The River Road

I

WE tied John to the wheel of Sisyphus and pushed the cart into the deep shadow of the white frame church with its top-heavy belfry. Then we spread our tattered road map on the steps of the church for the ever-delightful conference as to where the day should call us.

As usual, the inhabitants of the remote mountain village gathered about us. The hounds and coon dogs, less polite than the mountaineers, began to question John. As always when he is tied, John waved his whiteplumed tail and gazed at the far horizon in contemptuous silence.

Ordinarily there was small need of the map. For, drifting before the wind of destiny, we ever chose the most unfrequented way, with the wind preferably at our backs. But this day there was need of drifting toward a bank where we could cash the last one of our modest traveler’s checks. Peter was of the opinion that we had spent them all; but a cursory glance at the chamois bag at my neck revealed one more little crisp paper. And we had but forty-five cents left in money. Sis’s bicycle wheels would break on rocky trails and must be mended or replaced; shoes, and especially stockings, would wear out; and there was always the temptation to buy some useless article from a mountain woman, whose hard fingers touched a piece of silver as reverently and as curiously as one might touch a rare jewel.

The highway to the right of the Hard-shell Baptist Church evidently led to the county seat. For there men with mules jogged along, and motor cars whizzed past them. Peter, with relief, pointed out on the map that, while there was a bank at the county seat, there was no railway. But I hated the rock-crushed highways where once I had seen the convicts work, and at the left of the church there wound a dusty, shaded way toward the river. Beyond, skirting the mountain above, I saw it turn and twine toward the west, where the county seat lay. I pleaded for the river road.

It was in vain that Peter pointed out to me that when one started on a journey it was usual to set forth in the direction of the place where one expected to arrive. But I felt sure that the river road would eventually arrive at the town, and even suggested that we ask one of the women who gaped about us. For some reason there was not a man to be seen in the village. Of course I knew that it was hopeless to ask the way of a mountain woman. She would answer kindly, ‘That-air road runs ter Grandpap Bryant’s.’

‘And from there?’

‘I hain’t niver ben no furder. I don’t know whar hit might go frum thar.’

‘Peter,’ I cried, ‘there is a man in the little yard opposite.’

‘It’s a woman.’

‘It’s a man. He has on a veil, because he is working with his bees. He is taking honey from the hives.’

We folded our precious map and started to push Sisyphus across the grass-grown road. A gaunt woman wearing a purple sunbonnet leaned toward me and said, ‘I reckon youall don’t wanter go over thar. Mr. Jackson lives thar. Thcr hain’t nobody iver goes thar. He’s er infi-del.’

I thanked her and assured her that we only meant to ask about the road. Peter called across the picket fence before the log cabin so small it seemed the capital of a little city of beehives: ‘Good morning. May I trouble you with a question?’

The man came out through the swinging gate, took off his heavy gloves, and removed his veil. I watched curiously his sensitive, eloquent hands. He wore khaki and leggings. Fortyfive, perhaps, smooth-shaven, tall, slender, with bent shoulders; we looked on, not into, his opaque brown eyes.

‘Yes?’ he said in a rusty voice, and walked slowly around the cart, where, in large white letters, ‘Sisy’ was painted on one green side and ‘-phus’ on the other. Then his creaking voice went on, ‘Well, Sisyphus, don’t ask me how to keep your cursed wheel from slipping back.'

We were too astonished to speak at once. For in all our wanderings through the mountains no one of the many who had gazed wonderingly at our Chinese wheelbarrow had ever connected the words on its sides.

At last Peter said, ‘No? Mrs. Sisyphus wishes to know if the river road eventually arrives at. the county seat. And I want to ask if this is an Adamless Eden. I have n’t seen a man in the village.’

‘Will you walk into the house and rest a moment?’ said the man. ‘ I must replace the super on my beehive. Then I’ll come in and answer your questions.’

He led the way around the cabin, and I saw with surprise that there was neither door nor window in the front of his house.

