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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+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: The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge
+       1895
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Illustrator: A. B. Frost
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2007 [EBook #23630]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE
+
+By Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+1895
+
+
+Across the narrow gorge the little foot-bridge stretched-a brace of
+logs, the upper surface hewn, and a slight hand-rail formed of a cedar
+pole. A flimsy structure, one might think, looking down at the dark and
+rocky depths beneath, through which flowed the mountain stream, swift
+and strong, but it was doubtless substantial enough for all ordinary
+usage, and certainly sufficient for the imponderable and elusive
+travellers who by common report frequented it.
+
+“We ain’t likely ter meet nobody. Few folks kem this way nowadays,
+‘thout it air jes’ ter ford the creek down along hyar a piece, sence
+harnts an’ sech onlikely critters hev been viewed a-crossin’ the
+foot-bredge. An’ it hev got the name o’ bein’ toler’ble onlucky, too,”
+ said Roxby.
+
+His interlocutor drew back slightly. He had his own reasons to recoil
+from the subject of death. For him it was invested with a more immediate
+terror than is usual to many of the living, with that flattering
+persuasion of immortality in every strong pulsation repudiating all
+possibility of cessation. Then, lifting his gloomy, long-lashed eyes to
+the bridge far up the stream, he asked, “Whose ‘harms?”
+
+His voice had a low, repressed cadence, as of one who speaks seldom,
+grave, even melancholy, and little indicative of the averse interest
+that had kindled in his sombre eyes. In comparison the drawl of the
+mountaineer, who had found him heavy company by the way, seemed imbued
+with an abnormal vivacity, and keyed a tone or two higher than was its
+wont.
+
+“Thar ain’t a few,” he replied, with a sudden glow of the pride of the
+cicerone. “Thar’s a graveyard t’other side o’ the gorge, an’ not more
+than a haffen-mile off, an’ a cornsider’ble passel o’ folks hev
+been buried thar off an’ on, an’ the foot-bredge ain’t in nowise
+ill-convenient ter them.”
+
+Thus demonstrating the spectral resources of the locality, he rode his
+horse well into the stream as he spoke, and dropped the reins that the
+animal’s impatient lips might reach the water. He sat fac-, ing the
+foot-bridge, flecked with the alternate shifting of the sunshine and the
+shadows of the tremulous firs that grew on either side of the high
+banks on the ever-ascending slope, thus arching both above and below
+the haunted bridge. His companion had joined him in the centre of
+the stream; but while the horses drank, the stranger’s eyes were
+persistently bent on the concentric circles of the water that the
+movement of the animals had set astir in the current, as if he feared
+that too close or curious a gaze might discern some pilgrim, whom he
+cared not to see, traversing that shadowy quivering foot-bridge. He
+was mounted on a strong, handsome chestnut, as marked a contrast to his
+guide’s lank and trace-galled sorrel as were the two riders. A slender
+gloved hand had fallen with the reins to the pommel of the saddle. His
+soft felt hat, like a sombrero, shadowed his clear-cut face. He was
+carefully shaven, save for a long drooping dark mustache and imperial.
+His suit of dark cloth was much concealed by a black cloak, one end of
+which thrown back across his shoulder showed a bright blue lining, the
+color giving a sudden heightening touch to his attire, as if he were “in
+costume.” It was a fleeting fashion of the day, but it added a certain
+picturesqueness to a horseman, and seemed far enough from the times
+that produced the square-tailed frock-coat which the mountaineer wore,
+constructed of brown jeans, the skirts of which stood stiffly out on
+each side of the saddle, and gave him, with his broad-brimmed hat, a
+certain Quakerish aspect.
+
+“I dun’no’ why folks be so ‘feared of ‘em,” Rox-by remarked,
+speculatively. “The dead ain’t so oncommon, nohow. Them ez hev been
+in the war, like you an’ me done, oughter be in an’ ‘bout used ter
+corpses-though I never seen none o’ ‘em afoot agin. Lookin’ at a smit
+field o’ battle, arter the rage is jes’ passed, oughter gin a body a
+realizin’ sense how easy the sperit kin flee, an’ what pore vessels fur
+holdin’ the spark o’ life human clay be.”
+
+Simeon Roxby had a keen, not unkindly face, and he had that look of
+extreme intelligence which is entirely distinct from intellectuality,
+and which one sometimes sees in a minor degree in a very clever dog or a
+fine horse. One might rely on him to understand instinctively everything
+one might say to him, even in its subtler aesthetic values, although he
+had consciously learned little. He was of the endowed natures to whom
+much is given, rather than of those who are set to acquire. He had
+many lines in his face-even his simple life had gone hard with him, its
+sorrows un assuaged by its simplicity. His hair was grizzled, and hung
+long and straight on his collar. He wore a grizzled beard cut broad and
+short. His boots had big spurs, although the lank old sorrel had never
+felt them. He sat his horse like the cavalryman he had been for four
+years of hard riding and raiding, but his face had a certain gentleness
+that accented the Quaker-like suggestion of his garb, a look of
+communing with the higher things.
+
+“I never blamed ‘em,’” he went on, evidently reverting to the spectres
+of the bridge-“I never blamed ‘em for comin’ back wunst in a while. It
+‘pears ter me ‘twould take me a long time ter git familiar with heaven,
+an’ sociable with them ez hev gone before. An’, my Lord, jes’ think what
+the good green yearth is! Leastwise the mountings. I ain’t settin’ store
+on the valley lands I seen whenst I went ter the wars. I kin remember
+yit what them streets in the valley towns smelt like.”
+
+He lifted his head, drawing a long breath to inhale the exquisite
+fragrance of the fir, the freshness of the pellucid water, the aroma of
+the autumn wind, blowing through the sere leaves still clinging red and
+yellow to the boughs of the forest.
+
+“Naw, I ain’t blamin’ ‘em, though I don’t hanker ter view ‘em,” he
+resumed. “One of ‘em I wouldn’t be afeard of, though. I feel mighty
+sorry fur her. The old folks used ter tell about her. A young ‘oman she
+war, a-crossin’ this bredge with her child in her arms. She war young,
+an’ mus’ have been keerless, I reckon; though ez ‘twar her fust baby,
+she moightn’t hev been practised in holdin’ it an’ sech, an’ somehows
+it slipped through her arms an’ fell inter the ruver, an’ war killed in
+a minit, dashin’ agin the rocks. She jes’ stood fur a second a-screamin’
+like a wild painter, an’ jumped off’n the bredge arter it. She got it
+agin; for when they dragged her body out’n the ruver she hed it in her
+arms too tight fur even death ter onloose. An’ thar they air together in
+the buryin’-ground.”
+
+He gave a nod toward the slope of the mountain that intercepted the
+melancholy view of the graveyard.
+
+“Got it yit!” he continued; “bekase” (he lowered his voice) “on windy
+nights, whenst the moon is on the wane, she is viewed kerryin’ the baby
+along the bredge--kerryin’ it clear over, _safe an’ sound_, like she
+thought she oughter done, I reckon, in that one minute, whilst she stood
+an’ screamed an’ surveyed what she hed done. That child would hev been
+nigh ter my age ef he hed lived.”
+
+Only the sunbeams wavered athwart the bridge now as the firs swayed
+above, giving glimpses of the sky, and their fibrous shadows flickered
+back and forth. The wild mountain stream flashed white between the brown
+bowlders, and plunged down the gorge in a succession of cascades, each
+seeming more transparently green and amber and brown than the other. The
+chestnut horse gazed meditatively at these limpid out-gushings, having
+drunk his fill; then thought better of his moderation, and once more
+thrust his head down to the water. The hand of his rider, which had
+made a motion to gather up the reins, dropped leniently on his neck, as
+Simeon Roxby spoke again:
+
+“Several--several others hev been viewed, actin’ accordin’ ter thar
+motions in life. Now thar war a peddler--some say he slipped one icy
+evenin’, ‘bout dusk in winter--some say evil ones waylaid him fur his
+gear an’ his goods in his pack, but the settlemint mostly believes
+he war alone whenst he fell. His pack ‘pears ter be full still, they
+say--but ye air ‘bleeged ter know he hev hed ter set that pack down fur
+good ‘fore this time. We kin take nuthin’ out’n this world, no matter
+what kind o’ a line o’ goods we kerry in life. Heaven’s no place fur
+tradin’, I understan’, an’ I _do_ wonder sometimes how in the worl’ them
+merchants an’ sech in the valley towns air goin’ ter entertain tharse’fs
+in the happy land o’ Canaan. It’s goin’ ter be sorter bleak fur them,
+sure’s ye air born.”
+
+With a look of freshened recollection, he suddenly drew a plug of
+tobacco from his pocket, and he talked on even as he gnawed a piece from
+it.
+
+“Durin’ the war a cavalry-man got shot out hyar whilst runnin’ ‘crost
+that thar foot-bredge. Thar hed been a scrimmage an’ his horse war kilt,
+an’ he tuk ter the bresh on foot, hopin’ ter hide in the laurel. But ez
+he war crossin’ the foot-bredge some o’ the pursuin’ party war fordin’
+the ruver over thar, an’ thinkin’ he’d make out ter escape they fired
+on him, jes’ ez the feller tried ter surrender. He turned this way an’
+flung up both arms--but thar’s mighty leetle truce in a pistol-ball.
+That minute it tuk him right through the brain. Seems toler’ble long
+range fur a pistol, don’t it? He kin be viewed now most enny moonlight
+night out hyar on the foot-bredge, throwin’ up both hands in sign of
+surrender.”
+
+The wild-geese were a-wing on the way southward. Looking up to that
+narrow section of the blue sky which the incision of the gorge into
+the very depths of the woods made visible, he could see the tiny files
+deploying along the azure or the flecking cirrus, and hear the vague
+clangor of their leader’s cry. He lifted his head to mechanically follow
+their flight. Then, as his eyes came back to earth, they rested again on
+the old bridge.
+
+“Strange enough,” he said, suddenly, “the sker-riest tale I hev ever
+hearn ‘bout that thar old bredge is one that my niece set a-goin’. She
+_seen_ the harnt _herself_, an’ it shakes me wuss ‘n the idee o’ all the
+rest.”
+
+His companion’s gloomy gaze was lifted for a moment with an expression
+of inquiry from the slowly widening circles of the water about the
+horse’s head as he drank. But Roxby’s eyes, with a certain gleam of
+excitement, a superstitious dilation, still dwelt upon the bridge at
+the end of the upward vista. He went on merely from the impetus of the
+subject. “Yes, sir--she _seen_ it a-pacin’ of its sorrowful way acrost
+that bredge, same ez the t’others of the percession o’ harnts. ‘Twar
+my niece, Mill’cent--brother’s darter--by name, Mill’cent Roxby. Waal,
+Mill’cent an’ a lot o’ young fools o’ her age--little over fryin’
+size--they ‘tended camp-meetin’ down hyar on Tomahawk Creek--‘tain’t
+so long ago--along with the old folks. An’ ‘bout twenty went huddled up
+tergether in a road-wagin. An’, lo! the wagin it bruk down on the way
+home, an’ what with proppin’ it up on a crotch, they made out ter reach
+the cross-roads over yander at the Notch, an’ thar the sober old folks
+called a halt, an’ hed the wagin mended at the blacksmith-shop. Waal, it
+tuk some two hours, fur Pete Rodd ain’t a-goin’ ter hurry hisself--in my
+opinion the angel Gabriel will hev ter blow his bugle oftener’n wunst
+at the last day ‘fore Pete Rodd makes up his mind ter rise from the
+dead an’ answer the roll-call--an’ this hyar young lot sorter found it
+tiresome waitin’ on thar elders’ solemn company. The old folks, whilst
+waitin’, set outside on the porches of the houses at the settlemint,
+an’ repeated some o’ the sermons they hed hearn at camp, an’ more’n one
+raised a hyme chune. An’ the young fry--they hed hed a steady diet o’
+sermons an’ hyme chunes fur fower days--they tuk ter stragglin’ off
+down the road, two an’ two, like the same sorter id jits the world over,
+leavin’ word with the old folks that the wagin would overtake ‘em an’
+pick ‘em up on the road when it passed. Waal, they walked several mile,
+an’ time they got ter the crest o’ the hill over yander the moon hed
+riz, an’ they could look down an’ see the mist in the valley. The
+moon war bright in the buryin’-groun’ when they passed it, an’ the
+head-boards stood up white an’ stiff, an’ a light frost hed fell on the
+mounds, an’ they showed plain, an’ shone sorter lonesome an’ cold.
+The young folks begun ter look behind em’ fur the wagin. Some said--I
+b’lieve ‘twar Em’ry Keen an--they could read the names on the boards
+plain, ‘twar so light, the moon bein’ nigh the full: but Em’ry never
+read nuthin’ at night by the moon in his life; he ain’t enny too capable
+o’ wrastlin’ with the alphabet with a strong daytime on his book ter
+light him ter knowledge. An’ the shadows war black an’ still, an’ all
+the yearth looked ez ef nuthin’ lived nor ever would agin, an’ they
+hearn a wolf howl. Waal, that disaccommodated the gals mightily, an’
+they hed a heap more interes’ in that old wagin, all smellin’ rank with
+wagin-grease an’ tar, than they did in thar lovyers; an’ they hed ruther
+hev hearn that old botch of a wheel that Pete Rodd hed set onto it com
+in’ a-creakin’ an’ a-com-plainin’ along the road than the sweetest words
+them boys war able ter make up or remember. So they stood thar in the
+road--a-stare-gazin’ them head-boards, like they expected every grave
+ter open an’ the reveilly ter sound--a-waitin’ ter be overtook by the
+wagin, a-listenin’, but hearin’ nuthin’ in the silence o’ the frost--not
+a dead leaf a-twirlin’, nor a frozen blade o’ grass astir. An’ then
+two or three o’ the gals ‘lowed they hed ruther walk back ter meet the
+wagin, an’ whenst the boys ‘lowed ter go on--nuthin’ war likely ter
+ketch ‘em--one of ‘em bust out a-cryin’. Waal, thar war the eend o’ that
+much! So the gay party set out on the back track, a-keepin’ step
+ter sobs an’ sniffles, an’ that’s how kem _they_ seen no harnt. But
+Mill’-cent an’ three or four o’ the t’others ‘lowed they’d go on. They
+warn’t two mile from home, an’ full five from the cross-roads. So Em’ry
+Keenan--he hev been waitin’ on her sence the year one--so he put his
+skeer in his pocket an’ kem along with her, a-shakin’ in his shoes, I’ll
+be bound! So down the hill in the frosty moonlight them few kem--purty
+nigh beat out, I reckon, Mill’cent war, what with the sermonizin’ an’
+the hyme-singin’ an’ hevin’ ter look continual at the sheep’s-eyes o’
+Em’ry Keenan--he wears my patience ter the bone! So she concluded ter
+take the short-cut. An’ Em’ry he agreed. So they tuk the lead, the rest
+a following an’ kem down thar through all that black growth”--he lifted
+his arm and pointed at the great slope, dense with fir and pine and the
+heavy underbrush--“keepin’ the bridle-path--easy enough even at night,
+fur the bresh is so thick they couldn’t lose thar way. But the moonlight
+war mightily slivered up, fallin’ through the needles of the pines an’
+the skeins of dead vines, an’ looked bleached and onnatural, an’ holped
+the dark mighty leetle. An’ they seen the water a-shinin’ an’ a-plungin’
+down the gorge, an’ the glistenin’ of the frost on the floor o’ the
+bredge. Thar war a few icicles on the hand-rail, an’ the branches o’ the
+firs hung ez still ez death; only that cold, racin’, shoutin’, jouncin’
+water moved. Jes ez they got toler’ble nigh the foot-bredge a sudden
+cloud kem over the face o’ the sky. Thar warn’t no wind on the yearth,
+but up above the air war a-stirrin’. An’ Em’ry he ‘lowed Mill’cent
+shouldn’t cross the foot-bredge whilst the light warn’t clar--I wonder
+the critter hed that much sense! An’ she jes’ drapped down on that rock
+thar ter rest”--he pointed up the slope to a great fragment that had
+broken off from the ledges and lay near the bank: the bulk of the mass
+was overgrown with moss and lichen, but the jagged edges of the recent
+fracture gleamed white and crystalline among the brown and olive-green
+shadows about it. A tree was close beside it. “Agin that thar pine trunk
+Em’ry he stood an’ leaned. The rest war behind, a-comin’ down the
+hill. An’ all of a suddenty a light fell on the furder eend o’
+the foot-bredge--a waverin’ light, mighty white an’ misty in the
+darksomeness. Mill’cent ‘lowed ez fust she thunk it war the moon. An’
+lookin’ up, she seen the cloud; it held the moon close kivered. An’
+lookin’ down, she seen the light war movin’--movin’ from the furder eend
+o’ the bredge, straight acrost it. Sometimes a hand war held afore it,
+ez ef ter shield it from the draught, an’ then Mill’cent ‘seen twar a
+candle, an’ the white in the mistiness war a ‘oman wearin’ white an’
+carryn’ it.
+
+[Illustration: The Phantom of the Foot-bridge 025]
+
+Lookin’ ter right an’ then ter lef the ‘oman kem, with now her right
+hand shieldin’ the candle she held, an’ now layin’ it on the hand-rail.
+The candle shone on the water, fur it didn’t flare, an’ when the ‘oman
+held her hand before it the light made a bright spot on the foot-bredge
+an’ in the dark air about her, an’ on the fir branches over her head.
+An’ a thin mist seemed to hang about her white frock, but not over her
+face, fur when she reached the middle o’ the foot-bredge she laid her
+hand agin on the rail, an’ in the clear light o’ the candle Mill’cent
+seen the harnt’s face. An’ thar she beheld her own face; _her own
+face_ she looked upon ez she waited thar under the tree watchin’ the
+foot-bredge; _her own face_ pale an’ troubled; her own self dressed in
+white, crossin’ the foot-bredge, an’ lightin’ her steps with a corpse’s
+candle.” He drew up the reins abruptly. He seemed in sudden haste to go.
+His companion looked with deepening interest at the bridge, although he
+followed his guide’s surging pathway to the opposite bank. As the two
+dripping horses struggled up the steep incline he asked, “Did the man
+with her see the manifestation also?”
+
+“He _‘lows_ he did,” responded Roxby, equivocally. “But when Mill’cent
+fust got so she could tell it, ‘peared ter me ez Em’ry Keen an fund it
+ez much news ez the rest o’ we-uns. Mill’cent jes’ drapped stone-dead,
+accordin’ ter all accounts, an’ he an’ the t’other young folks flung
+water in her face till she kem out’n her faint; an’ jes’ then they hearn
+the wagin a-rattlin’ along the road, an’ they stopped it an’ fetched her
+home in it. She never told the tale till she war home, an’ it skeered
+me an’ my mother powerful, fur Mill’cent is all the kin we hev got.
+Mill’cent is gran’daddy an’ gran’mam-my, sons an’ daughters, uncles an’
+aunts, cousins, nieces, an’ nephews, all in one. The only thing I ain’t
+pervided with is a nephew-in-law, an’ I don’t need him. Leastwise I
+ain’t lookin’ fur Em’ry Keenan jes’ at present.”
+
+The pace was brisker when the two horses, bending their strength
+sturdily to the task, had pressed up the massive slope from the deep
+cleft of the gorge. As the road curved about the outer verge of the
+mountain, the valley far beneath came into view, with intersecting
+valleys and transverse ranges, dense with the growths of primeval
+wildernesses, and rugged with the tilted strata of great upheavals, and
+with chasms cut in the solid rock by centuries of erosion, traces
+of some remote cataclysmal period, registering thus its throes and
+turmoils. The blue sky, seen beyond a gaunt profile of one of the
+farther summits that defined its craggy serrated edge against the
+ultimate distances of the western heavens, seemed of a singularly suave
+tint, incongruous with the savagery of the scene, which clouds and
+portents of storm might better have befitted. The little graveyard,
+which John Dundas discerned with recognizing eyes, albeit they had never
+before rested upon it, was revealed suddenly, lying high on the opposite
+side of the gorge. No frost glimmered now on the lowly mounds; the
+flickering autumnal sunshine loitered unafraid among them, according
+to its languid wont for many a year. Shadows of the gray un-painted
+head-boards lay on the withered grass, brown and crisp, with never
+a cicada left to break the deathlike silence. A tuft of red leaves,
+vagrant in the wind, had been caught on one of the primitive monuments,
+and swayed there with a decorative effect. The enclosure seemed, to
+unaccustomed eyes, of small compass, and few the denizens who had found
+shelter here and a resting-place, but it numbered all the dead of the
+country-side for many a mile and many a year, and somehow the loneliness
+was assuaged to a degree by the reflection that they had known each
+other in life, unlike the great herds of cities, and that it was a
+common fate which the neighbors, huddled together, encountered in
+company.
+
+It had no discordant effect in the pervasive sense of gloom, of mighty
+antagonistic forces with which the scene was replete; it fostered a
+realization of the pitiable minuteness and helplessness of human nature
+in the midst of the vastness of inanimate nature and the evidences of
+infinite lengths of forgotten time, of the long reaches of unimagined
+history, eventful, fateful, which the landscape at once suggested and
+revealed and concealed.
+
+Like the sudden flippant clatter of castanets in the pause of some
+solemn funeral music was the impression given by the first glimpse along
+the winding woodland way of a great flimsy white building, with its
+many pillars, its piazzas, its “observatory,” its band-stand, its garish
+intimations of the giddy, gay world of a summer hotel. But, alack! it,
+too, had its surfeit of woe.
+
+“The guerrillas an’ bushwhackers tuk it out on the old hotel, sure!”
+ observed Sim Roxby, by way of introduction. “Thar warn’t much fightin’
+hyar-abouts, an’ few sure-enough soldiers ever kem along. But wunst in a
+while a band o’ guerrillas went through like a suddint wind-storm, an’
+I tell ye they made things whurl while they war about it. They made a
+sorter barracks o’ the old place. Looks some like lightning hed struck
+it.”
+
+He had reined up his horse about one hundred yards in front of the
+edifice, where the weed-grown gravelled drive--carefully tended ten
+years agone--had diverged from the straight avenue of poplars, sweeping
+in a circle around to the broad flight of steps.
+
+“Though,” he qualified abruptly, as if a sudden thought had struck
+him, “ef ye air countin’ on buyin’ it, a leetle money spent ter keerful
+purpose will go a long way toward makin’ it ez good ez new.”
+
+His companion did not reply, and for the first time Roxby cast upon him
+a covert glance charged with the curiosity which would have been earlier
+and more easily aroused in another man by the manner of the stranger. A
+letter--infrequent missive in his experience--had come from an ancient
+companion-in-arms, his former colonel, requesting him in behalf of a
+friend of the old commander to repair to the railway station, thirty
+miles distant, to meet and guide this prospective purchaser of the old
+hotel to the site of the property. And now as Roxby looked at him the
+suspicion which his kind heart had not been quick to entertain was
+seized upon by his alert brain.
+
+“The cunnel’s been fooled somehows,” he said to himself.
+
+For the look with which John Dundas contemplated the place was not the
+gaze of him concerned with possible investment--with the problems of
+repair, the details of the glazier and the painter and the plasterer.
+The mind was evidently neither braced for resistance nor resigned to
+despair, as behooves one smitten by the foreknowledge of the certainty
+of the excess of the expenditures over the estimates. Only with pensive,
+listless melancholy, void of any intention, his eyes traversed the
+long rows of open doors, riven by rude hands from their locks, swinging
+helplessly to and fro in the wind, and giving to the deserted and
+desolate old place a spurious air of motion and life. Many of the
+shutters had been wrenched from their hinges, and lay rotting on the
+floors. The ball-room windows caught on their shattered glass the
+reflection of the clouds, and it seemed as if here and there a wan face
+looked through at the riders wending along the weed-grown path. Where so
+many faces had been what wonder that a similitude should linger in the
+loneliness! The pallid face seemed to draw back as they glanced up while
+slowly pacing around the drive. A rabbit sitting motionless on the front
+piazza did not draw back, although observing them with sedate eyes as
+he poised himself upright on his haunches, with his listless fore-paws
+suspended in the air, and it occurred to Dundas that he was probably
+unfamiliar with the presence of human beings, and had never heard the
+crack of a gun. A great swirl of swallows came soaring out of the big
+kitchen chimneys and circled in the sky, darting down again and again
+upward. Through an open passage was a glimpse of a quadrangle, with its
+weed-grown spaces and litter of yellow leaves. A tawny streak, a red
+fox, sped through it as Dundas looked. A half-moon, all a-tilt, hung
+above it. He saw the glimmer through the bare boughs of the leafless
+locust-trees here and there still standing, although outside on the lawn
+many a stump bore token how ruthlessly the bushwhackers had furnished
+their fires.
+
+“That thar moon’s a-hangin’ fur rain,” said the mountaineer, commenting
+upon the aspect of the luminary, which he, too, had noticed as they
+passed. “I ain’t s’prised none ef we hev fallin’ weather agin ‘fore
+day, an’ the man--by name Morgan Holden--that hev charge o’ the hotel
+property can’t git back fur a week an’ better.”
+
+A vague wonder to find himself so suspicious flitted through his mind,
+with the thought that perhaps the colonel might have reckoned on this
+delay. “Surely the ruvers down yander at Knoxville mus’ be a-boomin’,
+with all this wet weather,” he said to himself.
+
+Then aloud: “Morgan Holden he went ter Col-bury ter ‘tend ter some
+business in court, an’ the ruvers hev riz so that, what with the bredges
+bein’ washed away an’ the fords so onsartain an’ tricky, he’ll stay till
+the ruver falls. He don’t know ye war kemin’, ye see. The mail-rider hev
+quit, ‘count o’ the rise in the ruver, an’ thar’s no way ter git word
+ter him. Still, ef ye air minded ter wait, I’ll be powerful obligated
+fur yer comp’ny down ter my house till the ruver falls an’ Holden he
+gits back.”
+
+The stranger murmured his obligations, but his eyes dwelt lingeringly
+upon the old hotel, with its flapping doors and its shattered windows.
+Through the recurrent vistas of these, placed opposite in the rooms,
+came again broken glimpses of the grassy space within the quadrangle,
+with its leafless locust-trees, first of all to yield their foliage to
+the autumn wind, where a tiny owl was shrilling stridulously under the
+lonely red sky and the melancholy moon.
+
+“Hed ye ‘lowed ter, put up at the old hotel?” asked Roxby, some inherent
+quickness supplying the lack of a definite answer.
+
+For the first time the stranger turned upon him a look more expressive
+than the casual fragmentary attention with which he had half heeded,
+half ignored his talk since their first encounter at the railway
+station.
+
+“A simple fellow, but good as gold,” was the phrase with which Simeon
+Roxby had been commended as guide and in some sort guard.
+
+“Not so simple, perhaps,” the sophisticated man thought as their eyes
+met. Not so simple but that the truth must serve. “The colonel suggested
+that it might be best,” he replied, more alert to the present moment
+than his languid preoccupation had heretofore permitted.
+
+The answer was good as far as it went. A few days spent in the old
+hostelry certainly would serve well to acquaint the prospective
+purchaser with its actual condition and the measures and means needed
+for its repair; but as Sim Roxby stood there, with the cry of the owl
+shrilling in the desert air, the lonely red sky, the ominous tilted
+moon, the doors drearily flapping to and fro as the wind stole into the
+forlorn and empty place and sped back affrighted, he marvelled at the
+refuge contemplated.
+
+“I believe there is some of the furniture here yet. We could contrive to
+set up a bed from what is left. The colonel could make it all right with
+Holden, and I could stay a day or two, as we originally planned.”
+
+“Ye-es. I don’t mind Holden: a man ain’t much in charge of a place ez
+ain’t got a lock or a key ter bless itself with, an’ takes the owel an’
+the fox an’ the gopher fur boarders; but, ennyhow, kem with me home ter
+supper. Mill’cent will hev it ready by now ennyhows, an’ ye need suthin’
+hearty an’ hot ter stiffen ye up ter move inter sech quarters ez these.”
+ Dundas hesitated, but the mountaineer had already taken assent for
+granted, and pushed his horse into a sharp trot. Evidently a refusal was
+not in order. Dundas pressed forward, and they rode together along the
+winding way past the ten-pin alley, its long low roof half hidden in the
+encroaching undergrowth springing up apace beneath the great trees; past
+the stables; past a line of summer cottages, strangely staring of aspect
+out of the yawning doors and windows, giving, instead of an impression
+of vacancy, a sense of covert watching, of secret occupancy. If one’s
+glances were only quick enough, were there not faces pressed to those
+shattered panes--scarcely seen--swiftly withdrawn?
+
+He was in a desert; he had hardly been so utterly alone in all his life;
+yet he bore through the empty place a feeling of espionage, and ever
+and anon he glanced keenly at the overgrown lawns, with their deepening
+drifts of autumn leaves, at the staring windows and flaring doors, which
+emitted sometimes sudden creaking wails in the silence, as if he sought
+to assure himself of the vacancy of which his mind took cognizance and
+yet all his senses denied.
+
+Little of his sentiment, although sedulously cloaked, was lost on Sim
+Roxby; and he was aware, too, in some subtle way, of the relief his
+guest experienced when they plunged into the darkening forest and left
+the forlorn place behind them. The clearing in which it was situated
+seemed an oasis of light in the desert of night in which the rest of
+the world lay. From the obscurity of the forest Dundas saw, through the
+vistas of the giant trees, the clustering cottages, the great hotel,
+gables and chimneys and tower, stark and distinct as in some weird
+dream-light in the midst of the encircling gloom. The after-glow of
+sunset was still aflare on the western windows; the whole empty place
+was alight with a reminiscence of its old aspect--its old gay life. Who
+knows what memories were a-stalk there--what semblance of former times?
+What might not the darkness foster, the impunity of desertion, the
+associations that inhabited the place with almost the strength of human
+occupancy itself? Who knows--who knows?
+
+He remembered the scene afterward, the impression he received. And from
+this, he thought, arose his regret for his decision to take up here his
+abiding-place.
+
+The forest shut out the illumined landscape, and the night seemed indeed
+at hand; the gigantic boles of the trees loomed through the encompassing
+gloom, that was yet a semi-transparent medium, like some dark but clear
+fluid through which objects were dimly visible, albeit tinged with its
+own sombre hue. The lank, rawboned sorrel had set a sharp pace, to
+which the chestnut, after momentary lagging, as if weary with the day’s
+travel, responded briskly. He had received in some way intimations that
+his companion’s corn-crib was near at hand, and if he had not deduced
+from these premises the probability of sharing his fare, his mental
+processes served him quite as well as reason, and brought him to the
+same result. On and on they sped, neck and neck, through the darkening
+woods; fire flashed now and again from their iron-shod hoofs; often
+a splash and a shower of drops told of a swift dashing through the
+mud-holes that recent rains had fostered in the shallows. The dank odor
+of dripping boughs came on the clear air. Once the chestnut shied from a
+sudden strange shining point springing up in the darkness close at
+hand, which the country-bred horse discriminated as fox-fire, and
+kept steadily on, unmindful of the rotting log where it glowed. Far in
+advance, in the dank depths of the woods, a Will-o’-the-wisp danced and
+flickered and lured the traveller’s eye. The stranger was not sure of
+the different quality of another light, appearing down a vista as the
+road turned, until the sorrel, making a tremendous spurt, headed for it,
+uttering a joyous neigh at the sight.
+
+The deep-voiced barking of hounds rose melodiously on the silence,
+and as the horses burst out of the woods into a small clearing, Dundas
+beheld in the brighter light a half-dozen of the animals nimbly afoot in
+the road, one springing over the fence, another in the act of climbing,
+his fore-paws on the topmost rail, his long neck stretched, and his head
+turning about in attitudes of observation. He evidently wished to assure
+himself whether the excitement of his friends was warranted by the facts
+before he troubled himself to vault over the fence. Three or four still
+lingered near the door of a log-cabin, fawning about a girl who stood on
+the porch. Her pose was alert, expectant; a fire in the dooryard, where
+the domestic manufacture of soap had been in progress, cast a red flare
+on the house, its appurtenances, the great dark forest looming all
+around, and, more than the glow of the hearth within, lighted up the
+central figure of the scene. She was tall, straight, and strong; a
+wealth of fair hair was clustered in a knot at the back of her head, and
+fleecy tendrils fell over her brow; on it was perched a soldier’s-cap;
+and certainly more gallant and fearless eyes had never looked out from
+under the straight, stiff brim. Her chin, firm, round, dimpled, was
+uplifted as she raised her head, descrying the horsemen’s approach. She
+wore a full dark-red skirt, a dark brown waist, and around her neck
+was twisted a gray cotton kerchief, faded to a pale ashen hue, the
+neutrality of which somehow aided the delicate brilliancy of the
+blended roseate and pearly tints of her face. Was this the seer of
+ghosts--Dundas marvelled--this the Millicent whose pallid and troubled
+phantom already-paced the foot-bridge?
+
+He did not realize that he had drawn up his horse suddenly at the sight
+of her, nor did he notice that his host had dismounted, until Roxby was
+at the chestnut’s head, ready to lead the animal to supper in the barn.
+His evident surprise, his preoccupation, were not lost upon Roxby,
+however. His hand hesitated on the girth of the chestnut’s saddle when
+he stood between the two horses in the barn. He had half intended to
+disregard the stranger’s declination of his invitation, and stable the
+creature. Then he shook his head slowly; the mystery that hung about the
+new-comer was not reassuring. “A heap o’ wuthless cattle ‘mongst them
+valley men,” he said; for the war had been in some sort an education to
+his simplicity. “Let him stay whar the cunnel expected him ter stay. I
+ain’t wantin’ no stranger a-hangin’ round about Mill’cent, nohow. Em’ry
+Keenan ain’t a pattern o’ perfection, but I be toler’ble well acquainted
+with the cut o’ his foolishness, an’ I know his daddy an’ mammy, an’
+both sets o’ gran’daddies an’ gran’mammies, an’ I could tell ye exac’ly
+which one the critter got his nose an’ his mouth from, an’ them lean
+sheep’s-eyes o’ his’n, an’ nigh every tone o’ his voice. Em’ry never
+thunk afore ez I set store on bein’ acquainted with him. He ‘lowed I
+knowed him _too_ well.”
+
+He laughed as he glanced through the open door into the darkening
+landscape. Horizontal gray clouds were slipping fast across the pearly
+spaces of the sky. The yellow stubble gleamed among the brown earth
+of the farther field, still striped with its furrows. The black forest
+encircled the little cleared space, and a wind was astir among the
+tree-tops. A white star gleamed through the broken clapboards of the
+roof, the fire still flared under the soap-kettle in the dooryard, and
+the silence was suddenly smitten by a high cracked old voice, which told
+him that his mother had perceived the dismounted stranger at the gate,
+and was graciously welcoming him.
+
+She had come to the door, where the girl still stood, but half withdrawn
+in the shadow. Dundas silently bowed as he passed her, following his
+aged hostess into the low room, all bedight with the firelight of a huge
+chimney-place, and comfortable with the realization of a journey’s end.
+The wilderness might stretch its weary miles around, the weird wind
+wander in the solitudes, the star look coldly on unmoved by aught it
+beheld, the moon show sad portents, but at the door they all failed,
+for here waited rest and peace and human companionship and the sense of
+home.
+
+“Take a cheer, stranger, an’ make yerself at home. Powerful glad ter
+see ye---war ‘feard night would overtake ye. Ye fund the water toler’ble
+high in all the creeks an’ sech, I reckon, an’ fords shifty an’
+onsartain. Yes, sir. Fall rains kem on earlier’n common, an’ more’n
+we need. Wisht we could divide it with that thar drought we had in the
+summer. Craps war cut toler’ble short, sir--toler’ble short.”
+
+Mrs. Roxby’s spectacles beamed upon him with an expression of the utmost
+benignity as the firelight played on the lenses, but her eyes peering
+over them seemed endowed in some sort with independence of outlook. It
+was as if from behind some bland mask a critical observation was poised
+for unbiased judgment. He felt in some degree under surveillance. But
+when a light step heralded an approach he looked up, regardless of
+the betrayal of interest, and bent a steady gaze upon Millicent as she
+paused in the doorway.
+
+And as she stood there, distinct in the firelight and outlined against
+the black background of the night, she seemed some modern half-military
+ideal of Diana, with her two gaunt hounds beside her, the rest of the
+pack vaguely glimpsed at her heels outside, the perfect outline and
+chiselling of her features, her fine, strong, supple figure, the look of
+steady courage in her eyes, and the soldier’s cap on her fair hair. Her
+face so impressed itself upon his mind that he seemed to have seen her
+often. It was some resemblance to a picture of a vivandière, doubtless,
+in a foreign gallery--he could not say when or where; a remnant of a
+tourist’s overcrowded impressions; a half-realized reminiscence, he
+thought, with an uneasy sense of recognition.
+
+“Hello, Mill’cent! home agin!” Roxby cried, in cheery greeting as he
+entered at the back door opposite. “What sorter topknot is that ye got
+on?” he demanded, looking jocosely at her head-gear.
+
+The girl put up her hand with an expression of horror. A deep red
+flush dyed her cheek as she touched the cap. “I forgot ‘twar thar,” she
+murmured, contritely. Then, with a sudden rush of anger as she tore it
+off: “‘Twar granny’s fault. She axed me ter put it on, so ez ter see
+which one I looked most like.”
+
+“Stranger,” quavered the old woman, with a painful break in her voice,
+“I los’ fower sons in the war, an’ Mill’cent hev got the fambly favor.”
+
+“Ye _mought_ hev let me know ez I war a-perlitin’ round in this hyar
+men’s gear yit,” the girl muttered, as she hung the cap on a prong of
+the deer antlers on which rested the rifle of the master of the house.
+
+Roxby’s face had clouded at the mention of the four sons who had gone
+out from the mountains never to return, leaving to their mother’s aching
+heart only the vague comfort of an elusive resemblance in a girl’s
+face; but as he noted Millicent’s pettish manner, and divined her
+mortification because of her unseemly head-gear in the stranger’s
+presence, he addressed her again in that jocose tone without which he
+seldom spoke to her.
+
+[Illustration: Warn’t you-uns apologizin’ ter me 006]
+
+“Warn’t you-uns apologizin’ ter me t’other day fur not bein’ a nephew
+‘stiddier a niece? Looked sorter like a nephew ter-night.”
+
+She shook her head, covered now only with its own charming tresses
+waving in thick undulations to the coil at the nape of her neck--a
+trifle dishevelled from the rude haste with which the cap had been torn
+off.
+
+Roxby had seated himself, and with his elbows on his knees he looked
+up at her with a teasing jocularity, such as one might assume toward a
+child.
+
+“_Ye war_,” he declared, with affected solemnity--“ye war ‘pologizin’
+fur not bein’ a nephew, an’ ‘lowed ef ye war a nephew we could go
+a-huntin’ tergether, an’ ye could holp me in all my quar’ls an’ fights.
+I been aging some lately, an’ ef I war ter go ter the settlemint an’ git
+inter a fight I mought not be able ter hold my own. Think what ‘twould
+be ter a pore old man ter hev a dutiful nephew step up an’”--he doubled
+his fists and squared off--“jes’ let daylight through some o’ them
+cusses. An’ didn’t _ye say_”--he dropped his belligerent attitude and
+pointed an insistent finger at her, as if to fix the matter in her
+recollection--“ef ye war a nephew ‘stiddier a niece ye could fire a gun
+‘thout shettin’ yer eyes? An’ I told ye then ez that would mend yer aim
+mightily. I told ye that I’d be powerful mortified ef I hed a nephew ez
+hed ter shet his eyes ter keep the noise out’n his ears whenst he fired
+a rifle. The tale would go mighty hard with me at the settlemint.”
+
+The girl’s eyes glowed upon him with the fixity and the lustre of those
+of a child who is entertained and absorbed by an elder’s jovial wiles.
+A flash of laughter broke over her face, and the low, gurgling,
+half-dreamy sound was pleasant to hear. She was evidently no more than
+a child to these bereft old people, and by them cherished as naught else
+on earth.
+
+“An’ didn’t _I tell you-uns,_” he went on, affecting to warm to the
+discussion, and in reality oblivious of the presence of the
+guest’--“didn’t I tell ye ez how ef ye war a nephew ‘stiddier a niece ye
+wouldn’t hev sech cattle ez Em’ry Keenan a-dan-glin’ round underfoot,
+like a puppy ye can’t gin away, an’ that _won’t_ git lost, an’ ye ain’t
+got the heart ter kill?”
+
+The girl’s lip suddenly curled with scorn. “Yer nephew would be
+obligated ter make a ch’ice fur marryin’ ‘mongst these hyar mounting
+gals--Par-mely Lepstone, or Belindy M’ria Matthews, or one o’ the
+Windrow gals. Waal, sir, I’d ruther be yer niece--even ef Em’ry Keenan
+_air_ like a puppy underfoot, that ye can’t gin away, an’ won’t git
+lost, an’ ye ain’t got the heart ter kill.” She laughed again,
+showing her white teeth. She evidently relished the description of the
+persistent adherence of poor Emory Keenan. “But which one o’ these hyar
+gals would ye recommend ter yer nephew ter marry--ef ye hed a nephew?”
+
+She looked at him with flashing eyes, conscious of having propounded a
+poser.
+
+He hesitated for a moment. Then--“I’m surrounded,” he said, with a
+laugh. “Ez I couldn’t find a wife fur myself, I can’t undertake
+ter recommend one ter my nephew. Mighty fine boy he’d hev been, an’
+saaft-spoken an’ perlite ter aged men--not sassy an’ makin’ game o’ old
+uncles like a niece. Mighty fine boy!”
+
+“Ye air welcome ter him,” she said, with a simulation of scorn, as she
+turned away to the table.
+
+Whether it were the military cap she had worn, or the fancied
+resemblance to the young soldiers, never to grow old, who had gone forth
+from this humble abode to return no more, there was still to the guest’s
+mind the suggestion of the vivandière about her as she set the table
+and spread upon it the simple fare. To and from the fireplace she was
+followed by two or three of the younger dogs, their callowness expressed
+in their lack of manners and perfervid interest in the approaching meal.
+This induced their brief journeys back and forth, albeit embarrassed
+by their physical conformation, short turns on four legs not being
+apparently the easy thing it would seem from so much youthful
+suppleness. The dignity of the elder hounds did not suffer them to move,
+but they looked on from erect postures about the hearth with glistening
+eyes and slobbering jaws.
+
+Ever and anon the deep blue eyes of Millicent were lifted to the outer
+gloom, as if she took note of its sinister aspect. She showed scant
+interest in the stranger, whose gaze seldom left her as he sat beside
+the fire. He was a handsome man, his face and figure illumined by the
+firelight, and it might have been that he felt a certain pique, an
+unaccustomed slight, in that his presence was so indifferent an element
+in the estimation of any young and comely specimen of the feminine sex.
+Certainly he had rarely encountered such absolute preoccupation as her
+smiling far-away look betokened as she went back and forth with her
+young canine friends at her heels, or stood at the table deftly slicing
+the salt-rising bread, the dogs poised skilfully upon their hind-legs
+to better view the appetizing performance; whenever she turned her face
+toward them they laid their heads languish-ingly askew, as if to remind
+her that supper could not be more fitly bestowed than on them. One, to
+steady himself, placed unobserved his fore-paw on the edge of the table,
+his well-padded toes leaving a vague imprint as of fingers upon the
+coarse white cloth; but John Dundas was a sportsman, and could the
+better relax an exacting nicety where so pleasant-featured and affable
+a beggar was concerned. He forgot the turmoils of his own troubles as
+he gazed at Millicent, the dreary aspect of the solitudes without, the
+exile from his accustomed sphere of culture and comfort, the poverty
+and coarseness of her surroundings. He was sorry that he had declined
+a longer lease of Roxby’s hospitality, and it was in his mind to
+reconsider when it should be again proffered. Her attitude, her gesture,
+her face, her environment, all appealed to his sense of beauty, his
+interest, his curiosity, as little ever had done heretofore. Slice after
+slice of the firm fragrant bread was deftly cut and laid on the plate,
+as again and again she lifted her eyes with a look that might seem to
+expect to rest on summer in the full flush of a June noontide without,
+rather than on the wan, wintry night sky and the plundered, quaking
+woods, while the robber wind sped on his raids hither and thither so
+swiftly that none might follow, so stealthily that none might hinder. A
+sudden radiance broke upon her face, a sudden shadow fell on the
+firelit floor, and there was entering at the doorway a tall, lithe young
+mountaineer, whose first glance, animated with a responsive brightness,
+was for the girl, but whose punctilious greeting was addressed to the
+old woman.
+
+“Howdy, Mis’ Roxby--howdy? Air yer rheumatics mendin’ enny?” he
+demanded, with the condolent suavity of the would-be son-in-law, or
+grand-son-in-law, as the case may be. And he hung with a transfixed
+interest upon her reply, prolix and discursive according to the wont of
+those who cultivate “rheumatics,” as if each separate twinge racked his
+own sympathetic and filial sensibilities. Not until the tale was ended
+did he set his gun against the wall and advance to the seat which Roxby
+had indicated with the end of the stick he was whittling. He observed
+the stranger with only slight interest, till Dundas drew up his chair
+opposite at the table. There the light from the tallow dip, guttering in
+the centre, fell upon his handsome face and eyes, his carefully tended
+beard and hair, his immaculate cuffs and delicate hand, the seal-ring on
+his taper finger.
+
+“Like a gal, by gum!” thought Emory Keenan. “Rings on his fingers--yit
+six feet high!”
+
+He looked at his elders, marvelling that they so hospitably repressed
+the disgust which this effeminate adornment must occasion, forgetting
+that it was possible that they did not even observe it. In the gala-days
+of the old hotel, before the war, they had seen much “finicking finery”
+ in garb and equipage and habits affected by the _jeunesse dorée_ who
+frequented the place in those halcyon times, and were accustomed to
+such details. It might be that they and Millicent approved such flimsy
+daintiness. He began to fume inwardly with a sense of inferiority in her
+estimation. One of his fingers had been frosted last winter, and with
+the first twinge of cold weather it was beginning to look very red and
+sad and clumsy, as if it had just remembered its ancient woe; he glanced
+from it once more at the delicate ringed hand of the stranger.
+
+Dundas was looking up with a slow, deferential, decorous smile that
+nevertheless lightened and transfigured his expression. It seemed
+somehow communicated to Millicent’s face as she looked down at him from
+beneath her white eyelids and long, thick, dark lashes, for she was
+standing beside him, handing him the plate of bread. Then, still
+smiling, she passed noiselessly on to the others.
+
+Emory was indeed clumsy, for he had stretched his hand downward to
+offer a morsel to a friend of his under the table--he was on terms of
+exceeding amity with the four-footed members of the household--and in
+his absorption not withdrawing it as swiftly as one accustomed to canine
+manners should do, he had his frosted finger well mumbled before he
+could, as it were, repossess himself of it.
+
+“I wonder what they charge fur iron over yander at the settlemint,
+Em’ry?” observed Sim Roxby presently.
+
+“Dun’no’, sir,” responded Emory, glumly, his sullen black eyes full of
+smouldering fire--“hevin’ no call ter know, ez I ain’t no blacksmith.”
+
+“I war jes’ wonderin’ ef tenpenny nails didn’t cost toler’ble high ez
+reg’lar feed,” observed Roxby, gravely.
+
+But his mother laughed out with a gleeful cracked treble, always a ready
+sequence of her son’s rustic sallies. “He got ye that time, Em’ry,” she
+cried.
+
+A forced smile crossed Emory’s face. He tossed back his tangled dark
+hair with a gasp that was like the snort of an unruly horse submitting
+to the inevitable, but with restive projects in his brain. “I let the
+dog hyar ketch my finger whilst feedin’ him,” he said. His plausible
+excuse for the ten-penny expression was complete; but he added, his
+darker mood recurring instantly, “An’, Mis’ Roxby, I hev put a stop ter
+them ez hev tuk ter callin’ me Em’ly, I hev.”
+
+The old woman looked up, her small wrinkled mouth round and amazed.
+“_I_ never called ye Emily,” she declared.
+
+Swift repentance seized him.
+
+“Naw, ‘m,” he said, with hurried propitiation. “I ‘lowed ye did.”
+
+“I didn’t,” said the old woman. “But ef I warter find it toothsome ter
+call ye ‘Emily,’ I dun’no’ how ye air goin’ ter pervent it. Ye can’t go
+gun-nin’ fur me, like ye done fur the men at the mill, fur callin’ ye
+‘Emily.’”
+
+“Law, Mis’ Roxby!” he could only exclaim, in his horror and contrition
+at this picture he had thus conjured up. “Ye air welcome ter call me
+ennything ye air a mind ter,” he protested.
+
+And then he gasped once more. The eyes of the guest, contemptuous,
+amused, seeing through him, were fixed upon him. And he himself had
+furnished the lily-handed stranger with the information that he had been
+stigmatized “Em’ly” in the banter of his associates, until he had taken
+up arms, as it were, to repress this derision.
+
+“It takes powerful little ter put ye down, Em’ry,” said Roxby, with
+rallying laughter. “Mam hev sent ye skedaddlin’ in no time at all. I
+don’t b’lieve the Lord made woman out’n the man’s rib. He made her out’n
+the man’s backbone; fur the man ain’t hed none ter speak of sence.”
+
+Millicent, with a low gurgle of laughter, sat down beside Emory at the
+table, and fixed her eyes, softly lighted with mirth, upon him. The
+others too had laughed, the stranger with a flattering intonation, but
+young Keenan looked at her with a dumb appealing humility that did not
+altogether fail of its effect, for she busied herself to help his plate
+with an air of proprietorship as if he were a child, and returned
+it with a smile very radiant and sufficient at close range. She then
+addressed herself to her own meal. The young dogs under the table ceased
+to beg, and gambolled and gnawed and tugged at her stout little shoes,
+the sound of their callow mirthful growls rising occasionally above
+the talk. Sometimes she rose again to wait on the table, when they came
+leaping out after her, jumping and catching at her skirts, now and then
+casting themselves on the ground prone before her feet, and rolling over
+and over in the sheer joy of existence.
+
+The stranger took little part in the talk at the table. Never a question
+was asked him as to his mission in the mountains, or the length of
+his stay, his vocation, or his home. That extreme courtesy of the
+mountaineers, exemplified in their singular abstinence from any
+expressions of curiosity, accepted such account of himself as he had
+volunteered, and asked for no more. In the face of this standard of
+manners any inquisitiveness on his part, such as might have elicited
+points of interest for his merely momentary entertainment, was tabooed.
+Nevertheless, silent though he was for the most part, the relish with
+which he listened, his half-covert interest in the girl, his quick
+observation of the others, the sudden very apparent enlivening of his
+mental atmosphere, betokened that his quarters were not displeasing
+to him. It seemed only a short time before the meal was ended and the
+circle all, save Millicent, with pipes alight before the fire again. The
+dogs, well fed, had ranged themselves on the glowing hearth, lying prone
+on the hot stones; one old hound, however, who conserved the air of
+listening to the conversation, sat upright and nodded from time to time,
+now and again losing his balance and tipping forward in a truly human
+fashion, then gazing round on the circle with an open luminous eye, as
+who should say he had not slept.
+
+It was all very cheerful within, but outside the wind still blared
+mournfully. Once more Dundas was sorry that he had declined the
+invitation to remain, and it was with a somewhat tentative intention
+that he made a motion to return to the hotel. But his host seemed
+to regard his resolution as final, and rose with a regret, not an
+insistence. The two women stared in silent amazement at the mere idea
+of his camping out, as it were, in the old hotel. The ascendency of
+masculine government here, notwithstanding Roxby’s assertion that
+Eve was made of Adam’s backbone, was very apparent in their mute
+acquiescence and the alacrity with which they began to collect various
+articles, according to his directions, to make the stranger’s stay more
+comfortable.
+
+“Em’ry kin go along an’ holp,” he said, heartlessly; for poor Emory’s
+joy in perceiving that the guest was not a fixture, and that his
+presence was not to be an embargo on any word between himself and
+Millicent during the entire evening, was pitiably manifest. But the
+situation was still not without its comforts, since Dundas was to go
+too. Hence he was not poor company when once in the saddle, and was
+civil to a degree of which his former dismayed surliness had given no
+promise.
