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If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Delectable Mountains - -Author: Arthur Colton - -Release Date: October 21, 2015 [EBook #50270] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - - -THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS - -By Arthur Colton - -Charles Scribner's Sons - -1901 - - - -DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF - -MY SISTER, MABEL COLTON - - - -|So they went up to the Mountains, to behold the Gardens, and Orchards, -the Vineyards, and Fountains of water.... Now there was on the tops of -these Mountains, Shepherds feeding their flocks, and they stood by the -high-way side. The Pilgrims therefore went to them, and leaning upon -their staves, (as is common with weary Pilgrims, when they stand to -talk with any by the way,) they asked, Whose delectable Mountains are -these?... When the Shepherds perceived that they were way-faring men, -they also put questions to them, as, Whence came you? and, How got you -into the way? and, By what means have you so persevered therein?... Then -said the Shepherds one to another, Let us here shew to the Pilgrims the -Gates of the Coelestial City, if they have skill to look through our -Perspective Glass.... Then they essayed to look, but... they could not -look steadily through the Glass; yet they thought they saw something -like the Gate. - -_The Pilgrim's Progress_. - - - -CONTENTS: - - 1. The Place of Abandoned Gods - 2. The Leather Hermit - 3. Black Pond Clearing - 4. Joppa - 5. The Elders' Seat - 6. The Romance of the Institute - 7. Nausicaa - 8. Sanderson of Back Meadows - 9. Two Roads that meet in Salem - 10. A Visible Judgment - 11. The Emigrant East - 12. Tobin's Monument - - - - -THE PLACE OF THE ABANDONED GODS - -|The hut was built two sides and the roof of sodded poles; the roof -had new clapboards of birch bark, but the rest had once belonged to a -charcoal burner; the front side was partly poled and partly open, the -back was the under-slope of a rock. For it stood by a cliff, one of the -many that show their lonely faces all over the Cattle Ridge, except that -this was more tumultuous than most, and full of caves made by the clumsy -leaning bowlders; and all about were slim young birch trees in white and -green, like the demoiselles at Camelot. Old pines stood above the cliff, -making a soft, sad noise in the wind. In one of the caves above the -leafage of the birches we kept the idols, especially Baal, whom we -thought the most energetic; and in front of the cave was the altar-stone -that served them all, a great flat rock and thick with moss, where ears -of com were sacrificed, or peas or turnips, the first-fruits of the -field; or of course, if you shot a chipmunk or a rabbit, you could -have a burnt offering of that kind. Also the altar-stone was a council -chamber and an outlook. - -It was all a secret place on the north side of the Cattle Ridge, with -cliffs above and cliffs below. Eastward half a mile lay the Cattle Ridge -Road, and beyond that the Ridge ran on indefinitely; southward, three -miles down, the road took you into Hagar; westward the Ridge, after all -its leagues of length and rigor of form, broke down hurriedly to the -Wyantenaug River, at a place called the Haunted Water, where stood -the Leather Hermit's hut and beyond which were Bazilloa Armitage's -bottom-lands and the Preston Plains railroad station. The road from -the station across the bridge came through Sanderson Hollow, where the -fields were all over cattle and lively horses, and met the Cattle Ridge -Road to Hagar. And last, if you looked north from the altar-stone, you -saw a long, downward sweep of woodland, and on and on miles and miles to -the meadows and ploughed lands toward Wimberton, with a glimpse of the -Wyantenaug far away to the left. Such were the surroundings of the place -of abandoned gods. No one but ourselves came there, unless possibly the -Hermit. If any one had come it was thought that Baal would pitch him -over the cliffs in some manner, mystically. We got down on our hands and -knees, and said, "O Baal!" He was painted green, on a shingle; but -his eyes were red. The place was reached from the Cattle Ridge Road by -trail, for the old wood-road below was grown up to blackberry brambles, -which made one scratched and bloody and out of patience, unless it were -blackberry time. - -And on the bank, where the trail drops into the climbing highway, there -Aaron and Silvia were sitting in the June afternoon, hand in hand, with -the filtered green light of the woods about them. We came up from Hagar, -the three of us, and found them. They were strangers, so far as we knew. -Strangers or townsmen, we never took the trail with any one in sight; -it was an item in the Vows. But we ranged up before them and stared -candidly. There was nothing against that. Her eyes were nice and blue, -and at the time they contained tears. Her cheeks were dimpled and pink, -her brown dress dusty, and her round straw hat cocked a bit over one -tearful blue eye. He seemed like one who had been growing fast of late. -His arms swung loosely as if fastened to his shoulders with strings. The -hand that held her small hand was too large for its wrist, the wrist too -large for the arm, the arm too long for the shoulder. He had the first -growth of a downy mustache, a feeble chin, a humorous eye, and wore a -broad-brimmed straw hat and a faded black coat, loose and flopping to -his knees. A carpet bag lay at his feet, only half full and fallen over -with an air of depression. He seemed depressed in the same way. - -"What's she crying for?" asked Moses Durfey, stolidly. - -Aaron peered around at her shyly. - -"She's scared to go home. I ain't, but I mote be 'fore I got there." - -"What's your name?" - -"We-ell--" - -He hesitated. Then, with loud defiance: - -"It's Mr. and Mrs. Bees." - -A red squirrel clambered down a low-hanging branch overhead, and -chattered sharply, scattering flakes of bark. Aaron, still holding -Silvia's hand, leaned back on the bank and looked up. All lines of -trouble faded quickly from his face. He smiled, so that his two front -teeth stood out startlingly, and held up a long forefinger. - -"Cherky little cuss, ain't he?" - -The squirrel became more excited. Aaron's finger seemed to draw him -like a loadstone. He slid down nearer and nearer, as far as the branch -allowed, to a foot or two away, chattering his teeth fearfully. We knew -that any one who could magnetize so flighty and malicious a person as a -red squirrel, must be a magician, however simple he might be otherwise. -Aaron snapped his finger and the squirrel fled. "We'd better be movin', -Silvy." - -Silvia's tears flowed the faster, and the lines of trouble returned to -Aaron's face. - -"Why don't she want to go home?" persisted Moses, stolidly. - -We drew close beside them now and sat on the bank, Moses and I by Aaron, -Chub Leroy by Silvia. Chub was thoughtful. Silvia dried her eyes and -said with a gulp: - -"It's pa." - -"That's it." Aaron nodded and rubbed his sharp nose. "Old man Kincard, -it's him." - -They both looked at us trustfully. Moses saw no light in the matter. - -"Who's he?" - -"He's my father-in-law. He ain't goin' to like it. He's a sneezer. What -he don't like generally gets out of the way. My snakes! He 'll put Silvy -up the chimney and me in the stove, and he 'll light the fire." - -He chuckled and then relapsed into trouble. His emotions seemed to flit -across his face like sunbeams and shadows on a wall, leaving no trace -behind them, or each wiped out by the next. - -"Snakes! We might just as well sit here." - -Silvia wept again. Moses's face admitted a certain surprise. - -"What'll he do that for?" - -While Aaron told their story, Silvia sometimes commented tearfully -on his left, Moses stolidly on his right, and the red squirrel with -excitement overhead; Chub and I were silent; the woods for the most part -kept still and listened too, with only a little sympathetic murmur of -leaves and tremble of sunbeam and shadow. - -The Kincard place, it seemed, lay five miles away, down the north side -till you cleared the woods, and then eastward among the foothills. Old -Kincard's first name was James. And directly across the road stood the -four-roomed house where the Bees family once lived. It was "rickety -now and rented to rats." The Bees family had always been absent-minded, -given to dying off and leaving things lying around. In that way Aaron -had begun early to be an orphan and to live with the Kincards. He was -supposed to own the old house and the dooryard in front of it, but the -rats never paid their rent, unless they paid it to the old man or the -cat; and Mr. Kincard had a low opinion of Aaron, as being a Bees, and -because he was built lengthwise instead of sidewise and knew more about -foxes than cows. It seemed to Aaron that a fox was in himself a more -interesting person; that this raising more potatoes than you could eat, -more tobacco than you could smoke, this making butter and cheese and -taking them to Wimberton weekly, and buying little except mortgages -and bank accounts, somewhere involved a mistake. A mortgage was an -arrangement by which you established strained relations with a neighbor, -a bank account something that made you suspicious of the bank. Now in -the woods one dealt for direct usefulness, comfort, and freedom of mind. -If a man liked to collect mortgages rather than fox-skins, it was the -virtue of the woods to teach tolerance; but Mr. Kincard's opinion of -Aaron was low and active. There was that difference between a Kincard -and a Bees point of view. - -Aaron and Silvia grew up a few years apart on the old spread-out farm, -with the wooded mountainside heaving on the south and stretching east -and west. It was a neighborhood of few neighbors, and no village within -many miles, and the old man was not talkative commonly, though he'd open -up sometimes. Aaron and Silvia had always classed themselves together in -subdued opposition to their grim ruler of destiny. To each other they -called him "the old man," and expressed by it a reverential but opposed -state of mind. To Aaron the undoubted parts of life were the -mountain-side of his pleasures and the level fields of his toil. -Wimberton was but a troubled glimpse now and then, an improbable memory -of more people and houses than seemed natural. Silvia tended to see -things first through Aaron's eyes, though she kept a basal judgment of -her own in reserve. - -"He always licked us together since we was little," said Aaron, looking -at Silvia with softly reminiscent eye. "It was two licks to me for -Silvy's one. That was square enough, and the old man thought so. When he -got set in a habit he'd never change. It was two to me for Silvy's one." - -Aaron told him, but a week now gone, that himself and Silvia would wish -to be married, and he seemed surprised. In fact he came at Aaron with -the hoe-handle, but could not catch him, any more than a lonesome -rabbit. Then he opened up astonishingly, and told Aaron of his low -opinion of him, which was more spread-out and full of details than you'd -expect. He wasn't going to give Aaron any such "holt on him as that," -with a guaranty deed, whatever that was, on eternity to loaf in, and he -set him the end of the week to clear out, to go elsewhere forever. To -Aaron's mind that was an absurd proposal. He wasn't going to do any -such foolishness. The rather he sold his collection of skins to a farmer -named Shore, and one morning borrowed a carpet bag and came over the -Cattle Ridge hand in hand with Silvia. - -From Preston Plains they hired a team, drove over the line into York -State, and were married. The farmer named Shore laid that out for them. -He had a back score of trouble with the old man. - -"And Silvy's got a cat," added Aaron, "and she catches rats to please -herself. Silvy thinks she ought to catch rats to be obligin'. Folks that -live up these trees don't act that way. No more did Shore." - -Here Aaron looked shrewd and wise. - -"I wish Sammy was here," murmured Silvia, lovingly. - -"First-rate cat," Aaron admitted. "Now, we didn't marry to oblige each -other. Each of us obliged himself. Hey?" - -Silvia opened her eyes wide. The idea seemed a little complicated. They -clasped hands the tighter. - -"Now," said Aaron, "Silvy's scared. I ain't, but I mote be when I got -there." - -A blue-jay flew shrieking down the road. Aaron looked after it with a -quick change of interest. - -"See him! Yes, sir. You can tell his meanness the way he hollers. Musses -folks' eggs." - -Aaron no longer surprised us now, nor did Silvia. We accepted them. -We had standards of character and conduct, of wisdom and of things -possible, but they were not set for us by the pulpit, the statute book, -or the market-place. We had often gone forth on expeditions into the -mystical beyond, always with a certain purpose to achieve there, and at -some point it had been necessary to come home and face the punishment, -if there were any, to have supper, and go to bed. Home could not be left -permanently and another existence arranged, any more than the feet could -be taken from the earth permanently. It had been found impractical. -Aaron and Silvia were like ourselves. They might conceive of living away -from the farmhouse under the mountain-side a few days. They shrank from -facing old Kincard with his hoe-handle or horse-whip, but one must -go back eventually. We recognized that their adventure was bold and -peculiar; we judged the price likely to be appalling; we gave them -frank admiration for both. None of us had ever run away to be definitely -married, or suffered from a hoe-handle or a horse-whip, and yet all -these were things to be conceived of and sympathized with. - -"I knew a blue-jay," went on Aaron, thoughtfully, "that lived near the -end of Shore's land, and he never appeared to like anything agreeable. -He used to hang around other folks' nests and holler till they were -distracted." - -Silvia's snuffling caught his ear, and once more the rapid change passed -over his face. - -"We-ell," he said, "the old man'll be lively, that's sure. I'd stay -in the woods, if it was me, but women"--with a large air of -observation--"have to have houses.". - -"We've got a house," broke in Chub, suddenly. We exchanged looks -furtively. - -"They'll have to take the Vows," I objected. "We've took 'em," said -Aaron. "Parson--" - -"You'll have to solemn swear," said Moses. "Will you solemn swear?" - -"I guess so." - -"And if you tell, you hope you drop dead." - -The blue-jay flew up the road again, shrieking scornfully. The red -squirrel trembled and chattered his teeth on the branch overhead. All -else in the woods was silent while Aaron and Silvia took the Vows. - -And so we brought them, in excitement and content, to the place of the -abandoned gods. Baal lurked far back in his cave, the cliff looked down -with lonely forehead, the distant prospect was smooth and smoky. Neither -the gods nor the face of the world offered any promise or threat. But -Aaron and Silvia seemed to believe in the kindness of not human things. -Silvia fell to chattering, laughing, in unforeboding relief from sudden -and near-by evil. - -Aaron had a surprising number of silver dollars, due to Shore and the -fox-skins, by means of which we should bring them supplies from Hagar; -and so we left them to the whispering gossip of leaves, the lonely -cliff, the lurking Baal, and the smooth, smoky prospect. - -No doubt there were times to Aaron and Silvia of trembling awe, -dumb delight, conversations not to the point, so that it seemed more -successful merely to sit hand in hand and let the moon speak for them, -pouring light down silvery gulfs out of the abundant glory within her. -There could be seen, too, the dawn, as pink as Silvia's cheeks, but, -after all, not so interesting. A hermit-thrush sang of things holy at -dawn, far down the woodland, while the birch leaves trembled delicately -and the breeze was the sigh of a world in love; and of things quietly -infinite at sunset in the growth of rosy gloom. - -"It's nice," Silvia might whisper, leaning to Aaron. - -"That's a hermit-thrush down there, Silvy. He opens his mouth, and oh! -Kingdom's comin'." - -"Yes." - -"Little brown chap with a scared eye. You don't ever see him hardly." - -"You don't want to, do you, Aaron?" after a long silence. - -"Don't know as you do." - -There would be a tendency, at least, to look at things that way, -and talk duskily as the dusk came on, and we would leave them on the -altar-stone to take the trail below. - -But early in the afternoon it would be lively enough, except that Silvia -had a prejudice against Baal, which might have been dangerous if Baal -had minded it; but he did her no harm. She referred to Elijah and those -prophets of Baal, and we admitted he had been downed that time, for it -took him when he was not ready, and generally he was low in his luck -ever since. But we had chosen him first for an exiled dignity, who must -needs have a deadly dislike for the other dignity who had once conquered -him vaingloriously, and so must be in opposition to much that we -opposed, such as Sunday-school lessons, sermons, and limitations of -liberty. It might be that our reasonings were not so concrete and -determined, but the sense of opposition was strong. We put it to Silvia -that she ought to respect people's feelings, and she was reasonable -enough. - -Old Kincard, it seemed, was an interesting and opinionated heathen, and -Silvia had not experienced sermons and Sunday-schools. That explained -much. But she had read the Bible, which her mother had owned, before -she died; and we could follow her there, knowing it to be a book of -naturally strong points, as respects David for instance, Joseph, and -parts of Revelation. - -Aaron did not care for books, and had no prejudice toward any being -or supposition that might find place in the woods. The altar-stone was -common to many gods and councils, and we offered it to Silvia, to use as -she liked. I judge she used it mostly to sit there with Aaron, and hear -the hermit-thrush, or watch the thick moonlight pour down the scoop of -the mountain. - -That stretch of the Wyantenaug which is called the Haunted Water is -quiet and of slow current, by reason of its depth, and dark in color, by -reason of the steep fall of the Cattle Ridge and the pines which crowd -from it to the water's edge. The Leather Hermit's hut stood up from the -water in the dusk of the pines. - -He came to the valley in times within the memories of many who would -speak if they were asked, but long enough ago to have become a settled -fact; and if any did not like him, neither did they like the Wyantenaug -to flood the bottom-lands in spring. The pines and the cliffs belonged -to the Sandersons, who cared little enough for either phenomenon. - -We often met him on the Cattle Ridge, saw him pass glowering through the -thicket with shaggy gray beard and streaming hair. Sometimes he wore -a horse-blanket over his leathern vestment. He was apt to be there -Sundays, wandering about, and maybe trying to make out in what respect -he differed from Elijah the Tishbite; and although we knew this, and -knew it was in him to cut up roughly if he found out about Baal, being -a prophet himself both in his looks and his way of acting, still he went -to and fro for the most part on the other side of the crest, where he -had a trail of his own; and you could not see the altar-stone from -the top of the cliff, but had to climb down till you came to a jam of -bowlders directly over it. - -We did not know how long he may have stood there, glowering down on us. -The smoke of the sacrifice was beginning to curl up. Baal was -backed against a stone, looking off into anywhere and taking things -indifferently. Silvia sat aside, twirled her hat scornfully, and said we -were "silly." Aaron chewed a birch twig, and was very calm. - -We got down on our hands and knees, and said, "O Baal!" - -And the Hermit's voice broke over us in thunder and a sound as of -falling mountains. It was Sunday, June 26, 1875. - -He denounced us under the heads of "idolaters, gone after the -abornination of the Assyrians; babes and sucklings, old in sin, setting -up strange gods in secret places; idle mockers of holy things, like the -little children of Bethel, whereby they were cursed of the prophet and -swallowed of she-bears"; three headings with subdivisions. - -Then he came down thumping on the left. Silvia shrieked and clung to -Aaron, and we fled to the right and hid in the rocks. He fell upon Baal, -cast him on the altar-fire, stamping both to extinction, and shouted: - -"I know you, Aaron Bees and Silvia Kincard!" - -"N-no, you don't," stammered Aaron. "It's Mrs. Bees." - -The Hermit stood still and glared on them. - -"Why are you here, Aaron and Silvia Bees?" - -Aaron recovered himself, and fell to chewing his birch twig. - -"We-ell, you see, it's the old man." - -"What of him?" - -"He'd lick us with a hoe-handle, wouldn't he? And maybe he'd throw -us out, after all. What'd be the use? Might as well stay away," Aaron -finished, grumbling. "Save the hoe." - -The Hermit's glare relaxed. Some recollection of former times may have -passed through his rifted mind, or the scent of a new denunciation drawn -it away from the abornination of Assyria, who lay split and smoking -in the ashes. He leaped from the altar-stone, and vanished under the -leafage of the birches. We listened to him crashing and plunging, -chanting something incoherent and tuneless, down the mountain, till the -sound died away. - -Alas, Baal-Peor! Even to this day there are twinges of shame, misgivings -of conscience, that we had fled in fear and given him over to his enemy, -to be trampled on, destroyed and split through his green jacket and red -eye. He never again stood gazing off into anywhere, snuffing the fumes -of sacrifice and remembering Babylon. The look of things has changed -since then. We have doubted Baal, and-found some restraints of liberty -more grateful than tyrannous. But it is plain that in his last defeat -Baal-Peor did not have a fair chance. - -Concerning the Hermit's progress from this point, I can only draw upon -guesses and after report. He struck slantingwise down the mountain, left -the woods about at the Kincard place, and crossed the fields. - -Old Kincard sat in his doorway smoking his pipe, thick-set, -deep-chested, long-armed, with square, rough-shaven jaws, and steel-blue -eyes looking out of a face like a carved cliff for length and edge. The -Hermit stood suddenly before and denounced him under two heads--as a -heathen unsoftened in heart, and for setting up the altar of lucre and -pride against the will of the Lord that the children of men should marry -and multiply. Old Kincard took his pipe from his mouth. - -"Where might them marriers and multipliers be just now?" - -The Hermit pointed to the most westward cliff in sight from the doorway. - -"If you have not in mind to repent, James Kincard, I shall know it." - -"Maybe you'd put them ideas of yours again?" - -The Hermit restated his position accurately on the subject of heathen -hearts and the altar of lucre. - -"Ain't no mistake about that, Hermit? We-ell, now--" - -The Hermit shook his head sternly, and strode away. Old Kincard gave a -subterranean chuckle, such as a volcano might give purposing eruptions, -and fixed his eyes on the western cliff, five miles away, a grayish spot -in the darker woods. - -Alas, Baal-Peor! - -Yet he was never indeed a wood-god. He was always remembering how fine -it had been in Babylon. He had not cared for these later devotions. He -had been bored and weary. Since he was gone, split and dead, perhaps it -was better so. He should have a funeral pyre. - -"And," said Chub Leroy, "we'll keep his ashes in an urn. That's the way -they always did with people's ashes." - -We came up the Cattle Ridge Road Monday afternoon, talking of these -things. Chub carried the urn, which had once been a pickle-jar. Life -still was full of hope and ideas. The Hermit must be laid low in his -arrogance. Apollo, now, had strong points. Consider the pythoness -and the oracle. The Hermit couldn't prophesy in the same class with a -pythoness. The oracle might run, - - "He who dwells by the Haunted Water alone, - - He shall not remain, but shall perish." - -We came then to the hut, but Silvia would have, nothing to do with -Baal's funeral, so that she and Aaron wandered away among the birches, -that were no older than they, young birches, slim and white, coloring -the sunlight pale green with their leaves. And we went up to the -altar-stone, and made ready the funeral, and set the urn to receive the -ashes, decently, in order. The pyre was built four-square, of chosen -sticks. We did not try to fit Baal together much; we laid him on as he -came. And when the birch bark was curling up and the pitchy black smoke -of it was pouring upward, we fell on our faces and cried: "Alas, Baal! -Woe's me, Baal!" - -It was a good ceremony. For when you are doing a ceremony, it depends on -how much your feelings are worked up, of course, and very few, if any, -of those we had done--and they were many--had ever reached such a point -of efficiency as the funeral of Baal-Peor. Moses howled mournfully, -as if it were in some tooth that his sorrow lay. The thought of that -impressiveness and luxury of feeling lay mellow in our minds long after. -"Alas, Baal!" - -Somebody snorted near by. We looked up. Over our heads, thrust out -beyond the edge of the bowlders, was a strange old face, with heavy -brows and jaws and grizzled hair. - -The face was distorted, the jaws working. It disappeared, and we sat up, -gasping at one another across the funeral pyre, where the black smoke -was rolling up faster and faster. - -In a moment the face came out on the altar-stone, and looked at us with -level brows. - -"What ye doin'?" - -"My goodness!" gasped Moses. "You aren't another hermit?" - -"What ye doin'?" - -Chub recovered himself. - -"It's Baal's funeral." - -"Just so." - -He sat down on a stone and wiped his face, which was heated. He carried -a notable stick in his hand. "Baal! We-ell, what ailed him?" - -"Are you Silvia's old man?" asked Chub. - -"Just so--er--what ailed Baal?" - -Then we told him--seeing Baal was dead and the Vows would have to be -taken over again--we told him about Baal, and about the Leather Hermit, -because he seemed touched by it, and worked his face and blinked his -sharp hard eyes uncannily. Some hidden vein of grim ideas was coming to -a white heat within him, like a suppressed molten stratum beneath the -earth, unsuspected on its surface, that suddenly heaves and cracks the -faces of stone cliffs. He gave way at last, and his laughter was the -rending tumult of an earthquake. - -Aaron and Silvia came up through the woods hastily to the altar-stone. - -"I say," cried Chub. "Are you going to lick them? It's two to Aaron for -one to Silvia." - -"Been marryin' and multiplying have ye?" - -He suppressed the earthquake, but still seemed mainly interested in -Baal's funeral. - -Aaron said, "She's Mrs. Bees, anyhow." - -"Just so. Baal's dead. That hermit's some lively." - -"We'll get an oracle on him," said Moses. "What you going to do to Aaron -and Silvia?" - -Here Silvia cast herself on the old man suddenly and wept on his -shoulder. One often noticed how girls would start up and cry on a -person. - -Maybe the earthquake had brought up subsoils and mellowed things; at -least Kincard made no motion to lick some one, though he looked bored, -as any fellow might. - -"Oh, we-ell, I don't know--er--what's that oracle?" - - "He who dwells hy the Haunted Water alone, - - He shall not remain, but shall perish." - -"It's going to be like that," said Chub. "Won't it fetch him, don't you -think?" - -"It ought to," said the old man, working his jaw. "It ought to." - -The black smoke had ceased, and flames were crackling and dancing all -over the funeral pyre. The clearer smoke floated up against the face of -the lonesome cliff. Aaron and Silvia clasped hands unfrightened. The -old man now and then rumbled subterraneously in his throat. Peace was -everywhere, and presently Baal-Peor was ashes. - - - - -THE LEATHER HERMIT - -|To know the Wyantenaug thoroughly is to be wise in rivers; which if any -one doubts, let him follow it from its springs to the sea--a possible -fortnight--and consider then how he is a changed man with respect to -rivers. Not that by any means it is the epitome of rivers. It is no -spendthrift flood-stream to be whirling over the bottom-lands in April -and scarcely able to wet its middle stones in August, but a shrewd and -honest river, a canny river flowing among a canny folk, a companionable -river, loving both laughter and sentiment, with a taste for the -varieties of life and a fine vein of humor. Observe how it dances and -sputters down the rapids--not really losing its temper, but pretending -to be nervous--dives into that sloping pass where the rocks hang high -and drip forever, runs through it like a sleuth-hound, darkly and -savagely, and saunters out into the sunlight, as who should say in a -guileless manner, "You don't happen to know where I'm going?" Then -it wanders about the valley, spreads out comfortably and lies quiet a -space, "But it really makes no difference, you know"; and after that -gives a chuckle, rounds a bunch of hills and goes scampering off, quite -taken up with a new idea. And so in many ways it is an entertaining and -friendly river, with a liking for a joke and a pretty notion of dramatic -effect. - -But, of all times and places, I think it most beautiful in the twilight -and along that stretch, called of late the Haunted Water, opposite the -village of Preston Plains. The Cattle Ridge with its long heaving spine -comes down on the valley from the east, seeming to have it very much in -mind to walk over and do something to Preston Plains three miles beyond; -but it thought better of that long ago. The Wyantenaug goes close -beneath it in sheer bravado: "You try to cross me and you get jolly -wet"; for