The Despot of Broomsedge Cove

XVII.

IN Clem Sanders’s ingenuous face was expressed at this moment a sudden illogical, full-fledged anger and doubt, as in the slow processes of his brain was revolved the idea of the stranger’s claim to consideration on the score of a friendship with the Strobe family. He repudiated it as a figment. The normal repulsion for a cold-blooded lie, as he fancied this to be, chilled even his good nature. He had been weak, he knew, in treacherously revealing the secrets of his associates to Marcella, and he had incurred thereby heavy risks. He was willing, since it was her wish, that the man should utilize his folly to save his life, if he could. But he had revolted from sharing in the subsequent deceptions, from the double-masked character which he was forced to assume, one of the chief of the vigilantes and the secret ally of the culprit. His conclusions had a certain quality of absolute conviction, which triumphantly dispensed with logic.

“ Ye don’t know the Strobe fambly! ” he said suddenly. “Ye never hearn o’ nare one o’ ’em till this evenin’ in yer born days, — ’thout ’t war through yer frien’ Jake Baintree’s vaporin’s an’ maunderin’s ’bout folks he ain’t fit ter ’sociate with. Eli bein’ a candidate fur office so frequent, he hev a heap o’ wuthless folks a-hangin’ round him, created by God A’mighty fur nuthin’ in this worl’ but ter vote at the polls. Naw, sir! ye ain’t reg’lar ’quainted with none o’ the Strobe fambly! ”

He had ceased to work at the anvil, his uplifted hammer motionless in his hand. His brow showed several corrugations in straight lines, his eyebrows were elevated, his narrow, long eyes were grave, his square jaw was hard-set. His breath was quick, and showed in the rising and falling of his chest, from which the shirt collar was thrown back. He looked, as he stood, a splendid specimen of physical force, that one might have thought somewhat imposing, even awe-inspiring, to the slightly built stranger ; but the paramount, impression which he received was that this was Marcella’s informant, — this bold and inconsequent Vulcan, the traitor to the League of Vigilantes.

“ Now crow a little louder, my cock, and I ’ll have your friends wring your neck in short order ! ” he said to himself, feeling still master of the situation.

Outwardly he was dumb, silently marking the blacksmith’s demonstration with watchful eyes, leaning against the elevated hearth, the tips of his fingers thrust in his trousers pockets.

“ Clem Sanders,” said the blacksmith’s mother, much displeased, “ nuthin’ in this work air so becomin’ ter a fool ez a shet mouth. Then folks kin only jedge o’ what God A’mighty war in his wisdom disposed ye should look like.”

But Clem, usually a dutiful son, gave her no notice.

“ I ’m a-reelin’ ye out cornsider’ble line, ennyhow,” he continued. “I’ll haul ye in, though, in about three shakes o’ a dead sheep’s tail, ef ye go ter tryin’ ter purtend ez ye an’ Jake Baintree air favored guests yander at Strobe’s.”

For the sake of carrying out the theory on which he had conducted his share in the episode, the stranger, feigning to understand no more than the surface of affairs might betoken, lifted his eyebrows as in surprise, and shrugged his shoulders with a sophisticated gesture intimating a facile concession.

“ I meant no offense, I ’m sure; I should n’t have mentioned it. I had no idea the Strobes were so exclusive ! ” He could not have forborne this fling, had his life depended on his withholding it. “ But, my good fellow, don’t expend your spleen on me. Don’t question me. Ask them if they know me. They will tell you, and as you are so polite you will certainly believe them.”

The blacksmith lowered at him, the red light of the dwindling forge fire on his broad face and bare throat and herculean arm. Only a portion of the reply was intelligible to him, but he caught the covert satire it conveyed, and the method of glib enunciation, with quick, flexible motions of the eyelids and lips, the alert turn of the head, the gleam of innuendo in the eye implying bridled retorts that chafed at the curb of fear, all repelled him. He felt a sudden ebbing away of confidence, of his credulity. He began illogically to doubt every statement the stranger had made. Even the pick in his hand — how well it was mended, better than new ; the goodly handicraft! — was in some sort a blind, a disguise, a subterfuge. He frowned more darkly still as he sought to divine the rascality that must lurk behind this feint of mining.

Mrs. Sanders, still sitting on the keg, yawned with a somnolent vocal refrain, and then rose stiffly to her feet; this gesture roused little Silas from a state of galvanic jerks and nods in which he had been indulging, his white eyeballs quite eclipsed, or now and then half showing unnaturally upturned. He began to rub his eyes violently as he shuffled up from his seat on the hub, taking scant notice of the fact that where there is a hub, spokes are of the vicinage ; he stumbled over one or two of these, and fell in sprawling fashion almost to the door. “ Thar, now ! What did I tell ye ! ” Mrs. Sanders exclaimed acridly. And yet she had not told him anything.

But Silas, who had voice enough for much loud whooping, when such demonstrations were timely, seemed to be frugal in volume on ordinary occasions, and it was in a very thin wheeze that he made haste to stipulate that he “ warn’t hurt nowhar,” in a manner that implied that if he were injured he might expect to have his bruises multiplied at the hands of Mrs. Sanders, by way of annotating the lesson he had received to take more care.

Mrs. Sanders wore a disaffected air. All her interest in the events of the evening had evaporated in the prospect of a wrangle among the young men. She was of pacific principles, although her practices were not such as always tended to preserve the peace of the neighborhood, since she arrogated the prerogative of censorship in many particulars, and earnestly resented the right of reciprocation. If angry words were to be spoken, she liked them best of her own framing, and zealously and fearlessly applied them. But she sincerely deprecated a quarrel that was not of her own making, and her second yawn as candidly denoted that she was bored as her first.

“ Ef ye boys air a-goin’ ter take ter quar’lin’, I be a-goin’ home,” she remarked, as if this were a threat.

There was no direct reply, but the stranger looked at her with covert alarm and shame and entreaty contending in his eyes. It humiliated him to be so definitely conscious of the fact, but her presence here was a protection to him in some sort, and he leaned even upon so slight a thing as the prepossession in his favor with which he had inspired her. She did not notice, or she did not interpret, the protest in his eyes, and with them only could he follow her as she and little Silas took their way through the broad open door, and into that night of moonlight and shadow. Not all of pensive mystery, not all of melancholy magic, were these ethereal elements of contrast. Some elvish spirit informed a phase with fine-spun mirth, that failed not though none was there to see ; a tricksy fantasy cut the leaves into grotesque shapes; with a delicate twanging note snapped a twig to test the acoustic properties of the crystalline silence ; furnished the skulking fox with a nimble and crafty double to pursue him, at which he glanced over his shoulder askance; sprang up beside Mrs. Sanders and little Silas, following them in their own likeness to see them home through the woods, — duplicating her long, gaunt figure, with its grotesque sun-bonnet, and Silas’s small bifurcated image, with a slouched hat and a big head. The stranger did not watch them out of sight, for he became aware the next instant that Jepson had moved. The mountaineer had left the door, and was slowly advancing upon the two as they stood at the anvil. His face was quite unmoved, placid and dispassionate in its expression, but there was something in his eye which the stranger felt it might be well to note. Jepson paused, putting one hand upon the anvil, and looking full and searchingly into the intruder’s face he said, —

“ What mought be yer name, stranger ? ”

“ Rathburn, — Eugene Rathburn.”

Both mountaineers pondered upon this silently for a time.

“ Ye ’lowed ye war a doctor ? ” said Jepson.

“ Certainly I am,” replied Rathburn,

“ That’s how I happened to know Baintree. I attended him when he was ill in prison.”

“ Waal,” — Jepson tapped the pickaxe significantly, — “ ain’t this a powerful curus bizness fur sech ? ”

“ Why,” — Rathburn sought to laugh as he began to explain, — “ I ’m young as yet. I have no large practice. If I should find ore in quantities like the specimens Baintree shows,” — despite his fears his eyes glowed, — " I should be a wealthy man, a millionaire ! ”

He looked zestfully at the stolidly attentive mountaineers. They were alike incapable of sharing or understanding an enthusiasm such as this. A vague mental numbness, a sort of paralysis, began to steal over him, as he gradually realized how impossible it was to explain to them the greed for wealth, to move them to the love of riches. Yet he returned once more to the attempt:

“ Why, it would be a godsend to all this country. It would be opened out. You would all get rich. Emigration would set in, — new people in droves,” he explained in the vernacular. “ You would all get rich ! ”

The two mountaineers looked at one another.

“ Thar ain’t nobody so special pore hyar, though some is better off ’n others,” observed Jepson calmly.

“ You would all become educated and live high, like the valley folks.”

