Finding the barn also deserted, Stonie laid young Tucker on the straw in the barrel with two of Sniffer's sleeping puppies and began to attend to his errand, which involved the extraction of several long, stout pieces of string from a storehouse of his own under one of the feed bins and the plaiting of them into the cracker of a whip which he had brought along with him.

Down below the store the rest of the Swarm were busy marking out a large circus ring and discussing with considerable heat their individual rights to the various star parts to be performed in the coming exhibition. The ardors of their several ambitions were not at all dampened by the knowledge of the fact that the audience that would be in attendance to witness their triumphs would in all probability consist of only Granny Satterwhite, whom little Miss Amanda always coaxed to attend in her company, with perhaps a few moments of encouragement from Mr. Crabtree if he found the time. To which would always be added the interested and jocular company of Mr. Rucker, who always came, brought a chair to sit in and stayed through the entire performance. And in the talented aggregation of performers there was of course just one role that could have been assumed by General Jackson, that of ringmaster; so to that end he sat on the floor of the barn beside the sleeping puppies and young Tucker and plaited the lash by means of which he intended to govern the courses of his stars.

And it was here that Everett found him a few minutes later as he walked rapidly up the milk-house path and stood in the barn door in evident hurried search for somebody or some thing.

"Hello, General," he said with a smile at the barrel full of sleepers at Stonie's side, "do you know where Rose Mary is?"

"Yes," answered the General, "she are in her room putting buttermilk on the five freckles that comed on her nose when she hoed out in the garden without no sunbonnet. I found 'em all for her this morning, and she don't like 'em. You can go on in and see if they are any better for her, I ain't got the time to fool with 'em now."

"Not for worlds!" exclaimed Everett as he sat down on an upturned peck measure in close proximity to the barrel. "Have you decided to have Mrs. Poteet and Mrs. Sniffer swap—er—puppies, Stonie?" he further remarked.

"No, I didn't," answered Stonie with one of his rare smiles which made him so like Rose Mary that Everett's heart glowed within him. Stonie was, as a general thing, as grave as a judge, with something hauntingly, almost tragically serious in his austere young face, but his smiles when they came were flashes of the very divinity of youth and were a strange incarnation of the essence of Rose Mary's cousinly loveliness. "He was crying because he was by hisself and I bringed him along to wait till his mother came home. He belongs some to us, 'cause he's named for Uncle Tuck, and I oughter pester with him same as Tobe have to. It's fair to do my part."

"Yes, General, you always do your part—and always will, I think," said Everett, as he looked down at the sturdy little chap so busy with his long strings, weaving them over and over slowly but carefully. "A man's part," he added as two serious eyes were raised to his.

"In just a little while I'll be a man and have Uncle Tucker and Aunt Viney and Aunt Amandy to be mine to keep care of always, Rose Mamie says," answered Stonie in his most practical tone of voice as he began to see the end of the long strings draw into his weaving of the cracker.

"What about Rose Mamie herself?" asked Everett softly, his voice thrilling over the child's name for the girl with reverent tenderness.

"When I get big enough to keep care of everything here I'm going to let Rose Mamie get a husband and a heap of children, like Mis' Poteet—but I'm a-going to make 'em behave theyselves better'n Tobe and Peggie and the rest of 'em do. Aunt Viney says Mis' Poteet spares the rod too much, but I'll fix Rose Mamie's children if they don't mind her and me." The General's mouth assumed its most commanding expression as he glanced down at the little Poteet sleeping beside him, unconscious of the fact that he was, in the future, to be the victim of a spared rod.

"Stonie," asked Everett meekly, "have you chosen a husband for Rose Mary yet?"

"No," answered Stonie as he wove in the last inch of string. Then he paused and raised his eyes to Everett thoughtfully. "It's jest got to be the best man in the world, and I'm a-going to find him for her. If I can't I'll keep care of her as good as I can myself."

"General," said Everett as he held the child's eyes with a straight level compelling glance, "you are right—she must have only the best. And you 'keep care' until he comes. I am going away to-night and I don't know when I can come back, but you must always—always 'keep care' of her—until the good man comes. Will you?"

"I will," answered the General positively. "And if anybody of any kind bothers her or any of them I'll knock the stuffins outen 'em, and Tobe'll help. But say," he added, as if suddenly inspired by a brilliant idea, "couldn't you look for him for me? You'd know the good kind of a man and you could bring him here. I would give you one of the spotted puppies to pay for the trouble," and a hot wave engulfed Everett as the trustful friendly young eyes looked straight into his as Stonie made this extremely practical business proposition.

"Yes, General, I will come and bring him to you, and when he comes he will be the best ever—or he will have died in the attempt."

"All right," answered Stonie, completely satisfied with the terms of the bargain, "and you can take your pick of the puppies. Are you going on the steam cars from Boliver?"

"Yes," answered Everett, "and I want to find your Uncle Tucker to ask him—"

"Well, here he is to answer all inquiries at all times," came in Uncle Tucker's quizzical voice as he stood in the doorway of the barn with a bucket in one hand and a spade in the other. "Old age is just like a hobble that tithers up stiff-jinted old cattle to the home post and keeps 'em from a-roving. I haven't chawed the rope and broke over to Boliver in more'n a month now. Did you leave Main Street a-running east to west this morning?"

"Yes," answered Everett, "still the same old Boliver. But I wanted to see you right away to tell you that I have had a wire from the firm that makes it necessary for me to get back to New York immediately. I must catch that train that passes Boliver at midnight."

"Oh, fly away, you can't pick up and go like that!" exclaimed Uncle Tucker with alarmed remonstrance. "Such a hurry as that are unseemly. Good-byes oughter to be handled slowly and careful, like chiny, to save smashed feelings. Have you told Rose Mary and the sisters?"

"No; I've just come back from Boliver, and I couldn't find Rose Mary, and Miss Lavinia and Miss Amanda had company. I must go on over to the north field while there is still light to—to collect some—some instruments I—that is I may have left some things over there that I will need. I will hurry back. Will—you tell them all for me?" As Everett spoke he did not look directly at Uncle Tucker, but his eyes followed the retreating form of the General, who, with the completed whip, the nodding baby and the two awakened puppies was making his way down Providence Road in the direction of the circus band. There was a strange controlled note of excitement in his voice and his hands gripped themselves around the handles of his kit until the nails went white with the strain.

"Yes, I'll tell 'em," answered Uncle Tucker with a distressed quaver coming into his voice as he took in the fact that Everett's hurried departure was inevitable. "I'm sorry you have got to go, boy, but I'll help you get off if it's important for you. I'll have them get your supper early and put up a snack for the train."

"I don't want anything—that is, it doesn't matter about supper. I—I will be back to see Miss Lavinia and Miss Amanda before they retire." And Everett's voice was quiet with a calmness that belied the lump in his throat at the very mention of the farewell to be said to the two little old flower ladies.

"I'll go on and tell 'em now," said Uncle Tucker with an even increased gloom in his face and voice. "Breaking bad news to women folks is as nervous a work as dropping a basket of eggs; you never can tell in which direction the lamentations are a-going to spatter and spoil things. I'll go get the worst of the muss over before you get back."

"Thank you," answered Everett with both a laugh and a catch in his voice as they separated, he going out through the field and over the hill and Uncle Tucker along the path to the house.

And a little later Uncle Tucker found Rose Mary moving alone knee deep in the flowers and fruit of her beloved garden. For long moments she bent over the gray-green, white-starred bed of cinnamon pinks which sent up an Arabian fragrance into her face as she carefully threaded out each little weed that had dared rear its head among the white blossoms. As she walked between the rows the tall lilies laid their heads against her breast and kissed traces of their gold hearts on her hands and bare arms, while on the other side a very riot of blush peonies crowded against her skirts. Long trails of pod-laden snap beans tangled around her feet and a couple of round young squashes rolled from their stems at the touch of her fingers. She was the very incarnation of young Plenty in the garden of the gods, and she reveled as she worked.

"Rose Mary," said Uncle Tucker as he came and stood beside her as she began to train the clambering butter-bean vines around their tall poles, "young Everett has got to go on to New York to-night on the train from Boliver, and I told him you would be mighty glad to help him off in time. I'd put him up a middling good size snack if I was you, for the eating on a train must be mighty scrambled like at best. We'll have to turn around to keep him from being late." And it was thus broadside that the blow was delivered which shook the very foundations of Rose Mary's heart and left her white to the lips and with hands that clutched at the bean vines desperately.

"When did he tell you?" she asked in a voice that managed to pass muster in the failing light.

"Just a little while ago, and the news hit Sister Viney so sudden like it give her a bad spell of asthma, and Sister Amandy was sorter crying and let the jimson-weed smoke get in her mouth and choke her. They are a-having a kind of ruckus, with nobody but Stonie helping 'em put Sis' Viney to bed, so I reckon you'd better go in and see 'em. He's gone over to the north field to get a hammer or something he left and will be back soon. Hurry that black pester up with the supper, I'm so bothered I feel empty," with which injunction Uncle Tucker left Rose Mary at the kitchen steps.

