"You don't?" she flared up. "Will you tell me if there would be anything to be ashamed of in your being there? Would a divine service of that sort disgrace you? Would it besmirch your character?"

"No, and nobody said it would," Henley managed to fish from his addled brain. "But I simply thought, somehow, that it would look better for me to be out of the way. Funerals and the like are generally attended by mourners, and, well, where would I come in? I reckon my proper seat would be with you and the—the rest of the family on the front bench, if it was anywhere. It would look funny for me just to be a looker-on from the back part of the house, and I'd feel like a dern fool in front. A dern fool—you may not know what that is from experience, but you ought to from observation; you've had one under your eye for some time."

"Well, you simply don't approve of it," the woman returned, resentfully. "You can set there, blessed with good health and life, and plenty to eat and wear, and actually begrudge the little mite of respect that is paid to the helpless dead. In being overpersuaded and marrying you I was untrue to him and his memory, and now you make it worse by opposing a simple little ordinance that is due every person on earth, high or low."

"It ought to have been done earlier, and before I got—got mixed up in it, if it was done at all," Henley said, trying to speak mildly and, even, pacifically.

"I know that now," Mrs. Henley said, in a tone of such deep self-reproach that her stare softened and wavered; "but it wasn't thought of. I never knew it was the style till this man come along and told me; but that is no reason I shouldn't make amends, late as it is. It is all the better proof that Dick is remembered. But you can go to Texas." The stare hardened and became fixed again. "Folks will say you are jealous and mean, and that I was an unfaithful fool for listening to you, but I will have to stand it."

"Well, I'll simply be obliged to be away," Henley said, doggedly. "The business won't be put off, and—and—"

"And you are a heartless brute!" the gaunt woman cried, as she whirled from him and strode into the house.

A few minutes later there emerged from the near-by door of the kitchen the real instigator of the present dispute. He trudged across the passage, drawn down on one side by the weight of a dripping swill-pail which he was taking to the pigpen, descended the short flight of steps, and turned back toward Henley. He stood for a moment hesitatingly, the pail wiping its dripping exterior against his baggy jean trousers. Then he said: "I've got a thing or two to say to you, Alf, if you will oblige me by steppin' down to my pen so I can stop that hog's squealin' long enough to hear myself talk. One at a time, I say, an' let it be me."

"By all means," Henley answered, ambiguously, and he joined Wrinkle on the grass and they walked down the path together to the pigpen in a corner of the rail-fenced cow-lot.

"No use enterin' a talkin'-match with the whistle of a crazy steam-engine," the stepfather-in-law strained his lungs to say, and he grunted as he raised the pail to the top rail of the pen and cautiously tilted it to let the contents run into the wooden trough.

"Now, that's more like it," he said, his voice rising above the suction-pump noise of the hungry animal. He lowered the empty pail to the ground, and with a paddle began to dig out the mushy sediment from the bottom and throw it into the trough, as a mason might mortar from a trowel. "The truth is, Alf, I've got an apology to make to you, and I didn't want to do it up thar before them women. The other day when I said that about old Welborne a-sendin' you a bunch o' flowers to decorate Dick's grave I wasn't actually thinkin' about you as much as I was about Welborne an' his close-fisted ways. Of course, now I think of it again, it would be a good way for 'im to git back at you for yore joke in sendin' the tombstone man to him, and I catch myself lafin' every time I think of it, and the way you'd look if he did, but—"

"What the devil do you mean?" Henley broke in, testily. "Here you are startin' in to apologize for a thing and going over it again word for word? Have you plumb lost your senses?"

"Was I doin' that?" Wrinkle asked, blandly, though even in the twilight Henley could see that his eyes were twinkling. "Well, I'm sorry again, and I'm just man enough to say so, Alf. I'll apologize as many times as you like. I'll keep on till you are satisfied. But you must listen. You are a-gittin' powerful touchy here lately, and it ain't becomin' in a man of yore dignity. It will git so after a while that I can't express any sort of opinion to you without a fist-fight. I was goin' on to say that I was jest thinkin' of old Welborne's quick wit in every emergency that set me to wonderin' that day how he might act in sech a case. They say everything is grist to his mill—that he turns every single thing that drifts his way into profit great or small. And that day after you railed out at me in the store I went across the Square to see how yore joke would terminate. The door of his dingy little office was open, an' I could see the grave-rock man inside bendin' over old Welborne at his little table, pointin' at the pictures in his book and sweatin' like a nigger in a cotton-gin. But what struck me most of all was the glazed look in old Welborne's eye; he looked like he wasn't hearin' a word the fellow was spoutin', but was thinkin' o' some'n else plumb different. I walked on and hung about outside till the tombstone man come out. He was as mad as Hector. I seed he was, an' stopped 'im in a offhand way and axed him what luck.

"'Luck hell,' says he—he used the word, I didn't—'I talked to that dried-up old mummy,' says he, 'fer an hour jest to find that he was settin' thar all the time figurin' in his head about a speculation I'd made 'im think of while I was talkin' to him.'

"The agent was so mad that he wouldn't explain what the speculation was, but I heard it that evenin'. Hank Bradley was tellin' it to a crowd at the post-office. You know Hank makes all manner of sport of his uncle behind the old skunk's back. He told a tale, too, that I'd never heard. It seems that old Welborne's mother-in-law died, and Welborne went to a undertaker to buy 'er coffin. He picked out a fifty-dollar one, and talked and talked till he finally got the pore devil down to forty. Then he said:

"'You'd sell two for seventy-five, wouldn't you?'

"'I reckon I might,' the undertaker said, 'but you only want one.'

"'I'll need another 'fore many months,' old Welborne said. 'My father-in-law won't last long. I'll take one now at thirty-seven-fifty and the other when the time comes.'"

Henley laughed, despite his displeasure. "That is just like him," he said, "and I believe every word of it."

"His present speculation takes the rag off'n the bush," said Wrinkle. "The talk of the gravestone man started him to thinkin' about what thar might be in that line for him, and he recalled that he owned ten acres of ground on a rise in the edge of town which he had bought at a tax-sale for twenty-five dollars. The very next mornin' he had a feller diggin' post-holes an' puttin' a fence around it with a main gate that had a big curvin' sign over it with the words 'Sunnyside Cemetery' on it, and I'm told that he has been all over town tellin' folks that the old graveyard is too low and soggy to be half decent, and that his'n was a great improvement. He intimated, too, that nobody but blue-bloods could git the'r names enrolled, and thar has been a powerful scramble for places, even by folks that have no idea of dyin' yet a while. You see, Alf, I got a good many particulars at fust hand, for he was out here to see Hettie in regard to accommodations for Dick, and I heard all that was said. Accordin' to Welborne thar is to be a wholesale movin' right away and choice quarters will be scarce, right when they are in the most demand."

"I suppose she—I suppose my wife—"

"Yes, she bit, Alf, and took a full mouthful at that. Welborne told her he was givin' her the pick of the whole thing because she was startin' the ball rollin', an' her fine marble would set the place off. She selected twenty foot square under a weepin'-willow, which he said had a rock bottom and the best view of the town. It only set her back two hundred round plugs, but she had that much left in the bank, and seems powerful well, satisfied. I wouldn't 'a' fetched all this up, but I 'lowed you'd like to know what a big thing growed out of yore little joke that day. I love a good joke myself, but when one's turned on you in a sort o' wholesale way, it don't feel the best in the world."

"There is no joke about it; it's outright stealing!" Henley had reference to Welborne's part of the transaction. "Any man can get money out of fool women, if he's mean enough to take advantage of their silly whims."

"I often wonder about you an' me an' the whole bunch of us here at the house," Wrinkle said. "Not one of the four is blood kin to the other, and yet here we are all wedged together as tight as young catbirds in a nest. Folks say the hardest question on earth is how to live, and yet to me it's been as easy as fallin' off a log into soft sand. Me 'n Jane never counted on Dick for any sort of aid, an' yet it was through him that we are provided for—in fact, he was so wishy-washy and helpless that we was glad to have him tie up with a woman that had a few dollars. He went in for a high old time, and he had it. I couldn't object—I was that way myself. He was as bad after gals as a drummer, and in his sparkin' days, as maybe you know, he could have had his pick. I couldn't keep from hearin' you an' Hettie talkin' in the passage jest now, and when she come into the light mad enough to bite a tenpenny nail in two I saw thar had been a row. Her notion to have you on hand at sech a time as that may seem odd, but women are all odd. They want what other women can't have, and I reckon Het thinks it would be a sort o' feather in 'er cap to mourn in public over one husband while she's leanin' agin another that is ready an' willin' in every way."

"I reckon we've talked long enough about it," Henley said, frigidly, and he glanced toward the lights in the farm-house.

"Yes, I reckon so," returned the gadfly. "As for me, I never was able to see how Het could accuse you of bein' jealous of Dick, when—"

"Jealous fiddlesticks!" Henley snorted. "I never was jealous of a live man, much less a dead one."

"It would seem that way," was all the support Wrinkle would give to the claim, as he took up his pail and started back to the house. "I didn't say you was, but Het seems to size it up that way."

Left alone, and with hot fires of resentment raging in his breast, Henley sauntered along the fence till he was behind his barn. His change of position brought him within a few yards of Dixie Hart's cottage, and he suddenly heard her voice. She was speaking to some one. Peering through the deepening darkness, which was broken only by the gleams of a few random stars, he saw her inside her yard at the gate, and leaning on the fence from the outside was the tall, well-clad form of Hank Bradley.

"You are not going to treat a feller as mean as that," Bradley was heard to say, in a gruff, pleading tone, "when I've been begging you so many times."

"I can't let you come in now, and I can't go to ride with you, either," Henley heard her answer, as she stood well away from the fence. "I've got good and sufficient reasons, and I hope you won't ask me any more."

"I'll keep on asking till the crack of doom," Bradley said, in a voice that shook. "You know I'm not the weak-kneed kind. The Bradley stock hold on like bulldogs. When they take a notion to anything they want it, and they keep on till they get it. So look out, Dixie Hart. I'm not to blame; your eyes burn holes in me and set me on fire. The more you turn me down the more I think about you."

"Well, you mustn't come any more," Dixie said, firmly. "Good-night."

Henley saw her move across the grass and vanish in the cottage. He heard Bradley stifle a surly exclamation of disappointment, and saw him turn and walk off slowly toward his uncle's house.