+
+Night had become a definite element. The twilight had fled. Above their
+heads, as they galloped through the dank woods, the bare boughs of the
+trees clashed together--so high above their heads that to the town
+man, unaccustomed to these great growths, the sound seemed not of the
+vicinage, but unfamiliar, uncanny, and more than once he checked his
+horse to listen. As they approached the mountain’s verge and overlooked
+the valley and beheld the sky, the sense of the predominance of darkness
+was redoubled. The ranges gloomed against the clearer spaces, but a
+cloud, deep gray with curling white edges, was coming up from the
+west, with an invisible convoy of vague films, beneath which the stars,
+glimmering white points, disappeared one by one. The swift motion of
+this aerial fleet sailing with the wind might be inferred from the
+seemingly hurried pace of the moon making hard for the west. Still
+bright was the illumined segment, but despite its glitter the shadowy
+space of the full disk was distinctly visible, its dusky field spangled
+with myriads of minute, dully golden points. Down, down it took its
+way in haste--in disordered fright, it seemed, as if it had no heart
+to witness the storm which the wind and the clouds foreboded--to fairer
+skies somewhere behind those western mountains. Soon even its vague
+light would encroach no more upon the darkness. The great hotel would be
+invisible, annihilated as it were in the gloom, and not even thus dimly
+exist, glimmering, alone, forlorn, so incongruous to the wilderness that
+it seemed even now some mere figment of the brain, as the two horsemen
+came with a freshened burst of speed along the deserted avenue and
+reined up beside a small gate at the side.
+
+“No use ter ride all the way around,” observed Emory Keenan. “Mought jes
+ez well ‘light an’ hitch hyar.”
+
+The moon gave him the escort of a great grotesque shadow as he
+threw himself from his horse and passed the reins over a decrepit
+hitching-post near at hand. Then he essayed the latch of the small gate.
+He glanced up at Dundas, the moonlight in his dark eyes, with a smile as
+it resisted his strength.
+
+He was a fairly good-looking fellow when rid of the self-consciousness
+of jealousy. His eyes, mouth, chin, and nose, acquired from reliable
+and recognizable sources, were good features, and statuesque in their
+immobility beneath the drooping curves of his broad soft hat. He was
+tall, with the slenderness of youth, despite his evident weight and
+strength. He was long-waisted and lithe and small of girth, with broad
+square shoulders, whose play of muscles as he strove with the gate was
+not altogether concealed by the butternut jeans coat belted in with his
+pistols by a broad leathern belt. His boots reached high on his long
+legs, and jingled with a pair of huge cavalry spurs. His stalwart
+strength seemed as if it must break the obdurate gate rather than open
+it, but finally, with a rasping creak, dismally loud in the silence, it
+swung slowly back.
+
+The young mountaineer stood gazing for a moment at the red rust on the
+hinges. “How long sence this gate must hev been opened afore?” he said,
+again looking up at Dundas with a smile.
+
+Somehow the words struck a chill to the stranger’s heart. The sense of
+the loneliness of the place, of isolation, filled him with a sort of
+awe. The night-bound wilderness itself was not more daunting than these
+solitary tiers of piazzas, these vacant series of rooms and corridors,
+all instinct with vanished human presence, all alert with echoes of
+human voices. A step, a laugh, a rustle of garments--he could have sworn
+he heard them at any open doorway as he followed his guide along the dim
+moonlit piazza, with its pillars duplicated at regular intervals by the
+shadows on the floor. How their tread echoed down these lonely ways!
+From the opposite side of the house he heard Kee-nan’s spurs jangling,
+his soldierly stride sounding back as if their entrance had roused
+barracks. He winced once to see his own shadow with its stealthier
+movement. It seemed painfully furtive. For the first time during the
+evening his jaded mind, that had instinctively sought the solace of
+contemplating trifles, reverted to its own tormented processes. “Am
+I not hiding?” he said to himself, in a sort of sarcastic pity of his
+plight.
+
+The idea seemed never to enter the mind of the transparent Keenan. He
+laughed out gayly as they turned into the weed-grown quadrangle, and
+the red fox that Dundas had earlier observed slipped past him with
+affrighted speed and dashed among the shadows of the dense shrubbery of
+the old lawn without. Again and again the sound rang back from wall to
+wall, first with the jollity of seeming imitation, then with an appalled
+effect sinking to silence, and suddenly rising again in a grewsome
+_staccato_ that suggested some terrible unearthly laughter, and bore but
+scant resemblance to the hearty mirth which had evoked it Keenan paused
+and looked back with friendly gleaming eyes. “Oughter been a leetle
+handier with these hyar consarns,” he said, touching the pistols in his
+belt.
+
+It vaguely occurred to Dundas that the young man went strangely heavily
+armed for an evening visit at a neighbor’s house. But it was a lawless
+country and lawless times, and the sub-current of suggestion did not
+definitely fix itself in his mind until he remembered it later. He
+was looking into each vacant open doorway, seeing the still moonlight
+starkly white upon the floor; the cobwebbed and broken window-panes,
+through which a section of leafless trees beyond was visible; bits of
+furniture here and there, broken by the vandalism of the guerillas. Now
+and then a scurrying movement told of a gopher, hiding too, and on one
+mantel-piece, the black fireplace yawning below, sat a tiny tawny-tinted
+owl, whose motionless beadlike eyes met his with a stare of stolid
+surprise. After he had passed, its sudden ill-omened cry set the silence
+to shuddering.
+
+Keenan, leading the way, paused in displeasure. “I wisht I hed viewed
+that critter,” he said, glumly. “I’d hev purvented that screechin’ ter
+call the devil, sure. It’s jes a certain sign o’ death.”
+
+He was about to turn, to wreak his vengeance, perchance. But the bird,
+sufficiently fortunate itself, whatever woe it presaged for others,
+suddenly took its awkward flight through sheen and shadow across the
+quadrangle, and when they heard its cry again it came from some remote
+section of the building, with a doleful echo as a refrain.
+
+The circumstance was soon forgotten by Keenan. He seemed a happy,
+mercurial, lucid nature, and he began presently to dwell with interest
+on the availability of the old music-stand in the centre of the square
+as a manger. “Hyar,” he said, striking the rotten old structure with
+a heavy hand, which sent a quiver and a thrill through all the
+timbers--“hyar’s whar the guerillas always hitched thar beastises. Thar
+feed an’ forage war piled up thar on the fiddlers’ seats. Ye can’t do no
+better’n ter pattern arter them, till ye git ready ter hev fiddlers an’
+sech a-sawin’ away in hyar agin.”
+
+And he sauntered away from the little pavilion, followed by Dundas, who
+had not accepted his suggestion of a room on the first floor as being
+less liable to leakage, but finally made choice of an inner apartment in
+the second story. He looked hard at Keenan, when he stood in the doorway
+surveying the selection. The room opened into a cross-hall which gave
+upon a broad piazza that was latticed; tiny squares of moonlight were
+all sharply drawn on the floor, and, seen through a vista of gray
+shadow, seemed truly of a gilded lustre. From the windows of this room
+on a court-yard no light Could be visible to any passer-by without.
+Another door gave on an inner gallery, and through its floor a staircase
+came up from the quadrangle close to the threshold. Dundas wondered if
+these features were of possible significance in Keenan’s estimation. The
+young mountaineer turned suddenly, and snatching up a handful of slats
+broken from the shutters, remarked:
+
+“Let’s see how the chimbly draws--that’s the main p’int.”
+
+There was no defect in the chimney’s constitution. It drew admirably,
+and with the white and red flames dancing in the fireplace, two or
+three chairs, more or less disabled, a table, and an upholstered lounge
+gathered at random from the rooms near at hand, the possibility of
+sojourning comfortably for a few days in the deserted hostelry seemed
+amply assured.
+
+Once more Dundas gazed fixedly at the face of the young mountaineer,
+who still bent on one knee on the hearth, watching with smiling eyes
+the triumphs of his fire-making. It seemed to him afterwards that his
+judgment was strangely at fault; he perceived naught of import in the
+shallow brightness of the young man’s eyes, like the polished surface of
+jet; in the instability of his jealousy, his anger; in his hap-hazard,
+mercurial temperament. Once he might have noted how flat were the
+spaces beneath the eyes, how few were the lines that defined the lid,
+the socket, the curve of the cheekbone, the bridge of the nose, and how
+expressionless. It was doubtless the warmth and glow of the fire,
+the clinging desire of companionship, the earnest determination to be
+content, pathetic in one who had but little reason for optimism, that
+caused him to ignore the vacillating glancing moods that successively
+swayed Keenan, strong while they lasted, but with scanty augury because
+of their evanescence. He was like some newly discovered property in
+physics of untried potentialities, of which nothing is ascertained but
+its uncertainties.
+
+And yet he seemed to Dundas a simple country fellow, good-natured in the
+main, unsuspicious, and helpful. So, giving a long sigh of relief and
+fatigue, Dundas sank down in one of the large arm-chairs that had once
+done duty for the summer loungers on the piazza.
+
+In the light of the fire Emory was once more looking at him. A certain
+air of distinction, a grace and ease of movement, an indescribable
+quality of bearing which he could not discriminate, yet which he
+instinctively recognized as superior, offended him in some sort. He
+noticed again the ring on the stranger’s hand as he drew off his glove.
+Gloves! Emory Keen an would as soon have thought of wearing a petticoat.
+Once more the fear that these effeminate graces found favor in
+Millicent’s estimation smote upon his heart. It made the surface of his
+opaque eyes glisten as Dundas rose and took up a pipe and tobacco-pouch
+which he had laid on the mantelpiece, his full height and fine figure
+shown in the changed posture.
+
+“Ez tall ez me, ef not taller, an’, by gum! a good thirty pound
+heavier,” Emory reflected, with, a growing dismay that he had not those
+stalwart claims to precedence in height and weight as an offset to the
+smoother fascinations of the stranger’s polish.
+
+He had risen hastily to his feet. He would not linger to smoke
+fraternally over the fire, and thus cement friendly relations.
+
+“I guided him hyar, like old Sim Roxby axed me ter do, an’ that’s all. I
+ain’t keerin’ ef I never lay eyes on him again,” he said to himself.
+
+“Going?” said Dundas, pleasantly, noticing the motion. “You’ll look in
+again, won’t you?”
+
+“Wunst in a while, I reckon,” drawled Keenan, a trifle thrown off his
+balance by this courtesy.
+
+He paused at the door, looking back over his shoulder for a moment at
+the illumined room, then stepped out into the night, leaving the tenant
+of the lonely old house filling his pipe by the fire.
+
+His tread rang along the deserted gallery, and sudden echoes came
+tramping down the vacant halls as if many a denizen of the once populous
+place was once more astir within its walls. Long after Dundas had heard
+him spring from the lower piazza to the ground, and the rusty gate clang
+behind him, vague footfalls were audible far away, and were still again,
+and once more a pattering tread in some gaunt and empty apartment near
+at hand, faint and fainter yet, till he hardly knew whether it were the
+reverberations of sound or fancy that held his senses in thrall.
+
+And when all was still and silent at last he felt less solitary than
+when these elusive tokens of human presence were astir.
+
+Late, late he sat over the dwindling embers. His mind, no longer
+diverted by the events of the day, recurred with melancholy persistence
+to a theme which even they, although fraught with novelty and presage
+of danger, had not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril
+dulled, the craft of sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him
+in these dim watches of the night. Self-reproach had found him out here,
+defenceless so far from the specious wiles and ways of men. All the line
+of provocations seemed slight, seemed naught, as he reviewed them and
+balanced them against a human life. True, it was not in some mad quarrel
+that his skill had taken it and had served to keep his own--a duel, a
+fair fight, strictly regular according to the code of “honorable men”
+ for ages past--and he sought to argue that it was doubtless but the
+morbid sense of the wild fastnesses without, the illimitable vastness
+of the black night, the unutterable indurability of nature to the
+influences of civilization, which made it taste like murder. He had
+brought away even from the scene of action, to which he had gone with
+decorous deliberation--his worldly affairs arranged for the possibility
+of death, his will made, his volition surrendered, and his sacred honor
+in the hands of his seconds--a humiliating recollection of the sudden
+revulsion of the aspect of all things; the criminal sense of haste with
+which he was hurried away after that first straight shot; the agitation,
+nay, the fright of his seconds; their eagerness to be swiftly rid of
+him, their insistence that he should go away for a time, get out of the
+country, out of the embarrassing purview of the law, which was prone to
+regard the matter as he himself saw it now, and which had an ugly trick
+of calling things by their right names in the sincere phraseology of an
+indictment. And thus it was that he was here, remote from all the usual
+lines of flight, with his affectation of being a possible purchaser for
+the old hotel, far from the railroad, the telegraph, even the postal
+service. Some time--soon, indeed, it might be, when the first flush
+of excitement and indignation should be overpast, and the law, like a
+barking dog that will not bite, should have noisily exhausted the gamut
+of its devoirs--he would go back and live according to his habit in his
+wonted place, as did other men whom he had known to be “called out,” and
+who had survived their opponents. Meantime he heard the ash crumble; he
+saw the lighted room wane from glancing yellow to a dull steady red,
+and so to dusky brown; he marked the wind rise, and die away, and come
+again, banging the doors of the empty rooms, and setting timbers all
+strangely to creaking as under sudden trampling feet; then lift into the
+air with a rustling sound like the stir of garments and the flutter of
+wings, calling out weirdly in the great voids of the upper atmosphere.
+
+He had welcomed the sense of fatigue earlier in the evening, for it
+promised sleep. Now it had slipped away from him. He was strong and
+young, and the burning sensation that the frosty air had left on his
+face was the only token of the long journey. It seemed as if he
+would never sleep again as he lay on the lounge watching the gray ash
+gradually overgrow the embers, till presently only a vague dull glow
+gave intimation of the position of the hearth in the room. And then,
+bereft of this dim sense of companionship, he stared wide-eyed in the
+darkness, feeling the only creature alive and awake in all the world.
+No; the fox was suddenly barking within the quadrangle--a strangely wild
+and alien tone. And presently he heard the animal trot past his door
+on the piazza, the cushioned footfalls like those of a swift dog. He
+thought with a certain anxiety of the tawny tiny owl that had sat like
+a stuffed ornament on the mantel-piece of a neighboring room, and he
+listened with a quaking vicarious presentiment of woe for the sounds of
+capture and despair. He was sensible of waiting and hoping for the fox’s
+bootless return, when he suddenly lost consciousness.
+
+How long he slept he did not know, but it seemed only a momentary
+respite from the torture of memory, when, still in the darkness,
+thousands of tremulous penetrating sounds were astir, and with a great
+start he recognized the rain on the roof. It was coming down in steady
+torrents that made the house rock before the tumult of his plunging
+heart was still, and he was longing again for the forgetfulness of
+sleep. In vain. The hours dragged by; the windows slowly, slowly denned
+their dull gray squares against the dull gray day dawning without.
+The walls that had been left with only the first dark coat of plaster,
+awaiting another season for the final decoration, showed their drapings
+of cobweb, and the names and pencilled scribblings with which the fancy
+of transient bushwhackers had chosen to deface them. The locust-trees
+within the quadrangle drearily tossed their branches to and fro in the
+wind, the bark very black and distinct against the persistent gray lines
+of rain and the white walls of the galleried buildings opposite; the
+gutters were brimming, roaring along like miniature torrents; nowhere
+was the fox or the owl to be seen. Somehow their presence would have
+been a relief--the sight of any living thing reassuring. As he walked
+slowly along the deserted piazzas, in turning sudden corners, again and
+again he paused, expecting that something, some one, was approaching to
+meet him. When at last he mounted his horse, that had neighed gleefully
+to see him, and rode away through the avenue and along the empty ways
+among the untenanted summer cottages, all the drearier and more forlorn
+because of the rain, he felt as if he had left an aberration, some
+hideous dream, behind, instead of the stark reality of the gaunt and
+vacant and dilapidated old house.
+
+The transition to the glow and cheer of Sim Roxby’s fireside was like
+a rescue, a restoration. The smiling welcome in the women’s eyes, their
+soft drawling voices, with mellifluous intonations that gave a value to
+each commonplace simple word, braced his nerves like a tonic. It might
+have been only the contrast with the recollections of the night, with
+the prospect visible through the open door--the serried lines of rain
+dropping aslant from the gray sky and elusively outlined against the
+dark masses of leafless woods that encircled the clearing; the dooryard
+half submerged with puddles of a clay-brown tint, embossed always with
+myriads of protruding drops of rain, for however they melted away the
+downpour renewed them, and to the eye they were stationary, albeit
+pervaded with a continual tremor--but somehow he was cognizant of a
+certain coddling tenderness in the old woman’s manner that might have
+been relished by a petted child, an unaffected friendliness in the
+girl’s clear eyes. They made him sit close to the great wood fire; the
+blue and yellow flames gushed out from the piles of hickory logs, and
+the bed of coals gleamed at red and white heat beneath. They took his
+hat to carefully dry it, and they spread out his cloak on two chairs
+at one side of the room, where it dismally dripped. When he ventured to
+sneeze, Mrs. Roxby compounded and administered a “yerb tea,” a sovereign
+remedy against colds, which he tasted on compulsion and in great doubt,
+and swallowed with alacrity and confidence, finding its basis the easily
+recognizable “toddy.” He had little knowledge how white and troubled
+his face had looked as he came in from the gray day, how strongly marked
+were those lines of sharp mental distress, how piteously apparent was
+his mute appeal for sympathy and comfort.
+
+“Mill’cent,” said the old woman in the shed-room, as they washed and
+wiped the dishes after the cozy breakfast of venison and corn-dodgers
+and honey and milk, “that thar man hev run agin the law, sure’s ye air
+born.”
+
+Millicent turned her reflective fair face, that seemed whiter and
+more delicate in the damp dark day, and looked doubtfully out over the
+fields, where the water ran in steely lines in the furrows.
+
+“Mus’ hev been by accident or suthin’. _He_ ain’t no hardened sinner.”
+
+“Shucks!” the old woman commented upon her reluctant acquiescence. “I
+ain’t keerin’ for the law! ‘Tain’t none o’ my job. The tomfool men make
+an’ break it. Ennybody ez hev seen this war air obleeged to take note
+o’ the wickedness o’ men in gineral. This hyer man air a sorter pitiful
+sinner, an’ he hev got a look in his eyes that plumb teches my heart.
+I ‘ain’t got no call ter know nuthin’ ‘bout the law, bein’ a ‘oman an’
+naterally ignorant. I dun’no’ ez he hev run agin it.”
+
+“Mus’ hev been by accident,” said Millicent, dreamily, still gazing over
+the sodden fields.
+
+The suspicion did nothing to diminish his comfort or their cordiality.
+The morning dragged by without change in the outer aspects. The noontide
+dinner came and went without Roxby’s return, for the report of the
+washing away of a bridge some miles distant down the river had early
+called him out to the scene of the disaster, to verify in his own
+interests the rumor, since he had expected to haul his wheat to the
+settlement the ensuing day. The afternoon found the desultory talk still
+in progress about the fire, the old woman alternately carding cotton
+and nodding in her chair in the corner; the dogs eying the stranger,
+listening much of the time with the air of children taking instruction,
+only occasionally wandering out-of-doors, the floor here and there
+bearing the damp imprint of their feet; and Millicent on her knees in
+the other corner, the firelight on her bright hair, her delicate cheek,
+her quickly glancing eyes, as she deftly moulded bullets.
+
+“Uncle Sim hed ter s’render his shootin’-irons,” she explained, “an’ he
+‘ain’t got no ca’tridge-loadin’ ones lef. So he makes out with his old
+muzzle-loadin’ rifle that he hed afore the war, an’ I moulds his bullets
+for him rainy days.”
+
+As she held up a moulded ball and dexterously clipped off the surplus
+lead, the gesture was so culinary in its delicacy that one of the dogs
+in front of the fire extended his head, making a long neck, with a
+tentative sniff and a glistening gluttonous eye.
+
+“Ef I swallered enny mo’ lead, I wouldn’t take it hot, Towse,” she said,
+holding out the bullet for canine inspection. “‘Tain’t healthy!”
+
+But the dog, perceiving the nature of the commodity, drew back with a
+look of deep reproach, rose precipitately, and with a drooping tail went
+out skulkingly into the wet gray day.
+
+“Towse can’t abide a bullet,” she observed, “nor nuthin’ ‘bout a gun.
+He got shot wunst a-huntin’, an’ he never furgot it. Jes show him a gun
+an’ he ain’t nowhar ter be seen--like he war cotch up in the clouds.”
+
+“Good watch-dog, I suppose,” suggested Dundas, striving to enter into
+the spirit of her talk.
+
+“Naw; too sp’ilt for a gyard-dog--granny coddled him so whenst he
+got shot. He’s jest vally’ble fur his conversation, I reckon,” she
+continued, with a smile in her eyes. “I dun’no’ what else, but he _is_
+toler’ble good company.”
+
+The other dogs pressed about her, the heads of the great hounds as high
+as her own as she sat among them on the floor. With bright eyes and
+knitted brows they followed the motions of pouring in the melted metal,
+the lifting of the bullets from the mould, the clipping off of the
+surplus lead, and the flash of the keen knife.
+
+Outside the sad light waned; the wind sighed and sighed; the dreary
+rain fell; the trees clashed their boughs dolorously together, and their
+turbulence deadened the sound of galloping horses. As Dundas sat and
+gazed at the girl’s intent head, with its fleecy tendrils and its
+massive coil, the great hounds beside her, all emblazoned by the
+firelight upon the brown wall near by, with the vast fireplace at hand,
+the whole less like reality than some artist’s pictured fancy, he knew
+naught of a sudden entrance, until she moved, breaking the spell, and
+looked up to meet the displeasure in Roxby’s eyes and the dark scowl on
+Emory Keenan’s face.
+
+*****
+
+That night the wind shifted to the north. Morning found the chilled
+world still, ice where the water had lodged, all the trees incased in
+glittering garb that followed the symmetry alike of every bough and
+the tiniest twig, and made splendid the splintered remnants of the
+lightning-riven. The fields were laced across from furrow to furrow, in
+which the frozen water still stood gleaming, with white arabesques which
+had known a more humble identity as stubble and crab-grass; the sky was
+slate-colored, and from its sad tint this white splendor gained added
+values of contrast. When the sun should shine abroad much of the effect
+would be lost in the too dazzling glister; but the sun did not shine.
+
+All day the gray mood held unchanged. Night was imperceptibly sifting
+down upon all this whiteness, that seemed as if it would not be
+obscured, as if it held within itself some property of luminosity, when
+Millicent, a white apron tied over her golden head, improvising a hood,
+its superfluous fulness gathered in many folds and pleats around her
+neck, fichu-wise, stood beside the ice-draped fodder-stack and essayed
+with half-numbed hands to insert a tallow dip into the socket of a
+lantern, all incrusted and clumsy with previous drippings.
+
+“I dun’no’ whether I be a-goin’ ter need this hyar consarn whilst
+milkin’ or no,” she observed, half to herself, half to Emory, who,
+chewing a straw, somewhat surlily had followed her out for a word apart.
+“The dusk ‘pears slow ter-night, but Spot’s mighty late comin’ home, an’
+old Sue air fractious an’ contrairy-minded, and feels mighty anxious
+an’ oneasy ‘boutn her calf, that’s ez tall ez she is nowadays, an’ don’t
+keer no mo’ ‘bout her mammy ‘n a half-grown human does. I tell her she
+oughtn’t ter be mad with me, but with the way she brung up her chile, ez
+won’t notice her now.”
+
+She looked up with a laugh, her eyes and teeth gleaming; her golden hair
+still showed its color beneath the spotless whiteness of her voluminous
+headgear, and the clear tints of her complexion seemed all the more
+delicate and fresh in the snowy pallor of the surroundings and the
+grayness of the evening.
+
+“I reckon I’d better take it along,” and once more she addressed herself
+to the effort to insert the dip into the lantern.
+
+Emory hardly heard. His pulse was quick. His eye glittered. He breathed
+hard as, with both hands in his pockets, he came close to her.
+
+“Mill’cent,” he said, “I told ye the t’other day ez ye thunk a heap too
+much o’ that thar stran-ger-”
+
+“An’ I tole ye, bubby, that I didn’t think nuthin’ o’ nobody but
+you-uns,” she interrupted, with an effort to placate his jealousy. The
+little jocularity which she affected dwindled and died before the steady
+glow of his gaze, and she falteringly looked at him, her unguided hands
+futilely fumbling with the lantern.
+
+“Ye can’t fool me,” he stoutly asseverated. “Ye think mo’ o’ him ‘n o’
+me, kase ye ‘low he air rich, an’ book-larned, an’ smooth-fingered, an’
+fini-fied ez a gal, an’ goin’ ter buy the hotel. I say, _hotel!_ Now
+_I’ll_ tell ye what he is--I’ll tell ye! He’s a criminal. He’s runnin’
+from the law. He’s hidin’ in the old hotel that he’s purtendin’ ter
+buy.”
+
+She stared wide-eyed and pallid, breathless and waiting.
+
+He interpreted her expression as doubt, denial.
+
+“It’s gospel sure,” he cried. “Fur this very evenin’ I met a gang o’
+men an’ the sheriff’s deputy down yander by the sulphur spring ‘bout
+sundown, an’ he ‘lowed ez they war a-sarchin’ fur a criminal ez war
+skulkin’ round hyarabout lately--ez they wanted a man fur hevin’
+c’mitted murder.”
+
+“But ye didn’t accuse _him_, surely; ye hed no right ter s’picion _him_.
+Uncle Sim! Oh, my Lord! Ye surely wouldn’t! Oh, Uncle Sim!”
+
+Her tremulous words broke into a quavering cry as she caught his arm
+convulsively, for his face confirmed her fears. She thrust him wildly
+away, and started toward the house.
+
+“Ye needn’t go tattlin’ on me,” he said, roughly pushing her aside.
+“I’ll tell Mr. Roxby myself. I ain’t ‘shamed o’ what I done. I’ll
+tell him. I’ll tell him myself.” And animated with this intention to
+forestall her disclosure, his long strides bore him swiftly past and
+into the house.
+
+It seemed to him that he lingered there only a moment or two, for Roxby
+was not at the cabin, and he said nothing of the quarrel to the old
+woman. Already his heart had revolted against his treachery, and then
+there came to him the further reflection that he did not know enough
+to justify suspicion. Was not the stranger furnished with the fullest
+credentials--a letter to Roxby from the Colonel? Perhaps he had allowed
+his jealousy to endanger the man, to place him in jeopardy even of his
+life should he resist arrest.
+
+Keenan tarried at the house merely long enough to devise a plausible
+excuse for his sudden excited entrance, and then took his way back to
+the barnyard.
+
+It was vacant. The cows still stood lowing at the bars; the sheep
+cowered together in their shed; the great whitened cone of the
+fodder-stack gleamed icily in the purple air; beside it lay the lantern
+where Millicent had cast it aside. She was gone! He would not believe
+it till he had run to the barn, calling her name in the shadowy place,
+while the horse at his manger left his corn to look over the walls of
+his stall with inquisitive surprised eyes, luminous in the dusk. He
+searched the hen-house, where the fowls on their perches crowded close
+because of the chill of the evening. He even ran to the bars and looked
+down across the narrow ravine to which the clearing sloped. Beyond the
+chasm-like gorge he saw presently on the high ascent opposite footprints
+that had broken the light frostlike coating of ice on the dead leaves
+and moss--climbing footprints, swift, disordered. He looked back again
+at the lantern where Millicent had flung it in her haste. Her mission
+was plain now. She had gone to warn Dundas. She had taken a direct line
+through the woods. She hoped to forestall the deputy sheriff and his
+posse, following the circuitous mountain road.
+
+Keenan’s lip curled in triumph. His heart burned hot with scornful anger
+and contempt of the futility of her effort. “They’re there afore she
+started!” he said, looking up at the aspects of the hour shown by the
+sky, and judging of the interval since the encounter by the spring.
+Through a rift in the gray cloud a star looked down with an icy
+scintillation and disappeared again. He heard a branch in the woods snap
+beneath the weight of ice. A light sprang into the window of the cabin
+hard by, and came in a great gush of orange-tinted glow out into the
+snowy bleak wintry space. He suddenly leaped over the fence and ran like
+a deer through the woods.
+
+Millicent too had been swift. He had thought to overtake her before he
+emerged from the woods into the more open space where the hotel stood.
+In this quarter the cloud-break had been greater. Toward the west a
+fading amber glow still lingered in long horizontal bars upon the opaque
+gray sky. The white mountains opposite were hung with purple shadows
+borrowed from a glimpse of sunset somewhere far away over the valley
+of East Tennessee; one distant lofty range was drawn in elusive snowy
+suggestions, rather than lines, against a green space of intense yet
+pale tint. The moon, now nearing the full, hung over the wooded valley,
+and aided the ice and the crust of snow to show its bleak, wan, wintry
+aspect; a tiny spark glowed in its depths from some open door of an
+isolated home. Over it all a mist was rising from the east, drawing its
+fleecy but opaque curtain. Already it had climbed the mountain-side and
+advanced, windless, soundless, overwhelming, annihilating all before and
+beneath it. The old hotel had disappeared, save that here and there a
+gaunt gable protruded and was withdrawn, showed once more, and once more
+was submerged.
+
+A horse’s head suddenly looking out of the enveloping mist close to his
+shoulder gave him the first intimation of the arrival, the secret silent
+waiting, of those whom he had directed hither. That the saddles were
+empty he saw a moment later. The animals stood together in a row,
+hitched to the rack. No disturbance sounded from the silent building.
+The event was in abeyance. The fugitive in hiding was doubtless at
+ease, unsuspecting, while the noiseless search of the officers for his
+quarters was under way.
+
+With a thrill of excitement Keenan crept stealthily through an open
+passage and into the old grass-grown spaces of the quadrangle. Night
+possessed the place, but the cloud seemed denser than the darkness. He
+was somehow sensible of its convolutions as he stood against the wall
+and strained his eyes into the dusk. Suddenly it was penetrated by a
+milky-white glimmer, a glimmer duplicated at equidistant points, each
+fading as its successor sprang into brilliance. The next moment he
+understood its significance. It had come from the blurred windows of the
+old ball-room. Milli-cent had lighted her candle as she searched for the
+fugitive’s quarters; she was passing down the length of the old house
+on the second story, and suddenly she emerged upon the gallery. She
+shielded the feeble flicker with her Hand; her white-hooded head gleamed
+as with an aureola as the divergent rays rested on the opaque mist; and
+now and again she clutched the baluster and walked with tremulous care,
+for the flooring was rotten here and there, and ready to crumble away.
+Her face was pallid, troubled; and Dundas, who had been warned by the
+tramp of horses and the tread of men, and who had descended the stairs,
+revolver in hand, ready to slip away if he might under cover of
+the mist, paused appalled, gazing across the quadrangle as on an
+apparition--the sight so familiar to his senses, so strange to his
+experience. He saw in an abrupt shifting of the mist that there were
+other figures skulking in doorways, watching her progress. The next
+moment she leaned forward to clutch the baluster, and the light of the
+candle fell full on Emory Keenan, lurking in the open passage. A sudden
+sharp cry of “Surrender!” The young mountaineer, confused, swiftly drew
+his pistol. Others were swifter still. A sharp report rang out into
+the chill crisp air, rousing all the affrighted echoes--a few faltering
+steps, a heavy fall, and for a long time Emory Keenan’s life-blood
+stained the floor of the promenade. Even when it had faded, the rustic
+gossips came often and gazed at the spot with morbid interest, until, a
+decade later, an enterprising proprietor removed the floor and altered
+the shape of that section of the building out of recognition.
+
+The escape of Dundas was easily effected. The deputy sheriff, confronted
+with the problem of satisfactorily accounting for the death of a man
+who had committed no offence against public polity, was no longer
+formidable. His errand had been the arrest of a horse-thief, well-known
+to him, and he had no interest in pursuing a fugitive, however obnoxious
+to the law, whose personal description was so different from that of the
+object of his search.
+
+Time restored to Dundas his former place in life and the esteem of his
+fellow-citizens. His stay in the mountains was an episode which he will
+not often recall, but sometimes volition fails, and he marvels at the
+strange fulfilment of the girl’s vision; he winces to think that her
+solicitude for his safety should have cost her her lover; he wonders
+whether she yet lives, and whether that tender troubled phantom, on
+nights when the wind is still and the moon is low and the mists rise,
+again joins the strange, elusive, woful company crossing the quaking
+foot-bridge.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge, by 
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+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: The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge
+       1895
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Illustrator: A. B. Frost
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2007 [EBook #23630]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE
+
+By Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+1895
+
+
+Across the narrow gorge the little foot-bridge stretched-a brace of
+logs, the upper surface hewn, and a slight hand-rail formed of a cedar
+pole. A flimsy structure, one might think, looking down at the dark and
+rocky depths beneath, through which flowed the mountain stream, swift
+and strong, but it was doubtless substantial enough for all ordinary
+usage, and certainly sufficient for the imponderable and elusive
+travellers who by common report frequented it.
+
+"We ain't likely ter meet nobody. Few folks kem this way nowadays,
+'thout it air jes' ter ford the creek down along hyar a piece, sence
+harnts an' sech onlikely critters hev been viewed a-crossin' the
+foot-bredge. An' it hev got the name o' bein' toler'ble onlucky, too,"
+said Roxby.
+
+His interlocutor drew back slightly. He had his own reasons to recoil
+from the subject of death. For him it was invested with a more immediate
+terror than is usual to many of the living, with that flattering
+persuasion of immortality in every strong pulsation repudiating all
+possibility of cessation. Then, lifting his gloomy, long-lashed eyes to
+the bridge far up the stream, he asked, "Whose 'harms?"
+
+His voice had a low, repressed cadence, as of one who speaks seldom,
+grave, even melancholy, and little indicative of the averse interest
+that had kindled in his sombre eyes. In comparison the drawl of the
+mountaineer, who had found him heavy company by the way, seemed imbued
+with an abnormal vivacity, and keyed a tone or two higher than was its
+wont.
+
+"Thar ain't a few," he replied, with a sudden glow of the pride of the
+cicerone. "Thar's a graveyard t'other side o' the gorge, an' not more
+than a haffen-mile off, an' a cornsider'ble passel o' folks hev
+been buried thar off an' on, an' the foot-bredge ain't in nowise
+ill-convenient ter them."
+
+Thus demonstrating the spectral resources of the locality, he rode his
+horse well into the stream as he spoke, and dropped the reins that the
+animal's impatient lips might reach the water. He sat fac-, ing the
+foot-bridge, flecked with the alternate shifting of the sunshine and the
+shadows of the tremulous firs that grew on either side of the high
+banks on the ever-ascending slope, thus arching both above and below
+the haunted bridge. His companion had joined him in the centre of
+the stream; but while the horses drank, the stranger's eyes were
+persistently bent on the concentric circles of the water that the
+movement of the animals had set astir in the current, as if he feared
+that too close or curious a gaze might discern some pilgrim, whom he
+cared not to see, traversing that shadowy quivering foot-bridge. He
+was mounted on a strong, handsome chestnut, as marked a contrast to his
+guide's lank and trace-galled sorrel as were the two riders. A slender
+gloved hand had fallen with the reins to the pommel of the saddle. His
+soft felt hat, like a sombrero, shadowed his clear-cut face. He was
+carefully shaven, save for a long drooping dark mustache and imperial.
+His suit of dark cloth was much concealed by a black cloak, one end of
+which thrown back across his shoulder showed a bright blue lining, the
+color giving a sudden heightening touch to his attire, as if he were "in
+costume." It was a fleeting fashion of the day, but it added a certain
+picturesqueness to a horseman, and seemed far enough from the times
+that produced the square-tailed frock-coat which the mountaineer wore,
+constructed of brown jeans, the skirts of which stood stiffly out on
+each side of the saddle, and gave him, with his broad-brimmed hat, a
+certain Quakerish aspect.
+
+"I dun'no' why folks be so 'feared of 'em," Rox-by remarked,
+speculatively. "The dead ain't so oncommon, nohow. Them ez hev been
+in the war, like you an' me done, oughter be in an' 'bout used ter
+corpses-though I never seen none o' 'em afoot agin. Lookin' at a smit
+field o' battle, arter the rage is jes' passed, oughter gin a body a
+realizin' sense how easy the sperit kin flee, an' what pore vessels fur
+holdin' the spark o' life human clay be."
+
+Simeon Roxby had a keen, not unkindly face, and he had that look of
+extreme intelligence which is entirely distinct from intellectuality,
+and which one sometimes sees in a minor degree in a very clever dog or a
+fine horse. One might rely on him to understand instinctively everything
+one might say to him, even in its subtler aesthetic values, although he
+had consciously learned little. He was of the endowed natures to whom
+much is given, rather than of those who are set to acquire. He had
+many lines in his face-even his simple life had gone hard with him, its
+sorrows un assuaged by its simplicity. His hair was grizzled, and hung
+long and straight on his collar. He wore a grizzled beard cut broad and
+short. His boots had big spurs, although the lank old sorrel had never
+felt them. He sat his horse like the cavalryman he had been for four
+years of hard riding and raiding, but his face had a certain gentleness
+that accented the Quaker-like suggestion of his garb, a look of
+communing with the higher things.
+
+"I never blamed 'em,'" he went on, evidently reverting to the spectres
+of the bridge-"I never blamed 'em for comin' back wunst in a while. It
+'pears ter me 'twould take me a long time ter git familiar with heaven,
+an' sociable with them ez hev gone before. An', my Lord, jes' think what
+the good green yearth is! Leastwise the mountings. I ain't settin' store
+on the valley lands I seen whenst I went ter the wars. I kin remember
+yit what them streets in the valley towns smelt like."
+
+He lifted his head, drawing a long breath to inhale the exquisite
+fragrance of the fir, the freshness of the pellucid water, the aroma of
+the autumn wind, blowing through the sere leaves still clinging red and
+yellow to the boughs of the forest.
+
+"Naw, I ain't blamin' 'em, though I don't hanker ter view 'em," he
+resumed. "One of 'em I wouldn't be afeard of, though. I feel mighty
+sorry fur her. The old folks used ter tell about her. A young 'oman she
+war, a-crossin' this bredge with her child in her arms. She war young,
+an' mus' have been keerless, I reckon; though ez 'twar her fust baby,
+she moightn't hev been practised in holdin' it an' sech, an' somehows
+it slipped through her arms an' fell inter the ruver, an' war killed in
+a minit, dashin' agin the rocks. She jes' stood fur a second a-screamin'
+like a wild painter, an' jumped off'n the bredge arter it. She got it
+agin; for when they dragged her body out'n the ruver she hed it in her
+arms too tight fur even death ter onloose. An' thar they air together in
+the buryin'-ground."
+
+He gave a nod toward the slope of the mountain that intercepted the
+melancholy view of the graveyard.
+
+"Got it yit!" he continued; "bekase" (he lowered his voice) "on windy
+nights, whenst the moon is on the wane, she is viewed kerryin' the baby
+along the bredge--kerryin' it clear over, _safe an' sound_, like she
+thought she oughter done, I reckon, in that one minute, whilst she stood
+an' screamed an' surveyed what she hed done. That child would hev been
+nigh ter my age ef he hed lived."
+
+Only the sunbeams wavered athwart the bridge now as the firs swayed
+above, giving glimpses of the sky, and their fibrous shadows flickered
+back and forth. The wild mountain stream flashed white between the brown
+bowlders, and plunged down the gorge in a succession of cascades, each
+seeming more transparently green and amber and brown than the other. The
+chestnut horse gazed meditatively at these limpid out-gushings, having
+drunk his fill; then thought better of his moderation, and once more
+thrust his head down to the water. The hand of his rider, which had
+made a motion to gather up the reins, dropped leniently on his neck, as
+Simeon Roxby spoke again:
+
+"Several--several others hev been viewed, actin' accordin' ter thar
+motions in life. Now thar war a peddler--some say he slipped one icy
+evenin', 'bout dusk in winter--some say evil ones waylaid him fur his
+gear an' his goods in his pack, but the settlemint mostly believes
+he war alone whenst he fell. His pack 'pears ter be full still, they
+say--but ye air 'bleeged ter know he hev hed ter set that pack down fur
+good 'fore this time. We kin take nuthin' out'n this world, no matter
+what kind o' a line o' goods we kerry in life. Heaven's no place fur
+tradin', I understan', an' I _do_ wonder sometimes how in the worl' them
+merchants an' sech in the valley towns air goin' ter entertain tharse'fs
+in the happy land o' Canaan. It's goin' ter be sorter bleak fur them,
+sure's ye air born."
+
+With a look of freshened recollection, he suddenly drew a plug of
+tobacco from his pocket, and he talked on even as he gnawed a piece from
+it.
+
+"Durin' the war a cavalry-man got shot out hyar whilst runnin' 'crost
+that thar foot-bredge. Thar hed been a scrimmage an' his horse war kilt,
+an' he tuk ter the bresh on foot, hopin' ter hide in the laurel. But ez
+he war crossin' the foot-bredge some o' the pursuin' party war fordin'
+the ruver over thar, an' thinkin' he'd make out ter escape they fired
+on him, jes' ez the feller tried ter surrender. He turned this way an'
+flung up both arms--but thar's mighty leetle truce in a pistol-ball.
+That minute it tuk him right through the brain. Seems toler'ble long
+range fur a pistol, don't it? He kin be viewed now most enny moonlight
+night out hyar on the foot-bredge, throwin' up both hands in sign of
+surrender."
+
+The wild-geese were a-wing on the way southward. Looking up to that
+narrow section of the blue sky which the incision of the gorge into
+the very depths of the woods made visible, he could see the tiny files
+deploying along the azure or the flecking cirrus, and hear the vague
+clangor of their leader's cry. He lifted his head to mechanically follow
+their flight. Then, as his eyes came back to earth, they rested again on
+the old bridge.
+
+"Strange enough," he said, suddenly, "the sker-riest tale I hev ever
+hearn 'bout that thar old bredge is one that my niece set a-goin'. She
+_seen_ the harnt _herself_, an' it shakes me wuss 'n the idee o' all the
+rest."
+
+His companion's gloomy gaze was lifted for a moment with an expression
+of inquiry from the slowly widening circles of the water about the
+horse's head as he drank. But Roxby's eyes, with a certain gleam of
+excitement, a superstitious dilation, still dwelt upon the bridge at
+the end of the upward vista. He went on merely from the impetus of the
+subject. "Yes, sir--she _seen_ it a-pacin' of its sorrowful way acrost
+that bredge, same ez the t'others of the percession o' harnts. 'Twar
+my niece, Mill'cent--brother's darter--by name, Mill'cent Roxby. Waal,
+Mill'cent an' a lot o' young fools o' her age--little over fryin'
+size--they 'tended camp-meetin' down hyar on Tomahawk Creek--'tain't
+so long ago--along with the old folks. An' 'bout twenty went huddled up
+tergether in a road-wagin. An', lo! the wagin it bruk down on the way
+home, an' what with proppin' it up on a crotch, they made out ter reach
+the cross-roads over yander at the Notch, an' thar the sober old folks
+called a halt, an' hed the wagin mended at the blacksmith-shop. Waal, it
+tuk some two hours, fur Pete Rodd ain't a-goin' ter hurry hisself--in my
+opinion the angel Gabriel will hev ter blow his bugle oftener'n wunst
+at the last day 'fore Pete Rodd makes up his mind ter rise from the
+dead an' answer the roll-call--an' this hyar young lot sorter found it
+tiresome waitin' on thar elders' solemn company. The old folks, whilst
+waitin', set outside on the porches of the houses at the settlemint,
+an' repeated some o' the sermons they hed hearn at camp, an' more'n one
+raised a hyme chune. An' the young fry--they hed hed a steady diet o'
+sermons an' hyme chunes fur fower days--they tuk ter stragglin' off
+down the road, two an' two, like the same sorter id jits the world over,
+leavin' word with the old folks that the wagin would overtake 'em an'
+pick 'em up on the road when it passed. Waal, they walked several mile,
+an' time they got ter the crest o' the hill over yander the moon hed
+riz, an' they could look down an' see the mist in the valley. The
+moon war bright in the buryin'-groun' when they passed it, an' the
+head-boards stood up white an' stiff, an' a light frost hed fell on the
+mounds, an' they showed plain, an' shone sorter lonesome an' cold.
+The young folks begun ter look behind em' fur the wagin. Some said--I
+b'lieve 'twar Em'ry Keen an--they could read the names on the boards
+plain, 'twar so light, the moon bein' nigh the full: but Em'ry never
+read nuthin' at night by the moon in his life; he ain't enny too capable
+o' wrastlin' with the alphabet with a strong daytime on his book ter
+light him ter knowledge. An' the shadows war black an' still, an' all
+the yearth looked ez ef nuthin' lived nor ever would agin, an' they
+hearn a wolf howl. Waal, that disaccommodated the gals mightily, an'
+they hed a heap more interes' in that old wagin, all smellin' rank with
+wagin-grease an' tar, than they did in thar lovyers; an' they hed ruther
+hev hearn that old botch of a wheel that Pete Rodd hed set onto it com
+in' a-creakin' an' a-com-plainin' along the road than the sweetest words
+them boys war able ter make up or remember. So they stood thar in the
+road--a-stare-gazin' them head-boards, like they expected every grave
+ter open an' the reveilly ter sound--a-waitin' ter be overtook by the
+wagin, a-listenin', but hearin' nuthin' in the silence o' the frost--not
+a dead leaf a-twirlin', nor a frozen blade o' grass astir. An' then
+two or three o' the gals 'lowed they hed ruther walk back ter meet the
+wagin, an' whenst the boys 'lowed ter go on--nuthin' war likely ter
+ketch 'em--one of 'em bust out a-cryin'. Waal, thar war the eend o' that
+much! So the gay party set out on the back track, a-keepin' step
+ter sobs an' sniffles, an' that's how kem _they_ seen no harnt. But
+Mill'-cent an' three or four o' the t'others 'lowed they'd go on. They
+warn't two mile from home, an' full five from the cross-roads. So Em'ry
+Keenan--he hev been waitin' on her sence the year one--so he put his
+skeer in his pocket an' kem along with her, a-shakin' in his shoes, I'll
+be bound! So down the hill in the frosty moonlight them few kem--purty
+nigh beat out, I reckon, Mill'cent war, what with the sermonizin' an'
+the hyme-singin' an' hevin' ter look continual at the sheep's-eyes o'
+Em'ry Keenan--he wears my patience ter the bone! So she concluded ter
+take the short-cut. An' Em'ry he agreed. So they tuk the lead, the rest
+a following an' kem down thar through all that black growth"--he lifted
+his arm and pointed at the great slope, dense with fir and pine and the
+heavy underbrush--"keepin' the bridle-path--easy enough even at night,
+fur the bresh is so thick they couldn't lose thar way. But the moonlight
+war mightily slivered up, fallin' through the needles of the pines an'
+the skeins of dead vines, an' looked bleached and onnatural, an' holped
+the dark mighty leetle. An' they seen the water a-shinin' an' a-plungin'
+down the gorge, an' the glistenin' of the frost on the floor o' the
+bredge. Thar war a few icicles on the hand-rail, an' the branches o' the
+firs hung ez still ez death; only that cold, racin', shoutin', jouncin'
+water moved. Jes ez they got toler'ble nigh the foot-bredge a sudden
+cloud kem over the face o' the sky. Thar warn't no wind on the yearth,
+but up above the air war a-stirrin'. An' Em'ry he 'lowed Mill'cent
+shouldn't cross the foot-bredge whilst the light warn't clar--I wonder
+the critter hed that much sense! An' she jes' drapped down on that rock
+thar ter rest"--he pointed up the slope to a great fragment that had
+broken off from the ledges and lay near the bank: the bulk of the mass
+was overgrown with moss and lichen, but the jagged edges of the recent
+fracture gleamed white and crystalline among the brown and olive-green
+shadows about it. A tree was close beside it. "Agin that thar pine trunk
+Em'ry he stood an' leaned. The rest war behind, a-comin' down the
+hill. An' all of a suddenty a light fell on the furder eend o'
+the foot-bredge--a waverin' light, mighty white an' misty in the
+darksomeness. Mill'cent 'lowed ez fust she thunk it war the moon. An'
+lookin' up, she seen the cloud; it held the moon close kivered. An'
+lookin' down, she seen the light war movin'--movin' from the furder eend
+o' the bredge, straight acrost it. Sometimes a hand war held afore it,
+ez ef ter shield it from the draught, an' then Mill'cent 'seen twar a
+candle, an' the white in the mistiness war a 'oman wearin' white an'
+carryn' it.
+
+[Illustration: The Phantom of the Foot-bridge 025]
+
+Lookin' ter right an' then ter lef the 'oman kem, with now her right
+hand shieldin' the candle she held, an' now layin' it on the hand-rail.
+The candle shone on the water, fur it didn't flare, an' when the 'oman
+held her hand before it the light made a bright spot on the foot-bredge
+an' in the dark air about her, an' on the fir branches over her head.
+An' a thin mist seemed to hang about her white frock, but not over her
+face, fur when she reached the middle o' the foot-bredge she laid her
+hand agin on the rail, an' in the clear light o' the candle Mill'cent
+seen the harnt's face. An' thar she beheld her own face; _her own
+face_ she looked upon ez she waited thar under the tree watchin' the
+foot-bredge; _her own face_ pale an' troubled; her own self dressed in
+white, crossin' the foot-bredge, an' lightin' her steps with a corpse's
+candle." He drew up the reins abruptly. He seemed in sudden haste to go.
+His companion looked with deepening interest at the bridge, although he
+followed his guide's surging pathway to the opposite bank. As the two
+dripping horses struggled up the steep incline he asked, "Did the man
+with her see the manifestation also?"
+
+"He _'lows_ he did," responded Roxby, equivocally. "But when Mill'cent
+fust got so she could tell it, 'peared ter me ez Em'ry Keen an fund it
+ez much news ez the rest o' we-uns. Mill'cent jes' drapped stone-dead,
+accordin' ter all accounts, an' he an' the t'other young folks flung
+water in her face till she kem out'n her faint; an' jes' then they hearn
+the wagin a-rattlin' along the road, an' they stopped it an' fetched her
+home in it. She never told the tale till she war home, an' it skeered
+me an' my mother powerful, fur Mill'cent is all the kin we hev got.
+Mill'cent is gran'daddy an' gran'mam-my, sons an' daughters, uncles an'
+aunts, cousins, nieces, an' nephews, all in one. The only thing I ain't
+pervided with is a nephew-in-law, an' I don't need him. Leastwise I
+ain't lookin' fur Em'ry Keenan jes' at present."
+
+The pace was brisker when the two horses, bending their strength
+sturdily to the task, had pressed up the massive slope from the deep
+cleft of the gorge. As the road curved about the outer verge of the
+mountain, the valley far beneath came into view, with intersecting
+valleys and transverse ranges, dense with the growths of primeval
+wildernesses, and rugged with the tilted strata of great upheavals, and
+with chasms cut in the solid rock by centuries of erosion, traces
+of some remote cataclysmal period, registering thus its throes and
+turmoils. The blue sky, seen beyond a gaunt profile of one of the
+farther summits that defined its craggy serrated edge against the
+ultimate distances of the western heavens, seemed of a singularly suave
+tint, incongruous with the savagery of the scene, which clouds and
+portents of storm might better have befitted. The little graveyard,
+which John Dundas discerned with recognizing eyes, albeit they had never
+before rested upon it, was revealed suddenly, lying high on the opposite
+side of the gorge. No frost glimmered now on the lowly mounds; the
+flickering autumnal sunshine loitered unafraid among them, according
+to its languid wont for many a year. Shadows of the gray un-painted
+head-boards lay on the withered grass, brown and crisp, with never
+a cicada left to break the deathlike silence. A tuft of red leaves,
+vagrant in the wind, had been caught on one of the primitive monuments,
+and swayed there with a decorative effect. The enclosure seemed, to
+unaccustomed eyes, of small compass, and few the denizens who had found
+shelter here and a resting-place, but it numbered all the dead of the
+country-side for many a mile and many a year, and somehow the loneliness
+was assuaged to a degree by the reflection that they had known each
+other in life, unlike the great herds of cities, and that it was a
+common fate which the neighbors, huddled together, encountered in
+company.
+
+It had no discordant effect in the pervasive sense of gloom, of mighty
+antagonistic forces with which the scene was replete; it fostered a
+realization of the pitiable minuteness and helplessness of human nature
+in the midst of the vastness of inanimate nature and the evidences of
+infinite lengths of forgotten time, of the long reaches of unimagined
+history, eventful, fateful, which the landscape at once suggested and
+revealed and concealed.
+
+Like the sudden flippant clatter of castanets in the pause of some
+solemn funeral music was the impression given by the first glimpse along
+the winding woodland way of a great flimsy white building, with its
+many pillars, its piazzas, its "observatory," its band-stand, its garish
+intimations of the giddy, gay world of a summer hotel. But, alack! it,
+too, had its surfeit of woe.
+
+"The guerrillas an' bushwhackers tuk it out on the old hotel, sure!"
+observed Sim Roxby, by way of introduction. "Thar warn't much fightin'
+hyar-abouts, an' few sure-enough soldiers ever kem along. But wunst in a
+while a band o' guerrillas went through like a suddint wind-storm, an'
+I tell ye they made things whurl while they war about it. They made a
+sorter barracks o' the old place. Looks some like lightning hed struck
+it."