“ Laws-a-massy, I pray ter God I’ll never be like no valley folks ! ” protested Clem. “ Meanes’ blacksmith, ’ceptin’ you-uns, I ever knowed kem from Colbury. Yes, sir ; Grenup war his name.”

“ If you could strike paying ore on that little farm of yours,”—the stranger, turning to Jepson, still essayed the subject, — “ you might sell it for thousands and thousands of dollars.”

“ I could n’t sell it at all,” said Jepson definitely. “ My folks is all buried thar.”

Rathburn looked at him with an expression which precedes a burst of astonished laughter, caught himself in time, and said no more.

“ So this air what hev brung ye from home an frien’s, an’ kith an’ kin, ter consort with Jake Baintree, an’ hunt the mountings fur a silver mine,” said Jepson sternly. “ Though he air a murderer, yet ye will do sech fur the hope o’ gain ! ”

Rathburn quailed slightly, but sought to defend himself. “ He is no murderer. The jury acquitted him.”

“ D’ ye happen ter know whar’s Sam’l Keale, the man he didn’t kill, then?”

“Of course I don’t,” said Rathburn, visibly nettled. “I can only take the verdict of the jury on such questions. I have no right to go behind that.”

“ Waal, I don’t need twelve men ter swear my brains inter my head,” declared Jepson. “ Whar’s Sam’l Keale ? ”

The words rang out with the sonorous intensity of his voice. A faint echo came from the crag above the forge. The moonlight stood motionless in the door. Without, the frosty woods glittered.

“ Whar’s Sam’l Keale ? ” he cried again. “ Look-a-hyar, stranger.” He turned abruptly, and, with a lowered tone and a fiery eye, he laid his hand upon Rathburn’s arm, who shrank under his touch. “Ye axed me whar’s the mouth o’ the cave whar Baintree hid him. The critter never tole ! An’

I fund Sam’l Keale’s coat. An’ I fund Sam’l Keale’s hat, in a gorge they never sarched. God an’ the mountings only know the hidden place, an’ in thar mystery they will not reveal it.”

The stranger broke forth impetuously :

“ Then you, you can tell me where that gorge is, and we can search the chasms!

I feel sure that the silver is there, where the man lost his life, — the silver ” —■ Jepson flung away from him with a gesture so abrupt that Rathburn paused suddenly.

“ What ails ye, man,” cried the mountaineer, “ to talk of silver in the midst o’ the wharfores o’ life an’ death, an’ a-sarchin’ the gorge fur gain stiddier jestice ? The place air nuthin’ ter you-uns but the hope o’ gittin’ the riches what one man los his life fur, an’ the t’ other man tuk it. What sorter critter be ye ? ” His eyes were blazing with reproach. “ What sorter critter be ye?”

“ A sane one, I hope,” retorted the stranger, fairly overtaken. “ I’m not entrusted with the administration of the laws. I have no ' call ’ to sit in judgment on the justice of Jake Baintree’s acquittal. And it won’t make Samuel Keale any deader than he is — if he is dead — for me to find silver where he looked for it.”

“ Ye air free fur me ter find it,” said Jepson, “ but some time ye ’ll ’low the day ye los’ yer soul in the gorge, an tuk silver fur its price, war a powerful dark day, — the forerunner o’ darker ones, an’ eternal gloom.”

“ I ’m not going to lose my soul there ! ” cried Rathburn. “ I am going to take very excellent care of my soul. I am going to strike it rich, and be mighty good. Nothing in this world combines like goodness and prosperity, — natural affinities. All the good people are prosperous, and that is why they are so good. Adversity sours on the stomach, and deranges the nervous system, and produces crime.”

Jepson’s full eyes rested slightingly upon him.

“ Ye kin persevere, fur I ain’t of a mind ter hender.”

Rathburn looked wistfully at him ; so flinchingly was he sensible of this arrogance of permission, so did he yearn to flout and retort. Much as he had dared, he hardly dared this.

“I see no harm in sech ez ye hev said o’ yer goin’s on, ’ceptin’ it air o’ the pride an’ the willfulness o’ the devil; an’ ef he hev a mind ter mark ye fur his own, I dunno ez I feel called on in ennywise ter stay his hand. But thar may be deceitfulness in yer words, fur I know ye war warned aforehand by a woman.”

Rathburn palpably started; his eyes distended as he gazed at his self-constituted judge. How omniscient the masterful mountaineer seemed!

Jepson lingered, he hardly knew why, on this phase, despite the pain with which it was fraught. “Leastwise a gal,” he continued, elaborately particularizing. “ She warned ye. An’ ye hev hed time ter collogue with Jake Baintree, — a skeery devil; I s’pose he war fraid ter kem, — an’ make up lies ter tell when questioned. But ye know now ez ye air watched. Ef ye falter from the straight line, it ’ll go hard with ye. Take heed ter yer feet, fur ye will find thar air men in Brumsaidge ez will medjure each pace.”

He terminated the interview abruptly, making no sign of conclusion or farewell, moving with his long, deliberate, supple stride toward the door and out along the moonlit road.

Clem Sanders lingered. He felt that he would like to close his doors behind the audacity that, unlearned in the art, essayed to work at his forge and to protect the little tongs and swage and hammer— for each of which, in the moment of its danger, he felt an almost paternal solicitude — from all non-professional intermeddling. He was placing them in their wonted order, according to his habit, when he suddenly noticed that the stranger had not moved. Rathburn was still standing, his figure slightly thrown back, gazing steadfastly at Jepson’s retreating form, his whole attitude informed with resentment and agitation and the thirst for revenge, and his face bespeaking the passion and turmoil of his heart.

He turned with a quick gesture, as he became conscious that the blacksmith s eyes were upon him.

“What’s that man’s name? ” he demanded.

Clem Sanders was aware that in some sort he had produced a less forceful impression than his ally; that his recent anger and taunts were easily overlooked, and his problematic opinions were held as of scant consequence. A trifle of surliness was engendered by the perception that he was thus ignored, and he mumbled rather than pronounced his coadjutor’s name.

“Well, what’s the reason he takes so much on himself, damn him ! ” cried Rathburn recklessly.

“ Sorter robustious,” explained Jepson’s facile ally.

“ Sorter’ robustious! Good Lord ! Sets me free, and conditions me, as if — Don’t anybody make any head against him ? ”

“’T ain’t wuth while ter try. Folks sorter like Teck, an’ sorter don’t. But they foller arter him. An’,” with a recurrent desire to do justice, “ thar’s one thing ez goes a long way with most folks : he’s mighty religious.”

“ Religious ! Oh, Lord ! ” exclaimed Rathburn in a fervor of amazement.

Clem began to enjoy the rôle of biographer, since so fevered an interest hung on his words.

“ A plumb survigrous saint, he is. He hev got a mighty fine voice fur quirin’. When he sings, it sounds some like the mountings hed bruk out a-psalmin’.”

“ How many men did he have at your barn to-night ? ”

Clem Sanders gave him a long stare out of his narrow eyes. “Ye wanter know too much. Ef I war a smart man, I’d stop hyar an’ forge me an’ you-uns a chain ter tie up these hyar tongues o’ ourn. I hev done talked too much a’ready. Ef I hed n’t, ye ’d be a-danglin’ powerful limp ter one o’ them trees,” — nodding his head toward the great bare limbs, — “ stone dead, an’ the buzzards would be hevin’ a high time ’mongst yer bones by ter-morrer.”

It was not a pleasant picture under the blacksmith’s crude touch, but its power was heightened by a sense of its absolute veracity, and the very close propinquity it had to being an event instead of a possibility. Rathburn shuddered a little.

“ It was you who let the secret slip, then,”he said, his face flushing slightly. A hot, infrequent moisture had risen suddenly to his eyes. “ That lovely, noble girl! ” he faltered.

Sanders lost the final words in his eagerness to impress his theory of the clemency extended to the intruder, or it might have been tempered.

“Ye see, stranger, I hev got a tongue ez ’minds me o’ a cow a-swimmin’. Ter see the critter ker-wallop round in the water ye’d think’t warn’t goin’ nowhar in ’special, an’ ’fore ye know it the beastis air out’n ear-shot. An’ Teck air a sorter — I-dunno-what — I tell all I know when he air around ; an’ ef ye ’ll b’lieve me, he got it outer me ez we-uns war a-kemin’ down hyar, ez I hed let out the secret ter Marcelly Strobe, an’ she war agin bangin’. I dunno how he guessed ’t war her ez warned ye, — jes’ kase nobody else knowed it. But that’s how kem ye ain’t dead now, — kase Marcelly war agin it.”

