"I'll bet you a nickel—an' here it is—that Daniel an' I can beat you to the pike an' back!"

"Keep 'way! Keep 'way, son!" the old man hastily warned. "Keep 'way from his heah whirlwind!"

Bip backed slowly off. He understood the uncertainties of this location, and carefully watched the mule's anticipative ears which were symbols of treachery.

"Git on 'way, now," Zack again warned. "I'se gwine heist up de saddle!"

"He can't kick me over here," the boy said.

"Don' you believe no sich a-thing," the negro emphatically exclaimed. "De op'rashions of dis heah telescope extends to jest whar you happen to be standin'—no moh, an' no less. All he wants to know is yoh ad-dress, an' he'll pop you suah!"

"Then I'm as safe here as I would be at home," came the logical retort.

Zack stopped what he was about to do and stood with a broad grin on his face. Slowly he looked from the sturdy little youngster to the mule, and at last back again.

"De onlies' diff'ence is," he scratched his head, "dat ef you cross de road now, mebbe you kin do it lak a li'l gemmen; but ef you keep on foolin' 'roun' dis mule's back-doh, you'se apt to git heisted crost lak a jay-bird. It's mighty good sense to press yoh luck as fur's it'll go, honey, but a oudacious sin to set right out to bust it. An' 'member what ole Zack say 'bout dat, 'caze it mought do you a heap of good some day!"

Zack's saddle was finally tied on with a piece of clothesline and, putting his foot in a rope stirrup, he mounted.

"Now I'se gwine arter dat nickel," he declared. "Scramble up on yoh dumplin' an' come 'long! Li'l Mesmie," he looked down at the girl, "you stan' right dar an' squint yoh eyes good, an' you'll see de hottes' Kentucky Derby ever run!"

Bip led his pony to the horseblock, and by much squirming managed to wriggle on; then trotted over to Uncle Zack.

"We're ready," he cried, his face alight with excitement. "How much start'll you give me?"

"Staht! I ain' gwine give you no staht! You'se wuss'n a gal!"

"Why ain' you gwine give him no staht?" an indignant voice called, and, turning, he beheld Aunt Timmie leaning against the house complacently regarding them.

"Of course you'll give him a start!" the Colonel thundered, thereby showing to what extent he had been reading during the past half hour.

"It wouldn't be sporty not to give him a start, Uncle Zack," came still another voice, this time from the shrubbery where Brent, returning from a dabble at his work, had halted in the keenest amusement.

"Well, 'pon mah word," the old fellow scratched his head. "It looks lak I'se booked to race de whole fam'ly. Marse John, how much you reckon I'd ought to give 'im? 'Foh you answers, jes' keep in mind dat dis heah keg of dynermite I'se ridin' ain' got no shoes on, an' dese heah ropes is mighty rotten; an', ef we goes our best, de mule ain' gwine be de onlies' one dat'll need a hawse-doctor! I ain' got no nickel, no-way!"

Timmie was shaking with mirth. "I wish you'd git yohse'f kilt," she affectionately laughed at him. "Go on, den, an' find de Willer-de-Wispies. De chile's done been honin' 'bout 'em in his sleep. An' mind, don' let 'im git nigh no pisen-ivy! An' Zack," she called, as they were riding away with Mesmie now up behind Bip, "git 'im back heah by twelve!"

Still chuckling, she waddled around to the front, where only she and Zack, of all the servants, were permitted to tarry, and sat upon the lowest step.



CHAPTER XX

A STARTLING CONFESSION

"That ought to have been a fine race, Brent," the Colonel wiped his forehead and laughed. "But I suspect it would have made Timmie a widow."

"A widow?" Brent asked, passing her with a cheery nod. "Uncle Zack told me they were twins!"

"So we is twins," the old woman asserted, "but dat don' keep me from bein' a widder, do it?"

"The fact of the matter is, Brent," Colonel May said with a twinkle about his eyes, "it requires stupendous acumen to understand this situation. Timmie and Zack were born on the same day, at precisely the same hour, and in adjoining cabins. So that makes them twins. I hope you follow me?"

"Like a hound, sir," Brent assured him.

"Then Timmie has never told you how it all came about, and how they got their names!" The Colonel looked down at her. Occasionally, when he was in a particularly gay mood, he made one or both of these old people amuse his company. It was their boast, their greatest pride, that this story of how they became twins, how they were named, and finally married, had been recited before governors and other dignitaries, each of whom they delighted to enumerate. She looked up saying with a shade of rebuke in her voice:

"Marse John's done tol' you 'bout de twins part an' de marr'in'—an' as for de namin', why, dat won't take no time. You see, when I wuz 'bout to be borned mah mammy wuz in a turrible state. Most cullud folks is, at dat time, an' most of 'em gits de 'ligion, 'caze it kinder ease 'em up. Well, sah, whilst mah mammy wuz havin' de 'ligion an' me, Zack's mammy wuz havin' de 'ligion an' him. Our cabins set jest lak yoh two han's togerr—dat a-way—an' dar warn't no secrets 'tween dem famblys, dat's a fac'! Well, when 'twuz all over, mah mammy's so thankful she say she gwine name me outen de Scriptires. Zack's mammy heah dat, an' she lay low an' study 'bout a name, too. De upshot wuz dat mah mammy settle on de fu'st line of de hymn: 'Timorous-is-we-poh-mortal-worms.' Dat stun 'em some, you bet; but towa'ds evenin' Zack's mammy raise up an' shout she's done foun' de name, an' when dey-alls run to her doh she say: ''Zackly-how-thankful-I-is-dat-dis-heah-trial-an'-tribulachun-am-over- de-Lawd-in-His-goodness-only-knows! An' dat's mah son's name!' Well, sah, de niggers fer miles 'round wuz jest bustin' dey jaws tryin' to say dem gran' names, but a coolness set in on mah mammy. She got mighty uppish, an' say it warn't fayh fer Zack's mammy to wait an' go her one better, dat a-way. So dey sent fer ole Aunt Moony Jorden. Ever'body stepped 'round fer Aunt Moony, 'caze she's bohn wid a cawl on her face an' could see speer'ts; so she got out a dried buzzard's foot an' whispers to it, an' den says ever'body mought as well make up, 'caze someday de li'l chillun is gwine git mahr'd, anyway. An' sho' nuff," Aunt Timmie sighed, "we did."

The Colonel gave Brent a wink.

"Well, that was most fortunate," he mused, "for Zack has been a very upright husband."

The old woman bristled. Glaring at him she said in a low voice:

"Upright ain' so diffe'nt from downright! You knows how oudacious he done treat me 'bout dat 'surance!"

"Oh, yes, you mean about that policy!"

She maintained a moody silence, and the Colonel ventured:

"You see, Brent, Timmie thought so much of Zack—"

"Now, Marse John, you's jest pesterin'! De truff is, sah," she turned to Brent, "dat 'long back yonder when Miss Ann's 'bout de size of li'l Bip, a man come down heah an' says ef I takes a policy out on Zack, when de ole nigger's daid, he say, I'll be wu'th somethin'. I turned it over an' over in mah haid, an' reckoned dat, ef Zack had to go, dar warn't no sin in ole Timmie gittin' all de comfo't outen it she could. So de man size Zack up mighty smart, an' say a twenty-yeah policy'll be plenty long 'nough to out-stretch him. De fu'st of eve'y month I sont mah good money up to Loui'ville, an' 'bout a yeah ago de day come fer dat policy to git ripe. All de evenin' befoh I treat Zack mighty gentle. I cook him a scrumptuous supper, an' dat night go down in mah trunk an' git out mah mournin' clothes an' mah funeral hat, an' cry mahse'f to sleep. An' what you reckon! From dat ve'y day he's been sprier'n he ever wuz! Jest wait till I ketch some of dem 'surance men 'bout heah agin!"

With a deep sigh she rose laboriously and started back around the house.

"Where's Dale?" Brent asked, more to keep from laughing than from any particular interest in the mountaineer just then.

"In the library, as usual," answered the Colonel, "digging out analects."

Timmie, overhearing this, wheeled about.

"Mah sakes alive," she cried, a look of horror coming into her face. "You never had nuthin' lak dat in yoh house while I 'uz tendin' to it, Marse John! I'll bet dat liberry ain' fit fer a pusson to set in!"

The laughter which greeted this detracted nothing from her indignation, and she turned again toward the rear premises, shaking her head and mumbling direful things.

"That Dale, by the way," the Colonel said at last, "is a curious and remarkable chap. Positively, sir, he gives me a fresh and agreeable surprise each day!"

"I like the way he wears his clothes," Brent replied. "It isn't every fellow who can put on hand-me-downs and still look like they're made for him. Perhaps a small matter," he added, noting a smile of indulgence come into the old gentleman's face, "but you'll admit that it shows up favorably. It's probably an avatism pointing back to royalty; as Aunt Timmie would say, a sure sign of quality."

"You may be right, sir. But in other ways he shows up more extraordinarily. His mind is so retentive that nothing ever escapes from it. Any date, or fact, or figure that he has ever heard, may be instantly and accurately recalled. Why, sir, I would as soon contradict an encyclopedia! He is truthful to a fault!"

"I wouldn't condemn him for a little thing like that," Brent murmured.

"Condemn! Why, sir, I admire him for it! I was early taught to love the truth and shame the devil!"

Brent laughed softly. He got a great deal of fun out of ragging the old gentleman a bit at times.

"If shaming the devil were all," he said; "but think of your neighbors!"

"I think of no one, sir!" The Colonel was fuming now, and glaring impartially at everything about him.

"Then I wonder you've got a friend left. But, all joking aside, I wouldn't take anything for Dale, and have really grown to like him a whole lot. If he could just get over giving me the creeps! I can't describe what there is about him—his native crudity, doubtless."

"I should forgive crudities in one whose heart is right," the Colonel temporized. "It's in oysters that pearls are found, and surely oysters could not be termed finished."

"Your originality is dazzling," Brent looked across at him, "even though I can't agree with you. I've usually found oysters finished all too soon;—and much easier to swallow than your superannuated moral axioms."