+
+He had reined up his horse about one hundred yards in front of the
+edifice, where the weed-grown gravelled drive--carefully tended ten
+years agone--had diverged from the straight avenue of poplars, sweeping
+in a circle around to the broad flight of steps.
+
+"Though," he qualified abruptly, as if a sudden thought had struck
+him, "ef ye air countin' on buyin' it, a leetle money spent ter keerful
+purpose will go a long way toward makin' it ez good ez new."
+
+His companion did not reply, and for the first time Roxby cast upon him
+a covert glance charged with the curiosity which would have been earlier
+and more easily aroused in another man by the manner of the stranger. A
+letter--infrequent missive in his experience--had come from an ancient
+companion-in-arms, his former colonel, requesting him in behalf of a
+friend of the old commander to repair to the railway station, thirty
+miles distant, to meet and guide this prospective purchaser of the old
+hotel to the site of the property. And now as Roxby looked at him the
+suspicion which his kind heart had not been quick to entertain was
+seized upon by his alert brain.
+
+"The cunnel's been fooled somehows," he said to himself.
+
+For the look with which John Dundas contemplated the place was not the
+gaze of him concerned with possible investment--with the problems of
+repair, the details of the glazier and the painter and the plasterer.
+The mind was evidently neither braced for resistance nor resigned to
+despair, as behooves one smitten by the foreknowledge of the certainty
+of the excess of the expenditures over the estimates. Only with pensive,
+listless melancholy, void of any intention, his eyes traversed the
+long rows of open doors, riven by rude hands from their locks, swinging
+helplessly to and fro in the wind, and giving to the deserted and
+desolate old place a spurious air of motion and life. Many of the
+shutters had been wrenched from their hinges, and lay rotting on the
+floors. The ball-room windows caught on their shattered glass the
+reflection of the clouds, and it seemed as if here and there a wan face
+looked through at the riders wending along the weed-grown path. Where so
+many faces had been what wonder that a similitude should linger in the
+loneliness! The pallid face seemed to draw back as they glanced up while
+slowly pacing around the drive. A rabbit sitting motionless on the front
+piazza did not draw back, although observing them with sedate eyes as
+he poised himself upright on his haunches, with his listless fore-paws
+suspended in the air, and it occurred to Dundas that he was probably
+unfamiliar with the presence of human beings, and had never heard the
+crack of a gun. A great swirl of swallows came soaring out of the big
+kitchen chimneys and circled in the sky, darting down again and again
+upward. Through an open passage was a glimpse of a quadrangle, with its
+weed-grown spaces and litter of yellow leaves. A tawny streak, a red
+fox, sped through it as Dundas looked. A half-moon, all a-tilt, hung
+above it. He saw the glimmer through the bare boughs of the leafless
+locust-trees here and there still standing, although outside on the lawn
+many a stump bore token how ruthlessly the bushwhackers had furnished
+their fires.
+
+"That thar moon's a-hangin' fur rain," said the mountaineer, commenting
+upon the aspect of the luminary, which he, too, had noticed as they
+passed. "I ain't s'prised none ef we hev fallin' weather agin 'fore
+day, an' the man--by name Morgan Holden--that hev charge o' the hotel
+property can't git back fur a week an' better."
+
+A vague wonder to find himself so suspicious flitted through his mind,
+with the thought that perhaps the colonel might have reckoned on this
+delay. "Surely the ruvers down yander at Knoxville mus' be a-boomin',
+with all this wet weather," he said to himself.
+
+Then aloud: "Morgan Holden he went ter Col-bury ter 'tend ter some
+business in court, an' the ruvers hev riz so that, what with the bredges
+bein' washed away an' the fords so onsartain an' tricky, he'll stay till
+the ruver falls. He don't know ye war kemin', ye see. The mail-rider hev
+quit, 'count o' the rise in the ruver, an' thar's no way ter git word
+ter him. Still, ef ye air minded ter wait, I'll be powerful obligated
+fur yer comp'ny down ter my house till the ruver falls an' Holden he
+gits back."
+
+The stranger murmured his obligations, but his eyes dwelt lingeringly
+upon the old hotel, with its flapping doors and its shattered windows.
+Through the recurrent vistas of these, placed opposite in the rooms,
+came again broken glimpses of the grassy space within the quadrangle,
+with its leafless locust-trees, first of all to yield their foliage to
+the autumn wind, where a tiny owl was shrilling stridulously under the
+lonely red sky and the melancholy moon.
+
+"Hed ye 'lowed ter, put up at the old hotel?" asked Roxby, some inherent
+quickness supplying the lack of a definite answer.
+
+For the first time the stranger turned upon him a look more expressive
+than the casual fragmentary attention with which he had half heeded,
+half ignored his talk since their first encounter at the railway
+station.
+
+"A simple fellow, but good as gold," was the phrase with which Simeon
+Roxby had been commended as guide and in some sort guard.
+
+"Not so simple, perhaps," the sophisticated man thought as their eyes
+met. Not so simple but that the truth must serve. "The colonel suggested
+that it might be best," he replied, more alert to the present moment
+than his languid preoccupation had heretofore permitted.
+
+The answer was good as far as it went. A few days spent in the old
+hostelry certainly would serve well to acquaint the prospective
+purchaser with its actual condition and the measures and means needed
+for its repair; but as Sim Roxby stood there, with the cry of the owl
+shrilling in the desert air, the lonely red sky, the ominous tilted
+moon, the doors drearily flapping to and fro as the wind stole into the
+forlorn and empty place and sped back affrighted, he marvelled at the
+refuge contemplated.
+
+"I believe there is some of the furniture here yet. We could contrive to
+set up a bed from what is left. The colonel could make it all right with
+Holden, and I could stay a day or two, as we originally planned."
+
+"Ye-es. I don't mind Holden: a man ain't much in charge of a place ez
+ain't got a lock or a key ter bless itself with, an' takes the owel an'
+the fox an' the gopher fur boarders; but, ennyhow, kem with me home ter
+supper. Mill'cent will hev it ready by now ennyhows, an' ye need suthin'
+hearty an' hot ter stiffen ye up ter move inter sech quarters ez these."
+Dundas hesitated, but the mountaineer had already taken assent for
+granted, and pushed his horse into a sharp trot. Evidently a refusal was
+not in order. Dundas pressed forward, and they rode together along the
+winding way past the ten-pin alley, its long low roof half hidden in the
+encroaching undergrowth springing up apace beneath the great trees; past
+the stables; past a line of summer cottages, strangely staring of aspect
+out of the yawning doors and windows, giving, instead of an impression
+of vacancy, a sense of covert watching, of secret occupancy. If one's
+glances were only quick enough, were there not faces pressed to those
+shattered panes--scarcely seen--swiftly withdrawn?
+
+He was in a desert; he had hardly been so utterly alone in all his life;
+yet he bore through the empty place a feeling of espionage, and ever
+and anon he glanced keenly at the overgrown lawns, with their deepening
+drifts of autumn leaves, at the staring windows and flaring doors, which
+emitted sometimes sudden creaking wails in the silence, as if he sought
+to assure himself of the vacancy of which his mind took cognizance and
+yet all his senses denied.
+
+Little of his sentiment, although sedulously cloaked, was lost on Sim
+Roxby; and he was aware, too, in some subtle way, of the relief his
+guest experienced when they plunged into the darkening forest and left
+the forlorn place behind them. The clearing in which it was situated
+seemed an oasis of light in the desert of night in which the rest of
+the world lay. From the obscurity of the forest Dundas saw, through the
+vistas of the giant trees, the clustering cottages, the great hotel,
+gables and chimneys and tower, stark and distinct as in some weird
+dream-light in the midst of the encircling gloom. The after-glow of
+sunset was still aflare on the western windows; the whole empty place
+was alight with a reminiscence of its old aspect--its old gay life. Who
+knows what memories were a-stalk there--what semblance of former times?
+What might not the darkness foster, the impunity of desertion, the
+associations that inhabited the place with almost the strength of human
+occupancy itself? Who knows--who knows?
+
+He remembered the scene afterward, the impression he received. And from
+this, he thought, arose his regret for his decision to take up here his
+abiding-place.
+
+The forest shut out the illumined landscape, and the night seemed indeed
+at hand; the gigantic boles of the trees loomed through the encompassing
+gloom, that was yet a semi-transparent medium, like some dark but clear
+fluid through which objects were dimly visible, albeit tinged with its
+own sombre hue. The lank, rawboned sorrel had set a sharp pace, to
+which the chestnut, after momentary lagging, as if weary with the day's
+travel, responded briskly. He had received in some way intimations that
+his companion's corn-crib was near at hand, and if he had not deduced
+from these premises the probability of sharing his fare, his mental
+processes served him quite as well as reason, and brought him to the
+same result. On and on they sped, neck and neck, through the darkening
+woods; fire flashed now and again from their iron-shod hoofs; often
+a splash and a shower of drops told of a swift dashing through the
+mud-holes that recent rains had fostered in the shallows. The dank odor
+of dripping boughs came on the clear air. Once the chestnut shied from a
+sudden strange shining point springing up in the darkness close at
+hand, which the country-bred horse discriminated as fox-fire, and
+kept steadily on, unmindful of the rotting log where it glowed. Far in
+advance, in the dank depths of the woods, a Will-o'-the-wisp danced and
+flickered and lured the traveller's eye. The stranger was not sure of
+the different quality of another light, appearing down a vista as the
+road turned, until the sorrel, making a tremendous spurt, headed for it,
+uttering a joyous neigh at the sight.
+
+The deep-voiced barking of hounds rose melodiously on the silence,
+and as the horses burst out of the woods into a small clearing, Dundas
+beheld in the brighter light a half-dozen of the animals nimbly afoot in
+the road, one springing over the fence, another in the act of climbing,
+his fore-paws on the topmost rail, his long neck stretched, and his head
+turning about in attitudes of observation. He evidently wished to assure
+himself whether the excitement of his friends was warranted by the facts
+before he troubled himself to vault over the fence. Three or four still
+lingered near the door of a log-cabin, fawning about a girl who stood on
+the porch. Her pose was alert, expectant; a fire in the dooryard, where
+the domestic manufacture of soap had been in progress, cast a red flare
+on the house, its appurtenances, the great dark forest looming all
+around, and, more than the glow of the hearth within, lighted up the
+central figure of the scene. She was tall, straight, and strong; a
+wealth of fair hair was clustered in a knot at the back of her head, and
+fleecy tendrils fell over her brow; on it was perched a soldier's-cap;
+and certainly more gallant and fearless eyes had never looked out from
+under the straight, stiff brim. Her chin, firm, round, dimpled, was
+uplifted as she raised her head, descrying the horsemen's approach. She
+wore a full dark-red skirt, a dark brown waist, and around her neck
+was twisted a gray cotton kerchief, faded to a pale ashen hue, the
+neutrality of which somehow aided the delicate brilliancy of the
+blended roseate and pearly tints of her face. Was this the seer of
+ghosts--Dundas marvelled--this the Millicent whose pallid and troubled
+phantom already-paced the foot-bridge?
+
+He did not realize that he had drawn up his horse suddenly at the sight
+of her, nor did he notice that his host had dismounted, until Roxby was
+at the chestnut's head, ready to lead the animal to supper in the barn.
+His evident surprise, his preoccupation, were not lost upon Roxby,
+however. His hand hesitated on the girth of the chestnut's saddle when
+he stood between the two horses in the barn. He had half intended to
+disregard the stranger's declination of his invitation, and stable the
+creature. Then he shook his head slowly; the mystery that hung about the
+new-comer was not reassuring. "A heap o' wuthless cattle 'mongst them
+valley men," he said; for the war had been in some sort an education to
+his simplicity. "Let him stay whar the cunnel expected him ter stay. I
+ain't wantin' no stranger a-hangin' round about Mill'cent, nohow. Em'ry
+Keenan ain't a pattern o' perfection, but I be toler'ble well acquainted
+with the cut o' his foolishness, an' I know his daddy an' mammy, an'
+both sets o' gran'daddies an' gran'mammies, an' I could tell ye exac'ly
+which one the critter got his nose an' his mouth from, an' them lean
+sheep's-eyes o' his'n, an' nigh every tone o' his voice. Em'ry never
+thunk afore ez I set store on bein' acquainted with him. He 'lowed I
+knowed him _too_ well."
+
+He laughed as he glanced through the open door into the darkening
+landscape. Horizontal gray clouds were slipping fast across the pearly
+spaces of the sky. The yellow stubble gleamed among the brown earth
+of the farther field, still striped with its furrows. The black forest
+encircled the little cleared space, and a wind was astir among the
+tree-tops. A white star gleamed through the broken clapboards of the
+roof, the fire still flared under the soap-kettle in the dooryard, and
+the silence was suddenly smitten by a high cracked old voice, which told
+him that his mother had perceived the dismounted stranger at the gate,
+and was graciously welcoming him.
+
+She had come to the door, where the girl still stood, but half withdrawn
+in the shadow. Dundas silently bowed as he passed her, following his
+aged hostess into the low room, all bedight with the firelight of a huge
+chimney-place, and comfortable with the realization of a journey's end.
+The wilderness might stretch its weary miles around, the weird wind
+wander in the solitudes, the star look coldly on unmoved by aught it
+beheld, the moon show sad portents, but at the door they all failed,
+for here waited rest and peace and human companionship and the sense of
+home.
+
+"Take a cheer, stranger, an' make yerself at home. Powerful glad ter
+see ye---war 'feard night would overtake ye. Ye fund the water toler'ble
+high in all the creeks an' sech, I reckon, an' fords shifty an'
+onsartain. Yes, sir. Fall rains kem on earlier'n common, an' more'n
+we need. Wisht we could divide it with that thar drought we had in the
+summer. Craps war cut toler'ble short, sir--toler'ble short."
+
+Mrs. Roxby's spectacles beamed upon him with an expression of the utmost
+benignity as the firelight played on the lenses, but her eyes peering
+over them seemed endowed in some sort with independence of outlook. It
+was as if from behind some bland mask a critical observation was poised
+for unbiased judgment. He felt in some degree under surveillance. But
+when a light step heralded an approach he looked up, regardless of
+the betrayal of interest, and bent a steady gaze upon Millicent as she
+paused in the doorway.
+
+And as she stood there, distinct in the firelight and outlined against
+the black background of the night, she seemed some modern half-military
+ideal of Diana, with her two gaunt hounds beside her, the rest of the
+pack vaguely glimpsed at her heels outside, the perfect outline and
+chiselling of her features, her fine, strong, supple figure, the look of
+steady courage in her eyes, and the soldier's cap on her fair hair. Her
+face so impressed itself upon his mind that he seemed to have seen her
+often. It was some resemblance to a picture of a vivandi�re, doubtless,
+in a foreign gallery--he could not say when or where; a remnant of a
+tourist's overcrowded impressions; a half-realized reminiscence, he
+thought, with an uneasy sense of recognition.
+
+"Hello, Mill'cent! home agin!" Roxby cried, in cheery greeting as he
+entered at the back door opposite. "What sorter topknot is that ye got
+on?" he demanded, looking jocosely at her head-gear.
+
+The girl put up her hand with an expression of horror. A deep red
+flush dyed her cheek as she touched the cap. "I forgot 'twar thar," she
+murmured, contritely. Then, with a sudden rush of anger as she tore it
+off: "'Twar granny's fault. She axed me ter put it on, so ez ter see
+which one I looked most like."
+
+"Stranger," quavered the old woman, with a painful break in her voice,
+"I los' fower sons in the war, an' Mill'cent hev got the fambly favor."
+
+"Ye _mought_ hev let me know ez I war a-perlitin' round in this hyar
+men's gear yit," the girl muttered, as she hung the cap on a prong of
+the deer antlers on which rested the rifle of the master of the house.
+
+Roxby's face had clouded at the mention of the four sons who had gone
+out from the mountains never to return, leaving to their mother's aching
+heart only the vague comfort of an elusive resemblance in a girl's
+face; but as he noted Millicent's pettish manner, and divined her
+mortification because of her unseemly head-gear in the stranger's
+presence, he addressed her again in that jocose tone without which he
+seldom spoke to her.
+
+[Illustration: Warn't you-uns apologizin' ter me 006]
+
+"Warn't you-uns apologizin' ter me t'other day fur not bein' a nephew
+'stiddier a niece? Looked sorter like a nephew ter-night."
+
+She shook her head, covered now only with its own charming tresses
+waving in thick undulations to the coil at the nape of her neck--a
+trifle dishevelled from the rude haste with which the cap had been torn
+off.
+
+Roxby had seated himself, and with his elbows on his knees he looked
+up at her with a teasing jocularity, such as one might assume toward a
+child.
+
+"_Ye war_," he declared, with affected solemnity--"ye war 'pologizin'
+fur not bein' a nephew, an' 'lowed ef ye war a nephew we could go
+a-huntin' tergether, an' ye could holp me in all my quar'ls an' fights.
+I been aging some lately, an' ef I war ter go ter the settlemint an' git
+inter a fight I mought not be able ter hold my own. Think what 'twould
+be ter a pore old man ter hev a dutiful nephew step up an'"--he doubled
+his fists and squared off--"jes' let daylight through some o' them
+cusses. An' didn't _ye say_"--he dropped his belligerent attitude and
+pointed an insistent finger at her, as if to fix the matter in her
+recollection--"ef ye war a nephew 'stiddier a niece ye could fire a gun
+'thout shettin' yer eyes? An' I told ye then ez that would mend yer aim
+mightily. I told ye that I'd be powerful mortified ef I hed a nephew ez
+hed ter shet his eyes ter keep the noise out'n his ears whenst he fired
+a rifle. The tale would go mighty hard with me at the settlemint."
+
+The girl's eyes glowed upon him with the fixity and the lustre of those
+of a child who is entertained and absorbed by an elder's jovial wiles.
+A flash of laughter broke over her face, and the low, gurgling,
+half-dreamy sound was pleasant to hear. She was evidently no more than
+a child to these bereft old people, and by them cherished as naught else
+on earth.
+
+"An' didn't _I tell you-uns,_" he went on, affecting to warm to the
+discussion, and in reality oblivious of the presence of the
+guest'--"didn't I tell ye ez how ef ye war a nephew 'stiddier a niece ye
+wouldn't hev sech cattle ez Em'ry Keenan a-dan-glin' round underfoot,
+like a puppy ye can't gin away, an' that _won't_ git lost, an' ye ain't
+got the heart ter kill?"
+
+The girl's lip suddenly curled with scorn. "Yer nephew would be
+obligated ter make a ch'ice fur marryin' 'mongst these hyar mounting
+gals--Par-mely Lepstone, or Belindy M'ria Matthews, or one o' the
+Windrow gals. Waal, sir, I'd ruther be yer niece--even ef Em'ry Keenan
+_air_ like a puppy underfoot, that ye can't gin away, an' won't git
+lost, an' ye ain't got the heart ter kill." She laughed again,
+showing her white teeth. She evidently relished the description of the
+persistent adherence of poor Emory Keenan. "But which one o' these hyar
+gals would ye recommend ter yer nephew ter marry--ef ye hed a nephew?"
+
+She looked at him with flashing eyes, conscious of having propounded a
+poser.
+
+He hesitated for a moment. Then--"I'm surrounded," he said, with a
+laugh. "Ez I couldn't find a wife fur myself, I can't undertake
+ter recommend one ter my nephew. Mighty fine boy he'd hev been, an'
+saaft-spoken an' perlite ter aged men--not sassy an' makin' game o' old
+uncles like a niece. Mighty fine boy!"
+
+"Ye air welcome ter him," she said, with a simulation of scorn, as she
+turned away to the table.
+
+Whether it were the military cap she had worn, or the fancied
+resemblance to the young soldiers, never to grow old, who had gone forth
+from this humble abode to return no more, there was still to the guest's
+mind the suggestion of the vivandi�re about her as she set the table
+and spread upon it the simple fare. To and from the fireplace she was
+followed by two or three of the younger dogs, their callowness expressed
+in their lack of manners and perfervid interest in the approaching meal.
+This induced their brief journeys back and forth, albeit embarrassed
+by their physical conformation, short turns on four legs not being
+apparently the easy thing it would seem from so much youthful
+suppleness. The dignity of the elder hounds did not suffer them to move,
+but they looked on from erect postures about the hearth with glistening
+eyes and slobbering jaws.
+
+Ever and anon the deep blue eyes of Millicent were lifted to the outer
+gloom, as if she took note of its sinister aspect. She showed scant
+interest in the stranger, whose gaze seldom left her as he sat beside
+the fire. He was a handsome man, his face and figure illumined by the
+firelight, and it might have been that he felt a certain pique, an
+unaccustomed slight, in that his presence was so indifferent an element
+in the estimation of any young and comely specimen of the feminine sex.
+Certainly he had rarely encountered such absolute preoccupation as her
+smiling far-away look betokened as she went back and forth with her
+young canine friends at her heels, or stood at the table deftly slicing
+the salt-rising bread, the dogs poised skilfully upon their hind-legs
+to better view the appetizing performance; whenever she turned her face
+toward them they laid their heads languish-ingly askew, as if to remind
+her that supper could not be more fitly bestowed than on them. One, to
+steady himself, placed unobserved his fore-paw on the edge of the table,
+his well-padded toes leaving a vague imprint as of fingers upon the
+coarse white cloth; but John Dundas was a sportsman, and could the
+better relax an exacting nicety where so pleasant-featured and affable
+a beggar was concerned. He forgot the turmoils of his own troubles as
+he gazed at Millicent, the dreary aspect of the solitudes without, the
+exile from his accustomed sphere of culture and comfort, the poverty
+and coarseness of her surroundings. He was sorry that he had declined
+a longer lease of Roxby's hospitality, and it was in his mind to
+reconsider when it should be again proffered. Her attitude, her gesture,
+her face, her environment, all appealed to his sense of beauty, his
+interest, his curiosity, as little ever had done heretofore. Slice after
+slice of the firm fragrant bread was deftly cut and laid on the plate,
+as again and again she lifted her eyes with a look that might seem to
+expect to rest on summer in the full flush of a June noontide without,
+rather than on the wan, wintry night sky and the plundered, quaking
+woods, while the robber wind sped on his raids hither and thither so
+swiftly that none might follow, so stealthily that none might hinder. A
+sudden radiance broke upon her face, a sudden shadow fell on the
+firelit floor, and there was entering at the doorway a tall, lithe young
+mountaineer, whose first glance, animated with a responsive brightness,
+was for the girl, but whose punctilious greeting was addressed to the
+old woman.
+
+"Howdy, Mis' Roxby--howdy? Air yer rheumatics mendin' enny?" he
+demanded, with the condolent suavity of the would-be son-in-law, or
+grand-son-in-law, as the case may be. And he hung with a transfixed
+interest upon her reply, prolix and discursive according to the wont of
+those who cultivate "rheumatics," as if each separate twinge racked his
+own sympathetic and filial sensibilities. Not until the tale was ended
+did he set his gun against the wall and advance to the seat which Roxby
+had indicated with the end of the stick he was whittling. He observed
+the stranger with only slight interest, till Dundas drew up his chair
+opposite at the table. There the light from the tallow dip, guttering in
+the centre, fell upon his handsome face and eyes, his carefully tended
+beard and hair, his immaculate cuffs and delicate hand, the seal-ring on
+his taper finger.
+
+"Like a gal, by gum!" thought Emory Keenan. "Rings on his fingers--yit
+six feet high!"
+
+He looked at his elders, marvelling that they so hospitably repressed
+the disgust which this effeminate adornment must occasion, forgetting
+that it was possible that they did not even observe it. In the gala-days
+of the old hotel, before the war, they had seen much "finicking finery"
+in garb and equipage and habits affected by the _jeunesse dor�e_ who
+frequented the place in those halcyon times, and were accustomed to
+such details. It might be that they and Millicent approved such flimsy
+daintiness. He began to fume inwardly with a sense of inferiority in her
+estimation. One of his fingers had been frosted last winter, and with
+the first twinge of cold weather it was beginning to look very red and
+sad and clumsy, as if it had just remembered its ancient woe; he glanced
+from it once more at the delicate ringed hand of the stranger.
+
+Dundas was looking up with a slow, deferential, decorous smile that
+nevertheless lightened and transfigured his expression. It seemed
+somehow communicated to Millicent's face as she looked down at him from
+beneath her white eyelids and long, thick, dark lashes, for she was
+standing beside him, handing him the plate of bread. Then, still
+smiling, she passed noiselessly on to the others.
+
+Emory was indeed clumsy, for he had stretched his hand downward to
+offer a morsel to a friend of his under the table--he was on terms of
+exceeding amity with the four-footed members of the household--and in
+his absorption not withdrawing it as swiftly as one accustomed to canine
+manners should do, he had his frosted finger well mumbled before he
+could, as it were, repossess himself of it.
+
+"I wonder what they charge fur iron over yander at the settlemint,
+Em'ry?" observed Sim Roxby presently.
+
+"Dun'no', sir," responded Emory, glumly, his sullen black eyes full of
+smouldering fire--"hevin' no call ter know, ez I ain't no blacksmith."
+
+"I war jes' wonderin' ef tenpenny nails didn't cost toler'ble high ez
+reg'lar feed," observed Roxby, gravely.
+
+But his mother laughed out with a gleeful cracked treble, always a ready
+sequence of her son's rustic sallies. "He got ye that time, Em'ry," she
+cried.
+
+A forced smile crossed Emory's face. He tossed back his tangled dark
+hair with a gasp that was like the snort of an unruly horse submitting
+to the inevitable, but with restive projects in his brain. "I let the
+dog hyar ketch my finger whilst feedin' him," he said. His plausible
+excuse for the ten-penny expression was complete; but he added, his
+darker mood recurring instantly, "An', Mis' Roxby, I hev put a stop ter
+them ez hev tuk ter callin' me Em'ly, I hev."
+
+The old woman looked up, her small wrinkled mouth round and amazed.
+"_I_ never called ye Emily," she declared.
+
+Swift repentance seized him.
+
+"Naw, 'm," he said, with hurried propitiation. "I 'lowed ye did."
+
+"I didn't," said the old woman. "But ef I warter find it toothsome ter
+call ye 'Emily,' I dun'no' how ye air goin' ter pervent it. Ye can't go
+gun-nin' fur me, like ye done fur the men at the mill, fur callin' ye
+'Emily.'"
+
+"Law, Mis' Roxby!" he could only exclaim, in his horror and contrition
+at this picture he had thus conjured up. "Ye air welcome ter call me
+ennything ye air a mind ter," he protested.
+
+And then he gasped once more. The eyes of the guest, contemptuous,
+amused, seeing through him, were fixed upon him. And he himself had
+furnished the lily-handed stranger with the information that he had been
+stigmatized "Em'ly" in the banter of his associates, until he had taken
+up arms, as it were, to repress this derision.
+
+"It takes powerful little ter put ye down, Em'ry," said Roxby, with
+rallying laughter. "Mam hev sent ye skedaddlin' in no time at all. I
+don't b'lieve the Lord made woman out'n the man's rib. He made her out'n
+the man's backbone; fur the man ain't hed none ter speak of sence."
+
+Millicent, with a low gurgle of laughter, sat down beside Emory at the
+table, and fixed her eyes, softly lighted with mirth, upon him. The
+others too had laughed, the stranger with a flattering intonation, but
+young Keenan looked at her with a dumb appealing humility that did not
+altogether fail of its effect, for she busied herself to help his plate
+with an air of proprietorship as if he were a child, and returned
+it with a smile very radiant and sufficient at close range. She then
+addressed herself to her own meal. The young dogs under the table ceased
+to beg, and gambolled and gnawed and tugged at her stout little shoes,
+the sound of their callow mirthful growls rising occasionally above
+the talk. Sometimes she rose again to wait on the table, when they came
+leaping out after her, jumping and catching at her skirts, now and then
+casting themselves on the ground prone before her feet, and rolling over
+and over in the sheer joy of existence.
+
+The stranger took little part in the talk at the table. Never a question
+was asked him as to his mission in the mountains, or the length of
+his stay, his vocation, or his home. That extreme courtesy of the
+mountaineers, exemplified in their singular abstinence from any
+expressions of curiosity, accepted such account of himself as he had
+volunteered, and asked for no more. In the face of this standard of
+manners any inquisitiveness on his part, such as might have elicited
+points of interest for his merely momentary entertainment, was tabooed.
+Nevertheless, silent though he was for the most part, the relish with
+which he listened, his half-covert interest in the girl, his quick
+observation of the others, the sudden very apparent enlivening of his
+mental atmosphere, betokened that his quarters were not displeasing
+to him. It seemed only a short time before the meal was ended and the
+circle all, save Millicent, with pipes alight before the fire again. The
+dogs, well fed, had ranged themselves on the glowing hearth, lying prone
+on the hot stones; one old hound, however, who conserved the air of
+listening to the conversation, sat upright and nodded from time to time,
+now and again losing his balance and tipping forward in a truly human
+fashion, then gazing round on the circle with an open luminous eye, as
+who should say he had not slept.
+
+It was all very cheerful within, but outside the wind still blared
+mournfully. Once more Dundas was sorry that he had declined the
+invitation to remain, and it was with a somewhat tentative intention
+that he made a motion to return to the hotel. But his host seemed
+to regard his resolution as final, and rose with a regret, not an
+insistence. The two women stared in silent amazement at the mere idea
+of his camping out, as it were, in the old hotel. The ascendency of
+masculine government here, notwithstanding Roxby's assertion that
+Eve was made of Adam's backbone, was very apparent in their mute
+acquiescence and the alacrity with which they began to collect various
+articles, according to his directions, to make the stranger's stay more
+comfortable.
+
+"Em'ry kin go along an' holp," he said, heartlessly; for poor Emory's
+joy in perceiving that the guest was not a fixture, and that his
+presence was not to be an embargo on any word between himself and
+Millicent during the entire evening, was pitiably manifest. But the
+situation was still not without its comforts, since Dundas was to go
+too. Hence he was not poor company when once in the saddle, and was
+civil to a degree of which his former dismayed surliness had given no
+promise.
+
+Night had become a definite element. The twilight had fled. Above their
+heads, as they galloped through the dank woods, the bare boughs of the
+trees clashed together--so high above their heads that to the town
+man, unaccustomed to these great growths, the sound seemed not of the
+vicinage, but unfamiliar, uncanny, and more than once he checked his
+horse to listen. As they approached the mountain's verge and overlooked
+the valley and beheld the sky, the sense of the predominance of darkness
+was redoubled. The ranges gloomed against the clearer spaces, but a
+cloud, deep gray with curling white edges, was coming up from the
+west, with an invisible convoy of vague films, beneath which the stars,
+glimmering white points, disappeared one by one. The swift motion of
+this aerial fleet sailing with the wind might be inferred from the
+seemingly hurried pace of the moon making hard for the west. Still
+bright was the illumined segment, but despite its glitter the shadowy
+space of the full disk was distinctly visible, its dusky field spangled
+with myriads of minute, dully golden points. Down, down it took its
+way in haste--in disordered fright, it seemed, as if it had no heart
+to witness the storm which the wind and the clouds foreboded--to fairer
+skies somewhere behind those western mountains. Soon even its vague
+light would encroach no more upon the darkness. The great hotel would be
+invisible, annihilated as it were in the gloom, and not even thus dimly
+exist, glimmering, alone, forlorn, so incongruous to the wilderness that
+it seemed even now some mere figment of the brain, as the two horsemen
+came with a freshened burst of speed along the deserted avenue and
+reined up beside a small gate at the side.
+
+"No use ter ride all the way around," observed Emory Keenan. "Mought jes
+ez well 'light an' hitch hyar."
+
+The moon gave him the escort of a great grotesque shadow as he
+threw himself from his horse and passed the reins over a decrepit
+hitching-post near at hand. Then he essayed the latch of the small gate.
+He glanced up at Dundas, the moonlight in his dark eyes, with a smile as
+it resisted his strength.
+
+He was a fairly good-looking fellow when rid of the self-consciousness
+of jealousy. His eyes, mouth, chin, and nose, acquired from reliable
+and recognizable sources, were good features, and statuesque in their
+immobility beneath the drooping curves of his broad soft hat. He was
+tall, with the slenderness of youth, despite his evident weight and
+strength. He was long-waisted and lithe and small of girth, with broad
+square shoulders, whose play of muscles as he strove with the gate was
+not altogether concealed by the butternut jeans coat belted in with his
+pistols by a broad leathern belt. His boots reached high on his long
+legs, and jingled with a pair of huge cavalry spurs. His stalwart
+strength seemed as if it must break the obdurate gate rather than open
+it, but finally, with a rasping creak, dismally loud in the silence, it
+swung slowly back.
+
+The young mountaineer stood gazing for a moment at the red rust on the
+hinges. "How long sence this gate must hev been opened afore?" he said,
+again looking up at Dundas with a smile.
+
+Somehow the words struck a chill to the stranger's heart. The sense of
+the loneliness of the place, of isolation, filled him with a sort of
+awe. The night-bound wilderness itself was not more daunting than these
+solitary tiers of piazzas, these vacant series of rooms and corridors,
+all instinct with vanished human presence, all alert with echoes of
+human voices. A step, a laugh, a rustle of garments--he could have sworn
+he heard them at any open doorway as he followed his guide along the dim
+moonlit piazza, with its pillars duplicated at regular intervals by the
+shadows on the floor. How their tread echoed down these lonely ways!
+From the opposite side of the house he heard Kee-nan's spurs jangling,
+his soldierly stride sounding back as if their entrance had roused
+barracks. He winced once to see his own shadow with its stealthier
+movement. It seemed painfully furtive. For the first time during the
+evening his jaded mind, that had instinctively sought the solace of
+contemplating trifles, reverted to its own tormented processes. "Am
+I not hiding?" he said to himself, in a sort of sarcastic pity of his
+plight.
+
+The idea seemed never to enter the mind of the transparent Keenan. He
+laughed out gayly as they turned into the weed-grown quadrangle, and
+the red fox that Dundas had earlier observed slipped past him with
+affrighted speed and dashed among the shadows of the dense shrubbery of
+the old lawn without. Again and again the sound rang back from wall to
+wall, first with the jollity of seeming imitation, then with an appalled
+effect sinking to silence, and suddenly rising again in a grewsome
+_staccato_ that suggested some terrible unearthly laughter, and bore but
+scant resemblance to the hearty mirth which had evoked it Keenan paused
+and looked back with friendly gleaming eyes. "Oughter been a leetle
+handier with these hyar consarns," he said, touching the pistols in his
+belt.
+
+It vaguely occurred to Dundas that the young man went strangely heavily
+armed for an evening visit at a neighbor's house. But it was a lawless
+country and lawless times, and the sub-current of suggestion did not
+definitely fix itself in his mind until he remembered it later. He
+was looking into each vacant open doorway, seeing the still moonlight
+starkly white upon the floor; the cobwebbed and broken window-panes,
+through which a section of leafless trees beyond was visible; bits of
+furniture here and there, broken by the vandalism of the guerillas. Now
+and then a scurrying movement told of a gopher, hiding too, and on one
+mantel-piece, the black fireplace yawning below, sat a tiny tawny-tinted
+owl, whose motionless beadlike eyes met his with a stare of stolid
+surprise. After he had passed, its sudden ill-omened cry set the silence
+to shuddering.
+
+Keenan, leading the way, paused in displeasure. "I wisht I hed viewed
+that critter," he said, glumly. "I'd hev purvented that screechin' ter
+call the devil, sure. It's jes a certain sign o' death."
+
+He was about to turn, to wreak his vengeance, perchance. But the bird,
+sufficiently fortunate itself, whatever woe it presaged for others,
+suddenly took its awkward flight through sheen and shadow across the
+quadrangle, and when they heard its cry again it came from some remote
+section of the building, with a doleful echo as a refrain.
+
+The circumstance was soon forgotten by Keenan. He seemed a happy,
+mercurial, lucid nature, and he began presently to dwell with interest
+on the availability of the old music-stand in the centre of the square
+as a manger. "Hyar," he said, striking the rotten old structure with
+a heavy hand, which sent a quiver and a thrill through all the
+timbers--"hyar's whar the guerillas always hitched thar beastises. Thar
+feed an' forage war piled up thar on the fiddlers' seats. Ye can't do no
+better'n ter pattern arter them, till ye git ready ter hev fiddlers an'
+sech a-sawin' away in hyar agin."
+
+And he sauntered away from the little pavilion, followed by Dundas, who
+had not accepted his suggestion of a room on the first floor as being
+less liable to leakage, but finally made choice of an inner apartment in
+the second story. He looked hard at Keenan, when he stood in the doorway
+surveying the selection. The room opened into a cross-hall which gave
+upon a broad piazza that was latticed; tiny squares of moonlight were
+all sharply drawn on the floor, and, seen through a vista of gray
+shadow, seemed truly of a gilded lustre. From the windows of this room
+on a court-yard no light Could be visible to any passer-by without.
+Another door gave on an inner gallery, and through its floor a staircase
+came up from the quadrangle close to the threshold. Dundas wondered if
+these features were of possible significance in Keenan's estimation. The
+young mountaineer turned suddenly, and snatching up a handful of slats
+broken from the shutters, remarked:
+
+"Let's see how the chimbly draws--that's the main p'int."
+
+There was no defect in the chimney's constitution. It drew admirably,
+and with the white and red flames dancing in the fireplace, two or
+three chairs, more or less disabled, a table, and an upholstered lounge
+gathered at random from the rooms near at hand, the possibility of
+sojourning comfortably for a few days in the deserted hostelry seemed
+amply assured.
+
+Once more Dundas gazed fixedly at the face of the young mountaineer,
+who still bent on one knee on the hearth, watching with smiling eyes
+the triumphs of his fire-making. It seemed to him afterwards that his
+judgment was strangely at fault; he perceived naught of import in the
+shallow brightness of the young man's eyes, like the polished surface of
+jet; in the instability of his jealousy, his anger; in his hap-hazard,
+mercurial temperament. Once he might have noted how flat were the
+spaces beneath the eyes, how few were the lines that defined the lid,
+the socket, the curve of the cheekbone, the bridge of the nose, and how
+expressionless. It was doubtless the warmth and glow of the fire,
+the clinging desire of companionship, the earnest determination to be
+content, pathetic in one who had but little reason for optimism, that
+caused him to ignore the vacillating glancing moods that successively
+swayed Keenan, strong while they lasted, but with scanty augury because
+of their evanescence. He was like some newly discovered property in
+physics of untried potentialities, of which nothing is ascertained but
+its uncertainties.
+
+And yet he seemed to Dundas a simple country fellow, good-natured in the
+main, unsuspicious, and helpful. So, giving a long sigh of relief and
+fatigue, Dundas sank down in one of the large arm-chairs that had once
+done duty for the summer loungers on the piazza.
+
+In the light of the fire Emory was once more looking at him. A certain
+air of distinction, a grace and ease of movement, an indescribable
+quality of bearing which he could not discriminate, yet which he
+instinctively recognized as superior, offended him in some sort. He
+noticed again the ring on the stranger's hand as he drew off his glove.
+Gloves! Emory Keen an would as soon have thought of wearing a petticoat.
+Once more the fear that these effeminate graces found favor in
+Millicent's estimation smote upon his heart. It made the surface of his
+opaque eyes glisten as Dundas rose and took up a pipe and tobacco-pouch
+which he had laid on the mantelpiece, his full height and fine figure
+shown in the changed posture.
+
+"Ez tall ez me, ef not taller, an', by gum! a good thirty pound
+heavier," Emory reflected, with, a growing dismay that he had not those
+stalwart claims to precedence in height and weight as an offset to the
+smoother fascinations of the stranger's polish.
+
+He had risen hastily to his feet. He would not linger to smoke
+fraternally over the fire, and thus cement friendly relations.
+
+"I guided him hyar, like old Sim Roxby axed me ter do, an' that's all. I
+ain't keerin' ef I never lay eyes on him again," he said to himself.
+
+"Going?" said Dundas, pleasantly, noticing the motion. "You'll look in
+again, won't you?"
+
+"Wunst in a while, I reckon," drawled Keenan, a trifle thrown off his
+balance by this courtesy.
+
+He paused at the door, looking back over his shoulder for a moment at
+the illumined room, then stepped out into the night, leaving the tenant
+of the lonely old house filling his pipe by the fire.
+
+His tread rang along the deserted gallery, and sudden echoes came
+tramping down the vacant halls as if many a denizen of the once populous
+place was once more astir within its walls. Long after Dundas had heard
+him spring from the lower piazza to the ground, and the rusty gate clang
+behind him, vague footfalls were audible far away, and were still again,
+and once more a pattering tread in some gaunt and empty apartment near
+at hand, faint and fainter yet, till he hardly knew whether it were the
+reverberations of sound or fancy that held his senses in thrall.
+
+And when all was still and silent at last he felt less solitary than
+when these elusive tokens of human presence were astir.
+
+Late, late he sat over the dwindling embers. His mind, no longer
+diverted by the events of the day, recurred with melancholy persistence
+to a theme which even they, although fraught with novelty and presage
+of danger, had not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril
+dulled, the craft of sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him
+in these dim watches of the night. Self-reproach had found him out here,
+defenceless so far from the specious wiles and ways of men. All the line
+of provocations seemed slight, seemed naught, as he reviewed them and
+balanced them against a human life. True, it was not in some mad quarrel
+that his skill had taken it and had served to keep his own--a duel, a
+fair fight, strictly regular according to the code of "honorable men"
+for ages past--and he sought to argue that it was doubtless but the
+morbid sense of the wild fastnesses without, the illimitable vastness
+of the black night, the unutterable indurability of nature to the
+influences of civilization, which made it taste like murder. He had
+brought away even from the scene of action, to which he had gone with
+decorous deliberation--his worldly affairs arranged for the possibility
+of death, his will made, his volition surrendered, and his sacred honor
+in the hands of his seconds--a humiliating recollection of the sudden
+revulsion of the aspect of all things; the criminal sense of haste with
+which he was hurried away after that first straight shot; the agitation,
+nay, the fright of his seconds; their eagerness to be swiftly rid of
+him, their insistence that he should go away for a time, get out of the
+country, out of the embarrassing purview of the law, which was prone to
+regard the matter as he himself saw it now, and which had an ugly trick
+of calling things by their right names in the sincere phraseology of an
+indictment. And thus it was that he was here, remote from all the usual
+lines of flight, with his affectation of being a possible purchaser for
+the old hotel, far from the railroad, the telegraph, even the postal
+service. Some time--soon, indeed, it might be, when the first flush
+of excitement and indignation should be overpast, and the law, like a
+barking dog that will not bite, should have noisily exhausted the gamut
+of its devoirs--he would go back and live according to his habit in his
+wonted place, as did other men whom he had known to be "called out," and
+who had survived their opponents. Meantime he heard the ash crumble; he
+saw the lighted room wane from glancing yellow to a dull steady red,
+and so to dusky brown; he marked the wind rise, and die away, and come
+again, banging the doors of the empty rooms, and setting timbers all
+strangely to creaking as under sudden trampling feet; then lift into the
+air with a rustling sound like the stir of garments and the flutter of
+wings, calling out weirdly in the great voids of the upper atmosphere.
+
+He had welcomed the sense of fatigue earlier in the evening, for it
+promised sleep. Now it had slipped away from him. He was strong and
+young, and the burning sensation that the frosty air had left on his
+face was the only token of the long journey. It seemed as if he
+would never sleep again as he lay on the lounge watching the gray ash
+gradually overgrow the embers, till presently only a vague dull glow
+gave intimation of the position of the hearth in the room. And then,
+bereft of this dim sense of companionship, he stared wide-eyed in the
+darkness, feeling the only creature alive and awake in all the world.
+No; the fox was suddenly barking within the quadrangle--a strangely wild
+and alien tone. And presently he heard the animal trot past his door
+on the piazza, the cushioned footfalls like those of a swift dog. He
+thought with a certain anxiety of the tawny tiny owl that had sat like
+a stuffed ornament on the mantel-piece of a neighboring room, and he
+listened with a quaking vicarious presentiment of woe for the sounds of
+capture and despair. He was sensible of waiting and hoping for the fox's
+bootless return, when he suddenly lost consciousness.
+
+How long he slept he did not know, but it seemed only a momentary
+respite from the torture of memory, when, still in the darkness,
+thousands of tremulous penetrating sounds were astir, and with a great
+start he recognized the rain on the roof. It was coming down in steady
+torrents that made the house rock before the tumult of his plunging
+heart was still, and he was longing again for the forgetfulness of
+sleep. In vain. The hours dragged by; the windows slowly, slowly denned
+their dull gray squares against the dull gray day dawning without.
+The walls that had been left with only the first dark coat of plaster,
+awaiting another season for the final decoration, showed their drapings
+of cobweb, and the names and pencilled scribblings with which the fancy
+of transient bushwhackers had chosen to deface them. The locust-trees
+within the quadrangle drearily tossed their branches to and fro in the
+wind, the bark very black and distinct against the persistent gray lines
+of rain and the white walls of the galleried buildings opposite; the
+gutters were brimming, roaring along like miniature torrents; nowhere
+was the fox or the owl to be seen. Somehow their presence would have
+been a relief--the sight of any living thing reassuring. As he walked
+slowly along the deserted piazzas, in turning sudden corners, again and
+again he paused, expecting that something, some one, was approaching to
+meet him. When at last he mounted his horse, that had neighed gleefully
+to see him, and rode away through the avenue and along the empty ways
+among the untenanted summer cottages, all the drearier and more forlorn
+because of the rain, he felt as if he had left an aberration, some
+hideous dream, behind, instead of the stark reality of the gaunt and
+vacant and dilapidated old house.
+
+The transition to the glow and cheer of Sim Roxby's fireside was like
+a rescue, a restoration. The smiling welcome in the women's eyes, their
+soft drawling voices, with mellifluous intonations that gave a value to
+each commonplace simple word, braced his nerves like a tonic. It might
+have been only the contrast with the recollections of the night, with
+the prospect visible through the open door--the serried lines of rain
+dropping aslant from the gray sky and elusively outlined against the
+dark masses of leafless woods that encircled the clearing; the dooryard
+half submerged with puddles of a clay-brown tint, embossed always with
+myriads of protruding drops of rain, for however they melted away the
+downpour renewed them, and to the eye they were stationary, albeit
+pervaded with a continual tremor--but somehow he was cognizant of a
+certain coddling tenderness in the old woman's manner that might have
+been relished by a petted child, an unaffected friendliness in the
+girl's clear eyes. They made him sit close to the great wood fire; the
+blue and yellow flames gushed out from the piles of hickory logs, and
+the bed of coals gleamed at red and white heat beneath. They took his
+hat to carefully dry it, and they spread out his cloak on two chairs
+at one side of the room, where it dismally dripped. When he ventured to
+sneeze, Mrs. Roxby compounded and administered a "yerb tea," a sovereign
+remedy against colds, which he tasted on compulsion and in great doubt,
+and swallowed with alacrity and confidence, finding its basis the easily
+recognizable "toddy." He had little knowledge how white and troubled
+his face had looked as he came in from the gray day, how strongly marked
+were those lines of sharp mental distress, how piteously apparent was
+his mute appeal for sympathy and comfort.
+
+"Mill'cent," said the old woman in the shed-room, as they washed and
+wiped the dishes after the cozy breakfast of venison and corn-dodgers
+and honey and milk, "that thar man hev run agin the law, sure's ye air
+born."
+
+Millicent turned her reflective fair face, that seemed whiter and
+more delicate in the damp dark day, and looked doubtfully out over the
+fields, where the water ran in steely lines in the furrows.
+
+"Mus' hev been by accident or suthin'. _He_ ain't no hardened sinner."
+
+"Shucks!" the old woman commented upon her reluctant acquiescence. "I
+ain't keerin' for the law! 'Tain't none o' my job. The tomfool men make
+an' break it. Ennybody ez hev seen this war air obleeged to take note
+o' the wickedness o' men in gineral. This hyer man air a sorter pitiful
+sinner, an' he hev got a look in his eyes that plumb teches my heart.
+I 'ain't got no call ter know nuthin' 'bout the law, bein' a 'oman an'
+naterally ignorant. I dun'no' ez he hev run agin it."
+
+"Mus' hev been by accident," said Millicent, dreamily, still gazing over
+the sodden fields.
+
+The suspicion did nothing to diminish his comfort or their cordiality.
+The morning dragged by without change in the outer aspects. The noontide
+dinner came and went without Roxby's return, for the report of the
+washing away of a bridge some miles distant down the river had early
+called him out to the scene of the disaster, to verify in his own
+interests the rumor, since he had expected to haul his wheat to the
+settlement the ensuing day. The afternoon found the desultory talk still
+in progress about the fire, the old woman alternately carding cotton
+and nodding in her chair in the corner; the dogs eying the stranger,
+listening much of the time with the air of children taking instruction,
+only occasionally wandering out-of-doors, the floor here and there
+bearing the damp imprint of their feet; and Millicent on her knees in
+the other corner, the firelight on her bright hair, her delicate cheek,
+her quickly glancing eyes, as she deftly moulded bullets.
+
+"Uncle Sim hed ter s'render his shootin'-irons," she explained, "an' he
+'ain't got no ca'tridge-loadin' ones lef. So he makes out with his old
+muzzle-loadin' rifle that he hed afore the war, an' I moulds his bullets
+for him rainy days."
+
+As she held up a moulded ball and dexterously clipped off the surplus
+lead, the gesture was so culinary in its delicacy that one of the dogs
+in front of the fire extended his head, making a long neck, with a
+tentative sniff and a glistening gluttonous eye.
+
+"Ef I swallered enny mo' lead, I wouldn't take it hot, Towse," she said,
+holding out the bullet for canine inspection. "'Tain't healthy!"
+
+But the dog, perceiving the nature of the commodity, drew back with a
+look of deep reproach, rose precipitately, and with a drooping tail went
+out skulkingly into the wet gray day.
+
+"Towse can't abide a bullet," she observed, "nor nuthin' 'bout a gun.
+He got shot wunst a-huntin', an' he never furgot it. Jes show him a gun
+an' he ain't nowhar ter be seen--like he war cotch up in the clouds."
+
+"Good watch-dog, I suppose," suggested Dundas, striving to enter into
+the spirit of her talk.
+
+"Naw; too sp'ilt for a gyard-dog--granny coddled him so whenst he
+got shot. He's jest vally'ble fur his conversation, I reckon," she
+continued, with a smile in her eyes. "I dun'no' what else, but he _is_
+toler'ble good company."
+
+The other dogs pressed about her, the heads of the great hounds as high
+as her own as she sat among them on the floor. With bright eyes and
+knitted brows they followed the motions of pouring in the melted metal,
+the lifting of the bullets from the mould, the clipping off of the
+surplus lead, and the flash of the keen knife.
+
+Outside the sad light waned; the wind sighed and sighed; the dreary
+rain fell; the trees clashed their boughs dolorously together, and their
+turbulence deadened the sound of galloping horses. As Dundas sat and
+gazed at the girl's intent head, with its fleecy tendrils and its
+massive coil, the great hounds beside her, all emblazoned by the
+firelight upon the brown wall near by, with the vast fireplace at hand,
+the whole less like reality than some artist's pictured fancy, he knew
+naught of a sudden entrance, until she moved, breaking the spell, and
+looked up to meet the displeasure in Roxby's eyes and the dark scowl on
+Emory Keenan's face.
+
+*****
+
+That night the wind shifted to the north. Morning found the chilled
+world still, ice where the water had lodged, all the trees incased in
+glittering garb that followed the symmetry alike of every bough and
+the tiniest twig, and made splendid the splintered remnants of the
+lightning-riven. The fields were laced across from furrow to furrow, in
+which the frozen water still stood gleaming, with white arabesques which
+had known a more humble identity as stubble and crab-grass; the sky was
+slate-colored, and from its sad tint this white splendor gained added
+values of contrast. When the sun should shine abroad much of the effect
+would be lost in the too dazzling glister; but the sun did not shine.
+
+All day the gray mood held unchanged. Night was imperceptibly sifting
+down upon all this whiteness, that seemed as if it would not be
+obscured, as if it held within itself some property of luminosity, when
+Millicent, a white apron tied over her golden head, improvising a hood,
+its superfluous fulness gathered in many folds and pleats around her
+neck, fichu-wise, stood beside the ice-draped fodder-stack and essayed
+with half-numbed hands to insert a tallow dip into the socket of a
+lantern, all incrusted and clumsy with previous drippings.
+
+"I dun'no' whether I be a-goin' ter need this hyar consarn whilst
+milkin' or no," she observed, half to herself, half to Emory, who,
+chewing a straw, somewhat surlily had followed her out for a word apart.
+"The dusk 'pears slow ter-night, but Spot's mighty late comin' home, an'
+old Sue air fractious an' contrairy-minded, and feels mighty anxious
+an' oneasy 'boutn her calf, that's ez tall ez she is nowadays, an' don't
+keer no mo' 'bout her mammy 'n a half-grown human does. I tell her she
+oughtn't ter be mad with me, but with the way she brung up her chile, ez
+won't notice her now."
