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<title>A Chilhowee Lily | Project Gutenberg</title>
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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 23554 ***</div>
<div style="height: 8em;">
<br ><br ><br ><br ><br ><br ><br ><br >
</div>
<h1>
A CHILHOWEE LILY
</h1>
<h2>
By Charles Egbert Craddock <br > <br > 1911
</h2>
<p>
<br ><br > <br >
</p>
<p>
Tall, delicate, and stately, with all the finished symmetry and
distinction that might appertain to a cultivated plant, yet sharing that
fragility of texture and peculiar suggestion of evanescence characteristic
of the unheeded weed as it flowers, the Chilhowee lily caught his eye.
Albeit long familiar, the bloom was now invested with a special
significance and the sight of it brought him to a sudden pause.
</p>
<p>
The cluster grew in a niche on the rocky verge of a precipice beetling
over the windings of the rugged primitive road on the slope of the ridge.
The great pure white bloom, trumpet-shaped and crowned with its flaring
and many-cleft paracorolla, distinct against the densely blue sky, seemed
the more ethereal because of the delicacy of its stalk, so erect, so
inflexibly upright. About it the rocks were at intervals green with moss,
and showed here and there heavy ocherous water stain. The luxuriant ferns
and pendant vines in the densely umbrageous tangle of verdure served to
heighten by contrast the keen whiteness of the flower and the isolation of
its situation.
</p>
<p>
Ozias Crann sighed with perplexity as he looked, and then his eye wandered
down the great hosky slope of the wooded mountain where in marshy spots,
here and there, a sudden white flare in the shadows betokened the
Chilhowee lily, flowering in myraids, holding out lures bewildering in
their multitude.
</p>
<p>
“They air bloomin' bodaciously all over the mounting,” he remarked
rancorously, as he leaned heavily on a pickaxe; “but we uns hed better try
it ter-night ennyhows.”
</p>
<p>
It was late in August; a moon of exceeding lustre was in the sky, while
still the sun was going down. All the western clouds were aflare with
gorgeous reflections; the long reaches of the Great Smoky range had grown
densely purple; and those dim Cumberland heights that, viewed from this
precipice of Chilhowee, were wont to show so softly blue in the distance,
had now a variant amethystine hue, hard and translucent of effect as the
jewel itself.
</p>
<p>
The face of one of his companions expressed an adverse doubt, as he, too,
gazed at the illuminated wilderness, all solitary, silent, remote.
</p>
<p>
“'Pears like ter me it mought be powerful public,” Pete Swolford objected.
He had a tall, heavy, lumpish, frame, a lackluster eye, a broad, dimpled,
babyish face incongruously decorated with a tuft of dark beard at the
chin. The suit of brown jeans which he wore bore token variously of the
storms it had weathered, and his coarse cowhide boots were drawn over the
trousers to the knee. His attention was now and again diverted from the
conversation by the necessity of aiding a young bear, which he led by a
chain, to repel the unwelcome demonstrations of two hounds belonging to
one of his interlocutors. Snuffling and nosing about in an affectation of
curiosity the dogs could not forbear growling outright, as their muzzles
approached their shrinking hereditary enemy, while the cub nestled close
to his master and whimpered like a child.
</p>
<p>
“Jes' so, jes' so, Honey. I'll make 'em cl'ar out!” Swofford replied to
the animal's appeal with ready sympathy. Then, “I wish ter Gawd, Eufe,
ye'd call yer dogs off,” he added in a sort of aside to the youngest of
the three mountaineers, who stood among the already reddening sumac
fringing the road, beside his horse, athwart which lay a buck all gray and
antlered, his recently cut throat still dripping blood. The party had been
here long enough for it to collect in a tiny pool in a crevice in the
rocky road, and the hounds constrained to cease their harassments of the
bear now began to eagerly lap it up. The rifle with which Eufe Kinnicutt
had killed the deer was still in his hands and he leaned upon it; he was a
tall, finely formed, athletic young fellow with dark hair, keen, darkly
greenish eyes, full of quickly glancing lights, and as he, too, scanned
the sky, his attitude of mind also seemed dissuasive.
