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Title: The Eye of Dread

Author: Payne Erskine

Illustrator: George Gibbs

Release Date: September 19, 2009 [EBook #30031]

Language: English

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“Listen. Go with the love in your heart––for me.”
Frontispiece.        See Page 329.

The Eye of Dread

By PAYNE ERSKINE

Author of “The Mountain Girl,” “Joyful Heatherby,”
Etc.

With Frontispiece by
GEORGE GIBBS

A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS

114-120 East Twenty-third Street  -  -  New York

Published by Arrangement With Little, Brown & Company

Copyright, 1913,

By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Published, October, 1913

Reprinted, October, 1913

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER

PAGE

I.

Betty 1

II.

Watching the Bees 9

III.

A Mother’s Struggle 23

IV.

Leave-Taking 34

V.

The Passing of Time 49

VI.

The End of the War 59

VII.

A New Era Begins 69

VIII.

Mary Ballard’s Discovery 87

IX.

The Banker’s Point of View 97

X.

The Nutting Party 110

XI.

Betty Ballard’s Awakening 125

XII.

Mysterious Findings 139

XIII.

Confession 157

BOOK TWO

XIV.

Out of the Desert 168

XV.

The Big Man’s Return 183

XVI.

A Peculiar Position 198

XVII.

Adopting a Family 208

XVIII.

Larry Kildene’s Story 219

XIX.

The Mine––And the Departure 237

XX.

Alone on the Mountain 252

XXI.

The Violin 267

XXII.

The Beast on the Trail 282

XXIII.

A Discourse on Lying 295

XXIV.

Amalia’s Fête 305

XXV.

Harry King Leaves the Mountain 318

BOOK THREE

XXVI.

The Little School-Teacher 331

XXVII.

The Swede’s Telegram 342

XXVIII.

“A Resemblance Somewhere” 354

XXIX.

The Arrest 365

XXX.

The Argument 376

XXXI.

Robert Kater’s Success 387

XXXII.

The Prisoner 408

XXXIII.

Hester Craigmile Receives Her Letter 422

XXXIV.

Jean Craigmile’s Return 433

XXXV.

The Trial 445

XXXVI.

Nels Nelson’s Testimony 453

XXXVII.

The Stranger’s Arrival 463

XXXVIII.

Betty Ballard’s Testimony 475

XXXIX.

Reconciliation 487

XL.

The Same Boy 499

THE EYE OF DREAD

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER I

BETTY

Two whip-poor-wills were uttering their insistent note, hidden somewhere among the thick foliage of the maple and basswood trees that towered above the spring down behind the house where the Ballards lived. The sky in the west still glowed with amber light, and the crescent moon floated like a golden boat above the horizon’s edge. The day had been unusually warm, and the family were all gathered on the front porch in the dusk. The lamps within were unlighted, and the evening wind blew the white muslin curtains out and in through the opened windows. The porch was low,––only a step from the ground,––and the grass of the dooryard felt soft and cool to the bare feet of the children.

In front and all around lay the garden––flowers and fruit quaintly intermingled. Down the long path to the gate, where three roads met, great bunches of peonies lifted white blossoms––luminously white in the moonlight; and on either side rows of currant bushes cast low, dark shadows, and here and there dwarf crab-apple trees tossed pale, scented flowers above them. In the dusky evening light the iris flowers showed frail and iridescent against the dark shadows under the bushes.

The children chattered quietly at their play, as if they felt a mystery around them, and small Betty was sure she saw fairies dancing on the iris flowers when the light breeze stirred them; but of this she said nothing, lest her practical older sister should drop a scornful word of unbelief, a thing Betty shrank from and instinctively avoided. Why should she be told there were no such things as fairies and goblins and pigwidgeons, when one might be at that very moment dancing at her elbow and hear it all?

So Betty wagged her curly golden head, wise with the wisdom of childhood, and went her own ways and thought her own thoughts. As for the strange creatures of wondrous power that peopled the earth, and the sky, and the streams, she knew they were there. She could almost see them, could almost feel them and hear them, even though they were hidden from mortal sight.

Did she not often go when the sun was setting and climb the fence behind the barn under the great locust and silver-leaf poplar trees, where none could see her, and watch the fiery griffins in the west? Could she not see them flame and flash, their wings spreading far out across the sky in fantastic flight, or drawn close and folded about them in hues of purple and crimson and gold? Could she not see the flying mist-women flinging their floating robes of softest pink and palest green around their slender limbs, and trailing them delicately across the deepening sky?

Had she not heard the giants––nay, seen them––driving their terrible steeds over the tumbled clouds, and rolling them smooth with noise of thunder, under huge rolling machines a thousand times bigger than that Farmer Hopkins used to crush the clods in his wheat field in the spring? Had she not seen the flashes of fire dart through the heavens, struck by the hoofs of the giants’ huge beasts? Ah! She knew! If Martha would only listen to her, she could show her some of these true things and stop her scoffing.

Lured by these mysteries, Betty made short excursions into the garden away from the others, peering among the shadows, and gazing wide-eyed into the clusters of iris flowers above which night moths fluttered softly and silently. Maybe there were fairies there. Three could ride at once on the back of a devil’s riding horse, she knew, and in the daytime they rode the dragon flies, two at a time; they were so light it was nothing for the great green and gold, big-eyed dragon flies to carry two.

Betty knew a place below the spring where the maidenhair fern grew thick and spread out wide, perfect fronds on slender brown stems, shading fairy bowers; and where taller ferns grew high and leaned over like a delicate fairy forest; and where the wild violets grew so thick you could not see the ground beneath them, and the grass was lush and long like fine green hair, and crept up the hillside and over the roots of the maple and basswood trees. Here lived the elves; she knew them well, and often lay with her head among the violets, listening for the thin sound of their elfin fiddles. Often she had drowsed the summer noon in the coolness, unheeding the dinner call, until busy Martha roused her with the sisterly scolding she knew she deserved and took in good part.

Now as Betty crept cautiously about, peering and hoping with a half-fearing expectation, a sweet, threadlike wail trembled out toward her across the moonlit and shadowed space. Her father was tuning his violin. Her mother sat at his side, hushing Bobby in her arms. Betty could hear the sound of her rockers on the porch floor. Now the plaintive call of the violin came stronger, and she hastened back to curl up at her father’s feet and listen. She closed her vision-seeing eyes and leaned against her father’s knee. He felt the gentle pressure of his little daughter’s head and liked it.

All the long summer day Betty’s small feet had carried her on numberless errands for young and old, and as the season advanced she would be busier still. This Betty well knew, for she was old enough to remember other summers, several of them, each bringing an advancing crescendo of work. But oh, the happy days! For Betty lived in a world all her own, wherein her play was as real as her work, and labor was turned by her imaginative little mind into new forms of play, and although night often found her weary––too tired to lie quietly in her bed sometimes––the line between the two was never in her thoughts distinctly drawn.

To-night Betty’s conscience was troubling her a little, for she had done two naughty things, and the pathetic quality of her father’s music made her wish with all the intensity of her sensitive soul that she might confess to some one what she had done, but it was all too peaceful and sweet now to tell her mother of naughty things, and, anyway, she could not confess before the whole family, so she tried to repent very hard and tell God all about it. Somehow it was always easier to tell God about things; for she reasoned, if God was everywhere and knew everything, then he knew she had been bad, and had seen her all the time, and all she need do was to own up to it, without explaining everything in words, as she would have to do to her mother.

Brother Bobby’s bare feet swung close to her cheek as they dangled from her mother’s knee, and she turned and kissed them, first one and then the other, with eager kisses. He stirred and kicked out at her fretfully.

“Don’t wake him, dear,” said her mother.

Then Betty drew up her knees and clasped them about with her arms, and hid her face on them while she repented very hard. Mother had said that very day that she never felt troubled about the baby when Betty had care of him, and that very day she had recklessly taken him up into the barn loft, climbing behind him and guiding his little feet from one rung of the perpendicular ladder to another, teaching him to cling with clenched hands to the rounds until she had landed him in the loft. There she had persuaded him he was a swallow in his nest, while she had taken her fill of the delight of leaping from the loft down into the bay, where she had first tossed enough hay to make a soft lighting place for the twelve-foot leap.

Oh, the joy of it––flying through the air! If she could only fly up instead of down! Every time she climbed back into the loft she would stop and cuddle the little brother and toss hay over him and tell him he was a baby bird, and she was the mother bird, and must fly away and bring him nice worms. She bade him look up to the rafters above and see the mother birds flying out and in, while the little birds just sat still in their nests and opened their mouths. So Bobby sat still, and when she returned, obediently opened his mouth; but alas! he wearied of his rôle in the play, and at last crept to the very edge of the loft at a place where there was no hay spread beneath to break his fall; and when Betty looked up and saw his sweet baby face peering down at her over the edge, her heart stopped beating. How wildly she called for him to wait for her to come to him! She promised him all the dearest of her treasures if he would wait until “sister” got there.

Now, as she sat clasping her knees, her little body grew all trembling and weak again as she lived over the terrible moment when she had reached him just in time to drag him back from the edge, and to cuddle and caress him, until he lifted up his voice and wept, not because he was in the least troubled or hurt, but because it seemed to be the right thing to do.

Then she gave him the pretty round comb that held back her hair, and he promptly straightened it and broke it; and when she reluctantly brought him back to dinner––how she had succeeded in getting him down from the loft would make a chapter of diplomacy––her mother reproved her for allowing him to take it, and lapped the two pieces and wound them about with thread, and told her she must wear the broken comb after this. She was glad––glad it was broken––and she had treasured it so––and glad that her mother had scolded her; she wished she had scolded harder instead of speaking words of praise that cut her to the heart. Oh, oh, oh! If he had fallen over, he would be dead now, and she would have killed him! Thus she tortured herself, and repented very hard.

The other sin she had that day committed she felt to be a double sin, because she knew all the time it was wrong and did it deliberately. When she went out with the corn meal to feed the little chicks and fetch in the new-laid eggs, she carried, concealed under her skirt, a small, squat book of Robert Burns’ poems. These poems she loved; not that she understood them, but that the rhythm pleased her, and the odd words and half-comprehended phrases stirred her imagination.

So, after feeding the chicks and gathering the eggs, she did not return to the house, but climbed instead up into the top of the silver-leaf poplar behind the barn, and sat there long, swaying with the swaying tree top and reading the lines that most fascinated her and stirred her soul, until she forgot she must help Martha with the breakfast dishes––forgot she must carry milk to the neighbor’s––forgot she must mind the baby and peel the potatoes for dinner. It was so delightful to sway and swing and chant the rythmic lines over and over that almost she forgot she was being bad, and Martha had done the things she ought to have done, and the baby cried himself to sleep without her, and lay with the pathetic tear marks still on his cheeks, but her tired mother had only looked reproachfully at her and had not said one word. Oh, dear! If she could only be a good girl! If only she might pass one day being good all day long with nothing to regret!

Now with the wailing of the violin her soul grew hungry and sad, and a strange, unchildish fear crept over her, a fear of the years to come––so long and endless they would be, always coming, coming, one after another; and here she was, never to stop living, and every day doing something that she ought not and every evening repenting it––and her father might stop loving her, and her sister might stop loving her, and her little brother might stop loving her, and Bobby might die––and even her mother might die or stop loving her, and she might grow up and marry a man who forgot after a while to love her––and she might be very poor––even poorer than they were now, and have to wash dishes every day and no one to help her––until at last she could bear the sadness no longer, and could not repent as hard as she ought, there where she could not go down on her knees and just cry and cry. So she slipped away and crept in the darkness to her own room, where her mother found her half an hour later on her knees beside the bed fast asleep. She lovingly undressed the limp, weary little girl, lifted her tenderly and laid her curly head on the pillow, and kissed her cheek with a repentant sigh of her own, regretting that she must lay so many tasks on so small a child.

CHAPTER II

WATCHING THE BEES

Father Ballard walked slowly up the path from the garden, wiping his brow, for the heat was oppressive. “Mary, my dear, I see signs of swarming. The bees are hanging out on that hive under the Tolman Sweet. Where’s Betty?”

“She’s down cellar churning, but she can leave. Bobby’s getting fretful, anyway, and she can take him under the trees and watch the bees and amuse him. Betty!” Mary Ballard went to the short flight of steps leading to the paved basement, dark and cool: “Betty, father wants you to watch the bees, dear. Find Bobby. He’s so still I’m afraid he’s out at the currant bushes again, and he’ll make himself sick. Keep an eye on the hive under the Tolman Sweet particularly, dear.”

Gladly Betty bounded up the steps and darted away to find the baby who was still called the baby by reason of his being the last arrival, although he was nearly three, and an active little tyrant at that. Watching the bees was Betty’s delight. Minding the baby, lolling under the trees reading her books, gazing up into the great branches, and all the time keeping an eye on the hives scattered about in the garden,––nothing could be pleasanter.

Naturally Betty could not understand all she read in the books she carried out from the library, for purely children’s books were very few in those days. The children of the present day would be dismayed were they asked to read what Betty pondered over with avidity and loved. Her father’s library was his one extravagance, even though the purchase of books was always a serious matter, each volume being discussed and debated about, and only obtained after due preparation by sundry small economies.

As for worldly possessions, the Ballards had started out with nothing at all but their own two hands, and, as assets, well-equipped brains, their love for each other, a fair amount of thrift, and a large share of what Mary Ballard’s old Grannie Sherman used to designate as “gumption.” Exactly what she intended should be understood by the word it would be hard to say, unless it might be the faculty with which, when one thing proved to be no longer feasible as a shift toward progress and the making of a living for an increasing family, they were enabled to discover other means and work them out to a productive conclusion.

Thus, when times grew hard under the stress of the Civil War, and the works of art representing many hours of Bertrand Ballard’s keenest effort lay in his studio unpurchased, and even carefully created portraits, ordered and painstakingly painted, were left on his hands, unclaimed and unpaid for, he quietly turned his attention to his garden, saying, “People can live without pictures, but they must eat.”

So he obtained a few of the choicest of the quickly produced small fruits and vegetables and flowers, and soon had rare and beautiful things to sell. His clever hands, which before had made his own stretchers for his canvases, and had fashioned and gilded with gold leaf the frames for his own paintings, now made trellises for his vines and boxes for his fruits, and when the price of sugar climbed to the very top of the gamut, he created beehives on new models, and bought a book on bee culture; ere long he had combs of delicious honey to tempt the lovers of sweets.

But how came Bertrand Ballard away out in Wisconsin in a country home, painting pictures for people who knew little or nothing of art, and cared not to know more, raising fruits and keeping bees for the means to live? Ah, that is another story, and to tell it would make another book; suffice it to say that for love of a beautiful woman, strong and wise and sweet, he had followed her farmer father out into the newer west from old New York State.

There, frail in health and delicate and choice in his tastes, but brave in spirit, he took up the battle of the weak with life, and fought it like a strong man, valiantly and well. And where got he his strength? How are the weak ever made strong? Through strength of love––the inward fire that makes great the soul, while consuming the dross of false values and foolish estimates––from the merry heart that could laugh through any failure, and most of all from the beautiful hand, supple and workful, and gentle and forceful, that lay in his.

But this is not the story of Bertrand Ballard, except incidentally as he and his family play their part in the drama that centers in the lives of two lads, one of whom––Peter Craigmile, Junior––comes now swinging up the path from the front gate, where three roads meet, brave in his new uniform of blue, with lifted head, and eyes grave and shining with a kind of solemn elation.

“Bertrand, here comes Peter Junior in a new uniform,” Mary Ballard called to her husband, who was working at a box in which he meant to fit glass sides for an aquarium for the edification of the little ones. He came quickly out from his workroom, and Mary rose from her seat and pushed her mending basket one side, and together they walked down the path to meet the youth.

“Peter Junior, have you done it? Oh, I’m sorry!”

“Why, Mary! why, Mary! I’m astonished! Not sorry?” Bertrand took the boy’s hand in both his own and looked up in his eyes, for the lad was tall, much taller than his friend. “I would go myself if I only had the strength and were not near-sighted.”

“Thank the Lord!” said his wife, fervently.

“Why, Mary––Mary––I’m astonished!” he said again. “Our country––”

“Yes, ‘Our Country’ is being bled to death,” she said, taking the boy’s hand in hers for a moment; and, turning, they walked back to the house with the young volunteer between them. “No, I’m not reconciled to having our young men go down there and die by the thousands from disease and bullets and in prisons. It’s wrong! I say war is iniquitous, and the issues, North or South, are not worth it. Peter, I had hoped you were too young. Why did you?”

“I couldn’t help it, Mrs. Ballard. The call for fifty thousand more came, and father gave his consent; and, anyway, they are taking a younger set now than at first.”

“Yes, and soon they’ll take an older set, and then they’ll take the small and frail and near-sighted ones, and then––” She stopped suddenly, with a contrite glance at her husband’s face. He hated to be small and frail and near-sighted. She stepped round to his side and put her hand in his. “I’m thankful you are, Bertrand,” she said quietly. “You’ll stay to tea with us, won’t you, Peter? We’ll have it out of doors.”

“Yes, I’ll stay––thank you. It may be the last time, and mother––I came to see if you’d go up home and see mother, Mrs. Ballard. I kind of thought you’d think as father and Mr. Ballard do about it, and I thought you might be able to help mother to see it that way, too. You see, mother––she––I always thought you were kind of strong and would see things sort of––well––big, you know, more––as we men do.” He held his head high and looked off as he spoke.

She exchanged a half-smiling glance with her husband, and their hands clasped tighter. “Maybe, though––if you feel this way––you can’t help mother––but what shall I do?” The big boy looked wistfully down at her.

“I may not be able to help her to see things you want, Peter Junior. Maybe she would be happier in seeing things her own way; but I can sympathize with her. Perhaps I can help her to hope for the best, and anyway––we can––just talk it over.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Ballard, thank you. I don’t care how she sees it, if––if––she’ll only be happier––and––give her consent. I can’t bear to go away without that; but if she won’t give it, I must go anyway,––you know.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling, “I suppose we women have to be forced sometimes, or we never would allow some things to be done. You enlisted first and then went to her for her consent? Yes, you are a man, Peter Junior. But I tell you, if you were my son, I would never give my consent––nor have it forced from me––still––I would love you better for doing this.”

“My love, your inconsistency is my joy,” said her husband, as she passed into the house and left them together.

The sun still shone hotly down, but the shadows were growing longer, and Betty left baby asleep under the Harvest apple tree where she had been staying patiently during the long, warm hours, and sat at her father’s feet on the edge of the porch, where apparently she was wholly occupied in tracing patterns with her bare toes in the sand of the path. Now and then she ran out to the Harvest apple tree and back, her golden head darting among the green shrubbery like a sunbeam. She wished to do her full duty by the bees and the baby, and at the same time hear all the talk of the older ones, and watch the fascinating young soldier in his new uniform.

As bright as the sunbeam, and as silent, she watched and listened. Her heart beat fast with excitement, as it often did these days, when she heard them talk of the war and the men who went away, perhaps never to return, or to return with great glory. Now here was Peter Junior going. He already had his beautiful new uniform, and he would march and drill and carry a gun, and halt and present arms, along with the older men she had seen in the great camp out on the high bluffs which overlooked the wide, sweeping, rushing, willful Wisconsin River.

Oh, if she were only a man and as old as Peter Junior, she would go with him; but it was very grand to know him even. Why was she a girl? If God had only asked her which she would rather be when he had made her out of dust, she would have told him to make her a man, so she might be a soldier. It was not fair. There was Bobby; he would be a man some day, and he could ride on a large black horse like the knights of old, and go to wars, and rescue people, and do deeds of arms. What deeds of arms were, she little knew, but it was something very strong and wonderful that only knights and soldiers did.

Betty heaved a deep sigh, and put out her hand and softly touched Peter Junior’s trousers. He thought it was the kitten purring about. No, God had not treated her fairly. Now she must grow up and be only a woman, and wash dishes, and sweep and dust, and get very tired, and wear dresses––and oh, dear! But then perhaps God had to do that way, for if he had given everybody a choice, everybody would choose to be men, and there would be no women to mind the home and take care of the little children, and it would be a very sad kind of world, as she had often heard her father say. Perhaps God had to do with them as Peter Junior had done with his mother when he enlisted first and asked her consent afterwards; just make them girls, and then try to convince them afterwards that it was a fine thing to be a girl. She wished she were Bobby instead of Betty––but then––Bobby might not have liked that.

She glanced wistfully at the sleeping child and saw him toss his arms about, and knew she ought to be there to sway a green branch over him to keep the little gnats and flies from bothering him and waking him; and the bees might swarm and no one see them.

“Father, is it three o’clock yet?”

“Yes, deary, why?”

“Goody! The bees won’t swarm now, will they? Will you bring Bobby in, father?”

“He is very well there; we won’t disturb him.”

Peter Junior looked down on the little girl, so full of vitality and life and inspiration, so vibrant with enthusiasm, and saw her vaguely as a slightly disturbing element, but otherwise of little moment in the world’s economy. His thoughts were on greater things.

Betty accepted her father’s decision without protest, as she accepted most things,––a finality to be endured and made the best of,––so she continued to run back and forth between the sleeping child and the porch, thereby losing much interesting dialogue,––all about camps and fighting and scout duty,––until at last her mother returned and with a glance at her small daughter’s face said:––

“Father, will you bring baby in now and put him in his cradle? Betty has had him nearly all day.” And father went. Oh, beautiful mother! How did she know!

Then Betty settled herself at Peter Junior’s feet and looked up in his eyes gravely. “What will you be, now you are a soldier?” she asked.

“Why, a soldier.”

“No, I mean, will you be a general––or a flag carrier––or will you drum? I’d be a general if I were you––or else a drummer. I think you would be very handsome for a general.”

Peter Junior threw back his head and laughed. It was the first time he had laughed that day, and yet he was both proud and happy. “Would you like to be a soldier?”

“Yes.”

“But you might be killed, or have your leg shot off––or––”

“I know. So might you––but you would go, anyway––wouldn’t you?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, then you understand how I feel. I’d like to be a man, and go to war, and ‘Have a part to tear a cat in,’ too.”

“What’s that? What’s that? Mary, do you hear that?” said her father, resuming his seat at Peter’s side, and hearing her remark.

“Why, father, wouldn’t you? You know you’d like to go to war. I heard what you said to mother, and, anyway––I’d just like to be a man and ‘Have a part to tear a cat in,’ the way men have.”

Bertrand Ballard looked down and patted his little daughter’s head, then caught her up and placed her on his knee. He realized suddenly that his child was an entity unfathomed, separate from himself, working out her own individuality almost without guidance, except such as he and his Mary were unconsciously giving to her by their daily acts and words.

“What books are those you have there? Don’t you know you mustn’t take father’s Shakespeare out and leave it on the grass?”

Betty laughed. “How did you know I had Shakespeare?”

“Didn’t you say you ‘Would like a part to tear a cat in’?”

“Oh, have you read ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’?” She lifted her head from his bosom and eyed him gravely a moment, then snuggled comfortably down again. “But then, I suppose you have read everything.” Her father and Peter both laughed.

“Were you reading ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ out there?”

“No, I’ve read that lots of times––long ago. I’m reading ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ now.”

“Mary, Mary, do you hear this? I think it’s time our Betty had a little supervision in her reading.”

Mary Ballard came to the door from the tea table where she had been arranging her little set of delicate china, her one rare treasure and inheritance. “Yes, I knew she was reading––whatever she fancied, but I thought I wouldn’t interfere––not yet. I have so little time, for one thing, and, anyway, I thought she might browse a bit. She’s like a calf in rare pastures, and I don’t think she understands enough to do her harm––or much good, either. Those things slide off from her like water off a duck’s back.”

Betty looked anxiously up at her mother. What things was she missing? She must read them all over again.

“What else have you out there, Betty?” asked her father.

Betty dropped her head shamefacedly. She never knew when she was in the right and when wrong. Sometimes the very things which seemed most right to her were most wrong. “That’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ It was an old book, father. There was a tear in the back when I took it down. I like to read about Satan. I like to read about the mighty hosts and the angels and the burning lake. Is that hell? I was pretending if the bees swarmed that they would be the mighty host of bad angels falling out of heaven.”

Again Peter flung back his head and laughed. He looked at the child with new interest, but Betty did not smile back at him. She did not like being laughed at.

“It’s true,” she said; “they did fall out of heaven in a swarm, and it was like over at High Knob on the river bank, only a million times higher, because they were so long falling. ‘From morn till noon they fell, from noon till dewy eve.’” Betty looked off into space with half-closed eyes. She was seeing them fall. “It was a long time to be in suspense, wasn’t it, father?” Then every one laughed. Even mother joined in. She was putting the last touches to the tea table.

“Mary, my dear, I think we’d better take a little supervision of the child’s reading––I do, really.”

The gate at the end of the long path to the house clicked, and another lad came swinging up the walk, slightly taller than Peter Junior, but otherwise enough like him in appearance to be his own brother. He was not as grave as Peter, but smiled as he hailed them, waving his cap above his head. He also wore the blue uniform, and it was new.

“Hallo, Peter! You here?”

“Of course I’m here. I thought you were never coming.”

“You did?”

Betty sprang from her father’s lap and ran to meet him. She slipped her hand in his and hopped along at his side. “Oh, Rich! Are you going, too? I wish I were you.”

He lifted the child to a level with his face and kissed her, then set her on her feet again. “Never wish that, Betty. It would spoil a nice little girl.”

“I’m not such a nice little girl. I––I––love Satan––and they’re going to––to––supervise my reading.” She clung to his hand and nodded her head with finality. He swung her along, making her take long leaps as they walked.

“You love Satan? I thought you loved me!”

“It’s the same thing, Rich,” said Peter Junior, with a grin.

Bertrand had gone to the kitchen door. “Mary, my love, here’s Richard Kildene.” She entered the living room, carrying a plate of light, hot biscuit, and hurried out to Richard, greeting him warmly––even lovingly.

“Bertrand, won’t you and the boys carry the table out to the garden?” she suggested. “Open both doors and take it carefully. It will be pleasanter here in the shade.”

The young men sprang to do her bidding, and the small table was borne out under the trees, the lads enumerating with joy the articles of Mary Ballard’s simple menu.

“Hot biscuits and honey! My golly! Won’t we wish for this in about two months from now?” said Richard.

“Cream and caraway cookies!” shouted Peter Junior, turning back to the porch to help Bertrand carry the chairs. “Of course we’ll be wishing for this before long, but that’s part of soldiering.”

“We’re not looking forward to a well-fed, easy time of it, so we’ll just make the best of this to-night, and eat everything in sight,” said Richard.

Bertrand preferred to change the subject. “This is some of our new white clover honey,” he said. “I took it from that hive over there last evening, and they’ve been working all day as if they had had new life given them. All bees want is a lot of empty space for storing honey.”

Richard followed Mrs. Ballard into the kitchen for the tea. “Where are the other children?” he asked.

“Martha and Jamie are spending a week with my mother and father. They love to go there, and mother––and father, also, seem never to have enough of them. Baby is still asleep, and I must waken him, too, or he won’t sleep to-night. I hung a pail of milk over the spring to keep it cool, and the butter is there also––and the Dutch cheese in a tin box. Can you––wait, I’d better go with you. We’ll leave the tea to steep a minute.”

They passed through the house and down toward the spring house under the maple and basswood trees at the back, walking between rows of currant bushes where the fruit hung red.

“I hate to leave all this––maybe forever,” said the boy. The corners of his mouth drooped a little, and he looked down at Mary Ballard with a tender glint in his deep blue eyes. His eyes were as blue as the lake on a summer’s evening, and they were shaded by heavy dark brown lashes, almost black. His brows and hair were the same deep brown. Peter Junior’s were a shade lighter, and his hair more curling. It was often a matter of discussion in the village as to which of the boys was the handsomer. That they were both fine-looking lads was always conceded.

Mary Ballard turned toward him impulsively. “Why did you do this, Richard? Why? I can’t feel that this fever for war is right. It is terrible. We are losing the best blood in the land in a wicked war.” She took his two hands in hers, and her eyes filled. “When we first came here, your mother was my dearest friend. You never knew her, but I loved her––and her loss was much to me. Richard, why didn’t you consult us?”

“I hadn’t any one but you and your husband to care. Oh, Aunt Hester loves me, of course, and is awfully good to me––but the Elder––I always feel somehow as if he expects me to go to the bad. He never had any use for my father, I guess. Was my father––was––he no good? Don’t mind telling me the truth: I ought to know.”

“Your father was not so well known here, but he was, in Bertrand’s estimation, a royal Irish gentleman. We both liked him; no one could help it. Never think hardly of him.”

“Why has he never cared for me? Why have I never known him?”

“There was a quarrel––or––some unpleasantness between your uncle and him; it’s an old thing.”

Richard’s lip quivered an instant, then he drew himself up and smiled on her, then he stooped and kissed her. “Some of us must go; we can’t let this nation be broken up. Some men must give their lives for it; and I’m one of those who ought to go, for I have no one to mourn for me. Half the class has enlisted.”

“I venture to say you suggested it, too?”

“Well––yes.”

“And Peter Junior was the first to follow you?”

“Well, yes! I’m sorry––because of Aunt Hester––but we always do pull together, you know. See here, let’s not think of it in this way. There are other ways. Perhaps I’ll come back with straps on my shoulders and marry Betty some day.”

“God grant you may; that is, if you come back as you left us. You understand me? The same boy?”

“I do and I will,” he said gravely.

That was a happy hour they spent at the evening meal, and many an evening afterwards, when hardship and weariness had made the lads seem more rugged and years older, they spoke of it and lived it over.

CHAPTER III

A MOTHER’S STRUGGLE

“Come, Lady, come. You’re slow this morning.” Mary Ballard drove a steady, well-bred, chestnut mare with whom she was on most friendly terms. Usually her carryall was filled with children, for she kept no help, and when she went abroad, she must perforce take the children with her or spend an unquiet hour or two while leaving them behind. This morning she had left the children at home, and carried in their stead a basket of fruit and flowers on the seat beside her. “Come, Lady, come; just hurry a little.” She touched the mare with the whip, a delicate reminder to haste, which Lady assumed to be a fly and treated as such with a switch of her tail.

The way seemed long to Mary Ballard this morning, and the sun beating down on the parched fields made the air quiver with heat. The unpaved road was heavy with dust, and the mare seemed to drag her feet through it unnecessarily as she jogged along. Mary was anxious and dreaded the visit she must make. She would be glad when it was over. What could she say to the stricken woman who spent her time behind closed blinds? Presently she left the dust behind and drove along under the maple trees that lined the village street, over cool roads that were kept well sprinkled.

The Craigmiles lived on the main street of the town in the most dignified of the well-built homes of cream-colored brick, with a wide front stoop and white columns at the entrance. Mary was shown into the parlor by a neat serving maid, who stepped softly as if she were afraid of waking some one. The room was dark and cool, but the air seemed heavy with a lingering musky odor. The dark furniture was set stiffly back against the walls, the floor was covered with a velvet carpet of rich, dark colors, and oil portraits were hung about in heavy gold frames.

Mary looked up at two of these portraits with pride, and rebelled that the light was so shut out that they must always be seen in the obscurity, for Bertrand had painted them, and she considered them her husband’s best work. In the painting of them and the long sittings required the intimacy between the two families had begun. Really it had begun before that, for there were other paintings in that home––portraits, old and fine, which Elder Craigmile’s father had brought over from Scotland when he came to the new world to establish a new home. These paintings were the pride of Elder Craigmile’s heart, and the delight of Bertrand Ballard’s artist soul.

To Bertrand they were a discovery––an oasis in a desert. One day the banker had called him in to look at a canvas that was falling to pieces with age, in the hope that the artist might have the skill to restore it. From that day the intimacy began, and a warm friendship sprang up between the two families, founded on Bertrand’s love for the old works of art, wherein the ancestors of Peter Craigmile, Senior, looked out from their frames with a dignity and warmth and grace rarely to be met with in this new western land.

Bertrand’s heart leaped with joy as he gazed on one of them, the one he had been called on to save if possible. “This must be a genuine Reynolds. Ah! They could paint, those old fellows!” he cried.

“Genuine Reynolds? Why, man, it is! it is! You are a true artist. You knew it in a moment.” Peter Senior’s heart was immediately filled with admiration for the younger man. “Yes, they were a good family––the Craigmiles of Aberdeen. My father brought all the old portraits coming to him to this country to keep the family traditions alive. It’s a good thing––a good thing!”

“She was a beautiful woman, the original of that portrait.”

“She was a great beauty, indeed. Her husband took her to London to have it done by the great painter. Ah, the Scotch lasses were fine! Look at that color! You don’t see that here, no?”

“Our American women are too pale, for the most part; but then again, your men are too red.”

“Ah! Beef and red wine! Beef and red wine! With us in Scotland it was good oatcakes and home-brew––and the air. The air of the Scotch hills and the sea. You don’t have such air here, I’ve often heard my father say. I’ve spent the greater part of my life here, so it’s mostly the traditions I have––they and the portraits.”

Thus it came about that owing to his desire to keep up the line of family portraits, Peter Craigmile engaged the artist to paint the picture of his gentle, sweet-faced wife. She was painted seated, a little son on either side of her; and now in the dimness she looked out from the heavy gold frame, a half smile playing about her lips, on her lap an open book, and about the low-cut crimson velvet bodice rare old lace pinned at the bosom with a large brooch of wrought gold, framing a delicately cut cameo.

As Mary Ballard sat in the parlor waiting, she looked up in the dusky light at this picture. Ah, yes! Her Bertrand also was a great painter. If only he could be where he might become known and appreciated! She sighed for another reason, also, as she regarded it: because the two little sons clasped by the mother’s arms were both gone. Sunny-haired Scotch laddies they were, with fair, wide brows, each in kilt and plaid, with bare knees and ruddy cheeks. What delight her husband had taken in painting it! And now the mother mourned unceasingly the loss of those little sons, and of one other whom Mary had never seen, and of whom they had no likeness. It was indeed hard that the one son left them,––their firstborn,––their hope and pride, should now be going away to leave them, going perhaps to his death.

The door opened and a shadow swept slowly across the room. Always pale and in black––wrapped in her mourning the shadow of sorrow never left this mother; and now it seemed to envelop even Mary Ballard, bright and warm of nature as she was.

Hester Craigmile barely smiled as she held out her slender, blue-veined hand.

“It is very good of you to come to me, Mary Ballard, but you can’t make me think I should be reconciled to this. No! It is hard enough to be reconciled to the blows God has dealt me, without accepting what my husband and son see fit to give me in this.” Her hand was cold and passive, and her voice was restrained and low.

Mary Ballard’s hands were warm, and her tones were rich and full. She took the proffered hand in both her own and drew the shadow down to sit at her side.

“No, no. I’m not going to try to make you reconciled, or anything. I’ve just come to tell you that I understand, and that I think you are justified in withholding your consent to Peter Junior’s going off in this way.”

“If he were killed, I should feel as if I had consented to his death.”

“Of course you would. I should feel just the same. Naturally you can’t forbid his going,––now,––for it’s too late, and he would have to go with the feeling of disobedience in his heart, and that would be cruel to him, and worse for you.”

“I know. His father has consented; they think I am wrong. My son thinks I am wrong. But I can’t! I can’t!” In her suppressed tones sounded the ancient wail of women––mothers crying for their sons sacrificed in war. For a few moments neither of them spoke. It was hard for Mary to break the silence. Her friend sat at her side withdrawn and still; then she lifted her eyes to the picture of herself and the children and spoke again, only breathing the words: “Peter Junior––my beautiful oldest boy––he is the last––the others are all gone––three of them.”

“Peter Junior is splendid. I thought so last evening as I saw him coming up the path. I took it home to myself––what I should feel, and what I would think if he were my son. Somehow we women are so inconsistent and foolish. I knew if he were my son, I never could give my consent to his going, never in the world,––but there! I would be so proud of him for doing just what your boy has done; I would look up to him in admiration, and be so glad that he was just that kind of a man!”

Hester Craigmile turned and looked steadily in her friend’s eyes, but did not open her lips, and after a moment Mary continued:––

“To have one’s sons taken like these––is––is different. We know they are safe with the One who loved little children; we know they are safe and waiting for us. But to have a boy grow into a young man like Peter Junior––so straight and fine and beautiful––and then to have him come and say: ‘I’m going to help save our country and will die for it if I must!’ Why, my heart would grow big with thanksgiving that I had brought such an one into the world and reared him. I––What would I do! I couldn’t tell him he might go,––no,––but I’d just take him in my arms and bless him and love him a thousand times more for it, so he could go away with that warm feeling all about his heart; and then––I’d just pray and hope the war might end soon and that he might come back to me rewarded, and––and––still good.”

“That’s it. If he would,––I don’t distrust my son,––but there are always things to tempt, and if––if he were changed in that way, or if he never came back,––I would die.”

“I know. We can’t help thinking about ourselves and how we are left––or how we feel––” Mary hesitated and was loath to go on with that train of thought, but her friend caught her meaning and rose in silence and paced the room a moment, then returned.

“It is easy to talk in that way when one has not lost,” she said.

“I know it seems so, but it is not easy, Hester Craigmile. It is hard––so hard that I came near staying at home this morning. It seemed as if I could not––could not––”

“Yes, what I said was bitter, and it wasn’t honest. You were good to come to me––and what you have said is true. It has helped me; I think it will help me.”

“Then good-by. I’ll go now, but I’ll come again soon.” She left the shadow sitting there with the basket of fruit and flowers at her side unnoticed and forgotten, and stepped quietly out of the darkened room into the sunlight and fresh air.

“I do wish I could induce her to go out a little––or open up her house. I wish––” Mary Ballard said no more, but shut her lips tightly on her thoughts, untied the mare, and drove slowly away.

Hester Craigmile stood for a moment gazing on the picture of her little sons, then for an hour or more wandered up and down over her spacious home, going from room to room, mechanically arranging and rearranging the chairs and small articles on the mantels and tables. Nothing was out of place. No dust or disorder anywhere, and there was the pity of it. If only a boy’s cap could be found lying about, or books left carelessly where they ought not to be! One closed door she passed again and again. Once she laid her hand on the knob, but passed on, leaving it still unopened. At last she turned, and, walking swiftly down the long hall, entered the room.

There the blinds were closed and the curtains drawn, and everything set in as perfect order as in the parlor below. She sat down in a chair placed back against the wall and folded her hands in her lap. No, it was not so hard for Mary Ballard. It would not be, even if she had a son old enough to go. Mary had work to do.

On the wall above Hester’s head was one of the portraits which helped to establish the family dignity of the Craigmiles. If the blinds had been open, one could have seen it in sharp contrast to the pale moth of a woman who sat beneath it. The painting, warm and rich in tone, was of a dame in a long-bodiced dress. She held a fan in her hand and wore feathers in her powdered hair. Her eyes gazed straight across the room into those of a red-coated soldier who wore a sword at his side and gold on his shoulders. Yes, there had been soldiers in the family before Peter Junior’s time.

This was Peter Junior’s room, but the boy was there no longer. He had come home from college one day and had entered it a boy, and then he came out of it and down to his mother, dressed in his new uniform––a man. Now he entered it no more, for he stayed at the camp over on the high bluff of the Wisconsin River. He was wholly taken up with his new duties there, and his room had been set in order and closed as if he were dead.

Sitting there, Hester heard the church clock peal out the hour of twelve, and started. Soon she would hear the front door open and shut, and a heavy tread along the lower hall, and she would go down and sit silently at the table opposite her husband, they two alone. There would be silence, because there would be nothing to say. He loved her and was tender of her, but his word was law, and in all matters he was dictator, lawmaker, and judge, and from his decisions there was no appeal. It never occurred to him that there ever need be. So Hester Craigmile, reserved and intense, closed her lips on her own thoughts, which it seemed to her to be useless to utter, and let them eat her heart out in silence.

At the moment expected she heard the step on the floor of the vestibule, and the door opened, but it was not her husband’s step alone that she heard. Surely it was Peter Junior’s and his cousin’s. Were they coming to dinner? But no word had been sent. Hester stepped out of the room and stood at the head of the stairs waiting. She did not wish to go down and meet her son before the others, and if he did not find her below, he would know where to look for her.

Peter Senior was an Elder in the Presbyterian Church, and he was always addressed as Elder, even by his wife and son. On the street he was always Elder Craigmile. She heard the men enter the dining room and the door close after them, but still she waited. The maid would have to be told to put two more places at the table, but Hester did not move. The Elder might attend to that. Presently she heard quick steps returning and knew her son was coming. She went to meet him and was clasped in his arms, close and hard.

“You were waiting for me here? Come, mother, come.” He stroked her smooth, dark hair, and put his cheek to hers. It was what she needed, what her heart was breaking for. She could even let him go easier after this. Sometimes her husband kissed her, but only when he went a journey or when he returned, a grave kiss of farewell or greeting; but in her son’s clasp there was something of her own soul’s pent-up longing.