‘I have my entrance at the back,’ he said, ‘because I don’t care to face that blast of frozen music across the road. Perhaps you noticed the jack pot of a belfry.’

‘Why, yes,’I answered, very much amused. ‘ But t he Hard-shells have the advantage with their jack pot. At home we ’d have to send for the bishop to open it up.’

‘At home?’ he said, looking at me curiously. ‘But here we can never ring for a cold deck. The cards are marked, and it s the same old game of graft as — at home.’

Then to Peter, ‘Selling Bibles? Or a traveling evangelist?’

‘ Unfort unately, neither,’ answered Peter.

‘Pardon me. I’ll go in and tie Lucifer. He’s not used to visitors.’

II

We passed through a tiny vestibule, very clean, with a cookstove, a table, and a solitary chair on one side, and on the other side shelves piled high with labeled buckets, evidently honey for shipment. There was but one chair in the room beyond, a rustic easy-chair on whose cushion lay a fat fox terrier, who snarled, but made no objection to being tied to a chain fastened to the wall. The man dusted the cushion and offered Lucifer’s throne to me. Then, from the step of a rude stairway that ran to a loft above, he pushed aside a coffeepot of pamphlets and a large stewpan of magazines, invited Peter to be seated, and went to his bees.

On the table beside me was a large oil lamp and an open book. Bergson! Strange infidel! The walls were lined to the ceiling with books. The floor was mounded with books in neat piles or boxes. Under the window was a large tin wash boiler that Peter said was full of Plato. Through the door opposite me I saw the only other room of the cabin. It was clean and bare, with a snowy bed; and among the toilet articles on the bureau stood a framed picture. As I rose to examine the bookshelves, I confess I stole a glance at the faded, full-length photograph of a young woman in old-fashioned evening dress.

‘Now what can I do for you?’ asked the man, appearing at the door. ‘As to the men of the village, they have all gone to a murder trial at the county seat. It is their happy carnival.’

‘I suppose you could n’t leave the bees,’ said Peter, curiously.

‘I might care for a good fresh murder. In fact, I wish I had been present at this one. But a judicial murder does n’t appeal to me. There is no charm of the unexpected.’

‘So sure of the verdict?’ asked Peter.

‘Oh, yes. The murdered man was a preacher; the avenger a village halfwit. I am a village atheist. Fellow feeling, perhaps. It’s not at all a pretty story — the half-wit’s daughter. Madame Sisyphus will not care for the tale.’

‘Can we reach the county scat by the river road?’ I asked.

‘Yes, in time. But the river road runs through the Indian and negro settlements.’

‘Indians! Here?’ cried Peter.

‘Not a tribe. Just scattered through the settlement. The Eastern band of Cherokees. Wandered over from the Qualla Reservation in North Carolina. The people here call them “the blue men.” As a matter of fact they look as though they might have a mixture of negro blood — but they have not.’

‘Of course we must take the river road!’ I cried. ‘But negroes! I don’t think we have seen a negro in the mountains.’

‘No. The negroes in the mountains are like the Indians — just shadows of the past. The young negroes are off to the cities. The poor whites here hate them, these shadows who slip in and out of the village for supplies. They are thriftier than the whites. A larger per cent of negroes own their own homes in America than do whites.’

‘But of course the whites own their own homes here,’ said Peter.

‘Why, no. The storekeeper often owns their homes through duebills — the credit system.’

‘Why does n’t he get the negro too?’

‘When the negro goes broke he goes down in the rich valley and works for someone till he can carry on.’

The man’s voice, as if oiled by use, took on cultivated modulations, and so full and round it was that I wondered if he were English. But I ventured no impertinent questions, fearing what might come alive behind those dead eyes. He said no more, and I fancied that his glance rested longingly on the open book beside me. No doubt we were shadows, disturbing shadows. His real world was in his books. So I rose to go, and asked him if we might buy a small jar of the honey. Peter gave me a warning glance that said, ‘Forty-five cents.’ But I murmured, ‘We’ll spend it like a prince for the stored-up sweetness of this summer’s flowers.’