The old gentleman began to laugh. "On my word, sir, you are hopeless! But, if he meets Jane's expectations, you will see him one of these days with a masterful grasp on the abstruse questions of life, and striding on to undisputed success. Jane has never been so enthusiastic about anything as this rapid development. She's planning wonders with him!"

Brent was silent, gloomily watching the smoke from his cigarette. Pointedly ignoring the personal element, at last he said:

"I was just trying to decide whether success in life depends as much on grasping its abstruse questions, as the faculty of picking out its soft snaps! But he's a poverty stricken beggar, and I wish him luck."

The old gentleman's eyes twinkled as he observed Brent's gloom. It had an effect of pleasing him, and he banteringly advanced another moral axiom:

"There are worse misfortunes than being poor!"

"That may be, Colonel," he sighed. "I'm not familiar with all the tortures. Anyway, I'll bury the issue, along with my nose, in the delectable juleps Timmie is bringing."

"You must have caught her eye," the old gentleman smiled, watching her waddle through the hall with an inviting tray.

"Or Miss Liz is taking a nap," the other suggested, raising one of the frosted goblets. "Here's to the gratification of your merest whim, sir!"

Both drank a swallow, and then sat upright staring at each other in amazement.

"God bless my soul!" the Colonel gasped, "what is this stuff?"

"It tastes like raspberry juice," Brent answered, warily taking another sip. "But it's sort of good—it's real good!"

The old gentleman gingerly sipped it now, and then once more, while his lips made the soft smacking noise of taste on an investigation.

"By Godfry, it is good," he wagged his head convincingly. "It's mighty good, sir!—er—perhaps Lizzie was not asleep, after all!"

After a few moments of contented silence—when Aunt Timmie had tiptoed back to the kitchen and was relating to Miss Liz the success of their undertaking—the Colonel asked:

"How is the road coming on?"

A month earlier Brent would have evaded this subject, but now his eyes sparkled with pleasure.

"Bully! I've been able to make speed by the fortunate possession of a hand map by Thruston—that super-accurate geologist, metallurgist and engineer who tramped every foot of these mountains twenty-five years ago—and it's making things easy. We've nothing to equal it, even today!"

"Do you know," the Colonel slapped his knee, "I have suspected you were slipping out oftener of late! I've been missing my niggers!—and was going to tell Jane about it!"

"Don't," Brent said seriously, "I want—I just had an idea, that maybe it would be nice to finish up for—well, about the time of her birthday this summer. So, if you've noticed any especial activity, you'll have to respect my confidence."

"Why, sir, I call that handsome, sir!" he cried. "Ladies might not object to birthdays if cavaliers laid railroads at their feet! Tell me more!"

"Well," Brent flushed, "the line is short and surprisingly simple: distance from Buckville to the coal, sixteen miles. There was only one choice of locations: the valley line, where the ruling grade is about nominal. I'll come past here half a mile—or more, Colonel, if you desire it—and scoot up the North Fork of Blacksnake, through the natural tunnel, follow alongside the disappearing stream, and there you are! A few rights of way are still unsecured, but I've had Dulany out trying to gather them up. He's known hereabouts, and bargains better than I."

"Well, well, I am charmed! Dulany is a good man! I take it that things will soon begin to show in earnest?"

"It depends on what you mean by earnest," Brent laughed. "If construction work, that doesn't begin till after I've done!"

"Of course, of course! I had forgotten! Where do you cross the pike, sir?"

Brent looked at him a moment, then slowly began to smile.

"I'm going through the front parlor of my friend Tom Hewlet's house."

"Good riddance," the old gentleman chuckled.

"And," Brent continued, "I fear I'll have to go through the reception room of one of your friends."

"Why, this is serious, Brent! Whom do you mean?"

"It might be serious," the engineer laughed. "It's a chap named Potter—very much in love with you."

The Colonel looked grave. "His cabin burned down this spring; I supposed he had moved away!"

"No, he is rebuilding," Brent casually replied, and glancing slyly across at the serious face, murmured: "He doesn't think you had a right to burn him out."

Colonel May sprang to his feet: "The impudence of him, sir!" he wrathfully exclaimed. "The impudence of him! Why, sir, he grossly insulted—" and quickly remembering that this insult to Jane must not be known, added: "insulted me, sir! Of course, I had a right to burn him out!"

"I'm glad you did," Brent soothingly agreed. "I only knew the facts yesterday, when he happened to be telling about it."

"Telling about it! What do you mean, sir? What lie could that scoundrel have invented?"

For a moment Brent looked the excited man steadily in the eyes, and the Colonel realized that further dissimulation was useless. After this silent message had passed between them, he said:

"I was resting under a tree yesterday, back from the road. As a matter of fact, I was trying to write a verse. Dale and Bob came by on horseback. Potter, who it seems has returned from his long and mysterious absence with Tom Hewlet, appeared pretty well up the hill on the other side. Seeing Dale, he yelled at him, and shot his pistol in the air, and—and said a lot of things about the fire. He was too far away for them to get him."

"This is detestable," the old gentleman locked his jaws. "It's positively dangerous for that dear girl to go about! I shall not let her leave Bob's place without some of the hounds!"

"Hounds wouldn't amount to anything. If she tried to set them on anyone, they'd think it was a cast and be off!" Then quietly added: "I've wired home for an airedale terrier. With him as her friend, she can go anywhere!"

"That is most thoughtful," the old gentleman murmured. "But, Brent, that damned half-wit will take savage delight in spreading his story—" the Colonel gritted his teeth and could not finish.

"I hardly think so," Brent reassured him. "It just happens that I've placed him in a most superstitious dread of me—through a little encounter we had because of an attempt Tom Hewlet made to blackmail me. Though I mention this in confidence, sir."

"Blackmail! Why, Brent, what does this mean? I feel as though I were dreaming!" But a deeper anxiety came into his eyes as he recalled some whisperings of two months back.

"Don't let it worry you. It has been cooked by proper threats of the penitentiary—" He stopped short, becoming for the first time aware of Aunt Timmie's presence as she was taking up the goblets with more than necessary deliberation. When she left, he added: "Anyway, what I started out to say is, Tusk will keep his mouth shut forever after I get hold of him. I looked for him in town, and at his half finished cabin, but he wasn't around. So I'll try again today."

"Do you really think you can stop this?" the Colonel leaned hopefully forward.

"I know it, unless Tom has successfully disillusioned his mind about my being a devil."

"A matter which would doubtless require more eloquence than Tom possesses," the old gentleman's eyes twinkled: but he added in the former serious voice: "If you can't, sir, I—I shall have his life! I will, sir!—by God, sir. I will!"

Dale had come quietly to the French window. At his place in the library, where he had been poring over books, the conversation could have been heard, but none of it drew his attention until the Colonel's first outburst of rage. He stood now, looking calmly down at the old gentleman's flushed face, then stepped out and approached them.

"You won't have to do that," he said. "I killed 'im this mornin'."

A deadly, sickening hush came over his listeners, and gradually through it the rythmic strokes of a galloping horse fell upon their ears. Brent turned and saw Jane. In a dry voice he said:

"The hell you did."

For once the adaptable engineer seemed helpless to rise to the situation. It was the Colonel who pulled himself together, saying hurriedly:

"Here's Jane! Go out, Brent, and entertain her! I'll take Dale indoors and see what this means!"

"I haven't time," the mountaineer irritably replied. "I'm readin', and can't stop!"

"I'll bet you a cooky you can stop, sir," the old Colonel snapped. "You come and talk to me! Hurry, Brent!"

Entering the French window to the library he turned nervously to Dale.

"Now, what does this mean?"

"Brent told you," the mountaineer answered. "He told you how the varmint yelled, an' what he said. This mornin' I went 'foh sun an' laid out near his cabin. That's all."

The reproach in the Colonel's eyes fell upon Dale like a lash, and he angrily continued:

"You said you'd do it, didn't you? If I hadn't—or somebody hadn't—he'd kept on shoutin' those things, an' maybe worse, till she wouldn't have opened school next yeah! Would she? Then what would I do? I tell you, Tusk had to be kilt!"

"I was merely angry, and talking, sir," the Colonel protested, with not the same regard for truth he had formerly boasted.

"An' I was angry an' not talkin'," Dale sullenly retorted.

The silence that followed was broken by the old gentleman's brief question:

"Dead?"

"I reckon. He went down."

"We must go and see. Come!"

"I ain't got time to fool with 'im," the mountaineer looked restlessly at the open book and then back at his interrogator. "I've got to study. You go, if you think you'd ought, an' take some niggers."

The Colonel shuddered: "By God, but you're a cold one!" then hastily went out to consult the faithful Zack. But the mountaineer reseated himself at the long mahogany table, and plunged furiously into the maze of erudition.



CHAPTER XXI

A VOICE AND A TAPER FLAME

Brent, who for some days had not been gracious to the sight of Jane, went out to meet her in a state of mind so dazed that it bordered on the humorous. At heart most things were jests with this devil-may-care young man (it may have been a trait cultivated through sheer necessity) and whether Dale killed or were killed might some weeks ago have passed into his continuous performance of human comedies and tragedies. But there was a new element about this which shocked him to the foundation of his nature, and the revulsion became more acute as he looked up into her face smiling politely down at him.

He had watched her interest in Dale, and now guessed her depth of disappointment when she were told how the mountaineer's career had gone dashing into the black wall of ruin. But he had watched with a twinge of jealousy which, as jealousy has the knack of doing, exaggerated both the extent and kind of interest she may have felt.

Many opportunities had come to Brent, and it was not all his fault that most of them had been neglected. His capacity for achievement was as an arm perpetually carried in a sling; no one's fingers had untied the knot and massaged the cramped muscles, nor had anyone's lips bidden him strike the right sort of blow. His mother breathed his name when a trained nurse had laid him down beside her on the bed; and that was the only time he might have heard her voice. His father was a man so threaded in the loom of finance that the rearing of a baby boy seemed wasted energy for one of his activities. The governess whom he employed to assume this duty came with recommendations; that was all—came with recommendations. And the boy's days were without intelligent direction of any kind.

