"Whar—whar's Huldy?" she questioned before she would trust herself to believe. But Creed, full of the wonder of her message, dropped the mule's bridle and came toward her his uninjured arm outstretched. He put the inquiry by almost impatiently.

"Huldah? She went on down to Hepzibah soon Saturday morning," he said. "O Judith, did you mean it—that word you sent me by Little Buck?"

He came swiftly up to her, snatching her hand eagerly, pressing it hard against his breast, leaning close in the twilight to study her face.

"You couldn't mean it," he hurried on passionately, tremulously, "not now; you just pity me. Little Buck cried when he told me what you said, honey. He was jealous. But he needn't have been—need he Judith? You just pity me."

Creed's manner and his words were instant reassurance to Judith's womanly pride. But immediately on the relaxation of that pain rose clamouring her anxiety for his safety—his life.

"Yes, yes, Creed," she murmured vehemently. "I did mean it—I sure meant every word of it. But we got to get right away from here. Do ye reckon ye can stand it to ride as far as the foot of the mountain? Ye got to go—and I'm here to take ye."

They drew out of the path and into the deep blackness beneath the trees. There was but a hundredth chance that anybody would be passing here, or watching this point, yet that hundredth chance must be guarded against.

Poor Creed, he detained her, he clung to her hands hungrily, and invoked the sound of her voice. So much hate had daunted him, the strength and sweetness of her presence, the warm tenderness of her tones, were like balm to his lacerated spirit.

"I couldn't go to-night—dear——" he faltered, abashed that the first word he uttered to her must be a denial. "You're mighty sweet and good to offer to take me—I don't know what I have ever done that you should risk this for me—but I'm to have a chance to talk to your Uncle Jephthah at moonrise to-night, and I can't turn my back on that. He's a fair-minded man and I'll make this thing right yet."

Judith shuddered. "Don't you never believe it," she urged in a panting whisper. "Uncle Jep hadn't a thing on earth to do with that word goin' to you. He's left home. I can't find him nowhars, or I'd have went straight to him and begged him to help me out when I found what the boys was aimin' to do. Hit was Blatch planned it all. I tell ye Creed, Blatch Turrentine is alive—you never killed him when you flung him over the bluff—and while he lives you can't stay here. He's bound to kill ye."

"Have you seen Blatch, yourself, Judith?" Creed asked quickly.

"Oh, laws, no. He's a layin' out in the woods somewheres, aimin' to make Uncle Jep believe you killed him. But I heard him plain enough—I heard him and the boys fix it all up—hid out from Uncle Jep down in the grain-room. There's to be seven of 'em a-waitin' down by the big hollow, and when they git you betwixt them an' the sky at moonrise they're all promised to shoot at once, so that nary man dast to go back on the others when you're killed."

Wounded, appalled, the young fellow drew back from her and clung to the saddle of the old mule, with a boyish desire to hide his face against the arm which he threw over it.

"How they hate me!" he breathed at last. "Oh, I've failed—I've failed. I meant so well by them all—and I've got nothing but their hate. But I won't run. I never ran from anything yet. I'll stay here and take what comes."

Perhaps in his extremity the despair of this speech was but an unconscious reaching out for Judith's expressed affection, the warmth and consolation of her love. If this were so, the movement brought him what he craved. In terror she laid hold upon him, holding to his unwounded arm, pressing her cheek upon his shoulder, making her protest in swift passionate sentences.

"What good will it do for you to get yourself killed—tell me that? Every one of them men will be murderers, when you've stayed and seen it through. Lord, what differ is it whether sech critters as them love you or hate you? 'Pears to me I would ruther have their ill-will as their good-will. Don't you have no regards for them that is good friends to you? I care. I understand what it was you was tryin' to do. I thort it was fine. Air you goin' to break my heart by stayin' here to git yourself killed? Oh, don't do it, Creed. You let me take you out of the mountains, or I'll never know what it is to sleep in peace."

His arm slipped softly round her waist and drew her close against his side, so close that the two young creatures, standing silent in the midst of the warm summer night, could almost hear the beating of each other's heart. In spite of their desperate situation they were tremulously happy.

"I thank my God for you, Judith," murmured Creed, bending to lay his cheek timidly against hers. "Never was a man in trouble had such a sweet helper. It's mighty near worth it all to have found you. Maybe you never would have cared for me at all if this hadn't come about—if I hadn't needed you so bad."

Judith's lavish heart would have hastened to break its alabaster jar of ointment at love's feet with the impetuous avowal that he had been dear to her since first she looked on him. But there was instant need of haste; the situation was full of danger; that confession, with all its sweetness, might well wait a more secure time and place. She got to her horse glowing with hope, feeling herself equal to the dubious enterprise before them.

"Whatever you say honey," Creed assured her. "Do with me as you will. I'm your man now."

They had wheeled their mounts toward the open.

"Hark! What's that?" whispered Judith.

The quavering cry of a screech-owl came across the gulch to them. The girl crouched in her saddle, shivering slightly, and stroking Selim's nose so that he might make no stir nor sound.

"They use—that—for a signal," she breathed at last. "The boys is out guardin' the trails. And 'pears like they're a-movin'. We got to go quick."

They set forth in silence; Judith riding ahead, skirted at a considerable distance the buildings on the old Turrentine place, then followed down a rocky stream-bed, dry now and leading abruptly into a ravine. Here the girl took her bearings by the summits she could see black against the star-lit sky, and, avoiding the open, made for the old Indian trail which would lead them directly down to Garyville. They could ride abreast sometimes, and they began to talk together in these broken intervals.

"And Little Buck cried when he told you," Judith said, in that tender, brooding voice of hers. "That was my fault. I'm mighty sorry. I wouldn't 'a' hurt the child's feelings for anything; but I never thought."

"I fixed it up with him some," said her lover, quickly. "I told him you only said that because I was hurt and you was sorry for me. I thought I was telling the truth."

"Uncle Jep feels mighty bad about this business," she began another time, hastening to offer what consolation she could. "Nothin' would have made him willin' to it, but the fear that when you brought the raiders up he'd get took hisself. He ain't had nothin' to do with stillin' for more'n six year, but of course hit's on his land, and the boys is his sons. He says he's too old to go to the penitentiary."

Creed reached out in the gloom and got the girl's hand.

"Oh, Judith, darling!" he said eagerly. "Let me tell you right now, and make you understand—I never had any more notion of bringing raiders into the mountains than you have yourself. I do know that blockaded stills and what they mean are the ruin of this country; but honey, you've got to believe me when I say I never wanted to get any information about them or break them up."

The girl harkened, with close attention to the man—the lover—but with simple indifference to the gist of what he was saying. It was plain that she would have loved and followed him had he been a revenue officer himself.

"I'll tell Uncle Jep," she said presently. "He'll be mighty proud. He does really set a heap of store by you, and they all know it. But I ain't never goin' to let you talk like that to him," she added, the note of proud possession sounding in her voice. "Ef you're goin' to live in the mountains you'll have to learn not to have much to say about moonshine whiskey and blockaded stills—you never do know who you might be hittin'."

"You'll take good care of me, won't you Judith?" he said fondly, pressing the hand he held. "And I reckon I need it—I surely do manage to get into misunderstandings with people. But that wasn't the trouble with Blatch Turrentine—he never thought any such thing as that I was a spy. He was mad at me about something else—and I don't know yet what it was."

Judith laughed softly, low in her throat, so far had they come from the uncertainty, strain, and distress of an hour before. When next the trail narrowed and widened again, she came up on his left, the side of the injured arm, but which brought her nearer to him, leaned close and laying her hand on his shoulder, whispered,

"I reckon I know. I reckon you'll have to blame me with Blatch's meanness."

"Why, of course that was it!" exclaimed Creed. He looped the bridle on his saddle horn, reached up and drew her hand across his shoulders and around his neck. "That's what comes of getting the girl that everybody else wants," he said with fond pride. "But nobody else can have her now, can they? Say it Judith—say it to me, dear."

Judith made sweet and satisfying response, and they rode in silence a moment. Then she halted Selim thoughtfully.

"This path takes off to Double Springs, Creed," she said, mentioning the name of a little watering place built up about some wells of chalybeate and sulphur water. "We might—do ye think mebbe we'd better go there?"

Creed, who felt his strength ebbing, calculated the distance. They had seen, as they made the last turn under the bluff, the lights flaring at the Garyville station. Double Springs was more than a mile farther. "I reckon Garyville will be the best, dear," he returned gently. Then, "I wish I had cut a little better figure in this business—on account of you," he added wistfully. "You're everything that a man could ask. I don't want you to be ashamed of me."

"Ashamed of you!" Judith's deep tones carried such love, such scorn of those who might not appreciate the man of her choice, that he was fain to be comforted.

"If we had known each other better from the first I reckon you would have kept me out of these fool mistakes I've made," the young fellow said humbly.

"You ain't made no mistakes," Judith declared with reckless loyalty, "Hit's the other folks—Blatch Turrentine and them that follers him—no good person could git along with them. Are you much tired Creed? Does yo' shoulder pain you?"

