"That's it exactly, Mr. Turrentine," responded Creed quickly. "They need to be taught what to want."

"Oh, they do, do they?" inquired Jephthah with a humorous twitch of the lips. "Well, ef you're a-goin' to set up to teach, hadn't you better have a school-house, place of a jestice's office?"

"Maybe you're right. I reckon you are—exactly right," Creed assented thoughtfully. "I'd studied about that considerable. I reckon I'm a more suitable age for a schoolmaster than for a justice; and the children—but that would take a long time; and I wanted to give the help where it was worst needed."

"Oh, well, 'tain't a hangin' matter," old Jephthah smiled at the younger man's solemn earnestness. "Ef this new fangled buildin' o' yours don't get used for a jestice's office we can turn it into a school-house; we need one powerful bad."

The desultory, sardonic, deep-voiced, soft-footed, mountain carpenters who worked leisurely and fitfully with Creed were always mightily amused by the exactness of the "town feller's" ideas.

"Why lordy! Lookee hyer Creed," remonstrated Doss Provine, over a question of matching boards and battening joints, "ef you git yo' pen so almighty tight as that you won't git no fresh air. Man's bound to have ventilation. Course you can leave the do' open all the time like we-all do; but when yo're a-holdin' co't and sech-like maybe you'll want to shet the do' sometimes—and then whar'll ye git breath to breathe?"

"I reckon Creed knows his business," put in the old man who was helping Doss, "but all these here glass winders is blame foolishness to me. Ef ye need light, open the do'. Ef somebody comes that you don't want in, you can shet it and put up a bar. But saw the walls full o' holes an' set in glass winders, an' any feller that's got a mind to can pick ye off with a rifle ball as easy as not whilst ye set by the fire of a evenin'."

He shook a reprehending head, hoary with the snows of years, and containing therefore, presumably, wisdom. He had learned the necessary points of life in his environment, and as always occurs, the younger generation seemed to him lavishly reckless.

It was only old Jephthah's criticisms that Creed really minded.

"Uh-huh," allowed Jephthah, settling his hands on his hips and surveying the yellow pine structure tolerantly; "mighty sightly for them that likes that kind o' thing. But I hold with a good log house, becaze it's apt to be square. These here town doin's that looks like a man with a bile on his ear never did ketch me. Ef ye hew out good oak or pine timber ye won't be willin' to cut short lengths for to make such foolishness."

Creed would often have explained to his critics that he did not expect to get into feuds and have neighbours pot-hunting him through his glass windows, that he needed the light from them to study or read, and that his little house was as square as any log hut ever constructed; but they lumped it all together and made an outsider of him—which hurt.

Word went abroad to the farthest confines of the Turkey Track neighbourhoods, carried by herders who took sheep, hogs, or cows up into the high-hung inner valleys of Yellow Old Bald, or the natural meadows of Big Turkey Track to turn them loose for the season, recited where one or two met out salting cattle, discussed by many a chip pile, where the willing axe rested on the unsplit block while the wielder heard how Creed Bonbright had done sot up a jestice's office and made peace between the Shallidays and the Bushareses.

"But you know in reason hit ain't a-goin' to hold," the old women at the hearthside would say, withdrawing their cob pipes to shake deprecating heads. "The Bushareses and Shallidays has been killin' each other up sence my gran'pap was a little boy. They tell me the Injuns mixed into that there feud. I say Creed Bonbright! Nothin' but a fool boy. He better l'arn something before he sets up to teach. He don't know what he's meddlin' with." All this with a pride in the vendetta as an ancient neighbourhood institution and monument.

The office of the new justice never became, as he had hoped it would, a lounging place for his passing neighbours. He had expected them to drop in to visit with him, when he might sow the good seed in season without appearing to seek an occasion for so doing. But they were shy of him—he saw that. They went on past the little yellow pine office, on their mules, or their sorry nags, or in shackling waggons behind oxen, to lounge at Nancy Card's gate as of old, or sit upon her porch to swap news and listen to her caustic comments on neighbourhood happenings. And only an occasional glance over the shoulder, a backward nod of the head, or jerk of the thumb, told the young justice that he was present in their recollection.

But there was one element of the community which showed no disposition to hold aloof from the newcomer. About this time, by twos and threes—never one alone—the virgins of the mountain-top sought Nancy Card for flower seed, soft soap recipes, a charm to take off warts, or to learn exactly from her at what season a body had better divide the roots of day lilies.

Old-fashioned roses begin blooming in the Cumberlands about the first of May, and when this time came round Nancy's garden was a thing to marvel at. The spring flowers were past or nearly so, and the advent of the roses marked the floral beginning of summer. In the forest the dogwood petals now let go and fell silently one by one through the shadowed green. But over Nancy's fence of weather-beaten, hand-rived palings tossed a snow of bloom so like that here they were not missed at all; and the mock orange adds to the dogwood's simple beauty the soul of an exquisite odour. Small, heavily thorned roses, yellow as the daffodils they had succeeded, blushing Baltimore Belles, Seven Sisters all over the ricketty porch—one who loved such things might well have taken a day's journey for sight of that dooryard in May.

"Well, I vow!" said the old woman one day peering through her window that gave on the road, "ef here don't come Huldy Spiller and the two Lusks. Look like to me I have a heap of gal company of late. Creed, you're a mighty learned somebody, cain't you tell me the whys of it?"

Creed, sitting at a little table deep in some books and papers before him, heard no word of his friend's teasing speech. It was Doss Provine, at the big fireplace heating a poker to burn a hole through his pulley-wheel, who turned toward his mother-in-law and grinned foolishly.

"I reckon I know the answer to that," he observed. "The boys is all a warnin' me that a widower is mo' run after than a young feller. They tell me I'll have to watch out."

"I say watch out—you!" cried Nancy, wheeling upon him with a comically disproportionate fury. "Jest you let me ketch you settin' up to any of the gals—you, a father with two he'pless chaps to look after, and nobody but an old woman like me, with one foot in the grave, to depend on!"

There was one girl however who, instead of multiplying her visits to the Card cabin with Creed's advent, abruptly ceased them. Judith Barrier was an uncertain quantity to her masculine household; unreasonably elated or depressed, she led them the round of her moods, and they paid for the fact that Creed Bonbright did not come across the mountain top visiting, without being at all aware of where their guilt lay. After that interview at the milking lot one thought, one emotion was with her always. Always she was waiting for the next meeting with Creed. Through the day she heard his voice or his footstep in all the little sounds of the woods, the humble noises of the farm life; and at night there was the cedar tree.

Now the cedar tree had affairs of its own. When, with the egotism of her keen, passionate, desirous youth, the girl in the little chamber under the eves listened to its voice in April, it was talking in the soft air of the vernal night about the sap which rose in its veins, spicy, resinous, odoured with spring, carrying its wine of life into the farthest green tips, till all the little twigs were intoxicated with it, and beat and flung themselves in joy. And the tree's deep note was a song of abiding trust. There was a nest building within its heart—so well hidden in that dense thicket that it was safe from the eye of any prowler. Hope and faith and a great devotion went to the building. And the tree, rich and happy in its own life, cherished generously that other life within its protecting arms. Its song was of the mating birds, the building birds, the mother joy and father joy that made the nest ready for the speckled eggs and the birdlings that should follow.

But to the listening girl the cedar tree was a harp that the winds struck—a voice that spoke in the night of love and Creed.

Finally one morning she saddled Selim and, with something in her pocket for Little Buck and Beezy, set out for Hepzibah—reckon they's nothin' so turrible strange in a body goin' to the settlement when they' out o' both needles an' bakin' soda!

As she rode up Nancy herself called to her to 'light and come in, and finally went out to stand a moment and chat; but the girl smilingly shook her head.

"I got to be getting along, thank ye," she said. "I can't stop this mornin'. You-all must come and see us, Aunt Nancy."

"Why, what's Little Buck a-goin' to do, with his own true love a-tearin' past the house like this and refusin' to stop and visit?" complained Nancy, secretly applauding the girl's good sense and dignity.

"Where is my beau?" asked Judith. "I fetched him the first June apples off the tree."

"Judy's brought apples to her beau, and now he's went off fishin' with Doss and she's got nobody to give 'em to," old Nancy called as Creed stepped from the door of his office and started across to the cabin. "Don't you want 'em, Creed?"

The tall, fair young fellow came up laughing.

"Aunt Nancy knows I love apples," he said. "If you give me Little Buck's share I'm afraid he'll never see 'em."

Judith reached in her pocket and brought out the shiny, small red globes and put them in his outstretched hand.

"I'll bring Little Buck a play-pretty from the settlement," she said softly. "He'll keer a sight more for hit than for the apples. I wish I'd knowed you liked 'em—I'd brought you more. Why don't you come over and see us and git all you want? We've got two trees of 'em."



Chapter V

The Red Rose and the Briar

ALL through April Judith's project of a play-party languished. She had to pull steadily against the elders, for not only were the men hard at it making ready for the putting in of the year's crops, but it was gardening time as well, when even the women and children are pressed in to help at the raking up and brush piling. Wood smoke from the clearing fires haunted all the hollows. Everybody was preparing for the making of the truck patch. Down on the little groups would drop a cloud and blot out the bonfire till it became the mere glowing point at the heart of a shaken opal—for if you are wise you burn brush on a rainy day.

Old Jephthah opposed the plan for the girl's festivity on another ground. "I've got no objection to a frolic, Jude," he observed quietly, on hearing the first mention of the matter, "but I wouldn't have no play-party at this house. Hit's too handy to that cussed still of Blatch's. A passel of fool boys is mighty apt to go over thar an' fill theirselves up with corn whiskey, an' the party will just about end up in a interruption."