"Poor girl!" Henley said to himself. "In all her troubles she has to ward off a dirty, designing scamp like that; but she's doing it like a queen, an' no harm can touch 'er. And she's going to get married! She is going into the treacherous thing absolutely blindfolded, and the Lord only knows what will come of it. It's a risk for the best, and under the best conditions—it may prove to be the final stroke that will knock out her wonderful courage. God have mercy on her!"



CHAPTER VII

On the day set for Dixie's wedding Henley had occasion to go to the little express office, adjoining the old-fashioned brick car-shed in the village, to see about a shipment of produce which had been incorrectly marked. And as he was returning he saw the girl seated in her wagon in the open space between the station and the hotel.

Henley knew what it meant. She had come to meet her lover. She happened to have her glance fixed on some point in the opposite direction from him and did not know that he was near. He hesitated for an instant, and then decided that he would not intrude upon her privacy. There was something in her attitude of bland and helpless expectancy that probed the deepest fount of his sympathy.

"Poor, brave little woman!" he mused, as he turned his back upon the scene and moved on toward his store. "She's having her dream like all the rest. She may get a fair cut of the cards, and she may not. He ain't very promising material from the looks of his picture, but it wouldn't be fair to judge him by that. He may do his part, and the Lord knows she needs help. I'm too big a failure in the marrying line to object or offer advice."

Reaching his desk, he applied himself to the writing of some letters pertaining to his intended trip to Texas, but the pathetic sight he had of the girl at the station thrust itself between him and his task. She was his faithful friend. He loved her almost as if she had been a sister; she had confided in him; only he and she and her little family knew of what was to take place to-day. How strange to think that she would no longer be as she was! The wife of a man she had never seen, of a man whose full name Henley had not even heard.

Just then the still air was stirred by the sportive whippoorwill's call with which the young engineer of that particular train always announced with the locomotive's whistle his approach to Chester, and later there was a sound of escaping steam and the slow clanging of a bell as the train drew up in the shed. Only a moment's pause, and the train was off again.

It occurred to Henley that as his store was on the most direct way to her home Dixie would naturally drive past it on her return, so he went to the front, taking pains to stand back a few feet from the entrance that his position might not appear to be by design. He was glad that Cahews and Pomp were busy in the rear, and he became conscious of the hope that no stray customer would interrupt him at what seemed such a grave and important moment. Time passed, and still old Bob and the ramshackle wagon were not in sight. Henley cautiously ventured to the door, whence he glanced down the street. He saw the wagon. It was now at the door of the post-office, but no one was in it. With his hip-joint loose the animal swayed and sagged against one of the shafts, the reins hanging from his rump to the ground.

"They've stopped to get the mail," Henley said in his tight throat; "they'll be out in a minute. I'll take one peep at 'im, anyway."

But Dixie emerged from the narrow doorway of the little building alone. She was reading a letter, and she groped slowly across the sidewalk to the wagon, where she stood till she had finished it. Even at that distance Henley could see that she was pale, and he fancied that her hand and step were unsteady as she mounted to the spring seat and reached for the reins. Henley receded farther into the store, actuated by a vague intuition that she might not care to be seen, and he was glad that he had not intruded upon her, for, as she drove past the store, she did not glance toward it, but instead looked steadily in the opposite direction.

"The fellow didn't come, and she's had bad news besides," Henley mused, and he now stood in the doorway and looked after the shackly vehicle as it moved slowly away in the beating sunshine. "She's bad hit by something or other," he said, anxiously. "I've never seen her look like that before. Some'n has gone wrong."

He did not see her for three days. On the evening of the third day he was standing at the door of his barn. It was growing dark. The coming night had robed the mountain-peaks in gray, and put them out of sight. Old Wrinkle was singing "How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord!" as he trudged back to the house, swinging his empty swill-pail. The door of Dixie Hart's cottage opened, and in a narrow frame of firelight she stood peering out toward him. Then he saw that she was coming. She moved swiftly, and with a sure step, till she paused at the fence which separated her land from his.

"I've been wanting to see you, Alfred," she said, in a low, changed voice. "I had no excuse to go to the store, and—well, I didn't think that was exactly the place, anyway to—to say what I had to say. You haven't spoke about what I told you to anybody—I know in reason that you haven't, but—"

"I'd cut off my right arm first," he declared, earnestly. "What you said that day was as sacred to me as if it had come from on high and my very salvation depended on it."

"I knew that," she said, softly. "I only said that to—to sort o' get started. I'm all upset, Alfred; I'll get right after a while, but things are all crooked now. I've had trouble—I reckon a girl might call it that and still have self-respect. I've had heaps of unexpected trouble."

"I was afraid some'n had gone wrong," Henley found himself able to say, "not hearing any more, you see, about—about what you talked of that day."

"I'm going to tell you, and then dismiss it," Dixie said, her pretty lip twitching, the dark curves under her eyes lending sharp contrast to their fathomless lustre. "I had everything ready, and went to meet him, but he didn't come. I went to the post-office and got a letter. He was—was taken sick—so the letter said. He was pretty bad off. In fact, Alfred, the truth is, he's dead; the—the fellow is dead."

Her head was down; she had folded her arms on the top rail of the fence, and she rested her brow on them. He was wondering if she was crying and what there was for him to say, when she suddenly, and quite dry-eyed, looked up and said: "But that must be a secret, too. Nobody knows about it except my home folks, and nobody must. I'd give plumb up if Carrie Wade was to flaunt that in my face and start it going over hill and dale."

"It's too bad," Henley ventured, as nearly upon what he considered consolation as his knowledge of her rather questionable bereavement would justify. "What was his complaint?"

"You mean, what ailded him?" Dixie asked, an incongruous flush battling with the pallor of her face and becoming observable even in the starlight. "Why, you see, Alfred, I didn't get full particulars—a body never can, you know, at a time like that—and in just a letter—but you can depend upon it that it was sudden."

"Maybe it was what they say is so common now," Henley pursued, awkwardly—"heart failure."

"Or weakness of the backbone." He was sure that she smiled impulsively, for she quickly covered her mouth with her hand and lowered her head to the fence again, and for a moment he stood staring at her and wondering if the calamity had caused her to be hysterical. Suddenly she looked up again and said:

"I reckon you think I ought to act different—that I ought to cry and take on—but I can't. You must make what allowance you can. You see, I never saw him in my life, and, well, it was just a wild-goose chase that started in nothing and ended the same way."

"I see," Henley ventured, "but I'm sorry. Death is bad enough, in any case, but to be called away without a minute's notice and on the eve of—"

"Well, you needn't be sorry for me—you needn't waste pity on me," Dixie broke in with irrelevant warmth. "You'll find me doing business at the same old stand, man or no man. If we can just keep this silly caper from getting out I'll be thankful. So far, I've got along by myself, and, outside of wanting to flaunt a husband in Carrie Wade's face, I don't know as I'll be particularly disappointed. I can keep on at the plough and hoe, rain or shine, and—" Her voice had trailed away into indistinctness, and he saw her lower lip quivering. She suddenly turned and hurried away.

He saw her vanish in the lighted doorway, and he stood overwhelmed with blended perplexity and sympathy.

"She's trying to keep a stiff upper lip, but she's hit, and hit hard—harder'n I thought possible in her case," he mused. "She never saw the feller, but she may have had a sort of a idea in her head of what he was like, an' the loss is as keen as if she had knowed him a long time, maybe keener, for the gloss hain't been rubbed off by actual acquaintance, as it has been off of me and most other married folks. I reckon my wife has put the gloss back on Dick Wrinkle, if it was ever off, and I've got a rival in the spirit-world that nothing earthly could ever hope to match. They say absence works that way, and when I get to Texas maybe she will look back on all I've done to keep peace and harmony betwixt us and appreciate me more than she is doing now. I say maybe, for, on t'other hand, she may be glad to have me away, and when I get back I may find that her whole heart is in the empty grave she is bent on digging and adorning at such a great outlay."



CHAPTER VIII

The next afternoon, as Henley was on his way home from the store, and was passing a corn-field owned by Sam Pitman—a farmer of weak character and sullen disposition who had been a moonshiner as long as the law had permitted the business to yield profits—he was surprised to see Dixie near the centre of the field. She was bending over something or somebody, and, fearing that an accident had happened, he hastily climbed the fence and walked rapidly over the ploughed soil toward her. He could not make out what the object of her attention was till he was quite near, and then he saw that it was a little boy about ten years of age who was seated on the ground and, till now, hidden by the corn-stalks and their succulent blades, which, as he sat, rose higher than his yellow, ill-kempt head. Dixie heard Henley's step and turned a very grave face on him.

"It's the poor little orphan Sam Pitman adopted by law the other day," she informed him in a gentle aside, as her hand rested tenderly on the child's head, which was supported by his frail knees in their ragged and patched covering. "I've had my eye on him all evening. He's hoed out all this since dinner." She waved an indignant hand over the patch of corn immediately about them. "I couldn't have done more myself, and I know what work is. Yes, I was watching him, and awhile ago I saw him stagger an' fall. He'd fainted from overheat. I come as quick as I could. I got water in his hat and dashed it on him—look how wet it made him, but it revived him. He wanted to work on, but I made him stop and set down. He's timid and shy before you, but me 'n him are great friends, ain't we, Joe? He helped me hunt eggs the other day"—she was running on now in a tender, caressing tone—"and I gave him some of my pie. He could crawl to places I never got at before, and we raked in a peck that would have been a dead loss, for I've already got too many broods."

"I heard Pitman had got a boy," Henley said, guardedly, "and I wondered what the Ordinary meant by turning such a little fellow over to a man like him. It seems like there was only one or two applications, and the boy had to be sent somewhere right off. Do you feel better now, Joe?"

"Yes, sir," the child answered. "It wasn't nothing. It didn't hurt a bit."

Henley caught Dixie's quick upward glance. "Ain't it pitiful?" she said, with a shake of her head and a catch in her full voice. "Huh, 'didn't hurt,' I say! You dear little boy!"

With a brave smile the lad stood up to the full height of his spare frame. He was still pale, and his hair was matted down over his brow by the douche it had received. His little, cotton, checked shirt was open at the neck, disclosing a rather low chest. He stooped down and picked up the hoe, which was of the regulation size and weight used by men. Dixie was protesting against his working more that day, when, looking behind her, she saw the foster-father of the boy approaching.