"No, dear," he said softly, laying his cheek against the hand which he had drawn around his neck. "Nothing pains me any more. I'm mighty happy."

And together thus they rode forward in darkness, toward Garyville and safety.



Chapter XVIII

Bitter Parting

In the sickly yellow flare of the kerosene lamps around the Garyville station Judith got her first sight of Creed's face: sunken, the blood drained from it till it was colourless as paper, the eyes wild, purple rimmed, haggard—it frightened her. She was off of Selim in a moment, begging him to get down and sit on the edge of the platform with her, here on the dark side where nobody would notice them, and they could decide what was to be done next.

He dismounted slowly, stumblingly, gained the edge of the platform, and there sat with drooping head. Judith tied the two animals and ran to sit beside him.

"Ye ain't goin' to faint air ye?" she asked anxiously. "Lean on me, Creed. I wish't I knew what to do for ye!"

The young fellow, half unconscious indeed, put his head down upon her shoulder with a great shuddering sigh.

"I'll be better in a minute, dear," he whispered. "I reckon I got a little tired—riding so far."

For some time Judith sat there, Creed's head on her shoulder, the black night all about them, the little lighted station empty save for the clicking of the telegraph instrument, and the footsteps of the station master who had opened up for the midnight train. She was desperately anxious and at a loss which way to turn. And yet through all her being there rolled a mighty undernote of joy. As to the dweller on the coast the voice of the sea is the undertone to all the sounds of man's activities, so beneath all her virginal hesitancies, her half terror of what she had done, surged and sang the knowledge that Creed was hers, her avowed lover. She, Judith, had him here safe; she had brought him away out of the mountains, from those who would have harmed him—and those who would have loved him too well. In all her plannings up to this time she had never quite been able to see clearly what should come after getting Creed down into the valley. Over her stormily beating heart now there rose and fell a little packet of bills, savings above necessary expenditures on the farm, and her own modest expenses, savings which had been accumulating since Uncle Jephthah rented the place, and now amounted to some hundreds of dollars. These she had put in the bosom of her frock when she set out on this enterprise, with, as she now realised, the vaguest expectation of ever returning to her uncle's house.

"Creed," she whispered, "air ye better?"

"Yes," responded her charge, "yes—I'm better." But he made no movement to raise his head, and with eyes long accustomed to darkness she was able to see that his lids were still closed.

"Creed," she began again, "what shall I do for you now? Must I go ask at the hotel will they give you a room? Have you—have you got money with you?"

Bonbright roused himself.

"I'm all right now," he said in a strained tone. "Yes, dear, I've got some money with me, and a little more in the bank at Hepzibah. I can get hold of that any time I want to. I don't know just what I'll do," he looked around him bewildered. This had not been his plan, and the long ride down the mountain, and above all the happiness of being with Judith, of her avowals had made him forgetful of its exigencies. "I reckon I'll make out. You needn't worry about me any more, Judith. I'm safe down here."

These words sounded dreadfully like a dismissal to the girl. She locked her hands hard together in her lap and fought for composure. An older or a more worldly woman would have said to him promptly that she could not leave him in this case, and that if they were ever to be married it must be now. But all the traditions of the mountain girl's life and upbringing were against such a course. She gazed at him helplessly.

"I ain't got but one friend on this earth, looks like," began Creed wearily, as he got to his feet, "and now I'm obliged to send her away from me."

It was more than Judith could bear. She lifted her swimming eyes to him in the dusk; he was recovering self command and strength, but he was still white, shaken, the bandaged head and shoulder showing how close he had been to death. Her love overbore virgin timidity and tradition.

"Don't send me away then," she said in the deepest tones of that rich, passionate voice of hers. "Ef hit's me you're namin' when you speak of having but one friend—don't send me away, Creed."

He came close and caught her hand, looking into her face with wondering half comprehension of her words. That face was dyed with sudden, burning red. She hoped and expected that he would make the proffer which must come from him. When he did not, she burst out in a vehement, tense whisper,

"If—if you love me like you said you did——"

Creed hesitated, bewildered. He was too ill to judge matters aright, but he knew one thing.

"I do love you," he said with mounting firmness. "I may be a mighty poor sort of a fellow—I've begun to think so of late—but I love you."

Judith put out both hands blindly toward him whispering,

"And I love you. I don't want nothin' but to be with you an' help you, an' take keer of you. I'll never leave you."

For a moment the young fellow felt only the dizzy rapture of her frank confession. In that instant he saw himself accepting her sacrifice, taking her in his arms; in anticipation he tasted the sweetness of her lips. Then pure reason, that shrew who had always ruled his days, spoke loud, as the bitterness of his situation rolled back upon him.

"No—no!" he cried. "Judith—honey—I can't do that. Why, I'd be robbing you of everything in the world. Your kin would turn against you. Your farm would be lost to you, I reckon—I don't know when I'll be able to go back and claim mine."

In the moment of strained silence that followed this speech, with a sense of violent painful revulsion the girl pushed him back when he would timidly have clung to her. What woman ever appreciated prudence in a lover? It is not a lover's virtue. Her farm—her farm! He could listen to her confession of love for him, and speculate upon the chances of her losing her farm by it! She had one shamed, desperate instant when she would have been glad to deny the words she had spoken. Then Creed, reading her anger and despair by the light of his own sorrows, said brokenly:

"You feel—you're offended at me now—but Judith, you wouldn't love me if I had taken you at your word, and ruined all your chances in life. I—Judith—dear—I'll make this thing right yet. I'll come back—and you'll forgive me then."

With a sudden flaring up of strength he took quiet mastery of the situation. He kissed her tenderly, but sadly, not such a kiss as either could ever have imagined their first would be.

"I love you too well to let you wed a man that's fixed like I am—a man that's made such a failure of life—a fugitive—a fellow that has nothing to offer you, and no more standing with your people than a hound dog. I love you better than I do myself or my comfort—or even my life."

In anguished silence Judith received the caress; dumb with misery she got to her horse. Creed stood looking up at her for their last words, when, with a rattle and clang, the train from the North swept in and halted. Selim jibed and fought the bit as any sensible mountain horse feels himself entitled to do under similar circumstances; but Judith heeded him almost not at all.

"My Lord—who's that?" she cried, staring toward the lighted train where the figure of a man mounted the platform.

"What is it?" queried Creed.

"Hit looked like Blatch," whispered the girl; "but I reckon it couldn't a-been."

"Blatch!" echoed Creed, all on fire in an instant—where now was her poor invalid whose head she had pillowed, of whom she had thought to take care? "Blatch Turrentine!—Good-bye, honey—you mustn't be seen with me. If Blatch is here I've got to find and face him. You see that, don't you?—You understand."

And he turned and left her so. Oh, these men, with their quarrels and their nice points of honour—while a woman's heart bleeds under the scuffling feet!

She watched him hurry to the train, his staggering step advertising how unfit he was for any such attempt, watched him mount the platform where she had seen the man that looked like Blatch; and then the conductor swung his lantern, the wheels began to revolve, she half cried out, and Selim at the end of his patience, bolted with her and never stopped running till he had topped the rise above the village.

Here, with some ado, she got him quieted, brought to a standstill, got off and tightened the girth, for the saddle was slipping dangerously. She climbed on once more, mounting from a fallen tree, and was moving again up the trail when, down toward Garyville, someone called her name.

"Judith!"

She did not turn her head. She knew to whom the voice belonged. As he rode up to her:

"What you doin' here, Blatch Turrentine?" she demanded fiercely, "an' what'll the boys say to you for slippin' away from 'em to-night?"

He took her inferred knowledge of all his enterprises without a word of comment. Bringing his mule up closer to her where she sat on Selim he answered:

"The boys know whar I'm at. We got word last evenin' that the man I sell to was waitin' for me in Garyville. He don't know nobody but me in the business, and nobody but me could do the arrent. I hauled a load down, an' I would have been back in plenty time, ef I hadn't met you and Bonbright right thar whar that old Cherokee trail comes into the Garyville road."

Judith started, her face burned in the darkness, but she said nothing. Blatch peered curiously at her as he went on:

"I reckon you never took notice of the waggon that was under the bluff thar by the turn, but that was my waggon, and I was a-settin' on it. I wheeled myse'f round, when I seed 'twas Bonbright, and follered you two down to Garyville, and put up my mules."

Again he peered sharply at her.

"Jude," as she still sat silent, "I won't tell the boys what kept me—I won't tell them nary thing about you. I'll just let on that I happened to see Bonbright at Garyville."

"You tell what you're a mind to," said Judith bitterly. "I don't keer what you say."

Blatchley took the retort coolly. But his light grey eyes narrowed under the black brows.

"Bonbright seemed mightily upsot," he commented. "Went off on the train an' left his mule a-standin'."

Went off on the train! Judith's heart leaped, then stood still.

"Ye needn't werry about it—I had Scomp put it up, 'long o' my other 'n. He'll send 'em both up a Wednesday. I reckon it ain't to be wondered at Bonbright was flustered. Who do you 'low he went with on the railroad train? Jude, air you so easy fooled as to think it was a new notion for him to go to Garyville? Didn't he name it to you that it was a better place than Double Springs?"