And it was a strenuous hour that followed, in which things were so crowded into Rose Mary's hands that the fullness of her heart had to be ignored if she was to go on with them. After a time Miss Lavinia was eased back on her pile of pillows and might have dropped off to sleep, but she insisted on having her best company cap arranged on her hair and a lavender shawl put around her shoulders and thus in state take a formal leave of the departing guest—alone. And it was fully a half hour before Everett came out of her room, and Rose Mary saw him slip a tiny pocket testament which had always lain on Miss Lavinia's table into his inside breast pocket, and his face was serious almost to the point of exhaustion. The time he had spent in Miss Lavinia's room little Miss Amanda had busily occupied in packing the generous "snack," which Uncle Tucker hovered over and saw bestowed to his entire satisfaction with the traps Everett had strapped up in his room. Stonie's large eyes grew more and more wistful, and after he and Uncle Tucker retired with their good-byes all said he whispered to Rose Mary that he wanted to say just one more thing to Mr. Mark.

Tenderly Everett bent over the cot until the blush rosebud that Miss Amanda had shyly pinned in his buttonhole as her good-by before she had retired, brushed the little fellow's cheek as he ran his arm under the sturdy little nightgowned shoulders and drew him as close as he dared.

"Say," whispered Stonie in his ear, "if you see a man that would buy Sniffer's other two spotted pups I would sell 'em to him. I want to get them teeth for Aunt Viney. I could get 'em to him in a box."

"How much do you want for them?" asked Everett with a little gulp in his voice as his heart beat against the arm of the young provider assuming his obligations so very early in life.

"A dollar a-piece, I guess, or maybe ten," answered Stonie vaguely.

"I'll sell them right away at your price," answered Everett. "I'll see that Mr. Crabtree has them packed and shipped." He paused for a moment. He would have given worlds to have taken the two little dogs with him and have left the money with Stonie—but he didn't dare.

"And," murmured Stonie drowsily, "don't forget that good man for Rose Mamie if you see him—and—and—" but suddenly he had drifted off into the depths, thus abandoning himself to the crush of a hug Everett had been hungry to give him.

And out in the starlit dusk he found Rose Mary sitting on the steps, freed at last, with her responsibilities all asleep—and before him there lay just this one—good-by.

Silently he seated himself beside her and as silently lit his cigar and began to puff the rings out into the air. In the perfect flood of perfume that poured around and over them and came in great gusts from the garden he detected a new tone, wild and woodsy, sweet with a curious tang and haunting in its alien and insistent note in the rhapsody of odors.

"There's something new in bloom in your garden, Lady of the Rose?" he asked questioningly.

"Yes, it's the roses on the hedges coming out; don't they smell briary and—good? Just this last night you will be able to carry away with you a whiff of real sweetbriar. To-morrow the whole town will be in bloom. It is now I think if we could only see it." Rose Mary had gained her composure and the poignant wistfulness in her voice was but a part of the motif of the briar roses in the valley dusk.

"I'll see it all right to-morrow and often. Sweetbriar—it's going to blind me so that I won't be able to make my way along Broadway. Everything hereafter will be located up and down Providence Road for me." Everett's voice held to a tone of quiet lightness and he bravely puffed his rings of smoke out on the breezes.

"Perhaps some day you'll pass us again along the road to your Providence," said Rose Mary gently, and the wistful question was all that her woman's tradition allowed her to ask—though her heart break with its pride.

"Some day," answered Everett, and underneath the quiet voice sounded a savage note and his teeth bit through his cigar, which he threw out into the dew-carpeted grass. Just then there came from up under the eaves a soft disturbed flutter of wings and a gentle dove note was answered reassuringly and tenderly in kind.

"Rose Mary," he said as he turned to her and laid his hand on the step near her, "once you materialized your heart for me, and now I'm going to do the same for mine to you. Yours, you say, is an old gabled, vine-clad, dove-nested country house, a shelter for the people you love—and always kept for your Master's use. It is something just to have had a man's road to Providence lead past the garden gate. I make acknowledgement. And mine? I think it is like one of those squat, heathen, Satsuma vases, inlaid with distorted figures and symbols and toned in all luridness of color, into which has been tossed a poor sort of flower plucked from any bush the owner happened to pass, which has been salted down in frivolity—or perhaps something stronger. I'll keep the lid on to-night, for you wouldn't like the—perfume."

"If you'd let me have it an hour I would take it down to the milk-house and empty and scrub it and then I could use it to pour sweet cream into. Couldn't you—you leave it here—in Uncle Tucker's care? I—I—really—I need it badly." The raillery in her voice was as delicious and daring as that of any accomplished world woman out over the Ridge. It fairly staggered Everett with its audacity.

"No," he answered, coolly disapproving, "no, I'll not leave it; you might break it."

"I never break the crocks—I can't afford to. And women never break men's hearts; they do it themselves by keeping a hand on the treasure so as to take it back when they want it, and so between them both it sometimes gets—shattered."

"Very well, then—the lid's off to you—and remember you asked for—the rummage, Rose Mary," answered Everett in a tone as light as hers. Then suddenly he rose and stood tall and straight in front of her, looking down into her upraised eyes in the dusk. "You don't know, do you, you rose woman you, what a man's life can hold—of nothingness? Yes, I've worked hard at my profession and thrown away the proceeds—in a kind of—riotous living. Other men's vast fortunes have been built on my brains, and my next year I'm going to enter as a penniless thirty-niner. When I came South three months ago I drew the last thousand dollars I had in bank, I have a couple of hundreds left, and that's all, out of over twenty thousand made in straight fees from mineral tests in the last year. Yes—a bit of riotous living. It's true about those poor flowers plucked off frail stems off frailer bushes—but—if it hadn't been—a sort of fair play all around I wouldn't stand here telling you about it, you in your hedge of briar roses. And now suddenly something has come into my life that makes me regret every dollar tossed to the winds and every cent burned in the fires—and in spite of it all I must make good. I'm going away from you and I don't know what is going to happen—but as I tell you from now on my feet do not stray from Providence Road, my eyes will turn from across any distance to catch a sight of the crown of old Harpeth, and my heart is in your milk-house to be of any kind of humble use. Ah, comfort me, rose girl, that I can not say more and that go I must if I catch my train." And he stretched out his hands to Rose Mary as she arose and stood close at his side, her eyes never leaving his and her lips parted with the quick breathing of her lifted breast.

"And you'll remember, won't you, when things go wrong, or you are tired, that the sunny corner in the old farm-house is yours? Always I shall be here in Harpeth Valley with my nest in the Briars, and because you are gone I'll be lonely. But I won't be in the least anxious, for whatever it is that calls you, I know you will give the right answer, because—because—well, aren't you one of my own nesties, and don't I know how strong and straight your wings can fly?"



CHAPTER VIII

UNCLE TUCKER'S TORCH

"And how do you do, Mr. Crabtree? Glad to see you, suh, glad to see you again! How is all Sweetbriar? Any new voters since young Tucker, or a poem or so in the Rucker family? And are you succeeding in keeping the peace with Mrs. Plunkett for young Bob?" And firing this volley of questions through the gently agitated smile-veil the Honorable Gideon Newsome stood in the door of the store, large-looming and jocular.

"Well, howdy, howdy, Senator, come right in and have a chair in the door-breeze!" exclaimed Mr. Crabtree as he turned to beam a welcome on the Senator from behind the counter where he was filling kerosene cans. "We ain't seen you in most a month of Sundays, and I'm sure glad you lit in passing again."

"I never just light in passing Sweetbriar, friend Crabtree," answered the senator impressively. "I start every journey with a stop at Sweetbriar in view, and it seems a long time until I make the haven I assure you, suh. And now for the news. You say my friend, Mrs. Plunkett, is enjoying her usual good health and spirits?"

"Well, not to say enjoying of things in general, but it do seem she has got just a little mite of spirit back along of this here bully-ragging of Bob and Louisa Helen. She come over here yesterday and stood by the counter upwards of an hour before I could persuade her to be easy in her mind about letting Bob take that frizzling over to Providence to a ice-cream festibul Mis' Mayberry was a-having for the church carpet benefit last night. After I told her I would put up early, and me and her could jog over in my buggy along behind them flippets to see no foolishness were being carried on, she took it more easy, and it looked like onct and a while on the road she most come to the point of enjoying her own self. But I reckon I'm just fooling myself by thinking that though," and Mr. Crabtree eyed the Senator with pathetic eagerness to be assured that he was not self-deceived at this slight advance up the steep ascent of his road of true love.

"Not a bit of doubt in my mind she enjoyed it greatly, suh, greatly, and I consider the cause of diverting her grief has advanced a hundred per cent by her consenting to go at all. Did any of the other Sweetbriar friends avail themselves of the Providence invitation—Miss Rose Mary and er—any of the other young people?"

