The Colonel, ever ready to quiet fermenting anger, laid his hand genially on the homespun-covered shoulder.

"You will find, my ambitious young friend," he said, "that it is better in the long run to rest occasionally. Nature requires it, and, as you yourself have said, Nature is the true standard to follow."

"Nature don't rest," he doggedly retorted. "Trees don't rest from growin'!"

"They do, indeed," declared the Colonel, not quite sure of his ground, but willing to venture it. "Every night they rest, and so do all growing things."

Dale thought a moment, for this was a new idea.

"I don't believe it," he finally declared. Then smiling, and dropping into the attractive drawl, he asked: "Cunnel, ye wouldn't go so fur as ter say the trees takes Satu'day off ter quit growin', would ye?"

Bob laughed, but the old gentleman sighed.

"I fear you can't quite catch my meaning, sir," he compromised. "However, you will be learning something this evening, because I want to have a long talk with you. I want to know your ambitions and your plans. I have determined to see you get all the education you can eat, drink, and otherwise stuff into your system. Now, be satisfied for the moment, until we discuss the matter."

Dale's eyes and cheeks showed the grateful effect of the old gentleman's words. He wanted to thank him, but, not knowing quite how, remained silent; and in this way the three entered the overgrown gate of Arden.



CHAPTER VIII

THE INCONSEQUENT ENGINEER

Uncle Zack's watchful eyes discerned the returning riders and busily he went to prepare juleps, while, at the same time, a company of little darkies dashed past the house eager to lead the horses stableward.

This aroused a man who had been day-dreaming on the deep, cool porch. His feet were comfortably perched on the seat of an opposite chair, and an open book lay face down on his lap. Within convenient reaching distance stood a silver goblet topped with sprigs of mint. He was dressed in immaculate white, a suit which showed the character of expert tailorship when subjected to the arm and leg stretch of the frantic yawn he now deliberately enjoyed. For young Mr. Brent McElroy was as well groomed as he was good to look upon. Although Bod had called him the laziest chap in clothes, and Miss Liz had berated his lack of ambition, and all had sometimes resented his ironies, a very critical glance at his face would have belied these faults. For his chin was cast in a good mould, and his eyes looked at one with steady, honest interest. They were spirited, but tender, and a trained observer would have found in them a deep, lingering hunger for something which seemed not to have come. He would also have found strength in the mouth, ordinarily too cynical.

Brent managed to get along pretty well with everything but work, and in severing diplomatic relations with this he usually found himself persona non grata with Jane and her strongest ally, Miss Liz. For Jane, more than all of them, realized the blessings a railroad would bring to her people in that wild area beyond Snarly Knob. She knew how each artery leading from the virgin heart of those mountains, carrying to the world its stream of warmth, would return twofold riches to the benighted denizens of their antiquity. She knew that through each vein from the distant centers of the world's culture would flow back a broader understanding of life, its responsibilities, ambitions, opportunities. To her, the little road was a savior, to such a degree God-sent, that it seemed a sacrilege to let it halt. Moreover, since Brent came, she felt that the Colonel had been given fresh inspiration to imbibe. It had not occurred to her to reverse this indictment, which might have been done with an equal amount of truth. At any rate, she had lost patience with the good-looking engineer, while the Colonel was finding him more and more attractive.

He arose now as the men dismounted, stretched again, and smiled down at them.

"Ah, sir," the Colonel cried, "I'm glad you are home in time to join us!"

"I've just been joining," he laughed, "but, of course, if you can't get along without me—" he waved a hand toward his empty goblet. Uncle Zack had made provision for this—Uncle Zack, who believed that a thoroughbred gentleman should always be "jes' a li'l bit toddied up."

Dale stood at the bottom step staring with the open curiosity characteristic of his kind, and convinced that he was gazing upon the most elegant gentleman in all creation. No detail of the toilette escaped his minute scrutiny—from the white buckskin shoes to the white cravat, from the immaculate linen to the flashing teeth; and for a second time that day his eyes lowered to pass slowly over the crudeness of his own attire.

The Colonel saw this and smiled, but it was not a mirthful smile. His former interest had become quickened by this helpless and pathetic look, and mentally he strengthened a previous resolution.

"Brent," he said, "I want you to know Dale Dawson! Mr. McElroy," he turned to the still staring mountaineer, "is staying with me, and making a survey for the railroad we hope to see running through here before long, sir."

"I hain't never seed a train but onct," Dale exclaimed, shaking hands with more open admiration. "Then hit 'most scared the gizzard outen me! How do ye make 'em?"

"Oh," Brent laughed, "screws, and nuts, and hammers, and things. But I don't make trains, old fellow; I'm just making the survey!"

"Good-bye everybody!" Bob gurgled, swinging into the saddle. The Colonel called him sternly back.

"Now, Bob," he whispered, stepping out to the tanbark drive, "you've no right to leave me like this, sir. I can't put up with it, I tell you! Why, God bless my soul, the fellow hasn't a rag except what's on his back! Must I ask him to sleep in the stable, sir? Those mountain people are sensitive to the very core, you know that, and his feelings would be immeasurably hurt if he suspected I complain of his clothes. But, Bob, it's impossible! You're both of a size; help an old man out—there's a good fellow!"

"I'll do anything but stay here and disgrace myself," Bob assured him.

"Tactfully, sir, tactfully," the Colonel warned.

"Trust me to do it tactfully," Bob whispered. "I'm not out to get shot." And turning to the porch he called: "Dale, like to ride over and meet my family? You might get a word with Miss Jane about the school, too!"

There was no reply to this except a quick step toward the old white mare.

"Will hit be all right ter leave my rifle hyar, Cunnel?" he asked, with one foot in the stirrup.

"Certainly, sir," that gentleman gave cheery acquiescence. "But take my horse. Your own seems tired."

"Yourn air faster," he nodded, passing unnoticed Lucy's invitation to be caressed and rising into the Colonel's saddle. There was something pathetic in the wistful way she looked after him, whinnying twice or three times in a sudden panic of apprehension. The old gentleman stroked her nose, murmuring:

"I don't think he ought to have done it just that way, old faithful. But if I read the signs correctly you'd better get used to it now. There'll be plenty more times."

Bob called from the gate: "Send Zack over; I want my hair cut!" And the Colonel, understanding, waved his hand as they again cantered away—Dale in advance, and the young planter evidently cautioning him to spare his horse in the noon hour heat.

"Who's Bob's anthropoid friend?" Brent asked, as he and the Colonel now stretched in their chairs.

"A young man from the mountains, violently in search of an education. He will be asking you every question in the range of thought, Brent, and I hope you will have patience with him. It's such a pity to see one so hungry for knowledge—really starving for it—while the whole wide board before him holds more than enough for all!"

"He's welcome to banquet on my feast of reason, but he'll get mighty tired of it. Do you think he's serious?"

The Colonel smiled at this from Brent.

"It has been my observation that believing in people usually brings out their best," he answered, "and so I think he is serious. I hope you will, also."

"You bet I will," Brent cordially agreed, burying his nose in the mint. "He's all right;—I like him!"

After a moment of affectionate contemplation of his own julep, the Colonel said:

"Bob's household will be over to dinner tonight. I trust you can be with us, sir!"

Before he could reply, Miss Liz appeared in the doorway, and both men arose with courtly bows. When Brent had arranged a place for her—and the Colonel had slipped into the house holding the telltale goblet under his coat—this severe lady, balancing on the chair with prim nicety, raised her lorgnette and observed:

"You have come home early!"

It was not hospitably done. Indeed, Miss Liz, sister of the Colonel's angelic wife, inherited few of that departed lady's endearments. While both had passed their girlhood in the Shenandoah, this one alone managed to absorb and retain all the stern qualities from the surroundings of her nativity. Now a spinster of perhaps sixty years, this firmness had become imbedded in her nature as unalterably as the Blue Ridge rock; her eyes and hair were as gray, and her voice—unless she were deeply moved—as hard; also was her sense of duty as unyielding. Before her sister's death she regularly visited Arden, and afterwards the Colonel had insisted upon her making it a permanent home.

He paid the price for this, as he knew he would pay; but without a word, and with as few outward signs as possible. For Miss Liz could not have been termed in sympathy with the easy-going Colonel, nor, in her self-righteous moods, sympathetic with any man. From long practice and research she had at her fingers' tips the measurements of every male transgressor from Cain to Judas Iscariot, and could work up about as unhappy an hour for gay Lotharios as might be found this side of the Spanish Inquisition. At any rate, Miss Liz did come to Arden, finding rest and quiet and peace—not imparting them.

The little darkies never tired of twisting pieces of bale-wire into an imitation of lorgnettes and airily strutting in her wake when she visited the garden—-being careful to keep their carousal well away from the danger zone. At the same time, all who had been allowed peeps into her gentler side were gripped with tentacles of affection as firm as was her own relentless adherence to duty. In just one respect might Miss Liz have been rated below par, and this was a hopeless incapacity to see when others were teasing her. She took all in good faith when they looked her straight in the eyes and told the most flagrant absurdities.

Brent now smiled blandly into her face and accepted the implied rebuke a moment in silence.

"Isn't it extraordinary," he said at last, "that I guessed you would be having on that becoming gown, and looking just this cool and attractive?"