The only trait in his character which this governess strongly developed, was a desire to hide from every one his deepest and best impulses. Since one day, when his four-year-old arms had clasped a homeless puppy hurt by a passing wagon, and she had poked her finger and laughed at his tears in order to keep his clothes from becoming worse soiled, his generous side shrank back into itself and froze. Then he began to clasp this newly bruised thing—a little boy's wounded nobility; so jealously guarding it from the cruelty of other laughs, from other curled lips and fingers of scorn, that few might have suspected it lived in him at all.

Later in life there appeared an object he might have cherished—the girl of whom he had told Jane; but this did not leave the regret he tried to make himself believe. He had never been able to rise above a lingering disappointment because her fingers made no effort to untie the knot;—rather, had she drawn it tighter by applauding those things which inherently he realized needed rebuking. For in his soul lived a voice comparing her to an ideal known only to his dreams—a being, somewhere, who would tear off the sling with brave and loving hands, and not be content to see him drift. His closely guarded better nature was persistently pleading with him to face about, while her pouting lips imperiously demanded his mornings and afternoons for her entertainment. Then, very softly, a consciousness began to dawn upon this little romance, showing its glitter to be the veriest tinsel; and, so it was, in a make-believe fervor of self-righteousness, he pressed the pseudo crown of martyrdom upon his brow and "stepped aside."

If the truth were known, his soul had many times craved self-sacrifice—a hunger from which true men and women do not long escape. So he hugged the imitation, knowing it to be an imitation, but pretending it was real; before this false altar he "stepped aside," crying within himself that he had done a noble act, and knowing it was counterfeit. The knowledge, not the sacrifice, was bitter; nevertheless, this false altar sweetly fed his innate hunger—and, to keep the false in an attitude of real, he dreamed more, drank more. In the three years which had passed since then he retained only the love of drifting.

As he now looked seriously up into Jane's face he was swept by one thought: tragedy, cruelty, disappointment were entitled to no place in the atmosphere of her dwelling. With a pang he realized that Dale was bringing them all to her. With a bound, something that was very far from being false, awoke in his heart, whispering how she might be spared. Then he perceived her still smiling down at him.

"Dreaming?" she asked.

"Fascinated," he murmured.

Without assistance she slipped from the saddle, exclaiming:

"My, but it's a lovely day!"

"Isn't it! Oh, you can't interrupt the Colonel and Dale just now," he warned, seeing her intention. "They're hard at it. Come with me while I tie your horse, and then let's go to your charmed circle and talk. Have you forgiven my—er—shortcomings?"

"I'd forgotten you were so afflicted," she laughed, knowing he had no reference to the dinner—that absolutely closed subject.

"I didn't know I was either, till you told me one day. In fact, you're always enlightening me. How wonderful you must be to discover so many things in a chap!"

"My insight is very clear," she observed, without enthusiasm.

"A vision filtered through such wonderful eyes should transform everything to beauty," he smiled. "In a negative way I might feel complimented."

"It would be so negative. How long will the Colonel and Dale be closeted?"

"Lord knows. They've lots to talk about. Dale has reached a place where the Colonel finds him exciting."

"Isn't he a marvel!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, he's a marvel, all right," Brent grumbled. "But his vanity will surpass his great achievements;—don't delude yourself about that!"

"Well; you're an authority on that condition of life. Do you enjoy it?"

"If you'll give me more reason to be vain, I'll tell you."

She ignored this, and when they were among the cedars he began again; not caring what he talked about as much as to be talking. He felt that if he stopped, she might read through his depression.

"Do you remember the last time we were here? You lectured me for loafing, and shooting woodpeckers. There were other things, but you couldn't recall them at the moment. I've been doing some right stiff thinking since then!"

"Retrospection is good for the soul," she smiled at him.

"On the contrary, retrospection makes for hollow eyes, and introspection is tinged with bitterness. Keep your face to the future if you would have your soul contented."

"And what is your future?" she archly inquired.

"These coming minutes while you are here with me."

"Really," she flashed him a rather bewildering look, "I did think for once you were going to be serious!"

"I am serious," he dug the heel of his boot thoughtfully into the tanbark. "I wish I weren't—or didn't have to be."

"Has something gone wrong—with the road?" There was a slight tinge of irony in the suggestion.

"No, but something's gone wrong with the world. I wish," he suddenly looked up at her, "that I could be as sure of laying a smooth grade for—for my friends as I am for trains of coal!"

"Your friends might have to wait a long time before traveling about," she laughed, but there was a note of apprehension in her voice which again put him on his guard;—and yet he could not help feeling that a partial preparation was only fair to her.

"It wouldn't be a bad thing if some people never traveled about," he smiled. "I might then succeed in keeping you here, and those hot-headed mountaineers would stay back in their holes and rot forever, as they ought."

"Oh, Brent," she exclaimed, in a hurt voice, "there is such a wealth of splendid human material up there if we can only get hold of it! They're all ambitious—if stirred!"

He waited, asking: "And what else?"

"Nothing else."

"But you didn't say anything nice about Dale!"

She laughed. "I thought you knew about Dale—and me; for I'm of the mountains!"

"You didn't belong to those people," he murmured. "You're a spirit who lived in a deep spring, and you just floated down with the brook. I know, because I've dreamed about you. And I know, too," he shook off the spell, "a little something about stirring the ambition of real people up there. I've seen it tried in a mining camp where a railroad has been running for years! I've seen a fair and square company build model cottages, and in every way try to improve conditions. It put in baths, and the tubs were used for vegetable bins. It built a reading room, and the walls were covered with charcoal pictures. Two men used their little front porches for firewood, rather than pick up all they wanted a hundred yards away. One winter coal took a jump. The mine had a bonanza chance, and the men who had been making their two and a half dollars a day, or thereabouts, could with the same hours' work pull down twice that much. Did they? I'll tell you what they did: they laughed at the superintendent and worked half time; they sat about the store and whittled, saying that two and a half was all they needed. But they forgot this quick enough when the union afterwards went in and told them they ought to get twenty cents more! You'd have thought then that they'd been on the verge of starvation for years, and the harrowing tales which went forth about their 'wretched conditions' would have made you laugh—had you known the facts. The union had photographs taken of the two cottages without front porches, and sent them broadcast so the world could see how capital trod upon its hire. Ambition? They don't know the word deeper than its two first letters! And you've got to be ready for many a disappointment here, too—let me tell you that!"

She was looking at him earnestly, and in a few moments said: "I agree with everything you say. I grant it all, every bit. But, Brent, consider! A mother tells her little boy to wash his face, to read his primer, and he doesn't. And the next day she tells him, and he doesn't. And so on, for days and days, she tells and tells. It seems utterly hopeless, but all the time she is persisting, and gradually bringing him nearer to a sense of obligation. After ten or twelve years you will find him stepping briskly on to admirable manhood; but it is because she has never turned her back on him—she never faltered. See what Dale's sister has done with patient perseverance! Surely, you would not get in a pout and hold back the road simply because a few mountaineers are sometimes obstinate little children!"

He felt the double reproach of this and began to smile, saying:

"I hadn't intended to tell you, but now you force me to it: the line is twice as far along as when you were over here last!"

"Oh, you good-for-nothing—splendid!" she impulsively cried; but more wistfully added: "Why wouldn't you have told me? Why do you try to keep people from seeing when you do good things, and only show the—the not so good?" He did not answer, and she spoke again with a new and delicate caress in her voice: "You haven't deceived me utterly—there are times when I've been tremendously proud of you."

"Jane," he said, and stopped. His eyes were looking deep into her own, and while she gave him back look for look he seemed incapable of continuing. But she turned away, somewhat confused, and slowly he continued: "One time I discovered that in us all there is a secret temple, with a very small but highly prized altar lighted by a tiny taper flame, where we keep just our own little treasures—our wonderful selves." She glanced up in some surprise, but this time he was staring at the ground. "In some, its door is studiously, carefully locked; in others, its paths of approach are overgrown with weeds and almost lost; in others still, it is hard to find because it has been starved, or hurt, or laughed at—but always when a certain current of thought or sound sweeps by, that wonderful part of our souls upon this little altar is set a-quivering. Old soldiers feel its pulsing at the booming of a cannon; old women feel it at the laughter of a child; others know it is there while beneath the spell of an orchestra, a breeze in the pines, a bird's note, the fragrance of certain flowers, the caress of a voice. You will forgive this unintentional preamble," he looked slowly up at her, "when I say that your voice just now has been all of these things to me—and more!"

"Oh, Brent," she cried, with a brave pretense at lightness, "if only you weren't such a trifler! The dangerous thing about you is that you mean this now—almost; enough, anyway, to give it a ring of sincerity. Were I less sophisticated, I might go home believing it, and thinking what a wonderful man you are starting out to be; but in the morning find my ideals shattered, and on the ash heap!"

"You are so worldly, then?" he smiled.

But she had arisen and now stood at the entrance of the path, looking slightly over her shoulder and ignoring his question with another:

"You say things are really hurrying?"

"Dulany is buying the necessary land in record time," he answered.

"But," she hesitated, pouting just a little, "that implies no work of your own! Still, I suppose I should be thankful for whatever we receive. And, oh, Brent," she now turned and looked seriously up at him, "if you would only stop this wretched drinking! Tell me, why do you? What call, or what cause, makes you? Is it to drug the mind into some sort of mock rest, or the body into sleep, or the soul—ah, Brent, what does the soul do when it is stupefied? The pity of it flares up in me like a great scorching flame!"

He opened his lips, but could not speak. The words, their sincerity, sympathy, and wonderfully strange appeal, came like an unfelt air; for a second time setting a-tremble the tiny taper flame in that reliquary of which he had told her. Another moment she looked appealingly up at him, then turned toward the house.

"Jane!" His voice, hoarse and vibrating, held her where she stood. She dared not see the face which her senses said had been driven white by some tremendous feeling. So she waited, listening.

The smell of cedar buds was in the air about them; and wafted out on this, as though it might have been just now brought up from the musty depths of some old cedar chest, they heard the thin voice of Miss Liz scolding one of the servants. Otherwise, the morning seemed to have no life except the lazy drone of insects.