"No, Miss Rose Mary didn't want to go, though Mr. Rucker woulder liked to hitch up the wagon and take her and Mis' Rucker and the children. She have been mighty quiet like sinct Mr. Everett left us, though she'd never let anybody lack the heartening of that smile of hern no matter how tetched with lonesome she was herself. When the letters come I just can't wait to finish sorting the rest, but I run with hers to her, like Sniffie brings sticks back to Stonie Jackson when he throws them in the bushes."

"Ahm—er—do they come often?" asked the Senator in a casual voice, but his eyes narrowed in their slits and the veil became impenetrable.

"Oh, about every day or two," answered the unconsciously gossipy little bachelor. "Looks like the whole family have missed him, too. Miss Viney has been in bed off and on ever since he left, and Miss Amandy has tooken a bad cold in her right ear and has had to keep her head wrapped up all the time. Mr. Tucker's mighty busy a-trying to figure out how to crap the farm like Mr. Mark laid off on a map for him to do—but he ain't got the strength now to even get a part of it done. If Miss Rose Mary weren't strong and bendy as a hickory saplin she couldn't prop up all them old folks."

"Yes," answered the Senator in one of his most judicial and dulcet tones as he eyed the little bachelor in a calculating way as if deciding whether to take him into his confidence, "what you say of Mr. Alloway's being too old to farm his land with a profit is true. I have come this time to talk things over with him and—er—Miss Rose Mary. Did I understand you to say our friend Everett is still in New York? Have you heard of his having any intention of returning to Sweetbriar any time soon?"

"No, I haven't heard tell of his coming back at all, and I'm mighty sorry and disappointed some, too," answered Mr. Crabtree with an anxious look coming into his kind eyes. "I somehow felt sure he would scratch up oil or some kind of pay truck out there in the fields of the Briars. I shipped a whole box of sand and gravel for him according to a telegram he sent me just last week and I had sorter got my hopes up for a find, specially as that young city fellow came out here and dug another bag full outen the same place not any time after that. He had a map with him, and I thought he might be a friend of Mr. Mark's and asked him, but he didn't answer; never rested to light a pipe, even, so I never found out about him. I reckon he was just fooling around and I hadn't oughter hoped on such a light ration."

"When was it that the man came and prospected?" asked the Senator with a quick gleam coming into his ugly little eyes and the smile veil took on another layer of density, while his hand trembled slightly as he lighted his cigar.

"Oh, about a week ago," answered Mr. Crabtree. "But I ain't got no hopes now for Mr. Tucker and the folks from him. We'll all just have to find some way to help them out when the bad time comes."

"The way will be provided, friend Crabtree," answered the Senator in an oily tone of voice, but which held nevertheless a decided note of excitement. "Do you know where I can find Mr. Alloway? I think I will go have a business talk with him now." And in a few minutes the Senator was striding as rapidly as his ponderosity would allow up Providence Road, leaving the garrulous little storekeeper totally unconscious of the fuse he had lighted for the firing of the mine so long dreaded by his friends.

"Well now, Crabbie, don't bust out and cry into them dried apples jest to swell the price, fer Mis' Rucker will ketch you sure when she comes to buy 'em for to-morrow's turnovers," came in the long drawl of the poet as he dawdled into the door and flung the rusty mail-sack down on to the counter in front of Mr. Crabtree. "They ain't a thing in that sack 'cept Miss Rose Mary's letter, and he must make a light kind of love from the heft of it. I most let it drop offen the saddle as I jogged along, only I'm a sensitive kind of cupid and the buckle of the bag hit that place on my knee I got sleep-walking last week while I was thinking up that verse that 'despair' wouldn't rhyme with 'hair' in for me. Want me to waft this here missive over to the milk-house to her and kinder pledge his good digestion and such in a glass of her buttermilk?"

"No, I wisht you would stay here in the store for me while I take it over to her myself. I've got some kind of business with her for a few minutes," answered Mr. Crabtree as he searched out the solitary letter and started to the door with it. "Sample that new keg of maple drip behind the door there. The cracker box is open," he added by way of compensation to the poet for the loss of the buttermilk.

The imagination of all true lovers is easily exercised about matters pertaining to the tender passion, and though Mr. Crabtree had never in his life received such a letter he divined instantly that it should be delivered promptly by a messenger whose mercury wings should scarcely pause in agitating the air of arrival and departure. And suiting his actions to his instinct he whirled the envelope across the spring stream to the table by Rose Mary's side with the aim of one of the little god's own arrows and retreated before her greeting and invitation to enter should tempt him.

"Honey drip and women folks is sweet jest about the same and they both stick some when you're got your full of 'em at the time," philosophized the poet as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Say, Crabbie, don't tell Mis' Rucker I have come home yet, please. I want to go out and lay down in the barn on the hay and see if I can get that 'hair-despair' tangle straightened out. She hasn't seen me to tell me things for two hours or more and I know I won't get no thinking done this day if I don't make the barn 'fore she spies me." And with furtive steps and eyes he left the store and veered in a round-about way toward the barn.

And over in the milk-house Rose Mary stood in the long shaft of golden light that came across the valley and fell through the door, it would seem, just to throw a glow over the wide sheets of closely written paper. Rose Mary had been pale as she worked, and her deep eyes had been filled with a very gentle sadness which lighted with a flash as she opened the envelope and began to read.

"Just a line, Rose girl, before I put out the light and go on a dream hunt for you," Everett wrote in his square black letters. "The day has been long and I feel as if I had been drawn out still longer. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and there's no balm of Gilead in New York. I can't eat because there are no cornmeal muffins in this howling wilderness of houses, streets, people and noise. I can't drink because something awful rises in my throat when I see cream or buttermilk, and sassarcak doesn't interest me any more. I would be glad to lap out of one of your crocks with Sniffie and the wee dogs.

"And most of all I'm tired to see you. I want to tell you how hard I am working, and that I don't seem to be able to make some of these stupid old gold backs see things my way, even if I do show it to them covered with a haze of yellow pay dust. But they shall—and that's my vow to—

"I wish I could kneel down by your rocking-chair with Stonie and hear Uncle Tucker chant that stunt about 'the hollow of His hand.' Is any of that true, Rose Mamie, and are you true and is Aunt Viney as well as could be expected, considering the length of my absence? I've got the little Bible book with Miss Amanda's blush rose pressed in it, and I put my hand to my breast-pocket so often to be sure it is there and some other things—letter things—that the heat and friction of them and the hand combined have brought out a great patch of prickly heat right over my heart in this sizzling weather. I know it needs fresh cold cream to make it heal up, and I haven't even any talcum powder. How's Louisa Helen and doth the widow consent still not at all? Tell Crabtree I say just walk over and try force of arms and not to—That force of arms is a good expression to use—literally in some cases. Something is the matter with my arms. They don't feel strong like they did when I helped Uncle Tucker mow the south pasture and turn the corn chopper—they're weak and—and sorter useless—and empty. Tell Stonie he could beat me bear-hugging any day now. Has Tobe discovered any new adventure in aromatics lately, and can little Poteet sit up and take notice? Help, help, I'm getting so homesick that I'm about to cry and fall into the ink!

"Good night—with all that the expression can imply of moonlight coming over the head of old Harpeth, pouring down its sides, rippling out over the corn-fields and flooding over a tall rose girl thing who stands in the doorway with her 'nesties' all asleep in the dark house behind her—and if any man were lounging against the honeysuckle vine getting a last puff out of his cigar I should know it, and a thousand miles couldn't save him. I'm all waked up thinking about it, and I could smash—Good night!

M.E.

P.S. I don't think it at all square of you not to let Stonie sell me the little dogs. Women ought to keep out of business affairs between men."

And as she turned the last page, slipped it back into place and promptly began at the beginning of the very first one, Rose Mary's face was an exquisite study in what might have been entitled pure joy. Her roses rioted up under her lashes, her rich lips curled like the half-blown bud between the flower of her cheeks, and her eyes shone like the two first stars mirrored in a woman's pool of life. Also it is one of the mysteries of the drama why a woman will scan over and over pages whose every letter is chiseled inches deep into her heart; and exactly one-half hour later Rose Mary was still standing motionless by her table, with the letter outspread in her hand.

And this was a very wonderful woman Old Harpeth had cradled in the hollow of His hand, nurtured on the richness of the valley and breathed into her with ever-perfumed breath the peace of faith—in God and man, for to any but an elemental, natural, faith-inspired woman of the fields would have come crushing, cruel, tearing doubts of the man beyond the hills who said so little and yet so much. However, Rose Mary was one of the order of fostering women whose arms are forever outheld cradle-wise, and to whose breast is ever drawn in mother love the child in the man of her choice, so her days since Everett's hurried departure had been filled with love and longing, with faith and prayers, but there had been not one shadow of doubt of him or his love for her all half-spoken as he had left it.