+
+She looked up with a laugh, her eyes and teeth gleaming; her golden hair
+still showed its color beneath the spotless whiteness of her voluminous
+headgear, and the clear tints of her complexion seemed all the more
+delicate and fresh in the snowy pallor of the surroundings and the
+grayness of the evening.
+
+"I reckon I'd better take it along," and once more she addressed herself
+to the effort to insert the dip into the lantern.
+
+Emory hardly heard. His pulse was quick. His eye glittered. He breathed
+hard as, with both hands in his pockets, he came close to her.
+
+"Mill'cent," he said, "I told ye the t'other day ez ye thunk a heap too
+much o' that thar stran-ger-"
+
+"An' I tole ye, bubby, that I didn't think nuthin' o' nobody but
+you-uns," she interrupted, with an effort to placate his jealousy. The
+little jocularity which she affected dwindled and died before the steady
+glow of his gaze, and she falteringly looked at him, her unguided hands
+futilely fumbling with the lantern.
+
+"Ye can't fool me," he stoutly asseverated. "Ye think mo' o' him 'n o'
+me, kase ye 'low he air rich, an' book-larned, an' smooth-fingered, an'
+fini-fied ez a gal, an' goin' ter buy the hotel. I say, _hotel!_ Now
+_I'll_ tell ye what he is--I'll tell ye! He's a criminal. He's runnin'
+from the law. He's hidin' in the old hotel that he's purtendin' ter
+buy."
+
+She stared wide-eyed and pallid, breathless and waiting.
+
+He interpreted her expression as doubt, denial.
+
+"It's gospel sure," he cried. "Fur this very evenin' I met a gang o'
+men an' the sheriff's deputy down yander by the sulphur spring 'bout
+sundown, an' he 'lowed ez they war a-sarchin' fur a criminal ez war
+skulkin' round hyarabout lately--ez they wanted a man fur hevin'
+c'mitted murder."
+
+"But ye didn't accuse _him_, surely; ye hed no right ter s'picion _him_.
+Uncle Sim! Oh, my Lord! Ye surely wouldn't! Oh, Uncle Sim!"
+
+Her tremulous words broke into a quavering cry as she caught his arm
+convulsively, for his face confirmed her fears. She thrust him wildly
+away, and started toward the house.
+
+"Ye needn't go tattlin' on me," he said, roughly pushing her aside.
+"I'll tell Mr. Roxby myself. I ain't 'shamed o' what I done. I'll
+tell him. I'll tell him myself." And animated with this intention to
+forestall her disclosure, his long strides bore him swiftly past and
+into the house.
+
+It seemed to him that he lingered there only a moment or two, for Roxby
+was not at the cabin, and he said nothing of the quarrel to the old
+woman. Already his heart had revolted against his treachery, and then
+there came to him the further reflection that he did not know enough
+to justify suspicion. Was not the stranger furnished with the fullest
+credentials--a letter to Roxby from the Colonel? Perhaps he had allowed
+his jealousy to endanger the man, to place him in jeopardy even of his
+life should he resist arrest.
+
+Keenan tarried at the house merely long enough to devise a plausible
+excuse for his sudden excited entrance, and then took his way back to
+the barnyard.
+
+It was vacant. The cows still stood lowing at the bars; the sheep
+cowered together in their shed; the great whitened cone of the
+fodder-stack gleamed icily in the purple air; beside it lay the lantern
+where Millicent had cast it aside. She was gone! He would not believe
+it till he had run to the barn, calling her name in the shadowy place,
+while the horse at his manger left his corn to look over the walls of
+his stall with inquisitive surprised eyes, luminous in the dusk. He
+searched the hen-house, where the fowls on their perches crowded close
+because of the chill of the evening. He even ran to the bars and looked
+down across the narrow ravine to which the clearing sloped. Beyond the
+chasm-like gorge he saw presently on the high ascent opposite footprints
+that had broken the light frostlike coating of ice on the dead leaves
+and moss--climbing footprints, swift, disordered. He looked back again
+at the lantern where Millicent had flung it in her haste. Her mission
+was plain now. She had gone to warn Dundas. She had taken a direct line
+through the woods. She hoped to forestall the deputy sheriff and his
+posse, following the circuitous mountain road.
+
+Keenan's lip curled in triumph. His heart burned hot with scornful anger
+and contempt of the futility of her effort. "They're there afore she
+started!" he said, looking up at the aspects of the hour shown by the
+sky, and judging of the interval since the encounter by the spring.
+Through a rift in the gray cloud a star looked down with an icy
+scintillation and disappeared again. He heard a branch in the woods snap
+beneath the weight of ice. A light sprang into the window of the cabin
+hard by, and came in a great gush of orange-tinted glow out into the
+snowy bleak wintry space. He suddenly leaped over the fence and ran like
+a deer through the woods.
+
+Millicent too had been swift. He had thought to overtake her before he
+emerged from the woods into the more open space where the hotel stood.
+In this quarter the cloud-break had been greater. Toward the west a
+fading amber glow still lingered in long horizontal bars upon the opaque
+gray sky. The white mountains opposite were hung with purple shadows
+borrowed from a glimpse of sunset somewhere far away over the valley
+of East Tennessee; one distant lofty range was drawn in elusive snowy
+suggestions, rather than lines, against a green space of intense yet
+pale tint. The moon, now nearing the full, hung over the wooded valley,
+and aided the ice and the crust of snow to show its bleak, wan, wintry
+aspect; a tiny spark glowed in its depths from some open door of an
+isolated home. Over it all a mist was rising from the east, drawing its
+fleecy but opaque curtain. Already it had climbed the mountain-side and
+advanced, windless, soundless, overwhelming, annihilating all before and
+beneath it. The old hotel had disappeared, save that here and there a
+gaunt gable protruded and was withdrawn, showed once more, and once more
+was submerged.
+
+A horse's head suddenly looking out of the enveloping mist close to his
+shoulder gave him the first intimation of the arrival, the secret silent
+waiting, of those whom he had directed hither. That the saddles were
+empty he saw a moment later. The animals stood together in a row,
+hitched to the rack. No disturbance sounded from the silent building.
+The event was in abeyance. The fugitive in hiding was doubtless at
+ease, unsuspecting, while the noiseless search of the officers for his
+quarters was under way.
+
+With a thrill of excitement Keenan crept stealthily through an open
+passage and into the old grass-grown spaces of the quadrangle. Night
+possessed the place, but the cloud seemed denser than the darkness. He
+was somehow sensible of its convolutions as he stood against the wall
+and strained his eyes into the dusk. Suddenly it was penetrated by a
+milky-white glimmer, a glimmer duplicated at equidistant points, each
+fading as its successor sprang into brilliance. The next moment he
+understood its significance. It had come from the blurred windows of the
+old ball-room. Milli-cent had lighted her candle as she searched for the
+fugitive's quarters; she was passing down the length of the old house
+on the second story, and suddenly she emerged upon the gallery. She
+shielded the feeble flicker with her Hand; her white-hooded head gleamed
+as with an aureola as the divergent rays rested on the opaque mist; and
+now and again she clutched the baluster and walked with tremulous care,
+for the flooring was rotten here and there, and ready to crumble away.
+Her face was pallid, troubled; and Dundas, who had been warned by the
+tramp of horses and the tread of men, and who had descended the stairs,
+revolver in hand, ready to slip away if he might under cover of
+the mist, paused appalled, gazing across the quadrangle as on an
+apparition--the sight so familiar to his senses, so strange to his
+experience. He saw in an abrupt shifting of the mist that there were
+other figures skulking in doorways, watching her progress. The next
+moment she leaned forward to clutch the baluster, and the light of the
+candle fell full on Emory Keenan, lurking in the open passage. A sudden
+sharp cry of "Surrender!" The young mountaineer, confused, swiftly drew
+his pistol. Others were swifter still. A sharp report rang out into
+the chill crisp air, rousing all the affrighted echoes--a few faltering
+steps, a heavy fall, and for a long time Emory Keenan's life-blood
+stained the floor of the promenade. Even when it had faded, the rustic
+gossips came often and gazed at the spot with morbid interest, until, a
+decade later, an enterprising proprietor removed the floor and altered
+the shape of that section of the building out of recognition.
+
+The escape of Dundas was easily effected. The deputy sheriff, confronted
+with the problem of satisfactorily accounting for the death of a man
+who had committed no offence against public polity, was no longer
+formidable. His errand had been the arrest of a horse-thief, well-known
+to him, and he had no interest in pursuing a fugitive, however obnoxious
+to the law, whose personal description was so different from that of the
+object of his search.
+
+Time restored to Dundas his former place in life and the esteem of his
+fellow-citizens. His stay in the mountains was an episode which he will
+not often recall, but sometimes volition fails, and he marvels at the
+strange fulfilment of the girl's vision; he winces to think that her
+solicitude for his safety should have cost her her lover; he wonders
+whether she yet lives, and whether that tender troubled phantom, on
+nights when the wind is still and the moon is low and the mists rise,
+again joins the strange, elusive, woful company crossing the quaking
+foot-bridge.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge, by 
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Phantoms of the Foot-bridge, by Charles Egbert Craddock
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+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: The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge
+       1895
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Illustrator: A. B. Frost
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2007 [EBook #23630]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Charles Egbert Craddock <br /><br /> 1895
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Across the narrow gorge the little foot-bridge stretched-a brace of logs,
+      the upper surface hewn, and a slight hand-rail formed of a cedar pole. A
+      flimsy structure, one might think, looking down at the dark and rocky
+      depths beneath, through which flowed the mountain stream, swift and
+      strong, but it was doubtless substantial enough for all ordinary usage,
+      and certainly sufficient for the imponderable and elusive travellers who
+      by common report frequented it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ain't likely ter meet nobody. Few folks kem this way nowadays, 'thout
+      it air jes' ter ford the creek down along hyar a piece, sence harnts an'
+      sech onlikely critters hev been viewed a-crossin' the foot-bredge. An' it
+      hev got the name o' bein' toler'ble onlucky, too,&rdquo; said Roxby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His interlocutor drew back slightly. He had his own reasons to recoil from
+      the subject of death. For him it was invested with a more immediate terror
+      than is usual to many of the living, with that flattering persuasion of
+      immortality in every strong pulsation repudiating all possibility of
+      cessation. Then, lifting his gloomy, long-lashed eyes to the bridge far up
+      the stream, he asked, &ldquo;Whose 'harms?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice had a low, repressed cadence, as of one who speaks seldom,
+      grave, even melancholy, and little indicative of the averse interest that
+      had kindled in his sombre eyes. In comparison the drawl of the
+      mountaineer, who had found him heavy company by the way, seemed imbued
+      with an abnormal vivacity, and keyed a tone or two higher than was its
+      wont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thar ain't a few,&rdquo; he replied, with a sudden glow of the pride of the
+      cicerone. &ldquo;Thar's a graveyard t'other side o' the gorge, an' not more than
+      a haffen-mile off, an' a cornsider'ble passel o' folks hev been buried
+      thar off an' on, an' the foot-bredge ain't in nowise ill-convenient ter
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus demonstrating the spectral resources of the locality, he rode his
+      horse well into the stream as he spoke, and dropped the reins that the
+      animal's impatient lips might reach the water. He sat fac-, ing the
+      foot-bridge, flecked with the alternate shifting of the sunshine and the
+      shadows of the tremulous firs that grew on either side of the high banks
+      on the ever-ascending slope, thus arching both above and below the haunted
+      bridge. His companion had joined him in the centre of the stream; but
+      while the horses drank, the stranger's eyes were persistently bent on the
+      concentric circles of the water that the movement of the animals had set
+      astir in the current, as if he feared that too close or curious a gaze
+      might discern some pilgrim, whom he cared not to see, traversing that
+      shadowy quivering foot-bridge. He was mounted on a strong, handsome
+      chestnut, as marked a contrast to his guide's lank and trace-galled sorrel
+      as were the two riders. A slender gloved hand had fallen with the reins to
+      the pommel of the saddle. His soft felt hat, like a sombrero, shadowed his
+      clear-cut face. He was carefully shaven, save for a long drooping dark
+      mustache and imperial. His suit of dark cloth was much concealed by a
+      black cloak, one end of which thrown back across his shoulder showed a
+      bright blue lining, the color giving a sudden heightening touch to his
+      attire, as if he were &ldquo;in costume.&rdquo; It was a fleeting fashion of the day,
+      but it added a certain picturesqueness to a horseman, and seemed far
+      enough from the times that produced the square-tailed frock-coat which the
+      mountaineer wore, constructed of brown jeans, the skirts of which stood
+      stiffly out on each side of the saddle, and gave him, with his
+      broad-brimmed hat, a certain Quakerish aspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dun'no' why folks be so 'feared of 'em,&rdquo; Rox-by remarked,
+      speculatively. &ldquo;The dead ain't so oncommon, nohow. Them ez hev been in the
+      war, like you an' me done, oughter be in an' 'bout used ter corpses-though
+      I never seen none o' 'em afoot agin. Lookin' at a smit field o' battle,
+      arter the rage is jes' passed, oughter gin a body a realizin' sense how
+      easy the sperit kin flee, an' what pore vessels fur holdin' the spark o'
+      life human clay be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simeon Roxby had a keen, not unkindly face, and he had that look of
+      extreme intelligence which is entirely distinct from intellectuality, and
+      which one sometimes sees in a minor degree in a very clever dog or a fine
+      horse. One might rely on him to understand instinctively everything one
+      might say to him, even in its subtler aesthetic values, although he had
+      consciously learned little. He was of the endowed natures to whom much is
+      given, rather than of those who are set to acquire. He had many lines in
+      his face-even his simple life had gone hard with him, its sorrows un
+      assuaged by its simplicity. His hair was grizzled, and hung long and
+      straight on his collar. He wore a grizzled beard cut broad and short. His
+      boots had big spurs, although the lank old sorrel had never felt them. He
+      sat his horse like the cavalryman he had been for four years of hard
+      riding and raiding, but his face had a certain gentleness that accented
+      the Quaker-like suggestion of his garb, a look of communing with the
+      higher things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never blamed 'em,'&rdquo; he went on, evidently reverting to the spectres of
+      the bridge-&ldquo;I never blamed 'em for comin' back wunst in a while. It 'pears
+      ter me 'twould take me a long time ter git familiar with heaven, an'
+      sociable with them ez hev gone before. An', my Lord, jes' think what the
+      good green yearth is! Leastwise the mountings. I ain't settin' store on
+      the valley lands I seen whenst I went ter the wars. I kin remember yit
+      what them streets in the valley towns smelt like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted his head, drawing a long breath to inhale the exquisite
+      fragrance of the fir, the freshness of the pellucid water, the aroma of
+      the autumn wind, blowing through the sere leaves still clinging red and
+      yellow to the boughs of the forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naw, I ain't blamin' 'em, though I don't hanker ter view 'em,&rdquo; he
+      resumed. &ldquo;One of 'em I wouldn't be afeard of, though. I feel mighty sorry
+      fur her. The old folks used ter tell about her. A young 'oman she war,
+      a-crossin' this bredge with her child in her arms. She war young, an' mus'
+      have been keerless, I reckon; though ez 'twar her fust baby, she moightn't
+      hev been practised in holdin' it an' sech, an' somehows it slipped through
+      her arms an' fell inter the ruver, an' war killed in a minit, dashin' agin
+      the rocks. She jes' stood fur a second a-screamin' like a wild painter,
+      an' jumped off'n the bredge arter it. She got it agin; for when they
+      dragged her body out'n the ruver she hed it in her arms too tight fur even
+      death ter onloose. An' thar they air together in the buryin'-ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a nod toward the slope of the mountain that intercepted the
+      melancholy view of the graveyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got it yit!&rdquo; he continued; &ldquo;bekase&rdquo; (he lowered his voice) &ldquo;on windy
+      nights, whenst the moon is on the wane, she is viewed kerryin' the baby
+      along the bredge&mdash;kerryin' it clear over, <i>safe an' sound</i>, like
+      she thought she oughter done, I reckon, in that one minute, whilst she
+      stood an' screamed an' surveyed what she hed done. That child would hev
+      been nigh ter my age ef he hed lived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Only the sunbeams wavered athwart the bridge now as the firs swayed above,
+      giving glimpses of the sky, and their fibrous shadows flickered back and
+      forth. The wild mountain stream flashed white between the brown bowlders,
+      and plunged down the gorge in a succession of cascades, each seeming more
+      transparently green and amber and brown than the other. The chestnut horse
+      gazed meditatively at these limpid out-gushings, having drunk his fill;
+      then thought better of his moderation, and once more thrust his head down
+      to the water. The hand of his rider, which had made a motion to gather up
+      the reins, dropped leniently on his neck, as Simeon Roxby spoke again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Several&mdash;several others hev been viewed, actin' accordin' ter thar
+      motions in life. Now thar war a peddler&mdash;some say he slipped one icy
+      evenin', 'bout dusk in winter&mdash;some say evil ones waylaid him fur his
+      gear an' his goods in his pack, but the settlemint mostly believes he war
+      alone whenst he fell. His pack 'pears ter be full still, they say&mdash;but
+      ye air 'bleeged ter know he hev hed ter set that pack down fur good 'fore
+      this time. We kin take nuthin' out'n this world, no matter what kind o' a
+      line o' goods we kerry in life. Heaven's no place fur tradin', I
+      understan', an' I <i>do</i> wonder sometimes how in the worl' them
+      merchants an' sech in the valley towns air goin' ter entertain tharse'fs
+      in the happy land o' Canaan. It's goin' ter be sorter bleak fur them,
+      sure's ye air born.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a look of freshened recollection, he suddenly drew a plug of tobacco
+      from his pocket, and he talked on even as he gnawed a piece from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Durin' the war a cavalry-man got shot out hyar whilst runnin' 'crost that
+      thar foot-bredge. Thar hed been a scrimmage an' his horse war kilt, an' he
+      tuk ter the bresh on foot, hopin' ter hide in the laurel. But ez he war
+      crossin' the foot-bredge some o' the pursuin' party war fordin' the ruver
+      over thar, an' thinkin' he'd make out ter escape they fired on him, jes'
+      ez the feller tried ter surrender. He turned this way an' flung up both
+      arms&mdash;but thar's mighty leetle truce in a pistol-ball. That minute it
+      tuk him right through the brain. Seems toler'ble long range fur a pistol,
+      don't it? He kin be viewed now most enny moonlight night out hyar on the
+      foot-bredge, throwin' up both hands in sign of surrender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wild-geese were a-wing on the way southward. Looking up to that narrow
+      section of the blue sky which the incision of the gorge into the very
+      depths of the woods made visible, he could see the tiny files deploying
+      along the azure or the flecking cirrus, and hear the vague clangor of
+      their leader's cry. He lifted his head to mechanically follow their
+      flight. Then, as his eyes came back to earth, they rested again on the old
+      bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strange enough,&rdquo; he said, suddenly, &ldquo;the sker-riest tale I hev ever hearn
+      'bout that thar old bredge is one that my niece set a-goin'. She <i>seen</i>
+      the harnt <i>herself</i>, an' it shakes me wuss 'n the idee o' all the
+      rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion's gloomy gaze was lifted for a moment with an expression of
+      inquiry from the slowly widening circles of the water about the horse's
+      head as he drank. But Roxby's eyes, with a certain gleam of excitement, a
+      superstitious dilation, still dwelt upon the bridge at the end of the
+      upward vista. He went on merely from the impetus of the subject. &ldquo;Yes, sir&mdash;she
+      <i>seen</i> it a-pacin' of its sorrowful way acrost that bredge, same ez
+      the t'others of the percession o' harnts. 'Twar my niece, Mill'cent&mdash;brother's
+      darter&mdash;by name, Mill'cent Roxby. Waal, Mill'cent an' a lot o' young
+      fools o' her age&mdash;little over fryin' size&mdash;they 'tended
+      camp-meetin' down hyar on Tomahawk Creek&mdash;'tain't so long ago&mdash;along
+      with the old folks. An' 'bout twenty went huddled up tergether in a
+      road-wagin. An', lo! the wagin it bruk down on the way home, an' what with
+      proppin' it up on a crotch, they made out ter reach the cross-roads over
+      yander at the Notch, an' thar the sober old folks called a halt, an' hed
+      the wagin mended at the blacksmith-shop. Waal, it tuk some two hours, fur
+      Pete Rodd ain't a-goin' ter hurry hisself&mdash;in my opinion the angel
+      Gabriel will hev ter blow his bugle oftener'n wunst at the last day 'fore
+      Pete Rodd makes up his mind ter rise from the dead an' answer the
+      roll-call&mdash;an' this hyar young lot sorter found it tiresome waitin'
+      on thar elders' solemn company. The old folks, whilst waitin', set outside
+      on the porches of the houses at the settlemint, an' repeated some o' the
+      sermons they hed hearn at camp, an' more'n one raised a hyme chune. An'
+      the young fry&mdash;they hed hed a steady diet o' sermons an' hyme chunes
+      fur fower days&mdash;they tuk ter stragglin' off down the road, two an'
+      two, like the same sorter id jits the world over, leavin' word with the
+      old folks that the wagin would overtake 'em an' pick 'em up on the road
+      when it passed. Waal, they walked several mile, an' time they got ter the
+      crest o' the hill over yander the moon hed riz, an' they could look down
+      an' see the mist in the valley. The moon war bright in the buryin'-groun'
+      when they passed it, an' the head-boards stood up white an' stiff, an' a
+      light frost hed fell on the mounds, an' they showed plain, an' shone
+      sorter lonesome an' cold. The young folks begun ter look behind em' fur
+      the wagin. Some said&mdash;I b'lieve 'twar Em'ry Keen an&mdash;they could
+      read the names on the boards plain, 'twar so light, the moon bein' nigh
+      the full: but Em'ry never read nuthin' at night by the moon in his life;
+      he ain't enny too capable o' wrastlin' with the alphabet with a strong
+      daytime on his book ter light him ter knowledge. An' the shadows war black
+      an' still, an' all the yearth looked ez ef nuthin' lived nor ever would
+      agin, an' they hearn a wolf howl. Waal, that disaccommodated the gals
+      mightily, an' they hed a heap more interes' in that old wagin, all
+      smellin' rank with wagin-grease an' tar, than they did in thar lovyers;
+      an' they hed ruther hev hearn that old botch of a wheel that Pete Rodd hed
+      set onto it com in' a-creakin' an' a-com-plainin' along the road than the
+      sweetest words them boys war able ter make up or remember. So they stood
+      thar in the road&mdash;a-stare-gazin' them head-boards, like they expected
+      every grave ter open an' the reveilly ter sound&mdash;a-waitin' ter be
+      overtook by the wagin, a-listenin', but hearin' nuthin' in the silence o'
+      the frost&mdash;not a dead leaf a-twirlin', nor a frozen blade o' grass
+      astir. An' then two or three o' the gals 'lowed they hed ruther walk back
+      ter meet the wagin, an' whenst the boys 'lowed ter go on&mdash;nuthin' war
+      likely ter ketch 'em&mdash;one of 'em bust out a-cryin'. Waal, thar war
+      the eend o' that much! So the gay party set out on the back track,
+      a-keepin' step ter sobs an' sniffles, an' that's how kem <i>they</i> seen
+      no harnt. But Mill'-cent an' three or four o' the t'others 'lowed they'd
+      go on. They warn't two mile from home, an' full five from the cross-roads.
+      So Em'ry Keenan&mdash;he hev been waitin' on her sence the year one&mdash;so
+      he put his skeer in his pocket an' kem along with her, a-shakin' in his
+      shoes, I'll be bound! So down the hill in the frosty moonlight them few
+      kem&mdash;purty nigh beat out, I reckon, Mill'cent war, what with the
+      sermonizin' an' the hyme-singin' an' hevin' ter look continual at the
+      sheep's-eyes o' Em'ry Keenan&mdash;he wears my patience ter the bone! So
+      she concluded ter take the short-cut. An' Em'ry he agreed. So they tuk the
+      lead, the rest a following an' kem down thar through all that black
+      growth&rdquo;&mdash;he lifted his arm and pointed at the great slope, dense with
+      fir and pine and the heavy underbrush&mdash;&ldquo;keepin' the bridle-path&mdash;easy
+      enough even at night, fur the bresh is so thick they couldn't lose thar
+      way. But the moonlight war mightily slivered up, fallin' through the
+      needles of the pines an' the skeins of dead vines, an' looked bleached and
+      onnatural, an' holped the dark mighty leetle. An' they seen the water
+      a-shinin' an' a-plungin' down the gorge, an' the glistenin' of the frost
+      on the floor o' the bredge. Thar war a few icicles on the hand-rail, an'
+      the branches o' the firs hung ez still ez death; only that cold, racin',
+      shoutin', jouncin' water moved. Jes ez they got toler'ble nigh the
+      foot-bredge a sudden cloud kem over the face o' the sky. Thar warn't no
+      wind on the yearth, but up above the air war a-stirrin'. An' Em'ry he
+      'lowed Mill'cent shouldn't cross the foot-bredge whilst the light warn't
+      clar&mdash;I wonder the critter hed that much sense! An' she jes' drapped
+      down on that rock thar ter rest&rdquo;&mdash;he pointed up the slope to a great
+      fragment that had broken off from the ledges and lay near the bank: the
+      bulk of the mass was overgrown with moss and lichen, but the jagged edges
+      of the recent fracture gleamed white and crystalline among the brown and
+      olive-green shadows about it. A tree was close beside it. &ldquo;Agin that thar
+      pine trunk Em'ry he stood an' leaned. The rest war behind, a-comin' down
+      the hill. An' all of a suddenty a light fell on the furder eend o' the
+      foot-bredge&mdash;a waverin' light, mighty white an' misty in the
+      darksomeness. Mill'cent 'lowed ez fust she thunk it war the moon. An'
+      lookin' up, she seen the cloud; it held the moon close kivered. An'
+      lookin' down, she seen the light war movin'&mdash;movin' from the furder
+      eend o' the bredge, straight acrost it. Sometimes a hand war held afore
+      it, ez ef ter shield it from the draught, an' then Mill'cent 'seen twar a
+      candle, an' the white in the mistiness war a 'oman wearin' white an'
+      carryn' it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:30%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/025.jpg"
+       alt="The Phantom of the Foot-bridge 025 " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Lookin' ter right an' then ter lef the 'oman kem, with now her right hand
+      shieldin' the candle she held, an' now layin' it on the hand-rail. The
+      candle shone on the water, fur it didn't flare, an' when the 'oman held
+      her hand before it the light made a bright spot on the foot-bredge an' in
+      the dark air about her, an' on the fir branches over her head. An' a thin
+      mist seemed to hang about her white frock, but not over her face, fur when
+      she reached the middle o' the foot-bredge she laid her hand agin on the
+      rail, an' in the clear light o' the candle Mill'cent seen the harnt's
+      face. An' thar she beheld her own face; <i>her own face</i> she looked
+      upon ez she waited thar under the tree watchin' the foot-bredge; <i>her
+      own face</i> pale an' troubled; her own self dressed in white, crossin'
+      the foot-bredge, an' lightin' her steps with a corpse's candle.&rdquo; He drew
+      up the reins abruptly. He seemed in sudden haste to go. His companion
+      looked with deepening interest at the bridge, although he followed his
+      guide's surging pathway to the opposite bank. As the two dripping horses
+      struggled up the steep incline he asked, &ldquo;Did the man with her see the
+      manifestation also?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He <i>'lows</i> he did,&rdquo; responded Roxby, equivocally. &ldquo;But when
+      Mill'cent fust got so she could tell it, 'peared ter me ez Em'ry Keen an
+      fund it ez much news ez the rest o' we-uns. Mill'cent jes' drapped
+      stone-dead, accordin' ter all accounts, an' he an' the t'other young folks
+      flung water in her face till she kem out'n her faint; an' jes' then they
+      hearn the wagin a-rattlin' along the road, an' they stopped it an' fetched
+      her home in it. She never told the tale till she war home, an' it skeered
+      me an' my mother powerful, fur Mill'cent is all the kin we hev got.
+      Mill'cent is gran'daddy an' gran'mam-my, sons an' daughters, uncles an'
+      aunts, cousins, nieces, an' nephews, all in one. The only thing I ain't
+      pervided with is a nephew-in-law, an' I don't need him. Leastwise I ain't
+      lookin' fur Em'ry Keenan jes' at present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pace was brisker when the two horses, bending their strength sturdily
+      to the task, had pressed up the massive slope from the deep cleft of the
+      gorge. As the road curved about the outer verge of the mountain, the
+      valley far beneath came into view, with intersecting valleys and
+      transverse ranges, dense with the growths of primeval wildernesses, and
+      rugged with the tilted strata of great upheavals, and with chasms cut in
+      the solid rock by centuries of erosion, traces of some remote cataclysmal
+      period, registering thus its throes and turmoils. The blue sky, seen
+      beyond a gaunt profile of one of the farther summits that defined its
+      craggy serrated edge against the ultimate distances of the western
+      heavens, seemed of a singularly suave tint, incongruous with the savagery
+      of the scene, which clouds and portents of storm might better have
+      befitted. The little graveyard, which John Dundas discerned with
+      recognizing eyes, albeit they had never before rested upon it, was
+      revealed suddenly, lying high on the opposite side of the gorge. No frost
+      glimmered now on the lowly mounds; the flickering autumnal sunshine
+      loitered unafraid among them, according to its languid wont for many a
+      year. Shadows of the gray un-painted head-boards lay on the withered
+      grass, brown and crisp, with never a cicada left to break the deathlike
+      silence. A tuft of red leaves, vagrant in the wind, had been caught on one
+      of the primitive monuments, and swayed there with a decorative effect. The
+      enclosure seemed, to unaccustomed eyes, of small compass, and few the
+      denizens who had found shelter here and a resting-place, but it numbered
+      all the dead of the country-side for many a mile and many a year, and
+      somehow the loneliness was assuaged to a degree by the reflection that
+      they had known each other in life, unlike the great herds of cities, and
+      that it was a common fate which the neighbors, huddled together,
+      encountered in company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had no discordant effect in the pervasive sense of gloom, of mighty
+      antagonistic forces with which the scene was replete; it fostered a
+      realization of the pitiable minuteness and helplessness of human nature in
+      the midst of the vastness of inanimate nature and the evidences of
+      infinite lengths of forgotten time, of the long reaches of unimagined
+      history, eventful, fateful, which the landscape at once suggested and
+      revealed and concealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like the sudden flippant clatter of castanets in the pause of some solemn
+      funeral music was the impression given by the first glimpse along the
+      winding woodland way of a great flimsy white building, with its many
+      pillars, its piazzas, its &ldquo;observatory,&rdquo; its band-stand, its garish
+      intimations of the giddy, gay world of a summer hotel. But, alack! it,
+      too, had its surfeit of woe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The guerrillas an' bushwhackers tuk it out on the old hotel, sure!&rdquo;
+       observed Sim Roxby, by way of introduction. &ldquo;Thar warn't much fightin'
+      hyar-abouts, an' few sure-enough soldiers ever kem along. But wunst in a
+      while a band o' guerrillas went through like a suddint wind-storm, an' I
+      tell ye they made things whurl while they war about it. They made a sorter
+      barracks o' the old place. Looks some like lightning hed struck it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had reined up his horse about one hundred yards in front of the
+      edifice, where the weed-grown gravelled drive&mdash;carefully tended ten
+      years agone&mdash;had diverged from the straight avenue of poplars,
+      sweeping in a circle around to the broad flight of steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though,&rdquo; he qualified abruptly, as if a sudden thought had struck him,
+      &ldquo;ef ye air countin' on buyin' it, a leetle money spent ter keerful purpose
+      will go a long way toward makin' it ez good ez new.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion did not reply, and for the first time Roxby cast upon him a
+      covert glance charged with the curiosity which would have been earlier and
+      more easily aroused in another man by the manner of the stranger. A letter&mdash;infrequent
+      missive in his experience&mdash;had come from an ancient
+      companion-in-arms, his former colonel, requesting him in behalf of a
+      friend of the old commander to repair to the railway station, thirty miles
+      distant, to meet and guide this prospective purchaser of the old hotel to
+      the site of the property. And now as Roxby looked at him the suspicion
+      which his kind heart had not been quick to entertain was seized upon by
+      his alert brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cunnel's been fooled somehows,&rdquo; he said to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the look with which John Dundas contemplated the place was not the
+      gaze of him concerned with possible investment&mdash;with the problems of
+      repair, the details of the glazier and the painter and the plasterer. The
+      mind was evidently neither braced for resistance nor resigned to despair,
+      as behooves one smitten by the foreknowledge of the certainty of the
+      excess of the expenditures over the estimates. Only with pensive, listless
+      melancholy, void of any intention, his eyes traversed the long rows of
+      open doors, riven by rude hands from their locks, swinging helplessly to
+      and fro in the wind, and giving to the deserted and desolate old place a
+      spurious air of motion and life. Many of the shutters had been wrenched
+      from their hinges, and lay rotting on the floors. The ball-room windows
+      caught on their shattered glass the reflection of the clouds, and it
+      seemed as if here and there a wan face looked through at the riders
+      wending along the weed-grown path. Where so many faces had been what
+      wonder that a similitude should linger in the loneliness! The pallid face
+      seemed to draw back as they glanced up while slowly pacing around the
+      drive. A rabbit sitting motionless on the front piazza did not draw back,
+      although observing them with sedate eyes as he poised himself upright on
+      his haunches, with his listless fore-paws suspended in the air, and it
+      occurred to Dundas that he was probably unfamiliar with the presence of
+      human beings, and had never heard the crack of a gun. A great swirl of
+      swallows came soaring out of the big kitchen chimneys and circled in the
+      sky, darting down again and again upward. Through an open passage was a
+      glimpse of a quadrangle, with its weed-grown spaces and litter of yellow
+      leaves. A tawny streak, a red fox, sped through it as Dundas looked. A
+      half-moon, all a-tilt, hung above it. He saw the glimmer through the bare
+      boughs of the leafless locust-trees here and there still standing,
+      although outside on the lawn many a stump bore token how ruthlessly the
+      bushwhackers had furnished their fires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That thar moon's a-hangin' fur rain,&rdquo; said the mountaineer, commenting
+      upon the aspect of the luminary, which he, too, had noticed as they
+      passed. &ldquo;I ain't s'prised none ef we hev fallin' weather agin 'fore day,
+      an' the man&mdash;by name Morgan Holden&mdash;that hev charge o' the hotel
+      property can't git back fur a week an' better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A vague wonder to find himself so suspicious flitted through his mind,
+      with the thought that perhaps the colonel might have reckoned on this
+      delay. &ldquo;Surely the ruvers down yander at Knoxville mus' be a-boomin', with
+      all this wet weather,&rdquo; he said to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then aloud: &ldquo;Morgan Holden he went ter Col-bury ter 'tend ter some
+      business in court, an' the ruvers hev riz so that, what with the bredges
+      bein' washed away an' the fords so onsartain an' tricky, he'll stay till
+      the ruver falls. He don't know ye war kemin', ye see. The mail-rider hev
+      quit, 'count o' the rise in the ruver, an' thar's no way ter git word ter
+      him. Still, ef ye air minded ter wait, I'll be powerful obligated fur yer
+      comp'ny down ter my house till the ruver falls an' Holden he gits back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger murmured his obligations, but his eyes dwelt lingeringly upon
+      the old hotel, with its flapping doors and its shattered windows. Through
+      the recurrent vistas of these, placed opposite in the rooms, came again
+      broken glimpses of the grassy space within the quadrangle, with its
+      leafless locust-trees, first of all to yield their foliage to the autumn
+      wind, where a tiny owl was shrilling stridulously under the lonely red sky
+      and the melancholy moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hed ye 'lowed ter, put up at the old hotel?&rdquo; asked Roxby, some inherent
+      quickness supplying the lack of a definite answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time the stranger turned upon him a look more expressive
+      than the casual fragmentary attention with which he had half heeded, half
+      ignored his talk since their first encounter at the railway station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A simple fellow, but good as gold,&rdquo; was the phrase with which Simeon
+      Roxby had been commended as guide and in some sort guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so simple, perhaps,&rdquo; the sophisticated man thought as their eyes met.
+      Not so simple but that the truth must serve. &ldquo;The colonel suggested that
+      it might be best,&rdquo; he replied, more alert to the present moment than his
+      languid preoccupation had heretofore permitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer was good as far as it went. A few days spent in the old
+      hostelry certainly would serve well to acquaint the prospective purchaser
+      with its actual condition and the measures and means needed for its
+      repair; but as Sim Roxby stood there, with the cry of the owl shrilling in
+      the desert air, the lonely red sky, the ominous tilted moon, the doors
+      drearily flapping to and fro as the wind stole into the forlorn and empty
+      place and sped back affrighted, he marvelled at the refuge contemplated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe there is some of the furniture here yet. We could contrive to
+      set up a bed from what is left. The colonel could make it all right with
+      Holden, and I could stay a day or two, as we originally planned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es. I don't mind Holden: a man ain't much in charge of a place ez
+      ain't got a lock or a key ter bless itself with, an' takes the owel an'
+      the fox an' the gopher fur boarders; but, ennyhow, kem with me home ter
+      supper. Mill'cent will hev it ready by now ennyhows, an' ye need suthin'
+      hearty an' hot ter stiffen ye up ter move inter sech quarters ez these.&rdquo;
+       Dundas hesitated, but the mountaineer had already taken assent for
+      granted, and pushed his horse into a sharp trot. Evidently a refusal was
+      not in order. Dundas pressed forward, and they rode together along the
+      winding way past the ten-pin alley, its long low roof half hidden in the
+      encroaching undergrowth springing up apace beneath the great trees; past
+      the stables; past a line of summer cottages, strangely staring of aspect
+      out of the yawning doors and windows, giving, instead of an impression of
+      vacancy, a sense of covert watching, of secret occupancy. If one's glances
+      were only quick enough, were there not faces pressed to those shattered
+      panes&mdash;scarcely seen&mdash;swiftly withdrawn?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was in a desert; he had hardly been so utterly alone in all his life;
+      yet he bore through the empty place a feeling of espionage, and ever and
+      anon he glanced keenly at the overgrown lawns, with their deepening drifts
+      of autumn leaves, at the staring windows and flaring doors, which emitted
+      sometimes sudden creaking wails in the silence, as if he sought to assure
+      himself of the vacancy of which his mind took cognizance and yet all his
+      senses denied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little of his sentiment, although sedulously cloaked, was lost on Sim
+      Roxby; and he was aware, too, in some subtle way, of the relief his guest
+      experienced when they plunged into the darkening forest and left the
+      forlorn place behind them. The clearing in which it was situated seemed an
+      oasis of light in the desert of night in which the rest of the world lay.
+      From the obscurity of the forest Dundas saw, through the vistas of the
+      giant trees, the clustering cottages, the great hotel, gables and chimneys
+      and tower, stark and distinct as in some weird dream-light in the midst of
+      the encircling gloom. The after-glow of sunset was still aflare on the
+      western windows; the whole empty place was alight with a reminiscence of
+      its old aspect&mdash;its old gay life. Who knows what memories were
+      a-stalk there&mdash;what semblance of former times? What might not the
+      darkness foster, the impunity of desertion, the associations that
+      inhabited the place with almost the strength of human occupancy itself?
+      Who knows&mdash;who knows?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remembered the scene afterward, the impression he received. And from
+      this, he thought, arose his regret for his decision to take up here his
+      abiding-place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The forest shut out the illumined landscape, and the night seemed indeed
+      at hand; the gigantic boles of the trees loomed through the encompassing
+      gloom, that was yet a semi-transparent medium, like some dark but clear
+      fluid through which objects were dimly visible, albeit tinged with its own
+      sombre hue. The lank, rawboned sorrel had set a sharp pace, to which the
+      chestnut, after momentary lagging, as if weary with the day's travel,
+      responded briskly. He had received in some way intimations that his
+      companion's corn-crib was near at hand, and if he had not deduced from
+      these premises the probability of sharing his fare, his mental processes
+      served him quite as well as reason, and brought him to the same result. On
+      and on they sped, neck and neck, through the darkening woods; fire flashed
+      now and again from their iron-shod hoofs; often a splash and a shower of
+      drops told of a swift dashing through the mud-holes that recent rains had
+      fostered in the shallows. The dank odor of dripping boughs came on the
+      clear air. Once the chestnut shied from a sudden strange shining point
+      springing up in the darkness close at hand, which the country-bred horse
+      discriminated as fox-fire, and kept steadily on, unmindful of the rotting
+      log where it glowed. Far in advance, in the dank depths of the woods, a
+      Will-o'-the-wisp danced and flickered and lured the traveller's eye. The
+      stranger was not sure of the different quality of another light, appearing
+      down a vista as the road turned, until the sorrel, making a tremendous
+      spurt, headed for it, uttering a joyous neigh at the sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deep-voiced barking of hounds rose melodiously on the silence, and as
+      the horses burst out of the woods into a small clearing, Dundas beheld in
+      the brighter light a half-dozen of the animals nimbly afoot in the road,
+      one springing over the fence, another in the act of climbing, his
+      fore-paws on the topmost rail, his long neck stretched, and his head
+      turning about in attitudes of observation. He evidently wished to assure
+      himself whether the excitement of his friends was warranted by the facts
+      before he troubled himself to vault over the fence. Three or four still
+      lingered near the door of a log-cabin, fawning about a girl who stood on
+      the porch. Her pose was alert, expectant; a fire in the dooryard, where
+      the domestic manufacture of soap had been in progress, cast a red flare on
+      the house, its appurtenances, the great dark forest looming all around,
+      and, more than the glow of the hearth within, lighted up the central
+      figure of the scene. She was tall, straight, and strong; a wealth of fair
+      hair was clustered in a knot at the back of her head, and fleecy tendrils
+      fell over her brow; on it was perched a soldier's-cap; and certainly more
+      gallant and fearless eyes had never looked out from under the straight,
+      stiff brim. Her chin, firm, round, dimpled, was uplifted as she raised her
+      head, descrying the horsemen's approach. She wore a full dark-red skirt, a
+      dark brown waist, and around her neck was twisted a gray cotton kerchief,
+      faded to a pale ashen hue, the neutrality of which somehow aided the
+      delicate brilliancy of the blended roseate and pearly tints of her face.
+      Was this the seer of ghosts&mdash;Dundas marvelled&mdash;this the
+      Millicent whose pallid and troubled phantom already-paced the foot-bridge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not realize that he had drawn up his horse suddenly at the sight of
+      her, nor did he notice that his host had dismounted, until Roxby was at
+      the chestnut's head, ready to lead the animal to supper in the barn. His
+      evident surprise, his preoccupation, were not lost upon Roxby, however.
+      His hand hesitated on the girth of the chestnut's saddle when he stood
+      between the two horses in the barn. He had half intended to disregard the
+      stranger's declination of his invitation, and stable the creature. Then he
+      shook his head slowly; the mystery that hung about the new-comer was not
+      reassuring. &ldquo;A heap o' wuthless cattle 'mongst them valley men,&rdquo; he said;
+      for the war had been in some sort an education to his simplicity. &ldquo;Let him
+      stay whar the cunnel expected him ter stay. I ain't wantin' no stranger
+      a-hangin' round about Mill'cent, nohow. Em'ry Keenan ain't a pattern o'
+      perfection, but I be toler'ble well acquainted with the cut o' his
+      foolishness, an' I know his daddy an' mammy, an' both sets o' gran'daddies
+      an' gran'mammies, an' I could tell ye exac'ly which one the critter got
+      his nose an' his mouth from, an' them lean sheep's-eyes o' his'n, an' nigh
+      every tone o' his voice. Em'ry never thunk afore ez I set store on bein'
+      acquainted with him. He 'lowed I knowed him <i>too</i> well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed as he glanced through the open door into the darkening
+      landscape. Horizontal gray clouds were slipping fast across the pearly
+      spaces of the sky. The yellow stubble gleamed among the brown earth of the
+      farther field, still striped with its furrows. The black forest encircled
+      the little cleared space, and a wind was astir among the tree-tops. A
+      white star gleamed through the broken clapboards of the roof, the fire
+      still flared under the soap-kettle in the dooryard, and the silence was
+      suddenly smitten by a high cracked old voice, which told him that his
+      mother had perceived the dismounted stranger at the gate, and was
+      graciously welcoming him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had come to the door, where the girl still stood, but half withdrawn
+      in the shadow. Dundas silently bowed as he passed her, following his aged
+      hostess into the low room, all bedight with the firelight of a huge
+      chimney-place, and comfortable with the realization of a journey's end.
+      The wilderness might stretch its weary miles around, the weird wind wander
+      in the solitudes, the star look coldly on unmoved by aught it beheld, the
+      moon show sad portents, but at the door they all failed, for here waited
+      rest and peace and human companionship and the sense of home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a cheer, stranger, an' make yerself at home. Powerful glad ter see
+      ye&mdash;-war 'feard night would overtake ye. Ye fund the water toler'ble
+      high in all the creeks an' sech, I reckon, an' fords shifty an' onsartain.
+      Yes, sir. Fall rains kem on earlier'n common, an' more'n we need. Wisht we
+      could divide it with that thar drought we had in the summer. Craps war cut
+      toler'ble short, sir&mdash;toler'ble short.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Roxby's spectacles beamed upon him with an expression of the utmost
+      benignity as the firelight played on the lenses, but her eyes peering over
+      them seemed endowed in some sort with independence of outlook. It was as
+      if from behind some bland mask a critical observation was poised for
+      unbiased judgment. He felt in some degree under surveillance. But when a
+      light step heralded an approach he looked up, regardless of the betrayal
+      of interest, and bent a steady gaze upon Millicent as she paused in the
+      doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as she stood there, distinct in the firelight and outlined against the
+      black background of the night, she seemed some modern half-military ideal
+      of Diana, with her two gaunt hounds beside her, the rest of the pack
+      vaguely glimpsed at her heels outside, the perfect outline and chiselling
+      of her features, her fine, strong, supple figure, the look of steady
+      courage in her eyes, and the soldier's cap on her fair hair. Her face so
+      impressed itself upon his mind that he seemed to have seen her often. It
+      was some resemblance to a picture of a vivandière, doubtless, in a foreign
+      gallery&mdash;he could not say when or where; a remnant of a tourist's
+      overcrowded impressions; a half-realized reminiscence, he thought, with an
+      uneasy sense of recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Mill'cent! home agin!&rdquo; Roxby cried, in cheery greeting as he
+      entered at the back door opposite. &ldquo;What sorter topknot is that ye got
+      on?&rdquo; he demanded, looking jocosely at her head-gear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl put up her hand with an expression of horror. A deep red flush
+      dyed her cheek as she touched the cap. &ldquo;I forgot 'twar thar,&rdquo; she
+      murmured, contritely. Then, with a sudden rush of anger as she tore it
+      off: &ldquo;'Twar granny's fault. She axed me ter put it on, so ez ter see which
+      one I looked most like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stranger,&rdquo; quavered the old woman, with a painful break in her voice, &ldquo;I
+      los' fower sons in the war, an' Mill'cent hev got the fambly favor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye <i>mought</i> hev let me know ez I war a-perlitin' round in this hyar
+      men's gear yit,&rdquo; the girl muttered, as she hung the cap on a prong of the
+      deer antlers on which rested the rifle of the master of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roxby's face had clouded at the mention of the four sons who had gone out
+      from the mountains never to return, leaving to their mother's aching heart
+      only the vague comfort of an elusive resemblance in a girl's face; but as
+      he noted Millicent's pettish manner, and divined her mortification because
+      of her unseemly head-gear in the stranger's presence, he addressed her
+      again in that jocose tone without which he seldom spoke to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/006.jpg" alt="Warn't You-uns Apologizin' Ter Me 006 "   width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Warn't you-uns apologizin' ter me t'other day fur not bein' a nephew
+      'stiddier a niece? Looked sorter like a nephew ter-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head, covered now only with its own charming tresses waving
+      in thick undulations to the coil at the nape of her neck&mdash;a trifle
+      dishevelled from the rude haste with which the cap had been torn off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roxby had seated himself, and with his elbows on his knees he looked up at
+      her with a teasing jocularity, such as one might assume toward a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Ye war</i>,&rdquo; he declared, with affected solemnity&mdash;&ldquo;ye war
+      'pologizin' fur not bein' a nephew, an' 'lowed ef ye war a nephew we could
+      go a-huntin' tergether, an' ye could holp me in all my quar'ls an' fights.
+      I been aging some lately, an' ef I war ter go ter the settlemint an' git
+      inter a fight I mought not be able ter hold my own. Think what 'twould be
+      ter a pore old man ter hev a dutiful nephew step up an'&rdquo;&mdash;he doubled
+      his fists and squared off&mdash;&ldquo;jes' let daylight through some o' them
+      cusses. An' didn't <i>ye say</i>&rdquo;&mdash;he dropped his belligerent
+      attitude and pointed an insistent finger at her, as if to fix the matter
+      in her recollection&mdash;&ldquo;ef ye war a nephew 'stiddier a niece ye could
+      fire a gun 'thout shettin' yer eyes? An' I told ye then ez that would mend
+      yer aim mightily. I told ye that I'd be powerful mortified ef I hed a
+      nephew ez hed ter shet his eyes ter keep the noise out'n his ears whenst
+      he fired a rifle. The tale would go mighty hard with me at the
+      settlemint.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's eyes glowed upon him with the fixity and the lustre of those of
+      a child who is entertained and absorbed by an elder's jovial wiles. A
+      flash of laughter broke over her face, and the low, gurgling, half-dreamy
+      sound was pleasant to hear. She was evidently no more than a child to
+      these bereft old people, and by them cherished as naught else on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' didn't <i>I tell you-uns,</i>&rdquo; he went on, affecting to warm to the
+      discussion, and in reality oblivious of the presence of the guest'&mdash;&ldquo;didn't
+      I tell ye ez how ef ye war a nephew 'stiddier a niece ye wouldn't hev sech
+      cattle ez Em'ry Keenan a-dan-glin' round underfoot, like a puppy ye can't
+      gin away, an' that <i>won't</i> git lost, an' ye ain't got the heart ter
+      kill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's lip suddenly curled with scorn. &ldquo;Yer nephew would be obligated
+      ter make a ch'ice fur marryin' 'mongst these hyar mounting gals&mdash;Par-mely
+      Lepstone, or Belindy M'ria Matthews, or one o' the Windrow gals. Waal,
+      sir, I'd ruther be yer niece&mdash;even ef Em'ry Keenan <i>air</i> like a
+      puppy underfoot, that ye can't gin away, an' won't git lost, an' ye ain't
+      got the heart ter kill.&rdquo; She laughed again, showing her white teeth. She
+      evidently relished the description of the persistent adherence of poor
+      Emory Keenan. &ldquo;But which one o' these hyar gals would ye recommend ter yer
+      nephew ter marry&mdash;ef ye hed a nephew?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with flashing eyes, conscious of having propounded a
+      poser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated for a moment. Then&mdash;&ldquo;I'm surrounded,&rdquo; he said, with a
+      laugh. &ldquo;Ez I couldn't find a wife fur myself, I can't undertake ter
+      recommend one ter my nephew. Mighty fine boy he'd hev been, an'
+      saaft-spoken an' perlite ter aged men&mdash;not sassy an' makin' game o'
+      old uncles like a niece. Mighty fine boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye air welcome ter him,&rdquo; she said, with a simulation of scorn, as she
+      turned away to the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether it were the military cap she had worn, or the fancied resemblance
+      to the young soldiers, never to grow old, who had gone forth from this
+      humble abode to return no more, there was still to the guest's mind the
+      suggestion of the vivandière about her as she set the table and spread
+      upon it the simple fare. To and from the fireplace she was followed by two
+      or three of the younger dogs, their callowness expressed in their lack of
+      manners and perfervid interest in the approaching meal. This induced their
+      brief journeys back and forth, albeit embarrassed by their physical
+      conformation, short turns on four legs not being apparently the easy thing
+      it would seem from so much youthful suppleness. The dignity of the elder
+      hounds did not suffer them to move, but they looked on from erect postures
+      about the hearth with glistening eyes and slobbering jaws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever and anon the deep blue eyes of Millicent were lifted to the outer
+      gloom, as if she took note of its sinister aspect. She showed scant
+      interest in the stranger, whose gaze seldom left her as he sat beside the
+      fire. He was a handsome man, his face and figure illumined by the
+      firelight, and it might have been that he felt a certain pique, an
+      unaccustomed slight, in that his presence was so indifferent an element in
+      the estimation of any young and comely specimen of the feminine sex.