He said no more, and Judith made no reply. Though ordinarily she would have hesitated to go against her uncle's expressed wishes, her heart was too much set on this enterprise to allow of easy checking. She made no reply, but her campaign on behalf of the merrymaking went steadily on.

"I wonder you can have the heart to git up play-parties and the like when Andy and Jeff's a-sufferin' in the jail," Pendrilla Lusk plucked up spirit to say when the plan was first mooted to her.

Andy and Jeff, the wild young hawks, with the glamour upon them of lawless, adventurous spirits, and bold, proper lovers, equally fascinated and terrified the Lusk girls—timid, fluttering pair—and were in their turn attracted to them by an inevitable law of nature.

"I don't see how it hurts the boys for us to have a dance," rejoined Judith with asperity. "If we was all to set and cry our eyes out, it wouldn't fetch 'em back on the mountain any quicker." Then with a teasing flash, "I'll tell 'em when they git home what you said, though."

"Now, Jude, you're real mean," pleaded Cliantha Lusk sinking to her knees beside Judith and raising thin little arms to clasp that young woman around the waist. "You ain't a-goin' to tell them fool boys any sech truck as that, air ye? Pendrilly jest said it for a sayin'. We'd love to come to yo' play-party, whenever it is. I say Andy and Jeff! Let 'em git out of the jail the way they got in."

This is the approved attitude of the mountain virgin; yet Cliantha's voice shook sadly as she uttered the independent sentiments, and Pendrilla furtively wiped her eyes in promising to attend the play-party.

All this was in April. By the time May came in, that dread of a belated frost which amounts almost to terror in the farmer of the Cumberlands was ended; the Easter cold and blackberry winter were over, and all the garden truck was planted. Everybody began whole-heartedly to enjoy the time of year. The leaves were full size, but still soft; the wind made hardly any noise among them. In the pasture lot and fence corners near the house, meadow flowers began to star the green. The frog chorus, so loud and jubilant in early spring, had subsided now except at night, when their treble was accompanied by the bass "chug-chug" of the bull-frogs. The mornings were vocal with the notes of yellow hammer, cuckoos; the cooing of doves, the squawk of the jay, and the drum of the big red-headed woodpecker sounded through the summer woods; while always in the cool of the day came the thrush's song. The early corn was in by mid April. About the first full moon of May the main crop was planted.

Early in June Judith, walking in the wood, brought home the splendid red wood lily, and a cluster too of "ratsbane," with its flowers like a little crown of white wax.

The spring restlessness was over throughout all the wild country; life no longer stirred and rustled; the leaves hung still in the long sunny noons. The air was clear, rinsed with frequent showers; the woods were silent except for birds and cow bells. The crops were laid by. The huckleberries ripened; the "sarvices" hung thick in the forest. Even the blackberries were beginning to turn and Andy and Jeff had been back at home more than a week, when Judith finally succeeded in getting her forces together and her guests promised. Many of them would have to walk four or five miles to sing and play for a few hours, tramping back at midnight to lie down and catch what sleep they could before dawn waked them to another day of toil. Thursday evening was set for the event. On Wednesday the Lusk girls coming in to discuss, found Judith with shining eyes and crimson cheeks, attacking the simple housework of the cabin.

"I wish't you'd sing while I finish my churnin'," the girl said, "I'm so flustered looks like I can't sca'cely do anything right."

The sisters clasped hands and raised their childish faces. Cliantha had a thin, high piping soprano like a small flute, and Pendrilla sang "counter" to it. They were repositories of all the old ballads of the mountains—ballads from Scotland, from Ireland, from England, and from Wales, that set the ferocities and the love-making of Elizabeth's time or earlier most quaintly amidst the localities and nomenclature of the Cumberlands.

"Sing 'Barb'ry Allen,'" commanded Judith as she swung the dasher with nervous energy.

The July sunshine filtered through the leaves of the big muscadine vine that covered and sheltered the tiny side porch. Bees boomed about the ragged tufts of clover and Bouncing Bet that fringed the side yard. The old hound at the chip pile blinked lazily and raised his head, then dropped it and slumbered again. Within, the big room was dim and cool. The high, thin, quavering voices celebrated the love and woe of cruel Barbara Allen. Judith's dark eyes grew soft and brooding; the nervous strokes of her dasher measured themselves more and more to the swing of the old tune.

"I don't see how anybody can be hardhearted thataway with a person they love," she said softly as the song descended to its doleful end.

The next morning Judith hurried her work that she might get through and go over to the Bonbright house, there to put in execution her long-cherished plan of cleaning it and making it fit for Creed's occupancy that night. Old Dilsey Rust, their tenant, came in to help at the Turrentine cabin always on occasions like this, or with the churning or washing; and penetrated with impatience the girl finally left her assistant in charge of matters and set forth through the woods and across the fields, the little key which she had carried ever since that morning in early April in her pocket like a talisman. At last it was to open her kingdom to her. Behind the bolt that it controlled lay not only the home of Creed's childhood, but supposably the home of his children. Judith's heart beat suffocatingly at the thought.

Halfway across she met Huldah Spiller coming up from the Far spring with a bucket of sulphur water which was held to be good for Jim Cal's rheumatism.

"Whar ye goin'?" asked Huldah, looking curiously at the broom over Judith's shoulder, the roll of cloths and the small gourd of soft soap she carried.

"I'm a-goin' whar I'm a-goin'," returned Judith aggressively. But the other only smiled. It did not suit her to be offended at that moment. Instead, "What are you goin' to wear to-night, Judy?" she inquired vivaciously. It was one of the advantages of waiting on table at a boarding house in the settlement—pieced out perhaps by the possession of red hair—that Huldah had the courage to address Judith Barrier as "Judy."

The hostess of the evening's festivities was half in the mind to pass on without reply; then her curiosity as to Huldah's costume got the better of her, and she compromised, with a laconic,

"My white frock—what are you?"

"Don't you know I went down to Hepzibah after you said you was goin' to have a play-party?" asked Huldah, tossing her head to get the red curls out of her eyes. "Well, Iley had give me fifty cents on my wages—" Huldah worked as a servant in her sister's family, which is not uncommon in the mountains—"an' I tuck it and bought me ten yard of five-cent lawn, the prettiest blue you ever put yo' eyes on."

"Blue!" A sudden shock went over Judith. She had forgotten; and here Huldah Spiller would wear a blue dress, and she—oh, the stupidity, the bat-like, doltish, blindness of it!—would be in white, because it was now too late to make a change. Out of the very tragedy of the situation she managed to pluck forth a smile.

"I was aimin' to wear blue ribbons," she said finally. It had just come into her head that she could pull the blue bow from her hat—that blue bow with which she had zealously replaced the despised and outcast red—and so make shift.

"Blue's my best feller's favourite colour," contributed Huldah, picking up the bucket which she had set down, and starting on. "He 'lows it goes fine with aurbu'n hair."

"Wade never said that," muttered Judith to herself as she took her way to the Bonbright place.

But after all one could not be long out of tune with such a summer day. The spicy odour of pennyroyal bruised underfoot, came to her nostrils like incense. Even the sickly sweet of jimson blossoms by the draw-bars of the milking lot was dear and familiar, while their white trumpets whispered of childish play-days and flower-ladies she had set walking in procession under the shadow of some big green leaf. Blue—the soft stars of spider-wort opening among the rocks reminded her of the hue; blue curls and dittany tangled at the path edge; but the very air itself was beginning to wear Creed's colour and put on that wonderful, luminous blue in which the Cumberlands of midsummer melt cerulean into a sky of lapis lazuli. Creed's colour—Creed's colour—her dark eyes misted as they searched the far reaches of the hills and found it everywhere.

Jephthah Turrentine used to say that if a man owned enough mountain land to set his foot on, he owned the whole of the sky above him; it was a truer word than this old mountain dweller could have known, since the mere possessor of a city lot, where other tall roofs cut the horizon high, must content himself with less of the welkin.

Judith opened the door, went in, closed it behind her, and gazed about. There lay over everything a fine dust; there was the look of decay which comes with disuse; and the air bore the musty odour of a shut and long uninhabited house. The Bonbright home had been a good one for the mountains, of hewn logs, and with four rooms, and two great stone chimneys. Inside was the furniture which Mary Gillenwaters brought to it as a bride when her mountain lover came down to Hepzibah and with the swift ardour of his tribe—this Bonbright's fires of eloquence were all kindled upon the altar of his mating romance—charmed the daughter of its one merchant. These added to the already fairly complete plenishings, many of which had come over the mountains from Virginia when Sevier opened up the new State, gave an air of abundance, even of sober elegance to the room.

Reverently Judith moved among the dumb witnesses and servitors of Bonbright generations. Here was the spinning-wheel, here the cards, and out in the little room off the porch stood the loom. She had dreams of replacing these with a sewing machine. Nobody wove jeans any more—but a good carpet-loom now, that might be made useful. Unwilling to hang the bedding on bushes for fear of a chance tear from twig or thorn, she rigged a line in the back yard, and spread quilt and homespun blanket, coarse white sheets and pillowcases that were yellowing with age, out for the glad gay wind to play with, for the sunshine to sweeten.

"What a lot of feather beds!" she murmured as she tallied them over. "That there ticking is better than you can buy in the stores. My, ain't these light and nice!"

All the warm, sunny afternoon she toiled at her self-appointed labour of love. She swept and dusted, she scrubbed and cleaned, with capable fingers, proud of the strength and skill that made her a good housewife; then bringing in the fragrant, homely fabrics, made up the beds and placed all back in due order.

