"Whisky is the curse of this country," said Mrs. Carroll, vehemently, while Bob gazed into the fire and Sydney played with the sugar-tongs. "You can't deny lying, Bob, when the moonshiners are lying to the revenue men every day, and their friends are lying in their behalf; and you can't say they don't steal, when they are defrauding the government with every quart of blockade they sell. The mountaineers may be loyal to their friends, but it is to conceal crime."

"Illicit stilling seems to be regarded like smuggling," said John. "The government is fair game."

"Whisky stunts the growth of children, and blunts the morals of youth, and makes murderers of men," went on the old lady, disregarding John's interruption, and sitting with expressive straightness. A silence fell upon the group that John and Katrina felt to be painful without understanding why. Patton and Sydney were burning with sympathy for Bob. It was Patton who broke the quiet.

"And they drink it from a dipper!"

The ensuing laughter snapped the strain of embarrassment.

"We have another class of people that we haven't described to Katrina," said Sidney. "The resident foreigners."

"Like Baron von Rittenheim," said Bob, absently, staring at the fire.

"Another title! How in the world did he come here?" asked Katrina.

"Oh, he's one of the footballs of Fate," said Patton.

"Usually they're English,—the footballs," said Bob. "They come here to mend either health or fortune, stay a few years, and go away."

"Mended?"

"Yes, in health, if they—stop drinking." Bob brought it out with a jerk. "This climate's great, you know."

"But not with improved finances?"

"Yes, that too. It's a fine place for economy."

"For what purpose did this German come?" asked Katrina.

"He's one of the mysteries," said Patton, rising to take his leave.

Bob called Sydney from the drawing-room into the hall, and handed her a letter.

"Father got it this afternoon," he said. "It's awfully funny."

Sydney took it from its envelope. Bob, bending to buckle on his spurs, did not see her flush at the signature and then grow pale as she read.

"Bob," she whispered, hoarsely, "promise me,—promise that you'll let me know—if they do it—when it's going to be."

And Bob, who had no thought but to amuse her, said, heartily, "Why, of course."

Had von Rittenheim, sitting before his fire awaiting Bud's return, been able to see into the minds of his neighbors, he would have found matter more productive of mental confusion than were English irregular verbs to him.

That Dr. Morgan, after receiving a challenge, could settle back to the perusal of the Pickwick Papers as placidly as if he had attended to the last minute detail of the conventions attendant upon that process called "giving satisfaction," was a thing that his traditions, his education, and his environment had put it out of his power to understand.

That Bob could regard the incident as a joke was even farther from his grasp. An indifference caused by a lack of fear,—that was within his range. But that this method of wiping out an insult should be regarded as funny,—of such an emotion under such circumstances he could not conceive.

Sydney's feeling, could he have known it, was closer to his comprehension, because it is not beyond man's imagination to guess, approximately, the frame of mind into which a woman would be thrown upon hearing of such a prospective meeting. What he could not see was the importance that his own part played in the girl's fear.

The thing seemed to her barbaric, mediaeval, horrible. She shook to think of harm that might come to her good old friend, the Doctor. She became an abject coward when she remembered that the old man was noted throughout the mountains as a perfect shot.

She could not understand herself. She had not had this feeling at all when Ben Frady had cleared the open space before the post-office of all loafers, and she unwittingly had ridden on to the scene, and, grasping the situation, had demanded his revolver from him and had received it.

Not until afterwards had she had any such sensations as this, when a message had come to the house that the negroes on the farm were cutting each other, and she had walked in upon them and had ordered them to separate.

Bob had told her that he didn't know what it was all about, and the uncertainty made the situation only more disquieting. Like most Southern women, it did not occur to her to interfere before the event in any affair that was men's own; but she began to formulate a plan that depended for its success upon Bob's keeping her informed as to the course pursued by his father. Could she depend on him? Her anxiety was cruel.



VIII

Sydney Rides against Time

Three days later Bud brought to von Rittenheim the following note:

"DEAR BARON,—I say again that I haven't any idea what you are driving at, but I never yet went back on a fight, so if you still want one I'll meet you at twelve o'clock to-morrow on top of Buck Mountain. I think you went to a picnic there when the chestnuts were ripe last fall, so you know the place. I'll take the weapons along with me, and you can examine them when you get there. I don't want any second.

"Yours truly,

"HENRY MORGAN."

Von Rittenheim puzzled over the English of this document, and nodded his head in satisfaction.

"At last he performs his duty. Buck Mountain I know. It is a distant spot, ten miles from here. He is strange not to say what are the weapons; but what can you expect?"

With a shrug derogating the social experience of his adopted land, he proceeded to negotiate with Bud for the use of his mule on the next day.

It was nearly eleven o'clock on the following morning when Bob Morgan drew rein before the Carrolls' door, and asked to see Sydney.

"Beg her to come to the door just a moment, Uncle Jimmy. No, I'll not send the horse around. And she'll want Johnny saddled at once. Send word to the stable, please."

When she appeared he ran up the steps as far as his bridle would allow, and spoke in a low voice, with a glance at the windows.

"It's this morning, Sydney, at twelve. Will you come? Father didn't tell me about it until just as he was leaving the house, and he said he didn't want me, but I'd promised you, and we'll be in time if we hurry, I've ordered Johnny."

The girl clutched her throat with a feeling that every bit of strength was leaving her body. Bob, buckling his curb rein, saw nothing. His only thought was to give her some sport. A fight, more or less, counted but little with him personally; and he did not think that this one actually would take place, else he would not have considered taking a girl to it.

Sydney spared a thought of wonder at Bob's nonchalance, but as swiftly reflected that perhaps men always were cool in such emergencies. To her it meant murder,—the crime of life destroyed. And whose life? Perhaps that of her dear old friend. Perhaps——!

The blood surged back to her brain and she mastered herself.

"We have so little time," she panted. "I'll be ready in a minute."

Before the horse was at the mounting-block she was awaiting him, buttoning her gloves, while she extended her foot for Bob to buckle her spur. She had put on her riding-skirt, but otherwise was as she had come to the door.

"Don't you-all want a coat, Sydney?" asked Bob, solicitously. "Or a hat?"

"No, I'm quite warm. Where is that boy? Hurry, Clint," she called to the little negro, who was bringing the horse around with a slowness born of his enjoyment of the brief ride.

"Off with you, quick, now, boy!" It was Bob, who was catching the girl's impatience. "Here, take Gray Eagle."

He flung his bridle to the lad, and threw Sydney into the saddle as quickly as she could wish. She adjusted herself carefully, for she knew how the discomfort of a twisted skirt may make a difference of a minute in the mile, or may mean real danger at a jump.

"There's no time to lose, it's five minutes past eleven now," she said, glancing at a strap watch on her wrist, and touching Johnny with her spur.

Bob's horse was off in pursuit before his master was well on his back.

"I declare, she might have given me a fairer start!" he growled, as the sorrel settled down ahead of him into a run that bade fair to keep even the advantage. They had had many a race, Bob and Sydney, and usually it was the girl who was the more cautious rider of the two. To-day, however, she took risks that amazed even her old-time playmate, who thought he knew her every mood.

By the long driveway and the road it was two miles to the Doctor's house, and five from there to the foot of Buck Mountain. By a cut across the sheep-pasture the first part of the way could be reduced nearly a mile.

"She certainly is keen for the fun," thought Bob, as he saw Sydney turn from the avenue and drive Johnny at a gate which he knew that she did not care often to take.

"Too high for Johnny. I must tell her not to do that again," he commented, as he noticed during his own flight that the top rail was split from contact with the first horse's heels.



Down the hill and across the field tore the sorrel, leaping the branch, and slackening to allow the gray's approach only when he came to a fence whose position at the top of a sharp ascent forbade his taking it.

Sydney looked back impatiently as Bob covered the dozen lengths between them and swung off to open the gate.

"You might wait for a fellow," he grumbled, but already the girl was through, and her white blouse and ruddy hair shone half-way across the unenclosed meadow upon which she had entered. For the first time her pale face impressed Bob.

"Looks like she saw something," he thought, with a remnant of old superstition. "I do believe she thinks there's going to be bloodshed." And with a view to reassuring her, he caught up with her in the path through the belt of woods that led from the field to the road. Their horses were nose on tail, and of necessity going slowly.

"Sydney!" he cried, "O-oh, Sydney! You don't think it's serious, do you? Because——"

Here the path debouched into the open road, and Johnny was off again before Bob could finish, and his question, meant to inspirit Sydney, had sounded to her only like a desire for his own reassurance, and had alarmed her more than ever.

A mad feeling within pricked her to tear on without slackening. She felt that she could have galloped to the very top of the mountain without fatigue. Her horsewoman's intelligence, however, warned her to think of her animal, and she took him along quietly through the open place before the post-office, giving Bob a chance to catch up.

He was thoroughly out of temper now. Never before had Sydney been so careless of him. He couldn't understand it; but he was beginning to realize that she was taking the adventure seriously, and, with boyish malice, he resolved to make no further effort to undeceive her.