+      Certainly he had rarely encountered such absolute preoccupation as her
+      smiling far-away look betokened as she went back and forth with her young
+      canine friends at her heels, or stood at the table deftly slicing the
+      salt-rising bread, the dogs poised skilfully upon their hind-legs to
+      better view the appetizing performance; whenever she turned her face
+      toward them they laid their heads languish-ingly askew, as if to remind
+      her that supper could not be more fitly bestowed than on them. One, to
+      steady himself, placed unobserved his fore-paw on the edge of the table,
+      his well-padded toes leaving a vague imprint as of fingers upon the coarse
+      white cloth; but John Dundas was a sportsman, and could the better relax
+      an exacting nicety where so pleasant-featured and affable a beggar was
+      concerned. He forgot the turmoils of his own troubles as he gazed at
+      Millicent, the dreary aspect of the solitudes without, the exile from his
+      accustomed sphere of culture and comfort, the poverty and coarseness of
+      her surroundings. He was sorry that he had declined a longer lease of
+      Roxby's hospitality, and it was in his mind to reconsider when it should
+      be again proffered. Her attitude, her gesture, her face, her environment,
+      all appealed to his sense of beauty, his interest, his curiosity, as
+      little ever had done heretofore. Slice after slice of the firm fragrant
+      bread was deftly cut and laid on the plate, as again and again she lifted
+      her eyes with a look that might seem to expect to rest on summer in the
+      full flush of a June noontide without, rather than on the wan, wintry
+      night sky and the plundered, quaking woods, while the robber wind sped on
+      his raids hither and thither so swiftly that none might follow, so
+      stealthily that none might hinder. A sudden radiance broke upon her face,
+      a sudden shadow fell on the firelit floor, and there was entering at the
+      doorway a tall, lithe young mountaineer, whose first glance, animated with
+      a responsive brightness, was for the girl, but whose punctilious greeting
+      was addressed to the old woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Howdy, Mis' Roxby&mdash;howdy? Air yer rheumatics mendin' enny?&rdquo; he
+      demanded, with the condolent suavity of the would-be son-in-law, or
+      grand-son-in-law, as the case may be. And he hung with a transfixed
+      interest upon her reply, prolix and discursive according to the wont of
+      those who cultivate &ldquo;rheumatics,&rdquo; as if each separate twinge racked his
+      own sympathetic and filial sensibilities. Not until the tale was ended did
+      he set his gun against the wall and advance to the seat which Roxby had
+      indicated with the end of the stick he was whittling. He observed the
+      stranger with only slight interest, till Dundas drew up his chair opposite
+      at the table. There the light from the tallow dip, guttering in the
+      centre, fell upon his handsome face and eyes, his carefully tended beard
+      and hair, his immaculate cuffs and delicate hand, the seal-ring on his
+      taper finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a gal, by gum!&rdquo; thought Emory Keenan. &ldquo;Rings on his fingers&mdash;yit
+      six feet high!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at his elders, marvelling that they so hospitably repressed the
+      disgust which this effeminate adornment must occasion, forgetting that it
+      was possible that they did not even observe it. In the gala-days of the
+      old hotel, before the war, they had seen much &ldquo;finicking finery&rdquo; in garb
+      and equipage and habits affected by the <i>jeunesse dorée</i> who
+      frequented the place in those halcyon times, and were accustomed to such
+      details. It might be that they and Millicent approved such flimsy
+      daintiness. He began to fume inwardly with a sense of inferiority in her
+      estimation. One of his fingers had been frosted last winter, and with the
+      first twinge of cold weather it was beginning to look very red and sad and
+      clumsy, as if it had just remembered its ancient woe; he glanced from it
+      once more at the delicate ringed hand of the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dundas was looking up with a slow, deferential, decorous smile that
+      nevertheless lightened and transfigured his expression. It seemed somehow
+      communicated to Millicent's face as she looked down at him from beneath
+      her white eyelids and long, thick, dark lashes, for she was standing
+      beside him, handing him the plate of bread. Then, still smiling, she
+      passed noiselessly on to the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emory was indeed clumsy, for he had stretched his hand downward to offer a
+      morsel to a friend of his under the table&mdash;he was on terms of
+      exceeding amity with the four-footed members of the household&mdash;and in
+      his absorption not withdrawing it as swiftly as one accustomed to canine
+      manners should do, he had his frosted finger well mumbled before he could,
+      as it were, repossess himself of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what they charge fur iron over yander at the settlemint, Em'ry?&rdquo;
+       observed Sim Roxby presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dun'no', sir,&rdquo; responded Emory, glumly, his sullen black eyes full of
+      smouldering fire&mdash;&ldquo;hevin' no call ter know, ez I ain't no
+      blacksmith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I war jes' wonderin' ef tenpenny nails didn't cost toler'ble high ez
+      reg'lar feed,&rdquo; observed Roxby, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his mother laughed out with a gleeful cracked treble, always a ready
+      sequence of her son's rustic sallies. &ldquo;He got ye that time, Em'ry,&rdquo; she
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A forced smile crossed Emory's face. He tossed back his tangled dark hair
+      with a gasp that was like the snort of an unruly horse submitting to the
+      inevitable, but with restive projects in his brain. &ldquo;I let the dog hyar
+      ketch my finger whilst feedin' him,&rdquo; he said. His plausible excuse for the
+      ten-penny expression was complete; but he added, his darker mood recurring
+      instantly, &ldquo;An', Mis' Roxby, I hev put a stop ter them ez hev tuk ter
+      callin' me Em'ly, I hev.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman looked up, her small wrinkled mouth round and amazed. &ldquo;<i>I</i>
+      never called ye Emily,&rdquo; she declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swift repentance seized him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naw, 'm,&rdquo; he said, with hurried propitiation. &ldquo;I 'lowed ye did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't,&rdquo; said the old woman. &ldquo;But ef I warter find it toothsome ter
+      call ye 'Emily,' I dun'no' how ye air goin' ter pervent it. Ye can't go
+      gun-nin' fur me, like ye done fur the men at the mill, fur callin' ye
+      'Emily.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Law, Mis' Roxby!&rdquo; he could only exclaim, in his horror and contrition at
+      this picture he had thus conjured up. &ldquo;Ye air welcome ter call me
+      ennything ye air a mind ter,&rdquo; he protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he gasped once more. The eyes of the guest, contemptuous, amused,
+      seeing through him, were fixed upon him. And he himself had furnished the
+      lily-handed stranger with the information that he had been stigmatized
+      &ldquo;Em'ly&rdquo; in the banter of his associates, until he had taken up arms, as it
+      were, to repress this derision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It takes powerful little ter put ye down, Em'ry,&rdquo; said Roxby, with
+      rallying laughter. &ldquo;Mam hev sent ye skedaddlin' in no time at all. I don't
+      b'lieve the Lord made woman out'n the man's rib. He made her out'n the
+      man's backbone; fur the man ain't hed none ter speak of sence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Millicent, with a low gurgle of laughter, sat down beside Emory at the
+      table, and fixed her eyes, softly lighted with mirth, upon him. The others
+      too had laughed, the stranger with a flattering intonation, but young
+      Keenan looked at her with a dumb appealing humility that did not
+      altogether fail of its effect, for she busied herself to help his plate
+      with an air of proprietorship as if he were a child, and returned it with
+      a smile very radiant and sufficient at close range. She then addressed
+      herself to her own meal. The young dogs under the table ceased to beg, and
+      gambolled and gnawed and tugged at her stout little shoes, the sound of
+      their callow mirthful growls rising occasionally above the talk. Sometimes
+      she rose again to wait on the table, when they came leaping out after her,
+      jumping and catching at her skirts, now and then casting themselves on the
+      ground prone before her feet, and rolling over and over in the sheer joy
+      of existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger took little part in the talk at the table. Never a question
+      was asked him as to his mission in the mountains, or the length of his
+      stay, his vocation, or his home. That extreme courtesy of the
+      mountaineers, exemplified in their singular abstinence from any
+      expressions of curiosity, accepted such account of himself as he had
+      volunteered, and asked for no more. In the face of this standard of
+      manners any inquisitiveness on his part, such as might have elicited
+      points of interest for his merely momentary entertainment, was tabooed.
+      Nevertheless, silent though he was for the most part, the relish with
+      which he listened, his half-covert interest in the girl, his quick
+      observation of the others, the sudden very apparent enlivening of his
+      mental atmosphere, betokened that his quarters were not displeasing to
+      him. It seemed only a short time before the meal was ended and the circle
+      all, save Millicent, with pipes alight before the fire again. The dogs,
+      well fed, had ranged themselves on the glowing hearth, lying prone on the
+      hot stones; one old hound, however, who conserved the air of listening to
+      the conversation, sat upright and nodded from time to time, now and again
+      losing his balance and tipping forward in a truly human fashion, then
+      gazing round on the circle with an open luminous eye, as who should say he
+      had not slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all very cheerful within, but outside the wind still blared
+      mournfully. Once more Dundas was sorry that he had declined the invitation
+      to remain, and it was with a somewhat tentative intention that he made a
+      motion to return to the hotel. But his host seemed to regard his
+      resolution as final, and rose with a regret, not an insistence. The two
+      women stared in silent amazement at the mere idea of his camping out, as
+      it were, in the old hotel. The ascendency of masculine government here,
+      notwithstanding Roxby's assertion that Eve was made of Adam's backbone,
+      was very apparent in their mute acquiescence and the alacrity with which
+      they began to collect various articles, according to his directions, to
+      make the stranger's stay more comfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Em'ry kin go along an' holp,&rdquo; he said, heartlessly; for poor Emory's joy
+      in perceiving that the guest was not a fixture, and that his presence was
+      not to be an embargo on any word between himself and Millicent during the
+      entire evening, was pitiably manifest. But the situation was still not
+      without its comforts, since Dundas was to go too. Hence he was not poor
+      company when once in the saddle, and was civil to a degree of which his
+      former dismayed surliness had given no promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Night had become a definite element. The twilight had fled. Above their
+      heads, as they galloped through the dank woods, the bare boughs of the
+      trees clashed together&mdash;so high above their heads that to the town
+      man, unaccustomed to these great growths, the sound seemed not of the
+      vicinage, but unfamiliar, uncanny, and more than once he checked his horse
+      to listen. As they approached the mountain's verge and overlooked the
+      valley and beheld the sky, the sense of the predominance of darkness was
+      redoubled. The ranges gloomed against the clearer spaces, but a cloud,
+      deep gray with curling white edges, was coming up from the west, with an
+      invisible convoy of vague films, beneath which the stars, glimmering white
+      points, disappeared one by one. The swift motion of this aerial fleet
+      sailing with the wind might be inferred from the seemingly hurried pace of
+      the moon making hard for the west. Still bright was the illumined segment,
+      but despite its glitter the shadowy space of the full disk was distinctly
+      visible, its dusky field spangled with myriads of minute, dully golden
+      points. Down, down it took its way in haste&mdash;in disordered fright, it
+      seemed, as if it had no heart to witness the storm which the wind and the
+      clouds foreboded&mdash;to fairer skies somewhere behind those western
+      mountains. Soon even its vague light would encroach no more upon the
+      darkness. The great hotel would be invisible, annihilated as it were in
+      the gloom, and not even thus dimly exist, glimmering, alone, forlorn, so
+      incongruous to the wilderness that it seemed even now some mere figment of
+      the brain, as the two horsemen came with a freshened burst of speed along
+      the deserted avenue and reined up beside a small gate at the side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No use ter ride all the way around,&rdquo; observed Emory Keenan. &ldquo;Mought jes
+      ez well 'light an' hitch hyar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The moon gave him the escort of a great grotesque shadow as he threw
+      himself from his horse and passed the reins over a decrepit hitching-post
+      near at hand. Then he essayed the latch of the small gate. He glanced up
+      at Dundas, the moonlight in his dark eyes, with a smile as it resisted his
+      strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a fairly good-looking fellow when rid of the self-consciousness of
+      jealousy. His eyes, mouth, chin, and nose, acquired from reliable and
+      recognizable sources, were good features, and statuesque in their
+      immobility beneath the drooping curves of his broad soft hat. He was tall,
+      with the slenderness of youth, despite his evident weight and strength. He
+      was long-waisted and lithe and small of girth, with broad square
+      shoulders, whose play of muscles as he strove with the gate was not
+      altogether concealed by the butternut jeans coat belted in with his
+      pistols by a broad leathern belt. His boots reached high on his long legs,
+      and jingled with a pair of huge cavalry spurs. His stalwart strength
+      seemed as if it must break the obdurate gate rather than open it, but
+      finally, with a rasping creak, dismally loud in the silence, it swung
+      slowly back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young mountaineer stood gazing for a moment at the red rust on the
+      hinges. &ldquo;How long sence this gate must hev been opened afore?&rdquo; he said,
+      again looking up at Dundas with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow the words struck a chill to the stranger's heart. The sense of the
+      loneliness of the place, of isolation, filled him with a sort of awe. The
+      night-bound wilderness itself was not more daunting than these solitary
+      tiers of piazzas, these vacant series of rooms and corridors, all instinct
+      with vanished human presence, all alert with echoes of human voices. A
+      step, a laugh, a rustle of garments&mdash;he could have sworn he heard
+      them at any open doorway as he followed his guide along the dim moonlit
+      piazza, with its pillars duplicated at regular intervals by the shadows on
+      the floor. How their tread echoed down these lonely ways! From the
+      opposite side of the house he heard Kee-nan's spurs jangling, his
+      soldierly stride sounding back as if their entrance had roused barracks.
+      He winced once to see his own shadow with its stealthier movement. It
+      seemed painfully furtive. For the first time during the evening his jaded
+      mind, that had instinctively sought the solace of contemplating trifles,
+      reverted to its own tormented processes. &ldquo;Am I not hiding?&rdquo; he said to
+      himself, in a sort of sarcastic pity of his plight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea seemed never to enter the mind of the transparent Keenan. He
+      laughed out gayly as they turned into the weed-grown quadrangle, and the
+      red fox that Dundas had earlier observed slipped past him with affrighted
+      speed and dashed among the shadows of the dense shrubbery of the old lawn
+      without. Again and again the sound rang back from wall to wall, first with
+      the jollity of seeming imitation, then with an appalled effect sinking to
+      silence, and suddenly rising again in a grewsome <i>staccato</i> that
+      suggested some terrible unearthly laughter, and bore but scant resemblance
+      to the hearty mirth which had evoked it Keenan paused and looked back with
+      friendly gleaming eyes. &ldquo;Oughter been a leetle handier with these hyar
+      consarns,&rdquo; he said, touching the pistols in his belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It vaguely occurred to Dundas that the young man went strangely heavily
+      armed for an evening visit at a neighbor's house. But it was a lawless
+      country and lawless times, and the sub-current of suggestion did not
+      definitely fix itself in his mind until he remembered it later. He was
+      looking into each vacant open doorway, seeing the still moonlight starkly
+      white upon the floor; the cobwebbed and broken window-panes, through which
+      a section of leafless trees beyond was visible; bits of furniture here and
+      there, broken by the vandalism of the guerillas. Now and then a scurrying
+      movement told of a gopher, hiding too, and on one mantel-piece, the black
+      fireplace yawning below, sat a tiny tawny-tinted owl, whose motionless
+      beadlike eyes met his with a stare of stolid surprise. After he had
+      passed, its sudden ill-omened cry set the silence to shuddering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Keenan, leading the way, paused in displeasure. &ldquo;I wisht I hed viewed that
+      critter,&rdquo; he said, glumly. &ldquo;I'd hev purvented that screechin' ter call the
+      devil, sure. It's jes a certain sign o' death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was about to turn, to wreak his vengeance, perchance. But the bird,
+      sufficiently fortunate itself, whatever woe it presaged for others,
+      suddenly took its awkward flight through sheen and shadow across the
+      quadrangle, and when they heard its cry again it came from some remote
+      section of the building, with a doleful echo as a refrain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The circumstance was soon forgotten by Keenan. He seemed a happy,
+      mercurial, lucid nature, and he began presently to dwell with interest on
+      the availability of the old music-stand in the centre of the square as a
+      manger. &ldquo;Hyar,&rdquo; he said, striking the rotten old structure with a heavy
+      hand, which sent a quiver and a thrill through all the timbers&mdash;&ldquo;hyar's
+      whar the guerillas always hitched thar beastises. Thar feed an' forage war
+      piled up thar on the fiddlers' seats. Ye can't do no better'n ter pattern
+      arter them, till ye git ready ter hev fiddlers an' sech a-sawin' away in
+      hyar agin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he sauntered away from the little pavilion, followed by Dundas, who
+      had not accepted his suggestion of a room on the first floor as being less
+      liable to leakage, but finally made choice of an inner apartment in the
+      second story. He looked hard at Keenan, when he stood in the doorway
+      surveying the selection. The room opened into a cross-hall which gave upon
+      a broad piazza that was latticed; tiny squares of moonlight were all
+      sharply drawn on the floor, and, seen through a vista of gray shadow,
+      seemed truly of a gilded lustre. From the windows of this room on a
+      court-yard no light Could be visible to any passer-by without. Another
+      door gave on an inner gallery, and through its floor a staircase came up
+      from the quadrangle close to the threshold. Dundas wondered if these
+      features were of possible significance in Keenan's estimation. The young
+      mountaineer turned suddenly, and snatching up a handful of slats broken
+      from the shutters, remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's see how the chimbly draws&mdash;that's the main p'int.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no defect in the chimney's constitution. It drew admirably, and
+      with the white and red flames dancing in the fireplace, two or three
+      chairs, more or less disabled, a table, and an upholstered lounge gathered
+      at random from the rooms near at hand, the possibility of sojourning
+      comfortably for a few days in the deserted hostelry seemed amply assured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more Dundas gazed fixedly at the face of the young mountaineer, who
+      still bent on one knee on the hearth, watching with smiling eyes the
+      triumphs of his fire-making. It seemed to him afterwards that his judgment
+      was strangely at fault; he perceived naught of import in the shallow
+      brightness of the young man's eyes, like the polished surface of jet; in
+      the instability of his jealousy, his anger; in his hap-hazard, mercurial
+      temperament. Once he might have noted how flat were the spaces beneath the
+      eyes, how few were the lines that defined the lid, the socket, the curve
+      of the cheekbone, the bridge of the nose, and how expressionless. It was
+      doubtless the warmth and glow of the fire, the clinging desire of
+      companionship, the earnest determination to be content, pathetic in one
+      who had but little reason for optimism, that caused him to ignore the
+      vacillating glancing moods that successively swayed Keenan, strong while
+      they lasted, but with scanty augury because of their evanescence. He was
+      like some newly discovered property in physics of untried potentialities,
+      of which nothing is ascertained but its uncertainties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet he seemed to Dundas a simple country fellow, good-natured in the
+      main, unsuspicious, and helpful. So, giving a long sigh of relief and
+      fatigue, Dundas sank down in one of the large arm-chairs that had once
+      done duty for the summer loungers on the piazza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the light of the fire Emory was once more looking at him. A certain air
+      of distinction, a grace and ease of movement, an indescribable quality of
+      bearing which he could not discriminate, yet which he instinctively
+      recognized as superior, offended him in some sort. He noticed again the
+      ring on the stranger's hand as he drew off his glove. Gloves! Emory Keen
+      an would as soon have thought of wearing a petticoat. Once more the fear
+      that these effeminate graces found favor in Millicent's estimation smote
+      upon his heart. It made the surface of his opaque eyes glisten as Dundas
+      rose and took up a pipe and tobacco-pouch which he had laid on the
+      mantelpiece, his full height and fine figure shown in the changed posture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ez tall ez me, ef not taller, an', by gum! a good thirty pound heavier,&rdquo;
+       Emory reflected, with, a growing dismay that he had not those stalwart
+      claims to precedence in height and weight as an offset to the smoother
+      fascinations of the stranger's polish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had risen hastily to his feet. He would not linger to smoke fraternally
+      over the fire, and thus cement friendly relations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guided him hyar, like old Sim Roxby axed me ter do, an' that's all. I
+      ain't keerin' ef I never lay eyes on him again,&rdquo; he said to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going?&rdquo; said Dundas, pleasantly, noticing the motion. &ldquo;You'll look in
+      again, won't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wunst in a while, I reckon,&rdquo; drawled Keenan, a trifle thrown off his
+      balance by this courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused at the door, looking back over his shoulder for a moment at the
+      illumined room, then stepped out into the night, leaving the tenant of the
+      lonely old house filling his pipe by the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His tread rang along the deserted gallery, and sudden echoes came tramping
+      down the vacant halls as if many a denizen of the once populous place was
+      once more astir within its walls. Long after Dundas had heard him spring
+      from the lower piazza to the ground, and the rusty gate clang behind him,
+      vague footfalls were audible far away, and were still again, and once more
+      a pattering tread in some gaunt and empty apartment near at hand, faint
+      and fainter yet, till he hardly knew whether it were the reverberations of
+      sound or fancy that held his senses in thrall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when all was still and silent at last he felt less solitary than when
+      these elusive tokens of human presence were astir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late, late he sat over the dwindling embers. His mind, no longer diverted
+      by the events of the day, recurred with melancholy persistence to a theme
+      which even they, although fraught with novelty and presage of danger, had
+      not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril dulled, the craft of
+      sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him in these dim watches of
+      the night. Self-reproach had found him out here, defenceless so far from
+      the specious wiles and ways of men. All the line of provocations seemed
+      slight, seemed naught, as he reviewed them and balanced them against a
+      human life. True, it was not in some mad quarrel that his skill had taken
+      it and had served to keep his own&mdash;a duel, a fair fight, strictly
+      regular according to the code of &ldquo;honorable men&rdquo; for ages past&mdash;and
+      he sought to argue that it was doubtless but the morbid sense of the wild
+      fastnesses without, the illimitable vastness of the black night, the
+      unutterable indurability of nature to the influences of civilization,
+      which made it taste like murder. He had brought away even from the scene
+      of action, to which he had gone with decorous deliberation&mdash;his
+      worldly affairs arranged for the possibility of death, his will made, his
+      volition surrendered, and his sacred honor in the hands of his seconds&mdash;a
+      humiliating recollection of the sudden revulsion of the aspect of all
+      things; the criminal sense of haste with which he was hurried away after
+      that first straight shot; the agitation, nay, the fright of his seconds;
+      their eagerness to be swiftly rid of him, their insistence that he should
+      go away for a time, get out of the country, out of the embarrassing
+      purview of the law, which was prone to regard the matter as he himself saw
+      it now, and which had an ugly trick of calling things by their right names
+      in the sincere phraseology of an indictment. And thus it was that he was
+      here, remote from all the usual lines of flight, with his affectation of
+      being a possible purchaser for the old hotel, far from the railroad, the
+      telegraph, even the postal service. Some time&mdash;soon, indeed, it might
+      be, when the first flush of excitement and indignation should be overpast,
+      and the law, like a barking dog that will not bite, should have noisily
+      exhausted the gamut of its devoirs&mdash;he would go back and live
+      according to his habit in his wonted place, as did other men whom he had
+      known to be &ldquo;called out,&rdquo; and who had survived their opponents. Meantime
+      he heard the ash crumble; he saw the lighted room wane from glancing
+      yellow to a dull steady red, and so to dusky brown; he marked the wind
+      rise, and die away, and come again, banging the doors of the empty rooms,
+      and setting timbers all strangely to creaking as under sudden trampling
+      feet; then lift into the air with a rustling sound like the stir of
+      garments and the flutter of wings, calling out weirdly in the great voids
+      of the upper atmosphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had welcomed the sense of fatigue earlier in the evening, for it
+      promised sleep. Now it had slipped away from him. He was strong and young,
+      and the burning sensation that the frosty air had left on his face was the
+      only token of the long journey. It seemed as if he would never sleep again
+      as he lay on the lounge watching the gray ash gradually overgrow the
+      embers, till presently only a vague dull glow gave intimation of the
+      position of the hearth in the room. And then, bereft of this dim sense of
+      companionship, he stared wide-eyed in the darkness, feeling the only
+      creature alive and awake in all the world. No; the fox was suddenly
+      barking within the quadrangle&mdash;a strangely wild and alien tone. And
+      presently he heard the animal trot past his door on the piazza, the
+      cushioned footfalls like those of a swift dog. He thought with a certain
+      anxiety of the tawny tiny owl that had sat like a stuffed ornament on the
+      mantel-piece of a neighboring room, and he listened with a quaking
+      vicarious presentiment of woe for the sounds of capture and despair. He
+      was sensible of waiting and hoping for the fox's bootless return, when he
+      suddenly lost consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How long he slept he did not know, but it seemed only a momentary respite
+      from the torture of memory, when, still in the darkness, thousands of
+      tremulous penetrating sounds were astir, and with a great start he
+      recognized the rain on the roof. It was coming down in steady torrents
+      that made the house rock before the tumult of his plunging heart was
+      still, and he was longing again for the forgetfulness of sleep. In vain.
+      The hours dragged by; the windows slowly, slowly denned their dull gray
+      squares against the dull gray day dawning without. The walls that had been
+      left with only the first dark coat of plaster, awaiting another season for
+      the final decoration, showed their drapings of cobweb, and the names and
+      pencilled scribblings with which the fancy of transient bushwhackers had
+      chosen to deface them. The locust-trees within the quadrangle drearily
+      tossed their branches to and fro in the wind, the bark very black and
+      distinct against the persistent gray lines of rain and the white walls of
+      the galleried buildings opposite; the gutters were brimming, roaring along
+      like miniature torrents; nowhere was the fox or the owl to be seen.
+      Somehow their presence would have been a relief&mdash;the sight of any
+      living thing reassuring. As he walked slowly along the deserted piazzas,
+      in turning sudden corners, again and again he paused, expecting that
+      something, some one, was approaching to meet him. When at last he mounted
+      his horse, that had neighed gleefully to see him, and rode away through
+      the avenue and along the empty ways among the untenanted summer cottages,
+      all the drearier and more forlorn because of the rain, he felt as if he
+      had left an aberration, some hideous dream, behind, instead of the stark
+      reality of the gaunt and vacant and dilapidated old house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The transition to the glow and cheer of Sim Roxby's fireside was like a
+      rescue, a restoration. The smiling welcome in the women's eyes, their soft
+      drawling voices, with mellifluous intonations that gave a value to each
+      commonplace simple word, braced his nerves like a tonic. It might have
+      been only the contrast with the recollections of the night, with the
+      prospect visible through the open door&mdash;the serried lines of rain
+      dropping aslant from the gray sky and elusively outlined against the dark
+      masses of leafless woods that encircled the clearing; the dooryard half
+      submerged with puddles of a clay-brown tint, embossed always with myriads
+      of protruding drops of rain, for however they melted away the downpour
+      renewed them, and to the eye they were stationary, albeit pervaded with a
+      continual tremor&mdash;but somehow he was cognizant of a certain coddling
+      tenderness in the old woman's manner that might have been relished by a
+      petted child, an unaffected friendliness in the girl's clear eyes. They
+      made him sit close to the great wood fire; the blue and yellow flames
+      gushed out from the piles of hickory logs, and the bed of coals gleamed at
+      red and white heat beneath. They took his hat to carefully dry it, and
+      they spread out his cloak on two chairs at one side of the room, where it
+      dismally dripped. When he ventured to sneeze, Mrs. Roxby compounded and
+      administered a &ldquo;yerb tea,&rdquo; a sovereign remedy against colds, which he
+      tasted on compulsion and in great doubt, and swallowed with alacrity and
+      confidence, finding its basis the easily recognizable &ldquo;toddy.&rdquo; He had
+      little knowledge how white and troubled his face had looked as he came in
+      from the gray day, how strongly marked were those lines of sharp mental
+      distress, how piteously apparent was his mute appeal for sympathy and
+      comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mill'cent,&rdquo; said the old woman in the shed-room, as they washed and wiped
+      the dishes after the cozy breakfast of venison and corn-dodgers and honey
+      and milk, &ldquo;that thar man hev run agin the law, sure's ye air born.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Millicent turned her reflective fair face, that seemed whiter and more
+      delicate in the damp dark day, and looked doubtfully out over the fields,
+      where the water ran in steely lines in the furrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mus' hev been by accident or suthin'. <i>He</i> ain't no hardened
+      sinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; the old woman commented upon her reluctant acquiescence. &ldquo;I
+      ain't keerin' for the law! 'Tain't none o' my job. The tomfool men make
+      an' break it. Ennybody ez hev seen this war air obleeged to take note o'
+      the wickedness o' men in gineral. This hyer man air a sorter pitiful
+      sinner, an' he hev got a look in his eyes that plumb teches my heart. I
+      'ain't got no call ter know nuthin' 'bout the law, bein' a 'oman an'
+      naterally ignorant. I dun'no' ez he hev run agin it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mus' hev been by accident,&rdquo; said Millicent, dreamily, still gazing over
+      the sodden fields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suspicion did nothing to diminish his comfort or their cordiality. The
+      morning dragged by without change in the outer aspects. The noontide
+      dinner came and went without Roxby's return, for the report of the washing
+      away of a bridge some miles distant down the river had early called him
+      out to the scene of the disaster, to verify in his own interests the
+      rumor, since he had expected to haul his wheat to the settlement the
+      ensuing day. The afternoon found the desultory talk still in progress
+      about the fire, the old woman alternately carding cotton and nodding in
+      her chair in the corner; the dogs eying the stranger, listening much of
+      the time with the air of children taking instruction, only occasionally
+      wandering out-of-doors, the floor here and there bearing the damp imprint
+      of their feet; and Millicent on her knees in the other corner, the
+      firelight on her bright hair, her delicate cheek, her quickly glancing
+      eyes, as she deftly moulded bullets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Sim hed ter s'render his shootin'-irons,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;an' he
+      'ain't got no ca'tridge-loadin' ones lef. So he makes out with his old
+      muzzle-loadin' rifle that he hed afore the war, an' I moulds his bullets
+      for him rainy days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she held up a moulded ball and dexterously clipped off the surplus
+      lead, the gesture was so culinary in its delicacy that one of the dogs in
+      front of the fire extended his head, making a long neck, with a tentative
+      sniff and a glistening gluttonous eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ef I swallered enny mo' lead, I wouldn't take it hot, Towse,&rdquo; she said,
+      holding out the bullet for canine inspection. &ldquo;'Tain't healthy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the dog, perceiving the nature of the commodity, drew back with a look
+      of deep reproach, rose precipitately, and with a drooping tail went out
+      skulkingly into the wet gray day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Towse can't abide a bullet,&rdquo; she observed, &ldquo;nor nuthin' 'bout a gun. He
+      got shot wunst a-huntin', an' he never furgot it. Jes show him a gun an'
+      he ain't nowhar ter be seen&mdash;like he war cotch up in the clouds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good watch-dog, I suppose,&rdquo; suggested Dundas, striving to enter into the
+      spirit of her talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naw; too sp'ilt for a gyard-dog&mdash;granny coddled him so whenst he got
+      shot. He's jest vally'ble fur his conversation, I reckon,&rdquo; she continued,
+      with a smile in her eyes. &ldquo;I dun'no' what else, but he <i>is</i> toler'ble
+      good company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other dogs pressed about her, the heads of the great hounds as high as
+      her own as she sat among them on the floor. With bright eyes and knitted
+      brows they followed the motions of pouring in the melted metal, the
+      lifting of the bullets from the mould, the clipping off of the surplus
+      lead, and the flash of the keen knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the sad light waned; the wind sighed and sighed; the dreary rain
+      fell; the trees clashed their boughs dolorously together, and their
+      turbulence deadened the sound of galloping horses. As Dundas sat and gazed
+      at the girl's intent head, with its fleecy tendrils and its massive coil,
+      the great hounds beside her, all emblazoned by the firelight upon the
+      brown wall near by, with the vast fireplace at hand, the whole less like
+      reality than some artist's pictured fancy, he knew naught of a sudden
+      entrance, until she moved, breaking the spell, and looked up to meet the
+      displeasure in Roxby's eyes and the dark scowl on Emory Keenan's face.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      That night the wind shifted to the north. Morning found the chilled world
+      still, ice where the water had lodged, all the trees incased in glittering
+      garb that followed the symmetry alike of every bough and the tiniest twig,
+      and made splendid the splintered remnants of the lightning-riven. The
+      fields were laced across from furrow to furrow, in which the frozen water
+      still stood gleaming, with white arabesques which had known a more humble
+      identity as stubble and crab-grass; the sky was slate-colored, and from
+      its sad tint this white splendor gained added values of contrast. When the
+      sun should shine abroad much of the effect would be lost in the too
+      dazzling glister; but the sun did not shine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day the gray mood held unchanged. Night was imperceptibly sifting down
+      upon all this whiteness, that seemed as if it would not be obscured, as if
+      it held within itself some property of luminosity, when Millicent, a white
+      apron tied over her golden head, improvising a hood, its superfluous
+      fulness gathered in many folds and pleats around her neck, fichu-wise,
+      stood beside the ice-draped fodder-stack and essayed with half-numbed
+      hands to insert a tallow dip into the socket of a lantern, all incrusted
+      and clumsy with previous drippings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dun'no' whether I be a-goin' ter need this hyar consarn whilst milkin'
+      or no,&rdquo; she observed, half to herself, half to Emory, who, chewing a
+      straw, somewhat surlily had followed her out for a word apart. &ldquo;The dusk
+      'pears slow ter-night, but Spot's mighty late comin' home, an' old Sue air
+      fractious an' contrairy-minded, and feels mighty anxious an' oneasy 'boutn
+      her calf, that's ez tall ez she is nowadays, an' don't keer no mo' 'bout
+      her mammy 'n a half-grown human does. I tell her she oughtn't ter be mad
+      with me, but with the way she brung up her chile, ez won't notice her
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up with a laugh, her eyes and teeth gleaming; her golden hair
+      still showed its color beneath the spotless whiteness of her voluminous
+      headgear, and the clear tints of her complexion seemed all the more
+      delicate and fresh in the snowy pallor of the surroundings and the
+      grayness of the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon I'd better take it along,&rdquo; and once more she addressed herself
+      to the effort to insert the dip into the lantern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emory hardly heard. His pulse was quick. His eye glittered. He breathed
+      hard as, with both hands in his pockets, he came close to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mill'cent,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I told ye the t'other day ez ye thunk a heap too
+      much o' that thar stran-ger-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' I tole ye, bubby, that I didn't think nuthin' o' nobody but you-uns,&rdquo;
+       she interrupted, with an effort to placate his jealousy. The little
+      jocularity which she affected dwindled and died before the steady glow of
+      his gaze, and she falteringly looked at him, her unguided hands futilely
+      fumbling with the lantern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye can't fool me,&rdquo; he stoutly asseverated. &ldquo;Ye think mo' o' him 'n o' me,
+      kase ye 'low he air rich, an' book-larned, an' smooth-fingered, an'
+      fini-fied ez a gal, an' goin' ter buy the hotel. I say, <i>hotel!</i> Now
+      <i>I'll</i> tell ye what he is&mdash;I'll tell ye! He's a criminal. He's
+      runnin' from the law. He's hidin' in the old hotel that he's purtendin'
+      ter buy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared wide-eyed and pallid, breathless and waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He interpreted her expression as doubt, denial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's gospel sure,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Fur this very evenin' I met a gang o' men
+      an' the sheriff's deputy down yander by the sulphur spring 'bout sundown,
+      an' he 'lowed ez they war a-sarchin' fur a criminal ez war skulkin' round
+      hyarabout lately&mdash;ez they wanted a man fur hevin' c'mitted murder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But ye didn't accuse <i>him</i>, surely; ye hed no right ter s'picion <i>him</i>.
+      Uncle Sim! Oh, my Lord! Ye surely wouldn't! Oh, Uncle Sim!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her tremulous words broke into a quavering cry as she caught his arm
+      convulsively, for his face confirmed her fears. She thrust him wildly
+      away, and started toward the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye needn't go tattlin' on me,&rdquo; he said, roughly pushing her aside. &ldquo;I'll
+      tell Mr. Roxby myself. I ain't 'shamed o' what I done. I'll tell him. I'll
+      tell him myself.&rdquo; And animated with this intention to forestall her
+      disclosure, his long strides bore him swiftly past and into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to him that he lingered there only a moment or two, for Roxby
+      was not at the cabin, and he said nothing of the quarrel to the old woman.
+      Already his heart had revolted against his treachery, and then there came
+      to him the further reflection that he did not know enough to justify
+      suspicion. Was not the stranger furnished with the fullest credentials&mdash;a
+      letter to Roxby from the Colonel? Perhaps he had allowed his jealousy to
+      endanger the man, to place him in jeopardy even of his life should he
+      resist arrest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Keenan tarried at the house merely long enough to devise a plausible
+      excuse for his sudden excited entrance, and then took his way back to the
+      barnyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was vacant. The cows still stood lowing at the bars; the sheep cowered
+      together in their shed; the great whitened cone of the fodder-stack
+      gleamed icily in the purple air; beside it lay the lantern where Millicent
+      had cast it aside. She was gone! He would not believe it till he had run
+      to the barn, calling her name in the shadowy place, while the horse at his
+      manger left his corn to look over the walls of his stall with inquisitive
+      surprised eyes, luminous in the dusk. He searched the hen-house, where the
+      fowls on their perches crowded close because of the chill of the evening.
+      He even ran to the bars and looked down across the narrow ravine to which
+      the clearing sloped. Beyond the chasm-like gorge he saw presently on the
+      high ascent opposite footprints that had broken the light frostlike
+      coating of ice on the dead leaves and moss&mdash;climbing footprints,
+      swift, disordered. He looked back again at the lantern where Millicent had
+      flung it in her haste. Her mission was plain now. She had gone to warn
+      Dundas. She had taken a direct line through the woods. She hoped to
+      forestall the deputy sheriff and his posse, following the circuitous
+      mountain road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Keenan's lip curled in triumph. His heart burned hot with scornful anger
+      and contempt of the futility of her effort. &ldquo;They're there afore she
+      started!&rdquo; he said, looking up at the aspects of the hour shown by the sky,
+      and judging of the interval since the encounter by the spring. Through a
+      rift in the gray cloud a star looked down with an icy scintillation and
+      disappeared again. He heard a branch in the woods snap beneath the weight
+      of ice. A light sprang into the window of the cabin hard by, and came in a
+      great gush of orange-tinted glow out into the snowy bleak wintry space. He
+      suddenly leaped over the fence and ran like a deer through the woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Millicent too had been swift. He had thought to overtake her before he
+      emerged from the woods into the more open space where the hotel stood. In
+      this quarter the cloud-break had been greater. Toward the west a fading
+      amber glow still lingered in long horizontal bars upon the opaque gray
+      sky. The white mountains opposite were hung with purple shadows borrowed
+      from a glimpse of sunset somewhere far away over the valley of East
+      Tennessee; one distant lofty range was drawn in elusive snowy suggestions,
+      rather than lines, against a green space of intense yet pale tint. The
+      moon, now nearing the full, hung over the wooded valley, and aided the ice
+      and the crust of snow to show its bleak, wan, wintry aspect; a tiny spark
+      glowed in its depths from some open door of an isolated home. Over it all
+      a mist was rising from the east, drawing its fleecy but opaque curtain.
+      Already it had climbed the mountain-side and advanced, windless,
+      soundless, overwhelming, annihilating all before and beneath it. The old
+      hotel had disappeared, save that here and there a gaunt gable protruded
+      and was withdrawn, showed once more, and once more was submerged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A horse's head suddenly looking out of the enveloping mist close to his
+      shoulder gave him the first intimation of the arrival, the secret silent
+      waiting, of those whom he had directed hither. That the saddles were empty
+      he saw a moment later. The animals stood together in a row, hitched to the
+      rack. No disturbance sounded from the silent building. The event was in
+      abeyance. The fugitive in hiding was doubtless at ease, unsuspecting,
+      while the noiseless search of the officers for his quarters was under way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a thrill of excitement Keenan crept stealthily through an open
+      passage and into the old grass-grown spaces of the quadrangle. Night
+      possessed the place, but the cloud seemed denser than the darkness. He was
+      somehow sensible of its convolutions as he stood against the wall and
+      strained his eyes into the dusk. Suddenly it was penetrated by a
+      milky-white glimmer, a glimmer duplicated at equidistant points, each
+      fading as its successor sprang into brilliance. The next moment he
+      understood its significance. It had come from the blurred windows of the
+      old ball-room. Milli-cent had lighted her candle as she searched for the
+      fugitive's quarters; she was passing down the length of the old house on
+      the second story, and suddenly she emerged upon the gallery. She shielded
+      the feeble flicker with her Hand; her white-hooded head gleamed as with an
+      aureola as the divergent rays rested on the opaque mist; and now and again
+      she clutched the baluster and walked with tremulous care, for the flooring
+      was rotten here and there, and ready to crumble away. Her face was pallid,
+      troubled; and Dundas, who had been warned by the tramp of horses and the
+      tread of men, and who had descended the stairs, revolver in hand, ready to
+      slip away if he might under cover of the mist, paused appalled, gazing
+      across the quadrangle as on an apparition&mdash;the sight so familiar to
+      his senses, so strange to his experience. He saw in an abrupt shifting of
+      the mist that there were other figures skulking in doorways, watching her
+      progress. The next moment she leaned forward to clutch the baluster, and
+      the light of the candle fell full on Emory Keenan, lurking in the open
+      passage. A sudden sharp cry of &ldquo;Surrender!&rdquo; The young mountaineer,
+      confused, swiftly drew his pistol. Others were swifter still. A sharp
+      report rang out into the chill crisp air, rousing all the affrighted
+      echoes&mdash;a few faltering steps, a heavy fall, and for a long time
+      Emory Keenan's life-blood stained the floor of the promenade. Even when it
+      had faded, the rustic gossips came often and gazed at the spot with morbid
+      interest, until, a decade later, an enterprising proprietor removed the
+      floor and altered the shape of that section of the building out of
+      recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The escape of Dundas was easily effected. The deputy sheriff, confronted
+      with the problem of satisfactorily accounting for the death of a man who
+      had committed no offence against public polity, was no longer formidable.
+      His errand had been the arrest of a horse-thief, well-known to him, and he
+      had no interest in pursuing a fugitive, however obnoxious to the law,
+      whose personal description was so different from that of the object of his
+      search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time restored to Dundas his former place in life and the esteem of his
+      fellow-citizens. His stay in the mountains was an episode which he will
+      not often recall, but sometimes volition fails, and he marvels at the
+      strange fulfilment of the girl's vision; he winces to think that her
+      solicitude for his safety should have cost her her lover; he wonders
+      whether she yet lives, and whether that tender troubled phantom, on nights
+      when the wind is still and the moon is low and the mists rise, again joins
+      the strange, elusive, woful company crossing the quaking foot-bridge.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
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+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+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: The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge
+       1895
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Illustrator: A. B. Frost
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2007 [EBook #23630]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE
+
+By Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+1895
+
+
+Across the narrow gorge the little foot-bridge stretched-a brace of
+logs, the upper surface hewn, and a slight hand-rail formed of a cedar
+pole. A flimsy structure, one might think, looking down at the dark and
+rocky depths beneath, through which flowed the mountain stream, swift
+and strong, but it was doubtless substantial enough for all ordinary
+usage, and certainly sufficient for the imponderable and elusive
+travellers who by common report frequented it.
+
+"We ain't likely ter meet nobody. Few folks kem this way nowadays,
+'thout it air jes' ter ford the creek down along hyar a piece, sence
+harnts an' sech onlikely critters hev been viewed a-crossin' the
+foot-bredge. An' it hev got the name o' bein' toler'ble onlucky, too,"
+said Roxby.
+
+His interlocutor drew back slightly. He had his own reasons to recoil
+from the subject of death. For him it was invested with a more immediate
+terror than is usual to many of the living, with that flattering
+persuasion of immortality in every strong pulsation repudiating all
+possibility of cessation. Then, lifting his gloomy, long-lashed eyes to
+the bridge far up the stream, he asked, "Whose 'harms?"
+
+His voice had a low, repressed cadence, as of one who speaks seldom,
+grave, even melancholy, and little indicative of the averse interest
+that had kindled in his sombre eyes. In comparison the drawl of the
+mountaineer, who had found him heavy company by the way, seemed imbued
+with an abnormal vivacity, and keyed a tone or two higher than was its
+wont.
+
+"Thar ain't a few," he replied, with a sudden glow of the pride of the
+cicerone. "Thar's a graveyard t'other side o' the gorge, an' not more
+than a haffen-mile off, an' a cornsider'ble passel o' folks hev
+been buried thar off an' on, an' the foot-bredge ain't in nowise
+ill-convenient ter them."
+
+Thus demonstrating the spectral resources of the locality, he rode his
+horse well into the stream as he spoke, and dropped the reins that the
+animal's impatient lips might reach the water. He sat fac-, ing the
+foot-bridge, flecked with the alternate shifting of the sunshine and the
+shadows of the tremulous firs that grew on either side of the high
+banks on the ever-ascending slope, thus arching both above and below
+the haunted bridge. His companion had joined him in the centre of
+the stream; but while the horses drank, the stranger's eyes were
+persistently bent on the concentric circles of the water that the
+movement of the animals had set astir in the current, as if he feared
+that too close or curious a gaze might discern some pilgrim, whom he
+cared not to see, traversing that shadowy quivering foot-bridge. He
+was mounted on a strong, handsome chestnut, as marked a contrast to his
+guide's lank and trace-galled sorrel as were the two riders. A slender
+gloved hand had fallen with the reins to the pommel of the saddle. His
+soft felt hat, like a sombrero, shadowed his clear-cut face. He was
+carefully shaven, save for a long drooping dark mustache and imperial.
+His suit of dark cloth was much concealed by a black cloak, one end of
+which thrown back across his shoulder showed a bright blue lining, the
+color giving a sudden heightening touch to his attire, as if he were "in
+costume." It was a fleeting fashion of the day, but it added a certain
+picturesqueness to a horseman, and seemed far enough from the times
+that produced the square-tailed frock-coat which the mountaineer wore,
+constructed of brown jeans, the skirts of which stood stiffly out on
+each side of the saddle, and gave him, with his broad-brimmed hat, a
+certain Quakerish aspect.
+
+"I dun'no' why folks be so 'feared of 'em," Rox-by remarked,
+speculatively. "The dead ain't so oncommon, nohow. Them ez hev been
+in the war, like you an' me done, oughter be in an' 'bout used ter
+corpses-though I never seen none o' 'em afoot agin. Lookin' at a smit
+field o' battle, arter the rage is jes' passed, oughter gin a body a
+realizin' sense how easy the sperit kin flee, an' what pore vessels fur
+holdin' the spark o' life human clay be."
+
+Simeon Roxby had a keen, not unkindly face, and he had that look of
+extreme intelligence which is entirely distinct from intellectuality,
+and which one sometimes sees in a minor degree in a very clever dog or a
+fine horse. One might rely on him to understand instinctively everything
+one might say to him, even in its subtler aesthetic values, although he
+had consciously learned little. He was of the endowed natures to whom
+much is given, rather than of those who are set to acquire. He had
+many lines in his face-even his simple life had gone hard with him, its
+sorrows un assuaged by its simplicity. His hair was grizzled, and hung
+long and straight on his collar. He wore a grizzled beard cut broad and
+short. His boots had big spurs, although the lank old sorrel had never
+felt them. He sat his horse like the cavalryman he had been for four
+years of hard riding and raiding, but his face had a certain gentleness
+that accented the Quaker-like suggestion of his garb, a look of
+communing with the higher things.
+
+"I never blamed 'em,'" he went on, evidently reverting to the spectres
+of the bridge-"I never blamed 'em for comin' back wunst in a while. It
+'pears ter me 'twould take me a long time ter git familiar with heaven,
+an' sociable with them ez hev gone before. An', my Lord, jes' think what
+the good green yearth is! Leastwise the mountings. I ain't settin' store
+on the valley lands I seen whenst I went ter the wars. I kin remember
+yit what them streets in the valley towns smelt like."
+
+He lifted his head, drawing a long breath to inhale the exquisite
+fragrance of the fir, the freshness of the pellucid water, the aroma of
+the autumn wind, blowing through the sere leaves still clinging red and
+yellow to the boughs of the forest.
+
+"Naw, I ain't blamin' 'em, though I don't hanker ter view 'em," he
+resumed. "One of 'em I wouldn't be afeard of, though. I feel mighty
+sorry fur her. The old folks used ter tell about her. A young 'oman she
+war, a-crossin' this bredge with her child in her arms. She war young,
+an' mus' have been keerless, I reckon; though ez 'twar her fust baby,
+she moightn't hev been practised in holdin' it an' sech, an' somehows
+it slipped through her arms an' fell inter the ruver, an' war killed in
+a minit, dashin' agin the rocks. She jes' stood fur a second a-screamin'
+like a wild painter, an' jumped off'n the bredge arter it. She got it
+agin; for when they dragged her body out'n the ruver she hed it in her
+arms too tight fur even death ter onloose. An' thar they air together in
+the buryin'-ground."
+
+He gave a nod toward the slope of the mountain that intercepted the
+melancholy view of the graveyard.
+
+"Got it yit!" he continued; "bekase" (he lowered his voice) "on windy
+nights, whenst the moon is on the wane, she is viewed kerryin' the baby
+along the bredge--kerryin' it clear over, _safe an' sound_, like she
+thought she oughter done, I reckon, in that one minute, whilst she stood
+an' screamed an' surveyed what she hed done. That child would hev been
+nigh ter my age ef he hed lived."
+
+Only the sunbeams wavered athwart the bridge now as the firs swayed
+above, giving glimpses of the sky, and their fibrous shadows flickered
+back and forth. The wild mountain stream flashed white between the brown
+bowlders, and plunged down the gorge in a succession of cascades, each
+seeming more transparently green and amber and brown than the other. The
+chestnut horse gazed meditatively at these limpid out-gushings, having
+drunk his fill; then thought better of his moderation, and once more
+thrust his head down to the water. The hand of his rider, which had
+made a motion to gather up the reins, dropped leniently on his neck, as
+Simeon Roxby spoke again:
+
+"Several--several others hev been viewed, actin' accordin' ter thar
+motions in life. Now thar war a peddler--some say he slipped one icy
+evenin', 'bout dusk in winter--some say evil ones waylaid him fur his
+gear an' his goods in his pack, but the settlemint mostly believes
+he war alone whenst he fell. His pack 'pears ter be full still, they
+say--but ye air 'bleeged ter know he hev hed ter set that pack down fur
+good 'fore this time. We kin take nuthin' out'n this world, no matter
+what kind o' a line o' goods we kerry in life. Heaven's no place fur
+tradin', I understan', an' I _do_ wonder sometimes how in the worl' them
+merchants an' sech in the valley towns air goin' ter entertain tharse'fs
+in the happy land o' Canaan. It's goin' ter be sorter bleak fur them,
+sure's ye air born."
+
+With a look of freshened recollection, he suddenly drew a plug of
+tobacco from his pocket, and he talked on even as he gnawed a piece from
+it.
+
+"Durin' the war a cavalry-man got shot out hyar whilst runnin' 'crost
+that thar foot-bredge. Thar hed been a scrimmage an' his horse war kilt,
+an' he tuk ter the bresh on foot, hopin' ter hide in the laurel. But ez
+he war crossin' the foot-bredge some o' the pursuin' party war fordin'
+the ruver over thar, an' thinkin' he'd make out ter escape they fired
+on him, jes' ez the feller tried ter surrender. He turned this way an'
+flung up both arms--but thar's mighty leetle truce in a pistol-ball.
+That minute it tuk him right through the brain. Seems toler'ble long
+range fur a pistol, don't it? He kin be viewed now most enny moonlight
+night out hyar on the foot-bredge, throwin' up both hands in sign of
+surrender."
+
+The wild-geese were a-wing on the way southward. Looking up to that
+narrow section of the blue sky which the incision of the gorge into
+the very depths of the woods made visible, he could see the tiny files
+deploying along the azure or the flecking cirrus, and hear the vague
+clangor of their leader's cry. He lifted his head to mechanically follow
+their flight. Then, as his eyes came back to earth, they rested again on
+the old bridge.
+
+"Strange enough," he said, suddenly, "the sker-riest tale I hev ever
+hearn 'bout that thar old bredge is one that my niece set a-goin'. She
+_seen_ the harnt _herself_, an' it shakes me wuss 'n the idee o' all the
+rest."