"What's the matter here?" the farmer growled, eying the group distrustfully with his small gray eyes under pent-house brows. He was short of stature, sinewy, and grizzled as to head and bristling beard.

"Miss Dixie says the boy fainted," Henley answered. "I saw her here, and come over to see what was wrong. The little fellow don't look overly stout."

"Nothing's the matter with 'im," Pitman retorted, visibly angered by what he regarded as the interference of outsiders in his private affairs.

"Well, I know he fainted," Dixie said, calmly, "but we won't argue about it. I'll tell you one thing, though, Sam Pitman, if this thing goes on—I say, if Joe is overworked like this any more—a single other time—and it comes to my knowledge, I'll take you smack-dab to court. I don't meddle in things that don't concern me, as a general thing, but I'll take this in hand and I'll clutch it tight."

"You'll do wonders," Pitman sneered, but with a guarded glance at Henley, who had, on one occasion, knocked him down in some dispute over a debt at the store. He turned to the boy and took the hoe from him. "You go drive up that cow. I'll finish this patch myself, and don't you dare come back and say you can't find her, nuther. If you know what's good for you, you fetch 'er home."

Leaving Pitman at work in the corn, and with the boy trudging homeward, Henley and Dixie made their way out to the road. At the fence he threw down several rails and aided her to step over the remaining ones. When he had put the rails back in their places and joined her he was struck by the altered expression of her face.

"I've wanted to see you all day," she began, her grave glance on the ground, "and it looks like this meeting is providential. I want to get it all plumb out, Alfred, and have it off my mind. I don't know when a thing has bothered me so much. It seemed like such a little thing at the time, but a whopping big one now. You 'n me have been too good friends, Alfred, to let deception of any sort whatever come between us. Please don't look at me so straight; I'll never get through it if you do. You think I'm as good as the general run of girls, I'll be bound, and yet I ain't."

"I'll take the risk on that," he laughed, incredulously. "I know what you are—you are true blue. You've just showed the stripe you're made of. In a minute you'd have fought that skunk back there like a mad wildcat. For the time, at least, you was loving that pore boy as if he was your own."

"We are not talking about that—that's nothing," she said. "No woman that is half a one could see the dreamy blue eyes of that lonely boy, and know what he's going through, and not want to hug 'im up to her breast and pet 'im and comfort 'im. I saw him the day Pitman fetched him here. He sat out under the trees all day long. I watched him from my field, and I could see 'im wiping his eyes on his sleeve. He kept it up from morning till night. Sometimes, Alfred, I doubt the goodness of God Almighty. I know it's a sin to say so, but I can't help it. I've talked a heap to Joe off and on, an' he's had more put on 'im than a grown person ought to bear. Poor thing! he misses his Ma. From what he says I judge she was good and tender. I had a queer dream the other night. I seemed to see a woman in my room; she was crying, and, as plain as I can hear yore voice this minute, I heard her say: 'Don't let 'em abuse 'im—he's weak and he can't stand it,' and with that she seemed to melt away. But that is clean off the track. I've got a confession to make to you, and I am so ashamed I hardly know what to do. Alfred Henley, I've told you a lie—a cold, deliberate lie. Can you respect anybody that will tell a lie?"

"Well, I wouldn't have much respect for myself then," he said, his eyes large in wonder over what she was driving at. "I've lied as many times as an average clock can tick in a lifetime. I've told a dozen lies to sell a pair of shoes, and forty to sell a hoss."

"Hush joking," she said. "Listen. When I told you that fellow was dead I was lying. I didn't intend to fool you, but I got in an awful tangle, and you had to take your chance along with the rest. When I went to the train that day and that fool didn't heave in sight I smelt a mouse. I went to the post-office and got a letter from him. It was the most wishy-washy concoction that was ever put on paper. He never, at any time, had marry in the back of his head. He was just seeing how far he could go with me to pass time. Some men are that way. They are powerful interested till they get a girl to commit herself, and then they begin to twist and turn or call it all off on the spot. As long as I kept this 'un in doubt he wrote the softest gush that ever flowed from a pen. But when I wrote that I was ready—actually ready and waiting—well, that was another proposition. He plumb lost his nerve."

"The scoundrel!" Henley burst out, grown red in the face. "He is below contempt. I was afraid he was a sneak the minute I saw his picture. I'd have stopped you if I'd known how."

"Well, it was nobody's fault but mine." Dixie was trying to divest her brave voice of a certain quavering. "Folks say I've got a long head on me—you amongst 'em—but if any God-forsaken female on this round globe ever made a bigger fool of herself than I did that whack I'd like to shake hands with her. I shall see myself setting in that wagon in my new togs waiting for that train to blow—I'll see that sickening sight till I draw my last whiff of air. Oh, you don't know! Being a man, you can't understand what a woman's pride is. Fate has hit me hard licks, but letting me get my outfit ready, clean up the house, and cook enough ahead to last a week, and come to town with my own hoss and wagon to haul a trifling man to the altar who was jest joking with me—well, that's what made me lie."

"God knows, it was enough," Henley answered in his throat. "The banners toted by the angels have such mottoes as your lie on 'em."

"I was forced to it to protect myself," Dixie said. "You see, Alfred, Ma is kind o' high strung and liable to fly off the handle and talk before folks. She thinks I'm all right, and she'd have raised the roof off the house and let all the country know my plight if I hadn't acted, and acted quick. I drove home slow that day and studied up a plan. Death was the only thing that would do any good, and so I killed him. I liked that part of it, anyway. I wouldn't have lied to you, but I'd done it so often at home, and with such a straight face, that it had got to be a settled habit. But I jumped from the frying-pan into the fire in one way, for they both weep and wail over him—think o' that, and me feeling like I could pull his ears clean out of his head and stomp 'em into the ground."

"Oh, they take it that way!" exclaimed Henley.

"That's what they do," said the girl. "I attend that fellow's funeral sixteen times a day. They want me to put on black—to put on—huh! when the fool has already made me spend my last dollar on an outfit that—shucks! Well, you see what I've got my foot into. I had actually to clap my hand over Ma's mouth the other day while Carrie Wade was there making her brags to keep Ma from telling of my great loss. Carrie would see through it, you know she would, and I'd never hear the end of it. Ma was dead bent on letting folks know, till I worked a trick on her. I told her, I did, that men didn't like to marry widows, and if I ever expected to get a husband I must keep Pete's death quiet. With that understanding they both agreed to hold their tongues. But it's funny, ain't it?" she ended with a laugh—"you with your tombstone trouble at home, and me with a dead bridegroom to look after, and one that treated me like a hound-pup in the bargain?"

Henley laughed now, for she was laughing. "I'm not going to let mine bother me any more," he said, "now that I've heard what you are going through."

"And you'll forgive me for the lie I told you?" she asked anxiously, as she turned to leave him at a point where their ways parted.

"I would for a million of its sort," he said, fervently. He raised his hat and smiled, and stood watching her till she was out of sight in the apple-orchard she had to traverse to reach the cottage.



CHAPTER IX

Henley had been away nearly a year, his absence being protracted by various business enterprises. Letters to Jim Cahews in regard to the store, which Cahews was admirably managing, contained humorous accounts of the various deals which Henley had put through. At one time he had bought a roller-skating rink, which was sold by auction at a great sacrifice because the town was too small to support it. Henley had bid it in, packed it up, and shipped it to a thriving young city, advertised a big opening, and sold it for a handsome profit while the novelty was at its height. On another occasion he was the highest bidder on the scrap-iron in a stove-foundry which had been destroyed by fire, and he made a handsome "speck" through his ability to guess more nearly than any of his competitors the weight of the refuse. There was nothing he would not buy if the price was right, he wrote his clerk, except tombstones, and Cahews understood, and answered to the best of his ability and tact that the public had long since ceased to talk about that unfortunate little matter, and when Henley returned he would perhaps never hear it mentioned.

The stepfather-in-law had used less diplomacy in the account he had forwarded to Henley on the day following the great occasion. Wrinkle was as fond of writing as he was of talking, and he fairly basked in the sunshine of the letter he sent. He read it aloud to himself as he walked to Chester to post it, pausing now and then to scratch out a word or to add one with a pencil as the paper lay on his raised knee. This is the way it sounded to his pleased ears:

"DEAR ALF,—I take my pen in hand to address these few lines to you to let you know that we are all well, and hope you are endowed with the same and many like blessings. Nothin' unusual is goin' on here right now. It is as quiet as the day after camp-meetin'. Dick's funeral was preached yesterday. The weather was tiptop, and nothin' was lackin' to make it a plumb success. Hettie got us out of bed before a single streak of day had appeared. We put on our clothes by pine-knots. The preacher she sent away off for, because she was bound to git some'n extra, was installed at the hotel. He is a wheel-hoss; he dressed as fine as a fiddle, with a plug-hat and dashboard shoes, and had a long jimswinger coat that come to his knees. The paper said he was the silver-tongued orator of the entire Cherokee pulpit, and printed his picture, and said he'd been paid a handsome figure by one of our wealthiest citizens to take part in the memorable occasion. I cut the artickle out to send to you, but forgot an' lit my pipe with it. I'll try to git another, but they are hard to find, as all hands seem to be keepin' 'em for future generations to look at. I seed ten men all readin' one at the same time in a gang at the sawmill t'other day. They seemed to consider it funny, but I didn't. I don't see how a thing as solemn as that affair was could be funny.

"We et our breakfast by candle-light, and then set around and had nothin' to do till startin'-time. We went in the two-seated spring-wagon. I was the only one in our layout not draped from head to foot in black. I couldn't see the women's faces, and as they didn't say a word I couldn't estimate the extend of their grief. I reckon you can guess, anyway. You know 'em. You never saw sech a stream o' folks in all yore born days. You'd 'a' thought it was a public hangin', and every livin' soul had to take a special peep at us as we driv along. As well as I could make out through her veil, Hettie seemed to like bein' so conspicuous, for she axed me to drive slow an' go through the main street, which ain't the nighest way to the church. When we got thar the house was packed as tight as dry apples in a cider-press. But the front bench was all our'n. Nobody dared take it, although more'n half of it was empty, an' folks was settin' in the windows. I had trouble with Hettie, for she made me throw my chaw o' tobacco away, and I found I was settin' right over a wide crack in the floor, too. I wouldn't 'a' damaged a thing, an' could 'a' done it without bein' seed.