the Wyantenaug is very deep and broad just here. The Cattle -Ridge, therefore, merely wrinkles its craggy brows with a puzzled air, -and Preston Plains is untroubled save of its own inhabitants. As to that -matter the people of the village of Hagar have opinions. The valley -road goes on the other side of the river--naturally, for there are the -pastures, the feeding cattle, the corn-fields, and farmhouses--and the -Cattle Ridge side is steep, and threaded by a footpath only, for a mile -or more, up to Hants Corby's place. Hants Corby's is not much of a place -either. - -In old times the footpath was seldom used, except by the Leather Hermit. -No boy in Hagar would go that way for his life, though we often went up -and down on the river, and saw the Leather Hermit fishing. The minister -in Hagar visited him once or twice, and probably went by the footpath. -I remember distinctly how he shook his head and said that the Hermit -sought salvation at any rate by a narrow way, and how the miller's wife -remonstrated with him for seeming to take the Hermit seriously. - -"You don't mean to say he ain't crazy," she said, in anxious defence of -standard reason. - -"Oh, I suppose so, yes." - -The minister sighed and rubbed his chin uneasily, and Mrs. Mather -recovered her ordinary state of mind, which was a state of suppressed -complaint. - -I was saying that the footpath was seldom used. Hants Corby would have -used it--for he was too shiftless to be afraid--if the river had run -the other way. As it was, he preferred to drift down in his boat and -row back when he had to. He found that easier, being very shiftless. The -Hermit himself went on the river, except in the spring when the current -below was too strong. - -The opinions of the Leather Hermit may be shown in this way. If you came -on him, no matter suddenly, and asked whose land that was across the -river, he would answer promptly, "The devil's"; whereas it belonged -to Bazilloa Armitage, a pillar of the church in Preston Plains, who -quarrelled zealously with the other pillars; so that, as one sees, the -Leather Hermit was not in sympathy with the church in Preston Plains. - -The people of the valley differed about him according to humor, and he -used strong language regarding the people of the valley according -to opportunity, especially regarding Bazilloa Armitage. He denounced -Bazilloa Armitage publicly in Preston Plains as a hypocrite, a -backbiter, and a man with a muck rake--with other language stronger -still. Bazilloa Armitage felt hurt, for he was, in fact, rather close, -and exceedingly respectable. Besides it is painful to be damned by a man -who means exactly what he says. - -To speak particularly, this was in the year 1875; for the next year we -camped near the spot, and Hants Corby tried to frighten us into seeing -the Hermit's ghost. Bazilloa Armitage was denounced in June, and Hants -Corby on the second Friday in August, as Hants and the Hermit fished -near each other on the river. The Hermit denounced him under three -heads--sluggard, scoffer, and beast wallowing in the sty of his own -lustful contentment. On Saturday the Hermit rowed up to Hants Corby's -place in the rain and denounced him again. - -Sunday morning the Hermit rose early, turned his back on the Wyantenaug, -and climbed the cliff, onward and up through the pines. The prophets of -old went into high places when they prayed; and it was an idea of his -that those who would walk in the rugged path after them could do no -better. Possibly the day was an anniversary, for it was of an August -day many years gone--before ever a charcoal pit was built on the Cattle -Ridge--that the Hermit first appeared on the Wyantenaug, with his -leather clothes in a bundle on his back, and perhaps another and -invisible burden beneath it. A third burden he took up immediately, that -of denouncing the sins of Wyantenaug Valley, as I have said. - -All that Sabbath day the river went its way, and late in the afternoon -the sunlight stretched a thin finger beneath the hemlocks almost to the -Hermit's door. Across the river the two children of Bazilloa Armitage, -boy and girl, came down to the water's edge. The boy pulled a pole -and line out of some mysterious place in the bank. The little girl sat -primly on the grass, mindful of her white pinafore. - -"You better look out, Cis," he said. "Any fish you catch on Sunday -is devils. You don't touch him. You cut the line and let him dry till -Monday." - -"Oh, Tad!" gasped the little girl, "won't the Leather Hermit tell?" - -"Well," said Tad, sturdily, "father said he'd get even, if it took -a month of Sundays, and that's six Sundays by this time. There ain't -anything bothers the Hermit like catching the fish on Sundays, specially -if you catch a lot of 'em. Blamed old fool!" grumbled Tad. - -"Oh, Tad," gasped the little girl again, in awed admiration, "that's -swearing." - -But Tad did not mind. "There's Hants Corby," he exclaimed; "he's going -to fish, too." - -Hants Corby floated down in his old boat, dropped anchor opposite the -children, and grinned sociably. - -"He daren't touch his boat to-day," he said in a husky whisper. "He'll -raise jinks in a minute. You wait." - -"Fishes is devils on Sunday, aren't they, Hants?" - -"Trout," returned Hants, decisively, "is devils any time." - -Both Tad Armitage and Hants Corby ought to have known that the Leather -Hermit sometimes went up the Cattle Ridge on Sundays to wrestle with -an angel, like Jacob, who had his thigh broken. We knew that much in -Hagar--and it shows what comes of living in Preston Plains instead of -Hagar. - -Hants Corby motioned with his thumb toward the Hermit's hut. - -"Him," he remarked, "he don't let folks alone. He wants folks to let him -alone particular. That ain't reasonable." - -"Father says he's a fernatic," ventured Tad. "What's a fernatic, Hants?" - -"Ah," said Hants, thoughtfully, "that's a rattlin' good word." - -Time dragged on, and yet no denouncing voice came from the further -shore. The door of the hut was a darker hole in the shade of the -hemlocks. Hants Corby proposed going over to investigate. - -"If he ain't there, we'll carry off his boat." - -Tad fell into Hants's boat quite absorbed in the greatness of the -thought. It was not a good thing generally to follow Hants Corby, who -was an irresponsible person, apt to take much trouble to arrange a bad -joke and shiftlessly slip out from under the consequences. If he left -you in a trap, he thought that a part of the joke, as I remember very -well. - -"A-a-a-ow!" wailed Cissy Armitage from the bank; for it dawned on her -that something tremendous was going forward, in which Tad was likely -to be suddenly obliterated. She sat on the bank with her stubby shoes -hanging over, staring with great frightened blue eyes, till she saw -them at last draw silently away from the further shore--and behold, the -Hermit's boat was in tow. Then she knew that there was no one in the -world so brave or so grandly wicked as Tad. - -Cissy Armitage used to have fluffy yellow hair and scratches on her -shins. She was a sunny little soul generally, but she had a way of -imagining how badly other people felt, which interfered with her -happiness, and was not always accurate. Tad seldom felt so badly as she -thought he did. Tad thought he could imagine most things better on the -whole, but when it came to imagining how badly other people felt, -he admitted that she did it very well. Therefore when she set about -imagining how the Hermit felt, on the other side of the river, with no -boat to come across in, to where people were cosy and comfortable, where -they sang the Doxology and put the kittens to bed, she quite forgot that -the Hermit had always before had a boat, that he never yet had taken -advantage of it to make the acquaintance of the Doxology or the kittens, -and imagined him feeling very badly indeed. - -Bazilloa Armitage held family prayers at six o'clock on Sunday -afternoons; and all through them Cissy considered the Hermit. - -"I sink in deep waters," read Bazilloa Armitage with a rising -inflection. "The billows go over my head, all his waves go over me, -Selah," and Cissy in her mind saw the Hermit sitting on the further -shore, feeling very badly, calling Tad an "evil generation," and saying: -"The billows go over my head, Selah," because he had no boat. She -thought that one must feel desperately in order to say: "Selah, -the billows go over me." And while Bazilloa Armitage prayed for the -President, Congress, the Governor, and other people who were in trouble, -she plotted diligently how it might be avoided that the Hermit should -feel so badly as to say "Selah," or call Tad an "evil generation"; how -she might get the boat back, in order that the Hermit should feel better -and let bygones be; and how it might be done secretly, in order that Tad -should not make a bear of himself. Afterwards she walked out of the back -door in her sturdy fashion, and no one paid her any attention. - -The Hermit muttered in the dusk of his doorway. - -Leather clothes are stiff after a rain and bad for the temper; moreover, -other things than disordered visions of the heavens rolling away as a -scroll and the imperative duty of denouncing some one were present in -his clouded brain,--half memories, breaking through clouds, of a time -when he had not as yet begun to companion daily with judgment to come, -nor had those black spots begun to dance before his eyes, which black -spots were evidently the sins of the world. He muttered and shifted his -position uneasily. - -There was once a little white house somewhere in the suburbs of a city. -It stood near the end of a half-built street, with a sandy road in -front. There was a child, too, that rolled its doll down the steps, -rolled after it, wept aloud and laughed through its tears. - -The stiff leather rasped the Hermit's skin. The clouds closed in again; -he shook himself, and raised his voice threateningly in words familiar -enough to the denounced people of the Wyantenaug: "It is written, 'Thou -shalt have no other gods before me'; and your gods are multitudes." -He stared with dazed eyes across the dusky river. The little ripples -chuckled, sobbed and gurgled in a soft, human way. Something seemed to -steal in upon him, like a gentle hand, pleading and caressing. He -made an angry motion to thrust it away, and muttered: "Judgment to -come--judgment to come." He seemed to hear a sobbing and whispering, -and then two infinite things came together in his shattered brain with a -crash, leaving him stunned and still. - -There was a syringa bush before the little white house, a picket fence, -too, white and neat. Who was it that when he would cry, "Judgment to -come!" would whisper and sob? That was not a child. That was--no--well, -there was a child. Evidently it rolled its doll down the steps and -rolled after it. There was a tan-yard, too, and the dressing of hides. -He dressed hides across a bench. The other men did not take much -interest in judgment to come. They swore at him and burned sulphur under -his bench. After that the child rolled its doll down the steps again, -and bumped after it pitifully. - -The Hermit groaned and hid his face. He could almost remember it all, if -it were not for the black spots, the sins of the world. Something surely -was true--whether judgment to come or the child bumping down the steps -he could not tell, but he thought, "Presently I shall forget one of the -two." - -The sun had set, and the dusk was creeping from the irregular hills -beyond, over the village of Preston Plains, over the house of Bazilloa -Armitage. Dark storm-clouds were bearing down from the north. A glitter -sprang once more into the Hermit's eyes, and he welcomed the clouds, -stretching out his hands toward them. Suddenly he dropped his hands, and -the glitter died out in a dull stare. Across the last red reflection of -the water glided a boat, his own boat, or one like it. A little child in -white rose up and stood in the prow, and, as though she were a spirit, -the light in the west passed into her hair. It was not the right way for -judgment to come. The dark clouds bearing down from the north--that -was judgment to come; but the spirit in the boat, that--could not be -anything--it was false--unless--unless it rolled down the steps. And -then once more the two infinite things came together with a crash. He -leaped to his feet; for a moment his hands went to and fro over his -head; he babbled mere sounds, and fell forward on his face, groaning. - -Cissy Armitage achieved the top of the bank with difficulty, and -adjusted her pinafore. The Hermit lay on his face very still. It was -embarrassing. - -"I--I brought back your boat, so you needn't feel bad. I--I feel bad." - -She stopped, hearing the Hermit moan once softly, and then for a time -the only sound was the lapping of the water. It was growing quite dark. -She thought that he must feel even worse than she had imagined. - -"I'm sorry. It's awful lonesome. I--want to go home." - -The Hermit made no motion. Cissy felt that it was a bad case. She -twisted her pinafore and blinked hard. The lumps were rising in her -throat, and she did not know what to say that would show the Hermit how -badly she felt--unless she said "Selah." It was strong language, but she -ventured it at last. - -"I feel awful bad. The--the billows go over my head, Selah!" Then she -wished that she had let "Selah" quite alone. - -The Hermit lifted his face. It was very white; his eyes were fixed and -dead-looking, and he got his feet under him, as if he intended to creep -forward. Cissy backed against a tree, swallowed lumps very fast, and -decided to kick if he came near. But he only looked at her steadily. - -"What is your name?" he said in a slow, plaintive tone, as a man speaks -who cannot hear his own voice. Cissy thought it silly that he should not -know her name, having seen her often enough,--and this gave her courage. -"Cecilia Armitage. I want to go home." - -"No!" shouted the Hermit. He sat up suddenly and glared at her, so that -the lumps began climbing her throat again faster than ever. "That isn't -the name." Then he dropped his head between his knees and began sobbing. -Cissy did not know that men ever cried. It seemed to tear him up, and -was much worse than "The billows go over me, Selah." On the whole there -seemed to be no point in staying longer. She walked to the bank and -there hesitated diffidently. - -"I want to go home. I--I want you to row me." - -There was a long silence; the Hermit's head was still hidden between his -knees. Then he came over and got into the boat, not walking upright, but -almost creeping, making no noise, nor lifting his head. He took the oars -and rowed, still keeping his head down, until the boat came under the -old willow, where the bank runs low on the edge of Bazilloa Armitage's -ten-acre lot. It struck the bank, but he sat still, with his head down. -Cissy Armitage scrambled up the roots of the willow, looked back, and -saw him sitting with his head down. - -Cissy Armitage was the last to see the Leather Hermit alive, for Hants -Corby found him Monday afternoon in shallow water, about a rod from -shore. The anchor stone was clasped in his arms, and the anchor rope -wound around his waist, which would seem to imply that he was there -with a purpose. If that purpose was to discover which of two things -were true--judgment to come, or the child that rolled its doll down -the steps--every one is surely entitled to an opinion on its success or -failure. There was a copy-book, such as children use, found in his -hut. On the cover was written, "The Book of Judgment." It contained -the record of his denunciations, with other odd things. The people of -Wyantenaug Valley still differ, according to humor; but any one of them -will give his or her opinion, if you ask it. - - - - -BLACK POND CLEARING - -|In those days I knew Hamilton only by the light in the south; for in -Hagar men said, "That light in the south is Hamilton," as they would -say, "The sunrise in the east, the sunset in the west, the aurora in the -north," illuminations that were native in their places. Hamilton was a -yellow glimmer on clear nights, and on cloudy nights a larger glow. It -crouched low in the sky, pale, secret, enticing. - -Also I knew that Hamilton was twenty miles away, like Sheridan's ride. -How great and full of palaces and splendors that must be which shone so -far! How golden its streets, and jewelled its gates, like the Celestial -City, which is described in Revelations and "The Progress" in an -unmistakable manner, if not as one would wish in the matter of some -details. Yet to speak justly, "The Progress" was considered a passable -good story, though not up to the "Arabian Nights"; and Revelations had -its points, though any one could see the writer was mixed in his mind, -and upset probably by the oddness of his adventures, and rather stumped -how to relate them plainly. - -But this story does not include the city of Hamilton, although touching -on the lights in the south. It left its mark upon me and cast a shadow -over many things that did not seem connected with it, being a kind of -introduction for me to what might be called the Greater Melancholies. - -There are four roads that meet in Hagar: the Cattle Ridge, the Salem, -the Windless Mountain, and the Red Rock. The Salem is broad, level, -and straight; the Windless sweeps around the mountain, deep through -the pines, the jungle of other woods, and the gorge of the falling Mill -Stream; the Red Rock is a high, clean hill road, open and bare; the -Cattle Ridge Road comes down from highest of all, from far up on the -windy brows of the Ridge, and dips and courtesies all the way into -Hagar. Some time I would like to make more plain the nature and -influence of the Four Roads. But the adventure began on the Cattle Ridge -Road with a wide-armed chestnut tree, where certain red squirrels lived -who were lively and had thin tails. I went out over the road on a long -limb with Moses Durfey and Chub Leroy, seeing Mr. Cummings driving a -load of hay down from the Cattle Ridge: it seemed desirable to drop on -the hay when it passed beneath. Mr. Cummings was sleepy. He sat nodding -far down in front, while we lit softly on the crest and slid over -behind. - -And next you are to know that Chub Leroy's feet came down thump on the -head of a monstrous man, half buried in the hay, who sat up and looked -around, vast, shaggy, black-bearded, smoking a corncob pipe, composed, -and quite ragged in his clothes. - -"Humph!" he said mildly, and rubbed his head. - -After a few moments looking us over, he pointed with his thumb through -the hay at Mr. Cummings, and leaned toward us and winked. - -"Same as me," he whispered, and shook all over his fatness, silently, -with the laughter and pleasure he was having inside. - -It is a good thing in this world to have adventures, and it is only a -matter of looking around a bit in country or city. For each fellow -his quest is waiting at the street corner, or hides in the edge of the -woods, peering out of green shadows. On all highways it is to be met -with and is seldom far to seek--though no harm if it were--because the -world is populous with men and animals, and no moment like another. It -may be, if you drop on a hay-load, you will have a row with the driver, -or you will thump on the head such a free traveller as ours, vast, -shaggy, primeval, pipe-smoking, of wonderful fatness. - -He seemed a sleepy, contented man, not in point of fact minding thumps -on the head. The hay-cart rolled on gently in the dust. Mr. Cummings -drowsed in front, unaware, and the Free Traveller drowsed behind, -smoking listlessly. The rest of us grew sleepy too and liked everything. -For it was odd but pleasant in a way to look down from the secrecy of -the hay on familiar things, on the village dooryards and the tops of -hats. We seemed to fall into silent league with the Free Traveller, to -be interested in things, but not anxious, observing the hats of labor -and ambition, careless of appearance, primitive, easy, seeing little -importance in where the cart might go, because anywhere was good enough. - -Instead of turning east at the cross-roads, Mr. Cummings drove drowsily -ahead on the Windless Road, although the Cummings place is east on the -Salem; so that the hay was plainly going to the little pasture barn, -three miles off, all one to us, and better for the Free Traveller, as it -appeared after. But he was not interested then, being in a fair way to -sleep. We lay deep in the hay and looked up at the blue of the sky and -the white of the creeping clouds, till the pine trees closed suddenly -over the road, the cliffs of Windless Mountain on one side and the Mill -Stream on the other, deep under its bank. A strong south wind came under -the pines, skirting the corner of the mountain, hissed through the pine -needles, and rumpled the hay. - -And there was a great smoke and blaze about us. "Humph!" said the Free -Traveller. - -He went off the back of the hay-cart into the middle of the road, and we -too fell off immediately, each in his own way, on the pine needles. -Mr. Cummings came up over the top of the load with a tumult of mixed -language, and the horses ran away. - -The great load sped down the green avenue smoking, crackling, blazing, -taking with it Mr. Cummings to unknown results, and leaving the Free -Traveller sitting up in the middle of the road and looking after it -mildly. He heaved himself up puffing. "There!" he said. "There goes my -pipe." - -"It's all your fault," shouted Moses Durfey. "You shouldn't smoke on -hay-loads." - -"Maybe Mr. Cummings is a deader," said Chub Leroy, thoughtfully. - -The Free Traveller rubbed his leg. - -"You're same as me. If he ain't dead he'll come back with a strap and -lam some of us. That ain't me. I'm going to light out." - -He slid under the rail and down the bank to the stream, handling himself -wonderfully for so weighty a man; for he seemed to accommodate himself -to obstacles like a jellyfish, and somehow to get around them. So he was -over the bowlders and across the stream, which there divides Windless -Mountain from the Great South Woods. - -We were indignant that he should leave us to be "lammed" for his -carelessness. We shouted after, and Moses Durfey said he was a "chump." - -"You might come along," retorted the Free Traveller with an injured -manner. "What's hindering? I lugs nobody. I lets folks alone." - -He was at the wood's edge by this time, where a dim green path went in, -looked over his shoulder a moment, and then disappeared. We scrambled -down the bank and over the bowlders, for it was not desirable to wait -for Mr. Cummings, and Hagar itself would be no refuge. Hagar was a place -where criticisms were made, while the green woods have never a comment -on any folly, but are good comrades to all who have the temper to like -them. We caught up with him by dint of running and followed silently. -It grew dusky with the lateness of the afternoon, the pale green light -turning dark, and we were solemn and rather low in our minds. The Free -Traveller seemed to grow more vast in outline. Being short of wind he -wheezed and moaned and what with his swaying as he walked, and his great -humpy shoulders and all, he looked less and less like a man, and more -and more like a Thing. Sometimes a tree would creak suddenly near at -hand, and I fancied there were other people in the woods, whispering and -all going the way we went, to see what would come to us in the end. - -So it went on till we came on a little clearing, between the forest and -a swamp. A black pond, tinted a bit with the sunset, lay below along -the edge of the swamp; and we knew mainly where we were, for there was -a highway somewhere beyond the swamp, connecting the valleys of the -Wyantenaug and the Pilgrim. But none the less for the highway it seemed -a lonely place, fit for congregations of ghosts. The pond was unknown to -me, and it looked very still and oily. The forest seemed to crowd about -and overhang the clearing. On the western side was a heap of caverned -bowlders, and a fire burned in front with three persons sitting beside -it. - -The Free Traveller slid along the wood's edge noiselessly but without -hesitation, and coming to the fire was greeted. One of those who sat -there was a tall old man with very light blue eyes and prominent, his -beard white and long. As we came to know, he was called the "Prophet." -He said: - -"How do, Humpy?" so that we knew the Free Traveller was called Humpy, -either for the shape of his shoulders or for the word he used to express -himself. There was a younger man, with a retreating chin, and a necktie, -but no collar, and there was a silent woman with a shawl over her head. - -"These are friends o' mine," said the Free Traveller to the older man. -"Make you acquainted. That's Showman Bobby, and that's the Prophet." - -A vast chuckle of mirth started then from deep within him and surged -through his throat,--such a laugh as would naturally come from a whale -or some creature of a past age, whose midriff was boundless. - -"Ho!" he said. "Bloke with a hay-load lit under him. Ho, Ho!" - -"Gen'leman," said the Prophet with a fluent wave of his hand. "Friends -of Humpy's. That's enough. Any grub, Humpy?" - -The Free Traveller brought out a round loaf and some meat done up in -a newspaper. He might have carried a number of such things about him -without making any great difference in his contour. The Prophet did not -ask about the hay-load, or where the bread and meat came from. - -The daylight was fading now in the clearing, and presently a few thin -stars were out. It might have occurred to persons of better regulated -fancies than ours that they were due at supper long since with other -friends of staider qualities, and that now the wood-paths were too dark -to follow. Perhaps it did; but it could not have seemed a fair reason to -be troubled, that we were last seen in company with the Free Traveller, -so fat and friendly a man. I remember better that the Black Pond -reflected no stars, that the gleams from the fire played fearful games -along the wood's edge and the bowlders, and how, beyond the Black Pond, -the swamp and the close-cuddled hills, the lights of Hamilton crouched -low under the sky. Opposite us across the fire sat that woman who said -nothing, and her face was shadowed by her shawl. - -Showman Bobby and the Free Traveller went to sleep, Bobby on his face -and the Free Traveller accommodating himself. The Prophet sat up and -kept us company; for we asked him questions naturally, and he seemed -interested to answer, and was fluent and striking in his speech. They -were a runout Company and very low in their luck; and it seemed that -Bobby was the manager, a tumbler himself by profession and in that -way of life since childhood; and the Free Traveller was apt to be an -Australian giant now, but in earlier years had been given to footing -from place to place and living as he might. The Prophet called him a -skilful man at getting things out of women, partly by experience, and -partly by reason of his size and the mildness of his manners. As for the -Black Pond Clearing, it was well known to people of the road, even to -orange-men and pack-peddlers, being a hidden place with wood and water -and shelter in the caves from rain. - -"That light in the south is Hamilton," said Chub Leroy. - -The Prophet started and looked anxiously across the fire, but the woman -did not move. Then he drew nearer us and spoke lower. - -"You look out," he said. "She ain't right in her head. Bobby painted the -kid for a pappoose. It took the shakes and died queer. You'd better lie -down, Cass," speaking across the fire to the woman, who turned her head -and stared at him directly. "You'd better lie down." - -She drew back from the fire noiselessly and lay down, wrapping her shawl -about her head. - -"I ain't been a circus heeler all my time," began the Prophet. "I been a -gentleman. Neither has Humpy, I reckon. When I met Bobby it was West and -he ran a dime museum. He took me in for being a gifted talker, and I -was that low in my luck. She and Bobby was married sometime, and she did -acts like the Circassian Beauty, and the Headless Woman, and the Child -of the Aztecs. Humpy's gifts lies in his size, and he's a powerful -strong man, too, more than you'd think, and he can get himself up for a -savage to look like a loose tornado. Look at him now. Ain't he a heap? -There was a three-eyed dog in the show that you could n't tell that the -extra eye was n't so hardly, and a snake that was any kind of a snake -according as you fixed him, his natural color being black. We came -East with Forepaugh's. Bobby bought a tent in Chicago, and we came to -Hamilton a fortnight ago. Now there's Hamilton that's a-shining off -there with its lights. And we run away from it in the night a week come -to-morrow, or next day, I forget. We left the tent and outfit which was -come down on by a Dutch grocer for debt, and Cassie's baby was dead -in the tent. Bobby painted him too thick. And there was a lot of folks -looking for us with sticks. Now, that was n't right. Think Bobby'd have -poisoned his own kid if he'd known better about painting him, a kid -that was a credit to the show! That's what they said. Think folks coming -round with sticks and a-howling blasphemous is going to help out any -family mourning! That ain't my idea. - -"Then a fellow says, 'I don't know anything about it,' he says, 'and I -don't want to, but I know you get out of here quick.' - -"And they drove us out of Hamilton that night ten miles in a covered -cart, and left us in the road. And the Dutch grocer got the outfit. I -reckon the circus and the city has buried the kid between 'em. Hey? -Sh! She's got a quirk. All I know is Fore-paugh's shook us as if we was -fleas." - -The Prophet looked over to where Cassie lay, but she did not stir. -Anyway, if she heard, it was the Prophet's fault. "They're awful poor -company," he said plaintively, "Bobby and Cass. She takes on terrible. -She's took a notion that baby ain't buried