In spite of her stiffening shoulders and frown of extreme displeasure, an echo of color crept slowly into her cheeks. For it is a curious fact that, while stern and self-denying people may be found who are impregnable to the fiercest attacks of passion, indifferent to the most insidious lures of avarice, unmoved by the most convincing whispers of jealousy, and impartial in every act toward fellowman—all, all will yield an inch to the smile of flattery.

"Fiddlesticks!" she exclaimed. "I am old enough to be your grandmother!"

The lorgnette never faltered, and Brent's eyes lowered in feigned distress.

"Yes, I suppose so," he quietly admitted. "The fact is, when you come out on the porch this way and begin to talk so pleasantly, I'm always forgetting that you're so—so terribly old as you insist. I'll try to remember, Miss Liz."

"I am not inviting old age," she smiled, with a freezing lack of mirth; but yet she may have yielded the inch, for one of her thin hands went timidly up to the iron gray curls which hung before her ears, and her eyes turned to gaze dreamily over the fields as though in search of some long past, golden memory.

His own eyes took this opportunity to cast another sly look at the tell-tale goblet, hoping to light upon some method of spiriting it away.

"Mr. McElroy," she suddenly exclaimed, "I have been talking to brother John, and have told him my views about you!"

Brent's mouth opened a moment in surprise and then he frankly began to laugh.

"I'm glad I wasn't in hearing distance!"

"You might have heard to your advantage. I told him that I considered marriage to some determined girl your only chance of reformation."

"Marriage!" he almost rose out of his chair. "Heavens, Miss Liz! I've got an alarm clock that does that sort of thing!"

"Alarm clock?" she gasped. "Pray, what do you suppose marriage is?"

"I've never tried to suppose! I don't want to suppose"

She arose with dignity and went toward the door. There was another minute, while he stood making humble apologies to which she seemed indifferent, and then her voice came like the crackling of dry twigs. "I bid you good morning, Mr. McElroy!"



CHAPTER IX

AT THE UNPAINTED HOUSE

Brent sat down and took a deep breath, as men do when they have narrowly escaped disaster. He saw Zack on a mule, heading for the gate, and called him.

"Uncle Zack," he whispered, when the old darky had come hat in hand up the steps, "rustle me another julep!"

"Lawd, Marse Brent," he cast a suspicious glance toward the front hall, "I'se gotter go clar to Marse Bob's an' cut his haih!" But, translating the look, Brent gave a low laugh, saying:

"She won't be out again for awhile. Hustle, Zack! I've just been frozen to death!"

The old man thrust the empty goblet under his coat and quickly returned with another, invitingly frosted.

"Ain' she turr'ble sometimes, Marse Brent?" he asked in a confidential undertone. "She done tol' me yisterday dat I'se gwine git th'owed clar to de bottom of hell, an' den criss-cross all over de coals, ef I don' stop makin' juleps for Marse John an' you! Do you reckon I'se gwine git all dat misery?"

"Betcher life," Brent answered, taking a few swallows and leaning back with a sigh of satisfaction. "That's all coming to you; but d'you want to know what the Colonel and I've decided to do if you quit making us juleps, you old devil?"

Zack grinned.

"We'll take you out to the tool house, and press your teeth down on a dry grinding-stone till they get hot and squeak and—"

"Hush, man, hush! In de name of goodness, hush!" Zack covered his wrinkled mouth. "You makes mah jaws feel all scrouged up!"

And after he was again astride the mule, plodding toward Bob's place, his hand continued to stroke with affectionate care those jaws that had been thrown into such spasms of suggested torture, muttering:

"Who ever heerd tell of sech misery as puttin' mah onlies' toof on de grind-stone!"

A mile from Arden stood a house, too near the road to give it the air of being a place of many comforts, even were it in other respects pretentious. But its lightly built porch, precariously nailed to an unpainted frame front, stamped it with poverty.

Here dwelt Tom Hewlet, proprietor of ten acres and a bad name. It was said that his first wife had all but died of neglect, and then burst an artery in her brain while pursuing him with a skillet. The second Mrs. Hewlet still held on. Both, no doubt, possessed virtues, but neighborly sympathy clustered around the present incumbent, because she was the present, and because of a frequently expressed regret that the good Lord had not spared her predecessor until the skillet and Tom had made connection. It was but a whispered wish, for Tom's second choice came from the meek and lowly. He was taking no more chances.

Besides that exciting memory, however, the first Mrs. Hewlet, previously the widow of a country parson, had left him a daughter by that marriage, and this girl, Nancy, had stayed—for Tom's house was, after all, the only place she had to stay. Arden's people and those of Bob's home had felt in a mild way sorry for this girl, sometimes sending over "things," and in other ways showing a long-distance interest; yet the very fact that she lived beneath the roof of such an old reprobate constituted a barrier which many of the less established neighbors would not venture to cross. Just, or unjust, this had made her shunned—at least, not sought; and as she grew into young womanhood, she also grew into a life of solitude. The native swains did not approach because they were afraid of Tom, and girl friends were denied by a far more unrelenting danger—compromise.

This particular spring, however, two events occurred which were vitally affecting her life. The first, when she stopped Jane in the road and asked if she might come to school. From that time forth the teacher began to see many things which others had not given themselves the opportunity to see, and her previous long-distance interest merged with the girl's spirit of secret envy into a companionship—bounded for the most part by school hours, yet a companionship, nevertheless.

Not until then was there exposed a lovelier side of character, doubtless formed in early childhood with her father, the country parson. Jane learned of the mutual adoration which had existed between these two, and, when he had died, how death seemed also to lay a hand upon her budding hopes of life and future. The mother's background she found more difficult to place, and the only glimpse she could get of it was through Nancy's possession of four books left from that forlorn woman's more forlorn estate: the Bible, Swinburne's poems, "Adam Bede" and "Household Hints." That she had been superior to Tom might be accepted without question, and why she married him was simply one of those anomalies which makes our neighbors interesting.

But the seed implanted by the father, a man of honest impulses, remained somewhere the girl's consciousness—latent, nearly parched by the brutality of subsequent environments; until Jane had begun to moisten it with encouragement, and now it was budding. On the other hand, she had seen in Nancy tendencies of less promise: a physical desire to be away from the frame house by the roadside, and a character—not entirely weak, but irresolute—easing its sense of obligation by the devil's insidious argument of poverty; also, that the recent application to perfect her modest learning was in parallel with an unexpressed hope of independence in the cities. Frequently—and invariably after nights when old Tom was on his sprees—Jane had found her pathetically near the precipice of desperation, and it required some pointed talks to hold her steady.

The second event in her life had been of more recent date: Brent.

As old Zack now neared the ramshackle house, he saw her leaning over the crooked gate. Not infrequently of late he had carried a note to her, and he rather felt that she might be looking for one today.

She smiled, showing a really exquisite line of teeth between lips full and inviting. Her mouth was large, as though Nature, realizing her possession of one exceptional quality, had made the most of it. Around her neck hung a simple garnet pendant which Zack had noticed only in the last few days; and now, as she stood with chin up-tilted, the sunlight struck this stone sending a soft, crimson gleam of dull fire across the white skin below her throat.

"Mawnin', Miss Nancy," he made a perfunctory bow.

"Good mornin', Uncle Zack."

"How's yoh folks?" the old man asked. It was warm, he was weary of the ride and wanted to talk.

"They're well, thanks." She did not ask after those at Arden.

He folded his hands on the pummel and let his feet slip out of the uncertain rope stirrups. Sitting thus relaxed, for a moment he looked meditatively at the old mule's drooping ears, then reached in his pocket, brought out a red handkerchief of the bandanna type and wiped his brow. He had something to tell her—she knew this! But she knew, too, from experience that when he brought a message he must take his own time about delivering it.

"Dat's a mighty spry gemmen over to our house," he finally remarked.

"Mr. Brent?" she flushed a little.

"No-deedy! He's spry, too; but dis'n I'm talkin' 'bout jes' come."

"Yes, I heard about him," she said. "A sort of hill-billy, isn't he?"

"Now, how'd you heah dat?" the old fellow looked down at her. "He only got dar las' night!"

"I don't remember—somebody came by an' told Pappy, I reckon."

"It do beat all how tales travel," he doubtfully shook his head. "But don' you put no stock in him bein' a hill-billy! Long haih an' s'penders don' make no greenhorn. Dey never has yit, an' dey never will—any moh'n a Adam's Apple do; an' I got a Adam's Apple mahse'f, sech as 'tis! I got sumfin else, too!" He slowly closed one eye and looked up at the sky.

"A note?" she laughed.

"Dat ain' so fur off!"

"A message?"

"You sho' guessed it dat time!" he chuckled. "Some-un suttenly do a lot of thinkin' 'bout some-un—dat's all I got to say!"

"Does he?" she blushed. It pleased her to have this old man tease. It was her only outlet; he was the only one who shared the secrets of their trysts.

"He suttenly do! I don' reckon she's been outen his mind but onct dis spring!"

"When could that have been?" she bantered.

The old fellow's face disappeared into a network of wrinkles. "Dat wuz when he picked his gloves offen de po'ch an' got one on befoh knowin' a hornet had done crawled in it. He come purty nigh fergittin' his salvation, den! All de same," he added, still chuckling, "he say he's comin' over dis 'way dis evenin', less'n de lightnin' strike 'im. Dar ain' no cloud in de sky now," he looked up musingly.

