugene called back. "What's the matter?"
+
+Abner come panting alongside. He had run from the village, and,
+vigorous as he was, breath came hard in the thin air. It was a very
+cold night.
+
+"Where have they gone?" he demanded.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Louis and Richard. Where have they gone?"
+
+There was a ghastly look in Abner's face, in spite of the glowing red
+which the cold wind had brought to it. The other man seemed to catch
+it and reflect it in their own faces as they stared at him.
+
+Eugene turned quickly to his father. "Aren't they in the house?" he
+asked.
+
+"No, they ain't," returned David, with his eyes still on Abner's
+face.
+
+"Sure they ain't up chamber?"
+
+"No; I was home a good half-hour before Madelon came. There wasn't a
+soul in the house, and nobody could have come home since without my
+knowing it."
+
+"They didn't come home this noon either," said Eugene.
+
+"Thought you said they'd gone to see to their traps on West
+Mountain?" David rejoined.
+
+"Thought they had when they didn't come."  Eugene turned impatiently
+on Abner. "Where do you think they've gone--what do you mean by
+looking so?" he cried.
+
+Abner dug his heel into the snow. "Don't know," he returned, in a
+surly voice.
+
+"What do you suspect, then? Good God! can't you speak out?"
+
+Abner's features were heavier than his brother's--his speech and
+manner slower. He paused a second, even then; then he turned towards
+the house, and spoke, with his face away from them, with a curious
+directness and taciturnity. "Didn't go to the traps on West
+Mountain," he said, then; "went there myself. They hadn't been
+there--no tracks; was home before father was to-night. Louis and
+Richard hadn't come. Went down to the village; hadn't been there."
+
+"You don't mean Louis and Richard have run away?" demanded David.
+
+"Both their guns and their powder-horns and shot-bags are gone," said
+Abner.
+
+"They would have taken them anyway," said Louis.
+
+"The chest in Louis's chamber is unlocked and the money he kept in
+the till is gone, and his fiddle is gone, and the cider-brandy and
+wormwood bottle to bathe his arm with, and two shoulders of pork out
+of the cellar, and a sack of potatoes, and the blankets off his and
+Richard's beds are gone too," said Abner. He began to move towards
+the house.
+
+His father made a bound after him and grasped his arm. "What do you
+mean?" he cried out. "What do you think they've run away for?"
+
+"Know as much as I do," replied Abner. He wrenched his arm away and
+strode on towards the house. Then David Hautville and his son Eugene
+stood looking at each other with a surmise of horror growing in their
+eyes.
+
+"What does he mean?" David whispered, hoarsely.
+
+Eugene shook his head.
+
+Presently Eugene went into the barn and fell to feeding the roan
+mare, and David plunged heavily back to the house. He and Abner sat
+one on each side of the fire and furtively watched Madelon preparing
+supper.
+
+She spoke never a word. Her red lips were a red line of resolution.
+Her despairing eyes were fixed upon her work without a glance for
+either of them.
+
+However, when supper was set on the table, and she had blown the horn
+at the door and waited, and nobody else came, she turned with sudden
+life upon her father and her brothers, who had already begun to taste
+the smoking hasty-pudding. "Where are the others?" she cried out,
+shrilly. "Where are Louis and Richard?"
+
+The men glanced at one another under sullen eyelids, but nobody
+answered. "Where are they?" she repeated.
+
+"You know as much about it as we do," Eugene said, then, in his soft
+voice.
+
+Madelon stood with wild eyes flashing from one to another. Then she
+gave a sudden spring out of the room, and they heard her swift feet
+on the chamber-stairs. The men ate their hasty-pudding, bending their
+brows over it as if it were a witches' mess instead of their ordinary
+home fare.
+
+Madelon came back so rapidly that she seemed to fly over the stairs.
+They scarcely heard the separate taps of her feet. She burst into the
+room and faced them in a sort of fury. "They have gone!" she gasped
+out. "Louis and Richard have gone! Where are they?"
+
+David Hautville slowly shook his head. Then he took another spoonful
+of pudding. The brothers bent with stern assiduity over their bowls.
+
+"You have hid them away!" shrieked Madelon. "You have hid them away
+lest Louis own that he saw blood on my hand, and Richard that he gave
+me his knife! What have you done with them?"
+
+Not one of the three men spoke. They swallowed their pudding.
+
+"Father! Abner! Eugene!" said Madelon, "tell me what you have done
+with my brothers, who can testify that I killed Lot Gordon, and save
+Burr?"
+
+David Hautville wiped his mouth on his sleeve, rose up, and took his
+daughter firmly by the arm.
+
+"We know no more what has become of your brothers than you do," said
+he. "If they have gone away for the reason you say, your old father
+would be the first to bring them back, if you were guilty as you say,
+daughter of mine though you be. But we know well enough, wherever
+your brothers have gone, and for whatever cause they have gone, that
+you have done nothing worse then go daft, as women will, to shield a
+fellow that's used you ill. You shall put us to no more shame while I
+am your father and you under my roof. Abner, fill up a bowl with the
+pudding."
+
+Madelon's face was deathly white and full of rebellion as she looked
+up in her father's, but she held herself still with a stern dignity
+and did not struggle. David Hautville's will was up. His hand on her
+soft arm was like a vise of steel. The memories of her childhood were
+strong upon her. She knew of old that there was no appeal, and was
+too proud to contend where she must yield.
+
+"Take the bowl," said her father, when Abner extended it filled with
+the steaming pudding--"take the bowl, and go you to your chamber. Eat
+your supper, and get in to your bed and stay there till morning."
+
+Madelon still looked at her father with that same look of speechless
+but unyielding rebellion. She did not stir to take the bowl or go to
+her chamber.
+
+"Do as I bid ye!" ordered her father, in a great voice.
+
+Madelon took the bowl from her brother's hand and went out of the
+room as she was bid; and yet as she went they all knew that there was
+no yielding in her.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+The next morning Madelon came down-stairs as usual and prepared
+breakfast. When it was ready the family sat up to the table and ate
+silently and swiftly. No one addressed a word to Madelon. After
+breakfast David and his son Abner put on their leather jackets and
+their fur caps, and set forth for the woods with their axes, but
+Eugene lounged gracefully over to the hearth and sat down on the
+settle, and began reading his Shakespeare book. Eugene was the only
+one of the Hautvilles who ever read books. He studied faithfully the
+few in the house--the Shakespeare, the _Pilgrim's Progress_, Milton,
+and _Gulliver's Travels_. The others wondered at him. They could not
+understand how any one who could handle a gun or a musical instrument
+could lay finger on a book. "Made-up things," said Abner once, with a
+scornful motion towards Shakespeare.
+
+"No more made-up than fugue," retorted Eugene, hotly; but they all
+cried out on him.
+
+This morning Madelon cast one quick glance at him as he sauntered
+over to the settle with his book. Then she did not look his way
+again. She worked quietly, setting the kitchen to rights.
+
+The day was very cold; the light in the room was dim and white, the
+windows were coated so thickly with the hoar-frost. Eugene kept
+stirring the fire and adding sticks as he read.
+
+Finally, Madelon had finished her work in the kitchen, and went
+up-stairs. Then Eugene arose reluctantly, went out into the cold
+entry, and stood by the door with his book in hand. Madelon, passing
+across the landing above, looked down and saw him standing there, and
+knew that what she suspected was true--that her brother was mounting
+guard over her lest she leave the house.
+
+She finished her work in the chamber, and came down-stairs with some
+knitting-work in hand. She seated herself quietly in her own
+cushioned rocking-chair, and fell to work with yarn and clicking
+needles, like any peaceful housewife. She knitted and Eugene read,
+bending his handsome dark face, smiling with pleasure, over his
+Shakespeare book. This fierce winter day he was reading "A
+Midsummer-Night's Dream," and letting his fancy revel with
+Shakespeare's fairies in an enchanted summer wood. He was, however,
+alert as a watch-dog. He could at an instant's warning leave that
+delicate and dainty crew and those flowery shores, and intercept his
+sister, should she attempt to pass him and escape from the house.
+
+Still, his alertness all came to naught, for Madelon, like some
+fleeing fox, took a sudden turn which no canny hunter could have
+anticipated. She sat somewhat away from the hearth and well at
+Eugene's back. He would have asked her why she did not draw nearer
+the fire and if she were not cold had he not feared to encounter a
+sulky humor. He could not see the lengths of linen cloth, which she
+herself had spun and woven, lying in a great heap on the floor, half
+at her back, half under her petticoats. However, could he have seen
+it he would have thought of it merely as some mysterious domestic and
+feminine proceeding about which he neither knew nor cared to know
+anything.
+
+Madelon, as she knitted, ever measured the distance between her
+brother and herself with her great black eyes, training her nerves
+and muscles for what she had to do as she would have trained a bow
+and arrow.
+
+Eugene turned a leaf in his Shakespeare book. Madelon made a leap, so
+soft and swift that it seemed like an onslaught of Silence itself,
+and he was smothered and wound about and entangled in folds of linen
+as if it had been in truth his winding-sheet. He struggled as best he
+might against his linen bands, and cried out as angrily as he could
+for the linen that bound his mouth and his eyes, but he could not
+release himself. Eugene was strong and lithe, but Madelon was nearly
+as strong as he at any time; and now the great tension of her nerves
+seemed to inform all her muscles with the strength of steel wire.
+
+Eugene sat bound hard and fast to the settle, with his face swathed
+like a mummy's, with only enough space clear for breath. "Let me go,
+or I'll--" he threatened, in his smothered tone.
+
+Madelon made no reply. She watched him struggle to be sure that he
+could not free himself. Then she went out of the room. Eugene called
+after her in a choke of fury, but she spoke not a word.
+
+Up-stairs she hastened to her own chamber, and put on her red cloak
+and hood, and was down the stairs again, out the door, and hurrying
+up the road to the village. From time to time she glanced behind her
+to be sure that her brother had not freed himself, and was not in
+pursuit; then she sped on faster. The road was glare with ice, but
+she did not slow her pace for that. She was as sure-footed as a hare.
+She kept her arms close to her sides under her red cloak, and did not
+pause until she came out on the village street where the houses were
+thick. Then she went at a rapid walk, still glancing sharply behind
+her to see if she were followed, until she came to Parson Fair's
+house. She went up the front walk, between the rows of ice-coated
+box, and up the stone steps under the stately columned porch, and
+raised the knocker and let it fall with sharp impetus. The door
+opened speedily a little way, and Parson Fair himself stood there,
+his pale, stern old face framed in the dark aperture. He bowed with
+gentle courtesy and bade her good-morning, and Madelon courtesied
+hurriedly and spoke out her errand with no preface.
+
+"Can I see your daughter, sir?" said she.
+
+Parson Fair looked at Madelon's white face, touched on the cheeks and
+lips with feverish red, at her set mouth and desperate eyes. The
+story of her connection with the Gordon tragedy had not penetrated to
+his study, neither did he know how Burr had forsaken her for his
+Dorothy; but he saw something was amiss with her, although he was not
+well versed in the signs of a woman's face. Parson Fair, moreover,
+felt somewhat of interest in this Madelon Hautville, for he had a
+decorously restrained passion for sweet sounds which she had often
+gratified. Many a Sabbath day had he sat in his beetling pulpit and
+striven to keep his mind fixed upon the spirit of the hymn alone, in
+spite of his leaping pulses, when Madelon's great voice filled the
+meeting-house. It was probable that he also, notwithstanding his
+Christian grace, shared somewhat the popular sentiments towards these
+musical and Bohemian Hautvilles; yet he looked with a dignified
+kindness at the girl.
+
+"I trust you are not ill," he said, without answering her question as
+to whether she might see Dorothy.
+
+Madelon did not act as if she heard what he said. "Can I see your
+daughter, sir?" she repeated. She cast an anxious glance over her
+shoulder for fear Eugene might appear in the road.
+
+Parson Fair still eyed her with perplexity. "I believe Dorothy is ill
+in her chamber," he said, hesitatingly. "I do not know--"
+
+Madelon gave a dry sob. "I beg you to let me see her for a minute,
+sir," she gasped out, "for the love of God. It is life and death!"
+
+Parson Fair looked shocked and half alarmed. He had not had to do
+with women like this, who spoke with such fervor of passion. His
+womankind had swathed all their fiercer human emotions with shy
+decorum and stern modesty, as Turkish women swathe their faces with
+veils.
+
+Madelon, still under the fear of Eugene, pressed inside the door as
+she spoke, and he stood aside half involuntarily. "I beg you to let
+me see her," she repeated. She looked at the stately wind of the
+stairs up to the second floor, as if she were minded to ascend
+without bidding to Dorothy's chamber.
+
+"She is ill in her chamber," the Parson said again, with a kind of
+forbidding helplessness.
+
+"I would see her only for a minute. I beg you to let me, sir. It is
+life and death, I tell you--it is life and death!"
+
+Whether Parson Fair motioned her to ascend, or whether he simply
+stood aside to allow her to pass, he never knew, but Madelon was up
+the winding stairs with a swirl of her cloak, as if the wind had
+caught it. Parson Fair followed her, and motioned her to the south
+front chamber, and was about to rap on the door when it was flung
+open violently, and the great black princess stood there, scowling at
+them.
+
+"I have a guest here for your mistress," said Parson Fair; but the
+black woman blocked his way, speaking fast in her wrathful gibberish.
+
+However, at a stately gesture from her master she stood aside, and he
+held the door open, and Madelon entered. "You had better not remain
+long, to tire her," said the parson, and closed the door. Immediately
+the uncouth savage voice was raised high again, and quelled by the
+parson's calm tone. Then there was a great settling of a heavy body
+close to the threshold. The black woman had thrown herself at the
+sill of her darling's door, to keep watch, like a faithful dog.
+
+Madelon Hautville, when she entered Dorothy Fair's room, had her mind
+not been fixed upon its one end, which was above all such petty
+details of existence, might well have looked about her. No such
+dainty maiden bower was there in the whole village as this. Madelon's
+own chamber, carpetless and freezing cold, with its sparse furniture
+and scanty sweep of white curtains across the furred windows which
+filled the room with the blue-white light of frost, was desolation to
+it.
+
+A great fire blazed on Dorothy Fair's chamber hearth. The red glow of
+it was over the whole room, and the frost on the windows was melting.
+Curtains of a soft blue-and-white stuff, said to have been brought
+from overseas, hung at Dorothy's windows and between the high posts
+of her bed. She had also her little rocking-chair and footstool
+frilled and cushioned with it. There was a fine white matting on her
+floor, and a thick rug with a basket of flowers wrought on it beside
+her bed. The high white panel-work around Dorothy's mantel was carved
+with curving garlands and festoons of ribbon and flowers, and on the
+shelf stood tall china vases and bright candlesticks. Dorothy's
+dressing-table had a petticoat of finest dimity, trimmed with tiny
+tassels. Above it hung her fine oval mirror, in a carved gilt frame.
+Upon the table were scattered silver and ivory things and glass
+bottles, the like of which Madelon had never seen. The room was full
+of that mingled perfume of roses and lavender which was always about
+Dorothy herself.
+
+The counterpane on Dorothy's bed was all white and blue, and quilted
+in a curious fashion, and her pillows were edged with lace. In the
+midst of this white-and-blue nest, her slender little body half
+buried in her great feather-bed, her lovely yellow locks spreading
+over her pillow, lay Dorothy Fair when Madelon entered. She half
+raised herself, and stared at her with blue, dilated eyes, and shrank
+back with a little whimper of terror when she came impetuously to her
+bedside.
+
+"You don't believe it," Madelon said, with no preface.
+
+Dorothy stared at her, trembling. "You mean--"
+
+"I mean you don't believe he killed him! You don't believe Burr
+Gordon killed his cousin Lot!"
+
+Dorothy sank weakly back on her pillows. Great tears welled up in her
+blue eyes and rolled down her soft cheeks. "They _saw_ him there,"
+she sobbed out, "and they found his knife. Oh, I didn't think he was
+so wicked!"
+
+Madelon caught her by one slender arm hard, as if she would have
+shaken her. "_You_ believe it!" she cried out. "You believe that Burr
+did it--_you!_"
+
+"They--saw--him--there," moaned Dorothy, with a terrified roll of her
+tearful eyes at Madelon's face.
+
+"_Saw him there!_  What if they did see him there? What if the whole
+town saw him? What if you saw him? What if you saw him strike the
+blow with your own eyes? Wouldn't you tear them out of your own head
+before you believed it? Wouldn't you cut your own tongue out before
+you'd bear witness against him?"
+
+Dorothy sobbed convulsively.
+
+"I would," said Madelon.
+
+Dorothy hid her face away from her in the pillow.
+
+Madelon laid her hand on her fair head, and turned it with no gentle
+hand. "Listen to me now," she said. "You've got to listen. You've got
+to hear what I say. You ought to believe without being told, without
+knowing anything about it, that he's innocent, if you're a woman and
+love him; but I'm going to tell you. Burr Gordon didn't kill his
+cousin Lot. I did!"
+
+Dorothy gave a faint scream and shrank away from her.
+
+"I did!" repeated Madelon. "Now do you believe he's innocent, when
+somebody else has told you?"
+
+Dorothy's face was white as her pillows, her eyes big with terror.
+There was a soft thud against her door. The black woman was keeping
+arduous watch.
+
+"You couldn't!" Dorothy gasped out.
+
+"I could! Look at my hands; they are as strong as a man's."
+
+"You--couldn't!"
+
+"I could, and I did."
+
+Dorothy shook her head in hysterical doubt.
+
+"Listen," said Madelon--"listen. I'll tell you why I did it, Dorothy
+Fair. Burr Gordon had been with me a little before he went with you.
+Perhaps you knew it. If you did, I am not blaming you--he's got
+taking ways, you couldn't help it; and I am not blaming him--he's a
+man, and you're fairer complexioned than I am. But I was fool enough
+to be mad without any good reason--you understand I am not saying
+anything against him, Dorothy Fair--when I saw him with you at the
+ball. He had a right to take anybody to the ball that he chose. It
+was naught to me, but I was mad. I have a quick temper. And I started
+home when that young man from Kingston offered to fiddle for the
+dancing after you and Burr went out; and my brother Richard made me
+take his knife for fear I might meet stragglers, and I had it open
+under my cloak. And when I got to that lonely part of the road, after
+the turn, I saw somebody coming, and I thought it was Burr. He walked
+like him. And I looked away--I did not want to see his face; and when
+I came up to him the first thing I knew he threw his arm around me
+and kissed me, and--something seemed to leap up in me and I struck
+with Richard's knife. And--then he fell down, and I looked and it was
+not Burr--it was his cousin Lot. And--then Burr came, and we heard
+whistling, and others were coming, and he made me run, and the others
+came up and found him; and now they say he did it and not I. It was I
+who stabbed Lot Gordon, Dorothy Fair!"
+
+"It was Burr's knife, with his initials cut in the handle, that they
+found," said Dorothy, with a kind of piteous doggedness. There was in
+this fair little maiden the same power of adherence to a mental
+attitude which her father had shown in his religious tenets. Wherever
+the men and women of this family stood they were fixed beyond their
+own capability of motion.
+
+Madelon gave a bewildered sigh. "I know not how that was," said she,
+"unless--" a red flush mounted over her whole face. "No, he would not
+have done that for me," she said, as if to herself.
+
+A red flush on Dorothy's face seemed to respond to that on Madelon's.
+"You think he put his knife there to take suspicion from you?" she
+cried out, quickly.
+
+Madelon shook her head. "I don't know about the knife," she said,
+"but I know I stabbed Lot Gordon."
+
+"He would not have done that," said Dorothy, with troubled, angry
+blue eyes on her face. "He would have thought of--others. He never
+changed the knife, Madelon Hautville!"
+
+"I know nothing about the knife," repeated Madelon, "but Burr Gordon
+did not kill his cousin."
+
+"He was there, and it was his knife," said Dorothy. There was now a
+curious indignation in her manner. It was almost as if she preferred
+to believe her lover guilty of murder rather than unduly solicitous
+for her rival.
+
+Madelon Hautville turned upon her with a kind of fierce solemnity.
+"Dorothy Fair," said she, "look at me!" and the soft, blue-eyed face,
+full of that gentle unyielding which is the firmest of all, looked up
+at her from the pillows--"Dorothy Fair, did that man, who's locked up
+over there in jail in New Salem, for a crime he's innocent of, ever
+kiss you?"
+
+Madelon's face seemed to wax stiff and white. She looked like one who
+bared her breast for a mortal hurt as she spoke. Dorothy went pink to
+the roots of her yellow hair and the frill on her nightgown. She made
+an angry shamed motion of her head, which might have signified
+anything.
+
+"And you can believe this thing of him after that!" said Madelon,
+with a look of despairing scorn. "He has kissed you, Dorothy Fair,
+and you can think he has committed a murder!"
+
+Dorothy gasped. "They said--" she began again.
+
+"_They said!_  Are you a woman, Dorothy Fair, and don't you know that
+the man you love enough to let him kiss you should do no wrong in
+your eyes, or else it's a shame to you, and you should kill him to
+wipe it out?"  Dorothy shrank away from her in the bed, her
+frightened blue eyes staring at her over her shoulder. "My God! don't
+you know," said Madelon, "the man you love is yourself? When you
+believe in his guilt you believe in your own; when you strike him for
+it you strike yourself. Don't you know that, Dorothy Fair?"
+
+Dorothy looked at her, all white and trembling. She gave a half-sob.
+Suddenly Madelon's tone changed. "Don't be afraid," said she. "I'm
+different from you. I don't wonder he liked you better. It's no blame
+to him. I know you care about him. You don't believe he did it."
+
+"I don't know," sobbed Dorothy. The door opened a crack, and the
+black woman's watchful eyes appeared.
+
+"Oh, you do know, you do know! I tell you, I did it--I! Can't you
+believe me? I'm a wicked woman, and I love anybody I love in a
+different way from any that a woman as good as you are can. I did it,
+Dorothy, and not Burr! He mustn't suffer for it. We must see him, you
+and I together! Don't you believe me?"
+
+"I don't--know," sobbed Dorothy. The dark face appeared quite fully
+in the door. Madelon cast a quick glance about the room. Dorothy's
+pretty Bible, with a blue-silk-ribbon marker hanging from it, lay on
+her dimity dressing-table. Madelon sprang across and got it. The
+black woman stood in the doorway, muttering to herself. She looked
+all ready to spring to Dorothy's defence. Madelon did not notice her
+at all. She went close to Dorothy, put the Bible on the bed, and laid
+her right hand upon it.
+
+"I swear upon this Holy Book," said she, "that this hand of mine is
+the one that stabbed Lot Gordon. I swear, and I call God to witness,
+and may I be struck dead as I speak if what I say is not true. Now do
+you believe what I say, Dorothy Fair?"
+
+Dorothy looked at her and the Bible in bewildered terror. She nodded.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+Something like joy came into Madelon's face. "Then we will save him,
+you and I!" she cried out. "We will save him together! He shall not
+be hung! He shall be set free! They shall let him out of jail to-day,
+and put me there instead. We will save him! He would not own that I
+was guilty and he innocent; Lot would not own it, nor my brother
+Richard, but now--we will save him--now!"
+
+"How?" asked Dorothy, feebly.
+
+"He will own it to you. Burr will own it to you if you go and plead
+with him. He can't help owning it to you. And then you shall go to
+Lot, and when you ask him for your sake, that you may marry Burr, if
+he knows Burr has told you, and does not care about me, he will
+speak. He will be sure to speak for you. Come!"
+
+Dorothy raised herself on one elbow and stared at Madelon, her yellow
+hair falling about her fair startled face. "Where?" said she.
+
+"With me to New Salem."
+
+"To New Salem?"
+
+"Yes, to New Salem--to see Burr."
+
+"But I am ill, and the doctor has bid me stay in bed. I have been ill
+ever since the ball with a headache and fever."
+
+"You talk about headache and fever when Burr is there in prison! I
+tell you if my two feet were cut off I would walk to him on the
+stumps to set him free!"
+
+"How can I go?" said Dorothy. Her blue eyes kindled a little under
+Madelon's fiery zeal.
+
+"We will take your father's horse and sleigh."
+
+"But the horse is gone lame, and has not been used for a month."
+
+"I will get one from Dexter Beers at the tavern," said Madelon,
+promptly. "I will lead him over here and harness him into the
+sleigh."
+
+"My father will not let me go," said Dorothy.
+
+"He is a minister of the gospel--he will let his daughter go to save
+a life."
+
+"I tell you he will not," said Dorothy. "I know my father better than
+you. He will not let me go out when I am ill. It is freezing cold,
+too. If I go I must go without his knowledge and consent."
+
+"I am going without my father's," said Madelon, shortly, "and I go at
+a greater cost than that, too."
+
+"It's the second time I have deceived and disobeyed my father in a
+week's time," Dorothy said.
+
+"You talk about your father when it is Burr--Burr--that's at stake!"
+Madelon cried out. "What is your father to Burr if you love him? That
+ought to go before anything else. It says so in your Bible--it says
+so in your Bible, Dorothy Fair!"
+
+Dorothy, with her innocent, frightened eyes fixed upon the other
+girl's passionate face, as if she were being led by her into unknown
+paths, put back the coverlet and thrust one little white foot out of
+bed. Then swiftly the black woman, who had entered the room, backed
+against the door as stiffly as a sentinel, darted forward, and would
+have thrust her mistress into bed again, making uncouth protests the
+while, had not Dorothy motioned her away with a gentle dignity, which
+was hers for use when she chose.
+
+"Go down-stairs, if you please," said she, "and see if my father is
+in his study. If he is in there, and busy over his sermon, go to the
+barn, and drag out the sleigh for us."
+
+Dorothy, white and fair as an angel, in her straight linen nightgown,
+stood out on the floor, in front of her great black guardian, who
+made again as though she would seize her and force her back, and
+pleaded with her in a thick drone, like an anxious bee, not to go.
+
+"Do as I bid you!" said Dorothy, and glided past her to her dimity
+dressing-table, and began combing out her yellow hair.
+
+The black woman went out, muttering.
+
+"If my father is in his study on the north side of the house, and
+busy over his sermon, we can get away; otherwise we cannot," said
+Dorothy, combing the thick tress over her shoulder.
+
+Madelon went to a south window of the room and looked out. She could
+see the barn, and across the road, farther down, the tavern. She
+watched while Dorothy bound up her hair, and soon she saw the black
+woman run, with a low crouch of her great body like a stealthy
+animal, across the yard.
+
+"Your father is in his study," Madelon said, quickly. "I will go over
+to the tavern for a horse if yours is too lame."
+
+"He can scarce stand," said Dorothy. Her soft voice trembled; she
+trembled all over--then was still with nervous rigors. Bright pink
+spots were on her cheeks. A certain girlish daring was there in this
+gentle maiden for youthful love and pleasure, else she had not stolen
+away that night to the ball, but very little for tragic enterprise.
+And, moreover, her fine sense of decorum and womanly pride had always
+served her mainly in the place of courage, which she lacked.
+
+Sorely afraid was Dorothy Fair, if the truth were told, to go with
+this passionate girl, who had declared to her face she had done
+murder, to visit a man who she still half believed, with her helpless
+tenacity of thought, was a murderer also. The love she had hitherto
+felt for him was eclipsed by terror at the new image of him which her
+fearful fancy had conjured up and could not yet dismiss, in spite of
+Madelon's assurances. She was, too, really ill, and her delicate
+nerves were still awry from the shock they had received the night of
+the ball. Parson Fair had been sternly indignant, and his daughter
+had quailed before him, and then had come the news concerning Burr.
+Sage tea, and hot foot-baths, and the doctor's nostrums had not cured
+her yet. Her very spirit trembled and fluttered at this undertaking;
+but she could not withstand this fierce and ardent girl who upbraided
+her with the cowardice and distrust of her love. Instinctively she
+tried to raise her sentiment to the standard of the other's and
+believe in Burr.
+
+Madelon paused a second as she went out, and gave a strange,
+scrutinizing glance at her.
+
+"Why do you not wear your blue-silk quilted hood with the swan's-down
+trimming?" said she. "It becomes you, and it is warm over your ears."
+
+"Yes, I will," said Dorothy, looking at her wonderingly.
+
+Madelon went softly out of the house, and ran across and down the
+road to the tavern. Dexter Beers, the landlord, was just going around
+the wide sweep of drive to the stable with a meal-sack over his
+shoulder. No one else was in sight; it was so cold there were no
+loafers about. Madelon ran after him, and overtook him before he
+reached the stable door.
+
+"Can you let me take a horse?" said she, abruptly.
+
+Dexter Beers looked slowly around at her with a quick roll of a black
+eye in a massive face. He had an enormous bulk, which he moved about
+with painful sidewise motions. His voice was husky.
+
+"What d'ye want a horse for?" said he.
+
+"I want it to put in Parson Fair's sleigh."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To take Dorothy to ride."
+
+"Parson's horse lame yet?"
+
+Madelon nodded.
+
+"Where's yours?"
+
+"I can't have him."
+
+Dexter Beers still moved on with curious lateral twirls of his
+shoulders and heaves of his great chest, with its row of shining
+waistcoat buttons.
+
+"Pooty cold day for a sleigh-ride," he observed, with a great steam
+of breath.
+
+"I'll pay you well for the horse," said Madelon, in a hard voice. She
+followed him into the stable. He heaved the meal-sack from his
+shoulder to the floor with a grunt. Another man came forward with a
+peck measure in his hand. He was young, with a frosty yellow
+mustache. He had gone to school with Madelon and knew her well, but
+he looked at her with uncouth shyness without speaking. Then he began
+unfastening the mouth of the sack.
+
+Madelon stepped forward impatiently towards the horse-stalls. There
+were the relay of coach-horses, great grays and bays, champing their
+feed, getting ready for their sure-footed rushes over the mountain
+roads when the coaches came in. She passed them by with sharp
+glances.
+
+A man whose face was purplish red with cold was out in the rear of
+the stable, rubbing down a restive bay with loud "whoas," and now and
+then a stronger word and a hard twitch at the halter. He looked
+curiously at Madelon as she walked up to one of the stalls.
+
+"Better look out for them heels!" he called out, as she drew nearer.
+She paid no heed, but went straight into the stall, untied the horse,
+and began to back him out. "Hi, there!" the man shouted, and Dexter
+Beers and the young man came hurrying up. "Better look out for that
+gal--I believe she's gone crazy!" he called out. "I can't leave this
+darned beast--she'll get kicked to death if she don't look out. That
+old white won't stan' a woman in the stall. Whoa, there! whoa, darn
+ye! Stan' still!"
+
+"Hullo, what ye doin' of?" demanded Dexter Beers, coming up.
+
+Madelon calmly backed the horse out of his stall. "I want to hire
+this horse," said she, holding his halter with a firm hand.
+
+"That horse?"
+
+"Yes. I'll pay you whatever you ask."
+
+Dexter Beers stared at her and the horse dubiously. "Jest as soon set
+a woman to drivin' the devil as that old white," volunteered the man
+who was cleaning the bay. The young man stood gaping with wonder.
+
+"Can I have this horse or not?" demanded Madelon. Her black eyes
+flashed imperiously at Dexter Beers. Her small brown hand held the
+halter of the old white with a grasp like steel.
+
+"Dunno 'bout your drivin' that horse," said Dexter Beers. "'Fraid
+you'll get run away with. Better take another."
+
+"Isn't this horse the fastest you've got on a short stretch?"
+
+"S'pose he is, but I dunno 'bout a woman's drivin' of him."
+
+Madelon looked as if she were half minded to spring upon the back of
+the old white and settle the matter summarily. She fairly quivered
+with impatience.
+
+"A woman who can drive David Hautville's roan can drive this horse,
+and you know it," said she. She moved forward as she spoke, leading
+the high-stepping old white, and Dexter Beers stood aside.
+
+"Well, David Hautville's roan is nigh a match for this one," he
+grunted, hesitatingly, "but then ye know your own better. Hadn't ye
+better--"
+
+But the old white was out of the stable at a trot, with Madelon
+running alongside.
+
+"Don't ye want a man to hitch him up?" Dexter Beers called after her;
+but she was out of hearing.
+
+"If the gal's ekal to drivin' that horse, she's ekal to hitchin' of
+him up," said the man who was cleaning the bay. "If a gal wants to
+drive, let her hitch. Ye'd better let a woman go the whole figger
+when she gits started, just as ye'd better give an ugly cuss of a
+horse his head up hill an' down. It takes the mischief out of 'em
+quicker'n anything. Let her go it, Dexter--don't ye fret."
+
+"I don't want her breakin' any of the parson's daughter's bones with
+none of my horses," said Dexter Beers, uneasily. "Wonder where the
+parson is?"
+
+"Let 'em go it! They won't git smashed up, I guess," said the other.
+"I've seen that gal of Hautville's with that mare of his'n. She kin
+drive most anythin' short of the devil, an' old white's got sense
+enough to know when he's well driv, ugly's he is. He wa'n't on the
+track for nothin'. He ain't no wuss, if he's as bad, as that roan
+mare. Let 'em _go_ it!"
+
+"Wonder what's to pay?" said the young man, who had not spoken
+before.
+
+"Dunno," said Dexter Beers. "Somethin's to pay--that girl acted
+queer."
+
+"S'pose she takes it hard 'bout Burr Gordon. He used to fool 'round
+her, I've heerd, afore he went courtin' the parson's gal."
+
+"Dunno--queer she's so thick with the parson's gal all of a sudden."
+
+"Lord, I wouldn't tech a gal that could git the upperhand of a horse
+like that roan mare with a ten-foot pole," half soliloquized the man
+at work over the bay. "Wouldn't have her if she owned half the
+township, an' went down on her knees to me--darned if I would. Don't
+want no woman that kin make horse-flesh like that knuckle under.
+Guess a man wouldn't have much show; hev to take his porridge 'bout
+the way she wanted to make it. Whoa, there! stan' still, can't ye?
+Darned if I want nothin' to do with sech woman folks or sech horses
+as ye be."
+
+Dexter Beers moved laboriously out to the stable door and peered
+after Madelon, but she had disappeared in Parson Fair's yard. The
+white horse had gone up the road at a brisk trot, but she had easily
+kept pace with him. She also harnessed him into the sleigh with no
+difficulty. The animal seemed docile, and as if he were to belie his
+hard reputation. There was, however, a proud and nervous cant to his
+old white head, and he set his jaw stiffly against his bit.
+
+Dorothy came out in her quilted silk pelisse and her blue hood edged
+with swan's-down, and got into the sleigh. The black woman was
+keeping watch at the parson's study door the while, but he never
+swerved from his hard application of the doctrines. The sleigh
+slipped noiselessly out of the yard and up the road, for Madelon had
+not put on the bells. The old white went rather stiffly and steadily
+for the first quarter-mile; then he made a leap forward with a great
+lift of his lean white flanks, and they flew.
+
+Dorothy gave a terrified gasp. "Don't be frightened," Madelon said.
+"It's the horse that used to beat everything in the county. He's old
+now, but when he gets warmed up he's the fastest horse around for a
+short stretch. He can't hold out long, but while he does he goes; and
+I want to get a good start. I want to strike the New Salem road as
+soon as I can."
+
+Madelon had a growing fear lest Eugene might have freed himself, and
+might ride the roan across by a shorter cut, and so intercept her at
+the turn into the New Salem road. He might easily suspect her of
+attempting to see Burr again. If she passed the turn first she could
+probably escape him if her horse held out; and, indeed, he might not
+think she had gone that way if he did not see her.
+
+Dorothy held fast to the side of the sleigh, which seemed to rise
+from the track as they sped on. "Don't be frightened," Madelon said
+again. "This is the only horse in town that can beat my father's on a
+short stretch, and I don't know that he can always, but I don't think
+he has been used, and father's was ridden hard yesterday. I can
+manage this one in harness better than I can father's. Don't be
+frightened."  But Dorothy's face grew pale as the swan's-down around
+it, and her great blue eyes were fixed fearfully upon the bounding
+heels and flanks of the old white race-horse.
+
+Madelon strained her eyes ahead as they neared the turn of the New
+Salem road. There was nobody in sight. Then she glanced across the
+fields at the right. Suddenly she swung out the reins over the back
+of the old white, and hallooed, and stood up in the sleigh.
+
+Dorothy screamed faintly. "Sit still and hold on!" Madelon shouted.
+Dorothy shut her eyes. It seemed to her she was being hurled through
+space. Her slender body swung to and fro against the sleigh as she
+clung frantically to it.
+
+Eugene Hautville, on the roan, was coming at a mad run across the
+open field on the right towards the turn of the road. It seemed for a
+second as if Madelon would reach it before he did; but they met
+there, and the roan reared to a stop in the narrow road directly in
+front of the old white, who plunged furiously.
+
+"Look out there!" shouted Eugene, as the sleigh tilted on the
+snow-crust. The old white's temper was up at this sudden check, but
+the woman behind him had a stronger will than he. She brought him to
+a straining halt, and then she spoke to her brother.
+
+"You let us pass!" she said, sternly.
+
+"Where are you going?" he demanded. He looked uneasily at Dorothy as
+he spoke. It was easy enough to see that she was a restraint upon
+him, and that fair, timid face in its blue hood held his indignation
+well in check.
+
+"We are going to New Salem," replied Madelon. "Let us pass."
+
+"I want to know what you are going for," said Eugene; and he tried to
+speak with fire, but he still looked furtively at Dorothy.
+
+Nobody had ever suspected how that lovely face of hers had been in
+his dreams, unless it had been for a time Dorothy herself. Nobody had
+noticed in meeting, of a Sabbath day long since, when Dorothy had
+first returned from her Boston school, sundry glances which had
+passed between a pair of soft blue eyes in the parson's pew and a
+pair of fiery black ones in the singing-seats.
+
+Dorothy, half guiltily in those days, had arranged her curls and tied
+on her Sunday bonnets with a view to Eugene Hautville's eyes; and
+always, when she returned from meeting, had gone straight to her
+looking-glass, to be sure that she had looked fair in them. But
+nobody had ever known, and scarcely she herself.
+
+She had come to think later that she had perhaps been mistaken, for
+never had Eugene made other advances to her than by those ardent
+glances; and Burr had come, and she had turned to him, and thought of
+Eugene Hautville only when he crossed her way, and then with a
+mixture of pique and shame. Never by any chance did her eyes meet his
+nowadays of a Sabbath day, and she listened coldly to his sweet tenor
+in the hymns. Now, suddenly, she looked straight up in his face and
+met his eyes, and a pink flush came into her white cheeks.
+
+"Please to let us pass," she said, in her gentle tone, which had yet
+a tincture of command in it. Any woman as fair as she, who has a
+right understanding of her looking-glass, has, however soft she may
+be, the instincts of a queen within her. She felt a proud resentment
+for her own old folly and for Eugene's old slighting of her, and
+indignation at his present attitude as she looked up at him with
+sudden daring.
+
+Eugene threw back his head haughtily. "She wants to see Burr Gordon,"
+he thought, and would have died rather than let her think he would
+stand in the way of it. He jerked the roan aside, and seemed as if he
+would have been flung into the way-side bushes with her curving
+plunge.
+
+"Pass, if you wish," he said, with a graceful bend in his saddle, and
+was past them, riding the other way towards the village.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+When they reached the county buildings, the court-house and the jail,
+in New Salem, the old race-horse was still not nearly spent, although
+he breathed somewhat hard. When Madelon sprang out to blanket and tie
+him he seemed to vibrate to her touch like electric steel, and showed
+that the old fire had not yet died out of his nerves and muscles.
+
+Poor Dorothy Fair's knees were weak under her as she got out of the
+sleigh. Her pretty face was pitiful, her sweet mouth drooping at the
+corners like a troubled child's.
+
+Madelon looked at her sharply when they stood before the jail door
+waiting for admittance. "I have seen you wear a curl each side of
+your face outside your hood," said she.
+
+"I didn't think of it to-day," Dorothy replied, with forlorn
+surprise.
+
+Madelon went close to the other girl peremptorily, as if she had been
+her mother, pulled forward two soft curls from under her hood, and
+arranged them becomingly against the pale cheeks; and Dorothy
+submitted.
+
+Alvin Mead opened the jail door, and his great face took on a
+forbidding scowl when he saw Madelon Hautville.
+
+"Can't let ye in," he said, gruffly. "Ain't a visitin' day."  He
+would have shut the door in their faces had not Madelon made a quick
+spring against it.
+
+"I don't want to come in!" she cried. "I don't want to see him
+to-day. It's this lady who wants to see him."
+
+"Can't see nobody," said Alvin Mead, filling up the door like a surly
+living wedge.
+
+"You must let us see him," persisted Madelon. "She's Parson Fair's
+daughter. She is going to marry Burr Gordon--she must see him."
+
+Alvin Mead shook his head stubbornly. Then Dorothy spoke, thrusting
+her fair face forward, and looking up at him with terrified, innocent
+pleading, like a child, and yet speaking with a gentle lady's
+authority. "I beg you to let me come in, only for a few moments,"
+said she. "I will not make you any trouble. I will come out directly
+when you bid me to."
+
+Alvin Mead looked at her a second, then at Madelon with rough
+inquiry. "Who did ye say she was?" he growled.
+
+"Parson Fair's daughter, the lady that's going to marry Burr Gordon."
+
+"I can't let but one of ye see him, and she can't stay more'n ten
+minutes," said Alvin Mead, and moved aside, and Madelon and Dorothy
+entered.
+
+They followed Alvin Mead down the icy, dark corridor to Burr's cell
+door. He unlocked it, and bade Dorothy enter. He cast a forbidding
+look at Madelon. "I will stand here," she said with a strange
+meekness, almost as if her heart were broken; but when the jailer
+prepared to follow Dorothy into Burr's cell she caught him by the arm
+and tried to force him back, and cried out sharply that he should let
+her see him alone. "She is the girl he is going to marry, I tell
+you!" she said. "Let them see each other alone. You cannot come
+between two like that when they are in such trouble."