Indeed, as they rode on slowly and silently, side by side, for a few hundred yards, he became not so sure himself that the duel was the joke that he had considered it.

He knew his father to be a man ready in his own defence, and of a high, though controlled temper; and he had not overlooked the fact that the stocks of two guns were protruding from the holster that projected from under the skirt of the Doctor's McClellan. Furthermore, he knew that the German was in deadly earnest.

As these suspicions assailed him, he turned to Sydney and touched the spur to his gray. The girl responded to his look, and they set into the steady gallop that covers much country with but little effort either to horse or rider.

Sydney held out her watch for Bob to see. It was quarter past eleven. Nearly five miles lay before them to the foot of the mountain, and to the summit there was a long, steep mile and a half which was the time-consumer to be reckoned with.

A mile beyond the post-office they turned from the State Road into a less-travelled, and hence rougher, side road. Through a stretch of sandy mud they breathed the horses again, and then on, on, on to the big hill whose vast bulk was beginning to tower mightily before them. Past the old school-house they dashed, without a glance for its forlorn state of decay; past one of the farm gates of the Cotswold estate; past the Baptist Bethel, indistinguishable from a school-house except for the white stones in the graveyard, upon which the sun glinted cheerfully.

Quarter after quarter they left behind them, slowing up only for steep descents or for patches of lengthwise road-mending whose upthrust branch ends are liable to snag a horse's legs. Johnny and Gray Eagle took in their stride the brooks that babbled gayly across the way; they shied at a glare of mica on the red clay of the bank; they dodged ruts, and leaped mud-holes, and pushed for the middle of the road.

At the end of the third mile Sydney asked, not lifting her eyes from the ground before her, "Is the bridle-path open?" It was the first time she had spoken since they left Oakwood.

"I don't know. It may be washed. We'd better keep to the sled-track."

"It's half a mile longer."

"But the other might delay us more."

Sydney did not urge the point, but looked at her watch as they reached the opening where the ascent began.

It was twenty minutes of twelve.

Without a word she held out her hand to Bob. She felt sick and faint, and her companion's whistle was not reassuring.

"They'll probably be late," he suggested, but he remembered as he said it that his father had left home for the meeting-place before he had started to take the news to Sydney.

The trail began in a steep acclivity that soon brought the horses to a walk. When it was surmounted the beasts needs must blow, though they pressed on willingly enough at a half-minute's end. A fairly level bit followed along the ridge of the foot-hill they just had climbed. It was not wide enough for them to travel abreast, and Johnny led with a sharp trot that made clever avoidance of the stones and roots and stumps that sprang into sight before him as at the summons of a malignant spirit.

The next upward stretch was over a ledge of rock from which the winter's rains had washed the soil. A trickling spring kept its surface constantly wet, and its slippery face brought Johnny to his knees.

Sydney uttered a cry which ordinarily would have been one of pity for her favorite's pain. Now it was a note of fear lest the fall might mean delay. But the brave sorrel heaved himself up, and turned across the path to pant after the exertion.

"Are you all right, Sydney?" came Bob's anxious cry from below, whence he had seen the accident.

"It was nothing," she called. "Come, Johnny, poor old man!"

She patted his lowered neck, and he bent his hoofs to catch his toe-calks in the cracks of the rock.

Another fleeting pause at the top rewarded his endeavor, and then a couple of hundred yards of hardly perceptible upward incline produced again the swift and ready trot.

Five minutes more of easy climbing brought into view the tobacco barn which was one of the mountain's landmarks. Beyond it the grade became much more abrupt, and although it was worn fairly smooth by the sleds of the men who planted aerial cornfields far up on the highest clearings, yet its steepness rendered this last half-mile the truly formidable part of the ascent.

Johnny glanced up it with regretful eye, stopped an instant, took a long breath, shook himself, and went bravely to his task.

Sydney's every thought was a passionate longing to press on,—to hurry, to rush, to fly. Her lips grew white when she saw that the hands of her watch pointed to four minutes of twelve.

"It is not possible to be in time," she agonized. "O God, delay them! O God, stop them!"

She bent forward over the horse's withers, and stretched upward, as if to pull him higher by her buoyancy. She was heedless of the stream that gurgled beside the trail among the evergreen sword-fern—a noisy betrayer of the mountain's angle. She did not observe that she was alone, that Bob was not following her. She was deaf to his cries as he struggled below with the gray, which was plunging against an attack of yellow jackets, and refused to take the trail.

Johnny stopped, his sides heaving pitiably.

"Oh, can I bear it? Oh, go on; do go on! O God, give me strength to wait."

Though she tore off her gloves in nervous impatience, still she left the rein upon the horse's neck, for she knew that the willing beast was doing his best.

He stopped again, and still once more, before they came to the foot of the bald, whose slippery, dead grass added another peril to the climb. The trail ended here, for it was not needed where a sled could go anywhere over the clearing.

"Come, dear boy. Come, dear old horse," she urged. "Five minutes more will take us there."

The watch's cruel face told the hour to be twelve minutes past twelve, but Sydney did not feel so keen a pang as when she looked last, although it was later than the fatal hour. The continued silence gave her confidence. Only the bay of a hound in some cove below, and the yelp of a puppy, reached her.

She was dully dogged. The horse stumbled and scrambled on.

"We can't do better than our best, Johnny. May God keep them! Oh, Johnny! My dear, faithful Johnny, don't fall! Get up—get up!" she cried.

As he settled on to his side to roll up on to his feet again,—a process that his labored breathing and the weight of his rider made difficult on the sharp incline,—she slipped from his back and struggled on on foot.

She was near the crest of the mountain,—the bunch of chestnut-trees on the summit showed their swelling buds against the sky just over her head,—yet how slow was her advance! The sedge-grass caught her feet; the blackberry-vines tore at her skirt; a rolling pebble threw her down upon her hands.

In an instant she was up and on again,—she was at the summit at last! And there, just below the crest on the other side, facing each other on their animals, like knights of old, were the two men she sought.



IX

"It Needed Only This!"

Trembling she stood, looking down upon the foes below her. Her hands were knotted against her breast, that heaved with nature's cry at her cruelty. The thumping of her heart shook her body mercilessly. The anguish of her soul dried her throat, and filled her eyes with dread, and made her an embodiment of horror. Yet a stir of gratitude fought with fear for a place in her.

"Thank God, I am not too late!" was her voiceless cry.

Through the clear air came the sound of a voice, sharply articulate.

"It is not enough that you eat my bread and go forth from my door to do your treacherous act. You come again to my house to scorn at me after my humiliation, and you have not the courage to own your falseness. And now, when I demand from you the satisfaction that most surely do you owe me, how do you make a mock at me? Is that a weapon with which gentlemen do fight? Is it a shot-gun that men do carry to a duel?"

The hitherto still figure on the Doctor's horse stirred uneasily.

"And see, I break it." The mule turned back his ears, as upon them fell the click of the opening gun, followed by the drop of a shell into an open palm. "Ach, yes, I thought so! It needed only this! This so small shot is for the birds!"

A thud vibrated on the air—the sound of the flung-down weapon.

"Now, if you-all were only an American, Ah could make you understand right quick that——"

The Doctor's slow drawl was broken by an exclamation from von Rittenheim. Morgan followed the German's eyes, and saw above them against the fleckless blue of the heavens the brilliant figure of the girl, her hands straining against her breast, her face a field where anxiety and grief flitted like clouds across the background of the sky.

She came down towards them when she saw herself observed, and the two men silently dismounted as she approached, and pulled off their caps, less in salutation than from instinctive respect for deep emotion.

It was a poor little appeal she made, as words went. Her voice was hardly whisper-high, so labored was her breathing. She held out her hands to them one after the other, in supplication.

"You won't do it! Oh, please don't! I came—— You mustn't——" Her breath came in gasps.

Von Rittenheim mutely took the pleading hands in his, and reverently kissed them. He faced the Doctor brokenly.

"I thought you had heaped upon me every humiliation. Until now this was lacking. You might have spared me this!"

Mounting his mule he broke into the thicket and disappeared.

The two left behind—the tawny, stooping Carolinian and the girl, gone white-lipped in spite of the beating of her heart—stared in silence at the copse as long as they could hear the crash of the breaking twigs and resisting branches.

Sydney still was intent on the lessening sounds when the old man's keen blue eyes withdrew themselves from the wood and scrutinized her face, pitiably drawn and colorless.

"H'm," he grunted, and added, mentally, "Hard lines for Bob."

The sound of his ejaculation reached the girl's dulled ears. She turned to him with a touch of distrust, and yet a look of question that seemed to implore her old friend for an explanation that might save him to her as an honest man. The Doctor was touched by it. He nodded in the direction in which the Baron had disappeared.

"Crazy, plumb crazy," he averred.

Sydney's dry lips formed a soundless "Why?"

"He's got some notion in his head that Ah've done him an injury—you heard him?"

She nodded.

"Ah swear to you, Sydney, Ah haven't any idea what he means, but he harps on it, and he sent me a challenge, as Ah suppose you know, or you wouldn't be here."

"Yes. Bob brought me."