He felt about for the stirrups with his boots and then took up the old reins, still grinning and bowing his adieux with a gallantry that would have done credit to the Colonel. And, as he rode away, she drew a deep, trembling breath of happy anticipation.



CHAPTER X

THE SPIRIT OF SUNLIGHT PATCH

The old darky, after another half hour of plodding, sighed as he turned into the welcome shade of Flat Rock. The pike had been shimmering white and his eyes ached. Yet, as he followed the woodland road, he thought of a garnet shadow on a young throat, and again he sighed. In a vague way it meant a sign to him, and troubled his old heart.

A glimpse of Bob's house and its carefully kept grounds came into view, each detail opening as he approached, until he saw Jane and the mountaineer seated on the lawn. Passing by a side way to the rear, had his eyes been good he might have seen her face flushed with interest in the man whom she was drawing out and graciously dissecting.

For this was one of her own people—one of that very shut-in, restless, hungry type, whom she had hoped by the perfecting of herself to help. Other scholars at the school were not like him. They were, with a single exception, of the valley and foothills, but this one came from primeval grandeur. He alone possessed the absorbing craze to learn which had dominated her own life, and so she felt peculiarly drawn to him.

"I must ask you," she was saying, "where you get your way of talking. We of the mountains,"—and she noted his look of thanks for this acknowledgment of mutual origin—"come out with our dialect pure; but I find you mixing it up with bits of really correct speech!"

"I can't talk yet like I want to," he answered, carefully choosing his words, "but what I've learned was up in Sunlight Patch. Some of the finest speakin' in the world, I reckon, is up thar!"

"Up there," Jane corrected.

"Up there," he repeated after her, adding: "I knowed that, but forgot."

"What and where is Sunlight Patch? Twice you've spoken of it."

"Hit's a cabin 'n' a clarin'," he answered simply, "back in the mountings. I war borned thar—there; all of we-uns war born there."

"An odd name," she mused, although she knew odd names were typical of the mountains.

"Not when ye know how-cum-hit," he said. "Hit war called that-a-way by a preacher onct. Yeou see, Miss Jane, my sister war born blind—leastways, the fu'st thing they knowed of hit she war blind. Thar war four of us brats in the cabin, two brothers older'n me who got shot, 'n' her. I war the kid, ye mought say, 'n' when I war mighty small some-un took her off ter the blind school in the settlements. She only come back 'bout two year ago, 'n' fetched some blind books they'd give her."

"What were the books?" Jane softly asked, touched by the picture of that poverty she had so well known.

"The New Testament," he answered. "Thar war five big books of that. Then she had four big-uns of a feller named Dickens—'The Tale of Two Cities,' that war. But what I liked most war the three wrote by a Cooper feller—he warn't no kin ter our Coopers, Ruth says—called 'The Last of the Mohigans.' That Injun, Uncas, war a man, I tell yeou! Thar war some poetry I liked mighty well, too. Ruth says all of 'em wouldn't take up so much room, if 'twarn't fer the blind writin'."

"Do you remember much of those books?" she asked.

"'Member much! Why, I know 'em purty nigh off by heart! That's how-cum I kin talk so good—when I stop to think. By repeatin' arter her I know the alphabet, the multiplication table, mental 'rithmetic up ter long dervision, some history, 'n' some g'ography—but I hain't never seed a map, nor writin'. Her books is writ in blind."

"I think you have learned a great deal," she smiled at him.

"Hit hain't nuthin' ter what I'm goin' ter larn," he declared. "But moh'n what I've told ye, even, I larned from her readin'. Yeou see, Miss Jane, she uster read ter ever'body who'd come, 'n' hit got so arter 'while—'specially Sundays—that folks 'd walk or ride ter our place from as fur as twenty mile ter listen, jest like they war comin' ter a singin', till the clarin' 'd be plumb full. They'd listen, 'n' watch her fingers slip over them raised letters, 'n' keep a-listenin' till plumb dark afore thinkin' 'bout goin' home. 'N' arter dark, too; 'cause ter her the darkness didn't make no diff'ence. 'N' sometimes, with jest the stars 'n' black trees 'round us up thar on the mounting side, hit seemed right quar ter see folks a-settin' on the grass, 'n' her voice comin' outen the night like one of them prophets what maybe she war a-readin' 'bout. Yeou see," his voice assumed a mystic, whispery tone, "she never knowed when hit war night, 'n' the people wouldn't tell her, nur make a move till she quit—beant hit even mawnin'. Arter readin', she'd talk awhile; tellin' 'em things they'd orter do, 'n' things they'd orten't. 'N' onct she clean busted up a feud by makin' two ole fellers shake han's. That caught the preacher's eye. When he heern tell of hit, he called our cabin Sunlight Patch, 'n' said she war the slocum—'n' the name's done stuck."

He paused; absently, almost unconsciously raising his fingers to brush back the long hair. And when she gently encouraged him to continue, he looked at her with another smile of grateful acknowledgment.

"I won't ever fergit that day, I reckon. She war settin' in the doh as usual, 'n' on the step nigh her feet war ole Ben French 'n' Leister Mann—two of the hatin'est fellers in our parts. But they'd wanted ter come so bad that both sides compacted ter leave thar weepons behind. This day she seemed ter be readin' stronger'n afore, 'n' she talked moh like she war a-seein' things—I mean sure 'nough things; 'n' arter 'while the folks begun ter rock 'n' moan. They believe ter this day that the Lawd give her sight back fer a minit then, 'cause she reached down 'n' took ole Ben's hand in one of hern, 'n' ole Leister's in t'other'n, 'n' asked 'em ter shake. They'd been settin' thar a-cryin' afore that, so they shook friendly, 'n' all the fellers in the clarin' they shook, too; 'n' the wimmin folks on both sides crossed over 'n' made up. That's how-cum-hit."

"I don't remember those men," she murmured. "Leaders of that feud changed so quickly and so often! It lasted a long time, didn't it!"

"Hit did, that! The fu'st I ever knowed thar war sich a thing war when they brought Pappy home daid," he looked down at the ground. "I war only a leetle brat, then, but ole Granny busted out a-wailin', 'n' put his rifle in my han's, 'n' tetched my face with his blood, 'n'—but yeou know how our people takes the oath; 'n' ye know hit hain't no nice oath." She shuddered, but the mountaineer continued: "Wall, she done all that, 'n' made me say arter her the things I wisht 'd strike me daid if I didn't git the fellers what had got him. Then one day, from up in the rocks, she p'inted 'em out, so'd I know 'em. One got drowned takin' a raft down ter Frankfo't—he fell off jest arter I shot. 'N' t'other-un I didn't git fer a long time. I ketched him—"

"Don't tell me any more, Dale," she pleaded. "I know you must have ketched him."

"Wall," he mused, "'twusn't right ter make no leetle feller take a oath like that, Miss Jane—'n' I moughtn't a-done hit, 'cept fer not knowin' no better. I wouldn't be tellin' ye, neither, but Ruth said ye'd want ter know afore takin' me in school. She says folks in the settlemints is awful tetchy 'bout killin' folks."

"We'll pass the feud. Tell me how you happened to come here?"

"A circuit rider come through our parts one day, 'n' tol' us 'bout yo' school. That war in the winter. Ruth war so set on me ter come, 'n' me the same, I couldn't sleep. She said I'd be like Lincoln, 'n' Clay, 'n' even finer—ef thar is sech a thing as bein' finer'n them! But I knowed I'd be jest as fine, 'n' she did too. But ye see, with all our people daid, 'cept me 'n' her, I couldn't leave. She knowed how 'twar, 'n' one day a woman come from over the mounting ter live with us. I reckon Ruth had the preacher ask her ter come 'n' stay thar whilst I war heah ter school; fer her man had got caught makin' licker 'n' had ter do time down in the settlemints."

"We say 'her husband'; not 'her man,' Dale."

"Thank-ee. Well, she come, 'n' Ruth says fer me ter light out, 'n' ter tell ye all I know, as 'twon't take so long as tellin' ye all I don't. 'N' she give me the ole mare, 'n' nine dollars—all we had. The mawnin' I left," his voice slipped back into the whispery accents, "she put her arms 'round my neck, 'n' asked me ter make her one promise."

"What was that promise? Can you tell me?"

"Hit war jest somethin'," he hesitated, flushing. "She said she war willin' fer me ter do any other kind of sinnin', ef I jest plain couldn't git outen hit, but she hoped I might die afore doin' that. Then she got on her knees 'n' fer most a hour prayed Gawd ter strike me daid afore He'd see me do hit. She said," he added softly, "hit air on accounten that sin as how-cum she's blind."

Jane shuddered. She could picture the cabin room, the girl kneeling on the rough board floor, her sightless eyes raised to the wall of logs and mud, her frantic prayer to have this only brother kept safe and sent back to her; but, if he were about to sin a certain sin, to strike him dead.

She was too deeply moved to speak, and indeed she felt that words would be out of place in this pause which seemed so eloquent of a curiously comforting holiness. On his own part, he merely sat there looking down at his awkward boots. Finally, with sincere, trembling regret in his voice, he murmured:

"I'm sorry ye've a headache."

"Thank you, Dale." Her reply was tenderer than she knew, for now he still further appealed to her. From men in the valley, this solicitation might probably have denoted no more than ordinary politeness, but she knew from experience that the phlegmatic mountaineers must be moved by strong emotion to sympathize with one in pain. "It's all gone, now," she added.