Again she started slowly to the house; but this time he did not speak, and only watched until she disappeared.



CHAPTER XXII

TWO PLANS

When Colonel May returned he was tired. He paused at the library door, for a moment watching the bent head of the indomitable student, now oblivious to everything except the page before him, hesitated, and then passed on in search of Brent. He seemed to appreciate the uselessness of calling the mountaineer who was in a realm too remote for human interference. The Colonel was not the first that day to look in, pause, and then pass on.

He found the young engineer out under the trees, deep in the contemplation of the sky. Jerkily pulling off his gloves, he said:

"I want a drink!"

"You must have caught his eye," Brent smiled, as the tactful Zack was seen following from the house with two frosted, green-tipped goblets of silver hugged close to his stomach. It was obviously an effort to shield them from the windows of Miss Liz's room and her inquisitorial lorgnette. Colonel May noticed this shameless evidence of stealth, and colored.

"I wish I could drink in my own house like a gentleman, sir," he raged, "without hurting the sensibilities of super-sensitive ladies! This schoolboy tomfoolery is sickening, and I'm going to put a stop to it right now, sir!" So when the servant drew near, with a sly smile that did anything but assuage the Colonel's humor, he raged anew: "Zack, you rascal, hereafter when you bring me a julep I want you first to ask Miss Liz if she thinks it looks well enough to be served!"

That black worthy put the juleps quickly down and exploded with uncontrollable laughter. Such a suggestion, he thought, was about the most irresistible bit of humor the Colonel had ever achieved; and now, holding his sides, between guffaws he gasped:

"Marse John, you'se gittin' funnier an' funnier eve'y day you lives!"

But at this moment his eyes wandered to the Colonel's face. The laughter stopped with a dry croak. He saw that his old master and friend was serious, and reaching for one of the goblets he anxiously exclaimed:

"Great day in de mawnin', Marse John! You suttenly don' mean dat! Drink dis heah, quick! Ridin' in de sun's done tetched yoh haid!"

"Touched the devil," the old gentleman thundered. "Take it back this instant and ask Miss Liz if she thinks it's pretty enough to serve!"

Uncle Zack was indeed troubled. His hand shook with more than its usual wont, as he looked down at the offending beverage and then pleadingly up.

"She done tol' me twict dis week dat I'se gwine buhn in hell for dis heah julep makin'. De fu'st thing you-alls'll know ole Zack'll bust out in flames—an' den whar'll you git yoh comfo't from?"

But the Colonel's glowering brows said very distinctly that the alternative was an immediate little hell right there beneath the trees and, choosing the more remote, Zack turned slowly to the house. The old gentleman's eyes followed him, and now he turned irritably to Brent:

"I will not drink my juleps in gulps behind trees and shrubs, sir! I like to have them sit before me, and contemplate their merits. I like to Fletcherize them with my mind, and with those senses which my mind can set astir. And so with my cigars, and with my food! Why, sir, much of the pleasure of drinking and smoking and eating—as a gentleman understands these pleasures—is in their peaceful contemplation before the act! Otherwise, we are swine, and degrade our nutriment by coarse handling! What respect can we have for self, sir, if we choke and gurgle, and contemptuously treat those things we put into our bodies! I shall have no more of it, sir!"

Brent waited until this wave of impatience had spent itself upon the chairs, the grass, and everything within reach of the Colonel's wrathful eye; then asked:

"What did you do with him?"

"Potter?" he nervously answered. "Wasn't there. Blood on the ground, but he'd gone. Either wasn't killed, or someone found him. I don't know which, of course, but probably the latter."

"What shall you do?"

"I don't know; I don't know. Telephone to Jess, doubtless."

For a moment they sat looking soberly into each other's faces.

"May I suggest," Brent said, "that you abandon the idea of telephoning the sheriff? Jess isn't wanted quite yet awhile. If Potter is only wounded—maybe just scratched—he's all right. If someone found his body, there are others besides Dale who might have killed him."

"But, sir," sputtered the Colonel, "I can't harbor a murderer!"

"There's a difference between a murderer and one who righteously avenges a wrong. That's worth considering. Besides, it's a serious matter for a gentleman to give over his guest."

This, he knew, was a powerful argument and, feeling content to let it plead its own cause, quietly added: "We don't want to see him go to jail—"

"He wouldn't go to jail, sir," the Colonel quickly interrupted. "I would ask Jess to leave him here until Court convenes. He would be glad to do that for me."

"I know he would," Brent replied with all sincerity. "But we don't need a sheriff yet. Let's wait, and see what turns up!"

An expression of infinite relief came into the old gentleman's face, but his conscience was still aroused and emphatically he declared: "I'll deliver him to the law, sir, the very minute I know to a certainty that Potter is dead!" Then his eyes turned toward the house, from where by this time he thought his julep should be emerging.

That faithful institution, Uncle Zack, had come perilously near fulfilling his mission. He had walked bravely through the rooms, goblet in hand, at each turn earnestly and fervently praying to his gods that Miss Liz might not be found. Coming into the front hall, and passing "de long room"—that long room which used to ring with the merry laughs of dancers, but was now guarded as a sort of chapel for shrouded portraits—he saw its forbidding doors slightly ajar, and peered in.

Uncle Zack always avoided this room. Its subdued light; its oppressive atmosphere, invariably suggesting the image of "Ole Miss" lying there amidst banks of flowers which matched in purity her calm face; the uniform arrangement of high-backed chairs, suggesting in their white coverings a line of tombstones; the two massive crystal chandeliers, hanging like weights of an old clock which would never again be wound;—were all too much for Zack's heart and imagination. Yet the door was open, and he peered in.

His fading eyes followed the line of chairs, upon one of which stood Miss Liz. She had drawn the musty covering from an overhanging portrait—her dead sister—and to this she was murmuring. Her black silk dress and lace kerchief seemed to make her a part of the gallery; and her thin hand resting on the frame, with its forefinger unconsciously pointing upward, was as frail and wax-like as that other hand into which the old negro had, one twilit evening, long ago, laid a rose—when, unobserved and shaken by convulsive sobs, he tiptoed in to pray at the side of "Ole Miss'" bier.

Carefully now he stepped back, drawing the door softly to, and leaving the room to its undisturbed communion of whispering spirits.

"What are you crying for?" the Colonel asked, as he finally came up with the julep.

"I isn't cryin', Marse John. Dat bad eye of mine hu'ts me some, dat's all."

"I'll have you see the doctor. Did you find Miss Liz?"

"Yas, sah, I foun' her."

"And what did she say?"

"She never say nuthin' to me," Zack answered in his low, musical voice. "An' I never axed her nuthin', neither. She wuz standin' on a cheer in de long room, whisperin' to Ole Miss' pictur, Marse John; an' I couldn' poke no julep up at her den!"

The Colonel bowed his head. After a prolonged silence he drew a deep breath, then drained the goblet thirstily to the very end, taking a piece of ice into his mouth and moodily crunching it. But his eyes were not raised; his thoughts had not been diverted.

Zack tiptoed away and disappeared behind the house. Brent respectfully waited for the spell to pass; and when, at last, the old gentleman did look up, his eyes, like Zack's, were moist.

"The tobacco ought to be good this year," he said.

"Yes," Brent smiled at his courageous nonchalance, "if we don't have the riders."

"Riders, pooh," he ridiculed. "You mean, if we don't have any more play of fancy imaginations, and thunderings of overwrought editors, sir!"

For Colonel May was one of those many, many thousands whose love of State stands just above his love of Nation. Any word, or whisper, which scandalized the sweet name of Kentucky spurred him instantly to action. The same unwavering Southern Law whose right hand commands man to strike in defense of a woman's honor, placed its left upon the Colonel's shoulder whenever the old Commonwealth happened to be slandered by some impetuous act of a misguided son. Nor would Brent have been any less slow with his defense;—but, among themselves, pretenses were unnecessary. So he laughed at the old gentleman's fervor, saying:

"That's all right for the outsiders, Colonel; but I was in the State cavalry, and know. We chased 'em for weeks!"

"And how many were caught, sir?"

"Oh, I don't remember. My own troop rounded up three or four."

"Well, sir," the Colonel said, with a finality intended to close the subject, "that's a mighty small number to have given us all so bad a name! The injustice of Kentucky being exploited in the press of the United States merely for the misdeeds of three or four rascals! All kinds of deviltry may be perpetrated in other sections of the Union, sir, and the press treats it with indifference; but let just one gentleman in Kentucky shoot another gentleman, and the papers make it into a dish for the gods, garnished with their blackest type and seasoned with the spiciest titbits of their fertile imaginations! It's disgusting, sir!"

"There may have been a few of those fellows we didn't catch," Brent suggested, wanting very much to laugh.

"Impossible! I tell you it's impossible, sir! When a troop of cavalry, made up of such material as yourself, sir, goes after offenders, I am pretty well satisfied that you bring them every one in!"

"You put it most convincingly," the engineer bowed to him. "By the way," he added, rightly judging where the Colonel's thoughts were dwelling, "I hope you will tell me the day before you decide on telephoning Jess—I mean, of course, if the worst comes to the worst!"

"Certainly," he looked up. "But why do you want to know?"

"Perhaps you don't want to know why I want to know," Brent laughed.

"But I do, sir!"

"That isn't a sufficient reason, Colonel, for it may not be ethical for me to tell you. However, I've two plans. One is to give Dale a twenty-four-hour start, and in that event I'll go along to see him settled."

"I shall forget what you say," the old gentleman, immeasurably pleased, frowned sternly to ease his conscience. "But you can be of no service to him! He knows his country like a book!"

"It isn't to his country I'd advise him to go. No one would think, for instance, of looking for him in our house at home. He could keep on studying, too; and after awhile this thing would blow over."

The light in Colonel May's face was eloquent of a greater affection than he had at any time felt for Brent, but he simply said:

"Then I should lose you both! What is your other plan?"

"The other plan is something I am not at liberty to tell even you," Brent soberly answered.