Leaning close and watching her face, he saw in it confirmation.

"Shore. They was a little somebody on the railroad train waitin' to go on with him—after he'd done kissed you good-bye—and left you!"

Judith sat, head up, staring at him. Her less worthy nature was always instantly roused by this man's approach. Savage resentment, jealousy, hate, stirred in her crushed spirit; they raised their heads; their movement crowded out grief and humiliation. It must be true—she had proposed Double Springs, and he had said Garyville would be better. He had refused in so many words her offer of herself. He had kissed her——

"No!—no!—no!" she cried to the man before her, "don't you look at me—don't you speak to me."

"Why, Judith," he protested, hanging on Selim's flank and talking to her as she whirled the sorrel into the road and put him at the slope at a pace which that petted animal very much resented, "why Judith, ef one feller goes back on you thataway you be mad at him—he's the one to be mad at. Here's me, I stand willin' to make it up. Creed Bonbright has shamed you—he's left you; but you could make him look like a fool if you would only say the word—and you and me would——"

"Now you go back!" Judith turned upon him as one speaks to a dog who is determined to follow. "I ain't nary 'nother word to say to you. Leave me alone!"

"But Judith, hit ain't safe for you to be ridin' up here in the night time, thisaway," Blatch insisted. "Lemme jest go along with you——"

"I'll be a mighty heap safer alone than I'd be with you," Judith told him, urging Selim ahead, "and anybody that knows you well will say so. You—go—back."



Chapter XIX

Cast Out

Judith reached the Top in the grey, disillusioning light of early dawn. The moon, a ghastly wraith, was far down in the west, the east had not yet taken any hint of rose flush, but held that pallid line of greyish white that precedes sunrise.

She clambered across the Gulch, her tired horse stumbling with drooping head over the familiar stones, and rode slowly up to the home place. The huddle of buildings looked gaunt, deserted, inhospitable. There was light here enough to see the life which in daytime made all homelike, but which now, quenched and hidden, left all desolate, forbidding. As sleep takes on the semblance of death, so the sleeping house took on the semblance of desertion. The chickens were still humped on their perches in the trees, the cows had not come up to the milking-pen, their calves lay in a little bunch by the fence fast asleep. To the girl's heavy heart it seemed a spot utterly forlorn in the chill, sad, ironic half-light of the slow-coming morning.

She rode directly to the barn, unsaddled, and put her horse out. As she was coming back past her uncle's cabin, she saw the old man himself sitting in the door. He was fully dressed; his hat lay on the doorstone beside him, and against the jamb leaned Old Sister. He looked up at her with a sort of indifferent, troubled gaze.

"So you got back, Jude," he said quietly.

"Yes, Uncle Jep," she returned as quietly.

He made no comment on her riding skirt which she held up away from the drenching dew. He asked no questions as to where she had been, or what her errand. She noted that he looked old and worn.

"I'm mighty sorry it happened," he began abruptly, quite as though he was continuing a conversation which they had intermitted but a few moments, "mighty sorry; but I don't see no other way. I've studied a heap on it. Folks that stirs up trouble, gits trouble. I——"

He broke off and sat brooding.

"I'm glad you ain't mad at me for the part I've tuck in it," Judith began finally.

"Don't tell me." He raised a hasty, protesting hand. "I don't want to know nothin' about it. All is, I couldn't have things according to my ruthers, and they had to go as they must. Hit ain't what a man means that makes the differ—hit's what he does that we count. Them that stirs up trouble, finds trouble."

"I reckon so, Uncle Jep," said the girl, drooping as she stood.

"They ain't been a roof between my head and the sky sence I left this house," the old man's big voice rumbled on monotonously, hollowly. "I tromped the ridges over to'ds Yeller Old Bald. I left mankind and their works behind me, and I have done a power of thinking; but I can't make this thing come out no other way."

He ceased and sat looking down. The girl could fancy his solitary meals where he cooked what he had killed and ate it, to lie down under the sky and sleep. Women are denied this fleeing to the desert to be alone with God and their sorrow. She envied him the privilege. She had no heart to repeat to him Creed's statements that he was not a spy. That was all past—wiped out by the parting between her and her lover.

"Yes, Uncle Jep," she uttered low, and with bent head she moved dejectedly on toward the house.

Here all the boys were sleeping noisily after their vigils of the night before. About three o'clock, or a little after, they had come home to find their father turning in at the gate. With their disappointment fresh upon them they broke through his command of silence, and Wade told him how they and Blatch had planned the ambush, how Blatch had been called away, how they had waited in the hollow for Creed, who had promised to "come and talk to them," how he had never come, but how Arley Kittridge a few minutes ago had ridden up to notify them that Bonbright was gone from Nancy Card's, and that the mule was gone with him. None of the watchers could say what direction he took, except to give earnest assurances that he had not left by any trail leading down the mountain. "He's bound to be over here somewhars," Wade concluded, "and Blatch not havin' got back from Garyville, they two has met somewhars."

The old man listened in silence, and when his son had made an end offered neither comment nor reply. He passed over without a word the revelation of the deceit about Blatch's supposed killing. It was as though, weary and foredone, he dismissed the young fellows to the logic of events—to life itself—for response, explanation, or punishment.

Judith changed her dress, bathed her pale face, and set about preparing breakfast. And that was a strange meal when she had finally put it on the table and bidden them to it. The sons sat in their places like chidden schoolboys, furtively studying their father's ravaged visage, looking at each other and muttering requests or replies. They were all aware of the ugliness of their several offences. Creed's strange disappearance, Blatch's failure to return, the utter collapse of their errand, these had shaken them terribly.

About a third of the way through the meal Jim Cal shuffled in.

"Do you mind givin' me some breakfast, Jude?" he asked humbly. "Iley an' the chaps is all sound asleep. I hate to wake 'em, an' I never was no hand to do for myse'f."

"Set and welcome," said Judith, mechanically placing a chair for the one who had been most resolute of all that Creed must die. So it was that they were all seated about the board when Blatch Turrentine, without a word, made his appearance in the door. Without moving his head Jephthah turned those sombre eyes of his upon his nephew, and regarded him steadily. The younger man stopped where he was on the threshold.

"So ye ain't dead?" inquired his uncle finally.

"I reckon that ain't news to you, is it?" asked Blatch, making as though to come in and take his place at the table.

For a moment the loyalty of the tribal head, the hospitality of the mountaineer, warred in old Jephthah's heart with deep, strong resentment against this man. Then he said without rising,

"Yes, hit's news. But you may take it that hit's news I ain't heard. I reckon we'll just leave it that you air dead. The lease on the ground over thar runs tell next spring. I'll not rue my bargain, but no son of mine sets his foot on yo' land and stays my son, and you don't put yo' foot in this house again. You give it out that you was dead—stay dead."

"Oh, I see," said Blatch. "Yo' a-blamin' the whole business on me, air ye? Well, that's handy. What about them fine fellers that's settin' at meat with ye now? I reckon the tale goes that I led 'em into all their meanness."

Jim Cal dropped his head and stared at the bit of cornbread in his pudgy fingers; Wade glanced up angrily; the twins stirred like young hounds in leash; but Jephthah quieted them all with a look.

"Blatch," began the head of the house temperately, even sadly, "yo' my brother's son. Sam and me was chaps together, and I set a heap of store by him. Sam's been gone more than ten year, and in that time I've aimed to do by you as I would by a son of my own. I felt that hit was something I owed to Sam. But ef I owed hit hit's been paid out. Yo' Sam's son, but also yo' a Blatchley, and I reckon the Blatchley blood had to show up in ye. My boys is neither better nor worse than others, but when I say that I don't aim to have you walk with 'em, I say what is my right. What I owed yo' daddy, and my dead brother, has been paid out—hit's been paid plumb out."

Now that it was made plain, Blatch took the dismissal hardily. Perhaps he had been more or less prepared for it, knowing as he would have phrased it that his uncle wanted but half a chance to break with him. He was aware, too, that the secret of his illicit traffic was safe in the old man's hands, and that indeed Jephthah would strain a point to defend him for the name's sake if for nothing else.

"All right," he said, "ef them's yo' ruthers, hit suits me. What do you-all boys say?—I reckon Unc' Jep'll let ye speak for yo'selves—this one time."

"I say what pap says," came promptly from Wade. And, "Jeff an' me thinks it's about time pap's word went with his boys," put in the younger and more emotional Andy.

"All right, all right," agreed Blatch in some haste, finding the battle to go thus sweepingly against him. "I wont expect no opinions from you, podner, tell you've had time to run home an' ax Iley what air they. Ye ain't named Judith, Unc' Jep," he went on, glancing to where the girl knelt on the hearthstone dishing up corn pones from the Dutch oven. "Cain't she come over and visit me when she has a mind?"

"Judith's her own mistress. She can use her ruthers," returned Jephthah briefly, "but I misdoubt that you'll be greatly troubled with her company."