"Whoop-ee!" he gave a sudden yell, at the same time springing into the air and striking his heels twice together in a wild dance of joy. "Whoop-ee!" he yelled again. "Git hit, 'n' let's begin! Git hit, I say!"

"Dale!" she cried in consternation, drawing back from him. "Are you mad?"

"Bob said ye couldn't teach 'counten yo' haid," he breathlessly continued, his face glowing with excited pleasure. "But now ye kin! Now ye kin git the book 'n' give me my larnin', can't ye?"

He was looking down at her with an expression she had never beheld in anyone's face—enthusiasm, wildness, even madness; but his eyes were not seeing her. They missed the parted, startled lips, the heightened color of her oval cheeks, the pulsing throat, and the frightened breathing. They watched only for her to produce the key to his religion—a book.

And she read this in his burning eyes as though it were written there in cold, black, selfish letters. A deep smouldering and immoderate anger seized her. That this man who had seemed such a power of softness should so show himself to be a thing of self-centered flint, wounded her; and Jane rebelled at wounds. For the moment they stared, seemingly hypnotized; until at last her voice came as low and expressionless as his had been full of fire.

"Sit down. I'll get a book, but before you look into it you shall learn a lesson that will be more useful."

He obediently dropped into his chair, but she remained standing and, in the same monotone, said:

"You've told me about your Sunlight Patch, and of a blind sister who reads all day and into the nights to throngs of ignorant people for their improvement; who gave the only horse and the last nine dollars on the place, and left herself nearer helpless than she already was, in order that you might start out to be a great man—a man like Lincoln, or like Clay." He missed a touch of fine sarcasm here. "Now let us see what you have done, and how far you have emulated the great hearts of those noble patterns you've set out to follow: Yesterday you arrived, and," here her cheeks turned a deeper pink, "defended a school teacher against insult. Understand, you did not champion a defenseless girl; it was the school teacher, whom you considered as a necessity to your future. This morning you went out before daylight—I've heard about it—to punish, not an offender against society, but a probable menace to your ambition. You are sorry if the school teacher has a headache, not because a human being is suffering, but because your own desire is thwarted. You have no more charity in your soul than a stone!"

He was silent, contrite and humble, but she had not finished with him yet. While the instinct of the teacher had been stirred, more thoroughly had been aroused a girl's offended pride. So in the same voice she went relentlessly on:

"First learn that your mountain is not the only place which holds a Sunlight Patch! There is one everywhere," her hand, unconsciously placed against her breast, now pressed as she spoke. "In everyone there must be that same selfless desire to give the last horse and the last nine dollars to whomsoever it may carry to a higher goal, or mankind is a failure. Learn this now. Do not think because you were born in Sunlight Patch that any of its virtues are clinging to you. We carry no virtues but our own—remember that! Don't forget that other people depend on you just as much as you depend upon them, and that life is a big game of give and take—the giver usually winding up with the largest share of happiness. Now go to the house. Bob has called you twice!"

He rose slowly. There was a tightness in his throat; his head throbbed and hurt. His capacity for learning, the true offspring of his insatiable desire, had become so like a dry sponge drawing in from every trickle of knowledge which flowed through his remote habitation, that he missed no word of what she said—each had sunk deep into his mind as a marble that is tossed into a limpid pool, gradually settling until it rests on the clear bottom, forever to be undisturbed, but forever in sight.

It suddenly occurred to him that Bob had really called, and he took a step in that direction, but turned once more to look at her. No one could have met that look unmoved, much less this girl who had been the necessary cause of it. It was so haunted, so pleading for another chance, and he seemed so pitifully helpless in his awkwardness and homespun clothes, that in spite of herself two tears welled into her eyes, balanced, and fell. She dashed them quickly away and turned her back to him. Again the tightness seized his throat while wave after wave of something particularly cruel swept through him.

His sister had never cried—or, at least, not in his presence; nor had the few bare-footed girls he knew. They might have bawled their eyes out and he would have calmly walked away. But this one was different, very different, and he could not move; this was the teacher, his teacher, the thing he had set up on a pedestal by the throne of God Himself—yes, higher; or, at any rate, more continuously in his thoughts.

"Have you forgotten Bob wants you?" she finally asked.

"No'm," he answered. "I war jest 'bout ter go."

A woodpecker tapping on the dead top of a tree now stopped amidst a breathless stillness. Bees were droning in the air, and softly over the land came the song of a happy field hand. It was all very peaceful and very quiet; too peaceful, too cloyingly quiet for Jane just then, and, as he continued to stand, she fairly screamed at him:

"Are you petrified?"

"What's petrified?" he asked simply.

Slowly she turned and faced him; her eyes showing no tears, only tolerant surprise and amusement.

"Really, Dale, you are the most extraordinary person! Petrified means having become stone, or stony; sometimes stunned, or dazed. Now run along to Bob!"

While she watched him striding over the lawn, a low, merry laugh made her turn to behold Nancy, a picture of mischief—although with traces of a recent storm in her own eyes. Yet, like so many of the physically mature but mentally undeveloped, sorrows did not rest heavily upon her for any length of time.

"I didn't mean to laugh," she apologized, "but it did sound so funny sending that big feller away like that! That's all I heard," she added quickly.

"He's really no more than a boy," Jane smiled. "You'll probably see him in school Monday. What's the matter?"

"Oh, lots;" Nancy flopped, rather than sat, on the grass. "I can't keep on goin' to school! I can't do these sums a-tall! Pappy's drunk again, an' throwin' things around the house just awful. He can't mortgage the farm for any more, an' the storekeeper in town says he's goin' to sue him for what he owes, an' he's got drunk to forget it, I reckon. I can't work out this old thing in long division, anyway, Miss Jane, let alone when he's throwin' things!"

Most of this story had often before been poured into the teacher's sympathetic ears.

"You must have more grit than that," she said, patting one of the girl's hands. "You know I'll stand by you, and you know you're doing very nicely!"

"I reckon I ought to know," Nancy sighed. "But, honest, Miss Jane, I've used up enough grit for a flock of dominick hens! There isn't any more left on our place!"

Jane laughed. "If I'm not terribly mistaken in the girl, you'll find another supply before getting home."

"I reckon you're awful mistaken, then," she sighed dolefully. "I've just plain got to the end of the pile. It's hard, Miss Jane, honest it is, with Pappy cussin' an' drunk, an' barely enough to eat, an' not decent clothes to wear! His mealy-mouthed wife stands for it, but I don't, an' that makes things all the hotter. I'm tired of it! Why, I could have everything I want if—if—"

"If what?" Jane quickly asked. She looked fixedly at the girl whose face, suddenly crimson with blushes, made an effort to look calmly back.

"Oh, if nothin', I reckon," Nancy stammered.

"Sit over here nearer to me, Nan," Jane said after awhile. "I'm lonely myself today, and I've just heard something I want to tell you."

In no school could she have acquired that faculty for reaching one's confidence, and this artfully expressed feeling of loneliness touched a response in the girl's nature which she now frankly confessed by timidly snuggling against Jane's knees.

"Poor, tired thing," Jane murmured, her fingers touching Nancy's hair. "Do you sometimes fancy everyone unsympathetic?"

"Sort of," came a trembling little sigh.

Again the bees droned their drowsy lullaby. The song of the field hand was hushed, but in its place was the smell of new turned earth that told of a labor finished.

With every detail vividly drawn, she related the story of the blind girl in a remote wilderness which had achieved the name of Sunlight Patch; of what she had accomplished; of all she had given to the lives of those about her. And in a lowered voice told of the promise exacted of her brother, her only brother and support. When she finished, Nancy was looking up with wide open eyes.

"You mean to say she prayed for the only kin she had on earth to be struck dead if he ever went wrong?—an' him a man? Well, that surely is grit!"

"The thing is, Nan," Jane said softly, "that people with two eyes ought to do at least as much!"

Nancy arose and brushed her skirt.

"I reckon," she murmured, "that girl can teach us a heap when it comes to gettin' your teeth in things an' holdin' on. I ain't got a good reason now for not goin' back an' fightin' the ole man; but I wish to Gawd somethin' would strike him dead! Much obliged, Miss Jane—I sort of feel more like a Christian now."



CHAPTER XI

ON THE THRESHOLD

Toward evening Dale rode back to Arden. His mind was a confusion of happy impressions, the result of having laid its touch upon the throttle of power. From the dusky room where his life had sat wondering, he felt now that a hand had pressed his shoulder, aroused him, and led him to the silver threshold whose outlook was a landscape of golden opportunity. As, twenty-four hours earlier, when his eyes for the first time rapturously feasted on this valley of plenty, so now his mind roamed across a dazzling future—a future which was his, his very own.

Tossing back his head he gave a yell, a wild, joyous yell, that startled the horse and sent scurrying to higher branches an inquisitive squirrel which had been looking down at him with chattering interest.

When he turned into the circle, the Colonel stood up and stretched, welcoming him with an open smile of approval. He could imagine what tact Bob had employed to bring about this new attire, but little did he guess at what sacrifice to personal comfort. For the donation of clothes was not what stamped Bob a philanthropist. He had taken Dale into his room and there prosecuted a stragetic system; voluntarily submitting to Uncle Zack's shears on his hair which required no cutting. Nor was this all. He made the old servant shave him, a thing he despised from any hand but his own. Then he tubbed, and continued this game of follow-the-leader throughout the entire toilette, affably talking all the while, until Dale emerged a different looking, and a much more gratified, man.

