In the Clouds

XVII.

ALETHEA stood motionless for some little time, still leaning on the fence. A stalk of golden-rod, brown and withered, its glory departed, touched the rails now and then. Its slight, infrequent swaying was the only intimation of wind, except that the encompassing smoke, filling the vast spaces between heaven and earth, shifted occasionally, the dense convolutions silently merging into new combinations of ill-defined shapes, — colorless phantasmagoria, dimly looming. It might have seemed as if all the world had faded out, leaving only these blurred suggestions of unrecognized forms, like the vestiges of forgotten aeons.

Even the harvesters did not maintain always a human aspect. Through the haze they were grotesque, distorted, gigantic ; their hands vaguely visible, now lifted, now falling, in their deliberate but ceaseless work. They looked like vagrants from that eccentric populace of dreams, given over to abnormal, inconsequent gestures, to shifting similitudes, to preposterous conditions and facile metamorphoses of identity. Alethea felt a strange doubt, in recognizing Sam Marvin, whether it were indeed the moonshiner whom she saw.

An insistent silence possessed the air, broken only by the rustle of the crisp husks as the three dim figures pulled the corn. Suddenly there sounded a mad, scuttling rush, shrill canine yelps, and a series of nimble shadows vaulted over the fence. The coon ran up a tree, while the inooushiuer’s dogs ranged themselves beneath it, with upturned heads askew, and gloating, baffled eyes, and rnoaus of melancholy frustration, punctuated ever and anon with yaps of more poignant realization of the coon’s inaccessibility. Tige, irresolute, showed tight at first to the strangers ; then he too sat down, and with quivering fore-paws and wagging tail wheezed and yelped at his fireside companion, as if he had had no personal acquaintance with the raccoon, had held with him no relations of enforced amity, and could not wait one moment to crunch his bones.

The half-grown girl, desisting from her work, turned her head in the direction of the noise, and caught a glimpse of Alethea. She had an excited eye, high cheek-bones, and a thin, prominent nose. Her face looked peculiarly sharp inside her flabby sun-bonnet. She was at the “growing age,” and her frock was consequently very short for the bare, sun-embrowned legs which protruded from it. Her bare feet were long and bony. She seemed to be growing lengthwise only, for her shoulders were narrow, her arms slim. She had a callow, half-fledged look, not unlike a Shanghai pullet. Her manner was abrupt and fluttered, and her voice high and shrill.

“ Laws - a - massy ! ” she exclaimed, jumping precipitately backward on her long, attenuated legs, “yander’s Lethe Sayles ! ”

Both the man and the woman started violently, — not because of the matter of the disclosure, but of its manner, as was manifested in his rebuke.

“ By Gosh, Sereny ! ef ye ain’t mighty nigh skeered me ter death ! ” he cried angrily. “ S’pose it air Lethe Sayles ! ” He bowed his body grotesquely amidst the smoke, as he emphasized his reproof. “ Air she ennything so powerful oncommon ez ye hev ter jump ez sprightly ez ef ye hed stepped on a rattlesnake, an’ squeech out that-a-way? Howdy, Lethe,” he added, with an odd contrast of a calm voice and a smooth manner, as if Alethea were deaf to these amenities. “ Thrivin’, I s’pose ? ”

Alethea faltered that she was well, and said no more. The imperative consciousness of all that she had done against him, of all for which she feared him, prevailed for a time. She knew that it would have been wiser to venture some commonplace civility, and then go. But that insistent conscience, strong within her, forbade this. She was all unprepared now for the disclosure of her testimony in the court-room, but the fact that she had ever intended to warn him made it seem as if this were due. She felt as if she had missed a certain fortification of her courage in that she had not had the privilege of trembling over the prospect, of familiarizing herself with it, of approaching it slowly, but none the less surely, by lessening degrees of trepidation. She wondered that he did not look at her with more of the indignation which she knew he must feel toward her. Bitterness, however, was acridly manifested in the woman’s manner, her averted head, her sedulous silence. She continued industriously pulling the corn, as if no word had been spoken, no creature stood by. The gallinaceous girl, silent too, returned to her work, but often looked askance at Alethea over her shoulder.

The man spoke presently. His face and figure were blurred now in the smoke. It was as if a shadow had purloined a sarcastic voice. Alethea’s nerves were unstrung by the surprise of the meeting, and the fact that she could see only this elusive suggestion of his presence harassed and discomposed her.

“ Waal, Lethe, I dunno ez I be s’prised ter see ye. I hev seen ye sech a many times whenst I never expected ye, — startin’ up yander at Boke’s barn ez suddint ez ef ye hed yer headquarters in the yearth or the sky. An’ jes’ at this junctry, whenst we air a-tryin’ ter steal our own corn away from hyar, ye kem a-boundin’ out’n the smoke, like ye hed no abidin’ place more ’n a witch or that thar Herder on Thunderhead, or sech harnts. I never see yer beat ez a meddler. Satan ain’t no busier with other folkses’ souls.”

She made no reply. The shifting vapor hid the tree where the bright-eyed coon hung fast by his claws, and the wheezing yapping of the foiled dogs besieging his stronghold seemed strangely loud and near since they were invisible.

The shucks rustled sibilantly. The ears of maize fell with a monotonous sound upon the heaps in the turn row.

“ What did the revenuers do when they kem up the mounting?” Marvin asked suddenly. His tone was all alert now with curiosity. He could reserve his rebukes till his craving for gossip should be satisfied. Conversation, a fine art elsewhere, assumes the dignity of a privilege in these sparsely settled wilds, where its opportunities are scant.

“ They ain’t never kem, ez I knows on,” said Alethea tremulously. They might come yet, and here he was still unwarned and at the mercy of accident. She had climbed the fence, springing lightly down on the other side, and had mechanically begun to assist them in their work, — the usual courtesy of a guest in the mountains who finds the host employed.

“ Slip-shuck it, Lethe,” he remarked, calling her attention to the fact that the outer husks were left upon the stalks, and the ear, enveloped merely in its inner integuments, was thrown upon the heap. “ I hates powerful ter be obleeged ter leave all this hyar good roughness; ” he indicated the long rows of shucks upon the stalks. “ My cattle would be mighty thankful ter hev sech fedded ter ’em. But the corn itself air about ez much ez I kin haul so fur ” —

“ Don’t ye tell her wharabouts weuns lives nowadays,” broke out the woman.

She was standing near Alethea, and she turned and looked at her. The girl’s fresh and beautiful countenance was only more delicate, more sensitive, with that half-affrighted perturbation on it, that piteous deprecation. The elder woman’s face was furrowed and yellow in contrast ; her large, prominent eyes, of a light hazel color, were full of tears, and had a look as if tears were no unfamiliar visitants. She wiped them away with the curtain of her pink sun-bonnet, and went on pulling the corn.

“ I dunno whar Sam Marvin lives, myself,” the moonshiner declared, with reckless bravado. “ I don’t go by that name no mo’.”

He straightened up and set his arms akimbo, as he laughed.

“ Ye need n’t send no mo’ o’ yer spies, Lethe, arter me,” he declared. “ My neighbors ’way over yander dunno no sech man ez Sam Marvin.”

Alethea’s lifted hand paused upon the shuck on the sere stalk. As she turned half round he saw her face in the smoke ; her golden hair and fresh cheek, and the saffron kerchief tied beneath the round chin. He was not struck by her beauty; it always seemed a thing apart from her, the slightest incident of her personality, so much more forceful were the impressions of her character, so much more intimately her coercive opinions concerned those with whom she came in contact. But in her clear eyes he detected a surprise which he hardly understood at the moment. And he paused to look at her, wondering if it were only simulated.

Her heart throbbed with a dull and heavy pain. So angry were they because she would not promise to keep their secret. She shrank from their rage when she should tell that she had voluntarily disclosed it.

“ Ye ’ll be purtendin’ ez’t war somebody else ez sent the spy ter make sure o’ the place whar we kep’ our still. I know ye! ” He wagged his head in more active assertion that her machinations could not avail against his discernment.