</p>
<p>
“'Pears like thar won't be no night, ez ye mought call night, till this
moon goes down,” he suggested. “'Pears nigh ez bright ez day!”
</p>
<p>
Ozias Crann's lank, angular frame; his narrow, bony face; his nose, long
yet not large, sharp, pinched; his light grey eyes, set very closely
together; his straggling reddish beard, all were fitting concomitants to
accent the degree of caustic contempt he expressed. “Oh, to be sure!” he
drawled. “It'll be powerful public up hyar in the mounting in the
midnight,—that's a fac'!—an' moonlight is mighty inconvenient
to them ez wants ter git spied on through totin' a lantern in cur'ous
places.”
</p>
<p>
This sarcasm left the two remonstrants out of countenance. Pete Swofford
found a certain resource in the agitations of his bear, once more
shrinking and protesting because of the dogs. “Call off yer hound-dogs,
Rufe,” he cried irritably, “or I'll gin 'em a bullet ter swallow.”
</p>
<p>
“Ye air a plumb fool about that thar bar, Pete,” Kinnicutt said sourly,
calling off the hounds nevertheless.
</p>
<p>
“That thar bar?” exclaimed Swofford. “Why, thar never war sech a bar! That
thar bar goes ter mill, an' kin fetch home grist,—ef I starts him
out in the woods whar he won't meet no dogs nor contrairy cattle o' men he
kin go ter mill all by his lone!—same ez folks an' the bes' kind o'
folks, too!”
</p>
<p>
In fact the bear was even now begirt with a meal-bag, well filled, which
although adding to his uncouth appearance and perhaps unduly afflicting
the sensibilities of the horse, who snorted and reared at the sight of
him, saved his master the labor of “packing” the heavy weight.
</p>
<p>
Swofford had his genial instincts and in return was willing to put up with
the cubbishness of the transport,—would wait in the illimitable
patience of the utterly idle for the bear to climb a tree if he liked and
pleasantly share with him the persimmons of his quest;—would never
interfere when the bear flung himself down and wallowed with the bag on
his back, and would reply to the censorious at home, objecting to the dust
and sand thus sifting in with the meal, with the time honored reminder
that we are all destined “to eat a peck of dirt” in this world.
</p>
<p>
“Whenst ye fust spoke o' digging” said Kinnicutt, interrupting a
lengthening account of the bear's mental and moral graces, “I 'lowed ez ye
mought be sayin' ez they air layin' off ter work agin in the Tanglefoot
Mine.”
</p>
<p>
Ozias Crann lifted a scornful chin. “I reckon the last disasters thar hev
interrupted the company so ez they hain't got much heart todes diggin' fur
silver agin over in Tanglefoot Cove. Fust,” he checked off these
misfortunes, by laying the fingers of one hand successively in the palm of
the other, “the timbers o' one o' the cross cuts fell an' the roof caved
in an' them two men war kilt, an' thar famblies sued the company an' got
mo' damages 'n the men war bodaciously wuth. Then the nex' thing the pay
agent, ez war sent from Glaston, war held up in Tanglefoot an' robbed—some
say by the miners. He got hyar whenst they war out on a strike, an' they
robbed him 'cause they warn't paid cordin' ter thar lights, an' they <i>did</i>
shoot him up cornsider'ble. That happened jes' about a year ago. Then
sence, thar hev been a awful cavin' in that deep shaft they hed sunk in
the tunnel, an' the mine war flooded an' the machinery ruint—I
reckon the company in Glaston ain 't a-layin' off ter fly in the face o'
Providence and begin agin, arter all them leadin's ter quit.”
</p>
<p>
“Some believe he warh't robbed at all,” Kinnicutt said slowly. He had
turned listlessly away, evidently meditating departure, his hand on his
horse's mane, one foot in the stirrup.
</p>
<p>
“Ye know that gal named Loralindy Byars?” Crann said craftily.
