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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of His "Day In Court", 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: His "Day In Court"
+       1895
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock         (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Illustrator: A. B. Frost
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2007 [EBook #23633]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIS "DAY IN COURT" ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HIS "DAY IN COURT"
+
+By Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+1895
+
+
+It had been a hard winter along the slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains,
+and still the towering treeless domes were covered with snow, and the
+vagrant winds were abroad, rioting among the clifty heights where they
+held their tryst, or raiding down into the sheltered depths of the Cove,
+where they seldom intruded. Nevertheless, on this turbulent rush was
+borne in the fair spring of the year. The fragrance of the budding
+wild-cherry was to be discerned amidst the keen slanting javelins of
+the rain. A cognition of the renewal and the expanding of the forces of
+nature pervaded the senses as distinctly as if one might hear the grass
+growing, or feel along the chill currents of the air the vernal pulses
+thrill. Night after night in the rifts of the breaking clouds close to
+the horizon was glimpsed the stately sidereal Virgo, prefiguring and
+promising the harvest, holding in her hand a gleaming ear of corn.
+But it was not the constellation which the tumultuous torrent at the
+mountain's base reflected in a starry glitter. From the hill-side above
+a light cast its broken image among the ripples, as it shone for an
+instant through the bosky laurel, white, stellular, splendid--only a
+tallow dip suddenly placed in the window of a log-cabin, and as suddenly
+withdrawn.
+
+For a gruff voice within growled out a remonstrance: "What ye doin' that
+fur, Steve? Hev that thar candle got enny call ter bide in that thar
+winder?"
+
+The interior, contrary to the customary aspect of the humble homes of
+the region, was in great disarray. Cooking utensils stood uncleaned
+about the hearth; dishes and bowls of earthen-ware were assembled upon
+the table in such numbers as to suggest that several meals had been
+eaten without the ceremony of laying the cloth anew, and that in default
+of washing the crockery it had been re-enforced from the shelf so far as
+the limited store might admit. Saddles and spinning-wheels, an ox-yoke
+and trace-chains, reels and wash-tubs, were incongruously pushed
+together in the corners. Only one of the three men in the room made
+any effort to reduce the confusion to order. This was the square-faced,
+black-bearded, thick-set young fellow who took the candle from the
+window, and now advanced with it toward the hearth, holding it at an
+angle that caused the flame to swiftly melt the tallow, which dripped
+generously upon the floor.
+
+"I hev seen Eveliny do it," he said, excitedly justifying himself. "I
+noticed her sot the candle in the winder jes' las' night arter supper."
+He glanced about uncertainly, and his patience seemed to give way
+suddenly. "Dad-burn the old candle! I dunno _whar_ ter set it," he
+cried, desperately, as he flung it from him, and it fell upon the floor
+close to the wall.
+
+The dogs lifted their heads to look, and one soft-stepping old hound got
+up with the nimbleness of expectation, and, with a prescient gratitude
+astir in his tail, went and sniffed at it. His aspect drooped suddenly,
+and he looked around in reproach at Stephen Quimbey, as if suspecting
+a practical joke. But there was no merriment in the young mountaineer's
+face. He threw himself into his chair with a heavy sigh, and desisted
+for a time from the unaccustomed duty of clearing away the dishes after
+supper.
+
+"An' 'ain't ye got the gumption ter sense what Eveliny sot the candle in
+the winder fur?" his brother Timothy demanded, abruptly--"ez a sign ter
+that thar durned Abs'lom Kittredge."
+
+The other two men turned their heads and looked at the speaker with a
+poignant intensity of interest. "I 'lowed ez much when I seen that light
+ez I war a-kemin' home las' night," he continued; "it shined spang down
+the slope acrost the ruver an' through all the laurel; it looked plumb
+like a star that hed fell ter yearth in that pitch-black night. I dun-no
+how I s'picioned it, but ez I stood thar an' gazed I knowed somebody
+war a-standin' an' gazin' too on the foot-bredge a mite ahead o' me.
+I couldn't see him, an' he couldn't turn back an' pass me, the bredge
+bein' too narrer. He war jes obligated ter go on. I hearn him breathe
+quick; then--pit-pat, pit-pat, ez he walked straight toward that light.
+An' he be 'bleeged ter hev hearn me, fur arter I crost I stopped.
+Nuthin'. Jes' a whisper o' wind, an' jes' a swishin' from the ruver.
+I knowed then he hed turned off inter the laurel. An' I went on,
+a-whistlin' ter make him 'low ez I never s'picioned nuthin'. An' I kem
+inter the house an' tole dad ez he'd better be a-lookin' arter Eveliny,
+fur I b'lieved she war a-settin' her head ter run away an' marry Abs'lom
+Kittredge."
+
+"Waal, I ain't right up an' down sati'fied we oughter done what we
+done," exclaimed Stephen, fretfully. "It don't 'pear edzacly right fur
+three men ter fire on one."
+
+[Illustration: Old Joel Quimbey 081]
+
+Old Joel Quimbey, in his arm-chair in the chimney-corner, suddenly
+lifted his head--a thin head with fine white hair, short and sparse,
+upon it. His thin, lined face was clear-cut, with a pointed chin and an
+aquiline nose. He maintained an air of indignant and rebellious grief,
+and had hitherto sat silent, a gnarled and knotted hand on either arm
+of his chair. His eyes gleamed keenly from under his heavy brows as he
+turned his face upon his sons. "How could we know thar warn't but one,
+eh?"
+
+He had not been a candidate for justice of the peace for nothing; he had
+absorbed something of the methods and spirit of the law through sheer
+propinquity to the office. "We-uns wouldn't be persumed ter _know_." And
+he ungrudgingly gave himself all the benefit of the doubt that the law
+accords.
+
+"That's a true word!" exclaimed Stephen, quick to console his
+conscience. "Jes' look at the fac's, now. We-uns in a plumb black
+midnight hear a man a-gittin' over our fence; we git our rifles;
+a-peekin' through the chinkin' we ketch a glimge o' him--"
+
+"Ha!" cried out Timothy, with savage satisfaction, "we seen him by the
+light she set her head him on!"
+
+He was tall and lank, with a delicately hooked nose, high cheek-bones,
+fierce dark eyes, and dark eyebrows, which were continually elevated,
+corrugating his forehead. His hair was black, short and straight, and
+he was clad in brown jeans, as were the others, with great cowhide boots
+reaching to the knee. He fixed his fiery intent gaze on his brother as
+the slower Stephen continued, "An' so we blaze away--"
+
+"An' one durned fool's so onlucky ez ter hit him an' not kill him,"
+growled Timothy, again interrupting. "An' so whilst Eveliny runs out
+a-screamin', 'He's dead! he's dead!--ye hev shot him dead!' we-uns make
+no doubt but he _is_ dead, an' load up agin, lest his frien's mought
+rush in on we-uns whilst we hedn't no use o' our shootin'-irons. An'
+suddint--ye can't hear nuthin' but jes' a owel hoot-in' in the woods, or
+old Pa'son Bates's dogs a-howlin' acrost the Cove. An' we go out with
+a lantern, an' thar's jes' a pool o' blood in the dooryard, an' bloody
+tracks down ter the laurel."
+
+"Eveliny gone!" cried the old man, smiting his hands together; "my
+leetle darter! The only one ez never gin me enny trouble. I couldn't hev
+made out ter put up with this hyar worl' no longer when my wife died ef
+it hedn't been fur Eveliny. Boys war wild an' mischeevious, an' folks
+outside don't keer nuthin' 'bout ye--ef they _war_ ter 'lect ye ter
+office 'twould be ter keep some other feller from hevin' it, 'kase they
+'spise him more'n ye. An' hyar she's runned off an' married old Tom
+Kittredge's gran'son, Josiah Kittredge's son--when our folks 'ain't
+spoke ter none o' 'em fur fifty year--Josiah Kittredge's son--ha! ha!
+ha!" He laughed aloud in tuneless scorn of himself and of this freak
+of froward destiny and then fell to wringing his hands and calling upon
+Evelina.
+
+The flare from the great chimney-place genially played over the huddled
+confusion of the room and the brown logs of the wall, where the gigantic
+shadows of the three men mimicked their every gesture with grotesque
+exaggeration. The rainbow yarn on the warping bars, the strings of
+red-pepper hanging from the ceiling, the burnished metallic flash from
+the guns on their racks of deer antlers, served as incidents in the
+monotony of the alternate yellow flicker and brown shadow. Deep under
+the blaze the red coals pulsated, and in the farthest vistas of the fire
+quivered a white heat.
+
+"Old Tom Kittredge," the father resumed, after a time, "he jes' branded
+yer gran'dad's cattle with his mark; he jes' cheated yer gran'dad, my
+dad, out'n six head o' cattle."
+
+"But then," said the warlike Timothy, not willing to lose sight of
+reprisal even in vague reminiscence, "he hed only one hand ter rob with
+arter that, fur I hev hearn ez how when gran'dad got through with him
+the doctor hed ter take his arm off."
+
+"Sartainly, sartainly," admitted the old man, in quiet assent. "An'
+Josiah Kittredge he put out the eyes of a horse critter o' mine right
+thar at the court-house door--"
+
+"Waal, arterward, we-uns fired his house over his head," put in Tim.
+
+"An' Josiah Kittredge an' me," the old man went on, "we-uns clinched
+every time we met in this mortal life. Every time I go past the
+graveyard whar he be buried I kin feel his fingers on my throat. He had
+a nervy grip, but no variation; he always tuk holt the same way."
+
+"Tears like ter me ez 'twar a fust-rate time ter fetch out the rifles
+again," remarked Tim, "this mornin', when old Pa'son Bates kem up
+hyar an' 'lowed ez he hed married Eveliny ter Abs'lom Kittredge on
+his death-bed; 'So be, pa'son,' I say. An' he tuk off his hat an' say,
+'Thank the Lord, this will heal the breach an' make ye frien's!' An'
+I say, 'Edzacly, pa'son, ef it _air_ Abs'lom's deathbed; but them
+Kittredges air so smilin' an' deceiv-in' I be powerful feared he'll
+cheat the King o' Terrors himself. I'll forgive 'em ennything--_over his
+grave?_"
+
+"Pa'son war tuk toler'ble suddint in his temper," said the literal
+Steve. "I hearn him call yer talk onchristian, cussed sentiments, ez he
+put out."
+
+"Ye mus' keep up a Christian sperit, boys; that's the main thing," said
+the old man, who was esteemed very religious, and a pious Mentor in his
+own family. He gazed meditatively into the fire. "What ailed Eveliny
+ter git so tuk up with this hyar Abs'-lom? What made her like him?" he
+propounded.
+
+"His big eyes, edzacly like a buck's, an' his long yaller hair," sneered
+the discerning Timothy, with the valid scorn of a big ugly man for a
+slim pretty one. "'Twar jes 'count o' his long yaller hair his
+mother called him Abs'lom. He war named Pete or Bob, I disremember
+what--suthin' common--till his hair got so long an' curly, an' he sot
+out ter be so plumb all-fired beautiful, an' his mother named him agin;
+this time Abs'lom, arter the king's son, 'count o' his yaller hair."
+
+"Git hung by his hair some o' these days in the woods, like him the
+Bible tells about; that happened ter the sure-enough Abs'lom," suggested
+Stephen, hopefully.
+
+"Naw, sir," said Tim; "when Abs'lom Kittredge gits hung it 'll be with
+suthin' stronger'n hair; he'll stretch hemp." He exchanged a glance of
+triumphant prediction with his brother, and anon gazed ruefully into the
+fire.
+
+"Ye talk like ez ef he war goin' ter live, boys," said old Joel Quimbey,
+irritably. "Pa'son 'lowed he war powerful low."
+
+"Pa'son said he'd never hev got home alive 'thout she'd holped him,"
+said Stephen. "She jes' tuk him an' drug him plumb ter the bars, though
+I don't see how she done it, slim leetle critter ez she be; an' thar she
+holped him git on his beastis; an' then--I declar' I feel ez ef I could
+kill her fur a-demeanin' of herself so--she led that thar horse, him
+a-ridin' an' a-leanin' on the neck o' the beastis, two mile up the
+mountain, through the night."
