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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Loves of Ambrose, by Margaret Vandercook
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Loves of Ambrose
+
+Author: Margaret Vandercook
+
+Illustrator: Gordon Grant
+
+Release Date: July 29, 2010 [EBook #33289]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOVES OF AMBROSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Emmy, Darleen Dove and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVES OF AMBROSE
+
+[Illustration: "The young man put the honeysuckle in his buttonhole"]
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVES OF AMBROSE
+
+BY MARGARET VANDERCOOK
+
+[Illustration]
+
+_Illustrated by Gordon Grant_
+
+          DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+          GARDEN CITY        NEW YORK
+          1914
+
+
+
+
+          _Copyright, 1914, by_
+          DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+          _All rights reserved, including that of
+          translation into foreign languages,
+          including the Scandinavian_
+
+
+
+
+          "_And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding
+              exceeding much, and largeness of
+            heart, even as the sand that is on the seashore._"
+
+
+
+          To
+          JOHN VANDERCOOK
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    PART I
+    HIS FIRST WIFE
+
+    CHAPTER                                     PAGE
+        I. The Departure                           3
+       II. The Voice of the Turtle                22
+      III. "Peachy"                               34
+       IV. "Even so, Love, even so! Whither thou
+               goest, I will go."                 52
+        V. The Return                             70
+
+
+    PART II
+    HIS SECOND WIFE
+
+       VI. Reconstruction                         77
+      VII. "Em'ly Dunham"                         92
+     VIII. The Female Delegation                 100
+       IX. "The tides of love and laughter run
+            Increasing aye from sun to sun"      107
+        X. The Revelation                        116
+       XI. Following His Advice                  126
+      XII. A Light in Darkness                   136
+     XIII. The Surprise Party                    144
+
+
+    PART III
+    HIS THIRD WIFE
+
+      XIV. Thirty Years                          153
+       XV. Original Sin                          164
+      XVI. The Eternal Fire                      171
+     XVII. The Revival Service                   179
+    XVIII. Indian Summer                         188
+
+
+    PART IV
+    HIS FOURTH WIFE
+
+      XIX. "'Lizabeth"                           203
+       XX. "Giving in Marriage"                  211
+      XXI. "I Shall Want My Em'ly"               224
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+    "The young man put the honeysuckle in
+        his buttonhole"               _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                PAGE
+
+    "Leaping ditches, tearing across ploughed
+        fields, to the woods ahead"                5
+
+    "Miner rode slowly along on horseback, now
+        and then making inquiries of wayfarers"   25
+
+    "The Village"                                 45
+
+    "He stopped when the mouth of an old war
+        pistol was suddenly placed in front of
+        his shoulder"                            112
+
+    "'Ain't you never goin' to stop mopin',
+        Ambrose Thompson? I'm sick of lookin'
+        at you.'"                                131
+
+    "'You kin manage me now all you've a mind
+        to; I ain't worryin''"                   198
+
+    "Thus it was that 'Lisabeth took up the
+        business of caring for Uncle Ambrose
+        Thompson"                                214
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+HIS FIRST WIFE
+
+
+  "_Oh! lose the winter from thine heart, the darkness from
+         thine eyes,
+    And from the low hearth-chair of dreams, my Love-o'-May, arise,
+    And let the maidens robe thee like a white white, lilac tree.
+    Oh! hear the call of Spring, fair Soul,--and wilt thou
+         come with me?_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE DEPARTURE
+
+
+AMBROSE THOMPSON opened his front door and looked out. It was May, the
+sun had just risen over Pennyroyal, and before him lay Kentucky's
+carnival of spring.
+
+The boy drew a deep breath that seemed to rise and quiver over his face
+like a breeze coming away at the end of his long, curiously emotional
+nose.
+
+"Glory, what a day!" he whispered; "seems about good enough to eat!" And
+then he vanished, only to reappear five minutes afterward dressed as a
+traveller and wearing a linen duster, a stovepipe hat, and carrying a
+carpet-bag.
+
+Out in the cinder path his glance embraced the quiet street.
+
+"Right foot, left foot"--without a change of expression the boy broke
+into an irrepressible jig. He was nineteen and stood six feet four in
+his stocking feet; the wind tilted his tall hat, showing his high
+forehead, his straight, straw-coloured hair, and solemn, light blue
+eyes; it whipped back his linen duster, disclosing his lean legs clad in
+tight trousers, his frock coat, and white stock. An indescribable air of
+adventure enveloped him. So Abraham Lincoln may have looked on some
+dress-occasion morning in his youth--all big bones and promises waiting
+for something to happen.
+
+"I sure am going to give 'em the slip this time," Ambrose panted,
+stopping to readjust his costume and to take another careful survey of
+the neighbourhood. In his garden several lilac bushes were in their
+first bloom, and above his doorway an ardent, over-early honeysuckle had
+blossomed in the night. The young man put the honeysuckle in his
+buttonhole.
+
+[Illustration: "Leaping ditches, tearing across ploughed fields, to the
+woods ahead"]
+
+"I reckon," he remarked, "there ain't nothin' sweet that don't grow in
+Kentucky," and then with a smile whose shine radiated through his
+homeliness and a blush that spread to the tips of his big ears, he
+added: "I ain't just figurin' on the growth of flowers," and was off
+tiptoeing down his garden walk and stepping across his gate to avoid
+the creak of opening it.
+
+This was fifty-five years ago in Kentucky, in a little village of some
+three or four hundred inhabitants, shut in by hills and by inclination
+in the southwestern part of the state; a community not to be confounded
+with their high-living, high-stepping blue grass neighbours, for
+dwellers in the "Pennyrile" were a plainer people, who perhaps drew some
+of their characteristics from the bittersweet, pungent "Pennyrile" grass
+that gave the locality its name.
+
+As for the town itself, it rested primly in a cup-shaped hollow with
+three main streets. One of them, travelling farther than the rest, led
+in a way to the end of things for the residents of Pennyroyal as it
+climbed a hill at the foot of the village, set thick with hardy
+perennials, evergreens, and small white stones, while encircling this
+hill was Peter's Creek, that by and by grew up to be a river, but it had
+a tranquil movement, proceeding slowly on its course by reason of
+sharing the Pennyroyalian distaste for getting any distance from home.
+
+Then the houses in Pennyroyal: although the beautiful open country was
+all about them, they crowded so close together that they seemed almost
+to touch elbows, and now and then one of them had appeared to shove the
+other back in its determination to get the best view of the street. They
+were mostly cottages, with no front porches, but with sloping roofs and
+little Gothic wooden fences, and painted white, with green outside
+blinds, except Ambrose's, and his had been touched with a boy's
+imagination, its intention being plainly rose colour.
+
+Now in a double row along the outside wooden sidewalk this morning the
+linden trees were dropping fragrant yellow plumes inches deep in the
+ruts of the clay road, while over the chimneys whirled the last of the
+spring's apple blossoms. Bees buzzed among the flowers, birds chattered,
+flying nervously from one tree to another in an effort to be through
+with breakfast before the disturbing human element should get about; and
+hitched to a nearby post Ambrose's horse and gig were waiting.
+
+The young man surveyed his equipage with the eyes of an idealist.
+
+Old Liza had seen service, but her toilet had been made in the spirit
+of the best foot foremost; her coat had been freshly curried, her gray
+mane and tail carefully combed, and in her manner there was an air of
+emotional anticipation.
+
+With one foot hovering above the step of his gig, Ambrose suddenly
+paused. The laprobe inside the carriage was quivering.
+
+"Holy Moses!" Reaching underneath, the young man drew forth a small
+black and brown object whose legs and tail were five upturned points of
+supplication. Setting it upright on the ground, his face hardened.
+"Ain't I told you you couldn't come with me, Moses?" he began sternly.
+"Ef ever there was a crittur, human or otherwise, with a talent for
+bein' where it wasn't wanted, it's you! Besides, ain't I just locked you
+in the stable?"
+
+The softening in his master's manner, visible in his last question, in
+the twitching of his eyebrows, in the slight movement of the tip of his
+long nose, was familiar to Moses. Casually he approached Ambrose's leg,
+but midway there, sensing defeat and not being an amiable beast, he
+planted his feet wide apart, barked as loudly as chronic hoarseness
+permitted, and straightway the young man humbled himself before him.
+
+"Fer the lands sakes don't give me away," he pleaded. "I ain't never had
+such luck before this, getting off without being pestered." Down on his
+knees, he patted the stiff bristles, apologetically whispering: "Sorry
+not to be wishing your company, but Susan and Aunt Ca'line will look
+after you. Ain't nothin' on God's earth that will keep Susan Barrows
+from lookin' after every mortal thing she sets eyes on."
+
+Without deigning a farewell, Moses trotted away. A ridiculous looking
+animal with an ancestry as mixed as any son of Adam, yet he had an
+enormous self-esteem. You see, though a dog, Moses possessed a
+self-sustaining ego, which requires no special ancestry or talents to
+uphold it. For there is a vanity that feeds itself, and many nobler
+personalities go down before it. Invariably Ambrose's did. Merely
+christened after the Hebrew lawmaker because of having been found amid
+some bulrushes, yet Moses may have felt that the name carried its
+anointment.
+
+But now at last the traveller had fairly started. Swinging into his gig,
+he arranged his long legs in a comfortable right-angle triangle, taking
+a final hurried glance around him. "Move on, Liza, faster'n you can, or
+it's all over with me," he urged, "for things is lookin' kind of
+nervous."
+
+Three times his wagon wheels had revolved in the clay road when a
+shutter on the house next door banged open, and like the explosion of a
+gun a child's voice rent the air.
+
+"He's off! I tell you I see him. He's gettin' away unbeknownst." And a
+thin, brown figure hopping out of the window on the grass ran toward the
+street, twittering and moving its head from side to side like an excited
+bird. An instant later from the same opening a second pair of legs
+protruded--longer and thinner than the others, clad in white stockings
+and black cloth gaiters. Like the feelers of a beetle turned over on its
+back they waved in the air. And from behind a kind of barrel-shaped
+opening came a voice so tragic and compelling that even old Liza,
+stopping short, turned an inquiring eye toward the source of the
+disturbance.
+
+As for Ambrose, although filled with a boy's impatience at interruption,
+the sight was overpowering. His reins dropped loosely, he stared,
+gasped, and then shook with silent laughter. Susan Barrows was living in
+the days of hoopskirts, and now in her effort to slide through the
+window had been held fast.
+
+Nevertheless, in her time, desire has probably removed as many mountains
+as faith, so, notwithstanding her present difficulty, Susan's gave her
+power soon to set herself upright on the ground, and still with her full
+rigging to continue moving toward her goal like a ship with a full gale
+behind it.
+
+A thin middle-aged woman, Mrs. Barrows was, of medium height and of
+terrific energy. The drama of her personal existence in a small town
+with no outside interests being always insufficient, Susan had filled in
+her hunger with an insatiate appetite for other people's affairs. Never
+could her curiosity about her neighbours be wholly gratified, and yet,
+like the possessor of any other great passion, its owner did her level
+best to satisfy it.
+
+Out in the road, with one hand she grasped Ambrose's coat sleeve while
+the other was unconsciously raised toward heaven. Two bright spots of
+colour burned on her high cheek bones, her bunches of black corkscrew
+curls trembled with eagerness, her eyes challenged.
+
+"Tell me where you be goin' and what you be a-goin' fer, Ambrose
+Thompson. It ain't fair you stealin' off this way each year and nobody
+findin' out where or why. Seems like us bein' neighbours and me seein'
+to you since your ma's death, that you might leastways have put your
+trust in me."
+
+Removing her hand from his sleeve, Ambrose patted it gently before
+returning it to its owner. "No, ma'am, I ain't goin' to tell you no more
+this time than before," he replied. "And I was hopin' to get off once
+without remarks."
+
+During this temporary delay the younger Susan had been industriously
+pecking and poking about in the lower part of their neighbour's gig. Now
+as the young man moved on for the second time the child's voice again
+rang after him.
+
+"He's goin' courtin'; Ambrose Thompson is always runnin' after girls!
+It's Peachy Williams, for I seen his leg under his duster, and he's
+wearing his Sunday clothes!"
+
+These last words were a triumph of evidence, but not for a moment would
+Ambrose look back nor appear to have heard. A humorous affection he
+might feel for the older Susan, but for the younger his dislike was to
+last for more than fifty years. Nevertheless, a little later he did turn
+around, and root and branch, the Susans had vanished, so that even now
+the news of his departure was stirring through Pennyroyal as the wind
+moves the leaves in a group of closely planted trees.
+
+Something it is to know when one is beaten. Swearing a trifle and yet
+grinning, the boy settled himself more comfortably in his gig. "Might as
+well drive through town now kind of slow, and give folks a treat," he
+relented. "Mebbe I was shirkin' duty in tryin' to sneak off. Pennyrile
+ain't to say starvin' for food and clothes, but she certainly is pinin'
+for excitement, and who says that ain't just as bad? Seems like
+Christian charity for me to give this town something to talk about at
+least once a year."
+
+And truly these yearly spring migrations of young Ambrose Thompson had
+aroused more interest and unrest in Pennyroyal than the yearly mystery
+of the earth's rebirth. Because, for the past five years on a certain
+May morning (and there never was a way of discovering just which morning
+he might choose) Ambrose had set out, at first on foot and later with
+his gig, and been away from his home eight and forty hours. Returning,
+he had given no clue as to where he had been.
+
+Now like the music of a calliope the squeak of his wagon wheels awoke
+the village. Windows and doors flew open, heads in nightcaps and bald
+heads and heads with curls were thrust forth, but to their volley of
+questionings and accusations, Ambrose offered only the morning's
+greetings.
+
+Travelling with praiseworthy slowness, he neglected no street in
+Pennyroyal, and, by the dozen, girls went fluttering in and out of
+houses, to wave farewells to the adventurer, while bolder voices called
+out Peachy Williams's name with every teasing inflection. One girl to
+whom Ambrose threw the spray of honeysuckle from his buttonhole cast it
+scornfully back, refusing to accept what she so plainly thought
+another's spoils.
+
+Then the young man drove past Brother Bibbs, the Baptist minister, who,
+framed in the vestibule of his wooden church, beamed upon him with such
+heavenly condescension toward earthly affection that his expression of
+"Bless you, my children," was almost equivalent to a marriage ceremony.
+Next, along his route, appeared three maiden sisters, the Misses Polly.
+They stood in a line in their front yard, Miss Zeruiah, the literary
+one, _always_ in advance, then Miss Narcissa, instructor in mathematics
+and the sciences, and last and humblest because most useful of the
+family trio, Miss Jane, the domestic one. Upon her Ambrose smiled with
+especial kindness, remembering certain heart-shaped cookies presented in
+early youth, which even in the form of sweet cakes held a kind of
+romantic suggestion. The Mistress Polly were directors of the "Polly
+Institute," where Ambrose and Peachy had started their technical
+education at about the same time, and yet this youthful acquaintance
+hardly justified the present arrangement of a love motif. Nevertheless
+Ambrose distinctly heard the three ladies breathing in unison the name
+of "Peachy" as he passed them by.
+
+Two hours later, well away from Pennyroyal, having turned off the high
+road to a less frequented lane, the traveller brought old Liza to her
+first halt. Then, drawing out a large red handkerchief, he wiped his
+moist brow and, removing his collar, gazed furtively about him.
+
+The glory of his early morning face had departed; he looked older and
+almost haggard.
+
+"Ain't it awful, human curiosity!" he murmured. "Reckon I was most too
+brave in tryin' to make things worse, and yet I never dreamed folks
+would think I was runnin' after Peachy Williams this trip. She----"
+
+Lower and lower Ambrose seemed to be gradually settling down into his
+gig, although finding some trouble in disposing of so great a length of
+leg.
+
+Finally he sighed: "Kind of wish I had brought old Moses along fer
+comp'ny." For the boy was feeling that need for companionship that comes
+after all mental strain. "But then Moses ain't like dogs; he's so
+bothersome he's most human--always either wantin' you to do something
+fer him or to set up and take notice of what he is doin'."
+
+Relapsing into silence after this, which was soon followed by a more
+usual and serene state of mind, the young man shortly after took out
+from his duster pocket a withered russet apple left over from the winter
+store, and thoughtfully sunk his teeth in it. Then gradually his
+tranquillity deepened, increased by the recollection of his having just
+passed through the fire of the enemy and escaped. Behind him lay the
+village of Pennyroyal, suspicious yet still unsatisfied, and before him
+the open, empty, springtime road. At will Liza was cropping wayside
+grass: the traveller's hands had let slip the reins, and sometimes his
+eyes wandered to the far-off blue horizon and sometimes dwelt on the
+closer beauty of the roadsides, where elderberry, sumach and Virginia
+creeper were tangled in thick hedges, and where young grapevines hung
+like silver-green garlands under their fine coating of May dust.
+
+In a Kentucky landscape, to those who comprehend it, there is ever a
+sense of generous growth, of nature's yielding herself gladly to life's
+eternal purpose. Now dimly this country boy began to understand the
+motive in the new beauties and new fragrances of each returning spring.
+
+Again the eagerness of the dawn overtook him; and stiffening, he picked
+up his reins, starting off again, when, turning in from an elbow up the
+road, Ambrose beheld the one person whom above all others his desire had
+been to escape.
+
+The figure was occupying the entire seat of a buggy, but was driving
+along apparently so lost in thought as to seem oblivious of anything or
+anybody in his vicinity.
+
+"Morning, Ambrose," Doctor Webb began, however, as he appeared directly
+alongside the other gig, and yet there was nothing either in his tone or
+manner to suggest that he thought it unusual for a young man to be
+turning his back upon his natural field of labour at this hour of the
+morning to drive off in exactly the opposite direction.
+
+"Morning," Ambrose returned, warily attempting to creep past without
+further conversation. For if the doctor should open the broadside of
+his humour the secret of his journey might yet be wrested from him.
+Nevertheless, although the older man had stopped his horse too
+deliberately to be ignored, he showed no present desire to ask
+questions. Indeed, the usual smile had disappeared from his kind face,
+and his deeply lined eyes appeared anxious and worried. Just such a look
+Ambrose had seen while the doctor sat watching by the bedside of a
+critically ill patient.
+
+"What troubles you, doctor?" he inquired.
+
+In answer the man leaned across from his buggy, taking one of Ambrose's
+lean hands in his, and, unaccustomed to a touch with such magnetic power
+in it, a kind of electric thrill passed through the susceptible boy.
+
+"It's you I've been troubling about lately, my son," Doctor Webb
+answered, "and now it seems as if Providence had just sent you along for
+me to speak to this morning. I've brought you out of children's
+diseases, chicken pox, measles and the like, but I've been seein'
+symptoms in you lately that have made me powerful uneasy, 'cause in this
+trouble it ain't in my power to help you through."
+
+Ambrose's tongue was thickening, and his Adam's apple moving
+convulsively. "Is the disease so serious, then?" he whispered, feeling a
+hitherto unsuspected though general weakness creeping over him.
+
+The doctor bowed his great head until his double, treble chin rested
+upon his shirt bosom, concealing his face from view. "Sometimes it's
+fatal, my boy," he returned, appearing so moved that his big voice
+sounded hoarse and unnatural. "It's true there's some that gets over it,
+but nobody ain't ever _quite_ the same afterward."
+
+Ambrose was trying to keep his knees from knocking together. "How have I
+showed symptoms of the disease?" he asked.
+
+And Doctor Webb's whole body rocked slowly back and forth. "My son,
+you're showin' 'em uncommon bad this mornin'. I could notice 'em soon as
+I was ridin' up toward you; your colour is a-comin' an' a-goin', your
+eyes is shinin' unnatural bright, your heart is a-thumpin' too quick."
+And here he sighed, so that Ambrose braced his lean shoulders for the
+worst, although his lips were dry.
+
+"Tell me quick, doctor; ef I kin bear it, what is it ails me?"
+
+"Puppy love," the doctor shouted, and then giving his old horse an
+unexpected cut with his clean willow switch, off he drove, shaking with
+laughter.
+
+"Puppy love!" Twice Ambrose repeated the words in a stupid fashion, and
+then his laughter rang out until it sounded like an echo of the older
+man's heavier roar. "Durn it," he said to himself, "ef that ain't just
+another way of sayin' 'Peachy'!"
+
+When finally the traveller entered the shelter of a certain group of low
+hills near the Kentucky river, it was well past the middle of the
+afternoon, and there in a hollow he fed and watered his horse and then
+lay down behind a tree.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE
+
+
+IN THE mean time, however, Mrs. Barrows and her offspring had not been
+idle. Indeed, no sooner had they become convinced that no information
+could be had out of Ambrose than they both set off at once hurrying
+across back lots, the younger preceding her mother like an outrider,
+thrusting her head and her news into every open door.
+
+Within a few minutes the mother and daughter had arrived together at a
+small house set midway in the next street, and there, without even
+pausing to knock, Mrs. Barrows, pulling at a side door, entered a
+dining-room. Seated at a breakfast table were six girls and one young
+man, and immediately the six pairs of inquiring feminine eyes were
+upraised toward Susan, although the solitary male continued the eating
+of three large fried eggs in spite of the fact that his appearance
+plainly indicated a bilious temperament.
+
+"Miner Hobbs, he's gone!" said Susan. "Got off most without my seein'
+him, though I ain't had a good night's rest come this month of May!"
+
+Obviously this information should have been regarded as interesting, and
+yet, except for a curt nod, Miner apparently had not heard. From
+earliest boyhood notwithstanding that two more unlike fellow creatures
+could not be imagined, he and Ambrose Thompson had been closest friends.
+For while Ambrose was long and fair, Miner was considerably below medium
+height and dark, with one gloomy, indestructible curl rising above his
+already furrowed brow. Alike only in both being orphans, Ambrose was
+untroubled by other ties, while Miner was guardian to six beautiful
+blond sisters, all exceeding him in size and tranquillity. The drygoods
+firm of Hobbs & Thompson had been opened up in Pennyroyal a year before,
+so that to-day Ambrose's unexplained disappearance was not only a
+failure in personal confidence but a downright business backsliding.
+
+By and by, Miner arose. Still his fit of abstraction appeared too deep
+to have been pierced from the outside, and yet, sliding past Mrs.
+Barrows, he attempted to get out of the door. However, his visitor
+sprang upon him.
+
+"You're sneakin' off to try to catch up with Ambrose," she announced
+triumphantly. "Well, the Lord knows I ain't one to want to hinder you.
+But I'm thinkin' you won't succeed, for Ambrose Thompson will lead all
+of us that aims to keep up with him a powerful long journey before ever
+we are through with him."
+
+Notwithstanding, in the following of his partner Miner Hobbs fully
+understood that one must proceed warily; therefore he did not attempt
+starting until after Ambrose was well out of town, and then he rode
+slowly along on horseback, never coming into the range of the other
+traveller's vision, but trying to keep his wheel tracks in evidence, and
+now and then making inquiries of wayfarers. So that about an hour after
+Ambrose's entrance into the woods his friend came to the same place and
+there sought the thicket in which he believed him to have hidden
+himself.
+
+[Illustration: "Miner rode slowly along on horseback, now and then
+making inquiries of wayfarers"]
+
+Face downward Ambrose was lying on the soft earth; but if he felt
+surprise or anger at hearing the sound of a horse's hoofs, and later a
+human footfall, he made no sign. Flopping over he merely called,
+"Hello," keeping his eyes fixed upon the line of hills on the opposite
+bank of the river. His fishing-pole, fastened to a bush near by, was
+extended over the water, but Ambrose's only visible occupation was the
+chewing of a blade of "pennyrile" grass.
+
+In contrast, Miner Hobbs appeared fatigued and harassed.
+
+"I got to find out why you come off to yourself every year, Ambrose," he
+began angrily. "I know you're doin' somethin' you're ashamed of or you
+wouldn't be hidin'."
+
+"Wherefore?" smiled the other boy. "Look here, Miner, we're friends,
+have been since the first hour we met, yet I can't see as that gives you
+the right to know my business. Friends has got their places, and in my
+opinion a man can tell his friend just what he wants him to know, no
+more, and no less, and the friend ain't the privilege to spy out a
+single other thing."
+
+"But you're doin' somethin' sinful or you would 'a' told me," Miner
+repeated doggedly, and then, although uninvited, he sat down on the
+ground close by, commencing to smooth out the Hyperion curl over his
+brow which his dejection and the heat of his trip had considerably
+tightened.
+
+"Then we'll let it go at that," drawled Ambrose.
+
+And for the next five minutes both boys sulked, Miner gnawing savagely
+at his plug of tobacco, Ambrose still chewing on the blade of
+"pennyrile" grass.
+
+There were no informing signs about the place, so Miner decided that the
+truant must now merely be resting on his journey.
+
+"You hadn't a right to run off from business," Miner spluttered next.
+Having made up his mind not to make this accusation, the little man was
+surprised upon hearing it explode of its own strength.
+
+However, Ambrose, instead of appearing disturbed, attempted to arrange
+himself more comfortably on the grass, but finding this impossible, his
+voice suggested richer repose.
+
+"Miner, ain't it ever come to you that the Lord has given human bein's
+time for more than one thing?" he queried, resting his chin upon his
+hand. "I hold with work myself most always, but now and then there comes
+a time, maybe it's just a short time, that is meant for something else,
+something that belongs to you and is intended for you to do same as your
+work. Maybe it's restin' and maybe it ain't."