</p>
<p>
Kinnicutt paused abruptly. Then as the schemer remained silent he
demanded, frowning darkly, “What's Loralindy Byars got ter do with it?”
</p>
<p>
“Mighty nigh all!” Crann exclaimed, triumphantly.
</p>
<p>
It was a moment of tense suspense. But it was not Crann's policy to
tantalize him further, however much the process might address itself to
his peculiar interpretation of pleasure. “That thar pay agent o' the
mining company,” he explained, “he hed some sort'n comical name—oh,
I remember now, Renfrow—Paul Renfrow—waal—ye know he war
shot in the knee when the miners way-laid him.”
</p>
<p>
“I disremember now ef it war in the knee or the thigh,” Swofford
interposed, heavily pondering.
</p>
<p>
Kinnicutt's brow contracted angrily, and Crann broke into open wrath: “an'
I ain't carin', ye fool—what d' ye interrupt fur like that?”
</p>
<p>
“Wall,” protested Swofford, indignantly, “ye said 'ye know' an' I didn't
<i>know</i>.”
</p>
<p>
“An' I ain't carin'—the main p'int war that he could neither ride
nor walk. So the critter crawled! Nobody knows how he gin the strikers the
slip, but he got through ter old man Byars's house. An' thar he staid till
Loralindy an' the old 'oman Byars nussed him up so ez he could bear the
pain o' bein' moved. An' he got old man Byars ter wagin him down ter
Colb'ry, a-layin' on two feather beds 'count o' the rocky roads, an' thar
he got on the steam kyars an' he rid on them back ter whar he kem from.”
</p>
<p>
Kinnicutt seemed unable to longer restrain his impatience. He advanced a
pace. “Ye appear ter 'low ez ye air tellin' news—I knowed all that
whenst it happened a full year ago!”
</p>
<p>
“I reckon ye know, too, ez Loralindy hed no eyes nor ears fur ennybody
else whilst he war hyar—but then <i>he war</i> good-lookin' an'
saaft-spoken fur true! An' now he hev writ a letter ter her!”
</p>
<p>
Crann grinned as Kinnicutt inadvertently gasped. “How do you uns know
that!” the young man hoarsely demanded, with a challenging accent of
doubt, yet prescient despair.
</p>
<p>
“'Kase, bubby, that's the way the story 'bout the lily got out. I was at
the mill this actial day. The miller hed got the letter—hevin' been
ter the post-office at the Crossroads—an' he read it ter her, bein'
ez Loralindy can't read writin'. She warn't expectin' it. He writ of his
own accord.”
</p>
<p>
A sense of shadows impended vaguely over all the illuminated world, and
now and again a flicker of wings through the upper atmosphere betokened
the flight of homing birds. Crann gazed about him absently while he
permitted the statement he had made to sink deep into the jealous,
shrinking heart of the young mountaineer, and he repeated it as he
resumed.
</p>
<p>
“She warn't expectin' of the letter. She jes' stood thar by the mill-door
straight an' slim an' white an' still, like she always be—ter my
mind like she war some sort'n sperit, stiddier a sure enough gal—with
her yaller hair slick an' plain, an' that old, faded, green cotton dress
she mos' always wears, an' lookin' quiet out at the water o' the mill-dam
ter one side, with the trees a-wavin' behind her at the open door—jes'
like she always be! An' arter awhile she speaks slow an' saaft an axes the
miller ter read it aloud ter her. An' lo! old man Bates war rej'iced an'
glorified ter the bone ter be able ter git a peek inter that letter! He
jes' shet down the gates and stopped the mill from runnin' in a jiffy, an'
tole all them loafers, ez hangs round thar mosly, ter quit thar noise. An'
then he propped hisself up on a pile o' grist, an' thar he read all the
sayin's ez war writ in that letter. An' a power o' time it tuk, an' a
power o' spellin' an' bodaciously wrastlin' with the alphabit.”
</p>
<p>
He laughed lazily, as he turned his quid of tobacco in his mouth,
recollecting the turbulence of these linguistic turmoils.