“ I never sent no spy,” faltered Alethea.

“ Thar, now ! What did I tell ye ! ” he broke out, laughing disdainfully; the woman added a high, shrill, unmirthful refrain ; even Serena the pullet, stepping about in the smoke on her long, yellow feet and in her abbreviated garments, cackled scornfully.

“Ye may thank yer blessed stars,” cried the woman scathingly, — she could hold silence no longer, — “ ez ye done nuthin’ agin we-uns. An’ the revenuers never raided our still, nor got nare drap o’ our liquor, nor tuk nuthin’ o’ ourn. Yer bones would be a-bleachin’ on the hillside ef they hed! Jes’ afore yer spy kem them white-livered men — Sam, thar, an’ the t’other distillers — war a-talkin’ ’bout how they could make ye hesh up yer mouth, ez ye would n’t keep it shet yerse’f. They ’lowed it never seemed right handy ter them ter shoot a woman same ez a man, an’ I jes’ up-ed an’ tole ’em ez ye desarved no better ’n a bullet through that yaller head o’ yourn, an’ they could git a shot at ye enny evenin’ whenst ye war a-drivin’ up the cow. An’ I ’lowed ez whenst a woman went a-meddlin’ an’ informin’ like a man, let her take what a man hev ter take. Naw, sir ! but they mus’ run away, ’count o’ a meddlin’ hussy like you-uns, an’ go live somwhar else ! An’ I hed ter leave my home, an’ the three graves o’ my dead chill’n, yander on the rise, ez lonesome an’ ez meagre-lookin’ ez ef they war three pertater hills.”

She burst into a tumult of tears. The smoke wafted down, obscuring her, — there was commotion in its midst, for the wind was astir, — and her sobs sounded from out the invisibility that had usurped the earth as if some spirit of grief were abroad in it.

“Shet up, M’ria! Ye talk like ye hed no mo’ sense ’n a sheep. The chill’n ain’t in them graves,” Marvin said, with the consolations of a sturdy orthodoxy.

“ Thar leetle bones is,” said the spirit of grief from the densities of the clouds.

And he could not gainsay this.

She wept on persistently for the little deserted bones. He could not feel as she did, yet he could understand her feeling. His under jaw dropped a little ; some stress of melancholy and solemnity was on his face, as if a saddened retrospection were evoked for him, too. But it was a recollection which his instinct was to throw off, rather than to cherish as a precious sorrow, jealously exacting for it the extremest tribute of sighs and tears.

“ Lethe,” he said suddenly, with a cheerful note, “ bein’ ez they never cotch us, did they pay ye ennything ez informer ? I ain’t right sure how the law stands on that p’int. The law ’pears ter me ter be a mighty onstiddy, contrariwise contrivance, an’ the bes’ way ter find ennything sartain sure ’bout’n it air ter ’sperience it. Did they pay ye ennything ? ”

“ I never informed the revenuers,” declared Alethea, once more.

He turned upon her a look of scorn.

“ I knowed ye war a powerful fool, a-talkin’ ’bout ‘ what’s right,’ an’ preachin’ same ez the rider, an’ faultin’ yer elders. But I never knowed ye war a liar an’ a scandalous hypocrite. The Bible say, ‘ Woe ter ye, hypocrites ! ’ I wonder ye ain’t hearn that afore; either a-wrastlin’ with yer own soul, or meddlin’ with other folkses’ salvation.” It occurred to him that he preached very well himself, and he was minded, in the sudden vanity of the discovery, to reiterate, “ Woe unto ye, hypocrite ! ”

“ What makes ye ’low ez I gin the word ter the revenuers ? ” demanded Alethea.

“ Kase the spy kem up thar with yer name on his lips. ‘ Lethe Sayles,’he sez, — ‘ Lethe Sayles.’ ”

The girl stared wide-eyed and amazed at him.

Marvin’s wife noted the expression. “ Oh, g’long, Lethe Sayles ! ” she cried, impatiently ; “ ye air so deceivin’! ”

“The spy ! ” faltered Alethea. “ Who war the spy ? I never tole nobody ’bout seein’ ye at Boke’s barn, nor whenst I war milkin’ the cow, nuther, till a few weeks ago. Ye hed lef’ hyar fur months afore then.”

The woman, listening, with an ear of corn in her motionless hand, turned and cast it upon the heap with a significant gesture of rejection, as if she thus discarded the claims of what she had heard. She sneered, and laughed derisively and shrill. The pullet, too, broke into mocking mirth, and then both fell to pulling corn with a sort of flouting energy.

“ Oh, shucks ! ” exclaimed Marvin, with a feint of sharing their incredulity. But he held his straggling beard in one hand, and looked at Alethea seriously. To him her manner constrained belief in what she had said. “ Why, Lethe,” he broke out, abruptly, “’t war n’t a week arter that evenin’ whenst I seen ye a-milkin’ the cow when the spy kem. We-uns war a-settin’ roun’ the still,— we kep’ it in the shed-room, me an’ my partners, — an’ we war a-talkin’ ’bout you-uns, an’ how ye acted ; an’ M’ria, she war thar, an’ she went agin ye, an’ ’lowed ez we hed better make ye shet yer mouth; an’ some o’ the boys were argufyin’ ez ye war jes’ sayin’ sech ez ye done ter hear yerse’f talk, an’ feel sot up in yer own ’pinion. They ’lowed ye’d be feared ter tell, sure enough, but ye hankered ter be begged ter shet up. ’T war a powerful stormy night. I never hear a wusser wind ez war a-cavortin’ round the house. An’ the lightnin’ an’ thunder hed been right up an’ down sniptious. A lightnin’ ball mus’ hev bust up on Piomingo Bald, kase nex’ day I see the ground tore up round the herder’s cabin, though Ben Doaks war n’t thar, — hed gone down ter the cove, I reckon. Waal, sir, it quit stormin’ arter a while, but everything war mighty damp an’ wet; the draps kep’ a-fallin’ off’n the eaves. We could hear the hogs in the pen a-squashin’ about in the mud. An’ all of a suddenly they tuk ter squealin’ an’ gruntin’, skeered mighty nigh ter death. An’ my oldest son, Mose, he ’lowed it war a varmint arter ’em ; an’ he snatched his gun an’ runned out ter the hog-pen. An’ thar they war, all jammed up tergether, gruntin’ an’ snortin’; an’ Mose say he war afeard ter shoot ’mongst ’em, fur fear o’ hittin’ some o’ them stiddier the varmint. An’ whilst he war lookin’ right keerful, — the moon hed kem out by then, — he seen, stiddier a wolf, suthin’ a-bowin’ down off’n the fence. An’ the thing cotch up a crust o’ bread, or a rind o’ water-million, or suthin’, out o’ the trough fur the hogs, an’ then sot up ez white-faced on the fence, a-munchin’ it an a-lookin’ at him. An’ Mose ’lowed he war so plumb s’prised he los’ his senses. He lowed ’t war a harnt, — it looked so onexpected. He jes’ flung his rifle on the groun’ an’ run. It’s mighty seldom sech tracks hev been made on the Big Smoky ez Mose tuk. We-uns ain’t medjured ’em yit, but Mose hev got the name ’mongst the gang o’ bein’ able ter step fourteen feet at a stride.”

He showed his long, tobacco-stained teeth in the midst of his straggling beard, and as he talked on he gnawed at a plug of tobacco, as if, being no impediment to thought, it could be none to its expression.

“ Mose lept inter the house, declarin’ thar war a harnt a-settin’ on the fence. Ye know Jeb Peake ? — hongry Jeb, they useter call him.” Marvin broke off suddenly, having forgotten the significance and purpose of the recital in the rare pleasure of recounting. Even his wife’s face bore only retrospective absorption, and Serena had lifted her head, and fixed an excited, steadfast eye upon him. “ Waal, hongry Jeb war a-settin’ thar in the corner, an’ bein’ toler’ble sleepy-headed he hed drapped off, his head agin the chimbley. An’ when Mose kem a-rampagin’ in thar, with his eyes poppin’ out, declarin’ thar war a harnt settin’ on the fence, eatin’,— ‘ Eatin’ what ? ’ sez hongry Jeb, a-startin’ up. Ha ! ha ! ha ! ”

“Jeb ain’t never forgot the bottom o’ the pot yit,” chimed in the wife.