"He's boun' to notice somebody's been here and put things to rights," she said over and over to herself. "If it looks sightly, and seems like home, mebbe he'll give out the notion of stayin' at Nancy Card's, and come and live here." She brooded on the bliss of the idea as she worked.

Under the great mahogany four-poster in the front room was slipped a trundle-bed that she drew out and looked at with fond eyes. No doubt Creed's boyish head had lain there once. She wished passionately that she had known him then, all unaware that we never do know our lovers when they and we are children. Even those playfellows who are destined to be mates find, all on a day, that the familiar companion who has grown up beside each has changed into quite a different person.

She rolled the trundle-bed back into place and turned to lift a pile of bedding that lay apparently on a chest. When it was raised it revealed the clumsy old cradle that had rocked three generations of Bonbrights. She stood looking down at it with quickening pulse, then reached a fluttering hand and touched its small pillow tenderly. Here had rested that golden head, so many years ago; beside it his mother had sat and rocked. At the thought Judith was on her knees, her hands falling naturally upon the side and rocking the small bed. In a strange conflict of dreamy emotion, she swayed it back and forth a moment, and then—what woman could resist it?—began to croon an old mountain cradle song. Suddenly the westering sun got to the level of a half shrouded window and sent a beam in across Judith's bent head.

"My land!" she whispered, getting to her feet. "I ain't got no call to stay foolin' here all day. Dilsey'll jest about burn them cakes I told her to bake, and I ain't fixed my blue bow for my hair yet."

She swept a glance around the speckless room, gathered up her paraphernalia of cleaning, passed out, locked the door, and set her face toward home.

In Mary Bonbright's garden, now given over to weeds as the gardens of dead women are so apt to be, there had grown a singular, half wild rose. This flower was of a clear blood red, with a yellow heart which its five broad petals, flinging wide open, disclosed to view, unlike the crimped and guarded loveliness of the more evolved sisters of the green-house. Mowed down spring after spring by the scythe of Strubley, the renter, the vigorous thing had spread abroad, and as Judith stepped from the door its exultant beauty caught her eye. Flaming shields of crimson, bearing each its boss of filagree gold, the hosts of the red rose stood up bravely in the choking grass to which the insensate scythe blade had so often levelled them, and shouted to the girl of love and joy, and of youth which was the time for both. Wide petalled, burning red, their golden hearts open to sun and bee, they were the blossoms for the earth-woman. She ran and knelt down beside them.

He had said that his favourite colour was blue—but there are no blue roses. She did not follow it far enough to guess that the man who was content with the colour of the sky might not get his gaze down close enough to earth to care for roses. She bent above them gloating on their fierce, triumphant splendour. Was there ever such a colour? But the stems were dreadfully short. A sudden purpose grew in her mind. With hasty, tremulous fingers she gathered an apronful of the blossoms. Once more she unlocked the front door, hurried back to that bed which she had so lovingly spread, and on its white coverlet began arranging a great, glowing wreath, fashioned by setting a circle of red roses petal to petal.

As she worked Cliantha Lusk's ballad came into her head, and she sang it under her breath.

"'And they grew and they grew to the old church top Till they couldn't grow any higher, And there they twined in a true lover's knot, The red rose and the briar.'

"No—that ain't it—

"'And there they twined in a true lover's knot, For all true lovers to admire.'"

True lovers—she crooned the word over and over. It was sweet to say it. She thrilled through all her strong young body with the delight of what she was doing.

"He'll wonder who put 'em there," she whispered to herself. "Ef nothin' else don't take his eye, these here is shore to."



Chapter VI

The Play-Party

Long lanes of light crossed the grass from window and door of the Turrentine house; Judith's play-party was in full swing. They were dancing or playing in the big front room which was lit only by the rich broken shimmer and shine from a fire of pine sticks in the cavernous black chimney. Though it was early July the evening, in those altitudes, had its own chill, and the heat from this was not unpleasant, while its illumination became necessary, for all the lamps and candles available were in use out where the tables were spread.

Old Jephthah held state in his own quarters, a detached log cabin standing about thirty feet from the main structure, and once used probably to house the loom or for some such extra domestic purpose. Here too a fire smoldered on the hearthstone, for the head of the Turrentine clan was tormented by rheumatism, that plague of otherwise healthy primitive man. He lounged now on the doorstep, smoking, ready to intercept and entertain any of the older men who might come with their women folk. Occasionally somebody rode up, or came tramping down the trail or through the woods—a belated merrymaker hurrying in to ask who had arrived and who was expected.

To the father's intense disgust Jim Cal had elected to sit with the elders that night, and obstinately held his place before the hearthstone in the cabin room. Jephthah Turrentine's sons were none of them particularly satisfactory to their progenitor. A man of brains, a creature to whom an argument was ever more than the mere material thing argued about, these male offspring, who took their traits naturally after the spindle side, vexed him with resemblance to their handsome, high-tempered, brainless mother. But Jim Cal was worse than a bore to his father; the old fellow regarded a son who weighed above two hundred pounds as a disgrace. And to-night the fact that the door of his room commanded a sidelong view of the tables which were being spread, and about which Iley circled and scolded, furnished so fair a reason for James Calhoun's selection of it as an anchorage that his father was the more offended.

"You thar, Unc' Jep?" sounded Blatchley Turrentine's careless voice from the dark.

"I make out to be," returned his uncle lazily.

Blatchley came into the circle of dim light about the door, Andy and Jeff at his shoulder. Wade followed a moment later.

"Why ain't you-all boys down thar whar the gals is at, playin'?" inquired Jim Cal fretfully. "Looks like to me ef I was a young feller an' not wedded I wouldn't hang around whar the old men was."

"Is Creed Bonbright comin' over here to-night?" inquired Andy abruptly, in obedience apparently to a nudge from Blatch.

"I reckon he is," observed the old man dispassionately. "Jude has purty well bidden the whole top of the mountain."

"Is Pone Cyard comin'?" put in Jeff. The twins usually spoke alternately, the sum of their conversation counting thus for one.

"That I can't say," returned the old man with mildly ironic emphasis. "Mebbe him and the chaps and the lame rooster—and Nancy—will come along at the tail of the procession."

"Well," persisted Andy, breaking a somewhat lengthened silence in which all the newcomers stood, and through which their breathing could be distinctly heard, "well I think Creed Bonbright has got the impudence! He come to the jail, whar me and Jeff was at, an' he had some talk with us, an' I let him know my mind. He stood in with that marshal—I know it—and so does Jeff. Pone Cyard got out quicker becaze Bonbright tipped the marshal the wink; but I don't hold with him nor his doin's."

The parent of the twins regarded them both with sardonic black eyes half shut. "You don't? And who-all might you be, young fellers?" he asked. "This here Bonbright man has come up on Turkey Track to give us a show at law. If they's persons engaged in unlawful practices on this here mountain top, mebbe he'll knock up against 'em. Them that keeps the law and lives decent has no reason to fear the law. Ain't that what you say, Blatch?" turning suddenly to his nephew.

The big swart mountaineer drew up his shoulders with a sort of shrug.

"Ef you stand in with Bonbright, Unc' Jep," he said, bluntly, "we might as well all go down to Hepzibah and give ourselves up. You've done rented me the land, and yo' boys is in the still with me—air ye a-goin' to stand from under, and have the marshal forever keepin' us on the jump?"

Old Jephthah looked wordless contempt at the nephew who knew little enough to impute such a course to him.

"That's what I say," put in Jim Cal's thin, querulous tones from the back of the room—the voice of a fat man in trouble; can anyone say why the sorrows of the obese are always comic to the rest of the world? "A body cain't sleep nights for thinkin' what may chance."

"Oh,—air you thar, podner?" inquired Blatch, with a sort of ferocious banter in his tone which he frequently used toward his fleshy associate. "I thort ye was down in the bed sick."

"I was," said Jim Cal sulkily; "but Iley she said—Iley 'lowed——"

Blatch burst into a great horse laugh, which the others joined.

"I know'd in reason ye'd be down when they came any trouble at the still," he commented. "Hit always affects yo' health thataway; but I didn't know Iley had seed reason to dig ye out. What you goin' to do about Bonbright, Unc' Jep—stand in with him?"

"Well—you air a fool," observed the old man meditatively. "Who named standin' in with Bonbright, or standin' out agin' him? When I rented you my farm for five year I had no thought of yo' starting up that pesky ol' still on it. But I never was knowed to rue a trade. My daddy taught me when I made a bad bargain to freeze the tighter to it, and I've no mind to do other."

"They'd been a still thar," said Blatch defensively.

The old man nodded.

"Oh, yes," he agreed. "Hit had been,—I put it thar. I've made many a run of whiskey in my young days—and I've seed the folly of it. I reckon you fool boys'll have to see the folly of it too befo' yo've got yo' satisfy. As for Creed Bonbright, he 'pears to think that if we have plenty of law in the Turkey Tracks we'll all go to heaven in a hand-basket. Mebbe he's right, and then agin mebbe he's wrong; but this I know, ain't anybody goin' to jump on him in my house, and he gets a fair show when fightin' time comes."

"Well, if he ain't standin' in with the marshal, what does he—" began Andy's high-pitched boyish voice, when somebody called, "Good evening," in pleasant tones, and Bonbright himself got off a light-stepping mule, tethered him to the fence, and came toward the cabin.

He had just returned from a meeting of the County Court at Hepzibah, where he did good service in representing the needs of his district, fighting hard for more money for schools—the plan heretofore had been to let them have only their own pro rata of the school tax.