</p>
<p>
“This hyar feller—this Renfrow—he called her in the letter 'My
dear friend'—he did—an' lowed he hed a right ter the word, fur
ef ever a man war befriended he hed been. He lowed ez he could never
fur-get her. An' Lord! how it tickled old man Bates ter read them
sentiments—the pride-ful old peacock! He would jes' stop an' push
his spectacles back on his slick bald head an' say, 'Ye hear me,
Loralindy! he 'lows he'll never furget the keer ye tuk o' him whenst he
war shot an' ailin' an' nigh ter death. An' no mo' he ought, nuther. But
some do furget sech ez that, Loralindy—some do!'”
</p>
<p>
An' them fellers at the mill, listenin' ter the letter, could sca'cely git
thar consent ter wait fur old man Bates ter git through his talk ter
Loralindy, that he kin talk ter every day in the year! But arter awhile he
settled his spectacles agin, an' tuk another tussle with the spellin,' an'
then he rips out the main p'int o' the letter. “This stranger-man he
'lowed he war bold enough ter ax another favior. The cuss tried ter be
funny. 'One good turn desarves another,' he said. 'An' ez ye hev done me
one good turn, I want ye ter do me another.' An' old man Bates hed the
insurance ter waste the time a-laffin' an' a-laffin' at sech a good joke.
Them fellers at the mill could hev fund it in thar hearts ter grind him up
in his own hopper, ef it wouldn't hev ground up with him thar chance o'
ever hearin' the end o' that thar interestin' letter. So thar comes the
favior. Would she dig up that box he treasured from whar he told her he
hed buried it, arter he escaped from the attack o' the miners? An' would
she take the box ter Colb'ry in her grandad's wagin, an' send it ter him
by express. He hed tole her once whar he hed placed it—an' ter mark
the spot mo' percisely he hed noticed one Chilhowee lily bulb right beside
it. An' then says the letter, 'Good bye, Chilhowee Lily!' An' all them
fellers stood staring.”
</p>
<p>
A light wind was under way from the west Delicate flakes of red and
glistening white were detached from the clouds. Sails—sails were
unfurling in the vast floods of the skies. With flaunting banners and
swelling canvas a splendid fleet reached half way to the zenith. But a
more multitudinous shipping still swung at anchor low in the west, though
the promise of a fair night as yet held fast.
</p>
<p>
“An' now,” said Ozias Crann in conclusion, “all them fellers is
a-diggin'.”
</p>
<p>
“Whut's in the box!” demanded Swof-ford, his big baby-face all in a pucker
of doubt.
</p>
<p>
“The gold an' silver he ought ter hev paid the miners, of course. They
always 'lowed they never tuk a dollar off him; they jes' got a long range
shot at him! How I wish,” Ozias Crann broke off fervently, “how I wish I
could jes' git my hands on that money once!” He held out his hands, long
and sinewy, and opened and shut them very fast.
</p>
<p>
“Why, that would be stealin'!” exclaimed Kinnicutt with repulsion.
</p>
<p>
“How so? 't ain't his'n now, sure—he war jes' the agent ter pay it
out,” argued Crann, volubly.
</p>
<p>
“It belongs ter the mine owners, then—the company.” There was a
suggestion of inquiry in the younger man's tone.
</p>
<p>
“'Pears not—they sent it hyar fur the percise purpose ter be paid
out!” the specious Crann replied.
</p>
<p>
“Then it belongs ter the miners.”
</p>
<p>
“They hedn't yearned it—an' ef some o' them hed they warn't thar ter
receive it, bein' out on a strike. They hed burnt down the company's
office over yander at the mine in Tanglefoot Cove, with all the books an'
accounts, an' now nobody knows what's owin' ter who.”