+
+"Waal, let her bide thar. I'll look on her face no mo'," declared the
+old man, his toothless jaw shaking. "Kittredge she be now, an' none o'
+the name kin come a-nigh me. How be I ever a-goin' 'bout 'mongst the
+folks at the settlement agin with my darter married ter a Kittredge? How
+Josiah an' his dad mus' be a-grinnin' in thar graves at me this night!
+An' I 'low they hev got suthin' ter grin about."
+
+And suddenly his grim face relaxed, and once more he began to smite his
+hands together and to call aloud for Evelina.
+
+Timothy could offer no consolation, but stared dismally into the fire,
+and Stephen rose with a sigh and addressed himself to pushing the
+spinning-wheels and tubs and tables into the opposite corner of the
+room, in the hope of solving the enigma of its wonted order.
+
+*****
+
+It seemed to Evelina afterward that when she climbed the rugged ways
+of the mountain slope in that momentous night she left forever in the
+depths of the Cove that free and careless young identity which she had
+been. She did not accurately discriminate the moment in which she began
+to realize that she was among her hereditary enemies, encompassed by
+a hatred nourished to full proportions and to a savage strength long
+before she drew her first breath. The fact only gradually claimed its
+share in her consciousness as the tension of anxiety for Absalom's sake
+relaxed, for the young mountaineer's strength and vitality were promptly
+reasserted, and he rallied from the wound and his pallid and forlorn
+estate with the recuperative power of the primitive man. By degrees she
+came to expect the covert unfriendly glances his brother cast upon her,
+the lowering averted mien of her sister-in-law, and now and again she
+surprised a long, lingering, curious gaze in his mother's eyes. They
+were all Kittredges! And she wondered how she could ever have dreamed
+that she might live happily among them--one of them, for her name was
+theirs. And then perhaps the young husband would stroll languidly in,
+with his long hair curling on his blue jeans coat-collar, and an assured
+smile in his dark brown eyes, and some lazy jest on his lips, certain of
+a welcoming laugh, for he had been so near to death that they all had a
+sense of acquisition in that he had been led back. For his sake they had
+said little; his mother would busy herself in brewing his "yerb" tea,
+and his brother would offer to saddle the mare if he felt that he could
+ride, and they would all be very friendly together; and his alien wife
+would presently slip out unnoticed into the "gyarden spot," where the
+rows of vegetables grew as they did in the Cove, turning upon her the
+same neighborly looks they wore of yore, and showing not a strange leaf
+among them. The sunshine wrapped itself in its old fine gilded gossamer
+haze and drowsed upon the verdant slopes; the green jewelled "Juny-bugs"
+whirred in the soft air; the mould was as richly brown as in Joel
+Quimbey's own enclosure; the flag-lilies bloomed beside the onion bed;
+and the woolly green leaves of the sage wore their old delicate tint and
+gave out a familiar odor.
+
+Among this quaint company of the garden borders she spent much of her
+time, now hoeing in a desultory fashion, now leaning on the long handle
+of the implement and looking away upon the far reaches of the purple
+mountains. As they stretched to vague distances they became blue, and
+farther on the great azure domes merged into a still more tender hue,
+and this in turn melted into a soft indeterminate tint that embellished
+the faint horizon. Her dreaming eyes would grow bright and wistful; her
+rich brown curling hair, set free by the yellow sun-bonnet that slipped
+off her head and upon her shoulders, would airily float backward in the
+wind; there was a lithe grace in the slender figure, albeit clad in a
+yellow homespun of a deep dye, and the faded purplish neckerchief
+was caught about a throat fairer even than the fair face, which was
+delicately flushed. Absalom's mother, standing beside Peter, the eldest
+son, in the doorway, watched her long one day.
+
+"It all kem about from that thar bran dance," said Peter, a homely man,
+with a sterling, narrow-minded wife and an ascetic sense of religion.
+"Thar Satan waits, an' he gits nimbler every time ye shake yer foot. The
+fiddler gin out the figger ter change partners, an' this hyar gal war
+dancin' opposite Abs'lom, ez hed never looked nigh her till that day.
+The gal didn't know _what_ ter do; she jes' stood still; but Abs'lom he
+jes' danced up ter her ez keerless an' gay ez he always war, jes' like
+she war ennybody else, an' when he held out his han' she gin him hern,
+all a-trembly, an' lookin' up at him, plumb skeered ter death, her eyes
+all wide an' sorter wishful, like some wild thing trapped in the woods.
+An' then the durned fiddler, moved by the devil, I'll be be bound, plumb
+furgot ter change 'em back. So they danced haf'n the day tergether. An'
+arter that they war forever a-stealin' off an' accidentally meetin' at
+the spring, an' whenst he war a-huntin' or she drivin' up the cow, an'
+a-courtin' ginerally, till they war promised ter marry."
+
+"'Twarn't the bran dance; 'twar suthin' ez fleet-in' an' ez useless,"
+said his mother, standing in the door and gazing at the unconscious
+girl, who was leaning upon the hoe, half in the shadow of the blooming
+laurel that crowded about the enclosure and bent over the rail fence,
+and half in the burnished sunshine; "she's plumb beautiful--thar's the
+snare ez tangled Abs'lom's steps. I never 'lowed ter see the day ez
+could show enny comfort fur his dad bein' dead, but we hev been spared
+some o' the tallest cavortin' that ever war seen sence the Big Smoky
+war built. Sometimes it plumb skeers me ter think ez we-uns hev got a
+Quimbey abidin' up hyar along o' we-uns in _his_ house an' a-callin' o'
+herse'f Kittredge. I looks ter see him a-stalkin' roun' hyar some night,
+too outdone an' aggervated ter rest in his grave."
+
+But the nights continued spectreless and peaceful on the Great Smoky,
+and the same serene stars shone above the mountain as over the Cove.
+Evelina could watch here, as often before, the rising moon ascending
+through a rugged gap in the range, suffusing the dusky purple slopes and
+the black crags on either hand with a pensive glamour, and revealing the
+river below by the amber reflection its light evoked. She often sat on
+the step of the porch, her elbow on her knees, her chin in her hand,
+following with her shining eyes the pearly white mists loitering among
+the ranges. Hear! a dog barks in the Cove, a cock crows, a horn is
+wound, far, far away; it echoes faintly. And once more only the sounds
+of the night--that vague stir in the windless woods, as if the forest
+breathes, the far-away tinkle of water hidden in the darkness--and the
+moon is among the summits.
+
+The men remained within, for Absalom avoided the chill night air, and
+crouched over the smouldering fire. Peter's wife sedulously held aloof
+from the ostracized Quimbey woman. But her mother-in-law had fallen into
+the habit of sitting upon the porch these moonlit nights. The sparse,
+newly-leafed hop and gourd vines clambering to its roof were all
+delicately imaged on the floor, and the old woman's clumsy figure, her
+grotesque sun-bonnet, her awkward arm-chair, were faithfully reproduced
+in her shadow on the log wall of the cabin--even to the up-curling
+smoke from her pipe. Once she suddenly took the stem from her mouth.
+"Eveliny," she said, "'pears like ter me ye talk mighty little. Thar
+ain't no use in gittin' tongue-tied up hyar on the mounting."
+
+Evelina started and raised her eyes, dilated with a stare of amazement
+at this unexpected overture.
+
+"I ain't keerin'," said the old woman, recklessly, to herself, although
+consciously recreant to the traditions of the family, and sacrificing
+with a pang her distorted sense of loyalty and duty to her kindlier
+impulse. "I warn't born a Kittredge nohow."
+
+"Yes, 'm," said Evelina, meekly; "but I don't feel much like talkin'
+noways; I never talked much, bein' nobody but men-folks ter our house.
+I'd ruther hear ye talk 'n talk myself."
+
+"Listen at ye now! The headin' young folks o' this kentry 'll never rest
+till they make thar elders shoulder _all_ the burdens. An' what air ye
+wantin' a pore ole 'oman like me ter talk about?"
+
+Evelina hesitated a moment, then looked up, with a face radiant in the
+moonbeams. "Tell all 'bout Abs'lom--afore I ever seen him."
+
+His mother laughed. "Ye air a powerful fool, Eveliny."
+
+The girl laughed a little, too. "I dunno ez I want ter be no wiser," she
+said.
+
+But one was his wife, and the other was his mother, and as they talked
+of him daily and long, the bond between them was complete.
+
+*****
+
+"I hev got 'em both plumb fooled," the handsome Absalom boasted at the
+settlement, when the gossips wondered once more, as they had often done,
+that there should be such unity of interest between old Joel Quimbey's
+daughter and old Josiah Kittredge's widow. As time went on many rumors
+of great peace on the mountain-side came to the father's ears, and he
+grew more testy daily as he grew visibly older. These rumors multiplied
+with the discovery that they were as wormwood and gall to him. Not that
+he wished his daughter to be unhappy, but the joy which was his grief
+and humiliation was needlessly flaunted into his face; the idlers about
+the county town had invariably a new budget of details, being
+supplied, somewhat maliciously, it must be confessed, by the Kittredges
+themselves. The ceremony of planting one foot on the neck of the
+vanquished was in their minds one of the essential concomitants of
+victory. The bold Absalom, not thoroughly known to either of the
+women who adored him, was ingenious in expedients, and had applied the
+knowledge gleaned from his wife's reminiscences of her home, her father,
+and her brothers to more accurately aim his darts. Sometimes old Quimbey
+would fairly flee the town, and betake himself in a towering rage to his
+deserted hearth, to brood futilely over the ashes, and devise impotent
+schemes of vengeance.
+
+He often wondered afterward in dreary retrospection how he had survived
+that first troublous year after his daughter's elopement, when he was
+so lonely, so heavy-hearted at home, so harried and angered abroad. His
+comforts, it is true, were amply insured: a widowed sister had come
+to preside over his household--a deaf old woman, who had much to be
+thankful for in her infirmity, for Joel Quimbey in his youth, before he
+acquired religion, had been known as a singularly profane man--"a mos'
+survigrus cusser"--and something of his old proficiency had returned to
+him. Perhaps public sympathy for his troubles strengthened his hold upon
+the regard of the community. For it was in the second year of Evelina's
+marriage, in the splendid midsummer, when all the gifts of nature climax
+to a gorgeous perfection, and candidates become incumbents, that he
+unexpectedly attained the great ambition of his life. He was said to
+have made the race for justice of the peace from sheer force of habit,
+but by some unexplained freak of popularity the oft-defeated candidate
+was successful by a large majority at the August election.
+
+"Laws-a-massy, boys," he said, tremulously, to his triumphant sons,
+when the result was announced, the excited flush on his thin old face
+suffusing his hollow veinous temples, and rising into his fine white
+hair, "how glad Eveliny would hev been ef--ef--" He was about to say if
+she had lived, for he often spoke of her as if she were dead. He turned
+suddenly back, and began to eagerly absorb the details of the race, as
+if he had often before been elected, with calm superiority canvassing
+the relative strength, or rather the relative weakness, of the defeated
+aspirants.
+
+He could scarcely have measured the joy which the news gave to Evelina.
+She was eminently susceptible of the elation of pride, the fervid glow
+of success; but her tender heart melted in sympathetic divination of
+all that this was to him who had sought it so long, and so unabashed
+by defeat. She pined to see his triumph in his eyes, to hear it in his
+voice. She wondered--nay, she knew that he longed to tell it to her. As
+the year rolled around again to summer, and she heard from time to
+time of his quarterly visits to the town as a member of the worshipful
+Quarterly County Court, she began to hope that, softened by his
+prosperity, lifted so high by his honors above all the cavillings of the
+Kittredges, he might be more leniently disposed toward her, might pity
+her, might even go so far as to forgive.
+
+But none of her filial messages reached her father's fiery old heart.
+
+"Ye'll be sure, Abs'lom, ef ye see Joe Boyd in town, ye'll tell him ter
+gin dad my respec's, an' the word ez how the baby air a-thrivin', an' I
+wants ter fotch him ter see the fambly at home, ef they'll lemme."
+
+Then she would watch Absalom with all the confidence of happy
+anticipation, as he rode off down the mountain with his hair flaunting,
+and his spurs jingling, and his shy young horse curveting.