+
+Alvin Mead looked at her a second irresolutely. Then he stepped back
+in the corridor and locked the cell door. "That the gal? Thought ye
+was the one," he said, with a half-chuckle, with coarse, sharp eyes
+upon her face.
+
+"He is going to marry her," Madelon repeated. She stood stiff and
+straight like a statue, and waited. Once, when Alvin made an
+impatient motion as though to open the door, she restrained him with
+such despairing eagerness that he drew back and looked at her
+wonderingly, and stood in surly silence awhile longer.
+
+"She's got to come out now," he said, at last. "I've got other things
+to tend to. Can't stay here no longer, nohow."  He unlocked the door
+and threw it open with a jerk. "Time's up!" he shouted, and Dorothy
+came out directly, almost as if she were running away. Alvin Mead
+clapped to the door with a great jar and locked it. Madelon, had she
+tried, could not have got a glimpse of Burr; but she did not try. She
+sprang at Dorothy Fair, and took her by the shoulders, and looked
+into her scared face with agonized questioning.
+
+"Did--he confess?" she gasped out. "Did--he tell you, did he--tell
+you, Dorothy Fair?"
+
+Dorothy shook her head in a mute terror that was almost horror. It
+seemed as if she would sink to the floor under Madelon's heavy hands.
+Alvin Mead stood staring at them.
+
+"Didn't he--tell you--I was the one who--stabbed Lot? Didn't he--tell
+you?"
+
+"She's at it again," muttered Alvin Mead.
+
+Dorothy shook her head. "He wouldn't speak," she said, faintly. "He
+would say nothing about it."
+
+Madelon fairly shook her. "Couldn't you make him speak? _You!_"
+
+"I couldn't, I couldn't, Madelon!"
+
+"Did you tell him your heart would break if he didn't--that you
+couldn't marry him if he didn't?"
+
+"Yes--don't, don't--look at me so, Madelon."
+
+Alvin Mead stepped forward. "Look at here--you're scarin' of that gal
+to death," he interfered. "You'd better take your hands off her."
+
+Then Madelon turned to him, and grasped at the keys in his hands, as
+if she would wrest them from him. "Unlock the door and let me in, and
+let Burr Gordon out!" she demanded, wildly.
+
+The jailer wrested his keys away with a contemptuous jerk, and took
+the skin from Madelon's hands with them. "You're crazy," he said.
+
+"I am not crazy! You've got an innocent man locked up in there, and
+I, who am guilty and tell you so, you will not arrest. It is you who
+are crazy. Let me in!"
+
+Alvin Mead laid a rough hand on Madelon's shoulder. "Now you look at
+here, gal," said he. "I've had about all this darned nonsense I'm
+a-goin' to stan'. That chap is in jail for murder, an' in jail he's
+a-goin' to stay till I git orders from somebody besides you to let
+him out. An' what's more, don't you come here on no sich tom-fool
+arrant agin. If you do you won't git in. I ain't no objection to gals
+he was goin' to marry ef he hadn't broke the laws comin' to see him a
+leetle spell, if they'll go away peaceable when they're bid, but as
+for havin' sech highstericky work as this, I'll be darned if I will.
+Now I can't stan' here foolin' no longer; you'd better be gittin'
+right along home, an' don't you break this other gal's neck with that
+old stepper you've got out there."
+
+Madelon Hautville said not another word. She went out of the jail
+quickly, and she and Dorothy were soon in the sleigh and flying down
+the road. The old racer was not so old nor so weary that the impetus
+of the homeward stretch failed to stir him--for a mile or so, at
+least. After that his pace slackened, and then Madelon turned to the
+other girl, who looked up at her with a kind of piteous defiance.
+"What did you say to him?" she demanded.
+
+"I--begged him--if he--did not kill Lot to--say so," replied Dorothy,
+faintly; then she shrank and quivered before the other girl, who
+started wrathfully, half as if she would fling her from the sleigh.
+
+"_If_ he did not kill Lot to say so!" repeated Madelon. "_If_ he did
+not! You know he did not."
+
+"He would not tell me so," said Dorothy, with her stubbornness of
+meekness, and her blue eyes met Madelon's, although there were tears
+welling up in them.
+
+"Tell you so!" cried Madelon. "What are you made of, Dorothy Fair?"
+
+"He would not," repeated Dorothy. "If he _was_ innocent, why should
+he not have told me if he loved me?"
+
+Madelon looked at her. "You don't love him!" she cried out, sharply.
+"You don't love him, and that's why. You don't love him, Dorothy
+Fair!"
+
+Dorothy flushed red and drew herself up with gentle stiffness. "You
+cannot expect me to unveil my heart to you," said she.
+
+"You have betrayed it," persisted Madelon. "You don't love him,
+Dorothy Fair! Shame on you, after all!"
+
+"What right have you to say that?" demanded Dorothy, and this time
+with some show of anger.
+
+"The right of another woman who does love him, and would save his
+life," Madelon answered, fiercely. "The right of a woman who can love
+more in an hour than such as you in a lifetime!"
+
+"You--don't know--"
+
+"I do know. You don't love him or you would not have distrusted him.
+You would have made him tell you the truth. You would have flung your
+arms around him, and you would not have let him go until he told you.
+Did you do that? Answer me: did you do that?"
+
+A great wave of red crept over Dorothy's face, but she replied, with
+cold dignity: "I throw my arms around no man unbidden!"
+
+"Unbidden!" repeated Madelon, and scorn seemed to sound in her voice
+like the lash of a whip. She flung out the reins over the horse's
+back, and they slipped along swiftly over the icy crust, and not
+another word did she speak to Dorothy Fair all the way home.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+When they entered Parson Fair's south yard there was a swift
+disappearance of a dark face from a window, and the door was flung
+open, and the grimly faithful servant-woman came forth and lifted
+Dorothy out of the sleigh, crooning the while in tender and angry
+gutturals. Poor Dorothy Fair shook like a white flower in a wind, for
+beside the rigor of the cold, which seemed to pierce her very soul,
+the chill of fever was still upon her. She chattered helplessly when
+she tried to speak, and there were sobs in her throat. The black
+woman half carried her into the house, and up-stairs to her own
+chamber, where the hearth-fire was blazing bright. She covered her up
+warm in bed, with a hot brick at her feet, and dosed her with warm
+herb drinks, and coddled her, until, after some piteous weeping, she
+fell asleep.
+
+But for Madelon Hautville there was no rest and no sleep. She felt
+not the cold, and if she had fever in her veins the fierce disregard
+of her straining spirit was beyond it. No knowledge of her body at
+all had Madelon Hautville, no knowledge of anything on earth except
+her one aim--to save her lover's life. She was nothing but a purpose
+concentrated upon one end; there was in her that great impetus of the
+human will which is above all the swift forces of the world when once
+it is aroused.
+
+She unharnessed the horse quickly from the parson's sleigh, and led
+him, restive again at the near prospect of his stall and feed, back
+to the tavern stable, paid for him, and struck out on the homeward
+road, straight and swift as one of her Indian ancestors. A group of
+men in the stable door stood aside with curious alacrity to let her
+pass; they stared after her, then at each other.
+
+"I swan!" said one.
+
+"Wouldn't like to be in the way when that gal was headed anywheres,"
+said another.
+
+"If that gal belonged to me I'd get her some stronger bits," said the
+man who had been cleaning the bay horse when Madelon came for the
+white.
+
+"I believe she's lost her mind," said the tavern-keeper. "It's the
+last time I'll ever let her have a horse, and I told her so."  There
+came a blast of northwest wind which buffeted them about their faces
+and chests like an icy flail, and they scattered before it, some to
+their duties in the stable, some into the warm tavern for a mug of
+something hot to do away with the chill. It was too cold a day to
+gossip in a doorway. It was not long past noon, but the cold had
+seemed to strengthen as the sun rode higher. The wind blew from the
+icy northwest more frequently in fiercer gusts. Madelon Hautville
+sped along before it, her red cloak flying out like a flag, and took
+no thought of it at all. She was, while still in the flesh and upon
+the earth, so intensified in spirit that there existed for her
+consciousness neither heat nor cold. She reached the old road, the
+short-cut, stretched down through the stiff white woods to her own
+home; she hastened along it a little way, then she stopped and faced
+back and stood irresolute. The icy wind stiffened her face, but she
+did not note it. She looked back at the road with its blue
+snow-furrows stretching between the desolate woods, at the spires and
+roofs of the village beyond. If one followed that road to the village
+and took the first one upon the right, and travelled ten miles, one
+would come to the town of Kingston.
+
+Madelon began moving along on the road to the village, vaguely at
+first, as if half in a dream, then with gathering purpose. Back she
+went, in her tracks, straight to the village and the tavern stable,
+and asked of Dexter Beers another horse to drive to Kingston. But he
+refused her, standing before her, blocking the stable door, looking
+aside with a kind of timid doggedness. "Can't let ye have another
+horse to-day nohow," said he; "too cold to let 'em out."
+
+"I'll pay you well," said Madelon.
+
+"Pay ain't no object. Can't let none of 'em out but the stage-horses
+in no sech weather as this."  Still Dexter Beers did not look at
+Madelon's stern and angry eyes; he gazed intently at a post in an icy
+slant of snow in the yard on the left.
+
+He had the usual masculine dread of an angry woman, and, moreover, he
+had a sharp-tongued wife, but he had also the masculine tenacity of a
+position. He stared at the post as if his spirit held fast to it, and
+braced itself against the torrent of feminine wrath which he
+expected; but it did not come. Madelon Hautville set her mouth hard,
+wrapped her red cloak around her with a firm gesture, as if she were
+a soldier about to start on a long march, and walked out of the yard
+and up the road without another word.
+
+"I swan!" said Dexter Beers.
+
+The red-faced hostler approached with a pail in each hand bound for
+the well; he was watering the coach-horses for the next relay.
+"What's up?" he inquired, pushing past him.
+
+"I'll be darned if I don't believe that gal of Hautville's has
+started to walk to Kingston, 'cause I wouldn't let her have another
+horse!"
+
+"Let her go it," droned the red-faced man, with a short chuckle.
+
+"Hope she won't freeze her feet nor nothin'," said Dexter Beers,
+uneasily.
+
+"Let her _go_ it!" said the red-faced man, swinging across the yard
+with his pails.
+
+Madelon Hautville walked on steadily. She reached the right-hand
+turn, and then she was on the direct Kingston road, with a ten-mile
+stretch before her. It was past one o'clock, and she could not reach
+her journey's end much before dark.
+
+About two miles after the turn of the road the more thickly set
+habitations ceased, and there were only isolated farm-houses, with
+long, sloping reaches of woods and pasture-lands between. The
+pasture-lands were hummocked with ice-coated rocks and hooped with
+frozen vines; they seemed to flow down in glittering waves, like
+glaciers, over the hill-sides. The woods stood white and petrified,
+as woods might have done in a glacial era. There was no sound in them
+except now and then the crack of a bough under the weight of ice, and
+slow, painful responses, like the twangs of rusty harp-strings, to
+the harder gusts of wind. The cold was so intense that the ice did
+not melt in the noonday sun, and there were no soft droppings and
+gurglings to modify this rigor of white light and sound. Occasionally
+a rabbit crossed Madelon's path, silent as a little gray scudding
+shadow, and so swiftly that he did not reach one's consciousness
+until he was out of sight. There was seldom a winter bird, even, in
+sight. The ice on the trees and the pastures had locked and sealed
+their larders. Their little beaks could not pierce it for seeds and
+grubs, and so they were forced to repair to kitchen doors and
+barnyards in quest of stray crumbs from the provender of men and
+cattle.
+
+The rabbits, and an ox-team drawing a sled laden with cedar logs,
+slipping with shrill, long squeaks over the white road, driven by a
+man with a red face in an ambush of frozen beard, were all the living
+things she met for the first four miles. The man clambered stiffly
+down from his sled just before he met her, and began walking,
+stamping, rubbing his ears, and swinging his arms violently the
+while. He stared hard at Madelon, and gave a sort of grunt as he
+passed. It was an instinctive note of comradeship with another in a
+situation hard for their common humanity. The man, toiling painfully
+along that hard road, on that bitter day, with hands and feet half
+frost-bitten, and face smarting as if with fire, his aching lungs
+straining with the icy air, felt that he and the woman struggling
+over the same road had common cause for wrath against this stress of
+nature, and so made that half-surly, half-sympathetic grunt as he
+passed her. But she did not respond. She did not even glance at him
+as she went along. Her face glowed all over, red as a rose with the
+freezing wind; she wrapped her cloak instinctively tight around her,
+and walked a little stiffly, as if her feet might be somewhat numb;
+but there was in her fixed dark eyes no recognition of anything but
+some end she had in view beyond his ken.
+
+The man stopped and looked seriously after her, and past her down the
+road. "Wonder what she's up to!" he muttered. Then he struggled on
+after his oxen, who plodded along with goat's-beards of their frozen
+breath hanging from their jaws.
+
+Two miles farther on there was a sudden loud blast of a horn, and
+following upon it a great jangle of bells and the tramp of hoofs, and
+Madelon knew the Ware and Kingston stage was coming. Presently the
+top of the coach and the leaders' heads appeared above the rise of
+the road, and Madelon stood well aside to meet it, pressing in among
+the crackling icy bushes.
+
+There was another blast of the horn, then a wild rush of sure-footed
+horses down the hill, and the coach was past, going towards Ware.
+Madelon had caught only a glimpse of the frost-white driver on the
+box, a man beside him shrugged up miserably in great-coat and
+comforter, with back rounded and head bent against the cold, and some
+chilled faces in the windows. Some of the passengers had come from
+Wolverton, ten miles past Kingston, and one might freeze to death on
+a long stage journey a day like that. There was, perhaps, less danger
+in a walk, but there was danger in that should the cold increase, and
+it did increase hourly. Madelon's feet grew more and more numb. She
+stamped them from time to time, but more from instinct than from any
+real appreciation of the discomfort they gave her. So wrought up was
+she with zeal that it seemed she might have set out to walk through a
+fiery furnace as soon as through this frozen waste, and perhaps have
+had her flesh consumed to ashes, with her soul still intent upon its
+one purpose. All thought of her own self, save as an instrument to
+save the life of the man she loved, was gone out of the girl.
+Jealousy was purged out of her; all resentment for faithlessness, all
+longing for possession were gone. She bore in her heart the greatest
+love of her life as she sped along down the frozen road to Kingston.
+
+The last two miles of the way poor Madelon struggled hard to cover.
+She drew short, gasping breaths, as if she were on a high
+mountain-top. The cold strengthened as the daylight waned. The very
+air seemed frozen and resolved into a cutting diamond-dust of frost.
+Suddenly Madelon awoke to the fear that she could not walk much
+farther. She had eaten nothing since morning; the cold and fatigue
+were consuming her life as the flame consumes the wick of the lamp
+when the oil is lacking.
+
+"I must get there!" she said to herself. She stamped her numb feet
+desperately. She beat herself pitilessly with her stiff hands. She
+set forth on a run towards Kingston, and quickened her blood a little
+in that way, although she panted and fairly gasped for breath.
+
+She drew a sigh of relief when she gained the last rise in the road,
+and the town of Kingston lay before her a mile in the valley. It was
+growing dark and the village lights were coming out when she had
+passed the straggling farms and come into the little centre of the
+town where the stores, the meeting-houses, and the tavern were
+grouped.
+
+The village main street looked almost deserted. There was only one
+sleigh in sight, drawn up in front of the store. The horse was well
+covered with a buffalo-skin and an old bed-quilt in addition, which
+his master's wife had doubtless provided on account of the terrible
+cold.
+
+As Madelon reached the store a man came out with a molasses-jug in
+hand and arms clasping parcels, which he began stowing away under the
+seat of the sleigh. Madelon went up to him. "Can you tell me where
+Mr. Otis lives?" said she. She could scarcely enunciate. Her very
+tongue seemed stiff with the cold.
+
+The man turned and stared at her with sharp blue eyes under red brows
+frost-white between his cap and twice-wound red tippet. "Hey?" he
+said, in a muffled voice.
+
+"Can you tell me where Mr. Otis lives?"
+
+"Otis?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Which Otis d'ye mean? There's two Otises. D'ye mean Calvin Otis or
+Jim Otis?"
+
+"He has a son that plays the fiddle," answered Madelon, faintly.
+
+"Then it's Jim ye mean. He died last year. He had a son Jim that
+plays the fiddle. Lives down the road on the left-hand side, five
+houses below the meeting-house. House with three popple-trees in
+front--sets close to the road."
+
+Madelon started, but the man's voice arrested her. "You look most
+froze," said he. "Hadn't ye better go in there an' warm up?"  He
+pointed towards the store-windows with a rosy glow of light and
+warmth transfusing their thick layers of frost. "It's pipin' hot in
+there--warm ye all through in a minute. It's a terrible cold night.
+Old man in there, lived 'round these parts risin' eighty years, says
+he never knew sech a night. Better just step in there."
+
+Madelon shook her head and started on.
+
+"Where did ye come from?" called the man.
+
+"Ware Centre," Madelon gasped out, as the freezing wind struck her.
+
+"Good Lord! you don't mean to say you've walked risin' ten mile from
+Ware Centre a day like this!"
+
+Madelon was gone, bending before the wind, without another word.
+
+"Good Lord!" said the man, "a woman walkin' from Ware Centre this
+weather!"  He stood staring after the girls' retreating figure; then
+he started to unblanket his horse. But he stopped and stared again,
+and finally went into the store to tell the news.
+
+Madelon kept on as fast as she was able, but she was nearly spent.
+Her exultation of spirit might indeed survive fleshly exhaustion and
+perhaps in a measure overcome it, but it could not prevent it
+altogether. When she reached the fifth house below the white
+meeting-house, the house set close to the road, with three
+poplar-trees in front, she had just strength enough to stagger to the
+door and raise the knocker. Then she leaned against the door-post,
+and it was only with a fierce effort that she kept her grasp upon her
+consciousness. She did not seem to feel her body at all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+Presently a bolt was shot and the door pushed open with an effort. It
+was little used, and there was ice against it. Then a man's face
+peered out irresolutely into the dusk. A knock upon the front door,
+upon a night like this, seemed so unlikely that he doubted if he had
+heard rightly.
+
+"Anybody here?" he said. Then he saw the woman's figure propped
+stiffly against the door-post. "Who is it?" he asked, in a startled
+voice. "Is it you, Mrs. Lane?"
+
+Madelon aroused herself. "I want to see Mr. Otis's son a minute if I
+can," she said, with a great effort. Then she raised her piteous eyes
+to the face before her, and realized dimly that it was the face of
+the young man who had taken her place at the ball, and sent her
+homeward to work all this misery on that dreadful night.
+
+"I am Mr. Otis's son," returned the young man, wonderingly.
+"What"--then he gave a cry--"why, it is you!"
+
+"I want--to--see you--a minute," said Madelon, and her voice sounded
+far away in her own ears.
+
+The young man started. "Why, you're half frozen," he cried out, "and
+here I am keeping you standing out here! Come in."
+
+Madelon shrank back. "No," she faltered, "I--only want to ask--"
+
+But Jim Otis took her by the arm with gentle force, and she was so
+spent that she could but let him have his way, and lead her into the
+house and the warm living-room, staggering under his supporting
+clasp.
+
+"Mother," called Jim Otis--"mother, come here, quick!"  He placed
+Madelon tenderly on the settle, and his mother came hurriedly out of
+the pantry.
+
+"What is it?" she asked. "What is the matter, Jim? Who was it
+knocked? Why, who's that?"
+
+Madelon leaned back helplessly in the corner of the settle, her head
+hanging half unconsciously. The young man stooped over her and
+unfastened her cloak and hood. "Come here, quick, mother!" he cried,
+and his voice was as sweet with pity as a woman's. "This poor girl is
+half dead with the cold."
+
+Mrs. Otis, large and fair-faced, with her soft, massive curves
+swathed in purple thibet, stared for a second in speechless wonder.
+"Who is it? How did she get here?" she whispered.
+
+"Hush--I don't know. She's from Ware Centre. Her name's Hautville."
+
+"Seems to me I've heard of her. What has she come here for, Jim?"
+
+"Hush--I don't know. She'll hear you. Go and get something hot for
+her to drink. I saw her at the ball the other night. Go quick,
+mother."
+
+"I'll get her some brandy cordial," said Mrs. Otis, with sudden
+alacrity. She needed time always to get her mental bearing thoroughly
+in any emergency, but action was prompt afterwards. She made a quick
+motion towards the cupboard, but Madelon aroused herself suddenly.
+Her senses had lapsed for a few minutes upon coming into the warm
+room. "Where am I?" she asked, in a bewildered way.
+
+"In our house," replied Mrs. Otis, promptly. "Jim just brought you
+in, and it's lucky you come just as you did, for I don't know but
+you'd froze to death if you'd been out much longer. Now, I'll get you
+some of my brandy cordial, and that'll warm you right up. Did you
+come way over from Ware Centre this dreadful night?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," replied Madelon, with the dazed look still in her eyes.
+Mrs. Otis looked back on her way to the cupboard.
+
+"Rode way over from Ware Centre in an open sleigh?" she said.
+
+"No, ma'am; I walked."
+
+Mrs. Otis stopped and looked at Madelon with a gasp, then at her son.
+"She's out of her head, I'm afraid," said she.
+
+"You didn't really walk over from Ware Centre?" questioned Jim.
+
+"Yes, I did," replied Madelon. She stood up with sudden decision. "I
+want to see you a minute," she said to Jim. Then she turned to Mrs.
+Otis. "I don't need anything to take," said she. "I was only a little
+dizzy for a minute when I came into this warm room. I feel better
+now. I only want to ask your son a question, then I must go home--"
+
+Before Mrs. Otis could speak she asked the question with no preface.
+
+"Didn't you see him give me the knife?" she cried out, with fiercely
+imploring eyes upon Jim Otis's face.
+
+The young man turned deadly white. He looked at her and did not
+answer.
+
+"Didn't you?" she repeated.
+
+"What knife?" asked Jim Otis, slowly.
+
+"You know what knife! The knife that my brother handed me when I
+started home from the ball--the knife that I stabbed Lot Gordon with.
+Tell me that you saw it, that you saw me take it, here before your
+mother, and then you must go to New Salem and testify, and set Burr
+Gordon free! He is in prison for murder, and I am guilty, and they
+will not believe it. You must tell them, and they will. You saw my
+brother give me that knife."
+
+Still Jim Otis, with his white face, stood looking at her, and
+answered not a word. His mother, continually opening her mouth to
+speak, then shutting it, looked first at one, then at the other, with
+round, dilated eyes, turning her head and quivering all over her soft
+bulk, like some great agitated and softly feathered bird.
+
+"Why don't you speak?" demanded Madelon.
+
+"What is it you want me to say?" said Jim Otis, then, hesitatingly.
+
+"Say? Say that you saw my brother Richard give me the knife that I
+did the deed with."
+
+Jim Otis stood silent, with his pale, handsome face bent doggedly
+towards the floor.
+
+"Say so! You saw it!"
+
+Still Jim Otis did not speak, and Madelon pressed close to him, and
+thrust her agonized face before his. "Have mercy upon me and speak!"
+she groaned.
+
+"Jim, what does she mean?" asked his mother, in a frightened whisper.
+"Is she out of her head?"
+
+"No; hush, mother," replied Jim. Then he turned to the girl. "No," he
+said, with stern, defiant eyes upon her face, "I did not see your
+brother give you the knife."
+
+"You did! I know you did!"
+
+"I _did not!_"
+
+"You did see him! You were looking at us when I went out!"
+
+"I was tightening a string in the fiddle when you went out," said Jim
+Otis.
+
+"You must have seen."
+
+"I tell you I did not."
+
+Madelon looked at him as if she would penetrate his soul, and he met
+her eyes fully.
+
+"I did not see your brother give you the knife," he replied, with a
+steady, unflinching look at her; but a long shudder went over him as
+he spoke. The first deliberate lie of his whole life was Jim Otis
+telling, for he had seen Richard Hautville give his sister the knife.
+
+Madelon believed his lie at last, and turned away. What with her sore
+exhaustion of body and this last disappointment her heart almost
+failed her. She went back to the settle for her cloak and her hood,
+and tied them on, while the others stood watching her, seemingly in a
+maze. She made for the door, but Jim Otis stopped her.
+
+"You cannot go back to Ware Centre to-night," he said.
+
+Madelon looked at him with proud determination, although she could
+scarce stand. "I must go," said she, and would have pressed past him,
+but he took hold of her arm.
+
+"Mother," he said, "tell her she cannot go. There has been no such
+night as this for forty years, and it is dark now. To-morrow morning
+I will carry her home; but to-night, as she is, it is out of the
+question. Tell her so, mother."
+
+Mrs. Otis gathered herself together then, and came forward and laid
+hold of Madelon's arm, and strove to pull her back towards the
+settle. "Come," said she, as if Madelon were a child--"come, that's a
+good girl. You stay with us till morning, and then my son shall hitch
+up and carry you home. I shouldn't dare to have him go way over to
+Ware Centre to-night, cold as 'tis. He ain't very tough. You stay
+here with us to-night, and don't worry anything about it. I don't
+know what you're talkin' about, an' I guess you don't--you are all
+wore out, poor child; but I guess there didn't nobody have any knife,
+and I guess he'll git out of prison pretty soon. You just take off
+your things, and I'll get some pillows out of the bedroom, and you
+lay down on the settle by the fire while I get some supper. The
+kettle's on now. And then I'll heat the warming-pan and get the
+spare-room bed as warm as toast, and mix you up a tumbler of hot
+brandy cordial, and then you drink it all down and get right into
+bed, and I'll tuck you up, and I guess you'll feel better in the
+morning, and things will look different."
+
+"Let me go," Madelon said to Jim Otis.
+
+"She mustn't go, mother," he said, never looking at Madelon at all,
+although he still held fast to her straining arm.
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Otis, "You ain't no daughter of mine, and if you
+set out to go I suppose I ain't any right to hinder you. But there's
+one thing maybe you ain't thought of--I can't let my son take you
+'way over to Ware Centre a night like this, nohow. He's all I've got
+now, and I can't have anything happen to him. He can't go with you,
+and there ain't any stable here, and there ain't a neighbor round
+here that will hitch up and carry you there to-night, and--I suppose
+you know, if you've got common-sense, that if you set out to walk
+there, the way you are, you don't stand much chance of gettin' there
+alive."
+
+Madelon stared at her.
+
+"I don't really know myself what you and my son have been talkin'
+about," continued Mrs. Otis, "but near's I can make out you think
+you've done something wrong, and somebody's in prison you want to get
+out. I suppose you've got sense enough to know that if you freeze to
+death going home to-night you can't do anything more to get him out.
+Then there's another thing--it's night. You can't do much to get him
+out anyway before morning. I don't believe they ever let folks out at
+night, and my son shall carry you over just as soon as it's fit in
+the morning, and you'll do just as much good as if you went
+to-night."
+
+Still Madelon stood staring at her. Then presently she began
+unfastening her hood and cloak. "If you can keep me till morning I
+shall be obliged," she said, with a kind of stern gratitude.
+
+"Stay just as well as not!" cried Mrs. Otis. "Jim, just take her
+things and lay 'em in the bedroom. Then you have her set right down
+close to the hearth, and get all warmed through, while I get supper."
+
+Handsome young Jim Otis stood by with his brows knit moodily while
+Madelon Hautville removed her wraps, then took them over his arm, and
+conducted her to the warm seat in the hearth-corner which his mother
+designated.
+
+In his heart he judged this girl whom he was defending to be guilty,
+yet was full of intensest admiration, and was sorely torn between the
+two and his own remorse over his false witnessing. "If I'm called
+into court and sworn on the Bible, I won't own up that I saw her take
+that knife," he muttered to himself, as he laid the red cloak and
+hood on the high feather-bed in his mother's room.
+
+This handsome, stalwart young man, who had hitherto been considered
+full of a gay audacity where womenfolk were concerned, able to make
+almost any pretty girl flutter at his smile, was strangely abashed
+before this beautiful Madelon Hautville, stained, in his eyes, with
+crime. He brought in wood and mended the hearth fire; he moved about
+doing such household tasks as were allotted to his masculine hands,
+and scarcely let his eyes rest once upon the girl in the
+chimney-corner. He dreaded the sight of that beautiful face which
+gave him such a shock of pity and admiration and horror. Jim Otis's
+mind could not compass this new revelation of a woman, but he would
+not betray her even for her own pleading if he went down perjured to
+his grave. So valiant was he in her defence that he withstood her
+against her own self.
+
+Madelon's mother had died when she was a little girl. She could not
+fairly remember that ever in her whole life she had been so tended
+and petted as she was that night by Jim Otis's mother. Kind indeed
+her father and her brothers had always been to her. They had watched
+over her with jealous fondness, and had taken all rougher tasks upon
+themselves, but the devotion of woman, which extends to all the minor
+details of life, she had never known.
+
+She had never had a supper-table set out for her own especial
+pleasure with this and that dish to tempt her appetite, as Mrs. Otis
+set out hers that night. A dish of a fine and sublimated porridge did
+Mrs. Otis make for her--a porridge mixed with cream and sprinkled
+with nutmeg and fat plums. "I thought some hot porridge would do you
+good," said Mrs. Otis, when she sat the smoking bowl before Madelon.
+Then she whispered low, that her son, who was putting another stick
+on the fire before coming to table, might not hear, "It's the same
+kind of porridge I had after my son was born--with cream and plums in
+it. I used to think there never was anything so good."  This porridge
+might well have possessed a flavor of the sweetest memories of
+motherhood to the older woman, but to the girl, wild with longing to
+be gone and carry out her purpose, manna from heaven would not have
+yielded its full measure of sweetness.
+
+She would scarcely have eaten at all had not Jim Otis's mother
+remarked, as she watched her reluctant sips of the good porridge, "As
+I said just now, you ain't any daughter of mine, and I ain't any
+right to dictate, but if you want to get that man, whoever he is, out
+of prison, you'll have to eat enough to get some strength to do it."
+
+Simply placid as Mrs. Otis looked, she had often wisdom enough to
+gain her ends by means of that shrewd finesse of government which
+appeals to the reason of others as applied to the furthering of their
+own desires.
+
+Madelon after that swallowed her porridge almost greedily, and when
+supper was over went up-stairs to bed, following Mrs. Otis as readily
+as any meek young daughter of her own might have done. The spirit of
+resistance was laid for the time in this poor Madelon Hautville, but
+it had yielded, after all, more to the will of her own reason than to
+Jim Otis's mother or the weariness of her own flesh.
+
+When Mrs. Otis came down-stairs she was flushed with pleasant
+motherly victory. "She's drunk all that hot cordial," she said to her
+son, "every drop of it, and I've tucked her into bed with the extra
+comfortables over her, an' she eat quite a good supper, an' I told
+her to go right to sleep, and I guess she will."
+
+"If she don't she'll be down sick," said Jim, sternly. He sat by the
+fire, tuning his fiddle.
+
+"She can't hear your fiddle so it'll keep her awake, can she?" asked
+Mrs. Otis, anxiously.
+
+"Of course she can't, up in the front chamber, with all the doors
+shut. Wouldn't have touched it if she could."
+
+"Well, I don't s'pose she can. Jim--"
+
+Jim twanged a string. "What is it, mother?"
+
+"I don't want to have you think I'm interferin', Jim. I know you're
+grown-up now, and I know there's things a young man might not want to
+tell his mother till he gets ready, but I do kind of want to know one
+thing, Jim."
+
+Jim tightened the G string. He bent his face low over his violin. "I
+don't know as I've ever kept much back from you, mother," he said,
+soberly.
+
+"No, I know you ain't, Jim; you've always told more to your mother
+than most boys. But I didn't just know but this might be something
+you hadn't got ready to speak about."
+
+"What is it you want to know, mother?"
+
+"Jim, is that your _girl?_"
+
+Jim laughed a little, although his eyes were grave; he raise the
+fiddle to his shoulder. "Lord, no, mother. I wouldn't get a girl
+without asking you."
+
+"I didn't know but you might have seen her over to Ware when you've
+been there to parties, and not said anything."
+
+"I never saw her but that once, mother."  Jim struck up "Kinloch of
+Kinloch," but he played softly, lest by any chance Madelon, aloft in
+her chamber, might hear.
+
+"She's handsome as a picture," said his mother. "Who is it that's in
+prison, Jim?"
+
+"A young man by the name of Gordon."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"They think he stabbed his cousin."
+
+"My sakes! Do you s'pose he did, Jim?"
+
+"I don't know, mother. I wasn't there."
+
+"I s'pose the young man that did it is this girl's beau, and that's
+why she's so crazy to get him out."
+
+Jim played the merry measure softly, and made no reply.
+
+His mother stood before him quivering with curiosity, which she
+restrained lest it defeat its own ends. She had learned early that
+too impetuous feminine questioning is apt to strike a dead-wall in
+the masculine mind.
+
+"I didn't quite understand what she meant about a knife," she
+ventured, with an eager glance at her son. He played a little louder,
+as if he did not hear.
+
+"I s'pose she come here, walked all that way from Ware Centre, this
+dreadful night, 'cause she thought you could help to get her young
+man out of prison."
+
+Jim nodded as he fiddled.
+
+"But I can't see how your seein' her brother give her a knife could
+do any good. Of course that sweet, pretty girl didn't do it herself.
+But you didn't see her brother give her the knife, Jim?"
+
+"Didn't you hear me say I didn't?" replied Jim, with sudden force.
+"Don't let's talk any more about it, mother. It's a dreadful piece of
+work, anyway. I don't half know what it means myself. That poor girl
+is 'most crazy because that fellow is in prison. That's why she came
+on this wild-goose chase after me. You can't tell anything by what
+she says."
+
+"Wasn't he a nice kind of a fellow before this happened, Jim?"
+
+"No, he was a scamp," said Jim Otis, angrily. He struck into the
+"Fisher's Hornpipe" with fury, regardless of the girl up-stairs.
+
+"Land sakes, Jim, don't fiddle quite so loud as that--I'm dreadful
+afraid she'll hear," said his mother. "I shouldn't thought a girl
+that looks as sweet as she does would ever have taken up with a
+scamp."
+
+"The sweetest girls are the worst fools," answered Jim, bitterly, but
+he obeyed his mother and played less loudly. The shadows of the
+winter night might have footed it to the soft measures of the
+hornpipe which Jim Otis played on his fiddle. His mother could
+scarcely hear it in the pantry when she went in there to set away the
+supper dishes. She shut the door every time, lest her son should feel
+the icy air from the fireless closet. She had always a belief that
+Jim was delicate, and took a certain pride in it, although she could
+not have told why.
+
+Everything that was in the least likely to freeze to its injury had
+to be removed from the cold pantry and set on the hearth that bitter
+night. It was quite a while before her soft, heavy pattering, which
+jarred the house when she stepped on certain parts of the floor,
+ceased, and she took her knitting-work and sat down in her
+rocking-chair opposite her son.
+
+Jim continued to fiddle, touching the strings as if his fingers were
+muffled with down. The wind whistled more loudly than his fiddle; it
+had increased, and the cold with it. Some of Mrs. Otis's crocks froze
+on the hearth that night. No such cold had been known in Vermont for
+years. The frost on the window-panes thickened--the light of the full
+moon could not penetrate them; all over the house were heard sounds
+like those on a straining ship at sea. The old timbers cracked now
+and then with a report like a pistol. "It's a dreadful night," said
+Mrs. Otis, and as she spoke the returning wind struck the house, and
+she gasped as if it had in truth taken her breath away.
+
+A few minutes before nine o'clock Mrs. Otis put away her
+knitting-work and got the great Bible off the desk. "Stop fiddling
+now, Jim," she said, solemnly. Mrs. Otis spoke with more direct
+authority in religious matters than in others. She felt herself well
+backed by the spiritual law. Jim finished the tune he was playing and
+lowered his fiddle from his shoulder. His mother found the place in
+the Bible, and the holy words were on her tongue when there was a
+sharp clash of sleigh-bells close under the window.
+
+"Somebody's drove into the yard!" cried Mrs. Otis. "Who do you s'pose
+'tis this time of night?"
+
+"Hullo!" shouted a man's voice, hoarsely, and Jim shouted "Hullo!" in
+response, and started towards the door.
+
+"Ask who's there before you open the door," said the mother,
+anxiously. She stood listening a moment after Jim had gone; then she
+caught her shawl from a peg, put it over her head, and followed
+him--she was so afraid some harm would come to her son.
+
+The outer door was open, and before it was drawn up a sleigh and a
+great, high-shouldered, snorting and pawing horse. In the sleigh was
+a man muffled in furs like an Eskimo, leaning out and questioning
+Jim.
+
+"When did she come?" asked the man.
+
+"About five o'clock," answered Jim.
+
+Then Mrs. Otis understood that they were talking about the girl in
+her spare-chamber, and she interposed, standing in the doorway. "She
+was just about tuckered out, what with the cold and that awful
+tramp," said she. "She most ought to have rode over."  Mrs. Otis's
+voice was soft and conciliatory.
+
+"We didn't know she was coming," replied the man in the sleigh,
+courteously, "or we should not have let her walk so far on such a
+day."
+
+"Be you her brother?" questioned Mrs. Otis.
+
+"Yes. I'm her brother Eugene."
+
+"And you drove over to see where she was?"
+
+"Yes; we've been very anxious."
+
+"Well, you can be easy about her for to-night," said Mrs. Otis.
+"She's tucked up nice and warm in my spare-chamber bed, and I give
+her a tumbler of my brandy cordial, and I guess she's sound asleep."
+
+"He wants to take her home to-night, mother," said Jim, and there was
+a curious appeal in his tone.
+
+Mrs. Otis, standing there on the door-step in the freezing moonlight,
+turned quickly upon the man in the sleigh, and all the soft
+conciliation was gone from her voice. "You ain't plannin' to take
+that girl way home to Ware Centre to-night?" said she.
+
+"Father sent me for her," replied Eugene Hautville.
+
+"Well, she ain't goin' a step!"
+
+"Her father will expect me to bring her," said Eugene, with his
+unfailing courtesy. "He has been very anxious. I had hard work to
+find where she was. My father won't be satisfied if I come home
+without her."
+
+"That girl ain't going out of this house to-night!"
+
+"I've got a bearskin here to wrap her up in. She is used to being out
+in all weathers," persisted Eugene, gently.
+
+"She can't go. Pull her out of a warm bed such a night as this! If
+you try to take that poor child out to-night I'll stand in my
+spare-chamber door, and you'll have to walk over me to do it--and my
+son won't see his mother hurt, I guess!"
+
+Jim Otis stepped closer to the sleigh and spoke to Eugene Hautville
+in a low voice.
+
+"Well," said Eugene, slowly, "maybe you're right, Otis. I don't know
+what father will say, but if she was as used up as you tell for, I
+don't know as 'tis safe. It is an awful night."
+
+"I guess it ain't safe, and she ain't going," maintained Mrs. Otis
+from the door-step.
+
+Then Eugene Hautville bent well out of his sleigh and asked a
+question in the other man's ear.
+
+"Yes, she did," replied Jim Otis.
+
+"The poor girl is crazy over it," said Eugene. He and Jim talked for
+a few moments, but Mrs. Otis, straining her ears on the door-step,
+could not hear.
+
+Suddenly Jim said, quite distinctly, "She wanted to know if I saw him
+give her the knife."
+
+There was a pause; then Eugene Hautville asked, in a voice with which
+he might have addressed a judge of his life and death, "Did you?"
+
+"No," said Jim Otis.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+The next morning there took place in a few hours a great change in
+the temperature. It moderated rapidly. The frost on the windows and
+the ice-ridges in the roads did not soften yet, since the sun was
+overcast by heavy clouds, but the terrible rigor and tension of the
+cold was relaxed, and men could breathe without constraint. At eight
+o'clock, when Jim Otis and Madelon started for Ware Centre, there was
+a white film of fallen snow over the distant hills and scattering
+flakes drove in advance of the storm.
+
+A mile out of Kingston it snowed hard. "Hadn't you better have that
+extra shawl mother put in over your shoulders?" Jim Otis suggested.
+
+But Madelon shook her head. "The snow won't hurt me," she said. She
+sat up straight in the sleigh, and there was a look in her eyes,
+fixed ahead on the white drive of the storm, as if her spirit were
+out-speeding her body. She had her strength again that morning. She
+had slept and eaten. She had submitted to the exigencies of life that
+she might gain power to resist them again.
+
+Jim Otis drove a stout little mare with a good wind for speed, but
+she had not the stride of David Hautville's great roan. Moreover,
+after the first stretch, she slacked on the hills and fell into walks
+in the lonely reaches, almost as if she had learned it in a lesson.
+Many a pretty girl, flushing sweetly under Jim Otis's gay smile, and
+perhaps under his caressing arm, had ridden behind that little canny
+mare, who learned well the meaning of the careless rein along the
+woodland roads.
+
+However, to-day there was no careless rein. At the first slack
+Madelon herself had reached the whip and touched the gently ambling
+neck. "She has more speed in her than this," said she, shortly.
+
+"She hasn't been driven for two days, either," asserted Jim Otis.
+"Wake up, Molly!"  He took the whip himself and flourished it with a
+quick little snap over her back. In truth, Jim Otis was as anxious to
+be at this journey's end as Madelon, for he feared every minute lest
+she should ask him again if he had seen her take the knife, and that
+he would again have to oppose falsehood to her frantic pleading. But
+Madelon had believed him. She did not beg him again for his evidence.
+She sat still at his side with a strained look in her black eyes, and
+they rode in silence, with the storm heaping its white flakes on
+their shoulders, until they reached Ware Centre.
+
+Then Madelon turned quickly to Jim Otis. "Don't drive to my home,"
+said she; "I would rather not go home yet. Drive to Burr Gordon's
+house, please. I want to see his mother. Don't turn--keep straight
+on."
+
+"Yes, I know where he lives," said Jim, soberly. He drove very
+slowly. They were drawing near the turn in the road. "See here," he
+said, suddenly, "don't you think you'd better go home now?"  He spoke
+with nothing of the half-gay, half-caressing authority with which he
+was wont to turn a pretty girl to his mind, but timidly rather, and
+kept his eyes fixed on the mare's nodding head, hooded with snow.