After several minutes, during which the older man seemed to be thinking deeply, he struck his fist on the arm of his chair, exclaiming:

"I don't see why it's so damned important to tell Jess, anyhow! Why, sir, the fellow may not be dead, at all! And you mustn't lose sight of the fact, sir, that Dale is my guest, entitled by a higher law to my protection!"

"Now that you mention it, I believe you are right," Brent cried, as though this were sparklingly original. "Let's act on the suggestion!"

Sometime later, after they had gone, Zack came out to gather up the goblets. For several minutes he stood with one of these in his hand, staring with a perplexed and troubled frown at a julep which had not been tasted.

"Dar ain' no fly in it, dat's suah," he mumbled, "but I cyarn' see what de trubble is! An' it ain' Marse John's, 'caze he drinked his'n whilst I wuz heah! De onlies' answer is dat Marse Brent done lef it fer de ole nigger!"

With a stealthy look toward Miss Liz's windows he backed into the shrubbery and transferred the julep to a place where it might receive more consideration; then, after doing a few steps of a double-shuffle, he emerged and walked airily to the house.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE SECOND PLAN

Brent's room was across the hall from Dale's. These two, engineer and mountaineer, were the only occupants of the third floor, known since their arrival as Bachelors' Belfry. This floor, however, was far from resembling a belfry. Its high ceilings and spacious rooms were of the type which architects drew in the early nineteenth century, when labor cost but its feed and materials were everywhere at hand. Just as the bricks in the outside walls were laid "every other one a header," so the interior spoke of a style which went out of existence three generations ago. More recently, however, the Colonel had added a furnace and baths, converting for the latter several entire bed-rooms with which Arden was over supplied. Thus Bachelors' Belfry might have been considered the most agreeable, even as the most isolated, portion of the house; and, as its occupants passed a law forbidding women servants to ascend above the second floor between five in the afternoon and nine in the morning, conventions of attire were not by your leave, but as you please.

Tonight Brent had gone up early. At dinner he had been distrait; nor even his poise could quite disguise it. The Colonel had suggested a smoke and chat out on the porch where the air was soft and still and cool, but Brent could not find it in his heart to stay.

During a portion of the morning, during those few passion-riven seconds while Jane had been held like a carved image by the unfathomable timbre of his voice, a struggle had taken place in the engineer's soul. And when she had again started toward the house she little dreamed how savagely it was raging. So he wanted to be alone tonight; not to face that fight anew, because for once and all it had been settled, but to plan for the fulfillment of its issue. The Colonel, therefore, was smoking alone; just as Miss Liz was reading her Bible alone, and as Dale was poring alone over a book in the silent library.

Brent, his chair back-tilted, his pumps resting on the window sill, his coat off, had been surrounded for an hour by darkness. Only out across the limited space of world framed by his window, and now barely visible in the starlight, was there anywhere to rest his eyes.

He had watched the afterglow fading, fading; he had heard the last sleepy twitter of the birds; he had seen one star, two and three, come out; before his steadfast, brooding stare the trees had slowly lost their green for the somber shade of night. And now it was indeed night; that hushed and awe-inspiring span of gloom when worlds most sin; when men and women do their sobbing; do their yielding; count their cost.

All of this had had a most oppressing effect on him whose thoughts matched the compass, if not the penetration, of his vision. Another hour he sat. Then he heard the great front door close with a jar. It was the Colonel locking up the house. Shortly afterwards he heard Dale's step, as the mountaineer went to his room. A sigh trembled between the lonely watcher's lips, but he promptly arose and crossed the hall.

"How'd you get along today?" he asked, closing the door softly after him. Not infrequently did they chat together at night.

"Fine," Dale cried, still excited by the labors he adored. "I'm readin' about as fast as I can talk. It seems easy, now that I've got the knack!"

Brent watched the light of ambition, of achievement, flicker across his neighbor's face; he saw the purposeful chin, the knotted muscles in the jaws, the fist, which in emphasis had just come down upon a table, remain clenched as though it might never be off high tension.

"I'm glad to hear it," he said quietly. "But what have you in mind for the future?"

"In mind? Everything! I'm getting my learning (I used to say larnin') like a hungry old sow turned out on corn. Miss Jane says I'm doin' better'n anyone she ever dreamed of; and when I finish, we're going back in the mountains to bring our people out to light!"

"Yes, I've gathered something of that," Brent drily replied. "But, what I mean is, what is your idea about Tusk?"

Dale started: "Good Lord," he slowly exclaimed, "I'd forgot about him!"

"It might be worth while remembering," the other suggested, "I've come in to talk over plans for saving you."

"Savin' me! Me?" the mountaineer sprang to his feet in a burst of rage. "Only you an' the Cunnel know I've done it, an' if you'll keep yoh mouths shut there won't be any reason to save me, as you call it!"

"This isn't your country," Brent held his temper. "Men aren't shot around here and carted off and buried without some sort of legal investigation. If Tusk's body is found, and it will be found if he's dead, someone's got to pay; someone must either stand trial or turn fugitive."

"Great Gawd," Dale cried, slowly rocking his body from side to side. "Great Gawd! Great Gawd!" he repeated over and over. There was a flickering look about the eyes that made Brent catch his breath. It seemed for just a passing second that they had been converted into little balls of trembling red quicksilver; that was the only thing to which he could liken those eyes just then—red quicksilver. But this passed so quickly that it might have been a reflection from the lamp. At any rate, Dale was continuing: "Why, Brent, I can't go to jail! Nor I can't run away! Miss Jane says I'll be chuck full of education by next winter—how can I go to jail? She says every hope she has is in me!" Brent winced. "She says she trusts me more'n any feller she ever saw!" Brent winced again. "How can I go to jail?"

So it was true. The engineer laughed, but it sounded more like the stirring of ice.

"Don't divulge any more of her confidences. You've said enough—too much. I assure you. The thing to talk about now is how to save you. Are you sure you killed him?"

"'Course I did. Do you reckon I miss a man at three rod?"

"Then someone found his body, for it wasn't there when the Colonel went. Sooner or later the trail will lead here. I've thought, perhaps, you might slip away and go home with me. You can study there. Later, when things blow over, you can come back."

"An' Miss Jane'll go?" he asked, hopefully.

"Certainly not," Brent flushed.

"I'll see what she says," Dale dubiously suggested.

"You'll do nothing of the sort! Would you have her know about this mess?"

"It seems like she's pretty apt to know," he answered.

There was cruel truth in this; she was pretty apt to know beyond a doubt; and Brent pictured what it would mean to a girl who believed and had such implicit trust in one to find him a willful murderer. He thought a moment of the blind sister, the helpless one of patient waiting, of prayerful days; all dark, all dark, except for the hopeful coming of that day when her brother should stand irreproachable before the world and hear the applause of men. Slowly he spoke; it was of the second plan, formed in a white hot crucible of passion as Jane had walked away from him that morning.

"Several times Tusk has threatened to kill me if I persisted in building the road across his patch of land. He stopped me one night on the pike and laid hold of my bridle rein, and I had to get down and punch his head. Why shouldn't he have tried to fix me early this morning when I might have been up in that country?—and why shouldn't I have shot him in self-defense?"

"I reckon you could," the mountaineer doggedly answered.

"Well, prod up your brains, man, or I'll begin to doubt if you're as scintillating us everybody says! Don't you see what has to be done if the sheriff gets wind of the thing and comes here? If I can probably get off, and you'll probably be hanged—what's the answer?"

"You don't mean—" Dale swung about, resurrected hope lighting his face; but Brent held up a warning hand.

"You're on, and that's enough; so don't open your mouth even in here. If you do, I'll back out. You get that, too, don't you? Now listen: if Jess comes, just tell him you don't know anything about anything; that you've never left the library. I'll fix the Colonel and Zack."

But Dale was scarcely listening. He had begun to cavort about the room in a semi-barbarous dance, clapping his hands and making a purring sort of growl in his throat. A chair fell over; then another.

"Chop that crazy stuff," Brent commanded. "Want to wake the house?"

The big mountaineer looked rather sheepish as he picked up one of the chairs and sat down in it.

"I reckon I was so tickled to get off from the law," he mildly explained.

"I thought you might be mourning over the fate of whoever takes your place," the engineer murmured, with a sarcasm entirely lost on his listener. "Hell, Dale," he now let his feeling explode. "I've seen lots of fellows from the mountains, but any one of 'em would lose a hand before letting another man take his medicine! You've got to let me do it, you understand!—but I do reserve this opportunity of saying you're damned unappreciative."

"Do you reckon I'm lettin' you do it for me?" he turned savagely. "Do you think it's me—jest me? Then you're a-way off!"

"Well, I supposed it had some little to do with you," Brent suggested, "and—and Miss Jane."

"It hain't!" He was in a fury again, and dropped back into the old dialect "I hain't thinkin' of Miss Jane, nor nuthin'—'cept jest the place Ruth said I'd git ter fill, the man I'll make 'mongst the big men of the world! I'm the only one on airth as kin be as big as that, hain't I? Yeou hain't amountin' ter nuthin', air ye? Why shouldn't ye take my place afore the law? Hain't hit Natur's way fer the puny ter go down afore the strong?"

The engineer's eyes opened at the curious sensation this gave him; at the utter astonishment of listening. Then he softly began to laugh.

"My friend," he said, "I have raised my hat to one or two colossal freaks in the past, but henceforth I shall come into your exalted presence with bare-headed humilitude. However, my boy, don't think that I'm flirting with the penitentiary for the sake of your dazzling future, or for any of your pipe dreams. I'm doing it," he arose, and added softly, "I'm doing it for the fun of the damn thing. Good night, Mr. Genius!"

Long, long afterwards, Brent continued to sit in the back-tilted chair, gloomily staring through the window which framed his dim vision of the world. Later, somewhere on the other side of the house, the moon came up; and far out across the country a dog howled. Yet, by another hour, when that disk of lifeless white had floated higher in the sky, the trees framed by his window dropped their robe of mourning for a more soothing green and silver.

"I don't reckon it's such a somber old world, after all," he stood up, stretching;—then went to bed, and slept.

But, across the hall, Dale had not slept. Excited, boyishly happy to have escaped the consequences of his madness, he had tossed throughout the night; building up castles of greatness equal to those of his beloved Clay and Lincoln.