"It'll pay you a heap better to educate the mountain people than to hire their keep in jail," he said to his fellow justices of the valley. "The blue-backed speller is the best cure for crime in the mountains that I know of."

He failed to get this; but he succeeded in another matter, one less near his heart, but calculated to appeal perhaps more strongly to his constituents; he secured the opening of a highway for which the people in the two Turkey Tracks had struggled and prayed more than twenty years. It was with the pride of this victory strong in him that he had set out for Judith's play-party. The young fellow might have been pardoned a half wistful belief that this first success was the entering wedge and would lead swiftly to that standing with his neighbours lacking which he was helpless. Yet the sons of the house replied but gruffly to his greeting, and, as though his coming had been a signal, the younger group promptly disappeared in the direction of the main cabin.

At the old man's hearty invitation, Creed seated himself on the doorstep, while his host went in for a coal from the smouldering hearth to light his pipe, and joined the guest a moment later.

"Well sir, and how's the law coming on these days?" inquired old Jephthah somewhat humorously.

"I reckon it's doing pretty well," allowed Creed. "The law's all right, Mr. Turrentine; it's what our people need; and if there comes any failure it's bound to be in me, not in the law."

"That's right," old Jephthah commended him. "Stand up for yo' principles. Ef you go into a thing, back it. I never could get on with these here good-Lord-good-devil folks. I like to know whar a man's at—cain't hit him unless 'n you do."

"That's what I say," piped Jim Cal's reedy voice from the interior. "Is it true that you've done made up the Shalliday fuss over that thar cow, Creed? I thort a jestice of the peace was to he'p folks have fusses, place o' settlin' 'em up."

"That's what everybody seems to think," replied Creed rather dolefully. "I can't say I'm very proud of my part in the Shalliday matter. It seemed to be mighty hard on the widow; but the law was on her brother-in-law's side; so I gave my decision in favour of Bill Shalliday, and paid the woman for the cow. And now they're both mad at me."

Old Jephthah narrowed his eyes and chuckled in luxurious enjoyment of the situation.

"To be shore they air. To be shore they air," he repeated with unction. "Ain't you done a favour to the both of 'em? Is they anything a man will hate you worse for than a favour? If they is I ain't met up with it yet."

"That's what I say," iterated Jim Cal. "What's the use o' tryin' to he'p folks to law and order when they don't want it, and you've got to buy 'em to behave? When you git to be a married man with chaps, like me, you'll keep yo' money in yo' breeches pocket and let other folks fix it up amongst themselves about their cows an' sech."

"I had hoped to get a chance to do something that amounted to more than settling small family fusses," Creed said in a discouraged tone. "I hoped to have the opportunity to talk to many a gathering of our folks about the desirability of good citizenship in a general way. This thing of blockaded stills keeps us forever torn up with a bad name in the valley and the settlement."

Old Jephthah stirred not a hair; Jim Cal sat just as he had; yet the two were indefinably changed the moment the words "blockaded still" were uttered.

"Do you know of any sech? Air ye aimin' to find out about em?" quavered the fat man finally, and his father looked scornfully at him, and the revelation of his terror.

"No. I don't mean it in that personal way," Creed answered impatiently. "Mr. Turrentine, I wish you'd tell me what you think about it. You've lived all your life in the mountains; you're a man of judgment—is there any way to show our people the folly as well as the crime of illicit distilling?"

Jephthah surveyed with amusement the youth who came to an old moonshiner for an opinion as to the advisability of the traffic. He liked the audacity of it. It tickled his fancy.

"Well sir," he said finally, "the guv'ment sets off thar in Washington and names a-many a thing that I shall do and that I shan't do. Howsomever, they is but one thing hit will come here and watch out to see ef I keep rules on—and that's the matter o' moonshine whiskey. Guv'ment," he repeated meditatively but with rising rancour, "what has the guv'ment ever done fer me, that I should be asked to do so much for hit? I put the case thisaway. That man raises corn and grinds it to meal and makes it into bread. I raise corn and grind hit to meal and make clean, honest whiskey. The man that makes the bread pays no tax; guv'ment says I shall pay a tax—an' I say I will not, by God!"

The big voice had risen to a good deal of feeling before old Jephthah made an end.

"Nor I wouldn't neither," bleated Jim Cal in comical antiphon.

In the light from the open doorway Creed's face looked uneasy.

"But you don't think—you wouldn't—" he began and then broke off.

Old Jephthah shook his head.

"I ain't got no blockade still," he asserted sweepingly. "I made my last run of moonshine whiskey many a year ago. I reckon two wrongs don't make a right."

Creed's dismay increased. Inexperienced boy, he had not expected to encounter such feeling in the discussion of this the one topic upon which your true mountaineer of the remote districts can never be anything but passionate, embittered, at bay.

"You name the crime of makin' wildcat whiskey," the old man's deep, accusing voice went on, after a little silence. "It ain't no crime—an' you know it—an' no guv'ment o' mortal men can make a crime out'n it. As for the foolishness of it," he dropped his chin on his breast, his black eyes looked out broodingly, his great beard rose against his lips and muffled his tones, "I reckon the foolishness of a thing is what each feller has to find out for hisself," he said. "Daddies has been tryin' since the time of Adam to let their knowin' it sarve for their sons; but ef one of 'em has made the plan work yit, I ain't heard on it. Nor the guv'ment can't neither. A man'll take his punishment for a meanness an' l'arn by it; but to be jailed for what's his right makes an outlaw of him, an' always will. Good Lord, Creed! What set you an' me off on this tune? Young feller, you ort to be down yon dancin' with the gals, instead of here talking foolishness to a old man like me."

Creed arose to his tall young height and glanced uncertainly from his host to the lighted room from which came the sounds of fiddle and stamping feet. It was a little hard for a prophet on his own mountain-top to be sent to play with the children; yet he went.



Chapter VII

Kisses

With the advent of the four Turrentine boys festivities had taken on a brighter air, the game became better worth while.

"Wade, you've got to fiddle," cried Judith peremptorily. A chair was set upon a table in the corner, the rather reluctant Wade hoisted to it, and soon "Weevily Wheat," as the twitting tune comes from the country fiddler's jigging bow, was filling the room.

"I reckon I ought to have asked your ruthers before I took Wade out of the game," Judith said to Huldah Spiller as they joined hands to begin.

"Like I cared!" retorted Huldah, tossing her red head till the curls bobbed. She was wearing the new blue lawn dress, made by a real store pattern cut out of tissue paper, and was supremely conscious of looking her best.

The Lusk girls in spotted calico frocks, the dots whereof were pink on Cliantha's dress, and blue on Pendrilla's, had bridled and glanced about shamefaced when Andy and Jeff came in; they now "balanced" demurely with down dropped eyes as the game moved to the music.

Judith had left the supper preparations with the elder women, pieced out by the assistance of old Dilsey Rust, and was most active in the games. In the white muslin, washed and ironed by her own skilful, capable fingers, with the blue bow confining the heavy chestnut braids at the nape of her neck, her dark beauty glowed richly. Now the players shifted to "Drop the Handkerchief." Judith delighted in this game because, fleeter of foot, quicker of hand and eye than the others, she continually disappointed any daring swain who thought to have a kiss from her. Her shining eyes were ever on the doorway, till Blatch Turrentine left his seat at the back of the room and elected to lounge there watching the play with the tolerant air of a man contemplating the sports of children. It apparently gave him satisfaction that Judith time after time eluded a pursuer, broke into the ring and left him to wander in search of a less alert and resolute fair.

"Cain't none of the boys kiss yo' gal," panted Huldah Spiller, pausing beside him. "I doubt mightily ef ye could do it yo'self 'less'n she had a mind to let ye'."

Judith heard, and the carmine on her cheek deepened and spread, while the dark eyes above gleamed angrily.

"Come on and play, Blatch," called Wade, jigging away valiantly at his fiddle. "We all know who it is you want to kiss—most of us is bettin' that you're scared to try."

"Play!" echoed Blatchley in a contemptuous tone. "I say play! When I want to buss a gal, I walk up and take my ruthers—like this."

Again that daunting panther quickness of movement from the big slouching figure; the powerful lines seemed to melt and flow as he flung himself in Judith's direction, and cast one arm firmly about her in such a way that it pinioned both her elbows to her side.

"You turn me a-loose!" she cried, even as Little Buck had cried. "That ain't fair. I wasn't ready for ye, 'caze ye said ye wouldn't play. You turn me a-loose or ye'll wish ye had."

"No fair—no fair!" came the cries from the boys in the ring. "Either you stay out or come in. Jude's right."

"Well, some of ye put me out," suggested Blatchley, significantly. He had brought a jug of moonshine whiskey over from the still and it was flowing freely, though unknown to Old Jephthah, in the loft where most of his possessions were kept.

No man moved to lay finger on him. He held Judith—scarlet of face and almost in tears—by her elbows, and lowered his mocking countenance to within a few inches of her angry eyes.

"Now kiss me pretty, and kiss me all yo'self. I ain't got nothin' to do with this; hit's yo' play. You been wantin' to git a chance to kiss me this long while," he asserted with derisive humour. "Don't you hold off becaze the others is here; that ain't the way you do when we're—"

"Wade—Jim Cal! Won't some o' you boys pull this fool man away," appealed Judith. "I wish somebody'd call Uncle Jep. You can hold yo' ugly old face there till yo' hair turns grey," she suddenly and furiously addressed her admirer. "I'll never kiss ye."