“ Is — is — he in love with her ? ”

“ Yes,” assented Clem, “ but,” with decision, “ he air barkin’ up the wrong tree. Ye kin put that in yer pipe an’ smoke it.”

Rathburn was silent for a few moments, while Clem clatteringly completed the orderly arrangement of the tools about the forge. Then they both stood together in the road, after the great barn-like doors were closed.

The moon hung near the meridian ; the shadows had dwindled. There were wider avenues of frosty brilliance in the dense woods ; the full splendor of the night was climaxing. The stars were few, however, and very faint; the wide spaces of the indefinitely blue sky were a desert, save here and there a vague scintillation that one might hardly distinguish as sidereal glinting or some elusive twinkle of frost in the air. Midnight, doubtless, and a cock was crowing. A muffled resonance the sound had, as though the fowl were housed in lieu of camping out among the althea bushes, — in imminent danger of fox and mink, — according to the recent summertide wont of the mountain poultry. A faint blare of a horn from the dense coverts of the distance, and an elfin shout of hilarity, barely discernible, betokened a coonhunt on some far-away mountain. Then there fell again the deep silence of the windless night. When it was broken by a sharp sound near at hand, the interruption smote with a jar the senses, lulled and quiescent in the muteness of the resting nature. As Rathburn lifted his head, he discriminated the tones of raucous disputatious voices rising vehemently, and anon sinking down. There was an unconscious inquiry, perchance, in his eyes as he turned them upon Clem Sanders, who replied with a guttural chuckle, “ Them boys at the barn a-quar’lin’ with Teck.”

A sudden chill crept along Rathburn’s nerves.

“ You reckon they won’t agree with him ? ”

“ They never do, sca’cely. Teck’s all one ter hisse’f. But they don’t do nothin’ agin his say-so. Dunno why, but they don’t. He be so durned robustious.”

The blacksmith presently quickened his pace. Then with a drawling “ Goodby ” he began to run lightly along the hard, whitened road, feeling an accession of interest in what might be going forward at the barn, his curiosity concerning his companion flagging in this new prospect of excitement. His footfalls sounded, regular and rhythmic as machinery, long after he had disappeared amongst the white frosted wands of the bare brambles and the silver - tipped leaves of the luxuriant laurel.

Rathburn, thus summarily deserted, stood still for a moment, then took his way alone. He had a certain pride in the fact that even under these circumstances he could keep his steps deliberate and even. He scrutinized his own gait to assure himself on this point. Albeit policy had prompted his course and the event had so far justified its wisdom, he was well aware of the abundant resources of courage that had made it possible. Still he listened with sharpened sense, with every nerve tense, with an insidious chill like some cold finger illustrating an object-lesson, tracing out his vertebral column and every delicate fibre of the spinal cord, and he felt a rage of humiliation that he should be subjected to an anguish of fear like this, which but for its physical testimony he would not acknowledge to himself. If the voices rose or fell, he heard them only in the midst of the beat of his own footsteps, for he would not pause. Sometimes he fancied that another tramp was on the air, other footfalls — hasty, deranged, pursuing footfalls — were hard upon his track. He might never know — he kept steadily on, however that curious icy hand traced out his quivering nerves, and now desisted, and again laid on its chilling touch.

He had not hitherto, in his comings and goings, been insensible of the majesty of these dark ranges, the pervasive effects of awe and silence of this nocturnal scene, — never so august, never so austere, as on this night of mingled lustre and gloom ; but now, as he looked upon it, a sort of repulsion for the inanimate mountain forms possessed him. He experienced that strong hatred of place, a thousand times more potent than the vaunted local attachments. He would fain have never seen these grim encircling heights ; if he might, he would have swept them away into vague annihilation. There rose in his heart a sentiment, too, of reproach to the insensate scene, grown so familiar ; and then he saw it, purple or duskily brown, with heavy shadows lined about with mystic strokes of luminous white and with that pure pale sky above, — saw it all through a shimmer, for the hot unreasoning tears had risen to his eyes, smitten out by his helpless rage. This shabby ordeal, as he felt it,—how little he had deserved it! Even these ignorant savages could find no flaw in aught that he had done, albeit they had thirsted for his blood. They were bereft of pretext by the integrity of his intentions. Such interest, such sense of adventure, as the secret nocturnal expeditions to the forge had possessed had given way utterly before this exigent necessity to account for his freak. He began to appreciate more definitely than before the danger that had waited upon it. And yet, he thought, what sane being would not have ventured upon a trifle of mystery rather than alienate a man that held a secret like Jake Baintree’s, now half revealed, and again with a miserly clutch concealed ? Always Baintree’s clumsy subterfuges grew clumsier ; always his reticent, suspicious nature was relaxingmore and more. It seemed only a little waiting yet, and still a little time. And if these clods of mountaineers could not comprehend the value of even the remote possibility of veins of ore commensurate in richness with the specimen in Baintree’s possession, Eugene Rathburn congratulated himself that he could, and felt anew that he stood ready to risk much — very much of bodily harm and mental indignity and anguish of fright — for the bare hope to live to possess the treasure. With this, he felt he was soothsayer enough to read his future, — the long lapse of years filled with the satisfied cravings his heart held dear ; without it, he could scarce foresee the dull to-morrow that should follow to-day, and of which naught save sequence might be predicted, — the empty, empty time ! He had a sudden spasm of an unnamed affection, very well defined, however, the reverse of nostalgia, as there arose the poignant recollection of his office in Glaston, where he sat idle much of the time, in company with a blue-bottle fly, that droned on the window-pane, and whence he was summoned at inconceivably long intervals to attend some charity patient. The reward of this exertion was a local reputation of having intentionally assisted the end of certain well-known indigent worthies, who had chanced to make their demise under his ministrations; and the popular, logical surmise concerning the motive for the commission of the deed was that he thought " pore folks ” cumberers of the ground. Science, although furnishing many rich and varied instances for transformation, fails to give data concerning the gradual development of the professional man — artist, author, physician, lawyer — from the waiting, eager grub ; what causes assist at the metamorphosis, what influences favor it, what casualties retard it, what circumstances preclude it utterly. Time seems no factor, and the poor worm, with no instinct of forecast, must writhe indefinitely, not knowing whether his sinuous carcass contains the possibilities of splendid wings, or merely continued wriggles. Rathburn had turned his eyes far afield ; he yearned for the great cities that he had known as a medical student, and their ampler opportunities. He thought that he longed for wealth as a stepping-stone to the worthy practice of his chosen profession, rather than his profession as a stepping-stone to wealth. He was eager to forsake this state of elaborately equipped idleness, this farce of postulance, this endless waiting, with no certain result in view. But consciously or unconsciously, most of all he thirsted for riches ; it fired his blood to think of the avaricious grasp of the great rocky gorges. He dreamed by day as well as by night; and sometimes, so little was there that he would not risk, that he would not do for his cherished hope, he dreamed that it might be well to lay his strong hands on Jake Baintree’s bony neck — that had escaped such catastrophe so closely — and tighten their grasp, till the secret that the foolish, suspicious, obstructive, ignorant marplot so jealously guarded should be choked out or remain with him, hopeless, inert, and indeed incapable of telling his tale if he would. But as yet Rathburn dreamed this chiefly by night.

XVIII.

He had left the road mechanically where it was intersected by the turnrow that led through Eli Strobe’s cornfield. All frosted and melancholy and spectral were the gaunt stalks in the moonlight. He could see the sky and the summit of a distant mountain through the meshes that the intertwisted bare boughs of the orchard wrought against the horizon. But the house on the further side of the fruit trees was still invisible, embowered amongst the red and yellow sumach and dogwood foliage, that seemed to find a prolongation of life in its genial vicinage. He stopped twice, peering eagerly into its bosky surroundings; he was surprised to gauge the disappointment he experienced that there was no glimmer of light. It seemed that no one had awaited his return from the forge ; it had been accounted, perhaps, hardly worth the while, since none knew that danger menaced him there, none except Marcella. He would go back, then, to his lurking coadjutor, hidden in the mountains. He could come again, and then he could thank her once more ; he could never thank her enough. As he turned, his heart leaped ; a tiny red gleam came through the leaves, and as he took his way toward the gate with a quick step he saw in the moonlight a slight figure, that he had learned to know, coming down from the porch toward it.

Marcella distinguished him in the shadows as readily. She hesitated for a moment, but by the time he had reached the gate she had turned back, and she stood upon the porch as he came up the steps. The light streamed out from the open door, and fell upon his face. She saw his eyes, at once eager and soft and almost suffused, shining upon her as he held out his hand to her.

She held out her own, but it was not a responsive gesture.