Now a robin piped its three first waking notes, and the mountaineer's eyes opened wide. The interior of the room was beginning to be touched with gray, and he sprang up, throwing back the eastern shutters and gazing on that first faint flush of dawn which stirs within man's breast a feeling of the Omnipotent. With lips apart, he watched the coming of delicate layers of salmon, and saw them merge to a soft and satiny rose. Vermillion now touched the highlights, as though some unseen brush, wet from a palette below the horizon, had reached up and made a bold stroke across this varying canvas. More slowly followed blue—and then a bluer blue.

His thoughts, coloring with the sky, were whimsically curious. A day was coming! It would come and go, and never in all eternity come again—would this day! It was coming: to some, bringing ungrudging pleasure, sweet happiness; to others, unsparing misery, bitter despair! Before days were, it had been arranged that this one should appear—it had been nicely calculated that this very dawn should glorify the sky at this precise moment; and that e'er the sun of this day set, thousands upon thousands of human beings should raise their smiling lips in rapture, or their bloodshot eyes in pain! How many now, out across this big, beautiful, blushingly awakening world, were undreaming of their approaching joy—or unconscious of their creeping doom? Over and over in his mind Dale weighed these thoughts. The universe was becoming a fascinating, tremendous force to him. This day, just now coming over the hill, so weighted with its black and white bounties—what was it bringing to him?

"I know!" he cried, snatching up his clothes. "I get freedom, an' he," here his clenched fist shook toward Brent's room, "gets jail!"

Feverishly dressing, he stamped down to the library—his paradise; regardless of whom he might be disturbing at this hour.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE CALL THAT MEANS SURRENDER

Three days later an airedale terrier was driven to Flat Rock by Uncle Zack. When, with an air of mystery, he presented the leash to Jane, grinned and politely bowed himself away, she had stared at him in utter surprise; then down at the dog which seemed to be gazing up with greater understanding.

"Well, what is the answer?" she kneeled before him, fondly taking him by the ears. The honest, fearless brown eyes spoke, but she slowly shook her head: "I'm not civilized enough to understand!"

But her fingers, now turning his collar about, came upon a little note addressed in Brent's writing. Untying it in some haste she sat upon the grass and read:

"I, and my life, are yours, Mistress Jane. Please take me, and let me guard you faithfully.

An unnamed dog."

"An unnamed dog!" she cried in delight, giving him a quick, impulsive hug. "Oh, you wonderful creature!" Then held him off at arms' length, his head between her palms in a way that wrinkled the tawny forehead into an expression of profound wisdom. "How would you like to be named—Mac?" she whispered.

He was wagging his stumpy tail, anyway; but one can always give a dog the benefit of a doubt, and she believed that it began to wag more happily. Thus it was settled between them. All the affection which his nature held, which his rearing in a large kennel of other dogs had not permitted him to bestow upon any one master, now sprang to its most perfect development and centered upon this girl. Wherever she was, he was; watchful, ready for a lark, or equally content to lie quietly at her feet.

That afternoon, in trim boots and riding habit, she crossed the porch to her horse which had just been brought around. Mac, in great pretended fury, was grasping the leash end of her crop and tugging at it with savage growls.

"Drop it," she gave his nose a tap. He licked her glove then, and looked up with his head tilted in roguish inquiry. "We must ride over and thank the other Mister Mac," she explained; and a few minutes later they were going at a spirited pace across the meadows to Arden.

With still no news of Tusk Potter, the Colonel had spent a restless day. Earlier, the doughty son of Shadeland Wildon brought the little boy over to see him, followed by Aunt Timmie in her precarious buggy; but it was now afternoon and they had left. Shadows were lengthening, and the cows were mooing at the pasture gate.

Dale, as usual, had spent the day in study. His absorption had made him unconscious of intruders who came into the room. Timmie and the little boy had stopped to say good-bye, and she called his name; even emboldened by his silence to murmur: "Don' you know you'se gwine pop yoh brains a-wu'kin' 'em so hard?"

Bip, who regarded Dale with mysterious interest, made farther advances. He went up close, and looked wonderingly into his face; but at last both he and the old woman left unseen and unheard.

All unconscious of his surroundings, this student was living in other days with the dauntless Pompey. By the aid of the huge dictionary, now seldom opened, he laboriously followed this daring friend of the great Cicero. Since morning he had witnessed the capture of a thousand cities, the slaying or subjugation of a million human beings—and more of this was to come. Had lightning snapped about his head he would not have known it for the wilder sounds of battlefields, scattered between Rome and the Euphrates, possessing his brain.

When Jane arrived, Mac was properly introduced to the old gentleman, who made a great fuss over him and directed her attention to his points of unusual excellence. But Brent, he told her, was not about.

"Dale would like to see him," she said enthusiastically.

"Oh, yes," his face clouded, "I suppose so!"

"What's the matter?" she quickly asked.

"Matter?" he looked up. "Why, nothing, my dear! Nothing, of course!"

But it did not satisfy, and she asked again:

"Has anything happened?—Dale, or anything?"

He must have found some difficulty in evading this direct question, and his hesitation, brief though it was, alarmed her.

"No, my dear. I cannot say that anything has happened. I may be growing a little uncertain of him—that is, I may be afraid—oh, bother! It is nothing but an old man's fancy!"

Nevertheless, when later, calling the mountaineer's name, she stepped through the library window, an element of uncertainty, quite a different sort from that which the Colonel was congratulating himself upon having so deftly hid, filled her heart with a vague foreboding.

Dale was mumbling aloud as he read, and did not hear her; but a slight pressure on his shoulder brought him slowly back from scenes of carnage, and he looked up into her face, smiling down at him.

"Stop awhile, and speak to Mac! Your eyes seem tired!"

"They're not. That was a great man—that Pompey!"

"Great," she agreed, a trifle piqued that he ignored her dog.

"Those fights," he said tensely, "were the biggest things a feller ever did!"

"He did something bigger than conquering men," she told him.

"What?" he challenged.

"The battles won over himself," she answered slowly. "His upright life, his unsullied honor toward all those women whom he made captive. In battles of that kind there are great generals today. In that respect everyone can be a Pompey. I wish I could feel," she thought again of the Colonel's troubled face, "that you, without any doubt at all, were going to be one!"

"I see what you mean," at last he said, turning back to the book; but instantly pushed it away with a gesture of impatience and gazed moodily into the high polish of the mahogany table, as though somewhere down in its ancient graining an answer might be found to his troubled thoughts.

She watched him, with a curious look of interest.

"I don't understand it," he finally murmured. "By that very teachin', we're branded worse than any kind of beasts. There's somethin' wrong, Miss Jane; there's somethin' wrong!" A soft and peculiar light, which she had often seen when his pupils began to dilate and contract, fitfully crossed and recrossed them.

"I don't think I understand you," she replied.

"Then look!" he turned quickly. Again the curious light. She felt herself being charmed by it, and wondered if a quail might feel so while crouching before the point of a bird-dog. In a whisper-haunted voice he began to speak; "It's a summer night. A lazy mist hangs in the valley. I can see it—I've seen it most a thousand times! It hangs from the mountain's waist like a skirt on a half dressed woman, and above is all naked in the starlight. The air is still and clear, up thar," he slipped unconsciously into the familiar dialect as he grew more intense, "'n' the mist below is smooth 'n' white. Ye'd think ye could walk acrost on hit. No sign or sound of the world kin touch this place, 'n' one might as well be standin' on some crag that overlooks eternity. Back in a cave a wild-cat wakes, 'n' sniffs the air; 'n' then he yawns, 'n' purrs, 'n' gits up 'n' walks with soft, padded feet ter look out on this silence. He sniffs the air, 'n' purrs agin, then lays his ears down flat 'n' sends a cry a-tearin' 'crost the space. I've seen 'im; I've heerd 'im; I've laid back outen the wind 'n' watched 'im. He crouches 'n' waits. Soft, but nervous-like, his claws dig in 'n' out the airth. Then an answer comes, floatin' like a far-off cry of a child in pain. With ears still tight ag'inst his head, he freezes closter ter the ground, lashin' his stumpy tail from side ter side, 'n' purrin' deeper. Then he cries agin, 'n' waits. Purty soon, from out that mist, the answer comes agin, 'n' like a flash he's gone. Has he done wrong?"

He paused, still looking at her; and she, too strangely fascinated to turn away her eyes, stared back with parted lips.

"When the fu'st red bars of dawn flash up the sky," he went on, in the same mysterious voice, "showin' folks down in the valley that a day has come, a bird pulls his head out from his wing, 'n' blinks. I've seen 'em; I've laid 'n' watched 'em 'most a thousand times. He blinks agin, 'n' finds hisse'f a-lookin' squar in ter a pair of twinklin' eyes that seems ter've been awake all night, jest a-watchin', with sly longin', from 'tween two leaves. Maybe he'd seen those eyes afore, but not jest like this. Maybe only yestidday he passed 'em by—or even drove 'em away from food;—but somethin' strange is in 'em now, somethin' strange that happened in the night. So he gives a jump at 'em, jest like a spring he didn't know was in his legs had been let loose; 'n' she laughs 'n' flies away, I've seen it happen 'most a thousand times. From tree ter tree, from bush ter bush, he follers. He stops; she stops. But when he tries agin, she flies. The next day they're buildin' a nest. Have they done wrong?"

He paused, but she did not take her eyes from his face. She might not have known his voice had ceased by the way she looked deep into his pupils—deep into the realm of his fancies. When he did speak again his words were scarcely audible:

"Whether I'm in this misty valley, or up in those scarred rocks 'n' crags—wherever I happen ter be—'n' send my call out ter space, I reckon I've got ter go when the answer comes floatin' back ter me:—whenever a dawn brings two eyes that have been watchin' fer no one else but me, I reckon I've got ter follow in jest that very way! We weren't made ter put up a fight when that call comes—fer that call don't mean fight, Miss Jane; it means surrender!"

"Oh, my mountain poet," she murmured, leaning gracefully nearer, "how can you wear a modern harness with such a soul! But we cannot live simply, as the animals and birds! Do you not see that a higher civilization has taught us the greater meaning of these things?"