+
+But no word ever came in response; and sometimes she would take the
+child in her arms and carry him down a path, worn smooth by her own
+feet, to a jagged shoulder thrust out by the mountain where all the
+slopes fell away, and a crag beetled over the depths of the Cove. Thence
+she could discern certain vague lines marking the enclosure, and a tiny
+cluster of foliage hardly recognizable as the orchard, in the midst of
+which the cabin nestled. She could not distinguish them, but she knew
+that the cows were coming to be milked, lowing and clanking their bells
+tunefully, fording the river that had the sunset emblazoned upon it, or
+standing flank deep amidst its ripples; the chickens might be going
+to roost among the althea bushes; the lazy old dogs were astir on the
+porch. She could picture her brothers at work about the barn; most often
+a white-haired man who walked with a stick--alack! she did not fancy how
+feebly, nor that his white hair had grown long and venerable, and tossed
+in the breeze. "Ef he would jes lemme kem fur one haff'n hour!" she
+would cry.
+
+But all her griefs were bewept on the crag, that there might be no tears
+to distress the tenderhearted Absalom when she should return to the
+house.
+
+The election of Squire Quimbey was a sad blow to the arrogant spirit of
+the Kittredges. They had easily accustomed themselves to ascendency, and
+they hotly resented the fact that fate had forborne the opportunity to
+hit Joel Quimbey when he was down. They had used their utmost influence
+to defeat him in the race, and had openly avowed their desire to see him
+bite the dust. The inimical feeling between the families culminated one
+rainy autumnal day in the town where the quarterly county court was in
+session.
+
+A fire had been kindled in the great rusty stove, and crackled away with
+grudging merriment inside, imparting no sentiment of cheer to the gaunt
+bare room, with its dusty window-panes streaked with rain, its shutters
+drearily flapping in the wind, and the floor bearing the imprint of
+many boots burdened with the red clay of the region. The sound of slow
+strolling feet in the brick-paved hall was monotonous and somnolent.
+
+Squire Quimbey sat in his place among the justices. Despite his pride of
+office, he had not the heart for business that might formerly have been
+his. More than once his attention wandered. He looked absently out of
+the nearest window at the neighboring dwelling--a little frame-house
+with a green yard; a well-sweep was defined against the gray sky, and
+about the curb a file of geese followed with swaying gait the wise old
+gander. "What a hand for fow-_els_ Eveliny war!" he muttered to himself;
+"an' she hed luck with sech critters." He used the obituary tense, for
+Evelina had in some sort passed away.
+
+He rubbed his hand across his corrugated brow, and suddenly he became
+aware that her husband was in the room, speaking to the chairman of the
+county court, and claiming a certificate in the sum of two dollars each
+for the scalps of one wolf, "an' one painter," he continued, laying the
+small furry repulsive objects upon the desk, "an' one dollar fur the
+skelp of one wild-cat." He was ready to take his oath that these animals
+were killed by him running at large in this county.
+
+He had stooped a little in making the transfer. He came suddenly to
+his full height, and stood with one hand in his leather belt, the other
+shouldering his rifle. The old man scanned him curiously. The crude
+light from the long windows was full upon his tall slim figure; his
+yellow hair curled down upon the collar of his blue jeans coat; his
+great miry boots were drawn high over the trousers to the knee; his
+pensive deer-like eyes brightened with a touch of arrogance and enmity
+as, turning slowly to see who was present, his glance encountered his
+father-in-law's fiery gaze.
+
+"Mr. Cheerman! Mr. Cheerman!" exclaimed the old man, tremulously, "lemme
+examinate that thar wild-cat skelp. Thanky, sir; thanky, sir; I wanter
+see ef hain't off'n the head o' some old tame tomcat. An' this air a
+painter's "--affecting to scan it by the window--"two ears 'cordin' to
+law; yes, sir, two; and this"--his keen old face had all the white light
+of the sad gray day on its bleaching hair and its many lines, and his
+eager old hands trembled with the excitement of the significant satire
+he enacted--"an' this air a wolf's, ye say? Yes; it's a Kittredge's;
+same thing, Mr. Cheerman, by a diff'ent name; nuthin' in the code
+'bout'n a premium fur a Kittredge's skelp; but same natur'; coward,
+bully, thief--_thief!_"
+
+The words in the high cracked voice rang from the bare walls and bare
+floors as he tossed the scalps from him, and sat down, laughing silently
+in painful, mirthless fashion, his toothless jaw quivering, and his
+shaking hands groping for the arms of his chair.
+
+"Who says a Kittredge air a thief says a lie!" cried out the young man,
+recovering from his tense surprise. "I don't keer how old he be," he
+stipulated--for he had not thought to see her father so aged--"he lies."
+
+The old man fixed him with a steady gaze and a sudden alternation of
+calmness. "Ye air a Kittredge; ye stole my daughter from me."
+
+"I never. She kem of her own accord."
+
+"Damn ye!" the old man retorted to the unwelcome truth. There was
+nothing else for him to say. "Damn the whole tribe of ye; everything
+that goes by the accursed name of Kittredge, that's got a drop o' yer
+blood, or a bone o' yer bones, or a puif o' yer breath--"
+
+"Squair! squair!" interposed an officious old colleague, taking him by
+the elbow, "jes' quiet down now; ye air a-cussin' yer own gran'son."
+
+"So be! so be!" cried the old man, in a frenzy of rage. "Damn 'em
+all--all the Kittredge tribe!" He gasped for breath; his lips still
+moved speechlessly as he fell back in his chair.
+
+Kittredge let his gun slip from his shoulder, the butt ringing heavily
+as it struck upon the floor. "I ain't a-goin' ter take sech ez that
+off'n ye, old man," he cried, pallid with fury, for be it remembered
+this grandson was that august institution, a first baby. "He sha'n't sit
+up thar an' cuss the baby, Mr. Cheerman." He appealed to the presiding
+justice, holding up his right arm as tremulous as old Quimbey's own. "I
+want the law! I ain't a-goin' ter tech a old man like him, an' my wife's
+father, so I ax in the name o' peace fur the law. Don't deny it"--with a
+warning glance--"'kase I ain't school-larned, an' dunno how ter get it.
+Don't ye deny me the law! I _know_ the law don't 'low a magistrate an'
+a jestice ter cuss in his high office, in the presence of the county
+court. I want the law! I want the law!"
+
+The chairman of the court, who had risen in his excitement, turning
+eagerly first to one and then to the other of the speakers, striving to
+silence the colloquy, and in the sudden surprise of it at a momentary
+loss how to take action, sat down abruptly, and with a face of
+consternation. Profanity seemed to him so usual and necessary an
+incident of conversation that it had never occurred to him until this
+moment that by some strange aberration from the rational estimate of
+essentials it was entered in the code as a violation of law. He would
+fain have overlooked it, but the room was crowded with spectators. The
+chairman would be a candidate for re-election as justice of the peace at
+the expiration of his term. And after all what was old Quimbey to him,
+or he to old Quimbey, that, with practically the whole town looking on,
+he should destroy his political prospects and disregard the dignity of
+his office. He had a certain twinge of conscience, and a recollection of
+the choice and fluent oaths of his own repertory, but as he turned over
+the pages of the code in search of the section he deftly argued that
+they were uttered in his own presence as a person, not as a justice.
+
+And so for the first time old Joel Quimbey appeared as a law-breaker,
+and was duly fined by the worshipful county court fifty cents for each
+oath, that being the price at which the State rates the expensive and
+impious luxury of swearing in the hearing of a justice of the peace, and
+which in its discretion the court saw fit to adopt in this instance.
+
+The old man offered no remonstrance; he said not a word in his own
+defence. He silently drew out his worn wallet, with much contortion of
+his thin old anatomy in getting to his pocket, and paid his fines on the
+spot. Absalom had already left the room, the clerk having made out the
+certificates, the chairman of the court casting the scalps into the open
+door of the stove, that they might be consumed by fire according to law.
+
+The young mountaineer wore a heavy frown, and his heart was ill at ease.
+He sought some satisfaction in the evident opinion of the crowd which
+now streamed out, for the excitements within were over, that he had done
+a fine thing; a very clever thought, they considered it, to demand the
+law of Mr. Chairman, that one of their worships should be dragged from
+the bench and arraigned before the quarterly county court of which he
+was a member. The result gave general satisfaction, although there were
+those who found fault with the court's moderation, and complained that
+the least possible cognizance had been taken of the offence.
+
+"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed an old codger in the street. "I jes knowed that
+hurt old Joel Quimbey wuss 'n ef a body hed druv a knife through him;
+he's been so proud o' bein' jestice 'mongst his betters, an' bein'
+'lected at las', many times ez he hev run. Waal, Abs'lom, ye hev
+proved thar's law fur jestices too. I tell ye ye hev got sense in yer
+skull-i-bone."
+
+But Absalom hung his head before these congratulations; he found no
+relish in the old man's humbled pride. Yet had he not cursed the baby,
+lumping him among the Kittredges? Absalom went about for a time, with a
+hopeful anxiety in his eyes, searching for one of the younger Quim-beys,
+in order to involve him in a fight that might have a provocation and a
+result more to his mind. Somehow the recollection of the quivering and
+aged figure of his wife's father, of the smitten look on his old face,
+of his abashed and humbled demeanor before the court, was a reproach
+to him, vivid and continuously present with his repetitious thoughts
+forever re-enacting the scene. His hands trembled; he wanted to lay hold
+on a younger man, to replace this aesthetic revenge with a quarrel more
+wholesome in the estimation of his own conscience. But the Quimbey sons
+were not in town to-day. He could only stroll about and hear himself
+praised for this thing that he had done, and wonder how he should
+meet Evelina with his conscience thus arrayed against himself for her
+father's sake. "Plumb turned Quimbey, I swear," he said, in helpless
+reproach to this independent and coercive moral force within. His
+dejection, he supposed, had reached its lowest limits, when a rumor
+pervaded the town, so wild that he thought it could be only fantasy.
+
+It proved to be fact. Joel Quimbey, aggrieved, humbled, and indignant,
+had resigned his office, and as Absalom rode out of town toward the
+mountains, he saw the old man in his crumpled brown jeans suit, mounted
+on his white mare, jogging down the red clay road, his head bowed before
+the slanting lines of rain, on his way to his cheerless fireside. He
+turned off presently, for the road to the levels of the Cove was not the
+shorter cut that Absalom travelled to the mountains. But all the way
+the young man fancied that he saw from time to time, as the bridle-path
+curved in the intricacies of the laurel, the bowed old figure among
+the mists, jogging along, his proud head and his stiff neck bent to the
+slanting rain and the buffets of his unkind fate. And yet, pressing the
+young horse to overtake him, Absalom could find naught but the fleecy
+mists drifting down the bridle-path as the wind might will, or lurking
+in the darkling nooks of the laurel when the wind would.
+
+*****
+
+The sun was shining on the mountains, and Absalom went up from the sad
+gray rain and through the gloomy clouds of autumn hanging over the Cove
+into a soft brilliant upper atmosphere--a generous after-thought of
+summer--and the warm brightness of Evelina's smile. She stood in the
+doorway as she saw him dismounting, with her finger on her lips, for
+the baby was sleeping: he put much of his time into that occupation. The
+tiny gourds hung yellow among the vines that clambered over the roof of
+the porch, and a brave jack-bean--a friend of the sheltering eaves--made
+shift to bloom purple and white, though others of the kind hung, crisp
+and sere, and rattled their dry bones in every gust. The "gyarden spot"
+at the side of the house was full of brown and withered skeletons of
+the summer growths; among the crisp blades of the Indian-corn a sibilant
+voice was forever whispering; down the tawny-colored vistas the pumpkins
+glowed. The sky was blue; the yellow hickory flaming against it and
+hanging over the roof of the cabin was a fine color to see. The red
+sour-wood tree in the fence corner shook out a myriad of white tassels;
+the rolling tumult of the gray clouds below thickened, and he could hear
+the rain a-falling--falling into the dreary depths of the Cove.
+
+All this for him: why should he disquiet himself for the storm that
+burst upon others?
+
+Evelina seemed a part of the brightness; her dark eyes so softly alight,
+her curving red lips, the faint flush in her cheeks, her rich brown
+hair, and the purplish kerchief about the neck of her yellow dress. Once
+more she looked smilingly at him, and shook her head and laid her finger
+on her lip.
+
+"I oughter been sati'fied with all I got, stiddier hectorin' other folks
+till they 'ain't got no heart ter hold on ter what they been at sech
+trouble ter git," he said, as he turned out the horse and strode
+gloomily toward the house with the saddle over his arm.
