"That's all gay, mother; 'tain't the parson I'm going after, it's the surveyor."

He shut the door on the last word and went away whistling. Not that he was merry; as his horse started he set his teeth, smote in the spurs, and cleared the paling fence at a bound.

The surveyors were Champion and Shotwell. John worked with them. To his own surprise he was the life of the party. Some nights they camped. They sang jolly songs together; but often Shotwell would say:

"O Champion, I'll hush if you will; we're scaring the wolves. Now, if you had such a voice as John's—Go on, March, sing 'Queen o' my Soul.'"

John would sing; Shotwell would lie back on the pine-needles with his eyes shut, and each time the singer reached the refrain, "Mary, Mary, queen of my soul," the impassioned listener would fetch a whoop and cry, "That's her!" although everybody had known that for years the only "her" who had queened it over Shotwell's soul was John's own Fannie Halliday.

"Now, March, sing, 'Thou wert the first, thou aht the layst,' an' th'ow yo' whole soul into it like you did last night!"

"John," said Champion once, after March had sung this lament, "You're a plumb fraud. If you wa'n't you couldn't sing that thing an' then turn round and sing, 'They laughed, ha-ha! and they quaffed, ha-ha!'"

"Let's have it!" cried Shotwell. "Paass tin cups once mo', gen'lemen!"—tink—tink—

"March," said Champion, "if you'll excuse the personality, what's changed you so?"

John laughed and said he didn't think he was changed, but if he was he reckoned it was evolution. Which did not satisfy Shotwell, who had "quaffed, ha-ha!" till he was argumentative.

"Don't you 'scuse personal'ty 't all, March. I know wha's change' you. 'Tain't no 'sperience. You ain't been converted. You're gettin' ripe! 'S all is about it. Wha' changes green persimmons? 's nature; 'tain't 'sperience."

"Well, I'd like to know if sunshine an' frost ain't experiences," retorted Champion.

"Some experiences," laughed John, "are mighty hot sunshine, and some are mighty hard frosts." To which the two old soldiers assented with more than one sentimental sigh as the three rolled themselves in their blankets and closed their eyes.

When the survey was done they made a large colored map of everything, and John kept it in a long tin tube—what rare times he was not looking at it.

"How short-sighted most men are! They'll have lands to dispose of and yet not have maps made! How the devil do they expect ever"—etc. Sometimes he smiled to himself as he rolled the gorgeous thing up, but only as we smile at the oddities of one whom we admire.

He opened an office. It contained a mantel-piece, a desk, four chairs, a Winchester rifle, and a box of cigars. The hearth and mantel-piece were crowded with specimens of earths, ores, and building stones, and of woods precious to the dyer, the manufacturer, the joiner and the cabinet-maker. Inside the desk lay the map whenever he was, and a revolver whenever he was not—"Out. Will be back in a few minutes."

On the desk's top were more specimens, three or four fat old books from Widewood, and on one corner, by the hour, his own feet, in tight boots, when he read Washington's Letters, Story on the Constitution, or the Geology of Dixie. What interested Suez most of all was his sign. It professed no occupation. "John March." That was all it proclaimed, for a time, in gilt, on a field of blue smalts. But one afternoon when he was—"Out of town. Will be back Friday"—some Rosemont boys scratched in the smalts the tin word, Gentleman.

"Let it alone, John," said the next day's Courier. "It's a good ad., and you can live up to it." It stayed.



XXXVII.

WISDOM AND FAITH KISS EACH OTHER

It came to pass in those days that an effort to start a religious revival issued from Suez "University." It seems the "Black-and-Tannery," as the Rosemont boys called it, was having such increase in numbers that its president had thought well to give the national thanks-giving day special emphasis on the devotional side. Prayer for gifts of grace to crown these temporal good fortunes extended over into a second and third evening, black young women and tan young men asked to be prayed for, the president "wired" glad news to the board in New York, the board "wired" back, "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward!"—just ten words, economy is the road to commendation—meetings were continued, and the gray-headed black janitor, richest man in the institution, leading in prayer, promised that if the Lord would "come down" then and there, "right thoo de roof," he himself would pay for the shingles!

Since corner-stone day the shabby-coated president had not known such joy. In the chapel, Sunday morning, he read the story of the two lepers who found the Syrian camp deserted in the siege of Samaria; and preached from the text, "We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace.... So they came and called unto the porter of the city." That afternoon he went to Parson Tombs. The pastor was cordial, brotherly; full of tender gladness to hear of the "manifestations." They talked a great while, were pleased with each other, and came to several kind and unexpected agreements. They even knelt and prayed together. As to the president's specific errand—his proposal for a week of union revival meetings in Parson Tomb's church, with or without the town congregation, the "university students" offering to occupy only the gallery—the pastor said that as far as he was concerned, he was much disposed to favor it.

"Why, befo' the wa' ow slaves used to worship with us; I've seen ow gallery half full of 'm! And we'd be only too glad to see it so again—for we love 'em yet, seh—if they wouldn't insist so on mixin' religion an' politics. I'll consult some o' my people an' let you know."

When he consulted his church officers that evening only two replied approvingly. One of them was the oldest, whitest haired man in the church. "Faw my part," he said, "I don't think the churches air a-behavin' theyse'ves like Christians to the niggehs anywheres. I jest know ef my Lawd an' Master was here in Dixie now he'd not bless a single one of all these separations between churches, aw in churches, unless it's the separation o' the sexes, which I'm pow'ful sorry to see that broke up. I'm faw invitin' them people, dry-so, an' I don't give a cent whether they set upstairs aw down"—which was true.

The other approving voice was young Doctor Grace.

"Brethren, I believe in separating worshippers by race. But when, as now, this is so fully and amicably provided for, I would have all come together, joined, yet separated, to cry with one shout, 'Lord, revive us!' And he'll do it, brethren! I feel it right here!" He put his hand on the exact spot.

Garnet spoke. "Brother Grace, you say the separation is fully provided for—where'll the white teachers of our colored brethren sit? If they sit down-stairs we run the risk of offending some of our own folks; if they sit in the gallery that's a direct insult to the whole community. It'll not be stood. When colored mourners come up to the front—h-they'll come in troops—where'll you put 'em?"

"I'd put them wherever there's room for them," was the heroic reply.

"Oh, there'd be room for them everywhere," laughed Garnet, "for as far as our young folks are concerned, the whole thing would be a complete frazzle. Why, you take a graceless young fellow, say like John March. How are you going to get him to come up here and kneel down amongst a lot of black and saddle-colored bucks and wenches?—I word it his way, you understand. No, sir, as sure as we try this thing, we'll create dissension—in a church where everything now is as sweet and peaceful as the grave."

"Of course we mustn't have dissensions," said Parson Tombs.

Mr. Usher, who spoke last and very slowly, said but a word or two. He agreed with Brother Garnet. And yet he believed this was a message from on high to be up and a-doin'. "This church, brethren, has jest got to be replaastered, an' I don't see how we goin' to do it 'ithout we have a outpourin' o' the spirit that'll give us mo' church membehs."

So the good parson dropped the matter, and saw how rightly he had followed the divine guidance when only a day or two later the "university" insulted and exasperated all Suez by enrolling three young white women from Sandstone. The Courier, regretting to state that this infringed no statute, deprecated all violence, and while it extolled the forbearance of the people, yet declared that an education which educated backward, and an institution which sought to elevate an inferior race by degrading a superior, would compel the people to make laws they would rather not enact. The Black-and-Tannery's effort for a union revival meeting lay at the door of "our church," said Garnet smilingly to Sister Proudfit, "as dead as Ananias." The kind pastor was troubled.

Yet he was gladdened again when Barbara, on horseback, brought word from "pop-a" that he had found half a dozen of his students praying together for the conversion of their fellows, and that the merest hint of revival meetings in Suez had been met by them with such zeal that he saw they were divinely moved. "Get thee up, brother," the Major's note ended, "for there is a sound of abundance of rain."

"Is it good news?" asked Barbara. The white-haired man handed her the note, joyfully, and stood at her saddle-bow watching her face as she gravely read it.

"Bless the Lord," he said, "and bless you, too, my daughter, faw yo' glad tidin's. I'll see Mary and Martha Salter and Doctor Grace right off, and get ready to ketch the blessed shower. May the very first droppin's fall on you, my beautiful child. I've heard what a wise an' blessed help you've been to yo' father since yo'—here lately. Ain't you a-goin' to give yo' heart to Jesus, daughter?"

She met his longing look with the same face as before; not blankly, yet denying, asking, confessing nothing. Truth there, but no fact.

"Well, good-by," said the old man, "I believe you're nearer the kingdom now than you know." His awkward kindness brought her nearer still.

Thus the revival began at Rosemont. The two congregations joined counsel, and decided to hold the meetings in Parson Tombs's church.

"I'm proud, Brother Tombs—or, rather, I'm grateful," said Garnet. "I look on this as a divine vindication against the missionary solicitude of an alien institution's ambitious zeal. My brethren, it's a heavenly proof of the superior vitality of Southern Christianity."

But they decided not to begin at once. Mary Salter thought they should, and so did the unmarried pastor of the other church, who, they said, was "sweet on her."

"All we need is faith!" said Miss Mary.

"No, it's not," was Miss Martha's calm response, "we need a little common sense." She said the two pastors ought to preach at least two Sunday sermons, each "pointed toward the projected—that is to say expected—showers of blessing."

"Sort o' take the people's temperature," put in Doctor Grace, but she ignored him. By that time, she said, it would be too near Christmas to start anything of the kind before——

"Why, Christmas, Sister Martha, think what Christmas is? It ought to be just the time!"

"Yes, but it isn't."

"I think Miss Martha's right," said Parson Tombs, very sweetly to Mary; "and I think," turning as affectionately to Martha, "that Miss Mary's right, too. We need faith and wisdom. The Lord promises both, and so we must use all we can uv both. Now, if we can begin a couple of days before New Year, so's to have things agoin' by New Year's eve, I think we'll find that wisdom and faith have kissed each other."

Miss Martha and Sister Tombs smiled softly at the startling figure. Miss Mary and the unmarried pastor dropped their eyes. But when Doctor Grace said, fervently, "That sounds good!" all admitted the excellence of Parson Tombs's suggestion.



XXXVIII.

RUBBING AGAINST MEN

About three in the afternoon on the last day of the year John March was in the saddle loping down from Widewood.

He was thinking of one of the most serious obstacles to the furtherance of his enterprise: the stubborn hostility of the Sandstone County mountaineers. To the gentlest of them it meant changes that would make game scarcer and circumscribe and belittle their consciously small and circumscribed lives; to the wilder sort it meant an invasion of aliens who had never come before for other purpose than to break up their stills and drag them to jail. As he came out into the Susie and Pussie pike he met a frowsy pinewoodsman astride a mule, returning into the hills.