right. She thinks--well, I -don't know. Now that ain't my way of looking at things, but I did n't -own the outfit. It was Bobby's outfit, and the Dutch grocer got it." - -He was silent for a moment. We could hear the Free Traveller asleep and -rumbling in his throat. - -"Where might you chaps come from?" asked the Prophet, suddenly. "Not -that it's my business. Maybe there might be a town over there? Hey? -Yes." - -He grumbled in his beard a few moments more, and then lay down to sleep. -We drew together and whispered. The three men slept, and the woman said -nothing. - -It is seen that sometimes your most battered and world-worn of men is -the simplest in his way of looking at things. Or else it was because the -Prophet was a talker by nature, and Bobby and Cass such poor company, -that he fell into speech with us on such equal terms. I have set down -but little of what he said, only enough for the story of the Company, -and as I happen to recollect it. - -It should have been something earlier than nine o'clock when the Prophet -lay down to sleep, and half an hour later when we first noticed that -the woman, Cass, was sitting up. She had her back to us and was looking -toward the lights of Hamilton. There was no moon and the stars only -shone here and there between clouds that hurried across the sky, making -preparations for the storm that came in the morning. The fire burned -low, but there was no need of it for warmth. The outlines of the hills -could be seen. The swamp, the pond, and most of the clearing were dark -together. - -Presently she looked cautiously around, first at the three sleepers, and -then at us. She crept nearer slowly and crouched beside the dull fire, -throwing back her shawl. Her hair was black and straggled about her -face, and her eyes were black too, and glittering. The glow of the -embers, striking upward, made their sockets cavernous, but the eyes -stood out in the midst of the caverns. One knows well enough that -tragedies walk about and exchange agreeable phrases with each other. -Your tragedy is yours, and mine is mine, and in the meanwhile see to -it that we look sedate, and discuss anything, provided it is of no -importance to either. One does not choose to be an inscribed monument to -the fame of one's private affair. But Cassie had lost that instinct of -reserve, and her desolation looked out of her eyes with dreadful candor. -The lines of her face, the droop of her figure and even little motions -of the hand, signified but one thought. I suppose all ideas possible -to the world had become as one to her, so that three boys cowering away -from her seemed only a natural enough part of the same subject. It was -all one; namely, a baby painted brown, who died queerly in a side tent -in Hamilton Fair Grounds. - -We stared at her breathlessly. - -"You tell 'em I'm going," she whispered. - -"Where?" asked Chub. - -"They ain't no right to--to--Who are you?" - -But this was only in passing. She did not wait to be answered. - -"You tell 'em I'm going." - -"What for?" persisted Chub. - -"It's six days. Maybe they throwed him where the tin cans are. You tell -'em I'm going." - -And she was gone. She must have slipped along the edge of the woods -where the shadows were densest. - -We listened a moment or two stupidly. Then we sprang up. It seems as if -the three men were on their feet at the same instant, wakened by some -common instinct or pressure of fear. It was a single sound of splashing -we heard off in the darkness. Bobby was gone, then the Free Traveller, -then the Prophet. We fell into hollows, over rocks and stumps, and came -to the pond. The reflection of a star or two glimmered there. The water -looked heavy, like melted lead, and any ripple that had been was gone, -or too slight to see. The Free Traveller and Bobby went in and waded -about. - -"Don't you step on her," said Bobby, hoarsely. - -The bottom seemed to shelve steeply from the shore. They moved along -chest-deep, feeling with their feet, and we heard them whispering. The -Prophet sat down and whimpered softly. They waded a distance along the -shore, and back. They came close in, whispered together, and went out -again. - -"Here! I got it," said the Free Traveller. They came out, carrying -something large and black, and laid it on the ground. - -"It ain't Cassie!" whimpered the Prophet. "It ain't Cassie, is it?" - -They all stood about it. The face was like a dim white patch on the -ground. - -"Hold your jaw," said Bobby. "Hark!" - -There were voices in the woods above, and a crashing of the branches. -They were coming nearer and lights were twinkling far back in the -wood-path, where we had entered the clearing. I do not know what thought -it was--some instinct to flee and hide--that seized the outcasts. They -slid away into the darkness together, swiftly and without speaking. The -Free Traveller had Cassie's body on his shoulder, carrying it as a child -carries a rag doll. The darkness swallowed them at a gulp, and we -stood alone by the Black Pond. Several men came into the clearing with -lanterns, villagers from Hagar, Harvey Cummings, the minister, and -others, who swung their lanterns and shouted. - -Now, I suppose that Cassie lies buried to-day somewhere in the South -Woods, and it may be that no man alive knows where. For none of the -Company were ever seen again in that part of the country, nor have -been heard of anywhere now these many years. We can see the lights of -Hamilton from Hagar as of old, but we seldom think of the Celestial -City, or any palaces and splendors, but of the multitude of various -people who go to and fro, each carrying a story. - -The coming and going of aliens made little difference with Hagar. I -suppose it was more important there, that Harvey Cummings's hay-load -went up lawlessly in smoke and flame, and never came to the little -pasture barn on the Windless Mountain Road. - - - - -JOPPA - -|On Friday afternoon, the twenty-eighth of June, Deacon Crockett's -horse ran away. It was not a suitable thing, not at all what a settled -community had a right to expect of a horse with stubby legs and no mane -to speak of, who had grown old in the order of decent conduct. He ran -into Mrs. Cullom Sanderson's basket phaeton and spilled Mrs. Cullom on -the ground, which was taking a grave responsibility. It was done in the -midst of Hagar. Harvey Cummings jumped out of the way and said, "Deb -it!" There was no concealment about it. Everybody heard of it and said -it was astonishing. - -The name of the deacon's horse was Joppa. The deacon's father-in-law, -Captain David Brett, had an iron-gray named Borneo. Borneo and Joppa did -not agree, on account of Borneo's kicking Joppa in the ribs to show his -contempt. It was natural that he should have this contempt, being sleek -and spirited himself, with a nautical gait that every one admitted to be -taking; and Joppa did not think it unnatural in him to show it. Without -questioning the justice of Borneo's position, he disliked being kicked -in the ribs. - -Borneo had been eating grass by the roadside; Joppa stood harnessed in -front of the horse-block; Mrs. Crockett stood on the horse-block; Borneo -came around and kicked Joppa in the ribs; Joppa ran away; Mrs. Crockett -shrieked; Harvey Cummings said "Deb it!" and Mrs. Cullom Sanderson was -spilled. She weighed two hundred pounds and covered a deal of ground -when she was spilled. - -He crossed the bridge and tore along the Salem Road, his stubby legs -pattering under him, and a great fear in his soul of the shouting -village behind. Angelica and Willy Flint saw him coming. - -"It's a runaway!" shouted Angelica. - -Willy Flint continued swinging on the gate. He thought it his place to -be self-contained and accurate. - -"It's Joppa," he said calmly. - -But Angelica did not care for appearances. She shied a clam-shell at -Joppa, said "Hi there!" and jumped around. - -Joppa swerved sharply, the deacon's buggy turned several sides up, -if that is possible, bobbed along behind, and then broke loose at the -thills. Joppa fled madly up the side road that leads to Scrabble Up and -Down, and disappeared over the crest of the hill, leaving Angelica and -Willy Flint to gloat over the wreck of the buggy. It gratified a number -of their instincts. - -The region called Scrabble Up and Down, as well as the road which leads -to it, is distinguished by innumerable small steep hills and hollows. -For the rest, it is a sandy and ill-populated district, and a lonely -road. Westward of it lies a wilderness of underbrush and stunted trees, -rising at last into exultant woods and billowing over the hills mile -upon mile to the valley of the Wyantenaug. The South Woods do not belong -to Scrabble Up and Down. They are put there to show Scrabble Up and Down -what it cannot do. - -The road winds around hillocks and down hollows in an aimless fashion; -and for that reason it is not possible to see much of it at a time. -When the villagers of Hagar reached the top of the first hill, Joppa -was nearly a mile away, his stubby legs rather tired, his spirit more -tranquil, and himself out of sight of the villagers of Hagar. He saw -no point in turning back. Hagar gave him but a dull and unideal -life, plodding between shafts before the austere and silent deacon, -unaccountably smacked with a whip, and in constant contrast with -Borneo's good looks. Joppa had not many ideas and little imagination. -He did not feel drawn to go back. Moreover he smelt something damp and -fresh in the direction of the woods which absorbed him. He stopped, -sniffed, and looked around. The fence was broken here and there, as -fences generally were in Scrabble Up and Down. The leaves were budding; -there was a shimmer of green on the distant woods; and presently Joppa -was wandering through the brush and scrub trees westward. The broken -shafts dragged quietly beside him. He lifted his head a little higher -than usual and had an odd feeling, as if he were enjoying himself. - -A tumult, row, or excitement of any kind was considered by the children -of Hagar a thing to be desired, assisted, and remembered gratefully. -Some of the elders were much of the same mind. Joppa's action was -therefore popular in Hagar, the more so that it was felt to be -incongruous; and, when by no search that Friday afternoon nor the -following Saturday could he be found, his reputation rose in leaps. He -had gone over the hill and vanished like a ghost, commonplace, homely, -plodding, downcast Joppa, known to Hagar in that fashion these dozen -or more years and suddenly become the loud talk of the day. The road -to Scrabble Up and Down and the roads far beyond were searched. Inquiry -spread to Salem and to Gilead. On Saturday night notices were posted -here and there by happy jokers relating to Joppa, one on the church door -of Hagar requesting the prayers of the congregation. Mr. Atherton Bell -thought the deacon's horse like "the deacon's one-hoss shay," in that he -had lasted an extraordinary time intact, and then disintegrated. Joppa -had become a mystery, an excitement, a cause of wit. A definite addition -had been made to the hoarded stock of tradition and jest; the lives of -all seemed the richer. An atmosphere of deep and tranquil mirth pervaded -the village, a kind of mellow light of humor, in the focus of which -stood Deacon Crockett, and writhed. - -It was hoped that the minister would preach on Joppa. He preached on -"human insignificance," and read of the war-horse, "Hast thou clothed -his neck with thunder?" but it was thought not to refer to Joppa. - -As for the children of Hagar, did they not dream of him, and hear him -thumping and blundering by in the winds of the dim night? They saw no -humor in him, nor in the deacon. Rather it was a serious mystery, and -they went about with the impression of it on their faces, having faith -that the outcome would be worthy of the promise. - -Harvey Cummings thought that the war-horse did not refer to Joppa, and -said so on the steps of the church. "There wan'd no thudder aboud him. -He was the meekest hoss in Hamilton County. He run away on accound of -his shyness." - -Mr. Cummings had no palate to speak of, and his consonants were -uncertain. Mr. Atherton Bell threw out his chest, as an orator should, -put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and gazed at Mr. Cummings -with a kindling eye. - -"For a meek horse," he said impressively, "he showed--a--great -resolution when he spilled Mrs. Cullom Sanderson. I declare to you, -Harvey, I give you my word, sir, I would not have missed seeing Mrs. -Cullom spilled for a government contract." - -"Oh, indeed, Mr. Bell!" said Mrs. Cullom Sanderson, rustling past, -"clothed with thunder" and black silk. Mr. Atherton Bell recovered -himself slowly and moved to a greater distance from the church door. -He was a politician and a legislator, but he found diplomacy difficult. -Several others gathered around, desiring to hear the statesman. "Now -suppose, Harvey, suppose the deacon too should take a notion to run -away, knock over Mrs. Cullom, you know, and--a--disappear. Imagine it, -Harvey." - -Mr. Cummings shook his head. - -"Can't do it." - -Mr. Bell took off his hat and smiled expansively. - -"It's a pleasing thought, ha! He might be translated--a--Elijah, you -know. He might leave his mantle to--to me. Hitherto the deacon has -lacked dramatic interest. Contact between Mrs. Cullom and Deacon -Crockett would--" (here his hearers stirred appreciatively) "would have -dramatic interest--Ah, good morning, deacon, good morning, sir. We were -speaking of your loss. We--a--trust it will not be permanent." - -The deacon moved on without answering. Mr. Atherton Bell's spirit fell -again, and he wiped his forehead nervously. - -It would be a painful thing if a man were suddenly to enter into full -sight of himself as others see him; it is a measure of distress even -to have a passing glimpse--not so much because he sees a worse man, but -because he sees a stranger. - -Deacon Crockett had never asked himself how others saw him. He was not a -flexible man. The grooves in which his life ran had been worn slowly -in a hard substance. Its purports and ends had always seemed to him -accurately measured and bounded. He exacted his rights, paid his dues, -and had no doubts about either; held his conscience before him as a -sword, dividing truth from falsehood. He stood by the faith of his -forefathers, gave up no jot or tittle of it; there were no hazy outlying -regions in that faith. - -When a man observes himself to be a well-defined thing in certain -relations with other well-defined things, has no more doubt of the -meaning of his presence on the earth than of the function of a cogwheel -in his watch, his footing seems singularly secure; the figure he makes -in his own eyes not only grows rigid with habit, but seems logically -exact to begin with. To doubt the function of the cog-wheel is to put in -question the watch, which is impossible and a sufficient demonstration. -Other men's opinions, if worth anything or considered at all, are -assumed to be respectful; and the assumption seems just. - -Why should he not feel impregnable in his personal dignity, who sees -himself sufficiently fulfilling his function in an ordered scheme, a -just man, elected to become perfect? Personal dignity is at least not a -vulgar ambition. It was the deacon's ambition, the thing which he wished -to characterize his life. - -The deacon walked down the path from the church. He walked quietly and -stiffly as usual, but the spirit within him was worse than angry; it -was confused. The whole neighborhood seemed to be laughing at him; his -fingers tingled at the thought. - -But that was not the source of his confusion. It was, strangely, that -there seemed to be no malice in the laughter, only a kind of amused -friendliness. An insult and a resentment can be understood by a man of -function, within his function; his resentment maintains his equilibrium. -But, quite the contrary, his neighbors seemed timidly to invite him into -the joke. Of all the hidden ways of laughter one comes last to that in -which he may walk and be amused with himself; although it is only there -that he is for the first time entirely comfortable in the world. Tim -Rae, the town drunkard, met him where the path across the Green joins -the road. It was Tim's habit to flee from the deacon's approach with -feeble subterfuges, not because the deacon ever lectured him, but -because the deacon's presence seemed to foreshorten his stature, and -gave him a chill in the stomach, where he preferred "something warm." -Yet he ambled amiably across the road, and his air of good-fellowship -could not have been greater if they had met in a ditch on equal terms of -intoxication. - -"What think, deacon," he gurgled. "I was dream-in' las' night, 'bout -Joppa comin' down my chimney, damned if he did n't." - -The deacon stopped and faced him. - -"You may be drunk, sir," he said slowly, "on Saturday night, and you may -curse on the Sabbath; but you _may not_ expect me to sympathize with -you--in either." - -Then Tim Rae slunk away foreshortened of stature and cold in the -stomach. - -Monday morning was the first of May; and on May-day, unless the season -were backward and without early flowers, the children of Hagar would go -after ground-pine for the May-baskets, and trailing arbutus to fill them -with. They would hang the baskets on the door-handles of those who were -thought worthy, popular persons such as the minister and Sandy Campbell; -on Mr. Atherton Bell's door-handle on account of Bobby Bell, who was a -gentleman but not allowed to be out nights because of his inferior age. - -Ground-pine grows in many places, but early arbutus is a whimsical -flower, as shy as first love. It is nearly always to be found somewhere -in the South Woods. And the South Woods are to be reached, not by -Scrabble Up and Down, but along the Windless Mountain Road, across the -Mill Stream, and by cart-paths which know not their own minds. - -The deacon drove home from Gilead Monday afternoon, and saw the children -noisily jumping the Mill Stream where the line of bowlders dams up the -stream and makes deep quiet water above. Their voices, quarrelling and -laughing, fell on his ear with an unfamiliar sound. Somehow they seemed -significant, at least suggesting odd trains of thought. He found himself -imagining how it would seem to go Maying; and the incongruity of it -brought a sudden frown of mental pain and confusion to his forehead. And -so he drove into Hagar. - -But if he had followed the May-day revellers, as he had oddly imagined -himself doing, he would have gone by those winding cart-paths, fragrant -with early growth, and might have seen the children break from the woods -with shouts into a small opening above a sunken pond; he might even have -heard the voice of Angelica Flint rise in shrill excitement: - -"_Why, there's Joppa!_" - -Some minutes after six, the first shading of the twilight being in the -air, the villagers of Hagar, whose houses lay along the north and south -road, rose on one impulse and came forth into the street. And standing -by their gates and porches, they saw the children go by with lost -Joppa in their midst. Around his neck was a huge flopping wreath of -ground-pine and arbutus. The arbutus did not stay in very well, and -there was little of it--only bits stuck in here and there. Joppa hung -his head low, so that the wreath had to be held on. He did not seem -cheerful; in fact, the whole cortège had a subdued though important air, -as if oppressed by a great thought and conscious of ceremony. - -The minister and the other neighbors along the street came out and -followed. Some dozen or more at last stood on the brow of the slight -hill looking down to the deacon's house; and they too felt conscious of -something, of a ceremony, a suspense. - -Mr. Atherton Bell met the children and drove his buggy into the ditch, -stood up and gazed over the back of it with an absorbed look. - -"I feel curious how the deacon will take it," said the minister. "I--I -feel anxious." - -Mr. Atherton Bell said, it got him. He said something too about -"dramatic interest" and "a good betting chance he'll cut up rough"; but -no one answered him. - -The procession halted outside the deacon's gate. A tendency to giggle -on the part of certain girls was sternly suppressed by Angelica Flint. -Willy Flint led Joppa cautiously up the board walk and tied him to a -pillar of the porch; the company began to retreat irregularly. - -Suddenly the deacon, tall and black-coated, stood in the doorway, Mrs. -Crockett at his elbow pouring forth exclamations; and the retreat became -a flight. Little Nettie Paulus fell behind; she stood in the middle of -the road and wailed piteously. - -The deacon glared at Joppa and Joppa's grotesque necklace, looked after -the fleeing children and saw on the brow of the hill the group of his -fellow-townsmen. His forehead flushed and he hesitated. At last he took -the wreath awkwardly from Joppa's neck, went into the house and shut -the door. The wreath hung in his front window seven months, and fell to -pieces about the end of November. Joppa died long after of old age and -rheumatism. - - - - -THE ELDER' SEAT - -|Between the mill and the miller's house in Hagar the Mill Stream made -a broad pool with a yellow bottom of pebbles and sand. It was sometimes -called the Mediterranean. If you wished to cross the Mill Stream, there -was a plank below, which was good to jounce on also, though apt to tip -you into the water. The pool was shallow, about twenty feet across and -as long as you might care to go upstream,--as far as the clay bank, -anyway, where Chub Leroy built the city of Alexandria. Jeannette Paulus -walked all over Alexandria to catch a frog, and made a mess of it, -and did not catch the frog. That is the way of things in this world. -Alexandria fell in a moment, with all her palaces and towers. But there -were other cities, and commerce was lively on the Mediterranean. - -On the nearer side, against the gray, weatherbeaten flank of the -miller's house was a painted bench, for convenience of the morning sun -and afternoon shade; and I call it now the Elders' Seat, because Captain -David Brett and others were often to be seen sitting there in the sun -or shade. I remember the minister was there, and Job Mather, the miller, -whenever his grist ran low, so that he let his stem millstones cease -to grind. These were the three to whom the Elders' Seat seemed to us to -belong by right of continuance, because our short memories ran not to -the contrary. Captain David was well in his seventies, the miller not -far behind, and Mr. Royce already gray-haired. They sat and watched the -rise and fall of cities, the growth and decay of commerce, the tumult of -conquests, and the wreck of high ambition. They noticed that one thing -did not change nor cease, namely, the ripple of the stream; just as -if, in history, there really were a voice distinguishable that went -murmuring forever. - -After the fall of Alexandria Damascus was built, but inland, so that it -had to be reached by caravan; and Moses Durfey laid the foundations of -Byzantium where the pool narrowed into rushing water, and Venice was -planted low in a marshy place hard by the seven hills of Rome. But you -must know that Bobby Bell built the city of Rome absurdly, and filled it -with pot-holes to keep frogs in and floating black bugs, so that it -was impossible to hold it against the Carthaginians. There were wars in -those days. These were the main marts of trade, but there were quays -and fortresses elsewhere; and it should be told sometime how the Barbary -pirates came down. Rome was in a bad way, for Bobby had one aquarium in -the Campus Martius, and another where the Forum should have been. There -was nothing flourishing but the aqueducts. - -The three Elders would sit leaning forward, watching the changes of -fortune and event that went on from hour to hour by the Mediterranean. -The captain smoked his pipe; the minister rested his chin on his cane; -the miller's hands were on his knees, his large white face stolid, -his heavy lips seldom moving. He was a thinking man, the miller,--a -slow-moving, slow-speaking, persistent man, and a fatalist in his way of -thinking, though he used no such term; it was his notion of things. - -They talked of old history out of Gibbon and Grote and the Seven -Monarchies, and they talked of things that had happened to them as -men in the world; but the things which they thought of most often, in -watching the children and the Mill Stream, they said little about, for -these had not happened a thousand or two thousand years before, nor -twenty or thirty, but just sixty or seventy. And this was why they came -so often to the Elders' Seat, because something dim and happy seemed to -come up to them, like a mist, from the Mill Stream, where the children -quarrelled and contrived. - -"I'll tell ye what ailed Rome," said Captain David. "She needed to be -keeled and scraped. She fouled her bottom!" - -The minister answered slowly: "No, she was rotten within. She lost the -faith in God and in man that keeps a people sound." - -"Ho! Well, then she wa'n't handled right." - -The miller rubbed his thumb slowly on the palm of his hand. "She was -grinded out," he said. "She couldn't help it. Corn can't keep itself -from meal when the stones gets at it. No more a man can't keep his bones -from dust, nor a people, either, I'm thinking, when its time comes." - -The minister shook his head. "I don't like that." - -"I don't know as I do, either. And I don't know as that makes any -difference." - -"Ho!" said the captain. "Bobby's got a new frog!" - -And Chub Leroy cried out in despair: "Look out, Bobby! You're stepping -on the Colosseum!" - -I would not pretend to say how long the Elders' Seat had stood there, or -how many years the Elders had come to it now and again; but I remember -that it seemed to us very permanent, in a world of shifting empires, -where Alexandria was suddenly walked upon and deserted, and Venice went -down the current in a rainy night, and was spoken of no more. We could -not remember when it had not stood in its place. It was a kind of -Olympus to us, or Delphi, where we went for oracles on shipping and -other matters. - -Afterward we grew up, and became too old to dabble and make beautiful -things of gray clay, except Chub Leroy, who is still doing something -of that kind, cutting and building with clay and stone. But the Elders' -Seat remained, and the Elders watched other children, as if nothing had -happened. Only, Captain David had trouble to keep his pipe in his mouth. -So that when the Elders' Seat took its first journey, it seemed very -difficult for us to understand,--even for those who were too old to -dabble in gray clay. - -It was not more than a quarter of a mile from the mill, past the drug -store, the Crocketts' house, where Captain David lived, and so on by -the crossroads, to the minister's, with the graveyard just beyond. I -remember how very yellow and dusty the road was in the summer of '86, so -that the clay bottom cracked off in flat pieces, which could be gathered -up; and then, if you climbed the wall with care enough, you could scale -them at woodchucks. August was sultry and still. The morning-glories -drooped on Captain David's porch, and the pigeons on the roof went to -sleep more than was natural. - -The minister and Job Mather sat, one afternoon, in the Elders' Seat; -for Captain David, he had not gone out through his gate those many days. -There was history enough in process on the Mediterranean. The Americans -and Carthaginians were preparing to have a battle, on account of docks -that ran too near together. The Elders discovered that they did not care -about it. - -The miller got to his feet, and lifted one end of the bench. "Come," he -said gruffly. "Let's move it." - -"Hey!" said the minister, looking troubled and a bit lost. Then his lips -trembled. "Yes, Job. That's so, Job. We'd better move it." - -The children came up from the Mediterranean in a body, and stared. It -was much to them as if, in Greece, the gods had risen up and gone away, -for unknown reasons, taking Olympus with them. The old men went along -the yellow, dusty road with very shuffling steps, carrying the Elders' -Seat, one at each end, till they turned into Captain David's garden and -put it down against the porch. Mrs. Crockett came to the door, and held -up her hands in astonishment. Captain David was helped out. He was faded -and worn with pain. He settled himself in the Elders' Seat. It did not -seem possible to say anything. The captain smoked his pipe; the minister -rested his chin on his cane; the miller's hands were on his knees, his -large white face stolid and set. - -"I'm goin' to shell those peas to-morrow," began the captain at last. -Then his voice broke, and a mist came into his eyes. - -"I bet ye the Americans are licking the Carthaginians." - -On the contrary, the Americans and Carthaginians, with other nations, -were hanging over the picket fence, staring and bewildered. What was the -use of mere human wars, if primeval things could be suddenly changed? -The grass might take a notion to come up pink or the seas to run out at -the bottom, and that sort of thing would make a difference. - -The sun dropped low in the west, and presently Chub Leroy, who built the -city of Alexandria ten years before, came slowly along in the shadow -of the maples, and St. Agnes Macree was with him. She was old Caspar -Macree's granddaughter, and he was a charcoal-burner on the Cattle Ridge -long ago. They were surprised to see the Elders' Seat, and stopped a -moment. St. Agnes looked up at him and smiled softly, and Chub's eyes -kept saying, "Sweetheart, sweetheart," all the time. Then they went on. - -"I remember--" said Captain David, and stopped short. - -"Eh! So do I," said the minister. - -"You do! Well, Job, do you remember? Ain't it the remarkablest thing!" - -The miller's heavy face was changed with a slow, embarrassed smile. And -all these three sat a long time very still, while the