“You’ll come down, mother? Rich came home with me.”

“Yes, I heard his voice. I am glad he came.”

“See here, mother! I know what you are doing. This won’t do. Every one who goes to war doesn’t get killed or go to the bad. Look at that old redcoat up in my room. He wasn’t killed, or where would I be now? I’m coming back, just as he did. We are born to fight, we Craigmiles, and father feels it or he never would have given his consent.”

Slowly they went down the long winding flight of stairs––a flight with a smooth banister down which it had once been Peter Junior’s delight to slide when there was no one nigh to reprove. Now he went down with his arm around his slender mother’s waist, and now and then he kissed her cheek like a lover.

The Elder looked up as they entered, with a slight wince of disapproval, the only demonstration of reproof he ever gave his wife, which changed instantly to as slight a smile, as he noticed the faint color in her cheek, and a brighter light in her eyes than there was at breakfast. He and Richard were both seated as they entered, but they rose instantly, and the Elder placed her chair with all the manner of his forefathers, a courtesy he never neglected.

Hester Craigmile forced herself to converse, and tried to smile as if there were no impending gloom. It was here Mary Ballard’s influence was felt by them all. She had helped her friend more than she knew.

“I’m glad to see you, Richard; I was afraid I might not.”

“Oh, no, Aunt Hester. I’d never leave without seeing you. I went into the bank and the Elder asked me to dinner and I jumped at the chance.”

“This is your home always, you know.”

“And it’s good to think of, too, Aunt Hester.”

She looked at her son and then her nephew. “You are so like in your uniforms I would not know you apart on the street in the dark,” she said. Richard shot a merry glance in his uncle’s eyes, then only smiled decorously with him and Peter Junior.

“I wish you’d visit the camp and see us drill. We go like clockwork, Peter and I. They call us the twins.”

“There is a very good reason for that, for your mother and I were twins, and you resemble her, while Peter Junior resembles me,” said the Elder.

“Yes,” said Hester, “Peter Junior looks like his father;” but as she glanced at her son she knew his soul was hers.

Thus the meal passed in quiet, decorous talk, touching on nothing vital, but holding a smoldering fire underneath. The young men said nothing about the fact that the regiment had been called to duty, and soon the camp on the bluff would be breaking up. They dared not touch on the past, and they as little dared touch on the future––indeed there might be no future. So they talked of indifferent things, and Hester parted with her nephew as if they were to meet again soon, except that she called him back when he was halfway down the steps and kissed him again. As for her son, she took him up to his room and there they stayed for an hour, and then he came out and she was left in the house alone.

CHAPTER IV

LEAVE-TAKING

Early in the morning, while the earth was still a mass of gray shadow and mist, and the sky had only begun to show faint signs of the flush of dawn, Betty, awake and alert, crept softly out of bed, not to awaken Martha, who slept the sleep of utter weariness at her side. Martha had returned only the day before from her visit to her grandfather’s, a long carriage ride away from Leauvite.

Betty bathed hurriedly, giving a perfunctory brushing to the tangled mass of curls, and getting into her clothing swiftly and silently. She had been cautioned the night before by her mother not to awaken her sister by getting up at too early an hour, for she would be called in plenty of time to drive over with the rest to see the soldiers off. But what if her mother should forget! So she put on her new white dress and gathered a few small parcels which she had carefully tied up the night before, and her hat and little white linen cape, and taking her shoes in her hand, softly descended the stairs.

“Betty, Betty,” her mother spoke in a sleepy voice from her own room as the child crept past her door; “why, my dear, it isn’t time to get up yet. We shan’t start for hours.”

“I heard Peter Junior say they were going to strike camp at daybreak, and I want to see them strike it. You don’t need to get up. I can go over there alone.”

“Why, no, child! Mother couldn’t let you do that. They don’t want little girls there. Go back to bed, dear. Did you wake Martha?”

“Oh, mother. Can’t I go downstairs? I don’t want to go to bed again. I’ll be very still.”

“Will you lie on the lounge and try to go to sleep again?”

“Yes, mother.”

Mary Ballard turned with a sigh and presently fell asleep, and Betty softly continued her way and obediently lay down in the darkened room below; but sleep she could not. At last, having satisfied her conscience by lying quietly for a while, she stole to the open door, for in that peaceful spot the Ballards slept with doors and windows wide open all through the warm nights. Oh, but the world was cool and mysterious, and the air was sweet! Little rustling noises made her feel as if strange beings were stirring; above her head were soft chirpings, and somewhere a bird was calling an undulating, long-drawn note, low and sweet, like a tone drawn from her father’s violin.

Betty sat on the edge of the porch and put on her shoes, and then walked down the path to the gate. The white peonies and the iris flowers were long since gone, and on the Harvest apple trees and the Sweet Boughs the fruit hung ripening. All Betty’s life long she never forgot this wonderful moment of the breaking of day. She listened for sounds to come to her from the camp far away on the river bluff, but none were heard, only the restless moving of her grandfather’s team taking their early feed in the small pasture lot near by.

How fresh everything smelled! And the sky! Surely it must be like this in heaven! It must be heaven showing through, while the world slept. She was glad she had awakened early so she might see it,––she and God and the angels, and all the wild things of earth.

Slowly everything around her grew plainer, and long rays of color, faintly pink, streamed up into the sky from the eastern horizon; then suddenly some pale gray, floating clouds above her head blossomed into a wonderful rose laid upon a sea of gold, then gradually turned shell-pink, then faded through changing shades to daytime clouds of white. She wondered if the soldiers saw it, too. They were breaking camp now, surely, for it was day. Still she swung on the gate and dreamed, until a voice roused her.

“So Betty sleeps all night on the gate like a chicken on the fence.” A pair of long arms seized her and lifted her high in the air to a pair of strong shoulders. Then she was tossed about and her cheeks rubbed red against grandfather Clide’s stubby beard, until she laughed aloud. “What are you doing here on the gate?”

“I was watching the sky. I think God looked through and smiled, for all at once it blossomed. Now the colors are gone.”

Grandfather Clide set her gently on her feet and stood looking gravely down on her for a moment. “So?” he said.

“The soldiers are striking camp over there, and then they are going to march to the square, and then every one is to see them form and salute––and then they are to march to the station, and––and––then––and then I don’t know what will be––I think glory.”

Her grandfather shook his head, his thoughtful face half smiling and half grave. He took her hand. “Come, we’ll see what Jack and Jill are up to.” He led her to the pasture lot and the horses came and thrust their heads over the fence and whinnied. “See? They want their oats.” Then Betty was lifted to old Jack’s bare back and grandfather led him by the forelock to the barn, while Jill followed after.

“Did Jack ever ‘fall down and break his crown,’ grandfather?”

“No, but he ran away once on a time.”

“Oh, did Jill come running after?”

“That she did.”

The sun had but just cast his first glance at High Knob, where the camp was, and Mary Ballard was hastily whipping up batter for pancakes, the simplest thing she could get for breakfast, as they were to go early enough to see the “boys” at the camp before they formed for their march to the town square. The children were to ride over in the great carriage with grandfather and grandmother Clide, while father and mother would take Bobby with them in the carryall. It was an arrangement liked equally by the three small children and the well-content grandparents.

Betty came to the house, clinging to her grandfather’s hand. He drew the large rocking-chair from the kitchen––where winter and summer it occupied a place by the window, that Bertrand in his moments of rest and leisure might sit and read the war news aloud to his wife as she worked––out to a cool grass plot by the door, so that he might still be near enough to chat with his daughter, while enjoying the morning air.

Betty found tidy little Martha, fresh and clean as a rosebud, stepping busily about, setting the table with extra places and putting the chairs around. Filled with self-condemnation at the sight of her sister’s helpfulness, she dashed upstairs to do her part in getting all neat for the day. First she coaxed naughty little Jamie, who, in his nightshirt, was out on the porch roof fishing, dangling his shoe over the edge by its strings tied to his father’s cane, to return and be hustled into his trousers––funny little garments that came almost to his shoe tops––and to stand still while “sister” washed his face and brushed his curly red hair into a state of semi-orderliness.

Then there was Bobby to be kissed and coaxed, and washed and dressed, and told marvelous tales to beguile him into listening submission. “Mother, mayn’t I put Bobby’s Sunday dress on him?” called Betty, from the head of the stairs.

“Yes, dear, anything you like, but hurry. Breakfast is almost ready;” then to Martha, “Leave the sweeping, deary, and run down to the spring for the cream.” To her father, Mary explained: “The little girls are a great help. Betty manages to do for the boys without irritating them. Now we’ll eat while the cakes are hot. Come, Bertrand.”

It was a grave mission and a sorrowful one, that early morning ride to say good-by to those youthful volunteers. The breakfast conversation turned on the subject with subdued intensity. Mary Ballard did not explain herself,––she was too busy serving,––but denounced the war in broad terms as “unnecessary and iniquitous,” thus eliciting from her husband his usual exclamation, when an aphorism of more than ordinary daring burst from her lips: “Mary! why, Mary! I’m astonished!”

“Every one regards it from a different point of view,” said his wife, “and this is my point.” It was conclusive.

Grandfather Clide turned sideways, leaned one elbow on the table in a meditative way he had, and spoke slowly. Betty gazed up at him in wide-eyed attention, while Mary poured the coffee and Martha helped her mother by passing the cakes. Bobby sat close to his comfortable grandmother, who seemed to be giving him all her attention, but who heard everything, and was ready to drop a quiet word of significance when applicable.

“If we bring the question down to its primal cause,” said grandfather, “if we bring it down to its primal cause, Mary is right; for the cause being iniquitous, of course, the war is the same.”

“What is ‘primal cause,’ grandfather?” asked Betty.

“The thing that began it all,” said grandfather, regarding her quizzically.

“I don’t agree with your conclusion,” said Bertrand, pausing to put sirup on Jamie’s cakes, after repeated demands therefor. “If the cause be evil, it follows that to annihilate the cause––wipe it out of existence––must be righteous.”

“In God’s good time,” said grandmother Clide, quietly.

“God’s good time, in my opinion, seems to be when we are forced to a thing.” Grandfather lifted one shaggy eyebrow in her direction.

“At any rate, and whatever happens,” said Bertrand, “the Union must be preserved, a nation, whole and undivided. My father left England for love of its magnificent ideals of government by the people. Here is to be the vast open ground where all nations may come and realize their highest possibilities, and consequently this nation must be held together and developed as a whole in all its resources, and not cut up into small, ineffective, quarrelsome factions. To allow that would mean the ruin of a colossal scheme for universal progress.”

Mary brought her husband’s coffee and put it beside his plate, as he was too absorbed to take it, and as she did so placed her hand on his shoulder with gentle pressure and their eyes met for an instant. Then grandfather Clide took up the thread.

“Speaking of your father makes me think of my father, your old grandfather Clide, Mary. He fought with his father in the Revolutionary War when he was a lad no more than Peter Junior’s age––or less. He lived through it and came to be a judge of the supreme court of New York, and helped to frame the constitution of that State, too. I used to hear him say, when I was a mere boy,––and he would bring his fist down on the table with an emphasis that made the dishes rattle, for all he averred that he never used gesticulation to aid his oratory,––he used to say,––I remember his words, as if it were but yesterday,––‘Slavery is a crime which we, the whole nation, are accountable for, and for which we will be held accountable. If we as a nation will not do away with it by legislation or mutual compact justly, then the Lord will take it into his own hands and wipe it out with blood. He may be patient for a long while, and give us a good chance, but if we wait too long,––it may not be in my day––it may not be in yours,––he will wipe it out with blood!’ and here was where he used to make the dishes rattle.”

“Maybe, then, this is the Lord’s good time,” said grandmother.

“I believe in preserving the Union at any cost, slavery or no slavery,” said Bertrand.

“The bigger and grander the nation, the more rottenness, if it’s rotten at heart. I believe it better––even at the cost of war––to wipe out a national crime,––or let those who want slavery take themselves out of it.”

Betty began to quiver through all her little system of high-strung nerves and sympathies. The talk was growing heated, and she hated to listen to excited arguments; yet she gazed and listened with fascinated attention.

Bertrand looked up at his father-in-law. “Why, father! why, father! I’m astonished! I fail to see how permitting one tremendous evil can possibly further any good purpose. To my mind the most tremendous evil that could be perpetrated on this globe––the thing that would do more to set all progress back for hundreds of years, maybe––would be to break up this Union. Here in this country now we are advancing at a pace that covers the centuries of the past in leaps of a hundred years in one. Now cut this land up into little, caviling factions, and where are we? Why, the very motto of the republic would be done away with––‘In Union there is strength.’ I tell you slavery is a sort of Delilah, and the nation––if it is divided––will be like Sampson with his locks shorn.”

“Well, war is here,” said Mary, “and we must send off our young men to the shambles, and later on fill up our country with the refuse of Europe in their stead. It will be a terrible blood-letting for both North and South, and it will be the best blood on both sides. I’m as sorry for the mothers down there as I am for ourselves. Did you get the apples, Bertrand? We’d better start, to be there at eight.”

“I put them in the carryall, my dear, Sweet Boughs and Harvest apples. The boys will have one more taste before they leave.”

“Father, we want to carry some. Put some in the carriage too,” said Martha.

“Yes, father. We want to eat some while we are on the way.”

“Why, Jamie, they are for the soldiers; they’re not for us,” cried Betty, in horror. To eat even one, it seemed to her, would be greed and robbery.

In spite of the gravity of the hour to the older ones, the occasion took on an air of festivity to the children. In grandfather’s dignified old family carriage Martha sat with demure elation on the back seat at her grandmother’s side, wearing her white linen cape, and a wide-brimmed, low-crowned hat of Neapolitan straw, with a blue ribbon around the crown, and a narrow one attached to the front, the end of which she held in her hand to pull the brim down to shade her eyes as was the fashion for little girls of the day. She felt well pleased with the hat, and held the ribbon daintily in her shapely little hand.

At her feet was the basket of apples, and with her other hand she guarded three small packages. Grandmother wore a gray, changeable silk. The round waist fitted her plump figure smoothly, and the skirt was full and flowing. Her bonnet was made of the same silk shirred on rattan, and was not perched on the top of her head, but covered it well and framed her sweet face with a full, white tulle ruching set close under the brim.

Grandfather, up in front, drove Jack and Jill, who, he said, were “feeling their oats.” Betty did not wonder, for oats are sharp and must prick their stomachs. She sat with grandfather,––he had promised she should the night before,––and Jamie was tucked in between them. He ought to have been in behind with grandmother, but his scream of rebellion as he was lifted in brought instant yielding from Betty, when grandfather interfered and took them both. But when Jamie insisted on holding the reins, grandfather grew firm, and when screams again began, his young majesty was lifted down and placed in the road to remain until instant obedience was promised, after which he was restored to the coveted place and away they went.

Betty’s white linen cape blew out behind and her ribbons flew like blue butterflies all about her hat. She forgot to hold down the brim, as polite little girls did who knew how to wear their Sunday clothes. She, too, held three small packages in her lap. For days, ever since Peter Junior and Richard Kildene had taken tea with them in their new uniforms, the little girls had patiently sewed to make the articles which filled these packages.

Mary Ballard had planned them. In each was a needle-book filled with needles large enough to be used by clumsy fingers, a pin ball, a good-sized iron thimble, and a case of thread and yarn for mending, buttons of various sizes, and a bit of beeswax, molded in Mary Ballard’s thimble, to wax their linen thread. All were neatly packed in a case of bronzed leather bound about with firm braid, and tucked under the strap of the leather on the inside was a small pair of scissors. It was all very compact and tied about with the braid. Mother had done some of the hardest of the sewing, but for the most part the stitches had been painstakingly put in by the children’s own fingers.

The morning was cool, and the dust had been laid by a heavy shower in the night. The horses held up their heads and went swiftly, in spite of their long journey the day before. Soon they heard in the distance the sound of the drum, and the merry note of a fife. Again a pang shot through Betty’s heart that she had not been a boy of Peter Junior’s age that she might go to war. She heaved a deep sigh and looked up in her grandfather’s face. It was a grizzled face, with blue eyes that shot a kindly glance sideways at her as if he understood.

When they drew near, the horses danced to the merry tune, as if they would like to go, too. All the camp seemed alive. How splendid the soldiers looked in their blue uniforms, their guns flashing in the sun! Betty watched how their legs with the stripes on them seemed to twinkle as they moved all together, marching in companies. Back and forth, back and forth, they went, and the orders came to the children short and abrupt, as the men went through their maneuvers. They saw the sentinel pacing up and down, and wondered why he did it instead of marching with the other men. All these questions were saved up to ask of grandfather when they got home. They were too interested to do anything but watch now.

At last, very suddenly it seemed, the soldiers broke ranks and scattered over the greensward, running hither and thither like ants. Betty again drew a long breath. Now they were coming, the soldiers in whom they were particularly interested.

“Can they do what they please now?” she asked her grandfather.

“Yes, for a while.”

All along the sentry line carriages were drawn up, for this hour from eight till nine was given to the “boys” to see their friends for the last time in many months, maybe years, maybe forever. As they had come from all over the State, some had no friends to meet them, but guests were there in crowds, and every man might receive a handshake whether he was known or not. All were friends to these young volunteers.

Bertrand Ballard was known and loved by all the youths. Some from the village, and others from the country around, had been in the way of coming to the Ballard home simply because the place was made an enjoyable center for them. Some came to practice the violin and others to sing. Some came to try their hand at sketching and painting and some just to hear Bertrand talk. All was done for them quite gratuitously on his part, and no laugh was merrier than his. Even the chore boy came in for a share of the Ballards’ kindly help, sitting at Mary Ballard’s side in the long winter evenings, and conning lessons to patch up an education snatched haphazard and hardly come by.

Here comes one of them now, head up, smiling, and happy-go-lucky. “Bertrand, here comes Johnnie. Give him the apples and let him distribute them. Poor boy! I’m sorry he’s going; he’s too easily led,” said Mary.

“Oh! Johnnie, Johnnie Cooper! I’ve got something for you. We made them. Mother helped us,” cried Martha. Now the children were out of the carriage and running about among their friends.

Johnnie Cooper snatched Jamie from the ground and threw him up over his head, then set him down again and took the parcel. Then he caught Martha up and set her on his shoulder while he peeped into the package.

“Stop, Johnnie. Set me down. I’m too big now for you to toss me up.” Her arms were clasped tightly under his chin as he held her by the feet. Slowly he let her slide to the ground and thrust the little case in his pocket, and stooping, kissed the child.

“I’ll think of you and your mother when I use this,” he said.

“And you’ll write to us, won’t you, Johnnie?” said Mary. “If you don’t, I shall think something is gone wrong with you.” He knew what she meant, and she knew he knew. “There are worse things than bullets, Johnnie.”

“Never you worry for me, Mrs. Ballard. We’re going down for business, and you won’t see me again until we’ve licked the ‘rebs.’” He held her hand awkwardly for a minute, then relieved the tension by carrying off the two baskets of apples. “I know the trees these came from,” he said, and soon a hundred boys in blue were eating Bertrand’s choicest apples.

“Here come the twins!” said some one, as Peter Junior and Richard Kildene came toward them across the sward. Betty ran to meet them and caught Richard by the hand. She loved to have him swing her in long leaps from the ground as he walked.

“See, Richard, I made this for you all myself––almost. I put C in the corner so it wouldn’t get mixed with the others, because this I made especially for you.”

“Did you? Why didn’t you put R in the corner if you meant it for me? I think you meant this for Charley Crabbe.”

“No, I didunt.” Betty spoke most emphatically. “Martha has one for him. I put C because––you’ll see when you open it. Everything’s bound all round with my very best cherry-colored hair ribbon, to make it very special, and that is what C is for. All the rest are brown, and this is prettier, and it won’t get mixed with Peter Junior’s.”

“Ah, yes. C is for cherry––Betty’s hair ribbon; and the gold-brown leather is for Betty’s hair. Is that it?”

“Yep.”

“Haven’t I one, too?” asked Peter Junior.

“Yep. We made them just alike, and you can sew on buttons and everything.”

Thus the children made the leave-taking less somber, to the relief of every one.

Grandfather and grandmother Clide had friends of their own whom they had come all the forty miles to see,––neighbor boys from many of the farms around their home, and their daughter-in-law’s own brother, who was like a son to them. There he stood, lithe and strong and genial, and, alas! too easy-going to be safe among the temptations of the camp.

Quickly the hour passed and the call came to form ranks for the march to the town square, where speeches were to be made and prayers were to be read before the march to the station.

Our little party waited until the last company had left the camp ground and the excited children had seen them all and heard the sound of the fife and drum to their last note and beat as the “boys in blue” filed past them and off down the winding country road among the trees. Nothing was said by the older ones of what might be in the future for those gallant youths––yes, and for the few men of greater years with them––as they wound out of sight. It was better so. Bobby fell asleep in Mary Ballard’s arms as they drove back, and a bright tear fell from her wide-open, far-seeing eyes down on his baby cheek.

It was no lack of love for his son that kept Elder Craigmile away at the departure of the boys from their camp on the bluff. He had virtually said his say and parted from his son when he gave his consent to his going in the first place. To him war meant sacrifice, and the parting with sons, at no matter what cost. The dominant idea with him was ever the preservation of the Union. At nine o’clock as usual that morning he had entered the bank, and a few minutes later, when the troops formed on the square, he came out and took his appointed place on the platform, as one of the speakers, and offered a closing prayer for the confounding of the enemy after the manner of David of old––then he descended and took his son’s hand, as he stood in the ranks, with his arm across the boy’s shoulder, looked a moment in his eyes; then, without a word, he turned and reëntered the bank.

CHAPTER V

THE PASSING OF TIME

It was winter. The snow was blowing past the windows in blinding drifts, and the road in front of the Ballards’ home was fast filling to the tops of the fences. A bright wood-fire was burning in the great cookstove, which had been brought into the living room for warmth and to economize steps, as all the work of the household devolved on Mary and little Betty, since Martha spent the week days at the Deans in the village in order to attend the high school.

Mary gazed anxiously now and then through the fast-frosting window panes on the opaque whiteness of the storm without, where the trees tossed their bare branches weirdly, like threatening gray phantoms, grotesque and dimly seen through the driving snow. It was Friday afternoon and still early, and brave, busy little Martha always came home on Fridays after school to help her mother on Saturdays.

“Oh, I hope Martha hasn’t started,” said Mary. “Look out, Bertrand. This is the wildest storm we have had this year.”

“Mrs. Dean would never allow her to set out in this storm, I’m sure,” said Bertrand. “I cautioned her yesterday when I was there never to start when the weather seemed like a blizzard.”

Bertrand had painted in his studio above as long as the light remained, and now he was washing his brushes, carefully swishing the water out of them and drawing each one between his lips to shape it properly before laying it down. Mary laid the babe in her arms in its crib, and rocked it a moment while she and Bertrand chatted.

A long winter and summer had passed since the troops marched away from Leauvite, and now another winter was passing. For a year and a bit more, little Janey, the babe now being hushed to sleep, had been a member of the family circle. Thus it was that Mary Ballard seldom went to the village, and Betty learned her lessons at home as best she could, and tended the baby and helped her mother. But Bertrand and his wife had plenty to talk about; for he went out and saw their friends in the village, led the choir on Sundays, taught the Bible class, heard all the news, and talked it over with Mary.

Thus, in one way or another, all the new books found their way into the Ballards’ home, were read and commented on, even though books were not written so much for commercial purposes then as now, and their writers were looked up to with more respect than criticism. The Atlantic Monthly and Littell’s Living Age, Harper’s Magazine, and the New York Tribune also brought up a variety of subjects for discussion. Now and then a new poem by Whittier, or Bryant, or some other of the small galaxy of poets who justly were becoming the nation’s pride, would appear and be read aloud to Mary as she prepared their meals, or washed the dishes or ironed small garments, while Betty listened with intent eyes and ears, as she helped her mother or tended the baby.

That afternoon, while the storm soughed without, the cow and horse were comfortably quartered in their small stable, which was banked with straw to keep out the cold. Indoors, Jamie was whittling behind the warm cookstove over a newspaper spread to catch the chips, while Bobby played quietly in a corner with two gray kittens and a worsted ball. Janey was asleep in the crib which Betty jogged now and then while she knit on a sock for the soldiers,––Mary and the two little girls were always knitting socks for the soldiers these days in their spare moments and during the long winter evenings,––Mary was kneading white loaves of bread with floury hands, and Bertrand sat close beside the window to catch the last rays of daylight by which to read the war news.

Bertrand always read the war news first,––news of battles and lists of wounded and slain and imprisoned, and saddest of all, lists of the missing,––following closely the movements of their own company of “boys” from Leauvite. Mary listened always with a thought of the shadow in the banker’s home, and the mother there, watching and waiting for the return of her boy. Although their own home was safe, the sorrow of other homes, devastated and mourning, weighed heavily upon Mary Ballard, and she needed to listen to the stirring editorials of the Tribune, which Bertrand read with dramatic intensity, to bolster up her faith in the rightness of this war between men who ought to be brothers in their hopes and ambitions for the national life of their great country.

“I suppose it is too great a thing to ask––that such a tremendous and mixed nation as ours should be knit together for the good of all men in a spirit of brotherly love––but what a thing to ask for! What a thing to try for! If I were a man, I would pray that I might gain influence over my fellows just for that––just––for that,” said Mary.

“Ah,” replied her husband, with fond optimism, “you need not say ‘If I were a man,’ for that. It is the women who have the influence; don’t you know that, Mary?”

Mary looked down at her work, an incredulous smile playing about her lips.

“Well, my dear?” Bertrand loved a response.

“Well, Bertrand? Men do like to talk about our ‘sweet influence,’ don’t they?” Then she laughed outright.

“But, Mary––but, Mary, it is true. Women do more with their influence than men can do with their guns,” and Bertrand really meant what he said. Dusky shadows filled the room, but if the light had been stronger, he would have seen that little ironical smile still playing about his wife’s lips.

“Did you see Judge Logan again about those Waupaca lots?”

Bertrand wondered what the lots had to do with the subject, but suffered the digression patiently, for the feminine mind was not supposed to be coherent. “Yes, my love; I saw him yesterday.”

“What did you do about them? I hope you refused.”

“No, my dear. I thought best not. He showed me very conclusively that in time they will be worth more––much more––than the debt.”

“Then why did he offer them to you for the debt? The portrait you painted for him will be worth more, too, in time, than the debt. You remember when you asked me what I thought, I said we needed the money more now.”

“Yes, I remember; but this plan is a looking toward the future. I didn’t think it wise to refuse.”

Mary said nothing, but went out, returning presently with two lighted candles. Bertrand was replenishing the fire. Had he been looking at her face with the light of the candles on it as she carried them, he would have noticed that little smile about her lips.

“I’m very glad we brought the bees in yesterday,” he said. “This storm would have made it impossible to do it to-day, and we should have lost them.”

“How about those lectures, dear? The ‘boys’ are all gone now, and you won’t have them to take up your time evenings, so you can easily prepare them. They will take you into the city now and then, and that will keep you in touch with the world outside this village.” Bertrand had been requested to give a series of lectures on art in one of the colleges in the city. He had been well pleased and had accepted, but later had refused because of certain dictatorship exercised by the Board, which he felt infringed on his province of a suitable selection of subjects. He was silent for a moment. Again Mary had irrelevantly and abruptly changed the subject of conversation. Where was the connection between bees and lectures? “I really wish you would, dear,” urged Mary.

“You still wish it after the affront the Board has given me?”

“I know, but what do they know about art? I would give the lectures if it was only to be able––incidentally––to teach them something. Be a little conciliatory, dear.”

“I will make no concessions. If I give the lectures, I must be allowed to select my courses. It is my province.”

“Did you see Elder Craigmile about it?”

“I did.”

“And what did he say?”

“He seemed to think the Board was right.”

“I knew he would. You remember I asked you not to go to him about it, and that was why.”

“Why did you think so? He assumes to be my friend.”

“Because people who don’t know anything about art always are satisfied with their own opinions. They don’t know anything to upset them. He knows more than some of them, but how much is that? Enough to know that he owns some fine paintings; but you taught him their value, now, didn’t you?” Bertrand smiled, but said nothing, and his wife continued. “Prepare the lectures, dear, for my sake. I love to know that you are doing such work.”

“I can’t. The action of the Board is an insult to my intelligence. What are you smiling about?”

“About you, dear.”

“Mary, why, Mary! I––”

But Mary only smiled the more. “You love my irrelevance and inconsistency, you say,––”

“I love any weakness that is yours, Mary. What are you keeping back from me?”

“The weakness that is mine, dear.” Again Mary laughed outright. “It would be useless to tell you––or to try to explain. I love you, isn’t that enough?”

Bertrand thought it ought to be, but was not sure, and said so. Then Mary laughed again, and he kissed her, shaking his head dubiously, and took up his violin for solace. Thus an hour passed; then Betty set the table for supper, and the long evening followed like many another evening, filled with the companionship only comfortably married people know, while Bertrand read from the poets.

Since, with a man’s helplessness in such matters, he could not do the family mending, or knit for the soldiers, or remodel old garments into new, it behooved him to render such tasks pleasant for the busy hand and brain that must devise and create and make much out of little for economy’s sake; and this Bertrand did to Mary’s complete satisfaction.

Evenings like these were Betty’s school, and they seemed all the schooling she was likely to get, for the family funds were barely sufficient to cover the expenses of one child at a time. But, as Mary said, “It’s not so bad for Betty to be kept at home, for she will read and study, anyway, because she likes it, and it won’t hurt her to learn to be practical as well;” and no doubt Mary was right.

Bertrand was himself a poet in his appreciation and fineness of choice, and he read for Mary with all the effectiveness and warmth of color that he would put into a recitation for a large audience, carried on solely by his one sympathetic listener and his love for what he read; while Betty, in her corner close to the lamp behind her father’s chair, listened unnoticed, with eager soul, rapt and uplifted.

As Bertrand read he commented. “These men who are writing like this are doing for this country what the Lake Poets did for England. They are making true literature for the nation, and saving it from banality. They are going to live. They will be classed some day with Wordsworth and all the rest of the best. Hear this from James Russell Lowell. It’s about a violin, and is called ‘In the Twilight.’ It’s worthy of Shelley.” And Bertrand read the poem through, while Mary let her knitting fall in her lap and listened. He loved to see her listen in that way.

“Read again the verse that begins: ‘O my life.’ I seem to like it best.” And he read it over:––

“O my life, have we not had seasons
 That only said, Live and rejoice?
That asked not for causes and reasons,
 But made us all feeling and voice?
When we went with the winds in their blowing,
 When Nature and we were peers,
And we seemed to share in the flowing
 Of the inexhaustible years?
 Have we not from the earth drawn juices
 Too fine for earth’s sordid uses?
 Have I heard, have I seen
 All I feel, all I know?
 Doth my heart overween?
 Or could it have been
 Long ago?”

“And the next, Bertrand. I love to hear them over again.” And he read:––

“Sometimes a breath floats by me,
 An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
 Of a splendor that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
 In what diviner sphere,
Of memories that stay not and go not,
 Like music heard once by an ear
 That cannot forget or reclaim it,
A something so shy, it would shame it
 To make it a show,
A something too vague, could I name it,
 For others to know,
As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
 Long ago!“

“And the last verse, father. I like the last best,” cried Betty, suddenly.

“Why, my deary. I thought you were gone to bed.”

“No, mother lets me sit up a little while longer when you’re reading. I like to hear you.” And he read for her the last verse:––

“And yet, could I live it over,
 This life that stirs my brain,
Could I be both maiden and lover,
Moon and tide, bee and clover,
 As I seem to have been, once again,
Could I but speak it and show it,
 This pleasure more sharp than pain,
 That baffles and lures me so,
The world should once more have a poet,
 Such as it had
 In the ages glad,
 Long ago!”

Then, wishing to know more of the secret springs of his little daughter’s life, he asked: “Why do you love that stanza best, Betty, my dear?”

Betty blushed crimson to the roots of her hair, for what she carried in her heart was too precious to tell, but she meant to be a poet. Even then, in the pocket of her calico dress lay a little book and a stubbed lead pencil, and in the book was already the beginning of her great epic. Her father had said the epic was a thing of the past, that in the future none would be written, for that it was a form of expressions that belonged to the world’s youth, and that age brought philosophy and introspection, but not epics.

She meant to surprise her father some day with this poem. The great world was so full of mystery––of seductive beauty and terror and of strange, enticing charm! She saw and felt it always. Even now, in the driving, whirling storm without, in the darkness of her chamber, or when she looked through the frosted panes into the starry skies at midnight, always it was there all about her,––a something unexpressed, unseen, but close––close to her,––the mystery which throbbed through all her small being, and which she was one day to find out and understand and put into her great epic.

She thought over her father’s question, hardly knowing why she liked that last stanza best. She slowly wound up her ball of yarn and thrust the needles through it, and dropped it into her mother’s workbasket before she replied; then, taking up her candle, she looked shyly in her father’s eyes.

“Because I like where it says: ‘This pleasure more sharp than pain, That baffles and lures me so.’” Then she was gone, hurrying away lest they should question her further and learn about the little book in her pocket.

Thus time passed with the Ballards, many days swiftly flying, laden with a fair share of sweetness and pleasure, and much of harassment and toil, but in the main bringing happiness.

CHAPTER VI

THE END OF THE WAR

It was three years after the troops marched away from High Knob encampment before either Peter Junior or Richard Kildene were again in Leauvite, and then only Peter returned, because he was wounded, and not that he was unwilling to enlist again, as did Richard and many of the boys, when their first term of service was ended. He returned with the brevet of a captain, for gallant conduct in the encounter in which he received his wound, but only a shadow of the healthy, earnest boy who had stood in the ranks on the town square of Leauvite three years before; yet this very fact brought life and hope to his waiting mother, now that she had the blessed privilege of nursing him back to strength.

It seemed as though her long period of mourning ended when Peter Junior, pallid in his blue uniform, his hair darkened and matted with the dampness caused by weakness and pain, was borne in between the white columns of his father’s house. When the news reached him that his son was lying wounded in a southern hospital, the Elder had, for the first time in many, many years, followed an impulse without pausing to consider his act beforehand. He left the bank on the instant and started for the scene of battles, only hurrying home to break the news first to his wife. Yielding to a rare tenderness, he touched her hair as he kissed her, and enjoined on her to remember that their son was not slain, but by a merciful Providence was only wounded and might be spared to them. She must thank the Lord and be ready to nurse him back to life.

Why Providence should be thus merciful to their son rather than to many another son, the good Elder did not pause to consider. Possibly he thought it no more than just that the prayers of the righteous should be answered by a supernatural intervention between their sons and the bullets of the enemy. His ideas on this point were no doubt vague at the best, but certain it is that he returned from his long and difficult journey to the seat of strife after his boy, with a clearer notion of what war really was, and a more human sympathy for those who go and suffer, and, as might be anticipated with those of his temperament, an added bitterness against those whom he felt were to blame for the conflict.

When Peter Junior left his home, his father had enjoined on him to go, not in the spirit of bitterness and enmity, but as an act of duty, to teach a needed lesson; for surely the Lord was on the side of the right, and was using the men of the North to teach this needed lesson to those laboring in error. Ah! it is a very different point of view we take when we suffer, instead of merely moralizing on the suffering of others; especially we who feel that we know what is right, and lack in great part the imagination to comprehend the other man’s viewpoint. To us of that cast of mind there is only one viewpoint and that is our own, and only a bodily departure to the other man’s hilltop or valley, as the case may be, will open the eyes and enlarge the understanding to the extent of even allowing our fellows to see things in another light from our own.

In this instance, while the Elder’s understanding had been decidedly enlarged, it had been in but one direction, and the effect had not been to his spiritual benefit, for he had seen only the suffering of his own side, and, being deficient in power to imagine what might be, he had taken no charitable thought for the other side. Instead, a feeling of hatred had been stirred within him,––a feeling he felt himself justified in and therefore indulged and named: “Righteous Indignation.”

The Elder’s face was stern and hard as he directed the men who bore his boy on the litter where to turn, and how to lift it above the banister in going up the stair so as not to jar the young man, who was too weak after the long journey to do more than turn his eyes on his mother’s face.

But that mother’s face! It seemed to him he had never seen it so radiant and charming, for all that her hair had grown silvery white in the three years since he had last kissed her. He could not take his eyes from it, and besought her not to leave his side, even when the Elder bade her go and not excite him, but allow him to rest.

No sooner was her son laid on his own bed in his old room than she began a series of gentle ministrations most sweet to the boy and to herself. But the Elder had been told that all he needed now was rest and absolute quiet, and the surgeon’s orders must be carried out regardless of all else. Hester Craigmile yielded, as always, to the Elder’s will, and remained without, seated close beside her son’s door, her hands, that ached to serve, lying idle in her lap, while the Elder brought him his warm milk and held it to his lips, lifting his head to drink it, and then left him with the command to sleep.

“Don’t go in for an hour at least,” he enjoined on his wife as he passed her and took his way to the bank, for it was too early for closing, and there would still be time for him to look into his affairs a bit. Thus for the banker the usual routine began.

Not so for Hester Craigmile. Joy and life had begun for her. She had her boy again––quite to herself when the Elder was away, and the tears for very happiness came to her eyes and dropped on her hands unchecked. Had the Elder been there he would have enjoined upon her to be controlled and she would have obeyed, but now there was no need, and she wept deliciously for joy while she still sat outside the door and listened. Intense––eager––it seemed almost as if she could hear him breathe.

“Mother!” Hark! Did he speak? “Mother!” It was merely a breath, but she heard and went swiftly to him. Kneeling, she clasped him, and her tears wet his cheek, but at the same time they soothed him, and he slept. It was thus the Elder found them when he returned from the bank, both sweetly sleeping. He did not take his wife away for fear of waking his son, nevertheless he was displeased with her, and when they met at table that evening, she knew it.

The whole order of the house was changed because of Peter Junior’s return. Blinds, windows, and doors were thrown open at the direction of the physician, that he might be given all the air and sunlight it was possible to admit; else he would never gain strength, for so long had he lived in the open air, in rain and sun, that he had need now of every help nature could give.

A bullet had struck him in the hip and glanced off at a peculiar angle, rendering his recovery precarious and long delayed, and causing the old doctor to shake his head with the fear that he must pass the rest of his life a cripple. Still, normal youth is buoyant and vigorous and mocks at physicians’ fears, and after a time, what with heart at rest, with loving and unceasing care on his mother’s part, and rigorous supervision on his father’s, Peter Junior did at length recover sufficiently to be taken out to drive, and began to get back the good red blood in his veins.

During this long period of convalescence, Peter Junior’s one anxiety was for his cousin Richard. Rumors had reached him that his comrade had been wounded and taken prisoner, yet nothing definite had been heard, until at last, after much writing, he learned Richard’s whereabouts, and later that he had been exchanged. Then, too ill and prison-worn to go back to his regiment, he appeared one day, slowly walking up the village street toward the banker’s house.

There he was welcomed and made much of, and the two young men spent a while together happily, the best of friends and comrades, still filled with enthusiasm, but with a wider knowledge of life and the meaning of war. These weeks were few and short, and soon Richard was back in the army. Peter Junior, envying him, still lay convalescing and only able with much difficulty to crawl to the carriage for his daily drive.

His mother always accompanied him on these drives, and the very first of them was to the home of the Ballards. It was early spring, the air was biting and cool, and Peter was unable to alight, but Mary and her husband came to them where they waited at the gate and stood long, talking happily. Jamie and Bobby followed at their heels and peered up curiously at the wounded soldier, but Betty was seized with a rare moment of shyness that held her back.

Dear little Betty! She had grown taller since Peter Junior had taken that last tea at the Ballards. No longer care free, the oldest but one, she had taken many of her mother’s burdens upon her young shoulders, albeit not knowing that they were burdens, since they were wholly acts of love and joyously done. She was fully conscious of her advancing years, and took them very seriously, regarding her acts with a grave and serene sense of their importance. She had put back the wild hair that used to fly about her face until her father called her “An owl in an ivy bush” and her mother admonished her that her “head was like a mop.” Now, being in her teens, she wore her dresses longer and never ran about barefooted, paddling in the brook below the spring, although she would like to do so; still she was child enough to run when she should walk, and to laugh when some would sigh.

Her thoughts had been romantically active regarding Peter Junior, how he would look, and how splendid and great he was to have been a real soldier and come home wounded––to have suffered and bled for his country. And Richard, too, was brave and splendid. He must have been in the very front of the battle to have been taken prisoner. She wondered a little if he remembered her, but not much, for how could men with great work to do, like fighting and dying for their country, stop to think of a little girl who was still in short dresses when they had seen her last?

Then, when the war was ended at last, there was Richard returned and stopping at his uncle’s. In the few short visits he made at the Ballards’ he greeted Betty as of old, as he would greet a little sister of whom he was fond, and she accepted his frank, old-time brotherliness in the same spirit, gayly and happily, revealing but little of herself, and holding a slight reserve in her manner which seemed to him quite delightful and maidenly. Then, all too suddenly, he was gone again, but in his heart he carried a memory of her that made a continual undercurrent in his thoughts.