+
+But at this the little man rose up on his feet. "As you've made up your
+mind you are not goin' to tell me, Ambrose, what is the use of talkin'
+so much? I suppose you're sure you are not goin' to tell me?"
+
+His companion bowed his head.
+
+"All right then, it ain't necessary," Miner rejoined. "I know what 'tis.
+There ain't but one thing that could ever come between you and me and
+that's--a girl. If it ain't Peachy Williams that has lured you from
+home, then it's some one else. I've been expectin' this to happen a long
+time, and I've been tryin' to prepare myself for this day,"--here Miner
+choked, and coughed in order to conceal his emotion--"but I've always
+said to myself: Ambrose's easy, but he's open, and he'll surely tell me
+in time to get a brace. Of course I know, Ambrose, that you've been
+plumb crazy about girls since the Lord knows when, and been sendin'
+mottoes and valentines since you were able to talk, but I didn't think
+you would reach the marryin' stage fer quite a spell. Still I can see
+for myself that this spring trip looks like business. It passes my
+knowledge,"--Miner relented--"but it's you. Seems as if I couldn't bear
+havin' females worritin' me save those my parents and the Lord put on me
+to the last day I live, but you, Ambrose, you ain't never had petticoat
+sense and never will. Good-bye." And there was unutterable scorn in
+Miner's last words, as he moved away, mingled with the affection he was
+to feel for no living thing save Ambrose. When with head bowed, he was
+unconsciously treading underfoot the flowers that sprinkled his path, a
+fishing-pole and line deftly circled through the air caught its hook in
+his coat sleeve.
+
+The one boy struggled, while the other jerked, and then a rich voice
+drawled: "Please come back, old man, for if you really want to know why
+I've run off to myself each spring for these past five years so it
+clean hurts you not to know, I reckon I've got to tell you."
+
+Then Miner returned and sat down again. His friend's behaviour was now
+even more puzzling than before, for although Ambrose was close by, his
+eyes had a faraway look in them, his eyebrows were twitching, his
+slender nostrils quivering, and indeed, he had the appearance of a man
+having strayed off some great distance by himself.
+
+"Swear you'll never give me away, Miner," he began, and holding up one
+of his big hands in the sunlight--his hands which were the truly
+beautiful thing about him--he made a mystic sign to which his companion
+swore.
+
+"You won't understand when I do tell you," he hedged, "but I've been
+comin' away off to myself every spring since I was a boy on account of
+the 'Second Song of Solomon.'"
+
+And at this Miner groaned, shutting his near-sighted eyes. "Lord, he's
+the chap that had a thousand wives!"
+
+Then back to earth came Ambrose, his blue eyes swimming in mists of
+laughter and his shouts waking all the echoes in the hills.
+
+"Wives!" he cried, rolling his long body over and over in the grass, and
+kicking out his legs in sheer ecstasy, "Miner Hobbs, if ever you git an
+idea fixed in your head, earthquakes won't shake it. Wives, is it? Why,
+I ain't given Peachy Williams a thought of my own accord since I started
+on this trip, nor any other girl, for that matter, so I can't for the
+land sakes see why I have been havin' her poked at me so continual!
+'Course there wouldn't be sense in me denyin' that I have a hankerin'
+for girls; flesh and blood, 'ceptin' yours, Miner Hobbs, cannot deny the
+kind we raise in Kentucky. However, they ain't been on my mind this
+trip. Old King Solomon done a lot of things besides havin' a thousand
+wives--they was his recreation. He builded a temple and founded a nation
+and wrote pretty nigh the greatest poetry heard in these parts."
+
+Here the speaker commenced pulling at the damp earth to hide his
+embarrassment, and then made a pretence of examining the soil that came
+up in his hand.
+
+"It's the 'Second Song of Solomon' I'm meanin', Miner, and I've already
+told you you ain't goin' to comprehend me when I do explain," he
+continued patiently, "but bein's as it's you, I reckon I've got to try.
+It's that song about spring. Ever since I was a little boy and first
+heard it, why it began a-callin' me to get away for a little space to
+myself to try and kind of hear things grow. It's a disappointin' reason
+for me sneakin' off, ain't it, and foolish? I wish I had been doin'
+somethin' with more snap to it, just to gratify Pennyroyal. But at
+first, you see, I didn't mean nothin' in particular by not tellin',
+knowin' that folks would think my real reason outlandish, but by and by
+when the town got so all-fired curious and kept sayin' I was up to
+different sorts of mischief, I just thought I'd keep 'em guessin'." Now
+the long face was quivering in its eagerness to make things clear. "Why,
+it seems to me from the time that the first green tips come peepin' up
+between the stubble in the winter fields I kin hear that Solomon Song
+a-beatin' and a-beatin' in my ears. 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and
+come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the
+flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds has come,
+and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.'"
+
+But poor Miner was making a cup for his ear with his hand. "But turtles
+ain't voices, Ambrose, that anybody knows of," he murmured dimly; "it's
+frogs we hear croakin' along the river bank."
+
+And this time Ambrose laughed to himself. "It's croaks you're always
+hearin', old fellow, ain't it?" he whispered affectionately. And
+then--"I reckon it makes no difference to me whether it's a frog or a
+turtle, a bird or even a tree toad. It's the song of life, I'm listenin'
+for, Miner."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+PEACHY
+
+
+NEVERTHELESS, in spite of Ambrose's intentionally truthful declaration
+to Miner, for the rest of that afternoon and evening he was never wholly
+able to get free from the thought of Peachy. However, he did not then
+stir from his first shelter in the woods, finding endless refreshment in
+the beauty of the Kentucky river landscape, nor did he surrender himself
+readily to the lure of the feminine; but poor Ambrose was a victim of
+the strange force that lies embodied within a universal idea.
+
+A bird appearing on the branch of a tree above his head and bending
+over, peeped into his face twittering: "Pe-che, Pe-che," as impudently
+as any small Susan; then, catching his eye, with a little mocking
+courtesy, flew away. A robin hopping on the grass near the boy's side,
+pecked at the crumbs left over from his luncheon; her full breast, her
+air of concentrated domesticity somehow recalled the image of his latest
+affection--Peachy, the youthful mistress of the Red Farm.
+
+Now in setting out on this spring pilgrimage nothing had been farther
+from the traveller's intention than any dallying with his familiar
+weakness. Girls--why, the years behind Ambrose Thompson blossomed with
+them; never could he recall a season since his extremest boyhood when he
+had not been enchantingly in love. But actually there was little reason
+why Peachy Williams should be thrust upon him more than another save
+that he was growing older and had been devoting some time to her of
+late. Besides which, she was comely.
+
+Toward nightfall the bird songs became such intimate revelations of love
+that several times the listener put his fingers into his ears in his
+effort to fight their suggestions away. And yet it was not until next
+morning that his decision actually broke.
+
+And then it was not so much a matter of emotion. But he had had an
+uncomfortable night of fitful dreaming and awakened with yesterday's
+spiritual elation gone and with an intense desire for human
+companionship.
+
+Rising first on one elbow, Ambrose made a remark which has probably been
+considered by the greater portion of the male creation. "I wonder now,"
+he asked himself, "ef bein' looked after and made over ain't sometimes
+better'n bein' free?"
+
+A very little while after this the boy cooked his own breakfast, with
+extremely poor results, and then making as pleasing a toilet as his
+reflection in the river permitted, immediately set out in the direction
+of the Red Farm. And no longer did Ambrose's face show signs of
+struggle: his air had now become one of peaceful acquiescence in the
+laws of nature. He had no idea of committing himself definitely,
+however, by this visit to Peachy; his mind was not wholly made up and he
+desired nothing abrupt or startling; it was simply that at present a day
+of solitary musing did not appear so appealing as her companionship, and
+moreover, Ambrose shared the universal masculine delusion that his was
+the important mind to be made up.
+
+A sense of humour means a sense of proportion and therefore an
+appreciation of values, so Ambrose Thompson, the young Kentucky Romeo,
+was not without a certain thrifty streak. In driving along it was not
+disagreeable to reflect that the Red Farm was the richest tobacco farm
+in the county and that Peachy was its sole heiress. Not that Peachy by
+herself was insufficient; Ambrose also had pleasure in recalling the
+firmness of her young bosom, the sheen of her auburn hair, the whiteness
+of her teeth--and then--how frequently and how delightfully she laughed.
+That her laugh was non-committal had not up to this time troubled her
+admirer, who yearned for a feminine audience and had not yet learned to
+ask that this audience be discriminating.
+
+Even feeding chickens may be made an alluring picture, or at least
+Ambrose thought so, when he had driven unobserved into the farmyard and
+waited there watching Peachy, with her sleeves rolled back, flinging the
+corn to the ground. Also with his accustomed sensitiveness to
+impressions the boy realized that the girl herself was not unlike one of
+her own creamy leghorn hens; she, too, was both red and white with her
+clear healthy skin, red hair, and red-brown eyes--and then the fulness
+of her figure! The young man laughed delightedly, when turning and
+catching sight of him the girl started running toward him with short,
+uneven steps that yet got over the ground very quickly, and actually
+when she spoke, there was a little cluck to her voice.
+
+And yet, somehow, Peachy did not seem to feel the same degree of
+surprise that her visitor did at his own unexpected appearance. She
+blushed when he kissed her hand with an ardour peculiar to Ambrose
+though foreign to custom in the "Pennyrile," but she betrayed no wonder
+at his visit in the broad daylight when plainly he should have been at
+work in his store. Neither did she ask questions. Notwithstanding, after
+a few words of greeting, Ambrose had the impression of being shooed into
+the house, Peachy using her white apron for the purpose.
+
+Yet this had not been his intention, for indeed he had arrived at the
+farm an hour before dinner, with the idea of taking Peachy out for a
+walk and then possibly confiding to her the original purpose of his
+escape from Pennyroyal; surely _she_ could be made to understand better
+than any one else, and his mood was now one requiring sympathy. Instead,
+however, there was something mysterious the matter with the girl's
+costume, so that Ambrose shortly found himself divested of his hat and
+duster and shut up in a sticky parlour with the family album on his lap
+for entertainment, and only one window open to give him just enough
+light to be able faintly to see and air to keep barely alive. On
+entering the room his first impulse naturally had been to fling open
+wide all the windows, but hearing his hostess's cries of horror, both
+his arms and his inclination had weakened. Although truly the lawn about
+the Red Farm house was exquisitely green and free from dust, yet the
+thought of possible desecration to the best parlour had the effect of
+reality.
+
+Now although Ambrose was miserably settled according to Peachy's
+directions, and in spite of having expressed the desire to change her
+dress at once, the girl still lingered on, her face wearing a look that
+troubled her suitor as it was so unlike her usually placid and admiring
+one. Her red lips were drawn, her brow puckered, her atmosphere one of
+extreme disapproval. Under the circumstances Ambrose's forehead was
+naturally moist with perspiration and his face not overly clean, yet his
+clothes, notwithstanding being somewhat crumpled and dusty, were plainly
+his Sunday best.
+
+"What is it, Peachy?" he asked, first studying himself solicitously.
+Then, following her shuddering gaze across the crimson splendour of the
+Brussels carpet, he beheld a track of mud made with footprints so large
+that they could belong to no other feet than his. His eyes dropped.
+Surely his feet were caked with mud--mud from the shadowy cool depth of
+the woods, from the banks of that celestial river so lately deserted by
+him. Yet, seeing the girl's unhappiness, again the young man surrendered
+and so for a longtime (it was hard to tell how long) continued sitting
+in the same place. Peachy had gone away, to remain perhaps till dinner
+time, and taken his shoes with her. So Ambrose's feet were now encased
+in a pair of hot carpet slippers, a whole size too small for him, so
+that he could not even shuffle without crumpling his toes or else
+walking about in his socks.
+
+Several times he sighed, pushing back his long hair, a gesture with him
+expressive of mental unrest. Why, oh, why, had he given up his original
+plan of two days' solitary freedom and companionship with nature? Peachy
+had never seemed less alluring, and as for physical comfort or even the
+pleasure of her society, had he gained either? Cold shivers every now
+and then had their way up and down the young man's spine in the course
+of his meditations, notwithstanding the warmth of the room. For he knew
+himself to be easily stirred, so supposing that he and Peachy had taken
+the walk together that morning and something serious had happened! By
+and by young Ambrose began to feel as utterly uninterested in female
+charms, as cool and remote as a snow-capped mountain, and at about this
+moment Peachy returned to the room.
+
+She was wearing a pure white dress and, moving over into a dark corner,
+smiling at her suitor, she sat down on a small sofa. Here, by dint of
+pinning his toes down into his slippers, and letting his heels rise
+above them, Ambrose managed to arrive a few seconds later. He was close
+up beside her, as comfortably near as Peachy's starched clothes
+permitted, liking the clean smell of her dress, the perfume of her body;
+there were odours about her of warm new milk, of fresh honey, of
+ripening fruits.
+
+And quite by accident, it seemed to him, the girl's plump hand was laid
+near his, so that a moment later it required pressing. Then the kerchief
+about her full breast, rising and falling softly, showed a hint of
+something whiter and softer beneath. With surprising rapidity the boy's
+recent regret for his lost holiday began slipping away from him. The
+room was still close, but a breeze blowing in from the partly raised
+window fanned them both. Perhaps Ambrose's head was swimming from
+fatigue and drowsiness, perhaps from his sense of his companion's
+nearness, of her readiness to fall into his arms with his first desiring
+touch.
+
+"Peachy," Ambrose was whispering, when stealthily the door of the
+parlour opened, and there stood Peachy's father, his red face wearing
+such an expression of amusement and coarse understanding that instantly
+Ambrose felt a return of his former coldness. His boots having been
+cleaned and returned to him five minutes later, he followed the farmer
+and his daughter into their dining-room.
+
+There the meal was a hideous one to him despite his hunger and the good
+and plentiful food. For seated at the family table, were several farm
+hands, white overseers of the negro labourers, and they made stupid
+jokes, shoving their elbows into one another and grinning idiotically
+from Peachy to him. Their ugly thoughts were like palpable close
+presences in the room, destroying all possible illusions for the boy,
+and yet the girl herself seemed not to mind. Instead, she blushed and
+bridled, sending challenging looks at Ambrose across the spring
+freshness of his piled-up plate of new potatoes, jowl, and spring greens
+each time he attempted putting his fork up to his mouth.
+
+So that after a while, inch by inch, the boy felt himself being pushed
+into a corner where he had meant to walk one day of his own accord. And
+by the time dinner was over, not only had all desire passed from him,
+but apparently all will power as well. For next he allowed Peachy to
+lead him to an enclosed summer house. This summer house was some
+distance away from the big place and so shut in by carefully trained
+vines that it allowed no opportunity for distracting views or vistas
+beyond. It was what one under some circumstances might have called, "a
+chosen spot."
+
+[Illustration: "The Village"]
+
+Now there is no reasonable explanation of why Peachy Williams, the chief
+heiress of "the Pennyrile," had so set her heart upon the possession of
+Ambrose Thompson. Lovers were plentiful, and among them the rich owner
+of the place adjoining her father's, and Ambrose had no fortune worth
+mentioning, and, moreover, was distinctly homely; but perhaps Peachy was
+drawn as many another woman has been before--by the lure of the unknown;
+for never could she have any proper understanding of Ambrose Thompson's
+temperament. Times were when he appeared more ardent than any of her
+other suitors, and then his attention being distracted, both physically
+and mentally he faded from sight. Now in contrast Peachy's own
+disposition was direct and simple. At a distance from the Red Farm to
+the village she recognized that her lover might be difficult to control,
+but near at hand she believed him tractable, and in a measure this was
+true, for Ambrose could always be managed by his friends up to a certain
+point--only the trouble was that at this time of life Peachy Williams
+did not understand where this point ended.
+
+Like a long tallow candle slowly melting from the heat, the young man
+was now lolling idly on the narrow circular bench of the summer house
+appearing so limp and dispirited that he seemed incapable of any kind of
+opposition.
+
+Would the afternoon never pass? Could he ever remember having been
+forced to remain so long in the society of any one woman? So long that
+he ceased to have anything he desired to say or any possible idea that
+he wished to express; indeed his mind felt as clean and empty as a slate
+wiped by a wet rag. Why in heaven's name didn't Peachy herself have
+something to say once in a while? Before this day his calls had been
+short evening ones, when he had had opinions of his own and to spare.
+Could the time ever come in a man's life when he might want a girl to be
+inspiration as well as audience, to have an idea of her own now and
+then?
+
+"Oh, Lord," Ambrose groaned half aloud. If only he could think of some
+plan of escape, but in the rash enthusiasm of his arrival at the farm
+had he not promised Peachy to remain all day? And now in his exhausted
+condition even his imagination had deserted him. Certainly he could
+think of no excuse for getting away at once.
+
+Yet more and more depressing were Peachy's long silences, her frequent
+laugh more irritating, since Ambrose could find no reasonable excuse for
+laughter in the dulness of the interminable May afternoon with nothing
+to look at but the ground at his feet, or the lacing of leaves overhead,
+except Peachy, stitching, stitching everlastingly on something so white
+and weblike that Ambrose felt he too was being sewed in, made prisoner
+for life.
+
+His long legs twitched, fairly his body ached with his longing to be
+off, until by and by even the girl was made to realize that things were
+not going as she had reasonably expected.
+
+"What is it ails you this afternoon, Ambrose?" she asked at last,
+wistful if he had but known it. "Wasn't there something special you
+wanted to say to me to-day, else why did you come so out of your regular
+time?"
+
+"Why had he come?" Barely was Ambrose able to repress another groan.
+For the life of him he could not now have told what had drawn him that
+morning to the Red Farm. Whatever desires or emotions had then stirred
+him were gone, his head was heavy, his blood moved languidly, even the
+necessary domestic noises of farm life were inexpressibly annoying.
+Could Peachy ever have spelled romance? Sighing aloud Ambrose put up his
+hand to wipe fresh moisture from his brow, and then coloured.
+
+"I'm afeard you're ill," the girl continued, suddenly solicitous, and
+again with a movement that suggested a motherly hen: "You're so quiet
+and unlike yourself and yet so nervous and wriggly."
+
+Ambrose yawned. "I slep' out last night, so mebbe I'm tired," he
+confessed unadvisedly; then immediately observed the same expression on
+Peachy's face that had been brought there by the presence of his muddy
+boots in her parlour. Her lips had tightened, though her brow was
+smooth; it was that gentle but awful look of the born manager.
+
+"I knowed you'd been doin' something foolish," she stated calmly.
+"Anybody else'd remember there is chills and fever out of doors these
+spring nights. It's the spring that has set in on you; your blood needs
+thinnin'. I'll get you some sassafras tea." Relieved by Ambrose's
+revelation, Peachy was for at once starting off, but the young man
+caught at her skirts.
+
+Truly the spring was not at present working on him nor did his blood at
+this hour require thinning.
+
+"Don't go, Peachy; it ain't sassafras I'm needin', thank you just as
+kindly," he said, touched and a bit shamed by her interest. "To tell you
+the truth, I'm beginnin' to feel restless wantin' to get back to the
+woods ag'in. I'll come back to see you soon," he pleaded, observing that
+her head was being shaken with unmoved persistence. Her reply was final:
+
+"You'll do no such thing, Ambrose Thompson; you'll stay right here till
+your queerness has wore off. Haven't I been worryin' over you ever since
+dinner? Think I'll let you go moonin' off now by yourself with no one to
+look after you?" Like young Juno both in her majesty and plenitude,
+Peachy did this time move out of sight, leaving her victim greatly
+shaken.
+
+In a few moments Ambrose knew that a bitter herb compound would be
+poured down his reluctant throat; later he might be placed in bed
+between hot blankets and more sweat drawn from his lean frame. Really
+there was no limit to Peachy's particular kind of mothering femininity,
+and since her intentions were kind--Ambrose knew himself of old--before
+kindness he would go down like a struck ten-pin. Already he could feel
+the blankets closing in over him, and now in truth he shook with a
+chill.
+
+Soon after his tall form arose, and then crouched as it crept forth from
+the summer house, stopping only long enough to pin a white paper to the
+outside arbour, when with leaps and bounds it disappeared inside the
+stable, to reappear a few moments later with old Liza hitched to his
+high gig. Driving as rapidly as possible he soon got past the outside
+farm gate leading into the road.
+
+So when Peachy returned with cup and spoon in hand she found her shrine
+deserted and instead read this note pinned outside among the vines and
+scrawled in the handwriting of Ambrose Thompson:
+
+          You were right, Peachy dear, I'm not myself
+          to-day. I _am_ cold and my heart action is
+          uncommon feeble, so I think I'd best not stay to
+          worry you. Maybe I'll be coming back to the farm
+          some day when I'm feeling different.
+
+                                       Your respectful
+                                                 AMBROSE.
+
+However, safe on the road, Ambrose, looking back and catching a far
+image of Peachy with his letter in her hand, decided that never again
+should he return to the Red Farm. For not only was Ambrose fleeing, but
+knew the reason why. Peachy was a manager, and had that moment in the
+parlour before dinner been longer--well, thank God and old Liza, he was
+still free.
+
+"Good Lord, deliver me!" the boy prayed, though being a good Baptist he
+knew no litany save that of his own soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+          "Even so, Love, even so!
+           Whither thou goest, I will go."
+
+
+SO THE boy continued driving on and on, loitering in the faint
+sweet-smelling May afternoon.
+
+At first after having left the farm his heart had been troubled and his
+mind uneasy, burdened by an unconscious wave of sex weariness.
+
+"Lord," he said aloud once, "seems such a pity you didn't make all
+critturs the same sex; I ain't carin' which, male or female, seein' what
+a lot of trouble we might all then 'a' been saved."
+
+Naturally, so far as Ambrose himself was concerned, he was through with
+the dangers lurking in feminine society forever! He even intended
+confessing this conviction to his friend and partner, Miner, as soon as
+they should be alone together, for even at the moment of his resolution
+had not the boy's subliminal self whispered that he might need
+strengthening later on?
+
+After getting well away from his danger zone, however, Ambrose had
+chosen that the remainder of his spring journey should lie through an
+unfamiliar part of the state, and so had turned his horse into every
+likely lane presenting itself until by degrees the ever-increasing
+beauty of the landscape wrought its effect upon his susceptible soul.
+
+The houses along his route were finer than those of his own
+neighbourhood and, being placed farther back, showed only a chimney, or
+the white fluted column of a veranda every now and then beyond the
+closely planted avenues of beech or maple trees. Sounding across the
+fields came the voices of the darkies closing their day's tasks with
+songs. Truly this Kentucky was a happy land in the days before the war,
+and on this afternoon there were myriads of the soft, green growing
+things toward which Ambrose's young spirit had yearned,--acres of corn
+just creeping above the mould, and miles of tiny tobacco plants.
+
+Then unexpectedly this character of landscape disappeared, and old Liza
+trotted on to a hard white turnpike. The twilight was closing down, but
+a toll-gate keeper showed himself a few yards ahead, and then a cluster
+of small stores. Afterward there was nothing further to interest Ambrose
+until he drove straight up to a big building surrounded by a high fence
+and set in the middle of a grassless yard without the influence of a
+tree or vine near it and where from the inside came the murmur of
+children's voices hushed to a pathetic, uniform note.
+
+The boy knew the place at once for a county orphan asylum, and being
+what he was, reflected. In times past he had seen these same orphans led
+through the streets of Pennyroyal, a dreary set of little human beings,
+dressed alike and made to keep step like a chain gang. "Glory," he
+whispered, "here am I running away from the fear of havin' to keep step
+with _one_ person; what if I had been made to keep step with so many?"
+
+The next moment brought him nearly opposite a woodpile, and there he
+slowed up, for he thought that he heard a noise behind it sounding like
+a scared sheep or lamb.
+
+"Stop!" What looked like a child's figure instantly rose and ran toward
+him. "Hide me!" she gasped; "oh, please be quick and don't ask
+questions." And the girl clung so tightly to the spokes of the gig wheel
+that had the young man driven on she must have been dragged like a slave
+at his chariot.
+
+But of course he did no such thing. "Hop in," he replied cheerfully.
+Then, while the child crouched shivering and panting against his knee
+under the thin laprobe, Ambrose whistled to indicate his entire lack of
+concern in this latest adventure, and also to suggest that he rode
+alone.
+
+Pretty soon, however, he began wondering what character of person he had
+rescued and from what or from whom she was running away, it being
+characteristic of Ambrose that first he had done what was required of
+him, and later had desired to ask questions. In the haste and
+semi-darkness it had been impossible to tell whether the child was a
+gypsy or a mere ordinary waif, and she had looked so young--twelve or a
+little more perhaps. There was nothing much to judge by except that she
+was little and light and that her eyes were dark and shiny and she had
+two braids of long hair. But by and by of its own accord the figure
+under the laprobe started talking. "Don't let anybody take me
+away,--say you ain't seen me if they come along," she pleaded in such a
+tone that it was only possible for Ambrose to give a reassuring pat to
+her head and then to drive more rapidly along. Once when there was a
+moment of unusual stillness he did peep under the laprobe, only to catch
+sight of a pair of grateful eyes upturned to his and to jerk back his
+hand from the touch of cold lips.
+
+Fifteen minutes of what had seemed totally unnecessary hiding, as there
+were few vehicles abroad on the turnpike at this late hour, and then
+both the occupants of the gig heard a furious pounding of a horse's
+hoofs behind them and knew that something or some one was being pursued.