‘Humph!’ said Peter unsympathetically.

The man returned with a little bucket carefully wrapped, and said, ‘Permit me, Madame Sisyphus.’ And only when he had refused the money did Peter’s face relax.

Our host walked a little way with us, and I noticed the curious halt in his step.

Outside the village we met the woman of the purple sunbonnet.

‘The man, Mr. Jackson — has he been here long?’ I asked.

‘Tin yar ergo hit war whin he kim hyar, and bought ther house by ther church and turned hit eround. He war hurted in his laig. Some sez he’s lakein’. But I ’low he jest sulls. He air a infi-del.'

‘Ah,’ said Peter as we walked on, ‘his limp — the lock step, perhaps. Poor devil!’

‘Oh, no!’ I cried. ’He’s lame. Recall what he said about the murder trial. He just refuses to share the guilt of the world with the rest of us. The religionists do it in another way. Our sins ought to hold us together. We grow queer on the heights. Poor lonely infi -del! His books are his opium!’

III

The river road! Cool golden sands beneath white-armed sycamores. The river road, where solemn cows converse disparagingly about us, and dispute our right of way; where mules look over the rail fences through their wise, bitter eyes; where the sudden print of a child’s bare foot in the sand is a great work of art; where a tawny bobcat, intent on his own business, trots across on noiseless padded feet, at once another shadow in the sun-flecked wood. Where cardinals flash from green bird-haunted thickets, and a friendly mocking bird cools his wing in the clear water of the ford where we stop a moment to fish. Where the fitful breeze brings the languorous sweetness of the honeysuckle, and John selects the ripest of the plump black dewberries by the wayside, and deserts them when a red squirrel — a very short expression of life with a question mark at the end — runs up a sweet gum, and we leave John in acute hysteria at the foot of the tree. Where a wagon with bolt timber creaks slowly down the hill, and we stand before the cart that the mules may not shy; and the driver stops, and three other log wagons stop, and we all meet on the common ground of the weather with abundant time to exhaust the subject. For a highway is but a way of transit, as dangerous and as monotonous as a railway track, but a country road is a pleasant retreat where ‘all the world’ may meet in careless leisure.

Beside the jade-green river the road ran in and out, then up and up the mountain. And when we came to a little knoll deep in pine needles, with a clear spring gushing at its foot, we made our noon camp, and broiled our two fat perch.

Though we had seen cabins at a distance, we had met no Indians, no negroes.

‘These Indians, the blue men, are probably creoles,’ said Peter as he lay on the pine needles smoking his afterdinner cigarette. I replied that I hoped they were, for I loved the creoles; meaning not the French creoles so familiar to us in New Orleans, but the miscalled creoles of the rural districts in the Gulf States — a mixture of negro and Indian.

Peter laughed, as he always did when he thought of our first acquaintance with the creoles.

It was one day when I was seated sullenly on the verandah of a deserted hotel near the railway station of a little town where we waited to connect with a road that ran to another tedious town on the Gulf. These towns were all alike. I was weary of the glaring water and the voice of the realtor in the land. 1 desired dully, like a lotus-eater, never more to roam — even in search of health. Peter, seeing I was wickedly ‘sunk,’ had gone across the street to get me a cup of coffee. A tall, lank man with blue soot-rimmed eyes leaned against a pillar and said, ‘The train is late to-day.’

‘Yes,’ 1 answered; ‘1 have heard no excited rumors that it is on time. But I don’t care if it never comes.’

‘Don’t you want to go on?’

‘No.’

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘I want to go,’ I answered dreamily, ‘away from the sea waves. I want to go to a blue river where green banks come down to the water’s edge; and below low hills boats — only little boats — glide silently. But I’m describing another country — Paradise, maybe.’

‘Why, no. It’s about seven miles from here. Have you bought your tickets?’

‘No.’