</p>
<p>
Kinnicutt's moral protests were silenced, not satisfied. He looked up
moodily at the moon now alone in the sky, for only a vanishing segment of
the great vermilion sphere of the sun was visible above the western
mountains, when suddenly he felt one of those long grasping claws on his
arm. “Now, Rufe, bubby,” a most insinuating tone, Crann had summoned, “all
them fool fellers air diggin' up the face of the yearth, wharever they kin
find a Chilhowee lily—like sarchin' fur a needle in a haystack. But
we uns will do a better thing than that. I drawed the idee ez soon ez I
seen you an' Pete hyar this evenin' so onexpected. 'Them's my pardners,' I
sez ter myself. 'Pete ter holp dig an' tote ef the box be heavy. An' you
ter find out edzac'ly whar it be hid.' You uns an' Loralindy hev been
keepin' company right smart, an' ye kin toll Loralindy along till she lets
slip jes' whar that lily air growin'. I'll be bound ez she likes ye a
sight better 'n that Renfrow—leastwise ef 't warn't fur his letter,
honeyin' her up with complimints, an' she hevin' the chance o' tollin' him
on through doin' him sech faviors, savin' his life, an' now his money—shucks
it's mo' <i>our</i> money 'n his'n; 't ain 't his 'n! Gol-darn the
insurance o' this Renfrow! His idee is ter keep the money his own self,
an' make her sen' it ter him. Then 'Good-bye, Chilhowee Lily!'”
</p>
<p>
The night had come at last, albeit almost as bright as day, but with so
ethereal, so chastened a splendor that naught of day seemed real. A world
of dreams it was, of gracious illusions, of far vague distances that lured
with fair promises that the eye might not seek to measure. The gorgeous
tints were gone, and in their stead were soft grays and indefinite
blurring browns, and every suggestion of silver that metal can show
flashed in variant glitter in the moon. The mountains were majestically
sombre, with a mysterious sense of awe in their great height There were
few stars; only here and there the intense lustre of a still planet might
withstand the annihilating magnificence of the moon.
</p>
<p>
Its glamour did not disdain the embellishment of humbler objects. As Rufe
Kinnicutt approached a little log cabin nestling in a sheltered cove he
realized that a year had gone by since Renfrow had seen it first, and that
thus it must have appeared when he beheld it. The dew was bright on the
slanting roof, and the shadow of oak trees wavered over it. The mountain
loomed above. The zigzag lines of the rail fence, the bee-gums all awry
ranged against it, the rickety barn and fowl-house, the gourd vines
draping the porch of the dwelling, all had a glimmer of dew and a
picturesque symmetry, while the spinning wheel as Loralinda sat in the
white effulgent glow seemed to revolve with flashes of light in lieu of
spokes, and the thread she drew forth was as silver. Its murmuring rune
was hardly distinguishable from the chant of the cicada or the long
droning in strophe and antistrophe of the waterside frogs far away, but
such was the whir or her absorption that she did not perceive his approach
till his shadow fell athwart the threshold, and she looked up with a
start.
</p>
<p>
“Ye 'pear powerful busy a-workin' hyar so late in the night,” he exclaimed
with a jocose intonation.
</p>
<p>
She smiled, a trifle abashed; then evidently conscious of the bizarre
suggestions of so much ill-timed industry, she explained, softly drawling:
“Waal, ye know, Granny, she be so harried with her rheumatics ez she gits
along powerful poor with her wheel, an' by night she be plumb out'n heart
an' mad fur true. So arter she goes ter bed I jes' spins a passel fur her,
an' nex' mornin' she 'lows she done a toler'ble stint o' work an' air
consider'ble s'prised ez she war so easy put out.”
</p>
<p>
She laughed a little, but he did not respond. With his sensibilities all
jarred by the perfidious insinuation of Ozias Crann, and his jealousy all
on the alert, he noted and resented the fact that at first her attention
had come back reluctantly to him, and that he, standing before her, had
been for a moment a less definitely realized presence than the thought in
her mind—this thought had naught to do with him, and of that he was
sure.
</p>
<p>
“Loralindy,” he said with a turbulent impulse of rage and grief; “whenst
ye promised to marry me ye an' me war agreed that we would never hev one
thought hid from one another—ain't that a true word!”