And added to her full heart had been burdens that had made her hands still fuller. She had gone on her way day by day pouring out the richness of her life and strength where it was so sorely needed by her feeble folk, with a song in her heart for him and them and to answer every call from along Providence Road. Thus it is that the motive power for the great cycles that turn and turn out in the wide spaces between time and eternity, regardless of the wheels of men that whirl and buzz on broken cog with shattered rim, is poured through the natures of women of such a mold for the saving of His nations.

At last Rose Mary folded her letter, hesitated, and with a glint of the blue in her eyes as her lashes fell over a still rosier hint in her cheeks, she tucked it into the front of her dress and smoothed and patted the folds of her apron close down over it, then turned with praiseworthy energy to the huge bowl of unworked butter.

And it was nearly an hour later, still, that the Honorable Gid loomed in the doorway under the honeysuckle vines, a complacent smile arranged on his huge face and gallantry oozing from every gesture and pose.

"Why, Mr. Newsome, when did you come? How are you, and I'm glad to see you!" exclaimed Rose Mary all in one hospitable breath as she beamed at the Senator across her table with the most affable friendship. Rose Mary felt in a beaming mood, and the Honorable Gid came under the shower of her affability.

"Do have that chair by the door, and let me give you a glass of milk," she hastened to add as she took up a cup and started for the crocks with a still greater accession of hospitality. "Sweet or buttermilk?" she paused to inquire over her shoulder.

"Either handed by you would be sweet" answered the Senator with praiseworthy ponderosity, and he shook out the smile veil until the very roots of his hair became agitated.

"Yes, Mr. Rucker says my buttermilk tastes like sweet milk with honey added," laughed Rose Mary, dimpling from over the tall jar. "He says that because I always pour cream into it for him, and Mrs. Rucker won't because she says it is extravagant. But I think a poet ought to have a dash of cream in his life, if just to make the poetry run smoother—and orators, too," she added as she poured half a ladleful of the golden top milk into the foaming glass in her hand and gave it to the Senator, who received it with a trembling hand and gulped it down desperately; for this once in his life the Honorable Gideon Newsome was completely and entirely embarrassed. For many a year he had had at his command florid and extravagant figures of speech which, cast in any one of a dozen of his dulcet modulations of voice, were warranted to tell on even the most stubborn masculine intelligence, and ought to have melted the feminine heart at the moment of utterance, but at this particular moment they all failed him, and he was left high and dry on the coast of courtship with only the bare question available for use.

"Miss Rose Mary," he blurted out without any preamble at all, and drops of the sweat of an agony of anxiety stood out all over the wide brow, "I have been talking with Mr. Alloway, and I have come to you to see if we can't all get together and settle this mortgage question to the profit of all concerned. I lent him that money six years ago with the intention of trying to get you to be my wife just as soon as you recovered from your—your natural grief over the way things had gone with you and young Alloway. I have waited longer than I had any intention of doing, because I was absorbed in this political career I had begun on, but now I see it is time to settle matters, as the farm is running us all into debt, and I'm very much in need of you as a wife. I hope you see it in that light, and the marriage can't take place too soon to suit me. You are the handsomest woman in my district, and my constituents can not help but approve of my choice." Something of the Senator's grandiloquence was returning to him, and he regarded Rose Mary with the pride of one who has appraised satisfactorily and is about to complete a proposed purchase.

And as for Rose Mary, she stood framed against the fern-lined dusk at the back of the milk-house like a naiad startled as she emerged from her tree bower. Quickly she raised her hand to her breast and just as quickly the pressure of the letter laying there against her heart sent a flood over her face that had grown pale and still, but she raised her head proudly and looked the Senator straight in the face with a questioning, hurt surprise.

"You didn't make the terms clear when you lent the money to us," she said quietly.

"Well," he answered, beginning to take heart at her very tranquil acceptance of the first bombardment, "I thought it best to let a time elapse to soothe your deceived affections and cure your humiliation. For the time being I was content to enjoy culling the flowers of your friendship from time to time, but I now feel no longer satisfied with them, but must be paid in a richer harvest. We will take charge of this place, assure a comfortable future for the aged relatives in your care, and as my wife you will be both happy and honored." The Senator was decidedly coming into his own, and smile, glance and voice as he regarded Rose Mary were unctuous. In fact, through their slits his eyes shot a gleam of something that was so hateful to Rose Mary that she caught her breath with horror, and only the sharp corner of her letter pressed into her naked breast kept her from reeling. But in a second she had herself in hand and her quick mother-wit was aroused to find out the worst and begin a fight for the safeguarding of her nesties—and the nest.

"And if I shouldn't want to—to do what you want me to?" she asked, and she was even able to summon a smile with a tinge of coquetry that served to draw the wily Senator further than he realized.

"Oh, I feel sure you can have no objections to me that are strong enough to weigh against thus providing suitably for your old relatives," was the bait he dangled before her humiliated eyes. "It is the only way to do it, for Mr. Alloway is too old to care any longer for the place, which has been run at a loss for too long already. We may say that in accepting me you are accepting their comfortable future. Of course you could not expect things to go on any longer in this impossible way, as I have need of the home and family I am really entitled to, now could you?" The Senator bent forward and finished his sentence in his most beguiling tone as he poured the hateful glance all over her again so that her blood stopped in her veins from very fear and repulsion.

"No," she said slowly, with her eyes down on the bowl of butter on the table before her; "no, things couldn't go on as they have any longer. I have felt that for some time." She paused a second, then lifted her deep eyes and looked straight into his, and the wounded light in their blue depth was shadowed in the pride of the glance. "You are right—you must not be kept out of your own any longer. But you will—will you give me just a little time to—to get used to—to thinking about it? Will you go now and leave me—and come back in a few days? It is the last favor I shall ever ask of you. I promise when you come back to—to pay the debt." And the color flooded over her face, then receded, to leave her white and controlled.

"I felt sure you would see it that way; immediately, immediately, my dear," answered the Senator, as he rose to take his departure. A triumphant note boomed in his big gloating voice, but some influence that it is given a woman to exhale in a desperate self-defense kept him from bestowing anything more than an ordinary pressure on the cold hand laid in his. Then with a heavy jauntiness he crossed the Road, mounted his horse and, tipping his wide hat in a conquering-hero wave, rode on down Providence Road toward Boliver.

And for a long, quiet moment Rose Mary stood leaning against the old stone table perfectly still, with her hand pressing the sharp-edge paper against her heart; then she sank into a chair and, stretching her arms across the cold table, she let her head sink until the chill of the stone came cool to her burning cheeks. So this was the door that was to be opened in the stone wall—she had been blind and hadn't seen!

And across the hills away by the sea he was tired and cold and hungry—with only a few hundred dollars in his pocket. He was discouraged and overworked, and a time was coming when she would not have the right to shelter his heart in hers. Once when he had been so ill, before he ever became conscious of her at all, his head had fallen over on her breast as she had tended him in his weakness—the throb of it hurt her now. And perhaps he would never understand. She couldn't tell him because—because of his poverty and the hurt it would give him—not to be able to help—to save her. No, he must not know until too late—and never understand! Desperately thus wave after wave swept over her, crushing, grinding, mocking her womanhood, until, helpless and breathless, she was tossed, well nigh unconscious, upon the shore of exhaustion. The fight of the instinctive woman for its own was over and the sacrifice was prepared. She was bound to the wheel and ready for the first turn, though out under the skies, "stretched as a tent to dwell in," the cycle was moving on its course turned by the same force from the same source that numbers the sparrows.

"Rose Mary, child," came in a gentle voice, and Uncle Tucker's trembling old hand was laid with a caress on the bowed head before she had even heard him come into the milk-house, "now you've got to look up and get the kite to going again. I've been under the waters, too, but I've pulled myself ashore with a-thinking that nothing's a-going to take you away from me and them. What does it matter if we were to have to take the bed covers and make a tent for ourselves to camp along Providence Road just so we all can crawl under the flap together? I need nothing in the world but to be sure your smile is not a-going to die out."

"Oh, honey-sweet, it isn't—it isn't," answered Rose Mary, looking up at him quickly with the tenderness breaking through the agony in a perfect radiance. "It's all right, Uncle Tucker, I know it will be!"

"Course it's all right because it is right," answered Uncle Tucker bravely, with a real smile breaking through the exhaustion on his face that showed so plainly the fight he had been having out in his fields, now no longer his as he realized. "Gid has got the right of it, and it wasn't honest of us to hold on at this losing rate as long as we did. There is just a little more value to the land than the mortgage, I take it, and we can pay the behind interest with that, and when we do move offen the place we won't leave debt to nobody on it, even if we do leave—the graves."

"Did he say—when—when he expected you to—give up the Briars?" asked Rose Mary in a guarded tone of voice, as if she wanted to be sure of all the facts before she told of the climax she saw had not been even suggested to Uncle Tucker.