"Then I made her as mad as Old Nick by a little mistake of mine. While I was hitchin' up the wagon Old Bay bit a whoppin' big gap out'n my straw hat, and it was so comical-lookin' that Ma told me not to wear it. That was easy enough to say, but I didn't want to go bareheaded, so I begun to look about the house for some'n to put on, and hid away amongst Het's knickknacks I found a hat that used to belong to Dick. It was jest my size, and so I put it on an' thought no more about it till we was all settin' in church. It was on my lap, and all at once I seed Hettie lift up her veil an' squint at it; then she heaved a big groan and snatched it and put it out o' sight. She'd have blessed me out on the spot, I reckon, if the singers hadn't set in. I was a sight goin' home without a thing on my head, but she wouldn't listen to reason, an' kept it stuffed all in a wad under her arm. She said I had no feelin' or I wouldn't have done sech an outrageous thing.

"The preacher was all right, but he'd bit off more than he could chaw. It seems from report that he went around Chester to find out statements that he could work in about Dick that would sound nice and suitable; but for some reason or other—maybe because everybody was so excited, and maybe because they was naturally backward before sech a shinin' light—but, as I say, he run short on information. When he come to that part of his talk he looked actually teased. He floundered about considerable, an' drunk a lot o' water, but he done the best he could. He said Dick was a devoted husband and father, and got red when he corrected the last part, and said a Divine Providence had seed fit to take 'im away purty early in the game, and that the poor fellow hadn't really had a chance to show what was in him. Looked like he was determined to say some'n nice about Dick, so he gave a few backhanded licks at the Republican party and the nigger-lovers of the North, an' wound up by sayin' that the late lamented had been a stanch Democrat an' worked at the poles as hard to overthrow graftin' and Yankee oppression as any man in the fair Southland. He got through somehow, but, betwixt me 'n you, Alf, I don't think Hettie thought she got her full money's worth, for she was countin' on a wonderful display of poetry and highfalutin' things that would be remembered an' placed to her credit for a long time afterwards. He got his foot in it several times. Once I heard Hettie sniff mighty nigh loud enough for him to hear it. It was when he said life wasn't what it was cracked up to be, nohow, and he didn't doubt that Dick was a sight better off where he was at than here in this earthly wrangle. I thought to myself, I wonder what Alf would say in his far-off retreat to a statement of that sort.

"The marble monument looks all right in Welborne's new graveyard, an' he has a right to be proud of his enterprise. The ground is bein' mapped off in great shape. He's had grass sowed all over it and laid out avenues and sidewalks, and thar's some talk of a fountain.

"That Dixie Hart's a corker. She's not mealy-mouthed about anything. The day before the funeral Hettie was talkin' to her at the cow-lot, and axed Dixie if she was goin' to take it in. Dixie quit milchin', and stood up straight and said: 'No, I've got better sense, and you ought to be ashamed of yoreself. You've got a good husband, and you don't appreciate him nigh enough.'

"I thought it was funny that Het didn't fly off the handle, but she stood and tuck it, and seemed to be set back a peg or two. Me 'n her went to the house together, an' I looked for her to rail out on me, anyway, but she set on the porch like she had a lot to think about till bed-time. I made up my mind then that Het jest loves to do things that other folks don't approve of, an' that Dixie had set 'er to wonderin' if she hadn't gone a little bit too far.

"But the old gal is all right. She has tuck a new turn, as I wrote you in my last. She keeps boarders in the two spare rooms mighty nigh all the time, and she is figurin' expenses purty close. Sometimes it is a rovin' peddler at day-rates or a fruit-tree agent by the week. I can't say I like it overly much—though thar is somebody to talk to at odd times when they are through work—for she don't seem to feed quite as well when she's bein' paid as before money begun to come in. She seems to want to lay up scads for some reason or other; maybe it is to try to git back the cash she has spent on her odd notion. I don't know, an' I ain't sure she does herself, but she's as close as the bark on a tree. Jim says she's runnin' a separate account at the store, an' makes 'im figure everything she gets at bare cost in market—freight not included. I heard her tellin' a lightnin'-rod peddler that that was where she could cut under the Chester House, which didn't have no store nor credit to speak of.

"Who do you think was here last week? Why, Ben Warren, Hettie's bach' uncle. He stayed all night, an' occupied yore room. He says he's got two thousand acres in his plantation over the mountain, and the finest residence in the State—keeps a dozen hosses an' all the old niggers that his daddy used to own. He's thirty-five, an' still on the turf, but he told us he was at last engaged to a Baltimore lady that he had been settin up to for lo these many years. He's goin' to have us all spend a week over thar before long. He thinks a lot of Het, an' wants her to fix up his house for the bride. Het's lookin' forward to it. He couldn't stay over for the funeral, but he said she was showin' by her act that women was not forgetful of the past, and that it made him feel more secure in the venture he was about to make. He'd been inclined to doubt females to some extent, he said, and he was goin' to let Het's conduct stand before him always as a proof of how deep a woman's affections can be when they are tested.

"Now, take care of yourself, Alf, and come on home. These cool, green mountains are good enough for any man, an' you know what is said about a rollin' stone. So long. I sign myself, with my best respects,

"Yours truly, "JASON WRINKLE.

"P. S.—The same old crowd of jolly loafers make the store headquarters, and they are, if anything, worse 'n when you was the king-bee o' the bunch. They git off a fresh joke on somebody every day. I got off one on Jim that he didn't like a bit. Jim is still holdin' on to old man Hardcastle's gal like grim death, an' in order to cut a special dash he's got to sendin' his things to the steam laundry at Carlton. T'other day at the post-office the nigger that delivers for the Express Company, an' can't read, showed me Jim's package of socks, drawers, shirts, an' the like, that had just come, an' axed me who it was for. With as straight a face as if I was lookin' a corpse in the eyes, I p'inted out Hardcastle's house an' tol' 'im to take it thar. Then I writ with a pencil on the kiver these words, 'Please restore missin' buttons and stitch up holes.' Then what did I do but hike back to the store an' set an' wait. Miss Julia sent the stuff a-whizzin' to Jim by a nigger woman that works for her folks. The things was all tousled up in a big basket, an' she fetched along a note that made Jim turn as white as a cake o' tallow. He left me in charge an' run over an' explained matters to the best of his ability, but it's the talk of the town, an' not a soul has suspicioned me. If you don't want to git knocked flat you'd better not mention a steam laundry in Jim's presence.

"J. W."



CHAPTER X

Alfred Henley was coming home. Jim Cahews announced it one morning to a cluster of farmers and chronic loungers at the store, and the news rapidly spread through the village and country-side, and various comments were made. He was going to do a man's part and try to put up with the cranky woman he had married, said the men. He was heartily ashamed of himself, said the women. He had got over his silly pout and was coming home to make amends for his conduct in living so long away from a woman who had shown such beautiful constancy to her first and, perhaps—as it looked now—only love.

Dixie Hart heard the report on her way to the post-office, and, needing a spool of cotton, she went into the store.

"Yes, he's headed this way," was Cahews's confirmation of the news. "The truth is, Miss Dixie, if I'm any judge of a man's letters, Alf's actually homesick. He wants the mountains he was fetched up in. He writes about his lonely days and nights, when his speculations don't keep him busy, an' says they don't have anything out thar but pesky north winds an' sand-storms. He might have stayed away longer, as it was, but one little thing I wrote him turned the scale. You know that measly ten-cent circus that was to show here last month got stranded. The performers all quit and footed it home, an' the sheriff levied on the thing, lock, stock, and barrel, an' is to sell it piece by piece at public outcry Saturday week. Alf wrote me that a sale of that sort was exactly in his line, and that he'd try to be on hand. He didn't think anybody here would have any money to invest in such truck, and he'd have his own way. He said about the only man hereabouts that he'd have to contend with would be old Welborne, but he would risk him. He don't often allude to home matters, Miss Dixie, but I think Alf counts on havin' things up at the house a little smoother than they was when he went off."

"And maybe he will," the girl answered, thoughtfully, as she turned away.

The only boarders Mrs. Henley had at this time were a certain young married pair, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Allen, who had arrived only a week before with a baby not yet a month old. Allen was a travelling sewing-machine agent, and boarded his wife and child at some farm-house while he drove about the country in a buggy with a sample machine to instruct women in the use of it and take orders.

When Mrs. Allen heard the report that Henley was coming back, she was considerably disturbed by the thought that she and hers might not be wanted any longer. She nursed her fears all the morning, and finally, with the infant on her arm, she went out to Mrs. Henley, who was in the back-garden gathering cucumbers for the dinner-table.

"I reckon I'd as well come to the point an' be done with it," Mrs. Allen began, timidly. She was thin, had blue eyes and faded blond hair, used snuff, as was indicated by the brownish deposits in the corners of her mouth and her stained teeth. "I want to speak to you about yore husband."

"Well, what is it?" Mrs. Henley asked, as she drew herself up and peered at the speaker from the hood of her sunbonnet, and rested her pan of cucumbers on her hip.

"Why, they all say he's comin' home," said Mrs. Allen. "I've heard yore father-in—I mean, I've heard old Mr. Wrinkle say that yore husband, never havin' had children, can't abide babies, an' I got bothered. My little darlin' don't cry much—in fact, compared to most babies, it's a purty good un. It did cry some just a minute ago, but that wasn't its fault. It was mine. Like a plumb fool, who certainly ought to have had more sense, I was takin' a dip o' snuff from my box as I come out of the house, an' a sudden whiff of wind round the corner blowed a speck of it in the little thing's eyes. You know it stings like ackerfortis. We are goin' next week, anyway, you see."

"Well, you needn't let my husband's coming hurry you off," Mrs. Henley answered, as she reached out to a bean-pole and bore down on it that she might fasten it more firmly in the soil, and it was impossible to judge whether there was resentment in the tone. "He's coming back of his own free will, and if he stays he'll put up with the house just as he finds it. Nothing will be turned topsy-turvy, you may be sure. His room is where it always was, and it ain't likely to be changed."

The conversation was disturbed by the appearance of the baby's father, who emerged from the house and was on the way to the stable to feed and water his horse. He wore a ready-made suit of clothes and a scarlet necktie which clashed sharply with his blond hair and mustache. He was almost as young as his wife, and he beamed proudly on the red human lump in her arms as he paused for a moment. He smiled warmly on Mrs. Henley when his wife playfully informed him that they would not have to move till their week was up.