"Help me git my things out of the cupboard thar, Jude, won't ye?" asked Blatch civilly enough.

Without reply, without glancing at him, Judith preceded him into the fore-room, opened the doors and sought out his clean clothing, making it into a neat pile on the table.

"You come over and see me sometimes, won't ye, Judy?" whispered the tall man as he bundled these up. "I won't tell who I seen you with."

Judith looked at him with wordless contempt. Her own pain was so great that even anger was swallowed up in it.

"Tell anybody you're a mind to," she said listlessly. "I ain't a-carin'."

"I may git word of him, Jude," persisted Blatch as he was departing. "Ef I do would you wish to hear it? Ef you say yes, I'll send ye notice."

Again she glanced at him with that negligent disdain. What could he do to her now who had lost all? She was beyond the reach of his love or his malice.



Chapter XX

A Conversion

And now Judith's days strung themselves on the glowing thread of midsummer weather like black beads on a golden cord, a rosary of pain. She told each bead with sighs, facing the morning with a heavy heart that longed for darkness, lying down when day was over in dread of the night and a weariness that brought no sleep. And the cedar tree, swayed in the raw autumn air, talking to itself sombrely of the empty nest in its heart, sounded upon her wakeful ears a note of desolation and despair. For all the Turkey Tracks soon knew that Blatch Turrentine was sound and whole; all Hepzibah knew it eventually—and Creed Bonbright neither returned nor made any sign.

The embargo being removed, Judith went straight to Nancy Card.

In the preoccupation of her sorrow, she might have forgotten Little Buck's wounded heart; but when as of custom Beezy came rioting out to meet her, the man child hung back with so strange a countenance that she needs must note it.

"Come here, honey," she urged tenderly—her own suffering made her very pitiful to the childish grief.

Little Buck came slowly up to his idol, lifting doubtful eyes to her face. The girl's ready arm went swiftly round the small figure.

"Are you pestered about that word I sent Creed Bonbright by you?" she whispered.

The little boy nodded solemnly, and you could see the choke in his throat.

"Well, you don't need to be," she reassured him. "I had to send jest that word, Little Buck—jest that very word; nothin' less would 'a' brought him."

Again the child nodded, twisting around to look in her face, his own countenance clearing a bit.

"But it don't make any differ between you an' me, does it, honey?" she pursued. "You're Jude's man, jest the same as you ever was, ain't ye? You wouldn't never need to be jealous of anybody; 'cause you know all the time that Judy loves you."

Silently the small man put his arms round her neck and hugged her hard—an unusual demonstration for Little Buck. And during her entire stay he hung close about, somewhat to Nancy's annoyance, seeming to find plentiful joy in the contemplation of his recovered treasure.

The loss of Creed had meant a good deal to Nancy. More like a son than a boarder in her house, he had brought with him a sense of support and competence such as the hard-worked little woman had never known. With his going, she was back again in the old helpless, moneyless situation, with Pony on her hands a growing problem and anxiety, and Doss Provine but a broken reed on which to lean. Such inquiries after Creed as they managed to set afoot fetched no return.

"Hit ain't like Creed to be scared and keep runnin'," she would repeat pathetically. "I know in reason something awful has chanced to that boy. Either that, or it's like they're all beginning to say, he's wedded and gone to Texas same as his cousin Cyarter done. Cyarter Bonbright run away with a gal on the night she was to have wedded another feller—tuck her right out of the country and went to Texas. That's Bonbright nature: they ain't much on sweet-heartin' an' sech, but when they git it, they git it hard."

She laid a loving hand on the girl's shoulder, and leaned around to look frankly into the beautiful, melancholy, dark face with the direct, honest grey eyes that would admit no concealments between herself and those whom she really cared for.

"I speak right out to you, Jude," she said kindly, "'caze I see how hit's been between you an' Creed, an' hit'll hurt you less if you get used to the idy of givin' him up. Him treated the way he was, I don't know as I'd blame him."

But Judith could have blamed him. It was only when despair pressed too hard that she could say she would be glad to know he was alive even though he belonged to somebody else. Yet to credit Blatch's story for a moment, to think he had gone that night with Huldah Spiller, was to open the heart's door on such a black vista of treachery and double-dealing in Creed's conduct, to so utterly discredit his caring for herself, that she had no defence but to disbelieve the whole tale, and this she was generally able to do.

But as far away as Hepzibah a small event was preparing that should break the monotony of Judith's grievous days. Venters Drane, the elder's twelve-year-old boy, going to school in the village, fell ill of diphtheria. When word was brought to the father—a widower and wise—he loaded his three younger children and their small belongings into the waggon and drove over to the Turrentine place.

"I jest p'intedly ain't got nary another place to leave 'em, Sister Barrier, nor nary another soul on earth that I could trust 'em with like I could with you," he said wistfully, after he had explained the necessities of the case. "I'm on my way down now to get Venters and bring him home—look at that, will ye!" as the baby made a dash for Judith who stood by the wheel looking up.

"They're mighty welcome, Elder Drane," Judith declared warmly, receiving the little fellow in open arms. "I'll be glad to do for 'em."

Martin and Lucy were old-fashioned, repressed, timid children, with the pathetic outlook of young persons brought up by a melancholy, ancient hireling. But the baby, glowing-eyed, laughing-mouthed rogue, staggering valiantly on sturdy, emulous legs, taking tribute everywhere with all babyhood's divine audacity, walked straight into her heart. He slept beside her at night, for him she darkened and quieted the house of afternoons, lying down with him to watch his slumbers, to brood with mother fondness upon the round, rosy, small face, and the even, placid breathing.

Drane had brought such clothing as they had, but Judith found them ill-provided, and set to work for them at once. Being a capable needlewoman she soon had them apparelled more to her liking, and the labour physicked pain. Sitting in the porch sewing, with the baby tumbling about the floor at her feet and Mart and Lucy building play-houses in the yard under the trees, Judith began dimly to realise that life, somewhere and at some time, might lack all she had so passionately craved, all she so piercingly regretted, and yet hold some peace, some satisfaction. True she was still desolate, robbed, despairing, yet with the children to tend there were hours when she almost lost sight of her own sorrow, in the sweet compulsion of doing for them.

Jim Cal shook his head over these arrangements. "Looks like to me ef I was a widower with chaps, trying to wed a fine lookin', upheaded gal like Jude, I'd a' kep' the little 'uns out of her sight as much as I could, 'stid of fetchin' 'em right to her. Hit seems now as though she muched them greatly, but she's sartin shore to find out what a sight o' trouble chaps makes, and ain't any woman wantin' more work than she's 'bleeged to have."

Lacking active concerns of his own, James Calhoun was always greatly interested in those of the persons about him. Judith's doings, on account of her reticence, beauty and high spirit, proved a theme of unending, mild interest.

"Jude," he opened out one day as he sat on the edge of the porch while his cousin was busy with some sewing for her little visitors, "did ye hear 'bout Lace Rountree?"

Judith never moved her eyes from her work. "I know they's sech a person," she said evenly, "if that's what you mean."

"No, but have ye heared of how he's a-doin' here lately?" persisted the fat man. "I don't know as anybody has named anything special to me about Lacey Rountree or his doin's," Judith returned with a rising irritation. "Why should they?"

Jim Cal heaved a wheezy sigh. "'Caze yo' said to be the cause of it," he expounded with lugubrious enjoyment. "Lace Rountree is fillin' hisse'f up on corn whiskey and givin' it out to each and every that he's goin' plumb straight di-rect to the dav-il, an' all on yo' accounts—'caze you wouldn't have 'im. Now what do you make out o' that?"

"I make out that some folks are mighty big fools," retorted Judith with asperity. "Lace Rountree is no older than Jeff and Andy—he's two years younger'n I am—why, he's like a child to me. I never no more thought of Lace Rountree than I'd think of—well, not so much as I would of Little Buck Provine."

"Uh-huh," agreed Jim Cal shaking his head dolefully, "that's the way you talk; but you-all gals had ort to have a care how you toll fellers on. Here's Huldy got Wade so up-tore about her that he's a-goin' to dash out and git him a place on the railroad whar he's mighty apt to be killed up; and you——"

"I what?" prompted Judith sharply, as he came to a wavering pause.

"Well—they was always one man that you give good reason to expect you'd wed him. I myse'f have heared you, more'n forty times I reckon, say to Blatch Turrentine—or if not say it in so many words, at least——"

"Cousin Jim," broke in Judith, carefully ignoring this last charge, "so far as that Lace Rountree is concerned, did you ever know of a reckless feller that come to no good but what he had some gal at whose door he could lay it all? I vow I never did. They ain't a drinkin' whiskey becaze they like it; they don't git into no interruptions becaze they're mad—it's always 'count o' some gal that has give 'em the mitten. I'll thank you not to name Lace Rountree to me again, nor—nor anybody else," as she saw his eyes wander to the sewing in her lap.