“ I ain’t a-grudgin’ him ter eat, though,” stipulated the moonshiner, “ nor the harnt, nuther. I jes’ ’lowed ez that thar white-faced critter a-settin’ on the fence, a-thievin’ from the hog, mought take up a fancy ter Mose’s rifle, lef onpertected on the ground. So I goes out. Nuthin’ war n’t settin’ on the fence, ’ceptin’ the moonlight an’ that thar onregenerate young tur-rkey ez nuthin’ could hender from roostin’ on the rails o’ the hog-pen, stiddier on a limb o’ a tree, ’longside o’ the t’other tur-rkeys.”

“ An’ thar a fox cotch her afore daybreak,” interpolated Mrs. Marvin, supplying biographical deficiencies.

“I always did b’lieve ’t war them thar greedy old hogs,” said Serena.

Marvin went on, disregarding the interruption : —

“ I picked up Mose’s gun, an’ in I kem. I barred up the door, an’ then I sot down an’ lighted my pipe. An’ Jeb, he tuk ter tellin’ tales ’bout all the folks ez he ever knowed ter be skeered haffen ter death ” —

“Nare one of ’em war Jeb,” remarked the observant Mrs. Marvin, seizing the salient trait of the romancer. “ In all Jeb’s tales he comes out’n the big e-end o’ the hawn.”

“ An’ ez I sot thar, jes’ wallin’ my eyes round the room, I seen suthin’ that, ef the t’others hed said they seen, I’d hev tole ’em they war lyin’. ’T war a couple o’ eyes an’ a white face peekin’ through the holes in the chinkin’ o’ the walls, whar the daubin’ hed fell out. ’T war right close ter me at fust, — that war how I kem ter see it so plain. I ’lowed ter jes’ stick my knife right quick inter one o’ them eyes. I ’lowed ’t war a raider. ’Fore I could move’t war gone ! Then all of a suddenty I seen the face an’ eyes peekin’ in close ter the door. I jes’ flew at it that time, — war n’t goin’ ter let nuthin’ hender ” —

“ I war ’twixt him an’ the door, an’ he jes’ run over me,” interpolated the pullet. “ Knocked me plumb over, head fust, inter a tub o’ beer. Hed ter set in the sun all nex’ day fur my hair ter dry out, an’ I smelt like a toper.”

Sam Marvin not ungenially permitted his family thus to share in telling his story. He resumed with unabated ardor: —

“An’ I jumped through the door so quick that the spy jes’ did see me, an’ war steppin’ out ter run when I cotch him by the collar. I don’t reckon thar ever war a better beatin’ ’n I gin him. I hed drapped my knife a-runnin’, an’ I hed no dependence ’ceptin’ my fists. His face war so bloody I did n’t know him a-fust, when I dragged him in the house, with his head under my arm. An’ when I seen him I knowed he never kem of hisself, but somebody had sent him. An’ I say, ‘ What did ye kem hyar fur ? ’ An’ he say, ‘ Lethe Sayles.’ An’ I say, ‘ Who sent ye ? ’ An’ he say, ‘ Lethe Sayles.’ ”

“Now, Lethe, see what a liar ye hev been fund out ter be! ” said the woman, scornfully. " Lord knows I never ’lowed ye would kem ter sech. I knowed ye whenst ye war a baby. A fatter one I never see. Nobody would hev b’lieved ye’d grow up sour, an’ preachified, an’ faultin’ yer elders, an’ bide a single woman, ez ef nobody would make ch’ice o’ ye.”

Alethea looked vaguely from one to the other. Denial seemed futile. She asked mechanically, rather than from any definite motive, " Did ye hear o’ enny revenuers arter that?”

“ Did n’t wait ter,” said Marvin. “ We hed hearn enough, knowin’ ez ye hed tole, an’ the word hed got round the kentry, so ez the spy hed been sent up ter make sure o’ the place. We-uns war too busy a-movin’ the still an’ a-hustlin’ off. Ef thar hed been time enough fur ennything, I reckon some o’ them boys would hev put a bullet through that thar sandy head o’ yourn. But the raiders never kem up with we-uns, nor got our still an’ liquor, — we-uns war miles an’ miles away from hyar the night arter Tad kem a-spyin’.”

Alethea stood staring, speechless. “ Tad ! ” she gasped at last. “ Tad! ”

They all stopped and looked at her through the wreathing smoke, as if they hardly understood her.

“ Lethe, ye air too pretensified ter be healthy! ” Mrs. Marvin exclaimed at last.

“ O’ course ye knowed, bein’ ez ye tole him,” said the moonshiner. He did not resume his work, but stood gazing at her. They were all at a loss, amazed at her perturbation.

Her breath came fast; her lips were parted. One lifted hand clung to the heavily enswathed ear of corn upon the tall, sere stalk ; the other clutched the kerchief about her throat, as if she were suffocating. Her face was pale; her eyes were distended.

“ I would n’t look so pop-eyed fur nuthin’,” remarked the pullet, in callow pertness ; she might not have been suspected of laying so much stress on appearances.

“ I’m tryin’ ter think,” said Alethea, dazed, “ ef that war afore Tad war drownded or arterward.”

Marvin turned, and leered significantly at his family.

“ Mus’ hev been afore he war drownded, I reckon,” he said satirically.

“ Lethe Sayles,” observed Serena reprehensively, “ ye air teched in the head.”

She tossed her own head with a conviction that, if not strictly ornamental, it was level. Then, like the sane fowl that she was, she went stepping about on her long, yellow feet with a demure, grown-up air.

“ Oh,” said Alethea, fixing the dates in her mind, “ it mus’ hev been afterwards ” —

“ Likely,” interrupted Sam Marvin.

— “ kase that very evenin’ arter I seen ye at the cow-pen Elviry Crosby kem an’ tole ez how Reuben Lorey hed bust down old man Griff’s mill, an’ his nevy Tad war in it, an’ war drownded in the river.”

“ Laws-a-me! ” exclaimed Mrs. Marvin, clutching her sun-bonnet with both hands, and thrusting it backward from her head, as if it intercepted the news.

“Waal, sir!” cried the moonshiner, amazed.

“ Oh,” cried Alethea, clasping both her hands, “ ef I hed called ye back that evenin’, an’ promised not ter tell, like war minded ter do ” —

“ Ye lowed’t war n’t right,” suggested the moonshiner.

— “ ye would hev knowed ez Tad war n’t no spy, but war jes’ vagabondin’ round the kentry, a runaway, houseless an’ hongry ; an’ ye would hev tuk him back ter old man Griff, an’ Reuben would n’t hev been tried fur killin’ him ! ”

“ Shucks, Mink war n’t tried fur sech sure enough,” said Marvin, uneasily. His face had changed. His wife was turning the corner of her apron nervously between her fingers, and looking at him in evident trepidation.

“ He hev been in jail fur months an’ months,” said Alethea. “ An’ when he war tried, I told on the witness stand ’bout glimpsin’ Tad one night whenst I kem from camp, — mus’ hev been the same night whenst he went up the mounting ter yer house, kase thar war a awful storm. An’ when I seen him suddint I screamed, bein’ s’prised; an’ I reckon that war the reason he said ‘Lethe Sayles.’ An’ at the trial they ’lowed I hed seen nuthin’ but Tad’s harnt, an’ the jury disagreed.”

“ An’ — an’ — an’ air Mink in jail yit ? ” demanded the moonshiner, his jaw falling in dismay.

“ The rescuers tuk him out,” said Alethea.