“ Gimme that thar pick,” she remarked Stiffly. “ I ’ll set it in the shedroom. We-uns don’t tote tools in the house.”

Her staid manner seemed only an added charm in his eyes, whose glance she would not meet as she took the implement in question and bore it away. For he had only sought to thus silently reiterate his thanks, since Mrs. Strobe and the master of the house were both summoned to the door by Marcella’s words.

“ Kem in, stranger! ” cried Mrs. Strobe. “ Ye war a power o’ time gittin’ yer pick mended. Take a cheer by the ha’th. A body would ’low ’t war a powerful tejious business, ’cordin’ ter the time Marcelly hev been keepin’ a lookout. Ef she hev been traipsin’ ter the gate wunst ter look ter see ef ye war a-kemin’ back, she hev been fewer hunderd an’ ninety-nine times. I reckon, ef the truth war knowed, she war a-hopin’ ye’d bring Clem Sanders back with ye. Clem’s a mighty favorite ’mongst the gals.”

The fire was burning blithely on the hearth, with great beds of ashes about it to attest the late hour and the waste throughout the day. The room intimated a presentiment of winter, although the batten shutters were unclosed and the door stood open. Bunches of herbs, that but lately waved in the summer’s wind, were already dried and dangling from the rafters. Seeds had been gathered, and fruit dried, and red peppers strung, and gourds cut; and the tokens of this industry, marking the passing of the season, the homely harvests of the primitive housewife, all had place in the variegated pendants and festoons that swung above their heads. There was no work afoot at this time of the night. Isabel sat idle on an inverted noggin, looking but just aroused from slumber. Mrs. Strobe perched on her chair, with her feet on its rungs and her hands clasped in her lap, and fixed her shrewd small eyes on her visitor. It was never too late to smoke, and Eli Strobe was filling his pipe with a home-dried tobacco leaf, which he crumbled for the purpose. Rathburn drew his chair aside, that he might still see Marcella, who had sunk down on a low bench by the chimney corner ; and as he responded to his host’s invitation to smoke with him he glanced at her, the glow of the coal with which he kindled his pipe red on his face and in his significant eyes as her father spoke.

“Marcelly seemed ter sense ez ef suthin’ mought be goin’ for’ard at the forge, — some sort’n row, or suthin’,” he said. “ Seemed ter listen ez skeered an’ white! An’ fower or five times she wanted ter walk down ter the e-end o’ the turn - row ter listen better.” He puffed his pipe in silence for a moment. “ But I told her ez ’t warn’t wuth while ter be on easy. This hyar kentry, stranger,” he continued impressively, “ air the peaceablest c’munity on the face o’ the livin’ yearth. Never hev no c’motions hyar, — naw, sir ; no fights nor ” — He brought up short, recollecting his own reduced state and his bandaged head, which were hardly the kind of corroborative instances his statement needed. “ ’Thout,” he qualified, “ ’thout it air ’lection time, an’ sech ez that. Ye don’t hear o’ no ’sturbances in Brumsaidge, now, do ye ? ” He turned to Rathburn his haggard face, full of the pride of his charge, and reiterated, “ Now, do ye ? ”

Rathburn had tilted his chair back slightly on its hind legs ; he slipped the tips of his fingers in his trousers pockets ; his pipe was redly aglow, and the firelight flickered over his face with its long yellow mustache and his closeclipped hair, for he did not wear his hat in the house as Eli Strobe did.

“'You ’ve been cooped up a good while, Mr. Strobe. Let me see, — how long has it been since I came over here and prescribed for you ? Well, no matter ; you did n’t know about that, when you were first ill. Broomsedge Cove has been having it pretty much its own way ever since then, with the constable laid up.”

Strobe looked a trifle crestfallen. Marcella, with a sudden anxious impatience of manner, rose and passed to the other side of the room and mechanically closed the batten shutter, then purposelessly opened it again. Rathburn did not follow her with his eyes. They were still fixed moodily on the fire. When she seated herself again, she looked at her father with a clearing brow. A slow satisfaction, even triumph, was creeping across Eli Strobe’s face. “ They need me ter keep ’em straight,” he observed. “ Some powerful fractious boys in Brumsaidge Cove,” he declared, with his slow, sidelong, convincing glance at Rathburn.

“ I should think so, indeed,” Rathburn affirmed, with an accession of significant emphasis. He hesitated a moment, then went on. “I fell in to-night with the ringleader of a gang of lynchers, and if I had n’t been warned beforehand and known just how to talk to him I should n’t have got off with my life. He once more cast a swift glance at Marcella, charged with much that he would fain have said ; but her eyes were downcast, the long lashes almost touching the rare rose a-bloom in her cheeks.

Eli Strobe turned his bovine stare of slowly kindling excitement upon the speaker ; his pipe-stem was quivering in his hand ; his lips had parted, as if an ejaculation were trembling upon them, but the alert maternal comments forestalled him : —

“ Dell - law ! the crazy buzzards ! What hed ye been a-doin’ of, though, ter hev sech a pursuit ez that take ai’ter ye ? ” Mrs. Strobe fixed an investigating eye upon the stranger which intimated a cautious reserve of judgment.

“ I’d like for you to guess ; but you never could,” Rathburn declared.

“ It air in rank vi’lation o’ the law, no matter what he done nor what he done it fur,” Eli Strobe declared impressively. Then he tremulously replaced his pipe in his mouth, and turned his agitated gaze upon the guest.

“You see,” said Rathburn, leaning forward and tapping the burly mountaineer on the knee, looking up at him the while with eyes that grew momently more fiery and revealed more the angry, smarting wounds to his pride, “ I admit I was fool enough to agree to Jake Baintree’s idiocy in keeping the matter secret. I have been trying to strike silver that he found here a few years ago, and when we broke our tools I undertook to mend and sharpen them at the forge, being a sort of Jack-of-alltrades; and I did it at night and in secret to humor him. I wanted to keep him as communicative as I could, because the fool puts me off and deceives me from day to day about the place, — the Lord knows why.” He paused. “ I’d like to throttle him, — I’d like to break his neck,” he said, as his preoccupied gaze dwelt on the fire for a moment. Then flinging himself back in his chair and slipping his hands into his pockets, in his former attitude, he continued, “That’s what like to have happened to me, though, I tell you. It was a mighty close call. I got off by the skin of my teeth.”

“Whar’s Jake, then?” Eli Strobe turned his bandaged head actively in search of the supposed sharer of Rathburn’s peril, as if thinking him near at hand. “ Some o’ them boys air been keen ter see Jake stretch hemp ever senee the jury acquitted him, — miser’ble, senseless critters; got no mo’ spect fur the law ’n so many painters an’ sech. Whar’s Jake ? They did n’t ketch Jake, did they?” He rose stumblingly to his feet.

Rathburn laughed; the gleam of his white teeth, showing under his yellow mustache, was capable of adding a geniality to his ordinary expression, but now it gave only a certain fierceness to his face, so little mirth did it imply.

“ No, you may bet your immortal soul they did n’t. By this time he’s mighty safe ; no more to be found, I ’ll warrant, than Samuel Keale, — ain’t that his name ? I reasoned with Baintree. I begged him to come boldly out with me; we could afford to stand the scrutiny of the vigilantes ; but he would n’t. He ’s afraid of your good, law-abiding population of Broomsedge, Mr. Strobe.” He clasped his hands behind his head and tilted himself back in his chair, as his eyes retrospectively rested on the coals. “ Jake threw down his pickaxe and started the instant we got a word of warning.”

“Waal, ye war powerful lucky. Ginerally, in Brumsaidge, the lynchers an’ sech keep too close a mouth fur enny words o’ warnin’ ter git a-goin’,” said Eli Strobe, who, however he might congratulate himself in the interests of law and humanity upon the result, felt a certain deprecation of the futility of the enterprise as a work of art, as it were. “ I dunno how in this worl’ sech ez a word o’ warnin’ could hev kem ter ye.”

“ It may have come through a woman, but it seemed to me through an angel of mercy! ” the young man declared, his glowing brown eyes swiftly seeking Marcella’s flushed and grave and halfaverted face.

Mrs. Strobe, unnoting the demonstration, gave a sharp little satiric laugh, more like the fleering squawk of a jaybird than any merely human flout.