</p>
<p>
The wheel had stopped suddenly—the silver thread was broken; she was
looking up at him, the moonlight full on the straight delicate lineaments
of her pale face, and the smooth glister of her golden hair. “Not o' my
own,” she stipulated. And he remembered, and wondered that it should come
to him so late, that she had stood upon this reservation and that he—poor
fool—had conceded it, thinking it concerned the distilling of whisky
in defiance of the revenue law, in which some of her relatives were
suspected to be engaged, and of which he wished to know as little as
possible.
</p>
<p>
The discovery of his fatuity was not of soothing effect. “'T war that man
Renfrew's secret—I hearn about his letter what war read down ter the
mill.”
</p>
<p>
She nodded acquiescently, her expression once more abstracted, her
thoughts far afield.
</p>
<p>
He had one moment of triumph as he brought himself tensely erect,
shouldering his gun—his shadow behind him in the moonlight
duplicated the gesture with a sharp promptness as at a word of command.
</p>
<p>
“All the mounting's a-diggin' by this time!” He laughed with ready scorn,
then experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling. Her face had changed. Her
expression was unfamiliar. She had caught together the two ends of the
broken thread, and was knotting them with a steady hand, and a look of
composed security on her face, that was itself a flout to the inopportune
search of the mountaineers and boded ill to his hope to discover from her
the secret of the <i>cache</i>. He recovered himself suddenly.
</p>
<p>
“Ye 'lowed ter me ez ye never keered nuthin' fur that man, Renfrow,” he
said with a plaintive appeal, far more powerful with her than scorn.
</p>
<p>
She looked up at him with candid reassuring eyes. “I never keered none fur
him,” she protested. “He kem hyar all shot up, with the miners an'
mounting boys hot foot arter him—an' we done what we could fur him.
Gran'daddy 'lowed ez <i>he</i> warn't 'spon-sible fur whut the owners
done, or hedn't done at the mine, an' he seen no sense in shootin' one man
ter git even with another.”
</p>
<p>
“But ye kep' his secret!” Kinnicutt persisted.
</p>
<p>
“What fur should I tell it—'t ain't mine?”
</p>
<p>
“That thar money in that box he buried ain't <i>his'n</i>, nuther!” he
argued.
</p>
<p>
There was an inscrutable look in her clear eyes. She had risen, and was
standing in the moonlight opposite him. The shadows of the vines falling
over her straight skirt left her face and hair the fairer in the silver
glister.
</p>
<p>
“'Pears like ter me,” he broke the silence with his plaintive cadence, “ez
ye ought ter hev tole me. I ain't keerin' ter know 'ceptin' ye hev shet me
out. It hev hurt my feelin's powerful ter be treated that-a-way. Tell me
now—or lemme go forever!”
</p>
<p>
She was suddenly trembling from head to foot. Pale she was always. Now she
was ghastly. “Rufe Kinnicutt,” she said with the solemnity of an
adjuration, “ye don't keer fur sech ez this, fur <i>nuthin</i>'. An' I
promised!”
</p>
<p>
He noted her agitation. He felt the clue in his grasp. He sought to wield
his power, “Choose a-twixt us! Choose a-twixt the promise ye made ter that
man—or the word ye deny ter me! An' when I'm gone—I'm gone!”
</p>
<p>
She stood seemingly irresolute.
</p>
<p>
“It's nuthin' ter me,” he protested once more. “I kin keep it an' gyard it
ez well ez you uns. But I won't be shet out, an' doubted, an' denied, like
ez ef <i>I</i> wan't fitten ter be trested with nuthin'!”
</p>
<p>
He stood a moment longer, watching her trembling agitation, and feeling
that tingling exasperation that might have preceded a blow.
</p>
<p>
“I'm goin',” he threatened.
</p>
<p>
As she still stood motionless he turned away as if to make good his
threat. He heard a vague stir among the leaves, and turning back he saw
that the porch was vacant.