“ Waal, sir,” he exclaimed, with a long breath. “ Ye see,” — he seemed to feel that he must account for his excitement and interest. — “ bein’ hid out, I hain’t hearn no news, sca’cely, sence we-uns lef’.”

“ Whar be Tad now ? ” Alethea asked suddenly, realizing that here was the man who had seen him last.

He glanced quickly at her, then in perplexed dubitation at his wife. Like many women, she was willing enough to steer when it was all plain sailing, but among the breakers she left him with an undivided responsibility. She fell to pulling corn with an air of complete absorption in her work.

He made a clumsy effort at diversion. “ By Gosh,” he declared, waving his hand about his head, “ ef this hyar smoke don’t clar away, we-uns ’ll all be sifflicated in it.”

But the smoke was not now so dense. High up, its sober, dun-colored folds were suffused with a lurid flush admitted from the wintry sunset. The black, dead trees within the inclosure stood out distinctly athwart the blank neutrality of the gray, nebulous background. The little house on the rise was dimly suggested beyond the corn-field, across which skulked protean shapes of smoke, — monstrous forms, full of motion and strange consistency and slowly realized symmetry, as if some gigantic prehistoric beasts were trembling upon the verge of materialization and visibility. The wind gave them chase, for it was rising. It had lifted its voice in the silences. Like a clarion it rang down the narrow ravine below. But Sam Marvin, expanding his lungs to the freshened air, declared that he felt “ plumb sifflicated.”

“ Whar be Tad now ? ” persisted Alethea.

He spat meditatively upon the ground. “ Waal, Lethe,” he said at last, “ that’s more ’n I know. I dunno whar Tad be now.”

She detected consciousness in the manner of the woman and the girl. She broke out in a tumult of fear: —

“ Ye didn’t harm Tad, did ye ? ” with wild, terrified eyes fixed upon him. “ Ye didn’t kill Tad fur a spy? — kase he war n’t.”

“ Shet up, ye blatant hussy ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Marvin, “ layin’ sech ez that at we-uns’s door.”

“ An’ shet up yerse’f, M’ria. Least said, soonest mended,” Marvin interposed. “ Look-a-hyar, Lethe Sayles, ye hev done harm enough ; it may be kase it war right. Take sech satisfaction ez ye kin in yer notion. It never turned out right, — turned out mighty wrong. I ain’t goin’ ter answer ye nare nuther word. I hev got a question ter ax youuns right now. Who war it ye tole ’bout findin’ out’t war me a-moonshinin’ ? ”

She detailed tremulously the scene in the court-room, and the impression it produced was altogether at variance with her expectations. Perhaps, however, it was only natural that Sam Marvin should feel less interest in the belated disclosure, which he had thought was made months previous, than in the circumstances of the trial, Peter Rood’s death, the imprisonment of the jury, and the riot of the rescuing mob. As to his wife, she was chiefly shocked by the publicity attaching to testimony in open court.

“ An’ ye jes’ stood up thar, Lethe Sayles, ez bold-faced ez a biscuit block, an’ lifted up yer outdacious voice afore all them men ? Waal, sir ! Waal! I dunno what the wimmin air a-comin’ ter ! ”

“ I war obligated ter tell sech ez I knowed,” Alethea contended against this assumption of superior delicacy. “ I never felt no more bold-faced than in tellin’ ’speriunce ’fore the brethren at camp.”

“ Oh, child ! ” cried Mrs. Marvin. “ It’s the spirit o’ grace movin’ at camp, but at court it’s the nimbleness o’ the devil.”

Alethea argued no further, for conversation was impeded by the succeeding operations of gathering the crop. Marvin was leading the team of the great wagon from one to another of the heaps of corn. The huge creaking wheels crushed the ranks of stalks that fell in confusion on either side; the white canvas cover had been removed from the hoops, in order to facilitate the throwing of the corn into the wagon. Through the wreaths of smoke appeared the long ears of a pair of mules. Sam Marvin had apparently found his new home in a thirstier locality than his old, for he was evidently thriving. The pair of mules might have been considered a sorry team in point of appearance : their sides were rubbed bare with the friction of the trace-chains ; they were both unkempt, and one was very tall and the other small, but they were stalwart and sure-footed and fleet, and a wonderful acquisition in lieu of the yoke of slow oxen she remembered. The continuous thud, as the ears of corn were thrown into the wagon, enabled Marvin to affect not to hear Alethea’s reiteration as to Tad’s fate.

“ I wisht ye’d tell me suthin’ bout’n Tad,” she said piteously. “ I wisht I knew ye hed n’t hurt him, nor — nor ” —

She paused in the work, looking drearily about her. The wind tossed her garments ; she was fain at times to catch her bonnet by the curtain, to hold it. The smoke had taken flight; dragons, winged horses, griffins, forgotten myths, all scurrying away before the strong blast. And still they came and went, and rose once more, for the wind that lifted the smoke fanned the fire. The flames were in sight along the base of Big Injun Mounting, writhing now like fiery serpents, and now rising like some strange growth in quivering blades ; waving and bowing, appearing and disappearing, and always extending further and further. They seemed so alive, so endowed with the spirit of destruction, so wantonly alert, so merciless to the fettered mountain that tossed its forests in wild commotion, with many a gesture of abject despair, and spite of all could not flee. Their strong, vivid color contrasted with the dull garnet of the myriads of bare boughs and the deep, sombre green of the solemn pines. The smoke carried from the fire a lurid reflection, fading presently in the progress across the landscape of the long, dun-colored flights. The wintry sunset was at hand. The sky was red and amber ; the plains of the far west lay vaguely purple beneath. On Walden’s Ridge, rising against the horizon, rested the sun, from which somehow the dazzling fire seemed withdrawn, leaving a sphere of vivid scarlet, indescribably pure and intense, upon which the eye could nevertheless gaze undaunted.

Pensive intimations there were in its reduced splendors ; in the deep purple of Chilhowee, in the brown tints of the nearer ranges. Something was gone from the earth, — a day, — and the earth was sad, though it had known so many. And the night impended and the unimagined morrow. And thus the averted Future turns by slow degrees the face that all flesh dreads to see. The voice of lowing cattle came up from the cove. The fires in the solitudes burned apace.

“ I hev axed ye time an’ agin, Sam Marvin, whar Tad be. Ef ye don’t tell, I ‘ll be bound ter b’lieve ye moonshiners hev done suthin’ awful ter him.”

They were about to depart on their journey. Already Serena was on her uneasy bed of corn in the ear. But the pullet’s life had been made up chiefly of rough jouncing, and never having heard of a wagon with springs, she was in a measure incapable of appreciating her deprivation. She had wrapped a quilt of many colors about her shoulders, for the evening air was chill, and she looked out of the opening in the back of the canvas-covered wagon in grotesque variegation. Mrs. Marvin was climbing upon the wheel to her seat on the board in front. The moonshiner stood by the head of one of the mules, busy arranging the simple tackling. He looked with a sneer at Alethea over the beast’s neck.

“ An’ I hev tole ye, Lethe Sayles, ez I dunno whar Tad be now. I’m a mighty smart man, sure enough, but ’t would take a smarter one ’n me ter say whar Tad be now, an’ what he be a-doin’.”

He looked at his wife with a grin. She laughed aloud in tuneless scorn. The girl, gazing out of the back of the wagon as it jolted off, echoed the derision in a shrill key. And as the clumsy vehicle went creaking down the precipitous slope, beyond the crest of which could be seen only the flaming base of the opposite mountain, all luridly aflare in the windy dusk, they seemed to Alethea as if they were descending into Tophet itself.

XVIII.