"Ah bluffed him off fo' three days. Ah hoped Ah might think of something that would get him out of that vein without hurting his foreign feelings, but Ah couldn't think of anything, so Ah 'lowed to pretend to play up to his game, and in some way turn it into a joke."

"The bird-shot was the joke?"

The Doctor colored dimly under his tan.

"Well, Ah must confess that it seemed to me mo' humorous when Ah was loading up the guns at home than when the Baron was discoursing about it."

"I should think so. I should think——"

Sydney bit her sentence in two. She felt too uncontrolled to allow herself to comment upon the Doctor's conduct.

"Ah certainly believe he's crazy or going to have a fever, and Ah'll find some way of watching him. Ah suppose he won't let me on his place now; Ah'll have to see Bud. Where's yo' horse?" he asked, suddenly.

Sydney pressed her hand to her head confusedly.

"I don't know. Back there somewhere."

"Come, we must hunt him. You seem tired to death, child. Did you ride hard?"

"It was about an hour and ten minutes to the foot of the bald."

She was dragging herself wearily up to the chestnut-trees.

"An hour and ten minutes to the foot of the bald? From where?"

"From home."

"From Oakwood? Holy Smoke! What did Bob let you do such a fool thing fo'?" he ejaculated, angrily. "Where is Bob, anyway?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him since—I think it was—I don't know where it was," she ended, weakly, and with distress.

The Doctor looked at her keenly.

"Here, never mind him; he can take care of himself well enough; better than he can of you, by the looks of it. Sit down, now; yes, right here on the grass, and drink this."

He gave her a draught from his flask, standing over her threateningly when she hesitated at the entire contents of the cup cover.

"Take it all," he insisted, "every drop. It's the only thing on earth that's health to its enemies and death to its friends."

Sydney leaned back wearily against a jutting rock and closed her eyes. Her head swam, and she resigned herself to the Doctor's commands with the blessed feeling of relief that a woman has when responsibility falls from her own upon some man's shoulders.

A whoop from the chestnuts made her open her eyes.

"Is it Bob?"

"Yes, leading Johnny." Doctor Morgan raised his voice. "Come down here. You're a pretty feller to carry a girl to ride," he continued, as Bob tied the horse to one of the chestnuts and sprang down the slope. "No girl in my time ever shook me like that. Where did she lose you?"

Bob answered nothing to his father's gibes, but bent anxiously over Sydney.

"You are not hurt, de—Sydney? Just awfully done up? I ought not to have let you come. It's been too hard a ride. It's all my fault," he went on, accusingly, while the Doctor nodded his head in agreement, and Sydney tried in vain to interrupt.

"No, indeed, Bob, you were not to blame at all. I made you promise, and I couldn't have forgiven you or myself if I hadn't been here when——"

She fell back against the rock, and the Doctor broke in, by way of diversion,—

"Where's Gray Eagle?"

"Down at the tobacco barn. He got wild and balked the steep part of the trail, so I tied him to a tree and left him to kick it out."

"You walked up, then?"

"Yes, and found Johnny gluttonously eating blackberry-vines on the other side of the bald. That scared me to death, for I thought he'd made way with Sydney in some mysterious fashion,—perhaps eaten her,—and was indulging in dessert! Where's your enemy?"

The Doctor glanced quickly at Sydney, and frowned at Bob.

"Gone home," was all he would say.

They lifted the girl on to her horse, and Bob guided him down to the very foot of the mountain. At the tobacco barn the Doctor untied Gray Eagle, subdued by his enforced loneliness, and led him behind them.

"Bob will stay to luncheon at Oakwood, it's so late," said Sydney to him as they parted at his gate. "You'll not forget to find out in some way if the Baron is ill, will you?"

"No, my dear, I'll watch him like the Pinkertons' eye that never sleeps," returned the old man, genially.

"Mrs. Carroll has gone into the dining-room," the servant told them at the door, and Sydney assumed much cheerfulness as she made her apologies.

"I've brought Bob, grandmother. He's been all over everywhere with me this morning. You'll forgive me, Katrina, for leaving you, won't you? Where's Mr. Wendell?"

"Not back from Asheville yet."

"He went in yesterday," explained Mrs. Carroll to Bob. "I suppose the train is late. It does seem as if they grow more and more uncertain, and when there are only two a day each way, it certainly is annoying, very. You wouldn't know what to make of so meagre an arrangement, would you, Katrina dear?"

"There's the carriage now," said Bob. "The train couldn't have been much over an hour behind time; surely you wouldn't complain of that."

"I feel as if I had been journeying for days," said John, sitting down, "and had seen the sights of far-distant worlds."

"It's the obelisk in Court Square that makes you think that," suggested Sydney.

"Or the battlements on the library building," added Bob.

"Are there street-cars?" asked Katrina.

"Street-cars? Why, child, there are street-cars to burn—electric ones, too. I felt grievously defrauded. I wanted a mule tram."

"The mule is an unfashionable animal," said Mrs. Carroll. "Time was when a handsome pair of mules was considered not unsuitable to draw a gentleman's carriage."

"The farmers aren't using them so much, either," said Bob. "They're too unreliable. Horses are cheaper, too."

"I saw some very decent saddle-horses in town—of their kind."

"What's their kind?"

"Long-tailed single-footers, Katrina."

"The easiest gait in the world," put in Bob, combatively, disregarding the tails.

"It looks so. And not a Derby hat in the whole place except mine."

"And not a silk one, except on colored coachmen," added Sydney, maliciously.

"Did you drive about?"

"I saw all the sights, dear Mrs. Carroll. I have done to a brown the Vanderbilt place, the Sunset Drive, and the junction of the Swannanoa and the French Broad. I flogged a rebellious horse to Gold View, and I scaled Beaumont and looked down into Chunn's Cove. I gazed at the—you will excuse me, I hope—faded exterior of a tobacco warehouse——"

"The farmers don't grow much now," interpolated Bob.

"So I was told. And I beheld with rapture the architecture of the Federal Building. That's the fullest beehive for its size, isn't it? Post-office, revenue office,—goodness knows what's in it!"

"Is the United States Court on yet?" asked Bob.

"Not being a victim, I don't know."

"You don't have to be a victim to find that out. The whole town is filled with the rural population who are interested in the liquor cases,—and our rural population is unmistakable."

"If that's the sign, then it isn't on, for only about half the town looked egregiously rural. Now I think of it, though, the court is going to sit day after to-morrow."

"Of course. It's the first Monday in May, isn't it?"

"Please ask me how I knew it. Thank you, Mrs. Carroll. I see that you are about to oblige me. Know then, good people, that this humble worm that you see before you has had the honor of occupying the same seat in the train with a minion of the law,—in fact, a revenue officer."

"Coming out to-day?"

"Yes. And, furthermore, he paid the flag-station of Flora the distinguished attention of getting out there."

"Was he after somebody?"

"He was about to jog the memories of several people, and I think you'll be surprised to know who one of them is. Mrs. Carroll, how can you expect the less fortunate part of your community to keep in the straight and narrow way, when the aristocracy—yea, verily, the nobility—sets it so bad an example?"

"What do you mean, John?"

"I'm going to write a tale to be called 'The Titled Moonshiner; or, The Baron's Quart of Corn.'"

Sydney and Bob looked at each other with dawning comprehension, yet without the ability entirely to clear away the fog.

"John, are you hinting any slur against Baron von Rittenheim, our neighbor and good friend?" The old lady was radiating dignity and indignation.

"I'm not hinting a thing, my dear Mrs. Carroll. I'm telling you what the affable revenue man told me. About a month ago, it seems, your friend and neighbor entertained a guest who proved to be, not an angel in disguise, but a deputy-marshal on his way to Asheville. Not knowing the official position of his visitor, von Rittenheim sold him a quart of whisky of his own vintage. Whereupon, like all other chilled vipers that have been warmed by this or other means, even from the far days of fable, the beast retaliated. He returned the next day and arrested him."

Mrs. Carroll and Katrina cried out in surprise and indignation. Bob's eyes were fixed upon Sydney, and she, ghastly white, was crumbling her bread into bits.

"The next day? Why, that is why he didn't come here for so long, Sydney!"

"He's under bond to appear at the next sitting of the United States Court, and, as that comes in on Monday, you understand the appearance of my friend the enemy on the train."

"Poor fellow!" murmured Katrina.

"Why in the world should the Baron sell any whisky, I should like to have some one tell me," demanded Mrs. Carroll. "And why didn't we see it in the paper?"

"Probably the name was put in incorrectly," Bob suggested. "The Asheville reporters aren't accustomed to German."

Sydney was silent. But upon Bob, for his father's sake, she laid accusing eyes, for she thought she had a clue to the words that had come to her ears through the clear air as she stood upon the top of Buck Mountain.



X

Through the Mist

One day in the autumn, a few weeks after he had bought Ben Frady's farm, von Rittenheim had taken his gun, and had whistled to heel one of the hounds that had preferred to stay in his old home with an unknown master rather than endure the precarious temper of the known quantity, and had climbed Buzzard, the mountain behind his cabin, in search of squirrel or quail.