+
+"No, I must see Burr's mother," replied Madelon.
+
+"But your folks will be expecting you, won't they?" persisted Jim
+Otis. He felt that he had a duty of loyalty towards this desperate
+girl's father and brothers as well as to herself. He had promised
+Eugene Hautville to bring her home this morning, and who could tell
+where she might wander and when she might return if he left her now?
+
+He still did not look at Madelon as he spoke, but he felt her turn
+and fasten her eyes upon his face, and somehow they compelled his. He
+raised them and saw her beautiful face full of a scorn of passion
+which he might die and never know in himself.
+
+"What do you think that is to me," said she, "when I've got to save
+his life? If you do not wish to carry me farther, go back. I will
+walk."
+
+"I will take you wherever you wish," returned Jim Otis, and touched
+up the mare, and neither spoke again until they reached Burr Gordon's
+house, high on its three terraces, with Lot Gordon's opposite. Then
+Jim halted his mare in the road before it, and would have alighted to
+assist Madelon, but she sprang out before him. "I am much obliged to
+you and your mother for what you have done for me," said she, and
+turned with a swing of her red cloak, and was skimming up the
+terraces like a red-winged bird.
+
+As for Jim Otis, he slewed his sleigh about recklessly, and shook the
+whip over the little mare, and drove up the road. When he reached the
+turn which he knew led to the Hautville house he drew rein, and sat
+pondering in his sleigh for a few minutes. He was in doubt whether he
+should inform Eugene Hautville of his sister's whereabouts or not.
+Finally he spoke to the mare, and continued on his way to Kingston.
+
+The terraces which Madelon mounted were all covered with the
+gathering snow. When she reached the last the door was opened, and
+Burr Gordon's mother, Elvira, stood there. "I am sorry there's so
+much snow for you to wade through," said she, in a sweet, quiet
+voice.
+
+"I don't mind it, thank you," replied Madelon, harshly. She felt
+incensed with this mother of Burr's, who came to the door and greeted
+her as if she were an ordinary caller, and her son were not in
+prison.
+
+"You had better shake it off your skirts or you'll take cold," said
+Mrs. Gordon.
+
+"I am not afraid," returned Madelon. She gave her skirts a careless
+flirt and entered the door with the snow still clinging to her.
+
+"If you will wait a moment," said Mrs. Gordon, "I will get a broom
+and brush the snow from you before it melts. Then you won't take
+cold."
+
+"I don't care to have you, thank you," said Madelon. Mrs. Gordon said
+no more, but led the way to the sitting-room. She was a tall, slender
+woman with the face of a saint, long and pale, and full of gentle
+melancholy, with large, meek-lidded blue eyes and patiently
+compressed lips. She had a habit of folding her long hands always
+before her, whether she walked or sat, and she moved with sinuous
+wavings of her widow-bombazine.
+
+The room into which she ushered Madelon was accounted the grandest
+sitting-room in the village. When Burr's father had built his fine
+new house he had made the furnishings correspond. He had eschewed the
+spindle-legged tables and fiddle-backed chairs of the former
+generations, and taken to solid masses of red mahogany, which were
+impressive to the village folk. The carpet was a tapestry of great
+crimson roses with the like of which no other floor in town was
+covered, and, moreover, there was a glossy black stove instead of a
+hearth fire.
+
+"Please be seated," said Mrs. Gordon. She indicated the best chair in
+the room. When her guest had taken it, she sat down herself in the
+middle of her great haircloth sofa, and folded her long hands in her
+lap. Mrs. Gordon had the extremest manners of the old New England
+gentlewoman--so punctiliously polite that they called attention to
+themselves. She had married late in life, having been previously a
+preceptress in a young ladies' school. She was still the example of
+her own precepts--all outward decorum if not inward composure.
+
+Madelon Hautville, opposite her, in her snow-powdered cloak, with her
+face like a flash of white fire in her snow-powdered silk hood,
+seemed in comparison a female of another and an older race. She might
+well, from the look of her, have come a nearer and straighter road
+from the inmost heart of things, from the unpruned tangle of woods
+and undammed course of streams, from all primitive and untempered
+love and passion and religion, than this gentlewoman formed upon the
+models of creeds and scholars.
+
+Madelon looked at the other woman a second with fierce questioning.
+Then she sprang up out of the chair where she had been placed, and
+stood before her on her sofa, and cried out, abruptly, "I have come
+to tell you about your son. He is not guilty. I, myself, stabbed Lot
+Gordon!"
+
+"Please be seated," said Elvira Gordon, and her folded hands in her
+lap never stirred.
+
+"Seated!" cried Madelon, "seated! How can _you_ be seated, how can
+you rest a moment--you, his mother? Why do you not set out to New
+Salem now--now? Why do you not walk there, every step, in the snow?
+Why do you not crawl there on your hands and knees, if your feet fail
+you, and plead with him to confess that I speak the truth, and tell
+them to set him free?"
+
+"I beg of you not to so agitate yourself," said Elvira Gordon. "You
+will be ill. Pray be seated."
+
+Madelon bent towards her with a sudden motion, as if she would seize
+her by the shoulders.
+
+"Are you his mother," she cried--"his mother--and sit here, like
+this, and speak like this? Why do you not move? Why do you not start
+this instant for New Salem--this instant?"
+
+"I beg you to calm yourself," replied Elvira Gordon. "I have been to
+New Salem to visit my son. I have prayed with him in his prison."
+
+"Prayed with him! Don't you know that he is innocent, and in prison
+for murder--your own son? You stop to pray with him; why don't you
+act to save him?"
+
+"You will make yourself ill, my dear."
+
+"Don't you believe that your son is innocent?" demanded Madelon.
+"Don't you believe it?"
+
+Her eyes blazed; she clinched her hands. She felt as if she could
+spring at this other woman with her gentle murmurings and soft
+foldings, and shake her into her own meaning of life. If her impulse
+had had the power of deed, Elvira Gordon's little cap of fine
+needle-work would have been a fiercely crumpled rag upon her decorous
+head, her sober bands of gray hair would have streamed like the locks
+of a fury, the quiet clasp of her long fingers would have been
+stirred with some response of indignant defence if nothing else.
+Madelon, with her, realized that worst balk in the world--the balk of
+a passive nature in the path of an active one--and all her fiery zeal
+seemed to flow back into herself and fairly madden her.
+
+"I hope," said Elvira Gordon, "that my son will be proved innocent
+and set free."
+
+"_Proved_ innocent! Don't you know your own son is innocent?"
+
+"I pray without ceasing that he may be acquitted of the crime for
+which he is imprisoned," replied Elvira Gordon, over her folded
+hands.
+
+Madelon looked at her. "You are a good woman," said she, with fierce
+scorn. "You are a member of Parson Fair's church, and you keep to the
+commandments and all the creed. You are a good woman, and you believe
+in the eternal wrath of God and the guilt of your own son. You
+believe in that, in spite of what I tell you. But I tell you again
+that I, and not your son, am guilty, and I will save him yet!"
+
+Madelon Hautville gathered her red cloak about her, and Mrs. Gordon
+arose as she would have done when any caller was about to take leave.
+It would scarcely have seemed out of keeping with her manner had she
+politely invited Madelon to call again. However, her quiet voice was
+somewhat unsteady and hoarse when she spoke to Madelon on the
+threshold of the outer door, although the words were still gently
+formal. "I am grateful to you for the interest you take in my son,"
+she said; "I hope you will not excite yourself so much that you will
+be ill."
+
+"I will die if that can save him," answered Madelon Hautville, and
+went down the snowy steps over the terraces.
+
+Elvira Gordon, when she had closed the door, drew the bolt softly.
+Truth was, she thought the girl had gone mad through grief and love
+for her son. Believing, as she did, that the love was all unsought
+and unreturned, and being also shocked in all her delicate decorum by
+such unmaidenly violence and self-betrayal, she regarded Madelon with
+a strange mixture of scorn and sympathy and fear.
+
+Moreover, not one word did she believe of Madelon's assertion that
+she herself was guilty. "She is accusing herself to save my son,"
+thought Elvira Gordon, and her heart seemed to leap after the girl
+with half-shamed gratitude, in spite of her astonishment and terror,
+as she watched her go out of the yard and across the road to Lot
+Gordon's house. Mrs. Gordon stood at one of the narrow lights beside
+her front door and watched until Madelon entered the opposite house;
+then she went hastily through her fine sitting-room to her own
+bedroom, and there went down on her knees, and all her icy constraint
+melted into a very passion of weeping and prayer. Those placidly
+folded hands of hers clutched at the poor mother-bosom in the fury of
+her grief; those placid-lidded eyes welled over with scalding tears;
+that calmly set mouth was convulsed like a wailing child's, and all
+the rigorous lines of her whole body were relaxed into overborne
+curves of agony. "Oh, my son, my son, my son!" lamented Elvira
+Gordon. "Have mercy, have mercy, O Father in heaven! Let him be
+proved innocent! Let Lot Gordon live! Oh, my son!"
+
+Elvira Gordon had the stern pride of justice of a Brutus. She would
+not without proof discover even to the passionate pleading of her own
+heart that she believed her son innocent, but believe it she did.
+Every breath she drew was a prayer that Lot Gordon might yet speak
+and clear Burr. This morning she had some slight hope that that might
+come to pass, for the sick man had passed a comfortable night except
+for his old enemy, the cough.
+
+"It's my belief," Margaret Bean had told Elvira, when she had sped
+across the road in the early morning to inquire, "that it's his old
+trouble that's going to kill him when he does die instead of anything
+else."
+
+"Has he spoken yet?" asked Elvira, eagerly.
+
+"No, he ain't; but there's none so still as them that won't speak."
+Margaret Bean nodded shrewdly at Elvira. Her voice was weak and
+hoarse as if from a cold or much calling, but there was sharp
+emphasis in it. She gave a curious impression of spirit subdued and
+tearfully rasped, like her face, yet never lacking.
+
+"You--think he--could?" whispered Elvira Gordon.
+
+"'Tain't for me to say," replied Margaret Bean. "He lays there--looks
+most as if he was dead."  She wiped her eyes hard, with a
+handkerchief so stiff that it looked on that cold morning frozen as
+with old tears. Margaret Bean was famous for her fine starching in
+the village; it was her chief domestic talent, and she was faithful
+in its application in all possible directions.
+
+"I wish he would speak if he could," said Mrs. Gordon.
+
+"I do, if it's for the best," returned Margaret Bean. She hesitated;
+there were red rings around her tearful eyes, like a bird's. "I can't
+believe your son did it, nohow, Mis' Gordon," said she.
+
+"I hope if my son is innocent he will be proved so," returned Elvira
+Gordon. She was too proudly just herself not to use the word _if_,
+and yet she could have slain the other woman for the sly doubt and
+pity in her tone.
+
+"It's harder for you than 'tis for him, layin' there," said Margaret
+Bean, nodding towards the house. There was an odd gratulation of pity
+in her tone. She rubbed her eyes again.
+
+"We all have our own burdens," replied Elvira, with a dignified
+motion, as if she straightened herself under hers. "I hope he will be
+able to speak--soon."
+
+"I hope so, if it's for the best," said Margaret Bean.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+Elvira Gordon had gone home hoping that Lot might yet speak. She had
+heard his rattling cough as she picked her way out of the icy yard,
+and Madelon also heard it when she entered it. She knocked at the
+side door, and Margaret Bean opened it. She had a gruel cup in her
+hand.
+
+"I want to see him," said Madelon.
+
+Margaret Bean looked at her. Her starched calico apron flared out
+widely over her lank knees across the doorway.
+
+"I'm afraid he ain't able to see nobody this morning," said she, and
+the asperity in her tone was less veiled than usual. Her voice was
+not so hoarse. She was mindful of this girl's former conduct at her
+master's bedside, and herself half believed her mad or guilty. A
+suspicious imagination had Margaret Bean, and Madelon would have
+found in her a much readier belief than in others.
+
+"I've got to see him, whether he's able or not," said Madelon.
+
+"The doctor said--"
+
+"I'm going to see him!"
+
+Madelon pushed roughly in past the smooth apron and ran through the
+entry to Lot's room, with the housekeeper staring after her in a
+helpless ruffle of indignation.
+
+"She's gone in there," she told her husband, who appeared in the
+kitchen door, dish-towel in hand. Margaret Bean's husband always
+washed the dishes and performed all the irresponsible domestic duties
+of the establishment. He was commonly adjudged not as smart as his
+wife, and little store was set by his counsels. Indeed, at times the
+only dignity of his man's estate which seemed left to this obediently
+pottering old body was the masculine pronoun which necessarily
+expressed him still. However, even in that the undisturbed use was
+not allowed. "Margaret Bean's husband" was usually substituted for
+"He," and nothing left of him but the superior feminine element
+feebly qualified by masculinity.
+
+Margaret Bean's husband's name was Zenas, but scarcely anybody knew
+it, and he had almost forgotten it himself through never being
+addressed by it. Margaret herself spoke of her husband as "Him," but
+she never called him anything, except sometimes "You."  However, he
+always knew when she meant him, and there was no need of
+specification.
+
+Now he half thought she was appealing to his masculine authority from
+her bewildered air. He stiffened his meek old back. "Want me to go in
+there and order her out?"
+
+"_You!_  Go back in there and finish them dishes."
+
+Margaret Bean's husband went back into the kitchen, and Margaret
+followed Madelon with a sly, determined air, to Lot's room.
+
+The great square northwest room was warm, but the frost had not yet
+melted from the window-panes. The room looked full of hard white
+lines of frost, and starched curtains, and high wainscoting; but the
+hardest white lines of all were in Lot Gordon's face, sunken sharply
+in his pillows, showing between the stiff dimity slants of his
+bed-hangings as in a tent door. He looked already like a dead man,
+except for his eyes. It seemed as if the life in them could never die
+when they saw Madelon. She bent over him, darkening the light.
+
+"Speak now!" said she.
+
+Lot Gordon looked up at her.
+
+"I tell you, speak! I will not bear this any longer. I am at the
+end."
+
+Still Lot Gordon looked up at her silently.
+
+Then Madelon made a quick motion in the folds of her skirt, and there
+was the long gleam of a hunting-knife above the man in the bed.
+Margaret Bean, standing by the door, shrieked faintly, but she did
+not stir.
+
+"I have tried everything," said Madelon. "This is the last. Speak, or
+I will make your speaking of no avail. I will strike again, and this
+time they shall find me beside you and not Burr. My new guilt shall
+prove my old, and they will hang me and not him. Speak, or, before
+God, I will strike!"
+
+Then Lot Gordon spoke. "I love you, Madelon," said he.
+
+"Say what I bid you, Lot Gordon; not that."
+
+"All your bidding is in that."
+
+"Will you?"
+
+"I will clear--Burr."
+
+Madelon slipped her knife away, and stood back. Margaret Bean slunk
+farther around past the bedpost. Neither of them could see her.
+
+"On one condition," said Lot Gordon.
+
+"What?"
+
+"That you marry me."
+
+Madelon gasped. "You?"
+
+Lot laughed faintly, stretching his ghastly mouth. "You think it is
+an offer of wedlock from a churchyard knight," he said.
+
+"What are you talking about, Lot Gordon?"
+
+"Marry me!"
+
+"Marry you? I am going to prison to-day for stabbing you. If you die,
+I die for your murder. Marriage between us? You are mad, Lot Gordon."
+
+Lot Gordon opened his mouth to speak, but he coughed instead. He half
+raised himself feebly, and his cough shook the bed. Madelon waited
+until he lay back, gasping.
+
+"You are mad to talk so," she said again, but her voice was softer.
+
+"No madder--than--my ancestors made me," Lot stammered, feebly. Great
+drops of sweat stood on his forehead.
+
+Madelon stood looking at him. He lay still, breathing hard, for a
+little; then he spoke again. "Say you will marry me, and I will clear
+him," he said, "or else--strike as you will. But all will believe
+that Burr struck the first blow and you the second for love of him,
+and though he be not hung, the mark of the noose will be round his
+neck in folks' fancies so long as he draws the breath of life."
+
+"I will marry you," said Madelon.
+
+"Don't cheat yourself," Lot went on, in his disjointed sentences,
+broken with the rise of the cough in his throat. "This wound may not
+be--mortal--after all, and a man lives--long, sometimes, when he's
+sore put to it for breath. The spark of life dies hard, and you may
+fan it into a blaze again. All the doctor's nostrums may not stir my
+poor dying flesh--but give the spirit--what it craves--and 'tis
+sometimes--strong enough--to gallop the flesh where it will. Lord,
+I've seen a tree blossom in the fall, when 'twas warm enough. It may
+be a long life we'll--live together, Madelon. Don't--cheat--yourself
+into--thinking you'll be my widow, instead of--my wife. My wife you
+may be, and--the mother of my children."
+
+Madelon moved towards him with a curious, pushing motion, as if she
+thrust out of her way her own will. She bent over him her white face,
+holding her body aloof. "I will marry you, come what will. Now, set
+him free."
+
+Great tears stood in Lot's eyes. "Oh," he whispered, "you think only
+of him. I love you better than he does, Madelon."
+
+"Set him free," said she, in a hard voice.
+
+Lot heaved a great sigh, and rolled his eyes feebly about towards the
+door.
+
+"Find--Margaret Bean," he began; and with that Margaret Bean, who had
+kept the door ajar, slid out softly, "and tell her--to send her
+husband to--Parson Fair, and--Jonas Hapgood, and she--must go the
+other way for--the doctor. Tell them to come at once."
+
+With that Lot fell to coughing again, but Madelon went out quickly,
+and found Margaret Bean in the kitchen mixing gruel.
+
+"Mr. Gordon wishes your husband to go at once for Parson Fair and
+Jonas Hapgood, and you for the doctor," said she.
+
+"Is he took worse?" asked Margaret Bean, innocently, with a quick
+sniff of apprehension.
+
+"No, he is no worse, but he wishes to see them. He said to go at
+once."
+
+Margaret Bean cast an injured eye at the window, all blurred with the
+clinging shreds of the storm. "I don't see how I can get out in this
+awful storm nohow," she said. "I've got rheumatism now. Why can't
+_he_ go to see 'em all, I'd like to know?"
+
+"The doctor lives a quarter of a mile the other way. It will save
+time."
+
+Margaret Bean looked at the gruel. "I've got to make this gruel for
+him."
+
+"I will make it. Get your shawl, quick."
+
+"It ain't b'iled."
+
+"I tell you I will make it."
+
+"Why can't _he_ go to both places?"
+
+"I will go myself!" Madelon cried, suddenly. She had been bewildered,
+or that would have occurred to her before. She had never been one to
+send where she could go, but for the time Lot Gordon's will had
+overcome hers. "Tell your husband to go to the parson's and the
+sheriff's, quick, and I will go for the doctor," said she, and was
+flashing out of the yard in her red cloak before Margaret Bean had
+time to turn herself about from the prospect of her own going. Then
+she ordered her husband imperiously into his boots and great-coat and
+tippet, and sent him forth.
+
+She finished the gruel, and took it in to the sick man, and fed him
+with hard thrusts of the spoon. Lot looked about feebly for Madelon,
+and Margaret Bean replied to the look, in her husky voice, "She's
+gone, instead of me. I've got rheumatism too bad to venture out in
+such a storm and get my petticoats bedraggled."  She spoke with a
+little whine of defiant crying, but Lot took no notice. He was
+exhausted. After he had eaten the gruel, he pointed to the
+chimney-cupboard.
+
+"What is it ye want?" said she.
+
+Lot pointed.
+
+"How do I know what ye want when ye jest p'int like that?"
+
+But there came then a look into Lot Gordon's eyes as expressive as a
+word, and Margaret Bean crossed over to the chimney-cupboard, and got
+out the brandy-flask and a wine-glass and some loaf-sugar. She mixed
+a little dose of the brandy and sugar, and would have fed it to the
+sick man as she had the gruel, but he motioned her aside, raised
+himself with an effort, and drank it down eagerly. Then he lay still,
+and soon a faint flush came into his face. Margaret Bean went back
+into the kitchen and mixed some bread, with her eye upon the window.
+
+Presently there was a wild gallop and great clash of bells past the
+window, and a shout at the door. Margaret Bean put on her little blue
+shawl and opened it when the shout had been twice repeated. Old David
+Hautville sat there in his sleigh, keeping a tight rein on his
+tugging roan. "My daughter here?" he shouted. "Whoa, there!"
+
+"There's sick folks here," said Margaret Bean, shivering in the
+doorway. "You hadn't ought to holler so."  Her tearful eyes were more
+frankly hostile than usual. She had always looked down from her own
+slight eminence of life upon these Hautvilles, and now was full of
+scorn that her master was to marry one of them.
+
+"I want to know if my daughter is here," said David Hautville, and he
+did not lower his voice. It sounded like a hoarse bellow of wrath,
+coming out of the white whirl of snow. His fur coat was all crusted
+with snow, his great mustache heavy with it; the roan plunged in a
+rising cloud of it.
+
+"No, she ain't here," replied Margaret Bean, and her weak voice
+seemed by its very antithesis to express the utmost scorn and disgust
+at the brutality of the other.
+
+"Has she been here?"
+
+"Yes, she's been here."  Margaret made as though to shut the door,
+but David Hautville stopped her.
+
+"Did she start for home?"
+
+"You'd better ask somebody that knows more about it."
+
+"Where did she go?"
+
+"You'd better ask somebody that knows about it!" repeated Margaret
+Bean, in her malicious meekness. Then she shut the door.
+
+David Hautville, with a great "whoa!" leaped out of the sleigh. He
+led up the roan with a fierce pull to the fence, and tied her there.
+Then he strode into the house, and through the entry to Lot's room,
+with no ceremony.
+
+"Where is my daughter?" he demanded, standing at Lot's bedside in his
+great fur coat, all bristling with points of snow.
+
+"She'll be back presently," answered Lot. His voice was a little
+stronger; there were two red spots on his cheeks.
+
+"Where's she gone?"
+
+"For the doctor."
+
+All at once David Hautville gave a great start. "Why, you're
+talking!" he cried out. "You couldn't speak."
+
+Lot nodded vaguely.
+
+"You're better, then?" cried the other, with a sharp look at him.
+
+Lot nodded again.
+
+"When did she come here?"
+
+"Just now."
+
+"Same damned nonsense, I suppose. She's gone mad. If the law don't
+finish that fellow, I will!"
+
+Lot motioned towards a chair. "Sit down," he whispered.
+
+"She coming back with the doctor?"
+
+"Yes," Lot coughed.
+
+David Hautville settled into a chair with a surly grunt. He watched
+Lot cough, holding to his straining chest, and thought that he must
+be worse, else he would not have sent for the doctor. He resolved to
+wait and take his daughter home with him, by force if necessary, but
+with no more disturbance of this man, who might be sick unto death.
+Seeing Lot cast his eyes about as if looking for something, and make
+a motion towards the table at his side, he rose up quickly and got
+him a spoonful of the cough mixture in a bottle thereon, and
+administered it to him gently.
+
+"Don't you touch my wet coat," said David Hautville, "or yo'll get a
+chill," and he held himself carefully away from the sick man.
+
+When Lot lay back, panting, he returned to his chair and did not
+speak again. The two remained in silence until there came the jingle
+of bells, the tramp of horses' feet, and the voice of men out in the
+yard.
+
+Lot lay still, with his eyes closed. David Hautville raised his head
+and looked at the window, thick with frost. Presently the door was
+opened softly, and the doctor came in, with Parson Fair and Jonas
+Hapgood. Madelon, in her snow-powdered red cloak, came last. David
+started up fiercely when he saw her; then he stood back and waited.
+The doctor bent over Lot and began counting his pulse. He eyed him
+sharply.
+
+"The pendulum still swings," said Lot.
+
+The doctor started. "You can speak, then!" he cried out, brusquely.
+
+Lot smiled.
+
+The doctor was old, and his long struggle with birth and death had
+begun to tell upon him. He had already visited Lot that morning,
+after a hard night with a patient, back in the hills. His face was
+haggard under its sharp gray bristle of beard; his eyes fierce, like
+an old dog's, with fatigue and hunger. He had just reached home and
+sat down to his breakfast when this new call came. He had thought Lot
+was dying from Madelon's imperative summons, and she had not
+undeceived him. She was growing cunning in her desperate efforts to
+save Burr Gordon.
+
+"What in thunder did ye send for me again for?" he snapped. This old
+country doctor was never chary of plain speaking, and his brusqueness
+had increased his popularity. Many of his patients were simple
+countrywomen, who had greater belief in that which they feared. They
+repeated his half-savage speeches to each other, and added, "He's a
+good doctor, if he does speak out."
+
+Lot only smiled that covert smile of his, which seemed to imply some
+wisdom of humor beyond the ken of others. "I ought to be dying," he
+said, with grim apology. "I ought not--to have disturbed you all for
+a less reason than to witness my final exit, but I want you to
+witness something else."  Lot Gordon spoke quite strongly and
+connectedly.
+
+"What?" asked the doctor, irritably.
+
+"I want to make a statement," said Lot Gordon.
+
+There was a pause. Jonas Hapgood, with his look of heavy
+facetiousness, slightly tempered now with curiosity, stood lounging
+into his great snowy boots at the foot of the bed. Parson Fair, the
+consolation for the dying which he had thought to administer still in
+his mind, which could not swerve easily, his slender height in his
+black surtout inclined towards the sick man with gentle courtesy,
+waited. Margaret Bean peered around the bed-curtain. Madelon stood
+near the doctor, her face white as if she were dead, and a look of
+awful listening upon it. In the background David Hautville, wrathful
+and wondering, towered over them all.
+
+"I wish to declare in the presence of these witnesses," said Lot
+Gordon, "the doctor here testifying that I am in my right mind"--the
+doctor gave a surly grunt of assent--"that it is my firm belief that
+all mortal ills come to man through his own agency, and this last ill
+of mine is no exception. I declare solemnly before you all that my
+cousin Burr Gordon is not guilty of administering this wound which I
+bear in my side."
+
+The sheriff started forward. "Who did do it, then?" he cried out.
+
+"I myself," replied Lot Gordon.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+There was a gasp of astonishment from the company. Jonas Hapgood
+began to speak, but Madelon's soprano drowned out his thick bass.
+
+"How dare you," she cried out, "swear to that lie? Liar! You are a
+liar, Lot Gordon!"
+
+Then, before Lot could reply, David Hautville came forward with a
+mighty plunge, and grasped his daughter by the arm, and forced her to
+the door.
+
+"Get ye out of this," growled David Hautville; but Madelon turned her
+face back in the doorway for one last word. "Don't you know," she
+shrieked back to Lot Gordon, in her pitiless despair--"don't you know
+that I would rather have seen the inside of my prison-cell to-night
+and the gallows to-morrow than this, Lot Gordon?"
+
+"Quit your talk!" shouted David Hautville; and she followed his
+fierce leading out of the house into the yard.
+
+"Get ye into this sleigh," ordered her father; and she obeyed.
+Suddenly the fire of passion and revolt seemed to die out in her; it
+was like a lull in a spiritual storm. She rode home with her father,
+and neither spoke. David Hautville now considered the matter as past
+any words of reasoning. He was convinced that his daughter's fair
+wits were shaken, and that nothing but summary dealing, as with a
+child, could avail anything. When they reached home he bade her, with
+a kind of stern forbearance, to get into the house at once and see to
+her work there, and she obeyed again.
+
+All that day, and many days after that, poor Madelon Hautville, who
+had been striving like any warrior against the powers and
+principalities of human wills and passions, and had grounded her arms
+after a victory which had left her wounded almost to death, carried
+her bleeding heart and walked her woman's treadmill. She scoured
+faithfully the pewter dishes and the iron pots. She swept the hearth
+clean and baked and brewed and spun and sewed. Her lot would have
+been easier had her woe befallen her generations before, and she
+could, instead, have backed her heavy load of tenting through the
+snow on wild hunting-parties, and broken the ice on the river for
+fish, and perchance taken a hand at the defence when the males of her
+tribe were hard pressed. Civilization bowed cruelly this girl, who
+felt in greater measure than the gently staid female descendants of
+the Puritan stock around her the fire of savage or primitive
+passions; but she now submitted to it with the taciturnity of one of
+her ancestresses to the torture. Week after week she went about the
+house, and neither spoke nor smiled. Burr Gordon was set free, fully
+acquitted of the charge against him; Madelon's denial of Lot's false
+confession had gone for nothing. Half the village considered her
+hysterical and irresponsible, and Lot Gordon, it was agreed, was just
+the man to lay violent hands upon his own life, steal and use his
+cousin's knife, and keep mute to fasten the guilt upon him, as he had
+confessed.
+
+A week after Burr's release Louis and Richard Hautville came home.
+They had been trapping on Green Mountain, they said, camping in the
+little lodge they had built there. When they came in laden with stark
+white rabbits and limp-necked birds, and one of them with a haunch of
+venison on his back, Madelon faced them with sudden fierceness, as if
+to speak. Then she turned away to her work, without a word of
+greeting. The boy Richard stared at her with a quiver, as of coming
+tears on his handsome face. He whispered to Eugene, when she went
+into the pantry.
+
+"Best let her alone," said Eugene. "She's been so ever since."
+
+Not one of them knew of her promise to marry Lot Gordon, and Lot had
+bound Margaret Bean over to secrecy. All the village was as yet
+ignorant of that, but there was enough besides to afford a choice
+bone of gossip to folk sunken in the monotony and isolation of a
+Vermont country winter. The women put their heads together over it at
+their quilting-bees, and the men in their lounging-places in the
+store and tavern. This mystery, which endured as well as their
+hard-packed snows, and kept their imaginations always upon the
+stretch, was a great acquisition to them. Plenty of mental activity
+was there in Ware Centre that winter, and the brains of many were
+smartly at work upon some of those problems whose conditions, being
+all unknown quantities of character and circumstance and fate, are
+beyond all rules of solution.
+
+Would Burr Gordon marry Dorothy Fair, or would he, after all, turn
+again to his old love, who had shown such devotion to him that it had
+almost turned her brain? Unless, indeed--for there is room in gossip
+for all suspicion, and surmise can never be quite laid at rest--her
+brain had not been turned, and she had struck the blow, as she said.
+But, in that case, why had Lot taken her guilt upon himself? Why had
+he cleared Burr at his own expense, and saved her? If he had done it
+for love of Madelon, he had also set his rival free to woo her, and
+had established her innocence in his eyes.
+
+Lot still lived. Would he die, finally, of his wound or of his
+disease? Would he recover and come out of his house alive again? Time
+went on, and the people knew no more than they knew at first; but
+they continued to watch, crossing the gleams of all the neighboring
+window-panes with sharp lines of attention, hushing conversation in
+the store if a Hautville or a Gordon entered, and rolling keen eyes
+over shoulders after meeting one of them upon the country roads. But
+especially they were alert in the meeting-house upon Sabbath days.
+Their eyes were slyly keen upon Dorothy Fair, softly wrapped in her
+blue wadded silk and swan's-down, holding up her head with gentle
+state in the parson's pew; upon Burr Gordon, somewhat pale and moody
+in his smart Sunday coat; and Madelon, up in the singing-seats. They
+never, in those days, saw Madelon elsewhere. She went to meeting
+every Sabbath day and sang as usual, but between the hymns she sat
+with her beautiful face as irresponsive to all around her as a
+painted portrait, and more so, for the eyes of a portrait will often
+seem to follow an ardent gazer. Madelon's father and brothers, except
+Richard and Louis, who kept their own counsel, were much bewildered
+among themselves at her strange mood, and were inclined to hold the
+opinion that her wits were a little shaken, and, moreover, to keep it
+quiet and secret from everybody until she should be quite restored.
+They said little to her, treating her with a kind of forbearing
+compassion; but the indignation of them all was fierce, although held
+well in check, against Burr Gordon. Him they held accountable for
+all.
+
+Burr Gordon might well have been quit of any charge of cowardice had
+he shrunk from facing the male Hautvilles on those days. They passed
+him in the road with the looks of surly dogs in leash. None of them
+except Eugene gave him a nod of recognition. Eugene bowed always,
+with his unfailing grace of courtesy, but he hated him more than all
+the others, for he was jealous on his own account as well as his
+sister's. It was said that Burr Gordon, since his acquittal, was
+courting Dorothy Fair steadily, although they had not been seen out
+together.
+
+Burr had been to the Hautville house twice since his return from New
+Salem, but had not been admitted. Once when he called Madelon had
+been alone in the house, and caught a glimpse of her old lover coming
+into the yard. She had sprung up, letting her needle-work slide to
+the floor, and fled with her face as white as death and her heart
+beating hard into the freezing best room, and stood back in a corner
+out of range of the windows, and listened to the taps of the knocker
+and finally to Burr's retreating steps. Then she crept across to a
+window and peered around the curtain, and watched him out of sight as
+if her soul would follow him; then she stole out the door and looked
+up and down to see if anybody was in sight; and then she flung
+herself down upon her knees and kissed her lover's cold footprint in
+the snow.
+
+The second time Burr came was on an evening, when her father and all
+her brothers except Richard were at the singing-school. She knew
+Burr's step when he drew near the door, and bade Richard shortly to
+answer the knock, and say she was busy and could see nobody, which he
+did with all the emphasis which his fiery young blood could put into
+words of dismissal. The boy, of all the others, alone knew a reason
+why he should be more lenient with Burr; and yet this very reason
+seemed to swell his wrath and hold him more deeply responsible for a
+deeper disgrace. When he had shut the door hard upon Burr, he turned
+to his sister. "I would have killed him rather than let him in," said
+he.
+
+Madelon took another stitch in her work. Her face looked as if it
+were carved in marble. Richard stood staring at her a second; then he
+flung out of the room, and the doors closing behind him shook the
+house. Richard's manner towards his sister was sometimes full of a
+fierce sympathy and partisanship, sometimes of wild anger and
+aversion. He looked ten years older in a few weeks. Both he and Louis
+appeared to avoid the other members of the family, and kept much
+together, and yet even in their close companionship they also seemed
+to have a curious avoidance of each other; one was seldom seen to
+look in his brother's face, or address him directly.
+
+One morning, a month after Burr's release, Margaret Bean came to the
+Hautville door. She was well wrapped against the cold, her head
+especially being swathed about with lengths of knitted scarf over her
+silk hood; there was only a thin sharp gleam of face out of it, like
+a very lance of intelligence. Margaret held out the stiff white
+corner of a letter from the folds of her shawl. "He sent it," she
+said to Madelon, who came to the door.
+
+Madelon opened the letter and read it. "I can't come," she said,
+shortly. "I'm busy. Tell him he must write what he wants to tell me."
+
+Margaret Bean's eyes were sharp as steel points. She had not known
+what was in the letter. "Hey?" said she, pretending that she had not
+heard, in order to make Madelon repeat and perhaps reveal more.
+
+"I can't come," said Madelon. "He can write what he wants to tell
+me."
+
+Suddenly a great red flush spread over her pale face and her neck.
+She lowered her eyes before the other woman as if in utter
+degradation of shame, and shrank back into the house and closed the
+door in Margaret Bean's face.
+
+Margaret Bean stood for a moment, a silent, shapeless figure in the
+cold air. "Pretty actions, I call it," said she then, quite loudly,
+and went out of the yard with a curious tilting motion on slender
+ankles, as of a balancing bale of wool.
+
+Madelon slipped her letter into her pocket as she entered the
+kitchen. Her father and all her brothers were there. It was shortly
+after breakfast, and they had not yet gone out.
+
+"Who was it at the door?" her father asked. He sat by the fire in his
+great boots.
+
+"Margaret Bean."
+
+"What did she want?"
+
+"Lot Gordon sent for me to come over there."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"He wanted--to--tell me something."
+
+"You ain't going a step. I can tell ye that."
+
+"I--told her I couldn't go," said Madelon. Her voice was almost
+breathless, and still that red of shame was over her face. She bent
+her head and turned her back to them all, and went out of the room.
+The male Hautvilles looked at one another. "What's come over the girl
+now?" said Abner, in his surly bass growl.
+
+"She's a woman," said his father, and he stamped his booted feet on
+the floor with a great clamp.
+
+Madelon meantime fled up-stairs to her chamber, with her first
+love-letter from Lot Gordon in her pocket. Until this the reality of
+all that had happened had not fully come home to her. Without
+acknowledging it to herself she had entertained a half-hope that Lot
+might not have been entirely in earnest--that he might not hold her
+to her promise. And then there had been the uncertainty as to his
+recovery. But here was this letter, in which Lot Gordon called
+her--her, Madelon Hautville--his sweetheart, and begged her to come
+to him, as he had something of importance to say to her! He used,
+moreover, terms of endearment which thrilled her with the stinging
+shame of lashes upon her bare shoulders at the public whipping-post.
+She lit the candle on her table, snatched the letter out of her
+pocket, crumpled it fiercely as if it were some live thing that she
+would crush the life out of, and then held it to the candle-flame
+until it burned away, and the last flashes of it scorched her
+fingers. Then she caught a sight of her own miserable, shamed face in
+her looking-glass, and flushed redder and struck herself in her face
+angrily, and then fell to walking up and down her little room.
+
+Her father and brothers down below heard her, and looked at each
+other.
+
+"There was that Emmeline Littlefield that went mad, and fell to
+walking all the time," said Abner.
+
+The others listened to the footsteps overhead with a gloomy assent of
+silence.
+
+"They had to keep her in a room with an iron grate on the window,"
+said Abner, further, with a pale scowl.
+
+Then David Hautville took down his leather jacket from its peg with a
+jerk, and thrust his arm into it. "I tell ye, she's a _woman_," he
+said, in a shout, as if to drown out those hurrying steps; and then
+he went out of the room and the house, and disappeared with axe on
+shoulder across the snowy reach of fields; and presently all his sons
+except Eugene followed him. Eugene remained to keep watch over his
+sister.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+After his father and brothers were gone, Eugene got Louis's fiddle
+out of the chimney-cupboard and fell to playing with an imperfect
+touch, picking out a tune slowly, with halts between the strains, as
+if he spelled a word with stammering syllables. Eugene's musical
+expression was in his throat alone; his fingers were almost powerless
+to bring out the meaning of sweet sounds. A drunken crew on a rolling
+vessel might have danced to the tune that Eugene Hautville fingered
+on his brother's fiddle that morning while his sister walked back and
+forth overhead, running the gantlet, as it were, of an agony which
+his masculine imagination could not compass, well tutored as it was
+by the lessons of his Shakespeare book.
+
+When Margaret Bean came to the door the second time she heard the
+squeak of the fiddle, and clanged the knocker loud to overcome it.
+Madelon and Eugene reached the door at the same time, and Margaret
+Bean extended another letter. "Here's another," said she, shortly, to
+Madelon. She tucked the hand which had held the letter under her
+shawl and hugged herself with a shiver, ostentatiously. "I'm most
+froze, traipsin' back and forth, I know that much," she muttered.
+
+Eugene stood aside with a flourish and a graceful, beckoning wave of
+his hand. "Won't you come in and warm yourself?" he said, and he
+smiled in her face as if she and no other were the love of his heart.
+
+But Margaret Bean had a shrewd understanding which no grace of
+flattery could dazzle, and felt truly that nowadays her principal
+claim to masculine admiration lay in her fine starching specialty of
+housewifery; and of that she gave no show, bundled up against the
+cold in her shapeless wools. So she put aside the young man's smiling
+courtesy scornfully, as not belonging to her, and spoke in a voice as
+sharp as an edge of her own well-stiffened linens. "No, sir," said
+Margaret Bean; "I've got bread in the oven and I can't stop, and I
+ain't coming in for two or three minutes and set with my things on,
+and get all chilled through when I go out. I'll stand here while your
+sister reads that letter. He said the answer would be just 'yes' or
+'no,' and I shouldn't have to wait long. 'She ain't one to teeter
+long on a decision,' says he; 'she finds her footin' one side or the
+other.'  He talks queer, queerer'n ever sence he was hurt. I pity
+anybody that gets him."
+
+"Tell him 'yes,'" said Madelon, abruptly; and then she wheeled about
+and went into the house.
+
+"Well," said Margaret Bean, harshly. The door closed before her;
+Eugene had forgotten his courtesy, and followed his sister into the
+house without a good-day to the guest.
+
+Margaret Bean stood for a minute looking at the house, with its yawn
+of blank windows in her face; then she went out of the yard, bearing
+her message to Lot Gordon.
+
+Eugene Hautville was startled at the look on Madelon's face when she
+went into the house. "Madelon, what is it?" he said, softly. But she
+did not answer him a word; she ran across the room and thrust Lot
+Gordon's letter into the fire. Eugene followed her and turned her
+about gently, and looked keenly in her white face.
+
+"What was in that latter?" said he.
+
+Madelon shook her head dumbly.
+
+"Madelon?"
+
+"Wait. You will know soon. I can't tell you," she gasped out then.
+
+"Was it from Lot Gordon?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"What is he writing to you about? You are my sister, and I have a
+right to know."
+
+"Wait," she gasped again. "Oh, Eugene, wait. I--can't--"
+
+Suddenly Madelon hung heavy on her brother's arm. "Madelon," he cried
+out loudly to her, as if she were deaf--"Madelon, don't! You needn't
+tell me. Madelon!"
+
+Eugene almost lifted his sister into the rocking-chair on the hearth,
+and hastened to get her a cup of water; but when he returned with it
+she motioned it away, and was sitting up, stern and straight and
+white, but quite conscious.
+
+"Hadn't you better drink it, Madelon?" pleaded Eugene.
+
+"No. What do I want it for? I am quite well," said she.
+
+"You almost fainted away."
+
+"I don't want it."
+
+Eugene set the cup on the dresser; then he came back to Madelon, and
+stood over her, looking at her, his dark face as pitiful as a
+woman's. "Madelon, why can't you tell me what new thing is making you
+act like this?" he said. Madelon made an impatient motion and started
+up, and would have gone out of the room, but Eugene flung an arm
+around her and held her firmly. "What is it, poor girl?" he whispered
+in her ear.