+
+"Hev ennybody been spiteful ter you-uns ter-day?" she asked, in an
+almost maternal solicitude, and with a flash of partisan anger in her
+eyes.
+
+"Git out'n my road, Eveliny," he said, fretfully, pushing by, and
+throwing the saddle on the floor. There was no one in the room but the
+occupant of the rude box on rockers which served as cradle.
+
+Absalom had a swift, prescient fear. "She'll git it all out'n me ef
+I don't look sharp," he said to himself. Then aloud, "Whar's mam?" he
+demanded, flinging himself into a chair and looking loweringly about.
+
+"Topknot hev jes kem off'n her nest with fourteen deedies, an' she an'
+'Melia hev gone ter the barn ter see 'bout'n 'em."
+
+"Whar's Pete?"
+
+"A-huntin'."
+
+A pause. The fire smouldered audibly; a hickory-nut fell with a sharp
+thwack on the clapboards of the roof, and rolled down and bounded to the
+ground.
+
+Suddenly: "I seen yer dad ter-day," he began, without coercion. "He gin
+me a cussin', in the courtroom, 'fore all the folks. He cussed all the
+Kit-tredges, _all_ o' 'em; him too"--he glanced in the direction of the
+cradle--"cussed 'em black an' blue, an' called me a _thief_ fur marryin'
+ye an kerry-in' ye off."
+
+Her face turned scarlet, then pale. She sat down, her trembling hands
+reaching out to rock the cradle, as if the youthful Kittredge might
+be disturbed by the malediction hurled upon his tribe. But he slept
+sturdily on.
+
+"Waal, now," she said, making a great effort at self-control, "ye
+oughtn't ter mind it. Ye know he war powerful tried. I never purtended
+ter be ez sweet an' pritty ez the baby air, but how would you-uns feel
+ef somebody ye despised war ter kem hyar an' tote him off from we-uns
+forever?"
+
+"I'd cut thar hearts out," he said, with prompt barbarity.
+
+"Thar, now!" exclaimed his wife, in triumphant logic.
+
+He gloomily eyed the smouldering coals. He was beginning to understand
+the paternal sentiment. By his own heart he was learning the heart of
+his wife's father.
+
+"I'd chop 'em inter minch-meat," he continued, carrying his just
+reprisals a step further.
+
+"Waal, don't do it right now," said his wife, trying to laugh, yet
+vaguely frightened by his vehemence.
+
+"Eveliny," he cried, springing to his feet, "I be a-goin' ter tell ye
+all 'bout'n it. I jes called on the cheerman fur the law agin him."
+
+"Agin _dad!_--the law!"' Her voice dropped as she contemplated aghast
+this terrible unapprehended force brought to oppress old Joel Quim-bey;
+she felt a sudden poignant pang for his forlorn and lonely estate.
+
+"Never mind, never mind, Eveliny," Absalom said, hastily, repenting of
+his frantic candor and seeking to soothe her.
+
+"I _will_ mind," she said, sternly. "What hev ye done ter dad?"
+
+"Nuthin'," he replied, sulkily--"nuthin'."
+
+"Ye needn't try ter fool me, Abs'lom Kittredge. Ef ye ain't minded ter
+tell me, I'll foot it down ter town an' find out. What did the law do
+ter him?"
+
+"Jes fined him," he said, striving to make light of it.
+
+"An' ye done that fur--_spite!_" she cried. "A-set-tin' the law ter
+chouse a old man out'n money, fur gittin' mad an' sayin' ye stole his
+only darter. Oh, I'll answer fur him"--she too had risen; her hand
+trembled on the back of the chair, but her face was scornfully
+smiling--"he don't mind the _money_; he'll never git you-uns _fined_ ter
+pay back the gredge. He don't take his wrath out on folkses' _wallets_;
+he grips thar throats, or teches the trigger o' his rifle. Laws-a-massy!
+takin' out yer gredge that-a-way! It's ye poorer fur them dollars,
+Abs'lom--'tain't him." She laughed satirically, and turned to rock the
+cradle.
+
+"What d'ye want me ter do? Fight a old man?" he exclaimed, angrily.
+
+She kept silence, only looking at him with a flushed cheek and a
+scornful laughing eye.
+
+He went on, resentfully: "I ain't 'shamed," he stoutly asserted. "Nobody
+'lowed I oughter be, It's him, plumb bowed down with shame."
+
+"The shoe's on the t'other foot," she cried. "It's ye that oughter be
+'shamed, an' ef ye ain't, it's more shame ter ye. What hev he got ter be
+'shamed of?"
+
+"'Kase," he retorted, "he war fetched up afore a court on a crim'nal
+offence--a-cussin' afore the court! Ye may think it's no shame, but he
+do; he war so 'shamed he gin up his office ez jestice o' the peace, what
+he hev run fur four or five times, an' always got beat 'ceptin' wunst."
+
+"Dad!" but for the whisper she seemed turning to stone; her dilated eyes
+were fixed as she stared into his face.
+
+"An' I seen him a-ridin' off from town in the rain arterward, his head
+hangin' plumb down ter the saddle-bow."
+
+Her amazed eyes were still fastened upon his face, but her hand no
+longer trembled on the back of the chair.
+
+He suddenly held out his own hand to her, his sympathy and regret
+returning as he recalled the picture of the lonely wayfarer in the rain
+that had touched him so. "Oh, Eveliny!" he cried, "I never war so beset
+an' sorry an'--"
+
+She struck his hand down; her eyes blazed. Her aspect was all instinct
+with anger.
+
+"I do declar' I'll never furgive ye--ter spite him so--an' kem an' tell
+_me!_ An' shame him so ez he can't hold his place--an' kem an' tell
+_me!_ An' bow him down so ez he can't show his face whar he hev been so
+respected by all--an' kem an' tell _me!_ An' all fur spite, fur he hev
+got nuthin' ye want now. An' I gin him up an' lef him lonely, an' all
+fur you-uns. Ye air mean, Abs'lom Kit-tredge, an' I'm the mos' fursaken
+fool on the face o' the yearth!"
+
+He tried to speak, but she held up her hand in expostulation.
+
+"Nare word--fur I won't answer. I do declar' I'll never speak ter ye
+agin ez long ez I live."
+
+He flung away with a laugh and a jeer. "That's right," he said,
+encouragingly; "plenty o' men would be powerful glad ef thar wives would
+take pattern by that."
+
+He caught up his hat and strode out of the room. He busied himself in
+stabling his horse, and in looking after the stock. He could hear the
+women's voices from the loft of the barn as they disputed about the
+best methods of tending the newly hatched chickens, that had chipped
+the shell so late in the fall as to be embarrassed by the frosts and the
+coming cold weather. The last bee had ceased to drone about the great
+crimson prince's-feather by the door-step, worn purplish through long
+flaunting, and gone to seed. The clouds were creeping up and up the
+slope, and others were journeying hither from over the mountains. A
+sense of moisture was in the air, although a great column of dust sprang
+up from the dry corn-field, with panic-stricken suggestions, and went
+whirling away, carrying off withered blades in the rush. The first drops
+of rain were pattering, with a resonant timbre in the midst, when Pete
+came home with a newly killed deer on his horse, and the women, with
+fluttering skirts and sun-bonnets, ran swiftly across from the barn to
+the back door of the shed-room. Then the heavy downpour made the cabin
+rock.
+
+"Why, Eveliny an' the baby oughtn't ter be out in this hyar
+rain--they'll be drenched," said the old woman, when they were all
+safely housed except the two. "Whar be she?"
+
+"A-foolin' in the gyarden spot a-getherin' seed an' sech, like she
+always be," said the sister-in-law, tartly.
+
+Absalom ran out into the rain without his hat, his heart in the clutch
+of a prescient terror. No; the summer was over for the garden as well
+as for him; all forlorn and rifled, its few swaying shrubs tossed wildly
+about, a mockery of the grace and bloom that had once embellished it.
+His wet hair Streaming backward in the wind caught on the laurel boughs
+as he went down and down the tangled path that her homesick feet had
+worn to the crag which overlooked the Cove. Not there! He stood,
+himself enveloped in the mist, and gazed blankly into the folds of the
+dun-colored clouds that with tumultuous involutions surged above the
+valley and baffled his vision. He realized it with a sinking heart. She
+was gone.
+
+*****
+
+That afternoon--it was close upon nightfall--Stephen Quimbey, letting
+down the bars for the cows, noticed through the slanting lines of rain,
+serried against the masses of sober-hued vapors which hid the great
+mountain towering above the Cove, a woman crossing the foot-bridge. He
+turned and lifted down another bar, and then looked again. Something
+was familiar in her aspect, certainly. He stood gravely staring. Her
+sun-bonnet had fallen back upon her shoulders, and was hanging loosely
+there by the strings tied beneath her chin; her brown hair, dishevelled'
+by the storm, tossed back and forth in heavy wave-less locks, wet
+through and through. When the wind freshened they lashed, thong-like,
+her pallid oval face; more than once she put up her hand and tried to
+gather them together, or to press them back--only one hand, for she
+clasped a heavy bundle in her arms, and as she toiled along slowly up
+the rocky slope, Stephen suddenly held his palm above his eyes. The
+recognition was becoming definite, and yet he could scarcely believe his
+senses: was it indeed Evelina, wind-tossed, tempest-beaten, and with as
+many tears as rain-drops on her pale cheek? Evelina, forlorn and sorry,
+and with swollen sad dark eyes, and listless exhausted step--here again
+at the bars, where she had not stood since she dragged her wounded lover
+thence on-that eventful night two years and more ago.
+
+Resentment for the domestic treachery was uppermost in his mind, and he
+demanded surlily, when she had advanced within the sound of his words,
+"What hev ye kem hyar fur?"
+
+"Ter stay," she responded, briefly.
+
+His hand in an uncertain gesture laid hold upon his tuft of beard.
+
+"Fur good?" he faltered, amazed.
+
+She nodded silently.
+
+He stooped to lift down the lowest bar that she might pass. Suddenly
+the bundle she clasped gave a dexterous twist; a small head, with
+yellow downy hair, was thrust forth; a pair of fawn-like eyes fixed an
+inquiring stare upon him; the pink face distended with a grin, to which
+the two small teeth in the red mouth, otherwise empty, lent a singularly
+merry expression; and with a manner that was a challenge to pursuit, the
+head disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, tucked with affected
+shyness under Evelina's arm.
+
+She left Stephen standing with the bar in his hand, staring blankly
+after her, and ran into the cabin.
+
+Her father had no questions to ask--nor she.
+
+As he caught her in his arms he gave a great cry of joy that rang
+through the house, and brought Timothy from the barn, in astonishment,
+to the scene.
+
+"Eveliny's _home!_" he cried out to Tim, who, with the ox-yoke in his
+hand, paused in the doorway. "Kem ter stay! Eveliny's _home!_ I knowed
+she'd kem back to her old daddy. Eveliny's kem ter stay fur good."
+
+"They tole me they'd hectored ye plumb out'n the town an' out'n yer
+office. They hed the insurance ter tell _me_ that word!" she cried,
+sobbing on his breast.
+
+"What d'ye reckon I keer fur enny jestice's cheer when I hev got ye
+agin ter set alongside o' me by the fire?" he exclaimed, his cracked old
+voice shrill with triumphant gladness.
+
+He pushed her into her rocking-chair in the chimney-corner, and laughed
+again with the supreme pleasure of the moment, although she had leaned
+her head against the logs of the wall, and was sobbing aloud with the
+contending emotions that tore her heart.
+
+"Didn't ye ever want ter kem afore, Eveliny?" he demanded. "I hev been
+a-pinin' fur a glimge o' ye." He was in his own place now, his hands
+trembling as they lay on the arms of his chair; a pathetic reproach was
+in his voice. "Though old folks oughtn't ter expec' too much o' young
+ones, ez be all tuk up naterally with tharse'fs," he added, bravely. He
+would not let his past lonely griefs mar the bright present. "Old folks
+air mos'ly cumber-ers--mos'ly cumberers o' the yearth, ennyhow."
+
+Her weeping had ceased; she was looking at him with dismayed surprise
+in her eyes, still lustrous with unshed tears. "Why, dad I sent ye
+a hundred messages ef I mought kem. I tole Abs'lom ter tell Joe
+Boyd--bein' as ye liked Joe--I wanted ter see ye." She leaned forward
+and looked up at him with frowning intensity. "They never gin ye that
+word?"