+
+The girl's clasp tightened, and Ambrose could catch, not the words, but
+the sound of a prayer. Harder than ever before in all their ten years of
+friendly intimacy the boy now spurred on old Liza. It might have been
+just as well had he known why he was being thus chivalrous, but there
+had been no opportunity so far for finding out, and everything in
+Ambrose played gallantly with this new adventure. He was still a boy
+with a boy's love of mischief, of hiding, of winning in any kind of
+game, and susceptibility to instant sympathy.
+
+Old Liza was a retired racehorse, and although her retirement dated some
+years back, still she was subject to spurts of speed. However, the best
+of spurts won't hold out long, and soon her driver realized that the
+wagon behind was gaining on him every moment.
+
+"Keep still!" he ordered, deliberately pulling up short in the middle of
+the road. With a quick movement, seeing that the truant was completely
+hidden, he set his carpet-bag up on his lap, and, opening it, began
+rummaging among its contents. When the other wagon was within hailing
+distance he turned slowly about.
+
+"Thank the Lord for trifles, stranger," he called. "I wonder now if you
+would mind pausin' and givin' me a light; I got my pipe and tobacco"--he
+held out an old-time corncob pipe--"but maybe you be hurryin' on to a
+sick person."
+
+Naturally the other man hesitated. Ambrose's solemn long face was fairly
+plain to view, also his manner of having all eternity before him. Eying
+him suspiciously, the newcomer thrust forth his own lighted pipe,
+Ambrose managing to keep his carpet-bag between them.
+
+"You ain't seen anything of a runaway girl?" the man asked.
+
+Ambrose nodded with irritating precision, the time being consumed in
+scrutiny of his questioner's face. The man had lantern jaws, small, hard
+eyes, and an expression of official authority peculiarly annoying to
+certain members of the laity.
+
+"There was a girl a piece back hidin' behind a woodpile; thought maybe
+she was playin' hide and seek." Here the speaker laughed. "Reckon you
+suspicioned she was a pretty fair runner if you're chasin' a girl along
+the high-road with that horse. Most any human would have had the sense
+to hide." Here the reins flapped on old Liza's back and she took a few
+steps forward.
+
+Evidently Ambrose's words had not been without effect, for the stranger
+did not hurry on at once, neither did he reveal any misgiving in
+connection with the young man nor the amount of property being
+transported at the front of his gig, for the country people of that day
+were accustomed to doing their own carrying.
+
+Safety with honours! A smile began playing about Ambrose's face, when
+suddenly a kind of miniature convulsion shook his leg, followed by a
+choking, spluttering noise that was plainly a terrified sneeze.
+
+And instantly the hand of the man in the wagon reached forward, but he
+was not within reaching distance, and at the same instant Ambrose,
+seizing hold of his passenger, made a flying leap from the gig. Then
+catching the girl's hand in his he ran with her, ran gloriously, hardly
+conscious of the light figure being drawn along. All day his long legs
+had been cramped with sitting still; this, then, was the thing that he
+had most desired: leaping ditches, tearing across ploughed fields to the
+woods ahead, with the frightened girl panting but keeping close to his
+side, and behind them the enraged, shouting figure of officialdom.
+
+Once in the woods the hiding was easy; twisting in and out among the
+trees not only did Ambrose lose his pursuer, but himself. For if he had
+counted on anything, which he probably had not, it was that the man
+would not run after them for any length of time, leaving his fast horse
+to stand in the road.
+
+Finally, the girl and boy both dropped down on the ground. The long May
+twilight was past, still they could see the outlines of each other's
+forms, and Ambrose could hear the beating of the girl's heart against
+her frock like the fluttering of an imprisoned moth.
+
+He could not help reassuring her. "You're safe, sis, don't worry," he
+drawled. "Keep still and maybe in a minute I'll find some water."
+
+But she would not let him leave her, and tagged along until they finally
+discovered a little stream. Then, as Ambrose had some stale bread in his
+pocket, together they feasted for a short time, when, as the moon of the
+night before had come out again a trifle larger, Ambrose decided to
+inquire concerning his companion's plans. She now seemed entirely
+peaceful, and, though rested, had made no mention of moving along.
+However, for some time longer he watched her with that solemn stare of
+his. She was chattering gayly enough about nothing ("there was never a
+time when a female wouldn't be able to talk," he thought), but by and
+by she _must_ be interrupted.
+
+"I wonder now," he said when there was no longer any sound either of
+fear or fatigue in her voice, "if you would kindly be tellin' me which
+way you would like to be goin' and what friends you was plannin' to run
+to to-night when I picked you up back on the road? I ain't to say
+acquainted with this part of the country, but I reckon I can help to
+find them. It's gettin' late and I ain't easy in my mind about Liza."
+
+For some absurd reason he felt himself placed upon the defensive.
+
+The girl was shaking her head. "I ain't no friend but you."
+
+Ambrose whistled. "Well, bein's as I am what one might call a recently
+adopted friend, maybe you'll so much as tell me where you're thinkin' of
+spendin' the night."
+
+"I ain't thinkin'," was the answer, and at this Ambrose swore softly,
+though you may count on his having sworn under his breath.
+
+"Look here, you got to tell me a straight story. I ought to 'a' made you
+before," he confessed. "I reckon I knew you were runnin' away from that
+orphan asylum and I kind of wanted to help, even more when that fellow
+came after you, but we can't go traipsin' around all night, and I got to
+find Liza. You oughtn't to have run away from a good asylum if you
+hadn't no friends."
+
+Ambrose knew himself for a liar before the girl on the ground began
+rocking herself back and forth with her hands clasped over her knees.
+
+"I ought to, I ought to, I ought to," she repeated until her words had
+the swaying influence of a chant. "You know nothin' about it. I have
+been in that place so long I can't remember anywheres else. How can I
+have friends? I don't know nobody, I don't love nobody, I ain't nobody!
+Why, there's mornings when I get up and lookin' at the other orphans,
+seein' we are dressed alike and got to do the same things at the same
+time all day, I begin to think maybe there ain't any _me_. I'm just one
+of them--any one." She began crying now, but that did not interrupt her
+passionate speech. "I've been thinkin' of runnin' away a long time.
+P'raps I'll have a hard time; I don't care. Ain't I a right to find
+out?"
+
+And this of course the young man could not answer, so he only passed his
+hand over his brow. "Well, you might 'a' stayed at the asylum a little
+longer," and then because he was Ambrose, "or at least till I got safely
+past that woodpile."
+
+"I was too old," she defended. "I ought not to have stayed so long as I
+did, only nobody knew what to do with me." She was looking up into her
+companion's face close, that she might find something more of help in
+it. "Maybe you know some one that might want me? I know lots of things,
+cleanin' and cookin' some----" She would like to have continued to pour
+out her poor list of accomplishments, but Ambrose stopped her.
+
+For some time the fear had been growing upon him that the child he
+believed himself to have rescued was not so much a child as he had first
+supposed. Of course he had never seen her very plainly and there was
+nothing to judge by in her short, scant dress. "Would you mind," he now
+inquired, "tellin' me just about how old you are?"
+
+"Sixteen."
+
+Ambrose groaned. For in Kentucky half a century ago, you must remember,
+sixteen was thought an age nearer that of a woman than of a girl.
+
+"Then I've got to take you back to the orphans," he announced.
+
+However, his declaration had not even the distinction of being listened
+to, for the girl, with her chin sunk in her clasped hands, was plainly
+thinking of something else. Now she put one hand timidly on his coat
+sleeve, and Ambrose could see that she had a curiously pointed chin and
+that her eyes were like deep wells with the moonlight shining down into
+them. "Maybe you'll tell me where _you're_ thinkin' of stayin' the
+night?"
+
+"The Lord knows _only_." And here yesterday's adventurer had a sudden
+vision of himself setting forth on his journey to be alone with nature.
+On the morning of the second day he had been almost caught in a trap of
+his own setting, and now at nightfall was probably in a worse fix. "I
+had been thinkin', though, of spendin' the night somewhere peaceful-like
+in the woods," he growled.
+
+The girl clapped her hands together and, yawning, drew closer to her
+new friend, almost as if she meant to rest her head upon his shoulder.
+
+"Then let me stay with you, please," she begged, and Ambrose could feel
+her warm breath on his cheek. "The woods is big and there's plenty of
+room for me, too. I shan't be afraid with you, and I've never seen the
+stars, except through the window."
+
+The boy rose. "No," he said harshly, "you can't stay alone in the woods
+at night with me. I reckon before this I understood you didn't know
+nothing."
+
+Half an hour afterward they found old Liza cropping grass, a little off
+the main road where they had left her. When both of them had returned to
+the gig Ambrose drove on in silence with an uncommonly bored face.
+
+Later the moon went behind a cloud and a light mist fell, and then the
+girl's body began swaying gently backward and forward. Once she fell too
+far forward, when, still frowning, her companion slipped an arm about
+her, and a moment later she was fast asleep with her head resting on his
+shoulder.
+
+Ambrose breathed deeply of the odour of the fresh wet earth. It was
+like the perfume of her young body; the moist curls about her face like
+the damp tendrils of new vines. Soon the boy's shoulder ached, and his
+entire left side, including his leg, seemed to have gone to sleep. Now
+and then he wondered if it ever should wake again in this world; and yet
+try as he might Ambrose Thompson could not make up his mind that he
+actually disliked the presence of the girl with him, and never from
+youth to old age had he the talent for deceiving himself.
+
+"Poor kid," he murmured more than once, "she must 'a' been lyin' awake
+nights plannin' to run away, with no place on God's earth to run to."
+
+Seldom did he allow himself the pleasure of looking long at her, and
+only once did his lips move toward hers, and then, though his face
+worked, they were drawn sharply back.
+
+"Lord!" he whispered after this, "whatever shall I do with her?" A
+stranger in that part of the country himself, he knew of no one to ask
+to shelter the girl, and take her back to the asylum he would not.
+Should he turn her over to a stranger she would promptly be sent back
+there in the morning. Yet here were the lights of a village showing
+close ahead of them, and every now and then old Liza stumbled, almost
+falling from weariness.
+
+Ambrose's prayer half awakened the girl. Anyhow, she sat up for a moment
+rubbing her eyes, to hear him asking: "Whatever is your name?"
+
+"Sarah," and then her head swayed again.
+
+But Ambrose sat straight up giving his reins an unexpected joyous flap.
+"Glory, why ain't I thought of it before?" he asked of no one. Then
+aloud: "When Abraham drew near to the land of the Egyptians didn't he
+admonish Sarah, his wife, to say she was his sister that it might be
+well with him and that his soul should live?" He grinned silently. "I'm
+findin' the patriarchs pretty useful this trip, but I reckon if Abraham
+could say that his wife Sarah was his sister to save his _own_ skin, I
+can tell the same kind of a one to save a girl."
+
+"Wake up, Sarah," he urged, when a few moments later he drew rein before
+a red brick tavern door, "and if anybody asks questions, recollect you
+are to say you're my sister."
+
+However, on that same evening, when Sarah put up her lips for a sister's
+good night kiss, it was the boy who turned away. There was something in
+this girl that called to him too strongly, something fragrant and as yet
+unawakened, and then he had not dreamed she was so pretty, with her
+scarlet cheeks and big, heavy-lidded eyes, some poor little child of Eve
+from a far different land than his blond Kentucky. It looked, too, as
+though the little force the girl had, had now spent itself in her one
+effort of running a way, and hereafter some one would surely have to
+look after her. "Not only had she never been taught at the asylum to
+think for herself," the boy reflected, "she ain't never even been
+allowed to."
+
+Nevertheless the girl slept untroubled in her high-post bed in the best
+guest chamber of the tavern, while Ambrose in a tiny room close under
+the roof, lay awake for a long time. He was not in the woods alone as he
+had dreamed of being, and yet he was not unhappy. He was not listening
+to the voices of nature as he knew her, but to the stirrings of his own
+blood, to the beating of his own heart.
+
+More than once in order to stay his restlessness Ambrose had risen from
+his bed and stood leaning and looking out of his window at the stars and
+breathing deep the odours of the night. Still he could see nor feel
+nothing except the presence of the strange girl near him, the appeal of
+her utter helplessness. And yet the boy did not understand that the song
+of life he had come forth to hear was being sung to him for the first
+time to-night. For he only kept repeating to himself over and over:
+"Whatever am I to do with her, poor little kid?" until he also fell
+asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE RETURN
+
+
+IT WAS the fourth morning since Ambrose's departure, and county court
+day in Pennyroyal. The hour was just before noon, so the men had already
+left the court-house and were standing around in groups talking
+politics, while the younger ones paraded, walking shoulder to shoulder
+for mutual support and encouragement. The main street was also
+fluttering with girls, a variety of household errands having brought
+them forth at this hour; on their arms fresh sunbonnets trembled, in
+their eyes wonderful things danced, and indeed almost all of them were
+fair. Yet in the doorway of the drygoods firm of Hobbs & Thompson Miner
+Hobbs stood wrapped in gloom; the girls had giggled for him and at him
+vainly. More than eighty-six hours had passed bringing no word from his
+partner.
+
+Suddenly a vibration swept through the air as tangible as the pealing
+of bells. Ambrose was on his way back into Pennyroyal. The news must
+have had its origin somewhere out of sight, for now it was travelling
+swiftly by word of mouth.
+
+One moment the older men ceased arguing and spat widely, the girls
+turned their eyes away from their admirers, even the youths glanced up
+the hill, for the story grew that not only was Ambrose returning, but
+that he did not ride alone.
+
+By and by, though still some distance off, Miner beheld old Liza drawing
+the familiar gig. About her neck hung a garland of buttercups and
+daisies, above one twitching ear appeared a bouquet of wild flowers and
+sweet fern tied with flowing streamers of white cotton-back satin
+ribbon, while upright on the floor of the gig stood Ambrose.
+
+As the equipage advanced Miner leaned against his door frame.
+
+Ambrose was wearing a new stove-pipe hat, his swallow tailed coat
+revealed a new beflowered waistcoat, and in his buttonhole blossomed a
+rose. But Miner swept details aside. On Ambrose's face was the
+expression that has lit up the world, and by his side rode a strange
+girl never before seen in Pennyroyal.
+
+Ambrose was bowing from right to left, waving his hat in joyous circles
+of greeting, while the girl clung with one hand to an end of his coat
+and with the other clutched her paper-flower bouquet.
+
+When the gig had turned the corner into Linden street and was moving on
+toward the rose cottage the news of its approach had preceded it, for
+the wooden sidewalk close by was lined and there in the forefront stood
+Susan Barrows, her hands on her hips and her bunches of corkscrew curls
+bobbing.
+
+"Where on earth did you find _that_ girl, Ambrose Thompson?" she called
+out as soon as the couple were in hailing distance.
+
+Ambrose drove closer. "I didn't _find_ her, Miss Susan," he answered,
+lying like a saint.
+
+Mrs. Barrows' eyes bored like old gimlets sharpened from long use.
+"She's too young to be your housekeeper, and she ain't ugly," she said.
+"The town'll talk."
+
+But now Liza had stopped of her own accord in front of home, and
+Ambrose, letting go of his reins, put his arm about the girl. Under the
+new poke bonnet her face was pale except for the scarlet of her lips and
+her dark eyes that never left their refuge.
+
+The sensitive point to her companion's long nose quivered. Coming toward
+them he could see Miner's six pink-and-white, blond sisters, and in
+their wake the dark little man. Miner was walking like a man at a
+funeral, with his head bowed, and that he did not wear a band of crêpe
+upon his arm was only that he had lacked opportunity; everything else
+suggested a pall. At the same instant, round the corner of the cottage,
+trotted Moses, waving his tail and wearing a smile of forgiveness. One
+look, and ignoring his master's friendly whistle, the little dog
+disappeared, not to be seen again for three days.
+
+Silently Ambrose lifted the stranger down to the boardwalk and with his
+arm still about her turned to face Susan. Perhaps there was something of
+appeal in the familiar solemnity of his gaze and in his whimsical drawl:
+
+"We'll let the town talk, Susan, won't we, or it'll bust?" he replied
+quietly. "No, ma'am, she ain't my hired housekeeper; no ma'am, she
+ain't no relation of mine; that is, no born blood kin." With this he
+began leading Sarah to the shelter of his own yard and, drawing her in,
+closed the gate.
+
+"But we're pretty closely related, Susan." Purposely Ambrose's voice was
+raised. He then took a few irresistibly jubilant steps backward and
+forward, swinging the girl with him. "She's my wife!"
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+HIS SECOND WIFE
+
+          "_Heaven mend us all_"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RECONSTRUCTION
+
+
+"HOW long has it been since, Mrs. Barrows?" asked the Baptist minister.
+
+"Eight years, Brother Bibbs," Susan answered.
+
+They were standing in front of Susan Barrows' cottage one late June
+afternoon in the summer of 1866.
+
+The minister sighed, flapping his worn coat-tails as a signal of
+distress. Mrs. Barrows was gazing at the house next door. There the
+lilac bush which had showed its first blossoms on that morning of
+Ambrose's runaway had grown to full estate. Its season having passed,
+however, it was no longer in bloom, but instead, the climbing rose,
+known in the South as the "Seven Sisters," was spreading itself above
+the front door, bestowing its flowers against the background of the once
+rose-coloured cottage.
+
+Susan's black curls moved reminiscently, eight years having wrought no
+changes in her beyond the deepening of the original plan. "Yes, eight
+years since Ambrose Thompson brought that orphan child home, and two
+since she passed away. Seems that Ambrose wouldn't never have got off
+even one year to the war if she hadn't gone on before, seein' as she
+wasn't never willing to let him out of her sight a minute longer'n she
+could help."
+
+"A deeply affectionate nature," remarked the minister.
+
+"A powerful clinger," retorted Susan, "but men is forgivin' to regular
+features with a high colour." She turned at this instant to look down
+the street. "I call it chokin' myself to hang on to a man the way Sarah
+done to Ambrose plumb up to the hour she died. What's always needin'
+proppin' ain't to my mind worth the prop. Howsomever, the child is dead,
+and I'm hopeful death does change us right considerable, though I can't
+see as it changes nothin' of what we were nor what we done in this
+world--and more's the pity!"
+
+Assuredly Brother Bibbs was growing restless, and Mrs. Barrows talking
+to cover time. For five minutes before had she not seen him attempting
+to sneak past her gate to gain refuge in the Thompson cottage unobserved
+before its owner could possibly have returned from work?
+
+Then, too, the minister's face was uncommonly harassed, and these were
+disjointed days in the Pennyroyal as well as throughout the entire
+country. True, the Civil War was over, which Susan called "the
+uncivilest ever fit on God's earth," but while its wounds and
+differences were patched up they were by no means healed. And
+Pennyroyal's disposition to regard herself as one family had made her
+dissensions peculiarly bitter. There were times in this past year since
+the close of the war when the minister had wondered if it had not been
+the bitterest year of all, for notwithstanding that Kentucky did not
+suffer from reconstruction as the states further south, remember that
+she was, during and after the war, a state divided within herself.
+
+There was trouble in the Pennyroyal air this afternoon.
+
+"Farewell, Susan," Brother Bibbs suggested, as getting out his pocket
+handkerchief he removed a slight moisture from his eyes. "Ambrose and
+Sarah loved one another, that was the main thing. Theirs was a spring
+mating, and, like the birds whose season they chose, brief, too brief in
+passing." Attempting now to move, Brother Bibbs found it impossible,
+since in his moment of sentiment Mrs. Barrows, leaning over her fence,
+had linked her arm through his.
+
+"Well, thank the Lord the little love bird didn't leave a young one in
+the nest for me and the male to look after," she argued more leniently.
+"Come right on in, Brother, and rest yourself, as I kin see Ambrose and
+his two shadders advancin' toward us up the street, and a peskier pair
+of shadders than Miner Hobbs and that dog, Moses, I ain't never seen,
+but it's true the two of 'em ain't left Ambrose to himself a minute
+since his wife died."
+
+With her free hand Susan now waved a friendly greeting, even releasing
+at the same time the vigour of her clutch with the other, for Brother
+Bibbs was a fragile gentleman, an elderly widower, and, excepting in
+matters pertaining to heaven or hell, greatly subject to the sisters in
+his congregation.
+
+Also the three figures were almost in plain sight, the little man
+leaning as usual on the arm of the tall one, with Moses following but a
+few steps behind.
+
+Miner Hobbs walked with a slight limp. Wounded in the battle of Resaca,
+he had never entirely recovered, and although not yet thirty years old
+already showed signs of advancing age in his shrivelled appearance, like
+a nut whose kernel has failed to ripen.
+
+Moses, however, was remarkably well preserved and, barring a stiffness
+in his legs and a few grizzled hairs, lighter of heart than in many a
+year. For since that girl who had come to his home had suddenly gone
+away with equal mysteriousness his master was once more his slave.
+
+On the surface Ambrose seemed to have changed more than either Miner or
+the dog. His face had lost its look of easy laughter, the crow's feet
+about the corners of his eyes spoke of nights of hard service. Perhaps
+he was even longer and leaner than ever, while the hair upon his
+forehead was slowly beginning to recede like a wave from the shore.
+
+Now his familiar spirit of fun took hold on him. The little man was
+talking to him earnestly. "Go easy, Miner," he whispered, bending his
+tall head, "ef you want to keep your secret from the women; there's Miss
+Susan less'n a block away." He also continued his teasing even after
+joining the minister and Mrs. Barrows, managing in a few moments to pass
+with the two men into his house, leaving the lady bristling with anger.
+
+"There's somethin' fermentin' in the head of every man in this here
+town," she flared, coming out on to the sidewalk and then following the
+trio into Ambrose's yard the better to deliver her message, "somethin'
+you're hidin' from the women, and what men keeps to themselves ain't no
+good and never was! Suppose we ain't noticed you plottin' new mischief
+together? Like it wasn't enough," she ended bitterly, "that women has
+had to bear a war, go half starved, and do man's work as well as their
+own 'thout bein' asked whether they'd like a war or not. Wonder if the
+good time's comin' when women kin reveal what they think and not have to
+stand fer the things they don't have no hand in the makin' of."
+
+Although during this tirade her audience had disappeared, eternal
+vigilance was forever Mrs. Barrows' motto. So now she went on with her
+watching, while the three men remained a long time inside the cottage,
+and by and by, when darkness had fallen, other men with their faces
+hidden followed in after them. Soon these men came out, and last of all
+Miner, Ambrose, and Brother Bibbs. Miner was scowling; nevertheless his
+scowl was concealing an expression of triumph; the minister's figure
+plainly showed defeat, but Ambrose, whatever his former look, laughed
+aloud, catching sight of his neighbour through the gloom, standing on a
+kitchen chair and leaning across the dividing rails between her house
+and his in order to peep through the closed slats of his sitting-room
+window.
+
+"Look out, Miss Susan, the meetin' is over, and high places is rickety,"
+he called suddenly.
+
+Mrs. Barrows started guiltily, accomplishing her own downfall, and over
+she went with the wreck of her chair, only to spring up so quickly
+afterward that her hoopskirts appeared to carry her higher than the laws
+of gravity.
+
+Although assistance from Ambrose arrived too late, still he lingered.
+"Ain't you no faith in what men undertakes 'thout advice from women,
+Miss Susan?" he inquired, and when that lady, breathless for once, was
+able only to shake her head, he gave her a slow, anxious smile,
+whispering, "I'm none too sure but you're right," before moving along.
+
+Notwithstanding, at midnight on the same night Ambrose and Miner were
+riding side by side through the Kentucky woods at the head of a small
+cavalcade that had come together silently on the outskirts of
+Pennyroyal. The riders wore masks, excepting Ambrose, who, with face
+uncovered, squirmed restlessly upon the sunken back of old Liza.
+
+"The men have give their word there ain't nobody goin' to git hurt," he
+repeated three or four times, until finally Miner turned upon him.
+
+"Mebbe you'd better not have went, Ambrose, ef you haven't the nerve,"
+he remarked testily.
+
+And at this the tall man stiffened. "It ain't nerve, Miner. I just ain't
+never liked a ten-man-against-one game in my life, and I ain't hidin' my
+sentiments. No more than the rest of you do I want this Yankee teacher
+bein' brought into Pennyrile to show us _our_ business, but I'm with
+this crowd to-night to see he don't get hurt 'cept in his feelin's."
+
+"He's got to git, notwithstandin'!" Miner's attitude was that of a
+fierce little dog, who even when he couldn't change a situation liked to
+bark in order to hear the noise.
+
+These men had both fought on the Southern side in the Civil War, but
+with a difference. Miner had plunged into it at once with pigheadedness
+and with passion; the full story of why Ambrose had failed to go south
+when his comrades did has not been told by Mrs. Barrows. At that time
+most men's hearts were on the one side or the other. Ambrose Thompson's
+heart was on both sides at once. Indeed, during the first hateful years
+of the war he had felt like a child whose equally beloved parents were
+engaged in getting a divorce, and not until after Miner was wounded and
+the South had showed herself the weaker did he heed her mothering call.
+And then he was never much of a success as a soldier because of his
+habit of so frequently misplacing his gun while he helped on a weaker
+brother, and because of his never having been known to fire at anything
+in particular. Still his companions did not count him a coward, merely
+recognizing that his imagination had a longer reach than theirs.