"Well, I certainly am glad to hear it," he declared. "I'd hate to look for a new place just for a day or so, an' I've got so I feel sorter at home here. Me an' yore father-in—(excuse me)—I mean, me 'n Mr. Wrinkle have high old times. Even if I went to board somers else I'd come here an' set of an evenin' to hear him talk. He drives off every spell of blues I have. He is the beatenest man to get off jokes I ever knowed, to be as old as he is. Just now he walked clean over to Pitman's to tell that crusty old cuss that thar was a cow inside his lot fence, an' when Pitman come down hoppin' mad with his shot-gun full o' pease yore father-in—(excuse me)—Mr. Wrinkle p'inted to Pitman's own cow an' said, 'I wasn't lyin' to you, Sam; thar she is.' He was laughin' just now an' said he had a joke in store for Mr. Henley when he got here. I tried to git it out of him, but he wouldn't say what was in the wind."

That evening, after supper, as the night was warm, the Allens, with the child asleep on a pillow in a chair between them, were seated out under the trees in front of the house, when Wrinkle slouched across the grass to them. He was chewing tobacco, and frequently pressed two fingers over his lips and between them spat with considerable accuracy at various shrubs and tufts of grass about him. Even in the twilight they could see that his small eyes were twinkling with suppressed amusement.

"I thought once, Allen," he chuckled, "that I wouldn't let you in on this joke, but I'm afraid I won't sleep if I don't tell somebody. I don't mind lettin' you two in on the quiet, but I wouldn't tell Hettie for any amount. You see, this un's a baby joke, an' it may be a tender point with her, not havin' a baby, an', in fact, never havin' had one up to date, although she's had two husbands in her day, an' resided with each one a sufficient time."

"So it's a baby joke?" Allen said. "Well, that interests me."

"That's what it is," the old man said, dryly. "You'd enjoy it if you knowed Alf. The gang at the store was eternally laughin' at 'im about babies. They could shet 'im up tight by jest gettin' a nigger nurse-gal to tote a lusty one back to his desk while he was at work. Once one of the gang sent 'im a tin rattler by mail, an' they was all thar to see 'im open it. He took it all in good fun, too; he's one joker that kin stand one on hisself. You may 'a' noticed that Hettie is a sorter odd woman in some ways. Well, she's more peculiar on the husband line than any other. Alf's been off now goin' on ten months, an' she hain't once put pen to paper for him. So the few lines that has gone from this shebang has been writ by yours truly. Alf hasn't writ to me much, but I've kept 'im posted. He didn't write me he was headed this way, but I got it from Cahews. As soon as I heard he was comin' in a week or so, I set down to write how glad we was. I was in my room j'inin' your'n at the time, an' all at once it struck me that it would be a royal welcome to greet 'im with some sort o' joke, an' while I was tryin' to study up some'n yore baby rolled out o' the bed an' struck the floor with a thump. It was as quiet as a stick o' wood fer a minute till it ketched its wind, an' then it set up a scream like a Comanchy Injun, an' right thar I got my idea. I determined to write Alf that he'd become the daddy of a bouncin' baby boy. But I had to go about it right, you see, for I knowed Alf would smell a mice if I brought it out bluntlike; so, knowin' that I'd have time to hear from him ag'in before he started, I jest ended my letter by sayin' that I didn't intend to take no hand in the little cold spell betwixt him an' his wife, but that I felt bound to say that after she had laid down her pride to write him sech important an' delicate news, for him to take no notice of it whatever was enough to hurt and offend any woman. He bit. He took my bait an' hook an' line, broke my pole, an' run up-stream. He writ by the next mail—said he hadn't got no letter from Hettie, an' axed me what the news was. He was so anxious to know that he said he was goin' to stop a day or so in Atlanta, an' wouldn't I oblige him by sendin' my answer thar? You bet I did. I'll do a friend a favor whenever I kin. I told 'im Alf Junior was a buster, had a yell on 'im that would do for a fire-alarm, an' was already keen enough to know the difference betwixt a bottle with a rubber neck an' the rail thing. So thar it rests. He hain't got no use for babies, an' he'll be as mad as Tucker, but when he finds out it's jest a joke he'll be happy enough to set up the drinks."

"Gracious, surely you didn't go as far as that," Mrs. Allen cried, casting a jealous look at her sleeping infant and sweeping it on to her grinning spouse.

"Didn't I, though!" Wrinkle spat, gleefully. "Alf has often said I couldn't fool him, an' we'll see—we'll see this pop."

"It certainly is a corker," Allen declared—"that is, if he swallows it."

"He's already done it," sniggered the stepfather-in-law. "I writ a document a Philadelphia lawyer and a Pinkerton detective combined couldn't pick a flaw in. I hedged it in with roundabout reasons an' facts, tellin' 'im he'd 'a' had letter after letter about how the baby was thrivin' if he'd just answered Hettie's first official proclamation, and so on, and so on. Folks, I can hardly wait. He'll git here to-morrow night, an' we'll have the fun of our lives. I hope you two won't say a word—at fust, anyway. Leave it all to me."



CHAPTER XI

The following afternoon about dusk the mail-hack, which usually brought a few passengers over from Carlton, put Henley down at the gate. The Allens, the Wrinkles, and Mrs. Henley were seated on the porch, and all stared expectantly except the wife of the returning man, who rose suddenly and retired into the house. Henley was tanned, wore a more stylish suit of clothes than had been his wont, and a broad-brimmed hat. As he advanced up the walk, swinging his bag in one hand and a bulky parcel in the other, the observers noted that he was flushed and smiling complacently.

"Durn it all!—dad blast his pictur'!" Wrinkle ejaculated, "I'll bet he missed my letter. He wouldn't look tickled that way if he'd got it. Well, the fun is off. If I was to tell 'im now he'd know I was lyin'."

The new-comer was at the bottom of the steps now, and, depositing his things on the grass, he came up with his hand extended.

"Well, here I am," he cried, as he clasped Wrinkle's hand and shook it cordially. "I never was as glad to strike Georgia grit in my life. I feel like a old soldier back from war. As I drove over and saw the sun in its bed of yellow behind the mountains I felt like I was flying through space. This country is good enough for me, and I'll prove it by sticking to it in the future. Where's Hettie? But, first of all, I want to see that baby. Trot him out—bless his soul!—trot him out."

Profound astonishment showed itself in every face. Only old Jason seemed capable of rising to the situation. For barely an instant he floundered, and then his small eyes began to twinkle, his voice held a rippling, unctuous quality as he laid his hand on Henley's arm.

"Oh, you mean little Alf," he faltered. "Why, he's—he's in thar asleep on the bed. We-uns—the last one of us—'lowed you'd raise big objections. You always seemed to have mighty little use for anything o' the sort."

"Huh!" Henley grunted, an honest flush spreading over his face. "That's another matter altogether. There are babies and babies in this world. This one's got different blood in 'im—this one's mine! If I've made light o' having little tots, I wasn't talking about him, for he hadn't come. Where is he? Let me see 'im. I won't wake 'im. I'll walk easy, an' not say a word."

"Well, step this way." Wrinkle cast a bubbling glance of warning at Mrs. Allen, who had risen resentfully, and motioned her back into her chair, and, with a comical strut, he led Henley into the room occupied by the child's parents. Near the door, in the dim light of a sputtering tallow-dip, on a tiny bed lay the sleeping infant. Wrinkle, choking down his amusement, took the candle from the mantelpiece and held it over the little face. "You can't see the favor so plain while its eyes are shet," he chuckled, "but when it grins an' winks it's you to a gnat's heel."

"Gewhilikins, ain't he a corker!" Henley said, worshipfully, under his breath, as he leaned over the bed.

"I wouldn't wake 'im now." Mrs. Allen stood in the doorway, quite erect and cold in her bearing, and there was no one but the deluded man who failed to detect her frigid tone of offended ownership. "This is his sleepin'-time; if he wakes now he'll fret all night, an' Mr. Allen has to git his rest or he can't git up early an' do his work."

"I see," said Henley, politely. "I heard Hettie had taken some boarders. I know she'd hate to have the little thing keep anybody awake."

"Sh! not yit, for the Lord's sake, not yit!" Wrinkle whispered, as he slid along, to the bewildered mother. "Don't spile it all."

"Well, let's go back on the porch," Henley said. "I've got some'n to show you. What you reckon I've got in my bundle? Come take a look." He led them back into the outer dusk, and descended to the ground for the parcel, which, after hastily cutting the string, he opened on the steps. The others stared in astonishment at the pile of toys, little dresses, flannels, dainty caps of lace, and shoes and stockings.

"What did you go an' buy all them things for?" Wrinkle asked, rendered serious for the first time by the realization that his jest had at least cost more than he had intended.

"Because I wanted to, that's what for!" Henley laughed, proudly. "Do you reckon I was going to come away from Atlanta empty-handed when I was right where so many things could be had? I showed your letter to Mrs. Moody, who keeps the house I stopped at, and she took me down-town and helped select what was best. She said every single article would come in handy, and she ought to know—she's the mother of nine. Lord, I wish I'd got here earlier, before his bed-time. I tried to git the driver to hurry up, but first one thing happened, then another. I want to see what the little chap 'll do with this rattler; these blamed little bells set up a jinglin' noise every time the hack struck a snag."

During this monologue the machine-agent was silent, a dark frown of indecision on his face. As for his wife, she looked as if she had bartered her child's birthright for something that had disagreed with her mental digestion. Jason Wrinkle, however, reflections on the cost of his joke for the moment set aside, seemed to have fallen into his happiest mood. Unable to disguise his merriment at such close range from his victim, he had slipped out into the yard, and Allen could see him writhing in the folds of darkness as he slapped his thighs and raised his heavy boots in a soundless dance of joy.

"Well, I'll go find Hettie." Henley took up the parcel, and, with it in his arms, he clattered thunderously through the hallway back to his wife's room. There was candle-light in the room, and he saw her hastily turn toward a window as he entered and threw the things on her bed.

"Well, here I am," he announced, the ring of elation still in his voice. "I don't blame you for hiding from me, Hettie. I've acted like an old hog, and I've come back to say so."

She turned toward him, an expression of surprise struggling on her thin face, but it had never been her way to show affection, and she made no offer even to shake hands. However, he had put his arms round her and kissed her cold cheek.

"You've just come?" she said, tentatively, as she drew stiffly from his embrace.