+
+He laughed aloud in sorry scorn. "We can't teach our chil'n nuthin',"
+he philosophized. "They hev got ter hurt tharse'fs with all the thorns
+an' the stings o' the yearth. Our sperience with the sharp things an'
+bitter ones don't do them no sarvice. Naw, leetle darter--naw! Ye mought
+ez well gin a message o' kindness ter a wolf, an' expec' him ter kerry
+it ter some lonesome, helpless thing a-wounded by the way-side, ez gin
+it ter a Kittredge."
+
+"I never will speak ter one o' 'em agin ez long ez I live," she cried,
+with a fresh gust of tears.
+
+"Waal," exclaimed the old man, reassuringly, and chirping high, "hyar
+we all be agin, jes' the same ez we war afore. Don't cry, Eveliny; it's
+jes' the same."
+
+A sudden babbling intruded upon the conversation. The youthful
+Kittredge, as he sat upon the wide flat stones of the hearth, was as
+unwelcome here in the Cove as a Quimbey had been in the cabin on the
+mountain. The great hickory fire called for his unmixed approval, coming
+in, as he had done, from the gray wet day. He shuffled his bare pink
+feet--exceedingly elastic and agile members they seemed to be, and he
+had a remarkable "purchase" upon their use--and brought them smartly
+down upon their heels as if this were one of the accepted gestures of
+applause. Then he looked up at the dark frowning faces of his mother's
+brothers, and gurgled with laughter, showing the fascinating spectacle
+of his two front teeth. Perhaps it was the only Kittredge eye that they
+were not willing to meet. They solemnly gazed beyond him and into the
+fire, ignoring his very existence. He sustained the slight with an
+admirable cheerfulness, and babbled and sputtered and flounced about
+with his hands. He grew pinker in the generous firelight, and he looked
+very fat as he sat in a heap on the floor. He seemed to have threads
+tightly tied about his bolster-shaped limbs in places where elder people
+prefer joints--in his ankles and wrists and elbows--for his arms were
+bare, and although his frock of pink calico hung decorously high on one
+shoulder, it drooped quite off from the other, showing a sturdy chest.
+
+His mother took slight notice of him; she was beginning to look about
+the room with a certain critical disfavor at the different arrangement
+of the household furniture adopted by her father's deaf and widowed old
+sister who presided here now, and who, it chanced, had been called away
+by the illness of a relative. Evelina got up presently, and shifted the
+position of the spinning-wheels, placing the flax-wheel where the large
+wheel had been. She then pushed out the table from the corner. "What
+ailed her ter sot it hyar?" she grumbled, in a disaffected undertone,
+and shoved it to the centre of the floor, where it had always stood
+during her own sway. She cast a discerning glance up among the strings
+of herbs and peppers hanging from above, and examined the shelves where
+the simple stores for table use were arranged in earthen-ware bowls or
+gourds--all with an air of vague dissatisfaction. She presently stepped
+into the shed-room, and there looked over the piles of quilts. They
+were in order, certainly, but placed in a different method from her own;
+another woman's hand had been at work, and she was jealous of its very
+touch among these familiar old things to which she seemed positively
+akin. "I wonder how I made out ter bide so long on the mounting," she
+said; and with the recollection of the long-haired Absalom there was
+another gush of tears and sobs, which she stifled as she could in one
+of the old quilts that held many of her own stitches and was soothing to
+touch.
+
+The infantile Kittredge, who was evidently not born to blush unseen,
+seemed to realize that he had failed to attract the attention of the
+three absorbed Quimbeys who sat about the fire. He blithely addressed
+himself to another effort. He suddenly whisked himself over on
+all-fours, and with a certain ursine aspect went nimbly across the
+hearth, still holding up his downy yellow head, his pink face agrin,
+and alluringly displaying his two facetious teeth. He caught the rung of
+Tim's chair, and lifted himself tremulously to an upright posture. And
+then it became evident that he was about to give an exhibition of
+the thrilling feat of walking around a chair. With a truly Kittredge
+perversity he had selected the one that had the savage Timothy seated
+in it. For an instant the dark-browed face scowled down into his
+unaffrighted eyes: it seemed as if Tim might kick him into the fire.
+The next moment he had set out to circumnavigate, as it were. What a
+prodigious force he expended upon it! How he gurgled and grinned and
+twisted his head to observe the effect upon the men, all sedulously
+gazing into the fire! how he bounced, and anon how he sank with sudden
+genuflections! how limber his feet seemed, and what free agents! Surely
+he never intended to put them down at that extravagant angle. More than
+once one foot was placed on top of the other--an attitude that impeded
+locomotion and resulted in his sitting down in an involuntary manner and
+with some emphasis. With an appalling temerity he clutched Tim's great
+miry boots to help him up and on his way round. Occasionally he swayed
+to and fro, with his teeth on exhibition, laughing and babbling and
+shrilly exclaiming, inarticulately bragging of his agile prowess, as
+if he were able to defy all the Quimbeys, who would not notice him. And
+when it was all over he went in his wriggling ursine gait back to the
+hearth-stone, and there he was sitting, demurely enough, and as if he
+had never moved, when his mother returned and found him.
+
+There was no indication that he had attracted a moment's attention. She
+looked gravely down at him; then took her chair. A pair of blue yarn
+socks was in her hand. "I never see sech darnin' ez Aunt Sairy Ann do
+fur ye, dad; I hev jes tuk my shears an' cut this heel smang out, an' I
+be goin' ter do it over."
+
+She slipped a tiny gourd into the heel, and began to draw the slow
+threads to and fro across it.
+
+The blaze, red and yellow, and with elusive purple gleams, leaped up the
+chimney. The sap was still in the wood; it sang a summer-tide song. But
+an autumn wind was blowing shrilly down the chimney; one could hear the
+sibilant rush of the dead leaves on the blast. The window and the door
+shook, and were still, and once more rattled as if a hand were on the
+latch.
+
+Suddenly--"Ever weigh him?" her father asked.
+
+She sat upright with a nervous start. It was a moment before she
+understood that it was of the Kittredge scion he spoke.
+
+With his high cracked laugh the old man leaned over, his outspread hand
+hovering about the plump baby, uncertain where, in so much soft fatness,
+it might be practicable to clutch him. There were some large horn
+buttons on the back of his frock, a half-dozen of which, gathered
+together, afforded a grasp. He lifted the child by them, laughing in
+undisguised pleasure to feel the substantial strain upon the garment.
+
+"Toler'ble survigrus," he declared, with his high chirp.
+
+His daughter suddenly sprang up with a pallid face and a pointing hand.
+
+"The winder!" she huskily cried--"suthin's at the winder!"
+
+But when they looked they saw only the dark square of tiny panes,
+with the fireside scene genially reflected on it. And then she fell to
+declaring that she had been dreaming, and besought them not to take
+down their guns nor to search, and would not be still until they had
+all seemed to concede the point; it was she who fastened the doors and
+shutters, and she did not lie down to rest till they were all asleep and
+hours had passed. None of them doubted that it was Absalom's face that
+she had seen at the window, where the light had once lured him before,
+and she knew that she had dreamed no dream like this.
+
+*****
+
+It soon became evident that whenever Joe Boyd was intrusted with a
+message he would find means to deliver it. For upon him presently
+devolved the difficult duties of ambassador. The first time that his
+honest square face appeared at the rail fence, and the sound of his
+voice roused Evelina as she stood feeding the poultry close by, she
+returned his question with a counter-question hard to answer.
+
+"I hev been up the mounting," he said, smiling, as he hooked his arms
+over the rail fence. "Abs'-lom he say he wanter know when ye'll git yer
+visit out an' kem home."
+
+She leaned her elbow against the ash-hopper, balancing the wooden bowl
+of corn-meal batter on its edge and trembling a little; the geese and
+chickens and turkeys crowded, a noisy rout, about her feet.
+
+"Joe," she said, irrelevantly, "ye air one o' the few men on this yearth
+ez ain't a liar."
+
+He stared at her gravely for a moment, then burst into a forced laugh.
+"Ho! ho! I tell a bushel o' 'em a day, Eveliny!" He wagged his head in
+an anxious affectation of mirth.
+
+[Illustration: Why'n't ye gin dad them messages 119]
+
+"Why'n't ye gin dad them messages ez Abs'lom gin ye from me?"
+
+Joe received this in blank amaze; then, with sudden comprehension, his
+lower jaw dropped. He looked at her with a plea for pity in his eyes.
+And yet his ready tact strove to reassert itself.
+
+"I mus' hev furgot 'em," he faltered.
+
+"Did Abs'lom ever gin 'em ter ye?" she persisted.
+
+"_Ef he did_, I mus' hev furgot 'em," he repeated, crestfallen and
+hopeless.
+
+She laughed and turned jauntily away, once more throwing the corn-meal
+batter to the greedily jostling poultry. "Tell Abs'lom I hev fund him
+out," she said. "He can't sot me agin dad no sech way. This be my home,
+an' hyar I be goin' ter 'bide."
+
+And so she left the good Joe Boyd hooked on by the elbows to the fence.
+
+The Quimbeys, who had heard this conversation from within, derived from
+it no small elation. "She hev gin 'em the go-by fur good," Timothy said,
+confidently, to his father, who laughed in triumph, and pulled calmly at
+his pipe, and looked ten years younger.
+
+But Steve was surlily anxious. "I'd place heap mo' dependence in Eveliny
+ef she didn't hev this hyar way o' cryin' all the time. She 'lows she's
+glad she kem--_so glad_ she hev lef Abs'lom fur good an' all--an' then
+she busts out a-cryin' agin. I ain't able ter argufy on sech."
+
+"Shucks! wimmen air always a-cryin', an' they don't mean _nuthin'_ by
+it," exclaimed the old man, in the plenitude of his wisdom. "It air jes'
+one o' thar most contrarious ways. I hev seen 'em set down an' cry fur
+joy an' pleasure."
+
+But Steve was doubtful. "It be a powerful low-sperited gift fur them ez
+hev ter 'bide along of 'em. Eveliny never useter be tearful in nowise.
+Now she cries a heap mo' 'n that thar shoat"--his lips curled in
+contempt as he glanced toward the door, through which was visible a
+small rotund figure in pink calico, seated upon the lowest log of the
+wood-pile--"ez she fotched down hyar with her. _He_ never hev hed a
+reg'lar blate but two or three times sence he hev been hyar, an' them
+war when that thar old tur-rkey gobbler teetered up ter him an' tuk
+his corn-dodger that he war a-eatin' on plumb out'n his hand. _He_ hed
+suthin' to holler fur--hed los' his breakfus."
+
+"Don't he 'pear ter you-uns to be powerful peeg-eon-toed?" asked Tim,
+anxiously, turning to his father.
+
+"The gawbbler?" faltered the amazed old man.
+
+"Naw; him, _him--Kittredge_," said Tim, jerking his big thumb in the
+direction of the small boy.
+
+"Law-dy Gawd A'mighty! _naw! naw!_" The grandfather indignantly
+repudiated the imputation of the infirmity. One would have imagined that
+he would deem it meet that a Kittredge should be pigeon-toed. "It's jes
+the way _all_ babies hev got a-walkin'; he ain't right handy yit with
+his feet--jes a-beginnin' ter walk, an' sech. Peegeon-toed! I say it, ye
+fool!" He cast a glance of contempt on his eldest-born, and arrogantly
+puffed his pipe.
+
+Again Joe Boyd came, and yet again. He brought messages contrite and
+promissory from Absalom; he brought commands stern and insistent. He
+came into the house at last, and sat and talked at the fireside in
+the presence of the men of the family, who bore themselves in a manner
+calculated to impress the Kittredge emissary with their triumph and
+contempt for his mission, although they studiously kept silence, leaving
+it to Evelina to answer.
+
+At last the old man, leaning forward, tapped Joe on the knee. "See hyar,
+Joe. Ye hev always been a good frien' o' mine. This hyar man he stole
+my darter from me, an' whenst she wanted ter be frien's, an' not let her
+old dad die unforgiving he wouldn't let her send the word ter me. An'
+then he sot himself ter spite an' hector me, an' fairly run me out'n the
+town, an' harried me out'n my office; an' when she fund out--she wouldn't
+take my word fur it--the deceivin' natur' o' the Kittredge tribe, she
+hed hed enough o' 'em. I hev let ye argufy 'bout'n it; ye hev hed yer
+fill of words. An' now I be tired out. Ye ain't 'lowin' she'll ever go
+back ter her husband, air ye?"