+
+Kentuckians, however, have not the grace of easy forgiveness, and also
+have a fixed determination to attend to their own affairs. To-night's
+expedition meant that the teacher sent from the North into the
+Pennyroyal district to instruct their coloured children must go. Not
+that Pennyroyal wished her negroes to remain untaught, "seein'," as
+Ambrose had said, "that readin' and writin' ought to belong to them same
+as seein' and smellin'," but because they preferred to have time to
+attend to the matter themselves. Also, the new teacher had been secretly
+hurried into the county that day, driven through the adjoining town, and
+finally installed in the Pennyroyal district schoolhouse without
+Pennyroyal's being allowed a chance to take even a look.
+
+This schoolhouse was an old-fashioned log cabin set in the middle of a
+clearing in a young papaw grove, and to-night, with a light burning in
+the front room, the oncoming men could see through a half-opened window
+the shadow of a figure.
+
+Without waiting for word of command, silently they got down from their
+horses, forming a line about the house, and then one man, pounding
+savagely on the closed door, shouted: "Come out from there or we'll drag
+you out."
+
+There was no answer at first, and when a candle appeared at the opening
+of the door the wind blew it out so quickly that the person holding it
+remained in indistinct outline.
+
+Miner, having been previously chosen as spokesman, now advanced toward
+this door and said: "Ahem!" He was feeling it a different thing to plan
+to bully a fellow-man by force of numbers and another to make so ugly a
+statement to his face, while Ambrose in even deeper embarrassment
+flattened his thin body against the front wall of the cabin until it
+suggested a tall plank left to rest there over night.
+
+"You got to git away from our district school-house to-night," blurted
+Miner at last; "Pennyroyal kin take care of its own coloured children
+'thout help from the outside. But you needn't be scairt, for nobody's
+goin' to hurt you if you go peaceable, but there's a horse waitin' fer
+you out here and we'll 'low you fifteen minutes to clear out."
+
+Then the little man jumped a few steps backward and the hand of each of
+his companions slipped toward the trigger of his gun. However, whatever
+of danger the past moment seemed to have had, it passed swiftly, for the
+weapon, held by the lonely figure in the doorway, dropped to the ground
+with a peculiar clatter, and an instant later the voice said:
+
+"There aren't men enough in Kentucky to make _me_ run away like a thief;
+if I am made to go it must be by force." The tones were low and
+tremulous, but were sufficiently clear and held no hint of surrender.
+Then, putting out both hands like a child at play in blind man's buff,
+the figure groped its way forth from the cabin, moving directly toward
+Miner and saying: "How can I talk with you, though, when I can't see
+you? Till to-night I never dreamed a Kentuckian would be ashamed to show
+his face."
+
+Actually Miner's hand shook as he tore off his mask, for the figure
+approaching him was that of a woman, possibly a girl, and she must have
+been preparing for bed at the time the men arrived, for her hair was
+hanging over her shoulders, and through the opening of her wrapper there
+showed the white glimmer of a gown.
+
+Even in the midst of his own shame and chagrin Ambrose inwardly
+chuckled, seeing that for the first time in his life Miner had to
+discuss a question with a woman without his primeval conviction that man
+was ordained to be always in the right and woman in the wrong.
+
+"Madam, there has been some mistake; surely you can see that----" he
+began pompously. But the girl shook her head. "I told you I couldn't
+_see_ anything."
+
+Something of relief hid in Ambrose's grin this time, for if the Yankee
+school teacher had a sense of humour even the situation in which he and
+his companions found themselves was not utterly hopeless.
+
+But an impatient voice now spoke from the crowd. "Oh, fer the love of
+heaven, can't you understand we didn't know you was a woman? Reckon we'd
+all 'a' come shyin' out here to drive a woman away? You pack up your
+duds in the mornin' and leave comfortable, and no more said."
+
+"I won't," came the defiant answer. Then changing her tactics, the girl
+drew nearer Miner, and putting out one hand almost touched his coat
+sleeve, although actually he seemed to shrivel away under it. "Do let me
+stay, at least for a while," she pleaded. "My father was killed in the
+war; I have to make my own living and this is my first chance. I didn't
+know you would mind so much. And, please, I am not so very
+Yankee--Indiana is only just across the river."
+
+There were no tears in the voice, but a sound so suspiciously near them
+that ten men, shuffling their feet, wished one of their number would
+speak.
+
+At last an answer came from a long shadow against the front wall of the
+cabin. "Certain you kin stay, Miss, and thank you. Just move on inside
+your house now and lock the door, for there's some among us that mebbe
+won't be anxious to be recognized later on as havin' give you--well, a
+kind of house warmin' in the Pennyrile."
+
+A moment later, while his companions were mounting their horses,
+Ambrose lingered, groping before the closed door; soon he touched
+something of strange formation with a smooth back and a prickly
+arrangement on the underneath side. "Lord, what a weapon of defence--a
+hairbrush," he drawled, slipping it into his pocket as he visioned the
+girl's interrupted preparations for the night. And then when old Liza
+had caught up with the others: "Boys, ain't to-night enough to cure us
+of Ku-Kluxing, or whatever you want to call this gol darn business?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+EM'LY DUNHAM
+
+"HER name's Em'ly Dunham," announced Miner shortly.
+
+Ambrose, who at this moment was arranging a pyramid design of their new
+stock of calicoes on a counter in the front of their shop in order to
+get the best colour effect, looked up quickly and then put his hand over
+his lips.
+
+"Whose named Em'ly Dunham?" he inquired in a partially stifled voice,
+with his interest apparently still concentrated on his work.
+
+"You know, the Yankee school teacher," Miner growled. He was standing
+inside a kind of wire cage which separated the post-office department
+from the rest of the store of Hobbs & Thompson, the charge of the mail
+having recently been given to the two men.
+
+"How'd you find out?"
+
+"Letters!" The little man was assorting the mail with an energy that
+Pennyroyal's one dozen epistles or less a day hardly justified. This was
+one morning less than a week after the unsuccessful midnight excursion.
+
+Ambrose now crossed his feet, resting his weight on his elbows against
+the bales of cotton cloth. He was staring solemnly at his partner.
+"Em'ly Dunham is a pretty name, Miner; kind of soft and gentle, yet with
+plenty of spirit in it. I am reckoning some one in Pennyroyal ought to
+try and make things up to her."
+
+With a sigh the other man climbed up to perch on his high official
+stool. "Ain't you never goin' to stop thinkin' of females and marryin',
+Ambrose? I thought mebbe when you lost Sarah you was cured!"
+
+Ambrose leaned farther over, shaking his head. "No," he answered simply,
+"I reckon not. I wonder ef you have ever thought, Miner, of how much
+them two little words--livin' and lovin'--are alike. I don't think it
+was an accident, jest the difference of that one little letter. Not that
+I intend marryin' again--I am through with marryin' forever--it's you,
+Miner Hobbs, I'm worryin' over." Here, because of his earnestness,
+Ambrose left his place and coming across the aisle looked down over the
+wire netting upon his friend. "Miner," he repeated as sternly as he was
+able, "your time has come. There ain't nothin' so no 'count on earth as
+an old bachelor. It's worse than an old maid and different, because
+perhaps an old maid couldn't help gettin' left out, but the Lord's given
+every man a chance to improve his condition jest by askin'. Course he
+may have to ask more'n one and mebbe more'n once, but there ain't no
+age limit to stop him. Then think, Miner, what chances always lies in
+villages. Why, villages is nature's nunneries. Ain't it time fer you to
+do a man's part?"
+
+There was silence for a little time, Miner making no response, although
+from over in his corner Moses growled in his sleep.
+
+Then the tall man coughed apologetically. He looked tired, as though he
+had been awake many hours the night before. "I didn't mean to rile you
+any," he continued, "only I can't help thinkin' that a man without a
+wife is like a little boat a-floatin' on the sea of life without a
+rudder and bound for nowhere in particular. Ef you don't marry you'll be
+awful sorry when you're an old man, Miner, and ef you've been kind of
+overfed on Pennyrile girls, why, this here new school teacher----"
+
+Miner fairly bounced up and down on his stool in his impatience. "Lord,
+why shouldn't I be sorry when I'm old instead of when I'm young? Mebbe I
+won't live to get old and then I'd 'a' made myself wretcheder'n a slave
+and all fer nothin'."
+
+At this second, the door opening, the speaker collapsed, while Ambrose
+shot backward behind the counter toward the rear of the shop. A flood of
+June sunshine entered with the girl, and Ambrose heard her name for the
+second time as she asked the terrified Miner for her mail. He also saw
+her plainly. She was twenty-five or perhaps a little more, with hair
+that was brown or gold as the light shone upon it; gray eyes set wide
+apart--eyes that might at times be cold and then shine warmly like a
+cloud suddenly shot through by the sun; her mouth was larger and her
+chin firmer than beauty requires, and yet both showed curves of frequent
+and redeeming laughter. She was tall, with broad shoulders and a slender
+body, and there was about her a hint of delicate and unconscious
+coquetry, noticeable as she talked with Miner while making her
+purchases, the little man coming out from his retreat to serve her and
+afterward following her into the street, where he was gone for almost an
+hour.
+
+In the meantime it was difficult for Ambrose to attend properly to
+business, for never before had his partner left the store during working
+hours save for his meals and to attend the wedding of his sisters, two
+of whom had happily passed from his home to homes of their own. However,
+no words on the subject were exchanged when Miner curtly explained that
+Miss Dunham had too many bundles for a lady to carry.
+
+It was after this extraordinary occurrence at their shop that Miner left
+Ambrose and Moses alone for three evenings in succession, the tall man
+sitting in his chair in the backyard under a ripening apple tree, with
+Moses at his side and his friend's empty chair near by. But although
+Ambrose drooped every now and then, he always smiled resolutely
+afterward. "It'll plumb be the salvation of Miner."
+
+On the fourth night, however, Ambrose, having gone early to bed and
+fallen into a light sleep, was awakened by a knock at his kitchen door,
+and on coming downstairs again found his friend outside. "It ain't no
+hour to be in bed yet," Miner snapped. Knowing the little man had
+something unusual on his mind his friend led him to their accustomed
+refuge.
+
+Ambrose and Miner were curiously incongruous figures that night in the
+garden, for the one man wore an oriental silk dressing-gown over a pair
+of hastily put on blue jean trousers; the gown, a scheme of deep rich
+colours and designs, having drifted into the shop one day by accident,
+had been seized upon by Ambrose to gratify a subconscious craving. It
+was tied about his waist with a red cord, and as he lolled back in his
+chair his eyes would travel from their study of his companion's face up
+toward the stars which he could see shining through the spaces between
+the leaves of his apple tree.
+
+Miner kept his eyes always upon the ground; he had a chew of tobacco in
+his mouth, his lips worked spasmodically, but he did not speak, neither
+did be spit as a vent to his feelings, a tight, small man, buttoned up
+both inside and out! By and by, however, when nearly an hour had passed
+in silence, he rose to his feet.
+
+"Reckon I'd better be goin', Ambrose; it's gettin' late. Good night."
+
+But the tall man pushed him back again into his chair. "Lord, Miner, is
+it so hard for you to tell things, even to me?" he inquired. "Out with
+it!"
+
+"Don't you go and be puttin' foolish ideas on to me if I tell you,"
+Miner pleaded, "but it's just this: The women have made up their minds
+to put Miss Em'ly Dunham out of Pennyrile. Course we men tried and
+failed, so we give up, but when a woman starts out to do a thing, why
+she does it. Can't you think of no plan to make 'em stop, Ambrose,
+bein's as you've always had a kind of way with women?"
+
+Ambrose shook his head, his homely face lined with sympathy. Poor Miner
+was unconscious of his own change of attitude toward the interloper, but
+surely he must not be turned back from the land of romance within whose
+gracious habitations Ambrose himself could never again hope to dwell.
+
+"I don't see just what I kin do with the women," he was obliged to
+confess after a moment of hard thinking, "still ef we keep studyin' and
+studyin' no doubt we kin find a way."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE FEMALE DELEGATION
+
+
+THERE was no question--Susan Barrows inspired and headed the female
+delegation which early the next morning sallied forth to the district
+schoolhouse to call on Miss Dunham. Also, there was no doubt in the
+minds of any of its members before their call was made that the Yankee
+teacher would hastily retreat as soon as she understood that the ladies
+of Pennyroyal did not desire her presence among them and, furthermore,
+would not have it. However, of the result of their visit no one was
+informed during the ensuing hours of that day.
+
+It was evening, before dark and yet some little time after supper, when
+Ambrose, ruminating on his back kitchen steps and worrying over the
+present situation, heard a noise of pots and pans that sounded like a
+skirmish of light artillery proceeding from his neighbour's house next
+door. So purposely assuming the expression of innocent solemnity that
+seemed most to inflame Mrs. Susan, he cautiously stepped across from his
+back yard to hers. On the door stoop he discovered Susan Jr., who, as
+the occupant of a hard chair, had both white stockinged legs stuck
+rebelliously out before her and, resting on her spinal column, held
+"Fox's Book of Martyrs" open in her lap. However, she was _not_ reading
+it.
+
+Sensing his approach before ever he could speak, Mrs. Barrows made an
+immediate appearance. She had a saucepan in her hand and her black eyes
+were wary. They were well matched adversaries, she and Ambrose, and,
+although already understanding perfectly the object of his visit, some
+time must pass before the one or the other could be forced into a
+surrender.
+
+"Raisin' children is killin' work, Ambrose," Susan began at once,
+darting a direful glance at her offspring.
+
+And Ambrose's voice was honey: "Most anythin's killin' work, ain't it,
+Susan?" he returned, depositing himself on the floor of her stoop so
+that his long legs overhung the side allowing his feet to touch the
+ground. "I've heard of folks lyin' in bed and doin' nothin' but singin'
+psa'ms continuous, and yet comin' to the same end."
+
+"It's a lot peacefuller way." Mrs. Barrows' interest was now so plainly
+concentrated within her saucepan, whirling a kitchen towel around and
+around in it until its revolutions were fairly dizzying, that nothing
+could seem more remote from the remarks and behaviour of herself and her
+neighbour than any introduction of the subject uppermost in both their
+minds.
+
+However, Susan Jr. did not belong to that noble army whose lives were at
+the present instant recorded in her lap, for, shutting up "The Book of
+Martyrs," she sniffed:
+
+"I didn't do nothin' but laugh and tell the female delegation about the
+King with his ten thousand men who marched up a hill and then marched
+down again," she explained.
+
+And in the face of this information what was the use of either Mrs.
+Barrows or Ambrose trying further to avoid the issue? The time had come
+for a voluntary surrender.
+
+"She won't go, or at least she says she won't, though there ain't no
+use in me tellin' you, Ambrose, bein's as from Susan Jr.'s words you've
+already guessed," Susan struck in. "But when we ladies got out to the
+district school this mornin' in the bilin' sun, what do you think, that
+girl came a-runnin' out to meet us a-wavin' her hand and smilin' and
+pretendin' she believed we'd come to welcome her to 'Pennyrile.' And
+then before any of us ladies could speak and tell her our errand, why,
+she began showin' us around the old school-house and sayin' she knew we
+would understand, 'cause we were women too, how hard things would be for
+her if we didn't help her, until most of the delegates either plumb
+forgot the reason of our visitation or else was too skeered to speak up.
+It wasn't so with me!"
+
+Susan paused for a reply, but her neighbour continued his unusual
+silence, the while pensively engaged in studying the toe of his boot.
+Coming farther out on to her porch, Mrs. Barrows' belligerent black
+curls fluttered like a war banner in the breeze.
+
+"Course we women knowed you men tried to make this Miss Em'ly Dunham go,
+and she wouldn't, but women ain't so easy turned from things they sets
+out to do. So I told her we didn't want no Yankee school teacher in our
+district, that we were talkin' things over and meant to get some one to
+teach our little darkies ourselves. And that our intention in comin'
+forth to see her had not been to say howdy, but good-bye."
+
+Here the joy of battle, even though it had resulted in defeat, actually
+spread a retrospective glow over the mind of the speaker, for, with her
+saucepan resting on her one hip and her dishcloth on the other, she was
+forgetting her work in the glory of narration.
+
+"What do you think that girl done when I said them last words to her,
+Ambrose? She put her head down on the doctor's wife's bosom, bein's as
+she had more'n the rest of us, and actually shed tears, said she thought
+that the war was over, and wouldn't we let her stay on for a time until
+mebbe we'd like her better. And at this the ladies was so outdone they
+kind of scurried off without gettin' down to anything definite. But I
+fixed up matters on the way home. I told 'em that if Miss Dunham
+wouldn't go polite fer the askin', why, 'Pennyrile' could try and see
+what freezin' out would do, so there ain't a single woman or girl in
+this here town goin' to exchange the time of day with that girl, ask her
+to come in and set fer a spell or even bow to her on the street."
+
+Still Ambrose remained silent. He knew that Mrs. Barrows was not unkind,
+but that she loved a fight for its own dramatic sake, and yet what could
+he do or say to her now that would not by the very force of opposition
+make things worse for Miner's romance?
+
+Susan was growing restless, for she was missing the clash of steel that
+usually came from the striking of her neighbour's against hers.
+
+"One of the ladies said we was boycottin'," she concluded, showing plain
+evidences of her wish to retire into her own home for the night; "seemed
+kind of foolish to me, bein's as there ain't so much as a boy in it."
+
+Perforce Ambrose had now to withdraw. And yet he said nothing, although
+as he moved slowly across her side yard Susan thought she heard him
+mutter: "I was a stranger and you took me in."
+
+Sternly then she ordered her offspring to bed, but, before following
+her, lingered until the last vestige of her visitor's coat-tail had
+disappeared, when in feminine fashion she had the final words:
+
+"I reckon it's a good thing we ain't all took in so easy as Ambrose
+Thompson."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+          "The tides of love and laughter run
+           Increasing aye from sun to sun."
+
+
+NOTHING could have been more characteristic of Ambrose Thompson than his
+sudden decision to have a second look at Miss Emily Dunham. Several days
+had passed since his conversation with Mrs. Barrows, and village
+information had given definite assurance that her plan for freezing out
+the Yankee schoolmistress was being put into execution. And, although
+little else had had place in Ambrose's mind, so far he had not been able
+to think out a plan of salvation.
+
+It was curious, however, the effect that the thought of a possible love
+affair for Miner had had upon him. Actually after their talk under the
+apple tree his step grew lighter, there was more of the boyhood spring
+to it, and the stoop in his shoulders that had showed after Sarah's
+passing certainly became less apparent; even his smile unconsciously
+offered more encouragement to well-meant feminine sympathizers in
+Pennyroyal. For such was this tall man's love of romance that the music
+of it sounding for another had awakened his own vibrations. Also he had
+almost driven Miner crazy in his repeated efforts to blow on whatever he
+considered signs of smouldering passion in his friend until one
+afternoon, when Miner had fairly pushed him from the shop in order to
+have peace, coming home to his empty cottage and feeling a sudden horror
+of its loneliness, he had set out for the log cabin. A vision of Miss
+Dunham, a meeting, or possibly a conversation with her, doubtless would
+add the spur his imagination needed in her defence. For poor Ambrose was
+blind to the fact that he had any interest but Miner's before him,
+exquisitely unaware that he had lately been growing weary of his own
+deserted altar and the life of high abnegation he had planned for
+himself, although once or twice he had wondered, if he lived to so great
+an age as fifty, how he could possibly endure so many lonely evenings.
+
+July in Kentucky brings a swift maturity. Already ears of corn were full
+ripe in their sheaths and the other grain bowed by its own abundance.
+Yet Ambrose took little of his accustomed interest in the landscape.
+Rapidly he walked in spite of the heat and as rapidly evolved and set
+aside his plans for aiding Miner and Miss Dunham. He knew his own
+people; the girl had been sent into Pennyroyal by the Freedmen's Bureau,
+a product of the Civil War hated by most Southerners; and while
+Pennyroyal might not mean to be cruel, her pride and clannishness had no
+parallel outside of early Scottish history. And, in spite of Kentucky's
+far-famed hospitality, truly there is no other place in the world where
+an outsider may be made to feel so outside.
+
+Finally when he had come to the edge of the clearing and could see the
+log school-house ahead, Ambrose was weary, and so sat down on the stump
+of a tree. He should have preferred to go boldly to Miss Dunham's door
+and ask that she talk with him, but while his courage had carried him
+thus far, the recollection of his first visit to her halted him at this
+spot. Surely the girl would some time come to her door or else be taking
+a walk through the woods, for the papaw grove of small slender trees was
+thickly shaded, cool and still, many of the birds that earlier
+inhabited it having flown farther north, while for those which remained
+behind it was a season of home responsibilities.
+
+How long Ambrose waited and watched he did not know, since time is of so
+little importance to a lonely man, and, moreover, he possessed a long
+and beautiful patience with men and things, even with that Providence
+whose ways are past finding out. Only once did anything happen to
+encourage him, and then some one did come out of the school-house door
+to look toward the setting sun, but she proved to be the coloured woman
+who was Miss Dunham's sole guardian and caretaker. Still Ambrose managed
+to keep cheerful, when unexpectedly and without warning a dreadful
+change came over him. His head sank upon his chest, his delicate nose
+quivered, and boyish tears sprang up in his eyes. And this change was
+brought about in the oddest fashion. Ambrose had been idly carving his
+own initials in the stump of the tree where he sat, when all of a sudden
+it was borne in upon him that this was the first time in his life that
+he had ever carved his own initials without some girl's to entwine with
+them. And this brought such a longing for Sarah that Ambrose straightway
+forgot both Miner and Miner's cause, remembering only his own loss and
+the single plate and cup and saucer that must be waiting for him on his
+supper table at home.
+
+"Lord," Ambrose whispered, "I'm all in." Then leaping up from his seat
+he started running, running away from the thought of himself. He must
+have appeared rather like an animated scarecrow with his straw-coloured
+hair, his long arms flopping and his legs covering such stretches of
+ground that his coat-tails stood out straight behind, for in deference
+to a possible meeting with a young woman Ambrose was wearing the swallow
+tail and carrying the stove-pipe hat of his wedding journey.
+
+He stopped, however, when the mouth of an old war pistol was suddenly
+placed in front of his left shoulder.
+
+"Please don't move," its owner said tremulously.
+
+[Illustration: "He stopped when the mouth of an old war pistol was
+suddenly placed in front of his shoulder"]
+
+And Ambrose's lips twitched as he answered politely, "I ain't a-goin'
+to," and then he kept absolutely still, noticing that the arm that held
+the pistol was trembling nervously and that the girl at the end of the
+arm wore a yellow sunbonnet and a primrose covered dress, and that the
+face within the sunbonnet was possibly a shade paler and more startled
+than his own.
+
+"I am sorry if I frightened you," she apologized after a little further
+study of her companion, "but I am so often alone in these woods and now
+that the war is just over and things so unsettled I thought it best to
+carry my father's pistol, and you startled me so running toward me."
+
+Ambrose inclined his head, not daring to make any further move, for the
+girl still held her pistol so confidingly near the neighbourhood of his
+heart; nevertheless, he was able to see that Miss Dunham had changed
+since the day of her visit to their shop. Her eyes were bright, but the
+laughter lines had disappeared from her mouth and chin, and while she
+still meant to be firm, the man could see that the firmness cost.
+
+Her pistol drooped listlessly downward. "You must not mind; it isn't
+loaded," she explained, "and even if it were, I couldn't shoot."
+
+But still she handled the weapon in so ingenuous and distinctly feminine
+a manner that Ambrose reached out. "You wouldn't mind my having a look,
+Miss Dunham?" Emptying the barrels, a single shot slid into his hand.
+
+"Oh, oh," cried the girl helplessly, "I am so sorry; I might have killed
+you." Then she wavered for a moment and except for Ambrose's arm might
+have fallen. The yellow sunlight bathed her and her dress in a golden
+light. It was a curious thing for the tall man to have a woman's eyes so
+nearly on a level with his own, though she righted herself almost
+instantly and taking off her sunbonnet began making odd pats at her hair
+as girls so frequently do after almost every upsetting situation.
+
+"I didn't faint, I never have fainted in my life," she explained
+indignantly. "I did feel a little sick, because as I didn't know my
+pistol was loaded I might so easily have----"
+
+"Just so," Ambrose answered gravely, and then without rhyme or reason
+both of them laughed, not just for an instant, but for the longest time,
+as though one of the funniest things in the world had just taken place;
+and afterward, without asking permission, Ambrose walked back with the
+girl to the log cabin. He would have gone home immediately, then, but
+at her door Emily turned to him with hot cheeks like a child longing to
+make a request and yet afraid.
+
+"Would you mind staying and talking to me for a little?" she begged at
+length. "You see, it seems to me I haven't laughed for such a long
+while, and I like to laugh so much."
+
+And Ambrose's face quivered in its old sympathetic fashion. "Course I
+will," he almost added "honey," but stopped himself in time. "Ef you and
+I can set a while on this bench by the door I wouldn't be a mite
+surprised ef we couldn't think up some way to make livin' in 'Pennyrile'
+a heap more of a laughin' matter for you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE REVELATION
+
+
+AFTER this it was extraordinary the number of absolutely unassailable
+reasons that kept Ambrose so frequently on his way back and forth from
+the village to the school-house. Certainly twenty-four hours rarely
+passed without his getting up a wholly new idea to assist Miss Dunham,
+and therefore Miner, about which it was necessary to ask her advice. And
+possibly Emily encouraged him in this, for often she had postponed or
+put aside a perfectly good suggestion with the proposition that they
+talk the question over later, and that Ambrose come out again to the log
+cabin to see if they were of the same mind.