As the day advanced, fleecy clouds gathered over the sky and obscured the sun, and then thickened and turned leaden. Suddenly, as the huntsman tramped across a clearing, a one-time cornfield high on the side of the mountain, he saw a mass of fog rolling towards him, and before he could descend below its level he found himself enveloped in the mist of a passing cloud. Heavy as a palpable thing it closed around him, impenetrable to the eye, chilling to the whole physical being, fraught with discouragement and depression to the mind.

Friedrich tried to regain a path that he remembered to have crossed a few minutes before, but under the trees the gloom was too dense for profitable search. Moisture began to collect upon the leaf tips and to drip upon him. The dog did not answer to his whistle. There were no points of the compass; there was no view of the valley below. He was like a ship rudderless. He only knew of a surety that the earth was beneath his feet, and as night drew on, and he could no longer see the soil his boot-soles pressed, he only knew that he was descending.

And then of a sudden came the barking of a dog in greeting, and the bray of a hungry mule, and he found himself close upon a cabin, and by a freak of fortune it proved to be his own, and he was at home.

Vaguely enough, yet insistently, the experience kept recurring to him during the days in Asheville, when he was awaiting his trial.

He went into the court-room in the Federal Building and watched, with a languid curiosity born of its foreignness, the easy-going ceremony of the opening of court. A group of lawyers laughed and gossiped at the front. A larger number of men, who proved to be potential jurors, gathered on one side and talked together more quietly, impressed by the novelty of their experience; while the men who had served on the jury before explained the furnishing of the room to them.

Some ladies were ushered into seats near the bench by a dapper young lawyer. Behind a railing, all about von Rittenheim, in front of him, beside him, and back of him, were the lean forms and bent shoulders of the mountaineers who were witnesses or principals in the whisky cases that fill so fully the docket of this court. From their appearance it was impossible to tell which were the law-breakers and which the bearers of testimony against them. There were old men and boys. Children were clinging to the skirts of their mothers, who had come to town either as witnesses or for the holiday. One woman was quieting a crying baby with the gag that a baby never refuses. She herself was soothed by the snuff-stick that protruded from the space left vacant by the early decay of her two front teeth.

The air rapidly grew heavy with the smell of unwashed bodies and of moist tobacco, and with the peculiar oily odor of corn whisky.

A short man of important bearing stepped in front of the rail and scanned the mass behind it. He easily singled out von Rittenheim, whose cropped head shone fair from among the towsled pows around him.

"Oh, von Rittenheim," he called, "step out here a minute."

"My so good friend, Mr. Weaver?" acknowledged Friedrich, looking at him through the squinting eyes that a sharp headache gave him.

"You'll be held by the grand jury, of course, von Rittenheim, but you needn't stay here all the time. Just drop in once or twice a day and see how the list stands. Some of these are old cases crowded out of the last term, and we may not get to you until Wednesday or Thursday. It ain't a right enjoyable place to stay in, and you'd better go out in the fresh air—you look sick."

"My head does give me pain," Friedrich admitted.

"Your case can't possibly be called to-day, anyway. You'd better go off until to-morrow."

"I thank you. I will when I have seen the honorable judge come in. It is most new to me, these customs of yours."

"I reckon they must be," returned Weaver, with something like pity in his upward glance at the drawn face above him. He scuttled off as a voice cried,—

"The court! the court!"

The lawyers scampered to their places behind the bar, and stood to acknowledge the entrance of the judge.

Beyond thinking him strangely unjudicial in appearance, Friedrich took no interest in him, for he did not regard him as the arbiter of his fate, since he had learned the customary sentence for cases like his, which was pronounced with the regularity of machinery and knew no variety.

He waited until another half-hour's observation had made clear to him the method of drawing the jurors. He left this task still in process of being fulfilled, and urged his way out of the press that held him fast.

The fresh, cool air was as wine to him, for wine invigorates the body while it clouds the mind. His lungs greedily took in great draughts of its light purity, and his blood raced so merrily that he grew confused. Always the pain bit into his eyes, and through his half-closed lids he saw but dimly the people around him and the pavement beneath his feet.

He went back to the little room that he had hired, and slept heavily into the afternoon. When he went out to get his supper at a restaurant, the gaunt figures of his fellow-criminals were at every step. They gazed curiously into the lighted shop-windows; they talked in groups that overflowed the curbstone into the gutter. In a vacant lot back of the Methodist church the glare of a camp-fire showed the covered wagon that was to give a night's shelter to the family whose shadows were cast large against its canvas side.

As he passed each group of them the odor that he had breathed for an hour in the morning assailed his nostrils and seemed to force itself into his lungs. He could not eat his supper, and he spent a restless night, filled with horrid dreams. Sydney was selling whisky to Mr. Weaver. The Judge turned into Dr. Morgan, who grinned triumphantly at his victim as he stood in the crowd behind the rail. He bent to kiss the hand of Mrs. Carroll, and she held in it a shell filled with bird-shot.

Always the sickening odor of the overheated court-room choked him, and his head throbbed unceasingly, and the balls of his eyes beat in anguished unison.

The first electric-car passing the house in the early dawn crashed into his dream as the bullet that was speeding from his revolver to Dr. Morgan's heart, and found its resting-place in Sydney's breast instead. He woke to find himself soaked with the sweat of exhaustion.

The cloud of that day on the mountain still clung around his fancy as he went out upon the street again. A horrible something, as penetrable as mist, as keen as the sting of conscience, as inevitable as the burden of life, seemed to inwrap him. He felt it dully, and wondered how much of it was physical and how much mental, and he didn't care which it was.

He ate a little breakfast, though it was odious to him, and went out to meet again the lantern-jawed mountaineers, who, like him,—like him,—were drifting towards the Federal Building.

Yes, he was going to the court-room to be tried for a criminal offence; he was a criminal, a criminal, a criminal. It buzzed angrily through his head.

He stumbled over a child sitting beside his mother on the edge of the sidewalk in front of the post-office. The woman had her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands, and in her eyes was the look of waiting that comes to women with uncertain husbands. She cuffed the child, and then shook him to still the uproar she had created. Two more children sat on the curb beyond her, and beyond them, up Haywood Street, men leaned against the iron fence or squatted in pairs upon the sidewalk. Friedrich wondered how they kept their balance, and went on up the stairs, through pools of tobacco-juice, to the court-room, where the day's work already had begun.

He secured a seat, and leaned his head against the wall. A negro man, accused of fraudulently obtaining a pension, was explaining volubly how he had received the injury upon which he based his claim.

His case was given to the jury, which filed out, and the second set of men made themselves comfortable in the abandoned seats, with much scraping of chairs and of throats, and adjustment of cuspidors to the range of each juror.

The case of the next prisoner, tried on a charge of a fraudulent use of the mails, lashed to frenzy the prosecuting attorney. He compared this foul violator of the laws of his country with Sextus and Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot. The national eagle had been insulted in his nest, and his screams were ringing from mountain-peak to mountain-peak. The echoes of Mitchell were sending back the cry, and Saint Elias's snowy top gave forth an answering sound.

Von Rittenheim understood enough of the rapid English to realize its irrelevancy, and wondered idly why the man was such a fool, not knowing that it was the presence of a visiting national senator from the hotel that had inspired this eloquence.

The air grew worse as more and more people pushed into the already crowded room. Some one opened a window, and some one else immediately begged to have it shut. There was a constant shuffling of feet and a restless moving of hands. Friedrich found himself smothered by the evil-smelling clothes of his companions as he sat against the wall, and he stood, to bring his head up into a clearer air. The steam in one of the radiators began to thump and clang, and each crash smote a raw nerve in his beating temple.

The feeling of striving against the mist, yielding but inexorable, had him fully in its possession, and through the fog he saw the face of Wilder, the deputy-marshal. Their eyes met, and the malice in the officer's drove the German mad. How long must he stand here and wait among these swine? Yet he remembered many hours of waiting motionless upon his horse, and he rebuked himself for a poor soldier.

Ah, if only he could tell the whole truth; if only he could stand before the bar of the world—of God himself—and say, "I am guilty. Of violating the law I am guilty. I am willing to bear my punishment for what I have done. But if I am guilty, how is he innocent who brake my bread and then tempted me? He who ate my last mouthful, and then offered me an unlawful chance to get more? Is the law of hospitality to be held of no account? And how is he innocent who poses as my friend, who drinks from my cup, who holds my hand in his, and who goes forth to betray me? Is there no law that binds a friend in honor? I have broken a law—the law of man. Those two men of whom I speak have broken the laws of the heart, the ties of honor and of love. I am a criminal in the eyes of men. They are sinners before the face of God."

Friedrich was trembling as he felt these words flow through his mind. The men on each side of him noticed his agitation, and drew away from the emotion of his tense face. So insistently did the words ring in his ears that it seemed to him that he must have spoken them aloud. Yet he was conscious that he had not, and that when the time came for him to face this throng he would never go beyond the first three words, "I am guilty."

He found himself speaking quietly to Mr. Weaver, and looked on at the conversation as if he were a thing apart from himself.

"The next case but one after this will begin the moonshine cases, and you-all surely won't come on until to-morrow morning. You might as well go now."