“ Dell-law, stranger, don’t ye b’lieve the haffen o’ that. ’T warn’t no nangel o’ mercy! I ain’t ’quainted with nangels much myself, but I know enough ’bout ’em ter make mighty sure ez nangels don’t go lopin’ ’round the Big Smoky seein’ arter the welfare o’ two sech goodlookin’ young men ez ye an’ Jake Baintree. It don’t need no wisdom from above ter know it air mighty safe ter trest ye ter some young yearthly ’oman, ’thout interruptin’ enny nangel in her reg’lar business o’ quirin’ ’roun’ the throne o’ grace. Don’t ye never make no sech mistake ez that; nangels ain’t never goin’ ter be sent ter look arter ye whilst gals air so plentiful an’ willin’.” And once more it might he doubted whether it were the satiric old woman or some gay cynic of a bird that gave a short shriek of laughter.

As a general rule, Rathburn cared little what these humble, illiterate mountaineers said or how they esteemed him. But despite his appreciation of its infinitesimal consequence he could not remain insensible of a shaft aimed so true, and that pierced so deeply. The color rushed to his face; he was at once surprised, and at a loss, and a trifle offended by the ridicule. He had turned to retort. when he saw Marcella’s face with the reflection of his own sentiment upon it. Those crystal-clear eyes of hers were widely opened; he could see, in their upward sweep, the thick, fine, straight lashes ; and why, since her flush was so infrequent, why did it wear that exquisite hue, deepening in the cheek, and merging by indistinguishable degrees, like the fine sorceries of sunset, into the warm whiteness of her brow, and chin, and throat? Her lips were more deeply red still, — did ever a sculptor chisel a mouth like that, where all sweet graces curved sedately ? It trembled slightly, and the sight of the quiver roused in him a new lease of gratitude for her timely word; even now he could not judge, could not measure, the risk she ran in saying it. He would not be laughed from his loyalty to the messenger who had brought him safety, even life, perhaps.

“ May have been a woman,” he admitted ; “she looked like an angel.”

“ A triflin’ chit, I ’ll be bound,” Mrs. Strobe declared. “ Hain’t she got no better work ter do ’n ter keep her eye on the young men, an’ her ear open ter all the talk ’bout’n ’em ? ”

She spoke all unaware that the belittled “ nangel " was one of her own fireside, or that any words of hers were serving to deepen the flush on Marcella’s cheek.

So preoccupied had Rathburn been hitherto in the significant and absorbing events of the evening that his mind had had little tendency to even unconscious processes of deduction that did not immediately pertain to the imminence of his danger and the security of his escape. It had not as yet occurred to him to speculate upon the influences which had moved Marcella to so unprecedented a course as to lure away the secret from one of the lynchers, and come with it to the rescue of a stranger and the ostracized Baintree. Mrs. Strobe’s logic, all unwitting though she was to whom she applied it, had kindled an idea in his brain that glowed and burned, and presently leaped like wild-fire from conjecture to conclusion, carrying all before it in its irresistible exhilaration. Was he so much a stranger to Marcella, then ? Had she not seen him before ? She had not forgotten, evidently. Perchance it was some nearer, more coercive, more personal interest that had nerved her; how else, indeed, could it be ? He had not hitherto thought of her save that her beauty had impressed him as strangely incongruous with the poverty of her surroundings, — incompetent even to afford the foil to the jewel, and of jarring and discordant effect. And earlier to-night his heart had only been stirred toward her with genuine gratitude. It was moved now with the sweet vanity of believing himself beloved. He perhaps would have esteemed his state of mind coxcombical in another man, but poor human nature is provided with a keen vision for the defects of others, and a purblind perception of those same traits closer at home. He felt a strong zest, a renewing interest, in reviewing the circumstances, when Mrs. Strobe, drawing from her pocket a corn-cob pipe, proceeded to crumble into its bowl a leaf of tobacco, asking the while, “An’ whar did this nangel find ye ? ”

Once more he glanced at Marcella, who sat quite still, quite grave, listening sedately.

“ She started up the mountain, thinking she would go to Baintree’s people, and that may be they would know where he was; but she heard the picks as we were digging in a gorge, and so she found us.”

Mrs. Strobe seemed to revolve this statement when it was finished, nodded her head several times, and emitted two or three deliberate puffs of smoke. “ She did, did she ? ” she observed, in default of more acrid comment, but bent upon ridicule.

“Then she told us all she knew” —

“ Mighty easy done, I ’ll bet,” interpolated the little dame.

— “Or had heard about the affair, and begged us not to tell who told us ”舒

“ Tuk a power o’ pains ter keep herself safe from the lynchers, I ’ll be bound ” —

“ That she didn’t ! ” cried the young fellow. “ That’s all she said about it, and left the rest to our discretion.”

“ Waal, that war a pore dependence, I will gin up,” said Mrs. Strobe, her pipe in her hand, her puckered lips, with a laugh well hid in their corrugations, ostensibly grave.

The color surged to the young man’s face. He was realizing how few friends one has in the world ; how alone, how piteously solitary, amongst the multitudes of one’s kind. He felt that Mrs. Strobe and her son, and all Broomsedge besides, — microcosmic illustration, — would have cared little had the event resulted differently. One would have blustered a trifle about the outraged dignity of the law. The other would have said some primitively witty things, hardly decent of one so recently dead, and, hampered by her sense of decorum, would have thought still more witty things, which she would reluctantly have refrained from saying. In Glaston and Colbury his most lenient obituary would have been, “Poor fool! ” And his memory would have served as a tradition in the mountains to warn the next addle-pate that came prying into their hidden chambers, seeking silver and gold and worldly treasures ! Only this girl would have risked aught to save his life. Only this girl truly cared that his life was saved. She seemed at the moment the only friend he had in the world, — surely, surely the best! That better nature of his, in its facile oscillations, was reasserted anew. He forgot the flattering personal tribute which he had been disposed to arrogate to himself. He did not speculate about her interest in him. He began to entertain a more definite intention as he talked. There was something — it had almost been forgotten — that he must let her know.

“Mebbe,” Mrs. Strobe resumed, the pause not being conducive to entertainment, — “ mebbe the gal, or the nangel, ’lowed ez ye hed been doin’ suthin’ a heap wuss, though not so foolish, ez, sarch the mountings fur silver. From the way ye an’ Jake Baintree talked the night ye kem hyar ter physic Eli, me an’ Marcelly ’lowed ye mus’ hev killed a man — I don’t mean through physickin’ him, but with a pistol or suthin’ — an’ war a-hidin’ from jestice.”

“ Killed a man ! Great Lord ! ” exclaimed Rathburn, aghast. He turned and looked at Marcella, reproach eloquent in his eyes. Had she ever thought this of him?

The girl incoherently sought to defend herself — “ Leastwise, granny said — ’t war granny’s word ” — and fell tremulously silent.

“ ’Peared mighty reason’ble ter me,” asserted the unabashed little dame. “ Mebbe that’s what the nangel thunk too.”

“ If she thought it, she did n’t say so,” he replied slowly. “ But I wanted it to seem to the lynchers as if it were by accident that I went to the forge and worked. So I came over betimes, and went from here to the blacksmith’s house, and could n’t find him ; and his mother gave me permission to open the forge, and I told her I had worked there once or twice before.”

“ I ’ll be bound Clem war one o’ the lynchers ! ” cried Mrs. Strobe vivaciously. “ Did they swaller that tale ? ” she demanded abruptly.

“ No, they did n’t,” he rejoined. “ Their leader knew I had been warned — and — knew who had warned me.”

“ Marcelly, set down ! ” exclaimed the old woman, with a sharp note of reproof. “ Ef ye hed been a harnt a-poppin’ up out’n a grave, ye could n’t hev skeered me wuss with yer suddint motions ! ”

For the girl had started abruptly to her feet, her distended eyes fastened upon Rathburn, her face paling, her hand half outstretched, trembling violently.

“ The leader ! ” she echoed, sinking back upon the low bench under the coercive touch of Mrs. Strobe’s hand. “ Who told him ? ”

“ He did n’t say, but somehow he got it out of the man who let the secret slip.”

Marcella knitted her brows, and fixed her pondering eyes upon the fire ; her breath was quick ; the rich color had deserted her cheek. With one hand she mechanically tossed back the brown curling hair that fell heavily forward from her half-bent head, and ever and again she put back the locks with the same tremulous, unconscious gesture.

“ Hed them men no masks nor nuthin’ ? ” demanded Eli Strobe, a hand on either knee, as he leaned slightly forward ; he spoke with his pipe-stem fast between his teeth.

“ Faces bare as my hand,” replied Rathburn, holding up the member in the light of the fire.

“ Waal, sir, they be powerful brigetty an’ bold ! ” said Eli Strobe with displeasure. “ They oughter hed the grace ter kiver thar faces, knowin’ ez thar actions be plumb agin the law, — conspiracy, an’ riot, an’ ef they hed hung ye, murder ; it air agin the law.”