"Oh, no; Gid handled the talk mighty kind-like. I think it's better to let folks always chaw their own hard tack instead of trying to grind it up friendly for them, cause the swalloring of the trouble has to come in the end; but Gid minced facts faithful for me, according to his lights. I didn't rightly make out just what he did expect, only we couldn't go on as we were—and that I've been knowing for some time."

"Yes, we've both known that," said Rose Mary, still suspending her announcement, she scarcely knew why.

"He talked like he was a-going to turn the Briars into a kinder orphan asylum for us old folks and spread-eagled around about something he didn't seem to be able to spit out with good sense. But I reckon I was kinder confused by the shock and wasn't right peart myself to take in his language." And Uncle Tucker sank into a chair, and Rose Mary could see that he was trembling from the strain. His big eyes were sunk far back into his head and his shoulders stooped more than she had ever seen them.

"Sweetie, sweetie, I can tell you what Mr. Newsome was trying to say to you—it was about me. I—I am going to be his wife, and you and the aunties are never, never going to leave the Briars. He has just left here and—and, oh, I am so grateful to keep it—for you—and them. I never thought of that—I never suspected such—a—door in our stone wall." And Rose Mary's voice was firm and gentle, but her deep eyes looked out over Harpeth Valley with the agony of all the ages in their depths.

But in hoping to conceal her tragedy Rose Mary had not counted on the light love throws across the dark places that confront the steps of those of our blood-bond, and in an instant Uncle Tucker's torch of comprehension flamed high with the passion of indignation. Slowly he rose to his feet, and the stoop in his feeble old shoulders straightened itself out so that he stood with the height of his young manhood. His gentle eyes lost the mysticism that had come with his years of sorrow and baffling toil, and a stern, dignified power shone straight out over the young woman at his side. He raised his arm and pointed with a hand that had ceased to tremble over the valley to where Providence Road wound itself over Old Harpeth.

"Rose Mary," he said sternly in a quiet, decisive voice that rang with the virility of his youth, "when the first of us Alloways came along that wilderness trail a slip of an English girl walked by him when he walked and rode the pillion behind him when he rode. She finished that journey with bleeding feet in moccasins he had bought from an Indian squaw. When they came on down into this Valley and found this spring he halted wagons and teams and there on that hill she dropped down to sleep, worn out with the journey. And while she was asleep he stuck a stake at the black-curled head of her and one by the little, tired, ragged feet. That was the measure of the front door-sill to the Briars up there on the hill. Come generations we have fought off the Indians, we have cleared and tilled the land, and we have gone up to the state house to name laws and order. In our home we have welcomed traveler, man and beast, and come sun-up each day we have worshipped at the altar of the living God—but we've never sold one of our women yet! The child of that English girl never leaves my arms except to go into those of a man she loves and wants. Yes, I'm old and I've got still older to look out for, but I can strike the trail again to-morrow, jest so I carry the honor of my women folks along with me. We may fall on the march, but, Rose Mary, you are a Harpeth Valley woman, and not for sale!"



CHAPTER IX

THE EXODUS

"Well, it just amounts to the whole of Sweetbriar a-rising up and declaring of a war on Gid Newsome, and I for one want to march in the front ranks and tote a blunderbuss what I couldn't hit nothing smaller than a barn door with if I waster try," exclaimed Mrs. Rucker as she waited at the store for a package Mr. Crabtree was wrapping for her.

"I reckon when the Senator hits Sweetbriar again he'll think he's stepped into a nest of yellar jackets and it'll be a case of run or swell up and bust," answered Mr. Crabtree as he put up the two boxes of baking-powder for the spouse of the poet, who stood beside his wife in the door of the store.

"Well," said Mr. Rucker in his long drawl as he dropped himself over the corner of the counter, "looks like the Honorable Gid kinder fooled along and let Cupid shed a feather on him and then along come somebody trying to pick his posey for him and in course it het him up. You all 'pear to forget that old saying that it's all's a fair fight in love and war."

"Yes, fight; that's the word! Take off his coat, strap his galluses tight, spit on his hands and fight for his girl, not trade for her like hogs," was the bomb of sentiment that young Bob exploded, much to the amazement of the gathering of the Sweetbriar clan in the store. Young Bob's devotion to Rose Mary, admiration for Everett and own tender state of heart had made him become articulate with a vengeance for this once and he spat his words out with a vehemence that made a decided impression on his audience.

"That are the right way to talk, Bob Nickols," said Mrs. Rucker, bestowing a glance of approval upon the fierce young Corydon, followed by one of scorn cast in the direction of the extenuating-circumstances pleading Mr. Rucker. "A man's heart ain't much use to a woman if the muscles of his arms git string-halt when he oughter fight for her. Come a dispute the man that knocks down would keep me, not the buyer," and this time the glance was delivered with a still greater accent.

"Shoo, honey, you'd settle any ruckus about you 'fore it got going by a kinder cold-word dash and pass-along," answered the poet propitiatingly and admiringly. "But I was jest a-wondering why Mr. Alloway and Miss Rose Mary was so—"

"Tain't for nobody to be a-wondering over what they feels and does," exclaimed Mrs. Rucker defensively before the query was half uttered. "They've been hurt deep with some kind of insult and all we have got to do is to take notice of the trouble and git to work to helping 'em all we can. Mr. Tucker ain't said a word to nobody about it, nor have Rose Mary, but they are a-getting ready to move the last of the week, and I don't know where to. I jest begged Rose Mary to let me have Miss Viney and Miss Amandy. I could move out the melojion into the kitchen and give 'em the parlor, and welcome, too. Mis' Poteet she put in and asked for Stonie to bed down on the pallet in the front hall with Tobe and Billy and Sammie, and I was a-going on to plan as how Mr. Tucker and Mr. Crabtree would stay together here, and I knew Mis' Plunkett would admire to have Rose Mary herself, but just then she sudden put her head down on my knee, her pretty arms around me, and held on tight without a tear, while I couldn't do nothing but rock back and forth. Then Mis' Poteet she cried the top of Shoofly's head so soaking wet it give her a sneeze, and we all had to laugh. But she never answered me what they was a-going to do, and you know, Cal Rucker, I ain't slept nights thinking about 'em, and where they'll move, have I?"

"Naw, you shore ain't—nor let me neither," answered the poet in a depressed tone of voice.

"I mighter known that Miss Viney woulder taken it up-headed and a-lined it out in the scriptures to suit herself until she wasn't deep in the grieving no more, but little Mis' Amandy's a-going to break my heart, as tough as it is, if she don't git comfort soon," continued Mrs. Rucker with a half sob. "Last night in the new moonlight I got up to go see if I hadn't left my blue waist out in the dew, which mighter faded it, and I saw something white over in the Briar's yard. I went across to see if they had left any wash out that hadn't oughter be in the dew, and there I found her in her little, short old nightgown and big slippers with the little wored-out gray shawl 'round her shoulders a-digging around the Maiden Blush rose-bush, putting in new dirt and just a-crying soft to herself, all trembling and hurt. I went in and set down by her on the damp grass, me and my rheumatism and all, took her in my arms like she were Petie, and me and her had it out. It's the graves she's a-grieving over, we all a-knowing that she's leaving buried what she have never had in life, and I tried to tell her that no matter who had the place they would let her come and—"

"Oh, durn him, durn him! I'm a-going clear to the city to git old Gid and beat the liver outen him!" exclaimed young Bob, while his sunburned face worked with emotion and his gruff young voice broke as he rose and walked to the door.

"I wisht you would, and I'll make Cal help you," sobbed Mrs. Rucker into a corner of her apron. Her grief was all the more impressive, as she was, as a general thing, the balance-wheel of the whole Sweetbriar machinery. "And I don't know what they are a-going to do," she continued to sob.

"Well, I know, and I've done decided," came in Mrs. Plunkett's soft voice from the side door of the store, and it held an unwonted note of decision in its hushed cadences. A deep pink spot burned on either cheek, her eyes were very bright, and she kept her face turned resolutely away from little Mr. Crabtree, over whose face there had flashed a ray of most beautiful and abashed delight.

"Me and Mr. Crabtree were a-talking it all over last night while Bob and Louisa Helen were down at the gate counting lightning-bugs, they said. They just ain't no use thinking of separating Rose Mary and Mr. Tucker and the rest of 'em, and they must have Sweetbriar shelter, good and tight and genteel, offered outen the love Sweetbriar has got for 'em all. Now if I was to marry Mr. Crabtree I could all good and proper move him over to my house and that would leave his little three-room cottage hitched on to the store to move 'em into comfortable. They have got a heap of things, but most of 'em could be packed away in the barn here, what they won't let us keep for 'em. If Mr. Crabtree has got to take holt of my farm it will keep him away from the store, and he could give Mr. Tucker a half-interest cheap to run it for him and that will leave Rose Mary free to help him and tend the old folks. What do you all neighbors think of it?"