For a long time that night Alethea sat on the cabin porch in Wild-Cat Hollow, absently watching the limited landscape seen through the narrow gap of the minor ridges superimposed upon the great mountain. The sky was dark but for the light that came from the earth. The flames were out of sight behind the intervening ranges. Weird fluctuating gleams, however, trembled over the cove below, and summoned from the darkness that stately file of peaks stretching away along the sole vista vouchsafed to the Hollow. Sometimes the illumination was a dull red suffusion, merging in the distance into melancholy gradations of tawny yellow and indeterminate brown, and so to densest gloom. Again it was golden, vivid, fibrous, divergent, like the segment of a halo about some miraculous presence, whose gracious splendor was only thus suggested to the debarred in Wild - Cat Hollow. The legions of the smoke were loosed : down in the cove always passing in endless ranks what way the wind might will; along the mountain side marshaled in fantasies reflecting from the fires subtle intimations of color, — of blue and red and purple; deploying upward, interposing between the constellations, that seemed themselves upon the march. There were clouds in the sky ; the night was chill. Alethea gathered her shawl over her head. Now and then Tige, who sat beside her, wheezed and glanced over his shoulder at the door ajar, as if to urge her to go in. Sometimes he ran thither himself, looking backward to see if she would follow him. Then, as she continued motionless, he would come and sit beside her, with a plaintive whine of resignation. Tige was pensive and humble to-night, and was making an edifying show of repentance. On the homeward walk he had been disposed to follow the example of the moonshiner’s dogs and harass the coon, thereby becoming acquainted with the teeth of the smiling creature, and incurring Alethea’s rebukes and displeasure.

It was a cheerful scene within, glimpsed through the half-open door, contrasting with the wild, dark world without, and its strange glares and fluctuating glooms and far-off stars and vast admeasurements of loneliness. The old woman knitted and nodded in her rocking-chair ; Jessup and Mr. Sayles smoked their pipes, and ever and anon the old man began anew to detail — the pipestem between his teeth — the legends that his grandfather had learned from the Indians of the hidden silver mines in these mountains, found long ago, and visited stealthily, the secret of the locality dying with its discoverer, who thus carried out of the world more than he brought with him. Their eyes gloated on the fire as they talked, seeing more than the leaping yellow flames or the white heats of the coals below. It might seem as if the craving for precious metal were a natural appetite, since these men that knew naught of the world, of the influence of wealth, of its powers, of its infinite divergences, should be a-hungered for it in their primitive fastnesses, and dream of it by night.

“ On the top of the Big Smoky Mountings, on a spot whar ye kin see the Tennessee River in three places at once,” said the old man, repeating the formula of the tradition.

Jessup puffed his pipe a moment in silence, watching the wreathing smoke. “ I know twenty sech spots,” he said presently.

The old man sighed and shifted his position. “ Me too,” he admitted. “ But thar it be,” he observed, “ fur the man ez air a-comin’.”

They fell silent, perhaps both projecting a mental ideal of the man of the future, and the subservient circumstance that should lead him to stand one day on these stupendous heights, with sunshine and clouds about him and the world at his feet, and to look upon the mystic curves of the river, trebly visible, strike his heel upon the ground, and triumphantly proclaim, “ It is here ! ”

The dogs lay about the hearth; one, a hound, in the shadow, with his muzzle stretched fiat on the floor between his paws, had saurian suggestions, — he was like an alligator. Leonidas and Lucinda had gone to bed, but the baby was still up and afoot. The fiat of nursery ethics that gentry of his age should be early asleep had been complied with only so far as getting him into his nightgown, which encased his increasing plumpness like a cylinder. He wore a queer night-cap, that made him look incongruously ancient and feminine. He plodded about the puncheon floor, in the joy of his newly acquired powers of locomotion, with reckless enthusiasm. His shadow accompanied him, magnified, elongated, — his similitude as he might be in years to come ; he seemed in some sort attended by the presentiment of his future. The energy, however, with which he had started on his long journey through life would presently be abated. In good sooth, he would be glad to sit down often and be still, and would find solace in perching on fences and whittling, and would know that hustling through this world is not what one might hope. He had fallen under the delusion that he could talk as well as walk, and was inarticulately loquacious.

Alethea’s errand outside was to gather chips from the wood-pile hard by, to kindle the morning’s fires. It had been long since rain had fallen, but the routine of spreading them upon the hearth, to dry during the night, was as diligently observed as if the reason that gave rise to the habit now existed. The splint baskets, filled and redolent of the hickory bark, stood at her feet, yet she did not move.

She was solitary in her isolated life, with her exalted moral ideal that could compromise with nothing less than the right. She had known no human being dominated by a supreme idea. The reformers, the martyrs, all who have looked upward, sacrificed in vain for her — not even as a tradition, an exemplar might they uphold when she failed. Religion was vague, distorted, uncomprehended, in the primitive expoundings to which she was accustomed. Her inherent conscience prevailed within her like some fine, ecstatic frenzy. It was of an essence so indomitably militant that in her ignorant musings it seemed that it must be this which marshals the human forces, and fights the battle of life, and is unconquered in death, and which the stumbling human tongue calls the soul. And yet so strange it was she thought that she could not always recognize the right, — that she must sedulously weigh and canvass what she had done and what she might have done, and what had resulted.

She dwelt long on the moonshiner’s story. She was heart-sore for the hungry idiot, filching from the hogs, — and what forlorn fate had he found at last! She drew her shawl closer about her head, and shivered more with her fears than with the wind. She was very tired ; not in body, for she was strong and well, but in mind and heart and life. Somehow, she felt as if she were near the end, — surely there was not enough vitality of hope to sustain her further, — the frequent illusion of sturdy youth, with the long stretches of weary years ahead. There was even a certain relaxation of Mink’s tyrannous hold upon her thoughts. It was not that she cared for him less, but she had pondered so long upon him that her imagination was numb ; she had beggared her invention. She could no more project scenes where he walked with all those gentler attributes with which her affection, despite the persistent contradictions of her subtler discernment, had invested him. She could no longer harass herself with doubts of his state of mind, with devising troublous reasons why he had avoided her, with fears of harm and grief menacing him. She had revolted at last from the thrall of these arid unrealities. She felt, in a sort of grief for herself, that they were but poor delusions that occupied her. He must come, and come soon, her heart insistently said. And yet so tired was her heart that she felt in a sort of dismay that were he here tonight there would be no wild thrill of ecstasy in her pulses, no trembling joys. All that she had suffered — despair, and frantic hope that was hardly less poignant, and keen anxieties, and a stress of care — had made apathy, quiet, rest, nullity, the grave, seem dearer than aught the earth could promise.

“ He oughter hev kem afore,” she said to herself, in weary deprecation.

And then she thought that perhaps now, since he was at liberty again, he was happy with Elvira, and she experienced another pang to know that she was not jealous.

The clouds had obscured the few stars. The wind was flagging; the smoke grew denser ; the forest flames emitted only a dull red glow; the file of peaks that they had conjured from the blackness of night was lost again in densest gloom.

She was roused suddenly to the fact that it was intensely quiet in-doors. She could even hear the sound of the fire in the deep chimney-place ; it was “ treadin’ snow,” the noise being very similar to the crunch of a footfall on a frozen crust. She rose, looking upward and holding her hand to the skies; the glow from within fell upon her fair face, half hooded in the shawl, and upon her wide, pensive eyes. Flakes were falling; now, no more ; and again she felt the faint touch in her palm.

Her first thought was of Mrs. Jessup, and the impediment that a snow-storm might prove to her return ; and thus she was reminded that the pedestrian within was still, for she no longer heard the thud of his bare feet on the floor. He had fallen asleep in a corner of the hearth, with a gourd in one hand, and in the other a doll made, after the rural fashion, of a forked twig arrayed in a bit of homespun. Tige watched him as he was borne off to his bed with an envy that was positively human.

It was for the baby’s sake that Mrs. Jessup returned the next day, despite the deep snow that covered the ground. She had had a dream about him, she declared,

— a dreadful dream, which she could not remember. It had roused all the maternal sentiment of which she was capable. She had endured some serious hardship in coming to assure herself of his well-being, for she was obliged to walk much of the way up the mountain,

— the snow and ice making the road almost impracticable, and rendering it essential that there should be as little weight as possible in the wagon ; to a woman of her sedentary habit this was an undertaking of magnitude. After her wild-eyed inquiry, “ Air Ebenezer well ez common ? ” she seemed to hold him responsible for the deceit of her dream, as if he were in conspiracy with her sleeping thoughts, and to be disappointed that the trouble which she had given herself was altogether unnecessary.