"I thank you," said Friedrich, and stumbled from the room.

In the corridor he leaned for a moment against the wall, that he might be sure to keep his balance as he went down the steep stairs dizzying before him.

How he reached the court on the next day he never could remember. He was conscious of feeling very ill, worse than ever he had felt in his life. His spine pulsed painfully up into his brain; his eyes burned back in their sockets until the two shafts of anguish met in one well-nigh unbearable torture. The cloud-mist wrapped about him and hindered him, and yielded only to blind him more. The same evil smells reeked around him, and a wave of nausea surged within him.

He heard his name called, and some one guided him to that part of the Judge's platform that served as a dock. He raised his hand, and heard afar off some words about the truth and God. He was bidden to kiss the filthy cover of a book. Dimly he heard a question and answered it.

"I am guilty."

A chair was pushed towards him and he sat down, conscious of a strange silence in the usually noisy room.

He heard Wilder telling his story of his purchase of a quart of whisky, "an' he owned it was blockade," and a long and detailed account of "the Dutchy's" resistance to arrest, in which the ferocity of his behavior would have been creditable to a bloodthirsty villain driven to desperate straits.

A voice asked him if he had anything to say, and he heard himself repeating once again, "I am guilty."

Then the voice of the laureate of the eagle's nest soared, and fell to a whisper, and swelled again, and Friedrich wondered if "example" would be "Muster" or "Beispiel." And "different class,"—what did that mean? How stupid he was about English!

By-and-by there was silence, and the Judge's voice said,—

"Three months or a hundred dollars."

And then there was a long, long silence.



XI

In the Corn

Summer had come.

The soft days of spring had gone by, the days when the feeling of growth impresses every sense. The haze-filled April mornings, warming into the forcing ardor of noon, had stirred into life the activity latent in root and twig. May's glowing sun, shining through the scantily covered branches, made dancing motes of heat wave above the surface of red clay. The aspens fluttered into exquisite greenness. The sourwood put forth the satin of its tender leaves. All over the mountain-sides and through the forest thickets the oak-tips blushed faint pink, a delicate velvet against the stout bristles of the yellow pines.

Birds flew over, bound for the North, each with his instinctive goal; some almost at their journey's end, others with many a long ethereal mile before them. Some of them sojourned for a few days, following the ploughman as he overturned the mellow earth. Others let this high land be the end of their wanderings, and settled here to the duty of love-making and the pleasures of domestic life.

The azalea flamed in yellow and orange and scarlet glory, a note of savage color on spring's soft palette. The delicate clusters of the laurel, and, later, of the rhododendron, crowned the stems of the parent bush, as sometimes a fair girl springs from a rough and ugly father.

The germ grew strong within its warm seed-prison, and sent inquiring leaflets into the upper world; and the adventurers never returned, but sent back demands for food and drink, as colonists to a new land rely upon the mother-country for sustenance and support.

On the steep mountain-sides, and in the coves that dimple the lower slopes; on the flat lands of the plateau, and in the meadows along the French Broad, the slender shafts of the corn-leaves were pushing upward with what success their position fostered. By mid-June the crop in the bottom-land was knee-high, while that nourished by the field over which Sydney had stumbled on the top of Buck Mountain was only half as tall.

Bud Yarebrough and Pink Pressley were hoeing among stalks half-way between these heights on the upland slopes of the Baron's farm, whose cultivable land they had hired for the season. Stripped to their shirts, whose open throats showed each a triangle of sunburned skin, they worked rapidly down the adjoining furrows, one keeping a hoe's length behind the other, that their tools might not interfere. Conversation was more pithy than voluble.

"Damn hot," ejaculated Pink, stopping to hitch up his trousers, and then to spit on his hands before resuming his hoe.

"Mos' dinner time," returned Bud, looking up at the sun, and then over his shoulder towards the spring-betraying group of trees to which Melissa was accustomed to bring his dinner when he was working here. "They's some feller tyin' his horse in front of the cabin. Who is hit?"

Pink leaned on his hoe and squinted across the blazing field to the grove that sheltered von Rittenheim's house.

"Bob Morgan, Ah reckon. Looks like his horse."

"Come to get somethin' fo' Mr. Baron. O-oh, Bob!"

Bob looked around his horse's nose, and held up his hand in token of understanding. He unlocked the cabin and disappeared within, coming out again with a bundle, which he tied on to the saddle, and then led his animal towards the trees at the spring. The two laborers tossed down their hoes and moved to the same haven.

"What time is hit, Bob?"

Morgan looked at his watch.

"Five past twelve, Pink. Working hard?"

"Yep. Tol'able big crop." He sat down at the foot of a tree and opened his dinner-pail.

"Have some?" he asked, pointing the opening at Bob, who was settling into repose with his hat over his face.

"No, I thank you. I must be going home in a few minutes. How are you getting on? Bought any more stock lately?"

Bob lay on his back with one long leg balanced on the other knee like a see-saw on a saw-horse. The rowel of his spur rattled as he jerked his foot up and down at the ankle.

"No." Pink had his mouth full.

"How many head have you got now?"

"Oh, jus' a mule 'n a couple o' cows."

"Sold your horse?"

"'M. Here Bud, take some o' this. Ah jus' natchelly hate to have you-all die o' starvation."

"No, she's comin'. Ah see her now." And Bud ran to meet his wife and to relieve her of the baby.

"Hungry, ain' he?" sneered Pink, as he watched his partner's alacrity, while Bob struggled to his feet to greet Melissa.

"Say, you-all wasn' wantin' to buy a cow, was ye, Bob?" asked Pink.

"Got one to sell?"

"Yes, the muley cow."

"No, I don't guess I want her."

"You seemed so damn curious about my stock, Ah 'lowed ye were purchasin'."

"Oh, no. I just thought you must have an extra lot of cattle to be providing for, or you wouldn't have needed to hire this land and to make an extra big crop of corn."

A dull red showed on Pink's forehead above the tan-mark, and crowded into his pale-blue eyes, destitute of lashes. The two men looked steadily at each other. Then, as Melissa drew near, Pink broke into an ugly laugh.

"Give a dog a bad name, eh? You-all needn' be quite so bigoty now yo' fine friends have been at the same business."

He waved his hand towards the cabin, and Bob, in his turn, flushed as he shook hands with Melissa.

The girl gave scant greeting to Pressley. Her husband's new friendship with him was distasteful to her; it filled her with foreboding when she remembered his threats.

Yet there had been nothing definite of which she could complain to Bud since the day when Miss Carroll had caught Pink trying to kiss her. He had never been to the cabin since his rebuff, but she knew that he and Bud were constantly together, and this partnership in the hiring of the Baron's land was a culmination of their friendly relations.

"Ah don' see how ye c'n stan' him, nohow, Bud," she often said, and Bud as often replied,—

"Ah never did see anythin' like the prejudice o' women! They certainly ain' no doubt about yo' sex, M'lissy."

Pink bore his part in the present conversation with no trace of embarrassment. Indeed, there was an assertiveness in his bearing that reacted upon Melissa to produce extreme shyness. Neither cause nor effect escaped Morgan's shrewd black eyes.

"How's Mr. Baron?" asked Bud, between bites.

"Doing very well. He gets out on the porch every day now."

"Great luck he has," growled Pressley. "Yo' father never paid my fine when Ah was given mah choice between 'a hundred dollars or three months.'"

"My father likes to choose his friends," replied Bob, sternly. Melissa looked distressed.

"What's sauce fo' the goose ought to be sauce fo' the gander," argued the ex-moonshiner.

"It ain' fittin' fo' you-all to say anythin' ag'in' Dr. Morgan, whatever he may se-lect to do," asserted Bud, combatively, and Pink hastened to hedge.

"Ah 'low not. He certainly was white to me when Ah broke mah laig. 'N as fo' Mr. Baron, Ah always did like him, 'n this is a new tie between us. Now we're brothers."

He chuckled with a full appreciation of his insolence, for the story of von Rittenheim's downfall and its cause was well known throughout the country.

Melissa went white at the malignity of his tone. She turned to Bob with a question:

"Mrs. Carroll 'n Miss Sydney—are they wore to a frazzle takin' care o' him?"

"Mrs. Carroll's all right. They've had two nurses from Asheville all the time, you know. Miss Sydney's wonderful. There's such a lot to do about a house when there's a serious illness, even for people who aren't doing the actual nursing."

"Ah s'pose so. Wouldn' hit be nice, jus' like a story, 'f they'd fall in love with each other—Mr. Baron 'n Miss Sydney?"

"Now, ain' that jus' like a girl!" ejaculated Bud, gulping the last of his coffee.

Bob sat down and fanned himself with his hat.

"Hot, ain' hit?" observed Pink, dryly. Then he turned to Melissa.

"You-all's fo'gittin' that he might be in prison at this minute. No woman o' his class would marry him now. No woman likes to think her man's guilty o' breakin' the law, eh? You-all wouldn' like yo' husband to be a moonshiner, would ye?"

The man's body leaned towards the girl, and he fixed her with a cruel stare from which she seemed unable to move her eyes. Seated as he was, he looked like a huge snake upreared to strike.