"No," he answered bluntly. "That call is the greatest meaning. Nothin' don't stand one, two, three to it! If civilization chokes it, then civilization is wrong!"

A feeling of conflict stirred in her. Here was this towering young god whom the Great Chiseller had made so awkward, so uncontrollably selfish, yet otherwise so fine, and he was deliberately leaving the one path of all others which she had believed him most sure to follow. Ruth had sent him to her untarnished, and now, while in her keeping, he was drifting away! How could she ever answer those blind eyes if they questioned her with their calm, sightless stare? Her hand left his chair and rested lightly on his shoulder, and the voice which spoke to him seemed almost hard:

"You are stumbling into a false reasoning! Civilization does not choke the cry; it only directs the way men and women shall answer! You are not forgetting your Sunlight Patch, are you?"

He started to speak, but changed his mind; while, without being noticed, she bent nearer, intently watching.

"Well?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said with a touch of uncertainty, "I reckon maybe it's all wrong up at Sunlight Patch, too!"

Tremendously moved, startled, fearful lest he drift entirely from her reach, she slipped still lower and looked up into his face.

"What does this mean?" she asked. "What has happened to you, boy?"

Mac, feeling that something had gone wrong, came over and pushed his head beneath her arm; and with this she held him, while her other hand impulsively caught Dale's sleeve. A feeling of protectorship, a faint consciousness of motherhood, gave her face an exquisite look of entreaty. What men's lives might be had never taken a definite place in her mind, for she had accepted much and passed over more. But she was not pleading now so much for him, as she was for the trust that had been imposed in her—the knowledge that her honor was answerable to the giver of that trust!

"You will not forget your Sunlight Patch, Dale?" she whispered. "You will promise me this?"

Slowly the answer for which she hoped began to frame itself upon his lips, and would have been spoken, had not Brent at this moment entered in search of the mountaineer, and got well within the room before seeing her.

She arose quietly, entirely free of self-consciousness, and was about to make a sign for him to wait until the promise should be put in words. But he was receiving altogether a different impression of the scene.

Yet, whatever his surprise, or the pain it brought, he was too well bred to be taken unawares, and immediately crossed to the shelves as though his errand were a book. The room was so large, and so deeply shadowed near the door, that he might do this; and, indeed, hoped she would believe herself to have been unobserved.

But the ruse had not deceived her. It had, instead, merely reflected his own thought; and, as this understanding flashed through her mind, she started forward, hurt;—but as quickly halted in confusion.

Rather hastily he took out the first book his fingers touched and was starting back, when again she made as if to follow; but once more stopped before the humiliation of having considered it even necessary to explain to him. Yet one of her hands was still held out, a picture of desperate protest.

Of course he did not see this, for his eyes had not dared to turn in her direction after their first unforunate glance. Thus he went into the hall, and an instant later she was staring at the vacant door, now rapidly becoming blurred.

She gave one backward glance at Dale, but he had forgotten her existence and was poring over the battles of Pompey. Such indifference did not hurt her now:—it was the emptiness of that door! Still staring, silently beating her hands together in impotent rage, her face burning with mortification, two big tears rolled down her cheeks and fell upon the rug. Mac whined. He did not understand—he only felt.

"Mac," she sobbed hysterically, "I wish you—could say all—all those things that go—with damn and hell!" then passionately ran from the room, and came up plump into the Colonel's ample waistcoat.

"My God!" the old gentleman cried.

"Oh!" she gasped.

"Ah, 'tis you!" he said, his arms still about her. "I thought it was a wild-cat!"

"I thought it was a bear," she sobbed.

"What? Crying? My dear, how is this?" he asked in alarm.

"I can't tell you," she murmured to his cravat.

"Can't tell me! But I say you shall!" he hotly commanded.

"I'll never do anything—when you say shall," she retorted brokenly.

"God bless my soul," he sputtered. "I want you to understand that you'll do anything whether I say shall or not, when I find you crying!"

"That sounds funny," she began to laugh, just a little. Then he began to laugh.

She took his hand after this and led him across the hall into the "long room," and when they emerged ten minutes later there were no signs of tears.

"Never fear," he chuckled, "I'll tell him this very night."

"Oh, but you mustn't tell him," she said, aghast. "I only want him to understand!"

"I see, I see," he pinched her cheek, "You only want him to understand. Well, he shall understand this very night, then."

"And you'll thank him for sending me Mac?"

"Yes, yes, I'll thank him, never fear. Wait now, till I order my horse; I'm going to ride home with you."

"It isn't dark yet, and I'm not afraid with Mac," she demurred.

"It is nearly dark, and I'm very much afraid," he bowed gallantly, "that I'll too soon be forgot for this airedale gentleman if you go alone."



CHAPTER XXV

ALMOST A RESOLUTION

Shortly after breakfast next day the Colonel dispatched Uncle Zack and his mule with a note to Jane. He might have telephoned this message, which simply read: "He understands, with an amplitude of grace which ill befits him. Come over this morning and straighten Lizzie out with her preserving. I hear that she is skinning every negro on the place, and I greatly fear for them, or her."

But, no; this must be on a written page and delivered by hand, for the old Colonel averred that no gentleman should assume to shriek his voice by mechanical device into the ear of a gentlewoman. In cases of illness, accident or fire, or perhaps in pressing business needs, the telephone had its uses; but a faux pas of the first order was to employ it socially.

So Zack's mule ambled down the pike and home again, bringing a reply which sparkled with merriment between its lines: "You have the maternal instinct of that lady who lived in a shoe! I'll be over to soothe Miss Liz and her poor, flayed darkies."

Arriving some hours later, she and Mac went directly to the shed where bright copper kettles were hanging in a row above the old fashioned, stone oven fires. Several negro women were moving quickly and silently about, frightened and getting into each other's way. But now, as she drew near, there was a commotion, and she saw Miss Liz actually lay hands upon a girl of about seventeen and roughly draw her away from one of the simmering pots. Unobserved, and in utter amazement, Jane stood and stared at them.

"What were you about to do?" Miss Liz cried excitedly.

"I—I drapped de spoon in," the girl began to whimper.

"And were going to thrust in your hand and get it scalded to the bone?"

"I'se—I'se 'feerd you'd scold," she put her head down in her arm.

"Now, Amanda," Miss Liz looked at her reprovingly, "if you think I've nothing to do but sit up nights making poultices on account of your idiocy, you're very much mistaken! What does a spoon in the preserves amount to compared with your suffering?—and my suffering, when I'll be dead for sleep with nursing you? What do you all mean," she turned angrily upon the others, "by standing there and letting her attempt such a thing?"

"'Deed, I didn' see her, Miss Liz!" several voices were raised in protest.

"Of course, you didn't see her! You never see anything! I must be your eyes as well as your brains, you lazy pieces! Here, Amanda, take this handful of cherries and go out there under the trees and eat them; and don't swallow the seeds, either, or I'll be sitting up with you yet!"

Jane came on then, and Miss Liz gratefully recited the multitude of grievances which had beset her since early morning. This seemed such a vast relief that she yielded to persuasion and left for a little rest. A few minutes later the shed was animated with a buzz of happy voices, fingers, more skilled than Miss Liz had given herself the opportunity of realizing, now traveled with twice their former speed, and into the simmering kettles was being cooked a geniality which all preserves must have to be appreciated.

Half an hour later, leaving this crew in splendid working order, she walked slowly around to the front of the house. Out before her, in the shaded group of rustic chairs, sat the Colonel and Brent, somewhat apart from, but facing, Miss Liz, who seemed to be holding them at bay. Had the men been alone Jane might doubtless have gone indoors and sought the commander of the kettles, for she did not care to see Brent just at once. But the human dice had fallen otherwise, and there seemed no alternative but straight ahead.

As she drew near she noticed that Miss Liz's cheeks were flushed with some new excitement, and guessed she was being worried by a process of serious teasing. Her eyes then sought the reason for this and discovered it in two julep goblets, cuddled guiltily behind a nearby tree. For as Miss Liz had come across the lawn to join them half an hour earlier, this refreshment was hurried out of sight—the Colonel's resolution of independence notwithstanding—and now, before the ice could entirely melt, Brent, by a polite tirade against the prim old lady's pet hobby, trusted her increasing wrath to clarify the situation by routing her housewards. While he and the Colonel knew this would inevitably come, her anger was not yet at sufficient heat, and she held her ground with defiance bristling from every stiff fold of her black silk dress.

Jane gave the men a reproachful look, and Brent's face flushed when he saw her eyes hover about the juleps; but she entered their scheme by asking:

"Why does everyone seem so serious?"

"My dear," Miss Liz began to fire, "your father had suggested a Fourth of July celebration—a most fitting tribute to our departed heroes—but I regret to say that two not very high minded gentlemen—" The lorgnette, turned first upon the Colonel and then on Brent, completed her indictment.

"I'm sure we are misunderstood," Brent murmured, but the Colonel maintained a discreet silence.

"Can it be, Mr. McElroy," she glared at him with straightening lips, "that I misunderstood you to say George Washington was not a paragon of truth?"

"You mean a bird?" he innocently asked.

"A bird, sir?" the black dress gave a startled rustle.

"Excuse me; I thought you said ptarmigan."

The conventional old Colonel committed a very deplorable breach of etiquette—he snickered; but twisted it into a lusty cough, gutturally explaining:

"Really, my cold!"

"Mr. McElroy," she turned severely to Jane, "has been blaspheming—blaspheming the traditions of our noble heroes! My dear, it is positively disgusting!"

"The subject is quite a closed book to him," Jane sweetly replied, and the Colonel was threatened with another coughing spell.

"I didn't say anything against heroes," the engineer explained, "except that none of them can measure up to our heroines."

But from the toss of Miss Liz's head this had not brought him a grain of grace.

"What hero did I malign?"

"You said," she snapped, "that Washington was neither truthful nor honest!"

"Oh, now, I couldn't have!" he protested. "I merely said, in regard to the cherry tree episode, his intention was not only to cut, but to run. You've heard the expression 'cut and run'? Well, we get it from George."