"Well, Drane's old enough to look out for hisse'f," said Jim Cal, rising and trying his joints apparently for a movement toward home. "Ef you choose to toll him on by takin' care of his chaps, that's yo' lookout, and his lookout—'taint mine; but 'ef I was givin' the man advice, I'd say to him that he might about as well take 'em home, or hunt up some other gal to leave 'em with, 'caze yo' apt to much the chil'en and then pop the do' in the daddy's face."

The weeks brought piecemeal confirmation of Jim Cal's dismal forebodings. Elihu Drane took advantage of every pretext to haunt about the roof that sheltered his children. Though he was not with the sick boy, he made the presence of a "ketchin' town disease" in his home, reason for not coming near the little ones, but called Judith down to the draw-bars to talk to him. When he had her there at such disadvantage, he so pertinaciously urged his unwelcome suit that he made her finally glad to be rid of the children, to see him, when Venters was once more well, take them away with him and give her respite from his importunities.

In the case of Wade, too, the fat man's pessimistic expectations were realised; the young man did, early in August, dash out and secure a place on the railroad. Mountain people write few letters. They heard nothing from him after the first message which told them where he was employed and what wages he was to have.

It was September when Iley announced to Judith that she had word from some of Pap Spiller's kin who were living in Garyville, that acquaintances of theirs from Hepzibah, coming down to the circus at the larger town, had given them roundabout and vague news of Huldah. The girl had delayed in Hepzibah but a few days. The story as it came up on the mountain was that she had married "some feller from Big Turkey Track, and gone off on the railroad."

"Them Tuels is mighty po' hands to remember names," Iley said. "But all ye got to do is to look around and take notice of anybody that's gone from Big Turkey Track here lately. Ye can fix it to suit yo'se'f. But I reckon Huldy has made a good match, and I'm satisfied."

Judith looked upon the floor in silence. In silence she left the cabin and took her way to her own home. And that night, while the cedar tree talked to her in the voice of love—Creed's voice—she fought with dragons and slew them, and was slain by them.

When Blatchley Turrentine had asserted this thing to her at Garyville, she found somewhere—after her first gust of unreasoning resentment was past—strength to disbelieve it utterly. But now it came again in more plausible guise. It gained likeliness from mere repetition. And hardest of all to bear, she was totally unsupported in her trust. She knew Creed, knew his love for her; yet to cling to it was to fly in the face of probabilities, and of everything and everybody about her. The lover who is silent, absent from her who loves him, at such a time, runs tremendous risks.

It was the set or turn of the year's tide; sunsets were full, rich, yellow, and a great round, golden moon swung in the evening sky above the purple hills. A soft, purring monotone of little tree crickets in the night forest replaced the shriller insect chorus of midsummer. Garden patches, about through their summer yield, were a tangle of bubble-tinted morning glories, the open woods misty with wild asters, bell flowers trembling from the crevices of rocks; and along fence-row and watercourse turkey-pea, brook sunflower, queen of the meadow, and joepye-weed made gay the land.

Such farm work as remained was only garnering—fodder-pulling, pea-hay and millet hay to gather; with a little sowing of wheat, rye, or turf oats.

In late midsummer and early fall revivalists, preachers, and exhorters go through the Cumberlands holding protracted meetings in the little isolated churches. At this time of year the men as well as the women are most at liberty. To a people who live scattered through a remote and inaccessible region, who have few and scanty public gatherings and diversions, this season of religious activity offers the one emotional outlet which their conception of dignity permits them, and it is proportionately precious in their eyes. In addition to the women and the girls and boys, who usually make up the rank and file of religious gatherings elsewhere, here at this favoured season old fellows, heads of families and life-long pillars of the Church, give up their entire time to the meetings. The family is put into the waggon with a basket of dinner, and they make a day of it. Services hold as late as twelve and one o'clock, and after them this contained, stoic folk will go home through the woods, carrying pine torches, singing, shouting, laughing, sobbing.

Hiram Bohannon came into the two Turkey Tracks this year and held services at Brush Arbour church. He was very much in earnest, Brother Bohannon, a practical man with a rough native eloquence that spoke loud to his hearers.

Every afternoon the wild, sweet hymns rang out over the little cup-like valley in which Brush Arbour church stood. The month was extremely warm, and they used the outside brush arbour from which the schoolhouse-church received its name.

Judith went day and night in a feverish attempt to get away from herself and her sorrows. Even the fact that Elihu Drane was very much to the fore in these gatherings could not deter her. Sitting in the open there, her hands clasped upon her knee, her sombre eyes on the ground, or interrogating the distance with an unseeing stare, she would let hymn and sermon, prayer and the weeping and shouting which always close night meeting, go past her ears well-nigh unheard. Before those darkened, bereaved eyes, turn where they would, Love's ever-renewed idyl of rustic courtship was enacting, since Big Meetin' was the time and occasion of all the year for Corydon to encounter Phyllis, to stroll or sit beneath the trees with her, possibly to "carry her home."

Andy and Jeff began taking the Lusk girls to meeting, and within a week's time two very pale young men—the twins always acted in concert—stumbled up the earthen aisle between the puncheon seats to join the group at the mourners' bench and ask for the prayers of the congregation. Brother Bohannon knew what quarry he had netted, and he hurried down at once, half in doubt that this was another scheme of these young daredevils to make game of his meeting. But both boys were on their knees, and the tears with which they began confessing to him past sins, the penitence of their shaking voices, proclaimed the genuineness of their conversion.

Cliantha and Pendrilla left behind—they had been sober church members since they were twelve years old—fluttered to Judith and demanded her instant attention to the miracle.

"Oh, Judith, ain't it jest too good to be true?" panted little Cliantha. "Jeff never did lack anything of bein' the best man that ever walked this earth except to jine the church—an' now look at him!"

"And Andy, too," put in Pendrilla jealously. "I do believe Andy is a prayin' the loudest—I'm shore he is."

Judith roused herself. "I'm mighty glad—for the both of ye," she said kindly.

And then she looked at their tremulous, happy faces, at the kneeling boys up among the press of figures about the pulpit, and burst into a storm of weeping. Where was her lover? Where was Creed? Dead—or he had forgotten her.

"Are you under conviction of sin, sister?" inquired one of the helpers.

Judith let it pass at that, and flung herself on her knees beside the bench to wait until the last hymn and the dismissal.

Brother Bohannon was an extremely practical Christian; his creed applied to every day in the year and to the most commonplace acts. He adjured his converts not only to quit their meanness, but to go and acknowledge past errors, to repair such evil as they could, and if possible to seek forgiveness from man, certain that God's forgiveness would follow. Such counsel as this brought the twins to their father's cabin early on the morning after their conversion at Brush Arbour church.

"Pap," began Andy standing before his parent with an odd suggestion of the small boy caught in mischief, "me and Jeff are aimin' to join the church."

"That's right, son," said the old man rising and clapping a hearty hand on each young shoulder. "I'm mighty proud to hear it. Hit's a good way for fellers like you to start out in this world."

"Well, befo' we do so," Jeff took up the burden, "the preacher says we ort to confess our sins and git forgiveness from them we have done wrong by. Creed Bonbright ain't here. Mebbe he's never goin' to be back any mo'. We talked it over and 'lowed we'd better come tell you, pap."

At Creed Bonbright's name a pathetic change went over old Jephthah's pleased countenance. He had received the opening words with satisfaction, not untinctured by the mild, patronising indulgence we show to children. But when Bonbright was mentioned he sat back in his chair, nervously knocking the ash from his pipe, anxiously staring at the boys.

"I'm mighty proud," he repeated, "to hear what you say." He spoke gravely and with dignity; but a note of uncontrollable eagerness stole into his voice, as he added in a lower tone, "What mought you-all have to tell me about Creed Bonbright?"

"Pap, we done you a meanness in that business," hastened Jeff. "We had no call to lie to you like we done, and send the feller word in yo' name."

"Wade, he was mad about his gal," agreed Andy thoughtfully, "but what possessed me and Jeff I'll never tell ye. Spy or no spy, we done that man wrong."

Jephthah looked expectantly and in silence from one young face to the other.

"Blatch let on to you hit was the still; but of course we knowed hit was Jude that ailed him. He got Taylor Stribling to toll Creed to Foeman's Bluff that night," Jeff supplied. "Blatch picked the quarrel, and drawed a knife when they was wrastlin', and when Bonbright pushed Blatch away from him, he fell over the cliff. That's God's truth about the business, pappy, ef I ever spoke it. Me an' Andy an' Wade was all into it."

The boyish countenance was pale, and Jeff drew a nervous hand across his brow as he concluded. There followed a lengthened silence. Old Jephthah sat regarding his own brown right hand as it lay upon his knee.

"Ye tolled him thar," he said finally. "Ye tolled him thar. Then Creed Bonbright wasn't no spy." He lifted his head. "I never could make it figure up right for that feller to be a spy. Curious he was, and he had some idees that I couldn't agree with; but a spy——"

He broke off suddenly, and one saw how strong had been the bond between him and the young justice, how greatly he cared that the memory of the man even should be cleared.