“ That’s why I am telling you,” said Rathburn. “ They are a lawless gang, and if anything happens to me, you, as an officer of the law, are in possession of the facts, and know just how and where to lay your hand on the men, the ringleader especially. I only saw two of them ; the other, the blacksmith, is a hap-hazard fellow, and does his bidding. The ringleader is the soul of the iniquity ; it could n’t move an inch without him.”

The fire had been burning clearly; the sticks across the andirons had gradually turned to a live vermilion tint, each an entire glowing coal, half translucent, yet still retaining the shape of the hickory logs they had once been ; here and there an elusive amethystine flame flickered, but the salient red and white blaze of the earlier stages was quenched, and the room was all in a dusky red shadow save for now and then a livid purple gleam. Isabel nodded as she sat on the inverted noggin; sleep seemed with her in some sort an ailment, since it so reduced her from her normal state of conversation. It was as if a palsy had fallen upon her faculties, and her face, bereft of its wonted animation, was unfamiliar, and pathetic, and forlornly reflective. The dog of the “frequent visitor” took note even in his slumbers of the dwindling state of the fire, and, with a countenance much solemnized by sleep and preternaturally sober, came and stood before it for a time, steadfastly regarding it. Then with a loud yawn, intrusive in the silence, he stretched his elastic length, rasping his nails on the stones of the hearth, and lay down once more before it. A cock crew, a muffled alarum in the distance; no other sound from the frosty midnight without. The example of the old hound had caused Mrs. Strobe to yawn too, with that epidemic appreciation of fatigue which the demonstration usually produces. She was not sorry for this, despite her ample repositories of what she collectively termed “ manners.” She was in hopes Rathburn would note it, and draw the natural inference.

“ He ’lowed he would n’t hide all night, so he mought jes’ ez well take the hint an’ stir his stumps away from hyar. I never see such a ow-el ez the man,” she thought.

But Glaston and Colbury hours were later than those kept in the mountains, and although Rathburn was aware that his stay exceeded the customary limits, he had no idea of its unprecedented extent. He went on after a momentary pause:—

“ He is a very dangerous customer. The eye of the law could n’t be better employed than fixed on that man. In Glaston or anywhere else, they ’d be awfully pleased to get up any kind of a charge against such a domineering blusterer as that, which would lock him up somewhere, safe out of harm’s way.”

He nodded his head once or twice in emphatic confirmation of the burden of his thoughts. He felt suddenly as if civilization, the world, all the mechanism of law and art and knowledge that he seemed to have been familiarized with in some previous state of existence on some alien planet, were not so far away, after all, save in sentiment. What could be easier than to place the headstrongdespot of Broomsedge Cove under the surveillance of a law stronger even than that which he wielded with so arrogant and absolute a temper ? He was not so far from the county authorities, who might take more cognizance of such matters than the constable of Broomsedge Cove; as lynch-law and the domination of a community according to the will of regulators might to them perchance be less familiar. His pride ; the recollection, ignominious he felt it to be, of his fear; the terrible strain on his nerves; the mere chance that had saved his life, — this girl’s sentiment toward him, her word of warning and his own clever diplomacy in its use, — all were bitter still to him, and his escape held none of the sweets of triumph.

He would rejoice to be revenged: not upon Clem Sanders, who seemed, in his hap-hazard lack of logic, as irresponsible as a child — not upon the unnumbered, unindividualized, unimagined vigilantes at the barn, but upon Teck Jepson. With all the fervor of a deep, suddenly awakened hatred he longed to see him cringe and cower. He resented his lofty serenity, his calm admission of the usurpation of power, his deliberate, open avowal of his intentions and of his conditional clemency. He should like to see this doughty mountaineer face the law he had insulted. His lip curled at the thought; he stroked his mustache in the satisfaction that the mental picture afforded him. He too could follow out a scheme ; he too could plot, and lie in wait, and capture. “ With stronger toils, my fine fellow ! ”

He encountered a sudden rebuff in the sequence of the idea, — the ridicule that would attach to the revelation in Glaston that in his perfectly tame and lawful prospecting for silver he should have been hauled up before the captain of vigilantes. He felt, too, that there was a certain element of derogation in his very enterprise. Unless he should find silver, he hardly cared that it should be known in his world that he had sought it. No, this was only the impulse ; he would find ampler opportunities for his revenge, — something that would better stand the strain of personal feeling, and yet sustain his grudge ; he would wait and hold the law in leash ; doubtless Jepson’s life would furnish cause for the pursuit. Fine sport, to be sure, to run down this big game of the Smoky Mountains.

“ For all he is so pious ! ” he exclaimed with a sneer.

Eli Strobe turned a slow glance upon him.

“ Who be ye a-talkin’ ’bout ? ” he demanded quietly.

That fellow I saw over at the forge there, — the ringleader of the lynchers. Teck Jepson is his name.”

An uncomprehended sensation, of which Rathburn nevertheless was aware, swept through the circle. He felt a vague surprise to see Marcella start up in the dusky red glow of the dwindling fire, and sink back uncertain, with a pallid, distraught face. In the puckers of Mrs. Strobe’s wizened little countenance, dimly white in the gloom, his transitory glance detected a strange embarrassment and discomfort. Isabel had roused herself, and was peering at him from her lowly seat. His host’s head was bent toward him, the long neck outstretched, his tangled locks and beard hanging forward, as he stared in the utmost amazement.

“ Ye never seen Teck Jepson to-night at the forge, young man.”

“But I did,” protested Rathburn.

“ That was what Clem Sanders called him, — a tall, powerfully built man.”

“ Light-complected ? ” asked Strobe.

“ As a girl, — with blue eyes, and hair and beard very dark, and slow stepping, and solemn spoken.”

Eli Strobe had thrown himself back in his chair. The deep bass rumble of his laughter sounded a trifle muffled. He was laughing to himself. “ Ye never seen Teck Jepson.”

A crash, and the women cried out, startled, and even Rathburn’s nerves were jarred ; but it was only the breaking of the logs, long delayed, and the chunks falling, some within and some beyond the andirons, were sending up streams of white flame. Rathburn turned instantly back to see the constable lying at ease in his chair, the laughter fading from his face as he reiterated, “ Ye never seen Teck Jepson.”

He dragged himself forward, and leaning overlaid his hand on the guest’s knee ; looking into Rathburn’s face, he said significantly, “ He’s dead ! ”

Rathburn sat silent for a moment, as if doubting his senses. “ I saw him, he spoke to me, not half an hour ago,” he insisted.

“Ye never seen him.” Eli Strobe shook his head, with its long, melancholy locks, slowly from side to side. “ Ye never seen him. Ye seen his harnt. He hev sot out ter walk. I seen his harnt wunst, myself. He ’s dead ! ”

He sank back in his chair, while Rathburn, perplexed and uncomprehending, gazed startled at him. The white firelight had conjured all the room from out the dusky nullity that had been creeping over it. The pendent trophies from the rafters seemed to sway as the light chased the shadows through their midst. The glad scarlet of the strings of peppers asserted its tint anew, and many hanks of saffron yarn lent it contrast and company. Marcella’s fair face shone out upon the background of flickering brown and fleeting gold, and the night seemed to have grown younger with this sense of movement and life and light; the nerves took less heed of the lateness of the hour. The dog turned his neck in a way that challenged dislocation, and looked about the room ; then rose slowly and stiffly, not at all sure that, with this new cheer, it was not day, and now and then wagging a languid tail as he glanced around at Marcella, expecting to see her set about getting breakfast. Not once did Rathburn’s attention flag as he sat and steadfastly gazed at his host; he hardly moved an eyelash, so tense, so fixed, so strained, was his attention.

As Eli Strobe glanced up from the fire he encountered the intent inquiry in Rathburn’s face.

“Ye seen his harnt,” he reiterated, in reply to the look. “ He’s dead. I kilt Teck Jepson myself, an’ I oughter know. He ’s dead.”

A sudden swift expression crossed the stranger’s face like a flash of light. Marcella saw the gleam of his teeth, white under his yellow mustache; he put up one hand and stroked it, as was his wont in excitement.

“ Why, now, that’s a fact! ” he rejoined coolly. “ I had forgotten that I had heard that.”

The next moment he leaned forward, extending the other hand half closed, and with a delicate tentative gesture he laid it on the constable’s wrist.

“ Let me feel your pulse, Mr. Strobe,” he said irrelevantly. “ You are still getting better, I suppose ? ”

The constable silently submitted. Then pursuing the subject, he added, “ They can’t do nuthin’ ter me fur it, though, — me bein’ officer o’ the law, an’ Teck engaged in a onlawful act. I pulled Teck off’n his hoss-critter an’ bruk his neck.” He nodded his head in doughty triumph. “ I war sorry some arterwards. Teck war a good man, in the main.”