+
+His companion's gloomy gaze was lifted for a moment with an expression
+of inquiry from the slowly widening circles of the water about the
+horse's head as he drank. But Roxby's eyes, with a certain gleam of
+excitement, a superstitious dilation, still dwelt upon the bridge at
+the end of the upward vista. He went on merely from the impetus of the
+subject. "Yes, sir--she _seen_ it a-pacin' of its sorrowful way acrost
+that bredge, same ez the t'others of the percession o' harnts. 'Twar
+my niece, Mill'cent--brother's darter--by name, Mill'cent Roxby. Waal,
+Mill'cent an' a lot o' young fools o' her age--little over fryin'
+size--they 'tended camp-meetin' down hyar on Tomahawk Creek--'tain't
+so long ago--along with the old folks. An' 'bout twenty went huddled up
+tergether in a road-wagin. An', lo! the wagin it bruk down on the way
+home, an' what with proppin' it up on a crotch, they made out ter reach
+the cross-roads over yander at the Notch, an' thar the sober old folks
+called a halt, an' hed the wagin mended at the blacksmith-shop. Waal, it
+tuk some two hours, fur Pete Rodd ain't a-goin' ter hurry hisself--in my
+opinion the angel Gabriel will hev ter blow his bugle oftener'n wunst
+at the last day 'fore Pete Rodd makes up his mind ter rise from the
+dead an' answer the roll-call--an' this hyar young lot sorter found it
+tiresome waitin' on thar elders' solemn company. The old folks, whilst
+waitin', set outside on the porches of the houses at the settlemint,
+an' repeated some o' the sermons they hed hearn at camp, an' more'n one
+raised a hyme chune. An' the young fry--they hed hed a steady diet o'
+sermons an' hyme chunes fur fower days--they tuk ter stragglin' off
+down the road, two an' two, like the same sorter id jits the world over,
+leavin' word with the old folks that the wagin would overtake 'em an'
+pick 'em up on the road when it passed. Waal, they walked several mile,
+an' time they got ter the crest o' the hill over yander the moon hed
+riz, an' they could look down an' see the mist in the valley. The
+moon war bright in the buryin'-groun' when they passed it, an' the
+head-boards stood up white an' stiff, an' a light frost hed fell on the
+mounds, an' they showed plain, an' shone sorter lonesome an' cold.
+The young folks begun ter look behind em' fur the wagin. Some said--I
+b'lieve 'twar Em'ry Keen an--they could read the names on the boards
+plain, 'twar so light, the moon bein' nigh the full: but Em'ry never
+read nuthin' at night by the moon in his life; he ain't enny too capable
+o' wrastlin' with the alphabet with a strong daytime on his book ter
+light him ter knowledge. An' the shadows war black an' still, an' all
+the yearth looked ez ef nuthin' lived nor ever would agin, an' they
+hearn a wolf howl. Waal, that disaccommodated the gals mightily, an'
+they hed a heap more interes' in that old wagin, all smellin' rank with
+wagin-grease an' tar, than they did in thar lovyers; an' they hed ruther
+hev hearn that old botch of a wheel that Pete Rodd hed set onto it com
+in' a-creakin' an' a-com-plainin' along the road than the sweetest words
+them boys war able ter make up or remember. So they stood thar in the
+road--a-stare-gazin' them head-boards, like they expected every grave
+ter open an' the reveilly ter sound--a-waitin' ter be overtook by the
+wagin, a-listenin', but hearin' nuthin' in the silence o' the frost--not
+a dead leaf a-twirlin', nor a frozen blade o' grass astir. An' then
+two or three o' the gals 'lowed they hed ruther walk back ter meet the
+wagin, an' whenst the boys 'lowed ter go on--nuthin' war likely ter
+ketch 'em--one of 'em bust out a-cryin'. Waal, thar war the eend o' that
+much! So the gay party set out on the back track, a-keepin' step
+ter sobs an' sniffles, an' that's how kem _they_ seen no harnt. But
+Mill'-cent an' three or four o' the t'others 'lowed they'd go on. They
+warn't two mile from home, an' full five from the cross-roads. So Em'ry
+Keenan--he hev been waitin' on her sence the year one--so he put his
+skeer in his pocket an' kem along with her, a-shakin' in his shoes, I'll
+be bound! So down the hill in the frosty moonlight them few kem--purty
+nigh beat out, I reckon, Mill'cent war, what with the sermonizin' an'
+the hyme-singin' an' hevin' ter look continual at the sheep's-eyes o'
+Em'ry Keenan--he wears my patience ter the bone! So she concluded ter
+take the short-cut. An' Em'ry he agreed. So they tuk the lead, the rest
+a following an' kem down thar through all that black growth"--he lifted
+his arm and pointed at the great slope, dense with fir and pine and the
+heavy underbrush--"keepin' the bridle-path--easy enough even at night,
+fur the bresh is so thick they couldn't lose thar way. But the moonlight
+war mightily slivered up, fallin' through the needles of the pines an'
+the skeins of dead vines, an' looked bleached and onnatural, an' holped
+the dark mighty leetle. An' they seen the water a-shinin' an' a-plungin'
+down the gorge, an' the glistenin' of the frost on the floor o' the
+bredge. Thar war a few icicles on the hand-rail, an' the branches o' the
+firs hung ez still ez death; only that cold, racin', shoutin', jouncin'
+water moved. Jes ez they got toler'ble nigh the foot-bredge a sudden
+cloud kem over the face o' the sky. Thar warn't no wind on the yearth,
+but up above the air war a-stirrin'. An' Em'ry he 'lowed Mill'cent
+shouldn't cross the foot-bredge whilst the light warn't clar--I wonder
+the critter hed that much sense! An' she jes' drapped down on that rock
+thar ter rest"--he pointed up the slope to a great fragment that had
+broken off from the ledges and lay near the bank: the bulk of the mass
+was overgrown with moss and lichen, but the jagged edges of the recent
+fracture gleamed white and crystalline among the brown and olive-green
+shadows about it. A tree was close beside it. "Agin that thar pine trunk
+Em'ry he stood an' leaned. The rest war behind, a-comin' down the
+hill. An' all of a suddenty a light fell on the furder eend o'
+the foot-bredge--a waverin' light, mighty white an' misty in the
+darksomeness. Mill'cent 'lowed ez fust she thunk it war the moon. An'
+lookin' up, she seen the cloud; it held the moon close kivered. An'
+lookin' down, she seen the light war movin'--movin' from the furder eend
+o' the bredge, straight acrost it. Sometimes a hand war held afore it,
+ez ef ter shield it from the draught, an' then Mill'cent 'seen twar a
+candle, an' the white in the mistiness war a 'oman wearin' white an'
+carryn' it.
+
+[Illustration: The Phantom of the Foot-bridge 025]
+
+Lookin' ter right an' then ter lef the 'oman kem, with now her right
+hand shieldin' the candle she held, an' now layin' it on the hand-rail.
+The candle shone on the water, fur it didn't flare, an' when the 'oman
+held her hand before it the light made a bright spot on the foot-bredge
+an' in the dark air about her, an' on the fir branches over her head.
+An' a thin mist seemed to hang about her white frock, but not over her
+face, fur when she reached the middle o' the foot-bredge she laid her
+hand agin on the rail, an' in the clear light o' the candle Mill'cent
+seen the harnt's face. An' thar she beheld her own face; _her own
+face_ she looked upon ez she waited thar under the tree watchin' the
+foot-bredge; _her own face_ pale an' troubled; her own self dressed in
+white, crossin' the foot-bredge, an' lightin' her steps with a corpse's
+candle." He drew up the reins abruptly. He seemed in sudden haste to go.
+His companion looked with deepening interest at the bridge, although he
+followed his guide's surging pathway to the opposite bank. As the two
+dripping horses struggled up the steep incline he asked, "Did the man
+with her see the manifestation also?"
+
+"He _'lows_ he did," responded Roxby, equivocally. "But when Mill'cent
+fust got so she could tell it, 'peared ter me ez Em'ry Keen an fund it
+ez much news ez the rest o' we-uns. Mill'cent jes' drapped stone-dead,
+accordin' ter all accounts, an' he an' the t'other young folks flung
+water in her face till she kem out'n her faint; an' jes' then they hearn
+the wagin a-rattlin' along the road, an' they stopped it an' fetched her
+home in it. She never told the tale till she war home, an' it skeered
+me an' my mother powerful, fur Mill'cent is all the kin we hev got.
+Mill'cent is gran'daddy an' gran'mam-my, sons an' daughters, uncles an'
+aunts, cousins, nieces, an' nephews, all in one. The only thing I ain't
+pervided with is a nephew-in-law, an' I don't need him. Leastwise I
+ain't lookin' fur Em'ry Keenan jes' at present."
+
+The pace was brisker when the two horses, bending their strength
+sturdily to the task, had pressed up the massive slope from the deep
+cleft of the gorge. As the road curved about the outer verge of the
+mountain, the valley far beneath came into view, with intersecting
+valleys and transverse ranges, dense with the growths of primeval
+wildernesses, and rugged with the tilted strata of great upheavals, and
+with chasms cut in the solid rock by centuries of erosion, traces
+of some remote cataclysmal period, registering thus its throes and
+turmoils. The blue sky, seen beyond a gaunt profile of one of the
+farther summits that defined its craggy serrated edge against the
+ultimate distances of the western heavens, seemed of a singularly suave
+tint, incongruous with the savagery of the scene, which clouds and
+portents of storm might better have befitted. The little graveyard,
+which John Dundas discerned with recognizing eyes, albeit they had never
+before rested upon it, was revealed suddenly, lying high on the opposite
+side of the gorge. No frost glimmered now on the lowly mounds; the
+flickering autumnal sunshine loitered unafraid among them, according
+to its languid wont for many a year. Shadows of the gray un-painted
+head-boards lay on the withered grass, brown and crisp, with never
+a cicada left to break the deathlike silence. A tuft of red leaves,
+vagrant in the wind, had been caught on one of the primitive monuments,
+and swayed there with a decorative effect. The enclosure seemed, to
+unaccustomed eyes, of small compass, and few the denizens who had found
+shelter here and a resting-place, but it numbered all the dead of the
+country-side for many a mile and many a year, and somehow the loneliness
+was assuaged to a degree by the reflection that they had known each
+other in life, unlike the great herds of cities, and that it was a
+common fate which the neighbors, huddled together, encountered in
+company.
+
+It had no discordant effect in the pervasive sense of gloom, of mighty
+antagonistic forces with which the scene was replete; it fostered a
+realization of the pitiable minuteness and helplessness of human nature
+in the midst of the vastness of inanimate nature and the evidences of
+infinite lengths of forgotten time, of the long reaches of unimagined
+history, eventful, fateful, which the landscape at once suggested and
+revealed and concealed.
+
+Like the sudden flippant clatter of castanets in the pause of some
+solemn funeral music was the impression given by the first glimpse along
+the winding woodland way of a great flimsy white building, with its
+many pillars, its piazzas, its "observatory," its band-stand, its garish
+intimations of the giddy, gay world of a summer hotel. But, alack! it,
+too, had its surfeit of woe.
+
+"The guerrillas an' bushwhackers tuk it out on the old hotel, sure!"
+observed Sim Roxby, by way of introduction. "Thar warn't much fightin'
+hyar-abouts, an' few sure-enough soldiers ever kem along. But wunst in a
+while a band o' guerrillas went through like a suddint wind-storm, an'
+I tell ye they made things whurl while they war about it. They made a
+sorter barracks o' the old place. Looks some like lightning hed struck
+it."
+
+He had reined up his horse about one hundred yards in front of the
+edifice, where the weed-grown gravelled drive--carefully tended ten
+years agone--had diverged from the straight avenue of poplars, sweeping
+in a circle around to the broad flight of steps.
+
+"Though," he qualified abruptly, as if a sudden thought had struck
+him, "ef ye air countin' on buyin' it, a leetle money spent ter keerful
+purpose will go a long way toward makin' it ez good ez new."
+
+His companion did not reply, and for the first time Roxby cast upon him
+a covert glance charged with the curiosity which would have been earlier
+and more easily aroused in another man by the manner of the stranger. A
+letter--infrequent missive in his experience--had come from an ancient
+companion-in-arms, his former colonel, requesting him in behalf of a
+friend of the old commander to repair to the railway station, thirty
+miles distant, to meet and guide this prospective purchaser of the old
+hotel to the site of the property. And now as Roxby looked at him the
+suspicion which his kind heart had not been quick to entertain was
+seized upon by his alert brain.
+
+"The cunnel's been fooled somehows," he said to himself.
+
+For the look with which John Dundas contemplated the place was not the
+gaze of him concerned with possible investment--with the problems of
+repair, the details of the glazier and the painter and the plasterer.
+The mind was evidently neither braced for resistance nor resigned to
+despair, as behooves one smitten by the foreknowledge of the certainty
+of the excess of the expenditures over the estimates. Only with pensive,
+listless melancholy, void of any intention, his eyes traversed the
+long rows of open doors, riven by rude hands from their locks, swinging
+helplessly to and fro in the wind, and giving to the deserted and
+desolate old place a spurious air of motion and life. Many of the
+shutters had been wrenched from their hinges, and lay rotting on the
+floors. The ball-room windows caught on their shattered glass the
+reflection of the clouds, and it seemed as if here and there a wan face
+looked through at the riders wending along the weed-grown path. Where so
+many faces had been what wonder that a similitude should linger in the
+loneliness! The pallid face seemed to draw back as they glanced up while
+slowly pacing around the drive. A rabbit sitting motionless on the front
+piazza did not draw back, although observing them with sedate eyes as
+he poised himself upright on his haunches, with his listless fore-paws
+suspended in the air, and it occurred to Dundas that he was probably
+unfamiliar with the presence of human beings, and had never heard the
+crack of a gun. A great swirl of swallows came soaring out of the big
+kitchen chimneys and circled in the sky, darting down again and again
+upward. Through an open passage was a glimpse of a quadrangle, with its
+weed-grown spaces and litter of yellow leaves. A tawny streak, a red
+fox, sped through it as Dundas looked. A half-moon, all a-tilt, hung
+above it. He saw the glimmer through the bare boughs of the leafless
+locust-trees here and there still standing, although outside on the lawn
+many a stump bore token how ruthlessly the bushwhackers had furnished
+their fires.
+
+"That thar moon's a-hangin' fur rain," said the mountaineer, commenting
+upon the aspect of the luminary, which he, too, had noticed as they
+passed. "I ain't s'prised none ef we hev fallin' weather agin 'fore
+day, an' the man--by name Morgan Holden--that hev charge o' the hotel
+property can't git back fur a week an' better."
+
+A vague wonder to find himself so suspicious flitted through his mind,
+with the thought that perhaps the colonel might have reckoned on this
+delay. "Surely the ruvers down yander at Knoxville mus' be a-boomin',
+with all this wet weather," he said to himself.
+
+Then aloud: "Morgan Holden he went ter Col-bury ter 'tend ter some
+business in court, an' the ruvers hev riz so that, what with the bredges
+bein' washed away an' the fords so onsartain an' tricky, he'll stay till
+the ruver falls. He don't know ye war kemin', ye see. The mail-rider hev
+quit, 'count o' the rise in the ruver, an' thar's no way ter git word
+ter him. Still, ef ye air minded ter wait, I'll be powerful obligated
+fur yer comp'ny down ter my house till the ruver falls an' Holden he
+gits back."
+
+The stranger murmured his obligations, but his eyes dwelt lingeringly
+upon the old hotel, with its flapping doors and its shattered windows.
+Through the recurrent vistas of these, placed opposite in the rooms,
+came again broken glimpses of the grassy space within the quadrangle,
+with its leafless locust-trees, first of all to yield their foliage to
+the autumn wind, where a tiny owl was shrilling stridulously under the
+lonely red sky and the melancholy moon.
+
+"Hed ye 'lowed ter, put up at the old hotel?" asked Roxby, some inherent
+quickness supplying the lack of a definite answer.
+
+For the first time the stranger turned upon him a look more expressive
+than the casual fragmentary attention with which he had half heeded,
+half ignored his talk since their first encounter at the railway
+station.
+
+"A simple fellow, but good as gold," was the phrase with which Simeon
+Roxby had been commended as guide and in some sort guard.
+
+"Not so simple, perhaps," the sophisticated man thought as their eyes
+met. Not so simple but that the truth must serve. "The colonel suggested
+that it might be best," he replied, more alert to the present moment
+than his languid preoccupation had heretofore permitted.
+
+The answer was good as far as it went. A few days spent in the old
+hostelry certainly would serve well to acquaint the prospective
+purchaser with its actual condition and the measures and means needed
+for its repair; but as Sim Roxby stood there, with the cry of the owl
+shrilling in the desert air, the lonely red sky, the ominous tilted
+moon, the doors drearily flapping to and fro as the wind stole into the
+forlorn and empty place and sped back affrighted, he marvelled at the
+refuge contemplated.
+
+"I believe there is some of the furniture here yet. We could contrive to
+set up a bed from what is left. The colonel could make it all right with
+Holden, and I could stay a day or two, as we originally planned."
+
+"Ye-es. I don't mind Holden: a man ain't much in charge of a place ez
+ain't got a lock or a key ter bless itself with, an' takes the owel an'
+the fox an' the gopher fur boarders; but, ennyhow, kem with me home ter
+supper. Mill'cent will hev it ready by now ennyhows, an' ye need suthin'
+hearty an' hot ter stiffen ye up ter move inter sech quarters ez these."
+Dundas hesitated, but the mountaineer had already taken assent for
+granted, and pushed his horse into a sharp trot. Evidently a refusal was
+not in order. Dundas pressed forward, and they rode together along the
+winding way past the ten-pin alley, its long low roof half hidden in the
+encroaching undergrowth springing up apace beneath the great trees; past
+the stables; past a line of summer cottages, strangely staring of aspect
+out of the yawning doors and windows, giving, instead of an impression
+of vacancy, a sense of covert watching, of secret occupancy. If one's
+glances were only quick enough, were there not faces pressed to those
+shattered panes--scarcely seen--swiftly withdrawn?
+
+He was in a desert; he had hardly been so utterly alone in all his life;
+yet he bore through the empty place a feeling of espionage, and ever
+and anon he glanced keenly at the overgrown lawns, with their deepening
+drifts of autumn leaves, at the staring windows and flaring doors, which
+emitted sometimes sudden creaking wails in the silence, as if he sought
+to assure himself of the vacancy of which his mind took cognizance and
+yet all his senses denied.
+
+Little of his sentiment, although sedulously cloaked, was lost on Sim
+Roxby; and he was aware, too, in some subtle way, of the relief his
+guest experienced when they plunged into the darkening forest and left
+the forlorn place behind them. The clearing in which it was situated
+seemed an oasis of light in the desert of night in which the rest of
+the world lay. From the obscurity of the forest Dundas saw, through the
+vistas of the giant trees, the clustering cottages, the great hotel,
+gables and chimneys and tower, stark and distinct as in some weird
+dream-light in the midst of the encircling gloom. The after-glow of
+sunset was still aflare on the western windows; the whole empty place
+was alight with a reminiscence of its old aspect--its old gay life. Who
+knows what memories were a-stalk there--what semblance of former times?
+What might not the darkness foster, the impunity of desertion, the
+associations that inhabited the place with almost the strength of human
+occupancy itself? Who knows--who knows?
+
+He remembered the scene afterward, the impression he received. And from
+this, he thought, arose his regret for his decision to take up here his
+abiding-place.
+
+The forest shut out the illumined landscape, and the night seemed indeed
+at hand; the gigantic boles of the trees loomed through the encompassing
+gloom, that was yet a semi-transparent medium, like some dark but clear
+fluid through which objects were dimly visible, albeit tinged with its
+own sombre hue. The lank, rawboned sorrel had set a sharp pace, to
+which the chestnut, after momentary lagging, as if weary with the day's
+travel, responded briskly. He had received in some way intimations that
+his companion's corn-crib was near at hand, and if he had not deduced
+from these premises the probability of sharing his fare, his mental
+processes served him quite as well as reason, and brought him to the
+same result. On and on they sped, neck and neck, through the darkening
+woods; fire flashed now and again from their iron-shod hoofs; often
+a splash and a shower of drops told of a swift dashing through the
+mud-holes that recent rains had fostered in the shallows. The dank odor
+of dripping boughs came on the clear air. Once the chestnut shied from a
+sudden strange shining point springing up in the darkness close at
+hand, which the country-bred horse discriminated as fox-fire, and
+kept steadily on, unmindful of the rotting log where it glowed. Far in
+advance, in the dank depths of the woods, a Will-o'-the-wisp danced and
+flickered and lured the traveller's eye. The stranger was not sure of
+the different quality of another light, appearing down a vista as the
+road turned, until the sorrel, making a tremendous spurt, headed for it,
+uttering a joyous neigh at the sight.
+
+The deep-voiced barking of hounds rose melodiously on the silence,
+and as the horses burst out of the woods into a small clearing, Dundas
+beheld in the brighter light a half-dozen of the animals nimbly afoot in
+the road, one springing over the fence, another in the act of climbing,
+his fore-paws on the topmost rail, his long neck stretched, and his head
+turning about in attitudes of observation. He evidently wished to assure
+himself whether the excitement of his friends was warranted by the facts
+before he troubled himself to vault over the fence. Three or four still
+lingered near the door of a log-cabin, fawning about a girl who stood on
+the porch. Her pose was alert, expectant; a fire in the dooryard, where
+the domestic manufacture of soap had been in progress, cast a red flare
+on the house, its appurtenances, the great dark forest looming all
+around, and, more than the glow of the hearth within, lighted up the
+central figure of the scene. She was tall, straight, and strong; a
+wealth of fair hair was clustered in a knot at the back of her head, and
+fleecy tendrils fell over her brow; on it was perched a soldier's-cap;
+and certainly more gallant and fearless eyes had never looked out from
+under the straight, stiff brim. Her chin, firm, round, dimpled, was
+uplifted as she raised her head, descrying the horsemen's approach. She
+wore a full dark-red skirt, a dark brown waist, and around her neck
+was twisted a gray cotton kerchief, faded to a pale ashen hue, the
+neutrality of which somehow aided the delicate brilliancy of the
+blended roseate and pearly tints of her face. Was this the seer of
+ghosts--Dundas marvelled--this the Millicent whose pallid and troubled
+phantom already-paced the foot-bridge?
+
+He did not realize that he had drawn up his horse suddenly at the sight
+of her, nor did he notice that his host had dismounted, until Roxby was
+at the chestnut's head, ready to lead the animal to supper in the barn.
+His evident surprise, his preoccupation, were not lost upon Roxby,
+however. His hand hesitated on the girth of the chestnut's saddle when
+he stood between the two horses in the barn. He had half intended to
+disregard the stranger's declination of his invitation, and stable the
+creature. Then he shook his head slowly; the mystery that hung about the
+new-comer was not reassuring. "A heap o' wuthless cattle 'mongst them
+valley men," he said; for the war had been in some sort an education to
+his simplicity. "Let him stay whar the cunnel expected him ter stay. I
+ain't wantin' no stranger a-hangin' round about Mill'cent, nohow. Em'ry
+Keenan ain't a pattern o' perfection, but I be toler'ble well acquainted
+with the cut o' his foolishness, an' I know his daddy an' mammy, an'
+both sets o' gran'daddies an' gran'mammies, an' I could tell ye exac'ly
+which one the critter got his nose an' his mouth from, an' them lean
+sheep's-eyes o' his'n, an' nigh every tone o' his voice. Em'ry never
+thunk afore ez I set store on bein' acquainted with him. He 'lowed I
+knowed him _too_ well."
+
+He laughed as he glanced through the open door into the darkening
+landscape. Horizontal gray clouds were slipping fast across the pearly
+spaces of the sky. The yellow stubble gleamed among the brown earth
+of the farther field, still striped with its furrows. The black forest
+encircled the little cleared space, and a wind was astir among the
+tree-tops. A white star gleamed through the broken clapboards of the
+roof, the fire still flared under the soap-kettle in the dooryard, and
+the silence was suddenly smitten by a high cracked old voice, which told
+him that his mother had perceived the dismounted stranger at the gate,
+and was graciously welcoming him.
+
+She had come to the door, where the girl still stood, but half withdrawn
+in the shadow. Dundas silently bowed as he passed her, following his
+aged hostess into the low room, all bedight with the firelight of a huge
+chimney-place, and comfortable with the realization of a journey's end.
+The wilderness might stretch its weary miles around, the weird wind
+wander in the solitudes, the star look coldly on unmoved by aught it
+beheld, the moon show sad portents, but at the door they all failed,
+for here waited rest and peace and human companionship and the sense of
+home.
+
+"Take a cheer, stranger, an' make yerself at home. Powerful glad ter
+see ye---war 'feard night would overtake ye. Ye fund the water toler'ble
+high in all the creeks an' sech, I reckon, an' fords shifty an'
+onsartain. Yes, sir. Fall rains kem on earlier'n common, an' more'n
+we need. Wisht we could divide it with that thar drought we had in the
+summer. Craps war cut toler'ble short, sir--toler'ble short."
+
+Mrs. Roxby's spectacles beamed upon him with an expression of the utmost
+benignity as the firelight played on the lenses, but her eyes peering
+over them seemed endowed in some sort with independence of outlook. It
+was as if from behind some bland mask a critical observation was poised
+for unbiased judgment. He felt in some degree under surveillance. But
+when a light step heralded an approach he looked up, regardless of
+the betrayal of interest, and bent a steady gaze upon Millicent as she
+paused in the doorway.
+
+And as she stood there, distinct in the firelight and outlined against
+the black background of the night, she seemed some modern half-military
+ideal of Diana, with her two gaunt hounds beside her, the rest of the
+pack vaguely glimpsed at her heels outside, the perfect outline and
+chiselling of her features, her fine, strong, supple figure, the look of
+steady courage in her eyes, and the soldier's cap on her fair hair. Her
+face so impressed itself upon his mind that he seemed to have seen her
+often. It was some resemblance to a picture of a vivandiere, doubtless,
+in a foreign gallery--he could not say when or where; a remnant of a
+tourist's overcrowded impressions; a half-realized reminiscence, he
+thought, with an uneasy sense of recognition.
+
+"Hello, Mill'cent! home agin!" Roxby cried, in cheery greeting as he
+entered at the back door opposite. "What sorter topknot is that ye got
+on?" he demanded, looking jocosely at her head-gear.
+
+The girl put up her hand with an expression of horror. A deep red
+flush dyed her cheek as she touched the cap. "I forgot 'twar thar," she
+murmured, contritely. Then, with a sudden rush of anger as she tore it
+off: "'Twar granny's fault. She axed me ter put it on, so ez ter see
+which one I looked most like."
+
+"Stranger," quavered the old woman, with a painful break in her voice,
+"I los' fower sons in the war, an' Mill'cent hev got the fambly favor."
+
+"Ye _mought_ hev let me know ez I war a-perlitin' round in this hyar
+men's gear yit," the girl muttered, as she hung the cap on a prong of
+the deer antlers on which rested the rifle of the master of the house.
+
+Roxby's face had clouded at the mention of the four sons who had gone
+out from the mountains never to return, leaving to their mother's aching
+heart only the vague comfort of an elusive resemblance in a girl's
+face; but as he noted Millicent's pettish manner, and divined her
+mortification because of her unseemly head-gear in the stranger's
+presence, he addressed her again in that jocose tone without which he
+seldom spoke to her.
+
+[Illustration: Warn't you-uns apologizin' ter me 006]
+
+"Warn't you-uns apologizin' ter me t'other day fur not bein' a nephew
+'stiddier a niece? Looked sorter like a nephew ter-night."
+
+She shook her head, covered now only with its own charming tresses
+waving in thick undulations to the coil at the nape of her neck--a
+trifle dishevelled from the rude haste with which the cap had been torn
+off.
+
+Roxby had seated himself, and with his elbows on his knees he looked
+up at her with a teasing jocularity, such as one might assume toward a
+child.
+
+"_Ye war_," he declared, with affected solemnity--"ye war 'pologizin'
+fur not bein' a nephew, an' 'lowed ef ye war a nephew we could go
+a-huntin' tergether, an' ye could holp me in all my quar'ls an' fights.
+I been aging some lately, an' ef I war ter go ter the settlemint an' git
+inter a fight I mought not be able ter hold my own. Think what 'twould
+be ter a pore old man ter hev a dutiful nephew step up an'"--he doubled
+his fists and squared off--"jes' let daylight through some o' them
+cusses. An' didn't _ye say_"--he dropped his belligerent attitude and
+pointed an insistent finger at her, as if to fix the matter in her
+recollection--"ef ye war a nephew 'stiddier a niece ye could fire a gun
+'thout shettin' yer eyes? An' I told ye then ez that would mend yer aim
+mightily. I told ye that I'd be powerful mortified ef I hed a nephew ez
+hed ter shet his eyes ter keep the noise out'n his ears whenst he fired
+a rifle. The tale would go mighty hard with me at the settlemint."
+
+The girl's eyes glowed upon him with the fixity and the lustre of those
+of a child who is entertained and absorbed by an elder's jovial wiles.
+A flash of laughter broke over her face, and the low, gurgling,
+half-dreamy sound was pleasant to hear. She was evidently no more than
+a child to these bereft old people, and by them cherished as naught else
+on earth.
+
+"An' didn't _I tell you-uns,_" he went on, affecting to warm to the
+discussion, and in reality oblivious of the presence of the
+guest'--"didn't I tell ye ez how ef ye war a nephew 'stiddier a niece ye
+wouldn't hev sech cattle ez Em'ry Keenan a-dan-glin' round underfoot,
+like a puppy ye can't gin away, an' that _won't_ git lost, an' ye ain't
+got the heart ter kill?"
+
+The girl's lip suddenly curled with scorn. "Yer nephew would be
+obligated ter make a ch'ice fur marryin' 'mongst these hyar mounting
+gals--Par-mely Lepstone, or Belindy M'ria Matthews, or one o' the
+Windrow gals. Waal, sir, I'd ruther be yer niece--even ef Em'ry Keenan
+_air_ like a puppy underfoot, that ye can't gin away, an' won't git
+lost, an' ye ain't got the heart ter kill." She laughed again,
+showing her white teeth. She evidently relished the description of the
+persistent adherence of poor Emory Keenan. "But which one o' these hyar
+gals would ye recommend ter yer nephew ter marry--ef ye hed a nephew?"
+
+She looked at him with flashing eyes, conscious of having propounded a
+poser.
+
+He hesitated for a moment. Then--"I'm surrounded," he said, with a
+laugh. "Ez I couldn't find a wife fur myself, I can't undertake
+ter recommend one ter my nephew. Mighty fine boy he'd hev been, an'
+saaft-spoken an' perlite ter aged men--not sassy an' makin' game o' old
+uncles like a niece. Mighty fine boy!"
+
+"Ye air welcome ter him," she said, with a simulation of scorn, as she
+turned away to the table.
+
+Whether it were the military cap she had worn, or the fancied
+resemblance to the young soldiers, never to grow old, who had gone forth
+from this humble abode to return no more, there was still to the guest's
+mind the suggestion of the vivandiere about her as she set the table
+and spread upon it the simple fare. To and from the fireplace she was
+followed by two or three of the younger dogs, their callowness expressed
+in their lack of manners and perfervid interest in the approaching meal.
+This induced their brief journeys back and forth, albeit embarrassed
+by their physical conformation, short turns on four legs not being
+apparently the easy thing it would seem from so much youthful
+suppleness. The dignity of the elder hounds did not suffer them to move,
+but they looked on from erect postures about the hearth with glistening
+eyes and slobbering jaws.
+
+Ever and anon the deep blue eyes of Millicent were lifted to the outer
+gloom, as if she took note of its sinister aspect. She showed scant
+interest in the stranger, whose gaze seldom left her as he sat beside
+the fire. He was a handsome man, his face and figure illumined by the
+firelight, and it might have been that he felt a certain pique, an
+unaccustomed slight, in that his presence was so indifferent an element
+in the estimation of any young and comely specimen of the feminine sex.
+Certainly he had rarely encountered such absolute preoccupation as her
+smiling far-away look betokened as she went back and forth with her
+young canine friends at her heels, or stood at the table deftly slicing
+the salt-rising bread, the dogs poised skilfully upon their hind-legs
+to better view the appetizing performance; whenever she turned her face
+toward them they laid their heads languish-ingly askew, as if to remind
+her that supper could not be more fitly bestowed than on them. One, to
+steady himself, placed unobserved his fore-paw on the edge of the table,
+his well-padded toes leaving a vague imprint as of fingers upon the
+coarse white cloth; but John Dundas was a sportsman, and could the
+better relax an exacting nicety where so pleasant-featured and affable
+a beggar was concerned. He forgot the turmoils of his own troubles as
+he gazed at Millicent, the dreary aspect of the solitudes without, the
+exile from his accustomed sphere of culture and comfort, the poverty
+and coarseness of her surroundings. He was sorry that he had declined
+a longer lease of Roxby's hospitality, and it was in his mind to
+reconsider when it should be again proffered. Her attitude, her gesture,
+her face, her environment, all appealed to his sense of beauty, his
+interest, his curiosity, as little ever had done heretofore. Slice after
+slice of the firm fragrant bread was deftly cut and laid on the plate,
+as again and again she lifted her eyes with a look that might seem to
+expect to rest on summer in the full flush of a June noontide without,
+rather than on the wan, wintry night sky and the plundered, quaking
+woods, while the robber wind sped on his raids hither and thither so
+swiftly that none might follow, so stealthily that none might hinder. A
+sudden radiance broke upon her face, a sudden shadow fell on the
+firelit floor, and there was entering at the doorway a tall, lithe young
+mountaineer, whose first glance, animated with a responsive brightness,
+was for the girl, but whose punctilious greeting was addressed to the
+old woman.
+
+"Howdy, Mis' Roxby--howdy? Air yer rheumatics mendin' enny?" he
+demanded, with the condolent suavity of the would-be son-in-law, or
+grand-son-in-law, as the case may be. And he hung with a transfixed
+interest upon her reply, prolix and discursive according to the wont of
+those who cultivate "rheumatics," as if each separate twinge racked his
+own sympathetic and filial sensibilities. Not until the tale was ended
+did he set his gun against the wall and advance to the seat which Roxby
+had indicated with the end of the stick he was whittling. He observed
+the stranger with only slight interest, till Dundas drew up his chair
+opposite at the table. There the light from the tallow dip, guttering in
+the centre, fell upon his handsome face and eyes, his carefully tended
+beard and hair, his immaculate cuffs and delicate hand, the seal-ring on
+his taper finger.
+
+"Like a gal, by gum!" thought Emory Keenan. "Rings on his fingers--yit
+six feet high!"
+
+He looked at his elders, marvelling that they so hospitably repressed
+the disgust which this effeminate adornment must occasion, forgetting
+that it was possible that they did not even observe it. In the gala-days
+of the old hotel, before the war, they had seen much "finicking finery"
+in garb and equipage and habits affected by the _jeunesse doree_ who
+frequented the place in those halcyon times, and were accustomed to
+such details. It might be that they and Millicent approved such flimsy
+daintiness. He began to fume inwardly with a sense of inferiority in her
+estimation. One of his fingers had been frosted last winter, and with
+the first twinge of cold weather it was beginning to look very red and
+sad and clumsy, as if it had just remembered its ancient woe; he glanced
+from it once more at the delicate ringed hand of the stranger.
+
+Dundas was looking up with a slow, deferential, decorous smile that
+nevertheless lightened and transfigured his expression. It seemed
+somehow communicated to Millicent's face as she looked down at him from
+beneath her white eyelids and long, thick, dark lashes, for she was
+standing beside him, handing him the plate of bread. Then, still
+smiling, she passed noiselessly on to the others.
+
+Emory was indeed clumsy, for he had stretched his hand downward to
+offer a morsel to a friend of his under the table--he was on terms of
+exceeding amity with the four-footed members of the household--and in
+his absorption not withdrawing it as swiftly as one accustomed to canine
+manners should do, he had his frosted finger well mumbled before he
+could, as it were, repossess himself of it.
+
+"I wonder what they charge fur iron over yander at the settlemint,
+Em'ry?" observed Sim Roxby presently.
+
+"Dun'no', sir," responded Emory, glumly, his sullen black eyes full of
+smouldering fire--"hevin' no call ter know, ez I ain't no blacksmith."
+
+"I war jes' wonderin' ef tenpenny nails didn't cost toler'ble high ez
+reg'lar feed," observed Roxby, gravely.
+
+But his mother laughed out with a gleeful cracked treble, always a ready
+sequence of her son's rustic sallies. "He got ye that time, Em'ry," she
+cried.
+
+A forced smile crossed Emory's face. He tossed back his tangled dark
+hair with a gasp that was like the snort of an unruly horse submitting
+to the inevitable, but with restive projects in his brain. "I let the
+dog hyar ketch my finger whilst feedin' him," he said. His plausible
+excuse for the ten-penny expression was complete; but he added, his
+darker mood recurring instantly, "An', Mis' Roxby, I hev put a stop ter
+them ez hev tuk ter callin' me Em'ly, I hev."
+
+The old woman looked up, her small wrinkled mouth round and amazed.
+"_I_ never called ye Emily," she declared.
+
+Swift repentance seized him.
+
+"Naw, 'm," he said, with hurried propitiation. "I 'lowed ye did."
+
+"I didn't," said the old woman. "But ef I warter find it toothsome ter
+call ye 'Emily,' I dun'no' how ye air goin' ter pervent it. Ye can't go
+gun-nin' fur me, like ye done fur the men at the mill, fur callin' ye
+'Emily.'"
+
+"Law, Mis' Roxby!" he could only exclaim, in his horror and contrition
+at this picture he had thus conjured up. "Ye air welcome ter call me
+ennything ye air a mind ter," he protested.
+
+And then he gasped once more. The eyes of the guest, contemptuous,
+amused, seeing through him, were fixed upon him. And he himself had
+furnished the lily-handed stranger with the information that he had been
+stigmatized "Em'ly" in the banter of his associates, until he had taken
+up arms, as it were, to repress this derision.
+
+"It takes powerful little ter put ye down, Em'ry," said Roxby, with
+rallying laughter. "Mam hev sent ye skedaddlin' in no time at all. I
+don't b'lieve the Lord made woman out'n the man's rib. He made her out'n
+the man's backbone; fur the man ain't hed none ter speak of sence."
+
+Millicent, with a low gurgle of laughter, sat down beside Emory at the
+table, and fixed her eyes, softly lighted with mirth, upon him. The
+others too had laughed, the stranger with a flattering intonation, but
+young Keenan looked at her with a dumb appealing humility that did not
+altogether fail of its effect, for she busied herself to help his plate
+with an air of proprietorship as if he were a child, and returned
+it with a smile very radiant and sufficient at close range. She then
+addressed herself to her own meal. The young dogs under the table ceased
+to beg, and gambolled and gnawed and tugged at her stout little shoes,
+the sound of their callow mirthful growls rising occasionally above
+the talk. Sometimes she rose again to wait on the table, when they came
+leaping out after her, jumping and catching at her skirts, now and then
+casting themselves on the ground prone before her feet, and rolling over
+and over in the sheer joy of existence.
+
+The stranger took little part in the talk at the table. Never a question
+was asked him as to his mission in the mountains, or the length of
+his stay, his vocation, or his home. That extreme courtesy of the
+mountaineers, exemplified in their singular abstinence from any
+expressions of curiosity, accepted such account of himself as he had
+volunteered, and asked for no more. In the face of this standard of
+manners any inquisitiveness on his part, such as might have elicited
+points of interest for his merely momentary entertainment, was tabooed.
+Nevertheless, silent though he was for the most part, the relish with
+which he listened, his half-covert interest in the girl, his quick
+observation of the others, the sudden very apparent enlivening of his
+mental atmosphere, betokened that his quarters were not displeasing
+to him. It seemed only a short time before the meal was ended and the
+circle all, save Millicent, with pipes alight before the fire again. The
+dogs, well fed, had ranged themselves on the glowing hearth, lying prone
+on the hot stones; one old hound, however, who conserved the air of
+listening to the conversation, sat upright and nodded from time to time,
+now and again losing his balance and tipping forward in a truly human
+fashion, then gazing round on the circle with an open luminous eye, as
+who should say he had not slept.
+
+It was all very cheerful within, but outside the wind still blared
+mournfully. Once more Dundas was sorry that he had declined the
+invitation to remain, and it was with a somewhat tentative intention
+that he made a motion to return to the hotel. But his host seemed
+to regard his resolution as final, and rose with a regret, not an
+insistence. The two women stared in silent amazement at the mere idea
+of his camping out, as it were, in the old hotel. The ascendency of
+masculine government here, notwithstanding Roxby's assertion that
+Eve was made of Adam's backbone, was very apparent in their mute
+acquiescence and the alacrity with which they began to collect various
+articles, according to his directions, to make the stranger's stay more
+comfortable.
+
+"Em'ry kin go along an' holp," he said, heartlessly; for poor Emory's
+joy in perceiving that the guest was not a fixture, and that his
+presence was not to be an embargo on any word between himself and
+Millicent during the entire evening, was pitiably manifest. But the
+situation was still not without its comforts, since Dundas was to go
+too. Hence he was not poor company when once in the saddle, and was
+civil to a degree of which his former dismayed surliness had given no
+promise.
+
+Night had become a definite element. The twilight had fled. Above their
+heads, as they galloped through the dank woods, the bare boughs of the
+trees clashed together--so high above their heads that to the town
+man, unaccustomed to these great growths, the sound seemed not of the
+vicinage, but unfamiliar, uncanny, and more than once he checked his
+horse to listen. As they approached the mountain's verge and overlooked
+the valley and beheld the sky, the sense of the predominance of darkness
+was redoubled. The ranges gloomed against the clearer spaces, but a
+cloud, deep gray with curling white edges, was coming up from the
+west, with an invisible convoy of vague films, beneath which the stars,
+glimmering white points, disappeared one by one. The swift motion of
+this aerial fleet sailing with the wind might be inferred from the
+seemingly hurried pace of the moon making hard for the west. Still
+bright was the illumined segment, but despite its glitter the shadowy
+space of the full disk was distinctly visible, its dusky field spangled
+with myriads of minute, dully golden points. Down, down it took its
+way in haste--in disordered fright, it seemed, as if it had no heart
+to witness the storm which the wind and the clouds foreboded--to fairer
+skies somewhere behind those western mountains. Soon even its vague
+light would encroach no more upon the darkness. The great hotel would be
+invisible, annihilated as it were in the gloom, and not even thus dimly
+exist, glimmering, alone, forlorn, so incongruous to the wilderness that
+it seemed even now some mere figment of the brain, as the two horsemen
+came with a freshened burst of speed along the deserted avenue and
+reined up beside a small gate at the side.
+
+"No use ter ride all the way around," observed Emory Keenan. "Mought jes
+ez well 'light an' hitch hyar."
+
+The moon gave him the escort of a great grotesque shadow as he
+threw himself from his horse and passed the reins over a decrepit
+hitching-post near at hand. Then he essayed the latch of the small gate.
+He glanced up at Dundas, the moonlight in his dark eyes, with a smile as
+it resisted his strength.
+
+He was a fairly good-looking fellow when rid of the self-consciousness
+of jealousy. His eyes, mouth, chin, and nose, acquired from reliable
+and recognizable sources, were good features, and statuesque in their
+immobility beneath the drooping curves of his broad soft hat. He was
+tall, with the slenderness of youth, despite his evident weight and
+strength. He was long-waisted and lithe and small of girth, with broad
+square shoulders, whose play of muscles as he strove with the gate was
+not altogether concealed by the butternut jeans coat belted in with his
+pistols by a broad leathern belt. His boots reached high on his long
+legs, and jingled with a pair of huge cavalry spurs. His stalwart
+strength seemed as if it must break the obdurate gate rather than open
+it, but finally, with a rasping creak, dismally loud in the silence, it
+swung slowly back.
+
+The young mountaineer stood gazing for a moment at the red rust on the
+hinges. "How long sence this gate must hev been opened afore?" he said,
+again looking up at Dundas with a smile.
+
+Somehow the words struck a chill to the stranger's heart. The sense of
+the loneliness of the place, of isolation, filled him with a sort of
+awe. The night-bound wilderness itself was not more daunting than these
+solitary tiers of piazzas, these vacant series of rooms and corridors,
+all instinct with vanished human presence, all alert with echoes of
+human voices. A step, a laugh, a rustle of garments--he could have sworn
+he heard them at any open doorway as he followed his guide along the dim
+moonlit piazza, with its pillars duplicated at regular intervals by the
+shadows on the floor. How their tread echoed down these lonely ways!
+From the opposite side of the house he heard Kee-nan's spurs jangling,
+his soldierly stride sounding back as if their entrance had roused
+barracks. He winced once to see his own shadow with its stealthier
+movement. It seemed painfully furtive. For the first time during the
+evening his jaded mind, that had instinctively sought the solace of
+contemplating trifles, reverted to its own tormented processes. "Am
+I not hiding?" he said to himself, in a sort of sarcastic pity of his
+plight.
+
+The idea seemed never to enter the mind of the transparent Keenan. He
+laughed out gayly as they turned into the weed-grown quadrangle, and
+the red fox that Dundas had earlier observed slipped past him with
+affrighted speed and dashed among the shadows of the dense shrubbery of
+the old lawn without. Again and again the sound rang back from wall to
+wall, first with the jollity of seeming imitation, then with an appalled
+effect sinking to silence, and suddenly rising again in a grewsome
+_staccato_ that suggested some terrible unearthly laughter, and bore but
+scant resemblance to the hearty mirth which had evoked it Keenan paused
+and looked back with friendly gleaming eyes. "Oughter been a leetle
+handier with these hyar consarns," he said, touching the pistols in his
+belt.
+
+It vaguely occurred to Dundas that the young man went strangely heavily
+armed for an evening visit at a neighbor's house. But it was a lawless
+country and lawless times, and the sub-current of suggestion did not
+definitely fix itself in his mind until he remembered it later. He
+was looking into each vacant open doorway, seeing the still moonlight
+starkly white upon the floor; the cobwebbed and broken window-panes,
+through which a section of leafless trees beyond was visible; bits of
+furniture here and there, broken by the vandalism of the guerillas. Now
+and then a scurrying movement told of a gopher, hiding too, and on one
+mantel-piece, the black fireplace yawning below, sat a tiny tawny-tinted
+owl, whose motionless beadlike eyes met his with a stare of stolid
+surprise. After he had passed, its sudden ill-omened cry set the silence
+to shuddering.
+
+Keenan, leading the way, paused in displeasure. "I wisht I hed viewed
+that critter," he said, glumly. "I'd hev purvented that screechin' ter
+call the devil, sure. It's jes a certain sign o' death."
+
+He was about to turn, to wreak his vengeance, perchance. But the bird,
+sufficiently fortunate itself, whatever woe it presaged for others,
+suddenly took its awkward flight through sheen and shadow across the
+quadrangle, and when they heard its cry again it came from some remote
+section of the building, with a doleful echo as a refrain.
+
+The circumstance was soon forgotten by Keenan. He seemed a happy,
+mercurial, lucid nature, and he began presently to dwell with interest
+on the availability of the old music-stand in the centre of the square
+as a manger. "Hyar," he said, striking the rotten old structure with
+a heavy hand, which sent a quiver and a thrill through all the
+timbers--"hyar's whar the guerillas always hitched thar beastises. Thar
+feed an' forage war piled up thar on the fiddlers' seats. Ye can't do no
+better'n ter pattern arter them, till ye git ready ter hev fiddlers an'
+sech a-sawin' away in hyar agin."
+
+And he sauntered away from the little pavilion, followed by Dundas, who
+had not accepted his suggestion of a room on the first floor as being
+less liable to leakage, but finally made choice of an inner apartment in
+the second story. He looked hard at Keenan, when he stood in the doorway
+surveying the selection. The room opened into a cross-hall which gave
+upon a broad piazza that was latticed; tiny squares of moonlight were
+all sharply drawn on the floor, and, seen through a vista of gray
+shadow, seemed truly of a gilded lustre. From the windows of this room
+on a court-yard no light Could be visible to any passer-by without.
+Another door gave on an inner gallery, and through its floor a staircase
+came up from the quadrangle close to the threshold. Dundas wondered if
+these features were of possible significance in Keenan's estimation. The
+young mountaineer turned suddenly, and snatching up a handful of slats
+broken from the shutters, remarked:
+
+"Let's see how the chimbly draws--that's the main p'int."
+
+There was no defect in the chimney's constitution. It drew admirably,
+and with the white and red flames dancing in the fireplace, two or
+three chairs, more or less disabled, a table, and an upholstered lounge
+gathered at random from the rooms near at hand, the possibility of
+sojourning comfortably for a few days in the deserted hostelry seemed
+amply assured.
+
+Once more Dundas gazed fixedly at the face of the young mountaineer,
+who still bent on one knee on the hearth, watching with smiling eyes
+the triumphs of his fire-making. It seemed to him afterwards that his
+judgment was strangely at fault; he perceived naught of import in the
+shallow brightness of the young man's eyes, like the polished surface of
+jet; in the instability of his jealousy, his anger; in his hap-hazard,
+mercurial temperament. Once he might have noted how flat were the
+spaces beneath the eyes, how few were the lines that defined the lid,
+the socket, the curve of the cheekbone, the bridge of the nose, and how
+expressionless. It was doubtless the warmth and glow of the fire,
+the clinging desire of companionship, the earnest determination to be
+content, pathetic in one who had but little reason for optimism, that
+caused him to ignore the vacillating glancing moods that successively
+swayed Keenan, strong while they lasted, but with scanty augury because
+of their evanescence. He was like some newly discovered property in
+physics of untried potentialities, of which nothing is ascertained but
+its uncertainties.
+
+And yet he seemed to Dundas a simple country fellow, good-natured in the
+main, unsuspicious, and helpful. So, giving a long sigh of relief and
+fatigue, Dundas sank down in one of the large arm-chairs that had once
+done duty for the summer loungers on the piazza.
+
+In the light of the fire Emory was once more looking at him. A certain
+air of distinction, a grace and ease of movement, an indescribable
+quality of bearing which he could not discriminate, yet which he
+instinctively recognized as superior, offended him in some sort. He
+noticed again the ring on the stranger's hand as he drew off his glove.
+Gloves! Emory Keen an would as soon have thought of wearing a petticoat.
+Once more the fear that these effeminate graces found favor in
+Millicent's estimation smote upon his heart. It made the surface of his
+opaque eyes glisten as Dundas rose and took up a pipe and tobacco-pouch
+which he had laid on the mantelpiece, his full height and fine figure
+shown in the changed posture.
+
+"Ez tall ez me, ef not taller, an', by gum! a good thirty pound
+heavier," Emory reflected, with, a growing dismay that he had not those
+stalwart claims to precedence in height and weight as an offset to the
+smoother fascinations of the stranger's polish.
+
+He had risen hastily to his feet. He would not linger to smoke
+fraternally over the fire, and thus cement friendly relations.
+
+"I guided him hyar, like old Sim Roxby axed me ter do, an' that's all. I
+ain't keerin' ef I never lay eyes on him again," he said to himself.
+
+"Going?" said Dundas, pleasantly, noticing the motion. "You'll look in
+again, won't you?"
+
+"Wunst in a while, I reckon," drawled Keenan, a trifle thrown off his
+balance by this courtesy.
+
+He paused at the door, looking back over his shoulder for a moment at
+the illumined room, then stepped out into the night, leaving the tenant
+of the lonely old house filling his pipe by the fire.
+
+His tread rang along the deserted gallery, and sudden echoes came
+tramping down the vacant halls as if many a denizen of the once populous
+place was once more astir within its walls. Long after Dundas had heard
+him spring from the lower piazza to the ground, and the rusty gate clang
+behind him, vague footfalls were audible far away, and were still again,
+and once more a pattering tread in some gaunt and empty apartment near
+at hand, faint and fainter yet, till he hardly knew whether it were the
+reverberations of sound or fancy that held his senses in thrall.
+
+And when all was still and silent at last he felt less solitary than
+when these elusive tokens of human presence were astir.
+
+Late, late he sat over the dwindling embers. His mind, no longer
+diverted by the events of the day, recurred with melancholy persistence
+to a theme which even they, although fraught with novelty and presage
+of danger, had not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril
+dulled, the craft of sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him
+in these dim watches of the night. Self-reproach had found him out here,
+defenceless so far from the specious wiles and ways of men. All the line
+of provocations seemed slight, seemed naught, as he reviewed them and
+balanced them against a human life. True, it was not in some mad quarrel
+that his skill had taken it and had served to keep his own--a duel, a
+fair fight, strictly regular according to the code of "honorable men"
+for ages past--and he sought to argue that it was doubtless but the
+morbid sense of the wild fastnesses without, the illimitable vastness
+of the black night, the unutterable indurability of nature to the
+influences of civilization, which made it taste like murder. He had
+brought away even from the scene of action, to which he had gone with
+decorous deliberation--his worldly affairs arranged for the possibility
+of death, his will made, his volition surrendered, and his sacred honor
+in the hands of his seconds--a humiliating recollection of the sudden
+revulsion of the aspect of all things; the criminal sense of haste with
+which he was hurried away after that first straight shot; the agitation,
+nay, the fright of his seconds; their eagerness to be swiftly rid of
+him, their insistence that he should go away for a time, get out of the
+country, out of the embarrassing purview of the law, which was prone to
+regard the matter as he himself saw it now, and which had an ugly trick
+of calling things by their right names in the sincere phraseology of an
+indictment. And thus it was that he was here, remote from all the usual
+lines of flight, with his affectation of being a possible purchaser for
+the old hotel, far from the railroad, the telegraph, even the postal
+service. Some time--soon, indeed, it might be, when the first flush
+of excitement and indignation should be overpast, and the law, like a
+barking dog that will not bite, should have noisily exhausted the gamut
+of its devoirs--he would go back and live according to his habit in his
+wonted place, as did other men whom he had known to be "called out," and
+who had survived their opponents. Meantime he heard the ash crumble; he
+saw the lighted room wane from glancing yellow to a dull steady red,
+and so to dusky brown; he marked the wind rise, and die away, and come
+again, banging the doors of the empty rooms, and setting timbers all
+strangely to creaking as under sudden trampling feet; then lift into the
+air with a rustling sound like the stir of garments and the flutter of
+wings, calling out weirdly in the great voids of the upper atmosphere.