‘I can’t get away until two o’clock. But you can wait over at the Mitchell House. At two I’ll come and take you over there. Any baggage?'

‘Two suitcases. Here are the checks. But I think we’ll walk on toward Paradise and lunch by the roadside. You can pick us up in the car. I’ll tie a handkerchief to a tree or something if we are far from the road.’

So when Peter came with the coffee the man told him our destination, and we hastened joyfully to buy bread, bacon, cakes, and tea, and started for Paradise.

But Jordan is a hard road to travel. At noon, after innumerable cups of tea over a little camp fire, a storm, utterly unheralded, broke, and we rushed to a ruined, deserted house near us. For half an hour the wind blew a hurricane. The left wing of the house collapsed, and sent a horde of rats upon us. But the storm ceased suddenly, the sun shone, and the car honked from the road. In a few minutes we stopped before a tiny cottage where the yard waved with phlox of varied hues in lieu of grass. I sat under a great umbrella tree while Peter and our friend went to find the landlord. But the landlord was shooting ’gator bait. His wife told them that the ’gators were rather bad. One had climbed on the bank, hit a sheep with its tail, and carried it into the river, just where the children bathed. So they were to put out bait and torches, and shoot him in the eye this night. But she found the key, and the little house was clean and comfortable; and oh, the beautiful cedar ceilings and walls! Our friend, disclaiming all money or thanks, drove away, saying he would come Sunday to see how we liked it.

Liked it ! Feeble words! We set off at once down the path to the broad blue river, where, below low green hills that sloped to the water’s edge, little boats drifted aimlessly about. The people stopped in the middle of the river for afternoon gossip. It was the village highway — Venice before the motor boat. A child sang as he pushed his boat across from the one store, with a loaf of bread under his arm. A fat, jolly priest tucked up his frock and poled across with a basket of eggs. Were we in America?

That night on a little wharf in a deserted garden, as we sat under a bright moon, suddenly there floated down the river a cry, melodious, penetrating, infinitely sweet. Another voice echoed, another, and far down the shining river another, until the warm moist night was vocal. The captain of the little boat at the pier stopped before us to light his pipe, and said, ‘The creoles are yodeling to-night. Beautiful, is n’t it?’

Oh, beautiful! Not the crystal call of the Tyrolese, a cry to the god of the hills, but a cry as native as the gurgle of their river, as seductive as the perfume of the night-blooming flowers where the water laps the shore — the old, old cry to the god of the valleys.

The next morning the fish wagon stopped at our door, and I met my first creole. Lithe, dark, erect — an Arab with the mellifluous voice of the negro and the proud reserve of the Indian. When I came to know this man well, he told me that his father, a creole and a widower, had married a negress, a widow with children. Now there are three free schools — one for the whites, one for the creoles, and one for the negroes. He himself went to the creoles’ school, his step-brothers to the negroes’. But when children came to this couple the threat of utter illiteracy hung over them, for all schools rejected them. After years of heated discussion, the disgrace was divided between the two schools; the children went half a term to each.

Some of the creole women, of mixed white blood, are very beautiful. A white man of means married one of these women, and on their wedding journey to Chicago the Southern railway conductor refused to permit the bride to ride in the Pullman or to allow the man in the negro coach! Though in the South we hold miscegenation in peculiar horror, yet the harm was already done, and I have always hoped that Charon made this conductor cross the Styx in the steerage.

IV

Now, as we lay on the mountainside and recalled all this, I said, ‘And oh, remember the day when the mail carrier tied our skiff behind his motor boat to deliver the mail!' For here was the only rural river route in America. Against t he law to take us? But in this languorous land how far away the law seems! And the creoles sauntered silently down green banks to their little wharves, and there among the water lilies we gave them their letters without a word to break the steady swish-swish of the reeds.

So, lighting one cigarette after another from the dying fire, we ‘tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.’

Unnoticed, an ominous cloud had appeared in the west, and we hastened for the camp shovel to trench for the tent, and prepared for the night on the hill.