"Howdy, Enos." They halted.

"Howdy, Johnnie. Well, ef you ain't been a-swappin' critters ag'n, to be sho'! Looks mighty much like you a-chawed this time, less'n this critter an' the one you had both deceives they looks a pow'ful sight."

John expressed himself unalarmed and asked the news.

"I ain't pick up much news in the Susie," said Enos. "Jeff-Jack's house beginnin' to look mos' done. Scan'lous fine house! Mawnstus hayndy, havin' it jined'n' right on, sawt o', to old Halliday's that a way. Johnnie, why don't you marry? You kin do it; the gal fools ain't all peg out yit."

"No," laughed John, "nor they ain't the worst kind, either."

"Thass so; the wuss kine is the fellers 'at don't marry 'em. Why, ef I was you, I'd have a wife as pooty as a speckle' hound pup, an' yit one 'at could build biscuits an' cook coffee, too! An' I'd jess quile down at home in my sock feet an' never git up, lessen it wus to eat aw go to bed. I wouldn't be a cavortin' an' projeckin' aroun' to settle up laynds which they got too many settlehs on 'em now, an' ef you bring niggehs we'll kill 'em, an' ef you bring white folks we'll make 'em wish they was dead."

The two men smiled good-naturedly. March knew every word bespoke the general spirit of Enos's neighbors and kin; men who believed the world was flat and would trust no man who didn't; who, in their own forests, would shoot on sight any stranger in store clothes; who ate with their boots off and died with them on.

"Reckon I got to risk it," said John; "can't always tell how things 'll go."

"Thass so," drawled Enos. "An' yit women folks seem like evm they think they kin. I hear Grannie Sugg, a-ridin' home fum church, 'llow ef Johnnie March bring air railroad 'ithin ten mile' o' her, he better leave his medjer 'ith the coffin man."

"Tell her howdy for me, will you, Enos?" said John; and Enos said he would.

Deeply absorbed, but clear in bloody resolve, March walked his horse down the turnpike in the cold sunshine and blustering air. He heard his name and looked back; had he first recognized the kindly voice he would not have turned, but fled, like a partlet at sight of the hawk, from Parson Tombs.

"Howdy, John! Ought to call you Mister March, I reckon, but you know I never baptized you Mister." They moved on together. "How's yo' maw?"

John said she was about as usual and asked after the parson's folks.

"O they all up, thank the Lawd. Mr. March, this is the Lawd's doin' an' mahvellous in ow eyes, meetin' up with you this way. I was prayin' faw it as I turned the bend in the road! He's sent me to you, Mr. March, I feel it!"

March showed distress, but the parson continued bright.

"I jest been up to get Brother Garnet to come he'p us in ow protracted meet'n', an' to arrange to let the college boys come when they begin school ag'in, day after to-morrow. Mr. March, I wish you'd come, won't you? to-night!"

"I couldn't very well come to-night, Mr. Tombs. I—I approve of such meetings. I think it's a very pleasant way to pass—" he reddened. "But I'm too busy——"

"This is business, Mr. March! The urgentest kind! It's the spirit's call! It may never call again, brotheh! What if in some more convenient season Gawd should mawk when yo' fear cometh?"

The young man drooped like a horse in the rain, and the pastor, mistaking endurance for contrition, pressed his plea. "You know, the holy book says, Come, faw all things ah now ready; it don't say all things will ever be ready again! The p'esumption is they won't! O my dear young brotheh, there's a wrath to come—real—awful—everlasting—O flee from it! Come to the flowing fountain! One plunge an' yo' saved! Johnnie—do I make too free? I've been prayin' faw you by name faw years!"

"O you hadn't ought to have done that, sir! I wa'n't worth it."

"Ah! yes you air! Johnnie, I've watched yo' ev'y step an' stumble all yo' days. I've had faith faw you when many a one was savin' you was jess bound to go to the bad—which you know it did look that way, brotheh. But, s' I, Satan's a-siftin' of him! He's in the gall o' bitterness jess as I was at his age!"

"You! Ha-ha! Why, my dear Mr. Tombs, you don't know who you're talking about!"

"Yes, I do, brotheh. I was jess so! An' s' I, he'll pull through! His motheh's prayers 'll prevail, evm if mine don't! An' now, when ev'ybody sees you a-changin' faw the better——"

"Better! Great Sc——"

"Yes, an' yet 'ithout the least sign o' conversion—I say, s' I, it's restrainin' grace! Ah! don't I know? Next 'll come savin' grace, an' then repentance unto life. Straight is the way, an' I can see right up it!"

"Why, Mr. Tombs, you're utterly wrong! I've only learned a little manners and a little sense. All that's ever restrained me, sir, was lack of sand. The few bad things I've kept out of, I kept out of simply because I knew if I went into 'em I'd bog down. It's not a half hour since I'd have liked first-rate to be worse than I am, but I didn't have the sand for that, either. Why, sir, I'm worse to-day than I ever was, only it's deeper hid. If men went to convict camps for what they are, instead of what they do, I'd be in one now."

"Conviction of sin! Praise Gawd, brotheh, you've got it! O bring it to-night to the inquirer's seat!"

But the convicted sinner interrupted, with a superior smile: "I've no inquiries to offer, Mr. Tombs. I know the plan of salvation, sir, perfectly! We're all totally depraved, and would be damned on Adam's account if we wa'n't, for we've lost communion with God and are liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and the pains of hell forever; but God out of his mere good pleasure having elected some to everlasting life, the rest of us—O I know it like a-b-c! Mother taught it to me before I could read. Yes, I must, with grief and hatred of my sin, turn from it unto God—certainly—because God, having first treated the innocent as if he were guilty, is willing now to treat the guilty as if he were innocent, which is all right because of God's sovereignty over us, his propriety in us, and the zeal he hath for his own worship—O——

"But, Mr. Tombs, what's the use, sir? Some things I can repent of, but some I can't. I'm expecting a letter to-day tha'll almost certainly be a favorable answer to an extensive proposition I've made for opening up my whole tract of land. Now, I've just been told by one of my squatters that if I bring settlers up there he'll kill 'em; and I know and you know he speaks for all of them. Well, d' you s'pose I won't kill him the minute he lifts a hand to try it?" The speaker's eyes widened pleasantly. He resumed:

"There's another man down here. He's set his worm-eaten heart on something—perfect right to do it. I've no right to say he sha'n't. But I do. I'm just honing to see him to tell him that if he values his health he'll drop that scheme at the close of the year, which closes to-day."

"O John, is that what yo' father—I don't evm say yo' pious mother—taught you to be?"

"No, sir; my father begged me to be like my mother. And I tried, sir, I tried hard! No use; I had to quit. Strange part is I've got along better ever since. But now, s'pose I should repent these things. 'Twouldn't do any good, sir. For, let me tell you, Mr. Tombs, underneath them all there's another matter—you can't guess it—please don't try or ask anybody else—a matter that I can't repent, and wouldn't if I could! Well, good-day, sir, I'm sure I reciprocate your——"

"Come to the meeting, my brotheh. You love yo' motheh. Do it to please her."

"I don't know; I'll see," replied John, with no intention of seeing, but reflecting with amused self-censure that if anything he did should visibly please his mother, such a result would be, at any rate, unique.



XXXIX.

SAME AFTERNOON

Suez had never seen so busy a winter. Never before in the same number of weeks had so much cotton been hauled into town or shipped from it. Goods had never been so cheap, gross sales so large, or Blackland darkeys and Sandstone crackers so flush.

And naturally the prosperity that worked downward had worked upward all the more. Rosemont had a few more students than in any earlier year; Montrose gave her young ladies better molasses; the white professors in the colored "university," and their wives, looked less starved; and General Halliday, in spite of the fact that he was part owner of a steamboat, had at last dropped the title of "Agent." Even John March had somehow made something.

Barbara, in black, was shopping for Fannie. Johanna was at her side. The day was brisk. Ox-wagons from Clearwater, mule-teams from Blackland, bull-carts from Sandstone, were everywhere. Cotton bales were being tumbled, torn, sampled, and weighed; products of the truck-patch and door-yard, and spoils of the forest, were changing hands. Flakes of cotton blew about under the wheels and among the reclining oxen. In the cold upper blue the buzzards circled, breasted the wind, or turned and scudded down it. From chimney tops the smoke darted hither and yon, and went to shreds in the cedars and evergreen oaks. On one small space of sidewalk which was quiet, Johanna found breath and utterance.

"Umph! dis-yeh town is busy. Look like jess ev'ybody a-makin' money." She got her mistress to read a certain sign for her. "Jawn Mawch, Gen'lemun!—k-he-he!—dass a new kine o' business. An' yit, Miss Barb, I heah Gen'l Halliday tell Miss Fannie 'istiddy dat Mr. Mawch done come out ahade on dem-ah telegraph pole' what de contractors done git sicken' on an' th'ow up. He mus' be pow'ful smart, dat Mr. Mawch; ain't he, Miss Barb?"

"I don't know," murmured Barbara; "anybody can make money when everybody's making it." She bent her gaze into a milliner's window.

The maid eyed her anxiously. There were growing signs that Barbara's shopping was not for the bride-elect only, but for herself also, and for a long journey and a longer absence.

"Miss Barb, yondeh Mr. Mawch. Miss Barb, he de hayn'somess mayn in de three counties!"

"Ridiculous! Come, make haste." Haste was a thing they were beginning to make large quantities of in Suez. It has some resemblance to speed.

"Miss Garnet, pardon me." March gave the Rosemont bow, she gave the Montrose. "Don't let me stop you, please." He caught step.

"Is General Halliday in town? I suppose, of course, you've seen Miss Fannie this morning?" His boyish eyes looked hungry for a little teasing. She stopped in a store doorway. Her black garb heightened the charm of her red-brown hair, and of the countenance ready enough for laughter, yet well content without it.

"Yes. I'm shopping for her now." Her smiling lip implied the coming bridal, but her eyes told him teasing was no longer in order. General Halliday was in Blackland, she said, but would be back by noon. March gave the Rosemont bow, she gave the Montrose, Johanna unconsciously courtesied.

In the post-office John found two letters. One he saw instantly was from Leggett. He started for his office, opening the other, which was post-marked Boston. It ran:

"MY DEAR MR. MARCH.—My father has carefully considered your very clear and elaborate plan, and, while he freely admits his judgment may be wrong, he deems it but just to be perfectly frank with you."

The reader's step ceased. A maker of haste jostled him. He did not know it. His heart sank; he lost the place on the page. He leaned against an awning-post and read on:

"He feels bound to admire a certain masterly inventiveness and courage in your plan, but is convinced it will cost more than you estimate, and cannot be made at the same time safe and commercially remunerative."