+
+Of course Ambrose was extremely particular not to permit the hours of
+his visits to conflict with those of his partner, but as Miner no longer
+spent his evenings with him, naturally he concluded that these evenings
+were devoted to Emily, and therefore his appearances were usually made
+during the long summer twilight. And this not with any idea of hiding or
+of disloyalty, but simply that he should not be in his friend's way; for
+Ambrose's heart was singularly light these days and the sun shone with
+its old glory. Why, even the one little cloud that had troubled him for
+a while had been with laughter pushed away. On his mind during the first
+of his two or three visits had been the thought that Miss Dunham could
+not know of his presence in the midnight raid.
+
+They were in the woods together one evening, a little beyond the papaw
+thicket, when Ambrose, thrusting his hand into his pocket, drew forth a
+carefully wrapped up package. "It ain't a present; it's yours already,"
+he announced, pushing it toward Emily with his face crimsoning, and
+digging his toes into the earth like a big, awkward boy.
+
+Slowly the girl unfolded her lost hairbrush, and, though her eyes
+immediately shone with laughter, womanlike she kept her lids down,
+asking with a kind of over-emphasized wonder, "How on earth, Mr.
+Ambrose Thompson, could you ever have come upon my hairbrush?"
+
+And in another moment Ambrose had confessed everything of his own part
+in the raid, told his story miserably and without extenuating
+circumstances, and ending with the statement that he couldn't endure to
+have her friendship until she knew the full extent of his unmanliness.
+
+Then Emily allowed herself to look straight at him and her laughter
+brimmed over. "Why, I've known all along," she whispered, putting her
+hand for just the briefest, comforting second over the top of his.
+"Don't you suppose that I recognized the voice coming from the longest
+shadow I ever saw as soon as I saw the longest man in Pennyroyal?"
+
+Two weeks afterward it happened as usual that Miner and Ambrose were
+both in their shop closing up for the night, but, what was most
+remarkable, Miner was allowing Ambrose to do the greater part of the
+work, and for fifteen minutes had been sitting on the top of a vinegar
+barrel idly whittling at a stick and every once in a while clearing his
+throat as though he were getting ready to speak, notwithstanding he
+kept his face turned from the sight of his partner.
+
+"Looks like Miss Dunham's gettin' more cheerfuller lately," he blurted
+at last, not glancing up, but whittling so briskly that the chips about
+him on the floor looked like the shorn curls of a lamb.
+
+Ambrose lifted his face from the depth of a large ledger where he had
+been laboriously writing down the day's accounts. "Yes, ain't she?" he
+returned happily; "seems like she's sorter too big to be hurt by other
+folk's meannesses." Then walking across the shop he laid his hand on his
+friend's shoulder with a gesture that was almost a caress.
+
+"You been goin' out to see her yourself considerable lately, ain't you?
+So mebbe she ain't needin' much other comp'ny," Miner suggested, raising
+his eyes and then lowering them quickly before the other man could catch
+his glance.
+
+Ambrose hesitated. "Why, mebbe I have," he confessed slowly; "funny I
+ain't ever thought of it in that light! You see I've been a-tryin' to do
+what you asked and hatch up some scheme to make 'Pennyrile' understand
+and like Miss Dunham better, but Em'ly and me ain't come to any
+conclusion yet that's good enough, so I reckon that's why I keep on
+a-goin'."
+
+"Em'ly!" Miner sprung off his barrel top like he had been struck. "So
+it's come to that, has it?" And by this time his sneer and anger were so
+unmistakable that his companion, whose expression had been perfectly
+frank a moment before, turned a dull red and for the first time in his
+life his eyes dropped before those of his friend.
+
+"I ain't callin' her Em'ly to her face, Miner, at least not more'n once
+or twice," he answered painfully, feeling himself turn hot and cold in
+the same instant, and an awful weight settle itself upon his chest. Then
+a relieved light broke over him. "Mebbe now I'm thinkin' upon her as
+Em'ly because some day you and she----"
+
+"Liar!" The little man, blinded with passion, struck out somewhere into
+the region of his friend's chest and, when Ambrose caught his hands and
+held them, twisted and growled like a little dog in the grasp of a big
+one, repeating over and over in a thick voice, "Liar, liar, you know you
+want her for yourself, you know you love her, so what damn use is there
+in you pretendin' before me?" until his rage had partly spent itself.
+
+Ambrose had made no sort of answer or defence; indeed, his big hands had
+seemed to cling to Miner rather than to restrain him, besides which
+there was something in his appearance that would have made it hard to
+continue angry with him even if you had not loved him.
+
+"I didn't know, Miner," he said at last, hushed and frightened, "I
+didn't know until you spoke it. I reckon I do love her, but now I know I
+won't see or speak with her no more."
+
+Then when Miner had banged his way out of the store the tall man,
+sitting down on the deserted barrel, began to shake, and there was shame
+on his face and the look of a man who has suddenly heard that the ship
+on which he is sailing must go down. For several hours he remained in
+his shop, sometimes walking up and down and then reseating himself on
+the barrel, but wherever he went and whatever he did old Moses dragged
+his rheumatic legs after him. Two or three times the man patted the dog,
+whispering reassuringly, "It's all right; don't you be worryin' none
+about me, old fellow."
+
+It was so dark in the shop that when Mrs. Barrows, carrying a lantern,
+opened the door she could not at first find Ambrose. And afterward, when
+he did come toward her and her light fell full upon his face, to Susan's
+eternal credit let it be set down that she turned away her eyes.
+
+"You come along home, Ambrose Thompson," she began sternly; "ain't I
+been watchin' and waitin' for you to go by to your supper these past two
+hours? It's mighty nigh time I was gittin' to bed and I ain't able to
+sleep less'n my mind's easy."
+
+Taking the man by the arm she led him toward home, talking in a tone
+that few persons had ever heard from Susan. "Whatever's happened to you
+to-day, Ambrose Thompson, don't you be scaired," she said once. "I tell
+you it's the folks that things never happen to that ought to be scaired,
+'cause you're livin' and they ain't." And then when Ambrose would have
+left her at her gate, climbing up the few steps that led into her yard
+she was able thus to place her hands on his shoulders.
+
+"Ambrose," she said then, "there was a neighbour remarked to me the
+other day, 'Ain't Ambrose Thompson changed a lot since his wife died?'
+I told her, 'No, folks don't change none in what I calls their
+fundamentals. They alter some; of course learnin' life don't mean to
+make no exception of them with troubles, but leopards don't stripe, nor
+zebras spot, nor human bein's get made over by experiences. You been
+livin' lately thinkin' you was changed entirely inside by Sarah's death,
+but you ain't changed--you've just been restin'. You've seen other folks
+git over things that hit 'em as hard as Sarah's dyin' done you, but
+course you thought _you_ were differ'nt." Leaning over, Susan gave
+Ambrose a peck certainly intended as a kiss. "It's awful hard, boy, to
+wake up sometimes, after one has been adreamin', but I reckon you're
+wakin' up."
+
+Susan was correct, Ambrose's dream had passed and by morning no mists of
+it remained. Since the revelation of Miner's accusation in the shop he
+had made no effort at self-deception, understanding now why since his
+meeting with the Yankee school teacher his world had been again so
+strangely vivid, so full of adventure, that even his trips back and
+forth to the shop had been filled with delightful impressions, ideas
+that might some day be confided to her. For, after all, is there not so
+much of life in the smallest place in this world when you are fully
+alive in it, and so little in the biggest when you are not?
+
+Then the bitterest part of Ambrose's fight was that he knew Emily to be
+his real mate, knew that Sarah had been a boy's spring fancy, but that
+the summer had now set the seal of her warmth and fruition upon his
+second love. Moreover, he also knew that Emily might be made to care for
+him, since love like his is rarely without its answer.
+
+Nevertheless when dawn came he had written this letter and taken it out
+to the post:
+
+          DEAR MISS DUNHAM: I've got to quit comin' to see
+          you and I can't say why, except it's best.
+
+          Then I haven't got the old reason, for to-night
+          it's come to me the way to make Pennyroyal not
+          treat you so bad. Can't you give out that you're
+          sick, for if only the Pennyroyal ladies can get
+          the chance to take care of you they'll be real
+          pleased. Seems like letting people do good things
+          for you is the surest way to make them quit doing
+          mean; it's kind of human nature.
+
+          And there is one other thing I'd like to say to
+          you: It's about Miner; he's a whole lot bigger
+          than he looks and there can't no man on earth beat
+          him at loving if you'll only help him a little at
+          the start.
+
+                                    Yours truly,
+                                         AMBROSE THOMPSON, ESQ.
+
+It was an odd, stiff letter, and yet that afternoon when Emily had
+received it she laughed and placed it inside the folds of her primrose
+dress; although a moment afterward she sighed with the thought of the
+lonely hour before sunset.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+FOLLOWING HIS ADVICE
+
+
+NO FURTHER reference was made to the difference between the two friends,
+but Ambrose had reason to believe a few days later that Miss Dunham was
+following his advice; for coming out in his yard before breakfast, after
+a restless night, he was just in time to spy Mrs. Barrows climbing into
+the gig with Doctor Webb, carrying a basket on her arm and wearing so
+glorified an expression that it could come of nothing but the
+opportunity of ministering to the sick. For the care of the sick gave to
+Susan the same glow of pleasure that the act of creation gives to the
+artist or the command of his army gives the born general. Once stationed
+by the bedside of a patient, was she not the main source from which news
+of the illness must flow as well as the basin into which all inquiries
+must be poured? Certainly Ambrose had so considered her.
+
+Moreover, that afternoon his suspicion was justified by Miner's growling
+at him over the opening of a new hogshead of molasses: "Miss Dunham's
+powerful poorly," and then going on furiously with his work as though he
+had never spoken.
+
+And Ambrose did not dare ask questions nor prolong the subject of their
+conversation, though wistful to hear that Miner as well as Emily
+approved his plan. However, there was little doubt of its success, for
+the turning of the tide in favour of the Yankee schoolmistress soon
+could be seen, heard, and felt. Rivers of soup were made to flow toward
+the once anathematized cabin, and mountains of sponge cake and jelly
+were dumped at its door.
+
+Since the day of the first visit there had always been in Pennyroyal a
+small number of women headed by Mrs. Dr. Webb who were not so manifestly
+unfavourable to Emily, but according to report they had lately been most
+unmercifully snubbed and put down by Mrs. Barrows, who would allow no
+one else inside the cabin and actually barred other ministering angels
+from the door.
+
+Hearing word of the approach of these ladies one morning through Emily's
+coloured maid, Susan came forth into the clearing to meet them and stood
+waiting as usual with one hand resting on each sharp hip. Then before
+any other mouth could be opened hers was at work.
+
+"I am powerful glad, Maria Webb, that you have had a change of heart
+toward the poor young girl," she commenced, "but you needn't try now to
+be gettin' inside her home after havin' so long kep' her out of your
+own. Besides, she's too sick to see no one 'cept the doctor and me.
+Doctor Webb says she's real ill with chills and fever 'cause papaw trees
+won't flourish 'ceptin' where it's damp, but I call it human ague the
+child's got. Talkin' about millstones hung about your neck, they're
+necklaces compared to the way women tries to drag down other women when
+they start in to do something a mite different."
+
+And this intense irritation of Mrs. Barrows showing itself thus to her
+female friends even extended to her comparatively favoured next door
+neighbour, although Ambrose could not understand the cause. Emily of
+course had taken Susan into her confidence and she was a natural
+dramatist and yet why should she positively glare at him one evening as
+he stood snipping the dead stalks from the rose bushes in his yard?
+
+Indeed her disapproval was so evident that Ambrose straightening up
+asked in amazement: "Whatever have I done, Susan?"
+
+"Ain't it about time you was inquirin' concernin' Miss Dunham?" Susan
+demanded; "you're 'most the only person now in Pennyrile that ain't, and
+ef there's one thing I more'n another nacherally despise it's folks
+proppin' up a thing when it's standin' firm and don't need help, and
+then beginnin' to ease off when mebbe it's likely to fall."
+
+"How is Miss Dunham?" Ambrose queried, and the older woman gave him a
+curious look. "She ain't dyin' sick yet, Doctor Webb says, but it's
+worse'n he thought, 'cause it ain't plain chills and fever; mebbe it's
+the typhoids."
+
+At this information Ambrose paled slightly, but when his neighbour had
+disappeared into her house for fresh clothes and supplies his expression
+grew more peaceful.
+
+"Em'ly's turnin' out a lot better actress'n I thought," he said to
+himself. "I wasn't figurin' on her play actin' so long."
+
+He was leaning on his rake, having suddenly lost every atom of energy,
+when Susan, passing out again, dealt him another blow.
+
+"Ain't you never goin' to stop mopin', Ambrose Thompson? I'm sick of
+lookin' at you," she said. "Seems like there's nothin' on this earth
+more tryin' than the way some folks act dead 'cause some one they love
+is. Ef the Lord hadn't wanted you to live, man, I reckon He'd 'a' took
+you with Sarah. 'Tain't likely He wants dead folks on His livin' earth!"
+And then Mrs. Barrows hurried away to her charge, having left behind her
+sufficient inspiration to persuade Ambrose to finish the task of tidying
+up his yard.
+
+[Illustration: "Ain't you never goin' to stop mopin', Ambrose Thompson?
+I'm sick of lookin' at you"]
+
+And so another week went by, Ambrose and Miner in the meanwhile having
+less to say to each other than at any time in their lives since they had
+learned to speak, and never meeting any more outside of working hours.
+Nevertheless when they were together, although Miner's manner continued
+surly and unapproachable, his eyes constantly watched the face of his
+former friend, while Ambrose never altered in his old attitude of
+affection toward him.
+
+Yet on Sunday morning, as Ambrose stood dressing for church in front of
+his yellow pine bureau, without warning his bedroom door suddenly opened
+and in stalked Miner. Grave and silent he waited, until when the meeting
+bell sounded, he started forth to church, leaning as of old on the arm
+of his friend, and entering his pew sat down beside him.
+
+Ambrose did not pay a great deal of attention to the beginning of the
+service that day; on coming in he noticed that Susan and Doctor Webb
+were not in their accustomed places, but afterward he seemed always to
+have been listening to the August hum of the bees just outside the
+raised window on his side of the pew. Through it he could also see the
+deep rose of the ripening pink clover fields, smell their almost
+overpowering sweetness, till with the weight on his chest which he never
+shook off these days he wondered if Emily, who loved the outdoors as he
+did, was not by this time weary of feigning illness.
+
+Then Brother Bibbs so changed the order of the usual Sunday routine
+that it must have startled Ambrose into consciousness. The elderly man
+had finished his sermon, but instead of at once announcing the closing
+hymn to be followed by the benediction, he stood clearing his throat,
+his little worn face paling with emotion.
+
+"Brether'n and sister'n," he began slowly, "there be faith, hope and
+charity, these three things, but the greatest of these is charity. I
+want you now to fall on your knees with me and pray for the life of the
+young woman lately come into our midst whom we, like the Pharisees of
+old, have tried to cast out. I want you to pray for that young Yankee
+school teacher, Miss Emily Dunham, because she is powerful sick, and if
+the good Lord takes her to Him, I don't see just how we are coming out
+with the greatest of these three things."
+
+While the rest of the congregation were falling upon their knees Ambrose
+somehow got himself out of the church, nor did he realize during the
+moment of his leaving that Miner was there hanging on to his arm. After
+a time, however, when both men were walking toward the log cabin, he
+turned to his friend, whispering brokenly:
+
+"I didn't know she was sick really, Miner. I thought she was just play
+actin' same as I asked her to."
+
+And Miner nodded. "My fault. I suspicioned your ignorance, but I ain't
+been able to break it. Em'ly told me of your letter soon as it come. She
+hadn't been feelin' any too well before then, though she'd sort 'er been
+hidin' it, and afterward she kep' a-gettin' worse and worse."
+
+When finally they had come near the cabin, Ambrose sat down on the
+selfsame stump where he had waited so long for Emily on the afternoon of
+their first meeting, and since he would not go inside the house Miner
+went in without him, promising to bring back news. However, several
+hours passed and Miner did not return; Ambrose saw Doctor Webb leave the
+house, stay away half an hour and then go back into it and remain there.
+Then afterward Brother Bibbs followed him in, and Mrs. Webb and a dozen
+or more Pennyroyal townsfolk appeared clustering in a hushed group near
+the little schoolhouse door.
+
+Nevertheless the waiting time did not seem long to Ambrose Thompson,
+since he was living over every moment he had ever spent with Emily,
+hearing the sound of her laughter, feeling the touch of her hand over
+his, and then remembering how he had wondered in the days since his
+surrender whether it would not have been easier for him to have given
+her up through death.
+
+It was dusk when Miner laid his hand on Ambrose's arm; he had not seen
+the little man's approach.
+
+"It's past, the crisis," Miner said huskily; "she's better and has been
+askin' for you."
+
+Then Ambrose rose, but he didn't move in the direction of the cabin;
+instead, he began running toward home, Miner having difficulty in
+keeping up with him. And it was hearing Miner's hard breathing behind
+that finally made him slow up.
+
+"I couldn't 'a' gone to her, Miner," he explained. "Can't you see, ef I
+should 'a' seen her lyin' there so white and helpless I couldn't 'a'
+helped takin' her in my arms and tellin' her I loved her. No man kin
+bear it when it looks like the woman he loves is needin' him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A LIGHT IN DARKNESS
+
+
+AFTERWARD, when the two men had parted for the night, Miner went
+directly to his home, and there in his usual methodical fashion
+undressed and got himself into bed, although all the time his dark face
+was twisting and working, his mouth dry, while the mind of the man had
+no knowledge of what his hands were doing. For Miner, without
+understanding it, was alone on his high mountain where every man must
+stand who knows what it is to desire and to surrender. So what does it
+matter that his mountain was the attic bedroom of a cottage and that the
+little man who wrestled with the devil stood but five feet two in his
+stocking feet and weighed only a hundred and five pounds, or even that
+his "Get thee behind me, Satan," was so differently put?
+
+Because when Miner's fight was over he merely said: "I ain't never been
+at all certain in my mind that I could love a woman, so more'n likely
+I've all along been mistaken 'bout Em'ly. Seems like there ain't but one
+mortal thing on this earth I am sure on and that's--Ambrose!"
+
+And yet the little man recalled nothing of the story of David and
+Jonathan, and, even if he had, could never have appreciated how their
+story touched his.
+
+Nevertheless, it was one thing to decide to make a sacrifice of himself
+and his love to his friend, and quite a different thing to persuade that
+friend to accept it. For some time poor Miner puzzled; Ambrose would not
+even go out to the log cabin during the period of Emily's convalescence,
+though getting daily reports of her condition through him and through
+Doctor Webb. Susan Barrows, for some unexplainable reason, absolutely
+declined to speak to her next door neighbour when, after the period of
+her nursing was over, she had once more returned home.
+
+There were harassed hours when unwittingly Miner came near to laying the
+case before Ambrose, being so accustomed, in all other matters
+requiring imagination, to relying on that of his friend. It is all very
+well to think that he might just have plainly stated his own change of
+mind and heart, but measuring the extent of the renunciation by what it
+would have meant to him, so surely Ambrose would never have accepted his
+sacrifice.
+
+No, some more ingenious method must be devised, and Hamlet did not
+devote more agony to discovering a plan for avenging his father's death
+than Miner to finding a way of new life for Ambrose.
+
+One afternoon the little man was limping slowly along the dusty August
+turnpike leading out from Pennyroyal with Moses, who, feeling his need,
+had accompanied him, yet, now too stiff to walk far, was being carried
+in his arms, when the attention of both the man and dog were arrested by
+the spectacle of an old darky trying to drive a mule, hitched to a
+wagonload of green-corn, into Pennyroyal, the mule having at this point
+positively declined to go farther.
+
+It was inspiration in a strange guise, and yet inspiration must
+necessarily come to us in the character of the events that make up our
+lives.
+
+The darky coaxed and threatened and beat his willow switch bare of
+leaves; the mule, spreading her legs to the four corners of the globe,
+remained firm. By and by the negro got down from his seat and with
+Miner's aid gathered a small pile of chips, which, with a piece of
+paper, were placed under the mule and set fire to. Then an instant
+later, when the mule started trotting amiably off toward Pennyroyal,
+Miner's heart began singing its own peculiar anthem of thankfulness, and
+immediately afterward he hurried off for a visit to Emily at the log
+cabin.
+
+On coming back to the shop so changed was his expression and so cleared
+his look of doubt that Ambrose, feeling sure Emily had just accepted
+him, wished to God Miner would confide in him and so let his darkest
+hour be lived through.
+
+But Miner said nothing then. However, when his regular hour came around
+once more he appeared taking his accustomed chair next his friend's
+under the apple tree in his yard. And yet here Miner still continued
+mute, although moving about far more restlessly than usual, while
+Ambrose, patiently waiting for him to speak, felt the sharpness of his
+earlier desire succeeded by a kind of apathy. Finally at some little
+distance off a clock in a church tower struck eight.
+
+"My foot itches to-night, Ambrose," Miner announced suddenly.
+
+"Shake it," advised his listener, whose mind was certainly on a far
+different line of thought.
+
+But Miner, only squirming and twisting about the more, complained:
+
+"Seems like it's one of them things that can't be shook off. I was just
+a-thinkin' it might be better to go for a walk than to sit here so
+eternal."
+
+And here Ambrose, feeling that the little man would never get out his
+confession to-night, sighed: "Suit yourself, ef you like walking better.
+I reckon I kin make out the rest of the evening alone."
+
+Nevertheless, Miner did not stir. Instead, taking another bite at a
+fresh plug of tobacco, he chewed on it fiercely for a moment longer. "I
+was aimin' for you to come with me," he said, "bein's as you know I
+ain't able to git on too well with this lame leg."
+
+The soft summer night stirred in Ambrose no inclination for movement,
+and indeed far rather would he have been alone and undisturbed, yet now
+getting up slowly, lifting his great height in sections, he offered his
+arm to his friend.
+
+Then the two men started off together, walking far more rapidly than
+usual on a summer night's stroll, for Miner seemed to have forgotten his
+lameness, and the fury of his spirit rushed them both ahead. Every now
+and then, furtively, he kept feeling in his back pocket, but the tall
+man did not notice him nor was he for some time aware in what direction
+he was being led.
+
+A half moon shone in the sky, and the night was clear and still.
+
+Then suddenly at a turn in a country road Ambrose abruptly halted,
+letting his companion's arm slide from his own. For at this turn in the
+road to the end of his life must Ambrose Thompson wake to consciousness,
+since from here in the daylight could be seen the first glimpse of the
+log schoolhouse, and though not visible by night its spiritual presence
+was the plainer.
+
+"I ain't goin' with you to Em'ly's to-night, Miner," Ambrose declared
+quietly; "it's more'n I kin stand and more'n you've the right to ask. I
+wasn't countin' on you tryin' to outwit me." The words were spoken with
+only reasonable reproach, and yet the little man turned on the speaker
+fiercely.
+
+"You jist wait here, Ambrose Thompson, till I git back, and keep on
+waitin' in the same place, for ef you don't I'll never forgive you, God
+knows." And off trotted Miner toward the cabin, until his small form was
+lost in the darkness.
+
+Of course Ambrose waited, it having always been his custom to give way
+to Miner in small things, and, as he had grown unaccountably weary,
+stretched himself full length on the ground, and there a moment later
+the man felt himself in the grip of the primal instinct that all big men
+and some big women know. His will kept his long clean body still, yet
+everything else in him called out the strong man's right over the weak.
+The earth that mothered him proved it in all her moods. And yet there
+only a few paces ahead of him Miner was holding Emily in his arms. One
+swift rush and--here Ambrose checked his vision, for he would not stir
+one foot.
+
+Therefore, at first, the slight crackling noise at some little distance
+off made no impression upon him, but almost at once and without his own
+volition his long, sensitive nose sniffed the odour of smoke somewhere
+in the woods. The next instant a flame shot up in the air and Ambrose
+with it, for the flame came directly from the neighbourhood of Emily's
+cottage.
+
+"Lord!" murmured Ambrose as he ran, "Em'ly's house is afire, and she
+hasn't no one but a little runt like Miner to look after her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE SURPRISE PARTY
+
+
+HE RAN straight on into--Emily.
+
+The girl, having been attracted by the light back of her cabin, had just
+come out into her yard and so saw the impossible figure flying toward
+her, and in all the world there was never but one other man so homely
+and so beautiful.
+
+"I--I thought your house was afire," Ambrose announced huskily.
+
+He had stopped so close to the girl that she caught both his hands in
+hers, pressing one for an instant against her cheek.
+
+"Something _is_ burning in the woods; it doesn't matter," she answered;
+"but, oh, Ambrose, you have been such a long time in coming to me!"
+
+The girl's eyes were shining, her figure perfectly distinct, and she
+wore the primrose dress, yet Ambrose knowing this did not believe he had
+dared look at her.
+
+"I haven't come to you now," he defended stoutly; "I was just afeard to
+trust you to Miner in a fire."
+
+Then Emily laughed the low understanding laugh that was her greatest
+charm, and all the while drawing her companion with her toward their
+bench in front of her door, she sat down beside him, still keeping one
+hand in his gently resisting fingers; there seemed to be no fear and no
+shyness about Emily to-night; she was too exquisitely a thing of love.