"Lawd, Marse Dale," Uncle Zack had exclaimed, "you suah does look handsome! I'se gwine to shave you ever' mawnin' now, till you ketches on for yohse'f!"

The Colonel's smile was immeasurably pleasing to his new guest, and when the old gentleman playfully spoke of fine clothes Dale responded like a happy boy.

"Ain't they fine!" he looked admiringly down at himself. "I reckon I hain't never had on decent clothes before in all my life! D'ye reckon I'll get used ter this collar? Bob said so!"

Under his arm were two books—a speller and a simple reader. These Jane had given him as he left, after an afternoon spent in lessons on the lawn. It was the first lesson, of course; a lesson, perhaps, which both would remember all their lives; vivid to Dale because the tentacles of his mind were beginning to stir and stretch in their new awakening; vivid to her for many reasons. As the day had progressed she became more and more astounded by his ability to learn, for in an incredibly short time he had mastered the first four columns of her spelling book with an ease which made her wonder if he had not before been over it.

Enthusiastically now he related this to the Colonel, who saw that he was trembling—tingling, like a thoroughbred ready for the start in a big race.

"You must use the library for your studies, sir," the old gentleman declared with warmth. "In there you will find a dictionary—if you know how to use one."

"Show me how!" the new student eagerly turned to him.

Laying aside his own volume, a treatise on the calorific power of fuels—a brain-rasping subject which had been absorbing him since the coal fields were in prospect—he led the way into that spacious, mellow room, walled from floor to ceiling with shelves upon shelves of books. Dale stood transfixed. His head was thrown back and his hands were clenched, as though in very truth the secrets of this silent store-house were already creeping out to enter his attentive brain. Colonel May opened the clumsy dictionary, explaining it with a word the mountaineer had already learned to spell, and left him in this paradise of fancies.

Some time later Uncle Zack opened the library door, announced dinner, and left unheard. A few minutes after this he returned, but again left unheard, and only when a hand pressed Dale's arm did the young man look up. The Colonel was smiling down at him.

"Come, Sam Johnson. Dr. Jared Sparks, Ben Franklin, Davy Crockett, Abe Lincoln, and more such indomitable shades rolled into one! Man must eat; it is time for dinner!"

"What does that mean?" he asked, leaning back in his chair.

"Oh, Lord," the Colonel groaned. "I'll tell you another time. Come! You understand 'dinner,' I hope?"

Entering the dining room Dale's mind was like a country pup walking stiff-legged into a crowd of city dogs, its hair belligerently on end and the tip of its tail wagging a friendly compromise. Not that he was at all defiant, and of course not afraid, but his whole mental attitude had become one of alert watchfulness, ready to spring this way or that, to follow this new custom or that new custom, and not intending to lag if the others made a move. So it was that when the Colonel held a chair back for Miss Liz, and Bob was seating Jane, Dale, who never in his life had seen anything of this sort, made a pretense of imitating them for the convenience of Ann;—and even though she were rudely jolted by the violence with which he shoved her into the table, her appreciative smile made him determine to do this thing forever.

"How will you have your coffee, Mr. Dawson?" Miss Liz presently asked—for dinner at the Colonel's was of the farm variety which scorned the demitasse.

"A mite of long sweetenin', please Ma'm," he answered to that lady's utter consternation. She laid down the tongs and stared at him.

"He'll take it as you fix Bob's, Miss Liz," Jane interposed readily enough to save the situation, and at the next opportunity she turned in a confidential undertone: "We don't use 'long sweetening' down here, Dale. People in the valleys use sugar exclusively—'short sweetening,' as you call it. They don't have to grind and stew up corn-stalks to get sorghum for their coffee, as we used to do. But I remember how good that molasses—that 'long sweetening'—was," she added, lying for the benefit of charity. "Don't forget, they use 'short sweetening' all the time here in coffee, but they never call it anything but sugar. While on the subject of customs I want to correct you about something else. Today, over home, you stood in the drive and halloed for Bob till he came out for you. That isn't done in the settlements. Here you can walk right up to anybody's front door and knock, or ring the bell, without the slightest fear of having a rifle poked through a chink because people may take you for an enemy. Of course, your way is the proper and polite thing to do where we come from, but in the valley it isn't good etiquette."

"What's etiquette?" he asked.

She explained it and continued:

"The etiquette of knives and forks and spoons also materially differs between our people and these."

"I never seed one of these little fellers before," he picked up a teaspoon and turned it curiously over.

"I didn't either," she laughed, "until I went to the convent. But now, since I'm to be your teacher, you must let me teach you these things, too."

"I want ye to teach me everything in the world," he whispered.

"Then watch how I use them," she replied, flushing at the way he said this, "and which ones I use. Down here, people who eat with their knives are murdered—I mean socially murdered. Break—" she was about to say: break all the commandments before doing this! but thought better of it and added: "yourself of that habit the very first—the very first thing you do. And I want to hear more of that good English you say you know," she laughed at him. "You've been talking atrociously all day!"

"What's atrociously?" he asked.

"I don't see Brent," Miss Liz raised her lorgnette. "Is he ill?"

"No, my dear," the Colonel answered, "he is otherwise engaged and cannot be with us."

"John," the good woman stared severely across at him, "I believe that boy is working too hard! You must prevail upon him to take more rest."

A bomb exploding could scarcely have produced more surprise, yet one could never know just at what point Miss Liz would "break out"—as Zack called it. In the midst of their spellbound silence Ann giggled, and Jane managed to say:

"That would be rather difficult, wouldn't it, Miss Liz?—I mean, persuading him to take more rest?"

"Well, your father must try," she insisted; for, when very much in earnest, Miss Liz impartially denoted the Colonel as father to whomsoever she might be speaking.

"He's makin' a railroad, ain't he?" Dale turned to Ann. "Do ye reckon he'll show me how?"

"He'll turn it all over to you, no doubt!—he'll have to turn it over to someone if it gets built! It only shows, Daddy," she laughed across to the Colonel, "that one can't serve a corporation and a goddess both at the same time! Isn't that a natty little epigram?"

"I don't follow the subject of your epigram," the Colonel smiled.

"Why, Brent, and the goddess, and the railroad," she replied.

"Goddess, my dear? What goddess?"

She and Jane exchanged glances.

"He's suspected of having a love somewhere; some mysterious love whom he meets in the moonlit forest of Arden—when it's moonlight; and, maybe, when it isn't."

"What have you to support this?" the old gentleman frowned. He, too, had sometimes wondered what took Brent away so frequently of late. These were uncomfortable thoughts to the Colonel, who allowed suspicions no place in his estimate of people.

"Oh, we just support it for the sake of gossip," she laughed. "Aunt Timmie dreamed it, I believe."

"I thought you were serious," he smiled, yet showing his distaste for the subject, "nor will I permit any gossiping here!"

"But, Heavens, Daddy—"

"My dear," he interrupted her, "I trust you will never learn to gossip. It is purely a trade, carried on by a breed of fawning Judases—of self-satisfied butchers, to deal in the choicest cuts of their unsuspecting friends' characters. The shelter of my roof must also afford protection to the good name of my guest."

"'Good name' in the present instance is hardly a calculable statement," she murmured, for Ann could be biting, as well as sweet, when her feelings were touched.

"I quite agree with John," Miss Liz arose to the occasion. "It is strange," she added, turning the lorgnette this time carefully at Jane, "that he does not find a nice young girl to marry."

"Such a cynosure of niceness, too," Ann added her little dig, and Jane suggested:

"He might try advertising!"

"What's advertising?" Dale asked.

"Oh, Lord," the Colonel exploded into his napkin.

When dinner was over, Jane crossed the porch unnoticed and walked out under the trees. The lorgnette which had said to her "it is strange he does not find some nice girl to marry," left a disquieting effect. Ann had only that day suggested the same idea, and Bob had laughed to her about it the previous evening. Even Aunt Timmie, the ebony font of wisdom, had but recently looked slyly at her, remarking: "'Foh long we's gwine to have a weddin' in a private cyar!" (Aunt Timmie had never seen a private car, but it typified her idea of grandeur). She now strolled on beneath the trees, beneath giant clinging wild grape and trumpet vines, to a circle of low spreading cedars, wherein lay a carpet of odorous tanbark. It was a favorite spot with her.

Gliding carefully through the meeting branches which hid the path, she dropped into a yielding hammock and gazed for several minutes up at the network of black limbs, watching a star here and there which showed in a few small patches of visible sky. One arm stretched down at full length until her fingers touched the ground, and in this way she was keeping the hammock gently in motion.

She made a wonderfully graceful shadow, reclining in this dark place, and no judge of the human form could have passed without a quick breath of admiration for its delicate blending of strength and frailty, its stamp of being thoroughbred. And it was along the line of thoroughbreds that her thoughts were wandering.

Having acquired much of the Colonel's reliance in breeding, and in the fitness of appropriately mated things, she was wondering! Her father and mother had been illiterate mountaineers, but did there not exist a time prior to this when their ancestors were people of refinement? This, she felt, must be surely so, because of her early love of refined things—truly refined, to a degree far beyond the ken of mountain life. Without substantiating records, she seemed to know that in early Colonial days her family of gentle blood had floated with the migratory tide across the Appalachian range. That was the origin of all mountaineers! What had held some there, instead of sending them on to the rich, unsurveyed plains? A birth enroute? That sometimes happened. The man of the family died, or was killed, and the woman forced to build a shelter as best she might until the boys grew big enough to help? That, too, had happened. Whatever the reason, some of the best Anglo-Saxon stock had been stranded in the Cumberlands, staying there literally and figuratively while the world advanced.