"Just a minute ago. I had to see the baby the first thing. I couldn't wait. The old man showed him to me. Ain't he great? I hain't seen his eyes yet—he was sound asleep. I reckon that boarder-woman helps you with him; she seems to thinks lots of him, and be powerful particular. I didn't get your letter about its coming, Hettie. I'd have written at once—you know I would. It was lost, I reckon. The mails don't run right always. The old man wrote me, and it certainly was like a thunderclap. I'm mighty proud, Hettie. You see, I'd given up hoping that a baby'd ever come to us, an'—"

"To us?" The woman stared and drew herself more erect. "What do you mean? Are you crazy? You've seen babies before and never went on at such a rate. I don't care for it. I haven't once touched it since it come. I don't like its mother any too well, and she is such a fool about it that—"

"Its mother?" Henley gasped. "Why, ain't it ours—ain't it yours and mine? The—the old man wrote me that—" Henley's voice faltered and sank. His lower lip hung loose from his teeth and quivered. With a furious shrug Mrs. Henley turned from him to the curtainless window against which the outer night pressed like a palpable substance. She could hear him behind her panting like a tired beast of burden. For a moment there was an awful silence in the room, then he broke it.

"My God, he made a fool of me!" he groaned.

"And you made one of me," the woman threw back from the window, "and before them all!" She sneered, as her glance fell on the pile of gifts on the bed. "This is what you come back for? Any other man would have had too much sense to be so easily fooled." She strode to the table and picked up the candle, for what purpose he did not know, but it slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor and went out. He heard her groan, and the slats of the bed creaked as she sat down. Thankful that the darkness hid the evidences of shame on his face, and not daring to trust his voice to further utterance, he went out of the room. As he passed through the hallway he heard a low cry from the infant on the right, and its mother crooning over it. No one was on the porch. A vast weight of misery and chagrin was on him. He sat down on the steps and fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. But his nerveless fingers broke the only match he had, as he attempted to strike it on the step, and, holding his pipe before him, he sat staring into space. He had a hunted sense of wanting to avoid forever all human contact; an intangible shame burned within him, drying up the tender emotions which so recently had swayed his being.

Suddenly his glance fell on his valise still resting on the step where he had left it, and, rising, he clutched it as he might the hand of a friend. The next instant he was striding over the grass to the gate. To shun the village, the lights of which winked sardonically in the distance, he crossed the road, climbed the fence and was in the meadow which lay between his land and Dixie Hart's. Blindly he trudged through the high weeds and grass, now wet with dew.

Cruel, cruel—a joke, a mere joke, as such things went with the shallow and light-minded, and yet it was a tragedy. For several days, in the highest realm of fancy he had revelled in the first joys of fatherhood, only to have it end like this. He paused on a slight rise of the ground and looked back at the outlines of the farm-house, and cursed it and its inhuman inmates. As he dug his nails into his palms and gnashed his teeth, he swore that the surrounding mountains, so false in their late promises, should never see him more; the wide, free world should be his solace, if solace could be had.

Suddenly, as he stood, he became conscious that there was a moving blur before him, as if some portion of the general darkness, by some trick of vision, had been rendered more compact and animate. Then he saw that it was a cow, and immediately in the animal's wake appeared another blur. This was the form of a woman. In a mellow, soothing tone she called out to the cow, and Henley recognized the voice. It was Dixie Hart. Instinctively, and shrinking even from her, he started on, but she suddenly cried out:

"Don't go, Alfred, you haven't said howdy to me. You aren't going to treat an old friend that way, I know."

Putting his valise down at his feet, he stood speechless while she advanced to him, her hand extended from beneath the shawl which enveloped her head and shoulders. "How are you?" She seemed to avoid seeing his valise. "I'm powerful glad to see you back home."

He made an effort to speak, but there was a dry tightness in his throat which made him doubt his command of utterance. His only response was the dumb clasping of her hand, and to it he clung, unconscious of what the act implied, as a proof of weakness.

"I knew you had got back," she went on, her face uplifted, her friendly fingers tightening on his. "That old mischief-maker told me. I didn't come out here after the cow. That was just a dodge to keep anybody from talking about me being away from home after dark. I had to see you. I knew you needed a friend, and I'm one, Alfred—I'd sacrifice anything on earth to help you. You've been a true friend to me, and I want to be to you. I know all that happened back there."

"You say you do?"

"Yes, Mr. Wrinkle come and told me. He was laughing, but he let up, for I opened his eyes. He hasn't had such a tongue-lashing since he was born. The fool, the fool—the silly fool! You mustn't mind, Alfred. You really mustn't."

"Mind?" he muttered. "My God!"

"Oh, I know!" she went on, still soothingly. "It is awful looked at from your standpoint, but that ain't the thing. We must consider the intentions of folks before we take offence. Why, Alfred, that old busybody hasn't yet got it through his head that any living man could object to a joke like that. Nothing under high heaven was ever sacred to him; you must have noticed that in the time you have known him. He'd make a jest out of the death of his closest kin. He told me once that to think anything was wrong in this world would be to deny God's goodness to mankind. When I told him just now that he had overstepped the bounds of reason and good sense in what he done, he simply wouldn't believe it. He said you knew how to give a joke and take one, and that he liked you better than any living man. The Allens are going to leave soon. Alfred, you mustn't go 'way like this—you just mustn't."

"There's nothing else to do."

"Oh yes, there is." She laid her hand on his arm, and gazed persuasively into his eyes. "You've got your duty to perform—your duty to your wife, Alfred."

"Huh, to her!" he sniffed.

"Yes, to her," Dixie went on, simply and yet eagerly. "I'm sorry for her, Alfred. To most folks she seems peculiar, and yet God made her that way just as He made you and me like we are, and, moreover, she can't help being like she is. You told me once that you didn't think she had ever quite got over her love for her first husband, but that you counted on that when you married her. Well, all the queer things which she done while you was away, that folks thought was so funny, come from her idea of her duty in that direction. If I read her right, she thinks, somehow, that she proved herself untrue to—to the dead by marrying again, and she's let it prey on her mind. But that is over with. I think she is afraid now that she went too far."

"You think so?" Henley breathed hard.

"Yes, I lost patience with her myself during it all, and give her a piece of my mind one day. If she had been plumb sure she was right she'd have got mad, but she didn't. She took it different from what I expected. She never had paid any attention to me before, but after that day she made a point o' coming to me. She never would bring up the subject again, but she'd stand and talk with as much respect as if I'd been some old person. She looked like she was ashamed, and wanted to let me know in some other way than telling me in so many words. No, you mustn't go 'way like this, Alfred. It 'ud never do. She ain't to blame for that old man's joke, and she ought not to suffer for it. She was glad you was coming back. A woman can read a woman, and she couldn't hide it. It looked to me like she is glad to get a chance to act different and do her part. If you was to go off on top of this thing it would humiliate her awfully. A great deal would be said, and it would all heap up on her as the prime cause. You are the noblest man I ever knew, Alfred, and you won't go and do as big a wrong as this would be, and in such thoughtless haste. A man never can decide on a correct course when he is upset like you are now, and you'd live to regret it. Then think of yourself. You was plumb homesick for these old mountains, and was glad to get back."

"How did you know that?"

"A little bird told me." She quoted the saying with an arch smile. "You wanted to get here in time to be at the auction sale of that broke-down circus, and you'll miss a good thing if you go. The horses are in bad shape, owing to poor feeding and hard use, but there's big come-out in 'em. Nobody else here will have the ready money, and you'd have a clean walk-over."

"What else have they got besides hosses?" The trader's eyes twinkled with an interest that broke through the stupor that was on him.

"Oh, lots o' odds and ends; you wait and see. Tote that valise back in the house, Alfred, and don't do what you'll be sorry for all your life. If you was to leave like this to-night it would be harder than ever to come back, and you'd have to do it sooner or later. You know I'm giving you good advice."

"Yes, I know it—before God I know it," he said, fervently. "You are the best friend I've got, Dixie. No, I don't want to go back to Texas." His strong voice shook and he coughed to steady it. "I never want to roam about that way again. I forced myself to stay out there day by day. That was one mistake, and I ought not to make another on top of it. You see it right, Dixie. You see it right."

"Then there is little Joe," she reminded him. "He is still having a hard time with Sam Pitman, and the little fellow has almost counted the hours since he heard you was coming. He dotes on you. He still has the money hid away that you left for him. He says he is going to keep it till he's a man. Oh, it was so sad! Alfred, he started to run away one night awhile back, after Pitman had whipped him for planting the wrong seed-corn. I happened to meet him down the road. He had a little bundle under one arm and a pet chicken I had given him under the other. I stopped him and got him to go back. I couldn't bear the thought of having him so far away from me and unprotected. I told him that, and it made him break down and cry. Then he let me kiss him; he never had before, he's so bashful, and, well"—her eyes were glistening and her tone was husky—"the next morning I saw him in the field bright and early. He was doing the hardest work there is on a farm—digging sprouts with a heavy grubbing-hoe. But he was cheerful."

"You made him go back, just as you are making me do," Henley said, swallowing a lump in his throat and forcing a smile. "You were right in his case, and right in mine. You are my best friend. How goes it with you? We've talked enough about me."

"Same old seven and six," she answered, with a shrug. "Still fighting with the world and Carrie Wade. She's a worm in my flesh that is on a constant wiggle. She nags me more now because she is more miserable herself. She don't even get as much attention as she did. She used to go after it, but the men have headed her off. The fellows at the lumber-camp got to laughing at her for the way she done. She's got down to little boy sweethearts. She's been making eyes at Johnny Cartwright, and the little fool—he ain't more than seventeen, eight years younger'n her—is clean daft about her. Poor old Mrs. Cartwright is awfully worried. The little scamp declares he is engaged to Carrie, and, instead of giving the report the lie, she actually seems proud of it."

"But how about your marrying?" Henley questioned.

"Me? Oh, I've got my trousseau ready, every stitch of it, including hat, gloves, stockings, and what not."

"You don't tell me—well, that is news!" Henley exclaimed in surprise.

"Well, it ain't to me," Dixie laughed. "You see, Alfred, it is the same old outfit that I laid in a year ago and keep in storage. It hain't exactly the latest wrinkle as to style, but I could cut away and add a flounce here and a ruffle there, and not have so much cash to lay out as I did when I missed fire that time. But I don't think I'll get to use it soon. Field-work in the broiling sun and setting on a divan with a dinky fan to your face and a young man to peep over it don't hitch, somehow. And I'm still deep in debt to old Welborne. He's the only man I make love to, but I don't get a cent off for my smiles; he growls and grumbles every time I see him about hard times and the like. But I'll pay out one of these days. As you pass it in the morning I want you to just take a look at my stand of cotton; if the drought will let it alone I'll make five bales. Now I must go. I know you'll keep your promise, so I ain't going to worry. Good-night."