He went on mercilessly. "O' co'se ye wouldn'. Ah expect you'd never hol' up yo' haid ag'in. What woman can when her man's that-a-way?"

"Oh, dry up, Pink," cried Bud. "You-all make me feel like Ah had the constable after me now, 'n Lawd knows hit ain' me that's raced 'em through these woods."

Pink acknowledged the shot with a grunt.

Melissa rose to go, and Bud picked up the baby and handed it to her.

"Hit's her busy day fo' sleepin', ain' hit?" he said, poking a blunt finger into the soft cheek.

"I must go, too," said Bob, "or my mother'll jar me up for being late."

"Good-by," said Bud, genially. "Stop by ag'in some time."

"Miss Sydney's been so busy she ain' rode over here fo' a long time. Will you-all give mah love to her, please?" said Melissa, timidly.

"'N mine," Pink started to add, but a dangerous look in Bob's eye induced him to change it to "'N mah re-gards to Mr. Baron," though his grin remained unaltered.



XII

Illumination

For the first time since the beginning of his illness, von Rittenheim was walking unassisted towards the cluster of trees on the Oakwood lawn, beneath whose shelter rugs and low chairs and a tea-table made a summer sitting-room. Mrs. Carroll, who already was established in the shade, watched anxiously her guest's feeble approach.

"You should have let the nurse or James come with you," she called to him. "It's too far for you to walk alone."

"Ah, dear Mrs. Carroll, it is so good not to have that admirable nurse or the good Uncle Yimmy with me."

He let himself down carefully into a big chair.

"And you see that not yet do I disdain cushions. The down of that pr-rovident bird, the eider duck, makes a substitute for the flesh that ought to pad my poor bones. Thank you, Uncle Yimmy," to the old negro, who had just set down the tea-tray, "thank you, yes, one more pillow behind my shoulders."

"You'll have tea?"

"May I have tea? Is it possible that I r-return in one same day to two examples of independence? I walk abr-road alone, and I say again to my dear Mrs. Carroll, 'I thank you. It does me pleasure to accept a cup of tea from your hands.'" He held up his own hand against the sun. "A little worse for the wear, my hand, eh? But still of use."

A slight change of position brought into view the field at the foot of the knoll upon whose top they were. Friedrich sat upright in his chair, while a flush tinged his worn cheeks.

"What makes Miss Sydney down there?" he cried.

"Sydney? Oh, she is breaking some of the colts; teaching them to jump, I think she said, to-day."

Mrs. Carroll adjusted her eye-glasses. Two negro grooms were setting up a low hurdle with wings, while two small black boys dangled joyously from the halters of a couple of young horses, and a third bore Sydney's saddle upon his head.

"Is it Bob Mor-rgan with Miss Sydney?" asked Friedrich, wistfully, as the girl walked across the field beside a man who was leading a tall gray, already saddled.

"Yes, that's Bob. A huge fellow, isn't he?"

"And fear you not that Miss Sydney should ride those so wild colts?"

"Not now. I used to be frightened to death, but I've seen her and Bob down there doing that for so many years that I've learned not to be afraid. She rides really very well, you know, and Bob is careful of her."

"He would be."

Von Rittenheim sighed, and leaned back with closed eyes. He wished with all his soul that it were he down in the field fitting the saddle—that dear side-saddle—to that dancing creature; that it were he who was responsible for the safety of Sydney.

"Bob gives her a lead over, you see, on his horse, which is a well-trained animal."

Friedrich opened his eyes in time to see the gray take off neatly. Sydney followed, and lifted her mount so cleverly that he had leaped his first hurdle before he knew what he was doing. The watchers on the knoll could see Bob, sitting on his horse at one side, clap his hands in approval, while the pickaninnies turned cartwheels in the grass.

"She does r-ride most beautifully, Miss Sydney. It is truly pleasurable to see her," murmured von Rittenheim, though his expression was one of approval rather than delight.

"Do you know, Mrs. Carroll, have I told you how much this Aussicht—view, is it not?—and the position of your house make me to think of my home? It is on the edge of the Schwarzwald, and we look down from the Schloss into a valley, oh, so lovely! with trees and a little r-river."

"A much wilder prospect than we have here at Oakwood."

"But not more beautiful, and the feeling is the same."

A vulgar emotion assailed the well-kept precincts of Mrs. Carroll's mind. Curiosity, commonplace curiosity surged within her. She yielded to its force.

"How could you bear to leave it?"

"It was the old pr-reference of the man in the window of the burning castle,—behind, the flames r-roaring mightily, and below, the spears of his enemies."

"A choice between evils."

"Yes, if you will for-rgive my calling your country an evil. I was unhappy—too unhappy to stay where every day I saw something to make me worse; and that evil was gr-reater than to banish myself, even though I do love my country dearly."

"Was it necessary for you to come so far? Could you not find peace in your own land?"

"I thought not. You see—if I do not weary you I will tell you. Shall I tell you?"

"You never weary me," returned Mrs. Carroll, heartily. "I shall consider that you do me an honor if you care to speak to me about yourself."

"It shall be only a little," began Friedrich, repenting of his expansiveness. "Perhaps I have told you that I am the older of my family. I have one br-rother four years younger. Our parents are dead several years, and Maximilian is married two years ago with Hilda von Arnim."

"You spoke of them both when you were ill; in your delirium, you know."

"Of Max and Hilda? What did I say?"

A sharp note was in Friedrich's voice.

"My dear Baron, I must make the humiliating confession that long disuse has impaired sadly my understanding of German. If you should speak to me very slowly, probably I could comprehend you, but at that time you were not speaking slowly."

"My nurses?"

"Neither of them speaks a word of anything but English."

"It is an escape," he murmured. "Forgive me, gnaedige Frau. It is a startle to think that perhaps you have given to the world your heart's thoughts."

"Be reassured. It was only the names, Max and Hilda, that we understood."

"When my tr-rouble came to me, it was unbearable to stay at the Schloss, so I must go away. Yet Maximilian was not able to pr-reserve the estate as it should be kept. He is not r-rich, Max, and he is a little what you call swift, eh? He spends much."

"I see."

"So if I leave him to care for the Schloss I must leave him also my incomings, and, if I act so, I cannot live myself in my own country where I have friends of the army and of society; where I have a—what is it?—a stand?"

"Position?"

"Yes, yes, a position to hold up. I must go where it concerns nobody if I am changed in purse. So to America I came, it is about two years since, and for one year I tr-ravelled everywhere to see where I liked best, and for the diversion also, for I was most sad. Then my money grew down so small that I saw I must stop, so to this lovely land I happened, and I bought my little farm. But, alas! I fear I am not a farmer. Still, I shall learn. I am determined of that."

"I'm sure you will. You haven't had a chance yet."

"And this year, what can I do? I am so misfortunate as to be away and sick at the time of planting."

"You won't be without some little return, for when we found that you would be ill so long we let your fields to two men who have planted them, and will pay you one-third of their crop of corn. That's the customary rent here, and it will keep your mule through next winter, at any rate."

"Now, that is truly kind and thoughtful. It is, indeed, fr-riendly!"

"You must thank Dr. Morgan for that arrangement."

Von Rittenheim sat erect and stared at the little old lady before him. A look of confused and struggling recollection was called into life by her words.

"I must thank—whom?"

The spirit of the gallant adventurer who had been Mrs. Carroll's immigrant ancestor to the Virginia wilds pushed her on to dare the situation. She also sat upright, and the two faced each other undauntedly.

"You must thank Dr. Morgan for that kindness, and for others even greater."

"Dr. Mor-rgan?"

Clearer remembrance brought with it the old feeling of suspicion and its accompanying look of hatred, which distorted Friedrich's handsome face.

"Yes, Dr. Morgan. I want you to listen to what I am going to tell you. You are well enough now to hear the truth."

"It is your right, madam, to say to me what you may like."

Von Rittenheim turned his stern face towards the training-field, and kept his eyes upon the moving forms that shifted below him.

Mrs. Carroll was unabashed.

"Dr. Morgan is an old and tried friend of mine and of all my family. He has seen life come and go at Oakwood. He rejoiced with us at Sydney's birth, and he was my chief help and support when her father and mother left us two here together, alone."

With a certain tenderness—the yearning that a man feels to protect the feeble and the helpless—Friedrich turned his softened eyes towards her.

"I tell you this because I can say truthfully that I know him to be faithful in friendship and incapable of treachery."

Friedrich turned again with tightened lips to his contemplation of the meadow.

"We heard of your being summoned to court and for what purpose."

Mrs. Carroll stopped, for a grayness settled over the young man's face, and the eyes that he turned upon hers were filled with horror.

"You had forgotten?"

"Yes, I had forgotten."

All the pride went out of him, as the fading of the sun's flush leaves the evening clouds without illumination and dull.

"I had for-rgotten, but now I r-remember. It comes back to me. Yes, now I r-remember all—all."

He turned away his face both from her and from the field below, and rested his cheek on his hand. Mrs. Carroll noticed the thinness of his wrist, and her heart misgave her.