“ Well, his " harnt ’ ain’t a good ‘ harnt’,”the young man flippantly declared.

His tone jarred upon Marcella, so sensitive she was for her father’s sake, so wounded in the pride she had once felt in his preëminence. The wound ceased to ache as she noticed the absorption, the deep attention, with which Rathburn regarded the invalid. In truth, Eli Strobe well and hearty was not half the man, in his estimation, that Eli Strobe was with this strange malady, and the contenqilation of the perfection of reason could not have so enthralled and invigorated his jaded perceptions as did this forlorn folly of a mental delusion. He made no further allusion to the spectral ringleader, although more than once he turned again and surveyed with his keen professional gaze the constable’s face. Once or twice, in his deft choosing of a subject of discussion, he seemed to experiment with the invalid’s capacities, and Marcella was amazed to note how rationally, with what strong good sense, Eli Strobe talked, reminding her of “dad’s conversation” of yore, in which she had experienced such filial pride.

At last the guest rose to go, and she listened, as she stood in the doorway, to the faint footfalls on the hard ground, growing ever fainter as the distance increased, — listened and looked out at the still and solitary night, so white with the moon and the frost in the midst of its normal gloom. So silent it was, so replete with a sense of loneliness. It seemed that not even some belated vigilante could be astir in that desert of dark mountains, and icy white glintings, and profundity of silences. The fear that could but stir at her heart grew still after a moment, and she became conscious that her grandmother had twice spoken to her.

“ Marcelly,” cried the irate littledame, “ what ails ye ter stan’ thar in the door a-lookin’ out at the moon ez big-eyed ez a ow-el, ez ef ye war bound ter watch ter see the man go ? I ain’t a-wonderin’ at ye nuther ” (sarcastically) ; “ he makes the shortes’ visits o’ enny o’ the fool folks ez kems ter this house. Bern’ ez he air a doctor-man, nex’ time he kems I be a-goin’ ter ax him ef he hain’t got enny lotium ez will brace up a sensible woman’s back ter endure the strain o’ hearin’ a young fool talk fewer hour at a stretch. Ye need n’t stan’ there stare - gazin’ the moon, I tell ye, a-thinkin’ ye look so powerful pritty an’ enticin’, with yer eyes stretched so big an’ shinin’,” becoming suddenly sensible of the ethereal beauty in the girl’s fair face. “ Thar’s lots o’ wimmin in this worl’ ez spends thar time lookin’ pritty fur nuthin’. Fur ye mark my words, — ye can’t cut out that nangel o’ a gal ez brung him the news ’bout the lynchers ; he air dead in love with her, else all signs fail ! ”

“ Oh,” faltered Marcella, “ I ’low ye mus’ he mistaken — ’t war jes’ — jes’ ” —

“ Jes’ what ? I reckon I know folks in love whenst I see ’em. Strange ez it may ’pear, I war wunst a fool o’ that kind myself,” she added, with a whimsical pucker of the lips, as she began to cover the fire with the abundant ashes, that it might last till morning.

She paused presently with a deeply reflective countenance, shown half in the glow of the fire, and half in the brilliant squares that the moonlight, falling through the open window and door, imprinted on the floor. “ I wonder which o’ these hyar mounting gals the idjit ’lows looks like a nangel. Mus’ hev been Em’line Bolter, ’ceptin’ I reckon no nangel air ez freckled ez her, — reg’lar tur-r-key-aig ; or else Ar’bella Jane Perkins, though she air some cornsider’ble red-headed. But laws-a-massy, that don’t make no diff’ence. When a man sets out ter be a fool, an’ fall in love, Providence in its mercy closes his eyes, an’ mos’ ennythin’ mought do fur a nangel. Ye Marcelly, quit hangin’ on that door, a-saggin’ it off’n the henges an’ a-stare-gazin’ the moon.”

It was lower now in the sky, and showed through the fringes of the pine ; its pensive light was in the girl’s lustrous eyes a moment longer, and then the door was closed.

XIX.

It was close upon dawn when Rathburn reached his destination. He could hardly have defined the time when he began to appreciate that daylight had invaded the mystic moonlit splendors. There the golden sphere still hung; out of it the fine ethereal fires were dying — paling, and growing yet more dim — above the purple Chilhowee; definiteness was gradually evolving out of the shadows; a valley was shaping its sinuous course where violet vagueness had seemed a plenitude of form and fixity before. A dull, gray, hard color never known in the fine lunar chromatics, lay upon a stretch of leafless woods. A dark, sombre green, cold and funereal, betokened the pines and the laurel groves. As the moon dulled and the day dallied, stars had suddenly bloomed out with palpitating splendor. One of a white glister shone above the rugged eastern crags, and was the herald of the dawn. He was feeling the strength of the matutinal resurrection in his veins, in his lungs, expanding to its fine, keen freshness. He hardly realized that he had been awake all night, after a long day’s tramp with his pick through the rugged gorges of the mountains. He had long since ceased to glance apprehensively to the right and left, lest there might be still an avenger lurking upon his track, as he took his way along the herder’s trail through the savage wilderness. Confidence came renewed with renewed freedom. He stopped to see, through a gap in the mountain, all along the summits of the misty purple ranges, a line of vermilion rise, expanding into the broad spaces of the pale sky, for the living sun was in the vital air. He hears an eagle cry, the sound infinitely wild and joyous with a savage enthusiasm in life ; the splendid sweep of the great bird’s wings describe long curves in the light air, and the yellow glow slants so far, so far ! A warm day, — for where is the frost? That fine vaporous tissue, all that there is to show for those premonitions of winter in the vanished white rime! All going down and down to Hang-Over Mountain, to lurk about the cold currents of the Little Tennessee.

There was moisture on the full yellow leaves of the hickory, the splendid red of the scarlet oak and the sourwood, shaken out afresh as bravely as if summer burned still in the sap; there were ferns green yet, here and there. He stooped to pick a spray of the lilac “ Christmas flower,” and thrust it jauntily in the button-hole of his blue flannel shirt; then, as his path curved abruptly, he came within sight of the deserted little cabin which he and Baintree had lately made their camp.

Somehow, with its dark little roof beneath that vast sky, so splendidly aflare, the great fresh vigorous trees on every hand, the gallant wind a-blaring all its bugles down the ravines, the sense of great openness and infinite space, it seemed doubly mean, and the plots devised there curiously sordid, and the episode and escape of last night grotesquely ignominious. In the midst of the conscious physical luxury that every respiration of the high air afforded, he wished he had never seen the place ; his cherished scheme, for which he had risked so much, palled for the nonce. He became aware of a great infusion of bitterness toward Jake Baintree, that was not less strong because of contempt.

“ And where has he gone, I wonder ? ” he said, as he approached the cabin.

For there was no smoke from the chimney, and the place was silent. He checked his pace as he went toward the door. The unhewn logs that had once formed the steps to ascend to the threshold had rotted down at one side; the wood quaked and gave way anew under his tread, as he laid his hand on the latch. It was not fastened, and the door easily swung back under his touch.

The room was vacant, illumined less by the rifts in the broken batten shutter than by the pale stream of light that came down the tunnel of the chimney, for the embers had died on the hearth. A repugnance, a paroxysm of fastidiousness, came over him as he looked in at the desolate discomforts, the sordid bareness, of the place.

“This is no way to live!” he exclaimed, forgetful for the moment of the wealth that barely eluded his clutching hand; and as he remembered it he thought it would be hardly earned. He had not eared for these things heretofore, although he had found scant congeniality in his comrade. The suspicion of crime which attached to him had seemed but the touch of romance to the backwoods desperado. But Jake Baintree had proved himself little fitted for that stanch vôle; and however natural his flight when he heard of the danger of the menace, Rathburn had not the dispassionate temperament to regard it leniently. He felt that it savored strongly of cowardice, he mentally designated his comrade a “contemptible cur,” and he began to feel a certain absorbing curiosity concerning the whereabouts of Samuel Keale and how he had met his fate.