sunlight slanted -among the morning-glories and the pigeons slept on the roof. - -There came a day in September when the minister and the miller were -alone again on the Elders' Seat, but Captain David lay in his bed near -the window. He slept a great deal, and babbled in his half dreams: -sometimes about ships and cordage, anchorage in harbors and whaling in -the south seas; and at times about some one named "Kitty." I never heard -who Kitty was. He said something or other "wasn't right." He took the -trouble and the end of things all in good part, and bore no grudge to -any one for it; it seemed only natural, like coming to anchor at last. - -"When a man gets legs like mine," he said, "it's time he took another -way of getting round. Something like a fish'd be my notion. Parson, a -man gets the other side of somewhere, he can jump round lively-like, -same as he was a boy, eh?" - -The minister murmured something about "our Heavenly Father," and Captain -David said softly: "I guess he don't call us nothing but boys. He says, -'Shucks! it ain't natural for 'em to behave.' Don't ye think, parson? -Him, he might see an old man like me and tell him, 'Glad to see ye, -sonny'; same as Harrier in Doty's Slip. The boys come in after a year -out, or maybe three years, and old man Harrier, he says, 'Glad to see -ye, sonny'; and the boys gets terrible drunk. He kept a junk-shop, -Harrier." - -The minister tried to answer, but could not make it out. - -"I saw a ship go down sudden-like. It was in '44. It was inside Cape -Cod. Something blowed her up inside. Me, I've took my time, I have. What -ye grumbling about, parson?" - -In the morning the shutters were closed, and all about the house was -still. The pigeons were cooing on the roof of the porch; and Captain -David was dead, without seeing any reason to grumble. Down at the mill -the miller watched his monotonous millstones grinding slowly. - -The Elders' Seat was moved once more after Captain David died, not -back to the Mediterranean, but further up the yellow road and into the -minister's yard, facing westward. From there the captain's white slab -could be seen through the cemetery gate. The two Elders occupied the -seat some years, and then went in through the gate. - -But the Elders' Seat and its journeys from place to place seemed to -have some curious meaning, hardly to be spelled. I imagine this far, at -least: that at a certain point it became to the two more natural, more -quiet and happy, to turn their eyes in the direction the captain had -gone than in the direction they had all come. It pleased them then to -move the Elders' Seat a little nearer to the gate. And when the late -hour came, it was rather a familiar matter. The minister went in to look -for his Master, and the miller according to his' notion of things. - - - - -THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE - -|Not quite two centuries of human life have gone quietly in Wimberton, -and for the most part it has been on Main and Chester Streets. Main -Street is a quarter of a mile long and three hundred feet wide, with -double roads, and between them a clean lawn shaded by old elms. Chester -Street is narrow and crowded with shops, and runs from the middle of -Main down-hill to the railway and the river. It is the business street -for Wimberton and the countryside of fifteen miles about. Main Street -is surrounded by old houses of honorable frontage, two churches, and the -Solley Institute, which used to be called "Solley's Folly" by frivolous -aliens. - -Mr. Solley, who owned the mines up the river and the foundries that have -been empty and silent these many years, founded it in 1840. At the time -I remember best the Institute had twenty-one trustees, lady patronesses, -matrons, and nurses; and three beneficiaries, or representatives of the -"aged, but not destitute, of Hamilton County." That seemed odd to the -alien. - -Mr. Solley need not have been so rigid about the equipment and -requirements of admission, except that he had in mind an institution of -dignity. It stood at the head of Main Street, with wide piazzas like a -hotel. The aristocracy of old Wimberton used to meet there and pass the -summer afternoons. The young people gave balls in the great parlors, and -the three beneficiaries looked on, and found nothing to complain of in -the management. What matter if it were odd? True Wimberton folk never -called the Institute a folly, but only newcomers, before years of -residence made them endurable and able to understand Wimberton. Failure -is a lady of better manners than Success, who is forward, complacent, -taking herself with unpleasant seriousness. Imagine the Institute -swarming with people from all parts of the county, a staring success in -beneficence! - -Mr. Solley's idea was touched with delicacy. It was not a home for -Hamilton County poor, but for those who, merely lingering somewhat on -the slow descent, found it a lonely road. For there is a period in -life, of varying length, when, one's purposes having failed or been -unfulfilled, the world seems quite occupied by other people who are busy -with themselves. Life belongs at any one time to the generation which -is making the most of it. A beneficiary was in a certain position of -respectable humility. But I suppose it was not so much Mr. Solley's -discrimination as that in 1840 his own house was empty of all but a -few servants; and so out of his sense of loneliness grew his idea of a -society of the superannuated. That was the Solley Institute. - -It is not so difficult to recreate old Wimberton of seventy years back, -for the same houses stood on Main Street, and the familiar names were -then heard--Solley, Gore, Cutting, Gilbert, Cass, Savage. The elms were -smaller, with fewer lights under them at night, and gravel paths instead -of asphalt. - -One may even call up those who peopled the street, whom time has -disguised or hidden away completely. Lucia Gore has dimples,--instead of -those faded cheeks one remembers at the Institute,--and quick movements, -and a bewildering prettiness, in spite of the skirts that made women -look like decanters or tea-bells in 1830. She is coming down the gravel -sidewalk with a swift step, a singular fire and eagerness of manner, -more than one would suppose Miss Lucia to have once possessed. - -And there is the elder Solley, already with that worn, wintry old face -we know from his portrait at the Institute, and John Solley, the son, -both with high-rolled collars, tall hats, and stiff cravats. Women said -that John Solley was reckless, but one only notices that he is very -tall. - -"I'm glad to see you are in a hurry, too, my dear. We might hurry up the -wedding among us all," says the elder Solley, with a grim smile and a -bow. "Ha! Glad to see you in a hurry;" and he passes on, leaving the two -together. Lucia flushes and seems to object. - -Is not that Mrs. Andrew Cutting in the front window of the gabled house -directly behind them? Then she is thinking how considerate it is, how -respectful to Main Street, that John and Lucia are to marry. - -The past springs up quickly, even to little details. Mrs. Cutting wears -a morning cap, has one finger on her cheek, and is wondering why John -looks amused and Lucia in a temper. "He will have to behave himself," -thinks Mrs. Cutting. "Lucia is--dear me, Lucia is very decided. I don't -really know that John likes to behave himself." And all these people of -1830 are clearly interested in their own affairs, and care little for -those who will look back at them, seventy years away. - -Love climbs trees in the Hesperides, day in and out, very busy with -their remarkable fruit, the dragon lying beneath with indifferent jaws. -Do we observe how recklessly the young man reaches out, and how slightly -he knows the nature of his footing? The branches of such apple trees as -bear golden fruit are notoriously brittle. He might drop into the lazy -throat of Fate by as easy an accident as the observer into figures of -speech, and the dragon care little about the matter. That indifference -of Fate is hard, for it seems an expense for no value received by any -one. We are advised to be as little melancholy as possible, and charge -it to profit and loss. - -It is well known that John Solley left Wimberton late one night in -October, 1830. In the morning the two big stuccoed houses of Gore and -Solley looked at each other across the street under the yellow arch of -leaves with that mysterious expression which they ever after seemed to -possess to the dwellers on Main Street. And the Gores' housemaid picked -up a glittering something from the fell of the bearskin rug on the -parlor floor. - -"Land! It's Miss Lucia's engagement ring. She's a careless girl!" -Plannah was a single woman of fifty, and spoke with strong moral -indignation. - -Some mornings later Mr. Solley came stiffly down his front steps, -crossed the street under the yellow elms, and went in between the white -pillars of the Gore house. Mr. Gore was a middle-aged man, chubby, -benevolent, gray-haired, deliberate. He sank back in his easy-chair in -fat astonishment. - -"Oh, dear me! I don't know." - -Lucia was called. - -"Mr. Solley wishes to ask you--a--something." - -"I wish to ask if my son has treated you badly," said Mr. Solley, most -absurdly. - -"Not at all, Mr. Solley." - -Lucia's eyes were suddenly hot and shining. - -"I beg your pardon, but if John is a scoundrel, you will do me a favor -by telling me so." - -"Where is he? I shall do nothing of the kind." - -"I am about to write to my son." - -"And that's nothing to me," she cried, and went swiftly out of the room. - -"Oh, I suppose he's only a fool," said Mr. Solley, grimly. "I knew that. -Spirited girl, Gore, very. Good morning." - -"Dear me!" said Mr. Gore, mildly, rubbing his glasses. "How quickly they -do things!" - -Elderly gentlemen whose wives are dead and children adventuring in the -Hesperides should take advice. Mrs. Cutting might have advised against -this paragraph in Mr. Solley's letter: - -"I have taken the trouble to inquire whether you have been acting as a -gentleman should. Inasmuch as Miss Lucia seemed to imply that the matter -no longer interests her, I presume she has followed her own will, which -is certainly a woman's right. With respect to the Michigan lands, I -inclose surveys. You will do well," etc. - -But Mr. Solley had not for many years thought of the Hesperides as a -more difficult piece of property to survey than another. Men and women -followed their own wills there as elsewhere, and were quite right, so -long as they did business honorably. And Mr. Gore had been a managed and -advised man all his wedded life, and had not found, that it increased -his happiness. That advice had always tended to embark him on some -enterprise that was fatiguing. - -"A good woman, Letitia," often ran Mr. Gore's reflections; and then, -with a sense of furtiveness, as if Letitia somewhere in the spiritual -universe might overhear his thought, "a little masterful--a--spirited, -very." - -But it was hard for Wimberton people to have a secret shut up among -them. It was not respectful to Main Street, with John Solley fleeing -mysteriously in the night and coming no more to Wimberton, and Lucia -going about with her nose in the air, impossible to sympathize with. -Some months passed, and Lucia seemed more subdued, then very quiet -indeed, with a liking to sit by her father's side, to Mr. Gore's slight -uneasiness. She might wish him to do something. - -He knew no more than Wimberton what had happened to send John westward -and Lucia to sitting beside him in unused silence; but he differed from -Wimberton in thinking it perhaps not desirable to know. He would pat -her hand furtively, and polish his glasses, without seeming to alter the -situation. Once he asked timidly if it were not dull for her. - -"No, father." - -"I've thought sometimes--sometimes--a--I don't remember what I was going -to say." - -Lucia's head went down till it almost rested on his knee. - -"Father--do you know--where John is?" - -"Why--a--of course, Mr. Solley--" - -"No, no, father! No!" - -"Well, I might inquire around--a--somewhere." - -"No! Oh, promise me you won't ask any one! Promise!" - -"Certainly, my dear," said Mr. Gore, very much confused. - -"It is no matter," said Lucia, eagerly. - -Mr. Gore thought for several minutes, but no idea seemed to occur to -him, and it relieved him to give it up. - -Months have a way of making years by a rapid arithmetic, and years that -greet us with such little variety of expression are the more apt to -step behind with faint reproach and very swiftly. Mr. Solley founded -the Institute in 1840, and died. The Solley house stood empty, and Miss -Lucia Gore by that time was living alone, except for the elderly maiden, -Hannah. Looking at the old elms of Wimberton, grave and orderly, there -is much to be said for a vegetable life. There is no right dignity but -in the slow growths of time. - -The elms increased their girth; the railway crept up the river; the -young men went to Southern battle-fields, and some of them returned; -children of a second generation walked in the Hesperides; the Institute -was reduced to three beneficiaries; Main Street smelled of tar from the -asphalt sidewalks; Chester Street was prosperous. Banks failed in '73, -and "Miss Lucia has lost everything," said Wimberton gossip. - -The Solley house was alternately rented and empty, the Gore house was -sold, Miss Lucia went up to the Institute, and gossip in Wimberton woke -again. - -"Of course the Institute is not like other places, but then--" - -"Miss Lucia was such a lady." - -"But it's a charity, after all." - -"Very sensible of Miss Lucia, I'm sure." - -"She was engaged to old Institute Solley's son once, but it ended with a -bump." - -"Then Miss Lucia goes to the Institute who might have gone to the Solley -house." - -"Oh, that is what one doesn't know." - -"Miss Lucia a beneficiary! But isn't that rather embarrassing?" - -"I wonder if she--" - -"My dear, it was centuries ago. One does n't think of love-affairs fifty -years old. They dry up." - -"Respectable, and you pay a little." - -"But a charity really." - -That year the public library was built on Main and Gilbert Streets, the -great elm fell down in the Institute yard, Mrs. Andrew Cutting died -at ninety-eight, with good sense and composure, and here is a letter -written by Miss Lucia to Babbie Cutting. Babbie Cutting, I remember, had -eyes like a last-century romance, never fancy-free, and her dolls loved -and were melancholy, when we were children together under the elms in -Wimberton. The letter is written in thin, flowing lines on lavender -paper. - -_My dear Child_: I am afraid you thought that your question offended me, -but it did not, indeed. I was engaged to Mr. John Solley many years ago. -I think I had a very hasty temper then, which I think has quite wasted -away now, for I have been so much alone. But then I sometimes fell into -dreadful rages. Mr. Solley was a very bold man, not easily influenced or -troubled, who laughed at my little faults and whims more than I thought -he should. - -You seemed to ask what sudden and mysterious thing happened to us, but, -my dear, one's life is chiefly moved by trifles and little accidents and -whims. Mr. Solley came one night, and I fancied he had been neglecting -me, for I was very proud, more so than ordinary life permits women to -be. I remember that he stood with his hands behind him, smiling. He -looked so easy and strong, so impossible to disturb, and said, "You're -such a little spitfire, Lucia," and I was so angry, it was like hot -flames all through my head. - -I cried, "How dare you speak to me so!" - -"I don't know," he said, and laughed. "It seems perilous." - -I tore his ring from my finger and threw it in his face. It struck his -forehead and fell to the floor without any sound. There was a tiny red -cut on his forehead. - -"That is your engagement ring," he said. - -"Take it away. I want nothing more to do with you," I cried--very -foolishly, for I did, and my anger was going off in fright. He turned -around and went from the house. The maid found the ring in the morning. -Mr. Solley had left Wimberton that night. Well, my dear, that is all. I -thought he would have come back. It seemed as if he might. I am so old -now that I do not mind talking, but I was proud then, and women are not -permitted to be very proud. Do your romances tell you that women are -foolish and men are sometimes hard on them? - -That is not good romance at all, but if you will come to see me again -I will tell you much better romances than mine that I have heard, for -other people's lives are interesting, even if mine has been quite dull. - -Will you put this letter away to remember me by? But do not think of me -as a complaining old woman, for I have had a long life of leisure and -many friends. I do not think any one who really cares for me will do so -the less for my living at the Institute, and only those we love are of -real importance to us. It is kind of you to visit me. - -_Your Affectionate Friend._ - -So half a century is put lightly aside; Miss Lucia has found it quite -dull; and here is the year 1885, when, as every one knows, John Solley -came back to Wimberton, a tall old man with a white mustache, heavy -brows, and deep eyes. Men thought it an honor to the town that the great -and rich Mr. Solley, so dignified a man, should return to spend his last -days in Wimberton. He would be its ornamental citizen, the proper leader -of its aristocracy. But Babbie Cutting thought of another function. What -matter for the melancholy waste of years, fifty leagues across? Love -should walk over it triumphant, unwearied, and find a fairer romance -at the end. Were there not written in the books words to that effect? -Babbie moved in a world of dreams, where knights were ever coming home -from distant places, or, at least, where every one found happiness after -great trouble. She looked up into Mr. Solley's eyes and thought them -romantic to a degree. When she heard he had never married the thing -seemed as good as proved. And the little old lady at the Institute with -the old-fashioned rolled curls above her ears--what a sequel! - -It was a white winter day. The elms looked so cold against the sky that -it was difficult to remember they had ever been green, or believe it was -in them to put forth leaves once more. The wind drove the sharp-edged -particles of snow directly in Babbie's face, and she put her head down, -covering her mouth with her furs. She turned in at the Solley house, -and found herself in the drawing-room, facing that tall, thin, -military-looking old man, and feeling out of breath and troubled what to -do first. But Mr. Solley was not a man to let any girl whatever be ill -at ease, and surely not one with cheeks and eyes and soft hair like -Babbie Cutting. Presently they were experienced friends. Babbie sat in -Mr. Solley's great chair and stretched her hands toward the fire. Mr. -Solley was persuaded to take up his cigar again. - -"I had not dared to hope," he said, "that my native place would welcome -me so charmingly. I have made so many new friends, or rather they seemed -to be friends already, though unknown to me, that I seem to begin life -again. I seem to start it all over. I should have returned sooner." - -"Oh, I'm sure you should have," said Babbie, eagerly. "And do you know -who is living at the Institute now?" - -"The Institute? I had almost forgotten the Institute, and I am a -trustee, which is very neglectful of duty. Who is living at the -Institute now?" - -"Miss Lucia Gore." - -Mr. Solley was silent, and looked at Babbie oddly under his white -eyebrows, so that her cheeks began to burn, and she was not a little -frightened, though quite determined and eager. - -"Miss Lucia lost all her money when the banks failed, and she sold the -Gore house, and got enough interest to pay her dues and a little more; -but it seems so sad for Miss Lucia, because people will patronize her, -not meaning to. But they 're so stupid--or, at least, it doesn't seem -like Miss Lucia." - -"I did not know she was living," said Mr. Solley, quietly. - -"Oh, how could you--be that way!" - -Mr. Solley looked steadily at Babbie, and it seemed to him as if her -face gave him a clue to something that he had groped for in the darkness -of late, as if some white mist were lifted from the river and he could -see up its vistas and smoky cataracts. How could he be that way? It is -every man's most personal and most unsolved enigma--how he came to be -that way, to be possible as he is. Up the river he saw a face somewhat -like Babbie's, somewhat more imperious, but with the same pathetic -eagerness and desire for abundance of life. How could young John Solley -become old John Solley? Looking into Babbie's eyes, he seemed able to -put the two men side by side. - -"At one time, Miss Barbara," he said, "--you will forgive my saying -so,--I should have resented your reference. Now I am only thinking how -kind it is of you to forget that I am old." - -Babbie did not quite understand, and felt troubled, and not sure of her -position. - -"Mr. Solley," she said, "I--I have a letter from Miss Lucia. Do you -think I might show it to you?" - -"It concerns me?" - -"Y-yes." - -He walked down the room and back again. - -"I don't know that you ought, but you have tempted me to wish that you -would. Thank you." He put on his glasses and read it slowly. Babbie -thought he read it like a business letter. - -"He ought to turn pale or red," she thought. "Oh, he oughtn't to wear -his spectacles on the end of his nose!" - -Mr. Solley handed back the letter. - -"Thank you, Miss Barbara," he said, and began to talk of her -great-grandmother Cutting. - -Babbie blinked back her sudden tears. It was very different from -a romance, where the pages will always turn and tell you the story -willingly, where the hero always shows you exactly how he feels. She -thought she would like to cry somewhere else. She stood up to go. - -"I'm sorry I'm so silly," she said, with a little gulp and trying to be -dignified. - -Mr. Solley looked amused, so far as that the wrinkles deepened about his -eyes. - -"Will you be a friend of mine?" he asked. - -"Yes," said Babbie, plaintively, but she did not think she would. How -could she, and he so cold, so prosaic! She went out into the snow, which -was driving down Main Street from the Institute. It was four by the town -clock. - -They said in Wimberton that Mr. Solley left his house at seven o'clock -in the evening, and that Stephen, the gardener, held an umbrella in -front of him to keep off the storm all the way up the hill to the -Institute. And they said, too, that the lights were left burning in -the Solley house, and the fire on the hearth, and that the book he -was reading when Babbie went in lay open on the table. The fire burned -itself out. Stephen came in late, closed the book, and put out the -lights, and in the morning went about town saying that Mr. Solley was to -enter the Institute as a beneficiary. - -But it is a secret that on that snowy evening Mr. Solley and Miss Lucia -sat in the great east parlor of the Institute, with a lamp near by, -but darkness in all the distances about them. His hands were on his -gold-headed cane; Miss Lucia's rolls of white curls were very tidy over -her ears, and her fingers were knitting something placidly. She was -saying it was "quite impossible. One doesn't want to be absurd at -seventy-five." - -"I suppose not," said Mr. Solley. "I shouldn't mind it. What do you -think of the other plan?" - -"If you want my permission to be a beneficiary," said Miss Lucia, with -her eyes twinkling, "I think it would be a proper humiliation for you. I -think you deserve it." - -"It would be no humiliation." - -"It was for me--some." - -"It shall be so no more. I'll make them wish they were all old enough to -do the same--hem--confound them!" - -"Did you think of it that way, John?" - -Mr. Solley was silent for some moments. - -"Do you know, I have been a busy man," he said at last, "but there was -nothing in it all that I care to think over now. And to-day, for the -first time, that seemed to me strange. It was shown to me--that is, I -saw it was strange. We have only a few years left, and you will let -me be somewhat near you while they pass. Isn't that enough? It seems a -little vague. Well, then, yes. I thought of it that way, as you say. Do -you mind my thinking of it that way?" - -Miss Lucia's eyes grew a little tearful, but she managed to hide it -by settling her glasses. Seventy-five years in a small town make the -opinions of one's neighbors part of the structure of existence. It was -bitter, the thought that Main Street tacitly patronized her. - -"Why, no, I don't mind." - -She dropped her knitting and laughed suddenly. - -"I think, John," she said, "that I missed marrying a very nice man." - -Mr. Solley's glasses fell off with surprise. He put them on again and -chuckled to himself. - -"My father used to call me a--hem--a fool. He used to state things more -accurately than you did." - -After all, there was no other institute like Wimberton's. The standards -of other places were no measure for our conduct, and the fact that such -things were not seen elsewhere was a flattering reason why they should -be seen in Wimberton; namely, only five beneficiaries, and one of them -a rich man and a trustee. It was singular, but it suited Wimberton to -be singular. One thing was plain to all, that if Mr. Solley was a -beneficiary, then to be a beneficiary was a dignified, well-bred, and -suitable thing. But one thing was not plain to all, why he chose to be -a beneficiary. Babbie Cutting went up to the Institute, and coming back, -wept for pure sentiment in her white-curtained room, with the picture on -the wall of Sir Lancelot riding down by the whirling river, the island, -and the gray-walled castle of Shalott. - -I remember well the great ball and reception that Mr. Solley gave at the -Institute to celebrate his entry, and how we all paid our respects -to the five beneficiaries, four old men, who were gracious, but -patronizing,--one with gold eye-glasses and gold-headed cane,--and Miss -Lucia, with the rolled curls over her ears. The Institute, from that -time on, looked down on Main Street with a different air, and never lost -its advantage. It seemed to many that the second Solley had refounded it -for one of those whims that are ornamental in the rich. Babbie Cutting -said to her heart, "He refounded it for Miss Lucia." - -There was nowhere in Wimberton such dignified society as at the -Institute. Even so that the last visitor of all seemed only to come -by invitation, and to pay his respects with proper ceremony: "Sir, or -madam, I hope it is not an inconvenient time," or similar phrase. - -"Oh, not at all. It seems very dark around." - -"Will you take my arm? The path is steep and worn, and here is a small -matter of a river, as you see. I regret that the water is perhaps a -trifle cold. Yes, one hears so much talk about the other side that one -hardly knows what to think. There is no hurry. But at this point I say -good night and leave you. When you were young you often heard good night -said when the morning was at hand. May it be so. Good night." - - - - -NAUSICAA - -|The Fourteenth Infantry, volunteers, were mustered out on the last day -of April. Sandy Cass and Kid Sadler came that night into the great city -of the river and the straits with their heads full of lurid visions -which they set about immediately to realize. Little Irish was with them, -and Bill Smith, who had had other names at other times. And Sandy woke -the next morning in a room that had no furniture but a bed, a washstand, -a cracked mirror, and a chair. He did not remember coming there. Some -one must have put him to bed. It was not Kid Sadler or Little Irish; -they were drunk early, with bad judgment. It must have been Bill Smith. -A hat with a frayed cord lay on the floor. "That's Bill's hat," he said. -"He's got mine." - -The gray morning filled the window, and carts rattled by in the street. -He rose and drank from the pitcher to clear the bitterness from his -mouth, and saw himself in the glass, haggard and holloweyed. It was a -clean-cut face, with straight, thin lips, straight eyebrows, and brown -hair. The lips were white and lines ran back from the eyes. Sandy did -not think he looked a credit to himself. - -"Some of it's yellow fever," he reflected, "and some of it's jag. About -half and half. The squire can charge it to the yellow." - -He wondered what new thing Squire Cass would find to say to his -"rascally nephew, that reprobate Ulysses." Squire Cass was a red-faced -gentleman and substantial citizen of that calm New England town of -Wimberton, which Sandy knew very well and did not care for. It was too -calm. But it would be good for his constitution to go there now. He -wondered if his constitution would hold out for another night equally -joyful; "Maybe it might;" then how much of his eighty dollars' back pay -was blown in. He put on his clothes slowly, feeling through the pockets, -collected two half-dollars on the way, came to the last and stopped. - -"Must have missed one;" and began again. But that crumpled wad of bills -was gone altogether. "Well, if I ain't an orphan!" - -He remembered last a place with bright glass chandeliers, a gilt cupid -over the bar, a girl in a frowzy hat, laughing with large teeth, and Kid -Sadler singing that song he had made up and was so "doggone stuck on": - - "Sandy Cass! A-alas! - - We 'll be shut up - - In the lockup - - If this here keeps on." - -It got monotonous, that song. - - "Sandy Cass! A-alas! - - A comin' home, - - A bummin home--" - -He liked to make poetry, Kid Sadler. You would not have expected it, to -look at his sloppy mustache, long dry throat, and big hands. The poetry -was generally accurate. Sandy did not see any good in it, unless it was -accurate. - - "Little Irish is a Catholic, he come from I-er-land; - - He ain't a whole cathedral, nor a new brass band; - - He got religion in 'is joints from the hoonin of