"Shall I go on?"

"If it please you."

"Bob Morgan went into Asheville to follow your career in behalf of all your friends here."

Von Rittenheim's head fell lower.

"He was in the court-room when you were——"

The old lady hesitated and watched von Rittenheim sharply. She was doubtful of his strength after all.

"When I was—yes, continue, please," he said, with muffled voice.

"When you were sentenced."

She hastened on, pretending not to hear the groan that followed her revelation.

"He galloped out here at once as fast as he could, and told us about it—his father and me. He feared an illness for you then—you looked not yourself, he said. We decided that it was best for you to come here to Oakwood. We could not bear to think of your going to the hospital."

Friedrich felt vaguely across the table for the plump little hand of his hostess, and pressed it blindly.

"They drove into town that same afternoon, Dr. Morgan in our carriage, and Bob in his buggy, and found you in the—found you very ill."

"Found me where?"

"You were delirious even then."

"Found me where?"

Friedrich pushed aside the cups and placed both elbows on the table. He seemed to Mrs. Carroll to have grown haggard since she had begun her recital.

"Found me where?" he repeated for the third time.

"You insist?"

"It is my r-right."

"They found you in—in the jail."

Mrs. Carroll turned away from the wretched man before her and sobbed undisguisedly. On them fell a quiet pregnant with emotion. The hush was broken by the crash of a tea-cup upon which Friedrich's fingers had happened to fall.

"Bob secured the nurses and drove one of them out in the buggy, and the Doctor and the other one brought you in the carriage."

"Why did they let me go from the—jail?"

"The Doctor paid your fine."

Often during the preceding weeks Mrs. Carroll had thought of this conversation with von Rittenheim, and the statement that she had just made always had figured as the climax of her argument in the Doctor's behalf. Now she felt no pleasure in it. The man before her was too crushed for her to exult over. He made no comment, merely said, reflectively,—

"Yes, there was a fine. It comes to me,—'one hundred dollars or three months.' It is the last thing I r-remember."

"You were dangerously ill by the time you reached Oakwood, and for three days Dr. Morgan left you only to visit his other patients. Between the attacks of stupor you talked a great deal, usually in German, but occasionally in English. From what you said then, and what Dr. Morgan remembered of conversations you had had with him, and from what Bob learned in Asheville, we gathered that you thought that when Dr. and Mrs. Morgan met the marshal on the road after they had been to your house, they betrayed you to him, and your arrest was the consequence. Is that so?"

Von Rittenheim nodded. "Yes, it is so."

"I hope it will come to you as clearly as we see it who are the Doctor's friends, that he is incapable of such a thing."

"Dear lady, even already I think I see it. I r-remember darkly my trial; how the officer told of his trick to entr-rap me into selling. Ah, dear Mrs. Carroll, I was anxious to despair from my so unusual poverty, and I was hungry, and bitten with shame for my weakness—and hopeless."

Unconsciously his eyes turned to the field below, where Sydney's hair gleamed red bronze in the sunset light. She was dismissing the men and horses. A great wall seemed to von Rittenheim to spring up between them, a wall made thick by his folly, and high by his disgrace, and strong by his weakness.

"Though I am shameful to say such things as if they were excuses, nothing excuses me. I am without justification. I say so most humbly to you."

Weakly he leaned back among his cushions. Mrs. Carroll glanced at him and hurried on.

"When the first fury of the disease was spent, you seemed distressed at the sight of the Doctor, though you did not recognize him fully; so, though he has not failed to come here twice each day, it is through the nurses' reports and Bob's that he has been treating you. He can do so much better for you now if you will see him."

"If I will see him?" he repeated. "Yes, I can at least make some little amends for my folly—my distr-rust. But can I win back ever my self-r-respect, so that you and other people can r-respect me? So that——"

He stopped as Sydney's voice reached him. She was coming up the hill, laughing with Bob.

Von Rittenheim looked appealingly at Mrs. Carroll.

"Sydney," she called, "go on to the house, dear, with Bob, and send James here."

She rose and laid her hand tenderly on the bent head.

"Stay here a while. It is still quite warm enough for you."

She went slowly across the lawn and disappeared beneath the veranda's roses. A level ray from the setting sun touched Friedrich's fair hair with gold, and went on to be splintered into a thousand tiny shafts against the swelling side of the silver cream-jug.



XIII

Reconciliation

The sunshine of a clear June day was beating upon the gravel of the driveway, and a few woolly clouds, the forerunners of the early afternoon's daily shower, clung over the tops of the southern mountains.

Behind the screen of vines and climbing roses that sheltered the porch von Rittenheim sat reading a New York paper of two days before. It was the morning after his explanation with Mrs. Carroll, and the emotional outcome of the talk had been a state of abasement of soul that had sapped his little store of strength. His thin hands shook weakly, and he continually changed his position, and glanced expectantly at the long window which opened upon the gallery.

Sydney's voice inside the house made him clutch his paper nervously. She spoke loudly, as in warning.

"The Baron? You'll find him on the porch, Dr. Morgan. The nurse says he didn't sleep very well last night."

"He didn't? We must mend that." And the Doctor stepped from the window and approached his long-unseen patient.

Von Rittenheim looked up into the wrinkled brown face with its shrewd, kind eyes, and covered his own eyes with his hand.

"You know?" he asked, brokenly. "Mrs. Carroll has told you?" He felt his other hand taken into a cordial grasp.

"Mrs. Carroll has told me that she has described to you all the happenings of yo' illness that had escaped yo' attention, so to speak. Curious troubles, these brain affairs, aren't they? Make you feel as if you'd been on an excursion outside of yo'self for a while, and had to hear all the home news when you got back."

Von Rittenheim grew composed as the Doctor rambled on.

"She has not told you," he said, insistently, "of my so deep r-regret for the injustice that I made towards you. I can never do atonement for my br-rutal behavior, for my unjust suspiciousness. That you can take my hand shows much par-rdon in you."

"Now, don't talk about that any more, Baron. It ain't worth it," Dr. Morgan replied, awkwardly. "Ah don't guess that circumstances looked very favorable to me. Anyway, you-all can please me best now by doing credit to my doctoring skill. Quit having the appearance of a skeleton just as quick as you can."

"I'll try," answered Friedrich, meekly.

"And don't worry too much over what's gone by," went on the Doctor, clumsily. "Breaking the law's breaking the law, Ah'm not denying that; but it makes a lot of difference what the motive is, and you've suffered your share of punishment, too. It's the right of every man to begin afresh. Avoid mud and give yo' horse a firm take-off, and he'll leap as clean as a whistle for you. Lawd, Ah'm getting plumb religious," he ejaculated, wiping his face.

Friedrich's knowledge of English was put to a test, but he listened with his eyes as well as his ears, and nodded slowly.

"I think I understand," he said. "But do you think that people—my fr-riends"—his eyes turned towards the house—"that my friends can overlook it—can ever think of me as they used to think of me?"

"Oh, I reckon she will," replied Dr. Morgan, with a smile that disconcerted von Rittenheim and drove him to a new topic.

"You will for-rgive me if I do talk some business with you," he said, hastily.

"Do you feel well enough?"

"Oh, yes. I shall feel much better when I have cleared my mind of all these things. I want to say to you that I do much appr-reciate, also, besides your kindness, all the money that you have paid, and—no, let me talk, please, Herr Doctor—and I must tell you that I shall write to-day to Germany for a r-remittance. There is a sum which I can have. Yes, I see you look, wondering that I have lived so poor. Well, I explain to you that I have sworn that I would not use it for myself—I have another use for it—so long as I am well and can earn enough for living; but now I am not well, and I have expenses in the past weeks, and I must live until I grow str-rong to work in some way; so am I justified to myself to send for the money, you see."

"Fix it any way you like," said the Doctor, cheerily, "only remember that if it ain't convenient to pay up ever,—why, just banish it from your mind, and Ah'll never think of it again, Ah promise you. Now, is that all?" he asked, as he leaned towards his patient and put a practised finger on his pulse. "Yes? Then Ah'd like to know where that Sydney is with that egg-nog. Here, you Sydney," he cried, putting his head into the house and letting his cracked voice echo into the darkness. "What kind of a nurse are you? How do you expect to rise in the profession, miss, if you don't have an egg-nog ready the instant yo' patient happens to think of it? Oh, here you are! Well, sit down here, then, and see that the Baron takes every drop of that, and don't tire him out with yo' chatter. Do you understand?"

After which burst he kissed her, and disappeared into the house. Sydney turned blushing to the Baron, and laughed at his wistful look.

"Age has its compensations," he said, as he took the tumbler from her. "But I do not begrudge the good Doctor all the happiness that comes to him. He is a most generous man."

"He's a darling!"

"A darling? Ah, yes. I should not have used that word for him, but I agree with the sentiment."

"You are critical this morning. Don't you ever allow yourself any liberty of speech in German? Do you always say exactly what you mean, and use exactly the right word?"

"Oh, Miss Sydney, you describe to me a pig—no, a pr-rig person. Surely I use many picture words in my thinking of—well, just to illustrate what I mean, I will say, in my thinking of you!"