"Good-night," he echoed, and as she moved away in the darkness he took up his valise and turned his face toward the farm-house. "She's right," he muttered. "God bless her, she's plumb right."



CHAPTER XII

The Allens had gone, taking with them the baby things, which Henley had prevailed upon them to accept. He sank into his accustomed place at home and at the store as naturally as if he had been away only for a day. The news of his return drew around him many of the motley ilk who made trading and swapping both a business and an avocation. They seldom dealt with him, to be sure, but it was a liberal education to hear his experiences, and even better to see him actually make a deal. On his first day at home he had bought a lame horse for the small sum of fifty dollars, after he had delivered a free lecture about the great "American Cruelty to Animals Association," as he called it. And, with his eyes on the owner, he gave it as his opinion that in a more enlightened community a man who would ride a horse in that condition would be dragged straight to court, and maybe imprisoned for life. When the animal was his, and the ex-owner had gone to buy a ticket to go home by rail, Henley winked at Cahews and said: "I know how to cure that hoss's leg. I paid two dollars to learn in Fort Worth from an Indian hoss-doctor. Two hundred dollars wouldn't buy 'im right now."

It was the loquacious stepfather-in-law who revelled most in Henley's sayings and doings, and he regaled his wife and Henley's with accurate and vivid reports of them. One morning he came into the sitting-room, where the two women sat bent over a quilt on a big, square frame, their needles going methodically up and down.

"You mought guess one million years," he panted, as he bent over them, that he might feast on their facial expressions, "an' not guess what Alf Henley's gone an' done."

They raised their faces and stared, and the wizened raconteur smiled as he stepped to the open fireplace, shifted the paper screen to one side, carefully spat, and then, replacing it, returned to his coign of vantage.

"I don't know, and care less," Mrs. Henley answered, though her poised needle and steady gaze belied her words. "He's done so many fool things in his life that I'd not be surprised if he'd gone off in a balloon."

"That's equal to sayin' you give it up." Wrinkle again applied himself to the screen and fireplace, and returned shuffling, his tobacco-quid in his hand. "Well, you've heard about the dime circus that was to show here a month back, an' couldn't because all the actors hit the grit an' left the manager to settle with the sheriff for debts that follered it all the way from Boston?"

They had heard every detail of the matter innumerable times, and only stared and gaped as they awaited further revelations.

"Well, Alf Henley is sole owner an' manager now," was the bomb which exploded in Wrinkle's hands. "He's the John Robinson and P. T. Barnum of the whole capoodle."

"You don't mean that he has actually gone off with—" began Mrs. Henley, but was checked by the old man's smile of correction.

"Well, he ain't, to say, actually started out yit," the old man grinned. "You know he'd have to git performers, tight-rope walkers, hoop-jumpers, bareback riders, an' the like, an' these mountain clodhoppers ain't in practice. But I'm here to state to you two women if he kin git clowns to furnish as much fun fer a dime and a seat throwed in as he give that crowd this mornin' he'll be rich enough to throw twenty-dollar gold pieces at cats in no time. I seed the whole shootin'-match. I was in the store when the nigger boy come by the front janglin' a bell an' totin' the red flag with a sign on it, an' Alf sent Pomp out fer one of the circulars that had a list of the items. He looked it over, an' then re'ched for his hat, an' me 'n him went down to the court-house yard whar the whole thing was spread out, piled up, an' haltered. It was like Noah's Ark washed ashore an' lyin' thar to dry. Thar was six hosses so thin you could read through 'em without yore specs, three big road-wagons heavy enough to haul steam-engines on, the little, teensy pony with a bob-tail that the clown driv' in the procession, an' the little red-an'-green streaky wagon that he rid in. Then thar was the heavy iron den on another big road-wagon that the lion stayed in till he starved to death, a whoppin' pile of planks that was used for seats, an', last of all, the big canvas tent.

"The entire town an' country was on hand, nosin' about an' crackin' jokes on the fat manager who had come up from Atlanta to attend the sale an' was lookin' as seedy as a last year's bird's-nest. But I'm here to tell you that when Alf Henley come stalkin' down, lookin' sorter indifferent, like he always does when he has a notion to trade, that crowd pulled in its horns an' waited."

"The fool!" Mrs. Henley ejaculated. "Making a public exhibition of himself."

"Well, I've often wondered about that very thing," Wrinkle said. "I sometimes think he tries to make folks think he is a fool to suit his aims, an' ef he ain't a natural-born one it oughtn't to be belt agin him. I admit I was puzzled on that point this mornin'. I stuck to his heels, bound to see 'im through. He'd sniff at one thing an' turn away from another as if it didn't smell right; he'd kick a pile of stuff with contempt an' walk on, an' he grinned to beat a heathen idol at the mere sight of the lion-cage an' pony an' cart, an' then he just squared hisse'f around same as to say, 'Well, I'm in pore business, but I'll jest stand here an' see if anybody will be fool enough to bid on such truck.'

"You know Sheriff Tobe Webb is a dry-talkin' cuss, anyway, an' I had to laff when he got up an' begun his harangue, fer all the world like a feller in front of a side-show tryin' to drum up a crowd to see a passel o' freaks on the inside. Tobe had the fust item led out fer inspection—a bony hoss that tried to lie down, an' Alf spoke up an' wanted to know if he was a stump-sucker.

"Fred Dill up an' said, 'The man that buys 'im will be the sucker,' an' everybody laffed, Alf as big as the rest.

"'I think I know whar I could sell his hide,' he said, an' bid ten dollars. Then somebody—or it may jest have been the show-man's bluff—raised it to fourteen, an' then Alf went 'im a dollar more an' got the hoss."

"Another one to feed and doctor," sighed Mrs. Henley.

"I say another," Wrinkle chuckled. "He got all six at about the same figure. Nobody was biddin' agin 'im except old Welborne, an' he was so mad he couldn't stand still. They say he had been countin' on havin' it all his own way, but Alf come home an' turned his cake to dough. Next come the three road-wagons. Some o' the farmers was interested in 'em, but they was too heavy fer field-work, an' though Tobe mighty nigh tore the linin' out o' his throat yellin' agin it as a plumb outrage, Alf raked 'em in at about the cost of the bare iron in 'em.

"The next item was the lion's cage, an' a big laff started, for Fred Dill told Alf that it was entirely too clumsy fer a baby-carriage, an' I knowed then that my joke was goin' the rounds, an' I backed away a little, fer I didn't like the way Alf looked. But he was still in the game, an' he walked up to the cage an' ketched hold of the bars an' sorter shook 'em. It had one of the same heavy wagons under it in good condition, an' I believe Alf was tryin' to attract attention from the wagon, for all the time Tobe was talkin' an' sayin' the cage would be a good thing fer a man to lock his wife up in to break 'er of the gad-about habit, Alf was examinin' the iron slats an' the bolts an' bars. It had a big door an' wooden sides that could be tuck off or left on, an' Dill advised Alf to buy it an' turn gypsy, an' roam about tradin' here an' yan. But Alf got the thing at his own bid, an' sorter sneered as he writ down the price on the scrap of paper in his hand."

"For Heaven's sake, what fool caper did he cut next?" Mrs. Henley demanded, in a tone of impatience.

"Why, he bought the pony an' little wagon fer ten dollars, even money, an' it was all I could do to keep the baby joke from risin' ag'in. I could see that Dill was about to spring it, but I shook my head at 'im, an' he kept quiet. I reckon he thought thar was no use rubbin' it in. Then everybody got to watchin' the nigger helpers stretch out the big tent at the sheriff's orders. It was stout, new cloth, an' it glistened like a patch of snow in the sun, an' driv' the crowd back on all sides in a big ring. I reckon everybody thar thought Alf surely would balk at a thing like that, but it looked like the fun folks was pokin' at him had got his dander up. Jim Cahews had closed the store an' come down, an' I seed 'im nudge Alf an' heard 'im say, 'I believe I'd let that item slide, Alf, the cloth has been cut on the bias, an' the seams are so stout that it never could be sold by the yard.'

"'Shet up, I know what I'm about,' I heard Alf whisper, an' then he yelled out to the sheriff, 'Put up the pile o' planks along with it; nobody wants a' old rag as big as that.'

"The sheriff agreed, an' both lots went in as one. It was a sharp trick of Alf's, for he had found out that a photographer was thar from Carlton to go his limit on the tent, but lumpin' it in with the planks sorter upset the chap's calculations, an' he didn't have the look of a man that could figure quick. He shuck all over as he bid ten dollars, an' while the sheriff was yellin' 'Goin'! goin'!' Alf stooped down an' felt of the canvas. He found a clean hole that looked like it had been cut, an' run his finger through it an' laffed an' said, 'It wouldn't do to hang it up to dry, the wind 'ud blow it to pieces, but I kin use the planks, an' I'll resk a dollar more.' The photographer got scared, an', while he was stoopin' down tryin' to feel o' the tent, Alf ketched the sheriff's eye an' said, 'I'll withdraw my bid if you don't hurry. I'm wastin' time.' The sheriff yelled out an' told the photographer it was agin 'im, but he look scared wuss 'n ever an' shuck his head, an' that ended it. Alf wasn't in as big a hurry to git away as he had let on, neither. He set a couple o' niggers to work stackin' up the planks in neat piles an' rollin' up the tent. He sent the hosses to the pasture back o' the store, an' told Pomp to give 'em a good rubbin' down, an' to put some o' his famous hoss-tonic in the'r feed."

"A circus!" Mrs. Henley said, with a sniff. "A circus, and me the daughter of a Baptist preacher."

"Well, he ain't raily goin' to put the thing on the road," Wrinkle said, seriously. "He counts on sellin' it off piece by piece. I went back to the store when he did. I was afeard, at the start, that he was cracked in the upper story, but I've sorter switched around. Old Welborne come in an' had his say about the snag Alf had at last struck in his overeagerness to have some'n to do now that he was back, an' went out as mad as the very devil about some'n or other. Jim an' me set down back at the desk an' watched Alf figure up. He looked tickled, and after a while he said:

"'Jim, I'm glad I got back. I know now that Texas ain't no place for my talent. It's overrun with sharp-witted Jews an' keen Yankees that know values down to a gnat's heel. But here in these mountains these yokels git scared clean out o' the'r senses when a dollar has to change hands. Do you know,' says he, 'that I'm out less'n two hundred this mornin', an' at a low estimate I have got a thousand dollars' wuth o' truck?'