a shell, - - An 'is auburn hair's burned bricky red from leanin over - - hell'' - -That was accurate enough, though put in figures of speech, but the Kid -was still more accurate regarding Bill Smith: - - "Nobody knows who Bill Smith is, - - His kin nor yet his kith, - - An nobody cares who Bill Smith is, - - An neither does Bill Smith;" - -which was perfectly true. Anyhow the Kid could not have taken the wad, -nor Little Irish. It must have been Bill Smith. - -"It was Bill," he decided. - -He did not make any special comments. Some thing or other happens to a -man every day. He went down-stairs, through a dim narrow hallway. - -"Hope there don't any one want something of me. I don't believe they 'll -get it." - -There were sounds in the basement, but no one met him. In the street the -Ninth Avenue car rolled by, a block away. He saw a restaurant sign which -said fearlessly that a stew cost ten cents, went in and breakfasted for -fifteen, waited on by a thin, weary woman, who looked at his blue coat -and braided hat with half-roused interest. - -The cobble-stones on Sixth Avenue were shining and wet. Here and there -some one in the crowd turned to look after him. It might have been the -uniform, the loafer's slouch of the hat, taken with the face being young -and too white. - -The hands of the station clock stood at ten. He took a ticket to the -limit of eighty-five cents, heard dimly the name of a familiar junction; -and then the rumble of the train was under him for an hour. Bill Smith -had left him his pipe and tobacco. Bill had good points. Sandy was -inclined to think kindly of Bill's thoughtfulness, and envy him his -enterprise. The roar of the car-wheels sounded like Kid Sadler's voice, -hoarse and choky, "A-alas, a-alas!" - -It was eleven o'clock at the junction. The mist of the earlier morning -had become a slow drizzle. Trains jangled to and fro in the freight -yards. He took a road which led away from the brick warehouses, streets -of shady trees and lawns, and curved to the north, along the bank of a -cold, sleepy river. - -There was an unpainted, three-room house somewhere, where a fat woman -said "Good land!" and gave him a plate full of different things, on a -table covered with oil-cloth. He could not remember afterward what he -ate, or what the woman said further. He remembered the oil-cloth, which -had a yellow-feverish design of curved lines, that twisted snakily, and -came out of the cloth and ran across the plate. Then out in the gray -drizzle again. - -All the morning his brain had seemed to grow duller and duller, heavy -and sodden; but in the afternoon red lights began dancing in the -mist. It might have been five miles or twenty he had gone by dusk; the -distinction between miles and rods was not clear--they both consisted -of brown mud and gray mist. Sometimes it was a mile across the road. The -dusk, and then the dark, heaved, and pulsed through blood-red veins, and -peeled, and broke apart in brilliant cracks, as they used to do nights -in the field hospital. There seemed to be no hope or desire in him, -except in his feet, which moved on. The lights that travelled with him -got mixed with lights on each side of a village street, and his feet -walked in through a gate. They had no reason for it, except that the -gate stood open and was painted white. He pushed back the door of a -little garden tool-house beside the path, and lay down on the floor. -He could not make out which of a number of things were happening. The -Fourteenth Infantry appeared to be bucking a steep hill, with the smoke -rolling down over it; but on the other hand Kid Sadler was singing -hoarsely, but distinctly, "A-alas, a-alas!" and moreover, a dim light -shone through a white-curtained window somewhere between a rod and a -mile away, and glimmered down the wet path by the tool-house. Some one -said, "Some of it's jag and some of it's the yellow. About half and -half." He might have been making the remark himself, except that he -appeared to be elsewhere. The rain kept up a thin whisper on the roof -of the tool-house. Gasps, shouts, thumping of feet, clash of rifle and -canteen. The hill was as steep as a wall. Little Irish said, "His legs -was too short to shtep on the back av his neck wid the shteepness av the -hill." - -"A-alas! A comin' home." - -"Oh, shut up, Kid!" - -"A-alas, a-alas!" The dark was split with red gashes, as it used to be -in the field hospital. The rain whispered on the roof and the wet path -glimmered like silk. - -It was the village of Zoar, which lies far back to the west of -Wyantenaug Valley, among low waves of hills, the house the old Hare -Place, and Miss Elizabeth Hare and Gracia lived there behind the white -gateway. - -That gateway had once been an ancient arch overhead, with a green wooden -ball topping it. Some one cut a face on the ball, that leered into the -street. It did not in the least resemble Miss Elizabeth, whose smile -was gentle and cool; but it was taken down from its station of half a -century; and Gracia cried secretly, because everything would needs be -disconsolate without an arch and a proper wooden ball on top of it, -under which knights and witch ladies might come and go, riding and -floating. It seemed to break down the old garden life. Odd flowers would -not hold conversations any more, tiger-lilies and peonies bother -each other, the tigers being snappish and the peonies fat, slow, and -irritating. Before Gracia's hair had abandoned yellow braids and become -mysterious, when she learned neat sewing and cross-stitch, she used to -set the tigers and peonies quarrelling to express her own feelings about -neat sewing and cross-stitch. Afterward she found the memory of that -wickedness too heavy, and confessed it to Miss Elizabeth, and added the -knights and witch ladies. Miss Elizabeth had said nothing, had seemed -disinclined to blame, and, going out into the garden, had walked to and -fro restlessly, stopping beside the tigers and peonies, and seeming to -look at the arched gateway with a certain wistfulness. - -Miss Elizabeth had now a dimly faded look, the charm of a still -November, where now and then an Indian summer steals over the chill. She -wore tiny white caps, and her hair was singularly smooth; while Gracia's -appeared rather to be blown back, pushed by the delicate fingers of a -breeze, that privately admired it, away from her eager face, with its -gray-blue eyes that looked at you as if they saw something else as well. -It kept you guessing about that other thing, and you got no further than -to wonder if it were not something, or some one, that you might be, -or might have been, if you had begun at it before life had become so -labelled and defined, so plastered over with maxims. - -The new gateway was still a doubtful quantity in Gracia's mind. It was -not justified. It had no connections, no consecrations; merely a white -gate against the greenery. - -It was the whiteness which caught Sandy Cass's dulled eyes, so that he -turned through, and lay down in the tool-house, and wondered which of a -number of incongruous things was really happening: Little Irish crying -plaintively that his legs were too short--"A-alas, a-alas!"--or the -whisper of the rain on the roof. - -Gracia lifted the white curtains, looked out, and saw the wet path -shining. - -"Is it raining, Gracia?" - -"It drizzles like anything, and the tool-house door is open, and, oh, -aunty! the path shines quite down to the gate." - -"It generally shines in the rain, dear." - -"Oh!" said Gracia, thoughtfully. She seemed to be examining a sudden -idea, and began the pretence of a whistle which afterward became a true -fact. - -"I wish it wouldn't be generally, don't you? I wish things would all be -specially." - -"I wouldn't wi--I wouldn't whistle, if I were you," said Miss Elizabeth, -gently. - -"Oh!" Gracia came suddenly with a ripple and coo of laughter, and -dropped on her knees by Miss Elizabeth. "You couldn't, you poor aunty, -if you tried. You never learned, did you?" - -Miss Elizabeth hesitated. - -"I once tried to learn--of your father. I used to think it sounded -cheerful. But my mother would n't allow it. What I really started to say -was, that I wouldn't, if I were you, I wouldn't wish so many things to -be other than they are. I used to wish for things to be different, and -then, you know, when they stay quite the same, it's such a number of -troubles." - -Gracia clasped her fingers about one knee, studied the neatly built fire -and the blue and white tiles over it, and thought hard on the subject of -wishes. She thought that she had not wished things to be different, so -much as to remain the same as of old, when one wore yellow braids, and -could whistle with approval, and everything happened specially. Because -it is sad when you begin to suspect that the sun and moon and the -growths of spring do not care about you, but only act according to -habits they have fallen into, and that the shining paths, which seem -to lead from beyond the night, are common or accidental and not meant -specially. The elder romancers and the latest seers do insist together -that they are, that such highways indeed as the moon lays on the water -are translunary and come with purposes from a celestial city. The -romancers have a simple faith, and the seers an ingenious theory about -it. But the days and weeks argue differently. They had begun to trouble -the fealty that Gracia held of romance, and she had not met with the -theory of the seers. - -Sandy Cass went through experiences that night which cannot be written, -for there was no sequence in them, and they were translunary and -sub-earthly; some of them broken fragments of his life thrown up at him -out of a kind of smoky red pit, very much as it used to be in the field -hospital. His life seemed to fall easily into fragments. There had not -been much sequence in it, since he began running away from the house of -the squire at fifteen. It had ranged between the back and front doors of -the social structure these ten years. The squire used to storm, because -it came natural to him to speak violently; but privately he thought -Sandy no more than his own younger self, let loose instead of tied down. -He even envied Sandy. He wished he would come oftener to entertain him. -Sandy was a periodical novel continued in the next issue, an irregular -and barbarous Odyssey, in which the squire, comparing with his Pope's -translation, recognized Scylla and Charybdis, Cyclops and Circe, and -the interference of the quarrelling gods. But that night the story went -through the Land of Shadows and Red Dreams. Sandy came at last to the -further edge of the Land; beyond was the Desert of Dreamless Sleep; and -then something white and waving was before his eyes, and beyond was a -pale green shimmer. He heard a gruff voice: - -"Hm--Constitution, Miss Hare. That chap had a solid ancestry. He ought -to have had a relapse and died, and he 'll be out in a week." - -Another voice said in an awed whisper: - -"He's like my Saint George!" - -"Hm--Legendary? This St. G. looks as if he'd made up with his devil. -Looks as if they'd been tolerably good friends." - -A third voice remonstrated: - -"Doctor!" - -"Hm, hm--My nonsense, Miss Gracia, my nonsense." - -The two ladies and the doctor went out. - -It was a long, low room, white, fragrant, and fresh. Soft white curtains -waved in open windows, and outside the late sunlight drifted shyly -through the pale green leaves of young maples. There were dainty things -about, touches of silk and lace, blue and white china on bureau and -dressing-table, a mirror framed with gilded pillars at the sides and a -painted Arcadia above. - -"Well, if I ain't an orphan!" grumbled Sandy, feebly. - -An elderly woman with a checked apron brought him soup in a bowl. She -was quite silent and soon went out. - -"It's pretty slick," he thought, looking around. "I could n't have done -better if I'd been a widow." - -The drifting quiet of the days that Sandy lay there pleased him for the -time. It felt like a cool poultice on a wound. The purity and fragility -of objects was interesting to look at, so long as he lay still and did -not move about among them. But he wondered how people could live -there right along. They must keep everything at a distance, with a -feather-duster between. He had an impression that china things always -broke, and white things became dirty. Then it occurred to him that there -might be some whose nature, without any worry to themselves, was to keep -things clean and not to knock them over, to touch things in a feathery -manner, so that they did not have to stay behind a duster. This subject -of speculation lasted him a day or two, and Miss Elizabeth and Gracia -began to interest him as beings with that special gift. He admired -any kind of capability. Miss Elizabeth he saw often, the woman in the -checked apron till he was tired of her. But Gracia was only now and then -a desirable and fleeting appearance in the doorway, saying: - -"Good morning, Saint George." - -She never stayed to tell him why "Saint George." It came to the point -that the notion of her yellow hair would stay by him an hour or more -afterward. He began to wake from his dozes, fancying he heard "Good -morning, Saint George," and finally to watch the doorway and fidget. - -"This lying abed," he concluded, "is played out." He got up and hunted -about for his clothes. His knees and fingers trembled. The clothes hung -in the closet, cleaned and pressed, in the extraordinary neighborhood of -a white muslin dress. Sandy sat down heavily on the bed. Things seemed -to be whizzing and whimpering all about him. He waited for them to -settle, and pulled on his clothes gradually. At the end of an hour he -thought he might pass on parade, and crept out into the hall and down -the stairs. The sunlight was warm in the garden and on the porch, and -pale green among the leaves. Gracia sat against a pillar, clasping one -knee. Miss Elizabeth sewed; her work-basket was fitted up inside on an -intricate system. Gracia hailed him with enthusiasm, and Miss Elizabeth -remonstrated. He looked past Miss Elizabeth to find the yellow hair. - -"This lying abed," he said feebly, "is played out." - -Sitting in the sunlight, Sandy told his story gradually from day to day. -It was all his story, being made up of selections. He was skilful -from practice on the squire, but he saw the need of a new principle -of selection and combination. His style of narrative was his own. It -possessed gravity, candor, simplicity, an assumption that nothing could -be unreasonable or surprising which came in the course of events, that -all things and all men were acceptable. Gracia thought that simplicity -beautiful, that his speech was like the speech of Tanneguy du Bois, -and that he looked like Saint George in the picture which hung in her -room--a pale young warrior, such as painters once loved to draw, putting -in those keen faces a peculiar manhood, tempered and edged like a sword. -Sandy looked oddly like him, in the straight lines of brow and mouth. -Saint George is taking a swift easy stride over the dead dragon, a kind -of level-eyed daring and grave inquiry in his face, as if it were Sandy -himself, about to say, "You don't happen to have another dragon? This -one wasn't real gamy. I'd rather have an average alligator." She laughed -with ripples and coos, and struggled with lumps in her throat, when -Sandy through simplicity fell into pathos. It bewildered her that the -funny things and pathetic things were so mixed up and run together, and -that he seemed to take no notice of either of them. But she grew -stern and indignant when Bill Smith, it was but probable, robbed the -unsuspecting sleep of his comrade. - -"You see," said Sandy, apologetically, "Bill was restless, that was the -reason. It was his enterprise kept bothering him. Likely he wanted -it for something, and he could n't tell how much I might need without -waking me up to ask. And he couldn't do that, because that'd have been -ridiculous, would n't it? Of course, if he'd waked me up to ask how -much I wanted, because he was going to take the rest with him, why, of -course, I'd been obliged to get up and hit him, to show how ridiculous -it was. Of course Bill saw that, and what could he do? Because there -wasn't any way he could tell, don't you see? So he left the pipe and -tobacco, and a dollar for luck, and lit out, being--a--restless." - -And Gracia wondered at and gloried in the width of that charity, that -impersonal and untamed tolerance. - -Then Sandy took up the subject of Kid Sadler. He felt there was need of -more virtue and valor. He took Kid Sadler and decorated him. He fitted -him with picturesque detail. The Kid bothered him with his raucous -voice, froth-dripped mustache, lean throat, black mighty hands, and -smell of uncleanness. But Sandy chose him as a poet. It seemed a good -start. Gracia surprised him by looking startled and quite tearful, where -the poet says: - - "Nobody cares who Bill Smith is, - - An neither does Bill Smith;" - -which had seemed to Sandy only an accurate statement. - -But the Kid's poetry needed expurgation and amendment. Sandy did it -conscientiously, and spent hours searching for lines of similar rhyme, -which would not glance so directly into byways and alleys that were -surprising. - - "A comin' home, - - A roamin' home--" - -"I told the Kid," he added critically, "roamin' wasn't a good rhyme, but -he thought it was a pathetic word." - - "Oh, when I was a little boy 't was things I did n't know, - - An when I growed I knowed a lot of things that was n't so; - - An now I know a few things that's useful an selected: - - As how to put hard liquor where hard liquor is expected--" - -and so on, different verses, which the Kid called his "Sing Song." -Sandy's judgment hung in doubt over this whether the lines were -objectionable. He tempered the taste of the working literary artist -for distinct flavor, and his own for that which is accurate, with the -cautions of a village library committee, and decided on, - - "An puts them things in moral verse to uses onexpected." - -"I don't know what he meant by 'onexpected,'" Sandy commented with a -sense of helplessness, "but maybe he meant that he didn't know what he -did mean. Because poets," getting more and more entangled, "poets are -that kind they can take a word and mean anything in the neighborhood, or -something that'll occur to 'em next week." - -Gracia admired the Kid, though Miss Elizabeth thought she ought to refer -to him as Mr. Sadler, which seemed a pity. And she declared a violent -love for Little Irish, because "his auburn hair turned bricky red with -falling down a well," and because he wished to climb hills by stepping -on the back of his neck. It was like Alice's Adventures, and especially -like the White Knight's scheme to be over a wall by putting his head on -top and standing on his head. - -After all humors and modifications, Sandy's story was a wild and strange -thing. It took new details from day to day, filling in the picture. -To Gracia's imagination it spread out beyond romance, full of glooms, -flashes, fascinations, dangers of cities, war and wilderness, and -in spite of Sandy's self-indifference, it was he who dominated the -pilgrimage, coloring it with his comment. The pilgrim appeared to be a -person to whom the Valley of the Shadow of Death was equally interesting -with Vanity Fair, and who entering the front gate of the Celestial City -with rejoicing would presently want to know whither the back gate would -take him. It seemed a pilgrimage to anywhere in search of everything, -but Gracia began to fancy it was meant to lead specially to the new -garden gate that opened so broadly on the street, and so dreamed the -fancy into belief. She saw Sandy in imagination coming out of the -pit-black night and lying down in the tool-house by the wet shining -path. The white gate was justified. - -Sandy's convalescence was not a finished thing, but he was beginning to -feel energy starting within him. Energy! He knew the feeling well. It -was something that snarled and clawed by fits. - -"I'm a wildcat," he said to himself reflectively, "sitting on eggs. -Why don't he get off? Now," as if addressing a speculative question for -instance to Kid Sadler, "he could n't expect to hatch anything, could -he?" - -It was such a question as the Kid would have been pleased with, and have -considered justly. "Has he got the eggs?" - -"I don't know. It's a mixed figure, Kid." - -"Does he feel like he wanted to hatch 'em?" - -"What'd he do with 'em hatched? That's so, Kid." - -"_Is_ he a wildcat?" - -"Yep." - -"He is. Can a wildcat hatch eggs? No, he can't." - -"A wildcat"--the Kid would have enjoyed following this figure--"ain't -an incubator. There ain't enough peacefulness in him. He'd make a yaller -mess of 'em an' take to the woods with the mess on his whiskers. It -stands to reason, don't it? He ain't in his own hole on a chickadee's -nest." - -Sandy stood looking over the gate into the village street, which was -shaded to dimness by its maples, a still, warm, brooding street. - -"Like an incubator," he thought, and heard Gracia calling from up the -path: - -"Saint George!" - -Sandy turned. She came down the path to the gate. - -"Aren't you going to fix the peony bed?" - -"Not," said Sandy, "if you stay here by the gate." - -Gracia looked away from him quickly into the street. - -"It's warm and quiet, isn't it? It's like--" - -Zoar was not to her like anything else. - -"Like an incubator," said Sandy, gloomily, and Gracia looked up and -laughed. - -"Oh, I shouldn't have thought of that." - -"Kid Sadler would have said it, if he'd been here." - -"Would he?" - -"Just his kind of figure. And he'd be saying further it was time Sandy -Cass took to the woods." - -He had an irritating spasm of desire to touch the slim white fingers -on the gate. Gracia moved her hands nervously. Sandy saw the fingers -tremble, and swore at himself under his breath. - -"Why, Saint George?" - -"Thinking he was a wildcat and he'd make a yel--a--Maybe thinking he -didn't look nat--I mean," Sandy ended very lamely, "the Kid'd probably -use figures of speech and mean something that'd occur to him by and by." - -"You're not well yet. You're not going so soon," she said, speaking -quite low. - -Sandy meditated a number of lies, and concluded that he did not care for -any of them. He seemed to dislike them as a class. - -This kind of internal struggle was new and irritating. He had never -known two desires that would not compromise equably, or one of them -recognize its place and get out of the road. The savage restlessness in -his blood, old, well-known, expected, something in brain and bone, had -always carried its point and always would. He accounted for all things -in all men by reference to it, supposing them to feel restless, the -inner reason why a man did anything. But here now was another thing, -hopelessly fighting it, clinging, exasperating; somewhere within him it -was a kind of solemn-eyed sorrow that looked outward and backward over -his life, and behold, the same was a windy alkali desert that bore -nothing and was bitter in the mouth; and at the ends of his fingers -it came to a keen point, a desire to touch Gracia's hair and the slim -fingers on the gate. - -Gracia looked up and then away. - -"You're not well yet." - -"You've been uncommonly good to me, and all--" - -"You mustn't speak of it that way. It spoils it." It seemed to both as -if they were swaying nearer together, a languid, mystical atmosphere -thickening about them. Only there was the drawback with Sandy of an -inward monitor, with a hoarse voice like Kid Sadler's, who would be -talking to him in figures and proverbs. - -"Keep away from china an' lace; they break an' stain; this thing has -been observed. Likewise is love a bit o' moonlight, sonny, that's all, -an' a tempest, an' a sucked orange. Come out o' that, Sandy, break away; -for, in the words o' the prophet, 'It's no square game,' an' this here -girl, God bless her! but she plays too high, an' you can't call her, -Sandy, you ain't got the chips. Come away, come away." - -"And that," Sandy concluded the council, "is pretty accurate. I'm broke -this deal." - -He stood up straight and looked at Gracia with eyes drawn and narrowed. - -She felt afraid and did not understand. - -"You don't know me. If you knew me, you'd know I have to go." - -The wind rose in the afternoon, and blew gustily through street and -garden. The windows of Miss Elizabeth's sitting-room were closed. The -curtains hung in white, lifeless folds. But in Gracia's room above the -windows were open, and the white curtains shook with the wind. Delicate -and tremulous, they clung and moulded themselves one moment to the -casement, and then broke out, straining in the wind that tossed the -maple leaves and went up and away into the wild sky after the driving -clouds. - -Sandy turned north up the village street, walking irresolutely. It might -be thirty miles to Wimberton. The squire had sent him money. He could -reach the railroad and make Wimberton that night, but he did not seem to -care about it. - -Out of the village, he fell into the long marching stride, and the -motion set his blood tingling. Presently he felt better; some burden was -shaken off; he was foot-loose and free of the open road, looking to the -friction of event. At the end of five miles he remembered a saying of -Kid Sadler's, chuckled over it, and began humming other verses of the -"Sing Song," so called by the outcast poet. - - "Oh, when I was a little boy, I laughed an then I cried, - - An ever since I done the same, more privately, inside. - - There's a joke between this world an me 'n it's tolerable grim, - - An God has got his end of it, an some of it's on him. - - - For he made a man with his left han, an the rest o' things - - with his right; - - An the right knew not what the left han did, for he hep - - it out o' sight. - - It's maybe a Wagner opery, it ain't no bedtime croon, - - When the highest note in the universe is a half note out - - o' tune'' - -"That appears to be pretty accurate," he thought. "Wonder how the Kid -comes to know things." - -He swung on enjoying the growth of vigor, the endless, open, travelled -road, and the wind blowing across his face. - - - - -SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS - -|Back Meadows lies three miles to the northwest of Hagar, rich -bottom-lands in Sanderson Hollow, and the Cattle Ridge shelters it on -the north. Five generations of Sandersons have added to the Sanderson -accumulation of this world's goods, without sensible interference on -the part of moths or rust or thieves that break through and steal. Cool, -quiet men, slow of speech and persistent of mood, they prospered -and lived well where other families, desiring too many things or not -desiring anything enough, found nothing at all desirable and drifted -away. The speculative traveller, hunting "abandoned farms," or studying -the problem of the future of New England's outlying districts, who -should stand on the crest of the Cattle Ridge overlooking the sheltered -valley, would note it as an instance of the problem satisfactorily -solved and of a farm which, so far from abandonment, smiled over all its -comfortable expanse in the consciousness of past and certainty of future -occupancy. These were ready illustrations for his thesis, if he had one: -the smooth meadows, square stone walls and herds of fawn-colored cattle, -large bams and long stables of the famous Sanderson stud; also the -white gabled house among the maples with spreading ells on either side, -suggesting a position taken with foresight and carefully guarded and -secured--a house that, recognizing the uncertainties and drifting -currents of the world, had acted accordingly, and now could afford to -consider itself complacently. The soul of any individual Sanderson might -be required of him, and his wisdom relative to eternity be demonstrated -folly, but the policy of the Sanderson family had not so far been -considered altogether an individual matter. Even individually, if the -question of such inversion of terms ever occurred to a Sanderson, it -only led to the conclusion that it was strictly a Pickwickian usage, -and, in the ordinary course of language, the policy of building barns, -stowing away goods and reflecting complacently thereon, still came under -the head of wisdom. - -Mrs. Cullom Sanderson, sister of Israel Sanderson of the last generation -and married into a distant branch of the Sanderson family, carried her -materialism with an unconscious and eccentric frankness that prevented -the family from recognizing in her a peculiar development of its own -quality. When Israel's gentle wife passed from a world which she had -found too full of unanswered questions, it was Mrs. Cullom who plunged -bulkily into the chamber of the great mystery and stopped, gulping with -astonishment. - -"I just made her some blanc-mange," she gasped. "Isn't that too bad! -Why, Israel!" - -Israel turned from the window and contemplated her gravely with his -hands clasped behind him. - -"I think you had better move down to the Meadows, Ellen," he said. "If -you will contrive to say as little as possible to me about Marian, and -one or two other matters I will specify, we shall get along very well." - -He went out with slow step and bent head, followed by Mrs. Cullom trying -vainly to find an idea on the subject suggested, which she was quite -positive she had somewhere about her. What Israel may have thought of -the thing that had whispered within his doors in an unknown tongue, and -had taken away what was his without receipt or equivalent exchange, it -were hard to say; equally hard even to say what he had thought of Marian -these twenty years. If her cloistral devotions and visionary moods -had seemed to him, in uninverted terms, folly, he had never said so. -Certainly he had liked her quiet, ladylike ways, and possibly respected -a difference of temperament inwardly as well as outwardly. At any rate, -tolerance was a consistent Sanderson policy and philosophy of