Perhaps her strain was purer than the Colonel's! Few mountaineers made alien marriages, for the very sufficient reason that they seldom roamed—even though this had meant stagnation in their own environment. Still, the strain was pure! If one occasionally escaped these mountain fastnesses, why should he not—why should she not—with a free rein, dash out to regain lost prestige? Why should she not with one stroke blot out five or six generations of ignorance, and bring the stifled line of her honorable ancestry to the place it had been rightfully demanding for a century? But, in the face of uncertainties, would her blood commingled with the blood of established lineage now be fair? Would she ever feel a rebuke in infant eyes? Would they not burn her soul if she wantonly summoned them to open on a world which might point back with a superior smile? Could she ever kiss the little lips which might some day praise the father and be silent of her?

Thus her sensitive thoughts, bringing a succession of confusions, wandered dreamily on, while the hammock gradually ceased its swinging and hung as a thing asleep.



CHAPTER XII

A LIGHT ABOVE THE MOUNTAIN

During the latter part of Jane's reflections Brent McElroy was having a few strange minutes. He had left Arden shortly before sundown and, by following two side roads, reached the rear gate of Tom Hewlet's farm without having to appear on the pike. This was no unusual route for him on evenings when the pike promised hazards such as a chance meeting with the Harts or Jane.

Whenever Nancy, on the lookout, saw a cloud of dust rising above these rambling, tree-lined lanes instead of from the white, direct way, a deep flush of mortification tinged her face. She understood his circumspection, but wisely refrained from showing it.

Tying his horse, he followed a path up to the gnarled orchard where he knew she would be waiting. And there he spied her, idly plaiting dry stems of last year's bluegrass, beneath the distorted old tree which he had named Nirvana. A glow of extreme pleasure warmed him, for this Rosalind with her rustic prettiness made an agreeable diversion from the somewhat monotonous evenings at Arden, and he vastly enjoyed angling about the edges of her rural pool. But he was unaware that she had never left its limpid depths. He did not suspect—because he did not think it possible—that, like a goldfish, she had only swum about in the limited sphere of her transparent bowl, looking out at the universe with large eyes which seemed, but were not, wise; and ready, if danger came, to scurry back into the little frosted castle that constituted the center of her constricted existence.

No kind words or deeds had reached that frosted little castle during the years she most required them. It had remained cold and uninviting, except as a place of shelter, and her soul had shrunk into a sort of knot—until Brent came. Only at his coming did her hungry nature begin to uncurl;—only at the coming of this polished gentleman from the great world, who knew everything, who was the epitome of kindness, who fed her with confidences and compliments, who inspired her with a sudden sense of meaningness, of importance—only since then had she begun to realize that for a long time her heart had craved affection.

He now remained another moment behind the trees to draw a half filled flask from his pocket. Had he not had more than enough to drink that day, he might have possessed the prudence to put this back untouched. Instead, he drained it; then carelessly sent it flying across the fence into an adjoining field rank with old weeds.

He came on after this, and Nancy sprang up, holding lightly to one of the low hanging boughs. Before they spoke, and to her wild dismay, he kissed her; and, as much to her dismay, she yielded, clinging to him in a strange, sweet agony. For if two hearts are hungry, if two natures have been strangled, there is a time when the touch of lips to lips lets loose a sweep of human passion before which the hosts of heaven and the laws of man draw back in awe.

But suddenly, with a piercing shriek, she sprang away; then, clutching his arm, whirled him about.

"Look!" she whispered, pointing a trembling finger to a pale, mysterious glow which seemed to be arising from the peaks of the distant Cumberlands.

"The moon is coming up," he said, unsteadily.

This was the first time either had spoken, either had moved; but now she commenced to sob in little gasps, backing farther from him as though he were something she dared not touch again—reaching blindly behind her for their old tree, whose strength in having resisted the fury of many storms might be imparted to her now.

"What's the matter?" he asked, still stupidly.

"Oh, Brent," she whispered, "I thought it was that blind girl lookin' down here an' tellin' me she'd rather see me dead! Go home, quick, for the love of Christ!"

He would not ask her to explain. Non-understandable as her words had been, they had given him time to look about and see upon what a perilous brink their feet were standing.

Brent was not a godly man; he had not cultivated Nancy with a grain of godly intention. But he was a manly man; and now as he suddenly realized, with that certainty which has no law, no rule, no answer, that she was good, he would not trust himself to speak. Shutting his teeth hard, he turned abruptly and almost ran toward the horse.

Then it was that she threw herself upon the grass and sobbed great sobs of thankfulness; and tried to laugh, and tried to pray; holding out her clasped hands to that halo of light above a humble cabin somewhere in the mountains, in whose door a blind face had seemed to look down at her entreating: "I'd ruther see ye die!"

It was in a perturbed but thoroughly sober mind that Brent dragged back the broken gate, whose openings and closings had worn a deep rut in the ground. He was about to untie his horse when the figure of a man appeared walking clumsily along the orchard fence.

"Wait there," the fellow called. "I want to see you!"

The heavy frame of Tom Hewlet came on, and no other word was spoken until he stopped three feet away. Swaying slightly, and looking into Brent's face with a simpering leer, in an undertone he said:

"Come over some evenin' next week."

"What for?"

"I might say it's 'cause you're so purty to look at," he guffawed at this bit of humor. "But, fact is, it's on fam'ly matters."

"You're coming apart, Tom. Go in and get some sleep!"

"I was sleepin', till a empty whiskey bottle come sailin' through the air an' hit me on my hand."

A cold shiver crawled up the engineer's spine, but he turned to unhitch the horse, saying casually:

"You'll have blue mice sailing through the air if you don't sober up."

"Don't be in a hurry," hiccoughed Tom. "Don't leave yoh would-be step-pappy without some kind of reminder. A fiver 'd go mighty fine jest now, an' you wouldn't never miss it!"

Brent had wheeled on him.

"You're getting in mighty dangerous ground, Tom," he warned sharply.

"'Tain't half as dangerous as that orchard back there, if you didn't come into it honest!—an' if you did come honest, there ain't no reason why I can't borry a fiver—bein' a fam'ly matter, as you might say!"

"I came honest, and I'm leaving honest, you drunken fool," Brent raved at him. "And don't try any blackmail dodges on me or I'll beat your head off!"

"Blackmail!" Tom stepped back, not so much in surprise at the word as at Brent's threatening attitude. "Well, I'll leave it to the Cunnel, an' Miss Jane, an' them folks over there, if this ain't a fair an' squar proposition—all in the fam'ly, as you might say;—bein' as you come honest! For if fine gentlemen like you don't come honest, they'll say Gawd pity the gal!"

They'll say: God pity the girl! It smote his soul like a whip. Why should they not say it anyhow of the half-read country girl whom he slipped around by back roads to meet at night? Heretofore, he had been more the adventurer than criminal, but now he felt the brand of both. Some day, after his work was finished and he had gone, Zack would tell of the messages and notes, and all the sacred oaths of all the creeds would not convince Arden and Flat Rock one little mite of her innocence!

Over in the orchard a girl, walking slowly to the house, had stopped, terrified; shrinking for him, not for herself, as with the unerring instinct of her sex she realized how his pride would cringe before such an exposure.

"Tom," he said at last, "you may have the fiver, but not because I'm afraid of anything you can say. Nancy hasn't a thing in God's world to be ashamed of, and neither have I. But it's plain that I can't come again as long as you're drunk and seeing things. Here," handing him a bill. "But it isn't a loan, or hush money, or anything of the sort;—just hope money."

"How hope money?" Tom grinned, crumpling it eagerly in his hand.

"Because I hope you'll drink yourself to death with it. Good night."

It was late that night, and not until she had made a hurried walk across the country to Arden, when Nancy stole into the house. Her ears told her that Tom was lost in slumber, and she crept to her room, fastening the door with the back of a chair wedged firmly beneath the knob. She was breathing fast—this time from physical exertion. Her skirt showed one or two rents where, in her haste, it had been forced through stiff underbrush, and the knuckles of her hands were stained with fresh earth, as though she might have crouched upon the ground somewhere to escape detection. Only upon her face was there no sign of violence. In it rested a light translatable as a great peace which comes to one who has forgiven nobly, at the sacrifice of toil, an erring friend.



CHAPTER XIII

IN THE CIRCLE OF CEDARS

Brent reached Arden behind a sweaty horse. The meeting with Hewlet was filling him more and more with an agonizing unrest. He wanted to be alone, and he wanted not to be alone. He wanted to think, and he wanted not to think. At least, he could not face the Colonel and the others just now, so turning past the house to the most secluded spot the lawn afforded, he brushed through the screen of cedar branches, felt his way across the tanbark to a seat, and sank into it with a low curse.