And now Betty’s father and mother were actually talking with Peter Junior at their very gate. Impulse would have sent her flying to meet him, but that new, self-conscious shyness stayed her feet, for he was one to be approached with reverence. He was afflicted with no romantic shyness with regard to her, however. He quite forgot her, indeed, although he did ask in a general way after the children and even mentioned Martha in particular, as, being the eldest, she was best remembered. So Betty did not see Peter Junior this time, but she stood where she could see the top of the carriage from her bedroom window, whither she had fled, and she could see the blue sleeve of his coat as he put out his arm to take her mother’s hand at parting. That was something, and she listened with beating heart for the sound of his voice. Ah, little he dreamed what a tumult he had raised in the heart of that young being whose imagination had been so stirred by all that she had read and heard of war, and the part taken in it by their own young men of Leauvite. That Peter Junior had come home brevetted a captain for his bravery crowned him with glory. All that day Betty went about with dreams in her head, and coursing through them was the voice of the wounded young soldier.

At last, with the slow march of time, came the proclamation of peace, and the nation so long held prostrate––a giant struggling against fetters of its own forging, blinded and strangling in its own blood––reared its head and cried out for the return of Hope, groping on all sides to gather the divine youth to its arms, when, as a last blow, dealt by a wanton hand, came the death of Lincoln.

Then it was that the nation recoiled and bowed itself for a time, beaten and crushed––both North and South––and vultures gathered at the seat of conflict and tore at its vitals and wrangled over the spoils. Then it was that they who had sowed discord stooped to reap the Devil’s own harvest,––a woeful, bitter, desperate time, when more enmity and deep rancor was bred and treasured up for future sorrow than during all the years of the honest and active strife of the war.

In the very beginning that first news of the firing on Fort Sumter flew through the North like a tragic cry, and men felt a sense of doom hanging over the nation. Bertrand Ballard heard it and walked sorrowfully home to his wife, and sat long with bowed head, brooding and silent. Neighbor Wilcox heard it, and, leaving his business, entered his home and called his household together with the servants and held family worship––a service which it was his custom to hold only on the Sabbath––and earnestly prayed for the salvation of the country, and that wisdom might be granted its rulers, after which he sent his oldest son to fight for the cause. Elder Craigmile heard it, and consented that his last and only son should enter the ranks and give his life, if need be, for the saving of the nation. Still, tempering all this sorrow and anxiety was the chance for action, and the hope of victory.

But now, in this later time, when the strength of the nation had been wasted, when victory itself was dark with mourning for sons slain, the loss of the one wise leader to whom all turned with uplifted hearts seemed the signal for annihilation; and then, indeed, it appeared that the prophecy of Mary Ballard’s old grandfather had been fulfilled and the curse of slavery had not only been wiped out with blood, but that the greater curse of anarchy and misrule had taken its place to still further scourge the nation.

Mary Ballard’s mother, while scarcely past her prime, was taken ill with fever and died, and immediately upon this blow to the dear old father who was not yet old enough by many years to be beyond his usefulness to those who loved and depended on him, came the tragic death of Lincoln, whom he revered and in whom all his hopes for the right adjustment of the nation’s affairs rested. Under the weight of the double calamity he gave up hope, and left the world where all looked so dark to him, almost before the touch of his wife’s hand had grown cold in his.

“Father died of a broken heart,” said Mary, and turned to her husband and children with even more intensity of devotion. “For,” she said, “after all, the only thing in life of which we can be perfectly sure is our love for each other. A grave may open at our feet anywhere at any time, and only love oversteps it.”

With such an animating spirit as this, no family can be wholly sad, and though poverty pinched them at times, and sorrow had bitterly visited them, with years and thrift things changed. Bertrand painted more pictures and sold them; the children were gay and vigorous and brought life and good times to the home, and the girls grew up to be womanly, winsome lasses, light-hearted and good to look upon.

Enough of the war and the evils thereof has been said and written and sung. Animosity is dead, and brotherhood and mutual service between the two opposing factions of one great family have taken the place of strife. Useless now to say what might have been, or how otherwise that terrible time of devastation and sorrow could have been avoided. Enough to know that at last as a nation, whole and undivided, we may pull together in the tremendous force of our united strength, and that now we may take up the “White Man’s Burden” and bear it to its magnificent conclusion to the service of all mankind and the glory of God.

CHAPTER VII

A NEW ERA BEGINS

Bertrand Ballard’s studio was at the top of his house, with a high north window and roughly plastered walls of uncolored sand, left as Bertrand himself had put the plaster on, with his trowel marks over the surface as they happened to come, and the angles and projections thereof draped with cobwebs.

When Peter Junior was able to leave his home and get about a little on his crutches, he loved to come there and rest and spend his idle hours, and Bertrand found pleasure in his companionship. They read together, and sang together, and laughed together, and no sound was more pleasant to Mary Ballard’s ears than this same happy laughter. Peter had sorely missed the companionship of his cousin, for, at the close of the war, no longer a boy and unwilling to be dependent and drifting, Richard had sought out a place for himself in the work of the world.

First he had gone to Scotland to visit his mother’s aunts. There he found the two dear old ladies, sweetly observant of him, willing to tell him much of his mother, who had been scarcely younger than the youngest of them, but discreetly reticent about his father. From this he gathered that for some reason his father was under a cloud. Yet he did not shrink from trying to learn from them all they knew about him, and for what reason they spoke as if to even mention his name was an indiscretion. It was really little they knew, only that he had gravely displeased their nephew, Peter Craigmile, who had brought Richard up, and who was his mother’s twin brother.

“But why did Uncle Peter have to bring me up? You say he quarreled with my father?”

“Weel, ye see, ye’r mither was dead.” It was Aunt Ellen, the elder by twenty years, who told him most about it, she who spoke with the broadest Scotch.

“Was my father a bad man, that Uncle ‘Elder’ disliked him so?”

“Weel now, I’d no say that; he was far from that to be right fair to them both––for ye see––ye’r mither would never have loved him if he’d been that––but he––he was an Irishman, and ye’r Uncle Peter could never thole an Irishman, and he––he––fair stole ye’r mither from us a’––an––” she hesitated to continue, then blurted out the real horror. “Your Uncle Peter kenned he had ance been in the theayter, a sort o’ an actor body an’ he couldna thole that.”

But little was to be gained with all his questioning, and what he could learn seemed no more than that his father had done what any man might be expected to do if some one stood between him and the girl he loved; so Richard felt that there must be something unknown to any one but his uncle that had turned them all against his father. Why had his father never appeared to claim his son? Why had he left his boy to be reared by a man who hated the boy’s father? It was a strange thing to do, and it must be that his father was dead.

At this time Richard was filled with ambitions,––fired by his early companionship with Bertrand Ballard,––and thought he would go to France and become an artist;––to France, the Mecca of Bertrand’s dreams––he desired of all things to go there for study. But of all this he said nothing to any one, for where was the money? He would never ask his uncle for it, and now that he had learned that he had been all his young life really a dependent on the bounty of his Uncle Peter, he could no longer accept his help. He would hereafter make his own way, asking no favors.

The old aunts guessed at his predicament, and offered to give him for his mother’s sake enough to carry him through the first year, but he would not allow them to take from their income to pay his bills. No, he would take his way back to America, and find a place for himself in the new world; seek some active, stirring work, and save money, and sometime––sometime he would do the things his heart loved. He often thought of Betty, the little Betty who used to run to meet him and say such quaint things; some day he would go to her and take her with him. He would work first and do something worthy of so choice a little mortal.

Thus dreaming, after the manner of youth, he went to Ireland, to his father’s boyhood home. He found only distant relatives there, and learned that his father had disposed of all he ever owned of Irish soil to an Englishman. A cousin much older than himself owned and still lived on the estate that had been his grandfather Kildene’s, and Richard was welcomed and treated with openhearted hospitality. But there, also, little was known of his father, only that the peasants on the estate remembered him lovingly as a free-hearted gentleman.

Even that little was a relief to Richard’s sore heart. Yes, his father must be dead. He was sorry. He was a lonely man, and to have a relative who was his very own, as near as a father, would be a great deal. His cousin, Peter Junior, was good as a friend, but from now on they must take paths that diverged, and that old intimacy must naturally change. His sweet Aunt Hester he loved, and she would fill the mother’s place if she could, but it was not to be. It would mean help from his Uncle Peter, and that would mean taking a place in his uncle’s bank, which had already been offered him, but which he did not want, which he would not accept if he did want it.

So, after a long and happy visit at his cousin Kildene’s, in Ireland, he at last left for America again, and plunged into a new, interesting, and vigorous life, one that suited well his energetic nature. He found work on the great railway that was being built across the plains to the Pacific Coast. He started as an engineer’s assistant, but soon his talent for managing men caused his employers to put him in charge of gangs of workmen who were often difficult and lawless. He did not object; indeed he liked the new job better than that he began with. He was more interested in men than materials.

The life was hard and rough, but he came to love it. He loved the wide, sweeping prairies, and, later on, the desert. He liked to lie out under the stars,––often when the men slept under tents,––his gun at his side and his thoughts back on the river bluffs at Leauvite. He did a lot of dreaming and thinking, and he never forgot Betty. He thought of her as still a child, although he was expecting her to grow up and be ready for him when he should return to her. He had a vague sort of feeling that all was understood between them, and that she was quietly becoming womanly, and waiting for him.

Peter Junior might have found other friends in Leauvite had he sought them out, but he did not care for them. His nature called for what he found in Bertrand’s studio, and he followed the desire of his heart regardless of anything else, spending all the time he could reasonably filch from his home. And what wonder! Richard would have done the same and was even then envying Peter the opportunity, as Peter well knew from his cousin’s letters. There was no place in the village so fascinating and delightful as this little country home on its outskirts, no conversation more hopeful and helpful than Bertrand’s, and no welcome sweeter or kinder than Mary Ballard’s.

One day, after Richard had gone out on the plains with the engineers of the projected road, Peter lay stretched on a long divan in the studio, his head supported by his hand as he half reclined on his elbow, and his one crutch––he had long since discarded the other––within reach of his arm. His violin also lay within reach, for he had been playing there by himself, as Bertrand had gone on one of his rare visits to the city a hundred miles away.

Betty Ballard had heard the wail of his violin from the garden, where she had been gathering pears. That was how she knew where to find him when she quickly appeared before him, rosy and flushed from her run to the house and up the long flight of stairs.

As Peter lay there, he was gazing at the half-finished copy he had been making of the head of an old man, for Peter had decided, since in all probability he would be good for no active work such as Richard had taken up, that he too would become an artist, like Bertrand Ballard. To have followed his cousin would have delighted his heart, for he had all the Scotchman’s love of adventure, but, since that was impossible, nothing was more alluring than the thought of fame and success as an artist. He would not tie himself to Leauvite to get it. He would go to Paris, and there he would do the things Bertrand had been prevented from doing. Poor Bertrand! How he would have loved the chance Peter Junior was planning for himself as he lay there dreaming and studying the half-finished copy.

Suddenly he beheld Betty, standing directly in front of the work, extending to him a folded bit of paper. “Here’s a note from your father,” she cried.

Looking upon her thus, with eyes that had been filled with the aged, rugged face on the canvas, Betty appealed to Peter as a lovely vision. He had never noticed before, in just this way, her curious charm, but these months of companionship and study with Bertrand had taught him to see beauty understandingly, and now, as she stood panting a little, with breath coming through parted lips and hair flying almost in the wild way of her childhood, Peter saw, as if it were a revelation, that she was lovely. He raised himself slowly and reached for the note without taking his eyes from her face.

He did not open the letter, but continued to look in her eyes, at which she turned about half shyly. “I heard your violin; that’s how I knew you were up here. Oh! Have you been painting on it again?”

“On my violin? No, I’ve been playing on it.”

“No! Painting on the picture of your old man. I think you have it too drawn out and thin. He’s too hollow there under the cheek bone.”

“Is he, Miss Critic? Well, thank your stars you’re not.”

“I know. I’m too fat.” She rubbed her cheek until it was redder than ever.

“What are you painting your cheeks for? There’s color enough on them as they are.”

She made a little mouth at him. “I could paint your old man as well as that, I know.”

“I know you could. You could paint him far better than that.”

She laughed, quickly repentant. “I didn’t say that to be horrid. I only said it for fun. I couldn’t.”

“And I know you could.” He rose and stood without his crutch, looking down on her. “And you’re not ‘too long drawn out,’ are you? See? You only come up to––about––here on me.” He measured with his hand a little below his chin.

“I don’t care. You’re not so awfully tall.”

“Very well, have it so. That only makes you the shorter.”

“I tell you I don’t care. You’d better stop staring at me, if I’m so little, and read your letter. The man’s waiting for it. That’s why I ran all the way up here.” By this it may be seen that Betty had lost all her awe of the young soldier. Maybe it left her when he doffed his uniform. “Here’s your crutch. Doesn’t it hurt you to stand alone?” She reached him the despised prop.

“Hurt me to stand alone? No! I’m not a baby. Do you think I’m likely to grow up bow-legged?” he thundered, taking it from her hand without a thank you, and glaring down on her humorously. “You’re a bit cruel to remind me of it. I’m going to walk with a cane hereafter, and next thing you know you’ll see me stalking around without either.”

“Why, Peter Junior! I’d be so proud of that crutch I wouldn’t leave it off for anything! I’d always limp a little, even if I didn’t use it. Cruel? I was complimenting you.”

“Complimenting me? How?”

“By reminding you that you had been brave––and had been a soldier––and had been wounded for your country––and had been promoted––and––”

But Peter drowned her voice with uproarious laughter, and suddenly surprised himself as well as her by slipping his arm around her waist and stopping her lips with a kiss.

Betty was surprised but not shocked. She knew of no reason why Peter should not kiss her even though it was not his custom to treat her thus. In Betty’s home, demonstrative expressions of affection were as natural as sunlight, and why should not Peter like her? Therefore it was Peter who was shocked, and embarrassed her with his sudden apology.

“I don’t care if you did kiss me. You’re just like my big brother––the same as Richard is––and he often used to kiss me.” She was trying to set Peter at his ease. “And, anyway, I like you. Why, I supposed of course you liked me––only naturally not as much as I liked you.”

“Oh, more! Much more!” he stammered tremblingly. He knew in his heart that there was a subtle difference, and that what he felt was not what she meant when she said, “I like you.” “I’m sure it is I who like you the most.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t! Why, you never even used to see me. And I––I used to gaze on you––and be so romantic! It was Richard who always saw me and played with me. He used to toss me up, and I would run away down the road to meet him. I wonder when he’s coming back! I wish he’d come. Why don’t you read your father’s letter? The man’s waiting, you know.”

“Ah, yes. And I suppose Dad’s waiting, too. I wonder why he wrote me when he can see me every day!”

“Well, read it. Don’t stand there looking at it and staring at me. Do you know how you look? You look as if it were a message from the king, saying: ‘You are remanded to the tower, and are to have your head struck off at sundown.’ That’s the way they did things in the olden days.” She turned to go.

“Stay here until I see if you are right.” He dropped on the divan and made room for her at his side.

“All right! That’s what I wanted to do, but I thought it wouldn’t be polite to be curious.”

“But you wouldn’t be polite anyway, you know, so you might as well stay. M-m-m. I’m remanded to the tower, sure enough. Father wants me to meet him in the director’s room as soon as banking hours are over. Fine old Dad! He wouldn’t think of infringing on banking hours for any private reasons unless the sky were falling, and even then he would save the bank papers first. See here––Betty––er––never mind. I’ll tell you another time.”

“Please tell me now! What is it? Something dreadful, Peter Junior?”

“I wasn’t thinking about this; it––it’s something else––”

“About what?”

“About you.”

“Oh, then it is no consequence. I want to hear what’s in the letter. Why did you tell me to stay if you weren’t going to tell me what’s in it?”

“Nothing. We have had a little difference of opinion, my father and I, and he evidently wants to settle it out of hand his way, by summoning me in this official manner to appear before him at the bank.”

“I know. He thinks you are idling away your time here trying to paint pictures, and he wishes to make a respectable banker of you.” She reached over and began picking the strings of his violin.

“You musn’t finger the strings of a violin that way.”

“Why not? I want to see if I can pick out ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ on it. I can on the flute, father’s old one; he lets me.”

“Because you’ll get them oily.”

She spread out her two firm little hands. “My fingers aren’t greasy!” she cried indignantly; “that’s pear juice on them.”

Peter Junior’s gravity turned to laughter. “Well, I don’t want pear juice on my strings. Wait, you rogue, I’m going to kiss you again.”

“No, you’re not, you old hobble-de-hoy. You can’t catch me.” When she was halfway down the stairs, she called back, “The man’s waiting.”

“Coward! Coward!” he called after her, “to run away from a poor old cripple and then call him names.” He thrust the letter into his pocket, and seizing his crutch began deliberately and carefully to descend the stairs, with grave, set face, not unlike his father’s.

“Catch, Peter Junior,” called Betty from the top of the pear tree as he passed down the garden path, and tossed him a pear which he caught, then another and another. “There! No, don’t eat them now. Put them in your desk, and next month they’ll be just as sweet!”

“Will they? Just like you? I’ll be even with you yet––when I catch you.”

“You’ll get pear juice on your strings. There are lots of nice girls in the village for you to kiss. They’ll do just as well as me.”

“Good girl. Good grammar. Good-by.” He waved his hand toward Betty, and turned to the waiting servant. “You go on and tell the Elder I’m coming right along,” he said, and hopped off down the road. It was only lately he had begun to take long walks or hops like this, with but one crutch, but he was growing frantic to be fairly on his two feet again. The doctor had told him he never would be, but he set his square chin, and decided that the doctor was wrong. More than ever to-day, with the new touch of little pear-stained fingers on his heart, he wanted to walk off like other men.

Now he tried to use his lame leg as much as possible. If only he might throw away the crutch and walk with a cane, it would be something gained. With one hand in his pocket he crushed his father’s letter into a small wad, then tossed it in the air and caught it awhile, then put it back in his pocket and hobbled on.

The atmosphere had the smoky appearance of the fall, and the sweet haze of Indian summer lay over the landscape, the horizon only faintly outlined through it. Peter Junior sniffed the air. He wondered if the forests in the north were afire. Golden maple leaves danced along on the path before him, whirled hither and thither by the light breeze, and the wild asters and goldenrod powdered his dark trousers with pollen as he brushed them in passing. All the world was lovely, and he appreciated it as he had never been able to do before. Bertrand’s influence had permeated his thoughts and widened thus his reach of happiness.

He entered the bank just at the closing hour, and the staid, faithful old clerks nodded to him as he passed through to the inner room, where he found his father awaiting him. He dropped wearily into a swivel chair before the great table and placed his crutch at his feet; wiping the perspiration from his forehead, he leaned forward, and rested his elbows on the table.

The young man’s wan look, for the walk had taxed his strength, reminded his father of the day he had brought the boy home wounded, and his face relaxed.

“You are tired, my son.”

“Oh, no. Not very. I have been more so.” Peter Junior smiled a disarming smile as he looked in his father’s face. “I’ve tramped many a mile on two sound feet when they were so numb from sheer weariness that I could not feel them or know what they were doing. What did you want to say to me, father?”

“Well, my son, we have different opinions, as you know, regarding your future.”

“I know, indeed.”

“And a father’s counsel is not to be lightly disposed of.”

“I have no intention of doing so, father.”

“No, no. But wait. You have been loitering the day at Mr. Ballard’s? Yes.”

“I have nothing else to do, father,––and––” Peter Junior’s smile again came to the rescue. “It isn’t as though I were in doubtful company––I––there are worse places here in the village where I might––where idle men waste their time.”

“Ah, yes. But they are not for you––not for you, my son.” The Elder smiled in his turn, and lifted his brows, then drew them down and looked keenly at his son. The afternoon sunlight streamed through the high western window and fell on the older man’s face, bringing it into strong relief against the dark oak paneling behind him, and as Peter Junior looked on his father he received his second revelation that day. He had not known before what a strong, fine old face his father’s was, and for the second time he surprised himself, when he cried out:––

“I tell you, father, you have a magnificent head! I’m going to make a portrait of you just as you are––some day.”

The Elder rose with an indignant, despairing downward motion of the hands and began pacing the floor, while Peter Junior threw off restraint and laughed aloud. The laughter freed his soul, but it sadly irritated the Elder. He did not like unusual or unprecedented things, and Peter Junior was certainly not like himself, and was acting in an unprecedented manner.

“You have now regained a fair amount of strength and have reached an age when you should think seriously of what you are to do in life. As you know, it has always been my intention that you should take a place here and fit yourself for the responsibilities that are now mine, but which will some day devolve on you.”

Peter Junior raised his hand in protest, then dropped it. “I mean to be an artist, father.”

“Faugh! An artist? Look at your friend, Bertrand Ballard. What has he to live on? What will he have laid by for his old age? How has he managed to live all these years––he and his wife? Miserable hand-to-mouth existence! I’ll see my son trying to emulate him! You’ll be an artist? And how will you support a wife if you ever have one? You mean to marry some day?”

“I mean to marry Betty Ballard,” said Peter Junior, with a rugged set of his jaw.

Again the Elder made that despairing downward thrust with his open hands. “Take a wife who has nothing, and a career which brings in nothing, and live on what your father has amassed for you, and leave your sons nothing––a pretty way for you to carry on the work I have begun for you––to––establish an honorable family––”

“Father, father, I mean to do all I can to please you. I’ll be always dutiful––and honorable––but you must leave me my manhood. You must allow me to choose my own path in life.”

The Elder paced the floor a few moments longer, then resumed his chair opposite his son, and, leaning back, looked across the table at his boy, meditatively, with half-closed eyes. At last he said, “We’ll take this matter to the Lord, and leave it in his hands.”

Then Peter Junior cried out upon him: “No, no, father; spare me that. It only means that you’ll state to the Lord what is your own way, and pray to have it, and then be more than ever convinced that it is the Lord’s way.”

“My son, my son!”

“It’s so, father. I’m willing to ask for guidance of the Lord, but I’m not willing to have you dictate to the Lord what––what I must do, and so whip me in line with the scourge of prayer.” Peter Junior paused, as he looked in his father’s face and saw the shocked and sorrowful expression there instead of the passionate retort he expected. “I am wrong to talk so, father; forgive me; but––have patience a little. God gave to man the power of choice, didn’t he?”

“Certainly. Through it all manner of evil came into the world.”

“And all manner of good, too. I––a man ought not to be merely an automaton, letting some one else always exercise that right for him. Surely the right of choice would never have been given us if it were not intended that each man should exercise it for himself. One who does not is good for nothing.”

“There is the command you forget; that of obedience to parents.”

“But how long––how long, father? Am I not man enough to choose for myself? Let me choose.”

Then the Elder leaned forward and faced his son as his son was facing him, both resting their elbows on the table and gazing straight into each other’s eyes; and the old man spoke first.

“My father founded this bank before I was born. He came from Scotland when he was but a lad, with his parents, and went to school and profited by his opportunities. He was of good family, as you know. When he was still a very young man, he entered a bank in the city as clerk, and received only ten dollars a week for his services, but he was a steady, good lad, and ambitious, and soon he moved higher––and higher. His father had taken up farming, and at his death, being an only son, he converted the farm, all but the homestead, which we still own, and which will be yours, into capital, and came to town and started this bank. When I was younger than you, my son, I went into the bank and stood at my father’s right hand, as I wish you––for your own sake––to do by me. We are a set race––a determined race, but we are not an insubordinate race, my son.”

Peter Junior was silent for a while; he felt himself being beaten. Then he made one more plea. “It is not that I am insubordinate father, but, as I see it, into each generation something enters, different from the preceding one. New elements are combined. In me there is that which my mother gave me.”

“Your mother has always been a sweet woman, yielding to the judgment of her husband, as is the duty of a good wife.”

“I know she was brought up and trained to think that her duty, but I doubt if you really know her heart. Did you ever try to know it? I don’t believe you understood what I meant by the scourge of prayer. She would have known. She has lived all these years under that lash, even though it has been wielded by the hand of one she loves––by one who loves her.” He paused a second time, arrested by his father’s expression. At first it was that of one who is stunned, then it slowly changed to one of rage. For once the boy had broken through that wall of self-control in which the Elder encased himself. Slowly the Elder rose and leaned towering over his son across the table.

“I tell you that is a lie!” he shouted. “Your mother has never rebelled. She has been an obedient, docile woman. It is a lie!”

Peter Junior made no reply. He also rose, and taking up his crutch, turned toward the door. There he paused and looked back, with flashing eyes. His lip quivered, but he held himself quiet.

“Come back!” shouted his father.

“I have told you the truth, father.” He still stood with his hand on the door.

“Has––has––your mother ever said anything to you to give you reason to insult me this way?”

“No, never. We can’t talk reasonably now. Let me go, and I’ll try to explain some other time.”

“Explain now. There is no other time.”

“Mother is sacred to me, father. I ought not to have dragged her into this discussion.”

The Elder’s lips trembled. He turned and walked to the window and stood a moment, silently looking out. At last he said in a low voice: “She is sacred to me also, my son.”

Peter Junior went back to his seat, and waited a while, with his head in his hands; then he lifted his eyes to his father’s face. “I can’t help it. Now I’ve begun, I might as well tell the truth. I meant what I said when I spoke of the different element in me, and that it is from my mother. You gave me that mother. I know you love her, and you know that your will is her law, as you feel that it ought to be. But when I am with her, I feel something of a nature in her that is not yours. And why not? Why not, father? There is that of her in me that makes me know this, and that of you in me that makes me understand you. Even now, though you are not willing to give me my own way, it makes me understand that you are insisting on your way because you think it is for my good. But nothing can alter the fact that I have inherited from my mother tastes that are not yours, and that entitle me to my manhood’s right of choice.”

“Well, what is your choice, now that you know my wish?”

“I can’t tell you yet, father. I must have more time. I only know what I think I would like to do.”

“You wish to talk it over with your mother?”

“Yes.”

“She will agree with me.”

“Yes, no doubt; but it’s only fair to tell her and ask her advice, especially if I decide to leave home.”

The Elder caught his breath inwardly, but said no more. He recognized in the boy enough of himself to know that he had met in him a power of resistance equal to his own. He also knew what Peter Junior did not know, that his grandfather’s removal to this country was an act of rebellion against the wishes of his father. It was a matter of family history he had thought best not to divulge.

CHAPTER VIII

MARY BALLARD’S DISCOVERY

Peter Junior’s mind was quite made up to go his own way and leave home to study abroad, but first he would try to convert his father to his way of thinking. Then there was another thing to be done. Not to marry, of course; that, under present conditions, would never do; but to make sure of Betty, lest some one come and steal into her heart before his return.

After his talk with his father in the bank he lay long into the night, gazing at the shadowed tracery on his wall cast by the full harvest moon shining through the maple branches outside his window. The leaves had not all fallen, and in the light breeze they danced and quivered, and the branches swayed, and the shadows also swayed and danced delicately over the soft gray wall paper and the red-coated old soldier standing stiffly in his gold frame. Often in his waking dreams in after life he saw the moving shadows silently swaying and dancing over gray and red and gold, and often he tried to call them out from the past to banish things he would forget.

Long this night he lay planning and thinking. Should he speak to Betty and tell her he loved her? Should he only teach her to think of him, not with the frank liking of her girlhood, so well expressed to him that very day, but with the warm feeling which would cause her cheeks to redden when he spoke? Could he be sure of himself––to do this discreetly, or would he overstep the mark? He would wait and see what the next day would bring forth.

In the morning he discarded his crutch, as he had threatened, and walked out to the studio, using only a stout old blackthorn stick he had found one day when rummaging among a collection of odds and ends in the attic. He thought the stick was his father’s and wondered why so interesting a walking stick––or staff; it could hardly be called a cane, he thought, because it was so large and oddly shaped––should be hidden away there. Had his father seen it he would have recognized it instantly as one that had belonged to his brother-in-law, Larry Kildene, and it would have been cut up and used for lighting fires. But it had been many years since the Elder had laid eyes on that knobbed and sturdy stick, which Larry had treasured as a rare thing in the new world, and a fine antique specimen of a genuine blackthorn. It had belonged to his great-grandfather in Ireland, and no doubt had done its part in cracking crowns.

Betty, kneading bread at a table before the kitchen window, spied Peter Junior limping wearily up the walk without his crutch, and ran to him, dusting the flour from her hands as she came.

“Lean on me. I won’t get flour on your coat. What did you go without your crutch for? It’s very silly of you.”

He essayed a laugh, but it was a self-conscious one. “I’m not going to use a crutch all my lifetime; don’t you think it. I’m very well off without, and almost myself again. I don’t need to lean on you––but I will––just for fun.” He put his arm about her and drew her to him.

“Stop, Peter Junior. Don’t you see you’re getting flour all over your clothes?”

“I like flour on my clothes. It will do for stiffening.” He raised her hand and kissed her wrist where there was no flour.

“You’re not leaning on me. You’re just acting silly, and you can hardly walk, you’re so tired! Coming all this way without your crutch. I think you’re foolish.”

“If you say anything more about that crutch, I’ll throw away my cane too.” He dropped down on the piazza and drew her to the step beside him.

“I must finish kneading the bread; I can’t sit here. You rest in the rocker awhile before you go up to the studio. Father’s up there. He came home late last night after we were all in bed.” She returned to her work, and after a moment called to him through the open window. “There’s going to be a nutting party to-morrow, and we want you to go. We’re going out to Carter’s grove; we’ve got permission. Every one’s going.”

Peter Junior rubbed the moisture from his hair and shook his head. He must get nearer her, but it was always the same thing; just a happy game, with no touch of sentiment––no more, he thought gloomily, than if she were his sister.

“What are you all going there for?”

“Why, nuts, goosey; didn’t I say we were going nutting?”

“I don’t happen to want nuts.” No, he wanted her to urge and coax him to go for her sake, but what could he say?

He left his seat, took the side path around to the kitchen door, and drew up a chair to the end of the table where she deftly manipulated the sweet-smelling dough, patting it, and pulling it, and turning it about until she was ready to put the shapely balls in the pans, holding them in her two firm little hands with a slight rolling motion as she slipped each loaf in its place. It had never occurred to Peter Junior that bread making was such an interesting process.

“Why do you fuss with it so? Why don’t you just dump it in the pan any old way? That’s the way I’d do.” But he loved to watch her pink-tipped fingers carefully shaping the loaves, nevertheless.

“Oh––because.”

“Good reason.”

“Well––the more you work it the better it is, just like everything else; and then––if you don’t make good-looking loaves, you’ll never have a handsome husband. Mother says so.” She tossed a stray lock from her eyes, and opening the oven door thrust in her arm. “My, but it’s hot! Why do you sit here in the heat? It’s a lot nicer on the porch in the rocker. Mother’s gone to town––and––”

“I’d rather sit here with you––thank you.” He spoke stiffly and waited. What could he say; what could he do next? She left him a moment and quickly returned with a cup of butter.

“You know––I’d stop and go out in the cool with you, Peter, but I must work this dough I have left into raised biscuit; and then I have to make a cake for to-morrow––and cookies––there’s something to do in this house, I tell you! How about to-morrow?”

“I don’t believe I’d better go. All the rest of the world will be there, and––”

“Only our little crowd. When I said everybody, you didn’t think I meant everybody in the whole world, did you? You know us all.”

“Do you want me to go? There’ll be enough others––”

She tossed her head and gave him a sidelong glance. “I always ask people to go when I don’t want them to.”

He rose at that and stood close to her side, and, stooping, looked in her eyes; and for the first time the color flamed up in her face because of him. “I say––do you want me to go?”

“No, I don’t.”

But the red he had brought into her cheeks intoxicated him with delight. Now he knew a thing to do. He seized her wrists and turned her away from the table and continued to look into her eyes. She twisted about, looking away from him, but the burning blush made even the little ear she turned toward him pink, and he loved it. His discretion was all gone. He loved her, and he would tell her now––now! She must hear it, and slipping his arm around her, he drew her away and out to the seat under the old silver-leaf poplar tree.

“You’re acting silly, Peter Junior,––and my bread will all spoil and get too light,––and my hands are all covered with flour, and––”

“And you’ll sit right here while I talk to you a bit, if the bread spoils and gets too light and everything burns to a cinder.” She started to run away from him, and his peremptory tone changed to pleading. “Please, Betty, dear! just hear me this far. I’m going away, Betty, and I love you. No, sit close and be my sweetheart. Dear, it isn’t the old thing. It’s love, and it’s what I want you to feel for me. I woke up yesterday, and found I loved you.” He held her closer and lifted her face to his. “You must wake up, too, Betty; we can’t play always. Say you’ll love me and be my wife––some day––won’t you, Betty?”

She drooped in his arms, hanging her head and looking down on her floury hands.

“Say it, Betty dear, won’t you?”

Her lip quivered. “I don’t want to be anybody’s wife––and, anyway––I liked you better the other way.”

“Why, Betty? Tell me why.”

“Because––lots of reasons. I must help mother––and I’m only seventeen, and––”

“Most eighteen, I know, because––”

“Well, anyway, mother says no girl of hers shall marry before she’s of age, and she says that means twenty-one, and––”

“That’s all right. I can wait. Kiss me, Betty.” But she was silent, with face turned from him. Again he lifted her face to his. “I say, kiss me, Betty. Just one? That was a stingy little kiss. You know I’m going away, and that is why I spoke to you now. I didn’t dare go without telling you this first. You’re so sweet, Betty, some one might find you out and love you––just as I have––only not so deeply in love with you––no one could––but some one might come and win you away from me, and so I must make sure that you will marry me when you are of age and I come back for you. Promise me.”

“Where?––why––Peter Junior! Where are you going?” Betty removed his arm from around her waist and slipped to her own end of the seat. There, with hands folded decorously in her lap, with heightened color and serious eyes, she looked shyly up at him. He had never seen her shy before. Always she had been merry and teasing, and his heart was proud that he had wrought such a miracle in her.

“I am going to Paris. I mean to be an artist.” He leaned toward her and would have taken her in his arms again, but she put his hands away.

“Will your father let you do that?” Her eyes widened with surprise, and the surprise nettled him.

“I don’t know. He’s thinking about it. Anyway, a man must decide for himself what his career will be, and if he won’t let me, I’ll earn the money and go without his letting me.”

“Wouldn’t that be the best way, anyway?”

“What do you mean? To go without his consent?”

“Of course not––goosey.” She laughed and was herself again, but he liked her better the other way. “To earn the money and then go. It––it––would be more––more as if you were in earnest.”

“My soul! Do you think I’m not in earnest? Do you think I’m not in love with you?”

Instantly she was serious and shy again. His heart leaped. He loved to feel his power over her thus. Still she tantalized him. “I’m not meaning about loving me. That’s not the question. I mean it would look more as if you were in earnest about becoming an artist.”

“No. The real question is, Do you love me? Will you marry me when I come back?” She was silent and he came nearer. “Say it. Say it. I must hear you say it before I leave.” Her lips trembled as if she were trying to form the words, and their eyes met.

“Yes––if––if––”

Then he caught her to him, and stopped her mouth with kisses. He did not know himself. He was a man he had never met the like of, and he gloried in himself. It seemed as if he heard bells ringing out in joy. Then he looked up and saw Mary Ballard’s eyes fixed on him.

“Peter Junior––what are you doing?” Her voice shook.

“I––I’m kissing Betty.”

“I see that.”

“We are to be married some day––and––”

“You are precipitate, Peter Junior.”

Then Betty did what every woman does when her lover is blamed, no matter how earnestly she may have resisted him before. She went completely over to his side and took his part.

“He’s going away, mother. He’s going away to be gone––perhaps for years; and I’ve––I’ve told him yes, mother,––so it isn’t his fault.” Then she turned and fled to her own room, and hid her flaming face in the pillow and wept.

“Sit here with me awhile, Peter Junior, and we’ll talk it all over,” said Mary.

He obeyed her, and looking squarely in her eyes, manfully told her his plans, and tried to make her feel as he felt, that no love like his had ever filled a man’s heart before. At last she sent him up to the studio to tell her husband, and she went in and finished Betty’s task, putting the bread––alas! too light by this time––in the oven, and shaping the raised biscuit which Betty had left half-finished.

Then she paused a moment to look out of the window down the path where the boys and little Janey would soon come tumbling home from school, hot and hungry. A tear slowly coursed down her cheek, and, following the curves, trembled on the tip of her chin. She brushed it away impatiently. Of course it had to come––that was what life must bring––but ah! not so soon––not so soon. Then she set about preparations for dinner without Betty’s help. That, too, was what it would mean––sometime––to go on doing things without Betty. She gave a little sigh, and at the instant an arm was slipped about her waist, and she turned to look in Bertrand’s eyes.

“Is it all right, Mary?”

“Why––yes––that is––if they’ll always love each other as we have. I think it ought not to be too definite an engagement, though, until his plans are more settled. What do you think?”

“You are right, no doubt. I’ll speak to him about that.” Then he kissed her warm, flushed cheek. “I declare, it makes me feel as Peter Junior feels again, to have this happen.”

“Ah, Bertrand! You never grew up––thank the Lord!” Then Mary laughed. After all, they had been happy, and why not Betty and Peter? Surely the young had their rights.

Bertrand climbed back to the studio where Peter Junior was pacing restlessly back and forth, and again they talked it all over, until the call came for dinner, when Peter was urged to stay, but would not. No, he would not see Betty again until he could have her quite to himself. So he limped away, feeling as if he were walking on air in spite of his halting gait, and Betty from her window watched him pass down the path and off along the grassy roadside. Then she went down to dinner, flushed and grave, but with shining eyes. Her father kissed her, but nothing was said, and the children thought nothing of it, for it was quite natural in the family to kiss Betty.

CHAPTER IX

THE BANKER’S POINT OF VIEW

There was no picnic and nutting party the next day, owing to a downpour of rain. Betty had time to think quietly over what had happened the day before and her mind misgave her. What was it that so filled her heart and mind? That so stirred her imagination? Was it romance or love? She wished she knew how other girls felt who had lovers. Was it easy or hard for them to say yes? Should a girl let her lover kiss her the way Peter Junior had done? Some of the questions which perplexed her she would have liked to ask her mother, but in spite of their charming intimacy she could not bring herself to speak of them. She wished she had a friend with a lover, and could talk it all over with her, but although she had girl friends, none of them had lovers, and to have one herself made her feel much older than any of them.

So Betty thought matters out for herself. Of course she liked Peter Junior––she had always liked him––and he was masterful––and she had always known she would marry a soldier––and one who had been wounded and been brave––that was the kind of a soldier to love. But she was more subdued than usual and sewed steadily on gingham aprons for Janey, making the buttonholes and binding them about the neck with contrasting stuff.

“Anyway, I’m glad there is no picnic to-day. The boys may eat up the cookies, and I didn’t get the cake made after all,” she said to her mother, as she lingered a moment in the kitchen and looked out of the window at the pouring rain. But she did not see the rain; she saw again a gray-clad youth limping down the path between the lilacs and away along the grassy roadside.

Well, what if she had said yes? It was all as it should be, according to her dreams, only––only––he had not allowed her to say what she had meant to say. She wished her mother had not happened to come just then before she could explain to Peter Junior; that it was “yes” only if when he came back he still wanted her and still loved her, and was sure he had not made a mistake about it. It was often so in books. Men went away, and when they returned, they found they no longer loved their sweethearts. If such a terrible thing should happen to her! Oh, dear! Or maybe he would be too honorable to say he no longer loved her, and would marry her in spite of it; and she would find out afterward, when it was too late, that he loved some one else; that would be very terrible, and they would be miserable all their lives.

“I don’t think I would let the boys eat up the cookies, dear; it may clear off by sundown, and be fine to-morrow, and they’ll be all as glad as to go to-day. You make your cake.”

“But Martha’s coming home to-morrow night, and I’d rather wait now until Saturday; that will be only one day longer, and it will be more fun with her along.” Betty spoke brightly and tried to make herself feel that no momentous thing had happened. She hated the constraint of it. “By that time Peter Junior will think that he can go, too. He’s so funny!” She laughed self-consciously, and carried the gingham aprons back to her room.

“Bless her dear little heart.” Mary Ballard understood.

Peter Junior also profited by the rainy morning. He had a long hour alone with his mother to tell her of his wish to go to Paris; and her way of receiving his news was a surprise to him. He had thought it would be a struggle and that he would have to argue with her, setting forth his hopes and plans, bringing her slowly to think with quiescence of their long separation: but no. She rose and began to pace the floor, and her eyes grew bright with eagerness.