There was plenty more, but the wind so ruffled the missive that, with unlifted eyes, he folded it. He looked across the corner of the court-house square to his office, whose second month's rent was due, and the first month's not yet paid. He saw his bright blue sign with the uncommercial title, which he had hoped to pay the painter for to-day. For, had his proposition been accepted, the letter was to have contained a small remittance. A gust of wind came scurrying round the post-office corner. Dust, leaves, and flakes of cotton rose on its wave, and—ah!—his hat went with them.

Johanna's teeth flashed in soft laughter as she waited in a doorway. "Run," she whispered, "run, Mr. Jawn Mawch, Gen'lemun. You so long gitt'n' to de awffice hat cayn't wait. Yass, betteh give it up. Bresh de ha'r out'n yo' eyes an' let dat-ah niggeh-felleh ketch it. K-he! I 'clare, dat's de mos' migracious hat I eveh see! Niggeh got it! Dass right, Mr. Mawch, give de naysty niggeh a dime. Po' niggeh! now run tu'n yo' dime into cawn-juice."

At his desk March read again:

"We appreciate the latent value of your lands. Time must bring changes which will liberate that value and make it commercial; but it was more a desire to promote these changes than any belief in their nearness which prompted my father's gifts to Rosemont College and Suez University. Not that he shares the current opinion that you are having too much politics. Progress and thrift may go side by side with political storms, and I know he thinks your State would be worse off to-day if it could secure a mere political calm.

"In reply to your generous invitation to suggest changes in your plan, I will myself venture one or two questions.

"First—Is not the elaborateness of your plan an argument against it? Dixie is not a new, wild country; and therefore does not your scheme—to establish not only mines, mills and roads, but stores, banks, schools and churches under the patronage and control of the company—imply that as a community and commonwealth you are, in Dixie, in a state of arrested development?

"Else why propose to do through a private commercial corporation what is everywhere else done through public government—by legislation, taxation, education, and courts? Cannot—or will not—your lawmakers and taxpayers give you their co-operation?

"The spirit of your plan is certainly beyond criticism. It seeks a common welfare. It does not offer swift enrichment to the moneyed few through the use of ignorant labor unlifted from destitution and degradation, but rather the remuneration of capital through the social betterment of all the factors of a complete community. But will the plan itself pay? Have not the things around you which paid been those which cared little if savings-bank, church or school lived or died, or whether laws or customs favored them?

"Suppose that on your own lands your colony should seem for a time to succeed, would you not be an island in an ocean of misunderstanding and indifference? If you should need an act of county or township legislation, could you get it? Is this not why capital seeks wilder and more distant regions when it would rather be in Dixie?

"I make these points not for their own sake, but to introduce a practical suggestion which my father is tempted to submit to you. And this, it may surprise you to find, is based upon the contents of the paper handed you as I was leaving Suez, by the colored man, Leggett, whose peculiar station doubtless makes it easy for him to see relations and necessities which better or wiser men, from other points of view, might easily overlook.

"This man would make your scheme as public as you would make it private, and my father is inclined to think that if public interest, action, and credit could be enlisted as suggested in Leggett's memorandum, your problem would have new attractions much beyond its present merely problematic interest, and might find financial backers. Alliance with Leggett is, of course, out of the question; but if you can consent and undertake to exploit your lands on the line of operation sketched by him we can guarantee the pecuniary support necessary to the effort, and you may at once draw on us at sight for the small sum mentioned in your letter, if your need is still urgent. With cordial regard,

"Yours faithfully,

"HENRY FAIR."

March started up, but sat again and gazed at the missive.

"Well, I will swear!" He smiled, held it at arm's length, and read again facetiously. "'Alliance with Leggett is, of course, out of the question; but if you can consent and undertake to exploit your lands on the line of operation sketched by him——'

"Now, where's that nigger's letter?—I wonder if I—" a knock at the door—"come in!—could have dropped it when my hat—O come in—ha! ha!—this isn't a private bedroom; I'm dressed."



XL.

ROUGH GOING

"Ah! Mr. Pettigrew, why'n't you walk right in, sir? I wasn't at prayer."

Mr. Pettigrew, his voice made more than usually ghostly by the wind and a cold, whispered that he thought he had heard conversation.

"O no, sir, I was only blowing up my assistant for losing a letter. Why, well, I'll be dog—You picked it up in the street, didn't you? Well, Mr. Pettigrew, I'm obliged to you, sir. Will you draw up a chair. Take the other one, sir; I threw that one at a friend the other day and broke it."

As the school-teacher sat down John dragged a chair close and threw himself into it loungingly but with tightly folded arms. Dinwiddie hitched back as if unpleasantly near big machinery. John smiled.

"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Pettigrew. I've been wanting a chance to say something to you for some time, sir."

Pettigrew whispered a similar desire.

"Yes, sir," said John, and was silent. Then: "It's about my mother, sir. Your last call was your fourth, I believe." He frowned and waited while the pipe-clay of Mr. Pettigrew's complexion slowly took the tint of old red sandstone. Then he resumed: "You used to tell us boys it was our part not so much to accept the protection of the laws as to protect them—from their own mistakes no less than from the mistakes of those who owe them reverence—much as it becomes the part of a man to protect his mother. Wasn't that it?"

The school-master gave a husky assent.

"Well, Mr. Pettigrew, I'm a man, now, at least bodily—I think. Now, I'm satisfied, sir, that you hold my mother in high esteem—yes, sir, I'm sure of that—don't try to talk, sir, you only irritate your throat. I know you think as I do, sir, that one finger of her little faded hand is worth more than the whole bad lot of you and me, head, heart, and heels."

The listener's sub-acid smile protested, but John—

"I believe she thinks fairly well of you, sir, but she doesn't really know you. With me it's just the reverse. Hm! Yes, sir. You know, Mr. Pettigrew, my dear mother is of a highly wrought imaginative temperament. Now, I'm not. She often complains that I've got no more romance in my nature than my dear father had. She idealizes people. I can't. But the result is I can protect her against the mistakes such a tendency might even at this stage of life lead her into, for they say the poet's heart never grows old. You understand."

The school-master bowed majestically.

"My mother, Mr. Pettigrew, can never love where she can't idealize, nor marry where she can't love; she's too true a woman for that. I expect you to consider this talk confidential, of course. Now, I don't know, sir, that she could ever idealize you, but against the bare possibility that she might, I must ask you not to call again. Hm! That's all, sir."

Mr. Pettigrew rose up ashen and as mad as an adder. His hair puffed out, his eyes glistened. John rose more leisurely, stepped to the hearth, picked up a piece of box stuff and knocked a nail out of one end.

"I'll only add this, sir: If you don't like the terms, you can have whatever satisfaction you want. But I remember"—he produced a large spring-back dirk-knife, sprung it open and began curling off long parings from the pine stick—"that in college, when any one of us vexed you, you took your spite out on us, and generally on me, in words. That's all right. We were boys and couldn't hold malice." A shaving fell upon Mr. Pettigrew's shoulder and stayed there. "But once or twice your venomous contempt came near including my father's name. Still that's past, let it go. But now, if you do take your spite out in words be careful to let them be entirely foreign to the real subject, and be dead sure not to involve any name but mine. Or else don't begin till you've packed your trunk and bought your railroad ticket; and you'd better have a transatlantic steamer ticket, too."

Mr. Pettigrew had drawn near the door. With his hand on it he hissed, "You'll find this is not the last of this, sir."

"I reckon it is," drawled John, with his eyes on his whittling. As the door opened and shut he put away his knife, and was taking his hat when his eye fell upon Cornelius's letter. He opened and read it.

The writing was Leggett's, but between the lines could be caught a whisper that was plainly not the mulatto's.

He was ready, he wrote, "to interjuce an' suppote that bill to create the Three Counties Colonization Company, Limited—which I has fo shawten its name an takened out the tucks. The sed company will buy yo whole Immense Track, paying for the same one third 1/3 its own stock—another one third 1/3 to be subscribened by private parties—an the res to be takened by the three counties and paid for in Cash to the sed Company Limited—which the sed cash to be raised by a special tax to be voted by the People. This money shell be used by the sed Company Limited to construc damns an sich eloquent an discomojus impertinences which then they kin sell the sed lans an impertinences to immigraters factorians an minors an in that means pay divies on the Stock an so evvybody get mo or less molasses on his finger an his vote Skewered. Thattle fetch white immigration an thattle ketch the white-liner's vote. But where some dever an as soon as any six miles square shell contain twenty white children of school Age the sed Company Limited shell be boun to bill an equip for them a free school house. An faw evvy school house so billden sed Company Limited shell be likewise boun to bill another sommers in the three Counties where a equal or greater number of collared children are without one. Thattle skewer the white squatter and Nigger vote."

The next clause—there was only a line or two besides—brought an audible exclamation from the reader: "Lassly faw evvy sich school house so bilt the sed Co. Limited shell pay a sum not less than its cost to some white male college in the three counties older then the sed Company Limited."

John marvelled. What was Garnet doing or promising, that Leggett should thus single out Rosemont for subsidies? And who was this in the letter's closing line—certainly not Garnet—who would "buy both fists full" of stock as soon as the bill should pass? He stepped out and walked along the windy street immersed in thought.

"John!"—General Halliday beckoned to him. The General and Proudfit were pushing into the lattice doors of a fragrant place whose bulletin announced "Mock Turtle Soup and Venison for Lunch To-day." March joined them. "Had your lunch, John? I heard you were looking for me."

"Well, yes, but there's no hurry." The three stood and ate, talking over incidents of war times, with John at a manifest disadvantage, and presently they passed from the luncheon trestles to the bar.

"No, Proudfit, if Garnet hadn't come in on our left just then and charged the moment he did we'd have lost the whole battery. Garnet was a poor soldier in camp, you're right; but on the field you'd only to tease him and he'd fight like a wild bull."

They drank, lighted cigars, and sauntered out toward the General's office. "John, I've read what you wrote me. I can't see it. We'll never colonize any lands in Dixie, my boy, till we've changed the whole system of laws under which we rent land and raise crops. You might as well try to farm swamp lands without draining them."

"Why, General, my scheme doesn't include plantations at all."

"Yes, it does; Dixie's a plantation State, and you can't make your little patch of it prosper till our planting prospers—can he, Proudfit?"

The Colonel laughed. "No go, General; I'm not going to side with you. Our prosperity, all around, hangs on the question whether you and the darkey may tax us and spend the taxes as you please, or we shall tax ourselves and spend the taxes as we please."

"Ah, Proudfit, you mean whether you may keep the taxes low enough to hold the darky down or let them be raised high enough to lift him up. Walk in, gentlemen. Proudfit, take the rocking-chair."