life. - -There was a slight movement in the chamber, after the silence which -followed the departing footsteps of Israel and Mrs. Cullom. A small -person in pinafores crept stealthily from under the bed and peered -over the edge. It was a hard climb but he persisted, and at last -seated himself on it panting, with his elbows on his knees, gravely -considering. A few hours since, the silent lips had whispered, among -many things that came back to his memory in after years like a distant -chime of bells, only this that seemed of any immediate importance: "I -shall be far away to-night, Joe, but when you say your prayers I shall -hear." The problem that puckered the small brow was whether prayers out -of regular hours were real prayers. Joe decided to risk it and, getting -on his knees, said over all the prayers he knew. Then he leaned over -and patted the thin, cold cheek (Joe and his mother always tacitly -understood each other), slid off the bed with a satisfied air, and -solemnly trotted out of the room. - -Mrs. Cullom Sanderson was a widow; "Which," Israel remarked, "is a pity. -Cullom would have taken comfort in outliving you, Ellen." - -"Well," remonstrated Mrs. Cullom, "I'm sure I don't know what you mean, -Israel. I've always respected his memory." - -Israel, gravely regarding her, observed, "You'd better not try to train -Joe," and departed, leaving her to struggle with the idea that -between Joe and Cullom's comfort Israel was getting very disconnected. -Disconnection of remark did not imply any changeableness in Israel's -temperament. He observed a silent sequence of character, and possibly -a sequence of thought of which he did not care to give evidence, on -matters which he found no profit in discussing. Twelve years later the -mystery again whispered within his doors, and he rose and followed it in -his usual deliberate and taciturn way, without disclosing any opinion on -the question of the inversion of terms. The story of each generation -is put away when its time comes with a more or less irrelevant epitaph, -whether or not its threads be gathered into a satisfactory finale. The -Spirit-of-things-moving-on is singularly indifferent to such matters. -Its only literary principle seems to be, to move on. The new Sanderson -of Back Meadows grew up a slight, thin-faced young fellow. The Sanderson -men were always slight of build, saving a certain breadth of shoulders. -A drooping mustache in course of time hid the only un-Sanderson feature, -a sensitive mouth. The cool gray eyes, slightly drawling speech, and -deliberate manner were all Sanderson, indicating "a chip of the old -block," as Mr. Durfey remarked to the old Scotchman who kept the drag -store in Hagar. If the latter had doubts, he kept them to himself. - -The Sanderson stud sprang from a certain red mare, Martha, belonging -to Blake Sanderson of Revolutionary times. They were a thin-necked, -generally bad-tempered breed, with red veins across the eyes, of high -repute among "horsey" men. Blake Sanderson was said to have ridden the -red mare from Boston in some astonishingly quick time on some -mysterious errand connected with the evacuation of New York, whereby her -descendants were at one time known as the Courier breed; but as no one -seemed to know what the errand was, it was possibly not a patriotic one. -Three of these red, thinnecked mares and a stallion were on exhibition -at the Hamilton County Fair of '76. Notable men of the county were -there, mingled with turfmen of all shades of notoriety; several -immaculately groomed gentlemen, tall-hatted, long-coated, and saying -little, but pointed out with provincial awe as coming from New York and -worth watching; a few lean Kentuckians, the redness of whose noses was -in direct ratio with their knowledge of the business, and whose artistic -profanity had a mercantile value in expressing contempt for Yankee -horse-flesh. There was the Honorable Gerald and the some-say -Dishonorable Morgan Map, originally natives of Hagar, with young Jacob -Lorn between them undergoing astute initiation into the ways of the -world and its manner of furnishing amusement to young men of wealth; -both conversing affably with Gypsy John of not even doubtful reputation, -at present booming Canadian stock in favor of certain animals that -may or may not have seen Canada. Thither came the manager of the opera -troupe resident in Hamilton during the Fair, and the Diva, popularly -known as Mignon, a brown-haired woman with a quick Gallic smile and a -voice, "By gad, sir, that she can soak every note of it in tears, the -little scamp," quoth Cassidy, observing from a distance. Cassidy was a -large fleshy man with a nickel shield under his coat. - - "A face to launch a thousand ships, - - And burn the topless towers of Ilium'' - -misquoted a tall, thin personage with an elongated face and sepulchral -voice. "The gods made you poetical, Mr. Cassidy. Do you find your gift -of sentiment of use on the force?" - -"Yes, sir," shouted Cassidy, inadvertently touched on one of innumerable -hobbies and beginning to pound one hand excitedly with the fist of the -other. "In fine cases, sir, the ordinary detective slips up on just that -point. Now let me tell you, Mr. Mavering--" - -"Tell me whether that is not Mignon's 'mari.' What sort of a man is he?" - -"Mignon's what? Oh--Manager Scott. He isn't married, further than that -he's liable to rows on account of Mignon, who--has a face to upset -things as you justly observe, not to speak of a disposition according. -At least, I don't know but what they may be married. If they are, -they're liable to perpetuate more rows than anything else." - -"'Does something smack, something grow to, has a kind of taste?"' - -"Eh?" said Cassidy, inquiringly. - -Sanderson, standing silently by, as silently turned and walked toward -the crowd drifting back and forth in front of the stables. Portly Judge -Carter of Gilead, beaming through gold-rimmed glasses, side-whiskered -and rubicund, stopped him to remark tremendously that he had issued an -injunction against the stallion going out of the state. "A matter of -local patriotism, Joe, eh?" - -"Hear, hear," commented the Honorable Gerald Map. A crowd began to -gather anticipating a conference of notables. Sanderson extricated -himself and walked on, and two small boys eventually smacked each -other over the question whether Judge Carter was as great a man as Mr. -Sanderson. - -Mavering's eyes followed him speculatively. - -"What's the particular combination that troubles the manager's rest?" - -"Eh?" said Cassidy. "Oh, I don't know. Bob Sutton mostly. He's here -somewhere. Swell young fellow in a plush vest, fashionable proprietor of -thread mills." - -The yellow, dusty road ran between the stables and a battle line of -sycamores and maples. Over the stables loomed the brick wall of the -theatre, and at the end of them a small green door for the private use -of exhibitors gave exit from the Fair Grounds. Sanderson stopped near a -group opposite it, where Mignon stood slapping her riding-boot with her -whip. - -"Mr. Sanderson," said Mignon, liquidly, "how can I get out through that -door?" - -Sanderson considered and suggested opening it. - -"But it's locked! Ciel! It's locked!" - -Sanderson considered again. "Here's a key," he said hopefully. - -"There!" shouted the plush vest. "I knew there'd be some solution. You -see, mademoiselle, what Ave admire in Sanderson is his readiness of -resource. Mademoiselle refused to melt down the fence with a smile or -climb over it on a high C, and we were quite in despair." - -Outside the gate, in the paved courtyard between the theatre and the -hotel, Mignon lifted her big brown eyes which said so many things, -according to Cassidy, that were not so, and observed demurely, "If you -were to leave me that key, Mr. Sanderson, well, I should steal in here -after the performance tonight and ride away on the little red mare, -certainly." - -Sanderson gravely held out the key, but Mignon drew back in sudden alarm -and clasped her hands tragically. - -"Oh, no! You would be on guard and, what! cut up? Yes. Ah, dreadfully! -You are so wise, Mr. Sanderson, and secret." - -And Jack Mavering, following slowly after, chuckled sepulchrally to -himself. "Pretty cool try sting. Peace to the shades of Manager Scott. I -couldn't have done it better myself." - -The Fair Grounds were as dark and lonely at eleven o'clock as if -the lighted street were not three hundred feet away with its gossipy -multitude going up and down seeking some new thing. The stands yawned -indifferently from a thousand vacant seats and the race-track had -forgotten its excitement. Horses stamped and rustled spectrally in their -stalls. The shadow under the maples was abysmal and the abyss gave forth -a murmur of dialogue, the sound of a silken voice. - -"Oh," it sighed in mock despair, "but Americans, they are so very -impassive. Look! They make love in monosyllables. They have no passion, -no action. They pull their mustachios, say 'Damn!'--so, and it is -tragedy. They stroke their chins, so, very grave. They say 'It is not -bad, and it is comedy. Ah, please, Joe, be romantique!" - -"Why," drawled the other voice, "I'll do whatever you like, except have -spasms." - -"Indifferent! Bah! That's not romantique. How would I look in the house -of your fathers?" - -"You'd look like thunder." - -"Would I?" The silken voice sank low and was quiet for a moment. "Well -then, listen. This shall you do. You shall give me that key and an order -to your man that I ride the little mare of a Sunday morning, which is -to-morrow, because she is the wind and because you are disagreeable. Is -it not so?" - -A ripple of low laughter by the green door, and "There then. You drive a -hard bargain in love, monsieur." The door opened and she stepped with -a rustle of skirts into and through the paved courtyard, now unlit by -lamps at the theatre entrance, dark enough for the purposes of Manager -Scott, in an angle of the entrance pulling his mustache and speaking -after the manner described by Mignon as tragedy. - -In the valley of the Wyantenaug many stopped and listened breathlessly -by barn-yard and entry door to a voice that floated along the still air -of the Sabbath morning, now carolling like a bobolink, now fluting -like a wood-thrush, now hushed in the covert of arching trees, and now -pealing over the meadows by the river bank; others only heard a rush of -hoofs and saw a little red horse and its rider go by with the electric -stride of a trained racer. Each put his or her interpretation thereon, -elaborately detailed after the manner of the region, and approximated -the fact of Mignon and her purposes as nearly as might be expected. -Delight in the creation of jewelled sounds as an end in itself; delight -in the clear morning air of autumn valleys, the sight of burnished -leaves and hills in mad revelry of color; delight in following vagrant -fancies with loose rein, happy, wine-lipped elves that rise without -reason and know no law; delight in the thrill and speed of a sinewy -horse compact of nerves; however all these may have entered in the -purposes of Mignon, they are not likely to have entered the conjectures -of the inhabitants of Wyantenaug Valley, such pleasures of the flesh. -Mignon let the mare choose her road, confining her own choice to odd -matters of going slow or fast or not at all, pausing by the river bank -to determine the key and imitate the quality of its low chuckle, and -such doings; all as incomprehensible to the little red mare as to the -inhabitants of Wyantenaug Valley. - -The valley is broad with cup-shaped sides, save where the crowding of -the hills has thrust one forward to stand in embarrassed projection. -Some twenty miles above Hamilton rises Windless Mountain on the right, -guarding from the world the village of Hagar behind it. Northward -from Windless lie irregular hills, and between them and the long -westward-inclining tumulus of the Cattle Ridge a narrow gorge with a -tumbling brook comes down. Up this gorge goes a broad, well-kept road, -now bridging the brook, now slipping under shelving ledges, everywhere -carpeted with the needles of pines, secret with the shadows of pines, -spicy and strong with the scent of pines, till at the end of half a mile -it emerges from beneath the pines into Sanderson Hollow. The little red -mare shot from the gloom into the sunlight with a snort and shake of the -head that seemed to say: "Oh, my hoofs and fetlocks! Deliver me from a -woman who makes believe to herself she is n't going where she is, or if -she is that it's only accidental." - -Mrs. Cullom Sanderson ponderously made ready for church, not with a -mental preparation of which the minister would have approved unless -he had seen as clearly as Mrs. Cullom the necessity of denouncing in -unmeasured terms the iniquity of Susan. Susan was a maid who tried to -do anything that she was told, and bumped her head a great deal. Her -present iniquity lay in her fingers and consisted in tying and buttoning -Mrs. Cullom and putting her together generally so that she felt as if -she had fallen into her clothes from different directions. A ring at the -door-bell brought Mrs. Cullom down from heights of sputtering invective -like an exhausted sky-rocket, and she plumped into a chair whispering -feebly, "Goodness, Susan, who's that?" Susan vaguely disclaimed all -knowledge of "that." - -"You might find out," remonstrated Mrs. Cullom, the reaction precluding -anything but a general feeling of injury. Susan went down-stairs and -bumped her head on the chandelier, opened the door and bumped it on the -door. - -"Ouch," she remarked in a matter-of-fact tone. "Please, ma'am, Miss -Sanderson wants to know, who's that?" - -"Ah," said the trim little lady in riding-habit, "will you so kindly ask -Miss Sanderson that I may speak to her?" - -But Mrs. Cullom was already descending the stairs, each step appearing -to Mignon to have the nature of a plunge. "My goodness, yes. Come in." -Mignon carried her long skirt over the lintel. - -"I am quite grieved to intrude, mademoi--" Mrs. Cullom's matronly -proportions seemed to discountenance the diminutive, "a--madame. Mr. -Sanderson permitted me to ride one of his horses. He is so generous. -And the horse brought me here, oh, quite decisively," and Mignon laughed -such a soft, magical laugh that Susan grinned in broad delight. "It is -such a famous place, this, is it not,--Back Meadows? I thought I might -be allowed to--to pay tribute to its fame." - -Mrs. Cullom's cordiality was such that if, strictly speaking, two -hundred pounds can flutter, she may be said to have fluttered. She -plunged through two sombre-curtained parlors, Mignon drifting serenely -in the wake of her tumult. Something in the black, old colonial -furniture sent a feeling of cold gruesomeness into her sunny veins, and -she was glad when Mrs. Cullom declared it chilly and towed her into the -dining-room, where a warm light sifted through yellow windows of -modern setting high over a long, irregular sideboard, and mellowed the -portraits of departed Sandersons on the walls: honorables numerous of -colonial times (Blake, first of the horse-breeding Sandersons, booted -and spurred but with too much thinness of face and length of jaw for a -Squire Western type), all flanked by dames, with a child here and there, -above or below--all but the late Israel, whose loneliness in his gilt -frame seemed to have a certain harmony with his expression. - -"That was Joseph's father, my brother Israel," said Mrs. Cullom, as -Mignon's eyes travelled curiously along and rested on the last. "Joseph -keeps his mother hung up in his den." - -"Hung up? Den?" cried Mignon, with a recurrence of the gruesome feeling -of the parlors. "Oh, ciel! What does he keep there? Bones?" - -"Bones! Goodness no. Books." - -Mrs. Cullom pushed open a door to the right and entered a long, low room -piled to the ceiling and littered with books, which, together with the -leathern chair and red-shaded lamp before the fireplace, gave a decided -air of studious repose, nothing suggesting a breeder of fancy stock. An -oil painting of a lady hung over the mantel, and near it some mediæval -Madonna, not unresembling the portrait in its pale cheeks, unworldly -eyes, and that faint monastic air of vigil and vision and strenuous -yearning of the soul to throw its dust aside. Nevertheless the face of -the lady was a sweet face, quiet and pure, such as from many a Madonna -of the Old World in tawdry regalia looks pityingly down over altar and -winking tapers, seeming to say with her tender eyes, "Is it very hard, -my dear, the living? Come apart then and rest awhile." Mignon turned to -Mrs. Cullom. "You are dressed for going out, madame," she said, looking -at that lady's well-to-do black silk. "Am I not detaining you?" - -"Oh, I was going to church. Goodness, are n't you going to church?" -A sudden thought struck her and she added severely: "And you've been -riding that wicked little mare on Sunday. And she might have thrown you, -and how'd you look pitched headfirst into heaven dressed so everybody ud -know you weren't going to church!" - -"Oh," cried Mignon, "but I was good when I was a child. Yes! I went to -mass every day, and had a little prie-dieu, oh, so tiny!" - -"Mass!" gasped Mrs. Cullom. "Well, I declare. What's a pray-do?" - -Mignon surveyed her riding-skirt regretfully. "Would it not be -appropriate, madame? I should so like to go with you," she said -plaintively. - -"Goodness! I'll risk it if you will. I'd like to see the woman who'd -tell me what to wear to church." She plunged suddenly out of the room, -leaving Mignon thinking that she would not like to be the woman referred -to. She listened to the ponderous footsteps of Mrs. Cullom climbing -the stairs, and then sank into the leathern chair facing the picture. -Possibly the living and the dead faced each other on a point at issue; -they seemed to debate some matter gravely and gently, as is seldom done -where both are living. Possibly it was Mignon's dramatic instinct -which caused her to rise at last, gathering up her riding-skirt, at -the approaching footsteps of Mrs. Cullom, and bow with Gallic grace and -diminutive stateliness to the pure-faced lady with the spiritual eyes. -"C'est vrai, madame," she said, and passed out with her small head in -the air. - -The congregation that day in the little church of the bended -weather-vane, where Hagar's cross-roads meet, heard certain ancient -hymns sung as never before in the church of the bended weather-vane. -"Rock of Ages, cleft for me," pleaded the silken voice, like a visitant -invisible, floating from fluted pillar to fluted pillar, calling at -some unseen door, "Let me in! Ah, let me in!" Somewhat too much of -rose leaves and purple garments in the voice for that simple, steadfast -music. The spirit seemed pleading rather for gratification than -rest. The congregation stopped singing, save Mrs. Cullom, who flatted -comfortably on unnoticed. Deacon Crockett frowned ominously over his -glasses at a scandalous scene and a woman too conspicuous; Captain David -Brett showed all the places where he had no teeth; Mr. Royce looked down -from the pulpit troubled with strange thoughts, and Miss Hettie Royce -dropped her veil over her face, remembering her youth. - -How should Mignon know she was not expected to be on exhibition in that -curious place? Of course people should be silent and listen when an -artist sings. Mignon hardly remembered a time when she was not more or -less on exhibition. That volatile young lady cantered along the Windless -Mountain Road somewhat after twelve o'clock not in a very good humor. -She recognized the ill humor, considered ill humor a thing both -unpleasant and unnecessary and attributed it to an empty stomach; -dismounted before an orchard and swung herself over the wall reckless of -where her skirts went or where they did not. - -"Them apples is mine," growled a gray-bearded person behind a barn-yard -fence. - -"Then why didn't you get them for me, pig?" returned Mignon sharply, -and departed with more than her small hands could conveniently carry, -leaving the gray-bearded person turning the question over dubiously in -his mind. - -It happened to have occurred to Sanderson that certain business of his -own pointed to Back Meadows that Sunday morning. The up-train on Sunday -does not leave till after eleven, and he took the valley road on the red -stallion of uncertain temper. The inhabitants of Wyantenaug Valley heard -no more carolling voices, or fitful rush and clatter of hoofs. The red -stallion covered his miles with a steady stride and the rider kept his -emotions, aesthetic or otherwise, to himself. The twain swung into the -Hollow about eleven o'clock, and Sanderson presently found himself in -his leathern chair debating a question at issue with the lady of the -spiritual eyes. What passed between them is their own secret, quite -hopeless of discovery, with one end of it on the other side of the -"valley of the shadow," and the other buried in close coverts of -Sanderson reserve. When the door-bell rang and Susan appearing bumped -her head against the casing and announced, "Mr. Joe, it's a red-haired -gentleman," having no dramatic instinct, he passed into the dining-room -without salutation to the lady of the spiritual eyes. - -"How are you, Scott? Sit down," he drawled placidly. - -"I suppose you know what I'm here for," said the other, with evident -self-restraint. - -"Can't say I do," returned Sanderson, cheerfully. "It needn't be -anything in particular, need it?" He sat down, stretched his legs under -the dining-room table and his arms on top of it. Manager Scott paced the -floor nervously. Suddenly he stooped, picked up something and flung it -on the table--a strip of thin gray veil. "You can save yourself a lie, -Mr. Sanderson." - -Sanderson gravely regarded the delicate article which seemed to be put -forth both as an accusation and a proof of something. Then he leaned -forward and rang the bell. "I will overlook that implication for the -present, Mr. Scott," he remarked. "If it's a bluff, it's a good one. I -take it it is n't. Susan, has any one been here this morning?" as that -maiden tumbled into the room in a general tangle of feet. - -"Yes, sir, and she's gone. My! She ain't comin' back to dinner! Lady -rode the little mare and she went to church with Miss Sanderson." - -"Mademoiselle Mignon," drawled Sanderson, turning to Manager Scott, -"asked permission to ride the mare this morning. I was not aware she -intended making an excursion to Back Meadows or I should have asked -permission to attend her. It seems she went to Hagar with my aunt and -proposes to ride back to Hamilton from there. It's my turn now, old man, -and I'd like to know what was the necessity of making your visit so very -tragic." - -"Oh, I presume I'm an ass," returned the other, with a noticeable -nervous twitching of the mouth and fingers, "and I presume I owe you an -apology. I shall probably shoot the man that comes between Mignon and -me, if he doesn't shoot first, which is all very asinine." - -"Quite irrespective of what mademoiselle may think about it?" - -"Oh, quite." - -"Well," said Sanderson, after a pause, "I rather sympathize with your -way of looking at it. I shouldn't wonder if I had some of that primeval -brutality myself." - -"Look here, Sanderson," said the manager. "Without going into -humiliating details as to how I came by the fact, which I don't know -why you take so much pains to conceal, I know as well as you do that the -issue is between you and me." - -"You don't mean to threaten, do you, Scott?" - -"Oh, no. I'm going back to Hamilton. I was looking for a row, and you -don't give me enough to go on." - -"Can't do it just now, old man," said Sanderson, gently, shaking hands -with him at the door. "I'll let you know when I can. In that case we 'll -have it out between us." - -The manager strode off across the Hollow and down the Gorge to the -valley station, and Sanderson mounted and took the road to Hagar. He -passed the village about one. The red stallion thundered through the -pine avenues at the foot of Windless and swept around the curve into -Wyantenaug Valley, but it was not till within a few miles of Hamilton -that the speedy little mare, even bothered as she was by her rider's -infirmity of purpose, allowed herself to be overtaken. The road there -turned away from the river and went covered with crisp autumn leaves -through chestnut woods. Mignon looked up and laughed, and the two horses -fell sympathetically into a walk. - -"Don't you think you owe me an explanation?" asked Sanderson, in a low -tone. - -"Indeed, sir, I owe you nothing, not even for this ride. It was paid -for," rippled the silken voice, and stopped suddenly in a little sob. -Sanderson turned quickly and bent over her. - -"By the living God," he said solemnly, "I swear I love you. What barrier -is strong enough to face that?" - -"It is because you do not know me, that. Listen, Joe. I have not been -what you call good nor pure in the past and shall not in the future. No, -hush. I know what I am and what I shall be always. If I swore by -your living God that I loved you now, it would not mean that I should -to-morrow, and the next day, oh, not at all. There are no deeps in me, -nor what you call a faith or principle in life. Listen, Joe. That lady -whose portrait I saw is your guardian angel. Look, I reverence now. -To-morrow I shall mock both her and you. This that I speak now is only -a mood. The wind is now one thing and then quite another, Joe. It has no -centre and no soul. I am an artist, sir. I have moods but no character. -Morals! I have none. They go like the whiff of the breeze. Nothing that -I do lowers or lifts me. It passes through me and that is all. Do you -not understand?" which indeed was hard to do, for the brown eyes were -very soft and deep. - -"If any one else had told me this," said Sanderson, between his teeth, -"man or woman, it would never have been said but once." - -"It is harder for you than for me, for to-morrow I shall not care and -you, you will care perhaps a long time. You are fast like these hills. -Listen. Now, sir, this is our last ride together. We are a cavalier and -his lady. They are gallant and gay. They wear life and love and death -in their hair like flowers. They smile and will not let their hearts -be sad, for they say, 'It is cowardly to be sad: it is brave only to -smile.' Is it not so?" - -Sanderson's New England reserve fled far away, and he bent over her -hand. - -"It shall be as you say." - -And to-morrow seemed far enough away, and an hour had its eternal value. -But the steady old hills could not understand that kind of chronology. - - - - -TWO ROADS THAT MEET IN SALEM - -|The Salem Road is a dusty road. Perhaps it is not really any dustier -than other roads, but it is straighter than most roads about Hagar. You -can see more of it at a time, and in that way you can see more dust. -Along this road one day many years ago came Dr. Wye of Salem in his -buggy, which leaned over on one side; and the dust was all over the -buggy-top, all over the big, gray, plodding horse, and all over the -doctor's hat and coat. He was tired and drowsy, but you would not have -suspected it; for he was a red-faced, sturdy man, with a beard cut -square, as if he never compromised with anything. He sat up straight and -solid, so as not to compromise with the tipping of the buggy. - -"Come, Billy," said the doctor, "no nonsense, now." - -He prided himself on being a strict man, who would put up with no -nonsense, but every one knew better. Billy, the gray horse, knew as well -as any one. - -"Come now, Billy, get along." - -A tall, dusty, black-bearded man rose up beside the road, and Billy -stopped immediately. - -A large pack lay against the bank. - -"You ain't seen a yeller dog?" - -"No," said the doctor, gruffly. He was provoked with Billy. "There -aren't any yellow dogs around here." - -"He hadn't no tail," persisted the stranger, wistfully. "And there were -a boy a-holdin' him. He chopped it off when he were little." - -"Who chopped it off?" - -"Hey? He's a little cuss, but the dog's a good dog." - -"Get up, Billy," growled the doctor. "All boys are little cusses. I have -n't seen any yellow dog. Nonsense! I wonder he did n't ask if I'd seen -the tail." - -But somehow the doctor could not get rid of the man's face, and he found -himself looking along the roadside for boys that were distinctly "little -cusses" and yellow dogs without tails, all the rest of the day. - -In the evening twilight he drove into Salem village. Very cool and -pleasant looked the little white house among the trees. Mother Wye -stood on the porch in her white apron and cap, watching for him. She -was flying signals of distress--if the word were not too strong--she was -even agitated. He tramped up the steps reassuringly. - -"Oh," whispered Mother Wye, "you've no idea, Ned! There's a boy and a -dog, a very large dog, my dear, on the back steps." - -"Well," said the doctor, gallantly, "they've no business to be anywhere -frightening my little mother. We'll tell them to do something else." The -doctor tramped sturdily around to the back steps, Mother Wye following -much comforted. - -The dog was actually a yellow dog without any tail to speak of--a large, -genial-looking dog, nevertheless; the boy, a black-eyed boy, very grave -and indifferent, with a face somewhat thin and long. "Without doubt," -thought the doctor, "a little cuss. Hullo," he said aloud, "I met a man -looking for you." - -The boy scrutinized him with settled gravity. "He's not much account," -he said calmly. "I'd rather stay here." - -"Oh, you would!" grumbled the doctor. "Must think I want somebody around -all the time to frighten this lady. Nice folks you are, you and your -dog." - -The boy turned quickly and took off his cap. "I beg your pardon, madam," -he said with a smile that was singularly sudden and winning. The action -was so elderly and sedate, so very courtly, surprising, and incongruous, -that the doctor slapped his knee and laughed uproariously; and