+
+Madelon had soft woman's blood in her veins, after all. Suddenly she
+shook convulsively, and would have kept her face firm, but she could
+not. She put her head on her brother's shoulder, and sobbed and wept
+as he had never seen her do, even when she was a child, for she had
+never been one to cry when she was hurt. Eugene sat down in the
+rocking-chair with his sister on his knee, and smoothed her dark hair
+as gently as her mother might have done. "Poor girl! poor girl!" he
+kept whispering; but, softly caressing as his voice was, his eyes,
+staring over his sister's head at the fire, got a fierce and fiercer
+look; for he was thinking of Burr Gordon and cursing him in his heart
+for all this. "Good Lord, Madelon, can't you put that fellow out of
+your head?" he cried out, sharply, all at once.
+
+Then Madelon hushed her sobs, with a stern grip of her will upon her
+quivering nerves, and raised herself up and away from him. "That has
+nothing to do with this," she said, coldly. "Let me go now, Eugene."
+
+But Eugene held her strongly with a hand on either arm, and scanned
+her keenly with his indignant eyes. "He is at the root of the whole
+matter," said he, "and you know it. I wish--"
+
+"I tell you Burr Gordon has nothing to do with this last. He knows
+nothing of it. Let me go, Eugene."
+
+But Eugene still held her and looked at her. "Madelon--"
+
+"What? I can sit here no longer. I have work to do. There is nothing
+the matter with me. I have nothing to complain of. What I do I do of
+my own free will."
+
+"Madelon," whispered Eugene, with a red flush stealing over his dark
+face, his eyes dropping a little before her, "you don't--think she
+will--marry him?"
+
+"Who? Dorothy?"
+
+Eugene nodded.
+
+"Of course she will--marry him, Eugene Hautville."
+
+Eugene set his sister down suddenly and got up. "All I've got to say
+is, then," he cried, with a movement of his right arm like a blow,
+"it's a damned shame that the child can't be taken care of among us
+all."
+
+"What do you mean, Eugene Hautville?"
+
+"I mean that she had better lie down in her grave than marry that--"
+
+"Take care what you say, Eugene."
+
+"I say she had--"
+
+"Better lie down in her grave than marry him--than marry Burr Gordon?
+What do you mean? Who are you, that you talk in this way? He is
+better than you all; not one of you is fit to tie his shoe."
+
+"Madelon, are you mad? He is a lying villain, and you know it,
+and--God knows it's only on her account I speak. Some one ought to
+tell her."
+
+"Tell her, tell her! What do you think I would tell her if I were to
+speak? If she were to come to me and ask me if Burr ever courted me
+and played me false for her, I would tell her, no, no, no! If she
+were to ask me if Burr ever kissed me, or said a fond word to me, or
+gave me a fond look, I would tell her, and this last is the truth,
+that he never gave me more than a passing thought, and 'twas only my
+own short-sightedness and conceit that made me think 'twas more than
+that, shame to me! Isn't he a man, and shouldn't a man look well
+about him among us to be sure his heart is set? I'd tell her 'twas
+something for her to hold up her head for among other women all the
+days of her life, because he chose her. That's what I'd tell her."
+
+"Madelon!"
+
+"Dorothy Fair shall not cheat Burr now, when he has set his heart
+upon her. It would be worse than all that has gone before. I tell you
+I won't bear that. He shall have her if he wants her. He has suffered
+enough."
+
+"But you--you," gasped Eugene. "I thought you--I thought you wanted
+him yourself, Madelon."
+
+"I've gone past myself. All I think of now is what he wants," said
+she, shortly. She turned to go out of the room; then she stopped and
+spoke to him over her shoulder: "There's no need of talking any more
+about it."  She added: "I know what I've set out to do, and I can go
+through with it."  Then the door shut after her, and Eugene sat down
+with his Shakespeare book. But he could not read; he sat moodily
+puzzling over his sister, whose unfulfilled drama of life held his
+mind better than them all.
+
+But puzzle as he might, he never once dreamed of the truth--that his
+sister Madelon had promised to marry Lot Gordon in a month's time,
+and sent her "yes" by word of mouth of Margaret Bean that morning.
+Somehow, even with the ashes of the letter of proposal before his
+eyes on the hearth, and his sister's "yes" ringing in his ears,
+knowing as he did that Lot as well as Burr had lost his heart to her,
+he could not conceive of such a possibility. He was too well
+acquainted with Madelon's attitude towards Lot, and she had never
+been one to walk whither she did not list for any man. He could not
+imagine the possibility, well versed as he was, through his
+Shakespeare lessons, in the feminine heart, of his sister's yielding
+her proud maiden will to any man. He would as soon have thought of a
+wild-cat which he had trailed in the woods, which knew him as his
+mortal enemy, whose eyes had followed him with stealthy fury out of a
+way-side bush, to unbend from the crouch of its spring and walk
+purring tamely into his house at call, and fall to lapping milk out
+of a saucer on the hearth. But no man can estimate the possibilities
+of character under the lever of circumstances, and there is power
+enough abroad to tame the savage in all nature. Madelon Hautville had
+yielded to a stress of which her brother knew nothing, and he
+therefore scouted the idea, if it crossed his mind like a wild fancy,
+of her yielding at all. He rather came to the conclusion that the
+letter had announced Burr's engagement to Dorothy Fair, and that
+Madelon's "yes" had signified proud approval of it. He leaned to this
+conclusion the sooner because of the miserable tendency which a
+jealous heart has to force all suspicions to open its own sore. "He's
+going to marry Dorothy Fair," Eugene told himself. "It was like Lot
+to tell Madelon, and ask her if she was pleased with it. And that was
+why she acted so. Her heart broke at first and she cried, and then
+she stood up and hid it. He's going to marry Dorothy Fair!"
+
+Eugene had a strong imagination, whereby he could suffer a
+thousandfold, if he would, every woe of his life. Sitting now by his
+hearth fire, with his Shakespeare book, full of the joys and sorrows
+of immortal lovers, disregarded upon his knees, he let his fancy show
+him many a picture which tore his heart, although look upon it he
+would. He saw Dorothy Fair in her wedding-gown; he saw her blush like
+a rose through her bridal lace; he saw her following Burr up the
+meeting-house aisle the Sabbath after her marriage with a soft
+rustling of silken finery, and a toss of white bridal plumes over her
+fair locks. He saw those glances, which he swore to himself boldly
+enough then had first been his, turned upon his rival; he imagined
+sweet words and caresses which he had never tasted, and were
+perchance the sweeter for that, bestowed upon Burr.
+
+Suddenly he started up and flung down his book upon the settle, and
+put on his fur cap and was out of the house. "The first turn of her
+heart was towards me, and I was the first man she coupled with love
+in her thoughts, and nothing can undo it," he said, aloud, fiercely
+to himself as he went up the lonely snowy road; and he believed it
+then. Those soft blue glances of Dorothy's came back to him so
+vividly that he seemed to see them anew whenever his eyes fell upon
+the way-side bushes, or the cloud-shadowed slopes of white fields, or
+the dark gaps of solitude between the forest pines.
+
+For the first time a fierce insistence of his rights of love was upon
+him. Straight to the village he went, and to Parson Fair's house. But
+he did not enter; his madness was not great enough for that. He did
+not enter, but he went past with a bold, searching look at all the
+windows and no pretence of indifference, and up the road a little
+way. Then he returned and passed the house again, and looked again;
+and this time Dorothy's face showed between the dimity sweeps of her
+chamber curtains. He half stopped, and then came another glance of
+blue eyes which verified those that had gone before, straight into
+his, which replied with a dark flash of ardor, and then Dorothy's
+face went red all of a sudden, and there was a vanishing curve of
+blushing cheek and a flirt aside of fair curls, and the space between
+the dimity curtains was clear.
+
+Eugene stood still beneath the window for a few minutes. There were
+watchful eyes in the neighboring windows. In the tavern-yard, farther
+down the street, Dexter Beers and old Luke Basset stood, also fixedly
+staring at Parson Fair's house.
+
+"Wonder if he thinks there's any trouble--fire or anything," said
+Dexter Beers.
+
+"Don't see no smoke," said old Luke.
+
+Eugene Hautville, rapt in that abstraction of love which is the
+completest in the world, and makes indeed a world of its own across
+eternal spaces, knew nothing and thought nothing of outside
+observers. He was half minded for a minute to enter Parson Fair's
+house. Had Dorothy appeared outside, the impulse to seize her and
+bear her away with him and fight for her possession against all odds,
+like any male of his old savage tribe when love stirred his veins,
+would have been strong within him. But she did not come, nor appear
+again in the window. She stood well around the curtain and peeped;
+but he did not know that, and presently he went away.
+
+When he passed the tavern Dexter Beers hailed him. "Say, anythin'
+wrong to the parson's?"
+
+"No," returned Eugene, sharply, and strode on.
+
+"Didn't know but you see smoke, you were lookin' up at the house so
+stiddy," called Beers, conciliatingly; but Eugene swung down the road
+without another look. All his grace of manner was forgot in the stir
+of passion within him. What had Dorothy Fair meant by that look? Was
+she betrothed to Burr Gordon? Was she playing with him for her own
+amusement? And what was he to do, what could he do, for the sake of
+his love, with honor?
+
+Eugene left the road after he had cleared the village, and struck off
+across the fields for a long tramp through snowy solitudes as well
+known to him as, and better suited to him for perplexed thoughts
+than, any place in his home. In a way, out-doors was the truest home
+of all these Hautvilles, with the strain of wild nomadic blood in
+their veins.
+
+The sight of the little fireless dwellings of woodland things, the
+empty nests revealed on the naked trees, the scattered berries on
+leafless bushes, the winter larders of birds, the tiny track of a
+wild hare or a partridge in the snow, disturbed less the current of
+their inmost life, as being more the wonted surroundings of their
+existence, than all the sounds and sights and savors within four
+domestic walls.
+
+Eugene tramped on for miles over paths well known to him, which were
+hidden now beneath the snow, pondering upon himself and Dorothy Fair,
+and never gave his sister, whose guardian he had been, another
+thought.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+
+Madelon, half an hour after Eugene had left, put on her cloak and
+hood, and went down the road to Lot Gordon's. "I want to see him a
+minute," she said to Margaret Bean when the woman answered her knock,
+and went in with no more ado. Her face was white and stern in the
+shadow of her hood.
+
+Margaret Bean recoiled a little when she looked at her. "He's up,"
+said she, backing before her, half as if she were afraid. "I guess
+you can walk right in."
+
+Madelon went into the sitting-room, and Lot's face confronted her at
+once, white and peaked, with hollow blue eyes lit, as of old, with a
+mocking intelligence of life.
+
+He was sunken amid multifold wrappings in a great chair before the
+fire, with a great leathern-bound book on his knees. Beside him was a
+little stand with writing-paper thereon, and sealing-wax and a
+candle, a quill pen and an inkstand. All the room was lined with
+books, and was full of the musty smell of them.
+
+Madelon went straight up to Lot and spoke out with no word of
+greeting. "I have sent your answer," said she. "I will keep my
+promise, but have you thought well of what you do, Lot Gordon?"
+
+Lot looked up at her and smiled, and the smile gave a curiously
+gentle look to his face, in spite of the sharp light in his eyes.
+
+"The thought has been my meat and my drink, my medicine and my breath
+of life," said he.
+
+"If I were a man I would rather--take a snake to my breast than a
+woman who held me as one--"
+
+"Two parallel lines can sooner meet than a woman know the heart of a
+man. What do I care so I hold you to mine?"
+
+Madelon stood farther away from him, but her eyes did not fall before
+his.
+
+"Why did you lie" said she. "You knew I stabbed you, and not
+yourself. You are a liar, Lot Gordon."
+
+But Lot still smiled as he answered her. "However it may be with
+other men, no happening has come to me since I set foot upon this
+earth that I brought not upon myself by my own deeds. The hand that
+set the knife in my side was my own, and I have not lied."
+
+"You have lied. Tell them the truth."
+
+"I have told the truth that lies at the bottom of the well."
+
+"Call them all in now, and tell them--I--did it, I--"
+
+Lot Gordon raised himself a little, and looked at her with the
+mocking expression gone suddenly from his face. "What good do you
+think it would do if I did, Madelon?" he said, with a strange sadness
+in his voice.
+
+She looked at him.
+
+"I shall not die of the wound. You can't escape me by prison or a
+disgraceful death, and as for me, do you think it would make any
+difference to me if all the village pointed at you, Madelon?"
+
+Madelon looked at him as if she were frozen.
+
+"All the way to be set loose from your promise is by your own
+breaking it," said Lot.
+
+"I will keep my promise," said Madelon, shutting her lips hard upon
+her words. She turned away.
+
+"Madelon," said Lot.
+
+She went towards the door as if she did not hear.
+
+"Madelon."
+
+She turned her white face slightly towards him and paused.
+
+"Won't you come here to me a moment?"
+
+"I cannot until I am driven to it!" she cried out, passion leaping
+into her voice like fire. "I cannot go near you, Lot Gordon!"
+
+She opened the door, and then she heard a sob. She hesitated a
+second, then looked around; and Lot Gordon's thin body was curled
+about in his chair and quivering with sobs like any child's.
+
+Madelon closed the door, and went back and stood over him. She looked
+at him with a curious expression of pity struggling with loathing, as
+she might have looked at some wounded reptile.
+
+"Well, I am here," she said, in a harsh voice.
+
+"All my life my heart has had nothing, and now what it has it has
+not," moaned Lot, as if it had been to his mother. He looked up at
+her with his hollow blue eyes swimming in tears. He seemed for a
+minute like a little ailing boy appealing for sympathy, and the
+latent motherhood in the girl responded to that.
+
+"You know I cannot help that, Lot," she said. "You know how you
+forced me into this to save the one I do love."
+
+"Oh, Madelon, can't you love me?"
+
+She shrank away from him and shook her head, but still her dark eyes
+were soft upon his face.
+
+"Does not love for you count anything? I love you more than he--I do,
+Madelon."
+
+"It is no use talking, I can never love you, Lot," she said, but
+gently.
+
+"It ought to count. Love ought to count, dear. It is the best thing
+in the world we have to give. And I have given it to you; oh, God,
+how have I given it to you, Madelon!"
+
+"Lot, don't--it's no use."
+
+"Listen--you must listen, dear. You must hear it once. It can't turn
+you more against me. You don't know how I have loved you--you don't
+know. Listen. Never a morning have I waked but the knowledge of you
+came before the consciousness of myself. Never a night I fell asleep
+but 'twas you, you I lost last, and not myself. When I have been sick
+the sting of my longing for you has dulled all my pain of body. If I
+die I see not how that can die with me, for it is of my soul. I see
+not why I must not bear it forever."
+
+"Lot, I must go!"
+
+"Listen, Madelon; you must listen. When I have taken my solitary
+walks in the woods and pried into the secrets of the little wild
+things that live there in order to turn my mind from my own musing, I
+found always, always, that you were in them--I cannot tell you how,
+but you were, Madelon. There was a meaning of you in every bird-call
+and flutter of wings and race of wild four-footed things across the
+open. Every white alder-bush in the spring raised you up anew before
+me to madden me with vain longing, and every red sumach in the fall.
+When I have sat here alone every book I have opened has had in it a
+meaning of you which the writer knew not of. You are in all my
+forethoughts and my memories and my imaginations. The future has your
+face, and the past. My whole world is made up of you and my vain
+hunger. Oh, love, and not toil, is the curse of man!"
+
+"You knew about Burr," Madelon said, in a quiet, agitated voice.
+"Why--did you?"
+
+Lot gave a sharp cry, as if he had been wounded anew. "Oh," he cried,
+"you are blind, blind, blind--a woman is born blind to love! If I had
+had the face and the body of him it would have been me you would have
+turned to, Madelon. Don't you know? can't you see? He has been false
+to you, he cares no more for you. But if he had? In the end it is
+love and love alone that sweetens life, and what could his love be to
+mine?"
+
+Madelon turned away again. "I can't stand here any longer, Lot," she
+said, and moved towards the door.
+
+But Lot called her piteously: "Madelon, come back! If you have any
+mercy, come back!"
+
+She stood irresolute, frowning; then she went back. "What is it?" she
+asked, impatiently.
+
+"Madelon, kiss me once."
+
+"I can't--I can't! Don't ask that of me, Lot."
+
+"Madelon, once!"
+
+Madelon bent over him, keeping her body stiffly aloof, and kissed him
+on his hollow forehead. Lot closed his eyes and smiled like a
+contented child; then suddenly he opened them upon Madelon, and the
+look in them was not a child's. She shrank away with a strong
+shudder, flushing with anger and shame, and made resolutely for the
+door again. She looked back and spoke out sharply to him, with her
+hand on the latch: "Mind you do not say one word about--what I said
+I'd do, until the last."  Then she went out, flinging to the door
+quickly lest she hear Lot's voice again.
+
+When she got home there was no one there. Eugene had not returned.
+She went about preparing dinner as usual; it was on the table when
+the men, all except Eugene, came home, and none of them dreamed she
+had left the house. They inquired where Eugene was, and she replied
+that she did not know. They did not suspect that she had taken
+advantage of this lack of guardianship, and yet there was something
+unwonted in her manner which led them to look at each other furtively
+when they first noticed it. The perfect poise of decision at which
+she had arrived affected their minds in some subtle fashion. Eugene,
+when he returned late in the afternoon, noticed the change in her, in
+spite of his own perturbation. He looked hard at her staid face,
+fixed into a sort of unquestioning and dignified acquiescence with
+misery, but he said nothing. Madelon, in this state, was not to be
+questioned even by her father. He simply muttered to himself, as he
+strode out of the room, that she was a woman.
+
+Madelon's manner was the same as the days went on. There ceased to be
+any question as to her sanity among her father and brothers. She no
+longer paced overhead like a wild thing. She no longer made fierce
+outbreaks of despairing appeal. They no longer kept watch over her
+lest she commit some folly, and became easier in their minds about
+her.
+
+They made no objections when, three weeks later, she asked for the
+sleigh and the roan to go to New Salem and make some purchases for
+herself. She went early in the afternoon, and returned in good season
+with her parcels. They did not dream that she had been in a strange
+spirit of bitterness and shameful misery and feminine pride to
+purchase her wedding-gown for her marriage with Lot Gordon.
+
+Her frantic and unreasoning impulse of concealment was still strong.
+It was almost as if the whole horror of it were not so plainly thrust
+upon her if none but she knew it; then there was the agony of shame
+which made her fain to turn her back and deafen her ears to her own
+self, let alone all these others.
+
+They rather wondered, the next morning, when they saw Madelon seated
+at work upon some shining lengths of silk, at the magnificence of her
+purchase in New Salem; but they knew that she had a little private
+fund of her own, which they had never questioned her right to spend.
+
+"Guess she's been saving her egg-and-butter money," Abner said, when
+she went out for something.
+
+His father nodded. "Glad she's got a new gown. Guess she'll show
+folks she ain't quite done for on account of that fellow," he said.
+
+When Madelon was seated at her work again, and he passed her to leave
+the room, he laid a heavy, caressing hand on her black head. "Glad
+ye've got ye a handsome gown," said he. "It's money well spent."
+
+That day there was a great snow-storm--the last of the season. There
+had been many such that winter. Snow fell upon snow, and the bare
+ground was never seen. This time the storm lasted two days. On the
+morning of the third the sun came out and the wind blew. There was a
+northern gale all day. The new snow arose like a white spirit from
+its downfall, and was again all abroad in the air. It moved across
+the fields in great diamond-glittering shafts; it crested itself over
+the brows of hills in flashing waves; it lengthened its sharp slants
+of white light from hour to hour against the windward sides of the
+fences and houses.
+
+On the morning of the next day everything was still. The snow lay
+transfixed in blue whirlpools around the trees; the fields were full
+of frozen eddies, and the hill-tops curled with white wave-crests
+which never broke. There was a dead calm, and the mercury was
+fourteen degrees below zero. Everything seemed in the white region of
+death after the delirium of storm. That morning Madelon Hautville,
+after her household tasks were done, sat down again to sew her
+wedding-dress. The silk was of changeable tints, and flashed in
+patches of green and gold as it lay over her knee and swept around
+her to the floor.
+
+All the others had gone, but presently, as she sewed, Richard came in
+with some parcels. He had been on an errand to the store. He tossed
+the packages on the dresser, then he went and stood directly in front
+of his sister, looking at her.
+
+"I want to know if it's true," said he.
+
+Then Madelon knew that he had heard. "Yes," said she.
+
+"And that is--"  Richard pointed at the silk.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Richard continued to look at his sister and the gorgeous silk. There
+was consternation in his look, and withal a certain relief. Boy as he
+was, he reasoned it out astutely. If Madelon married Lot Gordon the
+merest shadow of suspicion that her confession had been true would
+not cling to her, and Richard hated Burr, and was fiercely triumphant
+that he should not think his sister dying for love of him; and then
+Burr would lose the Gordon money.
+
+All at once Madelon rose up, let her silk breadths slip rustling to
+the floor, and took Richard by the shoulder. "Richard," she said,
+"why could you not have told the truth about the knife, and not
+forced me to this? Why could you not?"
+
+The boy looked aside from her doggedly. "I don't know what you mean
+about a knife," said he, but his voice shook.
+
+"Yes, you do know, Richard! It is all over now. I must marry Lot. I
+have promised. I shall not try to escape it--I shall not try again to
+make people believe it was I. If you were to tell the truth now it
+would do no good. But you must tell me this, Richard. How came Burr
+Gordon's knife there instead of yours?"
+
+The boy hesitated.
+
+"Richard, you know you can trust me."
+
+"Well," said Richard, slowly, in a low voice, "I came right up behind
+Burr before you were hardly out of sight. I'd got uneasy about your
+going home alone, and I'd thought I'd follow you unbeknown to you,
+and turn 'round and go back when you were safe in sight of home. Burr
+pulled my knife out of the wound quick and wiped it on the snow.
+'Take it quick,' says he, and I knew what he meant, and put it in my
+pocket, and slid out of sight in the bushes; and then he whipped out
+his knife and laid it in the pool of blood, and the others came up,
+and 'twas all done in a second. That's how."
+
+"He did it to save me," said Madelon, and her voice was fuller of
+exultant sweetness than it had ever been in a song.
+
+"He's a rascal, that's what he is!" said Richard. "If he hadn't
+treated you so, it wouldn't ever have happened."
+
+"He did it to save me," said Madelon, as if to herself; "it's worth
+all I'm going to do to save him."  She sat down again, and took up
+her wedding-dress, and resumed sewing. Richard stood looking at her a
+minute; then he got his gun off the hooks where he kept it, put on
+his fur cap, and went out.
+
+Madelon sat and sewed, in a broad slant of wintry sunshine, for an
+hour longer. Then a shadow passed suddenly athwart the floor, the
+door opened, and Burr Gordon was in the room. He came straight across
+to her, but she sat still and drew her needle through her
+wedding-silk.
+
+"Madelon!" he cried out, "is this true that I have just heard?
+Madelon!"--Burr Gordon's handsome face was white as death, and he
+breathed hard, as if he had been running--"Madelon! tell me, for
+God's sake, is it--true?"
+
+"Yes," said Madelon. She took another stitch. The self-restraint of
+her New England mother was upon her then. Burr Gordon, betrothed to
+Dorothy Fair, loving her not, yet still noble enough and kind enough
+to have perilled his life to save hers, should know nothing of the
+greater sacrifice she was making for him.
+
+"You are going to marry--Lot?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, my God!"
+
+Burr Gordon stood a moment looking at the girl sewing the breadths of
+shining silk. Then he went over to the settle and sat down there and
+bent over, leaning his head on his hands. He knew no more at that
+moment of Madelon's mind than an utter stranger.
+
+It well might be, he thought, that she no longer cared for him. It
+was not long since she had seemed to, but women, he had always heard,
+were fickle, and he had so treated her that it might have turned any
+woman's heart cold. And his cousin Lot had the family wealth, and if
+she married him she would inherit it, and not he. What could he say
+to her, sewing so calmly upon her wedding-dress, seemingly in utter
+acquiescence and content with her fate? Could he take another step
+without going deeper into the slough of shame and distress where it
+seemed to him he already stood? And there was Dorothy.
+
+Madelon never glanced at him as she sewed. Presently he arose and
+went over to her again. "Madelon," he said, hesitatingly, coloring
+red, "tell me you do not have any hard feelings towards me? I know I
+deserve it."
+
+"You deserve nothing; it is I," she said, in a low voice.
+
+"_You!_"
+
+"I know what you did to save my life," she said. Her voice gave out a
+rich thrill, like a musical tone, as she spoke. She bent lower over
+her work.
+
+"That was nothing. Madelon"--he paused a moment; she was
+silent--"Madelon, tell me. Are you--are you satisfied--with this step
+you are going to take?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There is nothing I can do? You know I would do--anything to-- You
+know if you wished--I would do whatever you said."
+
+"You will marry Dorothy Fair," Madelon said, in such a tone of calm
+assertion that he quailed before it.
+
+"Then you--are satisfied to--marry Lot-- It is your wish?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, my God!" said Burr, and went out, while Madelon took another
+stitch in her wedding-gown.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+However the tale of Madelon's and Lot's engagement had found
+mouth--whether Margaret Bean had vented her knowledge when it grew
+too big for her or not--it was scarce one day before the whole
+village was agape with it. With that tendency of the human mind born
+of involuntary self-knowledge which leads it to suspect a selfish
+motive in all untoward actions, many gave unhesitatingly a reason for
+Madelon's choice.
+
+The women nodded astutely at each other, and the men exchanged shrewd
+affirmative grunts. "She's goin' to marry Lot to pay off Burr," they
+all agreed. "She'll get all the money."
+
+Madelon herself had never thought of that. She had never considered
+the fact that her marriage with Lot would rob Burr of his prospective
+wealth; and, if she had, she would have dismissed the thought as of
+no moment. Capacity for revenge of that sort was not in her; even the
+imagination of it was lacking. She would simply have resolved to give
+the property to Burr if she should outlive Lot, and she would have
+carried out her resolution. Consciously, perhaps, this consideration
+was no more evident to her father and her brothers than to herself.
+The Hautvilles were not mercenary, and retaliation, involving
+personal profit at the expense of an enemy, was not of their code.
+They did have, however, a consideration no less selfish, in a way,
+and no less acute when they heard the news. One and all thought, "Now
+Madelon will be cleared of all suspicion that she may have brought
+upon herself. Nobody will believe that Lot Gordon would marry a girl
+who attempted his life. Every hint of disgrace will be removed from
+her and us all by this marriage."
+
+Louis, when he heard the news, gave an involuntary glance at his own
+hands at the thought of Madelon's crimsoned ones, to which he had
+tried to blind his memory. "Well, maybe it's the best thing that
+could happen," he said, grimly, but his wonder over it was great. He
+knew well enough, however he tried to hide the knowledge from
+himself, that Madelon's story had been true. He looked at his brother
+Richard, and Richard looked back at him; and one's knowledge for once
+faced the other's boldly in their utter astonishment. Then they
+nodded at each other in a stern understanding of assent. It was best
+their sister should cover her crime and avert the disgrace, which she
+had seemed to hang over all of them, in that way.
+
+When the male Hautvilles came home to dinner, on the noon of the day
+after Burr called, Madelon knew at once that they had all heard. They
+sat down to the table and ate in silence. None of them spoke a word
+to Madelon on the subject, but she knew they had heard. After dinner
+they all went out again except her father. He stood on the hearth,
+filling his pipe moodily, with an automatic motion of his fingers,
+his eyes aloof. Madelon moved about with quick, decided motions,
+clearing the dinner-table. David, when the tobacco was well packed in
+his pipe-bowl, turned his eyes mechanically upon the glowing coals on
+the hearth, but made no motion to light it. He looked slowly and
+furtively about presently at Madelon's wedding-silk, which lay heaped
+in a chair with a green and gold shimmer, as of leaves and flowers.
+All unmoved by, and oblivious of, the splendor of woman's gear was
+David Hautville usually, but this silk, radiant with the weaving of
+party-lights, affected him with a memory of old happiness, so vague
+that it was scarce more than a memory of a memory. In splendid silken
+raiment had Madelon's mother gone as a bride years ago. It had been
+in reality widely different from this gown of Madelon's, but still,
+looking at this, David Hautville's masculine eyes saw dimly beyond it
+another dapple of gorgeous tints, and heard a soft rustle of silken
+skirts out of the past. He would not have said that this bright mass
+of silk in the chair made him think of his wife's wedding-gown, but
+he knew by that thought it was Madelon's. He stared at it, scowling
+over his great mustache. Then he looked slowly around at his
+daughter. She was just coming out of the pantry, and faced him as he
+spoke.
+
+"I suppose this is true I've heard," said he.
+
+Madelon's face blazed red before his eyes, but her mouth was firm and
+hard, and her eyes unflinching. "Yes, sir," she replied; and she took
+a dish from the table and turned about, and went again into the
+pantry, carrying it.
+
+David Hautville, rearing his great height before the fire, casting a
+long shadow over the room, stood, holding his unlighted pipe, and
+staring again at the wedding-silk, until his daughter returned. Then
+he brought his gaze to bear upon her again.
+
+"I suppose you've thought over what you're going to do, and feel it's
+for the best," said he, with a kind of stern embarrassment. David
+Hautville felt no resentment because his daughter had not confided
+her engagement to him. From his very lack of understanding of the
+feminine character, and his bewilderment over it, he was disposed to
+give his daughter a wide latitude in a matter of this kind. Not
+comprehending the feminine gait to matrimony, but recognizing its
+inevitability, he was inclined to stand silently out of the road,
+unless his prejudices were too violently shocked. He had also a mild
+respect for, and understanding of, reticence concerning one's own
+affairs, and was, moreover, furtively satisfied with the match.
+
+"Yes, I have," answered Madelon, calmly.
+
+"How soon were you calculating--" asked her father, pressing the
+tobacco harder into the pipe-bowl, and casting a meditative eye at
+the coals.
+
+"He said a month--that was three weeks ago Monday. To-day is
+Wednesday."  Madelon Hautville spoke with her proud chin raised, and
+her eyes as compelling as a queen's; but in spite of herself there
+came into her voice the tone of one who counts the days to death.
+
+Her father looked at her sharply. She turned again towards her task
+at the table. "Well, Lot Gordon can give ye a good home," said he.
+"His health ain't very good, that's the most I see about it. But he
+may last a number of years yet--folks in consumption do sometimes;
+and I hear he's gettin' over that cut he give himself. I suppose he
+did that because he thought you wouldn't have him."
+
+Madelon, moving about the table, did not say a word.
+
+"It must have been that," said David Hautville. "I suppose he thought
+you favored--" he was about to speak Burr's name; then he stopped
+short. He was usually one to plunge upon dangerous ground, but this
+time something stopped him--perhaps a look in his daughter's face. He
+laid his pipe carefully on the mantel-shelf, went over to Madelon,
+and laid a heavily tender hand on her shoulder.
+
+"D'ye want any money to buy your wedding-fixings with?" he said, in a
+half-whisper.
+
+"I've got all I want," replied Madelon, wincing as if he had struck
+her.
+
+"Because I've sold some skins, lately, and wood."  David plunged a
+hand into his pocket, and began to pull out a leather pouch jingling
+with coins.
+
+"I've got all the money I want, father," said Madelon, catching her
+breath a little, but keeping her face steady. Could her father have
+understood, if she had told him, the pretty maiden providence, almost
+like one of the primal instincts, which had led her to save, year
+after year, little sums from her small earnings, towards her
+wedding-outfit? Could he, with his powerful masculine grasp of the
+large woes of life, have sensed this lesser one, and fairly known the
+piteous struggle it cost Madelon to spend her poor little wealth,
+which was to have furnished adornment for her bridal happiness with
+her lover, for such a purpose as this? Had she turned upon him then
+and there, and told him that she hated Lot Gordon, and would rather
+lie down in her grave than be his wife, he might have grasped that
+indeed, although not in her full sense of it, for the same sense of
+misery of that kind comes not to a man and a woman; but the other he
+would have puzzled over and solved it by his one sweeping solution of
+all feminine problems--by femininity itself.
+
+However, he continued to stand beside his daughter, looking at her
+across that great gulf of original conceptions of things which love
+itself can never quite bridge. Tears came into his keen black eyes,
+and his voice was hoarse when he spoke again. "Well, Madelon," said
+David Hautville, with a firmer laying on of his heavy hand on his
+daughter's shoulder, "ye've been a good daughter and sister, and
+we're all of us glad you've got over this last foolishness, and we
+don't lay it up against ye, and--we'll all miss ye when ye're gone."
+
+Madelon moved quietly away from her father's roughly tender hand. "I
+thought maybe the Widow Scoville would be willing to come here and
+live," said she. "She's a good cook and a good housekeeper. I'm going
+to see her about it."
+
+"Well, we'll see," said David Hautville, huskily--"we'll see."  He
+turned away, and looked irresolutely at the shelf whereon his pipe
+lay, at the wedding-silk on the chair, at his great boots in the
+corner at the outer door, then at his bass-viol leaning in the corner
+which the dresser formed against the wall, and a light of decision
+flashed into his eyes.
+
+He drew his old arm-chair nearer the fire, carried the viol over to
+it, set it between his knees, flung an arm around its neck and began
+to play. His great chest heaved tenderly over it; its sweetly
+sonorous voice spoke to his soul. Here was the friend who vexed David
+Hautville with no problems of character or sex, but filled his simple
+understanding without appeal. These chords in which the viol spoke
+were from the foundations of things, like the spring-time and the
+harvest and the frosts; they abided eternally through all the vain
+speculations of life, and sounded above the grave. No imagination of
+a great artist had David Hautville, but his music was to him like his
+woodcraft. He traced out the chords and the harmonies with the same
+fervor that he followed the course of a stream or climbed a
+mountain-path. A great player was he, although the power of creation
+was not in him, for he fingered his viol with the ardor of a soul set
+in its favorite way of all others. As David Hautville played his
+great resonant viol he forgot all about his own perplexity and his
+daughter's love-troubles; but she, listening as she worked, did not
+forget.
+
+Madelon, swept around with these sweet waves of sounds, never once
+had her memory of her own misery submerged. A strange double
+consciousness she had, as she listened, of her senses and her soul.
+All her nerves lapsed involuntarily into delight at the sounds they
+loved, and all her soul wept above all melodies and harmonies in her
+ears. The spirit of an artist had Madelon, and could, had she wished,
+have made the songs she sung; and for that very reason music could
+never carry her away from her own self.
+
+She finished her household tasks and sat down again to sew upon her
+wedding-gown. After a while her father ceased playing, and leaned his
+viol tenderly back in its corner, pulled on his great boots, put on
+his leather jacket and his fur cap, lighted his pipe, shouldered his
+gun, and set out with his eyes full of the abstraction of one who
+follows alone a different path.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+Then Madelon sat alone, sewing, setting nice stitches in her
+green-and-gold silk. Like other women, heretofore when she had sewn a
+new gown she had builded for herself air-castles of innocent vanity
+and love when she should be dressed in it. Now she builded no more,
+but sat and sewed among the ruins of all her happy maiden fancies.
+She had given herself no care concerning any other arrangements for
+her wedding than this gown--she felt even no curiosity concerning it.
+She left all that to Lot, as a victim leaves the details of his death
+to the executioner. She supposed he would send for her and tell her
+before long. When she heard a scraping step at the door she knew
+instinctively that the message had come.
+
+Margaret Bean's husband's simple old face confronted her when she
+opened the door. The weather was moderating fast that morning. The
+sun had the warmth of spring, and the old man stood in a shower of
+rainbow drops from the melting icicles on the eaves. He handed her a
+letter, backed clumsily and apologetically from under the drops, then
+retreated carefully down the slippery path, his clumsy old joints
+jolting.
+
+Madelon, back in the kitchen, stood for a second looking at the
+letter. Then she opened it, and read the message written in Lot
+Gordon's strange poetic style:
+
+"Madelon,--The rose waits in the garden for her lover, because he has
+wings and she has none. But had the rose wings and her lover none,
+then would she leave her garden and fly to him with her honey in her
+heart, for love must be found.
+
+    "Lot Gordon."
+
+Enough strength of New England blood Madelon had to feel towards Lot
+a new impulse of scorn that he should write her thus, instead of
+bidding her come, simply, like a man, displaying his power over her
+that they both knew.
+
+Small store of honey did she bear in her heart when she set out to
+obey Lot's call. She hurried along, indeed, with her cloak flying out
+at either side, like red wings in the south wind, but not from
+eagerness to see her lover. She was in constant dread lest she meet
+Burr on the road; but she gained Lot's house without seeing him or
+knowing that his miserable, jealous eyes watched her from an opposite
+window.
+
+Burr was up in his chamber when Madelon went into his cousin's house.
+Presently he went down-stairs, where his mother was, with a face so
+full of the helpless appeal of agony that she looked at him as she
+used to do when he came in hurt from play.
+
+"What is the matter, Burr, are you sick?" she said, in her quiet
+voice. She was sitting in a rocking-chair in the sun with her
+knitting-work. She swayed on gently as she spoke, and her long,
+delicate fingers still slipped the yarn over the needle.
+
+"Yes, I am sick, mother; I am sick to death," Burr groaned out. Then
+he went down on the floor at his mother's feet, and hid his face in
+her lap, as he had used to do when he was a child in trouble. Mrs.
+Gordon's stern repose of manner had never seemed to repel any
+demonstration of her son's. Now she continued to knit above his head,
+but he apparently felt no lack of sympathy in her.
+
+She asked no more questions, but waited for him to speak. "She's just
+gone in there," he half sobbed out, presently. "Oh, mother, what
+shall I do--what shall I do?"
+
+"You'll have to get used to it," said his mother. "You'll have to
+make up your mind to it, Burr."
+
+"Mother, I can't! Oh, God, I can't see her every day there with him.
+Mother, we've got to sell out and move away. You'll be willing to,
+won't you? Won't you, mother?"
+
+"You forget Dorothy. She can't leave the town where her father is."
+
+"I wish I could forget Dorothy in honor!" Burr cried out.
+
+"You can't," said his mother, "and there's an end of it."
+
+"I know it," said Burr. He got up and stood looking moodily out of
+the window.
+
+"You know," said his mother, still knitting, "how I have felt from
+the very first about Madelon Hautville. I never approved of her for a
+wife for you; I approve of her still less now, after her violent
+conduct and her consent to marry Lot, whom she cannot care for.
+Still, since you feel as you do about it, I should be glad to have
+you marry her, if such a thing could be done with any show of honor;
+but it cannot. You know that as well as I. You must marry Dorothy
+Fair, and Madelon is going to marry Lot. Leaving everything else out
+of the question, it is out of your power to say anything on account
+of the money which you will lose by her marriage with him. You know
+what she might think."
+
+"Curse the money!" Burr cried out. "Curse the money and the position
+and all the damned lot of bubbles that come between a man and what's
+worth more, and will last!"
+
+"Burr, don't talk so!"
+
+"I can't help it, mother. I mean it. Curse it, I say, and the
+infernal weakness that makes a man see double on women's faces when
+there's only one woman in his heart! Mother, why didn't you know
+about that last, so you could tell me when I was a boy?"
+
+His mother colored a little. "I never taught you to be fickle," she
+said, with a kind of shamed bewilderment.
+
+"I never have been fickle. This is something else worse."  Burr
+looked at his mother again, with the old expression of his when he
+had come in hurt from play. No matter how long Burr Gordon might
+live, no matter what brave deeds he might do--and there was brave
+stuff in him, for he would have gone to the gallows rather than
+betray Madelon--there would always be in him the appeal of a child to
+the woman who loved him. "Mother, I don't know how to bear it," he
+said.
+
+"You must bear it like a man."
+
+"It is hard to bear the consequence of unmanly conduct like a man,"
+said Burr, shortly; then he went out, as if the old comfort from his
+mother had failed him. As for her, she finished heeling her stocking,
+and then went out into the kitchen and made a pudding that her son
+loved for his dinner.
+
+Burr went back up-stairs to his cold chamber, and watched for Madelon
+to come out of Lot's house. It seemed to him she was there an
+eternity, but in reality it was only a half-hour.
+
+She had found Lot sitting as usual before the fire with a
+leather-covered volume on his knees. "I have come," she said,
+standing just inside the door; then she started at the look he gave
+her. There was a significance in it which she could not understand.
+
+He did not say a word for full five minutes while she waited. He did
+not even ask her to be seated. "Do you know the date?" he asked then,
+harshly. There was no hint of roses and honey in his speech and
+manner to offend her like his letter.
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"You know the month is up on Monday?"
+
+"I am not likely to forget."
+
+"True," said Lot; "it is the last thing a girl will forget--the day
+set for her happy marriage."  He laughed.
+
+Madelon's face contracted. She set her mouth harder, and looked
+straight at Lot. "When you have done laughing," said she, "will you
+tell me what you want of me? I have to go home and get dinner."
+
+Lot still looked at her with his mocking smile. "I wished to inquire
+if you are ready to become my bride on Monday," said he.
+
+"Yes, I am ready. Is that all?"
+
+"I wished also to inquire if you have any plans concerning the
+ceremony which you would like carried out."
+
+"I have none."
+
+"Then will it suit you to come here on Monday at two o'clock in the
+afternoon, since the doctor tells me I shall scarcely be able to go
+out myself, and be united to me by Parson Fair?"
+
+"I am ready to carry out any plans you may make."
+
+"Your father and your brothers and my cousin Burr and his mother
+will, of course, be present at our wedding," said Lot, with wary eyes
+upon her face.
+
+Madelon looked at him as proudly as ever. "Very well," said she. She
+waited a minute longer; then she laid her hand on the doorlatch.
+
+"Wait a minute!" Lot cried. He looked at her hesitatingly. A flush
+crept over his white face. "Madelon," he began; then his cough
+interrupted him. He tried to force it back with fierce swallowings,
+but had to yield. He bent over double, and shook with rattling
+volleys. Madelon waited, her eyes averted, without a sign of pity.