That night John gave the mangrowl, and the next morning as I boiled the tea while Peter foraged for wood — pine does not make a cooking fire — I saw behind the golden splash of Spanish needle a man creeping away in the bushes. The storm still threatened, and we dug the trench deeper and stayed another night; though John, who did not like the hill, begged to go on. The following morning, as Peter cleared the trench for the still threatening storm, again I saw the man in the bushes. I took the rifle and handed it quietly to Peter, and told him to look. Peter pointed the gun at the man and cried, ‘Come out, friend! We don’t like visitors on all fours!’

An Indian with a slight blue cast — like the terror of my childhood, a man who had taken a medicine for epileptic fits — came forward calmly and said, ‘You are an Indian.’

I looked at Peter with a fresh eye. We did look like Indians! For we were bronzed deep by the sun, and our hair hung black and long, — at least Peter’s was black, — for somewhere in the cart the scissors were lost. From months of walking in moccasins we had acquired the Indian glide — and oh, the ease it brought in walking!

So Peter answered diplomatically, ‘ Maybe.’

‘You are digging for our treasure — our gold. We won’t let you take it. We know it is here on this hill somewhere. You can’t take it. But,’ and a look of cunning came into his immobile face, ‘if you divide with me, I’ll not tell. Divide with me?’

‘I’m not digging for treasure,’ said Peter. ‘I’m trenching our tent because it’s going to rain.’

The Indian shook his head stubbornly. ‘Divide with me? We won’t let you take our gold. I’ll not tell. When the moon shines I’ll come. Divide with me?’

‘You can dig alone. I’ll not be here to-night. If you know the treasure is here, why haven’t you found it?’

‘The Quallas know where if is. There is gold — much gold. I’ll help you dig when the moon shines to-night.’ And he glided away.

We broke camp at once, so that we might not be suspected of having found gold — much gold; though when Peter reflected on the forty-five cents he said he would like to fortify the hill and dig.

“If you ask me,’he said as we walked away, ‘these shadows of the past are too dense to be comfortable, or I’m an Indian! ’

Though the houses of the blue men were neat and well cared for, — gardens always in front, and not a flower, — I was glad when we came to the first ramshackle negro cabin, where the hens scratched contentedly in gardens at the back and cockscombs and zinnias bloomed at the doorstone, where the pickaninnies grinned. But on the way we talked with some of the Indians and admitted that they were intelligent and thrifty.

A sad, a silent people, these lost Cherokees. Unlike the negroes, who hide their melancholy with marvelous secrecy, these Indians carry their sadness like a banner.

The clouds cleared away, and a perfume not of flowers or of ripening fruit came on the breeze — a fascinating odor to hungry wanderers. And around a turn of the road was a party of negroes before a barbecue fire. I turned into the big gate before an unexpectedly commodious house.

‘But they are negroes!’ said Peter doubtfully.

‘That is why we shall get a good clean dinner!’

‘But negroes! And we have only forty-five cents! ’

‘Nonsense!’ I cried impatiently and unjustly. For Peter had not been brought up in a land where Aunt Becky kept track of your ‘ka-reer’ through absent years, and walked ten rheumatic miles when you came home, to see if ‘you still favored yo paw !

A very old white-headed negro came to greet us. Resolved to be economical,

I said, ‘Good morning, Uncle. That barbecued meat smelled so good I just had to stop and see if you would sell us a slice.’

‘Suhtinly! Suhtinly! Rose, cut de lady a nice slice. One ob de blue min tole us dey wuz trablers on de road. But you is not whut we expected teh see, suh. Not atall, suh!

A negress, who turned two kids on spits before an open fire, began to sharpen a knife. Suddenly the old man cried, ‘Heah, you twins! Woodrow! You an’ Sambo! Come holp me cahy obeh somethin’. Wait a minute, Miss — Miss — ’

‘Miss Eleanor,’ I answered.