“Oh, Peter, Peter!” She came and placed her two hands on his shoulders and gazed into his eyes. “Peter Junior, you are a boy after my own heart. You are going to be something worth while. I always knew you would. It is Bertrand Ballard who has waked you up, who has taught you to see that there is much outside of Leauvite for a man to do. I’m not objecting to those who live here and have found their work here; it is only that you are different. Go! Go!––It is––has your father––have you asked his consent?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Has he given it?”

“I think he is considering it seriously.”

“Peter Junior, I hope you won’t go without it––as you went once, without mine.” Never before had she mentioned it to him, or recalled to his mind that terrible parting.

“Why not, mother? It would be as fair to him now as it was then to you. It would be fairer; for this is a question of progress, and then it was a matter of life and death.”

“Ah, that was different, I admit. But I never could retaliate, or seem to, even in the smallest thing. I don’t want him to suffer as I suffered.”

It was almost a cry for pity, and Peter Junior wondered in his heart at the depth of anguish she must have endured in those days, when he had thrust the thought of her opposition to one side as merely an obstacle overcome, and had felt the triumph of winning out in the contest, as one step toward independent manhood. Now, indeed, their viewpoints had changed. He felt almost a sense of pique that she had yielded so joyously and so suddenly, although confronted with the prospect of a long separation from him. Did she love him less than in the past? Had his former disregard of her wishes lessened even a trifle her mother love for him?

“I’m glad you can take the thought of my going as you do, mother.” He spoke coldly, as an only son may, but he was to be excused. He was less spoiled than most only sons.

“In what way, my son?”

“Why––in being glad to have me go––instead of feeling as you did then.”

“Glad? Glad to have you go? It isn’t that, dear. Understand me. I’m sorry I spoke of that old time. It was only to spare your father. You see we look at things differently. He loves to have us follow out his plans. It is almost––death to him to have to give up; and with me––it was not then as it is now. I don’t like to think or speak of that time.”

“Don’t, mother, don’t!” cried Peter, contritely.

“But I must to make you see this as you should. It was love for you then that made me cling to you, and want to hold you back from going; just the same it is love for you now that makes me want you to go out and find your right place in the world. I was letting you go then to be shot at––to suffer fatigue, and cold, and imprisonment, who could know, perhaps to be cruelly killed––and I did not believe in war. I suppose your father was the nobler in his way of thinking, but I could not see it his way. Angels from heaven couldn’t have made me believe it right; but it’s over. Now I know your life will be made broader by going, and you’ll have scope, at least, to know what you really wish to do with yourself and what you are worth, as you would not have, to sit down in your father’s bank, although you would be safer there, no doubt. But you went through all the temptations of the army safely, and I have no fear for you now, dear, no fear.”

Peter Junior’s heart melted. He took his mother in his arms and stroked her beautiful white hair. “I love you, mother, dear,” was all he could say. Should he tell her of Betty now? The question died in his heart. It was too much. He would be all hers for a little, nor intrude the new love that she might think divided his heart. He returned to the question of his father’s consent. “Mother, what shall I do if he will not give it?”

“Wait. Try to be patient and do what he wishes. It may help him to yield in the end.”

“Never! I know Dad better than that. He will only think all the more that he is in the right, and that I have come to my senses. He never takes any viewpoint but his own.” His mother was silent. Never would she open her lips against her husband. “I say, mother, naturally I would rather go with his consent, but if he won’t give it––How long must a man be obedient just for the sake of obedience? Does such bondage never end? Am I not of age?”

“I will speak to him. Wait and see. Talk it over with him again to-day after banking hours.”

“I––I––have something I must––must do to-day.” He was thinking he would go out to the Ballards’ in spite of the rain.

The dinner hour passed without constraint. In these days Peter Junior would not allow the long silences to occur that used often to cast a gloom over the meals in his boyhood. He knew that in this way his mother would sadly miss him. It was the Elder’s way to keep his thoughts for the most part to himself, and especially when there was an issue of importance before him. It was supposed that his wife could not take an interest in matters of business, or in things of interest to men, so silence was the rule when they were alone.

This time Peter Junior mentioned the topic of the wonderful new railroad that was being pushed across the plains and through the unexplored desert to the Pacific.

“The mere thought of it is inspiring,” said Hester.

“How so?” queried the Elder, with a lift of his brows. He deprecated any thought connecting sentiment with achievement. Sentiment was of the heart and only hindered achievement, which was purely of the brain.

“It’s just the wonder of it. Think of the two great oceans being brought so near together! Only two weeks apart! Don’t they estimate that the time to cross will be only two weeks?”

“Yes, mother, and we have those splendid old pioneers who made the first trail across the desert to thank for its being possible. It isn’t the capitalists who have done this. It’s the ones who had faith in themselves and dared the dangers and the hardships. They are the ones I honor.”

“They never went for love of humanity. It was mere love of wandering and migratory instinct,” said his father, grimly.

Peter Junior laughed merrily. “What did old grandfather Craigmile pull up and come over to this country for? They had to cross in sailing vessels then and take weeks for the journey.”

“Progress, my son, progress. Your grandfather had the idea of establishing his family in honorable business over here, and he did it.”

“Well, I say these people who have been crossing the plains and crawling over the desert behind ox teams in ‘prairie schooners’ for the last twenty or thirty years, braving all the dangers of the unknown, have really paved the way for progress and civilization. The railroad is being laid along the trail they made. Do you know Richard’s out there at the end of the line––nearly?”

“He would be likely to be. Roving boy! What’s he doing there?”

“Poor boy! He almost died in that terrible southern prison. He was the mere shadow of himself when he came home,” said Hester.

“The young men of the present day have little use for beaten paths and safe ways. I offered him a position in the bank, but no––he must go to Scotland first to make the acquaintance of our aunts. If he had been satisfied with that! But no, again, he must go to Ireland on a fool’s errand to learn something of his father.” The Elder paused and bit his lip, and a vein stood out on his forehead. “He’s never seen fit to write me of late.”

“Of course such a big scheme as this road across the plains would appeal to a man like Richard. He’s doing very well, father. I wouldn’t be disturbed about him.”

“Humph! I might as well be disturbed about the course of the Wisconsin River. I might as well worry over the rush of a cataract. The lad has no stability.”

“He never fails to write to me, and I must say that he was considered the most dependable man in the regiment.”

“What is he doing? I should like to see the boy again.” Hester looked across at her son with a warm, loving light in her eyes.

“I don’t know exactly, but it’s something worth while, and calls for lots of energy. He says they are striking out into the dust and alkali now––right into the desert.”

“And doesn’t he say a word about when he is coming back?”

“Not a word, mother. He really has no home, you know. He says Scotland has no opening for him, and he has no one to depend on but himself.”

“He has relatives who are fairly well to do in Ireland.”

The Elder frowned. “So I’ve heard, and my aunts in Scotland talked of making him their heir, when I was last there.”

“He knows that, father, but he says he’s not one to stand round waiting for two old women to die. He says they’re fine, decorous old ladies, too, who made a lot of him. I warrant they’d hold up their hands in horror if they knew what a rough life he’s leading now.”

“How rough, my son? I wish he’d make up his mind to come home.”

“There! I told him this is his home; just as much as it is mine. I’ll write him you said that, mother.”

“Indeed, yes. Bless the boy!”

The Elder looked at his wife and lifted his brows, a sign that it was time the meal should close, and she rose instantly. It was her habit never to rise until the Elder gave the sign. Peter Junior walked down the length of the hall at his father’s side.

“What Richard really wished to do was what I mentioned to you yesterday for myself. He wanted to go to Paris and study, but after visiting his great-aunts he saw that it would be too much. He would not allow them to take from their small income to help him through, so he gave it up for the time being; but if he keeps on as he is, it is my opinion he may go yet. He’s making good money. Then we could be there together.”

The Elder made no reply, but stooped and drew on his india-rubber overshoes,––stamping into them,––and then got himself into his raincoat with sundry liftings and hunchings of his shoulders. Peter Junior stood by waiting, if haply some sort of sign might be given that his remark had been heeded, but his father only carefully adjusted his hat and walked away in the rain, setting his feet down stubbornly at each step, and holding his umbrella as if it were a banner of righteousness. The younger man’s face flushed, and he turned from the door angrily; then he looked to see his mother’s eyes fixed on him sadly.

“At least he might treat me with common decency. He need not be rude, even if I am his son.” He thought he detected accusation of himself in his mother’s gaze and resented it.

“Be patient, dear.”

“Oh, mother! Patient, patient! What have you got by being patient all these years?”

“Peace of mind, my son.”

“Mother––”

“Try to take your father’s view of this matter. Have you any idea how hard he has worked all his life, and always with the thought of you and your advancement, and welfare? Why, Peter Junior, he is bound up in you. He expected you would one day stand at his side, his mainstay and help and comfort in his business.”

“Then it wasn’t for me; it was for himself that he has worked and built up the bank. It’s his bank, and his wife, and his son, and his ‘Tower of Babel that he has builded,’ and now he wants me to bury myself in it and worship at his idolatry.”

“Hush, Peter. I don’t like to rebuke you, but I must. You can twist facts about and see them in a wrong light, but the truth remains that he has loved you tenderly––always. I know his heart better than you––better than he. It is only that he thinks the line he has taken a lifetime to lay out for you is the best. He is as sure of it as that the days follow each other. He sees only futility in the way you would go. I have no doubt his heart is sore over it at this moment, and that he is grieving in a way that would shock you, could you comprehend it.”

“Enough said, mother, enough said. I’ll try to be fair.”

He went to his room and stood looking out at the rain-washed earth and the falling leaves. The sky was heavy and drab. He thought of Betty and her picnic and of how gay and sweet she was, and how altogether desirable, and the thought wrought a change in his spirit. He went downstairs and kissed his mother; then he, too, put on his rubber overshoes and shook himself into his raincoat and carefully adjusted his hat and his umbrella. Then with the assistance of the old blackthorn stick he walked away in the rain, limping, it is true, but nevertheless a younger, sturdier edition of the man who had passed out before him.

He found Betty alone as he had hoped, for Mary Ballard had gone to drive her husband to the station. Bertrand was thinking of opening a studio in the city, at his wife’s earnest solicitation, for she thought him buried there in their village. As for the children––they were still in school.

Thus it came about that Peter Junior spent the rest of that day with Betty in her father’s studio. He told Betty all his plans. He made love to her and cajoled her, and was happy indeed. He had a winsome way, and he made her say she loved him––more than once or twice––and his heart was satisfied.

“We’ll be married just as soon as I return from Paris, and you’ll not miss me so much until then?”

“Oh, no.”

“Ah––but––but I hope you will––you know.”

“Of course I shall! What would you suppose?”

“But you said no.”

“Naturally! Didn’t you wish me to say that?”

“I wanted you to tell the truth.”

“Well, I did.”

“There it is again! I’m afraid you don’t really love me.”

She tilted her head on one side and looked at him a moment. “Would you like me to say I don’t want you to go to Paris?”

“Not that, exactly; but all the time I’m gone I shall be longing for you.”

“I should hope so! It would be pretty bad if you didn’t.”

“Now you see what I mean about you. I want you to be longing for me all the time, until I return.”

“All right. I’ll cry my eyes out, and I’ll keep writing for you to come home.”

“Oh, come now! Tell me what you will do all the time.”

“Oh, lots of things. I’ll paint pictures, too, and––I’ll write––and help mother just as I do now; and I’ll study art without going to Paris.”

“Will you, you rogue! I’d marry you first and take you with me if it were possible, and you should study in Paris, too––that is, if you wished to.”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful! But I don’t know––I believe I’d rather write than paint.”

“I believe I’d rather have you. They say there are no really great women artists. It isn’t in the woman’s nature. They haven’t the strength. Oh, they have the delicacy and all that; it’s something else they lack.”

“Humph! It’s rather nice to have us lacking in one thing and another, isn’t it? It gives you men something to do to discover and fill in the lacks.”

“I know one little lady who lacks in nothing but years.”

Betty looked out of the window and down into the yard. “There is mother driving in. Let’s go down and have cookies and milk. I’m sure you need cookies and milk.”

“I’ll need anything you say.”

“Very well, then, you’ll need patience if ever you marry me.”

“I know that well enough. Stop a moment. Kiss me before we go down.” He caught her in his arms, but she slipped away.

“No, I won’t. You’ve had enough kisses. I’ll always give you one when you come, hereafter, and one when you go away, but no more.”

“Then I shall come very often.” He laughed and leaned upon her instead of using his stick, as they slowly descended.

Mary Ballard was chilled after her long drive in the rain, and Betty made her tea. Then, after a pleasant hour of chat and encouragement from the two sweet women, Peter Junior left them, promising to go to the picnic and nutting party on Saturday. It would surely be pleasant, for the sky was already clearing. Yes, truly a glad heart brings pleasant prognostications.

CHAPTER X

THE NUTTING PARTY

Peter Junior made no attempt the next day to speak further to his father about his plans. It seemed to him better that he should wait until his wise mother had talked the matter over with the Elder. Although he put in most of the day at the studio, painting, he saw very little of Betty and thought she was avoiding him out of girlish coquetry, but she was only very busy. Martha was coming home and everything must be as clean as wax. Martha was such a tidy housekeeper that she would see the least lack and set to work to remedy it, and that Betty could not abide. In these days Martha’s coming marked a semimonthly event in the home, for since completing her course at the high school she had been teaching in the city. Bertrand would return with her, and then all would have to be talked over,––just what he had decided to do, and why.

In the evening a surprise awaited the whole household, for Martha came, accompanied not only by her father, but also by a young professor in the same school where she taught. Mary Ballard greeted him most kindly, but she felt things were happening too rapidly in her family. Jamie and Bobby watched the young man covertly yet eagerly, taking note of his every movement and intonation. Was he one to be emulated or avoided? Only little Janey was quite unabashed by him, and this lightened his embarrassment greatly and helped him to the ease of manner he strove to establish.

She led him out to the sweet-apple tree, and introduced him to the calf and the bantams, and invited him to go with them nutting the next day. “We’re all going in a great, big picnic wagon. Everybody’s going and we’ll have just lots of fun.” And he accepted, provided she would sit beside him all the way.

Bobby decided at this point that he also would befriend the young man. “If you’re going to sit beside her all the way, you’ll have to be lively. She never sits in one place more than two minutes. You’ll have to sit on papa’s other knee for a while, and then you’ll have to sit on Peter Junior’s.”

“That will be interesting, anyway. Who’s Peter Junior?”

“Oh, he’s a man. He comes to see us a lot.”

“He’s the son of Elder Craigmile,” explained Martha.

“Is he going, too, Betty?”

“Yes. The whole crowd are going. It will be fun. I’m glad now it rained Thursday, for the Deans didn’t want to postpone it till to-morrow, and then, when it rained, Mrs. Dean said it would be too wet to try to have it yesterday; and now we have you. I wanted all the time to wait until you came home.”

That night, when Martha went to their room, Betty followed her, and after closing the door tightly she threw her arms around her sister’s neck.

“Oh, Martha, Martha, dear! Tell me all about him. Why didn’t you let us know? I came near having on my old blue gingham. What if I had? He’s awfully nice looking. Is he in love with you? Tell me all about it. Does he make love to you? Oh, Martha! It’s so romantic for you to have a lover!”

“Hush, Betty, some one will hear you. Of course he doesn’t make love to me!”

“Why?”

“I wouldn’t let him.”

“Martha! Why not? Do you think it’s bad to let a young man make love to you?”

“Betty! You mustn’t talk so loud. Everything sounds so through this house. It would mortify me to death.”

“What would mortify you to death: to have him make love to you or to have someone hear me?”

“Betty, dear!”

“Well, tell me all about him––please! Why did he come out with you?”

“You shouldn’t always be thinking about love-making––and––such things, Betty, dear. He just came out in the most natural way, just because he––he loves the country, and he was talking to me about it one day and said he’d like to come out some Friday with me––just about asked me to invite him. So when father called at the school yesterday for me, I introduced them, and he said the same thing to father, and of course father invited him over again, and––and––so he’s here. That’s all there is to it.”

“I bet it isn’t. How long have you known him?”

“Why, ever since I’ve been in the school, naturally.”

“What does he teach?”

“He has higher Latin and beginners’ Greek, and then he has charge of the main room when the principal goes out.”

Betty pondered a little, sitting on the floor in front of her sister. “You have such a lovely way of doing your hair. Is that the way to do hair nowadays––with two long curls hanging down from one side of the coil? You wind one side around the back knot, and then you pin the other up and let the ends hang down in two long curls, don’t you? I’m going to try mine that way; may I?”

“Of course, darling! I’ll help you.”

“What’s his name, Martha? I couldn’t quite catch it, and I did not want to let him know I thought it queer, so wouldn’t ask over.”

“His name is Lucien Thurbyfil. It’s not so queer, Betty.”

“Oh, you pronounce it T’urbyfil, just as if there were no ‘h’ in it. You know I thought father said Mr. Tubfull––or something like that, when he introduced him to mother, and that was why mother looked at him in such an odd way.”

The two girls laughed merrily. “Betty, what if you hadn’t been a dear, and had called him that! And he’s so very correct!”

“Oh, is he? Then I’ll try it to-morrow and we’ll see what he’ll do.”

“Don’t you dare! I’d be so ashamed I’d sink right through the floor. He’d think we’d been making fun of him.”

“Then I’ll wait until we are out in the woods, for I’d hate to have you make a hole in the floor by sinking through it.”

“Betty! You’ll be good to-morrow, won’t you, dear?”

“Good? Am I not always good? Didn’t I scrub and bake and put flowers all over the ugly what-not in the corner of the parlor, and get the grease spot out of the dining room rug that Jamie stepped butter into––and all for you––without any thought of any Mr. Tubfull or any one but you? All day long I’ve been doing it.”

“Of course you did, and it was perfectly sweet; and the flowers and mother looked so dear––and Janey’s hands were clean––I looked to see. You know usually they are so dirty. I knew you’d been busy; but Betty, dear, you won’t be mischievous to-morrow, will you? He’s our guest, you know, and you never were bashful, not as much as you really ought to be, and we can’t treat strangers just as we do––well––people we have always known, like Peter Junior. They wouldn’t understand it.”

But the admonition seemed to be lost, for Betty’s thoughts were wandering from the point. “Hasn’t he ever––ever––made love to you?” Martha was washing her face and neck at the washstand in the corner, and now she turned a face very rosy, possibly with scrubbing, and threw water over her naughty little sister. “Well, hasn’t he ever put his arm around you or––or anything?”

“I wouldn’t let a man do that.”

“Not if you were engaged?”

“Of course not! That wouldn’t be a nice way to do.”

“Shouldn’t you let a man kiss you or––or––put his arm around you––or anything––even when he’s trying to get engaged to you?”

“Of course not, Betty, dear. You’re asking very silly questions. I’m going to bed.”

“Well, but they do in books. He did in ‘Jane Eyre,’ don’t you remember? And she was proud of it––and pretended not to be––and very much touched, and treasured his every look in her heart. And in the books they always kiss their lovers. How can Mr. Thurbyfil ever be your lover, if you never let him even put his arm around you?”

“Betty, Betty, come to bed. He isn’t my lover and he doesn’t want to be and we aren’t in books, and you are getting too old to be so silly.”

Then Betty slowly disrobed and bathed her sweet limbs and at last crept in beside her sister. Surely she had not done right. She had let Peter Junior put his arm around her and kiss her, and that even before they were engaged; and all yesterday afternoon he had held her hand whenever she came near, and he had followed her about and had kissed her a great many times. Her cheeks burned with shame in the darkness, not that she had allowed this, but that she had not been as bashful as she ought. But how could she be bashful without pretending?

“Martha,” she said at last, “you are so sweet and pretty, if I were Mr. Thurbyfil, I’d put my arm around you anyway, and make love to you.”

Then Martha drew Betty close and gave her a sleepy kiss. “No you wouldn’t, dear,” she murmured, and soon the two were peacefully sleeping, Betty’s troubles quite forgotten. Still, when morning came, she did not confide to her sister anything about Peter Junior, and she even whispered to her mother not to mention a word of the affair to any one.

At breakfast Jamie and Bobby were turbulent with delight. All outings were a joy to them, no matter how often they came. Martha was neat and rosy and gay. Lucien Thurbyfil wanted to help her by wiping the dishes, but she sent him out to the sweet-apple tree with a basket, enjoining him to bring only the mellow ones. “Be sure to get enough. We’re all going, father and mother and all.”

“It’s very nice of your people to make room for me on the wagon.”

“And it’s nice of you to go.”

“I see Peter Junior. He’s coming,” shouted Bobby, from the top of the sweet-apple tree.

“Who does he go with?” asked Martha.

“With us. He always does,” said Betty. “I wonder why his mother and the Elder never go out for any fun, the way you and father do!”

“The Elder always has to be at the bank, I suppose,” said Mary Ballard, “and she wouldn’t go without him. Did you put in the salt and pepper for the eggs, dear?”

“Yes, mother. I’m glad father isn’t a banker.”

“It takes a man of more ability than I to be a banker,” said Bertrand, laughing, albeit with concealed pride.

“We don’t care if it does, Dad,” said Jamie, patronizingly. “When I get through the high school, I’m going to hire out to the bank.” He seized the lunch basket and marched manfully out to the wagon.

“I thought Peter Junior always went with Clara Dean. He did when I left,” said Martha, in a low voice to Betty, as they filled bottles with raspberry shrub, and with cream for the coffee. “Did you tie strings on the spoons, dear? They’ll get mixed with the Walters’ if you don’t. You remember theirs are just like ours.”

“Oh, I forgot. Why, he likes Clara a lot, of course, but I guess they just naturally expected him to go with us. They and the Walters have a wagon together, anyway, and they wouldn’t have room. We have one all to ourselves. Hello, Peter Junior! Mr. Thurbyfil, this is Mr. Junior.”

“Happy to meet you, Mr. Junior,” said the correct Mr. Thurbyfil. The boys laughed uproariously, and the rest all smiled, except Betty, who was grave and really seemed somewhat embarrassed.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Mr. Thurbyfil, this is Mr. Craigmile,” said Martha. “You introduced him as Mr. Junior, Betty.”

“I didn’t! Well, that’s because I’m bashful. Come on, everybody, mother’s in.” So they all climbed into the wagon and began to find their places.

“Oh, father, have you the matches? The bottles are on the kitchen table,” exclaimed Martha.

“Don’t get down, Mr. Ballard,” said Lucien. “I’ll get them. It would never do to forget the bottles. Now, where’s the little girl who was to ride beside me?” and Janey crawled across the hay and settled herself at her new friend’s side. “Now I think we are beautifully arranged,” for Martha was on his other side.

“Very well, we’re off,” and Bertrand gathered up the reins and they started.

“There they are. There’s the other wagon,” shouted Bobby. “We ought to have a flag to wave.”

Then Lucien, the correct, startled the party by putting his two fingers in his mouth and whistling shrilly.

“They have such a load I wish Clara could ride with us,” said Betty. “Peter Junior, won’t you get out and fetch her?”

So they all stopped and there were greetings and introductions and much laughing and joking, and Peter Junior obediently helped Clara Dean down and into the Ballards’ wagon.

“Clara, Mr. Thurbyfil can whistle as loud as a train, through his fingers, he can. Do it, Mr. Thurbyfil,” said Bobby.

“Oh, I can do that,” said Peter Junior, not to be outdone by the stranger, and they all tried it. Bertrand and his wife, settled comfortably on the high seat in front, had their own pleasure together and paid no heed to the noisy crew behind them.

What a day! Autumn leaves and hazy distances, soft breezes and sunlight, and miles of level road skirting woods and open fields where the pumpkins lay yellow among the shocks of corn, and where the fence corners were filled with flaming sumac, with goldenrod and purple asters adding their softer coloring.

It was a good eight miles to Carter’s woods, but they bordered the river where the bluffs were not so high, and it would be possible to build a fire on the river bank with perfect safety. Bertrand had brought roasting ears from his patch of sweet corn, and as soon as they arrived at their chosen grove, he and Mary leisurely turned their attention to the preparing of the lunch with Mrs. Dean and Mrs. Walters, leaving to the young people the gathering of the nuts.

Mrs. Dean, a slight, wiry woman, who acted and talked easily and unceasingly, spread out a fresh linen cloth and laid a stone on each corner to hold it down, and then looked into each lunch basket in turn, to acquaint herself with its contents.

“I see you brought cake and cookies and jam, Mrs. Ballard, besides all the corn and cream––you always do too much, and all your own work to look after, too. Well, I brought a lot of ham sandwiches and that brown bread your husband likes so much. I always feel so proud when Mr. Ballard praises anything I do; he’s so clever it makes me feel as if I were really able to do something. And you’re so clever too. I don’t know how it is some folks seem to have all the brains, and then there’s others––good enough––but there! As I tell Mr. Dean, you can’t tell why it is. Now where are the spoons? Every one brings their own, of course; yes, here are yours, Mrs. Walters. It’s good of you to think of that sweet corn, Mr. Ballard.––Oh, he’s gone away; well, anyway, we’re having a lot more than we can eat, and all so good and tempting. I hope Mr. Dean won’t overeat himself; he’s just a boy at a picnic, I always have to remind him––How?”

“Did you bring the cups for the coffee?” It was Mrs. Walters who interrupted the flow of Mrs. Dean’s eloquence. She was portly and inclined to brevity, which made her a good companion for Mrs. Dean.

“I had such a time with my jell this summer, and now this fall my grape jell’s just as bad. This is all running over the glasses. There, I’ll set it on this paper. I do hate to see a clean cloth all spotted with jell, even if it is a picnic when people think it doesn’t make any difference. I see Martha has a friend. Well, that’s nice. I wish Clara cared more for company; but, there, as I tell Mr. Dean––Oh, yes! the cups. Clara, where are the cups? Oh, she’s gone. Well, I’m sure they’re in that willow basket. I told Clara to pack towels around them good. I do hate to see cups all nicked up; yes, here they are. It’s good of you to always tend the coffee, Mrs. Walters; you know just how to make it. I tell Mr. Dean nobody ever makes coffee like you can at a picnic. Now, if it’s ready, I think everything else is; well, it soon will be with such a fire, and the corn’s not done, anyway. Do you think the sun’ll get round so as to shine on the table? I see it’s creeping this way pretty fast, and they’re all so scattered over the woods there’s no telling when we will get every one here to eat. I see another tablecloth in your basket, Mrs. Ballard. If you’ll be good enough to just hold that corner, we can cover everything up good, so, and then I’ll walk about a bit and call them all together.” And the kindly lady stepped briskly off through the woods, still talking, while Mrs. Ballard and Mrs. Walters sat themselves down in the shade and quietly watched the coffee and chatted.

It was past the noon hour, and the air was drowsy and still. The voices and laughter of the nut gatherers came back to them from the deeper woods in the distance, and the crackling of the fire where Bertrand attended to the roasting of the corn near by, and the gentle sound of the lapping water on the river bank came to them out of the stillness.

“I wonder if Mr. Walters tied the horses good!” said his wife. “Seems as if one’s got loose. Don’t you hear a horse galloping?”

“They’re all there eating,” said Mary, rising and looking about. “Some one’s coming, away off there over the bluff; see?”

“I wonder, now! My, but he rides well. He must be coming here. I hope there’s nothing the matter. It looks like––it might be Peter Junior, only he’s here already.”

“It’s––it’s––no, it can’t be––it is! It’s––Bertrand, Bertrand! Why, it’s Richard!” cried Mary Ballard, as the horseman came toward them, loping smoothly along under the trees, now in the sunlight and now in the shadow. He leaped from the saddle, and, throwing the rein over a knotted limb, walked rapidly toward them, holding out a hand to each, as Bertrand and Mary hurried forward.

“I couldn’t let you good folks have one of these fine old times without me.”

“Why, when did you come? Oh, Richard! It’s good to see you again,” said Mary.

“I came this morning. I went up to my uncle’s and then to your house and found you all away, and learned that you were here and my twin with you, so here I am. How are the children? All grown up?”

“Almost. Come and sit down and give an account of yourself to Mary, while I try to get hold of the rest,” said Bertrand.

“Mrs. Dean has gone for them, father. Mrs. Walters, the coffee’s all right; come and sit down here and let’s visit until the others come. You remember Richard Kildene, Mrs. Walters?”

“Since he was a baby, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen you, Richard. I don’t believe I’d have known you unless for your likeness to Peter Junior. You look stronger than he now. Redder and browner.”

“I ought to. I’ve been in the open air and sun for weeks. I’m only here now by chance.”

“A happy chance for us, Richard. Where have you been of late?” asked Bertrand.

“Out on the plains––riding and keeping a gang of men under control, for the most part, and pushing the work as rapidly as possible.” He tossed back his hair with the old movement Mary remembered so well. “Tell me about the children, Martha and Betty; both grown up? Or still ready to play with a comrade?”

“They’re all here to-day. Martha’s teaching in the city, but Betty’s at home helping me, as always. The boys are getting such big fellows, and little Janey’s as sweet as all the rest.”

“There! That’s Betty’s laugh, I know. I’d recognize it if I heard it out on the plains. I have, sometimes––when a homesick fit gets hold of me out under the stars, when the noise of the camp has subsided. A good deal of that work is done by the very refuse of humanity, you know, a mighty tough lot.”

“And you like that sort of thing, Richard?” asked Mary. “I thought when you went to your people in Scotland, you might be leading a very different kind of life by now.”

“I thought so, too, then; but I guess for some reasons this is best. Still, I couldn’t resist stealing a couple of days to run up here and see you all. I got off a carload of supplies yesterday from Chicago, and then I wired back to the end of the line that I’d be two days later myself. No wonder I followed you out here. I couldn’t afford to waste the precious hours. I say! That’s Betty again! I’ll find them and say you’re hungry, shall I?”

“Oh, they’re coming now. I see Martha’s pink dress, and there’s Betty in green over there.”

But Richard was gone, striding over the fallen leaves toward the spot of green which was Betty’s gingham dress. And Betty, spying him, forgot she was grown up. She ran toward him with outstretched arms, as of old––only––just as he reached her, she drew back and a wave of red suffused her face. She gave him one hand instead of both, and called to Peter Junior to hurry.

“Well, Betty Ballard! I can’t jump you along now over stocks and stones as I used to. And here’s everybody! Why, Jamie, what a great man you are! I’ll have to take you back with me to help build the new road. And here’s Bobby; and this little girl––I wonder if she remembers me well enough to give me a kiss? I have nobody to kiss me now, when I come back. That’s right. That’s what Betty used to do. Why, hello! here’s Clara Dean, and who’s this? John Walters? So you’re a man, too! Mr. Dean, how are you? And Mrs. Dean! You don’t grow any older anyway, so I’ll walk with you. Wait until I’ve pounded this old chap a minute. Why didn’t I write I was coming? Man, I didn’t know it myself. I’m under orders nowadays. To get here at all I had to steal time. So you’re graduated from a crutch to a cane? Good!”

Every one exclaimed at once, while Richard talked right on, until they reached the riverside where the lunch was spread; and then the babble was complete.

That night, as they all drove home in the moonlight, Richard tied his horse to the rear of the Ballards’ wagon and rode home seated on the hay with the rest. He placed himself where Betty sat on his right, and the two boys crowded as close to him as possible on his left. Little Janey, cuddled at Betty’s side, was soon fast asleep with her head in her sister’s lap, while Lucien Thurbyfil was well pleased to have Martha in the corner to himself. Peter Junior sat near Betty and listened with interest to his cousin, who entertained them all with tales of the plains and the Indians, and the game that supplied them with many a fine meal in camp.

“Say, did you ever see a real herd of wild buffalo just tearing over the ground and kicking up a great dust and stampeding and everything?” said Jamie.

“Oh, yes. And if you are out there all alone on your pony, you’d better keep away from in front of them, too, or you’d be trampled to death in a jiffy.”

“What’s stampeding?” said Bobby.

So Richard explained it, and much more that elicited long breaths of interest. He told them of the miles and miles of land without a single tree or hill, and only a sea of grass as far as the eye could reach, as level as Lake Michigan, and far vaster. And how the great railway was now approaching the desert, and how he had seen the bones of men and cattle and horses bleaching white, lying beside their broken-down wagons half buried in the drifting sand. He told them how the trail that such people had made with so much difficulty stretched far, far away into the desert along the very route, for the most part, that the railroad was taking, and answered their questions so interestingly that the boys were sorry when they reached home at last and they had to bid good-night to Peter Junior’s fascinating cousin, Richard.

CHAPTER XI

BETTY BALLARD’S AWAKENING

Mary and Bertrand always went early to church, for Bertrand led the choir, and it was often necessary for him to gather the singers together and try over the anthem before the service. Sometimes the rector would change the hymns, and then the choir must have one little rehearsal of them. Martha and Mr. Thurbyfil accompanied them this morning, and Betty and the boys were to walk, for four grown-ups with little Janey sandwiched in between more than filled the carryall.

In these days Betty no longer had to wash and dress her brothers, but there were numerous attentions required of her, such as only growing boys can originate, and “sister” was as kind and gay in helping them over their difficulties as of old. So, now, as she stepped out of her room all dressed for church in her white muslin with green rose sprigs over it, with her green parasol, and her prayer book in her hand, Bobby called her.

“Oh, Sis! I’ve broken my shoe string and it’s time to start.”

“I have a new one in my everyday shoes, Bobby, dear; run upstairs and take it out. They’re just inside the closet door. Wait a minute, Jamie; that lock stands straight up on the back of your head. Can’t you make it lie down? Bring me the brush. You look splendid in your new trousers. Now, you hurry on ahead and leave this at the Deans’. It’s Clara’s sash bow. I found it in the wagon after they left last night. Run, she may want to wear it to church.––Yes, Bobby, dear, I sent him on, but you can catch up. Have you a handkerchief? Yes, I’ll follow in a minute.”

And the boys rushed off, looking very clean in their Sunday clothing, and very old and mannish in their long trousers and stiff hats. Betty looked after them with pride, then she bethought her that the cat had not had her saucer of milk, and ran down to the spring to get it, leaving the doors wide open behind her. The day was quite warm enough for her to wear the summer gown, and she was very winsome and pretty in her starched muslin, with the delicate green buds sprayed over it. She wore a green belt, too, and the parasol she was very proud of, for she had bought it with her own chicken money. It was her heart’s delight. Betty’s skirt reached nearly to the ground, for she was quite in long dresses, and two little ruffles rippled about her feet as she ran down the path to the spring. But, alas! As she turned away after carefully fastening the spring-house door, the cat darted under her feet; and Betty stumbled and the milk streamed down the front of her dress and spattered her shoes––and if there was anything Betty liked, it was to have her shoes very neat.

“Oh, Kitty! I hate your running under my feet that way all the time.” Betty was almost in tears. She set the saucer down and tried to wipe off the milk, while the cat crouched before the dish and began drinking eagerly and unthankfully, after the manner of cats.

Some one stood silently watching her from the kitchen steps as she walked slowly up the path, gazing down on the ruin of the pretty starched ruffles.

“Why, Richard!” was all she said, for something came up in her throat and choked her. She waited where she stood, and in his eyes, her aspect seemed that of despair. Was it all for the spilled milk?

“Why, Betty dear!” He caught her and kissed her and laughed at her and comforted her all at once. “Not tears, dear? Tears to greet me? You didn’t half greet me last evening, and I came only to see you. Now you will, where there’s no one to see and no one to hear? Yes. Never mind the spilled milk, you know better than that.” But Betty lay in his arms, a little crumpled wisp of sorrow, white and still.

“Away off there in Cheyenne I got to thinking of you, and I went to headquarters and asked to be sent on this commission just to get the chance to run up here and tell you I have been waiting all these years for you to grow up. You have haunted me ever since I left Leauvite. You darling, your laughing face was always with me, on the march––in prison––and wherever I’ve been since. I’ve been trying to keep myself right––for you––so I might dare some day to take you in my arms like this and tell you––so I need not be ashamed before your––”

“Oh, Richard, wait!” wailed Betty, but he would not wait.

“I’ve waited long enough. I see you are grown up before I even dreamed you could be. Thank heaven I came now! You are so sweet some one would surely have won you away from me––but no one can now––no one.”

“Richard, why didn’t you tell me this when you first came home from the war––before you went to Scotland? I would––”

“Not then, sweetheart; I couldn’t. I didn’t even know then I would ever be worth the love of any woman; and––you were such a child then––I couldn’t intrude my weariness––my worn-out self on you. I was sick at heart when I got out of that terrible prison; but now it is all changed. I am my own man now, dependent on no one, and able to marry you out of hand, Betty, dear. After you’ve told me something, I’ll do whatever you say, wait as long as you say. No, no! Listen! Don’t break away from me. You don’t hate me as you do the cat. I haven’t been running under your feet all the time, have I, dear? Listen. See here, my arms are strong now. They can hold you forever, just like this. I’ve been thinking of you and dreaming of you and loving you through these years. You have never been out of my mind nor out of my heart. I’ve kept the little housewife you made me and bound with your cherry-colored hair ribbon until it is in rags, but I love it still. I love it. They took everything I had about me at the prison; but this––they gave back to me. It was the only thing I begged them to leave me.”

Poor little Betty! She tried to speak and tried again, but she could not utter a word. Her mouth grew dry and her knees would not support her. Richard was so big and strong he did not feel her weight, and only delighted in the thought that she resigned herself to him. “Darling little Betty! Darling little Betty! You do understand, don’t you? Won’t you tell me you do?”

But she only closed her eyes and lay quite still. She longed to lift her arms and put them about his neck, and the effort not to do so only crushed her spirit the more. Now she knew she was bad, and unworthy such a great love as this. She had let Peter Junior kiss her, and she had told him she loved him––and it was nothing to this. She was not good; she was unworthy, and all the angels in heaven could never bring her comfort any more. She was so still he put his cheek to hers, and it seemed as if she moaned, and that without a sound.

“Have I hurt you, Betty, dear?”

“Oh, no, Richard, no.”

“Do you love me, sweet?”

“Yes, Richard, yes. I love you so I could die of loving you, and I can’t help it. Oh, Richard, I can’t help it.”

“It’s asking too much that you should love me so, and yet that’s what my selfish, hungry heart wants and came here for.”

“Take your face away, Richard; stop. I must talk if it kills me. I have been so bad and wicked. Oh, Richard, I can’t tell you how wicked. Let me stand by myself now. I can.” She fought back the tears and turned her face away from him, but when he let go of her, in her weakness she swayed, and he caught her to him again, with many repeated words of tenderness.

“If you will take me to the steps, Richard, and bring me a glass of water, I think I can talk to you then. You remember where things are in this house?”

Did he remember? Was there anything he had forgotten about this beloved place? He brought her the water and she made him sit beside her, but not near, only that she need not look in his eyes.

“Richard, I thought something was love––that was not––I didn’t know. It was only liking––and––and now I––I’ve been so wrong––and I want to die––Oh, I want to die! No, don’t. Do you want to make me sin again? Oh, Richard, Richard! If you had only come before! Now it is too late.” She began sobbing bitterly, and her small frame shook with her grief.

He seized her wrists and his hand trembled. She tried to cover her face with her hands, but he took them down and held them.

“Betty, what have you done? Tell me––tell me quick.”

Then she turned her face toward him, wet with tears. “Have pity on me, Richard. Have pity on me, Richard, for my heart is broken, and the thing that hurts me most is that it will hurt you.”

“But it wasn’t yesterday when I came to you out there in the woods. I heard you laughing, and you ran to meet me as happy as ever––”

“You did not hear me laugh once again after you came and looked in my eyes there in the grove. It was in that instant that my heart began to break, and now I know why. Go back to Cheyenne. Go far away and never think of me any more. I am not worthy of you, anyway. I have let you hold me in your arms and kiss me when I ought not. Oh, I have been so bad––so bad! Let me hide my face. I can’t look in your eyes any more.”

But he was cruel. He made her look in his eyes and tell him all the sorrowful truth. Then at last he grew pitiful again and tried brokenly to comfort her, to make her feel that something would intervene to help them, but in his heart he knew that his cause was lost, and his hopes burned within him, a heap of smoldering coals dying in their own ashes.

He had always loved Peter Junior too well to blame him especially as Peter could not have known what havoc he was making of his cousin’s hopes. It had all been a terrible mischance, and now they must make the best of it and be brave. Yet a feeling of resentment would creep into his heart in spite of his manful resolve to be fair to his cousin, and let nothing interfere with their lifelong friendship. In vain he told himself that Peter had the same right as he to seek Betty’s love. Why not? Why should he think himself the only one to be considered? But there was Betty! And when he thought of her, his soul seemed to go out of him. Too late! Too late! And so he rose and walked sorrowfully away.

When Mary Ballard came home from church, she found her little daughter up in her room on her knees beside her bed, her arms stretched out over the white counterpane, asleep. She had suffered until nature had taken her into her own soothing arms and put her to sleep through sheer weakness. Her cheeks were still burning and her eyelids red from weeping. Mary thought her in a fever, and gently helped her to remove the pretty muslin dress and got her to bed.