"Oh, yes you will—you always do," Blatchley maintained. "Ef I was to tell the folks how blame lovin' ye are when jest you and me is alone together——"

He looked over his shoulder to enjoy the triumph of the moment. Blatchley Turrentine's delight was to traverse the will of every other human being with his own preference. Judith's gaze, tormented, tear-blurred, followed his and saw across the shoulders of the others, the shine of Creed Bonbright's fair hair, in the doorway. The sight brought from her an inarticulate cry. It fired Blatchley to take the kiss which he had vowed should be given him. As he bent to do so, Creed stepped forward and laid a hand upon his shoulder. The movement was absolutely pacific, but the fingers closed with a viselike grip, and there was so sharp a backward jerk that the proffered salute was not delivered.

In the surprise of the moment Judith pulled herself free and stood at bay. For an instant the two men looked into each other's eyes. Creed's blue orbs were calm, impersonal, and without one hint of yielding or fear.

"If you don't play fair," he said in argumentative tone, "there's no use playing at all. Let's close up the ring and try it again."

All eyes in the room turned to Blatchley Turrentine, the women in a flutter of terrified apprehension, the men with a brightening of interest; surely he would resent this interference in some notable manner. But Blatch was in fact too deadly to be merely high-tempered, quick in anger. For a moment he stared at Bonbright, trying to look him down; then those odd, whitey-grey eyes narrowed to mere slits. He laid the matter up in his mind; this was not the time for settling it—here before Judith Barrier and the women. He did not mean to content himself with mere fisticuffs, or even a chance pocket-knife which might double in his grasp and cut his own hand. To the immense surprise of everybody he stretched out his long arms, caught carelessly at the fingers of a player on either side of him, and, mending the line, began to move in rhythmic time to the fiddle.

It was soon observable that Creed Bonbright's presence caused Huldah Spiller's spirits to mount several notes in the octave. Whether it was that her own betrothed was looking on, and this an excellent chance to show him that even the town feller felt her charm, or merely Creed's personal attractions could hardly be guessed.

"Come on," she cried recklessly, "let's play 'Over the River to Feed my Sheep.' Strike up the tune, Wade."

The game she mentioned was also a forfeit play, with the difference that the kiss was more certain, being taken of mere choice—though delivered, of course, with due maidenly reluctance and a show of resisting—whenever the girl facing one could be caught over the line. All the young people played it; all the elders deprecated it. At the bottom of Judith's heart lay one reason for making a play-party and bidding Creed Bonbright to it; and now Huldah Spiller was blatantly calling out the unconfessed, the unconfessable; Wade was sullenly dropping into the old Scotch air; the long lines were forming, men opposite the girls—and the red-headed minx had placed herself directly across from Creed!

The laughing chains swayed back and forth to the measure of the music—advancing, retreating, pursuing, evading, choosing, rejecting, in a gay parody of courtship. Voices were added to that of the fiddle.

"Hit's over the river to feed my sheep, Hit's over the river to Charley; Hit's over the river to feed my sheep An' to kiss my lonesome darling,"

they sang.

Shadows crouched in the corners, flickering, dancing, threatening to come out and play, then shrinking back as the blaze leaped and the room widened. The rough brown walls took the shine and broidered themselves with a thread of golden tracery. In such an illumination the eyes shone with added luster, flying locks were all hyacinthine, the frocks might have been silks and satins.

In the movement of the game girls and boys divided. The girls tossed beribboned heads in unwonted coquetry, yet showed always, in downcast eyes and the modest management of light draperies, the mountain ideal of maidenhood. Across from them the line of youthful masculinity swayed; tall, lean, brown-faced, keen-eyed young hunters these, sinewy and light and quick of movement, with fine hands and feet, and a lazy pride of bearing. A very different type from that found in the lowlands, or in ordinary rustic communities.

Judith noted the other players not at all; her hot reprehending eyes were on the girl in the blue dress. She did not observe that she herself was dancing opposite Andy, while Pendrilla Lusk dragged with drooping head in the line across from the amiably grinning Doss Provine. Finding herself suddenly in the lead and successful, Huldah began to preen her feathers a bit. She withdrew a hand from the girl on her right to arrange the small string of blue glass beads around her neck.

"Jest ketch to my skirt for a minute," she whispered loudly. "I reckon hit won't rip, though most of 'em is 'stitches taken for a friend'—I was that anxious to get it done for the party. Oh, Law!"

And then—nobody knew how it happened—she was over the line, her hold on the hands of her mates broken, she had tripped and fallen in a giggling blue lawn heap fairly at Bonbright's feet. He was in a position where the least gallant must offer the salute the game demanded, but to make assurance doubly sure Huldah put out her hands like a three-year-old, crying,

"He'p me up, Creed, I b'lieve I've sprained my ankle."

The young fellow from Hepzibah was in a mood for play. After all he was only a big boy, and he had been long barred out from young people's frolics. Here was a gay, toward little soul, who seemed to like him. He stooped and caught her by the waist, picking her up as one might a small child, and holding her a moment with her feet off the floor. Something in the laughing challenge of her face as she protested and begged to be put down prompted him as to what was expected. He kissed her lightly upon the cheek before he released her.

As he set her down he encountered Wade Turrentine's eye. A spark of tawny fire had leaped to life in its hazel depth. The fiddler still clung faithfully to his office. If he missed a note now and again, or played off key, he might be forgiven. It is to be remembered that he sawed away without a moment's pause throughout the entire episode.

Creed reached out to join the broken line and touched Jeff's arm. The boy flung away from the contact with a muttered word. He looked helplessly at Judith, but she would not glance at him; head haughtily erect, long lashes on crimson cheeks, red lip curled to an expression of offence and disdain, the young hostess mended the line by joining the hands of the two girls on each side of her.

"You-all can go on playin' without me," she said in a constrained tone. "I got to see to something in the other room."

"See here, Mister Man," remarked Blatch, as Judith prepared to leave. "You're mighty free and permisc'ous makin' rules for kissin' games, but I take notice you don't follow none of 'em yo'se'f."

Judith halted uncertainly. To stop and defend Creed was out of the question. She was about to interpose with the general accusation that Blatch was trying to pick a fuss and break up her play-party, when Iley's voice, for once a welcome interruption, broke in from the doorway.

"Jude, we ain't got plates enough for everybody an' to put the biscuit on," called Jim Cal's wife. "Ax Creed Bonbright could we borry a few from his house."

Judith closed instantly with the diversion. She moved quickly toward the door; Bonbright joined her.

"Why yes," he said. "You know I told you to help yourself. Let me go over now and get what you want. Is there anything else?"

"That's mighty kind of you, Creed," Judith thanked him. "I reckon I better go along with ye and see. I don't think of anything else just now. Iley, we'll be back quick as we can with all the plates ye need."

Together they stepped out into the soft dusk of the summer night, followed by the narrowed gaze of Blatch Turrentine's grey eyes.



Chapter VIII

On the Doorstone

Behind them the play was resumed in the lighted room; the whining of the fiddle, the thud and stamp of many feet, came to them softened and refined by a little distance. They were suddenly drawn together in that intimacy of two who leave the company and the lights on a special expedition. Judith made an impatient mental effort to release the incident of Huldah and the kiss, which had so unreasonably irritated her.

"If we was to go acrosst fields hit would be a heap better," she advised softly, and they moved through the odorous, myriad-voiced darkness of the midsummer night, side by side, without speech, for a time. Then as Creed halted at a dim, straggling barrier which crossed their course and laid down a rail fence partially that she might the more easily get over in her white frock, she returned to the tormenting subject once more, opening obliquely:

"You and Huldy Spiller is old friends I reckon. Don't you think she's a powerful pretty girl?"

"Mighty pretty," echoed Creed absently. All girls were of an even prettiness to him, and Huldah Spiller was a pleasant little thing. He was wondering what he had done back there in the play-room that had set them all against him.

"Her and Wade is goin' to be wedded come September," put in Judith jealously.

"Yo' cousin will be getting a mighty fine wife."

The mountain man is apt to make his comments on the marriages of his friends with dignified formality, and Creed uttered the accustomed phrase without heat or enthusiasm; but it seemed to Judith that he might have said less—or more.

"Well, I never did like red hair," the girl managed to get out finally; "but I reckon hit's better than old black stuff like mine."

"My mother's hair was sorter sandy," Creed answered in his gentle, tolerant fashion. "Mine favours it." And he had not the wit to add that dark hair, however, pleased him best.

Judith stepped beside him for some moments in mortified silence. Evidently he was green wood and could by none of her old methods be kindled. Then, their eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, they came out into a modified twilight in the clearing about the Bonbright house. "You better unlock the door and go in first," suggested Judith, in a depressed tone.

"Why, I ain't got the key," Creed reminded her. "I left it with you—didn't you bring it?"

They drew unconsciously close together in the dark with something of the guilty consternation of childish culprits. A mishap of the sort ripens an acquaintance swiftly.

"What a gump I was!" Judith breathed with sudden low laughter. He could see her eyes shining in the gloom, and the dim outline of her figure. "I knowed well an' good you didn't have the key—hit's in the blue bowl on the fire-board at home."

"I ought to have thought of it," asserted Creed shouldering the blame. "And I'm sorry; I wanted to show you my mother's picture."

"An' I'm sorry," echoed Judith, remembering fleetingly the swept and garnished rooms, the wreath of red roses; "I had something to show you, too."

Nothing was said of the dishes for the merrymakers at Judith's house. Another interest was obtruding itself into the simple, practical expedition, crowding aside its original purpose. The girl looked around the dim, weed-grown garden, its bushes blots of deeper shadow upon the darkness, its blossoms vaguely conjectured by their odour.