"Your surmises are intolerable!"

"Miss Liz, it isn't fair to condemn until you hear me!" It was the tone of a much misunderstood penitent, and she hesitated. "I'll leave it to the Colonel," he was continuing, but the old gentleman briskly interrupted:

"You'll do nothing of the kind, sir!"

"Then I'll leave it to Jane—she may have some remote idea of history—if I'm scandalizing your hero by saying he never set us the extraordinary example you think. He was just a normal boy, a considerate boy, and had no intention of worrying the family about that tree; but it so happened that before he had time to sweep up the chips—which shows he was a tidy boy!—his governor swooped right down on top of him, you might say, and the game was up. George had cut, you see, Miss Liz, but he couldn't run—and here's where he showed himself the genius which ultimately resulted in our independence. He knew in a flash that this was a tight place; it was an awful tight place; in fact, you might say it pretty nearly squeezed him all over. There was the prostrate tree, right before the old gentleman's eyes; and there was the old gentleman, mad as hops, with his cane trembling in the air. There wasn't another boy, or even another hatchet, in fifteen miles—and little George's mind analyzed the full significance of that fact. It didn't take him a second to see how the situation had to be handled; so, really, Miss Liz, I think our lesson should be drawn, not from his love of truth, but from his quick and accurate judgment. In all the English language there was just one thing for him to say, and he said it. That's genius, Miss Liz—but not always veracity."

"Some persons may think that way," she compressed her lips, taking care to give the proper emphasis to persons. "There is no accounting for the benighted mind. Thanks be to God that every man, woman and child of intelligence knows otherwise."

Delivering herself of this, she calmly folded her hands and smiled at Jane with an expression of triumph. Brent took a fleeting glance toward the juleps.

But something now smote the Colonel's conscience. She looked so thin and frail! He remembered, too, the suspicious watering of Zack's bad eye, and what his good eye had seen in the "long room." In a gentle voice he said:

"My dear, I hear that the sisters are asking where good cherries may be had. It seems the convent would put up a certain cordial; and, if you are passing there, would you inquire how many bushels they wish, and say you will send them over with your compliments?"

"Thank you, John," she looked forgivingly across at him. "If Jane would like, we may go now. The cherries are at their primest state. I shall stop a moment," she turned and took Jane's arm, "to see how our preserving goes, my dear. Can we be home for luncheon? And will you remain to have it with us?"

Even before they had quite disappeared, Brent rescued the still palatable juleps, and he and the Colonel were testing them.

"She's a good soul," the old gentleman murmured. "I'm glad for her sake that Zack remained discreet the other day."

"I'm glad for all our sakes," Brent gravely nodded. "Though I suppose he wouldn't have done it under any circumstances."

"He's a perspicacious nigger," the Colonel chuckled. In a moment he spoke more soberly: "I've been in town every day, and have heard no single word about Potter. Do you suppose he's dead somewhere in the hills?"

"Oh, no," Brent evasively answered. "He's all right. A shot at him would scare him away for a month. He has too much on his conscience."

"Well, I shall persist," the old gentleman sighed.

They were leaning back—just as two contented idlers in the shade; but each with a weight upon his heart to rob it of that needed peace which makes for perfect days. Yet, Brent could hardly now be called an idler. He had worked late the night before plotting his field notes, and the afternoon would be devoted to this same pursuit. Finally he said:

"Suppose I had killed Tusk! Would you stand by me?"

"Yes, sir," the old gentleman opened his eyes, "I would stand by you with a shot gun until I had the satisfaction of seeing you safely locked up in jail."

A longer pause.

"Assuming that I'd acted in self defense, would there be much of a stir about it?"

"Hm," came the noncommital response, but this time with closed eyes, for the Master of Arden had passed the point of active interest.

It was a morning to invite sleep. No leaf stirred, but the shaded air was fresh and comforting. Great cumulus clouds lazily, ponderously, glided across the sky, prototypes of nomadic wandering. Somewhere back by the stables a mellow farm bell proclaimed across the smiling fields the hour of noon; then negroes straightened up from the rows of young tobacco, stretched their tired backs, and in groups wandered toward a cool spring where their dinner buckets had been left. Yet it was some little while before the Colonel's midday meal.

Again Brent asked (or perhaps he only thought, for thoughts have a knack of seeming loud to those at the threshold of Nod):

"I wonder how it would feel to stop drinking and buckle all the way down?"

No answer.

"If she could only care for me—after I've wiped the bad spots out!"

No answer.

"But I'm such a pup—and what a devilishly sweet miracle she is!"

Still no answer, so he may have been only thinking, after all. At any rate, the Colonel remained steeped in tranquil apathy.

The messengers to the convent, returning somewhat late, caught sight of the men beneath the trees and went that way in order to bring them in for luncheon. But as they approached, Jane stopped. She saw the immaculately white pleated bosom of the Colonel's shirt bulging out to support his chin, which rested firmly and comfortably in it. Then her eyes went to Brent, occupying three chairs for himself and his legs, while one arm hung inertly to the ground and his head lolled back in childish abandon. She smiled. But this was not what had stopped her. By the hand of each of these sleeping men, in glaring, accusing sight, stood a julep goblet.

Miss Liz, now wondering at her hesitation, was making ready to raise the terrifying lorgnette, and this would have spelled disaster. Those penetrating lenses would never have missed the dazzling light reflected from that traitorous silver. Smiling again, though with a dull heart ache as her gaze still lingered on the sprawling Brent, she took Miss Liz's wrist in the nick of time, saying:

"They're asleep. Let's go in first and brush off." She knew the invariable appeal which "brushing off" had for prim Miss Liz.

Soon the dainty chimes, manipulated in the front hall to the enduring joy of Uncle Zack, fell upon the sleeping ears in vain, and the old servant came across the lawn to call them. He also stopped, in dumb amazement, then hastened forward to gather the telltale evidence beneath his jacket. This aroused the Colonel and, after him, Brent, who looked up blinking.

"For de Lawd sake," the old darky frowned on them with all the severity of his five-feet-one, "don' you-all know Miss Liz is done got back!—an' heah you is sleepin' wid dese globuts a-settin' out in plain sight! I never seed sich reckerless doin's since I'se bawned—an' Marse Brent ain't no moh'n smelt his'n, at dat! Luncheon is sarved, Marse John," he added, with his usual formality.

"By Jove, Colonel," Brent laughed, "they might have caught us nicely!"

"It's God's truth, sir," the old gentleman chuckled, taking his arm and starting toward the house.



CHAPTER XXVI

"WHAT EYES HAVE YOU?"

The late azure twilights and early salmon dawns of June merged into July with no more ado than a changed date line on the Colonel's morning paper. Days were of little concern at Arden, other than being days—as the library calendar now gave accusing evidence by pointing at the previous May. Miss Liz, to be sure, was invariably aware when Sundays came; being told by that unnamable pressure of peace which to most women would proclaim the Sabbath even in places of utter solitude. Otherwise, the weeks might be composed of Mondays or Fridays, since school had been out.

Jane, this particular morning playing with Bip and Mac somewhat apart from the Colonel and Brent who were engrossed in a game of chess, had been critically alive to the Sunday habits of these two families which had come to mean so much to her; especially in relation to the little boy. Miss Liz not only supported her, but freely expressed her indignation at the child's parental indifference, and that good lady's tone was one of deepest injury whenever the subject was mentioned. For she had indeed tried to awaken Bip's spiritual mind two days after he was born, by sending him an embroidered bib with a baby blue motto: "I thank the Lord for what I eat—Soup and mush and bread and meat!" If he grew into an ungrateful man, she, at least, had done her duty! Bob paid small attention to matters of church, and Ann had easily acquired the negative enthusiasm of her father who frankly admitted he could not keep from going to sleep, even during the best of sermons. Yet, although he lived by this benighted declaration, he was known as a Christian gentleman—of the kind whose hands were never so tightly clasped in prayer that they could not reach his pocket.

Jane now looked up as, with a delighted laugh, the Colonel leaned back; while Brent, in pretended irritation, mussed the chess men in disorder over the board.

"Fifteen moves, sir!" the old gentleman cried. "That's a beat you'll not forget!"

"It's the worst I ever had," Brent admitted. "You can't do it again!"

"I'll bet you I can, sir," the old gentleman declared, then whispering, "after a julep!"

"Whew!" Brent gave a long, clear, incredulous whistle, and called over to Jane: "Did you hear this boaster?"

But the whistle had a more subtle intention than emphasis, and within doors Uncle Zack, dozing in a kitchen chair, became at once active. This newly inaugurated signal immeasurably pleased the Colonel, who could not himself whistle.

"Do either of you know it's Sunday?" she asked.

"By Jove, now, it isn't, is it?" Brent looked at her in concern.

"And I'm going to church," she continued. "Would you like to go, Colonel?"

The old gentleman cleared his throat and began searching closely over the table for his glasses, which weren't there.

"I should say he's just about crazy to go," Brent watched him. "Don't speak for a minute, or he'll die of joy. How ingenious you are in planning his amusements!"

"More amusement is coming, I should judge, from the dulcetness of your whistle," she drily observed.

The men exchanged sheepish glances. Brent laughed.

"Admitted," he said. "But it was not you we were trying to deceive. If you tell us how you knew, I'll tie the Colonel on a horse and let you lead him to the altar. She must be a witch, sir!"

"She is, indeed. A charming one, who bewitched me the very first moment I laid eyes on her—and there's been no change in my condition since, madam," the old gentleman bowed to her with courtly grace.

"Then," Brent tried to corner him, "until you admit yourself de-charmed, church this morning is your only alternative."

"It would be a very good place for your soul, young man," he sternly retorted. "When I was a gay spark, ladies of—of almost the same loveliness," he bowed again, "were kept busy weeks in advance accepting my invitations to church, sir! The very rocks and rills of our beloved Commonwealth would strike me dead, sir, if I had permitted so enchanting an opportunity to escape!" And once more he bowed low before her.

"Mistress Jane," Brent sprang to his feet and bent double with an abandon that the Colonel's old bones would have resented, "will you adorn my buggy as far as the meetin'-house?"