But the Colonel stood trying to return the General's last thrust, and John was bored. "General, all I want to see you about is to say that I'm going down into Blackland in a day or two to get as many darkies as I can to settle on my lands, and if you'll tell me the ones that are in your debt, I'll have nothing to do with them unless it is to tell them they've got to stay where they are."

Proudfit whirled and stared. The General gave a low laugh.

"Why, John, that sounds mighty funny to come from you. Would you do such a thing as that?—run off with another man's niggers?"

John bit his lip and looked at his cigar. "Are they yours, General?"

"By Jove! my son, they're not yours! O! of course, you've got the legal—pshaw! I'm not going to dispute an abstraction with you. Go and amuse yourself; you can't get 'em; the niggers that don't owe won't go; that's the poetry of it. I'd rather you'd take the fellows that owe than the one's that don't; but you won't get either kind."

"I can try, General." "No, sir, you can't!" exclaimed Proudfit. His cigar went into the fireplace with a vicious spat, and his eyes snapped. "Ow niggehs ah res'less an' discontented enough now, and whether you'll succeed aw not you shan't come 'round amongst them tryin' to steal them away! Damned if we don't run you out of the three counties! So long, General!" He went by March to the door.

John stood straight, his jaws set, chin up, eyes down. Halliday, by grimaces, was adjuring him to forbear. "But, Colonel Proudfit," he said—Proudfit paused—"you'll not insist on the word 'steal?'"

"You can call it what you damn please, sir, but you mustn't do it." The speaker passed out, leaving the door invitingly ajar.

The General caught John's arm—"Wait, I want to see you."

"I'll be back in a minute, General."

"My boy, the grave's full of nice fellows going to be back in a minute. Son John, there's only one thing I'm thoroughly ashamed of you for——"

"I can see you half a dozen better, General; let me go."

"You've no need to go; Proudfit's coming right back; he's only gone for his horse. There's plenty of time to hear the little I've got to say. John March, I'm ashamed of this reputation you've got for being quick on the trigger. O, you're much admired for it—by both sexes! Ye gods! John, isn't it pitiful to see a fellow like you not able to keep a kindly contempt for the opinion of fools! My dear boy—my dear boy! you'll never be worth powder enough to blow you to the devil till you've learned to let the sun go down on your wrath!"

John smiled and dropped his eyes, and the General, with an imperative gesture detaining some one at the young man's back, spoke on. "John, the old year's dying. For God's sake let it die in peace. Yes, and for your own sake, and for the sake of us old murderers of the years long dead, let as many old things as will die with it. I don't say bury anything alive—that's not my prescription; but ease their righteous death and give them a grave they'll stay in."

"General, all right! the Colonel may go for the present, but I'll tell you now, and I'll soon show him, that whatever the laws of my State give me leave to do I'll do if I choose, even if it's to help black men do what white men say shan't be done." John reached behind him for the latch.

His mentor smiled queerly. "Yes, even if it's to float a scheme drawing twice as much water as we've got on our political sandbar. Ah! John March, don't you know that the law's permission is never enough? Better get all the permissions you can, and turn your 'I' into the most multitudinous 'we' you can possibly make it. Seven legislatures can't dig you too much channel."

March's reply was cut short by a voice behind him, which said:

"You can have the Courier's permission."

As John wheeled about, Jeff-Jack came a step forward and Barbara Garnet shrank against a window.

"Well, Miss Garnet," laughed March, as Ravenel conversed with Halliday, "I was absorbed, wa'n't I? You and Miss Fannie going to watch the old year out and the new year in to-night?"

"No, sir, we're only going to the revival meeting," replied Barbara, with mellow gravity. "All bad people are cordially invited, you know. I reckon I've got to be there."

"Why, Miss Garnet, my name's Legion, too. I didn't know we were such close kin." He said good-day and departed, mildly wondering what the next incident would be. The retiring year seemed to be rushing him through a great deal of unfinished business.



XLI.

SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY

It was really a daring stroke, so to time the revival that the first culmination of interest should be looked for on New Year's eve. On that day business, the dry sorts, would be apt to decline faster than the sun, and the nearness of New Year would make men—country buyers and horsemen in particular—social, thirsty, and adventurous.

In fact, by the middle of the afternoon the streets around the court-house square were wholly given up to the white male sex. One man had, by accident, shot his own horse. Another had smashed a window, also by accident, and clearly the fault of the bar-keeper, who shouldn't have dodged. Men, and youths of men's stature, were laying arms about each other's necks, advising one another, with profanely affectionate assumptions of superiority, to come along home, promising on triple oath to do so after one more drink, and breaking forth at unlooked-for moments in blood-curdling yells. Three or four would take a fifth or seventh stirrup cup, mount, start home, ride round the square and come tearing up to the spot they had started from, as if they knew and were showing how they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix, though beyond a prefatory catamount shriek, the only news any of them brought was that he could whip anything of his size, weight and age in the three counties. The Jews closed their stores.

Proudfit had gone home. Enos had met a brother and a cousin, and come back with them. John March, with his hat on, sat alone at his desk with Fair's and Leggett's letters pinned under one elbow, his map under the other, and the verbal counsels of Enos, General Halliday, and Proudfit droning in his ears. He sank back with a baffled laugh.

He couldn't change a whole people's habit of thought, he reflected. Even the Courier followed the popular whim by miles and led it only by inches. So it seemed, at least. And yet if one should try to make his scheme a public one and leave the Courier out—imagine it!

And must the Courier, then, be invited in? Must everybody and his nigger "pass their plates?" Ah! how had a few years—a few months—twisted and tangled the path to mastership! Through what thickets of contradiction, what morasses of bafflement, what unimperial acceptance of help and counsel did that path now lead! And this was no merely personal fate of his. It was all Dixie's. He would never change his politics; O no! But how if men's politics, asking no leave of their owners, change themselves, and he who does not change ceases to be steadfast?

Behold! All the way down the Swanee River, spite of what big levees of prevention and draining wheels of antiquated cure, how invincibly were the waters of a new order sweeping in upon the "old plantation."

And still the old plantation slumbered on below the level of the world's great risen floods of emancipations and enfranchisements whereon party platforms, measures, triumphs, and defeats only floated and eddied, mere drift-logs of a current from which they might be cast up, but could not turn back.

He bent over the desk. "Jove!" was all he said; but it stood for the realization of the mighty difference between the map under his eyes and what he was under oath to himself to make it. What "lots" of men—not mountaineers only, but Blacklanders, too—had got to change their notions—notions stuck as fast in their belief as his mountains were stuck in the ground—before that map could suit him. To think harder, he covered his face with his hands. The gale rattled his window. He failed to hear Enos just outside his door, alone and very drunk, prying off the tin sign of John March, Gentleman. He did not hear even the soft click of the latch or the yet softer footsteps that brought the drunkard close before his desk; but at the first word he glanced up and found himself covered with a revolver.

"Set still," drawled Enos. In his left hand was the tin sign. "This yeh trick looked ti-ud a-tellin' lies, so I fotch it in."

Without change of color—for despair stood too close for fear to come between—John fixed his eyes upon the drunken man's and began to rise. The weapon followed his face up.

"Enos, point that thing another way or I'll kill you." He took a slow step outward from the desk, the pistol following with a drunken waver more terrible than a steady aim. Enos spoke along its barrel, still holding up the sign.

"Is this little trick gwine to stay fetch in? Say 'yass, mawsteh,' aw I blow yo' head off."

But John still held the drunkard's eye. As he took up from his desk a large piece of ore, he said, "Enos, when a man like you leaves a gentleman's door open, the gentleman goes and shuts it himself."

"Yass, you bet! So do a niggah. Shell I shoot, aw does you 'llow——"

"I'm going to shut the door, Enos. If you shoot me in the back I swear I'll kill you so quick you'll never know what hurt you." With the hand that held the stone, while word followed word, the speaker made a slow upward gesture. But at the last word the stone dropped, the pistol was in March's hand, it flashed up and then down, and the drunkard, blinded and sinking from a frightful blow of the weapon's butt, was dragging his foe with him to the floor. Down they went, the pistol flying out of reach, March's knuckles at Enos's throat and a knee on his breast.

"'Nough," gasped the mountaineer, "'nough!"

"Not yet! I know you too well! Not till one of us is dead!" John pressed the throat tighter with one hand, plunged the other into his pocket, and drew and sprung his dirk. The choking man gurgled for mercy, but March pushed back his falling locks with his wrist and lifted the blade. There it hung while he cried,

"O if you'd only done this sober I'd end you! I wish to God you wa'n't drunk!"

"'Nough, Johnnie, 'nough! You air a gentleman, Johnnie, sir."

"Will you nail that sign up again?"

"Yass."

The knife was shut and put away, and when Enos gained his feet March had him covered with his magazine rifle. "Pick that pistol up wrong end first and hand it to me! Now my hat! 'Ever mind yours! Now that sign."

The corners of the tin still held two small nails.

"Now stand back again." March thrust a finger into his vest-pocket. "I had a thumb-tack." He found it. "Now, Enos, I'll tack this thing up myself. But you'll stand behind me, sir, so's if anyone shoots he'll hit you first, and if you try to get away or to uncover me in the least bit, or if anybody even cocks a gun, you die right there, sir. Now go on!"

The sun was setting as they stepped out on the sidewalk. The mail hour had passed. The square and the streets around it were lonely. The saloons themselves were half deserted. In one near the Courier office there was some roystering, and before it three tipsy horsemen were just mounting and turning to leave town by the pike. They so nearly hid Major Garnet and Parson Tombs coming down the sidewalk on foot some distance beyond, that March did not recognize them. At Weed and Usher's Captain Champion joined the Major and the parson. But John's eye was on one lone man much nearer by, who came riding leisurely among the trees of the square, looking about as if in search of some one. He had a long, old-fashioned rifle.

"Wait, Enos, there's your brother. Stand still."

John levelled his rifle just in time. "Halt! Drop that gun! Drop it to the ground or I'll drop you!" The rifle fell to the earth. "Now get away! Move!" The horseman wheeled and hurried off under cover of the tree-trunks.

"Gentlemen!" cried Parson Tombs, "there'll be murder yonder!" He ran forward.

"Brother Tombs," cried Garnet, walking majestically after him, "for Heaven's sake, stop! you can't prevent anything that way." But the old man ran on.

Champion, with a curse at himself for having only a knife and a derringer, flew up a stair and into the Courier office.

"Lend me something to shoot with, Jeff-Jack, the Yahoos are after John March."

Ravenel handed from a desk-drawer, that stood open close to his hand, a six-shooter. Champion ran down-stairs. Ravenel stepped, smiling, to a window.