+
+Joe dolorously shook his head.
+
+"Waal, ef ever ye kem hyar talkin' 'bout'n it agin, I'll be 'bleeged ter
+take down my rifle ter ye."
+
+Joe gazed, unmoved, into the fire.
+
+"An' that would be mighty hard on me, Joe, 'kase ye be so pop'lar
+'mongst all, I dunno _what_ the kentry-side would do ter me ef I war ter
+put a bullet inter ye. Ye air a young man, Joe. Ye oughter spare a old
+man sech a danger ez that."
+
+And so it happened that Joe Boyd's offices as mediator ceased.
+
+A week went by in silence and without result.
+
+Evelina's tears seemed to keep count of the minutes. The brothers
+indignantly noted it, and even the old man was roused from the placid
+securities of his theories concerning lachrymose womankind, and
+remonstrated sometimes, and sometimes grew angry and exhorted her to
+go back. What did it matter to her how her father was treated? He was a
+cumberer of the ground, and many people besides her husband had thought
+he had no right to sit in a justice's chair. And then she would burst
+into tears once more, and declare again that she would never go back.
+
+The only thoroughly cheerful soul about the place was the intruding
+Kittredge. He sat continuously--for the weather was fine--on the lowest
+log of the wood-pile, and swung his bare pink feet among the chips and
+bark, and seemed to have given up all ambition to walk. Occasionally red
+and yellow leaves whisked past his astonished eyes, although these were
+few now, for November was on the wane. He babbled to the chickens, who
+pecked about him with as much indifference as if he were made of wood.
+His two teeth came glittering out whenever the rooster crowed, and his
+gleeful laugh--he rejoiced so in this handsomely endowed bird--could
+be heard to the barn. The dogs seemed never to have known that he was
+a Kittredge, and wagged their tails at the very sound of his voice,
+and seized surreptitious opportunities to lick his face. Of all his
+underfoot world only the gobbler awed him into gravity and silence; he
+would gaze in dismay as the marauding fowl irresolutely approached from
+around the wood pile, with long neck out-stretched and undulating gait,
+applying first one eye and then the other to the pink hands, for the
+gobbler seemed to consider them a perpetual repository of corn-dodgers,
+which indeed they were. Then the head and the wabbling red wattles would
+dart forth with a sudden peck, and the shriek that ensued proved that
+nothing could be much amiss with the Kittredge lungs.
+
+One fine day he sat thus in the red November sunset. The sky, seen
+through the interlacing black boughs above his head, was all amber and
+crimson, save for a wide space of pure and pallid green, against which
+the purplish-garnet wintry mountains darkly gloomed. Beyond the
+rail fence the avenues of the bare woods were carpeted with the
+sere yellowish leaves that gave back the sunlight with a responsive
+illuminating effect, and thus the sylvan visitas glowed. The long
+slanting beams elongated his squatty little shadow till it was hardly
+a caricature. He heard the cow lowing as she came to be milked, fording
+the river where the clouds were so splendidly reflected. The chickens
+were going to roost. The odor of the wood, the newly-hewn chips,
+imparted a fresh and fragrant aroma to the air. He had found among
+them a sweet-gum ball and a pine cone, and was applying them to the
+invariable test of taste. Suddenly he dropped them with a nervous
+start, his lips trembled, his lower jaw fell, he was aware of a stealthy
+approach. Something was creeping behind the wood-pile. He hardly had
+time to bethink himself of his enemy the gobbler when he was clutched
+under the arm, swung through the air with a swiftness that caused
+the scream to evaporate in his throat, and the next moment he looked
+quakingly up into his father's face with unrecognizing eyes; for he had
+forgotten Absalom in these few weeks. He squirmed and wriggled as he was
+held on the pommel of the saddle, winking and catching his breath and
+spluttering, as preliminary proceedings to an outcry. There was a sudden
+sound of heavily shod feet running across the puncheon floor within, a
+wild, incoherent exclamation smote the air, an interval of significant
+silence ensued.
+
+"Get up!" cried Absalom, not waiting for Tim's rifle, but spurring the
+young horse, and putting him at the fence. The animal rose with the
+elasticity and lightness of an uprearing ocean wave. The baby once more
+twisted his soft neck, and looked anxiously into the rider's face.
+This was not the gobbler. The gobbler did not ride horseback. Then
+the affinity of the male infant for the noble equine animal suddenly
+overbore all else. In elation he smote with his soft pink hand the
+glossy arched neck before him. "Dul-lup!" he arrogantly echoed Absalom's
+words. And thus father and son at a single bound disappeared into woods,
+and so out of sight.
+
+*****
+
+The savage Tim was leaning upon his rifle in the doorway, his eyes
+dilated, his breath short, his whole frame trembling with excitement, as
+the other men, alarmed by Evelina's screams, rushed down from the barn.
+
+"What ails ye, Tim? Why'n't ye fire?" demanded his father.
+
+Tim turned an agitated, baffled look upon him. "I--I mought hev hit the
+baby," he faltered.
+
+"Hain't ye got no aim, ye durned sinner?" asked Stephen, furiously.
+
+"Bullet mought hev gone through him and struck inter the baby,"
+expostulated Tim.
+
+"An' then agin it moughtn't!" cried Stephen. "Lawd, ef _I_ hed hed the
+chance!"
+
+"Ye wouldn't hev done no differ," declared Tim.
+
+"Hyar!" Steve caught his brother's gun and presented it to Tim's lips.
+"Suck the bar'l. It's 'bout all ye air good fur."
+
+The horses had been turned out. By the time they were caught and saddled
+pursuit was evidently hopeless. The men strode in one by one, dashing
+the saddles and bridles on the floor, and finding in angry expletives a
+vent for their grief. And indeed it might have seemed that the Quimbeys
+must have long sought a choice Kittredge infant for adoption, so far did
+their bewailings discount Rachel's mourning.
+
+"Don't cry, Eveliny," they said, ever and anon. "We-uns 'll git him back
+fur ye."
+
+But she had not shed a tear. She sat speechless, motionless, as if
+turned to stone.
+
+"Laws-a-massy, child, ef ye would jes hev b'lieved _me_ 'bout'n them
+Kittredges--Abs'lom in partic'lar--ye'd be happy an' free now," said the
+old man, his imagination somewhat extending his experience, for he had
+had no knowledge of his son-in-law until their relationship began.
+
+The evening wore drearily on. Now and then the men roused themselves,
+and with lowering faces discussed the opportunities of reprisal, and the
+best means of rescuing the child. And whether they schemed to burn the
+Kittredge cabin, or to arm themselves, burst in upon their enemies,
+shooting and killing all who resisted, Evelina said nothing, but stared
+into the fire with unnaturally dilated eyes, her white lined face all
+drawn and somehow unrecognizable.
+
+"Never mind," her father said at intervals, taking her cold hand,
+"we-uns 'll git him back, Eveliny. The Lord hed a mother wunst, an' I'll
+be bound He keeps a special pity for a woman an' her child."
+
+"Oh, great gosh! who'd hev dreamt we'd hev missed him so!" cried Tim,
+shifting his position, and slipping his left arm over the back of his
+chair. "Jes ter think o' the leetle size o' him, an' the great big gap
+he hev lef roun' this hyar ha'th-stone!"
+
+"An' yit he jes sot underfoot, 'mongst the cat an' the dogs, jes ez
+humble!" said Stephen.
+
+"I'd git him back even ef he warn't no kin ter me, Eveliny," declared
+Tim, and he spoke advisedly, remembering that the youth was a Kittredge.
+
+Still Evelina said not a word. All that night she silently walked the
+puncheon floor, while the rest of the household slept. The dogs, in
+vague disturbance, because of the unprecedented vigil and stir in the
+midnight, wheezed uneasily from time to time, and crept restlessly about
+under the cabin, now and again thumping their backs or heads against the
+floor; but at last they betook themselves to slumber. The hickory logs
+broke in twain as they burned, and fell on either side, and presently
+there was only the dull red glow of the embers on her pale face, and the
+room was full of brown shadows, motionless, now that the flames flared
+no more. Once when the red glow, growing ever dimmer, seemed almost
+submerged beneath the gray ashes, she paused and stirred the coals. The
+renewed glimmer showed a fixed expression in her eyes, becoming momently
+more resolute. At intervals she knelt at the window and placed her hands
+about her face to shut out the light from the hearth, and looked out
+upon the night. How the chill stars loitered! How the dawn delayed! The
+great mountain gloomed darkling above the Cove. The waning moon, all
+melancholy and mystic, swung in the purple sky. The bare, stark boughs
+of the trees gave out here and there a glimmer of hoar-frost. There was
+no wind; when she heard the dry leaves whisk she caught a sudden glimpse
+of a fox that, with his crafty shadow pursuing him, leaped upon the
+wood-pile, nimbly ran along its length, and so, noiselessly, away--while
+the dogs snored beneath the house. A cock crew from the chicken-roost;
+the mountain echoed the resonant strain. She saw a mist come stealing
+softly along a precipitous gorge; the gauzy web hung shimmering in the
+moon; presently the trees were invisible; anon they showed rigid among
+the soft enmeshment of the vapor, and again were lost to view..
+
+She rose; there was a new energy in her step; she walked quickly across
+the floor and unbarred the door.
+
+The little cabin on the mountain was lost among the clouds. It was
+not yet day, but the old woman, with that proclivity to early rising
+characteristic of advancing years, was already astir. It was in the
+principal room of the cabin that she slept, and it contained another
+bed, in which, placed crosswise, were five billet-shaped objects under
+the quilts, which when awake identified themselves as Peter Kittredge's
+children. She had dressed and uncovered the embers, and put on a few of
+the chips which had been spread out on the hearth to dry, and had sat
+down in the chimney corner. A timid blaze began to steal up, and again
+was quenched, and only the smoke ascended in its form; then the
+light flickered out once more, casting a gigantic shadow of her
+sun-bonnet--for she had donned it thus early--half upon the brown and
+yellow daubed wall, and half upon the dark ceiling, making a specious
+stir amidst the peltry and strings of pop-corn hanging motionless
+thence.
+
+She sighed heavily once or twice, and with an aged manner, and leaned
+her elbows on her knees and gazed contemplatively at the fire. All at
+once the ashes were whisked about the hearth as in a sudden draught,
+and then were still. In momentary surprise she pushed her chair back,
+hesitated, then replaced it, and calmly settled again her elbows on her
+knees. Suddenly once more a whisking of the ashes; a cold shiver ran
+through her, and she turned to see a hand fumbling at the batten shutter
+close by. She stared for a moment as if paralyzed; her spectacles fell
+to the floor from her nerveless hand, shattering the lenses on the
+hearth. She rose trembling to her feet, and her lips parted as if to cry
+out. They emitted no sound, and she turned with a terrified fascination
+and looked back. The shutter had opened; there was no glass; the small
+square of the window showed the nebulous gray mist without, and defined
+upon it was Evelina's head, her dark hair streaming over the red shawl
+held about it, her fair oval face pallid and pensive, and with a great
+wistfulness upon it; her lustrous dark eyes glittered.
+
+"Mother," her red lips quivered out.
+
+The old crone recognized no treachery in her heart. She laid a warning
+finger upon her lips. All the men were asleep.
+
+Evelina stretched out her yearning arms. "Gin him ter me!"
+
+"Naw, naw, Eveliny," huskily whispered Absalom's mother. "Ye oughter kem
+hyar an' 'bide with yer husband--ye know ye ought."
+
+Evelina still held out her insistent arms. "Gin him ter me!" she
+pleaded.
+
+The old woman shook her head sternly. "Ye kem in, an' 'bide whar ye
+b'long."
+
+Evelina took a step nearer the window. She laid her hand on the sill.
+"Spos'n 'twar Abs'lom whenst he war a baby," she said, her eyes softly
+brightening, "an' another woman hed him an' kep' him, 'kase ye an' his
+dad fell out--would ye hev 'lowed she war right ter treat ye like ye
+treat me--whenst Abs'lom war a baby?"
+
+Once more she held out her arms.
+
+There was a step in the inner shed-room; then silence.