+The near approach of her wedding-day caused a revolt of her whole
+maiden soul towards him so intense that it was as a contraction of
+the muscles. She was utterly hard to his suffering. At last he raised
+himself, panting, and cast a pale look around at her.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" she said.
+
+He motioned feebly towards is desk on the other side of the room.
+"Top drawer," he whispered, hoarsely; "left-hand corner--find--leather
+case--bring to me."
+
+Madelon crossed the room to the desk, opened the drawer, found the
+leather case, and carried it to Lot. "Here," said she.
+
+"Open it," Lot whispered.
+
+Madelon pressed the spring in the case, and held it out open towards
+Lot without a glance at its contents.
+
+"Look," he said.
+
+Madelon glanced at the little gold watch, curled round with a long
+gold chain, which the case contained, and continued to hold it out
+towards Lot. "I've looked," said she. "Here, take it; I must go
+home."
+
+"Oh, Madelon, it's for you."
+
+"I don't want it."
+
+"Take it--Madelon, won't you have it? I got it for you."
+
+"No, I don't want it. Shall I put it back in the drawer?"
+
+"Don't you think it's a pretty watch?"
+
+"Yes. Shall I put it back?"
+
+"You haven't any watch, Madelon."
+
+"I don't want one."  Madelon closed the case impatiently, and turned
+away.
+
+"Oh, Madelon, won't you take it?" Lot begged, piteously.
+
+"I told you no--I do not care for it."  Madelon put the case back in
+the desk drawer. Then she drew her cloak together, and went to the
+door again.
+
+"Oh," said Lot Gordon, weakly, in his hoarse voice, "the hardest
+thing in the whole world for Love to bruise himself against is the
+tender heart of a woman, when 'tis not inclined his way."
+
+"Good-bye," said Madelon, and shut the door behind her fiercely. That
+last speech of Lot's, which, like many of his speeches, seemed to her
+no human vernacular, added terror to her aversion of him. "He's more
+like a book than a man," she had often thought, and the fancy seized
+her now that the great leather-bound book upon his knees, and all
+those leather-bound books against his walls, had somehow possessed
+him with an uncanny life of their own.
+
+And she may have been in a measure right, for Lot Gordon, during his
+whole life, had dealt indirectly with human hearts through their
+translations in his beloved books rather than with the beating hearts
+of men and women around him. Still, although he spoke like one who
+learns a language from books instead of the familiar converse of
+people, and his thoughts clothed themselves in images which those
+about him disdained and threw off as impeding their hard race of
+life, poor Lot Gordon's heart beat in time with the hearts of his
+kind. But that Madelon could not know because hers was so set against
+it.
+
+She hurried out of the house and the yard, dreading again lest she
+should encounter Burr. But her haste was of no avail, for he came
+straight down his opposite terraces, and met her when she reached the
+road.
+
+She would have pushed past then, but he stood squarely before her.
+"Madelon, can't I speak with you a minute?" he pleaded. Madelon saw,
+without seeming to look, that Burr's handsome face was white as death
+and haggard.
+
+"Are you sick?" she asked, suddenly. "Why do you look so? What is the
+matter with you?" and she put a half-bitter, half-anxiously
+compassionate weight upon the _you_.
+
+"I believe I am going mad," Burr groaned, with the quick grasp of a
+man at the pity of the woman he loves. "Oh, Madelon!"  He held out
+his hands towards her like a child, but she stood back from him, and
+looked straight at him with sharp questioning in her eyes.
+
+"Do you mean--" she began; then stopped, and questioned him with her
+eyes again. She was seized with the belief, which filled her at once
+with agony and an impulse of fierce protection like that of a mother
+defending her young with her own wounded bosom, that Burr had had a
+falling out with Dorothy.
+
+"Oh, Madelon!" Burr said again, and then he could say no more for
+very shame and honor. He had run out, indeed, in a half-frenzy.
+
+"She _shall_ not play you false!" Madelon cried out. "Dorothy Fair
+_shall_ keep her word with you."
+
+Burr looked at her, bewildered.
+
+"Marry her at once," Madelon cried, with a quick rush of her
+words--"at once. Do you hear me, Burr Gordon? It's all the way to do
+with a girl like that. Do you hear me?"
+
+"Yes, I hear you," Burr said, slowly, as if he were stunned.
+
+"Dorothy Fair _shall_ keep her promise to you--I will make her. She
+shall marry you whenever you say. I will go this very day and see
+her."
+
+"There is no need for you to do that, Madelon. I will marry her at
+once, as you advise. I think she will be willing," Burr said, slowly
+and coldly. Then he left her without another word, and went up his
+terraces with his back bent like an old man's. He was holding hard to
+his heart the surety that Madelon no longer cared for him, for it is
+scarcely within the imagination of either man or woman that one can
+love and yet give away. But by the time he entered the house his
+spirit had awakened within him, and he made a proud resolve that
+since Madelon so advised and was herself to marry that he would marry
+Dorothy Fair as soon as she should be willing.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+
+As for Madelon, she went home with her mind diverted from her own
+unhappiness by Burr's, and, in spite of his assurance, might have
+gone to visit her righteous anger upon Dorothy had she not heard that
+very night that Burr and Parson Fair's daughter were to be married in
+a month's time.
+
+The next day Lot sent again for her, and she obeyed, with her proud
+sense of duty to her future husband, although every step she took
+towards him carried her farther away. His conduct began to puzzle her
+more than ever. Again he sent her to the desk drawer, and this time
+for a roll of precious rose-colored satin stuff, fit for a queen's
+gown; but she would have none of that either, although he pleaded
+with her to take it. When she started to go away he called her back,
+and called her back, and when she came had nothing to say, until she
+lost patience and went home.
+
+And the day after that he sent again, and there was a great carved
+comb for her in the desk drawer, and some rose-colored satin shoes;
+but she thrust them back indignantly. "Understand once for all, Lot
+Gordon," said she, "you I will take, as I would take my death,
+because I have pledged my word; but your presents I will not take."
+
+"I have been buying them and treasuring them, against the time you
+would have them, for years," pleaded Lot.
+
+"I tell you I will not have them," said she.
+
+That day, as the day before, he called her back again and again, and
+looked at her as if he had something on his mind which he would and
+could not say; and she went home at last resolved not to go again
+until she was obliged to for the marriage ceremony.
+
+The next day was Sunday, and Madelon went to meeting and sang, as
+usual. Burr was not there, but pretty Dorothy was, and looked up at
+Madelon with a kind of wondering alarm when she sang. Madelon had the
+heart of one who sings her death-song, and there was something of it
+in her face that morning. Unconsciously people looked past her, when
+her voice rang out, to see some dead wall of horror at her back to
+account for the strange tones in it and the look in her face. She had
+never looked handsomer, however, than she did that day. Her cheeks
+had the bloom of roses, and her black eyes seemed to give out their
+own light, like stars.
+
+She held up her head like a queen as she sang, and her wonderful
+voice sounded through and beyond the viols and violins, and all the
+other singing voices. The agony within her was great to penetrate the
+consciousness of others through this fair triumphant mask.
+
+Madelon looked better than her rival that morning. Dorothy sat, as
+usual, daintily clad in her Sabbath silks and swan's-downs, with a
+sweet atmosphere as of a flower around her; but her delicate color
+had faded, and her blue eyes looked as if she had been weeping and
+had not slept. She never glanced once at Eugene Hautville up in the
+singing-seats; but sometimes he looked at her, and then her face
+quivered under his eyes.
+
+That noon Lot Gordon sent again for Madelon, but this time she
+refused to go. "Tell him I am busy and can't come," she told Margaret
+Bean's husband, who had brought the note. The old man went off,
+muttering over her message to himself lest he forget it. She heard
+him repeating it in a childish sing-song--"Tell him I'm busy and
+can't come; tell him I'm busy and can't come"--as he went out of the
+yard, slanting his old body before the south wind. The wind blew from
+the south that day in great gusts as warm as summer; the air was full
+of the sounds of running water, of sweet, interrupted tinkles and
+sudden gurgles and steady outpourings as from a thousand pitchers.
+The snow was going fast; here and there were bare patches that showed
+a green shimmer across the wind. Sometimes spring comes with a rush
+to New England on the 1st of April.
+
+That afternoon Madelon went to meeting and sang again, and when she
+got home Margaret Bean was waiting for her, sitting, a motionless,
+swaddled figure, beside a window. The Hautvilles never locked their
+doors while away from home, and she had walked in and waited at her
+ease until Madelon should return.
+
+Madelon came in alone; her father, Abner, and Eugene had stopped in
+the barn to look after the roan, who had gone somewhat lame in one
+foot, and Louis and Richard had lagged. Margaret Bean stood up when
+Madelon entered.
+
+"You'd better come over," said she.
+
+"Didn't I tell your husband I couldn't?" returned Madelon, harshly.
+
+"You'd better, I guess."
+
+"I've got my father's and brothers' supper to get, and other things
+to see to. Tell him he must leave me in peace to-day, or I'll never
+come."  Madelon's voice rose high and strident. She unfastened her
+cloak as if it choked her. Margaret looked at her, her small black
+eyes peering out wrathfully from her swathing woollens. She was as
+much wrapped up on this mild day as she had been when the cold was
+intense. A certain dogged attitude towards the weather Margaret Bean
+always took. On Thanksgiving Day she donned her winter garments; on
+May Day she exchanged them for her summer ones, regardless of the
+temperature. She never made any compromises or concessions. She
+sweltered in her full regalia of wools on mild spring days; she
+weathered the early November blasts in her straw bonnet and silk
+shawl, without an extra kerchief around her stiff old neck. To-day
+she would not loosen her wraps as she sat waiting for Madelon in the
+warm room, but remained all securely pinned and tied as when she
+entered.
+
+However, her discomfort, although she would not yield to it, aroused
+her temper. "You'd better come," said she, "or you'll be sorry."
+
+Madelon made no reply.
+
+"He's sick," said Margaret Bean; "he's took considerable worse."  She
+nodded her head angrily at Madelon.
+
+"Is his cough worse?"
+
+"He can scarcely sit up," said Margaret Bean, with severe emphasis.
+She rose up stiffly, as if she had but one joint, so girt about was
+she. "If a woman's going to marry a man, I calculate it's her place
+to go to him when he's sick and wants her," she added.
+
+"Is his cough worse?"
+
+"Ain't his cough bad all the time? Well, I'm going. If folks 'ain't
+got any feelings, they 'ain't. I've got to make some porridge for
+him."
+
+Madelon opened the door for her. "I'll come over after supper," said
+she; "you can tell him so."
+
+After supper Madelon went over to Lot's in the early twilight. The
+tinkles and gurgles and plashes of water came mysteriously from all
+sides through the dusk. The hill-sides were flowing with shallow
+cascades, and the woods were threaded with brooks. The wind blew
+strongly as ever from the south; it had lost the warmth of the sun,
+but was still soft. The earth was full of a strange commotion and
+stir--of disorder changing into order, as if creation had come again.
+It might have been the very birthnight of the spring. Madelon, as she
+hurried along, felt that memory of old, joyous anticipation which
+enhances melancholy when the chance of realization is over. The
+spring might come, radiant as ever, with its fulfilment of love for
+flowers and birds and all living things, but the spring would never
+come in its full meaning, with its old prophecies, for her again.
+
+Just before she reached Lot's home, Burr passed her swiftly with a
+muttered "good-evening."  He was on his way to Dorothy Fair's.
+
+"Good-evening," Madelon returned, quite clearly.
+
+She found Lot sitting up, but she could see that he looked worse than
+usual. He was paler, and there was an odd, nervous contraction about
+his whole face, as if a frown of anxiety and perplexity had extended.
+
+He held out his hand, but she took no notice of it.
+
+"I have come," said she; "what is it?"
+
+"Won't you shake hands, Madelon?"
+
+Madelon held out her hand, with her face averted, but Lot did not
+take it, after all.
+
+"My hand is too cold," he muttered; "never mind--"  He continued to
+look at her, and the anxious lines on his face deepened.
+
+"Are you feeling worse than usual?" Madelon asked; and a little
+kindness came into her voice, for Lot Gordon looked again like a sick
+child who had lost his way in the world.
+
+Lot shook his head, with his wistful eyes still upon her face. A
+little light-stand, with his medicines and a candle, stood on his
+left. Presently he reached out and took a little box from off it, and
+extended it to Madelon. She shrank back.
+
+"Take it, Madelon."
+
+"No, I don't want it."
+
+"Oh, Madelon, take it and open it at least, and let me see you."
+
+Madelon took the box, with an impatient gesture, and opened it, and a
+ring set with a great pearl gleamed on its red velvet cushion. She
+closed the box and held it out towards Lot. "I want no presents,
+Lot," she said, but almost gently.
+
+"Oh, Madelon, keep it!"
+
+She reached across him, and laid the little box back on the table.
+
+"There's another ring I've got for you you'll have to wear, Madelon."
+
+"I will wear what I must, for the sake of my promise, when the time
+comes, but that is all I will do," returned Madelon; and she seemed
+to feel, as she spoke, the wedding-ring close around her finger like
+a snake.
+
+"Can nothing I can give you please you, Madelon?"
+
+"No, Lot," she said, but not ungently. She began to move away.
+
+"Madelon," said Lot.
+
+"Well?"  Madelon waited, but Lot said not another word. She went on
+towards the door.
+
+"Madelon," he whispered, and she stopped again; but this time also
+there was a long silence, which he did not break.
+
+Madelon opened the door, and his piteous cry came for the third time,
+and she waited on the threshold; but again he said nothing more.
+
+"Good-night," said she, shortly, and was out, and the door shut. Then
+she heard a cry from him, as if he were dying. "Madelon, Madelon!"
+
+She opened the door with a jerk, and went back. "Lot," said she,
+sternly, "this is the last time I will come back. Once for all, what
+is it you want of me?"
+
+Lot looked up at her, his face working. He strove to speak and could
+not. He strove again, and his voice was weak and gasping as if the
+breath of life had almost left him. "We--had better not be
+married--to-morrow," he said, with his piteous eyes upon Madelon's
+face.
+
+She started, and stared at him as if she feared she did not hear
+rightly.
+
+"I--have been--thinking it over," Lot went on, panting; "I am not as
+well--we had better wait--until--May. My cough--the doctor--we will
+wait--Madelon!"  Lot's broken speech ended in a pitiful cry of her
+name.
+
+"Why do you do this?" she asked, looking at him with her white, stern
+face, through which an expression of joy, which she tried to keep
+back, was struggling.
+
+"I am not as well, Madelon," Lot answered, with sudden readiness and
+sad dignity. "If you do not object to the change of time we had best
+defer it."
+
+Madelon looked away. "There is no need of any pretence between us,"
+she said; "I am sorry you are not as well."
+
+"But not sorry that our wedded bliss must be deferred?"
+
+"No," said she. Then she went away, and that time Lot did not call
+her back. She heard him coughing hard as she went through the entry.
+
+When she came out of the house into the tumultuous darkness of the
+spring night, and went down the road with the south wind smiting her
+with broadsides of soft air, and the living sounds of water ahead and
+on either hand of her, she was happy--in spite of Burr, in spite of
+everything--with the happiness of one to whom is granted a respite
+from death.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+
+When the mind has been strained up and held to the furthering of some
+painful end and then suddenly released, it sinks back for a time,
+alive to nothing but the consciousness of freedom and rest. Even the
+thought for the future, which is its one weapon against fate, is laid
+down. Madelon, for a few days after the postponement of her marriage,
+went about in a kind of negative happiness. There are few who have so
+much to bear that there is not left to them at least the joy of
+escape from another trial. Madelon had lost her lover indeed, but she
+was let loose for a while from a worse trouble than that.
+
+When Madelon entered the house that Sunday night her face was so
+changed that it held her father's and her brothers' casual glances.
+Her cheeks were brilliant with the damp wind, her eyes gleaming, her
+mouth half smiling as she looked around. For the first time for weeks
+it seemed to Madelon that she had really come home, and the old
+familiar place did not look strange to her with the threatening light
+of her own future over it. She tossed off her hood and her red cloak,
+and proposed with her old manner that they have some music.
+
+The men looked at her and each other. "She's a woman," old David
+muttered under his mustache, and got his viol.
+
+Soon the grand chorus began, and Madelon sang and sang, with all her
+old fervor. The brothers kept glancing at her, half uneasily, but
+David wooed his viol as if it were his one love in the world, and
+paid no attention to aught besides.
+
+The concert lasted late that night. It was midnight before they
+stopped singing and put their stringed instruments away.
+
+Then Madelon turned to them all. "I am not going to be married
+to-morrow," she said, and her face flushed red. "I had better tell
+you. I am not going to be married for a month."  She strove to
+control her voice, but in spite of herself it rang exultantly at the
+last.
+
+Louis and Richard exchanged one look with a sudden turn of white
+faces. David stared hard and perplexedly at his daughter. "What's
+that ye say?" he asked, after a second's pause.
+
+"I am not going to be married for another month."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Lot isn't as well as he was."
+
+"What's the matter? That cut he got?"
+
+"No, I guess not. I think it's his cough."  Madelon paled and
+shivered, and turned away as she spoke, for the horror of her deed
+and the forced pity came over her again.
+
+Her father caught her by the arm as she would have gone out of the
+room.
+
+"Look ye here," he said, "is this the whole truth of it? We've got a
+right to know. Be ye going to marry him in a month's time?"
+
+Madelon looked at him proudly. "I am going to marry him in a month's
+time, and I am not afraid to face all the truth in the world. Let me
+go, father."
+
+When she was gone the father and sons stood staring at one another.
+There was on all their faces an under meaning to which not one would
+give tongue.
+
+Richard jostled Louis's shoulder. "Suppose--" he whispered, looking
+at him with dismayed and suspicious eyes.
+
+"Hush up!" returned Louis, roughly, and swung across to the shelf for
+his candle.
+
+"If I thought--" began David, with force; then stopped, shaking his
+old head. The male Hautvilles went out, one after the other, their
+candles flaring up in their grimly silent faces. They were capable of
+concerted action without speech, and had evolved one purpose of going
+to bed with no more parley about Lot Gordon and Madelon that night.
+Brave as these men were, not one of them dared set foot squarely upon
+the dangerous ground which two of them knew, and three suspected, and
+look another in the face with the consciousness of his whereabouts in
+his eyes.
+
+Truly afraid were they all, with that subtle cowardice which lurks
+sometimes in the bravest souls, of one another's knowledge and
+suspicions, as they filed up the creaking wooden stairs.
+
+Richard looked at Louis in a terrified sidelong way when they were
+safe in their room with the door shut. "Hush up!" Louis whispered
+again, roughly, as if Richard had spoken. The two brothers were not
+to sleep much that night, each being tormented by anxiety lest Lot
+Gordon had resolved to stand by their sister no longer, and let
+disgrace fall upon her head; but neither would speak.
+
+The candles flashed athwart the dark window-spaces of the Hautville
+chambers, and one by one went out. The house was dark and still, with
+all the sweet voices and stringed instruments at rest. Yet so full of
+sonorous harmony had it been not long since that one might well fancy
+that it would still, to an attentive ear, reverberate with sweet
+sounds in all its hollows, like a shell.
+
+Madelon slept soundly that night, and when she woke on the morning of
+what was to have been her wedding-day felt as if she had a glimpse of
+her own self again, after a long dream in which she had been changed
+and lost. Richard went early to tell the woman who had been engaged
+to do the housework that she need not come for a month. After
+breakfast her father and brothers all went away, and she was alone in
+the house. She went about her work singing for the first time for
+weeks. She raised her voice high in a gay ditty which was then in
+vogue, entitled "The Knight Errant":
+
+  "It was Dennis the young and brave
+    Was bound for Palestine;
+  But first he made his orisons
+    Before Saint Mary's shrine.
+
+  "'And grant, immortal Queen of Heaven,'
+    Was still the soldier's prayer,
+  'That I may prove the bravest knight
+    And love the fairest fair.'"
+
+So sang Madelon, loud and sweet, as she tidied the kitchen. There
+were four verses, and she was on the last when the door opened
+stealthily and her granduncle, old Luke Basset, entered. Her back was
+towards him, and she did not see or hear him.
+
+He waited, his old face fixed in a sly grin, standing unsteadily on
+his shaking old legs, and holding to the back of a chair for support,
+until Madelon sang at the close of the song,
+
+  "And honored be the bravest brave,
+    Beloved the fairest fair,"
+
+and stopped. Then he spoke. "'Tain't so, then, I s'pose," said he,
+and his voice seemed to crack with sly suggestiveness.
+
+Madelon faced around on him. "What isn't so?" she asked, coldly. "I
+didn't hear you come in."
+
+Old Luke Basset shuffled stiffly to the hearth and settled into
+David's chair. "Well," said he, "I heerd in the store just now that
+your weddin' was put off, but I s'pose it ain't so, 'cause you seem
+to be in sech good sperits. A gal wouldn't be singin' if her weddin'
+was put off."
+
+"Look here, Uncle Luke," said Madelon.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"My wedding is put off for a month; now that settles it. I don't want
+to say another word about it."  Madelon went into the pantry.
+
+Luke sent his old voice, shrill and penetrating as a baby's, after
+her. "They say 'tain't luck to have a weddin' put off. 'Ain't ye
+afeard he'll give ye the slip?"
+
+Madelon made no reply. There was a rattle of dishes in the pantry.
+
+Old Luke waited a moment; then raised his shrill, infantile voice
+again. "If this feller gives ye the slip, ye can jest hang up yer
+fiddle; ye won't git t'other one back. Parson Fair's gal's got 'nough
+fine feathers comin' from Boston to fit out the Queen of England,
+they say."
+
+Madelon said nothing.
+
+"D'ye hear?" called old Luke; but he got no reply. "Dexter Beers says
+a hull passel of stuff come up from Boston on the stage yesterday.
+Saturday," persisted old Luke, "Mis' Beers she see an eend of blue
+satin a-stickin' out of one of the bundles."
+
+Old Luke waited again, with sharp eyes on the pantry. He could see
+therein a fold of Madelon's indigo-blue petticoat, and could hear the
+click of a spoon against a dish; that was all.
+
+Old Luke tried his last prod of aggravation. "Folks air sayin' down
+to the store that mebbe there was some truth, arter all, in what you
+said 'bout the stabbin', an' mebbe that's the reason Lot is a puttin'
+off the weddin'," piped old Luke. He chuckled slyly to himself, but
+sobered suddenly, and cowered in his chair before Madelon.
+
+She came out of the pantry with a rush, and stood before him, her
+eyes blazing. "There _was_ truth in what I said, after all!" she
+cried. "The truth's the truth, whether there's folks to believe it or
+not, and I spoke it, and you can tell them so at the store."
+
+Old Luke shrank before her. His old body seemed to cease to shape his
+clothes. He looked up at her with scared eyes.
+
+"And the reason I have told for the wedding being postponed is the
+truth, too," continued Madelon. "I did stab Lot Gordon, and he knows
+I did, though he won't own it, and he's bound to stab me back my
+whole life. And we shall be married in a month fast enough--you
+needn't worry, Uncle Luke Basset."
+
+Madelon stood over the old man a minute, quivering with impatience
+and utterly reckless anger and scorn, and he shrank before her with
+scared eyes, and yet a lurking of his malicious grin about his mouth.
+Then she made a contemptuous gesture, as if she would brush him out
+of her consciousness altogether, and went away out of the room
+without another word, and left him alone.
+
+He turned his head slowly and looked cautiously around after the door
+was closed. He heard Madelon's quick tread up the stairs. "Gorry!"
+muttered old Luke under his breath, and scowled reflectively over his
+foxy eyes. Quite convinced in his own mind was old Luke Basset that
+his grandniece had spoken the truth, and had wounded Lot Gordon
+almost to death, and quite resolute was he also that he would, since
+she was his own kin, contend against the carping tongues of the
+village gossips with all the cunning in him.
+
+Old Luke waited for some time. Then he got up stiffly and shuffled
+out on his tottering legs, scraping his feet for purchase on the
+floor, like some old claw-footed animal.
+
+Out in the entry he paused a moment, with his head cocked shrewdly
+and warily towards the stairs. "Hey!" he called, but got no response.
+He opened the outer door, and, all ready to be gone should his niece
+appear, he called shrilly up the stairs, "Hey, Mad'lon--forgot to
+tell ye. Mis' Beers she said she see a bandbox 'mongst them things
+that come for the parson's gal; said 'twas most big 'nough to hold
+the bride, and she guessed 'twas the weddin'-bunnit."
+
+Not a sound from above heard old Luke, and presently he gave it up
+and went out and down the road to the village, with occasional
+glances of a crafty old eye over his shoulder at Madelon's chamber
+window. Madelon had heard every word. She was folding up her own
+wedding-silk and putting it away in the cedar chest until she should
+want it. She put away her wedding-bonnet also, with its cream-colored
+plumes and its linings and strings of yellow satin, in the bandbox.
+
+She set her mouth hard, and coupled bitterly her own poor
+wedding-finery with Dorothy Fair's grand outfit; and yet not for the
+reason that her Uncle Luke had striven to give her, for she would
+have held an old ragged blanket of one of her Indian grandmothers
+like the bridal gown of a queen had Burr been her bridegroom.
+
+Madelon heard the door shut, and knew her tormentor was gone; and
+after her fine attire was packed away she went down-stairs and about
+her tasks again. But she sang no more. The certainty of the future
+overcame her like the present, and her short-lived joy or respite was
+all gone. When her father and brothers came home at noon they found
+the old stern quiet in her face, and their suspicions that there had
+been a rupture with Lot ceased. They were relieved, but the boy
+Richard eyed her with furtive pity. That night he lingered behind the
+others when they dispersed for the night, and went up to Madelon and
+threw an arm around her, and laid his cheek against hers. "Oh,
+Madelon, I wish--" he began, and then he caught his breath, and his
+cheek against hers was wet, and Madelon turned and comforted him, as
+a woman will turn and comfort a man for even his pity for her sorrow.
+
+"There is no need for you to fret," she said, with a sort of gentle
+authority, as if she had been his mother. "I've got my life to live,
+and I've got strength enough to live it. I shall do well enough."
+
+Then she put him away from her softly, and went about setting bread
+to rise. But he followed beseechingly at her heels, with a little
+parcel which he had been hiding in a corner of the dresser. "I bought
+these for you, with some of my trap money, for a little present," the
+boy whispered, piteously; and Madelon smiled at him and took the
+parcel and opened it, and found therein a pair of fine red-satin
+shoes. Then he brightened at the delight which she showed, and went
+up-stairs to bed, feeling that after all it would be no such hard
+task for his sister to marry Lot Gordon, and cover her fault of mad
+temper and her disgrace. "He likes her so much he will treat her
+kindly, and she will have a fine house, and plenty of silk gowns, and
+feathers in her bonnets," reflected Richard, comfortably, with no
+more consciousness of his sister's outlook upon life than if his eyes
+were turned towards a scene in another world. Still he loved his
+sister with all his heart, although he never in his life had seen
+anything just as she saw it. He did not dream that Madelon's calm
+broke before his red-satin shoes, and that she was sitting alone
+before the kitchen fire with them in her lap, weeping bitterly. She
+was made of stern stuff to endure the worst of things; but, after
+all, the pitiful little accessories of grief and death are harder to
+bear without weakening, because all one's powers of defence are not
+enlisted against them. They are sometimes the scouts that kill.
+
+Poor Madelon looked at her brother's wedding-gift, the little
+red-satin shoes, in which she could never walk or dance with a merry
+heart, and her courage almost failed her. But it was only for a
+little while. She rose up and finished setting the bread to rise, and
+then she went to her chamber and packed away the shoes with the other
+things in the cedar chest.
+
+Through the days that came now Madelon toiled as she had never toiled
+before, although she had always been an industrious girl. She had her
+own linen-chest, which she would take with her when she married, and
+now she bestirred herself to replenish the stores of the house she
+would leave, for the comfort of her father and brothers. Long before
+dawn the gentle hum of her spinning-wheel began, although the days
+were lengthening, and many a time she sat plying it on her solitary
+hearth until after midnight. She spent days at the great loom in the
+north chamber, marching back and forth before it, a straight,
+resolute figure of industry filling human needs, although with sweat
+of the brow and heart's blood. No happier was she for her hard toil,
+but it kept at least the spirit of fierce endurance alive within her,
+for no one succumbs entirely to misery with unfolded hands. Then,
+too, she was upheld somewhat by her pride in right-doing and
+providing for the interests of her family. Enough of the New England
+conscience she had to give her a certain comfort in holding herself
+to duty, like a knife to a grindstone.
+
+The third week of April had begun when one morning Dorothy Fair came
+to the door. Madelon was out in the field beside the house, laying
+some lengths of cloth on the green sunny levels to whiten. The grass
+had turned quite green in places, and the sun was hot as midsummer.
+The buds on the trees opened before one's eyes, as if unfolded by
+warm fingers. People walked languidly, for the humid heat served to
+force nothing to life in them but dreams; but the birds lived on
+their wings and called out of all the distances.
+
+Madelon, standing up from spreading her linen, caught sight of the
+swing of a blue petticoat, like the swing of a blue flower, beside
+the house door, and went towards it directly.
+
+But when she reached the house the blue-clad visitor had disappeared
+within. Madelon entered and found Dorothy Fair in the north parlor.
+Eugene had been sitting in there with his Shakespeare book, and he
+had opened the door, bowing and wishing her good-day, with his
+courtly grace of manner, although his handsome face was pale.
+
+Dorothy was pale, also, under her blue-ribboned bonnet. She
+courtesied on trembling knees, and spoke like a scared child, in
+spite of her training and genteel deportment. "Can I see your
+sister?" she said, in a half-whisper, and she did not raise her blue
+eyes to Eugene's face.
+
+Eugene looked past her. "I see her coming now across the field," he
+said; "she has seen you and will be here presently."
+
+Then he bade her enter, and made way for her, like a courtier for a
+princess, and seated her in the north parlor in the best
+rocking-chair, as if it were a throne. Then he sat down opposite her,
+with his Shakespeare book still on his knees. That morning he had
+been poring over "Romeo and Juliet."  His imagination was afire with
+the sweet ardor of that other lover, and he would gladly have
+identified Dorothy, as she sat there, with Juliet; and so he adored
+her doubly.
+
+Yet he saw only the tip of her little shoe below the blue hem of her
+gown, and dared not fairly glance at her face, although he bore
+himself with such calm ease that none could have suspected.
+
+"It is a beautiful day," said Eugene.
+
+"Yes," whispered Dorothy. Somehow for the moment Eugene forgot
+Dorothy's marriage, and Burr and his bitter jealousy, for suddenly a
+strange and unwarrantable sense of possession came over him. He
+looked fully at Dorothy, and scanned her drooping face, and smiled,
+and then Madelon came in.
+
+Dorothy arose at once and greeted her with more of her usual manner.
+Then she fumbled uneasily with a little parcel she held, and glanced
+at Eugene, and then at Madelon. "I had an errand--" began Dorothy and
+stopped, and then Eugene said softly, still smiling, "I see you have
+some weighty matter to discuss," and bowed himself out with his
+Shakespeare book.
+
+Then Dorothy, all trembling, and before he was fairly out of hearing
+across the entry in the other room, announced her errand. She had
+come to beg Madelon, whose rare skill in embroidering her own floral
+designs was celebrated in the village, to work for her the front
+breadth of one of her silken gowns with a garland of red roses. "I
+can work only from patterns which are marked out," said Dorothy; and
+then she held up a shining length of green silk upon which the
+garland already bloomed in her pretty feminine fancy. "I will pay you
+whatever you ask," said Dorothy, further. Then she started and
+shrank, for Madelon looked at her with such wrath and pride in her
+black eyes that she was frightened.
+
+"What--have--I--done?" she faltered, piteously. And it was quite true
+that she did not know what she had done, for she reasoned always like
+a child, with premises of acts only and not of motives. She
+considered simply that Madelon had urged her to be true to Burr, and
+was herself to marry another man, and therefore could not be jealous,
+and that she wanted her gown embroidered.
+
+Dorothy was not happy, and a nervous terror was always upon her which
+had caused her blue eyes to look out wistfully from delicate hollows
+and faded the soft pink on her cheeks; still she kept involuntarily
+to her feminine ways, and wanted her gowns embroidered.
+
+"I want no pay!" Madelon cried, hoarsely.
+
+"I meant no harm," Dorothy faltered, again. She remembered that
+Madelon Hautville had on divers occasions, for prospective brides,
+turned her marvellous skill in embroidery to financial profit, but
+she dared not say so for an excuse. "I could not do it myself,"
+Dorothy said, further, trembling in every limb, "and--I thought
+maybe--you--"
+
+Suddenly Madelon extended her hand. "Give me this silk," she said; "I
+will work the flowers on it for you, but never dare to speak to me of
+pay, Dorothy Fair."
+
+Dorothy looked at her, made a motion as to give her the silk, then
+drew it back again.
+
+"Give me the silk," said Madelon. Dorothy yielded up the silk
+hesitatingly, with a scared and apologetic murmur. Then she screamed
+faintly, for Eugene Hautville strode back into the room with a look
+on his face which she had never seen before. He snatched the silk out
+of Madelon's hand and thrust it roughly into Dorothy's.
+
+"Take it home," he said. "My sister does no work on your
+wedding-clothes!"
+
+Dorothy gasped and looked at him with wild terror in her blue eyes,
+and then he caught her in his arms, pressed her yellow head against
+his breast, and stroked it softly. "Don't be afraid," he said--and
+his voice had its wonderful gentle charm again. "Don't be afraid,
+dear child! I could not harm you if I tried--not a hard word shall be
+said to you, sweet!"
+
+"_Eugene!_" cried Madelon, and her voice seemed to carry wrath like a
+trumpet. She laid hold of his shoulders, and forced him back, and
+Dorothy slipped out of his arms and stood aside, trembling and
+weeping, with a little worked apron which she wore thrown over her
+face. "Let me be!" Eugene cried, angrily, and would have gone to
+Dorothy again to comfort her, but Madelon in her wrath was as strong
+as he, and she thrust herself between them.
+
+"You are no brother of mine, Eugene Hautville," she said, her face
+all white and fierce with anger. "You dare to touch her again, and
+you will find out that I can fight to keep her from you as well as
+Burr could if he were here. You _dare_ to touch her again!"  Then she
+turned to Dorothy. "Give me the silk," she said, in a hard voice. In
+her heart she blamed her more than her brother, although
+unnecessarily.
+
+Dorothy shrank back. "No," she said, feebly, "I had better not."
+
+"Give me the silk!"
+
+Dorothy gave her the silk. Eugene stood apart. He possessed his fine
+pride and graceful self-poise again, and though his blood boiled he
+would not, being a man, wrestle with his sister for another man's
+bride.
+
+Dorothy moved towards the door, her fair curls drooping over her
+agitated face. Eugene made a motion in her direction, and when
+Madelon would have thrust him back again, he only said, with a
+half-smile, "I would crave the lady's pardon; you would not prevent
+that."  And then he bowed low before Dorothy Fair, and besought her
+to pardon, if she could, his unseemly conduct, and believe that it
+had for motive only the highest respect and esteem for her.
+
+And Dorothy swept her curls farther over her face, and could not make
+the dignified response of offended maidenhood that she should, but
+courtesied tremblingly and fairly fled out of the house.
+
+Eugene, with his Shakespeare book under his arm, went also out of the
+house and over across the field, to a piney wood he loved, where all
+the trees, even in this warm flush of spring, whispered eternally of
+winter and the north, and there he stretched himself out beneath a
+tree, as melancholy as Jacques in the forest of Arden. Now that he
+had got the better of his impulse of mad passion and jealousy, he was
+ashamed, and stayed late in the wood, for he did not like to meet his
+sister's rightly scornful face.
+
+When he went at last late for his supper, Madelon, as he expected,
+noticed him only by an angry flash of her black eyes, under drooping
+lids. She said not one word to him, and as the days went on treated
+him coldly; and yet she did not give to the matter its full
+seriousness of meaning.
+
+Madelon, well acquainted with Eugene's caressing manner, thought
+simply that, seeing poor Dorothy's alarm, he had striven to soothe
+her with endearments and assurance that he would not hurt her, as he
+would have done with a child. As for Dorothy, Madelon credited her
+with the soft spirit which she knew she possessed. She scorned them
+both, and felt as jealous for Burr's sake as he himself could have
+done, that other hands than his had touched his bride's; and yet she
+did not dream of the full significance of it all.
+
+She wrought a marvellous garland of red roses on Dorothy Fair's green
+silk, and scarcely left herself time to sleep that she might complete
+that and her stint of household linen. She had nothing to add to her
+own wedding-garments.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+
+The weeks went past, and the Sunday before the day set for her
+wedding came again. She had seen Lot but three times in the interval.
+He had sent for her, and she had gone obediently, and remained a
+short time, pleading her work as an excuse to return home. Lot had
+not sought to detain her; he had vexed her with no vain appeals, but
+treated her with a sort of sad deference which would have perplexed
+her had she cared enough for him to dwell upon it.
+
+Lot was said to be in no better health. He did not stir abroad on
+those warm spring days. Once he had put on his great-coat, and was
+for setting foot on the springing grass in the sunny yard, but
+Margaret Bean had remarked to him how she had heard, whilst
+purchasing a bit of cheese in the store, a man say that he guessed
+Lot Gordon wasn't much worse, only afraid of a wife that could use a
+knife. Margaret Bean had shaken in her starched petticoats as she
+said it, not knowing how the news might affect her master towards the
+monger of it; but she was disposed to risk a little rather than have
+a mistress over her.
+
+Lot said nothing in response about the matter, but pulled off his
+great-coat and sank into his chair with a fit of coughing, and
+declared he felt not well enough to go out that day.
+
+That last Sunday Madelon went to him without being summoned, in the
+early evening after supper. On her last visit, the week before, he
+had asked her, and she had promised to come.
+
+The frogs were calling across the meadows as she went along; there
+was a young moon shining with frequent silvery glances through the
+budding trees, which tossed athwart it like foam, and the mists
+curled along the horizon distances. Madelon, moving along, was as the
+ghost of one who had belonged to the spring, as a part of its radiant
+hope and stir of life and youth in days past, but was now done with
+it forever. The spring sounds and sights, and all its sweet
+influence, seemed to tear her heart anew with memories of the visions
+of fair futures which she had forfeited. The loss of the sweet dreams
+which the spring awakens in the human heart is not one of the least
+losses of life. Though the spring be unfulfilled, it sweetens the
+year.
+
+Just before Madelon reached Lot Gordon's house, she met Burr going to
+court Dorothy. They were to be married in two weeks more. Madelon and
+Burr exchanged a murmur of salutations and passed each other.
+
+Madelon went directly into Lot's house, to his sitting-room, as she
+was used to do lately, and found Lot standing in the midst of the
+room, waiting for her, with a lighted candle in his hand.
+
+"I heard your footstep when you came through that open space, where
+the road has a hollow echo," he said; "and I have been waiting for
+you ever since."
+
+"You could not hear me; it is a half-mile away," said Madelon.
+
+"A half-mile! what's a hundred miles when 'tis the heart that
+listens, and not the ears? Come; I have something I want to show
+you."
+
+Lot led the way and Madelon followed out of the room across the front
+entry, with its spiral of stair mounting its landscape-papered
+height, and Lot opened the door of the opposite room, the great north
+parlor. "Wait here a minute," he said to Madelon, and she waited in
+the entry after he entered until he called her to follow.
+
+Lot had lighted every candle in the great branching candelabra upon
+the shelf, and the room was full of light. Madelon looked about her,
+and even her despairing calm was stirred a little. Never had she seen
+or dreamed of a room like this. She grasped no details; her
+bewildered eyes saw them all melting into each other, combining newly
+and vanishing like kaleidoscopic pictures--folds and gleaming
+stretches of crimson damask and velvet, the dark polish of precious
+woods, spots and arabesques of gold and the satin shimmer of
+wall-paper, lights and shades of steel engravings, and elegant and
+graceful lady-treasures of gilded books and work-boxes and vases on
+shelf and tables. There was even a little piano, the only one in the
+village, with slender, fluted legs, and a mother-of-pearl garland
+over the key-board.
+
+"I have had this all newly furnished for you. I hope it may please
+you," said Lot; and he looked at Madelon with hollow, wistful eyes.
+
+That brought her to herself. "It is very pretty," she replied, and
+turned away.
+
+Lot sighed. "Well, I have something more to show you," said he, and
+went forlornly before her, stooping weakly and coughing now and then,
+into the great middle room of the house, which was fitted up with
+carven oak which Governor Winthrop might have used. Here, too, Lot
+lighted all the branches of the candelabra on the shelf; and the
+great buffet directly responded with the dazzling white glitter of
+silver from the cream-jugs and ewers and spoons thereon.
+
+Then Lot threw open the fine carved doors of the cupboard, and the
+shelves were covered with precious blue china, brought from over
+seas, and wine-glasses like bubbles of crystal, and decanters as
+graceful as plumes.
+
+"Do you like it, Madelon?" Lot asked; and Madelon replied, as before,
+that it was pretty.
+
+Lot showed Madelon all the wealth of his house before they returned
+to the sitting-room. Much had been there from his father's day, but
+much had been added to please this bride, who looked at it more
+coldly and with less part in it than she would have looked at the
+treasures in a merchant's windows. She saw, unmoved by any pride of
+possession, great canopied bedsteads, and chests of drawers whose
+carven tops reached the ceiling, and mirrors in gilded frames. She
+saw marvellous stores of linen damask napery in such delicate and
+graceful designs, from foreign looms, as she had never dreamed. She
+saw an India shawl, and lengths of silk and satin and velvet, and
+turned away from it all to the obstinate contemplation and endurance
+of her own misery.
+
+At last Lot led the way back to the sitting-room. He set the candle
+on the shelf, and gave a strange, beseeching glance around the room
+at his books. It was as if he besought, with the irrationality of
+grief, those only friends he fairly knew for help and sympathy.