March had turned his back and was putting up the sign, pressing the nails into their former places with his thumb. Men all about were peeping from windows and doors. Champion ran to the nearest tree in the square and from behind it peered here and there to catch sight of the dismounted horseman, who was stealing back to his gun.

"Keep me well covered, you lean devil," growled John to Enos, "or I'll shoot you without warning!" Working left-handed, he dropped the thumb-tack. With a curse between his teeth he stooped and picked it up, but could not press it firmly into place. He leaned his rifle against the door-post, drew the revolver and used its butt as a hammer. Champion saw an elbow bend back from behind a tree. The mountaineer's brother had recovered his gun and was aiming it. The captain fired and hit the tree. March whirled upon Enos with the revolver in his face, the drunkard flinched violently when not to have flinched would have saved both lives, and from the tree-trunk that Champion had struck a rifle puffed and cracked. March heard the spat of a bullet, and with a sudden horrid widening of the eyes Enos fell into his bosom.

"Great God! Enos, your brother didn't mean to——"

The only reply was a fixing of the eyes, and Enos slid through his arms and sank to the pavement dead.

Champion had tripped on a root and got a cruel fall, losing his weapon in a drift of leaves; but as the brother of Enos was just capping his swiftly reloaded gun—

"Throw up your hands!" cried Parson Tombs, laying his aged eye along the sights of March's rifle; the hands went up and in a moment were in the clutch of the town marshal, while a growing crowd ran from the prisoner and from Champion to John March, who knelt with Parson Tombs beside the dead man, moaning,

"O good Lord! good Lord! this needn't 'a' been! O Enos, I'd better 'a' killed you myself! O great God, why didn't I keep this from happening, when I——"

Someone close to him, stooping over the dead under pretence of feeling for signs of life, murmured, "Stop talking." Then to the Parson, "Take him away with you," and then rising spoke across to Garnet, "Howdy, Major," with the old smile that could be no one's but Ravenel's. He and Garnet walked away together.

"Died of a gunshot wound received by accident," the coroner came and found. John March and the minister had gone into March's office, but Captain Champion's word was quite enough. It was nearly tea-time when John and the Parson came out again. The sidewalk was empty. As John locked the door he felt a nail under his boot, picked it up, and seeming not to realize his own action at all, stepped to the sidewalk's edge, found a loose stone and went back to the door, all the time saying,

"No, sir, I've made it perfectly terrible to think of God and a hereafter, but somehow I've never got so low down as to wish there wa'n't any. I—" his thumb pressed the nail into its hole in the corner of his sign—

"I do lots of things that are wrong, awfully wrong, though sometimes I feel—" he hammered it home with the stone—"as if I'd rather"—he did the same for the other two and the thumb-tack—"die trying to do right than live,—well,—this way. But—" tossing away the stone and wiping his hands—"that's only sometimes, and that's the very best I can say."

They walked slowly. The wind had ceased. By the Courier office John halted.

"Supper! O excuse me, Mr. Tombs really! I—I can't sir!—I—I'll eat at the hotel. I've got to see a gentleman on business. But I pledge you my word, sir, I'll come to the meeting." They shook hands. "You're mighty kind to me, sir."

The gentleman he saw on business was Ravenel. They supped together in a secluded corner of the Swanee Hotel dining-room, talking of Widewood and colonization, and by the time their cigars were brought—by an obsequious black waiter with soiled cuffs—March felt that he had never despatched so much business at one sitting in his life before.

"John," said Ravenel as they took the first puff, "there's one thing you can do for me if you will: I want you to stand up with me at my wedding."

March stiffened and clenched his chair. "Jeff-Jack, you oughtn't to've asked me that, sir! And least of all in connection with this Widewood business, in which I'm so indebted to you! It's not fair, sir!"

Ravenel scarcely roused himself from reverie to reply, "You mustn't make any connection. I don't."

"Well, then, I'll not," said March. "I'll even thank you for the honor. But I don't deserve either the honor or the punishment, and I simply can't do it!"

"Can't you 'hide in your breast every selfish care and flush your pale cheek with wine'? Every man has got to eat a good deal of crow. It's not so bad, from the hand of a friend. It shan't compromise you."

With head up and eyes widened John gazed at the friendly-cynical face before him. "It would compromise me; you know it would! Yes, sir, you may laugh, but you knew it when you asked me. You knew it would be unconditional surrender. I don't say you hadn't a right to ask, but—I'm a last ditcher, you know."

"Well," drawled Ravenel, pleasantly, when they rose, "if that's what you prefer——"

"No, I don't prefer it, Jeff-Jack; but if you were me could you help it?"

"I shouldn't try," said Ravenel.



XLII.

JOHN HEADS A PROCESSION

By the afternoon train on this last day of the year there had come into Suez a missionary returning from China on leave of absence, ill from scant fare and overwork.

General Halliday, Fannie, and Barbara were at tea when Parson Tombs brought in the returned wanderer. The General sprang to his feet with an energy that overturned his chair. "Why, Sammie Messenger, confound your young hide! Well, upon my soul! I'm outrageous proud to see you! Fan—Barb—come here! This is one of my old boys! Sam, this is the daughter of your old Major; Miss Garnet. Why, confound your young hide!"

Parson Tombs giggled with joy. "Brother Messenger is going to add a word of exhortation to Brother Garnet's discourse," he said with grave elation, and when the General execrated such cruelty to a weary traveler, he laughed again. But being called to the front door for a moment's consultation with the pastor of the other church, he presently returned, much embarrassed, with word that the missionary need not take part, a prior invitation having been accepted by Uncle Jimmie Rankin, of Wildcat Ridge. Fannie, in turn, cried out against this substitution, but the gentle shepherd explained that what mercy could not obtain official etiquette compelled.

"Tell us about John March," interposed the General. "They say you saved his life."

"I reckon I did, sir, humanly speakin'." The Parson told the lurid story, Fannie holding Barbara's hand as they listened. The church's first bell began to ring and the Parson started up.

"If only the right man could talk to John! He's very persuadable to-night and he'd take fum a stranger what he wouldn't take fum us." He looked fondly to the missionary, who had risen with him. "I wish you'd try him. You knew him when he was a toddler. He asks about you, freck-wently."

"You'd almost certainly see him down-town somewhere now," said Fannie.

Barbara gave the missionary her most daring smile of persuasion.

* * * * *

March was found only a step or two from Fannie's gate.

"Well, if this ain't a plumb Providence!" laughed the Parson. The three men stopped and talked, and then walked, chatted, and returned. The starlight was cool and still. At the Parson's gate, March, refusing to go in, said, yes, he would be glad of the missionary's company on a longer stroll. The two moved on and were quite out of sight when Fannie and Barbara, with Johanna close behind them, came out on their way to church.

"It would be funny," whispered Fannie, "if such a day as this should end in John March's getting religion, wouldn't it?"

But Barbara could come no nearer to the subject than to say, "I don't like revivals. I can't. I never could." She dropped her voice significantly—"Fannie."

"What, dear?"

"What were you going to say when Johanna rang the tea-bell and your father came in?"

"Was I going to say something? What'd you think it was?"

"I think it was something about Mr. Ravenel."

"O well, then, I reckon it wasn't anything much, was it?"

"I don't know, but—Johanna, you can go on into church." They loitered among the dim, lamp-lit shadows of the church-yard trees. "You said you were not like most engaged girls."

"Well, I'm not, am I?"

"No, but why did you say so?"

"Why, you know, Barb, most girls are distressed with doubts of their own love. I'm not. It's about his that I'm afraid. What do you reckon's the reason I've held him off for years?"

"Just because you could, Fannie."

"No, my dear little goosie, I did it because he never was so he couldn't be held off. I knew, and know yet, that after the wedding I've got to do all the courting. I don't doubt he loves me, but Barb, love isn't his master. That's what keeps me scared." They went in.

The service began. In this hour for the putting away of vanities the choir was dispensed with and the singing was led by a locally noted precentor, a large, pert, lazy Yankee, who had failed in the raising of small fruits. His zeal was beautiful.

"Trouble! 'Tain't never no trouble for me to do nawthin', an' even if 'twas I'd do it!" He sang each word in an argumentative staccato, and in high passages you could see his wisdom teeth. Between stanzas he spoke stimulating exhortations: "Louder, brethren and sisters, louder; the fate of immortal souls may be a-hangin' on the amount of noise you make."

As hymn followed hymn the church filled. All sorts—black or yellow being no sort—all sorts came; the town's best and worst, the country's proudest and forlornest; the sipper of wine, the dipper of snuff; acrid pietist, flagrant reprobate, and many a true Christian whose God-forgiven sins, if known to men, neither church nor world could have pardoned; many a soul that under the disguise of flippant smiles or superior frowns staggered in its darkness or shivered in its cold, trembling under visions of death and judgment or yearning for one right word of guidance or extrication; and many a heart that openly or secretly bled for some other heart's reclaim. And so the numbers grew and the waves of song swelled. The adagios and largos of ancient psalmody were engulfed and the modern "hyme toons," as the mountain people called them, were so "peert an' devilish" that the most heedless grew attentive, and lovers of raw peanuts, and even devotees of tobacco, emptied their mouths of these and filled them with praise.

Garnet had never preached more effectively. For the first time in Barbara's experience he seemed to her to feel, himself, genuinely and deeply the things he said. His text was, "Be sure your sin will find you out." Men marvelled at the life-likeness with which he pictured the torments of a soul torn by hidden and cherished sin. So wonderful, they murmured, are the pure intuitions of oratorical genius! Yet Barbara was longing for a widely different word.

Not for herself. It was not possible that she should ever tremble at any pulpit reasoning of temperance and judgment from the lips of her father. Three things in every soul, he cried, must either be subdued in this life or be forever ground to powder in a fiery hereafter; and these three, if she knew them at all, were the three most utterly unsubdued things that he embodied—will, pride, appetite. The word she vainly longed for was coveted for one whose tardy footfall her waiting ear caught the moment it sounded at the door, and before the turning of a hundred eyes told her John March had come and was sitting in the third seat behind her.

In the course of her father's sermon there was no lack of resonant Amens and soft groanings and moanings of ecstasy. But Suez was neither Wildcat Ridge nor Chalybeate Springs, and the tempering chill of plastered ceiling and social inequalities stayed the wild unrestraint of those who would have held free rule in the log church or under the camp-meeting bower. The academic elegance of the speaker's periods sobered the ardor which his warmth inspired, and as he closed there rested on the assemblage a silence and an awe as though Sinai smoked but could not thunder.