‘Miss Ellen,’ and he smiled delightedly, ‘you jis’ set down on de bench by de little table dar.’

Presently he returned with the twins, and under a great oak set the table with a clean white cloth and pinkflowered dishes.

‘Dese dishes,’ the old man said proudly, ‘is whut I keeps fuh white folks comp’ny. Nobody else iveh et in dem. I’m ve’y much respected heah, suh. I has a gret chance o’ white comp’ny. I owns my hunderd-acre fahm heah, suh. Ise lived heah sence de wah wid de States. Dese folks is all my dahters and deir chillun an’ gran’chillun. Ise pow’ful ole now. None o’ my boys’d stay on de place, an’ I wuked all my life teh make it fine fuh ’em! Dis is a picnic fuh Rose’s gal. She has a little boy baby; and dey’s all come frum town teh bring cradle presents. So I fotched some ice frum town, an’ I barbecued two fat kids fuh ’em.’

The old negro waited on us himself, and there was red raspberry ice cream and real pound cake. When lie had gone for more of the delicious barbecued meat, Peter said, ‘How the devil are we to pay for all this?’

‘Peter,’ I said, ‘I’m a Southern belle befo’ de wah oh de States, and you arc like the man who walked before Alexander to keep telling him he was mortal! You and your forty-five cents! We can get the money at the town and send it back — if there ’s not enough.’

‘Humph! He’ll believe that!’ Suddenly he whispered, ‘That little hickey you bought, of the last mountain woman — it’s a quilt, is n t it?

So we unlocked the cart and took from it the beautifully pieced and quilted silk square I had bought for a footstool cover. ‘Uncle,’ I said, ‘may I give the baby a cradle present too? It’s only a little quilt, but we think it pretty.’

Rose came with the other women and bore it proudly into the house to the baby. And when we had finished our dinner Peter, as from an inexhaustible store, produced the forty-five cents and offered it to the old negro.

‘Nossuh! Nossuh! You-all is comp’ny! I kim frum Vahginny, and my white folks wuz the Chiltons, suh!’

Rose eyed the money covetously, and her face fell. Her father turned to her and said sharply, ‘We iveh one ’d consideh it a bodacious insult teh take money frum a lady dat give Rose’s gran’chile a fine cradle present. We thanks you, Miss Ellen.

‘Saved again!’ murmured Peter.

‘It ’pears lak it mought rain. I keeps one room fuh white comp ny. I’d be proud if you-all would stay.

We thanked him and declined, and he brought us some apples to take with us. ‘Dey is fine apples. I got seven kinds o’ sweet apples. I planted ’em all. But nobody kecrs nothin’ fuh ’em. Maybe you-all don’t want ’em. I went teh Nashville teh visit my boy an’ his chillun an’ gran’ehillun. An’ I shined up my ve’y bestest apples I’d sprayed fo’ times, an’ I wropped iveh one in fine white paper, an’ I toted de sack wid me on de kyars. But my boy he jis’ th’owed ’em in de automobile an’ bruised ’em. An’ dat night I calls de chillun an’ I say’s, “See whut you-all’s ole gran’pappy done brung you!” An’ I ontied de flour sack, an’, suh, dey says, “Nothin’ but ole apples!” An’ th’owed ’em right on de flo’. Dey says dey laks awanges, suh. It ’pears lak I done th’owed away all my wuk heah. Dey won’t nobody even stay on de place. Dese chillun all live in town dat’s heah teh-day.’

The old negro’s eyes filled. I could not speak; and he went on, ‘Miss Ellen,

I hopes you won’t kyar if I axes yo’ las’ name. I sohteh thunk we mought name Rose’s baby boy fuh you. We kindeh runs outen names.’

I wrote my maiden name on a piece of paper, — spelled phonetically, — and Peter said, ‘Cheer up! With a name like that, this one will grow up and love the old place and come back to it.’