+
+Then he turned to Madelon and laid a hand on each of her shoulders,
+and looked at her. "No, there is no need now," he said, when she
+would have shrunk away from him; and something in his voice hushed
+her, and she stood still.
+
+"Madelon," said Lot Gordon, "tell me true, as before God. You are a
+woman, and always, I have heard, a woman takes comfort and pleasure
+in life with such gear as I have shown you, alone, even if she has
+little else. Would not all this give you some little happiness, even
+as my wife, Madelon?"
+
+Madelon looked at Lot and hesitated. She had a feeling that her word
+of reply would stab him more cruelly than her knife had done.
+
+"Madelon, tell me!"
+
+"Will you have the truth?"
+
+Lot nodded.
+
+"No, Lot."
+
+"Madelon, I can buy you more than all this. Are you sure?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Lot gave a great sigh. "Dearly bought possessions are worse than
+poverty, you hold," said he. "Then, Madelon, there is no sweetening
+in all this for your bondage?"
+
+She shook her head. "I shall do my duty, as I have promised," she
+said. "All this is useless. Let me go, Lot."
+
+"Madelon!"
+
+She looked up in his face, and a strange awe came over her at the
+look in it. A more secret lurking-place than any of the little wild
+things that he loved to discover had the self in Lot Gordon, and
+Madelon saw it for the first time, and perhaps he, also.
+
+"True love exists not unless it can do away with the desire of
+possession. I love you, Madelon," said Lot; and then he let go of her
+shoulders and went over to the mantel-shelf, and leaned against it,
+with his head bent.
+
+Madelon, all bewildered and trembling, stared at him.
+
+"I--don't think I know what you mean," she gasped out, finally.
+
+"You are--free," said Lot.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+
+
+That year, spring seemed to break over the village in a day, like a
+green flood. All at once people's thoughts were interrupted, and
+their eyes turned from selfish joys or pains by the emerald flash of
+fields and hill-sides in the morning sun, and the white flutter of
+flowering boughs past their windows like the festal garments of
+unexpected guests.
+
+The first week in May, the cherry-trees were in blossom, and the
+alders and shad bushes were white in the borders of the woods against
+the filmy green of the birches. The young women got out their summer
+muslins, and trimmed their bonnets anew; their faces, all unknown to
+themselves, took on a new meaning of the spring, like new flowers,
+and the young men looked after them as they passed as if they were
+strangers in the village.
+
+On the afternoon of Wednesday, in the first week of May, Eugene
+Hautville strolled across-lots over to the village. Through the
+fields north of the Hautville place there was an old foot-path to the
+former site of an old homestead, long ago burned to the ground and
+its ashes dissipated on winds long died away. The oldest inhabitants
+in the village barely remembered the house that used to stand there.
+The slant of its roof crossed their minds dimly when they spoke of
+it: they could not agree as to whether it had faced north or south.
+It might have seemed almost fabulous, had it not been for the thicket
+of old lilacs purpling with bloom every spring, which had first grown
+before its windows, and the perennial houseleek which had clustered
+round the door.
+
+Then, too, east of where the house had stood there was an old apple
+orchard, the trees thereof bent to the ground like distorted old men,
+and, when spring came, bearing scarcely one bough of pink bloom,
+among others shaggy with gray moss like the beard of age.
+
+Then, also, the lane still remained which had stretched, in days gone
+by, from the northward of the old house to the highway. The lane had
+divided the fields of the old landowners, and had been the
+thoroughfare for the dwellers in the house when they went to meeting
+and to mill.
+
+The Hautvilles often used it in the summer-time for a short-cut to
+the village. Eugene went along this foot-path, which was in its way a
+little humble track of history of simple village life, passed the
+site of the house, and then struck into the lane. It stretched before
+him like a shaft of green light. The afternoon sun shone through
+young willow-leaves, transparent like green glass. Low overhead hung
+rosy tassels from out-reaching boughs of maples. Between the trees,
+the flowering alders seemed gleaming out of sight before him like the
+white skirts of maidens. Here and there the ground was blue with
+violets. Eugene picked some half mechanically, as he went along, and
+made a little nosegay, with some sprigs of alder. He was half through
+the lane, and had just emerged from a clump of alders, when he saw
+Dorothy Fair coming. She gave a start when she saw him appear with a
+great jostling of white branches, and made as if she would have fled;
+then she held up her head with gentle dignity and advanced, lifting
+her lady-skirts with dainty fingers on either side. Mistress Dorothy,
+being weary of fine needle-work upon her bridal linen, had come out a
+little way to take the air, and naturally enough had chosen for her
+walk this sweet lane, which opened upon the highway a stone's-throw
+below her house.
+
+If Eugene Hautville, at sight of her, felt a quaking of his spirit,
+and would also fain have fled, he made no sign, but walked on proudly
+like a prince, with a bold yet graceful swing of his stalwart
+shoulders. And when he and Dorothy met, he bowed low before her, and
+she courtesied and he bade her good-day quite clearly, and she
+murmured a response with pretty, prim lips; and they would have
+passed on had not both, as if constrained by hands of force upon
+their necks, raised their faces and looked of a sudden into each
+other eyes with that same old look which they had exchanged in the
+meeting-house long ago.
+
+Dorothy Fair wore on that day a thin wool gown of a mottled blue
+color like a dapple of spring violets. It was laid across her bosom
+in smooth plaits, and showed at the throat her finely wrought lace
+kerchief. The sun was so warm that she had put on her white straw hat
+with blue ribbons, and her soft curls flowed from under it to her
+blue belt ribbon. She wore, too, her little black-silk apron,
+cunningly worked in the corners with flowers in colored silks.
+Dorothy looked up in Eugene Hautville's face, and he looked down at
+her, for a force against which they had come into the world unarmed
+constrained them. Then she bent her head before him until he could
+see nothing but the white slant of her hat, and caught at her silk
+apron as if she would hide her face with that also.
+
+Eugene stood still looking at her, his face radiant and glowing red.
+"Dorothy!" he stammered, and then Dorothy straightened herself
+suddenly, though she kept her face averted, flung up her head, caught
+up her blue skirts again, and made as if she would pass on without
+another word. Eugene, with his face all at once white, and his head
+proudly raise, stood aside to let her pass. "'Tis a warm day for the
+season," he said, with his old graceful courtesy. But Dorothy looked
+up at him again as she neared him in passing, and her sweet mouth was
+quivering like a frightened baby's, and the tears were in her blue
+eyes, and no man who loved her could have let her go by; and
+certainly not this fiery young Eugene. Suddenly, and with seemingly
+no more involvement of wills or ethics than the alders in their
+blossoming, the two were in each other's arms, and their lips were
+meeting in kisses.
+
+This fair and demure daughter of Puritans might well, as she stood
+there in her lover's embrace, being already, as she was, the
+betrothed bride of another, have been accounted fickle and false, but
+perhaps in a sense she was not. Never had she forgot or been untrue
+to her first love-dreams, which Eugene had caused, but had held to
+them with that mild negative obstinacy of her nature which she could
+not herself overcome. Now it was to her as if she were reconciled to
+her true lover, and was faithful instead of false; and less false she
+surely was to her own self.
+
+Right contentedly had she loved for a time Burr's love for her and
+his tenderness, and had been stirred thereby to passion, but now she
+loved this other man for something better than her own sweet image in
+his eyes.
+
+Never a word she said, but her hat slipped down on her shoulders,
+hanging by its blue strings, and she let her head lie on Eugene's
+shoulder, with a strange sense of wontedness and of remembering
+something which had never been.
+
+And, also, all Eugene's fond words in her ear seemed to her like the
+strains of old songs which were past her memory. Burr's, although she
+had listened happily, had never seemed to her like that.
+
+They stood together so for a few minutes, while the alder-flowers
+shook out sweetness, as from perfumed garments, at their side, and a
+bee who had left his hive and winter honey, and made that day another
+surprise of spring, hummed from one white raceme to another and then
+was away, disappearing in the blue air with a last gleam of filmy
+wing as behind a sapphire wall.
+
+Neither of the lovers had knowingly heard the bee's hum, but when it
+ceased the silence seemed to make an accusing sense audible to them.
+They let each other go and stood apart guiltily, as if some one had
+entered the lane and was spying upon them.
+
+Dorothy spoke first, without raising her pale little face, all
+drooped round with her curls. "What shall I do?" she said, like a
+child. She was trembling, and could scarcely control her tongue.
+
+Eugene made no reply. He stood looking moodily at the ground, where
+his nosegay of violets and alders was all scattered and trampled.
+
+Suddenly he had the feeling as of a thief in another man's garden,
+and a shame before Dorothy herself came over him. Eugene Hautville's
+principles of honor, in spite of his fiery nature, read like a
+primer, with no subtleties of evasion therein. Here was another man's
+betrothed, and he had wooed her away! He had kissed her lips, which
+were vowed to another. He had wronged her and Burr Gordon also.
+Strangely enough, Dorothy's own responsibility never occurred to him
+at all; he never dreamed of blaming her for falsity either to himself
+or Burr. That little fair trembling creature, clad like a violet in
+her mottled blue, seemed to him at once above and below all questions
+of personal agency. She bloomed like a flower in her garden,
+infinitely finer than those who wrangled around her and strove to
+gather her, and yet in a measure helpless before them.
+
+In a moment Dorothy answered her question negatively herself: "I will
+not marry Burr," she said, without raising her head, and yet with
+that tone of voice which accompanies a lift of chin and stiffening of
+the neck muscles.
+
+Eugene looked at her, and extended his arms as if he would take her
+to him again; then drew them back. "I do not know what to counsel
+you," he said, slowly. Then his eyes fell before the sudden shame and
+distress in Dorothy's.
+
+"You do not know what do counsel me!" she cried. "Then you do
+not--care--"  Tears rolled over her cheeks, and Eugene gathered her
+into his arms again, and laid his cheek against her fair head, and
+soothed her as he would have soothed a child. "There, there," he
+whispered, "it is not that, it is not that, sweet. I would die for
+you, I love you so! It is not that, but you are the promised wife of
+another man. How can I turn a thief even for you, Dorothy? How can I
+bid you be false, and forswear yourself? There's honor as well as
+love, child."
+
+"But love is honor," said Dorothy.
+
+"Not for a man," said Eugene.
+
+Then she clung to him softly and modestly, and sobbed, and he kissed
+her hair and whispered in one breath that she was all his own, and in
+another that he knew not what to do, and was near distracted between
+his love and his sense of honor, until Dorothy said something which
+set him pleading for his rival whether he would or no, for the sake
+of stern justice.
+
+"I am afraid of him, I am afraid of Burr," Dorothy whispered in his
+ear. "How could I have married him, when I was so afraid, even if you
+had not come?"
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+"_You--know--what--they said--Burr did!_"
+
+Eugene held her away from him by her slender arms, and looked at her.
+"You did not believe that?"
+
+"He would not tell me he was innocent, even when I begged him so."
+
+"You knew he was."
+
+"Why did he not tell me, when I begged him so?" she said, and the
+soft unyielding in her tone was absolute.
+
+"Dorothy!"
+
+"I am so afraid--you don't know," she whispered, piteously.
+
+"But--you know Burr was cleared."
+
+"Yes, I know, but even now he will not tell me on the Bible, as I
+asked him, that he is innocent."
+
+"Dorothy, he _is_ innocent," Eugene said, with solemn and bitter
+emphasis of which she knew not the full meaning.
+
+"Then why does he not swear that he is, to me?"  Back went Dorothy
+always, in all reasoning, to the starting-point in her own mind.
+
+"I tell you he is, child. It has been proven so."
+
+"Then why--" Dorothy began, but Eugene interrupted her in her circle.
+"There is no more cause for you to fear him than me," he said almost
+harshly, in his stern resolve to be just. Then Dorothy turned on him
+with sudden passion. "I am afraid," she cried out, "I shall always be
+afraid; even if he were to swear to me now that he is innocent, I
+shall always be afraid, for I coupled him with that awful deed once
+in my thoughts, and I cannot separate him from it forever. He will
+always hold the knife in his hand; even if it were not for you, I
+should be near mad with fear. I bid black Phyllis stay by the door
+when he comes."
+
+"Dorothy!"
+
+"Yes, I do. What my mind has once laid hold of, that it will not let
+go. I cannot separate him from my old thought of him. I have tried to
+be faithful, and true, but even had he sworn to me that he was
+innocent, the fear would have remained. Save me from him--oh, Eugene,
+save me!"
+
+But Eugene put her quite away from him, and looked at her almost
+sternly. His honor held the reins now in good earnest. The suspicion
+of Madelon, which he had never owned to himself, became a certainty.
+He defended his rival as strenuously as he would have defended
+himself, since it involved truth to himself. "I swear to you, Dorothy
+Fair," he said, "that Burr Gordon is innocent, and that your fear of
+him is groundless."
+
+Dorothy looked at him with dilated eyes. She said not a word, but her
+mind travelled its circle again.
+
+"It is so," said Eugene; "I know it."
+
+Still Dorothy looked at him.
+
+"All my heart is yours," Eugene went on, "but I would rather it
+broke, and yours too, before I counselled you to be false to a man
+for a reason like that."
+
+A flush came over Dorothy's face. She pulled her straw hat from her
+shoulders to her head, and tied the blue strings under her chin. She
+gathered up daintily a fold of her blue mottled skirt on either side.
+"Then I will marry Burr this day week," she said. "I will endeavor to
+be a good and true wife to him, and I pray you to forget if you can
+what has passed between us to-day."
+
+She said this as calmly and authoritatively as her father could have
+said it in the pulpit, and courtesied slightly, then went on down the
+lane and out into the open beyond, with a soft tilt of her blue
+skirts and as gently proud a carriage as when she walked into the
+meeting-house of a Sabbath.
+
+Eugene said not a word to stop her, but stood staring after her. All
+his study of his Shakespeare helped him not to an understanding of
+this one girl, whom he saw with love-dimmed eyes. This sudden
+abetting on her part of his resolve gave him a sense of earthquake
+and revolution, yet he did not call her back or follow her.
+
+He proceeded through the lane to the highway, then a few yards
+farther to the store, to get his Boston weekly paper. The mail had
+come in. On this warm spring day the loafers on the boxes and barrels
+within the store had crawled out to the bench on the piazza and sat
+there in a row. All mental states have their illustrative lives of
+body. This shabby row leaned and lopped and settled upon themselves,
+into all the lines and curves and downward slants of laziness, and
+with rank tobacco-smoke curling about them, like the very languid
+breath of it. However, when Eugene Hautville drew near, there was a
+slight shuffling stir; a drawling hum of conversation ceased, and
+when he entered the store their eyes followed him, bright with
+furtive attention. The mill of gossip had ground slowly in this heavy
+spring atmosphere, but it had ground steadily. They had been
+discussing Madelon Hautville and the breaking off of her marriage
+with Lot Gordon. It was village property by this time, and all
+tongues were exercised over it.
+
+"Why ain't Lot Gordon goin' to marry her?" they asked each other, and
+exchanged answering looks of dark suspicion. The reason for not
+marrying which Lot used every means in his power to promulgate--his
+fast-failing health--gained little credence. The story came directly
+from the doctor's wife that Lot Gordon was no worse than he had been
+for the last ten years, and was likely to live ten years to come.
+Margaret Bean was said to have told a neighboring woman, who told
+another, who in her turn told another, and so started an endless
+chain of good authority, that Lot Gordon had never coughed so little
+as he did this spring, and "ate like a pig."  He was, it is true,
+never seen on the highway, but there were those who said he was
+abroad again in his old woodland haunts.
+
+"Guess he didn't change his mind about havin' Mad'lon Hautville
+'cause he was so much worse than common," they said; "guess when the
+time drawed near he was afraid."  Margaret Bean was, furthermore, on
+good authority reported to have intimated that never, if Madelon had
+come to that house while she was in it, would she and her husband
+have gone to bed without the scissors in the latch of their bedroom
+door.
+
+Lot Gordon, who had forsworn himself to save Madelon, was now, by his
+last sacrifice for her, bidding fair to prove what her own assertions
+had failed to do--her guilt. He crept out secretly into cover of the
+woods, now and then, on a mild day; he could not deny himself that.
+But otherwise he stayed close, and coughed hard when there were
+listening ears, and complained like any old woman of his increasing
+aches and pains. Still his cunning availed little, although he did
+not dream of it.
+
+He went not among the gossips himself, and no one as yet had ventured
+to approach him with the rumor that was fast gaining ground.
+
+No one had ventured to broach the matter to the Hautville men, for
+obvious reasons. "I wouldn't vally your skin if that fellar overheard
+what you was sayin' of when he come up the road, Joe Simpson," one
+loafer drawled to another, when Eugene left the store that afternoon
+and had disappeared going the long way home.
+
+"Hush up, will ye!" whispered the other, glancing around pale under
+his unshaven beard as if he feared Eugene might yet be there. The
+Hautville men, however, hearing nothing, and saying nothing about the
+matter to each other, had always, among themselves, a subtle exchange
+of uneasy thought concerning it. If one sat moodily by and moved out
+of her way without a word while Madelon prepared a meal, the others
+knew what it meant. They also knew well the meaning of each other's
+glances at her, and sudden lowering of brows. Madelon herself did not
+know. When she had come home that Sunday night, and announced that
+she was not going to be married at all, she had not understood the
+sharp questioning, and then the stern quiet that followed upon it.
+She had told them simply that Lot said that his lungs were gone; that
+he had ascertained the fact himself through his own knowledge of
+medicine; that he could only live a wreck of a man, if at all, and,
+knowing it was so, had made up his mind that he would not marry.
+
+Lot had indeed told her so, and had made her believe it, doing away
+with much of the force of his giving her up for the sake of his love.
+It is difficult in any case for one to understand fully the love to
+which he cannot respond, for involuntarily the heart averts itself
+from it like an ear or an eye, and misses it like the highest notes
+of music and colors of the spectrum.
+
+Madelon had stared dumbly at Lot when he told her she was free, and
+for a moment indeed had struggled with a consciousness which would
+have stirred her at least into pity and gratitude and remorse, which
+she had never known, had not Lot recovered himself and spoken again
+in his old manner. He tapped himself on his hollow chest. "After
+all," he said, "'tis best you are not seduced like most of your sex
+into making the accessories of life supply the lack of the primal
+needs of it, into taking sugar instead of bread, and weakening your
+stomach and your understanding. 'Tis best for you and best for me,
+and best for those that might come after us. Treasure of house and
+land and fine apparel and furnishings may be a goodly inheritance,
+but our heirs would thank us more for power to draw the breath of
+life freely, and you would do better without a gown to your back, or
+a shoe to your foot, and a mate that was not half a dead man; and I
+should do better alone in my anteroom of the tomb than with another
+life to disturb the peace of it, and rouse me to efforts which will
+send me farther on."
+
+Madelon had stared at him, not knowing what to say, with compassion,
+and yet with growing conviction of his selfish ends, which disturbed
+it.
+
+Lot tapped his chest again. "My lungs are gone," he said, shortly; "I
+need no doctor to tell me. I know enough of physics myself to send
+the whole village stumbling, instead of racing, into their graves, if
+I choose to use it. My lungs are gone, and you are well quit of me,
+and I of a foolish undertaking, though of a charming bride. Now, go
+your way, child, and take up your maiden dreams again, for all me."
+
+Madelon looked at him proudly, although she was half dazed by what
+she heard. "I care nothing for all the fine things you have shown
+me," said she, "and I have told you truly always that I do not care
+for you, but I will keep my promise to marry you unless you yourself
+bid me to break it."
+
+"I bid you to break it," said Lot, steadily, and his eyes met hers,
+and his old mocking smile played over his white face. Then suddenly
+he bent over with his racking cough, and Madelon made a step towards
+him, but he motioned her away. "Good-night--child," he gasped out.
+
+Then Madelon had gone home and told her father and brothers, and
+thought their strange reception of the news due to anything but the
+truth. She had told them that she was guilty of wounding Lot Gordon
+almost to death. That they should now be rendered uneasy by
+suspicions, when she had given them actual knowledge, was something
+beyond her imagination. She fancied rather that they considered Lot
+had treated her badly, or else that she had a longing love for Burr,
+and, perhaps, had herself broken off her match with his cousin on
+that account. She strove hard to bear herself in such a manner that
+they should not think that. She put on as gay a face as she could
+muster, and even took, beside the dress, a little blue-silk mantle to
+embroider for Dorothy Fair's wedding outfit, and sang over it as she
+worked.
+
+Still, in a way, although her pride led her to it, her singing and
+her gayety were no pretence, for Madelon, through much suffering, had
+reached that growth in love which enabled her to see over her own
+self and her own needs. That knife-thrust she had meant for her lover
+had stilled forever the jealous temper in her own heart, and she
+fairly dreamed as she embroidered Dorothy's bridal mantle some dreams
+of happiness that might have been Burr's; so filled was she with
+purest love for him that his imagination possessed her own.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+
+
+It was told on good authority in the village that Parson Fair had
+paid all Burr Gordon's back interest money on his mortgage, and so
+released him from the danger of foreclosure; and then on equally good
+authority it was denied. There was much discussion over it, but one
+day the loafers in the store arrived at the truth. Parson Fair had
+indeed offered to pay the interest, and Burr had declined. He had
+also refused to live with his bride in his father-in-law's house, and
+when Parson Fair had, with his gracefully austere manner, intimated
+that he should be unwilling to place his daughter in such uncertain
+shelter, had replied harshly that Dorothy should have a roof over her
+head of his own providing while he lived; when he was dead it would
+be time to talk about her father's.
+
+When Burr had gone to Lot Gordon and offered to part with a small
+wood-lot of his, with a quantity of half-grown wood thereon, at
+two-thirds of its real value to pay the interest, Margaret Bean had
+listened at the door, and thus the story.
+
+"It is a sacrifice of a full third of its value, you know well
+enough," Burr had said, standing moodily before his cousin. "If I
+could wait for the growth of the wood, 'twould bring much more, but
+I'll call it even on the interest I owe you, if you will. This is the
+last foot of land I own clear."
+
+For answer Lot had bidden Burr open his desk and bring him a certain
+paper from a certain corner. Then Margaret Bean had opened the door a
+crack, and had with her two peering eyes seen Lot Gordon take his pen
+in hand and write upon the paper, and show it to his cousin Burr.
+
+"Very well," said Burr, "I will go home and get the deed of the
+wood-lot," and motioned towards the door, which drew to in a soft
+panic as if with the wind.
+
+"Stop," said Lot; and Margaret Bean paused in her flight, and laid
+her ear to the door again. "I don't want your woodland," said Lot.
+"The interest is paid without it. It is your wedding-gift."
+
+"Why should you do this? I did not ask you to," Burr returned, almost
+defiantly; and Margaret Bean had felt indignant at his unthankfulness.
+
+"You can take from your kinsman what you could not take from Parson
+Fair," replied Lot. "I hear you will not go to nest in Parson Fair's
+snug roof-tree, with your pretty bird, either."
+
+"I will die before I will take my wife under any roof but my own,"
+cried Burr, fiercely, "and I want no gifts from you either. I am not
+turned beggar from any one yet. You shall take the woodland."
+
+Lot waved his hand as if he swept the woodland, with all its
+half-grown trees, out of his horizon. "And yet," he said, "I thought
+'twas what you left the other for. I should have said 'twas but your
+wage that was offered you;" and he smiled at his cousin.
+
+"What do you mean, Lot Gordon?"
+
+Lot looked at him with sharp interest. "Was there another leaf of you
+to read when I thought I was at the end," said he, "or were you writ
+in such plain characters that I put in somewhat of my own imaginings
+to give substance to them? Are you better, and worse, than I thought
+you, cousin? Do you love this flower that has her counterpart in all
+the gardens of the world, that is as sweet and no sweeter, that you
+can replace when she dies by stooping and picking, better than the
+one which has thorns enough to kill and sweetness enough to pay for
+death, and whose bloom you can never match?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean," Burr said, impatiently and angrily; and
+Margaret Bean outside the door wagged her head in scornful assent.
+
+"Then you loved Dorothy Fair better than Madelon Hautville, and 'twas
+not her place and money that turned you her way," said Lot, as if he
+were translating; and he kept his keen eyes on the other's face.
+
+Burr's face flashed white. "What right have you to question me like
+this?" he demanded.
+
+"But you would not take the price, after all," said Lot, as if he had
+been answered, instead of questioned. Then he looked up at his cousin
+with something like kindness in his blue eyes. "It proves the truth
+of what I've thought before," he said, "that oftentimes a man has to
+sting his own honor with his own deeds to know 'tis in him."
+
+"My honor is my own lookout," Burr said, harshly.
+
+"And you've looked out for it better than I thought," Lot returned.
+
+Burr made another motion towards the door. "I can't stand here any
+longer," he said. "I'll go for the deed."  Margaret Bean, moving as
+softly as she could in her starched draperies, fled back to the
+kitchen.
+
+"Wait a minute," Lot said.
+
+"Well," returned Burr, impatiently.
+
+Lot got up, went over to the mantel-shelf, and stood there a minute,
+leaning against it, his face hidden. When he looked at Burr again he
+was so white that his cousin started. "Are you sick?" he cried, with
+harsh concern.
+
+Lot smiled with stiff lips. "Only with the life-sickness that smites
+the child when it enters the world, and makes it weep with its first
+breath," he answered.
+
+"If you want to say anything to me, Lot, talk like a man, and not a
+book," Burr cried out, with another step towards the door; and yet he
+spoke kindly enough, for there was something in his cousin's face
+which aroused his pity.
+
+"It is not--" began Lot, and stopped, and caught his breath. Burr
+watched him half alarmed; he looked in mortal agony. Lot clutched the
+carven edge of the mantel-shelf, then loosened his fingers. "If," he
+said, brokenly, looking at Burr with the eyes of one who awaits a
+mortal blow, "you want--Madelon--it is not--too late. She--I know how
+she feels--towards you."
+
+Burr turned white, as he stared at him. "She--she was going to marry
+you!" he said with a sneer.
+
+"Do--you know why?"
+
+Burr shook his head, still staring at his cousin.
+
+"It was the price of--your--acquittal."
+
+Burr did not move his eyes from Lot's face. He looked as if he were
+reading something there writ in startling characters, against which
+his whole soul leaped up in incredulity. "My God, I see!" he groaned
+out slowly, at length. And then he said, sharply, "But--you were
+going to marry her. Why did you give her up?"
+
+"I loved her," Lot said, simply. His white face worked.
+
+"But now--you--ask me to--"
+
+"I love her!" Lot said again, with a gasp.
+
+Burr strode forward, quite up to his cousin, and grasped his hand
+warmly for the first time in his life. "Before the Lord, Lot," he
+said, huskily, "'twas you, and not me, she should have fancied in the
+first of it."
+
+"It is neither you nor me, nor any other man, that she will ever love
+as he is," Lot said, shortly, straightening himself, for jealousy
+stung him hard.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Woman reverses creation. She is a sublimated particle of a man, and
+she builds a god from her own superstructure, and clothes him with
+any image whom she chooses. She chose yours. Live up to her thought
+of you, if you can."
+
+Burr dropped his cousin's hand, and surveyed him with that impatient
+wonder which he always felt when he used his favorite symbolic
+speech. "There's no question of my living up to the thought of any
+woman's but my wife's," he said, bitterly, and turned away.
+
+"There's no knowing to what stature even a Dorothy Fair may raise a
+man in her mind. You may not be able to grow to that."
+
+"It is all I shall attempt."
+
+Then Lot spoke again, in that short-breathed voice of his, straining
+between the syllables. "Be sure--that you do--what--you will
+not--regret. Honor is not--always what we--think it."
+
+"I have my own conception of it at least, and that I live up to. 'Tis
+high time," said Burr, with a kind of proud scorn of himself in his
+voice.
+
+"Madelon Hautville--loves--you."
+
+"She does not, after all this."
+
+"She does!"
+
+Burr stood straight and firm before his cousin, like a soldier. "If
+she does," said he, "and if she loved me with the love of ten lives
+instead of one, and I her, as perhaps I do, this last word of mine I
+will keep!"  Then he went out with not another word, and presently
+returned with the deed of his little wooded property, which, however,
+his cousin Lot finally persuaded him to keep, as Margaret Bean
+gathered at the door, whither she had ventured again.
+
+The loafers knew it all by nightfall, the news having been brought to
+the store by old Luke Basset, who had gotten it from Margaret Bean's
+husband. In a day or two they knew more from the same source. Lot
+Gordon had engaged his cousin to improve the Gordon acres which had
+been lying fallow for the last ten years. He had offered him a good
+salary. He wanted to carry out some new-fangled schemes which he had
+got out of books. Burr was going right to work; he had hired a man
+from New Salem to help him.
+
+People began to think better of Lot Gordon than they had ever done,
+and they looked at Burr with more respect. Many had considered that
+Dorothy Fair was not going to "do very well."  "Guess if it wa'n't
+for her father, and the chance of Lot's dying, she'd have a pretty
+poor prospect," they had said. Now they agreed that "Maybe Burr
+Gordon won't turn out so bad after all. Maybe he'll settle right down
+and go to work, and pay off his mortgage, when he gets married, and
+get a good living, even if Lot should hold out some time to come."
+
+They watched Burr as he swung up the street to Parson Fair's in the
+spring twilights, with admiration for his stalwart grace, and growing
+approval for those inner qualities which outward beauty sometimes but
+poorly indicates. They approved also of the temperate hours which he
+observed in his courting, for no one within eye-shot, or ear-shot,
+but knew when Parson Fair's front door closed behind him. Burr,
+during the last weeks before his marriage, never stayed much later
+than half-past nine or ten at his sweetheart's house, and, in truth,
+was not sorely tempted to do so. Mistress Dorothy in those days
+behaved in a manner which might well have aroused to rebellion a more
+ardent or a less determinately faithful lover. She had the candles
+lit early in the beautiful spring twilights, and then she sat and
+stitched and stitched upon her wedding finery, bending her fair face,
+half concealed by drooping curls, assiduously over it, having never a
+hand at liberty for a lover's caress, or an eye for his smiles. Then,
+too, when Burr took leave, she stood before him with such a strange
+effect of terror and hauteur that he could do no more than touch her
+lips as if she had been a timid child, and bid her good-night. Had
+Burr Gordon, in those days, been less aware of his own unfaithfulness
+and weariness, and less fiercely resolved not to yield to it, he
+might well have perceived Dorothy's. As it was he confused her
+coldness with his own, and attributed it to the change in his own
+heart, and not to that in hers. And even had he suspected it he would
+not have made the first motion for freedom, so desperate was his
+adherence to falsity for the sake of truth.
+
+Burr Gordon had at stake in this last more than any temporal good or
+ill of love. He had at stake his whole belief in himself, and he was
+also actuated by another motive which he scarcely admitted in his own
+thoughts.
+
+Convinced he was that Madelon Hautville, believing as she did that he
+had forsaken her for honest love of another, would hold him in utter
+scorn and contempt were she to discover him false to Dorothy as she
+had been to her; and his very love of her love, strangely enough,
+kept him true to her rival.
+
+So he went to see Dorothy, and found no fault with her coldness. The
+wedding preparations went on, and at last the day came.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+
+
+The wedding was to be at eight o'clock in the evening, and nearly all
+the village was bidden to it--even many of the Unitarian faction who
+had been Parson Fair's old parishioners. At half-past seven o'clock
+the street was full of people. The village women rustled through the
+soft dusk with silken whispers of wide best skirts. Young girls with
+spring buds in their hair flounced about with white muslins, and
+fluttering with ribbons, flitted along. The men, holding back firmly
+their best broadcloth shoulders, marched past in their creaking
+Sunday shoes. Before eight o'clock the fine old rooms in Parson
+Fair's house were lined with faces solemnly expectant, as the faces
+of simple country folk are wont to be before the great rites of love
+and death.
+
+The women sat with their mitted hands folded on their silken laps,
+their best brooches pinning decorously their fine-wrought
+neckerchiefs, their bosoms filled with sober knowledge and patient
+acquiescence. The young girls sat among them very still, with the
+stillness of unrest, like birds who alight only to fly, their soft
+cheeks burning, their necks and arms showing rosy through their
+laces, their little clasped fingers full of pulses, and their hearts
+tumultuous and stirred to imagination by the sweet surmise and
+ignorance of love. They looked seldom at the young men, and the young
+men at them, as they sat waiting. Still there were some who had
+learned in city schools the suavities which cover like clothes the
+primal emotions of life, and they moved about with exchanges of fine
+courtesies, while the others looked at them wondering.
+
+When the tall clock in the south room struck eight, there was a hush
+among these few who had learned to flock gracefully, chattering like
+birds, bearing always the same aspect to one another, without regard
+to selfish joys or pains. The lawyer's wife, in a grand gown and
+topknot of feathers, which she was said to have worn to a great party
+at the governor's house in Boston, composed to majestic approval her
+handsome florid face, and stood back with a white-gloved hand on an
+arm of each of her daughters, slender and pretty, and unshrinkingly
+radiant in the faces of the doctor's college-bred son and his
+visiting classmate. The doctor's wife, also, who had come of a grand
+family, and appeared always on festive occasions in some
+well-preserved splendor of her maiden days, which had been prolonged,
+drew back, spreading out with both hands a vast expanse of purple
+velvet skirt. She quite eclipsed as with a murky purple cloud the two
+meek elderly women and a timid young girl who sat behind her. They
+immediately peered around her sumptuous folds with anxious eyes lest
+they might lose sight of the bridal party; but the bridal party did
+not come.
+
+A passageway was left quite clear to the space between the windows on
+the west side of the room, where it was whispered the bride and groom
+were to stand, and the people all pressed back towards the walls; but
+no one came. A little hum of wondering conversation rose and fell
+again at fancied stirs of entrance. Folk hushed and nudged each other
+a dozen times, and craned their necks, and the clock struck the
+half-hour, and the bridal party had not come.
+
+In a great chair near the clear space between the windows sat the
+bridegroom's mother, with a large pearl brooch gleaming out of the
+black satin folds on her bosom. Her face, between long lace lappets,
+looked as clearly pallid and passively reflective as the pearls. Not
+a muscle stirred about her calm mouth and the smooth triangle of
+forehead between her curtain slants of gray hair. If she speculated
+deeply within herself, and was agitated over the delay, not a
+restless glance of her steadily mild eyes betrayed it.
+
+People wondered a little that she should not be busied about the
+bridal preparations, instead of waiting there like any other guest;
+but it was said that Dorothy had refused absolutely to have any
+helping hands but those of her old black slave woman about her. It
+was known, too, that Dorothy had only once taken tea with Burr's
+mother since the engagement, and everybody speculated as to how they
+would get on together. Dorothy had, in truth, received the rigorously
+courteous overtures of her future mother with the polite offishness
+of a scared but well-trained child, and the proud elder woman had not
+increased them.
+
+"When she comes here to live I shall do my duty by her, but I shall
+not force myself upon her," she told Burr. Burr's mother had not seen
+any of the dainty bridal gewgaws, but that she kept to herself.
+People glanced frequently at her with questioning eyes as the time
+went on; but she sat there with the gleam of her personality as
+unchanged in her face as the gleam of the pearls on her bosom.
+
+"Catch her looking flustered!" one woman whispered to another. After
+the clock struck nine a long breath seemed to be drawn simultaneously
+by the company; it was quite audible. Then came a sharp hissing
+whisper of wonder and consternation; then a hush, and all faces
+turned towards the door. Burr Gordon, his face stern and white, stood
+there looking across at his mother. She rose at once and went to him
+with a stately glide, and they disappeared amid a distinct buzz of
+curiosity that could no longer be restrained.
+
+"They've gone into the parson's study," whispered one to another.
+Some reported, upon the good authority of a neighbor's imagination,
+that Parson Fair had "fallen down dead;" some that Dorothy had
+fainted away; some that the black woman had killed her and her
+father.
+
+Meanwhile, Burr and his mother went into Parson Fair's study. There
+stood the minister by his desk, with his proudly gentle brow all
+furrowed, and his fine, long scholar-fingers clutching nervously at
+the back of his arm-chair. He cast one glance around as the door
+opened and shut, then looked away, then commanded himself with an
+effort, and stepped forward and bowed courteously to the woman in her
+black satin and pearls. Elvira Gordon looked from one to the other,
+and the two men followed her glances, and each waited for the other
+to speak.
+
+"Where is she?" she asked, finally.
+
+"She is up in her chamber," replied Parson Fair, in a voice more
+strained with his own anxiety than it had ever been in the pulpit
+over the sins of his fellow-men. "I know not what to say or do--I
+never thought that daughter of mine--she will not come--"
+
+Then Elvira Gordon cast a quick, sharp glance at her son, which he
+met with proud misery and resentment. "It is quite true, mother," he
+said. "We have both tried, and she will not come."
+
+"Perhaps a woman--" said Parson Fair. "I wish her mother were alive,"
+he added, with a break in his voice.
+
+"I will go and see her if you think it is best," said Mrs. Gordon. In
+her heart she rebelled bitterly against seeming to plead with this
+unwilling bride to come to her son. Had she not felt guilty for her
+son, with the conviction of his own secret deflection, she would
+never have mounted the spiral stairs to Dorothy Fair's chamber that
+night. Parson Fair led the way, and Burr followed. The people stood
+back with a kind of awed curiosity. Some of the young girls were
+quite pale, and their eyes were dilated. Folk longed to follow them
+up-stairs, but they did not dare.
+
+At the door of Dorothy's chamber crouched, like a fierce dog on
+guard, the great black African woman. When the three drew near she
+looked up at them with a hostile roll of savage eyes and a glitter of
+white teeth between thick lips. The parson advanced, and she sprang
+up and put her broad back against the door and rolled out defiance at
+him from under her burring tongue.
+
+But he continued to advance with unmoved front, as if she had been
+the Satanas of his orthodoxy, which, indeed, she did not faintly
+image. She moved aside with a savage sound in her throat, and he
+threw the door wide open. There sat Dorothy Fair before them at her
+dimity dressing-table, with all her slender body huddled forward and
+resting seemingly upon her two bare white arms, which encompassed her
+bowed head like sweet rings. Not a glimpse of Dorothy's face could be
+seen under the wide flow of her fair curls, which parted only a
+little over the curve of one pink shoulder. Dorothy wore her
+wedding-gown of embroidered India muslin; but her satin slippers were
+widely separated upon the floor, as if she had kicked them hither and
+thither; and on the bed, in a great, careless, fluffy heap, lay her
+wedding-veil, as if it had been tossed there.
+
+Elvira Gordon, at a signal from Parson Fair, entered the room past
+the sullen negress, who rolled her eyes and muttered low, and went
+close to the girl at the dressing-table.
+
+"Dorothy!" said Mrs. Gordon.
+
+Dorothy made no sign that she heard.
+
+"Dorothy, do you know it is an hour after the time set for your
+wedding?"
+
+Dorothy was so still that instinctively Mrs. Gordon bent close over
+her and listened; but she heard quite plainly the soft pant of her
+breath, and knew she had not fainted.
+
+Mrs. Gordon straightened herself and looked at her. It was strange
+how that delicate, girlish form under the soft flow of fair locks and
+muslin draperies should express, in all its half-suggested curves,
+such utter obstinacy that it might have been the passive
+unresponsiveness of marble. Even that soft tumult of agitated breath
+could not alter that impression. When Mrs. Gordon spoke again her
+words seemed to echo back in her own ears, as if she had spoken in an
+empty room.
+
+"Dorothy Fair," said she, with a kind of solemn authority, "neither I
+nor any other human being can look into your heart and see why you do
+this; and you owe it to my son, who has your solemn promise, and to
+your father, whose only child you are, to speak. If you are sick, say
+so; if at the last minute you have a doubt as to your affection for
+Burr, say so. My son will keep his promise to you with his life, but
+he will not force himself upon you against your wishes. You need fear
+nothing; but you must either speak and give us your reason for this,
+or get up and put on your wedding-veil and your shoes, and come down,
+where they have been waiting over an hour. You cannot put such a
+slight upon my son, or your father, or all these people, any longer.
+You do not think what you are doing, Dorothy."
+
+Mrs. Gordon's even, weighty voice softened to motherly appeal in the
+closing words. Dorothy remained quite silent and motionless. Then
+Burr gave a great sigh of impatient misery, and strode across to
+Dorothy, and bent low over her, touching her curls with his lips, and
+whispered. She did not stir. "Won't you, Dorothy?" he said, gently,
+then quite aloud; and then again, "Have you forgotten what you
+promised me, Dorothy?" and still again, "Are you sick? Have I
+offended you in any way? Can't you tell me, Dorothy?"
+
+At length, when Dorothy persisted in her silence, he stood back from
+her and spoke with his head proudly raised. "I will say no more," he
+said; "I have come here to keep my solemn promise, and be married to
+you, and here I will remain until you or your father bid me go, with
+something more than silence. That may be enough for my pride, but
+'tis not enough for my honor. I will go back to your father's study,
+Dorothy, and wait there until you speak and tell me what you wish."
+
+Burr turned to go, but Parson Fair thrust out his arm before him to
+stop him, and himself came forward and grasped Dorothy, with hardly a
+gentle hand, by a slender arm. "Daughter," said Parson Fair in a
+voice which Dorothy had never heard from his lips except when he
+addressed wayward sinners from the pulpit, "I command you to stop
+this folly; stand up and finish dressing yourself, and go down-stairs
+and fulfil your promise to this man whom you have chosen."  The black
+woman pressed forward, then stood back at a glance from her master's
+blue eyes.
+
+Dorothy did not stir; then her father spoke again, and his nervous
+hand tightened on her arm. "Dorothy," said he, "I command you to
+rise"--and there was a great authority of fatherhood and priesthood
+in his voice, and even Dorothy was moved before it to respond, though
+not to yielding.
+
+Suddenly she jerked her arm away from her father's grasp, and stood
+up, with a convulsive flutter of her white plumage like a bird. She
+flung back her curls and disclosed her beautiful pale face, all
+strained to terrified resolve, and her dilated blue eyes "I will
+not!" she cried out, addressing her father alone, "I will not,
+father. I have made up my mind that I will not."