Barbara hoped against hope. At every enumeration of will, pride, and appetite she saw the Pastor's gaze rest pleadingly on her, and in the stillness of her inmost heart she confessed the evil presence of that unregenerate trinity. Yet when he rose to bid all mourners for sin come forward while the next hymn was being sung, she only mourned that she could not go, and tried in vain not to feel, as in every drop of her blood she still felt, there behind her, that human presence so different from all others on earth. "This call," she secretly cried, "this hour, are not for me. Father in Heaven! if only they might be for him."

Before the rising precentor could give out his hymn Uncle Jimmie Rankin had sprung to his feet and started "Rock of Ages" in one of the wildest minors of the early pioneers. At once the strain was taken up on every side, the notes swelled, Uncle Jimmie clapped hands in time, and at the third line a mountain woman in the gallery, sitting with her sun-bonnet pulled down over her sore eyes, changed a snuff-stick from her mouth to her pocket, burst into a heart-freezing scream, and began to thrash about in her seat. The hymn rolled on in stronger volume. The Yankee precentor caught the tune and tried to lead, but Uncle Jimmie's voice soared over him with the rapture of a lark and the shriek of an eagle, two or three more pair of hands clapped time, the other Suez pastor took a trochee, and the four preachers filed down from the high pulpit, singing as they came. Garnet began to pace to and fro in front of it and to exhort in the midst of the singing.

"Who is on the Lord's side?" he loudly demanded.

"Should my tears forever flow," sang the standing throng.

But no one advanced.

"Should my zeal no respite know," they sang on, and Garnet's "Whosoever will, let him come," and other calls swept across their chant like the crash of falling trees across the roar of a torrent.

"Oh, my brother, two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken and the other left; which one will you be? Come, my weary sister; come, my sin-laden brother. O, come unto the marriage! Now is the accepted time! The clock of God's patience has run down and is standing at Now! Sing the last verse again, Uncle Jimmie! This night thy soul may be required of thee! Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, the other left. O, my sweet sister, come! be the taken one!—flee as a bird! The angel is troubling the pool; who will first come to the waters? O, my unknown, yet beloved brother, whoever you are, don't you know that whosoever comes first to-night will lead a hundred others and will win a crown with that many stars? Come, brethren, sisters, we're losing priceless moments!"

Why does no one move? Because just in the middle of the house, three seats behind that fair girl whose face has sunk into her hands, sits, with every eye on them, the wan missionary from China, pleading with John March.

Parson Tombs saw the chance for a better turn of affairs. "Brethren," he cried, kneeling as he spoke, "let us pray! And as our prayers ascend if any sinner feels the dew o' grace fall into his soul, let him come forward and kneel with the Lord's ministers. Brother Samuel Messenger, lead us in prayer!"

The missionary prayed. But the footfall for which all waited did not sound; the young man who knelt beside the supplicant, with temples clutched in his hands, moved not. While the missionary's amen was yet unspoken, Parson Tombs, still kneeling, began to ask aloud,

"Will Brother Garnet——"

But Garnet was wiser. "Father Tombs," he cried "the Lord be with you, lead us in prayer yourself!"

"Amen!" cried the other pastor. He was echoed by a dozen of his flock, and the old man lifted his voice in tremulous invocation. The prayer was long. But before there were signs of it ending, the step for which so many an ear was strained had been heard. Men were groaning, "God be praised!" and "Hallelujah!" Fannie's eyes were wet, tears were welling through Barbara's fingers, mourners were coming up both aisles, and John March was kneeling in the anxious seat.



XLIII.

ST. VALENTINE'S DAY

One morning some six weeks after New Year's eve Garnet's carriage wheels dripped water and mud as his good horses dragged them slowly into the borders of Suez. The soft, moist winds of February were ruffling the turbid waters of Turkey Creek and the swollen flood of the Swanee. A hint of new green brightened every road-side, willows were full of yellow light, and a pink and purple flush answered from woods to fence-row, from fence-row to woods, across and across the three counties.

"This pike's hardly a pike at all since the railroad's started," said the Major, more to himself than to Barbara and Johanna; for these were the two rear occupants of the carriage.

"Barb, I got a letter from Fair last night. You did too, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"He'll be here next week. He says he can't stop with us this time."

Barbara was silent, and felt the shy, care-taking glance of her maid. Garnet spoke again, in the guarded tone she knew so well.

"I reckon you understand he's only coming to see if he'll take stock in this land company we're getting up, don't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Doe he know you're going to spend these two weeks at Halliday's before you go North?"

"I think he does."

The questioner turned enough to make a show of frowning solicitude. "What's the matter with you this morning? sad at the thought of leaving home?"

"No, sir"—the speaker smiled meditatively—"we only don't hit on a subject of interest to both."

The father faced to front again and urged the horses. He even raised the whip, but let it droop. Then he turned sharply and drew his daughter's glance. "Is Fair going to stay with John March?"

They sat gaze to gaze while their common blood surged up to his brows and more gradually suffused her face. Without the stir of an eyelash she let her lips part enough to murmur, "Yes."

Before her word was finished Garnet's retort was bursting from him, "Thanks to you, you intermeddling——" He was cut short by the lurch of the carriage into a hole. It flounced him into the seat from which he had half started and faced him to the horses. With a smothered imprecation he rose and laid on the whip. They plunged, the carriage sprang from the hole and ploughed the mire, and Garnet sat down and drove into the town's main avenue, bespattered with mud from head to waist.

Near the gate of the Academy grounds stood Parson Tombs talking to a youth in Rosemont uniform. The student passed on, and the pastor, with an elated face, waved a hand to Garnet. Garnet stopped and the Parson came close.

"Brother Tombs, howdy?"

"Why, howdy-do, Brother Garnet?—Miss Barb!—Johanna." He pointed covertly at the departing youth and murmured to Garnet, "He'll make ow fo'teenth convert since New Year's. And still there is room!—Well, brother, I've been a-hearin' about John March's an' yo'-all's lan' boom, but"—the good man giggled—"I never see a case o' measles break out finer than the lan' business is broke out on you!—And you don't seem to mind it no mo'n—Look here! air you a miracle o' grace, aw what air you?"

"Why, nothing, Brother Tombs, nothing! Nothing but an old soldier who's learned that serenity's always best."

The Parson turned to Barbara and cast a doting smile sidewise upon the old soldier. But Garnet set his face against flattery and changed the subject.

"Brother Tombs, speaking of John March, you know now risky it is for anybody—unless it's you—to say anything to him. Oh, I dare say he's changed, but when he hasn't been converted two months, nor a member of the church three weeks, we mustn't expect him to have the virtues of an old Christian."

"He's changed mo'n I'm at libbety to tell you, Brother Garnet. He's renounced dancing."

"Yes?—Indeed! He's quit dancing. But still he carries two revolvers."

"Why, Brother John Wesley, I—that's so. I've spoke to John about that, but—the fact is——"

Garnet smiled. "His life's in constant danger—that's my very point. The bad weather's protected him thus far, but if it should last five years without a break, still you know that as soon as it fairs off——"

"Uv co'se! Enos's kinsfolks 'll be layin' faw him behind some bush aw sett'n' fire to his house; an' so what shall he do, brother, if we say he——"

"Oh, let him shoot a Yahoo or two if he must, but I think you ought to tell him he's committing a criminal folly in asking that young Yankee, Mr. Fair, to stop with him at Widewood when he comes here next week!"

"Why, Brother Garnet! Why, supposin' that young stranger should get shot!"

"Yes, or if he should no more than see March shot or shot at! What an impression he'd carry back North with him! It's an outrage on our whole people, sir, and God knows!—I speak reverently, my dear brother—we've suffered enough of that sort of slander! I'd tell him, myself, but—this must be between us, of course——"

"Why, of co'se, Brother Garnet," murmured the Pastor and bent one ear.

"It's a pure piece of selfish business rivalry on John's part toward me. He's asked Fair to his house simply to keep him away from Rosemont."

"Why, Brother Garnet! Rosemont's right where he'd ought to go to!"

"In John's own interest!" said Garnet.

"In John's—you're right, my brother! I'm suprised he don't see it so!"

"O—I'm not! He's a terribly overrated chap, Brother Tombs. Fact is—I say it in the sincerest friendship for him—John's got no real talents and not much good sense—though one or two of his most meddlesome friends have still less." The Major began to gather up the reins.

"Well, I'll try to see him, Brother Garnet. I met him yeste'day—Look here! I reckon that young man's not goin' to stop with him after all. He told me yeste'day he was going to put a friend into Swanee Hotel because Sisteh March felt too feeble, aw fearful, aw somethin', an' he felt bound to stand his expenses."

"And so he"—the Major paused pleasantly. "How much did you lend him?"

"Aw! Brother Garnet, I didn't mean you to know that! He had to put shuttehs on his sitt'n'-room windows, too, you know, to quiet Sisteh March's ve'y natu'al fears. I only promised to lend him a small amount if he should need it."

"O, he'll need it," said the Major, and included Barbara in his broad smile. "Still, I hope you'll let him have it. If he doesn't return it to you I will; I loved his father. John should have come to me, Brother Tombs, as he's always done. I say this to you privately, you know. I'll consider the loan practically made to me, for we simply can't let Fair go to Widewood, even if John puts shutters on all his windows."

Again the speaker lifted his reins and the Parson drew back with a bow to Barbara, when Johanna spoke and the whole group stared after two townward-bound horsemen.

"Those are mountain people, right now," said the Parson.

"Yes," replied Garnet, "but they're no kin to Enos." He moved on to Halliday's gate.

It was the fourteenth of the month. The Major stayed in town for the evening mail and drove home after dark, alone, but complacent, almost jovial. He had got three valentines.



XLIV.

ST. VALENTINE'S: EVENING

At Widewood that same hour there was deep silence. Since the first of the year the only hands left on the place were a decrepit old negro and wife, whom even he pronounced "wuthless," quartered beyond the stable-yard's farther fence. For some days this "lady" had been Widewood's only cook, owing to the fact that Mrs. March's servant, having a few nights before seen a man prowling about the place, had left in such a panic as almost to forget her wages, and quite omitting to leave behind her several articles of the Widewood washing.

Within the house John March sat reading newspapers. His healthy legs were crossed toward the flickering hearth, and his strong shoulders touched the centre-table lamp. The new batten shutters excluded the beautiful outer night. His mother, to whom the mail had brought nothing, was sitting in deep shadow, her limp form and her regular supply of disapproving questions alike exhausted. Her slender elbow slipped now and then from the arm of her rocking-chair, and unconscious gleams of incredulity and shades of grief still alternated across her face with every wrinkling effort of her brows to hold up her eyelids.

John was not so absorbed as he seemed. He felt both the silence and the closed shutters drearily, and was not especially cheered by the following irrelevant query in the paragraph before him:

"Who—having restored the sight of his jailer's blind daughter and converted her father from idolatry—was on this day beheaded?"