</p>
<p>
He had overshot the mark. In swift repentance he retraced his steps. He
called her name. No response save the echoes. The house dogs, roused to a
fresh excitement, were gathering about the door, barking in affected
alarm, save one, to whom Kinnicutt was a stranger, that came, silent and
ominous, dragging a block and chain from under the house. Kinnicutt heard
the sudden drowsy plaints of the old rheumatic grandmother, as she was
rudely awakened by the clamors, and presently a heavy footfall smote upon
the puncheons that floored the porch. Old Byars himself, with his cracked
voice and long gray hair, had left his pipe on the mantel-piece to
investigate the disorder without.
</p>
<p>
“Hy're Rufe!” he swung uneasily posed on his crutch stick in the doorway,
and mechanically shaded his eyes with one hand, as from the sun, as he
gazed dubiously at the young man, “hain't ye in an' about finished yer
visit t—or yer visitation, ez the pa'son calls it He, he, he! Wall,
Loralindy hev gone up steers ter the roof-room, an' it's about time ter
bar up the doors. Waal, joy go with ye, he, he, he! Come off, Tige, <i>ye</i>
Bose, hyar! Cur'ous I can't 'larn them dogs no manners.”
</p>
<p>
A dreary morrow ensued on the splendid night. The world was ful of mists;
the clouds were resolved into drizzling rain; every perspective of
expectation was restricted by the limited purlieus of the present. The
treasure-seekers digging here and there throughout the forest in every
nook in low ground, wherever a drift of the snowy blossoms might glimmer,
began to lose hope and faith. Now and again some iconoclastic soul sought
to stigmatize the whole rumor as a fable. More than one visited the Byars
cabin in the desperate hope that some chance word might fall from the
girl, giving a clue to the mystery.
</p>
<p>
By daylight the dreary little hut had no longer poetic or picturesque
suggestion. Bereft of the sheen and shimmer of the moonlight its aspect
had collapsed like a dream into the dullest realities. The door-yard was
muddy and littered; here the razor-back hogs rooted unrebuked; the rail
fence had fallen on one side, and it would seem that only their attachment
to home prevented them from wandering forth to be lost in the wilderness;
the clap-boards of the shiny roof were oozing and steaming with dampness,
and showed all awry and uneven; the clay and stick chimney, hopelessly ont
of plumb, leaned far from the wall.
</p>
<p>
Within it was not more cheerful; the fire smoked gustily into the dim
little room, illumined only by the flicker of the blaze and the
discouraged daylight from the open door, for the batten shutters of the
unglazed window were closed. The puncheon floor was grimy—the feet
that curiosity had led hither brought much red clay mire upon them. The
poultry, all wet and dispirited, ventured within and stood about the door,
now scuttling in sudden panic and with peevish squawks upon the unexpected
approach of a heavy foot. Loralinda, sitting at her spinning wheel, was
paler than ever, all her dearest illusions dashed into hopeless fragments,
and a promise which she did not value to one whom she did not love quite
perfect and intact.
</p>
<p>
The venerable grandmother sat propped with pillows in her arm-chair, and
now and again adjured the girl to “show some manners an' tell the
neighbors what they so honed to know.” With the vehemence of her
insistence her small wizened face would suddenly contract; the tortures of
the rheumatism, particularly rife in such weather, would seize upon her,
and she would cry aloud with anguish, and clutch her stick and smite her
granddaughter to expedite the search for the primitive remedies of dried
“yarbs” on which her comfort depended.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, Lord!” she would wail as she fell back among the pillows. “I'm
a-losin' all my religion amongst these hyar rheumatics. I wish I war a man
jes' ter say 'damn 'em' once! An' come good weather I'll sca'cely be able
ter look Loralindy in the face, considering how I hector her whilst I be
in the grip o' this misery.”
</p>
<p>
“Jes' pound away, Granny, ef it makes ye feel ennywise better,” cried
Loralinda, furtively rubbing the weales on her arm. “It don't hurt me wuth
talkin' 'bout. Ye jes' pound away, an' welcome!”
</p>
<p>
Perhaps it was her slender, elastic strength and erect grace, with her
shining hair and ethereal calm pallor in the midst of the storm that
evoked the comparison, for Ozias Crann was suddenly reminded of the happy
similitude suggested by the letter that he had heard read and had repeated
yesterday to his cronies as he stood in the road. The place was before him
for one illumined moment—the niche in the cliff, with its ferns and
vines, the delicate stately dignity of the lilies outlined against the
intense blue of the sky.