+
+"Yet you were willing to trust my life and soul and everything there is
+about me to Miner," she said slowly. "Ah, isn't that like a man! But,
+dear, Miner hasn't been near me since early this afternoon," she
+continued, "and then he came for such a funny Miner reason. He wanted to
+tell me that if ever I'd thought he had any leaning toward me, it wasn't
+in no ways true. Because so far as _he_ could see there wasn't nothin' a
+woman could be or do that could make up for her troublesomeness."
+
+With this Emily quietly withdrew her hand and sitting still wondered if
+Ambrose had even heard her, for he did not speak at first, yet when
+turning he looked at her, the light of the fire making his face quite
+clear, the girl's eyes filled with tears. "Has it been so bad as that?"
+she whispered.
+
+Ambrose nodded. "I ain't ever goin' to be able to tell you how I love
+you, honey, but it seems like everything that has gone before in my life
+and is comin' after is done made up fer by to-night."
+
+Then after a little, when they had talked for a while and been silent a
+while longer, Emily put her head down on Ambrose's shoulder so that he
+might not see her face.
+
+"I am thinking about Sarah; every woman thinks about the other woman
+some time," she confessed.
+
+"Little Sarah?" Ambrose waited. "Was you wantin' me to say I didn't love
+her, honey? 'cause I can't. Would it 'a' been fairer to you, I wonder,
+ef I hadn't had a heart big enough fer lovin' some one before ever I set
+eyes on you? Sarah was young and needed me, and I reckon I loved her all
+I was able to _then_, but there wasn't so much of me to love her with as
+there is now. You see, Em'ly darlin', the dark waters has sort 'er
+passed over me, and I ain't in my springtime no more. Then lovin' and
+losin' does learn us a lot: but I ain't never goin' to care fer nobody
+as I do fer you, 'cause nobody else'll ever understand me and match up
+to me same as you do." But here Ambrose, sighing, pushed back his faded
+straw-coloured hair with the old puzzled gesture. "Still, honey, ef
+anything ever happens, I feel just obleeged to tell you, I reckon I'm
+the kind that plumb couldn't live on this earth without lovin' some
+one."
+
+For a troubled instant Emily hesitated, and then with a sympathy so
+perfect that it was to last for ever and ever, and with another
+understanding laugh, she lifted up her head and kissed her truthful
+lover.
+
+So that by and by when the fire in the woods back of them had died down
+they were both so happy that they neither saw nor heard the figure in
+the papaw grove stealing along a few yards to one side of them, though
+in the darkness of the tangled thicket it stumbled several times and for
+want of a helping arm limped painfully along.
+
+Nevertheless five minutes later Ambrose and Emily both jumped hurriedly
+to their feet. For unexpectedly there sounded a noise as of many
+persons approaching the log cabin along the route which Ambrose had just
+taken. In another moment a procession came into sight and at the head
+and front walked Mrs. Barrows in her best purple linsey petticoat and
+scoop bonnet and carrying a basket on her arm. Following her were ten,
+twenty, thirty or more of the leading citizens of Pennyroyal, male and
+female, attired in their Sunday clothes and bearing packages.
+
+"It's some kind of a forgiveness party," Ambrose whispered nervously;
+"seems like I'd better hide," and once again he attempted to flatten his
+thin body against the wall of the cabin.
+
+Susan Barrows took Emily in her arms. "We're surprisin' you, child, and
+I hope we're pleasant," she explained. "Fer my own part I ain't never
+had nothin' happen to me suddint in my life that ain't been plumb
+distasteful, so I argued some with the folks to let you know we was
+comin'. But there's people in villages that finds things so slow and
+samewise it appears they think any kind of a start's better then nothin'
+happenin', so here we are!"
+
+Susan's speech having been somewhat longer than her neighbours cared to
+listen to, the men and women of the party in the meanwhile had come
+crowding up around Emily until she had the sensation of shaking hands
+with a dozen persons at once, and all of them were smiling at her and
+saying how glad they were to know she was well again and wouldn't she
+live always in Pennyroyal, until Mrs. Barrows was actually thrust to one
+side. However, in that instant she managed to unearth Ambrose, who,
+appreciating what was taking place, had thought it best to step forth
+out of the shadow. Sheepishly he extended his hand to his neighbour and
+in the moonlight Susan got a good view of his face.
+
+Her eyes snapped. "Good Lord! what a turn you've done give me!" she
+exclaimed, and then taking a closer survey: "Ambrose Thompson, I ain't
+more'n halfway suspicioned 'bout you and Em'ly Dunham before this night,
+but ef ever there's a surprise party in this village when you don't get
+there first, why I'd like to know!"
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+HIS THIRD WIFE
+
+
+          "_Is there no ending of mirth?
+            Will time former unloosen
+            Fresh fonts clear, bubbling, and bright
+            From the drainless youth of the earth?_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THIRTY YEARS
+
+
+PENNYROYAL bore witness to the permanence of material things untroubled
+by spirit. Thirty years had passed since Ambrose Thompson's last
+honeymoon, and yet the little town had not greatly changed.
+
+One afternoon in October, when from the same double row of linden trees,
+with only here and there a fallen comrade, a shower of wrinkled golden
+leaves was filling the ruts in the same road that once held the blossoms
+of an earlier spring, the door of a cottage opened and an elderly man
+stepped forth, humming a tune and began walking slowly down toward the
+front gate. He was dressed in gala attire and, observing a bed of purple
+asters that were growing near his path, stooped to gather one of the
+flowers. Getting up with a groan, he placed a hand on the small of his
+back, remarking testily: "Looks like I was gettin' powerful onlimber
+these days," and then jigging stiffly about to disprove his assertion he
+placed the aster in his buttonhole.
+
+Pennyroyal was unusually stirred up over something, for at five o'clock
+her streets were filling with people in their best clothes, all moving
+toward the same spot--the new red brick Baptist church, with a cupola,
+which stood where Brother Bibbs's old frame meeting house had once held
+place.
+
+A carriage advanced slowly, an open Victoria drawn by a pair of handsome
+Kentucky horses and containing besides the coachman two other persons, a
+man and a woman. The man was a product of an oratorical period in
+Kentucky; he had the beak nose, the rolling black eyes, long hair and
+heavy forensic shoulders that had already landed the Hon. Calvin
+Breckenridge Jones as representative of the Pennyroyal district in the
+State Capitol at Frankfort, while it was a common supposition that only
+a lack of money had kept him from climbing higher. His companion, the
+Widow Tarwater, was the richest widow in the county.
+
+Now as the carriage drew near the man at the gate, the bow with which
+he greeted the widow had in it the dignity and devotion of a
+benediction.
+
+"Lord, what a woman!" he exclaimed a moment later in a deliciously rich
+and reasonable voice. "Looks like there's some people same as fruits,
+they don't noways mellow till age gets 'em."
+
+Then once more lifting his hat, the speaker, Ambrose Thompson, now a man
+of almost sixty, attempted pushing back the hair from his forehead,
+apparently forgetting that his hair had retreated so far backward over
+his high dome that the few remaining locks tastefully arranged in front
+suggested the ripples left by a receding wave along a shore. Also his
+face was deeply lined and his shoulders stooped considerably, and yet in
+spite of these and other signs of age in some indefinable way Ambrose
+Thompson had kept his boyishness. Not having travelled more than a
+hundred miles out of Pennyroyal, nevertheless he had the eternal
+youthfulness of spirit which belongs to all life's true adventurers.
+
+"Ambrose Thompson's lookin' powerful spruce this evenin', ain't he?" A
+woman of about forty, with quick birdlike movements, shrieked this
+remark into an ear trumpet which was being held up by a shrivelled
+figure in a wheeled chair that had just been projected forth from the
+house next door with such suddenness that it seemed likely to spill out
+its feeble occupant.
+
+The old woman's head nodded helplessly, and yet out of her withered face
+her black eyes still shone with an unquenchable fire. At this instant
+Ambrose, catching sight of Mrs. Barrows, blew a kiss across his dividing
+fence to her, so that she laughed, before replying, the pleased
+monotonous laugh of deafness and old age.
+
+"Ef it's an evergreen spruce you're meanin', Susan Jr., then you're
+more'n right, for it seems Ambrose Thompson's leaves are forever green
+and the sap runnin' in him same as spring. But hurry me along, I don't
+want to miss nothin' of this oyster party, and mebbe ef you kin set me
+right about in the middle of the new Sunday-school room, I kin sort er
+reckon on what's goin' on."
+
+The two women then moved so rapidly down the street that they almost ran
+into a man who was hobbling in the opposite direction leaning on a
+cane; his face as dry of any human emotion as though it had been a
+squeezed-out dishcloth. He was attempting to move past the wheeled chair
+without speaking, when a claw hand reached out after him. "Scared of a
+female past eighty, Miner Hobbs," the old voice cheered. "Ain't it a
+God's blessing no woman has run off with you--yet?"
+
+Still at the gate the smile that greeted the approach of this dried-up
+little man was as radiant as the love of a woman.
+
+"It's mortal good of you, Miner, to be goin' to the oyster show with me
+to-night, bein's as how you hate gatherin's," Ambrose began
+affectionately; "you've done give up a heap of tastes fer me first and
+last, ain't you, old friend? Now ef you'll wait here for me a few
+moments longer I'll be wholly ready to join you, for I kinder thought
+I'd like to speak with a few friends before the supper begins."
+
+Ambrose started hastily back toward his front door with such an
+unmistakably jaunty air, such a forgetting of his rheumatic joints, that
+Miner's ferret eyes gleamed upon him suspiciously. Besides, was he not
+wearing an historic long coat, a strangely rusty stovepipe hat, and a
+white starched shirt over which his large lavender silk tie was crossed
+like a breastplate, and was he not also revealing yards of newly gray
+trousered legs?
+
+"You wasn't aimin' to speak to no one in particular, was ye?" Miner
+inquired.
+
+The long man stopped, noticeably blushing, and then, although the rest
+of his face remained grave, his eyes twinkled. "S'pose you don't know,
+Miner, how hard it is sometimes not to lie to the folks you love just
+because you love 'em? The Widow Tarwater druv past here a few minutes
+agone, she that was Peachy Williams, and though I ain't had more'n a
+bowin' acquaintance with her fer nigh forty years, knowin' that the
+Honourable Jones and our new Baptist preacher the Rev. Elias Tupper, are
+both after her, I kinder thought I'd like to see which one she favours
+the most."
+
+Then Ambrose went quickly inside his cottage while Miner patiently
+waited on the outside, understanding that this moment of withdrawal to
+his own bedroom before finally leaving his home had become his friend's
+invariable custom since the death of his second wife, Emily, five years
+before.
+
+In his bedroom the elderly man was standing before his bureau, where to
+one side hung the daguerreotype of a young woman.
+
+"It's mortal queer, honey," he said aloud, "how I ain't ever able to go
+places or to do things 'thout expectin' you to come along, yet there's
+times when it feels like you'd been gone from me forever and then agen
+when it don't seem more'n a few weeks."
+
+He was afterward leaving the room with his head bent and his eyes misty
+with tears when suddenly a smile twitched the end of his nose and the
+corners of his mouth lifted as he turned once more toward his picture.
+
+"Lord, Em'ly darlin', wouldn't you laugh if three old codgers was to get
+into the race after the widow instid of two? I would admire to see them
+sure winners beaten by a dark horse!"
+
+Five minutes later, Uncle Ambrose Thompson as he was now called by
+almost everybody in Pennyroyal, with every trace of lamentation removed
+clean from his face, was walking toward the new red brick church,
+having Miner's arm through his after their custom of more than thirty
+years. Moses could no longer accompany them, but was resting somewhat
+deeper under the apple tree than had been his habit in life.
+
+While in the course of their walk Miner never once lifted his hat,
+Ambrose's was seldom allowed to rest for a moment on his head, for women
+of all ages smiled upon him and children breaking away from grown up
+hands came to be tossed in the air by his long arms. Uncle Ambrose had
+grown very popular with the children of Pennyroyal since the death of
+his and Emily's only child twenty years before, since it was then that
+he began bringing home to Emily for repairs all the crying babies he
+could steal, the boys who had stumped their toes and the girls with torn
+frocks and feelings.
+
+In the Sunday-school room he immediately sailed up to the widow as
+gallantly as though his ship had not failed to enter her port in nearly
+forty years, and this when she was sheltered between the law and the
+gospel. But before Uncle Ambrose could speak a large soft hand grasped
+his lean and vital one.
+
+"Welcome!" said the minister with unction.
+
+Three years before, the Rev. Elias Tupper had entered Pennyroyal and
+with this same soft hand had since patted and soothed his congregation
+into following where their shepherd led. Indeed, the building of the
+brick church had been a tribute to his powers and to-night's oyster
+supper a kind of harvest festival to celebrate the last payment of the
+church's debt.
+
+Nevertheless an unspoken antagonism had always existed between the
+Reverend Tupper and Ambrose Thompson, and indeed this was the first
+appearance of the tall man within the new church's domains.
+
+Brother Tupper was a man of only medium height, but of considerable
+breadth, with cheeks as smooth and clean as a woman's. And while his
+lips were thin and his eyes expressionless his face managed to give the
+impression of a permanent smile, the kind of smile that can come from
+but one source, having nothing to do with amusement over people or
+things, nor even contentment in God's plan for His universe, but
+manifests only a supreme and personal self-satisfaction.
+
+Now for the life of him Ambrose could not refrain from frowning,
+because, while his lips said, "Thank you," to himself he protested: "I
+ain't able to bear it; this man actin' toward me as though _he_ was
+forgivin' me some mortal sin every time we meet."
+
+Neither was the widow's greeting of him cheering, since forty years had
+not completely wiped away a certain never-explained retreat.
+
+The promised plenitude of Peachy Williams' girlhood had been nobly
+fulfilled in the Widow Tarwater, for now she suggested an abundant
+harvest. A handsome black silk gown folded over her more than ample
+bosom, a double chin rippled from under the soft fulness of her broad
+face, her skin was white and crimson as a child's, her auburn hair
+without a thread of gray in it, and her huge brown eyes never having
+looked deep down into the waters of life showed none of its troubled
+reflections.
+
+Uncle Ambrose nodded approvingly at her appearance the while she looked
+at him coldly, saying: "I ain't seen you to talk to in a long time,
+Ambrose Thompson."
+
+His reply flatteringly included the member of the Kentucky legislature
+on the widow's right. "'Course you ain't, Peachy," he answered
+gallantly, "for when big stars is shinin' so close to a planet, t'ain't
+to be expected that the planet kin notice the little ones twitterin'
+about in her neighbourhood."
+
+And yet when supper was served the widow found herself placed at a table
+for four whose other occupants were three men instead of the two whom
+she had expected.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ORIGINAL SIN
+
+
+THE Widow Tarwater was in truth a pleasing vision.
+
+Not once had Ambrose Thompson left her side, yet he had been uncommonly
+silent. Thoughts, rose coloured as a boy's dream of a holiday, were
+floating before his mind's eye; he had been but dimly conscious that two
+plates of warm soup had lately flowed into him the while the
+conversation around him flowed on unceasingly. For the spirit of
+romance, which is an eternal though elusive thing, was surely taking
+fresh hold on him this evening as his pillar of cloud by day and of fire
+by night, and only Miner Hobbs, the little wooden figure of a man seated
+several tables off, was yet aware of his friend's exalted state.
+
+At the present moment the Rev. Elias Tupper was talking to the widow. He
+had but lately traversed the room crowded with tables and resplendent
+with decorations of harvest apples, pumpkins, goldenrod and tall
+tasselled stalks of corn, dispensing pleasantries as one would
+lollipops; and now amid much joking, laughter, and nudging had been
+allowed to take his place next the widow, only the legislator, who was
+making but a few weeks' visit in Pennyroyal, appearing disquieted.
+
+It was past seven o'clock and assuredly the new Baptist Sunday-school
+room was now the centre of Pennyroyal's social activities, when
+unexpectedly the tall figure of a boy lurched into the room--Pennyroyal's
+black sheep, a boy taller than any man in the village save Ambrose
+Thompson.
+
+There was a dismayed flutter and then an uncomfortable silence.
+
+Now there are black sheep and black sheep with extenuating
+circumstances, but this boy had none of the extenuating circumstances--a
+respectable family, money in the bank, or a line of distinguished but
+self-indulgent ancestors; no, he was simply a sandy-haired,
+loose-jointed boy of about twenty-one who worked about the Widow
+Tarwater's stables--one of nature's curious anomalies, a boy without a
+father.
+
+He looked about the homely, cheerful company at first with defiance, and
+then, feeling the weight of his loneliness and degradation, fell to
+crying foolishly. "I don't see why I ain't a right to your church
+social; if I ain't no name of my own, I got to be the son of some man in
+this town!"
+
+It was such a sudden, unlooked for accusation piercing the holy covering
+of every hard-shelled Baptist brother in the new Sunday-school room that
+for the moment the little group of men were staggered. Then while they
+were making up their minds as to which one should have the privilege of
+throwing out the intruder, a familiar tall figure was seen crossing the
+floor, and putting his arm about the lubbering, drunken boy.
+
+"Come along, sonnie; steady now," he whispered, leading him quickly
+away.
+
+Half an hour later, sauntering back to the church social, Uncle Ambrose
+found that supper time was past and that the tables having been cleared
+away there was more and more room for conversation. Once again he
+sought the Widow Tarwater's side, but this time was received more
+graciously, for, putting out a trembling hand, she clasped Uncle
+Ambrose's with gratitude. "I'm obliged to you, Ambrose Thompson," she
+said. "That boy's ever been a thorn in my flesh. I have kept him at the
+farm because my late husband was good to him, but after to-night I don't
+feel called to have him stay on."
+
+The Rev. Elias Tupper's voice thereafter was sufficiently loud to reach
+the ears of a number of the members of his congregation who were grouped
+about nearby.
+
+"That boy," he announced, folding his short arms across his chest and
+sighing deeply, "is a painful example of original sin."
+
+Since his return to the room up to this time Uncle Ambrose had made no
+remark, but now clearing his throat he eyed the last speaker for so long
+in silence that a little clacking noise was heard close by him and an
+old, old woman with an ear trumpet held to her ear leaned so far out of
+her wheeled chair that only her daughter's restraining hand kept her
+from falling.
+
+"Original sin, Brother Elias?" The tall man drawled his question
+thoughtfully. "I wonder now why you speak of this boy's weaknesses as
+_original_ sin? I've done lived in Pennyrile a right smart number of
+years and I ain't been witness to a single original sin. Seems like
+every fault a human crittur commits is just a plain copy of some fault
+that has gone before him. And I reckon it's more'n likely there's a good
+many original sinners among us men here to-night that has been original
+along pretty much the same lines as this here boy."
+
+There was an unspoken yet moving appeal in the sympathetic tones of the
+well-known voice, softening some of the women listeners and a few of the
+men, but the Hon. Calvin Jones had still to be heard from.
+
+There are men in this world to whom even the simplest exchange of words
+is a chance for oratory. So the Honorable Calvin, frowning and with one
+finger thrust in his coat, by his dramatic silence held his audience for
+a moment spellbound.
+
+"May I inquire," he thundered, "if this lad whom Mr. Ambrose Thompson
+has just rescued and--er--defended, is any relation of his?"
+
+In the interrogation itself there was no offence, but to every grown-up
+person who heard, the insinuation was plain enough.
+
+To the tips of his big ears Uncle Ambrose flushed. "No, sir, he's not my
+son," he answered the man, who was a stranger to him before this
+evening, "and maybe I'm glad and maybe I'm sorry. For I won't say since
+my daughter and Em'ly's died that I ain't thought most any kind of a
+child's better than no child at all." He hesitated and then went on in
+pretty much his same old fashion of talking to himself: "Come to think
+of it now, mebbe in a way this boy is a son of mine, for I kind er think
+that every young man that plays the fool is the son of every man that's
+played the fool before him."
+
+And then with a friendly smile he turned again toward the widow.
+
+"Ambrose," she faltered, with two round tears rolling down her plump
+cheeks, "Brother Elias and Mr. Jones advise against it, but maybe you
+are thinkin' I ought to give that boy another chance."
+
+The tall man pressed the soft hand and shook his head.
+
+"No, Peachy, I ain't never felt in my life that I knowed what another
+person _ought_ to do, but ef I've studied 'em long enough and close
+enough I know pretty well what they _will_ do. I took that boy home to
+spend the night with me, but I'll be drivin' out to your place with him
+to-morrow toward sundown. I'm more'n anxious fer a little old-time chat
+with you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE ETERNAL FIRE
+
+
+UNCLE AMBROSE poured the grace of forgiveness upon the pile of buckwheat
+cakes on his guest's plate next morning in the form of an over-supply of
+maple syrup, saying kindly: "Eat well, sonnie; we ain't goin' to talk
+over the events of last evening till you are feeling a little stronger
+in the stomach."
+
+And though the boy crimsoned and looked sullen, he proved his recovery
+by his application to the cakes.
+
+"I was an awful fool last night," he mumbled apologetically a few
+moments later.
+
+"You were," Uncle Ambrose replied, "but then being a young fool ain't so
+bad; it's bein' an old one that's serious," and his faded blue eyes
+twinkled self-accusingly, while the boy went on talking into his plate.
+
+"Course I didn't know what I was doin' when I bust into that social.
+Not that it matters; nobody kires fer me about here, and I'll pretty
+soon be clearin' out. The widow won't want me back to the farm."
+
+Uncle Ambrose leaned on his table, facing the young man so squarely that
+the boy was obliged to raise his bloodshot blue eyes to his.
+
+"Nobody don't kire fer you in Pennyroyal? That ain't the important
+thing; don't you kire fer somebody, Sam? That's what keeps a man
+straight. If we was stone images now set up in a desert, why, we might
+hope to have people come a-worshippin' of us, but bein's as we are just
+ordinary--sometimes very ordinary--human bein's, seems like we might do
+the lovin' end ourselves." The older man searched the face opposite him
+keenly. "How old are you?" he inquired suddenly.
+
+"'Bout twenty," was the answer. "I wasn't more'n eight or ten when
+Farmer Tarwater brought me to his farm and give me my schoolin' till I
+was a good sized boy. He was more of a friend to me than anybody's ever
+been."
+
+Uncle Ambrose waved the last statement aside. "Mebbe he was your friend
+and mebbe he wasn't, but the thing that worries me about you most, Sam,
+ain't last night's scrape nor the rest of the foolishnesses you been
+gettin' into in this village. It's you settin' right here at my table
+and you more'n twenty, been raised in Kentucky and got eyes in your
+head, and yet tellin' me you don't _kire_ fer nobody! The Widow Tarwater
+told me I could bring you back to the farm this evenin' ef you was
+feelin' yourself, but mebbe you'd better stay along with me 'till I kin
+kind of find something to prop up under you."
+
+But the boy's tanned face grew redder than usual. "I didn't say I didn't
+kire fer no one; I said there was no one kired fer me. There's a
+girl----"
+
+Now the tall man's hand struck the breakfast table until the plates on
+it fairly danced.
+
+"Glory, I knowed you'd more sense'n you showed!" he announced
+triumphantly, and coming around to refill his visitor's plate put his
+arm affectionately around his shoulder. "You got the best thing on
+earth, boy, to keep you goin'; you got to learn a girl to love you."
+Uncle Ambrose's emotional old face quivered with the glory of the chase.
+"Course your girl don't kire fer you now, you ain't worth it, but you
+up and show her what lovin' her has done fer you. And mebbe I'll keep
+right 'longside of you, Sam."
+
+This confidence was by no means finished, but at this moment a thin,
+brown shadow, faithful as the rising and setting of the sun, appearing
+at the dining-room window, Uncle Ambrose's further remarks were choked
+off. Returning from the kitchen a moment later he put down more cakes on
+the table and then shook his guest's hand in farewell. "I got to leave
+you now fer the day; Miner's come to git me to start fer the store, but
+there's one thing I want you to recollect while you're waitin' here fer
+me, sonnie, and that's that the good Lord sends a new day once in every
+twenty-four hours just to show folks they kin begin agen."
+
+It was a long day in the shop both to Miner and Ambrose. Inevitably the
+little man had grown more morose and bitter as the years went by. For in
+spite of Emily's and Ambrose's pleading he had gone but seldom to his
+old place under the apple tree after their marriage, and when his six
+sisters made homes of their own he had lived entirely alone. Indeed old
+Moses had seemed the only companion he had ever cared for except
+Ambrose, and on the day of Ambrose's second marriage the dog had moved
+himself and his allegiance from the tall man's house to the little one's
+and had never gone home again except to be buried.
+
+Ambrose kept surreptitiously watching the clock from the noon hour on
+until his partner removed it clean out of sight in the back of the shop:
+however, an hour before closing time Ambrose began putting away his
+share of the stock, remarking airily, "I thought I'd git away a little
+sooner than usual this evenin', Miner, ef you don't mind."
+
+To this the little man at first returned nothing, but seeing his friend
+step over to their assortment of new neckties and laying aside his old
+lavender one begin to match a bright red one to the shade of his own
+complexion, he sighed. "I reckon you feel it comin' on agen, Ambrose?"
+
+Ambrose nodded. "It started last night at the social," he replied
+truthfully, "and then those other two men's actions kind er sicked me
+on. Peachy has done ripened and sweetened considerable; mebbe you
+noticed it, Miner?" he ended hopefully.
+
+But Miner only scowled. "She's fat and old, but t'aint nothin' to you,
+Ambrose Thompson, once you're started. I was kind er hopin' you'd be
+faithful to Em'ly."