"Now wait just a minute, Lou Plunkett," said Mr. Crabtree in a radiant voice as he came out from around the counter and stood before her with his eyes fairly glowing with his emotion. "Have you done decided yourself? This is twixt me and you, and I don't want no Sweetbriar present for a wife if I can help it. Have you done decided?"

"Yes, Mr. Crabtree I have, and I had oughter stopped and told you, but I wanted to go quick as I could to see Mr. Tucker and Rose Mary. He gave consent immediately, and looked like Rose Mary couldn't do nothing but talk about you and how good you was. I declare I began to get kinder proud about you right then and there, 'fore I'd even told you as I'd have you." And the demure little widow cast a smile out from under a curl that had fallen down into her bright eyes that was so young and engaging that Mr. Crabtree had to lean against the counter to support himself. His storm-tossed single soul was fairly blinded at even this far sight of the haven of his double desires, but it was just as well that he was dumb for joy, for Mrs. Rucker was more than equal to the occasion.

"Well, glory be, Lou Plunkett, if that ain't a fine piece of news!" she exclaimed as she bestowed a hearty embrace upon the widow and one almost as hearty upon the overcome Mr. Crabtree. "And you can't know till you've tried what a pleasure and a comfort a second husband can be if you manage 'em right. Single folks a-marrying are likely to gum up the marriage certificate with some kind of a mistake until it sticks like fly-paper, but a experienced choice generally runs smooth like melted butter." And with a not at all unprecedented feminine change of front Mrs. Rucker substituted a glance of unbridled pride for the one of scorn she had lately bestowed upon the poet, under which his wilted aspect disappeared and he also began to bloom out with the joy of approval and congratulation.

"And I say marrying a widow are like getting a rose some other fellow have clipped and thorned to wear in your buttonhole, Crabtree; they ain't nothing like 'em." Thus poet and realist made acknowledgment each after his and her own order of mind, but actuated by the identical feeling of contented self-congratulation.

"I'm a-holding in for fear if I breathe on this promise of Mis' Plunkett's it'll take and blow away. But you all have heard it spoke," said the merry old bachelor in a voice that positively trembled with emotion as he turned and mechanically began to sort over a box of clothespins, mixed as to size and variety.

"Shoo, Crabbie, don't begin by bein' afraid of your wife, jest handle 'em positive but kind and they'll turn your flapjacks peaceable and butter 'em all with smiles," and Mr. Rucker beamed on his friend Crabtree as he wound one of his wife's apron strings all around one of his long fingers, a habit he had that amused him and he knew in his secret heart teased her.

"Now just look at Bob tracking down Providence Road a-whistling like a partridge in the wheat for Louisa Helen. They've got love's young dream so bad they had oughter have sassaprilla gave for it," and the poet cast a further glance at the widow, who only laughed and looked indulgently down the road at the retreating form of the gawky young Adonis.

"Hush up, Cal Rucker, and go begin chopping up fodder to feed with come supper time," answered his wife, her usual attitude of brisk generalship coming into her capable voice and eyes after their softening under the strain of the varied emotions of the last half hour in the store. "Let's me and you get mops and broom and begin on a-cleaning up for Mr. Crabtree before his moving, Lou. I reckon you want to go over his things before you marry him anyway, and I'll help you. I found everything Cal Rucker had a disgrace, with Mr. Satterwhite so neat, too." And not at all heeding the flame of embarrassment that communicated itself from the face of the widow to that of the sensitive Mr. Crabtree, Mrs. Rucker descended the steps of the store, taking Mrs. Plunkett with her, for to Mrs. Rucker the state of matrimony, though holy, was still an institution in the realm of realism and to be treated with according frankness.

Meanwhile over in the barn at the Briars Uncle Tucker was at work rooting up the foundations upon which had been built his lifetime of lordship over his fields. In the middle of the floor was a great pile of odds and ends of old harness, empty grease cans, broken tools, and scraps of iron. Along one side of the floor stood the pathetically-patched old implements that told the tale of patient saving of every cent even at the cost of much greater labor to the fast weakening old back and shoulders. A new plow-shaft had meant a dollar and a half, so Uncle Tucker had put forth the extra strength to drive the dull old one along the furrows, while even the grindstone had worn away to such unevenness that each revolution had made only half the impression on a blade pressed to its rim and thus caused the sharpening to take twice as long and twice the force as would have been required on a new one. But grindstones, too, cost cents and dollars, and Uncle Tucker had ground on patiently, even hopefully, until this the very end. But now he stood with a thin old scythe in his hands looking for all the world like the incarnation of Father Time called to face the first day of the new regime of an arrived eternity, and the bewilderment in his eyes cut into Rose Mary's heart with an edge of which the old blade had long since become incapable.

"Can't I help you go over things, Uncle Tucker?" she asked softly with a smile shining for him even through the mist his eyes were too dim to discover in hers.

"No, child, I reckon not," he answered gently. "Looks like it helps me to handle all these things I have used to put licks in on more'n one good farm deal. I was just a-wondering how many big clover crops I had mowed down with this old blade 'fore I laid it by to go riding away from it on that new-fangled buggy reaper out there that broke down in less'n five years, while this old friend had served its twenty-odd and now is good for as many more with careful honing. That's it, men of my time were like good blades what swing along steady and even, high over rocks and low over good ground; but they don't count in these days of the four-horse-power high-drive, cut-bind-and-deliver machines men work right on through God's gauges of sun-up and down. But maybe in glory come He'll walk with us in the cool of the evening while they'll be put to measuring the jasper walls with a golden reed just to keep themselves busy and contented. How's the resurrection in the wardrobes and chests of drawers coming on?" And a real smile made its way into Uncle Tucker's eyes as he inquired into the progress of the packing up of the sisters, from which he had fled a couple hours ago.

"They are still taking things out, talking them over and putting them right back in the same place," answered Rose Mary with a faint echo of his smile that tried to come to the surface bravely but had a struggle. "We will have to try and move the furniture with it all packed away as it is. It is just across the Road and I know everybody will want to help me disturb their things as little as possible. Oh, Uncle Tucker, it's almost worth the—the pain to see everybody planning and working for us as they are doing. Friends are like those tall pink hollyhocks that go along and bloom single on a stalk until something happens to make them all flower out double like peonies. And that reminds me, Aunt Viney says be sure and save some of the dry jack-bean seed from last year you had out here in the seed press for—"

"Say, Rose Mamie, say, what you think we found up on top of Mr. Crabtree's bedpost what Mis' Rucker were a-sweeping down with a broom?" and the General's face fairly beamed with excitement as he stood dancing in the barn door. Tobe stood close behind him and small Peggy and Jennie pressed close to Rose Mary's side, eager but not daring to hasten Stonie's dramatic way of making Rose Mary guess the news they were all so impatient to impart to her.

"Oh, what? Tell me quick, Stonie," pleaded Rose Mary with the eagerness she knew would be expected of her. Even in her darkest hours Rose Mary's sun had shone on the General with its usual radiance of adoration and he had not been permitted to feel the tragedy of the upheaval, but encouraged to enjoy to the utmost all its small excitements. In fact the move over to the store had appealed to a fast budding business instinct in the General and he had seen himself soon promoted to the weighing out of sugar, wrapping up bundles and delivering them over the counter to any one of the admiring Swarm sent to the store for the purchase of the daily provender.

"It were a tree squirrel and three little just-hatched ones in a bunch," Stonie answered with due dramatic weight at Rose Mary's plea. "Mis' Rucker thought it were a rat and jumped on the bed and hollowed for Tobe to ketch it, and Peg and Jennie acted just like her, too, after Tobe and me had ketched that mouse in the barn just last week and tied it to a string and let it run at 'em all day to get 'em used to rats and things just like boys." And the General cast a look of disappointed scorn at the two pigtailed heads, downcast at this failure of theirs to respond to the General's effort to inoculate their feminine natures with masculine courage.

"I hollered 'fore I knewed what at," answered the abashed Jennie in a very small voice, unconsciously making further display of the force of her hopeless feminine heredity. But Peggy switched her small skirts in an entirely different phase of femininity.

"You never heard me holler," she said in a tone that was skilful admixture of defiance and tentative propitiation.

"'Cause you had your head hid in Jennie's back," answered the General coolly unbeguiled. "Here is the letter we comed to bring you, Rose Mamie, and me and Tobe must go back to help Mis' Rucker some more clean Mr. Crabtree up. I don't reckon she needs Peg and Jennie, but they can come if they want to," with which Stonie and Tobe, the henchman, departed, and not at all abashed the humble small women trailing respectfully behind them.

"That women folks are the touch-off to the whole explosion of life is a hard lesson to learn for some men, and Stonie Jackson is one of that kind," observed Uncle Tucker as he looked with a quizzical expression after the small procession. "Want me to read that letter and tell you what's in it?" he further remarked, shifting both expression and attention on to Rose Mary, who stood at his side.

"No, I'll read it myself and tell you what's in it," answered Rose Mary with a blush and a smile. "I haven't written him about our troubles, because—because he hasn't got a position yet and I don't want to trouble him while he is lonely and discouraged."