The boys looked at each other, and with a gulp Jeff began again:

"I reckon you knowed well enough we stood in with Blatch when he hid out and let folks believe the killin' had been did. We knowed you seen through it all; but when ye git started in a business like that, one thing leads on to another, and befo' you're done with it, ye do a plenty that you'd ruther not."

"Well, hit's over and cain't be he'ped, but you've done what's right at last," Jephthah assured them. "The church is a mighty good thing for young fellers like you. A good wife'll do a sight to he'p along."

He looked at them kindly. He had never liked his boys half so well.

"I'm mighty proud of the both of ye," he concluded heartily. "Ef Creed Bonbright ever does come back in the mountains, we'll show him that the Turrentines can be better friends than foes to a man."



Chapter XXI

The Baptising

October had led forth her train across the Cumberlands. One night the forest was fairly green, but early risers next morning found that in the darkness while they slept the hickories had been touched to gold, the oaks smitten with a promise of the glowing mahogany-red which was to be theirs. Sourwood and sumach blazed; the woodbine flung its banner of blood, chestnuts were yellow where the nuts dropped through them from loosened burs. The varying dark greens of balsam and fir, pine and cedar, heightened by contrast the glow of colour, while the dim blue sky above set its note of tender distance and forgetfulness. On a thousand mountain peaks smoked and smouldered, flared and flamed the altar fires of autumn.

After that each day saw a deepening of the glory in the hills. It was like a noble overture a multitudinous chorus made visible. The marvel of it was that one sense should be so clamorously challenged while the other was not addressed. The ear hearkened ever amid that grand symphony of colour for some mighty harmony of sound. But even the piping song-birds were gone, and the cry of a hawk wheeling high in the blue, the voice of a woman calling her cow, these sounded loud in the autumnal hush.

The streams were shrunken to pools whose clear jade reaches reflected the blazing banners above them, and offered mimic seas for the sailing of painted argosies when the wind shook the leaves down. There was a fruity odour of persimmon and wild grape forever in the air. The salmon-pink globes stood defined against the blue on leafless twigs, while the frost sweetened them to sugary jelly, and the black wild grape by the water-courses yielded an odour that was only less material than the flavour of its juices. Every angle of the rail fences became a parterre with golden-rod, cat-brier, and the red-and-yellow pied leaves of blackberries, while a fringe of purple and white asters thrust fragile fingers through the rails below, or the stout iron-weed pushed its purple-red blooms into view at the head of tall, lance-like stems.

Judith walking in the woods one day found a great nest of Indian pipe. She bent listlessly to pick the waxen mystic blossoms, thinking to herself that they were like some beautiful dead thing; and then she came upon a delicate flush on the side of their clear, translucent pearl, and wondered if it were an omen.

It was a gorgeous October Sabbath when the boys were baptised. Baptisms always took place from Brush Arbour in a sizable pool of Lost Creek which flows through one corner of the little valley that holds the church building. The sward which ran down to its clear mirror was yet green, but the maples and sourwoods above it were coloured splendidly. Among their clamant red and yellow laurel and rhododendron showed glossy green, and added to the gay tapestry. The painted leaves let go their hold on twig or bough and dropped whispering into the water, like garlands flung to dress the coming rite.

Morning meeting was over. The women-folks who had come far spread dinner on the grass near the church, joining together occasionally, the children wandering about in solemn delight with a piece of corn pone in hand, whispering among the graves in the tiny God's acre, spelling out the words upon some wooden head-board, or the rarer stone.

The Big Spring was the customary gathering place of the young people before church, and during intermissions, about its clear basin, on the slopes above the great rock from under which it issued, might be seen a number of couples, the boys in Sunday best of jeans or store-bought clothing, the girls fluttering in cheap lawns or calicoes, and wearing generally hats instead of the more becoming sunbonnet. Judith had been used to lead her following here, and the number of her swains would have been a scandal in any one else: but there was a native dignity about Judith Barrier that kept even rural gossip at bay. This morning, however, when Elder Drane gave her the customary invitation to walk down there for a drink, she refused, and all during the first service the widower had sat tall and reproachful on the men's side and reminded her of past follies. She was aware of his accusing eyes even when she did not look in his direction, and uncomfortably aware too that others saw what she saw.

Throughout the pleasant picnic meal, shared with its group of neighbours, the sight of Andy and Jeff with Cliantha and Pendrilla aggravated a dull pain which dragged always in her heart, and when dinner was over and they had packed the basket once more, and set it in the back of the waggon, she left them, to wander by herself on the farther side of Lost Creek, sitting down finally in the shade of a great sourwood, and looking moodily at the water. All afternoon she sat there wrapt in her own emotions, forgetful of time and place. The congregation straggled back into the little log church, and the second service was begun. The preacher's voice came floating out to her softened by distance, and with it the sound of singing; as the meeting drew to its close an occasional more vociferous "Amen!" or "Glory!" or "Praise God!" made itself heard. The sun was beginning to slant well from the west when she got suddenly to her feet with the startled realisation that afternoon preaching was over, the people were pouring from the church door, streaming across the green toward the baptising pool. They were in the middle of a hymn.

"Oh, wanderer return—return,"

came their musical tones across the water. The grey-haired old preacher was in the lead, his black coat blowing about him, the congregation spreading out fan-wise as they followed after, Andy and Jeff arm in arm, the half-dozen others who were to be baptised walking with them.

Her fretted, pining spirit had no appreciation left for the appeal of the picture. She gazed, and looked away, and groaned. "Oh, wanderer return," they sang—almost her heart could not bear the words.

She sighed. Ought she to cross the foot-log and be with them when the boys were dipped? But while she hesitated the singers struck up a different hymn, a louder, more militant strain. Brother Bohannon was at the water; he was wading in; he was up to his knees now—up to his waist.

"Send 'em in, Brother Drane," she heard him call. "This is about deep enough. That's right—give me the young men first. When the others see them dipped they'll have no fear."

Elihu Drane took Andy's arm, and another helper laid hold of Jeff.

"Sing—sing brethren and sisters," admonished the preacher. "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord. This is the time for Hallelujahs. Ef ye don't sing now, when will ye ever?"

Andy spoke low in the elder's ear, whereupon he was released, and turned to his brother; hand-in-hand the two stepped into the water alone. Judith saw the pale, boyish faces, strangely refined by the exaltation of spirit which was upon them, as the twins waded out toward the preacher. Bohannon called to Jeff, shook hands with him, shouted, "Praise God, brother. Glory! Glory! Now—make yo'se'f right stiff. Let me have ye. Don't be scared. I won't drop ye. I've baptised a many before you was born, son." His right hand was lifted dripping above the dark head. "I baptise ye, Thomas Jefferson Turrentine, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen."

"Amen—Amen!" came the deep chorus from the bank, the high, plaintive women's voices undertoned by the masculine bass.

The black coat sleeve went around the white-clad shoulders, the preacher dropped his new convert gently backward into the shining water, dipped him, and Jeff who was not an excellent swimmer for nothing, came up quiet, smiling, and stood aside to wait for his brother.

"Sing—sing!" cried the preacher. "Here goes another soul on its way to glory," and he reached forth to take Andy. A moment later he sent him, drenched, but washed clean of his sins, so far as mountain belief goes, after his twin. The hallelujahs burst forth to greet the boys: joyful shouts, amens, and some sobbing when, hand-in-hand—even as they had gone in—they came up out of the water.

"Mighty pretty to look at, ain't it?" said a voice at Judith's shoulder.

She turned to find Blatch Turrentine standing behind her.

"I reckon Andy and Jeff is goin' to be regular little prayin' Sammies from this out," jeered the newcomer.

"Granny Lusk has given her consent for them and the gals to be wedded," remarked Judith softly. To her—and perhaps to Cliantha and Pendrilla also—the main importance of the twins' conversion was in this permission, which had been withheld so long as they were wild and had a bad name.

"I heared of another weddin' that might interest ye," Blatch insinuated. "Want to come and walk a piece over by the Big Spring, Judy?"

Judith turned uncertainly. The boys had passed on up to the sheds to get on dry clothing. It was nearly time for her to be going back to the waggon. Bohannon was dipping Doss Provine's sister Luna. A group of trembling, tearful candidates, mostly young girls, were being heartened and encouraged for the ordeal by the helpers on the bank.

"Tell me here—cain't ye?" she said listlessly.

"I heared from a feller that got it from another feller," Blatch began smilingly, "that Huldy Spiller an' Creed Bonbright was wedded and gone to Texas. I reckon hit's true, becaze the man that told me was aimin' to buy the Bonbright farm."

Judith did not cry out. She hoped her colour did not change very much, for Blatch's eyes were on her face. After a while she managed to say in a fairly steady voice,

"Does Wade know? Have ye sent any word to him?"

"No," drawled Blatch. "Unc' Jep aimed to break off with me, and he left you the only one o' the family that dared speak with me. Mebbe you would like to write an' tell Wade?"

"I don't know," sighed Judith hopelessly. "What's the use?"