“ Ye fat gopher ! ” she remarked, contemptuously, eying his puffy red cheeks. “ Don’t lean on me. I’m fit ter drap. Lean on yer own dinner. I ’ll be bound Lethe stuffed ye ez full ez a sassidge.”

She addressed herself to bewailing that she had curtailed her visit, having enjoyed it beyond the limits which the lugubrious occasion of the funeral might seem to warrant.

“ Mis’ Purvine war mighty perlite an’ sa-aft spoken. I never see a house so fixed up ez hern air, — though I don’t b’lieve that woman hev more ’n two or three hogs ter slarter fur meat this year, ef that. I slep’ in the bedroom; ’t war mighty nice, though colder ’n ’t war in the reg’lar house, through hevin’ no fire. I reckon that’s what sot me off ter dreamin’ a pack o’ lies ’bout that thar great hearty catamount, fairly bustin’ with fatness. I wisht I hed bided in the cove! Mis’ Purvine begged me ter bide. We-uns went ter the fun’el tergether, an’ the buryin’, an’ we went round an’ seen my old neighbors, an’ traded ter the sto’. An’ I spun some fur Mis’ Purvine.”

“ Mighty little, I ’ll bet,” declared her husband inopportunely, " ef what ye do hyar be enny sign.”

Whereupon Mrs. Jessup retorted that she wished she had made an excuse of the snow to have remained with Mrs. Purvine until the thaw, and retaliated amply by refusing to tell what hymns were sung at the funeral, and to recite any portion of the sermon.

This resolution punished the unoffending members of the family as severely as Jessup himself; but it is a common result that the innocent many must suffer for the guilty unit, — justice generally dealing in the gross. The old man’s lower jaw fell, dismayed at the deprivation. He had relinquished sorting his “ lumber,” and roused himself to listen and note. The details would long serve him for meditation, and would gradually combine in his recollection in dull mental pictures to dwell on hereafter, and to solace much lonely vacant time. Mrs. Sayles was irritated. Alethea had looked to hear something from Mink, and Jessup was unexpectedly balked.

Nothing could be more complete than Mrs. Jessup’s triumph, as she held her tongue,—having her reason. Her opaque blue eyes were bright with a surface gleam, as it were ; there was a good deal of fresh color in her face. She was neater than usual, having been smartened up to meet the folks in the cove. Her snuff-brush, however, was very much at home in the corner of an exceedingly pretty mouth. As they all sat before the fire, she took off the socks which aunt Dely had lent her, and which she had worn up the mountain over her shoes, because of the snow; and she could not altogether refrain from remark.

“ Ef these hyar socks hed n’t been loant ter me,” she said, holding one of them aloft, " I could n’t holp noticin’ how Mis’ Purvine turned them heels, knittin’ ’em. I do declar, ef these hyar socks fits Jerry Price, he hev got a foot shaped like Buck’s, an’ no mistake.”

It jumped with her idle humor to keep them all waiting, uncertain whether or not she would relent and disclose the meagre gossip they pined to hear. Nothing was developed till Jacob Jessup, retaliating in turn, flatly refused to go and feed Buck, still harnessed in the wagon.

Alethea rose indignantly.

“ I don’t lay off ter do yer work ginerally, but I ain’t goin’ ter let the steer go hongry,” she said, “kase ye air idle an’ onfeelin’.”

“ Don’t ye let him go hongry, then,” said Jessup, provokingly.

It had ceased to snow. When Alethea opened the door many of the traits of Wild-Cat Hollow were so changed amidst the deep drifts that one who had seen it only in its summer garb might hardly recognize it. Austere and bleak as it was, it had yet a symmetry that the foliage and bloom, and even the stubble and fallen leaves of autumn, served only to conceal. The splendid bare slope down the mountain, the precipitous ascent on either side of the deep ravine, showed how much the idea of majesty may be conveyed in mere lines, in the gigantic arc of a circle. The boles of the trees were deeply imbedded in drifts. On the mountain above, the pines and the firs supported great masses lodged amongst the needles. Sometimes a sharp crack told that a branch had broken, overburdened. The silence was intense; the poultry had hardly ventured off their roosts to-day ; the gourds that hung upon a pole as martin-house were whitened, and glittered pendulous. Once, as Alethea stood motionless, a little black-feathered head was thrust out and quickly withdrawn. Down in the cove the snow lay deep, and the forests seemed all less dense, lined about as they were with white, which served in some sort as an effacement. Through the narrow gap of the ridges was revealed the long mountain vista, with the snowy peaks against the gray sky. Very distinct it all was, sharply drawn, notwithstanding that it lacked but an hour, perhaps, of the early nightfall. For a moment she had forgotten her errand; the next she turned back in surprise. “ Whar’s Buck an’ the wagin ? ”

“ Oh,” said Mrs. Jessup, still serenely casual, “ he’s a-kemin’ up the mounting along o’ Ben Doaks. I met Ben, an’ I ’lowed ez I did n’t know how I’d make out ter drive sech a obstinate old steer up the mounting in all this snow. Buck hev fairly tuk ter argufyin’ ’bout the road ter go, till ye dunno whether ye air drivin’ the steer or the steer air drivin’ you-uns. I mos’ pulled off his hawns sence I been gone. So Ben, he ’lowed he’d like ter kem an’ spen’ a few days along o’ we-uns, ennyhow.”

“Why n’t ye tell that afore?” demanded her mother-in-law angrily. “ Ye want him ter ’low ez we air a-grudgin’ him victuals. Lethe, put in some mo’ o’ them sweet taters in the ashes ter roast, an’ ye hed better set about supper right now.”

For Mrs. Sayles bad been accounted in her best days a good housekeeper, for the mountains, and she cherished the memory of so fair a record. Perhaps her reputation owed something to the fact that she entertained a unique theory of hospitality, and made particularly elaborate preparations when the guests were men. “ Wimmen don’t keer special ’bout eatin’. Show ’em all the quilts ye hev pieced, an’ yer spun truck, an’ yer gyardin, an’ they ’ll hev so much ter study ’bout an’ be jealous ’bout ez they won’t want nuthin’ much ter eat.”

Now she proceeded to “ put the big pot into the little pot,” to use a rural expression, singularly descriptive of the ambitious impossibilities achieved. She did it chiefly by proxy, directing from her seat in the chimney corner Alethea’s movements, but wearing the absorbed, anxious countenance of strategy and resource. The glory of the victory is due rather to the head that devised than to the hands that executed; as in greater battles the pluck of the soldiery is held subordinate to the science of the commander.

It was no mean result that smoked upon the table when the sound of Buck’s slow hoofs was heard on the snow without, and a warm welcome was in readiness besides. A cheerful transition it was from the bleak solitudes : the fire flared up the chimney ; the peppers and the peltry hanging from the rafters might sway in draughts that naught else could feel; the snow without was manifested only by the drifts against the batten shutters, visible in thin white lines through the cracks, and in that intense silence of the muffled earth which appeals to the senses with hardly less insistence than sound.

Ben’s aspect was scarcely so negative, so colorless, as usual, despite his peculiarly pale brown hair and beard. The sharp sting of the cold air had brought a flush to his face ; his honest, candid gray eyes were bright and eager. His manner was very demure and propitiatory, especially to Mrs. Sayles, who, in her turn, conducted herself with an ideally motherly air, which was imbued with many suggestions of approval, even of respect.

“ Howdy, Ben, howdy. We-uns air mighty glad ter see ye, Ben.”