"Well, I reckon that's right," answered Uncle Tucker still in a bantering frame of mind that it delighted Rose Mary to see him maintain under the situation. "Come trouble, some women like to blind a man with cotton wool while they wade through the high water and only holler for help when their petticoats are down around their ankles on the far bank. We'll wait and send Everett a photagraf of me and you dishing out molasses and lard as grocer clerks. And glad to do it, too!" he added with a sudden fervor of thankfulness rising in his voice and great gray eyes.

"Yes, Uncle Tucker, glad and proud to do it," answered Rose Mary quickly. "Oh, don't you know that if you hadn't seen and understood because you loved me so, I would have felt it was right to do—to do what was so horrible to me? I will—I will make up to you and them for keeping me from—it. What do you suppose Mr. Newsome will do when he finds out that you have moved and are ready to turn the place over to him, even without any foreclosure?"

"Well, speculating on what men are a-going to do in this life is about like trying to read turkey tracks in the mud by the spring-house, and I'm not wasting any time on Gid Newsome's splay-footed impressions. Come to-morrow night I'm a-going to pull the front door to for the last time on all of us and early next morning Tom Crabtree's a-going to take the letter and deed down to Gid in his office in the city for me. Don't nobody have to foreclose on me; I hand back my debt dollar for dollar outen my own pocket without no duns. To give up the land immediate are just simple justice to him, and I'm a-leaving the Lord to deal with him for trying to buy a woman in her time of trouble. We haven't told it on him and we are never a-going to. I wisht I could make the neighbors all see the jestice in his taking over the land and not feel so spited at him. I'm afraid it will lose him every vote along Providence Road. 'Tain't right!"

"I know it isn't," answered Rose Mary. "But when Mrs. Rucker speaks her mind about him and Bob chokes and swells up my heart gets warm. Do you suppose it's wrong to let a friend's trouble heat sympathy to the boiling point? But if you don't need me I'm going down to the milk-house to work out my last batch of butter before they come to drive away my cows." And Rose Mary hurried down the lilac path before Uncle Tucker could catch a glimpse of the tears that rose at the idea of having to give up the beloved Mrs. Butter and her tribe of gentle-eyed daughters.

And as she stood in the cool gray depths of the old milk-house Rose Mary's gentle heart throbbed with pain as she pressed the great cakes of the golden treasure back and forth in the blue bowl, for it was a quiet time and Rose Mary was tearing up some of her own roots. Her sad eyes looked out over Harpeth Valley, which lay in a swoon with the midsummer heat. The lush blue-grass rose almost knee deep around the grazing cattle in the meadows, and in the fields the green grain was fast turning to a harvest hue. Almost as far as her eyes could reach along Providence Road and across the pastures to Providence Nob, beyond Tilting Rock, the land was Alloway land and had been theirs for what seemed always. She could remember what each good-by to it all had been when she had gone out over the Ridge in her merry girlhood and how overflowing with joy each return. Then had come the time when it had become still dearer as a refuge into which she could bring her torn heart for its healing.

And such a healing the Valley had given her! It had poured the fragrance of its blooming springs and summers over her head, she had drunk the wine of forgetfulness in the cup of long Octobers and the sting of its wind and rain and snow on her cheeks had brought back the grief-faded roses. The arms of the hearty Harpeth women had been outheld to her, and in turn she had had their babies and troubles laid on her own breast for her and their comforting. She had been mothered and sistered and brothered by these farmer folk with a very prodigality of friendship, and to-day she realized more than ever with positive exultation that she was brawn of their brawn and built of their building.

And then to her, a woman of the fields, had come down Providence Road over the Ridge from the great world outside—the miracle. She slipped her hand into her pocket for just one rapturous crush of the treasure-letter when suddenly it was borne in upon her that it might be that even that must come to an end for her. Stay she must by her nest of helpless folk, and was it with futile wings he was breasting the great outer currents of which she was so ignorant? His letters told her nothing of what he was doing, just were filled to the word with half-spoken love and longing and, above all, with a great impatience about what, or for what, it was impossible for her to understand. She could only grieve over it and long to comfort him with all the strength of her love for him. And so with thinking, puzzling and sad planning the afternoon wore away for her and sunset found her at the house putting the household in order and to bed with her usual cheery fostering of creaking joints and cumbersome retiring ceremonies.

At last she was at liberty to fling her exhausted body down on the cool, patched, old linen sheets of the great four-poster which had harbored many of her foremothers and let herself drift out on her own troubled waters. Wrapped in the compassionate darkness she was giving way to the luxury of letting the controlled tears rise to her eyes and the sobs that her white throat ached from suppressing all day were echoing on the stillness when a voice came from the little cot by her bed and the General in disheveled nightshirt and rumpled head rose by her pillow and stood with uncertain feet on his own springy place of repose.

"Rose Mamie," he demanded in an awestruck tone of voice that fairly trembled through the darkness, "are you a-crying?"

"Yes, Stonie," she answered in a shame-forced gurgle that would have done credit to Jennie Rucker in her worst moments of abasement before the force of the General.

"Does your stomach hurt you?" he demanded in a practical though sympathetic tone of voice, for so far in his journey along life's road his sleep had only been disturbed by retributive digestive causes.

"No," sniffed Rose Mary with a sob that was tinged with a small laugh. "It's my heart, darling," she added, the sob getting the best of the situation. "Oh, Stonie, Stonie!"

"Now, wait a minute, Rose Mamie," exclaimed the General as he climbed up and perched himself on the edge of the big bed. "Have you done anything you are afraid to tell God about?"

"No," came from the depths of Rose Mary's pillow.

"Then don't cry because you think Mr. Mark ain't coming back, like Mis' Rucker said she was afraid you was grieving about when she thought I wasn't a-listening. He's a-coming back. Me and him have got a bargain."

"What about, Stonie?" came in a much clearer voice from the pillow, and Rose Mary curled herself over nearer to the little bird perched on the edge of her bed.

"About a husband for you," answered Stonie in the reluctant voice that a man usually uses when circumstances force him into taking a woman into his business confidence. "Looked to me like everybody here was a-going to marry everybody else and leave you out, so I asked him to get you one up in New York and I'd pay him for doing it. He's a-going to bring him here on the cars his own self lest he get away before I get him." And the picture that rose in Rose Mary's mind, of the reluctant husband being dragged to her at the end of a tether by Everett, cut off the sob instantly.

"What—what did you—he say when you asked him about—getting the husband—for you—for me?" asked Rose Mary in a perfect agony of mirth and embarrassment.

"Let me see," said Stonie, and he paused as he tried to repeat Everett's exact words, which had been spoken in a manner that had impressed them on the General at the time. "He said that you wasn't a-going to have no husband but the best kind if he had to kill him—no, he said that if he was to have to go dead hisself he would come and bring him to me, when he got him good enough for you by doing right and such."

"Was that all?" asked Rose Mary with a gurgle that was well nigh ecstatic, for through her had shot a quiver of hope that set every pulse in her body beating hot and strong, while her cheeks burned in the cool linen of her pillow and her eyes fairly glowed into the night.

"About all," answered the General, beginning to yawn with the interrupted slumber. "I told him your children would have to mind me and Tobe when we spoke to 'em. He kinder choked then and said all right. Then we bear-hugged for keeps until he comes again. I'm sleepy now!"

"Oh, Stonie, darling, thank you for waking up and coming to comfort Rose Mamie," she said, and from its very fullness a happy little sob escaped from her heart.

"I tell you, Rose Mamie," said the General, instantly, again sympathetically alarmed, "I'd better come over in your bed and go to sleep. You can put your head on my shoulder and if you cry, getting me wet will wake me up to keep care of you agin, 'cause I am so sleepy now if you was to holler louder than Tucker Poteet I wouldn't wake up no more." And suiting his actions to his proposition the General stretched himself out beside Rose Mary, buried his touseled head on her pillow and presented a diminutive though sturdy little shoulder, against which she instantly laid her soft cheek.

"You scrouge just like the puppy," was his appreciative comment of her gentle nestling against his little body. "Now I'm going to sleep, but if praying to God don't keep you from crying, then wake me up," and with this generous and really heroic offer the General drifted off again into the depths, into which he soon drew Rose Mary with him, comforted by his faith and lulled in his strong little arms.



CHAPTER X

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

And the next morning a threatening, scowling, tossed-cloud dawn brought the day over the head of Old Harpeth down upon little Sweetbriar, which awakened with one accord to a sense of melancholy oppression. A cool, dust-laden wind blew down Providence Road, twisted the branches of the tall maples along the way, tore roughly at the festoons of blooming vines over the gables of the Briars, startled the nestled doves into a sad crooning, whipped mercilessly at the row of tall hollyhocks along the garden fence, flaunted the long spikes of jack-beans and carried their quaint fragrance to pour it over the bed of sober-colored mignonette, mixing it with the pungent zinnia odor and flinging it all over into the clover field across the briar hedge. The jovial old sun did his very best to light up the situation, but just as he would succeed in getting a ray down into the Valley a great puffy cloud would cast a gray shadow of suppression over his effort and retire him sternly for another half hour.