Jane had heard the quick approaching steps, and now, because her eyes were accustomed to the shadowy gloom, she recognized at once, not only the man but a measure of his agitation by the way he breathed and jammed one fist into the palm of his other hand. Yet, in a spirit of fun, she remained motionless, wondering how soon he would detect her. Then a deep groan burst from his lips. It was a sound of poignant suffering that went to the depths of her nature. Purposeless as seemed his life, she still felt that it could not be altogether bad. The very charm of his presence, which had a way of stamping him a gentleman born even when in his khaki working clothes, stood for some defense; and, in spite of his laziness, she rather guessed that a generous fund of masculine strength lay within that frame—and of mental strength, if directed toward things of his desire. She knew him to be a dreamer, a scoffer; but had not accredited him with a capacity of worry or grief. The evidence of it now perplexed as much as it stirred her. In the stillness of the place it seemed almost as though she could hear his heart crying beneath its breath in the grip of some remorseless sorrow. At once she was all pity, and slowly, with her eyes resting on his bent head, asked:

"What has happened?"

He sprang up, peered at her, and then tried to laugh.

"You must forgive me," he bowed, "for bringing the dramatic club into your sanctum. I'd no idea anyone was here."

"I know that," she said. Then asked again: "What has happened?"

"You're a bully fellow," he exclaimed in a tone of sincerity, but not entirely free from the false echo of his laugh, "and I'd love to tell you were you not certain to be bored stiff with it. Let me ask you, instead, what you're thinking about in this charmed circle?"

"I'm sure you'd be bored stiff," she drily answered.

He waited a moment. Then:

"It wasn't very courteous of me, I know; but, as a matter of fact, I was just having something out with myself. I've—I haven't been fair to someone; and I'm sorry. So I can't tell you lest I betray."

She sat more erect with a shade of her former sympathy, asking as though it had been a debatable point:

"Then you have a conscience?"

"I have a sense of proportion," he answered. "That's more logical than a conscience."

"Will you ever exercise it for those poor mountain people of mine, who are starving for civilization?"

"I already do—all sorts of ways."

He had himself in hand now, and, crossing over, sat down by her.

"I think you'll be more comfortable on the bench," she suggested, and he returned to the rustic seat.

The pause was rather awkward, and she continued:

"I didn't mean to pry into your—sense of proportion, but thought you might have had bad news. That's why I asked. In a place like this, you know, where people are more or less detached from the usual worldly interests, they sometimes feel as though they might help each other without committing an unpardonable affront. That's all. Have you many more rights of way to secure before the road can go ahead?"

"I should like to think, Miss Jane," he replied, passing the matter of railroads, "that I really could turn to you for help sometimes. If there's a fellow in all the world who needs it, and who abominably hates to let people see he needs it, it's the luckless devil before you."

"If the world is to be kept in ignorance," she smiled, "you mustn't come into dark places and begin swearing unless you know they're uninhabited. It's romantic, but dangerous."

"Romantic things are always dangerous; ever think of that?"

"I haven't, but it isn't true," she answered.

"I can prove it without any trouble, but—" he arose, feeling his pockets, "my—er—cigarettes! Will you wait a few minutes?"

She bowed, and he went out; not for the cigarettes, but to a side window of the house where he beckoned Zack and told him to build, without delay, a toddy. For Brent had been considerably unstrung by the suddenness with which events moved across his stage since sunset, and he turned to this concoction for temporary steadiness. Then he lighted a cigarette and walked back to her in a more composed frame of mind.

"Now," he said, entering the cedars, "with your permission, why are romantic things dangerous?"

"That happened to be your observation, and not interesting," she answered. "You found your cigarettes?"

"You see I'm smoking," he smiled.

"And temporizing," she drily observed. "Really, Mr. McElroy, the truth is not in you!"

"I beg your pardon?" he stiffened slightly.

"I am saying the truth is not in you," she directly answered. "When you first came here tonight, you took a cigarette from your case and lighted it."

"I should never have been so careless if something weren't on my mind," he laughed now. "The truth—the true truth—is that I needed a drink of wicked whiskey. Forgive me?"

"I might not find it so difficult to forgive if, in the future, you either stop trying to deceive me or talking to me; I really don't care which!"

"I say!" he looked up in surprise. "That's pretty straight talk! But it may be a worth-while thing for you to remember that a place does exist where men can't answer every question put to them, and I very much doubt your right to assume so much simply because I choose to keep a few of my affairs to myself. When I first came in here you asked what had happened. That was sympathetic, and I appreciated it; but it was something I couldn't answer, and told you so. You may remember that you seemed to resent that. Your manner was an invitation for me to make up some sort of a fairy-tale to appease your curiosity; and if I had, and you'd found it out, you would just as readily have called me a what's-his-name. You're illogical. You don't seem to share my sense of proportion, at any rate. I wanted a drink—I needed a drink; and I had every right in the world to take it, providing I didn't offend anyone. But it would have offended you—so why announce my intention? If I'm put in a position where some sort of explanation is demanded, and the truth can't in fairness be told, I'm thrown back on the resort which your own sex has taught me—that delectable sex of sweet poisons and silent stilettoes, versatile in the art of lying; queens of the art, indeed—though innocent in it. And here's another plain truth: I'd love to be frank with you, and tell you everything in the world I can, because I think you are square with lots of things which most women side-step. I can't just express it, but you're broadminded and charitable, and smash right out from the shoulder at a thing as if you didn't have skirts on. I don't put it very well, but you know what I mean!"

She thought he did not put it very well, but she knew he put it sincerely, and her reply held a vein of banter which he might not have been expecting just then:

"Perhaps you'll begin by telling about your mysterious dryad in the Forest of Arden!"

"Suspicion," he peered through the gloom at her reprovingly, "is the solvent which disintegrates happiness; and happiness, reduced to its component parts, is trash. Withdraw your question!"

"Happiness cannot be reduced to its component parts," she laughed, "because its ingredients have strayed to us from the four corners of the universe, and cannot ever be returned. I insist upon your answer!"

"You are drawing a long bow," he said more soberly. "You employ femininity's imperfect warrant to shoot at random and trust her gods to put something in the way of getting hit. It's a satire on honesty."

"Never mind about honesty," she laughed again. "Did my gods fail me?"

He puffed a few times at his cigarette, finally taking a deep inhalation and blowing it slowly on the lighted end until the outlines of his face became softly visible in the glow. She saw how serious it seemed, and guessed he was purposely making it so.

"Since you insist—!" he began very carefully. "My dryad in this enchanted wood is the most enticing spirit ever clothed in the graces of woman. That's all."

Again he turned to his cigarette. Again the red glow and the serious face. Again her accurate suspicion.

"If that is all, you're not playing fair. Does she live in a tree?"

"No. She lives in a big white house with big white columns; by night she haunts me, but by day she holds school for mortals in a shady grove."

"I thought you were more original than that," she said, in an expressionless voice. "So we're not to talk any more, are we!"

"But I swear—" he began.

"So do I," she interrupted him, "that you bore me to extinction with things like that, Brent; honestly you do! If you can't be just a little bit sincere, I can't be interested in you."

They had known each other for more than two months; two months of almost daily, unconventional contact, but this was the first time she had called him Brent. It came now as a master-stroke for true understanding, and he threw back his head and laughed.

"My, but you're a corker—beg pardon—I mean a live wire!"

"Overwhelming flattery in either case," she smiled, "and that's the second sincere thing you've said."

"The second! Well, I like that! Perhaps when you begin thinking less about yourself, you'll be able to see more virtues in other people!"

"No one has ever accused me of thinking particularly about myself," she righteously flushed.

"No one has to," he replied, teasingly. "Being a teacher—although a very young and charming one—presupposes egotism."

"Your analysis is shrewd tonight," she coolly observed.

"Not at all," he affably continued. "An egoist, and a woman whose dress is unhooked in the back, are always blissfully unconscious that the world is seeing more of them than they normally would permit."

Her hand stole to the back of her waist. He saw this and again began to laugh, saying:

"I fancy that part is all right. And you know how far I am from meaning the other, too!"

"I'm probably different from most of your friends," she spoke rather quickly, "because I'd rather tell an unpleasant truth than a conventional falsehood. Truth, to me, is the bravest and most beautiful thing in life. And one reason," she added, leaning imperceptibly nearer to see his face, "that women so love it in a man is because it makes of him a sort of restful harbor she can steer to from gathering worries. No man can possibly know how comforting it is for a girl's course to be laid within easy running distance of a safe harbor. He may know of wrecks which occur without them, but seldom considers how easily many of these might have been averted."

"Men sometimes feel that way about girls," he suggested. "Only, in girls, they ask for tenderness."

She took the rebuke, simply adding:

"Girls feel tenderness for shelter, not for a destroying sea."

They were quiet then. The hum of night life was about them, and from the house came faintly the mellow notes of a piano, where the Colonel and Bob were watching out of shadow the enraptured light in Dale's face as Ann introduced him for the first time in his life to that type of instrumental music.

As though this were in some way made known to her, Jane broke the silence.

"A man with an honest purpose in life," she gently said, "with a duty to perform, who sticks to it through thick and thin, admitting no defeat, hammering upon stubborn places, finds in good womankind an ever-ready tenderness. It is the feminine answer to masculine courage."