Betty drew a long sigh as her head sank back into the pillow. “My head aches; don’t worry, mother, dear.” She thought her heart was closed forever on her terrible secret.

“Mother’ll bring you something for it, dear. You must have eaten something at the picnic that didn’t agree with you.” She kissed Betty’s cheek, and at the door paused to look back on her, and a strange misgiving smote her.

“I can’t think what ails her,” she said to Martha. “She seems to be in a high fever. Did she sleep well last night?”

“Perfectly, but we talked a good while before we went to sleep. Perhaps she got too tired yesterday. I thought she seemed excited, too. Mrs. Walters always makes her coffee so strong.”

Peter Junior came in to dinner, buoyant and happy. He was disappointed not to see Betty, and frankly avowed it. He followed Mary into the kitchen and begged to be allowed to go up and speak to Betty for only a minute, but Mary thought sleep would be the best remedy and he would better leave her alone. He had been to church with his father, and all through the morning service as he sat at his father’s side he had meditated how he could persuade the Elder to look on his plans with some degree of favor––enough at least to warrant him in going on with them and trust to his father’s coming around in time.

Neither he nor Richard were at the Elder’s at dinner, and the meal passed in silence, except for a word now and then in regard to the sermon. Hester thought continually of her son and his hopes, but as she glanced from time to time in her husband’s face she realized that silence on her part was still best. Whenever the Elder cleared his throat and looked off out of the window, as was his wont when about to speak of any matter of importance, her heart leaped and her eyes gazed intently at her plate, to hide the emotion she could not restrain. Her hands grew cold and her lips tremulous, but still she waited.

It was the Elder’s custom to sleep after the Sunday’s dinner, which was always a hearty one, lying down on the sofa in the large parlor, where the closed blinds made a pleasant somberness. Hester passed the door and looked in on him, as he lay apparently asleep, his long, bony frame stretched out and the muscles of his strong face relaxing to a softness they sometimes assumed when sleeping. Her heart went out to him. Oh, if he only knew! If she only dared! His boy ought to love him, and understand him. If they would only understand!

Then she went up into Peter Junior’s room and sat there where she had sat seven years before––where she had often sat since––gazing across at the red-coated old ancestor, her hands in her lap, her thoughts busy with her son’s future even as then. If all the others had lived, would the quandary and the struggle between opposing wills have been as great for each one as for this sole survivor? Where were those little ones now? Playing in happy fields and waiting for her and the stern old man who also suffered, but knew not how to reveal his heart? Again and again the words repeated themselves in her heart mechanically: “Wait on the Lord––Wait on the Lord,” and then, again, “Oh, Lord, how long?”

Peter Junior returned early from the Ballards’, since he could not see Betty, leaving the field open for Martha and her guest, much to the guest’s satisfaction. He went straight to the room occupied by Richard whenever he was with them, but no Richard was there. His valise was all packed ready for his start on the morrow, but there was no line pinned to the frame of the mirror telling Peter Junior where to find him, as was Richard’s way in the past. With a fleeting glance around to see if any bit of paper had been blown away, he went to his own room and there he found his mother, waiting. In an instant that long ago morning came to his mind, and as then he went swiftly to her, and, kneeling, clasped her in his arms.

“Are you worried, mother mine? It’s all right. I will be careful and restrained. Don’t be troubled.”

Hester clasped her boy’s head to her bosom and rested her face against his soft hair. For a while the silence was deep and the moments burned themselves into the young man’s soul with a purifying fire never to be forgotten. Presently she began speaking to him in low, murmuring tones: “Your father is getting to be an old man, Peter, dear, and I––I am no longer young. Our boy is dear to us––the dearest. In our different ways we long only for what is best for you. If only it might be revealed to you and us alike! Many paths are good paths to walk in, and the way may be happy in any one of them, for happiness is of the spirit. It is in you––not made for you by circumstances. We have been so happy here, since you came home wounded, and to be wounded is not a happy thing, as you well know; but it seemed to bring you and me happiness, nevertheless. Did it not, dear?”

“Indeed yes, mother. Yes. It gave me a chance to have you to myself a lot, and that ought to make any man happy, with a mother like you. And now––a new happiness came to me, the other day, that I meant to speak of yesterday and couldn’t after getting so angry with father. It seemed like sacrilege to speak of it then, and, besides, there was another feeling that made me hesitate.”

“So you are in love with some one, Peter?”

“Yes, mother. How did you guess it?”

“Because only love is a feeling that would make you say you could not speak of it when your heart is full of anger. Is it Betty, dear?”

“Yes, mother. You are uncanny to read me so.”

She laughed softly and held him closer. “I love Betty, too, Peter. You will always be gentle and kind? You will never be hard and stern with her?”

“Mother! Have I ever been so? Can’t you tell by the way I have always acted toward you that I would be tender and kind? She will be myself––my very own. How could I be otherwise?”

Again Hester smiled her slow, wise smile. “You have always been tender, Peter, but you have always gone right along and done your own way, absolutely. The only reason there has not been more friction between you and your father has been that you have been tactful; also you have never seemed to desire unworthy things. You have been a good son, dear: I am not complaining. And the only reason why I have never––or seldom––felt hurt by your taking your own way has been that my likings have usually responded to yours, and the thing I most desired was that you should be allowed to take your own way. It is good for a man to be decided and to have a way of his own: I have liked it in you. But the matter still stands that it has always been your way and never any one’s else that you have taken. I can see you being stern even with a wife you thought you wholly loved if her will once crossed yours.”

Peter Junior was silent and a little hurt. He rose and paced the room. “I can’t think I could ever cross Betty, or be unkind. It seems preposterous,” he said at last.

“Perhaps it might never seem to you necessary. Peter, boy, listen. You say: ‘She will be myself––my very own.’ Now what does that mean? Does it mean that when you are married, her personality will be merged in yours, and so you two will be one? If so, you will not be completed and rounded out, and she will be lost in you. A man does not reach his full manhood to completion until he has loved greatly and truly, and has found the one who is to complete him. At best, by ourselves, we are never wholly man or wholly woman until this great soul completion has taken place in us. Then children come to us, and our very souls are knit in one, and still the mystery goes on and on; never are we completed by being lost––either one––in the will or nature of the other; but to make the whole and perfect creature, each must retain the individuality belonging to himself or herself, each to each the perfect and equal other half.”

Peter Junior paused in his walk and stood for a moment looking down on his mother, awed by what she revealed to him of her inner nature. “I believe you have done this, mother. You have kept your own individuality complete, and father doesn’t know it.”

“Not yet, but my hand will always be in his, and some day he will know. You are very like him, and yet you understand me as he never has, so you see how our oneness is wrought out in you. That which you have in you of your father is good and strong: never lose it. The day may come when you will be glad to have had such a father. Out in the world men need such traits; but you must not forget that sometimes it takes more strength to yield than to hold your own way. Yes, it takes strength and courage sometimes to give up––and tremendous faith in God. There! I hear him walking about. Go down and have your talk with him. Remember what I say, dear, and don’t get angry with your father. He loves you, too.”

“Have you said anything to him yet about––me––mother?”

“No. I have decided that it will be better for you to deal with him yourself––courageously. You’ll remember?”

Peter Junior took her again in his arms as she rose and stood beside him, and kissed her tenderly. “Yes, mother. Dear, good, wise mother! I’ll try to remember all. It would have been easier for you, maybe, if ever father’s mother had said to him the things you have just said to me.”

“Life teaches us these things. If we keep an open mind, so God fills it.”

She stood still in the middle of the room, listening to his rapid steps in the direction of the parlor. Then Hester did a thing very unusual for her to do of a Sunday. She put on her shawl and bonnet and walked out to see Mary Ballard.

No one ever knew what passed between Peter Junior and his father in that parlor. The Elder did not open his lips about it either at home or at the bank.

That Sunday evening some one saw Peter Junior and his cousin walking together up the bluff where the old camp had stood, toward the sunset. The path had many windings, and the bluff was dark and brown, and the two figures stood out clear and strong against the sky of gold. That was the last seen of either of the young men in the village. The one who saw them told later that he knew they were “the twins” because one of them walked with a stick and limped a little, and that the other was talking as if he were very much in earnest about something, for he was moving his arm up and down and gesticulating.

CHAPTER XII

MYSTERIOUS FINDINGS

Monday morning Elder Craigmile walked to the bank with the stubborn straightening of the knees at each step that always betokened irritation with him. Neither of the young men had appeared at breakfast, a matter peculiarly annoying to him. Peter Junior he had not expected to see, as, owing to his long period of recovery, he had naturally been excused from rigorous rules, but his nephew surely might have done that much out of courtesy, where he had always been treated as a son, to promote the orderliness of the household. It was unpardonable in the young man to lie abed in the morning thus when a guest in that home. It was a mistake of his wife to allow Peter Junior a night key. It induced late hours. He would take it from him. And as for Richard––there was no telling what habits he had fallen into during these years of wandering. What if he had come home to them with a clear skin and laughing eye! Was not the “heart of man deceitful above all things and desperately wicked”? And was not Satan abroad in the world laying snares for the feet of wandering youths?

It was still early enough for many of the workmen to be on their way to their day of labor with their tin dinner pails, and among them Mr. Walters passed him, swinging his pail with the rest, although he was master of his own foundry and employed fifty men. He had always gone early to work, and carried his tin pail when he was one of the workmen, and he still did it from choice. He, too, was a Scotchman of a slightly different class from the Elder, it is true, but he was a trustee of the church, and a man well respected in the community.

He touched his hat to the Elder, and the Elder nodded in return, but neither spoke a word. Mr. Walters smiled after he was well past. “The man has a touch of the indigestion,” he said.

When the Elder entered his front door at noon, his first glance was at the rack in the corner of the hall, where, on the left-hand hook, Peter Junior’s coat and hat had hung when he was at home, ever since he was a boy. They were not there. The Elder lifted his bushy brows one higher than the other, then drew them down to their usual straight line, and walked on into the dining room. His wife was not there, but in a moment she entered, looking white and perturbed.

“Peter!” she said, going up to her husband instead of taking her place opposite him, “Peter!” She laid a trembling hand on his arm. “I haven’t seen the boys this morning. Their beds have not been slept in.”

“Quiet yourself, lass, quiet yourself. Sit and eat in peace. ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners,’ but when doom strikes him, he’ll maybe experience a change of heart.” The Elder spoke in a tone not unkindly. He seated himself heavily.

Then his wife silently took her place at the table and he bowed his head and repeated the grace to which she had listened three times a day for nearly thirty years, only that this time he added the request that the Lord would, in his “merciful kindness, strike terror to the hearts of all evildoers and turn them from their way.”

When the silent meal was ended, Hester followed her husband to the door and laid a detaining hand on his arm. He stood and looked down on that slender white hand as if it were something that too sudden a movement would joggle off, and she did not know that it was as if she had laid her hand on his very heart. “Peter, tell me what happened yesterday afternoon. You should tell me, Peter.”

Then the Elder did an unwonted thing. He placed his hand over hers and pressed it harder on his arm, and after an instant’s pause he stooped and kissed her on the forehead.

“I spoke the lad fair, Hester, and made him an offer, but he would none of it. He thinks he is his own master, but I have put him in the Lord’s hands.”

“Has he gone, Peter?”

“Maybe, but the offer I made him was a good one. Comfort your heart, lass. If he’s gone, he will return. When the Devil holds the whip, he makes a hard bargain, and drives fast. When the boy is hard pressed, he will be glad to return to his father’s house.”

“Richard’s valise is gone. The maid says he came late yesterday after I was gone, and took it away with him.”

“They are likely gone together.”

“But Peter’s things are all here. No, they would never go like that and not bid me good-by.”

The Elder threw out his hands with his characteristic downward gesture of impatience. “I have no way of knowing, more than you. It is no doubt that Richard has become a ne’er-do-weel. He felt shame to tell us he was going a journey on the Sabbath day.”

“Oh, Peter, I think not. Peter, be just. You know your son was never one to let the Devil drive; he is like yourself, Peter. And as for Richard, Peter Junior would never think so much of him if he were a ne’er-do-weel.”

“Women are foolish and fond. It is their nature, and perhaps that is how we love them most, but the men should rule, for their own good. A man should be master in his own house. When the lad returns, the door is open to him. That is enough.”

With a sorrowful heart he left her, and truth to tell, the sorrow was more for his wife’s hurt than for his own. The one great tenderness of his life was his feeling for her, and this she felt rather than knew; but he believed himself absolutely right and that the hurt was inevitable, and for her was intensified by her weakness and fondness.

As for Hester, she turned away from the door and went quietly about her well-ordered house, directing the maidservant and looking carefully over her husband’s wardrobe. Then she did the same for Peter Junior’s, and at last, taking her basket of mending, she sat in the large, lace-curtained window looking out toward the west––the direction from which Peter Junior would be likely to come. For how long she would sit there during the days to come––waiting––she little knew.

She was comforted by the thought of the talk she had had with him the day before. She knew he was upright, and she felt that this quarrel––if it had been a quarrel––with his father would surely be healed; and then, there was Betty to call him back. The love of a girl was a good thing for a man. It would be stronger to draw him and hold him than love of home or of mother; it was the divine way for humanity, and it was a good way, and she must be patient and wait.

She was glad she had gone without delay to Mary Ballard. The two women were fond of each other, and the visit had been most satisfactory. Betty she had not seen, for the maiden was still sleeping the long, heavy sleep which saves a normal healthy body from wreck after severe emotion. Betty was so young––it might be best that matters should wait awhile as they were.

If Peter Junior went to Paris now, he would have to earn his own way, of course, and possibly he had gone west with Richard where he could earn faster than at home. Maybe that had been the grounds of the quarrel. Surely she would hear from him soon. Perhaps he had taken their talk on Sunday afternoon as a good-by to her; or he might yet come to her and tell her his plans. So she comforted herself in the most wholesome and natural way.

Richard’s action in taking his valise away during her absence and leaving no word of farewell for her was more of a surprise to her. But then––he might have resented the Elder’s attitude and sided with his cousin. Or, he might have feared he would say things he would afterwards regret, if he appeared, and so have taken himself quietly away. Still, these reasons did not wholly appeal to her, and she was filled with misgivings for him even more than for her son.

Peter Junior she trusted absolutely and Richard she loved as a son; but there was much of his father in him, and the Irish nature was erratic and wild, as the Elder said. Where was that father now? No one knew. It was one of the causes for anxiety she had for the boy that his father had been lost to them all ever since Richard’s birth and his wife’s death. He had gone out of their lives as completely as a candle in a gale of wind. She had mothered the boy, and the Elder had always been kind to him for his own dead sister’s sake, but of the father they never spoke.

It was while Hester Craigmile sat in her western window, thinking her thoughts, that two lads came hurrying down the bluff from the old camp ground, breathless and awed. One carried a straw hat, and the other a stout stick––a stick with an irregular knob at the end. It was Larry Kildene’s old blackthorn that Peter Junior had been carrying. The Ballards’ home was on the way between the bluff and the village, and Mary Ballard was standing at their gate watching for the children from school. She wished Jamie to go on an errand for her.

Mary noticed the agitation of the boys. They were John Walters and Charlie Dean––two chums who were always first to be around when there was anything unusual going on, or to be found. It was they who discovered the fire in the foundry in time to have it put out. It was they who knew where the tramps were hiding who had been stealing from the village stores, and now Mary wondered what they had discovered. She left the gate swinging open and walked down to meet them.

“What is it, boys?”

“We––we––found these––and––there’s something happened,” panted the boys, both speaking at once.

She took the hat of white straw from John’s hand. “Why! This is Peter Junior’s hat! Where did you find it?” She turned it about and saw dark red stains, as if it had been grasped by a bloody hand––finger marks of blood plainly imprinted on the rim.

“And this, Mrs. Ballard,” said Charlie, putting Peter Junior’s stick in her hand, and pointing to the same red stains sunken into the knob. “We think there’s been a fight and some one’s been hit with this.”

She took it and looked at it in a dazed way. “Yes. He was carrying this in the place of his crutch,” she said, as if to herself.

“We think somebody’s been pushed over the bluff into the river, Mrs. Ballard, for they’s a hunk been tore out as big as a man, from the edge, and it’s gone clean over, and down into the river. We can see where it is gone. And it’s an awful swift place.”

She handed the articles back to the boys.

“Sit down in the shade here, and I’ll bring you some sweet apples, and if any one comes by, don’t say anything about it until I have time to consult with Mr. Ballard.”

She hurried back and passed quickly around the house, and on to her husband, who was repairing the garden fence.

“Bertrand, come with me quickly. Something serious has happened. I don’t want Betty to hear of it until we know what it is.”

They hastened to the waiting boys, and together they slowly climbed the long path leading to the old camping place. Bertrand carried the stick and the hat carefully, for they were matters of great moment.

“This looks grave,” he said, when the boys had told him their story.

“Perhaps we ought to have brought some one with us––if anything––” said Mary.

“No, no; better wait and see, before making a stir.”

It was a good half hour’s walk up the hill, and every moment of the time seemed heavily freighted with foreboding. They said no more until they reached the spot where the boys had found the edge of the bluff torn away. There, for a space of about two feet only, back from the brink, the sparse grass was trampled, and the earth showed marks of heels and in places the sod was freshly torn up.

“There’s been something happened here, you see,” said Charlie Dean.

“Here is where a foot has been braced to keep from being pushed over; see, Mary? And here again.”

“I see indeed.” Mary looked, and stooping, picked something from the ground that glinted through the loosened earth. She held it on her open palm toward Bertrand, and the two boys looked intently at it. Her husband did not touch it, but glanced quickly into her eyes and then at the boys. Then her fingers closed over it, and taking her handkerchief she tied it in one corner securely.

“Did you ever see anything like it, boys?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. It’s a watch charm, isn’t it? Or what?”

“I suppose it must be.”

“I guess the fellah that was being pushed over must ’a’ grabbed for the other fellah’s watch. Maybe he was trying to rob him.”

“Let’s see whether we can find anything else,” said John Walters, peering over the bluff.

“Don’t, John, don’t. You may fall over. It might have been a fall, and one of them might have been trying to save the other, you know. He might have caught at him and pulled this off. There’s no reason why we should surmise the worst.”

“They might ha’ been playing––you know––wrestling––and it might ’a’ happened so,” said Charlie.

“Naw! They’d been big fools to wrestle so near the edge of the bluff as this,” said the practical John. “I see something white way down there, Mrs. Ballard. I can get it, I guess.”

“But take care, John. Go further round by the path.”

Both boys ran along the bluff until they came to a path that led down to the river. “Do be careful, boys!” called Mary.

“Now, let me see that again, my dear,” and Mary untied the handkerchief. “Yes, it is what I thought. That belonged to Larry Kildene. He got it in India, although he said it was Chinese. He was a year in the British service in India. I’ve often examined it. I should have known it anywhere. He must have left it with Hester for the boy.”

“Poor Larry! And it has come to this. I remember it on Richard’s chain when he came out there to meet us in the grove. Bertrand, what shall we do? They must have been here––and have quarreled––and what has happened! I’m going back to ask Betty.”

“Ask Betty! My dear! What can Betty know about it?”

“Something upset her terribly yesterday morning. She was ill and with no cause that I could see, and I believe she had had a nervous shock.”

“But she seemed all right this morning,––a little pale, but otherwise quite herself.” Bertrand turned the little charm over in his hand. “He thought it was Chinese because it is jade, but this carving is Egyptian. I don’t think it is jade, and I don’t think it is Chinese.”

“But whatever it is, it was on Richard’s chain Saturday,” said Mary, sadly. “And now, what can we do? On second thought I’ll say nothing to Betty. If a tragedy has come upon the Craigmiles, it will also fall on her now, and we must spare her all of it we can, until we know.”

A call came to them from below, and Bertrand hastily handed the charm back to his wife, and she tied it again in her handkerchief.

“Oh, Bertrand, don’t go near that terrible brink. It might give way. I’m sure this has been an accident.”

“But the stick, Mary, and the marks of blood on Peter Junior’s hat. I’m afraid––afraid.”

“But they were always fond of each other. They have been like brothers.”

“And quarrels between brothers are often the bitterest.”

“But we have never heard of their quarreling, and they were so glad to see each other Saturday. And you know Peter Junior was always possessed to do whatever Richard planned. They were that way about enlisting, you remember, and everything else. What cause could Richard have against Peter Junior?”

“We can’t say it was Richard against Peter. You see the stick was bloody, and it was Peter’s. We must offer no opinion, no matter what we think, for the world may turn against the wrong one, and only time will tell.”

They both were silent as the boys came panting up the bank. “Here’s a handkerchief. It was what I saw. It was caught on a thorn bush, and here––here’s Peter Junior’s little notebook, with his name––”

“This is Peter’s handkerchief. P. C. J. Hester Craigmile embroidered those letters.” Mary’s eyes filled with tears. “Bertrand, we must go to her. She may hear in some terrible way.”

“And the book, where was that, John?”

“It was lying on that flat rock. John had to crawl along the ledge on his belly to get it; and here, I found this lead pencil,” cried Charlie, excited and important.

“‘Faber No. 2.’ Yes, this was also Peter’s.” Bertrand shut it in the notebook. “Mary, this looks sinister. We’d better go down. There’s nothing more to learn here.”

“Maybe we’ll find the young men both safely at home.”

“Richard was to leave early this morning.”

“I remember.”

Sadly they returned, and the two boys walked with them, gravely and earnestly propounding one explanation after another.

“You’d better go back to the house, Mary, and I’ll go on to the village with the boys. We’ll consult with your father, John; he’s a thoughtful man, and––”

“And he’s a coroner, too––” said John.

“Yes, but if there’s nobody found, who’s he goin’ to sit on?”

“They don’t sit on the body, they sit on the jury,” said John, with contempt.

“Don’t I know that? But they’ve got to find the body, haven’t they, before they can sit on anything? Guess I know that much.”

“Now, boys,” said Bertrand, “this may turn out to be a very grave matter, and you must keep silent about it. It won’t do to get the town all stirred up about it and all manner of rumors afloat. It must be looked into quietly first, by responsible people, and you must keep all your opinions and surmises to yourselves until the truth can be learned.”

“Don’t walk, Bertrand; take the carryall, and these can be put under the seat. Boys, if you’ll go back there in the garden, you’ll find some more apples, and I’ll fetch you out some cookies to go with them.” The boys briskly departed. “I don’t want Betty to see them, and we’ll be silent until we know what to tell her,” Mary added, as they walked slowly up the front path.

Bertrand turned off to the stable, carrying the sad trophies with him, and Mary entered the house. She looked first for Betty, but no Betty was to be found, and the children were at home clamoring for something to eat. They always came home from school ravenously hungry. Mary hastily packed them a basket of fruit and cookies and sent them to play picnic down by the brook. Still no Betty appeared.

“Where is she?” asked Bertrand, as he entered the kitchen after bringing up the carryall.

“I don’t know. She may have gone over to Clara Dean’s. She spoke of going there to-day. I’m glad––rather.”

“Yes, yes.”

A little later in the day, almost closing time at the bank, James Walters and Bertrand Ballard entered and asked to see the Elder. They were shown into the director’s room, and found him seated alone at the great table in the center. He pushed his papers one side and rose, greeting them with his grave courtesy, as usual.

Mr. Walters, a shy man of few words, looked silently at Mr. Ballard to speak, while the Elder urged them to be seated. “A warm day for the season, and very pleasant to have it so. We’ll hope the winter may come late this year.”

“Yes, yes. We wish to inquire after your son, Elder Craigmile. Is he at home to-day?”

“Ah, yes. He was not at home––not when I left this noon.” The Elder cleared his throat and looked keenly at his friend. “Is it––ahem––a matter of business, Mr. Ballard?”

“Unfortunately, no. We have come to inquire if he––when he was last at home––or if his cousin––has been with you?”

“Not Richard, no. He came unexpectedly and has gone with as little ceremony, but my son was here on the Sabbath––ahem––He dined that day with you, Mr. Ballard?”

“He did––but––Elder, will you come with us? A matter with regard to him and his cousin should be looked into.”

“It is not necessary for me to interfere in matters regarding my son any longer. He has taken the ordering of his life in his own hands hereafter. As for Richard, he has long been his own master.”

“Elder, I beg you to come with us. We fear foul play of some sort. It is not a question now of family differences of opinion.”

The Elder’s face remained immovable, and Bertrand reluctantly added, “We fear either your son or his cousin, possibly both of them, have met with disaster––maybe murder.”

A pallor crept over the Elder’s face, and without a word further he took his hat from a hook in the corner of the room, paused, and then carefully arranged the papers he had pushed aside at their entrance and placing them in his desk, turned the key, still without a word. At the door he waited a moment with his hand on the knob, and with the characteristic lift of his brows, asked: “Has anything been said to my wife?”

“No, no. We thought best to do nothing until under your direction.”

“Thank you. That’s well. Whatever comes, I would spare her all I can.”

The three then drove slowly back to the top of the bluff, and on the way Bertrand explained to the Elder all that had transpired. “It seemed best to Mary and me that you should look the ground over yourself, before any action be taken. We hoped appearances might be deceptive, and that you would have information that would set our fears at rest before news of a mystery should reach the town.”

“Where are the boys who found these things?”

Mr. Walters spoke, “My son was one of them, and he is now at home. They are forbidden to speak to any one until we know more about it.”

Arrived at the top of the bluff the three men went carefully over the ground, even descending the steep path to the margin of the river.

“There,” said Bertrand, “the notebook was picked up on that flat rock which juts out from that narrow ledge. John Walters crawled along the ledge to get it. The handkerchief was caught on that thorn shrub, halfway up, see? And the pencil was picked up down here, somewhere.”

The Elder looked up to the top of the bluff and down at the rushing river beneath, and as he looked he seemed visibly to shrink and become in the instant an old man––older by twenty years. As they climbed back again, his shoulders drooped and his breath came hard. As they neared the top, Bertrand turned and gave him his aid to gain a firm footing above.

“Don’t forget that we can’t always trust to appearances,” he urged.

“Some heavy body––heavier than a clod of earth, has gone down there,” said the Elder, and his voice sounded weak and thin.

“Yes, yes. But even so, a stone may have been dislodged. You can’t be sure.”

“Ay, the lads might have been wrestling in play––or the like––and sent a rock over; it’s like lads, that,” hazarded Mr. Walters.

“Wrestling on the Sabbath evening! They are men, not lads.”

Mr. Walters looked down in embarrassment, and the old man continued. “Would a stone leave a handkerchief clinging to a thorn? Would it leave a notebook thrown down on yonder rock?” The Elder lifted his head and looked to the sky: holding one hand above his head he shook it toward heaven. “Would a stone leave a hat marked with a bloody hand––my son’s hat? There has been foul play here. May the curse of God fall on him who has robbed me of my son, be he stranger or my own kin.”

His voice broke and he reeled backward and would have fallen over the brink but for Bertrand’s quickness. Then, trembling and bowed, his two friends led him back to the carryall and no further word was spoken until they reached the village, when the Elder said:––

“Will you kindly drive me to the bank, Mr. Ballard?”

They did so. No one was there, and the Elder quietly unlocked the door and carried the articles found on the bluff into the room beyond and locked them away. Bertrand followed him, loath to leave him thus, and anxious to make a suggestion. The Elder opened the door of a cupboard recessed into the wall and laid the hat on a high shelf. Then he took the stick and looked at it with a sudden awakening in his eyes as if he saw it for the first time.

“This stick––this blackthorn stick––accursed! How came it here? I thought it had been burned. It was left years ago in my front hall by––Richard’s father. I condemned it to be burned.”

“Peter Junior was using that in place of his crutch, no doubt because of its strength. He had it at my house, and I recognize it now as one Larry brought over with him––”

“Peter was using it! My God! My God! The blow was struck with this. It is my son who is the murderer, and I have called down the curse of God on him? It falls––it falls on me!” He sank in his chair––the same in which he had sat when he talked with Peter Junior––and bowed his head in his arms. “It is enough, Mr. Ballard. Will you leave me?”

“I can’t leave you, sir: there is more to be said. We must not be hasty in forming conclusions. If any one was thrown over the bluff, it must have been your son, for he was lame and could not have saved himself. If he struck any one, he could not have killed him; for evidently he got away, unless he also went over the brink. If he got away, he must be found. There is something for you to do, Elder Craigmile.”

The old man lifted his head and looked in Bertrand’s face, pitifully seeking there for help. “You are a good man, Mr. Ballard. I need your counsel and help.”

“First, we will go below the rapids and search; the sooner the better, for in the strong current there is no telling how far––”

“Yes, we will search.” The Elder lifted himself to his full height, inspired by the thought of action. “We’ll go now.” He looked down on his shorter friend, and Bertrand looked up to him, his genial face saddened with sympathy, yet glowing with kindliness.

“Wait a little, Elder; let us consider further. Mr. Walters––sit down, Elder Craigmile, for a moment––Mr. Walters is capable, and he can organize the search; for if you keep this from your wife, you must be discreet. Here is something I haven’t shown you before. It is the charm from Richard’s watch. It was almost covered with earth where they had been struggling, and Mary found it. You see there is a mystery––and let us hope whatever happened was an accident. The evidences are so––so––mingled, that no one may know whom to blame.”

The Elder looked down on the charm without touching it, as it lay on Bertrand’s palm. “That belonged––” his lips twitched––“that belonged to the man who took from me my twin sister. The shadow––forever the shadow of Larry Kildene hangs over me.” He was silent for some moments, then he said: “Mr. Ballard, if, after the search, my son is found to be murdered, I will put a detective on the trail of the man who did the deed, and be he whom he may, he shall hang.”

“Hush, Elder Craigmile; in Wisconsin men are not hanged.”

“I tell you––be he whom he may––he shall suffer what is worse than to be hanged, he shall enter the living grave of a life imprisonment.”

CHAPTER XIII

CONFESSION

By Monday evening there were only two people in all the small town of Leauvite who had not heard of the tragedy, and these were Hester Craigmile and Betty Ballard. Mary doubted if it was wise to keep Hester thus in ignorance, but it was the Elder’s wish, and at his request she went to spend the evening and if necessary the night with his wife, to fend off any officious neighbor, while he personally directed the search.

It was the Elder’s firm belief that his son had been murdered, yet he thought if no traces should be found of Peter Junior, he might be able to spare Hester the agony of that belief. He preferred her to think her son had gone off in anger and would sometime return. He felt himself justified in this concealment, fearing that if she knew the truth, she might grieve herself into her grave, and his request to Mary to help him had been made so pitifully and humbly that her heart melted at the sight of the old man’s sorrow, and she went to spend those weary hours with his wife.

As the Elder sometimes had meetings of importance to take him away of an evening, Hester did not feel surprise at his absence, and she accepted Mary’s visit as one of sweet friendliness and courtesy because of Peter’s engagement to Betty. Nor did she wonder that the visit was made without Bertrand, as Mary said he and the Elder had business together, and she thought she would spend the time with her friend until their return.

That was all quite as it should be and very pleasant, and Hester filled the moments with cheerful chat, showing Mary certain pieces of cloth from which she proposed to make dainty garments for Betty, to help Mary with the girl’s wedding outfit. To Mary it all seemed like a dream as she locked the sad secret in her heart and listened. Her friend’s sorrow over Peter Junior’s disagreement with his father and his sudden departure from the home was tempered by the glad hope that after all the years of anxiety, she was some time to have a daughter to love, and that her boy and his wife would live near them, and her home might again know the sound of happy children’s voices. The sweet thoughts brought her gladness and peace of mind, and Mary’s visit made the dream more sure of ultimate fulfillment.

Mary felt the Elder’s wish lie upon her with the imperative force of a law, and she did not dare disregard his request that on no account was Hester to be told the truth. So she gathered all her fortitude and courage to carry her through this ordeal. She examined the fine linen that had been brought to Hester years ago from Scotland by Richard’s mother, and while she praised it she listened for steps without; the heavy tread of men bringing a sorrowful and terrible burden. But the minutes wore on, and no such sounds came, and the hour grew late.

“They may have gone out of town. Bertrand said something about it, and told me to stay until he called for me, if I stayed all night.” Mary tried to laugh over it, and Hester seized the thought gayly.

“We’ll go to bed, anyway, and your husband may just go home without you when he comes.”

And after a little longer wait they went to bed, and Hester slept, but Mary lay wakeful and fearing, until in the early morning, while it was yet dark, she heard the Elder slowly climb the stairs and go to his room. Then she also slept, hoping against hope, that they had found nothing.

Betty’s pride and shame had caused her to keep her trouble to herself. She knew Richard had gone forever, and she dreaded Peter Junior’s next visit. What should she do! Oh, what should she do! Should she tell Peter she did not love him, and that all had been a mistake? She must humble herself before him, and what excuse had she to make for all the hours she had given him, and the caresses she had accepted? Ah! If only she could make the last week as if it had never been! She was shamed before her mother, who had seen him kiss her. She was ashamed even in her own room in the darkness to think of all Peter Junior had said to her, and the love he had lavished on her. Ought she to break her word to him and beg him to forget? Ah! Neither he nor she could ever forget.

Her brothers had been forbidden to tell her a word of the reports that were already abroad in the town, and now they were both in bed and asleep, and little Janey was cuddled in Betty’s bed, also in dreamland. At last, when neither her father nor her mother returned and she could bear her own thoughts no longer, she brought drawing materials down from the studio and spread them out on the dining room table.

She had decided she would never marry any one––never. How could she! But she would study in earnest and be an illustrator. If women could never become great artists, as Peter Junior said, at least they might illustrate books; and sometime––maybe––when her heart was not so sad, she might write books, and she could illustrate them herself. Ah, that would almost make up for what she must go without all her life.

For a while she worked painstakingly, but all the time it seemed as though she could hear Richard’s voice, and the words he had said to her Sunday morning kept repeating themselves over and over in her mind. Then the tears fell one by one and blurred her work, until at last she put her head down on her arms and wept. Then the door opened very softly and Richard entered. Swiftly he came to her and knelt at her side. He put his head on her knee, and his whole body shook with tearless sobs he could not restrain. He was faint and weak. She could not know the whole cause of his grief, and thought he suffered because of her. She must comfort him––but alas! What could she say? How could she comfort him?

She put her trembling hand on his head and found the hair matted and stiff. Then she saw a wound above his temple, and knew he was hurt, and cried out: “You are hurt––you are hurt! Oh, Richard! Let me do something for you.”

He clasped her in his arms, but still did not look up at her, and Betty forgot all her shame, and her lessons in propriety. She lifted his head to her bosom and laid her cheek upon his and said all the comforting things that came into her heart. She begged him to let her wash his wound and to tell her how he came by it. She forgot everything, except that she loved him and told him over and over the sweet confession.

At last he found strength to speak to her brokenly. “Never love me any more, Betty. I’ve committed a terrible crime––Oh, my God! And you will hear of it Give me a little milk. I’ve eaten nothing since yesterday morning, when I saw you. Then I’ll try to tell you what you must know––what all the world will tell you soon.”

He rose and staggered to a chair and she brought him milk and bread and meat, but she would not let him talk to her until he had allowed her to wash the wound on his head and bind it up. As she worked the touch of her hands seemed to bring him sane thoughts in spite of the horror of himself that possessed him, and he was enabled to speak more coherently.

“If I had not been crazed when I looked through the window and saw you crying, Betty, I would never have let you see me or touch me again. It’s only adding one crime to another to come near you. I meant just to look in and see if I could catch one glimpse of you, and then was going to lose myself to all the world, or else give myself up to be hung.” Then he was silent, and she began to question him.

“Don’t! Richard. Hung? What have you done? What do you mean? When was it?”

“Sunday night.”

“But you had to start for Cheyenne early this morning. Where have you been all day? I thought you were gone forever, dear.”

“I hid myself down by the river. I lay there all day, and heard them talking, but I couldn’t see them nor they me. It was a hiding place we knew of when our camp was there––Peter Junior and I. He’s gone. I did it––I did it with murder in my heart––Oh, my God!”

“Don’t, Richard. You must tell me nothing except as I ask you. It is not as if we did not love each other. What you have done I must help you bear––as––as wives help their husbands––for I will never marry; but all my life my heart will be married to yours.” He reached for her hands and covered them with kisses and moaned. “No, Richard, don’t. Eat the bread and meat I have brought you. You’ve eaten nothing for two days, and everything may seem worse to you than it is.”

“No, no!”

“Richard, I’ll go away from you and leave you here alone if you don’t eat.”

“Yes, I must eat––not only now––but all the rest of my life, I must eat to live and repent. He was my dearest friend. I taunted him and said bitter things. I goaded him. I was insane with rage and at last so was he. He struck me––and––and I––I was trying to push him over the bluff––”

Slowly it dawned on Betty what Richard’s talk really meant.

“Not Peter? Oh, Richard––not Peter!” She shrank from him, wide-eyed in terror.

“He would have killed me––for I know what was in his heart as well as I knew what was in my own––and we were both seeing red. I’ve felt it sometimes in battle, and the feeling makes a man drunken. A man will do anything then. We’d been always friends––and yet we were drunken with hate; and now––he––he is better off than I. I must live. Unless for the disgrace to my relatives, I would give myself up to be hanged. It would be better to take the punishment than to live in such torture as this.”

The tears coursed fast down Betty’s cheeks. Slowly she drew nearer him, and bent down to him as he sat, until she could look into his eyes. “What were you quarreling about, Richard?”

“Don’t ask me, darling Betty.”

“What was it, Richard?”

“All my life you will be the sweet help to me––the help that may keep me from death in life. To carry in my soul the remembrance of last night will need all the help God will let me have. If I had gone away quietly, you and Peter Junior would have been married and have been happy––but––”

“No, no. Oh, Richard, no. I knew in a moment when you came––”

“Yes, Betty, dear, Peter Junior was good and faithful; and he might have been able to undo all the harm I had done. He could have taught you to love him. I have done the devil’s work––and then I killed him––Oh, my God! My God!”

“How do you know you pushed him over? He may have fallen over. You don’t know it. He may have––”

“Hush, dearest. I did it. When I came to myself, it was in the night; and it must have been late, for the moon was set. I could only see faintly that something white lay near me. I felt of it, and it was Peter Junior’s hat. Then I felt all about for him––and he was gone and I crawled to the edge of the bluff––but although I knew he was gone over there and washed by the terrible current far down the river by that time, I couldn’t follow him, whether from cowardice or weakness. I tried to get on my feet and could not. Then I must have fainted again, for all the world faded away, and I thought maybe the blow had done for me and I might not have to leap over there, after all. I could feel myself slipping away.

“When I awoke, the sun was shining and a bird was singing just as if nothing had happened, and I thought I had been dreaming an awful dream––but there was the wound on my head and I was alive. Then I went farther down the river and came back to the hiding place and crept in there to wait and think. Then, after a long while, the boys came, and I was terrified for fear they were searching for me. That is the shameful truth, Betty. I feared. I never knew what fear was before. Betty, fear is shameful. There I have been all day––waiting––for what, I do not know; but it seemed that if I could only have one little glimpse of you I could go bravely and give myself up. I will now––”

“No, Richard; it would do no good for you to die such a death. It would undo nothing, and change nothing. Peter was angry, too, and he struck you, and if he could have his way he would not want you to die. I say maybe he is living now. He may not have gone over.”

“It’s no use, Betty. He went down. I pushed him into that terrible river. I did it. I––I––I!” Richard only moaned the words in a whisper of despair, and the horror of it all began to deepen and crush down upon Betty. She retreated, step by step, until she backed against the door leading to her chamber, and there she stood gazing at him with her hand pressed over her lips to keep herself from crying out. Then she saw him rise and turn toward the door without looking at her again, his head bowed in grief, and the sight roused her. As the door closed between them she ran and threw it open and followed him out into the darkness.

“I can’t, Richard. I can’t let you go like this!” She clung to him, sobbing her heart out on his bosom, and he clasped her and held her warm little body close.

“I’m like a drowning man pulling you under with me. Your tears drown me. I would not have entered the house if I had not seen you crying. Never cry again for me, Betty, never.”

“I will cry. I tell you I will cry. I will. I don’t believe you are a murderer.”

“You must believe it. I am.”

“I loved Peter Junior and you loved him. You did not mean to do it.”

“I did it.”

“If you did it, it is as if I did it, too. We both killed him––and I am a murderer, too. It was because of me you did it, and if you give yourself up to be hung, I will give myself up. Poor Peter––Oh, Richard––I don’t believe he fell over.” For a long moment she sobbed thus. “Where are you going, Richard?” she asked, lifting her head.

“I don’t know, Betty. I may be taken and can go nowhere.”

“Yes, you must go––quick––quick––now. Some one may come and find you here.”

“No one will find me. Cain was a wanderer over the face of the earth.”

“Will you let me know where you are, after you are gone?”

“No, Betty. You must never think of me, nor let me darken your life.”

“Then must I live all the rest of the years without even knowing where you are?”

“Yes, love. Put me out of your life from now on, and it will be enough for me that you loved me once.”