+
+He had welcomed the sense of fatigue earlier in the evening, for it
+promised sleep. Now it had slipped away from him. He was strong and
+young, and the burning sensation that the frosty air had left on his
+face was the only token of the long journey. It seemed as if he
+would never sleep again as he lay on the lounge watching the gray ash
+gradually overgrow the embers, till presently only a vague dull glow
+gave intimation of the position of the hearth in the room. And then,
+bereft of this dim sense of companionship, he stared wide-eyed in the
+darkness, feeling the only creature alive and awake in all the world.
+No; the fox was suddenly barking within the quadrangle--a strangely wild
+and alien tone. And presently he heard the animal trot past his door
+on the piazza, the cushioned footfalls like those of a swift dog. He
+thought with a certain anxiety of the tawny tiny owl that had sat like
+a stuffed ornament on the mantel-piece of a neighboring room, and he
+listened with a quaking vicarious presentiment of woe for the sounds of
+capture and despair. He was sensible of waiting and hoping for the fox's
+bootless return, when he suddenly lost consciousness.
+
+How long he slept he did not know, but it seemed only a momentary
+respite from the torture of memory, when, still in the darkness,
+thousands of tremulous penetrating sounds were astir, and with a great
+start he recognized the rain on the roof. It was coming down in steady
+torrents that made the house rock before the tumult of his plunging
+heart was still, and he was longing again for the forgetfulness of
+sleep. In vain. The hours dragged by; the windows slowly, slowly denned
+their dull gray squares against the dull gray day dawning without.
+The walls that had been left with only the first dark coat of plaster,
+awaiting another season for the final decoration, showed their drapings
+of cobweb, and the names and pencilled scribblings with which the fancy
+of transient bushwhackers had chosen to deface them. The locust-trees
+within the quadrangle drearily tossed their branches to and fro in the
+wind, the bark very black and distinct against the persistent gray lines
+of rain and the white walls of the galleried buildings opposite; the
+gutters were brimming, roaring along like miniature torrents; nowhere
+was the fox or the owl to be seen. Somehow their presence would have
+been a relief--the sight of any living thing reassuring. As he walked
+slowly along the deserted piazzas, in turning sudden corners, again and
+again he paused, expecting that something, some one, was approaching to
+meet him. When at last he mounted his horse, that had neighed gleefully
+to see him, and rode away through the avenue and along the empty ways
+among the untenanted summer cottages, all the drearier and more forlorn
+because of the rain, he felt as if he had left an aberration, some
+hideous dream, behind, instead of the stark reality of the gaunt and
+vacant and dilapidated old house.
+
+The transition to the glow and cheer of Sim Roxby's fireside was like
+a rescue, a restoration. The smiling welcome in the women's eyes, their
+soft drawling voices, with mellifluous intonations that gave a value to
+each commonplace simple word, braced his nerves like a tonic. It might
+have been only the contrast with the recollections of the night, with
+the prospect visible through the open door--the serried lines of rain
+dropping aslant from the gray sky and elusively outlined against the
+dark masses of leafless woods that encircled the clearing; the dooryard
+half submerged with puddles of a clay-brown tint, embossed always with
+myriads of protruding drops of rain, for however they melted away the
+downpour renewed them, and to the eye they were stationary, albeit
+pervaded with a continual tremor--but somehow he was cognizant of a
+certain coddling tenderness in the old woman's manner that might have
+been relished by a petted child, an unaffected friendliness in the
+girl's clear eyes. They made him sit close to the great wood fire; the
+blue and yellow flames gushed out from the piles of hickory logs, and
+the bed of coals gleamed at red and white heat beneath. They took his
+hat to carefully dry it, and they spread out his cloak on two chairs
+at one side of the room, where it dismally dripped. When he ventured to
+sneeze, Mrs. Roxby compounded and administered a "yerb tea," a sovereign
+remedy against colds, which he tasted on compulsion and in great doubt,
+and swallowed with alacrity and confidence, finding its basis the easily
+recognizable "toddy." He had little knowledge how white and troubled
+his face had looked as he came in from the gray day, how strongly marked
+were those lines of sharp mental distress, how piteously apparent was
+his mute appeal for sympathy and comfort.
+
+"Mill'cent," said the old woman in the shed-room, as they washed and
+wiped the dishes after the cozy breakfast of venison and corn-dodgers
+and honey and milk, "that thar man hev run agin the law, sure's ye air
+born."
+
+Millicent turned her reflective fair face, that seemed whiter and
+more delicate in the damp dark day, and looked doubtfully out over the
+fields, where the water ran in steely lines in the furrows.
+
+"Mus' hev been by accident or suthin'. _He_ ain't no hardened sinner."
+
+"Shucks!" the old woman commented upon her reluctant acquiescence. "I
+ain't keerin' for the law! 'Tain't none o' my job. The tomfool men make
+an' break it. Ennybody ez hev seen this war air obleeged to take note
+o' the wickedness o' men in gineral. This hyer man air a sorter pitiful
+sinner, an' he hev got a look in his eyes that plumb teches my heart.
+I 'ain't got no call ter know nuthin' 'bout the law, bein' a 'oman an'
+naterally ignorant. I dun'no' ez he hev run agin it."
+
+"Mus' hev been by accident," said Millicent, dreamily, still gazing over
+the sodden fields.
+
+The suspicion did nothing to diminish his comfort or their cordiality.
+The morning dragged by without change in the outer aspects. The noontide
+dinner came and went without Roxby's return, for the report of the
+washing away of a bridge some miles distant down the river had early
+called him out to the scene of the disaster, to verify in his own
+interests the rumor, since he had expected to haul his wheat to the
+settlement the ensuing day. The afternoon found the desultory talk still
+in progress about the fire, the old woman alternately carding cotton
+and nodding in her chair in the corner; the dogs eying the stranger,
+listening much of the time with the air of children taking instruction,
+only occasionally wandering out-of-doors, the floor here and there
+bearing the damp imprint of their feet; and Millicent on her knees in
+the other corner, the firelight on her bright hair, her delicate cheek,
+her quickly glancing eyes, as she deftly moulded bullets.
+
+"Uncle Sim hed ter s'render his shootin'-irons," she explained, "an' he
+'ain't got no ca'tridge-loadin' ones lef. So he makes out with his old
+muzzle-loadin' rifle that he hed afore the war, an' I moulds his bullets
+for him rainy days."
+
+As she held up a moulded ball and dexterously clipped off the surplus
+lead, the gesture was so culinary in its delicacy that one of the dogs
+in front of the fire extended his head, making a long neck, with a
+tentative sniff and a glistening gluttonous eye.
+
+"Ef I swallered enny mo' lead, I wouldn't take it hot, Towse," she said,
+holding out the bullet for canine inspection. "'Tain't healthy!"
+
+But the dog, perceiving the nature of the commodity, drew back with a
+look of deep reproach, rose precipitately, and with a drooping tail went
+out skulkingly into the wet gray day.
+
+"Towse can't abide a bullet," she observed, "nor nuthin' 'bout a gun.
+He got shot wunst a-huntin', an' he never furgot it. Jes show him a gun
+an' he ain't nowhar ter be seen--like he war cotch up in the clouds."
+
+"Good watch-dog, I suppose," suggested Dundas, striving to enter into
+the spirit of her talk.
+
+"Naw; too sp'ilt for a gyard-dog--granny coddled him so whenst he
+got shot. He's jest vally'ble fur his conversation, I reckon," she
+continued, with a smile in her eyes. "I dun'no' what else, but he _is_
+toler'ble good company."
+
+The other dogs pressed about her, the heads of the great hounds as high
+as her own as she sat among them on the floor. With bright eyes and
+knitted brows they followed the motions of pouring in the melted metal,
+the lifting of the bullets from the mould, the clipping off of the
+surplus lead, and the flash of the keen knife.
+
+Outside the sad light waned; the wind sighed and sighed; the dreary
+rain fell; the trees clashed their boughs dolorously together, and their
+turbulence deadened the sound of galloping horses. As Dundas sat and
+gazed at the girl's intent head, with its fleecy tendrils and its
+massive coil, the great hounds beside her, all emblazoned by the
+firelight upon the brown wall near by, with the vast fireplace at hand,
+the whole less like reality than some artist's pictured fancy, he knew
+naught of a sudden entrance, until she moved, breaking the spell, and
+looked up to meet the displeasure in Roxby's eyes and the dark scowl on
+Emory Keenan's face.
+
+*****
+
+That night the wind shifted to the north. Morning found the chilled
+world still, ice where the water had lodged, all the trees incased in
+glittering garb that followed the symmetry alike of every bough and
+the tiniest twig, and made splendid the splintered remnants of the
+lightning-riven. The fields were laced across from furrow to furrow, in
+which the frozen water still stood gleaming, with white arabesques which
+had known a more humble identity as stubble and crab-grass; the sky was
+slate-colored, and from its sad tint this white splendor gained added
+values of contrast. When the sun should shine abroad much of the effect
+would be lost in the too dazzling glister; but the sun did not shine.
+
+All day the gray mood held unchanged. Night was imperceptibly sifting
+down upon all this whiteness, that seemed as if it would not be
+obscured, as if it held within itself some property of luminosity, when
+Millicent, a white apron tied over her golden head, improvising a hood,
+its superfluous fulness gathered in many folds and pleats around her
+neck, fichu-wise, stood beside the ice-draped fodder-stack and essayed
+with half-numbed hands to insert a tallow dip into the socket of a
+lantern, all incrusted and clumsy with previous drippings.
+
+"I dun'no' whether I be a-goin' ter need this hyar consarn whilst
+milkin' or no," she observed, half to herself, half to Emory, who,
+chewing a straw, somewhat surlily had followed her out for a word apart.
+"The dusk 'pears slow ter-night, but Spot's mighty late comin' home, an'
+old Sue air fractious an' contrairy-minded, and feels mighty anxious
+an' oneasy 'boutn her calf, that's ez tall ez she is nowadays, an' don't
+keer no mo' 'bout her mammy 'n a half-grown human does. I tell her she
+oughtn't ter be mad with me, but with the way she brung up her chile, ez
+won't notice her now."
+
+She looked up with a laugh, her eyes and teeth gleaming; her golden hair
+still showed its color beneath the spotless whiteness of her voluminous
+headgear, and the clear tints of her complexion seemed all the more
+delicate and fresh in the snowy pallor of the surroundings and the
+grayness of the evening.
+
+"I reckon I'd better take it along," and once more she addressed herself
+to the effort to insert the dip into the lantern.
+
+Emory hardly heard. His pulse was quick. His eye glittered. He breathed
+hard as, with both hands in his pockets, he came close to her.
+
+"Mill'cent," he said, "I told ye the t'other day ez ye thunk a heap too
+much o' that thar stran-ger-"
+
+"An' I tole ye, bubby, that I didn't think nuthin' o' nobody but
+you-uns," she interrupted, with an effort to placate his jealousy. The
+little jocularity which she affected dwindled and died before the steady
+glow of his gaze, and she falteringly looked at him, her unguided hands
+futilely fumbling with the lantern.
+
+"Ye can't fool me," he stoutly asseverated. "Ye think mo' o' him 'n o'
+me, kase ye 'low he air rich, an' book-larned, an' smooth-fingered, an'
+fini-fied ez a gal, an' goin' ter buy the hotel. I say, _hotel!_ Now
+_I'll_ tell ye what he is--I'll tell ye! He's a criminal. He's runnin'
+from the law. He's hidin' in the old hotel that he's purtendin' ter
+buy."
+
+She stared wide-eyed and pallid, breathless and waiting.
+
+He interpreted her expression as doubt, denial.
+
+"It's gospel sure," he cried. "Fur this very evenin' I met a gang o'
+men an' the sheriff's deputy down yander by the sulphur spring 'bout
+sundown, an' he 'lowed ez they war a-sarchin' fur a criminal ez war
+skulkin' round hyarabout lately--ez they wanted a man fur hevin'
+c'mitted murder."
+
+"But ye didn't accuse _him_, surely; ye hed no right ter s'picion _him_.
+Uncle Sim! Oh, my Lord! Ye surely wouldn't! Oh, Uncle Sim!"
+
+Her tremulous words broke into a quavering cry as she caught his arm
+convulsively, for his face confirmed her fears. She thrust him wildly
+away, and started toward the house.
+
+"Ye needn't go tattlin' on me," he said, roughly pushing her aside.
+"I'll tell Mr. Roxby myself. I ain't 'shamed o' what I done. I'll
+tell him. I'll tell him myself." And animated with this intention to
+forestall her disclosure, his long strides bore him swiftly past and
+into the house.
+
+It seemed to him that he lingered there only a moment or two, for Roxby
+was not at the cabin, and he said nothing of the quarrel to the old
+woman. Already his heart had revolted against his treachery, and then
+there came to him the further reflection that he did not know enough
+to justify suspicion. Was not the stranger furnished with the fullest
+credentials--a letter to Roxby from the Colonel? Perhaps he had allowed
+his jealousy to endanger the man, to place him in jeopardy even of his
+life should he resist arrest.
+
+Keenan tarried at the house merely long enough to devise a plausible
+excuse for his sudden excited entrance, and then took his way back to
+the barnyard.
+
+It was vacant. The cows still stood lowing at the bars; the sheep
+cowered together in their shed; the great whitened cone of the
+fodder-stack gleamed icily in the purple air; beside it lay the lantern
+where Millicent had cast it aside. She was gone! He would not believe
+it till he had run to the barn, calling her name in the shadowy place,
+while the horse at his manger left his corn to look over the walls of
+his stall with inquisitive surprised eyes, luminous in the dusk. He
+searched the hen-house, where the fowls on their perches crowded close
+because of the chill of the evening. He even ran to the bars and looked
+down across the narrow ravine to which the clearing sloped. Beyond the
+chasm-like gorge he saw presently on the high ascent opposite footprints
+that had broken the light frostlike coating of ice on the dead leaves
+and moss--climbing footprints, swift, disordered. He looked back again
+at the lantern where Millicent had flung it in her haste. Her mission
+was plain now. She had gone to warn Dundas. She had taken a direct line
+through the woods. She hoped to forestall the deputy sheriff and his
+posse, following the circuitous mountain road.
+
+Keenan's lip curled in triumph. His heart burned hot with scornful anger
+and contempt of the futility of her effort. "They're there afore she
+started!" he said, looking up at the aspects of the hour shown by the
+sky, and judging of the interval since the encounter by the spring.
+Through a rift in the gray cloud a star looked down with an icy
+scintillation and disappeared again. He heard a branch in the woods snap
+beneath the weight of ice. A light sprang into the window of the cabin
+hard by, and came in a great gush of orange-tinted glow out into the
+snowy bleak wintry space. He suddenly leaped over the fence and ran like
+a deer through the woods.
+
+Millicent too had been swift. He had thought to overtake her before he
+emerged from the woods into the more open space where the hotel stood.
+In this quarter the cloud-break had been greater. Toward the west a
+fading amber glow still lingered in long horizontal bars upon the opaque
+gray sky. The white mountains opposite were hung with purple shadows
+borrowed from a glimpse of sunset somewhere far away over the valley
+of East Tennessee; one distant lofty range was drawn in elusive snowy
+suggestions, rather than lines, against a green space of intense yet
+pale tint. The moon, now nearing the full, hung over the wooded valley,
+and aided the ice and the crust of snow to show its bleak, wan, wintry
+aspect; a tiny spark glowed in its depths from some open door of an
+isolated home. Over it all a mist was rising from the east, drawing its
+fleecy but opaque curtain. Already it had climbed the mountain-side and
+advanced, windless, soundless, overwhelming, annihilating all before and
+beneath it. The old hotel had disappeared, save that here and there a
+gaunt gable protruded and was withdrawn, showed once more, and once more
+was submerged.
+
+A horse's head suddenly looking out of the enveloping mist close to his
+shoulder gave him the first intimation of the arrival, the secret silent
+waiting, of those whom he had directed hither. That the saddles were
+empty he saw a moment later. The animals stood together in a row,
+hitched to the rack. No disturbance sounded from the silent building.
+The event was in abeyance. The fugitive in hiding was doubtless at
+ease, unsuspecting, while the noiseless search of the officers for his
+quarters was under way.
+
+With a thrill of excitement Keenan crept stealthily through an open
+passage and into the old grass-grown spaces of the quadrangle. Night
+possessed the place, but the cloud seemed denser than the darkness. He
+was somehow sensible of its convolutions as he stood against the wall
+and strained his eyes into the dusk. Suddenly it was penetrated by a
+milky-white glimmer, a glimmer duplicated at equidistant points, each
+fading as its successor sprang into brilliance. The next moment he
+understood its significance. It had come from the blurred windows of the
+old ball-room. Milli-cent had lighted her candle as she searched for the
+fugitive's quarters; she was passing down the length of the old house
+on the second story, and suddenly she emerged upon the gallery. She
+shielded the feeble flicker with her Hand; her white-hooded head gleamed
+as with an aureola as the divergent rays rested on the opaque mist; and
+now and again she clutched the baluster and walked with tremulous care,
+for the flooring was rotten here and there, and ready to crumble away.
+Her face was pallid, troubled; and Dundas, who had been warned by the
+tramp of horses and the tread of men, and who had descended the stairs,
+revolver in hand, ready to slip away if he might under cover of
+the mist, paused appalled, gazing across the quadrangle as on an
+apparition--the sight so familiar to his senses, so strange to his
+experience. He saw in an abrupt shifting of the mist that there were
+other figures skulking in doorways, watching her progress. The next
+moment she leaned forward to clutch the baluster, and the light of the
+candle fell full on Emory Keenan, lurking in the open passage. A sudden
+sharp cry of "Surrender!" The young mountaineer, confused, swiftly drew
+his pistol. Others were swifter still. A sharp report rang out into
+the chill crisp air, rousing all the affrighted echoes--a few faltering
+steps, a heavy fall, and for a long time Emory Keenan's life-blood
+stained the floor of the promenade. Even when it had faded, the rustic
+gossips came often and gazed at the spot with morbid interest, until, a
+decade later, an enterprising proprietor removed the floor and altered
+the shape of that section of the building out of recognition.
+
+The escape of Dundas was easily effected. The deputy sheriff, confronted
+with the problem of satisfactorily accounting for the death of a man
+who had committed no offence against public polity, was no longer
+formidable. His errand had been the arrest of a horse-thief, well-known
+to him, and he had no interest in pursuing a fugitive, however obnoxious
+to the law, whose personal description was so different from that of the
+object of his search.
+
+Time restored to Dundas his former place in life and the esteem of his
+fellow-citizens. His stay in the mountains was an episode which he will
+not often recall, but sometimes volition fails, and he marvels at the
+strange fulfilment of the girl's vision; he winces to think that her
+solicitude for his safety should have cost her her lover; he wonders
+whether she yet lives, and whether that tender troubled phantom, on
+nights when the wind is still and the moon is low and the mists rise,
+again joins the strange, elusive, woful company crossing the quaking
+foot-bridge.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
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+      The Phantoms of the Foot-bridge, by Charles Egbert Craddock
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+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: The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge
+       1895
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Illustrator: A. B. Frost
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2007 [EBook #23630]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Charles Egbert Craddock <br /><br /> 1895
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Across the narrow gorge the little foot-bridge stretched-a brace of logs,
+      the upper surface hewn, and a slight hand-rail formed of a cedar pole. A
+      flimsy structure, one might think, looking down at the dark and rocky
+      depths beneath, through which flowed the mountain stream, swift and
+      strong, but it was doubtless substantial enough for all ordinary usage,
+      and certainly sufficient for the imponderable and elusive travellers who
+      by common report frequented it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ain't likely ter meet nobody. Few folks kem this way nowadays, 'thout
+      it air jes' ter ford the creek down along hyar a piece, sence harnts an'
+      sech onlikely critters hev been viewed a-crossin' the foot-bredge. An' it
+      hev got the name o' bein' toler'ble onlucky, too,&rdquo; said Roxby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His interlocutor drew back slightly. He had his own reasons to recoil from
+      the subject of death. For him it was invested with a more immediate terror
+      than is usual to many of the living, with that flattering persuasion of
+      immortality in every strong pulsation repudiating all possibility of
+      cessation. Then, lifting his gloomy, long-lashed eyes to the bridge far up
+      the stream, he asked, &ldquo;Whose 'harms?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice had a low, repressed cadence, as of one who speaks seldom,
+      grave, even melancholy, and little indicative of the averse interest that
+      had kindled in his sombre eyes. In comparison the drawl of the
+      mountaineer, who had found him heavy company by the way, seemed imbued
+      with an abnormal vivacity, and keyed a tone or two higher than was its
+      wont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thar ain't a few,&rdquo; he replied, with a sudden glow of the pride of the
+      cicerone. &ldquo;Thar's a graveyard t'other side o' the gorge, an' not more than
+      a haffen-mile off, an' a cornsider'ble passel o' folks hev been buried
+      thar off an' on, an' the foot-bredge ain't in nowise ill-convenient ter
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus demonstrating the spectral resources of the locality, he rode his
+      horse well into the stream as he spoke, and dropped the reins that the
+      animal's impatient lips might reach the water. He sat fac-, ing the
+      foot-bridge, flecked with the alternate shifting of the sunshine and the
+      shadows of the tremulous firs that grew on either side of the high banks
+      on the ever-ascending slope, thus arching both above and below the haunted
+      bridge. His companion had joined him in the centre of the stream; but
+      while the horses drank, the stranger's eyes were persistently bent on the
+      concentric circles of the water that the movement of the animals had set
+      astir in the current, as if he feared that too close or curious a gaze
+      might discern some pilgrim, whom he cared not to see, traversing that
+      shadowy quivering foot-bridge. He was mounted on a strong, handsome
+      chestnut, as marked a contrast to his guide's lank and trace-galled sorrel
+      as were the two riders. A slender gloved hand had fallen with the reins to
+      the pommel of the saddle. His soft felt hat, like a sombrero, shadowed his
+      clear-cut face. He was carefully shaven, save for a long drooping dark
+      mustache and imperial. His suit of dark cloth was much concealed by a
+      black cloak, one end of which thrown back across his shoulder showed a
+      bright blue lining, the color giving a sudden heightening touch to his
+      attire, as if he were &ldquo;in costume.&rdquo; It was a fleeting fashion of the day,
+      but it added a certain picturesqueness to a horseman, and seemed far
+      enough from the times that produced the square-tailed frock-coat which the
+      mountaineer wore, constructed of brown jeans, the skirts of which stood
+      stiffly out on each side of the saddle, and gave him, with his
+      broad-brimmed hat, a certain Quakerish aspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dun'no' why folks be so 'feared of 'em,&rdquo; Rox-by remarked,
+      speculatively. &ldquo;The dead ain't so oncommon, nohow. Them ez hev been in the
+      war, like you an' me done, oughter be in an' 'bout used ter corpses-though
+      I never seen none o' 'em afoot agin. Lookin' at a smit field o' battle,
+      arter the rage is jes' passed, oughter gin a body a realizin' sense how
+      easy the sperit kin flee, an' what pore vessels fur holdin' the spark o'
+      life human clay be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simeon Roxby had a keen, not unkindly face, and he had that look of
+      extreme intelligence which is entirely distinct from intellectuality, and
+      which one sometimes sees in a minor degree in a very clever dog or a fine
+      horse. One might rely on him to understand instinctively everything one
+      might say to him, even in its subtler aesthetic values, although he had
+      consciously learned little. He was of the endowed natures to whom much is
+      given, rather than of those who are set to acquire. He had many lines in
+      his face-even his simple life had gone hard with him, its sorrows un
+      assuaged by its simplicity. His hair was grizzled, and hung long and
+      straight on his collar. He wore a grizzled beard cut broad and short. His
+      boots had big spurs, although the lank old sorrel had never felt them. He
+      sat his horse like the cavalryman he had been for four years of hard
+      riding and raiding, but his face had a certain gentleness that accented
+      the Quaker-like suggestion of his garb, a look of communing with the
+      higher things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never blamed 'em,'&rdquo; he went on, evidently reverting to the spectres of
+      the bridge-&ldquo;I never blamed 'em for comin' back wunst in a while. It 'pears
+      ter me 'twould take me a long time ter git familiar with heaven, an'
+      sociable with them ez hev gone before. An', my Lord, jes' think what the
+      good green yearth is! Leastwise the mountings. I ain't settin' store on
+      the valley lands I seen whenst I went ter the wars. I kin remember yit
+      what them streets in the valley towns smelt like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted his head, drawing a long breath to inhale the exquisite
+      fragrance of the fir, the freshness of the pellucid water, the aroma of
+      the autumn wind, blowing through the sere leaves still clinging red and
+      yellow to the boughs of the forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naw, I ain't blamin' 'em, though I don't hanker ter view 'em,&rdquo; he
+      resumed. &ldquo;One of 'em I wouldn't be afeard of, though. I feel mighty sorry
+      fur her. The old folks used ter tell about her. A young 'oman she war,
+      a-crossin' this bredge with her child in her arms. She war young, an' mus'
+      have been keerless, I reckon; though ez 'twar her fust baby, she moightn't
+      hev been practised in holdin' it an' sech, an' somehows it slipped through
+      her arms an' fell inter the ruver, an' war killed in a minit, dashin' agin
+      the rocks. She jes' stood fur a second a-screamin' like a wild painter,
+      an' jumped off'n the bredge arter it. She got it agin; for when they
+      dragged her body out'n the ruver she hed it in her arms too tight fur even
+      death ter onloose. An' thar they air together in the buryin'-ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a nod toward the slope of the mountain that intercepted the
+      melancholy view of the graveyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got it yit!&rdquo; he continued; &ldquo;bekase&rdquo; (he lowered his voice) &ldquo;on windy
+      nights, whenst the moon is on the wane, she is viewed kerryin' the baby
+      along the bredge&mdash;kerryin' it clear over, <i>safe an' sound</i>, like
+      she thought she oughter done, I reckon, in that one minute, whilst she
+      stood an' screamed an' surveyed what she hed done. That child would hev
+      been nigh ter my age ef he hed lived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Only the sunbeams wavered athwart the bridge now as the firs swayed above,
+      giving glimpses of the sky, and their fibrous shadows flickered back and
+      forth. The wild mountain stream flashed white between the brown bowlders,
+      and plunged down the gorge in a succession of cascades, each seeming more
+      transparently green and amber and brown than the other. The chestnut horse
+      gazed meditatively at these limpid out-gushings, having drunk his fill;
+      then thought better of his moderation, and once more thrust his head down
+      to the water. The hand of his rider, which had made a motion to gather up
+      the reins, dropped leniently on his neck, as Simeon Roxby spoke again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Several&mdash;several others hev been viewed, actin' accordin' ter thar
+      motions in life. Now thar war a peddler&mdash;some say he slipped one icy
+      evenin', 'bout dusk in winter&mdash;some say evil ones waylaid him fur his
+      gear an' his goods in his pack, but the settlemint mostly believes he war
+      alone whenst he fell. His pack 'pears ter be full still, they say&mdash;but
+      ye air 'bleeged ter know he hev hed ter set that pack down fur good 'fore
+      this time. We kin take nuthin' out'n this world, no matter what kind o' a
+      line o' goods we kerry in life. Heaven's no place fur tradin', I
+      understan', an' I <i>do</i> wonder sometimes how in the worl' them
+      merchants an' sech in the valley towns air goin' ter entertain tharse'fs
+      in the happy land o' Canaan. It's goin' ter be sorter bleak fur them,
+      sure's ye air born.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a look of freshened recollection, he suddenly drew a plug of tobacco
+      from his pocket, and he talked on even as he gnawed a piece from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Durin' the war a cavalry-man got shot out hyar whilst runnin' 'crost that
+      thar foot-bredge. Thar hed been a scrimmage an' his horse war kilt, an' he
+      tuk ter the bresh on foot, hopin' ter hide in the laurel. But ez he war
+      crossin' the foot-bredge some o' the pursuin' party war fordin' the ruver
+      over thar, an' thinkin' he'd make out ter escape they fired on him, jes'
+      ez the feller tried ter surrender. He turned this way an' flung up both
+      arms&mdash;but thar's mighty leetle truce in a pistol-ball. That minute it
+      tuk him right through the brain. Seems toler'ble long range fur a pistol,
+      don't it? He kin be viewed now most enny moonlight night out hyar on the
+      foot-bredge, throwin' up both hands in sign of surrender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wild-geese were a-wing on the way southward. Looking up to that narrow
+      section of the blue sky which the incision of the gorge into the very
+      depths of the woods made visible, he could see the tiny files deploying
+      along the azure or the flecking cirrus, and hear the vague clangor of
+      their leader's cry. He lifted his head to mechanically follow their
+      flight. Then, as his eyes came back to earth, they rested again on the old
+      bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strange enough,&rdquo; he said, suddenly, &ldquo;the sker-riest tale I hev ever hearn
+      'bout that thar old bredge is one that my niece set a-goin'. She <i>seen</i>
+      the harnt <i>herself</i>, an' it shakes me wuss 'n the idee o' all the
+      rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion's gloomy gaze was lifted for a moment with an expression of
+      inquiry from the slowly widening circles of the water about the horse's
+      head as he drank. But Roxby's eyes, with a certain gleam of excitement, a
+      superstitious dilation, still dwelt upon the bridge at the end of the
+      upward vista. He went on merely from the impetus of the subject. &ldquo;Yes, sir&mdash;she
+      <i>seen</i> it a-pacin' of its sorrowful way acrost that bredge, same ez
+      the t'others of the percession o' harnts. 'Twar my niece, Mill'cent&mdash;brother's
+      darter&mdash;by name, Mill'cent Roxby. Waal, Mill'cent an' a lot o' young
+      fools o' her age&mdash;little over fryin' size&mdash;they 'tended
+      camp-meetin' down hyar on Tomahawk Creek&mdash;'tain't so long ago&mdash;along
+      with the old folks. An' 'bout twenty went huddled up tergether in a
+      road-wagin. An', lo! the wagin it bruk down on the way home, an' what with
+      proppin' it up on a crotch, they made out ter reach the cross-roads over
+      yander at the Notch, an' thar the sober old folks called a halt, an' hed
+      the wagin mended at the blacksmith-shop. Waal, it tuk some two hours, fur
+      Pete Rodd ain't a-goin' ter hurry hisself&mdash;in my opinion the angel
+      Gabriel will hev ter blow his bugle oftener'n wunst at the last day 'fore
+      Pete Rodd makes up his mind ter rise from the dead an' answer the
+      roll-call&mdash;an' this hyar young lot sorter found it tiresome waitin'
+      on thar elders' solemn company. The old folks, whilst waitin', set outside
+      on the porches of the houses at the settlemint, an' repeated some o' the
+      sermons they hed hearn at camp, an' more'n one raised a hyme chune. An'
+      the young fry&mdash;they hed hed a steady diet o' sermons an' hyme chunes
+      fur fower days&mdash;they tuk ter stragglin' off down the road, two an'
+      two, like the same sorter id jits the world over, leavin' word with the
+      old folks that the wagin would overtake 'em an' pick 'em up on the road
+      when it passed. Waal, they walked several mile, an' time they got ter the
+      crest o' the hill over yander the moon hed riz, an' they could look down
+      an' see the mist in the valley. The moon war bright in the buryin'-groun'
+      when they passed it, an' the head-boards stood up white an' stiff, an' a
+      light frost hed fell on the mounds, an' they showed plain, an' shone
+      sorter lonesome an' cold. The young folks begun ter look behind em' fur
+      the wagin. Some said&mdash;I b'lieve 'twar Em'ry Keen an&mdash;they could
+      read the names on the boards plain, 'twar so light, the moon bein' nigh
+      the full: but Em'ry never read nuthin' at night by the moon in his life;
+      he ain't enny too capable o' wrastlin' with the alphabet with a strong
+      daytime on his book ter light him ter knowledge. An' the shadows war black
+      an' still, an' all the yearth looked ez ef nuthin' lived nor ever would
+      agin, an' they hearn a wolf howl. Waal, that disaccommodated the gals
+      mightily, an' they hed a heap more interes' in that old wagin, all
+      smellin' rank with wagin-grease an' tar, than they did in thar lovyers;
+      an' they hed ruther hev hearn that old botch of a wheel that Pete Rodd hed
+      set onto it com in' a-creakin' an' a-com-plainin' along the road than the
+      sweetest words them boys war able ter make up or remember. So they stood
+      thar in the road&mdash;a-stare-gazin' them head-boards, like they expected
+      every grave ter open an' the reveilly ter sound&mdash;a-waitin' ter be
+      overtook by the wagin, a-listenin', but hearin' nuthin' in the silence o'
+      the frost&mdash;not a dead leaf a-twirlin', nor a frozen blade o' grass
+      astir. An' then two or three o' the gals 'lowed they hed ruther walk back
+      ter meet the wagin, an' whenst the boys 'lowed ter go on&mdash;nuthin' war
+      likely ter ketch 'em&mdash;one of 'em bust out a-cryin'. Waal, thar war
+      the eend o' that much! So the gay party set out on the back track,
+      a-keepin' step ter sobs an' sniffles, an' that's how kem <i>they</i> seen
+      no harnt. But Mill'-cent an' three or four o' the t'others 'lowed they'd
+      go on. They warn't two mile from home, an' full five from the cross-roads.
+      So Em'ry Keenan&mdash;he hev been waitin' on her sence the year one&mdash;so
+      he put his skeer in his pocket an' kem along with her, a-shakin' in his
+      shoes, I'll be bound! So down the hill in the frosty moonlight them few
+      kem&mdash;purty nigh beat out, I reckon, Mill'cent war, what with the
+      sermonizin' an' the hyme-singin' an' hevin' ter look continual at the
+      sheep's-eyes o' Em'ry Keenan&mdash;he wears my patience ter the bone! So
+      she concluded ter take the short-cut. An' Em'ry he agreed. So they tuk the
+      lead, the rest a following an' kem down thar through all that black
+      growth&rdquo;&mdash;he lifted his arm and pointed at the great slope, dense with
+      fir and pine and the heavy underbrush&mdash;&ldquo;keepin' the bridle-path&mdash;easy
+      enough even at night, fur the bresh is so thick they couldn't lose thar
+      way. But the moonlight war mightily slivered up, fallin' through the
+      needles of the pines an' the skeins of dead vines, an' looked bleached and
+      onnatural, an' holped the dark mighty leetle. An' they seen the water
+      a-shinin' an' a-plungin' down the gorge, an' the glistenin' of the frost
+      on the floor o' the bredge. Thar war a few icicles on the hand-rail, an'
+      the branches o' the firs hung ez still ez death; only that cold, racin',
+      shoutin', jouncin' water moved. Jes ez they got toler'ble nigh the
+      foot-bredge a sudden cloud kem over the face o' the sky. Thar warn't no
+      wind on the yearth, but up above the air war a-stirrin'. An' Em'ry he
+      'lowed Mill'cent shouldn't cross the foot-bredge whilst the light warn't
+      clar&mdash;I wonder the critter hed that much sense! An' she jes' drapped
+      down on that rock thar ter rest&rdquo;&mdash;he pointed up the slope to a great
+      fragment that had broken off from the ledges and lay near the bank: the
+      bulk of the mass was overgrown with moss and lichen, but the jagged edges
+      of the recent fracture gleamed white and crystalline among the brown and
+      olive-green shadows about it. A tree was close beside it. &ldquo;Agin that thar
+      pine trunk Em'ry he stood an' leaned. The rest war behind, a-comin' down
+      the hill. An' all of a suddenty a light fell on the furder eend o' the
+      foot-bredge&mdash;a waverin' light, mighty white an' misty in the
+      darksomeness. Mill'cent 'lowed ez fust she thunk it war the moon. An'
+      lookin' up, she seen the cloud; it held the moon close kivered. An'
+      lookin' down, she seen the light war movin'&mdash;movin' from the furder
+      eend o' the bredge, straight acrost it. Sometimes a hand war held afore
+      it, ez ef ter shield it from the draught, an' then Mill'cent 'seen twar a
+      candle, an' the white in the mistiness war a 'oman wearin' white an'
+      carryn' it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:30%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/025.jpg"
+       alt="The Phantom of the Foot-bridge 025 " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Lookin' ter right an' then ter lef the 'oman kem, with now her right hand
+      shieldin' the candle she held, an' now layin' it on the hand-rail. The
+      candle shone on the water, fur it didn't flare, an' when the 'oman held
+      her hand before it the light made a bright spot on the foot-bredge an' in
+      the dark air about her, an' on the fir branches over her head. An' a thin
+      mist seemed to hang about her white frock, but not over her face, fur when
+      she reached the middle o' the foot-bredge she laid her hand agin on the
+      rail, an' in the clear light o' the candle Mill'cent seen the harnt's
+      face. An' thar she beheld her own face; <i>her own face</i> she looked
+      upon ez she waited thar under the tree watchin' the foot-bredge; <i>her
+      own face</i> pale an' troubled; her own self dressed in white, crossin'
+      the foot-bredge, an' lightin' her steps with a corpse's candle.&rdquo; He drew
+      up the reins abruptly. He seemed in sudden haste to go. His companion
+      looked with deepening interest at the bridge, although he followed his
+      guide's surging pathway to the opposite bank. As the two dripping horses
+      struggled up the steep incline he asked, &ldquo;Did the man with her see the
+      manifestation also?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He <i>'lows</i> he did,&rdquo; responded Roxby, equivocally. &ldquo;But when
+      Mill'cent fust got so she could tell it, 'peared ter me ez Em'ry Keen an
+      fund it ez much news ez the rest o' we-uns. Mill'cent jes' drapped
+      stone-dead, accordin' ter all accounts, an' he an' the t'other young folks
+      flung water in her face till she kem out'n her faint; an' jes' then they
+      hearn the wagin a-rattlin' along the road, an' they stopped it an' fetched
+      her home in it. She never told the tale till she war home, an' it skeered
+      me an' my mother powerful, fur Mill'cent is all the kin we hev got.
+      Mill'cent is gran'daddy an' gran'mam-my, sons an' daughters, uncles an'
+      aunts, cousins, nieces, an' nephews, all in one. The only thing I ain't
+      pervided with is a nephew-in-law, an' I don't need him. Leastwise I ain't
+      lookin' fur Em'ry Keenan jes' at present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pace was brisker when the two horses, bending their strength sturdily
+      to the task, had pressed up the massive slope from the deep cleft of the
+      gorge. As the road curved about the outer verge of the mountain, the
+      valley far beneath came into view, with intersecting valleys and
+      transverse ranges, dense with the growths of primeval wildernesses, and
+      rugged with the tilted strata of great upheavals, and with chasms cut in
+      the solid rock by centuries of erosion, traces of some remote cataclysmal
+      period, registering thus its throes and turmoils. The blue sky, seen
+      beyond a gaunt profile of one of the farther summits that defined its
+      craggy serrated edge against the ultimate distances of the western
+      heavens, seemed of a singularly suave tint, incongruous with the savagery
+      of the scene, which clouds and portents of storm might better have
+      befitted. The little graveyard, which John Dundas discerned with
+      recognizing eyes, albeit they had never before rested upon it, was
+      revealed suddenly, lying high on the opposite side of the gorge. No frost
+      glimmered now on the lowly mounds; the flickering autumnal sunshine
+      loitered unafraid among them, according to its languid wont for many a
+      year. Shadows of the gray un-painted head-boards lay on the withered
+      grass, brown and crisp, with never a cicada left to break the deathlike
+      silence. A tuft of red leaves, vagrant in the wind, had been caught on one
+      of the primitive monuments, and swayed there with a decorative effect. The
+      enclosure seemed, to unaccustomed eyes, of small compass, and few the
+      denizens who had found shelter here and a resting-place, but it numbered
+      all the dead of the country-side for many a mile and many a year, and
+      somehow the loneliness was assuaged to a degree by the reflection that
+      they had known each other in life, unlike the great herds of cities, and
+      that it was a common fate which the neighbors, huddled together,
+      encountered in company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had no discordant effect in the pervasive sense of gloom, of mighty
+      antagonistic forces with which the scene was replete; it fostered a
+      realization of the pitiable minuteness and helplessness of human nature in
+      the midst of the vastness of inanimate nature and the evidences of
+      infinite lengths of forgotten time, of the long reaches of unimagined
+      history, eventful, fateful, which the landscape at once suggested and
+      revealed and concealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like the sudden flippant clatter of castanets in the pause of some solemn
+      funeral music was the impression given by the first glimpse along the
+      winding woodland way of a great flimsy white building, with its many
+      pillars, its piazzas, its &ldquo;observatory,&rdquo; its band-stand, its garish
+      intimations of the giddy, gay world of a summer hotel. But, alack! it,
+      too, had its surfeit of woe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The guerrillas an' bushwhackers tuk it out on the old hotel, sure!&rdquo;
+       observed Sim Roxby, by way of introduction. &ldquo;Thar warn't much fightin'
+      hyar-abouts, an' few sure-enough soldiers ever kem along. But wunst in a
+      while a band o' guerrillas went through like a suddint wind-storm, an' I
+      tell ye they made things whurl while they war about it. They made a sorter
+      barracks o' the old place. Looks some like lightning hed struck it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had reined up his horse about one hundred yards in front of the
+      edifice, where the weed-grown gravelled drive&mdash;carefully tended ten
+      years agone&mdash;had diverged from the straight avenue of poplars,
+      sweeping in a circle around to the broad flight of steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though,&rdquo; he qualified abruptly, as if a sudden thought had struck him,
+      &ldquo;ef ye air countin' on buyin' it, a leetle money spent ter keerful purpose
+      will go a long way toward makin' it ez good ez new.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion did not reply, and for the first time Roxby cast upon him a
+      covert glance charged with the curiosity which would have been earlier and
+      more easily aroused in another man by the manner of the stranger. A letter&mdash;infrequent
+      missive in his experience&mdash;had come from an ancient
+      companion-in-arms, his former colonel, requesting him in behalf of a
+      friend of the old commander to repair to the railway station, thirty miles
+      distant, to meet and guide this prospective purchaser of the old hotel to
+      the site of the property. And now as Roxby looked at him the suspicion
+      which his kind heart had not been quick to entertain was seized upon by
+      his alert brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cunnel's been fooled somehows,&rdquo; he said to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the look with which John Dundas contemplated the place was not the
+      gaze of him concerned with possible investment&mdash;with the problems of
+      repair, the details of the glazier and the painter and the plasterer. The
+      mind was evidently neither braced for resistance nor resigned to despair,
+      as behooves one smitten by the foreknowledge of the certainty of the
+      excess of the expenditures over the estimates. Only with pensive, listless
+      melancholy, void of any intention, his eyes traversed the long rows of
+      open doors, riven by rude hands from their locks, swinging helplessly to
+      and fro in the wind, and giving to the deserted and desolate old place a
+      spurious air of motion and life. Many of the shutters had been wrenched
+      from their hinges, and lay rotting on the floors. The ball-room windows
+      caught on their shattered glass the reflection of the clouds, and it
+      seemed as if here and there a wan face looked through at the riders
+      wending along the weed-grown path. Where so many faces had been what
+      wonder that a similitude should linger in the loneliness! The pallid face
+      seemed to draw back as they glanced up while slowly pacing around the
+      drive. A rabbit sitting motionless on the front piazza did not draw back,
+      although observing them with sedate eyes as he poised himself upright on
+      his haunches, with his listless fore-paws suspended in the air, and it
+      occurred to Dundas that he was probably unfamiliar with the presence of
+      human beings, and had never heard the crack of a gun. A great swirl of
+      swallows came soaring out of the big kitchen chimneys and circled in the
+      sky, darting down again and again upward. Through an open passage was a
+      glimpse of a quadrangle, with its weed-grown spaces and litter of yellow
+      leaves. A tawny streak, a red fox, sped through it as Dundas looked. A
+      half-moon, all a-tilt, hung above it. He saw the glimmer through the bare
+      boughs of the leafless locust-trees here and there still standing,
+      although outside on the lawn many a stump bore token how ruthlessly the
+      bushwhackers had furnished their fires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That thar moon's a-hangin' fur rain,&rdquo; said the mountaineer, commenting
+      upon the aspect of the luminary, which he, too, had noticed as they
+      passed. &ldquo;I ain't s'prised none ef we hev fallin' weather agin 'fore day,
+      an' the man&mdash;by name Morgan Holden&mdash;that hev charge o' the hotel
+      property can't git back fur a week an' better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A vague wonder to find himself so suspicious flitted through his mind,
+      with the thought that perhaps the colonel might have reckoned on this
+      delay. &ldquo;Surely the ruvers down yander at Knoxville mus' be a-boomin', with
+      all this wet weather,&rdquo; he said to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then aloud: &ldquo;Morgan Holden he went ter Col-bury ter 'tend ter some
+      business in court, an' the ruvers hev riz so that, what with the bredges
+      bein' washed away an' the fords so onsartain an' tricky, he'll stay till
+      the ruver falls. He don't know ye war kemin', ye see. The mail-rider hev
+      quit, 'count o' the rise in the ruver, an' thar's no way ter git word ter
+      him. Still, ef ye air minded ter wait, I'll be powerful obligated fur yer
+      comp'ny down ter my house till the ruver falls an' Holden he gits back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger murmured his obligations, but his eyes dwelt lingeringly upon
+      the old hotel, with its flapping doors and its shattered windows. Through
+      the recurrent vistas of these, placed opposite in the rooms, came again
+      broken glimpses of the grassy space within the quadrangle, with its
+      leafless locust-trees, first of all to yield their foliage to the autumn
+      wind, where a tiny owl was shrilling stridulously under the lonely red sky
+      and the melancholy moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hed ye 'lowed ter, put up at the old hotel?&rdquo; asked Roxby, some inherent
+      quickness supplying the lack of a definite answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time the stranger turned upon him a look more expressive
+      than the casual fragmentary attention with which he had half heeded, half
+      ignored his talk since their first encounter at the railway station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A simple fellow, but good as gold,&rdquo; was the phrase with which Simeon
+      Roxby had been commended as guide and in some sort guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so simple, perhaps,&rdquo; the sophisticated man thought as their eyes met.
+      Not so simple but that the truth must serve. &ldquo;The colonel suggested that
+      it might be best,&rdquo; he replied, more alert to the present moment than his
+      languid preoccupation had heretofore permitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer was good as far as it went. A few days spent in the old
+      hostelry certainly would serve well to acquaint the prospective purchaser
+      with its actual condition and the measures and means needed for its
+      repair; but as Sim Roxby stood there, with the cry of the owl shrilling in
+      the desert air, the lonely red sky, the ominous tilted moon, the doors
+      drearily flapping to and fro as the wind stole into the forlorn and empty
+      place and sped back affrighted, he marvelled at the refuge contemplated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe there is some of the furniture here yet. We could contrive to
+      set up a bed from what is left. The colonel could make it all right with
+      Holden, and I could stay a day or two, as we originally planned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es. I don't mind Holden: a man ain't much in charge of a place ez
+      ain't got a lock or a key ter bless itself with, an' takes the owel an'
+      the fox an' the gopher fur boarders; but, ennyhow, kem with me home ter
+      supper. Mill'cent will hev it ready by now ennyhows, an' ye need suthin'
+      hearty an' hot ter stiffen ye up ter move inter sech quarters ez these.&rdquo;
+       Dundas hesitated, but the mountaineer had already taken assent for
+      granted, and pushed his horse into a sharp trot. Evidently a refusal was
+      not in order. Dundas pressed forward, and they rode together along the
+      winding way past the ten-pin alley, its long low roof half hidden in the
+      encroaching undergrowth springing up apace beneath the great trees; past
+      the stables; past a line of summer cottages, strangely staring of aspect
+      out of the yawning doors and windows, giving, instead of an impression of
+      vacancy, a sense of covert watching, of secret occupancy. If one's glances
+      were only quick enough, were there not faces pressed to those shattered
+      panes&mdash;scarcely seen&mdash;swiftly withdrawn?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was in a desert; he had hardly been so utterly alone in all his life;
+      yet he bore through the empty place a feeling of espionage, and ever and
+      anon he glanced keenly at the overgrown lawns, with their deepening drifts
+      of autumn leaves, at the staring windows and flaring doors, which emitted
+      sometimes sudden creaking wails in the silence, as if he sought to assure
+      himself of the vacancy of which his mind took cognizance and yet all his
+      senses denied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little of his sentiment, although sedulously cloaked, was lost on Sim
+      Roxby; and he was aware, too, in some subtle way, of the relief his guest
+      experienced when they plunged into the darkening forest and left the
+      forlorn place behind them. The clearing in which it was situated seemed an
+      oasis of light in the desert of night in which the rest of the world lay.
+      From the obscurity of the forest Dundas saw, through the vistas of the
+      giant trees, the clustering cottages, the great hotel, gables and chimneys
+      and tower, stark and distinct as in some weird dream-light in the midst of
+      the encircling gloom. The after-glow of sunset was still aflare on the
+      western windows; the whole empty place was alight with a reminiscence of
+      its old aspect&mdash;its old gay life. Who knows what memories were
+      a-stalk there&mdash;what semblance of former times? What might not the
+      darkness foster, the impunity of desertion, the associations that
+      inhabited the place with almost the strength of human occupancy itself?
+      Who knows&mdash;who knows?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remembered the scene afterward, the impression he received. And from
+      this, he thought, arose his regret for his decision to take up here his
+      abiding-place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The forest shut out the illumined landscape, and the night seemed indeed
+      at hand; the gigantic boles of the trees loomed through the encompassing
+      gloom, that was yet a semi-transparent medium, like some dark but clear
+      fluid through which objects were dimly visible, albeit tinged with its own
+      sombre hue. The lank, rawboned sorrel had set a sharp pace, to which the
+      chestnut, after momentary lagging, as if weary with the day's travel,
+      responded briskly. He had received in some way intimations that his
+      companion's corn-crib was near at hand, and if he had not deduced from
+      these premises the probability of sharing his fare, his mental processes
+      served him quite as well as reason, and brought him to the same result. On
+      and on they sped, neck and neck, through the darkening woods; fire flashed
+      now and again from their iron-shod hoofs; often a splash and a shower of
+      drops told of a swift dashing through the mud-holes that recent rains had
+      fostered in the shallows. The dank odor of dripping boughs came on the
+      clear air. Once the chestnut shied from a sudden strange shining point
+      springing up in the darkness close at hand, which the country-bred horse
+      discriminated as fox-fire, and kept steadily on, unmindful of the rotting
+      log where it glowed. Far in advance, in the dank depths of the woods, a
+      Will-o'-the-wisp danced and flickered and lured the traveller's eye. The
+      stranger was not sure of the different quality of another light, appearing
+      down a vista as the road turned, until the sorrel, making a tremendous
+      spurt, headed for it, uttering a joyous neigh at the sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deep-voiced barking of hounds rose melodiously on the silence, and as
+      the horses burst out of the woods into a small clearing, Dundas beheld in
+      the brighter light a half-dozen of the animals nimbly afoot in the road,
+      one springing over the fence, another in the act of climbing, his
+      fore-paws on the topmost rail, his long neck stretched, and his head
+      turning about in attitudes of observation. He evidently wished to assure
+      himself whether the excitement of his friends was warranted by the facts
+      before he troubled himself to vault over the fence. Three or four still
+      lingered near the door of a log-cabin, fawning about a girl who stood on
+      the porch. Her pose was alert, expectant; a fire in the dooryard, where
+      the domestic manufacture of soap had been in progress, cast a red flare on
+      the house, its appurtenances, the great dark forest looming all around,
+      and, more than the glow of the hearth within, lighted up the central
+      figure of the scene. She was tall, straight, and strong; a wealth of fair
+      hair was clustered in a knot at the back of her head, and fleecy tendrils
+      fell over her brow; on it was perched a soldier's-cap; and certainly more
+      gallant and fearless eyes had never looked out from under the straight,
+      stiff brim. Her chin, firm, round, dimpled, was uplifted as she raised her
+      head, descrying the horsemen's approach. She wore a full dark-red skirt, a
+      dark brown waist, and around her neck was twisted a gray cotton kerchief,
+      faded to a pale ashen hue, the neutrality of which somehow aided the
+      delicate brilliancy of the blended roseate and pearly tints of her face.