+
+Then, as Parson Fair said not a word, only looked at her with stern
+questioning, she went on, shrill and fast, "I will not; no, I will
+not! Nobody can make me! I thought I would, I thought I must, until
+this last. Now when it comes to this, I can do no more. I will not,
+father."
+
+"Why?" said Parson Fair.
+
+"I would have kept my promise, father. I would have kept it, no
+matter if--I would have been faithful to him if he--"  Suddenly
+Dorothy turned on Burr with a gasp of terror and defiance. "I would
+never have done this, you know," she cried; "it would never have come
+to this, if you had spoken and told me you were innocent."
+
+"What do you mean, child?" said Parson Fair, sternly.
+
+"He would not tell me that he did not stab his cousin Lot," replied
+Dorothy, setting her sweet mouth doggedly. Her blue eyes met her
+father's with shrinking and yet steadfast defiance.
+
+"Dorothy," said he, "do you not know that he is innocent by his
+cousin's own confession?"
+
+"Why, then, does he not say so?" finished Dorothy. "How do I know who
+did it? Madelon Hautville said she was guilty, then Lot Gordon; and
+Burr would not deny his guilt when I asked him. How do I know which?
+Madelon Hautville was trying to shield him; I am not blind. Then Lot
+liked her. How do I know which?"  Suddenly she cried out to Burr so
+loud that the people in the entry below heard her, "Tell me now that
+you are innocent, and either your cousin Lot or Madelon Hautville
+guilty," she demanded. "Tell me!"
+
+Burr, white and rigid, looked at her, and made no reply. "Tell me,"
+she cried, in her sweet, shrill voice, "tell me now that you did not
+stab your cousin Lot, and Madelon Hautville spoke the truth, and I
+will keep my promise to you, even if my heart is not yours."
+
+Parson Fair grasped his daughter's arm again. "No man whom you have
+promised to wed should reply to such distrust as this," he said.
+"Dorothy, I command you to go down-stairs and be married to this
+man."
+
+Then Dorothy broke away from him with a wild shriek. "No, I will not
+marry this man with his cousin's blood on his soul! I will not,
+father; you shall not make me! I will not! Night and day I shall see
+that knife in his hand. I will not marry him, because he tried to
+kill his cousin Lot. I will not, I will not!"  The black woman pushed
+between them with a savage murmur of love and wrath, and caught her
+mistress in her arms, and crooned over her, like a wild thing over
+her young.
+
+"There is no use in prolonging this, sir," Burr said to Parson Fair.
+
+The elder man looked at him with a strange mixture of helpless
+dignity and sympathy and wrath. "You know that I have no share in
+this," he said, and he glanced almost piteously from Burr to his
+mother. "I could never have believed that my daughter--"
+
+"We will say no more about it, sir," responded Burr. "I hold neither
+you nor your daughter in any blame."  Then he offered his arm to his
+mother, and the three went out and down-stairs, and the black woman
+clapped to the chamber door with a great jar upon her mistress, whose
+calm of obstinacy had broken into wailing hysterics which betokened
+no less stanchness. Parson Fair, Burr Gordon, and his mother, at the
+foot of the stairs among the curious wedding-guests, looked for a
+second at one another.
+
+The parson's fine state seemed to have deserted him. There were red
+spots on his pale cheeks. His long hands twitched nervously. "I
+will--inform them," he said, huskily, at length, but Burr moved
+before him. "No, sir; I will do it," he said.
+
+Then he strode into the great north parlor, where the more important
+guests were assembled, and where he and Dorothy were to have been
+married. He stood alone in the clear space between the windows, and
+knew, as the eyes of the people met his, that they had heard
+Dorothy's last wild cry, and knew why she would not marry him. He
+stood for a second facing them all before he spoke, and in spite of
+the shame of rejection which he felt heaped upon him by them all, and
+a subtler shame arising from his own heart, in spite of the fact that
+he could not offer any defense, or do aught but bend his back to the
+full weight of his humiliation, he had a certain majesty of demeanor.
+Revolt at humiliation alone precipitates the full measure of it, and
+the strength which survives defeat, even of one's own convictions, is
+of a good quality. Silence under wrongful accusation gives the
+bearing of a hero.
+
+There was a hush over the assembly so complete that it seemed as if
+the very personalities of the listeners were drawn back from
+self-consciousness to give free scope for sound. When Burr spoke,
+everybody heard.
+
+"The marriage between Dorothy Fair and myself is broken off," was all
+he said. Then he went out of the room as proudly as if his bride had
+been by his side, through the entry to the study. Parson Fair and his
+mother were there. "They know it," he announced, quite calmly; then
+he took his fine wedding-hat from the table.
+
+"Where are you going?" his mother demanded, quickly.
+
+"To walk a little way."  Burr turned to Parson Fair. "I beg you not
+to feel that you must deal severely with your daughter for this," he
+said, "for she does not deserve it. She was justified in asking what
+she did, and in feeling distrust that I did not answer."
+
+"If a wife's faith cannot survive her husband's silence, then is she
+no true spouse, and 'twas the part of a man not to answer," said this
+Parson Fair, who had all his life followed in most roads the lead of
+his womankind, and not known it, so much state had he been allowed in
+his captivity.
+
+"She was justified," said Burr, "and I beg you, sir, not to visit any
+displeasure upon her. I have not at any time been worthy of her,
+although God knows had she not cast me off, and did not this last,
+with what I remember now of her manner for the last few weeks, make
+me sure that her heart is no longer mine, I would have lived my life
+for her, as best I could; and will now, should she say the word."
+
+With that, Burr Gordon thrust on his wedding-hat, and was out of the
+study and out of the south door of the house.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+
+
+In the yard was drawn up in state, behind the five white horses, the
+grand old Gordon coach, which had not been used before since the
+death of Lot's father. Lot had insisted upon furnishing the coach and
+the horses for his cousin's wedding. The man who stood by the horses'
+heads looked up at Burr in a dazed way when he came out of the house
+and spoke to him.
+
+"When my mother is ready you can take her home, Silas," said Burr.
+"Then drive over to my cousin's, and put up the coach and the
+horses."
+
+The man gasped and looked at him. "Do you hear what I say?" said
+Burr, shortly.
+
+The man gave an affirmative grunt, and strove to speak, but Burr cut
+him short. "Look out for that bad place in the road, before you get
+to the bridge," he said, and went on out of the yard. The road was
+suddenly full of departing wedding-guests, fluttering along with
+shrill clatter of persistently individual notes, like a flock of
+birds.
+
+Burr, out of the yard, passed along through their midst with a hasty
+yet dignified pace. He said to himself that he would not seem to be
+running away. He looked neither to the right nor left, except to
+avoid collisions with silken and muslin petticoats, yet he was
+conscious of the hush of voices as he passed, and knew that they all
+recognized him in the broad moonlight.
+
+When he reached the lane which led across-lots to the old place, he
+plunged into it by a sudden impulse. He went half-way down its leafy
+tunnel; then he stopped and sat down on a great stone which had
+fallen off the bordering wall.
+
+Great spiritual as well as great physical catastrophes stun for a
+while, and there is after both a coming to one's self and an
+examining one's faculties, as well as one's bones, to see if they be
+still in working order. Burr Gordon, sitting there on his stone of
+meditation, in the moonlit dapple of the lane, came slowly to a full
+realization of himself in his change of state, and strove to make
+sure what power of action he had left under these new conditions.
+
+His first thought was a cowardly one--that he would sell out, or
+rather give up his estate to his cousin, take his mother, and turn
+his back upon the village altogether. He knew what he had to expect.
+He tasted well in advance the miserable and half ludicrous shame of a
+man who has been openly jilted by a woman. He tasted, too, the
+covertly whispered suspicion which had perhaps never quite departed,
+and which now was surely raised to new life by Dorothy's loud cries
+of accusation. He knew that he was utterly defenceless under both
+shame and suspicion, being fettered fast by his own tardy but stern
+sense of duty and loyalty. It seemed to him at first that he would be
+crippled beyond cure in his whole life if he should stay where he
+was; and then he felt the spring of the fighting instinct within him,
+and said proudly to himself that he would turn his back upon nothing.
+He would brave it all.
+
+There was a light wind, and now and then the young trees in the lane
+were driven into a soft tumult of whispering leaves. Burr did not
+notice when into this voice of the wind and this noise as of a crowd
+of softly scurrying ghosts there came a crisp rustle of muslin and a
+quick footstep up the lane. He only looked up when Madelon Hautville
+stopped before him and looked at him with incredulous alarm, as if
+she could not believe the evidence of her own eyes.
+
+Dressed like a bride herself was Madelon Hautville, in a sheer white
+gown, which she had fashioned for herself out of an old crape shawl
+which had belonged to her mother, and cunningly wrought with great
+garlands of red flowers. She was going to Burr Gordon's wedding, not
+knowing the lateness of the hour; for her brother Richard had played
+a trick upon her, and set back the clock two hours, when to his great
+wrath she would not stay at home. The others were half in favor of
+her going, thinking that it showed her pride; but Richard was sorely
+set against it, and watched his chance, and slipped back the hands of
+the clock that she should be too late to see the wedding of the man
+who had forsaken her.
+
+Madelon looked at Burr, and he at her, and neither spoke. Then, when
+she saw surely who it was, she cried out half in wonder and half
+chidingly, as if she had been his mother reproaching him for his
+tardiness: "What are you doing here, Burr Gordon? Do you know 'tis
+nearly eight o'clock, and time for your wedding?"
+
+"'Tis nearly ten," said Burr, "and there is no wedding."
+
+"Nearly ten?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But 'twas not eight by our clock."
+
+Burr took out the great gold timepiece which had belonged to his
+father, and held it towards her, and she saw the face plainly in the
+moonlight.
+
+"What does this mean?" she said; and then she cried, half shrinking
+away from him, "Are you married then? Where is she?"
+
+"Dorothy Fair is at home in her chamber, and I am not married, and
+never shall be."
+
+"Why--what does this mean, Burr Gordon?"
+
+"She will not have me, and--no blame to her."
+
+"Will not have you, and the people there, and the hour set! Will not
+have you? Burr, she shall have you! I promise you she shall. I will
+go talk to her. She is a child, and she does not know--I can make her
+listen. She shall have you, Burr. I will go this minute, and talk to
+her, and do you come after me."
+
+Madelon gave a forward bound, like a deer, but Burr sprang up and
+caught her by the arm. "Why do you stop me, Burr Gordon?" she cried,
+trying to wrest her arm away.
+
+"Do you think I have no manhood left, Madelon Hautville, that I will
+let you, _you_ beg a woman who does not love me to marry me?"
+
+"She does love you, she shall love you!"
+
+"I tell you she does not!"  Burr spoke with a bitterness which might
+well have come from slighted love, and, indeed, so complex and
+contradictory are the workings of the mind of a man, and so strong is
+the bent when once set in one direction, that not loving Dorothy
+Fair, and loving this other woman with his whole heart, he yet felt
+for the moment that he would rather his marriage had taken place and
+he were not free. His freedom, which he knew was a shame to welcome,
+galled him for the time worse than a chain, and he felt more injured
+than if he had loved this girl who had jilted him; for something
+which was more precious to him than love had been slighted and made
+for naught.
+
+"She does--you are mad, Burr Gordon! She was all ready to marry you.
+She came to me to help on her wedding-clothes. She was all smiling
+and pleased. How could she be pleased over her wedding-clothes if she
+did not love you? She does, Burr! She is a child--I can talk to her.
+I will make her. Let me go, Burr! You wait here, and not fret. Oh,
+how pale you look! I tell you, you shall have her, Burr!"
+
+"I tell you, Madelon, she does not love me, and I will not have you
+go."
+
+Madelon stood looking at him, her face all at once changing curiously
+as if from some revelation from within. She remembered suddenly that
+old scene with Eugene, and a suspicion seized her. "There's somebody
+else!" she cried out, fiercely. "There's no truth in her. If she
+thinks--she shall not--nor he--I will not have it so!"
+
+"For God's sake, Madelon, don't!" said Burr, not fairly comprehending
+what she said. He sat down again upon the stone, and leaned his head
+upon his hands. In truth he felt dazed and helpless, as if he had
+reached suddenly the mouth of many roads and knew not which to take.
+The intricacy of the situation was fairly paralyzing to an order of
+mind like his, which was wont to grasp, though shrewdly enough, only
+the straight course of cause and effect. He revolved dizzily in his
+mind the fact that he could not tell Madelon the reason which Dorothy
+had given for her rejection of him, and the conviction was fast
+gaining upon him that it was not the true and only reason. He held
+fiercely to his loyalty to Madelon, and his shammed loyalty to
+Dorothy, and his slipping clutch of loyalty to himself, and knew not
+what to say nor what course to take.
+
+Madelon, as he settled back upon the stone and bowed his head, made
+towards him one of those motions which the body has kept intact from
+the primitive order of things, when it was free to obey Love; then
+she stood back and looked at him a moment, while indignation and that
+compassion which is the very holiness of love swelled high within
+her. Then suddenly she leaned forward against him in her white robes,
+with the soft impetus of a white flowering tree driven by the wind,
+and put her arms around him, and drew his unhappy head against her
+bosom, and stroked his hair, and poured out in broken words her wrath
+against Dorothy Fair, and her pity for him. And all this she did in
+utter self-despite and forgetfulness, not caring if he should
+discover how great her love for him still was, believing fully that
+his whole heart had belonged to the other girl, and was breaking for
+her, and arguing thence no good for herself.
+
+"She shall never marry him, that I swear to you, Burr," she cried,
+passionately, "and in time she may turn to you again; there is no
+faith in her."
+
+Burr listened a while bewildered, not fully knowing nor asking what
+she meant, letting his head rest against her bosom, as if he were a
+child whom she comforted.
+
+"Burr, you shall have her, you shall have her yet!" she said, over
+and over, as if Dorothy were a sweetmeat for which he longed, until
+at last a great shame and resolution seemed to go over him like a
+wave, and he put her away and rose up.
+
+"Madelon," he said, "you don't know. Listen. You will scorn me after
+this--you will never look at me again, but listen: Dorothy must never
+know, for all the slight of this last must come from her and not from
+me, since she is a woman and I a man; but you shall know the whole
+truth. I never loved Dorothy Fair, Madelon, not as I love you, as God
+is my witness. She was pretty to look at, and I liked--but you cannot
+understand the weakness of a man that makes him ashamed of himself. I
+left you, and--I went--courting her because she was Parson Fair's
+only daughter, and I was poor, and that was not all the reason. I
+liked her pretty face and her pretty ways well enough, but all the
+time it was you and you alone in my heart; and, knowing that, I left
+you, though I was a man. I turned Judas to my own self, and denied
+and would have sold the best that was in me. Now you know the truth,
+Madelon Hautville."
+
+Madelon looked at him. Her lips parted, as if her breath came hard.
+
+Burr made as if to pass on without another word, but she held out her
+hand to stop him, though she did not touch him.
+
+"Stop, Burr," she said, with a strange, almost oratorical manner,
+that he had never seen in her before. It was almost as if she mounted
+before his eyes a platform of her own love and higher purposes.
+"Listen to me," she said. "That night when I was in such terrible
+anger with you that for a second I would have killed you, I put it
+out of your power forever to do anything that could turn me against
+you again. I broke my own spirit that night, Burr. The wrong I would
+have done you outweighs all you ever have done or ever can do me.
+There is no wrong in this world that you can do me, if I will not
+take it so; and as for the wrong you may have done yourself--that
+only makes me more faithful to you, Burr."
+
+Burr stood looking at her, speechless. It was to him as if he saw the
+true inner self of the girl, which he had dimly known by
+half-revealings but had never truly seen before. For a minute it was
+not Madelon Hautville in flesh and blood who stood before him, but
+the ghost of her, made evident by her love for him; and his very
+heart seemed to melt within him with shame and wonder and worship.
+"Oh, Madelon!" he gasped out, at length.
+
+But Madelon turned away then. "You must go home now," said she, "and
+I must. Good-night, Burr."
+
+"Good-night," said Burr, as if he repeated it at her bidding.
+
+Then they passed without touching each other. Madelon went home down
+the lane, across the fields, and Burr went out in the silent street,
+whence all the wedding-guests had departed, and homeward also.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI
+
+
+In this little Vermont village, lying among peacefully sloping hills,
+away from boisterous river-courses, there was small chance of those
+physical convulsions which sometimes disturb the quiet of
+generations. The roar of a spring freshet never smote the ears of the
+dwellers therein, and the winters passed with no danger of
+avalanches. From its sheltered situation destructive storms seldom
+launched themselves upon it; the oldest inhabitant could remember
+little injury from lightning or hail or wind.
+
+However, there is no village in this world so sheltered in situation
+that it is not exposed to the full brunt of the great forces of human
+passion, when they lash themselves at times into the fury of storm.
+It was here in this little village of Ware Centre, which could never
+know flood or volcanic fire, as if a sort of spiritual whirlpool had
+appeared suddenly in its midst. The thoughts of all the people, lying
+down upon their pillows, or rising for their daily tasks, centred
+upon it, and it was as if the minds of all were prone upon the edge
+of it, gazing curiously into the vortex.
+
+The Sunday after Burr Gordon's disastrous wedding-day the faces of
+all the people on their way to meeting wore the same expression, in
+different degrees of intensity. One emotion of strained curiosity and
+wonder made one family of the whole village. The people thought and
+spoke of only one subject; they asked each other one question--"Will
+any of them be at meeting?"  The Unitarian church was nearly deserted
+that Sunday, for Parson Fair's former parishioners returned to their
+old gathering place, under stronger pressure, for the time, than
+religious tenets.
+
+It was a burning day for May--as hot as midsummer. The flowers were
+blossoming visibly under the eyes of the people, but they did not
+notice. They flocked into the meeting-house and looked about them,
+all with the same expression in their eyes.
+
+When Burr Gordon and his mother entered, a thrill seemed to pass
+through the whole congregation. Nobody had thought they would come.
+Mrs. Gordon, gliding with even pace, softly murmurous in her Sunday
+silk, followed her son, who walked with brave front, although he was
+undeniably pale, up the aisle to their pew. He stood about to let his
+mother enter, meeting the eyes of the people as he did so; then sat
+down himself, and a long glance and a long nudge of shoulders passed
+over the meeting-house. Burr and his mother both knew it, but she sat
+in undisturbed serenity of pallor, and he stirred not a muscle,
+though a red spot blazed out on each cheek.
+
+Madelon Hautville sat in the singing seats, but he never looked at
+her nor she at him. There were curious eyes upon her also, for people
+wondered if Burr would turn to her now Dorothy Fair had jilted him;
+but she did not know it. She heeded nobody but Burr, though she did
+not look at him, and when she stood up in the midst of her brothers
+and sang, she sang neither to the Lord nor to the people, but to this
+one weak and humiliated man whom she loved. The people thought that
+she had never sung so before, recognizing, though ignorantly, that
+she struck that great chord of the heart whose capability of sound
+was in them also. For the time she stood before and led all the
+actors in that small drama of human life which was on the village
+stage, and in which she took involuntary part; and the audience saw
+and heard nobody but her.
+
+Burr, stiff as a soldier, at the end of his pew, felt his heart leap
+to hope and resolve through the sound of this woman's voice in the
+old orthodox hymns, and laid hold unknowingly, by means of it, of the
+love and force which are at the roots of things for the strengthening
+of the world. With weak and false starts and tardy retrogrades he had
+woven around his feet a labyrinth of crossing paths of life, but now,
+of a sudden, he saw clearly his way out. He trampled down the
+scruples which hampered and blinded him like thorns and had their
+roots in a false pride of honor, and recognized that divine call
+of love to worship which simplifies all perplexities. He would
+take that girl singing yonder for is wife, if she were indeed so
+generous-minded after all, not now, but later, when there could be no
+possibility of slight to Dorothy Fair. His honest work in the world
+he would do, were it in the ploughshares or the wayside ditches, with
+no striving for aggrandizement through untoward ways, and so would he
+humbly attain the full dignity of his being.
+
+When Madelon Hautville stopped singing not one in the meeting-house
+had seen Burr Gordon stir, but the soul in him had surely turned and
+faced about with a great rending as of swathing wills that bound it.
+
+Parson Fair preached that morning. Great had been the speculation as
+to whether he would or not. When he stood up in his pulpit and faced
+the crowded pews and the steely glances of curious eyes through the
+shifting flutter of fans, he was as austerely composed as ever; but a
+buzzing whisper went through the audience like a veritable bee of
+gossip. "He looks dreadful," they hissed in each other's ears, with
+nudges and nods.
+
+All the principal participants in the village commotion were there
+except Lot Gordon and Dorothy Fair. Dorothy had not come, in spite of
+her father's stern commands, and sterner they had been than any
+commands of his to his beloved child before. Dorothy had cowered
+before her father, in utter misery and trepidation, after the company
+had left that wedding-night, but yielded she had not--only fallen ill
+again of that light fever which so easily beset her under stress of
+mind.
+
+That Sunday morning, striving to rise and go to meeting as her father
+said, and being in truth willing enough, since she had a terrified
+longing to see Eugene Hautville in the choir and ascertain if he were
+angry or glad, she fell back weak and dizzy on her pillows, and the
+doctor was called. Dorothy's fever ran lightly, as all ailments of
+hers, whether mental or physical, were wont to do; and yet she had a
+delicacy of organization which caused her to be shaken sorely by
+slight causes. A butterfly may not have the capacity for despair, but
+the touch of a finger can crush it; and had it more capacity, there
+would be no butterflies.
+
+It was a full month before Dorothy was able to go out of doors,
+and all that time the gossips were cheated out of the sight of
+her, and her father was constrained to treat her with a sort of
+conscience-stricken tenderness, in spite of her grave fault. Her
+mother had never risen from a fever which seemed akin to this; and
+Dorothy, in spite of his stern Puritan creed, was yet dearer to him
+than that abstraction of her which he deemed her soul.
+
+Looking at the girl, flushed softly with fever, her blue eyes shining
+like jewels, as she lay in her white nest, he knew that he loved her
+life more fiercely than he judged her sins. He would turn his back
+upon her and go out of her chamber, his black height bowed like a
+penitent, and down to his study, and wrestle there upon his knees for
+hours with that earthly and natural love which he accounted as of the
+Tempter, yet might after all have been an angel, and of the Lord. And
+when Dorothy came weakly down-stairs at last, with the great black
+woman guarding her steps as if she were a baby, he found not in
+himself the power of stern counsel and reproof which he had decided
+upon when she should have left her chamber.
+
+All the neighbors knew when Dorothy Fair first stepped her foot out
+of doors, and told one another suspiciously that she did not look
+very sick, and that they guessed she might have come out sooner, and
+gone to meeting, had she been so minded.
+
+And in truth the girl, beyond slight deflections in the curves of her
+soft cheeks, and a wistful enlarging and brightening of her blue
+eyes, as in thoughtful shadows, was not much changed. The first
+Sunday when she appeared in the meeting-house she wore, to the
+delight and scandal of the women, one of the new gowns and hats of
+her bridal outfit. Dorothy Fair, in a great plumed hat of peach-blow
+silk, in a pearly silk gown and pink-silk mitts, in a white-muslin
+pelerine all wrought with cunning needlework, sat in the parson's
+pew, and uplifted her lovely face towards her father in the pulpit,
+and nobody knew how her whole mind and fancy were set, not upon the
+sermon, but upon Eugene Hautville in the singing-seats behind her.
+And nobody dreamed how, as she sat there, she held before her face,
+as it were, a sort of mental hand-mirror, in which she could see her
+head of fair curls, her peach-blow hat, and her slender white-muslin
+shoulders reflected from Eugene's dark eyes. The fall of every curl
+had she studied well that morning, and the folds of the muslin
+pelerine over her shoulders. And when the congregation arose for the
+hymns and faced about towards the singers, then did Dorothy let her
+blue eyes seek, with an innocent unconsciousness, as of blue flowers,
+which would have deceived the very elect, Eugene's face.
+
+But his black eyes met hers with no more fiery glances. Eugene never
+even looked at her, but sang, with stern averted face, which was
+paler and thinner than Dorothy's, though he had had no illness save
+of the spirit. In vain Dorothy sought his eyes, with her blue
+appealing ones, during every hymn; in vain once or twice during the
+sermon she even cast a glance around her shoulder with a slight fling
+of her curls aside, and a little shiver, as if she felt a draught.
+Eugene never looked her way that she could see.
+
+When the long service was over, Dorothy, with sly, watchful eyes,
+quickened her pace, and strove so to manage that she and Eugene
+should emerge from the meeting-house side by side. But he was
+striding far ahead, with never a backward glance, when she came out,
+lifting daintily her pearly skirts. Burr was near her, but him she
+never thought of, even to avoid, and his mother's stately aside
+movement was not even seen by her. She courtesied prettily to those
+who met her face to face, from force of habit, and went on thinking
+of no one but Eugene.
+
+Again, in the afternoon, Dorothy went to meeting, though her pulses
+began to beat, with a slight return of the fever, and again she
+strove with her cunning maiden wiles to attract this obdurate Eugene,
+and again in vain. That night Dorothy lay and wept awhile before she
+fell asleep, and dreamed that she and Eugene were a-walking in the
+lane and that he kissed her. And when she awoke, blushing in the
+darkness, she resolved that she would go a-walking in the lane on
+every pleasant day, in the hope that the dream might come true.
+
+And Mistress Dorothy Fair, with many eyes in the neighbors' windows
+watching, went pacing slowly, for her delicate limbs as yet did not
+bear her strongly, day after day down the road and into the lane,
+and, with frequent rests upon wayside stones, to the farther end of
+it. And yet she did not meet Eugene therein, and her dream did not
+come true.
+
+But it happened at last, about the middle of the month of June, when
+the great red and white roses in the dooryards were in such full
+bloom that in another day they would be past it and fall, that
+Dorothy and Eugene met in the lane; for there is room enough in time
+for most dreams to come true, and for the others there is eternity.
+
+That afternoon Dorothy had gone forth as usual, but she said to
+herself that he would not come; and half-way down the lane she ceased
+peering into the green distances for him, and sat herself down on a
+stone, and leaned back against the trunk of a young maple, and shut
+her eyes wearily, and told herself in a sort of sad penitence that
+she would look no more for him, for he would not come.
+
+The grass in the lane was grown long now, with a pink mist over the
+top of it; the trees at the sides leaned together heavy with foliage,
+and the bordering walls were all hidden under bushes and vines.
+Everywhere on bush and vine were spikes and corymbs of lusty
+blossoms. Birds were calling to their mates and their young; the
+locusts were shrilling out of depths of sunlight. Dorothy, in the
+midst of this uncontrolled passion of summer, was herself in utter
+tune and harmony with it. She was just as sweet and gracefully
+courtesying among her sisters as any flower among the host of the
+field; and she had silently and inconsequently, like the flower, her
+own little lust of life and bloom which none could overcome, and
+against which she could know no religion. This Dorothy, meekly
+leaning her slender shoulders against the maple-tree, with her blue
+eyes closed, and her little hands folded in her lap, could no more
+develop into aught towards which she herself inclined not than a
+daisy plant out in the field could grow a clover blossom. Moreover
+her heart, which had after all enough of the sweetness of love in it,
+opened or shut like the cup of a sensitive plant, with seemingly no
+volition of hers; therefore was she in a manner innocently helpless
+and docile before her own emotions and her own destiny.
+
+She sat still a few minutes and kept her eyes closed. Then she
+thought she heard a stir down the lane, but she would not open her
+eyes to look, so sadly and impatiently sure was she that he would not
+come. Even when she knew there was a footstep drawing near she would
+not look. She kept her eyes closed, and made as if she were asleep;
+and some one passed her, and she would not look, so sure was she that
+it was not Eugene.
+
+But that afternoon Eugene Hautville, who had gone all this time the
+long way to the village, felt his own instincts, or the natural
+towardness of his heart, too strong for him. Often, watching from a
+distance across the fields, he had seen a pale flutter of skirts in
+the lane, and knew well enough that Dorothy was there, and had turned
+back; but this time he walked on. When he came to Dorothy he cast one
+glance at her, then set his face sternly and kept on, with his heart
+pulling him back at every step. Dorothy did not open her eyes until
+he had fairly passed her, and then she looked and saw him going away
+from her without a word. Then she gave a little cry that no one could
+have interpreted with any written language. She called not Eugene by
+his name; she said no word; but her heart gave that ancient cry for
+its lover which was before all speech; and that human love-call
+drowned out suddenly all the others.
+
+But when Eugene stopped and turned, Dorothy blushed so before his
+eyes that her very neck and arms glowed pink through her lace tucker
+and sleeves. She shrank away, twisting herself and hiding her face,
+so that he could see naught of her but the flow of her muslin skirts
+and her curling fair locks.
+
+Eugene stood a minute looking at her. His dark face was as red as
+Dorothy's. He made a motion towards her, then drew back and held up
+his head resolutely.
+
+"It is a pleasant day," he said, as if they were exchanging the
+everyday courtesies of life; and then when she made no reply, he
+added that he hoped she was quite recovered from her sickness.
+
+And then he was pressing on again, white in the face now and
+wrestling fiercely with himself that he might, as it were, pass his
+own heart which stood in the way; but Dorothy rose up, with a sob,
+and pressed before him, touching his arm with her slender one in her
+lace sleeve, and shaking out like any flower the rose and lavender
+scent in her garments.
+
+"I want to speak to you," she said, and strove in vain to command her
+voice.
+
+Eugene bowed and tried to smile, and waited, and looked above her
+head, through the tree branches into the field.
+
+"I want to know if--you are angry with me because--I would not--marry
+Burr," said Dorothy, catching her breath between her words.
+
+"I told you that you had no reason--that he was not guilty," Eugene
+said, with a kind of stern doggedness; and still he did not look at
+her.
+
+"I could not marry--him," Dorothy panted, softly.
+
+"I told you you had no reason," Eugene said again, as if he were
+saying a lesson that he had taught himself.
+
+"Are you angry--with me because I could not marry him?" Dorothy
+asked, with her soft persistency in her own line of thought, and not
+his.
+
+Then Eugene in desperation looked down at her, and saw her face worn
+into sweet wistfulness by her illness, her dilated eyes and lips
+parted and quivering into sobs, like a baby's.
+
+"I am not angry, but I encourage no woman to be false to her
+betrothal vows," he said, and strove to make his voice hard; but
+Dorothy bent her head, and the sobs came, and he took her in his
+arms.
+
+"Are you angry with me?" Dorothy sobbed, piteously, against his
+breast.
+
+"No, not with you, but myself," said Eugene. "It is all with myself.
+I will take the blame of it all, sweet," and he smoothed her hair and
+kissed her and held her close and tried to comfort her; and it seemed
+to him that he could indeed take all the blame of her inconstancy and
+distrust, and could even bear his self-reproach for her sake, so much
+he loved her.
+
+"I would not have married Burr--even if--he had told me--he was
+innocent," Dorothy said, after a while. She was hushing her sobs, and
+her very soul was smiling within her for joy as Eugene's fond
+whispers reached her ears.
+
+"Why?" said Eugene.
+
+"Because--you came first--when you looked at me in the
+meeting-house," Dorothy whispered back. Then she suddenly lifted her
+face a little, and looked up at him, with one soft flushed cheek
+crushed against his breast, and Eugene bent his face down to hers.
+They stood so, and for a minute had, indeed, the whole world to their
+two selves, for love as well as death has the power of annihilation;
+and then there was a stir in the lane, a crisp rustle of petticoats
+and a hiss of whispering voices; and they started and fell apart.
+There in the lane before them, their eyes as keen as foxes, with the
+scent of curiosity and gossip, their cheeks red with the shame of it,
+and their lips forming into apologetic and terrified smiles, stood
+Margaret Bean and two others--the tavern-keeper's wife and the wife
+of the man who kept the village store.
+
+For a second the three women fairly cowered beneath Eugene
+Hautville's eyes, and Margaret Bean began to stammer as if her old
+tongue were palsied. Then Eugene collected himself, made them one of
+his courtly bows, turned to Dorothy with another, offered her his
+arm, and walked away with her out of the lane, before the eyes of the
+prying gossips.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII
+
+
+It was four o'clock that summer afternoon when the three
+women--Margaret Bean, the tavern-keeper's wife, and the storekeeper's
+wife--who had followed Dorothy and Eugene into the lane to pry upon
+them set forth to communicate by word of mouth the scandalous
+proceedings they had witnessed; and long before midnight all the
+village knew. The women crept cautiously at a good distance behind
+Dorothy and Eugene out of the lane, and watched, with incredulous
+eyes turning to each other for confirmation, the pair walk into
+Parson Fair's house together. Then they could do no more, since their
+ears were not long enough, and each went her way to tell what she had
+seen.
+
+All the neighbors knew when Eugene Hautville left Parson Fair's
+house that afternoon, but their knowledge stopped there. Nobody
+ever discovered just what was said within those four walls when
+Dorothy--who, soft plumaged though she was, had flown in the
+faces of all her decorous feminine antecedents and her goodly
+teaching--confronted her father with her new lover at her side.
+
+It was safe enough to assume, for one who knew her and them well,
+that the two men did finally turn and protect her and shelter her
+each against himself, and his own despite, as well as one another.
+After that Eugene Hautville was seen every Sunday night and twice in
+the week going into Parson Fair's house, and the candles burned late
+in the north parlor.
+
+The banns were published in a month's time. Some accounted it
+unseemly haste, after the other banns which had come to naught, and
+some said 'twas better so, and they blamed not Parson Fair for
+placing such a flighty and jilting maid safe within the pale of
+wedlock--and they guessed he was thankful enough to find a husband
+for her, even if 'twas one of the Hautvilles.
+
+However, Eugene was held in somewhat more of esteem than the others,
+since he had in his own right a snug little sum in bank which had
+come to him from an uncle whose name he bore. When it was known that
+Eugene had bought the old Squire Damon place, a goodly house with a
+box-bordered front walk, and a pillared front door, and would take
+his bride home to it, public favor became quite strong for him. Folk
+opined that he would, even if he was a Hautville, make full as good a
+husband as Burr, and that Dorothy Fair would have the best of the
+bargain all around. While many held Dorothy in slight esteem for her
+instability and delicacy, and thought she was no desirable helpmeet
+for any man, some were of the opinion that she had shown praiseworthy
+judgment and shrewdness in jilting Burr for Eugene.
+
+Dorothy this time made small show of her wedding, and was married in
+her father's study with only the necessary witnesses and no guests.
+Eugene Hautville had chafed. Dorothy also, with her feminine desire
+for all minor details of happiness, was aggrieved that she could
+never now appear before the public gaze in all the splendor of her
+wedding-gear. But Parson Fair stood firm for once, and would have it
+so.
+
+All the watchful neighbors saw was, after nightfall and moonrise,
+Parson Fair's door open, and the bride and groom appear for a second
+in a golden shaft of light which flashed into gloom at the closing of
+the door, and left there two shadows, as if the story of their life
+and love had already been told and passed into history. And then the
+neighbors saw them move up the road with long vanishing flutters of
+the bride's white draperies, and the great black woman, steadying a
+basket against her hip, in their wake, following her mistress like a
+faithful dog, with perhaps the most unselfish love of all.
+
+The black woman favored Eugene more than she had ever favored Burr,
+perhaps because she was a true slave of love, and leaned with the
+secret leanings of her mistress's heart against all words of mouth,
+obeying her commands with a fuller understanding of them than Dorothy
+herself.
+
+When this new lover came a-courting, the African woman had always
+greeted him at the door with that wide, sudden smile of hers, at once
+simple, like a child's, and wild, like the grin of an animal; and her
+voice, in her thick jargon, was nearly as softly rich to him as to
+Dorothy. Moreover she kept no longer jealous watch at the door of the
+room where the lovers sat, and was fond of treating the young man
+with little cakes which she made with honey, whose like was to be
+eaten nowhere else in the village.
+
+After Dorothy and Eugene were wedded they faded into comparative
+insignificance in the thoughts of the villagers, which were then
+centred upon Burr Gordon and Madelon. The curtain went down upon
+Eugene and his bride as upon any pair of wedded lovers in his
+Shakespeare book.
+
+Burr was in exceedingly ill repute, but he did not himself know it.
+Many of his old friends treated him coolly, but he attributed that to
+the embarrassed sympathy and constraint which they naturally felt
+towards him in his position. He thought they avoided him because they
+knew well that he would suspect even friendliness lest it contain a
+pity which would hurt his pride; and he thanked them for it. But the
+truth was, that outcry of Dorothy's against him on the wedding-night
+had lashed up into a hurricane all the suspicions which Lot's avowal
+had stilled. They did away easily enough with the force of Lot's
+statement, for there are many theories to furnish skin-fits for every
+difficulty, if one searches in the infinity of possibilities.
+
+Lot's true reason none fathomed, for it was beyond their
+sounding-lines of selfish curiosity; but they found another which
+seemed to meet the needs of the case as well.
+
+Lot, they said, had bargained with Burr to give up all claim to
+Madelon, and he would set him free by confessing an attempt at
+suicide. Margaret Bean, it was reported, had seen the letter which
+Lot had written to Burr in prison. When Madelon, who, half crazed by
+anxiety about her lover, had wrongfully accused herself to save him,
+had seen him turn to her rival and scorn her after his release, she
+had accepted Lot in a rage of pride and jealousy, as he had planned
+for her to do. The breaking off of the marriage betwixt her and Lot
+they mostly attributed to the simple cause he had mentioned--his
+failing health--though some thought that he had hesitated about
+marrying into the Hautville family when it came to it.
+
+Suspicion had been for a time somewhat hushed against Madelon, the
+more so that she had been seen, since Dorothy had jilted Burr, to
+pass him with scarcely a nod, and was popularly supposed to hold an
+Indian grudge against him, and to be still anxious to wed his cousin
+Lot.
+
+However, the tide soon turned again. On the Sunday after the banns
+between Dorothy and Eugene had been published, Burr had been seen to
+walk home openly with Madelon from evening meeting; and it was soon
+known that he was courting her regularly.
+
+Then darker whispers were circulated. People said now that they were
+accomplices in attempted crime. That black atmosphere of suspicion
+and hatred, which gathers nowhere more easily than in a New England
+town, was thick around Burr and Madelon. They breathed, though as yet
+it was in less degree, the same noxious air as did the persecuted
+Quakers and witches of bygone times. The gases which lie at the
+bottom of human souls, which gossip and suspicious imaginations
+upstir, are deadlier than those at the bottoms of old wells. Still
+Madelon and Burr knew nothing of it, nor Burr's mother, nor Lot, nor
+any of the Hautville men. The attitude of Madelon's father and
+brothers towards herself and Burr had done much to strengthen
+suspicion. High voices and strange remarks had been overheard by folk
+strolling casually, of a pleasant evening, past the Hautville house.
+
+In truth, at first old David Hautville and all his sons except Eugene
+had risen against Burr and Madelon, all their pride in arms that she
+should return to this man who had once forsaken her for another. But
+later they had yielded, for their pride was undermined by their own
+gloomy convictions as to Madelon, which they confided not to one
+another. However, the boy Richard still greeted Burr surlily, with a
+fierce black flash under frowning brows, and scarcely spoke to
+Madelon at all until the day before her marriage. That was set some
+two months after Dorothy's.
+
+Burr and Madelon, during the days of their betrothal, were as closely
+beset by spies on every hand as a party of Madelon's old kindred
+might have been, encamped in a wooded country, where every bush
+veiled savage eyes and every tree stood in front of a foeman, but
+they did not know it. Folk knew when Mrs. Gordon went to visit her
+son's betrothed, though 'twas on a dark evening. They knew what she
+wore, and how long she stayed. They knew when Madelon returned her
+visit; they knew, to remember, in many cases, more details of their
+daily lives than Burr and Madelon themselves.
+
+Madelon had few wedding preparations to make. The wedding-garments
+which she had stitched with sorrow for her marriage with Lot would
+serve her now. She employed her time in increasing still further the
+household stores of linen for her father's and brothers' use, when
+she should be gone, and in making a great stock of sweet-sauce,
+jelly, and cordials from the fruits and berries of the season.
+
+One afternoon in late summer, when the high blackberries were ripe,
+Madelon set forth with a great basket on her arm. A fine cordial,
+good for many ills, she knew how to make from the berries, and had
+planned to brew a goodly quantity this year. She went down the road a
+way, then over some bars, with her hands on the highest and a spring
+like a willow branch set free, across a pasture where some red cows
+were grazing, then over another set of bars, into a rough and shaggy
+land sloping gradually into a hill. Here the high blackberries grew
+in great thorny thickets, and Madelon pressed among them warily and
+began picking. She had not picked long--indeed the bottom of her
+basket was not covered--when she heard a rustle in the bushes behind
+her and looked over her shoulder hurriedly, and there was Lot Gordon.
+
+Lot came forward from a cluster of young firs, parting the rank
+undergrowth with the careless wonted movement of one who steers his
+way among his own household goods. Well used to all the wild disorder
+of out-doors was Lot Gordon, and could have picked his way of a dark
+night among the stones and bushes and trees of many a pasture and
+woodland. Moreover, Lot, uprising from the great nest which he had
+hollowed out for himself from a sweet fern growth under the balsam
+firs, exhaling their fragrant breath of healing, and coming into
+sight, made better show than he had ever done in his own book-walled
+study.
+
+Here, where the minds of other men swerved him and incited him not,
+where only Nature herself held him in leading-strings with
+unsearchable might or was laid bare before his daring eyes and many a
+secret discovered, Lot Gordon gained his best grace of home. The
+balsam firs framed him with more truth than the door of his own
+dwelling. To Madelon, as he came out from them, he looked more a man
+than he had ever done; for all unconsciously to her mind of strong
+and simple bent, he had seemed at times scarce a man but rather some
+strange character from a book, which had gotten life through too
+strong imagining.