“I will help you atone, Richard. I will try to be brave––and help Peter’s mother to bear it. I will love her for Peter and for you.”

“God’s blessing on you forever, Betty.” He was gone, striding away in the darkness, and Betty, with trembling steps, entered the house.

Carefully she removed every sign of his having been there. The bowl of water, and the cloth from which she had torn strips to bind his head she carried away, and the glass from which he had taken his milk, she washed, and even the crumbs of bread which had fallen to the floor she picked up one by one, so that not a trace remained. Then she took her drawing materials back to the studio, and after kneeling long at her bedside, and only saying: “God, help Richard, help him,” over and over, she crept in beside her little sister, and still weeping and praying chokingly clasped the sleeping child in her arms.

From that time, it seemed to Bertrand and Mary that a strange and subtle change had taken place in their beloved little daughter; for which they tried to account as the result of the mysterious disappearance of Peter Junior. He was not found, and Richard also was gone, and the matter after being for a long time the wonder of the village, became a thing of the past. Only the Elder cherished the thought that his son had been murdered, and quietly set a detective at work to find the guilty man––whom he would bring back to vengeance.

Her parents were forced to acquaint Betty with the suspicious nature of Peter’s disappearance, knowing she might hear of it soon and be more shocked than if told by themselves. Mary wondered not a little at her dry-eyed and silent reception of it, but that was a part of the change in Betty.

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER XIV

OUT OF THE DESERT

“Good horse. Good horse. Good boy. Goldbug––go it! I know you’re dying, but so am I. Keep it up a little while longer––Good boy.”

The young man encouraged his horse, while half asleep from utter weariness and faint with hunger and thirst. The poor beast scrambled over the rocks up a steep trail that seemed to have been long unused, or indeed it might be no trail at all, but only a channel worn by fierce, narrow torrents during the rainy season, now sun-baked and dry.

The fall rains were late this year, and the yellow plains below furnished neither food nor drink for either man or beast. The herds of buffalo had long since wandered to fresher spaces nearer the river beds. The young man’s flask was empty, and it was twenty-seven hours since either he or his horse had tasted anything. Now they had reached the mountains he hoped to find water and game if he could only hold out a little longer. Up and still up the lean horse scrambled with nose to earth and quivering flanks, and the young man, leaning forward and clinging to his seat as he reeled like one drunken, still murmured words of encouragement. “Good boy––Goldbug, go it. Good horse, keep it up.”

All at once the way opened out on a jutting crest and made a sharp turn to the right, and the horse paused on the verge so suddenly that his rider lost his hold and fell headlong over into a scrub oak that caught him and held him suspended in its tough and twisted branches above a chasm so deep that the buzzards sailed on widespread wings round and round in the blue air beneath him.

He lay there still and white as death, mercifully unconscious, while an eagle with a wild scream circled about and perched on a lightning-blasted tree far above and looked down on him.

For a moment the yellow horse swayed weakly on the brink, then feeling himself relieved of his burden, he stiffened himself to a last great effort and held on along the path which turned abruptly away from the edge of the cliff and broadened out among low bushes and stunted trees. Here again the horse paused and stretched his neck and bit off the tips of the dry twigs near him, then turned his head and whinnied to call his master, and pricked his ears to listen; but he only heard the scream of the eagle overhead, and again he walked on, guided by an instinct as mysterious and unerring as the call of conscience to a human soul.

Good old beast! He had not much farther to go. Soon there was a sound of water in the air––a continuous roar, muffled and deep. The path wound upward, then descended gradually until it led him to an open, grassy space, bordered by green trees. Again he turned his head and gave his intelligent call. Why did not his master respond? Why did he linger behind when here was grass and water––surely water, for the smell of it was fresh and sweet. But it was well he called, for his friendly nicker fell on human ears.

A man of stalwart frame, well built and spare, hairy and grizzled, but ruddy with health, sat in a cabin hidden among the trees not forty paces away, and prepared his meal of roasting quail suspended over the fire in his chimney and potatoes baking in the ashes.

He lifted his head with a jerk, and swung the quail away from the heat, leaving it still suspended, and taking his rifle from its pegs stood for a moment in his door listening. For months he had not heard the sound of a human voice, nor the nicker of any horse other than his own. He called a word of greeting, “Hello, stranger!” but receiving no response he ventured farther from his door.

Goldbug was eagerly grazing––too eagerly for his own good. The man recognized the signs of starvation and led him to a tree, where he brought him a little water in his own great tin dipper. Then he relieved him of saddle and bridle and left him tied while he hastily stowed a few hard-tack and a flask of whisky in his pocket, and taking a lasso over his arm, started up the trail on his own horse.

“Some poor guy has lost his way and gone over the cliff,” he muttered.

The young man still lay as he had fallen, but now his eyes were open and staring at the sky. Had he not been too weak to move he would have gone down; as it was, he waited, not knowing if he were dead or in a dream, seeing only the blue above him, and hearing only the scream of the eagle.

“Lie still. Don’t ye move. Don’t ye stir a hair. I’ll get ye. Still now––still.”

The big man’s voice came to him as out of a great chasm, scarcely heard for the roaring in his head, although he was quite near. His arms hung down and one leg swung free, but his body rested easily balanced in the branches. Presently he felt something fall lightly across his chest, slip down to his hand, and then crawl slowly up his arm to the shoulder, where it tightened and gripped. A vague hope awoke in him.

“Now, wait. I’ll get ye; don’t move. I’ll have a noose around ye’r leg next,––so.” The voice had grown clearer, and seemed nearer, but the young man could make no response with his parched throat.

“Now if I hurt ye a bit, try to stand it.” The man carried the long loop of his lasso around the cliff and wound it securely around another scrub oak, and then began slowly and steadily to pull, until the young man moaned with pain,––to cry out was impossible.

“I’ll have ye in a minute––I’ll have ye––there! Catch at my hand. Poor boy, poor boy, ye can’t. Hold on––just a little more––there!” Strong arms reached for him. Strong hands gripped his clothing and lifted him from the terrible chasm’s edge.

“He’s more dead than alive,” said the big man, as he strove to pour a little whisky between the stranger’s set teeth. “Well, I’ll pack him home and do for him there.”

He lifted his weight easily, and placing him on his horse, led the animal to the cabin where he laid him in his own bunk. There, with cool water, and whisky carefully administered, the big man restored him enough to know that he was conscious.

“There now, you’ll come out of this all right. You’ve got a good body and a good head, young man,––lie by a little and I’ll give ye some broth.”

The man took a small stone jar from a shelf and putting in a little water, took the half-cooked quail from the fire, and putting it in the jar set it on the coals among the ashes, and covered it. From time to time he lifted the cover and stirred it about, sprinkling in a little corn meal, and when the steam began to rise with savory odor, he did not wait for it to be wholly done, but taking a very little of the broth in a tin cup, he cooled it and fed it to his patient drop by drop until the young man’s eyes looked gratefully into his.

Then, while the young man dozed, he returned to his own uneaten meal, and dined on dried venison and roasted potatoes and salt. The big man was a good housekeeper. He washed his few utensils and swept the hearth with a broom worn almost to the handle. Then he removed the jar containing the quail and broth from the embers, and set it aside in reserve for his guest. Whenever the young man stirred he fed him again with the broth, until at last he seemed to sleep naturally.

Seeing his patient quietly sleeping, the big man went out to the starving horse and gave him another taste of water, and allowed him to graze a few minutes, then tied him again, and returned to the cabin. He stood for a while looking down at the pallid face of the sleeping stranger, then he lighted his pipe and busied himself about the cabin, returning from time to time to study the young man’s countenance. His pipe went out. He lighted it again and then sat down with his back to the stranger and smoked and gazed in the embers.

The expression of his face was peculiarly gentle as he gazed. Perhaps the thought of having rescued a human being worked on his spirit kindly, or what not, but something brought him a vision of a pale face with soft, dark hair waving back from the temples, and large gray eyes looking up into his. It came and was gone, and came again, even as he summoned it, and he smoked on. One watching him might have thought that it was his custom to smoke and gaze and dream thus.

At last he became aware that the stranger was trying to speak to him in husky whispers. He turned quickly.

“Feeling more fit, are you? Well, take another sup of broth. Can’t let you eat anything solid for a bit, but you can have all of the broth now if you want it.”

As he stooped over him the young man’s fingers caught at his shirt sleeve and pulled him down to listen to his whispered words.

“Pull me out of this––quickly––quickly––there’s a––party––down the––mountain––dying of thirst. Is this Higgins’ Camp? I––I––tried to get there for––for help.” He panted and could say no more.

The big man whistled softly. “Thought you’d get to Higgins’ Camp? You’re sixty miles out of the way––or more,––twice that, way you’ve come. You took the wrong trail and you’ve gone forty miles one way when you should have gone as far on the other. I did it myself once, and never undid it.”

The patient looked hungrily at the tin cup from which he had been taking the broth. “Can you give me a little more?”

“Yes, drink it all. It won’t hurt ye.”

“I’ve got to get up. They’ll die.” He struggled and succeeded in lifting himself to his elbow and with the effort he spoke more strongly. “May I have another taste of the whisky? I’m coming stronger now. I left them yesterday with all the food––only a bit––and a little water––not enough to keep them alive much longer. Yesterday––God help them––was it yesterday––or days ago?”

The older man had a slow, meditative manner of speech as if he had long been in the way of speaking only to himself, unhurried, and at peace. “It’s no use your trying to think that out, young man, and I can’t tell you. Nor you won’t be able to go for them in a while. No.”

“I must. I must if I die. I don’t care if I die––but they––I must go.” He tried again to raise himself, but fell back. Great drops stood out on his forehead and into his eyes crept a look of horror. “It’s there!” he said, and pointed with his finger.

“What’s there, man?”

“The eye. See! It’s gone. Never mind, it’s gone.” He relaxed, and his face turned gray and his eyes closed for a moment, then he said again, “I must go to them.”

“You can’t go. You’re delirious, man.”

Then the stranger’s lips twitched and he almost smiled. “Because I saw it? I saw it watching me. It often is, and it’s not delirium. I can go. I am quite myself.”

That half smile on the young man’s face was reassuring and appealing. The big man could not resist it.

“See here, are you enough yourself to take care of yourself, if I leave you and go after them––whoever they are?”

“Yes, oh, yes.”

“Will you be prudent––stay right here, eat very sparingly? Are they back on the plain? If so, there is a long ride ahead of me, but my horse is fresh. If they are not off the trail by which you came, I can reach them.”

“I did not once leave the trail after––there was no other way I could take.”

“Would they likely stay right where you left them?”

“They couldn’t move if they tried. Oh, my God––if I were only myself again!”

“Never waste words wishing, young man. I’ll get them. But you must give me your promise to wait here. Will you be prudent and wait?”

“Yes, yes.”

“You’ll be stronger before you know it, and then you’ll want to leave, you know, and go for them yourself. Don’t do that. I’ll give your horse a bit more to eat and drink, and tie him again, then there’ll be no need for you to leave this bunk until to-morrow. I’m to follow the trail you came up by, and not leave it until I come to––whoever it is? Right. Do you give me your word, no matter how long gone I may be, not to leave my place here until I return, or send?”

“Oh, yes, yes.”

“Good. I’ll trust you. There’s a better reason than I care to give you for this promise, young man. It’s not a bad one.”

The big man then made his preparations rapidly, pausing now and then to give the stranger instructions as to where to find provisions and how to manage there by himself, and inquiring carefully as to the party he was to find. He packed saddlebags with supplies, and water flasks, and, as he moved about, continued to question and admonish.

“By the time I get back you’ll be as well as ever you were. A couple of days––and you’ll be fuming round instead of waiting in patience––that’s what I tell you. I’ll fetch them––do you hear? I’ll do it. Now what’s your name? Harry King? Harry King––very well, I have it. And the party? Father and mother and daughter. Family party. I see. Big fools, no doubt. No description needed, I guess. Bird? Name Bird? No. McBride,––very good. Any name with a Mac to it goes on this mountain––that means me. I’m the mountain. Any one I don’t want here I pack off down the trail, and vice versa.”

Harry King lay still and heard the big man ride away. He heard his own horse stamping and nickering, and heaving a great sigh of relief his muscles relaxed, and he slept soundly on his hard bed. For hours he had fought off this terrible languor with a desperation born of terror for those he had left behind him, who looked to him as their only hope. Now he resigned their fate to the big man whose eyes had looked so kindly into his, with a childlike feeling of rest and content. He lay thus until the sun rose high in the heavens the next morning, when he was awakened by the insistent neighing of his horse which had risen almost to a cry of fear.

“Poor beast. Poor beast,” he muttered. His vocal chords seemed to have stiffened and dried, and his attempt to call out to reassure the animal resulted only in a hoarse croak. He devoured the meat of the little quail left in the jar and drank the few remaining drops of broth, then crawled out to look after the needs of his horse before making further search for food for himself. He gathered all his little strength to hold the frantic creature, maddened with hunger, and tethered him where he could graze for half an hour, then fetched him water as the big man had done, a little at a time in the great dipper.

After these efforts he rested, sitting in the doorway in the sun, and then searched out a meal for himself. The big man’s larder was well stocked, and although Harry King did not appear to be a western man, he was a good camper, and could bake a corn dodger or toss a flapjack with a fair amount of skill. As he worked, everything seemed like a dream to him. The murmuring of the trees far up the mountain side, the distant roar of falling water that made him feel as if a little way off he might find the sea, filled his senses with an impression of unseen forces at work all about him, and the peculiar clearness and lightness of the atmosphere made him feel as if he were swaying over the ground and barely touching his feet to the earth, instead of walking. He might indeed be in an enchanted land, were it not for his hunger and the reality of his still hungry horse.

After eating, he again stretched himself on the earth and again slept until his horse awakened him. It was well. The sun was setting in the golden notch of the hills, and once more he set himself to the same task of laboriously giving his horse water and tethering him where the grass was lush and green, then preparing food for himself, then sitting in the doorway and letting the peace of the place sink into his soul.

The horror of his situation when the big man found him had made no impression, for he had mercifully been unconscious and too stupefied with weariness to realize it. He had even no idea of how he had come to the cabin, or from which direction. Inertly he thought over it. A trail seemed to lead away to the southwest. He supposed he must have come by it, but he had not. It was only the path made by his rescuer in going to and fro between his garden patch and his cabin.

In the loneliness and peace of the dusk he looked up and saw the dome above filled with stars, and all things were so vast and inexplicable that he was minded to pray. The longing and the necessity of prayer was upon him, and he stood with arms uplifted and eyes fixed on the stars,––then his head sank on his breast and he turned slowly into the cabin and lay down on the bunk with his hands pressed over his eyes, and moaned. Far into the night he lay thus, unsleeping, now and again uttering that low moan. Toward morning he again slept until far into the day, and thus passed the first two days of his stay.

Strength came to him rapidly as the big man had said, and soon he was restlessly searching the short paths all about for a way by which he might find the plain below. He did not forget the promise which had been exacted from him to remain, no matter how long, until the big man’s return, but he wished to discover whence he might arrive, and perhaps journey to meet him on the way.

The first trail he followed led him to the fall that ever roared in his ears. He stood amazed at its height and volume, and its wonderful beauty. It lured him and drew him again and again to the spot from which he first viewed it. Midway of its height he stood where every now and then a little stronger breeze carried the fine mist of the fall in his face. Behind him lay the garden, ever watered thus by the wind-blown spray. Smoothly the water fell over a notch worn by its never ceasing motion in what seemed the very crest of the mountain far above him. Smoothly it fell into the rainbow mists that lost its base in a wonderful iridescence of shadows and quivering, never resting lights as far below him.

He caught his breath, and remembered the big man’s words. “You missed the trail to Higgins’ Camp a long way back. It’s easily done. I did it myself once, and never undid it.” He could not choose but return over and over to that spot. A wonderful ending to a lost trail for a lost soul.

The next path he followed took him to a living spring, where the big man was wont to lead his own horse to water, and from whence he led the water to his cabin in a small flume to always drip and trickle past his door. It was at the end of this flume that Harry King had filled the large dipper for his horse. Now he went back and washed that utensil carefully, and hung it beside the door.

The next trail he followed led by a bare and more forbidding route to the place where the big man had rescued him, and he knew it must be the one by which he had come. A sense of what had happened came over him terrifyingly, and he shrank from the abyss, his body quivering and his head reeling. He would not look down into the blue depth, knowing that if he did so, by that way his sanity would leave him, but he crawled cautiously around the projecting cliff and wandered down the stony trail. Now and again he called, “Whoopee! Whoopee!” but only his own voice came back to him many times repeated.

Again and again he called and listened, “Whoopee! Whoopee!” and was regretful at the thought that he did not even know the name of the man who had saved him. Could he also save the others? The wild trail drew him and fascinated him. Each day he followed a little farther, and morning and evening he called his lonely cry, “Whoopee! Whoopee!” and still was answered by the echo in diminuendo of his own voice. He tried to resist the lure of that narrow, sun-baked, and stony descent, which he felt led to the nethermost hell of hunger and burning thirst, but always it seemed to him as if a cry came up for help, and if it were not that he knew himself bound by a promise, he would have taken his horse and returned to the horror below.

Each evening he reasoned with himself, and repeated the big man’s words for reassurance: “I’ll fetch them, do you hear? I’ll fetch them,” and again: “I’m the mountain. Any one I don’t want here I pack off down the trail.” Perhaps he had taken them off to Higgins’ Camp instead of bringing them back with him––what then? Harry King bowed his head at the thought. Then he understood the lure of the trail. What then? Why, then––he would follow––follow––follow––until he found again the woman for whom he had dared the unknown and to whom he had given all but a few drops of water that were needed to keep him alive long enough to find more for her. He would follow her back into that hell below the heights. But how long should he wait? How long should he trust the man to whom he had given his promise?

He decided to wait a reasonable time, long enough to allow for the big man’s going, and slow returning––long enough indeed for them to use up all the provisions he had packed down to them, and then he would break his promise and go. In the meantime he tried to keep himself sane by doing what he found to do. He gathered the ripe corn in the big man’s garden patch and husked it and stored it in the shed which was built against the cabin. Then he stored the fodder in a sort of stable built of logs, one side of which was formed by a huge bowlder, or projecting part of the mountain itself, not far from the spring, where evidently it had been stored in the past, and where he supposed the man kept his horse in winter. He judged the winters must be very severe for the care with which this shed was covered and the wind holes stopped. And all the time he worked each day seemed a month of days, instead of a day of hours.

At last he felt he was justified in trying to learn the cause of the delay at least, and he baked many cakes of yellow corn meal and browned them well on the hearth, and roasted a side of bacon whole as it was, and packed strips of dried venison, and filled his water flask at the spring. After a long hunt he found empty bottles which he wrapped round with husks and filled also with water. These he purposed to hang at the sides of his saddle. He had carefully washed and mended his clothing, and searching among the big man’s effects, he found a razor, dull and long unused. He sharpened and polished and stropped it, and removed a vigorous growth of beard from his face, before a little framed mirror. To-morrow he would take the trail down into the horror from which he had come.

Now it only remained for him to look well to the good yellow horse and sleep one more night in the friendly big man’s bunk, then up before the sun and go.

The nights were cold, and he thought he would replenish the fire on his hearth, for he always had the feeling that at any moment they might come wearily climbing up the trail, famished and cold. Any night he might hear the “Halloo” of the big man’s voice. In the shed where he had piled the husked corn lay wood cut in lengths for the fireplace, and taking a pine torch he stooped to collect a few sticks, when, by the glare of the light he held, he saw what he had never seen in the dim daylight of the windowless place. A heavy iron ring lay at his feet, and as he kicked at it he discovered that it was attached to something covered with earth beneath.

Impelled by curiosity he thrust the torch between the logs and removed the earth, and found a huge bin of hewn logs carefully fitted and smoothed on the inside. The cover was not fastened, but only held in place by the weight of stones and earth piled above it. This bin was half filled with finely broken ore, and as he lifted it in his hands yellow dust sifted through his fingers.

Quivering with a strange excitement he delved deeper, lifting the precious particles by handfuls, feeling of it, sifting it between his fingers, and holding the torch close to the mass to catch the dull glow of it. For a long time he knelt there, wondering at it, dreaming over it, and feeling of it. Then he covered it all as he had found it, and taking the wood for which he had come, he replenished the fire and laid himself down to sleep.

What was gold to him? What were all the riches of the earth and of the caves of the earth? Only one thought absorbed him,––the woman whom he had left waiting for him on the burning plain, and a haunting memory that would never leave him––never be stilled.

CHAPTER XV

THE BIG MAN’S RETURN

The night was bitter cold after a day of fierce heat. Three people climbed the long winding trail from the plains beneath, slowly, carefully, and silently. A huge mountaineer walked ahead, leading a lean brown horse. Seated on the horse was a woman with long, pale face, and deeply sunken dark eyes that looked out from under arched, dark brows with a steady gaze that never wandered from some point just ahead of her, not as if they perceived anything beyond, but more as if they looked backward upon some terror.

Behind them on a sorrel horse––a horse slenderer and evidently of better stock than the brown––rode another woman, also with dark eyes, now heavy lidded from weariness, and pale skin, but younger and stronger and more alert to the way they were taking. Her face was built on different lines: a smooth, delicately modeled oval, wide at the temples and level of brow, with heavy dark hair growing low over the sides of the forehead, leaving the center high, and the arch of the head perfect. Trailing along in the rear a small mule followed, bearing a pack.

Sometimes the big man walking in front looked back and spoke a word of encouragement, to which the younger of the two women replied in low tones, as if the words were spoken under her breath.

“We’ll stop and rest awhile now,” he said at last, and led the horse to one side, where a level space made it possible for them to dismount and stretch themselves on the ground to give their weary limbs the needed relaxation.

The younger woman slipped to the ground and led her horse forward to where the elder sat rigidly stiff, declining to move.

“It is better we rest, mother. The kind man asks us.”

“Non, Amalia, non. We go on. It is best that we not wait.”

Then the daughter spoke rapidly in their own tongue, and the mother bowed her head and allowed herself to be lifted from the saddle. Her daughter then unrolled her blanket and, speaking still in her own tongue, with difficulty persuaded her mother to lie down on the mountain side, as they were directed, and the girl lay beside her, covering her tenderly and pillowing her mother’s head on her arm. The big man led the animals farther on and sat down with his back against a great rock, and waited.

They lay thus until the mother slept the sleep of exhaustion; then Amalia rose cautiously, not to awaken her, and went over to him. Her teeth chattered with the cold, and she drew a little shawl closer across her chest.

“This is a very hard way––so warm in the day and so cold in the night. It is not possible that I sleep. The cold drives me to move.”

“You ought to have put part of that blanket over yourself. It’s going to be a long pull up the mountain, and you ought to sleep a little. Walk about a bit to warm yourself and then try again to sleep.”

“Yes. I try.”

She turned docilely and walked back and forth, then very quietly crept under the blanket beside her mother. He watched them a while, and when he deemed she also must be sleeping, he removed his coat and gently laid it over the girl. By that time darkness had settled heavily over the mountain. The horses ceased browsing among the chaparral and lay down, and the big man stretched himself for warmth close beside his sorrel horse, on the stony ground. Thus in the stillness they all slept; at last, over the mountain top the moon rose.

Higher and higher it crept up in the sky, and the stars waned before its brilliant whiteness. The big man roused himself then, and looked at the blanket under which the two women slept, and with a muttered word of pity began gathering weeds and brush with which to build a fire. It should be a very small fire, hidden by chaparral from the plains below, and would be well stamped out and the charred place covered with stones and brush when they left it. Soon he had steeped a pot of coffee and fried some bacon, then he quickly put out his fire and woke the two women. The younger sprang up, and, finding his coat over her, took it to him and thanked him with rapid utterance.

“Oh, you are too kind. I am sorry you have deprive yourself of your coat to put it over me. That is why I have been so warm.”

The mother rose and shook out her skirt and glanced furtively about her. “It is not the morning? It is the moon. That is well we go early.” She drank the coffee hurriedly and scarcely tasted the bacon and hard biscuit. “It is no toilet we have here to make. So we go more quickly. So is good.”

“But you must eat the food, mother. You will be stronger for the long, hard ride. You have not here to hurry. No one follows us here.”

“Your father may be already by the camp, Amalia––to bring us help––yes. But of those men ‘rouge’––if they follow and rob us––”

The two women spoke English out of deference to the big man, and only dropped into their own language or into fluent French when necessity compelled them, or they thought themselves alone.

“Ah, but those red men, mother, they do not come here, so the kind man told us, for now they are also kind. Sit here and eat the biscuit. I will ask him.”

She went over to where he stood by the animals, pouring a very little water from the cans carried by the pack mule for each one. “They’ll have to hold out on this for the day, but they may only have half of it now,” he said.

“What shall I do?” Amalia looked with wide, distressed eyes in his face. “She believes it yet, that my father lives and has gone to the camp for help. She thinks we go to him,––to the camp. How can I tell her? I cannot––I dare not.”

“Let her think what satisfies her most. We can tell her as much as is best for her to know, a little at a time, and there will be plenty of time to do it in. We’ll be snowed up on this mountain all winter.” The young woman did not reply, but stood perfectly still, gazing off into the moonlit wilderness. “When people get locoed this way, the only thing is to humor them and give them a chance to rest satisfied in something––no matter what, much,––only so they are not hectored. No mind can get well when it is being hectored.”

“Hectored? That is to mean––tortured? Yes, I understand. It is that we not suffer the mind to be tortured?”

“About that, yes.”

“Thank you. I try to comfort her. But it is to lie to her? It is not a sin, when it is for the healing?”

“I’m not authority on that, Miss, but I know lying’s a blessing sometimes.”

“If I could make her see the marvelous beauty of this way we go, but she will not look. Me, I can hardly breathe for the wonder––yet––I do not forget my father is dead.”

“I’m starting you off now, because it will not be so hard on either you or the horses to travel by night, as long as it is light enough to see the way. Then when the sun comes out hot, we can lie by a bit, as we did yesterday.”

“Then is no fear of the red men we met on the plains?”

“They’re not likely to follow us up here––not at this season, and now the railroad’s going through, they’re attracted by that.”

“Do they never come to you, at your home?”

“Not often. They think I’m a sort of white ‘medicine man’––kind of a hoodoo, and leave me alone.”

She looked at him with mystification in her eyes, but did not ask what he meant, and returned to her mother.

“I have eaten. Now we go, is not?”

“Yes, mother. The kind man says we go on, and the red men will not follow us.”

“Good. I have afraid of the men ‘rouge.’ Your father knows not fear; only I know it.”

Soon they were mounted and traveling up the trail as before, the little pack mule following in the rear. No breeze stirred to make the frosty air bite more keenly, and the women rode in comparative comfort, with their hands wrapped in their shawls to keep them warm. They did not try to converse, or only uttered a word now and then in their own tongue. Amalia’s spirit was enrapt in the beauty around and above and below her, so that she could not have spoken more than the merest word for a reply had she tried.

The moonlight brought all the immediate surroundings into sharp relief, and the distant hills in receding gradations seemed to be created out of molten silver touched with palest gold. Above, the vault of the heavens was almost black, and the stars were few, but clear. Even the stones that impeded the horses’ feet seemed to be made of silver. The depths below them seemed as vast and black as the vault above, except for the silver bath of light that touched the tops of the gigantic trees at the bottom of the cañon around which they were climbing.

The silence of this vastness was as fraught with mystery as the scene, and was broken only by the scrambling of the horses over the stones and their heavy breathing. Thus throughout the rest of the night they wended steadily upward, only pausing now and then to allow the animals to breathe, and then on. At last a thing occurred to break the stillness and strike terror to Amalia’s heart. It had occurred once the day before when the silence was most profound. A piercing cry rent the air, that began in a scream of terror and ended in a long-drawn wail of despair.

Amalia slipped from her horse and stumbled over the rough ground to her mother’s side and poured forth a stream of words in her own tongue, and clasped her arms about the rigid form that did not bend toward her, but only sat staring into the white night as if her eye perceived a sight from which she could not turn away.

“Look at me, mother. Oh, try to make her look at me!” The big man lifted her from the horse, and she relaxed into trembling. “There, it is gone now. Walk with me, mother;” and the two walked for a while, holding hands, and Amalia talked unceasingly in low, soothing tones.

After a little time longer the moon paled and the stars disappeared, and soon the sky became overspread with the changing coloring and the splendor of dawn. Then the sun rose out of the glory, but still they kept on their way until the heat began to overcome them. Then they halted where some pines and high rocks made a shelter, but this time the big man did not build a fire. He gave them a little coffee which he had saved for them from what he had steeped during the night, and they ate and rested, and the mother fell quickly into the sleep of exhaustion, as before.

Thus during the middle of the day they rested, Amalia and the big man sometimes sleeping and sometimes conversing quietly.

“I don’t know why mother does this. I never knew her to until yesterday. Father never used to let her look straight ahead of her as she does now. She has always been very brave and strong. She has done wonderful things––but I was not there. When troubles came on my father, I was put in a convent––I know now it was to keep me from harm. I did not know then why I was sent away from them, for my father was not of the religion of the good sisters at the convent,––but now I know––it was to save me.”

“Why did troubles come on your father?”

“What he did I do not know, but I am very sure it was nothing wrong. In my country sometimes men have to break the law to do right; my mother has told me so. He was in prison a long time when I was living in the convent, sheltered and cared for,––and mother––mother was working all alone to get him out––all alone suffering.”

“How could they keep you there if she had to work so hard?”

“My father had a friend. He was not of our country, and he was most kind and good. I think he was of Scotland––or maybe of Ireland; I was so little I do not know. He saved for my mother some of her money so the government did not get it. I think my mother gave it to him, once––before the trouble came. Maybe she knew it would come,––anyway, so it was. I do not know if he was Irish, or of Scotland––but he must have been a good man.”

“Been? Is he dead?”

“Yes. It was of a fever he died. My mother told me. He gave us his name, and to my father his papers to leave our country, for he knew he would die, or my father never could have got out of the country. I never saw him but once. When I saw you, I thought of him. He was grand and good, as are you. My mother came for me at the convent in Paris, and in the night we went to my father, and in the morning we went to the great ship. We said McBride, and all was well. If we had said Manovska when we took the ship, we would have been sent back and my father would have been killed. In the prison we would have died. It was hard to get on the ship, but when we got to this country, nobody cared who got off.”

“How long ago was that?”

“It was at the time of your great war we came. My mother wore the dress of our peasant women, and I did the same.”

“And were you quite safe in this country?”

“For a long time we lived very quietly, and we thought we were. But after a time some one came, and father took him in, and then others came, and went away again, and came again––I don’t know why––they did not tell me,––but this I know. Some one had a great enmity against my father, and at last mother took me in the night to a strange place where we knew no one, and then we went to another place––and to still another. It was very wearisome.”

“What was your father’s business?”

“My father had no business. He was what you call a nobleman. He had very much land, but he was generous and gave it nearly all away to his poor people. My father was very learned and studied much. He made much music––very beautiful––not for money––never for that. Only after we came to this country did he so, to live. Once he played in a great orchestra. It was then those men found him and came so often that he had again to go away and hide. I think they brought him papers––very important––to be sacredly guarded until a right time should come to reveal them.”

“And you have no knowledge why he was followed and persecuted?”

“I was so little at the beginning I do not know. If it was that in his religion he was different,––or if he was trying to change in the government the laws,––for we are not of Russia,––I know that when he gave away his land, the other noblemen were very angry with him, and at the court––where my father was sent by his people for reasons––there was a prince,––I think it was about my mother he hated my father so,––but for what––that I never heard. But he had my father imprisoned, and there in the prison they––What was that word,––hectored? Yes. In the prison they hectored him greatly––so greatly that never more was he straight. It was very sad.”

“I don’t think we would say hectored, for that. I think we would say tortured.”

“Oh, yes. I see. To hector is of the mind, but torture is of the body. It is that I mean––for they were very terrible to him. My mother was there, and they made her look at it to bring him the more quickly to tell for her sake what he would not for his own. I think when she looks long before her at nothing, she is seeing again the tortures of my father, and so she cries out in that terrible way. I think so.”

“What were they trying to get out of him?”

Amalia looked up in his face with a puzzled expression for a moment. “Get––out––of––him?” she asked.

“I mean, what did they want him to tell?”

“Ah, that I know not. It was never told. If they could find him, I think they would try again to learn of him something which he only can tell. I think if they could find my mother, they would now try to learn from her what my father knew, but her lips are like the grave. At that time he had told her nothing, but since then––when we were far out in the wilderness––I do not know. I hope my mother will never be found. Is it a very secret place to which we go?”

“I might call it that––yes. I’ve lived there for twenty years and no white man has found me yet, until the young man, Harry King, was pitched over the edge of eternity and only saved by a––well––a chance––likely.”

The young woman gazed at him wide-eyed, and drew in her breath. “You saved him.”

“If he obeyed me––I did.”

“And all the twenty years were you alone?”

“I always had a horse.”

“But for a companion––had you never one?”

“Never.”

“Are you, too, a good man who has done a deed against the law of your land?”

The big man looked off a moment, then down at her with a little smile playing about his lips. “I never did a deed against the law of any land that I know of, but as for the good part––that’s another thing. I may be fairly good as goodness goes.”

“Goodnessgoes!” She repeated after him as if it were one word from which she was trying to extract a meaning. “Was it then to flee from the wicked world that you lived all the twenty years thus alone?”

“Hardly that, either. To tell the truth, it may be only a habit with me.”

“Will you forgive me that I asked? It was only that to me it has been terrible to live always in hiding and fear. I love people, and desire greatly to have kind people near me,––but of the world where my father and mother lived, and at the court––and of the nobles, of all these I am afraid.”

“Yes, yes. I fancy you were.” A grim look settled about his mouth, although his eyes twinkled kindly. He marveled to think how trustingly they accompanied him into this wilderness––but then––poor babes! What else could they do? “You’ll be safe from all the courts and nobles in the world where I’m taking you.”

“That is why my eyes do not weep for my father. He is now gone where none can find him but God. It is very terrible that a good man should always hide––hide and live in fear––always––even from his own kinsmen. I understand some of the sorrows of the world.”

“You’ll forget it all up there.”

“I will try if my mother recovers.” She drew in her breath with a little quivering catch.

“We’ll wake her now, and start on. It won’t do to waste daylight any longer.” Secretly he was afraid that they might be followed by Indians, and was sorry he had made the fire in the night, but he reasoned that he could never have brought them on without such refreshment. Women are different from men. He could eat raw bacon and hard-tack and go without coffee, when necessary, but to ask women to do so was quite another thing.

For long hours now they traveled on, even after the moon had set, in the darkness. It was just before the dawn, where the trail wound and doubled on itself, that the sorrel horse was startled by a small rolling stone that had been loosened on the trail above them. Instantly the big man halted where they were.

“Are you brave enough to wait here a bit by your mother’s horse while I go on? That stone did not loosen itself. It may be nothing but some little beast,––if it were a bear, the horses would have made a fuss.”

He mounted the sorrel and went forward, leaving her standing on the trail, holding the leading strap of her mother’s horse, which tossed its head and stepped about restlessly, trying to follow. She petted and soothed the animal and talked in low tones to her mother. Then with beating heart she listened. Two men’s voices came down to her––one, the big man’s––and the other––yes, she had heard it before.

“It is ’Arry King, mother. Surely he has come down to meet us,” she said joyfully. She would have hurried on, but bethought herself she would better wait as she had been directed. Soon the big man returned, looking displeased and grim.

“Young chap couldn’t wait. He gave me his promise, but he didn’t keep it.”

“It was ’Arry King?” He made no reply, and they resumed their way as before. “It was long to wait, and nothing to do,” she pleaded, divining his mood.

“I had good reasons, Miss. No matter. I sent him back. No need of him here. We’ll make it before morning now, and he will have the cabin warm and hot coffee for us, if you can stand to go on for a goodish long pull.”

A goodish long pull it surely was, in the darkness, but the women bore up with courage, and their guide led them safely. The horse Amalia rode, being his own horse, knew the way well.

“Don’t try to guide him; he’ll take you quite safely,” he called back to her. “Let the reins hang.” And in the dusk of early morning they safely turned the curve where Harry King had fallen, never knowing the danger.

Harry King, standing in the doorway of the cabin, with the firelight bright behind him, saw them winding down the trail and hurried forward. They were almost stupefied with fatigue. He lifted the mother in his arms without a word and carried her into the cabin and laid her in the bunk, which he had prepared to receive her. He greeted Amalia with a quiet word as the big man led her in, and went out to the horses, relieved them of their burdens, and led them away to the shed by the spring. Soon the big man joined him, and began rubbing down the animals.

“I will do this. You must rest,” said Harry.

“I need none of your help,” he said, not surlily, as the words might sound, but colorlessly.

“I needed yours when I came here––or you saved me and brought me here, and now whatever you wish I’ll do, but for to-night you must take my help. I’m not apologizing for what I did, because I thought it right, but––”

“Peace, man, peace. I’ve lived a long time with no man to gainsay me. I’ll take what comes now and thank the Lord it’s no worse. We’ll leave the cabin to the women, after I see that they have no fright about it, and we’ll sleep in the fodder. There have been worse beds.”

“I have coffee on the hearth, hot, and corn dodgers––such as we used to make in the army. I’ve made them often before.”

“Turn the beasts free; there isn’t room for them all in the shed, and I’ll go get a bite and join you soon.”

So Harry King did not return to the cabin that night, much as he desired to see Amalia again, but lay down on the fodder and tried to sleep. His heart throbbed gladly at the thought of her safety. He had not dared to inquire after her father. Although he had seen so little of the big man he understood his mood, and having received such great kindness at his hands, he was truly sorry at the invasion of his peace. Undoubtedly he did not like to have a family, gathered from the Lord only knew where, suddenly quartered on him for none knew how long.

The cabin was only meant for a hermit of a man, and little suited to women and their needs. A mixed household required more rooms. He tried to think the matter through and to plan, but the effort brought drowsiness, and before the big man returned he was asleep.

CHAPTER XVI

A PECULIAR POSITION

“Well, young man, we find ourselves in what I call a peculiar position.”

A smile that would have been sardonic, were it not for a few lines around the corners of his eyes which belied any sinister suspicion, spread grimly across the big man’s face as he stood looking down on Harry King in the dusk of the unlighted shed. The younger man rose quickly from the fodder where he had slept heavily after the fatigues of the past day and night, and stood respectfully looking into the big man’s face.

“I––I––realize the situation. I thought about it after I turned in here––before you came down––or up––to this––ahem––bedroom. I can take myself off, sir. And if there were any way––of relieving you of––the––whole––embarrassment,––I––I––would do so.”

“Everything’s quiet down at the cabin. I’ve been there and looked about a bit. They had need of sleep. You go back to your bunk, and I’ll take mine, and we’ll talk the thing over before we see them again. As for your taking yourself off, that remains to be seen. I’m not crabbed, that’s not the secret of my life alone,––though you might think it. I––ahem––ahem.” The big man cleared his throat and stretched his spare frame full length on the fodder where he had slept. With his elbow on the bed of corn stalks he lifted his head on his hand and gazed at Harry King, not dreamily as when he first saw him, but with covert keenness.

“Lie down in your place––a bit––lie down. We’ll talk until we’ve arrived at a conclusion, and it may be a long talk, so we may as well be comfortable.”

Harry King went back to his own bunk and lay prone, his forehead resting on his folded arms and his face hidden. “Very well, sir; I’ll do my best. We have to accept each other for the best there is in us, I take it. You’ve saved my life and the life of those two women, and we all owe you our grat––”

“Go to, go to. It’s not of that I’m wishing to speak. Let’s begin at the beginning, or, as near the beginning as we can. I’ve been standing here looking at you while you were sleeping,––and last night––I mean early this morning when I came up here, I––with a torch I studied your face well and long. A man betrays his true nature when he is sleeping. The lines of what he has been thinking and feeling show then when he cannot disguise them by smiles or words. I’m old enough to be your father––yes––so it might have been––and with your permission I’ll talk to you straight.”

Harry King lifted his head and looked at the other, then resumed his former position. “Thank you,” was all he said.

“You’ve been well bred. You’re in trouble. I ask you what is your true name and what you have done?”

The young man did not speak. He lay still as if he had heard nothing, but the other saw his hands clinch into knotted fists and the muscles of his arms grow rigid. His heart beat heavily and the blood roared in his ears. At last he lifted his head and looked back at the big man and spoke monotonously.

“I gave you my name––all the name I have.” His face was white in the dim light and the lids drew close over his gray eyes.

“You prefer to lie to me? I ask in good faith.”

“All the name I have is the one I gave you, Harry King.”

“And you will hold to the lie?” They looked steadily into each other’s eyes. The young man nodded. “And there was more I asked of you.”