"Farewell," said Blatch, using a common mountain form of adieu. "I reckon Unc' Jep won't want to see me standin' around talkin' to ye. You tell Wade," significantly. "The sooner he gets Huldy out of his head the better for him. No use cryin' over spilt milk. They's as good fish in the sea as ever come out of it."

He looked long at her downcast face.

"Jude, the man that told me that about Bonbright," he said, speaking apparently on sudden impulse, "'lowed that the feller had left you—give ye the mitten. You're a fool ef ye let that be said, when his betters is wantin' ye."

Without another word, without a glance, he turned and slouched swiftly away down the path behind the fringe of bushes by the creek side.

The baptising was over. Judith, crossing the stream, saw her uncle's waggon, Beck and Pete already hitched to it, being loaded with Jim Cal and his tribe. Andy and Jeff were horseback with the Lusk girls. She hurried forward to join them and make ready for departure when, to her dismay, she encountered Drane at the foot of the slope coming toward her.

"Wasn't that thar Blatchley Turrentine?" inquired the elder.

The girl nodded.

"I didn't see him in the church," Drane pursued.

"I reckon he wasn't there," assented Judith lifelessly, making as though to pass on.

"He jest came here to have speech with you, did he?" inquired the man, nervously, brushing his sandy whiskers with unquiet fingers.

"I reckon he did," acknowledged Judith without coquetry, without interest.

"Jude!" burst out the widower, "I promised you I never would again ax you to wed; but I'm obliged to know ef you're studyin' about takin' that feller."

"No," said Judith, resenting nothing, "I never did aim to wed Blatch Turrentine, and I never will."

The elder stood directly in her path, blocking the way and staring down at her miserably for a long minute.

"That's what you always used to tell me," he remarked finally with a heavy sigh. "Back in them days when you let me hope that I'd see you settin' by my fireside with my children on your knees, you always talked thataway about Blatch—I reckon you talked thataway of me to him."

Judith's pale cheek slowly crimsoned. She looked upon the ground. "I'm mighty sorry," she said slowly.

Elihu Drane's faded eyes lighted with fresh fires. He caught the hand that hung by her side.

"Oh, Jude—do you mean it?" he cried. "Do you care? You don't know how the chaps all love ye and want ye. That old woman I've got doin' for 'em ain't fittin' to raise 'em. Everybody tells me I've got to marry and give 'em a mother, but I cain't seem to find nobody but you. If you feel thataway—if you'll——"

Judith drew her hand away with finality, but her eyes were full of pitying kindness. She knew now what she had done to this man. By the revealing lamp of her own suffering she read his. Back in the old days she had counted him only one more triumph in her maiden progress.

"No," she said gravely, "I ain't studyin' about marryin' anybody. I'm mighty sorry that I done thataway. I'm sorry, and ashamed; but I have to say no again, Elder Drane. There ain't never goin' to be no other answer."

"Hit's that feller Bonbright," declared the elder sternly as he stood aside to let her pass. "Good Lord, why ain't the man got sense enough to come back and claim his own!"



Chapter XXII

Ebb-Tide

Life closed in on Judith after that with an iron hand. She missed sorely the children's demands upon her, their play and prattle and movement about the place. Huldah was gone. Wade was gone. She could get no news of Creed. The things to love and hate and be jealous of seemed to have dropped out of her existence, so that the heart recoiled upon itself, the spirit wrestled blindly in darkness with an angel which was but its own self in other guise.

Day by day she turned from side to side for an exit from the fiery path she trod, and cried out to Heaven that she could not bear it—she could not stand it—there must be some way other than this!

The Lusk girls and the Turrentine twins were to have a double wedding. The preparations for this event were torture to Judith. Everybody, it seemed, could be happy but her own poor self. Even the fact that Jeff and Andy were changed, kinder to her, more considerate, better men in every way, had its own sting. If this could have been so before, the wreck of her world need not have come about.

Blatch kept rigorously to his own side of the Gulch, yet once in a while Judith met him on the highroad; and then, while he approached her with the carefullest efforts toward pleasing, he showed the effects of anxiety, the hard life, and the fact that he had begun to drink heavily—a thing he had never done before.

Spring would terminate his lease of the Turrentine farm, and then he must seek other quarters for his illicit traffic. His situation was doubled in danger by the fact that it could not be disguised how his uncle had turned upon him. Now that one did not, supposably, incur the displeasure of the Turrentines by giving information concerning Blatch and his still, the enterprise was a much safer one, and he trembled in hourly terror of its being undertaken by some needy soul. This terror gave a certain ferocity to his manner. Also the man who had come in with him to take Jim Cal's place in the partnership was a more undesirable associate even than Buck Shalliday.

Judith watched all these things with an idle lack of interest that was strangely foreign to her vivid human temperament. As time passed and she could hear nothing from Creed Bonbright, nor of him beyond what Blatch had told her, and the connection she made between it and Iley's report of Huldah's marriage, the inaction of her woman's lot was almost more than she could endure. Of an evening after her milking was over she would stand at the draw-bars under the wide, blue, twilight sky, and stare with her great, black, passionate eyes into the autumn dusk, and her whole being went forth with such an intensity of longing that it seemed some part of it must find Creed, wherever he was, and speak for her to him.

After Iley's announcement in September Judith never approached her nor talked to her again, though the shrew was growing strangely mild and disciplined since Jim Cal had broken with Blatch Turrentine and was become a partner in his father's affairs—a husband who is out of the good books of other people is a scold-maker with the type of woman Jim Cal had married. To go near Pendrilla and Cliantha was to be overwhelmed instantly with the joyous details of their wedding preparations. Judith flinched from bringing her troubles before such happy eyes. She had but Aunt Nancy.

It was bitter hard times at the little cabin on The Edge. Doss Provine had begun actively looking for a "second," and his courting operations sorely interfered with the making of the small crop. Nancy took the field behind the plough; but her efforts came late and availed little. There was scarcely food for their mouths; she was continually harassed by anxiety concerning Pony, who had got to running with a bad crowd in Hepzibah. And finally the thing happened which had not been since Big Turkey Track was a mountain and Nancy Card was born in that small cabin. At her wit's end, she took Little Buck and Breezy and went away to visit a married daughter whose husband worked in a machine-shop in a valley settlement, leaving Doss Provine to stay with his kin for the time. There was plenty at her daughter's table, and a warm welcome awaiting her and the children; besides, the man of the house had promised to find a job for her spoiled boy, and give him the masculine oversight and discipline he needed. At Hepzibah she gathered up that rather astonished young man, exerting for once the real authority that was in her, and with him set out on this formidable journey.

Just once old Jephthah went past that closed door. Just once he looked on the little front yard spilling over its rived palings with autumn blossoms. And he came home so out of joint with life, in so altogether impossible a mood, that it was fairly unsafe to mention as innocent a matter as the time of day to him. Up to now perhaps he had not known what a very large place in his life those almost daily quarrels with his old sweetheart filled. Now the restlessness which had come with the trouble over Creed Bonbright was renewed; he wandered about aimlessly, with a good word for nothing and nobody, and opined darkly that his liver was out of order.

"Aunt Nancy told me one time that she would almost be willin' to wed you to get a chance to give you a good course of spring medicine for that thar liver," remarked Judith casually. And then she looked up with a wan little smile, to find an expression in her uncle's eyes that set her wondering.

Oh, dear Heaven—was it like that? Would she grieve for Creed all her life long, till she was an old, old woman? She declared it should not be so. Love would never be within her reach—within the reach of her utmost efforts—and escape her, leave her an empty husk to be blown by the wind of years to the dust pile of death. One day in this mood she broke down and talked to the Lusk girls.

"He said he'd shore come back," she concluded hopelessly. "Well, anyhow, he named things that would be done when he come back. I call that a promise. I keep thinking he'll come back."

Pendrilla sat, her great china-blue eyes fixed on Judith's tense, pale, working face, and the big tears of pure emotional enjoyment began to slip down her pink cheeks. In the glow of Judith's splendid, fiery nature, the two pale little sisters warmed themselves like timid children at a chance hearth. As the full, vibrant voice faltered into silence, Cliantha went forward and took her favourite position on her knees beside Judith, her arms raised and slipped around the taller girl's waist.

"Oh," she began, with a sort of frightened assurance. "Ef my lover had gone from me thataway, and I didn't know whar he was at, an' couldn't git no news to him nor from him, I know mighty well and good what I'd do."

"What?" whispered Judith, young lioness that she was, reduced to taking counsel from this mouse, "what would you do, Clianthy?"

"I'd make me a dumb supper and call him," asserted the Lusk girl with tremulous resolution.

"A dumb supper!" echoed Judith, and then again, on a different key, "a dumb supper. I never studied about such as that."

She brooded a moment on the thought, and the girls said nothing, watching her breathlessly.

"Do you reckon hit'd do me any good?" she questioned then, half-heartedly. "Why, dumb suppers always seemed to me jest happy foolishness for light-hearted gals that had sweethearts."