And on the wings of the intruding, out-of-season wind came a train of ills. Young Tucker Poteet waked at daylight and howled dismally with a pain that seemed to be all over and then in spots. When he went to take down the store shutters Mr. Crabtree smashed one of his large, generous-spreading thumbs and Mrs. Rucker's breakfast eggs burned to a cinder state while she tied it up in camphor for him. In the night a mosquito had taken a bite out of the end of Jennie's small nose and it was swelled to twice its natural size, and Peter, the wise, barked a plump shin before he was well out of the trundle bed. One of young Bob's mules broke away and necessitated a trip half way up to Providence for his capture, and Mrs. Plunkett had Louisa Helen so busy at some domestic manoeuvers that she found it impossible to go with him.

And before noon the whole village was in a fervid state of commotion. Mrs. Rucker had insisted on moving Mr. Crabtree and all his effects over into the domicile of his prospective bride, regardless of both her and his abashed remonstrance.

"Them squeems are all foolishness, Lou Plunkett," she had answered a faint plea from the widow for a delay until after the ceremony for this material mingling of the to-be-united lives. "It's all right and proper for you and Mr. Crabtree to be married at night meeting Sunday, and his things won't be unmarried in your house only through Saturday and Sunday. I'm a-going to pack up his Sunday clothes, a pair of clean socks, a shirt and other things in this basket. Then I'll fix him up a shake-down in my parlor to spend Saturday night in, and I'll dress him up nice and fine for the wedding you may be sure. We ain't got but this day to move him out and clean up the house good to move Rose Mary and the old folks into early Saturday morning, so just come on and get to work. You can shut your eyes to his things setting around your house for just them one day or two, can't you?"

"They ain't nothing in this world I couldn't do to make it just the littlest mite easier for Rose Mary and them sweet old folks, even to gettin' my house into a unseemly married condition before hand," answered Mrs. Plunkett as she brushed a tear away from her blue eyes.

"That's the way we all feel," said Mrs. Rucker. "Now if I was you I'd give Mr. Crabtree that middle bureau drawer. Men are apt to poke things away careless if they has the top, and the bottom one is best to use for your own things. Mr. Satterwhite always kept his clothes so it were a pleasure to look at 'em, but Cal Rucker prefers a pair of socks separated across the house if he can get them there. I found one of his undershirts full of mud and stuck away in the kitchen safe with the cup towels last week. There comes Mis' Poteet to help at last! I never heard anything yell like Tucker has been doing all morning. Is he quiet at last, Mis' Poteet?"

"Yes, I reckon he's gave out all the holler that's in him, but I'm afraid to put him down," and Mrs. Poteet continued the joggling, swaying motion to a blue bundle on her breast that she had been administering as a continuous performance to young Tucker since daylight. "I'm sorry I couldn't come help you all with the moving, but you can count on my mop and broom over to the store all afternoon, soon as I can turn him over to the children."

"We ain't needed you before, but now we have got Mr. Crabtree all settled down here with Mrs. Plunkett we can get to work on his house right after dinner. Have you been over to the Briars to see 'em in the last hour?"

"Yes, I come by there, but they didn't seem to need me. Miss Viney has got Miss Amandy and Tobe and the General at work, and Rose Mary has gone down to the dairy to pack up the last batch of butter for Mr. Crabtree to take to the city in the morning. Mr. Tucker's still going over things in the barn, and my feelings riz so I had to come away for fear of me and little Tucker both busting out crying."

And over at the Briars the scenes of exodus being enacted were well calculated to touch a heart sterner than that of the gentle, sympathetic and maternal Mrs. Poteet. Chilled by the out-of-season wind Miss Lavinia had awakened with as bad a spell of rheumatism as she had had for a year and it was with the greatest difficulty that Rose Mary had succeeded in rubbing down the pain to a state where she could be propped up in bed to direct little Miss Amanda and the children in the last sad rites of getting things into shape to be carried across the road at the beginning of the morrow, which was the day Uncle Tucker had sternly set as that of his abdication.

Feebly, Miss Amanda tottered about trying to carry out her sister's orders and patiently the General and Tobe labored to help her, though their hearts were really over at the store, where the rest of the Swarm were, in the midst of the excitement of Mr. Crabtree's change of residence. In all their young lives of varied length they had never before had an opportunity to witness the upheaval of a moving and this occasion was frought with a well-nigh insupportable fascination. The General's remaining at the post of family duty and his command of his henchman to the same sacrifice was indeed remarkable, though in a way pathetic.

"You, Stonewall Jackson, don't handle those chiny vases careless!" commanded Aunt Viney in a stern voice. "Put 'em in the basket right side up, for they were your great grandmother's wedding-present from Mister Bradford from Arkansas."

"Yes'm," answered Stonie, duly impressed. "But I've done packed 'em in four different baskets for you, and if this one don't do all right, can't me and Tobe together carry 'em over the Road to-morrow careful for you, Aunt Viney?"

"Well, yes, then you can take 'em out and set 'em back in their places," answered Miss Lavinia, which order was carried out faithfully by the General, with a generous disregard of the fact that he had been laboring over them under a fire of directions for more than a half-hour.

"Now, Amandy, come away from those flower cans and get out the grave clothes from the bureau drawers and let the boys wrap them in that old sheet first and then in the newspapers and then put 'em in that box trunk with brass tacks over there!" directed Miss Lavinia as Miss Amandy wandered over by the window, along which stood a row of tomato cans into which were stuck slips of all the vines and plants on the land of the Briars, ready for transportation across Providence Road when the time came. There was something so intensely pathetic in this effort of the fast-fading little old woman to begin to bud from the old life flower-plants to blossom in a new one, into which she could hardly expect to make more than the shortest journey, that even the General's young and inexperienced heart was moved to a quick compassion.

"I'm a-going to carry the flowers over and plant 'em careful for you, Aunt Amandy," he said as he sidled up close to her and put his arm around her with a protective gesture. "We'll water 'em twice a day and just make 'em grow, won't we, Tobe?"

"Bucketfuls 'til we drap," answered Tobe with a sympathy equal to and a courage as great as that of his superior officer.

"Is the blue myrtle sprig often the graves holding up its leaves, Amandy?" asked Miss Lavinia in a softened tone of voice.

"Yes, it's doing fine," answered Miss Amandy, bending over to the last of the row of cans.

"Then come on and get out the burying things and let's get that job over," Miss Lavinia continued to insist. "Don't get our things mixed! Remember that my grave shift has got nothing but a seemly stitched band on it while you would have linen lace on yours. And don't let anything get wrinkled. I don't want to rise on Judgment Day looking like I needed the pressing of a hot iron. Now pull out the trunk, boys, lift out the tray so as I can—"

But at this juncture Rose Mary appeared at the door with a tray on which stood a bowl of soup, and Miss Lavinia lay back on her pillows weakly, with the fire all gone out of her eyes and exhaustion written on every line of her determined old face.

"Go get dinner, everybody, so we can get back to work," she directed weakly as she raised the spoon to her lips and then rested a moment before she could take another sip. And with the last spoonful she looked up and whispered to Rose Mary, "You'll have to do the rest child, I can't drive any farther with a broke heart. I've got to lay myself in the arms of prayer and go to sleep." And so rested, Rose Mary left her.

Then finding the motive powers which had been driving her removed, little Miss Amandy stole away to the cedar grove behind the garden fence, the boys scampered with the greatest glee across the Road to the scene of mop and broom action behind the store, and Uncle Tucker stiffly mounted old Gray to drive the cows away to their separate homes. The thrifty neighbors had been glad to buy and pay him cash for the sleek animals, and their price had been the small capital which had been available for Uncle Tucker to embark on the commercial seas in partnership with Mr. Crabtree.

Thus left to herself in the old house, Rose Mary wandered from room to room trying to put things in shape for the morrow's moving and breasting her deep waters with what strength she could summon. Up to this last day some strange hope had buoyed her up, and it was only at this moment when the inevitable was so plainly closing down upon her and her helpless old people that the bitterness of despair rose in her heart. Against the uprooting of their feebleness her whole nature cried out, and the sacrifice that had been offered her in the milk-house days before, seemed but a small price to pay to avert the tragedy. Doubt of herself and her motives assailed her, and she quivered in every nerve when she thought that thus she had failed them. What! Was she to save herself and let the sorrow fall on their bent shoulders? Was it too late? Her heart answered her that it was, for her confession of horror of her purchaser to Uncle Tucker had cut off any hope of deceiving him and she knew he would be burned at the stake before he would let her make the sacrifice. She was helpless, helpless to safeguard them from this sorrow, as helpless as they themselves!