Then the young man turned away from the keen eyes that had held him and sat up in the fodder and clasped his knees with his hands and looked straight out before him, regarding nothing––nothing but his own thoughts. A strange expression crept over his face,––was it fear––or was it an inward terror? Suddenly he put out his hand with a frantic gesture toward the darkest corner of the place, “It’s there,” he cried in a voice scarcely above a whisper, then hid his eyes and moaned. At the sight, the big man’s face softened.

“Lad, lad, ye’re in trouble. I saved your body as it hung over the cliff––and the Lord only knows how ye were saved. I took ye home and laid ye in my own bunk,––and looked on your face––and there my heart cried on the Lord for the first time in many years. I had forsworn the company of men, and of all women,––and the faith of my fathers had died in me,––but there, as I looked on your face––the lost years came back. And now––ye’re only Harry King. Only Harry King.”

“That’s all.” The young man’s lips set tightly and the cords of his neck stood out. Nothing was lost to the eyes that watched him so intently.

“I had a son––once. I held him in my arms––for an hour––and then left him forever. You have a face that reminds me of one––one I hated––and it minds me of one I––I––loved,––of one I loved better than I loved life.”

Then Harry King turned and gazed in the big man’s eyes, and as he gazed, the withdrawn, inward look left his own. He still sat clasping his knees. “I can more easily tell you what I have done than I can tell you my name. I have sworn never to utter it again.” He was weeping, but he hid his tears for very shame of them.

The older man shook his head. “I’ve known sorrow, boy, but the lesson of it, never. Men say there is a thing to be learned from sorrow, but to me it has brought only rebellion and bitterness. So I’ve missed the good of it because it came upon me through arrogance and injustice––not my own. So now I say to you––if it was at the expense of your soul I saved your life, it were better I had let you go down. Lad,––you’ve brought me a softness,––it’s like what a man feels for a woman. I’m glad it’s come back to me. It is good to feel. I’d make a son of you,––but––for the truth’s sake tell me a bit more.”

“I had a friend and I killed him. I was angry and killed him. I have left my name in his grave.” Harry King rose and walked away and stood shivering in the entrance of the shed. Then he came back and spoke humbly. “Do with me what you will, but call me Harry King. I have nothing on earth but the clothes on my body, and they are in rags. If you have work for me to do, let me do it, in mercy. If not, let me go back to the plains and die there.”

“How long ago was this?”

“More––more than two years ago––yes, three––perhaps.”

“And where have you been?”

“Knocking about––hiding. For a while I had work on the road they are building––”

“Road? What road?”

“The new railroad across the continent.”

“Where, young man, where?”

“From Chicago on. They got it as far as Cheyenne, but that was the very place of all others where they would be apt to hunt for me. I got news of a detective hanging about the camp, and I was sure he had come there to track me. I had my wages and my clothes, and when I found they had traced me there, I spent all I had for my horse and took my pack and struck out over the plains.” He paused and wiped the cold drops from his forehead, then lifted his head with gathered courage. “One day,––I found these people, nigh starving for both water and food, and without strength to go where they could be provided for. They, too, were refugees, I learned, and so I cast my lot with theirs, and served them as best I could.”

“And now they have fallen to the two of us to provide for. You say, give you work? I’ve lived here these twenty years and found work for no man but myself. I’ve found plenty of that––just to keep alive, part of the time. It’s bad here in the winter––if the stores give out. Tell me what you know of these women.”

“Where is the man?”

“Dead. I found him dead before I reached them. I left him lying where I found him, and pushed on––got there just in time. He wasn’t three hours away from them as a man walks. I made them as comfortable as I could and saw that no Indians were about, nor had been, they said; so I ventured back and made a grave for him as best I could, and told the daughter only, for the old lady seemed out of her head. I don’t know what we can do with her if she gets worse. I don’t know.” As the big man talked he noticed the younger one growing calmer and listening intently.

“Before I buried him I searched him and found a few papers––just letters in a strange language, and from the feeling of his coat I judged others were hid––sewed in it, so I fetched it back to her––the young one. You thought I was long gone, and there was where you made the blunder. How did you suppose I came by the pack mule and the other horse?”

“When I saw them, I knew you must have gone to Higgins’ Camp and back, but how could I know it before? You might have been in need of me, and of food.”

“We’ll say no more of it. Those men at the camp are beasts. I bought those animals and paid gold for them. They wanted to know where I got the gold. I told them where they’d never get it. They asked me ten prices for those beasts, and then tried to keep me there until they could clean me out and get hold of my knowledge. But I skipped away in the night when they were all drunk and asleep. Then I had to make a long detour to put them off the track if they should try to follow me, and all that took time.”

The big man paused to fill and light his pipe. “And what next?” asked Harry King.

“Except for enough food and water to last us up the trail you came, I packed nothing back to the wagon, and so had room to bring a few of their things up here, and there may be some of your own among them––they said something about it. We hauled the wagon as far as a good place to hide it, in a wash, could be found, and we covered it––and our tracks. But there was nothing left in it but a few of their utensils, unless the box they did not open contained something. It was left in the wagon. That was the best I could do with only the help of the young woman, and she was too weak to do much. It may lie there untouched for ten years unless a rain scoops it out, and that’s not likely.

“I showed the young woman as we came along where her father lay, and as we came to a halt a bit farther on, she went back, while her mother slept, and knelt there praying for an hour. I doubt any good it did him, but it comforted her heart. It’s a good religion for a woman, where she does not have to think things out for herself, but takes a priest’s word for it all. And now they’re here, and you’re here, and my home is invaded, and my peace is gone, and may the Lord help me––I can’t.”

Harry King looked at him a moment in silence. “Nor can I––help––but to take myself off.”

“Take yourself off! And leave me alone with two women? I who have foresworn them forever! How do you know but that they may each be possessed by seven devils? But there! It isn’t so bad. As long as they stay you’ll stay. It was through you they are here, and close on to winter,––and if it was summer, it would be as bad to send them away where they would have no place to stay and no way to live. Lad, the world’s hard on women. I’ve seen much.”

Harry King went again and stood in the open entrance of the shed and waited. The big man saw that he had succeeded in taking the other’s mind off himself, and had led him to think of others, and now he followed up the advantage toward confidence that he had thus gained. He also came to the entrance and laid his kindly hand on the younger man’s shoulder, and there in the pale light of that cloudy fall morning, standing in the cool, invigorating air, with the sound of falling water in their ears, the two men made a compact, and the end was this.

“Harry King, if you’ll be my son, I’ll be your father. My boy would be about your age––if he lives,––but if he does, he has been taught to look down on me––on the very thought of me.” He cast a wistful glance at the young man’s face as he spoke. “From the time I held him in my arms, a day-old baby, I’ve never seen him, and it may be he has never heard of me. He was in good hands and was given over for good reasons, to one who hated my name and my race––and me. For love of his mother I did this. It was all I could do for her; I would have gone down into the grave for her.

“I, too, have been a wanderer over the face of the earth. At first I lived in India––in China––anywhere to be as far on the other side of the earth from her grave and my boy, as I vowed I would, but I’ve kept the memory of her sweet in my heart. You need not fear I’ll ask again for your name. Until you choose to give it I will respect your wish,––and for the rest––speak of it when you must––but not before. I have no more to ask. You’ve been well bred, as I said, and that’s enough for me. You’re more than of age––I can see that––but it’s my opinion you need a father. Will you take me?”

The young man drew in his breath sharply through quivering lips, and made answer with averted head: “Cain! Cain and the curse of Cain! Can I allow another to share it?”

“Another shares it and you have no choice.”

“I will be more than a son. Sons hurt their fathers and accept all from them and give little. You lifted me out of the abyss and brought me back to life. You took on yourself the burden laid on me, to save those who trusted me, knowing nothing of my crime,––and now you drag my very soul from hell. I will do more than be your son––I will give you the life you saved. Who are you?”

Then the big man gave his name, making no reciprocal demand. What mattered a name? It was the man, by whatever name, he wanted.

“I am an Irishman by birth, and my name is Larry Kildene. If you’ll go to a little county not so far from Dublin, but to the north, you’ll find my people.”

He was looking away toward the top of the mountain as he spoke, and was seeing his grandfather’s house as he had seen it when a boy, and so he did not see the countenance of the young man at his side. Had he done so, he would not have missed knowing what the young man from that moment knew, and from that moment, out of the love now awakened in his heart for the big man, carefully concealed, giving thanks that he had not told his name.

For a long minute they stood thus looking away from each other, while Harry King, by a mighty effort, gained control of his features, and his voice. Then although white to the lips, he spoke quietly: “Harry King––the murderer––be the son of Larry Kildene––Larry Kildene––I––to slink away in the hills––forever to hide––”

“No more of that. I’ll show you a new life. Give me your hand, Harry King.” And the young man extended both hands in a silence through which no words could have been heard.

CHAPTER XVII

ADOPTING A FAMILY

As the two men walked down toward the cabin they saw Amalia standing beside the door in the sunlight which now streamed through a rift in the clouds, gazing up at the towering mountain and listening to the falling water. She spied them and came swiftly to them, extending both hands in a sweet, gracious impulsiveness, and began speaking rapidly even before she reached them.

“Ah! So beautiful is your home! It is so much that I would say to you of gratitude in my heart––it is like a river flowing swiftly to tell you––Ah! I cannot say it all––and we come and intrude ourselves upon you thus that you have no place where to go for your own sleeping––Is not? Yes, I know it. So must we think quickly how we may unburden you of us––my mother and myself––only that she yet is sleeping that strange sleep that seems still not like sleep. Let me that I serve you, sir?”

Larry Kildene looked on her glowing, upturned face, gathering his slower wits for some response to her swift speech, while she turned to the younger man, grasping his hands in the same manner and not ceasing the flow of her utterance.

“And you, at such severe labor and great danger, have found this noble man, and have sent him to us––to you do we owe what never can we pay––it is thus while we live must we always thank you in our hearts. And to this place––so won-n-der-ful––Ah! Beautiful like heaven––Is not? Yes, and the sweet sound always in the air––like heaven and the sound of wings––to stop here even for this night is to make those sorrowful thoughts lie still and for a while speak nothing.”

As she turned from one to the other, addressing each in turn, warm lights flashed in her eyes through tears, like stars in a deep pool. Her dark hair rolled back from her smooth oval forehead in heavy coils, and over her head and knotted under her perfect chin, outlining its curve, was a silken peasant handkerchief with a crimson border of the richest hue, while about the neck of her colorless, closely fitted gown was a piece of exquisite hand-wrought lace. She stood before them, a vision from the old world, full of innate ladyhood, simple as a peasant, at once appealing and dominating, impulsive, yet shy. Her beautiful enunciation, her inverted and quaintly turned English, alive with poetry, was typical of her whole personality, a sweet and strange mixture of the high-bred aristocrat and the simple directness and strength of the peasant.

The two men made stumbling and embarrassed replies. That tender and beautiful quality of chivalry toward women, belonging by nature to undefiled manhood, was awakened in them, and as one being, not two, they would have laid their all at her feet. This, indeed, they literally did. The small, one-room cabin, which had so long served for Larry Kildene’s palace, was given over entirely to the two women, and the men made their own abode in the shed where they had slept.

This they accomplished by creating a new room, by extending the roof-covered space Larry had used for his stable and the storing of fodder, far enough along under the great overhanging rock to allow of comfortable bunks, a place to walk about, and a fireplace also. The labor involved in the making of this room was a boon to Harry King.

Upon the old stone boat which Larry had used for a similar purpose he hauled stones gathered from the rock ledge and built therewith a chimney, and with the few tools in the big man’s store he made seats out of hewn logs, and a rude table. This work was left to him by the older man purposely, while he occupied himself with the gathering in of the garden stuff for themselves and for the animals. A matter that troubled his good heart not a little was that of providing for the coming winter enough food supply for his suddenly acquired family. Of grain and fodder he thought he had enough for animals kept in idleness, as he still had stores gathered in previous years for his own horse. But for these women, he must not allow them to suffer the least privation.

It was not the question of food alone that disturbed him. At last he laid his troubles before Harry King.

“You know, lad, it won’t be so long before the snow will be down on us, and I’m thinking what shall we do with them when the long winter days set in.” He nodded his head toward the cabin. “It’s already getting too cold for them to sit out of doors as they do. I should have windows in my cabin––if I could get the glass up here. They can’t live there in the darkness, with the snow banked around them, with nothing to use their fingers on as women like to do. Now, if they had cloth or thread––but what use had I for such things? They’re not among my stores. I did not lay out to make it a home for women. The mother will get farther and farther astray with her dreams if she has nothing to do such as women like.”

“I think we should ask them––or ask Amalia, she is wise. Have you enough to keep them on––of food?”

“Of food, yes. Such as it is. No flour, but plenty of good wheat and corn. I always pound it up and bake it, but it is coarse fare for women. There’s plenty of game for the hunting, and easy got, but it’s something to think about we’ll need, else we’ll all go loony.”

“You have lived long here alone and seem sound of mind,––except for––” Harry King smiled, “except for a certain unworldliness that would pass for lunacy in the world below these heights.”

“Let alone, son. I’ve usually had my own way for these years and have formed the habit, but I’ve had my times. At the best it’s a sort of lunacy that takes a man away from his fellows, especially an Irishman. Maybe you’ll discover for yourself before we part––but it’s not to the point now. I’m asking you how we can keep the mother from brooding and the daughter happy? She’s asking to be sent away to earn money for her mother. She thinks she can take her mother with her to the nearest place on that new railroad you tell me of, and so on to some town. I tell her, no. And if she goes, and leaves her mother here––bless you––what would we do with her? Why, the woman would go yonder and jump over the cliff.”

“Oh, it would never do to listen to her. It would never do for her to try living in a city earning her bread––not while––” Harry King paused and turned a white, drawn face toward the mountain. Larry watched him. “I can do nothing.” He threw out his hands with a sudden downward movement. “I, a criminal in hiding! My manhood is of no avail! My God!”

“Remember, lad, the women have need of you right here. I’m keeping you on this mountain at my valuation, not yours. I have need of you, and your past is not to intrude in this place, and when you go out in the world again, as you will, when the right time comes, you’ll know how to meet––and face––your life––or death, as a man should.

“Hold yourself with a firm hand, and do the work of the days as they come. It’s all the Lord gives us to do at any time. If I only had books––now,––they would help us,––but where to get them––or how? We’ll even go and ask the women, as you advise.”

They all ate together in the little cabin, as was their habit, a meal prepared by Amalia, and carefully set out with all the dishes the cabin afforded: so few that there were not enough to serve all at once, but eked out by wooden blocks, and small lace serviettes taken from Amalia’s store of linen. At noon one day Larry Kildene spoke his anxieties for their welfare, and cleverly managed to make the theme a gay one.

“Where’s the use in adopting a family if you don’t get society out of them? The question I ask is, when the winter shuts us in, what are we going to do for sport––work––what you will? It’s indoor sport I’m meaning, for Harry and I have the hunting and providing in the daytime. No, never you ask me what I was doing before you came. I was my own master then––”

“And now you are ours? That is good, Sir Kildene. You have to say what to do, and me, I accept to do what you advise. Is not?”

Amalia turned to Larry and smiled, and whenever Amalia smiled, her mother would smile also, and nod her head as if to approve, although she usually sat in silence.

“Yours to command,” said Larry, bowing.

“He’s master of us all, but it’s yours to direct, Lady Amalia.”

“Oh, me, Mr. ’Arry. It is better for me I make for you both sufficient to eat, so all goes well. I think I have heard men are always pleased of much that is excellent to eat and drink.”

“Now, listen. We have only a short time before the heavy snows will come down on us, and then there will be no chance whatever to get supplies of any sort before spring. How far is the road completed now, Harry?”

“It should be well past Cheyenne by now. They must be working toward Laramie rapidly. If––if––you think best, I will go down and get supplies––whatever can be found there.”

“No. I have a plan. There’s enough for one man to do here finishing the jobs I have laid out, but one of us can very well be spared, and as you have wakened me from my long sleep, and stirred my old bones to life, and as I know best how to travel in this region, I’ll take the mule along, and go myself. I have a fancy for traveling by rail again. You ladies make out a list of all you need, and I’ll fill the order, in so far as the stations have the articles. If I can’t find the right things at one station, I may at another, even if I go back East for them.”

“Ah, but, Sir Kildene, it is that we have no money. If but we could get from the wagon the great box, there have we enough of things to give us labor for all the winter. It is the lovely lace I make. A little of the thread I have here, but not sufficient for long. So, too, there is my father’s violin. It made me much heart pain to leave it––for me, I play a little,––and there is also of cloth such as men wear––not of great quantity––but enough that I can make for you––something––a little––maybe, Mr. ’Arry he like well some good shirt of wool––as we make for our peasant––Is not?” Harry looked down on his worn gray shirt sleeves, then into her eyes, and on the instant his own fell. She took it for simple embarrassment, and spoke on.

“Yes. To go with us and help us so long and terrible a way, it has made very torn your apparel.”

“It makes that we improve him, could we obtain the box,” said the mother, speaking for the first time that day. Her voice was so deep and full that it was almost masculine, but her modulations were refined and most agreeable.

Amalia laughed for very gladness that her mother at last showed enough interest in what was being said to speak.

“Ah, mamma, to improve––it is to make better the mind––the heart––but of this has Mr. ’Arry no need. Is not, Sir Kildene? I call you always Sir as title to nobleness of character. We have, in our country, to inherit title, but here to make it of such character. It is well, I think so.”

Poor Larry Kildene had his own moment of embarrassment, but with her swift appreciation of their moods she talked rapidly on, leaving the compliment to fall as it would, and turning their thoughts to the subject in hand. “But the box, mamma, it is heavy, and it is far down on the terrible plain. If that you should try to obtain it, Sir Kildene: Ah, I cannot!––Even to think of the peril is a hurt in my heart. It must even lie there.”

“And the men ‘rouge’––”

“Yes. Of the red men––those Indian––of them I have great fear.”

“The danger from them is past, now. If the road is beyond Cheyenne, it must have reached Laramie or nearly so, and they would hang around the stations, picking up what they can, but the government has them in hand as never before. They would not dare interfere with white men anywhere near the road. I’ve dreamed of a railroad to connect the two oceans, but never expected to see it in my lifetime. I’ve taken a notion to go and see it––just to look at it,––to try to be reconciled to it.”

“Reconciled? It is to like it, you mean––Sir Kildene? Is it not won-n-derful––the achievement?”

“Oh, yes, the achievement, as you say. But other things will follow, and the plains will no longer keep men at bay. The money grabbers will pour in, and all the scum of creation will flock toward the setting sun. Then, too, I shall hate to see the wild animals that have their own rights killed in unsportsmanlike manner, and annihilated, as they are wherever men can easily reach them. Men are wasteful and bad. I’ve seen things in the wild places of the earth––and in the places where men flock together in hoards––and where they think they are most civilized, and the result has been what you see here,––a man living alone with a horse for companionship, and the voice of the winds and the falling water to fill his soul. Go to. Go to.”

Larry Kildene rose and stood a moment in the cabin door, then sauntered out in the sun, and off toward the fall. He had need to think a while alone. His companions knew this necessity was on him, and said nothing––only looked at each other, and took up the question of their needs for the winter.

“Mr. ’Arry, is it possible to reach with safety a station? I mean is time yet to go and return before the snows? Here are no deadly wolves as in my own country––but is much else to make dangerous the way.”

“There must be time or he would not propose it. I don’t know about the snows here.”

“I have seen that Sir Kildene drinks with most pleasure the coffee, but is little left––or not enough for all––to drink it. My mother and I we drink with more pleasure the tea, and of tea we ourselves have a little. It is possible also I make of things more palatable if I have the sugar, but is very little here. I have searched well, the foods placed here. Is it that Sir Kildene has other places where are such articles?”

“All he has is in the bins against the wall yonder.”

“Here is the key he gave me, and I have look well, but is not enough to last but for one through all the months of winter. Ah, poor man! We have come and eat his food like the wolves of the wild country at home, is not? I have make each day of the coffee for him, yes, a good drink, and for you not so good––forgive,––but for me and my mother, only to pretend, that it might last for him. It is right so. We have gone without more than to have no coffee, and this is not privation. To have too much is bad for the soul.”

Amalia’s mother seemed to have withdrawn herself from them and sat gazing into the smoking logs, apparently not hearing their conversation. Harry King for the second time that day looked in Amalia’s eyes. It was a moment of forgetfulness. He had forbidden himself this privilege except when courtesy demanded.

“You forgive––that I put––little coffee in your drink?”

“Forgive? Forgive?”

He murmured questioningly as if he hardly comprehended her meaning, as indeed he did not. His mind was going over the days since first he saw her, toiling to gather enough sagebrush to cook a drop of tea for her father, and striving to conceal from him that she, herself, was taking none, and barely tasting her hard biscuit that there might be enough to keep life in her parents. As she sat before him now, in her worn, mended, dark dress with the wonderful lace at the throat, and her thin hands lying on the crimson-bordered kerchief in her lap,––her fingers playing with the fringe, he still looked in her eyes and murmured, “Forgive?”

“Ah, Mr. ’Arry, your mind is sleeping and has gone to dream. Listen to me. If one goes to the plain, quickly he must go. I make with haste this naming of things to eat. It is sad we must always eat––eat. In heaven maybe is not so.” She wandered a moment about the cabin, then laughed for the second time. “Is no paper on which to write.”

“There is no need of paper; he’ll remember. Just mention them over. Coffee,––is there any tea beside that you have?”

“No, but no need. I name it not.”

“Tea is light and easily brought. What else?”

“And paper. I ask for that but for me to write my little romance of all this––forgive––it is for occupation in the long winter. You also must write of your experiences––perhaps––of your history of––of––You like it not? Why, Mr. ’Arry! It is to make work for the mind. The mind must work––work––or die. The hands––well. I make lace with the hands––but for the mind is music––or the books––but here are no books––good––we make them. So, paper I ask, and of crayon––Alas! It is in the box! What to do?”

“Listen. We’ll have that box, and bring it here on the mountain. I’ll get it.”

“Ah, no! No. Will you break my heart?” She seized his arm and looked in his eyes, her own brimming with tears. Then she flung up her arms in her dramatic way, and covered her eyes. “I can see it all so terrible. If you should go there and the Indian strike you dead––or the snow come too soon and kill you with the cold––in the great drift lying white––all the terrible hours never to see you again––Ah, no!”

In that instant his heart leaped toward her and the blood roared in his ears. He would have clasped her to him, but he only stood rigidly still. “Hands off, murderer!” The words seemed shouted at him by his own conscience. “I would rather die––than that you should not have your box,” was all he said, and left the cabin. He, too, had need to think things out alone.

CHAPTER XVIII

LARRY KILDENE’S STORY

“Man, but this is none so bad––none so bad.”

Larry Kildene sat on a bench before a roaring fire in the room added on to the fodder shed. The chimney which Harry King had built, although not quite completed to its full height, was being tried for the first time, as the night was too cold for comfort in the long, low shed without fire, and the men had come down early this evening to talk over their plans before Larry should start down the mountain in the morning. They had heaped logs on the women’s fire and seen that all was right for them, and with cheerful good-nights had left them to themselves.

Now, as they sat by their own fire, Harry could see Amalia by hers, seated on a low bench of stone, close to the blazing torch of pine, so placed that its smoke would be drawn up the large chimney. It was all the light they had for their work in the evenings, other than the firelight. He could see her fingers moving rapidly and mechanically at some pretty open-work pattern, and now and then grasping deftly at the ball of fine white thread that seemed to be ever taking little leaps, and trying to roll into the fire, or out over the cabin floor. She used a fine, slender needle and seemed to be performing some delicate magic with her fingers. Was she one of the three fates continually drawing out the thread of his life and weaving therewith a charmed web? And if so––when would she cease?

“It’s a good job and draws well.”

“The chimney? Yes, it seems to.” Harry roused himself and tried to close his mind against the warm, glowing picture. “Yes––yes. It draws well. I’m inclined to be a bit proud, although I never could have done it if you had not given me the lessons.”

“It’s art, my boy. To build a good fireplace is just that. Did you ever think that the whole world––and the welfare of it––centers just around that;––the fireplace and the hearth––or what stands for it in these days––maybe a little hole in the wall with a smudge of coal in it, as they have in the towns––but it’s the hearth and the cradle beside it––and––the mother.”

Larry’s voice died almost to a whisper, and his chin dropped on his breast, and his eyes gazed on the burning logs; and Harry, sitting beside him, gazed also at the same logs, but the pictures wrought in the alchemy of their souls were very different.

To Harry it was a sweet, oval face––a flush from the heat of the fire more on the smooth cheek that was toward it than on the other, and warm flame flashes in the large eyes that looked up at him from time to time, while the slender figure bent a little forward to see the better, as the wonderful hands kept up the never ceasing motion. A white linen cloth spread over her lap cast a clearer, more rosy light under her chin and brought out the strength of it and the delicate curves of it, which Harry longed even to dare to look upon in the rarest stolen intervals, without the clamor and outcry in his heart. It was always the same––the cry of Cain in the wilderness. Would God it might some day cease! What to him might be the hearth fire and the cradle, and the mother, that the big man should dwell on them thus? What had they meant in Larry Kildene’s life, he who had lived for twenty years the life of a hermit, and had forsworn women forever, as he said?

“I tell ye, lad, there’s a thing I would say to you––before I leave, but it’s sore to touch upon.” Harry made a deprecating gesture. “No, it’s best I tell you. I––I’ll come back––never fear––it’s my plan to come back, but in this life you may count on nothing for a surety. I’ve learned that, and to prove it, look at me. I made sure, never would I open my heart again to think on my fellow beings, but as aliens to my life, and I’ve lived it out for twenty years, and thought to hold out to the end. I held the Indians at bay through their superstitions, and they would no more dare to cross my path with hostile intent than they would dare take their chances over that fall above there. Where did I put my pipe? I can’t seem to find things as I did in the cabin.”

“Here it is, sir. I placed that stone further out at the end of the chimney on purpose for it, and in this side I’ve left a hole for your tobacco. I thought I was very clever doing that.”

“And we’d be fine and cozy here in the winter––if it wer’n’t for the women––a––a––now I’m blundering. I’d never turn them out if they lived there the rest of their days. But to have a lad beside me as I might have had––if you’d said, ‘Here it is, father,’ but now, it would have have been music to me. You see, Harry, I forswore the women harder than I did the men, and it’s the longing for the son I held in my arms an hour and then gave up, that has lived in me all these years. The mother––gone––The son I might have had.”

“I can’t say that––to you. I have a curse on me, and it will stay until I have paid for my crime. But I’ll be more to you than sons are to their fathers. I’ll be faithful to you as a dog to his master, and love you more. I’ll live for you even with the curse on me, and if need be, I’ll die for you.”

“It’s enough. I’ll ask you no more. Have you no curiosity to hear what I have to tell you?”

“I have, indeed I have. But it seems I can’t ask it––unless I’m able to return your confidence. To talk of my sorrow only deepens it. It drives me wild.”

“You’ll have it yet to learn, that nothing helps a sorrow that can’t be helped like bearing it. I don’t mean to lie down under it like a dumb beast––but just take it up and bear it. That’s what you’re doing now, and sometime you’ll be able to carry it, and still laugh now and again, when it’s right to laugh––and even jest, on occasion. It’s been done and done well. It’s good for a man to do it. The lass down there at the cabin is doing it––and the mother is not. She’s living in the past. Maybe she can’t help it.”

“When I first came on them out there in the desert, she seemed brave and strong. He was a poor, crippled man, with enormous vitality and a leonine head. The two women adored him and lived only for him, and he never knew it. He lived for an ideal and would have died for it. He did not speak English as well as they. I used to wish I could understand him, for he had a poet’s soul, and eyes like his daughter’s. He seemed to carry some secret with him, and no doubt was followed about the world as he thought he was. Fleeing myself, I could not know, but from things the mother has dropped, they must have seen terrible times together, she and her husband.”

“A wonderful deal of poetry and romance always clung to the names of Poland and Hungary for me. When I was young, our part of the world thrilled at the name of Kosciuszko and Kossuth. I’d give a good deal to know what this man’s secret was. All those old tales of mystery, like ‘The Man with the Iron Mask,’ and stories of noblemen spirited away to Siberia, of men locked for many years in dungeons, like the ‘Prisoner of Chillon,’ which fired the fancy and genius of Byron and sent him to fight for the oppressed, used to fill my dreams.” Larry talked on as if to himself. It seemed as if it were a habit formed when he had only himself with whom to visit, and Harry was interested.

“Now, to almost come upon a man of real ideals and a secret,––and just miss it. I ought to have been out in the world doing some work worth while––with my miserable, broken life––Boy! I knew that man McBride! I knew him for sure. We were in college together. He left Oxford to go to Russia, wild with the spirit of adventure and something more. He was a dreamer––with a practical turn, too. There, no doubt, he met these people. I judge this Manovska must have been in the diplomatic service of Poland, from what Amalia told us. Have you any idea whether that woman sitting there all day long rapt in her own thoughts knows her husband’s secret? Is it a thing any one now living would care to know?”

“Indeed, yes. They lived in terror of the prince who hounded him over the world. The mother trusted no one, but Amalia told me––enough––all she knows herself. I don’t know if the mother has the secret or not, but at least she guesses it. The poor man was trying to live until he could impart his knowledge to the right ones to bring about an upheaval that would astonish the world. It meant revolution, whatever it was. Amalia imagines it was to place a Polish king on the throne of Russia, but she does not know. She told me of stolen records of a Polish descendant of Catherine II of Russia. She thinks they were brought to her father after he came to this country.”

“If he had such knowledge or even thought he had, it was enough to set them on his track all his life; the wonder is that he was let to live at all.”

“The mother never mentioned it, but Amalia told me. We talked more freely out in the desert. That remarkable woman walked at her husband’s side over all the terrible miles to Siberia, and through her he escaped,––and of the horrors of those years she never would speak, even to her daughter. It’s not to be wondered at that her mind is astray. It’s only a wonder that she is for the most part so calm.”

“Well, the grave holds many a mystery, and what a fascination a mystery has for humanity, savage or civilized! I’ve kept the Indians at bay all this time by that means. They fear––they know not what, and the mystery holds them. Now, for ourselves, I leave you for a little while in charge of––the women––and of all my possessions.” Larry, gazing into the blazing logs, smiled. “You may not think so much of them, but it’s not so little now. Talk about lunacy––man, I understand it. I’ve been a lunatic––for––ever since I made a find here in this mountain.”

He paused and mused a while, and Harry’s thoughts dwelt for the time on his own find in the wing of the cabin, where the firewood was stored. The ring and the chest––he had not forgotten them, but by no means would he mention them.

“You may wonder why I should tell you this, but when I’m through, you’ll know. It all came about because of a woman.” Larry Kildene cast a sidelong glance at Harry, and the glance was keen and saw more than the younger man dreamed. “It’s more often so than any other way––almost always because of a woman. Her name may be anything––Mary––Elizabeth,––but, a woman. This one’s name was Katherine. Not like the Katherine of Shakespeare, but the sweetest––the tenderest mother-woman the Lord ever gave to man. I see her there in the fire. I’ve seen her there these many years. Well, she was twin sister to the man who hated me. He hated me––for why, I don’t know––perhaps because he never could influence me. He would make all who cared for him bow before his will.

“When I first saw her, she lived in his home. He was a banker of means,––not wholly of his own getting, but partly so. His father was a man of thrift and saving––anyway, he came to set too much store by money. Sometimes I think he might have been jealous of me because I had the Oxford training, and wished me to feel that wealth was a greater thing to have. Scotchmen think more of education than we of Ireland. It’s a good thing, of course, but I’d never have looked down on him because he went lacking it. But for some indiscretion maybe I would have had money, too. It was spent too lavishly on me in my youth. But no. I had none––only the experience and the knowledge of what it might bring.

“Well, it came about that I came to America to gain the money I lacked, and having learned a bit, in spite of Oxford and the schools, of a practical nature, I took a position in his bank. All was very well until I met her. Now there were the rosy cheeks and the dark hair for you! She looked more like an Irish lass than a Scotch one. But they’re not so different, only that the Irish are for the most part comelier.

“Now this banker had a very sweet wife, and she was kind to the Irish lad and welcomed him to her house. I’m thinking she liked me a bit––I liked her at all events. She welcomed me to her house until she was forbid. It was after they forbid me the house that I took to walking with Katherine, when all thought she was at Sunday School or visiting a neighbor, or even––at the last––when no other time could be stolen––when they thought her in bed. We walked there by the river that flows by the town of Leauvite.”

Again Larry Kildene paused and shot a swift glance at the young man at his side, and noted the drawn lids and blanched face, but he kept on. “In the moonlight we walked––lad––the ground there is holy now, because she walked upon it. We used to go to a high bluff that made a sheer fall to the river below––and there we used to stand and tell each other––things we dreamed––of the life we should live together––Ah, that life! She has spent it in heaven. I––I––have spent the most of it here.” He did not look at Harry King again. His voice shook, but he continued. “After a time her brother got to know about it, and he turned me from the bank, and sent her to live with his father’s sisters in Scotland.

“Kind old ladies, but unmarried, and too old for such a lass. How could they know the heart of a girl who loved a man? It was I who knew that. What did her brother know––her own twin brother? Nothing, because he could see only his own thoughts, never hers, and thought his thoughts were enough for wife or girl. I tell you, lad, men err greatly in that, and right there many of the troubles of life step in. The old man, her father, had left all his money to his son, but with the injunction that she was to be provided for, all her days, of his bounty. It’s a mean way to treat a woman––because––see? She has no right to her thoughts, and her heart is his to dispose of where he wills––not as she wills––and then comes the trouble.

“I ask you, lad, if you loved a girl as fine as silk and as tender as a flower you could crush in your hand with a touch ungentle, and you saw one holding her with that sort of a touch,––even if it was meant in love,––I’ll not be unjust, he loved her as few love their sisters––but he could not grasp her thus; I ask you what would you do?”

“If I were a true man, and had a right to my manhood, I would take her. I’d follow her to the ends of the earth.”

“Right, my son––I did that. I took the little money I had from my labor at the bank––all I had saved, and I went bravely to those two old women––her aunts, and they turned me from their door. It was what they had been enjoined to do. They said I was after the money and without conscience or thrift. With the Scotch, often, the confusion is natural between thrift and conscience. Ah, don’t I know! If a man is prosperous, he may hold out his hand to a maid and say ‘Come,’ and all her relatives will cry ‘Go,’ and the marriage bells will ring. If he is a happy Irishman with a shrunken purse, let his heart be loving and true and open as the day, they will spurn him forth. For food and raiment will they sell a soul, and for household gear will they clip the wings of the little god, and set him out in the cold.

“But the arrow had entered Katherine’s heart, and I knew and bided my time. They saw no more of me, but I knew all her goings and comings. I found her one day on the moor, with her collie, and her cheeks had lost their color, and her gray eyes looked in my face with their tears held back, like twin lakes under a cloud before a storm falls. I took her in my arms, and we kissed. The collie looked on and wagged his tail. It was all the approval we ever got from the family, but he was a knowing dog.

“Well, then we walked hand in hand to a village, and it was near nightfall, and we went straight to a magistrate and were married. I had a little coin with me, and we stayed all night at an inn. There was a great hurrying and scurrying all night over the moors for her, but we knew naught of it, for we lay sleeping in each other’s arms as care free and happy as birds. If she wept a little, I comforted her. In the morning we went to the great house where the aunts lived in the town, and there, with her hand in mine, I told them, and the storm broke. It was the disgrace of having been married clandestinely by a magistrate that cut them most to the heart; and yet, what did they think a man would do? And they cried upon her: ‘We trusted you. We trusted you.’ And all the reply she made was: ‘You thought I’d never dare, but I love him.’ Yes, love makes a woman’s heart strong.

“Well, then, nothing would do, but they must have in the minister and see us properly married. After that we stayed never a night in their house, but I took her to Ireland to my grandfather’s home. It was a terrible year in Ireland, for the poverty was great, and while my grandfather was well-to-do, as far as that means in Ireland, it was very little they had that year for helping the poor.” Larry Kildene glanced no more at Harry King, but looked only in the fire, where the logs had fallen in a glowing heap. His pipe was out, but he still held it in his hand.

“It was little I could do. I had my education, and could repeat poems and read Latin, but that would not feed hungry peasant children. I went out on the land and labored with the men, and gave of my little patrimony to keep the old folks, but it was too small for them all, so at last I yielded to Katherine’s importunities, and she wrote to her brother for help––not for her and me, mind you.

“It was for the poor in Ireland she wrote, and she let me read it. It was a sweet letter, asking forgiveness for her willfulness, yet saying she must even do the same thing again if it were to do over again. She pleaded only for the starving in the name of Christ. She asked only if a little of that portion which should be hers might be sent her, and that because he was her only brother and twin, and like part of her very self––she turned it so lovingly––I never could tell you with what skill––but she had the way––yes. But what did it bring?

“He was a canny, canny Scot, although brought up in America. Only for the times when his mother would take him back to Aberdeen with my Katherine for long visits, he never saw Scotland, but what’s in the blood holds fast through life. He was a canny Scot. It takes a time for letters to go and come, and in those days longer than now, when in two weeks one may reach the other side. The reply came as speedily as those days would admit, and it was carefully considered. Ah, Peter was a clever man to bring about his own way. Never a word did he say about forgiveness. It was as if no breach had ever been, but one thing I noticed that she thought must be only an omission, because of the more important things that crowded it out. It was that never once did he mention me any more than if I had never existed. He said he would send her a certain sum of money––and it was a generous one, that is but just to admit––if when she received it she would take another sum, which he would also send, and return to them. He said his home was hers forever if she wished, and that he loved her, and had never had other feeling for her than love. Upon this letter came a long time of pleading with me––and I was ever soft––with her. She won her way.

“‘We will both go, Larry, dear,’ she said. ‘I know he forgot to say you might come, too. If he loves me as he says, he would not break my heart by leaving you out.’

“‘He sends only enough for one––for you,’ I said.

“‘Yes, but he thinks you have enough to come by yourself. He thinks you would not accept it––and would not insult you by sending more.’

“‘He insults me by sending enough for you, dear. If I have it for me, I have it for you––most of all for you, or I’m no true man. If I have none for you––then we have none.’

“‘Larry, for love of me, let me go––for the gulf between my twin brother and me will never be passed until I go to him.’ And this was true enough. ‘I will make them love you. Hester loves you now. She will help me.’ Hester was the sweet wife of her brother. So she clung to me, and her hands touched me and caressed me––lad, I feel them now. I put her on the boat, and the money he sent relieved the suffering around me, and I gave thanks with a sore heart. It was for them, our own peasantry, and for her, I parted with her then, but as soon as I could I sold my little holding near my grandfather’s house to an Englishman who had long wanted it, and when it was parted with, I took the money and delayed not a day to follow her.

“I wrote to her, telling her when and where to meet me in the little town of Leauvite, and it was on the bluff over the river. I went to a home I knew there––where they thought well of me––I think. In the evening I walked up the long path, and there under the oak trees at the top where we had been used to sit, I waited. She came to me, walking in the golden light. It was spring. The whip-poor-wills called and replied to each other from the woods. A mourning dove spoke to its mate among the thick trees, low and sad, but it is only their way. I was glad, and so were they.

“I held her in my arms, and the river sang to us. She told me all over again the love in her heart for me, as she used to tell it. Lad! There is only one theme in the world that is worth telling. There is only one song in the universe that is worth singing, and when your heart has once sung it aright, you will never sing another. The air was soft and sweet around us, and we stayed until a town clock struck twelve; then I took her back, and, as she was not strong, part of the way I carried her in my arms. I left her at her brother’s door, and she went into the shadows there, and I was left outside,––all but my heart. She had been home so short a time––her brother was not yet reconciled, but she said she knew he would be. For me, I vowed I would make money enough to give her a home that would shame him for the poverty of his own––his, which he thought the finest in the town.”

For a long time there was silence, and Larry Kildene sat with his head drooped on his breast. At last he took up the thread where he had left it. “Two days later I stood in the heavy parlor of that house,––I stood there with their old portraits looking down on me, and my heart was filled with ice––ice and fire. I took what they placed in my arms, and it was––my––little son, but it might have been a stone. It weighed like lead in my arms, that ached with its weight. Might I see her? No. Was she gone? Yes. I laid the weight on the pillow held out to me for it, and turned away. Then Hester came and laid her hand on my arm, but my flesh was numb. I could not feel her touch.

“‘Give him to me, Larry,’ she was saying. ‘I will love him like my own, and he will be a brother to my little son.’ And I gave him into her arms, although I knew even then that he would be brought up to know nothing of his father, as if I had never lived. I gave him into her arms because he had no mother and his father’s heart had gone out of him. I gave him into her arms, because I felt it was all I could do to let his mother have the comfort of knowing that he was not adrift with me––if they do know where she is. For her sake most of all and for the lad’s sake I left him there.