"There are two kinds of courage," he replied after a polite pause, "just as there are two kinds of duty, and two kinds of pride—each so closely resembling its other self that men, and particularly women, are often misled. When fear tugs at a fellow's heart (and without fear there would be no courage) he is courageous who walks resolutely into every uncertainty if duty chances to be there calling. I think you will agree with me. But what is duty? There's your stumbling block! A false conception of this—a belief that he sees ahead of him what there is not—may cause him to be sacrificed as ignominiously as a bone tossed to a dog; his life would be gobbled up for no better purpose. That's bad business. Humanity would be bankrupt at such a rate. So, if a man of courage be not also a man of foresight—"

"You mean that he would have no excuse for keeping out of danger," she laughed. "That when he saw a duty, or heard its call, he would not be able to justify himself in sitting calmly down to consider if the sacrifice were worth while! Then, indeed, would the world be a sorry place! Personally, I'd rather see fat dogs stalking over the earth than just bones!"

"I hope you are deliberately misconstruing what I have said," he flushed furiously. "Fear of physical and mental pains are just the same, requiring the same courage to go through." He stopped, as though weighing the wisdom of continuing. "Oh, I don't care," he moved uneasily, "I want to tell you nearer what I mean. Once, a long time ago—maybe three years or four—there was a girl for whom I'd have suffered anything and thanked God for the pain. That's loving some! And there was another chap, a sort of friend of mine, and a right decent sort; steady, always at work, and people said she'd make a great mistake by taking me. They saw him only when he was making money by his own grinding, you know, and saw me only when I was spending my allowance. He wanted her, too; and it was a pretty nice race between us, with a foregone conclusion that she'd take one or the other. She didn't pay any attention to what the people said, but one day I picked up some kind of a self-righteous, courageous microbe, and decided the proper way for her—I stepped aside."

"And?" she asked, when he did not continue.

"My courage was there, but my point of view was warped; I was out of focus on duty," he quietly asserted. "She married the other fellow, and it developed too late that his life was a shabby muss. Now her eyes are heavy with an endless sorrow. I think that was when I tried—well, when I began drinking some."

"Wouldn't you have done that anyway?" she asked.

"Perhaps," he slowly answered.

"If he had not married her, and she were here now, would you?"

"Not since you are here," he debonairly smiled.

She might not have heard this from the way she sat, looking down and thinking.

"I suppose," she said at last, "that all men's lives are shabby musses. You may think me unkind, but without a shadow of doubt you would have made her unhappy, too. You are that type."

"I'm very much obliged to you," he murmured. "It seems that I've come to a friend, and found a judge; that my search for sympathy has brought me to a sentence. You're most encouraging, Jane. Perhaps it would be interesting to know how you've found all this out!"

"Oh, I can't say just how," she answered, feeling that his rebuke held more than a share of justice. "It comes from so many small things, which, apart, might be immaterial, but, together, speak volumes and make you quite an impossible quantity in the scheme of domesticity. For instance, the other day, when you had someone's gun in your hands, you deliberately fired at an overflying woodpecker to test your skill. The dead bird was useless. That showed the instinct of a wanton destroyer, and a wanton destroyer, my friend, is not just the safest place for a girl's happiness."

"How do you know I wasn't keeping in practice, in order to become a good protector?" he murmured, but she was not in the mood for flippancy, and continued:

"You shirk responsibilities, and have that dear old Colonel drinking more than he has done in years; while your own hedonism is shocking."

"Well, why not?" he looked up suddenly. "If pleasure's my god, whose business is it?"

"Pride's," she softly answered. "It's the business of Pride, that makes all male human beings men. Girls know, without having to reason, that a man who is lacking in pride is lacking in self respect, and is unworthy of himself; which means he is unworthy of anyone else. That may not be very clear, but it's what I mean. If Dale, now, had the surveying of your road, we could feel certain of it; or if you had more self control like him—though I suppose he was born with it!"

He frowned, and she saw his teeth press hard upon his lower lip. Perhaps that was why she added:

"See what a dependable man he is going to be!—what strength of character!"

He looked away. Realizing how impossible it would be for her to say this about himself, a feeling of rebellion began to stir against the mountaineer. But he indignantly choked it with a ruthless hand, knowing that her comparison, not Dale, must be held responsible. Then for a moment he took a swift glance into the future, wondering how long it might be before he could come abreast of this mountaineer's supposed dependability—and, perhaps, pass on ahead of it! But Brent was not in the habit of gazing future-ward, and he could not hold the focus for long at a time. Now, quietly, he spoke to her, though without interest:

"I'm afraid your three little observations are illogical. In the first place, self control is not a proof of dependability; in the second place, Dale has no more self control than a kitten in a fit; and in the third place, people are not born with self control. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?"

She flushed, but looked across at him smilingly:

"I want to talk about that!"

"Then let's get rid of Dale first. If I read the signs, you've got in that chap a creature of limitless self indulgence. He's crazy to learn, and I've no doubt that already he is studying like a steam engine; but when he wants to do other things he'll do 'em with the same zeal. I gather from the Colonel that he doesn't give a rap for anybody or anything just so he gets to a book. Self control? He doesn't know any more about it than water coming down a rain pipe!"

"Don't you think the desire to study is commendable?"

"Certainly, but it requires no self control. He studies just as he would scratch his hand if it itched. I should call it natural, rather than commendable; or fortunate, if you choose. Jane," he now looked her fully and seriously in the eyes, "there are lots of people who go through life with tense lines about their mouths, saying nothing, never getting into devilment, and the world tiptoes behind them whispering: 'What wonderful self control!' It's all rot! Self control is a thing we unconsciously cultivate from the moment our minds begin to coordinate. It's like building a dam across our hidden river of tendency; and a hit or miss sort of structure it is, too. In one man the current of this tendency may be like a trickling stream, and a handful of materials are enough to keep it in check. In another, it may be a raging torrent, and he may slave night and day, gathering stone and sand, and sealing them with his very blood. But suppose in the end the torrent gets away from him! He fails, you say. Yet is he weaker after that herculean task than the other chap who dammed up his stream of tendency with the side of his boot? He publicly goes under,—yes! But may he not still be finer than his two-by-four brother whose temperament ran only from the ice-box to family prayers and back to the ice-box? I want to tell you," he concluded in the same low, even voice, "that in the Big Summing Up, the Celestial Clearing House will show many a poor gutter-runner more entitled to wear medals for having made a game fight for respectability than some of his anemic superiors who all their days walked slowly, and were called by their fellows examples of great character. Don't be too quick to size up a chap's pace, Lady Jane, until you know how red his blood is, and how much weight he's carrying. I must go now!"

While he had been speaking, the moon, full and mellow, climbed high above the house and shed a mere suggestion of light—a sort of luminous radiance—into the thickly sheltered circle. He stood up quickly with the air of one who had said too much, reached for a cigarette, and then for a match which he could not at once find. She saw that his face was very white and drawn in this ghost-like gloaming.

"I wish you wouldn't," she hesitated. "I like to talk to you tonight."

He turned and looked down at her, as she added:

"You're a curious make-up;—and have some really fine things in you!"

"That starts out well," he laughed, lighting the cigarette and sinking back on the bench.

"Do you ever ask women's permission before smoking?" she asked, a shade offended by the persistent way he ignored her in this regard.

"I didn't think it was quite necessary out doors;—and you might say no!"

"Then you haven't the diplomacy of a true Kentucky gentleman. I'll tell you what one of the most true and gallant of them once told me, and he would be an example for you to follow—in more than one particular. He was over ninety years old, and smoking a pipe—a dear old pipe he was seldom without—when I came up to him. Holding it toward me, he said: 'I shall not ask if I may smoke in your presence! A long time ago that request once met with a denial, so thereafter I merely implored the ladies' permission to burn a little incense to their lovely charms. Nor do I recall,' he smiled, 'one single refusal in the seventy-five years which have passed since then!' This," Jane added, her voice tender with the memory, "was General Simon Bolivar Buckner."

"Well, you've cut a notch too high for me," he answered seriously. "Those few 'fine things' you just accused me of are nothing more than fireflies flashing in a skull compared to that grand old man. How d'you like the simile, by the way? Pretty good, isn't it?"

"A striking picture of you, Brent! I would recognize it anywhere!"

A ripple of good humor played about her mouth which made her dangerously attractive, and, oddly enough, this was caused by that look of seriousness she had seen in him—a look which she had not the slightest doubt portrayed some mental suffering. To anyone else she would have held out her hand and said: "Let me help—I know I can!" But now she could only feel somehow glad to find that he was big enough, and fine enough to suffer. She had not suspected it, and it threw a new light about him. It sent, too, a riot of something pleasant tingling through her blood—as she had felt sometimes at the lookout point above her father's cabin, where she watched for spies while he "mashed" the corn, and the white moonshine dripped, dripped from the rusty worm of his home-made still; when, crouched beneath the stars, her quick ears had caught some faint, suspicious sounds. Ruinous though they might turn out to be, she used to love those tingle-giving sounds. The same sort of thrill now reached past the culture-clothed sentinels around her heart and gave it an honest shake for old time's sake. Slowly she began to smile, and, seeing this, he moodily asked:

"Why are you smiling?"

"I don't know, Brent. I just want to smile, that's all." Then she arose, murmured good night, and went out.

But the branches were still swaying where she had passed when he heard a quick cry of surprise.

"Brent!"

He was beside her in a second, looking over her outstretched arm that pointed toward the thickest portion of the grounds.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I don't know," she whispered. "Someone must have been here, and ran in there!"

He dashed after whatever it was, plunging through the shrubbery and threshing about for several minutes. Once she thought she heard a low cry, or voice, and for awhile he was so quiet that she grew more uneasy; but again the crackling sounds proclaimed him to be on the search, and finally he emerged.