"There used to be a bubby bush—a sweet-scented shrub—over in that corner," Creed hesitated. "I'd like to get you some of the bubbies. My mother used to pick 'em and put 'em in the bureau drawers I remember, and they made everything smell nice."

He had taken her hand and led her with him, advancing uncertainly toward the flowers. He felt her shiver, and halted instantly.

"Yo' cold!" he said. "Let me take my coat off and put it around ye—I don't need it. You got overheated playing back there, and now you'll catch a cold."

"Oh, no," disclaimed Judith, whose little shudder had been as much from excitement as from the sharp chill of the night air after the heated play-room. "I reckon somebody jest walked over my grave—I ain't cold."

But he had pulled off the coat while he spoke, and now he turned to put it about her, and drew her back to the doorstep. Judith was full of a strange ecstasy as she slipped her arms into the sleeves. The lover's earliest and favourite artifice—the primitive kindness of wrapping her in his own garment! Even Creed, unready and unschooled as he was, felt stir within him its intimate appeal.

A nebulous lightening which had been making itself felt behind the eastern line of mountains now came plainly in view, late moon, melancholy and significant, as the waning moon always is. By its dim illumination Creed saw Judith Barrier standing at the door of his own house, smiling at him tremulously, with the immemorial challenge in her dark eyes. To that challenge the native man in him—the lover—so long usurped by the zealot, the would-be philanthropist, rose thrilling, yet still bewildered and uncertain, to respond. Something heady and ancient and eternally young seemed to pass into his soul out of the night and the moonlight and the shining of her eyes. He was all alive to her nearness, her loveliness, to the sweet sense that she was a young woman, he a young man, and the loveliness and the dearness of her were his for the trying—for the winning. His breath caught in his throat.

"Wait a minute," he whispered hurriedly, though she had not moved. With eager hands he wrapped the coat close about her. "Let's sit here on the doorstep and talk awhile. There are a heap of things I want to ask you about—that I want to tell you."

Young beauty and belle that she was, Judith had been sought and courted, in that most primitive society, since she was fourteen. She was love's votary by birthright, and her wit and her emotions were schooled in love's game: to lure, to please, to exploit, to defend, evade, deny; in each postulant seeking, testing, trying for the right man to whom should be made love's final surrender. But Creed, always absorbed in vague altruistic dreams, had no boyish sweethearting behind him to have taught him the ways of courtship.

Fire-flies sparkled everywhere, thickest over the marshy places. A mole cricket was chirring in the grass by the old doorstone. Sharp on the soft dark air came the call of that woodland night bird which the mountain people say cries "chip-out-o'-white-oak," and which others translate "chuck-wills-widow."

"I—" he began, hesitated momentarily, then daunted, grasped at the familiar things of his life—"I don't get on very well up here. I'm afraid I've made a failure of it; but"—he turned to her in a curious, groping entreaty, his hat in his hands, the dim moonlight full on his fair head and in his eager eyes—"but if you would help me—with you—I think I ought to——"

"I say made a failure!" cooed Judith in her rich, low tones. "You ax me whatever you want to know. You tell me what it is that you're aimin' to do—I say made a failure!"

Her trust was so hearty, so wholesale, she filled so instantly the position not only of sweetheart but of mother to a small boy with an unsatisfactory toy—that would always be Judith Barrier—that Creed's heart—the man's heart—a lonely one, and beginning to feel itself misunderstood and barred out from its kind—melted in his bosom. There was silence between them, a silence vibrant with the coming utterance. But even as the dark, fond, inviting eyes and the troubled, kindling blue ones encountered, as Creed lifted the girl's hand timidly, and essayed speech, the voice of that one who had stepped on her grave harshly aroused them both.

"I vow—I thort it was thieves, an' I was a-goin' to see could I pick off you-all," drawled Blatchley Turrentine's level tones from the shadow of the garden. Mutely, with a sense of chill and disappointment that was like the shock of a physical blow to each, the two young creatures got to their feet and turned to leave the place, preparing to go by the high road, without consultation. As they passed him near the gate, Blatch Turrentine fell in on the other side of the girl and walked with them silently for a time.

"Iley sont me over," he said finally. "She was skeered you-all wouldn't bring any plates."

Neither Judith nor Creed offered any explanation. Instead:

"Well, I don't see how you're goin' to help anything," said the girl bitterly—any presence must have been hateful to her which interrupted or forestalled what Creed would certainly have said, that for which her whole twenty years had waited.

"Oh, I've got the plates," chuckled Blatch, jingling a bulky package under his arm.

"Why, how did you——" began Judith in amazement.

"Uh-huh, I've got my own little trick of gittin' in whar I choose to go," declared Turrentine. He leaned around and looked meaningly at the man on her other side, then questioned, "How long do you-all reckon I'd been thar?" and examined them keenly in the shadowy half light.

But neither hastened to disclaim or explain, neither seemed in any degree embarrassed, though to both his bearing was plainly almost intolerable. Thereafter they walked in silence which was scarcely broken till they reached the gate and Iley came shrilling out to meet them demanding,

"Did you get them thar plates from Miz. Lusk's, you Blatch Turrentine?"

Judith looked at him with angry scorn. It was the old tyrannical trick which she had known from her childhood up, the attempt to maintain an ascendency over her by appearing to know everything and be everywhere—"like he was the Lord-a'mighty Hisself," she muttered indignantly, as Creed joined a group of young men, and she passed in to her necessary activities as hostess.

Judith Barrier's play-party won to its close with light hearts and light feet, with heavy hearts which the weary body would fain have denied, with love and laughter, with jealousy and chagrin, with the slanted look of envy, of furtive admiration, or of disparagement, from feminine eyes at the costumes of other women, just as any ball does.

The two who had trembled upon the brink of some personal revelation, a closer communion, were not again alone together that evening. Amid the moving figures of the others, now to his eyes as painted automatons, Creed Bonbright watched with strong fascination in which there was a tincture that was almost terror, the beautiful girl who had suddenly emerged from her class and become for him the one woman.

So adequate, so competent, Judith dominated the situation; passing among her guests, the thick dark lashes continually lowered toward her crimson cheeks. Some subtle sense told her that the spell was working. Smiles from this sweet inner satisfaction curved her red lips. No need to look—she knew how his eyes were following her. The exultant knowledge of it sang all through her being. Gone were her perturbations, her chilling uncertainties. She was at once stimulated and quieted.

Their good-byes were said in the most public manner, yet one glance flashed between them which asked and promised an early meeting.



Chapter IX

Foeman's Bluff

It was near midnight when Creed sought his patient mule at the rack, to find that Doss Provine had ridden the animal away.

"He said you was a-goin' to stay at yo' own house to-night, an' he 'lowed ye wouldn't need the mule, an' he was mighty tired. He 'lowed hit was a mighty long ja'nt out to the Edge whar he was a-goin'," contributed Blev Straley, who seemed to have been admitted to Provine's confidence.

"Mighty long ja'nt—I say long ja'nt!" ejaculated old man Broyles, who was engaged in saddling his ancient one-eyed mare. "Ef I couldn't spit as fur as from here to the Edge I'd never chaw tobacker agin! Plain old fashioned laziness is what ails Doss Provine. I'd nacher'ly w'ar him out for this trick, Bonbright, ef I was you."

"Well, I did aim to stay over at my house to-night," said Creed, "But I can't. I've got a case to try in the morning, soon, that I've got to look up some points on yet to-night. I reckon I'll have to foot it out to Aunt Nancy's."

As Creed spoke a fellow by the name of Taylor Stribling, a sort of satellite of Blatchley Turrentine's came slouching from the shadows of the nearby smoke-house. He watched old man Broyles ride away, and Blev Straley take a leisurely departure.

"Mighty bad ye got to hoof it, Creed," he observed. "Ef you've a mind to come with me I can show you a short cut through the woods by Foeman's Bluff. Hit's right on the first part of my way."

Creed had been long out of the mountains or he would have known that a short cut which led by Foeman's Bluff would certainly be a strange route toward Nancy Card's cabin; but it was characteristic of the man that without question or demur he accepted the proffered friendly turn at its face value, and he and Stribling at once took the way which led across the gulch to the still. They walked for some time, Stribling leading, Creed following, deep in his own thoughts.

"Looks like this is a queer direction to be going," he roused himself to comment wonderingly as they dipped into the sudden hollow.

"The trail turns a piece up yon," explained the guide briefly.

Again they toiled on in silence, crossing the dry boulder-strewn bed of a stream, travelling always in the dense darkness of the tall timber, finally striking the rise, which was so abrupt and steep that they had to catch by the path-side bushes to pull themselves up. It was lighter here, as the trail mounted toward a region of rocky bluffs where there was no big timber, running obliquely across the great promontory that had got the name of Foeman's Bluff, from old Ab Foeman whose hideout, still unknown, was said to be somewhere in its front.

"Ain't it mighty curious to be goin' up so?" Creed panted. "Aunt Nancy's place lies lower than the Turrentines'. By the road it's down hill mighty near all the way."

"Thishyer's a short cut," growled the other evasively. "Mind how you step. Hit's a fur ways down thar ef a body was to fall."

With the words they came out suddenly on the Bluff itself where the trail widened into a natural terrace, and the great rock, solemn with majestic peace, faced an infinity of sky with bared brow. As they emerged into the light Creed took off his hat and lifted his countenance, inhaling the beauty of the summer night. The late moon had climbed a third of the way up the heavens; now she looked down with a chastened, tarnished light, yet with a dusky, diminished beauty that held a sort of mild pathos. Great timbered slopes, inky black in this illumination, fell away on every hand down to where the mists lay death-white in the valley; behind them was a low, irregular bulk of brush-grown rock; and all about the whirr of katydids, a million voices blended into one. From a nearby thicket came to them the click and liquid gurgle, "Chip-out-o'-white-oak!" It sent Creed's heart and fancy questing back to the past hour with the girl on the doorstone. What would he have asked, she answered, if Blatch had not interrupted them? He scarcely heard the wavering cry of a screech-owl that followed hard upon the remembered notes. Stribling, however, noted the latter promptly, and began edging toward the shadow as his companion spoke.