+
+However, in the midst of his reproach his partner had vanished;
+nevertheless, ten minutes later, he came back into the shop and seating
+himself on the counter appeared lost in thought for some little time.
+
+"Miner," he confessed finally, "I am a-settin' here tryin' to git a
+little light on the subject of myself. I ain't feelin' unfaithful to
+Em'ly 'cause I'm noticin' the widow; I never felt unfaithful to Sarah
+when I married Em'ly. I tell you, Miner Hobbs, that what's workin' in me
+now is that I ain't able to git old and give up 'thout makin' a fight.
+It ain't gray hair and wrinkles that make folks hate gettin' old, it's
+dryin' up, losin' their spark, so to speak. Now there's nothin' that
+makes a man feel such an all fired lot younger as fallin' in love over
+agen." He laughed. "'Course I ain't recommendin' dynamite, Miner, which
+is fallin' in love with a new woman when you got an old one. That's my
+way, 'cause fate's done sent it so fer me, and we got to make our lives
+out of what we git. But why can't a man just start in ever so often
+fallin' in love agen and recourtin' his wife till he gits himself and
+her all woke up as in the old days? I ain't sayin' it's as easy with a
+stale girl as with a fresh one, but, Lord!"--and here the shadows chased
+each other across the luminous elderly face--"I could 'a' kep' on
+courtin' Em'ly till kingdom come and thanked God fer the chance, ef He
+had but seen fit to spare her to me so long."
+
+And then Uncle Ambrose slipped off the counter and went away and drove
+Sam out to the Widow Tarwater's Red Farm, which was now twice the size
+it had been in her youth, since Peachy had married the young man owning
+the place adjoining hers.
+
+Yet somehow Uncle Ambrose's anticipated visit proved a disappointment.
+
+In the first place, both of his rivals were there before him, and there
+was something in their attitude and in the widow's manner that made him
+hot with the desire to get the representatives of the law and the
+gospel out behind a fence and have everybody roll up their sleeves.
+However, since no open accusations were made and a woman was present,
+what was there for him to do but to make a short stay and then return
+slowly home?--home, to live through what was perhaps the most
+extraordinary experience of Ambrose Thompson's entire lifetime. For
+nearly sixty years he had lived in the village of Pennyroyal, been a
+friend to all its people, his life had been there for them to see and
+interpret, and yet with the first breathings of calumny the record of
+his whole career was smirched. Still he made no protest, for what does
+denial count if a man's character cannot save him? His visits to the
+widow were continued, however, and always he found her in a flutter
+between affection and fear. Nevertheless, Uncle Ambrose was merely
+biding his time, but in the meanwhile Miner's silence and devotion were
+more healing than any ointment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE REVIVAL SERVICE
+
+
+AMBROSE was raking the dead leaves in his front yard two weeks after the
+oyster supper when Susan Barrows summoned him across to her with a wave
+of her ear trumpet. All day she sat outdoors in her wheeled chair,
+huddled in rugs, until the snow came, with her eager old eyes fastened
+on the street, her curiosity hungry after eighty years.
+
+Ambrose knelt beside her with his lips to her trumpet.
+
+"They're sayin' ugly things about you," she whispered. Then seeing the
+hurt in the man's face that even Miner had not fully understood, she
+rested her trembling hand on his gray head. "Talkin' but not believin',
+Ambrose Thompson. I ain't sayin' that some people don't agree to this
+ugly story, since whatever's ugly naturally pleases 'em, but the most of
+Pennyroyal is just rollin' this bit of scandal 'bout you under their
+tongues like a sweet morsel and then spittin' it out, knowin' it ain't
+fitten to swallow. But what worries me is that I'm afeard you'll be
+losin' the widow. Here's Brother Tupper startin' in with a series of
+revival services to-night at his new church, and the legislator
+neglectin' the welfare of his State to keep close to the widow! Not that
+it's the law I am so much scared of as the preacher. Peachy's plump and
+jelly-like and kin be easy shook, and I ain't been a female eighty years
+'thout knowin' how easy 'tis to work on our religious feelin's. You
+goin' to the revivin'?"
+
+Not at once did Uncle Ambrose reply; instead he seemed to be
+considering.
+
+"I'm not at all sure, Miss Susan; seems like I've felt kind of lonesome
+in church since we lost Brother Bills, but I've more'n half way promised
+Peachy; she seemed so dead set on my attendin'."
+
+Susan grinned. "Ef she's worryin' about you needin' religious
+instruction, Ambrose, don't you lose hope. It's a powerful wifely sign."
+
+And so Uncle Ambrose went on back to his work, vaguely comforted though
+not yet certain whether or not to obey the widow's request. To tell the
+truth, he had comparatively little faith in his own chance with Peachy,
+since his befriending the boy Sam had brought with it so unfortunate a
+result. And yet the thought of the possession of the Widow Tarwater had
+daily grown more and more alluring as his rivals' claims progressed, and
+she seemed so much less ready for his picking than in past times.
+
+Late that evening when the first of the present series of revival
+services was in full swing, a tall man cautiously entered an open door.
+He had never yet been inside the church itself, and to-night found it
+crowded to the doors with men and even women standing in the aisles.
+Uncle Ambrose felt annoyed, for having made a special effort to be
+subservient he certainly desired that the widow should know of it, and,
+moreover, though he preferred not having the matter discussed, frequent
+rheumatic twinges in his right leg made standing for any length of time
+an impossibility.
+
+Now he shoved himself forward, politely edging his way between saints
+and sinners alike, hoping that Mrs. Tarwater would at least get a
+passing glimpse of him, when at the front of the church, to his immense
+surprise, he discovered an entirely empty pew.
+
+There was no time for thought, and almost immediately the newcomer
+dropped down upon the seat, observing at the same instant that the widow
+and her escort, the Honorable Calvin, were in an opposite pew just
+across the aisle, though why their pew should be so jammed and his own
+exactly under the chancel entirely unoccupied he did not then consider.
+Obeying his first impulse Uncle Ambrose turned a smile upon the widow.
+It was tremendously gratifying to observe her large bosom heave with
+emotion, but puzzling when soon after large tears coursed down her
+quivering face.
+
+Moreover, the persons in Uncle Ambrose's immediate vicinity were also
+beginning to behave queerly.
+
+"The Lord be praised that one more sinner is called to repentance!" he
+heard a sister's shrill voice cry out just back of him, and then loud
+"Amens" boomed all about. But even more alarming--the Rev. Elias
+Tupper's expressionless eyes were apparently glued upon him, while his
+face wore an exaggerated edition of that smile of heavenly forgiveness
+so irritating to the other man's soul.
+
+With a shudder of horror it was now borne in upon Uncle Ambrose Thompson
+that by misadventure he had placed himself upon the mourners' bench--the
+seat at revival services specially set apart for sinners overcome with
+remorse who desired to make open confession.
+
+With a hunted look the unhappy man searched about for some way of
+escape; there was none, for the congregation had come crowding closer
+toward the front of the church until every foot of room was occupied.
+
+Folding his arms across his lean chest and lifting his head Uncle
+Ambrose waited. During the first moments of his discovery his face had
+grown extraordinarily red, but now was paler than any man or woman had
+ever seen it before.
+
+Lifting his right hand the Rev. Elias Tupper commanded an intense and
+awed silence. "Ambrose Thompson is before us to-night openly to confess
+his sins," he announced in a loud voice.
+
+Still the tall man did not move and not even a muscle of his set face
+pulsated. A moment of waiting or longer must have gone by--nobody could
+have guessed the exact passage of time--and yet Uncle Ambrose appeared
+insensible.
+
+The minister cleared his throat. "If Ambrose Thompson is unable to speak
+for himself, then I will do my best to speak for him."
+
+But at this the presumably repentant sinner rose up slowly, very slowly,
+almost it would seem by inches, until he stood taller than any other
+person in the new red brick church.
+
+"It ain't my way to pray before a audience," he began quietly and with
+his gray head bowed, although his words could be distinctly heard, "and
+I don't know as I feel called to do any special repentin' this evenin',
+seein' as I got up on this here mourning bench by accident and with no
+idea but to set and listen fer a while. Still I reckon I got sins enough
+to be sorry 'bout most any time the chance comes." Ambrose then seemed
+to be reflecting for a moment, and it is just possible that during this
+pause the thin ghost of a smile played like heat lightning about the end
+of his sensitive nose, although his expression continued perfectly
+reverent.
+
+"I wouldn't be a mite surprised though, Lord," he went on in almost a
+conversational tone, "ef my neighbours wasn't better able to confess my
+sins fer me than I am fer myself, bein's as we've all got such special
+talents fer our neighbours' motes. The trouble is I'm none too sure one
+man can _precisely_ understand another man's, Heavenly Father, you've so
+many and various ways of revealin' yourself to your children. Course I
+know, Lord, I've loved fine apparel too dear and smokin' and the
+outdoors when mebbe I should 'a' been workin' in, and mebbe I've laughed
+now and then over things folks think should 'a' been cried over. And
+I've had my hours of distrustin' and repinin' and forgettin' it's God's
+privilege to run His world 'cordin' to His idees, not mine. But, O Lord,
+what's the use mentionin' things that ain't cheerful even to you? I'm
+plumb sorry fer all I've done that's bad 'thout goin' into further
+details."
+
+And here again Uncle Ambrose paused; however, not one of his strained
+and over-eager listeners had any delusion that his prayer was finished.
+He simply had been forgetting them and now remembered. Then he lifted
+his head and straightened his shoulders, and what he saw through the
+shining oak ceiling of the new brick church no one shall ever know.
+
+"Ef any one here present is waitin' to hear me say I'm sorry fer any
+lovin' I've ever done of man--or woman (course I know you ain't
+expectin' it, Lord)--then I am obleeged to state he or she'll be
+disappointed. Women is the nearest things I've known on this earth to
+the angels, and I ain't been disobedient to the heavenly vision."
+
+Up to this moment Uncle Ambrose's voice had been low and evenly
+modulated, but now it changed like the deeper tones of an organ until it
+came to be the most wonderful music in the world--a voice that was able
+perfectly to express the richest things of the spirit. "But, Lord, ef
+ever I'd wronged a woman, I'd not be askin' forgiveness of you; I'd just
+ask that it be meted out to me in like proportion as it has been meted
+out to the woman, forever and ever. Amen."
+
+And then not waiting for the closing of the service, and forgetting his
+hat, Uncle Ambrose passed on down the church aisle, where room was
+instantly made for him, out into the white stillness of the autumn
+night, away from calumny and human irritation, and the little
+congregation seeing him go with a look of added dignity and peace,
+whatever their former ill-founded suspicions, after to-night believed
+nothing against him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+INDIAN SUMMER
+
+
+TRUTH is immortal, and one truth is that there cannot be two pursuers in
+the game of love.
+
+After the night of the first revival service Uncle Ambrose, making no
+further visits to the Red Farm, it was the woman who set herself to lure
+him back again.
+
+In the first place, he had by then convinced her that her mistrust had
+been unjust and that she had listened to suggestion that was not
+evidence. So there was but one way by which the widow felt she could
+make reparation and restore peace between herself and Ambrose Thompson.
+She must find out the name of Sam's father, for necessarily the boy had
+to have two parents, and the mother she had known as she had come
+frequently to the farm on visits to her son up to the time of her death.
+
+The original informant mentioned in the Bible was a female: "And the
+damsel ran, and told them of her mother's house these things."
+
+Therefore after a certain period of effort the boy Sam himself drove one
+afternoon into Pennyroyal bearing three perfumed notes written by the
+widow which he was to carefully deliver at the post-office.
+
+The next afternoon, along about four o'clock, three men appearing in the
+village street at almost the same time were seen to start off in the
+direction of the Widow Tarwater's farm. Not that they were together,
+certainly not; for some little time they were even unconscious of each
+other's destination. Ambrose, however, made the discovery first, since
+owing to the enfeebled condition of his livery-stable horse and the
+disabled state of his prehistoric gig he was compelled to be in the rear
+of the procession, which was headed by the Honorable Calvin on a high
+black charger and seconded by the Rev. Mr. Tupper in a neat phaeton
+drawn by a fat pony.
+
+The tall man could have vowed that the best parlour at the Red Farm had
+not been changed in more than three decades, except that a criminal
+looking portrait done in crayons of the Widow Tarwater's late husband,
+who had been an uncommonly handsome man, hung over the mantel, for there
+in the same dark corner and on the identical sofa sat Peachy, but a far
+more flushed and emotional Peachy than her former admirer recalled.
+
+For indeed the widow's cheeks were burning, her mouth tremulous like a
+worried child's, and after her first greeting of her three visitors, she
+continued twisting her handkerchief in and out of her fingers, trying to
+speak and yet plainly not finding courage. So conspicuously was she
+needing consolation that Uncle Ambrose's long arm fairly ached to
+accommodate its length to her large waist, nevertheless the presence of
+his rivals, who may or may not have been suffering from the same
+pressure, deterred him.
+
+"Ambrose," so much the widow did get out, turning her eyes away from the
+encouragement she might have received from the ardour of two other
+glances, to rest them on her older friend, "I feel it my duty, having
+lately acted kind of suspicious to you, to tell you that I now know who
+the boy Sam's father is, was----" And Peachy fell to sobbing now in such
+earnest that she was compelled to bury her flushed face in her
+handkerchief.
+
+Two of the men stared; many hopeful things had each of them anticipated
+in this hasty summons from the widow, but not this confession. However,
+the third man, hopping up, began striding rather irritably about the
+room.
+
+"If his father was, then fer the land sakes, Peachy, keep it to
+yourself; 'taint a mortal bit er use startin' things on a dead man."
+
+But whether the widow belonged to the large group of females with a
+passion for martyrdom or whether she was less a martyr in telling her
+secret than in keeping it, who shall say? For in reply she shook her
+head, removing her handkerchief, though permitting her tears to flow
+faster than ever.
+
+"My late husband was this boy Sam's father," she went on quickly, once
+she had fairly started. "I might have guessed it years agone if I'd ever
+thought on it; seems like I can recall now numbers of times when he
+tried to tell me this himself, and as he was so often askin' me to be
+kind to Sam and give him a chance I more'n half took a dislike to the
+lad. Lately I've been goin' through some old papers and, well, there
+ain't no more to be said 'ceptin' as I've no children of my own I'm
+goin' to make this Sam my heir; I've already writ out the papers."
+
+With the ending of this speech Uncle Ambrose enjoyed one of the most
+exquisite moments of his later years. Not that he was so transfigured by
+the proof of his own innocence, since the annoyance that the scandal had
+caused had passed that evening in church, and most certainly not because
+he enjoyed hearing the reputation of Peachy's former husband damaged,
+but because the expressions on the faces of his rivals proved what his
+wits had already discovered, that the two men were not after the widow
+for herself, but because of the abundance and fruitfulness of her
+fields.
+
+What the widow herself saw it was impossible to tell, for almost
+immediately after, with her face still buried in her handkerchief, she
+left the room, and the three men could see her through the window
+hurrying across the front lawn.
+
+Left alone, the Honorable Calvin was the first to speak. Drawing out a
+delicately scented white handkerchief he wiped a slight dampness from
+about his lips. "I suppose the widow does not fully understand this boy
+has no legal claim on her," he said thoughtfully.
+
+The minister sighed, waving a fat hand. "A little remembrance, say a
+thousand dollars or so, as a start in life would be quite sufficient."
+
+Uncle Ambrose smiled. "I reckon you gentlemen had better talk this
+matter over with Mrs. Tarwater. Women have such foolish, softhearted
+ways of tryin' to save the innocent and help the guilty when they're
+able; 'taint law and 'taint gospel, mebbe, but it's woman."
+
+Then seeing that the legislator had risen to his feet with the first
+understanding of his suggestion the tall man laid a firm hand on him.
+"Better let Brother Elias have the first show, Mr. Jones," he drawled;
+"seems no more'n proper respect to pay the gospel."
+
+So both men waited ten minutes or more, the Honorable Calvin glowering
+and fidgeting, while Uncle Ambrose, whatever his inner stirrings,
+remained imperturbably calm until, seeing a stout figure returning to
+unhitch his pony, with his face wearing an expression more of sorrow
+than of anger, Mr. Jones waited for no further advice.
+
+Left alone, Uncle Ambrose betrayed his real feelings. First, he looked
+at himself in a small triple mirror on the mantel, carefully combing
+with a little pocket comb the thin hairs well to the front of his head
+over his increasing bald spot, and afterward he walked restlessly about
+the great room, finally arriving at the window. It was always Calvin
+Jones he had feared. "Good looks and a silver tongue! Lord, what a
+combination!"
+
+The sun was now going down at the edge of the Kentucky landscape, in the
+fields the grain had been cut and stacked and golden pumpkins were lying
+between the piled up mounds of hay and corn. Over the tips of the grass,
+which still showed green, autumn leaves were swirling, and hovering
+above, and through it all a fine, thin mist which might be the coming
+blight of winter or the lingering spirit of the summer's warmth.
+
+Crossing a meadow and moving toward a big red barn, Uncle Ambrose soon
+spied Sam driving a long line of cows toward home. With a leap his long
+legs carried him out the window and swiftly across the yard. "Hullo!" he
+cried while still some distance away.
+
+The boy's face reddened, but this time from sheer pleasure. "Hullo!" he
+cried, all his sullenness and resentment gone. And in a few moments the
+older man's lean, strong fingers held the boy's short stocky hand in a
+hard clasp. "I am glad fer you clean through," he said simply.
+
+The boy's head jerked toward the house. "Has she told you?" he asked.
+"It's powerful kind of her when she ain't even liked me."
+
+"Kind?" Uncle Ambrose frowned. "Why, boy, she's plumb magnificent!" And
+here he curveted a few steps to the side. "Lord! ain't it splendid--life
+so full of good things happenin' every minute!" Stopping, he gazed
+steadily and curiously into the eyes of the young man near him, while
+the cows wondering at the delay pressed their sweet smelling bodies
+against each other and muzzled their soft noses. The boy's eyes were no
+longer bloodshot nor ashamed.
+
+"'Bout that other thing, sonnie, your girl?" Uncle Ambrose hesitated.
+"Don't you tell me nothin' ef you ain't a mind to. Lord! don't I
+remember how a young fellow hates bein' pried into."
+
+"You ain't pryin'," the boy defended, "and it's comin' on great. I took
+your advice. I just let myself do all the lovin' I could 'thout stewin'
+over her feelin's fer me, and then all of a sudden she up and told me
+she always had loved me, only she was afeard I didn't kire fer her."
+
+Uncle Ambrose's face shone. "A'ire you worth her now, sonnie?"
+
+"Lord, no," the boy answered; "but I kep' straight since that night and
+I'll keep on. It's lovin' that done it."
+
+Uncle Ambrose raised his rusty stovepipe hat. "Lovin', that's it," he
+answered.
+
+And then across his wrinkled face there marched a host of memories,
+while keeping his eyes on the sky among whose soft clouds there might
+easily have been floating any number of angels, he repeated the toast
+made immortal by Kentuckians: "The ladies, God bless 'em!"
+
+Suddenly hearing the noise of a horse's hoofs trotting away from the
+neighbourhood of the farmhouse, Ambrose whirled, and before his
+companion could guess what ailed him, started running back across the
+lawn.
+
+But this time Peachy was not to be so easily found. Uncle Ambrose
+searched for her in the yard and in the garden, in the place where the
+old summer house, now a ruin, had once stood, and then when the sun had
+disappeared and only an afterglow remained, found her leaning over a
+turnstile facing an orchard.
+
+"I hope I ain't kept you waitin', Peachy," he remarked, a trifle
+breathlessly.
+
+The woman smiled and slipped her arm through his that they might both
+lean together on the turnstile. "Most forty years, Ambrose," she
+returned with a finer enjoyment than she could have felt in her youth.
+
+And her sixty-year-old suitor blushed. "I know more'n I did then,
+Peachy; I was frightened of your managin' ways." He was feeling a
+considerable anxiety, for the woman beside him was like a piece of
+fruit, no longer in her summer time, but reaching her perfection in late
+autumn.
+
+Very quietly then Peachy withdrew her arm.
+
+"I'm managin' now, Ambrose," she confessed. "Seems like growin' old
+don't lose us our faults; it kind er makes 'em set deeper. I should be
+sorry to try you, but I'm some past fifty and ain't able to change."
+
+[Illustration: "You kin manage me now all you've a mind to; I ain't
+worryin'"]
+
+However, Uncle Ambrose simply put his arm around her, drawing her
+closer to him. "Lord, Peachy, ef that's all, don't you fret. You kin
+manage me now all you've a mind to; I ain't worryin'. I was young and
+didn't understand then that no man kin git on comfortable in this world
+'thout bein' managed by a _good_ woman." And he laughed and kissed her
+with an ardour that was in its way as good a thing as the springtime.
+
+A minute later, the light dying quickly down, the autumn moon rose up
+above the orchard, and with the disappearance of the day the warmth
+ended so abruptly that, with a little shiver, the two middle-aged
+figures moved away, the woman watching the man anxiously. "It ain't
+moonlight we're needin', Ambrose Thompson," she whispered; "I'm thinkin'
+it's the light of the fireside."
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+HIS FOURTH WIFE
+
+          "_There are diversities of gift, but the same spirit_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+"'LIZABETH"
+
+
+A VERY old man leaned over, touching a cane-bottomed rocking chair with
+his carpet slipper. "Seems sort er more sociable like to see a little
+female chair a-rockin'," he remarked to himself, for the room was
+otherwise unoccupied, and even the house itself.
+
+It was a December night and snowing hard. By and by the old man got up,
+and crossing over to a side window where the blind had not yet been
+pulled down, stood there for a moment frowning and saying impatiently:
+"Ef that don't beat all!" for mingling with the noises outside there
+sounded a faint and monotonous crying.
+
+He was an uncommonly tall old man with a head like a highly polished
+billiard ball rising above a fringe of thin white hair; he had a
+straggly beard, while over his dim blue eyes the eyebrows arched like
+cornices.
+
+Finally he shuffled back toward his place by the kitchen fire, and there
+getting down the family Bible commenced to read, first stuffing both
+fingers in his ears, although every now and then partially removing one
+to make observations. He was reading the twenty-second chapter of St.
+Matthew:
+
+"For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
+but are as the angels of God in heaven." However, on the third reading
+he shut up his book, keeping three bunches of pressed flowers inside to
+mark the place, and half humorously and half with the irritability of
+old age, sighed: "I don't feel as ef I could stand it a inch longer.
+What mortal use is there in me tryin' to make myself at all comfortable
+this evenin' with that noise eternally pesterin' me? Seems like it has
+always been my experience a man has got to give in first _an'_ last."
+
+Then wrapped in the faded splendour of a once gorgeous silk
+dressing-gown the old man disappeared into his bedroom, returning with a
+shawl crossed over his shoulders and a knitted muffler tied about his
+head. On opening his door he listened again for a moment, but, as the
+crying had not ceased, waded across his yard through the snow in his
+carpet slippers until he knocked with his big blue-veined old hand hard
+against the locked back door of a cottage adjoining his.
+
+At first there was no answer except a continuing of the sniffling,
+snuffling noises which only made the visitor rap more vehemently, when
+at length the door opened and there stood a woman holding a lantern
+above her head.
+
+"Uncle Ambrose Thompson, what kin you want o' me this time o' night?"
+she asked; "it's goin' on nine o'clock! You ain't sick?"
+
+Uncle Ambrose shook his head, surveying his neighbour sympathetically,
+but oh, so disparagingly! She was so plainly an old-time old maid, flat
+in the chest and angular, a hard and bony structure, with a face that
+was equally barren save that its desert waste had lately been swept by a
+storm.
+
+"No, I ain't sick, child," Uncle Ambrose answered, "but you
+are--heartsick. And what's more it seems likely I can't stand that noise
+you keep on a-makin'. You come over and set by my kitchen fire a space
+and kind er talk things out with me. I reckon I ain't altogether lost
+my soothin' powers!"
+
+Before his glowing fire the old host comfortably placed two rocking
+chairs side by side. For the past seven years Ambrose Thompson had been
+a widower for the third time and, since Peachy's death, having come back
+home from the Red Farm, had lived all alone in his once rose-coloured
+cottage, looked after only by his neighbours.
+
+Picking up a crazy quilt cushion from his chair, the old man surveyed it
+tenderly. "This was my Em'ly's make," he explained; "seems, 'Lizabeth
+Horton, that you and me 're most like strangers, havin' lived side by
+side only a little piece like seven years. Em'ly she was the second of
+my three wives." And then thoughtfully passing his hand backward over
+his high bald crown, Uncle Ambrose smiled in a kind of slow and puzzled
+fashion.
+
+"No, now I've done mixed things up a bit; I'm gittin' a little oncertain
+these days. Em'ly wasn't never the sewin' one," he continued, "besides,
+this crazy quiltin' business was most too new fashioned fer my Em'ly. I
+kin recollect now bringin' that sofy cushion in from the farm, so it
+must 'a' been Peachy's. Funny how I keep puttin' everything on to Em'ly
+these days!"
+
+Then seeing that his caller's red-rimmed eyes had been yearning toward
+the coffee pot at the back of his stove, the old man put it down before
+her with a nicked but brightly flowered cup and saucer, and afterward,
+settling himself in his own place, peacefully began smoking, finding a
+kind of unholy joy in the old maid's horrified glances about his untidy
+but nobly littered kitchen.