“ Don’t ye git too proud, Ben,” said Mrs. Jessup, roused from her inertia by the unwonted excitements of her journey to the cove, and, since she was not too lazy to exercise her perversity, thoroughly relishing it. They’d be jes’ ez glad ter see ennybody, — it air so beset an’ lonesome up hyar. They fairly tore me ter pieces with thar questions whenst I kem.”

And this reminded old man Sayles that the details of the funeral could be elicited from Ben Doaks. Upon request the young man lugubriously rehearsed such portions of the sermon as he could remember, prompted now and then by Mrs. Jessup, who did not disdain to refresh his recollection when it flagged ; he even lifted his voice in a dolorous refrain to show how a certain " hyme chune ” went. But his attention wandered when supper was over, and he observed Alethea, with a bowl of scraps in her hand and a shawl over her head, starting toward the door.

The dogs ran after her, with voracious delight in the prospect of supper, and bounded up against the door so tumultuously that she had difficulty in opening it.

“ Goin’ ter feed the dogs, Lethe ? ” said Ben Doaks, seizing the opportunity. “ I ‘ll keep ’em back till ye kin git out.”

He held the door against the dogs, and when he shut it he too was on the outer side. It was not yet quite dark ; the whiteness of the snow contended with the night. The evening star showed through the rifts in the clouds, and then was obscured. The dogs were very distinct as they ran hither and thither on the snow at Alethea’s feet, while she leaned against the post of the porch and threw to them scraps from the bowl.

Ben knew that his time was short. “ Lethe,” he said, with a truly masculine tact, “ I hearn ez how ye hev done gin up waitin’ fur Mink.”

Her lustrous eyes seemed all undimmed by the shadows. The sheen of her hair was suggested beneath the faded shawl, drawn half over her head. What light the west could yet bestow, a pearly, subdued glimmer, was on her face. She said nothing.

He lifted his hand to the low, shelving roof of the porch, — for he was very tall, — and the motion dislodged a few flakes that fell upon her head. He did not notice them.

“ I hearn Mis’ Purvine ’low ye air all plumb outdone with Mink, an’ would n’t hev him ef he war ter ax ye, — an’ I reckon ye won’t see him no mo’. ’T ain’t likely, ye know. An’ Mis’ Purvine ’lowed ye hed been mightily streck with a man in Shaftesville, — a town cuss ” (with acrimony), “ ez war mighty nigh demented ’bout yer good looks an’ sech. Now, Lethe, ye dunno nuthin’ ’bout’n them town folks, an’ the name they hev got at home, ’mongst thar neighbors.”

She looked steadily at him, never moving a muscle save to cast more scraps to the dogs, who, when their tidbits became infrequent, or were accidentally buried in the snow by inopportune movements of their paws, gamboled about to attract her attention ; rising upon their hind legs, and almost dancing, in a manner exceedingly creditable to untrained mountain dogs.

“ An’ I ’lowed I war a tremenjious fool ter hev kep out’n the way ’count o’ Mink,—jes’ kase ye seemed ter set so much store by him. T’other folks mought kem in whilst I war a-holdin’ back. Nobody ain’t never goin’ ter keer fur ye like I do, Lethe. Mink don’t, — never did. An’ my house air ready fur ye enny day ye ’ll walk in. I got ye a rockin’-cheer the t’other day, an’ a spinnin’-wheel. It looks like home, sure enough, down thar, Lethe. I jes’ gazed at that thar rockin’-cheer afore the fire till I could fairly see ye settin’ in it. But shucks, I kin hear ye callin’ chickens roun’ thar, — ‘ Coo-chee, Coo-chee ! ’ — enny time I listens right hard.” He laughed in embarrassment because of his sentimentality. “ I reckon I mus’ be gittin’ teched in the head.”

It was snowing again. From those stupendous heights above the Great Smoky Mountains down into the depths of Piomingo Cove the flakes steadily fell. Myriads of serried white atoms interposed a veil, impalpable but opaque, between Wild-Cat Hollow and the rest of the world. Doaks looked about him a little, and resumed suddenly : —

“ I ain’t purtendin’ I ’m better ’n other men. I never could git religion. I ain’t nigh good enough fur ye, — only I think mo’ of ye. I’m mean ’bout some things. I could n’t holp but think, whenst I hearn ’bout Mink, ez now ye’d gin him up. I war n’t bodaciously glad, but I could n’t holp thinkin’ ‘t war better fur ye an’ me. Ye’d be happier married ter me, Lethe, than ter him, enny time.”

“ I ain’t never goin’ to marry you-uns, Ben,” she said drearily. “ An’ now ye hev hed yer say, an’ thar’s no use a-jawin’ no mo’ ’bout’n it.”

She turned to go in. Tige was already scratching at the door, as eager for the fire as he had been for his supper. She glanced at Ben over her shoulder, with some appreciation of his constancy, some commiseration for his disappointment.

“ Ye hed better go make a ch’ice ’mongst some o’ them gals in the cove,” she suggested.

He cast a glance of deep reproach upon her, and followed her silently into the house. Their return was the occasion of some slight flutter in the circle, in which had prevailed the opinion that the young folks out in the cold “ war a-courtin’.”

All relics of the supper were cleared away; the fire leaped joyously up the chimney. L’onidas and Lucindy were asleep. The baby in his night-gown, all unaware that he cut an unpresentable figure before company, pounded up and down the floor, unmolested. The pipes were lighted. As Ben Doaks leaned down to scoop up a coal from the fire, his face was distinct in the flare, and Mrs. Jessup noted the disappointment and trouble upon it. Mrs. Sayles too deduced a sage conclusion. A glance was exchanged between the two women. Then Mrs. Jessup, with a view to righting matters between these young people, whom fate seemed to decree should be lovers and only human perversity prevented, asked, “ Did ye tell Lethe the news ’bout Mink ? ”

“ Naw,” he responded, somewhat shortly. " I ’lowed she knowed it long ago.”

“ Naw she don’t,” said Mrs. Jessup ; “none o’ we-uns hyar on the mounting knowed it.”

She paused to listen to the wind, for it was astir without. A hollow, icy cry was lifted in the dark stillness,— now shrill and sibilant, now hoarsely roaring and dying away in the distance, to be renewed close at hand. The boughs of trees beat together. The pines were voiced with a dirge. The porch trembled, and the door shook.

“ Why, Lethe,” resumed Mrs. Jessup, turning toward the girl, as she sat in a low chair in the full radiance of the firelight, “ Mink ain’t out’n jail. The rescuers never tuk him out.”

The color left Alethea’s face. Her doubting eyes were dilated. Mrs. Jessup replied to the expression in them.

“Mis’ Purvine, she ’lowed ez she an’ you-uns hearn everybody sayin’ the rescuers tuk him out afore ye lef’ town that morniu’. That war town talk. But ’t war n’t true. The jailer an’ the sher’ff tied an’ gagged him, an’ tuk him out tharse’fs in the midst o’ the dark, whenst nobody could see ’em. Makes me laff ter think how they fooled them boys ! They jes’ busted up the jail so ez ’t war n’t safe ter try ter keep him thar no mo’, an’ the nex’ day the dep’ty an’ two gyards tuk him down ter the jail at Glaston, — an’ thar he’s safe enough.”

Alethea was thinking, with vague, causeless self-reproach, that she had let Sam Marvin, who had seen Tad since the disaster at the mill, go in the belief that Mink had been released. But how could she have detained him ? And would he, a moonshiner, suffer himself to be subpœnaed as a witness, and thus insure his own arrest ?

Her lips moved without a sound, as if she were suddenly bereft of the power to articulate.

“ Glaston, that’s a fac’,” reiterated Mrs. Jessup, noticing the demonstration, “ kase I see ’Lijah Miles, ez war one o’ the gyards. He kem up ter the cove ter the fun’el, bein’ ez his wife war kin ter the corpse. She war one o’ the Grinnells afore she war married, — not the Jer’miah fambly, but Abadiah’s darter ; an’ Abadiah’s gran’mother war own cousin ter the corpse’s mother” —

“ I dunno ’bout’n that,” said Mrs. Sayles, following this genealogical detail with a knitted brow and a painstaking attention.