“I thanks you-all. You kin find a good camp in de grove at de ole Lancaster place teh-night. De fambly’s all gone off teh be lawyers and doctahs in cities. But ole Miss an’ little Miss is buried dar. Little Miss’s boy wuz de las’ teh leave. Dar’s a tenant dar now. Jis’ pore white trash.’

V

As we walked on, Peter said: ‘Now that avuncular shadow of the past is worth while! But those young negroes — why, even after we gave them the cradle present they would have taken our — ’

‘If you say “forty-five cents” again I shall scream! What have we to do with high finance?’

‘You are right! The joy of the road is that the exigencies of the present shut off the past and the future. But the money smoulders in my pocket! And I have a feeling that a good-sized exigency is coming. We’ll spend it at the next stop.’

After supper in the dimly lighted old hall of the Lancaster mansion, with its pathetic spindle-legged piano and occasional carved chair. I played the violin for the tenant and the field hands who lolled on the great stairway or sprawled on the floor. Hoping to find a mountain fiddler, I passed the violin among them. A mellow voice from the dark called, ‘I kin play, if de lady don’t mind.’

‘Come in. Uncle Eli,’ said our host kindly. ‘You used ter live hyar, did n’t ye?’

An old, old negro stood framed in the doorway. Neatly dressed, with hightopped boots of a bygone fashion, he stood slender and straight as a charred pine.

I caught the veiled contempt in the glance he gave the field hands sprawled about the old hall. A glance that included me in my short skirt and bobbed hair.

‘Yas, suh! Yas, suh! I done sold my fiddle in dis berry hall when I went Nawth wid de fambly. I ain’t played no mo’. But I done come home now, suh.’

He fingered the violin lovingly with trembling old hands, and pushed the bow across the strings. But the music did not come. Sadly enough he brought it back to me. ‘I reckon Ise done fergot. how teh play,’ he said.

‘Try again, Uncle Eli,’ I said. ‘It will come back to you. It always does.’

It did come back to him, and after he had tuned the violin in his own way he said, ‘I’ll play you de oldest tune in de worl’. It’s “De Road tch Jericho.” An’ de pood Book say it made de walls o’ Jericho fall.’

Half a century and more has passed since Old Miss sat in her hoop-skirted dress and smiled while she watched the dancers and listened to Uncle Eli’s fiddle.

Old reels sparkled and lilted through the great hall; and suddenly one of the field hands sprang to his feet and cried, ‘Hoe all day an’ hop all night! And presently they were all dancing like mad. We hopped with t he best of them. Even our host’s tiny daughter joined the revels. Then, for the first time, I saw Uncle Eli smile. He sang with the violin, ‘Hold up youah dress an’ dance lak a lady. Nobody hyah but Kitty an’ de baby.’ The old white head so weighted with memories sank lower and lower. Perhaps he had sung that song for little Miss who sleeps under the oaks here, while her great-granddaughter dances the Charleston at a cabaret.

Night, when the whippoorwill called incessantly in the deep grove; and before sunrise we stole silently away to meet the mystery of the dawn breeze on the river road.

When the sun was hot we stopped at a desolate cabin for a drink. Inside, a weary woman was ironing, heating her irons before a fireplace, while a young woman sat in a cushioned chair and crocheted with very coarse twine what she called hats. The girl was beautiful. All the expression denied her body was concentrated in her face. For she had never walked. She was selling the hats to buy herself a wheel chair. When she told me they were fifty cents, Peter’s eyes met mine, and without a word he gave me forty-five cents and three postage stamps.

Outside, to prove the wisdom of my purchase, I tried to wear the hat. But it volplaned like an airship. Even a string weighted with a rock failed to secure it. So I removed the wire at the edge, made a hand bag of it, and felt lighter in my mind.

At last we stood on the summit of a steep hill, and Peter said, ‘If the mists would lift we could see the bank in the town.’

Sis, always of an unbalanced nature, became excited at this, and ran violently down the hill. We all three pursued, screaming and barking. A motor rattled past. We had come to the end of the river road.