+
+"Ye hain't got no excuse," the soft voice urged; "ye know jes how I
+feel, how ye'd hev felt, whenst Abs'lom war a baby."
+
+The shawl had fallen back from her tender face; her eyes glowed, her
+cheek was softly flushed. A sudden terror thrilled through her as she
+again heard the heavy step approaching in the shed-room. "Whenst Abs'lom
+war a baby," she reiterated, her whole pleading heart in the tones.
+
+A sudden radiance seemed to illumine the sad, dun-colored folds of the
+encompassing cloud; her face shone with a transfiguring happiness, for
+the hustling old crone had handed out to her a warm, somnolent bundle,
+and the shutter closed upon the mists with a bang.
+
+"The wind's riz powerful suddint," Peter said, noticing the noise as he
+came stumbling in, rubbing his eyes. He went and fastened the shutter,
+while his mother tremulously mended the fire.
+
+The absence of the baby was not noticed for some time, and when the
+father's hasty and angry questions elicited the reluctant facts, the
+outcry for his loss was hardly less bitter among the Kittredges than
+among the Quimbeys. The fugitives were shielded from capture by the
+enveloping mist, and when Absalom returned from the search he could do
+naught but indignantly upbraid his mother.
+
+[Illustration: Flung her apron over her head 133]
+
+She was terrified by her own deed, and cowered under Absalom's wrath. It
+was in a moral collapse, she felt, that she could have done this
+thing. She flung her apron over her head, and sat still and silent--a
+monumental figure--among them. Once, roused by Absalom's reproaches, she
+made some effort to defend and exculpate herself, speaking from behind
+the enveloping apron.
+
+"I ain't born no Kittredge nohow," she irrelevantly asseverated, "an'
+I never war. An' when Eveliny axed me how I'd hev liked ter hev another
+'oman take Abs'lom whenst he war a baby, I couldn't hold out no longer."
+
+"Shucks!" cried Absalom, unfilially; "ye'd aheap better be a-studyin'
+'bout'n my good now 'n whenst I war a baby--a-givin' away _my_ child ter
+them Quimbeys; a-h'istin' him out'n the winder!"
+
+She was glad to retort that he was "impident," and to take refuge in an
+aggrieved silence, as many another mother has done when outmatched by
+logic.
+
+After this there was more cheerfulness in her hidden face than might
+have been argued from her port of important sorrow. "Bes' ter hev
+no jawin', though," she said to herself, as she sat thus inscrutably
+veiled. And deep in her repentant heart she was contradictorily glad
+that Evelina and the baby were safe together down in the Cove.
+
+*****
+
+Old Joel Quimbey, putting on his spectacles, with a look of keenest
+curiosity, to read a paper which the deputy-sheriff of the county
+presented when he drew rein by the wood-pile one afternoon some three
+weeks later, had some difficulty in identifying a certain Elnathan
+Daniel Kittredge specified therein. He took off his spectacles, rubbed
+them smartly, and put them on again. The writing was unchanged. Surely
+it must mean the baby. That was the only Kittredge whose body they could
+be summoned to produce on the 24th of December before the judge of the
+circuit court, now in session. He turned the paper about and looked at
+it, his natural interest as a man augmented by his recognition as an
+ex-magistrate of its high important legal character.
+
+"Eveliny," he quavered, at once flattered and furious, "dad-burned ef
+Abs'lom hain't gone an' got out a _habeas corpus_ fur the baby!"
+
+The phrase had a sound so deadly that there was much ado to
+satisfactorily explain the writ and its functions to Evelina, who
+had felt at ease again since the baby was at home, and so effectually
+guarded that to kidnap him was necessarily to murder two or three of the
+vigilant and stalwart Quimbey men. So much joy did it afford the old
+man to air his learning and consult his code--a relic of his
+justiceship--that he belittled the danger of losing the said Elnathan
+Daniel Kittredge in the interest with which he looked forward to the day
+for him to be produced before the court.
+
+There was a gathering of the clans on that day. Quimbeys and Kittredges
+who had not visited the town for twenty years were jogging thither
+betimes that morning on the red clay roads, all unimpeded by the deep
+mud which, frozen into stiff ruts and ridges here and there, made the
+way hazardous to the running-gear. The lagging winter had come, and the
+ground was half covered with a light fall of snow.
+
+The windows of the court-house were white with frost; the weighted doors
+clanged continuously. An old codger, slowly ascending the steps, and
+pushing into the semi-obscurity of the hall, paused as the door slammed
+behind him, stared at the sheriff in surprise, then fixed him with a
+bantering leer. The light that slanted through the open court-room
+door fell upon the official's burly figure, his long red beard, his big
+broad-brimmed hat pushed back from his laughing red face, consciously
+ludicrous and abashed just now.
+
+"Hev ye made a find?" demanded the newcomer.
+
+For in the strong arms of the law sat, bolt-upright, Elnathan Daniel
+Kittredge, his yellow head actively turning about, his face decorated
+with a grin, and on most congenial terms with the sheriff.
+
+"They're lawin' 'bout'n him in thar "--the sheriff jerked his thumb
+toward the door. "_Habeas corpus_ perceedin's. Dun no ez I ever see a
+friskier leetle cuss. Durned ef I 'ain't got a good mind ter run off
+with him myself."
+
+The said Elnathan Daniel Kittredge once more squirmed round and settled
+himself comfortably in the hollow of the sheriff's elbow, who marvelled
+to find himself so deft in holding him, for it was twenty years since
+his son--a gawky youth who now affected the company at the saloon, and
+was none too filial--was the age and about the build of this infant
+Kittredge.
+
+"They hed a reg'lar scrimmage hyar in the hall--them fool men--Quimbey
+an' Kittredge. Old man Quimbey said suthin' ter Abs'lom Kittredge--I
+dunno what all. Abs'lom never jawed back none. He jes made a dart an'
+snatched this hyar leetle critter out'n his mother's arms, stiddier
+waitin' fur the law, what he summonsed himself. Blest ef I didn't hev
+ter hold my revolver ter his head, an' then crack him over the knuckles,
+ter make him let go the child. I didn't want ter arrest him--mighty
+clever boy, Abs'lom Kittredge! I promised that young woman I'd keep holt
+o' the child till the law gins its say-so. I feel sorry fur her; she's
+been through a heap."
+
+"Waal, ye look mighty pritty, totin' him around hyar," his friend
+encouraged him with a grin. "I'll say that fur ye--ye look mighty
+pritty."
+
+And in fact the merriment in the hall at the sheriff's expense began
+to grow so exhilarating as to make him feel that the proceedings within
+were too interesting to lose. His broad red face with its big red beard
+reappeared in the doorway--slightly embarrassed because of the sprightly
+manners of his charge, who challenged to mirth every eye that glanced at
+him by his toothful grin and his gurgles and bounces; he was evidently
+enjoying the excitement and his conspicuous position. He manfully
+gnawed at his corn-dodger from time to time, and from the manner in
+which he fraternized with his new acquaintance, the sheriff, he seemed
+old enough to dispense with maternal care, and, but for his incomplete
+methods of locomotion, able to knock about town with the boys. The
+Quimbeys took note of his mature demeanor with sinking hearts; they
+looked anxiously at the judge, wondering if he had ever before seen
+such precocity--anything so young to be so old: "He 'ain't never afore
+'peared so survigrus--so _durned survigrus_ ez he do ter-day," they
+whispered to each other.
+
+"Yes, sir," his father was saying, on examination, "year old. Eats
+anything he kin git--cabbage an' fat meat an' anything. _Could_ walk if
+he wanted ter. But he 'ain't been raised right"--he glanced at his wife
+to observe the effect of this statement. He felt a pang as he noted her
+pensive, downcast face, all tremulous and agitated, overwhelmed as she
+was by the crowd and the infinite moment of the decision. But Absalom,
+too, had his griefs, and they expressed themselves perversely.
+
+"He hev been pompered an' fattened by bein' let ter eat an' sleep so
+much, till he be so heavy ter his self he don't wanter take the trouble
+ter get about. He _could_ walk ennywhar. He's plumb survigrus."
+
+And as if in confirmation, the youthful Kittredge lifted his voice to
+display his lung power. He hilariously babbled, and suddenly roared out
+a stentorian whoop, elicited by nothing in particular, then caught the
+sheriff's beard, and buried in it his conscious pink face.
+
+The judge looked gravely up over his spectacles. He had a bronzed
+complexion, a serious, pondering expression, a bald head, and a gray
+beard. He wore a black broadcloth suit, somewhat old-fashioned in cut,
+and his black velvet waist-coat had suffered an eruption of tiny
+red satin spots. He had great respect for judicial decorums, and no
+Kittredge, however youthful, or survigrus, or exalted in importance
+by _habeas corpus_ proceedings, could "holler" unmolested where he
+presided.
+
+"Mr. Sheriff," he said, solemnly, "remove that child from the presence
+of the court."
+
+And the said Elnathan Daniel Kittredge went out gleefully kicking in the
+arms of the law.
+
+The hundred or so grinning faces in the courtroom relapsed quickly into
+gravity and excited interest. The rows of jeans-clad countrymen seated
+upon the long benches on either side of the bar leaned forward with
+intent attitudes. For this was a rich feast of local gossip, such as
+had not been so bountifully spread within their recollection. All the
+ancient Quimbey and Kittredge feuds contrived to be detailed anew in
+offering to the judge reasons why father or mother was the more fit
+custodian of the child in litigation.
+
+As Absalom sat listening to all this, his eyes were suddenly arrested
+by his wife's face--half draped it was, half shadowed by her sun-bonnet,
+its fine and delicate profile distinctly outlined against the
+crystalline and frosted pane of the window near which she sat. The snow
+without threw a white reflection upon it; its rich coloring in contrast
+was the more intense; it was very pensive, with the heavy lids drooping
+over the lustrous eyes, and with a pathetic appeal in its expression.
+
+And suddenly his thoughts wandered far afield. He wondered that it had
+come to this; that she could have misunderstood him so; that he had
+thought her hard and perverse and unforgiving. His heart was all at once
+melting within him; somehow he was reminded how slight a thing she was,
+and how strong was the power that nerved her slender hand to drag his
+heavy weight, in his dead and helpless unconsciousness, down to the bars
+and into the safety of the sheltering laurel that night, when he lay
+wounded and bleeding under the lighted window of the cabin in the Cove.
+A deep tenderness, an irresistible yearning had come upon him; he was
+about to rise, he was about to speak he knew not what, when suddenly
+her face was irradiated as one who sees a blessed vision; a happy light
+sprang into her eyes; her lips curved with a smile; the quick tears
+dropped one by one on her hands, nervously clasping and unclasping
+each other. He was bewildered for a moment. Then he heard Peter gruffly
+growling a half-whispered curse, and the voice of the judge, in the
+exercise of his discretion, methodically droning out his reasons for
+leaving so young a child in the custody of its mother, disregarding the
+paramount rights of the father. The judge concluded by dispassionately
+recommending the young couple to betake themselves home, and to try
+to live in peace together, or, at any rate, like sane people. Then he
+thrust his spectacles up on his forehead, drew a long sigh of dismissal,
+and said, with a freshened look of interest, "Mr. Clerk, call the next
+case."
+
+The Quimbey and Kittredge factions poured into the hall; what cared
+they for the disputed claims of Jenkins _versus_ Jones? The lovers
+of sensation cherished a hope that there might be a lawless effort
+to rescue the infant Kittredge from the custody to which he had been
+committed by the court. The Quimbeys watchfully kept about him in
+a close squad, his pink sun-bonnet, in which his head was eclipsed,
+visible among their brawny jeans shoulders, as his mother carried him
+in her arms. The sheriff looked smilingly after him from the court-house
+steps, then inhaled a long breath, and began to roar out to the icy
+air the name of a witness wanted within. Instead of a gate there was
+a flight of steps on each side of the fence, surmounted by a small
+platform. Evelina suddenly shrank back as she stood on the platform, for
+beside the fence Absalom was waiting. Timothy hastily vaulted over the
+fence, drew his "shooting-iron" from his boot-leg, and cocked it with
+a metallic click, sharp and peremptory in the keen wintry air. For a
+moment Absalom said not a word. He looked up at Evelina with as much
+reproach as bitterness in his dark eyes. They were bright with the anger
+that fired his blood; it was hot in his bronzed cheek; it quivered in
+his hands. The dry and cold atmosphere amplified the graces of his long
+curling yellow hair that she and his mother loved. His hat was pushed
+back from his face. He had not spoken to her since the day of his
+ill-starred confidence, but he would not be denied now.