“ Corpse war ’bleeged ter hev hed a mother wunst, ef ever he war alive,” said Mrs. Jessup recklessly.

“I reckon I know that.” retorted Mrs. Sayles. “ But ‘Lijah Miles’s wife’s father’s grandmother war the aunt o’ the corpse, stiddier his mother’s cousin,” — she tossed her head with a cheerful sense of accuracy, — “ sure ez ye air a born sinner.”

Mrs. Jessup paused in her recital, leaned her elbows on her knees, and fixed her eyes on the fire, as if following some abstruse calculation. In the silence the wind outside swept about the house and whistled down the chimney, till even Tige roused himself, and lifted his head to listen and to growl.

“ Waal, hev it so,” said the young woman, unable to contradict. “ Howbeit he war kin ter the corpse, he kem ter the fun’el, an’ arterward, ez he war goin’ back ter Shaftesville, he stopped at Mis’ Purvine’s an’ stayed all night. An’ he tole us ’bout’u takin’ Mink ter jail in Glaston. An’ ’t war the fust Mis’ Purvine knowed ez Mink war n’t out. But she ’lowed she’d miss him less in jail ‘n out.”

“ I reckon everybody feels that-a-way ’bout Mink,” interpolated Mrs. Sayles. “ Folks never knowed what could happen onexpected an’ upsettin’ till Mink’s capers l’arned ’em.”

“ Waal, none o’ his capers ever war like this las’ one o’ his’n,” said Mrs. Jessup, nodding seriously. “ They tuk him ter Glaston, an’ ’Lijah Miles war one o’ the gyards. They tuk him on the steamkyars.”

“ I ’ll be bound Mink war fairly skeered by them steam - kyars ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles, with all the assumption of superior experience, although she herself had never had a glimpse of them.

“ Waal, I reckon not, from the way he kerried on ’cordin’ ter ’Lijah,” said Mrs. Jessup, clasping one knee as she talked, eying the fire. “ ’Lijah ’lowed he never seen sech a fool. Mink got ter talkin’ ter the gyards an’ dep’ty ’bout this hyar Jedge Gwinnan ” —

“ Need n’t tell me nuthin’ ’bout Jedge Gwinnan. ‘ Jeemes ’ air what they call him over yauder in Kildeer County. An’ ‘ Jim,’ too. I knowed a woman ez knowed that man’s mother whenst he war a baby.”

“Waal, he’s changed some sence then. He ain’t a baby now. Mink kep’ a-talkin’ ter his gyards ’bout Gwinnan, an’ swearin’ Gwinnan had spited him in the trial, — put Pete Rood on the jury an’ sent ’em ter jail, an’ tole the sher’ff ter look arter his prisoner or he ’d escape the night Pete Rood fell dead, an’ tole ’em how ter keep the crowd from rescuin’ him, an’ all sech ez that. An’ what d’ ye reckon Mink ’lowed Gwinnan hed done it fur? Kase Gwinnan hed tuk a notion hisself ter Lethe Sayles, an’ ’lowed Mink war n’t good enough fur her.”

The incongruity of the idea impressed none of them. They all looked silently expectant as Mrs. Jessup went on : —

“ Waal, Mink swore ez some day he’d git his chance, an’ he ’d kill Gwinnan, sure. An’ ’Lijah, he seen ze Mink war a-lookin’ at Jedge Gwinnan, — the jedge, he war a-goin’ down on the train ter Glaston, an’ then out ter wharever he war a-goin’ ter hold court, an’ he war a-smokin’ in the ‘ smokin’-kyar,’ ’Lijah say they call it, whar they hed Mink. An’ ’Lijah say Mink looked at Gwinnan with his mouth sorter open, an’ his jaw sorter drapped, an’ his eyes ez set ez ef he war a wild beastis.”

Once more the wind, tumultuous, pervasive, with all the vast solitudes given over to it, sweptdown the mountain with shrill acclaim.

“ Goin’ ter hev some weather arter this,—ye mind my words,” said Mrs. Sayles, listening a moment.

“Waal, ’Lijah never thunk nothin’ mo’, an’ Mink kep’ his eyes ter hisself the rest o’ the way. When they got ter Glaston the gyards sorter waited fur the t’other folks ter git out fust, an’ then they started. Waal, ’Lijah say the dep’ty, he jumped off’n the platform fust, an’ tole Mink ter keen on. An’ the dep’ty, — ’Lijah say the dep’ty set a heap o’ store by Mink, — he war a-tellin’ Mink ter look how many tracks an’ locomotives an’ sech thar war in the depot, an’ not noticin’ Mink much. An’ ’Lijah say he seen Mink dart ter one side ; he ’lowed Mink war rankin’ a bust ter git away. Naw, sir ! Gwinnan hed stopped by the side o’ the kyar ter speak ter a man. ’Lijah say he felt like he war a-dreamin’ when he seen Mink lift up both his handcuffed hands an’ bring the irons down on the jedge’s head, — jes’ like he done the dep’ty when he war arrested. ’Lijah say him an’ the dep’ty an’ the t’other gyard hed thar pistols out in a second. But they war feared ter shoot, fur the jedge, stiddier drappin’ on the groun’, whurled roun’ an’ grabbed the man ez hit him. He got Mink by the throat, an’ held on ter him same ez a painter or sech. He nearly strangled Mink ter death, though the jedge war fairly blinded with his own blood. Mink writhed an’ wriggled so they could n’t tell one man from t’other. The gyards war feared ter shoot at Mink, kase they mought kill the jedge. They tore Mink loose at last. They ’lowed his face war black ez ef he hed been hung. He won’t tackle Gwinnan agin in a hurry. Ye ’lowed Gwinnan war a feeble infant, mother ; he ain’t very feeble now. Though he did faint arterward, an’ war hauled up ter the tavern in a kerridge. They hed ter hev some perlice thar ter holp keep the crowd off Mink, takin’ him ter jail. Waal, ’Lijah say they dunno whether the jedge will live or no, — suthin’ the matter with his head. But even ef he do live, ’Lijah say we ain’t likely ter see Mink in these parts no mo’ fur a right smart while, kase he hearn thar ez assault with intent ter c’mit murder air from three ter twenty-one year in the pen’tiary. An’ I reckon enny jury would gin Mink twenty ” —

“Yes, sir, he needs a good medjure ! ” exclaimed the negative Mr. Sayles, with unwonted hearty concurrence.

“ Mink will be an old man by the time he do git back,” computed Mrs. Sayles.

“ Now, Lethe,” argued Mrs. Jessup, “ ain’t ye got sense enough ter see ez Mink ain’t nobody ter set sech store on, an’ ef ye like him it’s kase ye air a fool ? ”

The girl sat as if stunned, looking into the fire with vague, distended eyes. She lifted them once and gazed at Mrs. Jessup, as if she hardly understood.

“ Look-a-hyar, Lethe, what sorter face air that ye hev got outer ye?” cried Mrs. Sayles. “ Ye better not set yer features that-a-way. I hev hearn folks call sech looks ‘ the dead-face,’ an’ when ye wear the ‘ dead-face ’ it air a sign ye air boun’ fur the grave.”

“ Waal, that ’s whar we all air boun’ fur,” moralized old man Sayles.

“Quit it!” his wife admonished the girl, who passed her hand over her face as if seeking to obliterate the noxious expression. “Ye go right up-steers ter bed. I ‘m goin’ ter gin ye some yerb tea.”

She took down a small bag, turning from it some dried leaves in her hand, and looked at them mysteriously, as if she were about to conjure with them.

The girl rose obediently, and went up the rude, uncovered stairs to the roofroom. After an interval Mrs. Jessup observed the jowering baby pointing upward. Among the shadows half-way up the stairs Alethea was sitting on a step, looking down vacantly at them. But upon their sudden outcry she seemed to rouse herself, rose, and disappeared above.

Charles Egbert Craddock.