+
+"S'pose you go ahead now'n tell me just what ails you?" Uncle Ambrose
+suggested after a reasonably sustaining pause.
+
+And straightway Elizabeth returned to the slow and monotonous weeping
+that had so disturbed his nerves for the past few hours. However, he let
+her alone for a time, and except for moving restlessly about in his
+chair and biting hard on his pipe stem made no other signs until at last
+he placed a trembling hand on her bowed shoulder. "'Lizabeth Horton,
+there is some women that just nachurally runs away to tears, but I
+wouldn't waste myself _en_tirely ef I was you. Seems like when a female
+has cried 's long as you have, she must need something to fill up the
+places that has gone dry on the inside; so you take another cup of
+coffee; it may be bitter but it's liquid. I ain't sayin' I ain't used to
+women's weepin', but I'm gittin' older an'----"
+
+Elizabeth at this gulped down her second dose. "I hadn't ought to cry so
+much, Uncle Ambrose," she apologized, "but you must know I'm havin' to
+give up my little home and it most breaks my heart."
+
+Uncle Ambrose looked meditatively about his ancient and patched
+fourteen-foot-square kitchen, and his dim eyes shone with the never
+failing pride of possession. "These cottages ain't so bad," he said
+defensively. "I been living in mine off'n on fer most seventy years, and
+I kin remember when yours and old Mrs. Barrows', now deceased, was built
+like it. Still I am obleeged to say there may be finer places; more'n
+likely now this nephew's house is stylisher where you're bein' took in
+to live. Seems like I've done heard it's in a su-burb and sets up on a
+hill. Kind er onnecessary Pennyrile's havin' a su-burb, but mebbe
+you're thinkin' the young folks won't be good to you when you go up
+there to dwell."
+
+Now that her crying had ceased the old maid's face looked gray.
+
+"It ain't that I ain't goin' to a good home, Uncle Ambrose," she
+explained, "and I suppose they'll be as good to me as they can to a
+piece of furniture that don't fit in and ain't nowheres needed in their
+house. I can't expect a man to understand, but when a woman don't never
+marry and hasn't a husband or children of her own, seems like all she
+has to set store by is just _things_, havin' a _home_ of her own. I done
+my best to keep mine since mother died and her pension stopped, by
+picklin' and preservin', but somehow I can't manage it." And now the
+woman's voice held the quiet acceptance of defeat which is sadder than
+any protest of tears.
+
+She was looking into her lap at her knotted, hardworking and yet
+unsuccessful hands as she spoke, or else she would have seen the light
+of the understanding she denied in the old face opposite hers, which had
+not, I think, failed any woman in nearly threescore years.
+
+"I've done smelt your efforts, 'Lizabeth," Uncle Ambrose murmured
+kindly. "They've often come right through the boards of my side wall. I
+wisht I knowed some way to help you out, but I can't somehow see it."
+
+Nevertheless when Elizabeth had made her old neighbour as comfortable
+for the night as she knew how by putting fresh coals on his fire and by
+fastening down his windows, and had said good night, still he continued
+sitting in the same place, wearing a look of uncomfortable gravity,
+until by and by hobbling once more into his bedroom he returned with a
+small daguerreotype in his hand and for a long while kept studying it,
+with his lips moving silently, and then suddenly said aloud: "Whatever
+on this earth am I goin' to do 'bout that old maid, Em'ly honey? She's
+poor and lonesome and she's scaired, and, moreover, she's powerful
+homely." And then just for an instant piercing the mists over his old
+eyes the immortal light of laughter flickered.
+
+"I reckon you think I've done earned a trifle of repose from worryin' on
+females, don't you, honey?" he inquired as he made his solitary way
+toward bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+"GIVING IN MARRIAGE"
+
+
+IN A similar cottage on one side of old Ambrose Thompson, as has already
+been explained, there now dwelt the single departing spinster, Elizabeth
+Horton, whom Uncle Ambrose regarded as a newcomer, her occupancy lying
+somewhat within the period of twenty years, while on the other side
+there still remained his youthful enemy, Susan Barrows. Not Mrs. Susan
+Barrows, Sr., because of course some years before that old lady had been
+translated to that country where we hope all human curiosity may be
+satisfied, but her daughter, Susan Jr.; a little prying, spiteful girl
+she would always remain to Ambrose, although now a married woman past
+middle age, with grown-up children of her own.
+
+And among her other inheritances she claimed an interfering interest in
+the old man's mode of life.
+
+Now a set of signals having been arranged between them in case of urgent
+need on his part, at about six o'clock the next morning Susan was
+aroused by a violent knocking on his wall on the side of the house next
+hers, and hurrying over she found the old man lying half dressed on his
+bed and groaning with pain.
+
+"Seems like I can't turn over or move or draw long breath, Susan Jr.,"
+he gasped. "'Course I know I got my feet wet; 'tain't no use of you
+startin' in on that. I've got the lumbago, but bein's as I feel I mayn't
+be able to git up fer a right smart spell you'd better step next door
+and tell that old maid 'Lizabeth to come over here and look after me.
+She ain't no kith and kin to keep her busy like you."
+
+Susan eyed her old neighbour narrowly; she never had and never would be
+able wholly to trust him, but now his fine old wrinkled face seemed to
+be twisting with pain and his nose and lips twitching.
+
+"'Lizabeth can't come, you know it well as I do, Ambrose Thompson," she
+replied. "I've just got to do the best fer you I kin, though it ain't
+noways convenient to me. This comes from you tryin' to live alone
+'cause Aunt Ca'line and the others who used to see to you is passed.
+'Lizabeth Horton is movin' within a few hours, bein' turned out of her
+house, bag and baggage," and there was such richness of superiority in
+Susan Jr.'s voice, the kind of superiority which the prosperous always
+feel in the presence of the unprosperous, that the old man longed to
+shake her.
+
+But instead he only remarked with suspicious meekness: "'Lizabeth's
+furniture is bein' moved, Susan Jr., but not necessar'ly 'Lizabeth;
+leastways I don't believe she is engaged to go off in the movin' van
+settin' on top her best dresser like a hen, though it's what a lot of
+women would like, they're so bound up in things mortal." And then Uncle
+Ambrose fixing his gaze on a far spot in the ceiling shivered and
+groaned until his audience hurried away, when he was able to relax into
+greater comfort.
+
+Thus it was that 'Lizabeth took up the business of caring for Uncle
+Ambrose Thompson until such time as the lumbago should depart from his
+back.
+
+[Illustration: "Thus it was that 'Lizabeth took up the business of
+caring for Uncle Ambrose Thompson"]
+
+From the first the old man could see that the spinster was enjoying
+herself thoroughly; true, his cottage was small, but then it was exactly
+like her own save that he had let his grow truly magnificent in its dirt
+and disorder, being not of the type of male with perverted feminine
+instincts, while Elizabeth never had had but one womanly passion
+gratified and that was her love of putting a house to rights.
+
+So for some little time Uncle Ambrose rather found pleasure in staying
+in bed with the hateful burden of solitariness removed from him; he
+loved listening to the familiar homely sounds of sweeping and the moving
+about of furniture; it brought back--ah well, perhaps at seventy-six it
+is something to have many things to remember.
+
+And then, lying alone, he used to talk very often to his picture of
+Emily, which still hung on its nail by the old pine bureau, for this
+habit, begun after her death and only practised in secret during his
+marriage to Peachy, had grown on him in these last seven years of
+failing body and mind.
+
+"She's a real good woman, Em'ly," he said several times, "and you'll be
+glad to know she's makin' me more comfortable than I been in some time.
+I was gittin' pretty tired. Seems like I might as well let this old
+spinster stay on here and keep house fer me; she plumb likes it and I
+reckon it's just one little thing more I kin do fer the sex. I ain't
+much good at lonin' it, and 'tain't like I had old Miner now fer the in
+betweens." And then he would laugh silently until the wrinkles in his
+old face seemed little channels for merriment: "I been married so
+frequent and got broke in to so many different sets of housekeepin'
+ways, seems like I ain't troubled to form no ways of my own."
+
+And in between dozing and talking to himself and the neighbours, who ran
+in to inquire for his health, Uncle Ambrose used to spend some time in
+reading his Bible. One afternoon when Elizabeth had been sitting by his
+bedside sewing and thinking him asleep, he suddenly rose up in bed as
+though completely ignoring the pain in his back and drawing his old
+Bible across the coverlid opened it again at the place of the pressed
+flowers.
+
+"'Lizabeth," he asked after a moment of uncommon gravity in which his
+hand frequently glided over his bald crown, "are you a good Bible
+woman? I mean are you a good interpreter of the Scriptures? Seems like I
+didn't used to look to others fer the meanin' in things, but I'm gittin'
+a leetle mite older and folks is pretty apt to confuse wishes with
+facts----"
+
+But Elizabeth's austere face, with its rigid regard for set duties, was
+reddening. "I read my chapter every night and I try to live accordin',"
+she answered.
+
+Then into Uncle Ambrose's old voice there crept such an eagerness it
+might have held the warm desire of youth: "Mebbe you kin tell me
+then--the meanin' of this here Bible text. I ain't never regarded it for
+seventy years, but I been worryin' over it consider'ble of late, and now
+I'd like to get a woman's views on it." And with his trembling
+forefinger following the lines he had read to himself on the evening
+before Elizabeth's installation he said: "It is what Jesus remarked to
+the Sadducees: 'For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given
+in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.'" And here Uncle
+Ambrose's eyes travelled wistfully toward the faded daguerreotype on his
+side wall.
+
+Naturally his listener was puzzled, but afterward laughed a laugh with a
+touch of new humour in it. "Lord! Uncle Ambrose, I _am_ sorry," she
+apologized, "but I ain't had cause to worry over that text same as you
+have; bein's as I'm turned fifty now and ain't had so much as _one_
+husband on this earth, I'm kind of expectin' to carry my same single
+blessedness along with me on the t'other side."
+
+Uncle Ambrose's eyes twinkled appreciatively, but a moment later he
+looked uncomfortable again. "Well, I reckon that's reasonable of you,
+'Lizabeth," he agreed. "Folks can't understand things fer other folks;
+there's plenty can't comprehend me marryin' so often and now worryin'
+over arrangements for the future. But it's like this, child: a man may
+git a lot of _help_mates in this world, but he don't find his _real_
+mate but once. And I want to know which one of my three wives is goin'
+to claim me in heaven, 'cause it looks like that combination's got to be
+eternal. To tell you the truth, I was so worried lately I sent fer the
+latest Baptist preacher and put this question up to him, and all he did
+was to read this selfsame verse out of St. Matthew as though I hadn't
+read and studied over it more'n a hundred times. The new brother seemed
+to think we'd have to travel alone up in heaven 'thout playin' favrits,
+but I can't come to agree with him. To tell you the truth,
+'Lizabeth"--and here Uncle Ambrose's words sunk to a hoarse whisper--"ef
+the facts be known I want my Em'ly. I done my best without her, but it
+wasn't _whole_ livin' 'cept when I had her, and I ain't meanin' nothin'
+in disfavour of no one else. Of course ef it's true that the Lord don't
+believe in marriages in the next world, with me such a marrier in this,
+then that text'll be a whole lot of assistance to me in gittin' things
+fixed. For when my three wives come a-floatin' up to me as the angels
+are, I'll be more'n pleased to see 'em _all_, but I got to speak up
+pretty positive: 'I want my Em'ly, and there ain't no marriages nor
+givin' in marriage in heaven.' For you see I marries little Sarah first
+and that might give her the first claim, and Peachy last, so it's likely
+she might think a last tie would bind. Seems like it wouldn't look
+regular to have the three of 'em to once." And at this the speaker
+smiled with a kind of appreciative vision of things to come, while at
+the same time wiping his brow, which was gleaming with perspiration.
+
+A day or so after this, having suddenly found his confinement
+unendurable, Uncle Ambrose demanded to be taken outdoors, and so
+wrapping him carefully in blankets Elizabeth set him out on the back
+stoop to look over his little snow-covered yard, leaving the door open
+that she might hear if he called to her.
+
+And the woman was so happy now that she sang as she went about her work,
+for in moving him out the old man had asked her to stay and keep house
+for him so long as he should live.
+
+Uncle Ambrose did not observe Susan Jr.'s birdlike black eyes peer
+slantingly at him through her partially closed blind, for two lady
+sparrows who had chosen to perch on the same twig were keeping up such a
+violent discussion of their territorial rights that they held his amused
+attention, so that Susan was able quietly to slip out through her front
+door and into his by a surreptitious move that outflanked her enemy. But
+pretty soon the old man caught the notes of her ever meddlesome voice
+and then a little later the sound of monotonous weeping. He had heard
+Elizabeth Horton crying one evening for two mortal hours and so was not
+apt to mistake her particular sniff. At first he squirmed restlessly in
+his chair, attempting to rise, but both the blankets and his reputation
+as an invalid enveloped him so that finally he called sharply: "Susan
+Jr., Susan, don't pretend you don't hear me. Come right out here on my
+stoop, I got to speak to you alone."
+
+And Susan crept stealthily out. She had grown up to be a thin, small
+woman with a meddlesome soul out of all proportion to her body, and now
+she wore a wheedling smile such as one might employ with a fretful baby.
+
+"You are lookin' right smart better, Uncle Ambrose," she began, "and
+'Lizabeth Horton tells me you'll soon be yourself again."
+
+"Susan," the old man interrupted, "you are in that kitchen hatching up
+trouble fer me sure as sin. I heard you tellin' 'Lizabeth that she
+oughtn't to be stayin' much longer with me. What did you do that fer?"
+And Uncle Ambrose's eyes, which could be like points of steel in
+righteous anger, now emitted certain fiery sparks. "'Lizabeth is happy
+and is makin' me comfortable after seven more lonesome years, and you've
+always been preachin' I ought to git some one to take kire of me. Susan
+Jr., the Lord gives and the Lord taketh away, but don't you try comin'
+around here playin' the part of the Lord. You let this spinster be."
+
+Again Susan Jr. smiled with an air of superior virtue. "It ain't _me_
+that's talkin', Uncle Ambrose; I ain't seein' anything so wrong in your
+present relations, but I must say folks in Pennyrile is beginnin' to
+speculate some, bein's as 'Lizabeth is just turned fifty and you with
+such a reckernized taste fer female folks, why, though things ain't to
+say scanderlous, there is some that thinks 'em a little pe-cul-iar."
+
+"Go, Susan," and though Uncle Ambrose spoke with restraint his long
+finger pointed toward the intervening space which lay between his house
+and hers. "Go, afore I'm able to tell you what I think of you, 'cause
+I've known you from a child and you ain't changed none--fer the better.
+To think of you sneakin' over here fer the supreme pleasure of worryin'
+one poor homely old maid with your gossip and suggestin's." And Uncle
+Ambrose's face worked with the annoyance of frustrated old age. "Ef only
+'Lizabeth had had one or two husbands she wouldn't be payin' no
+attention to this, but bein's as she's never had none, well, I kin see
+that I'm goin' to have my hands pretty nigh full. Seems like I'd rather
+turn a child out'n the world than this poor unrequited female."
+
+Late that evening Elizabeth gave Uncle Ambrose his supper as usual,
+although her eyes were so nearly closed from weeping that she was unable
+to catch the worried gleam in his. However, before going to bed she told
+him that she would have to leave him and go to her nephew's as soon as
+he was well enough to be about again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+"I SHALL WANT MY EM'LY."
+
+
+ON THAT same night Uncle Ambrose suffered a relapse and remained in bed
+for another week; however, he had already got sufficiently rested from
+his previous laying up and, besides, even at seventy-six he had not yet
+come to evading an issue. He was merely taking time to think.
+
+One evening just as the lamps in his room were being lighted he called
+Elizabeth to his bed. "I'm goin' to git up to-morrow, 'Lizabeth, and
+stay up; I'm 'bout as well now as I'm ever goin' to be, seein' as I'm
+gittin' older each day 'stid of younger," he said with the gentle
+firmness that had always come to him in big moments.
+
+With a nervous trembling Elizabeth smoothed the old man's pillows,
+tucking his blankets in more closely about him. "I'm reel glad fer you,
+Uncle Ambrose; then you won't be needin' me much longer."
+
+But the old man shook his head. "Set down, 'Lizabeth, I want to talk to
+you; I don't want my supper, leastways not yet."
+
+But when Elizabeth had seated herself by the side of his bed for a time
+he continued silent while his glance wandered from the spot where his
+daguerreotype hung alongside the wall to the figure of the elderly
+worried spinster, and once catching a reflection of himself in the
+looking glass with a night cap tied under his chin and then a vision of
+Elizabeth, suddenly his blue eyes under their overhanging brows brimmed
+over.
+
+"'Lizabeth," he inquired at length, "did I ever show you the picture of
+my Em'ly?"
+
+"You ain't exactly showed it to me," she replied kindly, "but I been
+seein' it every day when I come in here to clean; she's got a kind of
+different face; it's a pity she had to leave you."
+
+Uncle Ambrose only cleared his throat a trifle more huskily. "You're a
+good woman, too, 'Lizabeth, and so was little Sarah and Peachy Tarwater,
+and you're makin' my declinin' days peacefuller, givin' me a chance to
+relish things that is past, and to hope fer things to come. Not that I
+kin say you're one mortal bit like Em'ly, cause you ain't, but all
+women 'a' got different ways, fer which the Lord be praised. I been
+lyin' here thinkin' a darn sight lately; ain't had much else to do." But
+if Uncle Ambrose expected a look of understanding in his companion's
+face at this he was disappointed. "I know I got to vacate this earthly
+tenement pretty soon, and though I've had good times and sorry in the
+building I ain't objectin' to quit. Seems like a new dwellin' house'll
+give us more light and space. It's many times I've wondered ef mebbe the
+spirits of them that love us ain't always hoverin' close, ef only we had
+the right kind of windows to look out at 'em with. Why, child, there's
+certainly been times when I've felt my Em'ly's arms a-holdin' me up and
+her wings brushin' my face. She's done been helpin' me about you lately;
+'cause you see I know she'd always want me to do anything that'd make me
+comfortable and----"
+
+But Elizabeth was not listening to the old man's soliloquy. She was
+thinking of herself, trying to tear out the tendrils that had grown so
+close about Uncle Ambrose's house, which had lately come to seem so like
+her own. So finally when she could bear the pain no longer she rose and
+started stumbling from the room.
+
+Uncle Ambrose called out after her. "Don't go, 'Lizabeth, and don't try
+to stop cryin'. Tears is nachural to some women and you sure are one of
+'em. I ought to be used to 'em by now. 'Lizabeth, I don't want you to
+leave me; I want you to stay by me till my trumpet sounds." Elizabeth
+shook her head.
+
+"Think you got to go 'cause of what Susan Jr. said?" Uncle Ambrose's
+long nose twitched between amusement and scorn. "Good Lord! why is it
+the good women that is so afeard of talk?" he muttered to himself. "But
+thinkin' it all out kireful, 'Lizabeth, I ain't able to let you go. I
+can't stan' livin' 'thout female aid, and there ain't no use me tryin'.
+So now you listen to me. When I'm out o' this bed, and it'll be
+to-morrow, do you think you could bring yourself to marry me?" Uncle
+Ambrose laughed. "Don't git scaired, child; ef you ain't heard them
+words before it ain't the first time I've said 'em. But don't you answer
+me too quick; think it over and when you come back after fixin' my
+supper's time enough, for I ain't yet told you all I been steddyin'
+over, believin' the rest'd come in better later on."
+
+Then while Elizabeth was away this lover of many women lay with his dim
+old eyes still steadfast upon the picture of her who after all was "the
+only woman." "You feel I'm doin' what's best, don't you, honey?" he said
+with the completeness of a perfect union. "She's poor and lonesome and
+homely, but I've worked it out so it'll be all right."
+
+Afterward, when Uncle Ambrose discovered that his supper tray held all
+the dishes he most liked, he did not let his expression betray him, but
+ate his well-cooked meal peaceably and enjoyably until Elizabeth came to
+take away his tray, when his feeble hand caught hold of her hard one,
+trying to give it the rightful pressure.
+
+"I can't," the old maid answered sorrowfully; "it's only because you are
+sorry for me."
+
+And Uncle Ambrose hesitated. To tell any woman he did not love her, here
+at the end of his seventy-six years! "I'm growin' powerful fond of you,
+'Lizabeth Horton," he hedged, "but ef I'm sorry too, what's the odds? I
+reckon I'm sorry fer myself and been sorry fer most everybody I've
+knowed in this world one time or another. But mebbe you kin see things
+better like this. I'm more'n anxious fer you to look after me till I die
+and keep me from gittin' too darned lonesome and, moreover, I want to
+leave you this here cottage when I go away. See here, 'Lizabeth, I've
+done had some experience with women and I've been thinkin' a lot on what
+you said to me that evenin' you come over here to dry your tears. I kin
+see there are some women who kin live 'thout husbands and some that's
+just got to live 'thout children, but there's some women that ain't able
+to live 'thout homes of their own. Why, you poor old 'Lizabeth, you'd
+just pine away and die ef the time ever come when you didn't have a
+house to keep: it would be worse'n food starvin', 'cause it would last
+longer. I ain't no children of my own"--and even now Uncle Ambrose
+winced at saying it--"and what with selling my interest in the store
+when Miner went and a remembrance from Peachy I got a tidy sum of money
+in the bank. So I've got no special call to leave my money to nobody,
+but I know Pennyrile, and she sure would make it warm fer you ef I
+willed you my property 'thout makin' you my wife. Give me my answer,
+'Lizabeth; I ain't tryin' to bribe you, though I want you to stay by me,
+but I'm gittin' kind er tired and I ain't said all I've got to say yet."
+
+And here Uncle Ambrose turned his eyes for another time toward Emily's
+picture with their familiar appeal for light in dark places.
+
+"There is one more request I'm bound to make, but it ain't goin' to hurt
+you or any female to be sensible."
+
+"Uncle Ambrose," the old maid faltered, her yellow cheeks flushing
+palely, "ef you're sure you want to marry me I shall be plumb glad. I
+like to stay here and take care of you, and I don't want to leave you or
+this house. I'll try my best to do my part."
+
+"Then you listen to me," said the old man, speaking like a grown-up
+person to a confused child, "and you remember I don't want to hurt your
+feelin's, but whatsomever cometh I've got to git this out of me."
+
+"What is it, Uncle Ambrose?" Elizabeth inquired anxiously. "I told you I
+was hopeful to do my part."
+
+Before replying the old face set into beautiful lines of dignity and
+untarnished faith. "Do you recollect, 'Lizabeth, I told you once that
+when I died and crossed over the Jerden I was hopin' to spend the life
+eternal with Em'ly. T'ain't nothin' against little Sarah or Peachy, but
+you see I married Sarah 'fore I'd met up with Em'ly, and then Peachy
+she'd kind er staked out an original claim. It won't matter nothin' to
+Em'ly, but ef the truth be known I ain't no ways easy in my mind 'bout
+that Bible text I was a-repeatin' over to you. It may be I ain't got the
+Lord's meanin' exactly clear, whether the marriages made on this earth
+are goin' to hold good in heaven, so you kin surely see, 'Lizabeth, that
+there ain't no use in me addin' complications to the future at my time
+of life."
+
+And here reaching under his pillow Uncle Ambrose drew forth a crumpled
+sheet of paper torn from a book which deeded his cottage to Elizabeth
+Horton and five thousand dollars in bank in the event of her becoming
+his wife.
+
+"I know this document ain't legal," he explained, "but I'll have it writ
+out fair and square by a lawyer and sign it soon as ever I can ef
+you'll only give me a little slip of paper in return with a few easy
+words written on it."
+
+The woman waited a moment puzzled. "I don't quite understand you, Uncle
+Ambrose," she returned.
+
+"No, of course you don't, child. I just want to know ef you feel willin'
+to write down these here words: 'I, Elizabeth Horton, bein' fourth wife
+to Ambrose Thompson, do hereby relinquish all claim to him come the time
+when I shall meet him in heaven.' You see how 'tis, 'Lizabeth," Uncle
+Ambrose argued wistfully. "I wisht I'd thought to make some such plan
+with Peachy 'fore she died; not that I'm at all certain she'd 'a' done
+it," he added truthfully, "but it would 'a' eased my mind consid'ble in
+these last childish days ef I only had little gentle Sarah to explain
+things to on the other side. I don't want there should be any argufyin'
+or confusion just when Em'ly and me are tryin' to git off quiet to
+ourselves and talk things over."
+
+Elizabeth did not answer at once, for her vision did not naturally
+travel beyond the confines of this world, but other women before this
+old maid had travelled far in this now old man's leading. So she did
+not feel his request to be either childish or unreasonable, only she too
+wanted time to think. For after a while with her eyes resting
+affectionately upon the old face now lying so quiet on the pillow, and
+at the still beautiful and once so strong hands clasped together outside
+the counterpane, she leaned over toward him and whispered.
+
+"I'll give you that paper you want, Uncle Ambrose, and I'll write on it
+same as you wish me to, for I shall have the home, and somehow I feel it
+will be only right that you and Em'ly should have each other."
+
+"Amen!" whispered Uncle Ambrose.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+          THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
+          GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 168, "sympathic" changed to "sympathetic" (sympathetic sounds of)
+
+Page 217, "Sadduces" changed to "Sadducees" (remarked to the Saducees)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Loves of Ambrose, by Margaret Vandercook
+
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