Mother -Wye went through an immediate revulsion, to feel herself permeated with -motherly desires. The boy went on unmoved. - -"He's an easy dog, ma'am. His name's Poison, but he never does -anything;"--which started the doctor off again. - -"They said you wanted a boy." - -"Ah," said the doctor, growing grave, "that's true; but you're not the -boy." - -The boy seemed to think him plainly mistaken. "Stuff!" growled the -doctor, "I want a boy I can send all around the country. I know a dozen -boys that know the country, and that I know all about. I don't want you. -Besides," he added, "he said you were a little cuss." - -The boy paid no attention to the last remark. "I'll find it out. Other -boys are thick-headed." - -"That's true," the doctor admitted; "they are thick-headed." Indeed -this young person's serenity and confidence quite staggered him. A new -diplomatic idea seemed to occur to the young person. He turned to Mother -Wye and said gravely: "Will you pull Poison's ear, ma'am, so he'll know -it's all right?" - -Mother Wye, with some trepidation, pulled Poison's ear, and Poison -wagged the whole back end of himself to make up for a tail, signifying -things that were amicable, while the doctor tugged at his beard and -objected to nonsense. - -"Well, young man, we'll see what you have to say for yourself. Tut! -tut! mother,"--to Mrs. Wye's murmur of remonstrance,--"we'll have no -nonsense. This is a practical matter;" and he tramped sturdily into the -house, followed by the serious boy, the amicable dog, and the appeased, -in fact the quite melted, Mother Wye. - -"Now, boy," said the doctor, "what's your name?" - -"Jack." - -"Jack what? Is that other fellow your father?" - -"I reckon maybe he is," returned Jack, with a gloomy frown. "His name's -Baker. He peddles." - -The doctor tugged at his beard and muttered that "at any rate there -appeared to be no nonsense about it. But he's looking for you," he said. -"He'll take you away." - -"He's looking for the dog," said Jack, calmly. "He can't have him." - -The East End Road, which circles the eastern end of the Cattle Ridge, -is not at all like the Salem Road. It is wilder and crookeder, to begin -with, but that is a superficial matter. It passes through thick woods, -dips into gullies, and changes continually, while along the Salem Road -there is just the smoky haze on the meadows and dust in the chalices -of the flowers; there too the distance blinks stupidly and speculation -comes to nothing. But the real point is this: the Salem Road leads -straight to Hagar and stops there; the East End Road goes over somewhere -among the northern hills and splits up into innumerable side roads, -roads that lead to doorways, roads that run into footpaths and dwindle -away in despair, roads of which it must be said with sorrow that there -was doubt in Salem whether they ever ended or led anywhere. Hence arose -the tale that all things which were strange and new, at least all things -which were to be feared, came into Salem over the East End Road; just as -in Hagar they came down from the Cattle Ridge and went away to the south -beyond Windless Mountain. - -Along this road, a month later than the last incident, came the -black-bearded peddler with his pack, whistling; and indeed his pack, -though large, seemed to weigh singularly little; also the peddler seemed -to be in a very peaceful frame of mind. And along this road too came the -plodding gray horse, with the serious boy driving, and the yellow dog -in the rear; all at a pace which slowly but surely overtook the peddler. -The peddler, reaching a quiet place where a bank of ferns bordered the -brushwood, sat down and waited, whistling. The dog, catching sight of -him, came forward with a rush, wagging the back end of himself; and -Billy, the gray horse, came gently to a standstill. - -"How goes it?" said the peddler, pausing a moment in his whistling. -"Pretty good?" - -"Mostly." - -The peddler took a cigar-case from his pocket, a cigar wrapped in -tin-foil from the case, and lay back lazily among the ferns, putting his -long thin hands behind his head. "My notion was," he murmured, -"that it would take a month, a month would be enough." - -The serious boy said nothing, but sat with his chin on his fists looking -down the road meditatively. - -"My notion was," went on the peddler, "that a doctor's boy, particularly -that doctor's boy, would get into all the best houses around--learn the -lay of things tolerably neat. That was my notion. Good notion, wasn't -it, Jack?" Jack muttered a subdued assent. The peddler glanced at him -critically. "For instance now, that big square house on the hill north -of Hagar." - -Jack shook his head. "Nothing in it. Old man, name Map, rich enough, -furniture done up in cloth, valuables stored in Hamilton; clock or two -maybe; nothing in it." - -"Ah," said the other, "just so;" and again he glanced critically through -his half-closed eyes. "But there are others." Again Jack muttered a -subdued assent. - -"Good?" - -"Good enough." - -The apparent peddler smoked, quite at his ease among the ferns, and -seemed resolved that the boy should break the silence next. - -"Are you banking on this business, dad?" said the latter, finally. - -"Ah--why, no, Jack, not really. It's a sort of notion, I admit." He -lifted one knee lazily over the other. "I'm not shoving you, Jack. State -the case." A long silence followed, to which the conversation of the two -seemed well accustomed. - -"I never knew anything like that down there," nodding in the direction -of Salem. "Those people.--It's different." - -"That's so," assented the apparent peddler, critically. "I reckon it -is. We make a point not to be low. Polish is our strong point, Jack. -But we're not in society. We are not, in a way, on speaking terms with -society." - -"It ain't that." - -"Isn't," corrected the other, gently. "Isn't, Jack. But I rather think -it is." - -"Well," said Jack, "it's different, and"--with gloomy decision--"it's -better." - -The apparent peddler whistled no more, but lay back among the ferns and -gazed up at the drooping leaves overhead. The gray horse whisked at the -wood-gnats and looked around now and again inquiringly. The yellow dog -cocked his head on one side as if he had an opinion worth listening to -if it were only called for. - -"I suppose now," said the apparent peddler, softly, "I suppose now -they're pretty cosy. I suppose they say prayers." - -"You bet.". - -"You mean that they do, Jack. I suppose," he went on dreamily, "I -suppose the old lady has white hair and knits stockings." - -"She does that," said Jack, enthusiastically, "and pincushions and -mats." - -"And pincushions and mats. That's so." - -The lowing of cattle came up to them from hidden meadows below; for the -afternoon was drawing near its close and the cattle were uneasy. The -chimney and roof of a farmhouse were just visible through a break in the -sloping woods. The smoke that mounted from the chimney seemed to linger -lovingly over the roof, like a symbol of peace, blessing the hearth -from which it came. The sentimental outcast puffed his excellent cigar -meditatively, now and again taking it out to remark, "Pincushions and -mats!" indicating the constancy of his thoughts. - -The serious boy motioned in the direction of Salem. "I think I'll stay -there," he said. "It's better." - -"Reckon I know how you feel, Jack,--know how you feel. Give me my lowly -thatched cottage, and that sort of thing." After a longer silence -still, he sat up and threw away his cigar. "Well, Jack, if you see your -way--a--if I were you, Jack," he said slowly, "I wouldn't go half and -half; I'd go the whole bill. I'd turn on the hose and inquire for the -ten commandments, that's what I'd do." He came and leaned lazily on -the carriage wheel. "That isn't very plain. It's like this. You don't -exactly abolish the old man; you just imagine him comfortably buried; -that's it, comfortably buried, with an epitaph,--flourishy, Jack, -flourishy, stating"--here his eyes roamed meditatively along Billy's -well-padded spine--"stating, in a general way, that he made a point of -polish." - -The serious boy's lip trembled slightly. He seemed to be seeking some -method of expression. Finally he said: "I'll trade knives with you, dad. -It's six blades"; and the two silently exchanged knives. - -Then Billy, the gray horse, plodded down the hill through the woods, and -the apparent peddler plodded up. At one turn in the road can be seen the -white houses of Salem across the valley; and here he paused, leaning on -the single pole that guarded the edge. After a time he roused himself -again, swung his pack to his shoulder, and disappeared over the crest of -the hill whistling. - -The shadows deepened swiftly in the woods; they lengthened in the open -valley, filling the hollows, climbed the hill to Salem, and made dusky -Dr. Wye's little porch and his tiny office duskier still. The office -was so tiny that portly Judge Carter of Gilead seemed nearly to fill it, -leaving small space for the doctor. For this or some other reason -the doctor seemed uncomfortable, quite oppressed and borne down, and -remonstrating with the oppression. The judge was a man of some splendor, -with gold eye-glasses and cane. - -"There really is no doubt about it," he was saying, with a magnificent -finger on the doctor's knee, "no doubt at all." - -The conversation seemed to be most absorbing. The doctor pulled his -beard abstractedly and frowned. - -The serious boy drove by outside in the dusk, and after a while came up -from the bam. He sat down on the edge of the porch to think things over, -and the judge's voice rolled on oracularly. Jack hardly knew yet -what his thoughts were; and this was a state of mind that he was not -accustomed to put up with, because muddle-headedness was a thing that -he especially despised. "You don't exactly abolish the old man," he kept -hearing the peddler say; "you just imagine him comfortably buried--with -an epitaph--flourishy--stating--" - -"Clever, very," said the judge. "Merriwether was telling me--won't -catch him, too clever--Merri-wether says--remarkable--interesting scamp, -very." The doctor growled some inaudible objection. - -"Why did he show himself!" exclaimed the judge. "Why, see here. Observe -the refined cleverness of it! It roused your interest, didn't it? It was -unique, amusing. Chances are ten to one you would n't have taken the boy -without it. Why, look here--" - -"Stuff!"--Here the doctor raised his voice angrily. "The boy ran away -from him, of course." - -"Maybe, doctor, maybe," said the judge, soothingly. "But there are -other things--looks shady--consider the man is known. Dangerous, doctor, -dangerous, very. You ought to be careful." Then the words were a mere -murmur. - -Jack sat still on the porch, with his chin on his hands. Overhead -the night-hawks called, and now and then one came down with a whiz of -swooping wings. Presently he heard the chairs scrape; he rose, slipped -around to the back porch and into the kitchen. - -The little bronze clock in the dining-room had just told its largest -stint of hours,--and very hard work it made of it. It was a great trial -to the clock to have to rouse itself and bluster so. It did not mind -telling time in a quiet way. But then, every profession has its trials. -It settled itself again to stare with round, astonished face at the -table in the centre of the room. - -Jack sat at the table by a dim lamp, the house dark and silent all -around him, writing a letter. He leaned his head down almost on a level -with the paper. - -"I herd him and you," he wrote in a round hand with many blots. "I lied -and so did he I mean dad. I can lie good. Dad sed I must learn the ten -comandments. The ten comandments says diferent things. You neednt be -afrad. There dont anithing happen cep to me. I do love Mother Wye tru." -The clock went on telling the time in the way that it liked to do, -tick-tick-tick. Overhead the doctor slept a troubled sleep, and in -Gilead Judge Carter slept a sound sleep of good digestion. - -Far off the Salem Road led westward straight to Hagar, and stopped, and -the moonlight lay over it all the way; but the East End Road led through -the shadows and deep night over among the northern hills, and split -up into many roads, some of which did not seem ever to end, or lead -anywhere. - -Jack dropped from the window skilfully, noiselessly, and slid away in -the moonlight. At the Corners he did not hesitate, but took the East End -Road. - - - - -A VISIBLE JUDGMENT - -|He bore the name of Adam Wick. There seemed to be something primitive -in his temperament to fit it. By primitive we mean of such times as may -have furnished single-eyed passions that did not argue. He was a small, -thin, stooping man, with a sharp nose and red-lidded eyes. Sarah Wick, -his daughter, was a dry-faced woman of thirty, and lived with him. - -His house stood on a hill looking over the village of Preston -Plains, which lay in a flat valley. In the middle of the village the -church-steeple shot up tapering and tall. - -It was a bickering community. The church was a centre of interest. The -outlines of the building were clean and shapely, but in detail it stood -for a variety of opinions. A raised tracery ran along the pseudo-classic -frieze of its front, representing a rope of flowers with little cupids -holding up the loops. They may have been cherubs. The community had -quarrelled about them long ago when the church was building, but that -subject had given way to other subjects. - -The choir gallery bulged over the rear seats, as if to dispute the -relative importance of the pulpit. That was nothing. But it needed -bracing. The committee decided against a single pillar, and erected two, -one of them in the middle of Adam Wick's pew. - -Adam looked at things simply. It seemed to his simplicity that the -community had conspired to do him injustice. The spirit of nonconformity -stirred within him. He went to the minister. - -"Andrew Hill, nor any other man, nor committeeman's got no rights in my -pew." - -The minister was dignified. - -"The pew, Mr. Wick, belongs to the church." - -"No such thing! I sat twenty-four years in that pew." - -"But that, though very creditable--" - -"No such thing! I'll have no post in my pew, for Andrew Hill nor no -minister neither." - -"Mr. Wick--" - -"You take that post out o' my pew." - -He stumped out of the minister's green-latticed doorway and down the -gravel path. His eyes on either side of his sharp nose were like -those of an angry hawk, and his stooping shoulders, seen from behind, -resembled the huddled back of the hawk, caged and sullen. - -The minister watched him. Properly speaking, a primitive nature is an -unlimited monarchy where ego is king, but the minister's reflections did -not run in these terms. He did not even go so far as to wonder whether -such primitive natures did not render the current theory of a church -inaccurate. He went so far as to wonder what Adam Wick would do. - -One dark, windy night, near midnight, Adam Wick climbed in at the -vestibule window of the church, and chopped the pillar in two with an -axe. The wind wailed in the belfry over his head. The blinds strained, -as if hands were plucking at them from without. The sound of his blows -echoed in the cold, empty building, as if some personal devil were -enjoying the sacrilege. Adam was a simple-minded man; he realized that -he was having a good time himself. - -It was three days before the church was opened. What may have been -Adam's primitive thoughts, moving secretively among his townsmen? Then -a sudden rumor ran, a cry went up, of horror, of accusation, of the -lust of strife. Before the accusation Adam did not hesitate to make his -defiance perfect. The primitive mind was not in doubt. With a blink of -his red eyelids, he answered: - -"You tell Andrew Hill, don't you put another post in my pew." - -A meeting was held; a majority voted enthusiastically to strike his name -from the rolls for unchristian behavior and to replace the pillar. A -minority declared him a wronged man. That was natural enough in Preston -Plains. But Adam Wick's actions at this point were thought original and -effective by every one. - -He sat silently through the proceedings in the pew with the hacked -pillar, his shoulders hunched, his sharp eyes restless. - -"Mr. Wick," said the minister, sternly, "have you anything to say?" - -Adam rose. - -"I put fifty-six dollars into this meetin'-house. Any man deny that?" - -No man denied it. - -"Humph!" said Adam. - -He took the hymn-book from the rack, lifted the green cushion from the -seat, threw it over his shoulder, and walked out. - -No man spoke against it. - -"There's no further business before this meeting," said Chairman Hill. - -It was a Sunday in August and nearly noon. From the side porch of Adam -Wick's house on the hill the clustered foliage of the village below was -the centre of the landscape. The steeple and ridgepole of the church -rose out of the centre of the foliage. - -The landscape could not be fancied without the steeple. The dumb -materials of the earth, as well as the men who walk upon it, acquire -habits. You could read on the flat face of the valley that it had grown -accustomed to Preston Plains steeple. - -On the side porch stood a long, high-backed bench. It was a close -imitation of the pews in the church below among the foliage, with the -long green cushion on the seat and a chair facing it with a hymn-book -on it. Adam sat motionless on the bench. His red-lidded eyes were fixed -intently on the steeple. - -A hen with a brood of downy yellow chickens pecked about the path. -A turkey strutted up and down. The air was sultry, oppressive. A low -murmur of thunder mingled with the sleepy noises of creaking crickets -and clucking hen. - -Adam Wick's bench and rule of Sabbath observance had been common talk in -Preston Plains. But it had grown too familiar, for subjects of dispute -ever gave way there to other subjects. Some one said it was pathetic. -The minority thought it a happy instance to throw in the face of -the bigoted majority, that they had driven from the church a man -of religious feeling. The minister had consulted Andrew Hill, that -thick-set man with the dry mouth and gray chin-beard. - -"Not take out that pillar!" said Andrew Hill. "Ah," said the minister, -"I'm afraid that wouldn't do. It would seem like--" - -"I wouldn't move that pillar if the whole town was sidin' with him." - -"Oh, now--" - -"Not while I'm alive. Adam Wick, he's obstinate." Mr. Hill shut his -mouth grimly. - -"Religious! Humph! Maybe he is." - -The minister moved away. They were a stiff-necked people, but after all -he felt himself to be one of them. It was his own race. He knew how -Andrew Hill felt, as if something somewhere within him were suddenly -clamped down and riveted. He understood Adam too, in his private pew on -the side porch, the hymn-book on the chair, his eyes on Preston Plains -steeple, fixed and glittering. He thought, "We don't claim to be -altogether lovely." - -Adam was in his own eyes without question a just man suffering -injustice. His fathers in their Genesis and Exodus had so suffered, -faced stocks, pillory, the frowning edge of the wilderness, and -possessed their souls with the same grim congratulation. No generation -ever saw visions and sweat blood, and left a moderate-minded posterity. -Such martyrs were not surer that the God of Justice stood beside them -than Adam was sure of the injustice of that pillar in that pew, nor -more resolved that neither death nor hell should prevail against the -faithfulness of their protest. - -And the turkey strutted in the yard, the chickens hurried and peeped, -the thunder muttered at intervals as if the earth were breathing heavily -in its hot sleep. - -The church-bell rang for the end of the morning service. It floated up -from the distance, sweet and plaintive. - -Adam rose and carried the cushion, chair, and hymn-book into the house. - -The storm was rising, darkening. It crouched on the hills. It seemed to -gather its garments and gird its loins, to breathe heavily with crowded -hate, to strike with daggers of lightning right and left. - -Adam came out again and sat on the bench. The service being over, it was -no longer a pew. - -Carriages, one after another, drove out of the foliage below, and along -the five roads that ran out of Preston Plains between zigzag fences and -low stone walls. They were hurrying, but from that distance they seemed -to crawl. - -The Wick carriage came up the hill and through the gate--creaking -wheels, a shambling white horse, Sarah jerking the reins with monotonous -persistence. She stepped down and dusted off her cotton gloves. Adam -walked out to take the horse. - -"Wherefore do ye harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh -hardened their hearts?" - -Adam seemed puzzled, blinked his eyes, seemed to study carefully the -contents of his own mind. - -"I do' know," he said at last. - -"First Samuel, seven, six," said Sarah. - -Adam led the horse away despondently. Halfway to the bam he stopped and -called out: - -"Did he preach at me?" - -"No." - -The minister had chosen a text that Adam did not know, and made no -reference to him, although the text was a likely one. Adam felt both -slights in a dim way, and resented them. He came back to the house and -sat in the front room before the window. - -The valley was covered with a thick veil of gray rain. The black cloud -above it cracked every moment with sudden explosions, the echoes of them -tumbling clumsily among the hills. Preston Plains steeple faded away -and the foliage below it became a dim blot. A few drops struck the -window-pane at Adam's face, then a rush and tumult of rain. Dimmer still -the valley, but the lightning jabbed down into it incessantly, unseen -batteries playing attack and defence over Preston Plains steeple. - -It was a swift, sudden storm, come and gone like a burst of passion. The -imminent crack and crash of the thunder ceased, and only rumblings were -heard, mere memories, echoes, or as if the broken fragments of the -sky were rolling to and fro in some vast sea-wash. The valley and the -village trees came slowly into view. - -"Dinner's ready," said Sarah, in the next room. - -She had a strident voice, and said dinner was ready as if she expected -Adam to dispute it. There was no answer from the window. - -"Pa! Aren't you comin'?" - -No answer. Sarah came to the door. - -"Pa!" - -His face was close to the rain-washed window-pane. Something rattled in -his throat. It seemed like a suppressed chuckle. He rested his chin on -his hand and clawed it with bony fingers. - -"Pa!" - -He turned on her sternly. - -"You needn't be shoutin' on the Lord's day. Meetin'-house steeple's -a-fire." - -From Adam Wick's nothing could be seen but the slow column of smoke -rising and curling around the slender steeple. But under the foliage -Preston Plains was in tumult. - -By night the church was saved, but the belfry was a blackened ruin -within. The bell had fallen, through floor, cross-beams, and ceiling, -and smashed the front of the choir gallery, a mass of fallen pillar, -railing, and broken plaster on the floor. - -Andrew Hill called a meeting. Adam Wick came, entered his cluttered pew -and sat on the pillar that lay prostrate across it. He perched on it -like a hawk, with huddled back and red-lidded eyes blinking. It was the -sense of the meeting that modern ideas demanded the choir should sit -behind the minister. The ruined gallery must be removed. Adam Wick rose. - -"You've got no place in this meetin'," said Andrew Hill. "Set down." - -Adam kept his place scornfully. - -"Can't I subscribe twenty dollars to this church?" The chairman stroked -his beard and a gleam of acrid humor lit his face for a moment. - -"Well," he said slowly, "I suppose you can." - -And the eyes of all present looked on Adam Wick favorably. - -The minister rose to speak the last word of peace. - -"My friends, the Lord did it. He is righteous--" - -"That's my idea!" said Adam Wick, like a hawk on his fallen pillar, -red-lidded, complacent. "He did what was right." - -The minister coughed, hesitated, and sat down. Andrew Hill glowered from -his chair. - -"There's no further business before this meetin'." - - - - -THE EMIGRANT EAST - -|The old book-shop on Cripple Street in the city of Hamilton was walled -to its dusky ceiling with books. Books were stacked on the floor like -split wood, with alleys between. The long table down the centre was -piled with old magazines and the wrecks of paper-covered novels. -School arithmetics and dead theologies; Annuals in faded gilt, called -"Keepsake," or "Friendship's Offering"; little leathern nubbins of books -from the last century, that yet seemed less antique than the Annuals -which counted no more than forty years--so southern and early-passing -was the youth of the Annual; Bohn's translations, the useful and -despised; gaudy, glittering prints of the poets and novelists; all were -crowded together without recognition of caste, in a common Bohemia. -Finding a book in that mystical chaos seemed to establish a right to it -of first discovery. The pretty girl, who sat in one of the dim windows -and kept the accounts, looked Oriental but not Jewish, and wore crimson -ribbons in her black hair and at her throat. She read one of the -Annuals, or gazed through the window at Cripple Street. A show-case -in the other window contained stamp collections, Hindoo, Chinese, and -Levantine coinage. - -Far back in the shop a daring explorer might come upon a third window, -gray, grimy, beyond which lay the unnamable backyards between Cripple -and Academy Streets. It could not be said to "open on" them, for it was -never opened, or "give a view" of them, being thick with gray dust. But -if one went up to it and looked carefully, there in the dim corner -might be seen an old man with a long faded black coat, rabbinical -beard, dusky, transparent skin, and Buddha eyes, blue, faint, far away, -self-abnegating, such as under the Bo-tree might have looked forth -in meek abstraction on the infinities and perceived the Eightfold -Principle. It was always possible to find Mr. Barria by steering for the -window. So appeared the old bookshop on Cripple Street, Mr. Barria, the -dealer, and his granddaughter, Janey. - -Nature made Cripple Street to be calm and dull; for the hand of man, -working through generations, is the hand of nature, as surely as in -nature the oriole builds its nest or the rootlets seek their proper -soil. Cripple Street ran from Coronet to Main Street and its paving was -bad. There were a few tailors and bookbinders, a few silent, clapboarded -houses. - -But two doors from the corner on Coronet Street stood Station No. 4, of -the Fire Brigade, and Cripple Street was the nearest way to Main Street, -whither No. 4 was more likely to be called than elsewhere. So that, -though nature made Cripple Street to be calm and dull, No. 4, Fire -Brigade, sometimes passed it, engine, ladder, and hose, in the splendor -of the supernatural, the stormy pageantry of the gods; and one Tommy -Durdo drove the engine. - -Durdo first came into Mr. Barria's shop in search of a paper-covered -novel with a title promising something wild and belligerent. It was a -rainy, dismal day, and Janey sat among the dust and refuse of forgotten -centuries. - -"My eyes!" he thought. "She's a peach." - -He lost interest in any possible belligerent novel, gazed at her with -the candor of his youthfulness, and remarked, guilefully: - -"I bet you've seen me before now." - -"You drive the engine," said Janey, with shining eyes. - -"Why, this is my pie," thought Durdo, and sat down by her on a pile -of old magazines. He was lank, muscular, with a wide mouth, lean jaws, -turn-up nose, and joyful eyes. The magazines contained variations on the -loves of Edwards, Eleanors, and other people, well-bred, unfortunate, -and possessed of sentiments. Durdo was not well-bred, and had not a -presentable sentiment in his recollection. He had faith in his average -luck, and went away from Mr. Barria's shop at last with a spot in the -tough texture of his soul that felt mellow. - -"J. Barria, bookdealer," he read from the sign. "J! That's Janey, ain't -it? Hold on. She ain't the bookdealer. She ain't any ten-cent novel -either. She's a Rushy bound, two dollar and a half a copy, with -a dedication on the fly-leaf, which"--Tommy stopped suddenly and -reflected--"which it might be dedicated to Tommy." - -It came near to being a sentiment. The possibility of such a thing -rising from within him seemed impressive. He walked back to No. 4 -thoughtfully, and thrust himself into a fight with Hamp Sharkey, in -which it was proved that Hamp was the better man. Tommy regained his -ordinary reckless cheerfulness. But when a man is in a state of mind -that it needs a stand-up and knock-down fight to introduce cheerfulness, -he cannot hope to conceal his state of mind. - -Cripple Street drowsed in the sunshine one August afternoon. A small boy -dug bricks out of the sidewalk with a stick. It seemed to emphasize the -indifferent calm that no one took that interest in Cripple Street to -come and stop him. The clangor of the fire-bells broke across the city. -For a moment the silence in Cripple Street seemed more deathly than -before. Then the doors of the tailors and bookbinders flew open. The -Fire Company came with leap and roar, ladder, engine, and hose, rattle -of wheels and thud of steam. Passing Mr. Barria's Durdo turned his head, -saw Janey in the door, and beamed on her. - -"Hooray," he shouted. - -"It's Tommy's girl," thundered Hamp Sharkey, from the top of his -jingling ladders. Fire Brigade No. 4 cheered, waved its helmet, wherever -it had a hand free, and in a moment was gone, leaving the drift of its -smoke in the air, the tremble of its passing, and Janey flushed and -thrilled. Hook and ladder and all had hailed her with honor as Tommy's -girl. A battalion of cavalry, with her lover at the head, dashing up to -salute, say, her battlemented or rose-embowered window--both terms occur -in the