+      Was this the seer of ghosts&mdash;Dundas marvelled&mdash;this the
+      Millicent whose pallid and troubled phantom already-paced the foot-bridge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not realize that he had drawn up his horse suddenly at the sight of
+      her, nor did he notice that his host had dismounted, until Roxby was at
+      the chestnut's head, ready to lead the animal to supper in the barn. His
+      evident surprise, his preoccupation, were not lost upon Roxby, however.
+      His hand hesitated on the girth of the chestnut's saddle when he stood
+      between the two horses in the barn. He had half intended to disregard the
+      stranger's declination of his invitation, and stable the creature. Then he
+      shook his head slowly; the mystery that hung about the new-comer was not
+      reassuring. &ldquo;A heap o' wuthless cattle 'mongst them valley men,&rdquo; he said;
+      for the war had been in some sort an education to his simplicity. &ldquo;Let him
+      stay whar the cunnel expected him ter stay. I ain't wantin' no stranger
+      a-hangin' round about Mill'cent, nohow. Em'ry Keenan ain't a pattern o'
+      perfection, but I be toler'ble well acquainted with the cut o' his
+      foolishness, an' I know his daddy an' mammy, an' both sets o' gran'daddies
+      an' gran'mammies, an' I could tell ye exac'ly which one the critter got
+      his nose an' his mouth from, an' them lean sheep's-eyes o' his'n, an' nigh
+      every tone o' his voice. Em'ry never thunk afore ez I set store on bein'
+      acquainted with him. He 'lowed I knowed him <i>too</i> well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed as he glanced through the open door into the darkening
+      landscape. Horizontal gray clouds were slipping fast across the pearly
+      spaces of the sky. The yellow stubble gleamed among the brown earth of the
+      farther field, still striped with its furrows. The black forest encircled
+      the little cleared space, and a wind was astir among the tree-tops. A
+      white star gleamed through the broken clapboards of the roof, the fire
+      still flared under the soap-kettle in the dooryard, and the silence was
+      suddenly smitten by a high cracked old voice, which told him that his
+      mother had perceived the dismounted stranger at the gate, and was
+      graciously welcoming him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had come to the door, where the girl still stood, but half withdrawn
+      in the shadow. Dundas silently bowed as he passed her, following his aged
+      hostess into the low room, all bedight with the firelight of a huge
+      chimney-place, and comfortable with the realization of a journey's end.
+      The wilderness might stretch its weary miles around, the weird wind wander
+      in the solitudes, the star look coldly on unmoved by aught it beheld, the
+      moon show sad portents, but at the door they all failed, for here waited
+      rest and peace and human companionship and the sense of home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a cheer, stranger, an' make yerself at home. Powerful glad ter see
+      ye&mdash;-war 'feard night would overtake ye. Ye fund the water toler'ble
+      high in all the creeks an' sech, I reckon, an' fords shifty an' onsartain.
+      Yes, sir. Fall rains kem on earlier'n common, an' more'n we need. Wisht we
+      could divide it with that thar drought we had in the summer. Craps war cut
+      toler'ble short, sir&mdash;toler'ble short.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Roxby's spectacles beamed upon him with an expression of the utmost
+      benignity as the firelight played on the lenses, but her eyes peering over
+      them seemed endowed in some sort with independence of outlook. It was as
+      if from behind some bland mask a critical observation was poised for
+      unbiased judgment. He felt in some degree under surveillance. But when a
+      light step heralded an approach he looked up, regardless of the betrayal
+      of interest, and bent a steady gaze upon Millicent as she paused in the
+      doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as she stood there, distinct in the firelight and outlined against the
+      black background of the night, she seemed some modern half-military ideal
+      of Diana, with her two gaunt hounds beside her, the rest of the pack
+      vaguely glimpsed at her heels outside, the perfect outline and chiselling
+      of her features, her fine, strong, supple figure, the look of steady
+      courage in her eyes, and the soldier's cap on her fair hair. Her face so
+      impressed itself upon his mind that he seemed to have seen her often. It
+      was some resemblance to a picture of a vivandière, doubtless, in a foreign
+      gallery&mdash;he could not say when or where; a remnant of a tourist's
+      overcrowded impressions; a half-realized reminiscence, he thought, with an
+      uneasy sense of recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Mill'cent! home agin!&rdquo; Roxby cried, in cheery greeting as he
+      entered at the back door opposite. &ldquo;What sorter topknot is that ye got
+      on?&rdquo; he demanded, looking jocosely at her head-gear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl put up her hand with an expression of horror. A deep red flush
+      dyed her cheek as she touched the cap. &ldquo;I forgot 'twar thar,&rdquo; she
+      murmured, contritely. Then, with a sudden rush of anger as she tore it
+      off: &ldquo;'Twar granny's fault. She axed me ter put it on, so ez ter see which
+      one I looked most like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stranger,&rdquo; quavered the old woman, with a painful break in her voice, &ldquo;I
+      los' fower sons in the war, an' Mill'cent hev got the fambly favor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye <i>mought</i> hev let me know ez I war a-perlitin' round in this hyar
+      men's gear yit,&rdquo; the girl muttered, as she hung the cap on a prong of the
+      deer antlers on which rested the rifle of the master of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roxby's face had clouded at the mention of the four sons who had gone out
+      from the mountains never to return, leaving to their mother's aching heart
+      only the vague comfort of an elusive resemblance in a girl's face; but as
+      he noted Millicent's pettish manner, and divined her mortification because
+      of her unseemly head-gear in the stranger's presence, he addressed her
+      again in that jocose tone without which he seldom spoke to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/006.jpg" alt="Warn't You-uns Apologizin' Ter Me 006 "   width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Warn't you-uns apologizin' ter me t'other day fur not bein' a nephew
+      'stiddier a niece? Looked sorter like a nephew ter-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head, covered now only with its own charming tresses waving
+      in thick undulations to the coil at the nape of her neck&mdash;a trifle
+      dishevelled from the rude haste with which the cap had been torn off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roxby had seated himself, and with his elbows on his knees he looked up at
+      her with a teasing jocularity, such as one might assume toward a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Ye war</i>,&rdquo; he declared, with affected solemnity&mdash;&ldquo;ye war
+      'pologizin' fur not bein' a nephew, an' 'lowed ef ye war a nephew we could
+      go a-huntin' tergether, an' ye could holp me in all my quar'ls an' fights.
+      I been aging some lately, an' ef I war ter go ter the settlemint an' git
+      inter a fight I mought not be able ter hold my own. Think what 'twould be
+      ter a pore old man ter hev a dutiful nephew step up an'&rdquo;&mdash;he doubled
+      his fists and squared off&mdash;&ldquo;jes' let daylight through some o' them
+      cusses. An' didn't <i>ye say</i>&rdquo;&mdash;he dropped his belligerent
+      attitude and pointed an insistent finger at her, as if to fix the matter
+      in her recollection&mdash;&ldquo;ef ye war a nephew 'stiddier a niece ye could
+      fire a gun 'thout shettin' yer eyes? An' I told ye then ez that would mend
+      yer aim mightily. I told ye that I'd be powerful mortified ef I hed a
+      nephew ez hed ter shet his eyes ter keep the noise out'n his ears whenst
+      he fired a rifle. The tale would go mighty hard with me at the
+      settlemint.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's eyes glowed upon him with the fixity and the lustre of those of
+      a child who is entertained and absorbed by an elder's jovial wiles. A
+      flash of laughter broke over her face, and the low, gurgling, half-dreamy
+      sound was pleasant to hear. She was evidently no more than a child to
+      these bereft old people, and by them cherished as naught else on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' didn't <i>I tell you-uns,</i>&rdquo; he went on, affecting to warm to the
+      discussion, and in reality oblivious of the presence of the guest'&mdash;&ldquo;didn't
+      I tell ye ez how ef ye war a nephew 'stiddier a niece ye wouldn't hev sech
+      cattle ez Em'ry Keenan a-dan-glin' round underfoot, like a puppy ye can't
+      gin away, an' that <i>won't</i> git lost, an' ye ain't got the heart ter
+      kill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's lip suddenly curled with scorn. &ldquo;Yer nephew would be obligated
+      ter make a ch'ice fur marryin' 'mongst these hyar mounting gals&mdash;Par-mely
+      Lepstone, or Belindy M'ria Matthews, or one o' the Windrow gals. Waal,
+      sir, I'd ruther be yer niece&mdash;even ef Em'ry Keenan <i>air</i> like a
+      puppy underfoot, that ye can't gin away, an' won't git lost, an' ye ain't
+      got the heart ter kill.&rdquo; She laughed again, showing her white teeth. She
+      evidently relished the description of the persistent adherence of poor
+      Emory Keenan. &ldquo;But which one o' these hyar gals would ye recommend ter yer
+      nephew ter marry&mdash;ef ye hed a nephew?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with flashing eyes, conscious of having propounded a
+      poser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated for a moment. Then&mdash;&ldquo;I'm surrounded,&rdquo; he said, with a
+      laugh. &ldquo;Ez I couldn't find a wife fur myself, I can't undertake ter
+      recommend one ter my nephew. Mighty fine boy he'd hev been, an'
+      saaft-spoken an' perlite ter aged men&mdash;not sassy an' makin' game o'
+      old uncles like a niece. Mighty fine boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye air welcome ter him,&rdquo; she said, with a simulation of scorn, as she
+      turned away to the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether it were the military cap she had worn, or the fancied resemblance
+      to the young soldiers, never to grow old, who had gone forth from this
+      humble abode to return no more, there was still to the guest's mind the
+      suggestion of the vivandière about her as she set the table and spread
+      upon it the simple fare. To and from the fireplace she was followed by two
+      or three of the younger dogs, their callowness expressed in their lack of
+      manners and perfervid interest in the approaching meal. This induced their
+      brief journeys back and forth, albeit embarrassed by their physical
+      conformation, short turns on four legs not being apparently the easy thing
+      it would seem from so much youthful suppleness. The dignity of the elder
+      hounds did not suffer them to move, but they looked on from erect postures
+      about the hearth with glistening eyes and slobbering jaws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever and anon the deep blue eyes of Millicent were lifted to the outer
+      gloom, as if she took note of its sinister aspect. She showed scant
+      interest in the stranger, whose gaze seldom left her as he sat beside the
+      fire. He was a handsome man, his face and figure illumined by the
+      firelight, and it might have been that he felt a certain pique, an
+      unaccustomed slight, in that his presence was so indifferent an element in
+      the estimation of any young and comely specimen of the feminine sex.
+      Certainly he had rarely encountered such absolute preoccupation as her
+      smiling far-away look betokened as she went back and forth with her young
+      canine friends at her heels, or stood at the table deftly slicing the
+      salt-rising bread, the dogs poised skilfully upon their hind-legs to
+      better view the appetizing performance; whenever she turned her face
+      toward them they laid their heads languish-ingly askew, as if to remind
+      her that supper could not be more fitly bestowed than on them. One, to
+      steady himself, placed unobserved his fore-paw on the edge of the table,
+      his well-padded toes leaving a vague imprint as of fingers upon the coarse
+      white cloth; but John Dundas was a sportsman, and could the better relax
+      an exacting nicety where so pleasant-featured and affable a beggar was
+      concerned. He forgot the turmoils of his own troubles as he gazed at
+      Millicent, the dreary aspect of the solitudes without, the exile from his
+      accustomed sphere of culture and comfort, the poverty and coarseness of
+      her surroundings. He was sorry that he had declined a longer lease of
+      Roxby's hospitality, and it was in his mind to reconsider when it should
+      be again proffered. Her attitude, her gesture, her face, her environment,
+      all appealed to his sense of beauty, his interest, his curiosity, as
+      little ever had done heretofore. Slice after slice of the firm fragrant
+      bread was deftly cut and laid on the plate, as again and again she lifted
+      her eyes with a look that might seem to expect to rest on summer in the
+      full flush of a June noontide without, rather than on the wan, wintry
+      night sky and the plundered, quaking woods, while the robber wind sped on
+      his raids hither and thither so swiftly that none might follow, so
+      stealthily that none might hinder. A sudden radiance broke upon her face,
+      a sudden shadow fell on the firelit floor, and there was entering at the
+      doorway a tall, lithe young mountaineer, whose first glance, animated with
+      a responsive brightness, was for the girl, but whose punctilious greeting
+      was addressed to the old woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Howdy, Mis' Roxby&mdash;howdy? Air yer rheumatics mendin' enny?&rdquo; he
+      demanded, with the condolent suavity of the would-be son-in-law, or
+      grand-son-in-law, as the case may be. And he hung with a transfixed
+      interest upon her reply, prolix and discursive according to the wont of
+      those who cultivate &ldquo;rheumatics,&rdquo; as if each separate twinge racked his
+      own sympathetic and filial sensibilities. Not until the tale was ended did
+      he set his gun against the wall and advance to the seat which Roxby had
+      indicated with the end of the stick he was whittling. He observed the
+      stranger with only slight interest, till Dundas drew up his chair opposite
+      at the table. There the light from the tallow dip, guttering in the
+      centre, fell upon his handsome face and eyes, his carefully tended beard
+      and hair, his immaculate cuffs and delicate hand, the seal-ring on his
+      taper finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a gal, by gum!&rdquo; thought Emory Keenan. &ldquo;Rings on his fingers&mdash;yit
+      six feet high!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at his elders, marvelling that they so hospitably repressed the
+      disgust which this effeminate adornment must occasion, forgetting that it
+      was possible that they did not even observe it. In the gala-days of the
+      old hotel, before the war, they had seen much &ldquo;finicking finery&rdquo; in garb
+      and equipage and habits affected by the <i>jeunesse dorée</i> who
+      frequented the place in those halcyon times, and were accustomed to such
+      details. It might be that they and Millicent approved such flimsy
+      daintiness. He began to fume inwardly with a sense of inferiority in her
+      estimation. One of his fingers had been frosted last winter, and with the
+      first twinge of cold weather it was beginning to look very red and sad and
+      clumsy, as if it had just remembered its ancient woe; he glanced from it
+      once more at the delicate ringed hand of the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dundas was looking up with a slow, deferential, decorous smile that
+      nevertheless lightened and transfigured his expression. It seemed somehow
+      communicated to Millicent's face as she looked down at him from beneath
+      her white eyelids and long, thick, dark lashes, for she was standing
+      beside him, handing him the plate of bread. Then, still smiling, she
+      passed noiselessly on to the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emory was indeed clumsy, for he had stretched his hand downward to offer a
+      morsel to a friend of his under the table&mdash;he was on terms of
+      exceeding amity with the four-footed members of the household&mdash;and in
+      his absorption not withdrawing it as swiftly as one accustomed to canine
+      manners should do, he had his frosted finger well mumbled before he could,
+      as it were, repossess himself of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what they charge fur iron over yander at the settlemint, Em'ry?&rdquo;
+       observed Sim Roxby presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dun'no', sir,&rdquo; responded Emory, glumly, his sullen black eyes full of
+      smouldering fire&mdash;&ldquo;hevin' no call ter know, ez I ain't no
+      blacksmith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I war jes' wonderin' ef tenpenny nails didn't cost toler'ble high ez
+      reg'lar feed,&rdquo; observed Roxby, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his mother laughed out with a gleeful cracked treble, always a ready
+      sequence of her son's rustic sallies. &ldquo;He got ye that time, Em'ry,&rdquo; she
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A forced smile crossed Emory's face. He tossed back his tangled dark hair
+      with a gasp that was like the snort of an unruly horse submitting to the
+      inevitable, but with restive projects in his brain. &ldquo;I let the dog hyar
+      ketch my finger whilst feedin' him,&rdquo; he said. His plausible excuse for the
+      ten-penny expression was complete; but he added, his darker mood recurring
+      instantly, &ldquo;An', Mis' Roxby, I hev put a stop ter them ez hev tuk ter
+      callin' me Em'ly, I hev.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman looked up, her small wrinkled mouth round and amazed. &ldquo;<i>I</i>
+      never called ye Emily,&rdquo; she declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swift repentance seized him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naw, 'm,&rdquo; he said, with hurried propitiation. &ldquo;I 'lowed ye did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't,&rdquo; said the old woman. &ldquo;But ef I warter find it toothsome ter
+      call ye 'Emily,' I dun'no' how ye air goin' ter pervent it. Ye can't go
+      gun-nin' fur me, like ye done fur the men at the mill, fur callin' ye
+      'Emily.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Law, Mis' Roxby!&rdquo; he could only exclaim, in his horror and contrition at
+      this picture he had thus conjured up. &ldquo;Ye air welcome ter call me
+      ennything ye air a mind ter,&rdquo; he protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he gasped once more. The eyes of the guest, contemptuous, amused,
+      seeing through him, were fixed upon him. And he himself had furnished the
+      lily-handed stranger with the information that he had been stigmatized
+      &ldquo;Em'ly&rdquo; in the banter of his associates, until he had taken up arms, as it
+      were, to repress this derision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It takes powerful little ter put ye down, Em'ry,&rdquo; said Roxby, with
+      rallying laughter. &ldquo;Mam hev sent ye skedaddlin' in no time at all. I don't
+      b'lieve the Lord made woman out'n the man's rib. He made her out'n the
+      man's backbone; fur the man ain't hed none ter speak of sence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Millicent, with a low gurgle of laughter, sat down beside Emory at the
+      table, and fixed her eyes, softly lighted with mirth, upon him. The others
+      too had laughed, the stranger with a flattering intonation, but young
+      Keenan looked at her with a dumb appealing humility that did not
+      altogether fail of its effect, for she busied herself to help his plate
+      with an air of proprietorship as if he were a child, and returned it with
+      a smile very radiant and sufficient at close range. She then addressed
+      herself to her own meal. The young dogs under the table ceased to beg, and
+      gambolled and gnawed and tugged at her stout little shoes, the sound of
+      their callow mirthful growls rising occasionally above the talk. Sometimes
+      she rose again to wait on the table, when they came leaping out after her,
+      jumping and catching at her skirts, now and then casting themselves on the
+      ground prone before her feet, and rolling over and over in the sheer joy
+      of existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger took little part in the talk at the table. Never a question
+      was asked him as to his mission in the mountains, or the length of his
+      stay, his vocation, or his home. That extreme courtesy of the
+      mountaineers, exemplified in their singular abstinence from any
+      expressions of curiosity, accepted such account of himself as he had
+      volunteered, and asked for no more. In the face of this standard of
+      manners any inquisitiveness on his part, such as might have elicited
+      points of interest for his merely momentary entertainment, was tabooed.
+      Nevertheless, silent though he was for the most part, the relish with
+      which he listened, his half-covert interest in the girl, his quick
+      observation of the others, the sudden very apparent enlivening of his
+      mental atmosphere, betokened that his quarters were not displeasing to
+      him. It seemed only a short time before the meal was ended and the circle
+      all, save Millicent, with pipes alight before the fire again. The dogs,
+      well fed, had ranged themselves on the glowing hearth, lying prone on the
+      hot stones; one old hound, however, who conserved the air of listening to
+      the conversation, sat upright and nodded from time to time, now and again
+      losing his balance and tipping forward in a truly human fashion, then
+      gazing round on the circle with an open luminous eye, as who should say he
+      had not slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all very cheerful within, but outside the wind still blared
+      mournfully. Once more Dundas was sorry that he had declined the invitation
+      to remain, and it was with a somewhat tentative intention that he made a
+      motion to return to the hotel. But his host seemed to regard his
+      resolution as final, and rose with a regret, not an insistence. The two
+      women stared in silent amazement at the mere idea of his camping out, as
+      it were, in the old hotel. The ascendency of masculine government here,
+      notwithstanding Roxby's assertion that Eve was made of Adam's backbone,
+      was very apparent in their mute acquiescence and the alacrity with which
+      they began to collect various articles, according to his directions, to
+      make the stranger's stay more comfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Em'ry kin go along an' holp,&rdquo; he said, heartlessly; for poor Emory's joy
+      in perceiving that the guest was not a fixture, and that his presence was
+      not to be an embargo on any word between himself and Millicent during the
+      entire evening, was pitiably manifest. But the situation was still not
+      without its comforts, since Dundas was to go too. Hence he was not poor
+      company when once in the saddle, and was civil to a degree of which his
+      former dismayed surliness had given no promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Night had become a definite element. The twilight had fled. Above their
+      heads, as they galloped through the dank woods, the bare boughs of the
+      trees clashed together&mdash;so high above their heads that to the town
+      man, unaccustomed to these great growths, the sound seemed not of the
+      vicinage, but unfamiliar, uncanny, and more than once he checked his horse
+      to listen. As they approached the mountain's verge and overlooked the
+      valley and beheld the sky, the sense of the predominance of darkness was
+      redoubled. The ranges gloomed against the clearer spaces, but a cloud,
+      deep gray with curling white edges, was coming up from the west, with an
+      invisible convoy of vague films, beneath which the stars, glimmering white
+      points, disappeared one by one. The swift motion of this aerial fleet
+      sailing with the wind might be inferred from the seemingly hurried pace of
+      the moon making hard for the west. Still bright was the illumined segment,
+      but despite its glitter the shadowy space of the full disk was distinctly
+      visible, its dusky field spangled with myriads of minute, dully golden
+      points. Down, down it took its way in haste&mdash;in disordered fright, it
+      seemed, as if it had no heart to witness the storm which the wind and the
+      clouds foreboded&mdash;to fairer skies somewhere behind those western
+      mountains. Soon even its vague light would encroach no more upon the
+      darkness. The great hotel would be invisible, annihilated as it were in
+      the gloom, and not even thus dimly exist, glimmering, alone, forlorn, so
+      incongruous to the wilderness that it seemed even now some mere figment of
+      the brain, as the two horsemen came with a freshened burst of speed along
+      the deserted avenue and reined up beside a small gate at the side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No use ter ride all the way around,&rdquo; observed Emory Keenan. &ldquo;Mought jes
+      ez well 'light an' hitch hyar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The moon gave him the escort of a great grotesque shadow as he threw
+      himself from his horse and passed the reins over a decrepit hitching-post
+      near at hand. Then he essayed the latch of the small gate. He glanced up
+      at Dundas, the moonlight in his dark eyes, with a smile as it resisted his
+      strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a fairly good-looking fellow when rid of the self-consciousness of
+      jealousy. His eyes, mouth, chin, and nose, acquired from reliable and
+      recognizable sources, were good features, and statuesque in their
+      immobility beneath the drooping curves of his broad soft hat. He was tall,
+      with the slenderness of youth, despite his evident weight and strength. He
+      was long-waisted and lithe and small of girth, with broad square
+      shoulders, whose play of muscles as he strove with the gate was not
+      altogether concealed by the butternut jeans coat belted in with his
+      pistols by a broad leathern belt. His boots reached high on his long legs,
+      and jingled with a pair of huge cavalry spurs. His stalwart strength
+      seemed as if it must break the obdurate gate rather than open it, but
+      finally, with a rasping creak, dismally loud in the silence, it swung
+      slowly back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young mountaineer stood gazing for a moment at the red rust on the
+      hinges. &ldquo;How long sence this gate must hev been opened afore?&rdquo; he said,
+      again looking up at Dundas with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow the words struck a chill to the stranger's heart. The sense of the
+      loneliness of the place, of isolation, filled him with a sort of awe. The
+      night-bound wilderness itself was not more daunting than these solitary
+      tiers of piazzas, these vacant series of rooms and corridors, all instinct
+      with vanished human presence, all alert with echoes of human voices. A
+      step, a laugh, a rustle of garments&mdash;he could have sworn he heard
+      them at any open doorway as he followed his guide along the dim moonlit
+      piazza, with its pillars duplicated at regular intervals by the shadows on
+      the floor. How their tread echoed down these lonely ways! From the
+      opposite side of the house he heard Kee-nan's spurs jangling, his
+      soldierly stride sounding back as if their entrance had roused barracks.
+      He winced once to see his own shadow with its stealthier movement. It
+      seemed painfully furtive. For the first time during the evening his jaded
+      mind, that had instinctively sought the solace of contemplating trifles,
+      reverted to its own tormented processes. &ldquo;Am I not hiding?&rdquo; he said to
+      himself, in a sort of sarcastic pity of his plight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea seemed never to enter the mind of the transparent Keenan. He
+      laughed out gayly as they turned into the weed-grown quadrangle, and the
+      red fox that Dundas had earlier observed slipped past him with affrighted
+      speed and dashed among the shadows of the dense shrubbery of the old lawn
+      without. Again and again the sound rang back from wall to wall, first with
+      the jollity of seeming imitation, then with an appalled effect sinking to
+      silence, and suddenly rising again in a grewsome <i>staccato</i> that
+      suggested some terrible unearthly laughter, and bore but scant resemblance
+      to the hearty mirth which had evoked it Keenan paused and looked back with
+      friendly gleaming eyes. &ldquo;Oughter been a leetle handier with these hyar
+      consarns,&rdquo; he said, touching the pistols in his belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It vaguely occurred to Dundas that the young man went strangely heavily
+      armed for an evening visit at a neighbor's house. But it was a lawless
+      country and lawless times, and the sub-current of suggestion did not
+      definitely fix itself in his mind until he remembered it later. He was
+      looking into each vacant open doorway, seeing the still moonlight starkly
+      white upon the floor; the cobwebbed and broken window-panes, through which
+      a section of leafless trees beyond was visible; bits of furniture here and
+      there, broken by the vandalism of the guerillas. Now and then a scurrying
+      movement told of a gopher, hiding too, and on one mantel-piece, the black
+      fireplace yawning below, sat a tiny tawny-tinted owl, whose motionless
+      beadlike eyes met his with a stare of stolid surprise. After he had
+      passed, its sudden ill-omened cry set the silence to shuddering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Keenan, leading the way, paused in displeasure. &ldquo;I wisht I hed viewed that
+      critter,&rdquo; he said, glumly. &ldquo;I'd hev purvented that screechin' ter call the
+      devil, sure. It's jes a certain sign o' death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was about to turn, to wreak his vengeance, perchance. But the bird,
+      sufficiently fortunate itself, whatever woe it presaged for others,
+      suddenly took its awkward flight through sheen and shadow across the
+      quadrangle, and when they heard its cry again it came from some remote
+      section of the building, with a doleful echo as a refrain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The circumstance was soon forgotten by Keenan. He seemed a happy,
+      mercurial, lucid nature, and he began presently to dwell with interest on
+      the availability of the old music-stand in the centre of the square as a
+      manger. &ldquo;Hyar,&rdquo; he said, striking the rotten old structure with a heavy
+      hand, which sent a quiver and a thrill through all the timbers&mdash;&ldquo;hyar's
+      whar the guerillas always hitched thar beastises. Thar feed an' forage war
+      piled up thar on the fiddlers' seats. Ye can't do no better'n ter pattern
+      arter them, till ye git ready ter hev fiddlers an' sech a-sawin' away in
+      hyar agin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he sauntered away from the little pavilion, followed by Dundas, who
+      had not accepted his suggestion of a room on the first floor as being less
+      liable to leakage, but finally made choice of an inner apartment in the
+      second story. He looked hard at Keenan, when he stood in the doorway
+      surveying the selection. The room opened into a cross-hall which gave upon
+      a broad piazza that was latticed; tiny squares of moonlight were all
+      sharply drawn on the floor, and, seen through a vista of gray shadow,
+      seemed truly of a gilded lustre. From the windows of this room on a
+      court-yard no light Could be visible to any passer-by without. Another
+      door gave on an inner gallery, and through its floor a staircase came up
+      from the quadrangle close to the threshold. Dundas wondered if these
+      features were of possible significance in Keenan's estimation. The young
+      mountaineer turned suddenly, and snatching up a handful of slats broken
+      from the shutters, remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's see how the chimbly draws&mdash;that's the main p'int.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no defect in the chimney's constitution. It drew admirably, and
+      with the white and red flames dancing in the fireplace, two or three
+      chairs, more or less disabled, a table, and an upholstered lounge gathered
+      at random from the rooms near at hand, the possibility of sojourning
+      comfortably for a few days in the deserted hostelry seemed amply assured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more Dundas gazed fixedly at the face of the young mountaineer, who
+      still bent on one knee on the hearth, watching with smiling eyes the
+      triumphs of his fire-making. It seemed to him afterwards that his judgment
+      was strangely at fault; he perceived naught of import in the shallow
+      brightness of the young man's eyes, like the polished surface of jet; in
+      the instability of his jealousy, his anger; in his hap-hazard, mercurial
+      temperament. Once he might have noted how flat were the spaces beneath the
+      eyes, how few were the lines that defined the lid, the socket, the curve
+      of the cheekbone, the bridge of the nose, and how expressionless. It was
+      doubtless the warmth and glow of the fire, the clinging desire of
+      companionship, the earnest determination to be content, pathetic in one
+      who had but little reason for optimism, that caused him to ignore the
+      vacillating glancing moods that successively swayed Keenan, strong while
+      they lasted, but with scanty augury because of their evanescence. He was
+      like some newly discovered property in physics of untried potentialities,
+      of which nothing is ascertained but its uncertainties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet he seemed to Dundas a simple country fellow, good-natured in the
+      main, unsuspicious, and helpful. So, giving a long sigh of relief and
+      fatigue, Dundas sank down in one of the large arm-chairs that had once
+      done duty for the summer loungers on the piazza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the light of the fire Emory was once more looking at him. A certain air
+      of distinction, a grace and ease of movement, an indescribable quality of
+      bearing which he could not discriminate, yet which he instinctively
+      recognized as superior, offended him in some sort. He noticed again the
+      ring on the stranger's hand as he drew off his glove. Gloves! Emory Keen
+      an would as soon have thought of wearing a petticoat. Once more the fear
+      that these effeminate graces found favor in Millicent's estimation smote
+      upon his heart. It made the surface of his opaque eyes glisten as Dundas
+      rose and took up a pipe and tobacco-pouch which he had laid on the
+      mantelpiece, his full height and fine figure shown in the changed posture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ez tall ez me, ef not taller, an', by gum! a good thirty pound heavier,&rdquo;
+       Emory reflected, with, a growing dismay that he had not those stalwart
+      claims to precedence in height and weight as an offset to the smoother
+      fascinations of the stranger's polish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had risen hastily to his feet. He would not linger to smoke fraternally
+      over the fire, and thus cement friendly relations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guided him hyar, like old Sim Roxby axed me ter do, an' that's all. I
+      ain't keerin' ef I never lay eyes on him again,&rdquo; he said to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going?&rdquo; said Dundas, pleasantly, noticing the motion. &ldquo;You'll look in
+      again, won't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wunst in a while, I reckon,&rdquo; drawled Keenan, a trifle thrown off his
+      balance by this courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused at the door, looking back over his shoulder for a moment at the
+      illumined room, then stepped out into the night, leaving the tenant of the
+      lonely old house filling his pipe by the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His tread rang along the deserted gallery, and sudden echoes came tramping
+      down the vacant halls as if many a denizen of the once populous place was
+      once more astir within its walls. Long after Dundas had heard him spring
+      from the lower piazza to the ground, and the rusty gate clang behind him,
+      vague footfalls were audible far away, and were still again, and once more
+      a pattering tread in some gaunt and empty apartment near at hand, faint
+      and fainter yet, till he hardly knew whether it were the reverberations of
+      sound or fancy that held his senses in thrall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when all was still and silent at last he felt less solitary than when
+      these elusive tokens of human presence were astir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late, late he sat over the dwindling embers. His mind, no longer diverted
+      by the events of the day, recurred with melancholy persistence to a theme
+      which even they, although fraught with novelty and presage of danger, had
+      not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril dulled, the craft of
+      sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him in these dim watches of
+      the night. Self-reproach had found him out here, defenceless so far from
+      the specious wiles and ways of men. All the line of provocations seemed
+      slight, seemed naught, as he reviewed them and balanced them against a
+      human life. True, it was not in some mad quarrel that his skill had taken
+      it and had served to keep his own&mdash;a duel, a fair fight, strictly
+      regular according to the code of &ldquo;honorable men&rdquo; for ages past&mdash;and
+      he sought to argue that it was doubtless but the morbid sense of the wild
+      fastnesses without, the illimitable vastness of the black night, the
+      unutterable indurability of nature to the influences of civilization,
+      which made it taste like murder. He had brought away even from the scene
+      of action, to which he had gone with decorous deliberation&mdash;his
+      worldly affairs arranged for the possibility of death, his will made, his
+      volition surrendered, and his sacred honor in the hands of his seconds&mdash;a
+      humiliating recollection of the sudden revulsion of the aspect of all
+      things; the criminal sense of haste with which he was hurried away after
+      that first straight shot; the agitation, nay, the fright of his seconds;
+      their eagerness to be swiftly rid of him, their insistence that he should
+      go away for a time, get out of the country, out of the embarrassing
+      purview of the law, which was prone to regard the matter as he himself saw
+      it now, and which had an ugly trick of calling things by their right names
+      in the sincere phraseology of an indictment. And thus it was that he was
+      here, remote from all the usual lines of flight, with his affectation of
+      being a possible purchaser for the old hotel, far from the railroad, the
+      telegraph, even the postal service. Some time&mdash;soon, indeed, it might
+      be, when the first flush of excitement and indignation should be overpast,
+      and the law, like a barking dog that will not bite, should have noisily
+      exhausted the gamut of its devoirs&mdash;he would go back and live
+      according to his habit in his wonted place, as did other men whom he had
+      known to be &ldquo;called out,&rdquo; and who had survived their opponents. Meantime
+      he heard the ash crumble; he saw the lighted room wane from glancing
+      yellow to a dull steady red, and so to dusky brown; he marked the wind
+      rise, and die away, and come again, banging the doors of the empty rooms,
+      and setting timbers all strangely to creaking as under sudden trampling
+      feet; then lift into the air with a rustling sound like the stir of
+      garments and the flutter of wings, calling out weirdly in the great voids
+      of the upper atmosphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had welcomed the sense of fatigue earlier in the evening, for it
+      promised sleep. Now it had slipped away from him. He was strong and young,
+      and the burning sensation that the frosty air had left on his face was the
+      only token of the long journey. It seemed as if he would never sleep again
+      as he lay on the lounge watching the gray ash gradually overgrow the
+      embers, till presently only a vague dull glow gave intimation of the
+      position of the hearth in the room. And then, bereft of this dim sense of
+      companionship, he stared wide-eyed in the darkness, feeling the only
+      creature alive and awake in all the world. No; the fox was suddenly
+      barking within the quadrangle&mdash;a strangely wild and alien tone. And
+      presently he heard the animal trot past his door on the piazza, the
+      cushioned footfalls like those of a swift dog. He thought with a certain
+      anxiety of the tawny tiny owl that had sat like a stuffed ornament on the
+      mantel-piece of a neighboring room, and he listened with a quaking
+      vicarious presentiment of woe for the sounds of capture and despair. He
+      was sensible of waiting and hoping for the fox's bootless return, when he
+      suddenly lost consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How long he slept he did not know, but it seemed only a momentary respite
+      from the torture of memory, when, still in the darkness, thousands of
+      tremulous penetrating sounds were astir, and with a great start he
+      recognized the rain on the roof. It was coming down in steady torrents
+      that made the house rock before the tumult of his plunging heart was
+      still, and he was longing again for the forgetfulness of sleep. In vain.
+      The hours dragged by; the windows slowly, slowly denned their dull gray
+      squares against the dull gray day dawning without. The walls that had been
+      left with only the first dark coat of plaster, awaiting another season for
+      the final decoration, showed their drapings of cobweb, and the names and
+      pencilled scribblings with which the fancy of transient bushwhackers had
+      chosen to deface them. The locust-trees within the quadrangle drearily
+      tossed their branches to and fro in the wind, the bark very black and
+      distinct against the persistent gray lines of rain and the white walls of
+      the galleried buildings opposite; the gutters were brimming, roaring along
+      like miniature torrents; nowhere was the fox or the owl to be seen.
+      Somehow their presence would have been a relief&mdash;the sight of any
+      living thing reassuring. As he walked slowly along the deserted piazzas,
+      in turning sudden corners, again and again he paused, expecting that
+      something, some one, was approaching to meet him. When at last he mounted
+      his horse, that had neighed gleefully to see him, and rode away through
+      the avenue and along the empty ways among the untenanted summer cottages,
+      all the drearier and more forlorn because of the rain, he felt as if he
+      had left an aberration, some hideous dream, behind, instead of the stark
+      reality of the gaunt and vacant and dilapidated old house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The transition to the glow and cheer of Sim Roxby's fireside was like a
+      rescue, a restoration. The smiling welcome in the women's eyes, their soft
+      drawling voices, with mellifluous intonations that gave a value to each
+      commonplace simple word, braced his nerves like a tonic. It might have
+      been only the contrast with the recollections of the night, with the
+      prospect visible through the open door&mdash;the serried lines of rain
+      dropping aslant from the gray sky and elusively outlined against the dark
+      masses of leafless woods that encircled the clearing; the dooryard half
+      submerged with puddles of a clay-brown tint, embossed always with myriads
+      of protruding drops of rain, for however they melted away the downpour
+      renewed them, and to the eye they were stationary, albeit pervaded with a
+      continual tremor&mdash;but somehow he was cognizant of a certain coddling
+      tenderness in the old woman's manner that might have been relished by a
+      petted child, an unaffected friendliness in the girl's clear eyes. They
+      made him sit close to the great wood fire; the blue and yellow flames
+      gushed out from the piles of hickory logs, and the bed of coals gleamed at
+      red and white heat beneath. They took his hat to carefully dry it, and
+      they spread out his cloak on two chairs at one side of the room, where it
+      dismally dripped. When he ventured to sneeze, Mrs. Roxby compounded and
+      administered a &ldquo;yerb tea,&rdquo; a sovereign remedy against colds, which he
+      tasted on compulsion and in great doubt, and swallowed with alacrity and
+      confidence, finding its basis the easily recognizable &ldquo;toddy.&rdquo; He had
+      little knowledge how white and troubled his face had looked as he came in
+      from the gray day, how strongly marked were those lines of sharp mental
+      distress, how piteously apparent was his mute appeal for sympathy and
+      comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mill'cent,&rdquo; said the old woman in the shed-room, as they washed and wiped
+      the dishes after the cozy breakfast of venison and corn-dodgers and honey
+      and milk, &ldquo;that thar man hev run agin the law, sure's ye air born.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Millicent turned her reflective fair face, that seemed whiter and more
+      delicate in the damp dark day, and looked doubtfully out over the fields,
+      where the water ran in steely lines in the furrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mus' hev been by accident or suthin'. <i>He</i> ain't no hardened
+      sinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; the old woman commented upon her reluctant acquiescence. &ldquo;I
+      ain't keerin' for the law! 'Tain't none o' my job. The tomfool men make
+      an' break it. Ennybody ez hev seen this war air obleeged to take note o'
+      the wickedness o' men in gineral. This hyer man air a sorter pitiful
+      sinner, an' he hev got a look in his eyes that plumb teches my heart. I
+      'ain't got no call ter know nuthin' 'bout the law, bein' a 'oman an'
+      naterally ignorant. I dun'no' ez he hev run agin it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mus' hev been by accident,&rdquo; said Millicent, dreamily, still gazing over
+      the sodden fields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suspicion did nothing to diminish his comfort or their cordiality. The
+      morning dragged by without change in the outer aspects. The noontide
+      dinner came and went without Roxby's return, for the report of the washing
+      away of a bridge some miles distant down the river had early called him
+      out to the scene of the disaster, to verify in his own interests the
+      rumor, since he had expected to haul his wheat to the settlement the
+      ensuing day. The afternoon found the desultory talk still in progress
+      about the fire, the old woman alternately carding cotton and nodding in
+      her chair in the corner; the dogs eying the stranger, listening much of
+      the time with the air of children taking instruction, only occasionally
+      wandering out-of-doors, the floor here and there bearing the damp imprint
+      of their feet; and Millicent on her knees in the other corner, the
+      firelight on her bright hair, her delicate cheek, her quickly glancing
+      eyes, as she deftly moulded bullets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Sim hed ter s'render his shootin'-irons,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;an' he
+      'ain't got no ca'tridge-loadin' ones lef. So he makes out with his old
+      muzzle-loadin' rifle that he hed afore the war, an' I moulds his bullets
+      for him rainy days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she held up a moulded ball and dexterously clipped off the surplus
+      lead, the gesture was so culinary in its delicacy that one of the dogs in
+      front of the fire extended his head, making a long neck, with a tentative
+      sniff and a glistening gluttonous eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ef I swallered enny mo' lead, I wouldn't take it hot, Towse,&rdquo; she said,
+      holding out the bullet for canine inspection. &ldquo;'Tain't healthy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the dog, perceiving the nature of the commodity, drew back with a look
+      of deep reproach, rose precipitately, and with a drooping tail went out
+      skulkingly into the wet gray day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Towse can't abide a bullet,&rdquo; she observed, &ldquo;nor nuthin' 'bout a gun. He
+      got shot wunst a-huntin', an' he never furgot it. Jes show him a gun an'
+      he ain't nowhar ter be seen&mdash;like he war cotch up in the clouds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good watch-dog, I suppose,&rdquo; suggested Dundas, striving to enter into the
+      spirit of her talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naw; too sp'ilt for a gyard-dog&mdash;granny coddled him so whenst he got
+      shot. He's jest vally'ble fur his conversation, I reckon,&rdquo; she continued,
+      with a smile in her eyes. &ldquo;I dun'no' what else, but he <i>is</i> toler'ble
+      good company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other dogs pressed about her, the heads of the great hounds as high as
+      her own as she sat among them on the floor. With bright eyes and knitted
+      brows they followed the motions of pouring in the melted metal, the
+      lifting of the bullets from the mould, the clipping off of the surplus
+      lead, and the flash of the keen knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the sad light waned; the wind sighed and sighed; the dreary rain
+      fell; the trees clashed their boughs dolorously together, and their
+      turbulence deadened the sound of galloping horses. As Dundas sat and gazed
+      at the girl's intent head, with its fleecy tendrils and its massive coil,
+      the great hounds beside her, all emblazoned by the firelight upon the
+      brown wall near by, with the vast fireplace at hand, the whole less like
+      reality than some artist's pictured fancy, he knew naught of a sudden
+      entrance, until she moved, breaking the spell, and looked up to meet the
+      displeasure in Roxby's eyes and the dark scowl on Emory Keenan's face.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      That night the wind shifted to the north. Morning found the chilled world
+      still, ice where the water had lodged, all the trees incased in glittering
+      garb that followed the symmetry alike of every bough and the tiniest twig,
+      and made splendid the splintered remnants of the lightning-riven. The
+      fields were laced across from furrow to furrow, in which the frozen water
+      still stood gleaming, with white arabesques which had known a more humble
+      identity as stubble and crab-grass; the sky was slate-colored, and from
+      its sad tint this white splendor gained added values of contrast. When the
+      sun should shine abroad much of the effect would be lost in the too
+      dazzling glister; but the sun did not shine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day the gray mood held unchanged. Night was imperceptibly sifting down
+      upon all this whiteness, that seemed as if it would not be obscured, as if
+      it held within itself some property of luminosity, when Millicent, a white
+      apron tied over her golden head, improvising a hood, its superfluous
+      fulness gathered in many folds and pleats around her neck, fichu-wise,
+      stood beside the ice-draped fodder-stack and essayed with half-numbed
+      hands to insert a tallow dip into the socket of a lantern, all incrusted
+      and clumsy with previous drippings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dun'no' whether I be a-goin' ter need this hyar consarn whilst milkin'
+      or no,&rdquo; she observed, half to herself, half to Emory, who, chewing a
+      straw, somewhat surlily had followed her out for a word apart. &ldquo;The dusk
+      'pears slow ter-night, but Spot's mighty late comin' home, an' old Sue air
+      fractious an' contrairy-minded, and feels mighty anxious an' oneasy 'boutn
+      her calf, that's ez tall ez she is nowadays, an' don't keer no mo' 'bout
+      her mammy 'n a half-grown human does. I tell her she oughtn't ter be mad
+      with me, but with the way she brung up her chile, ez won't notice her
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up with a laugh, her eyes and teeth gleaming; her golden hair
+      still showed its color beneath the spotless whiteness of her voluminous
+      headgear, and the clear tints of her complexion seemed all the more
+      delicate and fresh in the snowy pallor of the surroundings and the
+      grayness of the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon I'd better take it along,&rdquo; and once more she addressed herself
+      to the effort to insert the dip into the lantern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emory hardly heard. His pulse was quick. His eye glittered. He breathed
+      hard as, with both hands in his pockets, he came close to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mill'cent,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I told ye the t'other day ez ye thunk a heap too
+      much o' that thar stran-ger-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' I tole ye, bubby, that I didn't think nuthin' o' nobody but you-uns,&rdquo;
+       she interrupted, with an effort to placate his jealousy. The little
+      jocularity which she affected dwindled and died before the steady glow of
+      his gaze, and she falteringly looked at him, her unguided hands futilely
+      fumbling with the lantern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye can't fool me,&rdquo; he stoutly asseverated. &ldquo;Ye think mo' o' him 'n o' me,
+      kase ye 'low he air rich, an' book-larned, an' smooth-fingered, an'
+      fini-fied ez a gal, an' goin' ter buy the hotel. I say, <i>hotel!</i> Now
+      <i>I'll</i> tell ye what he is&mdash;I'll tell ye! He's a criminal. He's
+      runnin' from the law. He's hidin' in the old hotel that he's purtendin'
+      ter buy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared wide-eyed and pallid, breathless and waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He interpreted her expression as doubt, denial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's gospel sure,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Fur this very evenin' I met a gang o' men
+      an' the sheriff's deputy down yander by the sulphur spring 'bout sundown,
+      an' he 'lowed ez they war a-sarchin' fur a criminal ez war skulkin' round
+      hyarabout lately&mdash;ez they wanted a man fur hevin' c'mitted murder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But ye didn't accuse <i>him</i>, surely; ye hed no right ter s'picion <i>him</i>.
+      Uncle Sim! Oh, my Lord! Ye surely wouldn't! Oh, Uncle Sim!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her tremulous words broke into a quavering cry as she caught his arm
+      convulsively, for his face confirmed her fears. She thrust him wildly
+      away, and started toward the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye needn't go tattlin' on me,&rdquo; he said, roughly pushing her aside. &ldquo;I'll
+      tell Mr. Roxby myself. I ain't 'shamed o' what I done. I'll tell him. I'll
+      tell him myself.&rdquo; And animated with this intention to forestall her
+      disclosure, his long strides bore him swiftly past and into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to him that he lingered there only a moment or two, for Roxby
+      was not at the cabin, and he said nothing of the quarrel to the old woman.
+      Already his heart had revolted against his treachery, and then there came
+      to him the further reflection that he did not know enough to justify
+      suspicion. Was not the stranger furnished with the fullest credentials&mdash;a
+      letter to Roxby from the Colonel? Perhaps he had allowed his jealousy to
+      endanger the man, to place him in jeopardy even of his life should he
+      resist arrest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Keenan tarried at the house merely long enough to devise a plausible
+      excuse for his sudden excited entrance, and then took his way back to the
+      barnyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was vacant. The cows still stood lowing at the bars; the sheep cowered
+      together in their shed; the great whitened cone of the fodder-stack
+      gleamed icily in the purple air; beside it lay the lantern where Millicent
+      had cast it aside. She was gone! He would not believe it till he had run
+      to the barn, calling her name in the shadowy place, while the horse at his
+      manger left his corn to look over the walls of his stall with inquisitive
+      surprised eyes, luminous in the dusk. He searched the hen-house, where the
+      fowls on their perches crowded close because of the chill of the evening.
+      He even ran to the bars and looked down across the narrow ravine to which
+      the clearing sloped. Beyond the chasm-like gorge he saw presently on the
+      high ascent opposite footprints that had broken the light frostlike
+      coating of ice on the dead leaves and moss&mdash;climbing footprints,
+      swift, disordered. He looked back again at the lantern where Millicent had
+      flung it in her haste. Her mission was plain now. She had gone to warn
+      Dundas. She had taken a direct line through the woods. She hoped to
+      forestall the deputy sheriff and his posse, following the circuitous
+      mountain road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Keenan's lip curled in triumph. His heart burned hot with scornful anger
+      and contempt of the futility of her effort. &ldquo;They're there afore she
+      started!&rdquo; he said, looking up at the aspects of the hour shown by the sky,
+      and judging of the interval since the encounter by the spring. Through a
+      rift in the gray cloud a star looked down with an icy scintillation and
+      disappeared again. He heard a branch in the woods snap beneath the weight
+      of ice. A light sprang into the window of the cabin hard by, and came in a
+      great gush of orange-tinted glow out into the snowy bleak wintry space. He
+      suddenly leaped over the fence and ran like a deer through the woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Millicent too had been swift. He had thought to overtake her before he
+      emerged from the woods into the more open space where the hotel stood. In
+      this quarter the cloud-break had been greater. Toward the west a fading
+      amber glow still lingered in long horizontal bars upon the opaque gray
+      sky. The white mountains opposite were hung with purple shadows borrowed
+      from a glimpse of sunset somewhere far away over the valley of East
+      Tennessee; one distant lofty range was drawn in elusive snowy suggestions,
+      rather than lines, against a green space of intense yet pale tint. The
+      moon, now nearing the full, hung over the wooded valley, and aided the ice
+      and the crust of snow to show its bleak, wan, wintry aspect; a tiny spark
+      glowed in its depths from some open door of an isolated home. Over it all
+      a mist was rising from the east, drawing its fleecy but opaque curtain.
+      Already it had climbed the mountain-side and advanced, windless,
+      soundless, overwhelming, annihilating all before and beneath it. The old
+      hotel had disappeared, save that here and there a gaunt gable protruded
+      and was withdrawn, showed once more, and once more was submerged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A horse's head suddenly looking out of the enveloping mist close to his
+      shoulder gave him the first intimation of the arrival, the secret silent
+      waiting, of those whom he had directed hither. That the saddles were empty
+      he saw a moment later. The animals stood together in a row, hitched to the
+      rack. No disturbance sounded from the silent building. The event was in
+      abeyance. The fugitive in hiding was doubtless at ease, unsuspecting,
+      while the noiseless search of the officers for his quarters was under way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a thrill of excitement Keenan crept stealthily through an open
+      passage and into the old grass-grown spaces of the quadrangle. Night
+      possessed the place, but the cloud seemed denser than the darkness. He was
+      somehow sensible of its convolutions as he stood against the wall and
+      strained his eyes into the dusk. Suddenly it was penetrated by a
+      milky-white glimmer, a glimmer duplicated at equidistant points, each
+      fading as its successor sprang into brilliance. The next moment he
+      understood its significance. It had come from the blurred windows of the
+      old ball-room. Milli-cent had lighted her candle as she searched for the
+      fugitive's quarters; she was passing down the length of the old house on
+      the second story, and suddenly she emerged upon the gallery. She shielded
+      the feeble flicker with her Hand; her white-hooded head gleamed as with an
+      aureola as the divergent rays rested on the opaque mist; and now and again
+      she clutched the baluster and walked with tremulous care, for the flooring
+      was rotten here and there, and ready to crumble away. Her face was pallid,
+      troubled; and Dundas, who had been warned by the tramp of horses and the
+      tread of men, and who had descended the stairs, revolver in hand, ready to
+      slip away if he might under cover of the mist, paused appalled, gazing
+      across the quadrangle as on an apparition&mdash;the sight so familiar to
+      his senses, so strange to his experience. He saw in an abrupt shifting of
+      the mist that there were other figures skulking in doorways, watching her
+      progress. The next moment she leaned forward to clutch the baluster, and
+      the light of the candle fell full on Emory Keenan, lurking in the open
+      passage. A sudden sharp cry of &ldquo;Surrender!&rdquo; The young mountaineer,
+      confused, swiftly drew his pistol. Others were swifter still. A sharp
+      report rang out into the chill crisp air, rousing all the affrighted
+      echoes&mdash;a few faltering steps, a heavy fall, and for a long time
+      Emory Keenan's life-blood stained the floor of the promenade. Even when it
+      had faded, the rustic gossips came often and gazed at the spot with morbid
+      interest, until, a decade later, an enterprising proprietor removed the
+      floor and altered the shape of that section of the building out of
+      recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The escape of Dundas was easily effected. The deputy sheriff, confronted
+      with the problem of satisfactorily accounting for the death of a man who
+      had committed no offence against public polity, was no longer formidable.
+      His errand had been the arrest of a horse-thief, well-known to him, and he
+      had no interest in pursuing a fugitive, however obnoxious to the law,
+      whose personal description was so different from that of the object of his
+      search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time restored to Dundas his former place in life and the esteem of his
+      fellow-citizens. His stay in the mountains was an episode which he will
+      not often recall, but sometimes volition fails, and he marvels at the
+      strange fulfilment of the girl's vision; he winces to think that her
+      solicitude for his safety should have cost her her lover; he wonders
+      whether she yet lives, and whether that tender troubled phantom, on nights
+      when the wind is still and the moon is low and the mists rise, again joins
+      the strange, elusive, woful company crossing the quaking foot-bridge.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>