"'I don't know, Alf,' Jim said. 'I'm with yore judgment, as a general thing, but not on this deal. I was lookin' at them hosses t'other day in the court-house yard, an' the Chester brass-band come along. Now, a average hoss,' Jim said, 'will either git scared or break an' run at a sound like that, but three o' them things you got this mornin' struck up a regular jig an' capered about the lot kickin' up the'r heels as if they was in a ring jumpin' over red strips o' cloth.'

"Well, folks," old Wrinkle continued, "you kin always tell a born trader by his not bein' in a hurry to unload, an' Alf is that way. While we all was settin' thar Pete Hepworth come in at the front, an' while he was on his way to us Alf said: 'You fellers hold yore tongues. That feller is itchin' fer a deal; I had my eye on 'im at the sale.'

"Pete leaned agin the platform-scales an' talked about the weather an' crops, an' then he said, kinder offhand, to Alf: 'I had a sort o' idea o' biddin' on that pile o' old planks, but when the sheriff lumped 'em in with that fine tent it let me out. I want to build me a cowhouse an' wagon-shed.'

"'I didn't care for the tent,' Alf said, an' he filled his pipe from a china bowl on the desk an' made Pomp fetch 'im a match. 'It was them planks I was after, an' I was bound to have 'em. They are smooth, ready-dressed, long-leaf, heart-pine boards, one an' a quarter by ten, with the ends sawed square an' seasoned by folks settin' on 'em under cover for three or four years—never had a nail driv' in 'em, nuther.'

"'Well, I never thought they was as good as all that,' Pete said, 'but what are you holdin' 'em at?'

"'I hain't thought much about it,' Alf said. 'I hain't much of a hand to jump at a trade. It railly does my eyes good to look at lumber like that these days when the best timber you kin git is full o' sap an' worm-holes. How would twenty-five dollars for the pile look to you?'

"'Why,' said Pete, with a funny look at me an' Jim, 'you only paid eleven for the tent an' planks together.'

"That hain't got a thing to do with yore deal an' mine,' Alf said, an' he turned an' axed Jim some'n about shippin' some chickens to Augusta that Jim didn't seem to know how to answer.

"'I think it is purty steep,' Pete said. 'I've got time to build now, an' it 'ud take a month to git an order sawed out at the mill, so I'll have to take it'; an' as he was countin' out the cash he laffed an' said: 'I've got an apology to make to you, Alf. Back at the sale I remarked that you was a born idiot, but I don't believe it now. You are a big fish amongst minnows.'

"An' when Pete had left Alf winked at us an' said, 'You fellers lie low an' watch, an' if I don't double my money on every item I bought to-day I'll buy new hats fer you both.'"



CHAPTER XIII

The purchase of the circus furnished amusement for the village for many a day afterward. During the month that followed the event every citizen who had any appreciation for the droll things of life looked in at the store and had some dry remark to make in regard to the deal. Fred Dill, the clerk of the court and wag of the place, had a new suggestion to make each day as he went to his work. There were certain village freaks he declared who would be drawing-cards on the road and who would work simply for their board and clothes.

But Henley was wisely keeping his own counsel. His underlying wisdom began to show itself one day early in June when there was a widely advertised sale of horses in the square. Farmers came for miles around to sell, swap, or buy, and buyers for city persons were on hand with plenty of ready money. The strangers in town saw nothing remarkable in the fact, but the knowing ones stood open-mouthed when Henley's negro assistants led six well-groomed horses into the square. The Chester band played in the balcony of the court-house, and Henley's exhibit kept gay and sprightly step to the music, as if glad to be once more in their accustomed element. The mane of each animal was decorated with a blue ribbon bow, to which was fastened a card holding the price asked. In no case was it low, and yet when the day was over Henley had completely sold out, and in the presence of many admiring witnesses whom he could hardly shake off he had banked a prodigious roll of currency.

The tide of opinion had turned. From ridicule it had swept with eager-eyed conviction to vast local pride in Henley as a native product. From that day on the remaining items of the circus property were regarded with growing interest. Would Henley actually triumph all through? became the question the villagers asked one another as if it were a game they, themselves, were playing. There was much general discussion over what, after all, really was the "hardest stock" of the lot, and the general consensus of opinion had decided that it was perhaps the three wagons, which were too heavy and cumbersome for any ordinary use. And this view was held till one day when the well-dressed representative of a gang of men working on a new railway over the mountain came and took a look at the wagons. They were almost too heavy, he said, but they might be made to answer his purpose in trucking ties along the new road. He had offered twice as much as Henley had paid for them, and yet the latter's laugh of open derision could have been heard across the street.

"I see you don't want my wagons," he smiled, as he cordially patted the stranger on the shoulder. "You want your company to spend their money on them light, painted things that bust in the sun and break down if you run 'em on anything but a plank floor."

The customer thought too well of himself to realize that he was under Henley's spell. "How much do you hold them at?" he asked.

Henley mentioned a price which was fully four times what they had cost him, and he did it in a tone of supreme contempt for the smallness of the figures. He added that he would never dream of letting them go so low, but that he had no place to store them and didn't care to ship them to Atlanta.

"Well, I'll take them," the man said. "I reckon neither of us will lose by it."

"Well, you won't, there's one thing certain about that," was the agreeable seal Henley put on the deal as he watched the railroad man draw out his check-book.

"I really did need one more," the purchaser remarked, "and I'm sorry you only had three."

"Hold on, hold on," Henley said, as the other was shaking the ink down into the tip of his fountain-pen. "Let me study a minute. You see that lion-cage standing on that vacant lot across the street. Now, I'll tell you what I'll do. The wagon the cage is on is pine-plank like them you've bought. The lot it stands on belongs to Seth Woods, the shoemaker; his shop is right around the corner behind the post-office. I put the thing there without his consent, intending to move it right away. I can't get away from here right at this minute, but if you'll step in and ask him if he will consent to let the cage rest on his land awhile I'll have a carpenter take the cage part off and you may have the wagon at the same low figure as the others."

It was one of Henley's best dodges—this raising of apparent obstacles between a customer and his own munificent proposals in the customer's behalf. He had learned early in life that nothing so completely clinched a trade as making a party to it work to bring it about. The man's eyes twinkled as he consented. He hastened out and returned in a moment to say that the shoemaker, with whom he had left an order for a pair of boots, was perfectly willing for his neighbor to use the lot as long as he liked, as he had given up all hope of ever being able to build a shop on it, as had been his plans when he bought the property.

"Well, then, you can draw your check for the whole amount," said Henley, in the same uneventful tone that always preceded his reception of money. "I'll let the cage set on the edge of the sidewalk. Maybe I can induce the town council to use it as a calaboose. The one they've got ain't strong enough by half."

The report of the four-wheeled transfer went over the village before nightfall, and the next morning, for the first time, Fred Dill looked in on Henley without a smile or a joke. He eyed the storekeeper, as he stood behind the show-case smoking a cigar, with a new and wondering respect. Fred was beginning to see largely manifested in Henley the very qualities which were wofully missing from his own merry and shiftless make-up. He counted on his mental digits the remaining items of the defunct circus—the tent, the clown's pony and cart, and the lion's den standing open-doored like a wheelless furniture-van across the street. And even while Dill stood there, telepathically apologetic for his past bantering in the presence of so much incarnate shrewdness and foresight, little Sammy Malthorn, the twelve-year-old son of the wealthiest planter in the village, came in, as he had been doing several times a day for a week past. His voice quivered with youthful triumph as he looked eagerly across the show-case at the smoker.

"Well," he announced, "papa says I may have 'em. You can charge it on his account. It was twenty-five dollars, you said."

"Yes, twenty-five to you, Sammy boy," Henley laughed easily. "Pomp will go with you to the stable and hitch 'im up. You'd better let me put in a ten-cent box of axle-grease for them wheels. If you haven't got the dime handy I can add it on the bill. I'd hate to see as fine a rig as that going through town squeaking like a rusty wheelbarrow."

"All right," responded the proud owner of the pony and cart. "Pomp will get it for me."

"Good Lord!" Fred Dill said in his throat, and he went at once to Seth Woods's shoe-shop, where there was a group of loafers, and told the last bit of news. "I begin to think, boys," he said, "that Alf Henley is goin' to make the only money that dang circus ever made. Jest think of it—think of a big circus, hippodrome, menagery, an' side-shows tourin' the whole United States an' Canada without a cent of profit, an' a mountain storekeeper in a measly hole like this gitting rich out of its remains without turning his hand over or losin' a minute's sleep. It looks like thar is some'n crooked in the universe."

"It's beca'se the Lord's bent on smitin' sech cussedness with a broad hand," said a long-faced deacon, who had come in to half-sole his own shoes with the shoemaker's tools, and sat soaking his bits of leather in a tub of dingy water.

"I mought take yore view of it ef the reward was bestowed in a different quarter," Fred said, grimly. "But Alf don't go to meetin' any oftener'n I do. Though he kin send up as good a prayer as the next one when they force 'im to it. Boys, I'm curious to see what he will do with the tent an' lion's cage. Nothin' would surprise me now. He's dead sure to git profit out of 'em."



CHAPTER XIV

That very evening Henley took even another step in his amusing enterprise. He returned to the store after supper and sat writing letters till about eight o'clock. Then he got up, brushed his clothes, and made Pomp polish his boots, and adjusted his black string tie before a glass over the water-pail and basin. Then he went out and walked leisurely up the street till he came to the dark stairway of a little public hall over a feed-store. He ascended the steps with a respectful tread and entered the hall. It was furnished with crude unpainted benches and lighted by kerosene lamps in concave-mirrored brackets on the white walls. At the end stood a table holding a pitcher of water, a goblet, and a Bible, and behind the table sat an earnest-eyed, middle-aged evangelistic preacher, who bowed and smiled in agreeable surprise at the new-comer. The room held fifty or sixty men and women, all silently awaiting the beginning of the services. Henley seated himself on the front bench nearest the preacher, and put his hat on the floor, and dropped his handkerchief into it.