</p>
<p>
The reminiscence struck him like a discovery. Where else could the flower
have been so naturally noticed by this man, a stranger, and remembered as
a mark in the expectation of finding it once more when the bulb should
flower again—as beside the county road? He would have been
hopelessly lost a furlong from the path.
</p>
<p>
Crann stood for a moment irresolute, then silently grasped his pickaxe and
slunk out among the mists on the porch.
</p>
<p>
He berated his slow mind as he hurried invisible through the vast clouds
in which the world seemed lost. Why should the laggard inspiration come so
late if it had come at all? Why should he, with the clue lying half
developed in his own mental impressions, have lost all the vacant hours of
the long, bright night, have given the rumor time to pervade the
mountains, and set all the idlers astir before he should strike the
decisive blow!
</p>
<p>
There, at last, was the cliff, beetling far over the mist-filled valley
below. A slant of sunshine fell on the surging vapor, and it gleamed
opalescent. There was the niche, with the lilies all a-bloom. He came
panting up the slope under the dripping trees, with a dash of wind in his
face and the odor of damp leafage and mold on the freshening air.
</p>
<p>
He struck the decisive blow with a will. The lilies shivered and fell
apart The echoes multiplied the stroke with a ringing metallic iteration.
</p>
<p>
The loiterers were indeed abroad. The sound lured them from their own
devious points of search, and a half dozen of the treasure-seekers burst
from the invisibilities of the mists as Ozias Crann's pickaxe cleaving the
mold struck upon the edge of a small japanned box hidden securely between
the rocks, a scant foot below the surface. A dangerous spot for a
struggle, the verge of a precipice, but the greed for gain is a passion
that blunts the sense of peril. The wrestling figures, heedless of the
abyss, swayed hither and thither, the precious box among them; now it was
captured by a stronger grasp, now secured anew by sheer sleight-of-hand.
More than once it dropped to the ground, and at last in falling the lock
gave way, and scattered to the wind were numberless orderly vouchers for
money already paid, inventories of fixtures, bills for repairs, reports of
departments—various details of value in settling the accounts of the
mine, and therefore to be transmitted to the main office of the mining
company at Glaston. “Ef I hed tole ye ez the money warn't thar, ye
wouldn't hev believed me,” Lora-linda Byars said drearily, when certain
disappointed wights, who had sought elsewhere and far a-field, repaired to
the cabin laughing at their own plight and upbraiding her with the paucity
of the <i>cache</i>. “I knowed all the time what war in that box. The man
lef' it thar in the niche arter he war shot, it bem' heavy ter tote an'
not wuth much. But he brung the money with him, an' tuk it off, bein', he
said, without orders from the owners, the miners hevin' burnt down the
offices, an' bruk open the safe an' destroyed all the papers, ceptin' that
leetle box. I sewed up the man's money myself in them feather beds what he
lay on whenst he war wagined down 'ter Colb'ry ter take the kyars. He
'lowed the compn'y mought want them papers whenst they went into
liquidation, ez he called it, an' tole me how he hed hid 'em.”
</p>
<p>
Rufe Kinnicutt wondered that she should have been so unyielding. She did
not speculate on the significance of her promise. She did not appraise its
relative value with other interests, and seek to qualify it. Once given
she simply kept it. She held herself no free agent. It was not hers.
</p>
<p>
The discovery that the lure was gold revealed the incentive of her lover's
jealous demand to share the custody of the secret. His intention was
substituted for the deed in her rigid interpretation of integrity. It cost
her many tears. But she seemed thereafter to him still more unyielding, as
erect, fragile, ethereally pure and pale she noted his passing no more
than the lily might. He often thought of the cheap lure of the sophisms
that had so deluded him, the simple obvious significance of the letter,
and the phrase, “Goodbye, Chilhowee Lily,” had also an echo of finality
for him.
</p>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 23554 ***</div>
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