"This is mighty sightly," said Creed, looking about him musingly; "I do love a moonshiny night."

For a moment there was only the noise of the katydids, backgrounded and enfolded by the deep silence of the great mountains. Then someone broke out into what was evidently a forced laugh, a long-drawn, girding, mirthless haw-haw, the laboured insult of which stung Creed into a certain resentment of demeanour.

"What's the joke?" he inquired dryly, turning toward Taylor Stribling. But Stribling had silently melted away among the shadows of distant trees along the trail. It was Blatchley Turrentine who stood before him thrusting forward a jeering face in the uncertain half light, while three vaguely defined forms moved and shouldered behind him. The apparition was sinister, but if Blatch looked for demonstrations of fear he was disappointed.

"What's the joke?" Creed repeated.

"I couldn't hold in when I heared your pretty talk," drawled Blatch, setting his hands on his hips and barring the way. "Whar might you be a-goin', Mr. Creed Bonbright?"

"Home," returned Creed briefly. "Get out of my road, and I'll be obliged to you."

"Yo' road—yo' road!" echoed Blatch. "Well, young feller, besides this here road runnin' acrosst the south eend o' the property that I've rented on a five-year lease, ef so be that yo're a-goin' to Nancy Cyard's house this is a mighty curious direction for you to be travellin' in."

"I was told it was a short cut," said Bonbright controlling his temper. A man who was justice of the peace, going home to get ready to try a case on the morrow, must not embroil himself.

"Good Lord!" scoffed Blatch. "You claim to be mountain raised, and tell me you think this is a short cut from whar you was at to Nancy Cyard's? I reckon you'll have to make up another tale."

Bonbright became suddenly aware that he was surrounded, two of the men who were with Turrentine having slipped past him and appearing now as blots of blacker shadow against the trees on either side of the path by which he had come. Turrentine and the remaining man barred the way ahead; on the one side was the sheer descent of the bluff; on the other the rough, broken rise.

It was like a bad dream. With his usual forthright directness he spoke out.

"What is it you want of me—all of you? This meeting never came about by chance."

Blatch shook his head. "Yo' mighty right it didn't," he said. "Me an' the boys has a word to speak with you, and when we ketch you walkin' on our land in the middle o' the night—with whatever intentions—we think the time has come for talkin'."

"Andy! Jeff! Is that you?" Creed, the rash, called over his shoulder to the two behind him.

An inarticulate growl answered, and then a boyish voice began,

"Yo' mighty free with folks' names, you Creed Bonbright. Me and my brother both told you what we thought o' you when you come to the jail. I told you then you'd be run out of the Turkey Tracks ef you tried to come up here. We don't want no spies."

"Spies!" echoed Creed with a rising note of anger in his voice. "Who said I was a spy? What should I be spying on?"

"Yo' friend Mr. Dan Haley might 'a' said you was a spy," suggested Andy's higher pitched tones. "As for what you'd be a-spyin' on you know best. We're all mighty peaceable, law-abidin' folks in the Turkey Tracks. I don't know of nothin' that we're apt to break the law about 'less'n it would be beatin' up and runnin' out a spy that——"

The childish bravado of this speech evidently displeased Blatch, who wanted the thing done and over with. His heavier, grating tones broke in,

"They's jest one thing to be said to you, Creed Bonbright. You've got to get out of the Turkey Tracks—and get quick. Air ye goin'?"

"No!" Creed flung back at him. "When I take my orders from you it will be a mighty cold day. I came up here in the Turkey Tracks to do a good work among my own people. I'm going to stay here and do it in my own way. Is that you, Wade Turrentine? What have you got to say to me?"

The second of the men who faced him stirred uneasily at the mention of his name. It rankled in the expectant bridegroom's heart that all he could complain of concerning Creed Bonbright was that Huldah had thrown herself in his way and forced a kiss upon him—not that Bonbright had been the amatory aggressor!

"I say what Blatch says," growled Wade as though the words stuck in his throat.

More and more the whole thing was like a nightmare to Creed; he felt as though with sufficient effort he might throw it off and wake. The four men hung at the path-side eyeing him, motionless if he were still, moving only if he stirred. Even this scarcely gave him a complete understanding of the gravity of his situation.

"Well," he said finally, "I'm going on home. If any of you boys has anything to say to me, to-morrow or any day after—you know where to find me."

He made as though to pass; but Blatch Turrentine stepped swiftly to the middle of the pathway and stood breathing a little short.

"No, by God, we don't!" he panted. "Ef we let you to go this night—we don't know whar we'll ever find you again. Mebbe you've got yo' budget made up—on yo' way to yo' friend Mr. Dan Haley right now. Ye don't go from here!"

Instinctively Creed fell back a step. It was out at last—this was neither more nor less than a waylaying. Did they mean to kill him? Blatch Turrentine had crouched where he stood, and even as the question went through the victim's mind, he launched himself with that sudden frightful quickness bodily upon Creed.

It would seem that the slighter man must be borne down by the onset. But Bonbright gathered himself, his arms shot out and gripped his assailant midway. Struggling, panting, gasping, stamping, they wrenched and swayed, the three who watched them holding aloof. Then with a sheer effort of strength Creed tore the heavier man from his footing and lifted him clear of the ground.

With a little sobbing oath Andy ran in. Bonbright could have heaved the man he held over his shoulder in that terrific fall well known to deadly wrestling. Wade's stern, "Sst! Git back there!" stopped the boy. Even as Creed's muscles knotted themselves to the supreme effort came sudden memory of what he must stand for to these people. It was his right to defend his own life; he must not, in any extremity, take that of another. His grip relaxed. Turrentine partially got his feet again; his arms were free; the right made a swift movement, and Creed caught the gleam of a knife-blade. Without volition of his own he flung all his weight and strength into one mighty movement that hurled man and weapon from him.

Plunging, staggering, clutching at the air, Turrentine gave ground. The moonlight flickered on the blade in his upflung hand as, with a strangled hoarse cry he reeled backward over the bluff.

There was a rending sound of breaking branches, a noise of rolling rocks; then deadly silence. For a long moment the men left standing on the cliff strained eyes and ears to where Blatch had gone down, then,

"Keep off!" shouted Creed as the three others began silently to close in on him. "Stand back, boys. We've had enough of this. Draw off and let me get down and see what's happened to him." He kept slowly backing away, striving not to be hemmed in against the rock behind him. The others warily followed.

"Let you down and finish him, ye mean—don't ye?" screamed Andy with all a boy's senseless rage.

"You're a fine one to bring law and order into the Turkey Tracks," Wade taunted savagely. "You've brought murder—that's what you've done."

"He drew a knife on me," cried Bonbright. "You all saw that. I only shoved him away. I never meant to throw him over the bluff."

"Nobody seen no knife but you, Creed Bonbright," Jeff doggedly asseverated. "All three of us seen you fling Blatch over the bluff. You ain't in no court of law now. Yo' lies won't do you no good. Yo' where we kill the feller that done the killin'."

"How?" said Creed, still backing, feeling his way slowly, seeking for some break in the rise behind, the others coming a little closer. "By jumpin' on to him somewhere out at night, four to one—or even three to one?"

"Yes, by God! thataway, ef we cain't do it no better way," panted Wade.

Years before—heaven knows how many—a little seep of water began to gather between two huge stones in the small broken bluff behind Creed. Winter after winter the crevice through which the trickle came enlarged, the water caught in a natural basin and froze with all its puny might to heave the stones apart. The winter before this slow process had closed leaving a wedge of rock trembling upon its base, ready to fall into a crevice. Yet the opening was masked with vine leaves, and when the spring rains finally washed away the mould and the crude doorway tottered and sank, the gap thus left was unnoted, invisible to the sharpest eye.

Bonbright pressing close against the rock to pass, stepping warily when it was forward, but hugging his barrier as a safety, missed his footing, and slipped almost without a sound into this opening. For a moment he sustained himself holding to tree roots, hearkening to the voices of those above him.

"Wade—you fool! What did you let him get a-past you for?"

And then Wade's heavier tones, "I didn't. He run back yo' way."

He could hear their footsteps pounding to and fro, their hoarse cries which finally settled down into a demand for a lantern.

"We can't find Blatch nor do nothing for him, nor git on the track of Bonbright nor nothin' else, without a lantern. You Jeff, run round to the still; me and Andy'll go back and fetch pap."

Creed sought cautiously for footing, lost all hold, and began a headlong descent.

Low limbs thrashed his face and body; again and again his head was dashed against rocks or tree stems; his forehead was gashed; the blood poured into his eyes; he rolled and bounded and slid down and down and down the crevice, and into the ravine, bruised, bleeding, breathless, blinded and choked by blood and earth and gravel. He was more than half unconscious when he brought up at last with a rib-smashing thump upon a sapling, and there he clung like a dazed animal, gasping.

Slowly, as his breath came back to him, and he cleared the blood and dust from his eyes, Creed became aware of a dim glow coming through the bushes in one direction. For some time he watched it, making ready to get away as quickly as possible, since this must be on Blatch Turrentine's land, and the light came probably from some of Blatch's party searching for Turrentine himself, or for Creed.