When he had kindled a fire and sat down before it, clasping his hands behind his head, waiting for the coals that he might prepare the primitive meal, which in his rough experience he had learned to cook, he entered upon a continuous expectation of Baintree’s return. This grew to an irritable suspense. More than once he rose, walked to the door, and stood looking over the vast landscape and scanning the little path that their feet had worn to the spring, with the vivid intimation that in another instant he should see the tall, cadaverous figure, the thin face, the sleek black hair, emerge from the clustering laurel. But except for a rabbit, leaping along, and pausing to feed itself upon a succulent green leaf, held very humanly between its fore-paws, — except for this wayfarer, and the slow paces of the sunlight loitering on to noon, naught came and naught went. Sometimes when Rathburn returned to the fire he examined anew the specimens which together they had found, — all strangely inferior, strangely meagre, in contrast to the rich bits of “ float ” which Baintree had showed him in the prison, and with which he had lured him on from day to day.

“ He never found this beside that torrent in the gorge, — he may swear till he is blue!” Rathburn looked at the bit of rock, shook his head, and replaced it on the rude shelf that served as mantelpiece. And once more he went to the door.

There should be no more delays, no more tortuous lies, with which he had borne merely seeking to humor the ignorant mountaineer, to familiarize him with the idea of a coadjutor, to wear off whatever there might be that was strange in his garb and speech and manner, to wear out the constitutional distrust of the man. He would wait no longer ; once let him lay hands again on Jake Baintree, — he unconsciously clenched them, — and he would have out. of him the secret he so foolishly, so zealously, guarded. And yet daily Baintree intended to reveal it, — daily Rathburn could see it in his face ; and when they would set forth to find the spot, the mountaineer would first become preoccupied, then silent, and presently stop short and pretend in clumsy fiction to recognize landmarks, and both would go through a fruitless feint of digging to find mineral that both knew was still far to seek.

“ There has been enough of it! ” Rathburn declared between his set teeth, in his reverie.

The prospect had all apparently seemed equitable to Baintree while he was in the prison. He had rejoiced at the idea of securing an expert in some sort as a partner ; he had voluntarily offered to divide. Perhaps with his liberty the inchoate wealth of his secret seemed more precious still; perhaps he merely doubted the good faith of his partner. But the summer months had gone, and autumn was waning. “ And it’s time there was an end of it,” Rathburn said, still looking out of the door.

Exhaustion prevailed at last and overpowered vigilance. He had lain down upon the floor, half on a saddle that had been flung there, intending merely to rest; but he was soon asleep, and the sun swung vertically above the Great Smoky, and gradually took its way down the steep western slopes, and presently the light faded from the purple earth, and the stars were in the great altitudes of the sky, alternating with vast spaces of gloom, for the night had brought clouds, and the moonrise was impenetrably veiled. Still he slept, unheeding that the fire had died to an ember on the hearth, unheeding that the wind howled in the gorge. The door shook in its rude grasp; the roof creaked; sharp draughts came through the crannies, and scattered the dry ashes about his feet and about the floor. Suddenly there was a sound outside other than the swirl of the dead leaves about the rotting threshold. A stealthy step came to the window. A face peered in through the rifts of the batten shutter.

Rathburn might have seen it, for the embers sent up at that moment a fitful blue gleam that played over the room, showing its dishevelment and his own recumbent figure, with its yellow head on the old dark saddle, and showing as well the face that looked in, — but he was too deep, far too deep, in his dream.

The tiny flame dropped ; the red ember glowed; the room was lighter than the black wilds without, and perhaps the recumbent figure beside the hearth was still visible to the peering eyes, themselves now invisible from within. The subtile influence of their long, steadfast scrutiny shook even the deep securities of slumber. It pervaded Rathburn’s consciousness,—how, with all his science he might hardly have explained. He shifted his attitude once or twice; then with a great start he struggled up to his feet.

For a moment the stupefying pain of a sudden awakening possessed his torpid consciousness. The next, he heard the wind trumpeting a blast that he had learned to know, and he reluctantly realized his surroundings. Once more he felt the chill of those scrutinizing eyes upon him, —a vague uneasiness which he could not recognize. His long-drawn sigh of somnolent reaction was checked midway. He stooped to the fire, and vainly sought to coax the embers to kindle anew. The sound of his own voice in an impatient exclamation had a strange echo in the empty loneliness of the place. He had matches in his pockets, or, like the provident mountaineers, he would not have suffered the fire to die. It was only a moment or two before the long, ribbon-like unfurlings of the white flames of pine knots were flying up the chimney, and there was no face at the window, and no sound but the riotous play of the wind without.

He had taken a chair before the fire when his alert ear discriminated in the elemental stir without a step that deliberately approached. There was a hand upon the latch.

“ Come in ! ” he sang out, without rousing himself, or hardly turning his head. He felt sure of the identity of the new-comer. He could measure, too, the deprecating envy and embarrassment that the contemplation of his serenity and bravado would excite in the wary and timorously suspicious Baintree, and he was in the mood to-night when that display of manly superiority was a grateful solace to his feelings and pride, so seriously jarred by the events of last evening. He did not look up until Baintree was drawing the other rickety chair to the fire, bending upon him an eager, inquiring face, every muscle of which expressed his surprise, his suspicion, and his earnest plea to disarm criticism.

“ Howdy do, Jake,” observed Rathburn, enjoying his suspense. “ The weather is getting to be ‘ some,’ if not more, ain’t it ? Listen at the wind, will you.”

“ The wind’s sorter harsh ter-night,” said Baintree. He sat down quietly in his chair, taking his cue from Rathburn’s manner and emulating his composure. Nevertheless, to the trained medical eye he was showing many symptoms of overwrought nerves, of long, harassing anxiety; he had doubtless been without food, without sleep, for many an hour.

Rathburn was conscious of his own advantage in the coming interview from the long, restful slumber in which the day had passed, and which had given brain and will again into his own control. The professional conscience, however, stirred at the sight of physical need.

“ Get you something to eat, Jake,” he said with his professional manner. “ You want it. Must be something on the shelf.”

But Baintree, rubbing together his long, thin hands, a trifle chilled, for the temperature without had changed, declared that he was not hungry.

“ All right,” returned the doctor, lightly. “ I can lead a horse to water, but I can’t make him drink.”

The word seemed to remind Baintree that there was a bottle on the shelf as well as food. He got up with his alert, soft step, took a long pull at it, and came back to his comrade with its effects distinctly apparent in the aroma upon his breath and the confidence which it served to impart to his manner. He pushed his hat far back on his sleek black head, rubbed his face once or twice between his hands, and then, leaning his elbows on his knees, he spread out his thin, almost transparent fingers over the blaze. He looked craftily up, presently, at Rathburn, who sat gazing placidly into the fire, one hand stroking his long yellow mustache, his feet encased in their high boots, his symmetrical figure trim and light in his blue flannel garb, carelessly donned and worn as it was. Few people could have augured from his easy composure and his debonair grace that he had lately been in danger of his life at the hands of a mob, or that he owed his security to aught that he could plan or compass.

“ Marcelly Strobe mus’ hev been foolin’ we-uns some. Funnin’, I s’pose,” Baintree hazarded.

“ She told the truth, as she always does, I am sure.”

Baintree’s outspread hands quivered despite the fictitious courage imparted by apple-jack. His eyes dilated.

“ War — war thar ennyhody thar sure enough ? ”

“ Plenty of ’em. But only two came to the forge.”

“ What — what did they say ? ”

“ Oh, they were civil enough,” returned Rathburn in an offhand fashion.

“ How did you git away from ’em ? ”

“ Oh, I had no trouble. I did just as I told you I would : went to the blacksmith’s house and roused up his mother, and pretended to be hunting for him.”

“ Did that tale go down ? ” asked Baintree, his relish of deceiving the enemy even by proxy causing his eyes to glitter.

“ Not a bit of it. That devil Teck Jepson had got wind of our being warned, and of who warned us. He just felt sort of good, I suppose, and let me off.”

“ He would n’t ef I had been thar,” said Baintree, with a pessimistic nod of the head.

“ He would ! ”

Baintree did not retaliate with a counter-retort. He was silent for a moment. Then he observed, “ Teck an’ Marcelly useter keep comp’ny tergether. I ’ll bet she got skeered arterward, an’ let him know she hed gin us the word.”

“ She ain’t one of that kind. She don’t scare worth a cent. She’s worth any ten men ! ”

There was something so fervent in his tone that it seemed to give a new and unique direction to Jake Baintree’s thoughts.

Presently he observed, " She air a powerful good an’ pritty gal, Marcelly air ! But she ain’t in no wise like them young town gals in Glaston. I useter see ’em on the street whenst I war fetched from the jail ter the court. Them’s the sort ye been ’quainted with, — the kind that walks with par’sols. She ain’t in no wise like them fine town gals.”

“ And what if she ain’t ? She’s better than them all put together, and a thousand times prettier.”

It was hardly twenty-four hours since she had bestirred herself to save his life, and his heart was still warm toward her.

Charles Egbert Craddock.