+
+Moreover to-day his likeness to Burr came out strongly. Madelon saw
+the cant of his head and swing of his shoulders, with a half sense of
+shame that he was not Burr, and yet with a sudden understanding of
+him that she had never felt before. She had not seen him since her
+betrothal to Burr. She thought to herself that he was thinner, and
+that the red flush on his cheeks was the flush of fever and not of
+the summer sun.
+
+"How do you do, Lot?" she said. Madelon's cheeks were a splendid red;
+her green sunbonnet hung by its strings low on her neck, and her
+head, with black hair clinging to her temples in moist rings, was
+thrust out from the green tangle of vines like a flower. When Lot did
+not answer at once, but stood pale and trembling, as if an icy wind
+had struck him, before her, she pulled the pricking vines loose from
+her dress, and came out. "How do you do, Lot?" she said, again. Still
+Lot did not answer, and after a minute she turned with impatient
+dignity as if to enter her fastness again; but then Lot spoke.
+
+"Like mankind," he said, "'tis not well, and it tends to death, but
+we were born with a lash at our backs to do it."
+
+Madelon knit her brows impatiently, for this was his old talk, that
+savored to her of ink and parchment and thoughts laid up in studied
+guise, like mummies. Then she noted his poor face, and again the look
+like Burr, which caused her heart to melt with the fancy of her love
+in like case, and she said, with that gracious kindness which became
+her well, that it was a pleasant day, and the smell of the balsam fir
+was good for him.
+
+But Lot looked at her with his great eyes set in hungry hollows, and
+answered her in that stilted speech which she liked not, trying to
+smile his old mocking smile with his poor lips, which only trembled
+like a child's when tears are coming. "There are rivers of honey and
+gardens of spices, and branches dropping balm," said Lot, "where a
+man can walk but his soul cannot follow him. His soul waits outside
+and strives to taste the sweet when he swallows it, and smell the
+balm and the spices when he breathes them in, but cannot; and that is
+only good for a man which is good for his soul."
+
+"I don't know what you mean," said Madelon, shortly.
+
+"I mean that I am outside all the good of this world, since the one
+good which I crave and cannot have is the gate to all the rest," said
+Lot. Then suddenly he cried out passionately, lifting up his face to
+the sky, "O God, why need it be so? Why need a man be a bond-slave to
+one hunger? Why need this one woman be the angel with the flaming
+sword before all the little pleasures I used to taste and love? Why
+need she come between me and the breath of the woods, and the incense
+of the fields, and their secrets which were to me before my own, so I
+can take no more delight in them?"
+
+Madelon looked at him half in pity, half in proud resentment. "If it
+is so," she said, "it was not of my own accord I came; you know that,
+Lot Gordon. I meant no harm to you, and the harm that I did you
+brought upon yourself. I would not have come here to-day if I had
+known you were here and that it would disturb you."
+
+"You could not have helped coming," said Lot. "I have been here since
+morning, and you have been here all the while."
+
+"Why do you talk so, Lot Gordon?" cried Madelon, angrily, for Lot's
+covert meanings fretted her straightforwardness beyond endurance.
+"You know that I have just come here!"
+
+"You came here when I did," said Lot, "when the fields were dewy. You
+held up your skirts and stepped daintily. I went ahead and you
+followed, high-kilted, pointing your steps among the wet grasses like
+a dove. Had I looked over my shoulder I could have seen you, but I
+looked not lest the power of flight might be in you like the dove."
+
+"I shall go away if you talk like this. I will not stay here and
+listen to it; you know I was not here," said Madelon, and she paled a
+little, for she almost thought, used to his fanciful talk though she
+were, that Lot had gone mad.
+
+"We walked towards the sun," persisted Lot, "but you were in my
+shadow and needed not to cast down your eyes. I saw some red flowers,
+but I did not pick them for you, and I heard you stop and break the
+stems as you came after. When we reached the shade of the firs there
+I sat down, but I left the space there, where the needles are
+smoothest and thickest, for you, and there you sat too, all day."
+
+"Lot Gordon!"
+
+"You need not mind, Madelon, for all day I looked not over my
+shoulder once. I saw not your face, nor touched your lips, nor your
+hand, nor even the fold of your dress. I harmed you not, even in my
+dreams, dear."
+
+Madelon, standing quite free of the clinging blackberry vines, held
+up her dark head like an empress, and looked at him. In truth she
+felt little pity for Lot Gordon then, for she liked not being made to
+follow other than Burr even in a man's dreams. Still, when she spoke
+it was not unkindly, for in spite of this jealousy of herself for
+Burr, and in spite of her inability to understand such worship of
+herself, when she was spent in worship of another, she remembered how
+she had nearly taken the life of this man, and how he had striven to
+shield her, though against her will, and on hard and selfish
+conditions, and how he had at last sacrificed himself to set her
+free.
+
+"Lot," said she, "there must be no more of this. I am almost your
+cousin's wife. You have no right."  And then she repeated it
+passionately. "I say you have no right to love me like this, if I do
+not love you, Lot Gordon. I will have no other man but Burr think me
+at his heels. I will follow him till the day of my death, but no
+other. I would only have married you to save his life--you know that.
+You know I never loved you. You have no right."
+
+"The right of love is every man's who sets not himself before it,"
+returned Lot, with sad dignity. "I will not yield that even for love
+of you, Madelon; but myself shall be pushed yet farther out of sight,
+I promise you, and you shall be pestered no more, child. Go on with
+your berry-picking."
+
+A great mound of rock uplifted itself like the swelling crouch of
+some fossil animal among the sweet ferns and the wild scramble of
+vines. Lot sank down upon it panting for breath. He leaned his head
+wearily forward between his hands, his elbows resting on his knees.
+
+Madelon looked at him hesitatingly; she opened her mouth as if to
+speak, then was silent. She looked at the high vines, black with
+fruit, then at the field beyond, as if half minded to go away and
+leave them.
+
+Finally she fell to picking again without a word. Lot coughed once,
+but he did not speak. Madelon kept glancing at him as she picked.
+Compunction and pity softened more and more her fiery heart, the more
+so since she felt the guilt of happiness in the face of the woe of
+another upon her. Finally she said, with that fond reversion to the
+little homely truths and waysides of life with which the feminine
+mind strives often to comfort, that she would put up for him a jug of
+her blackberry cordial, and furthermore that she hoped his cough was
+better. She said it with half-constrained kindness, not looking up
+from her berry-picking; but Lot lifted his head and thanked her and
+said the cough was nearly cured, with eagerness to respond to grace,
+like a child who has been chidden.
+
+Then he watched her with bright eyes as she picked, his breath coming
+hard and quick. "Madelon!" he said, and stopped.
+
+"What, Lot?"
+
+"You remember--the gewgaws which I--showed you, Madelon--the feathers
+and ribbons and satins, and the other things? You cared not for them
+then. Will you have them now, for your wedding-gift?"
+
+"No, Lot," said Madelon, quickly. "I thank you, but I cannot take
+them; I have enough."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I have enough."
+
+"There is no need for you to tell me why," said Lot. "A woman like
+you would almost veil herself from her own eyes for the sake of a
+lover, so great is her jealousy. The thoughts and the dreams with
+which I bought the gewgaws profane them in your eyes while I am
+alive."
+
+"I do not need them, and I cannot take them, Lot," said Madelon,
+steadily.
+
+Lot said no more. He leaned his head upon his hands again. Madelon
+could hear his panting breath. She resolved that she would go away
+across the fields, down the road a piece, to another berry patch that
+she knew of. Still she did not go. One of those impulses which seem
+to come from authority outside one's self, or else from some hidden
+springs of motion which we know not of, had seized her. She looked at
+Lot and moved softly away a few steps, holding her skirts clear of
+the vines. Then she paused and looked again, and was away again. Her
+face was resolute and wary, as if she saw something which she feared
+and loathed, and yet would brave. Then she went close to Lot, and
+stood still over him a minute.
+
+"Lot," she said.
+
+He looked up at her, wonderingly. "Are you sick, Madelon?" he cried,
+and would have risen, but she motioned him back and spoke, turning
+her face away the while.
+
+"Once I asked Burr to give me the kiss that I would have killed him
+for," said she, in a voice so sharpened by her stress of spirit that
+it might have come out of the flames of martyrdom. "Now I ask you to
+give me the kiss that I almost took your life for."
+
+"Madelon!"
+
+"It is all I can do to make amends," said she. Then she looked full
+at him, and did not shrink when she met his eyes, though her face
+grew white before the mad longing in them.
+
+Lot stood up and leaned towards her, and she stood waiting. Then he
+threw out his hands, as if he would push her back, and turned away.
+"You owe me no amends," he said, hoarsely. "The wound that you gave
+me was my just desert for striving to take what you were not willing
+to give."
+
+"Your life is your life," said she, steadily, "and I almost took it
+away from you. I would do this in token of repentance for that and
+whatever other harm I have done you unwittingly."
+
+"You owe me no amends, and I will take none," said Lot, again.
+
+Then he faced about towards her, and she started and looked at him,
+wondering and half in awe, for suddenly the love in the heart of the
+man showed itself in his face like a light, and it was almost as if
+she saw, unbelieving and denying, her own transfigured image in his
+eyes.
+
+"Good-bye, Madelon," said Lot.
+
+"Good-bye," she returned, faintly, and looked at him for the first
+time in all her life without the thought of Burr between them.
+
+But that Lot did not know, and stood a moment gazing at her as a man
+gazes at one beloved under the shadow of long parting, striving to
+gain possession of somewhat to hold and cherish aside from the
+conditions of the flesh. Then he said good-bye again, and went away,
+with that soft winding glide of his through the underbrush which he
+might have learned from the wild dwellers in the woods, and was out
+of sight through the violet glooms of the firs.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII
+
+
+The night before Madelon was married, as if by some tacit
+understanding of peace and harmony, the Hautvilles came together for
+a concert in the great living-room. Not one had said to another,
+"This is Madelon's last night at home, and we have been wroth with
+her; let us bury the hatchet, and raise our voices with one accord in
+our old songs;" but one impulse had seemed to move them all, as one
+wind moves the forest trees who are kin to one another, and they were
+all together at twilight, even Eugene and his bride.
+
+Burr Gordon came also, but he and Madelon did not sit apart that
+evening. The weather was cool, even for late September, and an early
+frost was threatened. A great fire blazed on the hearth. Burr and
+Dorothy, on the settle in the chimney-corner, listened to the
+Hautville chorus, and Burr looked always at Madelon and Dorothy at
+Eugene. The Hautvilles stood together before the fire, old David with
+his bass-viol at his side, like the wife of his bosom; Louis holding
+his violin on his shoulder, like a child, pressing his dark cheek
+against it, and Eugene and Abner and Richard and Madelon uplifting
+their voices in the old songs and fugues.
+
+The doors and windows were shut. Nobody heard nor saw Lot Gordon when
+he crept like a fox round the house, and came under a window and
+rested his chin on the sill and remained there looking at Madelon.
+She wore that night a soft gown of crimson wool, which clung about
+her limbs and her bosom, and showed her bare throat swelling with
+song into new curves which were indeed those of music itself. Lot, as
+he looked at her, saw her with the full meaning of her beauty as
+never Burr could, and as she could never see herself, for there is no
+looking-glass on earth like a vain love when it rises above the
+slight of its own desire. Greater praise than she would ever know
+again in her whole life went up for Madelon outside that window, as
+she sang, but she neither knew it nor missed anything when Lot went
+away.
+
+At ten o'clock the concert ceased. Lot slunk away noiselessly, and
+soon Eugene and Dorothy went home, and Burr, lingering for a
+good-night kiss or two in the door.
+
+Madelon set bread to rise that night, and fulfilled her little round
+of nightly tasks for the last time. Her father and brothers went to
+bed and left her there--all but Richard. He remained in a corner of
+the settle, his slim length flung out carelessly, his head tipped
+back as if he were asleep; but his black eyes flashed bright under
+their lids at his sister whenever she did not look at him. Madelon
+said not a word until her tasks were done; then she came and stood in
+front of Richard, and looked at him, frowning a little, for her pride
+was stung at his treatment of her, but holding out her hand. "Can't
+you bid me good-night, Richard?" said she, and tried to smile at him
+with that old loving comradeship which he had disowned.
+
+The boy maintained his sullen silence for a moment, and Madelon
+waited. Then suddenly he cried, "Good-night," with sharp intonations,
+like the response of a surly dog, and sprang up and thrust something
+hard into her hand, with such roughness that it hurt her, and she
+started.
+
+"'Tis a wedding-present for you," Richard said, savagely, with
+averted face. "I thought the one I gave you before would not serve
+for two weddings. Though there be but one bride, there should be
+different gifts."
+
+Madelon gave one look at Richard; then she opened her hand, and there
+on her reddened palm lay a little gold pencil, which the boy must
+have spent all his little savings to buy. Madelon held it out to him.
+"Take it back," said she; "I want no presents with words like that to
+sweeten them."
+
+Richard's clenched hand hung by his side. He shook his head sullenly.
+
+"Take it!" said Madelon; but he made no motion to do so.
+
+"Then I shall let it fall on the floor," said Madelon.
+
+"Let it," returned Richard, and forthwith the little gold pencil
+rolled on the floor under the settle, and Madelon turned away with a
+white face. But before she had reached the door Richard was at her
+side and his hand on her arm. "Oh, Madelon!" he said, striving to
+keep the sobs back. Then Madelon turned and laid a hand on each of
+his shoulders, and held him away, looking at him.
+
+"Why did you speak to me like that?" said she; and then, without
+waiting for an answer, drew the boy's head down to her bosom, and
+held it there a moment, stroking his hair. "If ever you are sick
+after I am gone," said she, "I will come and take care of you; and if
+you don't get good things to eat I will see to that, too;" and then
+she kissed Richard's dark head, and put him away gently, bidding him
+with a tender laugh "not to be a baby," and went over to the settle
+and picked up the little gold pencil, and praised it and said she
+would treasure it all her life.
+
+And then she bade Richard follow her into the best room, and opened
+the carved oak chest and displayed six beautiful shirts made of
+linen, which she had herself spun and woven and wrought with finest
+needlework in bands and bosoms, for a parting gift to him, because he
+was the nearest of all her brothers, though she must not say so. "The
+others have shirts enough," said she; "I have seen to that, for I
+have meant to do my duty to you all, but none of the others have
+bosoms and wristbands stitched like these, and the linen is extra
+fine."
+
+That night Richard would not go to his chamber, which he shared with
+his brother Louis, lest he wake and spy his face flushed with tears,
+but crept stealthily back down-stairs, and, all unbeknown to any one,
+lay all night on the settle in the living-room. He slept little, and
+often waked and wept in the darkness like a child rather than one of
+the fiery Hautville brothers.
+
+When wrath with a beloved one is stilled in the human heart and love
+takes its place, it is with a threefold increase, a great rending of
+spirit, and a cruel turning of weapons against one's self. Richard
+was one who would always deal with entireties, being capable of no
+divisions nor subtleties of praise or blame. Whereas his anger had
+been fierce against his sister that she should love and marry the man
+who had flouted her, now it was turned wholly against himself for his
+injustice and ill-treatment of her. He racked himself with the memory
+of his surly words and looks; and those six shirts of fine linen,
+with the cunning needlework in band and bosom, seemed the veritable
+scriptural coals of fire on his head. Also good and simple reasons
+for his sister's course came to him as he lay there and influenced
+him still more. "She had it in her mind to kill him, though 'twas the
+other she struck," he said to himself; "'tis only fit that she should
+make amends to him for that and keep his house for him, and bake and
+brew and spin and weave for him."  Richard in the darkness nodded his
+head in agreement with his own argument, and yet he hated Burr as
+well as ever, and the next morning when he saw him stand beside his
+sister before Parson Fair, he clenched his slender brown hands until
+the sinews stood out, and his black eyes still flashed hostility at
+him. Yet when he looked at Madelon's face his own softened, and he
+set his mouth hard to keep back the quiver in it. Madelon wore not
+the silk of green and gold in which she had planned to be wedded to
+Lot; that she could not bring her mind to do, since the old wretched
+dreams and imaginations seemed to cling to the garment and desecrate
+it for this. She wore instead a sober gown of a satin sheen with the
+rich purplish-red hue of a plum, which set off the dark bloom of her
+face by suggestion rather than contrast; but all the boy Richard
+noted of her costume was his little gold pencil slung on the long
+gold chain around her neck.
+
+Madelon and Burr were married quite early in the morning, in the best
+room of the Hautville house, and nobody outside the two families was
+bidden to the wedding. After the marriage the bride tied on a
+white-muslin apron and passed cake and currant wine; and the great
+Hautvilles sitting in sober state around the room, Elvira Gordon in
+her black satin and pearls, pretty Dorothy, and Parson Fair partook.
+
+Then the bride went up to her chamber and put on a pelisse of stuff
+like her gown, lined with canary-colored satin, and a little cap of
+otter and a great muff which she had fashioned herself out of skins
+which her brothers had brought home, and took over her arm, since the
+day was frosty, a long tippet of otter which she could wind round her
+throat, if need be, and came down all equipped for her wedding-journey.
+
+In front of the Hautville house stood waiting a smart chaise with a
+fine young horse in the shafts, and the bride and groom came out and
+got in and drove away. But first, while Burr was gathering up the
+reins, David Hautville's hoarse voice through the open door besought
+him to wait, and presently the old man came striding forth with the
+skin of a mighty bear which he had slain single-handed years ago, and
+which had been his chiefest treasure next to his viol ever since,
+kept beside his bed, whence no one dared remove it. He flung it up
+into the chaise, and tucked it well in over his daughter's knees.
+"Oh, father, I will not take your bearskin!" Madelon cried, and the
+tears came into her eyes, for this touched her more than anything;
+and the memory of aught that she had ever lacked in tenderness
+towards them all seemed to smite her in the face.
+
+"'Tis a sharp day for the time of year, and there'll be a frost
+to-night," was all old David Hautville said, and strode back into the
+house, keeping his face well turned away.
+
+The horse that Burr drove was a young animal that he had purchased
+lately. It was of the stock of the Morgans, and stood with the
+faithfulness of a sentinel; but when the signal to start was given
+stepped out proudly as if to a battle charge, with eager tossings of
+heavy mane and high flings of knees and hoofs; and yet, when fairly
+on the road, never broke the swift precision of his course.
+
+"He's got a fine horse there," Abner Hautville said, in his emphatic
+bass, as he watched them out of sight; and he further declared that
+for his part he would be willing to trade the roan for him. Then the
+boy Richard turned upon him, with a cry that was something between a
+sob and an oath: "Yes, trade off the roan and all we've got left to
+him, I'll warrant ye will!" he choked out. Then he was gone, pelting
+off madly across the fields, with his bold and innocent young heart,
+that had as yet known no fiercer passion than this for his sister,
+all aflame with grief and angry jealousy, as of one who sees his best
+haled off before his eyes, and still with awed submission to a power
+which he recognizes and understands not.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX
+
+
+As Burr and Madelon, setting forth on their wedding-journey, drove
+down the village street, they met many whom they knew; and had it not
+been for their self-engrossment they could not have failed to notice
+and wonder at the cold greetings they received, and the many averted
+faces which greeted them not at all.
+
+Indeed, Burr did remark upon it when they met Daniel Plympton, who
+nodded with a surly air and turned his fat and pleasant countenance
+resolutely away, with a gesture that seemed to belie his own
+identity.
+
+"What's come across Dan'l?" he said, laughing, for at that time
+coldness from the outside world seemed but provocative of amusement.
+Then he sang out gayly to the Morgan horse, and they flew along the
+road, under the outreaching branches, red and gold and russet, past
+old landmarks and houses and more familiar faces which bore strange
+looks towards them, and yet surprised them not, for a strangeness was
+over all the old sights and ways for them both. To the bride and
+groom, riding through the village where they had been born and bred,
+and whence all their earthly imaginations had sprung, came an
+experience like a resurrection. They saw it all: the paths their feet
+had trodden, the doors they had entered, the friends they had known
+from childhood, but all seemed no longer the same, since their own
+conditions of life had changed; and change in one's self is the vital
+spring of change in all besides.
+
+As they rode along old associations lost their holds over them in
+their new world, which was the outcome of the old, and would in its
+turn wax old again. Burr looked at his own home, as he went by, as if
+he had never seen it; even his memory of himself and his childhood
+days was dim, and he and Madelon, glancing at Lot's windows and
+having his image forced, as it were, upon their consciousness,
+regarded it as they might have done an actor in some old drama of
+history in which they also had taken part, but which had long since
+passed off the stage.
+
+They left the house behind and were swiftly out of sight, over the
+crest of a long hill with a great spread of golden maple branches
+closing after them like a curtain, and neither of them dreamed in
+what straits Lot Gordon lay behind his vacant windows--and all
+through this love and bliss and paradise of theirs.
+
+The smart chaise and the Morgan horse had scarcely disappeared before
+Margaret Bean came hurriedly out of Lot Gordon's house and went
+rattling in her starched draperies towards the village; and soon
+after that the doctor was seen driving thither furiously in his
+tilting sulky, while windows were opened and spying heads thrust out
+all along his course.
+
+An hour later everybody knew that Lot Gordon, some said by a fall in
+climbing over a stone wall, some said by a severe fit of coughing,
+had caused his old wound to beset him again with danger of his life.
+That night, indeed, the tide of rancorous gossip swelled high. The
+spirit of persecution and righteous retribution which finds easy
+birth in New England villages was fast getting to itself feet and
+hands and tongue and a whole body of active powers.
+
+A stormy bridal night had Burr and Madelon known had they been at
+home; and had Lot Gordon died during the next three days, in which he
+lay in imminent danger, there had been fleet horses on the track of
+the swift Morgan, and the wedding-journey had come to a close.
+
+Yet the Hautville men heard nothing of the bitterness which was
+gathering towards Madelon and Burr, for people, fearing their fierce
+tempers, hesitated until the time was come to disclose it to them.
+Even old Luke Basset dared not carry news to them. The tongues were
+always hushed when one of them drew near; and as for Eugene, who,
+having a wife, might perhaps have discovered it, he and Dorothy took
+the stage coach for Boston the day after the marriage, and were
+paying a visit at Dorothy's aunt's there.
+
+After three days Lot Gordon was reported to be no longer hovering
+between life and death, and yet it was said on good authority,
+through the doctor's wife in fact, that he might at any time, by an
+injudicious step or a harder coughing-spell, end his life through the
+opening of that old wound, for which they held either Madelon or
+Burr, or perhaps both, accountable; and public indignation swelled
+higher and higher. It was resolved that when the bridal couple
+returned a constant espionage should be kept upon them, and in case
+of Lot's death active measures should be taken.
+
+"We ain't goin' to have a man murdered to death in our midst by no
+French and Injuns nowadays and let it slide," proclaimed a fiery
+spirit in the store one night. Then when the door opened and Abner
+Hautville, dark and warlike in his carriage as any fighting chief,
+appeared, the man asked ostentatiously for a "quart of m'lasses, and
+not so black and gritty as the last was nuther," transferring the
+rancor in his tone to an inoffensive object with Machiavellian
+policy.
+
+However, Margaret Bean's husband was in the store that night, and
+heard it all. He had been sent thither for a half-pound of ginger,
+and told not to linger; but linger he did, disposing his old bones
+with a stiff fling upon a handy half-barrel and listening to every
+word with a shrewd sense, for which no one would have given him
+credit, that he could by repetition and enlargement, if necessary,
+appease his wife's wrath at his delay. The workings of the human mind
+towards selfish ends even in the simplest organization have an art
+beyond all mechanism, and can astonish the wisest when revealed.
+
+Nobody who saw old man Bean pottering homeward that night, his back
+bent with age, yet moving with a childlike shuffle, carrying his
+parcel of ginger with tight clutch lest he drop it, like one whose
+weariness of body must make up for feebleness of mind, dreamed what a
+diplomat he was in his humble walk of life, and what an adept still
+in doubles and turns and twists and dodges towards his own petty
+ends.
+
+A sweeter morsel than any sugar old man Bean, overborne with a sense
+of naughtiness and disobedience, like a child, carried home to his
+wife to quiet her chiding tongue.
+
+Hardly had he entered the door when he heard afar the swift rattle of
+her starched skirts, like a very warning note of hostility, and cut
+in ahead of her reproaches with a triumphant manner.
+
+"Pretty doin's there's goin' to be," said he; "never was nothin' like
+it in this town. That's what I stayed for. Thought ye'd orter know."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Margaret Bean, staring.
+
+"Ye know what the doctor says about _him_?"  The old man jerked his
+head towards the door.
+
+Margaret nodded.
+
+"Well, they're goin' to have 'em both hung for murder the minute he
+draws his last breath."
+
+"Can't till they're tried," said Margaret, with a sniff of scorn at
+her husband's lack of legal knowledge.
+
+"Well, they're goin' to clap 'em into jail the minute they git home,
+an' keep 'em there till they can hang 'em," persisted old man Bean.
+
+"They ain't."
+
+"I tell ye they are!"
+
+Old man Bean had a cup of tea, plentifully sweetened with molasses,
+made from the ginger which he had purchased, and went to bed happy
+and peaceful, as one who has worked innocently and well his small
+powers to his own advantage; and soon after that Lot also heard the
+news which he had brought.
+
+Margaret Bean said to herself that it was her duty; and her duty, and
+a great devouring thirst of curiosity, overcame her natural fear of
+injuring the sick man.
+
+Lot Gordon was still in bed, but propped up on pillows, with a candle
+on the stand at his side, reading one of his leather-covered books.
+Margaret Bean shrank back when she had delivered herself of her news,
+for the flash in Lot's eyes was like lightning; and she waited in
+trembling certainty as for thunder.
+
+"I tell ye 'tis a lie!" cried Lot Gordon. "Do ye hear, 'tis a lie! Go
+yourself and tell them so from me. The wound has naught to do with
+this. It was naught but a scratch, for I had not courage enough to
+strike deep, much as I wanted to be quit of the world and the fools
+in it. Go you down to the store and tell the gossips that have no
+affairs of their own, and must needs pry on their neighbors so. Dare
+any one of them to turn knife on his own flesh for the first time and
+strike deeper! The next time I'll do better. Tell them so! The fools!
+Sodom and Gomorrah, and fire from Heaven for wickedness! Lord, why
+not fire from Heaven for damned foolishness, that does more harm to
+the world than the shattering of all the commandments into
+stone-dust!"
+
+"I felt that 'twas my duty to let you know, sir," stammered Margaret
+Bean, backing farther and farther away from him.
+
+"Tell the fools that I say, and I'll swear to it, and so will the
+doctor swear, that 'twas not the wound that has been my ailment, but
+my cursed lungs; but if 'twas 'twould be naught to them, for I struck
+the blow myself. I tell you that neither the one nor the other of
+them struck the blow--it was I. Do you hear? It was I!"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Margaret Bean, trembling, her eyes big, her white
+face elongated in her starched cap ruffles.
+
+"Go to bed!" said Lot, savagely, and the old woman scuttled out, glad
+to be gone.
+
+Never before had Lot addressed her so. "I believe he did do it
+himself," she told her husband next morning, for she could not wake
+him to intelligence that night; "he's jest ugly 'nough to."
+
+The next day at early dawn Lot's bell, which was kept on his stand
+beside the bed, in case he should be worse in the night and need
+assistance, tinkled sharply.
+
+"Send your husband after the doctor," Lot ordered, peremptorily, when
+Margaret answered it; and presently early risers saw old man Bean
+advancing in a rapid shuffle towards the doctor's, and soon the
+doctor himself whirled past, his back bent to the rapid motion of his
+gig. The report that Lot Gordon was worse went through the village
+like wildfire. A crowd collected in the store as soon as the shutters
+were down; there was a knot of men before the lawyer's office waiting
+for him to come; and several hot-headed young fellows pressed into
+the stable and urged upon Silas Beers that he should keep the old
+white racer in readiness for an emergency that day, and also several
+others which, if not as fleet, had good staying powers.
+
+When the doctor entered Lot Gordon's chamber Margaret Bean followed,
+tremblingly officious, in his wake, with a bowl and spoon in hand.
+
+"I want to see the doctor alone," said Lot; and the old woman
+retreated before his coldly imperious order. "Stay out in the
+kitchen," ordered Lot, further, "and don't come through the entry; I
+shall hear you if you do."
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Margaret Bean, and obeyed, nor dared listen at
+the door, as was her wont, so terrified was she lest Lot could indeed
+hear and had heard in times past.
+
+The doctor, redolent of herbs and drugs, set his medicine-chest on
+the floor, and advanced upon Lot, who waved him back with a
+half-laugh.
+
+"Lord, let's have none of that nonsense this morning," he said. "Sit
+down; I want to talk to you."
+
+The doctor was gray and unshaven and haggard as ever, from a midnight
+vigil, the crumbs of his hasty breakfast were on his waistcoat; his
+eyes were bright as steel under heavy, frowning brows.
+
+"Are ye worse? Has it come on again?" he demanded.
+
+"No; sit down."
+
+The doctor snatched up his medicine-chest with a surly exclamation.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked Lot.
+
+"Back to my breakfast. I'll not be called out for nothing by you or
+any other man after I've been out all night. If you want a gossip,
+get the parson; he's got time enough on his hands. A man don't have
+to work so many hours a day saving souls as he does saving bodies."
+
+Lot laughed. "And neither souls nor bodies saved by either of you,
+after all," said he, "for the Lord saves the one, if he has so
+ordained it; and as for the other, your nostrums only work so long as
+death does not choose to come."
+
+"Have it your own way; save your own soul and your own body, as ye
+please, for all me," said the doctor, who was adjudged capable when
+crossed of being surly to a dying man; and he made for the door.
+
+"For God's sake stop," cried Lot, "and come back here and listen! I
+did not call you for nothing. The lives and deaths of more than one
+are at stake; come back here!"
+
+The doctor clamped his medicine-chest hard on the floor. "Be quick
+about it, then," said he, and sat down in a chair at Lot's bedside.
+
+Lot fumbled under his pillow and produced a folded paper which he
+handed to the doctor. "I want you to sign this," said he.
+
+The doctor scowled over the paper, got out his iron-bowed spectacles,
+adjusted them, and read aloud:
+
+"I, Justinus Emmons, practising doctor of medicine, do hereby declare
+that the death of Lot Gordon of Ware Centre will, when it takes
+place, be due to phthisis, and phthisis alone, and not in any degree,
+however small, to the wound inflicted by himself some months since.
+And, furthermore, I declare that his death will follow from the
+natural progress of the disease of phthisis, which has not in any
+respect been accelerated by his self-inflicted wound."
+
+"You want me to sign this, do you?" said the doctor.
+
+"I will call in Margaret Bean and her husband for witnesses," said
+Lot.
+
+"You think I am going to sign this?"
+
+"I want it in addition to the certificate of the cause of death which
+you will have to make out after my decease. 'Tis an unnecessary
+formality, but I would have it so," Lot returned.
+
+The doctor dashed the paper on the bed. "If you think I am going to
+subscribe to a lie for you, or any other man, you're mistaken," he
+cried. "It was enough for me to hold my tongue when you made that
+fool statement of yours that wouldn't have deceived a man with the
+brains of an ox."
+
+"My death will be due to phthisis; my left lung is almost consumed,
+and you know it," affirmed Lot.
+
+"And I tell you," said the doctor, stoutly, "that your death from
+phthisis might not have occurred for ten years to come. Does a tree
+die because half its boughs are gone? When you die, you die of that
+wound. The evil was greater than I thought at the time. It takes less
+to kill a diseased man than a sound one."
+
+"Then my death will be due to my disease and not to my wound, if it
+would not have killed a sound man," cried Lot, eagerly.
+
+"I tell you, your death will be due to that wound that Madelon
+Hautville, with maybe your cousin at her back, gave you."
+
+Lot's face glared white at the doctor. "I gave the wound to myself!"
+
+The doctor laughed.
+
+"I tell you, I gave the wound myself!"
+
+"Take your wound into court, and see what they say."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I'll give any man who will stab himself in just the same place, with
+the knife held in just the same way, every dollar I have in the
+world."
+
+"You can't prove it."
+
+"I can prove it."
+
+"I can do away with your proof," said Lot, in a strange voice. The
+doctor looked at him sharply.
+
+"Then you will not sign this paper?" Lot said, presently.
+
+"No, I will not; and I tell you, once for all, when you die I make
+out my certificate as it should be."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By a wound from a knife or other sharp instrument, inflicted by a
+person or persons unknown."
+
+Lot's face, towards the doctor, looked as if death had already struck
+it; but he spoke firmly. "How long will it be, first?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Approximate."
+
+"A false step may do it."
+
+"I can lie still!"
+
+"A coughing-spell may do it."
+
+"I will not cough!"
+
+"More than that, a thought may do it, if it stirs your heart too
+much. I tell you as I should want to be told myself: your life hangs
+by a thread."
+
+"Sometimes a thread does not break," Lot said, with a meditative
+light in his eyes.
+
+"That's true enough."
+
+"This may not."
+
+"True enough."
+
+"How long will you give it to last, before you sign this paper?"
+
+"A year."
+
+"Then you will sign this if I live a year from to-day?"
+
+"No, I will not sign it, for you may have another stab on New-year's
+day, if you seem likely to live so long," said the doctor, shortly;
+"but I will promise you not to make out your certificate of death
+from this wound."
+
+"How great a chance of life have I?" Lot asked, hoarsely, after a
+minute's pause.
+
+"Small."
+
+"Yet there is one?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The doctor opened his chest, and began selecting some bottles.
+
+"I want no more of your nostrums," said Lot.
+
+"Very well," said the doctor, replacing the bottles. "I would not
+make out that certificate sooner than necessary--that is all."
+
+"Dose death and go to the root of the matter," said Lot. "Then you
+won't sign this paper?"
+
+"No," replied the doctor, with a great emphasis of negation.
+
+"There is one thing you will do," said he.
+
+"What?" asked the doctor, suspiciously.
+
+"If I die within a year, to your truest belief, from any other cause
+than this wound now in my side you will say so."
+
+"Of course I will do that," replied the doctor, staring at him.
+
+"And you will in such a case let this wound drop into oblivion, you
+will hold your peace concerning it, 'forever after?'"
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+"Swear to it?"
+
+"I swear. But what in--"
+
+Lot smiled. "Some time, when you have leisure, write a treatise on
+'Who killed the man?'" he said, as if to turn the subject, "and keep
+going back to first causes. You'll find startling results; you may
+decide that 'twas your duty to sign the paper."
+
+"I have no time for treatises," returned the doctor, gruffly.
+
+"You may trace the killing back to yourself."
+
+"I'm not afraid of it. Good-day."
+
+"Shake hands with me, doctor," pleaded Lot, with a curious change of
+tone, "to show you bear no grudge for the breakfast you lost."
+
+The doctor stared a second, then went up to him with extended hand,
+looking at him seriously. He thought Lot's illness had begun to
+affect his mind.
+
+"Keep yourself quiet, and you may outlive the best of us," he said,
+soothingly, as if to a child or a woman, shook Lot's lean hand
+kindly, repeated his good-day, and was gone.
+
+Lot waited until he heard the outer door close. Then he tinkled his
+bell for Margaret Bean. "When are they coming home?" he asked,
+shortly, when she stood beside him.
+
+"His mother said she was expectin' of 'em Saturday."
+
+"Get my clothes out of the closet, will you," said Lot.
+
+"You ain't a-goin' to get up?"
+
+"Yes, I'm better; get the clothes."
+
+When Margaret Bean had laid the clothes out ready for him, and was
+gone, Lot laid still a moment, reflecting, with his eyes on the
+ceiling. He wished to cough, but with an effort he checked it,
+gasping once or twice. "Saturday," he said, aloud. "To-day is
+Wednesday--three days. Can I wait?"  He paused; then as if answering
+another self, he said, "No; I could die a thousand deaths in that
+time. I can't wait."
+
+Lot Gordon got up, moving by inches, with infinite care and pains,
+dressed himself, crawled out of his bedroom into his library, which
+was adjoining, and sat down at his desk. Margaret Bean came timidly
+to the door, and inquired if he did not want some breakfast. She had
+to repeat her query three times, he was writing so busily, and then
+he answered her "no" as if his thoughts were elsewhere. The old woman
+hungrily eyed the paper upon which he was scribbling, and went away
+with lingering backward glances.
+
+Lot Gordon, bending painfully over his desk, using his quill pen,
+with wary motions of hand and wrist alone, that he might not jar his
+wounded side, wrote a letter to the bride upon her wedding-journey.
+
+"Madelon," wrote Lot, "I pray you to pardon what I have done, and
+what I am about to do. The danger of blood-guiltiness and death have
+I brought upon you, and I now save you in the only way I know. I pray
+you, when you read this, and know what I have done, that you think of
+me with what charity you may, and that the love which caused the deed
+may be its saving grace."
+
+Lot sat looking at what he had written for a moment, then tore it up,
+and wrote again:
+
+"Madelon,--Alive I claimed nothing, dead I claim your memory, for the
+sake of the love for which I died."
+
+And, after a moment, tore up that also.
+
+And then he wrote again, with quivering lips, yet breathing
+guardedly:
+
+"Madelon,--The love that was set betwixt man and woman that the race
+might not die is one love, but there is another. That have I found
+and found through you, and bless you for it, though death be needful
+to its keeping. There is another birth than that of the flesh,
+through this so great love, which can upon itself beget immortality
+of love unto the understanding of all which is above. A greater end
+of love than the life of worlds there is, which is love itself. That
+end have I attained through this great love in my own soul which you
+have shown me, else should I have never known it there, and died so,
+having lived to myself alone, and been no true lover.
+
+   "Lot Gordon."
+
+And hesitated, reading it over; but at length tore that into shreds,
+and wrote yet again:
+
+"Dear Child,--I pray you when I am gone that you wear the pretty
+gowns and the trinkets which I offered you once, for I would fain
+give you for your happiness more than my poor life."
+
+Tears of self-pity fell from Lot's eyes as he wrote the last; then he
+laughed scornfully at himself, and tore that up. "Self dies hard,"
+said he.
+
+He wrote no more to Madelon, but now to Burr:
+
+"Dear Cousin," he wrote, "I have this day discovered that my life is
+in imminent danger from the wound. If my death comes in that wise
+there will be trouble. I take the only way to save her, but I pray
+you, upon your honor, that you do not let her know, for even your
+love cannot sweeten her life fully for her if she knows; for love has
+taught me the heart of this woman. To you alone, for the sake of the
+honor of our blood, which has never been shed by our own hands
+before, I disclose this; for I would be set right in the eyes of one
+man when I am dead."
+
+Lot Gordon pondered long over that; but finally tore up that as he
+had torn the others, and gathered up all the fragments and crawled
+across the room with them, and threw them on the hearthfire.
+
+Then, leaving them blazing there, he returned to his desk, and wrote:
+
+"_To all whom it may concern, or to all whom in their own estimation
+it may concern, this:_
+
+"I, Lot Gordon, of Ware Centre, being weary of life, which is a
+dream, have resolved to force the waking. Having once before
+attempted in vain to take my life, I now attempt it again, and this
+time not in vain, for my hand has grown skilful with practice. I take
+my life because of no wrong done me by man or woman, nor because of
+any vain love; I take it solely because my days upon this earth being
+numbered through my distress of the lungs, I have not the courage to
+see death approach by inches, and prefer to meet him at one bound. I
+have lived unto myself, with no man accountable, and I die unto
+myself, with no man accountable; and this is the truth with my last
+breath.
+
+   "Lot Gordon."
+
+This last Lot folded neatly and addressed it "To my fellow-townsmen,"
+and laid it in a conspicuous place on his desk, and then wrote on
+another sheet and put that in his pocket. Then he opened a drawer of
+the desk, and took out all the trinkets which he had offered Madelon,
+in their pretty cases, and with them in his hands crept out of the
+room, and up-stairs, into the chamber which he had caused to be
+decked out so newly and grandly when he had thought to marry her.
+There was a great carven chest in a corner of the room, which Lot
+unlocked, and took from thence all those rich fabrics which he had
+bought for Madelon. And then he laid them all--the silken stuffs and
+plumes and fine linens and jewels--out on the great bed, under the
+grand canopy, and placed on the top the sheet of paper on which he
+had last written, "For Madelon Gordon."
+
+Margaret Bean had listened when Lot climbed the stairs. She heard him
+when he came down again, entered his library, and shut the door. She
+waited a long time. For some reason which she did not herself know
+she felt cold with terror. She would not let her husband leave her
+alone in the kitchen for a moment. At last, when it was nearly noon,
+she bade him keep close at her heels, and went to the library door
+and knocked, and when no answer came, knocked again and again and
+again, louder and louder and louder. Then she made her husband open
+the door, with fierce urgings, and peered around his shoulder into
+the room. Then she gave one great shriek, and caught the old man by
+the arm with a frantic clutch, and was out of the house with him and
+screaming up the street.
+
+Saturday morning Burr and Madelon came riding into the village. As
+they passed up the street everybody whom they met saluted them with a
+manner which had in it something respectful, apologetic, and solemn.
+The lovers felt no wonder at such return of cordiality, seeing in
+everything but reflections of their own moods, and knew not what it
+meant until they reached home.
+
+Then Elvira Gordon, meeting them at the door, told them that Lot was
+dead by his own hand, by a knife-thrust which crossed the old wound
+in his side; and she dwelt upon the reason for his deed: that he had
+been slowly dying from the disease of his lungs, and had not the
+courage to die by inches, which reason now all the town believed,
+since the doctor had said no word in contradiction, and never would,
+being mindful of his oath.
+
+Madelon listened, white and still, saying not a word; and she said
+nothing when, up in their chamber, whither she went to take off her
+bonnet, Burr, who had followed, took her in his arms, and they stood
+together, looking at each other and trembling. Knowing not, and never
+to know, the whole which he had done for them, they yet knew enough.
+Suddenly, in the light of their own love another greater showed
+revealed; and each exalted the image of Lot Gordon above the other,
+and was acquaint with the spirit of what he had written and kept
+back; for love that so outspeeds self and death needs no speech nor
+written sign to prove its being.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Madelon, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
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