Yet here was a chance to be pleasant at the expense of a man quite too dead to mind.

"Mother," he began, so abruptly that Mrs. March started with a violent shudder, "this is February fourteenth. Did any ancient person of your acquaintance lose his head to-day?" He turned a facetious glance that changed in an instant to surprise. His mother had straightened up with bitter indignation, but she softened to an agony of reproach as she cried:

"John!"

"Why, mother, what?"

"Ah! John! John!" She gazed at him tearfully. "Is this what you've joined the church for? To cloak such——"

"My dear mother! I was simply trying to joke away the dismals! Why,"—he smiled persuasively—"if you only knew what a hard job it is." But the ludicrousness of her misconstruction took him off his guard, and in spite of the grimmest endeavor to prevent it, his smile increased and he stopped to keep from laughing.

Mrs. March rose, eloquent with unspoken resentment, and started from the room. At the door she cast back the blush of a martyr's forgiveness, and the next instant was in her son's big right arm. His words were broken with laughter.

"My dear, pretty little mother!" She struggled alarmedly, but he held her fast. "Why, I know the day is nothing to you, dear, less than nothing. I know perfectly well that I am your own and only valentine. Ain't I? Because you're mine now, you know, since I've turned over this new leaf."

The mother averted her face. "O my son, I'm so unused to loving words, they only frighten me."

But John spoke on with deepening emotion. "Yes, mother, I'm going to be your valentine, and yours only, as I've never been or thought of being in all my life before. I'm going to try my very best! You'll help me, won't you, little valentine mother?"

She lifted a glance of mournful derision. "Valentine me no valentines. You but increase my heart-loneliness. Ah! my self-deluded boy, your fickle pledges only mean, to my sad experience, that you have made your own will everything, and my wish nothing. Valentine me no valentines, let me go."

The young man turned abruptly and strode back to his newspapers. But he was too full of bitterness to read. He heard his mother's soft progress upstairs, and her slow step in the unlighted room overhead. It ceased. She must have sat down in the dark. A few moments passed. Then it sounded again, but so strange and hurried that he started up, and as he did so the cry came, frantic with alarm, from the upper hall, and then from the head of the stairs:

"John! John!"

He was already bounding up them. Mrs. March stood at the top, pale and trembling. "A man!" she cried, "with a gun! I saw him down in the moonlight under my window! I saw him! he's got a gun!"

She was deaf and blind to her son's beseechings to be quiet. He caught her hands in his; they were icy. He led her by gentle force down-stairs and back to her sitting-room seat.

"Why, that's all right, mother; that's what you made me put the shutters on down here for. If you'd just come and told me quietly, why, I might a' got him from your window. Did you see him?"

"I don't know," she moaned. "He had a gun. I saw one end of it."

"Are you sure it was a gun? Which end did you see, the butt or the muzzle?"

Mrs. March only gasped. She was too refined a woman to mention either end of a gun by name. "I saw—the—front end."

"He didn't aim it at you, or at anything, did he?"

"No—yes—he aimed it—sidewise."

"Sideways! Now, mother, there I draw the line! No man shall come around here aiming his gun sideways; endangering the throngs of casual bystanders!"

"Ah! John, is this the time to make your captive and beleaguered mother the victim of ribald jests?"

"My dear mother, no! it's a time to go to bed. If that fellow's still nosing 'round here with his gun aimed sideways he's protection enough! But seriously, mother, whatever you mean by being embargoed and blockaded——"

"I did not say embargoed and blockaded!"

"Why, my dear mother, those were your very words!"

"They were not! They were not my words! And yet, alas! how truly——" She turned and wept.

"O Lord! mother——"

"My son, you've broken the second commandment!"

"It was already broke! O for heaven's sake, mother, don't cave in in this hysterical way!"

The weeper whisked round with a face of wild beseeching. "O, my son, call me anything but that! Call me weak and credulous, too easily led and misled! Call me too poetical and confiding! I know I'm more lonely than I dare tell my own son! But I'm not—Oho! I'm not hysterical!" she sobbed.

So it continued for an hour. Then the lamp gave out and they went to bed.

The next morning John drove his mother to Suez for a visit of several days among her relatives, and rode on into Blackland to see if he could find "a girl" for Widewood. He spent three days and two nights at these tasks, stopping while in Blackland with—whom would you suppose? Proudfit, for all the world! He took an emphatic liking to the not too brainy colonel, and a new disrelish to his almost too sparkling wife.

As, at sunset of the third day, he again drew near Suez and checked his muddy horse's gallop at Swanee River Bridge, his heart leaped into his throat. He hurriedly raised his hat, but not to the transcendent beauties of the charming scene, unless these were Fannie Halliday and Barbara Garnet.



XLV.

A LITTLE VOYAGE OF DISCOVERIES

For two girls out on a quiet stroll, their arms about each other and their words murmurous, not any border of Suez was quite so alluring as the woods and waters seen from the parapet of this fine old stone bridge.

The main road from Blackland crossed here. As it reached the Suez side it made a strong angle under the town's leafy bluffs and their two or three clambering by-streets, and ran down the rocky margin of the stream to the new railway station and the old steamboat landing half a mile below. The bridge was entirely of rugged gray limestone, and spanned the river's channel and willow-covered sand-bars in seven high, rude arches. One Christmas dawn during the war a retreating enemy, making ready to blow up the structure, were a moment too slow, and except for the scars of a few timely shells dropped into their rear guard, it had come through those years unscathed. For, just below it, and preferable to it most of the year, was a broad gravelly ford. Beyond the bridge, on the Blackland side, the road curved out of view between woods on the right and meadows on the left. A short way up the river the waters came dimpling, green and blue in August, but yellow and swirling now, around the long, bare foot of a wooded island, that lay forever asleep in midstream, overrun and built upon by the winged Liliputians of the shores and fields.

The way down to this spot from the Halliday cottage was a grassy street overarched with low-branching evergreen oaks, and so terraced that the trees at times robbed the view of even a middle distance. It was by this way that Fannie and Barbara had come, with gathered skirts, picking dainty zigzags where, now and then, the way was wet. The spirit of spring was in the lightness of their draperies' texture and dyes—only a woman's eye would have noticed that Barbara was in mourning—and their broken talk was mainly on a plan for the celebration, on the twenty-second, not of any great and exceptionally truthful patriot's birthday—Captains Champion and Shotwell were seeing to that—but of Parson Tombs's and his wife's golden wedding.

When John March saw them, they had just been getting an astonishing amount of amusement out of the simple fact that Miss Mary Salter and the younger pastor were the committee on decorations. They were standing abreast the bridge's parapet, the evening air stirring their garments, watching the stern-wheeler, Launcelot Halliday, back out from the landing below into the fretting current for a trip down stream. John had always approved this companionship; it had tended to sustain his old illusion that Fannie's extra years need not count between her and him. But the pleasure of seeing them together now was but a flash and was gone, for something else than extra years was counting, which had never counted before. He had turned over a new leaf, as he said. On it he had subscribed with docile alacrity to every ancient grotesqueness in Parson Tombs's science of God, sin, and pardon; and then had stamped Fannie's picture there, fondly expecting to retain it by the very simple trick of garlanding it round with the irrefragable proposition that love is the fulfilling of the law! But not many days had the leaf been turned when a new and better conscience awoke to find shining there, still wet from God's own pen, the corollary that only a whole sphere of love can fulfil the law's broad circumference.

As Fannie and Barbara made their bow and moved to pass on he hurriedly raised his hat and his good horse dropped into a swift, supple walk. The bridle hand started as if to draw in, but almost at the same instant the animal sprang again into a gait which showed the spur had touched her, and was quickly out of hearing.

"Barb," murmured Fannie, "you're thinking he's improved."

"Yes, only—-"

"Only you think he'd have stopped if he'd seen us sooner. Why can't you think maybe he wouldn't? But you're not to blame; you simply have a girl's natural contempt for a boy's love. Well, a boy's love is silly; but when you see the constant kind, like John's, as sure as you live there are not many things entitled to higher respect. O Barb! I've never felt so honored by any other love that man ever offered me. He'll get over it; completely. I believe it's dying now, though it's dying hard. But the next time he loves, the girl who treats his love lightly—Let's go down in these woods and look for hepaticas. John can't bring them to me any more and Jeff-Jack never did. He sends candy. There's homage in a wild flower, Barb; but candy, oh—I don't know—it makes me ashamed."

"Why don't you tell him so?"

Fannie leaned close and whispered, "I'm afraid."

"Why, he gave me wild flowers, once."

"When? Who?" The black eyes flashed. "When did he ever give you flowers?"

"When I was five years old." They turned down a short descent into the woods.

Fannie smiled pensively. "Barb, did you notice that John——"

"Has been trading again! His love's not very constant as to horses."

"But what a pretty mare he's got! Barb, 'pon my word, when John March is well mounted, I do think, physically, he's—" The speaker hearkened. From the low place where they stood her eyes were on a level with the road. "It's him again; let's hide."

March came loping down from the bridge, slackened pace, and swept with his frowning glance the meadows on the left. Then he moved along the edge of the wood searching its sunset lights and glooms, and presently turned down into them, bending under the low boughs. And then he halted, burning with sudden resentment before the smiling, black-eyed girl who leaned against the tree, which had all at once refused to conceal her.

Neither spoke. Fannie's eyes were mocking and yet kind, and the resentment in John's turned to a purer mortification. A footstep rustled behind him and Barbara said:

"We're looking for wild flowers. Do you think we're too early?"

"No, I could have picked some this afternoon if I'd felt like it, but it's a sort o' belief with me that nobody ought to pick wild flowers for himself—ha-ha-ha!—Oh eh, Miss Garnet, I reckon I owe you an apology for charging down on you this way, but I just happened to think, after I passed you, that you could tell me where to find your father. He's president pro tem. of our land company, you know, and I want to consult him with Mr. Gamble—you know Mr. Gamble, don't you?—president of the railroad? O! of course you do! Well, he's our vice-president."

"Why, no, Mr. March, I don't know where you'll find pop-a right now. I might possibly know when I get back to the house. If it's important I could send you word."

"O no! O no! Not at all! I'll find him easily enough. I hope you'll both pardon me, Miss Fannie, but it seems as if I learned some things pow'ful slow. I ought to know by this time when two's company and three's a crowd."

Before he had finished, the two listeners had seen the remoter significance of his words, and it was to mask this that Barbara drawled—

"Why, Mr. March, that's not nice of you!"

But the young man's confusion was sufficient apology, and both girls beamed kindly on him as he presently took his leave under the delusion that his face hid his inward mortification.



XLVI.