+
+"Ye'll repent it," he said, threateningly. "I'll take special pains fur
+that."
+
+She bestowed on him one defiant glance, and laughed--a bitter little
+laugh. "Ye air ekal ter it; ye have a special gift fur makin' folks
+repent they ever seen ye."
+
+"The jedge jes gin him ter ye 'kase ye made him out sech a fibble little
+pusson," he sneered. "But it's jes fur a time."
+
+She held the baby closer. He busied himself in taking off his sun-bonnet
+and putting it on hind part before, gurgling with smothered laughter
+to find himself thus queerly masked, and he made futile efforts to play
+"peep-eye" with anybody jovially disposed in the crowd. But they
+were all gravely absorbed in the conjugal quarrel at which they were
+privileged to assist.
+
+"It's jes fur a time," he reiterated.
+
+"Wait an' see!" she retorted, triumphantly.
+
+"I won't wait," he declared, goaded; "I'll take him yit; an' when I do
+I'll clar out'n the State o' Tennessee--see ef I don't!"
+
+She turned white and trembled. "Ye dassent," she cried out shrilly.
+"Ye'll be 'feared o' the law."
+
+"Wait an' see!" He mockingly echoed her words, and turned in his old
+confident manner, and strode out of the crowd.
+
+Faint and trembling, she crept into the old canvas-covered wagon, and
+as it jogged along down the road stiff with its frozen ruts and ever
+nearing the mountains, she clasped the cheerful Kittredge with a
+yearning sense of loss, and declared that the judge had made him no
+safer than before. It was in vain that her father, speaking from
+the legal lore of the code, detailed the contempt of court that the
+Kittredges would commit should they undertake to interfere with the
+judicial decision--it might be even considered kidnapping.
+
+"But what good would that do me--an' the baby whisked plumb out'n the
+State? Ef Abs'lom ain't 'feared o' Tim's rifle, what's he goin' ter
+keer fur the pore jedge with nare weepon but his leetle contempt o'
+court--ter jail Abs'lom, ef he kin make out ter ketch him!"
+
+She leaned against the swaying hoop of the cover of the wagon and burst
+into tears. "Oh, none o' ye 'll do nuthin' fur me!" she exclaimed, in
+frantic reproach. "Nuthin'!"
+
+"Ye talk like 'twar we-uns ez made up sech foolishness ez _habeas
+corpus_ out'n our own heads," said Timothy. "I 'ain't never looked ter
+the law fur pertection. Hyar's the pertecter." He touched the trigger of
+his rifle and glanced reassuringly at his sister as he sat beside her on
+the plank laid as a seat from side to side of the wagon.
+
+She calmed herself for a moment; then suddenly looked aghast at the
+rifle, and with some occult and hideous thought, burst anew into tears.
+
+"Waal, sir," exclaimed Stephen, outdone, "what with all this hyar daily
+weepin' an' nightly mournin', I 'ain't got spunk enough lef ter stan'
+up agin the leetlest Kittredge a-goin'. I ain't man enough ter sight a
+rifle. Kittredges kin kem enny time an' take my hide, horns, an' tallow
+ef they air minded so ter do."
+
+"I 'lowed I hearn suthin' a-gallopin' down the road," said Tim,
+abruptly.
+
+Her tears suddenly ceased. She clutched the baby closer, and turned
+and lifted the flap of the white curtain at the back of the wagon,
+and looked out with a wild and terror-stricken eye. The red clay road
+stretched curveless, a long way visible and vacant. The black bare trees
+stood shivering in the chilly blast on either side; among them was an
+occasional clump of funereal cedars. Away off the brown wooded hills
+rose; snow lay in thin crust-like patches here and there, and again the
+earth wore the pallid gray of the crab-grass or the ochreous red of the
+gully-washed clay.
+
+"I don't see nuthin'," she said, in the bated voice of affrighted
+suspense.
+
+While she still looked out flakes suddenly began to fly, hardly falling
+at first, but poised tentatively, fluctuating athwart the scene,
+presently thickening, quickening, obscuring it all, isolating the woods
+with an added sense of solitude since the sight of the world and
+the sound of it were so speedily annulled. Even the creak of the
+wagon-wheels was muffled. Through the semicircular aperture in the front
+of the wagon-cover the horns of the oxen were dimly seen amidst the
+serried flakes; the snow whitened the backs of the beasts and added its
+burden to their yoke. Once as they jogged on she fancied again that she
+heard hoof-beats--this time a long way ahead, thundering over a little
+bridge high above a swirling torrent, that reverberated with a hollow
+tone to the faintest footfall. "Jes somebody ez hev passed we-uns,
+takin' the short-cut by the bridle-path," she ruminated. No pursuer,
+evidently.
+
+Everything was deeply submerged in the snow before they reached the dark
+little cabin nestling in the Cove. Motionless and dreary it was; not
+even a blue and gauzy wreath curled out of the chimney, for the fire had
+died on the hearth in their absence. No living creature was to be seen.
+The fowls were huddled together in the hen-house, and the dogs had
+accompanied the family to town, trotting beneath the wagon with lolling
+tongues and smoking breath; when they nimbly climbed the fence their
+circular footprints were the first traces to mar the level expanse of
+the door-yard. The bare limbs of the trees were laden; the cedars bore
+great flower-like tufts amidst the interlacing fibrous foliage. The
+eaves were heavily thatched; the drifts lay in the fence corners.
+
+Everything was covered except, indeed, one side of the fodder-stack that
+stood close to the barn. Evelina, going out to milk the cow, gazed at it
+for a moment in surprise. The snow had slipped down from it, and lay
+in rolls and piles about the base, intermixed with the sere husks and
+blades that seemed torn out of the great cone. "Waal, sir, Spot mus' hev
+been hongry fur true, ter kem a-foragin' this wise. Looks ez ef she hev
+been fairly a-burrowin."
+
+She turned and glanced over her shoulder at tracks in the
+snow--shapeless holes, and filling fast--which she did not doubt were
+the footprints of the big red cow, standing half in and half out of the
+wide door, slowly chewing her cud, her breath visibly curling out on
+the chill air, her great lips opening to emit a muttered low. She moved
+forward suddenly into the shelter as Evelina started anew toward it,
+holding the piggin in one hand and clasping the baby in the other arm.
+
+[Illustration: Stole noiselessly in the soft snow 145]
+
+Evelina noted the sound of her brothers' two axes, busy at the
+wood-pile, their regular cleavage splitting the air with a sharp stroke
+and bringing a crystalline shivering echo from the icy mountain. She did
+not see the crouching figure that came cautiously burrowing out from
+the stack. Absalom rose to his full height, looking keenly about him the
+while, and stole noiselessly in the soft snow to the stable, and peered
+in through a crevice in the wall.
+
+Evelina had placed the piggin upon the straw-covered ground, and stood
+among the horned cattle and the huddling sheep, her soft melancholy face
+half shaded by the red shawl thrown over her head and shoulders. A tress
+of her brown hair escaped and curled about her white neck, and hung down
+over the bosom of her dark-blue homespun dress. Against her shoulder the
+dun-colored cow rubbed her horned head. The baby was in a pensive
+mood, and scarcely babbled. The reflection of the snow was on his
+face, heightening the exquisite purity of the tints of his infantile
+complexion. His gentle, fawn-like eyes were full of soft and lustrous
+languors. His long lashes drooped over them now, and again were lifted.
+His short down of yellow hair glimmered golden against the red shawl
+over his mother's shoulders.
+
+One of the beasts sank slowly upon the ground--a tired creature
+doubtless, and night was at hand; then another, and still another. Their
+posture reminded Absalom, as he looked, that this was Christmas Eve,
+and of the old superstition that the cattle of the barns spend the night
+upon their knees, in memory of the wondrous Presence that once graced
+their lowly place. The boughs rattled suddenly in the chill blast above
+his head; the drifts fell about him. He glanced up mechanically to see
+in the zenith a star of gracious glister, tremulous and tender, in the
+rifts of the breaking clouds.
+
+"I wonder ef it air the same star o' Bethlehem?" he said, thinking of
+the great sidereal torch heralding the Light of the World. He had a
+vague sense that this star has never set, however the wandering planets
+may come and go in their wide journeys as the seasons roll. He looked
+again into the glooming place, at the mother and her child, remembering
+that the Lord of heaven and earth had once lain in a manger, and clung
+to a humble earthly mother.
+
+The man shook with a sudden affright. He had intended to wrest the child
+from her grasp, and mount and ride away; he was roused from his reverie
+by the thrusting upon him of his opportunity, facilitated a hundredfold.
+Evelina had evidently forgotten something. She hesitated for a moment;
+then put the baby down upon a great pile of straw among the horned
+creatures, and, catching her shawl about her head, ran swiftly to the
+house.
+
+Absalom moved mechanically into the doorway. The child, still pensive
+and silent, and looking tenderly infantile, lay upon the straw. A sudden
+pang of pity for her pierced his heart: how her own would be desolated!
+His horse, hitched in a clump of cedars, awaited him ten steps away. It
+was his only chance--his last chance. And he had been hardly entreated.
+The child's eyes rested, startled and dilated, upon him; he must be
+quick.
+
+The next instant he turned suddenly, ran hastily through the snow,
+crashed among the cedars, mounted his horse, and galloped away.
+
+It was only a moment that Evelina expected to be at the house, but the
+gourd of salt which she sought was not in its place. She hurried out
+with it at last, unprescient of any danger until all at once she saw the
+footprints of a man in the snow, otherwise untrodden, about the
+fodder-stack. She still heard the two axes at the wood-pile. Her father,
+she knew, was at the house.
+
+A smothered scream escaped her lips. The steps had evidently gone
+into the stable, and had come out thence. Her faltering strength could
+scarcely support her to the door. And then she saw lying in the straw
+Elnathan Daniel, beginning to babble and gurgle again, and to grow
+very pink with joy over a new toy--a man's glove, a red woollen glove,
+accidentally dropped in the straw. She caught it from his hands, and
+turned it about curiously. She had knit it herself--for Absalom!
+
+When she came into the house, beaming with joy, the baby holding the
+glove in his hands, the men listened to her in dumfounded amaze, and
+with significant side glances at each other.
+
+"He wouldn't take the baby whenst he hed the chance, 'kase he knowed
+'twould hurt me so. An' he never wanted ter torment me--I reckon he
+never _did_ mean ter torment me. An' he did 'low wunst he war sorry he
+spited dad. Oh! I hev been a heap too quick an' spiteful myself. I hev
+been so terrible wrong! Look a-hyar; he lef' this glove ter show me he
+hed been hyar, an' could hev tuk the baby ef he hed hed the heart ter do
+it. Oh! I'm goin' right up the mounting an' tell him how sorry I be."
+
+"Toler'ble cheap!" grumbled Stephen--"one old glove. An' he'll git
+Elnathan Daniel an' ye too. A smart fox he be."
+
+They could not dissuade her. And after a time it came to pass that the
+Quimbey and Kittredge feuds were healed; for how could the heart of a
+grandfather withstand a toddling spectacle in pink calico that ran away
+one day some two years later, in company with an adventurous dog, and
+came down the mountain to the cabin in the Cove, squeezing through the
+fence rails after the manner of his underfoot world, proceeding thence
+to the house, where he made himself very merry and very welcome?
+
+[Illustration: Old Quimbey and his grandson 151]
+
+And when Tim mounted his horse and rode up the mountain with the
+youngster on the pommel of the saddle, lest Evelina should be out of
+her mind with fright because of his absence, how should he and old Mrs.
+Kittredge differ in their respective opinions of his vigorous growth,
+and grace of countenance, and peartness of manner? On the strength of
+this concurrence Tim was induced to "'light an' hitch," and he even sat
+on the cabin porch and talked over the crops with Absalom, who, the next
+time he went to town, stopped at the cabin in the Cove to bring word how
+El-nathan Daniel was "thrivin'." The path that Evelina had worn to
+the crag in those first homesick days on the mountain rapidly extended
+itself into the Cove, and widened and grew smooth, as the grandfather
+went up and the grandson came down.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of His "Day In Court", by 
+Charles Egbert Craddock         (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIS "DAY IN COURT" ***
+
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