“Then I knocked about the world a while, and back in Ireland I could not stay, for the haunting thought of her. I could bide nowhere. Then the thought took me that I would get money and take my boy back. A longing for him grew in my heart, and it was all the thought I had, but until I had money I would not return. I went to find a mine of gold. Men were flying West to become rich through the finding of mines of gold, and I joined them. I tried to reach a spot that has since been named Higgins’ Camp, for there it was rumored that gold was to be found in plenty, and missed it. I came here, and here I stayed.”

Now the big man rose to his feet, and looked down on the younger one. He looked kindly. Then, as if seized and shaken by a torrent of impulses which he was trying to hold in check, he spoke tremulously and in suppressed tones.

“I longed for my son, but I tell you this, because there is a strange thing which grasps a man’s soul when he finds gold––as I found it. I came to love it for its own sake. I lived here and stored it up––until I am rich––you may not find many men so rich. I could go back and buy that bank that was Peter Craigmile’s pride––” His voice rose, but he again suppressed it. “I could buy that pitiful little bank a hundred times over. And she––is––gone. I tried to keep her and the remembrance of her in my mind above the gold, but it was like a lunacy upon me. At the last––until I found you there on the verge of death––the gold was always first in my mind, and the triumph of having it. I came to glory in it, and I worked day after day, and often in the night by torches, and all I gathered I hid, and when I was too weary to work, I sat and handled it and felt it fall through my fingers.

“A woman in England––Miss Evans, by name, only she writes under the name of a man, George Eliot––has written a tale of a poor weaver who came to love his little horde of gold as if it were alive and human. It’s a strong tale, that. A good one. Well, I came to understand what the poor little weaver felt. Summer and winter, day and night, week days and Sundays––and I was brought up to keep the Sunday like a Christian should––all were the same to me, just one long period for the getting together of gold. After a time I even forgot what I wanted the gold for in the first place, and thought only of getting it, more and more and more.

“This is a confession, lad. I tremble to think what would have been on my soul had I done what I first thought of doing when that horse of yours called me. He was calling for you––no doubt, but the call came from heaven itself for me, and the temptation came. It was, to stay where I was and know nothing. I might have done that, too, if it were not for the selfish reasons that flashed through my mind, even as the temptation seized it. It was that there might be those below who were climbing to my home––to find me out and take from me my gold. I knew there were prospectors all over, seeking for what I had found, and how could I dare stay in my cabin and be traced by a stray horse wandering to my door? Three coldblooded, selfish murders would now be resting on my soul. It’s no use for a man to shut his eyes and say ‘I didn’t know.’ It’s his business to know. When you speak of the ‘Curse of Cain,’ think what I might be bearing now, and remember, if a man repents of his act, there’s mercy for him. So I was taught, and so I believe.

“When I looked in your face, lying there in my bunk, then I knew that mercy had been shown me, and for this, here is the thing I mean to do. It is to show my gold and the mine from which it came to you––”

“No, no! I can’t bear it. I must not know.” Harry King threw up his hands as if in fright and rose, trembling in every limb.

“Man, what ails you?”

“Don’t. Don’t put temptation in my way that I may not be strong enough to resist.”

“I say, what ails you? It’s a good thing, rightly used. It may help you to a way out of your trouble. If I never return––I will, mind you,––but we never know––if not, my life will surely not have been spent for naught. You, now, are all I have on earth besides the gold. It was to have been my son’s, and it is yours. It might as well have been left in the heart of the mountain, else.”

“Better. The longer I think on it, the more I see that there is no hope for me, no true repentance,––” Again that expression on Harry King’s face filled Larry’s heart with deep pity. An inward terror seemed to convulse his features and throw a pallor as of age and years of sorrow into his visage. Then he continued, after a moment of self-mastery: “No true repentance for me but to go back and take the punishment. For this winter I will live here in peace, and do for Madam Manovska and her daughter what I can, and anything I can do for you,––then I must return and give myself up. The gold only holds out a worldly hope to me, and makes what I must do seem harder. I am afraid of it.”

“I’ll make you a promise that if I return I’ll not let you have it, but that it shall be turned to some good work. If I do not return, it will rest on your conscience that before you make your confession, you shall see it well placed for a charity. You’ll have to find the charity, I can’t say what it should be offhand now, but come with me. I must tell some man living my secret, and you’re the only one. Besides––I trust you. Surely I do.”

CHAPTER XIX

THE MINE––AND THE DEPARTURE

Larry Kildene went around behind the stall where he kept his own horse and returned with a hollow tube of burnt clay about a foot long. Into this he thrust a pine knot heavy with pitch, and, carrying a bunch of matches in his hand, he led the way back of the fodder.

“I made these clay handles for my torches myself. They are my invention, and I am quite proud of them. You can hold this burning knot until it is quite consumed, and that’s a convenience.” He stooped and crept under the fodder, and then Harry King saw why he kept more there than his horse could eat, and never let the store run low. It was to conceal the opening of a long, low passage that might at first be taken for a natural cave under the projecting mass of rock above them, which formed one side and part of the roof of the shed. Quivering with excitement, although sad at heart, Harry King followed his guide, who went rapidly forward, talking and explaining as he went. Under his feet the way was rough and made frequent turns, and for the most part seemed to climb upward.

“There you see it. I discovered a vein of ore back there at the place we entered, and assayed it and found it rich, and see how I worked it out! Here it seemed to end, and then I was still sane enough to think I had enough gold for my life; I left the digging for a while, and went to find my boy. I learned that he was living and had gone into the army with his cousin, and I knew we would be of little use to each other then, but reasoned that the time was to come when the war would be over, and then he would have to find a place for himself, and his father’s gold would help. However it was––I saw I must wait. Sit here a bit on this ledge, I want to tell you, but not in self-justification, mind you, not that.

“I had been in India, and had had my fill of wars and fighting. I had no mind to it. I went off and bought stores and seed, and thought I would make more of my garden and not show myself again in Leauvite until my boy was back. It was in my thought, if the lad survived the army, to send for him and give him gold to hold his head above––well––to start him in life, and let him know his father,––but when I returned, the great madness came on me.

“I had built the shed and stabled my horse there, and purposely located my cabin below. The trail up here from the plain is a blind one, because of the wash from the hills at times, and I didn’t fear much from white men,––still I concealed my tracks like this. Gold often turns men into devils.”

He was silent for a time, and Harry King wondered much why he had made no further effort to find his son before making to himself the offer he had, but he dared not question him, and preferred to let Larry take his own way of telling what he would. As if divining his thought Larry said quietly: “Something held me back from going down again to find my son. The way is long, and in the old way of traveling over the plains it would take a year or more to make the journey and return here, and somehow a superstition seized me that my boy would set out sometime to find me, and I would make the way easy for him to do it. And here on the mountain the years slip by like a long sleep.”

He began moving the torch about to show the walls of the cave in which they sat, and as he did so he threw the light strongly on the young man’s face, and scrutinized it sharply. He saw again that terrible look of sadness as if his soul were dying within him. He saw great drops of sweat on his brow, and his eyes narrowed and fixed, and he hurried on with the narrative. He could not bear the sight.

“Now here, look how this hole widens out? Here was where I prospected about to find the vein again, and there is where I took it up. All this overhead is full of gold. Think what it would mean if a man had the right apparatus for getting it out––I mean separating it! I only took what was free; that is, what could be easily freed from the quartz. Sometimes I found it in fine nuggets, and then I would go wild, and work until I was so weak I could hardly crawl back to the entrance. I often lay down here and slept with fatigue before I could get back and cook my supper.”

As they went on a strange roaring seemed gradually to fill the passage, and Harry spoke for the first time since they had entered. He feared the sound of his own voice, as though if he began to speak, he might scream out, or reveal something he was determined to hide. He thought the roaring sound might be in his own ears from the surging of blood in his veins and the tumultuous beating of his heart.

“What is it I hear? Is my head right?”

“The roaring? Yes, you’re all right. I thought when I was working here and slowly burrowing farther and farther that it might be the lack of air, and tried to contrive some way of getting it from the outside. I thought all the time that I was working farther into the mountain, and that I would have to stop or die here like a rat in a hole. But you just wait. You’ll be surprised in a minute.”

Then Harry laughed, and the laugh, unexpected to himself, woke him from the trancelike feeling that possessed him, and he walked more steadily. “I’ve been being more surprised each minute. Am I in Aladdin’s cave––or whose is it?”

“Only mine. Just one more turn here and then––! It was not in the night I came here, and it was not all at once, as you are coming––hold on! Let me go in front of you. The hole was made gradually, until, one morning about ten o’clock, a great mass of rock––gold bearing, I tell you––rich in nuggets––I was crazed to lose it––fell out into space, and there I stood on the very verge of eternity.”

They rounded the turn as he talked, and Larry Kildene stood forward under the stars and waved the torch over his head and held Harry back from the edge with his other hand. The air over their heads was sweet and pure and cold, and full of the roar of falling water. They could see it in a long, vast ribbon of luminous whiteness against the black abyss––moving––and waving––coming out from nothingness far above them, and reaching down to the nethermost depths––in that weird gloom of night––into nothingness again.

Harry stepped back, and back, into the hole from which they had emerged, and watched his companion stand holding the torch, which lit his features with a deep red light until he looked as if he might be the very alchemist of gold––red gold––and turning all he looked upon into the metal which closes around men’s hearts. The red light flashed on the white ribbon of water, and this way and that, as he waved it around, on the sides of the passage behind him, turning each point of projecting rock into red gold.

“Do you know where we are? No. We’re right under the fall––right behind it. No one can ever see this hole from the outside. It is as completely hidden as if the hand of the Almighty were stretched over it. The rush of this body of water always in front of it keeps the air in the passage always pure. It’s wonderful––wonderful!”

He turned to look at Harry, and saw a wild man crouched in the darkness of the passage, glaring, and preparing to leap. He seized and shook him. “What ails you, man? Hold on. Hold on. Keep your head, I say. There! I’ve got you. Turn about. Now! It’s over now. That’s enough. It won’t come again.”

Harry moaned. “Oh, let me go. Let me get away from it.”

The big man still gripped him and held him with his face toward the darkness. “Tell me what you see,” he commanded.

Still Harry moaned, and sank upon his knees. “Lord, forgive, forgive!”

“Tell me what you see,” Larry still commanded. He would try to break up this vision seeing.

“God! It is the eye. It follows me. It is gone.” He heaved a great sigh of relief, but still remained upon his knees, quivering and weak. “Did you see it? You must have seen it.”

“I saw nothing, and you saw nothing. It’s in your brain, and your brain is sick. You must heal it. You must stop it. Stand now, and conquer it.”

Harry stood, shivering. “I wanted to end it. It would have been so easy, and all over so soon,” he murmured.

“And you would die a coward, and so add one more crime to the first. You’d shirk a duty, and desert those who need you. You’d leave me in the lurch, and those women dependent on me––wake up––”

“I’m awake. Let’s go away.” Harry put his hand to his forehead and wiped away the cold drops that stood out like glistening beads of blood in the red light of the torch.

Larry grieved for him, in spite of the harshness of his words and tone, and taking him by the elbow, he led him kindly back into the passage.

“Don’t trouble about me now,” Harry said at last. “You’ve given me a thought to clutch to––if you really do need me––if I could believe it.”

“Well, you may! Didn’t you say you’d do for me more than sons do for their fathers? I ask you to do just that for me. Live for me. It’s a hard thing to ask of you, for, as you say, the other would be easier, but it’s a coward’s way. Don’t let it tempt you. Stand to your guns like a man, and if the time comes and you can’t see things differently, go back and make your confession and die the death––as a brave man should. Meantime, live to some purpose and do it cheerfully.” Larry paused. His words sank in, as he meant they should. He guided Harry slowly back to the place from which they had diverged, his arm across the younger man’s shoulder.

“Now I’ve more to show you. When I saw what I had done, I set myself to find another vein, and see this large room? I groveled all about here, this way and that. A year of this, see. It took patience, and in the meantime I went out into the world––as far as San Francisco, and wasted a year or more; then back I came.

“I tell you there is a lure in the gold, and the mountains are powers of peace to a man. It seemed there was no other place where I could rest in peace of mind. The longing for my son was on me,––but the war still raged, and I had no mind for that,––yet I was glad my boy was taking his part in the world out of which I had dropped. For one thing it seemed as if he were more my own than if he lived in Leauvite on the banker’s bounty. I would not go back there and meet the contempt of Peter Craigmile, for he never could forget that I had taken his sister out of hand, and she gone––man––it was all too sad. How did I know how my son had been taught to think on me? I could not go back when I would.

“His name was Richard––my boy’s. If he came alive from the army I do not know,––See? Here is where I found another vein, and I have followed it on there to the end of this other branch of the passage, and not exhausted it yet. Here’s maybe another twenty years’ work for some man. Now, wasn’t it a great work for one man alone, to tunnel through that rock to the fall? No one man needs all that wealth. I’ve often thought of Ireland and the poverty we left there. If I had my boy to hearten me, I could do something for them now. We’ll go back and sleep, for it’s the trail for me to-morrow, and to go and come quickly, before the snow falls. Come!”

They returned in silence to the shed. The torch had burned well down into the clay handle, and Larry Kildene extinguished the last sparks before they crept through the fodder to their room in the shed. The fire of logs was almost out, and the place growing cold.

“You’ll find the gold in a strong box made of hewn logs, buried in the ground underneath the wood in the addition to the cabin. There’s no need to go to it yet, not until you need money. I’ll show you how I prepare it for use, in the morning. I do it in the room I made there near the fall. It’s the most secret place a man ever had for such work.”

Larry stretched himself in his bunk and was soon sleeping soundly. Not so the younger man. He could not compose himself after the excitement of the evening. He tossed and turned until morning found him weary and worn, but with his troubled mind more at rest than it had been for many months. He had fought out his battle, at least for the time being, and was at peace.

Harry King rose and went out into the cold morning air and was refreshed. He brought in a large handful of pine cones and made a roaring fire in the chimney he had built, before Larry roused himself. Then he, too, went out and surveyed the sky with practiced eye.

“Clear and cool––that argues well for me. If it were warm, now, I’d hardly like to start. Sometimes the snow holds off for weeks in this weather.”

They stood in the pallid light of the early morning an hour before the sun, and the wind lifted Larry’s hair and flapped his shirt sleeves about his arms. It was a tingling, sharp breeze, and when they returned to the cave, where they went for Harry’s lesson in smelting, the old man’s cheeks were ruddy.

The sun had barely risen when the lesson was over, and they descended for breakfast. Amalia had all ready for them, and greeted Larry from the doorway.

“Good morning, Sir Kildene. You start soon. I have many good things to eat all prepare to put in your bag, and when you sit to your dinner on the long way, it is that you must think of Amalia and know that she says a prayer to the sweet Christ, that he send his good angels to watch over you all the way you go. A prayer to follow you all the way is good, is not?” Amalia’s frank and untrammeled way of referring to Divinity always precipitated a shyness on Larry,––a shyness that showed itself in smiles and stammering.

“Good––good––yes. Good, maybe so.” Harry had turned back to bring down Larry’s horse and pack mule. “Now, while we eat,––Harry will be down soon, we won’t wait for him,––while we eat, let me go over the things I’m to find for you down below. I must learn the list well by heart, or you may send me back for the things I’ve missed bringing.”

As they talked Amalia took from her wrist a heavy bracelet of gold, and from a small leather bag hidden in her clothing, a brooch of emeralds, quaintly set and very precious. Her mother sat in one of her trancelike moods, apparently seeing nothing around her, and Amalia took Larry to one side and spoke in low tones.

“Sir Kildene, I have thought much, and at last it seems to me right to part with these. It is little that we have––and no money, only these. What they are worth I have no knowledge. Mother may know, but to her I say nothing. They are a memory of the days when my father was noble and lived at the court. If you can sell them––it is that this brooch should bring much money––my father has told me. It was saved for my dowry, with a few other jewels of less worth. I have no need of dowry. It is that I never will marry. Until my mother is gone I can well care for her with the lace I make,––and then––”

“Lass, I can’t take these. I have no knowledge of their worth––or––” He knew he was saying what was not true, for he knew well the value of what she laid so trustingly in his palm, and his hand quivered under the shining jewels. He cleared his throat and began again. “I say, I can’t take jewels so valuable over the trail and run the risk of losing them. Never! Put them by as before.”

“But how can I ask of you the things I wish? I have no money to return for them, and none for all you have done for my mother and me. Please, Sir Kildene, take of this, then, only enough to buy for our need. It is little to take. Do not be hard with me.” She pleaded sweetly, placing one hand under his great one, and the other over the jewels, holding them pressed to his palm. “Will you go away and leave my heart heavy?”

“Look here, now––” Again he cleared his throat. “You put them by until I come back, and then––”

But she would not, and tying them in her handkerchief, she thrust them in the pocket of his flannel shirt.

“There! It is not safe in such a place. Be sure you take care, Sir Kildene. I have many thoughts in my mind. It is not all the money of these you will need now, and of the rest I may take my mother to a large city, where are people who understand the fine lace. There I may sell enough to keep us well. But of money will I need first a little to get us there. It is well for me, you take these––see? Is not?”

“No, it is not well.” He spoke gruffly in his effort to overcome his emotion. “Where under heaven can I sell these?”

“You go not to the great city?” she asked sadly. “How must we then so long intrude us upon you! It is very sad.” She clasped her hands and looked in his eyes, her own brimming with tears; then he turned away. Tears in a woman’s eyes! He could not stand it.

“See here. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If that railroad is through anywhere––so––so––I can reach San Francisco––” He thought he knew that to be an impossibility, and that she would be satisfied. “I say––if it’s where I can reach San Francisco, I’ll see what can be done.” He cleared his throat a great many times, and stood awkwardly, hardly daring to move with the precious jewels in his pocket. “See here. They’ll joggle out of here. Can’t you––”

She turned on him radiantly. “You may have my bag of leather. In that will they be safe.”

She removed the string from her neck and by it pulled the small embossed case from her bosom, shook out the few rings and unset stones left in it, and returned the larger jewels to it, and gave it into his hand, still warm from its soft resting place. At the same moment Harry arrived, leading the animals. He lifted his head courageously and his eyes shone as with an inspiration.

“Will you let me accompany you a bit of the way, sir? I’d like to go.” Larry accepted gladly. He knew then what he would do with Amalia’s dowry. “Then I’ll bring Goldbug. Thank you, Amalia, yes. I’ll drink my coffee now, and eat as I ride.” He ran back for his horse and soon returned, and then drank his coffee and snatched a bite, while Amalia and Larry slung the bags of food and the water on the mule and made all ready for the start. As he ate, he tried to arouse and encourage the mother, but she remained stolid until they were in the saddle, when she rose and followed them a few steps, and said in her deep voice: “Yes, I ask a thing. You will find Paul, my ’usband. Tell him to come to me––it is best––no more,––I cannot in English.” Then turning to her daughter she spoke volubly in her own tongue, and waved her hand imperiously toward the men.

“Yes, mamma. I tell all you say.” Amalia took a step away from the door, and her mother returned to her seat by the fire.

“It is so sad. My mother thinks my father is returned to our own country and that you go there. She thinks you are our friend Sir McBride in disguise, and that you go to help my father. She fears you will be taken and sent to Siberia, and says tell my father it is enough. He must no more try to save our fatherland: that our noblemen are full of ingratitude, and that he must return to her and live hereafter in peace.”

“Let be so. It’s a saving hallucination. Tell her if I find your father, I will surely deliver the message.” And the two men rode away up the trail, conversing earnestly.

Larry Kildene explained to Harry about the jewels, and turned them over to his keeping. “I had to take them, you see. You hide them in that chamber I showed you, along with the gold bars. Hang it around your neck, man, until you get back. It has rested on her bosom, and if I were a young man like you, that fact alone would make it sacred to me. It’s her dowry, she said. I’d sooner part with my right hand than take it from her.”

“So would I.” Harry took the case tenderly, and hid it as directed, and went on to ask the favor he had accompanied Larry to ask. It was that he might go down and bring the box from the wagon.

“Early this morning, before I woke you, I led the brown horse you brought the mother up the mountain on out toward the trail; we’ll find him over the ridge, all packed ready, and when I ran back for my horse, I left a letter written in charcoal on the hearth there in the shed––Amalia will be sure to go there and find it, if I don’t return now––telling her what I’m after and that I’ll only be gone a few days. She’s brave, and can get along without us.” Larry did not reply at once, and Harry continued.

“It will only take us a day and a half to reach it, and with your help, a sling can be made of the canvas top of the wagon, and the two animals can ‘tote it’ as the darkies down South say. I can walk back up the trail, or even ride one of the horses. We’ll take the tongue and the reach from the wagon and make a sort of affair to hang to the beasts, I know how it can be done. There may not be much of value in the box, but then––there may be. I see Amalia wishes it of all things, and that’s enough for––us.”

Thus it came that the two women were alone for five days. Madam Manovska did not seem to heed the absence of the two men at first, and waited in a contentment she had not shown before. It would seem that, as Larry had said, there was saving in her hallucination, but Amalia was troubled by it.

“Mother is so sure they will bring my father back,” she thought. She tried to forestall any such catastrophe as she feared by explaining that they might not find her father or he might not return, even if he got her message, not surely, for he had always done what he thought his duty before anything else, and he might think it his duty to stay where he could find something to do.

When Harry King did not return that night, Amalia did as he had laughingly suggested to her, when he left, “You’ll find a letter out in the shed,” was all he said. So she went up to the shed, and there she lighted a torch, and kneeling on the stones of the wide hearth, she read what he had written for her.

“To the Lady Amalia Manovska:

“Mr. Kildene will help me get your box. It will not be hard, for the two of us, and after it is drawn out and loaded I can get up with it myself and he can go on. I will soon be with you again, never fear. Do not be afraid of Indians. If there were any danger, I would not leave you. There is no way by which they would be likely to reach you except by the trail on which we go, and we will know if they are about before they can possibly get up the trail. I have seen you brave on the plains, and you will be as brave on the mountain top. Good-by for a few days.

“Yours to serve you, 
“Harry King.” 

The tears ran fast down her cheeks as she read. “Oh, why did I speak of it––why? He may be killed. He may die of this attempt.” She threw the torch from her into the fireplace, and clasping her hands began to pray, first in English her own words, then the prayers for those in peril which she had learned in the convent. Then, lying on her face, she prayed frantically in her own tongue for Harry’s safety. At last, comforted a little, she took up the torch and, flushed and tearful, walked down in the darkness to the cabin and crept into bed.

CHAPTER XX

ALONE ON THE MOUNTAIN

For the first two days of Harry King’s absence Madam Manovska relapsed into a more profound melancholy, and the care of her mother took up Amalia’s time and thoughts so completely as to give her little for indulging her own anxiety for Harry’s safety. Strangely, she felt no fear for themselves, although they were thus alone on the mountain top. She had a sense of security there which she had never felt in the years since she had been taken from the convent to share her parents’ wanderings. She made an earnest effort to divert and arouse her mother and succeeded until Madam Manovska talked much and volubly in Polish, and revealed more of the thoughts that possessed her in the long hours of brooding than she had ever told Amalia before. It seemed that she confidently expected the return of the men with her husband, and that the message she had sent by Larry Kildene would surely bring him. The thought excited her greatly, and Amalia found it necessary to keep continual watch lest she wander off down the trail in the direction they had taken, and be lost.

For a time Amalia tried to prevent Madam Manovska from dwelling on the past, until she became convinced that to do so was not well, since it only induced the fits of brooding. She then decided to encourage her mother to speak freely of her memories, rather than to keep them locked in her own mind. It was in one of these intervals of talkativeness that Amalia learned the cause of that strange cry that had so pierced her heart and startled her on the trail.

They had gone out for a walk, as the only means of inducing her mother to sleep was to let her walk in the clear air until so weary as to bring her to the point of exhaustion. This time they went farther than Amalia really intended, and had left the paths immediately about the cabin, and climbed higher up the mountain. Here there was no trail and the way was rough indeed, but Madam Manovska was in one of her most wayward moods and insisted on going higher and farther.

Her strength was remarkable, but it seemed to be strength of will rather than of body, for all at once she sank down, unable to go forward or to return. Amalia led her to the shade of a great gnarled tree, a species of fir, and made her lie down on a bed of stiff, coarse moss, and there she pillowed her mother’s head on her lap. Whether it was something in the situation in which she found herself or not, her mother began to tell her of a time about which she had hitherto kept silent. It was of the long march through heat and cold, over the wildest ways of the earth to Siberia, at her husband’s side.

She told how she had persisted in going with him, even at the cost of dressing in the garb of the exiles from the prisons and pretending to be one of the condemned. Only one of the officers knew her secret, who for reasons of humanity––or for some other feeling––kept silence. She carried her child in her arms, a boy, five months old, and was allowed to walk at her husband’s side instead of following on with the other women. She told how they carried a few things on their backs, and how one and another of the men would take the little one at intervals to help her, and how long the marches were when the summer was on the wane and they wished to make as much distance as possible before they were delayed by storms and snow.

Then she told how the storms came at last, and how her baby fell ill, and cried and cried––all the time––and how they walked in deep snow, until one and another fell by the way and never walked farther. She told how some of the weaker ones were finally left behind, because they could get on faster without them, but that the place where they were left was a terrible one under a cruel man, and that her child would surely have died there before the winter was over, and that when she persisted in keeping on with her husband, they beat her, but at last consented on condition that she would leave her baby boy. Then how she appealed to the officer who knew well who she was and that she was not one of the condemned, but had followed her husband for love, and to intercede for him when he would have been ill-treated; and that the man had allowed her to have her way, but later had demanded as his reward for yielding to her, that she no longer belong to her husband, but to him.

Looking off at the far ranges of mountains with steady gaze, she told of the mountains they had crossed, and the rushing, terrible rivers; and how, one day, the officer who had been kind only that he might be more cruel, had determined to force her to obedience, and how he grew very angry––so angry that when they had come to a trail that was well-nigh impassable, winding around the side of a mountain, where was a fearful rushing river far below them, and her baby cried in her arms for cold and hunger, how he had snatched the child from her and hurled it over the precipice into the swift water, and how she had shrieked and struck him and was crazed and remembered no more for days, except to call continually on God to send down curses on that officer’s head. She told how after that they were held at a certain station for a long time, but that she was allowed to stay by her husband only because the officer feared the terrible curses she had asked of God to descend on that man, that he dared no more touch her.

Then Amalia understood many things better than ever before, and grew if possible more tender of her mother. She thought how all during that awful time she had been safe and sheltered in the convent, and her life guarded; and moreover, she understood why her father had always treated her mother as if she were higher than the angels and with the courtesy and gentleness of a knight errant. He had bowed to her slightest wish, and no wonder her mother thought that when he received her request to return to her, and give up his hope, he would surely come to her.

More than ever Amalia feared the days to come if she could in no way convince her mother that it was not expedient for her father to return yet. To say again that he was dead she dared not, even if she could persuade Madam Manovska to believe it; for it seemed to her in that event that her mother would give up all interest in life, and die of a broken heart. But from the first she had not accepted the thought of her husband’s death, and held stubbornly to the belief that he had joined Harry King to find help. He had, indeed, wandered away from them a few hours after the young man’s departure and had been unable to find his way back, and, until Larry Kildene came to them, they had comforted themselves that the two men were together.

Much more Madam Manovska told her daughter that day, before she slept; and Amalia questioned her more closely than she had ever done concerning her father’s faith. Thereafter she sat for a long time on the bank of coarse moss and pondered, with her mother’s head pillowed on her lap. The sun reached the hour of noon, and still the mother slept and the daughter would not waken her.

She took from the small velvet bag she always carried with her, a crisp cake of corn meal and ate to satisfy her sharp hunger, for the keen air and the long climb gave her the appetite belonging to the vigorous health which was hers. They had climbed that part of the mountain directly behind the cabin, and from the secluded spot where they sat she could look down on it and on the paths leading to it; thankful and happy that at last they were where all was so safe, no fear of intrusion entered her mind. Even her first anxiety about the Indians she had dismissed.

Now, as her eyes wandered absently over the far distance and dropped to the nearer hills, and on down to the cabin and the patch of cultivated ground, what was her horror to see three figures stealing with swift, gliding tread toward the fodder shed from above, where was no trail, only such rough and wild hillside as that by which she and her mother had climbed. The men seemed to be carrying something slung between them on a pole. With long, gliding steps they walked in single file as she had seen the Indians walk on the plains.

She drew in her breath sharply and clasped her hands in supplication. Had those men seen them? Devoutly she prayed that they might not look up toward the heights where she and her mother sat. As they continued to descend she lost sight of them among the pines and the undergrowth which was more vigorous near the fall, and then they appeared again and went into the cabin. She thought they must have been in the fodder shed when she lost sight of them, and now she waited breathlessly to see them emerge from the cabin. For an hour she sat thus, straining her eyes lest she miss seeing them when they came forth, and fearing lest her mother waken. Then she saw smoke issuing from the cabin chimney, and her heart stopped its beating. What! Were they preparing to stay there? How could her mother endure the cold of the mountain all night?

Then she began to consider how she might protect her mother after the sun had gone from the cold that would envelop them. Reasoning that as long as the Indians stayed in the cabin they could not be seen by them, she looked about for some projecting ledge under which they might creep for the night. Gently she lifted her mother’s head and placed it on her own folded shawl, and, with an eye ever on the cabin below, she crept further up the side of the mountain until she found a place where a huge rock, warmed by the sun, projected far out, and left a hollow beneath, into which they might creep. Frantically she tore off twigs of the scrubby pines around them, and made a fragrant bed of pine needles and moss on which to rest. Then she woke her mother.

Sane and practical on all subjects but the one, Madam Manovska roused herself to meet this new difficulty with the old courage, and climbed with Amalia’s help to their wild resting place without a word of complaint. There she sat looking out over the magnificent scene before her with her great brooding eyes, and ate the coarse corn cake Amalia put in her hands.

She talked, always in Polish or in French, of the men “rouge,” and said she did not wonder they came to so good a place to rest, and that she would give thanks to the great God that she and her daughter were on the mountain when they arrived. She reminded Amalia that if she had consented to return when her daughter wished, they would now have been in the cabin with those terrible men, and said that she had been inspired of God to stay long on the mountain. Contentedly, then, she munched her cake, and remarked that water would give comfort in the eating of it, but she smiled and made the best of the dry food. Then she prayed that her husband might be detained until the men were gone.

Amalia gave her mother the water that was left in the bottle she had brought with her, and lamented that she had saved so little for her. “It was so bad, not to save more for my mamma,” she cried, giving the bottle with its lowered contents into her mother’s hand. “I go to watch, mamma mine. Soon will I return.”

Amalia went back to her point of vantage, where she could see all about the cabin and shed. Still the smoke poured from the chimney, and there was no sign of red men without. It was a mountain sheep they had carried, slung between them, and now they dressed and cooked a portion of it, and were gorging themselves comfortably before the fire, with many grunts of satisfaction at the finding of the formidable owner of the premises absent. They were on their way to Laramie to trade and sell game, and it was their intention to leave a portion of their mutton with Larry Kildene; for never did they dare venture near him without bringing a propitiatory offering.

The sun had set and the cold mists were blowing across from the fall and closing around the cabin like a veil of amethystine dye, when Amalia saw them moving about the cabin door as if preparing to depart. Her heart rose, and she signaled her mother, but no. They went indoors again, and she saw them no more. In truth they had disputed long as to whether it was best to leave before the big man’s return, or to remain in their comfortable quarters and start early, before day. It was the conference that drew them out, and they had made ready to start at a moment’s notice if he should return in the night. But as the darkness crept on and Larry Kildene did not appear they stretched themselves before the fire and slept, and the two women on the mountain, hungry and cold, crept under the mother’s cloak and lay long into the night, shivering and listening, couched on the pine twigs Amalia had spread under the ledge of rock. At last, clasped in each other’s arms, they slept, in spite of fear and cold, for very weariness.

Amalia woke next morning to the low murmuring of a voice. It was her mother, kneeling in the pine needles, praying at her side. She waited until the prayer was ended, then she rose and went out from the sheltered hollow where they lay. “I will look a little, mamma. Wait for me.”

She gazed down on the cabin, but all was still. The amethystine veil had not lifted, and no smoke came from the chimney. She crept back to her mother’s side, and they sat close for warmth, and waited. When the sun rose and the clouds melted away, all the earth smiled up at them, and their fears seemed to melt away with the clouds. Still they did not venture out where they thought they might be spied from below, and time passed while they watched earnestly for the sight of moving figures, and still no smoke appeared from the cabin.

Higher and higher the sun climbed in the sky, yet they could not bring themselves to return. Hunger pressed them, and Amalia begged her mother to let her go a little nearer to listen, but she would not. So they discussed together in their own tongue and neither would allow the other to venture below, and still no smoke issued from the chimney.

At last Amalia started and pressed her hand to her heart. What did she see far along on the trail toward the desert? Surely, a man with two animals, climbing toward the turn. Her eyes danced for gladness as she turned a flushed face toward her mother.

“Look, mamma! Far on,––no––there! It is––mamma mine––it is ’Arry King!” The mere sight of him made her break out in English. “It is that I must go to him and tell him of the Indian in the cabin before he arrive. If he come on them there, and they kill him! Oh, let me go quickly.” At the thought of him, and the danger he might meet, all her fears of the men “rouge” returned upon her, and she was gone, passing with incredible swiftness over the rough way, to try to intercept him before he could reach the cabin.

But she need not have feared, for the Indians were long gone. Before daybreak they had passed Harry where he rested in the deep dusk of the morning, without knowing he was near. With swift, silent steps they had passed down the trail, taking as much of Larry Kildene’s corn as they could carry, and leaving the bloody pelt of the sheep and a very meager share of the mutton in exchange. Hungry and footsore, yet eager and glad to have come home successfully, Harry King walked forward, leading his good yellow horse, his eyes fixed on the cabin, and wondering not a little; for he, too, saw that no smoke was issuing from the chimney.

He hastened, and all Amalia’s swiftness could not bring her to him before he reached his goal. He saw first the bloody pelt hanging beside the door, and his heart stood still. Those two women never could have done that! Where were they? He dropped the leading strap, leaving the weary horses where they stood, and ran forward to enter the cabin and see the evidence of Indians all about. There were the clean-picked bones of their feast and the dirt from their feet on Amalia’s carefully kept floor. The disorder smote him, and he ran out again in the sun. Looking this way and that, he called and listened and called again. Why did no answer reach him? Poor Amalia! In her haste she had turned her foot and now, fainting with pain, and with fear for him, she could not find her voice to reply.

He thought he heard a low cry. Was it she? He ran again, and now he saw her, high above him, a dark heap on the ground. Quickly he was by her side, and, kneeling, he gathered her in his arms. He forgot all but that she was living and that he held her, and he kissed her white face and her lips, and said all the tender things in his heart. He did not know what he was saying. He only knew that he could feel her heart beat, and that she was opening her eyes, and that with quivering arms she clasped his neck, and that her tears wet his cheek, and that, over and over, her lips were repeating his name.

“’Arry––’Arry King! You are come back. Ah, ’Arry King, my heart cry with the great gladness they have not killed you.”

All in the same instant he bethought himself that he must not caress her thus. Yet filled with a gladness he could not fathom he still clung to her and still murmured the words he meant never to speak to her. One thing he could do. One thing sweet and right to do. He could carry her to the cabin. How could she reach it else? His heart leaped that he had at least that right.

“No, ’Arry King. You have walk the long, hard way, and are very weary.” But still he carried her.

“Put me down, ’Arry King.” Then he obeyed her, and set her gently down. “I am too great a burden. See, thus? If you help me a little––it is that I may hop––It is better, is not?”

She smiled in his face, but he only stooped and lifted her again in his arms. “You are not a burden, Amalia. Put your arms around my neck, and lean on me.”

She obeyed him, and he could say no more for the beating of his heart. Carefully and slowly he made his way, setting his feet cautiously among the stones that obstructed his path. Madam Manovska from her heights above saw how her daughter was being carried, and, guessing the trouble, snatched up the velvet bag Amalia had dropped in her haste, flung her cloak about her, and began to thread her way down, slowly and carefully; for, as she said to herself, “We must not both break the bones at one time.”

To Harry it seemed no sound was ever sweeter than Amalia’s low voice as she coaxed him brokenly to set her down and allow her to walk.

“This is great foolishness, ’Arry King, that you carry me. Put me down that you rest a little.”

“I can’t, Amalia.”

“You have walk all the long trail––I saw you walk––and lead those horse, for only to bring our box. How my heart can thank you is not possible. ’Arry King, you are so weary––put me down.”

“I can’t, Amalia,” again was all he said. So he held her, comforting his heart that he had this right, until he drew near the cabin, and there Amalia saw the pelt of the sheep hung upon the wall of the cabin, pitifully dangling, bloody and ragged. Strangely, at the sight quite harmless, yet gruesome, all her fortitude gave way. With a cry of terror she hid her face and clung to him.

“No, no. I cannot go there––not near it––no!”

“Oh, you brave, sweet woman! It is only a skin. Don’t look at it, then. You have been frightened. I see how you have suffered. Wait. There––no, don’t put your foot to the ground. Sit on this hillock while I take it away.”

But she only clung to him the more, and sobbed convulsively. “I am afraid––’Arry King. Oh, if––if––they are there still! Those Indian! Do not go there.”

“But they are gone; I have been in and they are not there. I won’t take you into that place until I have made it fit for you again. Sit here awhile. Amalia Manovska,––I can’t see you weep.” So tenderly he spoke her name, with quivering lips, reverently. With all his power he held himself and would dare no more. If only once more he might touch her lips with his––only once in his renunciation––but no. His conscience forbade him. Memory closed upon him like a deadening cloud and drenched his hurt soul with sorrow. He rose from stooping above her and looked back.

“Your mother is coming. She will be here in a moment and then I will set that room in order for you, and––” his voice shook so that he was obliged to pause. He stooped again to her and spoke softly: “Amalia Manovska, stop weeping. Your tears fall on my heart.”

“Ah, what have happen, to you––to Amalia––? Those terrible men ‘rouge’!” cried Madam Manovska, hurrying forward.

“Oh, Madam, I am glad you have come. The Indians are gone, never fear. Amalia has hurt her foot. It is very painful. You will know what to do for her, and I will leave her while I make things more comfortable in there.”

He left them and ran to the cabin, and hastily taking the hideous pelt from the wall, hid it, and then set himself to cleaning the room and burning the litter of bones and scraps left from the feast. It was horrible––yes, horrible, that they should have had such a fright, and alone there. Soon he went back, and again taking her in his arms, unresisted now, he laid her on the bunk, then knelt and removed her worn shoe.

“Little worn shoe! It has walked many a mile, has it not? Did you think to ask Larry Kildene to bring you new ones?”

“No, I forgot my feet.” She laughed, and the spell of tears was broken. The long strain of anxiety and fear and then the sudden release had been too much. Moreover, she was faint with hunger. Without explanation Harry King understood. He looked to the mother for help and saw that a change had come over her. Roused from her apathy she was preparing food, and looking from her to Amalia, they exchanged a glance of mutual relief.

“How it is beautiful to see her!” Amalia spoke low. “It is my hurt that is good for her mind. I am glad of the hurt.”

He sat with the shoe in his hand. “Will you let me bind your ankle, Amalia? It will grow worse unless something is done quickly.” He spoke humbly, as one beseeching a favor.

“Now it is already better, you have remove the shoe.” How he loved her quaint, rapid speech! “Mamma will bind it, for you have to do for those horse and the mule. I know––I have seen––to take them to drink and eat, and take from them the load––the burden. It is the box––for that have you risk your life, and the gladness we feel to again have it is––is only one greater––and that is to have you again with us. Oh, what a sorrow and terror––if you had not come––I can never make you know. When I see those Indian come walking after each other so as they go––my heart cease to beat––and my body become like the ice––for the fear. When fearing for myself, it is bad, but when for another it is much––much––more terrible. So have I found it.”

Her mother came then to attend to her hurt, interrupting Amalia’s flow of speech, and Harry went out to the animals, full of care and misgiving. What now could he do? How endure the days to come with their torture of repression? How shield her from himself and his love––when she so freely gave? What middle course was possible, without making her suffer?

That afternoon all the events of his journey were told to them as they questioned him keenly, and he learned by little words and looks exchanged between them how great had been their anxiety for him, and of their night of terror on the mountain. But now that it was past and they were all unhurt except for Amalia’s accident, they made light of it. He dragged in the box, and before he left them that night he prepared Larry’s gun, and told Amalia to let nothing frighten her.

“Don’t leave the bunk, nor put your foot to the ground. Fire the gun at the slightest disturbance, and I will surely hear. I have another in the shed. Or I will roll myself in my blanket, and sleep outside your door. Yes, I will do that.”

Then the mother turned on him and spoke in her deep tones: “Go to your bed, ’Arry King, and sleep well. You have need. We asked of the good God your safety, and our fear is gone. Good night.”

“Good-night.”