"Oh, no!" disclaimed Pendrilla, joining her sister on the floor at Judith's feet. "They ain't nothin' like foolishness about a shore-enough dumb supper. Why, Judith, Granny Peavey, our maw's mother, told us oncet about a dumb supper that her and two other gals made when she was but sixteen year old, and her sweetheart away from her in Virginny, and she didn't know whar he was at, an' they brought her tales agin him."

"Well?" prompted Judith feverishly. "Did it do any good? Did she find out anything?"

"Her and two others went to a desarted house at midnight—you know that's the way, Jude."

Judith nodded impatiently.

"They tuck 'em each some bread an' salt, an' a candle to put the pins in and name. They done everything backwards—ye have to do everything backwards at a dumb supper. I don't know what happened when the candle burned down to the other girls' pins—I forget somehow—but when the pin Granny had stuck in the candle an' named for her lover was melted out and fell, the do' opened and in he walked and set down beside her. They wasn't a word said betwixt 'em. He tasted her salt, an' he et her bread; and then he was gone like a flash! And at that very same identical time that thar young man was a-crossin' the mountains of Virginny. It drawed him—don't you see, Judith?—it drawed him to Granny. He came back to her, shore enough, three months after, and they was wedded. He was our grandpap, Adoniram Peavey—and every word of that's true."

Judith sank lower in her splint-bottomed chair, looking fixedly above the flaxen heads at her knees, out through the open door, across the chip pile, and away to the bannered splendours of the autumn slopes.

Cliantha laid her head in Judith's lap and began to whimper.

"They's awful things chanced at them thar dumb suppers," she shivered. "I hearn tell of one gal that never had no true-love come, but jest a big black coffin hopped in at the do' and bumped around to her place and stopped 'side of her. My law, I believe I'd die ef sech as that should chance whar I was at!"

Judith's introverted gaze dropped to the girl's face.

"I reckon that gal died," she suggested musingly, "I don't know as I'd care much ef the coffin come for me. Unless—he—was to come, I'd ruther it would be the coffin. Pendrilly," with a sudden upflash of interest, "what is it that comes? Is it the man hisself—or a ghost?"

"'T ain't a ghost—a shore-enough ha'nt," argued Pendrilla soberly, sitting back on her heels, "not unless 'n the man's dead, hit couldn't be. Hit wasn't no ha'nt of Grandpap Peavey—and yet hit wasn't grandpap hisself. I reckon it was a sort of seemin'—jest like a vision in the Bible. Don't you, Jude?"

"I 'low," put in Cliantha doubtfully, "that if the right feller is close by when he's called by a dumb supper, he comes hisself. But ef he's away off somewhars that he cain't git to the place, then this here seemin' comes. An' ef he's dead and gone—why you'll see his ha'nt."

"They's jest three of us," whispered Pendrilla. "Three is the right number—but I know in my soul I'd be scared till I wouldn't be no manner of use to anybody."

"Hit's comin' close to Hollow Eve," suggested Cliantha. "That's the time to hold a dumb supper ef one ever should be held. Hit'll work then, ef it wouldn't on no other night of the year."

"It has to be held in a desarted house," Pendrilla reiterated the condition. "Ef you was to hold a dumb supper, Jude, we could go to the old Bonbright house itse'f—ef we had any way to git in."

"I've got the key," said Judith scarcely above her breath. "Creed left it with me away last April, to get things for the—for the play-party."



Chapter XXIII

The Dumb Supper

It was the thirty-first of October, All Souls' eve, that mystic point of contact between the worlds when quick and dead are fabled to walk the ways of earth together, to meet eye to eye, and hold converse. A web of mountain legend clings dimly about this season.

The spirit of it—weird, elfin—was abroad, the air was full of it as, alone out in the gusty darkness of the autumn night, at eleven o'clock, Judith walked swiftly toward the Lusk place. Wrapped in a little packet she carried bread and salt, and a length of candle. She went across fields, and thus cut down the distance till it was possible to walk it in fifteen minutes.

As she approached the house, Speaker, a barely grown hound-pup, came rollicking out to meet her, leaping about her shoulder-high, frisking back toward the porch and waiting for her, all the while barking joyously.

"My Lord!" said Pendrilla's sleepy small voice when Judith tapped on their window in the wing of the building where the girls roomed. "Ef that thar fool hound-pup ain't loose! I hope he don't wake up Grandpap. Cain't you make him hush, Judith?"

Judith stooped and caressed the dog for a moment, quieting him. The girls presently appeared in the doorway fully dressed and, as it seemed, with their packets made, in addition to which Cliantha carried an old lantern unlighted in her hand.

"I'll light it as soon as we get out in the road," she announced whisperingly.

When they would have secured the dog that he might not follow them, they found that he, wise for his age, had disappeared.

"I bet he's run down the road apiece; he'll be a-hidin' in the bushes waitin' for us," Cliantha opined pessimistically. But there was nothing to be done about it, and they set out, to be intercepted in just such manner as she foretold.

"I vow, I ain't so mighty sorry Speaker's along of us," Pendrilla said after they had vainly browbeaten, threatened, and stoned the hound to drive him back through the gate. "He's a mighty heap of company and protection out thisaway in the night."

"Girls," said Judith, suddenly halting them all in the little byroad which they were travelling, "don't you think we'd better cut across here? Hit'll be a lot nearer."

"Grandpap's jest ploughed that thar field to put in his winter wheat," objected Pendrilla. "Hit'll make mighty bad walkin'."

"But we'll get there quicker," urged Judith feverishly, and that closed the argument. Between them the Lusk girls had succeeded in lighting the old lantern; by its illumination the party climbed the rail fence, and struggled for some distance across the loose hillocks of ploughed ground.

"Hit wouldn't make such awful walkin' if it had been drug," Cliantha murmured. In the mountains they hitch a horse to a log or a large piece of brush and, dragging this over the ploughed ground, make shift to smooth it without a harrow.

They had hobbled about one third of the toilsome way when there came a rush of galloping hoofs, the girls had barely time to crouch and cry out, Speaker barked loud, and suddenly half a dozen young calves ran almost into them.

"Oh landy!" cried Pendrilla. "Ef them thar calves ain't broke the fence again! Grandpap will be so mad—and we don't darst to tell him that we know of it."

"Come on," urged Judith. "We've got to get over there."

But it was found when they would have moved forward that they could not shake off their unwelcome escort. The calves had been tended occasionally in the dusk by a man with a lantern, and they hailed this one as a beacon of hope. Finally even Judith, desperately impatient to be gone, agreed that they would have to turn back and put the meddlesome creatures into their pasture and lay up the fence before they could make any progress.

"Hit'll save time," she commented briefly, as though time were the only thing worth considering now.

At last, one after the other, they climbed the fence at the side of the Bonbright place. The air was soft, heavy with coming rain. Up through the weed-grown yard they went, greeted and beckoned by the odours of Mary Bonbright's garden, thyme and southernwood, herbs by the path-side, clumps of brave chrysanthemums, a wandering spray or two of late-blooming honeysuckle. Judith trembled and locked her teeth together in anguish as she remembered that other night in the odorous dusk when she and Creed had stood under these trees and sought in the darkness for the bush of sweet-scented shrub.

The empty house bulked big and black before them in the gloom. She took the key from her pocket and opened the front door, Pendrilla and Cliantha clinging to her in an ecstasy of delicious terror. She stepped into the front room, struck a match, and lighted her candle. It was half-past eleven by the small nickel alarm-clock which she carried. Its busy, bustling, modern tick roused strange, incongruous echoes in the old house, and reproved their errand.

Speaker made himself at home, coming in promptly, seeking out the corner he preferred, and turning around dog-fashion before he lay down and composed himself to half-waking slumbers.

"I reckon in here will be the best place," murmured Cliantha, seeking a candlestick from the mantel for their light. "We could set around this table."

"It's more better ef we-all set on the flo'," reminded Pendrilla doubtfully. "Don't ye ricollect? all the dumb suppers we ever hearn tell of was held thataway. Set on the flo' and put yo' bread and salt on the flo' in front of you."

"Mebbe that's becaze they was held in desarted houses, and most generally desarted houses don't have no tables nor chairs in 'em," Cliantha speculated.

From the moment the lantern revealed the room to them, Judith had stood drawn back against the wall curiously rigid, her hand at her lip, her over-bright eyes going swiftly from one remembered object to another. This fleeting gaze fixed itself at last on the inner door.

"I'll go in the other room a minute for—for something," she whispered finally. "You gals set here. I'll be right back. I've got two candles."

She lighted the second candle, left the girls arranging the dumb supper, and stole, as though some one had called her, into that room which she had made ready for Creed's occupancy on the night of the play-party. It had reverted to its former estate of dust and neglect. She looked about her with blank, desolate eyes which finally found upon the bed a withered brown something that held her gaze as she crept toward it—the wreath of red roses!

There it was, the pitiful little lure she had put forward to Love, the garland she had set in place to show Creed how fine a housewife she was, how grandly she would keep his home for him. The brave red roses, the bold laughing red roses, their crimson challenge was shrivelled to darkened shreds, each golden heart was a pinch of black dust; only the thorny stems remained to show what queen of blossoms had been there.