Sydney moved her position so that her face was partly hidden behind the back of the Baron's wheeled chair.

"Now, there is Schatz," went on Friedrich, sipping his egg-nog placidly, but keeping a wary eye upon the bit of pink cheek that was still within his range of vision. "I like to think of you as Schatz,"—there was a danger-betokening movement of the glowing head,—"because you are such a treasure to your grandmother."

He paused a moment, but there was no reply.

"And Perle—it is a pretty word, Perle—it makes you to think of the r-radiance of the moon, so pure, so soft. Yes," he went on, hastily, "Perle r-rhymes with Erle—that means an alder-tree—and that r-reminds me of you."

"I must say I fail to see the resemblance," came an injured voice from behind the chair.

"Not see? Oh, Miss Sydney, surely—with your cleverness! Listen to this, then; perhaps you like it better that I call you my—I mean a—Rose."

"That's because my hair is red."

"It is a white r-rose that always figures in my mind. A beautiful white r-rose with a heart of gold."

By a dexterous touch upon one wheel he whirled his chair about so that he saw her downcast face.

"A heart full of goodness to others is it, and of courage, and of love."

He was leaning eagerly towards her. She lifted her eyes with an effort, and met his. Then he remembered.

"Yes," he continued, hurriedly, "full of love for the poor and the desolate."

Sydney rose.

"Your pretty figures do me too much honor," she said, unsteadily, and went into the house with lingering tread and look.

Friedrich gazed after her.

"God knows I would be counted among the poor and the desolate," he cried, softly, to himself. "But I must not speak again of this until I am more worthy to stand before her—if ever that can be!"



XIV

The Fourth of July

That the settle-ment celebrated the Fourth of July was not due to an exuberance of patriotism, but to the mercantile spirit of Uncle Jimmy's son, Pete.

Pete was married, and lived in one of the cottages on the Oakwood estate, where he worked intermittently, sandwiching between thin slices of manual labor thick layers of less legitimate emprise.

Independence Day, as the anniversary of the birth of our country's liberty, is not celebrated with enthusiasm in the South. It meets with more cordial acceptance when regarded as another opportunity for knocking off work.

Pete's plan catered to all conditions of conscience, from the seared commodity that asked no excuse for playing to the scrupulous article that considered justification necessary, and found it in the infrequency of such amusement.

He advertised far and wide, by placards in the scattered stores and post-offices that cling near the railway stations and dot the Haywood Road on the other side of the river, a—

GANDER PULIN FORTH OF JULY AT 5 OCLOCK. FRADYS FEILD.

"I always make a point of going to these outdoor gatherings of the country people," explained Mrs. Carroll to the Baron, as they drove towards the field. "I think they like to have me."

Von Rittenheim had insisted upon going home to his cabin a few days before, since which time the old lady had missed him grievously. He was not yet strong enough to take the five-mile ride to Oakwood on his mule, and she had made the gander-pulling an excuse to go to his cabin to see how his housekeeping was progressing, and to take him for a drive.

"We don't have gander-pullings often now, since the law requires that the fowl shall be dead," she explained. "It demands less skill to break the poor thing's neck when it isn't writhing wildly."

"And it does not r-rouse the br-rutal desire to kill that seems to live in every one of us men. Will Miss Sydney be there?"

"Yes, she is going on horseback—"

"Ah!"

"—with John Wendell."

"Eh?"

"You didn't meet them—John and Katrina Wendell—when they were here in the spring. They went North again not long after you came to Oakwood."

"Oh, dear madam, I do so earnestly hope that my going to Oakwood did not depr-rive you of more welcome guests."

"Not the least in the world. They went back to New York to put the crown to a pretty romance."

"A love-story!"

"Katrina was sent down here, under her brother's care, to forget a certain Tom Schuyler, whom her mother considered impossible because he was penniless."

"The poor but honest suitor."

"A poor but lavish suitor would describe him better. It seems that an aunt of his was moved to give him a present of five hundred dollars. He says that he had just paid his tailor's bill as a concession to his desire to range himself, and he really didn't know what to do with the money. It wasn't enough to get anything really nice with,—he'd been trying to make his father give him an automobile,—unless it were a ring for Katrina. He concluded, however, that Mrs. Wendell would object to her daughter's accepting it, and that he might as well take a little flyer with it."

"Take—what is that?"

"Speculate—in stocks."

"And he made his for-rtune?"

"No, on the contrary. He took his father's advice about his purchase, and lost his five hundred dollars within twenty-four hours."

"Then wherefr-rom came his good luck? For surely I perceive the pr-resence of good luck."

"His father was so remorseful over his poor counsel, and so delighted with Tom's apparent desire to 'settle down,' that he made amends for his unfortunate 'tip' by giving his son a very decent sum of money."

"It is like a story, is it not? So the brother and sister went up from here to the wedding."

"It was only a few days ago, and now Tom and Katrina have come to us on their Hochzeitreise."

"And the brother?"

Mrs. Carroll glanced amusedly at her companion.

"He came to-day on the afternoon train, to continue the visit which Katrina insisted on shortening for him in May, he says."

"You will enjoy them."

Friedrich's tone was not enthusiastic, and he pulled his moustache gloomily.

"Very much. They are charming young people. See, there are Tom and Katrina now, just turning into the field."

Von Rittenheim raised his hat as Mrs. Schuyler waved her hand to Mrs. Carroll, and studied critically the bride's radiant face and pretty gown as the victoria followed the phaeton through the opened fence-rails. He found her charming and acknowledged it reluctantly, not because he begrudged her her beauty, nor because he thought her handsomer than Sydney, for he did not, but because he had a secret fear of the attractiveness of the brother of so fascinating a girl.

"Tom," said Mrs. Carroll, as Mrs. Schuyler came to the side of the carriage, "I want you to know my very dear friend, Baron von Rittenheim—Mr. Schuyler. Now take the Baron over to Katrina, Tom, and then find Mrs. Morgan,—that's she in the red-wheeled buggy,—and beg her to come and sit with me here. Vandeborough," to the coachman, "drive me under that apple-tree, where there is more shade. How do you do, Eliza?" she said to a woman by whom the carriage slowly passed; "I'm glad to see you out to-day. And you, Mary. Jack Garren, is that you? You grow too fast for my memory. Ah, Jane, I hope your rheumatism is better,—and is that Mattie's Bertha? Stop here, Vandeborough. This will be comfortable. Ah, Mrs. Morgan, it is kind of you to make me a little visit, but I couldn't possibly climb into that buggy of yours. I don't know how you achieve it."

"Nor do Ah, Mrs. Carroll. Ah thought it was high five years ago, when Ah didn't consider mahself overly fat, so you can imagine what the effort is now." And she shook jovially.

"Is the Doctor here?"

"Yes, indeed. He drove me. He always comes to these things. They generally need him before they get through, and it often saves him a long trip into the mountains if he's on the spot when things happen."

"I dare say his presence prevents a good many quarrels."

"Maybe so; but Ah should hate to have any mo' fights than there are. There's always whisky about, you know."

"If the chief crop of this country could be changed, what a blessing it would be!"

"Ah don't know as it would make much difference as long as potatoes were left."

"And thirst."

"There's Bob now. O-oh, Bob!" she called, waving a fat hand to her son as he cantered across the open on his gray.

Bob looked about for the source of the call, and turned his horse towards the tree.

"He's growing handsome, Mrs. Morgan," said Mrs. Carroll, in an undertone, as the tall fellow leaped to the ground, slipped the bridle over his arm, and pulled off his cap.

"He looks as his father did at his age," returned Mrs. Morgan, fondly, glancing across to where her husband was talking to a group of lank mountaineers from whom he was hardly to be distinguished.

"It's right nice of you to come this afternoon, Mrs. Carroll," Bob was saying. "The people always appreciate it. What is it, mother? Those boys? Oh, they're having a game of ball; and the men you see over yonder are throwing horseshoes over a peg—with mighty poor skill, too. Here come Patton McRae and Susy. Excuse me. I'll help him with his horses," for Patton's black mare hated the harness even more than she did the saddle, and was doing her best to demoralize her mate and overturn the buggy.

Sydney, entering the field from the State Road, glanced past the tethered mules and the chair-laden wagons, from which the horses had been taken, to where Bob sat in the carriage beside Susy, saying something very pretty to her, if downcast lids and a blush are any evidence; in reality, teasing her about an absent sweetheart.

Wandering farther, her eyes saw the quoit-throwers, and the groups of women and children sitting in the shade, enjoying an interchange of gossip with the zest of infrequent meetings. She saw the clusters of laughing negroes, and the tent where Pete and his wife were doing a vigorous business in cakes and ice-cream and lemonade. She waved her hand to her grandmother and Mrs. Morgan. She noticed the men and boys who strolled with apparent aimlessness towards the thicket on the edge of the field, and returned wiping their lips on their sleeves. And she saw Katrina talking animatedly to Baron von Rittenheim, who sat beside her, while Patton McRae watched her with adoring eyes, and Tom wore the conscious smile that indicates the young husband's pride of possession.