But when he noted that the illumination was steady and stationary, he began to move hesitatingly in its direction. He had gone probably two or three hundred feet when he came to a place whence he had an unobstructed view. The light shone out from the cramped opening of a cave. He went nearer in a sort of daze. There was nobody to intercept him, Blatch and the boys, whom he had left on the bluff above, when he so unexpectedly descended from it, being the only sentinels out. No approach was looked for from the quarter where he now was, and he found himself, gazing directly into Blatch Turrentine's blockaded still. He could distinctly see Jim Cal and the fellow Taylor Stribling moving about within the cave. They were attending to a run of whiskey. While Bonbright stood motionless, not yet fully comprehending the sinister colour his presence might wear, there was the thud of running footsteps, Jeff Turrentine rounded the boulder on the other side of the cave and called aloud to those within,

"Jim Cal! Taylor! Buck! Creed Bonbright's killed Blatch—flung him clean over the bluff—and got plumb away from us! Bring a lantern you-all. We've got to hunt for Blatch in under Foeman's Bluff—I'll show you whar."

Silently Creed drew back into the dense undergrowth. He knew where he was, now. As he retreated swiftly in the opposite direction from that in which Jeff had approached, he could vaguely hear the excited voices at the still, questioning, replying, denouncing, exclaiming. Presently he came out upon the main trail, rounded the Gulch, heading for the big road and Nancy Card's cabin, his soul sick within him at the events of the evening, bitterly regretting the explicit and unwelcome knowledge of the secret still which had been forced upon him, feeling himself now a spy indeed—a spy and a murderer.

He walked with long nervous strides; beaten and bruised though he was, he was unconscious of fatigue; the grief and regret that surged within him were as an anodyne to physical pain, and it was less than half an hour later that he opened the door of Nancy Card's cabin, his white face scratched and bleeding, his torn hands, too, covered with blood, his clothing rent and earth-stained, his eyes wild and pain-bright.

"Good Lord, boy! What's the matter with ye?" cried the old woman, coming toward him in terror, both hands out. "I sot up for ye, 'caze Pony he jest come from Hepzibah an' said that spiled-rotten Andy an' that feisty Jeff 'lowed ye was a spy an' they was a-goin' to run ye out of the Turkey Tracks."

She laid hold of him and examined him with anxious eyes.

"I was plumb werried about ye. I knowed in reason they was a-goin' to be trouble at that fool play-party."

"No, I ain't hurt, Aunt Nancy," said Creed desolately, and he stared past her at the wall. "But looks to me like I'm cursed. I meant so well——" He choked on the word. "I'd just had a talk with—She said—we—I thought that everything was about to come right. And now—I've killed Blatch Turrentine, and I've just got away from the others. They was all after me."



Chapter X

A Spy

Old Jephthah was winding the clock when the door—which he had closed some time ago after the last retiring guests—flung violently open, Andy paused, flying foot on the threshold, and gasped out hoarsely,

"Pap—Creed Bonbright's killed Blatch and got away from us!"

The Lusk girls had staid to help Judith clear up, intending to remain over night unless Andy and Jeff returned in time to take them home. The three young women working at the table lifted pale faces; Pendrilla let fall the plate in her hand and broke it. Unconscious of the fact, she stood staring with open mouth at the fragments by her feet. Jephthah took one more turn mechanically, then withdrew the key and laid it down.

"Whar at?" he inquired briefly.

"Up on our place," said Wade who now appeared at the boy's side. "Bonbright throwed him over Foeman's Bluff."

"How come it?" queried the head of the tribe.

"They was a fussin'," began Andy, but his father interrupted him in a curious tone.

"Foeman's Bluff," he repeated. "What tuck Bonbright thar at this time o' night?"

"That's what I say," panted Jim Cal's voice in the darkness outside. He had come straight from the still instead of going with Jeff and the others to search; and for all his flesh he had overtaken his brothers. But there was none now to demand sardonically why he fled the seat of war and ran to the paternal shelter for re-enforcements. "Ef folks go nosin' around whar they ain't wanted, sometimes they git what they don't like," he concluded.

Judith, very pale, had parted her lips to utter words of indignant defence, and denial of this broad imputation, but before she could speak Huldah Spiller irrupted into the room, her red curls flying, her bodice clutched about her in such a fashion as to suggest she had been undressing when the news reached her.

The mountain woman with temperament is reduced to the outlets of such occasions as these, or revival seasons and funerals; and Huldah Spiller, having abandoned the protesting Iley with her babies, whom the mother could not leave alone, meant to make the most of the occasion.

"You-all ain't got no right to talk the way you do about Creed," the red-haired girl burst out. "Him and me's been friends ever sence I went to Hepzibah, and there ain't a better man walks the earth. Ef he done anything to Blatch hit was becaze Blatch laywayed him an' jumped on him, an' he had to. Oh, Lord!" and she began to weep, "I wish't my daddy was here—I jest wish Pap Spiller was here. Pore Creed! Ef you-all git yo' hands on him, mad thisaway, the Lord knows what will be did!"

Jephthah regarded his postulant daughter-in-law from under lowered, bushy brows.

"Kin you make her hush?" he inquired of Wade.

"I ain't got no interest in makin' her hush nor makin' her holler," returned Wade contemptuously. Dishonoured before his clan, his male dignity sadly shorn, his woman shrieking out the wrongs and excellences of another man—and that man a young and well-favoured enemy—his bitterness may be forgiven.

"Fetch the lantern," ordered Jephthah briefly. "We-all have got to git over thar and see to this business."

"Well, I'll hush—but I'm goin' along," volleyed Huldah.

"Le's us go too, Jude," pleaded Cliantha Lusk in a trembling whisper. "I'm scared to be left here in the house with the men all gone. He might take a notion to come and raid the place and kill us. They do thataway in feud times. My gran' mammy——"

"Do hush!" choked Judith. But she hurried out in the wake of the departing men, Cliantha clinging to one arm, Pendrilla to the other.

They left the doors open, the candles flaring, and nobody to guard but the toothless old hound who slept and snored on the chip pile.

The journey to Foeman's Bluff, following the flicker of the lantern in Wade's hand, with the voices of the men coming back to her, hoarse, fragmentary, ejaculatory, reciting Creed's offences asseverating that they had expected nothing else, was like a nightmare to Judith. When Cliantha screamed and clung to her and said she thought she saw Creed Bonbright in the bushes by the path-side, Judith shook her off angrily, but let the clamouring little thing creep back and make her peace.

"I forgot about you and Blatch—Oh, po' Judy!" moaned Cliantha. "Ef hit was me goin' to s'arch for the murdered body of my true love I don't know as I could put foot befo' foot!"

"The trail's mighty narrow here—I'll go in front," said Judith. She freed herself, and thereafter walked alone with bent head.

As they descended into the hollow Andy began to hoo-ee; and finally he was answered from the neighbourhood of the bluff. Up this they climbed, since on this side they were cut off from the region below it by an impassable gulley. Halting on the top and looking down, they could see a lantern moving about and catch faint sound of the men's voices.

"Who's down thar?" Jephthah's big rolling bass sent out the call. There was an ominous hesitation before Jeff's perturbed tones replied,

"Hit's me, pap, me an' Buck Shalliday an' Taylor Stribling."

Andy found a tall tree at the bluffs edge, and began to descend through its branches with the swiftness and agility of a monkey.

"How is he—is he alive?"

The old man put the query at the edge of the gulf, stooping, peering over. Jim Cal sat down suddenly and began wiping his forehead. The moonlight showed his round face very pale under its beaded sweat.

"Andy'll git hisself killed!" whimpered Pendrilla.

And Huldah broke into loud hysteric weeping, on the tide of which "Creed—Pap Spiller—Blatch Turrentine" were cast up now and again.

"Hush, cain't ye?" demanded Jephthah, angrily; "I cain't hear one word they answer me down thar. Hello, boys. Is he livin'?"

Andy had evidently reached the searchers at the foot of the cliff. Loud, confused voices came up to those above. Finally,

"W'y, Pap, we ain't never found him," Jeff called.

"Ye what?" demanded the father incredulously.

"We ain't—never—found him," reiterated Jeff doggedly.

The old man drew back sharply with a look of swift anger in his face.

"Well, ef ye hain't found him by now ye better quit lookin', hadn't ye?" he suggested as he straightened to his full height and turned his back.

"Creed Bonbright's jest about been here an' hid the body, that's what he's done," Taylor Stribling clamoured after him in futile explanation. But the old man gave no heed. Lantern in hand, he was already addressing himself to a careful examination of the scene of the struggle. The torn vines where Creed had fallen through the fissure instantly caught his eye.

"Come up here, you-all!" he turned and shouted toward the gulf. He swung his lantern far out over the crevice. "Look at that," he said quietly. "Thar's whar yo' man got away from ye." He handed the lantern to Wade, and swung himself lightly down where Creed had fallen.

"Better let me go, Pap," said Wade, and Judith mutely stared after the old man as he disappeared into the dark.

For fifteen minutes or more the watchers on the cliff waited and trembled, straining ears and eyes. In that time they were joined by those from the foot of the bluff, all but Stribling, who, the boys said, had "gone on home." Then they heard sounds of clambering in the cleft, and the old man's face appeared in the well of inky shadow, pale, the black eyes burning, the great black beard flowing backward to join the darkness behind him. Wade held his lantern high. It lit a circle of faces on which terror, anger, and distress wrought. Judith could scarcely look at her uncle, and a great trembling shook her limbs, so that she laid hold of a little sapling by which she stood, and closed her eyes.