A PAIR OF SMUGGLERS

A short way farther within the wood they began to find flowers.

"Well—yes," said Fannie, musingly. "And pop consented to be treasurer pro tem., but that was purely to help John. You know he fairly loves John. They all think it'll be so much easier to get Northern capital if they can show they're fully organized and all interests interested, you know." She stooped to pick a blossom. Barbara was bending in another direction. Two doves alighted on the ground near by and began to feed, and, except for size, the four would have seemed to an on-looker to have been very much of a kind.

Presently Fannie spoke again. "But I think pop's more and more distrustful of the thing every day. Barb, I reckon I'll tell you something."

Barbara crouched motionless. "Tell on."

"O—well, I asked pop yesterday what he thought of this Widewood scheme anyhow, and he said, 'There's money in it for some men.' 'Well, then, why can't you be one of them,' I asked him, and said he, 'It's not the kind of money I want, Fan.'"

"O pshaw, Fannie, men are always saying that about one another."

"Yes," murmured Fannie.

"Fan," said Barbara, tenderly, "do stop talking that way; you know I'm nearly as proud of your father as you are, don't you?"

"Yes, sweetheart."

"Well, then, go on, dear."

"I asked him if John was one," resumed Fannie, "and, said he, 'No, I shouldn't be a bit surprised to see John lose everything he and his mother have got.'"

Barbara flinched and was still again. "Has he told him that?"

"No, he says John's a very hard fellow to tell anything to. And, you know, Barb, that's so. I used to could tell him things, but I mustn't even try now."

"Why, Fan, you don't reckon Mr. Ravenel would care, do you?"

"Barb, I'll never know how much he cares about anything till it's too late. You can't try things on Jeff-Jack."

"I wish," softly said Barbara, "you wouldn't smile so much like him."

"Don't say anything against him, Barb, now or ever! I'm his and he's mine, and I wouldn't for both worlds have it any other way." But this time the speaker's smile was her own and very sweet. The two returned to the road.

"I asked pop," said Fannie, "where Jeff-Jack stands in this affair. He laughed and said, 'Jeff-Jack doesn't take stands, Fan, he lays low.'"

"Somebody ought to tell him."

"Tell who? Oh, John!—yes, I only wish to gracious some one would! But men don't do that sort of thing for one another. If a man takes such a risk as that for another you may know he loves him; and if a woman takes it you may know she doesn't."

"Fan," said Barbara, as they locked arms, "would it do for me to tell him?"

"No, my dear; in the first place you wouldn't get the chance. You can't begin to try to tell him till you've clean circumgyrated yourself away down into his confidence. It's a job, Barb, and a bigger one than you can possibly want. Now, if we only knew some girl of real sense who was foolish enough to be self-sacrificingly in love with him—but where are we going to find the combination?"

"And even if we could, you say no woman in love with a man would do it."

"There are exceptions, sweet Simplicity. What we want is an exception! Law, Barb, what a fine game a girl of the true stuff could play in such a case! Not having his love yet, but wanting it worse than life, and yet taking the biggest chance of losing it for the chance of saving him from the wreck of his career. O see!" They stopped on the bridge again to watch the sun's last beams gilding the waters, and Barbara asked,

"Do you believe the right kind of a girl would do that?"

"Why, if she could do it without getting found out, yes! Why, Law, I'd have done it for Jeff-Jack! You see, she might save him and win him, too; or she might win him even if she tried and failed to save him."

"But she might," said Barbara, gazing up the river, "she might even save him and still lose."

"Yes, for a man thinks he's doing well if he so much as forgives a deliverer—in petticoats. Yet still, Barb, wouldn't a real woman sooner lose by saving him, than sit still and let him lose for fear she might lose by trying to save him?"

"I don't know; you can't imagine mom-a doing such a thing, can you?"

"What! Cousin Rose? Why, of all women she was just the sort to have done it. Barb, you'd do it!" Fannie expected her friend to look at her with an expression of complimented surprise. But the surprise was her own when Barbara gave a faint start and bent lower over the parapet. The difference was very slight, as slight as the smile of fond suspicion that came into Fannie's face.

"Fannie"—still looking down into the gliding water—"how does your father think Mr. March is going to lose so much; is he afraid he'll be swindled?"

"I believe he is, Barb."

"And do you think"—the words came very softly and significantly—"that that makes it any special matter of mine that he should be warned?"

"Yes, sweetheart, I do."

"Then"—the speaker looked up with distressed resolve—"I must do what I can. Will you help me, or let me help you, rather?"

"Yes, either way, as far as I can." They moved on for a moment. Then Barbara stopped abruptly, looking much amused. "There's one risk you didn't count!"

"What's that?"

"Why, if he should mistake my motive, and——"

"What? suspect you of being——"

"A girl of the true stuff!"

"O but, sweet, how could he?"

As they laughed Fannie generously prepared to keep her guess to herself, and to imply, still more broadly, that all she imputed to her friend was the determination secretly to circumvent a father's evil designs.

Barbara roused from a reverie. "I know who'll help us, Fan,—Mr. Fair." She withstood her companion's roguish look with one of caressing gravity until the companion spoke, when she broke into a smile as tranquil as a mother's.

"Barb, Barb, you deep-dyed villain!"

The only reply of the defendant—they were once more in the shady lane—was to give her accuser a touch of challenge, and the two sprang up a short acclivity to where a longer vista opened narrowly before them. But here, as if rifles had been aimed at them, they shrank instantly downward. For in the dim sylvan light two others walked slowly before them, their heads hidden by the evergreen branches, but their feet perfectly authenticated and as instantly identified. One pair were twos, one were elevens, and both belonged to the Committee on Decorations. An arm that by nature pertained unto the elevens was about the waist that pertained unto the twos, and at the moment of discovery, as well as could be judged by certain sinuosities of lines below, there was a distance between the two pairs of lips less than any assignable quantity.



XLVII.

LEVITICUS

The two maidens were still laughing as they re-entered their gate. Fannie threw an arm sturdily around her companion's waist and sought to repeat the pantomime, but checked herself at the sight of a buggy drawing near.

It was old, misshapen, and caked with wet and dry mud, as also was the mule which drew it. In the vehicle sat three persons. Two were negro women. One of them—of advanced years—was in a full bloom of crisp calico under a flaring bonnet which must have long passed its teens. The other was young and very black. She wore a tawdry hat that only helped to betray her general slovenliness. From between them a negro man was rising and dismounting. A wide-brimmed, crackled beaver rested on his fluffy gray locks, and there was the gentleness of old age in his face.

The spring sap seemed to have started anew in the elder woman's veins. She tittered as she scrambled to rise, and when the old man offered to help her, she eyed him with mock scorn and waved him off.

"G'way fum me, 'Viticus Wisdom—gallivantin' round here like we was young niggehs!—Lawd! my time is come I cayn't git up; my bones dun tuk dis-yeh shape to staay!"

"Come, come!" said the husband, in an undertone of amiable chiding; and the buggy gave a jerk of thankful relief as its principal burden left it for the sidewalk, diffusing the sweet smell of the ironing-table.

While the younger woman was making her mincing descent, Fanny and Barbara came toward them in the walk.

"Miss Halliday," said Leviticus, lifting his beaver and bowing across the gate, "in response to yo' invite we—O bless the Lawd my soul! is that my little—Miss Barb, is that you?"

Before he could say more Virginia threw both hands high. "Faw de Lawd's sake!" She thrust her husband aside. "G'way, niggah! lemme th'oo dis-yeh gate 'fo' I go ove' it!" She snatched Barbara to her bosom. "Lawd, honey! Lawd, honey! Ef anybody 'spec' you' ole Aunt Fudjinny to stan' off an' axe her baby howdy dey bettah go to de crazy house! Lawd! Lawd! dis de fus' chance I had to hug my own baby since I been a po' ole free niggah!" She held the laughing girl off by the shoulders.

"Honey, ef it's my las' ac', I"—she snatched her close again, kissed one cheek twice and the other thrice, and held her off once more to fix upon her a tearful, ravishing gaze. "Lawd, honey, Johanna done tole me how you growin' to favo' my sweet Miss Rose, an' I see it at de fun'l when I can't much mo'n speak to you, an' cry so I cayn't hardly see you; but Lawd! my sweet baby, dough you cayn't neveh supersede her in good looks, you jess as quiet an' beautiful as de sweet-potateh floweh!

"Howdy, Miss Fannie?" She gave her hand and courtesied.

"Howdy, Uncle Leviticus?" said Barbara.

The old man lifted his hat again, bowed very low, and looked very happy. "I'm tol'able well, Miss Barb, thank the Lawd, an' hope an' trus' an' pray you're of the same complexion." Still including Barbara in his audience, he went on with an address to Fannie already begun.

"You know, Miss Fannie, yo' letteh say fo' Aunt Fudjinny an' me to come the twentieth—yass, ma'am, we understan'—but, you know, Mr. Mahch, he come down an' superscribe faw this young—ah——"

"Girl," suggested Barbara, with pretty condescension; but Fannie covertly trod on her toe and said, "lady," with a twinkle at the dowdy maiden.

"P'ecisely!" responded Leviticus to both speakers at once. "An' Mr. Mahch, he was bereft o' any way to fetch her to he's maw less'n he taken her up behime o' his saddle, an' so it seem' like the Lawd's call faw us to come right along an' bring her hencefah, an' then, if she an' his maw fin' theyse'ves agreeable, then Mr. Mahch—which his buggy happn to be here in Suez—'llow to give her his transpotes the balance o' the way to-morrow in hit."

"And you and Aunt Virginia will stay through the golden wedding as our chief butler and chief baker, as I wrote you; will you?"

"Well, er, eh"—the old man scratched his head—"thass the question, Miss Fannie. Thass what I been a-revolvin', an' I sees two views faw revolution. On one side there is the fittenness o' we two faw this work."

"It's glaring," mused Fannie.

"Flagrant," as gravely suggested Barbara.

"P'ecisely! Faw, as you say in yo' letteh, we two was chief butler an' chief baker to they wedd'n' jess fifty year' ago, bein' at that time hi-ud out to 'Squi' Usher—the ole 'Squieh, you know—by Miss Rose' motheh, which, you know, Miss Tomb' she was a Usher, daughteh to the old 'Squi' Usher, same as she is still sisteh to the present 'Squieh, who was son to the ole 'Squieh, his father an' hern. The ole 'Squieh, he married a Jasper, an' thass how come the Tombses is remotely alloyed to the Mahches on the late Jedge's side, an' to you, Miss Barb, on Miss Rose's Montgomery side, an' in these times, when cooks is sca'ce an' butlehs is yit mo' so, it seem to me—it seem to me, Miss Fannie, like yo' letteh was a sawt o'—sawt o'——"