Annuals--and galloping away to the wars, might have been better -theoretically, but Janey was satisfied. She had no defence against such -battery. Power, daring, and danger were personified in Tommy. He had -brought them all to her feet. This it was to live and be a woman. She -turned back into the dim shop, her eyes shining. The backs of the dusty -books seemed to quiver and glow, even those containing arithmetic, -dead philosophies, and other cool abstractions, as if they forgot their -figures and rounded periods, and thought of the men who wrote them, how -these once were young. - -Durdo found it possible, by spending his off hours in Mr. Barria's shop, -to keep cheerful without fighting Hamp Sharkey. A row now and then with -a smaller man than Hamp was enough to satisfy the growing mellowness of -his soul. His off hours began at four. He passed them among the Annuals -and old magazines in a state of puzzled and flattered bliss. He fell so -far from nature as to read the Annuals where Janey directed, to conclude -that what was popularly called "fun" was vanity and dust in the mouth; -that from now on he would be decent, and that any corner or hole in the -ground which contained Janey and Tommy would suit him forever. No doubt -he was wrong there. - -Mr. Barria's memories of all that had befallen him within or without, in -the journey of this life, before his entry on the Path of Quietness, and -his consciousness of all external objects and occurrences since, were -clear enough, but only as little white clouds in the open sky are clear, -whose business it is to be far away and trouble us with no insistent -tempest. They never entered the inner circle of his meditation. They -appeared to be distant things. He had no sense of contact with them. -His abstractions had formed a series of concentric spheres about him. -In some outer sphere lay a knowledge of the value of books as bought and -sold, which enabled him to buy and sell them with indifferent profit, -but it entered his central absorption no more than the putting on and -off of his coat. - -He was not absorbed in books. He did not seem to care for them, beyond -the fourscore or more worn volumes that were piled about his table by -the gray window, many of them in tattered paper covers bearing German -imprints, some lately rebound by a Cripple Street bookbinder. He did not -care for history or geography, not even his own. He did not care where -he was born or when, where he was now, or how old. - -Once--whether forty years gone or four hundred, would have seemed to him -a question of the vaguest import--he had taught Arabic and Greek in a -university town, which looks off to mountains that in their turn look -off to the Adriatic Sea. There was a child, a smaller Julian Barria. -Somewhere about this time and place he began explorations in more -distant Eastern languages. The date was unnoted, obscure, traditional. -The interest in language soon disappeared. It was a period of wonder and -searching. After the moral fierceness of the Arab and Mohammedan, the -Hindoo's and Buddhist's calm negations and wide mental spaces first -interested him by contrast, then absorbed him. He began to practise the -discipline, the intense and quiet centring on one point, till the sense -of personality should slip away and he and that point be one. There was -no conviction or conversion, for the question never seemed put to him, -or to be of any value, whether one thing was true and another not true. -But the interest gradually changed to a personal issue. All that he now -heard and saw and spoke to, objects in rest or in motion, duties that -called for his performance, became not so much vaguer in outline as more -remote in position. In comparison with his other experiences they were -touched with a faint sense of unreality. The faces of other men were -changed in his eyes. He sometimes noticed and wondered, passingly, that -they seemed to see no change in him, or if any change, it was one that -drew them more than formerly to seek his sympathy. He observed himself -listening to intimate confessions with a feeling of patient benevolence -that cost him no effort, and seemed to him something not quite belonging -to him as a personal virtue, but which apparently satisfied and quieted -the troubled souls that sought him. - -About this later time--a reference to the histories would fix the date -at 1848--a civil war swept the land, and the University was closed. The -younger Julian Barria was involved in the fall of the revolutionists and -fled from the country. The late teacher of Greek and Arabic crossed -the ocean with him. It was a matter of mild indifference. He gave his -sympathy to all, gently and naturally, but felt no mental disturbance. -Neither did the change of scene affect him. Everywhere were earth -beneath and sky above, and if not it were no matter. Everywhere were -men and women and children, busy with a multitude of little things, -trembling, hurrying, crying out among anxieties. It was all one, clear -enough, but remote, touched with the same sense of unreality, and like -some sad old song familiar in childhood and still lingering in the -memory. - -The book-shop on Cripple Street at one time dealt also in newspapers and -cigars. They were more to the younger Barria's talent, more to his -taste the stirring talk of men who live in their own era and congregate -wherever there are newspapers and tobacco. Afterward he went away into -the West, seeking a larger field for his enterprise than Cripple Street, -and the newspaper and cigar business declined and passed away. The -show-case fell to other uses. The elder Barria sat by the square rear -window, and the gray dust gathered and dimmed it. Ten years flowed like -an unruffled stream; of their conventional divisions and succeeding -events he seemed but superficially conscious. Letters came now and -then from the West, announcing young Barria's journeys and schemes, his -marriage in the course of enterprise, finally his death. The last was in -a sprawling hand, and said: - -"Jules missus is ded to an thars a kid. Jules sez take her to the ol man -Jake when ye go est in the spring. I am Jake. He is wooly in his hed -sez he but he is a good man sez he. He got a soul like Mondays washin -on Tewsday mornin sez he spekin in figgers an menin you. Them was Jules -last word." - -The large, bony person called Jake, slouch-hatted and rough-bearded, -brought the child in time, and departed, muttering embarrassment. She -stood among the Annuals and old magazines with a silver dollar from -Jake clasped in each hand, and a roll of fifty-dollar bills in her -tiny pocket, probably representing young Barria's estate and the end of -Jake's duties as executor. She might have been two or three years old. -That was not a matter of interest to Mr. Barria, in whose conception the -soul of every creature was, in a way, more ancient than the hills. - -She seemed to believe in his good intentions and came to him gravely. -She did not remember any mother, and for her own name it had apparently -been "chicken" when her father had wanted her, and "scat" when he did -not. Mr. Barria envied a mind so untrammelled with memories, and named -her Jhana, which means a state of mystical meditation, of fruitful -tranquillity, out of which are said to come six kinds of supernatural -wisdom and ten powers. The name sometimes appeared to him written -Dhyana, when his meditations ran in Sanskrit instead of Pali. Cripple -Street called her Janey, and avoided the question with a wisdom of -its own. It had grown used to Mr. Barria. Scholars came from near-by -universities to consult him, and letters from distant countries to Herr, -Monsieur, or Signor Doctor Julian Barria, but Cripple Street, if it -knew of the matter, had no stated theory to explain it and was little -curious. His hair and beard grew white and prophetic, his skin more -transparent. A second decade and half a third glided by, and Janey and -Tommy Durdo sat hand in hand among the Annuals. - -"You must ask him, Tommy," Janey insisted, "because lovers always ask -parents." - -"An' the parents is horty and they runs away hossback. Say, Janey, if -his whiskers gets horty, I 'll faint. Say, Janey, you got to go 'n ask -my ma if you can have me." - -"Would she be haughty?" - -Janey always bubbled with pleasure, like a meadow spring, when Tommy -"got on a string," as he called it, fell to jesting circumstantially. -"You bet. She'd trun you down. An' yet she's married second time, she -has," he went on, thoughtfully, "an' she didn't ask my consent, not -either time. I would n't a given it the first, if she had, 'cause dad -was no good. I'd a been horty. I'd a told her he wa'n't worthy to come -into any family where I was comin', which he wa'n't." - -"Oh, Tommy!" - -"Yep. Dad was more nuisance'n mosquitoes." - -Mr. Barria came out of the distant retreat of his meditation slowly, and -looked up. It did not need all the subtle instinct of a pundit to read -the meaning of the two standing hand in hand before him. - -Tommy looked and felt as one asking favors of a spectre, and Mr. Barria -had fallen into a silent habit of understanding people. - -"Little Jhana iss a woman so soon?" he said softly. "She asks of her -birthright." - -He rose and looked quietly, steadily at Tommy, who felt himself growing -smaller inside, till his shoes seemed enormous, even his scalp loose and -his skull empty. - -"Mr.--" - -"It's Tommy Durdo," said Janey. - -"You will always remember to be a little kinder than seems necessary, -Mr. Durdo? It iss a good rule and very old." - -"He didn't ask whether I was a burglar or a lunatic by profesh," -grumbled Tommy, later. "Ain't a reasonable interest. He might a asked -which." - -"Never mind," said Janey. "I'll tell that." - -There were four rooms over the shop, where the three lived in great -peace. Tommy never made out whether Mr. Barria thought him a burglar or -a lunatic. As regards Janey he felt more like a burglar, as regards Mr. -Barria more like a lunatic. He dodged him reverentially. Only at the -station, where his duties kept him for the most part, did he feel like -a natural person and a fireman. He confided in Hamp Sharkey, and brought -him to the shop and the little up-stairs sitting-room for the purpose -of illustration. Hamp's feelings resembled Tommy's. They fell into naïve -sympathy. Hamp admired Tommy for his cleverness, his limber tongue, -the reckless daring of his daily contact with Mr. Barria and Janey, two -mysteries, differing but both remote. She was not like the shop-girls on -Main Street. Hamp would carry away the memory of her shining eyes lifted -to Tommy's irregular, somewhat impish face, and growl secretly over his -mental bewilderment. Tommy admired Hamp for his height and breadth and -dull good-nature. - -On an afternoon in the early summer the fire-bells rang call after call. -Engine No. 4 went second. The freight houses by the harbor were burning, -and the tall furniture factory that backed them. About dusk the north -wall of the factory fell into the street with a roar and rattle of -flying bricks. - -The book-shop was dark in the centre. The two lamps in the front windows -were lit, and Mr. Barria's lamp in his hidden corner. - -It came upon Mr. Barria in his absorption that there had been a moment -before the sound of the trampling of heavy feet in the front of the -shop, and a sudden cry. The trampling continued and increased. He came -forward with his lamp. Men were crowding up the narrow stairs that began -in the opposite corner. One of them swung a lantern overhead. - -"'Twere a brick," said some one in the dark centre of the shop. "Took -him over the ear. Dented him in like a plug hat." - -"Where's some water?" - -"Knocked her over quicker 'n the brick." - -"Sh! What's that?" - -"It's the old man." - -The light of the lamp, lifted in Mr. Barria's hand, fell over his -head with its flowing white hair, rabbinical beard, and spectral face. -Three-men, one of them a policeman, drew back to one side of the shop, -looking startled and feebly embarrassed. On the other side the window -lamp shone on Janey, where she lay fallen among the old Annuals. - -He lifted her head and muttered: - -"Jhana, Jhana." - -The three men slipped through the door; those above came down; a doctor -bustled in, satchel in hand, and after him several women; Janey was -carried up; the shop was empty, except for Mr. Barria sitting by his -lamp and muttering softly. - -"She could not find it, the peace that is about, and her little -happiness it would not stay beside her." - -Presently the doctor spoke over him. - -"I think Mrs. Durdo should be taken to the hospital. St. James, you -know. It's not far." - -"You think--" - -"She is approaching confinement, and the shock, you know." - -"Whatever iss desirable, Herr Doctor. There iss no need, sir, of the -economy in respect to--to whatever iss desirable." - -"Quite right, Mr. Barria. Quite right." - -This was in June. Late in the fall Janey came back from St. James's -Hospital, pale, drooping, and alone. - -She sat in a black dress by the front window and kept the accounts as -before, gazed through the dim panes at Cripple Street, which was made -by nature to be dull, but read the Annuals no more, which was perhaps a -pity. - -Mr. Barria from the rear of the shop watched Janey, sitting among the -Annuals and looking out on Cripple Street. He had not entered on the -Path himself as a cure for sorrow and suffering; he had come to it from -another direction. Yet the first purpose of its system had been the -solution of these. It was written: - -"Sorrow and suffering will be overcome when this thirst for life is -quenched, which makes for continuance, and that desire of separateness -and hunger after selfhood are put aside. They will fall away as drops -from a lotus leaf." - -And Janey was a type of them as they walk abroad. The measure of her -trouble was the measure of the yearning and attainment that had been -hers. - -"Desire not more then of yearning or attainment, of sight or touch, -of life in variety or abundance, but desire none at all, and turning -within, the dwelling you build there dwell in it, until both desire and -separateness shall in turn disappear." - -He went forward and drew a chair beside her. - -"Little Jhana," he said, "there wass once a woman and young who brought -her dead child to the wisest of men, and asked so of him, 'Do you know -one medicine that will be good for this child?' It was the custom then -for the patients or their friends to provide the herbs which the -doctors require, so that when she asked what herbs he would wish, and -he answered, 'Mustard-seed,' she promised with haste to bring it, for it -wass a common herb. 'And it must come,' he said, 'only from some house -where no child, no hussband, no wife, no parent, no friend hass died.' -Then she went in great hope, carrying the dead child; but everywhere -they said, 'I have lost,' and again, 'We have lost,' and one said, 'What -iss this you say; the living are few but the dead are many.' She found -so no house in that place from which she might take the mustard-seed. -Therefore she buried the child, and came, and she said, 'I have not -found it; they tell me the living are few and the dead many.' And he -showed her how that nothing endured at all, but changed and passed into -something else, and each wass but a changing part of a changing whole, -and how, if one thought more of the whole, one so ceased to be troubled -much of the parts, and sorrow would fade away quietly." Janey stared at -him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. There was a certain comfort always -in Mr. Barria himself, however oddly he might talk. She dropped her head -on his knee and whispered: - -"I don't know about all that. I want Tommy and the baby." - -He touched her hair with thin fingers gently. "Then I wonder, little -Jhana," he said, looking to the magazines and Annuals, "if you have -found among these one, a poet of the English, who calls it to be better -to love and lose than not to love." - -"I don't know. I don't remember." - -He smoothed her hair again and went away. The winter passed and the -spring came with a scatter of sunshine and little showers. Janey still -sat by the window. If she had been able to generalize, to see that Tommy -and the baby represented hunger after life, and that this was the root -of sorrow, it would perhaps have still seemed to her that love and loss -were the better choice. Perhaps not. But she could not generalize. Her -thoughts were instincts, fancies, and little shining points of belief. -She could not see herself in any figure of speech; that she was one of a -multitude of discordant notes in the universe, whose business it was to -tune themselves to the key of a certain large music and disappear in its -harmony, where alone was constant happiness. It did not seem to mention -Tommy or the baby, and if not there was no point in it. - -Spring slipped away. Cripple Street was filled to the brim with bland -summer. Janey went every day to the cemetery with flowers. In September -she began to come back with flowers in her belt. - -It was a rainy, dismal day in October. Mr. Barria had a remote sense of -hearing Janey's laugh. It seemed to him there was a strange presence -in the shop. He peered out, and saw Hamp Sharkey outlined against the -window, large, slow-moving, and calm, a man who seemed to avoid all -troubles of the flesh by virtue of having enough flesh, and solid bone -beneath. Janey looked up at him and laughed. Around her were the old -Annuals, containing the loves of Edwards and Eleanors. - -Mr. Barria leaned back in his chair. Some untraced suggestion led him -to counting his years idly. He made them out to be nearly eighty. -They seemed suddenly to rest on his shoulders like a weight. If one -considered them at all, they were heavy, the years. And for this human -life, it was only intelligible in the abstract. Of its details there -were too many. - -The shop grew duskier, and the rain beat on the windows with an -incessant pattering, a multitude of tiny details, sounding accordingly -as one might listen. For either it would seem a cheerful, busy sound of -the kindly water, humble and precious and clean, needful in households, -pleasant in the fulness of rivers, comfortable, common, familiar; or it -was the low sigh of the driven rain, the melancholy iteration and murmur -of water circling like everything else its wheel of change, earth and -ocean and sky, earth and ocean and sky, and weary to go back to its -vague, elemental vapor, as before the worlds were shaped. - -Mr. Barria turned back to his volume, bound in gray paper with a German -imprint. To his ears the sound of the two voices talking became as -abstract as the rain. Hamp Sharkey's laugh was like the lowing of a -contented ox, and Janey's, as of old, like the ripple of a brook in a -meadow. - - - - -TOBIN'S MONUMENT - -|I was a student then and lived on the second floor of a brick dormitory -with foot-worn stones and sagging casements. The windows looked across -one end of the campus on ivy-covered walls of other buildings, on -a bronze statue whose head was bent to indicate that the person -represented had taken life seriously in his day. Near at hand was a -street of unacademic noises, horse-cars, shops, German bands, newsboys, -people who bought and sold without higher mathematics and seldom -mentioned Horatius Flaccus. - -But there were drifts and eddies of the street that would turn aside and -enter the dormitories commercially. Tobin was one of these. He came to -my door by preference, because of the large crack in the panel. For, -if one entered the dormitory commercially and knocked at the doors, one -never knew--it might be Horatius Flaccus, a volume of size and weight. -But with a crack in the panel one could stand outside at ease and -dignity, looking through it, and crying, "_M'las ca-andy!_ Peanuts!" -Then, if anything arrived, without doubt it arrived. A man might throw -what he chose at his own door. - -He was thin in the legs and shoulders, but round of face and marked -there with strange designs that were partly a native complexion; but, if -one is a candy boy, in constant company with newsboys, shiners, persons -who carry no such merchandise but are apt to wish for it violently, -one's complexion of course varies from day to day. - -"Say, but I hit _him!_ He bled on his clo's." Tobin sometimes made this -comment, "him" meaning different persons. There was a vein of fresh -romance in him. Did not Sir Balin, or his like, smite Sir Lanceor, so -that the blood flowed over his hauberk, and afterward speak of it with -enthusiasm? - -It was a cold December day in the year 188-, when the snow whirled -without rest from morning chapel till the end of the day was signified -by the first splutter of gas-jets. Among the hills where I was born that -office was left to the sunsets and twilights, who had a manner of doing -it, a certain broad nobility, a courtesy and grace. "One of God's days -is over. This is our sister, the night." The gas-jets were fretful, -coquettish, affected. "It is an outrage! One is simply turned on and -turned off!" Horatius Flaccus was social and intimate with me that day. -"_Exegi monumentum_," he remarked. "You will find it not easy to forget -me." - -Monuments! At the University we lived among commemorative buildings; -many a silent dusty room was dim with accumulation of thought; and there -men labored for what but to make a name? - -The statue outside represented one who took life seriously in his day, -now with the whirling snow about it, the gas-jet in front snapping -petulantly. "One is simply turned on and turned off!" - -"_Exegi monumentum_," continued Horatius Flac-cus. "This is my work, and -it is good. I shall not all die, _non omnis moriar_." It seemed natural -to feel so. But how honorably the sunsets and twilights used to go their -ways among the hills, contented and leaving not a wrack behind. - -It was a better attitude and conduct, that serene security of clouds in -their absolute death. "_Non omnis moriar_" was not only a boast, but a -complaint and a protest. - -Still, as to monuments, one would rather be memorialized by one's own -work than by the words of other men, or the indifferent labor of their -chisels. - -"_M'las ca-andy!_" - -"Come in, Tobin!" - -He opened the door and said, tentatively, "Peanuts." - -He always spoke in a more confident tone of the candy than of the -peanuts. There was no good reason for his confidence in either. - -"Tobin," I said, "you don't want a monument?" - -He kicked his feet together and murmured again, "Peanuts." - -His shoes were cracked at the sides. The cracks were full of snow. - -The remark seemed to imply that he did not expect a monument, having no -confidence in his peanuts. As a rule they were soggy and half-baked. - -Tobin's life, I thought, was too full of the flux of things; candy -melted, peanuts decayed, complexion changed from day to day, his private -wars were but momentary matters. I understood him to have no artificial -desires. Death would be too simple an affair for comment. He would -think of no comment to make. Sunsets and twilights went out in silence; -Tobin's half of humanity nearly as dumb. It was the other half that was -fussy on the subject. - -"Your feet are wet, Tobin. Warm them. Your shoes are no good." - -Tobin picked the easiest chair with good judgment, and balanced his feet -over the coals of the open stove, making no comment. - -"I won't buy your peanuts. They're sloppy. I might buy you another pair -of shoes. What do you think?" - -He looked at me, at the shoes, at the wet basket on his knees, but -nothing elaborate seemed to occur to him. He said: - -"A'right." He had great mental directness. I had reached that point in -the progress of young philosophy where the avoidance of fussiness takes -the character of a broad doctrine: a certain Doric attitude was desired. -Tobin seemed to me to have that attitude. - -"If I give you the money, will you buy shoes or cigarettes?" - -"Shoes." - -"Here, then. Got anything to say?" - -He put the bill into his pocket, and said: - -"Yep, I'll buy 'em." - -His attitude was better than mine. The common wish to be thanked was -pure fussiness. - -"Well, look here. You bring me back the old ones." - -Even that did not disturb him. The Doric attitude never questions other -men's indifferent whims. - -"A'right." - -I heard him presently on the lower floor, crying, "_M'las ca-andy!_ -Peanuts." - -"I shall be spoken of," continued Horatius Flaccus, calmly, "by that -wild southern river, the Aufidus, and in many other places. I shall be -called a pioneer in my own line, _princeps Æolium carmen deduxisse_." - -The night was closing down. The gas-light flickered on the half-hidden -face of the statue, so that its grave dignity seemed changed to a -shifty, mocking smile. - -I heard no more of Tobin for a month, and probably did not think of him. -There were Christmas holidays about, and that week which is called of -the Promenade, when one opens Horatius Flaccus only to wonder what might -have been the color of Lydia's hair, and to introduce comparisons that -are unfair to Lydia. - -It was late in January. Some one came and thumped on the cracked panel. -It was not Tobin, but a stout woman carrying Tobin's basket, who said in -an expressionless voice: - -"Oi! Them shoes." - -"What?" - -"You give 'im some shoes." - -"Tobin. That's so." - -"I'm Missus Tobin." - -She was dull-looking, round-eyed, gray-haired. She fumbled in the -basket, dropped something in wet paper on a chair, and seemed placidly -preparing to say more. It seemed to me that she had much of Tobin's -mental directness, the Doric attitude, the neglect of comment. I asked: -"How's Tobin?" - -"Oi! He's dead." - -"I am very sorry, Mrs. Tobin. May I--" - -"Oi! Funeral's this afternoon. He could'n' be round. He was sick. Five -weeks three days." - -She went out and down the stair, bumping back and forth between the wall -and the banister. - -On the misty afternoon of that day I stood on that corner where more than -elsewhere the city and the University meet; where hackmen and newsboys -congregate; where a gray brick hotel looks askance at the pillared -and vaulted entry of a recitation hall. The front of that hall is a -vainglorious thing. Those who understand, looking dimly with halfshut -eyes, may see it change to a mist, and in the mist appear a worn fence, -a grassless, trodden space, and four tall trees. - -The steps of the hall were deserted, except for newsboys playing tag -among the pillars. I asked one if he knew where Tobin lived. - -"He's havin' a funeral," he said. - -"Where?" - -"10 Clark Street." - -"Did you know him?" - -The others had gathered around. One of them said: - -"Tobin licked him." - -The first seemed to think more than ordinary justice should be done a -person with a funeral, and admitted that Tobin had licked him. - -No. 10 Clark Street was a door between a clothing shop and a livery -stable. The stairway led up into darkness. On the third landing a door -stood open, showing a low room. A painted coffin rested on two chairs. -Three or four women sat about with their hands on their knees. One of -them was Mrs. Tobin. - -"Funeral's over," she said, placidly. - -The clergyman from the mission had come and gone. They were waiting for -the city undertaker. But they seemed glad of an interruption and looked -at me with silent interest. - -"I want to ask you to tell me something about him, Mrs. Tobin." - -Mrs. Tobin reflected. "There ain't nothin'." - -"He never ate no candy," said one of the women, after a pause. - -Mrs. Tobin sat stolidly. Two large tears appeared at length and rolled -slowly down. - -"It made him dreadful sick when he was little. That's why." - -The third woman nodded thoughtfully. - -"He said folks was fools to eat candy. It was his stomach." - -"Oi!" said Mrs. Tobin. - -I went no nearer the coffin than to see the common grayish pallor of the -face, and went home in the misty dusk. - -The forgotten wet bundle had fallen to the floor and become undone. - -By the cracks in the sides, the down-trodden heels, the marks of keen -experience, they were Tobin's old shoes, round-toed, leather-thonged, -stoical, severe. - -Mrs. Tobin had not commented. She had brought them merely, Tobin having -stated that they were mine. - -They remained with me six months, and were known to most men, who came -to idle or labor, as "Tobin's Monument." They stood on a book-shelf, -with other monuments thought to be _aere perennius_, more enduring than -brass, and disappeared at the end of the year, when the janitor reigned -supreme. There seemed to be some far-off and final idea in the title, -some thesis which never got itself rightly stated. Horatius Flaccus was -kept on the shelf beside them in the notion that the statement should -somehow be worked out between them. And there was no definite result; -but I thought he grew more diffident with that companionship. - -"_Exegi monumentum_. I suppose there is no doubt about that," he would -remark. "_Ære perennius_. It seems a trifle pushing, so to trespass on -the attention of posterity. I would rather talk of my Sabine farm." - - - - -THE CONCLUSION BY THE WAYFARERS - - - All honest things in the world we greet - - With welcome fair and free; - - A little love by the way is sweet, - - A friend, or two, or three; - - - Of the sun and moon and stars are glad, - - Of the waters of river and sea; - - We thank thee, Lord, for the years we've had, - - For the years that yet shall be. - - - These are our brothers, the winds of the airs; - - These are our sisters, the flowers. - - Be near us at evening and hear our.prayers., - - O God, in the late gray hours. - - - - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Delectable Mountains, by Arthur Colton - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS *** - -***** This file should be named 50270-8.txt or 50270-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/2/7/50270/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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